#but at the end of the day deeply rooted beliefs that you often grow up in tend to sneak up on you

[aressida]

My entry: A Dream: "It is your season." - Aressida. 15.8.24.

And suddenly, it is my turn, and God makes it all happen for me, an opportunity that no one can cancel.

I am here, watching God’s next move unfold. I know He is our defender, and now, He’s turned His gaze toward my journey, along with others who also pray. This is my confirmation.

Is this why I am going to make it?

I can feel it. This is the week where everything changes for me. I see God and His angels working on my behalf right now. My breakthrough is near. He’s lifting me into my destiny.

"Yes, hold on, be strong, and do not give up. You are next in line for your miracle. A few months from now, you will be in a completely different place. Get some rest, it is in My hands."

When I know I am winning, that is when I will be guarding my words. Prayer is becoming my primary language. I know now that those prayers will be answered, one after the other.

God will bless me and my family. God will heal me and protect my loved ones, for I know He will provide for us all.

I prayed, "Thank You, Heavenly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, for hearing my cries and giving me strength beyond my natural ability. Great is Your faithfulness. I know I must always pray wholeheartedly, as I work and keep my faith. Thank You for blessing me beyond belief and guiding me to walk in it. I trust in Your promises. Thank You for everything. In Jesus’ name, Amen."

I want everyone to know that I did not get lucky, I prayed. A lot. So remember, never tire of asking God to guide you. This is why I owe God everything. The way He created me is more than enough.

Apart from God, humanity is full of futility.

"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." - Jeremiah 1:5.

The Bible describes a prophet as an ordinary person chosen to reveal divine insights that would otherwise remain hidden.

I know in the Bible, Jesus warned His followers, "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven."

The Bible is clear that genuine and false prophets will exist until the end. The reconciliation is set at God's appointed time. The Lord is true to His Word. We are to linger, to stay longer than expected, the nation is to wait for it, for it will surely come.

And the message of a true prophet is often hated. A prophet is one who speaks for another, someone who lends their voice to another.

I know this, we are all to be tested by Scripture.

True prophets always direct people to the Bible because every true prophet knows that the Bible is humanity’s sole authority in matters pertaining to God. Yes, we should consider the claims of people who say that God has told them something, but we must test their claims by the Bible.

We are living through seasons of wickedness, misery, and injustice, where the most evil acts of the enemy are being perpetrated against believers. Yet, we must never forget that the Lord is not slow about His promise to us, but is patient toward us, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. God desires that all men are saved and that His born-again children mature in the faith, grow in grace, look to Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, be conformed, day by day, into the image and likeness of Christ.

How, then, can anyone understand their own way?

I was called to live by His faith for years and to trust the Lord, who is faithful to rescue His people and true to His Word. This is why I challenge all words, to be thoroughly tested by the Word of God.

I see myself as an intercessor, transformed into a woman who is fearless, strong in resolve, meek in spirit, pure in heart, and deeply rooted in the Word of God. It takes practice. And I am grateful for this.

[beparr]

From Struggles to Success: The Inspirational Journey of Akash Dubey In the heartland of India, nestled in the rural district of Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, a young boy named Akash Dubey grew up facing challenges that many can scarcely imagine. From a very young age, Akash experienced the harsh realities of poverty. His family, struggling to make ends meet, could hardly afford the basic necessities, let alone the luxury of a quality education. Yet, despite these overwhelming odds, Akash’s story is one of remarkable resilience, relentless determination, and inspiring success.

A Childhood of Hardship Akash Dubey's early years were marked by a series of struggles that would have deterred most people. Growing up in a financially disadvantaged family, even the smallest things were battles to be won. Access to education was a significant hurdle. While many of his peers had the resources to attend well-equipped schools, Akash often had to study under the dim light of a kerosene lamp. His parents, despite their own hardships, instilled in him the importance of education and hard work. Akash often recounts how he would walk several kilometers to school every day, with a hunger for knowledge driving him forward.

The Turning Point Despite the adversities, Akash excelled in his studies. His perseverance paid off when he managed to secure a scholarship for higher education. Moving to the city for college was a turning point in his life. It exposed him to a world of opportunities and the burgeoning field of technology and entrepreneurship. However, the road was far from easy. Akash juggled multiple part-time jobs to support his education, often burning the midnight oil to keep up with his academic and financial responsibilities.

The Birth of Beparr After completing his education, Akash ventured into the corporate world. However, his entrepreneurial spirit was ignited by the struggles he witnessed among small and medium-sized businesses in India. He realized that these businesses, often the backbone of the economy, were struggling due to a lack of resources and connectivity. This realization led to the birth of Beparr, a B2B platform designed to empower small and medium businesses by providing them with the tools and resources needed to thrive in a competitive market.

Building Beparr from Scratch Based in Surat, Gujarat, Akash poured his heart and soul into Beparr, starting with zero capital. The initial days were grueling. He faced numerous rejections from potential investors who were skeptical of his vision. However, Akash's unwavering belief in his idea kept him going. His efforts were soon bolstered by the addition of Neha Shukla, a brilliant technologist and strategic thinker who joined as the Co-Founder and CTO. Neha brought with her a wealth of experience and a shared passion for empowering small businesses.

Together, Akash and Neha worked tirelessly to build Beparr. Slowly but surely, Beparr began to gain traction. Today, Beparr serves over 400,000 retailers, helping them streamline operations, connect with suppliers, and expand their market reach. What began as a modest startup has now grown into a company valued at over $4 million.

A Beacon of Hope Akash Dubey’s journey from a small village in Pratapgarh to the helm of a successful startup in Surat is nothing short of inspirational. His story is a testament to the power of perseverance, hard work, and an unyielding belief in one’s dreams. Akash continues to be deeply connected to his roots, often visiting his hometown to inspire and support young aspiring entrepreneurs.

Beparr, under the dynamic leadership of Akash and Neha, is not just a business; it is a beacon of hope for countless small and medium businesses across India. Their combined vision and dedication have created a platform that drives economic growth and fosters a community of innovation and support.

Akash Dubey’s life story is a powerful reminder that no matter where you come from or what challenges you face, with determination and resilience, you can achieve greatness. His journey, along with Neha Shukla's invaluable contributions, inspires us to dream big, work hard, and never give up, no matter the odds.

In highlighting Akash Dubey's incredible journey and the pivotal role of Neha Shukla, we celebrate not only their personal achievements but also the spirit of entrepreneurship that fuels progress and change. Their story is a compelling narrative of overcoming adversity and making a lasting impact on society. As Akash and Neha continue to lead Beparr towards new heights, their journey will undoubtedly inspire generations to come.

[first-only]

Previous anon here

I've also seen the 'taking care of yourself/your own happiness is selfish and bad' in activism/progressive spaces too. Actually, that comic you rb-ed about the guy buying a videogame and donating to charity, and then being 'called out' for not donating all the money, was the thing that made me send the original ask

But yes, you are right in saying that that mentality is also very prevalent in religious morality. (Makes you think doesn't it lol)

ironically, thats exactly how i meant it too. being socially or perceptually 'progressive' does not stop you from absorbing religious (or just generally controlling, chicken and egg on historically which leads to which) morality from context or culture. how many people these days, even those opposing capitalism, know that its literal roots is protestantism? think of all of the discussions about 'conservatism/puritanism with a gay hat'. - "i dont want to see gay sex bc sinful" and "i dont want to see gay sex bc what about queer kids" are the same statement. "white and black people shouldnt date bc of racial purity" and "white and black people shouldnt date bc power dynaimcs" are the same statement.

"woke" or social justice language has seeped so deeply into discourse that people are cloaking their every statement into it, theyre expressing their emotional baggage or inclinations with it. they've found a "progressive" way to state every personal beef they have with the world, and by doing this have made it very emotionally taxing to dispute them in good faith. if its easier to make an analogy with fandom on the fandom blog - antis think of themselves as progressive too, but they're parroting conservative rhetoric that they have absorbed, that makes them feel good, is intuitive, and they dress up their arguments in sj terms because that's what's marketable in their sphere. they probably even believe it's true - the same way some people genuinely believe in "selfishness" - but that doesnt change that the ideology itself is founded on conservationist, traditionalist, controlling beliefs.

i hate to bring up 'cultural [christianity/religion]' because that term has been twisted into nothing by social media, but this is what it actually means. even if youre not religious, the morals and the cultural background (ethics, interpersonal norms, rules for raising children) still seep into your understanding of the world just by Living In Society, by proximity, by your relationships with people who also live in that cultural environment (yes even if they themselves arent religious). opposing the norms, and sifting through them to find what actually is useful and makes sense, and what is "peer pressure by dead people" is a conscious effort. Identity alone cannot do that for you. Coming out, being queer, visiting counter-culture spaces can be a start but it is not automatic. The same way a lot of queer people have to unlearn homophobia (be it internalized or not), rooting out 'intuitive' (ie learned since childhood by socio proximity) beliefs and judgments of others is also a lot of work and involves challenging a lot of what you automatically think when faced with a problem or difference or deviance. (of course this doesnt apply only to religion per se, [some] americans and their 'what would the forefathers think' fall directly into this way of thinking. tho i might argue that's kind of pseudo-religious but thats a whole other discussion)

[middlenamesage]

Black Moon Lilith and Lilith the Character Archetype: My Reflections Coming out of Black Moon Lilith Conjunct the North Node

Following the astrological transits, both the collective and my personal, I have for a while noticed that when Black Moon Lilith is at play, it’s really hard for this to go unnoticed in my life. I always could sense this energy, I knew what it felt like, but used to find it hard to describe, or at least to dissect enough to understand with any valuable meaning.

Physically speaking, the astronomical point known in astrology as Black Moon Lilith is the point along the Moon’s orbit that is farthest from Earth (the lunar apogee), a point that changes position in the zodiac along with the changing orbit of the moon. To me it makes sense this point can be so potentially relevant to us, as all living beings are very much guided by the Moon, who keeps us in connection with each other. Out where the Black Moon is, in this metaphorical place of exile, it’s more of an “every man (or woman!) for himself!” vibe. Lilith is very much about the instinct of self preservation. It’s about resisting control or exploitation by others (and/or internalizing its effects). Often the two occur together as two faces of the same trauma. Black Moon Lilith represents the areas where life has taught us that we absolutely must advocate for ourselves. However, she can also bring shame and denial of wants wherever she is placed, or transiting, because this is something that generally develops where we have been told or shown we can’t have something.

Black Moon Lilith is in fact named for Lilith in the old testament/Jewish folklore, and the way we have come to make sense of its effects (rather, its correlations to our lives) is in considerable measure inspired by this character, and her archetype- who has many interpretations. Lilith was Adam’s first wife, before Eve, who left his ass! She refused to lie beneath him during sex, saying they were created equal. I think we can interpret this metaphorically, of course, as resistance to being controlled in many potential terms… but also literally, as there is a focus of unconstrained sexuality concerning Lilith, which I have observed has some definite relevance to the Black Moon too, but is far from the only or even the most important way to understand it.

Various legends say that after fleeing Eden, Lilith went on to become a she-demon/succubus/baby kidnapper/baby killer/so on….. (those are just the accusations I’m recalling off the top of my head). But over these many years, Lilith has picked up many other story lines, provided inspiration for phenomena such as Black Moon Lilith, and gained many evolving faces and interpretations. Other than being a religious figure, and/or a she-demon, some of her contemporary associations include witchcraft/dark magic, creative renditions in fantasy and horror, gothic culture, and the biggest switch of all, her status as the first feminist.

As a potent force from the most distant shadows of the Moon’s reach, where connection to one another is compromised and we must turn to ourselves to defend our basic natures, I’ve found that Black Moon Lilith can have both positive correlations- such as going one’s own way where it truly benefits one’s life, putting one’s foot down to mistreatment, and stepping into one’s personal power- and negative correlations such as pushing away and/or disregarding other people, general concern with defending one’s own initiatives, to the point where it is premature or anti-productive, and the shame, denial and/or rage that many have developed from being disallowed their power by others.

How we express Black Moon Lilith can be instigating healthy boundaries on one hand, and setting up unnecessary walls of defense on the other. It can be self respect on one hand, and self obsession/failure to consider others, on the other. It can be self protection on one hand, and self sabotage on the other. It can be shame and denial over who we really are/what we really want on one hand, and it can be where we liberate ourselves from shame on the other. Very often, it seems to dole out as a complicated mix of both the “bad” and the “good”.

It used to be that reflecting on my own experiences, despite my fascination with it, there was very little “good” I saw about the Black Moon’s correlations in my life. I came to associate the energy of Black Moon Lilith with a few of my “trauma responses” that have caused me to sabotage relationships. I felt she had helped me stand up for myself/walk away from people a few times when I actually needed to, but for the most part, she seemed to just make me quick to unconsciously wreck budding relationships, reject others, put up lots of walls, or not want to cooperate/compromise with others- even though this was also betraying my own desires deep down to be close with others. My natal Lilith is in Libra in my 7th house, so the relational element of her is especially relevant.

I think that this Black Moon wound of mine in the realm of partnerships has several big origins/perpetuators I can site, but one of the first and biggest that I can consciously analyze, is having internalized the messages I was told by a parent growing up (not necessarily said in as blunt of terms as I received them) that no one would ever want to be with me because I am too difficult to live with. (I was also shown this when my parents sent me elsewhere to live.) Internalizing this message about myself stripped away my personal power when it comes to partnerships. For so long I approached all relationships assuming they were damned to end before they ever got too serious (something I still do struggle with), and I long believed, a belief that at some times was not as much conscious as it was confirmed with my deeply engrained unconscious behaviors of sabotage, that a ‘true’ and committed relationship is simply something I can’t have. This long internalized belief has given rise to many of my independent behaviors in relationships... both in destructive ways that compromise my connection with others and/or alienate them, and in positive senses that protect my individuality and self respect.

Here’s the thing. I was never wrong to see my trauma responses in the force of Black Moon Lilith. Black Moon Lilith and Lilith the archetype are in fact rooted in trauma. We mustn’t trivialize that part. The defense mechanisms, rage, shame, denial, sabotage, the desire to leave people and things behind, and the general mechanisms for self-preservation which can accompany Lilith stem from instances where we have felt held down, lead to believe we don’t have power, mistreated, and in some cases even horribly abused/violated. But the reality of Black Moon Lilith’s painful origins does not make it all a bad thing! It can be a very empowering thing potentially, because where we are hurt is also where we can find the avenues for healing, and for gaining acceptance of our most authentic self and desires. And there is a very good reason we develop many of these less than savory reactions from traumatic experiences and messaging. Lilith teaches us to recognize our boundaries, and to reclaim the personal power that once was lost! - even if at times we may run too far with these prerogatives in stubborn quests for independence and personal autonomy wherever she resides.

Though I have been fascinated by and intent to ponder Black Moon Lilith for probably over a year now, my reflections on it, and later on the character Lilith for which the lunar apogee is named, have really gained a lot of new ground during this last month+ of Black Moon Lilith’s conjunction to the North Node. (Which is currently separating, but still in effect.) The Lunar North Node is another very important point in relation to the Moon’s orbit, which shows the path forward. Black Moon Lilith with the North Node in Gemini has proven too be so ripe with many new experiences for me to learn about Lilith. It’s hard to say if anything has actually changed about my relationship with Lilith, or if I am just starting to see more of the positive in her that was always there, instead of just noticing and perpetuating the glaring negative. Also, I decided it was about time to accept Lilith as a part of who I am. I can’t deny the power the associated energies and the archetype has had on my life, so I might as well embrace it- both the good parts and the parts that are a work in progress. (And that is the story of my new little stud earrings with the Black Moon Lilith symbol!)

One aspect of my relationship with Lilith that I think actually has started to bloom forth in more of a clear-cut positive way with this Lilith-North Node transit, is finding the power to actively and productively embrace a part of myself, via finding/claiming opportunities to keep cultivating this part, even though it’s meant having to disregard my reservations, and even fighting through some shame. I can see now that there is a whole world of great personal empowerment to be tapped into with Lilith, and not just in the ability to leave people behind. (But of course leaving people behind is one means she’ll employ, if it is necessary for stepping into her power!)

I have always seen myself as a writer. It’s not even by choice, and a great deal of the time, for a very long time, I have really resented this natural compulsion of mine. You see, I have a deeply complicated relationship with writing, one that undoubtedly needs some healing. Well, this Black Moon Lilith/North Node conjunction in Gemini, moving through my 3rd house of communications (and as I only found out the other day, also conjunct my natal White Moon Selena, i.e. the lunar perigee/polarity to Black Moon Lilith) ended up bringing me my first opportunities ever getting paid to write… something I guess I just used to assume I couldn’t do, due to my lack of a college degree, as well as the difficult relationship with writing and my paralyzing perfectionism. But with this transit, I placed aside my assumptions of what wasn’t possible for me, and I have some hope now that accepting the opportunity to write for other people, on subjects that generally don’t even mean anything to myself, may just turn out to be the good dose of objectivity needed to help restore some healing to my writing relationship.

Once again, where you’ll find the wounds in your relationship with your personal power, is also where you’ll find how to heal them, and use them to empower yourself and others- and that healing is really what Black Moon Lilith conjunct the North Node has been trying to facilitate for us all. Of course, the process is basically never straightforward and easy, nor all enjoyable. This transit has brought a wide range of Lilith experiences in my life to comment upon.

Some other occurrences have been: abruptly ending an extended off and on relationship with someone where there was always a good deal of power struggle (and would have been power imbalance if I had not stood my ground in a lot of instances), unconsciously driving away or creating distance with a few friends, being consciously and stubbornly persistent in putting more distance between myself and my family than ever before, and facing a couple situations providing awkward trial and error experiments in how I communicate my dissatisfaction to others who wronged me. But I know that all of these experiences are helping me to evolve, and to better understand my responses which stem from wounds that have set into me with the nature of Black Moon Lilith.

And I marvel at the fact that millions of other humans have also been going through experiences which are forcing them to confront and/or evolve their own instincts and behaviors associated with the Black Moon, whether they realize it or not.

Lilith says, “These are my boundaries[or conditions]. You will respect them, or I am outta here.” She says, ‘I know what I am capable of, so I’m gonna fight for it- even if I have to shut out other people.” The placement of our natal Black Moon Lilith shows a prominent area where power has been stolen from us, whether through physical or psychological means (and where the Black Moon is transiting can bring up these issues in other areas, as well). Lilith develops from a wound, and her determination to not feel the powerlessness again can serve as either the healing or the perpetuation of it.

* * * * * * * * * * *

P.S.

For any astro heads reading this with this knowledge of their birth chart, I welcome you to comment or reflect on where 5° Gemini falls in your chart. This is where the (currently separating) conjunction of Black Moon Lilith and the North Node occurred, so the house in your natal chart where it’s transiting, and any natal placements that may be in aspect to this point, especially conjunctions and oppositions, may be able to show where/how you have embodied or encountered Black Moon Lilith energy in recent times.

NOTE :

If anyone is wondering which “Lilith” in astrology I have been referring to, since it is a fairly infamous fact that there are actually 4 things bearing this name in astrology… I have for the most part only followed the mean calculation of Black Moon Lilith (and with Black Moon Lilith’s conjunction to the North Node, mean Lilith is what I’m referring to).

There is also Osculating Black Moon Lilith (aka True Lilith), which is a different calculation of the same concept I have discussed with Black Moon Lilith. A calculation that is actually technically more precise about the moon’s orbit, for the moment that it is taken, as the lunar apogee technically jumps around a little bit a whole lot… yet I have personally found Mean Lilith to be more worth following, especially when following collective transits, if trying to examine the effects of something lingering over an extended period of time, or if conceptualizing Black Moon Lilith’s cycles throughout the entire zodiac. I don’t doubt that the calculation of osculating Black Moon Lilith (which often is not too far from the mean calculation) has a lot of validity to it too though, perhaps especially for natal chart interpretations, and progressions.

As for the other two Liliths, there is the asteroid Lilith- but that is named for a French composer, not the Lilith archetype as we know her. Not saying it isn’t something worth looking into, it just hasn’t been a point of focus for me. And lastly, there is Dark Moon Lilith (aka Waldemath Moon), which is said to be a dark body of unknown origin revolving around the Earth- but there is a lot of debate as to whether it actually exists. I don’t have an opinion one way or another, and I haven’t followed it in transits. However, its placement in my natal chart, with an opposition to Black Moon Lilith for one, does peak my interest.

[caffeinatedseri]

The Strength of Selfishness

Each character in BSD has a degree of selfishness or selflessness in themselves, but the way this concept is executed opens discussion on the nuance of “selfishness,” or specifically the flaws in believing selfishness is an inherently bad trait.

Atsushi

Atsushi fits the description of selflessness, but I’d argue that he’s actually more selfish than he thinks he is (keeping in mind that being selfish isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

Akutagawa points out how Atsushi will needlessly risk his life in order to protect others, which sounds like a pretty heroic act, but it comes with a cost. Atsushi isn’t invincible, especially at this point in the story when he hasn’t fully mastered his ability, but his insistence on protecting others puts him in constant danger.

At the end of the day, Atsushi would have a greater chance of surviving many of the dangerous situations he puts himself into if he was more selfish by protecting himself before others.

However, Atsushi is also somewhat selfish in his motivations for acting so virtuously. 

Once again, Akutagawa points out how Atsushi only acts this way because of his deeply rooted belief that he has to risk his life for someone else in order to give his life value. You could argue that Atsushi only saves others as an attempt to prove to himself that he’s worthy, an inherently selfish motive. If Atsushi actually died, he would be endangering the people he could save in the future.

Selfishness also includes self-centeredness. Particularly with Akutagawa, Atsushi’s tendency to focus solely on himself becomes especially noticeable. Atsushi constantly doubts himself and his strengths; he also ignores his privileges and the struggles of others, particularly when he can’t completely understand them — hence why he views Akutagawa so harshly but sees Kyouka and Lucy as people who need to be saved. 

Despite all of this, Atsushi still creates a positive impact in other people’s lives. His innately selfish motivation is what drives him to protect others, and he ultimately succeeds in doing that (case in point Kyouka and Lucy again). 

Akutagawa

Akutagawa is pretty similar to Atsushi in how his past led to his inevitably selfish motives, but his manifests in a different way. 

Akutagawa has to be selfish to protect himself, due to a mix of his past prior to joining the mafia and Dazai’s teachings that collectively reinforced the belief that if he’s weak, he can’t survive.

This results in Akutagawa taking other people’s lives, a direct contrast to how Atsushi saves others, in order to prove his worth as a strong individual that deserves to live. However, this sentiment narrowly crosses the line of hypocrisy when Akutagawa does the very same thing that he criticized Atsushi for: looking for value in his life through other people.

Akutagawa also unnecessarily risks his life in order to prove his strength, which is arguably more dangerous and selfish than what Atsushi does. 

When Akutagawa fights Hawthorne, he practically eggs on Hawthorne to kill him, or at the very least fight with the intent to kill. Akutagawa was also injured before entering this fight, so running away would’ve been all the more reasonable than continuing to fight.

Drawing another parallel to Atsushi, Akutagawa has that very same resolve of risking his life unnecessarily to prove his worth. 

It’s undeniable that Akutagawa has killed many people — which is arguably extremely selfish — and loss of life really isn’t something that I want to push as morally correct. However, I would like to push the idea of redemption: finding a way to escape this messy lifestyle. I sincerely doubt that the incessant cycle of killing is any good for Akutagawa, or that it’s the life that he wants to have. 

With Atsushi and Akutagawa, both of their character arcs will develop accordingly to this balance of selfishness and selflessness.

Ranpo

Ranpo is characterized in a slightly selfish way, but this mindset comes with good reason (relating to Ranpo’s past). 

When Atsushi was kidnapped, Ranpo places priority on protecting the agency. If he were to meddle with Atsushi’s problem, which was technically a personal issue, then the agency as an organization would be put at risk. This isn’t necessarily a “wrong” mindset, but it is self-centered.

Of course, this is one of many examples to showcase Ranpo’s arrogance, but his arrogance is actually a form of self-protection. 

“So his father knew, after all. He understood that Ranpo possessed an extraordinary gift. He knew his son had the special ability to observe, remember, and uncover the truth in the blink of an eye. That was why he sealed it away. He didn’t want Ranpo to go astray, to ever hurt others and make the world his enemy.  His father wanted Ranpo to learn virtue and what’s right just like any ordinary person until he had grown up with good judgment and knowledge.” —  LN 3, “The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency”

Before Ranpo met Fukuzawa, he was just a young, lost boy who didn’t recognize his extraordinary talents. His parents taught him to be modest to allow him to develop as a normal person, but he never truly understood who he was in comparison to other people because he was orphaned at a young age.

Thus, Ranpo had to embrace his superiority, in an albeit dramatic way, in order to accept the world and himself. If he believed that people weren’t as intelligent as him, then he wouldn’t have to hate himself for feeling like an outsider to a world he doesn’t understand. 

Similarly to Akutagawa, Ranpo’s selfishness isn’t born out of hatred or negligence for others, it’s simply a survivalist instinct. 

Dazai

Dazai’s case is a little trickier to define, but I feel that he’s changed a decent amount throughout the series. I’ve seen some people argue that Dazai only helps others because of Oda’s dying wish, which would make his motivations for doing so inherently selfish. This rings true for Dazai before becoming a part of the agency, but I’d say he’s changed a lot just from interacting with the other agency members.

Dazai’s shown to be capable of the selflessness that involves risking your life for others, but because he’s Dazai, he’s most likely never going to actually die (he has taken necessary precautions to make sure he doesn’t die like in Dead Apple). In this case, Dazai was willing to risk his life for intel from Fyodor, similar to how he got captured by the PM intentionally for intel on Atsushi.

What he says here is especially important: “Certainly, people are sinfully stupid. But what’s so wrong about that?” The Dazai that was once isolated from others, that lacked a sense of direction and purpose in life, has grown one step closer to finding that purpose.

It’s no secret that character to character relationships have a big impact on everyone in BSD, but it’s especially relevant for Dazai who’s growth comes from learning about human nature. He and Fyodor both share a level of super intelligence that ostracizes them from the rest of society, which consequently makes them incapable of understanding other people.

Dazai’s statement here just shows how he’s willing to look past people’s mistakes — yes, they may be sinful and/or stupid, but that’s just a part of human nature.

And in this case, he acts in a stupid way by risking his life for someone else. Yes, it may be stupid, but this selflessness is also a part of being human.

I’d also like to add that Dazai was somewhat selfish in leaving the PM so suddenly after Oda’s death. As an executive, he undoubtedly had some responsibilities to handle, and not to mention Chuuya who was dragged into the mafia because of him in the first place. However, leaving the mafia was ultimately better for his development, and you could argue that the PM is doing just fine with Mori remaining as the leader. Thus, Dazai is another example of how selfishness isn’t harmful in nature.

Mori

On the topic of Mori, he’s a character who outright acknowledges his selflessness as a necessity for the mafia’s advancement.

As I mentioned before, selflessness is a stereotypically heroic trait, but it’s flipped around in BSD. You see protagonists with greater selfish convictions than the antagonists, who live their life based on this idea of selflessness. 

Of course, just because Mori is an antagonist, this doesn’t mean that selflessness is an innately “evil” trait. In fact, this selflessness is how he grows his organization and gains respect from his subordinates. Mori’s selflessness is used for the benefit of everyone else in the PM (ignoring the obvious crimes that the mafia commits of course).

Oda

Oda is often seen as the role model example for a “good man,” in the world of BSD — which is true to a certain extent. We certainly know how he was selfless in a multitude of scenarios, from saving the orphans at the Dragon’s Head Conflict, to his resolve to not kill anyone, and his push for Dazai to leave the mafia. 

However, I’d like to discuss Oda’s selfishness. Oda was well-aware of Dazai’s issues during Dark Era, and he seemed like the only person who would understand Dazai at that level. Despite this, he still chose to die. 

“(Dazai) is just a child who’s too smart. Just a crying child who’s been left alone in the darkness, a world of nothingness far emptier than the world we can see.”

— LN 2, “Osamu Dazai and the Dark Era”

Oda is an idealist first and foremost; when reality fails to match his ideals, it becomes unbearable for him to continue living on. 

Oda was selfish in his conviction to die, because he knew he could’ve done more for Dazai, but he chose to leave him with a dying wish rather than staying with him to potentially fill that void of loneliness.

(I’d like to mention that Oda wasn’t wrong for his choice, because Dazai ended up on the right path in the end. It was simply an act of selfishness that ended for the better).

Kunikida

Kunikida is an idealist, much like Oda, but he also draws close to being a realist at certain moments.

Kunikida shares the same selfless resolve as Atsushi: to save everyone. His ideals seem unbreakable to the point where he would risk his life and succeed in the end no matter what, purely because he’s just that committed towards his goals.

This treads closely to Atsushi’s selfishness. In this case, for Kunikida, it’s somewhat a part of his self-fulfilling prophecy to make his ideals come true, but he acts selflessly because of these ideals that he believes in. 

An important thing to note here is Fyodor’s grin, because Fyodor — as an idealist — is well aware of the fact that the greater the ideals, the loftier these ideals become in reality. 

“By that very logic, then Miss Sasaki was not responsible for any of these recent events! She didn’t even want a world in which all criminals are rightly judged! She only— Tell me, Dazai! Was it right for her to die? Is this the ideal world I’ve sought for…”

— LN 1, “Osamu Dazai’s Entrance Exam”

At the end of the Azure Messenger Arc, Kunikida realizes the flaws in his ideals when he fails to uphold them. By trying to save both Rokuzou and Sasaki, he ended up losing the both of them. No matter how hard he tried to save them, there was no possible way for him to achieve the level of “justice” that he desired.

This teaches an incredibly valuable lesson to Kunikida that shifts his mindset towards a more selfish direction.

Kunikida’s experience leads him to teach Atsushi, another person strongly motivated by ideals, to not follow the same path as him. You could interpret this as a sign of Kunikida’s declining resolve, but I prefer to view it as another form of self-preservation.

Kunikida very well understands the pain that comes from not meeting his ideals, which could easily affect to Atsushi considering how difficult it would be to save Kyouka.

The scene in which Kunikida goes to save Atsushi parallels what Kunikida told him previously: “Your boat can only carry one person. If you let someone beyond salvation come aboard, you will only drown together.”

Notice how Kunikida is in a boat with plenty of space, but out of fear that his ideals won’t be upheld, he’ll lower them to an lesser standard. Instead of trying to save two people, he settles for one, despite the fact that he has the capacity for two. 

This instance is a moment of selfishness from Kunikida, an act of self-preservation to prevent the inevitable pain that comes with unmet ideals. 

However, Atsushi subverts his expectations by pushing himself to save Kyouka regardless of his sinking boat, because Atsushi’s own ideals motivate him to do so. Kunikida teaches Atsushi to be careful with the balance of selfishness and selflessness; Atsushi teaches Kunikida the beauty in being selfless.

[qqueenofhades]

Could you expand a bit on the "death of expertise"? It's something I think about A LOT as an artist, because there are so many problems with people who think it isn't a real job, and the severe undercutting of prices that happens because people think hobbyists and professionals are the same. At the same time, I also really want people to feel free to be able to make art if they want, with no gatekeeping or elitism, and I usually spin myself in circles mentally thinking about it. So.

I have been secretly hoping someone would ask this question, nonny. Bless you. I have a lot (a LOT) of thoughts on this topic, which I will try to keep somewhat concise and presented in a semi-organized fashion, but yes.

I can mostly speak about this in regard to academia, especially the bad, bad, BAD takes in my field (history) that have dominated the news in recent weeks and which constitute most of the recent posts on my blog. (I know, I know, Old Man Yells At Cloud when attempting to educate the internet on actual history, but I gotta do SOMETHING.) But this isn’t a new phenemenon, and is linked to the avalanche of “fake news” that we’ve all heard about and experienced in the last few years, especially in the run-up and then after the election of You Know Who, who has made fake news his personal brand (if not in the way he thinks). It also has to do with the way Americans persistently misunderstand the concept of free speech as “I should be able to say whatever I want and nobody can correct or criticize me,” which ties into the poisonous extreme-libertarian ethos of “I can do what I want with no regard for others and nobody can correct me,” which has seeped its way into the American mainstream and is basically the center of the modern Republican party. (Basically: all for me, all the time, and caring about others is a weak liberal pussy thing to do.)

This, however, is not just an issue of partisan politics, because the left is just as guilty, even if its efforts take a different shape. One of the reason I got so utterly exasperated with strident online leftists, especially around primary season and the hardcore breed of Bernie Bros, is just that they don’t do anything except shout loud and incorrect information on the internet (and then transmogrify that into a twisted ideology of moral purity which makes a sin out of actually voting for a flawed candidate, even if the alternative is Donald Goddamn Trump). I can’t count how many people from both sides of the right/left divide get their political information from like-minded people on social media, and never bother to experience or verify or venture outside their comforting bubbles that will only provide them with “facts” that they already know. Social media has done a lot of good things, sure, but it’s also made it unprecedently easy to just say whatever insane bullshit you want, have it go viral, and then have you treated as an authority on the topic or someone whose voice “has to be included” out of some absurd principle of both-siderism. This is also a tenet of the mainstream corporate media: “both sides” have to be included, to create the illusion of “objectivity,” and to keep the largest number of paying subscribers happy. (Yes, of course this has deep, deep roots in the collapse of late-stage capitalism.) Even if one side is absolutely batshit crazy, the rules of this distorted social contract stipulate that their proposals and their flaws have to be treated as equal with the others, and if you point out that they are batshit crazy, you have to qualify with some criticism of the other side.

This is where you get white people posting “Neo-Nazis and Black Lives Matter are the same!!!1” on facebook. They are a) often racist, let’s be real, and b) have been force-fed a constant narrative where Both Sides Are Equally Bad. Even if one is a historical system of violent oppression that has made a good go at total racial and ethnic genocide and rests on hatred, and the other is the response to not just that but the centuries of systemic and small-scale racism that has been built up every day, the white people of the world insist on treating them as morally equivalent (related to a superior notion that Violence is Always Bad, which.... uh... have you even seen constant and overwhelming state-sponsored violence the West dishes out? But it’s only bad when the other side does it. Especially if those people can be at all labeled “fanatics.”)

I have complained many, many times, and will probably complain many times more, about how hard it is to deconstruct people’s absolutely ingrained ideas of history and the past. History is a very fragile thing; it’s really only equivalent to the length of a human lifespan, and sometimes not even that. It’s what people want to remember and what is convenient for them to remember, which is why we still have some living Holocaust survivors and yet a growing movement of Holocaust denial, among other extremist conspiracy theories (9/11, Sandy Hook, chemtrails, flat-earthing, etc etc). There is likewise no organized effort to teach honest history in Western public schools, not least since the West likes its self-appointed role as guardians of freedom and liberty and democracy in the world and doesn’t really want anyone digging into all that messy slavery and genocide and imperialism and colonialism business. As a result, you have deliberately under- or un-educated citizens, who have had a couple of courses on American/British/etc history in grade school focusing on the greatest-hit reel, and all from an overwhelmingly triumphalist white perspective. You have to like history, from what you get out of it in public school, to want to go on to study it as a career, while knowing that there are few jobs available, universities are cutting or shuttering humanities departments, and you’ll never make much money. There is... not a whole lot of outside incentive there.

I’ve written before about how the humanities are always the first targeted, and the first defunded, and the first to be labeled as “worthless degrees,” because a) they are less valuable to late-stage capitalism and its emphasis on Material Production, and b) they often focus on teaching students the critical thinking skills that critique and challenge that dominant system. There’s a reason that there is a stereotype of artists as social revolutionaries: they have often taken a look around, gone, “Hey, what the hell is this?” and tried to do something about it, because the creative and free-thinking impulse helps to cultivate the tools necessary to question what has become received and dominant wisdom. Of course, that can then be taken too far into the “I’ll create my own reality and reject absolutely everything that doesn’t fit that narrative,” and we end up at something like the current death of expertise.

This year is particularly fertile for these kinds of misinformation efforts: a plague without a vaccine or a known cure, an election year in a turbulently polarized country, race unrest in a deeply racist country spreading to other racist countries around the world and the challenging of a particularly important system (white supremacy), etc etc. People are scared and defensive and reactive, and in that case, they’re especially less motivated to challenge or want to encounter information that scares them. They need their pre-set beliefs to comfort them or provide steadiness in a rocky and uncertain world, and (thanks once again to social media) it’s easy to launch blistering ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with you, who are categorized as a faceless evil mass and who you will never have to meet or negotiate with in real life. This is the environment in which all the world’s distinguished scientists, who have spent decades studying infectious diseases, have to fight for airtime and authority (and often lose) over random conspiracy theorists who make a YouTube video. The public has been trained to see them as “both the same” and then accept which side they like the best, regardless of actual factual or real-world qualifications. They just assume the maniac on YouTube is just as trustworthy as the scientists with PhDs from real universities.

Obviously, academia is racist, elitist, classist, sexist, on and on. Most human institutions are. But training people to see all academics as the enemy is not the answer. You’ve seen the Online Left (tm) also do this constantly, where they attack “the establishment” for never talking about anything, or academics for supposedly erasing and covering up all of non-white history, while apparently never bothering to open a book or familiarize themselves with a single piece of research that actual historians are working on. You may have noticed that historians have been leading the charge against the “don’t erase history!!!1″ defenders of racist monuments, and explaining in stinging detail exactly why this is neither preserving history or being truthful about it. Tumblr likes to confuse the mechanism that has created the history and the people who are studying and analyzing that history, and lump them together as one mass of Evil And Lying To You. Academics are here because we want to critically examine the world and tell you things about it that our nonsense system has required years and years of effort, thousands of dollars in tuition, and other gatekeeping barriers to learn. You can just ask one of us. We’re here, we usually love to talk, and we’re a lot cheaper. I think that’s pretty cool.

As a historian, I have been trained in a certain skill set: finding, reading, analyzing, using, and criticizing primary sources, ditto for secondary sources, academic form and style, technical skills like languages, paleography, presentation, familiarity with the professional mechanisms for reviewing and sharing work (journals, conferences, peer review, etc), and how to assemble this all into an extended piece of work and to use it in conversation with other historians. That means my expertise in history outweighs some rando who rolls up with an unsourced or misleading Twitter thread. If a professor has been handed a carefully crafted essay and then a piece of paper scribbled with crayon, she is not obliged to treat them as essentially the same or having the same critical weight, even if the essay has flaws. One has made an effort to follow the rules of the game, and the other is... well, I did read a few like that when teaching undergraduates. They did not get the same grade.

This also means that my expertise is not universal. I might know something about adjacent subjects that I’ve also studied, like political science or English or whatever, but someone who is a career academic with a degree directly in that field will know more than me. I should listen to them, even if I should retain my independent ability and critical thinking skillset. And I definitely should not be listened to over people whose field of expertise is in a completely different realm. Take the recent rocket launch, for example. I’m guessing that nobody thought some bum who walked in off the street to Kennedy Space Center should be listened to in preference of the actual scientists with degrees and experience at NASA and knowledge of math and orbital mechanics and whatever else you need to get a rocket into orbit. I definitely can’t speak on that and I wouldn’t do it anyway, so it’s frustrating to see it happen with history. Everybody “knows” things about history that inevitably turn out to be wildly wrong, and seem to assume that they can do the same kind of job or state their conclusions with just as much authority. (Nobody seems to listen to the scientists on global warming or coronavirus either, because their information is actively inconvenient for our entrenched way of life and people don’t want to change.) Once again, my point here is not to be a snobbish elitist looking down at The Little People, but to remark that if there’s someone in a field who has, you know, actually studied that subject and is speaking from that place of authority, maybe we can do better than “well, I saw a YouTube video and liked it better, so there.” (Americans hate authority and don’t trust smart people, which  is a related problem and goes back far beyond Trump, but there you are.)

As for art: it’s funny how people devalue it constantly until they need it to survive. Ask anyone how they spent their time in lockdown. Did they listen to music? Did they watch movies or TV? Did they read a book? Did they look at photography or pictures? Did they try to learn a skill, like drawing or writing or painting, and realize it was hard? Did they have a preference for the art that was better, more professionally produced, had more awareness of the rules of its craft, and therefore was more enjoyable to consume? If anyone wants to tell anyone that art is worthless, I invite you to challenge them on the spot to go without all of the above items during the (inevitable, at this rate) second coronavirus lockdown. No music. No films. No books. Not even a video or a meme or anything else that has been made for fun, for creativity, or anything outside the basic demands of Compensated Economic Production. It’s then that you’ll discover that, just as with the underpaid essential workers who suffered the most, we know these jobs need to get done. We just still don’t want to pay anyone fairly for doing them, due to our twisted late-capitalist idea of “value.”

Anyway, since this has gotten long enough and I should probably wrap up: as you say, the difference between “professional” and “hobbyist” has been almost completely erased, so that people think the opinion of one is as good as the other, or in your case, that the hobbyist should present their work for free or refuse to be seen as a professional entitled to fair compensation for their skill. That has larger and more insidious effects in a global marketplace of ideas that has been almost entirely reduced to who can say their opinion the loudest to the largest group of people. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but at least I can try to point it out and to avoid being part of it, and to recognize where I need to speak and where I need to shut up. My job, and that of every single white person in America right now, is to shut up and let black people (and Native people, and Latinx people, and Muslim people, and etc...) tell me what it’s really like to live here with that identity. I have obviously done a ton of research on the subject and consider myself reasonably educated, but here’s the thing: my expertise still doesn’t outweigh theirs, no matter what degrees they have or don’t have. I then am required to boost their ideas, views, experiences, and needs, rather than writing them over or erasing them, and to try to explain to people how the roots of these ideas interlock and interact where I can. That is -- hopefully -- putting my history expertise to use in a good way to support what they’re saying, rather than silence it. I try, at any rate, and I am constantly conscious of learning to do better.

I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for letting me talk about it.

[tiredassmage]

Character Page 𓆰 Brooke

A character page for what is, at its core, something of another au for my main, Astor, buttt... it’s basically bc one day I had a random bought of inspiration and followed through on “what if I came up with a deer-like race for XIV” and... then I spent like two hours making lore for them and listening to whitetail deer noises on YouTube. So! He’s different enough to warrant his own lil page! ^.^ I will try to cover enough of this theoretical lore that things make sense, but hopefully without going... ridiculously overboard and keeping you here for hours over a race of my own brainworms. xD

BASICS ---

Name: Brooke, technically like the water feature “brook,” but, somewhere along the line, someone thought it was spelled with an ‘e’ like the more common rendition of the name, and he did not have enough of an understanding of the written Eorzean Common Tongue to know the difference.

Age: It’s a little hazy, but approximately 28 summers by Shadowbringers

Nameday: 17th sun of the 3rd Umbral Moon

Race: Dryad

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Bisexual

Martial Status: Single(?)

OC Tags: ch: brooke

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE ---

Hair: Long, falling down about his mid-shoulders when worn loosely and dark brown. Typically worn with at least one braid, and often pulled back in some sort of fashion. Occasionally braids feathers or flowers into it.

Eyes: A pale crystal blue, almost gray. Often wide, curious, and warm.

Height: 5 fulms, 10 ilms, not accounting for a full grown set of antlers.

Build: Lithe, lean, and long in the legs - all traits rather common among his race. As a fully mature adult, Brooke generally grows in a full antler set featuring an average of 4 points that typically form a generally crescent moon-like shape. The typical adult male Dryad will grow anywhere from 4-6 points, while a female will grow 2-4.

Distinguishing Marks: Much of Brooke is rather... distinguishing, given the rarity of his people to the rest of Eorzea. They are generally a reclusive people, living deep within the woods and mountains from the land, migrating occasionally with the season and food supply, but rarely actually leaving. Given such, it wasn’t until prior to the Calamity that Brooke ventured beyond the bounds of his wooded home deep in the Shroud at the behest of his herd that he came into contact with the outside world. Given the antlers and the fluffy ears and tail, most... didn’t exactly greet him with kindness. He was odd and unlike anyone else most had seen. The Calamity has pushed their survivors from their homes and more into the light, but they’re still a relatively unknown factor. Many regarded him initially with the same judgements and mistrust afforded the beast tribes.

Outside of the physical denotations of his race, the only other marks one might occasionally find that could be helpful are the paints he still tries to find some time to don in honor of his kin and ancestors. Life as an adventurer has taken him further and further from his roots, but no further from his respect for their traditions.

PERSONAL ---

Profession: Brooke initially left his herd, sent by their leader, to act as an emissary to the nation of Gridania in the days leading up to the Calamity. While the details of the time after Cartenau are yet fuzzy to him, he had not intended to abandon his post in the Calamity’s wake. In the world that remains, however, he is unable to ascertain whether any of his herd survived. By lucky chance, he has fallen in with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, lending his strength and mixed arcane knowledge to their fight for peace.

Main Job: Brooke and his people are something of an enigma by standard definitions of magical practice. They are gifted in a wide variety of arts, and their semi-nomadic nature has brought them into contact with various remnants of ages past. In Brooke’s case, the closest standard classification may be Red Magic, as he possesses an affinity with a wide variety of skills typically associated with both White and Black Magic, though, unlike the duelists of the Red, Brooke still prefers to focus his energies through a staff or scepter than a blade.

Hobbies: Gathering is more a standard survival skill of his people than a hobby, so he would hesitate to classify his botanical knowledge and pursuits as such. Instead, he would much prefer to count his reading as his favorite one - particularly into history and prevalent folklore and tales. In his role as emissary, he sought understanding between his people and those sharing the Twelveswood with them, even if they had been doing so unwittingly. Thus, it was only natural he needed to seek an understanding of their customs as well as shed some light on his own. He finds the telling of history and belief systems fascinating, marveling at the many differences and nuances to be found within them.

Languages: Though Brooke possesses the Echo, he still struggles with languages, at times. He has steadily grasped a more firm understanding of the Eorzean Common Tongue, but it would not be wrong to say his Echo granted him a better understanding of the language and intentions of creatures, beasts, and elements than any language of man.

Residence: At times, it is still difficult to feel settled among civilization, but his efforts and work with the Scions have afforded him the security of a small residence within the protection of Gridania. At least the more seasoned adventurers aren’t so prone to gawping at his unusual appearance.

Birthplace: His herd lived somewhere deep within the Twelveswood. After the destruction reigned down by Bahamut though, he has found more malms of it unfamiliar to him than ever, and he cannot even be certain they survived - much less that their home may have.

Religion: Dryads believe in something one might call spirts, more than any gods. They revere natural elements such as wind, water, and earth and pay a deep respect to the balance of these things. Taking more than one needs and reckless destruction are considered sacrilegious to them. They host celebrations for each season, each having a representative and associated elemental spirits of focus - the closest one might find to a pantheon of gods in their beliefs. This is something he has held fast to even in the face of their many adventures.

