#to analyzing assassin and hidden one culture

[teecupangel]

I would also like to add to this in terms of their fighting style.

And, because I’m me, I’m focusing on Altaïr as our Levantine representative (mainly because the Animus cheats and most fighting style/form are redone for Crusaders, Saracens, and even the Masyaf guards if you want to fight them)

Anyway…

Comparison between blorbo and the dude that should get wrecked... a lot:

Altaïr fights by deliberately placing his bladed hand behind him in an almost slightly awkward hand gesture:

The hand gesture itself could mean that this certain angle gives the fastest way to unsheathe the hidden blade itself:

The fighting form itself could be a way to keep his enemies from focusing on his hidden blade, to give him a chance to surprise them when the opportunity presents itself.

On the other hand, Altaïr’s bladed hand is in front of his body when he uses a short blade. This could be because it makes it easier for Altaïr to use his left hand to strike with the hidden blade once he’s close enough. It’s less about surprise but more about being quick and striking as soon as the distance is closed.

And this is interesting because…

If we assume Basim’s fighting style to be what the Alamut Assassins are using, he uses a combination of what we've seen from Altaïr:

The reverse grip would be more similar to Altaïr’s reverse grip when holding a short blade (and they also have similar bent knees in comparison to the position of Altaïr’s knees when he’s holding a sword) BUT he keeps his bladed hand behind him which is more in line with how Altaïr positions his bladed hand when using a sword.

Although, it should be noted that Basim also changes stance during the boss fight. The arrogance in this pose and the entire boss fight makes it clear that Basim is 'losing' to the memories of Loki and his thirst for vengeance. This could mean that this is possibly Loki’s usual fighting stance and not part of the Alamut Assassins��� way of fighting and that's why it looks so out of place.

Sidebar:

I focused on AC1!Altaïr mainly because ACR!Altaïr seems to use AC2!Ezio's animation instead of having his own.

For example, on the left is ACR!Altaïr's normal sword stance during Al Mualim's damsel-in-distress moment (1189) and on the right is AC2!Ezio being a menace in Venice.

Curiously enough, ACR!Altaïr unarmed stance during Al Mualim's barbecue party (1191, just a few... hours? Days? after Al Mualim's death) seems to be an inverse of AC2!Ezio's unarmed stance)

AC1!Altaïr has a more close stance when he’s unarmed than both ACR!Altaïr and AC2!Ezio and this is even stranger because the main reason why they couldn't guard using their hidden blade is that it's quite fragile. It took Altaïr changing the hidden blade before they could start guarding using it so a form where Altaïr would have an easier time raising his left arm to protect his face is strange as he gives an opening to hitting his hidden blade in the process.

About Ezio's Levantine Brotherhood Mannerisms:

Of course, considering Ezio learned a lot of his Assassin skills from both his allies and the Codex, it’s not surprising that he has a few of Altaïr’s techniques as well. This could also be the reason why the Italian Brotherhood (and Ezio in general) have more Levantine Brotherhood gestures. At this point, Altaïr (and, by extension, the Levantine Brotherhood) is crowned as a legend so it wouldn’t be surprising if other Brotherhoods try to emulate him and his Brotherhood (for example: Aguilar’s Spanish Brotherhood still amputated their finger even though it’s no longer required).

And, it should be noted that Altaïr is the one that ordered the Brotherhood to build branches far beyond the reach of Levant and its neighboring countries/cities. This meant that the ones who built these branches (including the Italian Brotherhood which were the Polos) would have been trained or, at the very least, more heavily influenced by the Levantine Brotherhood.

To go with the glove kink ask... Imagine Desmond AND the team ending up in Altaїr's time. They do relatively well. But what gives them away at the end is Desmond winding down and defaulting to the general etiquette of someone who habitually wears a hidden blade. A peculiar hand movement there, a habitual gesture there... And neither Rebecca nor Shaun even realized that was a thing happening. Meanwhile Desmond: *is melting from joy of subconscious desire fulfilment*

The “Desmond has a glove kink” ask that influenced this.

And the one who noticed it is an old informant who works as a stall owner. Shaun loves the tea leaves he sells so Desmond gets to go and buy them regularly because Shaun and Rebecca are still trying to get a firm grasp on the languages during the 3rd Crusades (and there’s a lot) while Desmond is heavily relying on his Bleed of Altaïr.

And it’s because of this that the informant noticed his usual posture and a lot of his hand movements to specifically be of Levantine Brotherhood origin, down to the way he always liked to hide his left hand unless he was sure that no one would notice a missing ring finger (and the informant is always surprised to remember that he has all five of his fingers).

And that informant sends word to Masyaf because it’s too strange. A man with the mannerism of an Assassin but not an Assassin?

Something was off.

And who gets ordered to check this strange man?

Altaïr before that fateful year when he failed in saving Adha.

Altaïr before the attack on Masyaf where he singlehandedly saved Al Mualim.

Altaïr before he became a Master Assassin, just as curious but less arrogant than he would become years later.

Altaïr with a face that looked too much like Desmond's that it could not be counted as a coincidence.

[raionhatothecat]

Raionhato history:

Raionhato lost her parents when she was just a child, leading her to an unforgiving fate at the Bonta military facility. There, she underwent rigorous training that turned her into a formidable assassin. Despite the hostile environment and mistreatment she suffered at the hands of her superiors, Raionhato found a ray of hope in the company of other children with similar abilities. Together, they shared their sorrows and dreams of freedom, forming an unbreakable bond.

Raionhato was no ordinary girl; She was a hybrid between a zurcarak and an Eliatrope dragon, giving her unique abilities and extraordinary power. This unusual mix was both a blessing and a curse, as it made her stand out from the rest and attracted the attention of those who wanted to exploit her.

The decision to escape from her was made in a moment of desperation and hope. One night, under the light of the moon, Raionhato and her friends managed to escape surveillance and escape from the facility. Their destiny took them to the quiet and picturesque town of Emelka. There, they found not only shelter, but also a new home among the members of the Tofu brotherhood.

Over time, the relationship between Raionhato and the brotherhood grew stronger. The members of the brotherhood welcomed her as one of their own, teaching her that life could be more than pain and struggle. Together, they faced numerous challenges, from external threats to internal conflicts, always with courage and determination.

Habilities:

1. **Hand-to-hand combat**: Expert in various martial arts and hand-to-hand fighting techniques.

2. **Weapon Handling**: Mastery of a wide range of weapons, from knives and swords to firearms.

3. **Infiltration and stealth**: Ability to move without being detected, perfect for espionage or infiltration missions.

4. **Strategy and tactics**: Ability to plan and execute complex operations, both in combat and in escape situations.

5. **Physical and mental resistance**: Trained to withstand extreme conditions and remain calm under pressure.

6. **Survival**: Advanced knowledge of survival techniques in different environments, from jungles to urban areas.

7. **First Aid**: Ability to provide basic medical care on the battlefield.

8. **Engineering and explosives**: Knowledge in the creation and deactivation of explosives, as well as in the manipulation of machinery and devices.

9. **Intelligence and analysis**: Ability to collect and analyze information vital to the mission.

10. **Leadership**: Ability to lead and motivate her team, especially in high-risk situations.

11. **Emotional Connection**: Strong empathy and ability to form bonds with others, leveraging shared experiences to strengthen her team.

12. **Adaptability**: Ability to quickly adapt to new situations and environments, improvising effective solutions.

13. **Polyglot**: Knowledge of multiple languages, which allows you to communicate and operate in various countries and cultural contexts.

14.**Intuition and perception**: Acute ability to detect hidden dangers, read body language and anticipate the actions of others.

15. **Disguise and performance**: Ability to change appearance and adopt various identities for covert missions.

16**Climbing and parkour**: Ability to move quickly through urban and natural environments using climbing and parkour techniques.

17. **Energy or Magic Manipulation**: In a more fantasy context, you could have the ability to manipulate some type of energy (such as fire, ice, electricity) or use magic for various applications in combat and survival.

18.**Animal Skill**: Special connection with certain animals, allowing you to train them, communicate with them, or use them in missions.

19. **Pilotage**: Ability to pilot various vehicles, from motorcycles and cars to helicopters and airplanes.

20. **Creation of antidotes and poisons**: Advanced knowledge in chemistry to create and neutralize poisons.

21. **Diplomacy and negotiation**: Ability to mediate conflicts and negotiate agreements, useful in situations where violence is not the best option.

Problems:

. **Inexperience in personal relationships**: Due to his upbringing in a militarized environment and his focus on training and survival, Raionhato may lack experience in intimate or romantic personal relationships. This could make her clumsy or uncomfortable in complex emotional situations.

**Sense of guilt for her past as a weapon**: Although Raionhato escaped from the military facility, she may carry a sense of guilt for acts she may have committed under orders or pressure during her training. This emotional burden could affect her self-esteem and her ability to forgive herself.

**Difficulty adjusting to civilian life**: After escaping and finding refuge in Emelka with the Tofu brotherhood, Raionhato may face significant challenges adjusting to the peaceful and routine life of a quiet town. The lack of military structure and discipline could be disconcerting to her.

**Fear of rejection or abandonment**: Despite having found a new home with the Tofu brotherhood, Raionhato might have a persistent fear of rejection or abandonment from her due to his past loss and separation from her. This could lead her to be overprotective of her loved ones or remain emotionally distant.

. **Ethical and Moral Conflicts**: As a product of a military environment that often compromised ethics and morality for the sake of duty and obedience, Raionhato could face complicated ethical dilemmas in her everyday life. The need to make decisions that put her personal values ​​at stake could be a constant source of internal conflict.

1 **Impulsivity in dangerous situations**: Due to her past of military training and escape, Raionhato could be prone to acting impulsively or risky when faced with situations of immediate danger. This could put her at risk or negatively affect her fellow Tofu brotherhood.

**Aversion to interpersonal conflict**: Although skilled in physical and strategic combat, Raionhato may have difficulty dealing with conflicts or emotional problems that arise within the Tofu brotherhood. This could lead her to avoid confrontations necessary to resolve internal problems.

**Distrust of authorities**: Due to her experience in the Bonta military installations and the mistreatment she suffered from her superiors, Raionhato may have a deep distrust of authority figures or hierarchical structures. This could create tensions within the Tofu brotherhood if she faces situations where authority is questioned.

**Emotional Overload**: Although she has found support in the Tofu brotherhood, Raionhato might face difficulties processing intense emotions or past traumas. This could manifest itself in times of extreme stress or when she is faced with painful memories from her past.

** Fear of losing her loved ones **: After having lost her parents and having found a new family in the Tofu brotherhood, Raionhato could have a deep fear of losing those she loves again. This fear could influence her decisions and actions, leading her to take extreme measures to protect her peers.

[earth-electric]

The 12: Work Culture, Death Cult, & Endgame

The 12 is a crime organization and shadow government. They are named after the 12 hidden figures at the top and have many working under them. They have an agenda requiring the destabilization of all governments, select businesses, and societal resources with their main focus and central hub being Europe and Russia. This is aimed to create chaos, but this is not the endgame.

There is only one race of people in history who have managed to have world domination, before that many others have made an attempt: the Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, etc. and many other groups, nations and people who have been inspired to seek power and control have succeeded in some part of the world at one point or another. The 12 is just another one looking for their own power grab, which some would say they already have, but they are aiming for the jackpot.

The 12 have been around for decades, they at least have existed since the late 80s, so let’s say since the later half of the cold war. But what makes the 12 so different from any other mob/mafia, crime ring, secret society, etc. One thing is clear they have been planning for a long time, and their domino's are falling clean and precise, but since the season 2 finale (and season 3 finale), their cleanly laid out plan is going sideways. This is my attempt to piece together the 12, and analyze its nucleus. Let’s get into it!:

Work Culture:

The 12 is strictly hierarchical, it’s a secret organization that infiltrates any and every sector deemed important. It acts also as a political or religious operation, there is a shared belief and reward system. Keep in mind that the 12 is decentralized, meaning there is no one way of attack that brings them down. They are a 12 headed dragon.

There are 3 main hierarchy’s within the 12; the Masterminds, the Puppeteers, and the Puppets:

The Masterminds:

They are IT. They are the multi organ of this organization. The 12 is run by a group of people who have deep, old connections and old money. They are an exclusive, elitist, an almost ‘aryan-esque’ type deal. They are the privilege, the uber wealthy, the entitled, they are not in touch with the rest of humanity. They have a shared vision, a grand delusion, and the resources and plans to get it. There is a question on whether they get their hands dirty and how anonymous they are, but fortunately they have the Puppeteers for that.

