#eternal present

[madxmoonlight]

There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

[ronk]

There is no past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present. ~ James Joyce

[rabidhiss]

Lead into Gold “Eternal Present” review.

As a block of art, Eternal Present is a perfect example of avoiding the confines of traditional song structures so seamlessly that unless one is paying attention, you’d miss it. EP flows brilliantly in one sitting or as a whole in what I would like to call Doom Electronic. I wouldn’t be able to suggest particular tracks for the dance floor, and aside from the track “She Lies Beyond” which meanders in at over 7min, wouldn’t be able to suggest a single to highlight the album in the 3min tradition with a pretty bow on top. Hence why I think of EP as more of a conceptual work to be digested in its entirety. This fact also makes it harder to put EP against previous albums “Age of Reason” and “Sun Behind the Sun.” Both previous albums make their mark within EP, but do so in fleeting moments that eventually give way to sonic walls of ambiance or melancholy samples of wind chimes singing the closing moments out of a piece. EP is most effective in large doses, whereas both previous albums work as opuses themselves but can be interchanged and singled individually. While my personal preference is the latter, (I love to rock out when I want to rock out), I will not deny the appeal of EP as an abstract and textured piece perfectly timed and vital for the present.

A

4 1/2 / 5

[hellenhighwater]

Look I know I said I wasn't gonna. But then I had a pose idea, and two hours later, here we are.

Starting Sisyphus.

[philosophybits]

Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914-1916

[drenched-in-sunlight]

the Light of Miquella incantation Eng description is so confusing to me, so i decided to look at the JP text, still confused (i asked both my native speaker friend and American friend working as a translator in JP, and even they are confused and i couldn't just give them a wall of text on Elden Ring lore so they could translate 1 paragraph), so i turn to the CN translation which follows the JP one... and it's so clear??????????? im shocked

(please note im not native CN speaker either, but my mother tongue is built based on their language and i double check with my friend who is fluent)

Miquella wishes to embrace everything, yet he understands that there is one exception: whether it be the absolute God or the Lord (King Consort): there could only be one (of them)

so us player, as Lord of the old Order, is the one he could not embrace. and we clearly see that for him to accept us, we already have to be charmed and relinquish our claim to Lordship (thus failing the boss fight).

i feel like this is the translation i could understand & line up well with how events in the game plays out. Miquella wants to accept all, but the rule of the world dictates that there could only be one God & one Consort (who the hell wrote that rule...), and so one of us has to give.

it presents a paradox of him wanting to become a God to save people & bring compassion, but to be a God he HAS to eliminate all other candidates for Godhood. he has to be the only one.

it sheds light on why Marika's age also started with conflicts. it's something demanded of the new God. and also us when we fight to become Elden Lord (+ line up with why Ansbach is not mad at us for killing Mogh, as he too understands that rule).

[foryourownbosom]

portrait of a young artist, c. 1760s

(happy birthday dear john! 🌻)

[lieutenant-of-darkness]

Mairon in Valinor

Artwork by @drawulan, commissioned by me

[monsterfuckermilligan]

i’m sure this has been said before but when adam and michael are talking in the bunker about the possibility of michael’s dad being a grade a asshole, there’s something so so so important to me about how adam points out michael’s hypocrisy.

ADAM: Point is…. Parents keep secrets. Does it hurt to ask the question?

MICHAEL: Yes! It would mean I doubt him. The good son; the favorite doubts his father.

ADAM: You still care about that? After he left you in the cage?

this matters because michael was JUST criticizing sam and dean for leaving adam and how he is in unable to trust them. he doubts them because of their actions.

MICHAEL: You’re asking me to trust you. You who doomed me, you who let Lucifer walk free while your own brother sat in Hell.

in turn, adam is pointing out that clearly michael has a line for his family members and it’s been crossed by michael’s own, so why is his dad any different than sam or dean? what makes michael different than adam? why does his dad get to betray and abandon him and still get michael’s trust and loyalty? why is michael expendable?

he’s really tapping into michael’s beliefs that were just established to us as the audience at the diner. (ie: family sometimes hurts you and just because they’re blood relatives or ‘family’ doesn’t mean they have your best interests at heart. sometimes there are things more important than family, sometimes walking away from your family is freedom) and he’s holding michael to the same standard he’s set for the winchesters.

