#between this ; during Orpheus’s life ; and then after seeing human progress

[swanandphoenixsong]

My only explanation, (and it is a flimsy one at that, and I can’t wait to see how it is done in the show) But!

from Dream’s perspective (and from the surviving tribal males’ perspective from “Tales in the Sand”) Nada pursued him, ‘hunted him down’ – She happened to see him once, knew that he was different from all the men in her kingdom, and then he disappeared. She went searching for him, as far as swallowing the flame berry, which brought her into the Dreaming, effectively invading his home.

(Knowing what a dramatic Dream is, he may have compared it to when the Dreaming was invaded, conquered, and he was imprisoned by the Old Gods before he had met Alianora. Of course, it’s not really that comparable, but it also takes places before Calliope and Orpheus, therefore Dream may also be considered less considerate and mature, since he has not yet experienced being a husband and a father)

Anyway, Nada had been warned she shouldn’t go after him, but she ignored that warning. However, once she realized he was Dream of the Endless, King of the Dreaming, and knowing that his love would bring ruin to her people, she refused him. (This is the first time she refuses to be his queen) At this point she ran from him, as prey, and brutally destroyed her hymen/virginity, believing it would make herself undesirable to him. Dream heals her and says he wouldn’t even care if she were not a virgin. And by this point he’s worn her down and they have sex. (According to the tribal males, the whole world dreams of their coupling. Yeesh.)

After her people are destroyed because she lay with one of the Endless, she threw herself over the rocks and to her death. Even in her death, he is there again and asks her to join him in the Dreaming as his queen. She refuses him again. He warns her that he will punish her if she refuses once more, and she does for the third and final time, so he damns her to hell.

I don’t think Dream is at all justified, but I think in his eyes, Nada made him feel wanted, and then she took that away and made him feel vulnerable, and Dream wasn’t going to let it happen similarly to Alianora. He would be in control, and he would not look like a fool if he came away from it without a queen at his side again. Therefore, Nada was susceptible to her choices – her choice to pursue him, her choice to swallow the flame berry and go to the Dreaming, and then her choice not to become his queen. It’s not reasonable, and it’s not the character we would like to imagine him to be, but I think it is a stage of who he is, and hopefully my rambling makes some amount of sense.

I really do not know what to make of how Dream treats Nada, honestly. If there is one good value he has, one thing he does believe, it is that every person fundamentally belongs to themselves? Whether it's in a magical sense, like Thessaly saying the cuckoos life belongs to her or Titania giving him Nuala, or in the mundane, real sense like Funland attempting to "claim" Rose or Hob's participation in the slave trade, he always, always objects. Every other one of his lovers - Alianora, Calliope, Killala, Thessaly - he simply allows to leave when they want to. He didn't live with his wife when he was married to Calliope, fully allowing her her own life. He sacrifices a good bit of power to let Alianora go as far away as it's possible for her to be, when she decides she wants to. Refusing to possess her, even when metaphysically she can't exist outside of him!

And then there's also the time he showed a girl in hell for ten millennia for not wanting to be his, in the exact way he had let Alianora stop being his. Just right in the middle of his relationships there is this one that fell apart completely differently from every other, where he seems like a completely different person! Was her suggestion that he could just quit his job that offensive to him? Maybe! It just feels inconsistent! I don't know what to make of it! I don't know what to make of the predator/prey imagery either!!! Her whole story is so fucked and so out of character and I don't know what to make of it!!

[awed-frog]

hey, not sure if you talked about this already, but what are your thoughts about Cas's arc so far and what happened in the Empty?

Hi! Thanks for the question! No, I haven’t really discussed this before - to be honest, I don’t exactly know what to make of it all. 

First of all, I know that ‘fighting Death to come back to your lover’ is a tried and tested trope that goes back to - wait, actually, I don’t know when the whole thing started, because in Greek mythology people mostly fought to get themselves inside Hell - Herakles went there a couple of times, Theseus as well (tried to help his mate to kidnap Persephone and ended up with his ass glued to a chair for a few years), and Orpheus, of course - and anyway, it’s very romantic and all but there’s a part of me that doesn’t like it, because it sort of implies that all those other suckers who died - both IRL and in fiction - well, what? Their love wasn’t as strong as Whatshisface’s and bad luck to you?

(That said, I liked how the Empty was set up because it was very similar to the Homeric vision of the underworld, and you can never go wrong with Homer.)

As for Cas, his arc, and how it ties in with the Empty - that’s a wide-ranging question, my friend. I’d say that Cas is a puzzling character - someone who knows what he’s running from, but not what he’s running towards - and I think that the simplest metaphor for this very dominant aspect of his personality is how he loved humanity so much, and yet never bothered to read even a single book, or learn anything about our music and our art. I’m not sure whether this is a case of wanderlust, and how many of us build imagined versions of ideal countries, prospective partners and future selves in our minds without looking at them too closely (maybe because we know, or fear, that none of that will ever come to pass) or if it’s something to do with him being an angel, and a subconscious need to just keep quiet and obey orders. Whatever the truth, we know that before Dean crashed into his life, Cas hadn’t seriously tried to change anything about his own (and we know that because when he truly committed himself to it, he succeeded - basically severed his ties with Heaven and all that, and even the occasional bouts torture and brain-washing weren’t enough to keep him from Dean). So, well - from the very beginning, Cas has been this restless alien unhappy with his own culture but unable to change anything for himself and in this sense, Dean was as much of a trigger for him as Cas himself was for Dean - it’s because of how infuriatingly fascinating he found Dean that Cas kept coming back, and it’s because he finally allowed himself to love Dean that Cas finally chose to stay and fight for him and with him.

