#post-self cycle

[elizabethlazuli]

Thoughts regarding/plot synopsis of Post-Self: Qoheleth

[This is just a copy of my ramblings on Discord so apologies if there's some missing context or whatever, I didn't feel like reformatting this for the five people following my Tumblr.]

Okay. So. I'm going to be completely honest, it is hard to know where to begin with this.

So, for a few months I've known about this four-book series called the Post-Self Cycle. I don't remember where I first heard about it, it was probably on Cohost back when I still used to use that site. And after a cursory scan of the series' overall themes, I decided that despite fascinating me, I didn't feel like it was the right time to actually dive into it. And in retrospect that was absolutely the right call.

It's very philosophically heavy, tackling topics regarding identity and the future which I already struggle with a lot in my personal life. But the knowledge of this series continued to live in my head rent-free between then and a few days ago when I felt I was ready to explore what Post-Self had to offer. I literally remember talking to Sable [my girlfriend] one day having a breakdown(?) regarding identity and my fear of ego death, and the thing I remember most about that moment was how I actually brought this series up to Sable at one point. Without ever even reading it. Like it revealed to me fears I've been harboring my whole life.

I don't really know if there was anything specific that caused me to feel I was mentally ready to start reading it, because I knew that once I did it would change me in some significant way. And it's really fucking funny on the surface to be feeling this way about some furry book series. I think there's something particularly uncanny about combining furry with deep philosophical themes. I felt similarly with Slime Time. It's been so far ingrained in me that furry is just some nerdy hobby that doesn't really matter at the end of the day, that when it's used as a vessel to expose very serious things that I'm trying to ignore, it almost feels like an invasion of a safe space.

I guess that's why Post-Self latched on to me so intensely after just simply learning about it. Because it's the starkest I've ever experienced that sort of uncanniness. It seemed almost scary. And it is rare for me to feel that way about fiction anymore. But, I don't know. I've been thinking a lot about transhumanism lately, especially after having personally adopted the label "alterhuman". And I guess that's why the time felt right to finally check out Post-Self and hear what it has to say. For the past few days, I've been reading the first book in the series, Qoheleth. This is where I'm running into difficulty figuring out how to even talk about this. Because this isn't like any piece of media I've consumed before.

[1/3]

[draw-your-self-ship]

Another assortment of images to draw your self ship(s) as.

Do NOT Interact: Pro//Ship + Neutral, adults who ship with minors, and real people shippers

[phoenixcatch7]

Okay but it's super interesting how

Din = Power = Ganondorf

Naryu = Wisdom = Zelda

Farore = Courage = Link.

Because Din, in the hylian creation myth, created the physical world. Naryu then created the laws - gravity, time, etc. And Farore finally created life - plants and people.

Din created the body, naryu the mind, Farore the soul.

And the triforce and its wielders so perfectly reflect that.

Ganon is physical power, he is big and intimidating and he breaks things. He is cunning and determined, but that's not what he focuses on. He is might makes right.

Zelda is wisdom and cleverness. She is stall tactics and information and team work. She is a powerful mage with a spine of steel, but that's not how she'll win. She is the pen being mightier than the sword.

Link is courage and persistence. He is the wild card sneaking behind enemy ranks, always moving, plunging into terrifying situations head first. He's a phenomenal fighter with a keen wit, but that's not what will get him through his challenges. He is bravery not being the absence of fear but the triumph over it.

They sit in perfect parallels to each other.

And ganon is reborn through his body - his resurrection is immortality. No matter how low he is cast, as long as he has a body he can claw his way back. He can cling to his power, build it ever higher.

Zelda is reborn through the magic of her bloodline. It's the accumulated knowledge handed down for generations, the unique power she must master, the skills she must develop to survive and get her kingdom out the other side intact. Even her name, the knowledge of herself, is handed down from all the way from the very first. Her ancestors knowledge of her future presence, her stability, is what gives her the edge.

Link is reborn in spirit. He is not bound by flesh or blood. Just like his wanderlust soul he can reappear in any time or place. His variation, his unpredictability, is exactly how he fights. It's what makes him so hard to pin down.

Ganons need to build strength means he can't chase after link. Links impulsiveness means zelda can outwit him. Zeldas stationary predictability means she's an easy target for ganon.

But the other direction?

Fire melts ice, ice redirects lightning, lightning burns fire.

And that's the very essence of the triforce.

[meagancandraw]

You ever think about how neither of them got to say goodbye?

[lucky-fy]

Please enjoy :)

Two more with spoilers below

[cabeswaterdrowned]

Declan is described as looking like a combination of Ronan and a polished tailored guy like Gansey or Greenmantle, which in theory makes him like the pinnacle of the type of guys Adam is attracted too. Just don’t tell that to Adam Declan Ronan or Gansey it won’t go over well.

[shummthechumm]

ommgg fallen leaves being possessive and slightly unhinged is so good. like, over the course of holly's stay in the tunnels there are signs--but holly also refusing to move on and be with her loved ones.

then hollyleaf realizes: "wait he's a little crazy, actually" . like, an omen of what could happen to her if she doesn't leave the tunnels and confront her past mistakes.

so in the end, fallen leaves' own self-destructive behavior further pushes the first friend he's had in decades away--and hollyleaf's decision to amend for what she's done/learning to live with her identity directly contrast's fallen's.

living in denial for what, a century? just exacerbates fallen leaves' fixation on isolating himself. he refuses to move on because doing so would mean he has to acknowledge that he made a mistake in his own ambition to become a sharpclaw. him impatiently going into the tunnels for his assessment ultimately resulted in a world of pain for his mother and groupmates--which also led to them leaving the lake and going to the mountains. (you could also rewrite his backstory and he still serves as a decent parallel to holly.)

plus it's deliciously dark to have fallen want to keep holly in the tunnels so she can die (and stay dead in the eyes of her loved ones) so he doesn't have to be alone anymore. alone with your mistakes for possibly eternity OR project yourself onto the next living thing within a 5 mile radius so you can BOTH live with your mistakes. TOGETHER.

[urloveangel]

[dustykneed]

Hello! Random whipper snipper! Share a WIP of your work!

ooh, with pleasure. six the musical araleyn fanart? in the year 2k24? more likely than you think xDD

i realize this looks finished, but technically i'm still deciding whether to add a background or not lol. still, for the sake of sharing a proper WIP, here's a line or two from an araleyn brainworm WIP that i started reworking yesterday (mild tw for religious guilt and period-typical internalized homophobia from aragon's pov):

She remembers sharing her bed with Anne at Henry's behest, remembers the nights of tossing and turning and trying not to think about Anne asleep next to her-- remembers waking up to dark hair spilling across her pillow and the press of blood-warm bosoms against her own, softer than sin, as hot as the Devil, remembers lying still as death, mouthing prayers into the heat of Anne's neck like an act of penance.

[iheartbookbran]

Also ngl I kinda love the concept of Debling courting Penelope and Colin getting jealous because of it, not because I ship it (he’s barely a character) or because I’m part of the crowd that wants to see Colin ~suffer (though I’m not opposed to seeing him dramatically yearn), but because the reason Penelope specifically is going after this vegan man is so fascinating to me. Like, she obviously doesn’t love him. But she will marry him to protect LW… she’ll marry him to please Portia, that’s so funny.

Girl’s so desperate to escape her awful family life while at the same time keeping her secret, but she also wants her mother’s approval. And she’s so caught up in that toxic mindset that she completely misses the guy she’s been in love with since childhood making heart eyes at her from across the ballroom.

Pen only has her parents’ terrible marriage as a frame of reference, so she probably thinks it’s a bonus if her future husband is much older than her because that could make her a young widow. He’ll leave the country for the majority of the year to fuck off to Antarctica? Oh to be left alone by your own life partner!!!

Meanwhile Portia is enthusiastically nodding behind Penelope like yes, perhaps he’ll die at sea, and neither of them think there’s anything wrong with this outlook in life.

Hilarious.

[girlyaois]

I honest to God think a lot of the moral fears surrounding whether you think about your f/os enough or if you comfort your f/os enough in your mind or if YOU do enough FOR your f/os can... really and truly be answered simply by being reminded that they aren't real. you do not morally owe any of your f/os your time, effort, or emotional availability. because they aren't real, and you are. and it's OKAY to say this. it will never be immoral to acknowledge we daydream and draw fanart for ourselves and our joy because we're real people, they're not, they don't need anything from you. don't exert yourself worrying about people who don't exist.

[disco-asphodel]

the thing about me is that i will ship kimharry harrydora and jeanharry with equal levels of pounding the floor and screaming and sobbing. like they’re all the love of his life but in different ways and it makes me wanna chew through the hull of a battleship

[roserunodays]

*Trigger Warnings for this post discussing self harm and suicide*

So I was talking with @mgjong about Mahiru, and we noticed a few things regarding her story that I wanted to go more in detail with and highlight! First, I wanted to talk about Mahiru’s behavior during her T1 VD:

Once Es gets to the heart of the conversation and starts reminding Mahiru about her crime, the tone notably shifts here, along with Mahiru’s reaction. Her words are trailing off, her voice is notably more subdued, and of course, she does not deny that she did "kill" someone:

And then, Mahiru changes the subject, with Es even pointing it out and wondering why she’s doing this. The topics she starts talking about are very interesting too:

Mahiru: “So first things first, you should gather up all your courage and be completely transparent about yourself. Doing so will make your partner feel at ease. And they’ll start opening up about themselves more.”

What interesting topics to talk about Mahiru! Communication and transparency? Wanting your partner to open up? Why would you bring up those kinds of things here? Right after Es mentioned your crime? Were you doing it subconsciously because you were reminded of the time when you couldn't do this? Specifically for your boyfriend in mind? I don't know, it's just very interesting how this is the very first topic about love that she brings up in her VD.

Mahiru's bf:

Speaking of her bf, do I think this guy is a saint? No, definitely not. Do I think he’s some asshole who deserved to die? No, I don’t think that either. To me, the bf is just another guy. He’s human, and he failed to communicate his boundaries with Mahiru, which contributed to their conflict.

Clearly, we don’t know much about this guy, outside of Mahiru’s perception of him, but here’s how I personally interpret this guy and the role he plays in Mahiru’s story:

1. Mahiru's bf was just someone who failed to communicate and establish his boundaries with Mahiru, with his mental health getting worse as time went on for their relationship.

2. Mahiru's bf had his own mental health and self-harm issues before he had met Mahiru, which were made worse because of their relationship.

I don't think these two options have to be mutually exclusive either. But I do think there's a bit of evidence that points to her bf having mental health issues before. In one of the magazine scans in TIHTBILWY and in Q16 of her T2 interrogation, Mahiru notes that she met her bf on the university terrace, which seems innocuous enough with how Mahiru describes it:

From user @shima1408 on YouTube:

But in ILY, Mahiru's bf has also been shown to have blood on his clothing while both of them are in the forest. It is possible that he could've gotten injured while they were walking through the forest, but more importantly, Mahiru does not have any blood on her clothing. Why is Mahiru the one not injured then, but her bf is? Did he inflict those wounds on himself? Why was he on the university terrace that fateful day he and Mahiru met? Did he fall in love with Mahiru because he thought she was the one? A fated partner who stopped him on that day and could give him another chance at a happy life?

So I do think it's a possibility that this guy had mental health problems before he had met Mahiru, which she inevitably made worse due to her love. He literally could’ve just been on the terrace chilling, but the meeting detail is still pretty odd to point out. It also stands out from all of Mahiru’s existing fluff dialogue and romanticization of the event and is even noted again in an interrogation question in T2, despite having been mentioned before.

But regardless of whether or not he did, Mahiru did not recognize how her love caused a strain on her bf's mental health. So when Mahiru became more obsessive and overbearing as time went on, as well as her bf not being able to communicate his needs and establish those boundaries with her, they both ended up being mutually toxic to each other as a result of this miscommunication.

Again, this is why I think she continued to emphasize “getting to know the other person better” and “being transparent” to Es in her T1 VD, because she had failed to do this with her bf before. Not only did she change the subject to avoid talking about her sin, but she also switched to a topic she knew deep down she failed to do with her bf, so she ends up compensating for it through her conversation with Es.

Cake:

The cake in ILY obviously represents love, but it also represents hurt and pain (as shown with how Mahiru feeds the cake/rat to her bf). Because both of them are shown to be feeding the cake to each other, it shows that in this conflict, blame cannot be placed on one or the other entirely. They had both failed in the relationship, despite genuinely loving each other.

Mahiru's bf feeds her a small piece, which she takes happily. He's careful with it, making sure the piece doesn't fall it to the ground. An important thing to note: Mahiru eats the slice willingly (Mahiru is so willing to accept that pain too, huh?), and her bf does not force her to eat it:

But Mahiru gives him a much bigger piece with no hesitation. Because she thinks that's what he wants. She thinks that more of her love will help quell his exhaustion, his pain. So she feeds him a bigger, more overwhelming slice of cake. She's careless, and the slice could fall so easily. And what does she do? Force her bf to eat the cake. She does not give him a choice to not accept it.

Suicide:

Now to the main setting in ILY: it’s a literal forest, which seems to allude to the Aokigahara Forest aka the "Suicide Forest" as it's known for in real life. We know that Mahiru's bf died from suicide based on ILY and the Undercover shot where he's missing his shoe, but we still don't know the reason why Mahiru was shown to be with him before his suicide. This leads me into thinking two possible scenarios on what possibly happened:

1: Mahiru’s bf was planning to kill himself, and Mahiru somehow found out about it and tried to join him, but had failed in doing so.

2: Both Mahiru and her bf were planning a "shinjū" (lover’s suicide) together, with Mahiru being unsuccessful with the attempt.

I am leaning more towards possibility #2 because of how it would fit in with Mahiru’s tendency to "share pain" as something she views as love. Since the lover's suicide is a concept that matches this sort of thing, I wouldn't put it past Mahiru and her bf to go along with this idea, and it was just that Mahiru was the one who survived this while her bf did not. Lover's suicides are also a thing common in literature, so it's definitely something Mahiru would find and know about given her literature and romance novel associations.

Other interesting details pointing to this in ILY: Mahiru's bow around her neck and the way it is here in ILY is very odd, like it’s supposed to be some kind of noose around her neck. It doesn’t even seem like it can normally come undone like that while they were trekking through the forest, especially since the bow itself is usually fastened and tied up neatly in the outfit she wears with it:

Mahiru is also shown to be barefoot, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense? Why are you barefoot like your bf is, Mahiru? What is the reason for matching with your bf, who is about to commit suicide in this forest? Were you going to go along with him? Why were you even there in the first place, Mahiru?

Both of these theories could still work though! Whether it be them planning the suicide from the start, or her joining in willingly, I think both of these examples highlight how much little self-regard Mahiru has for her own life. Mahiru has established that she would do anything her lover does (including harmful behaviors such as smoking), and she would do anything for love itself at that. Mahiru would continue to endanger herself if it was for the sake of love, so it doesn't seem too far fetched that she would go along with something so extreme and life ending at that:

And what else does Mahiru say about love, the ultimate form of it? Being always together. Lover's suicides are often done with the intent of being reunited again in heaven and in the next life. A method such as this would definitely help Mahiru and her bf be together forever, right?

How interesting though, that she still does not quite understand why her bf isn't here anymore. Isn't the ultimate form of love always being together? So why then, is he not here anymore? She knows she’s responsible, that she had done something wrong.

But she was just showing her love. And yet, just why?

Why is he not here anymore?

[boyfridged]

jason todd & bruce wayne + kafka’s letter to his father.

[finelythreadedsky]

oooh the sequence of on-stage female disrobings in the oresteia, one in each play-- cassandra casting off her prophet's robe and priestly emblems in the agamemnon, clytemnestra baring her breast to orestes in the libation bearers, and the erinyes exchanging their monstrous regalia for the red robes of their new identity as the eumenides... it's not explicit in the text of the eumenides that they take anything off but they are discarding one identity in order to assume a new one that they put on as a garment, and even if they don't take off any part of their fury-costume it's still such a way to reverse and resolve the two disrobings in the earlier plays

[transgenderenkidu]

that's a heavy burden, son of the sword

i think sometimes about how the heaviest element a star can synthesize without going supernova is iron, and how when a star's core reaches iron it cant burn any longer

anyway take this intensely self indulgent chapter 18 fanart, kendal is from @comicaurora, the only thing ive read that consistently inspires me to draw full color pieces