#War Neurosis

[psychreviews2]

War Part 2 - Beyond the Pleasure Principle – Sigmund Freud and Beyond

Vimy

Like in the prior episode, Freud expected that WWI would make people confront death without any magical thinking, and it could also provide vigor for the person who truly accepted death. The war was fearful and traumatic, but it also gave an opportunity for people to achieve eternal glory, and if one could survive, a story to bask in for the rest of one's life.  One battle that displayed both sides of terror and victory was Vimy Ridge. It was an example of a big challenge that was tempting to tackle, but not without a lot of casualties. In Vimy: The Battle and the Legend, Tim Cook described how valuable the ridge was to the allies and the sacrifice soldiers made, especially the French, to try and take it. "The 7-kilometre Vimy Ridge protected the coal-rich area around Lens that the Germans occupied and desperately needed to retain to supply their war effort...The ridge was fiercely contested because it was a commanding geographic feature on the Western Front. Whichever army held it had an enormous advantage over the force at its base...When the Canadians arrived at the foot of the western side of the ridge in October 1916, Vimy was a vast desert of shell craters and rotting corpses...There remained thousands of unburied corpses and fragments of bodies. The shell craters were filled with foul, murky water, and many contained the rotting remains of the fallen who had dragged themselves into the depths and never emerged...'Vimy was a huge grey mountainous mass of mud,' recounted Sergeant Robert Kentner. 'It appeared as though nothing had ever or ever could live upon its surface. The absolute negation of beauty, a monument of wickedness, most distorted and repulsive.'" From the vantage point of the Germans, they could see the Canadian trenches and look "straight down on it and [give] hell with artillery and trench-mortar fire everyday...Sachimoro Moro-oka, a Japanese Canadian serving with the 50th Battalion, recounted one grisly sight: 'A shell exploded among a group of men and created a terrible mixture of blood, flesh, and mud. We looked on in horror. There were bodies with no heads. One poor soul was blinded, blood pouring from his eyes.'"

Learning from the mistakes of The Somme the Canadians and British had to come up with more sophisticated methods of attack. These involved the spreading of command to empower "junior officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs). If officers (majors, captains, and lieutenants) were knocked out in battle, the lower ranks (sergeants, corporals, and privates) were to continue on to their objectives." The new tactics required more grenades and machine guns. Grenades could be used to attack trenches and machine guns. Lewis machine guns were also used on the ground effectively and could also be used to shoot from the hip. "The Lewis gun provided more firepower than a section of riflemen and was used to pin down the enemy and allow comrades to advance and attack positions from a more advantageous location." Within around 200 metres most riflemen could use the Lee Enfield rifles. Grenades could be used within 30 metres with a blast radius of 18 metres and deadly at 5 metres. From close quarters most soldiers preferred to shoot the enemy or throw grenades, but in some cases, a bayonet had to be used. "While statistics from the war reveal a very low casualty rate from bayonets (far less than 1 percent of wounds), many of the bayonet stab wounds, which usually involved a twisting motion to free the bayonet from muscle and bone, were lethal, and under-reported in official combat records."

The airplane also revolutionized war technology to help with artillery accuracy. British planes flew over the trenches and better maps were made. The maps, along with taking into account of "wind, barometric pressure, and rain," were another advancement. Using triangulated microphones to "listen for the bark of enemy guns, the sound of the shell or observing the flash from the muzzle, they could locate the guns' position over time." This allowed for more pinpoint artillery fire to destroy the German guns so the fighters would have less to contend with when they got closer to enemy trenches. Underground caves were also used to setup explosives near trenches. Explosives were detonated near zero-hour to create more chaos before the advancement.

Not only did the Canadians and British have to go up hill at Vimy, but they also had to contend with barbed wire snagging kilts, socks, and the sticky mud was already effective at removing boots from soldiers. One of the advancements of artillery, to deal with this problem, was being able to make shells that were sensitive enough to explode when contacting barbed wire. This helped to clear the way for the Canadians.

How the soldiers moved were in "groups, but the units were trained to advance in more staggered and broken formations, using the ground and rushing ahead when the fire against them shifted to other targets...[also] known as 'fire and movement' tactics." As important as those tactics were, artillery was very crucial in WWI. The early strategies became stale in that enemies knew when the bombardments were completed and the soldiers would naturally advance towards them. The Germans who hid in bunkers during bombardments, had enough time to return to their stations and machine guns, to mow down the advancing enemy. In response to the predictability, improved coordination was needed to create more surprise by using a "creeping barrage...The infantry had to 'lean into the barrage' and stay within 35 to 65 metres of the wall of fire...[They] moved 100 metres every three minutes." When the barrage was complete the Canadians were close enough to attack the trenches, catching many of the Germans off guard. Using rifles, grenades, machine guns, and the odd bayonet, the ridge was eventually won over. Depending on which area the soldiers ended up, some of them had little mopping up to do. "By the time the Albertans of the 31st Battalion arrived at Thélus, little remained but smoking rubble and dismembered corpses...The Germans on the receiving end of the inferno were often killed, wounded, or buried alive..." Some were trapped in their bunkers and asphyxiated. In areas where there were still rifles and machine guns in action, the battle was much more difficult and required more casualties to win. Many were chewed up by bullets. "...An enemy officer of the 261st Prussian Reserve Infantry Regiment reported that the Canadian 'corpses accumulated and formed small hills of khaki.'" WWI tanks increased morale but they were inaccurate and their tread could easily be bombed and made ineffective.

On April 9th and 10th the Canadians had lost 2,967 men. "The entire face of the hill was covered with German green and Canadian khaki. Men lay out there in that blood-soaked field, some dead, some dying." One soldier wrote that "bodies could be seen protruding from shell holes half filled with water stained with human blood. The bodies were in all shapes and shapelessness of sudden death, many on their backs with hands raised and a wild look of terror on their faces from the shell or bayonet that had hurled them to eternity." Many heroes who survived those days would only live long enough to die another day and had to be posthumously be awarded. The ones who survived would be able to bond with the rest of the Canadians who felt the country was distinguished by the battle as can be seen commemorated by the astonishing Vimy Memorial.

Not everyone who survived was psychologically in one piece. From descriptions of soldiers feeling emotionally deadened, there were much more serious nervous cases. At the time it was called "shell-shock." Charges of cowardice, malingering, and the efforts of medical teams and their inventive ways of moving neurologically damaged soldiers to other duties, became a problem for armies. In A Weary Road, by Mark Osborne Humphries, he outlined the PTSD experience in WWI. "Because nervous soldiers were treated alongside other medical and surgical cases, they were sometimes victimized by staff and other patients. For example, Private Cecil G., a thirty-one-year-old civil servant, joined up in 1914 and served two years in the trenches before being knocked unconscious by a shell at Vimy Ridge. When he came to he vomited and was shaking all over. In hospital he began to suffer from terrible nightmares as well as headaches, tremors, and vague pains that came and went. G. was self-conscious and felt that the other patients were always watching him. 'He was unable to remain in one ward because he thought the patients believed he was [malingering],' recorded G.F. Boyer, his neurologist at Granville Special Hospital in England. 'He would break down and cry when he thought of it.'" Shell shock affected motor function as well. "'One poor fellow, a big chap, was crying like a baby with shell-shock,' wrote Lance-Corporal Donald Fraser, a machine-gunner in the 31st Battalion. 'His nerves and control were absolutely gone.'" Many others had a hyper-vigilant Thousand-yard Stare."The war that destroyed bodies with reckless abandon and also shattered souls."

War neuroses

The curious results of the some of these psychologically shattered patients were of interest to Sigmund Freud and early Psychoanalysts. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, being a complex disorder, it has to be approached from multiple angles. The 1st casualty of Freud's theories was the patterns of psychological behaviour that didn't conform with The Pleasure Principle. Many soldiers with PTSD had dreams and thoughts that obsessed with traumatic memories, worsening their stress. Typically, a normal mind does the opposite and continually searches for pleasure. Setups and payoffs. At the time Freud thought "that these processes are invariably triggered by an unpleasurable tension, and then follow a path such that their ultimate outcome represents a diminution of this tension, and hence a propensity to avoid unpleasure or to generate pleasure." Going back to his Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), Freud viewed neurons as having different functions. He saw the Ego as conditioned and built up by neurons that provide a constant cathexis [emotional investment ψ] and those that had a less sticky emotional investment, perception Φ. Consciousness for Freud, similar to Buddhism, co-arises with Perception. Perception provides qualities for consciousness, and the ego moves attention towards interesting perceptions and emotionally invests in them to provide satisfaction, "which is of such importance for the whole course of development) and the repetitions of that experience - states of craving which developed into states of wishing and states of expecting." The importance of these functions continued for Freud as a "biological justification of all thought...The craving involves a state of tension in the ego; and as a result of it the idea of the loved object (the 'wishful idea') is [invested with emotion.]" The wishful idea has to be a little hazy and dreamy so that it doesn't become "confused with a perception.." The emotional investment requires a payoff/discharge, "and...its discharge must be postponed till conditions of quality arise from it which prove that it's real [in perception]." As reality matches with the dreamy image of the wish, with the effort of thought, there is satisfaction, release or an identity. This is similar to what he wrote later in The Interpretation of Dreams, about a "'perceptual identity' - a repetition of the perception which was linked with the satisfaction of the need." The repetition of the same perceptions helps to build memory identities in the mind and the human personality. For example, we remember where all the "goodies" are in the environment, and create a personal identity around them. This is often why people have names that they've inherited from ancestors who were named for their jobs, or the products they were able to produce. Those higher up on a hierarchy would need to be able to label people based on their uses. The conditioned mind is utilitarian by how it labels objects and people. Tools for gratification and release.

Further, like in the noting meditation method, these thought objects are given a reality just like perceptions and can be labeled with word associations. "....Facilitations produced by thought leave only their result behind them and not a memory....Indications of discharge by way of speech help to make good this lack. They put thought-processes on a level with perceptual processes; they lend them reality and make it possible to remember them." This allows us to be aware of our thinking processes and the thinking processes of others. The brain can then make copies of important objects and people and imitate them into the mind.

Mental Noting - Mahasi Sayadaw & Daniel Ingram: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781911597100/

In Psycho-analysis and the War Neuroses, Freud focused on excessive repression and how it can come from external sources of fright and internal sources in peace-time, where desire is considered a foe and threatening to the super-ego of social standards. Of course developments in psychology on the topic of Posttraumatic stress disorder moved beyond early theories, but studies do match his hypotheses of internal battles and repression. Our mind really does want to avoid thinking about stressful topics, obsess about what others think, but there is more relief in processing these stressful thoughts than avoiding them. Freud found that in many cases, people who were injured in fact exhibited less signs of shell shock than those who were simply close to the danger. "In the case of ordinary traumatic neurosis, two features stand out very clearly, and have proved a useful starting point for further thought: first, the fact that the key causative element appeared to lie in the surprise factor, the fright experienced by the victim; and second, the fact that if any physical wound or injury was suffered at the same time, this generally inhibited the development of the neurosis." In Coping with PTSD in Returning Troops, they elaborate some of the social reasons for this phenomenon. "Physical injury reduces the chance for development of anxiety or conflictive feelings related to the traumatic event, because unlike psychic traumas, physical injuries cause much more sympathy and affection in the environment." There are also studies that hint at developmental preexisting vulnerabilities, as Freud pointed out before but was only able to sketch. "It is known that early life environmental events have persisting effects on central nervous tissue structure and function, a phenomenon called 'developmental programming.'" There are also signs of genetic predisposition, on top of early life stresses, that increase the likelihood of adult PTSD. Another sign of PTSD is the presence of persistent anger, and any treatments have to acknowledge the anger and outbursts that accompany it. Some of the methods of treatment include group therapy where they "[work] through deeply traumatic memories" and explore "deeply repressed and emotionally invested experiences." In a study on possible treatments for PTSD in the book, they allowed for "gradual completion of the pathological mourning process, [and it] enabled [a] reduction of depression." Another method that showed effectiveness was exposure therapy, and behaviour activation, where token rewards are given for successful attempts at moving through triggering activities. Whatever method a patient pursues, they must satisfy the mind's need to understand and process trauma.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

I have trod the upward and the downward slope; I have endured and done in days before; I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope; And I have lived and loved, and closed the door. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I have trod the upward and the downward slope - Ralph Vaughan Williams - Bryn Terfel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl-sbL-KpB0

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud tackled the problem of a Repetition Compulsion, where the mind would constantly return to traumatic thoughts in contradistinction to what he normally observed in people, which is to dwell in thoughts of anticipated pleasure and relief. It was a kind of "going back to the drawing board" situation he found himself in. Both pleasure and stress had to be reviewed along with the quantity of intensity, which was hard to measure at the time, and could only be described as a larger or smaller pressure or swelling, requiring a release. Either the Ego finds replacement activities to drain some of that libido as a setup and payoff in chosen targets for release, sublimation, or the unconscious would take over and force a release in an uncontrolled way at targets that the ego and parental super-ego were trying to avoid.

"After much consideration we are minded to posit a connection between pleasure/unpleasure and the quantity of excitation present - yet not [bound] in any way - within the psyche; a connection whereby unpleasure corresponds to an increase in that quantity, and the pleasure to a decrease....The key determining factor so far as the sensation is concerned is probably the intensity of the decrease or increase over a particular period of time." For example, in a war, there must be an enormous increase in intensity as soldiers see the reality of the danger to their own survival, and attention moves towards wishes to defeat an enemy, achieve a military goal, and the release that happens every time a goal is finally achieved. The intensity of the pain continues and increases when there is failure and low morale. This can happen in less intense situations when smaller preferences are not met. Some examples are: waiting for a loved one for an appointment and they don't show up. Waiting for an important exam result, and it's negative. As experiences repeat, with constant intense stimuli, the mind can become jaded with some people, or overload and breakdown with others.

How the mind views the world in terms of where it wants to be is described by Freud with a quote by G.T. Fechner on his Constancy Principle. "'Inasmuch as conscious impulses are always associated with pleasure or unpleasure, we may suppose that pleasure and unpleasure, too, are linked psycho-physically to conditions of stability and instability; Every psycho-physical motion that passes the threshold of consciousness involves pleasure to the degree that it moves beyond a certain point towards complete stability, and unpleasure to the degree that it moves beyond a certain point away from that stability; whilst between these two points - which may be defined as the qualitative thresholds of pleasure and unpleasure...The psychic apparatus is geared to keep the quantity of excitation present within it at the lowest possible level, or at least to keep it constant." In other words, we really like it when chaos moves towards order according to our preferences and really hate it when the stability of our preferences breaks down and moves back into chaos. Of course this is also true when other people do things for us, starting with our parents and eventually powerful authority figures who are responsible for things we cannot control.

Of course achieving goals is not a constant thing and the world is a dangerous place. Looking purely for pleasure, has to give way to something that allows for us to survive long enough to gain pleasure later. "[The Pleasure Principle], as far as self-preservation is concerned, is never anything but useless, indeed highly dangerous, given the challenges posed by the external world. Thanks to the influence of the ego's self-preservation drive it is displaced by the reality principle, which, without abandoning the aim of ultimately achieving pleasure, none the less demands and procures the postponement of gratification." Of course pleasure can take back it's power from the reality principle at times. "...There are countless occasions where the pleasure principle overwhelms the reality principle, to the detriment of the entire organism." The ego's response with the reality principle provides a form of unpleasure when unacceptable desires are repressed. "...There are numerous occasions where individual drives, prove to be incompatible in their aims and demands with...the ego. They are therefore separated off from this unified whole through the process of repression; they are restricted to lower levels of psychic development and, for the time being at least, cut off from any possibility of gratification...Most of the unpleasure we feel is perceptual unpleasure, involving perception of the [swelling] pressure of ungratified inner drives, or perception of external [dangerous] things." We can see here already a need for self-development so some of that pressure can find different objects and skills to discharge on. Freud viewed it as sublimation, and Carl Jung looked at this energy as something that could develop the human personality further.

Now the problem of the Pleasure Principle is this binding of perceptions into memory and how it can go into areas of unpleasure in a way that is self-destructive. As Freud encountered more patients they didn't always follow the pattern of avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. In situations of traumatic flashbacks, the mind of patients often returned to the trauma, instead of focusing on pleasure. The experience of survivors of the war didn't add up with the pleasure principle. "The terrible war that has only just ended gave rise to many [traumatic neuroses]." Freud then lists a variety of traumas and their impact, and highlights the most damaging one. "'Fear' represents a certain kind of inner state amounting to expectation of, and preparation for, danger of some kind, even though the nature of the danger may well be unknown. 'Dread' requires a specific object of which we are afraid. 'Fright', however, emphasizes the element of surprise; it describes the state that possesses us when we find ourselves plunged into danger without being prepared for it."

This type of surprise, especially when the fear is treated as real in the mind, overloads the mind. This isn't like a scary movie, though movies like Jaws, that create a primal fear of being eaten and annihilated, go closest to that feeling. In real conflicts, wars and domestic abuse, the mind has the tendency to go over those memories, even if the individual is recreating lots of unpleasure in the process of doing so. "...It is the distinctive feature of the dream-life of patients with traumatic neurosis that it repeatedly takes them back to the situation of their original misadventure, from which they awake with a renewed sense of fright...It would be rather more in the nature of dreams to conjure up pictures from the time when the patient was healthy, or else pictures of the return to health that is hoped for in the future...."

Jaws: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1fu_sA7XhE

IT: Chapter 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqUopiAYdRg

Hereditary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6wWKNij_1M

Child's Play

As Freud always did, he went back to childhood experiences to help explain adult phenomenon. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he explored a child's response to his mother going away. This child he studied had a strong attachment to his mother who took good care of him. In response to his mother leaving him for hours at a time, he would play a game, as Freud hypothesized, of "[throwing a] reel over the edge of his curtained cot so that it disappeared inside, all the while making his expressive 'o-o-o-o' sound, then used the string to pull the reel out of the cot again, but this time greeting its reappearance with a joyful Da!" Freud's conclusion was that it was a coping mechanism to control and master the feelings associated with his mother's disappearance and reappearance. It was a re-enactment, rehearsal, or a practice to deal with trauma. By turning the unpleasant experience of his mother's disappearance into a game he took his passive role and made it into an active one to give him a sense of control and mastery. There was also another possibility based on Freud's observations when the child flung an object away to "take revenge on his mother for having gone away from him." Taking aim at the Oedipus Complex, Freud interpreted this child's feeling towards his absent father. "This same child whose game I had observed when he was one and a half had the habit a year later of flinging down any toy that had made him cross and saying 'Go in war!' At the time he had been told that his absent father was away in the war, and he didn't miss his father in the least, instead giving out the clearest indications that he did not want his exclusive possession of his mother to be disrupted...It is plainly the case that children repeat everything in their play that has made a powerful impression on them, and that in so doing they [discharge] the intensity of the experience and make themselves so to speak master of the situation." Freud then connects it to the traumatized adult example, and the need to avoid surprise and fright. "These dreams seek to assert control over the stimuli retrospectively by generating fear - the absence of which was the cause of the traumatic neurosis in the first place." It's a way for the mind to remind oneself of a lesson that has to be learned to avoid traumatic situations like these in the future, or to master them.

In the case of the child, hostility that appears is a form of motivation to search for a reward that helps him or her, and eventually the adult, to replace passivity with activity towards domination and safety. Children's games that get too intense can also predict adult competition where there's escalation and envy, revenge and sabotage that become tempting. If something bad happens to a child, they can often repeat it onto another victim, and it can become contagious where abuse spreads with mimetics/imitation, and often it's spread to an innocent target that is easier to access. Freud gives an example of a scary experience with a doctor. "If a doctor examines a child's throat or performs some minor operation on him, we can be quite sure that this frightening experience will become the content of his next game - but the gain in pleasure from a different source is plain to see. Exchanging his passive role in the actual experience for an active role within the game, he inflicts on his playmate whatever nasty things were inflicted on him, and thus takes his revenge by proxy." This becomes another precursor to René Girard's scapegoating mechanism. The revenge is most often not enacted on a powerful person with strong boundaries but a person in a weak passive position: An easy target.

People who are also in a powerless position find verbal versions of power and control where perception is constantly on one's weaknesses, to keep people with a masochistic self-esteem. Masochists are easier to control. As people gain strength they often find more insults, more envy, more jealousy, and it's all about maintaining power and control. It's as if the they don't want you to improve yourself and "get away." The irony is that some of these people who were in a powerless position and now after they've moved to a powerful position, and turned the tables, so to speak, they forget how it was for them in the weaker position and identify with the controller. For René Girard, how we remind ourselves is realizing that "what we call conversion is, finally, the experience of the scapegoat becoming the subjective experience of the persecutor." This sounds like an easy enough process, but it's so hard for all of us to be honest about it. Girard says that, "we see scapegoats everywhere, we loudly denounce their oppressors. But we don't feel that we are personally implicated in the scapegoat mechanism. The scapegoat phenomenon is universal as an objective experience, and exceptional as a subjective experience. No one says: 'Sorry, I didn't realize it, but now I see that I'm a persecutor.' It would appear that everyone participates in this phenomenon, except each one of us." This can be readily seen in politics where everybody sees themselves as the hero and opponents are the enemy. When we switch from a powerless position to a powerful one, the best leaders remain vigilant and constantly try to see things from the point of view of the powerless. In most cases we fail to do this and just imitate the powerful and their scandals. We become the monster we want to defeat, and partially because sadism feels good and we lose perspective. Like Jesus pointed out, "why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" Matthew 7:3. The new habit is to look at ourselves first if something is wrong and try to change that before we move onto someone else.

There is also another hint that imitation is connected with pleasure. Sadism is a form of pleasure. We get pleasure when we defeat animals, kill animals for food, and we also get the same pleasure when we defeat human enemies. We can imitate higher and lower forms of pleasure. As long as a person has low enough empathy, it's quite possible to imitate evil things.  A later researcher of imitation, Vittorio Gallese called it "intentional attunement" for the way minds can map out the intentions of others with mirror neurons. The key to it in his studies was that this mapping of intentions happened only when the imitated actions were goal-directed. Of course it doesn't take much of a leap to discover what these goals are about. They are about increasing pleasure and reducing pain, the Pleasure Principle again, and in some cases the Reality Principle. There are some kinds of pleasures, advantages, treatments, cures, or benefits that the mind is motivated to imitate. Violence and hostility with an aim at winning is another source of pleasure, and it makes sense since a lot of our ancestors had to hunt and fight wars in order to survive. We had to fight for everything we had. If the child can map out how the pleasure works with hostility in an adult, and depending on hereditary influences, an identification with an abuser can be developed. The danger of course is the destruction of healthy human relationships, and why this form of pleasure is a lower pleasure, because of the damage that goes along with it. For example, people who are addicted to aggression end up with obsessive thoughts over rivals and conditioned reactivity so that mental peace becomes virtually impossible. There are differing levels of pleasure and some are better than others as most religions affirm. The higher ones provide pleasure that doesn't hurt others, essentially more peaceful, and the lower ones almost certainly hurt others and oneself. For Freud, the Pleasure Principle was supported by a Life Drive, and all he could posit for the self-destructive behaviours he witnessed was a Death Drive.

Freud's theoretical exploration of the dark side influenced later Neo-Freudians including Otto Kernberg. He found patients that were very self-destructive and obviously not following a pleasure principle. Similar to Freud's description of ambivalence between love and hate, or libido and aggression, people can slide between the two. They can attack others but also attack themselves. Kernberg found that certain destructive drives helped one to fight off predators and compete for mates. In some cases of PTSD there is a need to master a past traumatic situation in one's mind so that it can be avoided in the future, or how the unconscious see this problem. In all these examples there is an element of self-preservation in the conflict between the pleasure and reality principles, but there is an even more destructive aim that damages self-preservation. A form of Pyrrhic Victory where one wins and loses at the same time, much like a lot of battles in WWI. Here Kernberg describes some examples of a more adult version of what Freud was describing above. Instead of what other psychologists call a "duping-delight", for certain behaviours of personality disorders and their destructive attempts to attain mastery, Kernberg called it a triumph against. "...The repetition compulsion may reflect an effort to overcome the traumatic situation by an unconscious identification with the source of the trauma. Here the patient identifies with the perpetrator of the trauma while projecting on somebody else the function of victim. It is as if the world had become exclusively a relationship between perpetrators and victims, and the patient repeats, unconsciously, the traumatic situation in an effort to reverse the roles and place somebody else in the role of victim. The unconscious triumph that such a reversal may provide the patient then maintains repetition compulsion endlessly."

So here it becomes an addiction to sadism because it is now a reliable habit of gaining pleasure. Unfortunately this teeters into self-destruction when aggressors attack what is helpful. "There are still more malignant cases of repetition compulsion, such as the unconscious effort to destroy a potentially helpful relationship out of an unconscious sense of triumph over the person who tries to help, who is envied for not having suffered what the patient, in his mind, has suffered. It is an unconscious triumph that coincides, of course, at the same time, with the defeat of the patient himself." There is a sense that imitation can find lower levels of pleasure to identify with, as if role models are modeling for us the world and "how things are....This is how the world is." It's like a limitation where only certain modes of identification are available and real to the child. Even if healthier role-models exist in the world, unless the child has close access to those models, to imitate their healthy behaviours, it is out of sight and out of mind. Their limited and conditioned world becomes their adult perspective, narrowing their personality. Kernberg quotes André Green's example of an identification that is destructive and hard to connect with a pleasure principle. "[He] described the unconscious identification with a 'dead mother'- that is, a severely depressed mother who had chronically frustrated the needs for love and dependency of her infant child. At the same time, such a mother, desperately needed, cannot be abandoned. The patient, in unconscious identification with a fantasied 'dead mother', denies the existence of all live relationships in reality as if he himself were dead to the world." Another example is a common one that therapists deal with if they have narcissistic patients and their attempts at "triumphant destruction of the work of the envied therapist," that also destroys the therapy that could benefit the patient. The self-destruction can be even more intense. Examples of Borderline Personality Disorder can involve "self-mutilation, cutting, burning, and, in the most severe cases, self-mutilation leading to the loss of limbs as a relentless drive that, at times, causes all therapeutic efforts to fail." The ultimate form of destruction includes those who commit murder-suicides as pathological last ditches to maintain control.

Stalking: https://rumble.com/v1gvhk1-stalking-world-narcissistic-abuse-awareness-day.html

Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorder: https://rumble.com/v1gtj2d-treatment-of-narcissistic-personality-disorder-narcissism-part-4-of-4.html

Masochism

This sadism against oneself, or Masochism, as Freud calls it, is described very well in both Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and The Economic Problem of Masochism. As the child imitates authority figures, especially parents, there are many suggestions of inferiority and experiences of failure as a child grows up. It develops a chronic feeling of inferiority. "The early fluorescence of infantile sexuality is doomed to come to nothing, because the child's desires are incompatible with reality...The ever-diminishing affection shown to the child, the ever-increasing demands of his upbringing, the reprimands, the occasional punishments - all ultimately reveal to him the full measure of the rejection that it has fallen to him to suffer." The child then learns to lose trust in him or herself. Again Freud returns to childhood development and regression. He finds that adulthood is a set of skills that are very fragile and they can easily regress to lower modes of living. Using examples of biological cells that can self-destruct, he expands that to the entire human organism. "A drive might accordingly be seen as a powerful tendency inherent in every living organism to restore a prior state." With enough tragedy, obstacles, failure and incompetence, depression can lead to self-attacking psychologically, and in more extreme scenarios, self-harm, like in suicide. It's like the person feels they deserve it, like their internal tormentor is getting satisfaction as if it was an external tormentor punishing them. Freud terms it an "unconscious guilt", "a need for punishment", and a "tension between the ego and super-ego" (internal parent), or a "conscience anxiety." The regression goes all the way towards death. Freud connects this behaviour to an underlying Death Instinct. From the materialistic stand point, life came from non-life, and now wants to return to it. Ironically it sounds similar to the Christian understanding of Ashes to Ashes. There is also another Christian example of sin, like in the phrase "idleness breeds sin." When people are inactive, and are not actively pursuing self-development, the tendency is to regress to older habits and tendencies. Like forgetting an abandoned skill, the mind forgets and returns to a more primitive way of being, partially because it's less complex and easier. For people who like pleasure, it's hard to fathom how these scenarios would satisfy. For Freud, the peace of non-existence coincides with his theory that people want to "reduce inner stimulative tension, to maintain it at a steady level, [or] to resolve it completely." Freud uses the term the Nirvana Principle, borrowed from Psychoanalyst Barbara Low. All people, including the suicidal, just want the pain to go away. There is pain in a complex life that is chaotic and death ultimately relieves that problem.

Like a wave, the world goes from inanimate, to animate, and back to inanimate. How Freud resolves how the wave of Nirvana to Pleasure to Reality and back to Nirvana principles works, he wasn't able to prove, but later clinicians still can't disprove it completely due to the fact that humans are capable of so much self-destruction. It's an eternal chicken and egg conundrum. Which comes first, a death instinct or a life instinct? Clinicians either posit a stronger pleasure principle, a stronger nirvana principle, or a balance between development and decay. Similarly, scientists look at entropy throughout the entire universe, and how it ultimately breaks down, but others see increasing complexity happening at the same time. "...We can only assume that a very extensive fusion and amalgamation, in varying proportions, of the two classes of instincts takes place, so that we never have to deal with pure life instincts or pure death instincts but only with mixtures of them in different amounts." What Freud ultimately saw was that a lot of patients didn't get better or if they got better, they would often regress at a later date when they found another disappoint, failure or obstacle. At some point, there is something going on biologically, and unconsciously to prevent full recovery. Even today, therapists have to work with the tools they have and be prepared for repeated failure. Temporary therapeutic results may change into a situation where "one form of suffering has been replaced by another." In the realm of severe Masochism, new forms of self-attacking and punishment replace old ones.

Meditative insights

All this phenomenological study for meditators leads to a lot of challenges. One of them Freud alludes to above in his Project, where pleasure is a perception matching a wish, and pain, plus a lot of thinking, is the perception of instability, and wishes not matching perception. Meditation is a great skill for not only religious people, but also those who want to study their own phenomenology. One of the methods of meditation is to look at preferences and interrupt the thinking by being aware of how painful many preferences are, because of their inherent sense of lack. A good comparison to make clear is of how attention searches perception for satisfaction. Thich Nhat Hanh's advice is to "...reflect whatever you see just as it is, without distorting anything." Freud calls it Pcpt-Cs. It seems like an easy practice, but it's hard to maintain. The Chan Master Seng T'san shows the way, but he goes towards a perfectionism that is impractical and difficult to achieve. One has to find "a way beyond language/[concept]" and to let go of "the smallest distinction" between "love and hate", or preferences. This means you have to put attention on vibrating senses and to fit it in between thoughts to slowly make it a habit of consciousness to reside there. One can quickly see the difficulty of maintaining equanimity all the time at the level of perception. There is so much rebellion. For most people it's a healthy way of letting go to maintain well-being, but eventually one has to alter the environment in many different ways to prevent being preyed upon by predators and to build a nest. Essentially we have to get on with our lives.