side note: another thing i enjoy about this interaction is that adam is being gentle, although it 100% appears as if they’ve had this conversation before since he literally rolls his eyes, and not to mention that michael is an archangel. he could easily be mean or not even care about his feelings or michael could not even take his opinion into account and do what he wants. but despite everything, adam asks for michael to listen to him, and he does. and in turn adam appeals to him with logic and reasoning, because he’s overall a very rational and strategic being that’s simply been groomed from the get go in his dad’s weird cult. adam appeals to his emotions in a way that’s familiar. they share this experience. adam knows michael is protective of him and that it’s easy for michael to hate sam and dean for the same things his dad has done. but michael’s own lack of self worth that was drilled into him by his dad for aeons is being challenged, and it’s uncomfortable for him, but adam doesn’t back down and he helps get through to him. it’s really a great scene. this post wasn’t meant to be so long but yeah i have lots of thoughts about this short interaction!

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

wifies

[felikatze]

i think the reason i love silent protags a lot because the limitation of this staple necessitates indirect storytelling. yes it's primarily a device to allow player inserts and roleplaying, but a character's inability to state or directly show how they feel forces one to analyze much more.

when speech is filtered out, you need to reverse engineer what they could've said by how other characters reacted. Multiple choice dialogue options become concurrent thoughts in the character's mind, different facets leading to indecision, with the player only truly deciding which thought comes to the forefront.

definition comes through body language, idle animations, emotive portraits and noises of exertion. if a choice is railroaded, was the protagonist forced into it, or did they decide without player input? what do the available gameplay styles say about the character you've created? what does it mean to accept every single sidequest?

like, well and truly, making a nothing character is impossible, even in video games, because saying "yes" when asked to save the world, that's already a decision, isn't it? there is already an implication, a shadow of belief and value, in the act of playing.

[morethanwonderful]

Which MXTX Character Would Be Most Insufferable Online?

Full Bracket

(Bonus match theme: Nothing good ever happens to the street children)

[ampleappleamble]

axa and friends get their final fantasy costumes on for the spooky season 🎃

[quietlotus]

“Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.”

— Alan Watts

[philosophybits]

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

Henry David Thoreau, Journals

[neurosiscocktail]

Okay so here’s my pitch for the season 3 cold open-

We open to a close up of Stede’s face, he’s clearly concentrating, he’s sweating a little, and covered in blood. It’s pretty clear as we pan out to a shoulder shot that he just killed someone. He looks very sexy about it.

We switch to a close up of Ed’s face, sweaty, clearly has just been fucked. Maybe his top button is done up wrong. Who knows.

The shot pans out and we start hearing their conversation. They are outside the inn, digging up Izzy (stick with me)- they’re talking about how silly they feel for just now realizing this is the problem- OF COURSE Izzy has been so mad, they didn’t bury him with his ring! How silly of them! And they didn’t even notice until someone tried to rob them and Stede killed the robber (and they fucked about it). THAT must be why Izzy won’t stop haunting them. They tuck the ring into his breast pocket and start to rebury him.

Next shot- we find out that they think Izzy has been haunting them because of a the ~weird happenings~ at the Inn. The haunting does not stop after they bury the ring. This part of the episode starts very creepy, real horror movie vibes. However, we find out through the course of the episode that what they think is a haunting is just two whim prone chuckleheads with no experience running an Inn.

“All of the produce mysteriously went bad!” - Stede, whose experience with food preparation is putting marmalade on toast just left them too close to the fire and the heat did what it does to produce.

“The room keys keep going missing!” Nope. Ed simply cannot remember where he put them.

“The desk bell keeps ringing at night but there is no one there!” It’s buttons the seagull fucking with them.

They both think they’re responsible for the haunting and having a crisis about it. Idk, dealers choice about what they feel guilty about.

They are losing their fucking shit over this haunting. Maybe Izzy shows up once or twice in a Badminton style memory ghost.

We pan back to The Revenge. It’s a total parallel to what happened with the red suit.

They also think they are being haunted by Izzy.

The word “twat” keeps appearing carved into random places aboard the ship. Frenchie’s peanut allergy is back full swing. They keep sailing into storms by accident. Etc

They set sail for the Inn, desperate to ask Ed to control the ghost of his dead best friend or burn the body, anything to get rid of this fucking ghost.

It’s Jim fucking with them and dumb luck. (Except for the storm thing, it’s just impossible for anyone to read the weather as well as Ed)

They all meet up at the Inn, and now we have a Scooby Doo style episode where the ghost was the friendship and character growth we made along the way.

And then for an extra layer of comedy, maybe at the end of the season we see Izzy’s ghost just sort of old man loitering around the ship because he didn’t want to leave what I am affectionately deeming his kids.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk