#man this took so long... and its so hard to describe very specific art that doesnt exist that i also cannot personally make?

[fourtyfourcatss]

[████████ 100%] — @astralmysteria !

𖤣.𖥧.𖡼.⚘ RECORD #01

[a/n] hey mysteria! i’m sorry this took so long, i was really busy for a long time, but here it is! i hope you enjoy.

Upright this represents femininity, beauty, nature, and nurturing. Reversed it represents creative block and dependence on others.

𖤣.𖥧.𖡼.⚘ YOUR ARCANA IS… EMPRESS!

𑁍 From your described personality traits, I was very torn between TEMPERANCE and EMPRESS, for your arcana. But, after some long and hard musing, I must give you empress.

𑁍 The empress is a card that is assigned to many characters in the series, one of which is Haru, which you and her embody a lot of the traits it pertains, whether upright or reversed.

𑁍 Perfectionism and people pleasing (dependence on external) tends to lend aid to a creative block, and not only that, you told me that you were trying to get back into writing.

𑁍 You’re motherly, kind, empathetic, and I can tell by your personality you may either come off strong at times. Many of your traits indeed feel like what an empress would have, and you take pride in the things you do have and nurture and take care of it.

…loading match…

⚘ YUSUKE KITAGAWA

𑁍 Oh this match was perfect.

𑁍 First of all, your love languages. Yusuke is someone who is in need of gifts, in need of being spoiled. When you appear in his life to stay— he is very pleasantly surprised. Not only is he a man of gratitude and returning acts of affection so you would not feel unloved or perhaps even taken advantage of for your kindness, he is filled with anticipation for every gift, and surprisingly, wait a long time to use them if if can be used. He probably has a section in his place dedicated specifically to you, and treats you like a queen has graced the mortal realm. You seem hard to impress— so he will do his upmost in order to win your heart!

𑁍 He’s attracted to your kindness, but specifically, it had to be paired with all your other traits to make it right.

𑁍 so, so many nicknames. this man is going to shower you in the most sweetest of them. maybe it is a simple but tender “mys” uttered in his breath, or perhaps a “love?” — he tends to stick to the more formal sounding ones because of how he is, and yet, there will be times where he drops some funny ones jokingly, and that beckons not embarrassment or humiliation but rather good-hearted fun.

𑁍 You are a muse for him; with the vibes of your being and your singing. Yes, you are a beautiful woman, but he is more focused on how your characteristics enhances your attractiveness. He finds you talking whether it be to him or yourself very endearing, and he’s definitely going to draw whilst you sing. The way you inspire feelings out of him is a gratifying experience, its a passion. The two of you would be able to encourage and help each other out of creative blocks— but also, yusuke also has problems with taking care of himself. the two of you have problems taking care of yourselves, but now you have each other to take care of the other so extremely well. the rest of the cast is very soft and happy at this, hoping that this translates into treating yourselves better.

𑁍 yusuke is not loud, or inconsiderate in terms of jokes. he is a sweet lover, and he is perfect for you. the two of you would be super cute, i think. soft, with romantic tension in the air. i think you would exchange some sassy remarks, but it is a very healing process to be around each other.

as for runner ups: ryuji was one, and akihiko from P3 kept popping up in my mind. i think akihiko may be your one true love actually.

I AM THOU, THOU ART I… COME FORTH!

𑁍 TITANIA! 𑁍

The Queen of the Fairies, Titania is a character from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. She is the wife of Oberon. Because of her grand power and charisma, people consider her the Queen of the Fairies. While she is rather delicate and graceful in appearance, her power and knowledge over magic easily match those of Oberon, the king of Fairies.

The description above fits you well, and Titania has manifested as a result! The reason why I chose her for you is because of the character studies I read for her over the ages, excluding the sections regarding extra-martial affairs she may have participated in. The compassion she holds for the changeling she wants to adopt is one of motherly. She is principled, standing up to her husband.

Not only that, I think her movesets fits you.

𖤣.𖥧.𖡼.⚘ HOW IS SHE AWAKENED?

you are on a battlefield. your blood is singing through your veins, and you have just stepped out like a lamb to the slaughter.

how one awakens is a hard question, because it involves getting pushed to the brink by someone who is somewhat close to you in any manner, hostile or not. in your case, it would be a betrayal of a friend. you had introduced them to almost everyone you had known because you trusted her— and in a fit of rage, they had cursed out everyone they knew, you, and all you adored.

unable to take this slander towards your loved ones and aggrieved in your heart, you opened your resolve, and a mask appeared on your face.

“I am thou, and thou art I,—”

“I am Titania. I will become your mask. Now, let us enjoy a midsummer night's dream.”

𖤣. for weapon— you would have a RAPIER [The Sword of Sinai] or a BOW [SOURCE YUMI]

𖥧. for a gun— you would have a RAY GUN [SIRIUS]

𖡼. for outfits— school uniform would be like makoto’s with the jacket, and regular outfits would be like yukari and rise’s.

[rsmrymnt-tea]

Hey!! Since Dola's an artist what do you think her art looks like? What mediums do they prefer? Are there any artists that she really looks up to?

- 🐝

Okay okay! Making this took a long while because I overthought things as usual. And like... I know that almost all of these have statements to the work but I'm coming from a mostly formalistic/aesthetic/vibe place when I give these as pegs for what her work looks like >.<

I didn't include any pictures since it felt a little... odd? To be taking pictures off of the artists' Instagrams and sites + I would absolutely need more than the 10 picture limit >.>;; But links are there!

So like... Dola as an artist has two identities she presents. One is as herself, the other is as a collective (and I guess you could say that these are her two eras since at some point she can't really label her art with her name anymore?)

As herself, she works mostly with painting and illustration, eventually involving embroidery and thread painting in her output. Growing up, she dipped her hands into an assortment of different media due to her family all wanting her to take up their specific craft, but in the end she found herself drawn to the same media her parents use.

(For reference, I picture her father's art to be similar to Alphonse Mucha's—but not his art nouveau work, but much more along the lines of The Slav Epic mixed with Peter Mohrbacher's The Angelarium pieces. Meanwhile her mother's work would be along the lines of what Miriam Shimamura and Ekaterina Koroteva do except imagine the themes to be more supernatural baroque and rococo? Both parents are very influential to her own work.)

At her peak, Dola's art style would be something like... A mix between Nicolai Fechin and Mildred Hankinson? Along with a touch of Zivko Kondic and Lucy Davies, with the embroidery and thread painting aspect coming in for added dimension to the work, giving it something akin to a low relief soft sculpture. Her work would often have a lot of moody lighting to them and more surreal and fantastical subjects, usually set in some darkness or at night. Sometimes they'd be a twist on realism, showing scenes of domestic bliss except its with a demon or angel or some other kind of monster >.> Her time in the Devildom + with demons/angels/sorcerers + working with magic has had an impact on what she likes depicting, though she’s careful not to make anything like… too specific.

At some point though, she realizes that like… she can’t really keep using her name forever and that with magic, she can do a lot more with her art than what she’s already doing. So she creates a pseudonym that makes it sound like she’s a collective of artists when it’s really just her on her own doing a lot of work to make sure her real identity doesn’t get out. Magic and bribery and having some fellow sorcerers integrated into the art world go a long way.

(Though idk what name to give the ‘artist collective’ yet. I keep wanting something relating to the fact that she’s still around long after she should’ve died as a little joke for herself lol)

And I think Dola would take the event of establishing the new art collective/identity as a chance to branch out into trying new things that she hadn't really had the chance to. The most prolific of her work would be sculpture and textile/fiber art, usually in the form of high relief mixed media on canvas/flat base of choice or installation art that can either be purely decorative or be functional.

Thankfully I found things that match the vibe I have in my head for what she does. Works like these from Andrea Silva Guzman, these (x, x, x) works from Kellen Meyer, and at times work like Janet Echelman's and this gorgeous installation that I just found out about by Bruce Munro. I think she explores different media a bit and builds an insane portfolio over the years, but what remains consistent is the organic forms and a bit of... Whimsy? Fantasticality? And I think a touch of her artistry from her earlier years always remains. But she's a lot more secure and relaxed about her work while working with this identity, and it reflects in how much more wondrous everything is I think.

dgsfdjg Does any of this make sense... Kinda have to bash everything together in your head a bit to get the full picture, but overall I think these get the point across >.>

I actually have this idea that at some point, at the end of her 'mortal' life where she's expected to die, she creates this insane exhibit inspired by time in the Devildom as a final project before she retires as herself forever.

Imagine a large dark room, likely a black box theater, the Devildom night sky projected at the ceiling and just enough light to find your way around. There are seven large paintings of each of the brothers' avatars, though they're mixed with high relief scupturing so that each animal looks as though it were coming at you from the painting. And each one is detailed with fiber and other media to make it look like each animal is made of something magical. A few warm lights illuminate each, giving them strong shadows that make them look a little terrifying, to be honest.

I feel like it's a bit better to like... Attempt to draw what the room looks like when I can? It's been on my mind for almost a year honestly + the idea of Dola bringing the brothers into her home studio to collab on a piece that now lives either in Serenity Manor (which I headcanon to not have portals that just lead to rooms in the HoL because that's lame to me dfhgjkdfg) or the House of Lamentation.

sydfugfg anyway so sorry this took almost a whole fucking month to answer holy shit?? Something about it made me so anxious... I think I just took this way too serious for how little it actually shows up in anything I write about her >.> But I guess it makes sense since it's all important to her and informs what her spells look like because I fully believe she would polish off her magic with her personal touch aesthetically lol

[lillian-nator]

YBLN!Ranboo

His Ranboo is a year older than Tubbo, Tommy, and Purpled. 

Tommy meets Ranboo when he is a Junior and Ranboo is a Senior. 

Ranboo had moved to their town the year before and became the soccer team’s goalie. Due to the fact that Tommy plays offensive, he never interacts with Ranboo, however, he heard Fundy talking to Ranboo once and deemed the tall boy cool. 

They first talk in the senior English class, because Tommy is a year ahead in English, and Tommy tells Ranboo that he will be eating lunch with him and his friends. 

“You are going to sit at my table during Lunch today, and you are going to meet Tubbo and Purpled, and you are my friend now. No arguing."

Very much 2 extroverts adopting Ranboo, and Purpled just vibes on the side. 

But Ranboo turns out to be weird as fuck, and Tubbo vibes with that SO fucking hard. 

They T-pose at eachother in the hallways, its SO cringey that it’s almost okay. 

Most people in The Gang were shorter than Tommy, but since Ranboo is taller, sometimes Tommy likes to lean on him2

Niki gets a scholarship to a preforming arts school nearby, so, on weekends she volunteers at the school's library, and Niki and Ranboo become really good friends - Niki instantly takes the kid in 

ANYWAYS, so Ranboo gets the keys to the library from Niki one day, and the four of them play a game of Manhunt throughout the school - it’s chaotic as FUCK

Overwhelming Social Anxiety - what can I say

He has one sister, she is like 13 years older than him, he never really felt related to her, so then Niki shows up in the picture - OH BOY

Sibling Issues immediately resurface, and then were fixed by one Niki Nihachu. Thank you Niki Nihachu for being a good role model, and surrogate sibling. 

His sister pointed out how strangely deep his voice was when he was like 9, and he got really anxious over talking ever since. 

AND THEN, Ranboo meets Tommy, who some how describes the exact thing that Ranboo is always feeling. He meets Purpled who mutters “mood”, without looking up from his phone, when he explains he has an older sister who in his eyes wears devil horns. He meets Tubbo who cheers when he's willing to speak to him, who's willing to have t-pose battles in the hallways during school. 

Ranboo barely remembers his sister now, only a haunting memory. But he has Niki now, who smiles he rambles about anything, who helps him find books in the libraries, he has friends now, and he cheers internally. 

Ranboo has found his people. 

Ranboo was a MAJOR pushover before he became friends with Tubzo, Tommy, and Purpled. 

He doesn’t mean to be a pushover, he doesn’t. But he’s the kid who will do everything in a group project without telling the others they need to help. He becomes known for being the new kid that will give you homework answers. He doesn’t want to, he wants to help them before giving them straight answers, but he’s new and he’s quiet and his dad told him to make friends and apparently this is how you do it. Everyone asks him to give them things without a return, and he can’t tell them no because he doesn’t want to be the kid that everyone hates. He doesn’t want to be the butt of every joke.

Ranboo is the kid that nobody knows too much about but knows of. They know Ranboo as the one that does homework, the one that somewhat regulates things. They call him a suck-up. But when he is with The Gang and Tommy, he knows he can be demanding, sometimes. 

He can take the path of least resistance everywhere else, but when hes with his friends, he can let go for a second. He doesn’t have to "go with the flow" because the flow is always changing and moving forward and turning, and he will not turn with it. 

For once, he will fight against the tide, because where he is going, is a place that feels like home. He can joke about not doing things without being guilt-tripped into doing things anyway, and his choice is respected, and he doesn’t need to be stubborn for hours on end before breaking to get the people to listen, because they will listen regardless. 

But

But

Ranboo + Tubbo + Tommy + Purpled = Full Out Teen Indie Movie Vibes

Ranboo, Tommy, Tubbo, and purpled borrowing the keys from Niki and totally legally entering the school at like 4am on a Saturday the fifth week of summer break. They play tag along the whole campus with flashlights and ""walkie talkies"" and regroup just before the sun starts rising and sit outside on top of the car they drove here and share a bunch of capri suns before they give in and drive home to pass out for twelve hours and repeat the next day.

They go to Walmart and drive eachother in shopping carts, and eat Subway. 

Ranboo barging into tubbo's room like "i know you have this one specific ring you took it so long ago but i really wanna wear it" and Tubbo just. points at the box he keeps all of them in.

OH YEAH

Ranboo is just always dressed up. Sometimes he shows up in a literally full 3 piece suit. Most times he just wears Hawaiian shirts, and buttons up with black jeans, but - it’s so much better than how Tubbo and Tommy dress. 

He wears a lot of rings and necklaces. He also wears sunglasses inside. Let him have that. 

Tubbo still has a bunch of Ranboo’s rings (Tubbo steals Ranboo’s rings and necklaces, for those who didn’t know) when Ranboo goes to college. He keeps them in his bedside drawer, and puts them on when he feels lonely. Ranboo has to come back on a weekend to get one of his favorite rings back. Tubbo’s plan works out. He keeps stealing jewelry.

Tommy can finally borrow his friend’s clothes, because Ranboo is bigger than him

Tubbo and Purpled always borrowed Tommy’s sweatshirts and shit, but 

Tommy could never borrow any of theirs because it would be extremely awkward because Purpled is 3 inches shorter than him, so it would be just a small bit too small, and Tubbo’s would just straight up not fit him, I mean, the kid is literally 10 inches shorter than him

Tommy feels so fucking warm when he can finally borrow someone else’s hoodie. Of course it is all completely platonic, but all of his friends did it, and now he could finally participate.

Purpled flicking a lighter against his hoodie sleeve absently and tubbo whacking him on the head for it because "it makes the sleeves feel weird" - Purpled has a habit of playing with lighters. And Tubbo has a habit of wearing Purpled’s hoodies. 

Piercing their ears at home like IDIOTS. It doesn't go as bad as you think it would and now Ranboo, Tubbo, Tommy, and Purpled have matching earrings. 

The four of them lying next to each other on the floor with the lights off talking about college, talking about where they're going and where they've been accepted and what they'll do. 

Just very much teen movie shit.

Sitting on old creaky swings, sleeping on the roof, going nuts on Tubbo’s trampoline idk man

TAGS BELOW

@gxd-cxmplex @rmbz101 @introverted--pineapple @seilee @carry-on-my-wayward-why @iluvu3ooo @tubbanna @confusionnoises @yummygummysouls @wassupmygays

[sarahjtv]

BNHA Chapter 308 Spoiler Thoughts: Beat His Ass, Young Midoriya!

Chapter leaks are out!  Full chapter hasn’t been revealed yet (and take what I say with a grain of salt until the official translations come out), but I think I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.  Nothing super heavy, but it’s an action-packed chapter that shows us how much of a badass Deku has become since he left UA and went all vigilante on us.  So, let’s do this:

Before we get into the chapter, I need to mention our mangaka, Kohei Horikoshi-sensei’s comment this week.  He’s basically apologizing for taking a break last week, calling himself a “small-fry”, and promising to pick himself up.  Horikoshi deserved a break last week and he is by no means a “small-fry” for creating one of the best and most popular pieces of fiction in the last few years.  I hope that he knows that and that he shouldn’t blame himself for taking a break.  

So, the chapter picks up right where we left off!  Deku and Muscular’s battle begins and Muscular recognizes Deku’s voice.  He says that he’s been waiting for this moment as everyone else he’s faced have been weaklings compared to Deku.  As far as we know, Deku has been the only one to even beat Muscular by himself.  It took over 100% of his strength to do so, but Deku did manage to kick Muscular’s ass.  It makes sense why he’d want a rematch.

I need to take a moment here to talk about how awesome Deku looks in his Vigilante costume (as I’ve decided to call it).  The tattered clothing really works for him and the dark sclera around his eye adds to the effect.   Again, I love that he’s finally putting the bunny hood and metal mask to use.  I mean, he used them before, but not as a real part of his daily costume.  He looks almost like a completely different person with them on.  I’d be scared of Deku tbh.  

As the fight continues, he gives the injured Yo Shindo to his GF, Tatami.  Tatami can’t see Deku’s costume because of the smoke surrounding him, but she does kind of recognize his voice from somewhere.  I do wonder if Tatami’s going to put the pieces together and find out that the vigilante is Izuku Midoriya.  And I wonder if she’s going to get the word about his actions spreading and if that will reach our UA kids.  Or the news stations will, that might happen too.  

Speaking of smoke, DEKU UNLOCKED THE 6TH OFA USER’S QUIRK!  The 6th user is the Tobio Kageyama-looking dude with the long collar (He’s cute btw 😳!) and his name is “En” which translated to smoke.  His Quirk is Smokescreen which explains the smoke surrounding Deku at the end of the last chapter.  Deku is using the Quirk too much, so he needs to calm down a bit and use each Quirk individually.  There’s actually quite a bit that Deku could use with a Quirk like Smoakscreen: He could hide himself for a sneak attack, he could use it as a distraction, use it if he needs to retreat, etc.  My mind immediately went to Pokémon (because of course it did) and how Team Rocket would constantly use moves like Smoakscreen and Haze to either distract Ash and Co. to confuse them or use a sneak attack, or run away from the protagonist.  It’s another support-type Quirk, but it’s a damn good one if used right. 

Edit: There’s a panel that shows the scale of how much Smokescreen Deku used and it’s A LOT.  Like, the smoke is covering several streets and it goes to the top of some buildings.  It’s hard for really anyone to see anything.  Deku’s really trying to keep himself in the shadows, I suppose.

To use all his Quirks well, En suggests that Deku think of each Quirk like a support tool.  So, Float is a jetpack, Black Whip is a long string of rope, Danger Sense is a radio, and Smoakscreen is a flare or some kind of smoke grenade (I don’t know the specific name).  This is a really good way of thinking for Deku since he’s been using object-focused metaphors for OFA before.  Remember the “Egg in The Microwave” and the “Turntable in The Microwave”?  Similar to that!

Edit: Fan-scans are out.  It seem like Deku is actively talking to En here as if he’s a little voice in his head guiding him on what to do.  My guess is that after his coma talk with the OFA Holders, Deku can now talk to the vestiges consciously.  He doesn’t need to enter a dream-like state to interact with him; it’s just a thing he can do willingly.

So, Deku uses each Quirk individually and finally ties Muscular down with Black Whip.  I can’t describe it, but it’s so cool to see Deku in action here absolutely folding Muscular.  He really has improved since their last fight. There’s one panel that has a close up of Deku’s masked face and he looks so damn cool!  I’m so tempted to color it when the official translations come out.

Deku is asking Muscular where AFO and Shigaraki are, but Muscular doesn’t know.  He also asks why Muscular is doing what he’s doing, but Muscular just responds that there is only blood and battle in his heart and  he doesn’t want to live a life where he regrets not fulfilling that (his name is revealed to be Gouto Imasuji btw.  Don’t know the translation behind that, but I assume it has to do with his Quirk and his violent personality).  So, this confirms that Deku is actively looking for Shigaraki and AFO.  He’s not just saving people left and right, but he is actively looking for the big bad on his own.  I can’t see that ending well without help unfortunately.  Deku’s also trying to reason with Muscular to see if there’s a different path for him similar to his fight with Gentle and LaBrava.  He’s really going for the “Save People’s Hearts” route and I can understand why.  That’s Deku’s character at its core.  It’s why he wants to try to save Shigaraki despite everything.  If there is a different path for a villain, then Deku will try to lead them to it.  Unfortunately, villains like Muscular don’t always have that path.  

Edit: Actually, you know what, how in the world did Deku know Muscular’s real name?  Did he see it on the news somewhere?  Did he do some research and manage to look it up?  Does he have someone to give him intel?  I mean, unless Muscular’s name was broadcast out there, his real name is some very specific information Deku got a hold of.  

Finally, as he remembers Shigaraki and Kota (the small boy Deku saved back in the Forest Training Camp), Deku runs towards Muscular with full speed and finishes him with one powerful punch!  Deku speeds past Muscular as we finally see his face again under the mask (Badass Deku🥵)!  One Punch Man has left the chat, my dudes.  For real, though, if Muscular really is defeated, it’s amazing how flawlessly Deku beat him.  Deku used every Quirk well and efficiently to dodge Muscular's attacks and pin him down so he could get a clean hit in.  Everything was calculated and executed perfectly.  This is not the Deku we knew back in the Training Camp Arc.    

Edit: Ok, it was explained that Shindo’s Vibration actually did effect Muscular’s Quirk.  Then tendons in his muscles were pulled and were starting to unravel.  That’s what made an opening for Deku to get a good hit in.  I think it would’ve been hard for Deku to knock Muscular out with one punch if that opening wouldn’t have been made.  So, Shindo wasn’t entirely useless.  

And that’s it from what I can gather!  Damn good action-packed chapter! A+ art and writing from Horikoshi once again!  This man just keeps bringing us 🔥.  I’m so glad to see Deku fight like the badass he’s meant to be.  I wish it didn’t have to take a war and several near-death experiences to get here, but Shonen gotta Shonen.  He knocked the lights out of Muscular, I almost feel sorry for him.  He got his ass kicked by the same kid twice in less than a year.  You should’ve stayed in Tartarus, my dude.  Really, all prisoners should’ve stayed in Tartarus.  If Deku can defeat Muscular, then none of them stand a chance against him now.  I can only assume Deku’s going to go after everyone who was associated with the LOV to find Shigaraki and AFO at this point.  Thankfully, we don’t have a break next week.  Will En teach Deku how to play volleyball?!?  I’m kidding!  I do want to know what our UA kids are doing, especially Bakugo, Shoto, and Uraraka.  This would be a good time to transition to them.  Like, they can see Muscular’s capture on the local news, put the pieces together, and go after Deku.  Or we could just keep focusing on Deku’s vigilante adventures, that works too!  

Me @ Deku:

[mammoney-honey]

Summoning Circles: What to Offer the Brothers GN!MC

MC doesn’t need to set up anything to summon them since they have their pact but sometimes its just nice to add a bit of drama. It’s also a good way to get the brothers to accept Just Because gifts. So what would would MC lay out as an offering for their favorite demon in their pentagram?

Lucifer

Lucifer is hard to get gifts for because hes a man of few words and fewer guilty pleasures

MC does their best to keep an eye out for things he does like and finally sets things up when they feel that Luci needs a bit of a break

They mostly offer things that would make for a good date night but with one small exception: special gourmet dog treats 

He won’t admit it, he says Cerberus is just a well trained guard dog, but that big boy gets only the best and MC knows that Lucifer will appreciate the gesture

The rest is all about setting the mood so Lucifer couldn’t possibly say no to staying

The first thing to accomplish this is the finest bottle of hellfire aged wine, a special request put through to Diavolo for whatever he thought Lucifer would like most

And to accompany a good drink you need some good food as well. A charcuterie board supplied with recommendations from Barbatos and Luke. The little guy should be called a mouse rather than a dog with how much he loves cheese. It took a long time for him to stop talking about it

One of the things that MC looks most fondly on of their time with Lucifer was quiet nights in listening and dancing to new music. They didn’t always share the same tastes but they were always willing to give it a go

So MC would find a vinyl, the only thing Lucifer would listen to the purest that he is, of their most recent favorite song or band so that they could share it with him

The last thing offered is that which Lucifer would want above all else as his own, MC

They can think of nothing else that would gain Lucifer’s attention more than offering their full and complete self. His pride could never allow him to deny taking MC when they offer themselves so willingly

He appears in full demon form, he can’t think of who would be ballsy enough to try and summon him and he has to pull back on his full power once he sees its MC

“MC, my dearest love, the pageantry is appreciated but overall unneeded. All you ever have to do is call my name, all I wish is to hear my name on your lips. But now that I’m here lets make sure you are screaming it”

Mammon

He is another one who is hard to gift things to but for the opposite reason as Lucifer. He likes too many things, wants everything and so it makes it impossible to tell what would actually mean something to him

MC tries their best to lay out things that will show how much they love and appreciate their favorite demon

Money of course is the first thing that is set out but not just spare Grimm or human cash

No, MC will put gift cards out for Mammon’s favorite places or for a date that they can have together. It feels more personal that way and they hope it shows that they pay attention to the things he likes

Mammon has a wardrobe to rival Asmo’s but he insists that it all has to do with his job as a model. Gotta keep up appearances and all that yanno. Hes just a label whore though and everyone knows it

He also just melts at the idea that MC might be thinking of what he would look good in so if they put out a new outfit or accessory, even if its just new sunglasses or a belt, he just about explodes

He will scoff and say that hes not sure if human styles are really his thing but of course puts whatever it is on quickly

Next would be a very special edition of the TSL dvds, a directors cut that even Levi couldn’t get his hands on. He has watched it with MC so many times he could practically recite it but they were always borrowing from Levi so it was about time to start wearing out their own copy

The last two things are more personal, something that shows just how much MC thinks of and misses being with him

The first of that is MC’s favorite set of pictures they took with Mammon, a silly photo booth strip that captured their first kiss. MC had surprised him on the first snapshot and it showed a progression of him getting redder and redder before finally kissing them back

Lastly is a page from their diary, as intimate an offering as they can possibly give. Its from a day where the longing for Mammon was at its strongest and filled with sweet words of how much they miss their first man

Mammon is freaked out at first thinking he is being summoned by another witch and is confused to see MC before taking it all in

“H-hey you don’t have to go through all this. I mean of course The Great Mammon won’t say no to the the things he deserves but ... b-but you only ever need to say my name, there is no where I’d rather be than with you”

Levi

Levi has a bad habit of just buying whatever he wants but considering that he has so many fandom’s its not hard to find some piece or another he doesn’t have 

MC feels like his brothers don’t give much thought to his gifts though, just typing in a name they know and getting whatever they find. They want to give him something more personal and can’t just be bought and shipped in two days

MC starts to watch a lot of craft, cooking and cosplay YouTubers to try and put everything together themselves. It felt more genuine that way at least to them

MC tries to keep things diverse, hitting a couple of Levi’s favorites but mostly avoiding anything Ruri related since they are afraid of messing it up lmao

Instead they focus on the anime’s and games that they watched and played together. Almost like a collection of inside jokes that they are using to summon him

The first thing MC sets out is a prettily decorated plate of macrons, doing their best to replicate the colors and flavors described in the one bakery time management game they always played

MC also went through Levi’s super secret fanfiction accounts I will fight you he is totally a fic writer because he has so many self inserts and fix it fics  and wrote out comments for every single thing he had written. They printed them out not because they didn’t think he read them but to show that they were the ones that left them

Along with the comments MC also created art for Levi’s most beloved OC, creating cute enamel pins of them in chibi form with the cannon character he paired them with

 The last two things came as a sort of combo, a couples cosplay from the romance anime they had watched together. The protagonist had been a shut in otaku who had found his soulmate when they were reborn into his world and Levi had latched onto him immediately 

It had taken a lot of blood sweat and tears trying to get both of the outfits cannon perfect but damn it MC was not going to settle for anything less

At one point they forgot they were making it for Levi and just got caught up in the the drama that was finding the perfect buttons and trim color

Overall they were so proud of the sewing skills they just wanted to call on him the moment they were done so he could see but they got a hold of themselves so they could set up what they had planned

Levi was summoned into the circle still wearing his headset and fingers tapping at a controller that had been left behind

His demon side comes out at having been cost a serious match from the sounds of it but his anger turns to confusion at seeing MC and then into wide eyed amazement at all of the things in front of him

He started to gush about every single thing he saw before he realized that MC was there beaming at him 

“You went through all this trouble to prove that you aren’t a normie and yet you summon me this way?? J-just say my name like you’re supposed to! I kind of like hearing you say it anyway ...”

Satan

Satan surprisingly doesn’t like being the center of attention and thus doesn’t really like surprises or receiving gifts. He also doubts that anyone understands him enough to give him what he wants cocky ass that he is

The idea for the things to set out in his summoning circle came to MC when discussing love potions with Satan and Solomon one day. They were talking about how smell plays such a strong part and Satan let slip some of the things he might smell after MC listed some of theirs

So while MC doesn’t have much, well any, experience in magic or potions they do want to try to stir up those feelings those smells produce in Satan

The first thing he had said came as a surprise to no one, the smell of parchment and ink

MC used each of them as their own separate offering on the pentagram. They used a fancy new calligraphy quill dipped in green ink that matched his eyes to write a long love note for him

The ink was still wet on the parchment that they set down and left the quill and remaining ink as the second gift

The next thing he mentioned was another one MC expected: tea leaves

So MC just walked into their local tea shop and let their nose lead the way. Anything that caught their attention or made them want to keep smelling they bought, creating their own special blend just for Satan

It wasn’t necessarily something that Satan would say for himself but MC had started to burn different candles in their room when he would come to rant when he was angry, trying to find a scent that he could associate with being calm when they helped him work through the anger

Whatever candle seemed to work the best is the candle that MC sets out for him. Probably something woodsy, pine or balsam or even sandalwood. It brings back good memories for MC, kissing all those worries of his away and hopes it does the same

The last item is one that made MC blush when they heard Satan admit it, he had liked the scent of their shampoo

He hadn’t said that specifically but he had closed his eyes and described a scent that he couldnt place but that he adored and when MC was taking their shower that night it clicked 

It might have been a little lame, leaving a bottle of shampoo out for Satan but MC knew that when he realized what that scent he loved so much was that he would get the cutest blush

They weren’t disappointed when they summoned Satan. He hid his shock of being summoned this way well, taking his time to walk around the circle and examine each offering. He immediately knew where they had gotten the inspiration and teased them about being such a sap

He stopped when he got to the shampoo though, not sure how that fit into the equation until he smelled it. It dawned on him and there was that blush that he tried to hide by turning his face away

“You always did like to make things difficult on yourself didn’t you? I’m only ever a call away for you kitten. Now come here and let me really breath you in, you’re simply intoxicating to me and I can’t stay away.”

Asmo

Asmo is never shy about when he doesn’t like gifts that people have given him but he has only ever cherished what MC has gotten him. Every small trinket and gift he has on full display in his room and he will wear something that MC got them when he misses them the most

He also will do it when he wants to bother his brothers and show off that MC simply lavished him in gifts (Mammon and Levi are the only ones who fall for it lmao)

So MC decides to offer Asmo things that will allow him to parade around their love for him, things to keep them close when MC isn’t there

The first thing that MC gets Asmo is new nail polish, a color that they agonized over finding because they wanted it to match his eyes perfectly

Asmo has a very organized planner, its how he keeps track of all the events he is invited to, when he has dates, who hes slept with, who hes going to sleep with and everything in between

MC commissions custom made stickers for him so he can decorate the pages of his planner even more. Specifically a whole sheet of cute stickers of them together he could use for when they planned date nights

The next thing was something for Asmo’s room which he was always changing and refreshing so it looked forever interesting for Devilgram pics

MC gets a large print of Asmo’s favorite picture of them together and puts it in a beautiful frame that perfectly matched his favorite decorating style. Perfect to show to the world that Asmo was their favorite demon and that they looked so good together

And so they can take even more pictures of themselves together MC buys a Polaroid camera for Asmo. His phone will always be his favorite thing to take pics on but this way they could have them printed instantly and it continues to let him be trendy

Lastly MC gets Asmo a necklace. A dainty rose gold chain that he can wear with practically everything and with a diamond accented heart shaped locket that could easily be tucked away if needed. It was an enchanted locket, thanks to the help of Solomon, and it warmed when MC was thinking of him

Its the first thing Asmo grabs and quickly puts on, showing it off for MC

“Oh MC you are simply the cutest thing I have ever seen~ I’m sorry I don’t have something to give you in return. I hope the fact that my heart beats only for you will make up for it, now come here I’ve been without kisses too long.”

Beel

Its SO hard not to just grab whatever is in the kitchen at the time and throw it in the summoning circle and call it a day for Beel

But he is more than just his hunger and MC is always striving to show him that they understand that 

It was harder than expected, just because asking anyone what Beel might want always got them food answers. They thought Belphie might be helpful but only got told “he probably just wants a nap ... its what I would want”

MC starts to think of all the most special moments they had with Beel, trying to think what about them made them so memorable and they knew for a fact that it wasn’t the food

The first thing they come up with is a banner that MC made to cheer him on at one of his games. It had gotten a little tattered and torn because it had rained that day but they just couldn’t let it go

Mostly because Beel after winning had ran up into the stands and kissed them for the first time. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t ever kissed but they had always been the one to make the first move but this time Beel had come to them. Of course in the biggest gesture possible

It was cheating a little bit offering a cookbook, it was still food related, but it felt better than putting in actual food 

This particular cookbook was special to MC too, they had spent several months trying to recreate one of the recipes from it down in the Devildom when MC didn’t have it. Even their D.D.D had been no help in finding the human world dish they were trying so hard to recreate

It had finally been Beel who had found someplace that sold the food they had been craving. He had even been able to bring it back completely untouched just so that they could have it all though he didn’t complain when they offered him several bites from their fork

MC pulls the next thing from their own shelves at home, a well read copy of Lord of the Flies. The spine cracked and little notes about their favorite parts scribbled in the margin

It was one of the human novels that Satan had and one of MCs favorites from school. Beel had caught them reading it and thought the title was ironic but the more he watched MC get engrossed in reading the more curious he got

He eventually asked MC to read it to him, he actually liked books even if most didn’t take him for the type it was just that he had a hard time actually reading himself. He always got distracted by food but audio books always worked well for him when he was working out, it turned out to be even better when MC read to him when he was eating

It was the best of both worlds for him and he found the story actually pretty funny, slightly worrying MC but they figured they couldn’t blame a demon for getting enjoyment out of a story like that. He did find their lack of food concerning though so at least there was that

One of the things that Beel often complained about when MC was living in the devildom was that when he went to go eat they weren’t always there. Sure Beel would ask them to tag along whenever possible but it didn’t always happen. He would call them from the kitchen at times and tell them that he missed them

MC was sure the other brothers would have something to say about it but knew that Beel would genuinely enjoy the next thing MC offered. Amagnet with his favorite picture of them. It was MC caught in a candid he took, mid bite in a dessert he had made them and his hand could just be seen wiping some whipped cream off MC’s cheek

It was a way that Beel could have MC with him at his favorite place every time

The last thing that MC laid out was something that was inspired by Beel. He had once given them a coupon for a free meal by him and they had thought it was just about the cutest thing ever

They made him a whole coupon book of favors ranging from cooking any meal he wanted to recording his workouts for him and of course lots of coupons for hugs and kisses

Beel isn’t used to being summoned at all so hes slightly disoriented when he finds himself suddenly in the human world. As soon as he sees MC though its nothing but smiles and he doesn’t even notice the gifts until after

“MC did you know I was thinking about you? Sometimes I just say your name and hope you will appear ... so if you ever think of me just say my name. I want to be here, even if its during dinner” 

Belphie

Belphie is not one to beat around the bush at all. He is a creature of habit and just wants more of the same things that he already has. Dont fix something if its not broke right?

So its fairly easy to fill his summoning circle with things that he loves, just adding to his ever growing collection of happy nap time things

That isn’t to say that MC just grabs whatever blanket or pillows they have laying around, they still want it to be special for him

So yes the first two things they offer to Belphie is a pillow and blanket, there was never going to be anything else but MC spent a long time putting their love into finding just the right ones for him ... and still couldn’t find what they wanted

MC used this as an excuse to create something themselves for their sleepy boy. They dived deep into youtube and pintrest and spent more money than they care to admit on materials until finally they made what they wanted

The first was a quilt large enough for three cause the twins like to make MC a sandwich in a cow print pattern that matched his pillow and demon form marks, lined with the softest fabric she could find that was the same purple as his eyes 

His pillow was another quilted design, this time of a cloudy night sky with a sleepy cow jumping over the moon. MC stitched his name in pretty gold thread on the back long with a sweet ‘I love you’

There was one last fluffy thing to give to him, this one MC knew he would probably scoff and tease them about but they couldn’t help it. They saw the angry looking cow plushie and just could not walk away 

They have actually been sleeping with it when they miss him most and even if he doesn’t like the plushie the fact they have slept with it so much will make him a bit fonder of it

Even though they were pretty sure that Belphie knew every star in the sky MC couldn’t help but get a book with stories about the constellations. He might already know them all but they thought that he might still enjoy hearing them read to him as he drifted to sleep

The last thing MC has to offer him is also star related. A star map of the day that they made their pact. It was the day that MC had fully forgiven everything that had happened before and their relationship had truly began

When Belphie was summoned he was half asleep but knew who it must be even in his sluggish state. He gave a big yawn and looked around at all the things around him 

“At least things are already set up for the perfect nap, including having you. MC next time just say my name alright? Its much more of a drag this way ... and I want to know when you are dreaming of me”

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I really enjoyed your book review of Sebastian Junger’s Homecoming. Perhaps enjoyment isn’t the right word because it brought home some hard truths. Your book review really helped me understand my older brother better when I think back on how he came home from the war in Afghanistan after serving with the Paras and had medals pinned up the yin yang. It was hard on everyone in the family, especially for him and his wife and young kids. He has found it hard going. Thanks for sharing your own thoughts as a combat veteran from that  war. Even if you’re a toff you don’t come across as a typical Oxbridge poncey Rupert! As you’re a classicist and historian how did ancient soldiers deal with PTSD? Did the Greeks and Roman soldiers even suffer from it like our fighting boys and girls do? Is PTSD just a modern thing?

Part 1 of 2 (see following post)

Because this is subject very close to my heart as a combat veteran I thought very long and hard about the issues you raised. I decided to answer this question in two posts.

This is Part 1 and Part 2 is the next post.

My apologies for the length but this is subject that deserves full careful consideration.

Thank you for your lovely words and I especially find its heart warming if they touched you. I appreciate you for sharing something of the experience your ex-Para brother went through in coming home from war. I have every respect for the Parachute regiment as one of the world’s premier fighting force.

Working alongside them on missions out in Afghanistan I could see their reputation as the ‘brain shit’ of the British Army was well deserved. They’re most uncouth, sweary, and smelliest group of yobbos I’ve ever had the awful misfortune to meet. I’m kidding. The mutual respect and the ribbing went hand in hand. I doff my smurf hat to the cherry berries as ‘propah soldiers’ as they liked to say especially when they cast a glance over at the other elite regiments like HCav and the guards regiments.

Don’t worry I’ve been called a lot worse! But I am grateful you don’t lump me with the other ‘poncey’ officers. Not sure what a female Rupert is called. The fact that I was never accused of being one by any of those I served with is perhaps something I take some measure of pride. There are not as many real toff officers these days compared to the past but there are a fair few Ruperts who are clueless in leading men under their charge. I knew one or two and frankly I’m embarrassed for them and the men under their charge.

I don’t know when the term PTSD was first used in any official way. My older sister who is a doctor - specialising in neurology and all round brain box and is currently working on the front lines in the NHS wards fighting Covid alongside all our amazing NHS nurses and doctors -  took time out one evening to have a discussion with me about these issues. I also talked to one or two other friends in the psychiatric field too. In consensus they agree it was around 1980 when the term PTSD came into usage. Specifically it was the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-lll) published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 partly because as a result of the ongoing treatment of veterans from the Vietnam War. In the modern mind, PTSD is more associated with the legacy of the Vietnam War disaster.

The importance of whether PTSD affected the ancient Greeks and Romans lies in the larger historical question of to what extent we can apply modern experience to unlock or interpret the past. In the period since PTSD was officially recognised, scholars and psychologists have noted its symptoms in descriptions of the veterans of past conflicts. It has become increasingly common in books and novels as well as articles to assume the direct relevance of present-day psychology to the reactions of those who experienced violent events in the historical past. In popular culture, especially television and film dramas, claims for the historical pedigree of PTSD are now often provided as background to the modern story, without attribution. Indeed we just take it as a given that soldier-warriors in the past suffered the same and in the same way as their modern day counterparts. We are used to the West to map the classical world upon the present but whether we can so easily map the modern world back upon the Greeks and Romans is a doubtful proposition when it comes to discussing PTSD.

Simply put, there is no definitive evidence for the existence of PTSD in the ancient world existed, and relies instead upon the assumption that either the Greeks or Romans, because they were exposed to combat so often, must have suffered psychological trauma.

There are two schools of thought regarding the possibility of PTSD featuring in the Greco-Roman world (and indeed the wider ancient world stretching back into pre-history, myth and legend) – universalism and relativism. Put simply, the universalists argue that we all carry the same ‘wetware’ in our heads, since the human brain probably hasn’t developed in evolutionary terms in the eye blink that is the two thousand years or so since the Greco-Roman Classical era. If we’re subject to PTSD now, they posit, then the Greeks and the Romans must have been equally vulnerable. The relativists, on the other hand, argue that the circumstances under which the individual has received their life conditioning – the experiences which programme the highly individual software running that identical ‘wetware’, if you will – is of critical importance to an individual’s capacity to absorb the undoubted horrors of any battlefield, ancient or modern.

Whichever school one falls down on the side of is that what seems to happen in any serious discussion of the issue of PTSD in the ancient world is to either infer it indirectly from culture (primarily, literature and poetry) or infer it from a comparative historical understanding of ancient warfare. Because the direct evidence is so scant we can only ever infer or deduce but can never be certain. So we can read into it whenever we wish.

In Greek antiquity we have of course The Illiad and the Odyssey as one of the most cited examples when we look at the character traits of both Achilles and Odysseus. From Greek tragedy those who think PTSD can be inferred often point to Sophocles’s Ajax and Euripide’s Heracles. Or they look to Aeschylus and The Oresteia. I personally think this is an over stretch. Greek writers do; the return from war was a revisited theme in tragedy and is the subject of the Odyssey and the Cyclic Nostoi.

The Greeks didn’t leave us much to ponder further. But, with rare exceptions, the works from Graeco-Roman antiquity do not discuss the mental state of those who had fought. There is silence about the interior world of the fighting man at war’s end. So we are led to ponder the question why the silence?

This silence also echoes into the Roman period of literature and history too. Indeed when we turn to the Roman world, descriptions of veterans are rare in the writings that survive from the Roman world and occur most often in fiction.

In the first poem of Ovid’s Heroides, the poet writes about a returned soldier tracing a map upon a table (Ov. Her. 1.31–5):

...upon the tabletop that has been set someone shows the fierce battles, and paints all Troy with a slender line of pure wine:
‘Here the Simois flowed; this is the Sigeian territory,
here stood the lofty palace of old Priam, there the tent of Achilles...’

This scene provides an intimate glimpse of what it must have been like when a veteran returned home and told stories of his campaigns: the memories of battle brought to the meal, the crimson trail of the wine offering a rough outline of the places and battlefields he had experienced. The military characters in poems and plays show a world in which soldiers are ubiquitous, if somewhat annoying to the civilians. Plautus, for instance, in his Miles Gloriosus, portrays an officer boasting about his made-up conquests – the model for the braggart in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – and Juvenal complains about a centurion who stomps on his sandalled foot in the bustling Roman street.

Despite this silence, compelling works have been written that interweave vivid modern accounts of combat and its aftermath with quotes from ancient prose and poetry. At their best, these comparisons can illuminate both worlds, but at other times the concerns of the present-day author are imposed on the ancient material. But the question remains are such approaches truthful and valid in understanding PTSD in the ancient world?

So if arts and literature don’t really tell us much what about comparative examples drawn from military history itself?

Here again we are in left disappointed.

According to the Greek historian, Herodotus, in 480 B.C., at the Battle of Thermopylae, where King Leonidas and 300 Spartans took on Xerxes I and 100,000-150,000 Persian troops, two of the Spartan soldiers, Aristodemos and another named Eurytos, reported that they were suffering from an “acute inflammation of the eyes,”...Labeled tresantes, meaning “trembler,”. It is that Aristodemos later hung himself in shame. Another Spartan commander was forced to dismiss several of his troops in the Battle of Thermopylae Pass in 480 B.C, “They had no heart for the fight and were unwilling to take their share of the danger.”

Herodotus again in writing about the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., cites an Athenian warrior who went permanently blind when the soldier standing next to him was killed, although the blinded soldier “was wounded in no part of his body.” Interestingly enough, blindness, deafness, and paralysis, among other conditions, are common forms of “conversion reactions” experienced and well-documented among soldiers today

Outside the fictional world, Roman military history tell us very little.

Appian of Alexandria (c. 95? – c. AD 165) described a legion veteran called Cestius Macedonicus who, when his town was under threat of capture by (the Emperor-to-be) Octavian, set fire to his house and burned himself within it.  Plutarch’s Life of Marius speaks of Caius Marius’ behaviour who, when he found himself under severe stress towards the end of his life, suffering from night terrors, harassing dreams, excessive drinking and flashbacks to previous battles. These examples are just a few instances which seem to demonstrate that PTSD, or culturally similar phenomena, may be as old as warfare itself. But it’s worth stressing it is not definitive, just conjecture.

Of course of accounts of wars and battles were copiously written but not the hard bloody experience of the soldier. Indeed the Roman military man is described almost exclusively as a commander or in battle. Men such as Caesar who experienced war and wrote about it do not to tell us about homecoming.

It seems one of main challenges when we try to see military history through the lens of our definition of PTSD is to first understand the comparative nature of military history and what it is we are comparing ie mistaking apples for oranges.

The origin of military history was tied to the idea that if one understood ancient battle, one might fight and, more importantly, one might lead and strategise more effectively. In essence, much of the training of officers – even in the military handbooks of the Greeks and Romans – was an attempt to keep new commanders from making the same mistakes as the commanders of old. Military history is intended to be a pragmatic enterprise; in pursuit of this pragmatic goal, it has long been the norm to use comparative materials to understand the nature of ancient battle.

The 19th Century French military theorist Ardant du Picq argued for the continuity of human behaviour and assumed that the reactions of men under the threat of lethal force would be identical over the centuries: “Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the second....Now, man has a horror of death. In the bravest, a great sense of duty, which they alone are capable of understanding and living up to, is paramount. But the mass always cowers at sight of the phantom, death. Discipline is for the purpose of dominating that horror by a still greater horror, that of punishment or disgrace. But there always comes an instant when natural horror gets an upper hand over discipline, and the fighter flees”

These words offer insight to those of us who have never faced the terror of battle but at the same time assume the universality of how combat is experienced, despite changes in psychological expectations and weaponry, to name but two variables.

Another incentive for scholars and researchers is to turn to comparative material has been the growing awareness of the artificiality of how we describe war. A mere phrase such as ‘flank attack’ does not capture the bloody, grinding human struggle. Roman authors – especially those who had not fought – often wrote generic descriptions of battle. Literary battle can distort and simplify even as it tells, but if the main things are right – who won, who lost, and who the good guys are – the important ‘facts’ are covered. Even if one intends to speak the truth about battle, the assumptions and the normative language used to describe violence will affect the telling. We may note that the battle accounts in poetry become increasingly grisly during the course of the Roman Empire (perhaps owing to the growing popularity of gladiatorial games),while, in Caesar’s Gallic War, the Latin word cruor (blood) never appears and sanguis (another Latin word for blood) only appears in quoted appeals (Caes. B. Gall. 7.20, in the mouth of Vercingetorix, and 7.50, where the centurion M. Petronius urges his men to retreat). The realities of the battlefield are described in anodyne shorthand. In much the same way that the news rarely prints or televises graphic images, Caesar does not use gore, and perhaps for the same reason – to give a sense of reportorial objectivity.

Another element in the interpretive scrum is a given author’s goal in writing an account in the first place: Caesar, for example, was writing about himself, and he may have been producing something akin to a political campaign ad. Caesar makes Caesar look great and there is reason to believe that, if he was not precisely cooking the books, he did give them a little rinse to make him look more pristine. Given the many factors that complicate our ability to ‘unpack’ battle narratives, Philip Sabin has argued that the ambiguity and unreliability of the ancient sources must be supplemented by looking at the “form of the overall characteristics of Roman infantry in mortal combat”. Again the modern is used to illuminate that which is obscured by written accounts and the “the enduring psychological strains” are merely unconsciously assumed.

These legitimate uses of comparative materials have led to a sort of creep: because military historians have used observations of how men react to combat stress during battle to indicate continuity of behaviour through time, there appears to be a consequent expectation that men will also react identically after battle. This creep became a lusty stride with modern books written about the ancient world and PTSD.

After I finished my tour in Afghanistan I read many books recommended to me by family and friends as well as comrades. One of these books is well known in military circles - at least amongst the thinking officer class - as an iconic work of marrying the ancient world and the modern experience of war. I read it and I was touched deeply by this brilliant therapeutic book. It was only months later I began to re-think whether it was a true account of PTSD in the ancient world.

This insightful book is called Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay. Shay is psychiatrist in Boston, USA. He began reading The Iliad with Vietnam veterans whom he was treating. Achilles in Vietnam, is a deeply humane work and is very much concerned with promoting policies that he hoped would help diminish the frequency of post-traumatic stress. His goal was not to explain ancient poetry but to use it therapeutically by linking his patients’ pain to that of the Iliad’s great hero. His book offers a conduit between the reader and the experiences of the men that Shay counsels. In the introduction to this work he makes a nod to Homerists while also asserting the primacy of his own reading:

“I shall present the Iliad as the tragedy of Achilles. I will not glorify Vietnam combat veterans by linking them to a prestigious ‘classic’ nor attempt to justify study of the Iliad by making it sexy, exciting, modern or ‘relevant’. I respect the work of classical scholars and could not have done my work without them. Homer’s poem does not mean whatever I want it to mean. However, having honored the boundaries of meaning that scholars have pointed out, I can confidently tell you that my reading of the Iliad as an account of men in war is not a ‘meditation’ that is only tenuously rooted in the text. “

After outlining the major plot points around which he will organise his argument, he notes, “ ‘This is the story of Achilles in the Iliad, not some metaphorical translation of it”.

The trouble was and continues to be is that many in the historical and medical fields began to rush to unfounded conclusions that Shay, on the issue of PTSD in the ancient world, had demonstrated that the psychological realities of western warfare were universal and enduring. More books on similar comparative themes soon emerged and began to enshrine the truth that PTSD was indeed prevalent throughout the ancient world and one could draw comparative lessons from it.

Perhaps one of the most influential books after Shay was by Lawrence Tritle. Tritle, a veteran himself, wrote From Melos to My Lai. It’s a fascinating book to read and there are parts that certainly resonate with my own experiences and those of others I have known. In the book Tritle drew a direct parallel between the experiences of the ancient Greeks and those of modern veterans. For instance, Xenophon, in his military autobiography, presents a brief eulogy for one of his fallen commanders, Clearchus. Xenophon writes that Clearchus was ‘polemikos kai philopolemos eschatos’ (Xen. An. 2.6) – ‘warlike and a lover of war to the highest degree’.

Tritle comments:

“The question that arises is why men like Clearchus and his counterparts in Vietnam and the Western Front became so entranced with violence. The answer is to be found in the natural ‘high’ that violence induces in those exposed to it, and in the PTSD that follows this exposure. Such a modern interpretation in Clearchus’ case might seem forced, but there seems little reason to doubt that Xenophon in fact provides us with the first known historical case of PTSD in the western literary tradition.”

Arguably in the West and especially our current modern Western culture is predicated at baulking at the notion of being ‘war lovers” as immoral. But such an interpretation speaks more of our modern Christianised ambivalence towards war; to the Spartans and Athenians the term would not have had a negative connotation. ‘Philopolemos’ is, in fact, a compliment, and the list of Clearchus’ military exploits functions as a eulogy. There are points where his analysis does not adequately address the divergences between ancient and modern experiences.

For all the talk of our Western culture being rooted in Ancient Greece and Rome we are not shaped by the same ethics. Our modern ethics and our moral code is Christian. There is no such thing as a secular humanist or atheist both owe a debt to Christianity for the way they have come to be; in many respects it’s more accurate to describe such people as Christianised Humanists or Christian Atheists even if they reject the theological tenets of the religious faith because they use Christian morality as the foundation to construct their own. Many forget just how brutal these ancient societies were in every day life to the point there would be little one could find recognisable within our own modern lives.

Now we come to third point I wish to make in determining where the Greeks or Romans actually experienced PTSD. This is to do with the little understood nature of PTSD itself. As much as we know about PTSD there is still much more we don’t know. Indeed one of the most problematic and complicated issues is the continued disagreement around the diagnosis and specific triggers of the disorder which remain little understood. We have to admit there are competing theories about what causes PTSD but, in terms of experiences that make it manifest, there are essentially three possible triggers: witnessing horrific events and/or being in mortal danger and/or the act of killing – especially close kills where the reality of one’s responsibility cannot be doubted. The last of these was strongly argued in another scholarly book by D. Grossman, On Killing, the Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (1995).

Roman soldiers had the potential to experience all of these things. The majority of Roman combat was close combat and permitted no doubt as to the killer. The comparatively short length of the gladius encouraged aggressive fighting. Caesar recounts how his men, facing a shield wall carried by the taller Gauls, leaped up on top of the shields, grabbed the upper edges with one hand, and stabbed downwards into the faces of their opponents (Caes. B. Gall. 1.52). As for mortal danger, Stefan Chrissanthos in his informative book, Warfare in the Ancient World: From the Rise of Uruk to the Fall of Rome, 3500BC-476AD, puts it this way: “For Roman soldiers, though the weapons were more primitive, the terrors and risks of combat were just as real. They had to face javelins, stones, spears, arrows, swords, cavalry charges, and maybe worst of all, the threat of being trampled by war elephants.”

Such terrors are regularly attested. During his campaign in North Africa, Caesar, noting his men’s fear, procured a number of elephants to familiarise his troops with how best to kill the beasts (Caes. B. Afr.72). It should also be noted that it was not unusual for the reserve line to be made up of veterans because they were better able to watch the combat without losing their nerve. Held in reserve, they had to watch stoically as their comrades were injured and killed, and contemplate the awful fact that they might suffer the same fate. This was not a role for the faint of heart.

However, while the Romans certainly had the raw ingredients for combat trauma, the danger for a Roman legionary was much more localised. Mortars could not be lobbed into the Green Zone, suicide bombers did not walk into the market, and garbage piled on the street did not hide powerful explosives. The danger for a Roman soldier was largely circumscribed by his moments on the field of battle, and even here, if he was with the victorious side, the casualties were likely to be light: at Gergovia, a disaster by Caesar’s standards, he lost nearly seven hundred men (Caes. B. Gall. 7.51). In his victory over Pompey the Great at Pharsalus, his casualties numbered only two hundred (Caes. B. Civ. 3.99).

So we are left with the disturbing question: were the stressors really the same?

This is the part where I also defer to my eldest sister as a doctor and surgeon specialising in neurology and just so much smarter than myself.

My eldest sister holds the view in talking to her own American medical peers that despite  similar experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, British soldiers on average report better mental health than US soldiers.

My sister pointed out to research study done by Kings College London way back around 2015 or so that analysed 34 studies produced over a 15-year period (up to 2015) and found that overall there has been no increase in mental health issues among British personnel - with the exception of high rates of alcohol abuse among soldiers. The study was in part inspired the “significant mental health morbidity” among U.S. soldiers and reports that factors such as age and the quality of mental health programs contribute to the difference between the two nation’s servicemen and women.

She pointed out that these same studies showed that post-traumatic stress disorder afflicts roughly 2 to 5% of non-combat U.K. soldiers returning from deployment, while 7% of combat troops report PTSD. According to a General Health Questionnaire, an estimated 16 to 20% of U.K. soldiers have reported symptoms of common mental disorders, similar to the rates of the general U.K. population. In comparison, studies around the same time in 2014 showed U.S. soldiers experience PTSD at rates of 21 to 29%. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs estimated PTSD afflicted 11% of veterans returning from Afghanistan and 20% returning from Iraq. Major depression was reported by 14% of major soldiers according to another study commissioned by RAND corporation; roughly 7% of the general U.S. population reports similar symptoms.

It’s always tough comparing rates between countries and is not a reflection of the quality of the fighting soldier. But one finding that consistently and stubbornly refuses to go away is that over the past 20 years reported mental health problems tend to be higher among service personnel and veterans of the USA compared with the UK, Canada, Germany and Denmark.

However my sister strongly cautioned against making hasty judgements. And there could be many variable factors at play. One explanation is that American soldiers are more likely than their British counterparts to be from the reserve forces. Empirical studies showed reservists from both America and British troops were more likely to experience mental illness post-deployment. It was also worth pointing out that American soldiers also tended to be younger - being younger and inexperienced as well as untested on the battlefield, service personnel would naturally run the risk of greater and be more vulnerable to mental illness.

In contrast, the elite forces of the British army, such as your brother’s Parachute Regiment or the Royal Marines, were found to be the least affected by mental illness. It was found that in spite of elite forces experiencing some of the toughest fighting conditions, they tended to enjoy better mental health than non-elite troops. The more elite a unit is or more professional then you find that troops tend to enjoy a very deep bonds of camaraderie. As such the social cohesion of these fighting forces provides a psychological protective buffer. Not for all, but for many.

More intriguing are new avenues of discovery that might go a long way to actually understanding one of the root causes of PTSD. According to my sister, recent research carried out in the US and Europe and published in such prestigious medical journals as the New England Journal of Medicine (US) and the Lancet (UK), seems to establish a causal link between concussive injury and PTSD. 

One recent study looked at US soldiers that concerned itself with the effects of concussive injuries upon troops after their return from active duty during the war in Iraq.

Of the majority of soldiers who suffered no combat injuries of any sort, 9.1 per cent exhibited symptoms consistent with PTSD. This allows a baseline for susceptibility of roughly 10% of the population. A slightly higher number (16.2%)  of those who were injured in some way, but suffered no concussion, also experienced symptoms. As soon as concussive injuries were involved, however, the rates of PTSD climbed dramatically.

Although only 4.9% of the troops suffered concussions that resulted in complete loss of consciousness, 43.9% of these soldiers noted on their questionnaires that they were experiencing a range of PTSD symptoms. Of the 10.3% of the unit who suffered concussion resulting in confusion but retained consciousness, more than a quarter (27.3%) suffered symptoms. This suggests a high correlation between head trauma and the occurrence of subsequent psychological problems. The authors of the study note that ‘concern has been emerging about the possible long term effect of mild traumatic brain injury or concussion...as a result of deployment related head injuries, particularly those resulting from proximity to blast explosions’

Although these results are preliminary, if confirmed they have profound implications for anyone trying to understand the nature of warfare in the ancient world, especially the Western world. 

So why does it matter?

In Roman warfare, wounds were most often inflicted by edged weapons. Romans did of course experience head trauma, but the incidence of concussive injuries would have been limited both by the types of weapons they faced and by the use of helmets. Indeed the efficacy and importance of headgear for example can be deduced from the death of the Epirrote general Pyrrhus from a roof tile during the sack of Argos. It is likely that the Romans designed their helmets with an eye to blunting the force of the blows they most often encountered. Connolly has argued that helmet design in the Republican period suggests a crouching fighting stance (see P. Connolly, ‘The Roman Fighting Technique Deduced from Armour and Weaponry’, Roman Frontier Studies (1989). However my own view is that the change in helmet design may signal instead a shift in the role of troops from performing assaults on towns and fortifications when the empire was expanding (and the blows would more often rain from above) to the defence and guarding of the frontiers.

While the evidence is clear that concussion is not the only risk factor for PTSD, it is so strongly correlated that it suggests that the incidence of PTSD may have risen sharply with the arrival of modern warfare and the technology of gunpowder, shells, and plastic explosives. Indeed, accounts of shell shock from the First World War are common, and it was in the wake of that war that those observing veterans suspected that neurological damage was being caused by exploding shells.

For soldiers of the Second World War and down to our modern day, an artillery barrage is like an invention of hell.

As one American put it in his memoirs of fighting the Japanese at Peleiu and Okinawa, “I developed a passionate hatred for shells. To be killed by a bullet seemed so clean and surgical but shells would not only tear and rip the body, they tortured one’s mind almost beyond the brink of sanity. After each shell I was wrung out, limp and exhausted. During prolonged shelling, I often had to restrain myself and fight back a wild inexorable urge to scream, to sob, and to cry. As Peleliu dragged on, I feared that if I ever lost control of myself under shell fire my mind would be shattered. To be under heavy shell fire was to me by far the most terrifying of combat experiences. Each time it left me feeling more forlorn and helpless, more fatalistic, and with less confidence that I could escape the dreadful law of averages that inexorably reduced our numbers. Fear is many-faceted and has many subtle nuances, but the terror and desperation endured under heavy shelling are by far the most unbearable” (see E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleiu and Okinanwa, 2007).

The psychological effect of shelling seems to result from the combined effect of awaiting injury while at the same time having no power to combat it.

There is another aspect that I alluded to above which is the psychological and societal conditioning of the Roman soldier. In other words a Roman male’s social and cultural expectations of his place in the world. Feelings of helplessness and fatalism were probably a less alien experience for most Romans – even those in the upper classes. In general, the Romans inhabited a world that was significantly more brutal and uncertain than our own.

This another way of saying that the Roman and 21st century combat are very different in a variety of ways that subject the modern soldier to a good deal more stress than the legionary was ever likely to suffer. And the Roman’s societal preparation – his life before the battle – was far more robust than that we enjoy today.

Take infant mortality. In the modern developed world, our infant mortality rates are about ten per thousand. In Rome, it is estimated that this number was three hundred per thousand. Three-tenths of infants would die within the first year, and an additional fifth would not make it to the age of ten - 50% of children would not survive childhood. Anecdotal evidence supports these statistics: Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, gave birth to twelve children between 163 bc and 152 bc; all twelve survived their father’s death in 152 bc, but only three survived to adulthood. Marcus Aurelius and his wife, Faustina, had at least twelve children but only the future emperor Commodus survived. 


Then look at how that child grows up. The typical Roman child would be raised in a society that readily accepted ultra-violent arena entertainment, mob justice, frequent and bloody warfare as a fact of life. This was reinforced by religious and societal encouragement to see war as natural and beneficial, open butchering of food animals, a total lack of support structures for the poor and less able.

Compared to the legionary our modern soldier has been protected from such realities to a greater degree than at any other point in history, and will thus be far less well prepared for the horror of a warfare that contains far more stress factors than for a man who might fight a handful of battles in his military career, with long periods of relative calm in between, state of war notwithstanding. Modern special and elite forces training often emphasises the brutalisation and ‘rebuilding’ of the recruit in readiness for this step into darkness, but it seems likely that no such conditioning would have been needed two thousand years ago.

I would argue that we experience war very differently from the way the Romans did. Our modern identity is defined far more by our Western Christian heritage than our Western Classical roots. They are in fact world apart when it comes to ethics and morality. Consider the fact that when we talk of war and killing today we often do so through conflict between our civilian moral codes – which offer the strict injunction not to do violence to other human beings – and wartime, when men are commanded to violate such prohibitions. It is a terrible thing to try to navigate ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and the necessity of taking a life in combat.

It is sometimes the case that the qualities that make the best soldier do not make the best civilian, a point amply attested in Greek poetry by heroes such as Heracles and Odysseus.

The Romans, for their part, celebrated heroes such as Cincinnatus, who could command effectively and then leave behind the power he wielded to return to his humble plough. It is important, however, when evaluating combat and its effects in the ancient world, that we do not read our ambivalence about violence onto the Romans. They inhabited an empire whose prosperity was quite openly tied to conquest.

As M. Zimmerman writes in his academic article, “Violence in Late Antiquity Reconsidered’ (2007), “The pain of the other, seen on the distorted faces of public and private monuments, or heard in the screams of criminals in the amphitheatre, reassured Romans of their own place in the world. Violence was a pervasive presence in the public space; indeed, it was an important basis for its existence, pertaining as it did not only to victories over external enemies but also to the internal order of the state.”

Violence then was both the means and the expression of Roman power. The Roman soldier was its instrument. The Roman warrior then would have brought a different perspective to lethal violence, and would have had a far more restricted moral circle to his modern counterpart – his friends and family, clan, patron and clients, as opposed to millions of fellow citizens via the internet and social media.

Part II follows next post

[scarletarosa]

Enki

Mesopotamian god of fresh waters, wisdom, knowledge, cunning, magic, crafts, healing, fertility, virility, creation, and the arts

Enki (Akkadian: Ea) is the son of the sky god Anu and is husband to Ninhursag, the mother-goddess of the earth. In literary texts, Enki was sometimes called by the alternative names Nudimmud or Niššiku. In the Babylonian epic, Enûma Eliš, Enki is portrayed as the one who overthrew the primordial god Apsu by killing him in his sleep when he heard the god’s plan to slay all of his own offspring. Enki then took up residence in a palace on Apsu’s freshwaters. There, with Damkina (Ninhursag), Enki fathered the storm god Marduk, who eventually destroyed the creator goddess, Tiamat. Enki is said to have had around twelve children with Ninhursag, among them being the famed goddess Inanna (though sometimes she is referred to as the daughter of either Anu, Nanna, or Enlil). As a god of virility, Enki has had many lovers, among them being Inanna, Ninsar, and Ninkurra. In particular, there is a metaphorical link between the life-giving properties of Enki’s semen and the animating nature of fresh water from the abzu.

Mythology: Enki is also described as being the creator of humanity and the land, being depicted as the creator and protector of humanity in the Babylonian flood myth Atra-hasīs and the Epic of Gilgameš. Legend tells that the gods needed assistance in maintaining the Earth since they were already extremely busy with their divine duties and other areas of maintenance. So Enki used his knowledge and creative powers to form humans out of clay. They were made to be assistants to the gods (not as slaves, which is wrongly translated) so that they could be caretakers of the Earth. But due to the great clamour and chaos caused by the humans, the god Enlil attempted to destroy Enki's creations with a devastating flood. Though Enki was clever and was able to predict Enlil’s plan; he instructed a sage named Atrahasis to build an ark so that some of humanity could escape the deluge. From this action, some well-meaning humans continued on and convinced Enlil that they were worth a second chance at survival.  

In the myth Adapa and the South Wind, Enki helps humanity keep the gift of magic and incantations by preventing Adapa from becoming immortal. Adapa was created as the first human man by Enki and was perfect in many ways. Adapa was given perfection in wisdom and speech by Enki, but not eternal life- for if this were given, it would cancel out the other gifts. One day, Adapa went out to sea on his boat to fish for Enki, but the strong south wind blew him into the waters. In a rage, Adapa cursed the south wind, and thus broke its wing, rendering it incapable of blowing.  

When the supreme god Anu noticed that the south wind had left his lands, he demanded from his servants to know what had happened and was directed to Adapa. Enki, noticing that his human was in danger, instructed him on how to speak to Anu and what excuse to give as to why the wind’s wing was broken. He also said to him: “you will be offered the food of death, do not eat it. You will be offered the drink of death, do not drink it.” When Adapa was summoned before Anu, he followed all instructions and pleased Anu. Then the supreme god offered Adapa the food and drink of eternal life, but Adapa refused, so Anu laughed and returned him to Earth. Thus, humanity remained mortal, but was able to keep their gifts of magic.  

The god Enki also appears in other works such as The Atrahasis, The Marriage of Ereshkigal and Nergal, Inanna and The God of Wisdom, The Descent of Inanna, Enki and the World Order, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and more. In each myth of his, Enki is continuously shown to act in cunning ways in order to bring about prosperity, even if his actions are not always appreciated. He is one of the most important deities in the Mesopotamian pantheon along with Anu (god of the sky), Enlil (god of air), Inanna (goddess of passion and war), and others. Enki, along with Anu and Enlil, made up the triad governing the high heavens, atmosphere, and earth. He is also listed among the seven Sumerian deities known as the ones who “decree fate”, which also includes Anu, Enlil, Ninhursag, Utu, Nanna, and Inanna. Enki is also known as a healer, one who comes to banish diseases of all kinds.

In one myth, Enki and Ninhursag, the story of how Enki met the mother goddess is told. In the beginning of the world, it is described that there was a garden of paradise known as Dilmun. This garden was where the first humans were being nurtured until they were ready to leave and roam the Earth. Ninhursag, a young and vibrant goddess, was resting in this sacred garden for the winter after creating life throughout spring and summer. Enki sees her in the garden and falls deeply in love with her. They spend many nights together, and Ninhursag becomes pregnant. She births a daughter whom they name Ninsar ('Lady of Vegetation’) and she is blessed by her mother with abundant growth, causing Ninsar to mature into a woman in just nine days. However, when spring returns, Ninhursag leaves the garden Dilmun and returns to her duties.  

Enki soon becomes lustful towards Ninsar and so proceeds to seduce her and have sex, causing her to become pregnant with a daughter named Ninkurra (the goddess of mountain pastures). Ninkurra develops into a young woman in nine days just as Ninsar did, and Enki again becomes filled with desire and seduces her, causing the birth of a daughter named Uttu (goddess of spiders and weaving [both of clothing and fate]). Enki comes to the young goddess and grants her gifts of food from the garden and she joyously embraces him, allowing him to seduce her as well. Ninhursag later wipes the semen from Uttu’s body and with it, creates eight special plants, which Enki later discovers and curiously decides to consume them. Upon realizing what Enki has done, Ninhursag becomes enraged and curses Enki that he should die, which makes him deathly ill. Ninhursag soon calms down and takes Enki into her lap, and heals his affliction.

Mesopotamian depictions: Enki was often depicted as wearing a horned cap and long robes while ascending the Mountain of the Sunrise. Streams of water flow from his shoulders, emphasizing his association with fertility and life, and are also interpreted as the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which, according to one myth, were formed from Enki's semen. His name means "Lord of the Earth" and his symbols are the fish and the goat, both of which are representations of fertility. Another name for Enki is his Babylonian name Nudimmud, and another is Ninsiku (though it’s mainly only used in his aspect as the patron of crafts and art). Wall reliefs from Ninurta's temple in the Neo-Assyrian city of Kalhu show figures cloaked in the skin of a fish were (incorrectly) assumed to be representations of Enki during the early twentieth century. These images actually represent the apkallu sages who dwelt within the abzu with Enki, who sometimes took a form that was half-man and half-fish.

Appearance: Enki is an amorphous being of blue energy, he flows like water through the cosmos. When choosing to appear humanoid, he usually appears as a man in his 50’s.

Personal experiences: Enki is a very unique deity due to his vast complexity and his natural appearance being energy. He is deeply wise, curious, enigmatic, peaceful, loving (he’s also one of the gods who still deeply cares for mankind), protective of creation, fatherly, and has extensive knowledge on magick- especially regarding numbers and words being used in tablets and invocations. Enki acts as a patient and serious tutor who advises mortals and grants higher knowledge to the worthy. He is very kind and has a warm voice, but has no patience for ignorant or corrupt humans.  

Enki also has a side of him that is very sexual and enjoys taking many lovers- both for pleasure and to create new deities. He is deeply caring for others and enjoys experiencing many things. Despite being interpreted as a mischievous god, Enki does not actually have a mischievous personality and he explains he does not have trickery as a rulership. He does at times act cunning in order to achieve progress, but he is a serious deity and works hard towards knowledge and creation using his adept mental abilities. Enki also has explained that he is the same god as the one who the Egyptians called Khnum, and it is he who had created the Sumerian race and the Egyptians many ages ago.  

While Enki is married to Ninhursag, she has explained that she is not at all jealous of his lovers since deities usually view sex differently than how humans do. Gods often take lovers not only for pleasure, but also so they can procreate in order to form new deities from the combination of specific energies. As every god has their own unique powers and essences, specific combinations of these create certain deities, plenty of which are necessary for the evolution of creation. Due to this and Enki’s fertility role, he is one of the more sexually-inclined gods who favours having many lovers. Regarding the myth of Enki and Ninhursag, Ninhursag has explained that Enki had not raped any of his children as some have misinterpreted, but that it was wiling sex between them. As with how deities view sex differently from humans, the same goes for how gods view having sex with their offspring, as it works differently since they are not physical and is viewed among them as acceptable. 

During the myth when Enki was eating the plants, he explains that these were not from his own seed, but represented how he often would go around and devour various things during his youth in order to absorb knowledge on them. He did this with plants, animals, and even other deities, before unabsorbing them without harm. However, when he would do this with plants, it would kill them. Enki one day ended up devouring the special plants Ninhursag was growing safely in the garden of Dilmun, which caused them all to die. This greatly angered Ninhursag, who then cursed him to die, but soon calmed down and reverted this curse by pulling the negative energy from his body.     

Offerings: cool fresh water, malt beer, hot chocolate, fresh water fish, beef, pheasant, peppered grated cheese, brown sugar, black peppercorns, carnations, white lotus, barley, wheat, flour, clay pots, pottery styluses, three-sided pyramid figurines, scrolls, miniature water fountains, sand, red soil, seashells, goat horns, goat figurines, fish figurines, lapis lazuli, amethyst, labradorite, chrysocolla, moonstone, blue agate, jade, peridot, prehnite, green topaz, silver, capricorn figurines   *no heavy alcohol, he always wants clarity of mind

Resources on his myths: Myths of Enki, Adapa and the South Wind

[davidmann95]

Comics this week (3/10/2021)?

cheerfullynihilistic said: Comics this week (03/10/21)??

adudewholikescomicsandotherstuff said: This week’s comics?

Anonymous said: Comics?

Anonymous said: 3/10 NCBD?

Non-Stop Spider-Man #1: The lead story was fun, the backup was dopey, I’ll give it another issue or two to see where it goes.

The Immortal Hulk #44: While it was too late for this week I’ve taken Hulk off my pull list, so the store won’t order any copies specifically for me and therefore my future purchase of the book won’t support Joe Bennett’s presence, just the store. This issue is typical of some of the books’ weaker installments of the last year or so - feels like well-done regular superhero comics instead of Immortal Hulk - but those last couple pages bring it back around.

Daredevil #28: Holy cow, those King In Black issues actually mattered. God this book is still so fuckin’ good in so many ways, everything every dumbass street-level superhero ‘deconstruction’ wants to be when it grows up.

Children of the Atom #1: Sucks real bad! This weird combo of ‘hip new young Marvel heroes!’ trappings and soulless X-Men lifer comics execution that feels certain to appeal to neither group.

Eternals #3: Of the listed Deviants I imagine I’d relate most to Annoyed Veug.

Commanders in Crisis #6: While I remain without the ability to weigh in on this objectively, this is the issue that to date most feels like it lives up to the promises of the series premiere.

The Wrong Earth: Night & Day #3: Little disappointed personally with the reveal of what the third world is - I assumed it was going to be more of a straight take ‘modern’ version to the other two’s flavors of throwbacks - but this series still rules. And that ending.

Home Sick Pilots #4: Okay, I think I can follow what’s happening at this point, still enjoying it.

Proctor Valley Road #1: I review these books in the order I present them to my dad since he likes DC/Marvel/Other to each be lumped together, but make no mistake: this is the last of the three Morrison books to read this week, because this is what comes next for them. A return to their roots - 70s kids way into music and dealing with the weird, girls adventure stories of the kind they apparently grew up reading - this feels like a refinement of their mid/late-00s Vertigo work in the same way they’ve been iterating on their superhero material for decades. The horror is sold excellently, whether by their own efforts or thanks to cowriter Alex Child this is their most fluid, ‘real’-sounding dialogue perhaps ever, and Franquiz with Bonvillain are instantly among their all-time best collaborators, perfectly capturing the shifting tone and character acting necessary to best put Morrison’s big ideas over in a way a number of their collaborators haven’t lived up to over the years (and speaking of the visuals, Jim Campbell does the lord’s work with that lettering trick near the end). Ritesh Babu and Sean Dillon have a lot more to say about the book and how it already acts as a darker, more honest take on your Stranger Things and the like as a commentary on its times, but I’m already loving to see this particular return down to Earth for Morrison and company and I’m glad to hear this is selling really well compared to their previous indie work.

Dead Dog’s Bite #1: This actually came out last week, but Ritesh recommended it so I figured it might be worth a look. A so far intensely low-key missing persons mystery with a touch of surreality around its edges, this already looks to be the best “look! A nine-panel grid! Fancy!” comic since Mister Miracle, really lived-in and emotional for as little happens in this debut. Very curious where it’s going.

Rorschach #6: I continue to like it.

Batman: Urban Legends #1: Glory be, a good Jason Todd comic - at last, you noble stubborn weirdoes living off of like six nonconsecutive panels all these years, you may lay down your burden. Not all you’d necessarily hope from Zdarsky tackling Gotham after what he’s been doing with Daredevil but rock-solid work regardless; the Harley story is fine, Outsiders is a letdown after Thomas’s shockingly good showing for them in Future State but it’s still fine, and the Grifter stuff is fun.

The Joker #1: I thought the advertised ‘a Joker story from Gordon’s POV’ angle was an interesting one even if I was concerned this book would in practice be pure editorial mandate, but in reality? Tynion has managed to pull the wool over DC’s eyes and do a full-on Jim Gordon book (one predicated with him being off the force to make it reasonably comfortable read in 2021) with Joker as the barest of pretexts to get it out the door and selling for as long as he wants to continue it. He even said in interviews that when the book was first pitched to him that his response was that a Joker solo book was a dumb unworkable idea until he had an idea for a ‘different way to approach it’, he knows exactly what he’s doing and I salute him. And it’s a darn good Gordon book even if the Punchline backup is predictably tepid, I’m in the tank for Gotham’s perpetual whipping boy dealing with weird noir international crime with Joker sort of hanging around in the background menacingly to justify the nominal premise.

Anonymous said: Hey, so I figure one random anon won’t change your mind, but like you I was disappointed by New Frontier’s immortal Wonder Woman, but I still got the new issue of Wonder Woman cause Wonder Woman at Valhalla still sounds great and I actually liked it! I think I’m gonna get at least the next issue, so there’s at least one recommendation for it

Wonder Woman #770: This combined with the store still putting it in my pile prompted me to give it a try after all, and whether because something here clicks better or if they’re simply not trying so hard without the pressure of doing a ‘final’ story for Diana, Cloonan and Conrad do in fact do substantially better on the main book than they did with Immortal Wonder Woman. Some fun, some fights, some mythology and intrigue, gorgeous landscapes and generous servings of beefcake from Travis Moore - this isn’t going to be sweeping the Eisners, but this is as enjoyable as a Wonder Woman comic has been in a good long time. My only concern is that the joyousness on display here might dissipate somewhat once Diana fully returns to herself, but in the meantime this was a very pleasant surprise (especially with the the Young Diana backup by Bellaire, Ganucheau, Goode, and Carey).

Superman #29: PKJ’s Superman thus far has been a story of overcoming initial worries of mine - in this case, my concern that he’d have a bad Scott Snyder-ey case of “if you’ve read the interviews you’ve pretty much already heard the dialogue of the comic verbatim”. In practice here most of what he’s had to say about these issues are distilled down really succinctly and poignantly in the midst of a fun little upper-atmosphere adventure portending something grimmer, and while I know it didn’t click with everyone I thought Phil Hester’s work here was a perfect accompaniment. The Tales of Metropolis backup wasn’t nearly as enjoyable, but hints at some interesting worldbuilding I’m hopeful will pay off in the main run.

The Green Lantern Season Two #12: The final Grant Morrison DC comic. One of two anyway, but if the next story I discuss is their broader final (non-Klaus, hopefully) statement on the superhero subgenre and a bridge to what they’re doing next, this is the one that’s about being The Final Grant Morrison DC Comic. A mélange of pretty much all their other DC finales into a shamelessly self-reflective meditation on the limits of what they can accomplish in shared universe storytelling where Green Lantern saves the universe through collective action and then fucks off to do his own thing elsewhere while the kids take over the ongoings. Weird and kinda perfect, and if nothing else this series took Liam Sharp from “really? This dude is drawing the last ever Morrison DC ongoing?” to “HOLY FUCKING SHIT LIAM SHARP”.

(The panel folks blew up over I think can be read multiple ways, but not in a ‘it’s open to interpretation!’ way so much as the storytelling/framing being unclear. I personally read it as ‘this is what neighbor versus neighbor looks like now’ rather than ‘calling someone a TERF or a Nazi is as bad as anything the other side does’, because oldster and out of touch though they may be I can’t see Morrison seriously saying that, especially after coming out.)

Wonder Woman Earth One Volume 3: At long last, after a hideous misfire kicking the series off and a second installment best described as ‘well, at least it wasn’t the first one’, this while not without elements I want to see femme and nonbinary critics discuss critically lives up to what you want to see out of ‘Grant Morrison’s Wonder Woman’. Big utopian fiction breaking the typical boundaries of superhero stories with aplomb in implicit conversation with a ton of their previous work, a bridge from what they’ve done to what they’re doing next, it’s an imperfect (especially with Paquette’s art, which while gorgeous and majestic in the way this story demands really doesn’t living up to the ‘acting’ necessary here in a way thrown into sharp contrast by Franquiz in PVR) but shockingly passionate statement of intent - if the last two volumes felt like Morrison struggling to have something to say with Wonder Woman in the same way they did with Superman and Batman, this feels at the close like them at last finding in her a way to do everything left with the cape and tights crowd they wanted to but couldn’t manage anywhere else under the Big Two umbrella. Odd and lovely, a fine sendoff.

[talesofsonicasura]

Origami Dreams

Another experimental fic involving Jujustu Kaisen but with Yuji this time.

Origami, the craft of folding paper to create extraordinary creations. An art very treasured in the far East especially one specific legend. It was said if one were to fold a 1,000 paper cranes, then the gods will grant that person a single wish for their dexterous hard work. Something a lot of people gave up on from how difficult or monotonous the task was.

To one little boy named Yuji Itadori, it was a pastime he spent alongside his grandfather. For it all started when a classmate had given him a book on origami. He couldn't remember her name but he never forgot the image of fire and lightning upon the memory.

Not even the next day, his classmate had perished in a vicious car accident. To keep her last gift from becoming forgotten, little Yuji began to learn the craft of origami. First it started small like flowers or a snake, then in three months he crafted fantastic dragons, phoenixes and even an origami castle from scratch with masterful talent.

His favorite pieces of origami were simpler than all of his creations. It was a pair of sibling rulers, a king and his younger sister. They sat happily together on two thrones belonging to his origami castle, although he needed his grandfather's help to put them there properly.

Something that always brought him joy was looking at his masterpiece alongside his grandfather. You can only imagine the look of 7 year old Yuji on a day that could be described as a nightmare. A small boy with chocolate brown eyes, salmon hair sitting over almost black thin locks, and barely 3 ft tall watch his grandfather get carted into an ambulance.

The man had suffered a severe stroke which had put his only guardian into a deep coma. A tragedy that left a child returning to an empty house all alone. For a few days, Yuji barely ate anything and avoided his room where his castle lied. One day, he had found or to be precise tripped over the origami book given to him by his fallen classmate.

The book opened onto the legend of the 1,000 paper cranes. Something that gave the boy's soul fire once more. He returned to his room and began his quest to fold the finest paper cranes he could make. Searched every room for spare paper, if he ran out then he took any he could such as pages and color sheets.

Over the span of months, the little boy crafted paper crane after paper crane. Even if he missed up multiple times or lost a few cranes, Yuji never gave up. Finally on the night before his birthday, the child was crafting the last two paper cranes. Cranes crafted from various paper circles around the near 8 year old at his desk.

Slightly pudgy hands tiredly work to fold the wings of a red paper crane with the light of his desk lamp. Above his highest shelf sat a large green checkered origami castle and between its walls were two thrones which sat two origami people. They were sibling rulers for the folded crowns that sat on their sun blond hair heads.

"I'm... almost finished." Said the little boy, drowsiness slowly taking over his senses. He shakily picked up the last piece of blue construction paper and began to fold. Yuji's eyes felt heavy as fog filled his thoughts. First was the body, then came the head, and the wings were to follow.

"Only...a few…*yawn* more folds…" His head turned slightly to the castle of origami's sitting rulers. Their smiling eyes looking back at him as he was on the last two folds. Yuji needed to make a wish before folding the last crane.

It was getting harder to stay awake but he wouldn't sleep until he finished this. The salmon haired child looked at the incomplete paper bird in his hands. Vision growing fuzzy from tiredness, Yuji made the last fold and with his last bit of consciousness made a wish.

"I wish I wasn't alone…" And the boy's mind went black followed by a soft thud. Unbeknownst to the child, his wish would come true as the clock struck twelve. It wouldn't be how he expected though.

Something dull and pointy began to poke the boy's pudgy cheek. Crumbled words reaching the child's ears as his brain slowly came to life. "Hey brother! Our not paper creator is waking up! His rosy cheeks feel like pillows!" A childish young girl's bursting with excitement spoke as Yuji tiredly realized he wasn't alone.

Sleepy brown eyes slowly open to two very familiar pieces of origami overlooking him. Two people with one female and the other male. The female had blond hair with two large curls folded at the back, a folded dress robe made from yellow construction paper, peach paper forming the head with two small black strips to make little eyes, two point folded paper crown that adorn her head, white point fold arms and dark brown point fold legs.

Her male companion had pale blonde hair folded into a large curl that cover the left side of his face, a royal robe made from dark violet construction paper, a gold three pointed paper crown sat on his head with narrow black pieces paper to form eyes that were in a deadpan expression at the moment, purple point fold arms and white point fold legs.

Yuji knew who these surprisingly 1 ft and half tall origami were, they were the two siblings of his Origami Castle: Olly and his little sister Olivia. His two prized creations were floating before, completely alive almost if by magic. The 1,000 Paper Cranes magic. In seconds, the sleepiness faded away as the salmon hair boy sat up in relative shock.

"No doubt the young child is having an existential moment. He may have crafted the 1,000 paper cranes but he wasn't aware of the power that origami can possess. Particularly to those dedicated to the art." Spoke Olly who floated around the room to observe the child's work.

Olivia merely sat herself on the boy's desk to look at the various cranes that sat there. "Creator, take a few deep breaths. It should help calm you down a bit." Without even questioning her instructions, the little boy took a few deep breaths. His nerves and shell shock dissipating in little time.

"You're saying that all my hardwork brought you both to life? Does it mean that something happened to Grandpa too?" Olly flew over to Yuji upon the spoken question. "If you are talking about 'Wasuke Itadori', the hospital had made a call a few hours ago. His pulse has returned to normal and should be waking up soon. He is in extensive care, sadly. It means he can't leave without further risk to his health."

Even though his grandfather was stuck in the hospital, knowing his only family is going to be okay made the little boy happy. The 1,000 Paper Cranes had fulfilled his wish although with two extra attachments. Olly and Olivia had been brought to life. Speaking of which…

"You guys don't have to call me Creator all the time. Just call me Yuji." Yuji smiled brightly at the origami siblings. Olivia giggled before playfully patting the child's cheek. "Sure! Olly, Olivia and Yuji! That sounds like the beginning of a fairytale." The paper princess wasn't wrong on that assumption.

After that day, the little boy now lived in the once empty house with the two living origami. Something that had a lot of obstacles to face but nothing too harsh. First was money for necessary essentials, such as food and water but learning material too.

Selling origami was actually a good source of income with the presence of the two paper siblings. Olly and Olivia had magic which they used for various things but at the moment was to keep any origami Yuji sold to be immune to both damage and age. Some of his creations went from 200 yen to even 5,000 yen per piece depending on how advanced it was.

The two siblings would have to keep out of sight since any normal person would hunt them down for bad purposes. Luckily, Olly and Olivia could fold themselves to pocket size pieces that Yuji could carry with no trouble but they couldn't come to school.

Cooking wasn't much of an issue to learn although there were quite a few accidents with cookbooks and a blender that should never be told. However it appeared that there was much more to his life than magical Origami. For two years later, Yuji learned Olly and Olivia weren't the only ones who changed. He did too.

A 10 year old Yuji Itadori had found himself in a very bad situation. Sometimes selling origami creations would be difficult at some point during each year. This often led the young boy scavenging through abandoned places to look for anything valuable to sell.

He had found an old empty shack that wasn't too far from his house. It had enough scrap metal and loose change that could make up around 9,000 yen in cash alone. Problem was that there was... something living in the shack. And it wasn't friendly.

Yuji was running for his life with Olivia and Olly in his pockets. Behind the child was a blobfish-like abomination with multiple bulging yellow eyes across a gross green body, 15 deformed hands bent in unnatural ways that serve as legs and a large mouth filled with monstrous teeth along a long slimy tongue.

"What is that thing?! It looks so gross!" Olivia screamed within his shirt pocket. The monster had taken them by surprise when they were searching for more scraps. Too fast to prepare anything except to run. "I think it might be a Curse. Something about this world felt off so I did a personal investigation." Chimed Olly from Yuji's jacket pocket.

Both kept their little tirade about breaking the house rule quiet to hear what vital information that could save their life. "Curses are creatures invisible and invulnerable to those without Cursed Energy. I did come across an interesting fact, our Origami Magic can be used to successfully fight them!" Eyes widened upon Olly's explanation.

Too bad Yuji's foot got caught on a tree root which sent the child to the ground hard. "Yuji!" Olivia shot out of his pocket quickly unfolding herself to full size so she could help the boy up. None of them could prepare when the hideous Curse leapt at the two. Life flashing before his eyes, a single thought went through the salmon haired boy's head.

I want to live!

In seconds, the sound of rippling paper and a distorted gasp tore the silence to pieces. Opening eyes he didn't realize that he even closed, Yuji was greeted by an incredible sight. The vicious curse had been snared in large peach ropes of folded Origami that led to a dark blue fold. The very paper itself was the child's own arms, flesh and cloth turned into powerful origami of 1,000 folds.

Without hesitation, Yuji held the monster tighter in his grips as he raised his long origami arms into the air. "Leave us alone!!!" And the child slammed the monster brutally into the ground. It splatted but not into blood or gore. No, the creature exploded into paper confetti of its original green color.

Olly slipped out of Yuji's pocket to stare at the scene in utter shock before turning to his sister. A glowing orange symbol of a hand was on the right side of her chest which vanished upon Yuji's hands turning back to normal. "That was the 1,000-Fold Arms Technique you just did! And the...Curse turned into confetti." Olivia gawked in absolute shock.

It made no sense. Only paper or origami could use the technique and only origami would become confetti upon defeat. Not the hands of a child or a defeated monster. There was only one explanation. "Our magical presence has affected Yuji. He can use origami magic." That very sentence from male origami ruler was enough to picture how things had drastically changed.

After that day, the boy and his two paper companions learned to understand the powers little Yuji now had. It was a hard task for experimentations were needed thus led to occasional battles against Curses. Over the span of 5 years, the child had grown into a young man skilled in the art of origami magic.

There were still some spells he couldn't do without assistance from either Olly or Olivia but Yuji could defend himself against moderate strength Curses now. Although, nothing could compare for the third thing to come into his life. The Cursed Finger of Ryomen Sukuna.

It had occurred two weeks before afternoon clubs would begin at his local high school. The once small child now was a teenager standing around 5'8 in height and most of his baby fat was replaced with lean powerful bulk. Even though Olly and Olivia couldn't really grow like he could, the two happily took advantage of his new height to hang onto his shoulders instead.

Wearing a long coat or cloak on his back along with this 'koala cuddle' meant they didn't have to hide in his pockets if the weather was nice. Anyway, he had a huge cram session to deal with since there would be a big test in a few days. This meant that sometimes he couldn't cook and had instant ramen substitute for dinner.

What he didn't know was in the extra large cup of beef and pork ramen, something had accidentally got inside the package. Olly was sitting across the table looking through the stack of books Yuji had brought home. The origami prince had taken up reading and writing as a personal hobby so the teen often picked up books or writing material.

Olivia was sitting on the couch watching a cartoon on the TV. She usually spent her time drawing comics or acting out scenes from her favorite shows. In fact, Yuji made an account on the computer where the origami princess could post her comics whenever she wanted. Something that exploded across the internet as they end up getting emails to publish them on real paperback.

"Hey Olly, that stapler you wanted to buy should be in stores a few days from now. You want me to grab it for you?" Yuji questioned while slurping some noodles. "Table manners Yuji. And yes, I would like that. It's been so long since I've seen my beloved pet." The origami prince replied while flipping to the next page of his book.

The salmon haired young man pulled up something wrapped up in his ramen noodles. It was too tightly wound to take a better look but the teen could see it was dark meat of some type. Shrugging his shoulders, Yuji put the clump of noodles and meat in his mouth.

Olivia who was about to ask her brother something instantly paled at what was about to go down her creator's throat. It looked like a decrepit old rotten finger with a large claw, so old that it was dark purple and clearly toxic. "That's a crusty finger not beef!" And the finger went down the boy's throat before anyone could move.

Olly quickly flew over to the couch as the kitchen table exploded into splinters. The cause being their salmon hair roommate whose arm was held up in a swipe manner, an arm covered in intricate black tattoos and had large violet claws. Both watched as two slits that emerged under Yuji's eyes alongside black tattoos opened to reveal smaller red eyes.

Or the fact their friend laughed in a deeper more manic voice reminiscent of a psychopath. "Ahahahaha! It feels good to be alive again! Wonder what massacres I can unleash upon this age! The women and children crawling around like lambs to the slaughter!" The possessed Yuji then rips off his shirt apart to reveal even more intricate tattoos going down his slightly more powerful looking body.

"Our big brother got possessed by a psycho devil stripper!!" Olly could only freeze upon his sister's cry as four blood red orbs had now spotted them. Not Yuji stared at the two origami people behind the large plush furniture. Surprise and confusion crossing his four eyed face before he let out a manic chuckle.

"Hahaha! It seems this body belongs to a Jujutsu Sorcerer who knew how to craft living origami. Quite an interesting Cursed Technique… I wonder what I can learn from tearing you apart!" Both siblings were ready to fly away when Not Yuji suddenly froze. A familiar hand symbol emerged on Olivia's chest as Not Yuji's hands morphed into long appendages made of folded origami.

The Thousand Fold Arms wrapping itself around the possessed teen like a straitjacket much to their anger. "What?!" He shouted only for a mouth to pop up on his right cheek and the right eye's iris turning brown in color.

"Good to know origami magic can counter possession to an extent. Alright asshole, who are you? You already pissed me off since you tried to hurt my family and now ruined my study session!" Yuji threatened from the sudden transmutation. Not Yuji growled at the threat in irritation realizing he couldn't move or even retreat into the teen's soul.

This boy had somehow purposely locked him out from both the inside and outside. "No matter what age, you Jujutsu Sorcerers are still a pain in the ass! I am Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses! Show some respect you damn brat!" Howled the possessor as he struggled to break the teen's powerful hold over this body.

"Jujutsu Sorcerers??? What the heck is even that? And Curses have a king??? Then again, your crusty finger ended up in Yuji's ramen so maybe you're a gag?" Sukuna decided that he was going to tear the yellow origami girl apart first for the blatant disrespect. If he got out of this boy's grip. Her questions however raised one of his own.

"You telling me that not only do you fools don't know about me but also Jujutsu Sorcerers? Are you a bunch of dumbasses or completely ignorant?!" The King of Curses would've said more if a large blade didn't pop appear by his neck.

This blade or to be precise, blades, belonged to an inhumanly large pair of cutting scissors that were the size of a van. His three crimson eyes burned holes at Olly's own whose paper left arm was enveloped in a wild green circle depicting the tool ready to chop off his head. The prince's face burned red with rage.

"You're lucky I care about Yuji or I would cut your head off for disrespecting my family. We don't know about you or these Jujutsu Sorcerers and frankly don't care. Get out of our older brother's body now so he can study for his exam." Olly threatened, his tone similar to a lion ready to cut down intruders targeting its pride.

"Well too bad! I can't leave your little master's body even if I wanted too! He only ate one of my 20 fingers and even if he did eat them all, the boy's body will become mine! Unless you can fully pull my soul out then I'm stuck with you brats." Sukuna's words dripping with foul venom.

The information painted a very bad picture for the makeshift family of three. A psychotic demon was trapped in the eldest body and soul split into 20 pieces. Even if they could find all the fingers, it didn't mean the King of Curses would leave Yuji's body willingly.

"Then let's find those fingers." Yuji's second mouth grabbed everyone's attention. "You might be stuck in my body but that doesn't mean I can get you out somehow or someway. At best, I can make a origami body that you can possess temporarily so you won't be cooped up in my soul. And once we find all the fingers, I can get you out of my body with the 1,000 Paper Cranes."

A look of realization passing over Olivia's face. "That's right! The 1,000 Paper Cranes ritual can grant a free wish if you can make all the cranes faster than you did the first time! We can use that wish to get Sukuna out of your body! Nice thinking Yuji!" The King of Curses' couldn't help the shellshock.

These three were willing to collect every piece of his soul and use some wish making technique to make him whole again? None of them had any idea what they were getting themselves into by him or those who still seek to destroy the demon. If he played his cards right, then he will finally live once more.

"Alright you cocky little shits. I can help you locate my fingers since they're a part of my soul. Don't think we'll be buddy buddy because once I get out of that brat's body, I will rip you to shreds! Hear me?!" The pair of scissors by the two faced being's neck shrunk back to normal size before hitting the floor.

"We'll fight back when that time comes. For now, you better behave yourself. Come Olivia, let's see what paper we can use for Sukuna's origami vessel." With that said, Olly dragged his sister out of the room. Yuji's arms returned to normal once the magic connection was cut then ripped Sukuna's control over his body.

The tattoos vanished and one of the slits closed except for the right he forced open which took its original red hue. "Why haven't you fully blocked me out yet? You clearly have enough control to fully suppress me. Are you pitying me, dumb brat?!" Yuji merely ignored Sukuna's threat to grab a piece of paper and a pencil.

"What do you want your origami body to look like? It'll have a form similar to Olly and Olivia but you can choose the customization. Even give it four arms if you have the normal amount of fingers per hand like a human does." Yuji questioned, the mouth on his cheek going silent for a moment.

A few seconds later Sukuna spoke up once Yuji finished the body's outline. "Give it four arms and four crimson eyes. The clothing should be a kimono but I want different color sleeves." The salmon haired teen smiled as he got to work on the concept with the demon's instructions.

Maybe things wouldn't be so bad despite having to search for 20 fingers of a literal demon that had entered his life.

And that's it. Today's story was mixed with the newest Paper Mario game: The Origami King. Without spoiling the game to those who wish to play, it's a very fun game but the ending is very bittersweet.

I also wanted to experiment a bit with Yuji as a kid. How different this Yuji could turn out than his canon incarnation since there is new factors to his life.

Olly and Olivia will be serving sibling roles to Itadori but also taught him how to use Origami based magic or Cursed Technique. I'm taking the Smash Brothers' approach to bypass the requirement of Cursed Energy since in Smash Bros, rules are changed to allow each fighter to be on equal terms.

The game mechanics such as 1,000-Fold Arms, enemies, bosses and different locations will be incorporated into Yuji's moveset. This Yuji is also smarter due to Olly and Olivia's presence, perfect motivation to learn.

Spoilers?: Sukuna is going to get attached to the three.

I hope you guys enjoy the story! Until next time folks! Oh and have this Origami Ryomen Sukuna design! Chou!

Edit: Fixed a few spelling mistakes and grammar. Apparently me misspelling Jujutsu is pretty common in early works with this franchise. 😅

[knives-out20]

Magnetic Push - Erik Lehnsherr x Male!OC - Part 1

Fandom: X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014)

Pairing: Karmel Rosenstein (OC) x Erik Lehnsherr

Warnings: Swearing, Spoilers for Days Of Future Past, Magnetic Pull spoilers,

Notes: Hi! Welcome to the sequel of Magnetic Pull, titled ‘Magnetic Push’, it is advised you DO NOT READ this if you have NOT finished Magnetic Pull. But that is an obvious given. Grimm, as you all may remember, is an OC of mine. Enjoy!

Logan and Hank sat in front of Charles' desk in his office.

Charles bent over sluggishly, looking at Logan under a big desk lamp. "So, you're saying...that they took Raven's power, and, what? They weaponized it?"

"Yep." Logan nodded.

"She is unique" Hank commented.

"Yea, she is, Hank" Charles agreed, standing up properly.

"In the beginning, Sentinels were just targeting mutants. Then they began to identify the genetics in non-mutants, who would eventually have mutant children, and grandchildren" Logan explained, watching Charles walk over to sit on a big couch at the side of the room. "Many of the humans tried to help us, but it was a slaughter. Leaving only the worst of humanity in charge. I've been in a lot of wars...I've never seen anything like this. And it all starts with her."

"Now, let's just say that, for the sake of...the sake, that I- I choose to believe you, that I choose to help you, Raven won't listen to me" Charles sighed, smiling sadly. "Her soul belongs to someone else, now. Hers isn't the only one."

"I know" Logan admitted, standing up. "That's why we're gonna need Magneto, too. And Climber."

Hank looked up, as if he hadn't heard those names in ages. "Erik? A-And Karmel? You do know where they are?"

"Yea."

Charles grinned in disbelief, laughing to himself. "Could you give me that one more time, please?" He rhetorically asked.

"You heard me" Logan replied, promptly standing his ground.

Charles continued to laugh as he stood up. "He's where he belongs. Him and Karmel both" he told, facial expression rapidly changing to one of disdain as he passed by Logan.

"Well, that's it? You're just gonna walk out?"

"Ooh, top marks" Charles raised his eyebrows, sassing Logan. "Like I said, you are perceptive" he pointed at Logan, walking backwards towards the staircase.

"The Professor I know would never turn his back on someone who lost their path" Hank noted, watching Charles walk away. "Especially someone he loved."

Charles stopped at the foot of the stairs. He took a step back, then one more before speaking again. "You know...I think I do remember you now" Charles said, walking back over to Logan. "Yea. Tall, angry fellow with the contentious hair. We came to you a long time ago, Erik, Karmel, and I, seeking your help. And I'm gonna say to you, what you said to us then..." he leaned in, getting right up in Logan's face. "'Go fuck yourself'."

"Listen to me, you little shit" Logan growled, grabbing Charles' shirt. "I've come a long way, and I've watched a lot of people die. Good people. Friends. If you're gonna wallow in self-pity and do nothing, then you're gonna watch the same thing, you understand?"

Charles searched Logan's eyes, confused at the audacity this man had.

Logan let go of Charles.

"We all have to die sometime" Charles walked away, for real this time.

"I told you there was no professor here" Hank reminded.

"What the hell happened to him?" Logan asked, turning around.

"He lost everything. Erik, Karmel, Raven, his legs" Hank sighed. "We built the school, the labs, this whole place, then, just after the first semester, the war in Vietnam got worse. Many of the teachers and older students were drafted. It broke him. He retreated into himself, I...I wanted to help, do something, so I designed a serum to treat his spine, derived from the same formula that helps me control my mutation" he shook his head. "I take just enough to keep myself balanced, but...he takes too much. I tried easing him back, as did Grimm, but he just couldn't bear the pain. The voices. Grimm tried countless times to- to help Charles, to slow him down to the dosage I take, but like I said, Charles, he...couldn't be helped."

"Grimm, uh...blue-haired guy, talks to and controls the dead?" Logan arched a brow.

"Yea. Grimm didn't want to waste away trying to help someone who couldn't be helped, so, he broke it off with Charles, and thus, Charles lost him. The treatment gives Charles his legs, but it's not enough. He's...He's just lost too much" Hank concluded.

Charles lay on his bed, eyes shining on the brink of tears. He looked over at his bedside table, specifically at a framed photo of Raven. Charles' chest went up and down with his restrained breathing, thinking back to the first time Raven and him met, as kids. His vision glided over the photo of Raven, to a tie. Not any tie of his own, or Hank's, but...an old friend's tie. 

Karmel's tie. He had forgotten it at the X-Mansion back when he resided in it, and Charles kept it with the underlying hope of seeing Karmel again and returning it to him.

Charles knew how much Karmel's ties meant to him, and why they meant to much to him; all of Karmel's ties belonged to his father. He groaned softy, thinking back to when he first met Karmel.

"Uh, Karmel" Karmel repeated, outstretching his hand, "Karmel Rosenstein."

"Charles Xavier. Friend of Moira's?"

Karmel shrugged.

"Acquaintances, actually? Mutual friend" Charles corrected.

Karmel furrowed his eyebrows. "Yea...How did you- never mind- you?"

"Very recently acquainted. She brought me here to meet you."

Karmel's eyes went wide. "Uh- w-why? Why'd you need to meet me? What's happening? Moira, I- I don't like boys, but it's fine if you do Charles, but I-"

Moira raised a hand, putting back the book she was holding and cutting Karmel short. "I didn't bring Charles here to set him up with you, I know you like girls. I brought him here because I feel that you both have something in common."

"An obvious interest in girls?" Karmel insisted, hands on his hips.

Charles held back a chuckle. He knew Karmel had been locked up in Erik's heart for the past ten years or so- and vice versa. Charles thought that surely, today, Karmel was more embracing of his sexuality than he had been back then, when he used to live in fear of it.

"Karmel, Karmel-" Charles called, putting a hand on Karmel's shoulder. "It's okay."

Karmel slowly dropped his hands, raising an eyebrow. His vine art of Erik grew purple flowers, which bloomed quickly. Karmel's breath hitched at that.

"It's okay now, remember? I know, you know, we both know here. And I'm a hundred percent okay with what I know. As of our quick trip to Russia, so are you. It's okay, you're safe here. You can be who you truly are."

Karmel took slow, deep breaths, nodding. "Yea, I- I just...I guess I'm gonna forget sometimes, that it's okay. But it's hard to forget that on a scale of one to ten, he's a certified twenty. I'm...I love Erik, man."

"Which is okay" Charles cracked a comforting smile. "I'll be around to remind you. It's a slow process."

Charles could still vividly remember the way Karmel's vines looped around the wall of the mansion to form Erik's face, the pure detail of it all- Karmel had Erik's entire being memorized. He moaned in annoyance, getting out of bed and passing right by the tie and framed photo.

Back downstairs, Hank was organizing the study while Logan tried thinking of what to do next.

"I'll help you get her" Charles stood right outside the study. "Not for any of your future shite, but for her."

"Fair enough" Logan quickly replied.

"But I'll tell you this, you don't know Erik, and you definitely don’t know Karmel. No one knows them like they know each other. Karmel follows in Erik’s footsteps, his pain and anger pushing him to go faster and faster. Erik, that man is a monster, a murderer. You think you can convince Raven to change? To come home? That's splendid. But what makes you think you can change him?" Charles scowled.

"Because you and Erik sent me back here, together."

Charles stared deep into Logan's eyes, determined. "And- And what about Karmel, huh?"

"Listen, Professor. What Karmel does or doesn't do in the future isn't important. What's important is that we can change Erik, and that means him, too. Y'just gotta believe me."

***

"The room they're holding Erik and Karmel in was built during the Second World War, when there was a shortage of steel. So the foundation is pure concrete and sand. No metal. The walls are too thick for Karmel to grow vines out of, and the glass ceiling, he isn't strong enough to break his vines through" Hank described.

"They're being held a hundred floors beneath the most heavily-guarded building on the planet" Charles added, the three men looking over an aerial map of the Pentagon.

"Why are they in there?" Logan inquired.

Charles looked up at Hank, then over at Logan. "What, Erik forgot to mention?" He snickered.

"Uh, JFK" Hank timidly answered.

"...They killed-" Charles cut Logan off.

"What else explains a bullet miraculously curving through the air? At the perfect level from around some trees? Erik's always had a way with guns, and Karmel's always had a way, for the way Erik has a way with guns" Charles chuckled.

"Or just, Karmel's always had a way with Erik" Hank shortened what Charles said, down to its bare minimum.

"Are you sure you want to carry on with this?"

"This is your plan, not mine" Logan reminded.

"We don't have any resources to get us in" Hank complained, Charles chiming in by chirping "or out. It's just me and Hank."

"I knew a guy. Yea, he'd be a young man now. Grew up outside of DC" Logan giggled, shaking his head. "He could get into anywhere, I just don't know how the hell we're gonna find him."

Hank tore his gaze from Logan, to Charles. "Is Cerebro out of the question?" He whispered, Charles silently hanging his head as an answer.

"If only you guys had internet."

Charles looked up at Logan, eyebrows raised in interest.

"What's 'internet'?" Hank furrowed his eyebrows.

Logan sighed, shifting where he stood and turning back down to the map.

"We have a phone book" Hank then suggested.

[spiralesbian]

ALRIGHT

here’s my full Stranger Avatar Sasha Archivist timeline:

(also, thanks to @artbyblastweave for being so interested in my lil au!)

SEASON ONE

sasha james is hired as the head archivist of the magnus institute!

her assistants are jon, tim, and martin

tim takes the thematic role of martin (aka getting tormented by my worm wife jane, and stays in the archives)

sasha reads thru statements and is a skeptic! she really does not believe it’s real until jane comes along.

“tim……………………..did you die here?”

“no, but every time i come to work i die a little more inside.”

cute timsha moment in the supply closet tho.

until martin kool-aid-mans through the door and gets them out of there

jon used to work in artefact storage so he hides in there. he’ll be fine

i actually can’t remember how they all get out but they do it KKJSDGFJHD

sasha takes everyone’s statements. tim is fucked up, martin is also fucked up, jon is actually fine though he seems pretty normal about this whole situation most definitely.

sasha realizes this is a bit more than a regular archivist job.

SEASON TWO

sasha gets paranoid of course. she learns more about gertrude because she never got the chance to meet her

she takes a statement from a guy named michael shelley. weird dude. then helen shows up :)

jon is most definitely himself he is just a normal regular grumpy jon i swear :)

sasha starts to manifest her powers a little bit. she doesn’t know it, but she is an avatar of the stranger, and a prisoner of the eye.

she starts to notice more things about jon? similar to this comic but with jon

eventually she + tim + martin help get jon out of the grip of the NotJon. this is my au and i get to choose who dies (it’s no one because i miss the s1 archival assistants too much).

jon is pretty fucked up from this though and at like a season-3-tim mindset already.

fucking goddamn leitner avatar of the fucking whore shows up to trap the NotJon in one of his shitty fucking novels. fuck this guy tho

he’s like Sasha We Must Talk and shes like okay but stay 8 ft away from me at all times you bitch

she leaves the room for 10 minutes and pipe murder occurs. good riddance

wait are the cops in the season i genuinely can’t remember. if they are, their roles don’t change very much. melanie and sasha feud, battle of the bi queens

SEASON THREE:

uh oh! girlie’s be framed for murder! she crashes at her ex gf georgie’s flat. also the admiral is there don’t think i would EVER cut him out of this story

(also jon is georgie’s ex too because i think that would be fun JDHBFHS)

sasha learns abt an upcoming web ritual (mirroring the unknowing), all that shit. gets kidnapped a ton of times, as usual.

helen is like “i am going to kill you because i hate gertrude <3 i was that dumb bitch’s assistant for too long” but michael busts out of the door like Hi Guys and traps her in the hallway.

sasha also gives her statement about a leitner she found as a child that marked her. its a stranger book and we learn her edgy orphan origin story how her parents were both murked by the stranger. fucked up if true!

back at the archives jon is like so fucking tired of this shit honestly and now martin is also pretty paranoid. also jm romance subplot is still very present!

tim is just trying to protect sasha at all times and he’s pissed she keeps leaving the country and getting fucking kidnapped

(remember when jon persuades the traffic cop?) sasha starts to fill her archivist role in a different way. she can shapeshift into the subject of a statement and uses her affiliation with the eye to coerce statements or info out of people. (example: if she needed a live statement from the guy in #90 Body Builder, she could temporarily make herself look like jared hopworth to the guy and ask “what happened to me?” or “what did i do?” and the guy would be like well he built some fucken bodies i guess let me tell you all about it) while reading the statements in america that refuel her, she fully shapeshifts into the statement giver while reading out loud.

once again i truly can’t remember daisy + basira’s roles until the end of the season. also melanie get shot by the ghost at some point

anyways sasha gets kidnapped by trevor and julia and they gerry lays out all the shit for her and she’s like ah! i’m fucked

tim offhand mentions the web ritual to martin and he loses his shit cause he’s marked by the web blah blah this isn’t a web!martin thing i swear i just need someone to fill tim’s role in the ritual and a lonely ritual would be fucking boring as hell as we learned from ass man peter lukas. i hate that man

so they make the plan to stop the web ritual (which is fucking hard when the offense knows your every move) so sasha, basira, daisy, jon, and martin go.

tim stays back at the institute to burn shit and distract elias. elias does some fucked up shit as usual and it makes me sad

the ritual starts! they have a plan to blow it up and run but like. u know how it goes

instead of the unknowing-stranger-dream-sequence, we get everyone kinda mixed up in a huge spider’s web on the big stage and its still quite confusing because this ritual not only manipulates the prey, but also the prey’s perceived reality. the web is also in current control of the buried coffin cause they think that shit is kinda fun. they yeet daisy into it.

hard to describe what happens, but basira keeps her cool, jon is a bit lost in his own mind, sasha tries to use her powers to escape but fails. she manages to get through to martin through the strings and mounds of spiders and she tosses him the detonator.

[squishing spider noises]

SEASON FOUR:

martin doesn't die, i told you i can't kill the og archival assistants! he does lose most of one leg though, he took the blunt of the explosion.

sasha in da hospital in da coma. tim is mad he can’t wake her up and then my man ollie says “ur fucked up mate” and she wakes up

(and because coma jon has such wild hair controversy, i’m establishing that her head was shaved when she was in the coma. it grows back thru s4. it she keeps one side shaved cause she’s cool)

meanwhile tim is recruited by that dumbass man you know who i don’t even wanna say his stupid fucking name

sasha gets daisy out of the buried. they become avatar pals!

(there is the biggest blank in my memory where all of season four should be. at this point i should just relisten to the entire fucking show but i would literally just forget it all again)

melanie says hm. fuck this! and blinds herself. she goes to live with georgie (and that’s the moment jon and sasha realize they are both georgie’s exes FHFHDJD)

tim continues to fight the lonely pull. he thinks that since p*ter l*kas is tied to the institute, he can blind himself out cause melanie was successful. he is wrong. he is also interrupted by elias midway, and only blinds one eye, and loses most of his sight in the other. elias’s hold on him is weak, but this just drives him way farther into the lonely.

gotta be honest i remember the end of season four but like i couldn’t visualize what was happening at the end so i like don’t understand what happened JGDKFJGD but sasha intervenes (???) and peter yeets tim into the lonely (???) and sasha jumps in (??????) after him. elias is just there i guess?

instead of “look at me martin,” sasha finds tim and at this point her form is warped and hard to recognize because of stranger powers, and tim is almost 100% blind, so she says “don’t look at me, see me. see me tim, it’s me.” and finally creates a clear image of herself. “it’s...it’s you. you’re my sasha.”

they break free and go to scotland i guess KHSDDKDSF

idk what happens with jon and martin im losing continuity at this point. fuck it, they smooch <3

“ah these are the statements.”

“yes. basira said last week she’d send some up as soon as the archives weren’t a crime scene. and she wasn’t sure which ones you’ve read already, so she, she just said she’d send a bunch.”

“.........Hello Sasha.”

(alternate ending: personally i think sasha would read through each statement before speaking them aloud cause that’s what i would fucking do, so she would get this statement and be like “lmao tim come look at this elias trying to prank me dumb bitch think i’ll start the apocalypse for him. fucking little puny bitch boy. anyways what do you want for dinner?”)

SEASON FIVE:

“just. listen.”

“...i’m dead. and you have been chosen to be my replacement as head archivist. hopefully, this means you, jon, but if someone else is hearing this, and elias has made a different choice for some reason, then these words are still very much intended for you.”

sasha in full stranger avatar mode and is like 8ft tall and her faces shift a lot as they go through the realms. except the stranger is the second to last one (the panopticon is last obviously).

helen and michael actually talk shit out in the spiral hallway and now they are mlm wlw solidarity and both like tim and sasha are such bi and trans icons <3 this is so fun don’t you love the fearpocalypse <3

oh daisy n basira trapped in the hunt, and jon and martin are trapped in the stranger. wtgfs + the admiral are like in space or some shit idk but they are ok :)

not much to report other than she is my monster wife <3

i really don’t have many theories to how everything in s5 is gonna pan out, and i would like to closely mirror the actual show, so maybe as we get closer to the end i’ll build more on to this! thanks a lot for all the notes on my first sarchivist post!! also if u wanna make art this specific au DEF tag me in it i’d love to see!!

[thedragonslibrary]

Is it possible to be blocked like magick or energy wise? I do not know how to put it in words but sometimes I feel like there is something that i should connect to or should be able to do but I am not. Maybe I am not idk well practiced enough but it sometimes feels like I am running against a glass wall. Maybe I Idk man. I am just really frustrated. I cant really give examples just everytime I do something magick related it feels like running against a wall and it makes me wanna cry. Sorry

Yes, of course it’s possible to be blocked!  

To clarify, your first statement about feeling as though you should be able to “connect” to something is a common beginner issue.  It may simply be that you haven’t found the thing you’re supposed to connect to yet - whether that’s opening your third eye and being able to talk to your guides, finding the deity and/or pantheon you connect most to in a religious manner, or simply opening your psychic awareness fully enough to feel the energies around you.  The best advice I can give is to experiment.  Try everything, and don’t hold yourself back!  

When I was a beginner witch, I tried everything from Wicca to demonolatry to Christian witchery, from reiki to hexing and cursing, from psychopomp work and shadow work and light work and everything you can imagine.  If you can think of it, I probably tried it in some way.  Only by putting yourself out there in as many avenues and paths as you possibly can, will you find what works for you.  If something doesn’t work, doesn’t fit or “feel right,” put it away and move on.  Read everything you can - on Tumblr, in books, in every single resource you can find.  It took me probably five or six years of exploration to figure out what generally “worked” for me, and I still feel like I’m learning and discovering new outlets for my magical expression.

An extra “something” is not for everyone.  Often in magical practices, you are the source of your own power.  Sure, crystals and herbs and grounding and gods help, but ultimately the magic is coming from you.  You might not necessarily need an extra “thing.”  Let your magic be intuitive, don’t let books or Tumblr bloggers tell you how to do your thing step-by-step.  Take spells or rituals and modify them to fit your needs - that is how they’ll be most powerful and useful for you.

But back to the topic of blockages, if you have already had magical abilities previously: I have gone through blockages myself, and they are exactly what you described here: frustrating, like hitting a wall.  Sometimes it feels as though all your “power” has been taken away, and you’re left without your previous magical agency.  You might have the thought that perhaps you were just making everything up all along, that maybe you’ve been deluding yourself.  Trust me, you didn’t, and things will get better!  

In my experience, there are two general types of blocks you can have.  I’ll outline them for you and how they can be worked through.  

The first is a bit simpler, and is more like an art block.  Lots of magic-users go through periods of this softer, mental blockage at some point or another on their path.  It can be sometimes referred to as a Fallow Period, which comes from a similar phrase in farming used to refer to when a partition of soil is meant to rest for a season or two to regain its fertility.  

A Fallow Period can arise from burnout, especially from outside sources creating stress in your life.  

Magic, especially psychic and spirit work, is infinitely more difficult when you are stressed, going through a rough mental health period, or when you are physically ill.  

Fallow Periods can also be caused through divine intervention - your spirit guides or deities may have decided that you need to take a break to focus on real life, or to focus on taking care of yourself for a little while.

Blockages of this nature eventually right themselves, but it can take time - it can last anywhere from a few months to over a year.

The best thing to do when you’re experiencing a fallow period like this is to not force it.  You are only going to frustrate yourself if you continue to attempt to perform magically and have little to no results.  Additionally, you’re going to create a deadly cycle of feeling disappointed in yourself, and eventually burn out so hard you won’t want to do magic at all anymore.

Instead, take some time to create: write poetry, draw, or paint.  Write devotional poetry.  If you want to do magical work, work on your grimoire or book of shadows.  Focus on practical magic you can do with your hands - cooking, creating items with intent, cleansing and clearing your home.

Take time to meditate and perform self-care.  Perform practical, easy meditations like the simple, free ones in the Headspace app, or find guided meditations for free on YouTube that bring you into fun, brightly colored astral spaces.  Take baths and imagine all of your troubles washing away down the drain when you’re finished.  Give yourself room to heal and just feel good about yourself.

When you feel ready to move out of your Fallow Period, it will come very naturally.  Like an urge to pick up a witchcraft book or to astral travel suddenly.  Don’t worry about easing back into it - while taking it slow might be good for some, it’s not for everyone.  If you’re really excited to get back into magic, and you’re being urged to do it right now, go ahead and do it!

The other type of blockage is a physical, energetic blockage.  These are usually sudden-onset conditions.  If one day you are performing just fine magically, and the next you wake up and you can’t feel any of your sixth senses, and you are not physically sick or particularly more stressed out than normal, you probably have a physical energetic blockage.

Ensure first that it’s an energetic blockage.  Perform a reading on yourself, check your energy centers, figure out how you’re feeling physically.  Meditation goes a long way here, as well as visualizing your energy moving through your body.  Does it seem to stop anywhere?  Likewise, do you feel extremely hopeless and drained energetically for no discernible, tangible reason (i.e. depression or a recent traumatic experience)?  Can you not even muster up the motivation to check yourself?  Then you probably have an energetic blockage.

Find an energy healer in physical proximity to you.  Trust me when I say that it is not enough to go to the local Hand & Stone and ask for a reiki massage (I have tried this for you already, and please believe me when I say it’s not going to solve your problems).  Distance healings do work and are worth it, but in my personal experience physical healings tend to be much more powerful when it comes to dismantling blockages in this way.

Ask around at your local metaphysical stores.  Find someone who is a reiki master or another type of energy healer, who has great reviews outside of what’s posted on their website and who has a great deal of experience.  Ask them if they have unedited testimonials anywhere they can share with you (such as Google reviews).  

Ask what their process is, ask to see their healing space, ask them what physical tools they use in their session.  Ask them if they’d be willing to charge a small fee for them to examine you and figure out what’s going on (don’t expect them to do something like that for free).  Remember that they should never suggest that they can heal physical ailments or claim that their services replace allopathic medicine - they should only focus on your energetic issues.  

Explain to them that you feel blocked energetically and that this is exactly what you are looking to be treated for - psychics and healers are not mind readers, and they cannot help you if they’re not told what they need to fix.  

Pay attention to your gut and what feels right.  Even in a blocked state, you always have decent access to your intuition.

I won’t lie, you will likely need to shell out a good amount of money for this.  A good healer worth their salt most likely won’t charge you less than $60 for an hour session.

If you don’t feel some kind of energetic release during your healing session, mention that to your healer.  Since you’ve already told them about your issue, they may be able to give advice as to why you didn’t feel any specific change, as everyone’s process is different and the healer you’ve chosen to work with is going to have the best understanding over the situation, after you.  Again, pay attention to your gut.  Give the healing a couple of days to set in, and make sure to drink plenty of water and pay attention to how you feel.

When I personally dealt with my own physical energy blockage, when it was finally healed it felt like a dam breaking and all of my energy flowing back into my body.  It felt like I had had one of my senses shut off, and for the switch to finally be turned back on.  Not everyone is going to feel this way, but if you’ve been blocked for a particularly long time, it may feel very strong and overwhelming to have yourself be un-blocked.

Whatever your situation is, I hope this post was helpful!  Good luck on finding your solution!

[mwolf0epsilon]

Story on Norman catching Sammy in Joey cult ?

It's been twice now that I've written Norman's demise. Y'all really like killing people uh?

Summary: Sammy was weird in many ways, but this? This was just crazy.

---

     Back when Norman was still a little tot, his great nanna used to tell him and his brothers and sisters about their great poppop. How he'd been raised in some sort of cult that indoctrinated its disciples from birth. She related to them how, even though he'd managed to escape them, their constant drilling of ideals had never truly left him. Which was why nanna had gotten rid of him. Love him as she did, she knew he was a crazy dangerous man. Little five year old Norman had been very curious about those tales his mama begged nanna not to tell them. He especially found it curious when she described his eyes. Having a condition like the one he had, had made him a prime target for neighbourhood bullies that called him "Crazy-Eye". So hearing about someone who had actual insanity behind what most considered to be the windows to the soul... It had given him a sort of relief, because at least there was a spark of life behind his own unsynchronized peepers.   "N'aw child, don't yous go be tellin' ya mama 'bout what ol' nanna be tellin' you 'bout ya poppop, ya hear?"   "Ok nanna. Won't tell a soul."   "Yous is a clever one, boy. An' don't forget ta keep an eye out... Crazy can hide in plain sight. Sure did for poppop." Insanity could hide in plain sight. That was perhaps the most valuable lesson to take from his nanna's tales. What she could never get across was how hard it was to see someone you cared for slowly be afflicted with it.

     Sammy was a weird man. Had been from day one of Norman meeting him, and never quite changed even when he put a reign on his deplorable attitude. He wasn't a bad person per say. Misguided by a parent with that typical southern brand of white superiority complex. A man who thought his skin color made him better than all the other folk, and who taught his boy to think it was just as sacred an idea as the damn gospel he also tried to drill into Sammy's head. But Sammy was admittedly clever, and much more curious than his father had been. He asked questions and he tried to change when he realized his own crappy behaviour didn't please him all that much. But then things started getting unsettling in the studio. Little things popped up, and the world's own agenda got in the way of Joey Drew's plans. Turns out Joey wasn't about to fold for anything or anyone. Those who were drafted were the lucky ones. Those who were socially outcasts or liabilities in the military's eyes, were not so lucky. They stayed, so the wrongness affected them. The wrongness... Norman had felt something was not right for a long while, but now that he had to get acquainted with so many new hires and the such? He'd been preoccupied. So when the ones he knew suddenly started acting unlike themselves he'd been caught by surprise.   "I don't understand how Mr. Drew has no trouble with him... He's just so..." He'd found Buddy in the bathroom, trying to clean the obvious ink stains on his clothing. "Why did I think helping him would make him less nasty?"   "Sammy tends ta blow up at minor things. If it was as bad as yous say it was, then he was just freaked out from nearly drowning." He got as many paper towels as he could to help the poor kid get rid of as much of the ink as he could.   "Doesn't excuse what he says to me... Or the other Jewish employees..." Buddy murmured sadly.   "What did he say?"   "Not important... Just makes me uneasy. It's like I'm specifically not worth anything just because of my... Mr. Polk?" Buddy blinked once the projectionist dropped everything he was doing to stalk out the door.   "Yous ain't the first he's gone and played that card on. Was a long while ago but I can refresh Sammy's memory for the folks he's been barkin' at."   "Oh! Uh, you don't have to! It's not going to fix anything."   "Trust me, a hard knock on the noggin' works just fine ta sorte Sammy's bullshit." Norman smiled in passing at Dot who paused to watch him and then look at Buddy in concern once he peered out the bathroom door. "You two kids run along now. I'll see yous around." He tried not to laugh when he heard Buddy fretting over potentially getting fired for starting a fight. Kid still had a lot to learn about how Joey Drew Studios ran for all these years. Sometimes tough love was all it needed. But not this time.

     His nanna's tales rushed back to him when he'd cornered Sammy in his office. Norman didn't like roughing people up, but he'd promised the music director that if he stepped on any toes for the wrong reasons he'd give him a whooping like the one the blond had been begging for, back when he'd first harassed the projectionist. He had half a mind to start hollering until he'd caught sight of Sammy's eyes. Nanna had described insanity in great detail. The unfeeling and unfocused darkness in poppop's eyes that consumed the man she'd loved and left nothing behind. Sammy's eyes were a soft hazel, the nice flicker of green so full of the essence that made Sammy Lawrence who he was. What Norman saw instead of those pretty peepers were dark pools, a sickly grayish brown with flecks of blackness like tar. Like ink... Norman completely forgot what he was to say. He couldn't bring himself to talk when he saw the same thing that had tormented his nanna's dreams. It just wasn't right.

-

     Joey Drew was up to something, and Sammy was involved somehow. By his own volition, Norman wasn't too sure. The kid was acting mighty strange since Norman had noticed his eyes had inexplicably changed color, and whatever progress for positive change he'd made was completely gone. If anything, Sammy had become an incredibly volatile and aggressive husk. Very few people noticed, which was what was so concerning.   "It can't be a coincidence... Joey barely showin' his face 'round the departments and Sammy actin' up like the devil bit him in the ass..." He'd paced as he watched Jack drink what was likely the 5th cup of coffee he'd in the morning.   "Whatever it is, Sammy's more enthusiastic about his songs for a change..." He sounded nonchalant about it. "He complained about all the pieces Drew forced him to change... Now he's less, angry about those. Seems to love them actually."   "Those little annoying jigs? He said they was garbage!"   "And they are. Putting lyrics to those was dang awful but... Well if he's happy, I'm happy..." Jack gave a weak smile before coughing a rather wet sounding cough. He took another sip of his coffee to sooth his throat.   "You comin' down with somethin'?"   "Must be... This gross cough has been popping up a lot. And my nose is awfully stuffy. Can't smell or taste nothing, which is good considering I gotta hide away in the sewers to work..." Norman huffs. People were getting sick from being forced to do overtime with no rest. Jack getting sick wasn't entirely out of the question. But the stench of something acrid coming from his mug did give him cause for concern. Best check to see if Wally hadn't accidentally stored the coffee beans with the cleaning supplies again. A week later he forgets about it once he instead finds himself making a list of the people he stops seeing around the Studio not long after he noticed something up with Joey and Sammy.

     There's Jack, who he hadn't noticed gone at first until he'd gone poking around the sewers and not caught sight of the shorter lyricist. There was Johnny Brokehart, who's organ was completely abandoned in its little corner. No one dared touch it, in case the man returned and found so much as a pipe out of place. There was Julian Whitaker, the tall gangly cellist that often sat with the resident art critic, that Vernon fellow who liked to stare at the cartoon posters like they were masterpieces on display at a museum. Susie Campbell had gone too. Wally insisted she hadn't quit, and was awfully worried about her. Allison and Thomas had also up and split after they'd made a scene at one of them fancy parties Joey used to get investors to dump money into his lap. Shawn Flynn, Grant Cohen, Bertrum Piedmont, Lacie Benton, Emma LaMonte... People were vanishing left and right and there was no say of them being fired. Norman had a theory, and he didn't like it one bit. He tried to do his best to inform the younger hires to run before something inevitably happened to them. He told Buddy and Dot it was dangerous, in as little words he could so not to let Joey catch wind of what he did know. He prayed to whatever god was out there that no bad befell those two kids. And then he'd grabbed his light and went down, where the groaning and moaning came from.

-

     Norman ran. Ran as fast as he could, trying not to look at the things trapped in those tubes. The creatures that were tall, gangly, and vaguely humanoid. Weeping faces pressed to the glass, begging to be let out. The disgusting sludge creatures, barely holding themselves together and clawing at the glass in obvious suffering. The thing that had Sammy's voice and that was rushing after him, axe in hand and Bendy mask covering its face. Screaming at him to accept the "Lord's" blessing. He ran and dodged strikes that nicked his elbows, his legs, grazed his ankle and back... He came to a full stop before what could only be described as a throne. Horrified to find something twisted that looked like a humanoid corpse-like Bendy bound in chains. And then he was knocked onto the floor, air escaping his lungs from the sudden collision. The Sammy thing was on top of him, overjoyed to have caught him. And then all around, Joey Drew's voice filled the room... The thing on the throne shook and hissed.   "Excellent... You know what to do Prophet. Baptize this non-believer in the name of your lord."   "Anything for you my lord. Anything!" Norman tried to fight him off, knocked that silly mask off his face even. Except there was no face. Not even eyes. Windows to the soul... If he had none, then did Sammy even have a soul anymore? The axe raised, and Norman Polk didn't even have time to scream before it plunged into his chest, destroyed his ribcage, and obliterated his heart.

[immaculate-benediction-batch]

Sorry this is so long......How TV Creators Are Handling Subtext And Shipping

TV series creators have a hard time not tailoring content towards a strictly heteronormative audience, refusing to lean in to queer context, no matter howlarge an LGBTQ following a show may have.

Once a fictional character is put out for public consumption, it ceases to be the one thing it’s described as on paper. This is especially the case with TV and film, where said character goes through so many hands before hitting the screen and becoming public property.

There are three kinds of creators when it comes to queer content on TV. The first (and sadly, most typical) is the creator who will deny any intention of creating queer content, and who will also refuse to acknowledge a queer audience’s interpretation., This often results in an instant backlash, as the Supergirlcast and creators experienced after an embarrassing interview with MTV last summer. When prompted to recap the latest season, the cast broke into a cringeworthy song that mocked fans’ interest in the Supergirl/Lena Luthor pairing, with Jeremy Jordan repeatedly exclaiming that the two will never get together. It continued despite Katie McGrath’s attempt to save the interview saying, “The great thing about what we do is, like any art, anyone can read into it what they want.” Chris Wood then chimed in with “Sexuality is all about others’ perception of yours, right?”

Supergirl is a show with a large female following that from the beginning has gravitated toward the female relationships it portrays, with emphasis on those relationships with strong queer energy. At first, there was a group of internet fans that were drawn to the chemistry between Melissa Benoist and Calista Flockhart, which was maximized due to the characters’ intense mentor/mentee relationship, and that was fine, and for the most part went unacknowledged by the show.

However, upon Flockhart’s exit, Lena Luthor was introduced, played by Katie McGrath. Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor became fast friends, and fans’ fascination with Supergirl’s queer vibes grew strong enough for the the cast to take notice. One would think that by having Alex Danvers and Maggie Sawyer, two queer characters already in their orbit, fan speculation about others wouldn’t be such an inconvenience that it would have to be addressed by aggressively singing “They’re only friends!” over and over, as if the pairing were unfathomable.

But Supergirl hasn’t been the only show to outright reject queer interpretations. In fact, a few years back, the long-running series Supernatural was called out by its fans for purposefully inserting homoerotic subtext within storylines pertaining to male characters Dean and Castiel, and for rather indirectly addressing said subtext in interviews. In one of them, Misha Collins (Castiel) stated that in certain scenes with Jensen Ackles (Dean) he was directed to portray his character as a “jilted lover.”

During a Toronto Con panel in 2013, it was revealed that a line was changed by Ackles — who last year specifically requested no questions about the popular pairing be allowed during the Q portion of a panel for the show at New Jersey Con–from “I love you” to “We’re family. I need you” because the Actor didn’t think it suited his character. Despite fandom’s interest in the pairing, it hasn’t been enough for Supernaturalto follow through with an actual queer storyline, aside from the one recurring lesbian character, Charlie, who was ultimately killed off. It turns out our tolerance for queerbaiting does have its limits.

Another show that failed to address the sapphic energy between its leads, in effect rejecting a great opportunity to add a bonus layer to an already complex relationship between two women, was Damages. The thriller starred Glenn Close as powerhouse prosecutor Patty Hewes, and Rose Byrne as her protégée, Ellen Parsons. The series went on for five seasons and throughout, though it benefitted from incredible writing, its highlight was clearly the tension and undecipherable relationship between Patty and Ellen.

While there was never any doubt that their connection was what kept the the show’s palpable tension dial at a 10, anytime the subject was brought up to either cast or creators it was denied or waved off as “wishful thinking,” as Glenn Close put it. When pressed further, she added, “I think there’s something seductive about Patty and she just seduces people and she’ll lead people on. I think that can come across as pure seduction.”

With Person of Interest, Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi) and Root (Amy Acker) first connected under very unique, very dark circumstances in which one was holding the other against their will in a life threatening situation. But there was a sizzle there that the audience immediately responded to, and while both cast and writers admitted that was not their intention, something amazing happenedthey took that audience reaction and ran with it. In the end, Shaw and Root’s romance became one of the show’s more compelling storylines.

Jane the Virgin did the same. When a character, Petra, who wasn’t intentionally written as queer read queer to LGBTQ viewers, the writers saw no problem taking the interpretation and adopting it as canon. After years of keeping Petra as a sort of peripheral player within Jane/Rafael storylines, the character of Jane Ramos was introduced as Petra’s defense attorney and eventual love interest.

The third type of creator is everyone’s favorite. This is the one that takes whatever gay subtext or context there is, embraces it, and expands upon it, recognizing that it’s there from the beginning. In the Flesh and Killing Eve are true representatives of queer entertainment that isn’t trying to steer its characters toward a path they weren’t organically wanting to go.

In the Flesh, a BAFTA-award winning series from BBC 3, was easily one of the best shows that no one watched; a zombie show with depth, which isn’t easy to accomplish. The story takes place years after a virus epidemic that turned the infected into flesh-eating monsters is cured, and the rehabilitated are returning home. Its main character is Luke, one of the former infected, suffering from memories of the terrible things he did while sick, and tortured by his own suicide, which was prompted by the loss of love interest, Rick.

The series ran for only two seasons, with a total of nine episodes. It was inventive and creative and stands as one of the greats right next to shows like Hannibal and The Exorcist, which was unfortunately canceled by Fox this year after only two seasons of sacrilege, beautiful cinematography, Alfonso Herrera (Sense8) and a bisexual Father Marcus, played by Ben Daniels.

Killing Eve is a female-led thriller that proves that the secret to making great TV is treating characters like human beings with the capacity to change. Eve, who, when we meet her, is living a life that doesn’t seem particularly terrible, whose marriage appears to be solid, her job secure, is lured into potentially life threatening situations for the sake of following her inexplicable attraction to a female assassin. As if beneath the surface there is a dormant unrest that is awakened with the arrival of Villanelle in her life, and though she does not stop to examine exactly what she expects to get from it, she craves and wants more of these moments that have stirred her awake. She’s both excited and frightened by Villanelle’s audaciousness, by the intrusion into her life,

both figuratively and literally.

The season’s got a few episodes left, yet the most compelling, and most attentively queer moment is part of the fifth episode, in which the two women finally come face to face in Eve’s home. Eve is sopping wet in a gorgeous dress Villanelle’s purchased for her, she’s cold and visibly uncomfortable, therefore Villanelle suggests Eve should change, before proceeding to peel the dress off her herself. It is a scene that doesn’t downplay the very real danger Eve is in by having Villanelle in her home. However there is also an erotic aspect to it that is very purposeful, and as series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge points out, the attraction is definitely mutual, “I knew that the first moment they see each other. I labeled that moment as ‘love at first sight.’ But I didn’t want it to be constrained to romance, or to lust, or anything like that. There’s something waking in Eve every day that she spends imagining what this woman is doing.”

This type of storytelling allows characters to evolve the way that they want to evolve as opposed to forcing them into a first page description. There is loyalty to the authenticity of the story, which comes from meticulous attention paid to the writing, which Waller-Green explains is all about going against cliché: “The moment something feels predictable, there’s a roar in me to just go to the most surprising place. I don’t want to bore myself.”

Often times, when female queer characters are introduced, it is done in order to titillate, and their storylines are the product of a male gaze fantasy. Killing Eve manages to avoid all of that with Villanelle, a character who seems to have no specific preference when it comes to sexual partners, and yet doesn’t feel the need to use her sexuality to get what she wants. In addition to that and the meaty tension between the two leads (Villanelle and the titular Eve, played by Sandra Oh), the attention paid to the very queer theme of the show is evident in backstories of characters that would normally go without one, like that of Eve’s former boss and best friend Bill, an older man in a heterosexual relationship who casually reveals he’s loved “hundreds” of men, much to Eve’s surprise, and further reveals he is in an open relationship, and happily so.

The series proves not only that queer characters are marketablethe BBC series was renewed for a second season before the first even airedbut that straight creators are capable of writing queer content that isn’t offensive or over-sexualized. Phoebe Waller-Bridge credits the authenticity of the series to a collaborative effort, stating, “Because it’s all about the characters, the little details that link the two worlds, everyone’s really made it a psychological piece rather than just an artistic painting of two different people’s worlds,” but it really just goes to show that that negative aspects of queer representation that include the dreaded male gaze perspective can be avoided as long as the bar is set high enough by the showrunner.

It only takes a little bit of creativity and imagination, and a willingness to challenge the idea that heterosexual-based television makes for the best and most successful stories.

Alex Velazquez is a writer, photographer, and queer Mexican living in Los Angeles, CA.

[straightupstrangetimes]

Ogopogo: Infamous Monster of Okanagan Lake

Contributed by Andrew McKay, Co-Host of Into The Portal Podcast

Editor’s note: the following in an excerpt from Andrew McKay’s unpublished work, CANADIAN CRYPTIDS

OGOPOGO (OKANAGAN LAKE, BC)

Ogopogo: A giant serpent-like creature inhabiting Lake Okanagan British Columbia. 10 to 60 feet long and 1-4 feet wide, a head like a horse, smooth with no fins.

Finishing a close second to Nessie of Loch Ness Scotland for the most famous lake monsters in history, the legendary Ogopogo is said to be a massive serpent of prehistoric proportions, lurking in the depths of one of Canada’s most unique mountain lakes. The origins of the Ogopogo can be traced to the indigenous Sylix peoples of the Okanagan who, for thousands of years, have known of the creature and held it it high esteem as a spirit of the water, or N’ha-a-itk, which translates to ‘Lake Demon’. That local travellers would make a ritual sacrificial offering to Ogopogo when crossing the lake in return for safe passage arose out of this specific translation, however this is inaccurate, as the Ogopogo has been traditionally viewed by the Indigenous Okanagan people as a benevolent creature. Much like the Sasquatch, Ogopogo is thought of as both a metaphysical spirit of the lake and a very real living breathing animal. The sightings of the lake serpent certainly corroborate this, but could lake Okanagan be home to such a massive creature?

Lake Okanagan is incredibly deep and long for a high elevation mountain lake, stretching 90km in length, 5km in width and possibly as deep as 1000 feet in some locations. Even more interesting, lake Okanagan is what's known as a tectonic rift lake, and beneath the 1000 feet of water is proposed to be at least another 750 feet of loose sediment - a possible hiding place for a large eel-like monster. Some researchers believe that beneath this sediment lies ancient caves or perhaps lava tubes that could be home to the legendary serpent, a deep place to hide and possibly a good place to bear young. Legends persist that the serpents den lies beneath Squally Point and Rattlesnake Island, a small island that very much looks like the massive head of an aquatic monster; located towards the South end of the lake near Peachland BC. But what about the sightings?

The first european reports of the creature came from early 1800’s when Hudson’s Bay fur traders would hear second and third hand accounts of native legends. Every year there are new reports of sightings on the lake from boaters as well as those on shore, however some are much more convincing than others. One of the earliest non-indigenous reports of Ogopogo came in 1873 from a woman named Susan Allison. Allison was the first white settler in the area of the Okanagan and wrote of her experience in her memoirs ‘A Pioneer Gentle Women in BC ‘. According to Allison, her husband had a run in with a massive serpent near what is now Quails Gate Winery in West Kelowna while returning from a fishing trip.

In 1927 of the first reports of multiple creatures surfaced in a newspaper article of the Daily Colonist quoting a Mrs PV. Royal and Mrs WA. Newton who claimed to see multiple juvenile Ogopogo’s travelling in the Water near the shores of Downtown Kelowna. However one of the most compelling sightings of the 1920s occurred on Mission Beach where dozens of witnesses saw a massive serpent like creature travelling and surfacing several hundred meters offshore, causing multiple cars to stop and see what the commotion on the beach was all about. All in all all, over 40 people saw Ogopogo that day in what has become one of the most significant pieces of anecdotal evidence of the creatures existence, as almost no photo evidence came of the incident. Despite the lack of credible photo evidence the mission beach sighting has gone down in local lore as much more than a misinterpretation of some other object in the water that day… local residents would get their much desired image of the creature several decades later in the 1960’s with the infamous Folden Film.

In the summer of 1968 Art Folden and his wife were travelling south along the highway towards Penticton BC, when they noticed something very strange in the waters below them. Art pulled over the car and began to film what has now become the most compelling video evidence of a gigantic serpentine creature in Okanagan Lake. In several minutes of film; Art was able to capture the image of a massive 60 foot long 3 foot wide object surfacing, submerging and moving at an impressive rate of speed traveling south near Squally Point. The film was eventually purchased by Arlene Gaal, a journalist, who authored several books on the existence of the Ogopogo, and had it professionally analyzed. The film was not a hoax and the object travelling in the water that day can not be conclusively explained, leaving the Folden film has still the best video evidence of something monstrous in the Lake. However it doesn’t stop there.

In the 1970’s a man by the name of Ed Fletcher claimed to chase Ogopogo for several hours. The creature appeared to be attracted to the electrolysis created by the jet engine of his boat, a common fishing technique for attracting many types of aquatic life. As wild as his initial claims may have been, Ed was able to capture several photos that much like the Folden film are rather difficult to explain. in 1977, Ed Fletcher and his daughter photographed several images of what appears to be humps of a serpent undulating beneath the water with small portions exposed above the surface. Immediately people discounted the photos as nothing more than large waves created by the wake of Fletchers own boat, however upon closer analysis researchers found something slightly more ominous. Although officially inconclusive, the images clearly show that there is some kind of solid object beneath the water, suggesting the possibility that Ed’s photos are more than simply a strange series of waves.

Strange or ‘anomalous’ waves have in fact been the dominant explanation for almost all Ogopogo sightings, with there being some merit to the idea. UBC researchers have published works discussing how wind patterns on the surface in conjunction with temperatures and currents beneath the water can create what is known as anomalous waves, which can travel in strange directions and appear seemingly out of nowhere without a boat in sight. However for this to take place there has to be wind on the surface of the water and in the case of Art Folden and Ed Fletcher both pieces of evidence were taken on sunny afternoons, calm and deprived of conditions for such a wave to occur.

Reports continue to surface every year, some more terrifying than others. In the early 2000’s one local man reported that while swimming in the take training for a triathlon he was followed by two massive black serpents travelling closely behind him. At first he thought it was a trick of his imagination, but when he realized he was being stalked by very real moving objects adrenaline took effect and he headed straight for shore. Sightings such as this are common on the lake where large dark objects are seen one second and disappear the next, the question we are left with is what exactly are people experiencing in Okanagan Lake?

Theories

Like most creatures of cryptozoology, the Ogopogo’s existence is still up for debate. Most mainstream researchers believe that this mountain lake is far too small to be the home of such a giant creature. So what could it be? Some people have suggested that much like Champ in Lake Champlain of Vermont/Quebec, the Ogopogo could be an evolved species of Plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile that supposedly disappeared around 65 million years ago. However, unlike Champ in lake Champlain, the descriptions of Ogopogo lack the fins and flippers of the Plesiosaur, striking away an already unlikely answer to this mystery.

Others have posited that the sturgeon is the obvious answer for massive creatures being sighted in the water. These types of fish can grow well over 6 feet and at a glance might fit the description of a serpent like monster in the water, however sturgeon are not known to move in an undulating motion like an eel that has been described time and again with sightings of the Ogopogo, not to mention that Sturgeon certainly do not grow to be 60 feet long like the object shown in the Folden Film.

Another theory suggested by researcher Joe Nickel, who has written extensively on Lake Monsters, is that most of these sightings could possibly be a group of otters who are often known to swim in a line. This could account for some of the reported sightings, but does not account for the size or for the feelings described by people who have had experience on and in the water. Fishermen, avid boaters, farmers working lakeside all know what certain animals of the area look like, making it hard to believe that all sightings could be simple misinterpretation.

The most compelling theory for Ogopogo is the idea that the creature is a giant eel that has survived and evolved by burrowing and living in the deep sediment of this rift lake. We know that salt water eels can grow to massive sizes such as The Kongor eel which has been known to grow to sizes up to 20 feet and weigh over 200 pounds, a formidable foe to be sure; but not a freshwater dwelling creature. Despite this the descriptions of Ogopogo all point to the it being some kind of giant eel, and if its reproduction cycles take many years within the depths of this unique mountain lake perhaps there could be a sustaining breeding population lurking in the abyss of lake okanagan.

Best Places to See Ogopogo in the Okanagan

- Squally Point, The alleged home of Ogopogo and location of numerous sightings.

- Naramata, Southern Okanagan Lake

- Pauls Tomb, local beach at Knox Mountain Park that features an underwater statue of Ogopogo. Swim into the depths here to catch a glimpse, if you dare!

_________________________________

Enjoyed this piece of high strangeness? Share it with your world!

[autolenaphilia]

The Cybersix comics

So now i’ve read most Cybersix comics that are available in English scanlations. Mainly Pharmadan’s stuff. 

And it is very different from the cartoon adaptation previously reviewed here, very different indeed.

Anyway, the comics were created by Argentinian creators Carlos Trillo (scripts) and Carlos Meglia (art), in the early 1990s. And yes, i do think of them as Carlos & Carlos or the the two Carloses.

The premise is one i recognize from the cartoon adaptation. It is about the superhero Cybersix, a product of genetic engineering that has rebelled against her evil creator and fights the other products of his mad science, led by his clone son José.Her cover as a male literature school teacher named Adrian. She finds a friend in Lucas, the school’s biology teacher, with who she also sexual/romantic tension. Her allies include another product of the villain’s mad science, Data-7, who has the body of a panther and Julian, a street urchin she adopted.

But the approach the comic book source material took to this is very different. The cartoon tv show is meant for children, even if it is on the darker side for such things. The comic is clearly meant for adults, and has a transgressive attitude with lots of violence and sex. And it is still almost 30 years later very shocking and offensive, it certainly was to me and I still kinda liked it. The word “problematic” has been much abused, but it still applies.

You could compare it to something out of the 90s “dark age” of American super hero comics, but to me the tone reminded me of artistic, provocative and very sexualized European comics, like something out of Métal Hurlant.

I’m therefore going to leave the rest of this review under a cut. Also it is getting kinda long. This might be a good point to put out some content warnings, ignore them at your own risk.

Content warning:: Discussions of: violence, racism, nazism, racist caricatures, sexualization of women, prostitution mention and (most disturbingly) sexual themes involving underage people (ick)

(most of this applies to the comic if you decide to read it, it can be worth checking out, but replace “discussion” and “mention” with just depiction, so be prepared for that.)

For one thing, the villain is clearly a nazi scientist who escaped from Germany to South America after the war. He is even named Von Reichter (the cartoon goes with Von Richter). This gives the comic a strong political edge. I don’t know exactly how controversial Argentina’s former status as a haven for escaped Nazis is in that country. But it probably is very controversial. Taking that subject in a critical manner might very well have been a genuinely brave move on part of the creators.

There is also the violence you might expect from a superhero comic. José is a particularly brutal villain this time around. Although Cybersix is remarkably non-violent. When she draws the sustenance she needs vampire-like from Von Reichter’s creations, she avoids killing them.

Concerning Cybersix’s gender, the comic doesn’t have the ambiguity of the cartoon. This time, it’s clear what her gender identity is, Cybersix is a woman.

Her male identity is merely a disguise. Adrian Seidelman is a person who dies in a car accident who looks kinda like Cybersix, who has no legal status, and therefore she decides to steal his identity.

Cybersix remains an interesting character, but i frankly prefer the ambiguity of the cartoon.

Her questioning of her own humanity due to her origins was also in the comic and is a strong theme in her internal monologue here.

Interestingly from a gender perspective, she has this need to prove to herself that she is not just human, but specifically a woman.

II is hard to avoid the subject of sexuality when talking about this comic, for it is almost omnipresent here. Cybersix is a very sexualized character. Her costume design is far from the worst example in comics, but like so many superheroines still designed with titillation in mind.

I found it hilarious that the comic’s actual explanation for the costume is that Cybersix stole it from the wardrobe of a literal sex worker. (the reason Cybersix broke into her home is that she was actually a Von Reichter creation that had infiltrated human society).

But this comic goes beyond most american comics and actually shows Cybersix naked surprisingly often. Her relationship with Lucas gets fairly explicit. If you find the crop of these panels odd sometimes, it’s because I’m trying to avoid showing something that breaks tumblr guidelines.

But the sexualization of Cybersix is actually a minor problem. The nude panels of her are almost quaint, like watching an old movie from the 70s which doesn’t bother to cutaway when a couple gets undressed. It isn’t really that disturbing, especially compared to the creepy sexuality in the rest of the comic.

I didn’t mention Lori in my review of the cartoon. She is one of Adrian’s students who in the cartoon has a crush on him. That is kinda a disturbing theme in itself, but in the cartoon it is no big deal, because it is fairly toned down. In the comic, she is much, much worse.

She is obsessed with Adrian and very explicitly wants to have sex with him. Remember, Lori is a teenage schoolgirl. She also doesn’t care much for the concept of consent. For example, she mails Adrian her nudes unsolicited, and that is about the least worst thing she does. I’m not saying that isn’t terrible in itself, it is just that Lori does way worse things in this comic. You can understand this gets very uncomfortable to read about very quickly.

To be fair, while the trope of the sex-obsessed woman is often a male fantasy, it is very possible that Lori is supposed to be disturbing, rather than sexy. She is even drawn in a rather grotesque manner.

José is even worse. He has only the body of a child, but the mind of a man, including sexually. It isn’t nearly as prominent part of his character as it is with Lori, but this also becomes disgusting rather quickly, for obvious reasons. And then Lori and José meet and do it, oh my god. Although José’s sexuality is almost certainly meant to be creepy.

(because the world is full of people who can’t read properly I probably need to say: no, i don’t support pedophilia even if I think this comic also has its positive sides. Also, even though I can’t really speak for them and they have both passed away long ago, I’m pretty sure Carlos & Carlos didn’t support pedophilia either, if you can even call what horrors that go on in this comic that. Depiction in fiction doesn’t equal endorsement and all that.

This might be obvious from everything I written, but i have seen bad misreadings of what people write and the resulting misinformation spread so quickly on the internet, that writing out the obvious might be necessary. )

I must also talk about the depiction of race in this comic, which is odd. There are two important characters here, who are for lack of a better word, racialized.

One is a black man who saves Cybersix from Von Reichter when she was a child. She regards him as her father. The other is Miao Yashimoto, a Japanese private detective. His sister is kidnapped by Von Reichter, who forces Yashimoto to act against Cybersix, but he eventually becomes her ally.

Now describing them here, it doesn’t sound bad at all. That’s because their personality and role in the story isn’t the problem, it is how they are drawn. They, especially Yashimoto are very much racist caricatures. Yashimoto even has the stereotypical buckteeth. I won’t show you for obvious reasons, but you can always look up this comic yourself.

What is odd about this is that the intent clearly isn’t hateful. These are both heroic characters and the comic has a more or less explicit anti-racist message. A nazi is the villain for a reason. It is just that the creators clearly don’t realize the way Meglia drew these characters is not appropriate.

What is even weirder that Yashimoto was adapted into the cartoon, complete with buckteeth. And that was a show was made in Canada in 1999. Very strange.

Overall, the comic is very different from the cartoon and I have no idea why they picked this edgy adult comic as source material for.a tv show for children, but they did. It is surprisingly faithful to the comic in many ways. The premise is pretty much the same, only it is executed in a very different, child-friendly manner. I would argue that the cartoon is in many ways more enjoyable and accessible than the comic. The attempts of the comic to provoke its audience are often not successful, or maybe rather too successful.

As you can probably tell, my feelings on this comic are complex. I care not for the creepy sexuality or the hamfisted attempts to handle race. So I don’t know if I can recommend this comic. You do need a strong stomach for all this.  But despite all that, there is still much to like about this comic  The art is great; very evocative and atmospheric.

And the writing can be that too. Cybersix is still a great character. Her origin story, her existential angst and her difficult love story with Lucas are just as compelling if not more than in the cartoon.

Sadly, this comic is not widely available in English.The scanlations made or collected by Pharmadan is the most extensive and what I read so far. There is a person here on tumblr, who tried to continue scanlating them  but they seem to have fallen prey to tumblr’s asinine content rules.and doesn’t seem to have been able to go elsewhere yet.

I’ll leave you with my favourite panel from the comic: