#the kind of petty that immediately gets you expelled out of petty university because it's BAD petty
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critical-espurr · 1 year ago
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Hello, hi, I've decided I have more to say on this one, hope you don't mind.
Another reason it's incredibly difficult to take this stance from Lily seriously is that, if someone had a similar sort of deeply emotionally moving response she's describing here but it was due to an anime, manga, JRPG etc., she'd call them a weeb and imply they're a pervert of some sort. She probably does think that art can influence and deeply move people, but only the (few and far between) pieces of art that she personally has any respect for. As we know, she's disturbingly self-centered and self-absorbed like that. Rules for thee, not for she.
One of the pieces of fiction that not only still deeply emotionally moves me to this day but made me realize just how I had been harmed and wronged in the past is the anime she keeps mischaracterizing as a substanceless, violent abusefest between lesbians (not because she's actually seen it, mind -- she's super lying about that and I believe the old gossip blog has proof of that somewhere, proof I saw when Lily herself INITIALLY POSTED IT -- but because it inspired cartoons she doesn't like and that makes her incredibly mad for some reason.) We all know she wouldn't approach this the same way she does for the books that have supposedly moved her (and I say supposedly because, as mentioned by our good Gallade friend here, she's bragged about how she hasn't read anything for a time period that roughly makes up half of her total life so far.)
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this is a deeply ironic point to make from the woman who, not that long ago, was bragging about never reading anything in the last 15 years. especifically because she thought everything sucked anyway.
or about how she never reads fanfiction outside of a very limited scope.
or how she claims artists wanting credit for their work are divas that should be doxxed and mocked for eternity.
or how they don't deserve any recognition at all as long LO deems they don't because she stole their work on a arbitrary timeframe.
because LO just has that much respect for art, right?
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hpfannons · 4 years ago
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Hi. There’s a lot of things I really wanna ask but I’ll try to minimize. tee-hee. I am curious of what the batfam did during Harry in a “trial” did they ever retaliate after? And what about Umbridge? Did she ever survive? lol. And is there a sweet inducing brotherly moments between batfam that the hp people are kinda jealous of them? Thank you much. :)
P.S. I read it and it was awesome...looking forward for more will wait for part 7. :)
I haven't quite figured out what Harry's trial would be for in this universe.
Since I don't adhere to JKR's version of magic in America, as far as I see it magic laws in the US are much more laxed.(*) So there really isn't a law about underaged wizardry that can be enforced since Harry only uses magic outside of school when he's home in Gotham.
Now, of course, Fudge could just decided he wants to be a huge dick and charge Harry with it anyway. But he's got enough of a PR nightmare going on as is, so trying to publicly smear the boy-who-lived and then trying to expel him on grounds that under normal circumstances wouldn't stick would probably turn a lot of people against him.
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But, regardless, let's ignore my rambling about how we would get to that point, and focus on the fact Harry is on trial and potentially going to be expelled for something that shouldn't be happening... His family is pissed.
I think I've mentioned it before, but Jason gets ahold of the Prophet and sees what Fudge is saying about Harry and Dumbledore and immediately starts trying to figure out how much blow back there'd be if he shot the minister of magic... and, honestly, for quite a while, he's convinced the risk is worth it.
The rest of the batfam is still pissed about everything going on here: Too many people are acting like because they don't carry around those stupid little sticks, they can't really be Harry's family. Like they couldn't possibly understand what's going on here.
They had to pry every little ounce of information out of the Order like pulling teeth.
And Bruce has honestly been this close to saying fuck these people - Harry's dedication to this fight is commendable, but nobody here really has his best interest at heart, they just want to keep him away from a mess he's sitting clearly in the middle of. Bruce is not comfortable putting his kid at that kind of risk.
Then this whole kangaroo trial nonsense starts up and everyone is done with all of this ridiculousness. Even Harry is honestly ready to punch out at this point... but he's also kind of petty, and doesn't want to give Fudge the satisfaction of tapping out now. So he goes through with it all, and comes out on top.
-*-*-*-*-*-
As far as Umbridge, I don't see much changing in her story line, except she's made an insurmountable number of more enemies. Though, since she doesn't exactly run in the same circles as the batfam and JLA it's not going to effect her too much...
I always liked to think she had to slink into obscurity. Like god knows she couldn't go back to the ministry after everything. And Harry, again having a moment of being absolutely petty decided that going after her and putting her on trial and potentially into Azkaban would just be validating her, so he purposely has her left out of the people they were going after for supporting or enabling Voldemort.
She's still black listed though, so there's no government job she can hold... and if the rumor mill happens to be turning and Ms Rita Skitter can put her collum to good use for once... well, that certainly had nothing to do with Harry. Nope. Not at all. No idea where Skitter got all those details about the absolute torture Umbridge put her students through for a year.
-*-*-*-*-*-
I don't think jealousy is really much of a thing when it comes to Harry's relationship with his family. I thing most of the adults are happy to see that Harry found a loving home, even if it wasn't how things were originally supposed to go. McGonagall especially, loves that Harry is happy and healthy and clearly cared for, inspite of the situation he was originally left in.
And his friends... well, that's just Harry's family, same as Ron and all of his brothers and sister.
If anything, it's probably a little bittersweet for Remus and Sirius just because James and Lily were their family, and even if they really didn't get to spend a whole lot of time with him, Harry was too. And they never stopped loving him, but his life is so drastically different now than it would have been if things were different. And they have to figure out if they even fit into this version of Harry's life, let alone how.
-*-*-*-*-*-
(*I was heavily influenced by the other wizard named Harry in high school (The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher), so that's where a lot of my ideas on how magic is handled comes from. Basically, as long as you're not using your abilities to do things like kill people or mess with their minds, you can be as open about magic as you want. (Most people don't want to really believe it anyway, so they find ways to write it off.))
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prorevenge · 6 years ago
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"You're gonna regret that winky emoji"
Buckle down, because if this was a rollercoaster it'd be the Tower of Terror. It's also very long, TLDR at the bottom, if you can find it..
Now, just as a little disclaimer, the person involved may not read reddit but her son very well might. So, I've changed names, places and specific details, and I'm not going to describe the person's appearance. I will however, be telling you of a revenge that started off petty in nature, has since had a pro outcome - and is still ongoing.
I'm a University student (f,19) in *Canada*, studying *history*. Since September, I've been struggling with both my physical and mental health. The problem with a free healthcare system is that sometimes there is long waiting lists for mental health services and despite being put on medication, my condition was worsening. I'd gone to a member of staff, who we shall call PC, to explain the situation. Initially, she was helpful, giving me extensions on assignments and special considerations for my exams. I passed the first semester with a whopping 62%, impressive given the fact I hadn't really been into any lectures.
After the Christmas break, my mental health was so bad that I ended up in hospital. I also struggled to get back into lectures as planned and submit much work. I was seeing the student support team the university had supplied, and the mental health team the hospital had provided. I have a personality disorder and sometimes find it hard to control my emotions, and PC is well aware of this. However, she is going -above and beyond- her normal duties and it's starting to get a little distressing. She'd offer to come to my GP appointments with me, constantly email me (3-4 separate email chains a day), and then got my personal phone number off the university system and started texting me. Being naive, I thought that having her phone number would be useful, as I check my texts significantly faster than my emails.
What. A bad. Idea.
What was confirming attendance for meetings quickly turned into "hope to see you soon", and asking how things in my personal life were going. The event that knocked me for six was when she turned up at my GP surgery after I had told her my appointment went badly. Luckily I was on the other side of town by this point, but she sent me a string of four texts starting with "I'm at the GP, where are you?" and ending in "I'm not going to nag you" before ringing me 3 times despite me hanging up IMMEDIATELY the first time.
(Side note at this point, she very obviously cares about me, but she's incredibly overbearing).
I had gone in for a routine procedure at the hospital to try and sort my physical health out (a cystoscopy, if you fancy a cringe), so she sent me a text asking how it had gone. I'd been put on the same antibiotics as I was before, and when I tried to explain to the consultant that I was already on them and that the pain hadn't stopped in months, I started getting a little angry and upset. Not enough to cause a scene - but enough for them to firmly tell me to leave. I explained this to PC and she replied with "stop arguing ;)". Now, given the nature of the procedure, the position of responsibility PC has and the fact it's coming from her personal phone number, I found this extremely inappropriate.
This kind of behaviour went on for a couple months, I'm trying to keep her at arms length - I still need her in terms of getting assignments in and stuff, but I don't want her reaching in to my personal life - but she keeps trying. She's told me repeatedly that I will have a "fit to work" procedure put in place due to the lack of assignments put in, which would decide my future at the university - and that the options would be getting suspended or getting expelled. This added a load of anxiety to my life and ultimately destroyed my mental health, so after a *not so helpful* session with the mental health team, I submitted the worst essay I've ever written with a sarcastic note at the bottom (still got 18%, success!). In hindsight, this was probably the worst way of trying to get back at her, as PC called me in for another meeting, but not before ringing my boss and my mental health consultant asking to attend my therapy sessions, and then telling me I'm "making it more than it needs to be".
This meeting was hell.
She started off by stroking my knee - not sensually, but wayyyy too close to be comfortable - which put my back up immediately.
She tried to get me to cancel the submission, which I wouldn't, and then told me I'm going to get her fired or reprimanded if I don't. (hello, emotional blackmail).
I repeatedly tried to explain I was struggling, and it's a case of mentally having to fight myself to get out of bed in the mornings, let alone research and write essays, do complex maths and attend 12 lectures a week. She kept shouting me down with things like "Just because you have a mental health condition doesn't mean you're special" and "it took me 3 years of intensive therapy to sort my head out, so you should be fine by August".
Eventually I was frustrated, sobbing and bent over, head to my knees in the chair. This cut off the circulation to my legs after 40 MINUTES of feeling trapped in her office, so when I finally got the courage to leave, I physically couldn't. I made it halfway across the room before stumbling. I didn't fall, I had hold of the table. PC shot up from her chair like she'd just won the lottery and HELD ME FROM BEHIND. I got out as quickly as I could. She later sent me a text (at 22:50) telling me that "it was really valuable".
Finally, the revenge;
I was so angry I decided I was going to come down on this woman like a ton of bricks. I spent 8 hours collating the year's emails and texts, annotating them all and putting them in a folder alongside evidence I was actively seeking medical help - a condition of the university for students who are ill. I affectionately called the folder The Brick, because if all else fails I'm going to hit her with it. This folder weighs at least 5kg, just to give you an idea of the amount of trees I had to kill for this. I submitted a complaints form for 3 separate issues (emails and texts/blackmail/physical contact), as well as a designated form for harassment. This would normally go to PC, but since I was complaining about her, I took it to THE DEAN. Phase 1 complete.
Phase 2 was the picking apart of her emails and making a case for mistreatment. The fit to work panel I attended (after 5 months of being told that it would happen), were going to expel me completely, until I whipped out The Brick and showed them 8 cases of unprofessionalism in ONE EMAIL. My "sentence" was reduced to only suspension, meaning I still have access to my uni email address, and student union services. Useful for phase 3.
Phase 3 is taking my case to the University Legal Team and holding this over the Dean's head until a satisfactory outcome is achieved, or I'll take it to court. I'll keep you updated.
And so, dear redditors, after successfully enacting phases 1 and 2, I can confirm PC has gone on 6 MONTHS of "sick leave". Let me tell you exactly why she's not on sick leave and has in fact been suspended - she was supposed to be on my fit to work panel, 3 DAYS after going on this sick leave; the whole department has been told not to contact her and if they have an urgent matter, they must send it to a different person through an online reporting system which will be "more closely monitored". We were also told that she would not be replying to emails because she's "ill", which made me laugh because she'd been wanting me to write 5000 word essays despite the fact I am genuinely ill. Given the nature of PC's role at the university (handling sensitive information, dealing with vulnerable students), this will be a major blemish on her record at the least, and could well cost her her job and prevent her from getting a new one in the same field. I have since left the university for health reasons, no doubtedly made worse by the actions of PC.
TLDR; tutor at the university harasses me in more ways than one, causes a severe decline in my mental health. I complain with 8 months of evidence and get her suspended/nearly fired, potential legal case pending.
(source) story by (/u/archercolne)
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aletaevers · 6 years ago
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( cisfemale ) haven’t seen ALETA 'PIXIE' EVERS around in a while. the FREYA MAVOR lookalike has been known to be (+) DRIVEN & (+) RESILIENT, but SHE can also be (-) VAIN & (-) UNRELENTING. The 22 year old is a JUNIOR majoring in NURSING. I believe they’re living in TERRA FIRMA, but I popped by earlier and no one answered the door. ( james. 20. EST. she/they. )
i’m......so excited......................like i LOVE aleta and im so iskdjfg !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
pleathe give this a like if u’d like to plot w/ her !!! esp if u have a hendrix bb as they’d know her more ... obv
TW: child abuse, alcoholism, death, violence, grief. just some really tragic shit, man. self loathing.
a e s t h e t i c s
french-pane windows and ivy-coated bricks, silk pajama sets and champagne bubbles, wind through hair and constant, constant running; red cards and penalties, explosive words and hair-tugging, tear-soaked pillows and red eyes in empty bathrooms, the smell of roses and death, loose curls and sharp scissors, fairy tales and their endings -- how bittersweet, nails against desks, against backs, nails down a chalkboard, nails breaking skin. thrown fists and bruised knuckles, late night cereal-runs, getting lost in the woods, sleeping in fields. choking down insults, forced smiles, a wish for comfort.
general information !!
full name: aleta marit evers
nickname(s): pixie, tbd
b.o.d. - june 17th, grand ol’ gemini
label(s): the vixen, the amaranth, the hellcat, etc. etc.
height: 5′8″ tbh
hometown: giethoorn, netherlands
sexuality: bi as hell
pinterest
stats
biography !!
all aleta has ever wanted was to be happy. to just, for once--be content.
born to anton evers, a well-known neurosurgeon and eleanor evers (nee du pont), a talented actress appearing on several tv shows in her youth -- privilege is, essentially, her middle name
her parents met on the set of a hospital show, anton a consultant and eleanor a ‘patient’; it was the kind of love that was volatile and loud and known -- dangerous, in the end, maybe.
this was only possible because eleanor had always dreamed of being a star, instead of inheriting her families’ horse racing business; which thus resulted in her traveling across an entire ocean to pursue her dreams where there wasn’t already a name made for her.
lil fun facts about the evers: anton’s older brother is a partner with their father at evers & evers, and his younger brother is koninklijke marechaussee.
life was normal in the beginning; eleanor had her firstborn, rhys -- a son, which made anton happy. then, her second born, aleta -- a daughter, which made anton less happy. a few years after aleta came laurel, another daughter. and that was that.
it was supposed to be the three of them.
anton evers, in all his glory -- was nothing more than a no-good cheater with a bad temper and a lack of empathy. which, of course, led to his numerous affairs with one of his nurses. which -- in turn, led to the birth of one ramona evers, only to be discovered six years later. 
pre-ramona: when the kids got too much for eleanor, she’d let them fall into the hands of the nannies. plural, as there were many; not all willing to deal with three spoiled devils from the deepest pits of hell. she loved her children, but god, was she not built for motherhood. eleanor spent her days drinking wine and champagne, excessively, while the nannies chased after mud-coated children and faced their tantrums head-first.
their house was old and ~vintage~ and more like a mansion than anything else, a backyard leading into woods--countless woods. this is where aleta spent most of her time, when she got sick of rhys pulling her pigtails and him refusing to play knights and princes with her.
after a severe accident, ramona was suddenly left motherless and thus: custody went to anton. it came to a shock to the entire family, but eleanor the most -- she’d gone six years unknowing of the fact that her husband had another child.
it was like watching their mother turn into a completely different person overnight -- while never cruel to her own children, eleanor was relentless towards ramona. whether it were insults or nails dug into arms; more often than not a martini glass in her hand.
aleta had always loved her mother -- even with nannies looking after her more often than not. in her eyes, her mother and father had a marriage that fairy tales were based off of. anton worked often, but everyday he’d bring home flowers for eleanor; their home was essentially a garden; vases and vases of roses.
if her mother hated ramona then aleta hated ramona. rhys had begun closing up and laurel, out of fear than anything else, stayed clear of the soap opera that was now their life.
these were aleta’s nightmare child gone extreme years. unapologetically violent towards any other student who dared step in her way, she took what she wanted and was a typical bully throughout her school years. she was essentially just. a really angry brat. with dyslexia, which also made school Hard which in turn made her Hate School. 
more often than not, she was alone at home. more often than not, she was in the woods. they were her only source of peace. it was in the woods that she met vos. whether that was his real name, she didn’t know. she didn’t care. he’d gotten his foot stuck in a rabbit hole, and she’d gotten it out. and from that point, they were friends. it was like a fairy tale, which aleta had always been big on. she went by duif, going along with his shenanigans.
together they played knights and princes (aleta, always the knight. always. vos, the prince. always.) practically everyday until sundown, where they’d part ways.
throughout this all, eleanor had been getting worse. her alcoholism had taken an extreme turn for the worst.
when aleta was 12, she found her mother dead. she doesn’t remember much, just red wine mimicking blood and pearls strewn across the room, shattered glass and her own screaming sobs.
the day after the funeral, they moved.
aleta was, essentially, alone in the world after that. rhys had gone off with the bad sort of crowd and had no time for his mourning sister; he was grieving in his own way. laurel had befriended their neighbor, eva, and aleta had immediately taken a dislike towards her. she thought she looked like a rat. aleta told eva that much. and ramona was...off doing ramona things, avoiding her family by any means necessary.
time sort of...flew, after that. aleta channeled her anger through sports--and as she got older, into parties and general reckless activity involving alcohol and whatnot. grief still hung heavy in her throat, but she put on a mask of cynical coldness and became known as the resident bitch. it fit her. she didn’t care.
her moods calmed a bit as she entered university, but not by much tbh.
uuhhh hmmm. met tiago through her brother, and only pursued him because she had overheard ramona gushing to either laurel or eva or whomever the fuck about her little ~faraway crush~. so, like, obviously aleta fucked him? and somehow! they wound up dating! she’s very much in love with him, which terrifies her because she’s very scared of loving someone.
also...........uh......................may have gotten ramona expelled out of sheer pettiness. more on that later. :~)
personality !!
frank, rude, and spiteful -- at least she’s honest. even if her comments are riddled in backhanded compliments and eye-rolling. 
she’s not the....easiest person to befriend. has a habit of really only paying much attention to people she finds interesting; if you bore her then you’re out! thanks for playing!
despite how off-putting she can be, she’s pretty well-known. whether its because of her viciousness on the field in the many, many sports she has played for hendrix, or her presence at parties, or ‘cos she made your cousin or best friend or whomever cry in the bathroom, or y’know. her famous, dead mom.
doesn’t...seem to have a problem with her reputation? likes being seen as this tough, untouchable person.
is soft with very very few people, like, maybe three at the max? and she’s not even soft towards her siblings so difjgkh. one of these people is obv tiago.
she’s endlessly loyal, even if she does flirt with other people to make her bf jealous ?? like, she’d never actually cheat. not after what her father did to her mother. does it excuse her actions ?? fuck no. she’s still a bad person
hates her dad so yay !! daddy issues. p sure papa evers is part of a secret society but, y’know. just dad things.
she’s....very emotional. very prone to sudden spouts of just, anger. it doesn’t take a lot to piss her off, and she’s not a particularly friendly whirlpool.
cries a lot tbh. usually before she sleeps, or in the shower, or in one of the campus bathrooms. doesn’t let people see her cry but like...it’s also not surprising to catch her fixing her eyeliner in the bathroom after an episode.
she’s just in general p moody ?? petty ?? will talk shit to you in dutch, even if u fucking speak it. she doesn’t care. would probably spread a rumor about u just for funsies.
she’s gr8 at parties, usually ‘cos shes too crossed to be actively mean.
like, okay, i’ve made her out to be pretty Horrible but hbjnfdmgh she isn’t going to look at your character and just. start beating them down with words n fists and shit, y’know ?? she might be thinking it, but she’s not That impulsive
is apathetic at best towards most people otherwise, like, idk -- if she doesn’t have a reason, even if its a very small reason, she won’t bother with you. 
this VIDEO right fucking here. GOD. that’s an aleta vibe. it’s probably not something she’d say but just. the tone ?? awful. it gave me flashbacks to middle school when i watched that video.
has a sketchbook which is essentially anatomy notes and like, lil doodles n shit of fantasy scenery n shit
kinda...escapes into her mind sometimes ?? is still in love w the concept of fairy tales and perfect love and just. happiness. like she’s kind of obsessed with it ?? with the perfect image ?? which, hence, leads to her illustrating it. hence why she’s just so. in love. hence why she sabotages everything for herself too ‘cos ! she just sort of hates herself and knows nothing will ever be magical and perfect and shit.
so like, big secret fantasy nerd. probably has tried to sing with birds once when nobody was looking. she cant even sing. she shower sings and like maybe the bathroom acoustics make her sound not horrible but ?? she’s mediocre at best. it’s tragic, really.
there’s sm more, like, she’s just got a lot of feelings and contradicting personality points and she’s udfjighk she’s annoying. that’s what she is. aleta is CANCELED
ok ok ok but GOD is she good at sports ?? like genuinely just. she does like, track, hockey, lacrosse, tennis prolly idk, maybe other shit. and like granted she gets angry n then gets penalized for almost beating a girl down but isjkdfg she’s good at sports 
got the nickname ‘pixie’ on the field ‘cos shes fast and also has bitten a few people and is just very aggressive
EDIT: i forgot to mention that she !! stopped relying on her father for money (this does not include....stealing from him, which she most definitely does!!) and she’s kinda paying for things w/ savings and like...soon, she’ll get a job, i promise uhdfijfkg 
wanted connections !!
like...two close friends. pleathe, for her sanity.
uuuuuHHH god, just enemies of all sorts. ex-friends or never-friends or exes before tiago. people she’s talked shit about, or spread shit about
maybe she fucking poured her alcohol on ur muses’ head during a party
GOD i don’t know she drops people so much !!
other....friends, y’know, that she isn’t ~close~ to, but she gets along with fairly well
people she flirts with to make her bf jealous !! because she’s awful !!
temptations...b/c commitment is difficult for her b/c of y’know. her parents. not an actual affair but just...y’know. checking each other out, flirtatious banter, the whole ‘no i can’t ive got a boyfriend’ and shit like that.
teammates !!
dead parents club.
somebody who caught her crying in the bathroom hfdjgkh whether theyre concerned for some fucking reason or r straight up like ‘lmao...u deserve it’
ummm give me rhys ?? and laurel ?? or people who know them
rhys is a drug dealer so like.............she prolly knows a few ppl who get their drugs from him
friends of ramona’s before she uh . . . disappeared / got expelled
good influences who r like ‘stop being such a fucking dick aleta get ur shit together’
cousins !! she prolly has a ton
maybe......an online friend ?? who shes known for a while ??
bad influences who r like >:3 yes stay angry. stay bad. here, break this fucking window with this bat. yes, good.
literally i will take anything sjkfdg
people she’s tormented ??? has bullied ?? has embarrassed ???
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weltratsel · 7 years ago
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The Last Messiah
I
One night in long bygone times, man awoke and saw himself.
He saw that he was naked under cosmos, homeless in his own body. All things dissolved before his testing thought, wonder above wonder, horror above horror unfolded in his mind.
Then woman too awoke and said it was time to go and slay. And he fetched his bow and arrow, a fruit of the marriage of spirit and hand, and went outside beneath the stars. But as the beasts arrived at their waterholes where he expected them of habit, he felt no more the tiger’s bound in his blood, but a great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive.
That day he did not return with prey, and when they found him by the next new moon, he was sitting dead by the waterhole.
II
Whatever happened? A breach in the very unity of life, a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature. Life had overshot its target, blowing itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily – by spirit made almighty without, but equally a menace to its own well-being. Its weapon was like a sword without hilt or plate, a two-edged blade cleaving everything; but he who is to wield it must grasp the blade and turn the one edge toward himself.
Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all phenomena, see through and locate his vital processes. He comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no more, it performed a miracle with man, but later did not know him. He has lost his right of residence in the universe, has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been expelled from Paradise. He is mighty in the near world, but curses his might as purchased with his harmony of soul, his innocence, his inner peace in life’s embrace.
So there he stands with his visions, betrayed by the universe, in wonder and fear. The beast knew fear as well, in thunderstorms and on the lion’s claw. But man became fearful of life itself – indeed, of his very being. Life – that was for the beast to feel the play of power, it was heat and games and strife and hunger, and then at last to bow before the law of course. In the beast, suffering is self-confined, in man, it knocks holes into a fear of the world and a despair of life. Even as the child sets out on the river of life, the roars from the waterfall of death rise highly above the vale, ever closer, and tearing, tearing at its joy. Man beholds the earth, and it is breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail. Not merely his own day could he see, the graveyards wrung themselves before his gaze, the laments of sunken millennia wailed against him from the ghastly decaying shapes, the earth-turned dreams of mothers. Future’s curtain unravelled itself to reveal a nightmare of endless repetition, a senseless squander of organic material. The suffering of human billions makes its entrance into him through the gateway of compassion, from all that happen arises a laughter to mock the demand for justice, his profoundest ordering principle. He sees himself emerge in his mother’s womb, he holds up his hand in the air and it has five branches; whence this devilish number five, and what has it to do with my soul? He is no longer obvious to himself – he touches his body in utter horror; this is you and so far do you extend and no farther. He carries a meal within him, yesterday it was a beast that could itself dash around, now I suck it up and make it part of me, and where do I begin and end? All things chain together in causes and effects, and everything he wants to grasp dissolves before the testing thought. Soon he sees mechanics even in the so-far whole and dear, in the smile of his beloved – there are other smiles as well, a torn boot with toes. Eventually, the features of things are features only of himself. Nothing exists without himself, every line points back at him, the world is but a ghostly echo of his voice – he leaps up loudly screaming and wants to disgorge himself onto the earth along with his impure meal, he feels the looming of madness and wants to find death before losing even such ability.
But as he stands before imminent death, he grasps its nature also, and the cosmic import of the step to come. His creative imagination constructs new, fearful prospects behind the curtain of death, and he sees that even there is no sanctuary found. And now he can discern the outline of his biologicocosmic terms: He is the universe’s helpless captive, kept to fall into nameless possibilities.
From this moment on, he is in a state of relentless panic.
Such a ‘feeling of cosmic panic’ is pivotal to every human mind. Indeed, the race appears destined to perish in so far as any effective preservation and continuation of life is ruled out when all of the individual’s attention and energy goes to endure, or relay, the catastrophic high tension within.
The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by overevolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment.
In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.
III
Why, then, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during great epidemics of madness? Why do only a fairly minor number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the strain of living – because cognition gives them more than they can carry?
Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.
If the giant deer, at suitable intervals, had broken off the outer spears of its antlers, it might have kept going for some while longer. Yet in fever and constant pain, indeed, in betrayal of its central idea, the core of its peculiarity, for it was vocated by creation’s hand to be the horn bearer of wild animals. What it gained in continuance, it would lose in significance, in grandness of life, in other words a continuance without hope, a march not up to affirmation, but forth across its ever recreated ruins, a self-destructive race against the sacred will of blood.
The identity of purpose and perishment is, for giant deer and man alike, the tragic paradox of life. In devoted Bejahung, the last Cervis Giganticus bore the badge of its lineage to its end. The human being saves itself and carries on. It performs, to extend a settled phrase, a more or less self-conscious repression of its damaging surplus of consciousness. This process is virtually constant during our waking and active hours, and is a requirement of social adaptability and of everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal living.
Psychiatry even works on the assumption that the ‘healthy’ and viable is at one with the highest in personal terms. Depression, ‘fear of life,’ refusal of nourishment and so on are invariably taken as signs of a pathological state and treated thereafter. Often, however, such phenomena are messages from a deeper, more immediate sense of life, bitter fruits of a geniality of thought or feeling at the root of antibiological tendencies. It is not the soul being sick, but its protection failing, or else being rejected because it is experienced – correctly – as a betrayal of ego’s highest potential.
The whole of living that we see before our eyes today is from inmost to outmost enmeshed in repressional mechanisms, social and individual; they can be traced right into the tritest formulas of everyday life. Though they take a vast and multifarious variety of forms, it seems legitimate to at least identify four major kinds, naturally occuring in every possible combination: isolation, anchoring, distraction and sublimation.
By isolation I here mean a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling. (Engström: “One should not think, it is just confusing.”) A perfect and almost brutalising variant is found among certain physicians, who for self-protection will only see the technical aspect of their profession. It can also decay to pure hooliganism, as among petty thugs and medical students, where any sensitivity to the tragic side of life is eradicated by violent means (football played with cadaver heads, and so on.)
In everyday interaction, isolation is manifested in a general code of mutual silence: primarily toward children, so these are not at once scared senseless by the life they have just begun, but retain their illusions until they can afford to lose them. In return, children are not to bother the adults with untimely reminders of sex, toilet, or death. Among adults there are the rules of ‘tact,’ the mechanism being openly displayed when a man who weeps on the street is removed with police assistance.
The mechanism of anchoring also serves from early childhood; parents, home, the street become matters of course to the child and give it a sense of assurance. This sphere of experience is the first, and perhaps the happiest, protection against the cosmos that we ever get to know in life, a fact that doubtless also explains the much debated ‘infantile bonding;’ the question of whether that is sexually tainted too is unimportant here. When the child later discovers that those fixed points are as ‘arbitrary’ and ‘ephemeral’ as any others, it has a crisis of confusion and anxiety and promptly looks around for another anchoring. “In Autumn, I will attend middle school.” If the substitution somehow fails, then the crisis may take a fatal course, or else what I will call an anchoring spasm occurs: One clings to the dead values, concealing as well as possible from oneself and others the fact that they are unworkable, that one is spiritually insolvent. The result is lasting insecurity, ‘feelings of inferiority,’ over-compensation, restlessness. Insofar as this state falls into certain categories, it is made subject to psychoanalytic treatment, which aims to complete the transition to new anchorings.
Anchoring might be characterised as a fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness. Though typically unconscious, it may also be fully conscious (one ‘adopts a goal’.) Publicly useful anchorings are met with sympathy, he who ‘sacrifices himself totally’ for his anchoring (the firm, the cause) is idolised. He has established a mighty bulwark against the dissolution of life, and others are by suggestion gaining from his strength. In a brutalised form, as deliberate action, it is found among ‘decadent’ playboys (“one should get married in time, and then the constraints will come of themselves.”) Thus one establishes a necessity in one’s life, exposing oneself to an obvious evil from one’s point of view, but a soothing of the nerves, a high-walled container for a sensibility to life that has been growing increasingly crude. Ibsen presents, in Hjalmar Ekdal and Molvik, two flowering cases (‘living lies’); there is no difference between their anchoring and that of the pillars of society except for the practico-economic unproductiveness of the former.
Any culture is a great, rounded system of anchorings, built on foundational firmaments, the basic cultural ideas. The average person makes do with the collective firmaments, the personality is building for himself, the person of character has finished his construction, more or less grounded on the inherited, collective main firmaments (God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the law of life, the people, the future). The closer to main firmaments a certain carrying element is, the more perilous it is to touch. Here a direct protection is normally established by means of penal codes and threats of prosecution (inquisition, censorship, the Conservative approach to life).
The carrying capacity of each segment either depends on its fictitious nature having not been seen through yet, or else on its being recognised as necessary anyway. Hence the religious education in schools, which even atheists support because they know no other way to bring children into social ways of response.
Whenever people realise the fictitiousness or redundancy of the segments, they will strive to replace them with new ones (‘the limited duration of Truths’) – and whence flows all the spiritual and cultural strife which, along with economic competition, forms the dynamic content of world history.
The craving for material goods (power) is not so much due to the direct pleasures of wealth, as none can be seated on more than one chair or eat himself more than sated. Rather, the value of a fortune to life consists in the rich opportunities for anchoring and distraction offered to the owner.
Both for collective and individual anchorings it holds that when a segment breaks, there is a crisis that is graver the closer that segment to main firmaments. Within the inner circles, sheltered by the outer ramparts, such crises are daily and fairly painfree occurrences (‘disappointments’); even a playing with anchoring values is here seen (wittiness, jargon, alcohol). But during such play one may accidentally rip a hole right to the bottom, and the scene is instantly transformed from euphoric to macabre. The dread of being stares us in the eye, and in a deadly gush we perceive how the minds are dangling in threads of their own spinning, and that a hell is lurking underneath.
The very foundational firmaments are rarely replaced without great social spasms and a risk of complete dissolution (reformation, revolution). During such times, individuals are increasingly left to their own devices for anchoring, and the number of failures tends to rise. Depressions, excesses, and suicides result (German officers after the war, Chinese students after the revolution).
Another flaw of the system is the fact that various danger fronts often require very different firmaments. As a logical superstructure is built upon each, there follow clashes of incommensurable modes of feeling and thought. Then despair can enter through the rifts. In such cases, a person may be obsessed with destructive joy, dislodging the whole artificial apparatus of his life and starting with rapturous horror to make a clean sweep of it. The horror stems from the loss of all sheltering values, the rapture from his by now ruthless identification and harmony with our nature’s deepest secret, the biological unsoundness, the enduring disposition for doom.
We love the anchorings for saving us, but also hate them for limiting our sense of freedom. Whenever we feel strong enough, we thus take pleasure in going together to bury an expired value in style. Material objects take on a symbolic import here (the Radical approach to life).
When a human being has eliminated those of his anchorings that are visible to himself, only the unconscious ones staying put, then he will call himself a liberated personality.
A very popular mode of protection is distraction. One limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions. This is typical even in childhood; without distraction, the child is also insufferable to itself. “Mom, what am I to do.” A little English girl visiting her Norwegian aunts came inside from her room, saying: “What happens now?” The nurses attain virtuosity: Look, a doggie! Watch, they are painting the palace! The phenomenon is too familiar to require any further demonstration. Distraction is, for example, the ‘high society’s’ tactic for living. It can be likened to a flying machine – made of heavy material, but embodying a principle that keeps it airborne whenever applying. It must always be in motion, as air only carries it fleetingly. The pilot may grow drowsy and comfortable out of habit, but the crisis is acute as soon as the engine flunks.
The tactic is often fully conscious. Despair may dwell right underneath and break through in gushes, in a sudden sobbing. When all distractive options are expended, spleen sets in, ranging from mild indifference to fatal depression. Women, in general less cognition-prone and hence more secure in their living than men, preferably use distraction.
A considerable evil of imprisonment is the denial of most distractive options. And as terms for deliverance by other means are poor as well, the prisoner will tend to stay in the close vicinity of despair. The acts he then commits to deflect the final stage have a warrant in the principle of vitality itself. In such a moment he is experiencing his soul within the universe, and has no other motive than the utter inendurability of that condition.
Pure examples of life-panic are presumably rare, as the protective mechanisms are refined and automatic and to some extent unremitting. But even the adjacent terrain bears the mark of death, life is here barely sustainable and by great efforts. Death always appears as an escape, one ignores the possibilities of the hereafter, and as the way death is experienced is partly dependent on feeling and perspective, it might be quite an acceptable solution. If one in statu mortis could manage a pose (a poem, a gesture, to ‘die standing up’), i.e. a final anchoring, or a final distraction (Aases’ death), then such a fate is not the worst one at all. The press, for once serving the concealment mechanism, never fails to find reasons that cause no alarm – “it is believed that the latest fall in the price of wheat...”
When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of ‘saving’ the suicidal is based on a hairraising misapprehension of the nature of existence.
Only a limited part of humanity can make do with mere ‘changes’, whether in work, social life, or entertainment. The cultured person demands connections, lines, a progression in the changes. Nothing finite satisfies at length, one is ever proceeding, gathering knowledge, making a career. The phenomenon is known as ‘yearning’ or ‘transcendental tendency.’ Whenever a goal is reached, the yearning moves on; hence its object is not the goal, but the very attainment of it – the gradient, not the absolute height, of the curve representing one’s life. The promotion from private to corporal may give a more valuable experience than the one from colonel to general. Any grounds of ‘progressive optimism’ are removed by this major psychological law.
The human yearning is not merely marked by a ‘striving toward’, but equally by an ‘escape from.’ And if we use the word in a religious sense, only the latter description fits. For here, none has yet been clear about what he is longing for, but one has always a heartfelt awareness of what one is longing away from, namely the earthly vale of tears, one’s own inendurable condition. If awareness of this predicament is the deepest stratum of the soul, as argued above, then it is also understandable why the religious yearning is felt and experienced as fundamental. By contrast, the hope that it forms a divine criterion, which harbours a promise of its own fulfilment, is placed in a truly melancholy light by these considerations.
The fourth remedy against panic, sublimation, is a matter of transformation rather than repression. Through stylistic or artistic gifts can the very pain of living at times be converted into valuable experiences. Positive impulses engage the evil and put it to their own ends, fastening onto its pictorial, dramatic, heroic, lyric or even comic aspects.
Unless the worst sting of suffering is blunted by other means, or denied control of the mind, such utilisation is unlikely, however. (Image: The mountaineer does not enjoy his view of the abyss while choking with vertigo; only when this feeling is more or less overcome does he enjoy it – anchored.) To write a tragedy, one must to some extent free oneself from – betray – the very feeling of tragedy and regard it from an outer, e.g. aesthetic, point of view. Here is, by the way, an opportunity for the wildest round-dancing through ever higher ironic levels, into a most embarrassing circulus vitiosus. Here one can chase one’s ego across numerous habitats, enjoying the capacity of the various layers of consciousness to dispel one another.
The present essay is a typical attempt at sublimation. The author does not suffer, he is filling pages and is going to be published in a journal.
The ‘martyrdom’ of lonely ladies also shows a kind of sublimation – they gain in significance thereby.
Nevertheless, sublimation appears to be the rarest of the protective means mentioned here.
IV
Is it possible for ‘primitive natures’ to renounce these cramps and cavorts and live in harmony with themselves in the serene bliss of labour and love? Insofar as they may be considered human at all, I think the answer must be no. The strongest claim to be made about the so-called peoples of nature is that they are somewhat closer to the wonderful biological ideal than we unnatural people. And when even we have so far been able to save a majority through every storm, we have been assisted by the sides of our nature that are just modestly or moderately developed. This positive basis (as protection alone cannot create life, only hinder its faltering) must be sought in the naturally adapted deployment of the energy in the body and the biologically helpful parts of the soul1, subject to such hardships as are precisely due to sensory limitations, bodily frailty, and the need to do work for life and love.
And just in this finite land of bliss within the fronts do the progressing civilisation, technology and standardisation have such a debasing influence. For as an ever growing fraction of the cognitive faculties retire from the game against the environment, there is a rising spiritual unemployment. The value of a technical advance to the whole undertaking of life must be judged by its contribution to the human opportunity for spiritual occupation. Though boundaries are blurry, perhaps the first tools for cutting might be mentioned as a case of a positive invention.
Other technical inventions enrich only the life of the inventor himself; they represent a gross and ruthless theft from humankind’s common reserve of experiences and should invoke the harshest punishment if made public against the veto of censorship. One such crime among numerous others is the use of flying machines to explore uncharted land. In a single vandalistic glob, one thus destroys lush opportunities for experience that could benefit many if each, by effort, obtained his fair share.2
The current phase of life’s chronic fever is particularly tainted by this circumstance. The absence of naturally (biologically) based spiritual activity shows up, for example, in the pervasive recourse to distraction (entertainment, sport, radio – ‘the rhythm of the times’). Terms for anchoring are not as favourable – all the inherited, collective systems of anchorings are punctured by criticism, and anxiety, disgust, confusion, despair leak in through the rifts (‘corpses in the cargo.’) Communism and psychoanalysis, however incommensurable otherwise, both attempt (as Communism has also a spiritual reflection) by novel means to vary the old escape anew; applying, respectively, violence and guile to make humans biologically fit by ensnaring their critical surplus of cognition. The idea, in either case, is uncannily logical. But again, it cannot yield a final solution. Though a deliberate degeneration to a more viable nadir may certainly save the species in the short run, it will by its nature be unable to find peace in such resignation, or indeed find any peace at all.
V
If we continue these considerations to the bitter end, then the conclusion is not in doubt. As long as humankind recklessly proceeds in the fateful delusion of being biologically fated for triumph, nothing essential will change. As its numbers mount and the spiritual atmosphere thickens, the techniques of protection must assume an increasingly brutal character.
And humans will persist in dreaming of salvation and affirmation and a new Messiah. Yet when many saviours have been nailed to trees and stoned on the city squares, then the last Messiah shall come.
Then will appear the man who, as the first of all, has dared strip his soul naked and submit it alive to the outmost thought of the lineage, the very idea of doom. A man who has fathomed life and its cosmic ground, and whose pain is the Earth’s collective pain. With what furious screams shall not mobs of all nations cry out for his thousandfold death, when like a cloth his voice encloses the globe, and the strange message has resounded for the first and last time:
“– The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth’s is a pond and a backwater.
– The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?
– But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.
– Know yourselves – be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.”
And when he has spoken, they will pour themselves over him, led by the pacifier makers and the midwives, and bury him in their fingernails.
He is the last Messiah. As son from father, he stems from the archer by the waterhole.
Peter Wessel Zapffe, 1933
Notes:
1 A distinction for clarity. 2 I emphasize that this is not about fantastic reform proposals, but rather a psychological view of principle
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alexsmitposts · 5 years ago
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Welcome to the middle ages of the XXI century
In the first half of the 14th century, Europe was gripped by the"black death". Drowning in prejudice and ignorance, the cradle of enlightenment quickly found the culprits. Witches and wizards burned with a blue flame, then the black cats got. The Jews also got a lot of money. When in the 1320s in Anjou, one of the Jews allegedly found a letter with proof of a plot against Christians, from the German lands to Gibraltar swept a monstrous wave of lynching of Jews, then looters stole their property. In some regions, the authorities have officially decided to exterminate Jews as a kind of prevention against the plague.
During the plague epidemic of the 1770s, which came to the capital of our country from the Northern black sea region during the Russian-Turkish war, a riot broke out. Archbishop Ambrose of Moscow, well aware of the danger, forbade prayers at the Bogolyubsky icon Of the mother of God, which was considered healing. Ambrose even started collecting donations for the treatment of patients. But the maddened mob beat the Archbishop to death.
It would seem that this is not true for a long time. But looking at the behavior of humanity, it is even more ridiculous to ask the question: what conclusions will humanity draw? In General, none, except for a monstrous scale of vanity. The brave new world of the end of the history of Fukuyama came, and then suddenly such an unexpected natural (natural?) a gift in the form of a coronavirus. And it began…
The conscience deficit pandemic in the " new Europe»
In Europe, due to hysteria in the media, a real hunt for medical masks has begun. In Poland, a batch of 23 thousand medical masks intended for doctors in the Lazio region in Italy was blocked. While the bureaucratic obstacles were trying to be removed, the Italians accused the poles of stealing medical cargo, which is also difficult to call humanitarian, because it was fully paid for by Italy.
A little later, after the sad Czech and Polish experience, the Italian authorities, importing medical masks, decided to bring them through the port of Rotterdam. However, when the cargo arrived in Rotterdam and the German distributor unloaded it for delivery to Italy, the Berlin authorities requisitioned it.
As you know, French Guiana is home to the Kourou spaceport, which is jointly operated by the European space Agency and the French National center for space research, with all the necessary infrastructure. So, from this very infrastructure, or rather, from the warehouse, unknown persons managed to steal 40 thousand medical masks. The mode of the object did not affect the theft process in any way.
The US is also keeping up with Western trends. So, if someone can order medical drugs or protective equipment from abroad, then most likely, the "cradle" of the sanctity of private property and an open free market will take your purchase immediately upon arrival on the territory of the country.
New Sanzhary was only training
But our Ukrainian neighbors went the farthest, for whom the shameful incident in the style of "burn the witch" in Novy Sanzhary was, apparently, just a training session. Baiting people who are suspected of being infected, hunting for medicines, fighting on public transport are just the backdrop for much Wilder things. So, in the Ternopil region, the body of a 68-year-old man who died from coronavirus was Packed by doctors in garbage bags and thrown out on the street. Details were later told by the daughter of the deceased, Anna Polishchuk, who was stunned by the horror. According to her, the doctors threw the lifeless man out into the street, closed the doors of the hospital, and relatives without protection had to carry the man in a bag to the car and even drag him on the ground.
"Crown, crown!"- children shouted and threw stones
But all the wild things from the West are somewhat refined. No" good old " bonfires, street fighting, at least not yet. But the so-called developing countries have gone disproportionately further. Petty theft and speculation, of course, are included in their "menu", but the citizens of these countries did not have time to swim in the fat of a good life.
After the coronavirus hit India, the Indians launched a real persecution of tourists, including those from Russia, who were on the territory of the country. Tourists, these" cash cows", suddenly became objects of universal hatred. Tourists are thrown out of hotels, the local population, seeing foreigners, reacts very aggressively, and the authorities are in no hurry to stop these actions. And in some regions of the country, the authorities not only condone this, but issue official instructions to expel tourists from hotels.
There were more frequent cases when Indian citizens shouted" crown, crown " and spat at foreigners or threw stones and sticks at them. In this case, the country is completely closed. The movement of trains, buses and even a taxi suspended. Indian States overlap the internal border. On the streets of some Indian cities, the police and voluntary "vigilantes" restore order, so there have been cases of law enforcement officers attacking "whites" who tried to buy food or escape from the closed country.
It comes to ridiculous tragicomic situations. So, some tourists who decided to gather in India ancient refined wisdom, as is now fashionable among a specific public with a pierced nose and a tattoo on half of the body, were blocked in ashrams-the abodes of thinkers and philosophers. The Indian sages, no less wisely, told their "disciples" that if they went out into the street, they would not be allowed back in. This means that, at the risk of not getting to the airport, the "enlightened" will find themselves without housing, since almost all hotels are closed.
In Thailand, which has served as a tourist Mecca for many years, the coronavirus has also forced authorities to impose a strict quarantine. Closed cafes, restaurants, numerous clubs, shopping centers, etc. But shapeless herds of infantile tourists, sweetly cherishing their own egoism, continue to gather together to once again arrange a feast during the plague on the picturesque beaches. The local police did not hesitate to disperse such gatherings with batons. Not too happy and the locals and, oddly enough, the primates that tourists fed. Now macaques literally attack passers-by, demanding food. It is difficult to say what is more wild in this…
When did people start going wild?
It would seem that the outbreak of aggressive inadequacy, theft and selfish betrayal of former "brothers in the free world" is entirely due to the panic over the coronavirus, fueled by the media. But this is only one side of the coin, so to speak, too superficial a judgment. One outbreak, for all its scale and fueled by the press, could not lead to such individualization of both countries and individual areas, as well as specific individuals.
There is a strong impression that at some civilizational moment we simply turned somewhere wrong. In order to increase the desperate race of consumption of goods and services, humanity was able to convince of the sanctity and inviolability of the right of eternal hedonism and gluttony at the highest level. Kilotons and terabytes of advertising convinced individuals that they were worthy, and that was all for them.
Society in this construction lost all meaning and even importance for the individual engaged in constant consumption of the final product. Moreover, individuals, considering themselves strong and independent, began to hate and despise this very society quietly, and sometimes loudly. This was especially the case for such a social formation as the state, which owed absolutely everything to free individuals until their death.
The author does not have any sympathy for the pleasure-hungry tourists who, despite such a difficult time, rushed over the cordon, buying cheap last-minute tours. Especially to those tourists who, under the guise of learning the culture and "wisdom" of other countries, only tease their egos, following the fashion and separating themselves from the short and non-progressive, in their opinion, society. And it's not even a lack of personal responsibility, but selfishness. After all, they did not even think about the danger they could pose to society upon their return. Why should they? After all, these progressive individuals despise society.
And now the countries are closing. And the infantile howl of people who realized themselves as citizens and part of society so timely for themselves, announced the information field. The paradox is that society cannot turn away from such people, because this will lead to its own devaluation. But it is not only possible to draw proper conclusions about the depravity of educating people in such a parasitic consumer approach to life itself, but it was necessary yesterday. And all this applies not only to tourists, but also to those who only yesterday earned money from them, those who now speculate in masks, those who are engaged in information and political speculation…
In this light, there has been no civilizational leap since the middle Ages. The realization of this, however, is buried in large-scale advertising campaigns, when politicians after another terrorist attack took up their pens and sang: "We are the world" or "We are not afraid".
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ofsort · 7 years ago
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Peter Wessel Zapffe - The Last Messiah
The first English version of a classic essay by Peter Wessel Zapffe, originally published in Janus #9, 1933. Translated from the Norwegian by Gisle R. Tangenes. I One night in long bygone times, man awoke and saw himself. 
He saw that he was naked under cosmos, homeless in his own body. All things dissolved before his testing thought, wonder above wonder, horror above horror unfolded in his mind. 
Then woman too awoke and said it was time to go and slay. And he fetched his bow and arrow, a fruit of the marriage of spirit and hand, and went outside beneath the stars. But as the beasts arrived at their waterholes where he expected them of habit, he felt no more the tiger’s bound in his blood, but a great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive. 
That day he did not return with prey, and when they found him by the next new moon, he was sitting dead by the waterhole. 
  II
Whatever happened? A breach in the very unity of life, a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature. Life had overshot its target, blowing itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily – by spirit made almighty without, but equally a menace to its own well-being. Its weapon was like a sword without hilt or plate, a two-edged blade cleaving everything; but he who is to wield it must grasp the blade and turn the one edge toward himself. 
Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all phenomena, see through and locate his vital processes. He comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no more, it performed a miracle with man, but later did not know him. He has lost his right of residence in the universe, has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been expelled from Paradise. He is mighty in the near world, but curses his might as purchased with his harmony of soul, his innocence, his inner peace in life’s embrace.
So there he stands with his visions, betrayed by the universe, in wonder and fear. The beast knew fear as well, in thunderstorms and on the lion’s claw. But man became fearful of life itself – indeed, of his very being. Life – that was for the beast to feel the play of power, it was heat and games and strife and hunger, and then at last to bow before the law of course. In the beast, suffering is self-confined, in man, it knocks holes into a fear of the world and a despair of life. Even as the child sets out on the river of life, the roars from the waterfall of death rise highly above the vale, ever closer, and tearing, tearing at its joy. Man beholds the earth, and it is breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail. Not merely his own day could he see, the graveyards wrung themselves before his gaze, the laments of sunken millennia wailed against him from the ghastly decaying shapes, the earth-turned dreams of mothers. Future’s curtain unravelled itself to reveal a nightmare of endless repetition, a senseless squander of organic material. The suffering of human billions makes its entrance into him through the gateway of compassion, from all that happen arises a laughter to mock the demand for justice, his profoundest ordering principle. He sees himself emerge in his mother’s womb, he holds up his hand in the air and it has five branches; whence this devilish number five, and what has it to do with my soul? He is no longer obvious to himself – he touches his body in utter horror; this is you and so far do you extend and no farther. He carries a meal within him, yesterday it was a beast that could itself dash around, now I suck it up and make it part of me, and where do I begin and end? All things chain together in causes and effects, and everything he wants to grasp dissolves before the testing thought. Soon he sees mechanics even in the so-far whole and dear, in the smile of his beloved – there are other smiles as well, a torn boot with toes. Eventually, the features of things are features only of himself. Nothing exists without himself, every line points back at him, the world is but a ghostly echo of his voice – he leaps up loudly screaming and wants to disgorge himself onto the earth along with his impure meal, he feels the looming of madness and wants to find death before losing even such ability.
But as he stands before imminent death, he grasps its nature also, and the cosmic import of the step to come. His creative imagination constructs new, fearful prospects behind the curtain of death, and he sees that even there is no sanctuary found. And now he can discern the outline of his biologicocosmic terms: He is the universe’s helpless captive, kept to fall into nameless possibilities.
From this moment on, he is in a state of relentless panic.
Such a ‘feeling of cosmic panic’ is pivotal to every human mind. Indeed, the race appears destined to perish in so far as any effective preservation and continuation of life is ruled out when all of the individual’s attention and energy goes to endure, or relay, the catastrophic high tension within.
The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by overevolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment.
In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground. III
Why, then, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during great epidemics of madness? Why do only a fairly minor number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the strain of living – because cognition gives them more than they can carry?
Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.
If the giant deer, at suitable intervals, had broken off the outer spears of its antlers, it might have kept going for some while longer. Yet in fever and constant pain, indeed, in betrayal of its central idea, the core of its peculiarity, for it was vocated by creation’s hand to be the horn bearer of wild animals. What it gained in continuance, it would lose in significance, in grandness of life, in other words a continuance without hope, a march not up to affirmation, but forth across its ever recreated ruins, a self-destructive race against the sacred will of blood.
The identity of purpose and perishment is, for giant deer and man alike, the tragic paradox of life. In devoted Bejahung, the last Cervis Giganticus bore the badge of its lineage to its end. The human being saves itself and carries on. It performs, to extend a settled phrase, a more or less self-conscious repression of its damaging surplus of consciousness. This process is virtually constant during our waking and active hours, and is a requirement of social adaptability and of everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal living.
Psychiatry even works on the assumption that the ‘healthy’ and viable is at one with the highest in personal terms. Depression, ‘fear of life,’ refusal of nourishment and so on are invariably taken as signs of a pathological state and treated thereafter. Often, however, such phenomena are messages from a deeper, more immediate sense of life, bitter fruits of a geniality of thought or feeling at the root of antibiological tendencies. It is not the soul being sick, but its protection failing, or else being rejected because it is experienced – correctly – as a betrayal of ego’s highest potential.
The whole of living that we see before our eyes today is from inmost to outmost enmeshed in repressional mechanisms, social and individual; they can be traced right into the tritest formulas of everyday life. Though they take a vast and multifarious variety of forms, it seems legitimate to at least identify four major kinds, naturally occuring in every possible combination: isolation, anchoring, distraction and sublimation.
By isolation I here mean a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling. (Engström: “One should not think, it is just confusing.”) A perfect and almost brutalising variant is found among certain physicians, who for self-protection will only see the technical aspect of their profession. It can also decay to pure hooliganism, as among petty thugs and medical students, where any sensitivity to the tragic side of life is eradicated by violent means (football played with cadaver heads, and so on.)
The mechanism of anchoring also serves from early childhood; parents, home, the street become matters of course to the child and give it a sense of assurance. This sphere of experience is the first, and perhaps the happiest, protection against the cosmos that we ever get to know in life, a fact that doubtless also explains the much debated ‘infantile bonding;’ the question of whether that is sexually tainted too is unimportant here. When the child later discovers that those fixed points are as ‘arbitrary’ and ‘ephemeral’ as any others, it has a crisis of confusion and anxiety and promptly looks around for another anchoring. “In Autumn, I will attend middle school.” If the substitution somehow fails, then the crisis may take a fatal course, or else what I will call an anchoring spasm occurs: One clings to the dead values, concealing as well as possible from oneself and others the fact that they are unworkable, that one is spiritually insolvent. The result is lasting insecurity, ‘feelings of inferiority,’ over-compensation, restlessness. Insofar as this state falls into certain categories, it is made subject to psychoanalytic treatment, which aims to complete the transition to new anchorings.
Anchoring might be characterised as a fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness. Though typically unconscious, it may also be fully conscious (one ‘adopts a goal’.) Publicly useful anchorings are met with sympathy, he who ‘sacrifices himself totally’ for his anchoring (the firm, the cause) is idolised. He has established a mighty bulwark against the dissolution of life, and others are by suggestion gaining from his strength. In a brutalised form, as deliberate action, it is found among ‘decadent’ playboys (“one should get married in time, and then the constraints will come of themselves.”) Thus one establishes a necessity in one’s life, exposing oneself to an obvious evil from one’s point of view, but a soothing of the nerves, a high-walled container for a sensibility to life that has been growing increasingly crude. Ibsen presents, in Hjalmar Ekdal and Molvik, two flowering cases (‘living lies’); there is no difference between their anchoring and that of the pillars of society except for the practico-economic unproductiveness of the former.
Any culture is a great, rounded system of anchorings, built on foundational firmaments, the basic cultural ideas. The average person makes do with the collective firmaments, the personality is building for himself, the person of character has finished his construction, more or less grounded on the inherited, collective main firmaments (God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the law of life, the people, the future). The closer to main firmaments a certain carrying element is, the more perilous it is to touch. Here a direct protection is normally established by means of penal codes and threats of prosecution (inquisition, censorship, the Conservative approach to life).
The carrying capacity of each segment either depends on its fictitious nature having not been seen through yet, or else on its being recognised as necessary anyway. Hence the religious education in schools, which even atheists support because they know no other way to bring children into social ways of response.
Whenever people realise the fictitiousness or redundancy of the segments, they will strive to replace them with new ones (‘the limited duration of Truths’) – and whence flows all the spiritual and cultural strife which, along with economic competition, forms the dynamic content of world history.
The craving for material goods (power) is not so much due to the direct pleasures of wealth, as none can be seated on more than one chair or eat himself more than sated. Rather, the value of a fortune to life consists in the rich opportunities for anchoring and distraction offered to the owner.
Both for collective and individual anchorings it holds that when a segment breaks, there is a crisis that is graver the closer that segment to main firmaments. Within the inner circles, sheltered by the outer ramparts, such crises are daily and fairly painfree occurrences (‘disappointments’); even a playing with anchoring values is here seen (wittiness, jargon, alcohol). But during such play one may accidentally rip a hole right to the bottom, and the scene is instantly transformed from euphoric to macabre. The dread of being stares us in the eye, and in a deadly gush we perceive how the minds are dangling in threads of their own spinning, and that a hell is lurking underneath.
The very foundational firmaments are rarely replaced without great social spasms and a risk of complete dissolution (reformation, revolution). During such times, individuals are increasingly left to their own devices for anchoring, and the number of failures tends to rise. Depressions, excesses, and suicides result (German officers after the war, Chinese students after the revolution).
Another flaw of the system is the fact that various danger fronts often require very different firmaments. As a logical superstructure is built upon each, there follow clashes of incommensurable modes of feeling and thought. Then despair can enter through the rifts. In such cases, a person may be obsessed with destructive joy, dislodging the whole artificial apparatus of his life and starting with rapturous horror to make a clean sweep of it. The horror stems from the loss of all sheltering values, the rapture from his by now ruthless identification and harmony with our nature’s deepest secret, the biological unsoundness, the enduring disposition for doom.
We love the anchorings for saving us, but also hate them for limiting our sense of freedom. Whenever we feel strong enough, we thus take pleasure in going together to bury an expired value in style. Material objects take on a symbolic import here (the Radical approach to life).
When a human being has eliminated those of his anchorings that are visible to himself, only the unconscious ones staying put, then he will call himself a liberated personality.
A very popular mode of protection is distraction. One limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions. This is typical even in childhood; without distraction, the child is also insufferable to itself. “Mom, what am I to do.” A little English girl visiting her Norwegian aunts came inside from her room, saying: “What happens now?” The nurses attain virtuosity: Look, a doggie! Watch, they are painting the palace! The phenomenon is too familiar to require any further demonstration. Distraction is, for example, the ‘high society’s’ tactic for living. It can be likened to a flying machine – made of heavy material, but embodying a principle that keeps it airborne whenever applying. It must always be in motion, as air only carries it fleetingly. The pilot may grow drowsy and comfortable out of habit, but the crisis is acute as soon as the engine flunks.
The tactic is often fully conscious. Despair may dwell right underneath and break through in gushes, in a sudden sobbing. When all distractive options are expended, spleen sets in, ranging from mild indifference to fatal depression. Women, in general less cognition-prone and hence more secure in their living than men, preferably use distraction.
A considerable evil of imprisonment is the denial of most distractive options. And as terms for deliverance by other means are poor as well, the prisoner will tend to stay in the close vicinity of despair. The acts he then commits to deflect the final stage have a warrant in the principle of vitality itself. In such a moment he is experiencing his soul within the universe, and has no other motive than the utter inendurability of that condition.
Pure examples of life-panic are presumably rare, as the protective mechanisms are refined and automatic and to some extent unremitting. But even the adjacent terrain bears the mark of death, life is here barely sustainable and by great efforts. Death always appears as an escape, one ignores the possibilities of the hereafter, and as the way death is experienced is partly dependent on feeling and perspective, it might be quite an acceptable solution. If one in statu mortis could manage a pose (a poem, a gesture, to ‘die standing up’), i.e. a final anchoring, or a final distraction (Aases’ death), then such a fate is not the worst one at all. The press, for once serving the concealment mechanism, never fails to find reasons that cause no alarm – “it is believed that the latest fall in the price of wheat...”
When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of ‘saving’ the suicidal is based on a hairraising misapprehension of the nature of existence.
Only a limited part of humanity can make do with mere ‘changes’, whether in work, social life, or entertainment. The cultured person demands connections, lines, a progression in the changes. Nothing finite satisfies at length, one is ever proceeding, gathering knowledge, making a career. The phenomenon is known as ‘yearning’ or ‘transcendental tendency.’ Whenever a goal is reached, the yearning moves on; hence its object is not the goal, but the very attainment of it – the gradient, not the absolute height, of the curve representing one’s life. The promotion from private to corporal may give a more valuable experience than the one from colonel to general. Any grounds of ‘progressive optimism’ are removed by this major psychological law.
The human yearning is not merely marked by a ‘striving toward’, but equally by an ‘escape from.’ And if we use the word in a religious sense, only the latter description fits. For here, none has yet been clear about what he is longing for, but one has always a heartfelt awareness of what one is longing away from, namely the earthly vale of tears, one’s own inendurable condition. If awareness of this predicament is the deepest stratum of the soul, as argued above, then it is also understandable why the religious yearning is felt and experienced as fundamental. By contrast, the hope that it forms a divine criterion, which harbours a promise of its own fulfilment, is placed in a truly melancholy light by these considerations.
The fourth remedy against panic, sublimation, is a matter of transformation rather than repression. Through stylistic or artistic gifts can the very pain of living at times be converted into valuable experiences. Positive impulses engage the evil and put it to their own ends, fastening onto its pictorial, dramatic, heroic, lyric or even comic aspects.
Unless the worst sting of suffering is blunted by other means, or denied control of the mind, such utilisation is unlikely, however. (Image: The mountaineer does not enjoy his view of the abyss while choking with vertigo; only when this feeling is more or less overcome does he enjoy it – anchored.) To write a tragedy, one must to some extent free oneself from – betray – the very feeling of tragedy and regard it from an outer, e.g. aesthetic, point of view. Here is, by the way, an opportunity for the wildest round-dancing through ever higher ironic levels, into a most embarrassing circulus vitiosus. Here one can chase one’s ego across numerous habitats, enjoying the capacity of the various layers of consciousness to dispel one another.
The present essay is a typical attempt at sublimation. The author does not suffer, he is filling pages and is going to be published in a journal.
The ‘martyrdom’ of lonely ladies also shows a kind of sublimation – they gain in significance thereby.
Nevertheless, sublimation appears to be the rarest of the protective means mentioned here.
IV
Is it possible for ‘primitive natures’ to renounce these cramps and cavorts and live in harmony with themselves in the serene bliss of labour and love? Insofar as they may be considered human at all, I think the answer must be no. The strongest claim to be made about the so-called peoples of nature is that they are somewhat closer to the wonderful biological ideal than we unnatural people. And when even we have so far been able to save a majority through every storm, we have been assisted by the sides of our nature that are just modestly or moderately developed. This positive basis (as protection alone cannot create life, only hinder its faltering) must be sought in the naturally adapted deployment of the energy in the body and the biologically helpful parts of the soul1, subject to such hardships as are precisely due to sensory limitations, bodily frailty, and the need to do work for life and love.
And just in this finite land of bliss within the fronts do the progressing civilisation, technology and standardisation have such a debasing influence. For as an ever growing fraction of the cognitive faculties retire from the game against the environment, there is a rising spiritual unemployment. The value of a technical advance to the whole undertaking of life must be judged by its contribution to the human opportunity for spiritual occupation. Though boundaries are blurry, perhaps the first tools for cutting might be mentioned as a case of a positive invention.
Other technical inventions enrich only the life of the inventor himself; they represent a gross and ruthless theft from humankind’s common reserve of experiences and should invoke the harshest punishment if made public against the veto of censorship. One such crime among numerous others is the use of flying machines to explore uncharted land. In a single vandalistic glob, one thus destroys lush opportunities for experience that could benefit many if each, by effort, obtained his fair share.2
The current phase of life’s chronic fever is particularly tainted by this circumstance. The absence of naturally (biologically) based spiritual activity shows up, for example, in the pervasive recourse to distraction (entertainment, sport, radio – ‘the rhythm of the times’). Terms for anchoring are not as favourable – all the inherited, collective systems of anchorings are punctured by criticism, and anxiety, disgust, confusion, despair leak in through the rifts (‘corpses in the cargo.’) Communism and psychoanalysis, however incommensurable otherwise, both attempt (as Communism has also a spiritual reflection) by novel means to vary the old escape anew; applying, respectively, violence and guile to make humans biologically fit by ensnaring their critical surplus of cognition. The idea, in either case, is uncannily logical. But again, it cannot yield a final solution. Though a deliberate degeneration to a more viable nadir may certainly save the species in the short run, it will by its nature be unable to find peace in such resignation, or indeed find any peace at all.
V
If we continue these considerations to the bitter end, then the conclusion is not in doubt. As long as humankind recklessly proceeds in the fateful delusion of being biologically fated for triumph, nothing essential will change. As its numbers mount and the spiritual atmosphere thickens, the techniques of protection must assume an increasingly brutal character.
And humans will persist in dreaming of salvation and affirmation and a new Messiah. Yet when many saviours have been nailed to trees and stoned on the city squares, then the last Messiah shall come.
Then will appear the man who, as the first of all, has dared strip his soul naked and submit it alive to the outmost thought of the lineage, the very idea of doom. A man who has fathomed life and its cosmic ground, and whose pain is the Earth’s collective pain. With what furious screams shall not mobs of all nations cry out for his thousandfold death, when like a cloth his voice encloses the globe, and the strange message has resounded for the first and last time:
“– The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth’s is a pond and a backwater.
– The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?
– But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.
– Know yourselves – be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.”
And when he has spoken, they will pour themselves over him, led by the pacifier makers and the midwives, and bury him in their fingernails.
He is the last Messiah. As son from father, he stems from the archer by the waterhole.
Peter Wessel Zapffe, 1933
Notes:
1 A distinction for clarity. 2 I emphasize that this is not about fantastic reform proposals, but rather a psychological view of principle
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spinjitzu-comics · 8 years ago
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Lloyd Garmadon Headcanons
My headcanons for The Child™ Lloyd, as requested by that anon who asked who my favorite Ninjago character was.
Bear with me on some of these because I’ve only watched up to the end of S5 (they don’t have anything past that on Netflix) and I dunno much about the later seasons past Hands of Time involving some serious timeline bullshit of Homestuckian proportions.
Sometimes he has nightmares where his dad is accusing him of betraying him and yelling at him for sending him to the Cursed Realm. He wakes up sobbing and usually with a lightbulb blown because his powers surged while he was dreaming.
The first time he ever kills someone, he doesn’t think much of it at the time. But when the reality of what he did sets in after the adrenaline fades, he locks himself in his room for a week and refuses to talk to anyone. He’s never really the same afterwards.
He hates it when people treat him like a child, but he also hates being given too much adult responsibility.
“Kai I don’t care if I was 10 when I met you I’m mentally a teenager dammit don’t treat me like I’m little.”
“SENSEI I AM LITERALLY LIKE 12 WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE I’M AN ADULT I CAN’T EVEN DO CALCULUS AND REMEMBER TO FEED THE FISH LET ALONE TAKE CARE OF THIS PLACE BY MYSELF FOR A WEEK”
When he’s depressed, he’s extremely self-destructive in one way or another. Sometimes it’s actual self harm, others it’s self neglect like not eating or sleeping.
He’s less likely to cut himself than he is to purposely give himself bruises.
His least self-destructive tendency is working out excessively, until he strains his body so much that he can’t move for about 15 minutes.
He color codes his clothes most of the time, but sometimes he just can’t can’t be bothered to or he doesn’t feel like wearing green so he’ll wear dark jeans and a black jacket or hoodie.
Sometimes he thinks about Morro and wonders if he would have ended up the way he was if Wu had warned him that there was a chance he wasn’t really the Green Ninja.
He also thinks about all the things that Wu doesn’t tell any of them until its too late and it makes him really mad.
He cries every time he thinks about his dad for more than 5 consecutive minutes.
Kai is his best friend in the whole world but sometimes he really resents him and he can’t figure out why.
He looks up to Zane and/or Nya as sort of pseudo-mother figures when his own mom isn’t around.
He’s really good at drawing and painting but he prefers not to because he thinks people will take him less seriously if they find out.
His preference is nature drawings, namely vines and flowers because he can repeat patterns and such and he finds it calming.
He prefers to paint when he does do anything artsy, and usually uses watercolors.
When he draws/paints anything other than flowers/vines, he tends to do portraits of people in oil pastels. So far he’s got portraits of his mom, dad, Kai, Zane, and Cole... He’s planning on drawing Wu, Jay, and Nya at some point too.
He holds grudges like a boss... But only against people who deserve it.
That said, he can be incredibly petty if he wants to be and there are a few boys from Darkley’s that he has grudges against for things like “he looked at me funny”.
He was kicked out of Darkley’s for “lacking the motivation to be a villain” (canon), but in reality he didn’t really want to be evil, he just wanted to be able to make his dad proud of him, which is why he kept trying even after he was expelled. If he had really wanted to be evil, he probably could have taken over Ninjago in half the time it took his dad to attempt it.
No matter how old he is or what universe he’s in, he always has a sweet tooth. Always. He just learns how to control himself after a while.
In same-age AUs, his friendship with Kai has the very real possibility of turning into something else due to how close they are and how compatible their personalities are.
It’s still possible in the main/canon timeline, but it’s less likely because even if he liked Kai, Kai would probably be incredibly hesitant due to Lloyd really being so much younger than he is and Lloyd wouldn’t want to make him uncomfortable.
He lowkey thinks that Cole and Jay are secretly gay for each other.
He also thinks they both might be a little gay for Zane.
Loud noises and big crowds make him uncomfortable, but absolute silence and total loneliness terrify him. He has a hard time finding a proper balance of sound/silence and the right amount of people.
When in a situation where he has to sit still for long periods of time, he spends the majority of it bouncing his knees, drumming his fingers on stuff, and chewing on the insides of his cheeks and on his bottom lip.
In modern/real world AUs, fidget cubes are his best friends.
In the High School AU, Lloyd is outwardly sarcastic and sassy to everyone around him, but below that salty exterior he’s actually a really sad and vulnerable kid.
He’s super sensitive, too, but he’s trained himself to hold in his emotions until he’s alone.
Any time he’s criticized or yelled at, he cries.
If someone calls him out on how he acts, he gets hurt deep down but externally tells them something that rhymes with “Duck Glue”.
When he finally reaches his “rebellious teenage phase” he ends up with a really foul mouth for a couple months but grows out of it. He still drops the occasional F-Bomb from time to time but mostly he manages not to curse.
When the day finally comes that Sensei Wu dies, all the ninja are utterly devastated. Lloyd is the only one who doesn’t collapse into emotional turmoil, remaining, for the most part, outwardly calm.
Kai takes it entirely the wrong way and explodes on him about it, saying a lot of things that he later regrets very much. (”You don’t even care, do you?” “I guess I should have expected something like this from Garmadon’s son.”)
Lloyd locks himself in his room afterwards and doesn’t come out until Cole talks him into coming out to eat something because he’s hungry. He spends a few weeks being entirely apathetic to Kai but eventually their relationship recovers and they go back to being bros.
When he gets frustrated he spars with Cole to take out some of his aggression. It works pretty well for both of them because they can both fight almost at their peak without having to worry too much about hurting each other.
Somehow, some way, he still has a little bit of his Golden Power locked up somewhere. He knows it’s there but refuses to try and use it because the longer he leaves it alone the more it starts to replenish itself. He kind of hopes that one day he’ll have it all back, but even if he did he’d only use it in extreme situations.
Some of the Devourer’s venom did get passed on to him, but his Golden Power and status as the Green Ninja kind of quash down the “evil” aspect of it, making it surface mostly in small ways.
When he gets really, really, really mad, his eyes turn red.
He has little fangs and whenever he’s so mad his eyes turn red, they get bigger and sharper.
He’s a really good liar because hey you know snakes are deceivers.
Also his whole grudge-holding thing? That’s another thing caused by the venom.
Movie Lloyd (Luh-loyd) has some severe depression, anxiety, and abandonment issues that are constantly perpetuated by Garmadon being an huge deadbeat.
Every time Bad Blood played in the trailer it was because Luh-loyd was thinking it because he’s secretly a meme lord.
If Lloyd and Luh-loyd ever met, Luh-loyd would probably resent the fact that Lloyd’s dad actually knew his name and cared about him, but then would immediately feel bad about it when he finds out that Garmadon is Garmadead.
Okay seriously I have more but I think this is more than enough for one post.
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