#if anyones spirituality is ever vague but they have a lot of aspects of other religions and beliefs just like around them

[variant-archive]

(Preemptive apologies if I'm not entirely understanding your experiences) What you're describing sounds to me like a form of plurality! I will say from personal experience that what you're describing (awareness of other versions of yourself, sometimes off in their own space) is part of how I realized I have a system. If you ever feel like you change notably during kinshifts, or you "become" them temporarily, it could very well be introjects/fictives/whatever term you like most. I'm someone who's introjected my past lives as traumagenic headmates (complicated I know lol), and I've known other people who feel like many-in-one or that have their past/parallel lives as parts like I do for any number of reasons. Communication isn't necessary at all for being plural, nor is being fully aware of specific parts. Sometimes you just "feel" the shift/switch, and it clicks as another aspect of you but doesn't quite click as a headmate.

Even if what I said doesn't help, I wish you a lot of luck in your journey to find the words that best describe you :) I know how alienating it can be sometimes to not know whether you fit into something, but you're definitely not alone

Hey, I really genuinely appreciate you responding! See, the difference in my experience is that I don't shift or switch in any way other than feeling my astral body change from my true self (a love deity furrything lmao) to one of my kintypes (sylveon, alolan ninetales, etc) and my true self can also shapeshift into different body plans (biped, quadruped etc) so I identify as more of a shapeshifter than anything. I guess the fact that I do "become" my kintypes astrally is something. But my identity itself doesn't change at all, just how I percieve my body in my mind. It's so weird, I feel like I'm stretched across the alterhuman spectrum in such an awkward and unusual way to the point that I'm almost a lot of things. I do know I'm otherkin though so I typically use that. Instead of one body, many minds I feel like I'm many bodies, one mind. Although there are barriers between the other shards of my true self in other universes, likely because they're literally in different realities than me. I do have exomemories/exotrauma though, although vague (my memories for specific fictional characters is stronger because I can simply "re-live" them through the media though). I'm considering attempting to connect to both my true self and the other shards in a spiritual way since (to me) that's the only way to penetrate the barriers of reality. Unfortunately I have a lot of difficulty practicing my beliefs though :( because of my anxiety and trauma I never feel safe enough to do it.

Also it's funny but I never feel my astral body change to my humanoid kintypes (rainbow quartz 2.0 etc) but that could be that it's because they look less like my true self than my non-humanoid kins and I find myself seeking to become more like my true self within this life as it alleviates the dysphoria I get from being in this reality sometimes. I also wonder if my other shards are aware of me/kin with me or something. I don't see why not as all of my kintypes are sapient but they simply might not ever learn about what alterhumantiy is

Sorry for the rant lol but thank you, I'm just happy that anyone is open to listening to my experiences and relating to them even though they don't fit neatly into the alterhuman spectrum. I really don't want to intrude into plural spaces when I don't really feel plural but I can't deny how uncannily similar some of my experiences are. I think the way I'd describe myself is "other-self aware". I've been interested in coining new alterhuman terms if I can get the spoons so I might do that. I still want to explore my identity and figure out what would and would not be appropriate first, though. I don't wanna hurt anyone.

[snekdood]

bruh that guy i posted that talked about shrooms is talking about mk ultra now. goddamn and JUST when i think ill find a normal spiritual type. nope. they never are i guess.

[iyezarik]

"The death of God is about the drying up of a horizon of meaning."

R: Before language can have meaning again, "meaning" itself must come back into the world. A: We have to bring God back to life? R: Or wake it up. A: Or acknowledge Her unchanging presence obscured by ideology. R: Yes, it may very well be that God is still alive but we just can't see it. Or if God is to be conceptualised as the meaning by which we orient our subjectivity toward, we will be able to see it again if enough of us turn towards it. A: This is a very admissible reading of Qur'an 2:17-20. B: So what's the accepted interpretation of that line around here? I'm only vaguely aware of the one where "God is dead" refers to the peoples' turn away from the church as the primary source of ethics/morality and towards secular institutions. R: I don't think "God is Dead" has ever referred to people turning away from the church. At least in Nietzsche, where the term originated, that's certainly not what he's talking about The most succinct way I know of putting it, "God is Dead" refers to the paradigm shift, starting in Europe but has now become the dominant paradigm globally, of a mass re-orientation of subjectivity. People went from being "subject to X" to "subject to I", X being something outside of the individual and for Individualism to become dominant God had to be killed first. As Zizek says "We are no longer subjects to something else, whether that be God, or a cause, or some larger Truth but instead have become subject to ourselves, to our wants and desires" This outward oriented subjectivity is also how we formed communities in the first place. The idea that you are obliged to the service of others It's not as simple as "selfishness" or "selflessness" per se A: I haven't read practically a single thing you're talking about here, but this lines up very closely with a train of thought I've been developing for probably years now. Away From The Hindus talks some about how a change in religion is a real change in nationality, for that exact reason, because when you convert into a tribe, you're accepting their gods as your own. You have no god, you have no tribe, you have no subjectivity except for yourself. It's why a lot of lower caste organising is so skeptical of outside allies, I feel. Speaking as one. When you convert out of your religion by becoming an atheist, you also give up that tribal affiliation and convert into what's really a particular metaphysics of secularism. R: I sometimes think Atheism is just the worship of the non-God. It's another religion but without any of the positive aspects of religion. All the negative ones, though, lol. It has those in spades. A: Absolutely. Like every other "new religion", it leaves a lot of its fundamental metaphysics untouched and you can't truly understand it outside the context of its Christian milieu. It hasn't acquired a new identity of its own the way, say, Islam has, and it will never do so. R: Agree. One cannot arrive at Atheism without first passing through Christianity. Just like how we dunk on Protestantism for being so so soooooooo deeply heretical precisely because it replaces God with the Believer-in-God at the center of its cosmos. Fucking Protestants. I think we've discussed it here before but my take is that most of Protestantism and especially Evangelicalism is secularised Christianity. That isn't to say Catholicism is the bee's knees or anything but at least they're still Christians. A: I think yes. I think we're also dealing with a secularised Islam, and that Hinduism per se is a product of secularism as well. Wicca and Neo-Buddhism are very interesting as attempts to self-consciously create a religion in the context of secularism, as opposed to doing it accidentally as in the 3 above mentioned cases. R: How much of that purposeful construction is just the commodification of spirituality? A: I think none or close to none. Ambedkar when he made Neo-Buddhism absolutely wasn't targeting people who'd even been acquainted with the commodity form. Though neo-Buddhist twitter discourse is... twitter discourse. Wicca very quickly

became a commodity but I don't think much of that can be pinned on its founders. R: My brief exposure to neo-paganism movements left a very sour taste in my mouth but that might simply be my anecdotal experience. A: My more-than-brief exposure hasn't sweetened them to me. They are inert. When we talk about Wicca, there are actually a handful of lineaged groups, but your average Wiccan teeny bopper reading Silver Ravenwolf or whatever isn't really scratching any of the itches we've identified. A lot of neo-paganism is about as revolutionary as kinning. R: And in particular when it comes to anything to do with Celtic paganism. Anyone claiming to inherit that mantle, I'm sorry, is just a liar. There's nothing to inherit, the world it thrived in is dead and gone and appealing to a misguided sense of the weight of time/tradition belies the very real tragedy that it is lost. A: I don't think I'm in principle opposed to reconstructing, I think there's a real argument that my own approach to Islam is basically reconstructionist... however, when you do reconstruct something, you're making something that is not the original thing. It's still Islam, because Islam is Islam and there's a clear continuity Whereas for say Celtic reconstructionism you absolutely do not have that, unless you're connecting it through Christianity. R: Exactly. Like I said it's anecdotal but this space of neo-paganism just strikes me as a con. Not as in they are worshiping false gods or anything but that the continuity they are claiming does not exist. The monstrous grind of history has ensured that A: There are Celtic reconstructionists who consider themselves to be inheriting both the legacies of the Celts and of Irish Catholicism, and I'm much warmer towards that.

[writerrachelspangler]

A Hierarchy of Tops

What the actual hell, y’all? Nothing to see here, except Katherine Hepburn giving us all the look that makes our collective gay insides instantly clench up then immediately liquefy.  

What is that gut incinerating reaction? I can’t say for sure, but I have been thinking about it a lot, and I’m going to offer 3 possible suggestions:

Attraction (obviously). 

But there are many levels to attraction. There’s like a woman walks by and turns your head attraction, or A-list celebrity beautiful-person attraction, and then there’s THIS. This feeling I’m talking about goes so far beyond the “you’re attractive” sort of attraction to like “laws of physics” sort of attraction. The kind of attraction that registers not just inside your core but also psyche. 

It messes with my head in ways that have turned me around ever since I was old enough to be aware of such things, and I’ve come to sum it up as “The great queer question.”

Do I want to be with you, or do I want to be you?

It’s hard when you’re young (or even not so young) and you’re hungry for role models, but also thirsty for something else. And the whole issue gets complicated by the way those two feelings register in similar places of your body. The first time you see a woman step into full ownership of her God-given gift of giving zero fucks for conformity it lights a fire in the deepest regions of your gut. And as the warmth spreads outward from that low guttural place it can cause things to heat up in areas right below your core, too. You know the ones I mean, right? Those body parts are very close together, sometimes it’s hard to separate the two types of attraction. 

And I’ve made peace with that, the not always knowing which came first, or which takes precedent, because ultimately it doesn’t matter.  As fun as it can be (and by fun, I clearly mean disorienting) to try to figure out if I want to be with someone or be like someone, I am non-binary enough to realize the answer can be, and often is:

Attraction and aspiration are both cool, they’re both fluid, and they totally intersect. I’m comfortable with that. I’m more than comfortable with it. I dig it. 

So if there’s no great conflict around attraction, why should that photo of ole K. Hep and her butchly furrowed brow still make my tummy so. damn. squimbly? Could it be something deeper than attraction? Something more complex? Something more elemental? Something like...

Recognition. 

You see, over the last few years I’ve gotten into the concept of ancestral echoes, or the idea that memories and the knowledge that comes from them can be passed down through our DNA. That you can, on some level, know  about things you’ve never experienced for yourself, and you can recognize the same sort of knowledge in other people.

Example: Folks way back up my family tree were sea-faring explorers. It’s been like 15 generations and I am super susceptible to sea sickness, but I am still so drawn to boats and the ocean. Not just like I find them pretty, but like I’m freaking Moana or something.  There’s a pull there that goes beyond all reason and logic. I know that if I get on a sailboat there’s decent chance I am going to lose my lunch, but I can’t stay away.  Even as I go green in the gills and my stomach does summersaults a part of me is still like:

I feel the same inexplicable connection when I look at that picture of Katherine Hepburn. There is a gay DNA level kind of recognition. A big queer ancestral echo. Whatever part of me that makes me gay senses its mirror in her.

Now I don’t know what part of me that is, nor what part of her trips that recognition trigger for me. The insolent stare? The turn of the mouth? Those gay AF eyebrows? 

I’m not sure, but I feel certain it would exist even if I didn’t know the words gay or DNA. Something queer in me honors something queer in her. It’s inborn, liike gaydar on steroids boiled down to its most primal level. It runs through the generations on double helix rainbows. It vibrates across my chromosomes humming through the lowest, most animal regions of my brain. 

I know you. 

We are the same. Whatever this thing is, it builds an unbreakable bond. A shared ..something. Brotherhood is too gendered. Personhood too vague.  A queersterhood. A ... wait for it ... Listerhood?

You didn’t really think I’d make it through this gay ass therapy session without her did you?

Well I didn’t, because I can’t. I am physically incapable of looking away from this paragon of queer top perfection.  And while I get that this is exactly the point where I should be able to tie this post up neatly on some note about our  foremothers of the past living on through our legacy, that’s not going to happen.

As much as I would like to have some spiritual or academic conclusion for the things I feel when I see this, I don’t.

Nothing about my reaction is academic, or hypothetical or high minded. 

I’ve looked these photos it so many times, trying to figure out what is bigger than attraction and deeper than recognition, and there’s only one word that comes close to capturing the experience for me:

Reckoning.

Reckoning involves looking something in the eye and taking stock of it and you at the same time. It involves taking weight and measures, taking inventory of your totality, and checking receipts on the things both utterly unquantifiable and yet indisputable. 

And when I look at those women, I am forced to reckon with a fundamental truth:

They are better tops than me.

Katherine Hepburn is a better top than me.  Ann Lister (as played by Suranne Jones) is a better top than me.  There’s no way around it.

No matter how much I like to think I have some natural predication for topness, they have more. Clearly.

Sometimes you look at someone and you just know they know things. Things you are desperate to know. They possess a command and understanding you do not possess. They have skills you can only, and probably only ever will, aspire to.

I am not ashamed to admit it. It’s just the natural order of things. Did Joe DiMaggio feel shame at not being Babe Ruth? Or for you non-sportsball people, does Lizzo feel ashamed for not being Aretha Franklin? I hope not. There’s no shame in having your greatness fall just below that of divine master. Not everyone can be the GOAT. I’m okay with that. It’s not a competition. I don’t need to best anyone.

But I do need to make peace with that reckoning in other ways. Like a wolf who just met the new pack leader, or pirate captain whose ship just got overrun, there’s a new world older that must be acknowledged in those moments. There is a hierarchy of tops and topness, and it’s just been indisputably altered.

I am not the top top, not even in my own mind. I can’t ignore it, I am the one who acknowledged it in the first place. I could run from it. At least in theory. I could look away, close my eyes, or banish those understandings to vast reaches of the unfollowed internet, but I am not a coward. 

As fluid as I am, and as secure as I am in who I am, I can feel gratitude at the the opportunity to look upon greatness.  To indulge my awe. To relish my vast appreciation of the most transcendent of beings.  

And then, of course, as is only right, I feel compelled to roll over. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone could feel compelled to do anything other than roll over when they look at that picture.  That is the great tremble in my gut: it is all the scripts being flipped. 

Does that make me a lesser top? Maybe. Does that make me a bottom? Perhaps sometimes. Does that bother me?

Not at all.

Cause really, what’s the use of recognizing a hierarchy to tops, if you don’t intend to enjoy every possible aspect of your own position on that spectrum?

[saprophetic]

Why did you convert to Judaism?

tl;dr: it called to me for five years and felt like home, even before i knew i was allowed to be jewish. the community aspect, the sense that i was who i was supposed to be. that i was where i was supposed to be.

the long version is... very complex, and i'll try to answer it as honestly and extensively as i can without adding stuff i'm uncomfortable sharing because a lot of it is personal backstory. (i indented the part that skips over the tragic backstory if you want to skip that, i’m only adding it because i feel like it’s integral to my journey) i'm putting it under a cut because it's very very long and may be triggering. i also… don’t know if this was necessarily what you were asking, but i hope i answered your question sufficiently. the stuff about jewish belief (as interpreted by me) is the last few paragraphs.

tw for xtianity (specifically catholicism, as well as missionaries), child abuse, brief mention of religious homophobia and sexual assault (in paragraph 4), and mentions of antisemitism at the end

i grew up with a very catholic grandmother, and was very much the Good Catholic Girl - i was at mass every sunday, i was a youth group leader (both of my parish specifically and on a regional level) and personally helped put together a lot of youth events, i was an altar server, i was a eucharistic minister, i helped teach sunday school. i talked all the time about how much i loved being catholic, and how much i trusted god, and any time anything bad happened, i would publicly say that it was in his hands and that whatever was meant to happen would happen. no matter how bad it was, i told everyone how much i loved and trusted god.

and i was completely and utterly empty. nothing felt right. i got yelled at once for asking a question (i don't remember the question, but i do remember the embarrassment and resolve to stop questioning things). i didn't understand confession, and was too embarrassed to ask. i have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and was absolutely obsessed with being the poster girl for what a good catholic girl should look like because it was what i was supposed to be, but i just... didn't feel it. i didn't understand why some things were sins, and i didn't ever really do anything that i considered bad... so i lied in confession. i made up stuff i didn't do just so people wouldn't see that i was as lacking as i felt. and boy was i good at it.

i was very good at faking loving god, when i actually hated him. he didn’t stop my mother from being neglectful, he didn’t stop her boyfriends from being abusive, he didn’t stop us from being taken away and made to live with our grandmother. my grandmother was in the council of catholic women, she was on the board of directors at the church, she taught sunday school, she was close personal friends with both the priest and the deacon, and was beloved by everyone. and she is and always has been viciously abusive.

when i was a junior in high school, my boyfriend was a missionary kid whose parents were at a local church. he frequently bragged about how many people in papua new guinea he and his family personally converted to xtianity, and about how the bible he carried around helped him in lots of arguments at school. one instance was when he used it to argue against same-sex marriage in his US history class. even though i was catholic and he was not, he had me go to church with him sometimes. his family was Righteous and Godly and Ideal. he was a missionary kid and i was a Good Catholic Girl, and that didn't stop him from sexually assaulting me. and then he just went right back to converting people, went right back to talking about how godly and morally correct he was. 

god didn’t stop that from happening, either. god didn’t stop any of that from happening, and i hated him for it.

when i was a senior in high school, i finally called cps on my grandmother for her abuse, and they did nothing. my grandmother, the poor old woman who took in her grandchildren and suffered through how absolutely terrible and horrible they were but was still so godly, and the family was just so beautiful at mass every week… she tossed me out. she told me to pack and to leave the house. so i did.