The Puppeteers (keepers,etc):

These ‘managers’ are fairly high up in government and business sectors. They also have the same characteristics and backgrounds of their Masterminds. They are many questions about them as well, their job description is rather vague.

We can summarize that a Keepers job is to help make their bosses dream become a reality, of course with rewards. I believe they also know the 12’s identity and keep them safe and hidden. When all destabilizes they’ll be there to make sure the power flows where it should. Raymond and Paul could have been keepers, but we don’t know for sure do we.

The Puppets (Handler, Informants, Assassins, etc.):

This is straight forward. They do the dirty work, run the lower operation, get the dirt, and kill the targets and so it goes. Many are the readily disposable and replaceable. Notice that many among the 12 are apart of government offices. This lower tier has many government agents, like Konstantin, Dasha, Colonel Zhang Wu and of course Frank (though there’s evidence he may have been in deeper). This group also has a sub hierarchy, as handlers and informants are above assassins.

Death Cult:

What mentality does the 12 function, it’s almost occult, hence the use of ‘the 12, the all powerful number’. A cult is not just strictly defined as religious or spiritual group of beliefs but be defined as philosophical belief, a shared common interest in a personality, objects, or goal. Will like to say that the 12 is not a typical cult, but crime organizations, mafias, and secret societies etc. all have characteristics that are considered cultish. Heck fandom is considered to have cult mentality characteristics.

But what are the 12 specifically ‘worshiping’? What is their shared goal, their shared vision? The cult of capitalism, elitism and white supremacy; so basically money and power and perverse utopia. The 12 is what I call a Death Cult, now this is not used in the traditional sense where a religious cult that worships death and partakes in mass homicides and suicides.

A death cult is a perfectly distinguishes of the 12, as this is an organization you can’t get out of alive. In a death cult, no lives matter just the belief just the goal. They are willing to sacrifice everything around them except themselves to achieve their agenda, and if they go down they’ll take everyone down with them. Not all in the 12 are into the agenda, but are there for the money, the rewards, and the power. Example, Villanelle has no stake in what they believe, she just wants the money, benefits, and for a brief period the power.

The 12 infiltrate, recruit, and divide and conquer - sound familiar? They are everywhere in business and government with their hand in different honey jars strategizing their plans. They have a deadline though, and their plan is (was) going very well.

This culture and cult of wealth, power, and white supremacy, what do they want?

Endgame:

What really is the endgame, it’s not just chaos, that’s just the tool. When there are times of chaos and turmoil it’s easier to seize power. As history has recounted time and time again of political factions rising to power during economic lows, disease, and unrest, that’s where the power is a free for all. Coup’s happen all the time, during the past 2 years at least 4 attempts and successes have happened around the world.

If you want to build a new world, chaos is where it’s at.

Really it’s a grand delusion, and not rooted in reality, but with enough power, money, and of course “destabilizing from the ground up”. This vision can become a sick reality. What do all rich elitists, power hungry, white supremacists want; they want the world at their fingertips. They want perfection (eugenics), they want ‘law and order”, they want their version of utopia that they can rule, control, and exploit.

This may be a fictional universe but we are actually living in a world where a certain race and class of people actually succeeded in world domination *cough*

Final Thoughts:

So yes the 12 are the mustache twirling villain, the Dr. Evil seeking world domination. The 12 is a dream shadow organization and terrorist group that conspiracy theorists would jerk off to. But they are dumbasses who let two lesbians go buck wild. The 12 in my eyes are sorely lacking, supposedly this all powerful shadow government with all their resources and what not to take over the world and their just a looming shadow with no bite just a blah subplot to the actual story line which is Villaneve. And I’m not complaining but the 12 plot drives me up the wall with questions, hopefully season 4 let’s the Villaneve plot and the 12 subplot converge more and not leave it unsatisfactory.

[bakubabes-tatakae]

The Uchiha In The Leaves (Part Four)

Author’s Note: If anyone wants to be in a taglist for this feel free to let me know! Happy to do it for anyone!

(Kakashi Hatake x Reader)

Summary: What happens when Y/N finally returns to the Village Hidden in the Leaves? Her life is flipped upside down when not only does she find the man that’s awaited her return, but she finds someone she thought she’d never see again.

AO3 Link

Part One, Part Two:*NSFW Ahead!*, Part Three

Part Four:

Word Count: 5055

*Kakashi's P.O.V*

As the kids ran through the woods their mission was clear, they were becoming seasoned, they knew what they were doing. They all answered Y/n and I when our voices emerged through their earpieces. 

Sasuke’s brooding voice was heard first. “This is Sasuke, I’m at point B.”

The bubbly pink-haired Genin spoke next. “It’s Sakura, I’ve made it to point C.”

And finally the number-one knuckle head Genin. “Naruto, I’m at point A. Believe it.”

I scolded Naruto through the headset. His response should have come sooner. If we were out of the village on a real mission we would have assumed something had happened to him. “You’re slow Naruto.”

As I attempted to scold him further Y/n cut me off. “Okay, squad seven. The target is moving, follow it.”

The kids all surrounded a lone bush. I watched them closely, they all had determination in their eyes. “What’s your distance from the target?” 

Naruto was first to answer me this time, clearly learning his lesson. “Five meters, I’m ready, just give the signal.”

Sasuke nodded. “I’m ready too.”

Sakura blushed as she watched Sasuke intently. “So am I.”

“Okay, now!” The kids all sprang for the bush, each wrestling a small brown cat. Naruto was the first of them to grab and not let it slip. He hugged it tightly so I changed my focus to Sasuke. “Can you verify the ribbon on the right ear?”

He turned back toward Naruto, taking a glance at the cat. “Affirmative, we’ve got a positive ID.”

Y/n gushed with excitement, grabbing my arm and squeezing. “Right, lost pet, Tora, captured. Mission accomplished!”

Naruto was never pleased with the missions we picked for them. The cat hissed as Naruto spoke about it. “Can’t we get a better mission than this! I hate cats!”

* * * * * *

 When we got back with Tora the owner was overjoyed to see her. The cat writhed with anger as her owner’s grip around it tightened and she made it a pancake as she squeezed it to her face. It screamed at her as she squeezed it, the owner none the wiser. 

The five of us stood before her, Naruto still brewing about the hiss he had gotten in the woods. “Dumb cat.” He laughed at himself. ‘He deserves to get squashed.”

Sakura’s look turned to horror. “No wonder he ran away.”

