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onomatopagu-et-cie · 1 year ago

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Again some other personal notes on D. Gray-Man (Link, part. 2)

First impressions after re-reading DGM Some theories and observations Notes on Link, part 1

Here's the second part on the notes more focused on Link's character! They will also touch on Johnny's (and Kanda!!!) wholesome character and how their relationship to Allen is portrayed!

One day I'll dedicate a whole post on Kanda because there's A LOT to say about him, I love how he fits the story's themes!

Again have a nice week!

(SPOILERS UP TO CH247!!!!)

▶ The Allen-Kanda-Johnny trio, Johnny and Link parallels

THEM!!!!

I love how Allen is slowly reconnecting with his world through Johnny and Kanda! The way they are portrayed is really interesting.

Johnny offers Allen full emotional support when he didn’t think he even needed it in the first place (eg. when he realizes he’s been feeling lonely all this time) and will never let go of their bond. I loved how Johnny’s involvement with the story gradually developed too!

Kanda is determined to help Allen despite his unyielding rejections ; even if the truth hurts, he will search for it and won’t sugarcoat it in order to move things forward and have the keys to help Allen. He understands Johnny is someone Allen needs the most beside him right now: he has his best interests at heart and an unwavering faith in him, just like Alma made him believe in a future together.

I wonder how Link’s presence will factor in this situation, especially now that he revealed his role to everyone.

I love the parallel here between ch211 (Johnny reunites with Allen) and ch247 (Allen reunites with Link). When Johnny reminded Allen how lonely he was, his line of thoughts strayed to the last time he saw Link: Apocryphos was the root cause of his isolation and at that time, he believed Link was dead by its hands.

Allen probably wouldn’t have accepted help if Johnny didn’t give him unconditional support, so I wonder if just like Johnny, Allen will be able to help Link somehow?

It’s interesting to look at Johnny and Link side to side:

At the beginning, Johnny completely relied on Allen’s help as an exorcist (pretty understandably, he’s a scientist and the Level 4 attack was a tragedy) and failed to realize the soul-crushing burden he carried on his own. Stricken with guilt after the Level 4 attack, he strongly wanted to save everyone to make up for Tapp and the others then, as the next arcs show.

When Allen escaped the Order, Johnny decided to go after him because he understood how lonely his friend must be, and was also convinced he would never have killed Link. He gave him his full support and trust. (I’m just digging these kinds of plot lines, just like Ochako’s « when heroes suffer, who is there to help them? » in MHA!)

Link failed Allen once: he was torn between Luberrier’s orders and Allen’s plea to trust him, but he was also determined to save the latter from the Fourteenth, that’s why he bound him in the first place. He was also stricken with remorse towards the fate of the third generation exorcists he considered as his own family.

He’s in a place where he can hardly give unconditional trust/emotional engagement to anyone. His role frames him in a passive position: he’s a Crow meant to obey Luberrier’s orders, as his shadow.

His existence as a Crow denies him everything he can claim as his: even the family he found in Tewaku, Madarao, Tokusa, Goushi and Kiredori was taken away from (and also ironically because of) him because he’s a puppet.

And I think Allen could sympathize with his situation, since Neah said the same of him. It could explain his quiet reaction to Link confessing he’s come to aid the Fourteenth, only asking if he’s okay with all ‘that’. It also ties into the general marionette - puppet - doll staged on a play imagery weaved throughout the story (if I’m not mistaken, Hoshino intended to title the story ‘Dolls’ before DGM?).

While Johnny left the Order to stay by Allen’s side as his friend, Link meant to disappear from Allen’s side should he overcome Neah’s memory, probably because he doesn’t deem himself worthy of any kind of bond with Allen.

Just like Fo said to Allen, everybody comes with their lot of hopes, dreams and struggles, and sometimes it’s difficult to reach out:

Faith is an important theme in D. Gray-man, depicted in a light both positive and negative:

We can see it reflected in Anita, Lenalee and Lavi’s stories. The unshakeable belief that Cross didn’t sink with his float that sustains alone Anita ; the anguish to keep on advancing even though Allen might be gone that both Lavi and Lenalee struggled with. Allen wanted Lenalee to believe they would all come back safely from the Ark when her legs couldn’t synchronize. The doubt that gradually seized Allen’s faith in his bond with Mana. It dissipated once he decided to face the truth and fulfill his promise to him. Allen’s faith in his path as an exorcist and his promise to Mana is also strongly associated to his self-sacrifice. Little by little the story also shows that faith in ‘God’ didn’t even hold any meaning in this staged world. The Order is given prophecies and blindly acts accordingly as Apocryphos and the Heart pull the strings ; the Noah believe in a completely different depiction of the Three Days of Darkness. The cruelty in faith was also strongly introduced with Marc and Claire’s story in the first chapter. Innocence is believed to bring salvation but we get to see how parasitic it is to their holders. Link believed in the uprightness of the Vatican before facing Apocryphos. His faith in Luberrier also seems to waver the more he delves into his true intentions. Cross’s belief in Neah’s promise stuck him in a 30-year-long search for a host. Luberrier hates God but deeply believes in humanity’s ability to take back the control of this war, no matter the atrocities. Zuu was willing to give what was left of his life because he believed Luberrier’s plan would success.

It was just as important when Link didn’t listen to Allen: the thought couldn’t leave Link’s mind and the first thing Allen does after staying silent for a long time is apologizing for the argument.

(This moment even described their relationship in Allen’s chart ;;)

Link then decided to confide in him and share his past but Apocryphos interrupted their talk.

Maybe it was also the first time he shared his past with somebody else, just like Allen did with him in ch183.

(in the bottom right panel on the first page, Link remarks it’s the first time Allen has ever spoken of Mana to somebody)

Their stories are also similar: orphans, they found the comfort of a family but due to tragic circumstances beyond their control (totally for Allen, partly for Link), they found themselves feeling deeply guilty of the destruction of their family:

Allen loves Mana as his father. He holds himself responsible of Mana’s double death, first when he hurt him with his arm because of Apocryphos, who staged all this tragedy, then when he turned him into an Akuma.

Link holds himself, and not Luberrier, responsible of the fate of the third generation exorcists, fully transformed into Akuma in the end. Ch201, where Link stops Allen and fails to save Tokusa and Tewaku, is titled �� Desperate sinner »: he’s caught up by the order he was given to retrieve the egg fragment. He was however unaware of how it would be used (and should he have known, I don’t believe he would have a say in it either, as he’s only asked to follow orders), as the chapters before the North-American branch attack clearly establish. And even less that it would lead to experimenting on his family.

The parallels between Johnny and Link don’t stop there. Some moments important to the development of Johnny and Link regarding their relationship with Allen are also associated with rays of light (be it day or moonlight).

1) Rays of lights here add to the dramatic effect of all these moments. They frame them as important moments.

2) Following the empathic environment and cue the sun tropes (Empathic Environment - TV Tropes), the rays could be a symbol of a solace found in the character’s words and/or action. Hunter x Hunter illustrates it well with Killua’s perception of Gon as well as Meruem and Komugi’s relationship.

And this holds more meaning especially since Allen associated his link to this dark world as a lantern: it was first introduced in his conversation with Fo in ch80. Manga often use the light as a symbol of a warm light guiding a character’s path to their ‘home’.

The dialogue goes like that: « F: You said it was dark, so I brought you a light. Here! A: Oh, um… I was speaking figuratively. Thank you. … F: Your poor arm… You’ve been working so hard. It must be tough. A: Huh? Oh, well… Actually, I’m ashamed of myself. My progress has been pathetically slow. F: You shouldn’t feel that way! Honest, you’ve been working really hard! A: What good is hard work if it accomplishes nothing? F: Nothing? After all you’ve experienced? A: Huh? F: New friends… The Noah… The Heart… Battles, massacres… The Fallen One… And… Your loss… Yet after all that you still want to look after your friends… And defeat the Noah. It’s like… You’re carrying the burden of all the people you couldn’t save. Are they… Who you’re fighting for? The fallen? What drives you, Allen? Is it your concern for others? Is that what makes you feel you have to fight? Is that why you bury your own feelings and press on? You’re not fighting because you like to fight… or for your own survival. You’re fighting to protect something. You’re fighting to save human lives! »

(What destroyed me was the fact that yes, Allen desperately fights for anything to grasp because he’s lost everything before… especially if you link it to his conversation with Bak when he banged his arm on the door AAAAaaaA)

The lantern’s image shows up again on ch132’s cover, Hoshino described this cover as a representation of all the symbols revolving around Allen (two black and white moon shapes opposing each other in a lantern and in Timcampy's shape, his left arm, the Fourteenth and the Piano, a cross/rosary). And finally in ch230, titled « Lamp and Tears », when Allen compares his link to Johnny and Kanda to a lantern he never wanted to let go once he got a taste of it.

3) The rays of light:

(Look!!!!! at!!!!!!! The golem’s eye!!!!!!!! It twinkles!!!!!!!)

-> Shine on Johnny in Allen’s pov: when he makes it clear to Allen he’s here to stay by his side as his friend, and as a consequence when Allen looks for him to call his name as he resurfaces.

-> Shine on Link in Allen’s pov and vice versa after the Level 4 attack: it was perhaps the first time Allen saw a gentle, compassionate side to Link, crying on his back. It was also maybe the first time Link felt a connection to Allen that he’s only supposed to observe as Allen found comfort in him after the attack.

-> Shine on Link in Allen’s pov in ch247: Allen discovers Link was alive after all this time (at least a month since Kanda and Johnny found him), the backlight of the moon shines on his silhouette as he turns around. His eye takes in the moonlight once he faces Link, Link’s silhouette is surrounded by a light screentone, as though to indicate he’s the object of Allen’s focus/the moonlight.

-> Shine on Allen in Link’s pov in ch247: Link promises he’ll never be near Allen if he overcomes his fate as Neah’s host, even though that pains him: his mouth left corner looks downturned (on the upper right panel), his bangs hide his eyes and his expression. Allen will have none of that and interrupts his thoughts: he wants them to go together no matter what.

Note: the succession of the first two pages was awesome, I was breathless seeing Allen’s reaction! I don’t know if this has a name, but the trope where A stops in his tracks to slowly turn around in disbelief as B shows up for an emotionally loaded reunion is really nice for the drama haha -> the dramatic backlight of the moon which makes us focus on Allen’s expression, he might have interrupted his sentence because he had an inkling of who might be behind, completely in disbelief ; -> his inattention to Johnny’s calls as he turns around and proceeds to open ; -> the eye wide open and glowing once he sees Link and the speedlines inside his lashes to maybe show his inner turmoil ; -> the big « ga-cha »/clank onomatopoeia and the speedlines indicating he rushes to open the door, gaping at the silhouette in the foreground -> the contrast between Allen’s shaky bubble and Link’s collected ones aaaaaa -> the full moon, the particles suspended in the air, the wind suggested by leaves and Allen finally calling out to Link with Johnny in the background + the hand stretched out in the next page (shadowed by screentones to emphasize the dramatic effect)… I love how in just two pages time stopped for this reunion!

Allen still wants to reach out to them by extending his hand (ch225, 247 & 212):

(The hand as a visual symbol of Allen's reconnection to his world while fighting against Neah's memories contrast how hands are also drawn in the manga as a vector of influence, control and violence, I'll talk about it in another post!)

The same way Johnny (and Link, even though he doesn’t voice it) cares about Allen, Allen also voices out his relief to see Link alive.

Also on another subject, since Kanda will now go back to the Order, will he tell Allen what he meant to say before they part ways?

▶ Panel composition and Link in ch221 & ch225

The positioning of the bubbles can add a visual impact to the speech or even tell another story. One of the recent examples I have in mind is the Requiem of the Rose King by Aya Kanno.

(Please read it! It’s a manga based on Shakespeare’s Henry VI and Richard III! The art is stunning, the characters’ expressions and development complex and gutting!! One of the general themes, agency or lack thereof over your own existence, trapped in power games, is really impactful! There’s a LOT of violence in it just so you know so please be warned!)

(SPOILERS UP TO CHAPTER 31 IF YOU HAVEN’T READ IT!!!!)

When Richard was asked by his brother to persuade Anne Neville to marry him, he enacted a love confession, addressed to her at first glance, but inspired from his lost love for Henry:

« (…) It has come to this because of love. The love I have for you made me do it. You were … my light. In dreams and in reality… I sought you out. Thus… »

The bottom right bubble on the left page blocks the viewer’s gaze from Richard’s memory of him and Henry embracing (right page).

This emphasizes that 1) it’s a confession not destined to Anne, Richard mourns his love when the addressee in not there anymore and he now has to ‘weaponize’ these feelings to obey his brother, 2) he blocks himself the very memory of Henry because it traumatizes him (and in fact, chapters later, it is revealed he even forgets Henry entirely because the memory is deeply tied to trauma) & 3) his soul died the day his love was rejected and lost as Anne witnesses it.

Kneeling in front of her, in reality he professes a love to what he thinks is Henry’s body in the coffin beside them.

(also his eye looks like it gazes beyond the panel it’s placed in right into the coffin, as though he alone breaks through the panel walls)

Chapters 221 and 225 showed Link stricken with conflict and sorrow towards Allen’s fate in various ways:

IN CHAPTER 221

Link knew he was dealing with Neah the whole time. For an instant he was disconcerted when he turned around to Neah impersonating Allen, visual elements emphasize his brief shock at how faithful this impersonation could look to anyone at first glance:

-> a shadow cast temporarily on his right eye when it wasn’t hidden until then. Obscuring one or both eyes (eg. with a shadow, bangs or accessories) while the angle and lighting would normally let us see them is sometimes used in manga and other media to show characters hide something/know more than they let on, or to show they’re going through an emotional change.

-> the left eye that can still be seen is widening

-> the interruption of his sentence and his mouth closed

-> the onomatopoeia dokun signaling a heartbeat/throb

Link has been observing Allen and Neah’s escape for three months: he knows Allen’s consciousness is fading away, and even before he left the Order, Neah’s mask already fell in front of him.

When he saved Neah from the Earl, he was probably solely focused on his mission at hand: bind the Earl, save Johnny and Neah, protect them from the Order and flee.

Completely absorbed in the task he’s meant to do as Luberrier’s Crow, seeing a perfect replica of Allen that could have fooled anyone resurfaces his personal regret: it’s a bitter recall of what is now lost.

And the knife gets twisted even more since the contrast between Allen and Neah is visually clear in appearance and personality: Neah’s traits on Allen look more mature, thinner, pointier, harsher and sophisticated, his pupils become gold and are even smaller, his hair curls a little ; Neah is cold-blooded and unfazed. Neah could change his physical appearance and behavior to Allen in the span of a few pages!

Ch220 even gave us this panel on the top left (and as the chapters go/Neah’s control over Allen goes, the contrast is made even stronger by Hoshino’s drawing style).

Neah’s act of a relieved Allen is depicted in an immaculate, polished white in the panel on the right: taken out of its context, it would really look like Allen crying if he had learnt Link was alive. And Allen will indeed react like that and say similar words (especially the ‘I’m glad… !’/よかった repeated twice) when he reunites with Link:

The more Neah performs, the white bubbles grow bigger and cover Link’s dark profile on the left, as though it’s them that cast the shadow over his figure, trying to make him believe in his pretense. But another story is told underneath these bubbles by Link’s expression. In contrast, Link’s previously hidden eye appears again to show a wistful expression, accentuated by the dark screentone over his profile. Beside his earlier surprise, this is the only moment Link’s feelings can be seen in the chapter, and it’s also when Neah doesn’t see it as he pretends to cry, closing his eye. Only his eye glows in the panel: the speech rings false and Link sees through it.

He then resumes his mission and heals Neah’s wound like nothing ever happened.

When Neah intended to maintain the act again, Link cuts him off, insisting that not only this is unnecessary when it comes to him (‘私にはウォーカーのフリは不要です’, ‘Pretending to be Walker in front of me is unnecessary’), but it’s even a waste of time for Neah (‘というか無駄です’, ‘rather, it is a waste of time’).

(1, first panel) Once Link reveals he can’t be fooled, the shadow that was cast on him recedes, his right eye again accentuated: despite all the efforts, in Link’s eye, Neah’s act is exposed in broad daylight. (1, second panel) And dark tones finally taint Neah’s framing, his true colors begin to reemerge. (1, last four panels) As Neah tries to deny it and still pretends to be Allen, white comes back again, making the black lines disappear.

(2) Once that forces Link to explain why he’s undeniably the Fourteenth thanks to his bloodlust, the bubble affirming he’s Neah brings the shadow back.

(3) Neah finally drops the act and black speedlines loom over his figure and the white background, overflowing.

When Link describes Neah’s bloodlust that couldn’t be further away from the true Allen he knows, this time the bubble entirely covers his obscured profile. It looks like it was conveniently placed right above his expression to hide his feelings as he’s forced to explain Allen’s conscience ‘died’ and what replaced it permanently.

Also the dokun/badumps in these pages? Whose are they?

-> Are they Link’s?

Ever since he saved Allen and Johnny, and even when Neah intended to pass himself off as Allen, Link could tell it was Neah all along and proceeds to carry on his mission as his aid, healing him as if it was nothing. He didn’t even need a confirmation from Neah, he affirmed it himself.

