#the embodiment of earth and the embodiment of space. two figures with no way of physically interacting with one another

[theboxfort]

Floorhole. Blackfloor?? The Hole. Yeah! Yeah

Floory x Black Hole TPOT

[son1c]

after months of agonizing over it, he's finally here: the sonic variant from my original shatterspace! syzygy, or "ziggy," has a bad attitude, and no powers at all. that's right! after creating a sonic variant that's basically a god in terms of his power level, i've decided this one doesn't have any superspeed.

instead, he uses extreme gear to get around.

as for why he doesn't have a wisp... well, he used to, but it met an unfortunate end when he was still very young. since then, he became prickly and closed off. at least, that's what most people think.

in truth, the twist to his character is that he's the embodiment of sonic's "power of friendship." he's rescued several kids from certain death situations, and has formed his own little gang of superpowered loyalists. among these kids are this universe's cream, ray, and kit. more about them will come later...

also, something to note about this shatterspace: since the world is fractured in two, i figured it would only make sense for space to be like how it is in "treasure planet". so, there's breathable air up there. syzygy and his little friends spend most of their time traversing the cosmos, searching for a way to fix the planet--a goal that most people on earth have all but forgotten about.

[yourdeepestfathoms]

The you have any headcanon about Perrine and The Croon?

Perrine has an affinity for skulls because of The Croon, and they’re mainly the reason why she likes to collect them

The Croon refers to her as “calf”

Perrine sometimes catches glimpses of a tall figure out of her window at night, standing among the distant trees, hidden by just enough shadow to make her wonder if she’s just seeing things

The Croon gifts her skulls, bones, and small dead animals

When people say The Croon is evil, she’s the first to jump to its defense

However, Perrine does have a healthy dose of fear for The Croon

She doesn’t know why this is

But there’s always a level of wariness she feels towards it

There was this one night…

It was cold. The wind was blowing. Branches brushing against the cottage were like clawing fingers on the walls, desperate to get inside.

Perrine woke up.

Or maybe she had never fallen asleep in the first place.

She couldn’t remember.

It didn’t matter.

She got up from her bed.

All around her, the moonlight bleeding in through her window pooled ghoulishly into the empty black eyes of her animal skulls.

It felt like they were all watching her.

At first, she had gotten up to get a glass of water. Her mouth was dry, and the space behind her eyes was uncomfortably warm. But at the same time, she was covered in goosebumps.

But then, she found herself drawn outside.

Grass crunched under bare feet.

She didn’t even flinch from the cold.

Like she was in some kind of trance, she found herself delving into the woods.

And then, she saw it.

The towering beast of feathers and bone. It stood among the trees, nearly obscured by darkness.

The Croon.

She was scared.

She wasn’t sure why she was scared. She based her whole image around this beast, after all. She wore the moose mask because of it.

And yet…she trembled.

And then, she spoke.

“What’s the point of you?”

She asked it without thinking. It was a question that had been brewing in her head for ages.

“I mean…you embody and represent chaos…”

The Croon tilted their head for a moment, as if considering the question. The quiet night air was tense.

“Chaos…is beautiful and destructive. It’s everywhere, and it’s all-consuming. It doesn’t need any apparent purpose. It merely is. It destroys and makes and changes…over and over again. That is what I represent. Change is necessary. Everything must die, and from the destruction, something new is born. After a wildfire, flowers will bloom from the ashes.”

“But people like the flowers. Not the fire.”

“Perhaps. But they need the fire. They need the chaos and the change. Even if it destroys them. There is no new life without death, and there is no death without chaos.”

“But, you still destroy things. Why can’t you have something new without destruction? Why change?”

“Destruction..is just part of the cycle. It’s a part of change. There is beauty in decay. Death and destruction can be…art. The changing of the seasons, the wilting of flowers, the withering fall leaves… Even the most positive change is destruction for something else. Destruction and chaos are required for rebirth, for evolution. Because of change, everything is different, and everything is unique. There are no two things that are exactly the same, down to the last detail.”

“My friend, Cole, lost their parents in a horrible way. Is that supposed to be beautiful? Or necessary?”

“…Perhaps not. Not all destruction is beautiful or necessary. But not all death is cruel or senseless either. After all…without death, would you appreciate life at all? When an animal dies, and it decomposes, the earth gains the nutrients it gives to grow new flowers and new grass. New life. Even a death as horrible and cruel as that can still give new life to the plants and earth around it. It is the same with humans. A death, even a cruel and horrible one, can lead to new life for the remaining family or loved ones…or to the end of a destructive, hurtful cycle.”

“Cole has suffered since their parents’ death. There was no hurtful cycle to break! It’s not fair!”

“Death isn’t fair.”

Its voice had dropped to a low, almost guttural growl that shook her to the bones. But its empty eye sockets still held an eerie sense of calm.

“Life…isn’t fair. People die. Families are torn apart, homes and villages are destroyed. It’s the nature of the world. It’s a necessary evil.”

“…I don’t want to be a necessary evil.”

[queenbol-of-baldurs-gate]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Ending Theory

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. ALSO PRETTY LONG.

So, as I was showering this morning I came to a sudden realisation through my DATV daydreaming.

It's pretty obvious going by the hidden ending slides that something or someone has been manipulating events through history that weren't the Evanuris. They sound evil, look evil, very mysterious and spooky.

And I think most people can connect the dots that we have already been warned about them in DAI and in Veilguard with the little message in the Minrathous printing house, about those strange chalk markings and about a "storm" approaching from across the northern sea, as well as infiltrators tracking the progress over the major protagonists over the last 20 years (and a hidden figure in the future?):

Plus Rook has seemingly been interacting with these hidden entities every time they upgrade the Lighthouse's core with the spinning rings, whispering to them all ominous like and foreboding.

So, this 'storm' has been manipulating and waiting and letting things percolate in Thedas for a very very long time, and it's only when Solas is sealed into the Fade, with all the other Evanuris dead, that they are finally ready to move.

And so it occured to me, just how long have these mysterious entities been waiting? Since the fall of the elven empire? Since the rise of the elven gods?

Or since the fall of the Titans?

But then I got really thinking and the biggest question that came to me as I was rinsing out my hair; what on earth convinced a spirit to take physical form, and become the first elf? The first evanuris?

Spirits, by Solas' own words, are driven by a purpose, by emotion, by what inspires them (do not get me started on who the spirits got the emotions they embodied from in the first place)- so what in the hell could've been so compelling that it drove a spirit, who are also famously very content on being spirits, to take lyrium from the ground and create a body like that? How did it know to do it? Why would it choose lyrium in particular, when this was a world that was filled to the brim with magic?

I think someone told them to do it.

So, my theory is that these mysterious entities, the Storm coming across the northern sea (where the qunari ran from), haven't just been manipulating recent events in Thedas. I think they have been orchestrating things from the very beginning. Before the first elf, when Titans roamed the continent, maybe even the planet, freely; from the rise of the spirits-turned-elves, their war, and their inevitable downfall of their empire. I think these things needed the Titans to fall, then they needed the elves they uplifted to fall as well. I think the creation of the Veil put a wedge in those plans, as well as the continued lives of the Evanuris that powered the Veil as well as Solas'. So they needed them to die too, as well as these pesky little humans that suddenly popped up and started taking up space. But the Veil was strong, and Solas had hid his resting place well, and the humans propogated like fuckin bunnies.

So you bide your time, and you nudge and pull at events to your liking, until the Evanuris die off one by one, and the Veil gets weaker and weaker, and the Blights kill off more and more of the mortals above and below the surface.

And then the protagonists show up. They all each kill a major, ancient demon. They all dig up and find ancient evils and secrets and artifacts. They each influence history in uncountable ways. One stops a world ending Blight in a year. One holds together a literally cursed city, built on top of a damn blood ritual sigil, for a decade. One seals a massive tear in the Fade, stopping a cataclysmic event. And one kills two gods and imprisons a third, holding back the end of the world for a third time.

So enough is enough. They'll just have to come over the sea, and handle it themselves.

[textfromthelookout]

if you have the time, I wanna know what makes vegeta so compelling to you, whole ass character arc stuff and what not. I wanna hear you go off on your short king.

Anon do you understand what you’ve unleashed? I don’t think you understand what you’ve unleashed. Or if you do understand, I can almost guarantee you aren’t prepared. This is almost 3000 words of me frothing at the mouth. I hope you know you asked for this. Like the reason I was so late answering was because I wanted to do it justice and could not figure out what I wanted to yell about first.

I guess to understand why Vegeta’s development is so fucking staggering to me, you have to understand who he starts as when you meet him.

Vegeta is around 4 or 5 when Freeza destroys Vegetasei. He’s roughly 30 when he comes to Earth for immortality. In between are two and a half decades of being taken from, which he suffers only because he believes wholeheartedly that he will grow strong enough to kill Freeza and take it all back from him. He lands on Earth with little to his name beyond his pride in who and what he is, and power that, while paltry compared to Freeza and the people in his inner circle, surpassed and still surpasses every member of his race.

Right?

One of the biggest things about Vegeta in Z is that there is A Way Things Are Supposed To Go and when they go any other way, he cannot let it go. Losing to anybody other than the people he has known for years can kill him is unacceptable. Even more so if it’s to another Saiyan. Even more so when this Saiyan is such a disgrace to the blood in his veins. The loss is an impossibility and has to be rectified. Vegeta limps off of Earth with two big driving forces now: kill Freeza for vengeance, kill Kakarot to mend his pride (or at least beat him so far into the ground that his superiority is unquestionable).

Namek is where Vegeta gets really interesting. He’s fresh off a stinging defeat that put a couple cracks into his sense of certainty and self. He knows a way to get what he wants (the Dragon Balls on Namek). He’s in a race against the powers that be for it. He has something of an ace in the hole in that he worked out how to sense ki while he was flying half dead through space, so he’s no longer forced to rely on a scouter—on Freeza’s technology. He intends to make a clean break, and for a while it goes according to plan. Zarbon’s a stumbling block, but he makes it work in his favor, takes all the Dragon Balls Freeza collected and escapes with his life to boot.

And then another repeating theme surrounding Vegeta in Z comes into play. He’ll be a hairsbreadth from getting everything he wants before it all comes crashing down around him, largely due to things entirely outside his control. He couldn’t have used the Dragon Balls even if he had decided to press Gohan on what he was doing in the middle of nowhere with a ‘watch’, because he doesn’t have a password. The Ginyu Force thrashes him, Goku shows up stronger than ever. It’s fine though, because now he knows how to get the Dragon Balls to work, so he’ll never suffer defeat again—it’s a moot point.

…Right?

I think that the point in the story where Vegeta well and truly starts to come unraveled as a person is pretty immediately after Porunga dies and Freeza starts cycling through his transformations. Because like, rudimentary or no, Vegeta’s ki-sensing ability still works. He’s suddenly faced with irrefutable proof, that he can feel in the entire essence of his being, that his power is nothing to Freeza. And he lies to himself, because he can’t accept that he’s outclassed by the magnitude he is. Because this isn’t The Way Things Are Supposed To Go. He’s supposed to avenge his people and embody the legend. He refuses to bend, and so, he breaks.

And it’s sad, y’know? The way he just… stops fighting. For his whole life, he sweats and bleeds and swallows his bruised pride for the sake of survival and hope and what does it get him? I think all the goddamn time about the anime’s interpretation of this, where Vegeta being broken for Piccolo/Gohan/Krillin to witness up close is a deliberate choice on Freeza’s part*. In fact, I may never stop thinking about it. It’s not enough that Vegeta loses his will to fight, he has to know that others know that he gave up, that he can’t do anything against this monster even if he hadn’t. It’s a stunningly cruel blow precisely because he’s so proud and strong.

The man who dies on Namek crying at the feet of both of his bitterest enemies, begging one of them to kill the other for the sake of their race—who in that final moment lets his helpless frustration, his grief, his pride in his people supersede his own personal pride as warrior and prince—is not the same man who fought Goku on Earth. That man is in pieces, and Vegeta will spend every moment for years afterward trying to put him back together with saltwater and desperation. We meme on how death means basically nothing in Dragon Ball, but I go nuts thinking about how, intentionally or not, Toriyama managed to twist that to work with Vegeta’s development.

Because now Vegeta has to reckon with his many abject failures for longer than the few minutes before sweet oblivion, you see. Now it all matters again. As long as he’s alive, he’s still being taken from.

(Bulma’s one of the few—if not the only—person to simply give him something without coercion, or prompting, or obligation. Certainly the first we see. She had every reason to tell him to fuck off, really. She didn’t have to offer him a place to stay.)

Vegeta has a transitive hierarchical logic on strength, which comes up again towards the end of Cell that I’ll touch on when we get there, but for now it will suffice to say that in order to keep moving forward, he has to readjust his purpose in life to focus solely on beating Goku. If he beats Goku, then he beats Freeza, since Goku beat Freeza. Step one, obviously, is attaining Super Saiyan. And he’s so fucking committed to that that he unwittingly locks himself out of it, up until he leaves partway through the three year gap before the androids.

I could write another entire essay on how Super Saiyan can be read as a trauma response and how it differs between all the Saiyans in Cell saga (and especially about Goku on Namek), but this is surely already more than you bargained for when you opened this can of worms, so, Vegeta. When I think of Vegeta’s awakening to Super Saiyan, I tend to default to the original dub’s take (ep129), because it has lived in my head rent free since I saw it and it will not give me peace.

Take this part of my rambling with a grain of salt, I know I’m about to get a little ‘it’s not that deep’ about it, but. Here’s my interpretation of this. Vegeta only attains Super Saiyan once he has done away with distractions—not entirely because now he can focus on nothing but his training, but because he’s inadvertently given himself space to even begin to process all the shit from the last 25 years of his life, even if he fights it every step of the way as weakness. All the self-hatred, yes, but also the aforementioned frustration, the grief, the anger. The helplessness. ‘I didn’t care if I lived. I didn’t care about anything.’

Ultimately the trigger to Super Saiyan is a single moment of all-consuming emotion, so whichever thread of canon you personally subscribe to, the facts are that something happened in Vegeta out there in the middle of nowhere space. And he returns to Earth riding high. I’m not gonna lie, he’s rocking some seriously manic energy when he shows up to waste Android 19, and honestly why wouldn’t he be? He’s latched onto this new power and he doesn’t have to feel anything else. Things are finally going right. He’s invincible. He’s the king again. This is The Way Things Are Supposed To Go.

…

…right?

Super Saiyan is supposed to be a solution for Vegeta, and instead it eventually turns itself into a problem during Cell and the androids. To be fair, he can’t misestimate the strength of an opponent he can’t sense in the first place, but even so, he’s so blinded by the euphoria of succeeding for once in his goddamn life that he can’t imagine that anything can be stronger than him. Androids 17 and 18 are a rude fucking awakening. They are the ultimate pulling-the-rug-out-from-under-you vibe check. All those pieces that he struggled so hard to put back together, kicked apart again without thought or effort. He has a bit of a crisis over it, understandably.

In the interest of brevity, I’m glossing over the intermediary parts between Vegeta coming out of the time chamber (wish we had more info on what transpired in there, personally) and the tail end of the Cell saga, because it’s something of a repeat of what he did with Freeza, except he’s using Goku’s ‘let Freeza power up to 100% to hammer home his superiority’ logic. I made a previous post on my main blog about the post-Cell part of Vegeta’s character arc, which I’ll copy down here with some minor revisions:

The hell of Vegeta swearing to never fight again is that he actually follows through, at least in the beginning.

There are seven years between Cell and Buu. In every version of the media I’ve gone through—English manga, uncut dub, uncut JP, Kai dub—Bulma says that Vegeta has trained the last five years before the tournament. Which can only mean that there was a two year gap right after the Cell Games where he didn’t train at all.

And like. Can you really blame him. His purpose in life has been cut out from under him not once but twice, first by Goku attaining Super Saiyan and avenging their people by killing Freeza, and then by Goku’s decision to stay dead and deny him the opportunity to surpass him. His strength has proven insufficient time and again no matter how hard he works, overshadowed by that of a boy half his age, who doesn’t even like to fight. His pride hinges on both of those things and even before that was mercilessly trampled on. He has no people. No planet. No purpose, power, or pride.

I really do think the only things keeping him going by this point are inertia and spite. Almost without doubt, this is the absolute nadir of Vegeta’s existence: at least, the nadir for the man he thinks he has to be, or can’t reconcile not being. If he has nothing, if the last things tethering him to his supposed innate nature (to borrow a line from this fic, shameless plug,) are torn away from him, what is left for him to do but accept defeat and submit to change?

What he doesn’t know yet is that that’s okay. He doesn’t know yet, but the seven years that Goku is no longer a presence in his life is perhaps the best thing Goku could have possibly given him. Without Goku physically there to be actionable on (for lack of a better phrase), new things can grow in the spaces where his animosity and aggression burned holes in him. Even if Vegeta is still nursing the embers of that blaze and ignoring the encroaching growth as hard as he can, he is still beginning to care about things that the old him wouldn’t. (coming back to Vegeta’s logic on strength: to Vegeta, Gohan’s victory over Cell is also Goku’s victory, and Trunks’ loss is his own loss. Bulma mentions to Gohan that he’s dead set on making Trunks stronger than him, and why would Vegeta care about that goal specifically unless Trunks’ victory over Gohan is also Vegeta’s victory over Goku?)

And then.

And then all of a sudden, Goku is back in the picture. And when he comes back, so does the Vegeta from before, like a relapse.

Because as much growing as does, he still has seven years to gnaw on the same question he has been for ages now. Why is Goku so much stronger than he is, being what he is? Why is he so inadequate? There is now a window, fleeting as it may be, for Vegeta to get some answers he had no reason to assume he’d ever get. There is now the terrible possibility that he can make things go The Way They Are Supposed To Go. And Goku’s willing to let him take that shot and get those answers, right up until the whole business surrounding Buu disrupts everything and then he isn’t anymore.

Because the thing is, they were scheduled to fight each other before anybody else. Vegeta was not supposed to see the gap between himself and Goku until he was experiencing it firsthand. Picture for a minute the timeline in which the tournament plays out normally. Goku and Vegeta fight, Goku wins, and then Vegeta’s only recourse is to demand answers from Goku—who would surely give them, to the best of his ability!—or to come to his own conclusions and act from there. Either he makes peace with affairs, uneasy as it may be, or he blows up immediately, and Goku is there to stop him before he gets too out of hand. Instead, what happens is that he’s given the opportunity to realize that he’s still inferior, he still doesn’t understand why, and most importantly, that there’s a third option open to him. At the cost of his will, there is a way.

Submitting to Babidi to force Goku’s hand and close the gap is the act of a man who knows that he is running out of time. Whatever pride Vegeta still has would not possibly have allowed this unless he was so desperate for closure that he couldn’t see another way. For ten years he’s been trying to rebuild a sandcastle below the high tide line, and it’s not that he’s too stupid to move farther up so he isn’t freshly shattered at every pass—it’s just that trying to power through in the face of futility is literally all that he knows to do. He has been coming apart stitch by stitch ever since he met Goku, his worldview and his preconceptions of destiny and self dissolving in slow motion under his feet. Goku will only be here for a day. This is the last chance he has, and he knows it. He knows he’s not going to see Goku in the afterlife, even before he asks Piccolo.

What the fuck else was he supposed to do?

The music in the background of this scene is ‘Trapped Between Past and Present’ and if that doesn’t sum up the backbone of Vegeta’s arc in Z, then there’s nothing that does.

The beauty of his sacrifice is that he still has the mark of evil on his forehead when he dies, even though he’s bucked Babidi’s mind control by that point. He chooses the present. He chooses to symbolically and very literally raze his old self to the ground for the sake of all that his new self cares for. That is why the impermanence of death in Dragon Ball works for him. That’s why I go insane over the Majin arc specifically. New growth roots in ashes, phoenixes and sapling trees both.

Super (and end of Z) is where you get to luxuriate in that growth and watch it pay off, and oh my god does it ever pay off. Without going deep into spoiler territory (formally begging all of you to read the manga here), the later arcs begin to address Vegeta reckoning with his personal sins against the Namekians, and those of his race, who destroyed countless worlds under Freeza. Vegeta and Beerus have a conversation in chapter 69 of Super where things I’ve described in this here essay are worded explicitly into the canon. I think of it to this day. I think of all of the things Vegeta does in Super and I think it’s incredible just how far he’s come.

Before creation comes destruction.

Alright that’s enough pretentious meta. Here’s Vegeta being very happy about a well-earned victory. Isn’t he so fuckin’ cute.

*ep85, or 41 if you prefer Kai

[mollysunder]

The Icathian Roots of Zaun's Story and the Enduring Influence of the Void

The most important change to Zaun in Arcane is the addition of Shimmer which has not only become the crux of Zaun's origin, but the element of Arcane that has actually managed to tie Zaun closer to its Shuriman history and the Void's influence in the region.

To understand Zaun, it helps to know about Icathia, the city-state of free people and magic. Icathia was once a free society that had been subjugated into a vassal kingdom of Shurima, the powerful slave-owning expansionist empire for which the entire region remained named after. Shurima was notorious for how it would enslave the populaces of its defeated territories. Desperate to free themselves from Shurima's rule, the Icathian mages sought to use the Void against the Shurimans in their rebellion. But the power of the Void was too much and instead destroyed their civilization.

The similarities don't stop there. Icathia and Zaun both seem to have encountered the Void by similar means. Icathia first encountered the Void because a large earthquake exposed a Void rift to the surface in a coastal province. Zaun itself is a massive fissure broken into the Earth from Piltover's expoitative mining industry. In Runeterra, the creatures of the Void lie dormant beneath the earth, so to encounter them would require great force whether by nature, or man-made.

In some ways, Zaun is almost a divergent history for Icathia, because while Icathia was quickly overwhelmed by the Void's power, Zaun still exists. Silco and Singed managed to apply a more passive means to integrate the Void into Zaun's power structure through Shimmer.

The success of Shimmer's proliferation within Zaun has inadvertently promoted the worship of the Void. In League, the one known prophet of the Void, Malzahar, is depicted with a corrupted third eye. The eye is meant to represent the physical connection between him and the Void, even the Void Empress Bel'veth wears it. Now, in Zaun, the figure that embraces and spreads the benefits of the Void to the people has made that product, Shimmer, synonymous with his own corrupted eye that persists thanks to the Void.

Crowds are now seen offering real eyes to a giant vastayan turtle with eye tattoos, and we as the audience aren't sure if their worshipping their prophet Silco, or the Void. All we can be sure of is that the crowd of worshippers and the turtle vastaya recognize the eye as a source of reverance and believe it's physical presence is necessary for worship.

With the next season we're likely to see the two remaining elements that were a part of Icathia's story that were teased to soon exist in Zaun. Those two elements being the installation of the mage king and the time mage.

Icathia used to be ruled by mage kings but that institution was destroyed once Shurima conquered them. In Icathia's last stand for independence, a committee of mages, academics, and philosophers elected a new mage king, one who carried a starmetal staff, to lead the charge. But the mage king failed once the Void grew uncontrollable. I think the story of the mage king might best be embodied by Viktor. Not only is he one of the few characters that is actively studying the Void, but his future presence in Zaun is associated with royal imagery. In the card scene, his tarot, the Magician, wears a mask that doubles as a horned crown, something that's never existed in any of his alternate iterations. In the post-timeskip montage of Zaun there's a well-guarded cultivar, a public park for Zaun, with a sign that calls it "The Herald's Palace".

Then there's the time mage, also known as Zilean. Arcane seems to have made both Zilean and Ekko's stories more closely parallel echother. Zilean was one of the few to reject the idea to use the Void against the Shurimans, while Ekko seeks to destroy Silco's Shimmer supply that he uses to combat Piltover. Knowing that the Void was dangerous, Zilean creates a space outside of time to save as many people as he can before the Void destroys everything. Ekko does something similar with Firelights, where he creates a small hideaway for few to hide from the influence of Shimmer in Zaun. Once the fighting intensifies and the Void's power becomes more intense and Ekko builds the Z-Drive will he try to save as many as he can by hiding like Zilean? Or will he fight the Void on his own side?

Tldr: Arcane has gone out of it's way to make Zaun's story mirror the story of Icathia, a civilization long swallowed by the Void. A lot of things are similar yet different that it offers new possibilities in the way the characters of Zaun will change next season.

Sidenote: If the story of Icathia survived into the setting of Arcane and was retained in the public conscious, it would likely serve as a cautionary tale against the "warmongering of mages" for Piltovans. They'd completely sidestep the part about how the desperation of a subjugated people will force them to do monstrous things.

Extra sidenote: I couldn't fit this in anywhere because it isn't about Icathia, but it seems that Jinx's imagery is supplanting Janna's place in Zaun.

[heroesofchroma]

Magics of the World

Figured it was high time to start explaining some lore, and since it'll be a focus of the next chapter, I suppose the magic system is a good place to start.

So the Magic of this canon is based on the existence of 4 different existences. The Where that magic comes from. That being the Planes;

The Mundane; Where the story at large takes place. Finite spaces where you'd find humans, mutants, aliens, the usual stuff. It's the central Happening spot, with shaky origins as to why it exists at all.

The Primal Plane; This is where ANY AND ALL Elemental magic comes from. And we're not just talking the commonly thought of Fire, Water, Wind, Electricity, Ice, Earth, nope. It's E V E R Y T H I N G. If there's a magic school for it, it's found here. The Primal Plane is an endless expanse, seemingly, where the local zone is what determines the types of magic you'll find in your world. From Technomancy to Pyromancy to Astromancy. The Primal Plane is also, incidentally, where elemental creatures would reside or originate from, from raw elementals to dragons, quetzals, and kitsune.

The Nthotay; One of two Conceptual magic planes. This one is of Light and Order, and where you'd find creatures you'd classically hear called "Angels" or "Angelic."

The Nthatic; The other of the Conceptual magic planes, this one, of course, being the polar opposite of the Nthotay, embodying Darkness and Chaos. You'd find creatures you'd classically hear referred to as "Demons" or "Demonic."

So how does one actually Cast magic? There's a few ways, but two overall reasons you can cast magic. Either you, A; Are from one of the "extraplanes" (aka Not the Mundane), or B; Have something from the extraplanes with you. Be it a flower, crystal, scar, or even a possession or familiar from the extraplanes, any of these with the correct attunement and practice can allow you to cast magic. And once you're attuned to such an item, you're ready to go on your magic journey, from the lowest level flicking your wrist to light a candle, to sending meteorite swarms from your fingertips.

[mosspriestess]

okay, with the preface that I think much of this is kaleidoscopic and fractal, so depending on your entry point you can see different things, or use different names for the subsets of the pattern and relationships between them.

I want to put out a little of my internal theopoetics. I'm gonna start here with high level shapes, and may yet make a theogeny/cosmogeny which breaks them down into smaller subaspects.

ultimately the internal landscape is to me, dualist. while both sides contain contradictory aspects and try and re-inscribe the other inside them, the two camps remain important. And while the duality itself is probably ultimately illusory, trying to hold them as one seems to cause people to collapse their less favored into a shadow of the other.so the camps to me, as shaped as follows:

the unconscious, the feminine, the embodied, the intuitive, that which arises from the material, chaotic, the cthonic. For which I find symbols and inspiration in the mysteries and mystics

and the masculine, consciousness, rational, abstract, ordered, the celestial. which i find symbols in the exoteric religions of state and philosophers.

in both of these I find a primary figure, and a nearer, closer deity.

The unconscious has a great mother, a pantheistic goddess of earth and cosmos. The great water from which we emerge, the darkness in which we live.

Her effeminate son, is the deity I have historically felt strongest about. I usually give him the name dionysus, though others may prefer them in the shape of a daughter, and say persephone. this figure is to me life itself, the vine from which we sprout. A questing upwards to the celestial from the earth, and our root down into the unconscious. an initiator into the mysteries. as my entry point I can see all aspects of deity in him, even if also expressed other ways.

his counterpoint is of course a descending deity from the heavens. the logic and reason of math that seeks to order what it sees as chaos in the material. the consciousness following symbols to the unconscious, but also a bridge of revelation to 'higher' conciousness. The Logos principle. I typically see this in the shape of Minerva, a male woman, sprung forth from the king in the sky. But seems many of the more masc of my friends might prefer Apollo.

I have little personal connection, other than a grudging respectful acknowledgement to the deity on the other side of this. The monad, the all father, the king in the heavens. Order , the Eternal Stillness (whether that says life or death to you) and Laws . I suppose actually the call to Justice I respond to is connected here.

I am starting to wonder if I should add perhaps another category of the divine, those who are tricksters, who bridge the boundaries of the above and bring to humans ways around the divide, but this area of the metaphysical landscape has yet to be shown to me in much detail. Hermes, Thoth, the combined serpents of minerva and dionysus on their staff. Perhaps I don't see them as clearly because of my folding the nondual into dionysus, who initiated me into it through the higher substances. On the otherhand I have been omened by Spiders whenever I experience this space, which may be a path to follow. I suppose here might be the realm of magic and the occult, and the big deity one associated with Sex, and death? but I'm just guessing at what I may yet fold back into the unconscious the feminine and the mystic.

[radicalredrasp]

The other OC shown in the picture belongs to @flowerguy4ever

I feel like I should do a bit of an information dump on nightmare, since I really haven’t had a chance to and I really like her!

(if you couldn’t tell from my multiple posts about her-)

Her job isn’t to scare the shit out of people within their REM sleep hours.

Her job is to give premonitions via nightmares two people about to experience a tragedy or loss.

Some of her premonitions may be vague, some of them may be in your face.

But either way she’s there to help, even if helping may scare you.

She’s super nice, and she sort of has an Irish accent, she’s my mom for dark and also Eve’s mother. She likes collecting things like rocks or gemstones.

She sort of based off of a banshee mainly because originally I was going to have her a lot scarier. With a bunch of mascara, running down her face as she sobs and wails outside of somebody’s house.

She’s not overly clingy or mama bear with her kids if that makes sense? She recognizes that their adults and that they have their own lives and she doesn’t want to interfere with anything, although, if she does have the time, she’ll visit her children, and if they do have the time they’ll visit her.

The way she met dark’s father is that one day he saw her doing her job and felt inspired.

(supposed to be a cute parallel to dark viewing, sweet dreams as inspiring)

Eventually since darks father Oscuro, who before didn’t consider humanity that interesting and would’ve likely never consider them interesting. If it wasn’t for nightmare, showing him their culture..

The two bonded over that and sooner or later, they got married!

Now why would two entities of embodiments want to get married. I mean it’s just a silly piece of human paper binding two people legally-

Well, because they can now shut up /j

I figured they’d both be dark parents, because:

Oscuro at least in my AU, is the darkness that comes with the void of an area and space in time that does not yet have a galaxy, therefore dark is a portion of him.

(He’s also not affected by light, but still doesn’t like him-)

As to how nightmare is dark mother, Dark is tethered to earth, because he is the embodiment of earths dark

And since nightmare is an earth concept, that is how she is, his mother.

I kind of had headcannon dark as a bit of a mama‘s boy.

Nightmare is a loving mother, she’s very attentive, but also stern.

She’s a good mama.

I don’t really have anything else on her. If you want to ask questions, please do!

I don’t mind answering them :3

[pallysuune]

Theater of Hearts

Prologue

Being the firstborn daughter of a noblewoman, Meliana had always known that she would be married off to some guy or another for the benefit of her family. Maybe, if the guy was really important, for the benefit of their planet. She’d never even imagined it would be something like this.

Humanity had spread beyond the bounds of Earth long ago, but there were still so many mysteries of the galaxy. When the strange aliens had first come from the darkness between the stars, humans had called them ‘elves’, harkening back to ancient stories and legends. They proclaimed themselves Aeldari. Meliana was still a child when they had first come into realspace from a realm of twisting passages and space they called the Webway. She was still a little girl when treaties had been signed and deals had been made.

She was still a little girl when the first human woman was given as a bride to the Aeldari, a way to unite their two people despite their differences, to entwine them with the intention of keeping peace for generations.

For all she had always known she would have an arranged marriage, she always assumed it would be with a human.

She was wrong.

This had suddenly become a lot bigger than she’d expected.

Among the elves, the Aeldari, there were a faction that they called the Rillietann. They were artists, priests, and warriors all rolled into one. Players who’s calling was to serve their Laughing God by performing the history of their race on stage, and defending their race and territory from monsters that came from the deepest darkness of space. They were a secretive group, always masked, equal parts jester and assassin. And they all had roles.

At the top of their hierarchy, but set apart was the one they called the Arbennian. This was a player who was the only one allowed to play the great enemy from their mythology. And because of that, there was a taboo about them. It seemed like superstition to the humans, but the Aeldar took it very seriously. This Arbennian was a solitary force, belonging to no troupe, but still held in the highest regard, feared and revered almost in equal measures. High Priest and one to embody all the worst parts of their mythology. Some even went so far as to say that speaking with one was bad luck.

Meli wouldn’t have figured that this was the sort of figure to get married.

She was wrong again.

She would never know the exact series of events that led to her being the one chosen to be married to one of these esteemed and maligned Solitaires, but it happened. She came of age and she was told that she would be married to one, connecting him and his kin to their planet, hopefully for everyone’s mutual benefit. She would be leaving the planet she had been raised on, where she had lived all her life, and be taken to some strange, otherworldly new home in their Webway, with her only tie back to humanity being the knight chosen from the world governor’s house.

All Meliana knew was that this was going to be a mess, and nothing she had done had prepared her for it.

[botsnelves]

TF Histories: Cybertron, it's origins, and cybertronian anatomy.

The origin of the mechanical planet Cybertron have been heavily debated, well debated is a generous term. In fact, no one can pinpoint what Cybertron is exactly, where it came from, or how it formed. Many a cybertronian is ready to go on a long monologue about a figure called "Primus" a supposed god of Cybertron. It's strange, however, as no one can exactly decide whether or not he is real. Many cybertronians speak of him both as a mythological figure and a fact of life, so scholars are left confused…

So what actually happened? Well it turns out that the story most cybertronians tell is true! So what story do they tell? You may find it quite unbelievable. In the book "The Covenant of Primus" the author, Alpha Trion, writes: "The story of Cybertron acts in the deepest space, in the beginning of the age in a time unheard. In the vast emptiness of the galaxy were two beings, of the light and the dark. Basking in the light of the empty galaxy is the god Primus, and bathing within the cold darkness was the darkness embody Unicron. The two brothers of life fought with a primal sense, and their swords created stars. For millennia they fought, each giving in their valour, and Primus knew it could not continue. Unicron in his lust for power, questing to usurp, was blind to the conflict end. In the deepest of space, Primus used his power of creation to bring together asteroids to seal them both. Primus was wise and managed to format his asteroid into a planet, of his own creation. He used his powers of creation to form a metal to create a planet, named Cybertron. The evil Unicron, in his greed, created a form that would suit his evil purposes. A planet that consumed… Though he would lie dormant for the foreseeable time…"

The writing of The Covenant of Primus is quite obviously archaic in some way, written eons ago in ancient cybertronian and only now being translated into human languages. Considering how old the book is, and the language it was in, the translators (Two cybertronian Autobots) did a fantastic job! You may be asking, how does this prove Primus real? Well, we now must look at the core of Cybertron "Vector Sigma" Which could be classed as the brain of Primus, or avatar of Primus. The specifics on what Vector Sigma actually is, is rather contentious amongst cybertronians. The reason why Vector Sigma is evidence for Primus lies solely in the databanks of two groups, belonging to the Autobots and Decpticons respectively. The Aerialbots and the Stunticons, both groups were constructed in 1984 on Earth by the current faction leaders: Optimus Prime, and Megatron. The Aerialbots and Stunticons were brought to life by Vector Sigma, the author of The Covenant of Primus, Alpha Trion, had to sacrifice himself to activate Vector.

Each Aerialbot has a clear memory of Vector Sigma in their memory banks, which was observed by Anunias Alinas from the Alpha-9 Cluster. She was able to view the Aerialbots memory banks, with permission and supervision from Autobot medic First Aid. The event was recorded by Anunias in 2006, as the Autobots battled Decepticons in Alpha-9. If we take a cybertronians word for it, that Vector Sigma is a part of Primus: Then it becomes clear that Primus is a real being. The existence of Primus thus lends credence to an observed phenomenon on Cybertron, hot spots. Hot spots are observed all over Cybertron, as areas where new Cybertronians are "forged." The general idea of hot spot is that waves of energy are released by Vector Sigma occasionally, which 'lights up' these hot spots: Causing new cybertronians to be formed. These hot spots, most of the time, are solid metal and become more malleable and sometimes even liquid-y when Vector Sigma releases energy. Due to the random nature of hot spots, these areas are generally closed off and are guarded. Hot spots aren't the only way a new cybertronian can be created, constructed cold is another way a cybertronian can be "born." The process involves, well... Building a new one! As cybertronians are metal, they can be easily constructed. A team, sometimes just one person, will build a full body complete with paint, optic lenses, brain module, etc. A spark, which is like a heart for a cybertronian, is then inserted into a part of the body (Usually the middle, which is hollowed out to house the spark). The benefits of constructed cold are mainly: quick production of cybertronians (workers or soldier, the latter being the case during the Great War), and allowing a spark to be placed somewhere other than the "middle" of the torso, which is where a spark is placed during a forging (hot spot creation). However, a lot of constructed cold are looked down upon. The process itself if seen as immoral by most, as the process is used to create new cybertronians for mass production (War or work, as mentioned previously). Some notable constructed cold would by Skywarp, Thundercracker, and Bluestreak. When a forged model emerges from a hot spot, it's metal is still somewhat malleable. They're a shiny silver, not painted or given a "coloured metal" of sorts. They're also noticeably smaller than an average cybertronian. This is called the Protoform Stage. It lasts a 3-4 years, as the body of the cybertronian slowly undergoes changes and becomes a fully fledged cybertronian. At the end of the Protoform Stage, a cybertronian has full access to their Transformation Cog (T-Cog) which is explained later on.

Below is an diagram of cybertronian anatomy:

The diagram obviously is not representative of every cybertronian, the aforementioned constructed cold can have a spark anywhere, and ignoring arms, legs, head, and other things that would be obvious, or shared with humans. The diagram was made in 1984 by Autobot allied human, Chip Chase. The diagram you see now is a common reproduction, used in classrooms studying alien life (In the year 2006). Obviously, cybertronians have very diverse body types. This is usually because of the alternate mode. An alternate mode is the form a cybertronian can take at any time, which a cybertronian has implemented in them from day one. It may sound unbelievable that Primus gave cybertronians the ability to transform into vehicles, alien or not, and it is. The story of a cybertronians ability to transform is one for another day, though their is a diagram for a Transformation Cog (T-Cog) below, taken from the Autobot "Huffer" from a top-down view:

The process of transformation raises two questions: Is a cybertronian stuck with their alternate mode forever? And: what happens to both the vehicle and robot parts in both modes? To answer the first question: No, a cybertronian may be given an alt mode at birth but they aren't stuck with it. After the Protoform Stage, the brain module is able to contact the optical sensors to shoot a beam out of the lenses. This beam contains digital code, which scans a vehicle suitable for an alt mode (Mainly something that is mechanical and does not resemble the cybertronian form, so humans are a no go). This beam transports the data of the scanned potential alt mode to the brain module, providing a fully 3D model of the vehicle which includes even the smallest details (Aside from metal, a cybertronian being able to shift and change the atomic properties of their metal wouldn't come until long after the age of Autobots and Decepticons). There was a cybertronian policy which prevented a fresh cybertronian, out of the Protoform Stage, from scanning a new mode. Though, that part of history is beyond the scope of this document.

The second question is more complex, and depends on the alt mode chosen. Let's look at innards of a car, a Volkswagen beetle. We're looking at Bumblebee. Hi seats, steering wheel, pedals, and all else are able to be kept mostly in tact. His back seats split apart and create an opening to allow the chamber which contains his spark to be put into place, thme front seats fold up and are slid under the dashboard, the steering wheel and pedals retract into the floor to make room for the seats, then the torso thins out and collapses slightly, as the arms push themselves out from the side of the vehicle. No need to ask about the engine and such, cybertronians don't have them, their scanning module removes parts that already have their functions fulfilled by other aspects of cybertronian anatomy (Such as engines). When it comes to their head, it is stored wherever there is space. Sometimes, the head even collapses and folds away! Bumblebee's head does something similar to that: He has two small horns on his head which retract in, and his head folds into a rectangle shape. It's quite funny actually, when you're able to see Bumblebee's head become a thing cuboid for a split second.

Like this! Artists rendition of course, humourlessly drawn by Chip Chase. In fact, when it comes to cybertronian anatomy, you can thank Chip Chase for the majority of it. So that should be all for this edition of Transformers Histories, if I've missed anything, or have any questions: Feel free to mention, or ask away.

If you've made it this far: Thank you for reading!

[mistbow]

The Virtue of Void

The dragon mark on the Shepherd’s glove is modeled after Maotelus, and even the cloak is based upon the patterns of Maotelus. The Shepherd also uses Maotelus’ powers, the “Silver Flame”, to purify hellions. Yet, I think, even outside of his duty as the Shepherd, Sorey’s character represents the virtue in the element that Maotelus represents, Void.

In Zestiria, there are five elements: Earth (地), Water (水), Fire (火), Wind (風), and Void (無), modeled after the Godai (五大) in Japanese Buddhism: Earth (地), Water (水), Fire (火), Wind (風), and Void (空); as you can see that even the Five Lords are called Godaishin (五大神) in Japanese. However, if you notice in the kanji used for void, it’s actually different; sure, both “空” and “無” can be translated to “Void” in English, however, there’s a big yet nuanced difference here.

When 空 is used (like in the original Godai in Buddhism), Void means something like a vacant space. There��s nothing inside. Think about how a vase is useful because it has the clay part holding everything together, and the space inside it that you can put anything in it. In Buddhism, this character is used when describing śūnyatā or the element of ākāśa (both are very different concepts, mind you).

When 無 is used (like in Zestiria), Void means something like no-thing, like when you put the prefix un- or non- in English. It is the “without”. What it is not, however, is “no” in the “yes” and “no” dichotomy, which I will talk about later. It also, in some ways, refers to pure awareness, before the human gains experience and knowledge.

In Zen Buddhism, there’s a popular kouan in Mumonkan (無門關, lit. The Gateless Gate), in which the first kouan (趙州狗子) reads like this:

趙州和尚、因僧問、狗子還有佛性也無。州云、無。

A monk asked Zhaozhou Congshen, a Chinese Zen master, “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?” Zhaozhou answered, “無.”

This has been interpreted to mean as follows: The kouan is not about whether a dog does or does not have a Buddha-nature because everything is Buddha-nature, and either a positive or negative answer is absurd because there is no particular thing called Buddha-nature. In it, the answer of “negative”, 無, is clarified as although all beings have potential Buddha-nature, beings who do not have the capacity to see it and develop it essentially do not have it. The purpose of this primary kouan to a student is to free the mind from analytic thinking and into intuitive knowing. A student who understands the nature of his question would understand the importance of awareness of potential to begin developing it.

VELVET: Let me ask you a question, Shepherd. Which do you choose: the “many” or the “individual”? SOREY: Well, I suppose I'd choose each of the “individual” so I'd end up with the “many.”

This is a very Sorey-like answer, of course, in which I mean to say that here he basically refuses to engage in the dichotomy presented by Velvet (Artorius, actually). Sorey indirectly says to unask this question; it is fundamentally flawed and that he won’t give in to the premise that a dualistic answer can be given in this case. It’s not either-or, because without the individual, there is not the many, and vice-versa.

To explain more on that, I’d like to go back to the Five Lords, but especially look at the crests for the two known leaders of the Lords: Maotelus and Innominat.

The Crest of Maotelus

A crest signifying Maotelus, the central figure of the Five Lords—a lord of the void, who embodies both light and darkness.

The Crest of Innominat

A crest that bears a distinct resemblance to that of Maotelus of the Five Lords. The dark parts are absent, leaving one with an impression of light and purity.

These crests are deliberately similar, yet the big difference is that Innominat’s is missing the “dark” parts: signifying only “light” and “purity.” The “void” that Maotelus represents, on the other hands, embraces both the “dark” and the “light”, and we have the entire game of Berseria to explain why that is.

Taking a closer look at Maotelus’ crest, it reminds me of another symbol that exists in the real world, because of the equal and interacting dark and light parts, almost cyclical.

Taijitu (太極圖), literally meaning the Symbol of the Supreme Ultimate, is often used to symbolize yin-yang (陰陽), opposing yet non-adversarial forces that complement each other, equally taking turns on waning, waxing, waning, and waxing again. The common saying in English is that “there are two sides to everything”, however this doesn’t fully explain the symbol: one half of the yin-yang cannot exist without the other. They are inseparable. If you have a hill that has a sun shining on one side, then you have one sunny side and one shady side. You cannot have an inside of a square without the outside, or the outside without the inside. That sort of thing.

「オレはヘルダルフ��どうして災禍の顕主になったのかを知りたいんだ」

迷うことなく答えたスレイにメーヴィンは重ねて尋ねた。

「知ってどうする？あいつを倒す弱点を見つけたいのか？」

「それは……考えたことなかったな」

「なに？」

意外な答えにメーヴィンは眉間に皺を寄せた。

「じゃあ、なんのためにヘルダルフの過去を知りたいんだ？」

「導師として……ううん、オレがオレとしてヘルダルフと向き合うためだよ」

導師の使命は禍の顕主を鎮めること。スレイが導師になった当初、ライラはそう説明した。そのためには、世界を識る必要があると。

そしてスレイは旅に出た。出会いと別れを繰り返し、喜びと悲しみを繰り返した。どんなことにも裏と表があり、それらは切り離せない関係にあることを識った。

「旅は、導師として必要だったのかもしれない。でも、オレは導師であるまえにオレなんだ。世界を旅して、この世界が災禍の顕主によって危機に瀕していることを改めて識った。それを止めたいと思うのは、導師だからじゃない。オレ自身なんだ」

災禍の顕主は世界を穢れで満たそうとする、いわば大きな”負の流れ”だ。それと向き合い、抗おうとするなら—”正の流れ”になろうとするなら、相手を深く知り、正しく裏と表の関係にならなくてはいけない、とスレイは感じていた。

「導師として災禍の顕主と戦うだけなら、過去なんて識らなくてもいいかもしれない。でも、オレは識りたいんだ。自分が向き合うためには、それが必要だって感じてる。導師じゃなく、オレの勝手な願いだけれど、迷いのない選択をしたいから……メーヴィン、力を貸してくれないかな？」

メーヴィンは沈黙した。顔から笑みは消え、鋭い眼光がスレイを見定めるように行き来する。///スレイも沈黙し、メーヴィンの答えを待った。

やがて語り部は深くため息をついた。

「……なるほどな。使命じゃなく、己の意志で戦うことにしたってわけか……。確かにたいしたタマだったようだ」

“I want to know why Heldalf became the Lord of Calamity.” 

Sorey answered without any hesitation, and Mayvin asked again.

“And what will you do once you know? Do you want to find a weakness to take him down?”

“I... had never thought about that.” 

“What?”

Mayvin’s brows wrinkled at the unexpected answer.

“Then, for what reason do you want to know about Heldalf’s past?”

“I want to face him as the Shepherd... no, as myself.”

It is the Shepherd’s duty to quell the Lord of Calamity. When Sorey first became the Shepherd, Lailah explained this to him. In order to do so, he needed to know the world, she also told him.

Then Sorey set out on his journey. He had repeated encounters and farewells, experienced repeated joy and sorrow. He learned that everything had two sides to it, and that these two sides were inseparable.

“This journey might have been necessary for me as the Shepherd. But I am me before I am the Shepherd. Traveling around the world, I understood once again that this world is threatened by the Lord of Calamity. And I want to stop that not because I am the Shepherd, but because I want to do it as myself.” 

The Lord of Calamity was a great “negative flow,” so to speak, that seeked to fill the world with malevolence. To face and resist this, to be the “positive flow,” Sorey felt he had to know the other party deeply and be on the right side of the relationship between the two.

“If all I want to do is to fight against the Lord of Calamity as the Shepherd, I may not need to know anything about his past. But I want to know; I feel that I need to in order to face him. It’s my own selfish wish, not as the Shepherd, but I want to make this choice without hesitation, so... Mayvin, will you lend me your strength?”

Mayvin was silent. His smile faded from his face, and his sharp eyes came and went as if he were assessing Sorey.

Sorey, too, was silent, waiting for Mayvin’s answer.

“...I see. So you decided to fight him not because of the Shepherd’s calling, but on your own will... you certainly have the gall to do it.”

Emphasis mine. Like coins, Sorey realizes that everything can’t have the tails (裏) without the heads (表). If Heldalf is the minus (負) of this world, so to speak, then in some ways he intuits that he needs to be the plus (正). That’s just how the world operates—it will yield to the balance, as he gets it.

(By the way, this whole duality of everything also applies to life and death in Daoism, and Zestiria, as a whole, touches upon both life and death in its narrative.)

死生，命也，其有夜旦之常

Death and life are ordained, just as we have the constant succession of night and day.

故善吾生者，乃所以善吾死也

That I found it good to live is the very reason why I find it good to die.

(For a person to value life but resist death would be a perversion of our very nature, as life and death are natural stages of being, if we value a person’s life, we should likewise value their death.)

反者道之動 弱者道之用 天下萬物生於有 有生於無

Returning is the movement of Dao. Yielding is the manner of Dao. The ten thousand creatures of the world are created from being; Being is created from non-being.

—Dao De Jing (道德經) verse 40

道生一 一生二 二生三 三生萬物 萬物負陰而抱陽 沖氣以為和

Dao creates one. One creates two. Two creates three. Three creates the ten thousand creatures. The ten thousand creatures carry Yin and embrace Yang, Pouring their Qi together, thus becoming harmonious.

—Dao De Jing (道德經) verse 42

In Daoist philosophy, the yin-yang becomes sensible from an initial, quiescent nothingness or non-being (無), and continues moving on until that quiescence is achieved again.

And I’d like to emphasize this: at the center of Daoist philosophy is that nothingness (無). Everything emerges from that 無, and will come back to that  無 as well; that’s how the world will settle itself naturally, and that’s how we live with Dao (道), or, put simply, the underlying principles of the universe (this is a very gross simplification, by the way).

One of the important concepts in Daoism is wu wei (無為).

道常無為 而無不為

Dao ever-constantly practices actionless action, Yet nothing is left undone.

—Dao De Jing (道德經) verse 37

The term basically gets translated as a lot of things (actionless action, non-action, etc.), but wu wei refers to an action that you do without needing to act on it; an action that is so natural to you that you don’t have to consciously think about how, what, why, when to do it. (Think of how when you learn how to drive, you are conscious about many things, yet when you’re already adept, it’s almost second nature to you.)

Without forcing it. Yes, perhaps that is the right word.

將欲取天下而為之 吾見其不得已

[夫]天下神器 不可為也 為者敗之 執者失之

故物 或行或隨 或(歔)或吹 或強或羸 或挫或隳

是以聖人 去甚 去奢 去泰

Would you take hold of the world and control it? I see you have no choice.

Now: the world is a divine vessel, You can not control it (indeed!). He who acts, ruins it; He who grasps, loses it.

So, among all things, Some lead and some follow, Some sigh and some pant, Some are strong and some are weak, Some overcome and some succumb.

Therefore the sage avoids extremity, excess, and extravagance.

—Dao De Jing (道德經) verse 29

There is an order to life, and we play our parts in it. That’s fine, and it grants us enough liberty to explore our capacities and take delight in them. But if we try to overstep our boundaries, extend beyond our capacities, we will fail miserably and painfully.

There is no satisfaction in pretense, if allowed to guide our lives. We need to be what we are, not what we would like to be.

ROSE: Sorey. If a heart set on justice starts generating malevolence, how do you think it should be stopped? ROSE: That’s what her angle is. She thinks her own personal justice and a universal sense of justice are one and the same.

I hope it’s obvious enough why Cardinal Forton is different from Sorey, despite both having strong enough desires/dreams of their own.

(There’s also duality at play here—Sorey gives life, Rose takes life.)

「イズチにいた頃は"穢れは危険なもの"って認識ですんだけど、こうやって人の世界に出てくると、そんな単純なものじゃないんだってわかったよ。人の社会と穢れは切っても切れない関係なんだ。そこで生きていくということは、誰でも穢れを生む可能性があるってこと」

スレイは街を見通した。フォートンの影響がなくなったとはいえ、穢れはまだ残っている。街の人々が知らないうちに生んでいるのだ。

「オレも穢れを生むかもしれない」

「君は穢れを生まないよ」

ミクリオは間髪入れずに答えた。スレイは顔をしかめる。

「.......どうして、言い切れるんだ？ どうしても叶えたい夢がある——その点では、オレとフォートン枢機卿の気持ちは一緒じゃないか。それで、あの人は穢れを生み出していた」

「あの人とスレイは違う。君はひとりじゃない」

ミクリオははっきりと言った。

「夢を叶えるには、揺るがない意志が必要だ。けれどその強さゆえに、視野が狭くなり、他者の痛みに心が麻痺していく。——でもそれは一人だからだ。一人で夢を叶えようとするから、周りが見えなくなる」

ミクリオはスレイの両肩を摑み、言い聞かせるように言った。

「君の夢は、僕の夢でもある。君が暴走しそうになったら、僕が殴ってでも目を覚まさせる。僕を信じられないか？」

スレイは迷わず首を振る。その勢いのよさに、ミクリオは少しだけ笑う。

「だから君は穢れに捕まることはない、絶対」

“When I was in Elysia, I was aware that malevolence was a dangerous thing, but now that I’m out in the world of humans, I come to realize that it’s not that simple. Human society and malevolence are inseparable, even if we try to separate them. Living in such a world means that everyone has the potential to be tainted.”

Sorey looked over the town. Although Forton’s influence is gone, malevolence still remains. The people of this town were giving birth to malevolence without them realizing it.

“I might give birth to malevolence too.”

“You won’t.”

Without a moment’s delay, Mikleo answered. Sorey frowned.

“…How can you be so sure about that? I have a dream that I really want to fulfill——and in that respect, aren’t my feelings the same as Cardinal Forton’s? She was giving birth to malevolence because of that.”

“You’re different from her. You’re not alone.”

Mikleo made it very clear.

“An unwavering will is needed to make dreams come true. But because of how strong it is, our vision narrows and our hearts become numb to the pain of others——but that’s only because we are alone. Because we try to fulfill our dreams alone, we lose sight of the world around us.”

Mikleo said, grabbing both of Sorey’s shoulders, as if to remind him.

“Your dream is also my dream. If you are about to go out of control, I’ll punch you to wake you up. Or you can’t trust me?”

(Emphasis, again, mine.)

The Daoist sage is the paradigm of proper responsiveness. He has perfect sensitivity and responsiveness both to things in the world and to other people; to his surroundings. He’s open to the dynamic of relationship self-other, to the relativity and mutual involvement of self and other. In contrast with an average human being, the sage, whose heart-mind (心) is free from any residue, displays an “unbiased receptivity to things.” His empty heart-mind “takes no distortive action” and so “what is can be as it is, with no disfigurement.” Thus, it is possible for the sage to “appreciate things as they really are” and also to perceive and embrace a person as they are. The uncluttered heart-mind makes the sage well-equipped for correctly evaluating the actions of others and responding appropriately.

(I would like to mention that Zestiria tackled a bit of this whole “you’re not alone” bit earlier with a Daoist parable: the snake, the frog, and the centipede.)

Yes, it is in the heart-mind (心) that is empty; that has nothing in it. Think of it like a mirror, or a glass, that gets obscured when it is tainted, and so you can’t see clearly what’s on or through it. In Zestiria, I think this is the virtue of purity really stands for.

穢れ――自らの思うまま生きることを阻む世界の皮肉に圧し潰された、人の心の悲鳴。 その悲鳴を感じ寄り添い、本当の形の心とともに再出発する背中を押すのがスレイの救いの力(感じる力・霊応力)。 浄化の炎を振るうだけでは救いとは言えず、逆に炎がなくとも人や天族を穢れから救う事はできる。

Malevolence――The screams of the human heart-mind that is crushed by the irony of the world that prevents them from living as they wish.

To feel those screams of the heart-mind and get close to it, and push them to start over with the heart-mind in its true form is Sorey’s powers of salvation (his power to feel and his resonance).

Wielding Flame of Purification alone is not enough to save; on the contrary, it is possible to save humans and seraphim from malevolence even without it.

In Daoism, at the core of the heart-mind (心) of every human being there is an authentic self. The authentic self is intimately connected with virtue (德), which is a gift people receive at birth. But the heart-mind is also the seat of all mental activities; it is the “location of consciousness.” With time and via the contact with the outside world (learning a language, learning social norms, going through traumatic experiences, etc.), the heart-mind becomes filled—like a container—with “knowing consciousness” (知). Not knowing how to use this knowing consciousness selectively—turn it on when necessary, but also turn it off at other times—a human being comes to depend on this consciousness and identify with it completely. When unstopped in its growth, this consciousness continues to produce multiple, derivative intellectual layers atop the true self. All actions that are motivated by these inauthentic layers oppress and harm one's spiritual core.

The thoughts, actions, and speech of a person are no longer the reflection of their true self.

EDNA: Don’t let her see you frowning like that. You don’t want Rose’s feelings to go to waste, do you? SOREY: I don’t. But I just... I feel so bummed.

Now, the question of emotions. Having an empty heart-mind which is free from emotions implies being emotionless. However, it is not really the case that a Daoist sage is emotionless; rather that he does not add anything (i.e., a word, a thought, an action) to make a given emotion amplify and, thus, exceed its natural boundaries. Being free of these excessive emotion means not allowing likes or dislikes to damage you internally, instead making it your constant practice to follow along with the way each thing is of itself, without trying to add anything to the process of life.

The sage consciously restrains himself from making any such additions that would lead to prolonging the life span of an emotion. As a result, emotions remain spontaneous, genuine, and harmless—they come and go freely, like changes in the weather or the seasons of the year, and they never transform into anything excessive or harmful. Thus, emotions are never artificially solidified into a fixed identity. The sage is free from emotions in the sense that they leave no residue in his heart-mind, they do not take up the space within, and thus they do not block the sage's unity with Dao. By cultivating the void (無) of the heart-mind, the sage ensures that he is never harmed by emotions.

SOREY: You mean to live is to obey the laws of nature? HELDALF: What else would it be? SOREY: You’re wrong! All that is, is not being dead.

Daoism is a philosophy that stresses living simply and honestly while in harmony with nature. Letting things follow their natural course. Wu wei (無為), no wasted action, is the principle.

However, one thing that many people get wrong when hearing about this concept is that it means total surrender. Yes, wu wei implies giving up on forcing things. But never giving up altogether.

For instance, when you’re experiencing injustices, wu wei doesn’t suggest resignation. It’s quite the opposite. Wu wei suggests a persistent amount of pressure. This pressure isn’t a metaphorical jackhammer or wrecking ball. It’s a soft strike in the right spot. It’s like water quietly working through the toughest cliffs and rocks.

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves… Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Passivity is often looked down upon. In the case of Zestiria and Sorey, (especially in the early reviews where people started playing Zestiria in bad faith because of the infamy surrounding the game), people often criticize how Sorey is not the ideal male Tales protagonist; he is often called “radio-controlled” (ラジコ��) in the sense that Rose (along with the others, especially Lailah) is seen as the one controlling and driving his character around, thus, Rose is, to the eyes of these people, the “real” protagonist of Zestiria because she is the more “assertive” one. And she is assertive, by the way, but I think people look at Sorey’s character the wrong way.

Yielding and passivity are virtues traditionally associated with the feminine in the Daoist point of view, and I know this might have caused some knee-jerk reaction in some people, but in Dao De Jing, even though the intended audience would've been men, students are encourage to embrace and nurture the feminine elements of their nature. These feminine virtues are seen as positive traits to have, not inferior to their more assertive masculine counterpart.

The “feminine” is the earth. The inborn nature of its body is stable. Women are patterned on it. If a man wishes to congeal his essence, he should mentally pattern himself on earth and be like a woman.

And it is, intended as part of his character.

山本　 そういう意味ではおとなしい主人公に見えるかもしれませんが、熱い思いはちゃんと持っていて、叫んだりノリや勢いだけで解決しようとはしないキャラクターにしたんです。代わりに、ミクリオをストレートに感情表現するキャラクターにして、2人で1人の主人公のような言動をとるように工夫しました。

YAMAMOTO: In that sense, [Sorey] may seem like a calm protagonist, but he has passionate feelings, yet does not try to solve problems by shouting or just going with his spirit or momentum. Instead, we made Mikleo a character who expresses his emotions in a straightforward manner, so that the two of them act and speak as if they are one protagonist.

馬場　彼が世界を動かそうとしたんじゃなくて、彼の行動の結果が世界を動かしていく、変えていく。

BABA: He didn’t try to move the world, but the results of his actions moved and changed the world.

Sorey is like a blank canvas, unstained, yet with a strong, pure core. With this heart-mind of his that is empty in the Daoist sense, he acts just as he does, just as he is, staying true to himself. He never forces his way through, he knows that he has to be in harmony with nature (as symbolized by the seraphim, who are described as the very world the humans live in itself), and he then learns that everything in the nature has two sides to it—this includes reconciling not just life but also death. To respect life, you have to respect death. To respect death, you have to respect life. But to yield also means to still be alive; being alive is not the same as not being dead, after all. He has learned to be in check with himself, and with his surroundings.

Sorey is really the perfect character that embodies the values that Maotelus’ Void represents. Empty of malevolence.

One thousand years apart, and he manages to inherit that will. Legends (伝承) are not just told (伝), but also needs at least someone willing to listen to them (承); it’s why they’re called that way.

“Legends” will someday become “hope.”

[moviesessionwithmyhubby]

The passage of time

I've been thinking a lot about time recently after watching two movies, "Sleeping Beauty" and "Arrival." These two films discuss time in two distinct ways, but they all talk about one thing in common: the passage of time.

In the movie “Sleeping beauty” directed by Julia Leigh, Lucy, the main character, finds herself involved in a clandestine service where she is drugged and sleeps unconscious while clients, old men, engage in various activities with her. To be honest, I found it difficult to watch this film, particularly when I saw these old men in a room with an unconscious sleeping naked young girl, doing things to her without her knowledge or agreement. But when I looked deeper at these scenes, I saw a conflict between youth and old age in that space, I could plainly see in that room, the cruel flow of time. I saw three distinct old men entering the room one by one. They're all wealthy and accomplished, I supposed, and they walked into that room with various purposes in mind, different things they wanted to do with Lucy. But they all have one thing in common: they all reveal their impotence due to old age, and they all express regret for their youth, for the good old days they once had. In this room, Lucy represents their past, embodying their youthful strength, characterized by silky skin and shiny hair. These men, on the other hand, are worn and fatigued, carrying the weight of their years upon them. The first man, he was filled with remorse, regretting his failure to appreciate his wife, friends, and children. Above all else, he regretted his youthful days. He gave Lucy his greatest appreciation, for in her presence, he could briefly recollect the vitality of his youth. He would tenderly caress her skin and gently run his fingers through her hair, finding comfort as he went into sleep nestled against her body. The second man, upon entering the room, assumed a facade of strength and dominance, treating Lucy as a mere object of desire. This behavior, however, revealed a deep-seated insecurity stemming from his diminished sexual potency due to old age.  And the third man, grappling with the reality of their fading strength, treated Lucy as a means to test their own physical prowess. He lifted her up, only to accidentally cast her down, a futile attempt to deny his own impotence in the face of time's cruel flow And outside of this room lies the destiny or the future of these elderly men, a fate that eagerly awaits them on the distant horizon - the inevitable embrace of death. In a single room, a seamless and lucid progression of linear time is shown, including the realms of the past, present, and future.

The “Arrival” movie, on the other hand, gives cinematic expression to the concept that accepting the chronology may be more relative and dependent on your point of perspective. In the movie, a linguist interprets a Heptapod ( a species that is described as alien) message as “there’s no time”, which philosophically and figuratively means for Heptapods that time doesn’t exist. As the Heptapods possess the extraordinary ability to perceive time and events in a non-linear way. This implies that there exists neither a past nor a future; rather, each passing moment occurs within the realm of the present. Alternatively, it can be stated that Heptapod possesses the ability to perceive events that are yet to occur. Heptapod arrives on Earth to offer humanity a "weapon," eventually revealed to be their language or the capacity to live in non-linear time. And as quickly as Louies, the main character, excels at interpreting the Heptapods' language, she begins to have visions of the future. She then witnesses her daughter-Hannah's whole life, from her born to her last moments in the hospital bed. Louise: If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?

Ian: Maybe I’d say what I felt more often. I don’t know. Louise is still deciding to spend these years with her daughter and eventually lose her. She knows she will lose her daughter years from now. She knows she would feel suffering and emotional despair when she sees the image of her dying child. But yet, Louise can see all the joy that she would have expected to witness in the years ahead. And she chooses to embrace every minute. 

Both the films "Sleeping Beauty" and "Arrival" discuss the merciless passage of time and the ultimate endpoint of a human's existence, stating that no matter what timeline we live in, linear or nonlinear, able to glimpse the future or not, we will inevitably get old and die. However, unlike "Sleeping Beauty," which discusses time passing and the eventual end point with sorrow, "Arrival" takes a more optimistic attitude, redefining the well-advised guidance that life is a journey rather than a destination on the horizon. Human beings are meant to go through this journey not just with joy, but also with grief and sorrow, and that journey is more important than the destination. Why are the elderly men in "Sleeping Beauty" are not happy? What is Lucy is not happy? These men, residing in the present moment, find themselves burdened by remorse over past actions and yearn to revisit the days of their youth. Meanwhile, Lucy resides in the present, yet she harbors a hopeful anticipation for the future, envisioning it as a realm of greater brightness and happiness. The characters above seem to lack the ability to fully immerse themselves in the present moment, to truly embrace its essence.

And that brings to mind, the movie "Arrival" poses a thought-provoking question that continues to occupy my thoughts. If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?

I begin to wonder if the 18-year-old me had known that the major I chose in university would lead nowhere or that I would be on a hard road when I started working, would I have changed anything? Would I change my major in university or change my career path?

I honestly don't think so. Because I sincerely value all of my experiences, whether positive or negative, and I appreciate all of the individuals I've met along the way. If I hadn't chosen French as my major at university, I wouldn’t have gone to my first job as a translator and met these fantastic coworkers, and one of these coworkers would have suggested that I should work at a game company. And if I hadn't worked at my first company, I wouldn't have pursued a career in project management at my second company, where I met this fantastic co-worker who inspired me to work at the company where I met a group of friends whom I adore and my loving husband. I also believe that the delicate dance between sadness and happiness in our lives holds a profound truth: without experiencing sorrow, it's difficult to fully appreciate the beauty of joy. The stark contrast of emotions allows us to recognize blessings in a new light. When I find myself in the depths of sadness, I get a precious gift: a heightened feeling of gratitude for the moments of happiness that I experience. Memories that previously seemed ordinary now glow brightly against the background of our difficulties. Like right now, I find myself in the midst of an inconvenient situation at my cabin in a small-town village. One day, I am blessed with an ample supply of water, only to be deprived of it the very next day. This unfortunate circumstance has left me feeling quite frustrated as I struggle to contain my bodily functions. However, this situation has also granted me a newfound appreciation for the comforts of home, such as a solid roof over my head, accessibility to clean water, and a source of electricity. Or back then, during the profound sorrow of losing my beloved grandmother, I experienced a heightened sense of gratitude for the well-being of my parents and cherished the moments spent in their embrace. Or when I experienced the depths of my ill health, I developed a profound appreciation for the vitality of my body. I became highly conscious of the steady rhythm of my heart, the sharpness of my mental capacities, the freedom to walk and utilize both of my hands, the ability to see the beauty of the world through my vision, the ability to hear the melodious sounds, the ability to speak meaningful words, and the ability to simply breath the fresh air. I believe within the complex fabric of life, where sorrow and delight entwine, we acquire the wisdom to cherish the gifts of happiness. They transform into delicate blossoms, tenderly nurtured by the tears shed from the depths of our sorrows. This symphony of emotions teaches us the art of cherishing the blessings given us, both as writers and as the audience of our own stories. I know it's easier said than done, because I'm human after all. And human is a strange species, we don't seem to accept nature as it is, we always want to change things. We want to fix things that we cannot fix, and we want to prepare ourselves for things that yet to come. But I truly want to live like Louise in “Arrival”, despite the pain and emotional devastation that has occurred along the road, I want to choose to treasure joy and live each moment fully. Because the significance lies in the journey itself, for the road holds greater importance than its ultimate destination. And even if, by some chance, I were to acquire the knowledge of what lies ahead, it would not stop the never-ending flow of time.

[rhetoricandlogic]

Ian Mond Reviews The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager

August 21, 2019 Ian Mond

The Archive of Alternate Endings, Lindsey Drager (Dzanc 978-1945814822, $16.95, 168pp, tp) May 2019.

Above the ten chapter headings that make up Lindsey Drager’s remarkable short novel The Archive of Alternate Endings are a range of years beginning with 1378 and ending with 2365. Those mathematically inclined will note a 75- to 79-year gap between each year, and those who know their celestial bodies will figure out that this corresponds with the recorded and expected return of Halley’s Comet to Earth. The 11 stories that weave their way through the novel are as­sociated with a year when 1P/Halley has or will grace the night sky.

If the orbital path of Halley’s Comet provides The Archive of Alternate Endings its structure, then Drager’s second influence, the tale of Hansel and Gretel, embodies the novel’s essence. For example, the opening chapter, “Of Breadcrumbs and Constellations”, is set in and around 1835 and 1986. The 1835 section, unsurprisingly, concerns the Brothers Grimm, Jakob and Wilhelm, and their gathering and editing of “malleable myths” that would form Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the first edition of which included “Hansel and Gretel”. The account, though, deals less with how the brothers moulded and reshaped that famous tale and rather focuses on Jakob’s sexuality, with the strong suggestion that he was gay (apparently an open question in academia). When we shift across to 1986, Drager deals head-on with the AIDS crisis. A young man – a writer – who happens to be a descendant of Wilhelm Grimm, catches the eye of another man – a computer programmer – at the theatre. They spend the night together, and the next morning, when the writer asks the computer programmer whether they will meet again, the programmer takes down a copy of The Illustrated Hansel and Gretel that he spies on the writer’s bookshelf and tells him to “follow the breadcrumbs.” It’s romantic and sweet and tragically undercut by the fact that both of them will be dead from complications arising from AIDS within the year.

As we move forward and backward in time, to a future where the environment is in collapse, taking what’s left of humanity with it (2136), to a past where a young girl protects her brother, both of them abandoned in the woods (1378), multiple themes begin to emerge. One of those concerns the enduring power of storytelling and how our desire to communicate through narrative – both fact and fiction – led to the development of technologies to facilitate this, such as Johannes Gutenberg and his printing press. Drager takes us to 1456, where Gutenberg’s twin sister (Hansel and Gretel are sometimes portrayed as twins), decides to reveal to her brother that their father sexually abused her. In a moment of heart-rending prescience, Johannes reflects that the printing press…

… is for her, and all those who need a way to tell their stories. It is for every sister who once had a story that went unbelieved.

Skip nearly 800 years and that human need to communicate and share a story has reached a technological and almost transcendent endpoint as two marvels of our ingenuity, probes (also twins) traversing the reaches of space, disseminate, in binary, the Brother’s Grimm version of Hansel and Gretel to the “infinite beyond.”

A second thread that becomes apparent is how Drager reframes “Hansel and Gretel”, subtly and overtly, as a tale about those who have been marginalised throughout history. There’s Edmund Halley’s niece, bright and inquisitive, (sometimes Gretel is portrayed as the older of the two siblings) who fears for her future because she has been cursed with intelligence at a time when female empowerment is another word for witchcraft. And then there’s the woman who sketched the drawings for The Illustrated Hansel and Gretel (the same edition owned by the writer), committed by her father to an asylum (the woods) in 1910 because he loathes her bohemian “lifestyle,” particularly her love of other women. Most aston­ishing of all, though, is how the witch is recontex­tualised as a woman selflessly caring for gay men infected with AIDS. It’s the parents, who have heartlessly and cruelly disowned (abandoned) their dying boys, that have labelled her a witch.

The Archive of Alternate Endings is an in­credible novel. A book small in size but loaded with imagery – labyrinths and nautiluses – and themes beyond those I’ve touched on above. All of it is in service to a single, powerful message that folk tales about children abandoned in the woods, about houses built of cakes and lollies, about horrible parents and hungry witches, endure not to teach us a lesson but “for one purpose only, and that purpose is to say this: “Being human is difficult. Here is some evidence.”

[witchofwar]

Raven Reid, a young woman in the latter half of her twenties, embodies the quiet mystery of moonlit woods and the ancient strength of her Scottish heritage. She is a soul that moves with a timeless grace, often compared to the fey creatures of old tales, with an air that is both deeply grounded in the earth and yet touched by the unseen. Her long, dark hair falls like a river of shadows, framing eyes that seem to hold secrets and stories within their depths. A solitary figure by nature, Raven has found a life of quiet contentment nestled in her small, ivy-clad cottage by the river, its stone walls holding the warmth of a hundred years. This home stands at the edge of an enchanted forest, where the trees seem to whisper her name and the wind hums with the softest hint of magic.

Raven lives with her two constant companions—Storm, her black cat, a creature as enigmatic as she is, and Morty, a majestic Friesian horse with a mane as dark as the midnight sky. Storm is rarely far from her side, often slipping like a shadow between the shelves or curling up in the sun-dappled reading corners of the bookstore. Morty, on the other hand, brings her a sense of freedom and connection to the land itself. When she rides through the woods, she feels a communion with nature that resonates in her core, as if the trees and rivers are part of her very being.

Within her cottage is a world of its own—Raven’s very own bookstore, a lifelong dream realised through her own hands and unwavering spirit. The quaint shop is a sanctuary of worn tomes and flickering candlelight, where shelves line the walls like gentle guardians of knowledge, each book carefully chosen, each corner bearing her personal touch. The space pulses with her energy, a harmonious blend of mysticism and simplicity. Every morning, as she opens the door to the world beyond, she feels the warmth of each page calling to her, eager to share their tales. But for Raven, it is not just the written word that matters; rather the souls behind them—the lives that shaped those stories, the mysteries of human experience that she is ever-curious to unravel.

To those who enter her shop, Raven is a gentle mystery, offering a rare glimpse of her soulful depth through warm, knowing glances and words that flow like poetry. She often lets the silence settle around her, listening with a patience and reverence that few possess, as if the space itself were in on some shared secret. People often find themselves revealing more than they intended under her gaze, feeling as though they are talking to a trusted friend or a guide from an age long past. Raven’s interest in people runs as deep as her love of stories, and she listens intently, not just to the words but to the pauses and unspoken shadows, eager to understand what makes each soul tick. She believes that within everyone lies a story waiting to be told, a truth longing for light.

In her heart, Raven feels an affinity for the ancient and the mystical. She sees herself as a bridge between worlds: the seen and unseen, the real and imagined. The forest and the river are her confidants, nature her oldest friend. On certain mist-laden mornings, she walks through the woods, her fingers brushing the damp leaves, feeling as though the earth itself whispers to her. This connection to nature is not something she takes lightly; it’s her guiding force, her wellspring of inner peace and purpose.

Above all, Raven Reid is a seeker—of knowledge, of stories, of the souls of others. She approaches the world with an open heart and a boundless curiosity, believing that each encounter, each tale shared over a cup of tea, each book pressed into someone’s hands, enriches her understanding of life. Her gaze may seem faraway at times, as if she is lost in a reverie of some distant place, yet her presence is grounding, as though she is holding space for every soul that finds its way into her sanctuary. Raven dreams of her little bookstore growing not in size but in spirit, of it becoming a place where people can come to not only find new stories, but to uncover forgotten parts of themselves, to explore the hidden realms within.

Raven Reid is, in her own quiet way, a keeper of stories, a gentle guardian of souls. And though her life is one of soft, hidden moments, there is a depth and a strength within her, a willingness to embrace both the darkness and light that exist within us all. She remains a mystery, perhaps even to herself, but one thing is clear: her heart beats with the rhythms of ancient wisdom, and in her presence, one feels as though they, too, are part of a much grander tale.

[senal-mcad-creativeleadership]

Conceptualizing Humble Stewardship for Creative Leaders

A shift is emerging that challenges traditional models of leadership that often lead to "top heavy" structures within organizations and turn towards a more collective, creative approach. This shift emphasizes humility, shared responsibility, and a deeper connection to both society and the environment. Sharon Turnbull writes in "Gentle Stewardship" (from Resurgence, Issue 264), that the idea of leadership is moving away from the "hero" narrative to a space where stewardship and collaboration are prioritized.

Creative leadership goes hand-in-hand with this model. By fostering creativity and empathy, leaders can guide their teams and organizations in a way that not only encourages innovation, but also ensures that decisions are made collaboratively, with integrity and clear purpose.

Moving From Hero to Host: The Creative Leader’s Role

"Humility" and "Leadership"… two words that should go hand-in-hand, but often don't. Between my experiences working for mid-large corporate organizations, and my observations from politicians, two things are consistent -- the insidious thirst for power, and lip service. These people in positions of power and influence typically do a great job of understanding and communicating the needs of their constituents, however, they intentionally underdeliver for the sake of their own interests (queue-in labeling an organization as a "family", only to cut thousands of jobs for the sake of saving money). Many have grown tired and skeptical of leaders as they increasingly seem to wear empathy as a mask and create an environment of inherent distrust amongst their constituents. So, how can this be rectified?

The Western world has long been captivated by the image of the leader as a hero—someone who swoops in to save the day, offering solutions from a pedestal of knowledge. This "heroic leadership" model positions leaders as the sole decision-makers, embodying qualities of strength, wisdom, and confidence. However, the challenges leaders face today are far too complex for any singular individual to solve. Pertinent issues such as climate change, racism, sexism, wealth inequality, and rapid technological growth require a collaborative approach to create solutions.

Creative leadership rejects the hero model in favor of the "leader-as-host concept". This approach recognizes that innovation and change arise from the collective efforts of a group. A creative leader fosters environments where team members feel empowered to contribute ideas, solve problems, and collaborate freely. Just as an artist draws inspiration from diverse sources, a creative leader must cultivate a rich ecosystem of talents and perspectives within their organization.

Humble Stewardship in Creative Leadership

Check your ego at the door!

Humble stewardship, as Turnbull describes, centers on the idea that true leadership is not about commanding or controlling, but about serving. This notion is deeply rooted in Indigenous and Eastern philosophies, where leadership is seen as a shared responsibility toward both humanity and the earth. In these traditions, leaders are not elevated figures but servants who facilitate growth, harmony, and balance within their communities.

The concept of stewardship extends beyond the organization -- it involves cultivating a workspace that values both individual contributions and societal/environmental impact. By implementing a stewardship mindset/framework, leaders can ensure that their decisions are aligned with ethical values, holistically reflect the mission of an organization or cause, and foster a sustainable, healthy work environment for all.