We made our way to the Hokage to get our next mission. Our leader spoke to us. “Now then, for squad seven’s next mission we have several available tasks. Among them; babysitting the chief counselors three year old, helping his wife do the shopping, digging up potatoes, and-”

Our faces turned to cringe as Naruto spoke over him. “NO! I want a real mission. Something challenging and exciting, not this little kid stuff! Come on old man!”

I was dumbfounded by Naruto’s actions, not that it should have surprised me. Nothing Naruto did surprised me anymore, I was accustomed to his stupidity.

Y/n looked over at him, trying to ease the tension a little. “Naruto, enough.”

Suddenly Iruke stood up and slammed his hands on the table before us, jumping the five of us. “How dare you?! You’re just a new Genin with no experience, like everything else you start with a simple mission to work on your skills and prove yourself!”

Something was bothering Naruto today, we could all tell as he fought back. “Are you serious? Babysitting is not a mission, it’s just stupid…”

I lifted my fist and sunk it into the top of Naruto’s head, he fell to the ground holding his head, a welt already starting to grow. Y/n and I were never going to hear the end of this one. “Will you put a lid on it?”

The Hokage’s look had never faltered as he looked on at Naruto. “Naruto, it seems you do not understand the task you have been given.” Naruto stopped rubbing the welt on his head, silencing his bellyaching, to look up at the Hokage. “Listen, many kinds of tasks come into our village every day, from babysitting to assassinations. These requests are carefully recorded and analyzed.” He lifted a hand to point at the scrolls in front of him. “They are ranked A, B, C, or D, depending on their difficulty. We ninja are also ranked by ability. Hokage at the top, Jonin, Chunin, and Genin at the bottom. At the highest level we pick missions and assign them to ninja with the proper experience. If the mission is successful we receive a fee that supports our village and our work. Since you are untried Genin, just starting down the Shinobi path; you are given D level assignments, of course.”

The five of us had zoned out during the Hokage’s speech, beginning our own conversation, regretting it not too long after as the Hokage’s booming voice was heard above ours. “SILENCE!” The anger was clear on his face.

I placed my hand on the back of my head, rubbing it. “Oh… sorry.”

Y/n smiled an apologetic smile toward him. 

Naruto’s next wisecrack of the day escaped his lips. “You always lecture me like you’re my grandfather or something. But, I’m not that little bra that used to pull pranks all the time. I’m a ninja now, I want a ninja mission.” He turned around and sat down, sulking.

Y/n shot a glare at Naruto before turning to me. “We’re going to hear about this later.”

I rubbed my head nervously again. “Yea, we are.”

The Hokage chuckled. A huge surprise to us all. “Naruto wanted us to know that he’s not a brat, just a former brat, and he wants a mission. So be it.” Y/n and I looked up at him with wide eyes. “Since you are determined I’m going to give you a C ranked mission. You’ll be bodyguards on a journey.”

Naruto turned back around to face him. “Really? Yes!” He jumped up. “Who, who? Are we guarding a princess? Or some big wig counselor?”

“Don’t be so impatient. I’ll bring him in now.” He looked to his right. “Send in our visitor.”

A bigger man in a sun hat, clearly intoxicated and barely able to make coherent sentences came out. “What the? A bunch of snot nosed kids?” He took another swig from his bottle. “And you, the little on, with the idiotic look on your face, you really expect me to believe you’re a ninja?”

Naruto laughed as he looked between both of his fellow Genin. “Who’s the little one with the idiotic look on his…” Realization hit him as he realized he was the smallest. 

Naruto tried to run at him and I grabbed the back of his jacket, holding him back with ease. A sigh left my lips. “You can’t demolish the client Naruto. It doesn’t work that way.”

He took another swig. “I am Tazuna and I’m a master bridge builder. I must return to my country. I’m building a bridge there that will change our world and I expect you to get me there safely, even if it means giving up your life.”

* * * * * * 

As we reached the outer gates Naruto was the first one out, dashing through the gates and jumping around. “Yea! Alright!”

Sakura’s annoyance was all over her face. “What are you getting so excited about Naruto?”

“This is the first time I’ve ever left the village. I’m a traveler now, believe it!”

Tazuna was not amused by Naruto’s antics. He looked toward me. “Am I supposed to trust my life with this runt? He’s a joke.”

I chuckled. “He’s with me and I’m a Jonin, along with Y/n. She’s just a Jonin from another village. No need to worry.”

Naruto turned around and pointed directly at Tazuna. “Hey, never insult a ninja, it’s a big mistake. And I’m one of the greatest ninja ever. Someday I’m going to be Hokage and you’ll look up to me. My name is Naruto Uzumaki. Remember it!”

Tazuna took another drink. “Hokages are powerful and wise, you are puny and brainless. The day you become Hokage, I’ll sprout wings and fly.”

“Shut up!” I’m willing to do anything to become Hokage, no matter what it takes. And when I do everyone will have to admit that I’m the top ninja, including you!”

“You can become Hokage ten times over and to me you’ll still be a nobody, a loser.”

“I’m going to make you pay for that right now.”

Naruto jumped at him and Y/n and I both grabbed his backpack. I was getting annoyed with the two of them already. “I told you Naruto, you’re supposed to protect the client, not attack him.”

Y/n looked over at me as Tazuna started to walk away. “Well he is kind of being an ass.”

I made an agreeing noise so that I didn’t encourage Naruto.

As we walked Sakura tried to make conversation with the bridge builder. “Hey, Mr. Tazuna, can I ask you a question?”

“What is it?”

“Your land is the Land of Waves right?”

“Yea. What of it?”

She turned to me. “Kakashi-Sensei, there are ninja in that land too, aren’t there?”

I looked over, happy that I could teach them something and keep them from causing more trouble with the client. “No, there are no ninja in the Land of Waves, but in other countries there are hidden villages, each with their own different customs and cultures where ninja reside.”

“To the people of this continent the existence of Shinobi villages means strength. In other words, that’s how they protect themselves and maintain the balance of power with neighboring countries. The ninja villages are not controlled by any government. They’re independent and have equal status.

“Now a small island like the Land of Waves has natural protection from the sea, so there’s no need for a ninja village. The five ancient lands that possess Shinobi villages are the Lands of Fire, Water, Lightning, Wind, and Earth. They each occupy vast territories. Together they are known as the five Great Shinobi Nations.”

“The Land of Fire had the Village Hidden in the Leaves. The Land of Lightning had the Village Hidden in the Clouds. The Land of Wind had the Village Hidden in the Sand. The Land of Earth had the Village Hidden in the Stones.”

Y/n cut me off. “The Land of Water has the Village Hidden in the Mist. That’s where I came from after my Clan was wiped out. THat’s where I became a Jonin.”

I started again. “Only the leaders from these villages are permitted the name Kage, which means shadow. Hokage, Mizukage, Raikage, Kazekage, Tsuchikage. These are the leaders, the five shadows that rein over thousands of ninja.”

Sakura was elated. “Then Lord Hokage is really important.”

They all stared straight ahead and I spoke up. “Hey! You all just doubted Lord Hokage, didn’t you.’ They all shared the same nervous look. “That’s what you were thinking.” Sakura and Naruto shook their heads furiously. I placed my hand on Sakura’s head. “Well, anyway, there are no ninja battles in C ranked missions, so you can relax.”

Sakura looked up at me. “And we’re not going to run into any foreign ninja or anything like that?”

I laughed. “Not likely.”

* * * * * * 

As we got further and further the group got quieter and quieter. Nobody knew what to talk about anymore. Y/n and I walked at the back of the group. Every so often I would take her hand when no one was looking, holding it for a couple of minutes. I noticed something as we walked. I slowed Y/n down and turned our attention. THere was a single puddle in the middle of the diry, it hadn’t rained in weeks. We both slowly started to walk again. Suddenly we heard noises behind us. I was the first to turn around. There were two ninja coming toward me with chains. “What?” The chains wrapped around me and I felt myself get squeezed. As soon as I was able to, I used my substitution jutsu and jumped into a tree. Time to see what these kids could really do.

I probably should have told Y/n my place before we started, but maybe her panic being real will kick the kids into gear. Y/n looked around, her head moving a mile a minute. “Kakashi!” The fear on her face manifested deep. She never fought alone, she refused to since the Uchiha massacre. I knew she could do this without me, she didn’t need me as much as she thought she did.

She had not fought solo or been in a situation where she had to since the night that Itachi attacked her family. I could see her panic setting in more as she looked around, her gaze searching for Sasuke. The two ninja appeared behind Naruto.

They spoke to them with a menacing tone, trying to get him riled up. “Now it’s your turn.”

Naruto turned around. They got their chains ready to whip and lunged at him. Naruto froze in place and from out of nowhere the Uchiha siblings got to work, finding strength in each other. Y/n hollered to Sakura. “Protect Tazuna, Sakura.” Sakura jumped in front of him and stretched her arms out. Sasuke and Y/n jumped into the air. Y/n took out a ninja star and caught the end of both of their chains, spiking them into a tree. She was using Sasuke being there to get her through feeling alone, she had a look of pleasure on her face and the sound of the ninja star embedding in the tree rang out. Sasuke came from behind her with a kunai, putting it through the center of the ninja star to keep them in place. I hadn’t seen better teamwork in a long time. The Uchiha siblings were beginning to be an incredible team. 

With Sasuke around, Y/n seemed almost calm while she fought. Both ninja tried to pull their chains out. Sasuke landed on both their arms and kicked them both in the face, causing them to fall backwards, yanking their chains out of the mechanisms on their arms. Just as Y/n and Sasuke thought they had them they split ways. Y/n let Sasuke stay the course he was since it was easier for her to change her ways. One of them headed right for Sakura and Tazuna. Sasuke jumped down in front of them. The other was headed for Naruto again. Y/n soared for Naruto, landing in front of him. 

As the Uchiha hit the ground in front of Naruto I saw the rage that I had seen in her eyes the day that she left the village to find Itachi. She would soon become unfocused, it was time for me to intervene. Y/n lunged at the ninja, she wasn’t thinking anymore. As she lunged the ninja grabbed her arm and flung her against a tree on the other side of him. She hit hard and collapsed on the ground. 

I jumped down from the tree I was in and lunged, grabbing the two ninja by the necks, standing in front of everybody. They all stared at me with blank expressions. “Hi.” Sasuke's face turned from blank to unimpressed. “Naruto, sorry I didn’t help you right away. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. I just didn’t think you’d freeze up like that.” I walked over to Sauke. “Good job Sasuke, very smooth.” I looked over at Sakura, smiling. “You too, Sakura.” I began to talk before I turned around. “And you, Y/n, I’m glad that you’re now-” 

Y/n was still laying on the ground by the tree. I hadn’t noticed that she hadn’t gotten back up. That wasn’t like her. I began to worry a little. “Y/n?”

Sasuke looked over to where she was. “Y/n?” He pushed me out of the way and ran over to her. He dropped next to her, panic filled his voice. “Y/n, are you okay?” She didn’t respond to him. She must have been knocked unconscious by the hit.

I tied the two ninja up before I ran over to her. “Move Sasuke, she’s just unconscious.” I took the water bottle that I had attached to my side and splashed water on her face. 

With a jolt Y/n sat up, she winced and grabbed her side. “Crap, my rib.” She tried to stand up, but wobbled but wobbled and fell back down.

I slowed her down. “Hang on, relax a second. You were unconscious.”

Sasuke crawled closer to her as she reached out for him. You could read the terror on his face like a book. Since they had found each other Y/n was his weakness and he along with myself was hers. She pulled him in and reassured him. “I’m fine Sasuke, it’s just a rib. I’ve had worse… trust me.” He smiled and we both held her stand up. 

When he was calmed down he looked over at Naruto, ready to taunt him. “Hey,”

Naruto looked up. “Yea?”

“You’re not hurt, are you?” Sarcasm painted his voice. “Scaredy cat.”

Naruto went to step forward at Sasuke and I stopped him, noticing his head. “Naruto, stand still, these ninja have poison in their claws. We need to take it out of you quickly. You have to open the wound and remove it.” 

Naruto looked panicked now. I knew he was scared, but it was the only way to save him. “It’s in your blood so don’t move around, that spreads the poison.” I redirected my voice. “By the way, Mr. Tazuna.”

He jumped as I talked to him. “Yea, what?”

“We need to talk.” We all stood around the two tied to the tree. “They’re Chunin from the Village Hidden in the Mist. Their specialty is relentless attack. They’ll keep fighting no matter what the sacrifice.”

One of the ninja spoke up. “How did you know about our ambush?”

“A puddle on a clear day? When it hasn’t rained in weeks?”

Tazuna sounded angry. “In that case, why did you leave it to the Genin and the panicky Jonin to do that fighting?”

