#Visual Verbal Journal

[palephx]

A journal page of mine from about 1989.

I find it both interesting and satisfying that I've lived long enough to understand whatever the fuck I was internally screaming at 17.

[dandelionsresilience]

whether the internet becomes an intolerable surveillance state, ubiquitous subscription model, or unusably ad- or AI-ridden shithole, I think we need to remember

how to do things offline

either on your personal hard drive (just because it’s an app doesn’t mean the information is stored in your device) or on paper. I’m not saying the collapse of the internet is imminent, and I’m not suggesting we do everything completely without technology, or even stop using it until we have to. (to be clear, I also don’t think the internet will just blink out of existence, suddenly stop being a thing at all; rather I think it might continue to lose its usefulness to the point where it’s impossible to get anything done. anyway) but some people may have forgotten how we got by before the internet (I almost have!), and the younger generation might not have experienced it at all.

I figure most people probably use the internet mainly for communication with friends and family, entertainment and creation (eg. writing), and looking up how to do things, so here’s how to do those things offline:

First and most importantly, download everything important to you onto at least one hard drive and at least one flashdrive! files can get corrupted and hardware can get damaged or lost, but as long as you keep backup copies, you have much-closer-to-guaranteed access versus hoping a business doesn’t decide to paywall, purge, or otherwise revoke your access. I would recommend getting irreplaceable photos printed as well

download and/or print/write down:

anything important to you - photos/videos, journals, certificates, college transcripts

contact info - phone numbers and/or addresses of friends/family (know how to contact them if you can’t use your favourite messaging app), doctors (open hours would be good too), veterinarians if you have pets, and work

how-to’s - recipes (one, two), emergency preparedness (what do I do if… eg. I smell gas)

other things you might google: cleaning chemicals to NOT mix, what laundry tag symbols mean, people food dogs and cats can and can’t eat, plant toxicity to pets

and know offline ways to find things out - local radio station, newspaper, a nearby highway rest area might have a region map, public libraries usually have a bunch of resources

also, those of you who get periods should strongly consider not using period tracking apps! here’s how to track your period manually

free printable period tracker templates (no printer? public libraries usually charge a few cents per page, or you can recreate it by hand)

moving on to entertainment, you can still get most media for free! it’s completely legal to download your favourite movies to your own personal hard drive, you just can’t sell or distribute copies (not legal advice)

movies: wcostream.tv (right click the player) - the url changes every once in a while but usually redirects; I recently noticed that it’s hiding a lot of movies behind “premium,” so it may or may not work anymore | download youtube videos

music: how to get music without streaming it | legal free downloads

games: steamunlocked.net - doesn’t have every game and can be slow to update, but very reliable

books: free online libraries | legal free downloads

otherwise passing time:

active outdoor games

for road trips (social verbal games)

for when power’s out

for sheltering in place (not all offline, but good ideas)

board games (often found at thrift stores)

ad-free customisable games collection (mobile)

read, write, draw, or whatever your craft is, sing, dance, clean, reorganise, take a bath

go outside - excuses include napping (if safe), eating, reading, finding cool plants/animals/rocks, playing with the dog

places to go include:

zoos and museums can be surprisingly cheap

parks and nature preserves

library, mall, or game shop

and a few miscellaneous things for good measure:

time budgeting | household management

how to use a planner | I’ve had success with visually blocked-out schedules like these

please add on if you have any other offline alternatives to common uses of the internet!

[cyberclouddream]

Inheritances from Mother

This can also be hidden or suppressed aspects of your mother or key maternal figure.

Aries/Mars in the 12th House

sharp intense gaze with bright eyes; high energy levels or quick metabolism; strong or angular facial features, like prominent cheekbones

impulsiveness or eagerness to take action; competitive streak, or a natural drive to "win" or come first; very direct communication style, often blunt or straightforward

prone to headaches or stress-related tension; strong cardiovascular system; quick recovery from minor injuries or illness

Talents: strong athletic ability; natural leadership skills; starting projects enthusiastically; rallying people together

Mars: hidden injuries or tendencies to ignore signs or stress or fatigue; tend to have sudden bursts of energy followed by exhaustion, benefiting from alone time, repressed anger or competitive spirit

Taurus/Venus in the 12th House

sturdy or well-defined build with natural strength; smooth, often attractive skin; love for physical comforts, like blankets, plush toys, or scented candles

stubbornness and persistence in achieving goals; appreciation for luxury, beauty or sensory pleasure; tendency to take your time, like preferring a steady, relaxed pace

struggles with weight management; sensitive throat or neck, making you prone to colds or allergies; good stamina

Talents: eye for beauty and aesthetics, whether in art or design; culinary skills, particularly at making delicious meals; strong gardening or nurturing abilities

Venus: tendencies towards indulgence or escapism, particularly through food and comfort, which can lead to weight fluctuations or emotional eating

Gemini/Mercury in the 12th House

quick movements and expressive hands; youthful appearance, often look younger than their age; clear, communicative voice, often melodic/musical or chatty

curiosity or thirst for knowledge; "gift of gab", with a tendency to talk a lot, like carrying a conversation for ages without breaking a sweat; restless mind, always jumping from what idea to the next

energetic but may experience anxiety or insomnia; respiratory issues, like allergies or asthma; fast metabolism, tend to keep their weight in check without much effort

Talents: excellent communication skills, both written and verbal; quick adaptability to new situations or environments; talent for storytelling or entertaining others through humor

Mercury: mental restlessness and difficulty expressing feelings; anxiety and overthinking, benefiting from outlets for their thoughts like journaling or talking to friends

Cancer/Moon in the 12th House

round, gentle features or a soft face; sensitive stomach or digestive system; drawn to nostalgic objects, like family heirlooms or photos

deep emotional intuition and empathy; protective instincts, especially toward family or loved ones; moodiness, emotions shift easily

sensitive digestive system, affected by stress or emotions; tendency to hold onto water weight, making hydration important; strong immune system but may feel physically off when emotionally drained

Talents: great at understanding emotions; good intuitive abilities; nurturing skills, whether in caregiving or teaching; strong artistic talents, especially in visual arts or music

Moon: strong connection to your subconscious; strong emotional sensitivity; fluctuating moods or struggles with boundaries

Leo/Sun in the 12th House

thick, voluminous hair that draws attention; strong, upright posture with natural confidence; eye-catching personal style, with a tendency towards bold colors or statement pieces

need for recognition or acknowledgement; big-hearted and generous nature, often giving freely to those they care about; natural leadership qualities, with a tendency to step into authority or inspire others

tend to recover quickly from ailments; prone to heart-related issues, if they don’t manage stress well; high energy levels, benefiting from activities like dancing or sports

Talents: charismatic or performance skills, whether in acting or music; creative talents, particularly in theater or visual arts; strong leadership abilities that motivate and uplift others

Sun: struggles with self-identity and recognition, leading to feelings of insecurity; may experience burnout from needing constant validation, which impacts their mental health and energy levels

Virgo/Mercury in the 12th House

clear, glowing skin due to focus on health and cleanliness; precise, meticulous hand movements or gestures (type to fold a fitted sheet perfectly); good physical health, with a focus on taking care of themselves

always noticing small things or obsessed with details in some way (may ask questions often); analytical thinkers, love to solve problems and make sense of things; super organized, their space tends to be tidy and efficient

health conscious, often focusing on nutrition and wellness; prone to digestive issues due to stress levels or perfectionism; good overall health but may struggle with anxiety or overthinking

Talents: exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail; analytical abilities, particularly in problem-solving or research; talents in health and wellness, whether through fitness or nutrition

Mercury: perfectionism or overcritical thoughts, potentially resulting in anxiety or health issues; difficulty in recognizing own needs

Libra/Venus in the 12th House

symmetrical facial features or well-balanced appearance; graceful movements, often with a sense of poise; knack for fashion, good at stylish or coordinated outfits

diplomatic nature, tends to see all sides; people-pleasing tendencies; love for aesthetics, beauty, and creating balance

prone to stress-related issues, especially when dealing with conflict; strong skin and overall health but may need to watch their weight; social activities often promote your overall wellbeing

Talents: diplomatic skills and ability to meditate conflicts; aesthetic talents, particularly in design or fashion; creative writing skills, especially in poetry or romantic themes

Venus: people-pleasing behaviors that mask your own needs; tendencies to be stressed or anxious in relationships (romantic, platonic, domestic)

