#Reclusive Researcher | Simon

[pushspacetocontinue]

"Yeah, same here," Bill agreed, "At least they only just talk about your cosplay being rubbish when, you know, you're the real deal."

He grinned a little bit then. It seemed he was doing reworking all the restraints.

"Heh, I've already said the line back when I had to come in to help beat Five back again," Travis said, chuckling, "I was wearing my gas mask at the time, so it seemed funny."

"Good idea," Simon said, "It'll make things easier if we find the best entry points and the most advantageous terrain to go through while we approach."

Leofric made sure that his equipment and ingredients were safe were they were for the time being and then he slowly stood up. It seemed that he was going to go with Erica.

Russell's eyes widened briefly at the display of various cracks in the walls. Even now, it surprised him when Erica summoned a route.

"R-right," Russell said. At least it didn't seem that Lucien was about to do something that potentially put him in danger, "See you in, in a second."

"Don't rush," Simon said to Willow.

But then Travis nodded. Leofric decided to wait until they had gotten to the base before he transformed, but he gave Erica as he moved to stand by her.

"I'll go too," Travis then said, as he moved to join Erica, "I might be able to get a bit closer if he's able to sense supernatural people. I'm a normie after all."

"I'm, I'm going as, as well," Russell said.

"No!" Travis and Simon both spoke up at the same time.

"B-but..."

"You're most likely on his radar, Custard, with the encounters you've had. I really don't think you should be going right now," Simon then said.

Russell wanted to protest again, but it was a valid point. If he was potentially caught and then captured, that would be a disaster.

"I feel the three of us will work well enough," Leofric said with a small nod, "The less of us there are, the less attention we'll get, and we're only there to scout, to make preparations."

"I'll take annoying geeks over Five any day."

Those were marginally less prone to murder attempts at least. But knowing Bill had something to guard against Five was reassuring and one less thing to worry about when their blades would finally meet.

"Yeah, it'd be a shame if you turned into that gas mask guy from Doctor Who." Erica replied, turning to her gauntlet to have a look at the material Simon was sending, "...Okay, we'll have a look and make sure there aren't traps."

There was no way of telling from such tiny screens. Erica quietly made her way to a quiet corner, her tail shifting slowly as several cracks began forming all along the wall, before making way for several portals. The elf hummed quietly to herself as she began pacing.

Lucien smiled as he adjusted his jacket. "Thank you. And don't worry, I'll be back in a few minutes."

With that, he headed for the door while already scrolling through the contacts list on his phone.

Willow nodded, appreciating Simon trusted her enough with the information. "It will take me a few minutes to organize the delivery from here. Hopefully, my brothers aren't too busy."

"Well, Erica is definitely going." Rook said, motioning to her double, "Sticking to the shadows can be a bit trippy. Anybody who's fine with a bumpy ride can go."

[starsofang]

simon riley x autistic!reader requested by 🪼 anon! <3 tw: anxiety/bits of a meltdown, but other than that, it's fluffy! previous part

Today’s been a very, very bad day.

Everything that could’ve possibly gone wrong, went wrong.

Your brain was filled with fuzzy, radio static no matter how many times you tried to flip the channel. The buzzing rang through your ears like an endless swarm of bugs whipping at your face, causing your skin to itch and crawl with impending unease.

It felt as if you were teetering off of a high cliff, legs dangling over the bottomless pit with only a single hand on the edge to keep you from sinking down into the vast ocean of nothingness.

Your brain was having an inner battle with the things that kept you operating. It was coercing you into a full blown shutdown, panic pressing all of your buttons and sending you into overdrive. You were sure you would short circuit and billow out with exhausted rings of smoke, and it was only a matter of time before it became too much to handle.

Simon was there before your system called it quits and imploded on itself.

He was always there. Ever since he’d formed a bond with you after learning of you being autistic and researching every possible way to understand you as an individual, he was always there, trailing close behind and aiding you before you burst.

Simon knew from the moment he saw the distant look on your face and the befuddled furrow in your expression that you needed a moment to breathe. Air to fill your lungs, peaceful serenity to occupy the warzone in your mind.

The way you became snappy towards the team was like a ticking time bomb ready to go off and wreak havoc to anybody unfortunate enough to get in the way. You were reclusive, close-minded, and nearly sent Johnny into an early grave when he attempted to joke with you. Poor Johnny was only trying to lighten your spirits, but Simon knew that wasn’t what you needed.

You needed security. You needed grounding. You needed somebody to lightly tug you back down to Earth and exterminate the ugly parasites worming around in your brain with a gentle coax of patience.

When Simon saw you sat around the others with your hands curled into fists, nails biting into the smooth skin of your palm, and your jaw clenched so hard he feared your teeth might break, he called things quits for the day.

He said nothing as he stood from where he sat, gently guiding you with him with a touch on your elbow. He let go as soon as you got the hint and opted to gesture with a nod of his head to follow him, as he knew any form of communication or physicality might truly coax your hand to let go off that ledge and dive right into that empty abyss.

He knew if he let that happen, he might have to spend weeks searching it to find you again.

Your steps were heavy and dragged from behind him. Your shoes made muted thumps on the floor, and you walked with a bitter vengeance, like you were hoping if you stomped hard enough, the floor might open up and swallow you whole.

Simon said nothing, even as the two of you entered the privacy of his quarters. It was new for him to allow somebody in the very space he could hide away in like that of a troglodyte. This was his sanctuary, and nobody, not even Johnny had the permission to enter it on their own free will.

You were an exception. You were always an exception.

Any time you needed time to think, space to collect yourself before you succumbed to numbing stimulation, Simon would allow this sanctuary to be yours as well.

“Sit,” he told you, and though a demand, it remained soft and quiet so as not to rattle the drums in your ears that were already on the brink of exploding into a bloodied mess.

Your face was mucked up into a darkened scowl but you did as he said, plopping yourself down on the edge of his mattress. The fabric underneath your hands felt like sandpaper, and when you spread your palms along the material, it felt like shards of glass cutting into your skin.

The static in your brain raised tenfold. It grew louder and angrier, and you took the mattress sheet into your fists, balling it up so tight, your knuckles turned a pale white.

Everything felt overwhelming, everything felt loud, you didn’t understand why the buzzing wouldn’t stop, why the bugs biting at your skin couldn’t feast on a meal that wasn’t you, why–

Something soft and puffy encased your ears, submerging them with a gentle string of mellow chords and instruments and filtering through to the chaos rooted in your brain. The static slowed to a light hum that no longer felt suffocating, but instead, warm and fuzzy, like a loving hug that shifted all of your pain and worries into nothing but dusted air.

Simon stood before you with both hands carefully placing the headphones to your ears. It was his way of wanting to touch you for comfort, without having to actually touch you. He knew every little trigger as well as every necessity that ensures you feeling grounded and safe, and music was one of them.

You hated loud, fast music when the world felt like it was collapsing in on itself, and Simon knew that. It was exactly why he opted for a tender melody that contained no words, no singing, just simple notes that you could force yourself to tune in on and seek solace in.

When Simon saw your expression melt away from stiff and angry to calm and peaceful, he took his hands away from your headphones, letting them sit on their own. The war in your mind was calling a truce, but just to assure both himself and you that it stayed that way, he grabbed one of the blankets he kept for you and began wrapping you up in it.

He made sure it was just loose enough to where you could move, but tight enough for it to feel like an embrace that he knew you weren’t ready to receive from him yet. When the time was right, he’d join you under the confines of the blanket and hold you for as long as you needed, but for now, he was perfectly content with sitting and waiting for you to come back to Earth.

The room was silent during his patient waiting, apart from the faint sound of the classical music playing from under your headphones. He remained crouched in front of you, hands resting on his knees and itching with readiness for when you’d open your eyes and give him that blinding smile he fell in love with along the journey of your friendship.

When the time came, Simon tilted his head at you as you stared back with a spark back in your eye.

“Better?” he asked, and when you gave him a toothy smile, he knew he’d done well.

“Better,” you repeated in confidence.

Simon smiled back, eyes crinkling beneath his mask. He gave your knee a gentle squeeze, and he happily joined you under the blanket when you lifted it in invitation, molding you into his side and letting his fingers brush through your hand with a thoughtful touch while the music continued to give you much needed calm.

If tranquility was all you needed in times where your mind was exhausted to the point of collapse, he’d greedily wait a lifetime if it meant being the calm before (and after) the storm and having the opportunity to end it rolled up in blankets with you in the congested space of his bed.

as always, i hope you enjoyed, and i thank 🪼 anon for this lovely request! hopefully you like it <3

[pricegouge]

No but Price does fakes the apocalypse with Nik’s help. Maybe Reader has enough of feeling suffocated in that bunker. Maybe she tries to plan an escape. Maybe she doesn’t realize that her dad and Nik know that she’s trying to get out.

Would be a shame if Nik called up some favors with some crook scientists to make a problem… Would be a shame if Nik brought a fucked up human down there just cause he’s wanting to ‘research a cure’… would be a shame if Price tied her to a chair to make his babygirl see why she has to stay down there when that fucked up human just gets close enough to her…

right? can just see john price with all these back doors into his daughter's phone just feeding her escalatingly horrible false news articles while slowly blocking her off from her friends and social networks. maybe she's a bit of a recluse like him, barely goes outside because he's been filling her head with fear all her life. easier to manipulate that way.

hm. how about instead of human experimentation they just call in simon? stage it to look like he broke in. mask off, human butcher block, covered in scars and stinking like hell. he acts crazed, like he hasn't seen other humans for months.

hasn't seen a woman for much longer.

it takes both of them to wrestle him back out the hatch and they find you cowering under the bed when it's all done, just as frightened as the day they brought you down there. after that i think you're double checking the locks, absolutely terrified of being stuck with worse than what you have.

[sonofhelios2005]

Dead Boy Detectives and Mortal Instruments AU. This AU would see the boys existing within the same universe as the Mortal Instruments, The Dark Artifices, and other series.

Edwin would be a Warlock and experience a childhood of no parental love as his mother is aware of what he is. His demonic father isn't a named demon but an Eidolon demon. Due to his lonely upbringing, Edwin found solace in his magic and dedicated himself to mastering it. Unwilling to participate in WW1, Edwin leaves school before he is sent off to fight and sets off to explore the world. During his travels, Edwin encounters several other Warlocks who invite him into their group. The leader of this group Simon is obsessed with Edwin, and when his advances are refused, Simon uses Edwin in a ritual, which sees Edwin banished to hell.

As he is not human, Edwin isn't tortured in hell, but he is forced to make a deal with Asmodeus to get back to Earth. Back on Earth, Edwin becomes a recluse and spends years in London privately researching magic and making trips to the spiral labyrinth, becoming well known as a researcher. Edwin is not the most powerful Warlock in the world. However, he is far more knowledgeable than others who are centuries older than him. His Warlock Mark is something he has never shown anyone (Not sure what his mark would be). Edwin remains a recluse until he meets Charles Rowland in 1989.

Charles Rowland was born in the 1950s to a mortal mother, and his father, who was disgraced, deruned Shdaowhunter. Bitter about how his life turned out and that his son inherited some of his Nephilim abilities. Paul Rowland treated his child and wife horribly. Despite his abusive childhood, Charles grew up to be a kind and brave person who was completely aware of the supernatural thanks to having the sight and some enhanced physical abilities. It was entirely possible Charles could have become a full Shdaowhunter at some point however while he was away at school he had an encounter with a vampire who intrigued by his unusual smelling blood attacked and later turned him. Charles was forced to spend several years with his Sire before he could make his escape.

Charles returned home in the hope of reconnecting with his mother. However, she had left his father in those few years. His father was aware that his son was now a Downworlder, who tried to kill Charles, who was still a young vampire and was driven by instinct fought back and accidentally killed him. Before he fled his childhood home, Charles retrieved the seraph blade, and Stele that his father, had kept after being banished. Charles was shocked to find that despite being a vampire, he was somehow able to use the Stele and blade like a Shdaowhunter could. Although he fully accepted he was a vampire, Charles still had a strong desire to protect people, so he decided to use the items his father had left behind. Charles becomes the one other Downworlders will seek out to remove any demons troubling them so they don't have to bother with actual Nephilim. Charles has a particular hatred of the Clave who see him as an aberration like they do any Shdaowhunters who are part Downworlder.

Charles and Edwin met in 1989 when they were forced to work together after a stupid Warlock attempted to summon a greater demon in London, Edwin was able to bind the demon whilst Charles stabbed it through the heart and banished its essence back to hell. This was the start of their friendship and the beginning of the Payme and Rowland international Downworlder investigation agency, solving Downworlder problems since 1989.

For the other characters.

Crystal - Shdaowhunter

Niko - Faerie

Monty - Warlock (abused by Esther who is still a which)

Cat King ( Actual cat who like Church was used in a necromancy ritual so is now immortal)

Night Nurse - Reasonable Clave Official

David the Demon - A Demon

This is yet another of my mad rambling that I couldn't stop thinking about. The boys are Downworlders because normal Shdaowhunters are boring. Charles was born earlier because I wanted him to have something of a past before Edwin. Charles killing his father was an accident, and he feels guilty about not being guilty he's dead. Nephilim/Downworlder hybrids exist, so I thought, why not have Charles be a vampire who can use runes. He still has the weaknesses of a vampire, though not as bad as a regular vampire. He isn't Daylighter. Edwin's deal with Asmodeus is an issue to be dealt with in the future.

This won't actually be a story as I have no ability to write a coherent narrative.

[resident-idiot-simp]

Love Bites

Vampire Riley who is a recluse after killing his sire (Roba) and has been fighting his instincts ever since. He refuses to let himself be vulnerable in the slightest. The first while away from Roba was an absolute bloodbath the man was undeterred in his feeding, but once placed in the 141 he calmed slightly.

MacTavish takes one look at him and wants to fix it. So he goes out of his way to be welcoming and unintrusive for the new member. Riley's thankful but wouldn't dare reveal that. It goes on like that for months but slowly Riley gets more and more comfortable.

One time the Captain drops by and offers one of his hoodies. (MacTavish had done a lot of research) Riley is unsure but takes it. He can't help but put it on immediately.

Riley is slowly given more and more clothes and doesn't even realize what he's done until it's too late. He made a nest and it's the most comfortable he's been in his life. He is happily purring and he doesn't even notice. All you can smell is MacTavish his Captain his mate his .

He doesn't even realize the possessive nature has already reared its head. He doesn't realize he's slowly trying to reciprocate by rubbing himself against MacTavish whenever he can. But MacTavish realizes what's happening and he can't help the smile that spreads across his face every time.

It all comes to a head when another vampire is dropped on base one day.

The vampire was nothing special however. The creature has the misfortune of getting a bit too close to MacTavish. Testing Riley's limits seeing the claim is what it is. Riley takes it about as well as one can expect from the well-adjusted vampire.

Riley is eating in the mess when he hisses at the soldier showing off his considerable fangs. THEY ARE GETTING CLOSE TO WHAT IS MINE . Riley hadn't even realized what he had done before 141 members were trying to intervene. But Riley didn't take it any better that idiot had challenged his claim he couldn't allow that in good faith.

He stalks forward before MacTavish grabs him. "Stop it's ok Simon."

"NO IT'S NOT THEY TRIED TO TAKE YOUS FROM ME!"

MacTavish blushes slightly liking the way Riley claimed him as his own. "I'm not goin' anywhere but ye can't start fights no matter what the other idiots do."

MacTavish has to drag Riley away to prevent the situation from escalating. They eventually made their way back to Riley's room. As soon as MacTavish opened the door he froze at the sight in front of his. His clothes were all neatly placed around the bed the newest item at the head.

The Captain had to stop himself from commenting just brought Riley to his bed and ordered him to get some rest.

"No, they might try and mark yous again!"

The Captain sighs before offering a different solution. "What if I stayed in here then."

Riley perks up immediately before nodding fervently his mismatched eyes shining. MacTavish chuckles but allows himself to be pulled into the bed.

Riley curls around him rubbing his face against the Captain's neck marking him . Riley doesn't even realize when his face migrates to the junction of the Captain's neck, but MacTavish does.

"Ye want a drink love?"

Riley purrs loudly and MacTavish smiles down at him. "Go ahead Si."

Simon does he laches on and drinks slowly going completely pliant and mindless. MacTavish cannot help but freeze in shock.

Vampires only act like that while they feed If they feed from a sire or close-mate/friend possibly even family.

Riley feeds for some time. It's slow prolonging the experience the intimacy. MacTavish feels floaty himself It's something he could get used to. When Riley finally pulls away full and content he licks the wound sealing it. Riley is purring loudly as he feels himself slowly drifting off.

A few hours later Riley wakes again and freezes as he realizes his predicament and a sudden shocking moment. What the hell had he done? He tries to jump away scramble really MacTavish has an iron grip on him.

The movement wakes the captain as he blinks blearily up at Riley. "Wha' the hell do ye think you're doin'?"  His accent is much thicker with sleep.

Riley flounders how does one answer that question. 'Oh, nothing just trying to run away because I had emotions and I'm not used to that' MacTavish would laugh in his face.

The silence seems to be answered enough, "You're not going anywhere Simon not now that I have ya."

And Riley can't help the surprise chirp that leaves him because what what the hell had he missed?!

The Captain doesn't answer however as he drags Riley back and places himself on the vampire. "Rest I'm still tired"

The next time they awake Riley is more calm his subconscious has somehow managed to comprehend the situation to some degree. He still wasn't sure exactly what was going on he didn't know much about himself in the first place scared to research. Everything just reminded him of Roba.

The Captain patiently answered his questions and soon Riley felt relatively caught up to speed.

He neglected to mention what his mind had dubbed MacTavish but it seemed the Captain already knew.

Over the next week, MacTavish exchanged clothes to give him more of the ones he had worn recently the scent stronger. And if the captain had walked into him buried under a pile of shirts that was something they weren't to mention. Slowly Riley became more comfortable with asking or rather requesting MacTavish to do things for him.

The captain always jumped at the opportunity. Riley had even mustered the courage to ask to feed from him again. It was somehow better than the first time with the Captain scratching the back of his head.

Months passed and slowly the relationship developed well… Relationship was a generous term…

Neither quite knew what was going on but we're both happy to indulge it. It became an unwritten rule of the 141. MacTavish and Riley had a thing of their own unnamed but eternal.

Riley had moved into the Captain's room at some point down the line. They were private with their thing It was still too delicate and fragile to risk anything.

However, It eventually did evolve to the point where he didn't have to be behind closed doors. MacTavish would hold Riley close around the base and rub his body against the vampire.

He would snap his teeth at Riley and get a snap in return. It was courting through and through and anyone who knew anything about vampires knew it.

Slowly ever so slowly Riley would feed in public only around the team. He would place himself in the Captain's lap too just to soak up the heat on the man.

They slept curled around one another and slowly Riley felt safe again

If you are thinking to yourself humm I recognize some of these aspects. Yes Yes you do you recognize it from here I really need to get to writing that

[ask-site-61]

CHARACTERS -

Co-Site Director Benjamin Oliver Walker - Co-Site Director, (Wise-)Bright's Husband, Founder of The Library, Head of Pedology, but most importantly: good boy extraordinaire and D-9341 variant.

Dr. Jack Bright (Wise) - Holy fuck there's so much to say about him. Chaos incarnate.

Assistant Researcher Emily Ross - Died in The 2012 Catastrophe.. wonder how she's back. (SCP-061-ICE)

Pontos Doe - Himbo intern who's into greek mythology.

Dr. Wilhem Cure - Site Head of Medicine… probably the only LITERAL doctor on-site.

Agent Ulgrin - KYS'd after 2012 Catastrophe. Got SCP-061-ICE'd (trust me you'll see what it is in time.)

Researcher Penelope Normelle - Literally the most normal person here.

Site Director Bjärk Jakobssons - Quick to snap, jeez louise. Can teleport and is omnipotent across the Site.

George Olkassen - Class-D. Everyone calls him Georgie though. Cool kid wannabe.

Electra Macbeth - Longest-running Class-D. Seriously. How is she STILL alive.

Cookie - Nickname for one of the trans characters!! :3

Dr. Alto Clef (Wise) - Oh what a fucking asshole. Seriously. Only showing up when it entertains him. Might be fucking Maynard.

Dr. Akihito Saku - The Foundation's lovable "Head of Safe Classed Objects"; always the goofball.

Dr. Hartwell Artz - The Foundation's controversial "Head of Euclid Classed Objects"; he's better safe than sorry.

Dr. Amberlynn Rhodes - Th Foundation's rather enigmatic "Head of Keter Classed Objects"; it purported she's resistant against kill agents. Basically the middle ground of Saku and Artz. Not gonna snap at you for pressing a button, but still takes her work seriously.

Senior Researcher Thomas Rivbacht - Jeez.. uh… well, he doesn't take care of himself.. at all… he really should. He uh.. misses his family and is extremely depressive. Reclusive, too.

Dr. George Maynard - Mastermind of The 2013 Catastrophe. Forgiven, but scrutinized. Pale white skin since The Chaos Insurgency revived him utilizing a spliced variant of SCP-049's Touch.

Dr. Jack Bright (Emo) - I CHIME IN!! HAVEN'T YOU PEOPLE EVER HEARD OF.. CLOSING THE GODDAMN DOOR, NO???

Head Nelson Van Martins - The GOC's Icelandic Head. He lied. He's 16, not 18. Either way, he's here now and ready to stay.

Operative Roxxane Sparkes - Another trnas character!! This one being a member of Site Guard who's easily distracted. ^^

Researcher Carly Rosè Colbert - Espionage for The French Government; truly, The French must be stopped.

Researcher Stella Gospelle - The name says it all; "EVERYBODY LOVES STELLLLAAHHHH!"; drama queen and gossip bitch. She will ruin your life.

Site Head of Ethics, Jessica Parish - One of three. The enigmatic Parish Family. Anyways, besides often being mistaken for a bimbo, she's actually quite fierce and once threatened to rip the throat of Darvann out.

Junior Researcher Alexander Grimmes - "Foundation Head of Neutralized Objects"; but more over, attention-seeking extravagant.

Dr. Michelin Frances - Huh. For "Foundation Head of Thaumiel" objects, he speaks formally, maybe a bit posh, but he isn't god awful!

Dr. Amelia Polynaut - What the fuck is going on with "Foundation Head of Apollyon" objects over here?? Bitch is fucking shattered across time and space, apparently.

Chaos - Agent #080 deployed in Nálægt, Iceland for Site-61 raids. Variant of D-9341. LITERALLY Chaos Incarnate.

Dr. Simon Glass (Wise) - Moral, upright and somewhat skittish. At least his head's in the right place, as is his heart!

Dr. Stelle Shamrock Saraden - A humanoid drone bee! He has trauma to unpack, but first, he has to unpack YOURS! :D

Agent Steve Eastside - of the Eastside channel, probably cool in the head but quick to rage.

Senior Researcher Gemini D. Shirks - or just "Shirks", based off of SCPReadings, though, I suppose I could've also just done Dr. Goods. Either way, very hip! The Researcher all the interns wanna work for since he's just chill like that.

Reseacher James Talloran (Wise) - KILL HIM AG- huh? What. Oh. Oh. Okay. No, no he's fine. Yeah. Uh. 3999's still dead. Thank god for SCP-061-ICE.

Dr. Elias Shaw (Wise) - The Foundation's SCP-963-2.. it worked but.. his mind's being fractured each time he dies.

Dr. Charles Gears (Wise) - Now this is one I haven't actually done. He's monotonous, robotic, downright cold. Anyways, stop observing SCP-914 every waking second of your.. existence? …please?

Dr. Ellis Gill Iceberg (Wise) - Well… at least now he WANTS to be alive… FUCK HE'Z THROWING MOLOTOVS AGAIN

Eve - Yes, as in THE Biblical Eve. She's an MTF Agent now. Who knew she was a bad bitch?

Dr. Agatha Rights (Wise) - Femme fatale… and actually pretty funny. Get past the slut accusations and she's basically an auntie.

Dr. Mary-Ann Walker - Hey! Walker's Aunt— GAH!! WHO'S ALSO SCP-1938-J— MARYNODON'TCLICKTHATKINK GODDAMNIT

Dr. Evans Harper - "You'd better keep your mouth shut, seal yourself lip from lip, else I'll get to cram a mouthful in~!"; loonie. He has flowers growing on him, so pretty, but a loonie.

Agent Convit - STOP FUCKING JACKING OFF IN THE CAFETERIA MAN

General Dravi Kondraki, Junior Researcher Riseo, Dr. Benjamin Kondraki - Are all here too, but I haven't done them yet…

General Patrick Philia - "…ew. Bitch, bitch! DISGUST— DISGUSTING!" (Trust me. No.)

Persons of Interest up for questioning:

Dr. Wondertainment (Wise) - STOP FUCKING TALKING FOR FIVE SECONDS

Liddy Doves, of Doves and Co. Inc. - AND STOP MAKING PRODUCTS THAT MAKE PEOPLE HORNY!!!

Charles Fernando Walker - AND… okay, well, you're fine. You just have to figure out that "Bronze-and-Jade" amulet's SCP-963-3.

SCPs up for questioning:

SCP-999 - The Tickle Monster

SCP-131 - Eyepods

SCP-035 - Possessive Mask

SCP-049 - Plague Doctor

SCP-096 - Shy Guy

SCP-352 - Baba Yaga

SCP-106 - The Old Man

SCP-682 - Hard-to-Destroy Reptile

SCP-079 - Old AI

D-9341 - Respawning Test Subject

SCP-1048 - Builder Bear

THIS LIST IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. CHECK BACK WHENEVER, THERE WILL BE MORE. :)

[disaster-brings-critters-closer]

Muse Background Informational

Dogday & Entity

Two Souls bound to one body. One far stronger than the other.

The Entity was the one who ‘freed’ Dogday and his friends from the Cartoon World initially—allowing them to roam the lands of reality. However, it had an ulterior motive that has been made clear: To kill them one by one, in the form of a ‘game’ to play due to being trapped for so long. Currently puppeting Dogday’s body to satisfy his end goal.

Dogday is still in there, but his soul has receded to the most unlikely place in order to avoid being fully snuffed out by the entity. He yearns for the day he’ll be able to reunite with his friends.

Currently in captivity and being studied by Catnap and Bubba Bubbaphant for a way to remove it for good.

Face is permanently a smile.

Catnap

The Moon who refuses to give up on his sun.

Lived with Dogday peacefully until after they escaped to the real world.

Knows Dogday isn’t gone. Wants to save him by any means necessary—even though it’s costing him his friend’s trust.

When he goes out to scavenge, never leaves without his stun gun tailored by Bubba. Stun Gun is capable of stunning hunters—after all, they’re already dead.

Hoppy Hopscotch

One of what is considered the ‘muscles’ of the survivors, goes out on scavenge runs with Bobby and Icky often.

Has seen what the entity has done to her friends and firmly believes there is no saving Dogday.

Feels like Catnap and Bubba Bubbaphant are wasting their time. Secretly wishes they could open their eyes and realize their friend is basically dead.

Is currently in a relationship with Bobby. Only person that keeps her going at points, as she’s growing distrustful of everyone.

Bobby Bearhug

Another one of the muscles, she often goes out on scavenge runs with Hoppy.

Unlike Hoppy, she’s placing her trust in everyone a lot more than ever. Everyone but Catnap.

Acts as a shoulder to cry on for the more timid survivors. Even if she can’t offer words to them, her presence alone calms them.

Is in a relationship with Hoppy. Loves her dearly, but knows Hoppy is only hurting herself by growing to distrust everyone around her.

Bubba Bubbaphant

The 2nd researcher, works closely with Catnap.

Is the original manufacturer of the collets of weakness that are chained to Dogday’s arms—which prevent the entity from causing harm directly to anyone, regardless of method.

Knows he’s not the most liked member, so he tries to avoid social interaction as much as possible.

Feels responsible for what happened to a certain bird…

Allister Gator

The one who organizes scavenge runs. Despite being very lazy before, has chosen to take a stand by casting off that coil holding him back.

Plans every scavenge run to the very last minute detail—even goes on them sometimes to make sure they go well.

Carries a whip to put others back in their place if they overstep their bounds in the base. Or intentionally try to sow chaos.

When scavenging, uses a baton that can be electrified for self defense. Has only had to use it a couple of times…

Icky Licky

The last of the ‘muscle’ of the survivors. Ironically, not as physically strong as Bobby and Hoppy.

Due to a close encounter with the entity, he’s grown quite reclusive. In fact, he’s VERY easy to scare or intimidate.

Carries a sledge hammer with him everywhere. In fact, due to how easy it is for him to wield, it’s why he’s become one of the muscles.

Lies constantly that he’s fine. He isn’t fine, and hasn’t been since he saw… something very specific.

Simon Smoke

The dedicated medic of the survivors. For one reason only: his access to healing magic.

While he has latent healing magic in his body, his body is not adept for using it. Due to this, he can only use it to help heal small wounds, such as cuts, bruises, and scrapes, for example.

Any large wounds and he has to bust out a medkit. He could try to use his healing magic, but that will leave him incapacitated for an unknown amount of time. He did it once before, and that’s how he knows it.

However, if a wound is too big—say, an arm chopped clean off—he’s out of luck with his healing magic and medkits. He’s not a licensed doctor, sadly.

Due to being the medic, he’s been bottling up his emotions, opinions, and desires, seeing them as not being helpful in the current moment. Was also the second to last survivor brought into the base, and looked broken when he was brought in. Nobody has gotten a word out of him about what he saw.

Despite how much he bottles everything up, he’s very resilient to what others have to say about him, especially when he has to enter the vincity of the entity. However… he can’t keep being resilient forever. Not with a really sore topic existing.

Maggie Mako

The last survivor in the base. And unfortunately, the one who has to stay exclusively in the base.

Was originally one of the muscles before being chosen to put the collets of weakness on Dogday’s body. The entity blinded her for that one.

Uses her sense of smell and hearing to guide her around the base. They don’t fail her, unlike touch.

Seen as a liability, but Icky, Allister, Bobby, and Hoppy all defend her from being taken out of the base to die.

The Hunters

Kickin Chickin

The first to fall. Was killed by the entity when the entity first gained control of Dogday’s body.

Now puppeteered, Kickin’s body wields an ax and uses it to destroy structures it deems ‘useless’.

Cannot speak. Only laughs indicate when he’s nearby. If heard… hide.

All hunters have a permanent smile carved on their faces. Kickin’s smile is colored red.

Bubba feels responsible for his death. Not helped by Hoppy blaming him for it too.

CraftyCorn

The second to fall, in retaliation from being attacked by Simon.

Her body puppeteered, she silently stalks her victims in the night, waiting for the opportunity to deliver a precise stab with her newly acquired sword.

Was actually Simon’s best friend. Managed to mellow him out during high school. Needless to say, when Simon watched her die in front of him… he will never heal from that emotional scar inflicted.

Out of all the hunters, the most humane. Just delivers a single stab that blinks out the victim’s life in but one instance.

Touille

The third to fall. Only one who knows it is Maggie.

His body puppeteered, the only thing that indicates his approach… is the tugging of harp strings. Should they be heard, keep out of sight—he is no angel.

The entity affixed wings onto Touille’s body to give him the ability of flight, finding it amusing most particularly on the rat’s body.

The most ruthless. If he spots a survivor or even just an innocent person, he will relentlessly chase them down until they are either dead or hiding somewhere.

Rabie Baby

The fourth to fall. Was killed in front of Icky while he was hiding. This is why he’s particularly reclusive.

Her body puppeteered, she uses the art of manipulation to lure victims into an advantageous position for her to strike them down.

Doesn’t care about innocents, only cares about the survivors as they’re the ones who left her to die—they deserve her hate, not anyone else.

Only one known to retain a small amount of personality from before. Evident by how sometimes, she goes completely silent to listen in to the conversations of innocent lives.

Picky Piggy

The 6th to fall. However, despite being puppeteered, the control the entity has over Picky is weak. An outcome from a rushed job.

Currently unknown where she is. And little is known how she does her hunts. Only thing that is known is people just disappear at points, while others are fed through mysterious meals that pop up on their doorstep.

The Unknowns

Baba Chops

While having been the 5th to fall, Baba Chops still fought to keep her personality intact, and succeeded when the entity started puppeteering her body.

Wants to end this madness, and so is searching for a way to permanently kill the entity, believing it will just possess one of the other critters if not dealt with. So far isn’t liking what she’s finding.

Occasionally has to hunt the survivors, but always lets them go after a bit. She isn’t a fan of chasing them, personally. Especially if Hoppy, Bobby, and Icky are all together.

Currently unknown with her whereabouts. Alongside one other critter.

Poe

The only critter who didn’t initially escape the cartoon world. Due to this, wherever they are, it’s unknown.

Although, Simon claims to have been saved by something that vaguely resembled Poe. If it was him or not, nobody—not even Simon—knows.

[thedojoofintellect]

Kid Quanta

The associate professor of quantum physics at the California Institute of Technology speaks highly of Hawking radiation, positron emission tomography, as well as the uncertainty principle and superstring theory.

Dr. Simon Epstein is a complex and highly intellectual fellow. If even twenty-five percent of the western world’s population were his intellectual equal, we’d likely see technological progression akin to that of a post-space age 31st century technocratic society. Dr. Epstein’s IQ is easily unprecedented in a fashion which is most diametrical to egregious. An exceptional individual to put it mildly, his parents evaded Third Reich persecution by emigrating to Anaheim, California in 1938.

The dawn of a new age manifested itself in the year 2039 when the then-estranged and reclusive professor re-surfaced and leapt back into the limelight by unveiling his groundbreaking invention of earthshaking importance: the Feynman Space-Time Transmogrifier, humankind’s very first fully operational time machine. The first point in space-time to be tampered with was that of an early morning birth at Waterbury Hospital in May of 1991. The infant Anthony Cannata was taken to a research facility in Simon Epstein’s subterranean complex at a black site fifteen miles south of the Arctic Circle. Anthony was subsequently held captive but treated humanely and when he reached maturity he was turned into a cyborg and indoctrinated with the primary objective of detonating the two moons of Mars using an optical positron augmenter, catalyzing a war between humans and the High Chancellor of Mars’ private mercenary militia. All went as planned, and the Martian head of state signed non-aggression pacts with the nations of Earth. Meanwhile, Dr. Epstein became fat and rich off the antics of his faithful disciple until divine intervention took place and St. Peter hired the cybernetic Anthony as a bouncer in the Kingdom of Heaven’s most frequently visited restaurant and pub.

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Mey’s Monthly Memorables

Admin recs of February, 2020.

Tori

begin and never cease (ao3) - palomeheart

Summary: Dan is a grumpy second year law student living with reclusive, perpetual grad student named Phil. When the holiday season brings out a side of Phil that Dan’s never seen before, Meanwhile, when Phil finds out Dan hates all things festive, he makes it his goal to change Dan’s mind before Christmas. And also to find the perfect mince pie.

Homo Howell vs The Heterosexual Agenda (ao3) - CanDanAndPhilNot (enbycalhoun)

Summary: Dan had a normal life. At least that’s what he would have said two weeks ago. Before he found that creek-secrets Tumblr post about the closeted gay kid at school. Before he made a secret email account so he could respond with a simple “THIS.”Before his daily routine was staring at his phone and computer anticipating the next email from Fish. Before Matthew, the seemingly innocent nerdy theater kid found and screenshotted said emails. Before said nerdy kid was blackmailing him. Yeah, Dan had a normal life. And if by normal, you meant dealing with all of that on top of trying to hook Matthew up with one of Dan's best friends so he wouldn’t tell the entire school about Dan's sexuality? Sure, Dan's life was fucking normal.

aka a Love, Simon AU that's based on both the book and movie.

Shining Bright and Growing Strong - queenofallcorgis

Summary: Game of Thrones Crossover. Phil was not pleased that his father had basically bought him a husband in exchange for an army. He was equally displeased that his new husband was scared to death of him.

Christy

Coming Clean and Kisses on Screen (ao3) - hygge

Summary: Dan and Phil are finally ready to make the news of their marriage and their new family public.

Love The Way I Hate You (ao3) - HelloAnonymousWriter

Summary: Dan and Phil have a fake rivalry at school when they’re really dating.

The Valentine's Day Classroom Helpers - Yiffandquiff

Summary: Dan knew the day was coming but that still didn't mean he was prepared, so when his son Oliver brings home a note saying Dan is due to be a parent for his classroom for the Valentine's Day party, he already feels a bit of dread. Reluctant to go, he meets Phil, another parent: who just happens to be the father of Oliver's best friend. And he realizes maybe it's not so bad after all.

Alexis 

berlin (ao3) - waveydnp and dizzy 

Summary: dan and phil meet at a hostel in berlin

give me all your hopeless hearts (ao3) - itsmyusualphannie 

Summary: Dan is a university student who doesn't believe in love, but when Valentine's Day rolls around, he feels himself suddenly falling for the boy who sits next to him in his writing 101 class. When they're assigned a project together, Dan has the brilliant idea to ask Phil out - for research!

shapes and weights to choose (ao3) - queerofcups 

Summary: Getting to interview Phil, Phil Lester, feels like the kind of recognition he's been working towards for years and Dan doesn't know how to handle it. 