Y/n glared at him and the ninja on the three spoke, taunting her. “Y/n, he would be so ashamed that the one he trained turned out to be such a wimp. He’d be so disappointed.” Y/n turned around and stared daggers at the ninja who was chuckled. Who were they talking about?

Y/n lunged at them a little and I grabbed her arm, stopping her from hitting the two men. “Shut up you disgraces. My thirteen year old brother just whipped your asses.”

I spoke back to Tazuna, ignoring what had just happened. “I could have taken them out quickly, but then I’d have learned nothing. I need the kids to see how real the situation was too, that’s why I didn’t say anything to Y/n.” I felt her glare on me. “I had to know how their target was and what they were after.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I wanted to know whether they were after us; ninja attack ninja, or if they were after you; the master bridge builder. When you put in the request you asked for standard protection from robbers and highwaymen. You didn’t say there were ninja looking for you, hunting you down.”

Y/n saw where I was going so she joined in. “If we had known it would have been a B ranked mission or higher. Our task was simply to get you to your destination and protect you while you finished building your bridge. If we knew we were wielding attacks from enemy ninja we would have staffed differently and charged for a B ranked mission.” 

I stopped Y/n, seeing how angry she was getting. “Apparently you have your reasons, but lying to us is not acceptable. We are now beyond the scope of this mission.” I tried to make myself  sound like an authority figure.

Sakura tried to sound apologetic. “We’re Genin, this mission is too advanced for our training. We should go back. And I really think we should get Naruto back and treat his wound. We have to get the poison out as soon as possible. Back in our village we can take him to a doctor.”

“Naruto’s hand could become a problem. I guess we should go back to the village.”

We all saw Naruto’ hand raise and come back down, the kunai in it slicing open his palm. “Why am I so different? Why am I always…” He turned away from us. 

We all stood in shock except for Sakura. She ran toward him. “Naruto! Stop that! What are you doing?” Naruto went off, rambling as the feeling of being a burden washed over him. “I worked so hard to get here. Pushing myself until it hurts. Training alone for hours. Anything to get stronger, to reach my dreams. I will never back down again and let someone else rescue me. I will never run away. I will not lose to Sasuke.” At the sound of her brother’s name being mentioned Y/n smiled a little. “Upon this wound I made this pledge. Believe it. Bridge builder, I’ll complete this mission and protect you with this kunai knife.” He turned back toward us with the knife still in his hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.” Determination littered his face. 

I was growing concerned. He was losing a lot of blood. “Naruto, that was really cool how you took the poison out and all, but if you lose anymore blood… you’re going to die.”

Panic rippled through Naruto’s body and Y/n started to walk toward him. “Give me your hand, it’s a good idea to stop the bleeding now. Seriously.”

His panic spread even more. “No, no, no, I’m too young to let it all end like this.”I snapped at him in an attempt to snap him out of it. 

“Naruto, show Y/n your hand.”Naruto ran over to Y/n, terror in his eyes. “Help, help, help.” 

Sakura’s anger with Naruto grew. “Naruto, you’ve got a self abusive personality. It’s called masochism.”

Y/n took his hand and stared. When I noticed she was just staring I looked over. “Kakashi,” She motioned for me. 

I walked over and we both stared at his hand. Naruto noticed that we weren’t doing anything and got worried. “Uhm, you guys have a really serious look on your faces. Am I okay?”

I grabbed some bandages from my bag and handed them to Y/n. She tried to calm him while she worked. “Yea, you should be fine.”

He sighed with relief  and looked over at me before thanking Y/n and walking away.

As we got farther down the path everyone seemed to calm down from the event before. Y/n and I hung back, talking about what had just happened, careful that no one could hear us. She spoke first. “What would make the mist ninja come after him?”

“Maybe he owes them something, that’s the only thing that I can think of. Nothing else really explains it. What did they mean when they said that ‘he’ would be disappointed in you? What are they talking about?”

“That’s a long story that I can’t explain right now. It had something to do with when I was in the Village Hidden in the Mist.” She stopped and gave me a small, weak smile before continuing. 

“What  made Naruto heal that fast Kashi?” Y/n only ever called me by my pet name when no one was around.

“I can’t explain that now either. I’ll tell you tonight when everyone’s asleep as long as you tell me about what the mist ninja meant.” She gave me a look of worry before agreeing. 

* * * * * *

Tazuna finally led us to the edge of the water, heading to where his bridge was going to be. We hopped onto a boat and settled in. I sat on the farthest end with Y/n next to me. The boat was crammed so me having my arm around her shoulders didn’t seem like a big deal. It was something we could get away with this time.

There was fog all around us. It was the protection for this small village. Sakura was scared. “The fog is so thick, you can’t see anything.”

The person steering the boat spoke in a whisper. “The bridge isn’t far now. Our destination is just ahead. The Land of Waves.”

We all looked forward, not able to see anything through the fog. When Naruto was finally able to see something he hollered. “Woah, it’s huge!”

The driver got angry with him. “Quiet! I told you no noise.” He was whisper yelling back at him. “Why do you think we’re traveling like this, huh? Cutting the engine and rowing, moving through the dense fog. It’s so they don’t see us.”

Naruto covered his mouth and seemed apologetic. I looked over at the bridge builder. “Mr. Tazuna, before we reach the pier I want to ask you something. The men who are after you, I need to know why. If you don’t tell us I’m afraid I’ll have to end this mission when we drop you ashore.”

Tazuna was annoyed. “I have no choice but to tell you. No, I want you to know the truth. Like you said, this is beyond the scope of the original mission. The one who seeks my life is a very short man who casts a long and deadly shadow.”

Y/N looked up. “A deadly shadow? Who is it?”

“You know him, at least I’m sure you’ve heard his name before. He’s one of the wealthiest men in the world. The shipping magnate, Gato.”I had heard that name before. “Gato? Of Gato transport? He’s a business leader, everyone knows him.” I was in shock.“Gato. He’s a very famous tycoon from a company that’s true, but below the surface, with the same ruthless methods he uses to get businesses and nations, he sells drugs and contraband. He uses gangs and ninja. It was one year ago when Gato first set his sight on the Land of Waves. He came to our island and used his vast wealth to take control of our transport and shipping. Anyone who tried to stand in his way simply disappeared. In an island nation a man who controls the sea controls everything. Finance, government, our very lives, but there’s one thing he fears. The bridge, when it’s complete, will join us to the land and that will break his control. I am the bridge builder.”

Sakura was putting the pieces together. “So that’s it? Since you’re the bridge builder you’re getting in this gangster’s way?”

Sasuke looked over at Y/N and I. “That means those guys in the woods, they’re working for Gato.”

Y/N looked over at him again. “I don’t understand, if you knew that he was dangerous, knew he’d send ninja to eliminate you, why did you hide that from us?”

“Because the Land of Waves is a small, impoverished nation. Even our nobles have little money. They are common people that are building this bridge, they can’t pay for an A or B ranked mission. It’s too expensive. If you end the mission when you drop me ashore there will be no bridge. They assassinate me before I reach home. Don’t feel bad about that, of course, my sweet little grandson will be upset. He’d cry 'Grandad, I want my Grandad’ and my daughter will condemn the ninja of the Hidden Lead, denouncing and blaming you for abandoning her and father and living her life in sorrow.” 

Of course he would bring up kids and grandkids. Anything to sucker us in. 

“Oh well. It’s not your fault, forget it.”

I rubbed my forehead through my headband and looked down at Y/N, who had sunken down in the boat further. “Well, I guess we have no choice. We’ll have to keep guarding you."

Y/N looked up at me and then held her arm out to Sasuke, who leaned over on her, sighing.

"I’m very grateful.” Tazuna smiled.

Y/N grabbed at her side and winced a little. I looked over at her. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

“I’m not leaving you guys, I’ll be fine.” She sat back up and winced some more. She was in a great deal of pain, she had to have been to show it. “It’s an old injury, it’s just been hit again.”

I knew what she had meant by 'old injury’. It was something that had happened while she was saving Sasuke from Itachi, but she would never let him know this.

The driver spoke. “We’re approaching the shore, Tazuna.” He looked down. “We’ve been fortunate, no one has noticed us so far.”

“Nice going.” Tazuna appeased him.

* * * * * * 

The Land of Waves came into sight as we went through a small tunnel. When we reached the pier we all climbed out of the boat. We thanked the driver who then wished us luck and drove back off. Tazuna turned to us. “Take me to my home and by that I mean get me there in one piece.”

Y/N and I hung back some again so we could talk as everyone else sped up ahead. I looked over at her and I knew she could hear the concern in my voice. “The next ninja they send won't be Chunin, they’ll be Jonin, like us.”

“These guys aren’t ready to fight Jonin level ninja, Kakashi. They don’t have the skills. They could barely take on us at subpar.” She was starting to get her panicked voice back.

“Keep yourself calm or the kids will notice Y/N.” I put my hand on her back since no one was looking.

Seeming to relax, she looked back up at me. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m just worried about who they’re going to send. They’ve got some pretty tough Jonin in the Mist Village. I can think of one in particular.” She had known this personally.

Taglist 💕 @nubiadethemyscira​ @nimeryaa​ @o-franzii-o​ @chidori-mint​

Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight: *NSFWish Ahead!*

Updated 5/8/2020

[the-final-straw-blog]

Palestine and Challenging Settler Colonial Imaginaries

This week on the show, we’re airing a portion of our 2018 interview with filmmaker and activist Yousef Natsha about his film about his hometown, Hebron, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. We invite you to check out our full interview with him from March 25, 2018, linked in our show notes and we’re choosing to air this right now because of the flare up in violent evictions, home destruction and the assassination of around 100 Palestinian residents of Gaza by the “Israeli Defense Forces”. Podcast image by Yousef Natsha. [00:10:24]

Then, we’ll be sharing a panel from the 2021 UNC Queer Studies Conference called “No Blank Slates: A Discussion of Utopia, Queer Identity, and Settler Colonialism” featuring occasional Final Straw host, Scott Bransen alongside E. Ornelas and Kai Rajala. This audio first aired on Queercorps, on CKUT radio in Montreal. If you’d like to engage in this project, reach out to noblankslates@riseup.net [00:24:05]

Also, Sean Swain on aparthied [00:01:48]

No Blank Slates: A Discussion of Utopia, Queer Identity, and Settler Colonialism

Presenter(s)

Scott Branson, E Ornelas, Kai Rajala

Abstract

Under the neoliberal regime of multiculturalism, the settler colonial project has relied on the assimilation of certain subaltern communities into its project for the effective dispossession and control of indigenous lands. This discussion will present ideas from a book project we are collaborating on in order to invite conversation around the intersection and tension around ideas of liberation and forms of appropriation and oppression. Our main challenge for radical queers is to rethink the kinds of futures we try to include ourselves in, and how our liberatory work can subtly replay exclusion and erasure. How do neoliberal utopian gay politics perpetuate settler colonial erasure and genocide? How do politics that seek inclusion and representation--in other words assimilation--disavow the work by indigenous self-determination movements, which are also poised on the frontlines of planetary self-defense? The workshop will be divided up into short presentations by each writer, followed by a structured discussion facilitated by the presenters.

Description:

The utopian project that underwrote the Canadian/American settler colonial states that still exist today was eventually transmuted into a neoliberal utopian sense of identity. The entire concept of space and self that we inherit is imbued with utopian longing for a time and place that we can fully be ourselves. This kind of rhetoric is largely at play in mainstream identity-based movements, like gay rights. But this longing often works in favor of the regime of violence and dominance perpetrated by the modern nation state. We can see how the attempt at inclusive representation of queer cultures leads to assimilation and appropriation. What gets included in regimes of representation ends up mimicking the norms of straight/cisgender heteronormativity, in terms of class aspirations, behaviors, and family structures. This therefore contributes to systematic erasure of Black and Brown queer folks, who are still the most targeted “identities” for state violence and its civilian deputies. With images of diversity that appeal to bourgeois urban gays, businesses and governments can pinkwash their violence.

A radical queer politics that relies on unquestioned utopian and dystopian visions risks aligning itself with a settler colonial imaginary of terra nullius or “blank slate” space. On the one hand, dystopian and apocalyptic visions perpetuate the unquestioned assumption that a societal collapse is impending, as if the continual degradation of human and more-than-human communities has not already arrived. Particularly dangerous in this assumption is the kind of crisis rhetoric that fosters opportunities for settler colonial sentiments of insecurity and, in the face of this insecurity, assertions of belonging and sovereignty in land and lifeways. Furthermore, visions of radical utopias as-yet-to-be-realized (or, as-yet-to-be-colonized) discount the ongoing presence of Indigenous alternatives to the current settler colonial dystopian reality, and instead preserves a view of geographic and social space as blank and ready to be “improved” with a “new” model.