Scorpio/Mars/Pluto in the 12th House

intense, piercing eyes that seem to “see through” people; strong physical endurance or resilience; drawn to dark or mysterious objects, like amulets or crystals

super passionate, going all in on what they love; inquisitive nature, having a knack for uncovering hidden truths; natural air of mystery, keeping people guessing

strong stamina and resilience; prone to emotional stress, which can manifest as physical symptoms; strong immune system, tends to recover well from illness

Talents: ability to understand complex emotional dynamics; talents in investigation, whether in research or detective work; creative expression through deep, impactful storytelling or art

Pluto: struggles with deep-seated fears or hidden emotions, which can manifest as intense psychological experiences

Sagittarius/Jupiter in the 12th House

long legs or a tendency towards an athletic build; strong, healthy liver and digestive system; fondness for travel gear or souvenirs from different places

adventurous spirit, always seeking new experiences; optimistic outlook, with a natural sense of humor; restlessness, always seeking freedom or something new

often need regular physical activity to feel their best; prone to accidents or injuries from their adventurous spirit; good digestion but needs to monitor caffeine intake

Talents: natural teaching abilities, especially in philosophical or cultural subjects; gifted storytelling or public speaking skills that inspire others; athletic talents, particularly in outdoor sports or activities

Jupiter: tendency to seek escapism through travel or adventure; struggles with excessive optimism, leading to disappointment when reality doesn’t match their expectations

Capricorn/Saturn in the 12th House

strong bone structure, often with prominent features; natural resilient, especially to illness; inclination towards classic or timeless objects, like leather wallets or old watches

strong sense of responsibility and duty; practicality and grounded approach to life; discipline and perseverance, often willing to work hard

strong bones; prone to stress-related issues, especially from work; tend to have good long-term health habits, benefiting from routine and discipline

Talents: strong work ethic and determination to achieve goals; natural leadership skills, especially in structured environments; talents in business or finance; particularly in strategic planning

Saturn: feelings of isolation or self-doubt, often related to stress-related health issues; challenges with letting go of control

Aquarius/Saturn/Uranus in the 12th House

unique facial features or unconventional beauty; slim or wiry build, with a tendency towards quick movements; love for tech or quirky objects that showcase their individuality

independent spirit, needing their freedom and space to be themselves; unconventional thinking, often challenging norms; friendly yet somewhat detached in social situations, hard to read sometimes

generally good health, but may experience sudden illnesses due to their busy lifestyle; prone to circulatory issues or cold extremities due to their “unique” physiology

Talents: innovative think and problem-solving abilities; talents in technology, science, or humanitarian efforts; creative expression through unique art forms or performances

Uranus: unconventional thought patterns and a sense of detachment; struggles with feeling misunderstood, which can affect emotional health and relationships

Pisces/Jupiter/Neptune in the 12th House

dreamy, often soft or gentle eyes; sensitive feet or appreciation for comfortable shoes (like therapeutic socks or shoes); drawn to water-related objects or environments, like the beach, rivers, or fountains

highly intuitive and in tune with emotions; imaginative, with a natural artistic or creative flair; empathetic and compassionate, often feeling others’ emotions deeply

sensitive immune system, often catch colds or infections more easily; prone to stress-related issues, especially if they don’t take care of their mental health; tend to escape through food or habits that aren’t always the healthiest

Talents: creative abilities in music, art, or writing that resonates with others; strong intuition and empathetic skills; tend to be good listeners; talents in healing or counseling, particularly in spiritual or holistic practices

Neptune: deep connection to collective unconscious, leading to heightened sensitivity and empathy; struggles with escapism; need to be mindful of their emotional boundaries

[grimoirey]

✨ The Clairs ✨

Main Types of Clairs

Clairvoyance

(Clear Seeing)

The ability to perceive visual information beyond the physical senses. This can include seeing images, colors, symbols, or even visions of future events.

Visualization Exercises

Sit quietly, close your eyes, and visualize objects, scenes, or colors in your mind’s eye. Practice daily with simple images and gradually move to more complex visuals to strengthen your “inner sight.” Meditation on the third eye (between the eyebrows) can also help.

Clairaudience

(Clear Hearing)

The ability to hear sounds or voices that aren’t audible to others, often experienced as inner guidance, hearing someone’s thoughts, or messages from spirits or guides.

Sound Awareness Meditation

Focus on ambient sounds around you, then shift to imagining sounds or inner voices in your mind. Practice discerning subtle sounds in your environment and try listening to soft, repetitive sounds like a ticking clock, letting them guide you inward to hear more subtle messages.

Clairsentience

(Clear Feeling)

A heightened sense of feeling, where someone can intuitively sense emotions, physical sensations, or energies of others or places. This includes physical sensations that convey information.

Body Scanning and Emotion Sensing

Practice a body scan by closing your eyes and paying attention to sensations in each body part. Then, imagine yourself in various environments and “tune in” to sense the emotions associated with each. Journaling afterward can help you interpret the emotions and sensations you pick up.

Claircognizance

(Clear Knowing)

A strong inner knowledge or “gut feeling” without any logical explanation. People with this gift receive sudden insights or knowledge about a person, place, or event.

Intuitive Journaling

Start with a question and free-write the answers that come to mind without filtering them. Over time, this practice can reveal patterns and strengthen your intuitive knowing. Meditation can also help you recognize the feeling of knowing distinct from thought.

Clairalience

(Clear Smelling)

The ability to smell scents that don’t have a physical source nearby, like smelling someone’s perfume after they've passed on or a certain aroma associated with a place or memory.

Scent Memory Practice

Smell different essential oils or spices, then close your eyes and try to recall the scent without it being present. Gradually, this can enhance your ability to “smell” or recall scents intuitively, which may help with connecting to people or memories associated with those smells.

Clairgustance

(Clear Tasting)

The ability to taste something without it being present, often linked to memories or associations that provide information about someone or something.

Taste Meditation

Focus on tasting different foods mindfully, paying attention to each layer of flavor. Then, try to “imagine” the taste of different foods without eating them, as this practice can enhance your ability to pick up tastes associated with people or memories.

Clairtangency

(Clear Touching or Psychometry)

The ability to receive information by touching an object, which can hold energy or memories of people or events connected to it.

Object Reading Practice

Hold an object that belongs to someone and tune into any feelings, images, or thoughts that arise. Let your impressions flow without judgment. Practicing with a variety of objects can help refine your ability to pick up on energies connected to them.

Other Types of Clairs

Clairempathy

(Clear Emotion)

Similar to clairsentience but focused on emotions. People with this ability feel the emotions of others deeply, often as if they were their own, and may intuitively understand others’ emotional states without verbal communication.

Emotion Meditation and Energy Shielding

Practice by focusing on your own emotions and then imagine how others may feel in certain situations. To avoid emotional overwhelm, also practice grounding and shielding by visualizing yourself surrounded by protective light.

Clairkinesthesia

(Clear Movement Awareness)

The ability to feel or sense physical movement that hasn’t occurred yet or even movement on an energetic level, such as shifts in someone’s energy field.

Body Awareness Exercises

Practice sensing subtle movements, such as the feeling of a breeze or the shift of your own muscles. You can also try gentle tai chi or qi gong movements to help you become more sensitive to the flow of energy and movement.

Clairinspiration/Claircreativity

(Clear Inspiration/Creativity)

The sense of receiving creative ideas, such as art, music, writing, or inventions, seemingly from beyond one's own conscious mind. Many artists, writers, and musicians describe a feeling of “receiving” their work from an outside source.

Open-Ended Creative Meditation

Sit quietly with an open mind, asking for inspiration or guidance on a question. Remain in a relaxed, open state, and note any ideas that “pop up.” Regular meditation or creative flow exercises, such as drawing without a plan, can encourage inspiration.

Clairpresence

(Clear Presence Awareness)

The ability to sense the presence of a spirit, entity, or energy without necessarily seeing or hearing it. People often describe this as the feeling of “not being alone” or of a particular being nearby.

Awareness Meditation for Presence Sensing

Practice meditating in silence, attuning to the feeling of your environment. Occasionally pause to sense if there is a “shift” in the atmosphere, such as a feeling of warmth or cold. This helps you discern subtle presences.

Claircosmology

(Clear Universal Knowledge)

This refers to a sense of connection with universal or cosmic knowledge, as if receiving insights about humanity, existence, or spiritual truths. It’s often described as a sudden deep understanding of complex, spiritual, or existential concepts.

Contemplative Meditation

Spend time in contemplation of big questions about life, the universe, or spiritual concepts. Keep an open mind and let insights come naturally. Journaling after meditation can help you capture sudden insights or “downloads” related to universal knowledge.

