#and True Spirituality

[astrogirlythings]

[theunmarkedtombstone]

WICKED pt. 1 (2024) dir. Jon M. Chu.

[spiritualseeker777]

[faronmckenzie]

Don’t let their energy change yours.

[a-path-by-the-moon]

[alexanderwales]

I found out today that my wife thinks I'm a nerd, which I tried to disagree with.

Wife: How many Magic cards did you have when we met? Me: I dunno, like ten thousand. But "nerd" is a mindset more than anything. Wife: You're a scifi/fantasy writer. Me: Right, right, I can see how that would look. Wife: We have a custom-built D&D table in the basement. You were a mathlete. You keep talking about wanting to buy a katana. Me: I see what you're saying. I can see where, from an outside perspective, I would look like a nerd. Wife: So you agree. Me: I think I just spend a lot of time around nerds, and - Wife: Why would that be? Me: And I have a fundamental spiritual disconnect with a lot of them. Wife: Feelings of alienation and social isolation, you say? Like some kind of ... nerd.

[heavenpureheart]

[accio-victuuri]

happy new year wang yibo, thank you for an amazing year. 🤍

[universetalkz]

“Forcing connection is forcing alignment.

Forcing alignment is forcing attachment.

Ego seeks attachment.

Soul seeks connection.

You will never have to force anything that aligns with you.

What is meant for you will feel natural, peaceful, and connected, not forced, chaotic, and attached.”

[fiddles-ifs]

Happy Lunar New Year!! Year of the snake baby!!!!!

Also, two Greenwarden announcements! 1) Greenwarden: Alpha is moving to itch.io at the end of the month, with the death of DashingDon. Same format and everything, just a new site. I fiddled with the idea of moving it to Twine but with everything I’m juggling right now it’s not feasible.

Coming in March: Greenwarden: Side Stories, which is a super secret project I’ve been working on. Side Stories are little chewable stories set in the Greenwarden universe, including old Patreon shorts! The Patreon shorts will be posted for free in the demo — other shorts I’ve written will be available for 2.99! All of them! This involves continuous updates!

Side Stories will be written in Twine and will mostly involve short stories, rather than choice-based content. This will also hopefully tide everyone over while I chug through the latest Greenwarden update.

[vaguely-concerned]

it probably says something either sad or deeply unfortunate about me as a person, but I'm darkly amused to see some people react to the reveal of the ultimate permeability of souls in tlt as a triumphant thing -- the "you can't take 'loved' away!!!" side of it all -- when my first reaction was such an immediate wave of 'oh, oh so this is why this series is horror, I truly understand now' distress haha. ngl the final confirmation of the self not being inviolable in the deepest way freaks me the fuck out far more than any moment of body horror in the series has managed. (these two elements are of course the two sides of one thematic coin; it's about the horror of our bodies and minds and selves not being inviolable things, and about the effect of violence on them on so many different levels. violence psychological and interpersonal, physical, subtextually sexual, emotional, medical, political, a whole unlovely smörgåsbord of indignity and violation a person can be exposed to, and on a broader scale the spectrum of violence colonialism wields). The world and other people being capable of leaving indelible marks on us for good or ill through their presence in our lives is of course a pretty self-evident demonstrable truth in the real world, but somehow having it be proven metaphysically just uh. Fucks me up! 

It also drives home to me just how perfectly Muir has captured the dilemma at the heart of human connection and intimacy: the fact that the thing that gives us life and meaning is also capable of harming us so deeply. the same thing that can be so beautiful — even in a bittersweet, violently transformative form like with the creation of Paul — when done mutually and consensually and compassionately, is the same process that means someone like John can touch someone else's soul and 'after he's put his fingers on something, you'll never find anyone else's fingerprints on it; too much noise'. I think the text itself — the whole series, because to me this is what it is ultimately about, this tension between individuation/self vs. love/connection/enmeshment — is far more ambivalent in its treatment of it than saying it’s inherently a good thing or inherently a bad thing. The only thing it says for sure is that it is always a thing, that thinking you’re ever getting away from it is the height of futility, and that through being alive (or even through being dead lol) it is something you have to engage with in some way no matter what. Contact with other people is deeply necessary — without it we sicken and die. it can be the most beautiful and meaningful thing in a human life, and the most unspeakably horrific. All of these people are searching for some way to be whole, whether in total self-contained sufficiency on their own or in melding with someone else as their ‘other half’, and stumbling around in the dark they reach for each other and score deep wounds into the thing they’re trying to touch even when they don’t mean to. Taken to horrific extremes with the form of lyctorhood John guided his disciples to when they were ‘children — playing in the reflections of stars in a pool of water, thinking it was space’, because while people hurt each other all the time with differing levels of intentionality behind it, what John did was deliberate. It weaponizes the misapprehension of what closeness must be and destroys everyone involved in the process… and all because it leaves John the one sun their ruined lives have left to orbit around, because that’s the closest thing his soul will allow to connection. He doesn’t understand that to truly touch something you have to truly let it touch you back, and then wonders why he’s never satisfied.   

‘The horrors of love’ has been memed to death, I know, but… yeah. That is what it is, isn’t it.

[qinluna]

I just have this strong inkling that Sylus is gonna be a strongly multi-layered character. Like yes, he is a villain, and probably with good reason. Considering how the current timeline/story is so deeply woven with the myths and other phenomena we may not know of yet, it's likely that Sylus is this anomaly who exists to bring an unexpected sequence of events that hasn't been foretold by any prophecy or past life.

Knowing that Xavier's role has allusions to time and time traveling (the current timeline we play in is the past), he's essentially breaking that prophetic rule, in a way. Going back to the main timeline to try and save the MC, destroying the protocores in Onichynus' possession...

But everything that Xavier's purpose is, maybe Sylus has exceeded that already or intends to, at least. Since he's been watching the MC this whole time, and has seen her with Xavier/Lumiere... the central rivalry will transpire between those two. I can also see a rivalry between Rafayel and Sylus, only because Raf seems to have the deeper connections when it comes to networking and who does what, etc. (And with Zayne who became a cardiac surgeon with the intention of saving MC, it's likely a tense rivalry between him and Sylus would gradually turn into something of neutral ground.)

Anyway, my point of it all is: Sylus will break the pattern. Whatever curse there is that has been placed on MC, his existence seeks to rid of that curse by any means possible. I do truly believe he wants to let the world burn for her, and the protocore experimentation serves a greater purpose of trying to save her...

[spiritualseeker777]

[yingandzhan]

Something just got me thinking...

Suibian is a truly loyal sword, it refused to let anyone else use it and did what was only ever heard of in legends and sealed itself away when its master died!

The sword is monogamous. It only connected with one person and no one else would do. No one else could compare.

Spiritual weapons have a deep connection with their wielders, they are constantly permeated with their owner's spiritual energy. They are, in a way, an extension of their master.

So, it makes perfect sense that Suibian is monogamous. Because it's quite obvious that WWX is as well. WWX only ever had eyes for one person, he only ever connected to one other person in such a deep, life changing way. No one else would do, no one else could ever compare to that boy that stole his undivided attention on the Cloud Recesses rooftop the first night they met.

It was always LWJ for him, just as it was always WWX for Suibian.

Like master, like sword.

[a-path-by-the-moon]