(As a side note, I’ve always wondered about that whole ‘saving from Hell�� thing - what angel in their right mind sent Cas down there? Cas? The unpredictable troublemaker, the faulty seraph, the one who, more than anyone else, was likely to do something stupid for a random human? And, I mean, beside the convoluted answer I explored during last year’s DCBB, all I can think of is that either they wanted Cas to die in there, or that Dean chose him in some way, that they established a connection before they even met, which would be weird and unprecedented, since Dean is not Cas’ vessel, but Michael’s.)

So anyway, as far as I can see, Cas’ journey has gone through three stages so far, all of them interrupted and pervaded by his growing feelings for Dean. 

First, Cas had to rebel against Heaven; secondly, he tried to atone for his sins, or his crimes, or whatever you want to call them (for instance, he tried leading the angels, he killed Raphael, and he took an interest in Claire) and now - now all of that is done, and Cas should figure out who he is and what he wants. And this is debatable, of course, but you could argue this third phase began at the end of S11, after God showed up and made clear the angels didn’t owe Him anything - not loyalty, not love - because He Himself didn’t give a damn about them. At the time, I was annoyed by the fact Cas never got his five minutes with God, and I still think it was not a deliberate choice, but something no one could figure out a way to make happen and in the end it was decided it was not that important and whatever (and, uhm - wrong) - but now I’m letting that go, because that complete estrangement between Cas and God - that was closure. Bad closure, but closure nonetheless. And from what we’ve seen in S12, Cas hasn’t made much progress in his personal journey so far - but he finally made explicit, to himself and others, that his role as ‘the Winchesters’ guardian’ has little to do with mission and duty and more with an emotional and affective bond (“I love you. I love all of you.”) and coming from a creature who’s learning to experience and express feelings for the very first time, that was significant.

The problem now, of course, is that Cas is used to one-sided relationships. He’s a soldier taking orders, a seraph singing the glory of an uncaring and distant God, a protector for humans who can’t even see him true face. This is the reality Cas knows, and no amount of shoulder pats and subtle hints will change that - someone needs to come out and say that he doesn’t need to be useful in order to be loved, and neither Dean nor Sam have done enough in that department. And, of course, it’s Dean Cas is watching more closely, and it’s Dean Cas is modeling himself after, and that’s dangerous and counterproductive and heartbreaking, because Dean is also a product of unrequited love - the son of a mother who never put his happiness first, the cadet of a soldier-father who always wanted him to be different, the caretaker of a brother who never quite understood what it was, exactly, that Dean was giving up for him, and, of course, the sexy one-night stand for a long string of women who didn’t bother (or were not allowed) to get to know him and the saviour of people who, quite naturally, would always be a mixture of desperate, grateful, demanding and ‘thank you, but now please get out of my life because I need to forget this ever happened’. But Dean, of course, is human, and he knows there’s a different way to do things (the gentle, romantic, open and caring way he sees in his beloved chick flicks), and Cas - Cas can probably feel his longing to be different, to fit in, and interprets it in his own seraphic way - because Cas’ experience is not movies promoting the ‘be yourself and the right guy will come along’ message, but the certainty that you’re respected and accepted when you do everything right - he did belong to an army for millions of years, after all. So, well - I think the narrative’s been quite clear about this - Cas’ hinted several times that he’d like to stay on Earth as an angel, but he still doesn’t think he’s good enough, because he’s seen the lives Sam and Dean lead - if he can’t hunt or he can’t fight or he gets stuff wrong, then he’s a burden to them, that’s how his reasoning goes. And what he fears, we know that as well, because it’s been a blinking light of distress and text and subtext since the very beginning, is that in order to be truly welcomed he’ll need to give in and function in a human way (ie, allow himself to have emotions and act on them), but at the same time he knows that doing that will make him weaker, that love and anger and fear will (and did) damage his judgement, his fighting skills, even his ability to go out there and just - do things. 

Now, if you’re asking what kind of impact did the Empty have on all of this - again, I wasn’t a fan of that particular plotline, and it wasn’t even clear, in a way, why all those people had to die at the end of S12 - if it was a question of NoHomo mirrors, of forcing us to care about Mary or what - but for once Cas’ death wasn’t his fault, or a direct consequence of something he did - it just - happened, in the same way death happens to humans just because we’re human. And this, to me, is an important distinction, because the first two times Cas died, he deliberately chose to die - he stayed behind to protect Chuck knowing he would get killed, and he went with Dean to the graveyard knowing neither of them would walk out again - and then the third time, he lost control of a dangerous experiment he’d decided to risk, and the fourth time, again, trusting anyone at that point was the stupid gamble of a lost and exhausted man who never knew what being a man even meant, but this final thing with Lucifer - I don’t think Cas had thought of dying at all - he bought the Winchesters five minutes and - miscalculated. He was unlucky, and that makes a big difference for guessing at his state of mind and what will come next. And as for the Empty - I’ve seen a lot of hilarity on how Cas basically annoyed a timeless entity into letting him go, but I haven’t read a lot about that startling declaration in the middle of their squabbling: “Kiddo, save yourself,” the guardian says, to which Cas replies: “I am already saved”. That’s astonishing and meaningful and what did Cas mean, exactly? Very recently (and even more recently for an immortal creature who surely perceives time in a much different way), Cas was lost and depressed and unable to leave the Bunker, and next he was listless and all he could think was how he was a joke and a failure, and he also basically went from ‘I’ll not involve Dean because he doesn’t get it’ to a mixture of ‘I’ll not involve Dean because I want him to be safe’ and ‘I’ll not involve Dean because I need him to be proud of me’ - and that’s the development of a sense of self, right there, of making stupid-ass decisions to avoid embarrassing yourself in front of someone you desperately care about. 

“I am already saved” - as much as I want that to be about Dean, I think Cas was referring to Jack here - this creature who’d given him so much hope, someone he perceives as good and untainted, someone who’s not angry about Cas letting him down literally since birth but instead is calling him back - Jack wants him back, which means he knows about Cas, which means Sam and Dean have told him (because anyone else, angel or demon, would have no reason to), which means whatever Sam and Dean said, it was enough for Jack to need him back with such certainty that it woke Cas up in a place of death and shadows, which means Cas’ plan worked and Dean saw that - he saw Jack was good - he saw Cas was right - and that’s a win, right there, and it’s not everything, but it’s something Cas can work with. 

(And if we want to be generous, that’s why it was Jack’s voice, not Dean’s that woke Cas up.)

So, I don’t know. Cas is like Dean, because he’s learning from Dean, which means that maybe what he needed all this time was something to push against, not someone to offer him the kind of support Cas didn’t feel worthy of. And the more the guardian of the Empty taunted him, the more Cas got his grit back, in a spectacularly Dean way, ‘cause you shut your mouth, goddammit, and there’s people who love me, and they brought me back from that edge and my father was an obsessed bastard and even I didn’t deserve it - I didn’t deserve to die. And all we can hope is that Cas’ victory against the darkest part of himself (and that’s what it was, because this scene - 

- well, it was a direct parallel of this scene -

- and the Empty guy didn’t say anything Cas wasn’t already thinking himself), well - in an ideal world, this victory would be cathartic enough for Cas to say Fuck it and just be who he wants to be - Dean Winchester’s seraph boyfriend, an uncomplicated, long-awaited role he’s been gravitating towards for years and years and something only his own self-doubt and self-loathing has prevented him from achieving, but - but that would make it GAY, of course, which means we’ll get more made-up conflict that’ll keep them both busy until the very end, and then - then we’ll see.

[archangelmichaelus-blog]

Solar Eclipse January 5th 2019, Vega start up!

Solar Eclipse January 5th, 2019, Vega start up!

This partial solar eclipse is dismissed by many as a minor event. Let’s expand and apply the Michaelic understanding to the story!

http://elcielolosastrosysumaravillla.blogspot.com/2014/12/extraido-de-la-bitacora-de-galileo-blog.html

Remember the basics:

Solar eclipse: the moon sits between the Sun and the Earth. Happening with NEW MOON, therefore new beginnings.

Lunar Eclipse: Earth sits between the Sun and the Moon. Occurring during a full moon, thus triggering the subconscious mind, emotions, past, dreams.

Eclipses come in pairs, one for review, one for change. They provide for the trigger, either fate/timeline in your growth or an event, a person, a situation that will crystallize the movement.

Eclipses in 2019, your windows of opportunity:

January 5th: Partial solar

January 20-21: Total lunar

July 2nd: Total solar Visible in South America. Eclipse chasers can contact me if you feel like traveling.

July 16th: Partial lunar

December 26th: Solar, annular.

First 2019 eclipse: New Moon, January 5th:  Eclipse in the Capricorn, in the Dragon tail area. Quite interesting: a new moon, indicator or new beginnings, yet in the Dragon Tail. The Tail energy is related to subconscious, moon-like functioning, connected to the past.

The Saturn Pluto cycle and conjunction:

The most significant event in 2019-2020:  Pluto and Saturn slowly joining and conjunct in January 2020. These are slow, heavy planets, thus already impacting us and very present during the eclipse. In 2019, Pluto and Saturn will be close enough to be considered conjunct and will already feel the impact of Jupiter in the Sagittarius. Saturn will be at 20 Capricorn while Pluto will have progressed up to 23. This conjunction demands to transform or letting go (death, symbolic or not) the structures in the system and personal life that have become obsolete.  You can feel the need of breaking from structures, limitations, obligations, although the energy might require heavy groundwork.

“The Saturn–Pluto cycle occurs roughly every 33 to 38 years, varying according to Pluto’s highly elliptical orbit. This meeting of forces represents, among other things, the redistribution of power in the world or, in other words, which faction will make the decisions that affect the greater collective, whether this occurs in plain sight or behind the scenes. From a spiritual perspective, this cycle reflects a rite of passage determining who is most qualified to be the custodian of resources

and thus regulates who will be in a position of influence. In its purest form, this cycle is one of the highest tests of integrity and morality for those in authority, along with a test of capacity and resilience. Beyond the management of power, this cycle is also about the skill to increase power and the value of resources.” https://mauricefernandez.com/the-saturn-pluto-conjunction-and-the-transits-for-the-year-2020/

Photo: Aviad Bublil GFDL et cc-by-3.0 Hades & Cerberus in a museum of Archeology in Crete

“This conjunction happens every 40 years and every 500 years in a specific sign. For this reason, if we want to understand how it is going to manifest in the sign of Capricorn shortly, we need to use the time machine that is, the ephemeris, go back and check the historical context of last time it happened. Last time the two planets formed conjunction was between 1518 and 1520. The two major events of this area were: the start of Protestantism and the Conquistadors landing in Central America (discovery of Maya civilization in February 1517 and Aztec civilization in May 1518).”

Jupitair, French article: https://jupitair.org/conjonction-saturne-pluton/

Jupitair: English https://worldastrology.jupitair.org/saturn-pluto-conjunction/

The Capricorn is connected to the second house, ruling economy, the distribution and circulation of money. The Capricorn is often regarded as austere. Beyond the Capricorn, when the beast has been mastered appears the Unicorn, altruistic and leading the soul to the light. Pluto/Hades is the king of the Underworld.

January 5th, 2019 Solar eclipse:

In the previous article, we have mentioned the importance of the Pluto-Saturn placement in conjunction with the Star Vega, Alpha Lyra. Pluto and Saturn are the agents of transmutation and rebuilding in harmony with the Lyra’s frequencies, after the letting go of the Sirian cosmic leadership. Saturn and Pluto will be at their tightest hug in April 2019. But the eclipse marks the onset of the mechanisms with the new moon and the eclipse happening at 15 Capricorn. The Sun and Moon are tightly embraced between Pluto (degree 20) and Saturn at 11 Capricorn.

This is the interpretation found in Astrologyking: “Solar eclipse conjunct Saturn does give this eclipse more serious overtones. It reinforces the grave and sober influence of Vega in general, and the critical, abrupt, reserved and unpopular influence from Vega. However, Neptune eases the cold and restrictive nature of Saturn. Saturn gives the discipline and patience to fulfill your duties and obligations. You may have to take on extra responsibility or act as a mentor or guide.” This author still mentions the ‘poetic’ side of Vega. If we think about the Lyra as Orpheus’s home, we must feel poetry and music. As you know, Vega, connected to Hermes and Apollo, is My home in this corner of the universe; while writing, my cells respond to Vega’s vibration.

According to the lore, Mercury made a Lyra and gave it to Orpheus who charmed humans and beasts with his wonderful music. After Orpheus death, Jupiter placed the Lyre in Heaven.  Do you remember Orpheus’ story? Orpheus, Apollo’s son, fell in love for the nymph Eurydice. Eurydice, enjoying nature with friends, was noticed by the shepherd Aristaeus. Escaping him, she was bitten by a snake and died. Struck by grief, Orpheus decided to find her in the underworld, kingdom of Pluto/Hades and Persephone. Charmed by Orpheus’ music, the masters of the underworld gave him permission to take back his beloved to the land of the living. There was one condition: Orpheus could not look at this wife while on the path to the upper world. Orpheus could not hear Euridyce, behind him, because she was immaterial. He lost faith and turned around to check if she was still following him. Euridyce vanished then, for eternity.

Vega is then the resting place of a hero who was a talented musician, experiencing all notes/frequencies with an instrument created by Hermes, the gods’ messenger. This hero also visited and escaped the underworld. The eclipse takes place in the vicinity of the Dragon Tail. Rahu, the Dragon Head was beheaded during a war in heaven involving the underworld: when the gods became weak in their battle with the demons, they needed an energy boost. Vishnu offered the ambrosia, nectar of immortality; yet someone had to churn the ocean, and bring the cream, the ambrosia or potion of immortality. “In order to churn the milk-ocean, the gods needed to use one of the Himalayan mountains as a churning stick. They could not lift this mountain themselves, having lost their power, so they asked Vishnu if it would be prudent to ask their enemies to help and, in return, to share the ambrosia. Vishnu agreed that he would oversee the project, and a truce between the gods and the Asuras was declared. Now the work could begin. A gigantic snake, Vasuki, the demon serpent who ruled the Underworld, was caught and wrapped around the mountain as a churning rope.”

The symbol is clear: As Orpheus, after the dive in the subconscious and the shadow, the visit of the Underworld, after playing with all the available frequencies/notes and creating your own ambrosia, you can visit or attune with Vega, the abode of the Archangel Michael, Principle of Light. The January partial solar eclipse happening at 15 Capricorn marks the timing, the onset of the attuning mechanisms between the Earth and Vega, in the Lyra Constellation. The Sun and Moon are tightly embraced between Pluto (degree 20) and Saturn at 11 Capricorn. Note the importance of the Pluto-Saturn placement in conjunction with the Star Vega, Alpha Lyra. Pluto and Saturn are the agents of transmutation and rebuilding in harmony with the Lyra’s frequencies, and the Archangel Michael, the Light Principle, after the passage in the Underworld and the letting go of the Sirian cosmic leadership.

The nodal axis Cancer-Capricorn which will impact mankind for 18 months could be interpreted as the return to Source (Cancer is home, roots), to our Creator, the Michaelic Consciousness.

If we add the impact of Jupiter in his home, the Sagittarius, we definitely have a chance to  rebuild or expand our world; eventually after a revolution (Uranus) of our international structures, of the financial and trading system, a larger number of earthlings will join all the groups, around the planet that have silently and diligently created visionary projects, greener technologies, a more balanced power.

Finally, Neptune and Saturn form a sextile. Neptune was retrograde for five months (June to November). Neptune strengthens sensitivity, intuition and assists your inner-search for spiritual growth. For months, you had the opportunity to see more clearly the delusions, phobias, paranoia that have kept you captive, preventing the manifestation (Saturn is the agent of crystallization) of your dreams. Are you ready for this new window of opportunity?

MORE astro:

The nodal axis change, Cancer-Capricorn axis for 18 months:  finding home roots, compassion, security vs fighting for excellence at the top of the mountain, yet eventually alone. https://cosmicintelligenceagency.com/nodalshiftcancercapricorn/

Stars, constellations and the Son of God – http://www.returntogod.com/Science/stars.htm

I do not know what the sources are but food for thoughts

A detailed story of the origin of the names, DRAGON HEAD and DRAGON TAIL http://www.astro.com/astrology/tma_article171108_e.htm

More about the star Vega: https://darkstarastrology.com/vega/

All Important dates and configurations: https://gabrijelastrology.com/2017/09/13/the-most-important-and-extreme-changes-in-the-history-of-our-generation/

IN THE NEWS: Can trauma become trans-generational?

In mid-October, researchers in California published a study of Civil War prisoners that came to a remarkable conclusion. Male children of abused war prisoners were about 10 percent more likely to die than their peers were in any given year after middle age, the study reported.

The findings, the authors concluded, supported an “epigenetic explanation.” The idea is that trauma can leave a chemical mark on a person’s genes, which then is passed down to subsequent generations. The mark doesn’t directly damage the gene; there’s no mutation. Instead, it alters the mechanism by which the gene is converted into functioning proteins or expressed. The alteration isn’t genetic. It’s epigenetic.

NEVER PRESIDENT BY CHANCE: In 1943, President Trump’s uncle, a scientist at MIT, involved in reviewing Tesla’s documents for the FBI:

An article in the New Yorker described Trump’s role in evaluating Tesla’s papers:

“Trump was involved in radar research for the Allies in the Second World War, and in 1943 the F.B.I. had enough faith in his technical ability and his discretion to call him in when Nikola Tesla died in his room at the New Yorker Hotel, in Manhattan, raising the question of whether enemy agents might have had a chance to learn some of his secrets before the body was found. (One fear was that Tesla was working on a “death ray.”) As Margaret Cheney and Robert Uth recount in “Tesla, Master of Lightning,”

Professor Trump examined Tesla’s papers and equipment, and wrote a report for the FBI stating nothing of national security significance was found within them.” Etc full article: https://www.exopolitics.org/did-trumps-uncle-tell-him-about-missing-tesla-papers-flying-saucers/

[jamesdazell]