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Fruzsi and the Importance of Her Character in Season 2 of Shadow and Bone

Okay I feel like I have been continuously teasing this post for a ridiculously long time and I have finally gotten around to writing it, I also feel like the fact that I talked about it so much might have built it up to sound bigger than it is but honestly I think that Fruzsi is a FASCINATING character study; I'm very excited to talk about her and have finally found the time (yay!) so hopefully you guys will find this at least a little bit interesting too

Tagging people who registered their interest here but please don’t feel pressured to read <3 @merlinxmagic @girasoljpg @atmosphericwrites @naushtheaspiringauthor @lunarthecorvus

SHOW AND BOOK SPOILERS AHEAD + TALKING ABOUT GRISHAVERSE SETUP & THE CHARACTERS' BACKSTORIES/EXPERIENCES (Mostly Zoya, Genya, Alina, Fruzsi, and Inej)

Super quick recap since of her story so we're on the same page as we begin: Fruzsi first appeared in Season 2 Episode 2 of Shadow and Bone and is a Grisha Tidemaker loyal to the Darkling. Her parents sold her to the Darkling when she was a child, its unclear how old she was, and we should take into consideration in this matter that there is no indication whatsoever that she was ever at the Little Palace since none of the other Grisha seem to recognise or know her and vice versa. She is instrumental in the Darkling's army and receives one of the amplifiers made from Baghra's bones, subsequently learning to manipulate water molecules into ice shafts that she can use as a weapon. She is responsible for Dominik's death towards the end of the season and is subsequently killed by Nikolai.

So right off the bat whenever anyone talks about Fruzsi I tend to see two things: "wannabe Zoya" and “the power of her amplifier was a problem because it will be too difficult to differentiate between amplifiers and parem". I've taked before about my thoughts on amplifiers and parem and why I didn't think it was going to be a problem for the Six of Crows spinoff show (*sobs*) but the general consensus seems to be that not only was Fruzsi an unlikeable character because of her actions, but because she was seen as a only being there to provide an enemy and a hand of the Darkling, and I think that's a real shame because she is a fascinating character and she tells us SO MUCH about the Darkling and other major characters. My personal favourite details about Fruzsi are her parallels with Zoya and the point from which they run opposing, the parallels she has to Genya and Inej and the subsequent parallels that her introduction creates between the Darkling and Heleen Van Houden, and the setup of Fruzsi, Vatra, and the Darkling's other Grisha to create genuine empathy for villainous characters for the reflections of the protagonists we can see in them.

Fruzsi's introduction in episode two begins with the Darkling arriving to see her and saying that she made it in good time - now we don't know where she travelled from, so yeah it could be the Little Palace (he was travelling from the base he set up in episode 1) but personally I don't think that there's much implication she ever lived there considering she doesn't know any of the other Grisha and she doesn't wear a kefta until the Darkling has new ones created for his new army. She's wearing pretty typical clothes that we see of the Ravkan population when we first meet her; a blouse and ankle-length skirt with a long coat, and from the very start is in dark shades that visually connect her to the Darkling in the audience's eye. Although she isn't hesitant to speak to him she shows consistent discomfort around the Darkling, making small steps away from him when he raises his hand and acknowledging non-verbal orders from him with immediate effect, as well as confirming that she never broke her promise to not open the Journal of Morozova without prompting and somewhat hurriedly. The Darkling is actually pretty quiet throughout most of this scene, cutting of Fruzsi's sentences and instructing her but not following any attempts she makes to initiate real conversation. When he tells her to reveal Baghra from behind the waterfall she asks him if he's sure, one of few instances in which she questions him, and after barely a second of maintained eye contact between them she turns away, physically bunching her shoulders and seeming to shrink in on herself, before turning to the waterfall and completing the task in silence. Everything we see of Fruzsi in this scene seems to contradict Baghra's later description of her as "deranged" and I think that this is really very noteworthy, because we start to develop this idea that Fruzsi's actions are different in front of the Darkling than when he isn't present - particularly since we know in this scene that Baghra has not seen the Darkling in weeks and has been alone with Fruzsi during that time. We actually don't see Fruzsi without the Darkling until very late in the show (episode 7), when her anger at the world and her easy ability to command the other Grisha are revealed ("First Army did this [...] If they wear the uniform they are all the same. Kill them all!"). We get this brilliantly foreboding image of her marching so confidently through the carnage with soldiers of both sides running and shouting and fighting and dying all around her while she barely shows any kind of response but to calmly begin her own method of very direct attack against Nikolai after walking through the battle completely untouched. If anything, Fruzsi seems quite unbothered by the entire thing until she fails to kill Nikolai, killing Dominik and several others instead, and screams her frustration before being forced to run for cover from approaching soldiers. After this her attacks are arguably much more emotional because she feels challenged and as though she has failed (relevant as I'll cover later because of the way the Darkling manipulates her), but all of this seemingly culminates only when Vatra dies, and in that moment we get this wonderfully clever shot of them holding each other's hands so that we can see the tattoos (I'm going to rant about the tattoos in this post) and then we see Vatra smiling in her final moments (that's gonna come up again as well). This moment is the most emotional we ever get to see Fruzsi; she looks down at Vatra, sheds a silent tear, and begins to exhibit more power than we have ever seen in her before. It is bare moments after this that she loses her fingers in an attack from Jesper and mere minutes afterwards that Nikolai shoots her in the throat and she dies.

It's confirmed in s2e7 that Fruzsi's parents attempted to sell her to the Darkling and arguably this is where her parallels with Zoya begin - "You remember when your family first brought you to me? The price they demanded when they discovered you were Grisha?" "Perhaps now I can repay the debt" "I would have paid it 100 times over". Ugh this angers me so much. He bought her and she believes, she genuinely believes, that she owes him for that. I'm going to talk about the structure of this relationship really strongly echoing Heleen Van Houden later on but particularly in this moment we understand that there is something here very similar to the Kerch indenture system that I'm actually really glad to see included as part of the worldbuilding and development in the show since we didn't get the opportunity to explore it as much in Kerch (*screams frustrations into the wind*)

Although we sadly didn't get the chance to explore Zoya's story in the show (*cries in cancellation*) it's explained in the final duology of the book series that her mother attempted to sell nine-year-old Zoya as a bride to 63-year-old, very rich, and twice-widowed Valentin Grankin. When Zoya's aunt, Lilyana, attempted to stop the wedding Grankin attacked and nearly killed her; in fear for herself and her aunt Zoya experienced a massive, terrified outburst of power, which was how she discovered she was Grisha, and Lilyana was able to rescue her and take her to Os Alta. My absolute favourite take on Fruzsi is that she is Zoya's Shadow, which is an idea that my friend voiced whilst we were watching the show and we discussed together at length at the time, but that I have never seen anyone talking about online.

The idea of having a Shadow comes from Suli culture and is explained to us in Crooked Kingdom by Inej; whenever a person does wrong it gives life to their shadow, with every action making the Shadow stronger until they are stronger than the original person and the person is defeated by the wrongs they've done - or learns to overcome them and defeat the Shadow. Inej's believes that her Shadow is Dunyasha and she fights her in Crooked Kingdom. I FREAKING LOVE the theory that Fruzsi is Zoya's Shadow because their stories parallel each other very well; both are abused and sold by their families only to be taken in by the Darkling and manipulated into believing that he is their saviour. The Darkling very much works by making others feel that they owe him something for any action he completes, just as we see in his manipulation and abuse of Alina, and Fruzsi and Zoya are prime examples of this. We even have two very similar scene setups between season 1 and season 2 that show us just how similar the Darkling and Zoya are in terms of the pent up rage that they keep private - in season 1 where the Darkling leaves Zoya alone in his room whilst she is trying to initiate intimacy because he is manipulating her and Alina against each other and wants to make Zoya feel like she has been abandoned in favour of a newer, shinier toy and once he's left Zoya screams her frustration and releases a gust of Squaller power that disrupts his chamber, and in season 2 when Fruzsi, in her second appearance (now wearing the new dark kefta design) hesitantly informs the Darkling that David stole Morozova's Journal and is immediately dismissed before the Darkling screams his frustrations and uses the tether to find and haunt Alina. Although this comparison between the Darkling and Zoya is of course more obvious it also gives us an idea of similarities between Zoya and Fruzsi because it extends this implication we have that Fruzsi acts very differently out of the Darkling's presence than in - and considering that at this point we have never seen her without him we have this gathering sense of intrigue about her backstory and her character. In a similar-ish manner we also have the scene in s2e5 when we get another example of the few times Fruzsi attempts to stand up to the Darkling, in this case openly telling him that they would do better to redirect their efforts North because it would be "the more strategic move"; the Darkling's response is to threaten her with his Nichevo'ya and manipulate her in a similar way that he does Zoya by replying "Alina Starkov is worth more than any army. So at the risk of sounding repetitive... find her", actively diminishing Fruzsi when he's been purposefully making her feel important and like she matters to him so that she feels she must redouble her efforts for him to notice and appreciate her and therefore desperately hopes to do a better job of bending to his will, especially since he's basically turned her entire purpose and usefulness to him into brining Alina back to him. Ugh this man i swear. I'm going to go on to talk about parallels between Fruzsi and Genya pretty soon so in this respect as well I want to add emphasis to the fact that when she disagrees with him on a point - and mind you not that she makes any suggestion of betraying his cause but only that she thinks they should take a different tactic to be more successful in it - he uses the presence of the Nichevo'ya to scare her into submission. The next time he gives her an order (to take down the First Army encampments) she agrees immediately and barely speaks to him except to ask "And what of the Sun Summoner?" - And note this is after she has taken Genya to the other Grisha because she was told to show her off as an example.

I have to say that at this point in time I was not expecting her to be the gold mine she became, and it's looking back on it knowing more about her backstory that I notice a lot of smaller details in the way she acts around him that consistently suggest she is afraid of him and I think that is shown really well in Reford's performance, I don't see her getting enough of the praise that she deserves - she was great!

Am I even making sense? Anyway

Fruzsi and Zoya are consistently presented with these similarities and I really love the idea that she represents what Zoya would have become without the influence of our other main characters, particular Alina and Genya. I really like the idea that she's Zoya's Shaodw and a literal, living embodiment of the wrng that Zoya did under the Darkling's command, but the only place that I think this theory falls short is in Fruzsi's death. If Fruzsi was truly Zoya's Shadow then they would have to face each other for one of them to die, but Fruzsi was killed by Nikolai in the aftermath of Dominik's death. However, I also think that there was standing there to start developing something truly, truly poetic in Nikolai killing Zoya's Shadow and Zoya later killing Nikolai's (or maybe even metaphorically doing so in trying to help rid him of the demon??) BUT I GUESS NOW WE'LL NEVER KNOW (*screams*) (*cries*) (*curses Netflix’s name*)

Now moving on to her parallels with Genya and Inej. I think that the loss of Heleen from season 2 (which I’ve shared my thoughts about a bit in the past so won’t go on about now) left a hole that was, in a way I didn’t quite expect, filled more by the Darkling than it was Pekka Rollins. There are multiple quotes from the Darkling this season, mostly directed towards Fruzsi and Genya, that I find to have very specific reminiscence of some of Heleen’s quotes from the the Six of Crows duology and this was the most obvious one for me, and the one that originally made me think of this particular comparison:

"I have always known your worth. Now show me," - the Darkling, s2e7, in the conversation where he specifically states that he bought Fruzsi and she specifically states that she owes him a debt for that

"I know your worth, little Lynx, right down to the cent" - Heleen, Six of Crows, to Inej when torturing Inej with the implication that she intends to find a way to bring her back to the Menagerie ("You'll wear my silks again, I promise")

(Also as a quick addition I think that so much can be said about Rachel Redford's acting in this specific moment of season 2 episode 7 after the Darkling delivers that line. She looks up at him, and the proxemics + their actual heights I must admit have a brilliant added effect to this, with what starts as such genuine sorrow but so quickly turns to such fierce determination before she shows him what she's capable of now that she has the amplifier. After her demonstration she is almost in shock at the revelation of what she was able to do but the pure exultation, the relief, the triumph in her expression does not even come close to existing until the moment that the Darkling says "extraordinary". He's not even looking at her - in fact, I don't doubt it possibly that he wasn't complimenting her herself but simply the creation of the amplifiers and their strength - but the expression on her face then is absolutely unmatched and it speaks VOLUMES) (I genuinely recommend rewatching that moment with this in mind because I cannot stop thinking about it)

And then layered on top of this, we have the tattoos. THE TATTOOS.

I made a specific post about the costuming in season 2, which you can read here if you’d like to, and that covers my thoughts on the new keftas but I didn’t go into detail on the tattoos at the time and I have a lot of thoughts about them. The Grishaverse, mostly the Six of Crows duology, uses tattoos incredibly symbolically and places particular emphasis on choosing to take the mark, creating a massively important bond to something that you deeply care about and will never want to break (gangs, Kaz’s ‘R’ for Rietveld), and being forced to take one on (the pleasure houses, of course most primarily Inej’s Menagerie tattoo). Although we don’t get as much emphasis on this since the show didn’t get the opportunity to explore the gang tattoos yet thus far (and I guess now it won’t *shakes fist at Netflix*) we did have focus surrounding Inej’s Menagerie tattoo and it’s removal in this season and, as much as I wish we’d been able to see her book canon tattoo removal (cut off by a butcher), this side by side comparison of the Grisha being given no option but to take on the amplifying tattoos and Nina using her Grisha power to remove Inej’s tattoo is absolutely fascinating and really well done.

So this for me creates an ongoing comparison between Fruzsi, Genya, and Inej - and taking on what I said about Fruzsi’s apparent absence from the Little Palace despite clearly having an established relationship with the Darkling and having been with him for some time, we can consider the earliest pieces of information we have about Genya’s life. Now it’s a long time since I read the S&B trilogy so I can’t remember if this specific detail is true to book canon but in the show Genya states that the Grisha testers found her when she was seven but that she was gifted to the Queen when she was eleven. We have no information about what happened to her during these four years, and yeah maybe she was at the Little Palace training but we don’t have confirmation of that and I wouldn’t trust the Darkling as far as I could throw him (which probably wouldn’t even crack a metre let’s be real). This also adds a really interesting layer to things with Fruzsi being the one instructed to show Genya off to the other Grisha as an example of what will happen if they try to betray the Darkling because we get this moment when she kneels down to take hold of Genya's chains and they are both sitting in the cage together that I think is really powerful in everything it says about how easily either of them could be in the other's position in that moment but we're also still very aware that Fruzsi has the far more power - or at least an illusion of it. In this same scene Baghra, about Genya, states "she served you loyally since she was a child, endured years of abuse on your orders, and you reduce her to an example? Oh Aleksander, where does this stop?" and honestly that is so brilliantly written (and so brilliantly delivered in the scene) that I don't think I need to say anything on top of it but when we consider this side by side with Fruzsi's position I think that this really is a very powerful parallel and a constant reminder that no-one who places their trust in the Darkling is ever safe, and that pretty much everyone on his side is there because of manipulation and because of abuse - be that abuse from the Darkling or abuse from others that the Darkling has so well learned how to manipulate in ways that are very, very similar to the way Jarl Brum manipulated and abused Matthias (I have written a lot about that too. I have strong feelings.)

I have so much fascination and I feel so much sympathy for Fruzsi and I think that this is one of the things that the show did so fantastically well in her and in the other Grisha on the Darkling’s side who are all manipulated and controlled by him in just the same way our protagonists were, who were ultimately still all very young people who had been attacked and threatened and made unsafe in their home for who they were and who were offered what they believed was the only solution. I think one of the greatest examples of this, other than Fruzsi, is seen in Vatra, the amplified Inferni who is so proud of herself when she brings the Hummingbird down - "Yes! I did it" and btw she says this with such an expression on her face I don't even have the words I would just genuinely recommend you rewatch the scene to get what I'm saying it's s2e7 around 24:30-50 she actually looks so proud of herself she's like a little kid and it's so soul-crushingly clever and incredibly well done and it breaks my heart she's been so successfully manipulated - because she so genuinely believes that she is doing the right thing and she is making a difference for her people, and even when she dies with her hand clutched in Fruzsi's she dies smiling. That girl breaks my heart every time I rewatch, and honestly even though she is presented in a more unlikeable way Fruzsi breaks my heart as well because I can see so much of our beloved characters in her and effectively what could have happened to them and what could have become of them if they hadn’t managed their escape. This duality and constant cause to question the morality of the characters is so brilliantly done and one of the biggest successes of the adaptation considering how well it was done in the books as well but could have been something difficult to translate between medias where exposition is concerned, and I think that Fruzsi was an incredible example of this and that we really should talk about her more

Thanks for reading my nonsense ramblings if you got this far, I hope that it made sense and was at least somewhat interesting <33

[xgeronimowrks]

Some creative ways to incorporate sigils into your daily life:

Draw sigils with water on surfaces before cleaning them, imbuing your cleaning routine with intention.

Carve or paint sigils on candles before burning them.

Draw sigils invisibly using water, salt water, or herbal water on surfaces.

Paint sigils under layers of paint on walls or doors.

Visualize sigils while focusing on their purpose during meditation.

Apply sigils as temporary tattoos or body art for personal intentions.

Incorporate sigils into cooking and baking:

Draw sigils in oil on pans before cooking

Visualize sigils while preparing food

Stamp sigils into cookies or pie crusts

Use sigils in crafting projects like altar cloths, jewelry, or ritual items.

Draw sigils into hot drinks while stirring them.

Create verbal sigils by rearranging letters from your intention into a chant-like phrase.

Develop movement-based sigils using hand gestures, dance, or yoga poses.

Make a sigil rubber stamp to easily apply it to various surfaces.

Embroider sigils onto clothing or accessories.

Use sigils as phone or computer wallpapers.

Incorporate sigils into your journaling or planner layouts.

Create sigil art pieces to display in your home or workspace.

Draw sigils in the steam on mirrors after showers.

These methods allow you to subtly and creatively integrate sigil magic into various aspects of your daily life, making it a more intuitive and personal practice.

[goffilolo]

Watchman Series Theory

I was thinking about the watchman series and one question that came to me was ‘what do all the items have in common?’

An obvious answer would be that they’re clothing items. As such, a fully assembled watchman series might make a full outfit.

But other than the nature of what the items are, their power and ability also come into question. The jinki in the story are all varied in what they are and what they can do, and are highly dependent on the user.  And despite the fact that we have yet to see all the watchman series in the story, I came up with an idea of the potential theme/basis of their powers.

My theory is that the watchman series abilities are based on the 5 senses.

***Also note that for the purpose of this theory, I believe the journal that Regto had on him was not a jinki, only a regular journal that had information on the watchman series***

Touch

Rudo’s gloves give him the ability to turn any broken item he touches into a weapon/tool he can fight with

Smell

Amo’s boots release a smell that alters a person’s perception based on memories making them easy to manipulate

Hearing

We don’t know what the corresponding watchman jinki is, but we do know that it is likely to be responsible for creating chokers that allow people to hear each other and communicate over long distance

Sight

CURRENTLY UNCONFIRMED

This one is only a theory but I believe Zodyl’s coat has a sight related ability based on the clues so far:

The ‘vision’ scene. Unsure if this was meant to be taken literally or just as visual metaphor, but it does give an implication that Zodyl was able to make Rudo see something that he wasn’t able to see himself simply based on a verbal suggestion

The comment from the information broker about Zodyl using the coat rarely, even in front of other vandals suggests that he might not want them to SEE the coat in action. It could be because seeing it would result in them being affected by whatever ability it generates

During his fight with Rudo there was some visual transformation happening. Hasn’t been explained so far, so unsure if it was incomplete, or if it was once again skewed/unreliable perception

Taste

This one has not been mentioned or implied in the story yet and is the odd one out, but once again we haven’t seen all the watchman jinki and all the other ones do fit the theme of 5 senses.

And since we know the watchman series can only be safely used by people who have something 'missing' in them, the jinki related to the senses could correspond with what the person symbolically lacks.

That being said, it is only a theory and I'm not feeling too strongly about whether it turns out true or not, but I do feel it would be a missed opportunity if the watchman abilities did not carry some thematic consistency between them.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Abstract Many teachers and researchers, among others, continue to believe, despite the lack of evidence, that learning will be more effective if educators match their teaching approaches to students’ alleged learning styles. Scholars have called for more research on why the belief in learning styles is so appealing. This conceptual paper suggests four moral intuitions or sensibilities that underlie the appeal: (1) the desire for rational control, (2) our sense of justice, (3) the feeling that everyone is unique, and (4) reverence for the natural. Speaking to these intuitions could strengthen efforts to debunk the myth of learning styles in teacher education.

[..] Experts aren’t sure how the concept spread, but it might have had something to do with the self-esteem movement of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Everyone was special—so everyone must have a special learning style, too. Teachers told students about it in grade school. “Teachers like to think that they can reach every student, even struggling students, just by tailoring their instruction to match each student’s preferred learning format,” said Central Michigan University’s Abby Knoll, a PhD student who has studied learning styles. (Students, meanwhile, like to blame their scholastic failures on their teacher’s failure to align their teaching style with their learning style.)

Either way, “by the time we get students at college,” said the Indiana University professor Polly Husmann, “they’ve already been told ‘You’re a visual learner.’” Or aural, or what have you.

The thing is, they’re not. Or at least, a lot of evidence suggests that people aren’t really one certain kind of learner or another. In a study published last month in the journal Anatomical Sciences Education, Husmann and her colleagues had hundreds of students take the Vark questionnaire to determine what kind of learner they supposedly were. The survey then gave them some study strategies that seem like they would correlate with that learning style. Husmann found that not only did students not study in ways that seemed to reflect their learning style, those who did tailor their studying to suit their style didn’t do any better on their tests.

Husmann thinks the students had fallen into certain study habits, which, once formed, were too hard to break. Students seemed to be interested in their learning styles, but not enough to actually change their studying behavior based on them. And even if they had, it wouldn’t have mattered.

“I think as a purely reflective exercise, just to get you thinking about your study habits, [Vark] might have a benefit,” Husmann said. “But the way we’ve been categorizing these learning styles doesn’t seem to hold up.”

Another study published last year in the British Journal of Psychology found that students who preferred learning visually thought they would remember pictures better, and those who preferred learning verbally thought they’d remember words better. But those preferences had no correlation to which they actually remembered better later on—words or pictures. Essentially, all the “learning style” meant, in this case, was that the subjects liked words or pictures better, not that words or pictures worked better for their memories.

In other words, “there’s evidence that people do try to treat tasks in accordance with what they believe to be their learning style, but it doesn’t help them,” says Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. In 2015, he reviewed the literature on learning styles and concluded that “learning styles theories have not panned out.”

That same year, a Journal of Educational Psychology paper found no relationship between the study subjects’ learning-style preference (visual or auditory) and their performance on reading- or listening-comprehension tests. Instead, the visual learners performed best on all kinds of tests. Therefore, the authors concluded, teachers should stop trying to gear some lessons toward “auditory learners.” “Educators may actually be doing a disservice to auditory learners by continually accommodating their auditory learning style,” they wrote, “rather than focusing on strengthening their visual word skills.”

In our conversation, Willingham brought up another study, published in 2009, in which people who said they liked to think visually or verbally really did try to think that way: Self-proclaimed visualizers tried to create an image, and self-proclaimed verbalizers tried to form words. But, there was a rub, he said: “If you’re a visualizer and I give you pictures, you don’t remember pictures any better than anyone who says they’re verbalizer.”

This doesn’t mean everyone is equally good at every skill, of course. Really, Willingham says, people have different abilities, not styles. Some people read better than others; some people hear worse than others. But most of the tasks we encounter are only really suited to one type of learning. You can’t visualize a perfect French accent, for example.

==

Considering the sources of teacher training, Ed Schools, are extremely highly ideological, the perpetuation of this "neuromyth" is probably not an accident or misunderstanding.

These are the schools that have attached quasi-religious overtones to their preferred, but ineffective, process of teaching kids to read, and have been denying evidence-based methods for decades.