when i moved in with a friend, sleeping on an air mattress on her floor, i had a lot of time to think about my sexuality and gender. and it scared me, because of a sermon our priest had given once and because i didn’t know how my very catholic boyfriend would react. (he was fine with it, but we did end up breaking up after a bit for unrelated stuff.) i did attend mass a few times while i lived with her, desperately hoping to feel… something, anything. but i didn’t. i didn’t get a sign or anything even remotely comforting. 

       eventually, i came to terms with the fact that i wasn’t cishet, and when i went to college (well… went is a strong word. i was on campus) i had the opportunity to start to find myself, and i thought… catholicism didn’t fit me. it never fit me, it always made me feel empty. 

one of my friends was a rabbi’s son, and as a jew, he was ALWAYS more than willing to talk about judaism. there was more than one occasion that our friend group would hang out in an empty classroom with a whiteboard, and we would just listen to him talking about the torah or about jewish ethics or just… whatever he felt like talking about.

and i desperately wanted to know more, i wanted to always feel the way i did listening to him talk about the relationship jews have with god. i wanted to be part of something that not only allowed but ENCOURAGED a fraught relationship with god. that not only allowed but ENCOURAGED questioning your beliefs. the kind of community i felt listening to him talk about judaism was something i had never felt in all my years of being a Good Catholic Girl. i wanted to be part of it so desperately… but i had been catholic, which in my mind meant i wasn’t allowed. so i pushed my desire down.

i ended up dropping out of college for mental health reasons, and by that point had ended my friendship with the friend i’d stayed with before, which meant i had to move back in with my grandmother. it was… bad. i tried to come out to her and it didn’t go well. i ended up moving out again, and was trying to get as far away from catholicism as humanly possible.

i was pagan for a few years, and i don’t regret it. i made a lot of friends and i learned a lot about what i wanted out of a relationship with god, but ultimately it just wasn’t for me. it just didn’t feel like home. during that time, i became friends with a lot of jews, and hung on to everything they said about judaism. (like, it’s seriously weird how the older i got the more jewish friends i had. it felt like judaism was literally calling me. but it scared me so i refused to think about it too hard.)

and then crazy circumstances happened (that have nothing to do with my conversion) and i moved in with my current roommates lol. one of my roommates was already jewish but didn’t really have the kind of connection to it that they wanted (for reasons that aren’t mine to share). the first time i saw them light the menorah for chanukah i… felt something. it was a kind of yearning that i just… couldn’t ignore. i felt like i was being called to something bigger and older and deeper than i had ever felt before. i wanted to be jewish more than anything and it felt like i was supposed to be jewish.

and i still waited… a while to bring it up. i thought about it constantly, but i never said a damn word to anyone, until finally i couldn’t keep it in anymore and blurted it out and i was so nervous that i was going to be told i couldn’t. but i wasn’t. we decided that we wanted to go to one of the local temples at some point.

the first time i rolled into the temple i almost cried. the feeling i had was one of overwhelming familiarity, of a desperate need to belong there. the people were so nice and welcoming but it didn’t feel like it did at my old catholic church. it felt like i already knew them, even though i was to shy to talk to many people. and then the service started, and i cried through… almost the entire thing. every time i heard hebrew, it resonated with me in a way i had never experienced.

it felt like what i was looking for in catholicism.

as a side note, at one point someone was like vaguely rude about my wheelchair in the typical abled nonsense way, and at the oneg afterwards rabbi was talking to me and was like “i saw that, and it was just absolutely unacceptable. i’m so sorry that happened.” and i was SHOCKED. 

me and my roommates ended up going to shabbat services for a few months and every single time i went into the building it just. felt like home. it felt like it was where i was supposed to be. eventually i worked up the guts to actually ask about converting, because i just… i know i keep saying it, but i just so desperately wanted to be jewish. i wanted to be a part of it more than i had ever wanted anything.

and during the conversion classes, i found… myself? i guess? i became more solidly myself, i think. i’ve never really… i’m not good with the academic part of being jewish because of my brain damage, and that’s something i worried about with my rabbi, but he told me that it was okay, that i didn’t have to know everything, because there’s things even he doesn’t know. the important thing was the spiritual part, and that was… something i actually found fulfilling.

i still have a very fraught relationship with god, but it doesn’t feel like one-sided hatred with an all knowing deity that knew i was suffering and didn’t care. it’s a struggle, a conversation, it’s me yelling at god at three in the morning and being allowed to do that. it’s me realizing that god doesn’t control everything in the universe because we’ve got free will, and there’s some things we have to do for ourselves. my suffering wasn’t preordained and there isn’t “a reason for everything”, it was other people doing it because they were exercising their free will to hurt others.

my rabbi is… older gen x cishet white man, so he’s got some pretty centrist politics, but he always stresses that he accepts us for who we are and that the most important thing is that we are taking care of ourselves. (seriously, the number of exchanges i’ve had with him that are along the lines of “i can’t make it to class because my body is doing a chronic illness” “that’s okay, make sure you take care of yourself” is… more than i can count) he’s flawed at it, of course, but… who isn’t?

the more i learn about the tanakh (as opposed to the old testament - because they’re actually very different) the more secure i feel in my decision. the stories aren’t meant to be absolutely true in every sense of the word, we have literal hundreds of pages of rabbis arguing with each other across hundreds of years about what a passage might mean. 

the stories aren’t showing how we need to be subservient to god, they’re showing that even god makes mistakes, so of course people are going to make mistakes, because we’re made in their image. they’re to remind us of who we are, of what it means to be jewish. am yisrael, the people of israel (NOT the country). we literally named ourselves after the time our great great great great grandpa wrestled with god AND WON. 

jewish belief in god doesn’t necessarily mean “i think god exists”, because of course they do. god is whatever you need them to be. jewish belief is trust, it’s like saying “i believe in you” to a friend you know can do whatever it is they need to do. 

despite what antisemites would have you believe, jews being god’s chosen people doesn’t mean we think we’re better than everyone else. being chosen is a burden. jews have historically suffered and suffered and suffered, and we’re still here. we still keep going, because we have to. jews grapple with the concept of being chosen much like we grapple with god. it’s a heavy and weighty thing that means something different to everyone. being chosen isn’t always a good thing. it’s responsibility, it’s heartbreak, it’s pain, it’s a happiness i can’t put into words, it’s community and belonging and facing adversity from people who want you dead. and continuing on, because jews will always endure.

but hey, i’m just one guy. if you ask another jew i can guarantee they’ve got another perspective and another story.

[x0401x]

Hi there! Just want to thank you so much for translating for the VE fandom! I've been looking through your VE posts and noticed you mentioned how anime!Gil is completely different from LN!Gil. I agree with you and was wholeheartedly disappointed in the anime. I was hoping you could elaborate more on your thoughts, where you thought anime!Gil and anime!Violet went wrong and how they were different from the anime. Sorry if you've already made a post on this previously. Thanks again!

Hi! You’re welcome!

This reply took me long enough, lol. I haven’t gone too much into detail, or else I’d just end up writing a bible. It still turned out long as hell, though, so I’ve put it under a cut.

I really didn’t know how to begin with this. “Where they went wrong” kinda implies that those two were going right until some point, and that’s just… not the case. They were a trainwreck from start to finish. And it’s kind of impossible to really discuss this without touching upon the massive fails in the writing of the entire show. It does try to convey important messages to the viewers, but mostly with visuals and repetitive lines, never with the actual plot or the characters. You get an inkling of what the story was attempting to do with them, and that initial idea is what seems to stay with most people, because there’s nearly nothing beyond it.

As director Ishidate has stated more than once before, he made changes to the story because he thought the novel was, in his words, “too orthodox”. But watering it down meant watering the characters down too, Gil and Violet more than anyone else. And this results in a show that ironically fails to grasp its own themes and cast — the personalities and conflicts get lost in the details and have to be patched up with excuses that end up displaying how little the show trusts its own audience. It keeps spelling out plot devices and character traits in an almost robotic manner, with very scarce effort put into actually showcasing them in the situations and dialogues. Everyone is too one-dimensional and the main plot line is repeated over and over instead of being alluded in parallels or even just slightly more intelligent exchanges. Animators like Ishidate have grown dangerously used to committing a grave narrative suicide: to give vague and unconvincing reasons for things to be the way they are and expect the audience to take it all as is simply because it was stated there. Everything is oversimplified because they clearly want the viewers to get invested in the emotional baggage of the show, and only the emotional baggage, because they think that’s all we get invested on. They forget that details are necessary for the whole experience.

These problems are recurrent in Violet and Gil, and they never stop. I’ll start with Gil, since he was mentioned first.

Gilbert Bougainvillea is a very complex, humane and multi-faceted character in the novel. What’s interesting is that he doesn’t look like it at first, so he surprised many readers in volume 1 with how caring and endearing he can be. And I mean caring for real. Anime!Gil seemed like a poor excuse for what he was supposed to represent, which in turn made him into a walking contradiction. In the novel, Gil is by far the person that emphasizes the most with Violet, because the two of them are two sides of the same coin. This is where the anime falls short most frequently. They at first look like polar-opposites, but are absolutely not, yet the show portrays them as such. Novel!Gil is gratuitously kind and righteous, and he’s brave and pure-hearted enough to stand by his values no matter what. He’s used to giving up everything for the sake of other people, but he has morals that he holds to the roots of his very being, so he always chooses to donate himself to what he deems as good causes. And once he has his mind set on an objective, he doesn’t mind playing dirty to achieve it, as long as he’s not hurting anyone. That’s exactly the same as Violet, and Gil isn’t the only one who sees himself in her — Hodgins and Dietfried also notice how alike the two are. Novel!Gil relates to Violet on a spiritual level, and he knows first-hand how she must feel. He’s been there and done that. And that’s why she’s his number one priority. His purpose in life is to protect her and keep her in a healthy lifestyle within a blessed working environment and a loving family. Quite literally, all he wants is to make sure that she’s happy, and he’s active and vocal about it. He’s also an unapologetic and unabashed feminist, so he completely approves of her doing anything for a living — she doesn’t need to live her life like an ordinary woman and whatever she wants for herself is fine, as long as it’s not too dangerous.

Apparently, his personality is one of the book aspects that Ishidate believed to be “too orthodox”. He depicts Gil the way you’d expect any male creator to depict a man — a brooding martyr figure who only has a heart of gold in fleeting moments that get replayed again and again in flashbacks to serve as justification for Violet’s undying love. He makes very little strides and there’s a lot of flawed reasoning behind his affection that makes it oddly disconnected, which is the fact that said affection is barely ever there. Gil hardly treats Violet like a person, let alone an equal. Violet is ready to give her life for him anytime, and as we see in the last battle at Intense, he’s ready to cling onto that to save his own life. Ishidate doesn’t shy away from making very evident that he thinks it’s okay for Gil to do only the minimum to earn Violet’s respect and trust, like it’s a given and all he’s required in order to earn her love is to exist. This is very visible in scenes like the one where they first met. Gil seems to shield Violet from the abuse of his brother, but shows next to no distress or even interest over it as he doesn’t even question where she came from or why Dietfried was treating her that way. There’s also the scene where he takes her to one of his family’s residences, and she has his jacket on, just like in the novel… yet he’s letting her walk barefoot in the snow without giving a single flying fuck. He then leaves her side as soon as he instructs the maid what to do with her, not looking back. I also hate that scene where he gets back home and she bumps into him and falls on her butt. He just stares at her and makes no effort to help her back up. But the one I hate the most is that festival scene where he nearly thanks Violet for fighting so well in battle. I mean, she’s killing people for him. She, a literal child, is in the frontlines of a long-lasting war, risking her life and committing mass murder for his sake. That’s literally nothing to be grateful for. Especially not when he’s supposed to love her. And I despise that he only stopped himself from finishing the phrase because he noticed the bruises on her.

Another major defect of the anime was changing Gil’s backstory. Anime!Gil was, by the looks of it, just a rich kid who enlisted simply because that’s the family tradition. And if you take away Gil’s backstory, you take away the viewers’ reason to empathize with him. Why? Because that means he’s morphed into someone who can make choices. Erase any factor that binds Gil to doing what his family and his superiors make him do, and what you have is a grown man with his free will intact. And he uses none of it to help Violet. Anime!Gil was always given the opportunity to say no. He could’ve said no to Dietfried and sent Violet straight to the Evergardens, he could’ve said no to his superior officer and not taken her into the military, or he could’ve at least said no to assigning her to the men’s troops. He didn’t because there would be no story otherwise. Novel!Gil is always attempting to save Violet from the war and from herself, while anime!Gil’s actions beg to differ. And so, anime!Violet’s obsession with Gil stems from the fact that he was the first to treat her remotely like a human being and that, for a long time, he was all she had. None of that fate thing, because it’s also “too orthodox”. But without the fate element and without Gil having no control whatsoever over how he feels about Violet, he’s straight-up a pedophile. If he feels regular romantic love for Violet, who is in her mid-teens, that’s pedophilia right there. This one is my biggest beef with anime!Gil, and I don’t take criticism for it.

Now Violet. Not to be rude, but I see so many people talk about how interesting her anime counterpart is, yet I rarely ever see anyone going in-depth on it. It’s like the way the fans talks about the show. Literally every single person who comments that they liked it always says the exact same thing: “I cried during every episode”. I sort of feel like most of them are just reproducing what they see other people say out there, which is probably what got them interested in watching it in the first place. I don’t mean this with ill-intent; it’s just seriously the impression I get from looking at the tag. I’ve accompanied it since the novel came out all the way back in 2015, and when the show was running, believe it or not, I didn’t really see much of those comments. It started becoming a habit to say it after episode 10, which seems to be the highest-rating episode (the irony being that it was the closest the anime ever got to the novels). Hence why it feels to me like some people just say it on automatic, and I get the same vibe from the fans of anime!Violet.

I’ll just be blunt here: the main difference between anime!Violet and canon!Violet is that canon!Violet was made to be liked by girls and women, and anime!Violet was made to be liked by men. I have already said this before, but Violet is the very definition of independent professional woman in the novel. She’s educated, confident, strong, reliable, altruistic and overall well-versed in at least a little bit of everything. Half of it is due to luck and half of it is her own merits, but all in all, she was created not just to be relatable but also a character that people could look up to. Meanwhile, anime!Violet was clearly made to be waifubait.

I can’t really stress how little thought was actually put into her portrayal and development. We never truly see her internalizing the lessons that she supposedly learns in each of the self-contained episodes. We only ever witness her displaying sudden significant hints of emotion at convenient times, paired to her either repeating what she was told earlier by one of the characters or taking an extremely obvious conclusion to a question that was already half-answered by someone else. Because of this, Violet’s growth process has an unsteady pacing in the anime and mostly feels disjointed. In comparison, novel!Violet is usually not the point of view — she’s often in the role of observer, and we notice through the solutions she comes up with for her clients’ issues that she does have a very humane connection with them. We also notice through the clients’ opinions on Violet that she shows subtle changes at certain specific points, such as smiling just a little when she manages to not only accomplish her duties but also help solve their problems. This makes her more real and believable because, unlike the anime, it presents no abrupt alteration to the essence of her person. She’s growing in her own way, but it’s still easy to tell. It’s also very clever to have Violet be disliked or misunderstood by her clients at first because she’s so aloof and apathetic-looking, but then she grows on them after they actually understand her, and the readers can absorb that from them. I’ve seen many people complain that they can’t really empathize with anime!Violet, but in the novel, the author takes care not to let this happen, and it really doesn’t.

What upsets me the most is that anime!Violet is overly infantilized. We all know that director Ishidate loves her like a father loves a daughter; it’s been said by himself and his colleagues quite a lot. That’s cute and all, but it made her depiction extremely shallow. The biggest problem was making her 14 in the anime. I still struggle to understand what would’ve been so bad with keeping her as a 17-year-old. Sum that up with removing many of her merits and adding forceful childish traits, such as being okay with changing clothes anywhere in front of anyone or pouting when she’s frustrated, and you have the perfect recipe of what waifu junkies like to be spoon-fed with. In my opinion, anime!Violet was a downgraded tragic heroine played in a cheap and boring way to attract tearjerker lovers.

I hope this has covered enough of my take on the matter. ✌️

[bigskydreaming]

I'm not sure if you got my request because i didn't had internet when i sent it, so i'll write it again xd Do you think Dick (and the batboys in general) are famouse like Bruce? Because in the comics there's not any clue about it, i've never seen anyone say something like "oh look! Its Dick Grayson!, y'know, Wayne's first ward/son And its a shame, because reporters would make such a hard life to all of them, it would maka a good narrative tool

Honestly, this is a prime example of that inconsistency I rant about, and also DC’s refusal to just COMMIT on even the most basic aspects of their universe like….uh…how many kids does Batman have. 

afhsahfklahsklfhal

Like, you would think that would meet the MINIMUM requirements of “shit you should probably have figured out and make sure everybody’s on the same page with” but DC’s like….nah, that’s not important.

So I mean…..I’m reasonably certain - like this is just my personal belief, but I’d put money on it being right, lol - but I think the primary reason there’s so little mention in the comics of how Bruce’s kids are viewed in the public eye/how much the public are aware of them (in the New 52, at least, as pre-Flashpoint there was a lot more plot around that kind of thing, especially back in the 80s and 90s)……

…is because 90% of the writers and editors have no clue either, and nobody wants to be the one to ask, and like, open that can of worms. I 100% think you could ask five different writers at DC which kids Bruce has OFFICIALLY adopted in this current continuity, and get five different answers, lol.