I think he was coming to terms with the fact that Neah took over Allen’s conscience (as what he thinks as) irreversibly.

Once he collected himself, closing his eyes, he finally puts words to the cold truth he’s facing: the Allen he knows doesn’t give off the bloodlust and the cold aura he’s now feeling in front of Neah.

It’s a call-back to what he thought when he bound Allen at the North-American branch in ch201:

(The bonus cover in volume 25 makes fun of this whole ‘vibe/aura’ thing Kanda and Link feel with Reever and Komui hahaha)

-> Are they Neah’s?

After all, the moment Link affirmed he was the Fourteenth, he was trying to stay in character and deny so that he might still have a chance to keep this cover, since he doesn’t know what the man he’s facing intends to do. The fact that he could totally see through his act and unmask him took him by surprise perhaps, making him antsy.

However, this seems unlikely given his reaction literally two pages later and his overall hardly fazed character: - he banged Johnny’s head against the wall while pretending to be Allen - he promptly made up his mind to cut ties with past!Allen - he directly swithed to Allen once Kanda confronted him - when he faced the Earl/Mana even if it was an emotional reunion - he attempts to strangle Link after this scene - he tries to activate Crown Clown even if it could threaten his life

-> Perhaps they’re from both!

Link’s pain is further portrayed when Neah wants to know his true intentions:

In the original version, Neah’s « If you came to save Allen then it’s too late, you know? » is the only line accentuated in a bold font compared to the rest of the dialogue.

It is then followed by Link’s silent answer, repressed in a clenched fist on the ground (and symbolically using the fist that now holds the power defining his new role).

Link answers he’s been waiting for three months for an opportunity to meet Neah, and not Allen. As he says this while kneeling, his bangs obstruct the view of his expression completely. The original version also puts an accent on ’NOT [meeting] Allen’.

Link conceals whatever he might feel in this moment with the truth: the mission Luberrier assigned him as the Fourteenth’s ally.

Just like Neah’s bubbles did earlier, Link’s bubbles now take almost half of the panels space as he explains his role.

But we know how conflicted he actually is since the previous chapter: he’s rooting for Allen but also has to carry on his mission. He’s ordered to just observe and protect the Fourteenth, so for three months he could only watch Allen helplessly as his consciousness was fading away.

When he swears to become the 14th’s aid in front of him, his right eye is out of sight, as though he’s now resolute to fulfill his duty, smothering any personal feelings in order to do so. His bubble is also transparent. This contrasts with Kanda’s clear intention when he meets him: if he’s after Allen, he’ll definitely kill him. The bubble in this panel is entirely see-through: we can see the continuation of Link’s costume underneath. He hides nothing here.

In Link’s bubble, the speed lines in the background and the details of his costume can’t be seen. Only his silhouette’s shadow is opaque, turning the bubble into black and white: what he says and does don’t faithfully reflect the real conflict inside of him, but still, he has to carry on. And in retrospect, we also know this doesn’t align at all with Luberrier’s intentions who merely wants to use Neah as a weapon.

(yes, this was me just overthinking bubbles, i regret absolutely nothing 8D)

Note: interestingly, Link’s right side is also drawn on ch239 cover.

IN CHAPTER 225

I believe it’s not that farfetched to read this scene in various angles:

1) Link was bewildered and shocked at Neah trying to synchronize as the huge ‘throb’ onomatopoeia highlights it, like his heart skipped a beat. And while Neah’s protection is entrusted to him and he has to stop him first and foremost to that end, he could also be worried about Allen’s life being endangered by the Fourteenth’s recklessness: his warnings could address Allen’s safety (ie. Innocence destroying the Noah's organism or turning the body into a Fallen One).

2) While mainly saying that he doesn’t give a damn about anyone, including Link’s concern and that he minds his own business, Neah also thanks him for worrying about Allen’s Innocence/life with caustic sarcasm.

In fact, Neah's speech is in general childish and far from formal. The majority of the lines he addresses to Link are casual in the original version with ～だよ and the suffixes ～な/ね. He also uses with him the pronoun お前/'omae' you can use when you talk to someone you consider of equal or lower status, and it sometimes has a harsh/rough nuance attached to it. When he thanks Link for the concern, he uses a polite form which clashes with his overall casual stance: "ご親切にどーも". ご is a honorific prefix that adds a feeling of respect or politeness to a word (here shinsetsu, kindness). Also his 'thanks', which are casual here with どうも, is written as どーも: the long dash (onbiki or chōonpu) that replaces the う stretches out the preceding vowel, here the 'o'. It puts a strong accent on the thanks he drags out in a totally not heartfelt way, which reinforces the overall sarcasm of his line.

Especially when the chapter ends with these panels (the page on the left):

-> Link is panting unlike up to then: he perhaps dashed to catch Allen, or Allen and Johnny together. A sigh of relief could also be mixed in with the panting.

-> He’s perched over the building’s edge to look down in Allen and Johnny’s direction, as though to check they’ve landed safely. And they did: after a close-up on their conversation, the eye of the reader focuses on their hug that occupies the center of the page to finally follow what’s right underneath, Link’s pov from the outside.

-> As Link is observing them, Johnny’s cry of relief is superposed to his silhouette, as though he shouts what Link can’t express himself: he’s glad, but he has to retreat since Allen came back and he’s not aware he’s alive.

The same panelling is used when Johnny feels pain for Allen after he lost Timcampy, and his speech is superposed to Kanda’s reaction (the pages on the right), averting his gaze from Allen staring into space in ch229.

#dgm spoilers #dgm meta #d gray man #link howard #allen walker #johnny gill #kanda yuu #requiem of the rose king

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maquisro · 1 year ago

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does anyone share my conspiracy theory that netflix’s most recent account sharing crackdown is actually just thinly-veiled retaliation for the WGA and SAG successes?

here is my presentation:

a) this is the first sharing crackdown that has successfully prevented me*, who I will call a “leech user”, from accessing my family’s netflix despite active effort on my part (as someone who is, shall we say, 🏴‍☠️moderately acquainted with dubious maritime conduct🏴‍☠️)

(*the rest of my argument relies on the assumption that my experience is somewhat representative of the wider leech user demographic — I assume at least one person will reach out if that is not the case)

b) the method by which they’re preventing sharing (2-step verification but both devices have to be on the same wifi network) is too simple for them to have just now figured out how to implement it

c) therefore, I propose that netflix has known how to do this for a while, and have simply not had any real motivation to actually pull the trigger — the incessant whining about the burden of account sharing and wringing of their pathetic little hands when their “efforts” “fail” to kick out that many leech users, is all, to some extent, an act*

(*to what end? science has yet to find the answer. “probably shareholder related”, he said, confidently, as though he were on Succession)

d) HOWMSTEVER — if netflix now has to deal with paying residuals each individual time something is streamed, suddenly all the streaming done by leech users is now Actively An Issue. so. crackdown.

e) so fewer individual streams = fewer residuals = less lost profit on netflix’s part — sounds like the kind of business decision that makes sense to the world of capitalism! but like. it’s inherent. this is the same business decision netflix was making before, the one that caused strikes in the first place, and to sneak right back into it after making a public show about how they’re “no longer” going to be screwing artists over, is absolutely a retaliatory action. referencing their “ongoing” “issue” with account sharing as plausible deniability is ridiculous and insulting

f) side note: the timing is also sus

g) if I were a cartoonishly evil corporation, I would create a MUCH longer gap between the new union contracts and my retaliation — it is NOT well-disguised right now

h) however, what all of netflix’s “attempts” to prevent account sharing have in common is what appears to be a fervent and genuinely held opinion on netflix’s part that booting leech users will somehow cause them to convert to paying account holders. they seem to be so invested in this goal that they’ll hold onto it even when it seems to contradict their other goals

i) now comes the timing thing — a few weeks after kicking the leech users (so as to let the tempers cool off), now we have the new A:TLA live action trailer + release date. very well-loved show, very active fanbase for a 3 season kids’ cartoon that recently turned 18, broad appeal to fairly disparate groups of people who are likely to be in the leech user demographic. I could go on but I’m tired

j) so if netflix is convinced that it’s vitally important to convert leech users into paying users, it makes sense to boot them right before hyping material that might ACTUALLY cause them to convert. I, for one, would seriously consider subscribing in order to watch it if I wasn’t certain that life will uhhh… 🏴‍☠️find a way🏴‍☠️

l) this is the part of the theory where I claim that netflix bumped up the timeline of their union retaliation to work with the A:TLA trailer release so that they could piggyback another use onto the method of their madness

m) and this is the part where I realize I’ve gone through half the alphabet. this is all speculative, these opinions belong solely to the blogger and are in no way representative blah blah blah. I have not re-read this draft ok goodnight*

(*this post written at 3am and queued for a more reasonable time)

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psychreviews2 · 8 months ago

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Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 1

She was an iconoclast who straddled the line between orthodox Freudianism while at the same time adding many new elements from her experience in child psychology. Like most other theorists, she used her own psyche and her environment for material for her theories and analytical practice. Her life was full of struggle and triumph, full of allies and enemies, including within her own family. This is a story of a woman who had to push through towards recognition starting from childhood all the way through her life. This is the story of Melanie Klein.

Forbidden Wishes

Melanie Klein was born in 1882 soon after her family had arrived in Vienna. Typical of most families Melanie was in an environment of siblings where a lot of early attachments were made, as well as defenses put up. Like other psychoanalysts, autobiographical material would factor into her theories and insights, which are mostly found in her writings collection. British Psychoanalyst Roger Money-Kyrle said "it is worth noting that, like Freud himself and many others, she practised self-analysis, so the works she published were almost certainly the result of analytic observations made both on her patients and on herself, cross-checked against each other." Phyllis Grosskurth, in Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work, was able to put together information that originally was to be Melanie's autobiography, to flesh out some the bones in Melanie's story.

Melanie's interactions with siblings and her parents was a mixed bag, like it is with most families, and there were lasting impressions. She was born into a Jewish family that was secular. Her father Moriz Reizes was on his second marriage with Libbusa Deutsch. No reason survived in the documents as to why he divorced his first wife. It was an unsuccessful marriage that was soon dissolved when he was 37. On a trip to Vienna he met Libbusa, who was from Warbotz Slovakia. Her name is after the mythical founder of Prague. "He immediately fell in love with this 'educated, witty, and interesting' young woman, with her fair complexion, fine features, and expressive eyes." In Melanie's view, Libbusa's family was the side of the family that was the most intellectual and tolerant. Libbusa herself spoke with the air of being a down-to-earth mother grounded with the day to day life of taking care of the household while the husband had to find work where he could in his midlife. "They could not have been so naïve as to harbor any expectation that a middle-aged Jewish doctor of Polish origin could achieve professional success. Dr. Reizes was forced to take on a dental practice (indeed, he seems at first to have been a dentist’s assistant) and to supplement his income by acting as medical consultant to a vaudeville theater...Their difficult financial circumstances made it necessary for Libussa to open a shop—not only in itself a humiliation for a doctor’s wife, but also personally distasteful because in addition to plants she sold reptiles, from which she cringed in horror. Melanie does not speculate on her mother’s choice of a somewhat bizarre type of shop, but notes that such was the power of her mother’s beauty that customers loved to drop in to chat with her. She adds that Libussa’s customers 'understood' that she was a 'lady,' not a common shopkeeper—a rather curious disclaimer for her to feel obliged to make. One of Melanie’s earliest memories was of being taken to visit this place into which her mother disappeared every day. The shop was an integral part of their lives until 1907, when Libussa was finally relieved of this burden." Melanie's Uncle Hermann was of great help and lent money to the family to eventually acquire a house.

Melanie went to school with many other students of a different age than hers, but she was very happy nonetheless and caught the family bug for acquiring knowledge and earned good marks on her report card. Her mother "Libussa and her two sisters were consumed with a passion for learning, and these determined young autodidacts gained knowledge by reading and discussions with their father. Melanie admired the way her mother had taught herself to play the piano. She had a vivid recollection of Libussa pacing up and down the wide veranda of a summer flat they rented in Dornbach, on the outskirts of Vienna, totally absorbed in a book of French idioms she was memorizing. For Klein this was a demonstration of intellectual passion, since opportunities for her mother to put these idioms to practical use were almost nonexistent. There is evidence that as a young woman Libussa did have some respect for learning: she was attracted to her future husband partly because of his command of ten languages. Other relatives recalled Karoline as the clever sister, while Libussa was known as the beauty of the family. In any event, Libussa’s later letters are written in a German that indicates the language did not come easily to her...Certainly Melanie often detected dissatisfaction in her mother—and possibly contempt. 'I have never been able to get to the bottom of this, whether she was simply not passionate or not passionate as far as my father was concerned, but I do believe that occasionally I saw a slight aversion against sexual passion in her, which might have been the expression of her own feeling or upbringing, etc'...Klein could never recall an occasion when her parents went out alone together. She evokes a united Jewish family; while not rigidly orthodox, Melanie’s childhood was steeped in Jewish ceremonial, and she was always deeply aware of her Hebraic background. Both parents maintained a strong feeling for the Jewish people, 'though,' she remarks cryptically, 'I am fully aware of their faults and shortcomings.' She would never have been able to live in Israel, she asserts. At one point her mother tried to keep a kosher household but soon abandoned the attempt, particularly as she was opposed by her strong-minded children. Klein describes the circle in which they grew up in Vienna as 'anti-Orthodox.' Some Jewish observances were made but Klein felt there was no piety behind them." She was clued into this when her mother talked admiringly of a dying student with tuberculosis in her hometown who towards the end didn't believe in any god. She may have loved him. "While always feeling 'Jewish,' [Melanie] was never a Zionist, and her way of life was in no way distinguishable from that of a Gentile. Yet as a Jewish child in Catholic Vienna she must have been acutely conscious that she was an outsider and a member of an often persecuted minority. Psychoanalysis became for many Jews a religion with its own rites, secrets, and demands of unswerving loyalty. Melanie Klein, when she eventually discovered psychoanalysis, embraced it as ardently as any convert to the Catholic Church."

At times she was teased by her brother Emanuel in her early days, but they became closer as they grew up. Her older sister Sidonie with "violet-blue eyes, her black curls, and her angelic face" took pity and helped Melanie with reading and arithmetic early on. Unfortunately she died young from Scrofula. "I have a feeling that I never entirely got over the feeling of grief for her death." Emanuel was aggressive and rebellious because he was told he had heart problems and would die young because of his past scarlet and rheumatic fevers. He helped Melanie with her with Latin and Greek so she could enter an advanced secondary school and expected her to achieve great success. Melanie felt indebted to him and thought he would achieve much in his life if he had better health. "From a very early age I heard the most beautiful piano-playing, because he was deeply musical, and I have seen him sitting at the piano and just composing what came into his mind. He was a self-willed and rebellious child and, I think, not sufficiently understood. He seemed at loggerheads with his teachers at the gymnasium, or contemptuous of them, and there were many controversial talks with my father...My brother was deeply fond of my mother, but gave her a good deal of anxiety."

Melanie Klein Trust: https://melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/timeline/1882-1902/

Melanie's father was an influence, even if at times he was aloof with her. "As a child, Melanie loved hearing about her father’s courage during a cholera epidemic. In answer to an appeal for doctors to go out to the Polish villages, he not only went but, unlike the other doctors who would stand at the windows telling the victims what to do, Moriz Reizes boldly entered the cottages and treated the patients as he would have done if they had been suffering from any other complaint. When he returned, he found a letter from his mother imploring him not to risk his life. Whether this act of heroism actually happened or not is immaterial; Klein believed that it had." Although there were some disappointments when he refused her attention, and when he made clear her sister Emile his favorite. "'I don’t think I sufficiently understood my father, because he had aged so much by this time'...He was an 'old fifty' when she was born. 'I have no memories of his ever playing with me.'" Melanie and Emilie would continue to have a love-hate relationship until the end. Emilie's dreary life compared to her sister's eventual success led to some letters having an "I'm not jealous, but I am" quality to them. "Emilie, too, seems to have been caught up in the family pattern of guilt-inducement. If one of them had good fortune, the other had to pay for it." In one letter, after Melanie published a book, Emile confessed that "even if I have been unapproachable at times, that in secret I have always appreciated and admired your strong will!...[Melanie] had to assert herself in view of the fact that her mother told her that she had been unwanted, Sidonie was the best-looking in the family, her father openly expressed his preference for Emilie, and Emanuel was considered something of a genius..."

As destiny was predicted, Emanuel died young at 25 of heart failure, ending his ambitions of artistic grandeur. He also suffered from tuberculosis and may have used morphine and cocaine to manage the pain. "Emanuel convinced himself that his main motive for abandoning his medical studies and leaving Vienna was his certainty that he was doomed to an early death; he intended to live life to the full in the time left to him. His mother shared his view that the climate of Vienna was detrimental to his health, and she settled a small allowance on him to enable him to seek lands of sun and beauty in the traditional pattern of the dying artist. It was in this role that Emanuel saw himself, and he dramatized the situation to the full. His letters for the next couple of years are full of complaints about the meagerness of his allowance." As he travelled in Italy he exchanged letters with family members and complained of the "out of sight, out of mind" neglect he was feeling. He laid down in a hotel in Genoa one night and died. The hotelkeeper was curt and demanded expenses to be taken care of, considering the cleanup job needed for tuberculosis and superstitions future guests may have. His wife was more empathetic. "Perhaps it will console you a little to hear that your son passed away completely without pain. He was lying in his bed as if he were asleep, death throes can absolutely not have occurred; he had not even stretched himself. He was lying on one side, the eyes closed, the right hand near the face, the left one under the blanket, exactly as one does when one makes oneself comfortable in bed to go to sleep. Had he not been cold and stiff, one would never have believed that anybody could look so peaceful in death. The authorities sent two more doctors round, but all three were agreed that heart failure had brought his life to an end."

Despite struggling to enter the Gymnasium, when Melanie passed the entrance examinations, she had strong motivation. "Not only did she intend to study medicine, she asserted, but she planned to specialize in psychiatry—an extraordinary ambition for a middle-class Jewish girl when one thinks of the vicissitudes Freud was encountering in his profession at that very time in Vienna. About this time, Moriz Reizes’ health began to deterioriate rapidly, and the household was held together by the indomitable Libussa. Melanie seldom had a new dress; the theater or a concert was a rare event; but she felt gloriously alive, infused with that deepest of all the passions, intellectual fervor. Unknown to her mother, she read far into the night—an indication that her mother did not encourage her intellectual interests. Her homework she did on the tram between home and school. Her brother proudly introduced her to his friends, and Melanie blossomed into a vibrant young woman...Family circumstances may have been extremely stringent, but somehow enough money was found for a number of photographs of Melanie to have been taken during this period. She is a voluptuous dark beauty with heavy-lidded eyes, and already fully aware of her striking profile. She was aware, too, of her desirability, as all her brother’s friends seemed to be falling in love with her. When she was only seventeen she met her future husband (then twenty-one), a second cousin on her mother’s side, who was visiting Vienna from his home in what was then the Slovak part of Hungary." Despite her ambitions, Melanie settled quickly on Arthur Klein. She said that at the time she had a "passionate temperament" and "it did not take very long for me to fall in love with him...From that time I was so loyal that I refrained from any entertainment where I might have met other young men and never expressed a feeling that I already had in my mind, that we were not really suited to one another. Both loyalty to my fiancé, with whom I was up to a point in love, and circumstances, prevented me from mentioning this to my mother or my brother." By this time her father Moriz had already passed away of pneumonia and Alzheimer's. Not very much time later both Emilie, who married a lawyer, and Melanie were married with children. Libussa maintained the household and visited both families and helped them get settled, to the envy of Emanuel, who felt abandoned and forgotten towards the end of his life.

Melanie was now in the marriage, even though she knew it was a mistake, probably because she hadn't forgotten her prior professional ambitions. Her situation matched what Helene Deutsch felt about women who went into depression when family and children interfered with career ambitions and hobbies. Both sisters had trouble getting used to motherhood and the painstaking household chores. As household cleaning technologies and methods were developed, standards for cleanliness also increased, so chores became an area that women traditionally fought over. Either the extravagances were too expensive in order to keep up with the Joneses, so to say, or daughters and mothers couldn't agree on the correct or appropriate décor and fought over the details. This could also include servants and fighting with them if they couldn't meet expectations. Fights over parenting styles would be common between parents and spouses. Melanie at this time also fell into many depressions as she continued to have more children. In many cases, she had to escape to other towns and visit friends and family to deal with what her mother called "her nerves...Photographs taken of Klein during this period reveal the paralyzing depression in which she was entrapped. In her Autobiography she describes Arthur as 'difficult.' [He was also suffering from nerve pain, commonly called Neuralgia.] There is hardly a letter from Libussa during this period that does not refer to his 'nerves,' insomnia, and stomach complaints. Often he was too tired, too overworked, or too miserable to write to his wife, and Libussa conveyed messages from one to the other...Late in 1907 Arthur accepted a well-paid job as director of one of Count Henkel-Donnersmarck’s paper mills in upper Silesia. As a result, they had to move to Krappitz, a small, dreary provincial town without a single congenial soul with whom Melanie could converse. Even Rosenberg had seemed unbearably confining...upon her marriage in 1906. At this point Libussa, with little reluctance, was persuaded to come and stay with them. She was only too happy to do so because Arthur was now in a position to pay off Uncle Hermann for his investment in the house, and Libussa could finally give up the shop, which she rented out to a coffeehouse."

Object Relations: Helene Deutsch Pt. 1: https://rumble.com/v2wrvg5-object-relations-helene-deutsch-pt.-1.html

Object Relations: Helene Deutsch Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v2yepky-object-relations-helene-deutsch-pt.-2.html

Libussa ended up being an interfering grandmother who micromanaged the household, despite being idealized in Melanie's later descriptions of her. "In the two and a half years they lived in Krappitz, Melanie seems to have been away almost as much as she was at home," especially in Abbazia where she underwent "carbonic acid baths and other current remedies for nerves." In one trip she was accompanied by a divorcee Klara Vágó who became a friend. "Every piece of advice [Libussa] gave her reinforced Melanie’s view of herself as a permanent semi-invalid" and she kept the unhappy husband and wife separated for the children's sake. "Libussa closed her eyes to the possibility that these separations were undermining the marriage. Everything had to accord with her conception of a conflict-free family situation...Arthur had to take frequent business trips and had plenty of opportunities for illicit amours if so inclined—and he might have been so inclined, considering that his wife was separated from him for weeks at a time and found sex distasteful even at the best of times. It is doubtful that we will ever know the truth about the marriage."

Even when Melanie returned home she still did not get over her depression. "She was becoming more entrapped than ever in her depressions, especially when her mother was visiting her. By May 1909 her fits of weeping and despair had reached such a point that she went to a sanatorium in Chur, Switzerland, for two and a half months in order to have a complete rest and change of scene...Melanie dreaded pregnancy..." Arthur at this time took the chance to leave the small town and move to Budapest. At this time Melanie's friend Klara was helping her be more assertive with her mother to take back the household and provided a role-model for emancipation. In her 30s she was pregnant again and had Erich, but everyone, including Libussa, were much older now. Libussa fell ill with cancer which was what was thought at the time due to her rapid weight loss. She contracted bronchitis and eventually passed away.

After her mother's death, Melanie wrote some minor works, including poetry and complete narratives. "Both poetry and prose are variations on a single theme: the longing of a woman for a richer and fuller life, particularly for sexual gratification, and the conflict that is stirred up by these forbidden wishes." Her wide reading eventually got her to Freud's works. "'About 1914' she read Freud’s 1901 paper on dreams, and realized immediately that 'that was what I was aiming at, at least during those years when I was so very keen to find what would satisfy me intellectually and emotionally. I entered into analysis with Ferenczi, who was the most outstanding Hungarian analyst.'" When she was with psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi, she became interested in learning how to practice psychoanalysis. He ended up influencing her later work in three areas: "the importance of raw and early emotion in the maternal bond, the importance of freedom and authenticity in the analytic relationship, and finally the use of transference and countertransference feelings." "During this analysis with Ferenczi, he drew my attention to my great gift for understanding children and my interest in them, and he very much encouraged my idea of devoting myself to analysis, particularly child-analysis. I had, of course, three children of my own at the time...I had not found…that education…could cover the whole understanding of the personality and therefore have the influence one might wish it to have. I had always the feeling that behind was something with which I could not come to grips."

Dreams - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtf6j-dreams-sigmund-freud.html

Klein eventually became an assistant to Ferenczi and began observing her children. "Melitta and Hans had been brought up largely under the supervision of Libussa; but once Klein discovered psychoanalysis, [her son] Erich was subjected to the most intense scrutiny from at least the age of three. There is no reference to his infancy, a curious omission in view of her later theories." When her husband moved to Sweden to work and Melanie went back to Rosenberg, Slovakia, the separation led eventually to an official divorce. She eventually moved to Berlin and began a psychoanalysis practice. Melanie was very ambitious and began to publish because this was one of the ways to increase recognition and allow the possibility of freer travel in the future. It also explained the haste she felt to begin analyzing her children before taking on more analysands.

By the time she joined the The Hague Congress, she was in a very competitive attitude, and as expected professional territory was jealously guarded. She "met Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, who had already started analyzing children in Vienna by watching them at play...Klein tried to engage her in discussion, but was given a very cool reception. She later attributed this to Hug-Hellmuth’s view of her as a competitive threat, and any references Klein made to her tended to be extremely condescending." Klein already made her judgement. "Dr. Hug-Hellmuth was doing child analysis at this time in Vienna, but in a very restricted way. She completely avoided interpretations, though she used some play material and drawings, and I could never get an impression of what she was actually doing, nor was she analysing children under six or seven years. I do not think it too conceited to say that I introduced into Berlin the beginnings of child analysis."

Klein was now in a situation where she could attempt to find her place in psychoanalysis, but this is often when rivalry is at it's most intense, when a new system is discovered but it has yet to be exhausted, and there's a gold rush to stake an important claim, as can be seen by the explosion of new talent over the 20th century. "There was intense envy and rivalry among these early psychoanalytic pioneers...Klein’s career belonged in the category of those whose 'creative capacity may begin to show and express itself for the first time.'" Different analysts took a stand on whether child analysis was too dangerous. "Her creative potential, stifled for so many years, was finally unleashed, but she had to fight opposition every step of the way. For the historical record Klein claimed that once she arrived in Berlin, she soon widened her practice, but the fact of the matter is that she aroused misgivings among some of her colleagues. There was unease about the advisability of probing too deeply into a child’s unconscious...Apart from the consideration shown her by Abraham, she was always bitter about the way she was treated by the Berlin Society. Gradually some of her colleagues allowed her to analyze their children in what were known as 'prophylactic analyses.' In later life she complained that the only patients sent to her were children and the deeply disturbed relatives or patients of other analysts. Yet if it had not been for this, she might never have had the opportunity for intense observation of children." Regardless, she was right away aiming at changing parenting practices and cultural influences in schools so children could hopefully live a more liberated life and find their authenticity.

Repression

In The Development of a Child (1921), Melanie was very blunt and appeared to be on a mission to wipe out superstition and poor parenting practices, and in a way, abolish a form of parental abuse related to sexual shaming and ignorance. "The idea of enlightening children in sexual matters is steadily gaining ground. The instruction introduced in many places by the schools aims at protecting children during the age of puberty from the increasing dangers of ignorance, and it is from this point of view that the idea has won most sympathy and support...This ensures that wishes, thoughts and feelings shall not—as happened to us—be partly repressed and partly, in so far as repression fails, endured under a burden of false shame and nervous suffering." In her paper, she believed that developmentally appropriate sexual education allows children to build "...foundations for health and mental balance." Even though she renamed her son Erich to "Fritz," in her analysis of her son, the flimsy disguise was enough to fool many Kleinians. "The child in question is a boy, little Fritz, the son of relations who live in my immediate neighbourhood. This gave me the opportunity to be often in the child's company without any restraint. Further, as his mother follows all my recommendations I am able to exercise a far-reaching influence on the child's upbringing." When questioned with the evidence "one [Kleinian] said that she had always had the impression that 'the mother' in the background left something to be desired. Another said that he didn’t know what name to apply to this kind of analysis, but it had nothing to do with mothering. A third confessed rather poignantly that the revelation would make him reexamine the work he had been doing for thirty years since he now saw in a new light why Melanie Klein had underestimated the role of the mother. Many analysts had heard for years a rumor that she had analyzed her own children, but they had not linked this with actual case histories she had recorded. Elliott Jaques seems to take a sensible view: the exploration of the roots of anxiety could have been conducted initially in the only way open to her, and it is hindsight that queries its value. Pearl King (not a Kleinian) feels that it could have established 'a pathological transference'; but adds, 'to be fair, everyone was doing it at that time.'"

Klein proceeded to explain to young Erich the truth about Easter and Christmas activities and the agnostic worldview. She described a rudimentary explanation for copulation for humans and animals. The child's fantasies and games started turning more violent afterwards. "His games as well as his phantasies showed an extraordinary aggressiveness towards his father and also of course his already clearly indicated passion for his mother...Fritz listened with great interest and said, 'I would so much like to see how a child is made inside like that.' I explain that this is impossible until he is big because it can't be done till then but that then he will do it himself: 'But then I would like to do it to mamma.' 'That can't be, mamma can't be your wife for she is the wife of your papa, and then papa would have no wife.' 'But we could both do it to her.' I say, 'No, that can't be. Every man has only one wife. When you are big your mamma will be old. Then you will marry a beautiful young girl and she will be your wife.' He (nearly in tears and with quivering lips), 'But shan't we live in the same house together with mamma?' 'Certainly, and your mamma will always love you but she can't be your wife.' He then enquired about various details, how the child is 'fed in the maternal body, what the cord is made of how it comes away, he was full of interest and no further resistance was to be noticed. At the end he said, 'But I would just once like to see how the child gets in and out.'"

Melanie felt that this sample of one was already showing a therapeutic response compared to how other children were raised. "I am of the opinion that no upbringing should be without analytic help, because analysis affords such valuable and, from the point of view of prophylaxis, as yet incalculable assistance." The deficits for children she concluded were of a wide variety, including, being anti-social, aloof, apathy, lost self-confidence, and diffidence. "What early analysis can do is to afford protection from severe shocks and to overcome inhibitions. This will assist not only the health of the individual but culture as well, in that the overcoming of inhibitions will open up fresh possibilities of development. In the boy I watched it was striking how greatly his general interest was stimulated subsequent to the satisfying of a part of his unconscious questions, and how greatly his impulse for investigation flagged again because further unconscious questions had arisen and drawn his whole interest upon themselves. It is evident, therefore, that, to go more into detail, the effectiveness of wishes and instinctive impulses can only be weakened by becoming conscious. I can, however, state from my own observations that, just as in the case of the adult, so also with the young child this occurs without any danger...It is easier to control an emotion that is becoming conscious than one that is unconscious. Simultaneously with acknowledging his incest-wishes, however, he is already making attempts to free himself from this passion and to achieve its transference to suitable objects."

For researchers, this was before the later techniques that Melanie developed with play, but she was already seeing that unconscious questions, with realistic, concrete answers, allowed for better actions afterwards for the analysand. "Eric Klein remembers that when they went to Rosenberg in 1919, his mother set aside an hour every night before he went to sleep to analyze him and that she continued to do this after they moved to Berlin in 1920. He remarks dryly that he did not find the experience pleasurable, but he holds no grudge against her for it...It could be argued that Klein was more therapist than mother to Erich. He has no recollection of her playing with him, but she did hug him." In Analyst of the Imagination, Paul Roazen said of Melanie's daughter, "Melitta Schmideberg, would be at the extreme end of the spectrum of those who relished hatred of their mothers but, alas, not alone in her bitterness towards analytic parenting." Melitta did collaborate very closely with Melanie, had many great insights into psychoanalysis, but was clearly asserting her independence and wanting to move into different modalities to distinguish herself from her mother and get out from under her wing.

Even at the time of the paper, Klein did give herself an out because she found that anxiety wasn't only caused by complexes and that different children could face the same situations and react with more or less sensitivity. "For we learn from the analysis of neurotics that only a part of the injuries resulting from repression can be traced to wrong environmental or other prejudicial external conditions. Another and very important part is due to an attitude on the part of the child, present from the very tenderest years. The child frequently develops, on the basis of the repression of a strong sexual curiosity, an unconquerable disinclination to everything sexual that only a thorough analysis can later overcome. It is not always possible to discover from the analyses of adults—especially in a reconstruction—in how far the irksome conditions, in how far the neurotic predisposition, is responsible for the development of the neurosis. In this matter variable, indeterminate quantities are being dealt with. So much, however, is certain: that in strongly neurotic dispositions quite slight rebuffs from the environment often suffice to determine a marked resistance to all sexual enlightenment and a repression excessively burdensome to the mental constitution in general." This also appears in the school environment, especially during puberty when a boy for example is "bombarded by his sexuality, he feels himself at the mercy of wishes and desires which he cannot and may not satisfy." This may lead to a lack of zeal in school work, lack of ambition, and in extreme cases there may be criminality or suicide. "Expertly and correctly conducted, psycho-analysis holds no more danger for children than for adults; much 'successful work' with children convinces me of this. The widely-felt anxiety that analysis diminishes children's spontaneity is disproved in practice. Many children have had their liveliness fully restored by analysis after losing it in the welter of their conflicts. Even very early analysis does not turn children into uncultured and asocial beings. The' reverse is true; freed from inhibitions, they are now able to make full use of emotional and intellectual resources for cultural and social purposes, in the service of their development."

At this time Melanie was recording in her autobiography different stories as to when there was a divorce and it was obvious that she wanted out. "In 1919 Arthur Klein went to live and work in Sweden, and [Melanie] moved back from Budapest to Rosenberg with the children. Hungary was in turmoil; and she could see her own future only in negative terms: as she describes it, there seemed no possibility that she and Arthur could ever get together again." There was eventually a reunification of the family in Dahlem, but Arthur's attempts to regain control of the family led to him bullying Hans. "In addition to Arthur’s renewed tyranny, both his 'emotional attachment' in Sweden and her new career were incentives to attain the independence she had always half-consciously been seeking. She soon realized that a permanent separation was imperative. Yet to walk out on her husband was financially hazardous, and she risked losing custody of Erich. There were ugly quarrels. One day Erich saw a document lying on his father’s desk and could not resist reading it. It appeared that Arthur was going to seek to obtain custody of the boy on the grounds that his mother had used him as a guinea pig for her psychoanalytic experiments. When Erich told his mother about this, she said that Arthur had deliberately put the paper on the table where he knew Erich would see it." Melitta defended her mother against her father, but both mother and daughter were beginning to show envy and jealousy. Melanie was worried that her daughter who was able to pursue her studies earlier than she, was now in a position to surpass her before she could make her mark on history. They eventually collaborated and were able to produce good work together, but Melitta would later on introduce insightful critiques on the limits of psychoanalysis and poke fun at the snobbery, foolishness, and scandals in the psychoanalytical communities, as well as patients who expected a panacea from the method, and eventually found a better fit when she moved more into studying juvenile delinquency. She also entered into analysis with Edward Glover for a time who was mourning the disconnection between the British school and Freud's Orthodoxy. In The War Inside, Michal Shapira said that "initially, Melitta made frequent use of her mother’s ideas. Later, and as she went to analysis with Glover, her criticism of Klein grew. She withdrew from active participation in the BPAS in 1944." Later psychoanalysts viewed Melitta's and Edward's complaints as a form of stuffiness. In reality there was always a new kind of stuffiness replacing an older kind. All therapists tend to react to positive results in their patients as confirmation of efficacy of one method or another and each positive experience would lead therapists to pick their favorite modality, either orthodox, British, or American. Despite the hair splitting, Klein continued her work with children and studied the effects of the Oedipus Complex.

School Castration

Despite all these fearful Freudian terms and symbols, the best way to read and enjoy psychoanalytic descriptions is to understand the underlying viewpoint, which is Darwinian, and therefore it is about territory, power, control, and procreation. Libido is energetic craving, and we have many cravings that aren't overtly sexual. You can crave sunlight if you are indoors for too long, for example. The cravings want to feed physically with food, but there is sexual feeding and emotional feeding of all kinds. The mistake is to take things too literally and think everything is about overt sexuality, when it's more teleological. The child could feel "castrated" at school for example, but is not actually castrated, but instead is humiliated by the teacher in class when providing a stupid answer that is ridiculous and funny. The purpose of school is to have success in the workplace. Success in the workplace makes you more attractive as a provider and you will have more sexual partners to choose from as you gain more wealth, fame, and notoriety. It all connects to sex in that way, so there are many degrees of separation, but these innocuous activities can be the supports that are required before one becomes attractive, if ever. Being castrated is like being turned off, demoralized, like how you would feel when you are sternly rejected on a date or you were dumped after a long attachment or you went through a divorce. You're not likely to be in the mood for some time, whereas someone who achieved success and wants to celebrate, they will more likely be looking for a sexual partner because of their newfound confidence. If a person finds sexual partners an imposition to personal fulfillment in work or hobbies, many will put their love into work, artistic projects or leisure activities.

In The Role of the School in the Libidinal Development of the Child, Melanie pointed out that "...fear of examinations in dreams as in reality, is the fear of castration...[for students]." Boys and girls are afraid of being made fun of and they sometimes have fears related to how masculine or feminine they should appear. Just like adults, the kids can make associations and metaphors out of anything so dreams, daydreaming, and doodling will likely connect with other areas of their life where they are measuring how well they are doing at school, socializing, and with relationships at home. With kids, analyses with Klein showed a lot of Oedipus material, death wishes for parents, fornication with parents, along with jokes about private parts, toilet jokes and early birthing theories. Having trouble completing difficult school tasks is a feeling of impotence, whereas success leads to feelings of potency. "I have endeavoured to show that the fundamental activities exercised at schools are channels for the flow of libido and that by this means the component instincts achieve sublimation under the supremacy of the genitals. This libidinal [emotional investment], however, is carried over from the most elementary studies—reading, writing and arithmetic—to wider efforts and interests based upon these, so that the foundations of later inhibitions—of vocational inhibition as well—are to be found; above all, in the frequently apparently evanescent ones concerned with the earliest studies. The inhibitions of these earliest studies, however, are built upon play-inhibitions, so that in the end—we can see all the later inhibitions, so significant for life and development, evolving from the earliest play-inhibitions." So not being able to play at a rudimentary level for a particular field, like math, or history, means an unsuccessful sublimation of libido. For Klein, it goes back to fear of humiliation. "Castration-fear interferes with ego-activities and interests because, besides other libidinal determinants, they always have fundamentally a genital symbolic, that is to say, a coitus significance...We must refer the establishment of all the inhibitions which affect learning and all further development to the time of the first efflorescence of infantile sexuality which, with the onset of the Oedipus complex, gives its greatest momentum to the castration-fear, that is, to the early period between three and four years of age. It is the consequent repression of the active masculine components in both boys and girls that provides the chief basis for inhibitions of learning...The contribution which the feminine component makes to sublimation will probably always prove to be receptivity and understanding, which are an important part of all activities; the driving executive part, however, which really constitutes the character of any activity, originates in the sublimation of masculine potency." Here we can see a development from Ferenczi, who separated masculine and feminine energies into different tasks and interests, whereas Klein saw that most activities could be done with a mixture and both boys and girls could use femininity or masculinity without it appearing pathological.

Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy (Director's Cut): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ827lkktYs

Case Studies: 'Little Hans' - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu93b-case-studies-little-hans-sigmund-freud.html

Sexuality Pt 2: Infantile Sexuality - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtort-sexuality-pt-2-infantile-sexuality-sigmund-freud.html

Totem and Taboo - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html

Melanie followed the typical Freudian view that creativity is essentially feminine and that both sexes needed to free up that libido as well as the masculine. "I was able repeatedly in analyses of boys and girls to see how important the repression of this feminine attitude through the castration complex might be. As an essential part of every activity, repression of it must contribute largely to the inhibition of any activity. It has also been possible to observe in analysing patients of both sexes how, as a part of the castration complex became conscious and the feminine attitude appeared more freely, there often occurred a powerful onset of artistic and other interests...Part of the inhibitions—and this is the more important for later development—resulting from the repression of genital activity directly affects ego activity and interest as such. Another part of the inhibitions results from the attitude to the teacher." For example, a male teacher could receive transference attitudes from a boy about his father, and since success is connected with sex with the mother figure in the Oedipus Complex, then the fear of fatherly retribution may appear as inhibition to perform well in front of the male teacher. "In girls the inhibition due to the castration complex and affecting all activity is of particular importance. The relationship to a male teacher that can be so burdensome to the boy acts on the girl, if her capabilities are not too inhibited, rather as an incentive. In her relationship to the mistress the anxiety attitude originating in the Oedipus complex is, in general, not nearly so powerful as is its analogue in the boy. That her achievements in life do not usually attain to those of the man is due to the fact that in general she has less masculine activity to employ in sublimation...The teacher can achieve much by sympathetic understanding, for he is able thereby considerably to reduce that part of the inhibition that attaches to the person of the teacher as 'avenger'. At the same time, the wise and kindly teacher offers the homosexual component in the boy and the masculine component of the girl an object for the exercise of their genital activity in a sublimated form, as which, as I suggested, we can recognize the various studies." As much as the teacher can reward both masculine and feminine energies, the children are bringing their complexes to school and would benefit from therapy in the view of Klein. "Where, however, repression of genital activity has affected the occupations and interests themselves, the attitude of the teacher can probably diminish (or intensify) the child's inner conflict, but will not affect anything essential as concerns his attainments. But even the possibility of a good teacher easing the conflict is a very slight one, for limits are set by the child's complex-formations, particularly by his relationship to his father, which determines beforehand his attitude towards school and teacher."

Developing The Self

The opportunities available in childhood to carve out skills, talents, and budding vocations, is a precious time because of how far reaching the impacts are in later life. This especially will echo in many later psychoanalysts when talking about the topic of authenticity. Certainly there can be economic disadvantages during this period and they limit what a child can develop, but finances don't guarantee authenticity if play, trial and error, and discovery is repressed. "We frequently find in psycho-analysis that neurotic inhibitions of talents are determined by repression having overtaken the libidinal ideas associated with these particular activities, and thus at the same time the activities themselves." For Klein, these inhibitions appeared in very typical demotivated states that children often present. "The following characteristics proved in a number of cases and in a typical way to be inhibitions: awkwardness in games and athletics and distaste for them, little or no pleasure in lessons, lack of interest in one particular subject, or, in general, the varying degrees of so-called laziness; very often, too, capacities or interests which were feebler than the ordinary turned out to be 'inhibited'".

You get the sense from psychoanalytic literature that scoring in soccer is like scoring in bed. The symbolism can be made to be overt by making it conscious and then using the lust and love feelings to fuel a sublimated task and derive proximate satisfaction. Even if people have to bring up lustful imagery in their minds transfer it into boring activities, there's a hinted practice in these texts that assume we should have already known this from the beginning in childhood play. Having "libidinal cathexis" is to have an emotional investment in a particular activity, like a sport, meaning simply that you like the sport. There's been so much inhibition throughout childhood, and not all of it is bad in the case of criminal activity, but if someone meditates, takes drugs or alcohol, or even engages in free association practices, which are a little like meditation, when inhibition is released momentarily a zeal can return in an anticipation of engaging in an activity, and possibly other activities that have been repressed. "I came to see that in far the greater number of these inhibitions, whether they were recognizable as such or not, the work of reversing the mechanism was accomplished by way of anxiety, and in particular by the 'dread of castration'; only when this anxiety was resolved was it possible to make any progress in removing the inhibition...By successful removal I do not simply mean that the inhibitions as such should be diminished or removed, but that the analysis should succeed in reinstating the primary pleasure of the activity." A success would then be that a person can see the enjoyment of the repressed activity and it can be engaged in again with appropriateness according to skill. Maybe a person will enjoy watching soccer if they have no facility to play it well enough to enjoy.

Just like with substances that relieve inhibitions, the zeal doesn't always arise first. There are "transitory symptoms" connected to the Castration Complex, where anger and hostility arise. Analysands begin to re-live the people and environments of the past where the intimidation occurred. "These again were principally resolved by way of anxiety. The fact that the removing of these inhibitions and symptoms takes place by way of anxiety surely shows that anxiety is their source." She quoted Franz Alexander who valued the emotional catharsis, or abreaction in the psychoanalytical experience. People needed to express their emotions by reliving the experience, understanding intellectually the impact of the castration and feel the emotions related, as if they were happening during the analysis. "Most of the suggested innovations in psychoanalytic technique involve a one-sided overemphasis on one or the other of two factors, both of which are essential for the curative effect of psychoanalytic therapy. These factors are emotional abreaction and intellectual insight. Emotional abreaction leads only to temporary symptomatic relief (as in the early hysteria analyses of Freud). On the other hand, intellectual insight without emotional experience is of little value. Every correct interpretation, 'serves both purposes,' integrating abreaction and insight into a single act." If at this point an analysand expresses the emotion fully of the castrating incident and discharges through venting, then the intellectual insight would focus on the activity more based on skill rather than just a hatred of the activity. The activity loses its sense of evil and looks more a matter of fact. All activities have easier and more complex parts to them. When in hatred only the complex parts are noticed. In a neutral view, or a positive view, there are easier elements to the skill that begin to show themselves as opportunities for growth.

Regardless of the method, skills will still have to be developed afterwards if the patient has a reason to take up the activity. There's also no guarantee that there won't be more authority figures providing fresh castration that an apprentice has to learn to ignore and focus instead with a learning mentality. The intellectual insight needs to catch authority figures in their jealousy, and to understand that they are afraid of being replaced. In many technical and professional jobs, knowledge that can't be found in books is jealously guarded and castration will be the norm until an authority figure is to move onto better opportunities and has to train an apprentice. At that point, the envy of students and candidates will be expressed as they wonder why they weren't chosen to be trained further. Certainly, the understudy that shows the most promise is sometimes taken on because they are viewed to be unstoppable and capable of changing organizations, make new professional connections, and compete directly with the master. The master then wants to control the trajectory of the prodigy, and also they want to bask in their future success. In other cases, there is nepotism, cronyism, and various other forms of bigotry, because the master wants to make a political statement and reward an inner circle and gain a future ally, if there are to be synergies in their professional work. As many students will attest, the psychology profession is full of patients at various levels of pathology so the envy tends to be directed against healthier psychologists with endless attempts at castration, because the envious feel the pain that they may never be cured completely, and those who are considered more pathetic are made fun of and castrated because they are seen as too incompetent to practice. Those who are more healthy have to decide if they want to join another profession that has a healthier culture, or walk the tightrope and network in the best places possible for development. Those who are more incompetent, and therefore in need of both therapy and training, they either leave the profession for something more appropriate, or they congregate around groups and leaders that require their fawning. Their pathologies, if not too severe, are sometimes considered a badge of honor and hopefully provide a secret knowledge and special empathy for patients that are one step behind them in therapy.

Whether you want to call it a "comfort zone" that protects against the anxiety of growth, or the Default Mode Network, "teleologically considered, the symptoms of illness serve the purpose of satisfying, in a relatively harmless manner, those wishes that are in conflict with the conscious ego, of localizing them to the symptoms, and thereby preventing them from injuring the rest of life...Driven by their instinctual tendencies perpetually to injure themselves in life, [analysands] do not fall ill of a neurosis simply because, by means of their apparently senseless self-injuries, they replace the symbolic overcompensations (self -punishments) of the obsessional neurotic by real ones, and in this way keep their oversensitive consciences clear." The consequences for Alexander in one case study was self-sabotage in a patient's failing business while not being able to earn as much money as he did before in the employment he got afterwards. Finding easier employment may reduce anxiety, but it can also be a regression. What I like about Alexander is how he connects libido to money. Even saving money can be a way of delaying cravings for later consumption. Investing is a way of giving people access to their cravings for either their business spending or current consumption. The saver is delaying gratification so they can earn investment income and have a greater consumption in the future. On the other hand, if things are really financially bad you can be too poor, castrated, and turned off to have intimate relationships and the mental health results are even worse if a patient can't find a suitable sublimation. If it gets to rock bottom, then any money that is received goes into an addiction that further prevents gainful employment and there is a possibility of a vicious cycle of homelessness. In less extremes, people find themselves in divorces and they have to downgrade their expectations and find genital relief with less desirable partners while earning a less desirable wage.

Two Days, One Night Official Trailer - Dr. Lorri Sulpizio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb3zBq6gVRk

For those who want to control their mind more, the way to transform libido, or cravings, into sublimation, is to have different cravings, just like how the sense of self is manipulated by advertisers. There's an "I" in the future that is savoring, and it's working when you can FEEL craving to do that particular activity. If the sublimation is strong, the activity is so interesting that you are not thinking about intimate relationships.

Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 6: https://rumble.com/v3mc0jy-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-6.html

If you eventually get courageous and try to move out of the comfort zone you can feel out the blockage. "We know that anxiety is one of the primary affects. 'I have said that transformation into anxiety—it would be better to say discharge in the form of anxiety—is the immediate vicissitude of libido which is subjected to repression.' In thus reacting with anxiety the ego repeats the affect which at birth became the prototype—of all anxiety and employs it as 'the universally current coinage for which any affective impulse is or can be exchanged.' The discovery of how the ego tries in the different neuroses to shield itself from the development of anxiety led Freud to conclude that 'It would thus seem not to be wrong in an abstract sense to assert that in general, symptoms are only formed to escape an otherwise unavoidable generating of anxiety." Anxiety of course can go unconscious, when repression is successful. If it's not successful there is visible anxiety. When it's unconscious, it's ready and waiting to produce anxiety but the analysand is outside of the challenging environment and can find another activity that is accessible for sublimation. Then when the patient goes again closer to the repressing situation, anxiety begins to return, like how people behave in a phobia. Psychoanalysts also feel that some patients are better at sublimating than others, for example, some are more creative, have more interesting hobbies, and can maintain well-being. This may be due to a good enough upbringing so that there's enough of a self to play with the environment to prevent feeling always empty inside emotionally. "If we equate the capacity to employ superfluous libido [craving] in a cathexis [emotional investment] of ego-tendencies with the capacity to sublimate, we may probably assume that the person who remains healthy succeeds in doing so on account of his greater capacity for sublimating at a very early stage of his ego-development." This means that some who are not inhibited will be in a healthy intimate relationship, in a job they like, or are good at, and any variations outside of that will be progressively worse outcomes, but some of those outcomes will be healthy because the analysand has vigorous activities they engage in, but those who cannot get into an intimate relationship or sublimate with skill, they will have the worst outcome for loneliness and depression.

Intimidation has also an element of control because it can be used to dominate an environment. Transference from a passive target can then anticipate castrations and avoid adventurism towards libido satisfactions precisely to avoid any other people who radiate the same power to punish. For example, a parent could bully a child and then that child becomes a prime target for future bullies because they continuously send the signal of passivity. "We know that the Oedipus complex brings repression into play with quite peculiar force and at the same time liberates the dread of castration. We may probably also assume that this great 'wave' of anxiety 'is reinforced by anxiety already existing (possibly only as a potential disposition) in consequence of earlier repressions—this latter anxiety may have operated directly as castration-anxiety originating in the 'primal castrations.'"

These castrations can lead to inauthentic desires where what you would like to pursue anticipates punishment and the area of choices provided by society where there are no punishments become the limited choices where one finds replacement satisfactions. This can be good when dealing with criminality, but it becomes a dystopian tyrannical society when rewards are being stripped from the populace to coalesce around a predator. Eventually success, or rewards, can be associated with punishment leading to the inhibitions just stated, which can be a block to self-development and move it into other areas based on self-preservation. Doing things only as a means to an end. A transfer from sexual instincts to self-preservation instincts. "The pleasure-principle allows us to compare two otherwise quite different objects on the basis of a similitude of pleasurable tone, or of interests. But we are probably justified in assuming that on the other hand these objects and activities, not in themselves sources of pleasure, become so through this identification, a sexual pleasure being displaced onto them. Then, when repression begins to operate and the step from identification to symbol-formation is taken, symbol-formation, [for example] libidinal phantasies becoming fixated in sexual-symbolic fashion upon particular objects, activities and interests, it is [symbol-formation] which affords an opportunity for libido to be displaced on to other objects and activities of the self-preservative instincts, not originally possessing a pleasurable tone. Here we arrive at the mechanism of sublimation..." For example, if a person has trouble with sexual symbolism, then connecting with a feeling of satisfaction after eating can be used for finishing projects or tasks. You need to find feelings of love or savoring to connect to the project, which would more normally be seeing oneself, identifying, and imagining savoring a benefit related to finishing that task or project. What's the meaning? What's the benefit? What's the payoff? What is the wish that would be enjoyable to fulfill? What is beautiful? What is precious, cute, endearing or treasured? What should be preserved for the future? In a way, Melanie was studying authenticity in activities and relationships so that those children would be luckier than she was.

The Pleasure Principle - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gurqv-the-pleasure-principle-sigmund-freud.html

Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 1: https://rumble.com/v1gvsvj-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-1.html

By 1924, it was clear the marriage wasn't working for the Kleins'. At that time Melanie moved to Berlin and there ensued a custody battle. "There is a widespread belief that Arthur Klein disappeared into Sweden, never to return. In actual fact he continued to live in the Dahlem house until 1937, when he moved to Switzerland, where he died in 1939. He remarried not long after the divorce ('disastrously,' according to Eric Clyne, since he was again divorced within a few years), and there was a daughter by the marriage. According to his son, Arthur Klein was subsequently looked after by a series of housekeepers."

Melanie Klein Trust: https://melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/

Love, Guilt and Reparation: And Works 1921-1945 (The Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume 1) by Melanie Klein: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780743237659/

The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought by Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Jane E. Milton, Penelope Garvey, Cyril Couve, Deborah Steiner: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780415592598/

Melanie Klein by Penelope Garvey: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781032105246/

Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work by Phyllis Grosskurth: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781568214450/

Analyst of the Imagination by Jenny Pearson: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781855759046/

The War Inside by Michal Shapira: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781107035133/

Hernandez-Halton I. Klein, Ferenczi and the clinical diary. Am J Psychoanal. 2015 Mar;75(1):76-85.

Psychology: http://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/

#abreaction #catharsis #child psychology #divorce #education #femininity #franz alexander #karl abraham #masculinity #melanie klein #object relations #oedipus complex #pedagogy #playpsychology #psychoanalysis #repression #sandor ferenczi #sublimation #teaching

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legionnaireslover · 8 months ago

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Wonder where Gator and her little gang would put "the Jews actually caused WWII" (like Aeltri has posited)? Would it belong in the overt or covert side of the chart?

And where would you chart this (from Aeltri's site)???

"Their [Aeltri means Jews] cultural influence is pervasive; Frankenstein is Shelley's take on the Golem and even the satirical Dr Frankenfurter is basically Adam Kadmon. I think it's important to note that Sabbatean-Frankists have infiltrated every major religion but hate anyone that doesn't belong to their deranged sect. Ever wonder why Epstein and Weinstein were so depraved and remorseless? Here's the answer:... This brings us to what I [again Aeltri is speaking here] like to call Sabbatean Supremacism... Ovadia Yosef said that they [Gentiles] were donkeys, which explains why Ben was made to carry that Burro bag in Santa Monica. That's what he's been to them, a beast of burden. Sabbatean-Frankists also humiliate others by making them crossdress and/or marry cult androgynes like Cunter. It's so incredibly fucked up but then again they did it to all of Europe so it's hardly surprising 🙄... "

Let me remind you, there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE that Weinstein was a "Sabbatean-Frankist".

Sabbataeans and Frankists are absolutely not seen as Jews and anyone spouting those views cannot even repent and return to the Jewish community without re-"converting". HW was open about his Jewishness. He never denounced his faith or heritage.

This is nothing more than Aeltri spewing her fear mongering, antisemitic tropes and then somehow tying Sophie into this garbage narrative.

So, when BC was papped with Sophie when they went out shopping at a small business while in LA, that becomes part of a hateful Jewish conspiracy theory.

Absolutely ridiculous.

Gator's got a fucking nerve to preach about bigotry after posting a bunch of islamophobic bullshit on her page. She might also want to have a close look at the company she keeps - namely Aeltri - and the vile conspiracies they bang on about. SMDH.

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punkylilwitch · 3 years ago

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Medusa

Myth vs. Modern

In mythology, the story of medusa has a couple translations that you’ll be sorry to hear aren't great. Specifically, the version that we hear today about Medusa being the victim is a lot more iffy than what’s been accepted by society. First, I’ll share the most widely recognized (and debated) stories, while I do this I’ll compare them to each other by sharing the history in the similar parts of Medusa’s story, and second I’ll share the modern reclaiming of the symbolism medusa has come to be.

The Beginnings

Medusa was born to Phorcys and Ceto, a minor sea god and water goddess/mother of sea monsters. Her siblings include Graeae (The sisters who share one eye and were forced into telling Perseus where Medusa laid so he could slay her. This was done by Perseus holding their eye hostage), Stheno and euryale the gorgons, Echidna the snake woman, Thoosa the sea nymph, Ladon the dragon (guardian of the Golden Apples in the Garden of the Hesperides), and the nymphs of the evening - the Hesperides. Medusa was the only one of her gorgon siblings who was born mortal. She was also the most human of all her siblings, even being beautiful amongst humans. She lived amongst the mortals because of this, becoming a priestess of Athena in Athens. She was incredibly popular out of the priestesses, gaining the attention of the god of the sea and storms Poseidon.

The Controversy

A Tragedy

Sympathetic - a curse given as a blessing

Some believe that Medusa’s curse was given to her as a blessing. In this variation, Medusa did not consent to Poseidon and Athena knew this, so she gave medusa the supposed power to keep away anyone else who may want to do this to Medusa again. This merely had the unfortunate side affect of afflicing literally everyone (sort of how the blessing of King Midas’ touch became a curse)

Cruel - a curse given out of malice

Others believe that Medusa did not consent to having intercourse with Poseidon, but was punished by Athena anyway. In this iteration, Athena blames Medusa for being too flamboyant and vain. Thus, the curse was given as just that - a curse.

Fairness in Justice

Justice - Medusa was cursed for being gross in a sacred place

A number believe that Medusa and Poseidon mutually had intercourse within Athena’s temple. Thus, Athena cursed her to more closely resemble her siblings so Medusa was forced to flee Athens and her life there.

Freeing - a curse given along with freedom

A few believe that Medusa and Poseidon willingly had intercourse in the temple, but that Athena was forgiving about it. They believe that this curse was given in order to free Medusa of her duties as priestess, freeing her from the burdens of humans and elevating Medusa to a divine form.

Misfortunate - Medusa tricked the gods into sympathizing with her

The remainder believe that Medusa maliciously tricked Athena into sympathizing with her this group is similar to the group seen in the “Sympathetic” section when it comes to the reason in which medusa was given the curse, but they believe that Athena purposely made it so that the power cannot be misused by making it affect medusa, ending in a sort of bittersweet power as a result. One thing I would like to note is that I could not find proof in this theory, but given the other theories, I decided to add it because some may believe it. Therefore, this theory is the only one without a source. If you have one, please feel free to reblog this and add it

But in every variation, a few things remain. Firstly, Poseidon left the moment they were caught in every variation. Secondly, what medusa became remains the same. Her long hair turned to snakes, her skin turned green, and her face was cursed so that anyone who looked upon it turned into stone. Thirdly, Medusa, once being transformed, no longer wanted to remain in Athens and instead fled to an island far away to be closer to her family.

Similarities

There are a couple ways in which Medusa’s story connects with itself. These are parts of the story historians are much less divided on.

One such connection is the known belief that in the story of Medusa, she is in the end killed by Perseus, who had been sent by Polydectes in the hopes that Perseus would be killed by the interaction. Instead, Perseus is aided by the gods by being given a sword and winged sandals from Hermes, and a mirror shield from Athena. He was also gifted just before this a cap of invisibility and a magical bag used to hold Medusa’s head safely once the deed had been done.

Notably, it was Athena’s temple in which Medusa was caught in, so take from that what you will. Medusa’s head is chopped off in her sleep, and that ends that.

Once Medusa was dead, Pegasus and Chrysaor were born of the wound, popping out of her neck and waking her two gorgon sisters who she was sleeping by in the cave. However, Perseus got away, delivering the head first to Polydectes and turning him to stone by showing the head to him and second delivering it to Athena. Also notable, Athena was then presented with this head as evidence of Perseus’ worthiness, which Athena then wore on her shield.

Modern Reclaiming

https://www.inkedmag.com/original-news/medusatattoos

Nowadays, most have accepted the theory that Medusa was taken against her will, though those who say she was a willing participant are still in the many. But Medusa’s story has evolved into much more than that. Now, She is a symbol of strength and being a survivor of SA (sexual assault) and is used in tattoos, stickers, art, and much more. Specifically, a medusa tattoo can be a protection from the evil, and/or a symbol of the victims. The most common interpretation of Medusa suggests she is an apotropaic symbol similar to the modern evil eye. She is said to represent a dangerous threat; and is meant to deter other dangerous threats. An image of evil to repel evil so to speak.

(I hope this doesn’t get taken down for nudity but it’s art soooo..?)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/arts/design/medusa-statue-manhattan.html

According to this article called How a Medusa Sculpture From a Decade Ago Became #MeToo Art by The New York Times, A statue made by Luciano Garbati sparked quite some controversy. The art, called “Medusa With the Head of Perseus” is a riff on the previously mentioned tale in which Perseus takes the head of Medusa. Accoridng to the article, “On Tuesday[The article came out on October 13th of 2020], Mr. Garbati’s sculpture — “Medusa With the Head of Perseus” — was reimagined as a symbol of triumph for victims of sexual assault, when it was unveiled in Lower Manhattan, just across the street from the criminal courthouse on Centre Street.” (Julia Jacobs).

Sources:

Medusa and Poseidon did it willingly (discusses theories of Freeing and Justice) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrmjcQuG-Gg

Perseus’ story summary (comical and over simplified) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4h8vzK60yk

Lineage source and also they thought that Medusa and Poseidon had an affair and she was punished (discusses theory of Justice) - https://www.thoughtco.com/greek-mythology-medusa-1524415#:~:text=One%20of%20three%20Gorgon%20sisters,she%20was%20born%20at%20sea.

General story and also they believe that Medusa and Poseidon had intercourse willingly and Athena punished Medusa (though notably specifically because Medusa was impregnated and Athena was the goddess of virginity) - https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Creatures/Medusa/medusa.html

They believe that Medusa was a victim. (discusses theory of Cruel) TW: mentions of SA. - https://eportfolios.roehampton.ac.uk/hsa020c132h/2018/06/29/medusa-as-a-victim/#:~:text=Medusa%20was%20so%20beautiful%20that,Gorgon%20instead%20of%20helping%20her.

They believe that Athena had to protect her former priestess by cursing her. (discusses theory of sympathetic) TW: mentions of SA. - https://www.parlia.com/a/athena-helped-medusa-by-transforming-her-into (The source’s source -http://diaryoftheblackdog.blogspot.com/2017/10/medusa-was-defending-herself.html#:~:text=Athena%20did%20not%20punish%20Medusa,Medusa%20was%20never%20touched%20again.)

#classical mythology #greek mythology #medusa #medusa myth #mythology #greek myth retellings #greek myth #greek mythos #witchy #witches #witchcraft #witches of tumblr #witch

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tarobytez · 3 years ago

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disability in the Six Of Crows Duology; an analysis of Kaz Brekker, Wylan Van Eck, and the fandom’s treatment of them.

****Note: I originally wrote this for a tiktok series, which im still going to do, but i wanted to post here as well bc tumblr is major contributor to what im going to talk about

CW: ableism, filicide, abuse

In the Six of Crows duology, Leigh Bardugo delicately subverts and melds harmful disability tropes into her narrative, unpacking them in a way that I, as a disabled person, found immensely refreshing and…. just brilliant.

But what did you all do with that? Well, you fucked it up. Instead of critically looking at the characters, y’all just chose to be ableist.

For the next few videos paragraphs im going to unpack disability theory (largely the stuff surrounding media, for obvious reasons) and how it relates to Six Of Crows and the characterization of Kaz Brekker and Wylan Van Eck, then how, despite their brilliant writing, y’all completely overlooked the actual text and continuously revert them to ableist cariactures.

Disclaimer: 1. Shocker - i am disabled. I have also extensively researched disability theory and am very active in the disabled community. Basically, I know my shit. 2. im going to be mad in these videos this analysis. Because the way y’all have been acting has been going on for a long ass time and im fuckin sick of it. I don’t give a shit about non-disabled feelings, die mad

Firstly, I’m going to discuss Kaz, his play on the stereotypical “mean cripple” trope and how Bardugo subverts it, his cane, and disabled rage. Then, I am going to discuss Wylan, the “inspiration porn” stereotype, caregivers / parents, and the social model of disability. Finally, I will then explain the problems in the fandom from my perspective as a disabled person, largely when it comes to wylan, bc yall cant leave that boy tf alone.

Kaz Brekker

Think of a character who uses a cane (obviously not Kaz). Now, are they evil, dubiously moral, or just an asshole in general? Because nearly example I can think of is: whether it be Lots’O from Toy Story, Lucius Malfoy, or even Scrooge and Mr.Gold from Once Upon A Time all have canes (the last two even having their canes appear less and less as they become better people)

The mean/evil cripple trope is far more common than you would think. Villains with different bodies are confined to the role of “evil”. To quote TV Tropes, who I think did a brilliant job on explaining it “The first is rooted in eugenics-based ideas linking disability or other physical deformities with a "natural" predisposition towards madness, criminality, vice, etc. The Rule of Symbolism is often at work here, since a "crippled" body can be used to represent a "crippled" soul — and indeed, a disabled villain is usually put in contrast to a morally upright and physically "perfect" hero. Whether consciously on the part of the writer or not, this can reinforce cultural ideas of disability making a person inherently inferior or negative, much in the same way the Sissy Villain or Depraved Homosexual trope associate sexual and gender nonconformity with evil. ”

Our introduction to Kaz affirms this notion of him being bad or morally bankrupt, with “Kaz Brekker didn’t need a reason”, etc. This mythologized version of himself, the “bastard of the barrel” actively fed into this misconception. But, as we the audience are privy to his inner thoughts, know that he is just a teenager like every other Crow. He is complex, his disability isn’t this tragic backstory, he just fell off a roof. It’s not his main motivation, nor does he curse revenge for making him a cripple - it is just another part of who he is.

His cane (though the shows version fills me with rage but-) is an extension of Kaz - he fights with it, but it has a purpose. Another common thing in media is for canes to be simply accessories, but while Kaz’ cane is fashionable, it has purpose.

The quote “There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.” is so fucking powerful. Kaz does not want nor need a cure - its said in Crooked Kingdom that his leg could most likely be healed, but he chooses not to. Abled-bodied people tend to dismiss this thought as Kaz being stubborn but it shows a reality of acceptance of his disability that is just, so refreshing.

In chapter 22 of SOC, we see disabled rage done right - when he is called a cripple by the Fjerdan inmate, Kaz is pissed - the important detail being that he is pissed at the Fjerdan, at society for ableism, not blaming it on being disabled or wishing he could be normal. He takes action, dislocating the asshole’s shoulder and proving to him, and to a lesser extent, himself, that he is just as capable as anyone else, not in spite of, but because he is disabled. And that is the point of Kaz, harking back to the line that “there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken”.

I cried on numerous occasions while reading the SOC duology, but the parts I highlighted in this section especially so. I, as many other disabled people do, have had a long and tumultuous relationship with our disability/es, and for many still struggle. But Kaz Brekker gave me an empowered disabled character who accepts themselves, and that means the world to me.

Keeping that in mind, I hope you can understand why it hurts so much to disabled people when you either erase Kaz’s disability (whether through cosplay or fanfiction), or portray him as a “broken boy uwu”, especially implying that he would want a cure. That flies in the face of canon and is inherently fucking ableist. (if u think im mad wait until the next section)

Next, we have Wylan.

Oh fucking boy.