How to See - Thich Naht Hanh: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781946764331/

The Third Patriarch of Zen Verses on the Faith Mind: https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/buddhism/third_patriarch_zen.html

Psychopathology of Everyday Life - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtl55-the-psychopathology-of-everyday-life-sigmund-freud.html

The Jhanas - Jhana vs. Narrative 1:19: https://rumble.com/v1gqznl-the-jhanas.html

Once the mind is rested in meditation, away from constant irritation of chasing preferences, the opportunity to get into Flow states returns. A depressed person instead has the habit of returning to thoughts of obstacles, worries and ruminations. But the sooner a person creates a new goal that is attainable, the sooner they feel better and get a sense of progress. Like Csikszentmihalyi's Flow system, this adjustment has to be constant throughout life but it is more accessible to people than trying to dwell in Pcpt-Cs, while trying to satisfy preferences. An expert meditator would have to satisfy biological needs with rationality instead of using the sense of lack as a guide. Most people like a small dose of lack in order to motivate action towards goals, as long as they are easy enough to achieve. When skills and challenges are balanced, people feel a healthy sense of zest, excitement and Flow. Most people will find a faster relief if they can let go of the masochism described above and repeatedly choose new goals, maintaining the "balance between challenge and skills." Part of the healing is realizing that one may have an imitated tormentor inside the mind and it is unduly repressing healthy zest. Healthier attitudes include a purposeful search for new attainable goals. This would be developing an ego and not over-developing a super-ego, in a state of masochism. Yet the super-ego isn't all bad, because it creates social standards to follow, but it becomes pathological when the standards are robotic, inhuman and unattainable. Freud references Kant's Categorical Imperative where one must act with responsibility in areas where one expects everyone else to behave responsibly. The unhealthy super-ego assumes responsibility beyond what is human. The Ego is on the frontline and can see the obstacles that an ill developed super-ego ignores. It has to point this out to the super-ego by being present and serve as a reality check. It can create a sense of poverty with the extreme expectations of the super-ego, but the ego knows that skills can be poor and need development. For example, one cannot run a marathon without practice. The solution is not self-bashing, but skill development.

Flow in 7 steps - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html

As skills increase to handle complex problems, then the psyche develops more complexity, despite all the entropy and chaos in the environment. If things get too difficult then instead of being lost, the individual can look for "opportunities to act" that match the individual's "ability to act." Mihaly says that "negative emotions are not necessarily bad. Many great paintings were created, many great books were written, in order to escape depression. Anger has led revolutionaries to build more just social institutions...But while negative feelings last, they take over consciousness and make it difficult to control thought and action." This he calls "psychic entropy" a kind of self-destructiveness and chaos. Concentration helps to create order in the mind, including meditation, but it takes constant practice. "The other way to achieve order is to develop an internal discipline that makes it possible to concentrate at will. This is much more difficult, and it takes meditators, yogis, artists, and scholars many years to learn how to do it." Like Freud's analysis of surprise, distractions can also be a form of stress, which was also found in recent studies of people who were distracted by social media at work. Distractions interfere with skill, and when skills are poorer then stress naturally increases under the Flow system.

Stony Brooks Does personal social media usage affect efficiency and well-being?, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 46, 2015, Pages 26-37, ISSN 0747-5632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.12.053.

Yet, for most people, meditation will be reserved for periods of powering-down and for deeper rest, not the priority of one's life. If they do concentrate, it will be on their life goals. Also many people enjoy the zest of looking forward to activities, and this is facilitated by the right level of challenge so that it's not too easy or too hard. When people are feeling down after a failure, they can pick themselves up by finding something they know they can do.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780141184050/

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

Vimy: The Battle and the Legend - Tim Cook: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780735233164/

On Metapsychology - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140138016/

The Evolving Self - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780062842589/

Psychoanalysis and the War Neuroses - Sandor Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, S. Freud (Introduction): https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781498177337/

Coping with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Returning Troops - Brenda K. Widerhold: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781607505709/

Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain, 119, 593-609.

Gallese, V. (2006). Intentional attunement: NA neurophysiological perspective on social cognition and its disruption in autism. Brain Research, 1079(I), 15-24.

Pain and deliberate self-harm: https://web.archive.org/web/20080916095230/http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/pain/microsite/culture4.html

The One by Whom Scandal comes - René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781611861099/

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

[omegaremix]

Omega Radio for April 3, 2016; #109.

Fight Amp “Goner”

Free Children Of Earth “Terminal Stasis”

Primitive Weapons “Quitter’s Anthem”

You Fucking Die “Sterile Art”

Pigs “Another Hour In Dick City”

UXO “Blind Suicide”

Summer Cannibals “Full Of It”

Scumbag Millionaire “Dead End”

KEN Mode “Daeodon”

Dirty Nil, The “Wrestle Yu To Husker Du”

Church Of Misery “Make Them Die Slowly”

Deja Vega “Friends In High Places”

Black Cobra “Negative Reversal”

War On Women “Servilia”

Chelsea Wolfe “Carrion Flowers”

Making Fuck “Mormon Guilt”

Deafheaven “Come Back”

Whores. “Daddy’s Money”

Baroness “Morningstar”

Drug Church “Then Try”

Primitive Weapons “Or Do Ideas Have You”

You Fucking Die “This Is How Words Are Made”

Super Unison “Close Your Eyes”

Kinski “Detroit Trickle Down”

Meshuggah “Obzen”

Ironboss “Motherfucker”

Neurosis “Locust Star”

Boris & Merzbow “Huge”

Deluxe metalcore, doom, sludge, and stoner.

[lemonhemlock]

What r ur thoughts of helemond and the theory that Aemond fathered her children

i stumbled on this twitter thread a while ago and it pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter (i do think we are getting alys as a character though)

i do agree that it would add a layer of dramatic irony and increase the ~DrAmA~

there are also the famous leaks, as the reddit user below explains (thread here)

ultimately speaking, i can't say if the show-runners have their hearts set on confirming this theory. they could just drop it or leave it ambiguous, but i do think they introduced enough elements to make us question, should they decide to go down this path.

that being said, i don't agree with most greens who say that aemond wouldn't ever father bastards. i talked about this more here and in my aemond/alys tag. my reading of aemond is that of a person repressed and burdened by his sense of duty, struggling with aegon's unworthiness, craving his brother's kinghood and toying at the edges of rebelling & claiming it for himself. i just find it interesting as a narrative choice. who knows how they decide to develop these relationships, maybe they'll retcon everything and start from scratch. but, as it stands now, i don't think it's OOC.

from a practical point of view, aegon, helaena & aemond are all siblings. balon/alyssa, jaehaerys/alysanne & aegon i/rhaenys were all siblings. they're so inbred already that it would be nigh impossible to look at those children and say with certainty who is the father. that doesn't preclude both aegon & aemond being devastated after blood & cheese, regardless of their parentage.

at the end of the day, the story can work both with and without helaemond, i guess it's just down to individual preference and i'm into this idea of a family collapsing in on itself, cannibalizing itself and blurring the boundaries between social roles.

[furious-rogue-stuff]

Has anyone asked Filoni or Favreau about this “Din Grogu” business yet? Because we all, collectively, need clarity on it! 

I think it’s because Grogu has no last name, and is adopted, but cannot verbalize the creed, so they named him Din Grogu as if to specify ‘Son of Din’ in the meantime until he is old enough to voice the creed and take his vow, which requires him to state his given name or for it to be known fully, at least, in order to then speak the creed:

“I swear on my name,

And the names of the Ancestors,

That I shall walk The Way of the Mand’alor,

And the words of The Creed shall forever be forged in my heart.”

Hoping that at that point, he will be able to identify himself as Grogu Djarin, son of Din.

[sheila--e]

3am im gonna sleep. i think sheila would be the type of person to crawl on the foot of someones bed in the middle of the night and sleep there and give them (Fugo) a heart attack. my twisted mind.

[mangoshorthand]

Five Hargreeves Meagalist

Hello, I write aged-up Five Hargreeves smut. Sometimes also not smut. But mostly smut. This is a compendium of my work.

Request status: Closed Request info + rules

[Based on behaviour I have become aware of on here: I know saying 'don't plagiarise my shit' will do nothing to stop actual plagiarists, but just know that, if you do, you are no better than ChatGPT and will not see the light of heaven. It's okay to be inspired by another writer, but not okay to flat out use excerpts with a few of the words changed and then try to make money off it. You know who you are.]

One + Twoshots

Not Smut (G-M rated)

Tickle War | Five Hargreeves / GN Reader (Fluff)- Words: 1.5k

Dickhead Sugar Daddy | Five Hargreeves / GN Reader (Angst/Fluff)- Words 2.8k

Two Old Men | Five Hargreeves / GN Reader (Fluff)- Words 3.3k

No Blinking! | Five Hargreeves & 3 y/o daughter (Fluff) Words: 3k

Twelve Feet Away From the Mistletoe Part 1, Part 2 | Five Hargreeves / F Reader (Fluff, angst) Total words: 5.8k

Senseless | Five Hargreeves/ GN Reader 1.3k words, Rated T/M (Angst + steamy)

Strings Attached | Five Hargreeves / F Reader (Steamy angst)- Words: 4.8k

The Changeling | Five Hargreeves / F Reader, Five Hargreeves & 8 y/o daughter (hurt/comfort) Words: 7.7k

Smut (E rated/18+)

NSFW Alphabet | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader - Words: 2.4k

Two Items of Business | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader/ FReader- Words: 2.1k (kind of a crackfic. Not my best.)

Goddamn Darling | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader- Words: 2.1k

If Tonight Was Our Last | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader- Words: 2.4k (mild smut, probably between M+E ratings)

Boy Wonder | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader- Words: 2.7k

Lucky Fucking Pillow | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader- Words: 3k

In Your Hands | Five Hargreeves / GN Reader - Words: 3.1k

The Birthday Boy | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader- Words: 3.8k

Your Desperate Man | Five Hargreeves/ GN Reader- Words 2.8k

Venus and Cupid | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader- Words 4k (inc. fluff, romance, hurt/comfort)

The Birthday Girl | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader- Words 2.8k

The Pandas and the Conservationist Part 1, Part 2 | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader - Words 11.8k.

My Kind of Deli | Five Hargreeves/ F Reader - Words 8k.

Series + Multichapter fics (best read on AO3)

Hard Feelings (E rated/18+) : 6 parts

You're Five's latest assassination target, but things don't go to plan and now he wants you as his fuckbuddy. What starts as a casual relationship soon comes to mean everything to him, but what can Five bring to a relationship? After 45 years alone, (or almost alone), how do you rebuild your understanding of partnership? Five has to listen, learn and face the future as well as his past.

Includes: No Hard Feelings Before A Fall Flesh and Blood Arrow of Time After We Fall The Years Between (oneshot collection)

READ ON AO3 READ ON TUMBLR

The Neurosis of Five Hargreeves (M/E rated): 2 Parts

Covering Five's readjustment to society post season 3. This series uses prose, monologues, transcripts, and case notes to explore Five's mental health demons, delusions, and recovery from decades of apocalypse trauma.

Not canon compliant. In this household, season 4 never happened.

Includes: Alias Number Five She

READ HERE

The Moth and The Spider (E Rated): Please heed tags.

Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was the fear, or maybe some sick, twisted part of him was titillated. Even looking back, he never knew. In the dark of nights years in the future, he couldn’t help linking how it turned out to this one mistake. Perhaps if he’d fought her just a little longer, it might never have turned into what it did- perhaps it would never have gone beyond that first night. In fact, it seemed likely: that’s how he knew it was all his fault really.

The Handler knows Five will be a difficult agent to control, but she also knows how to exploit his weaknesses.

READ HERE

Headcanons

Usually based on Tumblr asks:

SFW headcanons because I am capable of them y'know

Cooking

'Not like other girls' girls

Five hates himself

Five as the father of a son

S4 speculation

My dreams for Five in S4 (boy, was I disappointed)

Why Five's favourite word is "shit!"

What would Five look for in a partner?

Would Five be ok with not having kids?

A guide to flirting with Five

Five and Wordle

What did Five do in the apocalypse? (mention of masturbation- not graphic)

Five's enjoyment of murder

S/O stealing Five's jackets.

NSFW headcanons ah, safely back in my lane

NSFW alphabet

Five's relationship with the Handler (triggering content)

Five with a menstruating S/O (NSFW only because references sex)

Five + submissive pillow princess

Hargreeves brothers sharing sex tips

Five and flirtatious jokes (mild)

Mannequin banging: part 1 , part 2

Apocalypse sadwanks

Five eats pussy like a madman

[idontreadheartbeats]

Slightly different perspective here from a diagnosed borderline who’s experienced dissociative episodes with symptoms of psychosis:

I think delulu is kinda fun, actually? Like, it already sounds silly and makes me giggle—and just generally different enough—to where I don’t associate it with the very real diagnostic term delusion. If we threw around the term delusional more carelessly, the diagnostic term might start to lose its meaning in the same way psychotic, bipolar, schizo, or triggered have all been diluted in vernacular speech. But I’m not sure delulu is at risk in the same way bc the distinction is more clear.

*taps mic* umm as a zutara shipper can i ask for other zutara shippers not to use "delulu" or "delusional" when it comes to live action zutara? can we not use delusions - serious thing that ppl in real life have to deal with - as a quirky word to talk about ships?

i'm not blaming zutara shippers for this "delulu" trend and not all zutara shippers talk like that, but it's something i've noticed at times in the zutara tag and wanted to bring attention to before this "delulu" trend becomes more present in the tag.

[neocrash1101]

War neurosis

I completed the WAR with a P rank and accomplished all tasks.

Time management is severe....

In the second round, he drops his gun and runs around, and I like how he can feel the emptiness when he realizes that most of the enemies that were there so much are gone.

[tennessoui]

for context, ~3 hours of time out of the group hang day was lovingly partitioned out for "kit's neurosis". this is a kindness that i am touched by

(for additional context, solo was not included because i respect my friends' 3 hours of time)

[razistoricharka]

In 1945, the Yugoslav People's Army, having faced and triumphed over numerous formidable wartime challenges, was plagued by an internal problem which appeared impossible to resolve or even fully understand: a virtual epidemic of war neurosis, which affected thousands of partisan soldiers, and which did not show any signs of subsiding after the end of fighting. On the contrary, the end of the war seemed only to exacerbate the spread of the illness. This was a disorder that bore no resemblance to war traumas in the other nations that participated in the conflict: it did not manifest itself in the form of an urge to withdraw from the frontlines, as was the case in the British and US armies, where battle exhaustion, anxiety and demoralisation emerged as the most popular diagnoses by 1944. Rather, Yugoslav war neurotics demonstrated a heightened willingness to fight, as their new disorder consisted of violent and potentially harmful epileptiform seizures which simulated wartime battles and attacks. The seizures could occur at any moment and under any circumstances, usually when there was audience—in the middle of a conversation, at lectures or meetings, while driving or riding a car, in front of superiors, for example.

In some of these later accounts the notion of partisan neurosis acquired positive connotations: it was arguably a disorder of dedicated fighters, who considered their own interests to be identical to those of their army or of the new socialist republic. Partisan neurosis or partisan hysteria could thus become an advertisement for the new kind of society and people's democracy that the Yugoslav authorities were building. Marxist politics eliminated trembling, anxiety and battle exhaustion, and created soldiers who, even when faced with the worst traumas and suffering from shell-shock, kept their devotion to the army's cause, and their willingness to remain on the frontlines. Betlheim argued that it would be an offence to consider the neurotic ‘a person who consciously strives to escape the war efforts and who consciously wants to withdraw to the rear’, because the majority of the patients ‘had been through difficult experiences which they had barely survived. … They often, having invested the last vestiges of their strength, saved themselves from the dangerous situation, and then had their first seizure in a safe territory. In this psycho-dynamic discourse, the local specificity of the disorder resulted from the superiority of the Yugoslav resistance movement in comparison with both the Allied and the enemy armies in the Second World War, and the conditions of Yugoslav soldiers in the First World War.

I wish I could narrow this all down, especially the opposing viewpoints, but I wanted to pin down these salient parts as they fascinated me for long

[animentality]

Now I need to know what you think is missing from Wyll, Karlach, and Gale’s character arcs. For Wyll and Karlach, the emotional character moments to not feel as important as they should be. Karlach’s goal of killing Gortash doesn’t doesn’t relate to her current issue with Zariel and Wyll kind of has a flat character arc from hero for Baldur’s gate to hero for the sword coast and then hero for Avernus or back to Baldur’s gate. Gale’s is a bit harder for me to point out the major issue but I think it’s that the consequences of his choices happen off screen after all the conflict.

Thanks for answering so many of my asks!

Yeah no worries, I enjoy thinking about Baldur's Gate, the same way a mental patient dreams of violent neurosis.

Anyway, here's my suggestion.

As it is, right now, it does NOT make sense for Zariel to want Karlach? She literally has armies of pit fiends and orthons for the Blood War. The fuck does she need some random tiefling for? And one who needs an Infernal Engine for a heart just to...barely keep up with real devils?

Why even use an Infernal Engine like that, anyway? You telling me you couldn't use that shit for something way more useful than making some random girl able to fight the devils that you already have at your disposal?

What makes wayyyyy more sense is...let's give Karlach a disability. She has a heart murmur, or some kind of heart abnormality. Let's say that in that day and age, such a thing could kill her.

Now Gortash is a thief. Let's say he STOLE an Infernal Engine, and he's dying to test it out. See how it works. Let's say he wants to test it out on a live subject, because he's a tinkerer. He tells Karlach he can fix her heart. And she's desperate, because she think she might have a heart attack, and die. So she agrees.

But instead of fixing her heart, he replaces it with an Infernal Engine. And she's furious, because, they find out, it's unstable and it has to return to Avernus.

And Gortash, being the prick he is, just shrugs and condemns her to the hells, because he has what he wants. He now knows how the Infernal Engine works. He's "nice" enough to send Karlach to the hells, though. Let's say he might have soooome connect, who can at least direct Karlach to Zariel.

So Zariel, being a little more sympathetic than most, takes Karlach in. Gives her a home. Teaches her how to fight, and recruits her for her cause, mostly out of pity. But then Karlach gets tired of fighting in the Blood War. She betrays Zariel, by running away, and that's when she gets tadpoled.

And it'd be a slap in the face for Zariel, because she took that girl in, when no one else would've! So she's hurt and betrayed, and that's why she's hunting Karlach. She hates traitors.

So that's re-framing Karlach! It makes more sense to me this way, because as it is, Zariel has no reason to want Karlach, OR to hunt for her. And also, Gortash's relationship with Karlach is still preserved, just shifted, to make more sense.

And her ending arc could be...force Gortash to fix her heart, after he's learned enough about Infernal Engines to now know how to do that. And confront Zariel.

Let's say Mizora too, or at least Mizora.

You could have a great boss fight somewhere interesting, maybe go to the hells...whatever.

And her entire character arc could go from "sad golden retriever who gets kicked and then DIES" to:

"I was betrayed by someone I used to care about, who used me for his own benefits. I am 'stronger' now than I was before, but at a cost. I was taken in by someone kind...and then I betrayed them. And now, I'm on the run because of that decision...but I did get dealt a pretty shit hand in life. I must now confront the man who hurt me, and apologize to the woman I then hurt as a result of my past trauma."

At the very least, we could see her evolving. She seems innocent and sweet at first...and then you find out, she did some horrible things during the Blood War. She has PTSD. She's grizzled and disillusioned. And maybe she has a hard time trusting people, after being betrayed AND betraying someone who was kind to her. But with the help of Tav/Durge, she learns to stop running from her trauma. To face her old demons head on. Maybe she even drops her "cheerful" act and becomes colder. But in the end, when she's either killed Gortash and had Zariel fix her engine, OR had Gortash fix her engine, and then confronted Zariel, she could return to her happier self, just more honest this time about how she really feels.

Also, she wouldn't have to fucking die.

She'd have a proper working heart, and can live her life.

Now as for Wyll...

Sighing, because his arc is botched.

In the EA, I know he was originally more sleazy?

He like...was called the "fraud" of the Sword Coast. He was meant to be a more morally gray guy, who seems like a hero, but who actually made a deal with a devil for his powers. I didn't play EA, but from what I understand, you could confront him more for being fake?

I would like it if they'd kept this complexity. Have Wyll be putting on "airs" but also be more willing to hurt innocents in the guise of being a hero?

Have him be a little amoral.

But Tav/Durge can either push him to greater immorality...or end up making him a proper hero in the end. Someone his father could be proud of...or maybe. Confront the damage his father did to him, growing up, maybe trying to make him something he was not.

And basically, becoming a hero, but on his own terms, and rejecting his father's idea of what a hero is.

That could be an interesting thing to do with him. Have Mizora be that evil devil on his shoulder...and Karlach be the good angel, because she would basically be like, well...I don't want Mizora to come after me on behalf of Zariel, so...come on, bud.

As for Gale...

Well.

I don't know.

I haven't played through Gale's arc as much, but from what I understand, his biggest issue is that he doesn't get much of a quest in the end. Just the Sorcerous Sundries stuff, which is whatever. You get to decide if he picks the bad Gale ending, where his ambition destroys him, and he becomes just another asshole god, or if he chooses happiness, and becomes a teacher.

Just give him an actual ending quest. Let him fight either a representation of Mystra or Elminster!

Let him reject both of them.

I honestly hesitate to suggest ways to fix Gale, only because I don't know enough about him. To me, a character choosing happiness over ambition is a pretty solid arc.

I just think the execution at the END could've been better.