Tragedy as the Joyful Art; or, The Ironic Art of Tragedy

I took this photograph in April of last year. This is the first permanent theatre ever built in the world, where some of my favourite plays were performed for the very first time. The original site where all the formality of what we know as theatre had its origins. It was also a civic art, created simultaneously with democracy, where public speaking and talking about their lives was so important. And the most important site during the festival of Dionysia. I went to Athens to read the plays sitting in the theatre seats that someone sat in watching these very plays 2,500 years ago.I think Greek tragedy is the greatest artform and the greatest approach to art there ever was. I’ve been studying and writing about it for ten years. Meeting with scholars and practitioners of theatre. Learning from so many books, talks, and documentaries. And testing out my understanding in writing my own work across stage, books, and poetry. As well as hiring art spaces out to staging some of my own performances.This is an artform that demonstrates the power of art. It’s an artform of immense passion for life, and demands its artist a great capacity for comprehending reality with all its good and bad qualities. Tragedy was no art of optimism, nor was it mere melodrama, and certainly it wasn’t grave liturgical passion plays. Tragedy is more than a genre, it's a world view. And so its technique has to be in-keeping with that world view.Over the centuries we have corroded the original meaning of tragedy. We associate tragedy with death, but not a single tragic hero dies in any of Aeschylus' best plays. And, with the exception of Ajax’s suicide, not one tragic figure dies on stage. There was no pleasure taken from death in this theatre. Its about a dilemma of existence. Its an art that's been misunderstood and has been misunderstood since Aristotle. Aristotle thought the objective was to arouse pity and fear, and produce a cathartic effect from being overwhelmed by them. This is a complete misunderstanding, of both its effect and how the work would arrive on the page at all.It’s evident that original subject matter wasn’t of much importance, since all the tragedians wrote plays on the same subject and characters. What the theatre-maker did with it was what was of importance; what they invested into it; what the play was doing not what it was about. And given these plays were written in the context of a festival competition, it would be befitting that they should write on the same subject, so that their works could go head to head, as competition was everything to the Ancient Greeks. “potter strives against potter, craftsman strives against craftsman, singer strives against singer” writes Hesiod in the Works and Days. “Strife is justice” writes Heraclitus.But even the Greeks lost their way. Euripides turned tragedy into mere melodrama, Aristotle misunderstood it and ruined an understanding for centuries. The Romans didn’t know how to handle it correctly. When the Christians revived theatre as instruction of the Bible to the illiterate they turned tragedy into its present meaning. Even Nietzsche blundered aspects of it with his loony Dionysian-Apollonian dichotomy. Shakespeare borrowed from conventions unGreek, such as the Christian medieval passion plays of Christ’s crucifixion which featured enduring suffering and death on stage. Roman tragedies of Seneca that were pathos of suffering and revenge. And the comedies of antiquity which he borrowed their oscillation between protagonist and antagonist. Even the idea of the fall of heights comes from a medieval concept of the wheel of fortune. And if you combine these with Aristotle’s misinterpretations and Euripides’ melodrama, given his work survives more than any other tragedian, then our general understanding is naturally inaccurate. All in all, we’re just missing the point, and our understanding doesn’t do justice or describe any of the examples of what is going on in any of the earliest extant works of tragedy by Aeschylus, whom even in his own time was considered the greatest of the three surviving tragedians. The comic playwright Aristophanes, just after the death of Euripides, wrote a play called The Frogs wherein the patron god of theatre, Dionysus, goes to the underworld to bring back one of the three playwrights because tragedy has fallen to a terrible standard since they’ve died. Sophocles umpires whilst Aeschylus and Euripides have a kind of literary criticism competition, lampooning each others works, and in the end Aeschylus wins.When we think of this art being created, the rules for this aren't coming from literary criticism. So the rules for these works were born from their culture. Real Tragedy rose and fell in its richest form, much like what happens with our popular culture. It doesn’t seem to have been based around hard and fast rules, as with Japanese Noh Drama that keeps to its tradition. These were not professional playwrights. Theatre had only just been invented merely decades earlier (albeit in the previous century). But it had reached a refined and sophisticated brilliance, much like cinema in the sixties and seventies had done merely decades from the birth of cinema. For the same reason that we have culture of the eighties, nineties, twenty-tens, etc, the meaning of art changes. This is little or nothing to do with progress, politics, or technology, except as being part and parcel of that same consequence. As the prevailing condition of human character changes, the disposition to the world by the artist changes, both artists and in audience. The change in tragedy came with Socrates. With Socrates came rationalism, and with rationalism came optimism, and with optimism came cheerfulness, with cheerfulness comes attitudes to life of consolation, with consolation comes defensive doctrine of morality. It was this new scientific attitude that took hold of Athenian culture that was the prime symptom of the demise of real Greek tragedy. An attitude that stands in opposition to the embryonic pregnancy of how tragedy can be conceived. Not only Socratic influence in the case of Euripides’ work, but this was the age of Plato, which it is agreed upon, is a philosophy that is wholly proto-Christian, and significant to the development of Christianity by Neo-Plantonist Jews who studied his works in the Library of Alexandria. This is not all too dissimilar from the Puritanical, rationalistic and scientific age of Enlightenment that followed the period of Shakespearean tragedy.The art of tragedy differs also from our very familiarity with the presentation of theatre itself. Not only was this not a naturalistic theatre, but more stylised than even the mannerisms of opera, more in fact like the movements of a puppet theatre, the dancing of African and Indian dances, and the music of medieval secular music and our popular music, to the degree that our Modern theatre cannot be used as a frame of reference at all. If an ancient Athenian were to sit in our theatres of tragedy they would either be wholly confused or roll about laughing. It’s important to remember that Ancient Greece was a culture that looked East, and were influenced by world views and religions of the East. How sterile and cold a Modern Western European culture feels when held next to Ancient Greece, with its almost colourfully Brahmic culture. Two-thousand years of Christian Europe has lead to a lot of misunderstandings.Pageant wagons depicting scenes from the Bible were the first cinema or TV screens. They would roll through the town like a float parade representing the whole universe of the Bible. They were literally a window to the world, which incorporated all the people of the world and beyond it, whilst the audience watched, removed from its settings.This was not what tragedy was doing. Tragedy was a superimposed performance into a very real world, which didn’t have a metaphysical beyond. Olympus and the Underworld are in this one and the same world. The performances themselves were of, not Athens, but of real cities. Their plays consisted of characters absent, conjured by theatre, but the rest of the world consisted of those in the audience watching and this very same real world. The characters were not rolled out, being born from trying to re-present the world realistically, but born from a realm of poetry, with only three characters on stage at one time. The necessity of characters merely to move plot forward by bringing in new information, not because that’s how the world looks. It’s believed the first tragedies would have been only one actor and a chorus of fifty singers. Although limited, this must have a powerful kind of poetry-performance-art-music-dance-drama. The speech is stylised and poetic. compared to our modern theatre, since we see the stage as a re-presentation of a window to the world, writers naturally concluded why don’t people in the play talk like they do outside our windows, and ordinary realistic speech was pushed onto the stage. But again, we’re just missing the point. This was not a projected window to the universe, nor was it to be held up like a mirror to ordinary life. This was a drama of poetry-music performance art. The poet was by nature also a musician in these dramas, and in the case of Choral poetry, which was so integral to tragedy, a poet-musician-dancer. But the Greeks were not pessimistic. The Greeks didn’t underestimate the power of poetry and music. The tragic heroes were not poets but they were endowed with poetic abilities. The model for a poet was Orpheus who could transform the world around him with song and music, could make birds sing, and fish leap out of water. Just as the poet suffered in life they were also considered to posses divine abilities by the effect of poetry on others, and subsequently were mythologised. This was not a re-presentation of the world. This was an art. The very drama of tragedy is born from the intoxicating rapture of music and poetry, not only in to a vision of scenes, but the drama and all it contains that unfolds. The choral separations between “acts” are to reenergise the drama with its original intoxication for the drama to then spring from. The drama springs from the music, the character embodied by the poetry. Breaking up apart from out civilised cultural self into our primal nature and rebuilding into a character who cab stand in a world of such a reality, in a cycle of creative destruction. Think of that two minutes as Friends begins followed by the theme song, narrating the themes of the show, and then the acting resumes. It’s not all together different from what happens there. A pop rock quiet verse, loud chorus, quiet verse, loud chorus. Or the use of the music of Morricone in Leone's movies, in a Tarantino or Scorsese picture. The moments of talk by a singer between songs. All this is closer to tragedy than opera which literally dramatises action, feeling, words into the music itself. Opera, which is truthfully merely poetry as music, and considered a high art because it was associated with high society, the vogue of intellectual rationalism, and church music - in short, all things which modernity considered to be of refined and sophisticated high class. Modernity is Socratic art par excellence.To understand an art you have to understand the condition of its pregnancy not by its affected reception. You have to view it in embryo and look for under what conditions this would be conceived. If you study it as an afterword there are all sorts of interpretations possible. But if you study it in conception then every interpretation must end with the work. Not how do we analyse the written text as an afterword, but how you go from a blank page to this written text. We need to analyse it as the author not the audience. It's not enough to analyse effects because often the process of creation is inverse to the desired effect they produce. You can have a innumerable interpretations as an audience, but whatever interpretations you have here, all end with this. And if you apply those rules to a blank page you should end with the work too. Until I can fake a Greek play, I haven’t understood it.Challenges are what make us grow, are what make us demonstrate our outstanding qualities, and create goals which give our lives meaning. How do you give life meaning when it's full of horrible things that are hard to comprehend? It's normal that we prefer to want to live in a world of a limited amount of perception about the nature of ourselves and the world we live in. Or live optimistically and pretend that negative consequences are not likely to happen, that in the end everything works out. We prefer, not to live in a world of those difficult realities, but a world that consoles us for those things. And we put blinkers on and black-out just enough of reality so we can enjoy living in it. That can't happen in tragedy. It demands you to take in all the difficult things to comprehend about the world as a reality of lifeIn a similar way to how a pop or rock singer will sing a lyric contrary to its written expression, joyfully singing a sad lyric. And how an actor playing a villain doesn’t play the role as the audience feels about the character, but how the character feels about themselves, so to play the role convincingly they have to play the bad guy as a good guy. Tragedy is an art of irony. And irony is the essence of all great art. It sets up its pessimism and overcomes it with art. Pain shuts down language. It is such an intransitive experience that it is near impossible to express in language. Pain is the flip-side to imagination, and as such then is pain overcome by pure creative force. Pessimism is overcome by the creative act of poetry, that has a diction too strong to succumb to the very subject of their expression, overcome by their musicality and metaphorical beauty. What was pain is overcome by the power of art. Art, which stands beyond the reach of intransitive pain and suffering. And yet has by the very nature of art sprung from them, affirmed that very aspect of life which contains pain and suffering. Pessimism in the audience is overcome by the experience of the plays, of beautiful lyrical speech, the ecstasy music and dancing, performing to a collected public audience not in the dark but in the midday spring sun when everything was undergoing regeneration, in the context of a festival of wine and sex, devoted to the god Dionysus who embodied ecstasy and liberation from gloomy cares and worry. By allowing an audience to revel and feel exhilaration in a scenario of this scope of reality and spectrum of being a human being. When pain and suffering is universalised in to a collective experience being human, and again overcome by a collective experience of art. Similar to a crowd listening to an anthemic rock song all singing at the same time, liberated and reunited with that primal human being that lurks behind the overbearing cultural citizen who exists in daily civilization.Unnaturalness is the essence of archaic art because it shows the defiance of art in the face of aspects of life that would ordinarily make us gloomy. Tragedy was life affirming because it did not turn away from life. Some of the most similar examples of its technique are not from the renaissance, neo-classicalism, the opera, the Romans, but from the twentieth century. This was the pop culture of the American 1990s. This whole approach of popular culture from the 60s to the 90s. This was the art of Spain in the early twentieth century. This was some of the work of Italy and Japan. The rock music of England. The atmosphere of the Olympics, the superbowl, Glastonbury festival. Although tragedy and comedy were not mixed genres, there was no differentiation between high and popular art in Ancient Greece. Tragedy contained the popular arts we're familiar with today, and all the wisdom of Aristophanes' comedy was punctuated with fart jokes. Greek tragedy is high art popular culture.All great periods of art were during undesirable political times. The antagonism is a positive one. It shows the defiance in the power of art over aspects of life that make us gloomy. The whole objective was that pain and suffering, where a stimulant for overcoming, and therefore affirmed into the whole theatre of life, the whole horror of existence was overcome by art. This was an exhilarating joyful art. It was life affirming because it did not turn away from life. Not to use art to talk about the terribleness of the world but to use it as weights that test our strength for loving life even in that reality of the world. Like a weight lifter's strong arm that needs heavier things to test their strength. The Greeks used art to lift the heaviness of life. This was done in competition. This was the stage where the Greeks competed to demonstrate who loves life the most. That’s what I feel art is, the myth over the reality, an illusion we place over the world in order to love it more.

[jackkel-dragon]

Blue Reflection “Steam” Review

I wrote up a long review for a game I’ve been playing lately, and was going to post it as a Steam review until I noticed that my review went over the character limit. Since I couldn’t find a way to cut it down that I liked, I decided to post the full version of the review here. Behind a read more for length and spoilers. (Spoilers are also behind a warning to make the main review low-spoiler.)

Blue Reflection is a magical girl JRPG, a type of game I've been hoping to see for a while. It plays similarly to a Persona game, where it is split into daily life segments for getting to know the characters and otherworld segments for exploring and fighting.

The story is very character-focused, which works to its favor. Most of the story involves the main character gaining power through empathizing with others, allowing herself and those she meets to grow. This power is used to fight supernatural monsters from outer space and the negative emotions they impose on an otherworld sustained by humanity's collective unconscious. While there is an overarching plot, it doesn't get much play until near the end of the game. More information than that goes into spoiler territory, so that will be addressed later.

The "daily life" gameplay is very similar to the Persona series, albeit simpler and more streamlined. Outside of story chapters, free time can be spent exploring the school, completing side quests, or spending time with friends. There are several interesting things you can find in the school, particularly an odd collectible-like system where finding glowing spots in the school will open up new topics for the main character's IM app. Side quests involve either jumping into the otherworld to fight monsters/collect items, or simply bringing items to the person in question. While simple in design, each side quest has an interesting hook to give context to the mission, and so it's interesting to see what each student has problems with. Spending time with friends works similarly to Social Links/Confidants in the Persona series, where you get special events at certain levels of affection. During some of these events, the player may get a choice on how to respond, which changes the skill the player earns from completing that event. There is also a system where, at the end of each day, the player can decide what to do at night, which can cause certain events to play the next morning (sometimes giving stat boosts). There's no real time limit to free time, so it's possible to complete everything except for alternate scenes in a single playthrough.

The other gameplay for the game takes place in "The Common", an otherworld that is shaped by the collective unconscious. Because of its nature, it is split into certain "zones" such as Joy and Fear. Here the player fights monsters and prepares to fight the "Sephirot", giant monsters from outer space. The basic exploration will be familiar to those who have played the Atelier games, since it involves the same kind of on-screen monster icons and the ability to find items in certain areas. Battles are turn-based, though there are some interesting systems unlocked later in the game that make the wait time between turns an active part of the battle (such as allowing the use of a special meter to heal or accelerate turns). Instead of having XP, the game uses "growth points" to level up, which are gained exclusively from story progress and spending time with friends in daily life. This reduces some of the grind found in other JRPGs. On the other hand, it's easy enough to grind growth points from spending time with friends that combat will be easy for most of the game, even on the hardest difficulty. Each character also learns far more skills than you will ever need to use, and some skills end up being redundant because of this. While there is a system for learning specific skills in the growth point system, whatever combination of level ups you decide on will end up leaving you more than powerful enough to win. This is made even easier since HP/MP is restored after each fight. Battles can still be fun once you've become overpowered, but don't go into the game expecting something as difficult as a Megami Tensei game.

The last major gameplay element involves fighting the giant bosses. These are 2-3 phase fights that involve a single large enemy with multiple parts. You can finish each phase just by killing the main part, but each sub-part you kill will be inactive for a while and cause a debuff to the main body. These fights also allow the non-magical friends of the main character to support the team, usually with small buffs or attacks that increase the special gauge (which allows for certain abilities between turns later in the game, as mentioned earlier). These fights are usually about as easy as the rest of the game, but may take a bit longer due to high HP and the need for the player to heal.

Overall, it's a fun magical girl RPG, though not something for anyone looking for a challenge. This is very much a game focused on the stories of its major characters, with the main story and battles as part of the experience (but not the focus).

A note on the PC port: The game no longer has a game-breaking crash thanks to a patch, but it still is pretty resource-hungry and can crash under certain conditions. If you don't have a pretty recent computer, it may be better to look into the PS4 version.

Now, onto some spoiler talk... If you want to go in blind, the review essentially ends here.

====SPOILERS====

Note: I'm going to assume some basic knowledge of character names and such, in order to avoid making this part of the review longer than it already is.

To start with, I really like the characters and most of the story of the game. That might come into question with my later ramblings if I don't point it out right away. It's mostly how the main plot was handled near the end that gets to me.

With that said, let's start with some good things about the story. I really like most of the characters, and they all have really nice stories when you complete their friendship events. Even some characters that I wouldn't give a chance in real life ended up growing on me. The daily life main plot regarding the school festival was also a really nice way to explain why Hinako was getting so close to her classmates.

Now, something I have a problem with is the Sephirot. Aside from sounding cool, I have a hard time finding out what connections they have to Kabbalah and its philosophy. Aside from surface connections (Yesod, the foundation, being the first one fought; Da'at/Daath, the place where all Sephirot are one, being the last fought), I can't see a whole lot of how these space monsters are connected to Jewish mysticism. Now, the series everyone thinks inspired the game--the Megami Tensei franchise--also makes heavy use of mythology in every game. But those games also show their work in how everything connects to what they are named after. The tarot arcana in the Persona series are always thematically related to the people they are assigned to. The initial and ultimate personae of the leads are connected to the theme of the game. (For example, Orpheus/Thanatos are connected to Death.) Aside from Daath's sudden idea to combine all of humanity into one being, I don't see much connection between Blue Reflection's Sephirot and the real world's idea of Sephirot. Maybe this is a lack of research on my part, but it still bugs me.

The main plot also contradicts itself and becomes a mess near the end. Yuzu and Lime being ghosts is actually foreshadowed fairly early, but then gets swept under the rug until the reveal. More importantly, Daath directly contradicts things that Yuzu, Lime, and Yuri claim, and no one explains why this thing that shows up in the last twenty minutes of the game is suddenly changing all the information we were told. For instance, Yuzu and Lime claim that there are 22 singularities, each with a Reflector. This is further shown in a scene without Hinako that proves they aren't lying to her about this. But then, after they are outed as ghosts, they say there is only one Reflector at a time. Hinako never addresses this, and Daath later points out that only Hinako is a Reflector. There's a lot more I could complain about Daath, really. Yuzu and Lime also recognize it (him?) when he decides to show up in the final scene, yet never thought to mention him to Hinako before he started killing and absorbing people.

Even worse than Daath is the ending. I was mostly okay with it at first, despite not liking how many Japanese stories seem to end with timeloops or resets. (I have to wonder if Puella Magi Madoka Magica inspired Blue Reflection to use this particular trope, despite this game not needing such a plot point.) But the more I think about it, the suckier it is without making some serious assumptions. Basically, Yuzu and Lime return to being dead. Daath is gone, but apparently might come back later (he's not clear on whether he's dying or not). But everything else in the story snaps back to the opening cutscene, aside from Hinako remembering some of what happened. This memory alone seems to warrant a bittersweet, rather than downer, ending. But keep this in mind: this means that all twelve of Hinako's friends and all of the sidequest characters are back to where they were at the start of the game. Rin is back to being indecisive about her crush. Sarasa is back to being bitter and upset that Hinako stopped ballet. Shihori is back to being hated for something she isn't doing. Mao is back to being a loner jerk that keeps others at arms length. All of those problems that Hinako fixed are now undone, and now she doesn't have magic or Yuzu/Lime to help her re-fix everything. You have to assume that Hinako can befriend everyone again and help them in more mundane ways to solve their problems, otherwise the ending is really depressing. Yet Hinako is just happy that she didn't forget about Yuzu and Lime, and we're supposed to be okay with just that. I thought this game was about empathy and friendship overcoming adversity, not how everything one does in life is ultimately pointless.

There are other things that bother me, but those are the more major ones. Accidentally undercutting the premise of the story in the last half hour of the game is not really a good way to leave a lasting impression. I still like the game, but unless a sequel/spinoff fixes some of the issues, I have to mentally rewrite or re-contextualize the ending in order to be okay with it.

At any rate, I still recommend the game. It's a fun game, and the character-focused parts of the story are really good. As a story of how Hinako comes to terms with not being able to dance again thanks to her new friends, it works well. Just try not to take the self-contradicting myth arc too seriously if you don't want to get annoyed.