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slimshaedy92 · 2 years ago

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We need to talk about The Great Gatsby (2013)

We don't have to, but I just watched it, and I want to.

It's been a long time since I watched this movie, and I am a very different person than I was in 2013. At that time, I was a Leonardo DiCaprio stan from the Man in the Iron Mask days and I hated Daisy for not choosing Gatsby over her ain't shit husband.

I owe her an apology, and also Nick is gay and in love with Gatsby.

Nick

Real talk that's me with any crush I've ever had.

Nick is just a guy. Poor, wants to be a writer, happens to have rich family he can hang around with and just kind of watch in silent awe at just how rich they are. Loves Daisy, doesn't understand why she wants her daughter to be "a little fool" etc. Then he meets Gatsby, after partaking in the mountains of gossip to be had about him with Jordan (lesbian? I think so). When he meets Gatsby, it's pretty much one of the top ten movie scenes of my life. Perfect score, perfect cinematography, over the top visuals, and Leo being as charming as anyone could possibly be in the year of galaxy leggings and mustache finger tattoos.

Nick instantly falls in love. With that entrance, I would have too.

How do we know he's gay?

Uh, how many people tried to set him up with women?

Daisy

TOM

The sheer distance he's trying to put between himself and Myrtle's sister? Yes they kiss later but this man is plastered by that point.

Also this feels significant I just can't...put my finger on how.

Anyway, Nick meets Gatsby and

This is the face of someone who has just had an awakening and doesn't know what to do about it.

Throughout the rest of the movie, his motivations are influenced by his rose-colored feelings for Gatsby.

Daisy

One of the first things Daisy does when she sees Nick again is tell him about her daughter's birth, and in that story, she gives a lot of context for her emotional state at the time.

Tom wasn't there, "Tom was God knows where *she glances towards Tom* with God knows who" and when the nurse told her it was a girl, she cried and hoped "she'll be a beautiful little fool. That's the best thing a girl can be in this world."

Daisy isn't stupid. She knows what Tom has been doing and will continue to do, but even as a girl from a relatively wealthy family, she's been told what to do her entire life, and as a woman pre-1974, she can't even get a credit card on her own.

Into her life, here comes this charming soldier who sweeps her off her feet in the greenhouse before he's shipped off to war. Presumably she doesn't hear from him and being a debutante pre-modern age, she's expected to marry and do it quick. Tom shows up, she falls in love, and then on her wedding day she hears from Gatsby and immediately wants to call off the wedding. She was willing to stop everything for him when he told her "Wait for me to make something of myself". Stupid thing to ask someone to do, but she was willing to do it at first. Since she wouldn't show anyone the letter, the bridal party probably wore her down and she got married because that was the expected flow of things.

When Daisy and Gatsby see each other again, sparks fly, etc etc, they fall back in love. She does, anyway. There's some very different stuff happening in his mind, but we'll get to that. Daisy eventually says, "I wish we could just run away," and Gatsby gets this weird look on his face and says "Run away? No. Daisy darling, that wouldn't be respectable."

Sir.

Let's unpack that real quick because it's an indicator of things to come.

Daisy has found this guy that she pined for secretly for years and is willing to drop her whole life (theoretically- really doing it is a lot scarier) and run off with him, but Gatsby says what? No. No way. We have to keep up a good image. Image is extremely important to Gatsby and he'll keep reminding us of that.

Gatsby

Ahem.

This man is a walking red flag. We start with his origin story which of course he only shares with Nick (have you ever been in love with your bestie and felt super special when they confided something in you and you alone?) where he's born dirt poor in North Dakota and as soon as he has enough brain cells to rub together, he rejects his parents because no way someone as important as him could be born into this life. The delusions start early.

Later, he meets Captain Cody and, seeing an opportunity to climb the social ladder, becomes his sailing son hoping that when he dies, he'll inherit Cody's money and finally be a rich guy. As Nick later tells this, he says that Gatsby "showed ambition" and was "robbed of his inheritance by Cody's FAMILY".

The rose-colored glasses are thick.

When he meets Daisy, sure yeah falls in love, when he first kisses her he's like ope we're married now in my heart. Leaves to the army but not before realizing that if he's gonna be a social climber, he's gonna have to do it alone. Can't marry her yet. Instead, he sends her a letter expecting her to wait for him for an undisclosed amount of time until he can make some money.

She, a southern debutante in the "prime" of her life (can't become a 21 year old spinster, can we?) is expected to just. Sit around without telling her family she's waiting on a poor boy that's definitely NOT from one of the "illustrious families" they saw at her debut, but specifically "new money" which no one likes. Tom ticked all the boxes and he was there at the time. Gatsby just missed his chance.

Before asking Nick to arrange the meetup between him and Daisy, Gatsby lists off a clearly false life story to Nick as well as parading his connections and awards so that Nick "approves" of him enough to sit him down with Daisy. He thinks that his status, wealth, and great life story matter to this guy who has....none of that. When they do meet for tea, Gatsby has AN ENTIRE FLASH MOB to completely makeover this cottage that Nick is literally just renting in order to make an impression so insane that Daisy is momentarily worried that her cousin really did fall in love with her.

When Nick, Daisy, and Gatsby hang out at Gatsby's place for the day, Gatsby makes a show out of everything he's built (for her, you shout- yes I hear you but like buddy you're coming off a little strong) from the overly complicated orange juice machine "I like anything modern" he says *eye roll* to the camera at the beach. As Daisy dances in the hall of his mind-bogglingly huge house, Gatsby says

Like she's a set piece or an accessory- which she is! Gatsby has a grand image planned for his life and Daisy is just a part of the set- a doll in the dollhouse that he can wave in front of everyone to show how respectable he is.

The Hotel Room

I hate this scene because it's literally a dick-measuring contest between two men arguing over who Daisy actually loves. The entire thing is uncomfortable and you can see that Daisy is about to implode from stress. She's been told what to do her entire life and mostly done it to avoid conflict. Now Gatsby is asking her to make a DIRECT CONFLICT.

The face of a gay that knows shit is about to go DOWN

Gatsby immediately goes to Daisy's side, grabs her hand, and starts FLAUNTING their relationship in front of a big ol' beast of a man.

"She never loved you. You see, she loves me," this big-britches boy says before completely divulging their entire love story to a man that does not want to hear it in front of Daisy who PROBABLY DOESN'T WANT TO SHARE IT.

Tom starts to argue back ABOUT DAISY'S FEELINGS with Daisy right there. "Nah Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now-" "No, no, I'm sorry Mr. Buchanan, no" DAISY IS PHYSICALLY RIGHT THERE Y'ALL maybe let her talk I don't know.

"She DOES love me and what's more I love Daisy too. Now once in awhile I go off on a spree, but I always come back." When he says "I love Daisy too", you see a small change in her eyes. Hope. She did love this guy when they got married and it hurts every time he cheats so this is the face of someone that's falling for the sudden love-bombing of an abusive husband.

When Tom says oh I always come back, she changes her tone only into a victim that's finally got enough support and anger to say how she feels. She lays out some dirty laundry as SHE SHOULD.

Her anger rises and she runs to the window to get some air because holy shit she's EXPRESSING HER ANGER and it's SCARY but she needs to process this. Instead of letting her feel her feelings, Gatsby is already past this to where she proclaims her undying love and they move into his castle together.

"That's all over" no it's not- it's literally happening right now. "Tell him you never loved him and this will be wiped out forever."

That's what Gatsby wants- it's not what she wants. She has a whole kid that did happen, and she has happy memories that DID happen. He doesn't care about that. When she tries to do what Gatsby wanted, Tom pushes back by listing specific memories of him treating her at least marginally well, which hurts her because she did love him and probably still does. "I love you now, isn't that enough? I loved him, but I loved you, too." NO. He almost snaps at the "too" because how could the great Jay Gatsby be second to anyone in the heart of a woman he was (spiritually) married to while he climbed the social ladder?

There's more to talk about, but let's just look in at the end real quick.

Gatsby dies thinking Daisy was going to call. Honestly, probably the best thing that could have happened. How would he have handled her rejecting him or running from him after the violence he showed with Tom? Nick tells him "you're worth the whole lot of them together" which he objectively is NOT considering that his real goal was image and he did whatever it took to get that. At his funeral, Nick sits with him and hates everyone else for not being there, especially Daisy. "From Daisy? Not even a flower" he says, when she literally can't even get a credit card on her own. He calls her (and Tom and Jordan) uncaring people that wreck everything, but Daisy was afraid. She'd been told what to do and who to be her entire life in a world that (unless you're a celebrity like Jordan or the movie stars at Gatsby's parties) expects you to submit to a man in some way. She was pressured into probably every decision she ever made in her life, and when Tom showed her kindness after the car accident, the deal was sealed. He offered comfort, the life she knew, her daughter, and safety. Gatsby was the only one that showed potential for physical abuse and that frightened her more than the emotional neglect she'd become used to.

Also Nick is gay and was madly in love with an idealized version of Gatsby because while this man tried to bully his cousin into being his trophy wife, Nick only said "damn that man can really hope."

Anyway.

#the great gatsby #the great gatsby 2013 #nick carraway #jay gatsby #daisy buchanon #tom buchanon

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dashawfrostart · 9 months ago

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So I Completed The GOG Survey, And It Made Me Thoughtful... (a.k.a. Artist's Rant)

... And everybody knows that I become scary when I'm thoughtful, because hello yet another one wall of text 😎 But if you're here, it means you love 'em. Otherwise you would've never come over.

Perhaps, I've already mentioned that before somewhere around here, or maybe not (Frosty does not remember absolutely every single post she writes), that the primary purpose of playing videogames for me is to draw inspirations for my own creative stuffs. I really wish I could signify that in the survey, but alas, I did not have an opportunity to do so, for there was no extra "other" field to fill out. This way, the absolutely biggest factor that drives me to play videogames had to be left out from the survey. And this is very sad, because I would really love to share that. This is not a secret to anyone that I'm very much into the development of my graphic novel right now, to the point that I sacrifice some other activities or aspects of other creative works I really enjoyed earlier (for example, as the pinned message says, I virtually stopped working on greeting cards designs, and I hardly ever do totally random artworks anymore - all for the sake of fetching out a bit more time for myself to further invest into "Time & Again", for that is my priority... and... I stopped assembling papercraft models in my leisure time as well). I have my ups and downs working on "Time & Again", too, so it does not always go smooth as I expected. Sometimes my creative spark needs a push - a thoughtful or an emotional one, or a little of both. That's especially when the videogames come into play for me. Depending on my choice of a game to play, what kind of inspiration I'm seeking, it might be incredibly impactful - sometimes even empowering! I most certainly see videogames as a form of art, there's no denial. An interactive form of art that is - and I treasure that way more than movies that usually require zero involvement from the viewer when it comes down to the story itself. (but overall, my superhuman-proportioned cringe towards movies is a whole another topic, so we'll keep that outside this post for now) I've been playing videogames since childhood - back in the day I used to have a NES/Famicom console, but soon I became a PC gamer. I truly believe that was one of the factors that contributed to my creativity and endless curiosity in visual arts, and perhaps also something that turned me into a thinking person. And by the way, I learnt a lot of interesting stuff about the world through playing videogames, heheheh!

While, perhaps, being purely a form of entertainment to some people (and I don't deny that by any means), I think over the years, with the development in the industry, video games have evolved into something more nowadays, something that can be taken more serious. Art always contains a certain message. Videogames do contain artistic messages, too. Since my priorities have been shifting ever since I started working on "Time & Again", I often think about all of that. My paradigm has cracked and now rearranges itself in a most peculiar way. In fact, I perceive videogames as a form of art more than anything else now. Because this is what it is to me. And I draw inspirations for my own projects from the other people's art. It's really that simple. Art is an experience. I want to experience art - including videogames, for this is one of my favourite forms of art - to feed myself emotion to process and thought to ponder on, that could potentially lead me to the expansion of my own artistic horizons. I think this is truly magical. People's creations inspiring other people's creations is quite possibly worth living for. This way we share our experiences and pass them on to the others. I'd say this is very precious. I could talk about this stuff for hours and hours, but I will stop here, for there's something else.

There is another one interesting point that I wanted to reflect on after completing the survey, and during the last couple years - and the last year especially - it has become fairly important to me. I am incredibly disappointed with the fact that buying a PDF artbook for a game without owning the game itself is not even an option on any of the videogame stores. That is frustrating, and honestly - it doesn't make any sense. The reason is that the artbooks are usually distributed as DLCs for the games. Logically, DLCs DO indeed require the base game, for the additional content usually is something that you can use within the game, such as an extra level, or a skin, or a weapon, etc. But artbooks are neither of those. Most of the artbooks are just separate PDF documents you can read on your desktop computer or a mobile device... and they most certainly do NOT require a base game to be owned. (the only exception to that I've seen so far was the artbook for Atomic Heart that was actually incorporated onto the game and was accessible through the in-game menu. That is, I must admit, an excellent way to prevent people from just "redistributing" (e.g. just a sophisticated word for STEALING, cough cough) the PDFs illegally in the internet - and oh boy, let me tell you, people really love doing that!😅) So why not make them purchasable separately, in case if the user wants to support the artist, but does not necessarily want to play the game (for whatever reason they have - it doesn't matter)? 😁 I was fairly disappointed when I discovered on GOG that I could not buy a Yooka-Laylee comic (that was discounted at the time, and I've been specifically waiting for it be get discounted for a long time) because I didn't have the game on my account on GOG... sadly, I actually do own the game - but on Epic only. I usually prefer to support GOG with the idea of DRM-free content, but that time it just didn't work out for me. So I ended up buying it from Epic anyway. But that's for the game I actually owned. There are plenty of other games that I don't think I will be able to play for different reasons, so I don't wanna buy them - but I sure DO wanna buy the artbooks, to support the artists (and developers, too). But I can't. Because I have to own the game first. The game that I might never play anyway. 🤷‍♀️ Working on my graphic novel sure changed my understanding of the value of art a lot, and also my views on what's important and how my works impact the others, including the fellow artists. Starting last year, I found out that the presence - or absence - of an artbook as a bonus content was one of the main deciding factors for me if I really wanted to buy a game or not. Majority of my last videogame purchases had artbooks included, usually with deluxe editions. It means a lot to me as an artist - aside from simply appreciating the art in those artbooks itself - because I relate quite well and I understand the amount of time and work put into the game development AND development of all the visual materials for the games, breathing life into something that your mind have created and materializing it through the means of pen and paper and/or digitally. And let me tell you: it's not easy at all. One might say that I'm going a bit too hardcore on this whole topic, turning it into some great issue of sorts, etc. But it is what it is. This is what's important to me, and I want to uphold the values.

A shellfish request of mine: I would've really appreciated the videogame services to allow me to search specifically for the games with artbooks as DLCs 😁 And THEN allow me to buy the PDF artboooks separately, pls 😤 That would make me very happy.

I suppose, that would be enough for today's random post on the topics that are very important to me. So I bid you farewell for now and go back to working on my story about crazy Lothar. 🙌

UPD (Oct 2024): I have realized a bit later and forgot to update the post. Shortly after I wrote that post, I have discovered that GOG actually DOES allow you to browse through the games that include artbooks! And that makes me sooooooo happy, you cannot even imagine! It's always small things that make us happy 😉 Ever since I have made that discovery, I've been often browsing GOG sales by the "artbook" tag. Now I'm just waiting for everyone to allow people to buy the artbooks without owning the games 😁

#video games #thoughts

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multitrackdrifting · 2 years ago

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gacha game anon - you have my full encouragement on going back to fgo! for some of the faults with it, the writing in Camelot (chapter 6) and onwards is amazing, and from what I know it just keeps getting better from then on. im on anastasia at the moment and it hasn't dipped in quality for me so far! it's a bit of a slog until it gets good but when it gets good it gets REALLY good. and good luck on your protoarthur rolls! i don't remember when he's on gacha but if you've got $15 to spare the guaranteed SSR is going on right now and im 80% sure he's on one of the banners that's up right now.

i haven't played granblue yet but with that endorsement i want to check it out! im always on the lookout for new gacha games, I started nikke myself recently but nothing else has much caught my eye. i completely agree though localization being trash is the number one reason I usually quit on games I think I otherwise would have loved. but I've generally heard great things about granblue and would love to try it out. if you like I will keep you updated on that!

and totally take your time on mahoyaku, when you get to it I recommend watching a video of the game, or playing it alongside if you can get your hands on it as it's jp only at the moment. i went in with no visuals and it took me a lot longer to put names to faces and stop getting everyone confused with each other haha.

enstars is a very good game but the lack of access to translations and the subpar level of quality for the English version has been really hurting it. the rhythm aspect is fun, actually, but my heart will always be with enstars basic. which has no rhythm elements, but mirrors the original idea for the game, which was an idol game where people who can't play rhythm games could still participate. unfortunately they didn't even try to give that version an english release, probably because they would have to translate a good five years worth of event stories from the previous game that are hosted on that version. which is really unfortunate because id love to read the official translations for those. and thank you for that image lol im definitely going to be saving that for future use!

I didn't mind the first few arcs in FGO, but I've read a lot of manga in my time including a lot of bad shounen and romcoms so my pain tolerance is pretty high. My brain is just like oh man time to read more fgo *burns all my AP on farming mats* . I will probably make a liveblog tag at some pt though I probably need a theme so I can just put a page up with different threads im running through since I use my pinned for my videos rn

Granblue is honestly very dear to my heart but the like "end game" cycle is very unappealing bc its super grindy - that said the story stuff [the main attraction imo] is not power-gated so you're not forced to engage with the worst aspects of the game (i.e. multiplayer/ranking called "unite and fight" or guild wars, kind of similar to how idol game card farming works). The event stories & main story are for everyone, so that's fun :' ). Also they do fun character themes, which I love - I think most people got hooked once they did What Makes The Sky Blue Parts 1-3 (it's like an epic about fighting for the fate of the world but in a more direct sense than most of the early conflicts in the story) which you can do in the event archive nowadays once you pass a certain chapter I believe. The art style might seem somewhat familiar bc the art director used to work for Square Enix

Granblue is kind of funny because just, one day they decided "yeah we will support eng" but the login stuff & lack of a localised app. It's just a web-game so they never released it in other regions, it just has full english language support - thankfully it's just like a g-mail signup process not as annoying as like doing lottery for an account like kancolle was

Mahoyaku I'll have to just login to my jp itunes acc dl it and play along or st so I know what people look like

#long post #asks #gacha game anon

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titconao3 · 2 years ago

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5, 4, 3, 2, 1

thank you @perverse-idyll for the tag! Oh dear, remembering and choosing… not my strongest points ;-) chugs coffee also, i'll cheat, sorry ^_^;; because my focus is bad, and has only gotten worse with every passing year, so i find it harder and harder to read, watch, etc. i'm also very, very bad at rereading/rewatching, in part because i don't want to be disappointed and find flaws or discover my tastes are different and what i'd invested in just isn't my thing any longer. So, some of this stuff is more about what was formative, touched me at one point, than things i'm necessarily still into.

Tagging whoever is interested! i'm uncomfortable tagging specific people because i don't want anyone to feel like they must, or alternatively that i forgot them.

Five Essentials:

- Quiet and alone time.

- An Internet connection: most of my friendships happen online, it's vital for work, and of course entertainment. Preferably on a desktop, if not then a laptop, if i must... fine, my phone.

- Silly mindless computer games. It used to be card games, these days it’s computer mah-jong. i used to love an old… Wikipedia tells me in English it’s called a breakout game? You're throwing a ball at a wall of bricks to break them. Mine wouldn’t work when i was playing something on Winamp at the same time, back in the day on my first computer. Never found one i liked as much, sadly! i need those games to forget myself and drop into some sort of trance-like state, though it's not working as well as it used to. (Where's that bricks game when you need it) Some games that sound like they should fit my needs stress me out, like snake, minesweeper, Tetris.

- Fandom. Once the Internet became more widely available and my English was good enough, 20+ years ago, i jumped in and never looked back, though at some times it’s a looser connection than at others. It’s given me language knowledge, cultural knowledge, the escapism I sorely need at times, skills (especially once I started organising events), friendships <3 …

- i won’t go out without a colour-changing lil necklace - don’t think it still changes colours but who cares? i may or may not have a pile of mood jewelry. @pixelbypixelfanfic has its twin and that’s why i <3 it. LOOK AT HIM

Four films/Shows

- Star Trek:TOS, including the films. We will not mention here the more recent Treks, of which i haven't seen much anyway - in big part because i'm so done with the constant retconning of Spock's life and fam, like cmon guys, as if Sybok hadn't been more than enough already. i may or may not have invested too much into Spock as a kid, although i love them all. First fandom, even before i knew what fandom was.

- Blade Runner (haven't seen the new one), because of the music, the visuals, the nods to Metropolis and how it also shaped the scifi that came afterwards, because of That Death Scene on the roof (yes, i know the speech by heart) and also Zohra's and oh noes Pris and that time i stepped into the Bradbury Building.

- i was #shook by a couple of Mamoru Oshii films in the early aughts, Ghost in the Shell & Avalon (music by Kenji Kawai), and since it was my Japan Era there was also Jin-Roh, that film we won’t talk about (Grave of the Fireflies), the Kenshin OAV (the one about his early years. TOMOEEEE!! i even bought the music. yes, me. music. bought. look it was a long time ago), and a couple more. Neon Genesis Evangelion, of course :-b (NOT Shinji ;-)

- Back when i was in uni, there was a cinema club where they showed films in the largest auditorium. i went almost every week, and that's where i watched Buster Keaton's The General (i dragged a friend who was horrified at the idea of a B&W silent film... he laughed out loud for 75 min straight\o/ ), Some Like It Hot, but also more recent stuff like the early Tim Burtons (this was the early aughts). The seats were horribly uncomfortable, some of the films were 3h+ long boring adaptations of boring books (no, i really do not like Madame Bovary), but it helped fueled my cinema-going years. i watched Korean films in tiny independent cinemas, that kind of thing ;-) Today, it takes a lot for me to go pay lots of money, sit still for 2/3 hours, grit my teeth while people keep noisily munching on pop corn and slurping sodas or whatever; i try to time my cinema-going for viewings with smaller audiences, but... So, i'll go a couple of times in a year, for something that will be entertaining and silly and won't ask me to focus too much (because it's not at home, where i can easily go back, pause, take a break to absorb and process, take my time, etc) like Jurassic World or John Wick.

Three books:

- The Discworld series as a whole, for its humanity and humour and on-point commentary and… and… flails everything

- Let’s add some manga i loved: Gunnm though i think in English it's titled Alita Battle Angel or something like that (one of the sources for my What-does-human/personhood-means kink, though it probably started as early as my first encounter with good old Spock), City Hunter, Saint Seiya (don’t think about the dubbing don’t think bout the dubbing don’t think about the dubbing). Also, Please Save My Earth, though i much preferred the OAVs visually. Liked the music, too.

- i used to be a voracious reader. Then, i studied literature for reasons, and it sucked all the joy out of reading books. Took years (and, to be honest, fandom) for me to start loving reading again, but i could never go back to ~The Classics~ . i read the entire Search For Lost Time at the time i started to disconnect from reading, and i remember nothing of it. i liked it, it just left no trace in me. So now i'll read the Vorkosigan series and love it, but don't ask me to pick up some Dickens. These days, i can't.

Re music, well - i don't really listen to music. i listened to some stuff as a teenager, probably in no small part because it was expected, i even took music lesson as an adult because i wanted to know how instruments worked. But as time goes by, i grow more and more intolerant to noise, and music is noise to me. i'll have the occasional YouTube trawl-through because i'll remember some old thing i liked way back when (liked, or more accurately that i associate with someone/thing), but often not even finish the song or piece of music. It's like, idk, ballet or skating for me: i can recognize the hard work and artistry that goes into it; it just doesn't do anything for me, beyond maybe a bit of nostalgia (until i remember that aside from less creaky bones and stiff joints, i don't want to go back in time and i don't miss my younger years). i used to listen to some film scores, and sometimes songs used in shows i enjoyed. Haven't done that in a long while, though. Now, if i want to shut out the world when i'm in the train or something, i'll put on a podcast or some white noise app.

Quote: nah, fandom’s free and i won’t put a price on it (whew, dodged that one ;-)

#tagged #tagging game #about me i guess

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julianottheastrologer · 4 years ago

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Tarot Basics

Abstract: The tarot is an ancient instrument of mysterious origin which consists of 78 cards divided between Major Arcana and Minor Arcana and to unravel all its mysteries it is necessary to use all its material, that is, all its cards. Tarot is life and as such, it also has its own journey.

The structure of the Tarot: contains a traditional structure, being 78 cards. It is primarily divided into two major groups, Major Arcana and Minor Arcana (ARCANO = Secret). The Major 22 cards being numbered from 0 to 21 and the Minor ones in 56 cards, being the numbered (from ace to 10) and the unnumbered, or from the court, in addition, the smallest are divided into 4 groups, being: swords, cups, wands and pentacles.

Choosing your Tarot: to start the study, Waite's is recommended, and in the future as a studious tarologist, acquire the one from Marseille to have the root of our knowledge. The reason is due to the material, you will find much more content related to Waite than any other tarot, since it is the most used. In addition, it cannot be denied that understanding Waite's cards is easier for most people because it has cleaner elements and colors that speak very well, for example I myself have an ease with a mermaid tarot and it was with it that I started, so the rule is not fixed.

How to study Tarot: it's like learning a new language. The way to read the tarot is to remove sounds, words, sensations ... from stable figures. Tips to improve fluency: 1st make summaries, interact with the community and of course, consume content, a lot of content; 2nd to put the references into practice, that is, to play tarot cards; 3rd, see life, live the tarot, see the tarot in life and in your daily life or that of others. Something I love to do is read the general readings you have online, you can see how other tarologists and fortune tellers see the cards and you can pause the video and see how you would have read them yourself.

Don't just play with the 22 Major Arcana: the tarot system has 78 cards and not using the Minor Arcana is not using their full potential. Just because they are called minors does not mean that they are less important, it is the younger siblings, the lesser mysteries and therefore those of everyday, those of our daily life, while the greatest are the mysteries of the universe. In the past it was common to use only 22 cards due to the lack of information and instruction that the tarologists had, however today as it is easier to acquire knowledge, play with the 78 cards!

The Tarot legend - The mythical origin of the cards: “O Caminho do Louco” - by Roberto Caldeira. In the book there was a civilization that reached its peak and when they concluded that one day it would be extinguished, the wise men of the city gathered to discuss how the conservation of all their knowledge would be fair. The first idea was to write and draw on the walls of their temples, but they feared that it could fall into the wrong hands and one day the temples would collapse. The second idea was to teach the most intelligent of the neighboring cities, however languages and word could change their foundations. In the third idea a game was suggested, because the human being's desire to be the first and his vices were his weaknesses and if a game is created, surely the same would be discovered and decoded, the same would be written on loose pages , on pages without a book and its information would be encoded in X visual messages, where anyone could understand it or none could even want to see it. It was thus decided how to keep the knowledge of that civilization.

The non-mythical origin of the Tarot: the fortune teller does not live only on magic and needs to be aware of reality, the first reports of a deck of 78 cards of which he had 22 trump cards and others like suit was in 1400 in Europe, in this period he was played like a card game that was a real fever at the time, the business was so profitable that it was the “government” of the time that took care of it. The divinatory use of this deck does not have a reason, but it also occurred at the same period.

The book of loose pages: First, the book of shadows is created, the book without light, the student's book (the one without light) to thus become a grimoire, the book of light, the book of "it worked" of a more experienced witch. The witch's desire / mission is to transform their library into an eternal book, a book without pages, therefore, to create a tarot. One of the “witches” who did this was Waite with the help of Pamela who launched the tarot of Waite, the best known and most popular today. Another "witch" to accomplish this was Crowley with his Thoth tarot.

#tarot #witch #green witch #pagan witch #witchcraft #divination #tarot cards #tarot stuff #mine #madamsaturn #fool #madam tarot

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loveisneurotic · 4 years ago

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Kaguya-sama Blind Reaction/Analysis: S1E1

Hello everyone, this is my blog which I am currently using to react to and analyze Kaguya-sama: Love Is War much more seriously than I should analyze any romcom.

I have only seen the first episode of the anime, which this post shall explore using far too many words. If I'm feeling particularly motivated, I may read the manga as well.

My analysis will contain spoilers. If you're thinking of watching this show and haven't seen it yet, I recommend you at least go check out the first episode yourself before reading any further. I don't know what the rest of the show is like, but what I've seen so far has been both entertaining and thought-provoking.

I'm going in mostly blind, but not entirely blind. There are a few images of the anime and manga that I have been exposed to, although without the attached context. Due to cultural osmosis and the sheer popularity of this work, perhaps that was almost inevitable.

Figure 1.1.1: Why did this guy write an essay about a single episode of an ongoing romcom?

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War

Season 1 Episode 1

I Will Make You Invite Me to a Movie / Kaguya Wants to Be Stopped / Kaguya Wants It

Power dynamics in relationships

Figure 1.1.2: Immediately, the mangaka's tastes become clear.

I heard a saying once that really stuck with me: "The partner who cares the least has all of the power."

In the world of dating, I often sincerely believed this saying. You may yearn for someone's affection, but the other person need not give it to you until they are willing and ready. No matter how much you want it, you can't make someone more interested in you, unless you resort to being roundabout, such as adding some mystery and intrigue to your courtship. But is that excessive?

I once felt a potential lover slipping through my grasp, and before I knew it, I found myself chasing after them. As I was yearning for their attention, I felt as if I'd lost my dignity. It was humiliating. Painful. Was it just that they weren't the right person for me? Or was I not funny enough? Not charismatic enough? Not interesting enough? Too clingy? Too talkative? Should I have been more distant and given them more space? Did I seem too weak? Too eager? How should I have maximized my desirability? Regardless, I had surely lost. Perhaps they wanted the satisfaction and validation of conquering me. Playing me for a fool and asserting their superiority by being so distant. Isn't that right? Or is that just insecurity speaking? At what point is it ideal to cut one's losses and walk away?

If someone desperately wants the object of their affection to desire them, does that make them pathetic? Does it make them a loser? If you show more vulnerability and desire than the other person, does that truly make you the weak one in a relationship?

These questions plague our two protagonists and seem to be a driving force behind the main conflict. Since I have also grappled with how much to reveal my own feelings of desire, I find Kaguya-sama: Love Is War to be a particularly fascinating show.

Desire without action

Figure 1.1.3: Our protagonists are gifted with impressively high academic intelligence paired with impressively low emotional intelligence.

The show wastes no time in introducing us to our two main protagonists. Kaguya was born into a family of high stature (and says "ara ara" frequently enough to power a small country of weebs), whereas Shirogane is a "commoner" (Kaguya's word, not mine) who worked hard to reach the pinnacle of the student body. Like timid schoolchildren, they're crushing on each other, and yet they refuse to admit it due to their pride. Instead, they focus on getting their "opponent" to confess their love first.

What stuck out to me immediately is how they both have different ideas of what their relationship would be like. Shirogane envisions Kaguya as blushing, shy, and conventionally cute, whereas Kaguya (thankfully) envisions herself taking absolute dominance over Shirogane (which plenty of people should see coming as a character trait after the anime's very first scene). The bad news about this is that their two fantasies are at odds. The good news about this is that the mangaka has fantastic taste -- you can learn a lot about a storyteller based on the characterization of a love interest or lead character of the author's preferred gender.

In the event that the two of them become an actual couple, I wonder how on Earth they'll reach a compromise as to how they'll treat each other. Perhaps they will have to figure that out before they can even get that intimate.

I appreciate that we get to see both of their perspectives. It hammers home how everyone has a different truth in regards to what they desire and what they experience, and the show does not hold back when it comes to showing just how different these truths can be -- such as a certain lunch-themed sequence that I will talk about later. This works to great dramatic and comedic effect.

That said, when you spend your time fantasizing about what could happen instead of actually taking action, time is not so friendly to you.

Half a year passes.

Figure 1.1.4: Two geniuses dedicate their pride to wasting their life and energy.

Immediately, I got the impression that whoever wrote this segment of the story knows what they're doing. This is too real. And by "too real", I mean I very much appreciate the realism. How many of us have waited for ages (or for eternity) to confess our feelings to a specific someone?

This is the curse of having a crush and being incapable of acting on it. It's also why I hate having crushes.

Manufacturing affection in others, AKA the extraction of vulnerability

Figure 1.1.5: A plan is devised to weaponize jealousy in the name of affection.

To express your truest feelings means being vulnerable. That implies taking a risk and feeling responsible for any potential consequences of rejection, as well as putting our dignity on the line. It would be so much easier for the object of our affection to make themselves vulnerable instead. So instead of being direct and honest, we act indirect. We drop hints. We act suggestively, but not explicitly. We may even place them in situations where we think they are more likely to confess. If they don't pick up on it, we can pretend we didn't mean anything by it. That way, we don't have to risk our dignity. We can just wait for them to make the move.

It sucks.

Incidentally, it sucks even more when both you and your love interest are thinking that way.

It sucks infinitely more when both you and your love interest are COMMITTED to thinking that way.

Someone has to break the deadlock, whether that's immediately or eventually.

If this show isn't one of those romcoms where the status quo never changes ever (judging by the quality of writing, I have faith that it isn't), then at some point, either Shirogane or Kaguya is going to have to be explicit about how they really feel. And it's going to feel scarier to them than anything else they've ever done.

It's gonna be great.

If we could all grow up and live in environments where it's safe and encouraged for all of us to be honest about how we feel and what we want, surely love would be much less painful for so many people.

Chaos theory

Figure 1.1.6: If your prospective lover won't protect you, then your friend definitely will.

Chika is the ideal wild card and agent of chaos in this arena of love.

From a writing perspective, Chika is immensely useful. The mangaka probably could have gotten by without a third character in the mix, but she serves as a catalyst and an unknown element, able to create unpredictability and subversion of expectations. For a comedy-oriented story, this is invaluable.

Blissfully unaware of the mental turmoil that plagues our two lovesick dorks, she is able to unintentionally invalidate whatever schemes that Kaguya or Shirogane spent so much mental energy on, which adds extra comedy and tension for the audience. She is also an effective vehicle for Kaguya's jealousy and projection, as seen in the lunchbox scene which I have so graciously foreshadowed.

Figure 1.1.7: We have confirmed visual on an unidentified fourth person. Chekhov would love this. From their posture, I wonder if they'll be a gloomy character?

Misunderstandings and assumptions

I've heard that most interpersonal conflicts in life emerge from misunderstandings. In the absence of communication, assumptions are born and give rise to misunderstandings.

You may know where I'm going with this. Let's talk about the lunchbox sequence.

Figure 1.1.8 (not pictured because tumblr wishes to deny me of my image spam): Kaguya is too prideful to admit she thinks that a couple is doing something cute.

Figure 1.1.9: Pride is considered a sin for a reason.

From a writing perspective, I was impressed by the lack of romantic intentions in Shirogane in this whole sequence. Not once did he try to get Kaguya to show vulnerability to him. Instead, Kaguya is the only one spinning the situation in a romantic way, while Shirogane's driving force is the misunderstanding that Kaguya is looking down on him for what he eats. Because of this misunderstanding, Shirogane doubles down and makes his food even better, making the situation even more complicated and more stressful for Kaguya. This was definitely my favorite comedy sequence from the first episode.

I appreciate that the show has demonstrated the ability to create these scenarios where one of the characters doesn't even have love on their mind, but there are still romantic thoughts coming from the other character which drives the drama. It gives me a lot of faith in the variety this show will have to offer, and makes me excited to watch more.

When it comes to comedy rooted in misunderstandings, it is important to have miscommunication or lack of communication. In order to resolve a misunderstanding, you need to talk about it. For a pairing as dysfunctional as Kaguya and Shirogane, expecting healthy communication sounds highly unreasonable, which makes them prime material for a whole world of misunderstandings.

Misunderstandings are rooted in assumptions about what the other person meant when they said something or made a certain gesture or expression. When Kaguya glared at Shirogane and his food, he didn't even think to ask "What's the matter?" He just made an assumption about how she felt. I wonder if trying to understand Kaguya's feelings would be considered a sign of weakness by Shirogane?

A prerequisite to initiating an emotional conversation is the desire to understand or be understood by the other person -- assuming that your assumptions haven't already built a narrative for you. It is far easier to make assumptions than it is to attempt any sort of understanding.

In the end, Shirogane fled, unwilling to confront or attempt to understand the intense and passive-aggressive Kaguya. Kaguya feels that she cannot directly ask to try his lunch, so perhaps this is the closest she can get to initiating such a conversation with him at this time. Despite their mind games where they imagine the reactions of their opponent, they still have a lot of difficulty understanding each other.

I am curious to see if this prospective couple's communication skills and emotional intelligence will improve over the course of the story.

The burden of potential romance

Figure 1.1.10: Even the infallible genius Kaguya succumbs to superficial jealousy. It's "mind over matter" versus "matter over mind". That's how the saying goes, right?

Chika is a free spirit, able to ask Shirogane for whatever she wants without being neurotic. That is the power of not being bounded by a crush. Kaguya, who lacks that degree of freedom, briefly loathes her for experiencing something that Kaguya cannot ask for. It's amazing how much someone's feelings for a friend can change without a single word being spoken between them. All it takes is an action, unintentional or not, combined with the raw strength of insecurity. Just as quickly, the status quo can return back to normal too, with the act of properly making up.

To Chika, asking for food from someone doesn't mean anything at all, whereas with Kaguya, it is an admission of defeat. In that sense, a relationship that will only ever be platonic brings peace of mind, whereas a relationship that can be potentially romantic brings leagues upon leagues of anxiety if the outcome is of great concern.

Love is neurotic.

Is love worth the pain? For some people, it is not. For others, the reward is immense -- but only if you can make sure your relationship with this person doesn't end up being a nightmare for your emotional health.

Love and self-identity

The final scene of the episode surprised me in a good way. It's a brief departure from the comedy, and reveals a more heartfelt side of the show.

Kaguya's servant asks her an insightful question. It is substantially more insightful than I would expect from any romcom: "If you fell in love some day, would you wait for that person to confess their love, like now? Or would you confess your love?" I found myself immediately curious to hear Kaguya's answer, since I knew it would be highly informative about her character.

"If that time comes, I would consider the risk of someone stealing him first and come to the one rational conclusion." Even in the realm of love, Kaguya seems precise and calculating. It's as if she hesitates to give a straight answer, but then she confirms: "Of course I would go."

Figure 1.1.11: "Please understand."

It is not embarrassment or rejection that Kaguya fears; it is the absolute destruction of her identity and sense of self. Kaguya is the daughter of a family that practically runs the country. In her mind, everyone yearns for her and wishes to serve her. Turning that around and reaching out to another person to express her own desire would be a direct contradiction of that. It is probably a similar situation for Shirogane, where the infallible self-image he has built up is being put at risk during his romantic duels against Kaguya.

Kaguya clearly feels trapped. She and Shirogane see each other as threats to be conquered, but in reality, they both share a mutual enemy that is much more imposing and insidious: their own simultaneous disgust at the idea of vulnerability.

Their freedom is dominated by their insecurities, and so, even despite their impressive stature, they are still very human. Their upbringing that has lead them to become so accomplished may be more of a curse than a blessing, due to the resulting pride and self-image they likely feel pressured to uphold.

It is hard to cast aside a lie that you have bought into for your whole life.

If our two protagonists wish to have a chance of establishing a healthy romantic relationship, they have a lot of their own demons to overcome first. If they cannot set aside their pride and reach mutual understanding, they have no hope.

Until then, they will both remain trapped in a hell of their own design, however tragically comedic it may be.

My hopes for this story's future

I can tell that the mangaka, unlike far too many writers all over the world, actually seems to have a solid understanding of romance and the conflict that arises within. I've watched too many anime that place huge focus on the "will they or won't they" crap which never runs any deeper than one or both of the characters being too embarrassed to just say what they're thinking, without any sort of convincing mental blocker. In that case, it's clearly just manufactured drama which is designed to pad out the story and waste your time rather than pose interesting questions and themes. In the case of Kaguya and Shirogane, the two of them have substantial communication issues which are depicted in a comedic yet mature way, which I have found engaging.

I very much hope that the show will more deeply explore the themes and questions surrounding the ideas of vulnerability, emotional intelligence, and superiority within relationships. Kaguya and Shirogane have been set up to be great vehicles for such exploration, and I hope the mangaka can capitalize on that, especially if our protagonists can confront these issues directly.

My impression is that the ending will make or break this story. If the mangaka can pull it off well, I can already believe the payoff will be hugely satisfying.

Of course, in order to get to that point, we'll have to see a certain something. It has to do with the most sacred word amongst romcom enthusiasts: "progress". Indeed, after spending chapters upon chapters watching two characters bumble around amidst the same exact status quo, those little signs of advancements in a relationship are highly rewarding.

Underneath all of their aggression, if we can see Kaguya and Shirogane slowly open up to each other and realize the benefits of vulnerability, I think we could witness something really beautiful and really emotionally cathartic.

I've still only seen one episode, but I believe the mangaka has laid a fantastic groundwork for a series and can do a great job developing upon what I've seen so far. On that note, I will surpass our prideful protagonists by opening my heart to this story and entrusting it with my vulnerability, believing it can deliver satisfying development and resolution. You can do it!

Closing thoughts

I did not expect to write so much about a single episode of an ANIME of all things, but here we are. If only I could conjure this kind of power back when I actually needed it in high school English class!

The first episode alone is already so rich with characterization and themes that I managed to find quite a lot to talk about. Given how much I found myself relating to the characters and some of their situations, it's clear to me how this show became so popular. Not only are the animation, direction, and writing excellent, but also many people can probably relate to love feeling like a battlefield.

I do not want to believe in the idea of winners and losers in relationships. That idea creeps into my head whenever I'm having trouble keeping the interest of a new date, and I find myself wondering where those thoughts even come from. Lately, I have been reflecting on the way I relate to other people. Perhaps I've started experiencing this show at a time in my life when I most needed it, and that's why I felt driven to write such a large analysis.

This show poses some very interesting questions about romance that I do not actually know the answer to at the time of writing. I do not know yet how much the show is actually going to explore these themes. Regardless, I appreciate how this show is helping me reflect, and I am curious to see if and how the mangaka will answer some of the questions brought about by the story's themes.

This is a show that I'll most likely have to pace myself with. There was so much to process in this first episode alone. If I went any faster, I'm not sure if I'd even catch all of the details and character moments. I'm excited to move onto the second episode soon.

A highly subjective footnote about my cultured tastes

I'm glad that Kaguya is a sadistic dom with a gentle and vulnerable side, solely on the basis of that being my favorite personality type in a love interest. It also helps that it makes Kaguya's fantasies that much funnier with Shirogane acting so out of character. I feel like this show was made for me.

What was I writing about again? Oh yeah, writing a gigantic wall of text about an anime romcom. Somehow, I spent an entire day on this essay. Hopefully someone got a kick out of it.

#kaguya sama: love is war #analysis #long post #reactions

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bh7theseriesblog · 4 years ago

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The Origins of Big Hero 7

Big Hero 7: The Series

Origins

*A flicker of black and white starts up for a while, static noises barely blocks out a voice*

Umm…Hello? Can you hear me?

*the flickering and static stops as it shows a 14 year old girl with dyed blue hair and purple eye contacts*

Can you hear me? Oh it's working!

*The girl sits on the chair in front of the camera. She smooths out her sea green skirt as she clears her throat*

Hi! So…after some thinking I decided to make a video diary so I can remember what I said. After all, who knows when it'll come in handy right? Oh right! I forgot to introduce myself! My name is Cora Mizichio.

*Cora chuckles slightly before continuing*

So I guess I should start with my life and such. Let me warn you though, it's kind of a long and wild story.

*she pulls out a phone and starts showing pictures*

I have lived in San Fransokyo for my whole life with my Dad, Mizuchi and Grandmama, Kaguya. My mom, Akemi passed away when I was a baby.

*image of a blonde hair woman smiled warmly before switching to Cora and her family. Her father being Goliath in stature and her grandmother dressed in a kimono with a cane*

Then my family found out that I'm incredibly intelligent for my age. I suppose hacking into your father's computer to send a birthday card at the age of 4 does that. My Dad is very sweet and an old softie, but is very protective of me and wasn't sure that I should go to school. So I was homeschooled, it was fun being taught by Grandmama and such about Marine biology, but…I felt kind of lonely…

After all my studies, I actually made a habit of bot fighting disguised as an unknown cat-masked competitor under the name 'Nekodomo'. It earned good money since at the time Dad hadn't gotten any luck with jobs due to his height. But it was my very first night of bot fighting that I met him…Hiro Hamada

*she flips the photo to a young Asian boy her age, with messy raven hair, large almond brown eyes and a tooth gap in his smile.*

I've never had very much luck when it came to making or having friends, so if I someone told me that I would end up dating this guy I would had laughed. But yeah we did. I was paired up with Hiro in one of those special bot fighting events like the duo duel. We won, but than the cops were coming and I was so scared of getting caught that I couldn't move. But then the next thing I know Hiro grabs my hand and we were running like crazy before the cops even spot us! I have no idea how long we had been running, but to be honest I didn't really care because I was still awe-struck by the fact that Hiro had save me from getting arrested and we didn't even know each other at the time. But that was all about to change, because as we were finally approaching a safe distance from the cops, it was at that moment where I tripped and fell flat on my face, and at the same time broke my mask. Thankfully Hiro picked me back up and we started running again, with me leaving my broken mask behind. Once we finally stopped and knew we were safe, that was when Hiro and I actually first met face-to-face. Now I have to be honest with you, I've never really known if the whole 'Love at first sight' thing was actually real or not, but it's the only thing I can describe how I felt when I first looked into Hiro's eyes. It was there when we properly introduced ourselves to each other and after that, we started seeing each other more. And it was only after 4 months of hanging out together, that I finally got to meet his family, and he got to meet mine.

*The picture now showed Hiro with a woman holding a calico japanese bobtail cat and a young man on either side of him.*

The woman on his left is his Aunt Cass, she runs a coffee shop called the Lucky Cat Cafe. The young man on his right is his older brother Tadashi. And the adorably cute kitty-cat Aunt Cass is holding is Mochi, their family pet. They are really cool people, and they always asked how I was doing and such, and Mochi is such a sweet kitty that he always tries to cuddle up to me whenever I come over. Hiro and I actually became an official thing one night when I saved his butt from Yama's minions. And boy were they surprised! Aunt Cass actually bounced when Hiro told them that I'm his girlfriend! Dad and Grandmama met them that night too, while dad wasn't too happy at first about me dating, Grandmama convinced him…after hitting him on the head with her cane.

*Cora giggled at the memory*

Anyway, After a slight misadventure where Hiro and Tadashi landed in jail and Cass had to bail them out, Tadashi actually took Hiro to SFIT, San Fransokyo institute of Technology that same night. Hiro told me that he met Tadashi's friends. There's Gogo: the cool biker chick, Honey Lemon: the stylish Chem genius, Wasabi: Laser neat freak, and Fred: the secret Billionaire super hero geek. Afterwards Hiro and I actually applied to SFIT by entering the showcase! Hiro made these miniature robots he called Microbots which he can control via head transmitter, I on the other hand did super strength suction cup shoes that can stick on any surface. We both won and we…were gonna celebrate until…a huge fire broke out in the showcase building and Tadashi ran back inside to help Callaghan, a teacher at the school….he didn't make it…

*Cora turned quiet, looking at her hands as she takes a deep breath*

Hiro wasn't himself for a while. I visited him a lot since the fire, and I mostly talked and tried to comfort and be there for him. Then came the day Hiro stubbed his toe and Baymax came along.

*A picture of a white inflated figure came to the picture*

Baymax was Tadashi's project, a robotic nurse to be more specific. He heard Hiro say ow and activated to help him. Then one of Hiro's microbots started acting weird, and Baymax followed the direction it went! It was then we found a guy in a kabuki mask controlling the Microbots. But they were destroyed at the fire right? Once Hiro pieced together that it was the kabuki-masked man that started the fire to steal them, which in turned killed Tadashi…Hiro decided to build Baymax some armor which…well

*the next picture showed Baymax in protective gear*

We traveled down to the port where we saw him take some type of machine out of the ocean. But then it turns out Baymax called the gang to help us, but sadly the guy in the mask saw us. We barely escaped with our lives that night! Thankfully Baymax being a walking marshmallow, also makes him an inflatable raft too. Afterwards we got to Fred's mansion and discussed over what to do next. Side note: it was weird to see that Fred is a billionaire.

*shows portrait of a young Fred and his parents in classy attire*

Hiro and I then built ourselves armor to fight the guy in the mask. Honey lemon got this cute chemistry purse to pull out what she needed, Gogo got some sick skates to zoom past us, Fred got a killer Kaiju costume that breaths fire, Wasabi got awesome laser blades on the backs of his hands, and I got my aquatic camouflage suit with squid strength suction cup shoes! And learning back from his previous work, Hiro turned Baymax from a stay puff marshmallow with bicycle gear to an awesome superhero!

*the next photo shows Baymax in his red armor*

After training and flying around the city we got down to business. We flew to Akuma island where the masked guy was, and it was there we learned something interesting. Krei and some government officials had something called 'Project Silent Sparrow'. It backfired when the portal sucked everything in, and the pilot was stuck. But then the masked guy attacked us! We tried to fight back but….

*a small clip showed Fred jumping only to be punched away *

We bombed, big time.

Hiro and I got lucky to get the mask…but the person was not who we thought….

Turns out Callaghan grabbed the transmitter and used it and the Microbots to protect himself in the fire…leaving Tadashi to die….

It was then that Hiro took out Baymax's health care chip and ordered him to kill Callaghan…

*Cora took a deep breathe before standing up and leaving the room, she returned back with a glass of water and started drinking it. Once she was done She then continued.*

Thankfully the gang got Baymax back to normal but Hiro was furious. He just left with Baymax…but we eventually met up with Hiro at his place, with a video of Tadashi…it was also when we showed him what we discovered. The pilot was no random person Krei hired. She was Callaghan's daughter, and Callaghan was out for blood.

We got to Krei Tech where Callaghan got his portal running. Hiro then learned what we needed to do to beat him; instead of the mask, we take out the Microbots, then he'd be powerless. But despite that, the portal was still open, and ready to tear itself to pieces. Then Baymax dropped the biggest bomb on us, Callaghan's daughter was still alive in there.

Hiro and I got on Baymax to rescue her. We found her pod but Baymax's thrusters were wrecked from the debris…

Baymax…he got us out by rocket punch…but stayed behind in the portal…

It's been weeks since then…

Krei agreed to keep our identities a secret, Callaghan is in prison, and his daughter is making a steady recovery at the hospital. And the news had been exploding over 'the mysterious group of heroes' that saved the city.

Hiro and I had been doing good, we talked to the gang a lot and we actually reapplied to SFIT again.

*Cora then looks at the clock beside her and gasped*

Oh man it's almost midnight! And first day of class is tomorrow! Anyway, thank you for listening! And…Baymax…I don't know if you can hear me..but Hiro has been doing good. We all miss you…especially me and Hiro...wish us good luck, cause who knows what happens tomorrow.

*Cora smiles at the camera before turning it off.*

A.N: This is an updated look for the prolouge chapter of Big Hero 7: The Series!

Liking the new visuals? ;3

This chapter has been edited by WolfWitchHuntress1318 at Fanfiction.net! Thank you for being my patient editor! Thank you for following and reading Big Hero 7! Love ya!

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ordulotusspa · 5 years ago

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My daily ritual format 🌙🕯️

So I thought of sharing this format I've been thinking of for a long time, because perhaps it can help someone! I know getting used to praying everyday can be difficult, even when you really want to get closer to the Gods. I've seen other formats on the internet, but most of them are very elaborated and as a low spoon devotee who doesn't always have the time to prepare everything, they're not something I would do daily, even if I promise it to myself or the Gods.

So: there are people that have been on this path for a long time and are willing to (either because of habit, reverence, or discipline) do those longer and more elaborate daily rites. But let's be real, when you're new to this, haven't taken an oath, are not that experienced with polytheism or have any impediment (be it physical or emotional, or anything else) —you're not gonna do those rites. Even if you start trying, you will probably leave it at some point. But! Don't think the Gods would get disappointed at you for this. On the contrary, if this has ever happened to you, take it as a chance to know yourself and your limitations. Anyway, no more wording. Here's the ritual format:

* This rites are designed to be done after showering (so you can be clean and presentable for the Gods) so try to fit that into your schedule. If for whatever reason you can't do them after showering, then find another time and just focus on cleaning up a bit and doing khernips.

* You don't have to do khernips daily. However, you should use them everytime you do a rite. Do them once a week and keep the water somewhere you can still use it for the rest of the week. You don't even need bay laurel —try drawing a cleansing/purifying sigil on a pice of paper and burn that. It doesn't have to be river or mountain water either, use tap water and sprinkle some salt into it. If you want, you can bless the salt beforehand in order for it to have the sole purpose of purifying the water. Whatever you feel is more practical and comfortable.

Rise offering or light incense (I personally have a different type of incense each day, dedicated to different Deities. Another tip: if you drink coffee, water or tea, offer a slip of that —it also creates a more intimate bond with the Deities, since you're sharing)

Offer the first portion to Hestia. Say something like: As always, the first portion goes to you, Mother Hestia, who takes care of this family and keeps us warm.

Offer another portion to the Deity of the day. It's part of my practice to dedicate each day to a different Olympian/Chthonic Deity. If you have any special candles for said Deity, light them up now. For example, I devote Mondays to Artemis and Hekate, so I would say something like: I offer a second portion of this [incense] to Lady Artemis and Mother Hekate, who I dedicate this day to. Have your devotee in mind and let me bask in your holy light as always.

Offer last portion to household & patron Deities. In my case, it's Apollo, Hermes and Aphrodite so I would say something like: Beloved Apollo, Bright Hermes, and Lovely Aphrodite: enjoy the rest of this offering [of incense] and guide me today as always. May your sacred blessings reach me in a way I can be able to recognize, and may I delight in your sacred presence today as yesterday. I love you.

Optional: Meditate. At least five minutes. Stay silent, listen, feel. Just accept. Ask for guidance, but on some slow instrumental or a guided meditation of your choice. Think of your purpose and manifest it, or ground yourself, or focus on visualizing in order to strengthen your connection to the Gods. You can also do a little tarot spread if you're in a hurry, grab a card or two and have their positive message in mind throughout the day.

Give thanks, from your heart. I would usually say something like: Precious Gods, enormous powers of the Universe, I give you thanks for the uncountable gifts I receive from you daily. I only ask for one thing: for my loved ones, me, and humanity as a whole to be able to know peace and love in abundance.

Close the rite. If it feels weird to just walk away then say something; that the ritual has come to an end and you wish for Them to enjoy the offerings, ask Them to tell you throughout the day about anything they want you to know, if the offerings are propitious, if there's anything They want you to change or add to your sacred time, etc. Ask them to stay in communication with you. If you have trouble noticing their signs you can also connect to your Higher Self in meditation for you to be more opened to the Gods.

Do this ritual whenever you feel comfortable throughout the day. Showering or taking a bath relaxes your mind and it's good to approach the Gods with a peaceful mentality, so do whatever makes you feel serene before the ritual takes place. Also, keep the Gods in mind when you're finished. Talk to Them throughout the rest of the day, practice Their virtues, dedicate different activities to Them. They love to be present with us!

I hope this helps someone! You can add or change anything to the format in order to make it more yours.

Blessed be and may the Gods fill your life with sweetness! 💗

#hellenism #hellenic polytheism #hellenic pagan #hellenic paganism #hellenic gods #hellenic polythiest #hellenic prayer #pagan prayer #daily ritual #greek polytheism #greek mythology #pagan ritual

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marshmallowprotection · 4 years ago

Text

Kait Reacts To The AE 8/?

Hi! These reactions are written out every time a Chatroom opens and it’s done over the course of the day. So, you’re watching me react in real time as it is for me. So, Spoilers AHOY. Expect Another post like this later today, there is just too many chats to put it all in one post. So, hey, if you click this, you’re opening yourself to spoilers, you make the choice.

[11:11]

Well, I knew it was coming but I didn’t want it to be coming. Rika comes into the chatroom and lets us know very clearly once more that nothing can change and that we need to accept that. She said that Prime Minister is coming tomorrow in preparation for... he expects to make sure the boys don’t fight him. I’m not really sure what he wants apart from that and I don’t want to. My worst fear is murder but clearly, he is going to use them as puppets and keep them holed away like Rika’s toys. It’s like we’re living in her godforsaken dollhouse.

She notes that Saeyoung isn’t trouble. He’s drugged. Saeran... she points out that he ran once, he may run again. She and V are clearly suspicious of what he is doing since he came with nothing, and both note to me that maybe it’s just their nerves and he’s really given up because he knows “there’s no other way to get through this.”

It’s not much to note. I’m just annoyed. I don’t want to even expend the energy on her or V anymore. I’m checked out with them and I’m not even bothering. It just isn’t worth my energy. I’m never forgiving them. I’ve already made my mind pretty clear on that subject. I just cannot. And, trust me, it’s about to get a whole lot worse. She and Saeran are back from the Agents and the Visual Novel is about to start.

And let me tell you that I nearly dropped my phone when this happened. I could feel myself already suffocated to see this. If I thought that I was hurting when we saw what happened to Saeyoung, I don’t know, this is a million times worse or at the very least, on the same fucking level of unsettling me to my very core. Well, it’s this moment that I know that I’m clenching my fists at my sides and using all my strength not to lash out at Rika. I don’t know how I would handle this. I don’t know. I don’t know how I would keep my level head that I normally have when I have to confront these traumatizing things.

I think in the end, I’d just cry because I can’t do anything.

Yes, Rika straight-up tied him up by the ankles. Yes, he is lost is a in triggered daze. Yes, I’m fucking upset. She tells him that he should get used to this for the time being but she’ll let him go when things are “perfect and she’s sure that he will behave.” She leaves.

I can gently nudge him and he snaps from his stupor as quickly as I can and he snaps out of it only to breathe a sigh of relief because we’re there with him and he can find solace in that fact. I know that we’re about to have a really serious talk but I’m trying not to fixate on the abuse of him at Rika’s hands.

He’s relieved. I’m momentarily relieved. He says that he’s able to feel calm in spite of this storm because of this. He’s just so happy to see us again. He’s still bothered by what he has gone through, but he does look a lot more at ease with the unease in his heart. At least, I know that he’s okay. He’s not suffocating by what I feared that he was, but I think I’m more upset about it than he is. He admits that his mother used to do this to you, and I know he’s mentioned it before during his route but... seeing it is....

A lot different than hearing about it. And that’s when he drops the biggest fucking fear I’ve had into my lap.

He hates this. But, he feels like he has to do this. He is going to... sorry, I’m still. I’m still crying right now it’s really hard to type. He said that he can’t get out of this, and that he wants to get Saeyoung out of here so at least he can be free and that we can continue living on. I don’t want that, but you can’t reason with him, we’re both crying. He wants us to hear out the plan because... this is what he wants to happen because he doesn’t see another option.

These brothers are going to be the death of because with how selfless they are. I can’t even really call them out about it. I would sacrifice myself just as quickly. I guess we’re all stubborn and have that in common. Saeran explains that Vanderwood helped him escape, and that they went back to Jumin. Jumin took members of the former intelligence team and formed his own group in a single fucking day with Jaehee at his side. Jumin is the one that told Zen to lie and make sure that nobody would know about this. Vanderwood and Saeran got into the agency but—

Saeran only had time to hack half of it.

His plan is that Saeyoung, once freed, should be able to finish it and be free from his chains. I... sorry. Everyone is awake with the RFA now. Jumin is still risking it all for us. Everyone is risking so much for Saeran, Saeyoung, and me, and I just... I’m sorry.

I don’t want to leave him. I tell him but... he’s resolute. He say that once Saeyoung is able to take down the agency, Saejoong will lose his power and they will be able to do whatever they can to right the wrongs committed against the RFA. I’m literally bawling at this point, and I’m asking him what is going to happen to him when we leave him behind because—

Rika, V, and everyone else that is against us are going to destroy him once we get out of here. They’re going to hurt him. They’re going to—

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t I can’t do this.

Saeran, please.

Who had “Send Kaitlyn in a fucking bawling mess because he said what he said during V Route when Ray blew up the fucking building because he felt like his life was worth nothing anymore but he couldn’t fucking leave without telling us that his love for us would never die,” on their fucking bingo card because you jus won the game.

I cannot express into words upset I am. This was beautifully written but I don’t want to leave him. I had to stifle my own sobs because it’s so early in the day and I didn’t want to wake up anyone and say that my fictional boyfriend just did this to me. There’s so much that I want to say about this but... I can’t. I’m just so in a state of being overwhelmed. I wasn’t okay after V Route. I sat there for a long time after that happened. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I can’t right now either. I love this man so much, I hope he knows that.

Please, this isn’t the end of you.

Please.

There’s a call with Zen after this. They knew. They fucking knew what he was going to do but they didn’t tell me. They’re expecting me. Zen tried to cheer me up and say that we’re going to save him, he knows that Saeran means everything to us but he wants us to stay positive because fear only festers and gets worse as it grows. I called V after because I needed to hear what he had to say. Once again, he threatened me being “polite” about it. He said that he does not want me to get hurt but... It’s implied every fucking time.

I’m done with you, Jihyun.

He tries to force me to talk about everything but I bite my tongue and basically tell him to fuck off. I’m done. I’m so fucking done. I’m checked out and I cannot stand you. Burn if you want to burn, Jihyun, but I’m not going to let you burn Saeran and Saeyoung because you’ve given up on everything and turned your fucking back on everything.

[12:48]

So. Hey. This was a short one. Rika pointedly is back to her bullshit. She's just... trying to make him.think and agree with her that the past is in the past but it isn't. Just because Saeran was willing to say he doesn't hate someone doesn't mean that he is willing to forgive someone who has continued to hurt him time and time again in his life.

She's fully denying things and telling him to act like a child. She wants to live in willful ignorance of her own misdeeds and pretend her dollhouse life she's planning is going to be perfect for him... for Saeyoung. It's not. Saeran is actually doing this with a lot of grace and care. I know he's sad and resolute. I know. But, he's not going to crack here. He has resigned himself but he wants to enjoy the time that we do have together for as long as we can do so.

Saeran points out that she must feel lonely and hurt herself after what she's gone through and how things went at Mint Eye since it was taken down the minute she left with V. He's offering a small shred of sympathy but it ain't much, trust me. He's trying to distract Rika and V so a lot of this is him playing a part. He calls right after this one and we talk a little. We talk about how strong he has become and he thanks me for being there for him even though I remind him that he saved himself from hell. He notes I'm too humble, that we make each other strong.

He says that I'm an angel for being kind to him and sharing my love. He days our love is like a soft white light, pure, and easy to see. We talk about what Saeyoung may do when he leaves, but I end by saying that he'll be sad without him there. Saeran says sadness will pass. That it will be okay. He will send his love to me in my dreams time and time again. I'm having an aura migraine right now and I think I sparked it by getting so upset. Haha. I offer to check on Saeyoung, he heard something?

Rika and V are out shopping. Rika notes that she cannot stand how Saeran is acting. She doesn't at all want to deal with this... kindness? She wants him to be silent and do as he did when he was a child and nothing more. She literally wants to pretend that it's ten years ago. She is that deep into her selfish desires and she refuses to see anything but this. She darts off to grab fruits and we pause on V. I don't know what the hell is going on in this thick skull of his and at this point I am not even trying to gauge.

He knows he's wrong. I don't care what he thinks he's playing at anymore. He knows that he is a lot of ways in the wrong and buried his head into the sand again. At least you note that she will never change because she refuses to admit that she hurt other people. She would rather play house and pretend.

I hope you're happy with the outcome, V. No matter what you think you're doing, you're wrong here.

[14:07]

A lot happens here, honestly. This chatroom is spent with Saeran. It's a private log where he is repeating what he just said to us. That we will need to leave him and leave with Vanderwood and Saeyoung as soon as possible while he is distracting Rika and V. He doesn't know how he will do it but he's going to do it for as long as he can because he wants us to get far away before anyone can stop us. I point out that I don't want to leave and that Saeyoung, if awoken with the antidote, will not leave him behind. He says that we need to lie if we have to do it. He just needs us safe. He thinks this is the only way. I can't really argue with him, but. I'm clearly distraught and he knows it. He wants us to stay as close as we can to each other until the last moment we have.

He says that even if he suffers, he will feel okay when he thinks of me. He repeats what he said earlier and now I'm still upset. In this context, he says first and past love for himself. He isn't at all talking about us. I'll get to this, there's a call with Yoosung after this and he's having a crisis. He is shocked and upset. He says that the entire time he caught up to speed on the recorded work that they did, he saw Saeran so passionate and in love that he is envious. He wishes he could be loved like that because he isn't sure he's ready for love of that caliber yet. He says that it's so strong that it transcends anything and everything that he has. He is not selfish. He is selfless in the way that he loves.

And he's crying, I'm crying, we're both crying about this. He says to enjoy what time I have with him. Then, he asks if I know what is fueling him. I answer, the freedom of his brother. And, Yoosung sighs, "Your happiness is what he is putting first." Everything, all of this, Yoosung says that he is willing to die if it means I can live on happily.

But, I know I'll never truly be happy without him and we both just. Crack.

As far as the Visual novel goes, Rika leaves and then V gives us another kind gesture laden with threats. It's all about Rika. It's always about Rika. He warns Saeran that he better fake a mask for Rika because she could lash out. He wants this to be peaceful times ahead for Rika. He doesn't want more conflict but I say that he cannot bend Saeran to his will. Saeran agrees. He says that no one will bind him and he will not lose himself no matter what they do or say to him. His freedom was earned by his hands and nobody will rob him of that.

V says that he's decided to be trouble now, and Saeran says that V is clouded by an obsession to be an adult. I add that Rika is playing Peter Pan because she wants to live in a world of terrible falsehoods. V paused, "Do you think I can become an adult once things settle down, even though Rika cannot?"

No answer.

He realizes Saeran isn't budging. And he says he'll have to try another way.

Yoosung and Zen are together, and this is right before he called me crying. He's just so broken up about how unfair all of this. How they should be doing something and Zen agrees. Yoosung says that Saeran is going to die tonight if they can't do something and I know that he isn't wrong and it's my biggest fear. If they don't have the two of them and if they cannot control either of the twins, they'll just kill the two of them the second they get the chance. Zen isn't wrong to say that we shouldn't think about that but Yoosung is always right when it comes to this regard.

Zen sighs, noting that he's gotta watch himself because he's starting to sound like Jumin. He is the one that wanted to run to us the minute he woke up. I trust that. He's broken up too, and I just don't know what I'm going to do next. They say they need to think.

They need to figure something out before... his love for me will be gone and he'll never get to be truly free with Saeyoung because he'll be dead. I really hope not, Yoosung. This is my worst case scenario too.

You get a text message from V as well, after. He says you know, Caterpillars build a home with a hard wall. I say, they make it so they can spread their wings and be free. He responds, I wonder if Rika and I just made our shells harder. I don't know if he's having second thoughts but no matter what he does at this point I'm not going to forgive him. He committed to this and he did this. There's no denying it. Even if you try to make things right at this point I'm still never going to give you a chance. You just don't deserve it in my eyes. The Others May think differently but I really doubt it.

There's no mending your melted wings.

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thedragonslibrary · 5 years ago

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I'm having problems communicating with my spirit companion. Like, I just can't do it. Maybe it's because I'm new, maybe I'm rushing it. But, opening my third eye and telepathy are things I don't know how to do. And everything I've seen so far is either too vague or something I haven't even heard of. So, could you help me? You could link me things or just write it out. P. S. Astral travel is scary but if I had more info and more real life stories I feel like is be more comfortable. Thank you.

Hi there! I know this is an extremely belated answer, and I really hope you were able to resolve this situation. But I’m going to go ahead and answer it anyway, since it may be helpful to someone now!

If you’re new to the idea of witchcraft, opening yourself up, astral travel, and the like, it can be really scary and overwhelming. If you’ve already gotten yourself a spirit companion, it may be the first time you’re introduced to any of these things. But there is no rush - your companion likely knew this going in, and they are not desperately trying to batter through your natural psychic barriers! They are on the other side, being just as patient, waiting for you to be ready.

One of my all-time favorite books about opening yourself up psychically, which has exercises I still use to this day, is You Are Psychic by Debra Lynne Katz. The book preaches an end goal of clairvoyance, but I find that even its first few exercises teach a lot about visualization, and its importance in energy and spirit work. I recommend starting there.

The thing about spirit and energy work is that it is often going to feel like it’s “all in your head,” especially when you are starting out and don’t yet have the skills to tell the difference between yourself and “the other.” But the most important thing for me is being able to explain this in a way that feels logical, even to those who might never have touched any kind of new age thing before. So, yeah, I’ll say it - sometimes it feels weird and out-there. It doesn’t make the most sense in a real-world context. It doesn’t always feel real, you don’t always see visions clearly or in real-time, most people can’t hear the voices of their spirit guides in their physical ears. Almost none of it is physical, actually. A lot of it feels internal.

Telepathy can feel like you’re talking to yourself in your head. Astral travel can feel like daydreaming. Witchcraft can feel like saying silly words over silly items. What brings it gravitas and power is what you bring to the table - how seriously you’re going to take it. How frequently you’re going to show up. I consider it to be a lot like this: I played in bands and orchestras for years. Before, all instruments sounded the same to me, or I didn’t care to differentiate, even if I knew what they looked like and what they were supposed to sound like. But I showed up every day and participated and listened for years, and now I know what each instrument sounds like, what it sounds like combined with others, and how that differs from my own instrument’s timbre.

So, if you’re just beginning to develop your psychic skills, start here. It will take time, and practice, but your patience will reward you in time.

Learn how to ground:

Visualize a cord, or roots, stretching from the base of your spine and down into the earth.

Breathe deeply. As you breathe in, imagine energy from the ground pulling up through that cord, filling you with light. As you breathe out, imagine that light washing away any darkness or blockages with you.

Work from your toes to your head. Take your time. If you feel you need to spend more time on one section, stay there for a while.

When you feel you are done, imagine the cord detaching painlessly from your body.

Learn how to stimulate your third eye:

The third eye cannot be forced open (or if it can, it’s not extremely beneficial for you). When doing the grounding/cleansing exercise I outlined above, take time to focus on the point in the middle of your forehead.

It might naturally tingle, and one day you might feel its sensations come naturally to you. But very few people can physically see with their third eye. It’s going to be more about spiritually seeing - not with your eyes, but with your non-physical sense.

Throughout the day, imagine energy swirling around your third eye, like one of those twirling loading circles.

Interact with your third eye. Press it with your thumb. Think about it casually. Put your palm over it and imagine giving it a warm glow of energy. Put diluted oil blends on it (and be sure to wash them off later, if your skin is sensitive). Take time to take care of it.

Repeat this often. This is an elongated process with no specific end-point.

Create a psychic space for yourself:

Learn to enter and craft a space inside yourself. This is especially helpful as a meeting place for you and your companions. A good friend of mine calls her “The White Room.” Mine looks like a treehouse. Allow yours to fit your needs, and your personality. Let it change and evolve as you do.

Find some quiet time to meditate. You can use free, guided meditations on YouTube to help with this. Once you’ve gotten yourself into a meditative position and a quiet mindspace, imagine going somewhere in your mind. Open a door, go down or up stairs, climb a ladder - whatever feels right. Once you have done this, you will find yourself in a space.

This will feel like daydreaming, and it may not be entirely solid. But you can make it your own place, and over time, with practice, it will solidify. Fill it with furniture, paint the walls, fill the pantry with food. Invite your companions over. They may not feel tangible or may look/feel fuzzy. That’s okay - they’ll get more solid over time.

Ah - whoops! Surprise! You just did your first astral travel! Really! It was inside yourself, but it was real.

And since you were looking specifically for other people’s astral experiences, this blog is pretty cool, although it’s not active anymore.

Practice telepathy with your companion:

This is not going to be like telepathy in the movies at all. It’s a subtler form of communication, and if you struggle with it, you can always try other communication techniques like pendulums, tarot cards, and automatic writing.

Notice your thoughts throughout the day. If you have unusual, stray thoughts, if you catch your thoughts responding to themselves, if you have strange urges to look at or interact with things you might not normally interact with, these are all signs that your companion may be attempting telepathy with you.

Like meditation, sit in a quiet space and let your thoughts drift. Invite your companion to join you, and just let your mind go. Are there any ideas or thoughts that feel out of place? Anything that sounds like not your own internal voice?

This can be a very hard process, especially if you’re not using any other communication method. I personally learned to perform telepathy with my companions by first using a pendulum and alphabet board to talk with them. Eventually, I was able to recognize what voices sounded like “theirs,” and differentiate them from mine.

You can read my post on communication for more info on this!

Above all, I feel I need to emphasize this: Your practice does not have to look like anybody else’s who has written their experiences on the internet. It is allowed to be imperfect, unfocused, messy, and fun. A lot of people, myself included, sometimes go to great lengths to make it seem as though when they are astral traveling, they feel as though they are physically there. That level of immersion is very difficult to reach and can take years after years of practice. I am not even there, I promise you.

Anyway, now that I’ve written an Entire Novel, I hope this was helpful to you or to somebody! Thank you for asking!

#spirit keeping #spirit companion #spirit communication #spirit companionship #communication #nolifekat

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c-is-for-circinate · 5 years ago

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A while ago you mentioned really hating the Persona 4 protagonist as Yu Narukami (from the crossover games and possibly the animation) but liking him as Souji Seta (from the manga, I think?), which is also the name you seem to use most regularly. If you don't mind, could you explain the difference and why you prefer one over the other?

FUCK YES I CAN

(there are Persona people on my dash, that’s so fucking exciting, I have many things to say about these video games and the fandom is small)

Okay so I have lots of thoughts and feelings about the protags from Personas 3, 4, and 5 in general, and about the various versions of them that show up in various media. It has to do with names and gender and how the very specific conventions of being the silent protag of a JRPG translate into creating character, and I could ramble about this forever, so it’s going behind a cut.

Step one: all Persona Wild Card protagonists are genderqueer and neurodivergent. Period.

A persona is, theoretically in game lore, a reflection of your soul–specifically, a reflection of the part of you that you choose to show the world, because it’s strong and powerful and keeps all the weak parts of you safe behind it. In early Persona games, every PC had a couple of different masks they could switch between, and that makes sense, but starting in P3 our party members each get one mask that eventually evolves into another one, and we-the-protag get more than a hundred.

We switch between masks constantly, at the drop of a hat. We learn to level these personas up, we figure out how to be these other people, by watching and learning to understand our friends. And there is something intensely queer about the fact that the masks we put on, with no pause or hesitation, can be male, can be female, can be both, can be neither. Sure, it’s possible to argue that the protag has any certain specific gender identity underneath/behind those masks, but then we’re heading straight towards a complicated discussion about what it means to pass as one gender, vs what it means to model yourself after individuals of one gender while passing or identifying s another, vs what it means to model your actions after a theoretical version of yourself that has a different gender than your own, and like, let us be honest, just having to get that deep into the weeds on that discussion is pretty inherently queer to begin with.

Add to that the essential nature of who Persona protags are as people, based on their reality as video game characters, and we get someone who really does not fit a ‘straight cis neurotypical’ frame. The entire scheduling system in Persona just speaks to every single part of my brain that understands executive dysfunction. You do exactly one thing per unit time. You can wander around town forever, but as soon as you stop to talk to another person, that’s it, that is your One Thing, that is all of the spoons you have for this time period, you can maybe do another thing later. This really hit home in Persona 5, where your protagonist has a goddamn talking service cat without whom he can’t remember how to start any task up to and including going to bed (and people bitched about Morgana so hard, but also #RELATABLE oh my god), but it’s there in 3 and 4 as well if you look. The P4 protag does favors for every single person in town. The P4 protag stands out in the rain fishing for hours. The P4 protag can accidentally spend an entire afternoon petting cats. The P4 protag tries to make tomorrow’s lunch and has to think for a while over whether to add soy sauce or sugar.

So: the video games give us these characters who are intended to be hollow so that we can fill them with our own self-projections (and maybe I am self-projecting here, why not, everybody else gets to do it), but that very hollowness is also a shape, do you see what I mean? You can extrapolate a person based on assuming the dialogue options the protagonists get are actual things that run through their minds, based on what choices are even available for them to make. You can ask questions about what it means to be so hollow in the first place, what it takes to be the sort of person who can switch masks in the blink of an eye when everybody else around you makes do with all of one. It’s really interesting to ask those questions.

Step two: the naming of Persona protags is complicated, and is as much a fandom question as it is a canon question.

In general, persona protags starting with P3 have gotten two names: one in the official manga that starts coming out right around the same time as the video game, and one in later animes and tie-in games. What this means, at least in Western fandom (I don’t know a ton about Japan-only fandom!) is that for the first year or more of having a protag, the only name we have for them is the manga name, and so that’s the name 99% of fandom jumps on in those first several months.

When we explore and extrapolate and do all of that extremely transformative fandom work, looking at the empty spaces around a protag and figuring out who he has to be to fill them (or she, the P3 FEMC is all of this dialed up to a hundred), we at least start doing that work under the manga name. To me–and, in my experience, to most of fandom, whether they think about it or not–the name has relatively little to do with the manga itself. It’s the name fandom had to hand when they first played the game and began to figure this person out. It’s the name for thousands of different interpretations that can fit inside the shell of a person the video game gives us.

I find that transformative labor, and those thousand different interpretations, wildly fascinating. I enjoy doing it myself. I like seeing what other people come up with. Figuring out how to fill the outline of a person who can be anyone (figuring out the difference between Minato Arisato, and Souji Seta, and Akira Kurusu, and learning who they are as individuals by picking out their contrasting spaces) is one of my favorite things about Persona.

The characters from the tie-in animes, then–and from P4 games like Arena and Dancing All Night, which are as much visual novel as video game, where the MC has an extremely distinct personal voice–each present one version of that infinitely-variable character. They’re a single interpretation. They’re a specific interpretation, separate from the many open options of the game itself, they just happen to come with a specific name.

Makoto Yuki, from the P3 anime, is a very different person than the character I played when I played P3, and they’re both very different than the person I write when I write Minato Arisato, the human I extrapolate when I look at all of canon and put my analysis goggles on. Now, I happen to love the P3 movies, and their interpretation of Makoto Yuki, who is a giant ball of severe depression and whom I consider an excellent exploration of the game’s themes of despair and mortality, but I love them like a really, really good fanfic. They don’t trump the ‘canon’ of the game for me; they’re an outgrowth of it. Likewise, I don’t know Ren Amamiya particularly well, but he’s a quiet guy with an inner well of sheer rage that really works for me in what I’ve seen of him. Not my Akira, but a cool dude.

In general, when I’m talking about Persona protags, I use the anime or tie-in game name to refer to the specific version of that character written in that game or anime, and the manga name to refer to that earlier, slightly hollow character of infinite possibilities and fandom interpretations. Which leads us to Souji and Yu.

Step 3: Yu Narukami is a fucking jackass

I think the big thing for me about Yu Narukami, the specific interpretation of P4 Protagonist as seen in the anime and tie-in games, is that he isn’t genderqueer or neurodivergent. Yu Narukami is perhaps the straightest character in all of Persona with the possible exception of Junpei Iori.

I don’t actually hate him in the anime all that much, but thinking about Arena-Yu…he’s a dude. He’s a fucking bro. He screws around with Yosuke over the suggestion of dirty magazines and he’s vaguely uncomfortable about Kanji. It’s been a while since I went through any game LP’s, but I remember the attitude Yu took towards his friends and Labrys, and it was authoritative. Certain. Of course Labrys can overcome her past, now that she has us here to be friends. Yukiko isn’t talking like I expect Yukiko to talk, so of course something is wrong with her.

Yu Narukami, as presented in the Arena games (and I’m pretty sure P4DAN, though it’s been even longer since I’ve seen that) is an In Charge kind of guy who Knows What’s Best for people, and doesn’t particularly need to listen to what they have to say to do it. He shows no sign of ever having molded himself around someone else; he does not present himself as a man (as a boy) who would or even could switch up who he is at a moment’s notice, because he doesn’t seem to be somebody who ever thinks there’s anything wrong with exactly who he is in the first place. Yu Narukami never had a shadow because he just thinks he’s Exactly That Cool all the way down. He pops the collar on his polo shirt not because he doesn’t know any better, but because he is actually that guy and always was.

Needless to say, that is not my Seta Souji, who spends hours petting cats, and rarely speaks up to bring order (let alone authority) to his rambunctious bickering friends in any discussion. It’s an interpretation, sure–and it’s even an interesting one!–but he is not a guy I particularly like.

So how do those two people, Yu and Souji, even fit together at all?

And this is where we go from me having opinions on various actual versions of characters as-written, and start diving into themes, theories, and mythological parallels. There is a way to tell the story where it all makes sense, where Souji (and even the Yu of the anime, who’s got more shades of asshole than my typical headcanon but still sits far closer to my personal version of the protag than any of the douchebro versions of Yu in the sequel games) ties into later-Yu and it’s a graceful, interesting, thematic choice.

I don’t think it was intentional on the part of the writers. But it does work. And here’s how.

Step 4: I go on a digression about persona protags and sacrifice

I have spent way too much time thinking about themes and parallels between Personas 3, 4, and 5 (someday I’ll watch some decent LPs of 1 and 2, but today is not yet that day, so we’ll stick to the Wild Card trilogy for now). One of the things that I love is the way each protag interacts with the big major theme thing of their game, losing it and gaining it and sacrificing it only to gain it yet again, and it happens in all three games.

In P3, the thing at the center of the game is life, in contrast to mortality. You’re in a car crash at age 6, your parents die, you carry Death Himself in the space behind your heart, you spend all game struggling to survive and also trying to figure out why you even care to bother. At the end you die so your friends can live, but also you’re not, quite, entirely dead–you are asleep, and at the end of all the world you’ll wake up and still be there, just you and Aigis and Elizabeth at the end of all things, alive and mortal. In P5 it’s freedom, and you start the game in chains, flash forward and flash back, breaking bonds and forging them right up to the point where you turn yourself into the police, only to eventually be found innocent of even the original crime that bound you to begin with. There are metaphors and angles to the whole thing, the way becoming Satanael is in its own way both a defiance of Yaldabaoth in front of you and a surrender, complying with the will of every furious desperate angry follower-believer-worshipper in the Tokyo streets, but what we care about most right now is how this shows up in Persona 4, where our thing is identity.

The Persona 4 protagonist, whoever he is, shows up in this small town with no identity at all. He had a life where people knew him, but the people in this small town don’t even have rumor and hearsay about dead parents or criminal charges to go on. And sure, every protagonist starts out on a train to a new town, but the P4 protagonist goes even farther than that. You show up in Inaba, and one of the very first things that happens to you, something that doesn’t happen to any Persona protag in any game I’ve ever seen, is that you lose your persona.

The starting persona in P4 is Izanagi. Based on the fact that Adachi’s persona is Izanagi, too, based on the fact that Izanami is the one who granted you access to the TV world and presumably a working persona to begin with, based on every theme and implication in the game–Izanami gives you your starting persona. She chooses who you are. She declares that you’re ‘hope’, and maybe you had some qualities that suited you for that role to begin with, but anyone you’ve ever been is gone now in service to your part in Izanami’s play.

One of the things I really liked in the P4 anime was the protag’s terror of being alone and empty. Now, I enjoy my Souji Seta as someone who’s a little bit hollow and empty–not in a bad way, but like a clear glass that can be filled with anything, and takes on the color and nature of whatever it holds–but right, in a story whose main theme is identity and accepting yourself, being infinitely transformable is both ideal and terrifying. If the P4 protag can be anyone, how can he be someone? In the end, the only identity that’s really his and not copied from one of his social links is the one that Izanami gave him. His final persona, Izanagi-no-Okami, has more to do with her than anything that comes from inside him.

Loss and gain, sacrifice and victory–the P4 protag goes back to his old life, sacrificing the person he’s created for himself here in Inaba to reclaim the person he theoretically used to be. Depending on how you read the ending, he gives up his infinite adaptability in order to fill himself with a final persona that is chosen for him, sacrificing his innate capacity to be anyone (which is in its own right a key characteristic of his self) in exchange for becoming someone, specifically a someone who was chosen for him.

(This is more my interpretation than anything I’d consider strictly canon, but–in my head, the P3 protag achieves that final moment of apotheosis, and the god-binding power that comes with it, from the sacrifice of his own life and also the fact that after Death lived in his heart for ten years straight he’s explicitly no longer entirely human to begin with. The P5 protag achieves it by sacrificing his own individual freedom to the collective belief and prayers of literal hordes of desperate people, which we know is full of power because that’s how cognition works. The P4 protag, I have always suspected just a little, gets it from the actual Izanagi–because if the actual Izanami is the source of all of this trouble, the actual Izanagi must exist too, and to trap a god you must be a god, in some small way. Our protag is given the tools of power to seal Izanami away, and in return he must become a tool of that power.)

There are a lot of ways to interpret the themes and echoes and actual events of P4 vs P4 Golden vs P3 and P5, and this isn’t necessarily Objective Truth, but this is very much where my head goes when I think about Souji Seta and Yu Narukami. Souji is the empty, unflappable chameleon boy who spends his time becoming whoever the people around him need him to be, whether that’s a silent confidant or a valiant hero. Yu is the bold, self-assured young man who has discovered or decided exactly who he is, and knows deep in his heart that he never has to hide or change for anyone, ever again.

Step 5: Yu is a dick because Izanagi is a dick, and okay, fine, I kind of love it that way

All of Persona 4 is about retelling the myth of Izanagi and Izanami, and changing the ending.

This is true for P3 and P5 too, of course. In P3 you walk into Tartarus with everyone you love already at your back, and you set them free to do their own thing (they make their own moves in battle, you don’t turn back to check on them, you trust them to follow or not follow on your own and every member in your team makes their greatest moments of personal growth without you there), but eventually one of you has to stay behind so the other can leave–so you fix Orpheus’s mistake, you stay in the underworld yourself so Eurydice and everyone else you love in the world can go home and live. In P5 you tell Satanael’s story backwards and forwards, the rise and the fall and the rise again; you start at the very bottom of your own pit (you start as the God of Control’s very own chosen one and don’t even know it), and eventually you climb so high that you’re the one who gets to cast God down into perdition instead. Start with one tale, end with another.

The story of Izanagi and Izanami is: once upon a time, through no fault of her own, Izanami was sent to the underworld, and Izanagi loved her so well he ventured down after her. But she was changed down there, her own darkness grown gross and rotten, and though she tried to hide her ugly parts Izanagi did see them. And then he didn’t love her any more; he fled, and trapped her there in darkness forever, to protect the whole world from her flaws, and never ever looked at his own.

You spend all of Persona 4 doing exactly the opposite: venturing down into another world to find people trapped there, and facing their ugliness, and embracing them and drawing them up into the light anyway. Namatame is Izanagi-who-dooms-them, though his intentions are good (Izanami died giving birth to Izanagi’s child in the first place). Adachi is Izanagi-corrupted, claimed and twisted by the darkness of the underworld and his own power, with no mercy in him. But the P4 protag gets to play the Izanagi of compassion, who tried to save his wife in the first place–and we get to fix it. We get to save people. We get to save everyone.

Until we get to Izanami herself, because Izanami can’t be saved. This all gets way more complicated in Golden when we add in Marie, but in the end, we’ve still got our protag standing in front of the goddess Izanami, sealing her away with Izanagi’s power for the sake of everyone else in the world, because she’s too dark and corrupted to bring back out into the light after all.

It’s really interesting coming at all of this from a Western perspective, because I…can’t actually tell if, playing through P4, we’re meant to like Izanagi? Are we meant to be on his side in the end? Are we meant to feel like we’re on this whole quest serving penance for his ancient mythological fuck-up? Are we meant to think that Yu Narukami, who’s embraced Izanagi in all his pride and self-righteousness as his own inner self, is the good guy?

Because yes, Izanami was trying to destroy the world. And yes, we saved it by trapping her, just like Izanagi did in ancient myth. But the Yu Narukami I see in the sequel games is so very much the guy who thinks he gets to decide who’s good enough to get saved and who isn’t. Labrys deserves to be saved, and because he’s decided to be her friend now, she will be, just like that, because of course he has that power.

By the time Arena happens, Yu has embraced and accepted Izanagi as his true self, flaws and all. (Let me not forget to point out the sister-complex kingpin title, for the man whose persona is a god that married his own sister. Let us literally never discuss Nanako as Izanami, because that gets really uncomfortable so fucking quick.)

And Izanagi is a dick. Which means that Yu isn’t, can’t be the quiet, gentle person I see when I try to extrapolate a most-probable Souji out of P4 canon alone. Yu is an asshole because that’s the person he’s chosen to be, the identity he’s claimed to replace the one he sacrificed, and I am on reflection kind of into that.

But also he’s still a dick, and therefore I kind of hate him for it.

#acelania #persona 4 #driveby meta attack #yu narukami #souji seta #gosh I should rewatch some of the anime or the later tie-in games #if I can stand to #I do love this series

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discovering-ellie · 3 years ago

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August 20, 2021

I'm sorry this post has come so late in the day -- don't want you guys thinking that I'm already falling off of my Mindfulness Accountability Wagon already -- I guess I really need an accountabilibuddy to make sure I roll these out on time. I most definitely pulled my Day Seven card this morning but, being that it was my lazy day to do whatever, I didn't exactly want to jump into writing about it right away. I wanted to let my day play out a little bit and see where I ended up before settling in to write.

So, this morning was Day Seven and I was feeling the "Curiosity & Joy" section a little today. I also decided to start the Less Anxiety Affirmation Cards and the Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills decks today instead of on Monday because, fuck it, I make these rules and I can do what I want.

Front: Look even closer

Back: "Take the time to pay closer attention to things that you would normally ignore. Learning to look at things in fine detail allows your mindfulness practice to become more refined with greater levels of subtlety. Try zooming in on a few objects in this way -- a piece of paper, a lamp, a leaf, or even a sensation in your body. Explore it in new detail, giving it attention as you never had before."

My Interpretation: This card really didn't feel -that- challenging to me today. Visually speaking, I love to narrow my focus in on the minute details. I can have lengthy conversations about the slight differences between colors and textures so much more easily than I can make small talk sometimes. Even during those times where I'm actually participating in one of my most favorite hobbies (photography.... I know, it's been a LONG time), I tend to specialize in the macro. I love the textures of nature -- flowers, tree bark, even snow. I can stare at ice for hours if I have a have a camera in my hand. In terms of architecture, I'm drawn to clean lines and shapes, smooth marble, and intricate detail. My favorite, above all, are the rust and countless layers of peeling paint when urbexing. There is so much history to be seen in those layers, now giving way to decay and the sands of time. I used to drive my friends crazy with how many different angles I would get of the exact same thing. It's just hard to take me away.

Today, I focused on the more physical, tactile side of things, namely the subtle difference between the smoothness of the inside of my anxiety ring and the very fine coarseness of the metal that makes up the spinning outer layer. I noted the difference in my sneakers -- instead of my normal "hey, I'm working for the day" sneakers, I wore my current favorite pair and immediately felt the difference. They're sturdier, the insoles still perfectly in tact, further confirming the fact that I need to get myself a new pair of sneakers for work.

Plan of Action: I want to start giving more attention to the smaller details of the things that make up the world around me. How are they different? How are they similar? What can I learn?

This week's affirmation card: "I am already everything I am trying to be. I will see that if I stop for a minute."

I actually shuffled the deck a couple of times before I randomly pulled this one and I really like it. I get in my own way a lot of the way, especially when I think I'm not doing as well as I should or is expected of me. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do to put this affirmation card thing into practice except, maybe for the week that I'm focusing on this card, close these mindfulness card posts with it.

This week's DBT Skill Card: While the mindfulness and affirmation cards are random draws, I'm just going to admit that I purposely chose this one. The DBT deck is divided into four sections: Distress Tolerance Skills, Mindfulness Skills, Emotion Regulation Skills, and Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills. I sort of just skimmed through the deck before finding one that I really felt was more "for me" right now and settled on a selection from the Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills Area -- #42: Establish Valued Relationships.

The Card: "Review your values and set positive intentions for each of the important relationships in your life. Then, interact with others according to those values and intentions. Also, set expectations about how you want to be treated and establish clear boundaries to protect yourself, if necessary. Start today."

Plan of Action: I'm honestly probably going to keep this card around for two weeks instead of one and update occasionally in regards to its progress because this specific area is one that I have quite a lot of difficulty with.

My plan includes voicing my thoughts, needs, and concerns with the people in my life as they arise, rather than downplaying them or ignoring them until I can no longer hold any of it in.

I've already begun setting expectations and boundaries with work (which, I'm sure there will be an update on tomorrow since I didn't work today and, thus, have no updates in regards to whether or not my concerns are being taken seriously). I also need to start enforcing the idea that, no, I'm not going to do _____ because it's my day off. I've had issues trying to enforce that boundary but, now, I've come to the point where I feel as if I have to start actively enforcing it.

In terms of personal relationships, I'm going to continue to work on being open and creating a channel of clear and honest communication. If you're here reading this, I want to work on this with you in any way that I can. Sometimes, when I get really into the habit of sharing things, I tend to feel like maybe I'm over sharing or that I'm updating too much. In those moments, I consider pulling back, but then I have to remind myself that opening this communication and being so forthcoming is exactly what I need to be working on and that, if I need to stop, I'll be told to stop. In the coming two weeks, I intend to work on improving that with as many of you as I can.

#mental health #mental health blog #mental health journey #mindfulness #mindfulness cards #DBT

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punkscowardschampions · 6 years ago

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Ro & Ali

Ro: …---… Ro: Mayday mayday Ali: This is AlleyCat, roger your mayday, position is our bedroom, how can I be of assistance? Ro: That was a very efficient response Ro: What would your ETA be for reaching the fantasy section of the library? Ali: Constant vigilance, Rosaline Ali: 15 minutes ish providing the hairy-footed hobbits aren't too thick a crowd to cut through Ali: What's the danger? Ro: Let me preface by saying that I could burn a forest of cedar and do not believe I'd be adequately protected Ro: Now that you're forewarned, I'll explain Ro: Kayne is here because his dear sister is having a party at which he is unwelcome Ro: As if her birthday wasn't already cause for lack of celebration enough, I can now not escape his attentions Ali: Yikes! Not to mention the environmental damage too, and if it's not gonna work, we're defs best to avoid Ali: Also the Librarian would probably think you were blazing up back there and using pages of an old Jilly Cooper as roaches and who wants to be tarred with the same brush as Donovan O'Reilly? Ali: Gross, skip the protection spells and the like and go straight for a swift kick in the balls Ali: How is it he's ALMOST as delusional as his sister? Not in this galaxy or one far, far away, honey, c'mon Ro: Precisely Ro: Not to mention of all days today I chose not to wear black and I don't need the ash blow back to ruin this outfit Ro: He's in no way worth that damage either Ro: Hm! I couldn't possibly do that, though I have pondered long and hard enough to suggest telling him that we'd (providing you and Carly would be willing to tag along, that is) crash the party, only to leave him there and make our escape Ro: Perhaps I'm being delusional myself to create a narrative whereby Laoise isn't hyper alert to our presence upon all occasions Ali: That's what it is, you've let your cover down and he's taken it as an invite! Ali: Though sure, you could probably wear a potato sack and he'd still be mooning Ali: Ha, that would be hilarious though! Rock up with a card and a bottle like, hey babes Ali: Least we could leg it, only a few doors to safety, after-all Ro: Oh Ali! I don't know what he sees in me and frankly do not wish to know Ro: What would be proper attire for a soiree at your nemesis' house? Ro: I'm certain she'd love to see me a potato sack even more so than her brother would, so I'll assume not that Ro: Exactly, why would she ever be hesitate to drink anything we offered or read anything we'd scribbled on a piece of paper which may or may not be a curse?! Ro: Very amusing. Unlike the conversational loop I am currently stuck in Ro: To use the term conversation very loosely, of course Ali: DUH, you're beautiful AND smart, not like other girls! Gag Ali: [Sends multiple options with are a lot of black silk, lace, fake fur and leather moments] Ali: Right? We're the perfect party guests Ali: Been ages since we tried anything dark sided, don't let the chic looks fool ya Ali: Oh Lord, what is he even? Last time I got stopped by him on my way to the post office he was prattling on about some online game and I should join and Ali: I'd feel bad for him but he's also intensely dislikeable and entitled with it all so Ro: Oh god, you're not actually considering putting my pretend party crashing into action, are you? Ro: I'm as tempted right now as I've ever been to dabble in dark arts, but that's solely for his benefit, and my own in ending this interaction, not hers Ro: He's offering to tutor me right now, which I neither need nor believe to be his real intentions in asking Ro: I know I'm not as scholarly as you, but that's why I'd turn to you if I needed assistance, not someone whose scores are not even on a par with my lesser subjects Ali: Of course I am Ali: She knows she misses us, you know I know that you need saving Ali: Win win on many different levels Ali: 😂 Nice try, bud Ali: How cliche, taking too many lessons from bad porn and worse romcoms himself, like Ro: Please no Ro: If you bring an invisibility cloak I may consider it, but otherwise Ro: As for Kayne, I almost miss the days he used to put slugs in my hair Ro: He had the excuse of childhood to blame his cliches on and we had some new pets into the bargain Ali: It all comes down to who you'd rather be fighting off, him or her Ali: Pets, or INGREDIENTS, eh, Leesh? Ro: I just snorted, so score one for appearing unattractive, thank you Ro: If I take off my glasses will that likely add or deduct a point? Ro: But to answer your query, the way I see it, Carly's owed a rematch so maybe we should go to the party Ro: Birthday beatings are a time honored tradition, no? Ali: Welcome, if he gives us room to pull of an anti-makeover I bet I can get that score in the minuses Ali: He's defs into the glasses vibe, makes him think he gives a shit about what's on the inside and your brain, as if you aren't the epitome of beauty still Ali: Ooh, true, true, many scores to settle, rights to wrong...I'll see if she's down or wants her own training montage to counteract yours Ali: Now you're sounding like a McKenna! Ro: But even if I switched to contacts, dyed my sister's hair and went shopping for an entirely new wardrobe, he'd still take my personality as an invitation Ro: As though I crafted any of this to appeal to him, or indeed to repel his sister Ro: Just trying not to lose my own voice here as he mansplains the plot of the novel I was faux browsing Ro: I may take a swing for him if this continues for much longer however, and thank Fearghal later for the lessons Ali: You mean its not him, him its all for him? Shocker Ali: You got two options way I see it (still on the peace path, your soul can thank ME later) Ali: Either outwit him and pick a book he so won't understand and show him up with your superior intellect, easy or hard mode, act infuriatingly dumb 'cos that would dead put him off his ideal of you Ali: like Shakespeare who? Is that the Leo movie? Ro: Both excellent suggestions Ro: And I could indeed wax lyrical about how gorgeous Leo was in that movie until the library closes so Ali: Honestly, proof of angels Ro: Thank you, yes! Ro: Not that it's needed, but if people insist upon being ignorant, there you are everyone Ro: He'd never talk down to me about Trolls and Orcs Ali: Seriously Ali: If our teachers ever got creative with the assignments, then I could too, dissertation READY on how this dirty world of ours has tainted him Ali: not quite fallen angel level of dark deeds but he's certainly aging into a Nicholson and not a Caravaggio Ro: If you keep discussing his visual decline I'll have no need for an escape route because I'll simply burst into loud and dramatic tears Ali: Oh God, don't Ali: He'll want to comfort you Ro: Oh Ro: I never thought of that and I hope the mental image never crosses my mind again Ali: Yeah, that's his shit, worst type Ali: as bad as the boys making you cry, that's right Kayne, I said it Ro: I don't understand why he likes me when you exist Ro: Surely you're his type, as you are the bad boys around here, as well Ro: Sorry Tess Ali: Nah, I'm not as nice as you Ali: thus not worthy of his lurve Ali: Devastated, of course Ro: You're nicer than me, as Carly can attest Ali: Only to those who deserve it Ali: He gotta know that Ro: He believes he is one of the chosen though Ali: As far as I know he's neither Jewish nor Harry Potter so Ali: not that those are MY parameters 😂 Ro: He's proud of not having read any of the Harry Potter books as far as I know Ro: And to think we could ever be together! No no Ali: 'Course he is Ali: HATING POPULAR THINGS ISN'T A PERSONALITY TRAIT, NOR IS IT INTERESTING OR ENDEARING TO PEOPLE Ali: Shouting so he can hopefully hear Ro: I would tell him but I'm so embarrassed by everything he's already spoken aloud that I can barely speak Ro: I have to get out of here Ali: Run baby run Ali: I can do a stellar Ma impression Ali: out of the realm you'd be in trouble but I can ring you with drama like Ali: FUCKING HELL, GET HOME NOW, ROCKY'S ON THE ROOF AND THE CHICKEN'S BURNING AND ALI IS NO HELP AT ALL AHH Ro: Please do Ro: I didn't expect to be asking for an invocation of your mother to get me out of trouble but I gladly shall Ro: And owe you one too Ro: I've been on and off my phone so he can't appear as if it'd be out of the blue Ro: Oh and now I'm rhyming... Ali: Find yourself in times of trouble, Mother Tessie comes to thee, speaking words of wisdom, let it be Ali: On it Ali: Scouse don't fail me now Ro: If you keep making me laugh this plan is going to fall apart Ro: If in doubt, speak angry Gaeilge, he doesn't so he'll never know what you're talking about Ali: Into it

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