I love Wylan so fucking much, and y’all just do not seem to understand his character? Like at all? Since this is disability-centric, I’m not going to discuss how the intersection of his queerness also contributes to these issues, but trust me when I say it’s a contributing factor to what i'm going to say.

Wylan, motherfucking Van Eck. If you ableist pricks don’t take ur fucking hands off him right now im going to fight you. I see Wylan as a subversion another, and in my opinion more insidious stereotype pf disabled people - inspiration porn.

Cara Liebowitz in a 2015 article on the blog The Body Is Not An Apology explains in greater detail how inspiration porn is impactful in real life, but media is a major contributing factor to this reality. The technical definition is “the portrayal of people with disabilities as inspirational solely or in part on the basis of their disability” - but that does not cover it fully.

Inspiration porn does lasting damage on the disabled community as it implies that disability is a negative that you need to “overcome” or “triumph” instead of something one can feel proud of. It exploits disabled people for the development of non-disabled people, and in media often the white male protagonist. Framing disability as inherently negative perpetuates ideals of eugenics and cures - see Autism $peaks’ “I Am Autism” ad. Inspiration porn is also incredibly patronizing as it implies that we cannot take care of ourselves, or do things like non-disabled people do. Because i stg some of you tend to think that we just sit around all day wishing we weren’t disabled.

Another important theory ideal that is necessary when thinking about Wylan is the experience of feeling like a burden simply for needing help or accommodations. This is especially true when it comes to familial relationships, and internalized ableism.

The rhetoric that Wylan’s father drilled into his head, that he is “defective”, “a mistake”, and “needs to be corrected”, that he (Jan) was “cursed with a moron for a child” is a long held belief that disabled people hear relentlessly. And while many see Van Eck’s attempted murder of Wylan as “preposturous” and overall something that you would never think happens today - filicide (a parent murdering their child) is more common than you would like to believe. Without even mentioning the countless and often unreported deaths of disabled people due to lack of / insufficient / neglectful medical care, in a study on children who died from the result of household abuse, 40 of 42 of them (95%) were diagnosed with disabilities. Van Eck is not some caricature of ableist ideals - he is a real reflection on how many people and family members view disability.

Circling back to how Wylan unpacks the inspiration porn trope - he is 3 dimensional, he is not only used to develop the other characters, he is just *chefs kiss* Leigh, imo, put so much love and care into the creation of Wylan and his story and character growth that is representative of a larger feeling in the disabled community.

That being said, what you non-disabled motherfuckers have done to him.

The “haha Wylan can’t read” jokes aren’t and were not funny. Y’all literally boiled down everything Wylan is to him being dyslexic. And it’s like,,,, the only thing you can say about him. You ignore every other part of him other than his disability, and then mock him for it. There’s so much you can say about Wylan - simping for Jesper, being band kid and playing the fuckin flute, literally anything else. But no, you just chose to mock his disability, excellent fucking job!

Next up on “ableds stfu” - infantilization! y’all are so fucking condescending to Wylan, and treat him like a fucking toddler. And while partly it is due to his sexuality i think a larger portion is him being disabled. Its in the same vein of people who think that Wylan and Jesper are romantically one sided, and that Jesper only kind of liked Wylan, despite the canon evidence of him loving Wylan just as much. You all view him as a “smol bean”, who needs protecting, and care, when Wylan is the opposite of that. He is a fucking demolitions expert who suggested waking up sleeping men to kill them - what about that says “uwu”. You are treating Wylan as a burden to Jesper and the other Crows when he is an immensely valuable, fully autonomous disabled person - you all just view him as damaged.

And before I get a comment saying that “uhhh Wylan isn’t real why do you care” while Wylan may not be real, how you all view him and treat him has real fucking impacts and informs how you treat people like me. If someone called me an “uwu baby boy” they’d get a fist square in the fucking jaw. Fiction informs how we perceive the world and y’all are making it super fucking clear how you see disabled people.

Finally, I wanted to talk about how the social model of disability is portrayed through Wylan. For those who are unaware, the social model of disability contrasts the medical model, that views the disability itself as the problem, that needs to be cured, whereas the social model essentially boils down to creating an accommodating society, where disability acceptance and pride is the goal. And we see this with Wylan - he is able to manage his father’s estate, with Jesper’s assistance to help him read documents. And this is not out of pity or charity, but an act of love. It is not portrayed as this almighty act for Jesper to play saviour, just a given, which is incredibly important to show, especially for someone who has been abused by family for his disability like Wylan, that he is accepted.

Yet, I still see people hold up Jesper on a pedestal for “putting up with” Wylan, as if loving a disabled person deserves a fucking pat on the back. It’s genuinely exhausting trying to engage with a work I love so much with a fandom that thinks so little of me and my community. It fucking shows.

Overall, Leigh Bardugo as a disabled person wrote two incredibly meticulous and empowered disabled characters, and due to either lack of reading comprehension, ableism, or a quirky mix of both, the fandom has ignored canon and the experiences of disabled people for…. shits and giggles i guess. And yes, there are issues with the Grishaverse and disability representation - while I haven’t finished them yet so I do not have an opinion on it, people have been discussing issues in the KOS duology with ableist ideals. This mini series was no way indicative of the entire disabled experience, nor does it represent my entire view on the representation as a whole. These things need to be met critically in our community, and talked about with disabled voices at the forefront. For example, the limited perspective we get of Wylan and Kaz being both white men, does not account for a large portion of the disabled community and the intersection of multiple identities.

All-in-all, Critique media, but do not forget to also critique fandom spaces. Alternatively, just shut the fuck up :)

happy fucking disability pride month, ig

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genshinsidepiece · 2 years ago

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Pierro and Kaeya

I've seen a lot of theories about these two and their connection. I wanted to throw my two cents in.

I don’t think Kaeya and Pierro are related. If Kaeya was alive at the time of the cataclysm, then he was either a baby/toddler and doesn’t remember or he simply doesn’t discuss it if he does remember it. My personal theory is that he was born post cataclysm to Khaerni’ahian parents who were/are impacted by the curse. If Kaeya was born in the last 400 or so years, then Pierro would be well established in Snezhnaya. He rarely leaves the country, so that would mean Kaeya was conceived in Snezhnaya or his mother was. There’s also been no indication that Pierro has any siblings or marital relations. That can change later on, but for now he appears to be an only child.

I’m not going to discount the theory that Kaeya ties back to the Khaerni’ahian royal family simply because we don’t know what happened to the Khaerni’ahian royal family post cataclysm. Due to some of Kaeya’s comments, I tend to believe Kaeya grew up in the remains of Khaerni’ah. Until proven otherwise, I tend to lean towards the notion that he is in fact a prince without a realm, much in the way that Diluc is the uncrowned king of Mondstadt. The two always seem to parallel each other. Now would be no different.

Pierro’s story gives no indication that he’s royal. He connects into royalty via a position he once held in a royal court, but he never outright says he’s royal. Due to the eyes, the reference to the cataclysm, and his general age (500+ yo), I’m going to say he was in the court of the Eclipse Empire as an advisor, diplomat, or some other influential position that had access to the ruler. He was probably on Dain’s level, maybe a little higher.

Pierro despises the Abyss as much as he despises the seven. He tried to stop the events that lead to the fall of the Eclipse Empire all those years ago and failed, thus leading to him swearing his allegiance to the Tsaritsa. Kaeya is described as the last hope of Khaerni’ah and possibly has ties to the Abyss. I doubt Pierro would start a war for “peace” just to then hide his son/grandson/nephew at the Dawn Winery as a sleeper agent for Khaerni’ah/The Abyss. Kaeya was purposefully hidden as a way to throw people off the scent. It could be that Pierro was already searching for Kaeya and was the reason why he was abandoned with the Ragnvindr’s.

My personal theory is that Kaeya is actually in a large amount of danger. Part of Pierro’s mission for peace would be to eradicate the Abyss and anyone connected to them. If Kaeya connects back to Khaerni’ah as the last heir of the Eclipse Empire, then Pierro would 100% want to find him. The Fatui presence in Mondstadt could be a ploy to lure Kaeya out and force him to reveal his true identity. The end game on that could be to recruit Kaeya to Pierro’s side, hence the large dinner Kaeya has with the Fatui a few updates ago. This would allow Pierro a small amount of redemption as someone from the Khaerni’ahian royal family finally listened to him and is willing to see his vision. He could bring Kaeya over to his side by making false promises to Kaeya about relieving the burden that Kaeya carries in his heart about his father, his past, and his future. Pierro could even go as far as to promise Kaeya the throne of this New World, only to betray Kaeya in the end. Thus fulfilling Pierro’s need for vengeance against the Eclipse Empire.

It should also be worth noting that there are a few Fatui pieces situated near Barbatos’ gnosis on the chess board, indicating there is a large Fauti threat near Barbatos. One of the pieces shown is a black knight. This could be foreshadowing that one of the Knights is not to be trusted. Since Kaeya is the clean up guy for the Knights and trusted by Jean, he could fly under the radar in terms of working to bring down Mondstadt from within or possibly eliminate Barbatos all together, thus getting rid of one of the seven who would stand in the Fatui’s way.

Another option is that Kaeya is helping the Fauti connect with Albedo. Given the large Fatui presence near Durin’s remains on Dragonspine, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Pierro isn’t trying to find our favorite Chalk Prince or Subject two. The reason being that Albedo/S2 are one of the few that understands Khemia and Rhinedottir’s work. Pierro could have come to the conclusion that the only way to achieve his goal is to use Rhinedottir’s research as a way to harness the power of the Gnosies and rid the world of Celestia forever.

Albedo alludes to the fact that he will destroy everything at some point in the story. Albedo/S2 could be working behind the scenes to aid Pierro in leveling Teyvat. When the time comes, Albedo/S2 with Kaeya could lead the charge in Mondstadt to avenge Khaerni’ah and fulfill Pierro’s dream of peace.

I will say it is a lovely thought that Pierro and Kaeya could be related. I definitely want to learn more about both of them as the story progresses. I would hate to think Kaeya is a minor player in all of this. There’s too much potential for his character to have a larger role. It would be a shame if they wasted it.

I also fully acknowledge that Pierro and Kaeya could be related. I can easily make a case for it. Leaning into the Kaeya is royalty notion, Pierro could have had children that married into the Khaerni’ahian royal family or he himself married into it and was not in line for the throne. Thus they are related, but if that was the case, then I feel like Kaeya's life would have gone much differently. It's hard to say though. With the chaos that was the cataclysm, it would have been hard to know who survived and who didn't. Pierro may have only just become aware of his Son/Grandson/Nephew's existence or his whereabouts.

I think it all hinges on when and where Kaeya was born. It also depends on how diluted Kaeya's bloodline is and if he is affected by the curse or not. If he isn't and he was born in the last 20ish years, then they could be distantly related, but probably aren't. If Kaeya was born shortly before or shortly after the cataclysm then it's likely.

In either case, there is a connection between the two. Everything for me hinges on the dinner Kaeya had with the Fatui and what it was all about. They mentioned it for a reason. I'm very curious to know what it was.

#pierro #genshin impact pierro #kaeya alberich #kaeya #genshin impact #genshin headcanons #the fatui harbingers #the fatui #albedo #albedo genshin impact #albedo kreideprinz

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lusilver001 · 2 years ago

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i saw your fanart with Tams scars and my mind went wild

what if the scars ache/burn every time he uses his ability. because i got this whole headcannon on how having an elemental ability makes you hyper sensitive to the opposite element ie. Forsters get overheated and sun burned easily (Chargers and Hydrokinetic are opposites because of another theory i have, idk what the opposite of Gusters is) i’ve had this headcannon for a while that after Tam came back from the Neverseen he had painful hand tremors i couldn’t figure out a good cause, but a reaction to the chain bracelets things make sense. maybe it happens if he uses his ability too much or it’s when he’s stressed, or maybe it’s just random.

that he doesn’t tell anyone about them, he didn’t want to be a burden. because he was told his whole life that he wasn’t as important and it was selfish to try to get people to pay attention to him because of something insignificant as your hands hurting a little. especially if someone else was in more pain than him. when Linh was sick he was told that he was selfish for asking for medicine when his sister was sick because he just wanted attention. he also think he deserves to be in pain because he helped the Neverseen, he doesn’t tell anyone to punish himself. Glimmer is the only one who knows and does her best to help, because she was the one to make the chains and wants to help in every way she can because she blames herself even though Tam doesn’t. (side note both Glimmer and Tam know meditations that keep their minds from braking)

when Tiergan finds out he’s mad but not at them, he’s mad at the people who hurt them. he tells Tam that he needs to tell him when he’s hurt no matter how little. because it doesn’t matter if someone is more pain than him it doesn’t mean his pain is any less important. they go Elwin who tells Tam the exact same thing. Tiergan makes sure to keep a closer eye on him so he can give him painkillers when the pain gets bad, because he knows one conversation isn’t going to fix years of Trauma and make Tam tell him when he’s in pain. he also has a HEATED conversation with the Songs about child abuse.

I made this! To illustrate my thoughts when I draw his scars.

Also, expanding on what I think would happen when the light and shadow scars are layers together: I really like the idea that abilities cause their weirder to be especially sensitive to the opposite “element” or force ig, so I think the light and the shadows would have a negative reaction to each other when they are mixing in tams hands/wrists. I don’t think they would be like oil and water; mixing but not really. Or baking soda and vinegar; explosive disaster (ew). More like when it feels like the blood in your neck is burning (I forget what it’s called T_T).

So I think tam has had a kind of perpetual burning feeling in his wrists since the about a week into wearing he cuffs, when they started to leave their mark. I also think that the shadowflux in his skin will only fade if he stops using it all together. Neither of the scars hurt on their own (the SF is kind of cold, the light makes his wrists stiff,) when put together they react poorly, and the only fool proof way to make them stop hurting his to give up on the shadowflux part of being a shade (which, as far as I am aware, tam is currently the only living elf able to use it, so he might find that his personal comfort is not worth the loss of this advantage the neverseen doesn’t have.)

#kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #my art #tam song #ask lu #shadowflux #shadowflux kotlc #neverseen #I typed this all out on mobile my finger joints are dead #also pls excuse my handwriting it’s surprisingly difficult to write on a screen #which is ironic bc I draw on one all the time

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its-me-your-bicon · 3 years ago

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Relics and Expectations - Sam Wilson x Reader.

Summary: Sam finds himself in the compromising position of needing guidance from Dr. Strange about events way out of his control or expertise, but he finds another master at the sanctum instead.

Word count: 2100.

Warnings: None.

She/her pronouns used for reader.

Author’s notes: This has been, quite frankly, the only thing on my mind ever since the sorcerer vs wizard memes exploded when tfatws was still hot.

Also, this piece is one of my oldest drafts and I wanted to put it out before NWH came out because I don’t know wtf is happening with Strange but I still failed 💀💀💀 just take all his mentions as plot convenience, because that’s exactly what it is.

At a loss for ideas on how to contact this man he hasn’t seen since literal war, Sam Wilson is now on Bleecker Street by government orders. As some are getting reckless by the Maximoff girl’s disappearance after such a long time.

It’s not a burden he thought he would have to carry as Captain America... But he could picture Steve meddling in a situation like this, even as a more personal quest. Wanda was part of their circle, after all. And he does worry, but was he really the man for the job? He’s not sure.

But hey, who better suited for a witch hunt than another wizard himself?

Now in the face of the so-called Sanctum, he needs to believe in that theory more than ever, as well as his persuasion to get Dr. Strange into helping him out. He takes a breath before knocking the door.

Nothing.

He knocks once again before the door opens by itself, making him back out in precaution at the open space. Not expecting something so cliche this early in the morning.

Must be the right place.

As creeped out as he is, he takes the step forward, wondering in. The place seemed... Nice. Homey even. He just needs to ignore the feeling of being in a bad caricature. But even he feels weird just standing around, waiting on something or someone to come down those damn stairs.

“So it is true. Captain America at my doorstep.” Your voice comes from behind him.

“Shit!” He twitches, not knowing where you came from. A bit alarming if you ask him. You, however, don’t pay any mind to his state as you walk around him, inspecting. “Um... Hi there, the name’s Sam.” He says slowly, waving his hand discreetly in front of you for a handshake (and for you to stop going round on him). You take it.

“Hi! Yes, I knew that.” You told him with a smile, giving him your own name. Sam thinks is a pretty one, along with your smile. In fact, now that he takes a good look at you, he’s quite mesmerized by the whole picture, even with the curious robes you’re wearing. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” You ask him, effectively bringing his attention back to your voice.

“I’m looking for Stephen Strange.” He states, hearing you chuckle at the name.

“You and me both.” You snicker, looking at your guest. Knowing he has questions. “Lots of things have happened since the whole crew came back. And he’s overcompensating for being away so long... By being away from his duty as protector of this Sanctum, apparently.” You smile again, feeling silly at explaining this to an outsider, even if you did fight side by side once, just... Never crossing. “Look, I’m not here to talk shit on the man. Being Sorcerer supreme must be something else, alright? It’s all just to say that I’m covering for him because I’m the next best thing.” You say proudly, knowing Wong would disagree. But he’s not here, so bragging was definitely on the table with a visit like this.