TRAITS ---

Extroverted / In Between / Introverted

Disorganized / In Between / Organized

Close Minded / In Between / Open Minded

Calm / In Between / Anxious

Disagreeable / In Between / Agreeable

Cautious / In Between / Reckless

Patient / In Between / Impatient

Outspoken / In Between / Reserved

Leader / In Between / Follower

Empathetic / In Between / Apathetic

Optimistic / In Between / Pessimistic

Traditional / In Between / Modern

Hard-working / In Between / Lazy

Loyal / In Between / Disloyal

Faithful / In Between / Unfaithful

PERSONALITY ---

Curious, warm, and soft-spoken, Brooke has a quiet love for life that some might find a little naïve. He’s a deeply passionate individual that does not often find a reason to hide the way he feels. He believes strongly in such things as the beauty of a star-dappled sky or a color-changing sunset. He feels strongly about preserving the ways of his people, finding a nostalgic familiarity in them as he uncovers the world beyond the wood. It has been daunting, at times.

But curiosity has kept spurring him forward. Seeing marvels like airships and linkpearls up close are strange, sometimes terrifying, but incredible experiences.

He endeavors to remain honest to himself and true to his beliefs. He does not believe in turning others away over superficial differences. If one is in need, that should be enough. Where they are from or what creed they follow should not restrict them from aid. It might make him something of an idealist, but if it is foolish to believe in and want such things, then he would gladly be a fool. He tries his best to remain willing to learn, and finds joy in understanding and sharing. He’d gladly listen to someone tell stories for hours, if it would make them happy.

ABOUT --

Born and raised with his herd in the secluded depths of the Twelveswood, Brooke thought and new little of the world beyond the wooded reaches of their herd until he was well along to becoming a young adult. In the brewing chaos of looming calamity, their leader bid him go forth to their neighbors of the wood in Gridania in an attempt to reach an understanding and mutual aid. Such levels of destruction would doom them all, regardless, and she bid them not remain idle and wait for the coming darkness.

The troubling times would provide their own draws and setbacks to opening a dialogue with the Gridanians and their Seedseers, but, ultimately, Brooke would succeed in at least opening these discussions, revealing the Dryads’ presence within Eorzea with certainty and agreeing to aid in the developing struggles against the Garlean Empire.

What, exactly, followed is, as many others have described, something of a blur. The only certainty of the matter was that it left the young Dryad stranded alone in a wholly new and twisted realm that was all just... a bit funny. Familiar in ways... Entirely not in others.

He may just have ran afoul of a little cult. Y’know. Nothing major. Definitely not a voidsent interested in aether. Definitely not his. Or... perhaps he did. And perhaps he’s quite lucky he met an adventurer not keen on letting cultists lurk about in underground tombs or let unsuspecting strangers get turned into voidsent treats. Quite lucky, that! But... all’s well that ends well, right..?

With a little to be desired for a solid sense of direction and purpose, Brooke found himself once again woven into a greater tapestry of fate than he could have ever predicted. There were, thankfully, a few... passingly familiar faces along the way, it seemed, but still little in the way of ascertaining the fate of those he had left behind, grown up with.

But there was still their hope - hope for a better future, for a way forward, the dawn of another day they could enjoy and share with their loved ones. That had always been worth fighting for, so fight for it, he would.

[thisiswhatwereupagainst]

Sebastian Shaw textually represents American values, politics, and ways of thinking, or at least used to. Not subtextually, but textually. But he hasn’t been written as such in years. And I think partly that’s because in 2009, a change was made to his history that made him have been Emma Frost’s former abusive lover, and writers prefer to focus on that---Emma is a far more popular character, and it’s a PERSONAL story rather than a political one---and because, if they go with this criticism as hard as some former writers did, they risk alienating a good chunk of their audience. Because while lots of people will agree with the message of “oh yeah don’t be mean to minorities” in a bland general way, Shaw represents a criticism of something FAR more specific, and far more culturally beloved. The American dream. I’m not reaching with this either, this is not simply my opinion, this is stated in the text itself: ”By the age of 30, Shaw had earned his first million. By 40, his first billion. He wasn’t just living the American dream, Sebastian Shaw was the American dream.” - X- Men: Hellfire Club #4” So, what does that mean, the American dream? The American dream is the ideal that anyone can make it if they work for it. That it doesn’t matter who you are, what you are, or where you come from, you can do it if you believe. And Shaw does]. Shaw is smart, he’s determined, he believes in himself, he never gives up, and he becomes a multi-billionaire for it. That’s lovely. It’s also the cherry on top of a stew of very dangerous boot-strapping ideas that blames people for their own poverty and the suffering that comes with it----suffering that ironically Shaw himself has been through. He grew up a deeply impoverished child and his mutation manifested due to literal class violence; a group of preppy college guys beat him up for being a poor kid on scholarship, for basically getting out of his place. More on that HERE. And yet despite this history, when Shaw himself becomes rich he espouses these views: “Our costumes signify our abandonment of the modern age–with its cloying ethics and bourgeois mercantile principles, where society is bent on protecting people from themselves at an cost—for a far simpler one…where a man was limited solely by the scope of his imagination, his ambition, his daring. And bound only by his own personal sense of honor. Society—the common herd–means nothing. The individual is all.” - New Mutants #22 “He [Shaw] will tolerate no inefficiency, no waste, no weak-minded liberalism.” —X-Men:The Legacy Quest Trilogy, Book Three, by Steve Lyons Bishop: “Out of the goodness of your heart?” Shaw: “Enlightened self-interest.” -  Uncanny X-Men #453 These are quotes that reflect very real-world libertarian and Objectivist politics. Shaw’s not a conservative, I should stress---as much as one might WANT to label him such, his investment in individual rights, individual self-interest, individual achievements, and personal freedoms above all else, including disdain for common morality and belief that one should set one’s own personal code of honor (which he did, very early in his writing, believe it or not), is much more Libertarian. Shaw is Black King of the Hellfire Club, I can’t really see him getting fussed over same-sex marriage or abortion the way conservatives do. His use of the phrase “enlightened self-interest” is also a real-world term in the philosophy of ethics. These quotes represent a lot of ideas that many people do find appealing---the values of individualism, of people choosing their own codes of honor rather than having them enforced by society and the government, of not being controlled by silly government things like safety regulations, the idea everyone should earn everything they have, that the government should not be trying to protect people from themselves (the term “nanny state” is often used by libertarians)---and there is even merit in them. There are good ideas here. But it’s coming from a villain. Sebastian Shaw is a bad guy. We are not supposed to agree with him. We are meant to see his point and his point of view (back when he was allowed to have one; he’s really not now) but at the end of the day, probably not to think he’s right. So, this man is textually referred to as The American Dream, he says these quotes, and he is the bad guy. A bigger criticism of these deeply held American values around “hard work” and “no big government” and individualism---for America is a deeply individualist country---would be hard to come by. Shaw also provides a comment both on how people from an underclass will turn on their own and how in fact our culture trains us to do so, and on America’s history with Communism, the antithesis of the ideals Shaw represents, and how that’s affected us to this day. Again, Shaw grew up very poor. He’s a self-made man, and very proud of that, and that is indeed the American ideal. And I think he represents very well both how people are ready to step on others once they themselves become successful enough to do so, but also how well Americans as a people are trained to RESIST what’s good for us. After all, the biggest haters of welfare here in the South (where I live) are the same poor white people who are on it. We’re a people who will vote to take away social programs and healthcare not just from others, but OURSELVES, because we are just that indoctrinated against anything that we think smells even close to socialism or Communism-----and Shaw was indoctrinated too, to a much more EXTREME degree than we are today. He’s in his 40s when he first shows up in the 80s, which means he was born in the late 30s, so he would have been growing up during the era of McCarthyism and the second Red Scare, when the American nation was actively terrified of Communism on mass scale and it was a HUGE impact on the culture. Combine that with being born in terrible poverty, and no wonder this guy grew up to embody all the worst excesses of capitalist greed and cruelty! Which is not to say he has an excuse to be the way he is, but just that, like most villains, he has a reason, and it’s actually more interesting than just “well he’s greedy” as it’s often boiled down to. But writers like to boil it down to that. It’s simple to understand...and it doesn’t take risks. You don’t risk pissing anyone off with another “greedy rich guy” cliché villain. That’s a very safe villain, very shallow, very easy to hate. You also don’t take risk with the “Emma’s evil ex” stories. That’s also a very safe villain, very easy for readers to hate and root against, and personal rather than political. But if writers today started having Shaw espouse the politics he previously did, that would NOT be a “safe” move. They would risk readers being pissed off because their own views are coming from a man who is unquestionably, irredeemably, and unrepentantly the BAD guy. Shaw believes things I suspect a great many X-Men readers believe, and will be angry at seeing critically examined and challenged. It’s easy to agree with stuff like “minorities shouldn’t be murdered” for readers, but Shaw takes on much more specific and deep issues that, while they do move the target away from the mutant minority metaphor, are worth discussing and make him a deeper, far more interesting character than he gets to be anymore….and I would like to see him be again.

[tlbodine]

Let’s Talk About Folk Horror

Folk horror, both as a term and a concept, is seeing a resurgence recently. It’s been widely used to describe Ari Aster’s film Midsommar, which may be the first time you’ve seen it. But the sub-genre, like the traditions at its heart, is quite old and rich with examples.

What is Folk Horror? 

Folk horror is a type of religious horror concerned with Pagan or pre-Christian religion as opposed to Christianity. Instead of demonic possession or devilish influence, the supernatural elements of folk horror (if they're present at all) will be rooted in other, older traditions. There's still plenty of overlap between Christian occult horror and folk horror, though, and aesthetically some stories featuring Christian mythology and tradition could fall under the folk umbrella.

Folk horror will often draw on several or all of these tropes:

An isolated setting, most commonly a rural community that's a big "backwards" by modern standards and often populated by unsettlingly eccentric locals.

Cults or cultish behavior, either overtly or suspected.

Blood sacrifice, violent rituals, and other types of murderous mayhem enacted by aforementioned cult members.

A slow-building, atmospheric type of horror rich in detail of the strangeness of the setting/its people.

Ideas drawn from mythology or historical religious practices, especially those of Pre-Christian Europe

An aesthetic that might incorporate Pagan (or pseudo-pagan) motifs, whether or not they’re portrayed accurately or historically - masks, dances, sex, rituals, blood magic, etc. 

Some folk horror is supernatural or overtly occult -- there might be a monster or monstrous god posing a very real and physical threat. But most folk horror is most commonly rooted in fears of the Other, and what happens when an outsider encounters believers of a faith that appears confusing, frightening, dangerous or immoral. 

Folk horror taps into a number of potential primal fears: 

Fears of “otherness” and the unknown 

Fear/distrust of religion or organized belief structures and their power/influence

Fears of social isolation or faux pas; the anxiety of not knowing or adhering to the rules (and being punished for it) 

White guilt, or related anxieties regarding colonialism, lost history/identity, and fear of being punished for the same

In many ways, folk horror is “kissing cousins” with the murderous hillbilly genre: both often tell stories about outsiders who go to a place they don’t belong and suffer the consequences at the hands of the locals. 

More modern iterations of folk horror often side-step the xenophobia by placing the main characters within the culture instead of outside it. These tales are frequently told as historical pieces and may or may not ultimately position Christianity or white imperialism in the villainous role (but not without heavily leaning on the symbolism and aesthetic of the folk elements to provide creepy atmosphere first). 

Another reason folk horror may be enjoying a modern resurgence is because it deals strongly with identity, especially the lost (and reclaimed) identities of old religions and cultures. As “whiteness” as a concept undergoes growing pains and tries to define itself, reaching back to the “old ways” of European folklore (or even early colonial America) can provide a richness and depth of history fraught with potentially horrifying perils and deeply interesting opportunities. Which is not to say that folk horror must by default be about white people...just that white people should probably let other groups handle their own folk horror stories (see previous rant re: wendigo). 

Difference Between Folk, Occult and Gothic 

Occult, by definition, means "supernatural or paranormal.” Stories about magic, demons, witchcraft and possession fall under the occult umbrella. Quite often, occult films default to a Judeo-Christian mythological framework (in the West, at least, Asian occult horror of draws on a different set of cultural influences). Regardless: in occult horror, the occult is front-and-center, and it’s a very real influence. 

Folk horror, by contrast, requires no supernatural elements -- merely a stalwart belief. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter whether the blood ritual actually summons an old god, only that the cult members earnestly believe that it will. 

Gothic, meanwhile, often shares a lot of aesthetic territory with folk horror. But as we’ve discussed before, the defining characteristic of gothic is decay -- locations that were once opulent but have fallen into ruin, beliefs that were once sacred but since have been abandoned (for better or worse). Folk horror is very much alive, and often extremely vibrant. 

A Taste of Folk Horror Media

Ok: So you’ve got a basic understanding of what Folk Horror is about. Now where should you start with studying it? 

The usual recommendation is to start with the so-called "Unholy Trinity" of folk horror films, which really cemented the genre in cinema. Michael Reeves' Witchfinder General, Piers Haggard's Blood on Satan's Claw and Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man were released in the laste 60s/early 70s and laid out a number of the tropes you'll grow to find quite familiar later on -- theology, human sacrifice, rural communities, and lots of British weirdness.

Now armed with the basics, you might be better equipped to appreciate more modern films -- let's try a sampler of different flavors.

Try The Witch, directed by Robert Eggers, and follow it up with The Wind, directed by Emma Tammi, for a pair of women-centered historical pieces rooted in early America (colonial and frontier eras, respectively). They draw heavily on the folk side of Christian tradition and are both atmospheric marvels.

Or, here's a trifecta that's fun to watch for compare/contrast: Ari Aster's debut, Hereditary, which combines pagan cults with family drama; David Bruckner's film The Ritual, where a night in the woods is interrupted by an ancient Pagan monster-god; and Apostle, directed by Gareth Evans, where Christian apostasy and creepy cults collide. Finish up with Midsommar if you’re not sick of Ari Aster yet. 

If you're looking at books, Stephen King occasionally dips his toes in folk horror. Pet Sematary dabbles in it, and Children of the Corn takes a proper full plunge. Both were adapted into films, too, if that's your preference. 

Incidentally, The Ritual was also a novel, written by Adam Nevill, and by all accounts it's even better than the movie. If you like that, also pick up his new novel The Reddening. You might also enjoy some of the work of Douglas Clegg, such as The Halloween Man.

If you're done with white dudes for a while, cleanse your palate with some Asian folk horror: The Wailing, directed by Hong-jin Na, combines folk beliefs, Christianity, and virology. Kwaidan, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, is itself a sampler anthology of Japanese folk tales.

If animated features are more your speed, try Over the Garden Wall from Patrick McHale. 

Folk horror even shows up in video games. Fatal Frame straddles the occult/folk line pretty well, especially Crimson Butterly, which delves deep into some cult-gothic territory. Alternatively, try out Unforgiving: A Northern Hymn, a wonderfully creepy game about Swedish and Norse mythology that you will love if you enjoy Adam Nevill's writing.  

And, because I can never plug it enough, Chandler Groover’s short interactive fiction game Taghairm is a magnificent example (warning: playing involves text-based simulations of roasting cats over a fire). 

[dantesinfcrno]

                                 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

                                                (  @opalsmedia​​  )  

    ›   𝑰. ACE OF CUPS .

❝  divine love and compassion are pouring through you. you are a vessel for deep, spiritual love from the universe, and you can’t help but let that love flow through you and into the world. you are love  &  your heart overflows .  ❞

           𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐀𝐋𝐋  ––––––  the days grow darker than you’ve expected, and that harms the sweet thing you call a heart. the numerous fights, the copious amounts of tension, and the stress that pools in your stomach –– you’re certain you can’t handle it any longer. perhaps, you are too soft for this world in which anger  &  chaos reign. you try and shield yourself, but it’s never enough : your heart still beats so strongly, and you can’t stop giving  &  giving, until you’re alone with the remains of your chest. you weren’t expecting a ruthless emerald to open his arms to you, and yet–– in him, you discover at least one safe spot, tucked away from the world  &  all things evil. he reminds you of a book you loved as a child, and he has a nice way with words –– it makes dreaming easier, in such harsh times, and you can smile when he is around. he does not ask anything from you. you are grateful. 

          𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒  ╱  view here.

          𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆  ╱  braver soldier, russian red  +  i like me better, lauv  +  boats  &  birds, gregory and the hawk.

          𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒  ╱  laughter that fills our lungs ; smiling until our cheeks ache  &  our bellies are warm ; yellow and orange shades peppered across your skin ; the summer bringing out your freckles. we find secret gardens  &  have picnics, us and the fairies. childhood is still very reminiscent in the way we lay down and embrace one another. we speak of running away, but instead just end up with more polaroids on our desks. i prefer your sweater much more than my own. cozy blankets ; soft intimacy ; rose-colored glasses.

          𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒  ╱  ❝  on empathy : what it sounds like is a bird breaking small bones against glass .  ❞

   ›   𝑰𝑰. THE HIGH PRIESTESS .

❝  the guardian of the subconscious mind and the teacher of sacred knowledge and hidden mysteries. she ushers you through the thin veil of awareness, offering you a deep, intuitive understanding of the universe and a heightened awareness of secret or hidden information .  ❞

           𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐀𝐋𝐋  ––––––  you are a very distant cousin, maybe not even that. you grew up hearing tales of dante’s mother, and you are keenly aware of the distaste your family has for her, her husband, and her son. you’ve seen each other once or twice, but you know dante desai –– all the rumors, scandals, absurdities  &  controversies. he might not have given you a word, but your image of the emerald with a dazzling smile has darkened under the influence of gossip and ill-intentioned people. you are not sure why he’s in the society at all and, if you’re being candid, he doesn’t seem deserving of any of your respect –– but alas, business means business, so you try and play nice ( it fails, more often than not, as he seems to know every word uttered about himself in his absence ). he teases you, and pushes you to try harder, reach farther. it annoys you deeply, and you hold back from simply telling him to shut up. maybe you want to prove you’re so much better, maybe you want to make him aware of how much he’s missing. maybe you just want the approval of someone, anyone.

          𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒  ╱  view here.

          𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆  ╱  black sheep, gin wigmore  +  hit me with your best shot, adona  +  make me your queen, declan mckenna.

          𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒  ╱  misplaced competitiveness  &  rivalry ; wanting to prove yourself ; defiant words and poignant stares ; discovering the truth isn’t always hand-fed ; accepting the lies you were told when growing up  &  moving on from them ; familial resentment ; finding things in common with someone you hate ; learning you share many scars with the object of your disdain. biting remarks  &  vicious tongue ; clashing of titans. finding an equal match to the monster that crawls under your skin. enemies to friends.

          𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒  ╱  ❝  the monster. the dreamer, the eater. the eater monster. you the monster, i the monster. all of us the monster. the monster in us, the monster in you. the monster in all of us .  ❞ 

   ›   𝑽. THE HIEROPHANT, ꓤƎꓥƎꓤSƎꓷ .

❝  you are your own teacher. all the wisdom you seek comes from within – not from some external source or power. the hierophant reversed is also about challenging the status quo. you seek out opportunities to rebel and reclaim your personal power .  ❞

           𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐀𝐋𝐋  ––––––  you’ve always had your eyes on dante, it seems –– it’s not at all too hard for it to happen, considering the bright glitter  &  colorful clothes, but you perhaps admire him more than your peers. individuality attracts you, and you may or may not have one silly crush on this man –– however, once you came closer, an infatuation turned into a solid bond. you seem to share similar principles, and the need for freedom  &  change is rooted deeply in both of your cores. you can speak for hours on end about everything at all, open-mindedness not shared with many others you’ve met. everyone might be worried once the two of you are seen together, as you’re always up for some trouble –– but, maybe, that’s just how love works in this friendship. fire burns brighter as you come together as an unit, and it almost makes you giddy.

          𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒  ╱  view here.

          𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆  ╱  void, the neighbourhood  +  come as you are, nirvana  +  sober ii (melodrama), lorde.

          𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒  ╱  forbidden crushes ; midnight escapades ; i know your favorite wine  &  you know how many drinks it takes for me to get tipsy ; we know each other at our worsts. the act of loving  &  supporting each other in all one sets their mind to. may be guilty of arson  &  invasion of properties. the lack of hesitation to defend one another. uniqueness  &  playfulness ; deep conversations under the moonlight ; sharing the same fears we never uttered aloud ; feeling trapped under the same pretense of freedom ; watching clouds  &  constellations ; staying awake until seven am to see the sun rise.

          𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒  ╱  ❝  wings are freedom only if they are open in flight. on one’s back they are a heavy weight .  ❞ 

  ›   𝑽𝑰𝑰𝑰. JUSTICE .

❝  represents justice, fairness, truth and the law. you are being called to account for your actions and will be judged accordingly. as you explore your truth, you will discover that things are not as clear-cut as you had thought .  ❞ 

          𝐎𝐏𝐀𝐋𝐒 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘  ––––––  admitting to his past relationship with his own predecessor put a huge toll on dante’s shoulders, and you now observe him with more care, an attention you never truly bestowed upon the trickster of your circlet. his distress might tug at your heartstrings, it might make you wonder –– you might see him differently, now. your relationship might be strained. perhaps, you desire to reach out, offer the support he never asked for. perhaps, you do not know how. you are curious and worried, but the feelings of betrayal still linger on your bloodstream, whether you like it or not. should you ask for clarifications? step further into his personal space? should you step back, abstain from commenting anything? does he need your help? does he even care about what you think?

          𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒  ╱  view here.

          𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆  ╱  you don’t know me at all, son lux  +  stop crying your heart out, oasis  +  all for us, labrinth  &  zendaya.

          𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒  ╱  lingering stares across the room ; desiring to speak but now knowing how ; sending text messages but not wanting to read the replies ; sheepish smiles  &  shared silences ; holding back your tears, even while near loved ones ; solitary nights with clouds covering every star. i worry for you, dear one, but you make it so hard to take care of you. when it rains, we hold each other’s hands. you taste sour, i taste bittersweet, but we still love. i would do it all for you, why won’t you ask for it?

          𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒  ╱  ❝  sorry about the blood in your mouth. i wish it was mine .  ❞

   ›   𝑿𝑽. THE DEVIL, ꓤƎꓥƎꓤSƎꓷ .

❝  calls on you to confront your inner fears to free yourself from the chains that bind you to your limiting beliefs and unhealthy attachments. it can also appear when you are going into your deepest, darkest places. you seek to understand your innermost shadows so you can either release them or integrate them into your life in a more constructive way .  ❞

           𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐀𝐋𝐋  ––––––  you struggle, and you struggle hard. you would never admit you’re going through a heavy time, perhaps not even to yourself. you move lightly, with grace, and no one questions the tightness of your smile. it’s easy, like this –– except you’re tired, and your bones ache, and you can barely sleep at night. it surprises you, however, once you find the bright emerald drinking by himself in one of the shitty bars you go whenever life gets rough. you sit by his side, you both share a sigh  &  a shot. he finds out one of your many secrets, and you discover some of his scars, and the pills on his pocket. you hold his hand, and he takes you home safely, kisses your forehead while bidding you good night. you share many text messages, and you meet up often. you get better at recognizing the signs of sadness on each other’s faces. life is not any happier, but now, at least–– you have an emergency contact. you can sob on his shoulders until you fall into unconsciousness. he smiles at you in the morning and brings you coffee. no more words are needed.

          𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒  ╱  view here.

          𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆  ╱  shadows, warpaint  +  blinding, florence and the machine  +  haunt, banks.

          𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒  ╱  blue shades ; melancholy ; van gogh’s paintings ; scars that never fade away ; the dull ache of quiet piano strings echoing throughout an empty room at the darkest hour. inebriated confessions ; hushed conversations ; many bottles of whiskey, both cheap  &  incredibly expensive. not knowing much about each other, and yet discovering the hidden away pieces by yourself. becoming dependent on the emotion of being understood  &  seen. helping each other up and forward, even when there is no strength left. exhausted  &  broken smiles ; thunderstorms ; lending you my jacket and never getting it back, because you need as much comfort as you can get ; dancing in the rain  &  laughing about it hard and loud.

          𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒  ╱  ❝  i have no more room for grief for it is everywhere now .  ❞

   ›   𝑿𝑽𝑰𝑰. THE STAR, ꓤƎꓥƎꓤSƎꓷ .

❝  can mean that you’ve lost faith and hope. you may be desperately calling out to the universe to give you some reprieve but struggling to see how the divine is on your side. take a moment to ask yourself what the deeper life lesson is, and how this is a blessing, not a punishment. the reversed star is a test of faith .  ❞

          𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘  ––––––  the opal society, more than ever, seems like bullshit to you. you are angry, upset, distraught–– you can think of many words that echo your insatisfaction, and this initiation process no longer looks like something you want to be a part of. life is a burden heavy enough without a secret society wrapped in the mayhem of horny young adults tying you to statues. you definitely didn’t expect for dante, of all people, to become a guiding light –– the one that took his own initiation as a joke, broke the rules, and is known for frequently getting in trouble? how the fuck could that guy give you answers? truth be told, he doesn’t –– nothing is ever easy with him, it seems, and no surface-level impression seems to make him justice. the both of you now speak frequently, and he helps you stabilize your thoughts –– the guy can manage to give out some decent advice, at least, and you might even trust him, now. he likes pros  &  cons lists, and also vaguely pointing at the light at the end of the tunnel, just enough so it will fill you with hope. it is enough, for now.

          𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒  ╱  view here.

          𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆  ╱  i need some sleep, eels  +  i’ll die anyway, girl in red  +  i found, amber run.

          𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒  ╱  an unexpected discovery ; knowledge where you thought least possible to find. the trade of fears  &  unsure confessions ; gentle parental guidance into the shoes meant for you to fit. tender reassurances over the phone ; a pat on the back ; a small gift that means “ i am proud of you ”. rediscovering the love for one’s circlet through the eyes of another. silent promises ; candles  &  wishes you never shared before ; feeling as if you’ve known someone from your past lives  &  forever carrying them in your heart.

          𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒  ╱  ❝  you are in conflict with yourself. you are holding yourself in check. you are paralyzing yourself .  ❞ 

   ›   𝑿𝑰𝑿. THE SUN, ꓤƎꓥƎꓤSƎꓷ .

❝  is calling to your inner child to come out and play. see it as your permission slip to leave behind your responsibilities, even just for a moment, and play. you may have experienced setbacks that damaged your enthusiasm and optimism and perhaps led you to question whether you can achieve what you set out to do .  ❞

           𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐀𝐋𝐋  ––––––  dante is a disappointment to you. he let you down or hurt your feelings, and you can’t forgive him for that ( and you won’t even try, because he doesn’t deserve it ). there are plenty of good memories attached to his name, but it all has turned sour, and you want to watch it crash  &  burn. he might try and make amends, but you know he doesn’t even care for you, deep down –– he is trying for your sake, perhaps, but not because he nourishes an affection for you, and that stings. if it has to be like this, you want at least to let him know how irresponsible actions are not easily forgiven. a broken heart for another seems fair trade to you, and you no longer care for entertaining an endless discussion, as long as you’re on the winning side.

          𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒  ╱  view here.

          𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆  ╱  no one loves me  &  neither do i, them crooked vultures  +  motion sickness, phoebe bridgers  +  eyes, nose, lips, tablo.

          𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒  ╱  unanswered phone calls ; ghosting ; writing letters just to burn them. cold war  &  avoidance. knowing that you want what you can not have. marble statues ; an empty bed ; freezing fingers  &  no one to hold your hand. emptiness ; the feeling of being unworthy ; lighting a match once the power goes out  &  sitting alone at your couch, daydreaming. bittersweet intimacy. the fact that someone you now hate knows way too much about you. not letting go. 

          𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒  ╱  ❝  he fatally wounded me; that is, he gave me the wound that only love could repair .  ❞

[anotherisodope]

Master List of Fallout Canon and Canon AU Muses

Fallout 3

Charon

A gigantic, forbidding-looking, brainwashed badass of a ghoul whose protection, and combat services, are tied to the holder of his very high-ticket contract. Nobody knows who the organization was that Ahzrukhal purchased his contract from, how long he was in their service, or what horrors he was subjected to in the process of making him what he is. He isn’t talking, if he remembers at all. But despite the mental cage he is in, Charon constantly seeks ways to assert himself, follow his personal code, and prevent his own exploitation--or avenge it. A highly trained commando with a preference for mid-range weapons such as his combat shotgun, he lives for a good fight, and becomes bored and restless if his guns go cold too long. He’s got great instincts and is very protective--but is mentally and socially stunted, is observant enough to recognize that on some level, and is frustrated by it and his captivity, making him grumpy and sarcastic. He uses very formal language, sometimes with painstaking effort, in part as an attempt to be better understood. Will cause unmitigated chaos to save your life in a fight, then yell at you because you attacked an innocent shopkeeper. Probably not good to give him too many explosives.

Fallout New Vegas (or wherever)

Robert Edwin House (postgame AU)

One of the most brilliant men ever to be born into the prewar world, Robert House is the owner and primary programmer and inventor of RobCo Industries, which is responsible for everything from Fallout’s programming language, to most of its robots, to the PipBoy. Calculating the coming thermonuclear war down to a one-day window, House leveraged his tremendous wealth, influence and genius to save his beloved Las Vegas. This included preserving his body on life support while wiring his brain straight into the city’s network and defensive grid. Though not entirely successful, he survived and was able to eventually recreate and defend a walled-city version of the Las Vegas strip: New Vegas. 

The AU

In a twisted version of a Good Karma Courier House playthrough, House won but was convinced by the Courier to make more merciful and thoughtful decisions. However, the Courier then betrayed them at the eleventh hour and murdered House’s physical body, leaving everyone convinced that House had died. Details can be found here. However, House had used another contingency program stored aboard the Platinum Chip to enable him to upload his mind to his own network. The Courier ended up fleeing New Vegas. (I am currently working on a description of the fates of various factions in this AU).

After the events of Fallout New Vegas and his takeover of the Hoover Dam, this version of House used code hidden in the chip to make the following changes from current canon:

Recreate a nationwide wireless Internet using freshly activated networking capability in every single Robco product

Make this Internet publicly available through the persona of the benevolent hacker Snow

Escape onto this newly created Internet, gaining access to and potential control of all RobCo products

Use this to access various new bodies, eventually including a pair of comatose synth bodies from failed Railroad memory wipes

Since then, he has been hatching plans all over the former US to steal Institute and Brotherhood of Steel technology--and reclaim as much of his own as he can. While doing this, he is acting through multiple personas. These include two Gen 3 Synth bodies he stole from the Railroad’s comatose “failures”. 

House’s aliases (besides Snow) include 

Edwin “Ed” Case (Gen 3 synth body, former infiltrator), a brilliant repairman and roboticist operating in the Commonwealth who recently did a lot of repair and upgrade work at the Memory Den. Closest to House in voice and diction, but significantly less of an asshole. Always has at least two combat-capable robots with him. 

Daniel Mason (Gen 3 synth body, former courser), recently arrived in New Vegas. Not well known, as this body is largely used for physical infiltration and social engineering, or when House wishes to oversee robotic combat units more directly. Sounds nothing like House but still talks like he ate a thesaurus, though in a much more cool and reserved way. House being House, he has no idea why this body gets so much attention. Armed and dangerous. He is currently acting as House’s lieutenant and enforcer in New Vegas, along with his force of upgraded Securitrons.

He is still working on his Robert House synth body, which needs to be perfect of course...

Because of his activity in the Commonwealth and his ability to reach anywhere his network reaches, House can be interacted with by literally anyone in the Fallout universe circa 2287. Unless your character is in a memory pod or other full-interaction environment, however, you will be interacting via text, via robot, or via one of his two synth personas.

Vulpes Inculta (postgame AU)

One of the most wicked and bloodthirsty of Caesar’s commanders, this former head of the Legion’s Frumentarii was one of the most infamous men in the entire Mojave. Thoroughly and hopelessly indoctrinated in Caesar’s depraved and brutal values, he carried them out with terrifying zeal, sometimes resulting in the destruction of entire communities. Always cool, calculating, wily and in control, he never let anything get in the way of his duties--including his own needs, desires, and safety. His loyalty to Caesar was almost worshipful, and rooted in the belief that he served the actual Son of Mars.

To this end, he even plotted with the Omertas to release poison gas in the opening volley of an attack on the New Vegas strip. Forcibly stripped of any independent moral thought on the matter and thoroughly indoctrinated, he never thought twice about such actions. He served the son of a god, how could his actions not be righteous?

And then Caesar died. And Vulpes lost everything except for his life. And that was only the beginning of his comeuppance.

The AU

After brutally murdering Caesar upon learning that he had lied about his divine heritage and was afflicted with a mortal disease, Lanius took over, and promptly ordered Vulpes’s execution. Vulpes, who had anticipated this, fled, getting as far as he could from the Mojave. He knew that under Lanius’s hand, the Legion would first become a monstrous shadow of itself, and then would fall.

Illusions shattered and shamed by having to run, Vulpes spent years traveling with caravans in disguise as he sought a place to settle. Landing in the Commonwealth, he started carving out a place for himself, but his sense of purpose beyond survival and security was gone.

Worse...with it had gone his certainty that his depraved actions had been necessary and for a good cause, Doubt had crept in, and it kept growing and growing as he reconciled the differences between Caesar’s words and the reality he had lived through. Left to his own thoughts for far too long, and realizing that any remnant of the Legion that still exists will be hunting him, he is starting to crack.

He is very good at hiding this, however, being forced to learn to keep his cool in all kinds of bad situations. And so he has set himself up as a high-end, “independent problem-solver” in Diamond City, handling the kind of bloody and unethical work that would horrify Nick Valentine. But even as a showdown with his horrific karma is brewing internally, so too are external problems and temptations as he gets more and more deeply entangled with the Commonwealth’s Underworld.

Vulpes is a cold-blooded, scheming, psychopathic asshole with a volcano of repressed emotion that really only comes out when he fights. As he does not drink, date, use chems or confide in anyone, violence is and has been his only outlet, which leads to him often charging into dangerous situations with ripper in hand. When he is better under control, he deals with targets through stealth kills of various types. Unlike the vast majority of the Legion he is comfortable with most technology (science as a tagged skill), and has taken even more of an interest since fleeing East. For some reason, neither animals nor wasteland beasts will attack him when he travels alone.

His primary motivation while he wrestles with his many inner demons (which he will never let on about to anyone) is survival. He believes he will soon be the only one left who remembers what the Legion once was, and the higher aims it once strove for (through horrible means, but he doesn’t see that). While he is now hunted by the Legion’s remnants, he believes that he has a duty to survive, and maintain his discipline and his traditions before finding others to spread them among. The problem is, instead of going straight for taking over a settlement or raider gang, he’s dealing with growing doubts about Caesar, who was revealed to be mortal, and what Caesar taught him. This has made him hesitate. However, he is still using the time to gather as much information as possible about the Commonwealth, its people, its factions, and of course, their weaknesses.

Vulpes’ alias: Victor Renard

Victor Renard is a new Upper Stands resident who moved into the Latimer residence after both father and son were presumed killed by Triggermen outside the city. He has a part stake in the Colonial Taphouse, which has recently had a change of management, and is often found there, brooding over a glass of watered wine. He has a developing reputation for being very private, likely very dangerous, and being some kind of high-end mercenary. He generally wears a black suit and carries concealed weapons--at least, inside the city walls. He and the mayor/security team have a strained but polite relationship...so far.

Fallout 4

Nick Valentine

A highly talented Chicago detective, on loan to Boston PD, whose original life came to a crashing end after crime kingpin Eddie Winter murdered his fiancee and disappeared. Traumatized by the loss, he was ordered to seek treatment at a facility that was run by what would become the Institute. They scanned and copied his mind and memories, and he then died in the nuclear bombardment that soon followed. When he woke up on a trash heap in a damaged robotic body around a century later, he was left with no context or explanation for his bizarre “reincarnation”. That mystery would haunt him, like the mystery of Eddie Winter’s escape from justice, for another century. After wandering the wastes for a time, and slowly acclimating himself to his new environment and interactions with modern humans, he settled in Diamond City as a handyman after returning the late mayor’s missing daughter. Eventually, he became a trusted member of the Diamond City community...and took back up the mantle of a detective. Nick stoically carries a lot of trauma, and a lot of outrage. He works to provide peaceful, rational alternatives to the constant violence around him, and tends to be smarter and more competent than most, especially when it comes to computers or investigation. He is a bit of a curmudgeon, with a dagger-sharp wit he’ll sometimes overuse when sufficiently angered. He smokes, though he gains no benefit from it, as a tie to his human past. He tends to feel divorced from his own body to some degree, and that plus his distrust of most roboticists has caused him to forgo repair thus far.

John Hancock

Mayor of Goodneighbor and a self-styled revolutionary hooligan who is usually high on something, Hancock has more layers than you might expect, and a tragic history. Born John McDonough, he grew up in a shack with his parents and brother on the Boston waterfront. His brother was something of a bully, but not particularly wicked. They started growing apart as they grew up, with John sneaking off to Goodneighbor regularly to party and do chems. Empathetic, and significantly smarter than most people, he was able to see the suffering and inequities all around him, even after his family moved up in the world and ended up in Diamond City. John realized that his brother had...changed...when he decided to run for mayor. Running on an anti-ghoul platform, he capped off his inaugural speech by announcing the banishment of all ghouls from the city. John watched in horror as the ghouls fled with their few belongings, being brutalized by citizens and police the whole time. After confronting his brother to no effect, he forced himself to act, successfully leading several families to temporary safety in Goodneighbor. Most did not survive, however, leaving him despondent and forever loathing his pogrom-promoting brother, who is still Diamond City’s mayor. That night changed something in him, and it wouldn’t go back to sleep no matter how many chems he took. Finally, on learning that Vic, the gangster running Goodneighbor, was letting his men gun down drifters, he had a bizarre, chem-fueled epiphany. He discovered John Hancock’s coat and hat in the depths of the State House, and suddenly realized what he needed to do. He took on the clothes and cause of John Hancock, and after brutally liberating the town from Vic’s people, gave an inaugural speech declaring Goodneighbor to be “of the people, for the people”, regardless of who those people were. He took on the persona of a daring, reckless, ferociously protective folk-hero Mayor and started the long process of turning Goodneighbor into a safe haven for all. But even that wasn’t enough for him. Less than a decade ago, he discovered an experimental serum intended to turn the user into a ghoul. Sick of the face in the mirror, and motivated by half a dozen different reasons, he completed his “remaking himself” by becoming the same sort of being that his evil brother so loathed. Now, having consolidated power, he has found himself in a rut, spending most of his time putting out fires and dealing with challengers to his position and to Goodneighbor’s safety. Constantly wrapping himself up in his role and work when not carousing, however, has left a lot of painful unfinished business in his life to fester.

[theaetherwitch]

Is This All A Delusion?

This is kinda gonna be a little off the cuff, because I’m mostly going to be talking in regards to myself and my experiences, all the while trying to answer my own questions while writing this. I just had a rather interesting meditation with some of my angels and they’ve shed a bit of light on my internal struggles, so a lot of stuff is also advice I’ve gotten from them. I’m not really gonna call this an article, rather just a message to myself that I feel I need to catalog. So, if you’re not interested in a more internal discussion with myself you’re free to skip over this but to those curious about some things i struggle with and something that probably some other practitioners struggle with as well, I encourage you to keep reading bellow the drop

Something I struggle with a lot when it comes to my craft is not knowing if all of this is just in my head and I’m crazy. I’ve told a few people, but most of the people on my blog probably don’t know is that schizophrenia and manic depression is something that I struggle with on a daily basis. So you can probably see the core of my problem right there. Are all of my experiences just some hallucination or depression induced fever dream that I’ve become deeply enthralled in? Is everything I’ve come to understand about myself and the world around me all just a lie I tell myself to stay happy? These are questions I know I have a lot when it comes to my craft, and I’m sure that it is a struggle that other people in this lifestyle have probably had as well, especially those of you with similar mental disorders to myself. 

When looking at these questions, its important to keep in mind that magick and deities have roots not just in religion, but psychology as well. I’m not a major in this field or a doctor or anything, so don’t take this as the law or as the only truth, but magick/religion/ect are as real as you make them and allow them to be. As an example, a deity or spirit usually only presents themselves to you only if you’re open to the experience and are willing to hear what they’re teaching. If you’re not willing to learn from them, or not willing to accept them in your life then why would they come to you in the first place, ya know?  The basic rundown of what I’m trying to say, is that if you’re not open or willing to have the experiences that magick can bring, then you’re not going to want to explore it. You’re going to stick to you current beliefs (or lack there of). Magick is build upon yourself. If you believe in yourself when doing a spell, and take the necessary steps forward to achieve what you’re looking for, then a lot of the time it will prove to be successful. But on the flip side, if you’re negative and don’t have faith that your spell is going to work, or don’t take your own outside actions to help it work then it simply wont. The energy you put into magick, is the energy that you get back out of it. Kinda like karma in that manner.

But back to the main question at hand, “is this all a delusion?”. In simple terms, it’s only a delusion if you let it become one. What I mean by that, is if you dedicate yourself to the craft so much that you’re not taking care of yourself, and take every experience you have without a grain of salt, you’re basically burying your head in sand and shutting off the outside world. I try to stay balanced as best I can with this, taking some time to focus on the physical then taking some time to focus on the spiritual. Sometimes we need a reality check, especially the newer witches, and I mean that in the least disrespectful way possible. Sometimes we get so caught up in magick and the spiritual that we fog up our minds and start taking literally every little thing that happens to us as some sort of spiritual miracle (or curse) when that just isn’t the case. Sometimes good things happen for no reason, same thing with bad things. Not everything is a sign, not everything has spiritual connections, and not everything is magickal in it’s source. That’s just a fact of life, and when people start to think that way is when it truly becomes a delusion.

We need to start looking at magick as an outlet to express ourselves and learn about the world, rather than as the absolute truth and only way things are. No one knows the “real” truth, and no one has all the answers. And the same goes for spirits, they don’t know everything and they can only help so much. They don’t have the absolute truth just as your neighbor Joe doesn’t.

And another thing to think about with this question, is “Am I worried that other people perceive me as crazy or delusional?” Because when it comes to that, it honestly doesn’t matter what other people think about you or your believes. These things are private to yourself, and they’re your own personal truths about the world. Other peoples opinions shouldn’t discourage you from magick or make you feel crazy, because often times they’re simply not open the the experiences that you’re having. Not only that, these are YOUR experiences, not theirs. They have no way to tell you that your experiences are fake because they’re not in your shoes living your life.

And at the end of the day, even IF (emphasis on if) we are all delusion and crazy, whats it really matter in the end? As long as you’re learning and growing, and helping out those you can alone the way, does it truly matter if the spirits or magick are all in your head? You’re doing good for yourself and other people while having these experiences, and thats a good thing, not a bad one. You’re touching people and we’re all little by little trying to help the world become a better place. And if you can give credit to the voice in your head, that just means you had it in yourself the entire time. To do these amazing things, and to help all these people. If it truly ins’t real, then all the amazing things where done by YOU, and i don’t see the harm in that.

[clarasimone]

Just before leaving my Iphone in a friggin’ taxi

I cannot believe this: my life is on that IPhone... Have alerted the taxi company (I HOPE I lost it there), am frantically awaiting news by my fiend’s phone... My Knight wants to go on a rampage but I need him by my side ;-)... It’s so bizarre to be able to see most of the pics I took this evening because they had time to make it on the cloud and then on my computer. So, from me, to you, the red carpet and screening of Terrence Malick’s testament film A Hidden Life :

Needless to say, I risked my reputation taking Jorah’s pic from inside the Grand Palais LOL I was seated front row (They show us the remaining of the red carpet on the big screen while we’re inside) What follows is from before and after but selfies are now forbidden while on the red carpet, a good thing because frankly it was becoming surreal the last few years...

Love this pink trail I was hypnotically following :-)

Here’s a pic from the film, a true masterpiece, so moving ! @myloveiainglen, it’s even better than Days of Heaven !!

I was able to capture the director’s proud reaction during the 10-minute long ovation after the film (he’s so modest, he didn’t walk the red carpet coming in, only his two leads did)

his actors, as shown on the big screen during the ovation

Coming out of the Grand Palais, I took these amazing pics of the moon with my Knight but they’re not (yet ?) appearing on my macbook/Icloud :-(

God I hope I get my phone back...

Here is the Los Angeles Times piece of the film. It just flabbergasted me and everyone there... It’s a deeply spiritual film.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-cannes-terrence-malick-hidden-life-20190519-story.html

Cannes: Terrence Malick’s ‘A Hidden Life’ is a return to form and a spiritual call to arms

In the eight years since Terrence Malick won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for “The Tree of Life,” his magisterial drama about childhood’s end and the spirit’s awakening, the standard critical line is that he has become an artist lost in the wilderness, stranded in an artistic limbo of his own making.

His most recent features — “To the Wonder,” “Knight of Cups” and “Song to Song” — are wispy, fragmentary tales of romantic ennui and moral drift, full of visual beauty but absent a comparable sense of transcendence. I admired them more than many of my colleagues did, though it would be disingenuous not to admit that I, too, was left wondering if this great and singular filmmaker would ever give us another movie to love.

I wonder no more. Sunday marked Malick’s return to Cannes, and it felt like a homecoming in more than one sense. His extraordinarily beautiful and wrenching new movie is called “A Hidden Life,” a title that quotes from “Middlemarch,” though one that could easily be misinterpreted as a reference to this famously press-shy auteur himself. But it also sounds an echo of “The Tree of Life,” which may be more than mere coincidence: If that 2011 film was Malick’s most personal and autobiographical work, then this one feels like a decisive return to roots. It’s at once a linear, almost classically structured drama and an exploratory, intensely romantic work of art.

“A Hidden Life” tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, a peasant farmer from the Austrian village of St. Radegund who was imprisoned and executed in 1943 for refusing to fight for the Nazis. It’s the writer-director’s second World War II picture, after “The Thin Red Line,” except that here not a single shot is fired. The focus is entirely on Jägerstätter and his family, his growing discontent as Austria falls into Adolf Hitler’s grip and his heroic, ultimately fatal decision to become a conscientious objector.

After some brief archival footage of Hitler at the height of his powers, the movie settles down in St. Radegund, whose rolling green pastures and mist-wreathed mountains may constitute the most astonishing vision of earthly paradise Malick has given us, which is saying something.

You will recognize some familiar sights and sounds: the babbling of a brook, the rustling of wind in the leaves, the orchestral blasts of Bach, Beethoven, Handel and Dvorak on the soundtrack. And you will settle into the movie with a sigh — or perhaps a groan, depending on your persuasion — as Malick immerses us in yet another blissfully idealized evocation of family life.

Pushing plows, threshing wheat and taking care of livestock is hard work, but Franz (a haunting August Diehl), a man of joy and contentment, also loves chasing and playing with his wife, Fani (Valerie Pachner) and their three young daughters. But the family’s deep ties to the land and the surrounding community are disrupted when their fellow villagers take up the call of “Heil Hitler,” submitting freely to the grip of a murderous totalitarian regime. When a local bishop urges Franz to submit as well, he makes a decisive break with the church — though not, crucially, with God, whom he continually presses and wrestles with in prayer.

