#if sisyphus was in love with his boulder core.

[necrotic-nephilim]

"I don't care how much you hate me - you need to eat!"

DickTim during Bruce's Lost In Time phase but with Dick stopping Tim from leaving💕

send a quote and a ship and I'll write a short fic!

fucked up DickTim during Bruce's lost in time era my beloved. this is 2k of *very* dead dove DickTim, with one-sided feelings from Dick and unreliable narrator vibes. it is a smidge OOC, just bc of how dark Dick gets, but i think i kept it best i could. enjoy <3

It wasn’t supposed to go this far.

Dick thought he was doing this to honor Bruce. The last thing Bruce would’ve wanted was to see Tim drive himself over the edge and go too far, all for a fruitless chase to bring Bruce back from the dead. And sure, maybe deep down Dick knew he reflected some of Bruce’s worst traits. The obsessive control. The worrying to the point of being overbearing.

It came with the capes and spandex territory. Especially now that Dick had decided to man up and put on that damned cowl.

But even at Bruce’s worst, Dick was pretty sure he wouldn’t dare go this far.

Dick knew it was wrong. What he didn’t know was why he couldn’t stop himself. Why the gnawing guilt was so easy to compartmentalize and why every good point Tim had got ignored by Dick’s logical side, brushed off by one simple mantra.

He was doing this for Tim’s own good.

All of this was to protect Tim from doing something he would regret.

Dick had done brain scans, had Tim magically checked up, and even managed to get him to properly talk to a psychiatrist. Everything came back normal. Tim was perfectly healthy.

So maybe this was something that had always been a part of Tim. Maybe it was a bad idea for any of them to have let Tim into the vigilante world so young.

Some people could handle it. Some people couldn’t. Dick had seen firsthand how it broke minds and ruined lives. He’d seen people turn to drugs, cults, murder, and god knew what else just to try to cope with it.

That didn’t make Tim weak. Tim Drake was the furthest thing from weak, and Dick would fight anyone on that.

This was just a hard life to cope with. Sometimes, people needed support through the worst of it.

That’s what Dick was doing.

Giving support.

“I don’t care how much you hate me- you need to eat!” Dick stepped back, dodging Tim’s attempt to kick his feet out. The bowl of salad Dick had set next to Tim was completely ignored.

Dick had learned not to give Tim hot food after Tim flung potato soup at his head the first time, chunks of potato stuck to his hair.

Tim’s scowl was lethal. Technically, he wasn’t restrained. He could move freely around the manor and do whatever he wanted.

It was the shock collar that kept him from leaving the grounds or breaking into the Batcave.

Dick had decided that would be the most humane way. The shock was only momentarily painful, it was designed to knock Tim unconscious if he tried to get somewhere he wasn’t supposed to. The collar had taken three tries before Dick found a lock Tim couldn’t pick, and a few more unfortunate incidents of Tim finding weak spots in the barrier.

But Dick always found Tim and brought him back home.

That was what was important.

The fact Tim kept trying to break out and go to god knew where on some fruitless quest to find a dead man made Dick more secure about this decision.

He was doing this to protect Tim. Once Tim worked through the worst of his grief, all this would be in the past. Something they would laugh at.

Hopefully.

It was like one of Tim’s contingency plans. Really, he of all people should understand.

But he didn’t. Which was what hurt Dick the most, the angry look in Tim’s eyes and the way his fists clenched when Dick came into Tim’s room. Tim had access to the whole manor, but he stuck mostly to his room, refusing to talk to anyone.

Especially Dick.

And now, it seemed, his latest tactic was a hunger strike.

“I��ll let you look over the burglary case we’re working on,” Dick offered. “I’ll bring you all the files and your computer if you just…” he gestured to the salad, “eat something.”

That had worked, in the beginning. Dick could coax good behavior out of Tim by offering to let Tim help with whatever case Dick was facing. It took a load off of Dick’s back and gave Tim something to focus on.

Of course, Dick couldn’t leave Tim’s computer with him. The first time Dick did that, Tim managed to break all of the firewalls and safeties put on it to start a case file about Bruce. Dick had to delete everything and only allow Tim monitored access from that point on.

After that, Tim really didn’t like Dick.

“Can’t you just go back to ignoring me?” Tim snapped. He sounded… resigned. Emotionless in a way he hadn’t been, like all the fight he’d been putting up for weeks was finally going out.

“Ignoring you?” Dick frowned. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut at the words. He kept a wide berth from Tim, wary of more punches being thrown, and decided to sit at Tim’s desk chair, a good few feet from where Tim was on his bed. “What makes you think I’m ignoring you?”

Tim scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You only talk to me to ask if I’ve dropped the Bruce thing yet, or to try to force self-care on me. The rest of the time you ignore me so you don’t have to face your own guilt.”

Dick violently shook his head. “That’s not-” he sighed, running a hand over his face- “I’m just busy, I promise. Between being Batman, managing Bruce’s estate, and trying to handle Damian, I just…” his voice trailed off. So many things to balance. He still didn’t know how Bruce managed it all. “I haven’t made enough time for you. I’m sorry.”

He decided to take on the burden of helping Tim. It was his responsibility and Tim was right, Dick was doing a piss poor job of taking care of him.

No wonder he pushed away Dick’s attempts to reconcile. It must’ve come across as half-assed, in Tim’s eyes.

Dick wished Bruce was here. He would’ve known the right way to handle this.

“Don’t start now,” Tim said icily. He picked up a book from his nightstand and opened it, pointedly not looking at Dick anymore. “Just leave me alone.”

“Will you eat first?” Dick asked. “If you just eat, I’ll go. I promise.”

With a loud sigh, Tim snapped his book shut. He picked up the salad Dick brought and shoveled down mouthfuls, all while glaring at Dick. Once the bowl was empty he set it back down and spread his hands, waiting.

Dick didn’t leave.

He wasn’t going to abandon Tim.

Dick stood up and Tim relaxed for just a moment before he realized Dick was walking toward Tim’s bed instead of the door. Slowly, like he was approaching a wild animal, Dick crept forward. He chose to sit on the foot of the bed, still far enough away from Tim to give him personal space.

“Tim-”

“Out. Now. You promised.”

Dick ran his fingers through his hair. “I know, but-”

“What do you want from me?” Tim almost yelled the words. “Do you want me to just say I don’t believe Bruce is alive? Will you finally leave me alone, then?”

“Can you say it under a truth serum?”

Tim went quiet, grinding his jaw.

“I want you to get better,” Dick sighed.

“What happens when I get better, then?” Tim challenged. He moved to sit cross-legged on the bed. So close to Dick that Dick could reach out and touch him, but emotionally, they were miles apart and it hurt Dick’s chest. “You ‘fix me’-” he put finger quotes around the words- “to your liking, then set me free?”

“Don’t talk about yourself like you’re an animal.” Dick frowned, fist clenching at the idea Tim thought of himself that way.

Tim just stared at him. “Then don’t treat me like one.” He raised a hand and tapped the collar.

It looked like it had new scratch marks on it.

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Dick said. He tried to find the words. It was so hard to explain it when Tim wasn’t listening to him. He wasn’t even given a chance. Dick tried to reach out. For once, Tim didn’t pull away. He was completely rigid under Dick’s touch, though. His hand rested on Tim’s arm, thumb stroking back and forth. “You know I’m doing this because… because I’m worried about you. And I care, Tim.”

“No you don’t,” Tim leaned away from Dick, but didn’t pull his arm free. “Whatever version of me exists in your head-”

“Tim-”

“-isn’t real,” Tim ignored him and kept going. “You won’t even listen to my theory-”

“Tim!” Dick tightened his grip, ignoring the small wince of pain that came out of Tim. “I’m not entertaining that kind of talk.” He tried to be firm but loving with his tone. But even Dick could hear the anger and frustration that was bleeding off of him. “This is practically self harm.”

“I know I’m right,” Tim mumbled. He wouldn’t look at Dick. “Will you just leave, now?”

Against his better judgment, Dick stood up. He had to patrol soon. “I’m sorry. We’ll talk after-”

“I’m going to sleep,” Tim snapped. “No, we won’t.”

Dick tried to throw his hands up in frustration, but he was still holding onto Tim’s arm.

He didn’t want to let go.

He knew Tim was waiting for him to let go, but Dick couldn’t force his fingers to release. He just stared for a moment, breathing hard.

Dick was doing this out of love.

And now, he loved Tim too much to want to let go of him.

Did he have to patrol tonight? He was pretty sure the Birds of Prey were in Gotham.

“Dick,” Tim said carefully, starting to scoot away from him. The apprehension in his voice was unsteady, eyes narrowed. He was always too on edge. “I’m tired. Just go on patrol.”

Instead of letting go, Dick lifted his other hand and held Tim’s face. Tim flinched but stopped inching away. He was completely still, barely even breathing.

He looked afraid of Dick.

Dick’s chest clenched. He wished he could get Tim to understand. Dick leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Tim’s forehead.

He wanted to kiss somewhere else, somewhere a few inches lower and just as unobtainable. That was a feeling Dick buried deep, deep inside of him.

It wasn’t why he was doing this.

A hand pressed against Dick’s chest. Trying to push Dick away, but for just a moment, the pressure and warmth almost made Dick shudder. Tim hadn’t properly trained in a while.

He wasn’t actually strong enough to push Dick off of him. If Dick wanted to, Tim couldn’t have stopped him.

But their relationship was already fractured. It would take a long time of repairing and letting Tim heal before Dick could even try pursuing those feelings.

Tim had once had a childhood crush on Dick, though. So he was pretty sure they could work their way up to it, be something more.

Dick pulled away. He let go of Tim’s arm and allowed himself one stroke of Tim’s hair. It was getting a little long, brushing against Tim’s shoulders.

The entire time, Tim remained perfectly still. But his eyes got wider and wider, the way they always did when he had just figured out a case.

Dick was getting too close. He needed to pull back.

“You still have the spare comm link?” Dick asked.

Tim didn’t answer. He just kept staring with those wide, searching eyes. He looked a little pale. Dick should get him some iron supplements, Tim becoming anemic is the last thing Dick wanted.

“Use it if you need me for anything,” Dick continued. He gave Tim what he hoped was a calming smile. “Get some sleep, Tim. I love you.”

He turned and walked out of Tim’s room. Slowed to crawl at a snail’s pace, hoping for an answer from Tim. He would take any kind of answer.

But Tim kept silent, even as Dick took his time intentionally, slowly closing the door. Dick just sighed, turning down the hall to head down to the Batcave.

Someday, he’d get through to Tim. Dick would find a way.

Someday soon.

[saviourfinn]

The fact that all the other Spiders believe that they became who they are only because they lost people they loved. That without grief and loss they wouldnt be heroes who save people. And Miles say "Fuck that!!!" to this idea and he's right !

Who's to say that if their loved ones had lived the Spiders wouldn't still be heroes ? Peter Parker and almost all the Spiders are good people to their core. Whether Uncle Ben died or not, they probably still would have used their powers for good ! Miles was trying to use his powers for good even before Uncle Aaron died ! Gwen was helping people before Peter died !

All the other Spiders are resigned to what they see as "fate", even Gwen who is clearly a parallel of Miles in this movie. While she accepts the narrative forced upon her and gives up, Miles refuses to do so. He has to at least TRY. It's not about having your cake and eat it too, it's about refusing to give up on the people you love, and having agency in your own life. It's about hope.

And I love this analysis from a french review of the movie ! It says :

"While most of Miles' counterparts have accepted to be "happy Sisyphus", relentlessy pushing their boulder like heroic martyrs bound to lose everything, Miles chooses to give another meaning to his life and explodes his boulder like the movie explodes the conventions of animated movies."

[minophus]

i need to know about your interpretations of sisyphus & minos … maybe even gabriel but you’re one of the only people with a coherent understanding of sisyphus i fear

Sisy: He is, of course, a very fun-loving charismatic person. Lights up a room the second he steps into one, and knows how to bring people together. He is not an angry person, he doesnt act on emotions, he thinks things through. ...hes realistic but chooses to find the good in things. He is a Very good liar and holds himself well under pressure. He's also INCREDIBLY spiteful as you may know from * gestures at his prime form *. I think he loves to roll that boulder at night knowing Heaven is wondering why he hasn't broken yet. Ohohoho!

as you may also know...he will look fate in its terrifying eyes and find a way to go out smiling.

He also fucking loves money. I think he is the king of greed for a reason. Shit ass

Mino: Very big presence in a room, but also very comforting. Hes cold and quiet but his words are very warm. He's a little more prone to acting on his emotions, and while he bites back his anger it still tends to influence him. He tends to be a little too optimistic...seeing how he thought gabriel would actually listen to him. I do think he struggles to let go of things, good or bad.

Despite being the king of lust and how funny it is to joke about i dont think he lives up to what might be behind that title. I think that is literally just him being the King of the layer of Lust.

Gaby: It's hard to sum him up. He has a lot of aspects. He *is*, at his core, an all-loving person, but the influence of the council and their warped ways have forced him to repress that. He does light up a room and he's very sociable, but the pressure of his duties (i like to picture) sort of prevent him from being able to socialize how he'd like to. He's a very warm presence and he's a good emotional rock...even if his advice will always be through the lens of faith and God's Love.

Despite how much people like to frame him as angry and pathetic and whiny, that is SO far from him. He's angry at V1 because it's (assumedly) the first time he's lost a battle in his *life*. He is not pathetic nor whiny. Have we all forgotten the Millions of sinners' lives he's fucked over (gestures at Leviathan).

They're also all very good with kids. Sisyphus plays a mean game of pretend, Minos can give a mean piggyback ride, and gabriel is just a delight to be around. He's also big enough stature-wise to be a jungle gym.

[cant-get-no-worse]

Hi Ciene!! I was looking thru your posts about barca and at one point you said "I was so numb by Bayern I barely noticed it, Anfield was way worse". But it seems to me 8-2 is from a score point of view way worse as an humiliation, no? Im genuinely curious! kiss kiss

Hi lovely!

I get from casuals or not Barça supporters that the logical option, upon getting asked to chose the "worst humiliation" in Barça's UCL's recent history, would be to go for the infamous 8-2 since, as you pointed out, it's a pretty catastrophic score that cannot be surpassed by a seemingly more dull 4-0. But from a Barça's hincha, you have to place Anfield, and Bayern, in the larger context.

Essentially, after 2015, it was a free fall, that started to take real shape and become noticeable in our game with Roma (4-1 ; 0-3 won by Roma due to the exterior goal rule that has since been erased) in 2018, then Anfield in 2019 (3-0 ; 0-4) and finally Bayern's 8-2 in 2020. Roma was the first severe hit, but Anfield was the uppercut. You gotta place it into our 2018-2019 season: Barcelona, after the 2017-2018 season, departures, knocking out of the UCL, wasn't expected to do very great, but they did. Because of a mix of things but most of all, essentially, at the core of it all, there was one guy that was at the form of his life, one guy that carried his club like Sisyphus and his boulder, one guy that aligned absolutely mental statistics while passing the eye test and being visibly better than essentially everyone on the pitch, whether his teammates or their opponents. Guess who. 😐 I'm not gonna go over his performance because truly, he outplayed and outshined every single player that season. FCB was on its way to win La Liga, the Supercopa and well on the UCL until Liverpool happened.

The first leg was good. That free kick? I jumped out of my skin alright. Me and the friends I was watching with did a Tom Cruise on my fucking couch, we were screaming, laughing, we couldn't believe it. You know those moments of euphoria in football, when it all happens at once, action after action, you can't fathom it, you're caught in your own pride, joy, relentless hope? Resumes LM10's UCL's run pretty well: stellar. Putting everyone on their feet. Making us hope to touch that trophy again. Making us so fucking proud of being a blaugrana and having him as ours. A promise of something great lying ahead, a treble, after Roma, after Neymar's departure and lack of proper replacement. I got no words for how bad second leg was. A crumble on the pitch, off of it, a mentality struggle that cripples this team to this day. Liverpool was so bad because the team just had to not take four goals. Guess they took lessons from PSG tho. :)

Can't really tell you how I and multiple felt about that; it was just a general, horrific crumble, and after the game, a kind of numbness that settled in. I remember one of my friend just shrugging at the end of Bayern; almost laughing. We were completely snapped out of it, no involvement whatsoever, and that's why, to me, Anfield was worse. Because at Anfield, we genuinely thought we could do it. It was a fairy tale. At Bayern, we didn't. 8-2 could have been 3-0 or 5-1 or 10-2, wouldn't have changed much. I'm not claiming it's all Barça's supporters feelings towards this, just explaining mine. I still can't watch Anfield's vids because it makes me genuinely mad, for everything it could have represented, for everything we could have won, because a team hadn't been able to back up one player when he had a faltering of form over one game. A bittersweet reminder that you could be the best player in the world and go through arguably the best season of your career, if you don't have anyone behind you, you won't get anywhere — football is a team sport and nothing else. A team wins. A team loses. End of discussion. :)

[penhive]

Apologetics and Philosophy

Apologetics is a philosophy to defend Christian faith through the exegesis of philosophical texts. Here, I would like to take up worldly philosophies and use apologetics as a lens to reinterpret it.

Plato and Christianity

Here I would like to take Plato’s theory of forms. Plato said: there is cave populated by men and it’s all dark and from the boundary of the cave men can see a beam of light and what Plato meant in this theory was beside the world of the senses there is an ideal world of forms.  Let’s take Plato’s allegory from a Christian point of view: the cave represents temptation and sin and the light is the Messiah Christ who came to this world and died on the cross for the remission of sins so that all in Christ can enjoy eternity in Heaven.

Hegel and the Master Slave Dialectic

It was the philosopher who proposed the idea of the Master and the Slave dialectic. Both of them have an interrelationship one being the dominant and the other being the submissive. From a Christian perspective: the relationship that Jesus has is one of being a friend and guide. And there is a free choice of surrender or apostasy. The Master Friend dialectic is one of camaraderie and essence fulfillment. It’s an intimacy based on the forgiving and eternal love of Christ.

Nietzsche and God is dead and Dionysian and Apollonian

Nietzsche’s statement that God is dead was an iconic one and turned the tables upside down into the world of despair and doom and ushered into a Philosophy of nihilism. What I would like to say is Nietzsche’s Death of God can be compared to Christ’s crucifixion which gave all humans the will to life in eternity. Nietzsche’s Dionysian and the Apollonian as Dionysian being rhythm and beat and Apollonian being melody and harmony can be reinterpreted as Dionysian being the prodigal complex (a tendency to sin lead a profligate life) and the Apollonian (being the tendency of the Father to give the freedom of choice for either yielding to the father or being in a state of apostasy where forgiveness is guaranteed with repentance

Existentialism

Here I would like to rewrite the Philosophies of Sartre and Camus from a Christian apologetics point of view. Camus based his philosophy on the Myth of Sisyphus where Sisyphus is condemned by the Gods to roll a boulder all the way up hill only to his madness it rolls down and he is forced to do this meaningless task. From this Camus said his iconic statement that life is absurd, meaningless, monotonous, repetitive and chaotic. Looking at it from a Christian point of view: I quote Christ’s words: ‘I came to give life abundantly.’ From a postmodern Christian existentialist point of view: Life is the celebration of meaning.

Sartre’s two core philosophies are: man is condemned to be free: and hell is the other. I rewrite Sartre by saying in Christ we are privileged to be free.  The other for me is Heaven as a relationship of love, empathy, and camaraderie.

Deconstruction and Reconstruction

It was the Philosopher Derrida who introduced deconstruction and in  it a text is analyzed as presence and absence. From Deconstruction, I have developed a Philosophy of Reconstruction from a Christian apologetic point of view: and it is a text with the celebration of presence and the privilege and forgiveness as absence. In the text there is always a chance for the prodigal apostate to return back to the father and be embraced with love, compassion and mercy. The God of presence is a kind and merciful God and he harbors no grievance.

Kant’s Transcendental Idealism

In this Kant talks about a not-knowable-world or the noumena (spirit). Here I would like to bifurcate Kant’s transcendental idealism into transcendental realism. Kant’s transcendental idealism stands for the Father God the supreme and Kant’s transcendental realism stands for a knowable God as Christ the Messiah who came into the world: to proselytize and save people from their sins and died on the cross so that we can share an eternity with him.

[imalwaystiredzzz]

C3: Sisyphus happy. Yan Zhongli x Reader

Warning: Yandere behavior, unhealthy relationships.

< Sisyphus happy. chapters >

“You are still the kindest thing that ever happened to me, even if that is not how our tale is told.” ― Nikita Gill, (Persephone to Hades) Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters ══════════════════════════════════

Step by step by step. Any more and you would collapse, exhausted to the very core of your soul. You’d give anything to stop, to sleep, to rest on a shade of a tree.  In this realm, there is no god. There is only the boulder upon your back and prisoner set to carry it and the nightmare of this is that you can’t.

The dreams flow like the sands of time, holding for a moment and gone the next, blown by the wind, unforgiving to anything. Not even you.

“You should rest a bit more,” Zhongli would say, picking a dress that you would be wearing from an extensive wardrobe that he got you after moving to your new house while you sit on the dresser feeling as if this has happened before.

The white silk easy and comfortable on the skin in this summer heat is welcomed with open arms and you smile at him as thanks. While it is as simple, fitting for someone in your standing, the traditional embroidery, intricate symbols of the land decorated by the long body of a dragon, made it fashionable and familiar yet never having worn it before. A perfect fit on your small frame Zhongli would admire without looking, busy brushing your (h/c) hair. “I would dare say that it would even be better if you simply relaxed indoors with this heat.”

“Isn’t that like asking you to skip the day and stay with me.” You would slyly comment after he is finished, holding his hand and giving you the shubi(comb) to be kept in the drawer. Yet another gift that he has given, your lovely husband never failed to spoil as even a simple comb is adorned by jewels and a symbol of the geo. 

“Trust me dear, I’d rather see your face than have another conversation with Barbatos.” He brushes a strand and kisses your forehead before going to the kitchen so you may prepare his tea. You chuckle, thinking back to the nights that he would complain, long and trouble about his flighty acquaintance from the city. The drunkard from Mondstandt, who shirks his duties and plays around. ‘A disgrace to the arts,’ he would even grumble. 

Even in summer when the sun is high with its sweltering long days and short nights, the mornings have never changed. You slowly and carefully put the leaves on the pot, as Zhongli talks about a child that he has recently taken in. “I do not know how to handle a child, and he seems to be suffering from chronic pain…” His voice, drawled in the background like static in your head; everything slowing and blurring like an oncoming headache as you notice something in the bottom of the pot. 

The city who was protected by the god of geo, had loved and adored him, to the point that they would engrave it on their crafts it seems, you think staring at it wondering when exactly did Zhongli get this yixing teapot. It seems as if a long time has passed, so long that even you have begun to forget. 

“Zhongli, when did we get married again?” 

He stops and as if time had known a master so did the world. Neither the creak of the wood as he stood, nor the pads of his familiar footsteps and the shift of his clothes make a sound.

The walls have ears and the earth keeps your soul, the wind whispers as you begin to suffocate in his presence, the whole house feeling familiar yet foreign, like the back of your husband as he walks away.

Your heart is filled with regret, the sound of a closing door has resumed the ticking of a clock, while you are left in the kitchen, thoroughly alone with an empty cup and unfinished tea, left to pick up pieces of your routine with a question left unanswered. You stare at the catalyst of this disaster, only to find a plain pot and a headache from trying to remember what you were looking for. 

It's always in summer, when uncomfortable heat makes your joints hurt and head light, that an unusual day occurs, it is as if you were dreaming, and any moment you would soon wake to begin the day all over again. Yet you don’t and you hate this season even more.

It ends with you retreating to the garden, welcoming and always familiar with it’s peaceful quiet where you find yourself in solace. “This is solely yours,” Zhongli once said, the first and last time that he has stepped in the garden that he had made especially for you. 

Here you are safe. Here the plants sprout from the ground and nurtured to life with your own two hands are a pillar to your reality. Here, you are (y/n)(l/n), a simple herbalist and the ache from being under this heat on your skin that turns red, the pain in your bones as it creaks from crouching to be near the ground, the soil and leaves in your hands is familiar.

It is with plants harvested and crushed to medicine, intricately and methodologically, where you find yourself. 

You are (Y/n) (l/n). You are a herbalist as was your father and mother whom  you clung and learned from their hip since you understood how to speak, and you try to remember what permeated the air as they came home in the dusk. 

Did your mother’s warm hands perhaps carry the scent of flowers from all the Qingxin petals or had your father smelled of miasma from the dying?

The mountain with its afternoon air, for the first time, never felt so lonely that you had wished for the sun to come down for any company. 

“Maybe we should visit my parents.” You say while eating Jewelry soup, an offering of sorts for whatever happened earlier. He is quiet again, sighing when you spoke before he replies, “I’m unsure if you can make the trip, you are aware how sickly you are, right? I would have loved even to show you an opera.”

“What if they visit us, instead?”

“(y/n), you know how they’ve grown old, I’m worried for their fragile bones.” 

Lies. Lies. Lies. Something whispers in the back of your head as you stare at him, gouging for any hints that it is indeed a lie, yet his impassive face and sharp amber eyes brimming with sympathy tells otherwise; then there it was again a deja vu moment as if you’d had this conversation before and you are drowning in your own head. 

“Maybe one day when you are feeling better.” He kisses your hand, tender and long, holding it tightly as if it was painful to let go, as a silent apology. It pulls you out and grounds you, immensely thankful for his presence thinking where you would be without your husband?

“I’m sorry. “ Guilt overwhelms your heart and you do not tell him that you barely remember your parent’s face, rather you opt to look at the hands that clasp yours, like a prayer as he sighs almost like a hiccup to his impassive facade, and you think that he is simply exhausted from work and the long journey it takes everyday, simply because you needed to be here lest you compromise your health. Everything, everything he does is always for you, yet here you are pestering and giving him another headache when home is supposed to be where one rests their weariness. 

Tonight, it is you who blows the candles and let the house dissolve into the pitch black, until you are blind and all you can do is feel and hold his weary body against yours. Your husband who is always unmoving, adamant and akin to a pillar rather than a person who knows how to hide his emotions in little cracks, feels like a stranger in your arms as he silently falls apart, yet still speaks no words and hides his face in the dark.

And then you sleep, closing your eyes as another season passes, like a dream blurring in and out of focus. Forgetting the tiniest details, but Zhongli. 

Your dear husband who is the only constant. Your dear, beloved husband is always there smiling and telling you stories about memories long passed and if you looked in the corner of your eyes, he looks at you like you were too. 

You are (Y/n) (l/n).You are a gardener. You don’t know nor understand why those words repeat in your thoughts like a broken prayer of a sinner who has long been abandoned by his god. It is whispered like a plea, filled with sorrow and regret. The weight of these emotions bore on your fragile shoulders as if you were carrying a boulder on an uphill road and yet you cannot stop your steps. 

[bluetomorrows]

Going Through My Movies Part 12: The Human Condition (1959-61)

How do you even talk about this movie?

The title is completely accurate. This is a film about the human condition. What it means to be human. The cost of being human.

Everything.

The Human Condition is technically 3 films: No Greater Love, Road to Eternity, and A Soldier's Prayer, all of which themselves are split into 2 parts.

I choose to view it as one film. It's all based on the same book, the Criterion box set calls it "A film by Masaki Kobayashi", all the parts acknowledge their placement in the whole (i.e. Road to Eternity begins with a screen that says "Part 4"), and also the films don't work on their own. They would still be good, but they're all clearly operating as parts of one larger story.

Anyways, what is that larger story?

The Human Condition is the story of a sane man in an insane world. Kaji is a socialist, and a humanist. He believes deep to his core that every man, woman, and child deserves respect, and that the best thing for humanity, for everyone, is for us to work together.

And this man is placed in fascist Japan.

You believe that every man is born equal and that we should all just love each other and do what's best for humanity as a whole? Great, go fight for the axis powers.

Everywhere Kaji is put, running a Japanese prison, basic training, the front lines, a Soviet POW camp, or just wandering the Manchurian countryside, he tries to make things better.

But over and over again he is stopped. He isn't allowed to make things better, anytime he pushes through and manages to make some change, things are only made worse for himself. He's in a constant dilemma and we're with him all the way.

Kaji is a modern Sisyphus. He is forever doomed to push his boulder of humanism up a hill in an uncaring cruel world. And he's doomed to do this for eternity, or 9 hours of runtime, whichever comes first.

I'm not going to lie to you and pretend that those 9 hours go by fast. They don't. This is actually an extremely slow movie. You never mind because it's so great, but it is slow. By the end, you feel like you've taken in the totality of human experience.

The Human Condition is also about a search for meaning. Japan is fighting a war they cannot possibly win, but almost every character in the movie deludes themselves into thinking that the Japanese empire will topple the invading forces. What's the point of even going on? Why shouldn't Kaji just lay down his arms and desert his country?

It's a good thing to search for when Kaji is fighting for what's right. What's the point of it all? Can we really do good? And I don't mean make things better for a while, can we make real lasting change for the betterment of our society?

The Human Condition doesn't really give us solid answers for any of the questions we're going to ask. But it isn't really shouting into the void either. It gives you ideas and concepts and just leaves the final decision up to you. Characters in the film make their decision, it's just your choice if you agree or not.

The film is filled to the brim with these grand wide shots and I think they serve a couple purposes. One they're just really beautiful shots. Two they're good at portraying some of the actions that are taken in the settings of the film. And three, they emphasize how small we are.

I think if I were to condense the themes of the film into one sentence, it would be that humans are small stupid creatures.

We are at war with each other and ourselves, and we refuse to help ourselves. But we still matter. We may refuse help, but we still need to try to love each other. We can't give up. That is what really makes us human.

And maybe we will fail. Maybe it will end in tragedy. Maybe we will be separated from those we love. Maybe we will lose what made us love life. But we need to try. If not, then what's the point of our lives? Why do we put any importance on these small stupid creatures?

The Human Condition is not only a monumental achievement in cinema but in humanity. I think if everyone in the world watched this film the world would be a better place.

I think this is the greatest film ever made. I implore you to watch it

Next up in my collection is Kiki's Delivery Service, which I am very excited about.

See ya when I see ya

[himbeaux-on-ice]

Can I just say that Habs “fans” who act like Carey Price’s contract is somehow patient zero of all this team’s problems drive me absolutely fucking insane? Seriously. Buckle up. This is about to be a rant.

Now. First things first. Is it ideal that the $10 million goalie is currently uh, not doing very good? Fucking NO! I am disappointed as shit with that and I don’t like seeing him struggle. I know he can be better. He has to be better. Obviously.

However. That being said.

Do I think it’s an incredibly stupid look to spend several tweets complaining about all the issues Habs defence have been having, and then also griping that they haven’t started Jake Allen enough for how he’s performing, only to then for some inexplicable reason state that the FIRST THING, the first thing that needs to be dealt with after the new coaching staff have had ONE GAME (and zero practices) to work on things, is somehow “well, the ten million dollar man in net is weighing them down, that contract has gotta go!”?

Yes! That’s stupid!!

I think that’s a very ice cold small-brain take, and not just because Price is my favourite of favourites for as long as I’ve been a hockey fan! I have reasons, dammit!! I put THOUGHT into this!!

Here, dear ppl of Habs twitter who will never read this, are some reasons why this narrative you’re concocting is dumb, and why management/coaching are unlikely to think of trying to ditch Price mid-season to fix the current problems:

1: Time. It has been one (1) game under Ducharme. He has been able to run zero (0) full practices on off days with the team. We just changed up a major piece on the Habs chess board — why don’t you give it a minute to see what fresh eyes and minds can do with this roster before you decide we are fucked? This season is fast-moving, sure, but there is time for us to ride out some little bumps here and still make a playoff spot in this Canadian division. Have patience. Do you remember what patience is? Dom is a new head coach, not a wish-granting fairy godmother. Chill. Do you remember chill?

(rest of this under a cut because I actually LIKE Habs Tumblr, and I want to be nice to you all by not making you scroll past all of it if you don’t want to)

2: Jake Allen exists. There are a couple of things I like for what this means for the Habs. Firstly, for basically the first time in his NHL career, we are not in a situation where if Carey Price is in a slump, we have to go “Ah, shit, so now our options are let his stats tank while he tries to get the groove back in net, OR throw whoever the poor backup is out there to get murdered while we plummet through the standings.... 😬” We don’t have that problem right now, because the backup is... actually good? Oh my god, the backup is actually good! Thank fuck! We’re not doomed. If I’m Ducharme, I put Allen in net for a few consecutive starts to put a solid backstop behind all my fun experiments I’m probably planning with the skating roster (to catch their slip-ups, while also giving Carey lots of time and rest with which to work hard on sorting out whatever his issue is along with the goalie coaches).

2b: Jake Allen exists and is competition. Hell, if I’m Ducharme, maybe I even play a little hardball and say “Look, Carey, I don’t want you to be an expensive benchwarmer, but if things don’t pick up soon I am going to start whoever is doing best and you will have to compete for that net.” Related to my last point, when was the last time Carey Price had to push himself to compete for net time against anything other than his own injuries, and wasn’t simply always the default starter? Has that EVER been a thing? Honestly as much as I love the idea of him being The Goalie for the Habs, I also kinda like this idea a lot because I think it could really push him to a higher standard of performance. Maybe that kind of high-pressure situation (given how much he thrives in the pressure-cooker of the playoffs) could be what he NEEDS in order to Be Carey Price again. Worst comes to worst, he doesn’t respond to that challenge, and I am very sad but the Habs have a good goalie in net anyway, because Hallelujah, Jake Allen exists! God, isn’t it nice to have Jake Allen? Bless him.

3: Money. Guys, this league is so broke right now. Seriously. Seriously. Nobody has any fucking money. The Habs probably have more money than most teams, and that does not help when it comes to offloading large contracts. Trades are a NIGHTMARE both because of the flat cap but also because travel is complicated (especially cross-border) but also nobody wants to trade within their division if possible because all your games are against them. Who in the name of fuck do you think is jumping at the idea of taking the $10 million per through 20-lots-and-lots-of-years-from-now contract of a goalie who is currently struggling, impressive past record aside? What kind of astral plane of fantasy hockey are you on to think there’s a trade out there for that within this season. Shut up. And no, don’t bring up the expansion draft, this post is a rebuttal SPECIFICALLY to the people who think that Price and his contract are the biggest problem that needs to be dealt with RIGHT NOW and first on the list of ways to immediately remedy the team’s struggles.

4: Spite. Specifically to piss you off, bud. You personally.

5: Knowing how to troubleshoot properly. Fellas, if my computer is running slowly and freezing up a lot, do I immediately decide the first step to fixing it is to crack open the chassis, remove the hard drive, and try to sell that hard drive to someone to see if I can enough money back to somehow get a better hard drive for less? No, dipshit. That’s not how troubleshooting a complex system works works. It’s the same with hockey teams. Ah, my star goalie is not performing great. This situation is deeply less than ideal. If you’re actually good at troubleshooting, the first thing you do is not “WELL. I GUESS WE’LL HAVE TO THROW THE WHOLE GOALIE OUT. HE’S TOAST.” The first thing you do, if you’re a smart coach, is you say “Okay, what are my defence doing in front of him? What are they doing to reduce the amount and quality of our opponents’ scoring chances? Oh. Oh, they’re taking a lot of penalties, and... oh, uh, some of this is very not great. Yikes.” And then you start your work by trying to make the defence actually work instead of running the same Pairs That Everyone Is Very Much Over And Tired Of, because your goalie is actually supposed to be your Last Line of Defence. And maybe during that time you give more starts to Goalie Who Is Absolutely Slaying It, so that when you start trying new D-pairs and they inevitably have some mistakes, it doesn’t immediately turn into an Oh God Holy Fuck moment every time, because that last line of defence backstopping them is solid. The reason you need to deal with defense first is because a) You know you have a reliable goalie (Allen) in your pocket right now if you need him. What you don’t have is a whole-ass proven and tested and practiced Backup D-Core you can swap into the roster in front of your goalies to make their lives easier. Fix your defense and it WILL improve your goalies, even marginally. Defrag the hard drive before you ask why it’s not working. and b) If you need to go looking for any new D-men to solve the issues, those are WAY easier and cheaper to find than top-tier goalies, and you always want to start any troubleshooting process with trying the simplest solutions first to hopefully save time and money. The better that D-core is, the less it fucks your team over if the goalie isn’t feeling themselves, because the D is going to stop more of those pucks before they ever even become the goalie’s problem. FIX. DEFENCE. FIRST. Then try to train your goalie back into top form. THEN explore your other options.

6: The vicious cycle. Guys. We literally do this once every year or second year. EVERY time Carey Price has a slump, this fanbase gets into a tizzy like the Bell Centre is burning down and he was the one with the matches. And what ALWAYS happens literally within the year, every single time? He gets his mojo back like he did last summer in the bubble and goes on a heater and everybody goes “JESUS PRICE!!!! 🙌” and is ready to name their firstborn kid after him. Until eventually that performance becomes unsustainable, and he becomes mortal again, and suddenly he’s The Real Problem With This Franchise once again. I know he’s the guy they chose to build the team around instead of a superstar forward, but oh my god folks. You’d think he was the only player on the team. Guys, I feel like fucking Sisyphus pushing a blue blanc et rouge boulder up Mont Royal once a year with this shit. This man’s entire career has been a constant seesaw narrative between “Carey Price is our saviour!” and “Carey Price should be exiled to Nome!!!!” from parts of this fanbase, I swear. Look, slumps suck, but for once we are actually lucky enough to be in a position where this team, for the first time in YEARS, does not solelylive or die by the inscrutable magical cycles of Carey Price’s goalie powers — because when he has to step back and work to get back into his groove, there is FINALLY a SECOND GUY who is GREAT. Honestly, given that the state of this team for so long has been “they will go as far as Carey Price can take them” and he has put in a pretty fucking decent job of it despite all of the team’s other struggles, I feel like it is owed it to the guy to be like “Okay, well, we have somebody else solid to fill the net right now, and a chance to really figure out our defence and special teams with this new coach. Why don’t you take a step back and work your ass off at trying to get back into the form I know you can still perform at, and we’ll go from there?”

Anyway. Some parts of this fanbase have been waiting for a fresh excuse to claim Price is overrated, washed-up, and to blame for all of this team’s flaws and ills ever since he signed that contract, if not since the start of his NHL career. Just unreal how nasty some of this fanbase is willing to be about a player who is ON. YOUR. TEAM.

Am I saying he is beyond critique of his play and can do no wrong and his contract is perfect? No! I want this team to have the best goaltending it can get, and I want them to kick ass and take names. The difference is, I still believe Carey Price is a part of that winning formula, and I also think Twitter is overflowing with idiots who just repeat what everybody else says. He’s still a better goalie than your ass would be if I stuck you out there to stop shots from Mark Schieffle, for crap’s sake.

“The first thing that has to go is Carey Price’s contract 🤪”. Shut the fuck up. You are actively making other people stupider by talking. Go eat sand. Good day.

[liminalrp]

WELCOME TO CENTER POINT, FRANCESA ABE

Age Twenty Four Occupation Unemployed Length of Residence 6 months Apartment Top Floor (Serviced), Odd Unit, North-Facing Add-Ons Odd Unit #1

Tenants that live in units that start with #1 should avoid using cameras past 11:30pm, as they’ll see something that they won’t want to see.

Trigger Warnings: None

Fill in the gaps.

The story sounds more exciting than it actually is. Father is a guy who’s a big deal in the 80s and 90s but people don’t care so much anymore when they hear his name. Marcel Wilson means barely anything in 2021. Mother is a girl all of 19 named Madoka, a flight attendant. The two of them meet at an airport bar, and for two weeks they’re a thing. Then three months late Madoka finds out she’s pregnant, hits Marcel up and when he denies any responsibility she hits him with a paternity suit. It’s a whole ordeal in the tabloids for a few months, stuck sitting in the bottom corner of US Weekly but it doesn’t matter, it’s not really important. Only the ending result is: the court says Marcel is the dad and both Marcel’s marriage nearly collapses. Nearly.

Here’s the collateral: Marcel doesn’t want the kid, neither does Madoka, there’s never any accounting of what actually happens to the baby once the lawsuit is over and the money is paid out, just a simple of statement of fact that no one actually wants her. So Madoka leaves her in Honolulu at her parents house when maternity leave ends. Then she gets on another flight off to somewhere better, away from the shitty old house her parents raised her in. She names the baby Francesca before she goes because little girls need pretty names, even the unwanted ones.

Grandma says a lot of things, mostly how girls shouldn’t be made of vices. Incidentally, Francesca is a girl filled with vices; flawed to the very core. She’s no good in school, spends too much time staring out the window daydreaming about this and that and any free time is spent with Uncle’s record collection or skating up and down the street until the street lights come on and Grandma calls out to her in her raspy voice with her heavily accented english. “Too much like your mother”, Grandma likes to mumble under he breath, “no good. no good. no good.”

She’s always trying to fill some endless void. Like Sisyphus with that fucking boulder. Looking for love in the wrong people, looking for approval in people who don’t care, searching for things eternally denied. The process goes on ad nauseum. There are words for people like her, most of them boil down to something near masochism. “I just want to prove to myself,” She tells her therapist in her very last session before she ghosts for good, “I just want to prove that I’m something people can love. I just want to be the little kid who’s parents put their artwork up on the refrigerator. That’s not a crime, is it?”

Side story: First time in a long time she sees Madoka they’re both at LAX. “You drink right?” Madoka asks, and it dawns on Francesca that maybe Madoka can’t remember her brithday, doesn’t know if her only daughter is 21 yet or maybe she’s a little younger. Doesn’t matter, Madoka takes her back to the bar anyways and orders her a manhattan. “It’s good.” she says. It’s not. And for an hour Madoka talks her ear off. Talks about her flight to Buenos Aries and the shitty guy in business class, and how fight attending isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and how she’s got to borrow from her 401k to stay afloat sometimes. And the whole time Francesca can’t stop bouncing her leg and watching the way condensation accumulates on the glass. Her flight is probably boarding right now, and all the while Madoka is talking ceaselessly, saying more to Francesca in the instance than she’s said over the course of her own life, but if she listens closely Francesca swears she can hear someone calling the final boarding call for her flight. “You know,” Madoka says while Francesca’s slowly getting up, trying to figure out the best way to make a polite exist and praying to god the plane hasn’t taken off, “You know maybe I should’ve been a mother to you. Maybe we both would’ve ended up better off for it.” The plane ends up taking off without Francesca.

She runs away a lot, probably gets it from Madoka. First she goes to New York under the idea that maybe for once in her life she’ll try to get closer to Marcel. Then the rug gets pulled from under her and Marcel dies* and some stupid boy breaks her heart and Francesca’s too sensitive and weak to deal with any of it so she runs to California under the guise that it’ll fix her depression. (Spoiler Alert: LA only makes depression worse). Then back to Hawaii, back to Honolulu because Grandpa is getting old and senile and Grandma can’t really handle him on his own. “It’s time to grow up,” Grandma tells her, “you can’t run forever your feet can only go so far.”

*Footnote: Marcel leaves his entire estate to Francesca. There’s a threat of litigation from his last wife but nothing ever materializes. His only child gets the whole $200 million. Doesn’t make up for a father. Doesn’t hurt either.

The shocker is Grandma dies first, peacefully in her sleep after visiting Grandpa earlier that day. No suffering, no pain. Just Francesca crying at her bedside before the paramedics take her away. Grandpa asks what happened to the nice woman that used to visit, he can’t remember that she was his wife, though he asks about her too. The staff says he tells the picture of Grandma good night every night, just like he did when he was home. And then on some unimportant Tuesday not long after Grandpa goes to be with Grandma because everyone knows he could never bear the thought of being away from her and Francesca is alone again.

Madoka comes back, just for the funerals and to settle the estates. She hugs Francesca for the first time in what feels like forever, and apologizes that she had to deal with it all alone and something in Francesca wants to breakdown but instead she claps her mother on the back and tells her it’s okay, and comforts Madoka as she drowns in her own loss and self pity. “I’ll be the mother you wanted now,” Madoka tells Francesca, “the mother you always deserved.“

Epilogue: Francesca runs out one night. She’s good at running, feet hitting the pavement, going going going until she ends up in Ville City. Madoka leaves her a voicemail, asks her where she’s run off to and why. Francesca never replies, she just keeps running.

[wahbegan]

Okay so 3 Things about Triangle

1. Love the Greek mythology Sisyphus shit in there, is it me or is that cab driver clearly supposed to represent death? Sisyphus tells his wife to deliberately neglect his funeral rites and then when he dies tells Hades he needs to go back to the mortal realm for one minute just to put his funeral rites in order, and never returns. He leaves the meter running and never comes back. Until eventually old age takes him and y’know boulder up the hill forever. Jess leaves The Driver’s meter running. Every time. I believe either rejecting his offer for a ride or accepting that she’s dead and telling him to take her on would be the only way to break the loop. 2. Beyond just the Greek shit, i love the movie’s core theme: that there are certain lines that, once you cross them, no matter what you do, no matter how you try to fix it, even if you die, you can never undo what you did, and it will brand you. Maybe that’s why people first invented concepts like Hell in a purely ethical, philosophical sense. 3. But the REAL moral of the story is that if you tell cabbies to leave the meter running and then take off, you’re a prick and your soul will spend eternity in damnation

You should all watch it, it’s really good it’s on youtube for free, though they censor the language for some reason but it’s not that distracting

[tipsycad147]

5 Quick and Easy Ways to Change Your Energy

By Lisa

I think we’ve all been there. Inches away from spell burn out, having worked every, spell every way we can think of, and nothing is happening. Spells fizzling for no reason we can find. I’ve experienced it myself recently with my job search. What I knew should be easy as pie, was somehow like pushing Sisyphus’ boulder. So this week we are going to talk about the power of changing your energy and how to use it for manifestation.

Change Your Energy and Change Your Life

As I mentioned above, I have been in the middle of a mundane job search. One that was not going so well despite my best efforts both magical and mundane. It wasn’t until I nearly sliced my toe off with a knife (clumsy, I am clumsy) that I looked around my living room and realized two things: the arrangement of furniture in my living room was wrong and that I had not properly changed my own energy since my last job.

This may not seem like a big deal. For most of us, energy changes multiple times per day depending on things like where we are and what we are doing. It even changes based on who we are hanging out with. So my energy should’ve changed by itself, right? No, because the energy of something like work is a slow burn. It is something that builds and builds overtime adding additional layers. Changing it was not going to be easy.

It’s Called Sage, Genius!

I know what a lot of your are thinking, why didn’t I just go get a sage bundle and smoke cleanse myself? The answer is a fine line between two concepts. I wanted to change my energy, not banish it. Banishing something sends both the good and the bad of it away. There was some good job energy working away in the form of the spells I had worked. I didn’t want those to disappear too.

That left me with changing all that bad job energy that was hanging around. Thinking about it left me feeling an awful lot like I had asked Sisyphus to stand on the sidelines while I did his job. Then I remembered what my mentor taught us about manipulating energy. The inklings of a plan formed. Gritting my teeth, I got started.

1- Our Surroundings Reflect Our Inner Life

Remember the revelation about my furniture when I was murdering my poor innocent toe? It was perhaps the biggest obvious change I could make towards changing my energy. After wrapping up my toe and a good night sleep, I stood in my living room and looked at the couch, the loveseat, and the coffee tables. And I remembered. I remembered all the nasty work energy of that toxic job I had spewed working from home or talking to my boyfriend. That energy had lingered on because nothing had changed in those spots.

You see, energy has two states: stagnant and flowing. Flowing energy is good as it is constantly bring new good energy in and moving old, bad energy out. This is the goal of things like Feng Shui and Tai Chi. Stagnant energy is energy that was deposited by you or an event and then it just stays there. It lingers like a cobweb gathering more of like energy like dust until something comes along and moves it. So I needed to create a new flow.

Based on the space and the furniture that I had in it, I came up with a plan top rearrange my living room. I enlisted my boyfriend’s help we cleaned the heck out of the living room and rotated the furniture. This did two things:

The cleaning broke up the stagnant energy so that it could be gathered by the new flow

The new arrangement subtly changed how I viewed the room.

Every time I sit in the room now, I am not in the same exact place I used to work. I don’t automatically relive those bad work memories in the back of my mind. My energy and the energy of the room are no longer the same.

2- Splish Splash Taking a Bath

This method is not quite as big as the first one, but is still crazy important. You can take a shower with the intent of removing any kind of lingering energy. This is especially important if you have long hair. For me, my hair is the place that I hold most of my stagnant energy due to the fact that it is long and curly.

There are a lot of different methods out there on how to take a shower or bath with magical intent. Here is the quick and easy way that I do it:

Once the water is up to temperature and you step inside ground and center yourself.

Step under the spray/immerse yourself in the water

Visualize your aura/energy field

Anywhere the color is not matching the rest visualize the water changing the color. For me this is like little drops of paint slowly painting the odd color the ‘right’ one.

Thank the water while regrounding and center

It really is just that easy and can also be used as a quick way to reset your day if you are having a bad one.

A Chakra Tune Up

I find this to be the hardest one to do for myself. Often when our energy needs to change but is stubbornly remaining the same it is because our charkras are not in alignment. A healthy chakra system has all the major chakras moving at the same speed and direction. If one of them is hyper active or sluggish, this can manifest itself as an energy block that has you repeating the same cycles over and over again.

The best way to get this fixed is to have someone who knows what they are doing align them. For me, this is an energy practitioner at my local metaphysics store. He uses a combination of crystals, drumming, and visualization techniques to help them get back into alignment.

This can be hard to do at home, because it requires a lot of awareness of not only the changes in your own energy but what your chakras should be. If you are going through something traumatic or if you have recently been diagnosed with an illness there may be a new normal level for both your energy and chakras-a new normal that you may not be aware of.

If you know that you need to use this method and have before, I recommend that you reach out to a reputable energy worker.

Tried and True

This is great for a quick pick me up or if you need to change your energy right away. It’s also something that it seems every witch will get up on their soapbox about: grounding and centering. We briefly discussed grounding in my post on raising energy, but centering needs to be paired with it in order to change your energy rather than just remove excess.

What exactly is centering? For me, it is pulling in my energy using my chakras.

It takes practice to see all the colors in the following visualization at one time. It works even if you can’t hold them all in your mind’s eye. If you follow it all the way through, you will be both centered and grounded.

Start sitting or standing with both your feet on planted firmly on the ground. Do not cross your arms or your legs. If you are sitting on the ground it is okay to cross your legs. What you don’t want is anything crossed between you and the ground or floor.

Visualization for Centering

Inhale through your nose and exhale out your mouth. Close your eyes. Visualize a bright white light sparkling like a disco ball just above the top of your head. Pay attention to how big it is and how/if it rotates. It should be variations on the one color. If it or any color during this exercise is not all one color, pass your energy through the ball until it returns to the correct color.

Move your energy down to just behind your forehead. Imagine a lotus or other flower here. It will likely be a shade of purple. It may be an open or closed flower. Since we are changing energy, if the flower is open you may want to close it or vice versa. This is your third eye and represents your psychic abilities. Opening or closing the flower is a way to control your psychic abilities.

Move your energy down again to your throat. There should be a ball here in a blue shade. Take a moment to make sure that it is all one color and rotating in the same direction as the flower and the ball above the top of your head. If not, use your energy to make it so.

Next, move down to where your heart sits. You’ll know it as the spot where you feel emotions in your chest. There should be a ball of energy here as well. It can be either green or pink. Make sure of its color and rotation. Using your energy, push the color out so that it follows your circulatory system down your arms to your hands and back up.

Once you return to your heart chakra, move down to where your ribs start to separate. There should be a ball here in a yellow shade. Check to make sure it is rotating along with your other chakras and that it is all the same color.

Finished, move on just behind your belly button. It should be a ball of orange energy. Just as with the others, make sure that it is rotating and that there is no other colors here.

Now we come to the last chakra. It rests between your sex and your butt. The ball here should be red. Treat it like all the rest before pushing the red energy down your legs to the soles of your feet.

You should now be a rainbow of colours from the top of your head to your toes. You should also now be centered. If you don’t feel like you are bursting with energy or your energy levels are too low, you’re done. If you feel either of the two things above you can use the below to ground.

Visualization for Grounding

Visualizing your rainbow self, change all the rainbow colours so that they are a shade of pink and full of love. We’re going to give the energy back to the Earth and whatever energy we give the Earth should always be love.

Visualize roots growing from whichever part of you is touching the ground or the floor. Picture the roots burrowing down through the earth-past the crust, past all the layers of the Earth’s mantle to the core.

The core should be a shade of gold. This is the embrace of the mother Goddess and you should feel safe and happy here. Take a moment to revel in the feel of Her. Once done, visualize your now pink energy following along the roots. Give this energy to the Goddess.

Once you are empty of energy, imagine your roots soaking up the golden energy from the Goddess. She will only give you as much energy as you need. The energy should fill your entire body until you glow gold.

You should not be too full. The energy should be comfortable. If you aren’t repeat the above process as needed until you feel that way.

The more you practice the above the faster you should be able to do it.

Music is a Magical All Its Own

When it comes to energy manipulation, music has to be my favorite. You can do anything with the right kind of music in my opinion. In to use music to change your energy, you’ll need to have an idea of what you want your energy to be. Then, you should choose music that embodies that energy. Make a playlist. Turn the music on, then dance. Seriously, dance.

The movement of dancing will help ‘shake off’ the previous energy allowing room for the energy of the music to fill you. Keep listening and dancing until you feel the energy changes. It is literally that simple.

I hope this post has helped you if you need to change your energy.

http://thebladeandcaludron.com/5-ways-to-change-energy/

[aurora-diary]

Fury Within

July 22, 2020

There is a fire that burns deep in the core of my being. It is fury and rage. It is a savage beast that rages like a wildfire and lacks rational thought. When those furnaces blast, I feel as though my body is consumed in flames. From my limbs spout plumes of toxic smoke and from my orifices pour and sputter molten lava. It is a feeling I don’t enjoy having. It is hard to control, but I do manage to do it better than most. I manage to avoid expressing the full extent of it on the physical plane, unlike some who might devolve into a shouting barbarian drunken with berserker rage. But the emotion still eats away at me. I’d rather not have it and trade it in for calm levelheadedness. But I must learn to understand that anger exists for a reason.

I had a dream not too long ago in which I saw a skeleton engulfed in flames. Its visage still haunts me. It said “Ixion knows me as the wheel. Sisyphus knows me as the hill and boulder. Tantalus knows me as the water and fruit. I am Hell on Earth”. It was angry that it was being denied entrance into world.

Anger, broadly put, exists as a reaction to an offense. But the anger I want to talk about is the one that debilitates me the most. The fires of my rage are stoked by injustice. I would describe this feeling as ‘weltschmerz’ – meaning the depression one feels when the world doesn’t reflect what you think it should be; a feeling of melancholy and world-weariness. The difference being that what I feel is not a sadness, but a rage. Perhaps there’s a more precise word, but that will do for now. Nothing triggers me more than injustice. It doesn’t matter if these transgressions are against me or others, whether they be near or far, past or present, real or fiction. I’m a firm believer that people shouldn’t do bad things to other people who don’t deserve it. It’s unfair and wrong.

The wonders of modern technology allow me to view the injustices of the world from the palm of my hand. Daily, I am troubled by scenes of police brutality, political corruption, bigotry, systemic oppression, corporate depravity, abuse, sexual assault, and don’t get me started on late-stage capitalism. Anti-maskers, transphobes, and Trump and his Gestapo are just a few of the atrocities currently sickening me. I feel powerless and helpless to eradicate these issues. The fire inside me leaves me a burnt-out husk.

These things aren’t right. They shouldn’t be. I’ll be so bold as to say they are evil. I can’t ignore these injustices, that wouldn’t be right either. Even though burying my head in the sand would put my mind at ease, that wouldn’t be fair. Why do I care so much? Especially injustices that have nothing to do with me. I’ll tell you why. Even though these atrocities aren’t happening me, they might as well be. I am but a jewel on Indra’s Net, as are we all. These things are happening in the world, and the last time I checked, I happened to be a part of that world.

If I could, I would punish all the evils of the world with a snap of my fingers. Torment them until they learn their lesson and usher in peace on Earth. But that’s unrealistic. I need to find healthy ways to manage my anger and realistic ways I can help make the world a better place. I need to find a way to not have my burnouts extinguish my hope and passion. A friend of mine once said that I focus too much on the big picture. While reflecting on those words, I recall a story taught to me as a child in school. Loren Eiseley’s Starfish story. I can’t fix everything, but that doesn’t invalidate what I am able to accomplish. I can make a difference to an individual at a time. Every little bit helps – and if we don’t respect the small, we don’t deserve the big.

In the television adaption of Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods, Anansi says “Angry is good. Angry gets shit done.” And honestly, I couldn’t agree more. Anger should be used as a drive towards progress. In truth, I fear anger. It likely originated when I was a child. Whenever my parents exploded in anger, I would tremble. And now I become stressed and upset whenever my friends get remotely angry about something. A part of me says that people would be better off if we didn’t have anger – but I know that’s wrong. We should work to direct our anger in productive ways and towards outcomes where peace and love prevails.

“I don’t do this to change the country, I do this this so the country doesn’t change me.” -AJ Muste

[kaaramel]

*sobs gently into my hands* uniquely among this cast I think his genuine deepest down character motivation is *belonging*

like obviously all the other characters need connection on some level too (even if poor zenigata isn't getting a lot of it :') ) but I don't think any of them has it as this fundamental desperate right-in-the-core drive like jigen does it's so sad that he spent so much of his life in a world where you can't trust anyone when one of his most defining character traits is a just... IMMENSE capacity for loyalty and devotion

and not in the fear-based 'you know what happens if you aren't...' way OR mechanical thoughtless way of that violent world but the real deal babey with his whole chest; quietly and undramatically and steadfastly as much in the silly little background moments of day to day life as in the great crescendo of a heist

and like when you think about it he really needed so little! he literally just needed someone to treat him decently! for just one (1) person to not repay that capacity for loyalty and devotion with stabbing him in the back when he isn't 'needed' anymore! he fascinates me so endlessly as a character who at one point very nearly died psychologically if not physically (though when you're that dead inside I feel it's only a question of time before even professional pride ain't enough to keep you from that) doing things he didn't much care for for people he didn't much care for for reasons he didn't much care for

(he doesn't seem to like... care that much about money really? even when lupin loses them a score to fujiko it's more anger that he's devaluing what he and jigen did together just like that. no one in the lupin gang really cares that much about the money in and of itself except possibly fujiko which is probably why she usually wins lol) and then lupin shows up with all his joyful nonsense and it wakes him up and he saunters back into life again. I mean. hmng ;___;

I know I joke that lupin iii is fundamentally the 'we must imagine Sisyphus happy' central of fiction but I think jigen is the Most in finding contentment in pushing that metaphorical boulder b/c he's doing it with the people he loves (which is why it's both so funny and sweet to me that 'where you go I go'. like 'yeah I'll go wherever as long as it's with you' *shrug*) and it's a hell of a lot better than being dead while still having to walk around and breathe

like he doesn't care as much about where he's going as the fact that he's not going alone. that finally something loved him back. ...all my jigen feels spilling out of my chest on a tuesday morning lol

(via @vaguely-concerned )

hi, OP here! just came off hiatus! thank you SO much for this Jigen Essay Series, truly, genuinely, every one of you

[dominushq]

❝ My soul shattered with the strains of trying to belong to earth. What will you do, when it is your turn in the field with the god? ❞

[IRENE] is a/an [AGE] year old [MAJOR] student at [COLLEGE] in the University of Oxford. [PRONOUNS] are in [pronoun] [#] year of studies.

DESCRIPTION

It is in ritual that you find meaning, those intricate systems of belief and worship giving you a something that cannot be gleaned from this era of disconnection and irreverence. You were a voracious reader when you were young, devouring systems of knowledge as if for sustenance. In a way, it was: it was what nourished your soul. You didn’t even realise you’ve been wanting until you suddenly faced life with a new vivaciousness, a new meaning, and all of a sudden it is as if all the world’s possibilities have been laid before you, and you need only step forward to write out the great story that is life, in conjunction with others—for what is living if not experiencing overlapping narratives all at the same time?

And like all great stories, there is always—always—conflict: your two societies have fallen down dark paths—the others don’t really care for the rituals and the history, caring only for the rivalry and the benefits they reap from their membership. They do not get the bigger picture, the meaning inherent in what you do, the interconnectedness of everything, even amongst enemies. Even your own society has forgotten its roots, forgetting that you were founded on the ideal of the democratisation of knowledge and turning instead to secrecy and mystery. The ivory tower has been constructed and it’s very existence insults you: you believe knowledge to be a universal right, a universal pursuit open to all regardless of background, and there is no greater anathema to your soul than the words forbidden knowledge.

CONNECTIONS

To your surprise, you and CAESAR shared similar views. You had not expected him to be so brazen about those shared values of yours, but it is that very same behaviour that woke you out of your dogmatic slumber. With his death, it is as if there is a fire that has been kindled within your soul, and now you have taken up the reins of continuing the fight where he left off, the risks be damned. You know who you are, you know what you believe in, and you have never been the type to be dishonest. Some might perhaps call you foolish, your strategy thoughtless and risky, but you have grown used to your ideas being called eccentric and now is no different.

You are playing a dangerous game with your relationship with ELAGABALUS, but the connection between the two of you is undeniable. They are the only one who understands your fixation with antiquated mysteries, of trying to get at the core of what it truly means to be divinely inspired. You risk everything by keeping your relationship secret from the rest of your respective groups, but you know that you’ll sacrifice everything for a divine love such as this.

You are expected to see ANASTASIUS as a corruption that threatens the society and all it represents. In truth, you believe the opposite. You see the potential within ANASTASIUS. There is a reason they were invited into Pandidakterion, and when you say that the right to knowledge belongs to all, these are not empty words. You are determined to help them actualize their potential, even if at times you feel as though you are Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill.

SUGGESTED FACECLAIMS: Natalie Westling, Krystal Jung, Sophie Turner, Teddy Quinlivan, Carmen Lee Solomons

Faceclaim must be female / female-aligned.

Their character tag can be found here.

[kicksparkleaxe-blog]

This is my kitchen, and I felt my grandmother’s shell house was very empty and sterile, and when I was growing up, my dad said that he was a dictator basically whenever I had a question or any opposition to his autocratic nature, and he said freedom begins at the curb. I’m in Dana Point in Orange County right now, and Orange County scares me very much, I have so many stories, but this idea of how something appears and how it is produced, acted, directed, packaged, etc., it is extremely interesting to me, as I am passionate about the reflections and refractions and patterns and wires and sparks inside everything, including that which is arctic, since ice too has its lace, and an intricate atomic and architectural structure; it is not what exists, but how you evaluate, interpret, analyze, and hack it, and you must hack until you build something new which contains your multitudes; everything is an infinite number of questions, and an artist or a thinker or an inventor or an entrepreneur or a vagabond, they stay with the same problems, but they explore and explode new methods, and that is creative evolution; it is Sisyphus playing every game and athletics strategy, using his body as an instrument, to lift a boulder in perpetuity. I actually hope the cycling never ends, now that I’ve learned you can play with everything you’ve ever learned and absolutely anything you have at the perfect moment.

Anyways, since my dad restricted my freedom, and I thought I was trapped because I had no money, I began to manipulate different perspectives in the method of my interpretation, and literature, poetry, music, film, fashion, visual art, philosophy, economics, politics, strategy, international relations, video games, hard sciences, basically everything helped me survive, and I was trapped, so I began to see the shapes and electricity in the dark. It took me a long time to realize that you are anything you want to believe if you believe in symbols and metaphors and hacking and coding and inventing enough, so you can be anything you want in the sense that every object or subject has its functions, laws, code, and you can adapt anything if you research, annotate, and experiment, and fashion it into whatever you need in that moment, because we adapt continuously to our environment, relations, and everything caught in our web of meaning within and surround sound, so everything is anything if you have the imagination and the focus.

Anyways, I rigged my kitchen, playing with the windows, screens, and space of my house to build an inhabitable replica of what it feels like to be trapped in the amber of intergenerational trauma; you have to look at the fluid dynamics, the hardening, the stasis, the crystal structure, and you have to keep fighting until you break the mold. Any mold is breakable, and any mold is also another weapon if you need it, if you analyze it and learn its secrets. 

You can be an astronaut from a wheelchair like Stephen Hawking, and that confinement was his space, and how he escaped like a Houdini with everything he had, that is how he launched himself, and became a star in the darkness. His celebrity doesn’t matter, it’s his blueprint. Anyone that can replay a traumatic wound or situation or memory again and again and run through it like an athlete in their mind can rewire their muscle memory, which is why coaches teach Olympic athletes to visualize. What you see inside is what you become if you keep running the plays in whatever way you can.

America told me that I was disabled, and I realized that a sick country infecting me by osmosis does not mean I am sick, but that I am sensitive enough to be attuned to my environment and all its glory and agony and secrets in a way others are not, and it is the pain which is converted to paint, a virus builds a vaccine, so I just needed to invent. All art is invention, and all people should be constantly updating experiments, and that’s how you spark a revolution within and around. So no, I am not disabled, I am going to disable America and the power structure and grid and workings and the culprits themselves, the elitism, the exclusivity, the artificial hierarchy, the definitions, diagnoses, labels, and counterfeit answers, and I’m on the run now, like I’ll get to that. 

The doctors told me before that I have “bipolar I disorder with psychosis” and “complex PTSD”, and numerous other issues such as insomnia and delayed sleep phase disorder, and I’ve struggled with binge-drinking, binge-eating, anorexia nervosa, self-injury, suicidal planning, sexual dysfunction, recreating abusive relations, exercise bulimia, OCD symptoms, and many other issues which include people continually sexually and physically assaulting me, though honestly, sometimes the psychological violence was worst of all. My body is indestructible now, and my soul too, but my soul is very soft.

Anyways, I realized that these conditions are not disabilities, they are different vantage points and cloaks and methods, and now I have night vision because I am basically nocturnal, and that’s a superhero secret, because there are secrets in the night, and honesty and authenticity, since observation and light changes one’s behavior, so who you are in the dark is who you really are.

Athletes condition their bodies, because they want to make them stronger, so if you have conditions others don’t, that is an arrow in your quiver that others wish they had.

I stay awake for days, and I work, and I faint when I feel safe, and that’s what war must be like, so I love veterans, I am so sorry for them, but it is called shell shock, because it will shock you awake, and if you are alive, then you become electric, and light and dark and power and physics, that is what defines this playground, so if you can adapt to such a powerful mutation, that means your magic. I believe that is why so many superhero and children’s stories play with concepts of sympathetic monsters, sorcerers, alchemy, and mutants. 

I don’t like the word bipolar, I prefer manic-depression, because there really are no binaries. I call myself bipolar technicolor spectrum, because everything is a spectrum that the poles and extremes define, so my expanse is accelerating always, since I reverse engineer vacuums as I grew up with many unfortunately, and no, there is no extreme or fringe which is not related to what it contains and defines by the boundary, and defines the future if we are brave enough to see the edges of the graph. 

I love the word mad, because yes, we should be furious, the world is very bleak sometimes, and it is righteous indignation and a fight which dismantles the source of anger. If you are angry, you are awake in a world of electric sheep striving towards a suicidal excellence, and that is the truest gift of all. 

If you are sick with sadness then you are mining the sorrowful depths of the world and seeing the counterfeit surfaces so artificially well designed that no one looks to the core, you are sensitive, and if you can build a cocoon and molt and evolve, you will be the most beautiful blossom of all. I loved butterflies before I met Nabokov through his work, and he inspired me to be a writer.

Anyways, the blue chair represents me, as blue is one of my favorite colors, though my favorite color is purple, as I feel blue and red define the intensities I feel best. It is small and has an interesting vantage point, because it is puny compared to the surrounding architecture. But its “disadvantage” in size subverts the structure, and the bath bombs are to show that any mess must be cleaned with resourcefulness, humor, and style, and the best bomb is aesthetics and ethics and harms no one at all, but reveals we do not need violence at all, unless it is consensual, since there are daredevils among us who enjoy the extreme, and I am like that, so I see what others do not from the apparently minuscule such as entomology and animal adaptation and anything which can poison or kill us, to skiing, bungee-jumping, zip-lining, luge, sky diving, golf, tennis, dance, boxing, marital arts, etc. It is the scope and vantage and advantage and disadvantage which helps you explore facets you will always notice if you keep notes on everything, you must examine everything.

Scrutinize until there is no shroud, if you are obsessed with something, it means it is a code with a key inside. There is no lock that cannot be picked or exploded. 

You can shrink if the world is scary, and you can learn to get out. The smallest things are most effective sometimes, because we are too arrogant to see that they are in fact very large. So that’s this piece. I’ll post another one, I actually have like 6000 images on my phone, and I need to examine if I can post videos on here as well.

[imalwaystiredzzz]

C2: Sisyphus happy. Yan Zhongli x Reader

Warning: Yandere behavior, unhealthy relationships

< Sisyphus happy. chapters >

“Perhaps you would fear if you saw me, and love is all I ask. There is a necessity that keeps me hidden now. Only believe.” - Cupid and Psyche ══════════════════════════════════

You have a dream; heavy and looming as you carry a boulder on your fragile back. It dares to crush you under its weight, while you trudge up a steep path towards the peak of this mountain. The sun glares with its heat like a guard set to watch your endless labor, sweat trickles down like rain on your skin as you pray for water. 

The relief comes in the form of waking from this endless dream.

Breath. Breath. Breath. You breath as if your lungs were crushed and you had drowned in earth, wondering why the familiar pain of doing so was gone. “Slowly,” smooth like velvet and deep that it reverberates to your being, your dear husband hushes next to you observing for any hint - even a twitch - that you might need help. 

“I felt like I had a really long dream,” you say, sitting up from the warm sheets of your shared bed. 

“Care to tell me what it is about?” He is the epitome of patience practiced and perfected, waiting for your reply; though try as you might to remember what it was, the dream had long  slipped from your mind like sand held between cupped hands, flowing and flowing until nothing is left.

“Have I been asleep long?” Voice groggy and eyes a bit blinded by the light, small hands felt the sheets on his side, the warmth and ghost of his form long gone, your dutiful husband, always awake and dressed before you even rouse from slumber. 

Zhongli leans toward you, his gloved fingers graze your cheeks with tenderness only to tuck a strand behind your ear and it is warm as the morning sun that rises on your window. “It’s alright, I know that you need rest after our move.”

You blush, heart soaring like a pure maiden in love with her suitor even though it is none other than your husband who gives you his full attention. It’s supposed to be endearing. It is endearing. Yet there is an ache at the back of your head, that something is amiss.

His fingers, barely touching your skin, made you think of claws, long and sharp, shining with polish. You brush it aside, under the bed long forgotten in the dark, while you would begin your routine. 

You could say that a day does not begin when you wake, rather it is when you make his tea.

He once told you that brewing is an art no less than painting or writing, it is not a matter of simply sprinkling leaves on a clay pot. It is a meditation and a ceremony practiced to bring forth a harmony of earth and water.

You take his words to heart. You take almost all his words to heart and memorize them the way he recites poems to you before bed. You command air to bring forth an aroma that allures the butterflies and with practiced elegance, you hold the Yixing teapot to pour him his cup while Zhongli is nothing but a spectator to this show.  

There are no words exchanged before he sips. It is a little game between you and him, a show of trust you would like to think. Even the heavens could not imagine Zhongli take abhorrent food, not even for his wife.  

He is nothing but an expert, listing the leaves you secretly used and the flavor in full detail like a practiced line from a play. You’d wager that had he been blessed to borne out of better parents, had he been blessed with a better standing rather than a son of a merchant who had a herbalist like you for a wife, he would have stood as the finest in a world of history and art with those deft amber eyes that miss nothing.

Not even the way you look as he leaves through that door with a kiss. 

A kiss of parting as you wave him goodbye, the wind whispering that this is not your simple husband, who goes down the mountain to sell herbs and trade merchandise in the city. He is your foreign husband, who disappears from your presence and hides a secret deeper than the mines the humans could hope to till.

But who is to listen to the wind? Zhongli tells you that it is nothing but your active imagination and you are nothing but (Y/n) (l/n), a herbalist, who belongs to the soil.

This thought repeats in your head like a broken record and rings in your ear. 

It is spring now, you remember looking up and thanking the clouds and the lush leaves of the tree that hide the harsh glare of the afternoon sun. The grass was evergreen and the wind smell of the oncoming summer heat, fragrant with flowers that bloom in the wild.

In spring, he tells you that a gardener is happy for the harvest is abundant and the lands teems with life. In spring, you should be happy.

The plants are alive and they grow easy, they are not shriveled by the summer heat nor do they hide under the ground because of the winter. The flowers and herbs bloom, almost too perfectly as if the little pots were visited by the dendro archcon themselves in your sleep. 

You are (Y/n) (l/n). In spring, you should be alive.

Yet cannot help but notice the absence of the worms nor ants that you once complained about. Once upon a time, you would be maneuvering them all throughout the day away from the lush green leaves and bountiful earth. And sometimes your imagination would play tricks and whispers of their avoidance.

“What cruel little pest,” you tell the soil while planting new seeds until the sun goes down and hides from the skies, when you light the lamps in the house, but most especially by the door, red and glowing like a star against the vast darkness of this lonely mountain.

Hoping, praying that this simple light will lead him back, if he might ever be lost in the shadows in the road. 

Even before he walks through the door, your ears are listening to the whispers of the air that carries his footsteps as it taps the ground so when he opens the door, you are there with a warm welcoming smile and a kiss to his cheeks, heart calm as you know he is safe and he is here. He is home.

You should laugh, really. Your husband who has mapped this mountain like the back of his hand would never be lost but the anxiousness of it never fades. A perpetual worrier, he would call you with eyes lost, staring at yet never really seeing. You know that he has his moments, he doesn’t mean to show, it is fleeting as it comes and no more than a blink of an eye hence you blink and pretend that you don’t see and lead him by the hand to the table neatly set and filled with warm food. 

You dine as he talks about the people he has met and worked with in the city, how the land has begun to thrive and the mora flowing. He tells you of a harbor, where boats are ever growing in size as the days go by and the merchants travelling to do business within it. As far as you can remember, there was never dinner where Zhongli does not talk endlessly about the city - always proud yet humble like a poem, you would think that he talks about it like a child of his own.

“I wonder when will I see the lights of the city from here.” You don’t know what compelled you to say this, maybe it was the stories that he never ceased to tell, maybe it was the lantern that still hung lit outside and darkness that encloses it like a sky with a single star. He pauses,  struck and still as a statue, he looks at you in a way that you have never seen before. 

This smile is is not warm as the morning sun when you wake; it is not tight and constricted when he leaves; nor is it practiced the way it would fall so easily on his visage like a mask; rather this smile dims the glow in his amber eyes and wrinkles the skin akin to sadness and guilt held back.

He reaches for your hand on the other side of the table and kisses it, tenderly, gently as if you are glass that would break with a tap and this is his silent promise that you feel would never come to fruition, “Maybe one day when you are feeling better.” 

The routine ends when your dear husband leads you to bed, the fire closed and you are both in the dark. Tonight he kisses you with unhinged passion, holding unto your small form against him like you were about to disappear into thin air and he is a stone cage. 

“Is it so selfish of me to keep you by my side and never want to let go?” 

He asked barely a whisper above your skin, like a prayer to a god that never answers while the only thing on your heart was pity for your dear husband’s deep sadness, who was an embodiment tragedy that could make you cry.

Had you been born with a stronger body, maybe then you could promise him tomorrow and the rest of your days yet you are nothing but ephemeral so you don’t speak; simply hold his arms, firm and hard under your touch briefly wondering why you thought of scales, mighty and solid as the unblemished core lapis from deep underneath.  Under your fingertips he is foreign yet familiar, in every wrong and right way possible. “You have enraptured me, body and soul. I will always love you, even after I have long passed”

“Is that what it means to love”

“That is what it means to be human.” 

You fall asleep, long before he does. He holds your hand, tightly. 

Step by step by step. An endless walk as you contemplate: why? What sin so great that you have committed for this to be an equal torture. And yet even as millennium of wondering have passed you don’t know, rather you’ve forgotten, memories and thoughts lost in the pain that seeps into the bone, desert in your throat and the eyes that cannot see the peak of this mountain you climb.