[lonelynpc]

Mental Health Among Healthcare Workers

so, in light of my recent mental health leave, i thought now might be a good time to discuss mental health among healthcare workers. feel free to use it for whump if you want to, i guess this is a continuation of the whump-trope posts.

there are a few things of concern but i'll list the main (and most common) ones:

compassion fatigue: sometimes called "secondary traumatic stress". this is often described as the cost of caring. simply put, it's when healthcare workers care for others day in and day out, often having little time to care for ourselves.

signs and symptoms:

the biggest one is decreased sympathy and empathy. for example, somebody who once really cared for their patients is now "impassive" or "detached". instead of chatting to patients like they used to, they just discuss what they need to and leave.

becoming task-oriented. this is not necessarily a bad thing in healthy doses, obviously we have a job to do and need to do it properly but there are still degrees of emotion in what we do. it's similar to the above.

physical and emotional exhaustion. i read a medical journal where it was described as, "feeling fatigued in every cell of your being".

negative emotions. irritability, cynicism, anger, annoyance, resentfulness, etc.

tearfulness and sadness. sometimes just unprompted, sometimes prompted.

physical complaints. headaches, nausea, vomiting, migraines, diarrhoea, non-specific pain.

negative coping mechanisms. this can be substance use, there is actually a section on this in the Oxford Handbook of Anaesthesia 5th Edition.

vicarious trauma: a response to hearing other people's trauma, pain, etc, regularly (or sometimes just once) and is a big problem in healthcare as we are sometimes not trained in how to avoid or manage this exposure. generally, it is seen after empathetic engagement (as opposed to sympathetic and compassionate), graphic exposure to trauma (verbally or visually, through reading or seeing), exposure to human cruelty.

signs and symptoms:

baseless guilt and shame. "could i have done more?", "i need to do more," "this is my fault, i made things worse," etc.

hyper-arousal reactions. becoming markedly more disturbed by certain stimuli (e.g. blood, sharps, etc), hyper-vigilance in general. you might see another patient that is bleeding and experience a more intense reaction than you usually would.

intrusive thoughts. typically about what we have been told or seen, sometimes with a trigger and sometimes without.

sleep disturbances. nightmares, sleeping too much or too little.

avoidance. most commonly in people experiencing VT, i have noticed that they will try to keep busy to avoid hearing stories from colleagues, patients or visitors. i have also seen people taking more sick days than what is normal for them, not seeing work friends outside of the hospital.

a significant change in worldview, sense of self, etc. this is one of the big ones, we often see people becoming cynical or angry or having a different change as a response to the exposure

relationship problems. this is usually due to a change in trust, self-esteem, and a lost feeling of control.

negative emotions. similar to compassion fatigue in this regard.

intimacy problems. similar reasons to relationship problems.

occupational burnout: the result of constant workplace stress that isn't being managed.

signs and symptoms:

fatigue. just exhausted, especially after work.

sleep disturbances. sleeping too much or too little.

irritability. especially with coworkers, visitors and patients.

dreading work. this can sometimes lead to an increase in sick days because the idea of going to work stresses you out so much.

feeling dissatisfied. in life, work, with accomplishments, etc.

lack of motivation. same as above.

so, how do we manage this?

debriefs. generally after medical emergency calls (code blues or MET calls), intense or upsetting cases, cases where we have identified a pattern of self-blame in the past, when requested by a staff member. this is where we discuss what happened, what we did, develop a shared understanding of the events, and offer further support services ("my door is always open," "we have a counsellor on site," etc.)

counselling. my hospital has support services available for us and we can request to see them through management whenever we like. we do not need to disclose a reason.

talk to colleagues. we often seek each other out to talk and just unwind.

separating personal and professional. people have different ways of doing this, i've met some people who use their middle name at work and people who absolutely will not take the job home with them, even for the good days. i have a separate internal dialogue at work compared to at home.

maintaining professional boundaries. this is easier said than done.

crying. it sounds weird but sometimes you just need to. i saw a neurosurgeon cry behind the nurses' station because he was overwhelmed, i cried in my consultant's office after a hard case, my consultant and i didn't even realise we were crying until someone pointed it out after a hard resus. if we're able to, we offer to watch each other's patients so that we can go and let it out. if tears are coming, there's no stopping that train.

some people get really weird about people crying in healthcare or having panic attacks but, as my favourite consultant once told me:

"as long as you are not causing harm to yourself or others, do whatever you need to do to make it to the end of the day, week, month. if that means crying your eyes out in my office every week, so be it."

sometimes, you also hear, "don't cry first. don't cry loudest," which is generally for when you're in front of the patient/visitor. it's okay to cry in front of patients/visitors (under certain circumstances), it shows them that you're human and that you care. it's not okay to cry so much that they feel like they need to comfort you. generally, in front of patients, it's a shaky voice, a few tears, and we have to be mindful of how the patient/visitor is reacting, we don't want to react more than they are. if we think our reaction is going to be greater than the patient/visitor, we will excuse ourselves.

it's all about "ring theory", not dumping inward because it's not about us:

"Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, "Life is unfair" and "Why me?" That's the one payoff for being in the center ring. Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings."

first responders/healthcare workers are in the outermost ring of these situations. "comfort in, dump out".

we are human, we feel. some things get easier, some never do.

[lemonswoop]

My game journal entry for Final Fantasy 7 remake! I decided to try to run through the game RIGHT before rebirth came out!

Start date: 1/19/2024

End date: 2/28/2024

Platform: ps4

Hours played: 75

Rating: 4/5

Officially the year of Final Fantasy for me! And what a great game to revisit! Easily the Final Fantasy that I think best mixes humor and seriousness in equal parts.

It's been a while since I played the original, but the remake does an amazing job at adding depth to these beloved characters; even getting me to love characters I previously didn't care for much. Aerith was a character who I admit, on my first playthrough as a kid, I overlooked. But the remake made her so charming and endearing I couldn't overlook her.

Events that previously seemed small on the ps1 (like the first mako reactor bombing) now show just how devastating the aftermath truly was. In the original, I never thought twice about Avalanche being correct when taking their extremist methods. It's hard to visualize just how bad an explosion of that scale would have been, and harder to convey the devastation through that medium.

"A good man who serves a great evil is not without sin"

The voice acting also adds to some of the characters a lot. Cloud, for example, absolutely thrives as a voice acted character. There's a noticeable change in voice an mannerisms as he goes from an uncaring merc who is only in it for the cash, to a person who genuinely cares about the people around him.

I do have a gripe about the ending, though. Nit the fact that it diverges from the original, I just feel like they could have gone about it in a more subtle way. Like okay, yes, square-enix. I got that the whispers represented fate without you stabbing Barret and having the magical dementors save him so we could get a scene that verbally spells out that plotline for us. I already got it before that. You're good!

That aside, at the time for writing this, I have just barely started rebirth. I am excited to see where the story goes, how it diverges from the original, and what this means for these characters, who I am reminded of why I love so much. I hope the spirit of the original stays in tact while still telling a wonderful and unique story.

Funny story about the end boss; Sephiroth pulled a move that dropped my entire teams hp down to 1, and then started the meteor countdown. Cloud started a limit break when the countdown reached one second. Screen flashed white, and I thought I died, so I put the controller down. When the screen faded back in, cloud was in the middle of his limit break and it had canceled meteor. I had won.

The entire team won with 1hp.

One of the most tense minutes of my life.

[sunshinesmebdy]

January 18 Astro Vibe Check

The moon's luxurious dance in Taurus harmonizes with both Mercury and Mars in Capricorn, sharpening your communication and igniting your drive with practical focus. Meanwhile, a moon-Jupiter conjunction amplifies your ability to manifest desires and bask in pleasure. Finally, the moon sextiles Saturn in Pisces, encouraging compassionate boundaries and creative problem-solving. It's time to set achievable goals with laser-sharp focus, unleash your sensuality without guilt, and watch your dreams blossom into fulfilling reality.

Moon enters Taurus: Time to Ground Yourself and Indulge. As the gentle Moon enters the sign of the earthy Bull, Taurus,, it's time to slow down, reconnect with your senses, and savor the simple pleasures in life. Taurus energy is all about stability, comfort, and sensuality, so it's the perfect time to indulge in self-care, pamper yourself, and enjoy the finer things.

Tips for this Transit:

Get in touch with nature

Treat yourself

Surround yourself with beauty and comfort

Practice gratitude

Connect with loved ones

Moon in Taurus trine Mercury in Capricorn: This transit brings a potent blend of grounded communication and practical magic to our lives. This is an excellent time for important conversations, negotiations, or presentations. The Taurus moon amplifies your ability to turn your desires into reality, while Capricorn's influence adds structure and discipline to your manifestation practices. Visualize your goals, write them down, and take concrete steps towards achieving them. Take advantage of this transit to review your finances, make wise decisions, and attract abundance. Remember, slow and steady wins the race!

Tips for this Transit:

Create a vision board

Get practical about your goals

Start a gratitude journal

Have a self-care day

Connect with nature

Moon in Taurus trine Mars in Capricorn: This a satisfying blend of grounded passion and achievable ambition. It’s like the universe is handing us a blueprint for turning our daydreams into concrete reality. Don't be afraid to pursue your goals with passion, but remember to keep it grounded in practicality. Invest in your future, negotiate for what you deserve, and watch your abundance grow.