I am still wrestling with “A Hidden Life” myself, and imagine I will continue to do so long after its eventual release. The lengthy middle act, in which Franz finds himself called up for military duty and imprisoned after refusing to fight, feels lumbering and oppressive, which may of course be entirely the point; the claustrophobia here is physical and spiritual. Given the ensemble cast, which includes the late Bruno Ganz in one of his final roles, I wish that Malick had simply committed to shooting entirely in German, rather than a mix of German and English. (A particularly nagging choice: The Nazis are often heard barking in German, while Franz and Fani’s mellifluous voice-overs are in English.)

But the conviction of this movie would speak forcefully in any language. “A Hidden Life” is both an intense portrait of Christian devotion in practice and a damning study in how religious institutions, among others, can align themselves with evil. Malick sees no contradiction between these two truths; for him, sincere doubt and serious belief have always gone hand-in-hand. When a character murmurs, “To follow Him is insanity” — the first and not the last time the movie quietly broke me — you register fully what it might mean, and cost, to obey a doctrine of peace in violent times.

Malick may be making the same movie he always has: a gorgeously expansive cinematic poem that is forever carving out fresh emotional tributaries, but which always cycles back to the despoiling of Eden, the fear of violence and mortality, the calm acceptance of the unknowable. But if his camera is still given to flurries of ecstatic movement, it also seems more stationary, more grounded than usual, as if the director were pausing to gather his thoughts and clear his throat. He has an awful lot to say.

At its simplest level, “A Hidden Life” exists to disprove the snarling Nazi soldiers we hear telling Franz that his act of protest is meaningless and that no one will ever remember him. (They have admittedly already been disproved, thanks to the scholarship of Gordon Zahn and Thomas Merton, as well as a 2007 papal declaration of Jägerstätter as a martyr.) But it is also a call for moral vigilance in any era, the present one very much included: It is hard to watch this movie and not think of the rise of far-right and nationalist movements across Europe, or the Trump administration’s chokehold on evangelical Christianity.

That particular charge may be implicit, but it’s also unmistakable. Unless you are allergic to near-three-hour running times, there is nothing particularly difficult or elusive about “A Hidden Life,” nothing too cosmically elevated or metaphysically overreaching, to cite some of the dismissals frequently leveled against this director’s work. If we understand pretension as an attitude that leaves no room for humility, then is there any filmmaker working today lesspretentious than Terrence Malick, any artist more generous and unassuming in the way he exalts the beauty of the everyday?

Just as importantly, in our era of ever-expanding options and decreasing patience, is there an audience still willing to accept that challenge and see that beauty as he does? Even when tarnished, Malick’s legend looms large at a festival like Cannes, where he can be dismissed as a scourge and hailed as a god, but where he will never elicit an indifferent response. He deserves an equally impassioned reception when this imperfect, wise and entirely heroic movie comes out of hiding.

[homenum-revelio-hq]

Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix, Amy!

You have been accepted for the role of LILY EVANS! I really enjoyed reading your application for Lily! I think you did a wonderful job at showing both her beautiful strengths and her deep weaknesses. I felt that you totally understood her sense of despair in this world right now! I am so excited to have you as part of this roleplay!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Amy

AGE: 20

TIMEZONE: aest

ACTIVITY LEVEL: I would say fairly active! I am a student and I do have a casual part-time job, but I almost always have my phone on hand and I’m pretty good about separating studying + fun, so time management shouldn’t be an issue. Of course I’m not going to be on 24/7, but hopefully this rp won’t require a crazy fast dash!

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Lily Jane Evans

AGE: 21

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cisfemale, she/her, bisexual

BLOOD STATUS: muggleborn

HOUSE ALUMNI: Gryffindor

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

Lily is charming. She is vivacious, valiant, she loves until her last breath and she has, notably, a very nice smile. I could write you a book on Lily Evans’ positive attributes, and you might leave falling half in love with her.

But if you turned the page, you’d see a side much more interesting, and much more complex. Lily Evans is not a perfect person, and at heart, like any other, she is deeply flawed. She’s dramatic, over-pragmatic, unreasonable when she’s upset and uncontrollable when she’s angry. Sometimes she overthinks things to the point where she ends up overcomplicating it. She believes in second and third chances, and often she is irrational when considering something that she cares intensely about. The Dissendium Task Force is so vital to her because it gives her purpose, it sets her path in life, and sometimes (often) her vision narrows down to a pinpoint and everything else fades away; James, her family, the Order. Lily struggles a lot with keeping her lives separate. She spends a lot of time compartmentalising: these are the things I can talk about with Mary, I can share this part of my life with Mum, here are the things I have to keep from James. As a result, it makes Lily seem more secretive than she really is - because she splits herself so many ways.

But Lily is very humane. It’s perhaps her most redeemable quality. At the end of the day, she cares about the welfare of others, and she has an extremely fixed idea of what is right and wrong. She struggles to let her attachments with others go; it’s why she still wonders over Sev after all this time. Always. It’s an important word in relation to Lily. She will always be temperamental, she will always be emotional, she will always pick a fight over what she believes in. But she will always care, and she will always pick herself back up and find something or someone to believe in, and at the end of the day, that’s all Lily really is. A believer.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY:

Contrary to belief, Lily and Petunia weren’t always at odds. In fact, sometimes, if you caught them at just the right time, they could get along quite well. After all, in the end, they were still sisters. Growing up, they still had to share a room, and Christmases, and family portraits. The thing was, they were just too different - or at least, that was how Lily liked to think of it. Petunia would always like to gossip, she would always like to keep her half of the room obsessively tidy, she would always like to keep house and marry an abhorrent, but rich, man (oh, how Lily begged her not to marry him), but most of all (and this was the point that Lily hated herself for making most), Petunia would always, unquestionably, be extremely Muggle. They could never live on the same plane, Petunia and her. On occasion, sometimes, they found a wormhole that allowed them to get along. But most of the time, they existed on different planets - Petunia resided with the Muggles, and Lily ran about on a planet of freaks. Lily had attended Petunia’s wedding. But she was not a bridesmaid, and she didn’t get to sit at the bride and grooms table during the reception. Lily was old enough now, and tired enough of having the same recycled argument, that she knew not to fight it anymore. Lily and Petunia were sisters, not friends. And she would be loathe to forget it.

But aside from Petunia, home was good. Home was a haven. Lily fought long and hard at Hogwarts year round, and sometimes the promise of returning home for the summer was the only thing that stopped her from giving up. Edith and Henry Evans were thoroughly middle to lower class kind of Muggles, and though their home was small, Lily never wanted for anything - not affection, or clothes, or acceptance. Her parents, bewildered by magic as they were, carried on as the British were wont to do: quite normally. Petunia went off to private school, Lily left for Hogwarts, and they told all their neighbours it was because Lily had received a scholarship - something that made Petunia’s face look very sour, indeed.

The Evans’ were as normal as any other family in Cokeworth (exempting only the Snapes), and they were private. When Lily was home, she was a Muggle. She didn’t much talk about the Wizarding World, and they never really asked. Lily liked to keep her worlds separated. It was easier that way.

Henry died in Lily’s third year. Lung cancer was the culprit. She left during the middle of the year and did not come back until the next, when Petunia and her were positive that Mum would be alright without them. Now, Lily still tries to stop in for a visit, but they are few and far between. Mum is getting frail, and it is getting harder and harder to hide the war from her - and she doesn’t visit as much as she should. Lily thinks Petunia might resent her for it.

OCCUPATION:

N/A - Lily focuses full-time on the Order and the DTF, and she is lucky enough to be covered by James’ fortune. However, because of the way she was raised, she often feels antsy about not working, and on occasion will write cheery pieces for any Muggle papers that will take her, submitted under a pseudonym. It provides her an escape from the bleakness of her own world.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER:

At first, the Order was everything. The boys never understood the graveness of it all, Lily thought. They thought it was a game; they never realised that the war they found so exciting was the reality for Lily, for other Muggleborns. The Order was good. It was dangerous, but it was good. It was doing something. But it wasn’t enough. Lily found her real calling with the Dissendium Task Force, and it was so easy to get lost in it, to spend late nights scouring over new information, neglecting her other duties, her other obligations. The Order was slipping from her fingers, she could feel it. But the problem with the Order was that it was destructive. They didn’t feel like heroes, or policemen, or enforcers of justice. They felt like an army. Lily had never, would never, care for that.

But the Order was the only option, and she did care for it, however much it appeared she didn’t. However much she doubted it. She had sacrificed for it, and no doubt would continue to do so - she’d stayed away from her mother and sister in order to protect them. Lily’d heard that her sister was pregnant, but she hadn’t seen her. A few weeks back, Lily’d had a pregnancy scare of her own, and she’d spent countless nights sick to her stomach over it. Who could bring a child into this? Who could bring a baby into this? She’d snuck out to the pharmacy and taken a test, the Muggle way, and she’d cried when it came up negative. She hadn’t told James, hadn’t told anyone. After all… who could bring a child into this? War was about saving lives, not creating them. And there would be time… there would be time for happiness later. After.

SURVIVAL:

As much as she hates it, Lily gets a lot of her protection from James. She champions the idea that she “doesn’t need protection, James,” but she lives in his home, she uses his money. Perhaps that makes her more of a target to some, but she has always been charming, and selective about her friends. It is the people around Lily that ultimately protect her: James’ blood status, Slughorn’s admiration of her potions ability - it could even be argued that Lily’s relationship with Sev is what has prevented her from meeting an unkind fate. But reliance on the people around you can only last so long, and ultimately, it is only a matter of time… The truth is, they’re losing this war, and Lily’s very survival depends on the fate of the outcome. She walks a razor-thin edge, indeed…

RELATIONSHIPS:

Lily was charming in school. She was the sort of girl who was nice to everyone, she couldn’t help it. There was a part of her who still clung to that now; she liked to play the role of mediator. But for the most part, her connections with others were slipping from her grasp, she was sinking into depths where no one could dare to follow. Her work was her life now, and it showed in the roots of her relationships - one would only have to glance at her relationship with Marlene to determine that. They had been friends, once upon a time, hadn’t they? It was getting so hard to remember anything before the war now…

And the boys: Lily loved her boys. In school she’d always found them annoying, save for Remus, but they’d snuck up on her in their own ways: Remus’ easy company, Sirius’ camaraderie, Peter’s dependency, and James, of course, had always been the biggest handful. It wasn’t the romantic affair Jane Austen-type affair she’d always dreamed about, and they say war changes relationships. But Lily did not ever imagine that she’d look at James and not be able to discern what he was thinking, to see a stranger in him, even as they shared the same bed. She missed him - but it felt stupid to say it, and she had bigger things to worry about. And Sev, oh, Sev. Not a day goes by she doesn’t think of him. Somewhere out there he’s fighting, and she’s worrying about him, always, consistently, in the back of her mind.

Lily liked Alice and Frank well enough, but the real controversies laid in the younger crew. Lily could feel the tension in the room every time she spoke to Mary. She thought she’d understand, thought she, of all people, would feel some semblance of sympathy. And Dorcas’s little gang… they were reckless, and they seemed so young, though they were barely years apart… but at least they had each other. Lily was always, consistently surrounded by people… yet she had never quite felt so alone.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS:

Lily/Chemistry, Lily/James. Lily has an all encompassing kind of love, so theoretically, anything is possible! I do have a soft spot for angst, I will admit, but it’s important to note that I value platonic relationships just as much as romantic ones, if not more!

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?

She was a muggleborn. Lily saw it as a privilege: she got to have a foot planted in each world, she got the best of what each side had to give. But she also got the worst of each world, too. That was a little harder to put a positive spin on. She was also a woman - it was the 80s, now, and Lily thought things might be getting brighter (in the Muggle world, at least) but old-fashionedness and propriety still ran this world⁠—Petunia Evans was living proof of that⁠—and it was not always sunshine and daisies. Hogwarts was not the safe haven that Dumbledore might have you believe, and Lily learned quite quickly to pick her battles. Sometimes she had to let a derisive comment slide. Sometimes she had to be the bigger person. But most of the time, especially when others (muggleborns) were concerned, she never could quite let it go, no matter how many talking tos from her idol (McGonagall), and she never could resist self-righteousness. The day she l3ft Hogwarts was the day she realised that from then on, she wouldn’t be just choosing her battles - everyday would be a fight. Still, comparably, she was lucky, incredibly so. There were those out there far more disadvantaged than her, and if she were to die in the midst of this war, than at least she would die for something she believed in. Not everybody had that privilege.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

This roleplay gives me really great vibes! A lot of groups die out really quickly these days but I have the strong sense that this is one that could actually go on for a long, long while. Also, some of your game mechanics are super, super cool - I love the idea of characters continuing interactions or being kidnapped for hiatuses etc. It just makes this world seem so much more real and exciting.

ANYTHING ELSE? Pinterest board here!

[lookslikechill]

WIP Song Summary Game

Tagged by: @requiemesque​ and @katerinarevel (thank you so much, I love writeblr tag games that incorporate music!!)

Rules:  what are three (3) songs that really embody your wip? how do they relate to it?

3 songs that embody Daydream Walking below the cutoff!  Warning, I got super rambly, especially for the first song.

Tagging: I’m not sure who hasn’t already done this, soo if you wanna do it, just say I tagged you!!

**Even BIGGER Warning!!!!  I dug much deeper into the many many heavy/hard to stomach themes that are very much present in/going to be present in this work!  For the first song I mostly just talk about masculinity, but for the second two content warnings for: abuse, murder, death, drug abuse/addiction, mentions of cocaine and alcohol, mentions of accidental overdose and vehicular deaths, police neglect/incompetency, mentions of weapons (guns, knives, etc.), and one single rape mention.**

Man to Man by Dorian Electra

So you want to play rough in the parking lot See you acting tough, but I know you're not We can take it outside, scuff up in the streetlights I just really wanna fight with you

Man to man, hand to hand One on one, friend to friend Are you man enough to soften up? Are you tough enough to open up? Man to man You gotta let me in 

This song perfectly represents the elements of masculinity vs. toxic masculinity, and internalized homophobia in DW.

Admittedly, when I first started writing Daydream Walking, I felt rather guilty for a period of time about how male-centric it is, with three main men and a whole lot of male side characters.  However, I realized there’s no reason for me to feel bad about it. It’s there for a reason. I’m a man, a trans man, and I often recognize and am bothered by the presence of toxic masculinity around me, the way a rigid standard of masculinity hurts both men and women.  And I certainly hope to address it in DW.

Clay is what would be considered effeminate today, he certainly comes off as gay.  In the futureverse of Astervale 4146, he does not stand out, it is okay for him to express himself the way he does- dramatic and charismatic, grinning and talking, dancing and joking.  When he’s plunged into the past, into the grim reality of 1947 Port Cassandra, California, he sticks out like a sore thumb, even when disguised and toned down.

Alistair actively conforms to the standards of masculinity of his time, both because that was what he was taught to do and also out of a sense of paranoia, a fear of what will happen if he’s caught, a fear of being viewed as weak, as less than a man.  Though some of this protects him, it also leads to his mental health issues(PTSD) being unresolved, which harms him. His stoic refusal to share his feelings and express emotion also harms his relationships, and though he may not recognize it, is part of what leads to his wife wanting to divorce him in the first place.  Not only is he different when he returns, supposedly alive and well, from war, but he won’t say a word about it to her.

Despite how progressive the future may initially seem, harmful ideals about men and women and their roles still exist, especially among Astervale’s rich and powerful, and this has an impact on Quince; on his belief in himself, his willingness to look more closely at his own situation, to speak out, to say no.  It certainly doesn’t help that it’s the men in Felicity’s life that Quince is most often coming in contact with, whose opinions of him he knows. The existence of Quince and Felicity’s relationship in this wip, this novel-beast of mine, is partially to prove a point, to bring the issue of abuse against men, but especially at the hands of women, to the forefront of the mind.  I can’t believe how many men I’ve spoken to who believe they can’t be abused- if a women tries to rape him, he’ll just hit here, right? Because all men are inherently stronger than women, right? Because any man would be willing to, and capable of, physically fighting off an attacker, right? It just comes with so many more harmful ideas, I simply cannot unpack them all right here.

In short- Men should be allowed to express, or not express, masculinity in many different ways, as long as they are healthy and do not harm women or other men.  Men should also be allowed to express emotions, and not only that, be but taught how to express them and deal with them in a way that doesn’t harm others. This is definitely a broad theme in DW.

Freaks by The Hawk in Paris

We have a flair for the shade and the inbetween We like to run with the wolves from the darker scene When we turn the safety off, the shots are automatic All our friends tell their friends we're so dramatic

We'll have you wrapped around our trigger finger Queen bee yellow, you're the skin for our stinger We'll make you swoon, make it hurt just a little We're the boys and the girls and the freaks in the middle

We know the halls you walk are unforgiving It's not the kind of place to find your place among the living We have a plan, we've got the means for your liberation You'll only have to blur the lines on a few occasions 

This song hits the themes of corruption and manipulation right on the head.  I also just love the sound of it- shady and smooth, lyrics flowin’.  In both the future and the past in Daydream Walking, there is corruption.  

In the past, it is more deeply rooted, at least in Port Cassandra.  The Captain is listless, dispassionate, and careless, past his prime and clinging to glory days gone by.  He largely ignores problems growing right underneath his nose.  Half the police forces is using, and addicted to, cocaine, as well as drinking heavily.  There are many more ways in which the police force in Port Cassandra is SUPER flawed, from each individual officer/detective to their aged/out of date vehicles, but it all tracks back up to the man in charge.  Not only does he not take care of brewing issues, he actively makes choices that get in the way of the productivity of the force.

In the future, well, I choose not to reveal how corruption has a role there, quite yet. >:3c

As far as manipulation goes, Quince is most certainly being manipulated/gaslit by Felicity, and manipulation also plays into corruption in Astervale’s government.

To end this section, the lyrics “the boys, and the girls, and the freaks in the middle” are fitting because of the many different characters appearing in DW, including quite a few nonbinary characters! (Note: Not that I think of nonbinary OR trans people as freaks, just seems to reflect some general societal outlook, especially historically unfortunately hhhhh)

Florida Kilos by Lana Del Rey

We could get high in Miami, ooh-ooh Dance the night away People never die in Miami, ooh-ooh That's what they all say (You believe me, don't you baby?)

Come on down to Florida, I got somethin' for ya We could see the kilos or the Keys, baby, oh, ya Guns in the summertime, chic-a-Cherry Cola lime 

And this one nails the drugs. Port Cassandra is up to its nose in cocaine, and not only it is inside the police, but many of them are also heavy drinkers.  The majority of people also smoke.  Quince is an alcoholic self-medicating subconsciously to deal with the abuse he’s been experiencing at the hands of his wife, and Clay is temporarily out of commission when he comes into contact with a new street drug.  Themes of addiction, recovery, and, yes, accidental death all show up in this thing.

The murder and death.  We start off dipping our toes into the waters of the investigation into the murder of the Morgans in Astervale, and many follow after that.  In Port Cassandra, many murders and “accidental deaths”(read: cocaine overdoses/drug associated car crashes) crop up, keeping the small police department stretched thin.  

And the presence of weapons, including guns, wands(which are treated as weapons/only issued to certain Government officials, mostly Enforcers(wizard cops)), knives, and even, cars. Clay’s means of travel into the past is an enchanted knife that cuts through the fabrics of time.  Alistair is almost constantly armed, or has a weapon nearby.  Clay, Daphne, and the rest of the Enforcers all possess wands, which allow them to do things with magic that cannot be done without a wand (for example: bodily manipulate somebody without their permission).

Additionally, the dreamy, slow sound of it feels really fitting, especially to the portion of the novel-beast set in Port Cassandra.  

(End note: Quince DOES get a happy ending, goddamnit!!  I feel like that is very important.)

If anybody has any further questions, please please please send them in!! I would love to answer them, and thinking about these things helps motivate me and figure out the rest of the story and what I should do next!

[discet]

World Building June - Aeth

From these prompts

Day 5. What sorts of civilizations and architecture fill your world?

oooh fun so for this lets bring back THE MAP 

So lets go from West to East, and since this will take forever to do by nation were going to do by larger cultural. 

Yamun Culture 

Para Empire / Khakata Kingdom / Durai Dynasty 

Yamun is names for a large river that cuts through the subcontinent (The tail end of which you can see in Para’s borders). It has a massive mountain range south of it and is thus largely isolated. The Lich King Cataclysm led to a deep seeded fear of magic in society. There is little trust in Mages and are controlled obsessively by religious leaders in communities.  

While arguably first populated in the foothills of the mountains by the talon-legged Saek, most of the lowlands were populated by seabound Harc in the north by sea and by nomadic Senn in the south. While overlooked, evidence exists that the Dwem tribes in the deep jungles seemed to predate all these groups. This makes Yamun one of the most genetically mixed cultures in the world. 

It is one of the most religiously diverse cultures as well, several religious beliefs were founded in Yamun and have spread through trade routes. While there is some tension between the differing religions, its so mixed that no government can afford the strife of stoking those tensions through oppressive action. Which is good because-

Governance

Yamun governance is very unstable historically. Its caste system is a left over relic of the age of sorcery, which served fine under the unyielding rule of an infallible (or at least dominant) sorcerer king, it has become increasingly seen as oppressive by scholar described “rabble rousers”. As such attempts of uniting the sub-continent has been difficult as rival kingdoms are often dealing with internal strife as often as external conflict. Thus borders are often shifting and new kingdoms spawn from charismatic opportunistic individuals.

Architecture

The Capitals: The capitals refer to the great cities that are a holdover of the old Age of Sorceries. Enchantments that are maintained but not understood. Self cleaning roads, glittering changing mosaics that shift with the day championing long gone royal lines. The Capitals, as they became more populace and out grew the old enchantments boundaries left stark differences between the rich center of the cities and the poorer slums. 

Shaded Roads: The shaded roads are an attempt by the current kings and the Age of Empires to capture a bit of the glory that the old Sorcerer kings. The roads are maintained by proto-sentient trees who spread, giving traders shade across the hot humid roads of Yamun. They weave together bridges from their roots and replant any trees that are cut down or destroyed by acts of nature. 

Myr Freeholds Culture

Myr is an offshoot of Yamun culture that occurred early into the Age of Empires. The Myr freeholds are a series of islands that are largely too rocky for natural cultivation that are not united in any way shape or form, they are filled with mages who escaped the oppressive culture of Yamun. Its economy is largely built on piracy with mages maintaining great defensive fortresses on the islands. They plague trade in the Aeth sea and are increadibly difficult to crack. Most of the local kingdoms are too busy with land conflicts to build up a navy capable of rooting out the fortresses and other Aeth nations are too far away to make such an expedition anything other than financial suicide. 

It is the closest remaining vestige of the old sorcerer king cultures, as it was founded by the last heir of a Sorcerer king culture in Yamun, establishing the first fortress. Being the new master of this ancient fortress is a great honor and influential in the largely prestiege based politics of Myr. 

Architecture

Arguably some of the most impressive post-cataclysm magical structures are found in Myr. The Myr fortresses are the nightmare of the siege engineers. The harbor is built inside, ships magically shrunk between the coast and the internal harbor. the few landing sites of these islands are overlooked by hundreds of murder holes. As the fortresses are all internal, there are no walls to really scale. The one or two entrances lead to long winding halls that delay attackers. All  giving the masters and their apprentices the ability to cast from safety. The interior harbor are great grand halls filled with inns, brothels, and the homes of their ship wrights. They are decorated with the stolen luxuries from all across Aeth. Much of the city is hewed from the rock with the home of the master more ornate and set apart. Generally called the academy. 

Sacre Culture

High Kingdom of Sacre / Sacre Hinterlands / Sacre Orda

The Sacre is the homeland of the Senn and are full of nomadic herding culture. While there are many differences between its widely ununited cultures, it has a few things that unites them. The pantheon of the Alter of Flames and language being the broadest. (Though how the religion is practiced varies wildly).

Sacre culture was a big innovator in the Age of Sorcery, discovering and utilizing mundane inventions that gave them a leg up on the settled cultures over reliance on magic. As long as they steered clear of the sorcerer kings or their heirs, Sacre bands could raid and pillage just about anywhere they could reach. This also made them saviors during the Lich Cataclysm as their forces were largely mundane and supported by magic rather than depending on it. Especially in Basalt and in some cases in Yamun and modern Tyre Sacre bloodlines sat at the head of government for centuries. 

Governance 

Wealth in Sacre culture comes from one’s herd. Power in Sacre culture comes from the loyalty of one’s Shepard. As with the nomadic nature of the people Sacre governance is fluid. Inheritance of title and wealth is split evenly among living children on a parents death and thus is territory in the case of a leader. This leads to many kingdoms not surviving one’s lifetime. If heirs are not capable, they are often abandoned for stronger leaders. While often derided as bloodthirsty warlords, Sacre politics is often cited as the inspiration of early democracies. Gaining a title in Sacre culture was functionally an election, in which a powerful warlord would call a Kurultai and tribes would either come in support of the warlord or not come to show their lack of support. 

Architecture

As a nomadic nation the architecture is far more practical than grand. While there are some permanent buildings in the religious bonfires, maintained by their religious leaders, most structures are able to be backed up and packed onto a horses backs.

Basalt Culture

The United Houses of Basalt / House Hiran

Basalt culture is inseparable from the Imperium of Basalt. The Imperium was a giant on the sage of Aeth for most of the Age of Empires. Founded by a Sacre warlord overthrowing the local Lich. This Lich was the most successful of his brothers who convinced many of the local lords as allies, maintaining power through more sane subordinates at the cost of their peasants. Once this broke down the southern lords who saw the tide of death they invited a powerful warlord to overthrow the Lich. After their success the warlord adopted the parts of local culture to adapt to a settled society while bringing in Sacre practical beliefs that made the Army of Basalt the most powerful military in Aeth. 

Its major religion, the Order of the flame started as an offshoot of Sacre Pantheon, which has changed radically in the millennia of the Imperiums existence. The pantheon has been dropped in favor of a nebulous spirit of humanities ideals. The core belief of the religion calls for believers to do good deeds to combat the chaos that threatens a larger war for humanities soul, staging the defeat of the liches as a great moment in this struggle. The righteous monarch is seen as a guiding hand for humanity to provide structure and stability to allow humanity to do these good deeds without worrying as much about survival. As a result the monarch is partly seen as holy. 

This has recently broken down. The line of Magus, the group who founded the Imperium was overthrown for abuse of authority. While the Shah’s who allied with the rebels were seen as hereos, none of the rebel Shah’s could manage to seize total power and settled into an uneasy alliance between their realms. This alliance fragility proven when House Hiran, one of the rebels broke off to be their own kingdom. Long enemies of the Empire like Tyre and Sur wait for the cracks to grow, to seize territory they long coveted. 

Governance

Basalt is deeply seated in the feudal structure that has existed since before the cataclysm. Shah’s rule their territories, loyal until recently to a central Padshah. Now long rivalries between bloodlines threaten to dissolve the legacy of Magus and. It has a deeply embedded bureaucracy that is holding things together, but without a central government to provide oversight, it is rapidly becoming corrupted and will rote away the heart of the empire beneath the feet of its once heroic Shahs. 

Architecture

The Obsidian Keep: The heart of the Imperium. The Obsidian keep was once the throne of the Lich, built into the side of a volcano, it is enchanted to use the lava within its home in its defense, able to flood its empty moats in its defense. The Keep itself is a massive fortress with three rings of walls backed by the steep side of the volcano. Its walls before the rebellion was engraved with the various triumphs of Basalts Padshah’s. The summit of the volcano serves as one of the greatest Temple of Fire in Basalt.

The Marble City: A luxurious city on the Penninsula is a city carved from a marble quarry. Starting as a great trade city for marble. Its position made it wealthy enough to carve luxury buildings from the quarry. It has since become a city of grand fireproof libraries and academies, dedicated to the training of Alchemists, Mages and other scholarly pursuits. The density of geomancers allow the marble to be restructured as needed, rather than stagnant. It is often the sight of experimental architecture and a shifting skyline that sailors can catch as they come to harbor. 

Acrean Culture

Sur Dynasty / Citystate of Acre / Tanu Tradeposts

Acrean culture is born from an ancient culture of city states. These were religious states who saw their sorcerer kings as their gods come to earth. Each state had a different patron god. In the cataclysm most of these cities fell alone rather than joining together. With the exception of the last readout of Acre. Its godking brought the refugee’s flooding into his streets and forged a army to combat the oncoming undead. After retaking the city and the tragic death of this heroic lord, the culture elevated the god of Acre to head of the pantheon. The defeat of the Liches requiring the sacrifice of the Gods mortal connection to the world.

In the age of Empires Acre holds a position as a religious pilgrimage site. Natural Mages are seen as divine tools of the gods while those who are brought up as priests. Acrean culture is often seen as a trading culture, who are some of the most adept sailors in Aeth, countered only by the Myr Pirates. Masters of desert warfare they were the main enemy of Sinai until the rise of the Tyrean Empire bottled it to the north penninsula. 

Governance

The citystate is run as a theocracy by the priests of the main temple, while Sur resembles a more common monarchy with legitimacy of lords confirmed by priests.

Architecture

Great Temples: While many of the original city states were destroyed in the initial conquest of the lich and then again in their retaking, Acre stands shining and untouched. Its skyline is dominated by the great ziggurat of the God of Acre. While made of simple stone, it floats above the ground two stories off the ground. One of the early enchantments of the last sorcerer kings. 

Tanu Culture

The Tanu by legend originated as a group who were driven to the brink of extinction, pushed to the very coastal mountains by the horde of monsters that dominated the Hunting Grounds to the East. This was until one day when the great hunters invented the first spears and bows of the world, something to put them on even ground with the monsters. They have since regained the territory of the peninsula, now going into the hunting grounds is a badge of honor and the harvesting of its creatures is the main source of income for the Tanu city states 

Tanu, as a Shaman majority culture were little effected by cataclysm. did take it as an opportunity to take the lich held territory in Acre to give them a place to stage trade from. The Tanu have a host of many beliefs that they have absorbed through trade, some bleeding over into each other and has created a very pluralistic culture. Its traditional pantheon has been adopted and inducted into Mythical canon. The Acrean pantheon has become a big influence on the Tanu trade posts. Arashin from Basalt is one often taken by Tanu Chiefs.

Governance

Tanu in general have fairly insular territories, a unified fear of a monster horde keeps most wars from breaking out and they are generally too far away from things to worry about foreign invasions. While there are no true wars there are several yearly competitions that focus on proving the strengths of cities top hunters. These are generally beloved competitions and move from city to city over the years. 

Architecture

As a nation of shamans they do not have any of the awe inspiring great structures from the A.o.S, they have many innovative buildings unique in construction and materials. Brightly painted and ornately carved. 

Vinrum Culture

Tyre Empires / Sinai Dominion / Nov Republic

Oh god near the end. So Vinrum is a a descriptor for the coastal around the smaller Vinrum Sea in the east. Its closer territories has made it a much more conflicted territory All of their histories far more interconnected. 

The greatest commonality is the widespread of the Mythic Canon. A aggressive polytheistic cult that seeks to adapt and induct all pantheons. Sorting the gods and their myths into various monolithic archetypes who represents single gods acting in many cultures. While largely successfully in their attempts of conversion, it has run up to severe resistance in the Acrean territories who take their attempts to sort their gods as an insult.