Dan's a sex toy blogger, Phil's a nearly-retired porn star. They fall in love, eventually.

Some Other Light (ao3) - jestbee 

Summary: Dan works the night shift because it's easier to exist in the dark

‘til death (ao3) - waveydnp 

Summary: in which dan and phil are young, in love, and so, so impulsive

[pushspacetocontinue]

"So you're finally letting Russell back into your life, are you?" Travis asked, "Better late than never I reckon."

"Yes, I am," Gracie said, "I've wasted four, almost five years over this stupid grudge, and I don't even remember what it was about anymore."

"To be honest, I don't think any of us," Travis replied.

"Well, you know Russell, he's most likely forgiven you for hitting him in the face," Simon said over the video call. He typed while he talked, never skipping a beat, "He's like that; too kind for his own good."

"Yes, I'm aware," Gracie said, "I know I don't deserve to be forgiven so readily, but I know he's going to be thinking that too. He's going to be worried he's going to say or do anything else that'll make me lash out again."

"Yeah, he will be," Simon said.

"Whoa, Simon, blunt," Travis snapped his head towards the phone then.

"No, he's right," Gracie said, "And he should say it. I came to realise I was essentially doing what Mom was doing to Dad."

She couldn't miss the flicker of sadness in both of her uncles' eyes then. They practically worshipped Lewis even now and his death still hurt.

"Why don't you get some kind of present?" Simon asked, "Just to show you're serious about wanting to make amends."

"Hey, great idea," Travis agreed, "Maybe a nice plant or something."

"I think that's a wonderful thought," Simon said, "And I think I know just the place for getting a lovely plant."

[justforbooks]

Nausea (French: La Nausée) is a philosophical novel by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, published in 1938. It is Sartre’s first novel and, in his opinion, one of his best works.

The novel takes place in ‘Bouville’ (literally, 'Mud town’) a town similar to Le Havre, and it concerns a dejected historian, who becomes convinced that inanimate objects and situations encroach on his ability to define himself, on his intellectual and spiritual freedom, evoking in the protagonist a sense of nausea.

French writer Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre’s lifelong partner, claims that La Nausée grants consciousness a remarkable independence and gives reality the full weight of its sense.

It is one of the canonical works of existentialism. Sartre was awarded, though he ultimately declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. The Nobel Foundation recognized him “for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age.” Sartre was one of the few people to have declined the award, referring to it as merely a function of a bourgeois institution.

The novel has been translated into English at least twice, by Lloyd Alexander as “The Diary of Antoine Roquentin” (John Lehmann, 1949) and by Robert Baldick as “Nausea” (Penguin Books, 1965).

Written in the form of journal entries, it follows 30-year-old Antoine Roquentin who, returned from years of travel, settles in the fictional French seaport town of Bouville to finish his research on the life of an 18th-century political figure. But during the winter of 1932 a “sweetish sickness,” as he calls nausea, increasingly impinges on almost everything he does or enjoys: his research project, the company of an autodidact who is reading all the books in the local library alphabetically, a physical relationship with a café owner named Françoise, his memories of Anny, an English girl he once loved, even his own hands and the beauty of nature.

Over time, his disgust towards existence forces him into self-hatred and near-insanity. He embodies Sartre’s theories of existential angst, and he searches anxiously for meaning in all the things that had filled and fulfilled his life up to that point. But finally Antoine comes to a revelation into the nature of his being when he faces the troublesomely provisional and limited nature of existence itself.

In his resolution at the end of the book he accepts the indifference of the physical world to man’s aspirations. He is able to see that realization not only as a regret but also as an opportunity. People are free to make their own meaning: a freedom that is also a responsibility, because without that commitment there will be no meaning.

Antoine Roquentin – The protagonist of the novel, Antoine is a former adventurer who has been living in Bouville for three years. Antoine does not keep in touch with family, and has no friends. He is a loner at heart and often likes to listen to other people’s conversations and examine their actions. Even though he at times admits to trying to find some sort of solace in the presence of others, he also exhibits signs of boredom and lack of interest when interacting with people. His relationship with Françoise is mostly hygienic in nature, for the two hardly exchange words and, when invited by the Self-Taught Man to accompany him for lunch, he agrees only to write in his diary later that: “I had as much desire to eat with him as I had to hang myself.” He can afford not to work, but spends a lot of his time writing a book about a French politician of the eighteenth century. Antoine does not think highly of himself: “The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so.” When he starts suffering from the Nausea he feels the need to talk to Anny, but when he finally does, it makes no difference to his condition. He eventually starts to think he does not even exist: “My existence was beginning to cause me some concern. Was I a mere figment of the imagination?”

Anny – Anny is an English woman who was once Antoine’s lover. After meeting with him, Anny makes it clear that she has changed a considerable amount and must go on with her life. Antoine clings to the past, hoping that she may want to redefine their relationship, but he is ultimately rejected by her.

Ogier P., generally referred to as “the self-taught man” or the Autodidact – An acquaintance of Antoine’s, he is a bailiff’s clerk who lives for the pursuit of knowledge and love of humanity. Highly disciplined, he has spent hundreds of hours reading at the local library. He often speaks to Roquentin and confides in him that he is a Socialist.

Like many Modernist novels, La Nausée is a “city-novel,” encapsulating experience within the city. It is widely assumed that “Bouville” in the novel is a fictional portrayal of Le Havre, where Sartre was living and teaching in the 1930s as he wrote it.

The critic William V. Spanos has used Sartre’s novel as an example of “negative capability,” a presentation of the uncertainty and dread of human existence, so strong that the imagination cannot comprehend it.

The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel places La Nausée in a tradition of French activism: “Following on from Malraux, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus among others were all able to use the writing of novels as a powerful tool of ideological exploration.” Although novelists like Sartre claim to be in rebellion against the 19th Century French novel, “they in fact owe a great deal both to its promotion of the lowly and to its ambiguous or 'poetic’ aspects.”

In his What Is Literature?, Sartre wrote, “On the one hand, the literary object has no substance but the reader’s subjectivity … But, on the other hand, the words are there like traps to arouse our feelings and to reflect them towards us … Thus, the writer appeals to the reader’s freedom to collaborate in the production of the work.”

The novel is an intricate formal achievement modeled on much 18th-century fiction that was presented as a “diary discovered among the papers of…”

Hayden Carruth wonders if there are not unrecognized layers of irony and humor beneath the seriousness of Nausea: “Sartre, for all his anguished disgust, can play the clown as well, and has done so often enough: a sort of fool at the metaphysical court.”

Like many modernist authors, Sartre, when young, loved popular novels in preference to the classics and claimed in his autobiography that it was from them, rather than from the balanced phrases of Chateaubriand that he had his “first encounters with beauty.”

Sartre described the stream of consciousness technique as one method of moving the novel from the era of Newtonian Physics forward into the era of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. He saw this as crucial because he felt that “narrative technique ultimately takes us back to the metaphysics of the novelist.” He wanted his novelistic techniques to be compatible with his theories on the existential freedom of the individual as well as his phenomenological analyses of the unstable, shifting structures of consciousness.

Disdaining 19th-century notions that character development in novels should obey and reveal psychological law, La Nausée treats such notions as bourgeois bad faith, ignoring the contingency and inexplicability of life.

From the psychological point of view Antoine Roquentin could be seen as an individual suffering from depression, and the nausea itself as one of the symptoms of his condition. Unemployed, living in deprived conditions, lacking human contact, being trapped in fantasies about the 18th century secret agent he is writing the book about, shows Sartre’s oeuvre as a follow-up of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge in search of the precise description of schizophrenia. Rilke’s character anticipates Sartre’s.

Roquentin’s problem is not simply depression or mental illness, although his experience has pushed him to that point. Sartre presents Roquentin’s difficulties as arising from man’s inherent existential condition. His seemingly special circumstances (returning from travel, reclusiveness), which goes beyond the mere indication of his very real depression, are supposed to induce in him (and in the reader) a state that makes one more receptive to noticing an existential situation that everyone has, but may not be sensitive enough to let become noticeable. Roquentin undergoes a strange metaphysical experience that estranges him from the world. His problems are not merely a result of personal insanity, without larger significance. Rather, like the characters in the Dostoevsky and Rilke novels, they are victims of larger ideological, social, and existential forces that have brought them to the brink of insanity. Sartre’s point in Nausea is to comment on our universal reaction to these common external problems.

Hayden Carruth wrote in 1959 of the way that “Roquentin has become a familiar of our world, one of those men who, like Hamlet or Julien Sorel, live outside the pages of the books in which they assumed their characters… . It is scarcely possible to read seriously in contemporary literature, philosophy, or psychology without encountering references to Roquentin’s confrontation with the chestnut tree, for example, which is one of the sharpest pictures ever drawn of self-doubt and metaphysical anguish.”

Certainly, Nausea gives us a few of the clearest and hence most useful images of man in our time that we possess; and this, as Allen Tate has said, is the supreme function of art.

Criticism of Sartre’s novels frequently centered on the tension between the philosophical and political on one side versus the novelistic and individual on the other.

Ronald Aronson describes the reaction of Albert Camus, still in Algeria and working on his own first novel, L’Étranger. At the time of the novel’s appearance, Camus was a reviewer for an Algiers left-wing daily. Camus told a friend that he “thought a lot about the book” and it was “a very close part of me.” In his review, Camus wrote, “the play of the toughest and most lucid mind are at the same time both lavished and squandered.” Camus felt that each of the book’s chapters, taken by itself, “reaches a kind of perfection in bitterness and truth.” However, he also felt that the descriptive and the philosophical aspects of the novel are not balanced, that they “don’t add up to a work of art: the passage from one to the other is too rapid, too unmotivated, to evoke in the reader the deep conviction that makes the art of the novel.” He likewise felt that Sartre had tipped the balance too far in depicting the repugnant features of mankind “instead of placing the reasons for his despair, at least to a certain degree, if not completely, on the elements of human greatness.” Still, Camus’s largely positive review led to a friendship between the two authors.

G.J. Mattey, a philosopher rather than a novelist like Camus, flatly describes Nausea and others of Sartre’s literary works as “practically philosophical treatises in literary form.”

In distinction both from Camus’s feeling that Nausea is an uneasy marriage of novel and philosophy and also from Mattey’s belief that it is a philosophy text, the philosopher William Barrett, in his book Irrational Man, expresses an opposite judgment. He writes that Nausea “may well be Sartre’s best book for the very reason that in it the intellectual and the creative artist come closest to being conjoined.” Barrett says that, in other literary works and in his literary criticism, Sartre feels the pull of ideas too strongly to respond to poetry, “which is precisely that form of human expression in which the poet—and the reader who would enter the poet’s world—must let Being be, to use Heidegger’s phrase and not attempt to coerce it by the will to action or the will to intellectualization.”

The poet Hayden Carruth agrees with Barrett, whom he quotes, about Nausea. He writes firmly that Sartre, “is not content, like some philosophers, to write fable, allegory, or a philosophical tale in the manner of Candide; he is content only with a proper work of art that is at the same time a synthesis of philosophical specifications.”

Barrett feels that Sartre as a writer is best when “the idea itself is able to generate artistic passion and life.”

Steven Ungar compares Nausea with French novels of different periods, such as Madame de Lafayette La Princesse de Clèves (1678), Honoré de Balzac Le Père Goriot (1835), André Malraux La Condition humaine (1933), and Annie Ernaux Une femme (1988), all of which have scenes with men and women faced with choices and “provide literary expressions to concerns with personal identity that vary over time more in detail than in essence.”

A main theme in La Nausée is that life is meaningless unless a person makes personal commitments that give it meaning. William Barrett emphasizes that the despair and disgust in Nausea contrast with the total despair of Céline (who is quoted on the flyleaf of the French edition) that leads to nothing; rather, they are a necessary personal recognition that eventuate in “a release from disgust into heroism.”

Barrett adds that, “like Adler’s, Sartre’s is fundamentally a masculine psychology; it misunderstands and disparages the psychology of woman. The humanity of man consists in the For-itself, the masculine component by which we choose, make projects, and generally commit ourselves to a life of action. The element of masculine protest, to use Adler’s term, is strong throughout Sartre’s writings … the disgust … of Roquentin, in Nausea, at the bloated roots of the chestnut tree …”

Mattey elaborates further on the positive, redeeming aspect of the seemingly bleak, frustrating themes of existentialism that are so apparent in Nausea: “Sartre considered the subjectivity of the starting-point for what a human is as a key thesis of existentialism. The starting-point is subjective because humans make themselves what they are. Most philosophers consider subjectivity to be a bad thing, particularly when it comes to the motivation for action… . Sartre responds by claiming that subjectivity is a dignity of human being, not something that degrades us.” Therefore, the characteristic anguish and forlornness of existentialism are temporary: only a prerequisite to recognizing individual responsibility and freedom. The basis of ethics is not rule-following. A specific action may be either wrong or right and no specific rule is necessarily valid. What makes the action, either way, ethical is “authenticity,” the willingness of the individual to accept responsibility rather than dependence on rules, and to commit to his action. Despair, the existentialist says, is the product of uncertainty: being oriented exclusively to the outcome of a decision rather than to the process yields uncertainty, as we cannot decide the future, only our action.

In his “Introduction” to the American edition of Nausea, the poet and critic Hayden Carruth feels that, even outside those modern writers who are explicitly philosophers in the existentialist tradition, a similar vein of thought is implicit but prominent in a main line through Franz Kafka, Miguel de Unamuno, D. H. Lawrence, André Malraux, and William Faulkner. Carruth says:

'Suffering is the origin of consciousness,’ Dostoevsky wrote. But suffering is everywhere in the presence of thought and sensitivity. Sartre for his part has written, and with equal simplicity: 'Life begins on the other side of despair.’

Sartre has written, “What is meant … by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and only afterwards defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives of him, is undefinable, it is only because he is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and he will have made what he will be.”

If things—and also people—are contingent, if they “just are,” then we are free and we create ourselves solely through our decisions and choices.

David Drake mentions that, in Nausea, Sartre gives several kinds of examples of people whose behavior shows bad faith, who are inauthentic: members of the bourgeoisie who believe their social standing or social skills give them a “right” to exist, or others who embrace the banality of life and attempt to flee from freedom by repeating empty gestures, others who live by perpetuating past versions of themselves as they were or who live for the expectations of others, or those who claim to have found meaning in politics, morality, or ideology.

In simply narrative terms, Roquentin’s nausea arises from his near-complete detachment from other people, his not needing much interaction with them for daily necessities: “the fact of his alienation from others is important; as his own work ceases to entertain and to occupy him, Roquentin has nothing that could distract him from the business of existing in its simplest forms.” As a practical matter, he could solve his problem by getting a job; but, as a device for developing the novel’s theme, his aloneness is a way of making him (and the reader) recognize that there is nothing inherent in the objective nature of the world that would give any necessary meaning to whatever actions he chose, and therefore nothing to restrict his freedom. “[H]is perception of the world around him becomes unstable as objects are disengaged from their usual frames of reference,” and he is forced to recognize that freedom is inescapable and that therefore creating a meaning for his life is his own responsibility. “Nothing makes us act the way we do, except our own personal choice.”

“But,” David Clowney writes, “freedom is frightening, and it is easier to run from it into the safety of roles and realities that are defined by society, or even by your own past. To be free is to be thrown into existence with no "human nature” as an essence to define you, and no definition of the reality into which you are thrown, either. To accept this freedom is to live “authentically”; but most of us run from authenticity. In the most ordinary affairs of daily life, we face the challenge of authentic choice, and the temptation of comfortable inauthenticity. All of Roquentin’s experiences are related to these themes from Sartre’s philosophy.“

Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.

During the Second World War, the experience of Sartre and others in the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation of France emphasized political activism as a form of personal commitment. This political dimension was developed in Sartre’s later trilogy of novels, Les Chemins de la Liberté (The Roads to Freedom) (1945–1949), which concern a vicious circle of failure on the part of a thinking individual to progress effectively from thought to action. Finally, for Sartre, political commitment became explicitly Marxist.

In 1945, Sartre gave a lecture in New York that was printed in Vogue in July of that year. In it he recast his prewar works, such as Nausea into politically committed works appropriate to the postwar era.

Marxism was not, in any case, always as appreciative of Sartre as he was of it. Mattey describes their objections:

Marxism was a very potent political and philosophical force in France after its liberation from the Nazi occupation. Marxist thinkers tend to be very ideological and to condemn in no uncertain terms what they regard to be rival positions. They found existentialism to run counter to their emphasis on the solidarity of human beings and their theory of material (economic) determinism. The subjectivity that is the starting point of existentialism seemed to the Marxists to be foreign to the objective character of economic conditions and to the goal of uniting the working classes in order to overthrow the bourgeoise capitalists. If one begins with the reality of the "I think,” one loses sight of what really defines the human being (according to the Marxists), which is their place in the economic system. Existentialism’s emphasis on individual choice leads to contemplation, rather than to action. Only the bourgeoise have the luxury to make themselves what they are through their choices, so existentialism is a bourgeoise philosophy.

Sartre was influenced at the time by the philosophy of Edmund Husserl and his phenomenological method. He received a stipend from the Institut Français, allowing him to study in Berlin with Husserl and Martin Heidegger in 1932, as he began writing the novel.

Roy Elveton reports:

In January, 1939, one year after the death of Edmund Husserl, Sartre published a short essay entitled 'Husserl’s Central Idea.’ In the space of a few paragraphs, Sartre rejects the epistemology of Descartes and the neo-Kantians and their view of consciousness’s relationship to the world. Consciousness is not related to the world by virtue of a set of mental representations and acts of mental synthesis that combine such representations to provide us with our knowledge of the external world. Husserl’s intentional theory of consciousness provides the only acceptable alternative: 'Consciousness and the world are immediately given together: the world, essentially external to consciousness, is essentially related to it.’ The only appropriate image for intentionality and our knowing relationship to the world is that of an 'explosion’: 'to know is to “explode” toward’ an object in the world, an object 'beyond oneself, over there…towards that which is not oneself…out of oneself.’

Following Husserl, Sartre views absurdity as a quality of all existing objects (and of the material world collectively), independent of any stance humans might take with respect to them. Our consciousness of an object does not inhere in the object itself. Thus in the early portions of the novel, Roquentin, who takes no attitude towards objects and has no stake in them, is totally estranged from the world he experiences. The objects themselves, in their brute existence, have only participation in a meaningless flow of events: they are superfluous. This alienation from objects casts doubt for him, in turn, on his own validity and even his own existence.

Roquentin says of physical objects that, for them, “to exist is simply to be there.” When he has the revelation at the chestnut tree, this “fundamental absurdity” of the world does not go away. What changes then is his attitude. By recognizing that objects won’t supply meaning in themselves, but people must supply it for them – that Roquentin himself must create meaning in his own life – he becomes both responsible and free. The absurdity becomes, for him, “the key to existence.”

Victoria Best writes:

Language proves to be a fragile barrier between Roquentin and the external world, failing to refer to objects and thus place them in a scheme of meaning. Once language collapses it becomes evident that words also give a measure of control and superiority to the speaker by keeping the world at bay; when they fail in this function, Roquentin is instantly vulnerable, unprotected.

Thus, although, in some senses, Sartre’s philosophy in Nausea derives from Husserl and ultimately from René Descartes, the strong role he gives to the contingent randomness of physical objects contrasts with their commitment to the role of necessity. (Elveton mentions that, unknown to Sartre, Husserl himself was developing the same ideas, but in manuscripts that remained unpublished.)

Ethan Kleinberg writes that, more than Husserl, it was Martin Heidegger who appealed to Sartre’s sense of radical individualism. He says, “for Sartre, the question of being was always and only a question of personal being. The dilemma of the individual confronting the overwhelming problem of understanding the relationship of consciousness to things, of being to things, is the central focus” of Nausea. Eventually, “in his reworking of Husserl, Sartre found himself coming back to the themes he had absorbed from Heidegger’s Was ist Metaphysik?” Nausea was a prelude to Sartre’s sustained attempt to follow Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit by analyzing human experience as various ontological modes, or ways of being in the world.

In 1937, just as Sartre was finishing Nausea and getting it to press, he wrote an essay, The Transcendence of the Ego. He still agreed with Husserl that consciousness is “about” objects or, as they say, it “intends” them – rather than forming within itself a duplicate, an inner representation of an outward object. The material objects of consciousness (or “objects of intention”) exist in their own right, independent and without any residue accumulating in them from our awareness of them. However, the new idea in this essay was that Sartre now differed in also believing that the person’s ego itself is also “in the world,” an object of consciousness to be discovered, rather than the totally known subject of consciousness. In the novel, not only Roquentin’s consciousness but his own body also becomes objectified in his new, alarming perception.

And so Sartre parted company with Husserl over the latter’s belief in a transcendent ego, which Sartre believed instead was neither formally nor materially in consciousness, but outside it: in the world.

This seemingly technical change fit with Sartre’s native predisposition to think of subjectivity as central: a conscious person is always immersed in a world where his or her task is to make himself concrete. A “person” is not an unchanging, central essence, but a fluid construct that continually re-arises as an interaction among a person’s consciousness, his physiology and history, the material world, and other people. This view itself supported Sartre’s vision of people as fundamentally both doomed and free to live lives of commitment and creativity.

As Søren Kierkegaard, the earliest existentialist, wrote: 'I must find a truth that is true for me … the idea for which I can live or die.’

La Nausée allows Sartre to explain his philosophy in simplified terms. Roquentin is the classic existentialist hero whose attempts to pierce the veil of perception lead him to a strange combination of disgust and wonder. For the first part of the novel, Roquentin has flashes of nausea that emanate from mundane objects. These flashes appear seemingly randomly, from staring at a crumpled piece of paper in the gutter to picking up a rock on the beach. The feeling he perceives is pure disgust: a contempt so refined that it almost shatters his mind each time it occurs. As the novel progresses, the nausea appears more and more frequently, though he is still unsure of what it actually signifies. However, at the base of a chestnut tree in a park, he receives a piercingly clear vision of what the nausea actually is. Existence itself, the property of existence to be something rather than nothing was what was slowly driving him mad. He no longer sees objects as having qualities such as color or shape. Instead, all words are separated from the thing itself, and he is confronted with pure being.

Carruth points out that the antipathy of the existentialists to formal ethical rules brought them disapproval from moral philosophers concerned with traditional schemes of value. On the other hand, analytical philosophers and logical positivists were “outraged by Existentialism’s willingness to abandon rational categories and rely on non mental processes of consciousness.”

Additionally, Sartre’s philosophy of existentialism is opposed to a certain kind of rationalistic humanism. Upon the confession of the Self-Taught Man as to being a member of the S.F.I.O., a French Socialist party, Roquentin quickly engages him in a Socratic dialogue to expose his inconsistencies as a humanist. Roquentin first points out how his version of humanism remains unaffiliated to a particular party or group so as to include or value all of mankind. However, he then notes how the humanist nonetheless caters his sympathy with a bias towards the humble portion of mankind. Roquentin continues to point out further discrepancies of how one humanist may favor an audience of laughter while another may enjoy the somber funeral. In dialogue, Roquentin challenges the Self-Taught Man to show a demonstrable love for a particular, tangible person rather than a love for the abstract entity attached to that person (i.e. the idea of Youth in a young man). In short, he concludes that such humanism naively attempts to “melt all human attitudes into one.” More importantly, to disavow humanism does not constitute “anti-humanism”.

The kind of humanism Sartre found unacceptable, according to Mattey, is one that denies the primacy of individual choice… . But there is another conception of humanism implicit in existentialism. This is one that emphasizes the ability of individual human beings to transcend their individual circumstances and act on behalf of all humans. The fact is, Sartre maintains, that the only universe we have is a human universe, and the only laws of this universe are made by humans.“

In his Sartre biography, David Drake writes, Nausea was on the whole well received by the critics and the success of Sartre the novelist served to enhance the reputation he had started to enjoy as a writer of short stories and philosophical texts, mostly on perception.”

Although his earlier essays did not receive much attention, Nausea and the collection of stories The Wall, swiftly brought him recognition.

Carruth writes that, on publication, “it was condemned, predictably, in academic circles, but younger readers welcomed it, and it was far more successful than most first novels.”

Sartre originally titled the novel Melancholia. Simone de Beauvoir referred to it as his “factum on contingency.” He composed it from 1932 to 1936. He had begun it during his military service and continued writing at Le Havre and in Berlin.

Ethan Kleinberg reports:

Sartre went to study in Berlin for the academic year 1933. While in Berlin, Sartre did not take any university courses or work with Husserl or Heidegger. Sartre’s time seems to have been spent reading Husserl and working on the second draft of Nausea.

Drake confirms this account.

The manuscript was subsequently typed. It was at first refused by the Nouvelle Revue Française (N.R.F.), despite a strong recommendation from their reviewer, Jean Paulhan. In 1937, however, the imprint’s publisher, Gaston Gallimard accepted it and suggested the title La Nausée.

Brice Parain, the editor, asked for numerous cuts of material that was either too populist or else too sexual to avoid an action for indecency. Sartre deleted the populist material, which was not natural to him, with few complaints, because he wanted to be published by the prestigious N.R.F., which had a strong, if vague, house style. However, he stood fast on the sexual material which he felt was an artistically necessary hallucinatory ingredient.

Michel Contat has examined the original typescript and feels that, “if ever Melancholia is published as its author had originally intended it, the novel will no doubt emerge as a work which is more composite, more baroque and perhaps more original than the version actually published.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[newenglandmonsters]

“Kid Quanta”

The associate professor of quantum physics at the California Institute of Technology speaks highly of Hawking radiation, positron emission tomography, as well as the uncertainty principle and superstring theory. Dr. Simon Epstein is a complex and highly intellectual fellow. If even twenty-five percent of the western world's population were his intellectual equal, we'd likely see technological progression akin to that of a post-space age 31st century technocratic society. Dr. Epstein's IQ is easily unprecedented in a fashion which is most diametrical to egregious. An exceptional individual to put it mildly, his parents evaded Third Reich persecution by emigrating to Anaheim, California in 1938. The dawn of a new age manifested itself in the year 2039 when the then-estranged and reclusive professor re-surfaced and leapt back into the limelight by unveiling his groundbreaking invention of earthshaking importance: the Feynman Space-Time Transmogrifier, humankind's very first fully operational time machine. The first point in space-time to be tampered with was that of an early morning birth at Waterbury Hospital in May of 1991. The infant Anthony Cannata was taken to a research facility in Simon Epstein's subterranean complex at a black site fifteen miles south of the Arctic Circle. Anthony was subsequently held captive but treated humanely and when he reached maturity he was turned into a cyborg and indoctrinated with the primary objective of detonating the two moons of Mars using an optical positron augmenter, catalyzing a war between humans and the High Chancellor of Mars' private mercenary militia. All went as planned, and the Martian head of state signed non-aggression pacts with the nations of Earth. Meanwhile, Dr. Epstein became fat and rich off the antics of his faithful disciple until divine intervention took place and St. Peter hired the cybernetic Anthony as a bouncer in the Kingdom of Heaven's most frequently visited restaurant and pub.

[weeklyhumorist]

Minutes From Last Months Meeting Of BRONIE, The Social Group For Men Who Are Obsessed With My Little Pony

Half an hour spent by Brian calming other members down, assuring them that it’s perfectly okay for grown men to be obsessed with My Little Pony. Check and make sure that each member’s Xanax prescription is up to date with plenty of refills.

Other members express sympathy to Edward over his recent divorce.

Also condolences for Kenneth, Brad, Tim, Brent, Simon, Eduardo, Philip and Edgar re their recent divorces.

Discuss firing website moderator who won’t remove misleading info on group site that claims BRONIE stands for Broken, Reclusive Oddballs Needing Immediate Euthanasia.

Forty-seven minutes spent going through group’s Facebook page, erasing rude messages from fake members who signed up just to be mean.

One hour and fifteen minutes spent with the group outside, fashioning the huge spray-painted image of the large penis on the side of Simon’s house into a My Little Pony character(Twilight Sparkle, because of the mostly purple color of both images).

Half an hour spent discussing last week’s Bronie gathering in front of city hall, protesting the recent local ordinance that requires all Bronies to notify neighbors in person of their presence when moving into a new neighborhood.

Thirty-eight minutes spent researching a lawyer who might represent us re Edgar’s recent back tattoo (which did include the My Little Pony character that Edgar requested, but engaged in activities that Edgar did NOT request, and that Fluttershy would NEVER perform upon a lactating dragon).

Minutes From Last Months Meeting Of BRONIE, The Social Group For Men Who Are Obsessed With My Little Pony was originally published on Weekly Humorist

[jellyinmybelly]

oh my god my time to shine ok here it goes(all of these are fiction btw :p):

The Bright Sessions- what a show. It's clever and funny and will definitely make you feel things. Here's the blurb: The Bright Sessions is a science fiction podcast that takes place in a fictional universe where super-powered individuals, called "atypicals", exist. Dr. Bright provides therapy for them and their sessions are recorded for research purposes.

The Penumbra Podcast- amazing rep and very gripping. Blurb: At the Penumbra, you might follow Juno Steel, a brooding, sharp-witted private eye on Mars, as he tangles with an elusive homme fatale, tracks dangerous artifacts of an ancient alien civilization, and faces his three greatest fears: heights, blood, and relationships. Or you might enter the world of the Second Citadel, where the merciless Sir Caroline must corral a team of emotionally distraught all-male knights to defend their city against mind-manipulating monsters...even the ones they’ve fallen in love with.

Blackout- v smort and interesting also RAMI MALEK!! Blurb: Rami Malek stars in this apocalyptic thriller as a small-town radio DJ, Simon Itani, fighting to protect his family and community after the power grid goes down nationwide, upending modern civilization.

Me and AU: queer and cute af and it mostly happens in tumblr so Blurb: When Kate "ACunningPlan" Cunningham sparks up an online friendship with a fellow fanfiction writer it seems like the perfect distraction from a summer stuck in her hometown, not to mention the coming terrors of her final year of university and the Real Adult Future beyond. (Seriously, please don’t mention them.) After all, Hella--Enchanted is funny, smart and writes canon-divergent werewolf fic like no one else. She’s everything a fangirl could ask for. But... what if she’s everything Kate could ask for, too?

The Cipher: brilliant voice acting and sooo compelling and cool. Blurb: When 16-year-old Sabrina cracks the cryptic Parallax, she’s recruited to track down a serial killer... who might not be from this world.

Greenhouse: queer and adorable. Blurb: Greenhouse is an anxious audio love story of a recluse write and a lonely florist as they learn letter by letter that the world is a whole lot brighter when you have someone to share your story with.

Welcome to Night Vale: very weird. Blurb: WTNV is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff's Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events. Turn on your radio and hide.

etc.

Here's an honorary non-fiction podcast mention that I loved:

Last Seen: art theft cool. Blurb: Last Seen investigated the most valuable — and confounding — art heist in history: the theft of 13 irreplaceable artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. WBUR and The Boston Globe teamed up to ask why, 28 years later, this still unsolved crime exerts its irresistible pull.

sorry for the long post but these are some of my absolute favourites! hope you enjoy!

can someone please recommend me some good podcast i can listen on spotify?

thank you

[misskaao]

Simone Snaith: Interview

Simone Snaith has a lot of books written and they are wonderful (I have written reviews on them all: Faireville Woods Series, The Indigo Stone, and Into the Drawing).

All of the books can be found at Amazon and I recommend buying them if you have not already.

**I was really happy and excited that Ms. Snaith had taken me up on answering a few questions for the blog. They are wonderful responses, and I want to thank her for taking time out to do so.

                                         Q & A

You have written a few books, one being a companion series (From the Ashes and Through the Eyes: Faireville Woods) and the rest standalones. Which are your favorites to do; series or one book a piece?

I prefer both writing and reading stand-alone books, most of the time. I like the idea of leaving the reader to imagine his/her own version of what else might happen in that particular fictional world. And I like having that freedom myself after finishing reading a book. There are some exceptions though; I eagerly read all of A Song of Ice and Fire and the Harry Potter books.

If I recall, there is not many/if any love triangles in your books. Do you hate them/love them or consider them unnecessary?

I absolutely hate love triangles! I think they are widely overused as a plot device and also, they’re not even very realistic. I’ve never been in love with two people at the same time, and neither has any of my close friends or family members...

Do you have a favorite book that you wrote?

I think my favorite is “The Indigo Stone.” I love a good, fish-out-of-water adventure story with a romantic subplot, and I feel like I achieved that with that novel. “In The Drawing” is the most personal, however; Genevieve is loosely based on a younger version of myself.

Do you have a favorite character from your books? What made you love that character?

It might be a tie between Eine from “The Indigo Stone” - because she is a tough survivor, but in a matter-of-fact, unshowy way – and Lundy from “From The Ashes,” for her kind heart, and her love of books and music.

How did you come up with the idea for your books?

They often spring from images that pop up in my head, or just scraps of ideas. “From The Ashes” was a very old story idea of mine, but one of the first images I had was of Harlan in Lundy’s window. I had a dream about the spinning contraption that Eine is strapped into by Indigo, and “In The Drawing” definitely started out as just the idea of vines growing over a building overnight.

Can you give us a hint to what we should be expecting in your next book?

“Between The Water & The Woods” is scheduled to be published by Holiday House in the spring! It’s a YA Fantasy that involves monsters, magic, and machines. 😉

Where do you like to write?

I usually write at my desk at home, but I also write on my Kindle Fire when I’m out and about.

Do you decide character traits before you sit down to write the book, or as you go along?

There are usually some that I know beforehand, but others that develop as I go. That’s one of the exciting parts for me.

If you could give a young writer any tip, what would it be?

Keep going until you finish the first draft, and THEN go back and edit. Don’t keep stopping and second-guessing things. A lot of the writers I know have trouble finishing even that first draft.

If you weren’t writing, what would you want to be doing for a living? What are some of your other passions in life?

My other passion is music, so I would be focusing more on that if I wasn’t also a writer. I currently sing and write songs in a band that plays locally in L.A.

What do you love about being an indie author?

I love the fact that many indie publishers accept unsolicited manuscripts! While literary agents are obviously amazing, they are also gatekeepers, in a sense. If you can’t find one who is excited about your current book, then you’re stuck, because the major publishers will only accept submissions through them. With my self-published books, I liked having control over the book cover and design, and also receiving the sales notifications directly in my inbox.  

What is the oddest thing you’ve found yourself researching for your books (if any)?

The most recent (unpublished) novel that I wrote is about a girl whose parents work in the space program, and who starts dreaming that aliens are contacting her. So I went on a tour of the Jet Propulsion Lab here in L.A., read about the Cassini spacecraft and Mars Rover online, and talked to a family friend who works for NASA! I had to figure out how my main character and her friend could do something technically minor that would alter her parents’ spacecraft mission.

Any tidbits you wish to share for inspiring or other indie authors?

If you truly love writing, then keep pursuing it forever and ever. There are many routes to publishing now and you can keep trying them all.

                                RANDOM Q & A

Which would you pick- (fame, money, happiness, or easy inspiration)?

Happiness, which would give me plenty of inspiration!

How many drafts from first to final?

For myself, usually only 2 or 3, but their have already been more than that for “Between The Water & The Woods.” I’m still in the editing stage with Holiday House.

Do you fit any author stereotypes (Cat owner? Coffee/tea Addict? Messy handwriting? Recluse? Late night writer? OCD spelling/grammer (i.e. hate others who don’t use it properly or even yourself)?

Haha, I fit all of those except for “recluse” and “late night writer!” I prefer to write in the morning, although I certainly don’t get up early, and I do like to get out often. I have a 21-year-old cat who is my true love, and I’m definitely a coffee addict and spelling/grammer Nazi. My handwriting only gets worse as I get older...

What is your biggest pet peeve?

Probably when people are unjustifiably rude. I work in retail, so I see this often, unfortunately. I’m a stickler for basic manners.

What is one thing you love and could not live without?

Rock ‘n roll. <3

****Those answers are wonderful, amazing and the tidbits for writers is a must read! Always helpful to add insight for others. I love the NASA information and I bet it was really cool to do. Manners are a must for me as well, sad to think we are losing some of that. I don't know about you readers, but I'm going to be checking out Ms. Snaith's music now and reviewing it up. Love that she writes music as well!

[jerdle-typology]

Enneagram 5

The Five in Profile

Healthy: Observe everything with extraordinary perceptiveness and insight. Are mentally alert, curious, have a searching intelligence: nothing escapes their notice. Display foresight and prediction abilities. Able to concentrate: become engrossed in what has caught their attention. / Attain skillful mastery of whatever interests them. Excited by knowledge: often become expert in some field. Innovative and inventive, producing extremely valuable, original works. Highly independent, idiosyncratic, and whimsical. At Their Best: Become visionaries, broadly comprehending the world while penetrating it profoundly. Open-minded, take things in whole, in their true context. Make pioneering discoveries and find entirely new ways of doing and perceiving things.

Average: Begin conceptualizing everything before acting—working things out in their minds: model building, preparing, practicing, gathering resources. Studious, acquiring technique. Become specialized and often “intellectual”: involvement in research, scholarship, and building theories. / Increasingly detached as they become involved with complicated ideas or imaginary worlds. Become preoccupied with their visions and interpretations rather than reality. Are fascinated by offbeat, esoteric subjects, even those involving dark and disturbing elements. Detached from the practical world, a “disembodied mind,” although high-strung and intense. / Begin to take an antagonistic stance toward anything which would interfere with their inner world and personal vision. Become provocative and abrasive, with intentionally extreme and radical views. Cynical and argumentative.

Unhealthy: Become reclusive and isolated from reality, eccentric and nihilistic. Highly unstable and fearful of aggressions: they reject and repulse others and all social attachments. / Get obsessed with yet frightened by their threatening ideas, becoming horrified, delirious, and prey to gross distortions and phobias. / Seeking oblivion, they may commit suicide or have a psychotic break with reality. Deranged, explosively self-destructive, with schizophrenic overtones.

Key Motivations: Want to be capable and competent, to master a body of knowledge and skill, to explore reality, to remain undisturbed by others, to reduce their needs.

Examples: Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stanley Kubrick, Georgia O'Keeffe, Emily Dickinson, Simone Weil, Bill Gates, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacob Bronowski, James Joyce, Gary Larson, David Lynch, Stephen King, Tim Burton, Clive Barker, Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, John Cage, Glenn Gould, Charles Ives, Bobby Fischer, and Vincent van Gogh.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE FIVE

The connection between genius and madness has long been debated. These two states are really poles apart, the opposite ends of the personality spectrum. The genius is someone who fuses knowledge with insight into the nature of reality, someone who has the ability to see things with utter clarity and with awe-inspiring comprehension. What separates the genius from the madman is that the genius, in addition to extraordinary insights, has the ability to see them correctly, within their context. The genius perceives patterns which are actually present, whereas the madman imposes patterns, projecting erroneous perceptions onto every circumstance. The genius may sometimes seem to be out of touch with reality, but only because he or she operates at a more profound level. The madman, however, is truly out of touch with reality, having nothing but delusions to substitute for it.

The Five is the personality type which most exemplifies these extremes. In the Five, we see the genius and the madman, the innovator and intellectual, the mildly eccentric crackpot and the deeply disturbed delusional schizoid. To understand how these widely diverse states are part of the same personality type is to understand the Five.

In the Thinking Triad

Fives are members of the Thinking Triad. Their potential problem results from the fact that they emphasize thinking over doing, becoming intensely involved with their thoughts. Fives think so much that their mental world becomes all-engrossing, virtually to the exclusion of everything else. This is not to say that Fives do nothing at all, but that they are more at home in their minds, viewing the world from a detached vantage point, than they are in the world of action.

All three members of the Thinking Triad—Fives, Sixes, and Sevens—focus their attention on the world outside themselves. This may seem to contradict the statement that Fives are engrossed in their thoughts, but it actually does not. Fives focus their attention on the external world for a variety of reasons, one of the most important of which is that the material they think about comes through their sense perceptions—the accuracy of which they can never be completely sure of because they are not certain about what lies outside themselves. The only thing they know with certainty is their own thoughts. Hence, the focus of their attention is outward, on the environment, while identifying with their thoughts about the environment. The source of many of their problems is their need to find out how their perceptions of the world square with reality so that they can act in it—and do things with confidence.

Problems with Security and Anxiety

Like the other two members of the Thinking Triad, average Fives tend to have problems with insecurity because they fear that the environment is unpredictable and potentially threatening. Further, they feel powerless to defend themselves against the world’s many dangers: they believe they are not capable of functioning as well as others and so make it their number one priority to acquire the skills and knowledge they feel are necessary for them to be able to operate adequately in life.

Their Basic Fear, of being helpless and incapable, influences their behavior in significant ways. Fives believe that their personal resources and capacities are limited, so they respond to their anxiety by downscaling their activities and needs. The more anxious they feel, the more they minimize their needs. While this can be a sensible approach to problems at times, anxious Fives may reduce themselves to living in extremely primitive conditions in order to allay their fears of inadequacy. Naturally, given this orientation, Fives feel easily overwhelmed by others’ needs as well, and try to avoid situations in which others will expect more from them than they feel able to give. As their fears increase, Fives begin to “shrink away” from the world and from connections with others.

When Fives are healthy, they are able to observe reality as it is and are able to comprehend complex phenomena at a glance because they are participating in life and testing their perceptions. In their search for security, however, the perceptions of even average Fives tend to become skewed. Their thinking becomes more convoluted, elaborate, and increasingly fueled by anxiety. As they withdraw from the world, it only heightens their fears that they cannot cope with it. Eventually, even basic living requirements seem overwhelming and frightening. And if they become unhealthy, Fives are the type of persons who cut themselves off from most human contact. Once isolated, they develop their eccentric ideas to such absurd extremes that they become obsessed with completely distorted notions about themselves and reality. Ultimately, unhealthy Fives become utterly terrified and trapped by the threatening visions which they have created in their own minds.

Their problem with anxiety, one of the issues common to the personality types of the Thinking Triad, is related to their difficulty with perceiving reality objectively. They are afraid of allowing anyone or anything to influence them or their thoughts. Because they doubt their own ability to do, they fear that others’ agendas will overwhelm them or that people who are more powerful than they are will control or possess them. Ironically, however, even average Fives are not unwilling to be possessed by an idea, as long as the idea has originated with them. Nothing must be allowed to influence their thinking lest their developing sense of confidence be diminished, although by relying solely on their own ideas and perceptions, and without testing them in the real world, Fives can become profoundly out of touch with reality.

The upshot of this is that average to unhealthy Fives are uncertain whether or not their perceptions of the environment are valid. They do not know what is real and what is the product of their minds. They project their anxiety-ridden thoughts and their aggressive impulses into the environment, becoming fearful of the antagonistic forces which seem to be arrayed against them. They gradually become convinced that their peculiar and increasingly dark interpretation of reality is the way things really are. In the end, they become so terrorized that they cannot act even though they are consumed by anxiety.

The basis of their orientation to the world is thinking; personality type Five corresponds to Jung’s introverted thinking type.

Introverted thinking is primarily oriented by the subjective factor…. It does not lead from concrete experience back again to the object, but always to the subjective content. External facts are not the aim and origin of this thinking, though the introvert would often like to make his thinking appear so. It begins with the subject and leads back to the subject, far though it may range into the realm of actual reality…. Facts are collected as evidence for a theory, never for their own sake. (C. G. Jung, Psychological Types, 380.)

Although they correspond to Jung’s introverted thinking type, Fives are perhaps more precisely characterized as a subjective thinking type because the aim of their thought is not always introverted (that is, directed toward themselves); rather, it is directed often outward toward the environment, which Fives want to understand so that they can be safer in it. The impetus for their thinking comes, as Jung says, from “the subjective factor,” from their need to know about what lies outside themselves, as well as from their anxiety when they do not understand the environment. This is why thinking is the method Fives use both to fit into the world and, paradoxically, to defend themselves against it.

One of the results of the way Fives think is that even healthy Fives are not very deeply rooted in visceral experience. They are the type of people who get a great deal of intellectual mileage out of very little experience because they always find something of significance where others see little or nothing. This may lead to great discoveries. However, when they stop observing the world and focus their attention on their interpretations of it, Fives begin to lose touch with reality. Instead of keeping an open mind while they observe the world, they become too involved with their own thoughts and dreams. This leads them further away from the world of constructive action—the very arena in which their self-confidence needs to develop. They may spend a great deal of time playing around with ideas or visions of alternative realities which have almost no practical impact on their lives, leaving them more fearful about themselves and feeling more vulnerable to the predations of the world.

Parental Orientation

As a result of their formative experiences, these children became ambivalent to both parents. Fives, like Twos and Eights, were in search of a niche within the family system, a role that they could fulfill that would win them protection and nurturance. For whatever reasons, though, they perceived that there was no place for them to fit in—that nothing they could do was wanted or needed by their family. As a result, Fives withdrew from active participation in the family to search for something that they could “bring to the table.” Fives want to find something that they can do well enough to feel like an equal of others. Unlike other types, however, since Fives’ underlying fear is of being helpless and incapable, they generally look for areas of expertise that others have not already explored. In a sense, their agenda is to focus on the search for and mastery of subjects and skills, until they feel confident enough to “reenter” the world.

In the meantime, Fives strike a kind of unstated bargain with their parents which carries over into all of their subsequent relationships: “Don’t ask too much of me, and I won’t ask too much of you.” Fives feel that they need most of their limited time and energy to acquire the knowledge and skills that they believe will make them capable and competent. Thus, average Fives come to resent intrusions upon their space, their time, and certainly upon their persons. What to another type might feel like a comfortable distance can feel uncomfortable to an average Five. The reasons for this may relate to the Five’s feeling of not having a place in the family. They may have felt crowded out or figuratively or literally intruded on by their parents and their agendas. Their parents may have nurtured them erratically, or may have been emotionally disturbed or alcoholic or caught in a loveless marriage, and therefore not dependable sources of love and reassurance. The result is that these children become ambivalent not only toward both parents, but ambivalent toward the world.

Fives attempt to resolve their ambivalence by not identifying with anything other than their thoughts. They feel that their thoughts are “good” (that is, correct, and can be safely identified with), while outside reality is “bad” (and must therefore be vigilantly watched), so that it can be repulsed at a moment’s notice. In average to unhealthy Fives, the sense of being crowded may have resulted in their feeling unsafe in their bodies. They then become profoundly detached, indifferent to physical comfort, and extremely cerebral, as if the quality of their material existence was irrelevant to them. Fearful Fives are willing to jettison many comforts and even needs in order to protect the space and time they feel they need to pursue their interests—that is, those areas they are trying to master.

They continue to find their parents, the world, and other people fascinating and necessary, but Fives also feel that they must keep everything and everyone at a safe distance lest they be in clanger of being overwhelmed by some outside force. Thus, from the very way they think—their “cognitive style"—Fives set up a strict dualism between themselves and the world: they see everything as essentially split into two fundamental areas—the inner world and the outer world, subjects and objects, the known and the unknown, the dangerous and the safe, and so forth. This sharp split between themselves as subjects and the rest of the world as objects has tremendous ramifications throughout their entire lives.

Problems with Detachment and Phobia

When they are healthy, Fives do not have to detach themselves from the environment, because they feel secure and confident enough to fully participate in the world around them. Because they are interacting with the environment, their observations are accurate and balanced. But as they deteriorate down the Levels of Development toward unhealth, their perceptions become more intensely focused on what seems to be threatening and dangerous in the environment. As a result of their preoccupation with things they find fearful and dark, their mental world becomes filled with anxiety. Ironically, however, the more fearful Fives become, the more compelled they feel to investigate the very things that terrify them.

In the end, since they invariably focus on what is threatening, Fives turn their terrifying projections into their only reality, and in so doing, turn their minds against themselves, literally scaring themselves out of their minds. They become completely defenseless against the environment, which they find supremely dangerous because their minds have made it so. They become so phobic—and their sense of capability becomes so fragile—that it is extraordinarily difficult for them to function or turn to anyone for help. Yet, unless deteriorating Fives can reach out to someone, they have few ways of getting back in touch with reality.

If they live like this for long, their thought processes become so delusional and terrifying that they must separate themselves not just from the world but even from their own thoughts. Neurotic Fives become schizoid, unconsciously splitting themselves off from their teeming minds so that they can continue to live. Their reality has become hellish: dark, painful, and without hope. Recoiling in horror, they retreat into emptiness—and yet more horror.

ANALYZING THE HEALTHY FIVE

Level 1: The Pioneering Visionary

At their healthiest, Fives have the paradoxical ability to penetrate reality profoundly while comprehending it broadly. They are able to take things in whole, perceiving patterns where others see nothing but confusion. They are able to synthesize existing knowledge, making connections between phenomena which no one previously knew were related, such as time and space, the structures of the DNA molecule, or the relationship between brain chemistry and behavior. If they are artistically inclined, they may develop entirely new art forms, or revolutionize the form they are working with in ways that have not been seen before. These innovations often become the new platform from which others will learn and create.

The healthiest Fives do not cling to their own ideas about how the world works. Instead, they encompass reality so profoundly that they are able to discover unanticipated truths they could not have arrived at by mere theorizing. They make discoveries precisely because they are willing not to know the answers, keeping an open mind while they observe reality.

Because they do not impose their thoughts on reality, very healthy Fives are able to discover the internal logic, the structure, and interrelated patterns of whatever they observe. As a result, they have clear thoughts into obscure matters, and are able to predict events, often far in advance of the ability of others to verify them. Fives operating at the peak of their gifts may seem to be prophets and visionaries, although the explanation is simpler. They possess foresight because they see the world with extraordinary clarity, like a weaver who knows the pattern of a tapestry before it is completed.

The result is that they transcend rational thought to reveal objective reality, and in so doing they move toward the ineffable, to a level of comprehension where words, theories, and symbols are left behind. They perceive the world in all its complexity and simplicity with a vision that seems to come from beyond themselves. They are closer to contemplatives than thinkers. This is the quality of the “quiet mind,” discussed in Buddhism and other spiritual traditions. When the mind becomes still and quiet it becomes like a mirror which accurately contains and reflects whatever it turns toward. Healthy Fives are not using their minds to defend against reality; rather they are allowing reality in, understanding that they are not separate from it.

Very healthy, gifted Fives so perfectly describe reality that their perceptions and discoveries seem simple, even obvious, as if anyone could have thought of them. But the genius’s insights are obvious only in hindsight. To have made the leap from the known to the unknown, and to describe the unknown so clearly and accurately that the discovery accords perfectly with what is already known, is a great achievement. Similarly, anyone can “create” a new form of artistic expression, but to do so in a way that is powerful for others changes the way that others perceive reality, is both rare and extraordinary.

Thus, very healthy Fives are intellectual pioneers who open up new domains of knowledge and creativity. An individual Five, if sufficiently gifted, may well be a genius of historic dimensions, able to make staggering intellectual breakthroughs for mankind. A genius of the highest caliber may understand the way the world works for the first time in history. Less gifted individuals may have a sense of the genius’s excitement when they first understand calculus or how to use a computer. Their understanding is new to them, and can be thrilling. Others can only imagine how exciting it must be for someone to discover something totally new—when the discovery is new not only to that individual, but to humanity.

Yet, at Level 1, the brilliance of very healthy Fives is entirely unselfconscious. What Fives themselves are most aware of is feeling at home and at peace in the world. Because they have transcended their fears of being incapable and helpless, they are also freed from their relentless pursuit of knowledge and skill. They no longer feel overwhelmed by other people or by challenges and are able to bring their hearts and minds together for the compassionate use of their knowledge and talents.

Level 2: The Perceptive Observer

Even though Fives are not always this healthy, they are still extraordinarily conscious of the world around them, its glories and horrors, incongruities and inexhaustible complexities. They are the most mentally alert of the personality types, curious about everything. Healthy Fives enjoy thinking for its own sake; possessing knowledge—knowing that they know something, and being able to turn it around in their minds, to play with ideas—is extremely pleasurable for them. Knowledge and understanding are exhilarating. They are fascinated by people, by nature, by life, by the mind itself.

Given sufficient intelligence, healthy Fives penetrate the superficial, getting to profound levels very quickly. Their insights can be brilliant because they have the uncanny ability to see into the heart of things, noticing the anomaly, the curious but heretofore unobserved fact or hidden element which provides a key for understanding the whole. Because they see the world with unfailing insight, they always have something interesting and worthwhile to say. The act of seeing is virtually a symbol of their entire psychological orientation. If something can be seen, that is, apprehended either by the senses or by the mind, Fives feel that it can be understood. Once something is understood, it can be mastered. Then Fives can act with the confidence they desire.

Nothing escapes healthy Fives unnoticed because they do not merely observe the world passively, they concentrate on it, noting how things go together to form patterns and have meaning. People and objects are perceived in detail, as if Fives were training a magnifying glass on the environment. Since their minds are so active and they find everything around them fascinating, healthy Fives are never bored. They like learning what they do not know and understanding what is not obvious. No matter how much they know, they always want to learn more, and since the world is, for all intents and purposes, infinite in its complexity, there is always more to know.

Healthy Fives are also able to perceive far more than others because they have the ability to sustain concentration; they are not easily distracted. They quickly become deeply involved in the object of their scrutiny so they can understand how it works—why something is as it is. Their intellectual curiosity leads them to expend considerable effort to find out more about those things which have caught their attention. They are incredibly hard workers who will patiently attack a problem until they solve it, or until it becomes clear that the problem is insoluble. They will labor in obscurity for many years because they are excited about what they are exploring or creating. Because healthy Fives are accustomed to pursuing their interests with little support or attention, they are not dissuaded by others’ indifference or lack of comprehension. The process of exploring, learning, and creating is more enjoyable to Fives than achieving a final goal. They take delight in questioning reality and tinkering with familiar forms until they become almost unrecognizable, especially in the arts. They are also very good conceptualizers, asking the right fundamental questions and defining the proper intellectual boundaries for the problems with which they are involved. They do not attempt to do the impossible, only to understand what they have not understood before.

Regardless of their actual intelligence, most Fives consider themselves “smart” and perceptive, and see these as defining characteristics. Many Fives are not intellectuals or scholars, but all focus their attention in the world of ideas, perceptions, and ways of looking at reality. They are constantly on the lookout for something that they have not noticed before, or a way of connecting disparate ideas or activities they have been exploring. Having a new insight into a question or creative problem they have been grappling with gives them a sense of confidence and goads them into deeper explorations.

Fives are aware that others may view them as “unusual.” This may be due to their intelligence, a highly developed sensory acuity, idiosyncratic behavior, or perhaps their penetrating gaze. Fives are not interested in being “different” like Fours are; instead, they view their status as outsiders with a shrugging acceptance. They tend to be unsentimental about life, and this lack of sentiment extends to their own circumstances as well. Fives can also appear to be unusual because they are willing to follow their curiosity and their perceptions wherever they lead. They are relatively unconcerned with social convention; rather, they want to be unencumbered by activities that take them away from what they are really interested in.

Healthy Fives want to feel competent and capable in the objective world, and yet, the very act of inquiring into things begins to shift them away from active participation and toward the role of an outside observer. Even at this stage, healthy Fives are subject to a certain amount of anxiety about the environment if they do not understand it. (And, of course, because they cannot understand it until they deal with it, they are caught in a conundrum.) Therefore, the habit of observation reflects not simply a dispassionate curiosity but a deep personal need.

Level 3: The Focused Innovator

Once Fives have identified themselves as intelligent and perceptive, they begin to fear that they might lose their perceptiveness or that what they are thinking may be inaccurate. So they begin to focus their energies intensely into those areas that they are most interested in with the goal of really mastering them. In this way, Fives hope to develop an ability or a body of knowledge which will ensure that they will have a place in the world. They are not interested in merely acquiring facts or skills, but in using what they have learned to go beyond what has previously been explored. They want to “push the envelope,” both because it is a greater test of their competency, and also because they want to create a niche for themselves which no one else could have come up with.

Sometimes the results of their explorations are ingenious inventions and technological marvels which yield highly practical results. At times, their tinkering may produce startling new discoveries or artistic works. At other times, few things may result from their original ideas, although in time, those ideas, too, may have practical applications. What is impractical in one era often becomes the underpinning of an entirely new branch of knowledge or technology in another, such as the physics which made television and radar possible, or a few scraps of ideas which later produce a novel or a movie.

Because they are looking for new areas to explore and master, healthy Fives are generally open-minded people. They are not attached to particular points of view, and are curious to learn what other people think about things. They believe that there is almost always something interesting to learn from another person’s perspective. They are also patient about explaining their own thoughts to others, even when their thoughts are complex or the other person is slow to understand. Healthy Fives want to communicate, and they want others to understand what they are saying.

Because Fives understand things so perceptively, their profound knowledge enables them to get to the heart of difficulties so that they can explain problems, and possible solutions, clearly to others. Healthy Fives like sharing their knowledge because they often learn more when they discuss their ideas with someone else. This is why healthy Fives make exciting teachers, colleagues, and friends. Their enthusiasm for ideas is infectious, and they enjoy fertilizing their own areas of expertise with those of other intellectuals, artists, and thinkers, or, really, with anyone who is as interesting, curious, and intelligent as they are.

As much as they like being among those who can understand and appreciate their insights, healthy Fives are nevertheless extremely independent. For the most part, innovating, learning, and creating are solitary adventures best embarked on alone. Because they never know where their projects and discoveries will lead, Fives value their independence very highly; they are willing to be as unorthodox as their inquiries require, pursuing their interests and discoveries regardless of the sanctions of others or of society. They are not afraid to challenge existing dogmas, if need be.

Their innovations can be revolutionary, overturning previous ways of thinking. Owing to the nature of their interests and the scope of their intellects, healthy Fives give us powerful ideas which can literally change the course of history. The worlds of art, dance, cinema, and music have many times been “scandalized” by the strange new creations of Fives—which later on become widely accepted standards of “how things are done.”

Healthy Fives are also in possession of a whimsical sense of humor. They are attuned to life’s many absurdities and ironies and enjoy sharing their wry observations with others. They have a way of distorting the picture of reality just enough to highlight some assumption or way of looking at life that has no logical underpinning. They are fascinated by strange, offbeat subjects and love tinkering with objects, images, and words. There is a taboo-breaking quality to the humor of even healthy Fives, because they are attracted to looking at subject matter that others would reject or turn away from. Their imaginations are powerful and they use them to visualize the solution to a problem or to create an alternative reality. For this reason, many artistic Fives become filmmakers, cartoonists, or authors of genre fiction (science fiction, horror, black humor). The aesthetic sense tends to run in two extremes: minimalist and spare on one end, and surreal and fantastic on the other. Most Fives who are involved in the arts are not interested in simple “human interest” stories or narratives. They want to direct their audience’s attention beyond their daily concerns toward truths which are more absolute—especially those that are hidden in the “ordinary world.”

In the process of mastering those areas which interest them, healthy Fives accumulate knowledge. People of this personality type develop expertise in various disciplines, whether in the arts (for example, abstract expressionist painting, electronic music, or Egyptian hieroglyphics), or in the sciences (how to build a computer or put a satellite into space). Healthy Fives are usually polymaths, possessors of knowledge in a wide range of subjects and expert in them all. Healthy Fives know what they are talking about and share their knowledge with others, enriching the whole of society with their learning. They are also relatively confident because they are actively doing things with their insights, and it is precisely because their insights are so on target that both healthy Fives and their ideas are especially valuable to the rest of society. Where would we be without the computers and antibiotics, the sophisticated communications media and the technological innovations of all sorts which make up the modern world?

ANALYZING THE AVERAGE FIVE

Level 4: The Studious Expert

The essential difference between average Fives and healthy Fives is that average Fives begin to fear that they do not know enough to act or take their place in the world. They feel that they need to study more, to practice more, to acquire better technique or run further tests, to involve themselves even more deeply with their subject. (“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”) For whatever reason, they fear that they will not be able to put their concepts and ideas into action. Convinced that they are insufficiently prepared to put themselves on the line, they retreat into an area of their experience where they feel much more confident and in control—their minds. Every personality type deals from its strongest suit, and the intellect is what Fives are gifted with and what they favor in their development. Rather than innovating and exploring, however, average Fives begin conceptualizing and preparing. In a word, healthy Fives use knowledge, whereas average Fives are in pursuit of it.

Because Fives have become adept at playing with concepts and their imagination, they are more sure of themselves when they are “in their heads,” and from this Level down they begin to avoid more direct contact with the world. They can spend many hours conceptualizing a problem or an idea for a song, but hesitate to put their ideas out as real, concrete forms. Average Fives get stuck in “preparation mode,” endlessly studying, gathering more background information, and practicing. Or they may simply develop the idea for a book or an invention in their imagination and never actualize their projects in reality. “I need a little more time” is a repeating refrain from average Fives. They are not being reluctant for no reason, however: their hesitation belies their growing lack of faith in their ability to cope with the world.

Because they are beginning to experience themselves as somehow less prepared for life than other people, average Fives feel compelled to gather whatever information, skills, and resources they believe they will need to “build themselves up.” To this end, Fives begin to disengage from social activities and spend more and more of their time and energy acquiring these resources. Their homes become a reflection of their minds, storage areas for their collections of books, tapes, videos, CDs, gadgets, and so forth.

Average Fives are typically bookish. They haunt bookstores, libraries, and coffeehouses catering to intellectuals who discuss politics, films, and literature far into the night. They love scholarship, and are fascinated with the technical appurtenances by which they acquire knowledge. And while they will spend money to obtain whatever tools they need to pursue their intellectual interests, be they medieval manuscripts or computer equipment, average Fives are usually loath to spend money on themselves or their own comfort because they identify with their minds and their imaginations, not with their bodies.

In their pursuit of mastery, average Fives tend to become highly specialized in some field, delving into a body of knowledge not understood by most. (As specialists, they take pride and pleasure in their ability to say, in effect, “I know something that you don’t know.”) Some Fives may become specialists within an academic discipline—analyzing genetic structures, or the mathematics of snowflake formation, or the migration patterns of birds in the Amazon Delta. Others may specialize in less academic areas, becoming specialists in antiques, stamp collecting, comic books, or jazz. Their approach to collecting becomes a metaphor for their whole approach to life: gathering in more material and incorporating it into the body of what they believe they know or can do.

Their predilection for collecting can combine with their desire to specialize in surprising ways. Fives may have a complete video collection—organized by director, of course—of every major horror or science fiction film between 1950 and 1990. The completeness of the collection and the thorough knowledge of its contents becomes important. An average Five would feel superficial if he or she had only a few Beatles albums or only three Beethoven symphonies. They want to acquire the complete Beatles catalogue, including rare bootleg recordings, and have all nine Beethoven symphonies as recorded by various orchestras. To observe the chronological progression of the Beatles’ music or to compare and contrast the different recordings of Beethoven’s Third Symphony become enjoyable pursuits for Fives, and a certain degree of knowledge is gained by these activities, to be sure. But Fives might well wonder how profitably they are spending their time in these endeavors. They achieve at least a temporary feeling of competency by mastering these narrow areas of interest, but are beginning to avoid the kind of activities that might really help develop their confidence.

Average Fives have begun to identify more completely with their minds, and although this is not entirely problematic, it is not without consequences. As we have seen, healthy Fives are highly observant of the environment and attuned to the world around them, but because of their increasingly cerebral approach to life, average Fives begin to miss things. They focus intently upon certain details and may overlook other relevant information entirely. They tend to make a science of whatever they are interested in, whether history, linguistics, stereo equipment, jogging shoes, or the sociology of ape families. It is here that we see the beginning of their tendency to abstract from reality, concerning themselves with only those aspects of reality which capture their attention. They are by no means out of touch with reality in any unhealthy sense yet. They are, however, narrowing the focus of their perceptions so that they can pursue their interests in more depth.

Although they may not be aware of it, average Fives begin to approach most new experiences by trying to analyze them or to find their context in relation to what they already know. This is the shy person who tries to learn how to do a dance by watching people dancing and trying to analyze and memorize the different steps and movements. The easiest ways to learn to dance is to jump in and start moving, but average Fives fear to enter an activity until they have worked it all out in their minds. Usually, the dance is over by the time the Five is done “figuring it out.” This can be a cumbersome way of learning things, but it does have some positive aspects. Because their method of learning is so systematic, and because they are observing and memorizing every step of any process they engage in, many Fives can explain to others how they arrived at certain conclusions or achieved specific results. And at Level 4, Fives enjoy sharing their expertise with others. They can discourse enthusiastically and at length on the projects they have been pursuing. Unfortunately, average Fives may not be comfortable talking about much else. Their personal lives, their hopes, desires, and disappointments, and especially their feelings become private matters, and they are reluctant to share these parts of themselves with others. They prefer to discuss subjects of interest to them, and to arrive at deeper “truths” through intelligent conversation.

Level 5: The Intense Conceptualizer

As average Fives retreat into the apparent safety of their minds, they ironically begin to heighten their insecurities about their abilities. After all, they are putting less and less time into anything outside of their narrowing interests, and are less willing to try new activities. They shift into mental high-gear, using whatever internal and financial resources they have to gain a sense of confidence and strength that would allow them to move forward with their lives. Unfortunately, average Fives often misapply this energy, getting increasingly bogged down in what others would see as trivia and losing perspective on which activities will actually help them in their lives. They spend endless hours engaged in their projects, but are unable to come to closure, both because they are more uncertain of themselves and their ideas and because they are afraid to leave the security of their cerebral constructs.

As a result, Fives believe that they have no inner resources to spare. They fear that other people and their emotional needs will overwhelm them, or at the very least, sidetrack them from their projects. Fives believe that everything depends upon their acquiring a skill or ability that would give them a chance to survive in what they increasingly perceive as a world without pity or mercy. They may deeply want to connect with others, but feel that this is not possible until they can develop the sense of confidence and mastery they seek. Average Fives begin to view most of their social interactions as intrusions upon their time and space—time and space they believe they must devote to their quest for mastery. To defend themselves against these potential “intrusions,” they withdraw further into their own inner worlds by intensifying their mental focus and activity. If Fives began to create alternative realities in the healthier levels, they begin to inhabit them at Level 5. Average Fives do not want anyone or anything to distract them from whatever they believe they are gaining by exploring those realities.

Strangely, though, average Fives begin to distract themselves. If all of their energies were devoted to constructive projects, their behavior might be more comprehensible to others, but their growing insecurity causes them to spend much of their time engaged in any sort of activity which might provide some temporary sense of confidence and competence. In their minds, Fives can feel capable and fully in control of their situation, which begins to compensate for their fears about being powerless and incapable in the real world.

They plunge into complex intellectual puzzles and labyrinthine systems—elaborate, impenetrable mazes by which they can insulate themselves from the world while dealing with it intellectually. They get involved in highly detailed, complicated systems of thought, immersing themselves in obscure theories, whether these have to do with the abstruse regions of such traditional academic studies as astronomy, mathematics, or philosophy, or with esoteric topics such as the Kabbala, astrology, and the occult. They are endlessly fascinated with intellectual games (such as chess, computer simulation games, or Dungeons and Dragons), making areas of study into a kind of game, and games into an area of study. They often develop a strong affinity for genre fiction, especially science fiction and horror. Exploring the dark and fantastic realms of the imagination gives Fives the feeling of mastering something—even if it is only an image in their imaginations. Their interest in strange, disturbing subject matter is both a further search for “turf” unclaimed by others and a counterphobic reaction to their feelings of helplessness.

The thinking of average Fives becomes increasingly uncensored: they are willing to entertain any thought, no matter how horrible, unacceptable, or taboo it may seem to others. Fives are in pursuit of the truth, and if the truth is unpleasant or upsets existing conventions, so be it. In healthy Fives, this tendency is laudable and the source of many great discoveries. In average Fives, however, it starts to create problems. Because they are not participating as actively in the world, they are getting fewer “reality checks.” Consequently, their exploration of potentially unsettling subject matter begins to add fuel to their anxieties about the world and themselves.

Because of these fears, and because their imaginations are causing them to see ominous implications in almost everything, average Fives are typically fascinated with power. They feel that knowledge is power and that by possessing knowledge, they will be secure because they perceive more than others do—and hence, can protect themselves. They are attracted by areas of study which deal with some form of power, whether in nature, or in politics, or in human behavior. However, Fives are also ambivalent about power and suspicious of those who have power over them. They feel that whoever has power may use it against them, rendering them completely helpless, one of their deepest fears.

One way that average Fives maintain their independence and avoid the potential control of others is by becoming more secretive. They become increasingly unwilling to talk about their personal or emotional lives, fearing that to do so would give others power over them. Additionally, speaking about such things might well plunge them into a more direct experience of their own fears and vulnerability—a prospect that average Fives distinctly wish to avoid. In any event, Fives begin to control others’ access to them, not by overt deception but by offering little information about themselves; they can be terse, cryptic, or totally uncommunicative. They also control access by compartmentalizing their relationships and different aspects of their lives. A Five will tell one friend about his professional life, while another friend will learn of his fascination with insects. Still another will know about his romantic life, while another knows where the Five likes to go late at night. No one gets the complete picture, however, and as much as possible, average Fives will make sure that these different friends do not meet to “share notes.”

This state of affairs would be difficult to maintain if Fives had too many friends, but to keep their life simple and to allow more time for their private pursuits, at Level 5 they do with relationships what they do elsewhere in their lives, they begin to reduce their needs. Average Fives become more determined to continue their projects and want to avoid any involvements or dependencies that might hinder them. They begin to “cut back” on creature comforts, activities, and relationships. Anything that might compromise their independence and their freedom to continue with their interests becomes expendable. Fives at this point are so caught up in their mental world that even basic amenities and comforts become almost irrelevant to them. They can become extremely Spartan and minimal in their existence, requiring less of others so that others will require less of them. Average Fives will often take employment far beneath their capabilities because they want to avoid becoming entangled in the demands of a more challenging career. Ironically, they are avoiding living their lives so they can devote time to preparing to live their lives. They live for whatever pleasures and small victories they may derive from their cerebral preoccupations.

The problem is that average Fives have stopped observing the world with any consistency, and have instead focused their attention on their ideas and their imagination. This is a turning point in their development. Rather than investigate the objective world, average Fives at this stage become preoccupied with their own interpretations of it, mentally detaching themselves from the environment or even their own emotional experiences by becoming more intensely involved with their ideas. Healthy Fives are extraordinarily perceptive and aware of their environment. To the degree that Average Fives are absorbed in their own thoughts, they perceive very little of the world around them.

As Fives speculate and theorize, turning their ideas around in their minds, examining them from every angle, endlessly producing new interpretations, they lose the forest for the trees. With every new conjecture, they have no sense of certitude that their speculations are final: everything remains hanging in the air, in a cloud of possibilities. For example, the more they write, the more complex the exposition becomes, until it is virtually incomprehensible. As brilliant as they may be, average Fives do not easily publish their ideas because they cannot bring them to a conclusion.

Furthermore, all ideas seem equally plausible to Fives, since they can make a convincing case for almost anything they think of. Anything thinkable seems possible. Anything thinkable seems real. They are intellectually and emotionally capable of entertaining any new thought, even horrifying or outlandish ones, since speculating on new possibilities is virtually all they do. Their ideas, however, begin to have no direct connection with the outside world. (The problems of epistemology not only fascinate them, average Fives unwittingly live them out.) But establishing a relationship between their ideas and reality is no longer the primary function of the thinking of average Fives. Instead, speculation and imagination maintain the sense of self by keeping the mind active.

Moreover, for all the time they spend thinking, average Fives at this Level do not communicate to others clearly, because their thought processes are so complex and convoluted. They get into too much detail; their ideas become highly condensed. The stream of consciousness floods out in elaborate monologues, making it difficult for others to follow their train of thought. They go off on tangents, jumping from one point to another without indicating the intervening steps in their logic. A perceptive observation about Jackson Pollock’s painting technique may be followed by a disquisition on modern media and the hazards to biological systems of higher levels of chemicals in the environment. Their monologues may well be fascinating, and possibly breathtaking in the sweep of their intellectual range; however, their discourses may also be strange and tedious, because the mental exertion required to follow them is exhausting. Nor is it always clear that the trip will be worth the effort, although average Fives think that whatever they have to say is as interesting to others as it is to themselves.

They begin to function as disembodied minds because, as far as they are concerned, the body is merely the vehicle for the mind. At this Level, they do not pay much attention to their physical condition except when that gets in the way of their thinking. They become so deeply involved in projects that they forget to eat or sleep or change their clothes. They frequently look like the proverbial absent-minded professor, missing a button when putting on their shirts or forgetting to tie their shoes. No matter. To them such considerations are insignificant: the life of the mind, the excitement of pursuing their interests, is what counts.

Both for better and for worse, they are extremely high-strung, as if their nervous systems were tuned to a higher pitch than those of the other personality types. (Nines also become more cerebral and imaginative in the average Levels, but their affect is very different. Nines become placid and passive, while Fives become agitated and intense.) Fives seem to lack the ability to repress the unconscious impulses which erupt into their minds, fueling their intense involvement in their perceptions, their work, and their relations with others. They find it difficult to do things casually, and find close relationships with others particularly taxing.

The more detached average Fives are, the more ambivalent they are to just about everyone—they are attracted to people, yet suspicious about them. They want to figure out what makes other people tick, just as they analyze other objects of intellectual interest. (“What you just said was fascinating—you’re incredibly angry at men, aren’t you?”) Yet they usually try to avoid getting deeply involved with others because people are unpredictable and potentially demanding. Average Fives believe there must be a catch. They cannot imagine why anyone would be interested in them personally and fear that others may expect something from them which they will not be able to deliver. Further, emotional involvements arouse strong feelings which average Fives find difficult to control: the passions flood too easily into their minds. But because most Fives also have strong sexual impulses, they cannot avoid involvements altogether, as much as they would like to. Thus, though Fives find people and relationships endlessly fascinating, they remain wary.

It is therefore typical of average Fives either to be unmarried or to have stormy relationships with people. Intimacy with others gets so involved, so complex and exhausting, that they stop trying to make contact with others and become reclusive, ever more completely burying themselves in their work and ideas. Doing so only fuels their feelings of helplessness, though, and as Fives become more isolated they are increasingly prey to their own growing fears about themselves and the world. Their view of reality grows ever more bleak and doubtful. They have great difficulty accepting the idea of a benevolent universe, let alone a benevolent God. Moreover, the problem of evil is an enormous stumbling block: the horror and uncertainty of the world is so apparent to Fives that any God who allowed the world to be as it is must be sadistic, an evil God, a God they refuse to become involved with.

Level 6: The Provocative Cynic

In time, the complexities Fives create in their minds cause new and more troubling problems for them. Nothing is clear or certain; anxiety increases. They are more desperate than ever about whatever projects and ideas they are trying to develop and fear that other people will demand that they give up their pursuits before they are ready. They fear that they will be drawn “off course” by the intrusions of life and are determined to defend against whatever they perceive as a threat to their fragile niche. At Level 6, through their style of speech, their manner of dress, and the subjects that they involve themselves with, Fives are saying to the world, “Leave me alone!” If others could not get the message before, Fives become more aggressive in their efforts to scare people away.

On the surface, Fives at this Level may seem intellectually arrogant, but they are actually less certain of themselves. Even their most valued ideas and projects begin to seem futile to them, and they alternate between defending them aggressively and finding them worthless. They begin to take more extreme and unorthodox positions, as if they were trying to extract more confidence from ideas that are becoming meaningless for them. Fives may not be entirely convinced of the radical views they express, but express them they do, wielding them like cutting tools. Further, their own subconscious fears about their inability to cope with the environment are frequently erupting into their minds, and they live in growing terror of the world and others. They feel uncertain and uneasy about nearly everything, and it infuriates them that other people seem to be content or oblivious to the horrors which they notice. They therefore begin to undermine others’ certainty or contentment by “sharing” their provocative views. (“So you’re going to the beach? I was just reading the latest report on the ozone layer. Studies show that the chances of getting skin cancer have gone up by nearly one hundred percent.”) There is often an element of truth in what Fives express at this point, but their intention is no longer to arrive at the truth. It is to use their knowledge as a way of unsettling others. And because they have spent so much time gathering information, they can easily use it both to reinforce their conviction that the world is rotten and to subvert other people’s sense of security.

A certain extremism is as typical of their social style as it is of their intellectual viewpoint. In political or artistic matters, antagonistic Fives are usually radicals, populating the avant-garde. They love to take ideas to their furthest limits—for their shock value, to defy what has conventionally been thought or done, or to puncture and demolish popular opinions. (And even if they are not as correct as Fives think they are, their provocative ideas virtually force others to react to them, stirring up debate or even hostility.) As dyed-in-the-wool nonconformists and dissenters, they rebel against all social conventions, rules, and expectations, whether these involve feminism, politics, child rearing, sexual liberation, or all of them in some peculiar combination. They have an ax to grind. Understanding has been abandoned for polemics.

At Level 6, Fives use their entire lifestyle as a statement of their views and as a rebuke of the world. They may choose to live an extremely marginal existence to avoid “selling out.” At this Level, “selling out” may mean any kind of regular employment or even having a relationship. They may wear intentionally provocative clothing or groom themselves in nonconformist ways. Of course, social protest can be a vital and healthy impulse in any culture, and healthier Fives (as well as other types) may well use provocative language, art, or style of dress to make a point. But with lower average Fives, the point is that there is no point. Life is futile. People are stupid. My own life is meaningless. Although other types are certainly part of the picture, this attitude is common in many of the “alternative” cultures that have developed in the latter part of the twentieth century. Grunge, cyberpunk, heavy metal, and other youth subcultures embrace this ethos.

Ironically for those so given to complex thought, Fives at this Level have also become more reductionistic, oversimplifying reality and dismissing more positive, alternative explanations of things. For example, dismissing the flower, reductionistic Fives focus on the ooze from which it sprang, as if the brightest blossom were “nothing but” mud in some significantly altered state; painting is nothing but the desire to smear feces; God is nothing but a projection of the father into the cosmos; human beings are nothing but biological machines, and so forth. The result is that their ideas mix legitimate insights with extreme interpretations, while Fives themselves have no way of knowing which is which.

An irrational element—a kind of perverse resistance to reality—has begun to taint their thought processes. Fives at Level 6 are not crazy, even though their ideas may be strange and extremely unorthodox. Healthy originality, however, has deteriorated into quirky eccentricity; the genius has become little more than a crank. |They may assert that arcane secrets are hidden in numerical codes derived from the names of characters in their favorite TV show, or that all rational thought is meaningless.) Others may well have entertained outlandish ideas, but lower average Fives dwell on them, sometimes using all of their time and energy to “prove” them. Their extreme ideas are so much a part of their sense of self that Fives will defend their ideas at all costs, asserting them vigorously and attempting to demolish all counterarguments. Contentious and quarrelsome, they also worry about establishing their intellectual priority and protecting their ideas, threatening lawsuits if they think that someone has stolen one of their brilliant theories.

Even so, as radically extreme and reductionistic as many of their ideas are, average Fives are not necessarily completely off the mark. They are usually too intelligent not to have something interesting to say. The problem is knowing which of their ideas are valuable and which are not. This is because, at a deeper level, Fives are becoming cynical and hopeless about all of their ideas and projects. A profound pessimism is creeping into their thoughts, and they begin to see all viewpoints as equally irrelevant. They can argue any point because everything seems equally true or untrue, and therefore equally worthless. Fives at Level 6 may even enjoy arguing viewpoints which they find repugnant just to reaffirm their intelligence while simultaneously proving the futility of making any further efforts.

Fives at this stage give the appearance of being extremely involved in their projects, but a closer inspection usually reveals that they are spending much of their time in relatively inessential activities. They may need to put together a résumé, take care of bills, or complete a project for work, but will instead devote their efforts to reading a book on ants, creating a detailed computer database for their record collection, or studying strategies to improve their chess game. They put more and more of their time into activities which will do little to improve their situation, and which actually become harmful because they are distracting Fives from what they really need to do. They are so unsure of themselves that they feel completely unable to engage in many activities—especially those that might improve their quality of life—and keep gravitating to situations that give them the temporary feeling of having their lives “under control.” Average Fives may not be able to face a job interview or learn to drive a car, but they can conquer the world, survive a nuclear holocaust, or wield awesome occult powers in the world of their imaginations.

At this Level, Fives feel profoundly unsettled and anxious about their apparent helplessness in what seems to them a dark and hostile reality. They feel that it is extremely unlikely that they will ever find a place for themselves in the world, and in fact, their abrasive behavior is making this a real possibility. Fives desperately want to find something they can do that will make them feel more connected with the world, but their fear and anger cause them to retreat further and further from any contact with others. They are tormented by their tempers and by their teeming imaginations: insomnia is not uncommon. If they could reach out to others and acknowledge their own suffering, Fives could turn around their difficulties and reconstruct their lives. If they continue to turn away from the world, however, they may eventually cut off what few connections remain in their lives and plunge into a much more terrifying darkness.

ANALYZING THE UNHEALTHY FIVE

Level 7: The Isolated Nihilist

The need to keep others at a safe distance to protect their frantic search for mastery sets the stage for Fives to become extremely antagonistic toward anyone who they believe threatens their world. Unfortunately, as they become more unhealthy, their self-doubt becomes so great that almost everything threatens them. It seems to them that the only way that they can be safe is to cut off their connections with others and “go it alone.” They feel hopelessly ill-adapted for life and are profoundly disgusted with the world. Unhealthy Fives are convinced that they are never going to find a place for themselves in society, and so they turn their back on it. They become extremely isolated and prey to growing eccentricity and nihilistic despair.

Their aggressions are aroused when people question their ideas—or worse, if their ideas are ridiculed or dismissed. To maintain what little remains of their self-confidence, which is thoroughly wedded to their ideas, unhealthy Fives go on the offensive: individuals must be discredited, their ideas shown to be worthless, their solutions to problems an illusion, their world a fool’s paradise. Thus, unhealthy Fives unwittingly provoke others into rejecting them, and then become cynical about the value of all relationships. But in so doing, they become profoundly cut off from others and extremely hopeless about the possibility of ever relating to anyone.

Indeed, their need to reject what others believe is so strong that they take pleasure in debunking whatever is positive in life, trying to prove the virtual impossibility of human relationships and the complete rottenness at the core of human nature. Unhealthy Fives take delight in deflating what they see as the bourgeois illusions by which others get through life so comfortably, and to which they have not fallen prey because of their greater intellectual honesty.

As usual, there is a half-truth operating here. While others may well be living too comfortably for their own good, while some people may be self-deceptive, while some families and some relationships may be tainted by hypocrisy, jealousy, and struggles for power, it does not necessarily follow that cynicism is the best response. Unhealthy Fives throw out the baby with the bath water: faith, hope, love, kindness, friendship—all are extraordinarily difficult for them to believe in because of their fear of involvement with others. Attachment to others is too threatening at this stage, so unhealthy Fives must justify their isolation by becoming nihilistic and cynical about all relationships, indeed, about the value of humanity itself.

Just as an intense stream of water from a fire hose can hold back a crowd, the intensity of their minds, overheated by their erupting aggressive impulses, repels everything that might influence them. They “burn their bridges behind them,” ending friendships, quitting jobs, and emptying out all but the barest of necessities in their lives. (“To hell with everything!”) It is as if unhealthy Fives were attempting to purge themselves of everything but their most basic life-support systems so that they will not be dependent, and therefore potentially overwhelmed by anyone or anything. This process may be taken to extreme degrees. Unhealthy Fives may end up living out of a car, or squatting in a condemned building so that they will not be part of “the system.” They neglect themselves physically, paying no attention to their appearance, eating poorly, and going unwashed. Alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse are quite common at this stage, and the rebellious side of Fives has no hesitation about using illicit drugs. Their experimental nature may also lead them into trying new “designer drugs” or substances known to be dangerous, such as heroin. Drugs are harmful for any type, but for Fives they can be particularly debilitating. Unhealthy Fives are already having great difficulty facing even the basic maintenance of their lives, and their connection with reality is extremely tenuous. Drugs further erode their confidence and drive them further into isolation, thus accelerating their deterioration.

At this Level, unhealthy Fives believe they must maintain their isolation so that they will not be influenced by anyone. While usually not violent, they may rant and rave, write long diatribes and denunciations, or suddenly withdraw into a glowering, hateful silence. Since most people are repulsed by this kind of behavior, the isolation of Fives rapidly deepens, which is exactly what unhealthy Fives want. Yet, for that reason, they are vulnerable to ever worsening distortions in their thought processes. They are no longer getting “reality checks” from others, no longer comparing their perceptions to reality, and what few forays into the environment they do have are tainted with their growing terror. All of their experiences become confirmations of their helplessness and of the utter meaninglessness of life. Unhealthy Fives feel besieged by even minor problems and view all interactions with others as invasions upon their fragile space. Aggressions—and fear—continue to escalate.

Some of the personality types are able to conceal the degree of their distress in the unhealthy Levels, but Fives are clearly and unmistakably unstable. Others can see their disintegration and are both saddened and horrified, but unhealthy Fives’ aggressive defense of their isolation makes interventions difficult. Even the hint that they may “need help” may trigger their fears of helplessness and incompetency and drive them deeper into pathology. Unhealthy Fives also retain their ability to reason to some degree, and can cleverly argue away any positive input, dismissing any possibility that their dark and corrosive view of life may be in error. They have no expectations of themselves or others and retreat into a reality as bleak in its actuality as it is in its outlook.

Because unhealthy Fives are terrified of the world and of their own inability to cope with it, they stew in a destructive mixture of dark, twisted fantasies, feelings of contempt for others, and honor at the emptiness of their lives. They want to act, to do something that would discharge the relentlessness of their teeming minds, but they feel crippled by fear and have no belief in themselves or others. Consequently the intense force of their irrational thoughts keeps building without relief. They are filled with rage at a world which they believe has rejected them, but feeling powerless to do anything about it, they avoid all contact with others, let alone reach out for help. It is as if they cannot stop cutting themselves off at the knees. Unhealthy Fives may still be brilliant or talented, but their nihilism destroys any chance of their doing anything constructive with their abilities, and thus building up their confidence. Instead, they tear down everything in their lives, devaluing and rejecting all their attachments to the world. Yet, unhealthy Fives are worse than merely isolated; they are filled with aggressions and impulses which cannot be discharged, because they do not want to get into violent conflicts with others. Unhealthy Fives are thus trapped in a terrible dilemma: they are obsessed by their aggressions yet unable to act on them because they fear the consequences. They want to accomplish something in the world, but their bleak, cynical attitude does not allow them to engage in any activities that might improve their situation. The result is that they do nothing, and the intensity of their own minds begins to devour them.

Level 8: The Terrified “Alien”

As unhealthy Fives retreat further and further into their isolation, their belief in their ability to cope with the world disintegrates. Further, their lack of contact with other people allows their fearful thoughts to run rampant without being checked. They begin to feel that the world is closing in on them, and that it will show them no mercy. At this stage, Fives have reduced their activities and their living conditions to the point where there is nowhere left to retreat. They may be living in a single room and almost never venture forth from it, or literally hiding out in the basement of a friend’s or relative’s house. The only place left to go is deeper into their own minds, but because their minds are the true source of their terrors, this becomes their ultimate undoing.

At Level 8, Fives have tremendous difficulty distinguishing between the sensory impressions generated by the environment and those which have their origin in their fearful thoughts. Thus, unhealthy Fives see all of reality as an implacable, devouring force. The world appears to them like a delirious fever dream—an insane landscape, like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Almost nothing in the environment is a source of comfort or reassurance. The more Fives look at the world through their distorted perceptions, the more horrified and hopeless they become.

As their fears spread and grow in intensity, they encompass and distort more of reality until doing anything becomes impossible, because everything is charged with terrifying implications. Thus, neurotic Fives may begin to be incapacitated by phobias. Inanimate objects take on a sinister appearance—the ceiling is about to collapse on them, their armchair may swallow them up, the television is giving them brain cancer. They may also experience hallucinations—hearing voices or having grossly distorted visual perceptions. They begin to experience their bodies as alien, perceiving their physical selves as turning against them just as the environment has seemed to turn against them. Neurotic Fives cannot rest or sleep or distract themselves, because they must be vigilant—and because they cannot turn off their minds. As a result, they become physically exhausted, which only compounds their problems.

Even average Fives can have trouble sleeping, but unhealthy Fives literally cannot sleep. They are afraid of being more vulnerable to malevolent forces while they sleep and are also afraid of their dreams, which can be intensely violent and disturbing. They may increase their drug or alcohol use as a way of shutting down their minds, but this only adds to their exhaustion. Sleeplessness heightens the intensity of their thoughts, leading to hallucinations. The childhood monsters in the closet become real for them. Their fear and insomnia wear them down physically, leaving them emotionally volatile and physically fragile.

What begins to frighten neurotic Fives even more is that their thoughts seem to have a life of their own. Their thoughts are uncontrollable, scaring them when they do not want to be scared. Their minds race wildly and they become terrified by fears from which they cannot possibly escape, since, after all, their fears originate in themselves. Like Dr. Frankenstein, they are in danger of being destroyed by processes to which they themselves have given life.

Their healthy ability to find connections and to draw conclusions from disparate facts now works against them. Mental connections go haywire; they relate things which have no basis in fact, yet neurotic Fives are absolutely convinced that they are related. The behavior of birds becomes indicative of political trends. The number of raisins in a bowl of cereal portends the number of months to global cataclysm. Unhealthy Fives see existence as pointless and horrifying, yet constantly assign sinister meanings to trivial daily phenomena.

Unhealthy Fives are unable to stop the destructive force of their distorted thinking because they have cut themselves off from almost all of the constructive outlets for their tremendous mental energies. Their minds have become like a light bulb with more electricity coursing through its filament than it is designed to handle—five hundred watts through a one-hundred-watt bulb. Their thoughts blaze with a terrifying intensity which is rapidly burning them up. They cannot stop their horrific thoughts and fantasies and are almost completely incapable of doing anything positive for themselves. Worse, they resist all help from others, fearing that they will become even more powerless by accepting assistance. Getting help would also be the final confirmation of their own uselessness, their own inability to cope. They are likely to avoid or flee anyone reaching out to them.

Unhealthy Fives would like to destroy everything, so detestable has the world become in their eyes. Their rage, fear, and aggressions have become all-consuming and overwhelming, yet Fives are still unable to act or to discharge their destructive impulses and feelings. Their actions become erratic and irrational, even frightening, but they are still only minor responses to the eruptions of chaos in their psyches.

Life becomes unbearable: they seem to see too much, as if their eyelids had been removed. But the truth is that their minds are devouring them. The world becomes filled with terrors because their minds are filled with terrors. No part of their mind offers any solace or comfort.

Level 9: The Imploding Schizoid

To exert what little control remains over their growing terror and despair, neurotic Fives attempt to use the same defenses they have used all along—detachment and compartmentalization—but at this stage of pathology, these methods are ineffective at holding their fears at bay. They become increasingly schizoid, splitting off from terrifying parts of their psyches and identifying with whatever remaining ideas or fantasies offer some sense of power over their disintegration. But the relentless force of their fear keeps breaking through, leaving Fives feeling that they have no safe space left, even in their minds.

Ultimately, neurotic Fives come to believe that they can no longer defend themselves from hostile forces in the world or from the terrors in their own minds. In fact, most Fives at this Level cannot distinguish between these two realms: they have collapsed into one continuous experience of pain and horror. At this point, Fives want everything to stop. They want cessation, to end all experience in oblivion. There are two main ways that they are likely do this.

The first and most obvious of these is suicide. Like unhealthy Fours, neurotic Fives are likely to take their own lives, although for somewhat different reasons. Fours destroy themselves out of self-hatred and to silently accuse those who they feel have let them down. Fives tend to commit suicide because they see life as meaningless and horrifying. There is simply no point in continuing to exist. (Of course Fives with a Four-wing and Fours with a Five-wing will display some combination of these motivations.) All that unhealthy Fives perceive in themselves and the world fills them with terror and nausea. They conclude that the only way to stop their horrible experiences is to stop all experience. Like Hamlet, the prospect of “not being” becomes a “consummation devoutly to be wished.”

If they do not commit suicide, unhealthy Fives “solve” the problem of how to control their minds, especially the overwhelming anxiety produced by their consuming phobias, by unconsciously splitting consciousness into two parts. Neurotic Fives retreat into that part of themselves which seems safe, regressing into an autistic-like state which resembles psychosis.

At this final Level, Fives may defend themselves from reality by unconsciously cutting themselves off from every connection with it. To put this another way, unhealthy Fives are so terrorized by their thoughts that they must get rid of them somehow. They do so by identifying with the emptiness that remains within themselves when they detach from their remaining identifications. In effect, they detach themselves from themselves, like parents who, to stop being tormented by the memories of a dead child, throw away everything that reminds them of the child. The result is that neurotic Fives live in a totally empty house—the self which has been purged of everything that reminds them of their terrifying and painful attachments to the world.

Thus, neurotic Fives deteriorate into a state of inner emptiness and, if they continue to live this way, in all probability into a form of schizophrenia. *

All their former intellectual intensity and capacity for involvement is gone. Fives at this stage are utterly isolated from their environment, from other people, and from their inner life—from their ability to think, to feel, and to do.

Unhealthy Fives have finally succeeded in putting distance between themselves and the environment, although at the price of completely removing themselves from it through suicide or a schizoid break. The irony is, however, that Fives retreat from reality to gain the time and space to build their confidence and ability to deal with life, but they ultimately destroy their own confidence and talents, even their own life, through their fear and isolation. Those Fives who do not take their own lives may end up living a life of helplessness, dependency, or incarceration—the very situation they most feared—as a result of severe psychotic breaks with reality. In a final effort to escape from the horrors around them, Fives attempt to remove themselves from the environment. But what they have removed themselves from is not actually reality, but the projection of their anxieties about reality. They have succeeded only in removing themselves from their thoughts and feelings. Once neurotic Fives have done this, they become unable to cry out to anyone from the void they have created within themselves. All is emptiness within the abyss of the purged self.

THE DYNAMICS OF THE FIVE

The Direction of Disintegration: The Five Goes to Seven

Starting at Level 4, Fives under stress will begin to exhibit many of the qualities of average to unhealthy Sevens. Average Fives tend to retreat from connection with others and from activities in the world which they fear they will be unable to accomplish. Thus they become increasingly narrow in their focus and concerns. The move to Seven can be seen as an unconscious reaction to this shrinking of the Five’s world, albeit in the scattered, hyperactive discharge of anxiety found in the average to unhealthy Seven.

At Level 4, Fives are focusing their energies in studying, practicing, and preparing. They do not feel confident to enter the arena of life and believe that further developing their knowledge and skills will give them the protection they need to survive. Along with this, however, comes a desire for variety and a restlessness of mind characteristic of type Seven. Also like Sevens, Fives at this Level are constantly acquiring information, building their collections of music, books, and videos, or whatever else captures their interest. They move from one topic to another, looking for the subject that will satisfy them, for the project they can really get involved with. But in this state of restlessness, none of their pursuits are entirely satisfactory to them.

At Level 5, Fives have become even more preoccupied and involved with their projects and ideas. They are beginning to isolate themselves socially and to become more focused on their thoughts than on the world around them. Fives begin to be starved for stimulation, and under stress may begin to involve themselves with a wide variety of experiences which do not relate directly to their central projects or motivations. They distract themselves with video games, movies, and science fiction and horror novels. They love to let their minds free-associate, and can enjoy moments of silliness and offbeat humor which often surprise the people around them. Fives under stress may also develop a taste for nightlife, exploring restaurants, bars, and nightclubs—often as voyeurs. They will usually be secretive about this, however, and few of their friends will be aware of this aspect of their lives. As their anxiety escalates, so does their desire for distraction and stimulation.

At Level 6, Fives are becoming more fearful, and despair of ever finding a niche for themselves. They become threatened by most interactions with others and can be antagonistic and provocative in defense of their intellectual or creative “turf.” They get into high gear in their avoidance of anxiety, and can be insensitive and aggressive in their pursuit of whatever they want at the time. The jaded, calloused qualities of the Seven only reinforce the Five’s growing cynicism, making them impatient with people and extremely hardened in their view of the world. Some may find them wild and exciting at this level, but most people are put off by their intense, bristling energy. Further, Fives under stress will not hesitate to use drugs or alcohol to quell their anxieties. They will pursue whatever offers them relief from their pain and fears, even if their escape is costly and short-lived.

At Level 7, unhealthy Fives are extremely isolated, cut off from contact with others and the world, and consequently have no constructive outlets for their inner intensity. When they go to Seven, they discharge this energy in a variety of escapist behaviors, which only makes them more dissipated and incapable. Unhealthy Fives lurch from an isolated, fearful state to one of wild activity. Their minds are beginning to run out of control, and when they can no longer contain their fear, this enormous mental turbulence gets acted out in impulsive and often irresponsible ways. They lunge into mindless activity, by which they succeed only in getting themselves into worse trouble and more serious conflicts with the environment. They are irrational, have extremely poor judgment, and make poor choices about which actions to take. When others question their self-destructive escapism, their responses can be abusive and infantile.

At Level 8, Fives are full of terrors and cannot distinguish the horrific images that erupt from their unconscious from reality. Under increased stress, their behavior becomes manic and reckless. Moving to Seven now, deteriorated Fives go totally out of control. Some of the terrible things they have feared may actually happen as a result of their erratic and irresponsible behavior. And as fearful as Fives have become, they are often heedless and unaware of real dangers. For example, they may be killed—not because they are devoured by their furniture or exposed to death rays from their television, but because, not watching where they are going, they get run over by a truck. Out-of-control Fives are reckless and accident-prone: they may be poisoned, not by the KGB but because they mistakenly ate something they should not have. Neurotic Fives need to reestablish contact with reality (particularly the positive aspects of it), although at this Level they are completely incapable of doing so. They act impulsively, erratically, and hysterically, like a manic-depressive Seven, becoming increasingly unstable and unpredictable.

At Level 9, Fives are consumed with terror and are desperate to escape the horrors they perceive around them. Similarly, they cannot find anything in themselves which inspires confidence or gives them any sense that they will be able to cope with the rest of their lives. Fearing that they have reached some sort of horrible dead end, they may compulsively do permanent harm to themselves or someone else. Even if they do not kill themselves, their reckless activities may well have severely damaged their health and limited their ability to pursue any further activities. Like unhealthy Sevens, they are debilitated, burned-out, and paralyzed with fear. As anxiety reaches an ever new pitch, they may do something irrevocable, such as impulsively killing someone or committing suicide.

The Direction of Integration: The Five Goes to Eight

Fives typically do not feel that they know enough to act: there is always more to know. They will always feel insecure until they have mastered the real world and are not simply masters of their own minds. From a psychoanalytic point of view, their egos are typically too weak for the ids—their aggressions and other impulses tend to overpower their minds.

This no longer happens to healthy, integrating Fives because they have incorporated their perceptions of the world into themselves by identifying with them instead of merely observing them. They no longer identify just with their thoughts, but also with the objects of their thoughts. Thus, integrating Fives have overcome their fear of the environment and are learning to trust it. Hence their self-confidence grows, after the manner of healthy Eights.

When they go to Eight, Fives also realize that, as little as they think they know, it is still more than almost anyone else. They also realize that they do not have to know absolutely everything before they can act. They will learn more as they do more; they will be able to solve new problems as they arise. They understand that they will know what they need to know when they need to know it. Their confidence will come not from some collection of skills or some vast body of information that they have memorized, but from a real connection with their presence in the world. They then experience themselves not as separate from the world, not as a helpless speck, but as a powerful, integral part of it.

Integrating Fives act from a realization of their own genuine mastery. While they do not know everything, they know enough to lead others with confidence. The correctness of their ideas has been so well confirmed by reality that they no longer fear acting. They acquire the courage it takes to put their ideas, and consequently themselves, on the line. Thus, integrating Fives realize that they are able to contribute something worthwhile to others. As a result, their thoughts are finally given expression in action and possibly in leadership. Integrating Fives show others how to do what only they know how to do. And, as we have seen, the practical value of their ideas may be incalculable.

THE MAJOR SUBTYPES OF THE FIVE

The Five with a Four-Wing: “The Iconoclast”

The traits of the Five and those of the Four reinforce each other in many ways. Both Five and Four are withdrawn types: they turn to the inner world of their imagination to defend their egos and to reinforce their sense of self. They both feel that something essential in themselves must be found before they can live their lives completely. Fives lack the confidence to act, and Fours lack a strong, stable sense of identity. Thus, Fives with a Four-wing have difficulty connecting with others and staying grounded. People of this subtype are more emotional and introverted than Fives with a Six-wing, although paradoxically, they tend to be more sociable than the other subtype. As a result of their Four component, they are also more interested in the personal and intrapsychic. The two types also have some significant differences in their approach. Fives are cerebral, holding experience at arm’s length, while Fours internalize everything to intensify their feelings. Despite these differences—or because of them—these two personality types make one of the richest subtypes, combining possibilities for outstanding artistic as well as intellectual achievement. Noteworthy examples of this subtype include Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenburg, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Cage, John Lennon, k. d. lang, Laurie Anderson, James Joyce, Emily Dickinson, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Buster Keaton, Gary Larson, Stephen King, Tim Burton, Clive Barker, Franz Kafka, Umberto Eco, Jean-Paul Sartre, Oriana Fallaci, Glenn Gould, Peter Serkin, Hannah Arendt, Kurt Cobain, and Vincent van Gogh.

In healthy people of this subtype, we find the union of intuition and knowledge, sensitivity and insight, aesthetic appreciation and intellectual endowments. Fives with a Four-wing are likely to be involved in the arts as writers, directors, designers, musicians, composers, choreographers, and so forth. This subtype has been somewhat overlooked in many descriptions of Fives because they do not fit the stereotype of the academic/scientific Five (the Five with a Six-wing). This subtype is more synthetic in its thinking, pulling things together and seeking out new ways of looking at things. Also, Fives with a Four-wing tend to utilize their imaginations more than the analytic, systematic parts of the mind which are more the domain of the other subtype. If they are involved in science, Fives with a Four-wing are drawn to those areas in which there is less emphasis on experimentation and data collection than on intuition and comprehensive vision. This subtype is particularly aware of—and on the lookout for—the beauty in a mathematical formula, for example. For this subtype, beauty is one of the indications of truth, because the order which beauty represents is a confirmation of the objective lightness of an idea. One of the foremost strengths of healthy Fives with a Four-wing lies precisely in their intuition, since intuition helps them uncover areas of knowledge where their conscious thoughts have not yet ventured. The Fourwing adds a desire to find a unique, personal vision to the curiosity and perceptiveness of the Five, and the result is a propensity to “tinker” with familiar forms until they become something almost unrecognizable. In talented Fives with a Four-wing this can lead to startling innovations in their chosen fields of endeavor.

In Average Fives with a Four-wing, the Four-wing adds emotional depth, but causes difficulties in sustaining efforts and in working with others. Fives with a Four-wing are more independent than Fives with a Six-wing and resist having structures and deadlines imposed on them. There can be an off-putting detachment from the environment, both because they are involved in their thoughts and because they are introverted and emotionally self-absorbed. Analytic powers may be used to keep people at arm’s length rather than to understand them more deeply. Emotionally delicate, people of this subtype can be moody and hypersensitive to criticism, particularly regarding the value of their work or ideas, since this impinges directly upon self-esteem. Both component types tend to withdraw from people and be reclusive. They can be highly creative and imaginative, envisioning alternate realities in great detail, but can get lost in their own cerebral landscapes. The Four-wing gives a propensity to fantasizing, but with the Five with the Four-wing, the subject matter tends toward the surreal and fantastic rather than the romantic. Individuals of this subtype can become highly impractical, spending most of their time reading, playing intellectual games, or specializing in trivia. There is often an attraction to dark, forbidden subject matter or to any way of self-expression which would disturb or upset others. Some Fives with a Four-wing become fascinated with the macabre and the horrific. As they become more impractical and fearful about their possibilities in life, one typical solution is to find emotional solace in various forms of self-indulgence—in alcohol, drugs, or sexual escapades.

Unhealthy persons of this subtype may fall prey to debilitating depressions yet be disturbed by aggressive impulses. Envy of others mixes with contempt for them; the desire to isolate the self from the world mixes with regret that it must be so. Intellectual conflicts make their emotional lives seem hopeless, while their emotional conflicts make intellectual work difficult to sustain. Moreover, if this subtype becomes neurotic, it is one of the most alienated of all of the personality types: profoundly hopeless, nihilistic, self-inhibiting, isolated from others, and full of self-hatred. Unhealthy Fives with a Four-wing retreat into a very bleak, minimal existence, attempting to cut off from all needs. The self-rejection and despair of the Four combines with the cynical nihilism of the Five to create a worldview that is relentlessly negative and terrifying. Social isolation, addiction, and chronic depression are common. Suicide is a real possibility.

The Five with a Six-Wing: “The Problem Solver”

This subtype is the one that has been most often associated with Fives—the intellectual who is interested in science, technology, acquiring facts and details. Fives with a Six-wing are the “analysts” and “cataloguers” of their environments; they are problem solvers and excel at dissecting the components of a problem or thing to discover how it works. The traits of the Five and those of the Six-wing combine to produce one of the most “difficult” of the personality types to contact intimately or to sustain a relationship with. Both components, the Five and the Six, are in the Thinking Triad, and Fives with a Six-wing are perhaps the most intellectual of all the subtypes. They also tend to be more disengaged from their feelings than Fives with a Four-wing. Persons of this subtype have problems trusting others, both because they are essentially Fives and because the Six-wing reinforces anxiety, making any kind of risk taking in relationships difficult. However, the coping mechanisms of the Five and Six are somewhat at odds, creating an inner tension between the two components. Fives find security by withdrawing from others while Sixes find security by working cooperatively with others. Hence, their interpersonal relations are erratic, and in general are not an important part of their lives. Noteworthy examples of this subtype include Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Sigmund Freud, Simone Weil, Jacob Bronowski, Charles Darwin, Edward O. Wilson, Karl Marx, James Watson, Ursula K. LeGuin, Alfred Hitchcock, Doris Lessing, Cynthia Ozick, Bobby Fischer, B. F. Skinner, Isaac Asimov, Howard Hughes, Ezra Pound, and Theodore Kaczynski.

Healthy people of this subtype are more extroverted and focused on the external world than Fives with a Four-wing. They are not particularly introspective, preferring to observe and understand the world around them. Healthy Fives with a Six-wing observe the world with extraordinary clarity, combining the Five’s drive for mastery with the Six’s quest for certainty. The result is a gift for drawing meaningful conclusions from disparate facts, and an ability to make predictions based on those conclusions. They are often drawn to technical subjects, engineering, science, and philosophy, as well as inventing and repair work. The Six-wing gives this subtype a greater ability to cooperate with others and to bring a disciplined, persistent approach to their endeavors. There is more aptitude for and interest in the practical matters of life, and with sufficient talent, Fives with a Six-wing can combine their innovation with business savvy, sometimes with very lucrative results. Their attention is more often directed at objects than at people, although they identify strongly with key people in their lives. They may feel things deeply, but are extremely restrained in their emotional expression. In them we find an intellectual playfulness, a good sense of humor, as well as other attractive, lovable qualities. If others have been tested and permitted to come closer, they discover that people of this subtype have a deep capacity for friendship and commitment. There is also an endearing element in their desire to be accepted by others, and even if they are sometimes socially clumsy, others cannot help but be touched by their eagerness to reach out to people.

However, average persons of this subtype generally have problems with relationships. The Six-wing provides good organizational abilities and an endearing personal quality, but also adds to the Five’s anxiety and fearfulness. They do not seem to know what to do with their feelings, much less how to express them directly. Hence we find an insensitivity to their own feelings and emotional needs, as well as to the feelings and emotional needs of others. They have little awareness about how they communicate themselves to others. (They are the classic intellectual nerd, the socially inept oddball.) Average Fives with a Six-wing can become extremely preoccupied, theoretical, and absent-minded. They are totally wrapped up with intellectual pursuits and live completely in their minds, immersing themselves in their work to the exclusion of everything else. When interpersonal conflicts arise, average Fives with a Six-wing avoid resolving problems by burying themselves even more deeply in their intellectual work, and by employing passive-aggressive techniques, putting off people and problems rather than dealing with them directly. They can be rebellious and argumentative for no apparent reason, although something may have touched off unconscious emotional associations. Fives with a Six-wing tend to cling more tenaciously to their views and theories (reductionism) and to antagonize people who disagree with them, whereas Fives with a Four-wing tend to reject all meaning (nihilism) and to disturb the certainty of people who seem secure.

Unhealthy people of this subtype tend to be suspicious of people and to have counterphobic, contentious, and volatile reactions to others. They are extremely fearful of intimacy of any sort and can be highly unstable, with paranoid tendencies. Unconsciously seeking rescue, they also fearfully reject and antagonize their supporters. The isolation and mental distortion we see in unhealthy Fives are reinforced by the Six-wing’s paranoia, inferiority feelings, and conviction of being persecuted. Neurotic Fives with a Six-wing ultimately become extremely phobic, projecting dangers everywhere while retreating from all social interaction. They may lash out at imagined enemies, sometimes with lethal results. Psychotic breaks and madness are possible.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

Taking an overall view of the Five, we can see that there has been a struggle between various pairs of polar opposites: between thinking and doing, between a fascination with the world and a fear of the world, between identification with others and rejection of them, between love and hate. This process of attraction to and repulsion from the environment as a whole began with their ambivalence toward their parents. But unfortunately, what happens is that Fives gradually become so obsessed with defending themselves from potential threats from the environment—that is, from whatever they see as harmful and dangerous—that they also exclude the good. Eventually, there is nothing in the world with which Fives can identify, nothing true or valuable in which they can believe. The final result is total nihilism: there is nothing left to which they can attach themselves.

Like every other personality type which becomes gripped in the downward spiral of neurosis, Fives bring about the very thing they most fear: that they are helpless, useless, and incompetent. The irony is that they have become helpless and incompetent because they have rejected attachment to everything. And by intensifying their involvement with their mental processes, instead of finding security or power, Fives have brought about their own insecurity and powerlessness.

It is a tragic end. If there is something perverse and dark—even demonic—about Fives, it is that to protect themselves they have relentlessly repulsed the world and other human beings. What then is left? Only a fascination with—and a terrifying attraction to—the darkness.