Tips for this Transit:

Set ambitious but realistic goals

Create a financial plan

Turn your workspace into a sanctuary

Practice self-compassion

Moon in Taurus conjunct Jupiter in Taurus: This combination creates a powerhouse transit of abundance, pleasure, and potent manifestation energy. Take time to express your gratitude verbally, in writing, or through creative expression. The more grateful you are, the more abundance you attract. With Jupiter's luck and Taurus's focus on material security, this transit can bring financial blessings your way. Stay open to unexpected opportunities, explore new income streams, and invest in your future wisely.

Tips for this Transit:

Create a vision board

Start a gratitude journal

Plant seeds of prosperity

Share your gifts

Moon in Taurus sextile Saturn in Pisces: This drives the creation of grounded compassion, realistic dreams, and gentle but firm boundaries. You can process emotions without getting overwhelmed, allowing you to make decisions from a place of strength rather than reactivity. With Saturn's guidance, your dreams become more anchored in practicality. You can still hold onto your big goals, but you'll also develop a realistic roadmap for achieving them. This transit encourages you to establish healthy boundaries in your relationships, both personal and professional.

Tips for this Transit:

More SMART Goals

Practice saying no

Engage in mindful self-care

Start a creative project

Create that vision board

Mercury in Capricorn sextile Saturn in Pisces: This create a blend of sharp thinking, focused communication, and creative problem-solving. Capricorn's discipline and Saturn's meticulousness combine to give you an unbeatable ability to concentrate on the task at hand. Tackle complex projects, study for exams, or finally finish that writing assignment with laser focus. Express yourself with clarity and purpose. This transit is ideal for setting realistic goals and creating strategies to achieve them.

Tips for this Transit:

Create a detailed to-do list

Practice active listening

Brainstorm freely

Set SMART Goals

Start a learning project

[grim-wildwood]

Digital Tools

(For the Witch)

•☽────✧˖°˖⛤˖°˖✧────☾•

You may be thinking, "Locke, you're devoted to the Old Way. Why are you blogging about technology?"

Well, the truth is: I love technology. It makes my life easier, and when it comes to witchcraft, I have found so many different tools to both boost my academic productivity and help keep my focus.

So, without further ado, here are five free programs that I use to study witchcraft with:

Canva Whiteboard

Planable

Google Keep

Finch

Live Transcribe

Now, I know that new software can be a bit hard to digest, especially if a witch is inexperienced with technology to begin with. So, let me break down everything for you. I've kept all my information short, snappy, and easy to grasp right away.

Canva Whiteboard

Pros

Visual organization

Customizable templates

Infinite space

Cloud storage

Cons

Learning curve

Text limitations

A lot of people use Canva for making lovely little infographics, icons, and wallpapers. What they don't know is that Canva has a whiteboard function that allows their users to play with sticky notes, shapes, stickers, multimedia, graphics, and more. I find this absolutely perfect for making mind maps, keeping sigils, and keeping a visual record of herbs and crystals.

This is great for visual-style learners who like to study with minimal writing.

Planable

Pros

Aesthetic layout

Customizable font

Group editing

Tagging system

Cloud storage

Cons

Limit of 50 articles for free

You must sign up as a "company" (I say coven!)

Mobile app does not allow note editing

Planable was originally designed for planning professional social media posts. However, it's also fantastic for keeping long-form notes. It has all the writing tools you could possibly need for making in-depth articles, plotting out the content of your grimoire, and hosting live study groups. It can handle any multimedia you throw at it. It also has an app in beta for viewing your notes on the fly.

Great for witches who love hoarding all their knowledge in one cozy spot.

Google Keep

Pros

Customizable note backgrounds

Voice memos

Drawings

Tagging system

Cloud storage

Cons

Only has basic font customization

Images only (no video compatibility)

It's short; it's sweet. Google Keep (or simply Keep) is an ad-free notes app that gets down to the nitty-gritty. It's best for lists, checkboxes, short-form notes, and posting pretty pictures all in between.

Finch

Pros

Cute and easy app design

Turns goals into a game

Guided meditiation

Daily affirmations

Recieve uplifting messages from friends

Cons

Requires a healthy/newer phone to run

Only available on Google Play Store

Finch is charming, useful, and an anchor all bundled into one. Aimed for self-care, this app is no standard pet simulator. Your finch brings genuine companionship from a place of love, sending you affirmations, inspiring quotes, and offering compassion in hard times. You raise your finch by setting and completing goals for yourself, whether it be for self-care, everyday tasks, magick, or all three. The app also offers guided meditation, emergency panic/anxiety attack regulation, journaling, motivation check-ins, and other various emotional wellbeing activities.

The best way to do magick is with a clear and calm mind. Finch is perfect for facilitating this!

Live Transcribe

Pros

Minimalistic

Instant loading time

Transcribes in multiple languages at once

Offline usage

Cons

May occasionally mishear you

Doesn't shy away from transcribing vulgar language

If the app is closed, you will lose your previous transcription unless history is turned on

Turn it on and let it work! Live Transcribe takes verbage and turns it into a live and fairly accurate transcript for you to format into notes. I personally love finding short video documentaries on history and witchy how-tos to transcribe.

Great for learning and retaining verbal information for witches who may have an audio processing disorder. It's also good for the humble act of hoarding knowledge.

I hope that you find good use out of these digital tools! Have a lovely rest of your week, and enjoy a breath of fresh organization. 🌿✨️

•☽────✧˖°˖⛤˖°˖✧────☾•

[grandhotelabyss]

Do you wish there were more comics with the same "literally value" as the greates and most sophisticated books? Or would the talent be wasted on these silly little picture books?

I have reluctantly concluded that comics belongs more to the visual arts than to literature. The attempt on the part of ambitious writers to make it a high literary form eventually failed, leading those writers to leave comics for novels, and for the "literary" graphic novel itself to dwindle into YA propaganda, a mere prop in the "banned book" wars.

(Elif Batuman ingeniously grasped the relevant cultural logic years ago: the secret interrelation of American comics's two most characteristic genres, the superhero saga and the misery memoir, how they suture individual time to historical time, and therefore inevitably serve together the ends of progressive propagandists for the right side of history, as indicated by her application of Lukács's theory of the historical novel. And then she never wrote about comics again—except, in anticipation of the discussion of "black holes" at the end of this post, to extol the filth of Pigpen.)

I am now more interested in comics, to whatever extent I am still interested in comics, that explore the medium's potential as a visual form than those that try to recapitulate the effects of the novel in the absence of the novel's verbal density.

(Note, for example, how often Alan Moore, the best comic-book writer qua writer, "cheats" by turning his comics into pure prose, in the literal prose passages of Watchmen or Providence, or in the long and intricate narrative captions of Swamp Thing or soliloquies of From Hell. Only in the latter work, and perhaps in the also prosy Lost Girls, did he collaborate with an artist as concerned to make an innovative statement in the history of visual art as Moore was to take his place in literary history.)

In more direct answer to your question, then, I wouldn't demote comics below "real art" or whatever, but trying to make them into literature increasingly seems to me misguided. As I wrote in my review of the Norton Critical Edition of A Contract with God, considered by some the inaugural graphic novel, and the first graphic novel to take its place in Norton's canon,

Critics like Gary Groth, founder of The Comics Journal and hanging-judge of comics criticism, whose 1988 dissent on Eisner’s stellar reputation in the field the Norton volume reprints, complain of Eisner’s simplicity and melodrama. They aren’t wrong, but this too strictly mis-applies literary standards and undervalues the integrity and authority of his images. It’s true that Eisner makes no philosophical innovation with his parabolic crossing of the The Book of Job with Silas Marner; the story just re-states the ancient problem of theodicy. But the power is in the statement itself. If A Contract with God can’t compare to the intellectual sophistication of a Saul Bellow, Eisner’s dense line work and dynamic compositions, his use of image as text and text as image, offer a visual correlate to Bellow’s verbal richness. It’s only aesthetically illegitimate if you don’t take the visual seriously enough.

My review of the semi-illiterate visual extravaganza Akira also pertains here:

So mighty is Otomo’s storytelling craft that it paradoxically consumes attention even as it commands it, which neither Miller nor Moore, neither Jodorowsky nor Peeters, would be willing to do. In other words, you are never tempted to linger, but only to speed on. It is only a very slight exaggeration to say that one of Akira‘s six 400-page chapters can be read in the same time that it takes to read one of the 32-page chapters of Watchmen: about an hour. This reflects Otomo’s absolute mastery of layout and composition; he never puts an obstacle athwart the onrush of your eye across his collapsing cityscapes. Language does not get much in the way either: vast swaths of pages, all violent action, go by with no more demanding words than onomatopoeiac sound effects, grunts and profanities from the characters, and the heroes and villains crying one another’s names. [...] Such anti-literacy—very much against the Anglo-American “spirit of 1986,” which saw comics strive for and often attain the density of the 20th-century novel—bears upon Akira's theme of energy washing away all hierarchies.

(These remarks are partly inspired by the recent Weird Studies podcast episode on Charles Burns's Black Hole; there the hosts construe comics as a hybrid form of archeo-print-culture, a printing of the manuscript, and an unfolding of the spiritual-material potentialities of ink, Burns's book's secret eponym. Otomo's lovingly rendered Neo-Tokyo apocalypse is another such "black hole" from which the image stream proceeds, of course, as is Eisner's famous rain of ink out of the whirlwind sky upon his Job-like characters.)

[madamlaydebug]

Each and every day, in a multitude of ways, our Soul speaks to us. Our Soul speaks to us through nature, other people, events, sounds, words, symbols, dreams, and feelings. This week is about focusing on connecting to the deepest source of who you are: your Soul. Your Soul possesses every answer, every source of wisdom, and every bit of guidance you will ever need: it is your ultimate teacher, and it IS your True Nature beyond all exterior passing forms. What is your Soul trying to tell you? Does it have a special message for you, something you’ve suspected for a while but don’t quite know how to verbalize? This week you may like to incorporate certain tools such as journaling, automatic writing, visualization, dream recall and analysis, meditation, or whatever calls to you to communicate with your Soul. Remember that your Soul can be felt and listened to at ANY moment. Sometimes it calls to you through repeated numbers such as 11:11, 12:12, etc., and various synchronicities. Slow down, be quiet, and open your heart. Only then will you be able to truly listen.

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 19, 2024

Multilevel visual motion opponency in Drosophila. Ammer, G., Serbe-Kamp, E., Mauss, A. S., Richter, F. G., Fendl, S., & Borst, A. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(11), 1894–1905.

Rapid compensatory plasticity revealed by dynamic correlated activity in monkeys in vivo. Andrei, A. R., Akil, A. E., Kharas, N., Rosenbaum, R., Josić, K., & Dragoi, V. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(11), 1960–1969.

The rat frontal orienting field dynamically encodes value for economic decisions under risk. Bao, C., Zhu, X., Mōller-Mara, J., Li, J., Dubroqua, S., & Erlich, J. C. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(11), 1942–1952.

Early selection of task-relevant features through population gating. Barbosa, J., Proville, R., Rodgers, C. C., DeWeese, M. R., Ostojic, S., & Boubenec, Y. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6837.

Aversive stimulus-tuned responses in the CA1 of the dorsal hippocampus. Barth, A. M., Jelitai, M., Vasarhelyi-Nagy, M. F., & Varga, V. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6841.

Emergence of cortical network motifs for short-term memory during learning. Chia, X. W., Tan, J. K., Ang, L. F., Kamigaki, T., & Makino, H. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6869.

The combination of Hebbian and predictive plasticity learns invariant object representations in deep sensory networks. Halvagal, M. S., & Zenke, F. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(11), 1906–1915.

Electrophysiological Signatures of Visual Recognition Memory across All Layers of Mouse V1. Hayden, D. J., Finnie, P. S. B., Thomazeau, A., Li, A. Y., Cooke, S. F., & Bear, M. F. (2023). Journal of Neuroscience, 43(44), 7307–7321.

Reframing dopamine: A controlled controller at the limbic-motor interface. Lloyd, K., & Dayan, P. (2023). PLOS Computational Biology, 19(10), e1011569.

Acetylcholine waves and dopamine release in the striatum. Matityahu, L., Gilin, N., Sarpong, G. A., Atamna, Y., Tiroshi, L., Tritsch, N. X., … Goldberg, J. A. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6852.

Neuronal connected burst cascades bridge macroscale adaptive signatures across arousal states. Munn, B. R., Müller, E. J., Medel, V., Naismith, S. L., Lizier, J. T., Sanders, R. D., & Shine, J. M. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6846.

Mouse visual cortex as a limited resource system that self-learns an ecologically-general representation. Nayebi, A., Kong, N. C. L., Zhuang, C., Gardner, J. L., Norcia, A. M., & Yamins, D. L. K. (2023). PLOS Computational Biology, 19(10), e1011506.

A recurrent neural network model of prefrontal brain activity during a working memory task. Piwek, E. P., Stokes, M. G., & Summerfield, C. (2023). PLOS Computational Biology, 19(10), e1011555.

Objects guide human gaze behavior in dynamic real-world scenes. Roth, N., Rolfs, M., Hellwich, O., & Obermayer, K. (2023). PLOS Computational Biology, 19(10), e1011512.

Activity in primate visual cortex is minimally driven by spontaneous movements. Talluri, B. C., Kang, I., Lazere, A., Quinn, K. R., Kaliss, N., Yates, J. L., … Nienborg, H. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(11), 1953–1959.

Sensorimotor transformation underlying odor-modulated locomotion in walking Drosophila. Tao, L., Wechsler, S. P., & Bhandawat, V. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6818.

Neural and computational underpinnings of biased confidence in human reinforcement learning. Ting, C.-C., Salem-Garcia, N., Palminteri, S., Engelmann, J. B., & Lebreton, M. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6896.

Behavioral and brain responses to verbal stimuli reveal transient periods of cognitive integration of the external world during sleep. Türker, B., Musat, E. M., Chabani, E., Fonteix-Galet, A., Maranci, J.-B., Wattiez, N., … Oudiette, D. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(11), 1981–1993.

Attractor dynamics reflect decision confidence in macaque prefrontal cortex. Wang, S., Falcone, R., Richmond, B., & Averbeck, B. B. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(11), 1970–1980.

Differential effects of reward and punishment on reinforcement-based motor learning and generalization. Yin, C., Li, B., & Gao, T. (2023). Journal of Neurophysiology, 130(5), 1150–1161.

[restinthewest]

Hallow b-mod journal 2

Tuesday July 2, 2024

Had another town/creek trail walk. Took a few days off of focused training because we were pet sitting and then she had some GI upset (thought I could switch her dry food to the dry version of the wet food she already eats without issue. I WAS WRONG lol.) She’s mostly feeling better but was still a bit sluggish.

We had an almost identical repeat of an off leash dog situation that I described in the last post. We might have to find a new stationary spot for training. Never had issues at this spot until I started journaling her training, lol. I guess I jinxed it. Hallow lit up in the moment but recovered and went back to her baseline the rest of the outing. Hard to say if that’s because she truly didn’t care once the encounter was over or if it’s because her energy is a little down.

We saw fewer dogs today. I’d say when we were stationary and walking she initiated training about 50% of the time. There were only two times when she fixated that I needed to initiate and step in.

Today was a pretty good illustration of what kinds of dogs bother her. She didn’t initiate training in the presence of any dogs under about 25 lbs (11kgs). Three small dogs reacted towards her and she straight up did not care. Pretty typical- she is much less concerned with small dogs in general (and even with small dogs she knows she has markedly lower-arousal around them). One of the times she fixated was on a large shepherd type dog who was quite far away and was not paying any attention to her. Again, par for the course as she does not like large, pointy, stare-y dogs such as shepherds, collies, and huskies.

At the end of the walk we passed by a group of three young men who were raising money for a non-profit. They asked if they could pet her. Hallow has been more social with people lately so I’ve been trying out a new thing where I leave it up to her to decide whether she says “hi” rather than outright turning people down (this still depends on age/vibes. I still say no if it’s a kid under about 10 or if the situation/energy is not ideal). I told them they could pet if she approached them. She had absolutely no interest in two of the men but was VERY affectionate with the third one. No idea why! She is such a particular dog but it made us all laugh and was a positive experience.

Overall a good day. I am including a video below of a bit of an “oops” on my part. We were walking down Main Street. It was super crowded with people. As a default hallow walks either in front of me or to my right. Towards the end of the video there was a border collie to the right of the camera (about 2 feet away from hallow) that was laying down by a table. I am usually pretty good about scanning but I didn’t see it until we were on top of it since it was a black dog, in a shadow, and there were some visual obstructions. This is a bigger trigger for hallow due to the breed and she dislikes passing stationary dogs in close quarters. Had I noticed it in advance I would have switched her to my left side and fed her through passing it. No time for that today! It’s quiet in the video but I told her “leave it” twice and we went on our way. It’s clear she was a bit stressed but she recovered just fine. I try to avoid giving verbal corrections but it’s just one of those situations where it was necessary to keep her moving. Alls well that ends well.