“The next best thing, huh?” Sam ponders, starting to relax a bit, sure liking your confidence. “Think you could lend me a hand with a case, then? I could use any trick you wizards have up your sleeves.” You frown at that.

“We prefer Masters of the Mystic arts, if you don’t mind.” You inform him. “Seriously, did you have any plan coming for Strange like this, or were you just going to wing it?”

“It’s that a bird joke?” He questions, smiling incredulously.

“Perhaps.” You smirk back.

“Now’s the moment I pretend you’re funny so we can agree it’s my lucky day to cross into such a clever, beautiful lady instead of a stuck-up man.” He puts his hand over his chest as he finishes, wearing the same smile as before and hoping you’ll cooperate.

You didn’t want to show it, but the snort that initiated your laugh made you drop the smirk (and your pride) into a more bashful smile, seeing as he didn’t mind.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr. Wilson. But you’re here on business, yes? So...” The scenery around changed immediately, having chosen one of the studios for the exchange. “Tell me more about this case of yours.” Sam barely heard those last words over the commotion.

“It’s Sam— You can call me Sam.” He says, still looking around, processing his now sitting position in front of you, who is comfortably settled behind a desk. He clears his throat once he focuses on your face again. “What can you tell me about Wanda Maximoff?” He drops in question, watching you go stiff.

“The scarlet witch...” You whisper.

“So you do admit the term applies.” He jokes, trying to break the ice. You stare in response.

“Not the time, buddy... But no, what we do here it’s quite different.” You bite your tongue. “Are you after her? Is that why you’re here?”

“You could say that.”

“Responding to mystical threats it’s kind of our thing, you know?”

“And yet, she is still out there. Hidden somewhere.” He protests.

“How do you guess we don’t know where she is, though?” You put him to the test.

“Well, do you?” he moves front on his chair, smiling at the challenge. You return the gesture forcefully, throwing him a look before transporting the two of you to what Sam guesses it’s the library. He can’t really tell from the floor. Letting out a grunt as he had not been prepared. You smile in amusement as you walk off, happy to wipe that expression off his face.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re an awful loser?” He inquires standing up, hoping you two can stay on this floor for longer.

You don’t give him a chance to make any more comments, quickly coming back with a manuscript in hand, inviting him to peak as you speak.

“Believe me when I say we are pulling every string to ensure the situation is under control. Part of the reason why I’m standing with you today, mind you. But we have limitations. This girl, you see...”

You go on to explain the tales of her prowess, how important it was for your people to take this threat seriously, and why Stephen seemed so set on taking the responsibility for himself. Opening up to him enough to admit that, as much as you’d like to, you don’t have information on how he’s going. You were just asked to put his trust in him, even if it proved difficult.

“I’m asking you to do the same, Sam. I think you should step out. Vibranium alone is not going to protect you against what she’s capable of.” You know he has no reason to take you on your word, but you hope he could. They had worked together, as far as you know. He should know better than to meddle, only ever having scratched the surface.

“You know I can’t do that. If any of you had intervened a few months ago, maybe it’ll be different. I could vouch for whatever contingency plan you have. But what happened in Westview is done, and she has to respond.” He sighs, not loving the memories of his meetings about the subject. “She’s young. She might still have a chance. I mean that. It’s just... What she did— It really scared people.”

“But you’re scared for her.” You note softly, face morphing into a more soothing look. “You think she’s vulnerable behind all that power. And you want to help.” Like a noble hero, you think. But don’t say, in fear you might laugh at his goodwill. If he’s too good for this world or too naive for a superhero, you can’t tell.

“I know I can.” He assures with confidence. “You might not get it, but I’m one of the only people from her past that’s left. A time where a kid from Brooklyn took us in and gave her a chance to be more than the monster everyone thought she was.” He says, more to himself than you, apparently. Nostalgic for a time long gone. “That must be worth something. And if there’s anything I can do to get through her, I will.”

A silence settles in after that.

You want to believe the last part was more of a plead for help than a threat upon your meddlings. But it could just as much be neither of them... Only a vulnerable mentor opening up to you.

It’s almost as cute as it is sad, knowing there’s not much you can do. There’s still a cause you must remain loyal to.

“So determined.” You exclaim finally, coming closer to him. “You care about this Wanda girl, don’t you?” You ask him, even if you already knew the answer. He simply nods, connecting both of your stares for a whole moment. You don’t what it is about him, but the way his presence didn’t feel imposing over the whole visit makes this moment easier. It’s certainly not what you would’ve expected from any federal guest. Only wishing the circumstances were different.

But why not go on a high note anyways? You both could literally die today from this topic alone.

“Just so you know, I wish to believe we’re on the same side... I would hate to beat up someone as handsome as you in battle.” He chuckles. Partly amused at the change of topic, and part loving the bluntness.

“You’re not so bad yourself.” He slips in, a smirk on his lips. But it cracks a little at his confusion when you keep coming closer. Much closer.

“You almost make me feel bad about earlier.” You chime, putting both hands on each of his shoulders. Effectively distracting him from pinpointing exactly what you were referring to. It was a weird moment for him. Because he should be against it… But something about you was entrancing. If he held onto accusing you of putting a spell on him, it was only because he was deciding on what to do with his hands for the moment. Trying to look subtle on the occasional peep at your lips, also. But settling for your hips snaps him out of it once he realizes you’re on the main floor again, close to the main stairs. He hears your giggles at the recognition. “... But now we’re even in that department.”

He feels your hands go down his arms, separating the two of you and looking awfully bashful about it, considering what almost happened. You take a step back with your arms behind your back, not meeting his gaze. Did touch make the crazy transportations smoother somehow? He’s not sure, but he wants to experience it again.

“So is this your way of kicking me out?” He asks, gesturing to the door. “I don’t accept that... Uh-uh. You have something to do later? No witchy talk, I promise.” He proposes, and you stare at him in question. Not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing you were tempted.

“Like a date? Out of these walls?” Your eyes lit up, and Sam doesn’t have your reservations about showing his true feelings, grinning at you.

“Yeah, we could exchange numbers.” He says, raising a brow. “You do have a phone, don’t you?” That earns him a punch to the chest. Strong for a magic user, he thinks.

“Yes, you moron.” You roll your eyes. “And I’d like that... I mean, it’s the least I can do.” You breathe in false resignation. Both chuckling at your poor acting skills.

The conversation after that is kept short for courtesies, soon finding yourself accompanying him to the exit. Telling your goodbyes once he’s out before remembering.

“Oh, and Sam?” You rush to call for him.

“Yes? What is it?” He asks, somehow worried for the tone of your voice.

“I know this may not be the end of your search. So… If you do find Strange, maybe don’t mention any of this?” You ask of him, embarrassed by your rushed explanation. “I’ll never hear the end of it. He is quite uptight.” Sam smiles smugly at your request, you getting the feeling that you might not live this down with him either.

“How about we go on that date before making any promises?”

You suppress the urge of making him trip on the open street with one of your “tricks”, as he calls them. Saving the idea for your next meeting, should he be so lucky.

#sam wilson x reader #captain america x reader #falcon x reader #avengers x reader #mcu x reader #sam wilson imagine #avengers imagine #avengers fanfiction #captain america imagine #mcu imagine #marvel x reader #marvel fanfiction #my fics

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aminiatureworld · 3 years ago

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Damocles

Characters: Zhongli, fm!reader

Word Count: 3,211

Warnings: Hanahaki disease – depictions of a fictional illness with symptoms mimicking tuberculosis, mentions of coughing up blood, talking a lot about death

Premise: In which the reader thinks Zhongli doesn’t reciprocate their feelings, and fears the consequences.

Author’s Note: Ngl, I don’t think I’ve ever really heard about this trope before, except maybe in passing. So if it’s a little weird that’s why.

I ended up taking the story in a bit of a macabre direction. Hopefully not too melodramatic, but I kinda like how it turned out.

Zhongli

“Thank you for telling me, but I’m afraid I cannot return your feelings. I’m sorry to be a disappointment.”

In truth you couldn’t decide whether or not you had expected your feelings to be returned. You and Zhongli had been friends for years now, and you had grown closer to him than you had to most of your previous friends and acquaintances. Indeed, you had grown closer to him than you had to many of the people you’d been in previous relationships in. You called upon him in some form almost every day, whether it be to discuss something of importance or simply bask in his presence. When there was something new you found about, whether it be a story in a book or a particularly funky looking shell, you almost immediately sought out Zhongli to share your find with.

For Zhongli’s part, he also liked to share experiences with you. At the very least you couldn’t say that your friendship was one sided. He often would be the one to walk up to you on the street, a new brand of tea written down on a piece of paper in his pocket, or a location where one could find particularly beautiful glaze lilies on his lips. He never seemed to mind when you peppered him with endless questions, or talked his ear off about your own day; something which you often asked if he found annoying. No, you were very sure that Zhongli wasn’t simply spending time with you out of pity.

In truth it was your friends who guessed the trajectory of your personal feelings before you did. Though you often found their poking and prodding intensely irritating, they had the common sense to keep the questions to a minimum – perhaps in hope their silence might guarantee that your affections would reveal themselves naturally one day. Now though you had to admit they had been right. You had fallen for Zhongli how long ago? It seemed so difficult to say when, so gradually had your feelings changed from viewing him as a confidante to viewing him as something more. Once you had finally come to terms with it you’d put off revealing your feelings as long as possible.

It wasn’t just the chance of rejection, something that would already cause emotions to run high. You had seen what sort of disease could ravage those who were unlucky in love. One of your own friends had suffered from such a disease, a fellow member of the Liyue Qixing had died from such a thing only a few months ago.

It was a terrible disease, everyone at least could agree about that. The origins of such an unfathomable sickness was much less understood. Most saw it as a curse from the gods, a punishment to the humans who would love a fellow mortal more than those who ruled above them, who gave their protection, their mercy, and their gifts to the people below. Others argued that it was simply a result of stress, for what heart could take the shock of a truly deep rejection. A rare parasite, a curse from malevolent demons, all these theories made little difference when it came to the actual disease. You were fairly sure anyways that people dying of it couldn’t care less why it happened, only that it was happening to them.

First came the coughing, easy enough to ignore in a land where the common cold truly lived up to its name. Then you couldn’t run as fast or as far as you had once, at least on the days were you weren’t fighting off crippling fatigue – the night sweats doing little to help you in your desperate need for rest. Then the fever set in, then the blood that stained the porcelain sink. By the time the first few petals would appear emaciation would already begin to claim your muscle mass and the precious body fat that kept you alive. Some people didn’t even get to the point of regurgitating fully formed flowers. Those people were usually considered lucky, for when one must deal with an incurable disease, well, surely it is better to go sooner rather than later.

You wouldn’t lie and say that wasn’t one of the reasons it took you so long to confess. After all, what you don’t know won’t kill you, right? You weren’t actually sure about that, but it sounded right in your mind, regardless of its actual veracity. However, as with most people in love, you’d found a growing recklessness inside you, paired with the sudden desperation for a happiness which you would certainly never obtain at this rate. So you’d made up your mind to tell him, deciding that perhaps the certainty would be better than the ever growing cloud of anxiety that surrounded your thoughts.

Now you’d been rejected. You had to admit that your first reaction was utter panic, the distinct feeling of having made a terrible sort of mistake. Oh sure, your feelings were undeniably hurt, but that was less important than the virtual death sentence you’d been handed. Why oh why had you decided to do this? The world seemed to swim in front of your for a moment, as simultaneously everything came into sharp focus and faded away into the recesses of your mind. What would you do now? There was nothing to do, you just had to wait for the inevitable, wait for the cold embrace of death to welcome you to its abode. You took deep breaths, trying to control yourself. Tears were forming in your eyes, but you knew that they weren’t from romantic distress. Ironically romance was the last thing in your mind right now.

“I, I see. Thank you for your honesty.”

It was all you could manage to make out. Turning around, head light from fear, you bolted down the streets of Liyue, desperate to be in your home, desperate to ignore the sword of Damocles that now hung dangerously low over your head.

Zhongli watched you go, watched as you stumbled your way through the crowd that always packed the streets of Liyue in the daytime. He was fine, he was perfectly fine. He had seen it through, had done what he knew was right. There was no reason to regret. Surely the small stab of pain he felt was temporary, a pinprick compared to all that the ex-archon had suffered over the years.

Zhongli had suspected that a confession like this might’ve been on the horizon for quite some time now. Not that he was dreading it out of a personal inability to reciprocate. No, in his heart Zhongli already reciprocated your suspected feelings. He loved you, adored you even; within the stony heart that had atrophied over years of war, suffering, and personal duty, grew a love that Zhongli had not felt for a very long time. He cherished every moment with you, knowing that his long life would try to compress the memories that were so precious to them. Seeing you whenever he could, dragged out conversations as long as he possibly could, Zhongli was practically desperate for time with you. He was also intensely aware of how short that time would ultimately be.

How could Zhongli push the curse of loving an immortal being on you? For it truly was a curse, to both parties involved. His side was painful of course, the knowledge that your memory, you lifespan even, would slip through his fingers like grains of sand. He would always be wondering whether or not the two of you would be experiencing a “last”. Last visit to the sea, last time to climb up the Huaguang Stone Forest to watch the sunset together. Last, last, last. Always the shadow of death would hang over you, so palpable in Zhongli’s mind that he might almost reach out and grasp the gossamer veil that would eventually steal you away. Yes, it would be a truly painful experience. Not nearly as painful however as your own experience.

Zhongli had long ago come to the conclusion that mortals had no true concept of the passage of time. You were young now, the world was your oyster. Zhongli’s immortal status would be nothing more than a passing thought, an anomaly and nothing more. Then your 40th birthday would pass, then you 50th, then you 60th, 70th, 80th. By the time you reached the end of your life the difference between you and Zhongli would stretch out like a chasm between the two of you, something to never be reconciled, for the old rarely forgave the young for their youth. Not to mention the other scenario, the one that Zhongli would never allow the freedom to truly cloud his thoughts. Your death of old age would be a tragedy, the alternative a catastrophe.

He knew all this, had seen it time and time again. Zhongli was hardly the first immortal being to fall in love with a mortal, would not be the last. Adepti, archons, all walks of immortal life were drawn to humanity, drawn to the freedom that came with mortality. Humans did things because they died; they had no forcible tie to nature, no innate duty other than to themselves. Humans could be wicked or kind or cruel or merciful as they wished. To those who were chained by their destiny, well, there was something very anomalous in such a choice. Perhaps it was no surprise then that an immortal being would inevitable find themselves interacting with those supposedly below them. Perhaps it was no surprise that this often led to love.

All that being true, Zhongli still refused to give into his needless selfishness. He loved you, yes. Knowing that was enough. He wouldn’t push such a burden on you, wouldn’t cause you resentment or pain. It would be better if you thought that your feelings weren’t reciprocated, it would be less painful.

Nor would you have to worry about the curse to which many less lucky fell. Zhongli still loved you, still cherished you deeply. You would never have to worry about that, for archons and adepti do not move on from love the way humans do. Zhongli’s love for you would long outlast your lifespan, one which, the archon prayed, would be very long indeed.

Yes, everything had been handled well enough. Perhaps you would never wish to speak with him again, perhaps you would grow to resent him even, how quickly love can turn into hate. It didn’t matter though. Zhongli had shielded you from long, drawn-out suffering, and that was all that mattered. He should’ve been satisfied, should have felt relief. Instead however he only felt a great sadness pressing down, a sadness combined with the pain that accompanied a love that must never truly be realized.

It had been nine days since you’d been rejected by Zhongli. Crossing off another square on the calendar which you had dug out of your old stationary you sighed. The nine days succeeding the encounter had been utter hell. At first you were convinced that the worst thing that could happen was the symptoms of the wretched illness showing up quickly, so convinced you were that the next day you would wake up with blood on your pillow. Soon however, you’d come to a completely different conclusion. There was nothing worse than waiting.

Every day was spent in the agony of anticipation, every day waiting for the coughing to begin, for the night sweats to begin ravaging your sleep, for the breathe to be stolen from your lungs. Yet every day you woke up with none of these things, though your fatigue was real enough.

You should have been relieved, should have been glad for the opportunity to live even a few more days. Yet instead of relief you only felt deep, unrelenting dread. You couldn’t bring yourself to do anything, so crippled were you by morbid anticipation.

Not that your thoughts were particularly worthwhile either. Perhaps it would be one thing if your ruminations had brought up something profound, something that you could write down in a book for your family or your friends. Though it still would be poor solace, well, at least it’d be something. But your thoughts had all turned to mush, replaced by a paranoia so strong it confined you to your bed most days.

You thought that the death sentence would in some way be freeing, that you might be able to recklessly throw yourself at all the things you had avoided out of fear for so long. Instead you found yourself depressed, waiting for an inevitable so terrifying you found yourself disconnecting from the people around you. What did it matter anyways? You’d be dead soon enough.

This gross neglect of your wellbeing was at least somewhat allayed by the routine that had been drilled into your body from so many years working for the Liyue Qixing. Though you didn’t go to work, something you were sure you were going to hear about eventually, you still dared to venture out to the market. At the very least you would eat your fill in good for before the end was nigh. No need to worry about your health after all. Besides, your definition of good food didn’t necessarily always align with completely unhealthy.

