#of philosophical dread and despair

[werewolves-are-real]

Time Travel Temeraire snippet

At first, Laurence assumes he's dead.

It's a natural conclusion. He remembers dying, after all.

He and Tenzing were at a function hosted by Wellesley. They were mostly there to support the dragons. Temeraire had long abandoned them to quarrel with Perscitia in the courtyard, with half a dozen ferals watching like it were a jousting match. Wellesley had laid out his grounds to allow room for dragons and men to mingle, but a good portion of the guests retreated inside to avoid the raised voices of the dragons.

Laurence wonders how Temeraire felt about that, later. About not seeing.

He was stabbed. He barely remembers it – just a quick pulse of pain in his chest, looking down. Red blooming over his coat.

Then he was on the floor. People screamed. Tenzing appeared, grappling with a tall and finely-dressed man; he used a dinner-knife to punch a hole in the stranger's throat, in a fantastic spray of blood, and dropped the body at once to kneel by Laurence's side.

He remembers Wellesley barking orders – bandages, water, a hot knife. Have to cauterize it, he'd shouted. Keep pressure -

But Tenzing never spoke. Just pressed down on Laurence's chest, over the wound, without particular panic. Laurence still remembers the grim resignation on his face; Tenzing knew what was coming. Laurence was glad to have him there when he died.

Then Laurence woke up.

The world sways in a familiar way, a rhythmic motion that Laurence registers on a soul-deep level. He's on a ship. But why? Where is Tenzing, Temeraire? Why would they put him on a ship?

“I think the fever's breaking,” says a voice. A naval doctor, disheveled and salt-stained, with long scars down his bared arms. “Oh, and awake too!”

“Well thank Christ,” says another man. One Laurence recognizes.

It's Captain Gerry Stuart – but he looks different, younger than the last time Laurence saw him, with smooth skin and dark curly hair.

Gerry died two years ago.

“Well, Lieutenant! You gave us a scare – how are you feeling?” Gerry asks.

“It's Admiral,” Laurence corrects rather than all the other things he does not dare ask. He hates the title foisted upon him; but it's at least more comprehensible than Lieutenant, and he clings to that rather than demand where did you come from.

Stuart throws back his head to cackle, though the concern doesn't leave his face. “Still perhaps a bit feverish, I think!”

“That might be the laudanum,” says the doctor, also amused. “Why don't you sleep a bit more, Lieutenant?”

“But where is Temeraire? Or Tenzing?”

“I can only assume you had some very vivid dreams,” Stuart chuckles. “You were babbling and babbling for Temeraire – isn't that a ship?”

“Perhaps the flagship of his fleet,” suggests the doctor, and Stuart laughs again. “Get some rest, Mr. Laurence. Holler if you need me.”

They both exit the sick-berth. Laurence stares blankly at the door.

What?

Laurence pats his chest. No wound. He looks down, startled by the pale thinness of his fingers, his youth-soft skin.

Well; not soft. Callouses cover his hands. But even these patterns are different – hard skin in places where he would hold a sword, or pulls ropes. His hands should be more wrinkled, yes; but these callouses faded years ago.

“Where am I?” he asks when the doctor returns. “And what is the year?”

“The year? 1793. You don't remember?”

1793. Laurence was 19 in 1793. A lieutenant for two years, on the Shorewise.

The doctor narrows his eyes. “What's my name, lad?”

Laurence swallows. His stomach churns; for the life of him he can't remember.

The doctor rushes off to retrieve the captain.

_____________________________

Laurence is diagnosed with brain fever, and partial amnesia. Gerry is horribly guilty about laughing, earlier; Laurence could not care less. He is given strict orders to stay on bed-rest for another week, in hope his strength will recover – and his mind.

Laurence doesn't think he'll have any issues working – he's forgotten many of the people around him, true, but he may never forget the way to run a ship. He's far more concerned with learning what happened.

From all appearances, it is indeed 1793. France is undergoing riots, and declared war against Britain in February. Temeraire has not hatched. Napoleon is probably a corporal or general himself, at this point. If he exists at all. God knows, perhaps Laurence is only mad.

But he doesn't feel mad. His memories are too vivid to be mere fever-dreams. A man cannot dream up twenty years of life!

But neither can a man go back to his youth, and live it all again.

I have a dragon, he thinks of saying. There is no war, because I captured Napoleon – an unknown man who makes himself emperor.

Mad. It sounds mad even to Laurence himself. But to imagine that Temeraire was a fever-ridden dream... Tenzing and Granby and China, all of it...

Laurence doesn't share his turmoil with anyone – not even with Gerry, who checks on him fretfully. After a week the doctor declares him well enough, physically. He's paired always with another lieutenant for the first few days on duty, and his shipmates watch him carefully for signs of permanent debilitation; but aside from a moment or two of hesitance, Laurence competently resumes his duties. The oversight lessens.

Laurence thinks about writing letters.

He thinks about writing to Tharkay's late father, who ought to still be alive, inquiring after his son. He thinks of writing to Prince Mianning, asking about the health of Lung Tien Qian. He thinks of writing to young Midshipman Granby, his unwed brother, his dead father...

Not all of them would reply. But he could ask questions. Could verify the truth of things. Unless this, instead, is the delusion.

Is he in 1793, imagining the future? Is he in the future, imagining the past? Or maybe he is already dead, and this is the reality of hell. He came here burning with fever, and now he burns with fear. Surely that is it's own form of torture.

Laurence is ironically given the task of tutoring the midshipman and lieutenant-hopefuls more than any other duty as the weeks pass; his crewmates still look askance, and the more eager of the midshipman become protective. Laurence remains perfectly capable of command; it is only that he can't help but be absent-minded, sometimes, staring at all the crewmen that pass him like they are nothing but moving paintings. Images of a world that no longer matters.

One evening the midshipmen drag him away to a meal with the other officers. It's a noisy crowd; Laurence would find the friendly bustle comforting in another life.

One of the senior officers, Lieutenant Moore, waves him down as Laurence enters. Evidently they used to be friends, given his notably concerned behavior of late. Laurence can't remember the man, and has a sneaking suspicion he died too soon to make a lasting impression.Moore jostles him when Laurence sits at the long table. “Will! Did you get any letters with the last batch?”

A patrolling gunboat brought a satchel of letters just this morning. “I did not,” Laurence says. He's grateful for the fact. He'd found a few pieces of correspondence in his quarters that he dutifully sent on; he cannot imagine writing a letter now, in this confused state.

“Then you've had no news! Robespierre has gone mad. Madder than before, I suppose.”

“Robespierre?” asks Laurence blankly.

Lieutenant Moore double-takes, as does everyone else around them. “Good lord, Will, please tell me you remember Robespierre?”

Right... Robespierre's reign was brief, but this is when he led France. Some of the things the papers published...

Well, at least Laurence has a well-worn excuse for his ignorance. He plays up his malady: “Yes. I think I recall he was... French?”

Groans of horror mixed with amusement echo around the table. “...Well you aren't wrong,” says Moore, looking pained. “He has styled himself the 'President' of their Assembly, which is some stupid way of being king; the French are all mad about removing and adding words right now. I don't know how they expect anyone to hold a conversation.”

“We should... probably educate Mr. Laurence about the war at some point,” some midshipman mutters. Laurence doesn't recall his name.

Moore sighs again. “Anyway. Robespierre is a tyrant, of course. But he's elected someone else to rule France! Barely more than a boy, too.”

Laurence frowns; he doesn't remember what Moore's talking about. “Why would he do that? Did they capture one of the Bourbons?” Declaring himself regent of a child-prince would at least make sense.

“Well, at least you remember them. No; it is some nobody, a young soldier. Not even French! I cannot fathom it.”

It feels like Laurence has been dunked in ice.

For a moment he can't respond. “What was his name? The soldier.”

“Napoleon Bonaparte. He has been chosen as head of their new heresy, the 'Cult of the Supreme Being,' they're calling it; and now de facto head of the government, too. Must be a priest? I don't know, nothing the French are doing makes sense. I expect his little group will be as short-lived as everything else about these riots.”

But Laurence doesn't think so. “...Excuse me; I'm feeling a bit poorly,” he says, rising on wavering legs.

“Yes, you look it! Go on, we'll tell you about the war later...”

Laurence flees.

[fisheito]

Your crimson phantom Yaku post is such a good read but the entire time I was thinking how it's lowkey formatted like a disco elysium dialogue lolol

geuss i got that disco'leez in me (has never played it)

[tmwcs]

H I S M A R K : H E E T H A N

WARNINGS: SMUT (UNPROTECTED), DUBCON TO NONCON SMUT, OVERSTIMULATION, SYMBOLISM, MARKINGS, YANDERE LOVE, OBSESSION, POSSESSIVE, MENTIONS OF MURDER, MISSING PERSON, FORCED LOVE, ISOLATION, CURSING, RESTRAINING, SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, HATE SEX, ANGRY SEX, MAYBE MAKEUP SEX, NOT PROOREAD (YET).

NOTE: THIS TAKES PLACE RIGHT BEFORE THE LATEST EVENTS OF HHP.

‘Let me tell you a story…

It is a tale that takes place before God created angels, and the continents spoke in ancient dialect.

Less stars filled the night sky, and the planets lingered in a straight line. Mortals in their youth stared and admired these stars, and drafted tales based on their alignment. Stories of The Big Dipper, and Orions Belt came to life, fulfilling philosophers with ideas and astronomers with hope. Amongst these glittering specters, was the Goddess of the Moon.

Unlike those around her, she laid in lonesome silence, and invisible to all who stared at the sky. Residing in her shadowed kingdom, she cries out of sorrow, for no light emerged from her home. In truth, she was nothing but the queen of a shallow orbit, despaired at the thought of mortals never witnessing her presence.

One day, while traveling in his usual circuit to warmthe earth, the Sun God appeared, crossing paths with the pitiful Moon. Seeing her in distress, he asks her delicately…

“Pretty Moon, why do you cry?”

Tilting her chin up, she bestows a wet, wide-eyed stare, and tells him. “I am invisible…I have no light. I lay amongst the twinkling of stars who shine brightly without effort, and witness tales created in their honor…I cannot make light of my own, therefore man will never witness my glory.”

The Sun God looks down at the dreadful Goddess, sympathizing with her. To provide comfort, he gives her a solution, by telling her to use his own light to generate her own. He shines brightly and warms her gray kingdom. “Shine bright, my beauty. For you will no longer be ignored by anyone. Let me warm you with my rays, and may you glow brighter than anything in the universe.”

Just as the Sun God promised through his aid, the Moon Goddess shined brightly. She glowed brighter than any star in the sky, and was called the “Sun of the night”.

As the hours of the day rotate, the Moon stationed herself in the middle of the darkened sky, only to find that she went back to being an invisible silhouette again. Seeking his help, she pleads to the merciful Sun; his response gave her gratification once more.

“Pretty Moon, don’t you worry. I will always make you shine and glow. Everyone in the world will know of your beauty. They will use your presence as a guide in the darkness…all you need to do is to commit yourself to me. Never leave my side and use my light to make ‘our’ light. Be a part of me forever…”

The Moon, not withstanding the thought of being invisible any longer, did as the Sun bids her…and each night, she shone brightly than the last.

But as time went by, she soon learned, that no matter how glorious she appeared, everyone could see that she was only as beautiful as the Sun would allow her to be. Mortals spoke and philosophically determined her reliance to the Sun, configuring that her existence could only be due to him.

Shamed at the thought of losing her independence as the Queen of the night, and becoming a slave to the Sun God.

Refusing to end the long line of matriarchal reign, the Moon tries to distance herself from the Sun’s grasp, yearning to gain the freedom she once had…but it was too late.

“Pretty Moon you can’t escape. Don’t you see? Without me, you cannot brighten the dark sky…leaving me means to leave the entire world in darkness. Stay with me and never leave again, and I will ensure that you shine brighter than ever.”

For centuries, the Moon rested in the shackles of the suns rays, finding it impossible to leave. Craving his light, she feeds off his hand and thus lived off of him. The Moon accepted her fate; without him, she would cease to exist…

Without him…she cannot produce light….

Without her Sun…she is nothing. And so, by his side she stays…forever holding back tears of regret. With a permanent smile edged on her surface, mortals are fooled by her perfected glow. Just as she had wanted, tales of her glory did emerge, yet always paired with her husband, the Sun.

“I am forever stuck here. I can never leave…I can never go back home….the Sun has his grasp on me and I won’t ever be the same again…for centuries I have been stationed this side….even during the day. They see my hallow form in daylight, not realizing that I am left with no choice…I am left with no say….for thousands of years he has kept me…and for thousands more, he will.”

Oh, to be the Diamond in the Sky….what an eternal price to pay…’

………………

This week had been the worst…followed by the last, and even the one before that. Was it just a twist of fate? Or perhaps it was something in the atmosphere. There was no way in telling, all you could figure was that each time you tried to make up with him, he pushed you further over the edge.

It has been over a year since you and Heeseung started dating. Despite the atrocities that occurred, such as the one with Samuel, or Tiff and Scott, you both lived blissfully in each other’s presence…just you and Heeseung.

It didn’t take long for people to see the rather unusual circumstance of your relationship with him. Just days after you became his, it became well known that you were strictly off limits…and by strictly, you mean that had anyone so much as looked your way, they would meet a very unpleasant meeting. Sometimes, though you have yet to substantiate it yourself, but you were quite certain by the disappearance of some who took interest, that they may even have met with death at his hand.

Of course with his family connections and the corruption they stirred in the city, any case that raised eyebrows always came to an unsolved end without any leads. The last time you inquired about a certain classmate, who miraculously disappeared after he approached and handed you a note that read…

‘I won’t tell if you don’t. ;)’

Of course, had he had enough brains to hand you the note aside and not in front of Heeseung’s car, he might have still been around. Had he any brains at all, he would have refrained from even seeking any prospective relation with you since you were claimed by “Ethan the Heathen”, or so they called him by.

You knew his level of love for you extended past what was considered normal, and sane. But it didn’t mean that innocent people should get hurt, all because of you. You figured that since he placed you above all, even himself, it may have earned you leeway in talking to him, perhaps even bringing the toxicity down a bit. But just as you inquired about the missing male, he accused you of loving him less. He further provoked you by claiming that your inquiry of another man’s whereabouts was unwarranted and that the only one you should ever think about, was him.

How could he ever speak to you in such a manner?

Perhaps you were at fault…since the very beginning, you knew of his crazed obsession with you. Not only were you aware…you liked it.

Many people would think you’re crazy if they ever heard you say it aloud, and rightfully so. Unlike those around you, they will never know this feeling of belonging to one person, who out of their own selfish love for you, suppresses you in isolation. Detaching you from the world, and safekeeping you for their own pleasure, they beat and pass deathly judgement onto those who touch you, those who try and hurt you. It was a sinful feeling of danger and adventure, and despite wanting him to do things right and in a rational sense, you’d be lying if you told others that his malicious insanity didn’t make you feel most loved.

But you knew it was wrong…and you couldn’t live the rest of your life being a death trap for others.

You denied that he had done anything extensive, but at the accidental discovery of bloodied clothes, kerosene, shovels, and potential weapons, all tucked away in a false wall within the closet, you developed the worst of fears.

……

“I just think that…maybe you could relax a little bit. I am always going to be here with you.” You initiate the conversation…again. Much to his annoyance. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit too crazy? Plus, it would be nice if I could leave the room and go to the store or cafe by myself from time to time. I wouldn’t mind being treated like a human being, and not so much as a dog kept in a cage.”

You knew you were crossing the line, and surely you expected for him to give out one of usual punishments of locking you away for hours, chained or tied to one of the heavy upholsteries inside the room, sometimes nude or barely dressed in undergarments. Then of course, when he was really angered by your abhorrence, he took it up a step further from lessons learned through solitary confinement, and subjected you to derogatory acts that resulted in him demeaning you, physically and mentally, and breaking your spirit.

Strange…how one man could make you feel the most love, and yet at the same time, make you feel most ignored and even hated.

“Whenever you’re good, why can’t you just stay that way?” He’d snap out, hissing his tongue as he corners you, pressing your frame into a cowering stance as you kneel before him. “Why can’t you just fucking see how much I love you…it should be obvious by now.”

You argued back that there was no doubt that his love for you was present, and that you appreciated his gestures and the strength of his desire for you…it’s just…

“It’s just—I just want us to be a normal couple. Sometimes you really scare me, and I don’t know how to live with you when you display that side of you…that side that almost seems murderous.”

Instantly you regretted being so upfront. The moment he took your wrist, you regretted it even more.

“I’m so done fighting, get over here!” He spits out as he drags you away. Immediately, you realize he intended on chaining you up again, locking you away while he would ignore and leave you for God knows how long. It always drove you crazy with how lonely you’d become. He’d take away your phone, silence your screams through whatever gag-suppressing method he intended to use, and would even drug you to sleep by forcing a sleeping pill, or two, or sometimes opted for a natural sedative such as melatonin infused tea. It all depended how angry you got him, and right now, he was up there.

“No—stop! No more!” You yell out. It’s too bad you decided to pick today to argue, as his sorority brothers all left for the weekend. In fact, almost everyone on campus did, except you. He wouldn’t let you leave, and since his own schedule didn’t permit him to take you, he kept you back with him. “I want to go home! I hate you!”

You screamed as loudly as you could, not caring if your words hurt or angered him. “One more fucking word and I swear to God, y/n!”

He throws you on the bed, kneeling as he meandered a strategic grip on your arm, attempting to tie you to the bed frame. He’d do so by tightening the ropes to be just taunting enough so that your hands could not meet, and another attached to a belted choker would be latched onto your neck.

He successfully gets one wrist coiled in, and straddles over you to do the next. “You hate me? Then fucking stay here and rot for all I care.”

Your eyes began to tear up as you watch him reach for the other rope. “Don’t worry, I’ll still love you—I can love you even from afar.” He laconically spits out as he attempts to grab hold of your free hand. Desperate to avoid being alone and tied mercilessly, you reach around his neck and pull him in.

“Don’t! Stop! Please don’t do this!”

He ignores your pleads as he attempts to raise his frame, but your hold on his neck brings you up with him. He reaches up and tries to peel your arm off, and nearly succeeded effortlessly had it not been you regaining a grip on his jacket collar.

“Don’t do this…don’t leave me, I need you.” Your voice calls as you feel yourself on the verge of breaking down. Yes, you took on a tone of defeat, but if it meant that you weren’t facing lonely-induced depression, then you were willing to do anything. The sudden realization that you wanted him near you, to pay attention to you and to hold you was stronger now. “Please, don’t do this…I can’t be without you.” You cry into his neck as you held a python grip, embracing him as hard as you could.

He kept fighting with you, trying to break free from the single-arm embrace you had, but the softness of your voice and the pleading desire of needing him was starting to get to him. After all, he still loved you…and all he wanted, was for you to love him the way he understands it. It is brutal, irrational, non-sensible, and sadistic, but it was true love.

You cried into his throat and rubbed the tips of your fingers on the back of his nape. Feeling his tense body softened, you gained hope that he would be kind again. You truly were sorry…in the breach of his harsh punishment, you were left with no choice but to feel remorse. Through the guilt of spitting such terrible words, you realized more than ever that you couldn’t survive without him. What would have happened had he not been there to stop Samuel? What about Scott, and Tiff?

“Please…” you sobbed. Feeling his body growing dense against you, it encouraged for you to initiate the movements of passion as you waved your hips up and down, grinding against his groin. Nearly instantaneously, his cock hardens above and yearned to break free from the cloth.

“Please…Heeseung. I’m sorry…Im just scared…scared and nervous.”

You weren’t lying, you truly were scared, but the claim of being nervous wasn’t entirely so. You just knew him so well that had you said the right things, you could turn his mood around in a flick of an instant. Quicker than two fingers snapping. “I just don’t want anyone to break us apart…I’m scared of losing you.”

He raises his head, and you loosened your embrace as you felt him creating distance, not out of spite, but to relay sweet words. “You don’t have anything to be afraid of…not even me…” he gently takes your hand, while reaching for the rope. Damn he was so stubborn. Was he really intending on still tying you up? You committed another desperate move as you quickly raise your face to meet his, and there you kiss him. Initially, he wouldn’t let you in, but feeling your breath coating his lips, and the more your hips grinds against him, he falters. Finally…he kisses you.

“What do I have to do to prove to you that I’m sorry? Isn’t there anything I could do than to be locked away?” You breathed against his mouth once more, speaking softly as your tongue gently massages his. “Don’t you want me to be close to you anyhow? Wouldn’t you rather be locked away with me? Just the two of us…away from it all? Heeseung?”

Your hips begin to gyrate as that familiar tingle blisters beneath your pelvic muscles. You pick up the pace just a little more, and wrap a leg around his hips. “Heeseung…please…please touch me.”

You begged. He was staying strong in trying to refuse your advances, but seeing how much you yearned for him…it’s all he’s ever wanted and loved on this earth. Staying silent and stoic, he tries and stays strong, but your tenacity is breaking him piece by piece. God…why did you have to put on your bedroom voice…why did you have to move into him the way you were right now…why did you have to kiss him and tell him that you needed him.

“Heeseung please…please touch me. Fuck me…do everything to me.” You moaned out the last bit and that did it for him. Despite being angry with you, he could never resist your obedient nature.

He squares his face with yours, gripping onto your neck, a little more tighter than usual. “Tell me you need me.” His voice was dark and heavy, a bit husky as he clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth. He as still angry.

“I need you.” You whined, licking his throat with the very tip of your tongue, barely making contact. Had his grip on your throat not pinned you down to the pillow, you would have completely swallowed in skin, lacing his Adams apple with your saliva.

“Tell me you love me—“ his grip snaps tightly, knotting your airway. You slightly gasp as he jerks his grip and squeezes. You choked out the words as you looked pitifully in his eyes. “I-I….l-l-love….you-!”

You coughed up the air flowing back into your lungs as he releases his grip. He comes to a kneeling stance and releases the other rope, but does not untie the one already latched to you. He removes his cap and flings it to the floor, followed by stretching his abdominal muscles while he reaches overhead and peels his shirt off. Your free hand latches onto his belt, attempting to loosen it, only for his hands to slap it away. “No—I’m still pissed off at you.” He hisses as he undoes the buckle and zipper of his trousers. Pulling them a quarter way down, along with his briefs, he slides his pants down just enough for his lengthy cock to poke out freely, testicles included.

He leans back in, hovering on her as he extends an arm and props it next to your head, while the other lines his tip directly at your entrance. You could tell that by his nature, he wasn’t going to be as cementing as he would have been, and this been a punishable act, but not entirely loving. It was going to be a little of both.

“Fuck you…y/n.” Was all he said before leaning his head down and aggressively kissing you. Ramming himself in, he thrusts his cock inside, forcing it past un-prepped tissue and muscle as you felt yourself tearing. You help into his mouth, screaming eternally as he swallows it all. He wouldn’t let your mouth break free, in fact each time you moved your head away, his mouth remained latched on and his face trailed your every movement. You felt the flaring of his nostrils as he chalked harshly against your skin while thrusting deeper and deeper. Once he hit bottom, he strung it out rather fast, before rampaging into you at inhuman speed and momentum. You could feel it…the slight bit of blood and skin ripping apart until finally your body responds, producing a hint of moisture, which allowed him to slide in easily. The subtle curve of his length formed a C-shape, allowing the tip to easily find the soft button deep inside. Each time he thrusted in, his tip poked it, causing it to leak your orgasm little by little.

Squelching, squeezing, and slipping in and out, his movements became faster and more pungent as you kept leaking. From blood and pain comes perfection, and that’s where you were at right now.

“Ah! Ffffffuck! Oh my God—!” You gasp out, screaming and moaning as he kept fucking into you. You spew out your moans into his mouth as he restricted your breathing, by permanently enveloping your lips into a kiss that felt eternal.

Deeper and deeper, he digs in. Grunting and growling against your tongue. He adjust his position by extending both arms, propping his chest up to grant just a bit of space between you two. You gasp and moan, mouth wide open and tongue sticking out as he continued to fuck you senseless and numb. Sticking out his own tongue, he licks the flat surface of your own before swallowing your mouth into another prolonged kiss.

“Please—!!! Oh fuck! Heeseung!!” Your desperate cries only provoked him to keep going, to the point where the stimulation stayed past its welcome, and it became blisteringly painful.

“Sssstop! N-no—no more!” You begged, yearning for mercy. How much longer could this man go? How could he always have so much stamina and vigor in his body?

“Come on y/n…keep screaming…make me fucking cum!” He grunts as he swallows a kiss one final time, before plunging deep inside and filling you. So much, you felt the secretion of his fluids rimming out as his cock pulsed, his balls kissing your soft taint.

Your chest heaves, and you gasp for air as your free hair slaps onto his bicep. Your restrained wrist develops rope burn from all the friction of movement. Suddenly you felt the soft touch of his fingers, gently pinching your chin as he forced you to face him. A small glare from your eye greets the gaze of none other than—

“E..Ethan?”

He smirks maliciously. His usual psychotic stare reeks of a sinister intention as he bites down his lip, chuckling as he slurps in the excess saliva. “Miss me?”

You didn’t have the chance to put the moves on him as you did with his softer side…though you could hardly deem him soft to begin with. But compared to Ethan, anything was soft, even hard steel.

“Oh no wait—you could have missed me because….what was it that you said earlier?” He taps his fingertips along the center of your chest, spider crawling them upwards until he establishes a grip around your neck. “You hate me…RIIIIIIGHT? BABYDOLL?”

Your eyes are widen in fear as you attempt to scream but his offensive lips re-engages you to a lengthy kiss…own that contained the loudest of all your screams.

“Please! Stop! I’m sorry! I-I didn’t mean it! You know I don’t hate you, Ethan—“

His dark giggle halts your pleads. “I know…and don’t worry—“ licking a teardrop from your cheek, he whispers into your ear. “By the end of this, you just might hate me. But never to fear…I’m always going to love you…and that’s all that matters right now.”

He lines himself, centered to your soft flesh. “Got a surprise for you after this…”

“W-what….what are you—?”

“Shhh….you’ll see…”

……..

“Y/n! When did you get this?” H/n takes on an exciting tone as she notices the small mark located behind your ear. You tied your hair into a high piney tail, allowing the subtle tattoo to gain some air to help the healing process. “Over the weekend…” you softly spoke. An emotionless expression graces your face as you stare at the blackboard ahead, eyes tracing the white chalked equation your professor drafted. The beating pain from between your thighs sets a reminder of words you could never use against him…ever again.

As per usual, he waits by the curb, already standing outside his car as you walk outside. A part of you happy to see him, while the other half resented him for the pleasure he bestowed you…with pain.

“Hi pretty baby, how was class?”

He cups both sides of your neck, placing a kiss on your forehead. He tilts his head to the side, admiring his mark on you. “It’s healing well. Good.” He smirks against your forehead.

You embrace him in return. You love him…and you can’t live without him. Though you’re not sure if that was by your own willingness or if he has broken you down so many times, rebuilding and training you to rely on him…just him.

You look up and admire the dark look in his eye. Yeah…you do love him.

Reaching up, you delicately tuck some of his shaggy hair away from his cheek, the rest remained pinched against his forehead from the baseball cap adorning his head. In plain sight behind his ear, was the sun. It healed completely.

“My pretty moon loves her sun?” He asked you’d you, gripping your neck subtly as he leans into kiss your lips. “Hmm…yes….”

I must always have…the sun.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Do you maybe have any thoughts about the Faithful in Númenór, esp. in the last, darkest years... their motivations and ways of going about the hellish reality they found themselves in? Do you think the later remnant that formed the kingdoms in exile has a martyrological tradition?

(feel absolutely free to ignore this if I'm being presumptuous by asking — I don't think Númenor is your "specialty" as far as I'm aware, but I really like your philosophical approach to the Silm in general and I kind of yearn to hear the opinions of other religious people on the Akallabeth... since I think one cannot ignore that facet of the story, as interwined with the subject as it is)

I love these kinds of asks and I’m delighted you sent it! I hadn’t comsidered it before – thank you for setting me off thinking about it, because it is fascinating!

I think you’re right, that the Faithful would certainly have matrys and hold strongly to the memory of them as inspiration to hold fast in dark times. It must have bern horrific to them, seeing their entiee culture that they loved twisted and turned to the service of evil, and their friends dragged off as human sacrifices on Sauron’s altars. Remembering borth their own martyrs, and heroes of the First Age who defied the darkness, like Beren and Lúthien and Finrod and Húrin, could be inspiration in that time. I can even see them developing traditions around parts of the First Age they hadn’t thought much about until that time; for example, Fëanoreans followers who turned against the Fëanoreans during Sirion could be an image of rejecting allegiance to your nation-state when it has turned to evil. Or around Bór and his people, who fought against Morgoth; which could also become a symbol of solidarity with the Men of Middle-earth whom Númenor was victimizing. You would see Faithful risking their lives to save Men of Middle-earth from being made sacrifices, and being killed themselves (which would probably also draw parallels with Finrod in Tol-in-Gaurhoth), and memorialized by the Faithful. Martyrdom would be further elevated by being a symbolic contrast to the obsessions of Ar-Pharazôn and his followers: willingly giving up your life in service of what is right, set against the all-consuming obsession with avoiding death.

I think one thing that would become pressing to the Faithful in the time of Ar-Pharazôn and Sauron (and even well before that) would be the question of how to avoid being complicit in an empire that is bring your country such wealth and power. Because of this, I could see a strong ascetic tradition developing among some of the Faithful, living with minimal possessions and on simple food to avoid partaking of the spoils of empire; the love of craft and beauty is rooted to deeply to disappear, I think, but for some it would change to a determination that the only objects of art/beauty you would have would be ones made by yourself and your loved ones – a sort of return to the roots of what makes art meaningful, in human connection not vain display.

In times of such despair, I can also see these things taking a darker turn in some cases. People deliberately seeking out a martyr’s death for its own sake, seeing it again as a defiance of the King’s Men’s obsession with extending life, and because they had lost hope of things ever being better. Ascetics deliberately starving themselves to death.

In the kingdoms in exile, Arnor and Gondor, it becomes complicated in a different way. When the Faithful left Númenor, I think they knew in their hearts something dreadful was going to happen; but I don’t think they necessarily expected it to encompass the destruction of the entire island and everyone on it. While the martyriologucal tradition may have endured until the end of the Second Age, while they were fighting Sauron, as a memorial of what he had done to them and why it was necessary to fight, I think that things would have changed fairly rapidly in the Third Age. When we look at how Gondor remembers Númenor – the ritual of looking west before dinner as an equivalent to saying grace, and the way it’s talked about throughout The Lord of the Rings – it feels remembered primarily as a glorious lost past, not as a cautionary tale. I think the memory of Ar-Pharazôn’s era would have faded quickly, and the earlier history of Númenor would have been valorized – at first the time of Elros and the years when things were uncomplicatedly good, but after a while even the pre-Sauron time of empire and the years of Tar-Ciryatan and Tar-Atanamir might also be remembered as glory days, and the Downfall seen as the tragic consequence of corruption brought about by Sauron, rather than a progressive moral decline that long preceded Sauron and of which he was only the culmination. I think that it’s natural to idealize a thing once you’ve lost it; even a political refugee who left their country because it was tyrannical and oppressive – even one who had vigorously opposed their country’s actions as immoral – would feel grief, nostalgia, sentiment, if while in exile they saw that country destroyed. So I think that in the Third Age, Gondorian memory of Númenor as a whole becomes rather hagiographic, and the period under Ar-Pharazôn and Sauron is sidelined as an anomaly.

[fyodorsliceyrat]

Dazai's Diary!!!

July 18th, 2024

Ah, another delightful day in Yokohama, filled with the usual chaos, despair, and, of course, my unsuccessful attempts at a dramatic, yet poetic, exit from this world.

8:00 AM: Woke up to Atsushi banging on my door, screaming something about another mission. Honestly, can't a man die in peace around here? I told him I was busy contemplating the beauty of a double suicide, but he didn't seem to appreciate my artistic vision.

9:00 AM: Dragged myself to the Agency, where Kunikida immediately started lecturing me about punctuality and responsibility. I responded by suggesting we write a poem together about the fleeting nature of life. He didn't seem impressed. Such a shame; I thought he'd enjoy the literary exercise.

10:30 AM: Our mission today involved chasing down a particularly slippery mafia informant. I suggested we try to recruit him to the dark side – after all, who wouldn't want to join the Armed Detective Agency with its promise of constant peril and existential dread? Chuuya would have agreed with me, I'm sure. We do make quite the dynamic duo.

1:00 PM: Lunch was the usual: ramen and a side of existential pondering. Kyouka joined me, and we discussed the philosophical implications of living one's life in pursuit of meaning. She seemed to be more interested in the dumplings, though. Kids these days.

3:00 PM: Got into a minor skirmish with the Port Mafia. Ran into Chuuya, and as always, our reunion was a mix of insults and grudging admiration. He still hasn’t accepted my invitation to a double suicide. Maybe one day he’ll see the romantic potential.

5:00 PM: Back at the Agency, I decided to pull a prank on Ranpo-san by hiding all his sweets. Watching him panic was the highlight of my day. Eventually, I relented and returned them – even I have a heart, believe it or not.

7:00 PM: Ended the day with some paperwork (which I promptly delegated to Tanizaki). Spent the evening musing about life, death, and the possibility of reincarnation. Maybe in my next life, I’ll come back as a cat. Cats have it good.

All in all, it was a day like any other in the tumultuous life of Dazai Osamu. Full of fleeting moments, grand existential crises, and the occasional glimpse of something that almost resembles happiness. Until tomorrow, dear diary.

Yours in fleeting despair,

Dazai Osamu

[tenaciouschronicler]

Misattributed Quote Retrospectives 4

"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain." -American sports legend, Charles Barkley

A new quote, a new deepdive.

The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot is a central work of modernist poetry published in 1922.

The Waste Land is inconsistent in its narrative, style and structure. The poem shifts between satire and prophecy, and features abrupt and unannounced changes of narrator, location, and time. It actually alludes to alot of works considered classics in the west such as: Ovid's Metamorphoses, the legend of the Fisher King, Dante's Divine Comedy, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and even a contemporary song, "That Shakespearian Rag".

The poem is divided into five sections. The first, "The Burial of the Dead", introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second, "A Game of Chess", employs alternating narrations in which several characters display the fundamental emptiness of their lives. "The Fire Sermon" offers a philosophical meditation in relation to self-denial and sexual dissatisfaction; "Death by Water" is a brief description of a drowned merchant; and "What the Thunder Said" is a culmination of the poem's previous themes explored through a description of a desert journey.

Before the poem starts we get an epigraph, which is a quote, phrase or poem, that serves different purposes. These can be a preface, summary, counter-example or link to another work. Its in Latin and Ancient Greek from chapter 48 of the Satyricon of Petronius.

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: άποθανεῖν θέλω.

The original is untranslated however we do have the translation as follows:

With my own eyes I saw the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a bottle and, when the attendants asked her what she wanted, she replied, "I want to die."

The quote we have is one of the more famous phrases and is the start of the poem and a part of "The Burial of the Dead". It describes spring as something to be dreaded, with the comforting static nature of winter giving way to the forcible activity of spring. I wont post the whole poem but I will post the first section of "The Burial of the Dead" so you can get a feel for the poem.

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,

My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

Eliot later regretted leaving notes for how his poem was supposed to interpret certain metaphors and allusions. This allowed broader interpretations- less as a work which incorporates previous Romantic ideals and more as a poem describing "alienation, fragmentation, despair and disenchantment" in the post-war period, which are considered typical features of modernist literature.

Thoughts

Reading this its obvious that, taking place in April, this story is going to go places we will not expect and will not be enjoyable (for the characters at least). Many things will occur that push them to change beyomd the comfort and stagnation of Winter. We have already seen echoes of T. S. Eliots disjointed style with Wandering Vagabonds pages literally being seperated from the main narrative. There may end up being others who will do the same.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Robespierre the elder must remember my firmness when, both working as judges in the episcopal hall of Arras, we condemned an assassin to death. He must remember, it seems to me, our philosophical and philanthropic debates, and even that it cost him much more than me to resolve to sign the sentence; however, I have more than him the soul exercised in sensitivity, in the love of humanity, I am a husband and father, he is not.  Censure républicaine, ou, Lettre d’A-B-J Guffroy, répresentant du peuple (1795), page 66.

The consideration my elder brother enjoyed in Arras, made him named a member of the criminal tribunal by the bishop of this city. This prelate had the nomination of these sorts of charges. He exercised the functions which had been confided in him with exemplary equity. But it always cost him to condemn. An assassin having one day come before the tribunal of which Maximilien was a member, against him the strongest penalty needed to be pronounced, and that was death. There was no way to modify this dreadful penalty; the charges were too damning. My elder brother returned home with despair in his heart, and took no food for two days. I know well that he is guilty, he always repeated, that he is a villain, but to put a man to death!!... This thought was insupportable to him; no longer wishing to have to fight between the voice of his conscience and the cry of his heart, he resigned from his functions as judge.  Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1834) page 69. According to Herve Leuwers’ Robespierre (2014), Charlotte is wrong in that her brother resigned as a judge after this incident.

The two testimonies regarding Robespierre’s reluctance to the death penalty pre-revolution that we know of.

[wilcze-kudly]

Weilin has a very, very slim chance of becoming canon. [To my great and utter despair, but hey a ship don't have to be canon to be great] But if it were, here's how I, an inexperienced and completely biased amateur writer would go about it:

It's a couple of years after B4. I'd say like 4 or 5. Bolin and Opal have since amicably broken up [I never really cared for Bopal, I love both characters separately, but together they're about as interesting as mayo on white bread. ]

Remenants of the Earth Empire are stil slinking about the Earth Kingdom, causing trouble and a lot of Team Avatar and their other associates are having to step in.

Wei and Bolin get saddled with a mission together in which they have to travel around the Earth Kingdom for a couple weeks. [Because if Tolkien has taught me anything it's that gay road trips ALWAYS work]

Bolin is pretty ok with this arrangement. Sure, it's kinda awkward to travel the wilderness with your ex girlfiend's brother, but Wei is pretty cool, so he doesn't mind it that much.

Meanwhile, Wei has had a crush on Bolin for YEARS, but hasn't acted on it because Opal. This has evolved into a bit of resentment and he's sorta stressed about being in close proximity to Bolin for at least a month.

Bolin envies Wei for having a clearcut place in the world, while Bolin himself has yet to 'find himself'.

In return, Wei, who has been saddled with continuing Toph and Su's legacy since the moment him and Wing developed earthbending, envies Bolin's freedom to be whoever he chooses to be.

They butt heads often. Wei likes to poke and prod at Bolin and frustrate him. Bolin finds himself losing his cool more than ever, but also he finds that having little arguments with Wei helps him releive a lot of stress and tension.

This gay roadtrip would include:

Arguing about directions.

The car breaking down and them having to fix it but they both suck at mechanics.

Sleeping in a tiny tent together or under the stars and long, philosophical talks before falling asleep

Cooking together over a firepit. Bolin cooks, because Wei almost set the campsite on fire the first time he tried to. Wei does the dishes.

Bathing together in a creek and ogling the other. Also splash fights and playing in the water and suddenly, (oh my!) they're naked and really, really close.

Fighting side by side. Nothin gayer. Saving the other from danger.

So much mutual pining and sexual tension. And almost kisses and much more touching the other than necessary.

Pabu having to suffer through witnessing the tedious and odd mating rituals of human himbos. [Pabu, Opal and Wing are the biggest Weilin shippers, you can't change my mind.]

Making plans for the future together and kinda dreading the moment their trip is over and they're supposed to part.

[nicklloydnow]

“In this blog post, I examine the anti-natalist theory of the Norwegian existentialist philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990). According to Zapffe, human nature is riddled with an inherent, irresolvable conflict, the result of which is that human lives are filled with too much suffering for procreation to be morally permissible. In contrast to the God of the Old Testament, who instructs us to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,” Zapffe instructs us, in his 1933 essay “The Last Messiah,” to “be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.”

According to Peter Wessel Zapffe, human life is inescapably very bad, the central reason for which is that there is an irresolvable conflict inherent in our nature. What does this conflict consist of? On the one hand, Zapffe explains, we humans are biological beings that, due to the evolutionary forces that have shaped us, are constantly prompted to act in ways that promote our own survival and reproduction. Having become the dominant species on Earth, we have, in evolutionary terms, been successful. One of the central explanations of our success, Zapffe suggests, is our advanced cognitive capacities. While cheetahs gain an evolutionary advantage by being fast and bears by being strong, we humans gain an advantage by being smart: The human intellect enables us, among other things, to make tools and traps, to cook, to plan, to communicate effectively, and to adapt quickly to changing environments.

Zapffe suggests, however, that the human intellect comes with a very significant downside: It confronts us with our frailty, with the suffering and death that eventually awaits us, with the vastness of suffering on Earth, and with our own cosmic insignificance—and these insights, he writes, are apt to fill us with “world-angst and life-dread.” While “in the beast, suffering is self-confined, in man, it knocks holes into a fear of the world and a despair of life.” One reason for fear and despair is that we humans grasp not just what is right before us; due to our “creative imagination” and “inquisitive thought,” “graveyards wrung themselves before [our] gaze, the laments of sunken millennia wailed against [us] from the ghastly decaying shapes.” Another reason is that, as beings with an intellectual nature, we crave justification, and thus we are uniquely confronted with, and pained by, the meaninglessness and injustice of suffering. This, Zapffe holds, is a secular truth behind the myth that we humans have “eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been expelled from Paradise.”

(…)

Zapffe concedes that his bleak outlook on life is likely to strike many as counterintuitive. This is so, he suggests, not because life is in fact tolerably good, but because we have developed elaborate strategies to prevent ourselves from seeing the horrors of life. He argues that such strategies, which he calls strategies of suppression, “proceed practically without interruption as long as we are awake and in action, and provide a background for social cohesion and what is popularly called a healthy and normal way of life.”

Echoing ideas from early psychoanalytic theory, Zapffe lists three central strategies of suppression: Isolation, anchoring, and distraction. Isolation is the process of isolating ourselves from unpleasant impressions by institutionalizing taboos and by ostracizing those who break them. This is most evident, he suggests, in how we protect children from the harsh realities of life: We tell them that, in the end, all will be fine and good, even though we know that, in the end, we will suffer and die, and, eventually, be forgotten. Anchoring is the process of entertaining fictions that tell us that we belong in a certain stable place, such as a family, a home, a church, a state, or a nation. “With the help of fictitious attitudes,” Zapffe writes, “humans are able to behave as if the outer or inner situation were different from what honest cognition tells us.” Finally, distraction is the process of filling our waking hours with tasks that distract us from existential dread. We keep our “attention within the critical limit by capturing it in a ceaseless bombardment of external input.”

Zapffe suggests that these mechanisms of suppression are needed to keep us from being paralyzed by fear. He maintains that one of the crucial functions of any culture is to provide effective suppression, and that many psychiatric disorders should be understood as results of a breakdown of the mechanisms of suppression.

In addition to isolation, anchoring, and distraction, Zapffe lists a fourth strategy: sublimation. Sublimation is the process whereby the tragedy of human life is given aesthetic value. The production and appreciation of art, Zapffe writes, is perhaps more properly called a mechanism of “transformation rather than repression.”

The reason is that while isolation, anchoring, and distraction work by trying to push suffering out of sight, sublimation confronts suffering head-on and seeks to transform suffering into beauty.

(…)

Although art can give us consolation, however, it cannot save us from suffering, the reason for which is that the source of suffering is too deep. We suffer, Zapffe suggests, because of our very nature as humans. Insofar as we use our intellect, which, as humans, we must do in order to sustain ourselves, we are bound to suffer. Insofar as we suppress our intellectual capacities, we reject our humanity and undermine the faculty that is most crucial to our mode of survival. Humanity, therefore, is confronted with the grim fundamental alternative of having to choose either death or suffering.

This is a gravely pessimistic view of the world.

How, then, does Zapffe get from this argument for pessimism to the conclusion that procreation is immoral? One premise on the path to this further conclusion is that life is not just filled with suffering, but is filled with so much suffering, and with so little happiness, that human lives tend not to be worth living. Another premise is that nothing short of extinction can bring human suffering to an end. To appreciate why he holds this premise, notice that in Zapffe’s philosophy, there is no hope that social reform can solve the problem of suffering. Although social reform might perhaps alleviate some of the suffering, he takes the core problem to lie, not in the way in which society is organized, but in human nature. The problem, we might say, lies not in the rules of the game but in the internal nature of the game pieces, and therefore, we cannot expect to be able to solve the problem by changing the rules of the game. The third and last premise, which is implicitly assumed rather than explicitly stated by Zapffe, is that it is immoral to create lives that one cannot reasonably expect to be worth living. If we accept all three of these premises, we have reached the anti-natalist conclusion that it is immoral to procreate.”

[inkofamethyst]

June 26, 2023

Hm.  It does, in fact, seem that I have expelled most of my terror into that last post.  Now it kind of sits as a numb, low hum at the back of my mind instead of endless, tormented howling.  Figuratively, of course.  Anyway, the worry is still there, here, but just not as dreadfully centered.

My photo-friend, a former psychology major, once told me several years ago that catharsis was fake.  That there was no such effect documented scientifically.  That me journaling my negative emotions was only making them stronger, not somehow releasing them.  Time and time again, I feel that I must be proving scientific literature wrong.  But hey, that’s what a scientist does, right?

Now, I confess, I have, some winters, felt so dreadful that I listened to nothing but sad and angry music and isolated myself for months.  That was not catharsis.  That was wallowing.  A depression somewhat aided by the shorter, colder days, in addition to personal and/or international despair.

Maybe, then, true catharsis is just for me.  Some secret method of shedding the negative.  When I’m not in a self-created environment of it, that is.  If I’ve filled the box I’m in with negativity, shedding the negative from my skin won’t remove it from me, but add to the scenery.

Okay, enough with the philosophizing.

I finished watching Manifest with my dad, and I think the ending really, really delivered.  I mean, the show was textbook Lost-esque: large ensemble cast of unique characters experiences a mystery-riddled ordeal together, somehow isolated from the rest of the world.  There are clues and connections and buildups and twists and throwbacks and central characters and peripheral characters, all of whom we grow to know and care about.  I think the main difference between the ending of Manifest and Lost is that the characters in Lost were suck on that stupid island (I mean it was an interesting island, but it was, by nature, isolated).  Anything they did was stuck on that island.  There was literally (pretty much) no impact on the outside world once they boarded that plane.  They were all unknowingly fighting for a spot to be the protector of some special island that was only important, from my recollection, because Jacob said it was.  Because it contained the Man In Black and kept him from destroying humanity like some sort of Pandora’s Box, or something.  But, in its finale, Manifest demonstrated that the ensemble’s ordeal had a greater purpose that clearly and actually impacted themselves and their world.  I think I teared up when Lost ended because those iconic final few shots with Jack and seeing the cast all together again and happy after seasons of trials was a little emotional.  Sure there was some growth: Sun and Jin, most notably, Hurley...  But the characters in Manifest all grew and exhibited their growth clearly in those final minutes.  Sure, the show got a little wacky, just like Lost did, in mixing science and reasoning with magic and faith, but it was entertaining and interesting, with an ending that was heartwarming and, in my opinion, beautifully satisfactory (though my father did guess what would happen after they boarded the plane that final time, but he’s seen a lot more television than I have).  Four seasons is a reasonable length (it’s the only show I’ve watched from the beginning of college to its end, actually), and I would recommend it to Lost-lovers.

[edit: one thing about Manifest though, and maybe it’s just that I was raised Christian and live in a Christian-dominant culture, but I found an interesting Christian-y bend to the show.  And I’m not talking just about Angelina’s character background or the whole Romans(?) 8:28 thing near the beginning, but across the show and even in the finale, the idea of a sort of eternal, infinite punishment for finite crimes is a very Christian thing.  Now, don’t get me wrong in the slightest, seeing unequivocally bad, unrepentant people suffer feels immensely satisfying.  That’s because I’m human.  It’s that instant reaction.  But, after thinking about it just a little, it’s just kind of unfortunate, honestly.  I think a less satisfying but, perhaps, more just ending would have been those bad people not being able to recall or in any way use the growth that could have occurred during those five years, unlike the protagonists.  But to an audience, and as a piece of fiction, it might have seemed too lenient.]

Lost changed the game in television.  But it’s hard to maintain a position as both the first and the best as time goes on.

Today I’m really, really thankful that I feel less worried.

[penhive]

Being a Collection of Meaning

I would like to refute the philosopher Heidegger’s claim that being is the throwness of meaning and for me being is the collection of meaning.  The person experiencing meaning encounters it as a collection of meaning. Meaning occurs at various levels of presence and they are cognition, perception, catharsis, possession, angst and ecstasy.

Cognition

Now what is cognition? Cognition is an intellectual process of coming to grips or understanding something. An example I take is Plato’s allegory of the cave. The cave is dark inside and people are standing in it, a bright shaft of light is emanating from the outside and people are groping for it. A cognitive meaning of it is there exists apart from the physical world an ideal world of forms.

Perception

Perception refers to the act of sense impressions forming in the mind. I perceive that a chair lies beside me. I can also perceive that my neighbor’s house is red in color.

Catharsis

Catharsis coined by Aristotle refers to a mental cleansing occurring while watching tragedy. What is catharsis when applied to being? Catharsis is the elational content of consciousness. Through catharsis we celebrate the eureka of the body and the mind. Catharsis is the bliss of existence.

Possession

What does being’s possession mean? Possession can be physical or psychological. An example of physical possession is buying and owning property. At a psychological level possession can be an emotional state, for example the lust I have for women.

Angst

Angst as being’s collection of meaning is the woe, dread of existence. It includes all our fears, phobias, anxieties and depression. Angst is a negative celebration of meaning. Woe, despair, sadness and depression, all having negative connotations are the being’s collection of meaning.

Ecstasy

Ecstasy as being’s collection of meaning is the pleasure of the body in sexual intercourse.  It can also mean a mind trip for example freaking out with marijuana. While participating in sex, the being gets immersed in a world of love, a beatific bliss which makes he/r forget everything else. Marijuana works in the mind as a sedative joy.

Relationships

Relationships as a collection of meaning refers to interpersonal relationships. Affection, and camaraderie are affections shared and felt. Relations can also be toxic when the other in a relationship becomes a hell.

To conclude I would like to say I have made changes to Heidegger’s throwness of meaning to be a collection of meaning and they embolden emotional, mental and physical states

[lunarsilkscreen]

Nier

Despite many flaws in the series; what makes Nier one of the most memorable and innovative series in decades?

Some might say that its 2B's chassis carries the series to this very day.

But besides the memorable female protagonists and Nier simply being a sequel to Drake guard; mostly overshadowing its predecessor.

But; There are plenty of games with characters that have considerable assets that just don't cut the mustard. Dead or Alive; Beach Volleyball isn't known for its deep Philosophical themes after all.The one thing that I absolutely hate about the series is the sense of dread that persists; that our actions don't actually matter, don't change this realm of perpetual suffering.

Instead resources are continually used by people who don't know what to do with them, or cause mass extinction events.

Holding onto a historical story that may or may not matter that continues long after the humans that mattered cease to exist.

The things that I enjoy? The gameplay, the themes of hope and potential of ending suffering. But we see entities like Emil; who may be the source of suffering simply because his existence is suffering.

And him holding onto his dreams and family causes the creation of war bots. Both technically his fault, and not his fault because he himself is a biological engineered being granted those powers and an ignorance to how they effect reality.

The "Kami" that became "Kami" and doesn't know how to be "Kami".

I use "Kami" in this sense because despite being able to be called a God by the time Nier:Automata rolls around; he's still mortal and fallible like any human.

A distinction between how many religious folk use the word "God" as an infallible creator.

The joke hidden in the secret ending that "Killing Kami" actually ends the world. Because he's the source of all the black boxes.

But the themes are deeper than that even. As it explores a world that has been wiped out by events from an outside universe, and the subsequent desperate attempt to save the souls of humanity; which continually creates this despair.

A war from a completely separate universe bled over to an alternate reality Earth; destroyed *that* world and created a despair loop.

Which gets blamed on anyone and everyone that touched anything from that universe.

Mostly because they couldn't remember the original Nier who literally erased himself from the book of life in the hopes that his friends and family would be able to live a peaceful life without his intervention..since it was his shadow that caused suffering to the remaining humans in the first place.

And the only solution one of his allies; Kaine could muster was to pull his soul from the afterlife like Dante in the inferno.

Just to get whatever days she could get with her remaining family.

But then, because the loop always comes back to a point where neither remembers the future; they're stuck in this "Infinite Jest".

It's a master class in a weaponized skinner box.

Despite this it showcases something very important; humans most darkest desires can be sated in a virtual environment, and need not bleed over to reality.

Despite this; anti-video-game advocates suggest that our darkest desires should instead play out in the real world. Because what is life without enacting those desires in real life?

A weird twist that suggests that people can't get what they need from a virtual life without increasing desire "for the real thing".

Which is hilarious; considering Jordan Peterson's stance about pornography reducing sexual desire IRL.

Which is factual do you think? They can't both be factual...right?

The irony is that many children today learn *better* lessons digitally than their parents and society teaches to them directly.

So much for that limited screen time BS. If reality can't compete with the simulacrum; don't you think that's an issue in itself?

And all of that is baked into the Nier series as a whole. Whether intentionally or not. It's an artistic masterpiece that critiques life, suggests a better way, and instills hope in a dreadful world.

To Be Fair; Drakenguard has a limited audience for a reason; and Nier Replicant has some parts that break immersion.

But it's all the pieces that make the whole.

And the Nier:Reincarnation game... Is simply a view of the future where children's history, culture, and knowledge is contained in a little black box they take with them everywhere.

It's told in the form of a children's story book, as if it were the future where this is fact. And so the audience is definitely meant for a Teenage audience.

And not really for the audience Drakenguard and Nier are known for cultivating.

[storyofancientsideshows]

I recently endured a lucid nightmare of such vivid and prolonged terror, that it seemed to stretch on for an weeks, plunging me into a realm akin to the darkest cosmic horror sci-fi tale. In this nightmarish vision, I was trapped in a world that mirrored ours, yet it was laced with an unsettling, alien strangeness.

Deemed insane in this unnerving reality, I was imprisoned in what they called a psychiatric ward — a place not of healing, but of unimaginable horror and dread, where every shadow whispered threats and the very walls seemed to pulsate with a malevolent life of their own.

This place, it was at the crossroads of multiple realities, and it was run by these nightmarish beings. These beings weren't like anything we know – they defied our physical laws and were terrifying to behold. They transcend my understanding of existence. In that ward, the walls where alive, and the atmosphere was always so heavy with a sense of dread and an looming ominous presence I can’t explain in words.

The other patients in this ward were more than just individuals battling mental illness; they were involuntary participants in a series of harrowing experiments. These experiments were not mere medical procedures but explorations into the farthest reaches of human cognition and the resilience of the psyche.

The overseers of the ward, those otherworldly beings masquerading in human form, were conducting a study that was as grandiose as it was terrifying. They sought to understand how the human mind reacts when confronted with the deepest, most unfathomable truths of the universe.

These truths were not just complex scientific concepts or philosophical ideas. They were fundamental, cosmic realities so alien and overwhelming that mere exposure to them could unravel the fabric of one's sanity. The ward had become a crucible for testing the limits of human understanding and endurance.

Patients were exposed to stimuli that defied explanation: sights, sounds, and sensations that belonged to worlds and dimensions far beyond our own. Some faced visions of vast, incomprehensible landscapes that stretched the boundaries of their minds.

Others heard whispers in languages that predated human civilization, echoing with the knowledge of ancient, forgotten deities.

The reactions varied wildly. Some patients were reduced to catatonic states, their minds shattered by the weight of what they had witnessed. Others underwent transformations, their personalities fracturing and reassembling into something new, something that could comprehend these cosmic secrets without breaking.

There were rumors among the patients, whispered in hushed tones, of those who had glimpsed too much. They spoke of individuals who vanished overnight, speculated to have either been consumed by the knowledge or, perhaps, transcended to a state of existence our minds couldn't fathom.

As I navigated this nightmare, I saw the evidence of these experiments firsthand. The walls of some rooms were covered in frenzied scribbles, symbols, and equations that made my head spin. I heard the anguished cries of patients echoing through the halls at night, as if the very air was heavy with their despair and madness.

Despite the terror and confusion, there was a part of me that was morbidly fascinated by what these experiments represented.

They were a glimpse into the ultimate nature of reality, a peek behind the cosmic curtain that separates the known from the unknowable. But with each passing day, as the experiments continued and the overseers watched with their inhuman eyes, I knew that this knowledge came at a price far too high for any human mind to pay.

Every nightfall brought visions of indescribable shapes and whispers in ancient tongues, as if the very fabric of reality was unraveling, exposing realms and entities beyond human comprehension. These entities seemed aware of me, their attention piercing through the thin veil separating dream from reality.

Desperate to escape, I navigated the ever-shifting maze of the ward, its walls pulsing like living flesh. Anguished faces, trapped within, moaned from the grotesque surroundings.

Fellow patients, now unrecognizable and twisted by cosmic horrors, roamed as horrific shadows of their former selves, their bodies contorted into nightmarish forms.

The scene was a harrowing nightmare come to life, a tableau of terror where humanity was lost to unimaginable horror.

In the deepest depths of the ward, I uncovered a chilling truth: it was a portal to an ancient cosmic entity, a monstrous being from the void between worlds. This entity, a dark force older than time itself, was on the verge of awakening, a cataclysm that could obliterate not just our reality but the very fabric of existence.

This entity was no mere creature but a primordial darkness, an abyssal horror whose awakening would mean the end of all things. The ward, with its twisted experiments and screaming patients, was the epicenter of a ritual to revive this cosmic nightmare.

Each tormented mind, each unspeakable experiment, fed into this dark rite, hastening the awakening of this ancient horror. The thought of it was paralyzing – an entity so powerful and alien that its rise would shred the laws of physics, merging our world with an unfathomable realm of chaos.

Rumors whispered of entire universes erased, realities consumed by this unspeakable force. The atmosphere in the ward grew increasingly oppressive, charged with a sinister energy as if reality itself was warping in anticipation.

As the boundary between our world and the entity's realm thinned, the horrors of the void began to seep into the ward, manifesting as nightmarish visions and otherworldly phenomena. The air crackled with dark energy, and the walls pulsed as if alive, a foreboding sign of the impending doom that awaited us all.

In a desperate bid to halt the looming apocalypse, I became the only hope to seal the gateway to a realm beyond human understanding. My actions, driven by sheer terror and determination, spiraled out of control as the ancient entity, a cosmic horror from the depths of time, stirred in its eldritch prison.

The moment I reached out and touched the being, reality warped in a nightmarish cascade. My arm, upon contact, became malformed and mutated, becoming a conduit for unspeakable horror. It twisted into a form so alien and terrifying that my mind recoiled in horror.

This desperate action was my attempt to stop the entity or to close the ominous gateway it was emerging from. Driven by a sense of responsibility, I hoped to confront or interact with this cosmic force, to understand or neutralize it, or to change the course of events.

However, this attempt to engage with the entity only led to disastrous consequences, as my arm transformed into a horrifying extension of the nightmare itself.

The newly formed flesh pulsated with a sickening, otherworldly life, veins glowing with an eerie luminescence. The arm seemed to resonate with the entity's malevolent energy, becoming less of a limb and more a sickly appendage of the cosmic abomination itself.

After a fleeting moment of escape, jettisoning myself from the immediate horror that was unfolding before me, I was swiftly recaptured by the ward's overseers, those insatiably curious beings hungry for dark knowledge.

They used their mastery over the warped reality of the facility to bring me back, turning my psyche and mutated arm into the focal point of their perverse and inhumane experiments, seeking to unravel the secrets of my direct interaction with the cosmic entity.

They inflicted mental agonies that were unimaginably horrific, each session pushing me to the absolute brink of sanity. In their ruthless, unyielding hands, my mind was stretched to its limits, teetering on the edge of an abyss filled with nightmarish horrors, each more terrifying than the last, threatening to engulf me in an eternal darkness from which there was no escape.

As the final climax approached, the sense of impending doom grew suffocating. The air thickened with the tangible dread of annihilation. The entity, now partially connected to our reality through my mutated form, began to exert its malignant influence.

Shadows seemed to move with malevolent intent, and the laws of physics bent and broke around me. The fabric of reality itself started to unravel, revealing glimpses of the unspeakable void that lay beyond.

Voices, not heard but felt, echoed in my mind, whispers from the entity promising truths too terrifying for the human psyche to bear. The world around me became a twisted reflection of the entity's cosmic prison – a place where hope withered and madness flourished.

I, the inadvertent bridge between this monstrous entity and our world, was trapped for days in a state of overwhelming despair. The more I struggled against the being's malignant influence, the more I felt my sanity erode, slipping away like sand through my now grotesquely distorted fingers.

Days blurred into a timeless void, each moment stretching into an eternity of torment. The boundaries between myself and the entity grew increasingly indistinct, and with each passing day in this nightmarish captivity, I felt my humanity being inexorably consumed by the insatiable hunger of the ancient horror.

In this world teetering on the brink of annihilation, under the shadow of an entity whose mere presence threatened to extinguish all that we know, the true terror was the realization of our insignificance in the vast, uncaring cosmos. The end was not just an event; it was an unraveling of reality, a descent into a nightmare from which there was no awakening.

As the very air around me began to warp and shimmer, forming a swirling vortex of darkness, I was violently dragged into the emerging wormhole. The horror of my failure became brutally clear at that moment.

The entity, unleashed by my unintended actions, began its cataclysmic ascent, tearing apart the very fabric of our universe. The sensation of being dismantled, atom by atom, was excruciatingly vivid. Each cell in my body screamed in torment as I disintegrated, my existence fraying at the seams in the merciless grip of the wormhole.

The wormhole was a maelstrom of cosmic terror, a tunnel carved through the very bones of reality by an entity whose hunger knew no bounds. The void's cold embrace was a merciless vacuum, pulling me deeper into an abyss that defied understanding.

I could feel the universe collapsing around me, its death throes echoing through the infinite darkness. Stars imploded in silent agony, galaxies unraveled like threads in a tragic tapestry, and entire worlds were extinguished in the blink of an eye.

As I plummeted through this vortex of destruction, the entity's presence was overwhelming. It was a leviathan of the cosmos, a being of such immense and incomprehensible power that its mere existence was an affront to reality.

Its form was ever-shifting, a mass of tentacles, eyes, and mouths - each a nightmare made flesh. Its eyes, burning with a malevolent intelligence, seemed to stare into the very core of my being, stripping away any semblance of hope.

The destruction wrought by the entity was not just physical but existential. The very concept of time and space warped and twisted around it. I witnessed eons pass in the blink of an eye, and distances that spanned the breadth of the universe were traversed in a single, terrifying moment.

The laws of physics were mere playthings to this cosmic horror, and the universe was its tortured canvas.

In this relentless vortex, the screams of dying civilizations filled my ears, a symphony of despair that resonated with the finality of our doom. Planets cracked like eggs, stars were snuffed out like candles in a gale, and the void itself seemed to scream in torment. The entity feasted upon this destruction, growing ever more powerful, ever more insatiable.

In the final moments of my consciousness, as my body and soul were torn asunder, I realized the full extent of my failure. I had become the harbinger of the end, the unwitting architect of an apocalypse that would consume everything.

My last thought, before being swallowed by the void, was a chilling realization: in my arrogance, I had not only opened the door to our destruction but had also invited it in. And in the endless, suffocating darkness of the void, my failure would echo for eternity, a whisper in the vast, uncaring expanse of a universe undone.

I woke up, seemingly weeks later, in a puddle of my own sweat, the sheets drenched and clinging to my skin. The relief of waking was overwhelming, yet the terror of the dream lingered, making me shudder in the dim light of my room.

I was actually surprised I hadn't accidentally given my bed a golden shower, honestly, considering the sheer intensity and horror of the nightmare.

My heart was still racing, pounding against my chest as if trying to escape the remnants of that nightmarish realm. Lying there, gasping for breath, the room felt eerily still, as though the echoes of the dream lurked in the corners, poised to pull me back into the abyss.

Sometimes, at night, I glimpse the shadows of that once-visited but now departed world, a sinister presence at the edge of my perception.

The line between reality and nightmare was not just blurred but obliterated, leaving me in a lingering state of existential dread, questioning the very fabric and existence of my being.

[willowtalks]

“When all the current reasons—moral, esthetic, religious, social, and so on—no longer guide one’s life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life. I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing.” - Ciaron

Here’s what he means. Consider this for a second. Like we said before, reason can certainly pacify you. Reason can give you temporary relief from feelings of dread and melancholy. But another way of looking at that is to say that in doing so, you chain yourself to a doctrine and limit the possibilities you have in life. That’s an alternative way of looking at the merits of reason. Well, couldn’t we also say that a person that doesn’t have a pacifier of reason or distraction or acceptance disarming these uncomfortable feelings—couldn’t we say that a person filled with this feeling of despair is in some way full of life in a way all the other ones aren’t? I mean, if despair and melancholy are parts of life at times, then couldn’t we say running from them seems to be a denial or a negation of life in some way?

You know, it’s from this place that I want to look at this claim that Cioran is a pessimist a little bit closer. From his perspective, he is faced with the same reality as everyone else—the tragedy of our birth against our will into a universe that we quickly realize is meaningless and absurd. Now, most people at this point run in the other direction. Once again, they pacify—reason, distraction, acceptance—but from his perspective, none of these have actually solved the problem. The universe is still absurd, and no rationalization or distraction has changed that fact. So, from the perspective of most that use one of these tactics, yes, Cioran is going to look like an ultimate pessimist because he’s being negative about their optimistic outlook. But from his perspective, he’s not being pessimistic; he’s just calling it how he sees it. And he certainly doesn’t advocate sitting around, lamenting the fact that everything is meaningless and the world is absurd all the time.

What makes him an interesting thinker is that his tactic is to steer into the absurdity, to run into the burning building that everyone else wants to run away from, to learn to love the world, which is pure absurdity, simply for the sake of itself and not for the sake of what meaning it can give to us—to be able to connect with pure uselessness. Remember, as he said, to be able to love something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life. By steering into the absurdity and embracing it, we affirm life. By running from it in all sorts of creative ways, we negate it. Can we say that this embrace of the human condition—both the dark and the light sides of it—can we say that this is a type of optimism?

All the transcript of "Philosophize This" #155 Ciaron, Creation of Meaning.

----

I was an optimistic person that turned into nihilistic one after a major depression stage of my life. Not mean to be ungrateful but it was hard for me to see life without criticized it. I also agree with the idea that life has no meaning at all, but Ciaron point of view about this makes the 'no meaning' of life found the meaning after all.

That day i learned to maintain my mind with slow walking around the regency of Bintaro, the smells of the petrichor and the road noise had calmed me down and helped me to untied my busy brain. One day, i was listening to "Philosophize This", i interested with the episode of "Creation of Meaning" which related to my thoughts about the meaning of life and the meaning of living the life, the moment when i was questioning everything.

Those lines that i quoted was the line that makes me gasp and stop for a moment, because i got the realistic view of life that makes me think twice to end the life. The view that makes me realized that every preferences in my life are matters to establish the illusion to run in the pathways. From that day, im not thinking about end everything and i can handle my intrusive thoughts wisely.

Currently, i am happy because i have grown up and find my version about the meaning of life. I realized that we dont need a thousand million dollars or party every day to living the life or to be happy, only a cup of coffee latte in to start my day, it could be the source of happiness, like a sparkling dot in a day.

I am abudantly happy, i dont need ten thousand wishes from people around the world because the wishes for people around me that i loves are the best i ever get. I have seen that God is so good for my life.

Be grateful, be passionate, be you

The growing years, 2024

[stoicbreviary]

"Hymn to Adversity" 

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) 

Daughter of Jove, relentless Power, Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour The Bad affright, afflict the Best! Bound in thy adamantine chain The Proud are taught to taste of pain, And purple Tyrants vainly groan With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone. When first thy Sire to send on earth Virtue, his darling child, designed, To thee he gave the heav'nly Birth, And bade to form her infant mind. Stern rugged Nurse! thy rigid lore With patience many a year she bore: What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know, And from her own she learned to melt at others' woe. Scared at thy frown terrific, fly Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood, Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy, And leave us leisure to be good. Light they disperse, and with them go The summer Friend, the flatt'ring Foe; By vain Prosperity received, To her they vow their truth, and are again believed. Wisdom in sable garb arrayed Immersed in rapt'rous thought profound, And Melancholy, silent maid With leaden eye, that loves the ground, Still on thy solemn steps attend: Warm Charity, the gen'ral Friend, With Justice, to herself severe, And Pity dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear. Oh, gently on thy Suppliant's head, Dread Goddess, lay thy chast'ning hand! Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, Not circled with the vengeful Band (As by the Impious thou art seen), With thund'ring voice, and threat'ning mien, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty. Thy form benign, O Goddess, wear, Thy milder influence impart, Thy philosophic Train be there To soften, not to wound my heart. The gen'rous spark extinct revive, Teach me to love and to forgive, Exact my own defects to scan, What others are, to feel, and know myself a Man.