Also, not just exclusive to Gale...

one of the biggest issues with BG3 is the fact that they chose to split their time doing the dumb, play as an origin thing, rather than prioritizing letting the whole cast intermingle. They could've developed more chances for Tavs/ Durges to influence the party, together and individually, have their decisions matter throughout the entire story.

Instead, they gave us the backstories, and then we just decide literally in Act 3, are they gonna be good or evil.

You only get to see character development if you are ROMANCING them, which is just, terrible, because it limits you to only seeing one character truly develop. Also, even if you are romancing someone, then it's still not really showing you that development.

Like, for Astarion, right, let's say you're trying to convince him not to be Cazador 2.0...you just choose that.

Let him Ascend, or don't.

But your relationship with him doesn't have THAT much of an effect on him?

It would've been far more interesting if your actions in Act 1 and 2 decide what happens there, and there is NO going back by that point. Oh, you forced him to drink from Araj?

He's going to become Ascended, and you can't stop him.

Oh, you chose to encourage Gale's ambition in Act 1? He's becoming a god, good job.

Your Durge was nasty to everyone, and killed so many innocent people in Act 2?

Everyone should fucking leave your ass then. ESPECIALLY if you become the chosen of Bhaal.

That's my issue with the general character development of Baldur's Gate. It's left entirely to, pick dialogue option 1 or 2.

There's not an actual reason to get a character's approval up unless you want to have a sex scene with them.

There's only ONE thing that'll make characters leave, otherwise, they just smile on and don't care that you just killed Isobel for no reason.

And going back to the romance being used as the linchpin for character development...sure, Astarion must learn to trust you and be honest and stop trying to manipulate you. But you don't actually get to reprimand him for that sort of behavior. To challenge him. To force him to see how he's hurting himself, and others?

Like Astarion is a big asshole!! He's a racist, he's mean to kids, he approves of you being horrible.

But then at the end...he just...is good now?

Because you chose to be good, and he's just going along with you...but that's lazy writing.

You had to SHOW us. You had to make us REALIZE he's getting softer. And not just to you, but to everyone.

It makes no sense to me in the epilogue how Astarion just, is a hero now, for no reason. If you don't romance him, I mean, it defaults him to "hero."

And I just don't get that.

So anyway.

Too long of a post, but....

that's my big issue.

Karlach, Wyll, they get no character arcs, and have no depth. Their endings are unsatisfying and uninteresting.

And...BG3 needed to actually show the characters evolving. But they didn't have time to do that, because they chose instead to just, reveal the trauma of their backstory from Act 1...forget the characters have backstories in Act 2...and then decide if they want to be good or evil in Act 3.

And that's...really...boring. And they feel like cardboard cut outs by that point, and not people.

[queeranarchism]

"The quote is from Les Damnes de la terre (Wretched of the Earth), and can only be understood in the context of the fuller argument Fanon is making: “Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.” No one can deny Fanon’s brilliance or his pioneering and profound understanding of the psychological effects of colonial violence on the colonised and the coloniser (as a psychiatrist, he treated French colonial officers and Algerians alike and found them to suffer similar psychiatric ailments). But the second and more famously quoted part of Fanon’s argument is not comprehensible without the first part, and the first part – especially in the Israeli context – is in fact profoundly wrong. Colonialism, especially settler colonialism – and even more particularly Zionist settler colonialism – is very much a “thinking machine” with very powerful and longstanding logic and rationalities that are the key to its success. Because of this, considering what “a greater violence” would look like and how it can be measured, never mind achieved, is a crucial task for those analysing and fighting colonial violence alike. I have yet to see any plausible scenarios in which Palestinians acquire the means to deploy “far greater violence” vis-a-vis Israel/the Zionist entity for any length of time in any conceivable geostrategic balance of power. Even if Iran (the only major power that supports Palestine in any meaningful way), for example, wanted to deliver heavier weapons to Palestinians, Israel’s control over access points, as well as Egypt’s and Jordan’s, will prevent that from happening. Palestine is not Ukraine, supported by major powers and able to utilise land, water and air corridors to obtain an unending stream of weapons deliveries to fight a much larger and better-armed adversary. Quite the opposite, in fact. More broadly, Palestine today is not Algeria in 1956, which was Fanon’s most important reference point. Nor is Israel France, with a metropole to which settlers can return (unless we consider Tel Aviv the metropole). There will be no long-fought war of independence resulting in the vast majority of Jews leaving à la française a reconquered Palestine. But there are several scenarios that could lead to a redux of the Nakba, as many Israeli politicians are now screaming for. [...]

Indeed, for over 50 years of occupation, and 30 years of the post-Oslo Palestinian “self-rule” rather than “the native cur[ing] himself of colonial neurosis … through force of arms”, what has occurred (as I learned in interviews with therapists at the few mental health centres in Gaza as far back in the later 1990s through 2000s) is the passing on of trauma, with former Fatah prisoners tortured by Israel torturing Hamas members using the same techniques as the Israelis used on them – often screaming at their victims in Hebrew while torturing them in the very same rooms where they were tortured. Hamas has continued this cycle in the two decades of effective control over Gaza. And now we see this with crowds cheering kidnapped, beaten, and murdered Israelis. Whatever catharsis this constitutes, it is not one that will lead to victory over an Israeli society that has been using violence against Palestinians as its own traumatic catharsis for 75 years, in a world that has a very high tolerance for Palestinian civilian casualties, with most people in the West still supporting Israel whenever there is a high level of Israeli Jewish casualties. [...]

Tragically, Fanon died in 1961, a year before Algeria achieved independence. He did not live to see the realities of postcolonial politics in Algeria, or across Africa for that matter, where, as Kenyan novelist and decolonial thinker Ngugi wa Thiong’o has so powerfully showed, leaders of newly independent states almost immediately began treating their peoples in much the same manner as their former colonisers (a phenomenon also experienced with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas since Oslo). Forty years ago, when he was describing this dynamic of postcolonial governance in his groundbreaking prison memoir Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir, Thiong’o used the term “neocolonial” – not to indicate the continuation of European control by other means, but rather to describe how anticolonial leaders adopted (and adapted) the same brutal and authoritarian techniques of rule as their colonisers to cement and maintain their power; a critique of the “coloniality of power” that is today at the heart of the ever more popular decolonial thought. That coloniality of power fundamentally will never allow for anything approaching actual independence for Palestinians, neither via the neocolonial PA nor with Hamas at the helm. If Palestinians are to defeat Zionist colonialism, it will likely take a much different sort of analysis of its violence and power than Fanon offered three-quarters of a century ago, and it will probably require a paradigm shift in the core concepts of what a nation, freedom and independence are at a moment when the entire world, not just Palestine/Israel, is heading towards conflagration.

read the full article

I really like this column. When western media is mindlessly parroting Israeli propaganda and western far-leftists (myself included) are primarily listing all the evils of the Israeli state to make it clear who the real bad guy of the story is, there's very little practical discussion of what is actually happening and what could come next.

[bagheerita]

finally finished DS9 and decided to post some thoughts in one big blob

I was honestly about to give up on season 7 and put the rest of this show to the side for a few months, but then Ezri and Worf have a 3 episode arc sorting out their relationship, only talking to each other because they're marooned/imprisoned, and I was so charmed by them being loud and messy that I managed to bull my way through to the end. I love the two of them as friends, they are adorable. 

I actually really like Damar and his arc, and it’s pretty rare I say that about a character who killed my favorite. 

I feel like the reason Section 31 exists, and they keep forcing episodes about it upon me, is because they wrote themselves into a corner with inventing the changeling disease to kneecap an unbeatable enemy and didn’t know how else to fix it/end the war except with secret secret spies. 

Ezri has this whole speech she gives to Worf about dismantling structures of power and I feel like they needed to end the show before anyone was like, hey the Federation kind of sucks and we should definitely do that. 

Garak’s mom showed up and everything was good in the world again.

Ezri and Julian are like “can’t deny the chemistry.” lol babes that's called being a young attractive allosexual. "Chemistry" is what Worf and O'Brien have in all the scenes where they're mocking you.

I’ve never felt the truth of the phrase “I support women’s wrongs” so intensely as I do with Kai Winn. I love her and I want to give her everything. I didn't love her getting assaulted by Dukat, but when she knows everything that's happening and chooses the pah-wraiths anyway, yes fuck it up. When she poisoned Dukat I was like, hot damn if this character dies as a footnote in someone else's quest for power I will forgive everything that this show has put me through because of him. But we can't have nice things. I did like that her last act was to choose to take their victory from them, and give Sisko the clue he needed to beat them.

I do love Martok but I feel like he’s going to be about as good a chancellor as Robert Baratheon was a king. 

Odo is The Last Unicorn, but with brain-melding: he’s going to share his experience of loving a mortal with the other immortals. I still don’t “get” him and Kira as a couple, their relationship literally went from -20 to 100% after a single all night conversation locked in Jadzia's bathroom and no actual onscreen development, but at least I believe that they believe they’re in love. 

Why the ever loving fuck is Julian so obsessed with the Alamo. Every time they bring it up I want to grab him and Miles and shake them. I get that it's supposed to be some sort of metaphor for fighting a hopeless war, but really? You want to go up to the fake room where you can do/be literally anything and you're going to repeatedly reenact a battle where you die to defend your right to have slaves and practice settler colonialism??? Even in the last episode they’ve won the real war and they’re still obsessed with reenacting this old battle. They also spend that one episode trying to figure out how to win the Alamo… babes, that actually happened: it’s called the Battle of San Jacinto- learn some actual fucking history, your side won the war. This isn’t about metaphors anymore, the metaphor has failed, now Julian just has a neurosis.

The Dominion War plot line goes on for way too long and there is so little internal emotional catharsis. (Maybe because for me the things that were supposed to be cathartic just induced more rage? 🤔) The ending was fine as far as character wrap ups but felt pretty rushed considering how long it took us to get to this point, and I really think they needed more time to handle the denouement. The overall pacing of the episodes/seasons is terrible: you wasted like a season and a half puttering around, with whole episodes where you forgot to mention the war; you added in mirror-verse episodes without bothering to use them for story or character development; Quark is one of my favorite characters but there are too many episodes about Ferengi shenanigans that do not impact the actual plot; there are whole scenes and arcs dedicated to a character who does not (within the internal logic of the show) exist. And then you slammed all the development into the last half of the last season. I'm not surprised now that I forgot this entire show after watching it while airing because it’s emotionally exhausting. I've compared DS9 to SGA in the past, but the Dominion remind me of the Ori: You've killed the enjoyment I found in this show and have made it a chore to watch.

I do like that what ends the war is Julian’s determination and Odo’s compassion. You've proven the Founders wrong, but this entire plot thread was so poorly handled that I don't know that anyone remembers one mention from four seasons ago about why this war even started and, honestly, standing on a planet where you just murdered millions of children it's kind of not enough. I like that they let Garak kill the last Weyoun, and I adore the scene where he lets Kira take the phaser, but honestly he deserved more. It wouldn't solve anything, and I think there's a nice parallel in Garak's fears inspiring him into attempting genocide being incredible grounded in reality and the Founder's similar fears being negated, but he deserves it, the head Founder deserves to be torn into tiny pieces by grieving Cardassians, and I deserve to watch it. (I also desperately want Garak to find out about Section 31 and the changeling disease just so he can be like, "Oh so when I try to commit genocide I get 6 months in jail, but when the Federation wants to commit genocide that's okay?")

I don’t know who on the production team is so invested in Mark Alaimo getting a paycheck, but by the end Dukat as a character has long outlived any interesting qualities he may have had at one point. The final battle shit with the pah-wraiths was pretty underwhelming; except for the deeper exploration of Winn's motives that this season has allowed for, "The Reckoning" was such a better structured episode. (At least at this point they've let Kira go off and be awesome without being forced into episodes with Dukat. The sheer amount of abusive old men sexually attracted to much younger women in this show is frankly unnecessary; I will never be able to unhear Curzon say he flunked Jadzia from the symbiont program because he wanted to bang her, and Dukat’s relentless pursuit of Kira especially/even after we learn he sexually assaulted her mother is disgusting.) 

I have mixed feelings about Sisko, and his character having a “white savior” role with the Bajorans. Like, I guess it’s a cool twist that he’s a black white savior, maybe that's the best the 90s can do, but also can we decide to not write stories where we give foreigners positions of power over recently subjugated peoples??  I was feeling pretty yikes about it especially after the beginning of this season and learning that he was basically genetically bred by the Prophets for the position, but… I dunno, I’m probably not someone who can or should have a deep opinion about this. I do like that arc for him as a character outside of what it means for the Bajorans, but his ending feels too open. I wish we got to know more about what he learns from hanging out with the Prophets, and I wish that the great "sorrow" he suffers from disregarding the visions felt more concrete. Kassidy is really the only one sad about this, Sisko seems excited to exist outside of time. (And I feel like a lot of the "yikes" of the character could have been fixed by making the character be Bajoran? You wouldn't need to invent a reason why he was chosen by the Prophets. He could even have been raised on Earth and still have those ties, and I think it would have made the pull between his duty as an officer and his duty as the Emissary more interesting. Also can you imagine if Jake and Ziyal were both half Bajoran and hanging out with each other??? But they don't pay me to write shows.)

Why do Miles and Julian have the gayest final montage? It's literally the first of the montages and they start it up over "The Way You Look Tonight" and I was just like... wtf did I accidentally put in a fan video? Miles is the only person in a relationship who has a montage without any mention of their significant other, though I guess Worf's does jump from his first meeting with Sisko straight to season 5 clips so they didn't mention Jadzia either. I love that Miles and Julian have such a deep friendship, and I feel like this show could use more interrogation of the concept of love and the fact that platonic love/friendship is just as important as romantic love, but the production has spent so much time "no homo"ing every relationship they can think of that it just comes off as bizarre. 

All the bts things I’ve read about this show pretty much amount to the production being like “we had no idea what we were doing with this character” which, when combined with the failure to manage season structure and some of the utterly bonkers episodes this show threw out there, leads me to believe that pretty much anything I enjoyed about this show comes from the actors. This is definitely a show I feel like I’m going to be “rewatching” through fanfiction and gif sets before I ever rewatch the entire show again. 

[artbyblastweave]

What do you think about the whole Institute brotherhood as foils of each other thing ?

Because I feel like Bethesda did set up some interesting stuff with that? The Institute as a paragon of "progress" that destroy any chance of rebuilding society around them ,then the brotherhood as champions of regression who foister environments that allow "new" societies to form.

I think you could make that argument. One clear way in which the two are foils, right, is that both of them are legacy groups descended from pre-war American institutions- U.S Army for the Brotherhood, Ivy-League Academia for the Institute- but there's an underremarked-upon further similarity in that the founding stock of both factions aren't the best and brightest preserved as part of a considered plan, but instead a tiny pocket from each larger body who got reeaaaal fuckin' lucky and let it go to their heads. The Institute got started by a bunch of CIT faculty and students who hid in the basement when the bombs dropped- which’ll net you a higher-than-average engineering/r&d acumen than any other basement, and it would certainly select for the self-importance that crops up in those spaces, along with the MIT-specific funny student prank neurosis, but they are, fundamentally, still just A Bunch Of Guys In A Basement. The state of their complex 200 years later feels like an performative effort to justify to themselves that they really are the best and the brightest, but you find out from the maintenance guy that it’s a patina over old-world systems they have to keep repaired, and you can find elements of the old-world architecture and office complexes that they didn’t have the spare plastic to makeover. (The FEV lab is notably and pointedly in this style- and from this I think you can extrapolate that most of the institutes fun toys are probably pre-war research projects that they picked up and ran with vs something they were soooo uniquely intelligent to think of and produce post war. I do think SOME level of actual thought went into the Institute and how it happened and What It Is Thematically but not enough of that made it into the game in actual spoken words the player hears.)

In conclusion, the secret good fallout 4 that lives in my head would have been much more aggressive about drawing a through line to pre-war academia, and would have also made pre-war academia’s presence in Boston (college town of college towns) much more salient in the environmental storytelling and narrative- making it clear the extent to which the institute is essentially the still-walking zombie of the-pre-war governments research and development division, making their tussle with the Brotherhood closer to a civil war between fragments of the same beast. I have a lot of thoughts about how I’d rework the institute but this is getting long.

[youzicha]

The serendipitous discovery of spiritual healing therapy boxes reminds me of how Wilhelm Reich invented his famous Orgone Accumulator. The timeline was something like

In the 1930s, Reich discoveres that it you heat matter to incandescence and let it sit for a while in a test tube of water, and then look at it carefully through an optical microscope magnifying beyond the diffraction limit, you can see seemingly alive, moving, blue-glowing "bions".

in the 1940s he finds that "sand packet bions" (from heating beach sand) glow so intensely that his eyes start to hurt when he looks into the microscope. (An ophthalmologist says his account is "fantastic", and prescribes dark glasses). Trying to detect the radiation on photographic plate gives a shocking result: the test plate fogs, but the control plate (without bion culture) fogs as well! Reich realizes that the entire room must be suffused with "orgone radiation". Indeed, if you spend 5 hours in complete darkness, you can learn to see a blue glow around living organisms even using your bare eyes.

Reich builds a box to isolate the radiation from the sample, but surprisingly, the radiation is visible even when the box is empty. Evidently, the box is concentrating orgone from the atmosphere, so Reich sells the boxes as a cancer/neurosis/etc treatment.

In the early 1950s he uses the idea of concentrating/focusing orgone radiation to discover the "cloud buster", an empty metal tube connected to the ground with a wire which sucks up orgone. You aim it like a bazooka towards a cloud to dissipate it, or aim it just next to the cloud to make it grow bigger. By using a battery of many tubes the effect can be made stronger. (Also, you can use them to shoot down UFOs, but it's maybe best to not do this because it may provoke an interplanetary war.)

The most obvious parallel is that once you have trained yourself to see the Divine fragrance/Orgone glow, you can see it in all kinds of places. But also, both stories have this delightful Calvin and Hobbes atmosphere where ordinary household objects like boxes and tubes become fantastic toys. I guess the key is to keep your child-like sense of wonder.

[lemonhemlock]

If you were one of the writers of the show , how will you write Aegon's character? His development, his bond with his dragon, relationship with his children, wife, siblings etc...

Like how he will be from his childhood to his adulthood + how he will be as a king and how he will become after the war...

Like you free to not use Tom's interpretation or Sara+ryan's interpretation if you don't want to.

I'm interested to know how will you write F&B Aegon and i hope you write it in details if you have time because i love reading your ideas.

What a monumental ask, thank you! This character has had such a hold on me; I can feel the potential radiating off this combination of screen + page. I ranted in the past about how I disagree with the choices they made with him, but they did endow him with an exasperating capacity for greatness, a lot of it thanks to TGC's interpretation.

I do think that Aegon could have been one of the most memorable ASOIAF characters and one of the most thrilling explorations of kinghood. I am not referring to people's already-cemented views of him; I am speaking of building the most compelling version of this character possible within the basic narrative of FB, beyond any fandom sectarian lines. Basically, what I'd like to do with these raw materials is to construct a character that people will love, but that they would find very, very uncomfortable, in a prickling-beneath-the-skin type of way.

I am also well aware that this will start to diverge wildly from canon, so don't feel compelled to point that out. I know already. This is going to get very, very self-indulgent since that was the nature of the ask.

Trigger warning for everything. Needless to say, I'm not writing a wholesome script here.

So let's turn him into this generation's Commodus.

This will mostly be imagery and vibes, because I don't have a lot of plot point thought out.

Some of the descriptive tags I use something when referring to green family dynamics are those of #an incestuous autophagous family gradually violating every boundary until every kind of social role leeches into the next #collapsing onto itself in psychosexual neurosis. Sound very pretentious, I know, but it's basically this idea of House Targaryen retreating within its family unit as a result of trauma, but ending in a process of cannibalization. I would have Aegon be the main exponent of this type of breakdown. So I will usually choose the most fucked-up option whenever possible, but I'd focus mostly on innuendo & psychological fuckery, rather than anything more graphic. I mean, this is a TV show, still.

Consequently, one of the readings that I find the most disturbing (and entertaining) is that of Aegon wanting to crawl back inside Alicent's womb, to revert to that pre-birth state in which they weren't separated, they were still one whole and whatever particles of him lived inside Alicent were safe and warm and protected. I am going to link to a few posts I made that describe this type family dynamic (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). This is pretty intense, granted, but imagine if there were a TV show that had the balls to implement this kind of dynamic. I mean, if you can't realise it within ASOIAF-verse, then where?

So I would have Aegon mirror Alicent in the way that she's trying to keep her family together. Aegon craves his family, he wants to feed off of them and wants them to feed off him. He wants them all to collapse into each other back to that original state of being physical parts of Alicent in a far-away time that coincides with Alicent's girlhood. It's often said in meta that Cersei views her children as extensions of herself. I want the opposite for Aegon, our most self-aware, fourth-wall-breaking character: I want him to know that he is an extension of Alicent. This will only become apparent to the viewer later, because we start in a completely different way.

I'd say that this could work very well, because on screen Alicent & Aegon look a lot alike. The casting directions really pulled through here. Alicent seems to communicate often through touch - she will anxiously grab at whomever she's talking to or she will engage in self-soothing gestures. I'd have Aegon inherit that from his mother, that need to physically connect with his family. He'd like them to hug him, but they don't initiate, so he grabs at them to stop them from leaving or just so he could feel them. In one of these scenes, I'd have him look wistfully at her and say some creepy melancholic shit about how they have the same face. "If you were a man, you'd be me." (IF I WERE A MAN, I'D BE JAIME - IF I WERE A WOMAN, I'D BE CERSEI - you get it. We're running with this).

Similarly, I would have Aegon willing & eager to accept violence from his family as an act of love. As long as his mother slaps him, it means that she loves him, it means that she cares, it means that she deigns to touch him. She can do it in public or in court & he won't react other than being weepy. (fans love this anyway, he's never beating the pathetic wet rat allegations) I'd also give Ser Criston the privilege of knocking Aegon about. Heck, the entire Kingsguard (those who did not desert, at least, because it means they are truly loyal to him). I want to toy with the idea of the trappings of kinghood - the king doesn't have absolute powers, he is a prisoner in his own right OR does he just choose to give them up and be pushed about for whatever reason? I want the viewer not to know what Aegon is going to do, whether he will pull rank or whether he will submit.

For Aemond, I've already provided a few links above on how I'd portray their relationship. With Daeron, I'd have him be ecstatic - finally, someone who doesn't look at him with disgust & disappointment! (Mostly because Daeron has been away for a long time and hasn't had time to be disappointed by Aegon, but, oh, well) Finally someone who will withstand his hugs! I'd have Aegon be very caring-big-brother like.

With Helaena, I'd give him a better relationship, because it's just more interesting to me than to have him another awful targhusband. Aegon is not someone who has a lot of patience, but for Helaena, he could channel Alicent sometimes (IF I WERE A WOMAN I'D BE MY MOTHER) and get through to her.

I've already spoken to death on the issue of their children - the most interesting and toxic option for me is if none of them know who fathered them, but they do not care. Sometimes they wonder, but as a curiosity. The children belong to all of them. They are all Alicent's, anyway. She made them all via parthenogenesis. (this is a joke lol). Feel free to disagree with this, I do not care; make your own AU.

I would also age them up, frankly, because it's ridiculous for teenagers to be doing all of these things anyway. I'd have them be in their early twenties - with Alicent maybe around 38? That's still young, before any of you gets their knickers in a twist. So maybe another 10-year time jump after the eye incident.

I've already written a post on what I'd change about Season 1, but I'll add a few more indulgent changes.

I would give baby!Aegon the white hart symbolism just to fuck with Rhaenyra.

I do like Ty Tennant's Aegon and wouldn't change much about him, except give him more things to do. If I could add an extra episode between "We Light The Way" and "The Princess and The Queen", I'd fill it up mostly with interactions between all of the children. Jace, Luke, Aegon, Helaena, Aemond & Daeron. Have them do stuff separately and together. Show more of Aemond being bullied, but also have Aegon rope his siblings into some silly adventure. Show them how to navigate the secret tunnels. Convince them to sneak out into the city. Do something cute with them, so it's not all doom & gloom.

I would portray young Aegon as someone who is naturally talented but doesn't apply himself. That annoying instinctually smart kid that never does his homework but somehow coasts by. Have his peers be annoyed at this and view him as an arrogant twerp. Make him an arrogant twerp, so it's not just an opinion.

One thing that I haven't really seen discussed all that much is the effect Viserys' illness might have on Aegon. He sees the throne cut his father and infect him to such a degree he becomes a walking husk of a man. He thinks, he knows that one day that will be him. If "all goes well", he will have to sit the Iron Throne and become infected and diseased like that. (This is false, but we'll only realise later. The throne will never cut Aegon. It will hurt him in different ways).

His father doesn't care for him anyway, so Aegon subconsciously rejects all this. He needs constant stimulation to take his mind off this gruesome fate. I would give him Prince Hal energy. Mingling with the common people, bawdy, rude, whoring & drinking his liver out. Perhaps by doing all this, he believes he will disqualify himself from the position? Or that no one would be so mad as to place him on the throne. We could have some fun by showing him getting into street fights over the dumbest shit. Just behaving like a general rapscallion. Yes, I would cut the rape and the child fighting rinks. 🤦‍♀️

I would like to develop his relationship with Rhaenyra somehow. When he's older, maybe entertain the idea of him having the same attitude towards Rhaenyra as Aemond has towards him - jealousy, viewing her as depositing all of father's love, despite her not doing anything to "earn" it. In effect, she is being just as irresponsible as he is, only that she's passing her bastards off ahead of him in the line of succession, while he's drinking and whoring. Yet, he is the only one being looked down upon.

I'd make both Aegon and Sunfyre have a soft spot for children in general. It's a surefire way to get the audience on your side. Show him playing with his own children and being goofy with them.

Blood & Cheese is a very good opportunity to delevop deranged! Aegon. Maybe have him torture and kill Blood himself. In the books, he orders every ratcatcher to be hanged. This can go as dark as you like. If you're really feeling lugubrious, he could kill them himself, one by one (???) Show him in his unhinged era, but also show him comforting his sister and mother. I wouldn't be framing him heroically here; he is turning into a villain. I'd show his family a little wary of him, like all this revenge action is getting too much. Aegon looks back at them and doesn't understand why they're being cagey - this is all for their protection and dignity, don't they see?

I have this idea of a scene of him delegating Crown business to Alicent: open court day, she is hearing petitions. Aegon insists that she be the one sitting the throne that day, not Otto. This image of him waltzing into the throne room, splattered in blood from one of his "interrogation" sessions, the whole proceedings stop, everyone bows down to greet him, Alicent starts getting up from the throne, Aegon says there's no need. His mother is the steward of the Crown. He stands there looking on in fascination as she dispenses justice, because it gets his rocks off to see her wield his power. Have him smirking at people as if to say "this is my power trip as well". I'd also include ambiguous cues that would make fans write essays upon essays on the fucked-up implications. So, for example, I'd have people address Alicent as "The Queen", not the Queen Mother or Queen Alicent or the Dowager Queen, while Helaena would be Queen Helaena. No shade to Helaena - I just think it's a lot more messy this way. I'd like to emphasize how she is the boss of them - the King is just there to be a sovereignty-donor.

I would change a lot of things about the military aspect of the war, so to speak. I would make things more even, not give Rhaenyra so many allies because it makes more sense. No ridiculous Lads army and I'd probably render Cregan Stark irrelevant by the time he decides to march down south. I'd also like Aegon to participate in more battles in his own war. So I would not give him Anakin Skywalker-level injuries after Rook's Rest. There's the southern front with the battles of Tumbleton, there's the western front where the Greyjoy fleet is attacking the Lannisters... IDK. I feel like we could give him more to do in this regard. I have this image of him maybe fighting alongside Daeron, getting injured and Daeron enforcing a shield circle around him to get him to safety. Whenever he is injured and bedridden, I'd turn him into a wet-eyed rabbit crying for his mummy. In relation to Aegon, the audience should feel like they want to push him down the stairs, nurse him back to health, then push him down the stairs again.

When he gets smuggled out to Dragonstone, I need him to use all of his car saleman skills and convince the people of Dragonstone to side with him. This should be Aegon at peak politician. Make the commonfolk start believing in his cause. I'd frame him like a cult leader here for shits and giggles. Maybe introduce some comedic moments to lighten the mood a bit. I'd like to parallel injured!Aegon to injured!Sunfyre somehow. Aegon craves affection and so does Sunfyre. Headcanons here and here.

Getting injured by Morning would be the final straw for Aegon. My idea is for Rhaenyra to take Alicent as a hostage when she flees to King's Landing and have Alicent witness Rhaenyra's demise. Have her beg Aegon for mercy, while he remains cold-blooded. This is her son, her baby boy, the one time he decides to disobey her and not heed her advice is when he decides to kill her soulmate. He holds her tenderly while she sobs and fights to get to Sunfyre. (If I were a man, I'd be Aegon).

This is where we can play with crazy, off-his-rocker Aegon. He wants to behead Baela and needs to be calmed down. He oscillated between wanting to kill Aegon III, geld him, send him to the Wall or cut his ear off. He breaks down thinking of his dead brothers. He keeps at Sunfyre's side all times and weeps bitterly as his dragon dies. He is a river of tears and they don't stop flowing. When Sunfyre finally dies, Aegon orders his bones be transported to KL and placed in his chambers.

He takes his mother and goes back to KL where his daughter is. It's time for demented girl dad Aegon! He keeps Jaehaera with him at all times, while dispensing punishments that oscillate between fair and cruel. He has no mercy for the Shepherd's lambs or pretender kings. He is the King. He keeps Jaehaera on his lap, reads to her, plays with her, entertains her child-like trains of thought. Sometimes he asks her how intense should the punishments for traitors be. (I would not make her "simple" in this re-telling, jesus christ).

Alicent advises him to marry her to Aegon III, so as to unite the two rival claims. Aegon refuses. My daughter is the rightful heir / I will not have Rhaenyra's blood dirtying my throne / Andal Law states that a daughter comes before an uncle, isn't that what you taught me all my life?? He knows that this is the best compromise, so as to avoid another future succession crisis, but he just can't bring himself to do it. He pleads with Alicent, tells her he'll sire another boy on Cassandra Baratheon. He'll fix this. Only the best for his sweet little girl. He'll create a proper husband for Jaehaera, just like his mother created the best wife for him with Helaena. Alicent nods and agrees, but doesn't hope that the future will be so simple for them anymore. "Very well, but until that son is born, why don't you betroth them, just in case". Aegon concedes.

Life is not really that great for Aegon at this stage. He is in a lot of pain, prone to bouts of weeping when he remembers his dead family members and dead dragon. He tries to comfort himself thinking of Cassandra and how he plans on claiming another dragon or hatching an egg (he's never been a hatcher, none of them were). That keeps him going for a few more days/weeks. Eventually, he realises that he cannot keep living this half-life, suffocating with this agonizing need for his siblings and dragon. He will tell his mother and daughter that his love for them is enduring and drink the poison himself.

Alicent marries Jaehaera to Aegon in the world's most depressing funerary wedding. They are all she has left - a girl who looks like her children (and her) and a boy who looks like Rhaenyra (rhaenicent reborn!). I would end the story like PRINCESS Shireen said: "two scared children spouting oaths they didn't understand, all that was left of the mighty House Targaryen".

I would end the series with the image of Queen Regent Alicent of House Hightower, hearing petitions, sitting on the Iron Throne, where her son placed her. The throne never cuts her. It hurts her in different ways. She is so young, still. Young forever. The children look like her children.