#philosophy graves if you will

[reds-skull]

Not Alive, Nor Dead

[PREV PART] [AO3]

So I use a text-to-speech site to let me spot mistakes more easily (when the robot actually says it, I find it way easier), and that leads to this robot lady saying "fuck" in the calmest way possible.

For this chapter, it decided 'Phil.' stands for 'Philosophy'. So Graves' full name is now "Philosophy Graves". Almost died laughing.

Anyways...

The following day brought a lot of meetings with it. They would need extensive planning for their upcoming mission, if they want to catch what they dubbed ‘The PMC Revenant’.

Ghost has been on edge the entire day. Something about Graves has been pissing him off (well, something besides his personality and entire existence). The American has been avoiding everyone since his little chat with Shepherd, and Ghost doesn’t trust either of them not to plan anything behind their backs.

He knows, given the choice between glory and power, and saving lives, the Americans would go for the former every single time.

In that, they’re not so different from the enemies Ghost erases for them.

The sun is setting, and the Vaquero base is winding down for the day. The bright yellows and oranges remind him of the second thing that’s been bothering him - Johnny.

Well, not the man himself. The amount of secrets hidden beneath that easygoing smile. Ghost has been racking his brain for days trying to figure the Konchar riddle out, and he still is no closer to solving it.

His feet take him to the shooting range. He needs something to let his frustrations out on, and he rather not deal with the screams of Limbo right about now.

To his dismay, there’s someone else there already. Ghost can see the shots coming from one of the sniper nests. Whoever is it, they know their way around a rifle.

His feet are silent when he walks to the farthest nest, and settles down in front of an M24 SWS. He automatically goes through checking the rifle, before setting his scope on a target.

A quick inhale and the target falls, Ghost instantly moving onto another, when his companion shoots it down.

Annoyed, he takes a farther one, downing it perfectly. From then on, him and the other sniper enter an unspoken competition, each of them shooting farther and farther, until they both hit the last one together, the mannequin falling off the track and flying a few meters back.

Ghost huffs. He can appreciate the skills required to match him, no matter how irked he was when they started shooting his targets. He hears footsteps behind him and raises up to meet his new rival in sniping.

From the corner pops out Commander Karim, and she raises her brows, before smirking, “good shots, Lieutenant.”

Ghost nods, “likewise, Commander. Where did you get your training?” he can’t help the professional curiosity.

Farah’s face darkens, something defiant in her expression, “the streets of Urzikstan. We’re not an army - we’re a resistance. No… fancy bases and training programs.” She looks around, at the vast training fields, “my soldiers are people who want freedom, who are sick of seeing their family die for the crime of being born in their own country.”

He hums. Having to face such a great enemy with practically no support, the punishment being death and consequences equal your entire world… no wonder they so readily accepted the PMC revenant.

“I didn’t know that revenant deals in such… vile business.” Farah spits after a while.

Something in him believes her, “be careful who you trust.” 

She huffs, “I learned that lesson the hard way. But I trust the Captain, and so I trust you.” she turns to him, “I will help you hunt him. My soldiers are not safe until he’s out of the game - he knows too much about our operations.”

Ghost crosses his arms, “you got any other skills? Besides being a good shot.”

Farah smiles, walking towards the gunnery behind them. She inspects the weapons hanging on the wall, taking one revolver, opening the chamber to reveal one bullet.

She gives the gun to Ghost, and walks a step back. “Go ahead, shoot me.” she lifts her head up.

He looks from her to the revolver in his hands, thinking about it for a moment, before lining up and shooting her in the head half a second later.

Ghost tilts his head when Farah is completely unaffected, the bullet clinking on the floor. “They call it Ironskin. Shoot me, and the bullet falls to the ground, stab me, and the knife breaks.”

“How’d you get captured?” He returns the revolver to the wall, turning to lean on the table next to it.

“Gas. Not immune to that.” Farah snarls, and he gets the feeling there’s something more to that vulnerability than she lets on. She meets his stare head on, “I’ve heard rumors about you, Ghost. About your powers. Is Limbo truly as powerful as they say?”

“No”, he sighs, pushing off the table to leave, “It’s stronger.”

As he walks by her, Farah nods, silently analyzing him. She would make a powerful ally when Ghost deems her trustworthy. He’ll find out soon enough, on the field.

Price and Ghost are currently scoping out a potential location for the PMC revenant’s deal. The building is a small bar in a dark corner of Las Almas, with a back exit that leads to a car park, where intel suggests a truck housing the ‘goods’ will be.

The Captain has started irritating him about 5 minutes ago, when their very professional conversation about the best way to kill a man with a spoon has taken a sharp turn of topic to become about… Soap of all things.

“So… you and Soap, huh?” Price smirks, his voice filling his mind with his new most hated conversation starter. Seriously, when are they gonna learn there’s nothing interesting to gossip about him and Johnny?

The Captain side eyes him, “I beg to differ, I think it’s quite exciting, what you two got there.”

“What we got is a professional friendship between soldiers, Captain.” Ghost booms in return.

Price nudges his shoulder, cackling in his brain, “that so? Let me take a look…”

Ghost stiffens, “don’t you fucking dare-!”

“Don’t think about Soap MacTavish then, Simon.” He can practically hear the singsong way Price burrows into his memories.

Oh, now this is low, even for Price. Pulling out the ‘don’t think about the red balloon’ trick? Alright. Ghost won’t think about Johnny on principle.

He will not think about how Johnny smiles at him at mess, or how he claps his shoulder before leaving. He won’t think about all the nights he spent awake, staring at the ceiling, falling asleep to the memory of Johnny’s warmth on his skin. He certainly won’t think about how, when their eyes meet, he’s filled with this sudden urge to wrap his arms around him, how he wishes he could just do it one more time, how he’s going insane just thinking about it-

Ghost turns his head slowly, taking in Price’s gaping mouth and wide eyes.

…fuck.

He hears Price inhale to react, and drags a hand over his mask, “I don’t wanna fuckin’ hear it. I know it’s a problem. I won’t act on that, I swear on it Captain.”

Price returns to look at the bar, processing the information. Ghost starts to feel antsy when he finally pipes up, “as long as you keep it quiet, I don’t care what you do. We break a lot of rules, Simon. You really think I give a damn if you two start fucki-”

“We’re not fucking!” he says out loud, glaring at Price, and instantly turns away, unable to hold the Captain’s gaze, “and it’s not… it’s not exactly what I want.”

“What do you want, son?”

What does he want? Scratch that, it doesn’t matter what it is, he won’t get it. Not when it’s…

Price hums, “maybe something like this?” he projects a scene into Ghost’s head - two men, their faces flickering and undefined for a few moments before solidifying into Ghost and Soap. They’re sitting on a couch, in a small living room of sorts. Not talking, not doing anything really, just… cuddling. Trailing hands, flames warming skin, tracing scars, soothing. 

It feels safe. It feels… complete.

Ghost snarls and shakes his head to rid himself of the image, “stop.”

The Captain has a somber look that Ghost catches in the peripheral of his vision, “you want this, Simon. I could feel just how much. Question is, why do you think you don’t deserve it?”

Dead men don’t get to deserve, a memory whispers to him.

“We’re all dead. Doesn’t stop me from wanting, and deserving. Since when has that stopped you?”

Since he couldn’t even vocalise it. Couldn’t even form the words, his wants, in his scarred mouth. 

“Actions speak louder than words, son. I’m sure Soap will understand, he’s smart enough.”

Ghost sighs, “since when are you a relationship counselor, Captain?”

“Comes with the fuckin’ job, apparently.”

They huff a laugh, and return to their actual job, watching this extremely boring bar, and judging silently the people deciding 4 pm on a Tuesday is the time to get fuckin’ wasted.

Intel is slowly being pieced together, Farah and Alex joining on the efforts to plan for every possible outcome of the mission.

The two of them have been quite useful, providing details on the PMC revenant they couldn’t have gathered beforehand. 

The revenant is able to see from the eyes of all their soldiers, the puppets working as a hive mind. They’re not reanimated corpses, or replications of the revenant themselves, but a conjured creation, controlled like a robot from afar.

They can’t actually die, but destroy enough of their body, and the revenant will deem them useless, opting to melt the creature and focus their efforts on the rest.

Alex suggested attacking from multiple fronts, as the revenant’s greatest weakness is their own brain - they’re limited with how much they can divide their attention.

Optimally, they would go after the revenant themselves, but as Farah told them before, they’re likely not even in Mexico. For this mission, they aim to threaten, to scare the revenant into hiding, following his tracks to the snake den.

The two new revenants introduce the rest to their powers. Ghost already saw Farah’s, but he gets to see how knives just bend and refuse to pierce her. He reckons, if her powers are kept a secret, she can be practically unbeatable, if the enemy doesn’t prepare gas.

Alex’s showcase, while less shocking than Farah’s, is no less impressive. One moment, the man stands in front of him, the next he’s gone. 

Invisibility. Not hard to guess how he died. Ghost morbidly wonders if he lost his leg in the same incident.

Gaz volunteers to have a go at Farah’s Ironskin, and proceeds to throw whole tanks at the woman, who just stands there unamused. Soap is about to join in when Price blocks him, shaking his head. He informs Ghost the muppets had the bright idea of detonating trucks to use as rockets.

Ghost doesn’t even want to imagine how that would’ve turned out.

As he makes his way back to his barrack for the night, Ghost overhears two familiar voices arguing.

He sneaks closer, interest piqued.

“-playing at games you don’t understand, Phil.”

A barking laugh grates his teeth, “you’re always thinking so small, no wonder you’re still a Captain after all this time. You had potential, but you threw it all away to play with your little special soldiers.”

“At least I have soldiers, you two faced bastard.” Price growls, more anger than Ghost has heard in a while in his tone.

What does he mean by that?

“You can’t tell anyone, Captain” Graves mockingly enunciates, “higher brass got you tongue-tied, don’t it?” he chuckles cruelly, “this is what fucking annoys me about the military - so many damn rules!”

Footsteps echo, walking away, “you’ll learn one day, John. Sometimes you gotta step over red tape to get anywhere.”

The Captain is silent as Graves leaves. Eventually, he tells Ghost in his mind, “I know you’re there, son. Come out.”

Price is wearing a tired expression when Ghost slinks out of his hiding spot. “I suppose you have questions”, the Captain sighs.

“Not if the answers will get you in trouble.” he nods at the way Graves went, “is he going to be a problem?”

Price readjusts his hat, overlooking the horizon with contempt, replying honestly, “I don’t know. Keep a safe distance from him, and let Soap and Gaz know to not trust him. He won’t do anything while being tied to Shepherd, but the moment Graves will see an opportunity, I can’t guarantee he’ll keep his loyalties in check.”

Something tightens in his chest at the mention of the Sergeants. If Graves lays his hands on either one of them…

Limbo will be a mercy on him.

Can you tell I hate the military yet

[l-cereta]

Interestingly, though, (and extremely specific to this example! This is probably where op's friend's husband got it from) in a study by Haidt, Koller, and Dias in 1993 (Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog?), they interview Americans and Brazillians on this exact question — and found that despite their being no harm against others in the act, AND despite participants directly stating themselves that no one was harmed... "participants still usually said the actions were wrong, and universally wrong. They frequently made statements such as, 'It's just wrong to have sex with a chicken'" (my emphasis). Eight years later, Haidt would go on to argue in a seminal paper in the field of descriptive ethics (i.e. "What do people actually do?" as opposed to "What should people do?") that people form moral positions due to knee-jerk reactions and then justify their positions after the fact, as opposed to trying to privately reason things out and then come to a conclusion. I'm not a fan of the so-called 'Wisdom of Repugnance' any more than the next tranny, but the reason that it got spread around so much is that it's how we — for better and often for worse! — actually think.

This is a sort of different tangent than what @jurph is on (and for that conversation all I'll voice is a skepticism that moral thought, or really anything, can be broken down into neat categories as the Wikipedia article seems to suggest — seems like Haidt also had a hand in that, oh well, can't win 'em all) but I think the crucial point is that this isn't something that conservatives uniquely do. In Haidt's later 2001 paper, he mentions another study earlier that year where they "found the same thing when they interviewed conservatives and liberals about sexual morality issues" (my emphasis). Whether using a dead chicken like a fleshlight actually harms someone matters a lot less in the actual judgement-making than whether it feels wrong: "affective reactions were good predictors of judgement, whereas perceptions of harmfulness were not."

I'm very sympathetic about these "should" statements. For example, we shouldn't judge people based on unfair first impressions — but we do, and we probably always will (take, for instance, this 1972 study indicating that a person looking attractive leads other people to think they're also kind and of good character). Morals shouldn't play into our sex lives, but they do, and it's not just the conservative boogeymen who do this. Everyone does. Instead of shaming someone who's behaving in the default manner for every human on earth, talk to them like a real person! Haidt writes about a phenomenon called 'attitude alignment,' where there's "a constant pressure towards agreement if two parties [in a conversation are] friends and a constant pressure against agreement if the two parties [dislike] each other." By speaking harshly, you're lessening your odds for agreement!

Oh my god. I need to share another story of my new friend making today. So my friends husband says, very casually, as we’re about to leave for the ren faire, “Yeah, it’s like my story about fucking a chicken.”

And of the four people present I was the only one who was shocked. The others all nodded as if to say, yes yes, we know, the chicken fucking.

So he explained, when a progressive person is analyzing a behavior they will typically use the metric, Harm/No Harm. They may not like things in the No Harm category but they wouldn’t object.

Conversely, a more conservative mindset used something like eight metrics. Authority/No Authority Moral/Not Moral, things like that.

So, he posited if you want to sound out someone’s mindset (and you’re willing to live with the repercussions) you can ask: if a man buys a dead chicken from the store, cleans it thoroughly, then fucks it, and then eats it himself…?

I listened in dawning horror, both rapt and disgusted. But into the growing pause I whispered, “No harm…” because it really has no effect on me or anyone else if a man fucks a dead chicken. I don’t like it, I think he’s a weird dude, but like. That’s his dick. But a more conservative person will hear that and object on moral grounds despite not being harmed.

It’s been haunting me all day, so please enjoy.

[gffa]

When Sol said that he felt a connection to Osha, when he felt that she was meant to be his Padawan, Indara's response was to make sure he wasn't confusing what he wanted with what the Force wanted, and that's it, that's exactly it! Sol's statement isn't criticized because that kind of destiny doesn't exist--it pretty clearly does, sometimes people are meant to be Master and Padawan, they're drawn together by the Force, that's a thing the Force does in Star Wars, that's part of the worldbuilding that exists. It's criticized because Indara isn't sure that he's not bringing his own baggage to this, as that's something that often happens. The Force is not separate from a Jedi, it's not a tarot card that you read, it's a mystical energy Force that works based on your emotions, that's why the Jedi strive to be as selfless and careful and calm as they can, so that they're not putting their own feelings into the Force and saying that's what the Force wants. Who knows if Sol was right that the Force was pulling him towards Osha, I tend to think he was feeling something very genuine there, but that tragedy struck and it all went horribly wrong, dealing Osha a wound that she could never quite recover from. But also he did desperately want it and was reckless in going about it, he was unbalanced in a deeply understandable way, a way that he could just spend some time looking inward and rebalance, it's not like he was in grave danger, just a misstep that happens to any Jedi, it's normal, it happens, you recover and you find your footing again, that's what Jedi do. And that's why Jedi have to be so careful, because it's so easy to confuse what you want with what the Force is guiding you towards. It's so easy to center on your own anxieties and think the Force is warning you of a danger, when it's just your own thoughts. It's so easy to think this person was meant for you, because you care about them, and you move too fast and people get hurt. Which got me thinking about how often Masters choose the Padawan in canon, because that makes sense, too, with how hard it is to really center yourself and to be able to perceive what is what you want versus what the Force is guiding you towards. How a younger Jedi may not have the same amount of experience at that Perceiving Yourself that a Master or even a Knight would have. That Indara doesn't say Sol can't be drawn to Osha, the Force doesn't work that way, says a lot about how the Jedi and the Force work, but also the show really nailed that you have to be careful with that, it's not a magic crystal ball that you can read with impartiality no matter what mood you're in or what you wish would happen. But you need to understand yourself and what you want is something that's at the root of Jedi philosophy and action.

[littjara-mirrorlake]

The Color of Hope: Ambition, Necromancy, and Black Mana

Black is one of the most misunderstood colors in Magic: the Gathering, not least because it appears on the surface to be so straightforward. Look at the most iconic black cards of Magic and you'll see deals with demons, necromancy, mass destruction and cruelty and suffering–the trappings of classic fantasy evil. Even the color's symbol itself is a skull, a universal signifier of death and danger.

And in early Magic that seemed to be all it was. White was the color of Fantasy Good, black was the color of Fantasy Evil, and the rest of the colors were... fire magic? Elves? Whatever odd but intriguing skeleton affairs are implied by Time Walk?

Gradually, though, Magic deepened as both a game and a storytelling medium. The color pie grew into itself as a system of complementary philosophies, archetypes whose associated aesthetics were only part of the full picture. Their arrangement around the wheel, below, is highly deliberate; neighboring colors are said to be allies with a high degree of philosophical and mechanical overlap, while colors on opposite sides of the pie are known as enemies, more likely to disagree on fundamental levels.

Black stopped merely representing capital E Evil and became the color of striving for power; unlike its peers, black felt that nothing, least of all morality, could prevent it from seizing what it wanted. Mark Rosewater's 2015 article about black emphasized the color's focus on the self:

"Black's philosophy is very simple: There's no one better suited to look after your own interests than you... Many costs require the sacrifice of others for your own advancement. Because it puts itself first, black is always willing to make this trade. The weak must fall for the strong to thrive." -Mark Rosewater

At its worst, black is an exploitative, amoral color that prioritizes itself at the expense of all others, allowing the "weak" to fall and scorning the very idea of compassion. Rosewater writes that black is "always willing" to trade others for itself. And these can certainly be parts of black's philosophy, when taken to its worst possible extremes, but they're far from the entire story.

Over time, Magic's outlook on black gained nuance. Magic story introduced protagonists like the necromancer Liliana Vess, whose craving for immortality, seemingly exploitative nature, and demonic deals called back to the oldest portrayals of black–and yet she was not one-dimensionally evil. She underwent character development over the years, learning the value of reclaiming herself and standing beside others, and at no point did she become any less mono-black for it. Remember her; we will come back to Liliana and her story later.

In addition to the usual death and decay, black cards began to feature a theme of relentless devotion. On the plane of Eldraine where each color represents a virtue, black's is persistence, explicitly as important as any other color. On the plane of Ikoria, the love between bonder and beast pulls Winota back from the brink of death. Wherever this Oathsworn Vampire printing is set, its flavor text is quintessentially black. It's the same self-driven attitude as before, but cast in a different light: black is nothing if not persistent when it's got its heart set on something (or someone) it cares about. Nothing, least of all the grave, will keep it down. After all, black will always come back for its own.

These newer cards uncovered the true face of black as a color capable of both great love and harm (sometimes even the latter for the sake of the former), and suggested a tantalizing new thread: perhaps putting yourself and yours first isn't all that bad, necessarily. Black is a deeply protective color; it says you don't just have to accept what you're handed, it's okay even to be furious about it (hello, ally color red), but let that galvanize you to do something about it. 

Vraska, a gorgon who faces extreme discrimination on her home plane of Ravnica, triumphs by reclaiming herself, gorgon powers and all–and even more radically, loving herself. She displays traits often considered the purview of white and green, such as a love of home and a drive to elevate the oppressed, but they are all filtered through the lens of her black alignment. Vraska staunchly refuses to deny herself or her people, the Golgari Swarm, of their value. Nor does she allow law or propriety to prevent her from championing them by any means necessary–even if that means cold-blooded murder, or aligning herself with a villain like the Planeswalker Nicol Bolas.

"[Vraska] thought of Mazirek, of the kraul, of the rest of the Ochran assassins and the malignant Jarad who reigned with casual ruin over the most downtrodden of the downtrodden. She remembered her years of isolation, and the heinous cruelty of the Azorius, and how no group deserved to suffer as much as those who would subjugate her own. Eliminating that hell was all she ever wanted." -The Talented Captain Vraska, Alison Luhrs

Like Vraska, black loves fierce and hard, willing to break any taboo for the sake of those it cares about. And it whispers, the entire way through, you are enough. You deserve better. No matter what others may say or do, you are enough.

"If I am to be met with disrespect, then I must first love myself with a fierceness no fool can take away." -Vraska in Pride of the Kraul, Alison Luhrs

Even black's "ruthlessness" isn't as fundamentally cruel as it appears, centering a passion for problem-solving (shared by its other ally blue) instead of a blunt disregard for others.

"People don’t understand the word ruthless. They think it means 'mean.' It’s not about being mean. It’s about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B. The line that goes from motive to means. Beginning to end. It’s about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. Not caring about anything else but the perfection of it." -K. A. Applegate

All of this comes together to make a black a color not of evil but of strength, integrity, and persistence. And that's all well and good, but I'm going to take it even further and put forward a new proposition: that black is the color of hope.

Of the nine mono-black Magic cards with "hope" in their names, all but Liliana portray black as an instrument of hope's destruction. This is, once again, black's flaw taken to its extreme–crushing others to achieve its own ends–but neglects black's own relationship with hope.

Black, more than any other color, requires hope to stay alive.

For black to persist, it must believe in a light at the end of the tunnel, a future in which its goals are realized. As long as it does, it will endure any hardship, walk through fire, and turn reality itself upside down on its way there. Primal, desperate ambition is the engine of hope that burns at the heart of black, keeping it always one step ahead of stagnation. Bitter and stubborn, black believes tomorrow will come because there is no other choice. After all, for black to relinquish hope is to let itself wither, regress, and die–an unacceptable outcome. 

Thus, it is monumentally difficult to strip black of hope. That only makes it all the more crushing when it happens, when black contends with the idea that there is nothing it can do.

Black's deepest, darkest fear is helplessness.

Like any mono-black character, Liliana Vess is driven at her core by a seething, desperate hope. When Liliana first unlocks her necromantic power, it is out of a sheer refusal to allow her ill brother Josu to die, even when the esis root that would cure him is destroyed by enemy witches in an undead-raising ritual. She defies her previous training as a healer, which taught her only to take the safe path, in favor of a higher-risk and higher-reward approach: stealing life from the witches themselves to restore power to the esis root she needs. It is her knowledge that her brother needs her, and her sheer stubborn will to succeed, which allows her to defeat the witches against steep odds.

"Six foes, and Liliana stood alone. But Josu's life depended on her, and the power blossoming within her was more than enough." -Liliana's Origin: The Fourth Pact, James Wyatt

Tragically, however, Liliana's attempted cure goes horrifically wrong, transforming Josu into an undead being plagued by eternal suffering. In his pain, Josu attacks Liliana. For a while Liliana holds out hope, finding the power to fight back while she determinedly searches for a spell to reverse the harm she's done. It is when she realizes this isn't possible that her strength falters.

"All this time, she had believed… that she could turn the power of death to the service of life and health. That a healer should use every tool at her disposal. But Josu was the result, a horrible fusion of life and death, and all her spells meant to manipulate the life force of the living could do nothing to harm the dead." -The Fourth Pact

Liliana learns that even her own dark magic, fueled by determination, cannot solve the problem she's created. She discovers the hard limit of her willpower, and the despair of this discovery is what causes her Planeswalker spark to ignite.

At this time Planeswalkers are as gods, immortal and near-omnipotent. Liliana spends decades enjoying this affirmation of her capability before the Mending strips her and all her peers of their power, reducing them once again to mortal mages.

"Then the Multiverse reshaped itself, robbing her—and every other Planeswalker—of the godlike power they once had wielded. Some called it the Mending, as if something broken had been repaired, but to Liliana, it seemed the opposite. It broke her beyond any hope of repair." -The Fourth Pact

Once again, it is Liliana's fear of helplessness and her refusal to accept it that drives her to push beyond the bounds of propriety–this time, to make a pact with Nicol Bolas and four demons to maintain her immortality. It is not enough for her merely to delay death; she requires the security of knowing she is fully beyond its reach, that she will never be helpless before it again as she was with Josu.

"Holding death at arm's length for whatever years are left to me? No, that's not enough. I want to be free of its shadow." -Liliana in The Fourth Pact

Black isn't like its enemy colors white and green, which are superficially associated far more often with hope. Unlike white, it doesn't believe that conviction, justice, and community will bring about rightness. Unlike green, it doesn't trust in the wisdom of the world or the natural order. Black believes that nothing will change unless you make it change; ultimately, black's self is the only one it can trust to bring about the world it needs. In addition, black lacks its enemies' idealism. Instead, it strives to be a pragmatic realist, making a final assessment of defeat all the more definite and crushing.

While white and green are more amenable to finding hope and holding it aloft as a banner, black claws hope desperately to its chest with shredded, bloody fingernails. Every ounce of hope black has, it tore by itself from the clutches of an uncaring world.

Ironically for such a self-driven color, black's fierce hope is the greatest asset it can provide to others–on its own terms, of course. It was Liliana who turned the tide of battle against the Eldrazi titan Emrakul, defiant in the face of cosmic despair. And when Nicol Bolas made his bid to return to godhood, using Liliana's necromancy to command his undead hordes, Liliana finally turned against him. In reclaiming her power, so too did she use it to free her fellow Planeswalkers from Bolas' assault. Her fear of helplessness no longer shackled her to him; agency and autonomy were hers at last.

The triumph of black, its moment of ultimate victory, is the hard-won fulfillment of its hope.

"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." -Dylan Thomas

An aetherborn, railing against the shortness of their natural lifespan, constructs a new body for themself with their own bare hands. An artificer's grief over her lost companion causes her to push invention to its limits. A young girl who loves her brother calls on the darkest of powers to save him. As it turns out, necromancy–that original thematic keystone of black–is only one of black's many, many refusals to let go of love and hope once it has them, even in the face of the ultimate end.

Time and time again, black–in love with life, ablaze with hope–looks the Grim Reaper in the eye and tells it: "Not today."

[atlaswav]

CATACLYSMIC ☾

INFO: 5252 words..... dr ratio x fem! reader SYNOPSIS: You hate him, of that you're certain. You hate the man behind the alabaster figurehead, and you want to see him unravelled, but you don't know exactly what you do to him. WARNINGS: um alcohol and one kiss. also some swearing but mostly fine AUTHOR'S NOTE: rising from the grave to bring to you this thing i found this in my drafts from who knows how long when I was obsessed with this man (still am). someone help. i can no longer write this much for one fic. what was i on.

Veritas Ratio made it no secret that he despised those who lived in ignorance. He openly shunned those who were stupid enough to turn their eyes from knowledge – they’d be beggars in due time. They didn’t know how the world was governed, and ignorant fools would play victim to fate’s cruel touch.

With this philosophy of his, you often wondered whether or not his ivory figurehead would soon burst with the tumultuous storm of the man’s self importance. You wondered what would lie underneath. Surely, the divine makers would’ve allowed balance in his creation – surely, his face was horribly disfigured in exchange for such otherworldly intelligence. 

He was both delightfully astute and horrendously ill mannered at once. Brighter than your entire class combined – your entire university combined, no doubt – but his pretentiousness was overflowing, and you believed he was in dire need of being put in his place.

Arrogant and pretentious were two of the words that came to mind when someone mentioned Dr. Ratio, and you were sure you weren’t the only one who refused to worship his word like the gospel. In turn, he seemed to despise your very existence, as if you were merely a faded annotation in the footnotes of an ancient epic. Vandalising a work of art. A moustache on the Mona Lisa. Circe in the Odyssey, if she’d welcomed sailors with open arms, allowing them to degrade her as they would a common concubine, not a descendant of the gods.

Yet instead of sharing the witch’s beguiling, seductive nature, you only shared her mortal voice. Thin, reedy, quiet, compared to the booming voices of gods. The voice of Veritas Ratio. Your achievements could only pale in comparison to his, and it took everything within you to clap politely as he received his third – fourth? (you weren’t intent on keeping track) – diploma.

God you hated that man. You’d muttered as much under your breath countless times.

“Dr. Ratio is fine. No need to worship me.” he’d once corrected. But the attempt at humour was lost on you as your classmates began to laugh. The divine makers likely brought him into existence just to spite you. Oftentimes, you fought your urges to hurl the nearest textbook at his caricature head and watch the plaster crack, fall to the floor, and reveal his disfigured face. 

Not that you’d seen it before – lingered around him enough to see it disappear.

His scorn held no favourites, and certainly not when it came to you. He’d openly dragged your work through the dirt a couple of times before, and it was only a matter of time before he did it again. His words were scalding, leaving burns across your thin skin and leaving your mouth tasting of ash. Your voice, faint and human, fell quiet at his ‘gospel’. 

If it weren’t obvious, the hatred was mutual. He’d never admit it outright – he was far beyond these meaningless, trivial things such as immature hatred – but you felt his scathing glare in your soul, even through that perturbing headpiece, and that was enough. 

“Have you found it?” 

You turn around, meeting the cold, blank, unseeing gaze of his caricature head behind you. It was disconcerting to say the very least, but no one else had asked him about it, so you never pushed him further. None wanted to invoke his wrath, no matter what circumstance. It was a miracle neither of you had exploded at each other yet, but you suspected that he’d gladly put aside any type of loathing he harboured for you so that this project would get done faster. 

You were happy to oblige as he took the lead. A free credit was a free credit. But you did have your limits.

“Nope. The text is ancient. I doubt this library has it.”

“Nonsense.” he clicked his tongue, glancing to the side. “I’m asking the professor. Go work on your part.”

Patience is a virtue, as you keep reminding yourself. 

“Sure. Let me know if you find anything.” you say instead of the retort that sits on your tongue. False niceties and biting, underhanded remarks. This charade was entertaining, at the very least.

How did everyone love him? There had to be people like you who shared your dislike towards that conceited scholar. With a long suffering groan, you took a seat at one of the plethora of tables in the university’s library, clicked your pen and began to write. 

Maybe the reason he despised you so was because of your ideas, arguably the opposite of his own way of thinking. Where his twisted logic, rearranged rationality and pulled apart natural reasoning to formulate new material, you cut and stitched the work of others together to create your own emulations. (Frankenstein's monster. Was that a cliche? For Ratio, it probably was.)

He’d likely scrap what you’d written as soon as he returned, but that didn’t stop you from trying to spite him anyway. You hoped your readings wouldn’t go to waste as you recorded your findings, then started to draft an outline for your project. 

The scratch of paper became white nose, your hand struggling to keep up with the pace of your mind – was it even worth it? He’d likely call it worthless, snatch it from you and throw it into the recycling bin, then start writing his own outline. It only angered you further as you frowned at the page, wondering how he’d approach the project. 

The thump of a heavy tome on the wooden desk snapped you out of your sombre thoughts. 

“Here.” Ratio took a seat at the chair opposite of yours, brushing the dust off the thick text, leafing through its yellowed pages. “I told you they’d have it. You just need to search better.”

You offer him a tight smile. “Noted.” More false niceties, more flat remarks.

Then the figurehead disappears in a blink, and you nearly drop your pen. He barely pays you any mind as he runs a hand through his hair, flipping through the text. You’d heard the rumours of the handsome face beneath the statue, but you’d never have imagined him to be so disgustingly perfect. 

Statuesque. 

His deep violet locks looked unbelievably soft. His crimson eyes showed laser focus as he scanned the text in front of him, ignoring you completely as he noted something down. After a brief silence where you skim over your outline and he presumably attempts to decipher the undeniably unreadable and ancient text which you were opposed to reading in the first place, he turns to you with a sigh. “What did you do while I was gone?”

“I wrote an outline.” you hand the papers to him begrudgingly, fidgeting with the pen in your hand. You don’t meet his gaze, afraid that his calculating gaze might see too far into your soul. 

“This?” his distaste seeps through his tone. You don’t need to look at his face to know that he’s frowning. 

You say nothing as he skims through your work, twirling your pen between your fingers.

“...It’s not the worst thing I've ever read.”

Your eyebrows shoot up. 

“It’s not good, either.”

You scowl at him. 

“I can salvage it.” he nonchalantly throws it back onto the table, returning to the text at hand. 

You want to shove his grotesquely perfect face into the book. He really was put on this earth to spite you.

“Don’t just sit there. Go look for texts on criticism of our stance.”

You don’t know how you’re going to find the patience to survive this project. If anything, it irked you further to find that there wasn’t some monstrosity hidden behind that figurehead. In everything he did, he seemed to be inventing new ways to get on your nerves. However, unbeknownst to you, Veritas Ratio held you higher than you gave yourself credit for. He believed your ideas to be invigorating. Refreshing, almost. A welcome reprieve from the same reiterated, chewed, swallowed and regurgitated approaches that your other classmates had. 

You weren’t like the rest of the mindless, studying machines at the university. You could be brilliant, and it annoyed him that you didn’t know this. He’d admitted as much to himself before, but he’d never tell you. But it was still not good enough for his standards – far better than what the imbeciles in your class could’ve come up with – but still far behind him. Or so he kept telling himself. 

Days passed by without a word from either of you. You were content to write your part in the solitude of your dorm, and he seemed perfectly content mulling over whatever he’d found in that indecipherable ancient text. By the time you’d nearly finished your part, he decided to meet with you once again to share your findings. 

His definition of deciding to meet with you meant simply cornering you after class and asking you to follow him. 

You started to protest, but he’d already turned and briskly walked out of the classroom, so you groaned and followed after him, winding up in the library again. This time, in a secluded corner with the late afternoon sun pouring through the window, illuminating the small table and workspace with a warm glow. 

You wondered how he wasn’t winded after trekking across the entire campus. You certainly were. His muscled build suggested that a mere leisurely walk couldn’t possibly have tired him out. What did he eat? Was he what Nietzsche had in mind when he wrote of the Superman? 

“What are you doing? Sit.” he gestures to the seat across from him, and you sink into the armchair, taking out your papers. His headpiece disappears once again, and your breath catches in your throat. 

His hair cast a faint shadow across his face, and his eyes seemed to glow. As you leaned in closer, you realised there was a thin ring of gold around his pupils. 

“Are you done with your part?” he demands, breaking you out of your trance. 

You silently hand over your drafts, watching his eyes flit across your paper. His eyebrows furrow slightly, eyes narrowing, but he remains quiet. Were his eyelashes always this long? They created an indistinct shadow on his cheeks. His skin was pale, fair. Not the sickly kind of pale you thought he’d be. Did he exercise? You wouldn’t be surprised, with all your classmates always fawning over his broad, strong chest and narrower waist. 

Was it your imagination, or were his cheeks slightly flushed? It might have been the light. 

“It’s deplorable.”

Your heart sinks in your chest as you sit back against the armchair. 

“Your ideas are rudimentary. Have you been reading at all?” he sighs, holding his head in his hand. “No matter. I can fix it. I don’t need you to do anything anymore. You can go.”

You stay seated in shock, unable to move. You’ve heard the anecdotes of people crying over being scolded by him, but was he always this harsh? 

“You know it’s a group project, right?” you begin before your better judgement can decide against it, “My work is just as important as yours, it doesn’t matter if you think my work is ‘deplorable’. I’m in the same class, I take the same course, I learn the same things as you do, you don’t get to look down on me no matter how stupidly smart you are.”

He raises an eyebrow, unamused. “Why not?”

“Take that stick out of your ass, Veritas Ratio. Get off your high horse.” you snatch your papers out of his hands and take your leave, ignoring his calls of your name. 

Were you dramatic? Yes, but not without reason. Given Ratio’s reputation for prioritising academics over everything else, you suspected that it wouldn’t take long for him to find you, either. 

You were so wrong. 

More days passed with no contact. He didn’t seem to be affected by your dramatics, and never once batted an eye in your direction unless necessary. It seemed your hypothesis of him inventing new ways to get on your nerves was on the track of being proved correct. But if you didn’t do something within the next few days, you trusted him to turn in the project without your name on the paper, resulting in a zero. 

He was just as stubborn as you, and though you were nothing compared to him in actuality, you were so close to grabbing his face and forcing him to look at you for who you were.

Seemingly, even in the battle of wits, he seemed to emerge victorious. 

“Ratio.” 

He barely glances up, engrossed in his writing. “What?”

“Are you done with the project?” Biting the bullet stings your teeth and left a bitter taste on your tongue. 

“No. Not yet. Why? You’re finally going to help?”

“Are you going to stop looking down at me?” 

The library is nearly empty. The sun is barely a sliver on the horizon, and the voices of students float down the corridor beyond the grand stacks of books, yet you’re here. Why do you bother? Are you really that desperate for his validation?

“Are you going to keep writing such reprehensible work?”

You glare at him. “Guess not.” you turn on your heel.

“You’re absolutely infuriating.” he sighs, leaning back in the armchair. “You’re not aware of what you can do, are you?”

You glare at him. Your chest stings. 

He looks at you, then. Truly. His complexion relaxes, and he rubs his temples. “Sit. Let’s go through your part.”

“Why?”

“I mulled it over. Your part is brilliant.”

Your eyes widen.

“But your expression and research is appalling. Have you learned how to write academically at all?”

You’d never simultaneously wanted to slap and kiss a man at once until today. “What happened to getting off your high horse?”

“I got off it. Now sit and listen, I won’t repeat myself.”

You supposed that was the closest to an apology he’d ever give you, so you sat. It pained you, but you did. Besides, he had called you brilliant – your part – but still, you couldn’t force the smile from your face as you listened to his instruction. 

“Your ideas in your introduction are well formed, but from there, it all goes downhill. You have to reorder your logic for it to make sense, and we will be deducted points if you don’t elaborate on the principles of your concept first.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “So how would you do it?”

“For one, I’d restart completely and get straight to the point.”

You sigh exasperatedly. “Show me, then, if you’re so good.”

His eyes narrow at you, but he says nothing as he motions for you to come closer. 

The librarian was likely too scared to kick either of you out after closing time. Your arguments were heard by all of your neighbouring desks, and whenever there was a break in conversation, it seemed as if everyone held their breath. There was pin drop silence except for the two of you – but neither of you realised it. 

He was blunt, and had no idea what you were thinking, but perhaps this is what entrapped him. 

You, on the other hand, couldn’t stop thinking about how he had called your ideas brilliant. 

You quickly learn how good of a teacher he is. Maybe it’s his forced patience or once-in-a-millenium genuine praise that spurs your decision, but you find yourself so willing to prove yourself, and he finds himself willing to help. 

Maybe this wasn’t so bad. 

“Just fix it, stop arguing with me. I’m right.”

“Why? Do you know every single thing about our topic?”

“No, but I have four degrees and more experience than you.”

“Jackass.”

“Change it.”

You grumbled another insult under your breath, yawning as you scribbled out the section you wrote and began to reword your thoughts. The sudden quietude was jarring, and as you looked around, you realised the overhead lights were off, the only source of light from the lamps illuminating the desks. 

“Is everyone gone?” you ask, sitting up straight and stretching. 

“Who cares? Finish up, then we can head back.”

“Fuck you, give me a break. I don’t write at the pace of a robot.”

“Then learn.”

“Fuck you too Veritas Ratio.”

“Expand your vocabulary while you’re at it.”

“Why are you so intent on irritating me?”

“You get irritated easily. Not my problem.”

“If you know I get irritated easily, why do you keep provoking me then? Do you want me to hate you more?”

He seems to pause. Minisculely, almost unnoticeable had your gaze not been trained on him for the past few hours. He had a habit of pausing and furrowing his brows when you said something slightly out of line. 

“Just finish the paper. You talk too much.”

You sigh and get back to work as he leafs through his own research. 

Amicable silence passes. The night is alive outside, gleaming and glistening with the touch of benevolent gods and whispers of long gone wishes – pearls stitched by fate’s knowing hands. 

“I’m done.”

“Show me.”

You pass the paper to him as you watch his expression carefully. 

Crimson eyes flit across your work, gold ringed irises flickering in the scarce light. If you could capture the way the light reflected in his eyes in a jar, you think wishfully that you’d stare at it forever; Until the light died out, or it decided to escape the ephemeral glass confines. 

But you’d never admit it out loud. It was wishful. If Veritas Ratio could read minds, he would undoubtedly reprimand you.

He clears his throat, and you snap to attention, swatting away your fantasies of stealing and bottling evasive light. 

“It’s good.”

You wait for him to speak further, but he says nothing. “Just good?”

“Well, by my standards, no, but for you, it’s good.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean,” he leans on the table, forearms flexing. “That you’re finally starting to live up to your potential.”

“Huh?”

He blinks. “What do you mean?”

“What potential?”

He shakes his head absently, almost in disbelief. Forget light, you’d barter with the lady of fate to let you preserve this moment in a frame so that you could glimpse this expression forever. You’d never seen him so dumbfounded and awed at once – you doubt anyone ever has. He’d always been a man of knowing, and whatever he didn’t know, he would find out. Nothing was ever a “maybe,” or a “probably,” it was always absolute. It had to be absolute in his philosophy. 

You happened to be the one exception. 

“You’re not aware of the potential you have?”

“You think I have potential?”

“Aeons,” he murmurs under his breath, before standing and gathering his belongings. “I’m going to bed. See you in class tomorrow. We’ll finish up then.”

He leaves before you have the chance to question him, but as you slump back in your armchair, you can’t help but smile. 

Potential was as close as you’d ever get to a compliment from Veritas. 

—

The lady of fortune and lady Themis looked him in the eyes and saw their mortal emanator at his birth. He’d never been certain what he was made for, but he never let it burden him. Things like these weren’t made for him to ponder, that was up to the dreamers and inventors. 

He was a being of logic. A doctor of calculations and reason, and everyone knew him as such. 

But he simply couldn’t figure out what it was about you – your naive gaze or that pout that absently curved your lips – that had your words and scent and eyes lingering in his mind like a vengeful phantom. 

You were the being of all chaos and irrationality, but you were so bright. Unhoned, rough and unhewn. A gemstone shining with impurities but shining still, casting a beautiful mosaic cast across the ground with indecipherable shapes and patterns. 

It was deplorable. He hated you for being on his mind, and hated you even more for your wasted potential. He hated how you stared, how his cheeks would redden from the intensity of your gaze, and how he’d have to pretend he was unfazed, because he couldn’t afford any distractions. 

You were the being of his undoing, he was sure. You were brought into existence to spite him, to bring an unaccounted variable into the equation of his being, and present a causality dilemma for all he was. 

He wanted you gone, but he wanted you closer all at once. 

He hated it. 

It wasn’t common for him to sleep in either, so when he woke five minutes before class was supposed to start, he cursed you with all the spite in his heart and rushed to class, clutching papers from the night before, still imbued with traces of your lingering fragrance. Just how long had you pored over those papers for your smell to latch to them? It should be impossible. Fate was clearly against him. 

Fate brought you back together as he entered the brimming lecture hall, and the only vacant seat was the one next to you. 

“Did you get the papers in order?” you asked, glancing at his dishevelled state. The Dr Ratio you knew was never dishevelled, but this was the closest you’d ever seen him to it. 

“Yes. Just write your name on your bits and sign the sign off sheet and it’s complete.”

You take the paper from him, scrawling your name across your work, then handing it back. 

With your project finally submitted, you could breathe easy again – never endure his biting remarks and criticism again. 

But as the class progressed, you realised you were in trouble. 

The professor was merciless. He flicked through the presentation on the new topic with haste, rushing through new concepts, formulae and calculations with record speeds. You’d nudged Ratio, whispering for help, but he rolled his eyes and kept his stare attentively on the presentation. 

You wanted to slap him. 

Was he tolerating you because of the project? Was he going back to cold stares and dismissive glances?

You wouldn’t allow it. Not when you were so close to discovering the man behind the alabaster figurehead. As soon as the professor signalled the end of the lecture, a collective sigh was released from the class. 

You turned to Ratio, and he was already staring at you. 

“What was it you wanted to say?”

“Tutor me please.”

He raised a brow. “Why?”

“Because you’re smart.”

“Pick someone else, then. I don’t see why I should.”

“You asshole, I’ll buy you lunch if you tutor me.”

He frowns at you as he begins to leave. You trail after him. “Please?”

He sighs deeply. Like a man burdened with the weight of his own world on his shoulders. Byron’s brooding, romantic hero, in his melodramatic glory. “Fine. Stop annoying me.”

You smile. “Thanks. Meet you at your dorm after dinner?”

He sighs again. “ Don’t be late or I'll lock the door and go to bed.”

He watched the seconds tick by in agonising motion – a man awaiting his sentence, but also his reprieve. Is this what his classmates felt before they took tests? It certainly seemed like it. Relief was on the horizon, and yet great suffering was imminent. He’d never known the feeling until now.

But as they say, the harder the rain, the sweeter the sun, and he wasn’t about to relinquish his quest to decipher you. 

It seemed mutual as he paced in front of his front door, having eaten dinner at the cafeteria early to mentally prepare himself. 

When your knock finally sounded at his door, he sighed, checked his watch, then reluctantly opened the door. 

You were a picture to behold. 

Hair slightly damp from a shower, drowning in loose, oversized clothing. It was all painfully domestic to see you walk through his doorway, scanning his living space. In the back of his mind, he thought it felt right, but he shook his head. 

You were messing with him again. 

Two could play that game. 

“Take a seat.” He pulled out a stool from his kitchen island. “Want a drink?”

“What, like alcohol?” you huffed. 

“Are you an alcoholic?”

“Only if you want me to be.” you shrug, setting down your notes on the bench.

He sighs exasperatedly, already berating himself for agreeing to this. He never agreed to tutor anyone. Why were you the exception? You shouldn’t be. 

His hypothesis: you were trying to get something out of him. A way to cheat the class, his academic favour, something hedonistic, even. It seemed plausible enough, but you listened intently as he explained the concepts the professor spoke of in the lecture, asking questions and actively engaging with his explanation. 

It didn’t seem like there was any ulterior motive. So why was he letting you break his rules and defy his nature?

“God, why didn't the prof explain it during that lesson? Everyone struggled.”

“You’re not smart enough to understand his concise methods, then.” he huffed. 

“You’re too smart.”

“You’re not smart enough.”

“Smart ass,”

“Get back to work. You did that question wrong, by the way.”

You groaned. “Where?”

He was so caught up in your quarrels that he didn’t notice the time grinding away at the pestle. It was nearly midnight when you’d finally caught up with that day’s classwork, and he sighed in relief. 

“You understand?”

“Yes. You don’t have to worry now.”

“I won’t. Now get out.”

“No drink?” you frowned, pretending to sulk at his expense. He simply stared at you, getting up from his stool and walking to the fridge. 

Remarkably, he pulled out two beers. 

“Don’t speak. If you do, I'll regret allowing you over again.”

A smile befell your lips. “I’m not saying anything.”

“I don’t like the look on your face.”

“Wipe it off then.”

A frown.  His new hypothesis: you were trying to seduce him for better grades, more tutoring sessions, or for his own downfall. 

“Drink and leave.”

“If you say so.” you take the chilled bottle and drink. He watches your throat move, and he thinks of himself as pathetic as he drinks as well, wincing at the bitterness. 

“Do you live by yourself?” you ask, head propped onto your hand. 

“I do.”

“Are you lonely or something?”

“No, people are irritating.” Like you.

“What a ray of sunshine you are.” You’re not much better.

“I don’t have to put up with any idiocy.”

“If you say so.”

Quiet passes as beer fizzes in the bottles, golden liquid sloshing at the sides of the glass. 

One thing you learn that night is that Veritas Ratio, the famed multiple time valedictorian of your university, is an extreme lightweight. His cheeks become red quicker than you can finish your bottle, and he starts to grumble nonsense under his breath. 

“You’re really smart, you know?” he suddenly says after mumbling something about quantum physics.

“What was that?” 

“You’re really smart. Really smart. Impressive.”

“Really?”

“Yes, you idiot, how many times do I have to repeat myself?” he leans on the bench, not entirely aware of his surroundings as he does so.  He squints at the ground. 

He’s a cute drunk, you realise begrudgingly.

“Thanks, Veritas. You’re smart too.”

“I know.” he drinks from his bottle again, swirling the dregs. “But I can’t figure you out.”

“Hm?”

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Like what?”

“Do you hate me?”

You hesitate for a moment. “Yes.”

“Then why are you like this?”

Your eyebrows raise. 

“You’re making me irrational. I can’t figure it out.”

“...Sorry?”

“You should be. You know, I was nearly late to class today because of you. You kept me awake.”

“Really?”

“I couldn’t stop thinking. Thoughts. And things.”

You laugh at his predicament, draining your beer and gathering your things. Trying to leave before he said anything that could turn the encounter south. 

“Wait. Don’t go.” he slams his palm onto your notes, determination in his eyes. 

“I need to go to bed.” you say as if scolding a child.

“I need to figure you out. You’re still an enigma to me. The anomaly of my behaviour. Is this your intention?”

“What are you talking about? You’re drunk.”

“I can think. I can move. I can see fine. I’m not drunk. Answer me.”

“Maybe I'm just so mesmerising to you.” you joke, but his brows furrowed in thought. 

“Maybe.” he retracts his hand from your notes, and you stow them away into your bag, slinging it onto your shoulder before he can do anything else. 

As you’re halfway to the door, he pushes you against the wall. 

You never realised how tall he was until then. How much of a height difference you had, or how muscular he was. He had to have worked out on a daily basis. The pungent smell of alcohol lingered on his breath, and his cheeks were tainted with deep red as he searched your gaze. 

You decide he’s officially lost his mind, but who were you to complain?

“Are you mesmerising?” he whispers, eyes trailing down your face, examining and analysing, his hand tracing down your body with those slender scholar’s hands.

“You tell me.”

Then he grabs your face and mashes your lips together. The kiss is rough, biting and rushed. You freeze for a sliver of a second before returning it, letting him decide your allure with his own devices. 

He pulls away almost too fast, lips kiss bitten, breath fast. 

“You’re a siren.”

“Am I?”

“You’re going to ruin me.”

“What a weak man you are, if it only takes one woman to ruin you.”

“I hate you.”

“Really?”

“I hate it because I’d probably let you.”

“Are you a masochist?”

“Not in my right mind. I’ll wake up and regret everything, but it’ll all be the same, fundamentally.”

“So what’s your conclusion?”

He still has you pushed against the wall, caged within himself. “You were put into this world to bring about my destruction.”

“How? Why?”

“You’re my opposite. Brash, naive, carefree.”

“Are you normally this analytical of people?”

“No, which supports my point.”

“I see. So you’re going to let me ruin your image?”

“No. I hate you for it.”

“Let me go then.”

He wordlessly steps away, and you stumble to the door. 

“So what are we?” you ask, turned away from him. You can’t see the way he drinks in your visage like a starving man, and the small, sober part of him is grateful for it. 

“Polar opposites.”

“I mean who am I to you?”

He’s silent for a while, so you turn back to him to find him leaning on the wall, gazing into space. 

“Veritas?”

“You’re my undoing. A catalyst, maybe, for my downfall. But there must be balance, right? So what are you?”

“What am I?”

“I don’t know.”

You knew then that he was beyond reason. Was this what you did to him? You took some sadistic pride in seeing a man such as himself reduced to a mumbling, questioning, incoherent mess. You were somewhat pleased with the effect you had on him., but you could never let him know this. 

He crumpled to the floor, back to the wall, clutching his head in his hands. “I’ll figure you out.”

“Sure you will. Goodnight, Veritas.”

“Night.”

Your smile was brighter than the morning as you left his apartment, embracing the night’s welcoming chill. 

written by @atlaswav , published 15th of July 2024

[midnightsslut]

religion is one of the most prominent recurring themes on the album, and it has been present in some capacity for quite a few records now. taylor previously compared love to religion: her saving grace, her belief system, and a fated divine intervention (false god, cornelia street, and cruel summer are the best examples of this). ‘sacred new beginnings that became my religion’ and ‘we’d still worship this love even if it’s a false god’ are two of the defining statements about her philosophy on the lover album.

taylor doesn’t want to leave all of that behind on ttpd, at least not at the beginning. the first supernatural force she mentions is the spaceship on down bad, which she compares to a skylight of freedom in the epilogue. *something* has finally come to save her from her life of suffering. she doesn’t care if it’s a force of good at first; if anything, she’s just fine being taken away by aliens. she views this man as her destiny. it isn’t until guilty as sin? that taylor starts to ponder the moral implications of what she’s doing. is she guilty as sin for wanting to leave her previous religion and relationship behind? she comes to the conclusion that, even if she rolls the stone away and gets resurrected/redeemed, she cannot avoid the fallout. she is okay with the thought of having to wait, as long as both lovers vow to be together forever, just as she once did with someone else in false god. ‘I choose you and me religiously’ finishes the bridge of the song in a direct callback to cornelia street.

the next mention of religion has murkier imagery. she claims that she does not need the Lord’s help to save this man. she sees the halo that he has, and she can fix him herself. now that she feels free of her prior cage, she isn’t looking for divine intervention anymore. she wants control. she is their route to salvation.

when the relationship falls apart, she retreats back into the position of a believer rather than a divine figure. she compares him to a Holy Ghost who promised to save her and take her to heaven. instead, she is in hell in every sense of the word: she’s down bad and feels guilty for digging up the grave. he was a jehovah’s witness who promised that she could break free of the cage imposed by love without changing her religion altogether; she would’ve just had to switch denominations. she could still have a marriage and kids! she could still have a blue tortured poet! the man was different, but not the dreams they had together. the story of the first part of the album ends here. her faith has been broken, and she has only found any semblance of sanity by refusing to mention these belief systems altogether.

side b/the anthology blends the christian imagery of side a with goddesses, sorcerers, and prophecies. she bargains with these powers to let her have the future she wants (the prophecy). she doesn’t sound like someone believing in salvation. if anything, she feels cursed. she decides that the concept of divinely ordained timing will never work in certain relationships (‘the goddess of timing once found us beguiling / she said she was trying / peter, was she lying?’). this disdain extends onto her perception of other people’s faith (‘bet they never spared a prayer for my soul’). she does position herself as a prophet in cassandra, but even then, she admits that the role has hurt her. perhaps the pain in thank you aimee was meant to be, or perhaps she was just strong enough to build a legacy in spite of it, boulder by boulder. is she a martyr? does she want to be? or did she save herself?

the only real love song on this half of the album makes no mention of fate or any divine forces. it wasn’t meant to be. it’s not a supernatural invisible string or lightning in a bottle. she is just in love.

the album ends with the manuscript, which revisits an old story of a defining, formative heartbreak. as she sings ‘at last, she knew what the agony had been for’ while describing the legacy of her writing, she seems to revert to thinking about the purpose of trauma. the only exception is that, in this case, she is the one who found meaning in her pain by turning it into a manuscript. writing is her belief system now, and she proselytizes by telling her stories and thus giving up the manuscript.

ultimately, her belief in destiny has chewed her up and spat her out. she so desperately clung to her existing belief systems that she was fooled by a conman, which left her feeling cursed. religion is supposed to be with someone even in their darkest moments, but the album explains that taylor often felt abandoned. the only constant in her life was, well, herself. she’ll be okay, but her pen will be her saving grace.

[arminsumi]

Seeing ex!Geto again after years

💗 すぐる

note : srry to make y'all cry 👍 this was written from a raw heart lol

summary : oh god, he still loves you. oh god. all of it comes back to him in the moment he sees you. you say his name and it feels like a gunshot wound to the chest.

warnings : angst, kinda hopeful ending, not proofread

playme : my love mine all mine

In the moment you turn to face the stranger, the world stops. Or at least the world between you and him. You always did "live in your own world" when you were dating, everyone pointed it out.

When Suguru sees you for the first time after not talking to you for... what, a year? He's so stricken. His eyes widen. His pupils dilate a bit. The color drains from his face. He doesn't know what he feels, but it's a snapping shattering breaking ruining feeling.

And when you, so shocked as you are, whisper his name with a chip in your voice "Suguru...?" It's like a gunshot wound to his heart. Bang. It kills him. And god it's only his name, isn't it crazy that the effect is so severe?

It has such a hold on him, you saying his name. He can't move; he's stationary, statue-like just like you in the middle of this cafe. He's paralyzed by your voice. The voice that used to sing him to sleep. The voice that used to talk philosophy with him at 2:32 AM on school nights. The voice that was the only thing that calmed him down during his darkest hours.

He stutters. No words come out of him or you, and yet so much is said. So much is said.

"Hey." he chokes out.

"Hey." you return.

Isn't it funny, he thinks when he gets home and slumps against the door after closing it.

How we used to speak until we ran out of breath, until we exhausted all topics possible. And then stared with pure love at each other in silence...

...and yet when you encountered each other in public by chance again, nothing but "hey"? He used to tell you that he was gonna spend his whole life with you. He used to call you baby. He used to cradle you in his arms. He used to love you vehemently. He used to kiss you until he gasped for air and laughed. He used to smile into those kisses. He used to swear he was yours, all yours. He etched your name into his skin, not figuratively; when you were teenagers you were fucking insane and giggled over the idea of etching your names into each other.

Sad. So sad. He feels his whole chest weighted, gravity pulls on his heart like it's pulling him into a grave.

While in bed, he stares at your phone number in his contacts. He blocks and unblocks. He types and deletes. He calls and ends calls. He nibbles his lip and sighs and gives up.

What would I even say...?

The image of a memory from September 21st 2019 flashes in his eyes. Your smiling face. Okinawa.

He snaps. And calls you. And it rings, rings rings rings rings rings —

"...hello? Whose number is this?" you ask, voice sending a shiver down his spine.

Fuck, that voice. That voice... is capable of murder. You kill me, baby. You kill me with your voice alone.

He makes a strangled noise. Tears roll off his cheeks. There's so many tears in fact. So many. Endless. It hurts him to shed every single one. And all his tears are for you.

"...Suguru, is that you?"

How could she know?

He chokes up and stutters, and says the quietest "hey" after clearing his throat.

It's 1:30 AM.

"You're still a night owl?"

There's tense silence............................................then you chuckle and it fucking breaks him. Devastates him. Tortures him so deliciously. Oh he missed that. Oh god he missed that. That laugh. That laugh is so beautiful to him. It's so brief and yet it nourishes his whole soul just to hear your laugh again. Oh god your laugh. Oh god... your voice.

Oh god, you.

"I am, yeah." you respond. "But you're awake too, aren't you?"

I want to hear her say my name again.

"I am..."

Please say my name again.

"You are."

Baby say my name. Say my name. Say my name.

There's silence. He knows, and you know, that the both of you are feeling flashbacks of memories crashing over the two of you like tidal waves. Memories of you and him.

Us.

"...did you ever think of me?" you ask.

"...I thought of you every day from the moment we parted."

You choke up. You laugh to cope with his revelation.

"How dramatic..." he can hear your voice grow hoarse, like you're in pain but trying to be funny. Because... it is funny, isn't it? This insanity we call reality?

"Sorry..."

"I've got to sleep... got work tomorrow."

"Me too."

"Okay..."

"Yeah."

"Hey?"

"Yeah?"

He holds his breath.

"Suguru."

His whole world... god, it's... he just... he...

"Y/n."

The two of you hang up.

A few minutes pass. Then the two of you call each other again. It's you calling him. His heart thumps hard. His chest is so tight.

"...hey."

"...hey."

And then... well, it's... it's just like the old days. But different. But still... that old feeling engulfs you and him during this phone call.

A phone call that starts at 1 AM and ends at 5 AM.

Dawn comes. When birds chirp.

And the two of you pass out while talking, the phone call still going. You wake up and see that he never ended the call after saying he would once you fell asleep.

[brittle-doughie]

“So I’ll give you a tiny spoiler. Our first Beast Cookie has faced their fair share of anguish and as such, has their own clear philosophy on life. However, the decisions that these beliefs have led them to make may now pose a grave threat to the Cookie world as a whole.”

Ihwan Kim, CRK Project Director.

———————————————————————

Mystic Flour Cookie never saw a point in considering the life around her when it can all be destroyed in an instant, even life that she grew to care about, to get attached with. One motion of her hand and it was reduced to dust and nothingness.

Apathy made her think that nothing mattered, that she shouldn’t have a reason to care on who or what was around her….

“Y/N Cookie, know that you are an ally and a friend. I could not have asked for a more capable cookie than you…”

Mystic Flour opened her eyes, her snake slit pupils showing. Just like her peer Shadow Milk Cookie, Mystic Flour can hear what her Soul Jam successor is saying through the sword that held the soul jam…

This was just one of many conversations she caught..another that brought up this…Y/N Cookie…

Just who were they that was garnering this much mention from her successor….

She needed an image, she must see the face of this cookie…

The soul jam within the Grape Jam Choco Sword glinted for a brief moment.

She had a clear view….

…

She understood now….

When she looked deep into that cookie’s eyes for that brief moment, something..sparked within Mystic Flour that she hadn’t felt in a long time….

A semblance…of care.

She needed to pursue this feeling…

That single image of Y/N Cookie in her head….

…

…

She’s coming for them…

[spacelazarwolf]

Qinat Be'eri (A Lamentation for Be'eri) by Yagel Haroush

Yagel Haroush is a singer, a kamancheh and ney player, a poet, a composer of piyutim (traditional religious songs) and a teacher of Middle Eastern music. After completing his studies at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, Yagel earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and was awarded the Daoud Al-Kuwaiti Scholarship for musical excellence. Yagel specializes in performing and composing music based on maqam, the Middle Eastern modal system. He studied the Persian form of maqam, known as dastgah, with Prof. Piris Eliyahu and his son Mark Eliyahu, and Arab maqam with Prof. Taiseer Elias. As a child, he absorbed the liturgical poetic tradition of the Moroccan piyut (religious song) at his grandfather’s home in the southern Israeli city of Dimona, where every Shabbat, a group of paytanim (composers and singers of piyutim) would gather. Later, he delved into the secrets of the baqashot (“supplications”), a Sephardic mystical singing tradition practiced by Moroccan Jews. Yagel’s ensemble, Shir Yididot, performs original reinterpretations of this tradition that situate the baqashot within the broader context of Middle Eastern mystical song. The group released its debut album in 2016. Yagel is also the founder of the Study Center for Makam and Piyut, where he teaches composition and performance, as well as theoretical performance studies based on Jewish sources – philosophy, Kabbalah and Midrash. He also founded the School of Oriental Music in the Negev in the town of Yeruham, and Kedem, a school for composition in the spirit of maqam in Jerusalem.

Qinat Be’eri was written by Yagel Haroush in the month of Marḥeshban after the massacres on 7 October and disseminated on social media. (The text of the qinah here is as shared on the website Kipa on 7 January 2024.) The initial English translation and notes was shared by Yosef Goldman and Josh Fleet. (These notes were very lightly edited for clarity.) On Tishah b’Av, a second English translation was offered by Dr. Susan Weingarten. –Aharon Varady

Eikhah [1] – Alas! my well [2] has turned into my grave. And the day of my light [3] has become my darkness And all fruit has been destroyed and my singing overturned. My eyes pour forth water [4] from the depth of my brokenness.

Eikhah — Israel on a day of calling to God. Life was requested but chaos received Elder and infant wallow in blood. [6] His festival desecrated by a merciless enemy. My eyes pour forth water from the depth of my brokenness.

Eikhah — mothers, girls, and young women Taken into captivity as in the days of pogroms And fences were breached righteous sheep And the dancing ceased and the songs of my singers My eyes pour forth water from the depth of my brokenness

And eikhah — I wonder, you who enobled her — How long shall a nation live in upheaval How long shall her stature be brought low to the ground And now, arise to kindle my lamp [7] And from the wellsprings of your mercy heal my brokenness And my eye [8] that pours forth will water Be’eri

The opening word of the Book of Lamentations, “איכה” — translated as “alas!” or “how?!?” — is often used in Jewish poetry of lament — ḳinnot — that memorialize the Jewish people, from the liturgy for mourning the Temple’s destruction to today.

Be’eri means “my well.” [Be’eri here also refers to Kibbutz Be’eri, the site of one of the massacres that took place on 7 October 2023. — ANV]

A reference to the festival of Simḥat Torah on which the massacres took place. In TaNaKh and Rabbinic literature, Torah is compared to both light and water. “For the commandment is a lamp, the teaching of Torah is a light” (Proverbs 6:23) and “A flowing stream, a fountain of wisdom” (Proverbs 18:4). Also find Shir haShirim Rabbah 1:2.

"For these do I weep, my eyes flow with tears; far from me is a comforter who might revive my spirit; my children are forlorn, for the foe has prevailed” (Lamentations 1:16)

i.e. Simḥat Torah.

Find Ezekiel 15:6, “When I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you: ‘Live despite your blood’…”

It is you who light my lamp; YHVH my elo’ah lights up my darkness” (Psalms 18:29).

Hebrew, עין (‘ayin), means both “spring” and “eye.”

[bloodofasteria]

👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 how to find out about your future spouse (sidereal) 🪽 pt.1

( CONFUSED? NEED HELP? → EXAMPLES ! )

✴︎ where/how/when am i going to meet them?

take your moon sign and

make it the asc, check the

ruling planet of the desc

and see what house it’s in:

1st house → while expressing the self, during a first impression, public outings, popular places where people make “appearances” (disney land, concerts, fan con’s or whatever, etc)

2nd house → when making money/working, going about your daily routine, doing something out of habit

3rd house → speaking publicly, introduced by siblings or friends that act like siblings, doing social activities and interests, may have met them in early education or could possibly be a neighbor

4th house → homelike environments, places you’re comfortable in, introduced by mother, family, lady friends, feminine friends or children, environments indulgent in self-care (beauty salons, yoga, spas, etc) or places you have roots from

5th house → places where you play, have fun, express your inner child and overall self-expression (parks, parties, creative arts, etc) environments where you express creativity (acting, painting, making/playing music, making arts n crafts, etc)

6th house → places where you’re giving a service of some kind (pet/homeless shelters), places of health and fitness, in a system of some kind (rehab, jail, church, school, etc)

7th house → places where contracts take place, introduced by current relationship/business partners or friends who are taken/married, “romantic” places like those planned to matchmake you to meet potential partners or environments where equality takes place

8th house → institutions of the occult or shared resources (libraries, cults, stores, etc) places that death/rebirth or transformation occurs (hospitals, graves/funerals, doctor offices, etc)

9th house → places in higher education, during long distance travel, environments of spirituality, philosophy or religion

10th house → while accomplishing long term goals, introduced by father, guy friends or those who have a masculine presence, places where you’re doing your career

11th house → introduced by friend groups or a community of some kind, meeting online through social media, places where networking happens or communities get together

12th house → places where healing, isolation and solitude goes down (mental hospitals, prison, rehab, etc) introduced by people of an older age, during endings taking place and gaining closure of some kind

✴︎ what is my future spouse like? what do they look like?

find your darakaraka (the

planet in your chart that

holds the lowest degree

out of all traditional planets)

☉ sun → future spouse is confident, radiant, extroverted but has the ability to be egotistical, selfish and dramatic. indicates a partner who’s attractive and has a high status in society. could be tall, have a fair to medium complexion and brown hair

☾ moon → future spouse is caring, intimate, intuitive but has the ability to be overly-sensitive, moody and overly-emotional. indicates a partner who is willing to compromise and has a drive towards music. native with dk planet in moon could have multiple marriages. could be short, curvy, feminine looking, chubby or dark complexion/features

☿ mercury → future spouse is talkative, youthful, friendly but has the ability to be carefree, judgemental and inconsistent. indicates a partner who is younger than the native and when the two of you meet they may be in another relationship. could be of medium height and have strong cheekbones

♀venus → future spouse is charming, romantic, compromising, but has the ability to be materialistic, a people-pleaser and slow at building momentum in the relationship. indicates a partner who is beautiful/handsome, highly connected and wealthy. could be of medium height, have dark eyes and possess beautiful hair

♂ mars → future spouse is courageous, bold, adventurous, but has the ability to be argumentative, dominating and impulsive. indicates a partner who is very protective, highly sexually active, into sports/fitness (could be an athlete) and someone who can fix/solve things in life. could be physically strong, physically active, have broad shoulders, bright eyes, tinted complexion and colored hair

♃ jupiter → future spouse is charitable, creative, spiritual, but has the ability to be tactless, spacey and overly-optimistic. indicates a partner who is loyal, very wealthy/rich, protective, well educated, humorous and a lover of traveling and exploring different cultures. could be of medium to tall height, good build, has light eye color, from a foreign national and might be chubby

♄ saturn → future spouse is firm, pragmatic, mature, but has the ability to be cold, stubborn, and unromantic. indicates a partner who is duty-bound, is significantly older than the native, subject to be in a long lasting relationship with the native despite hard times. could be tall, thin, dark hair/eyes, thick eyebrows, strong and notable cheekbones and bones in general

✴︎ when talking about future spouses in vedic, most astrologers say to use jupiter for husband and venus for wife. what sign & house it’s in can also give more details on your future spouse

♈︎ aries → partner is strong, ambitious, independent and likely to initiate and take on the leadership role in the relationship. most likely accomplished in chosen career.

in 1st house → indicates a partner who will bring out your true and best self. will be very open and direct about their attraction towards you. can expand your sense of self and make you feel self-assured.

♉︎ taurus → partner is calm, security-oriented, practical and likely to be vocal about their beliefs and go after someone who shares the same views. most likely to take their time when making big decisions.

in 2nd house → indicates a partner who will make you feel lucky and blessed. marriage will be full of mutual benefits and financial blessings. can benefit from blind dates or arranged meetings.

♊︎ gemini → partner is witty, intellectual, versatile and likely to be attracted to a bunch of different personality types. most likely to date around a bit before finding someone who they like. tends to attract difficult relationships.

in 3rd house → indicates a partner who will be communicative with you and think about you a lot. marriage will be full of social activities and doing common interests together. can fall in love with someone you grew up with.

♋︎ cancer → partner is compassionate, nurturing, emotional and likely not worried about showing their feelings to you. you two will most likely have a happy home life/family life with children.

in 4th house → indicates a partner who will be protective over you and who feels like home. marriage will be cozy and built on an emotional foundation. can benefit from attending dinner parties hosted by friends or walking your dog near home.

♌︎ leo → partner is outgoing, attentive, affectionate and likely to shower you with gifts and treat you like royalty. most likely to be widely known and the center of attention at times.

in 5th house → indicates a partner who will be romantic and very self-expressive. marriage will be full of fun and doing childlike creative activities together. can benefit from being very social while having fun experiences.

♍︎ virgo → partner is hard-working, dutiful, humble and likely to have things figured out before coming to you. most likely to know what they want in life and approach it appropriately.

in 6th house → indicates a partner whose love language is acts of service and who wants to help you. marriage will be built on an analytical nature and doing everyday mundane tasks together. can benefit from going out more, as you’re more likely to meet your spouse from doing everyday tasks.

♎︎ libra → partner is civil, relatable, rational and likely to romanticize their relationship with you from the start. most likely to have been in lots of long-term relationships.

in 7th house → indicates a partner who will likely approach you first. marriage will be harmonious and balanced. might have a few long-term relationships before you meet the one. spouse could have a position of authority in their career.

♏︎ scorpio → partner is deep, private, strategic and likely to obsess about their relationship with you and be calculating in their interactions with you. most likely to seek a life partner who shares the same values and someone who you can grow with.

in 8th house → indicates a partner who will have a strong desire for deep and meaningful connections. marriage will be very intimate and the couple will likely to have merged spiritually. can benefit from going on spiritual retreats/religious gatherings/group events with like-minded individuals.

♐︎ sagittarius → partner is free-spirited, optimistic, and open to new experiences and opportunities that bring change. most likely to seek a relationship that expands your worldview and perspectives on different things.

in 9th house → indicates a partner who comes from a different country/background than you. marriage will be full of trying new experiences and having a bunch of fun together. can benefit from long distance travel, as you’re more likely to meet your spouse in a place far from you. also could benefit from higher education, as you could meet your spouse while attending university or gaining higher knowledge.

♑︎ capricorn → partner is mature, serious, enterprising and likely to approach you after your saturn return or after you’ve been married more than once. they take the relationship seriously and know what commitment they are making when they sign up; they’re responsible for their obligations in love and you can rely on them. most likely to seek a relationship with someone who has a position of authority or older than you.

in 10th house → indicates a partner who is of a similar career path as you or a bit older age wise. marriage will be full of commitment and following through on things together. can benefit from going networking with colleagues, as you’re more likely to meet your spouse while working.

♒︎ aquarius → partner is unique, eccentric, free-thinking and likely to challenge societal norms while still making you feel seen. most likely to seek relationships with someone who isn’t traditional/conventional and someone who could be your best friend as you share the world together.

in 11th house → indicates a partner who is of the same friend group as you or someone you meet through your friends or online dating. marriage will be unconventional and full of friendship; the two of you will be the best of friends. can benefit from going to social meet-ups like trivia night as you’re more likely to meet your spouse while socializing with different groups.

♓︎ pisces → partner is intuitive, dreamy, soft-hearted and likely to be creative and artistic when approaching you; they may appear as a hopeless romantic. most likely to seek relationships with someone who sweeps you off your feet and shows selfless devotion to you. may have their career in the arts or therapy.

in 12th house → indicates a partner who is self-sacrificing and who would work through any issue or problem that needs healing together. marriage will be very devotional and healing; you will go through lots of stages together. can benefit from healing inner wounds and mental health, as you’re more likely to meet your spouse while working on yourself.

part two → coming soon !

[evilminji]

Know what's been haunting me? And my Yandere loving brain?

What if... an SI-OC? Fffffucked UP™?

Like? STRAIGHT up "....Oh No. I have? GRAVELY miscalculated."? Cause? And I'm probably wrong here, or forgetting nuisances, but? Dooku? Left the order and began his Fall? NOT because he disagreed with the vast majority of Jedi philosophy... but?

Because of what the Jedi had BECOME.

Senate attack dogs. Indentured servants. Following NOT the Force or their Orders Mandate, but a mere GOVERMANT. Politicians. Straight into ruin and slaughter no less! It was vile. Corrupt. A perversion and degradation of HIS beloved Jedi Order.

He was proud and filled with grief, isolated. Palpatine chose well.

But! He was ALSO a Master Jedi with DECADES of Mastery under his belt. You do not become that with out clear vision of what you want. Who you ARE. And Dooku? Very CLEARLY planned on winning. Killing Sidious and taking his place. An unfortunate necessity, really. In his Grand Plan™.

Too?

Start over, obviously.

Instead of just leaving and starting a NORMAL Religious Schism, building a temple on Serrano, and publicly calling his old Council members lil bitchs. Slap fighting in the town square, as is traditional. Maybe sending pass aggressive notes back and forth in the hands of increasingly spoiled Padawan, because OUR temple at least FEEDS these POOR WAIFS. Etc etc?

Dude went the SITH route. Of... you know... "kill everybody".

Bit extreme. Just saying.

However! Dooku? Not well! In fact, DEEPLY unhinged and masterfully hiding it! Because he is, in fact, a MASTER jedi! And know how to fucking DO THAT. So that slow creep of Deepyly Crazy? No one sees it. Gives ya time to miss the countdown to Boom, as it were.

Which leads to our dearly beloved SI. She? Is a well meaning IDIOT. She can't help it. It's the Force, man. All that feel good juice, clogging up her brain! Making her? Optimistic! Vaguely perky! Wanting to see the GOOD in people!!!

Disturbing, she knows. But it is what it is.

And MASTER Dooku? Feels? Stern but warm. Stalwart. Like one of those ancient trees or great temples in a quite moment. Old and powerful, not necessarily KIND, but certainly not UNKIND. Just... fussy, you know? Proper. Collected and self contained. Doesn't like messy and dirty and needless noise.

So... what's an itty bitty Crecheling to do? To stop this Respected Master from falling? Well... Yoda seems to think "babies" works? And SHE is Baby...

Better scrub down so I'm EXTRA not "why are all children so... sticky?" and make my self look as presentable as possible. Then? Plan: Stalk the Respected Master Dooku Like A Duckling is a GO~! Yoda finds this INSTANTLY hilarious. Starts feeding her insider information (One of his many, later Great Regrets).

Dooku likes THIS tea. Meditates in THIS garden. Ask him about THIS subject, no one listens to him rant about it, he'll enjoy lecturing you about it for HOURS. She actually learns quite a lot! Man's a good teacher. And SHE? Is a dutiful, polite, thoughtful, shining young paragon example of what he feels the Jedi SHOULD be.

She LISTENS. Unlike his foolish peers. She tries to better herself, day by day, instead of running around screaming and playing in mud. Asks after etiquette from the courts he's traveled too, so she does not offend in the future. Does not react with blind disgust to questions others would deem heretical!

Instead? SHE comes from a JEDI place of approach with compassion and consultation of the Force. What creates the most GOOD? How can we strive for the kindest, most ethical, most equal social possible? What brings the universe the most Light? Where do OUR duties end and the duties of OTHERS begin, and when is it time to call them on their failings, should there be any?

It is? Delightful~ if he were not already committed to his path, he would seriously consider taking her on as a Padawn. Like the Granddaughter he never had. In FACT? He is conflicted. While he does not wish to lose the bright little light he has become so accustomed too? He should probably do what is best for her.

He IS leaving after all. Eventually. Perhaps after Qui-Gon finally knights his own padawn. He can convince the man to come with him. A talk between them has been so very, very long overdue. And the man is like a son to him. Young Obi-Wan is a fine young Jedi. Upstanding and collected, could use a bit of tempering. Outrageous flirt. It would be hilarious.

It's a good plan.... right up until it isn't.

Until the Council's BLINDNESS lead his SON to dying alone. For Sidious little games. And the place in HIS chosen lineage is USURPED by some WHINY SAND COVERED BRAT who can not CONTROL himself! No. NO.

Absolutely Not.

As far as HE is concerned? HIS lineage? Goes him, Qui-gon, Obi-Wan, and then SI-OC. No Sand Brat. Is he spiraling? Oh yes. Has been for a while. But now? NOW someone just kicked out a major support beam. The building is a'shaking. SI-OC is worried. Knows this could make or break his Fall.

Doesn't realize that ship has sailed LONG before she arrived.

Jedi Master's do not Fall over night. It is the slow erosion that kills them. Death by ten thousand cuts. He was already thousands deep. Bleeding and bleeding, beyond her abilities to heal. Yoda could have changed things. He is a Master. But a mere Crecheling? An untrained child? No. She stood no chance.

Does not realize that, as she stands in the heart of the storm. The center of the bear trap. As composed Master Dooku grieves and rages, hair disheveled and robes a mess. No, he can not come to the comm right now. No, he is not taking visitors, thank you. Please, Master Dooku. Please! Drink some tea? Eat? Something. Anything. I beg you.

It is a focal point. An anchor to cling to, in that great Fall. As SI-OC fusses with blankets and music that might help, pressing her small and fragile light against his shields like a comforting weight. As though trying to protect him from the pain. As though ANYTHING could protect him.

Sits with him, in remembrance.

Comes with him, to the funeral.... where stands the sand brat. At HER Master's side. As though enough has not been stolen. How dare he? How dare THEY? To allow this!? Hatred festers. Rage. The mania that Darkness brings. He sees now. Ooooo ho ho, does he now see.

The Order has become Rotten. It cannot be saved. The Jedi have lost their way.

The old must be purged... and they must begin again.

It's all so CLEAR now. So simple. The path forward. Its so obvious now, HE is not leaving, oh no, THEY are leaving. It would be madness to leave a vulnerable Crecheling in such unfettered corruption. Exposed to the nonexistent mercies of Sidious and his ilk. Not to mention, Force knows what filth they'd attempt to stuff in her head behind his back!

Knight Kenobi is an adult. Can comport himself and defend his person. SI-OC can not. She is just a youngling. Should have BARELY been a padawn. But... things have changed.

SI-OC fall asleep, comfortable and certain she is perfectly safe, in MASTER Dooku's apartments. Just another Tea Time and obscure Force Philosophy lecture. Maybe some hands-on etiquette lessons. There are many, MANY different ways to take tea. And... man... the room is so cozy. Always so comfortable and tastefully inviting. Warm an... an snoozy... feelin... *thunk of a small child falling over, dead to the world*

Drugged? Sleep suggestion? Soothing bedtime tea? Yes. Yes, he did. She stood literally negative chances. He scoops up HIS granddaughter and leaves droids to pack the rest. Tucks her under his cloak. No one thinks to even check. Who would? He is trusted. Respected. It is well known how he dotes upon the child. Old age has softened him, some jest.

The dangers of attachment indeed. But it is not HIM who is in danger. It is HER who his attachment endangers. Because he can not let go. WILL NOT. Because it can crossed from caring to obsessive. Possessive. To mine, mine, mine.

Children are not property. Not toys or trophies. Teddy bears to squeeze until your hurt stops. They are living, breathing, entities in their own right. Which is something a JEDI would be able to accept. The SITH? No. No, see, his Great-grandpadawn is HIS. This is HIS family. HIS Jedi order. HIS plan to "fix" everything.

She done fucked up.

She wakes up on a ship to Serrano with COUNT Dooku.

His... his eyes turn Interesting Colors now. Ha ha... she is... staying Very Calm. It is REALLY important to stay VERY calm. No sudden movements. We Do Not startle the Darksider! Eeeeeeverones FRIENDS here! R-Right?

Oh of course. Nothing to be worried about, dear. You're just going to his Manor until the NEW temple is finished. (Neat. Terrifying. So, SO many horrifying parts of that sentence). And SI-OC? Pulls the good ol "never argue with the crazy person with a gun" technique. Smile and Nod! Mmmmhmmm! G-great! Can't wait!

(Oh god, help me)

War breaks out. She's on THE Separatist planet. But not? Before crazy grandpa? Has hired bounty hunters to find him force sensitive kids. You know, for the NEW Jedi order. Because we're all pretending here. Smile and nod, fellow hostages. For the love of the Force, smile and nod.

She's not entirely even certain half these children were from families that WANTED to give them up. It makes her sick to think about.

She still has to have Tea Time. Because she, a child, is the HEAD of the New Order. And he has decades of Jedi knowledge to impart. Also? Lonely and fixating. We're a happy family. Because I say so and have hostages. That's why you love you, don't you dear? *SI-OC with a wide, terrified hostage smile* mmmmhmm!

The Jedi? Have figured out what happened. Crecheling mysteriously disappeared at the same time a Count Dooku? They originally thought she tried to follow him. Got lost or grabbed by slavers. But now... NOW? Oh Force they know they horrifying truth. The Darksider stole a CHILD.

Everyone remembers SI-OC. She was the sweet little duckling. Well behaved and polite. A kind child. Worried for Count Dooku. And now look at what's happened?! The CIS is trotting out the "head" or their "new order" and it's their lost Crecheling. Now a teenager. Terror in her eyes and a fixed jedi smile.

The Creche Masters have to be physically dragged away from stealth ships. (They're just going to talk! They're jUST GOING TO TAL-!!!) Plo Koon is fucking HELPING and that's NOT helpful! No, your commander do NOT have "a point"! You can not do just a "little bit" of murder as "a treat"!

A certain Quinlan Vos? Never heard of him, of course, rocks up to this New Order with a smoothie. Has betrayed the OLD order and the Republic. Definitely for realisies and not because he's here to spy! Heeeeey, kiddo. How you holding up?

Answer? Oh THANK GOD, AN ADULT JEDI! Halp! Followed by gross sobbing. So... you know... not GREAT. Wouldn't recommend it.

But! The INTEL. Sweet holy shit, kid. Chips. Palpatine. Dooku behind the Clones. Everything ELSE she's quietly been noting down. Uuuuh, yeah. Yeah that WILL be... real useful.... Holy shit. No, seriously, give him a second. Just like that? Huh. Didn't even have to convince you. Wow. Okay.

Well then! Let's fuck over some Sith!

How the Shadows go about it? Probably very action movie and nail biting. High octane. Sweet big budget cgi effects. They get the De-chipped clones involved. Fox gets to finally, FINALLY shoot his boss. Never a happier man. He deserves it.

But that's not important. What IS? Is Quinlan Vos? Showing up to the Temple, with a burger and smelling strongly of smoke, and like.... over 450 force sensitive younglings, teenage and below. And probably a litter of tookas. Because what? Were they supposed to LEAVE them?

She takes One(1) step into the temple and gets hit with like? Three generations of Guilt Complexes. Man Pain. Yoda, Obi-Wan, AND Anikin? Mother FUCKER, you were 9! What were you supposed to DO? Bite him?! You literally JUST GOT HERE. *SI-OC has used Logic against Skywalker Guilt... it is not very effective!*

When? When will she be freeeeeeee? Cannon Yoda had the right idea.

She should go hide in a fucking SWAMP.

@babbling-babull @legitimatesatanspawn @spidori @lolottes @hypewinter @mayfay @hdgnj

[trailingoff]

Aziraphale’s religious trauma

I’m sure others have discussed this in a lot of depth, but I can’t help throwing my hat in the ring. Aziraphale has major religious trauma after spending his entire very long existence as a member of a cult. If you’ve never experienced what it’s like to be indoctrinated into a religion, then it might be very hard to understand why he behaves the way he does, so I’ll try to lay it out for you.

Anyone who was raised from early childhood to believe that an all-powerful being is watching them as though they’re in a panopticon (a jail where prisoners are watched by authorities at random moments) and will severely punish them and/or their loved ones if anyone steps out of line (or just on a whim or based on a bet with Satan) either has experienced religious trauma or has somehow avoided it, perhaps through repression or retreating into themselves and managing to ignore what the adults were telling them. Another way to avoid the trauma is to continue to believe that the cult is ‘good’ and that those outside it are ‘bad’ and should seek redemption, forgiveness and salvation.

Not only does Aziraphale have this trauma, but it’s also based on reality in the GO universe. I was able to live with mine by realising that there is no empirical evidence for religious beliefs, by studying philosophy, by having therapy, and by reflecting on it for years. The trauma can still be triggered in me, leading to panic that God might be watching and judging me, and that an afterlife might exist, but luckily I’m now able to move through the panic relatively quickly. Aziraphale can’t do any of this because the beliefs of his cult are all too real. There really is a massively powerful (hopefully not all-powerful, but he believes she is) being who watches and judges him and everyone else at random moments. She has either directly ordered her angels to slaughter babies and children or has stood by and watched them do it. She has severely punished someone Aziraphale cares about, Crowley, who from that moment has been in a situation where he continues to be tortured by his fellow demons with no intervention from God and who simultaneously risks being destroyed by demons, by angels, by humans wielding sacred weapons (e.g. holy water) or by his own hand.

And so Aziraphale suffers from both religious trauma and the trauma of living under a real authoritarian dictatorship. This dictatorship is seemingly unbeatable and eternal, and it possesses weapons more powerful than the biggest nuclear weapons, more powerful than the sun, really more powerful than anything we humans can imagine.

Thousands of years ago, Crowley was kicked out in an extremely painful way, and he suffers his own trauma from that. He clearly doesn’t want Aziraphale to go through all of that, yet he wants Aziraphale to join him on ‘their own side’. At the end of the previous season, I thought Aziraphale was all in. I was happy to leave it at that ... even though it isn’t a realistic depiction of someone dealing with the particular types of trauma that Aziraphale has experienced and continues to experience.

Aziraphale and Crowley are still in constant grave danger, and they’re still living in God’s panopticon. That can’t just be hand-waved away. As we’ve seen this season, at any moment their fragile peace can be disrupted by a situation that puts them in danger of being harmed to the extent of being wiped from existence. They can’t actually just go to Alpha Centauri and it will all be cool. (And what would they do there for eternity anyway ...?) But yeah there is no way to escape from God, nowhere in the universe that God isn’t capable of supervising -- that’s real, not something Aziraphale merely has faith in, as humans understand belief in God. Aziraphale isn’t the equivalent of a human priest or a theologian or a cult member: he is a supernatural being created by a much more powerful supernatural being.

Perhaps there are only two ways for Aziraphale to deal with his trauma: 1) He realises that God and the Heavenly Host can be defeated. 2) He realises that they can be permanently altered in a positive way. 

At the end of season two, Aziraphale seems to believe he is being given the opportunity to bring about option 2. We don’t know if he has a plan or a vision for this, but for the first time he thinks he has a chance. Perhaps best of all, he has the opportunity to protect Crowley -- permanently! Imagine how anxious Aziraphale must have been, for thousands of years, that Crowley would be destroyed. It could have happened at any time, near or far from Aziraphale. Crowley faces dangers on all sides and also does foolish (from Aziraphale’s perspective) things like good deeds under the influence of laudanum and a heist so he can handle holy water. Crowley breaks and bends rules in ways that could kill him: Aziraphale isn’t catastrophising. This isn’t the same as a religious loved one telling you that you’re going to hell for sinning. Crowley has already been tortured in hell, and he could be tortured there forever, or he could be turned into an oily black puddle, or removed from the book of life etc etc. 

What Aziraphale doesn’t understand yet is that Crowley can’t be an angel again and still be the Crowley that Aziraphale loves. He also doesn’t see Crowley as an equal. If they’re going to take on heaven and bring down God’s dictatorship, they are going to have to do it as Aziraphale and Crowley, working in partnership, wielding the immense power of their love.

[rwbyrg]

So, we can all agree that when Oscar eventually gets his semblance, it's going to have something to do with Ruby, right? And I'm not even saying this from a shippy lens. Kid has an immortal wizard move into his brain at 14 that he can't kick out, immediately becomes a child soldier, lives through a train crash, countless grimm fights, crash lands a plane, gets shot in the chest, falls for - quite possibly - a few kilometres after blowing up a hole in the bottom of a military compound, gets beaten up and abducted by a goopy grimm super monster, magic blasted by his headmate's ex-wife, tortured and beaten up by a man six times his size, fights off Salem again to save his friends, and not ONE of those instances has been stressful enough to awaken it.

But both times he's talked about his semblance manifesting, it's been with Ruby. The first is in v5 after they spar and Ruby cheers him (and Jaune) on about getting there one day, while Ren makes a comment saying:

"One common philosophy is that a warrior's semblance is a part of who they are".

The second time is in v7 when Ruby does something new with her own semblance and Oscar asks if she's always been able to do that. Eventually leading to him lamenting again about how he's not unlocked his yet while everyone else's are evolving. And it's Ruby that responds with:

"Well, I'm sure we'll all be jealous when you do (figure it out)".

And then, from both Ruby and Oscar's perspectives, we are shown their attachment to each other. Ruby throughout V9 with Neo's illusions, and Oscar with - many instances - but especially in the recently released epilogue where he speaks at her grave. And in this speech we're reminded of that attachment as well as his struggles with identity. Specifically how those two things are intrinsically linked together:

"You always believed in the best. Saw people for who they really were. Some of us... don't know anymore. "

Oscar can't grasp his own personal super power that's "a part of himself" when he doesn't know who he is. He's losing himself to the merge, the boundaries of where he ends and Oz begins are blurring by the day, and he's only 15 and still growing into the person he could become. And the one person that was always certain of who he was, always made him feel like he was his own person... isn't around anymore. So he feels even more detached from his identity and the parts that comprise it than ever before.

But she returns in Vacuo before their final fight, and his semblance has been teased too many times to never appear. So my current guesses are either:

he's going to unlock it under stress to save Ruby from certain danger, because he "lost her once and won't risk it a second time"; or

he's going to unlock it in a different, maybe even quieter moment, where - once again, thanks to Ruby's certainty - he starts feeling like himself again.

Only one way to find out.

[antifainternational]

Since youre antifascist, how about you give us a definition of fascism? What exactly makes someone a fascist? (and in case you use terms such as left-wing or right-wing be sure to define them too)

Guess it's been a while since a clever Anon challenged us to define fascism, huh? Right, let's get into it: Via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

Yale professor Jason Stanley:

“Fascism is a creation of race hatred and its politically organized expression.” - Willhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933).

“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.” - Upton Sinclair

“Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect — better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall…that its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one’s own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone. ” - Ludwig von Mises,  Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition (1927).

“Spent most of the day reading fascisti leaflets. They certainly have turned the whole country into an army. From cradle to grave one is cast in the mould of fascismo and there can be no escape … It is certainly a socialist experiment in that it destroys individuality. It destroys liberty.” -  Harold Nicolson, The Harold Nicolson Diaries : 1919-1964 (2004).

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

“A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends….If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.” - Henry A. Wallace

“Fascism is the cult of organised murder, invented by the arch-enemies of society. It tends to destroy civilization and revert man to his most barbarous state. Mussolini and Hitler might well be called the devils of an age, for they are playing hell with civilization.” - Marcus Garvey,  Authors take Sides on the Spanish War, 1937 Philosophy Tube's breakdown of the elements of fascism is very thorough and recommended if you're not the reading type. But do you read books? We hope so if you're looking to engage in political discussion about anything. Here are some books that tackle the definition of fascism, in whole or in part, that we would recommend to you (check/order from your local library!) Mark Bray's highly-accessible Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook is a great starting point for this topic.

Columbia history professor Robert O. Paxton's excellent book The Anatomy of Fascism goes into this in great detail.

There's also Umberto Eco's The Eternal Fascist

or his "practical list for identifying fascists" as well as Hannah Arendt's seminal The Origins of Totalitarianism

We hope you weren't looking for a simple answer to the complex question of "what is fascism?" Anon, just as we hope you're up to taking our challenge of checking out all of the above so you're curiosity is satisfied and you're well-versed on the topic.

[nthspecialll]

Dutch Van Der Linde as the saviour and his early crime life.

Dutch Van Der Linde and his early life beyond the fact that his father died in the war and he ran away from his mother at the age of 15 is a mystery to us as players, however due to the fact he prefered a life of petty crime we assume that his mother was a terrible person, something that might not be true.

Unlike the majority of the gang Dutch does not have evidence of a terrible childhood, he was not orphaned, he was not fleeing from the government, he did not fear for his life and we cannot say that his mother was abusive, almost quite the contrary.

In Dutch's own words, he ran away because he and his mother "did not see eye to eye," and while this can indicate abuse the fact he follows up with "I was not always an obedient child" very much makes it seem like it was his own fault. He continues to talk about how they both loved one another in their own ways, meaning he ran away not because he had to but because he wanted to, especially as the reasons he was "not an obedient child" could very well be because he was young and rebellious.

What makes this even worse is that Dutch mentions having had a price on his head for fifteen years while he actually has been on the run for 29 as he is 44, this means for 14 years he committed crimes, did not have a price on his head, and had the choice to turn back to a "regular life." Now he might just have said 15 as a "about this many years but not the exact" but you don't get it wrong by 14 years.

Dutch mentions that he did not know that his mother was burried in Blackwater but was only told a few years later by an uncle. His mother died in 1881 (her grave can be found), he met Hosea in 1876, met Arthur in 1877 and had been on the run since 1870, meaning he was still in contact with his family at least in 1884, seven years after meeting Arthur.

Milton talks about Dutch being a Messiah, a savior for the people, and Dutch keeps saying "we" this and "we" that but the truth is he is nothing like them, Dutch chose his situation and had many chances to turn back but didn't, while the others in one way or another was forced into it. He also has many advantages, such as being in contact with his family, something which a character like Javier is forced not to and we only see one other character cannonically do, Pearson. Not only that but Dutch often reinforce his role as a boss by having his own tent, having expensive clothing, telling Molly that she doesn't need to work for the mere fact that she is his girl. He does not need to do this, everyone is already loyal to him, yet he does it for nothing more than to serve his own ego.

Now some would say he ran away to make a better world, but there is something wrong with that theory.

Dutch's favorite author is Evelyn Miller who is based on the real romantic/transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. Romanticism is a philosophy that dislikes the wealthy and the industrialization and wants people to embrace a more "authentic" life, which is why Thoreau as a more wealthy man wanted to do an experiment for two years where he moved into a cabin. He wanted to, for the experience of it, live in the woods, such as Dutch did not run away from his possible rich life because he needed to but for the experience of it.

Dutch did not spoil his chance at a normal life for love, he didn't spoil it for "a better world," he didn't spoil it for necessity, he spoiled it for fun, for the experience.

Imagine being Javier, hearing the man who claimed to understand you, say that he still is in touch with his family while you don't know if your sister is even alive. Imagine being Arthur, hearing the man who claimed to understand you, say that he chose a life of crime as an experience while you were forced into it to survive and now hate yourself for it. Imagine being Charles, hearing the man who claimed to understand you, say he chose to hurt for fun while you wish you had another way.

Based on conversations I had with @werewolfarthurmorganenjoyer and @heavenlymorals.

[y-rhywbeth2]

I don't know if material has ever gone into this (quite possibly) but since sorcerers are described as learning spells by intuition and fucking around and finding out I like to imagine that the spell components are just whatever they make up. The components for casting fireball could just be pointing at some annoying bastard with the hand that's holding a pinch of something flammable or symbolically related to fire in the sorcerer's mind and yelling 'fuck you.' The somatic component to raise dead is just clicking your fingers and ten skeletons rise from the grave at command. Due to charisma being your spellcasting ability you have to do it with confidence and style to work. The spell list is just little rituals you make up by yourself to shape your magic.

Wizards of course are using intricate philosophy and formulae and fancy archaic chants and symbols that have been tried and tested and are built upon many generations of spell work, often exposed to harsh scrutiny and critique by the academic community.

Nobody agrees which approach is more stylish, and then there are probably sorcerers who also do the philosophy and fancy chanting and symbols; the difference is that it just works because they think it should rather than because of any other structured logistics and a trained wizard will hit them with a grimoire if they act like it's anywhere near the same thing as understanding how this shit works.