#i remember wishing this during babel too

[lacnunga]

Anyway. Reading the poppy war and I am enjoying it however every time this weirdly contemporary language pops up i am rudely jolted back into reality

[rolotouto]

More translations (June)

Translations and opinions, too.

・Rolo: I will (protect) Brother! Kallen: The one from that time at Babel Tower? ・V.V.: You were a failed product, you know? Rolo: I'm not a tool! I really like seeing Rolo defending himself before V.V.. For a 63 year old, V.V. sure doesn't have many intelligent things to say other than throwing the same insult over and over:

V.V.: Rolo was a failed product. For his life to be shortened whenever he uses his Geass... "defective" is putting it mildly. Well, guess he can be used for assassinations at least. Is it that Rolo's life was shortened each time he used his Geass, or that each time he used his Geass for too long he could die? Because, if it's the latter, then provided that he was careful, arguably using his Geass didn't affect his health long term, but if it's the former, Lelouch sure didn't mind making Rolo have to sacrifice his life span for trivial things like protecting him from girls during Turn 12... Opinion time: Even though I want to believe that Lelouch wouldn't actually knowingly allow Rolo to shorten his life span, as I'm convinced that he cared about Rolo during all that time he told himself that he hated him, I wish Rolo acknowledged that it was very cruel of Lelouch to manipulate his emotions, and that Rolo's only reference to how Lelouch hurt him wasn't just a vague 'Brother used me' (which is always quickly followed by 'but he made me human' so that the audience doesn't have to think much about how Lelouch did wrong). His Home or Trust lines in Lost Stories would have been the perfect place for Rolo to show us more of his point of view, but instead, as I complained last time, he sounds a little too repetitive with the 'Brother made me human' and 'I will protect Brother' lines. In the anime, because there's no time for more, proportionately Rolo gets much more focus, as in a few minutes he: -Rescues Lelouch against Lelouch's demands -Monologues out loud despite having no listeners -When Lelouch wants to know 'Why did you save me?', he makes Lelouch have to change that lamenting tone and join him in pretending that everything is okay by giving Lelouch an answer that Lelouch didn't expect Rolo is the one in control during those scenes, while Lelouch temporarily becomes a "secondary" (passive) character. And because we don't see what he was thinking between Lelouch yelling at him and him deciding to save Lelouch, it's possible to interpret that Rolo *was* in fact hurt and resentful that Lelouch never even attempted to give him (<-a child who had only known abuse throughout his life) that future he promised, and that Rolo giving up his life to save him was, partially, his own way of forcing Lelouch to always remember him (plus he also called Lelouch a liar, which, even though at first glance he only does to protect Lelouch from feeling guilt, could also be an accusation Rolo wanted to make and get off his chest). Lost Stories even depicted Rolo still asking Lelouch to keep his promise around Turn 16, but then we see Turn19!Rolo's thoughts and there's no hint of shock or anger after Lelouch reveals he was manipulating Rolo from the start? I think that is too selfless to the point where it becomes lack of self-respect... Well, back to the video: ・Rolo: I won't let them kill (Brother)! No matter what! Lelouch: Please stop! Do you want to die? Battle interaction between Turn5!Shirley and regular!Rolo (not Turn19!Rolo): ・Shirley: Hey, do you know where Lulu is? Rolo: You are going around wearing that...? ?! Why would someone like Rolo care what she wears... How does he even have a concept of what kind of clothing is appropriate or not?! Love his formal Japanese though. A different login bonus line: ・Rolo: Excuse me, did you see Brother? He left without me realizing it... And teacher Villetta was looking for him. Yet another Home line that I'd never seen before, but that he started using around a couple weeks ago (used by any of the 3 Rolos): ・Rolo: There are still things I don't understand (lit. "can't read") about you. I wonder if I'll end up understanding them if more time goes by. June line (any of the 3 Rolos): ・Rolo: Come to think of it, I have not ridden the motorcycle lately. It's probably the same for you, right? You know, seeing as it won't stop raining...

Yes!! Thank you for remembering Rolo's life contains more activities than just thinking about niisan!! I did not translate that as "my" motorcycle because I think he only ever drives Rivalz's and doesn't own one... Home line that isn't part of the in-game archive (Turn19!Rolo only): ・Rolo: This locket... It's okay if I keep it until the end, right...?

😢

[orangecookiewhagt]

once again talking about lemon demon and Babel

this time it’s lifetime achievement award and more general about Babel as an institute and having more focus on Robin

beware spoilers and long

🏃🏃🏃

Die-hard fans adored your hands/They loved your throat and quote-unquote, "You"

About how Babel uses kids from different countries to translate texts

Babel acts like they love them (the people), but they only value their languages because they benefit the empire

Hey, remember Michael Jackson?/Michael Jackson really happened/Delta, Echo, Alpha, Delta/walking on the moon forever

Talking about how even when babblers die their translations will still be used even if they aren’t remembered 

For example Evie and Anthony’s silver work (we definitely see a bias from professor Playfair when he’s adamant about not touching Evie’s desk, while he barely acknowledges Anthony’s “death”)

You are dead and buried, you are dead (oh, no)/That's being revised/Even as we speak, we're synthesizing blood and organs/Synthesizing heart and soul

About how people like professor Lovell will take children from other countries, erase almost all of their connection with it so that the kids will turn into translation machines

Think of it like how professor Lovell called Robin different from other Chinese people because he was raised “properly” (isolated from any sort of contact with his culture)

When we get your heart to start tomorrow/When you see the chart tomorrow, you'll be number one

Professor Lovell (attempted) raising Griffin and Robin to be perfect, smart kids that don’t break the rules 

Basically he tried to mold them to become his ideal translator but failed terribly twice

Bro, you look amazing/Really put together/It's like you haven't aged a day, oh/It's like we know what we're doing or something

About Robin trying to act like everything is normal while he’s working for Hermes at Babel 

Even though sometimes he doesn’t even understand what he’s doing or what impact it has

You've been gone for way too long/Like half a year, an entire career for some

About Robin, Ramy, Victoire and Letty running away from Babel during their fourth year

And Robin and Victoire coming back to take it over

Good luck getting into Heaven/if you live past 27/Listen to the radiation/Put you back in circulation, oh, no

Griffin telling Robin that students like them have to fake their death to get away from Babel 

Ain't no cemetary you can't shed (oh, no)/Ain't nowhere you can hide/Don't be frightened of us/Soon enough you're gonna love us, just remember

People like professor Lovell make it so that kids like Robin have no choice but to become babblers because they’ve been so isolated from their home they have no where else to go

Babel is their only source of livelihood 

This is your last ride/ever, forever/Fill up your lungs/Feel better?/Look, it's you/good as new

About Robins character change after he saw what opium was doing to the people in Canton and after he killed professor Lovell 

Robin turning into a different person who sees violence as a necessity 

New hands, new throat/new living tissue/You earned this new purpose/Lifetime achievement award

About how Babel is constantly finding new translators and how it is a “great honour” to work for them

Don't be nervous, baby/We put a billion eyes back on you/From the grave to the stage/You're a natural, babe

About Hermes always watching Babel 

More specifically Griffin watching Robin

And Robin acting like a normal student while he’s secretly working for Hermes 

Due to my strong personal convictions (Due to my strong personal convictions)/I wish to stress (I wish to stress)/That this record (that this record)/In no way endorses (in no way endorses)/A belief in the occult (a belief in the occult)

Griffin making Robin swear that he won’t tell anyone about his Hermes activities 

also just the general vibe of the song is just Yeah

[cerastes]

I just remembered his monologue over Doctor and now feel pain. Him lamenting how a crucible if war was born and wishing that person instead was never forced again into strife again and lived on as teacher and also on what they were fighting for. ... i suspect he was unloading his sorrows on doctor since doctor was not yet warcrimes but like, he continued doing this apparently when doc was like, almost bereft of emotion that was not hunger for victory and goal achieved and that's impressive.

“i suspect he was unloading his sorrows on doctor since doctor was not yet warcrimes”

This is what I personally think, and the whole monologue Scout gives, I think, serves as pretty solid evidence that Scout is one of the longest lived veterans and most decorated elites Babel had. In other words, Scout probably befriended Doctor back when they were still an academic and held many an interesting conversation with them. It’s very likely that it wasn’t just Scout that confided in Doctor, but that Doc reciprocated as well.

And this leads to the perfect opportunity to address something I think we’ve been doing wrong: We’ve been considering Warcrimes!Doctor as two dimensional, I believe. We focus too much on them being a war machine.

Allow me to elaborate.

It is fact that they would eventually become a Beast Of Logic, so to speak, a creature that focuses only on winning battles, no matter the cost, but that’s very likely not all they were, even after the change Scout so sorrowfully describes.

Take Amiya, for example: She has the utmost intimacy and trust with Doctor, and makes many offhand references to past events that Doctor doesn’t remember but that she treasures. Doctor, even as a Beast Of Logic, did have some connection with others, likely select few people and only with those they knew before the switch with few exceptions: For example, W and Doctor never bonded, and we know W met Doctor after they already had changed, but the likes of Ace and Scout, veteran Elites, are very clearly enamored with Doctor. This likely was the case with Kal’tsit, Theresa, Closure (who is friendly with Doctor) and Amiya as well. Scout mentioning that W could confide with Doctor if she so wanted wasn’t an empty gesture: Despite knowing as much as he does about Doctor and what they had become, Scout still chose to see them as a friend and as someone apt to help others. Perhaps he saw in Doctor and W a chemistry that would allow them to be friends, had either ever taken the first step (neither did). Despite how cruel they had become, Doctor still apparently had their funny moments, such as their habit of eating weird things or eating things in weird ways, banter with Kal’tsit, bonding with Amiya, and whatever it is they had with Theresa, implied to be close enough that Doctor could apparently be in Theresa’s quarters and this would be seen as normal. As much of a bloodthirsty Beast Of Logic as they had become, terrifying enough for W to refer to them as “The Evil Spirit of Babel”, they still had a semblance of humanity outside the chessboard, with those they were close with.

And I think that’s what makes this even more painful, what makes Scout’s monologue even more painful, and what makes Kal’tsit’s interactions with Doctor in Chapter 7 even more painful.

It is easy to reject a monster.

Pariahs are pariahs because we don’t want them near us. No matter how effective and skilled and, dare I say, necessary someone is, the reality is, they won’t last if they have but burnt bridges around them. The reality of it all is, Doctor was probably still likable, if unsettling. It is not even subtext that Kal’tsit was having fun for a second with Doctor during some points of banter during Chapter 7, it is text, Actual Empath Amiya very much says “oh, wow, Doctor Kal’tsit, you are smiling right now!”, unintentionally shanking Kal’tsit in the heart with the agonic stake of nostalgia because, yeah, Kal’tsit and Doctor were probably very close in the past, and their seamless banter showed it. No matter however it is you wish to read their dynamic, either as that of colleagues, friends, or ex-lovers, it is rather painfully apparent that they used to be close, and Kal’tsit even has to take a stand and say: “No, I have to say this, I will not let this person close to me ever again, this is simply work”, even if she painfully misses this rapport, even if she aches at the thought of never having what they had again, because she knows, she knows something so terrible that it has irredeemably burned this bridge.

“Kal’tsit is being unreasonable. She’s a medical professional, she should understand the duress that comes with amnesia, the burden, and that Doctor can’t be blamed for it, she should understand she shouldn’t act that way towards someone amnesiac and blame them for things they did before they lost their memories,” you may say, and I can’t blame you for it, but hear me out:

Even if Doctor’s memories reawakened, even if Doctor was presented with the chance to reassess their choices, even if they repented, or looking at it the other way, even if Doctor truly forgot everything forever, you cannot change how Kal’tsit sees Doctor. She made clear she won’t let the hate buried deep inside of her bloom, but she has the right to keep it. She has the right to remain angry forever.

The thing with amnesiac narratives is that they focus a lot on the amnesiac, and so, we sympathize with our amnesiac protagonist and obviously defend them from people blaming them for things you could argue they never did, but we never really think about the victims of their past acts, and how they are entitled to all the anger they have, because whatever it is that happened that sowed it, it still happened, even if the guilty party doesn’t remember it. It isn’t as simple as tabula raza, the person currently standing in front of Kal’tsit might not have done the terrible thing she remembers, but they absolutely have the potential for that cruelty. And she has every right to hold onto her emotions, be they anger or wariness. Nothing you say can change that.

Nothing.

And so it becomes all the more painful to think that Scout probably had a drink with Doctor every Thursday, they’d talk about whatever, and all the time, Scout would see glimpses of this charismatic, kind educator he once knew, now replaced in part but never in their entirety by this Beast Of Logic. Consider that, and Scout’s monologue feels like something he’s telling himself more than something he’s telling to Guard before he goes off to his death.

Scout held a little eulogy for a remarkable friend he once knew before heading to his own funeral.

Because it’d be easy to reject and pile bile and blame on Doctor if they had become complete monsters.

But the painful and probably reality is, they likely didn’t.

Which only made it all the more painful to bear for those that knew the old educator.

[literaryfic]

Chapters: 5/? Fandom: 빈센조 | Vincenzo (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Vincenzo Cassano | Park Joo Hyeong/Hong Cha Young Characters: Hong Cha Young, Vincenzo Cassano | Park Joo Hyeong Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, vincenzo leaves, set five years after he left sk, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, vincenzo and cha-young are exes, they were in a relationship before, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Jealousy, Exes, Getting Back Together, Not Canon Compliant, i wrote this before ep 20, Canon-Typical Violence, Smut

Summary: Oh, how Cha-young wishes she could forget the past five years. Now that her anger has faded, she remembers clearly why she sealed herself in it; after anger comes sorrow, something she’s not sure she can overcome.

And just like the never-ending revolution of the Earth around the Sun causes the perpetual change of seasons — when flowers bloom after the frost melts and Spring follows Winter —, Cha-young finds herself knocking on Vincenzo’s door. They were two supernovas meant to collide and, although Cha-young wasn’t quite sure whether the impact would annihilate them or create a new form of life, she didn’t care.

“Who the fuck do you think you are, Park Joo-hyung?”

He opens the door, letting her in. She marches on, the door closing in a thump behind her. She turns to face him, his jaw is set. Both of them follow the familiar steps of a tango they’ve danced before, playing the part of an opera they know the end to.

“How dare you threaten and intimidate someone close to me?” She screams.

“Is that what he told you? Did he mention the phone call—”

“This has nothing to do with your behaviour!”

“Of course it fucking has, Cha-young-ah” Vincenzo is losing his temper too, and for the first time since they’ve met again, he’s yelling.“That bastard’s cheating on you, for fuck’s sake! Did you just expect me to pretend I didn’t hear anything? I thought you said we should be friends. That’s what friends do.”

“Whether he’s cheating on me or not, that’s none of your business. And I take it back, I don’t want to be your friend, I don’t want to be your anything. Leave me alone.” Cha-young’s index finger is pointing at him, and suddenly she realises how close they’ve gotten in the heat of their argument. She’s flushed, anger shading her cheeks red.

“You’re the one who came to me.” He whispers.

She can feel his breath on her face, and it’s taking everything in her to not look at his lips. His intoxicating scent is making her feel dizzy. She bites the inside of her cheek, the sharp pain bringing her back to her senses. She takes a step back.

“Because you think you can just waltz into my life as you please, Vincenzo.” She’s not looking at him anymore, the edge in her voice softened.

“If that were true, we both know very well that your little boyfriend would be dead by now.” His lips curl. His tone might be playful but she’s not sure he doesn’t mean it.

He’s looking at her and Cha-young knows he’s trying to make peace. He’d never liked to argue with her in the past, and he especially hated screaming matches. To everyone else, Vincenzo was intransigent, intimidating or even frightening. However, during their relationship, and although he’d been stubborn, he’d always been strangely compromising. She started the fights and he ended them. He would crack a joke, apologise and kiss her hand. He would burrow his face in her neck, wrap his arms around her waist and mouth ‘Forgive me’ against her skin. She’d feign resistance until he’d start tickling her. Then, they’d laugh together, forgetting about why they fought in the first place.

Oh, how Cha-young wishes she could forget the past five years. Now that her anger has faded, she remembers clearly why she sealed herself in it; after anger comes sorrow, something she’s not sure she can overcome. Submerged by a wave of melancholy, she can’t hold back the truth anymore.

“He’s not my boyfriend.” Vincenzo’s eyes widen, he’s stunned. A few seconds pass, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to say anything, so she goes on. “I lied. I’m here with my employees, he’s my personal assistant.”

Finally, the weight of her words strikes him. “Why did you lie to me?” He asks quietly, his face unreadable. Was it so foolish of her to search for relief in his eyes?

She swallows the lump in her throat. “What, so you could see how pathetic I was without you?”

There it is.

In a few seconds, the man she loved would realise she’d always been nothing more than an empty shell on the shore, discarded by the seas. All her life, Cha-young had been abandoned by the people she cherished. Whether it was intentional or not, it seemed that no one stuck around for long. Contrary to what one might think, her father had been the first one to go. He’d stayed out late, prioritised his clients over his family and avoided them. Then, her mom had gone, her loss altering Cha-young’s life and identity so profoundly she had began to think of herself as split in two — pre-death Cha-young, the one who had been naïve and hopeful, and post-death Cha-young, the jaded and bitter adult who had designed her life around self-preservation. Later, when her dad passed away, abandoning her for the second time, she had promised herself that she wouldn’t let anyone leave ever again. She had wanted to protect those around her: the tenants, Babel’s victims’ families, the innocent.

Slowly, her partnership with Vincenzo turned into something deeper, into something more. She’d prepared herself, readying her heart; he would leave soon. But everything changed when he sealed the promise of forever with a kiss— or so she thought. Cha-young realised a heartbeat too late that she had mistaken an oath of love for an act of war; she had taken him prisoner, put him in shackles and thrown away the key.

Odysseus, the legendary hero set on an epic journey, had accidentally landed on Ogygia, and Calypso, the troubled nymph, had fallen in love with him. How could she not, when he was strong and beautiful, and she was lonely in her exile? She had held him captive as long as she could, but she had no claim over him, and the devastating sadness she had felt after he had escaped was laughable. He had deserted her, the last remains of their love piercing her heart like shards of glass.

“You’re not pathetic.” Vincenzo said firmly, interrupting her thoughts.

Cha-young turned away from him. “Drop it.”

“No. None of this is your fault, Cha-young-ah.” He closed the distance between them, and she could feel him right behind her. “I wanted to tell you later but— I legally changed my name to Park Joo-hyung. Wanna know why?”

“Because it was obnoxiously hard to pronounce?” Her attempt at diversion doesn’t work.

Instead, Vincenzo grips her arms and presses his forehead against her shoulder blades. She’s still not facing him, compelling herself to not look at him or touch him or feel him against her.

“I hated it so much that just hearing it made me sick. I hated myself, Cha-young-ah. Not because of the murders, the torture or all the atrocities I’ve committed— no.” He laughs wryly. “It’s because of what I did to you. Leaving you is the one sin I can’t seem to forgive myself for. And that is pathetic.”

She holds her breath. One. Two. Three. She faces him. Red eyes, hollow cheeks, desperation carving deep lines on his forehead. He looks like a tormented devil.

“What do you want, Vincenzo?��� Cha-young whispers, an echo of the past.

Slowly, he locks his eyes on her. Those eyes, she thinks, they’re back.

“To repent.”

One. Two. Three. Cha-young grabs his face and kisses him. At first, Vincenzo stays still, hesitant. She’s about to break the kiss, reality catching up to her, when he opens his mouth and slips his tongue in hers. His hands grip her waist, bringing her closer, bringing her in. Her heart is beating so loudly she can’t hear herself think — or maybe she gave up on thoughts, and now she only feels. She feels him flush against her, she feels his hands; they burn her, leaving the imprint of him all over her body. God, how she had missed him.

There is no romance between them, only a visceral need to possess each other again. Soon enough, they’re on the bed, Cha-young on his lap, her hands pulling his hair so hard he hisses. Vincenzo bites her lower lip as retaliation and she rolls her hips against his erection, staring at him. He moans, head thrown back. Cha-young’s right hand cups his jaw firmly, making sure he’s looking at her. She wants to watch him fall apart, unravel under her touch.

“Take off your clothes.” What she asks, he does — rather awkwardly, she has to move off of him as he gets up, discarding his clothes on the ground without a care. He gets back on the bed from which she’d been watching him strip, lying next to her, completely naked. Their five years apart have somehow made him hotter, his upper body more toned, his biceps firmer. She counts a total of six or seven new scars, one of them still pink-ish and swollen. She reaches out, her finger following the gash running from his navel to his lower abdomen. He gasps when she doesn’t stop where the scar does — she continues on her way, surely, and takes him in her hand.

Vincenzo’s heavy breathing guides her movements, telling her when to stroke faster, when to slow down, when to twist. She stops right before he’s about to come, and the frustration in his eyes turns her on more than anything her last fling ever did.

“Don’t stop.” He asks, going in for a kiss.

Cha-young puts her hand on his mouth, “Tonight, I’m in charge, Joo-hyung-ah.”

His eyes light up and he smiles, “Yes, ma’am.”

Slipping out of her dress in no time, she climbs on top of him, taking his hands in hers and putting them above his head. There’s something thrilling about having him at her mercy, vulnerable under her. He’s hard against her thigh, and although he’s not talking, she hears his silent plea. Slowly, she sits on his cock, savouring the pleasant stretch; he feels so good, and her so full, at last.

“Oddio!” On his lips, God’s name becomes a curse.

She keeps a slow pace, it takes time to revisit a long-lost lover after all. She rolls her hips, turns, bounces. Once she’s figured out how to pleasure herself, she moves faster. Closing her eyes, she frees his left hand and puts it on her breast. Vincenzo is nothing if not an eager disciple trying to prove his worth, and so he caresses her enthusiastically, his thumb brushing against her hardened nipple. What a good boy, she thinks, before pressing her body against his, engulfing him in a kiss.

His hand finds her hair, cascading down her naked back. She kisses him everywhere — his lips, his cheeks, his neck. She needs to have him whole, to consume all of him, so she can keep him in her forever. She feels a familiar warm building up inside of her, but she’s not ready for it to be over yet. She stops bouncing on him abruptly and his eyes fly open, irked. She intertwines their fingers, and whispers, “Look at me.” Once again, he obeys her command, his eyes roaming her face, her breasts, her thighs. They go up and down, taking her in, devouring her. She feels hot under his gaze, and she picks up the pace. He parts his mouth, whimpering faintly. He thrusts back into her hard, and they find the right rhythm. Soon enough, Cha-young is there, right there, a white-hot flash of pleasure overwhelming all her senses.

“Cazzo!” He must have come too then. Fuck, indeed.

Cha-young is still on top of him, Vincenzo still inside of her. She rests her head against his chest, their flushed skin sticky with sweat. He’s playing with her hair absentmindedly, still trying to catch his breath. She looks up at him, and they kiss again, but this time it’s different. She feels it all, his longing, how much he’s missed her, how scared he is that this is all a dream. In this moment, she can’t tell where she ends and where he starts. She’s never been closer to him, never understood him as much as she does now.

Were the tears on her lips hers or his? The time for questions will come later, right now there’s only them, together — an ever-lasting moment they stole from the Fates.

[kinetic-elaboration]

April 10: 2x14 Wolf in the Fold

Watched Wolf in the Fold last night. The only thing I really remembered about this ep going in was that it was a Scotty ep. Which is true but also… slightly misleading. Also that it had to do with Jack the Ripper—which is more true than I remembered!

A decadent intro… I get why Spock isn’t here but I actually DO think he would be into it.

Matchmaker Kirk lol.

Scotty is so awkward. This is the other detail I remembered from this ep, actually: how Scotty wants to applaud using his hands no matter what. (Even with those cool lights RIGHT THERE lol). Old Aberdeen pub crawler…

This is honestly such a bizarre back story: Scotty got a concussion because someone who happened to be a woman made a mistake and now not only is his head all funny but he has a “total resentment toward women.” Like okay, nothing creepily sexist in that concept. Also –they ultimately barely even use it! I know it’s the implied rationale for why he would suddenly start murdering women and also not remembering it but it’s like such a flimsy excuse that they never say it out loud in so many words for fear it should sound too stupid. Which it would. Honestly, you really only need the concussion imo. Why go into the weird misogyny thing at all?

And now Kirk and Bons head off to a brothel, giving me a total resentment toward men.

Nice eerie fog out here. Very Aberdeenian.

Okay, so this woman was stabbed a dozen times but she only screamed once? And then a second later, Scotty had somehow teleported several feet away, still holding the knife? He’s good at his job but he’s not that good. This is already deeply suspicious.

“Therapeutic shore leave.” Trying to cure his hatred of ladies lmao.

So this weird little bald man, Hengist, from Rigel IV. Is he an alien? I suppose he must be. Rigellians are a race, as we know from Journey to Babel. It’s not always clear to me which groups of people are Earth colonists who have migrated to or been born on other planets and which are humanoid aliens.

The Aurelians are a gentle, harmless people. Cute. I like these aliens.

I wish we could hire aliens to be our administrators. Alien Overlord and Taylor.

“I’ll be taking over, since I am the highest official.” He out-officialed him.

I like this guy and his slightly creepy empath priestess wife. I feel like Spock would like them, too.

Speaking of: Spock in the captain’s chair. Hot.

I don’t get how this planet is the only space port around. Like… could not any planet be a space port? What does that even mean?

Oh no, a woman with the lie detector machine! She must be incompetent and/or to be despised.

I love Sybo’s outfit. Her hair and jewelry too. Honestly just a great head-to-toe look.

Another murder! Sorry but this one is on the Aurelian for just leaving the murder weapon out there unattended.

Generally speaking, the costume and set people are doing allllll the work in this episode.

Hengist went to look for suspects and he came up with the victim’s father and fiancé?? He’s not even trying lol. Anyway, he obviously did it.

How can you NOT tell if a lock was picked or not? I mean I know McCoy is a doctor, not a locksmith, but come on. It can’t be that ambiguous.

Spooky mumbo-jumbo.

Interesting that Spock doesn’t trust the mumbo-jumbo either. I guess he only approves of it when it’s Vulcan.

When Sybo says “monstrous evil” the camera is looking right at Hengist. Not suspicious at all. He’s only clearly railroading Scotty, looked right at the second victim before she was killed, was in the perfect position to take the murder weapon after it was carelessly left about, and is the most obvious non-Scotty suspect here.

I love how loyal Bones is. He literally saw Scotty holding Sybo and the knife with blood on his hands and is like “It’s impossible he could have done it.”

So many of the “truth discovery” devices on TOS are truly creepy. Like they’re all clear plot devices, and for that reason depicted as completely reliable, and the more completely reliable they are, the more deeply disturbing they become upon any reflection at all.

That’s a pretty computer though. All those pretty flashing lights! And it runs on floppy disks.

I literally just remembered what happened.

“Scotty, lie to me, how old are you?” / “Twenty-two, Sir.” Yeah, I’d say that’s a lie.

So like this allegedly all-powerful computer is literally just a lie detector. That’s it! A lie detector that picks up on psychological signs of lying, just like our lie detectors today. I mean… you could have just said that straight out. All they do is show what a person believes to be true, so in the case where someone truly doesn’t remember something, the usefulness is… limited.

My mom suggested a Vulcan mind meld which, actually, would pretty much solve the problem! But for once Spock actually treats it like something serious and not to be thrown out as a solution to all problems at the merest suggestion.

Someone needs to do a fashion line based entirely on the Argellian outfits.

Spock is internally eye-rolling at all this drama. I feel like he’s a real advocate for the computers today. That’s like… really his only role.

The computer’s linguistics banks don’t know what this word means? Maybe we should get Uhura on the case.

Plot twist: the killer was Jack the Ripper the WHOLE TIME! The last one you’d ever expect.

I don’t get how the computer made the leap from Redjac to Jack the Ripper since that is not a real word and no one outside of this episode of TOS has ever used it for Jack the Ripper.

“Everyone feeds on death, even vegetarians.” So dark, Spock. So emo.

Aw, alien creatures that derive sustenance from love. Adorable. There should have been an episode devoted to them. (Wait a minute…. Idea coming on…)

Speaking of gaseous cloud aliens…the Companion?

This episode really relies a lot on the computer to provide information and otherwise move the plot along.

Kirk keeps ignoring everyone to just talk to Spock.

“Cloud the issue” lol that’s a good pun. (Already can’t remember who said it but… point stands.)

The cloud entity feeds on women because they are more easily and deeply terrified. That sounds fake but okay. It’s also not in keeping with what Sybo said, is it? She mentioned a hatred of women. That’s not the same as finding women useful.

Hmm, when do we get our Martian Colonies, @ perseverance?

Oh, Rigel IV, you say? There seems to be a Rigellian right here!

This whole history of the entity is bizarre. The first killing sprees (that we know of) are on Earth, and Kirk specifically says that when man left Earth to explore, he took this with him. Does that mean… the cloud creature/entity originated on Earth? Truly a bizarre hypothesis, when you think about it.

Are you the entity, Sir?

There is actually very little Scotty in this Scotty-centric episode.

Lol the knife originates with the hill people of Rigel IV. What is this, Deliverance?

Omg Kirk punched the entity right out of that man!

So to summarize: “Jack the Ripper is actually a gaseous cloud that is capable of infecting the computer system of the Enterprise, thus hijacking the whole ship” is the basic, wacky concept of this episode.

This tranquilizer could quiet a volcano. Where was it during the volcano scene in STID hmm?

Kirk’s plan to keep people from being scared by the maniacal voice of the entity: Tranquilize the entire ship. That’s why he’s paid the big bucks.

Yet another twist on the old Kirk v. Computer plot. Time to use Math to defeat it.

Kirk is so unimpressed with the entity. “Eh, shut that off.” He would not be moved by a haunted house.

“This is the first time I’ve heard a malfunction threaten us.” Sulu can man his post AND be funny; he’s multi-talented.

Kirk and Spock don’t need tranquilizers because they’re smart enough to know this high-pitched voice yelling random threats just isn’t actually scary.

Kirk is really insistent that Sulu man his frickin’ post!

Oh no, not PI!! My nemesis, PI!

I’m really living for Sulu here.

If the entity entered a tranquilized person, it might take up knitting. I gotta say, that doesn’t make any sense as a plot point but I like it anyway.

That was a very efficient tranquilizing job! Everyone in a 400+ person ship in like 10 minutes? Get the medical team on the Enterprise in charge of the vaccine distribution stat.

Kirk just outright assumes that Spock won’t be a hospitable entity choice. And he’s not even wrong! The entity chooses the dead body over Spock or Kirk. It knows when it’s not wanted.

Hengist has been revived!

The entity is honestly, truly hilarious. Die, die, everybody die! Kill! Kill you all! Maniacal laughter! All while being carried by a still utterly unimpressed Kirk down the halls of the ship.

Spock’s like ���get out of the way, you tranquilized idiot. Got some entity-scattering to do.”

“I gave them a pretty big shot, Jim!” Think you might have slightly overdone it, Bones? You didn’t need to make everyone useless for 6 hours for a problem that was solved in 5 minutes!

This is one of those moments, Kirk trying to get Spock to see the pretty ladies with him, when Spock seems super gay. Like, I don’t even think he is, that’s not my reading of him, and I also assume that wasn’t the intention here, but that’s just so clearly how it reads.

Aw, Kirk doesn’t want to go the strip club alone. Poor bb.

Weird how Lt. Leslie was in this when he died in the last episode.

Overall, I’d actually have to say that was a very crack-y episode. I liked the ending the best because it was so ridiculous.

What I don’t understand, in addition to whether or not the entity was really supposed to be from Earth, was how it came to be Hengist. Like, it can enter and leave bodies (or computers) at will, so perhaps it just entered Hengist, a normal Rigellian, at some point. But if that’s so, putting him on the transporter and scattering him into space was a pretty cruel thing to do. Also, why did he die (or appear to die) when the entity wasn’t in him? That implies he is the entity’s physical form. But then, first of all, how is also a Rigellian? Like did the entity mate with a Rigellian? Did the entity take over a baby Rigellian? Did the entity just claim to be Rigellian but is really just humanoid in its physical form—we did establish that some aliens, like this one, or creatures or whatever, are gaseous sometimes and solid others, so maybe its solid form is humanoid. Which would fit well with it originating in Earth, although that also brings a new and perhaps unintentional layer of creepiness to the story. I have to assume that’s the situation, but still, wild. And it doesn’t explain this: why does Hengist “die” when the entity “leaves” him, as opposed to just disappear entirely when the entity changes form??

Anyway, I know I’m overthinking this very wacky premise. Overall, I think the episode was fine. It didn’t have enough Scotty (for being a “Scotty episode”) and it changed genres an awful lot for 50 minutes. There was a tad too much misogyny going on. And overall I didn’t feel like the characters—even Kirk, and in actuality this was a Kirk episode much more than a Scotty episode, and purposefully so—were at their most interesting. Tbh Sulu ultimately stole the show in the final minutes.

Next up is the Trouble with Tribbles! Also a funny episode but at least undeniably purposefully so!

[overhotchoco2]

.*.  Soft To Be Strong  .*.

“The vulgar error is to think that love is a kind of illusion. It is the fault of bad poets who encourage this mistake. ‘I am completely enraptured,’ lovers say, as if somehow they were being deceived. When the affair ends, they say, ‘I have been stripped of my illusions’. When they cease to love, they say, ‘Oh. I see him clearly now.’ The reverse is the truth. The everyday world is shrouded. We see it dimly. Only when we love do we see the true person. The truth of a person is only visible through love. Love is not the illusion. Life is.” - D. Hare

Do you ever get this sensation that when you meet the one, it’s just supposed to work out? Little effort, and the effort people talk about (“relationships take work”) isn’t supposed to be that difficult, confusing, painful.. “real” effort. Not only that, but all your individual issues up to that point (baggage, walls up, disappointments, calluses) will magically go away when you lay eyes on each other or talk?

But in reality, I think some of us experience �� not that. Meeting the one will not magically make you less afraid of the things you’re afraid of, magically solve all your “childhood” issues (basically, any issue up to that moment, really), magically make you a perfect communicator and listener, magically fuse together with another person’s habits, fears and different perspectives. No amount of knowing they’re the one will remove doubts about them as a person, your readiness for commitment, make life fall into place or even guarantee you’ll be together happily ever after from that simple fact. And some say it isn’t even a fact; that “the one” or “your person” (or to us 80s children: “soulmate”) isn’t even a thing, but a choice, which I personally feel it’s people’s excuses of ignoring all of the above (and below) to keep on searching for that perfection that is right under their nose. I do think “the one” does exist, but like I said, I also think it’s not a guarantee you’ll get to spend your lifetimes together, unfortunately, because - I think we have this idea in our heads that it’s not supposed to be hard. We think when they say “it’s hard work” it’s either not as hard as they warn, or that we can simply avoid it cuz we don’t need anyone else but ourselves. And that’s interesting, because some of the wisest, most spiritual and enlightened people I personally know, don’t quite agree; we’re social beings, and we’re partner beings. Being alone is not only not genetic, but it’s for the ones who choose to stay afraid.

And I can be quite easily put in this category.

But I want to go back to - we think when we meet our person, it’ll just flow and we’ll just be in sync and know each other beautifully and perfectly; finish each other’s sentences. Then we discover, if we’re lucky to run into our “one”, that maybe it isn’t so. But we’re kinda maybe taught that we’re supposed to; that it’s supposed to be perfect.

“Why do I feel with every atom of my being that I found the one, but yet it’s not fitting like a puzzle, and I still have all these fears, and are these my fears or theirs, etc. etc.?” is what we might ask ourselves. It shouldn’t be so hard, I shouldn’t be afraid, I should be elated and in a long honeymoon period - just a month, oh no! Run away! That means it’s not the one.

But “the one” isn’t about actions or feelings or sensations. It’s something you just know when you’re open to … well, everything. The whole Universe.

We all have heard the saying (and if not, you’ve heard here once or twice so far) that relationships take hard work; they’re not easy, they’re hard. How much do we really hear that and understand how hard the work actually is? And what type of work, too. I can tell you - not much. We just say it and repeat it cuz we sound mature, but we all think it’s not going to take that much work, or… and this is another good one: you’ll be magically inspired and excited to do the work. The person will be “worth it”. And then we get into a whole other issue of not feeling worthy when things don’t work out because one or both choose to keep looking or fleeing.

Where did we get these ideas, though? It makes absolutely no sense. You take two people who have been brought up differently, have different innate perceptions of life and everything in it… heck, you see it in siblings how different and how volatile those relationships can be, and they grew up in the same house with the same parents, going to the same school, etc. etc. And you expect, especially nowadays where people meet from across the globe, two people to magically just fuse and skip through a field without any problems, without any huge, major, difficult, excruciating problems in tackling those differences? Ever?

I think when it hits you, it hits you. May it be experience, may it be age, may it be self-work, may it be luck, may it be fate - I think when you get it, you get it. And it doesn’t have to be when you found your person. It can easily be before, during or even after. Those who somehow get it before, I think are the lucky ones. Those who get it during just in time, I think are also lucky enough. And those who get it after, I think it is unfortunate. I don’t believe when you meet your right person, you’ll want to make it work more, it will be easier or nothing can tear you apart. You can choose to ignore it. You can choose your fears, your doubts, your ego before it. It doesn’t make it any less true, nor false. When you find the right person especially later in life, I feel we have invisible, thick and heavy walls of baggage; we think it will be like the first crush in high school - all simple, straightforward, clear and doable - but it’s more like the Grinch or Scrooge trying to not be… grinchy and scroogey. If we’re lucky, we’ll try, but we may be so far gone in our defenses, we may not even try or see a need for it.

We think when we meet the right person, and I use “right person” for those that do not subscribe to fate and stars ✨ and aligned faith… it can be someone you choose based on some criteria, all logical and so forth,we think we can unload everything and they’ll love us unconditionally, even right away, too. That somehow they’ll just understand us. That we’ll understand them. If you’re christian, perhaps you know of Babel, and if you’re not, you at least know the translation software; and if you don’t know either, Google always has the answer.

As people, we live in this illusion that we actually understand each other when we speak the same language. I remember how in disbelief I was of Anna and Mursel - how can two people who can not speak more than a few words of each other’s language, know they love each other and they’re the one? As much as I believe in “ones”, I even found that one hard to believe, and you do start dismissing it and diminishing it “oh, it must be a scam. No? Well, it must be based on looks. Maybe not? Well, it must be because they can’t understand each other and they’re in love with who they think the other one is…” and so on and so on. But isn’t this just our jealous cynicism built out of calluses life’s thrown our way?

“Love is not the illusion. Life is,” as D. Hare says it. If you have been so deeply hurt by life and by love that you hold on strongly to your cynicism, then you can say this is just an opinion, a poetic movement and perhaps even that it didn’t work out too well in the play and it’s been taken out of context. I wouldn’t know of the latter, I don’t really know of either of them.. but when I saw this quote a few months ago, it clearly exemplified what I’ve learned, and I’m still fighting with every fiber of my being, even knowing this is right; surrender yourself.

This potential propaganda of some wounded people scorned in love- the more I learn about humans, the more I’ll say that it’s probably self-harm but they might not realize that - of how love is blind, or that one puts on love goggles triggered by mere chemical reactions for procreation in their brain… what benefit does it bring you to believe it vs. the other side? Because you choose to hold on to it or adopt it for you think it benefits you in some way. But I say - surrender is the true way.

A few months ago, I stumbled upon a song that spoke to me in a way no one saying the same message has ever gotten through to my core, to my ego, softening it to put its weapons down (or at least start thinking about it).

Marina - “Soft to be Strong”

“I know it's hard to be soft I know it hurts to be kind I know that when love is lost It's only fear in disguise

And I guess I've known it all along The truth is you have to be soft to be strong Finally, I feel the fear is gone I found out love has to be soft to be strong”

And my favorite part that speaks to my most hurt inner child:

“And I made myself believe Other people wanted to hurt me”

I urge you to listen to the song as it transmits meaning much better in its natural form.

This has been a long one, but it’s also been a while and it’s such a packed subject - I haven’t really even gotten most of it out on this virtual paper. But I hope enough to make you self-reflect a little bit.

I know there is a “one”. I know it goes beyond physical, mental, emotional attraction and it has little to do with any of those three’s logic. I don’t think I know that it’s a guarantee, unfortunately. But I don’t know that it’s not. Everything points in the direction that we can screw it up, or maybe as it was fate to find it, it was fate to lose it, or maybe we may never be able to shake off what is truly for us.

I have many regrets I can’t think how I would’ve done different, because how can you prepare truly for something you don’t know, never experienced before, can’t be taught, and at times you may not even believe in? All I feel I can do is be better now, and lean into whatever comes next. Yet, I still feel unprepared for any of that.

I wish finding “the one” would be magic. I wish it would be easy, everything would go right, both would choose to work at it and on themselves, at the same time, in the same way, with the same understanding. Not everyone out there with someone has found the one, and some are truly very happy. I think if you have, you’ll understand this message, but if you’re one of those, you might disagree with it or understand it differently. We’re all as clueless as the other, though. Who knows what the truth really is. All I can say is I believe every word I wrote on this virtual platform. I’ve felt all of it in a way words might fail to convey its meaning.

My life has gone through a lot of … a lot, these past few years. I may not have experienced everything everyone else has experienced, but not everyone has reflected necessarily as much as I have, either. It’s not a competition. Finally, I feel calm and awake and even happy. I’m grateful for how life’s turned out lately. Don’t think this is coming out of a bitter left-of-center feeling. I’m at peace. I’m excited most of the time about how much more I see now than ever, and also coming back to myself from who I’ve shed along the last ten years little by little. I choose to be happy, but my person is a real thing and with all my respect, love and peace in my heart, they will always be with me wherever life has yet to take me. I don’t know why. I don’t have the answers. I just have the observations.

“No shame in being sincere” - Marina

...and thank you to all before me through whom I can see this.

[miraitaxi]

BUCK-TICK DIQ-2017 live report

Kyoto Rohm hall - Nov. 9th 2017 (Part 1)

First I’d like to state that I don’t consider myself a hardcore fan in the sense that I don’t care for personal lives of the artists, leaks, bootlegs or other obscure contents. Call it a different word if you may, but I think I’d call it a passionate fan - I love the artists for what they do more than their works themselves, and I am always cool with whatever road they wish to take. I think that each song that the band creates has its own life, and although the band can do the best performance of that song because they know it best, the song exists to be brought to life by anyone and everyone. Thus the band is only there to materialize what needs to be materialized, and not for analyzing the expectations of their current fans and producing music only to please them. I started thinking about this when I frequented the perfume fandom and saw how much hate there was when the new album didn’t meet their expectations. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard Otsuka Ai say that she doesn’t want to go back to her previous style, and I’ve also read several reviews of people complaining that her new stuff doesn’t sound like it did before. Artists create what they believe need to be created, even if that means disappointing their previous audiences. I guess that’s what makes some artists go mainstream, which is not a bad thing at all either. It’s just that some people criticize artists for going mainstream, and others for not taking the mainstream path. This is one of the reasons I usually don’t read critics that judge bands with personal opinions, but read instead analyses of the music itself (Cayce does some great analysis at https://sites.google.com/site/lyricsyndrome/articles/reviews). And maybe that’s also one of the reasons why I myself don’t do live reports…

But the reason I had to share that rant, and the actual reason I don’t do live reports, is because I rarely remember what happens at live concerts 😂 Every time I go, the music goes directly from my ears to my follicles and I spend two hours in ecstasy and when I come to my senses I’m all sweaty with a sore throat and arms. I really feel lucky for being a person that experiences musical frisson several times almost on a daily basis. I also enjoy concerts with my eyes closed for considerable amounts of time - missing a few visual seconds of the band is nothing compared to the feeling of being bathed with the raw sound (and the screams of people, if there were any😒. Seriously, listen to e.g. Jupiter live from the Catalogue 1987-2016, disc 3 song 2 - it is CHILLING!). Plus, the last images I see before closing my eyes get burnt right into my brain and they’re the most precious memories that I get to keep. When I got this ask I had to google the playlist of the concert because all I remember was it starting with Dokudanjo beauty and finalizing with New World. So here is the playlist I found. Now that I see it I didn’t even recognize oriental love story

01.独壇場Beauty -R.I.P.- 02.ICONOCLASM 03.ANGELIC CONVERSATION 04.THE SEASIDE STORY 05.Oriental Love Story 06.スピード 07.LOVE PARADE 08.ノクターン -Rain Song- 09.サファイア 10.BABEL 11.BOY septem peccata mortalia 12.Django!!! -眩惑のジャンゴ- 13.絶界 14.Memento mori 15.COSMOS

-アンコール- 16.MACHINE -Remodel- 17.夢魔-The Nightmare 18.愛の葬列

-アンコール- 19.JUPITER 20.MY EYES & YOUR EYES 21.New World

So let’s start. As usual, the audience wasn’t very loud, compared to their early years. I mentioned this sometime before, but I don’t know if it’s because:

A) social behavior has changed - shyness, loudness not being socially acceptable, etc. (I remember seeing other artists with a much livelier audience so i don’t think that’s it)

B) only new fans are loud, and now that only long-term fans remain for BUCK-TICK, the loudness is gone (the 夢見る宇宙 tour dvd sounds amazing and it wasn’t that long ago, so I doubt this either)

C) the idol culture has spread everywhere; people go only to admire their idol and not to listen to me butcher their songs

D) the loudness hasn’t changed, they just used to hide microphones between the audience but I can’t tell because I didn’t go to the first concerts

E) it is forbidden by law

Whatever the reason it is, the band now needs to adapt to it, and I think Dokudanjo beauty was a great opening song, and if it had to be one song from a single it’d have to be either this or Glamorous in my opinion. This song has it all: music starts before the band is revealed, it’s followed by heavy snare and bass with good rhythm, and even though it has one of the easiest choruses which I hoped would have people singing along at least to this, it does have a lot of clapping which people love so at least that created good ambience.

Then we got some ICONOCLASM, but since I pretend to be able to play the bass for this (all the 3 notes!! 😏0530 3053) I was too busy getting U-ta blow his load all up in my ears to care about everyone else. I did expect Sakurai to let us say “5 for japanese babies”, but that was something that did not happen.

Then there was Angelic Conversation, which also gets the people wild like Jupiter does, but this time I did expect more heat from the fans. Also this is one of the favorite songs of the person who introduced me to BUCK-TICK so it’s a song that I enjoy on a very personal level. Since I was on the 3rd floor and most of the stage lighting was shining upwards directly on my face I had to listen to most of the songs with my eyes closed, but as I said before that’s not problem at all.

After that there was The Seaside Story. The song had the same intro as it did on the Atom Miraiha No. 9 Tour. With the playlist from that tour, the intro blended well with FUTURE SONG, but on this tour I might have missed something because I didn’t feel the same flow between songs. What I’m glad they kept was Sakurai singing the end of the second line from the first and third verses with full throttled anger (どうって��とないわ ＆ でもかまわないわ）.

I’d like to skip Oriental Love Story here and instead talk about their wardrobes. Hoshino and Yu-ta were wearing standard Hoshino and Yu-ta clothes, respectively. Yagami先生 was wearing his long-tailed coat and no top-hat. I can’t recall what Imai was wearing, but his hair looked like it was on fire like in the  BABEL single and several if not all the other The Parade photos. Sakurai was wearing, and I haven’t seen other photos of it yet, thigh-high tights with a vertical fishnet strip on the front, with magenta velvet high heel short boots. They weren’t as hidden as his tights from the Atom Miraiha No. 9 tour. I just loved that there were several 12 year olds or so in the audience with their mothers, learning since young that a displaying your tights as a 50 year old male is something to take with pride and confidence.

Speed and LOVE PARADE followed. Both are great songs that are enjoyed without needing to add anything more than their studio versions. In LOVE PARADE, Sakurai stood back in the dark while the parade silhouette was projected on the wall, so it was more of a “letting us sing the lyrics” kind of song, as it was originally designed to be in my opinion.

After that they played Nocturne. Assuming you don’t download all their collection illegally (i’m watching you) without the struggle of finding out of press discs , I don’t think all the people are familiar with maxi-single songs like Nocturne. I don’t even know if they sell the singles in digital format now. The song had beautiful lighting effects, so I hope that those who weren’t familiar with the song before loved this performance enough to go get the single.

It was then that I hit my climax, when they performed Sapphire. One life, One death is one of my favorite albums but other than Baby, I want you I don’t really see other songs from the album being played live. I was just recovering from ICONOCLASM when Yu-ta dropped this on me. I never expected I would be able to experience it live. What I love from this song is that it feels like there’s a part of the lyrics reserved especially for the audience (Don’t let me down - take me to the end of life), that we can sing while Sakurai does his part. It is songs like these that really make me feel connected to the band during live concerts.

Right as I was on my second recovery from bass overload, they played BABEL (after some promotion by Sakurai). I purposely didn’t watch the BABEL PV until after I got my copy, which was to be after the concert. I let the band surprise me with a live performance, and boy did they overdid themselves. I loved the bass line for this song, which I think I have heard before somewhere on a different song but I can’t put my finger on it. (I also think Baby, I love you has a similar to rhythm to Enter Sandman by Metallica but my friends say I’m crazy…). The chorus of this song was also easy to catch up to. Before I knew it I was singing along to a song I’ve never heard before. By this time the fog inside the theater was getting really thick and I think that for the lighting to match the mood in BABEL this would be a song better played on the beginning.

Then they played BOY -septem peccata mortalia-. I still can’t pick a favorite song from Atom Miraiha No. 9, but as its live versions go this is one that I really like. I feel that for songs where they project the lyrics on the back wall, this is one where it really adds to the song (the other one I like: DADA Disco). I really wanted to see Imai play lying on the ground with his feet on the air, but this didn’t happen this time (or at least I don’t recall it).

[kingbrunnhilde]

A Massive Spones Rec List

The Spones fandom is made up of some of the most talented people but is tiny and in need of more content. Due to this fact, there are significantly less Spones fics so I searched extra hard to compile a good, lengthy list of fics.. and somehow managed to find way more fics than I did for my Mckirk one?? Why am I such trash, help I need a life.

(Listed alphabetically: ** = favourite)

Addressed to the Damn Doctor by ElloPoppet | 2.5k, T

Spock writes McCoy a letter of confession, despite not quite knowing how to write a love letter. (A super sweet insight into Spock’s mind, especially on his thoughts on the Enterprise’s resident doctor.)

Best Medicine for the Worst Patient by gammadolphin | 8.5k, T

It’s a special kind of hell, becoming obsessed with the laughter of a man who barely even smiles unless he’s high or dying of blood loss. Leonard doesn’t handle it particularly well. (A hilariously frustrating fic in which Bones becomes a little too obsessed with trying to hear Spock laugh just once more.)

Blues March by IntuitivelyFortuitous | 7k, T

Leonard McCoy sees his friends bleed. He loves the blood when it is inside them, flushing their cheeks and warming their skin. When it colors his hands on the operating table, he can think of little but the time he has with them, and a minute is too long to waste. He’s not going to let Spock get away that easily. (Gruesome and sad yet somehow really sweet.)

The Body by therev | 13k, T

McCoy’s consciousness is transferred into an android body after a fatal accident. Spock helps him remember the man he used to be. (Wow a really creative and fascinating fic that could have gone totally wrong if it hadn’t been written by such a talented author.)

Body Temperature by MaidenofIron157 | 4.5k, G

Average Vulcan body temperature is approximately 8.6 degrees lower than humans’. It is only logical that Spock would eventually become cold within his lover’s quarters. The doctor comes up with a solution. (The blanket cocoon, the clothes sharing, Spock being in love with Leonard’s scent.. asdfghjkl too adorable to handle.)

Compassion Is a Virtue (But I Don’t Have the Time) by therev | 5k, E

McCoy and Spock switch bodies. Things get out of hand. (I love the way the author addresses the difference between human and Vulcan physiology. And you know, there’s also some sexy times too if you’re into that sort of thing.)

Do Vulcans Dream of Electric Doctors? by Neigedens | 4k, T

“It’s probably not even your fault, Spock,” he muttered. “I was probably destined to go mad in space some day anyway. You probably just made the process a lot more efficient. How typical.” Dr. McCoy has got Vulcan on the brain. Set during “The Search for Spock.” (The usual Spones banter but whilst sharing the same brain. Bonus: dream sharing.)

The Edge of Never by therev | 17k, T

Alternate ending to “City On The Edge of Forever”. Edith Keeler didn’t die. Jim couldn’t let her. The triumvirate are trapped in the past with an altered future. Jim must correct his mistake while Spock and Bones get domestic. Set in 1930s New York and rural Georgia. Mostly pining of the space doctor variety. (I didn’t know I needed domestic 30s Spones until I read this omg. And don’t let the 'slow build’ turn you off because it’s so worth it.)

Everything About You by sleepymccoy | 2.5k, G

A minor transporter accident has Bones and Scotty squabbling about safety while Spock watches. Spock gets lost in his own thoughts, thinking about his relationship with Bones. (‘Vulcans don’t get distracted,’ you say? Well you’re wrong because they can and the results can be incredibly adorable.)

Familiar by starstrung | 3.5k, T

The Romulans really need to stop shooting at their artificial gravity systems. (Almost like four ficlets in one if you will. All super heartwarming and nicely come together at the end. So well written!)

** Feigned Intimacy by IntuitivelyFortuitous | 4k, T

Jim was playing matchmaker again and McCoy was not happy about it. The fact that he had to spend the rest of the evening clinging to Spock like a damsel in distress was bad enough, but teaching him how to act like they were together? It’d be easier to cure Denobulan malaria. (Fake dating fics are hard to get right but this one is by far the best I’ve ever read. It’s so soft and sweet and fits TOS really well.)

Five Times Spock Was Interrupted While Trying to Confess His Love for McCoy and One Time He Wasn’t by therev | 3.5k, T

To be fair, he could have tried a lot harder, or spoken a bit faster. (One of the greatest 5+1 fics. And bonus points for that summary lol.)

Fragment by babel | 2.5k, T

McCoy deals with the aftermath of his mind meld with Spock in the mirror universe. (Post TOS ep “Mirror, Mirror”. Haunting but beautifully so.)

Insight by JiM | 4k, T

McCoy is the one who’s blind, but Spock has been slow to see. (Just. Excellent.)

** In Sickness… by mymetalphantom | 6k, G

Spock gets ill and not only does he have to deal with the illness, he also has to contend with his troublesome Human side. (Omg soft & sick Spock with a concerned Bones is just too cute I can’t deal. Also, the writing is incredible.)

In Vino Veritas by black_tea | 3k T

Bones over indulges at Jim’s party and ends up losing his impulse control thus forcing him to face the truth of the situation between himself and his Vulcan shipmate. (Post-Beyond fics are the absolute best and this one hits all the right spots. AND there’s an great sequel in which Spones goes swimming. Niceee.)

Last to Know by Dizzydodo | 19k, T

When Leonard is fatally injured, Spock attempts to save him with a bond. Unfortunately, Leonard mistakes this for an act of duty, and all Spock’s hints to the contrary go unnoticed. (The way the author wrote the bond as well as these two’s relationship was excellent.)

Long Last Night by Vera_DragonMuse | 23k, M

The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again. -Norman Mailer Two years after a terrible virus wipes out most of the world’s population, McCoy tries to keep mind and body together. Modern Post-Apocalypse AU. (I’m not a huge fan of post-apocalyptic stories but ohh boy I was completely sold on this one. Extremely well written and great characterization. Highly recommended!)

Nothing But Halves by therev | 11k, T

McCoy wishes he could talk to Spock’s human half. After a transporter malfunction, he can. (One Spock, two Spock.. Great fic that delves into Bones discovering Spock’s struggles with his human and Vulcan halves and how they’re not as different as they may seem.)

One Little Mistletoe Kiss by tprillahfiction | 1.5k, T

Spock and McCoy eat Christmas cookies and kiss under the mistletoe, Spock/McCoy style which means bickering and McCoy complaining and swearing. (SO HEARTWARMING. TOO MUCH FLUFF LET ME LIVE.)

Our Doubts Make Us Traitors by LogicalBookThief | 5k, T

Dealing with what did and didn’t occur on Altamid leaves McCoy incapable of sleeping. Paying his most recent patient a visit seems to be the only cure. (What can I say? I just really love post-Beyond fics.)

Perfectly Logical by Zauzat | 4k, T

Kirk has had enough of Spock and McCoy’s public squabbles. He orders them to sort it out. He just doesn’t anticipate the solution they come up with. (Love the way the author handled both mind melds and the boys’ relationship. A+)

The Placebo Effect by IntuitivelyFortuitous | 3k, T

Alright, maybe he should listen to Spock more often. Maybe he should not drink everything that gets put in front of him. In his defense, it was purple and sparkly no human with a decent sense of curiosity could resist at least a sip. He didn’t expect it to give him a sixth sense, though. (A really original and creative fic that’s also hilariously well written. Loved it.)

** Satisfactory by Damalur | 5.5k, G

Advancing in a relationship with Leonard McCoy only seems logical, particularly after Spock hears that the good doctor carried his katra in another life. (My first and possibly favourite Spones fic. Well characterized, hilarious, and sweet.)

something borrowed, something new by kojafras | 1k, NR (I’d say G)

Spock gives Leonard a tracking device. Leonard is less than thrilled. (A hilariously adorable post-Beyond fic that captures their relationship perfectly.)

Somewhere Only We Know by sullacat | 14k, M

Spock and McCoy find themselves thrust into a new world and a new life. Can they work together to find their way home - or is being lost the best thing that ever happened to them? Reboot of Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 'The Inner Light’. (Wow such an amazing AU. I love how both Spock and Bones are written and how they slowly fall in love. Gahhh my heart.)

Surgeon’s Mate by belmanoir | 4.5k, T

Spock likes McCoy. McCoy won’t take a hint. (The ultimate TOS fic.)

** volatile; handle with caution by starstrung | 8.5k, T

Spock moves in with McCoy in his lab and they have to learn to share the same space. (One of my absolute faves. Their voices are written perfectly and the plot is simple, but very very effective.)

Recommended authors:

all writers of the fics listed above of course

especially starstrung and therev, a couple of each of their fics are on this list but they have many other superb Spones fics

IntuitivelyFortuitous has an amazing Spones Oneshots series. I reced 3/5 of the fics in the series (so far?), but I highly recommend the other 2 as well

Think I missed any fics? Have a rec for me? Send in an ask! (Seriously, I love receiving asks, please feel free to send away)

A Massive Mckirk Rec List // A Massive Spirk Rec List to come soon(ish)

[monikaorpiktext-blog]

I am writing you this letter, which you’ll never read. From what I know, someone once said that every letter is a love letter, but I am not sure if it is true. My mind is still stuck in the Gallery scenario, when we first met. I remember when William introduced us to one another for the first time. I slept 2 hours that night and I wasn’t in the mood for installing any exhibition, another day of being an unpaid internship in a human body kind of thing. I was painting the brick walls white, isolated with another BadBadNotGood truck played on repeat. I wasn’t expecting anyone to help me, but you were the one who decided to give me a hand with hanging those massive prints worth thousands of pounds, which I cannot visualise in my head. I was standing on the ladder passing the tiniest magnets I’ve ever seen in my life. You were laughing, as both of us knew that we were too clumsy for this job, the prints were too big, the ladder was too high, and every 10 second we were on the edge of falling from this silver mountain. Pretending to help each other just to catch the glimpse of you or touch you with my painted hands. I can’t say that it wasn’t funny. We laughed a lot when people asked us when we met. “We met few hours ago” you replied. After everything that could be done, was done, I sat in the corner and looked at myself. Everything was covered in paint. My jeans, my shirt, my hair and the grey floor, which was renovated by Vivienne few weeks before. To be honest, I was fed up with the work. Buying extension cables, usb sticks, brushes from my own money, when I wasn’t even paid for my expenses. And you laughed about it, as you were paid, even for the hours when we patiently waited for a delivery of Laura’s prints. When I was leaving the gallery, you asked me if I want to grab something to eat, remember? We didn’t go anywhere, I went downstairs to see my friend for a second. Sitting on a pavement, sipping on beers and seeing you unlocking your bike, when we could be in some pub munching on fries and telling each other stories, wasn’t the best ending of the day. But then you came to pick me up from Tate, after a week of your attempts of meeting me at your place. Unfortunately, I was in the same state as in the Gallery when we finished installing exhibition. Another day of unpaid intern in a human form, me after a whole weekend of paying attention that “none of the Japanese tourists is eating a sandwich” in the biggest stand, owned by group of Italian motherfuckers,of the book fair. All sweaty, with messy hair as I was deinstalling brick benches, worth another thousands of pounds, which we later threw away to a “Tate bin”. You still wanted to grab a pint with me, though I am not sure how it happened. I was carrying this brick, feeling as if it was a communist era again in Poland, on the way to a pub in London. How disgraceful this sounds? We sat outside, you kept going to a toilet, but I didn’t ask why. After waves of words and sips of beer, you decided to kiss me. “I didn’t expect that” I said, and you laughed as if you knew how I am going to react. Even though, people usually turn their backs to things that happen out of the blue, I wanted more. I am more than sure, that I couldn’t construct any logical and coherent sentence after what happened. As if I was back in the elementary school with a teacher waiting for my reply during a math test. I was trying to calm down this Freudian wish fulfilment, covering my lips with more cigarettes, or constantly sipping on beer, to avoid this gap which could be used to slap me with your tongue again. Despite my attempts, you managed to overcome this maze of obstacles and kissed me six times more. I feel awful when I see people kissing in a public space. It is just a zone, which works with a certain rule of privacy, right? We left the bar as you had a fight with the manager about you nose candy habits, about which I didn’t know. As we were walking along the road, I felt this paradoxical void between us. I actually didn’t know anything about you, but I knew I loved you. I went to the station and I was looking at you fading more and more with the lights of the streets. I was there alone with my grey brick. My anger grew on my way home as I couldn’t go to your place because my friend, who happened to had an affair with my ex, was staying in my flat. I wanted to threw this brick into someone's face by the time I arrived south. You were sending me pictures 24/7 as if you wanted to squeeze yourself through the screen to be with me. I didn’t reply, not because I wasn’t eager to do so, it just all seemed fake. The cyberspace became the ugliest and the most disgusting thing you could possible imagine. I could see your face for this limited time until it flew to the limbo sphere, about which no one knows anything. I fed my devil inside of my stomach with those pictures and messages. Eat it, I said, and you will feel better. As the days went by and my devil refused to eat anything I tried to give it, I decided to use my unlimited doze of generosity and go all the way to North after work to help you deinstall your exhibition. It was a chance, which couldn’t be missed after all 2 weeks of failed attempts of meeting one another. I came with a loaf of bread and cakes, feeling I just need two braids on both sides of my head and little more freckles to become some sort of made, who fills herself with this platonic love towards you. I sat on a chair pretending to listen to all the stories this Italian woman told me about, when I was actually looking at you on the ladder. “Catty Dick” I thought. As before, you tried to sort something out for me, while talking to Juan about my work. I hated this to be honest. You were trying to catch a glimpse of my, smiling a lot, when you were talking in favour of my projects. I looked at you thinking, how dare you? How dare you Dick, talking this bullshit? You haven’t seen any of my work, we know nothing about one another and then you’re here. A superhero, a man that will find me. I haven’t said anything and you knew by this time that I didn’t like it. Still, both of us were trying to play it cool. I was giving you the bulbs..you were putting the bulbs in the frames... the Italian woman was standing next to the ladder as she was afraid you will fall down. How many people are needed to install a bulb? Apparently 4 people, as Juan was looking at us all the time, munching on those green olives left on a table. The hours passed, I didn’t mention anything about staying at mine, even though boys were out again. I knew that nothing will happen, when you said you need to just pick up your stuff from Camden and you will be on your way to my place. I knew it since the first word, as you called me darling and kissed me on a cheek. But they say that the hope is the last thing to die. So I sat there again in the corner. I was too stressed to wait for you while being sober, so I bought a bottle of Chardonnay which I opened on the bus number 3 on my way from Brixton. After an hour of waiting, I decided to scan my negatives while still sipping on the wine. It’s been 4 hours and you weren’t there. No messages received, no missed calls, no sign from you. Eventually the hope dies, and it died the next day. You may not know how it is when everyone knows each other in the city you live, as you were in London since you were a kid. And I thought I run away from that. You know this feeling of liberation, this wind of freedom that you can go on a streets without any worry that you will meet someone, who you don’t want to meet. Come on, London is like a tower of Babel, though it’s not really a tower. So I walked freely to Tate Britain to catch a glimpse of Hockney for the last time. I am crossing the street, still quite confused about the cars driving on the left side of the road, when suddenly Dick appears in the middle of the same street, in the same time of the day. It was you, but in contrast to me, you had a partner next you and you didn’t see me. Did you enjoy the exhibition with your lovely ceramic enthusiast beside you? Is she good in bed? I bet she is, all the cyclists are good from what I’ve heard. And when the hope dies, the human dies with it. I am still alive. I still have dreams and thoughts about it. I imagine every possible scenario of our meeting in a gallery, when Vivianne unexpectedly invites us both to install an exhibition. And what would you say? Will you be sorry? Will you say hi to me? I wish you could at least show me you’re there. In a way I accepted everything that happened. But accepting the contradictions means not believing anymore in the primacy of “true feeling.” And I think, I lost the ability of feeling. The fantasies will remain as dreams, which are fading every single day. When you’re living so intensely in your head there isn’t any difference between what you imagine and what actually takes place. Therefore, you’re both omnipotent and powerless. But I’m writing this for the sake of future catharsis, which may not even happen. But, you’ll never know that Dick. Love, M

[horocoat]

An Irrational Fear of Death (but not really)

(I think) I’ve been depressed before, but have never felt suicidal. I feel like I have a fear of death that is stronger than other (depressed) people’s. Recently, I’ve been trying to “convince” myself that this fear is irrational, and that I should want to die. ((Un)fortunately, I haven’t really succeeded. I think there are some good reasons to live.)

The last time I was very depressed, I gave up on trying in school, and stayed up late browsing Reddit and played a lot of video games. I had some interests in things, but I just wanted to give up. I remember planning out, in my head, my future: get a okay-paying job, spend my free-time playing video games and watching porn and whatever, and then kill myself once I feel bored.

I recently binge-watched a bunch of Lex Fridman’s videos (a podcast about AI and other things), and he talks a lot about being diligent and “doing work”. I agree when I was watching as well as now, but the depressed back of my mind says, it’s kind of sad that anything happy only comes from being stressed and suffering; it’s sad that many people can’t just do things and be happy.

To me, it feels like there are two sides to my life: being stressed from schoolwork and other responsibilities; or being disappointed with myself for not being productive when I’m not forced to. During the school year, I am tired and stressed all the time (in addition to being socially anxious); but whenever a school break is approaching, I have these high hopes of what I could achieve with all the extra free-time, only to feel really disappointed when I end up playing a lot of video games and getting nothing done.

I wish I could just be motivated: I like math and science and music and art and literature etc., so why doesn’t that turn into real action? I imagine the stereotypical autistic person, being obsessed with minute things and deriving passion from that; or people who are romantically attracted to objects (e.g. archer Erika Eiffel, whose attraction to her compound bow helped her succeed). I wish I could just inject [motivation] into myself, and start arbitrarily caring about things more.

So:

My life seems like a net negative. Why would I want to continue living? I have this fear of death, a fear of not existing. But wouldn’t it make more sense for nonexistence to be zero, 0?, meaning death is a better alternative to life. When I look at assisted suicide - on the extremes of negatives - that is somewhere I obviously agree.

In addition, there’s an idea in moral philosophy called “the Repugnant Conclusion”, where an Earth of a lot of barely happy people, of people barely worth living, is better than an Earth of comparatively few very happy and comfortable people. (Also see SlateStarCodex’s “Answer To Job”, where God maximizes happiness kind-of in this way.) I guess the proceeding is kind of Kantian (the universalizing of moral principles), but: if I don’t accept the repugnant conclusion, then I shouldn’t live.

One big counterargument is the possibility of change. But it seems like college and a “9 - 5 job” would all be a kind of continuation of this. At the same time, I can’t predict how my life will turn out (i.e. the end-of-history illusion). And, assuming I life to around 80, I would only need to be happy for a little over half of it; if my life increases in happiness over time, I would only need to be net happy at 40, which seems like a long enough time to figure out how to be happy.

That’s still a sad perspective, even if it means not dying, because it doesn’t mean anything right now. Like, I could suffer until age 40, and then it’d be okay as long as I don’t suffer for the last 40 years. Maybe that part is just wrong: negative experiences weigh more strongly. Even disregarding that, saying life is okay doesn’t say anything about how to be happier in the present.

With all this talk of utilitarianism, I should mention the role of the Effective Altruism (EA) movement in giving my life meaning in an inherently meaningless world. I believe EA is good/correct, and I believe I should follow it, but “in my heart” it just doesn’t feel right to imagine devoting my life to studying/doing some one thing (e.g. AI safety or priority research). That said, on inspection nothing else seems better: everything is “studying something”... there are so many things to do and too little life (and sometimes motivation) to do them. But if I don’t follow EA, then it doesn’t particularly matter what else I do with my life (”as long as I donate 10% of my income” (the link is about doing good enough to avoid excess stress)).

Society has these moral systems, and especially of note, a kind of virtue ethics: “get a job”, “start a family”, “be a good citizen”, “get a PhD”, [“be successful”]. But while these “accidentally” have positive utility, their arbitrary origins make them kind of a “spook” (I’ve never read Max Sterner, so my usage might be wrong). (For example, watching Lex Fridman’s podcasts, I don’t like how him and many of the guests are kind of boring about the meaning of life, saying, “find love, be genuine, [etc.]” - “don’t they realize it’s all utils?”.)

It doesn’t matter what I do, and I don’t really want to do anything. To be more precise: I don’t know what I want to do, and I don’t think I will be able to know. There are so many interesting things, and to pick one and somehow feel “artificially” passionate about one seems impossible.

I’ve had this urge to self-harm, but not actually kill myself, in an (edgy-aesthetic) act of defiance; to express, I don’t want to decide. I have this emotion-thought of my brain just being everything at once, in more of a “smoothie”-way than a “library-of-Babel”-way. (This is a kind of feeling I get/try to get from listening to noisy music, such as Sewerslvt or Machine Girl, or even literal noise music like Merzbow.)

I want to take a break for a million years, until I feel obsessed with something, and then come back.

But:

I suspect that suicide is like changing my terminal values, which is why I am afraid of it. My terminal values include learning and making cool things, and so my sadness stems from not being able to do that. If I just stop existing, I am not sad anymore, but because I don’t have those terminal values anymore. If there was a pill that made you really happy whenever you failed at something, I wouldn’t take the pill because success is a terminal value; the same applies to death.

Talking about Lex’s opinions on work, I don’t think work is ultimately that bad. The stress of having work is worse than the actual work itself (link mostly for citation). It will take effort, but that’s not a bad thing. I do have a hierarchy of interests and things I want to do, which factors in: my personal passion for it, the financial stability of it, and it’s moral value to society (EA). And sometimes you have to develop that personal passion, because without at least the work of learning what the thing is, you can’t appreciate it.

A really concrete example of this is learning to draw: you will suck at drawing at first, but once you get competent enough at that, you will be able to use that skill to really express yourself. And the learning process itself is fun - the emotion of curiosity (you just can’t know what about it is fun before you know what it is). This example applies just as well to learning a language, to learning an instrument, to learning math, and even to learning how to play a video game... everything has a “learning curve”. Even a passive story has to first characterize each character before they can be seen doing things.

Regarding “giving up”: I don’t have to just go from high school to college to a job. For that matter, I don’t even have to do well in high school (although I think I will try to, because I’m still uncertain). Instead I can spend time figuring out/pursuing my interests. I am irrationally fatalistic about giving up, when I could just pick and choose the parts I don’t like.

So yeah. Don’t commit suicide. I hope my “cynical” thought process about this helps someone else.

(Something that might help would be keeping a gratitude journal. Include even things that seem insignificant, or routine.)

[ecotone99]

[FN] Wolves and Sheep

“My name is Eaga. I don't have a normal body. Ever since I was born, everything I touched became a part of me. Unlike other humans, my skin didn't limit my existence. Mother, Father, even our sheep became my body parts. Of course, they didn't melt into me, if that's what you're thinking. Although we aren't connected physically, I can feel and see through them and control their actions. The sheep are my favorite. Always fluffy, warm and never alone. Luckily, they don't think too much, so I don't get a headache. Yes, can tell what they're thinking, even if it sounds weird. If you are wondering about, what they're thinking, you're not missing out on much, it's mainly basic stuff about eating, sleeping, drinking, shitting and mating. They're not particularly smart.” The little girl paused for a while. She looked at the fire that was slowly burning down in the night and she smiled. The traveler she invited to sit for a spell was focused on her face as she spoke. “I suppose you're traveling trough here to see the lost city of Agamora, right? That's the reason everyone comes here.” Her smile grew wider. “Not everyone gets to leave though.” The traveler did not respond at first, but as the silence grew longer he got the feeling that he had to say something: “I'm not afraid of you.” First she looked at him in surprise, and opposed to everything the traveler expected, he heard wholehearted laughter. “My intention isn't to kill you, if you thought that. Maybe I would make you a part of me, maybe you can stay and serve me without being my body part. Some people come here and wish to pay me tribute through their services. But you don't strike me as that type. Anyway, you wanted to know who I am. Now I'll answer. When I was but a mere child, I assimilated everything I came across. Plants, animals, and the like. It was quite fun to control an entire forest and it's inhabitants... for a while at least. You can probably imagine that the rules of nature had to step in at some point. A fox hunted for an injured rabbit, and I could feel how the jaws of the fox caught the rabbit and how it tore the rabbit into pieces. That's when I learned how it felt to die. Of course, I used all of my powers to track him down and when I found him, I experienced the other side of the coin. Ever since then, I distanced myself from nature, kill or be killed wasn't my world, or at least not a world I wanted to live in. Then I thought that the human world would be better.” At that point, she stopped again. Shortly a servant, or at least it seemed to be a servant to the traveler, brought bread and water to Eaga. Without saying a word, she accepted the nourishment and offered some to the traveler who was more than thankful for these gifts. The water tasted fresh and cool, the wooden cup was pleasant to drink out of, it was well crafted. “No splinters or rough texture”, the traveler thought, “I didn't expect to run into an carpenter around here.” As if she could read his mind, Eaga mentioned: “When I first got into the human world, I learned a wide assortment of skills. Since I could control them like hands, their knowledge also became mine. Thanks to that I can work wood into different shapes and also bake bread.” She took a bite out of the small loaf that lied on the wooden plate. “Flattering oneself is considered a sin, but I think this one turned out really good. Try it.” Without much hesitation the traveler ate a good chunk of it. He was not disappointed, the bread had a crunchy exterior and was fluffy on the inside. “You certainly can flatter yourself, it's fantastic.” “Huh, a compliment from another person. I've spent a long time without those. It'd be a lie to say that I didn't miss it.” She spaced out for a moment and said: “You did well in coming such a long way from home, you're a persistent pilgrim.” The traveler opened his eyes wide and nodded. “Feels nice, doesn't it? You know, many people complimented the wool that my family produced when we went to the market in Agamora. Every time we went there, I took control of some of the people there. That went on and on until the entire town was a part of me. Having the knowledge of every person there, I understood that everyone needed one another. Some of them raised wheat, others harvested it and others made bread of it. At first I was in awe of their cooperation, but I soon realized that most of them didn't really care about each other. All they had in mind was their own life. I changed that. Everyone became part of a whole, with me at the center. Slowly but steadily I built the town into a big sparkling city, a real kingdom. Everything worked so much better when they treated each other like parts of one body. Until I established connections to another person.” For a moment, Eaga closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was focused entirely on the fire, as if it contained the answer as to why everything had to go the way they did. Curiosity overwhelmed the pilgrim's fear and he asked a dangerous question: “Who is Leonar?” Suddenly Eaga fixated her gaze upon the traveler and she answered firmly: “He was like me, the same powers were given to him as well. Leonar was friendly at first, we were partners and... we were a couple back then. It felt so good to have someone just like yourself. Do you know how that feels?” Naturally, the pilgrim led a lonely life of travel, though he had met a bright person in his dark life, to which he wanted to return one day, when his travels were finished. “Yes, I do know the feeling.” “Don't get used to it, the day will come when they'll either betray or abandon you.”, she advised the traveler, with a distinct hopeless voice. In that instance, he thought back to Lucienne, her smile, the time they spent beneath an umbrella during the rain and her promise to wait for him. “I don't think that she'll do that to me.” “You don't believe me? I've spent centuries living alongside humans. What makes you think differently?”, she said, almost sounding like she wanted a genuine answer. The traveler did not respond. Instead he asked: “Just what happened between the two of you?” “This region is pretty much cut off by the mountains, you should know how difficult it is to get here. Leonar wanted to see what it was like out there, so we put our efforts together and built a tunnel, so we could travel with more people and equipment at once. The first town we came across was a stinking hole, full of murderers, thieves, corruption and oppressing authorities. It was a big shock for me, but even more so for Leonar. Unlike me, he built his home from the ground up, he didn't know anything about humans in the wild. When we returned to our home, he proposed that we should either assimilate the city or destroy it. We argued for hours on that day. In the end, I could convince him to leave them alone and continue with our lives. Or at least, I though I did. Secretly, he began forging weapons and building an army. Meanwhile, the outside world noticed our tunnel and our presence. I tried to build up good relations between us and the rest of mankind, I sent out many ambassadors, some of which are still out there today, but Leonar wasn't fond of that idea, he kept his body to himself. One day, when Leonar deemed his army ready, he went to demolish that city. Regardless of my pleas he took the tunnel to the exterior. That was the moment I made a powerful mistake. After I saw him entering the tunnel, I sent my body of people to block the exit. Using pickaxes, other tools and the weight of my body, I made the tunnel exit collapse. Not only the exit, regrettably. The whole tunnel started to cave in, Leonar barely made it back.” The girl had to force the words out of herself. “It was exactly then, when the entire tunnel came crashing down. I raced there as fast as I could, but it was useless, his corpse was already buried underneath the rubble.” After that, the traveler nodded and acknowledged it as the end. What he didn't know was, that Eaga lied to him. Leonar lived for a while after the entrance came down and the girl remembered their last moments together. In her mind she was before him again, he smelled like blood and dust. Leonar reached out with the only arm that wasn't stuck in the rubble, opened his blood smeared mouth and said: “Why did you do this to me?” She kneeled down to him and whispered desperately: “You didn't leave me a choice!” “You just don't want to admit that you're wrong! How would you cleanse them it, if not by bloodshed?”, he asked while coughing out the dust that came down with the rocks. “We could've lived in peace here, this 'cleansing' wasn't necessary! The people of Babel are just living according to human nature.” “But we could have changed them, we could have saved them, we could have reigned over the world!”, he cried out, his tears made their way through he dust on his face. She softly wiped his tears away. “Since when did you desire to do that?” “Of all people, you know best that sheep and wolves can never exist side by side. The only way for sheep to live in peace is to get rid of the wolves. We may be able to elude the humans, but for how long? How do you plan on keeping your peace?” “You're right”, she said as she was standing up, “sheep and wolves can never experience peace together. Goodbye, Leonar...” Suddenly, Eaga was pulled out of her memory by a familiar sound. The traveler had stoked the fire and the wood that shifted had made the sound. Eaga began to confess: “I lied to you, pilgrim. Leonar was still alive, when he was crushed. Instead of helping him, I walked away.” The traveler looked up from the fire, directly into her eyes, with an expression of confusion and concern. Quickly, the girl added: “He would have been a threat. To you, to me and the rest of the world. Everything you saw on your pilgrimage could have been either reduced to ashes or become a part of him. You saw how peaceful we all live. It wasn't my intention, but it's better this way.” Again, the only sound between them was the crackling fire. After a while, Eaga asked: “Now you know everything about me. But I don't know anything regarding you. Who are you?” “To be honest, I don't know. That's why I started my journey; to find myself.” “And did it help?”, she inquired further, to which the pilgrim replied: “Nah.” Slightly irritated, she pulled her eyebrows together, while the traveler let out a soft chuckle and he added: “Actually, it did give me something: a different perspective. In my home town, London, I explored myself deeply, but there was nothing left to discover anymore. My place there, my role there, that wasn't me, or at least not fully. As of now, I still don't know where I'm going, when I'll stop walking and who I am, but I do know that I'm getting closer.” “I wish I could do the same.”, the girl mentioned. “Why don't you?” Eaga stared at the ground in silence until she asked: “Do you think that I made the right choice by leaving Leonar to die?” “That's not for me to judge.” He thought for a second and added: “I'll just say this: on my way here, I came across a peculiar man, he was an executioner. He said to me: 'For some people, the only solution is death.'” “That can't be true.”, the girl said. “I wouldn't be so sure about that. Some do deserve death. Like...me.” The man took a deep breath. “Sorry, but I lied to you too. My journey started because I should have been executed. I barely managed to escape and now I'm just hoping that they don't catch me.”, the traveler revealed suddenly. “What did you do to deserve the death sentence?”, she asked. “You don't wanna know. All you need to know is, that I left all of that behind to find out who I really am and where my place is.” The traveler spent the rest of the night staring into the fire. Eaga on the other hand thought about his words until she fell asleep. In the morning the traveler was pulled out of his dream by the voice of Eaga: “I don't care what you did in London, I will accompany you on your pilgrimage, you'll need every help you can get. There's nothing keeping me here anyway.” A bit surprised, the traveler sat up and looked the girl that was standing before him straight in the eyes. He saw hope and determination sparkling inside them. Nonetheless he asked: “Are you sure? It's not going to be exactly easy.” “Of course. I've already put together a smaller body that will help us conquer any terrain. Where are we headed next?” Her answer satisfied the pilgrim and he replied: “The next stop would have been Agamora, but that doesn't seem to be necessary anymore. Next up is Pa Ring Sha, a little mountain village in the west. It could take up to two weeks to get there, so we better get going.” Having said that, the traveler stood up and packed his belongings together. Eaga, who had prepared in advance waited patiently. “OK, let's move.”, the traveler said and turned towards the path that he believed led to Pa Ring Sha. “Hey, wait! Before we go, could you tell me your name?”, she wanted to know. “Why are you asking now of all times?”, the pilgrim asked and turned around to face Eaga again. “Oh, come on, tell me!”, she demanded, secretly planning to surprise him with a hand made gift with his name on it. The traveler chuckled and answered: “My name is Jack, though I guess that most people would call me Jack the Ripper.”

submitted by /u/Kabanere [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2QTqQLy

[englishchinesetranslations]

All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are…

by Paul Craig Roberts via PaulCraigRoberts.org

Dear Donors,

Thank you for your support in 2019. Although you have kept me working yet another year, I find it encouraging that there are some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people.

My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?

Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.

In the days of my youth Christianity was still a potent force in America. It was part of most people’s lives, whether they were believers or not, and it regulated their behavior. That is why in Atlanta during the 1940s and 1950s we did not have to lock our door at night, and boys and girls could be gone all day without parental supervision and be completely safe. It is why I, as a 5-year old, could walk a mile safely to school and return home safely. Today parents who allowed such independence would be arrested for “child endangerment.”

The power of Christian morality over behavior has faded substantially. Nevertheless, even today in the remains of our civilizational foundations many, if not most, people are still guided by Christian morality. As Christian tradition fades as the basis of behavior, barbarity will gather more strength and reign over us.

Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it and to preserve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual.

The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States is a different country, and Americans a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution by the regimes in Washington are assaults on America that are far worse than any assaults by terrorists. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults or believe the government’s claim that safety requires the curtailment of civil liberty.

In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.

Paul Craig Roberts

The Greatest Gift For All

Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.

The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.

In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.

This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “Identity Politics,” “political correctness” and “the war on terror.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life.

Christianity is being gradually marginalized. Each year it becomes more difficult to find a Christmas card that says “Merry Christmas” instead of “Seasons Greetings.” In place of Christmas carols we get Hollywood Christmas songs.In some churches Christianity is being transmuted into Christian Zionism and the worship of Israel. We are approaching a time when a Christian Christmas cannot be celebrated as it is not inclusive in a diverse society and therefore is politically incorrect if not a hate crime.

Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.

Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.

All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.

Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by wars that served the ambitions of political leaders and ideological movements. Many were murdered simply because they were members of a class or race that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have been murdered and millions displaced in order to serve the neoconservatives’ agenda of extending Washington and Israel’s hegemony.

Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as “unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.” Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.

Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.

As we enter into 2020, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, is in decline. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny and degeneracy, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?

[hysterialyywrites]

There is Light in Dark and Dark in Light, but Nothing in Between

I sit at the window to the sky, with its orange hues outstretched and dominant, splayed across and beyond the end of the world. Speckled blues, purples, pinks and yellows in a seemingly never-ending blitz completed the grandeur of the world, a finite infinity, a home the people fervently called Eden. With the clouds seizing the wonder of the skies and solis its rightful ruler, I never once thought of Eden as my home. I was a foreigner to Eden, kept away at the topmost level of a towering spire the people built and called Babel: a tower that touches the heavens. My home is among the blitz in the sky, surrounded by the hues and speckles of a world I loved and called Cael. It was its own universe, and I, its only people.

The people did not call me a princess, they called me a scribe. The Scribe. The only Scribe in the world they called Eden. A baby brought forth all those years ago (time does not exist in Babel) was born with a mark that only existed among scribes, a mark capable of rivaling the very power of solis, spelled out in whatever tongue that was chosen by time. This mark was a scribe's most valuable birthright, the only distinctive right taken away by the people of Eden, but not by the people of Cael. This birthright spelled out Luna, written just along the nape of my neck. The people of Eden called me The Scribe. The people of Cael, she called me Luna. I am Luna, and I live in a world where the sun sits upon the horizon, but never, ever sets.

                                                           * * * "A new scribe?" "A child who bears a name from Erebus, this is historical! It's been decades since the last scribe!" "Quick! The Tower of Babel! Tell the people to make the necessary preparations for the new scribe!" "What does the mark say?" "Luna. Time chose Latin again. What was the former Scribe's mark?" "I don't remember, but I knew it was Gaelic. What does it matter? A new Scribe is among us! We might have a chance to finally establish contact with Erebus!" Erebus. The land where the sun does not rise; the polar opposite of the land of Eden. The very reason why scribes exist. For years, scribes have tried to reach the land of Erebus, sailing out into open sea, flying planes across the world of Cael, towards the horizon where solis forever sits. There used to be more than one scribe in the land of Eden in those days. Now they're a rarity, because the ones who left never came back. "That Tower of Babel is preposterous! What right do we have to lock up every scribe that comes forth? I absolutely do not see reason in this! They're people just like us!"

"They're the only people who can reach Erebus. Non-scribes like us have absolutely no chance. And after the large scale expedition during The Scribe Stella's era, we cannot risk another pointless mistake." "Then why bother with such a pointless mission to continue pursuing Erebus? We don't even know if it exists! No scribe has ever succeeded or made it back." "Oh, Erebus definitely exists. It's impossible for the scribes to simply vanish into thin air." It was never clear to me the fate of the other scribes, nor was it clear to me the purpose of fruitlessly trying to reach a land that may not exist. The things I hear and the things I read are limited. The purpose of locking me up in the Tower of Babel, however, was perfectly clear to me: I was not allowed to leave the land, for fear of losing another scribe to the unknown beyond the safe borders of Eden. Their priority is not my safety, however. It's the assurance that I have the best chance of establishing contact with Erebus that's keeping me locked up high in the sky, but little did they know that this isolation is my greatest pleasure. Cael, with its gold, orange and blue tinge and bold, daring solis, rules the sky with an outcast of a polar name. Luna. What are you doing in the land of light?                                                           * * * A writing desk is situated just below the only window in my room, and every day I sit at this desk, facing Cael, thinking, dreaming, writing. I dream of the land of Erebus, a world entirely alien to me, wondering what made the dark so beautiful that scribes of this land never wanted to leave it. I assumed they reached Erebus and stayed, because if this was how they were treated when they were here, I would never leave Erebus if I found it too. This tower is extremely suffocating, and much more so once you start thinking that this tower was only meant for scribes. People like me are caged animals to Eden, and it pains me to think so. The very rare occasions where I was allowed to walk outside were even worse than Babel; side glances and whispers everywhere I turn, looks of awe and amazement as if I were some sort of anomaly with two heads instead of one, when really the only thing different about me is the mark on the nape of my neck. I don't even know how I'm supposed to reach Erebus, yet they all expect me to be a natural at it. On the very rare occasions where I was allowed to walk outside, I decided to stay in Babel. While in Babel, I frequented making paper planes to throw out my only window. I would watch it fly across Cael towards the warmth of solis, dreaming of a day where I could fly just as freely, away from the land called Eden, when really, it's no eden at all. On one instance, before laying down to sleep, I decided to write a message on one of the planes before throwing it out the window. "To the people of Erebus: is your land as dark as they say?"                                                           * * * I wake to the splendor of Cael past my window and a paper plane on my desk, the same paper plane I threw before I slept. I saw my message to Erebus, yes, but scrunched my eyebrows to the sight of a different handwriting just below my own. "Dark to you, yes, but beautiful, if only you knew. Is Eden as bright as they say? Probably too bright for me, however. I'm used to the dark." I stand there stunned as I read and reread the message, not believing in what history has been trying so hard to prove. I sat and thought, thought long and hard, about the message, about Erebus, about what would happen if the people found out. But then I thought what if it's just a prank? I would rather much believe in a prank than false hope, yes, but logically thinking, it's impossible for a mere paper plane to fly back up into this window from the land of Eden. Babel is a tower that touches the heavens. It just doesn't fit right. But for a paper plane to fly across the unknown beyond Eden into the uncertainty that is Erebus? Complete insanity, but an insanity that fascinated me. I wrote back: "Eden is bright, but not beautiful. Cael, however, is breathtaking from my window at Babel. What's your mark? I assume you're aware of the scribes and what they're meant to do." I refolded the wings and aimed at the sun, throwing the plane at full strength, as far as my arm could go, and waited. I waited, and waited, and waited. Time does not exist in Babel. I could've waited seconds, maybe minutes, maybe even years for the plane to come back. I never really knew, and so I slept, and hoped to wake up with the plane on my desk.                                                           * * * "Yes, I'm aware of the scribes, and we don't call them 'marks' here. We call them names. My name is Licht. What's yours?" "A name, huh. My 'name' is Luna. Interesting how you bear a name from Eden. Is that how they choose scribes? People with polar names?" "Yes, I believe so. Fascinating, isn't it? I noticed your name is Latin. Cael, so that means... the sky? What's the sky like over there? You said it was breathtaking." "Not was, is. It absolutely is. Would you believe me if I told you that the sky is a stunningly warm orange? With speckles of bright gold and yellow and flecks of blue, a hint of pink and purple here and there too.Solis sits at the center, the horizon. A dome-shaped body, the sun is. I never get tired of looking at Cael. It's truly captivating; too good to be true. Almost ephemeral, as if the sky would instantly disappear if I blinked even once. What's the sky like there at Erebus?" "Well, here is much, much different. I can't possibly think of what 'orange' or 'pink' looks like. Myhimmel is a very different painting. It's a very, very deep blue, almost black, but it's not daunting at all. A million specks of white dot the entire sky, giving you a glimpse of the universe beyond the border. You get bright hues of blues too, sometimes purple as well, and the best part is: it doesn't hurt to look at the sky." "Hurt? Well, it's understandable, since I can only imagine how dark it is in Erebus. But your sky sounds astonishing; I wish I could see it. And you mentioned a painting? What exactly is it?" "You've never heard of a painting before? Well, here in Babel (yes, we both live in a tower with the same name), it's what I do when I don't write messages on paper planes." I laughed at that. "You use a brush and some liquid colors to paint a picture across a canvas. What do you do when you don't write?" "I still write. Not messages, but stories. I guess it's my own way of painting; I use words of no color to create pictures with millions." I secured several pieces of paper onto the plane. "Try reading one. This is one of my favorites. In turn, show me a painting of yours." It took a while before a fresh, new plane flew in; I didn't even notice we already filled up the first one. Licht secured a piece of paper to the new plane. It wasn't a painting like he described, it was more a... sketch. A rough sketch. Most of the picture featured a rural town, with unnaturally bright lights in the houses and poles with lanterns attached to the top, blaring the same unnatural white light. I asked Licht about those and he said they were 'fluorescent lights' and 'street lamps', to help the people find their way around the dark. We didn't need those here. In the background were dimly sketched mountains, large and imposing, almost intimidating with the pencil's grey shade. It was amazing how much contrast and shadows one shade of grey could impart from a piece of paper. Licht was really talented; I wonder if he knew. It was because of him that I started noticing the dark shadows that are everywhere in Eden, the one place I thought where darkness never roamed at all. "Here in Eden, sunflowers are the norm. They bloom everywhere, from the parks and gardens to individual households. So it led me to think: are there moonflowers in Erebus too? Is there such a thing?" "You mean a you-flower? Well I'm not so sure. I don't really leave Babel. I tend to steer clear of lights; it gets hard for me when it's too bright. It strains my eyes and I get a headache." "Oh, that's too bad. I would've loved to see a me-flower." "You would love to see everything in Erebus, basically." That's true. I would like to see you too. Before I knew it, paper planes were flying in and out so much that I lost count of how many papers we used up. At one time, we used a maximum of three planes, just to speed things up. We later found out that that wasn't a very smart thing to do, considering we couldn't keep track of what we were talking about on each plane. So we kept it at two planes; it was much easier. "Why do you think we scribes were born differently? Why are we the only ones who get marked with polar names and forced to communicate with the unknown for people who don't even believe in their existence?" "That's a pretty deep question, Luna. I'm afraid I don't have an answer to that. All I know is scribes who cross their borders into the unknown get lost forever. The scribes in our land once set out on an expedition too, in search of the land where the sun does not set. They never came back, and based on what you told me in previous planes, your scribes never reached our land too. They're forever lost in the unknown." "So even if I try to cross Eden's borders, I still won't be able to see you." I regretted letting that plane fly as soon as I let go. "I won't be able to see you either, even if I did find Eden." I left it at that. Soon, my drawers were stuffed with planes, and Licht's paintings and drawings were hung up on my walls. His art made me love Erebus more than I once thought possible. I dreamed of the stars and their finite infinity, the magic behind a wish upon a star that fell from the sky. I dreamed about the moon and its light, and wondered if Licht thought of me the same way I thought of him when I see the light in solis and the blue in Cael, because after all, those are the only things that are common in both our skies. I hoped his luna didn't blind him. Before I threw that first paper plane, I didn't think it was rational for someone to love something they've never seen before. After meeting Licht, I found that rationality to be quite ridiculous. I was a dreamer, and dreamers were never rational in the first place. I found myself writing much more messages and much more stories for Licht to read, and every time I threw a plane out the window, I always wished it would instantly fly right back, with Licht's reply written on its wings. "Tell me what you look like," he wrote. "What?" And that was the shortest response that ever flew back to Erebus. "Tell me what you look like," he simply wrote again. "An amazingly eloquent writer like you shouldn't have a problem describing herself." "Well..." I hesitated to write. I stood up and walked to the mirror right next to the window. I stared for as long as time dared deceive me, and it was the first time in my entire life that I couldn't put my thoughts onto paper. I did the best I could. "I have a round-shaped face, a small, flat nose, lips that aren't too thick and not too thin either. My eyelashes are long; eyebrows thick. I have long, wavy black hair that goes all the way to the middle of my back, and my eyes, dichromatic. Blue on the right, green on the left." "That's it?" And that was the shortest response that ever flew back to Eden. "You asked for a description, I gave you a description. What else was I supposed to write?" The plane flew back, but this time with another paper secured. Another drawing? "Before you open the other paper, stand in front of your mirror first. As you unfold the paper, look into the mirror, and describe your expression." I did as he wrote, and unfolded the other paper. There in my hands were two little white flowers, petals petite and as white as the clouds. The petals formed the shape of the sun if it was a full circle instead of a dome, and it took a few seconds before I realized what they were. Moonflowers. I read the note that came with the gift, which read: "I was reluctant to give you these you-flowers because they were my favorite, and they're real hard to find in Erebus with all the lights on. But then I thought, yeah, you deserve to have flowers that are (sort of) named after you. So, these are for you. Take care of them for me. They look a lot more beautiful here where the moon is, mind you." I looked up at the mirror to see a smile I never saw before. My lips were turned up, teeth bared, my happiness almost reaching my eyes. In fact, even my eyes were smiling. Every fiber of my being was elated. "Add a smile to my face, and use your imagination. An amazingly creative artist like you shouldn't have a problem imagining a smile." I threw that plane out the window for the nth time.                                                           * * * "Would you like to see the stars in Erebus?" I blinked at the paper. "Absolutely. If that was possible." "You know it is." "What are you suggesting?" "If there is one thing that scribes can do and non-scribes can't, it's to travel between Erebus and Eden, so long as there's two scribes involved, one from Eden, one from Erebus. Are you up for it? Just so you know, I would like to see Cael as well." "But the light strains your eyes. Cael won’t be as beautiful if you squint." "It only strains if I stare for too long. But don't worry; I have an artist’s picture-perfect memory. You can stay a bit longer in Erebus. I'll just turn my back and close my eyes 'till you're ready to come back." I was hesitant at first, but just then a new plane landed on my desk. "Trust me." I took several deep breaths, then wrote a reply. "Okay, what do we do?" Several moments later, I had Licht's name on my wrist, and he had mine on his own. The instructions on the plane he sent told me to simply focus on solis whenever I was ready. I was ready, but I was scared. What if the dark makes me go blind? What if I can't find the moon in Erebus? What if only Erebus scribes are the only ones who can see the moon and stars, and Eden scribes are left for themselves? What if we get lost in the unknown? What if− I stopped that train of thought. I didn't want to think about it. It was going to be fine. We were going to be fine. I looked at Licht's name one more time, then focused on solis for a mere two seconds before my mind went black.                                                           * * * My eyes woke to darkness. In this case, I'm not actually sure if my eyes are open because every time I blink, everything is the same everywhere: darkness. The warmth and security of Cael is gone, my assurance of sight stolen. I feared the dark more than I should, but I remembered Licht's advice: Look up. (I hoped the advice I wrote served him well too.) And so I did. And there I saw his luna, thin and curved, like the English letter C. It was a lone wolf among a sea of white dots, stars perhaps, and looked upon Licht's himmel with awe and wonder and amazement. I was at a loss for words; the whole universe was before me. Then, I saw a streak of white racing across the sky. Licht told me to make a wish if I saw such a thing. But why would we wish on falling stars? It sounds like a tragedy. Nevertheless, I wished upon this tragedy, and hoped a dreamer's hope that my rationality would not triumph over my faith on a falling star, because that is all I have right now: hope, for the safety of both scribes treading upon familiar, yet unknown territory. My eyesight returned after a few moments (better, but not any brighter), and I was able to see clearer than before in the dark. I saw Licht's room all filled with his paintings and drawings and art. On his desk were a painting and a sketch. The painting was one I knew all too well, despite seeing it for the first time. I saw the familiar blue, the dominant color across the sky, but the oranges and pinks were all over the place, turning Cael completely upside down. Maybe this is what a sunrise would look like. And next to the painting was a portrait of a young lady with wavy hair and dichromatic eyes. Licht's lines were sharp and crisp, his strokes careful and guarded, and I assume, his focus undivided. His imagination is impeccable; this young lady's smile is as wide as my own that day I received his moonflowers. I admired the stars some more, just a bit more before I retreat back to the comfort of Cael. This sky is infinite yet transient, absolutely stunning. And this will probably be the last time I will ever see it. I would stay forever; I could, but Erebus needs Licht (or perhaps the other way around), just as much as I need Cael. I looked down at Licht's name on my wrist, then came face to face with my Erebus counterpart. I focused on luna, and my mind went black once more.                                                           * * * I awoke to the familiar warmth and hues of Cael, absorbing the dream of a world I saw with no sun, thinking, dreaming, more than ever, then writing. I wrote, wrote, wrote as fast I could before my memories became a fleeting dream, putting in detail every single wonder I saw with my own eyes: the celestial simplicity of the moon and stars, the truce in white and blue, the cool silence of Erebus as its serenity embraces your mind to think, then calm. Erebus was dark, yes, but it was beautiful. "What did you think of Cael?" I threw the plane once more.                                                           * * * Several days, weeks, maybe months have passed and not a single plane has landed on my desk ever since my visit to Erebus. I've written him dozens of planes, my heart threatening to jump out of my chest every time I send one flying, thinking I might never even get one back. Licht's name was still on my wrist; I touched it with my hand. I feared the worst of my fears. I was anxious, jumpy, worried, simply afraid. For him and for myself. Then a paper plane flew in. I jumped up from my place on the bed and ran over to my desk. I hastily picked up the plane: new, even, and messily folded, as if made in a hurry. But no message on its wings. My hands fell limp, the plane dropped to the floor. My body felt heavy, my heart, even heavier. I stared out into Cael, remembering how I wished his luna didn't blind him. But maybe my solis did. (Shooting stars really are tragedies.)

Written: September 08, 2016

[romancatholicreflections]

4th June >> Daily Reflection on Today's Mass Readings (Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3-7,12-13; John 20:19-23) for Roman Catholics on Pentecost Sunday

Commentary on Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3-7,12-13; John 20:19-23 TODAY WE CELEBRATE what is often called the birthday of the Church. Happy birthday to all! We also bring to completion our celebration of the Paschal Mystery – the suffering, death, resurrection, ascension and coming of the Spirit on Jesus’ disciples. Although this ‘mystery’ is really one single reality, we have stretched its celebration over a period of more than seven weeks. That such a time frame is not to be too excessively emphasised as historical fact is indicated by the two very different accounts of the giving of the Spirit we have in the readings of today’s Mass. Full of symbols Most of us are more familiar with the account given in the Acts of the Apostles which is the First Reading of today’s Mass. In this account, the apostles are all gathered in one room at the time of the Jewish feast of Pentecost, which in the Jewish calendar traditionally falls 50 days after the Passover (or Easter in our Christian calendar). What follows is a scene filled with scriptural symbols. First, there is the sound of a mighty wind from heaven filling the whole house. The word in Greek for ‘spirit’ and ‘wind’ is the same, so the wind clearly indicates the Spirit of God. Then there appeared tongues of fire which rested on the head of each one present. Again we have a symbol of God’s presence. We remember Moses speaking to God out of the bush which was on fire. We remember that, as the Israelites wandered through the desert, they were accompanied during the night by a pillar of fire – God was with them. All present are then filled with the Spirit. The sign of this presence is their ability to speak in different languages. A message for all Immediately, the apostles go out and begin to speak to the crowds of people. Jerusalem is filled with Jewish and convert visitors from all over the Mediterranean, from Asia Minor, Egypt and North Africa, even Rome, to celebrate the feast. These people are amazed to hear men, who are clearly relatively unlettered people from the province of Galilee, speaking to them in so many languages. The meaning is clear. What the apostles are preaching is a message destined for the whole world and not just for one people. A long time ago, as described in the book of Genesis, men tried to build a tower right up to heaven. For such arrogance they were punished by having to speak in a myriad of languages unintelligible to others. Humanity became deeply divided. Today, Babel is reversed. All are speaking and hearing the message with full understanding; people are being brought together in unity under God. Full of fear The Gospel today has a quite different account of the coming of the Spirit on the disciples. It is the evening of Easter Sunday and the disciples are in a room, with the doors firmly locked. As accomplices in the work of the executed criminal, Jesus, they are afraid they are next to be arrested. The authorities would surely want to nip this subversive group in the bud before it gets out of control. Fear and anxiety is the prevailing mood among them. All of a sudden, Jesus is there in their midst. “Shalom, Peace with you” is his greeting. It is the normal Jewish greeting but it has a fuller significance here. Earlier, at the Last Supper, Jesus had promised that he would bring peace, a very special kind of peace, to his disciples. A peace they could not get anywhere else and a peace that no one and nothing could take away from them. Now, he brings that peace to this highly fearful group. “Peace with you” (‘‘) in the Greek has no verb. It can be read either as a wish or a statement of fact. It is something of both. Jesus then shows them the wounds in his hands and side. There can be no doubt: it is the crucified Jesus himself, risen from the dead. As their fear changes to an unspeakable joy, Jesus again wishes them peace. Receiving a mission And then he gives their mission: “As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.” Their mission is the same as his; they are to continue doing what he did. Then he breathes on them. Breath symbolises life. In the creation story, God breathed over the waters. He also breathed on to the clay of the ground and formed the first human being. Today he breathes on his disciples and gives them a new life, making them a new creation, giving them the life of his Spirit, saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Then he goes on to say, “Those whose sins you forgive are forgiven…” This is no mere juridical authority in which people are declared free of guilt. It is much more than that. The disciples are being given the authority to bring people back to God, to reconcile those who have become separated from their God to renew their unity with the Beginning and the End of their lives. They also have the authority to decide which people are not yet ready for reconciliation. Ultimate mission This is ultimately the mission of the Church, to bring people to God. It is not primarily to make converts to Christianity or to build up the Church but to work with God in building the Kingdom. The Kingdom realised is the whole world acknowledging the lordship of God our Creator and people directing their lives to be one with him. This was the mission given by Jesus to his disciples and the same mission has been given to each one of us. So, as soon as a person becomes reconciled with God as Lord and Jesus as Saviour, that person in turn accepts the obligation to become in turn a reconciler of others. Special gifts So, today’s Second Reading speaks of the gifts that the Spirit of God and Jesus gives to each one for this work. We are not all called to the same thing in the same way. “There are all sorts of service to be done but always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them.” We all have exactly the same ultimate goal, energised from the same Source, but, with our different qualities of character and ability and depending on the environmental situation in which we find ourselves, we aim at that goal in different ways. Working together in different ways towards a common aim, Paul compares us to a human body. It consists of many parts but each part is ordered to the well-being of the whole. That should be a picture of the Christian community, of our diocese and of each parish and of each community within a parish. We are all equal in dignity – Jew or Greek, slave or citizen, man or woman, cleric or lay – but different in calling and manner of service. On this feast of Pentecost, as we celebrate the formation and the mission of the whole Christian community, we also need to reflect on the particular role that God has for me, to reflect on the particular contribution that I can make to the corporate mission of the Church and of the particular group with which I am involved.