#Kalif

[all-thestories-aretrue]

Here are the Thoughts™️I promised @discordkittenterumi

This post is a much longer follow to this post from last night as I was listening to episode 60.

This post is also in conversation with with something @peppedstep mentioned about Neil’s loyalty to the coterie, which I touch on briefly.

Everything sort of solidified in my brain after finishing 60 at like 2 am last night.

In 60, we see Neil wake up in a strange place with Weathers and Amara with him. The last thing he remembers is running from his sire which seems to be several days ago.

Neil also does not remember much of Baghdad (which is a whole separate post that is coming. I have many thoughts about Nara and Neil in that situation).

He routinely has panic attacks, some of which lead to dissociation. For example, before his trial in 37 and 38, we see him go catatonic when he realizes his haven is under attack. Dissociation is not usually something that happens to someone once and then never again. It’s a coping mechanism, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it’s something he experiences, perhaps not regularly, but with some sort of frequency.

In addition, many of his rituals require his mind to be separated from his body, and we know kalif also impacts his cognitive function as also seen in Baghdad. He has the capability of astral projecting which leaves his body behind, defenseless. The ritual with the bull in 6, he had others stay nearby just in case something were to happen. The second time he completes the ritual, Johnny escorts him.

Neil is often dependent on the people around him to keep him safe, and we see him repeatedly look to others for their judgement before he makes a decision on his own. He looks to Nara to trust Jubair, and he looks to Amara to trust Catherine and this mission. In these two cases in particular, he’s forced to rely on others’ assessments of the situation because he cannot make his own. In addition, relies on Britta and Miles to defend him in court while Johnny and Wynn take care of his haven. He also places an immense amount of trust in the coterie and their decisions, generally speaking.

Peppedstep mentioned that family is important to Neil, the coterie is important to Neil. He consistently revolves around the idea of keeping them together and spending their final nights together. I agree, but to add another layer to that, Neil trusts everyone in the coterie, and as has often been discussed, trust is an extremely rare commodity for Kindred, and in some cases doesn’t exist at all. What Neil has with the coterie almost seems to be unprecedented given the general picture of the Camarilla and Kindred society the audience is presented with. He knows these people will protect him and/or his body when he is unable to.

I would imagine, without them, his quality of life would be diminished, and all it would take is one mistake, one bad episode, for him to meet final death or another horrible fate, especially considering his abilities. It was a stroke of luck that Amara and Weathers picked Neil up.

His drug use, mental health issues, and magical abilities all work closely together to form a complex web of memory loss and a distrust of his own opinions. Even further, I would argue that his memory loss contributes to his lack of a sense of identity.

I believe it’s been mentioned a few times that Neil doesn’t really have a strong sense of identity (I am not going to sort through all 60 episodes to find those sources though, sorry! I do think it might have been brought up at the party when Fester was preparing him?), and that’s proven by how he talks about his worth early on when Wynn confronts him after the bull ritual. He, and I am paraphrasing here, believes he is useful because he can provide the coterie with knowledge. Later on, he mentions that Miles kept him around because of his specific abilities which again, his worth is tied up in his usefulness to people.

This mentality is compounded by his early history with his sire. In 51 or 52 (I can’t remember which and I’m not going to look it up), it’s described that Neil looks at his sire the way one might look at an abusive parent. Neil is absolutely terrified of this person even now. Based on Neil’s nonconfrontational personality, some of his coping mechanisms in the face of this abuse could easily be making himself small, agreeing with his sire, etc. leading to the people-pleasing nature we see in Neil now. Peppedstep also posited that Neil could have been Embraced to be made in his sire’s image. We know he is a loner, we know he has visions, and maybe he also feels the need for family in his own demented way. Regardless of if that is true, Neil’s sire had a massive effect on who Neil became as a Kindred and without question would influence his sense of identity. If Peppedsteps’s theory is true, then Neil’s sire would have stripped away any sense of who he was to remake him in his image.

TLDR: Neil has memory loss from a combination of drug use, mental health issues, and magical abilities which make him reliant on others for his safety in certain circumstances and further exacerbate his lack of a sense of identity.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[blackmensuited]

[whitenikes]

Everybody Loves Raymond(s)

[thomas-the-goat-of-satan]

don't TALK TO ME, I'm thinking about Jennifer and Kali again.

[freshbrainss]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jennifer Blake/Kali (Teen Wolf) Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Established Relationship, Unhealthy Relationships, Power Imbalance, Morning After, Magic, Paganism, Femslash February 2024 Series: Part 10 of My Femslash February 2024 Summary:

Julia has never felt better. More powerful.

Beside her, a less-blissful werewolf wakes with a groan.

[prophetofnothing]

thinking about toxic yuri (jennifer and kali) today

[the-football-chick]

NFC PLAYERS OF THE WEEK (15)

[malibuzz]

interview autobiographique de RAS KALIF (Ibrahima Camara) de l'écurie AZK Productions

Koumassi, c’est dans ce quartier populaire du sud d’Abidjan, capitale politique ivoirienne, que voit le jour Ibrahima CAMARA. Il y passe son enfance et son adolescence. C’est aussi dans cette commune cosmopolite que débute sa carrière musicale. Vers le milieu des années 1990, le hip-hop bat son plein et Ibrahima intègre, en 1999, le groupe musical Azziza où il affûte ses armes sous le pseudonyme…

[silvileophotographyx]

[hnzkaitlyn]

[blackmensuited]

[thomas-the-goat-of-satan]

I should've ripped your head off.

[all-thestories-aretrue]

Johnny finds Neil high out on the balcony and confronts him about his apparent uptake in kalif use, causing Neil to spiral further. Weighed down by visions and signs, he shuts down, leaving Johnny to care for him in a moment of vulnerability.

After three months, I'm finally finished. Apparently, I just needed to be trapped inside for three days straight with nothing else to do.

Anyway, if you click through, mind the tags.

[alpaca-clouds]

Okay, let's go a bit more into Mizrak's probable origins

Okay, after my post-yesterday I saw in the reblogs and comments a couple of things where people get their history a bit mixed up. So let me try to clear this one up.

The world did not look like it does today in 1792!

As I said, there is quite a bit of dialogue that implies that he comes from Jerusalem. Which makes sense, because the Knights Hospitaller are from there. (For a quick explanation about what's up with the Knights Hospitaller, have a look here.) It also makes sense with his name.

Now, his name is a bit more complicated as some people make it out to be. While the name Mizrak today is most common in Turkey, it is actually a bit controverse where it originates from. There is some argument saying it came from the Slavic name Mizlav, but there can also be an argument made that it comes from the Ethopian name Misrak. Both still kinda make sense with it being so common in Turkey these days, because... Welp, the Ottoman Empire was freaking giant.

And in the late 18th century, Jerusalem was in fact part of the Ottoman Empire.

(This is the closest date in maps I have found to the setting of the show, but the bigger changes would not come until Napoleon did his thing in the late 1790s.)

Now, the show also mentions Malta in relation to the Abbot and his knight-monks. So how does that fit in?

Fairly simple.

There was a bit of a conflict happening between the religions in Jerusalem in the late 1770s. Now, please keep in mind, that in general Muslims were for most of history a lot more chill about other religions being around, than Christians historically were. But never the less: Some of the Knightly Orders and the local Kalif got into issues, there was fighting. It ended up with a lot of the Knightly Orders leaving Jerusalem.

The Knights Hospitaller moved their headquarters from Jerusalem to Malta in 1779.

We do not quite know how old Mizrak is. But I assume he is in his early 30s. So, yeah, good chance he joined the order in Jerusalem and then accompanied them to Malta and from Malta to France.