There’s been so much handwaving about Dick’s status ever since Spyral, and again - I think its because nobody bothered to think through the logistics of the Hypnos/global-mindwipe machine BEFORE writing it into the story, and then once it did occur to any of them to like….wonder just how specifically it worked, they were like, fuck it, better just be as vague as possible. So, according to Grayson, everyone Helena didn’t program into the exclusion list before the satellite was activated should have no recollection of Dick Grayson, which is why he was able to ‘go back to his old life’ and be Nightwing again, without worrying about his secret identity having been unmasked…..

But what does that mean for his official identity as adopted son or even just ward of billionaire Bruce Wayne? People can’t have NO memory of Dick Grayson and still remember that Bruce Wayne took in a kid named Dick Grayson. I mean, as far as I can tell, the overall consensus in the comics seems to be that after the satellite was activated, Dick just kinda started from scratch as ‘Dick Grayson’ like, he was free to be himself again, but it was like he was a blank slate/came out of nowhere as far as everyone else was concerned. But again, that means as far as anyone outside of their close circle of family and friends know….Dick Grayson is a non-entity to Bruce Wayne and the two have no history. 

Which I mean, is fairly shitty and you’d think if nothing else, there’d be massive story potential there for delving into Dick’s character and his relationship with Bruce and examining how he felt about ‘having his old life/identity back’….except with the caveat that as far as the world is concerned, his life and identity don’t and have never included his father.

Cut to DC: Naaaaaaaah.

But even WITH that, plot holes persist, and abound, because…..why didn’t the satellite erase the Court of Owls’ knowledge/memory of Dick? Even before Luthor gave Cobb those goggles and files to help him with bringing Ric into the fold, Cobb clearly was already stalking Ric and knew exactly who he was….the Court obviously already had that doctor in place while he was still in recovery…so, whoops. I mean, you could probably come up with an explanation about the Court, via their own tech and resources, having had some protections in place 24/7 that kept the satellite from affecting them even though they weren’t on guard for it specifically…..but again, Occam’s Razor….I feel like the real answer is DC just didn’t care enough to think things that far through. Especially since the average Bludhaven citizen, like Bea, at least didn’t seem totally blown away when Ric revealed to her that amnesia aside, he was supposedly some rich billionaire’s adopted kid….which again suggests that as far as the writers were thinking, people in general are familiar with the idea that Bruce Wayne has more than one kid.

Then you’ve got Jason’s whole situation, and to be honest….I really only have the vaguest idea what’s going on there, because reading Lobdell books is against my religion, and I am a devout and deeply spiritual person, as you all probably can tell. I mean, I know that there’s something going on where like, Jason had himself legally resurrected in the public eye and is openly referring to himself as Bruce Wayne’s formerly-assumed dead foster kid……but like, is that the official official word, or would other writers if you asked them say they’d been operating under the assumption Bruce had adopted Jason too at some point in the Rebirth timeline, or….idek, man.

I…..honestly don’t have the faintest fucking clue what to make of the many back-and-forth retcons about Tim and his parents and his official place in the Batfam/relationship with Bruce, and am actually slightly terrified of even trying to make sense of that clusterfuck of a Gordian knot, so my official stance on Tim is to just like….back sloooooowly away from the anthropomorphic-migraine-masquerading-as-a-backstory, without like….agitating it and accidentally setting off another multiverse Crisis birthed wholly from just that one all-consuming black hole of a retcon.

I mean, there’s a reason I basically just shoehorn all the kids’ official pre-Flashpoint family statuses into anything I write in Rebirth continuity, and that’s not just stubbornness and my refusal to play the “now this kid is adopted…now he’s not…now he is again….except he’s not….oh he’s adopted again…..oh wait now he’s not again" game. 

Its like. Also for the sake of my sanity and stuff.

(And also hahahahaha fuck you DC times infinity, every time you use the words “blood son,” or “real family” in a comic, or have one of Bruce’s other kids refer to Bruce as “your father” when talking to Damian, as if that’s not an utterly bizarre and roundabout way for any sibling to refer to their mutual parent and thus I j’ete REFUSE to acknowledge it as valid….ahem, anyway, my point is, every time they do that in a comic, I double down and headcanon Bruce throwing a random as fuck gala for literally no other purpose than to remind all of Gotham that he has half a dozen kids and they’re all better than everyone else’s. Ugh. Kill it. Kill the “blood son” nonsense with fire and lightning and also lots of stabbing maybe).

Anyway, that’s my official stance on DC’s stance on Damian in the books.

Then as far as Cass goes….ugh, her origins were pretty much utterly butchered by the New 52, which IMO has also failed to give us Cass and Bruce bonding and dynamics sufficient to Sate Mine Ire™, sooooooo…..I mean, my perception of the current canon is that Cassandra’s official status is “secret mystery foster child that nobody really knows about,” but because I do not care for that and there’s the whole not sufficiently sated ire thing I mentioned, I officially reject this canon and willfully replace it with pre-Flashpoint Bruce and Cass love and adoption. DC’s welcome to kiss my critically acclaimed hiney if I’m doing it wrong.

Which brings us last, but certainly not least, as its only this way because I go sequentially and Duke is still Shiny and New comparative to the others and will be until the next inevitable fostering/adoption/clone hi-jinks bumps him up the sequential ladder (except I randomly switched Damian and Cass around this time because LOOK I DONT MAKE THE RULES, THERE ARE NO RULES i hvea Adhd hiccup sob leavem e aloooone soooooob)…..

Duke’s official status, much like the rest of the Batkids, can be summed up as Honestly, I Really Don’t Have A Fucking Clue And Am Just Winging This Whole Thing.

I mean, there’s less inconsistency with him, due mostly to the fact that so few writers other than Snyder use him (boo, hiss, and not just because I hate having to give Snyder credit for stuff - look, I love his Duke, but I loathe how he writes Dami, its a thing, I just…don’t get me started). But what inconsistencies there are….well….they’re a bit glaring.

Basically one major storyline showed Duke as being an official foster kid/ward of Bruce’s and living out of the Manor with Bruce and Damian and occasionally Tim when he’s not off road-tripping around the multiverse….and then Batman and the Signal had Duke in the care of his uncle, who was stated to be his legal guardian and Duke was constantly sneaking out in order to meet Bruce in the special Signal-cave he built specifically for Duke to operate out of so he didn’t have to like, drive all the way out to the Manor to change just so he could then drive back into the city and patrol. And then Batman and the Outsiders just said fuck all that, here’s Duke and Cass hopping hemispheres with the Outsiders every other issue, so apparently nobody’s making unscheduled visits anywhere back in Gotham to make sure these two are where they’re legally assumed to be, which again, for the record is…..*error, source not found*

LOLOL and the really fun thing about this little back and forth is I’m pretty sure allllll these conflicting takes are all the work of the same writer. Like. GET ON YOUR OWN PAGE, DUDE.

Also, again I have to assume the “Can’t Be Bothered To Give A Shit, Or Maybe They’re All Just Really Bad At Logic” curse has struck again, because….uhhhh…..

….at no point anywhere in Duke’s stories have I seen Bruce or literally anyone else express concern about the fact that Duke living with Bruce as his official foster, like he definitely and clearly was at some point at least…..means that literally every single one of his We Are Robin friends who knows that he was taken in by the Batfam (and there’s several of them who know this)….like, by the transcendent properties of You Can’t Honestly Think They’re That Dumb, that’s a good five or six civilians out there who probably took all of five seconds to play connect the dots and figure out the Wayne family, having officially taken Duke in on paper…..is pretty likely the Batfamily.

I mean, I like all of Duke’s friends and would definitely headcanon/write them as all being trustworthy and able to keep this knowledge to themselves for Duke’s sake, if nothing else, but I mean, its pretty unprecedented for Bruce to out himself and all of his kids/allies by extension, to like, that many civilian teenagers all in one swoop….

…sooooooo, you’d think, AGAIN, logically, maybe, perhaps, this is the kind of thing that should be brought up in a narrative somewhere as a plot point worth delving into, y’know, just for shits and giggles and maybe a little bit of that whatchamacallit - oh right, character development, but.

Cut to DC: Naaaaaaah.

 *throws up hands and does the I Can’t Even Shuffle all the way home*

In conclusion:

DC is a mess. The official/public status of each and every Batkid is a mess. Except for Damian, the blood son, but we have that pencilled in on the schedule to be killed with fire and also stabbing, so he can get filed under ‘just a fucking mess’ with the rest of his siblings. Hashtag Solidarity.

I mean, I say just write or headcanon their official status however you damn well please, and it’ll STILL be more effort than I believe DC has put into organizing and staying consistent with all of this, and thus STILL make more sense than what we currently have to work with.

*Shrugs* If they don’t care enough to provide a clear canon blueprint to follow when mapping the Bat Family Tree, I can’t be bothered to care if the one I make up myself happens to contradict one single mention of one kid’s official status as claimed by one issue of one book.

Especially if it was written by Lobdell.

Jason’s just a foster son my ass. grumble mumble bitter vengeful swears and a pox on all DC’s houses. WHY DO YOU PEOPLE HATE ADOPTION SO MUCH, INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW AND ALSO FUCK YOU.

[ivyveil]

She’s Such an Actress

the one where she is golden and he doesn't have a chance

She was golden.

It was in the small ways, the ways that mattered to Harry at the beginning. How she shook his hand and smiled when they met, how she tilted her hair back when she laughed at his jokes.

And he had felt that he could be golden, too, next to her.

Harry was fascinated. As most people were by Y/N, because she managed to be everything anyone could want - yet evade the sense that she was real, as if she were a phantom in the guise of an actress. In the center of the room, the spotlight on her, but there was a blank space in her eyes.

In the manipulative, draining way that Hollywood tended to have, this aspect of Y/N intoxicated the social climbers around her. They tried to fulfill her expectation that was never vocalized, seek validation that had never been promised to begin with.

The movies she starred in had gained international recognition. With awards littering the floor of her lavish mansion, she was clearly in the midst of a firestorm within her career. All eyes were on her. Not restricted to the sense of her work, but when she entered a room it seemed no one could help but spent a few moments, dazzled by her glow.

There was talk among the gossipers and media personnel, of Y/N becoming a director, or that one of her scripts would be passed onto production soon. The way she dealt with art was grandiose and made a statement, she felt like 1920s glamour in a 2017 woman. Essentially, it was everything of the past people craved, with the optimistic hope of the present; she was surreal and felt more like a promise than a guarantee, which made people love her all the more.

People were strange in how they were drawn to what would let them down, eventually.

She grabbed people’s attention without so much as making a noise. It was simple. She was attractive, but more like magnetic fields than airbrushed skin. Golden flecks of magic sprinkled from her fingertips and she simply became the Woman of the Night with barely so much as a blink.

Harry didn’t know how to approach her.

Her image had been painted on the back of his eyelids for weeks. They had stumbled into each other a few times, enough to justify a rushed introduction and quick compliments. He liked her movies, she liked his music. It was easy enough.

It wasn’t enough, though. He wanted more of her, and with the way her eyes would be caught by his own, slowly drifting down his body- it was clear that she wanted more, too.

He finally gathered the courage to start a conversation, at a random networking event that had him bored out of his mind. With a glance her way, in the corner she had nestled into with a glass of wine, he figured she felt the same.

“Hi,” he had begun, sidling up next to her in the booth. The drinks kicking in his veins had given him the boost of confidence, and the hazy aura in his eyes to forgive any forwardness he might’ve brought to the table.

“Hello, Harry Styles,” she acknowledged him with a tip of her glass. Y/N’s eyes seemed to sparkle, somehow, in the dimly-lit room, and Harry could smell vanilla wafting from her perfume.

His heart didn’t have a chance.

The night had ended with her, fast asleep on his bare chest, her fingers clutching onto the sheet’s edges like a small child. His thumb grazed over her fingers again and again as she made small, sleepy noises. Harry had stayed up longer than she had, his eyes drifting over her face.

It felt as if he were running in a church, as if it were sacred, as if she would wake up and demand to know why he had stayed the night. (Not that it had been discussed, but with the way she had jumped back into bed after using the restroom, and immediately tucked her arm around his side, he had assumed the invitation was clear.) But she remained, fast asleep, and Harry remained staring.

Frankly, it was a side of her that Harry wouldn’t get the chance to see a lot, in future ‘meetings’. Their schedules were so hectic, Harry genuinely had to pencil in Y/N’s name on his phone, in order to make it work. Whatever they were, to make ‘it’ work.

And Y/N seemingly did the same, texting Harry the hours she would be free to see when his matched up. The vague sense that it would be restricted to a hook-up was heavy in the air, next to Harry’s moaning and Y/N’s curled fingers grasping for whatever paneling was behind the bed. It didn’t bother them, necessarily, because frankly – that was all they could offer each other.  

Endings didn’t often happen snuggled up under comforters, scrolling through shit hotel TV, staring at her face as she mumbled in her sleep. They typically ended with rushed kisses and her giving him one last bum squeeze, a giggle bursting from her lips as she dashed out of the bedroom, her shirt still unbuttoned and a car’s horn blaring below.

He liked that version of her the best, though, when she was asleep and he was beside her. It didn’t have the elegance and glamour of her evening gowns and smokey eyes, but it made him feel special. Harry got to see her like that, when she wasn’t acting. And the fact was, she always seemed to be acting.

The magic wore away, as it tended to do. After a month, Harry no longer noticed the golden flecks and crimson streaks that drifted after her physical form, he didn’t hear the angelic bells when she laughed.

Rather, he saw the violet smears, the eyeliner smudges, the beige stains on the fronts of his shirts. From when she, drunk and stumbling into his chest, had made her way back to him at the end of the night, again. Harry heard that one time, when they managed to squeeze in a dinner and he fed her pizza. He had made a dumb joke about the cheese, when she laughed so hard, she snorted and almost fell off the bed. He saw Y/N, and was privy to her sans pedestal and wings.

They weren’t anything tangible, though. There were no firm titles, labels, anything. Harry didn’t even have her name in his phone, it was simply the mesh of digits he started associating with her face.

Harry enjoyed that bit, because neither one of them had to play a role. He didn’t have to buy her flowers and she didn’t have to text him more often than the rare moments she did.

No “boyfriend”, no “girlfriend”. In his mind, somewhere deeper than conscious thought where he overanalyzed situations and overthought his words, he felt like that was what kept them real. It was what stopped Y/N’s missing piece from becoming too large of an elephant in the room, what let her laugh unexpectedly and not feel the need to explain anything. Because she didn’t owe him anything. It was what prevented Harry from getting too much in his head, from doing things that would be reserved for a man who could properly love her, with the right time and dedication.

Y/N wasn’t playing a role, not with him. To ask her to do so would shatter the glass that had been so sturdy, thus far. Ruin what they had built. There was no reason to break through the walls, shards flying everywhere, in order to have her stay a bit longer in his bed.

Harry could make do, he was an adult.

It was when she was pulling away that Harry realized he wasn’t as much of an adult as he had thought. His last four texts had gone unanswered. He would’ve understood, if he were asking her to meet up again or to send naughty photos - but they were texts of puppies, of weird clothing he found in thrift stores, of questions he had about that one TV show she had gotten him into (the finale was a fucker, and he wanted to know her thoughts). There was no pressure, no urgency, but he had hoped she would’ve responded.

Truthfully, it was not a huge deal. Harry was not heartbroken and he managed to continue on with life. Hook-ups had the nasty tendency of creating unrequited situations, which Harry realized was a bit relevant to his own situation, and ‘ghosting’ was not uncommon. Especially in his industry, it was what practically created muses for the artists. They thrived off of heartbreak, derived from any hurt imaginable.

Harry couldn’t shake off, though, how happy she had seemed, tucked against his side, naked chests pressed against one another, popping Goldfish at the others’ open mouth. She had seemed happy. He was happy. Was he wrong?

It went beyond sex, he had realized reluctantly.

She was a woman he couldn’t let go of, because she cried at every movie. Even her own, her eyes would tear up before the end credits and she would try to wipe them away without Harry noticing. He couldn’t let go of her because she had seen the world, knew art from countries he had never heard of. She would show him photos from her phone, the ones of her standing crudely against naked statues and pretending to be in awe of majestic portraits, and she would explain to him how art became her life. He couldn’t let go of her because he could tell her, in the same hushed voice she had used against the darkness of night, the emotional, spiritual relief that happened when he performed. How a piece of him lived in every song he wrote, and he couldn’t imagine who he would be without it. And how that equally satisfied him and terrified him, and she would give him a tiny nod and wrap her fingers more firmly against his hair, watching the shadows of his face.

He couldn’t let go of her because he wanted her to meet his mom, his sister, all his friends. He wanted him and her to become a ‘they’, and to be known for certain things. Like how his friend-couples were known for doing certain things together, for always going bowling on Thursday nights or holding wine board game nights on Sundays. He wanted her to be tucked against his side, laughing at the more ridiculous celebrities, at every formal event. He couldn’t let go of her because he could see it plain as ever: he could, very potentially, love her.

Maybe she had sensed his feelings, somehow. Maybe that was what was empty, within her, some gargantuous black-hole that sucked away her desire for more. Maybe she got bored, and it was nothing but another ending. It didn’t settle right with him, it didn’t match up to the woman he met between bedsheets. But, Harry figured, perhaps he was wrong.

He found her on the rooftop.

It was another networking event, and Harry couldn’t stand to stay in the venue for one more minute. He had grabbed two bottles of wine, thinking he would give one to Jeff later, and made his way up the stairwell. The stairs were tucked away near the back of the ballroom, which had made it easy enough for him to escape.

Harry didn’t want to feel another hand touch his shoulder, another cold voice expressing their love for his music, when he felt almost certain they had never heard it. It was cold and stark in the stairwell, but it beat the mass of kiss-ass barbarians below.

He found her on the rooftop.

Her heels were slouched against one another, against the elevated brick edge. Her dress was flapping in the wind, the loose bottom curling against her bare toes. Her legs were up to her chest, her arms wrapped around, and her chin resting on her knees. Her hair was up, but several pieces had fallen out and fell against her cheek. Her shoulders were shaking.

Harry was startled, to say the least, because he hadn’t expected her to be there. Last he had heard, she was in a different country filming an indie movie about Russia in the 1930s.

“Y/N?” he asked, as if she would disappear in a second. He stood next to the entry door of the stairwell, his heart thumping in his chest against the cold. His arms had fallen by his sides, the sloshing bottles loosely dangling by his fingertips. Almost immediately, in a bashful sense that he loathed, Harry wished he had glanced in a mirror before heading up. His suit was most likely wrinkled in the back, his hair was definitely not coping well with the wind.

Harry just wanted her to miss him, was all. And it wasn’t very likely, in his or her state.

Y/N’s head lifted, her eyes looking over her shoulder, before one arm rose and she offered a tiny wave.

“Hello, Harry Styles.”

She was drunk, and her mascara had transferred over to her cheeks and somewhat down her face. Harry felt at a complete loss, unsure of how to deal with Y/N when the tears weren’t from Up but something else, something that made her seem more ashamed than before.

He truly wasn’t sure what was happening in Y/N’s life. Not that he ever had a clear idea, but it was something he regretted now more than ever. Not asking her about her day, not checking up on her every so often - he had assumed that would’ve been too forward, too much, that it would’ve pushed Y/N away.

“What’re yeh doing up here?” Harry approached where she was curled up, moving her shoes so he could sit down. She held out a hand towards one of the bottles, and he reluctantly gave it up.

“Just thinking,” her voice broke, her eyes glancing away from him, to hold back the upcoming stream.

“About wha’?”

It was just Y/N’s luck, to be crying over a man on a rooftop - like some heartbroken teenager in a cheap rom-com - only to have the man show up. And not only that, but he was so heart-breakingly gorgeous that night, with his hair messed up the way she liked, and his shirt half-unbuttoned and his pants hanging a bit low. It was simply just her luck.

She hadn’t meant for anything to happen. Y/N enjoyed watching Harry from afar, to see his charm work over a crowd like an ocean’s wave. The people were just along for the ride, to experience his magic and witness history in the making. Entire textbooks would be written about how he lived, how he grasped attention with humility and pride, how he loved everyone and everyone loved him.

She hadn’t meant for him to notice her, or even to walk over. She hadn’t meant to sleep with him, the first night. But when his hand was on her thigh, and his voice had lowered, bordering husky, she hadn’t stood a chance.

Y/N had created a safe space within Harry. A shelter for her insecurities and flaws to become exposed, to see the light of day lest they plan a mutiny in the suffocation of fear. She had rambled to him like a school child who was learning something new everyday, about her fascination with art and how she had tried new techniques with camera angles and location shots (many of which failed, which was why she typically never let the words slip past her lips to others). Y/N could only starve off the mortification for so long.

He had become too much to her, for it to last.

Her success as an actress had sustained the piece of her that craved meaning. The reaction of people to what she had to perform was everything she could ask for, and more. Satisfaction drenched her shoulders when she received an award, recognition, or even when a famous director give her that knowing smile. The smile that meant, you’ve got this figured out, whatever it is. You’re one of us.

Her success had, similarly, led to her creating divides. Within herself, within how others wanted her to be. There were expectations that weighed down her shoulders to stay poised, that lifted the smile on her lips when it began to droop, that caused her eyes to unfocus after the fortieth time someone was trying to quote her own movie back at her, and did it wrong.  

With Harry, she had felt more free. And originally, because they had been such a secret, it was a salvation. She could separate herself physically from her expectation and live in the ways she longed for, have the romance she craved. It had developed into something more, though, and all Y/N really knew was how to run away. Create more divides.

She supposed it was instinct, more than anything else. Since Harry had been a home for her fears, she would soon turn away from their new location in a natural attempt of escape. They would follow, she knew, and Harry would be left in the dust. A biproduct of her trying to be what she felt she should be.

“Me,” she answered, and it was partially true.

Harry fell quiet, this time, and in the lapse of their words Y/N found it was harder to breathe. Her heart thundered in her chest when he finally spoke, and the tears threatened to over-spill. She wasn’t expecting to hear his voice dry-cracked with exhaustion, the bottle rising hesitantly to meet his lips. Y/N honestly would rather get drunk off the redness from those lips, than the wines in her cellar.

“It’s okay, if yeh wanted to end things. I know yeh’re busy, got a lot goin’ on.” His eyes were held resolutely on the bridges in the distance, the lighted tips of skyscrapers and the dashing streams of cars below. It was cold, the wind beating against their breath and keeping their cheeks redder than the circumstances alone would have allowed, and Harry felt the overwhelming sense of inadequacy gripping his bones.

In his more poetic moments, he had referred to her as his Muse, his goddess, his Eve who never left Eden. And it was true, to an extent, as all mythologies cast their foundations in the well of actuality. She held the world at her fingertips, poised between finger and thumb, and all he could be was a speck in relation.

She never made him feel ‘less than’, because she never quite focused on her talent to begin with, when she was with him. When they were in public, he could easily notice the shift between her then – and her later that night, legs tossed over his own and her head burrowing into his butterfly tattoo. Her actress persona was more refined, with practiced flaws so as to enhance the general beauty of her celebrity. Her other persona was more casual, gentle, with genuine rough curves and edges.

“Never said I wanted to end things,” Y/N mumbled, her fingers reaching down to pick at the pokey ends of the brick edge.

“Yeh didn’t say anythin’, actualy.” His voice was more clipped.

“Didn’t know what to say.”

“Could’ve said that, I-” his fingers reached up and he tugged at his roots slightly, raking the hair back. The wine bottle met his lips as he, aggravated, attempted to sort through his thoughts. It didn’t help, though, only made him feel more imbalanced and less sure about what he felt.

“I dunno,” he sighed, “I didn’t expect yeh to drop me, I guess.”

How much more honesty would it take to shatter the glass around his eyes? Harry already felt them begin to bend with blurry reluctance, the bitter rise in his throat being the ultimate betrayal.

“What did you expect me to do, Harry? What was I supposed to do? Did I miss the script between us, was there supposed to be another fucking scene I missed?”

And, no, Harry hadn’t expected her head to snap over in his direction, her shoulders heaving upwards with an angry rise bubbling in her throat, and her eyes to suddenly break into a clear, irritated glare into his.

She wasn’t acting, now, and she didn’t seem so golden.

Harry wasn’t feeling so golden, either, next to her.

“Treat me like I deserve a response,” was all he could reply with, his tearful gaze looking into hers more hesitantly.

“I don’t owe you anything, Harry Styles. We never established anything,” and her voice broke again, the exterior glaze of frustration not quite matching the vulnerable end of her words.

Harry watched her carefully.

“Did yeh want to establish something?” he asked slowly, unsure of which response he wanted.

Y/N didn’t want to talk to him, anymore. Her mouth felt heavy, closed, yet her tongue worked against her. A drop hit her arm, and it was only when Harry’s fingers gently grazed her cheek did Y/N realize she had started crying again.

“I don’t know, what I want. It’s all just so – so, I don’t know. I can’t think,” she mumbled, squeezing her eyes shut. Y/N could feel the wet mascara fucking up her face more, and the small part of her that had demanded perfection for so long was writhing against her chest.

“That’s oka’,” he was murmuring tenderly, almost, and Y/N hadn’t realized he had shifted a bit against the edge. His hip was closer to hers, his legs dangling down as hers were still tucked against her chest. One of his arms reached out, hesitant, and when Y/N glanced up she saw him looking at her, silently asking if it were okay. With a brief, glum nod from her, Harry’s arm went around her shoulder, pulling her in next to his side.

“We don’t have to figure anythin’ out. I just wanna know, if yeh wanted to end things. Gotta know, so I know if I gotta let go.” It was the most clear either of them had been, the only portion of the discussion that had lacked emotional-driven response and reaction. Y/N appreciated that about Harry, that he could be absolutely rational and calm down way faster than she was able to.

“I like who I am, with you,” she whispered, and she knew he heard because his body stilled, somewhat.

“I’m not who I am, all the time. And, I dunno...it’s hard? Because I can’t figure out how to balance myself, when you aren’t around. I don’t want to be so dependent on someone, not when we aren’t anything.”

Harry nodded, understanding. It had been difficult for him, as well, because although they hadn’t discussed the extent to which they would be dedicated to one another, he hadn’t been messing around with anyone else. And it was hard, on the stretches where they were traveling and across the world from each other. It was difficult because he didn’t know if he had the right, to call, or to text, or to ask for anything.

“Maybe we could make our own thing, yeah? Not a relationship, but with more contact than we’ve been givin’,” he compromised, and Y/N rested her head on his shoulder. He shifted slightly, giving her more space to snuggle in closer.

Y/N gave a little nod, and Harry couldn’t help but smile.

“I like yeh, lil famous Mrs. Y/N.” he gave her shoulders a squeeze, and felt them shake slightly. Worried, he looked down, but saw she was giggling this time.

“I like you too, megastar Mr. Harry Styles,” she replied, sniffling a bit.

They sat there, quiet, in the silence of the night and the overall epic nature that tended to wash over those who sat on a rooftop together, pressed in each others’ sides as they no longer feared the next day. The horizon twinkled with the cars and streetlamps in the distance and the noise of the street below intermingled with the wind to become dispersed over the ground as a whole. It was quiet outside, too.

“Do you wanna know something? Never mentioned it, before,” Y/N said, and one of her hands drifted down to play with the edges of his coat.

People were awfully strange in how they gave up their hearts at midnight, as if the hours wouldn’t tick by and life would just stop. For a moment. For a second. For that instant.

“What’s tha’?”

“You’ve got a glow around you. It’s the first thing I noticed, when we met?” she began, and his heart was already growing a bit, “It’s like…” she drifted off, shaking her head as she searched for the word Harry already knew.

“Gold?” he offered, praying his words didn’t sound as choked as he felt inside.

Y/N paused, before nodding against his shoulder.

“Yeah, you’re gold. And sometimes I feel it, too? Like, gold,” she cut off her own rambling, seemingly a bit embarrassed that her words didn’t appear to make sense outside of her feelings. Y/N couldn’t tell that Harry had felt the same way about her, that she was, for a time, his Sun.

Harry hummed agreement, not feeling the need to explain his own take on how she impressed him, in a shower of golden rain. There would be other nights, he felt sure.

“I was wonderin’...”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to...” The question was already in the air, the ending was all he had to get out. It wasn’t a huge step, anyway, and it wouldn’t cement anything that would require expectation into what they were to each other. But, he had spoken about Y/N to his mother, anyway, and she had been curious to meet the woman.

“What is’t?”

“Meet my mum?” he finished, feeling it sort of difficult to swallow.

Y/N stilled, before looking back up at him, confusion bringing her eyebrows together, and worry painted across her lips. He would kiss it off, if the timing were different.

“Does she know...who I am? About us?”

“She knows yeh’re a great girl, and that yeh’re a bit shy. That yeh like Goldfish but won’t eat real fish, because yeh think of Nemo,” Harry shrugged. “Doesn’t know what yeh do, for a job, though. Didn’t mention it, didn’t think it described you well enough.”

Y/N waited, perhaps a bit confused as to what Harry meant, so he continued.

“Amazing actress, yeh are. But that’s not all yeh are, yeah?” and she nodded, so he braved forward, “Just was wonderin’ if yeh wanted to meet her. No pressure, you don’t have to. She just thought yeh sounded lovely, ‘s all.”

“Does she really?” Y/N sounded a bit nervous, as if she didn’t quite believe what Harry was saying.

“O’ course she does, because yeh are,” Harry brushed it off.

Suddenly, he felt a couple of hesitant kisses against his neck, before one of Y/N’s freezing-cold arms wrapped behind his head to hold his face closer to her lips as they gained intensity. He shuddered, but let her continue, his dimples poking deeply against his smile.

“You’re kind to me, Harry Styles.” Her breath smelled of wine and Harry felt certain he had a mess of smudged makeup against his scruff. He set his bottle down and turned towards her, his hand reaching up to cup her cheeks. They were cold, as well, and still slightly wet from her tears.

“Yeh’re cold,” he mumbled, his eyes drooping from the heavy thudding within his veins.

“Warm me up?” It was barely a whisper, and the shivers that broke against his spine weren’t from the wind.

So, he first started on warming her lips, by kissing her gently. They were a bit rough, not as smooth as her lips usually were, and he ran his tongue against her lower lip as he pulled her in closer. She laughed, a bit, but it quieted down when he pressed deeper against her mouth, a heavier breath escaping his and warming against her lips.

It was one of his favorite things about her, how she would always laugh at the first kiss, little puffs of air against his lips. She liked how he reacted to it, by not questioning what she thought was funny, but accepting it as a compliment of sorts.

Eventually, he broke off, with a small kiss at the end, still holding her face close to his own. Her eyelashes fluttered against his nose when she looked at him, her lips still parted and full. He swallowed hard, flashing her a quick grin.

“Hi,” he whispered, unable to really contain the giggles that slipped from his lips, this time. Harry felt like a twelve year old boy, sometimes, after kissing her, because while she was definitely the most real with him, there was still a phantasmagoric level to her beauty. He almost felt like it hadn’t happened, but his lip was still tingling from how she gently bit against it, so it must have.

“Hello, Harry Styles.” 

His heart really didn’t stand a chance.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed! Let me know your thoughts here, and check out the rest of my works if you’d like!

[iamnojedii]

19. Give us a headcanon about your muse that you never shared to anyone else or wanting to explore deeper. 

@pryceism​

I don’t think I have one that I haven’t shared in some way, but the one I’ve talked about the least I vaguely mentioned here, because I see discrepancy in eye color between Clone Wars and Rebels and canon is my playground. Strap in because in this essay I actually will--

Deep Force Lore™ is one of my favorite things about Star Wars, and in both series we get to see aspects of the Force in balance and out of balance, and plenty of debate on what balance actually means. In Clone Wars we meet the Mortis gods who are literal personifications of the light and the dark and the balance. In Rebels, we meet the Bendu, who - when referred to as a Force-wielder - says:

The Jedi and Sith wield the Ashla and Bogan, the light and the dark. I’m the one in the middle, the Bendu.

Which is super cool, because there’s a lot canonized in that one scene. Also Bendu’s views on conflict are pretty interesting, because he helps the protagonists at times, but it’s more like...nudging someone to make their own choices and not being bothered one way or the other what happens to them; when petitioned for help against the invading Empire, he unleashes a terrible storm that threatens the lives of both the Imperials and the rebels.

BUY ANYWAY-- Ahsoka’s eyes.

They’re a completely different shade of blue by the time we get to the years leading up to the Galactic Civil War. Even Ahsoka’s Force vision of her future self has the same eye color as she does during the Clone Wars era (also no striations to her montrals/lekku, but that’s another Sarah Essay™ for another time). Why the change? Animation differences aside, Ahsoka’s skin and stripe coloring on her montrals and lekku are exactly the same. What changed is Ahsoka’s concentrated focus/relationship with the Force and how she uses it.

Ahsoka’s always been a naturally gifted Force-user even from a young age. Her abilities have always been described to be “advanced”, and we’ve seen her use mind tricks and force choke-slam Trandoshans and stall Nu-class attack shuttles mid-flight and shut off lightsabers by dampening their energy with the Force, but she also has some interesting stuff going on beyond that.

First being what went down on Mortis: her death and resurrection due to The Daughter’s lifeforce being transferred to her. We’ve seen very little of what that implies, outside of the convor bird, Morai, following Ahsoka wherever she goes, which is described in Rebels as “a servant of The Daughter, or The Daughter herself when acting as a spirit guide.” Also, I love the on-the-nose implications of Morai’s namesake regarding Greek mythology.

Another thing that’s important and something that’s repeatedly been driven home throughout Clone Wars is the contradictions within Ahsoka herself that lend themselves to the dark side. Which brings me to the second point; Malachor in Rebels.

Malachor is home to a Sith temple, which...okay, that’s bad, but I like how Dave Filoni talks about the symbolism and dichotomy of that temple:

When the characters are above ground, it’s daylight and they’re looking down at a black surface. When they are below, it’s nighttime and they’re looking up at what seem to be stars.  The design elements were important to reinforce the concepts of night and day, light and dark, life and death. Those things are part of Malachor’s DNA and its architecture.

Which is pretty on par with all the themes of Twilight of the Apprentice but also important to what ends up happening to Ahsoka at the end of her confrontation with Vader. She descends into the depths of the Sith temple, through the same ‘exit’ we saw Maul and Ezra emerge from. You know, the one Maul was all Rule of Two-ing Ezra about in regards to how to navigate the temple. We don’t really know what happened after that aside from some Topps digital card art that Filoni did, where he talks about her journey from the realm of the dead to the realm of the living, but it’s safe to say she navigated that temple alone with Morai as a kind of spiritual guide. I also think it’s safe to say that, similar to Jedi temples, Sith temples can be just as “tricky” in terms of having various pathways they can lead an individual down. A rebirth can be just as much of a death as a new form of life, which is pointed out to Ahsoka by Bendu:

BENDU: Understand this, much will change as a result of this encounter. AHSOKA: Isn’t that true of all things, as time advances? BENDU: My dear, when I say change, I mean death. AHSOKA: So I will die? BENDU: Will you? I didn’t know that. Goodbye then, Ahsoka Tano, former Jedi Knight.

Ahsoka, at her core, is a good person. Much of what drives and motivates Ahsoka is doing the right thing-- as she sees it. We all know people can believe something wrong is something right, and I don’t think Ahsoka is exactly averse to using less-than-upstanding means to accomplish a goal (see: using Darth Maul as a fatal distraction to help ensure her and Rex’s escape, being totally chill with ordering others to use violent means to get information out of targets, being totally chill observing others using violence as a means to a ‘good’ end-- seen predominantly in her apprenticeship to Anakin). All of these things aren’t exactly good actions or decisions, but she justifies them because they’re being done to achieve something she deems as good or righteous. Ahsoka is someone who is not above revenge and seeking vengeance for her loved ones or for wrongs committed to others/her ideals. This is a textbook un-Jedi way of thought, more in line with someone who leans towards the darker aspects of the Force. That being said, Ahsoka isn’t someone who seeks power, not for herself or over others. She isn’t cruel, no matter how ruthless her actions can come across. She’s not entirely selfless, but she’s not consumed by the concept of self.

Ahsoka’s relationship with the Force is parallel to her own personal moral compass. Her white lightsabers are perfect reflection of that. True Neutral. She has no affiliation with the Jedi, but she also holds no leanings towards Sith ideology either.

Lucasfilm story person Matt Martin, when asked about the concept of “Gray Jedi”, tweeted about how a Force user who wields both light and dark aspects of the Force can’t do so without consequences. I find that interesting, because it’s not a “that’s not possible” answer, just a “sure, but there’s a price to pay” answer. Which I vibe with.

We already know that the Force at its extremes has a visible affect on the users body (and sometimes mind). We’ve mostly seen this in Sith and other dark side users, predominately yellow/red eyes and sometimes actual degradation of the users body (gross). But we’ve also seen this in other beings. The Bendu? The mystic space moose talking about residing firmly in the middle of the Force who can control the weather and open Sith holocrons like it’s no big deal? He’s blind. So Ahsoka, someone who has a powerful connection to The Daughter, someone whose moral compass can justify ethically muddled choices for a righteous cause, sees a visible mark indicating her relationship with the Force: indigo eyes.

Some of my favorite quotes from the Ahsoka novel sum up her relationship with the Force very nicely, I think:

A sharp whine reached Ahsoka’s ears, the dark and light song of the crystals struggling for balance.... When Ahsoka opened her hands, she was not surprised to find that two lightsabers, rough and unfinished, were waiting. They would need more work, but they were hers. When she turned them on, they shone the brightest white.

BAIL: I’ve never seen white ones before. AHSOKA: They used to be red. When the creature had them, they were red. But I heard them before I ever saw him on Raada, and knew that they were meant for me. BAIL: You changed their nature? AHSOKA: I restored them. I freed them.

BAIL: In this fight, there will be people like Barriss who are focused on the past. And there will be people who focus strongly on the future. Neither of them is wrong, exactly, but even if we don’t always walk the same path as one another, ours must be the middle road. AHSOKA: [Ahsoka smiled] That’s what I thought when I was trying to find the crystals that power my lightsabers.... I want something in the middle of that, still useful but different than before.

[armsdealing]

@neotropical​ said:  3, 6, 10 & 25 for charles 13, 14, 15 & 38 for marce

CHARLES.

3. how do they position themselves in a group? do they like to be the center of attention, or do they hang back at the edges of a crowd?

charles prefers to stay in the background, and preferably, not a part of the group at all. he dislikes crowds, hates drawing attention to himself more than necessary (since he's the sort of person that commands authority just by manner of physical presence), and he'd rather be on his own. if he must be part of some group, though, he'll stay in the back, let people focus on anything but him, only provide his input if it's absolutely necessary.

6. what are they like in motion – in different environments, and in different activities? what causes the differences between these?

so this question is a bit vague. but as a general rule of thumb, charles moves very gracefully, much like a feline. he's an animal shapeshifter, and some animal characteristics rub off on him, so despite his size, he moves as though he wouldn't be able to stumble even if he tried to. he's quite casual and lax about his mannerisms, but also purposeful. when he's working, he's completely in that moment, seamless in a way that can almost be absorbing to look at, and when he's sparring or training or fighting, there's a lot of decisiveness to his every movement too. basically, charles in motion is completely devoid of self-doubt or awkwardness, even when he moves in a sluggish fashion. this wasn't born randomly; it's a result of his mutation, his physical skillset, his experience and his overall personality.

10. what energizes and drains them most?

charles is an introvert. so circling back to the initial question — people drain him the most, and that's why he does not like being around them. he does not like having to talk at length, and does not like being the center of attention. any kind of socialization, when prolongued, really tires him. and when i say any, i mean any and all — even romantic interactions. after spending a certain amount of time with a significant other, he needs some time for himself, to decompress. none of this is personal, really, he just gets overwhelmed easily and that sensation can trigger his dissociative episodes.

similarly, what energizes him most is being alone. he likes to exercise too and that keeps him physically energized. likes to occupy his mind with work and solving problems, even small every day problems like fixing people's appliances. he seems lazy sometimes, but he's got a curious mind and he likes to keep busy in some way.

25. what do they need and want out of relationships, and how do they go about getting it?

when it comes to friendships and romantic relationships, charles is very practical. he wants maturity and he needs patience and he needs space, and little more than that. naturally, he gravitates toward independent, autonomous people. charles doesn't do well with clinginess, with insecurity, and emotionally demanding relationships and people that need a lot of reassurance about his feelings toward them. his love languages are acts of service (doing things for you, helping you when you need it, defending you, etc) and physical affection, and he's not one to put into words how much he cares — you might not ever hear it, or you might hear it very rarely, and you need to be okay with that. and if you're not okay with that, then that is fine, but that's what you need to keep in mind if you aspire to a relationship with him of any sort.

he's pretty straight up about this. he will never mislead you and he will be honest about his terms and how he functions, and he's a very "what you see is what you get" type of person. if he notices that any of this makes you unhappy, then he will simply end the relationship in the most cordial but straightforward manner possible.

MARCELO.

13. how do they greet the world — what is their typical attitude towards life? how does it differ in different circumstances, or towards different subjects? why do they take these attitudes, and why do they change? how do these tend to be expressed?

overall, marcelo is pretty optimistic. he would much rather focus on the positives and the things that go right, rather than the things that go wrong. he's also very aware that the world is a shitty place full of injustice and bigotry but he firmly believes there's ways to make it better and it's just a matter of putting in the work and helping those around you (and those that need it most) and being constant and vigilant. it's often not easy but it's what must be done. marcelo is always striving toward progress, he believes almost every problem has a solution and those that don't one can be alleviated in some form. overall marcelo makes an active choice to believe in goodness and that most people are good — even if that good is very relative, or it doesn't abide by conditions such as laws. morally speaking, he's a well established neutral good, leaning toward chaotic good.

this attitude doesn't tend to differ from person to person or the circumstance. sure there's times his mood may waver and his view of the world may become less benevolent but once he recovers he goes back to believing this. the source of this belief is his love towards others, and the love other people have for him. and his realistic views on the world come from his own experiences, the experiences of those around him. so there's a certain degree of "caution" to his optimism, he believes in keeping one (and those around you) safe from harm above all else too.

it all ends up expressed in the things he does, how he acts toward others. marcelo shows his caring disposition very freely, he's a very helpful person, very quick to smile, very quick to defend others. kindness is a choice and he makes that choice every day.

14. what do they care deeply about? what kind of loyalties, commitments, moral codes, life philosophies, passions, callings, or spirituality and faith do they have? how do these tend to be expressed?

well, i think a lot of what i said above can also apply here (maybe im just too stupid for these questions!). but — marcelo's loyalty lies with his family (the reyes more so than the marconis, really), and with his friends/loved ones. all of these loyalties were choices for him, and not something he considers himself forced to — something he wants to do, rather than has to. his life philosophy is more or less what i described above. spirituality or faith is a more complex matter; in his canon verse he was raised catholic and as he's gotten older he's become less and less inclined to believe in it especially following traumatic experiences such as the deaths of his parents. he is still spiritual but his religion, his personal relationship to god isn't really a source of comfort anymore, he does not practice it and he spends a lot of thought on it but not much comes from it because it's a complex problem.

in contrast with his "loyalties" and "moral codes", which color every aspect of his life, his religion — or lack thereof — is much more of a private affair. he does not talk about it and it's one of those topics that are simply off limits. this answer would be no doubt different if i was talking about Nueva Religión's marcelo, but this applies exclusively to canon marcelo only.

15. what kind of inner life do they have — rich and imaginative? calculating and practical? full of doubts and fears? does it find any sort of outlet in their lives?

marcelo is creative and imaginative but there's a sense of practicality to how he thinks. he is the kind of person that needs organization, structure, and order not just outwardly but inwardly as well. so his thoughts follow a very rational pattern, a calculating approach. it's no surprise he enjoys planners, flowcharts and spreadsheets. he's a perfectionist; a precisionist that likes to make effective use of every portion of his time.

in a way, the sheer whirlwind of activity that characterizes his life is the outlet. marcelo is very confident on this level, he's at his best when he's focusing on something (be it getting a choreography perfect or reorganizing his closet) and not having something to do is when he begins to feel unhappy or unsure. because there's a lot of unresolved concerns festering inside his mind, but he does not think about them much unless he really has to.

38. is there anything they wish they could change about their worldview or thought processes? what, and why?

sure. i think he would make himself less tightly wound when it comes to the things that affect him, the deep things he does not share with just anyone; he wishes he could voice them out loud and ask for help with them, and that asking for help didn't feel so difficult. he wishes he could be vulnerable more freely. this is something he might be able to achieve over time, or it might remain unsolved, it depends on how things unfold.

[marginalgloss]

the republic of heaven

Back in 2000 when The Amber Spyglass came out I feel like there was not so much news in the world. At the turn of the millennium we seemed to be entering a more optimistic time. Tony Blair was elected in 1997 at the head of a liberal Labour government, and while it may be true that Blair would never be so popular again as he was in the opening years of his premiership, the Tories seemed hopelessly outdated by comparison. They were still the nasty party of old, while the country was ambitious, outward-looking, internationalist. Explicit racism and homophobia were no longer tolerated. We were Europhiles, but we weren’t part of Europe. There seemed to be a lot of money about.

At home there were occasional horrors — the murder of Jill Dando, the homophobic pub bombings in London, Harold Shipman — but they were somehow isolated, disparate, inexplicable. They were exceptional. There was the war in Kosovo, which set a template for liberal interventionism in years to come. The economy was trucking along; unemployment was low; for the first time there was a national minimum wage. I skim the headlines today and it seems like such a comfortable time by comparison. Perhaps I am remembering it wrong. But when the years to come would bring a spiral of endless war, recession, and one of the most significant declines in relative generational living standards, I’m not sure there is any need for rose-coloured glasses.  

Into this comes The Amber Spyglass, which is basically quite an optimistic anti-authoritarian novel. It was also the book which, for a handful of reasons, really brought Philip Pullman to the world’s attention. It was this which ensured that his name still lurks around the list of authors most frequently ‘banned’ in America, and which in the years after its publication would attract scores of avid cheerleaders and detractors. Inevitably most of those had no interest with engaging with the substance of the book itself. Instead, it became a sort of battleground: on one side, those convinced that religion was under attack from an educated elite; on the other, those who were committed to reducing the role of religion in public life, discourse, education, and so on. It is worth revisiting this typically excitable interview and profile by Christopher Hitchens for an example of how these novels were talked about. 

To call the novel ‘optimistic’ might seem surprising, because much of it is shrouded in scenes of gloom and suffering. But when I think of the tone of the novel as a whole, it is pastoral. When the world isn’t tearing itself apart the language seems more lyrical than in either of the two preceding books. Some of that is to do with the perspective, which now has at least three (and sometimes more) main characters to follow. This means that a sense of distance, of floating high above the many worlds of the story, becomes necessary. But it’s also that the reader has a sense that this book is going to be about the promised war against the heavens outlined in The Subtle Knife, and it’s likely the reader will also understand that this is a war that must be won. 

It feels like a world of binary opposites. Even characters who seemed villainous in the previous novels are here redeemed (at least in part) so they can be mustered against the ultimate figure of the ‘Authority’. A certain amount of good versus evil is likely in any book for children, but here things are now cast explicitly in terms of these two sides squaring up against each other. And taking sides is a matter of decision, not of belonging. This is a book where angelic figures can decide to fight alongside men, and where demonic harpies can be convinced not to consume the souls of the dead because they want to hear their stories instead. It’s plausible in terms of oldest storytelling traditions, where it is possible to talk one’s way out of anything — where the role of storyteller gives a person the ultimate kind of authority.   

Is the capital-A ‘Authority’ in these novels intended to be absolutely synonymous with God? I’m not sure. The book is explicitly anti-religion in the sense of being anti-church, but the forces of the Authority (and the being himself) do not seem to represent any kind of absolute power in the universe. The Authority is not omnipotent nor omnipresent, nor is he very much of a creator or a father-figure any more — he is a despot, but he is also somehow irrelevant. Like a shrivelled relic, he is vastly reduced when we finally meet him. The worst aspects of his regime seem like the calcified remnants of decisions long since made and now barely remembered, like the afterlife that has become a giant prison camp. In fact it’s the abolition of the afterlife, not the death of its creator, that’s the only really significant consequence of the fall of the Authority. 

So if God isn’t in the Authority, then where is he? In spite of the tendency for atheists to want to claim the author for one of their own, it seems like the heart of these novels is not in pure humanistic rationalism, but in a broader sort of pantheism. The idea of ‘Dust’ is the closest thing to a true divine presence here. It could be characterised as something akin to a spirit which moves through all things. It is ‘conscious’, and though it’s hard to determine what this means in practice, we know that it is not indifferent to humanity. It’s not like a host of little thinking homunculi (although Mary did have a whole conversation with it on a computer back in The Subtle Knife). But it wants to persist. It would seem to be the force that drives the Alethiometer. It has intentions.  

The counter-argument to this would say that Dust isn’t divine at all — it exists at the bleeding edge of science, and has nothing to do with faith. It’s a material thing. It’s not a spirit. But I don’t know that this is especially convincing. The books often try to equate Dust with quantum mechanics, but this doesn’t entirely seem to add up — these are particles which are somehow small enough to slip through gaps between universes, but big enough to see with the naked eye. Everything about Dust seems too convenient from an authorial perspective. It’s as though someone took everything indefinable and unique about evolved human (and non-human) consciousness and made it into a quantifiable thing and then said: there, without this thing we are no longer what we are. It’s an easy solution to the hard problem.

It the article linked above, Hitchens described the Alethiometer and Will’s knife as ‘tools of inquiry and struggle, not magic wands’. This is only half-right. Clearly they aren’t tools like a microscope or an X-ray machine. Both items are bonded to their owners through an innate sensitivity that has little to do with rational enquiry or rigorous method. The Alethiometer is even compared to the I Ching at various points. It seems wrong to mistake ‘inquiry’ here for the scientific method; it has much more in common with ‘negative capability’, a term which is actually quoted in The Amber Spyglass — the ability to pursue truth and beauty via one’s innate sensibility, to ‘see feelingly’ through a fascination with a sort of natural mystery, and not to depend exclusively on reason and knowledge.  

This leaves the reader in an odd sort of no man’s land between the armies who supposedly either adopted or despised this novel. A hypothetical arch-rationalist might find it difficult to accept all of what they find here without rolling their eyes at some of it. Negative capability does not sit comfortably alongside the scientific method as a tool, but nor does it have much to do with priests and popery. And yet it is a sort of inspiration, and in that respect I think it comes closer to a religious experience than it does a rational one.  

The problem with this is that it is not possible to get any sense from this novel of what it means to be religious, or to believe in a higher power, or to be ‘spiritual’ (choose your own euphemism). There is Mary Malone, but while I like Mary’s story here, her account of her early life in cloisters and later conversion/defection is unsatisfying. We have no sense of doubt, of anguish, of guilt — it is an all-too-straightforward seeing of the light. Will is arguably more complicated, more conflicted, but for the most part he never seems to have to make any difficult compromises. If he ever loses out on anything by abandoning his mother to travel through a whole set of alternate universes, we aren’t told about it. 

What if Will made the wrong call? What if he weren’t so trustworthy? He is, in a way, the lynchpin of the whole story. For all Lyra’s good intentions and inner strength, if it weren’t for Will, Asriel would have failed and nothing would have changed. So Will must be made to work. Yet it often seems as though he doesn’t want anything for himself, except perhaps to be with Lyra. It’s interesting to wonder what might have happened if Will weren’t quite so faithful (for want of a better word). 

But it’s inconceivable in the world of these books that anyone could possess negative capability and then use it for anything other than a pursuit of — well what exactly is being pursued, anyway? What is Asriel’s goal, above and beyond the overthrow of the Authority? There is vague mention of something called ‘the Republic of Heaven’ — a heaven on Earth, as it were — but today that phrase can only make me recall the idea of ‘Outer Heaven’ in the Metal Gear Solid games. It’s difficult to discern any latent irony lying in wait for the reader in this case. Will whatever replaces the Authority be just as bad, eventually? Perhaps, but again, the vibe of optimism in this novel is so strong it feels odd to impose doubt on it from elsewhere.   

The paradox of The Amber Spyglass is that while the explicit ‘moral’ of the novel is set against organised religion, it cannot help but describe the world in terms originally set by religion. (A very basic reading might declare the novel invalid for this reason, for much the same reason as a socialist might be declared hypocritical for buying a smartphone.) It isn’t just that there are angels, or that the story of Adam of Eve is central to the thing. It is the journey through the world of the dead and back. It’s the arc of redemption and overthrow. 

At times it feels like this book is re-fighting a battle that was begun hundreds of years ago in the English reformation. In the pursuit of humanistic knowledge, a godlike figure is re-cast in the guise of an Authority who can be overthrown, and cast out of our land, and even killed. And all for the sake of nothing especially certain, nothing at all new in political or ideological terms, except a sense that we would be more free — that we would be better off without. Is it better to eject the columns of the dead into a kind of oblivion than to consider any improvement to their position? I don’t know. Perhaps things seemed simpler twenty years ago. 

[arecomicsevengood]

On Alan Moore’s SUPREME

It is an understatement to say we live in interesting times. These are chaotic times, and I hope we survive long enough to learn from them. I do not know how they will be remembered. I only know that I do not believe that hindsight is 20/20. Rather, nostalgia has distorting effects that render eras in caricature. I know this because while people often look at things and say “hey, remember the nineties?” with this quasi-ironic tone meant to pigeonhole things according to a handful of superficial traits, I actually feel like I do remember the nineties, and they were not that, but they were very far from where we are now.

I recently tracked down collections of Alan Moore’s run on Supreme via my local library. Supreme was a character created by Rob Liefeld at Image. Liefeld and Image are both prime examples of what people think of when they think of “1990s comics,” though their influence continues to this day, maybe stronger now than it ever was then. The backlash against this stuff that followed, which involved a great deal of nostalgia, that you see in things like Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come, or Kurt Busiek’s Astro City, is, I would argue, way more definitive of the era, in that there was maybe a “square” or defensive reactionary tone that seems more out of step with the modern moment, maybe because they essentially “lost.” Moore’s Supreme is about comic book reboots, and comic book history. It’s pretty nostalgic, but it’s also one of the more optimistic Alan Moore comics: The reaction against the superficial Image work also included a rejection of the “grim and gritty” aspects of Moore’s eighties work.

These Supreme collections are out of print, which is weird. While new stories continue to be told set in this universe Rob Liefeld created, but I think it’s pretty widely acknowledged that Moore’s comics were the best things to come out of there, the stuff where the ideas make the most sense, where there’s material that can be expanded upon. I know Brandon Graham took material from Moore’s work for his Prophet run. The recent Warren Ellis/Tula Lotay Supreme: Blue Rose derives from concepts in Moore’s run. It’s vastly tonally different, aiming for some sort of slow-paced Solaris vibe of mystery, which Moore’s run explains in such a way that it feels like Ellis’ run would have less of a reason to exist were his source text widely available.

I read Moore’s first issue at the time of its release, and was not that into it. When I think of the comics I was into at the time, I understand why: Thinking of Mark Waid/Humberto Ramos series Impulse, or Christopher Priest and Mark Bright’s Quantum And Woody, the emotional connection I had with those books as a reader is basically impossible to imagine anyone having with Supreme. I don’t think Moore was interested in doing that: I think he was trying to crack “nineties comics” and was seeing a bunch of dumb garbage it was very easy to think mixing in some pastiches would improve.

Also, the character is basically just Superman, and while in some ways Supreme is “better” than, say, Scott McCloud’s Superman Adventures, in that a good deal of work and thought is being put into creating these riffs on the Superman concept, Rick Burchett’s art, drawing Bruce Timm designs, is more appealing than what Joe Bennett comes up with, though, so it’s kind of a wash. Chris Sprouse comes on board later, and when he’s drawing the book, it’s great. The book moves from being “kind of a slog even though it’s clever” to “actually pretty fun.” After working together on Supreme, Moore and Sprouse would launch Tom Strong together. That’s another comic I stopped reading early on because I wasn’t getting that much pleasure out of it. Both Supreme and Tom Strong have flashback sequences drawn by other artists (in Supreme, they’re usually handled by Rick Veitch) that are also meant to be reference some other genre or historical moment, fleshing out backstory but also demonstrating Moore’s cleverness, which is two-fold: it’s both the cleverness of a plotter, telling stories pithily, and the cleverness of a student of comics showing how much he knows, via jokey parody. This becomes tedious when baked into the structure of every issue of a comic, but it’s also how Supreme gets to have Rick Veitch pages, which are welcome when the stuff set in modern times is drawn by people whose work isn’t fun to look at. Still, it’s a superhero comic where the core of most issues is not a fight but an extended vaguely comedic riff.

Another person to continue on to Tom Strong is letterer Todd Klein, who does a great job here, enough so that, when late in the run there are issues he didn’t letter, they’re demonstrably worse and harder to read. Tom Strong does have a different colorist than Supreme though, and in some ways there are weaknesses even in Sprouse’s issues that can be laid on the coloring: It’s “nineties” in a true way, in that it’s tied to the computer coloring that was then state of the art. I am pretty sure I read the later issues of Tom Strong in collections a roommate owned, but I remember none of them. Most likely I will forget these issues of Supreme. The most impressive thing about Moore’s run is the long-term plotting, that the payoff to a year’s worth of stories is set up very early, and points that would pay off later are seeded throughout.

Still, in the mind of a kid, a year is a very long time. A developing brain pursues a lot of interests. There are very few comics I read every issue of for a year: To do that would cut into my ability to take chances on comics like, say, Alan Moore’s first issue of Supreme, when I’d never read any of the previous ones. Another reason I didn’t follow the title as a kid is this: By the time you get to the point where you have a preference for good superhero comics over bad ones, you’re also interested in non-superhero comics. The best stuff in the series are later Chris Sprouse drawn stories that work effectively as superhero comics, where multiple villains fight multiple heroes, and jokes are made steadily. This all follows up on groundwork laid earlier in the run.

These collections are not published by Image, but rather a book company called Checker I am pretty sure is no longer in business. The books at my library were not in great condition, and they’re not very well-designed. There’s an Alex Ross image on the front,  and Rob Liefeld on the back, alongside text that gives bios of Moore and Liefeld but says nothing about the Supreme comics the books contain. The interiors use Alex Ross drawings between issues, to cover for the original cover art being largely abysmal. I’m pretty sure Liefeld could reprint them at Image, although “this comic is drawn by a ton of different people, and quality varies” is not an appealing sales pitch. There were also other flashback stories, drawn by the likes of Melinda Gebbie and Kevin O’Neill, that ran in the original comics but aren’t in these collections, which I would hope a future reprint would restore. Around this time, Moore also did a run on Youngblood with Steve Skroce that was never collected, fondly remembered by some but also compromised by the fact that the last few pages currently extant, were drawn by a considerably worse artist.

What’s fun about these Supreme comics is that, for all the nostalgia for the past they contain, they’re still dense with ideas. It’s clear that what Moore appreciates about the old Superman comics he’s explicitly homaging is the imagination therein. He’s riffing, but extrapolating as well, these aren’t pure analogs. There are these science fiction or mythic elements all pressed together. I’m not saying there’s much that originates with Moore here, but in his bricolage things feel new, it’ll get your neurons firing. This is truly wild: the concept of the Supremacy, where all the alternate Supremes hang out, and its corresponding Daxia, where all the alternate reality versions of his nemesis hang out, both built in limbo, is surprisingly similar to plot points on the show Rick And Morty.

There are comics that are better than Moore’s Supreme, many more of them available now than there were twenty years ago. I read them, I write about them, and much of my championing of them stems from a preoccupation with storytelling. But there is a different kind of substance to these stories. It’s not “substance” in the sense of meaning, or emotional content. The substance is the sort of idea-space you swim in while reading fantasy or science fiction. I like to think that if you’re reading this you consider yourself a smart person, and that manifests itself as a certain snobbery in certain ways. Maybe you don’t read that sort of stuff as much as you did when you were a kid. As an adult, I’ve got other hang-ups. It is maybe a form of solipsism, though it stems from empathy, or a desire for it, obsessed over my own ability to relate to others. This is the stuff that makes up the content of “literary fiction” whereas I think of being a kid and trying to be imaginative or imagine possibilities beyond reality as essentially a spiritual quest. Reading this collection I could sense I wasn’t engaging it enough, even if only a portion of the pages were drawn well enough to make me want to engage it.

Moore is a spiritual person, obviously. You can listen to him talk about his work and artmaking and time and life and death and find a great deal of comfort. So much of his work is deeply reassuring and helpful, even though much of it is dark and more pessimistic than his Supreme run, and it’s often done through these genre pretexts. His work is much richer than what’s propped up by current trends, and it’s all informed by this grand history of literature, where what follows in Moore’s wake is frequently hollow because it doesn’t have this grounding in possibility and potential, but is instead premised on the observable. I’m making fun of Warren Ellis here, his obsession with science magazines and the idea of Moore’s run of Supreme as an observable phenomena after Moore made it exist.

It’s easy to view the way you engage this type of work as escapism, and there is truth to that, I think, when you’re an adult reader. I do think that when you’re younger, engaging with this stuff is more of a building a toolkit of ideas to engage with existence in a way that will stave off existential woe one encounters as they age. I frequently have this feeling that I am more tired than I used to be. My head is now subject to this feeling which is for all intents and purposes stupidity that maybe stems from trauma of having bad things happen to me (I have repeatedly been the victim of violent crime) and anxiety over things still to come. (Whether it be more crime or fascism or whatever, the complete collapse of the social fabric.)

There’s a feeling of being enervated I want to chase and have no idea how to, but it was genuinely present in my past. I know I can’t find it in nostalgia, in binge-reading old comics. That is 100% a trap and I know that the feeling I want is actually dependent on the absence of nostalgia, of being awake to there being possibilities in the future I can barely foresee. Moore’s run of Supreme taps into this energy, and he doesn’t think of it in a nostalgic way, the way he viewed 1963. He was engaging the moment, and finding the energy and collaborators that would propel him into the America’s Best Comics line, the sort of “better things” that might exist for a person in the near future that it is in the moment impossible to foresee. In all likelihood, the ability to manifest these things comes from a receptivity to potential that these comics evince.

Last week I turned 34, then the next day I found out my editor at The Comics Journal, Tim Hodler, was leaving it. I’m aware I need to leave Baltimore, get a new job, embark on a career path, enter into a new relationship, change everything about my life; all of these things both for their own sake but also to hopefully get the gears turning in my brain so I can write fiction again and feel that I am doing something.

When I read these book collections I was sort of wishing that like 2/3 of the pages were redrawn so that a book could exist which would have a reason to be read. Now I’m writing about it so I can remember I read it, and trying to explain why I’m doing so inevitably becomes about dissatisfaction with what is potentially giving way to something better, but I’m as overwhelmed by the facts of my own existence as Chris Sprouse would be at the fact that all the pages I would want him to redraw were already drawn by other people. Moore’s Supreme run can be reduced to these things that are essentially truisms: It’s “a moment in time,” “a transitional work.” This is true for so many things, but it is better to be these than the other thing that so much amounts to, a dead end.

[thesinglesjukebox]

CARLY RAE JEPSEN - WANT YOU IN MY ROOM

[7.80]

Give a [10]! or a [4]! We don't care! Anymore! (actually we clearly do care)

Josh Winters: The sound of the heart set aflame. [10]

Tobi Tella: Oh my god. The synths, the sultriness, that goddamn HOOK. Dedicated had a lot of great and fun, pop music, but this comes out of left field in the best possible way. It's one of the most direct and sexy things, she'd ever done. Is this what gay heaven feels like? [10]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Big "looks-up-grinning-like-the-devil" energy: when CRJ sings, "I wanna do bad things to you," the mischief is both inexplicably sweet and dirty. [8]

Michael Hong: "Want You In My Room" might be Carly Rae Jepsen at her horniest, but it's also Jack Antonoff at his least restrained, together making something that's thrillingly giddy. Carly Rae Jepsen drops some of those thinly disguised hints for more straight-forward temptations, coming across as intense where Dedicated erred more towards tepid. There's still room for coyness, with the distorted "want you in my room" bashfully buried in the mix and the way Jepsen's voice brazenly glides across the instrumental on the line "slide on through my window." But most importantly, "Want You In My Room" feels completely uninhibited and absolutely freeing as Carly Rae Jepsen delivers any line with as much of a wink as she desires. [9]

Kayla Beardslee: Pure joy. [9]

Edward Okulicz: Every song that goes by, I find myself enraged by how average I find the average Carly Rae Jepsen to be, and I'm not entirely sure that I'm not jealous of the euphoria she inspires in others. But honestly, she's no Vengaboys, let alone a Paul Lekakis; I believe Jepsen, but I don't buy her abandon. [4]

Alfred Soto: With Dedicated proving an ephemeral listen, "Want You in My Room" does a professional job as any discrete track at isolating her strengths: finding a hook for any title and singing as if any doggerel were Heidegger. The outro sax wipes the smear of the redundant vocoder, suggesting other paths that the arrangement avoids. [4]

Kylo Nocom: Given the runtime and production choices, one would think somebody had went out and decided to parody the style of Emotion with its Wikipedia article and five hours to complete the task. "Want You in My Room" slightly lacks sophistication in both songwriting and in aesthetic: it feels like half of the song is missing by the time the track decides to fade out, and the wonky percussion/clean guitars/fucking SAX are rather ungraceful signifiers of '80s kitschiness, as if hints were taken from Carly's turn with the Fuller House theme song. These tiny grievances immediately disappear once those robot-voices and shouts burst out, an exercise between restraint and shamelessness that's completely undeniable. I didn't register that the vocoded voices were actually saying anything the first few times I heard this, let alone the title, but it's quite sly how that turned out: the most explicit demand of the hook is obscured, leaving "I wanna do bad things to you!" which beats around the bush a tiny bit (thankfully, less embarrassingly than Camila) and additionally gleeful cheers before that lovely inquiry of "baby, don't you want me too?". I'm still frustrated this ends so quickly, but even this doesn't matter when it's the Carly song I've been using to soundtrack the crush-anxiety interludes of my life. Really, this could cut off after the first chorus and still be more exciting than nearly every other song on Dedicated. [8]

Joshua Lu: It's tempting to draw connections between Emotion and everything Carly Rae Jepsen has done since Emotion -- thematically, her work hasn't evolved much since 2015, with her primary concern being PG-13 depictions of love and heartbreak. But Emotion's portrayal of affection was grandiose and imposing, fit for blasting out the windows of your car as you get lost in the streets of LA, while Dedicated's take feels distinctly slighter and more intimate. "Want You In My Room" takes more of its cues from Kiss, if anything -- even overlooking the disco tinges and how that was the first time she worked with Jack Antonoff, Kiss employed intimate lyricism that could verge at times on the diaristic, with songs like "Turn Me Up" and "Curiosity." The song's title, conveyed through Antonoff's phalanx of robots, renders that closeness literally, but that intimacy comes through metaphorically as well, especially with that quintessentially Carly-esque grotesque lyric of "press you to the pages of my heart" and that absolutely filthy request to "slide on through my window." I'll always prefer this mode of Carly, whose depictions of carnal affection feel more genuine and evocative when she's cooing them in your ear instead of bellowing them to the world. Even the outro works for me; the music video helps to explicate that her lover has finally made it to her room, and the bleating saxophone becomes an aural metaphor of whatever the two of them are doing, now that the song has accomplished its purpose. [10]

Will Adams: The discourse around Jack Antonoff and his status as the supposed ingenue behind female pop stars' critical reappraisal is exhausting, mostly because it ignores my biggest gripe with it: the production is bad. As we've seen before, his penchant for vocoders sinks the songs and, in this case, the entire chorus. The rest is his typical beige, vaguely '80s, vaguely '90s, vaguely everything feel, as if those "Dreams" guitars haven't been done better elsewhere. Carly's not off the hook either, with lyrics as empty as "press you to the pages of my heart." The sax riffing at the end would have been nice had it not resulted in a fade-out, which only serves to let you know that no one involved bothered to write a bridge. [4]