Walking through the familiar streets you stared at the people around you. How odd it was to see people so close you could touch them but so far they might as well have been in Inazuma. Was there anyone else here suffering like you were? Anyone who could understand the thoughts that now flooded your brain? You stared at the ground, trying not to think about it. You’d be confronted with these thoughts the minute you got home anyways. Might as well delay it a bit.

Turning to find the fishmonger you spied a familiar silhouette. Stopping in your tracks you stared unabashedly at Zhongli. The man seemed to be carrying himself much as ever, but the unapproachable atmosphere which he’d blanketed himself in seemed somewhat more prominent. Perhaps it was your imagination, he seemed to be talking to the butcher easily enough. Not that it was any of your business. Zhongli wasn’t any of your business anymore. It would be better if you could forget him, if you could erase this feeling in your heart that refused to go away. Even now Zhongli was beautiful. Even now you wished to run up to him, to hug him, to make pretend everything was right with the world. You couldn’t do that though. Just as you couldn’t forget him, you couldn’t love him. Not in the way you wanted. Turning away you trudged back home, good food utterly forgotten.

It was day eighteen since Zhongli had rejected you, and by now your emotions were running almost unbearably high. You’d sunk into an odd reverie of adrenaline, anxiety, and utter disbelief. What in the world was going on? This was a familiar illness to you, something that had almost claimed the life of your friend and had felled your coworker. You knew everything about symptoms, timeline, etc.; and what you knew was you were supposed to be falling ill ages ago. Eighteen days between the initial rejection and the beginning of symptoms? It was unheard of! You didn’t know what to think. Were the rumors about the gods true, had Zhongli imposed some divine protection on you for the sake of your friendship? Were you somehow a superhuman who had the white blood cell coding to defeat the bacteria that caused this disease? Why hadn’t your descent begun yet?

You lounged on the couch, having moved out of your bedroom on the thirteenth day, three days after the latest possible showing of symptoms. Though you still felt deeply afraid, you found that curiosity was a surprisingly good deterrent when it wanted to be. Your fears hadn’t disappeared, but mixed with them was a disbelief so great that you often found your thoughts drifting to questions of how rather than questions of when.

Of course your initial instinct had been to seek out Zhongli. Pride mixed with fear however had kept you firmly at home. Really what was the point in even seeking out the answer to your miraculous reprieve at this point? It wouldn’t really change the outcome. Instead you might as well enjoy this unexpected extension of your life. Besides, you didn’t want to tempt the fates a second time.

Zhongli stood at the window of your first story apartment, a glaze lily in hand. He hadn’t meant to do this, but the urge refused to leave him.

He’d noticed you a few times at the market, face drawn, eyes empty. Zhongli wasn’t sure what exactly he was expecting, but certainly this wasn’t it. He knew you weren’t suffering from illness, your pace was strong, if slightly erratic, your general aura not that of the sick that Zhongli was all too familiar with. Why then did you look so terrible? The doubts that had plagued Zhongli began to rise again, jeering at the mistake he had made. He was supposed to protect you, right? Why then did you look as if you had experienced a total health collapse?

At first Zhongli tried to ignore it. You had not come to him for help, it was not his place to try and insert himself back in your life once more. The more he thought of you however, the more he found himself uneasy. He had to have some form of communication, some way to enquire about your health. At least one last time. If you explicitly rejected all forms of contact, well then Zhongli would leave. He would never defy your wishes in such a way. Until then however, he felt like he needed to ask.

The idea of walking up to your apartment and asking you was utterly off the table. Who knew how that might end? No, he wanted a subtler way. Glaze lilies had always been a favorite of yours, sneaking out into the evening to see them bloom even more so. He would simply leave one on your windowsill. If you took it, then he would enquire about your health. If you left it, well Zhongli would have his answer.

His hand trembled slightly as he stared at the windowsill, causing the gold ribbon tied around the lily to tremble slightly. At first Zhongli wanted only to give you the flower. He realized soon however that you might be confused, wondering if someone had not simply dropped a flower on your windowsill, or had the wind blown it there? The ribbon would hopefully clear things up. Even if it looked a little silly.

Slowly placing the flower down onto the open window Zhongli sighed. Turning around he did not dare spare a glance backwards. He would have his answer soon enough after all. Until then, well, there was no point in looking back.

You exited from the kitchen, having finally felt the energy to make yourself that good food you’d been promising yourself. Going to look at the sunset you let out a soft gasp.

On your windowsill was a single glaze lily, wrapped in gold.

#no one dies but I left the ending a bit ambiguous on purpose #I wrote more about it in the ask #genshin impact fanfiction #zhongli x reader #genshin zhongli #genshin impact #requested #oneshot #my writing

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shiroganeryo · 4 years ago

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Komui's Discussion Room content (DGM 27)

Volume 27 has been released recently here in Brazil and I realized the remaining of Komui’s Discussion Room were nowhere to be found in English, but after reading all of it, I thought there are very interesting things hence why I wanted to share!

Please bear in mind this is not a direct translation, but a summary.

I have a lot of criticism when it comes to Viz Media’s release (official English), but I’m quite content with the work Panini, the distributor of D.Gray-Man in Brazil, has done so far with the official Portuguese release. If there are any mistakes, please bear in mind I translated the information directly from their version.

There are 11 questions covered in this summary. For the others, please check Jeidafei’s translations on them (totally recommend it!): Part 1 | Part 2 | Author's note & Thanks Corner | Extra

Without further ado, let’s get into it! This got very long.

≫ Kanda hasn’t reached the “critical point” in synchronization yet (+ why Allen isn’t a General)

In the question “How did Kanda hide having gone past the critical point”, Tiedoll answers that he actually has the potential it takes to do it but hasn’t done it yet. Still on the same question, they answer a related question about Allen’s critical point: “If Allen has reached the critical point, why wasn’t he appointed to become a general during the Order’s reconstruction?”

Allen replies that it was impossible at that time since Central was keeping watch over him. Tiedoll adds that he’s also too young and the only one able to operate the Ark, the latter making Central even more suspicious of him. General Cross’s reputation also seems to have played a part in this, having the higher-ups deem Allen as someone they couldn’t trust enough.

Ryo’s note: Allen thanks Tiedoll for putting his thoughts about Cross into words and Cross simply laughs it off. XD

≫ Sleeping positions

They get asked about their sleeping positions. Tiedoll describes how Kanda sleeps with detail (when younger, in fetal position; nowadays, he sleeps lying on his side, preferentially the right side).

Allen comments that Johnny sleeps sprawled on the floor or the desk and that everyone in the Science Division sleeps like this; when he first saw it, he got concerned thinking something tragic had happened. Johnny says it’s comfortable to sleep like this, but Allen isn’t so sure.

Cross comments on how Allen sleeps; he mentions he likes to sleep hugging something and when he can’t do it, he complains until falling asleep. Allen gets flustered and claims that he got used to sleeping with Tim because he used to be big, but is over it nowadays. Johnny remembers Link used to tell him not to sleep with the piggy-bank, to which Allen replies that it was “not a sleeping position, but survival instincts”.

Kanda comments on how he brought a ton of food to the infirmary one time and says it was annoying to listen to him eating nonstop. Allen replies with sarcasm (“sorry for needing to eat to recover my energies”).

Cross sleeps naked, with his arms open (according to Allen).

Tiedoll sleeps on his stomach, blanket over his face.

Ryo’s note: The time Kanda is referring to is in Chapter 135 (135th Night: Repose, Partly Cloudly).

≫ The symbol on the CROWs' foreheads

Cross replies that it’s probably the compulsory mark of the procedure that transforms regular people in CROWs. Tiedoll says that Cross knows a lot, as expected of someone who’s able to use magic –he shrugs off the compliment – and Kanda asks when and how exactly someone like him learned it. He angrily says he didn’t learn it anywhere and ends the question at Allen’s remark that he always gets angry when people ask.

Ryo’s note: This is interesting. Could imply he was the one to teach magic to Nea (and the Earl himself?), and not the other way around. But, it’s also possible he just didn’t want to answer.

≫ “What is something you find impressive on the other, but have never admitted?”

Johnny decides to start with Kanda and Allen, and the two exchange insults for several lines.

Johnny then passes the baton to the Generals, who do the exact same as their apprentices.

Johnny ends the question with a thank you and sweating nervously.

Ryo’s note: By “insults”, I mean things like Kanda calling Allen a crybaby, and Allen saying Kanda’s dumb. Tiedoll calls Cross a delinquent; Cross calls him “doting dad”. The list goes on…

≫ The time Kanda spent with General Tiedoll right after becoming his apprentice (+ Allen’s time with Cross)

They are asked what was the most outstanding episode from such a time, and Kanda absentmindedly says he forgot. Tiedoll seems disappointed, stating they had made so many marvelous memories together, to which Kanda replies “please stop talking in this weird way”.

Allen asks how the travels were, and Tiedoll says the most important at that time was to take care of mending Kanda’s heart. They spent much time talking about amenities, having contact with plants and animals and admiring beautiful landscapes. Tiedoll believes that getting in touch with beautiful things can help to connect with the world, despite carrying the burden of being a Second; he wanted Kanda to feel like regular people feel about the world.

Johnny and Allen are touched, and the latter comments how jealous he is. Cross then reminds Allen of how many bedsheets he had to wash because of him, making him flustered. He then goes on to remind how not only he did that but also had to feed him – Tiedoll comments on how it seems impossible to imagine Cross doing all that – and even help him change many times.

Allen’s embarrassment reaches the maximum and he threatens to beat Cross if he keeps talking about that.

≫ Stories of when Kanda and Lenalee were little

Kanda tries to shrug the question off, but Johnny insists they answer. Tiedoll says that the two of them were really cute, just like two lilies that bloomed inside the gray scenery of the Order; Kanda tells him to stop.

Allen is uninterested in Kanda, but wants to hear about Lenalee. Cross asks him if he likes her, and says he thought he had a girlfriend in the Asian Branch already. Allen denies it and says both LouFa and Lenalee are his friends; Cross laughs, saying he doesn’t judge, and Allen nearly snaps in irritation (again).

Johnny moves on to answer the question; Kanda is against it, but Tiedoll holds him in place. Johnny tells that Jiji told him that at first, Kanda would be asked if Lenalee could train with him, but he would shrug her off saying he didn’t want to train with a girl, which would make her cry.

Every time Kanda made Lenalee cry, she would run off to Reever. In reality, Johnny thinks she wanted to talk to Komui instead, but she thought he was busy and didn’t want to bother him, resulting in her crying at Reever’s desk. Tiedoll and Allen are weeping at it (they thought it’s cute).

While Reever comforted Lenalee, Marie would appear bringing Kanda along, who had no idea how to apologize, while Lenalee would bashfully hide inside Reever’s lab coat. This kept happening until he eventually accepted to train with her.

Johnny starts telling another story involving Kanda’s meditation and Lenalee coming back tired from a mission, but Kanda interrupts him. Allen says it’s being fun and tells him not to bother.

Kanda tells him to shut up, calling him a bedwetter. Allen snaps (again).

Ryo’s note: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

≫ “Who amongst the Noah would Allen best go along with? Hypothetically speaking.”

Allen and Kanda are worn out from fighting (see the previous question); Johnny is giving them calming tea. Tiedoll says that it seems Allen and Tyki Mikk looked friendly when talking to each other, and Allen interjects saying they’re not friends and that Tyki doesn’t respect the notion of personal space.

He then goes on to say he doesn’t imagine himself being friends with any Noah because they lack common sense. Cross mentions Road and how she’s always being flirty with him, which makes Allen tell him to stop implying things, while sounding unsure about being friends with her or not.

Johnny asks if Allen is embarrassed and reminds Road kissed him. He denies being embarrassed and says that kissing is just a form of greeting for her (he’s sweating nervously while saying so). He adds that, on top of that, he feels like Road sees someone else when she looks at him.

Cross seems amused.

Ryo’s note: This answer is very interesting. It seems to confirm the theory that Road had some kind of connection with past!Allen. We won’t know for sure until it’s revealed, but it does seem to imply such a thing.

≫ The taste of Innocence + the Crystal Type Innocence + Exorcist supplies + Cross suspiciously knowing about the Bookman clan

A reader asks how did Innocence taste like when liquefied; Kanda says it tastes like nothing, similar to water.

Johnny points out the wounds that formed after their Innocence became Crystal types and if they don’t hurt. Kanda says that at the time they don’t, but such wounds won’t heal even with his healing ability – which he concludes makes sense since it’s from where the blood comes out to form the weapons.

Johnny mentions that the Science Division (Komui, more specifically) made Lenalee pills that will prevent anemia. Still on that subject, Allen remembers people had asked what goes inside the bags the Exorcists carry on their uniforms. Johnny says they carry first-aid kits, disinfectants, anti-hemorrhagic meds, and things of the sort. Miranda and Timothy carry sweets with a high intake of calories, Krory carries Akuma blood sweets and Lavi and Bookman asked for migraine meds.

Tiedoll says they are nothing without the support of the Science Division and thanks them. Allen asks about Lavi and Bookman getting migraines. Cross mentions it’s probably from an occupational disease because storing that much information and memories can wreck your head over time.

Allen comments again that he seems to know a lot about the Bookman Clan, and that it’s very suspicious. Cross magnificently shrugs off the question.

≫ Allen’s cheating

Allen gets asked if he becomes bad at luck games (i.e gambling) in case he doesn’t cheat. He says that a bet on luck always rewards something even if gains are small, but Johnny says he’s really bad at things like rock-paper-scissors. Kanda thinks he was just in denial about admitting he’s unlucky.

When scolded by Kanda, Allen says it was a matter of survival and that he never cheated good people on; just bad people.

Johnny says living like this is dangerous and that he should stop; Allen apologizes and says he needs money, and if anything, he can use his Innocence.

Cross is amused and sounds proud. Tiedoll regrets Cross’s influence on Allen.

≫ About Link

Allen gets asked if he has ever seen Link smile, to which he responds he has tried making him laugh/smile, but never could do it. Johnny says that everyone from Central is very serious, especially Link. Tiedoll thinks that it might be forbidden to smile when their superior is Director Lvellie.

Allen goes on to ramble about how Link complained about everything: when he had food on his face after or during eating, asking him to redo reports because they were illegible despite Reever being able to read, scolding him for not drying his hair after going out of the bath because he could get a cold, and how he was a shame for not folding his uniform properly before putting it away.

Cross asks him, “what was he? Your mother?” and Allen says he didn’t get annoyed at him. He wonders if all moms are like this.

Johnny says people were worried when he was assigned to watch Allen, but in the end, Link went along well with everyone and confirms that Allen liked him as well. He also states that Allen’s reports became a lot easier to read thanks to him.

Ryo’s note: Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary folks: it’s Link appreciation time! *tips hat* Also Allen wondering about how mothers treat their children was just precious, even if it’s a throwaway comment.

≫ The vibe at the Black Order

In the question “Who runs faster, Komui or Reever?”, Johnny says that he thinks Reever is faster; Allen adds that Komui cheats by using Komurin, though. Kanda gets annoyed and tells them they (at the Science Division) should make Komui behave accordingly to his role. Johnny sniffs and says that they try.

Tiedoll says that it’s actually good that Komui is cheerful because the Order used to be a very different place until he took over the post, and that he (Tiedoll) disliked the gloomy aura it used to have. Allen remembers Lenalee commented about it once and asks if the Order was really this different back then. Tiedoll says that even if it’s been built with a noble purpose, human beings aren’t perfect and a lot of things get distorted over a hundred years. He recommends Allen to ask For about it, as she has existed ever since the Order was founded and protects it to this day.

Allen is sad and comments he wants to visit the Asian Branch again someday. Johnny says he’ll go with Allen, but the latter says he would want to eat Jeryy’s food again before that. Cross sneers and wishes good luck.

They wrap it up at this, and both Kanda and Allen look very happy about being done with the Discussion Corner (as noted by Johnny). Tiedoll bids Cross adieu, and says “rest in peace, Marian” – to which he replies “don’t treat me like a ghost”.

Allen says he knows Cross is an illusion created by his weakness, but that he was happy to see him (in reference to the 222nd Night: Searching for A.W - Hypokrisis). Cross tells him not to exaggerate.

Johnny is content that they could finally keep it to the ideal number of pages – something the Discussion Corner is known to usually have trouble with. Tiedoll says that if they had gone overboard, the next issue’s Discussion Corner would be canceled, and wraps up thanking everyone who has cared about Yu so far and asks that people keep cheering for him.

Johnny thanks the readers for sending their questions. Allen and Kanda are relieved it’s over.

Ryo’s note: And that’s it! Man, this got LONG. Thank you very much for reading until the end. Can’t wait for the next Discussion Room, the way Tiedoll worded it makes it seem like it’ll be on the next volume, 28. I’m excited!

If you're interested in seeing more DGM content from me, feel free to check my masterlist here.

#d.gray-man #d.gray man #komui's discussion corner #komui's lounge #Allen Walker #Johnny Gill #Kanda Yuu #Cross Marian #Froi Tiedoll #DGM #I sure hope I didn't count wrong the number of questions #math isn't my forte at all #as for the palette requests: I'm currently working on them!

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