Joshua Copperman: That post-chorus is peak Carly - her songs are best when they're anxious but sensual, innocent but winking. But that's the problem with this song, content to be an E*MO*TION throwback when the best cuts on Dedicated ("I'll Be Your Girl," "Everything He Needs") push her sound forward in ways that still remain consistent with her past. Antonoff's on autopilot, lifting his own Tom Petty rip from "Don't Take The Money" for his usual mix of 80s and non-80s signifiers. Singles Jukebox editor and writer Katherine St. Asaph's issue with Dedicated was that Carly didn't play to her fanbase enough. This goes too much in the other direction giving the gays exactly what they want but nothing more. That doesn't mean it's bad, but it's too slight when Carly's beloved for her maximalism. [6]

Andy Hutchins: Fun, frivolous, brisk, and brief in the way so many great pop songs are, and a better spiritual successor to "Africa" in 2019 than Weezer actually covering it. But I will admit that listening to the potential [3] or [15] that would have been CRJ riffing on Rye Rye's spin on Vengaboys was deeply distracting. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: "Want You In My Room" is the worst kind of song to write about: so self-evidently joyful and skilled in every aspect (those synths!! that sax solo!!) that it's hard to point at any one thing to analyze. Is it enough to just say that the song is the best execution of crush pop in the catalog of an artist who is the queen of crush pop? Is it enough to say that I listen to the song in the shower and my morning walk to class? Is it enough to say that this song (and really, the whole starting run of Dedicated) is an excellent soundtrack to a roadtrip with the one you love? I don't know, and I don't quite know how to express how good it is that Carly Rae Jepsen is around and making music like this, but I hope this helps. [10]

Jackie Powell: Carly Rae Jepsen knows her base just as well as she knows herself. All of the elements of "Want You in My Room" confirm that."...And I'll press you to the pages of my heart" in the pre-chorus proves how Jepsen simultaneously views love and her music. She loves fantasy and probably adores fanfiction (Does anyone have confirmation on this?) "I think I like when people look at music from a way that's this childlike magical thing that happens to us," she said at Electric Lady Studios recording her Spotify singles session. She has made it her brand for the nerds who love love--but struggle to capture it-- feel at home with the awkwardness and desire that they feel inside. Jack Antonoff knows how to extrapolate Jepsen's inner feelings and give them a sound; the track begins with three different percussive loops which symbolize the racing heartbeat of sexual and romantic excitement. The aforementioned Spotify session version of the cut further echoes the idea that this song is an orgy that would take place at a campfire for young adults. (I guess I just described Woodstock. Imagine Woodstock in 2019...oh wait.) She proves once again that both fantasy and desire are natural and shouldn't be a source of any shame. [8]

Vikram Joseph: There's probably not much that my 11-year-old self has in common with me right now. But I remember getting up an hour before school to listen to the radio, and the way that I would lose myself in pop music and it would carry me through the day, painting the cyclical banalities of breaktime and double chemistry in weird, vivid colours that I didn't fully understand back then. And it's not so different to the way that I respond to it now; the way that caffeine and Dedicated made my commute shimmer and glow on sticky mornings this summer. For me, "Want You In My Room" has been the album's febrile, halcyon peak from the start - a high-camp maximalist fantasia of love and lust, the rare ecstasy of uncomplicated desire played out in a technicolour dreamscape of synths, vocoders and sax solos. It took four months for it to acquire a music video, but there must have already been a million existing in our imaginations, us as the stars, cameras panning as we walk down streets as flamboyantly as our queer little hearts dare to. It's garish, sugary and barely sounds real, and that's fine - because great pop is escapist, always has been and always will be, and "Want You In My Room" makes me believe I can have it all (even if it's fake). [10]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[errantabbot]

Sunyananda's General Guidance on the Stages of Awakening

Generally speaking Buddhists, non-dualists, and mystics of all sorts spout off quite a bit about “awakening,” and uphold it as an amorphous, yet identifiable destination on the trajectory of spiritual practice. Very rarely is awakening clearly identified, let alone its path. This lack of clarity has contributed to the origination, and proliferation of an infinite variety of practices and disciplines that subsist only through their vague pointing toward a reality that is “somewhere over there,” called awakening.

In my own practice, I have engaged innumerable disciplines in a number of mystical faith traditions, and have in the course of these experience been disillusioned by the number of these practices that clearly do not point toward any of the obscure tenants of awakening as it is frequently alluded to. I have therefore sought to discern what is awakening really? Is there a concrete term that we might use to bring clarity to this experience, or attainment? And along these lines, I have sought to identify perennial stages that various traditions point one toward, which progressively reveal the spiritual summit known as awakening. What I have discerned is that there are approximately six stages of awareness and experience that when fully engaged, build upon and grow from one another into what we might term awakening, which I suppose could be appropriately termed the “Realization of Transcendent Wisdom.”

In general we may say that the six stages begin with the Dawning of Metacognition, which births the Experience of Interdependence, which stewards the Arising of All-Enveloping Compassion, which propels the Persistence of Equanimity, which allows for the Curation of Cause and Effect, which yields the Expression of Non-Attachment, which summarily presents as the Realization of Transcendent Wisdom (Awakening itself).

The Dawning of Metacognition is assuredly the first stage on the path. It is really the primary objective of meditation, namely to distantiate from our sense of self, that is the small “I” that typically leads us around. This separate perspective to the thinking mind is born of the realization that the possessor (seemingly the “I”) cannot simultaneously be the possessed (the thoughts, opinions, ideas, brain, body, and even soul that the “I” all casts as “my”). While at first a great sense of unknowing and confusion can and often does arise at this realization, when this unknowing is gently held in meditation, gradually a clear sense of witness arises that observes the machinations of the mind formerly known as “I.” This sense of witness does not identify the mind or its functions then as a substantial self, and does not take on such a mantle itself, rather this sense of witness is a process that does not come to be conceptually amalgamated. Should such an amalgamation occur, it precludes the actual dawning of this first stage of awakening that is termed metacognition. The mind is particularly good at creating illusions to prevent the self from being distantiated. A great amount of practice is generally needed for an authentic experience of the metacognitive witness, and even more effort must be put into sustaining then, this unamalgamated process.

As a practitioner becomes firmly settled in this newly dawned metacognition, a natural progression stemming from continued intentional awareness, that is, the metacognitive awareness’ ongoing witness to both (seemingly) internal and external conditions and phenomena is the Experience of Interdependence. This stage is particularly difficult to identify under the banner of a single term, as it is indeed quite expansive. To experience, or perceive interdependence is to become aware of the insubstantiality of not just the self, but of all things. Reality is insubstantial in as much as it is unfixed, constantly moving, coming both together and apart in a constant flux. In fact reality is so unfixed, and so in motion that nothing really moves, comes, or goes at all. This seeming dichotomous conundrum is only resolved when it is left to be as it, witnessed rather than defined. To witness such a reality is to experience interdependence, and thus sunyata (absolute reality itself), which may also be termed the ground of being. In many spiritual schools (especially neo-advaita etc), this stage is considered to be awakening itself, however this is not so. The direct experience of interdependence is but a step, albeit a particularly large and life-altering step, but a step none the less on the path toward awakening.

It should be noted that Christian mystics have given us a particularly important turn of phrase that describes a common experience that is frequently encountered somewhere in the midst of these first two stages, and that is “The Dark Night of the Soul.” While not an absolute certainty, many people experience a great sense of grief around finding the self, and reality itself to be insubstantial. All of the rules that a person has built up in their minds about the world and the way it works in the course of a lifetime tend to be simultaneously broken in this process, and when not prepared for such a thing, the profound unknowing that is so essential to awakening can be experienced as profound loneliness, darkness, and loss. Luckily though, as the Lankavatara Sutra states “things are not as they seem, and nor are they otherwise.” While reality is undoubtedly shaken in the process of awakening, reality indeed is unmoving, and no student of the way has ever in fact been separate from reality as it is- most have just done an awful lot of daydreaming on top of it, it is in fact these dreams that are being illumined and shed, thus we are awakened.

Somewhere along the way of identification with the small “I” falling away, and the insubstantiality of reality being revealed in its interdependence, comes the Arising of an All-Enveloping Compassion. This is indeed the antidote to any “dark night of the soul” experience, which arises still in the absence of such an experience. All-Enveloping Compassion shares a root with small-minded narcissism, therefore as identification with the small “I” falls away, so too does any appendant and latent self-admiration, as it becomes recast as limitless compassion for all beings, and experiences. In the experience of interdependence we find that not only are we insubstantial, but so is everyone and everything else, and in our shared non-being our capacity to love anyone is transformed into an impetus to love everyone and everything. A true arising of this All-Enveloping Compassion comes too with an inability to hate- this doesn’t mean an inability to grow angry, or to become frustrated, but specifically an inability to hate. This inability may be understood in examining a quote from the Roman playwright Terence who once famously wrote "I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me." From a true place of witness to reality as it is, of which we and all are a part, no-thing, no matter how saintly or heinous is foreign to us, and where there is suffering we can only then know sadness, empathy, and compassion, not hatred. Compassion does not equate to condoning, but perhaps may be said to stem from understanding. This empathetic understanding, which can be called compassion is the very seed of the Transcendent Wisdom that the present schema terms awakening.

The natural bedfellow of All-Enveloping Compassion is the Persistence of Equanimity. Witnessing and being with reality as it is (radical acceptance), and being foreign to no experience we find that just as reality is ever oscillating and thus still (perfect in its “as it is-ness”), so too are we as seeming microcosms of reality, or more accurately reality’s self-awareness. As reality is ever in a state of equanimity, that is, of no hesitation or hindrance, it is natural then that as the metacognitive witness rouses “us” from our daydreams that we too come to embody such stability in our individualistic expressions and experiences of life.  

It should be said here, that the ongoing practice of awakening at any level is that of integration between the seemingly absolute, and seemingly relative aspects of reality, experience, and life. The metacognitive witness comes to uphold each of these stages perfectly, however, the small “I” largely is just a collection of sensory reports yielding to cause and effect. In other words, the small or relative self is largely governed by habitual energy and observed behavior (which is why, for instance precepts centering around consumption, mental and physical exist). Not being identified with the small “I,” one option is to simply let it run amuck, unchecked and unhindered, however, this is an incomplete awakening. When the small “I” truly integrates the All-Enveloping Compassion of the previously examined stage, it naturally works to alleviate even relative suffering, that seemingly near and seemingly far (personal and other), and thus is metered by the process of the metacognitive witness.

The following chart sorts each of the stages of awakening into a primary orientation, with the final stage of the Realization of Transcendent Wisdom holding a unique, integrated (terminal) position. The initial stages of awakening are experience oriented and pertain to the realm commonly identified as absolute reality. The last stages before awakening are expression oriented and pertain to the realm commonly identified as relative reality. The stages between the two seeming polarities are transitional, and are easily categorized as one or the other, absolute and relative, experiential and expressional. In reality, each of these stages is unfixed, and insubstantial, as are their seeming orientations (as their merging, or integration into Transcendent Wisdom would suggest). That said, this categorization may be helpful in navigating and understanding the general feeling and energy of the stages of the awakening process. 

This brings us to the Curating of Cause and Effect. While former stages seem to largely be interior or absolute oriented and experiential, this stage is assuredly also expressional. The curation of cause and effect is where the metacognitive witness most clearly meets the unidentified, or distantiated small “I” and appears to become directive. However, the metacognitive witness process, being impersonal cannot actually direct anything but the awareness pertaining to it is, itself, a cause with an effect. The cause, in this case, is small “I” transcendent awareness effecting the small “I’s” seemingly relative process, through being informed (aware) of subsequent stages (2-4, especially). A natural yield of metacognitive awareness and witness is profound insight into what we may call “karmic ripples,” which when met with All-Enveloping Compassion, for instance, inspires the habit of karmic control, or curation for which the capacity to do so has ever been present, if covered up or even ignored.

The final stage in the process of awakening, which must occur before integration and awakening itself may be rendered is that of the Expression of Non-Attachment. The Third Patriarch of Zen, Sengcan once wrote “The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” Absolutely, this is no problem- the metacognitive witness has no preferences, nor is it capable of any. However, the relative, small “I” functions only by them. When these two fully meet and mingle, it is not that preferences fall away, but that attachment to them does. Non-Attachment (to views, experiences, people, places, and things etc.) arises in summation of all of the foregoing stages, in that it is the only possibility when one comes to be able to perceive and uphold multiple views of reality simultaneously. The futility then, and harm of strong opinions and ideas is illumined through awareness of the multiplicity of reality, and deference to the cogs of reality, as opposed to those of ideas, is birthed.

As Lao Tzu is thought to have said: “…The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores, by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve. He helps people lose everything they know, everything they desire, and creates confusion in those who think that they know. Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place.”

~Sunyananda Baba

[noxstrix]

ABOUT THE MUN.

hello. i am coyote. my pronouns are she / her and they / them. i am over 21 years old, and a full time college student. i’m a practicing pagan in the real world. i have adhd and anxiety, so i really prefer to reply to drafts selectively and with mutuals only. my classes are mon - thurs  and i tend not to reply very much on those days. because of this i’d call this blog medium activity. as of right now nisa is my only character. i believe everyone has the freedom to say whatever they want on their blogs, within reason, please do not follow me if you are someone who is easily offended.

i know my rules are long, but they are to keep everyone on the same page and to prevent any future discourse from happening on my blog or between us as writers. thank you so much for taking the time to read everything, i sincerely appreciate it !!

TRIGGERING CONTENT / TRIGGER TAGGING.

please exit the page and unfollow right now, if you are under the age of eighteen.

this blog is extremely triggering. i cannot stress this enough. blasphemy is a reoccurring theme. a lot of the content i write here explores  conspiracy theories about the biblical apocalypse, the vatican and its links to illuminati, free masonry, and the ninth circle. if you have ever been curious enough to research on these cults, then you would likely know they are linked to subject matter such as human sacrifices, sex trafficking, murder, pedophilia, etc etc. while i do not promote or condone any of this, there will be frequent mentions in my writing of these topics and i won’t be tagging them. blasphemy will also never be tagged on my blog.

images posted / reposted on this blog are sometimes graphic and contain blood, gore, or melancholy. i will not be trigger tagging anything that does not make me personally uncomfortable. this blog is mine and i can do or post whatever i want on it. however, sometimes i do feel like there’s a line that might be crossed in regards to my followers.

i will be tagging any triggering imagery as  /  horror.  if you wish to add that to your blacklist. additionally if you have any really specific, and legitimate phobias you require me to tag, don’t hesitate to message me privately. all phobias brought to my attention ( ie. spiders, eye gore ) will likely wind up under the blacklist tag   /  trigger.  i will not be tagging anything such as food, or body image.

THE CHARACTER / THEFT.

my character takes basis from biblical, luciferian, satanic, gnostic and jewish mythology. she is lilith’s reincarnation. i however, do change up some of the lore and give it my own ideas and flavors. everything about nisa and lilith, i headcanoned myself. same goes for her partner blog lucian / lucifer ( @antichrstis ). i wrote both of biographies. please do not steal any aspects of either character, or any of my lore regarding their universe, as i worked very hard on their background stories. i will post a call out, if i catch you imitating, copying, or stealing anything. this is your one and only warning.

AGE LIMITS.

because this blog is full of mature, adult content, please do not follow me if you are under the age of eighteen or you cannot maturely handle in character content like profanity, sex, horror, violence, torture, mental or physical abuse. if  either of the words sex or smut bothers you and makes you feel even a little queezy or you have an aversion to it, i definitely  do not suggest following. while i don’t smut often on this blog, it does happen, and when it does, it’s with characters whose writers are over the age of 20. sorry, i personally do not feel comfortable writing smut with muns younger than 20 years of age, i don’t care of 18 is the legal age, this is my personal preference.

additionally, i do not ship my oc against characters whose face claims are under the age of 25. i will not ship her with characters under the age of 23 ( divided by 2 + 7 rule )  that’s creepy to me. not only is nisa thirty one years old, but lilith is older than the earth’s creation. don’t even try to come up with excuses or convince me otherwise because it’s gonna get you hard blocked, you feel me?

MUN =/= MUSE.

nisa’s personal beliefs and actions, are not my own ! please keep ooc and ic separate in this regard. these are works of fiction and this is roleplay. the mun’s personality is not the muses. she’s a bit of a binch sometimes and narcissistic, but just because she is rude and mean to some characters, does not mean i, the mun, feel that way towards you ooc, or towards your character!

CHARACTERIZATION + METAGAMING.

please, please, please, read nisa/lilith’s about pages in full. like every detail, okay? because i am so, so very tired of people approaching her as the stereotypical lilith. or approaching her automatically like she’s a bitch. if you’re a bitch to her first or give her an attitude, you better believe you’re going to get a reply according to that ten fold.

nisa is in essence, a fallen angel / demon, and the creator of witches and supernatural monstrosities, reincarnated. lilith is sometimes interpreted in biblical prophecy as the anti-christ’s partner in crime, which means only god can kill her. you can throw holy water at her, you can torture her, decapitate her, but your character can’t get rid of her.

she is true immortal. if you are going to pick a fight with her, pick your battle wisely, because she will not hesitate to use her magic or destroy your character to make a point. i do not hold her characterization back for any reason, so when you find yours flying across the room or pinned on a ceiling, don’t be surprised.

also bear in mind she has the ability to see people’s pasts and future, to pick up on their emotions, insecurities, and decipher personal things about them. i always read character’s backgrounds first to get an idea, and sometimes dig through headcanons pages for some juice. unless your character is a witch or supernatural being who has taken precautions spiritually or magically to block anyone from doing so at any given time,  don’t be surprised if this happens. i analyze your subtext as well, so anything your character is feeling or any vibes they’re giving off may or may not additionally not be picked up on.

if you read this and you’re thinking “lol overpowered, mary sue,” don’t follow me. it’s that simple. all of the powerful / evil characters you hate to love on television are mary sues when you strip away the lime light media.  i suggest taking a look in the mirror and getting off your high horse when it comes to your attitude towards original characters, kay? awesome.

GOD MODDING.

ah yes, god modding. please don’t do it to my character unless discussed first, or unless you are sending me a starter! starters are the only situation i let people gently god mod in, because i know it can be difficult writing threads out of thin air.

do not undermine evil or magically powerful characters. i think most of us have been around the rpc long enough to have seen the psa going around on tumblr about this. it’s truly frustrating, when you have someone’s human character or any being capable of dying, repetitively poking a villain with a sharp stick, and then getting all butt-hurt when the other person replies accordingly with negative consequences for their muse.

because my character is an immortal, with nearly all magical abilities, i am going to be honest with you. if your character does anything threatening towards nisa/lilith, or anything which might provoke her to harm yours, i will god mode in my reply. again, pick your battles wisely. this only happens if your character does something to deserve it. there will be no ’ attempts made ’ because  if they are human, she can literally begin choking them from across the room, melting their brain, breaking their bones, setting them on fire, or instantly kill them with a tap on their shoulder, if she chooses.

if your character is supernaturally based and has magical powers, etc, i will message you first and give you a heads up so we can discuss how we want their fight to end and which direction to go in. every attack on your supernatural character will be attempted. in counter, if your character wants to engage in a magical battle or some sort of violent fight with mine, i hope you will respect me the same way and message me before hand.

ENGAGING / INTERACTING WITH MY CHARACTER.

this blog is mutuals only! if i don’t follow you please do not send me random memes, or anything unprompted. also please do not like any of my starter calls or reply to my open starters. if i don’t follow you back, please don’t feel bad! it is most likely because i don’t see her interacting with your character, you post too much ooc, or i already follow too many of a certain muse. i am ocd about what is on my dash. i have adhd so a fast and clustered or disorganized dash does give me anxiety!

with that out of the way, any mutuals, whether we have or haven’t interacted, are always welcome to send nisa/lilith random starters, dialogue one liners, crack, memes, headcanon questions, etc. there is no limit as to how you can interact with me or how you want to. if you feel like interacting with nisa, feel confident that you can just do it and don’t hesitate !!!!! none of you will or could ever annoy me tbh.

SOFT / HARD BLOCKING / UNFOLLOWING.

this blog practices both soft blocking and hard blocking. if i soft block you and you try re-following, i hard block. i do this to protect myself, and to protect my creative freedom on my blog. i don’t owe anyone an explanation. if i see frequent call outs, callout reblogs, vague posts, or negativity on your blog, i will not hesitate to block you as i see fit. please keep your ooc political views off my dash. i really don’t give a shit, since i’m here to roleplay.  

if you think i might have unfollowed you on accident  ( bc lets be real the mobile app is really trash and my thumbs are clumsy ) please unfollow and then refollow me to alert me of my mistake. my tumblr msgs are currently for mutuals only, so that’s the easiest way to get my attention.

SHIPPING / SMUT.

as far as shipping is concerned, this blog only engages in pre-plotted ships. all  pre-plotted ships will get their own verse.

nisa is a complicated character and she is demiromantic. she isn’t really a flings kind of person and i bet you’re thinking ’ lol but it’s lilith ’ and yeah, that’s true, but just because the bible  called her a whore, doesn’t mean she is one. i’d really like to point out that they gave her that image because she disobeyed adam and god, whom are both men. did i also mention that the bible and rabbinical story of lilith, was written by men?

okay, great. now, we’re on the same page. many pagan practices and religions believe that periods of celibacy are a good thing, and actually makes witches more powerful, because sexual energy is powerful. before nisa accepts her fate of being lilith’s reincarnation, she does this frequently, as well as fasts, so that her various uses of magic, or that her visions, have an amplified effect.

in contrast, sometimes celibacy gets to be too much and she needs to actually release that tension and craves companionship, so one night stands, and flings are more likely to happen over romantic ships. she is flirty by nature and sometimes touchy-feely, this does not mean, however, that she wants to engage in sexual relations with your character.

i will only write with / ship with one lucifer, and that is @antichrstis in her main verse.

if your character is feeling nisa, or you view her character as someone yours might want to romantically ship with, and you would like it to happen, please feel free to message me andwe can discuss verse arcs and details ! don’t let what was previously mentioned above deter you.

i briefly mentioned smut earlier in my rules, but this is a reminder that i will not smut with anyone under age 20 or any muses whose fcs are under age 25.

DISCORD / TUMBLR MSGS.

if we’re mutuals, message me at your leisure! if you would like my discord, it is available upon request. i am open to ooc chit - chatting and plotting. i like making friends and getting to know people, so don’t be shy!

[mmkelleywrites]

The Children of the Lake

    My daughter Dharma is six. She’s rowdy and fearless. Dauntless, even.  Since she’s been old enough to walk, she’s been drawn to the water. There’s one particular spot in the lake that she’s always been drawn to. We live in the woods on the edge of Lake Michigan. It’s a tiny, self sufficient commune that hardly anyone cares to know about. My great grandmother started her family here and we’re still here with a handful of others.

    Ever since the first time I took her down the bent trunk path with us, she’s been fascinated by that little corner cove of the lake. She would sit on the shore and stare intently at the still water of the early morning while I went through the motions of leaving a food offering, singing an old song and making sure the candles were all burning.  

My great grandmother started the tradition of leaving food, flowers and singing a song on the shore of the lake. She passed it down to my grandmother, then my mother, and eventually to me before passing. Every detail was specific and she was particular about execution.

In preparation, we gather fireflies, flowers and raspberries. We fast for three days, so that they do not smell food on us and become jealous. On the night of the offering, everything is carried to a particular cove in old wooden bowls. A cove that has a flat rock laying across two stumps at the edge of the murky water.

We wait for the fireflies to signal their lovers. Then we smear the fluorescence of their bellies on our faces. Squiggles to a child, wards and runes to an adult. They tell the drowned that the bearer is both there to help, but also not to be trifled with.

    Then the bowls are laid out. There's a pestle-like rock on the makeshift table, it's used to mash and mix the offerings in a third bowl. A splash of bourbon is added to help placate their restlessness. Once those preparations are  completed, the candles are lit and the song is sung.

“They need us,” grandma would remind me when my offering was disappointing or my song half hearted, “their mothers drowned them here. Their spirits need comfort.”

I was never into the whole spiritual aspect, though I did find the monthly chore to be cathartic.  After we lost  my great grandmother, it became my fondest memory and a tribute to her memory. It's been at least fifteen years since she passed, and I still make an offering at the lake shore right after the full moon.

I asked my mother once why she had the same birthmark as her mother. She gazed down at her navel and her breath left her chest. It seemed like a talk she'd been dreading for longer than she'd known me.

“We're special, Becca,” she said as she pointed to her left cheek, “All the women in our family end up with this mark eventually.”

“Isn't it a birthmark?” I questioned.     

“No, baby. We aren't born with this, but I have it. Granny Geneva had it, too.”

“What's it mean? How do we get it?” My young mind couldn't wrap itself around the idea.

Mom shrugged and thought for a moment, “Granny Geneva said it marks the sight. It's in our blood, it just waits until you need it, or it needs you.”

I must have looked puzzled in that long silence. I started to speak, but my mother hushed me. She smiled kindly and spoke softly, “No more, we can talk more after it happens. You'll understand it then, right now it's just useless words in your head.”

    I waited and waited, but my mark never came. After awhile I figured it was just her version of a Bible story for our hippie dippie pagan traditions. Eventually the task fell to me, tending to the spirits of the lake. After Dharma was born, my mother would look after her while I gave our sympathy to the lake babies. Eventually though she wasn't in a condition to watch her while I was out in the wilderness.

    Naturally, sometimes I had to bring Dharma with me. I would generally leave her up at the trail, within earshot, and be done around the time she lost interest in being there. One day, I was a little slow, she was a done a little early. She wandered down to the water before I even noticed.

I heard the sound of rocks being thrown into water, only, it sounded like I was hearing it from underwater myself. I looked over my shoulder first. No Dharma. I scoured the shoreline from the altar. There she was, hanging off a rock, staring into the dark water. Between the moon and the candles, I could faintly see dozens of little faces in the water peering back up to her.

    I scrambled down the steep bank to her, loose rocks skidded with me onto the smooth rock outcrop. I grabbed her shoulder and jerked her back. My eyes hadn’t lied, I could see them plain as day under the water’s glassy surface.  Definitely human, but the skin was blue and pulled too tight across the skull. The whites of their eyes were green with algae. They pressed their hands and faces against the water, like something in a horror film trying to climb through a mirror.

    The cold, still surface of the water held them back, though. They clawed at it with pruny, sharp fingers, muffled splashing sounds coming up from the lake. Some of them motioned to Dharma, as if to say, “Come on in! The water’s fiiiine!” She struggled against me, trying to join them. I leaned out over the ledge and barked the most powerful “No!” I could muster.

Their murky green eyes collectively widened. They turned and quickly returned to the muddy bottom. I caught a glance of curved slits like gills on the sides of their necks when they turned to retreat. I think my wards drove the point home, I could see the glow from the fireflies bellies in the water. I finished the ritual quickly and carried her home. She was absolutely entranced, determined to join those things. I fought into the night to keep her away from the lake.

“What’d you see in the water, sunshine bear?”

“When?” she asked, puzzled.

“Last night,” I pressed, “You kept trying to go to the lake.”

She looked at even more confused and shrugged, “I don’t remember being there.”

The next full moon rolled around faster than I’d have liked. I waited for Dharma to go to sleep before departing for my work. I floated through the ritual with muscle memory. The same one I’d performed hundreds of times. At the end, my stomach knotted and unease punched me in the gut. My eyes darted back and forth along the shore and further out into the dark. I couldn’t see them, but I felt like they were watching.

The sound of a knife across glass screeched through the woods. Small blue hands, scraping their razor like nails against the water’s still surface from below. The faces started coming close enough to the surface to see. They snarled green and black teeth at me, inching towards the shore. They jammed against the junction of the water and the gravelly shore, their heads deforming and squeezing into the tight space, those green eyes never leaving me. Their scraping and digging deformed the shore, making a pit at the water’s edge that let more of them pile in closer to me. I noticed the fading light of the firefly belly on my nose and ran.

I returned in the light the next day. The pit was still dug out right at the water’s edge. Claw marks were dug into the shore leading up to the altar. The bowl on the stone slab was licked so clean it was sparkling. I needed help.

“They aren’t human.” I blurted out to my mother.

“What?” she asked with a wavering voice.

“The things in the water, those aren’t human kids!”

She groaned to herself before answering, “They used to be, Bec. Over the years the spirits twisted, changed. They turned more… fishlike. Mom- your grandmother- thought it was the oppressive loneliness in the depths that made them that way.”

“Can I keep them in the water?”

“They’re just restless, they’ll be fine” she sighed.

“They wanted Dharma to come in with them!” I cried.

“It will be okay, just keep her from the water.”

The sound of knives being drug across the sheet metal roof of our little hippie hut. Knives tapping on the solar panels that gave us some modern amenities. On the windows. Scraping the outside of the mud and rock walls of our home. I ducked out and slowly peeked out of the corner of the window.

    They shambled on feet that weren’t quite feet, but weren’t quite flippers. Long toes, webbed deeper than a human’s, yet still recognizable as vaguely human. My heart nearly flew from my chest as one of them flung itself into the window by my face. It laughed hysterically, like a child watching cartoons for the first time. We covered the windows with curtains, blocked the entrances the best we could and hid until morning.

    Guests arrived that morning. Not a lot, just a single couple looking to unplug for the weekend. We ran them through the usual routine. Organic gardening, tending the bees, and checking our limb lines for catfish.  I was vigilant while we checked for catfish. One of the lines didn’t want to come up to the surface. I put on work gloves and pulled with all of my might. Eventually with some help from our guests, it started coming up. I started to worry that we may have fished up one of those things. In the end all that we had was a boot that was probably stuck on a submerged log. They didn’t notice the cuts in the glass, doors or walls of the commune’s structures. But I did.

    Their stay had been uneventful. A few days in I’d decided to go check on the cove, to see if there’d been anymore activity. It was like watching a cheap slasher flick. There they went, galloping completely naked in the dark into the lake. I wanted to yell for them, but I figured everything had been calm so they must have gone back to sleep. I started back down the trail when I heard a scream.

    “Stop grabbing my foot and trim your nails!” the girl shrieked.

    The man’s voice carried across the water, “I didn’t grab your feet.”

    He started to scream, but it was interrupted by his head being submerged. She started screaming again and flailed her arms in a flurry of water droplets trying to get to the shore as fast as she could. The man burst through the water’s surface and similarly battled his way sloppily to the beach. I ran down to check on them.  He was oddly calm; she was hysterical, for lack of a better word. His left leg was gone from the knee down. The flesh was tattered, tendons trailed across the beach from it like streamers.

    “Lets get him back to the commune, we can help him better there and get CareFlight out to get him.”

    I looked to the water to make sure we were clear. There they were, those green eyes staring at me as a handful of them tore into the limb like a turkey leg. They were at first taken aback by the sight of me up close. Then I realized I wasn’t warded.

“Lets go!” I barked as I grabbed his shoulders.

She stumbled and helped support his hips. Those things  were crawling and scratching at the shore again, like they were trying to dig out of the water. When we were back within shouting distance of the commune, she collapsed. I nearly dropped him onto her and yelled for help. She had a nasty gash on her leg that’d been bleeding pretty bad, too.

He survived. Neither of them saw the children. Shortly after they arrived at the hospital animal control showed up and searched for the presumed alligator that attacked the two of them. They searched into the afternoon the following day by boat. When they pulled their boat out, they didn’t notice the gashes in the wooden hull.

After animal control was gone, we started hearing a noise around dusk. It was something halfway between a frog’s croak and man yawning. It quickly formed into a melody, with more voices joining in the longer it went. The melody itself was haunting; it seemed to suck us into its rises and falls. The only thing I can relate the tone to is children singing the words to a song they don't actually know.

Something burned inside of me and I shook free of the stupor. I ran out, shaking everyone out of it. They were shambling absentmindedly to the lake. Dharma. I couldn’t find Dharma. I already knew. I knew who the song was for, maybe she was why they had been so active. I ran for the trail; she’d go to the cove with the altar.

She waddled down the trail. I shook her. I yelled her name. I even tried scooping her up, but she just wiggled and slid out of my arms without a minute acknowledgment of my presence. I ran in front of her. There they were on the shore, in the water, everywhere. They grinned with their black and green teeth as they sang louder.

“Cut the shit!” I yelled.

They ignored me, then I realized why. I was unprotected. Dharma was getting close to the shore. I ran up and punched one of them. Wet, squishy. It didn’t even flinch. I ran back again, this time trying to push Dharma back up the gravelly shore. She pushed me towards the water, unphased as the cacophony urged her on.

I looked over my shoulder, and there was a shadow just under the surface. It was something much bigger than a child. Awestruck, I turned around and tried to make out what it was, but it was too far out for me to make out any detail. It inched towards the shore. As it got closer I could see it pushing up against the surface of the water. The sound of glass splintering echoed across the flat surface of the lake.

My body started to panic, my brain couldn’t process what was happening. The thing that surfaced reminded me of a manatee at first. Scarred, with barnacles dug into its flesh. But it had hair on its head, matted and long, tangled with plant matter. Its face was vaguely human, its voice gruff and distorted as it called out from the middle of the cove.

“Come join us, my new child…”

I learned, in that moment, what it meant to have a fire inside of you. I screamed with pure, unadulterated rage. A bright green light washed over the cove, lighting up the water, the shore, and the things that were trying to take my Dharma. They recoiled back, but the big thing in the water stood its ground. I roared again; this time the green light crumbled some of the childish things that were too near me. My reflection in the water told me all I needed to know. The firefly wards burned bright green on my face. A burning V had overtaken my left cheek and ran over my left eye.

“I said *fuck off*!” I wailed, sending a green shockwave that disintegrated more of the singing things. A tree’s trunk cracked behind me from the force.

Then they all went silent and slipped into the water without so much as a splash. I checked my other side. There was Dharma, right at the edge of the water.

Her toes touched the glass like surface. The cold, dark water shocked her into awareness.

I tried to reach for her. I grabbed a handful of her curly locks. I saw those scaley, half-fin, half-human little hands shoot up and grab her ankle. They ripped her from this world.

Not a sound, not a splash. Just gone. Gone into the abyss.

I collapsed, a thick wad of her curls in my hand. The manatee creature still where it was. It gave me a nod of acknowledgment. Then it grinned and gave me a wink before swishing back to the depths of the lake.

I still perform the ritual. I don’t hurry anymore; the runes are there when they need to be. I stay and I watch. I watch little Dharma come up and partake the offering. She isn’t changing into one of them yet. I think it’s because I’m keeping her from being lonely. This V on my cheek hasn’t faded, so I guess it was finally my time.