Here we have a problem of erasure of the oppressions and resistances that have been ongoing in different iterations, in favor of the blank space of the utopian frontier. We argue against these linear progression narratives of societal and environmental collapse which promise to bring about a future idealized world of rainbow-diverse identities. Instead, we propose ways for radical politics, particularly those espoused by non-Indigenous people, to disavow such settler colonial mindsets. There are a few ways to offer a glimpse into the lived realities—what we might still call utopian moments—that make up the non-alienated, revolutionary life: queer and indigenous histories of resistance, rituals and moment of community care and mutual aid, and science fiction revisions of the world. We argue that this other world does in fact exist—has existed and has not stopped existing—if only in the interstices or true moments of communing and inhabiting the land alongside friends and family.

This is not an argument in favor of utopia, but one that seeks to bypass the utopian/dystopian divide. The world we inhabit is clearly dystopian for most, and utopian for some, and in many estimations, constantly on the verge of ending. The disaster scenarios, repeating the puritanical eschatology that helped settle the colonies in America, perpetuates the history of erasure of ways of life that aren’t in fact gunning for that disaster. We still argue that the purpose of dreaming, of envisioning alternatives, is to make action possible today, through recognition of the power we do already hold. Our discussion will interrogate the settler-utopian impulses that get hidden within apparently liberatory movements, such as radical queers and strands of environmentalism, as well as the way these identities and politics are represented in narratives of liberation that rely on the same logic they claim to oppose.

Bios

E Ornelas (no pronouns or they/them) is a Feminist Studies PhD candidate in the Department of Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies. As the descendant of a survivor of the Sherman Institute, a Native boarding school in Riverside, California—and therefore robbed of cultural, linguistic, and tribal identity—E’s research interests focus on the continued survivance and futurity of BIPOC communities, particularly through the use of literature. E's dissertation illuminates community-based, abolitionist-informed, alternative models of redress for gendered, racialized, and colonial violence by analyzing Black and Indigenous speculative fiction. When not on campus, E can be found reading feminist sci-fi, making music, baking vegan sweets, and walking their dog. [00:45:06]

Kai Rajala (pronounced RYE-ah-la) is a queer, nonbinary, white-settler of Finnish and mixed European descent. They are a writer, and an anarchist anti-academic working and living on the unceded territories of the Kanien'kehá:ka peoples on the island colonially referred to as Montréal, and known otherwise as Tiohtià:ke. They are currently pursuing studies as an independent researcher and are interested in sites outside of the university where knowledge production occurs. You can find Kai on twitter at @anarcho_thembo or on instagram at @they4pay. [00:57:28]

Scott Branson is queer trans Jewish anarchist who teaches, writes, translates, and does other things in Western so-called North Carolina. Their translation of Jacques Lesage De la Haye’s The Abolition of Prison is coming out with AK Press this summer. Their translation of Guy Hocquenghem’s second book, Gay Liberation After May 68, is due out next year with Duke University Press. They edited a volume of abolitionist queer writings based on two iterations of the UNC Asheville queer studies conference, due out with PM Press next year. They are currently working on a book on daily anarchism for Pluto Press and researching a book on the institutionalization of queerness in the academy. They also make books of poems and artwork. You can find Scott on Instagram @scottbransonblurredwords or check out sjbranson.com for more of their work or on twitter at @sjbranson1. [00:30:41]

. ... . ..

Featured tracks:

Dabkeh Melody by Mecky from The Combination Soundtrack

Born Here by DAM from The Rough Guide To Arabic Revolution [00:20:21]

Check out this episode!

[notquitecanon]

New Routines// Criminal Minds x Marvel Crossover pt. 4

Part One   Part Two   Part Three 

“So Captain Rogers,” you started, watching him look around the room in curiosity before he corrected you.

“Please, call me Steve, ma’am.” He nodded, eyes settling on the computer sitting on your desk. You nodded in return, pretended to take note of that but actually scribbling notes about his body language. You had already worked up a ridiculously preliminary profile on the three-hour train from DC, but the combination of the extenuating circumstances and outdated material made it hard to get a feel for his personality. You scratched out ‘profile’, and wrote down Psychological Eval at the top of your notes. It would be easy enough to bend a normal psych eval and throw around a few improvised questions for Steve. 

“Alright, Steve, as long as you don’t call me Ma’am.” You smiled, before continuing, “Like Director Fury told you, I’m just here to assess how you’re doing mentally. As he said, my name is (Y/N) (Y/L/N).” 

You paused, a snap decision to tell him a little about yourself flashed through your mind. You hoped it give him a little confidence in your work, or at the very least build some rapport. “I formally worked in the FBI, with the BAU. I was recruited to SHIELD a little under a year ago. Before we get started, do you have any questions?”

“Sorry, what is the BAU? And Director Fury said something about a Psych Eval.” He asked, one eyebrow raised, and hands folding in his lap. You smiled, apologizing quietly.

“BAU, behavioral analysis unit. We’re specially trained to ‘profile’. We use behavioral cues to analyze, prevent, and catch criminals. But, this can also be used just to learn about people and how/why they do what they do. And a Psych Eval is just a series of questions that helps me understand where you are mentally with what’s going on.” You watched him listen intently as you explained. “If you have any more questions, please feel free to stop me. Ready?”

And with a nod, you began as you flipped to a blank page. Most questions were fairly standard for an evaluation, and he answered flawlessly- showing you that he could at least come off as well balanced, but he also seemed exceedingly genuine. Forty-five minutes later, you were nodding along as he answered a question. Finally, it came to a natural pause long enough for you to interject, “Thank you for your honesty, and due to the uniqueness of this situation, I’ve drafted a few questions for you. 

The blonde man in front of you, nodded eyes catching a helicopter outside the window. When he zeroed back in on you, you smiled before reading off the question, “As you’ve seen, a lot has changed. And while I know you haven’t had a chance to explore, what seems to be the biggest change?”

“Well, obviously, there’s the physical things. Clothes are different, the city is different- I almost didn’t recognize Time’s Square. I don’t know if I’ll ever wrap my head around technology- computers used to be the size of a room, and now they’re barely radio sized. But, the biggest change is the people.” He explained, eyes looking past you and out of the window to the New York streets.  His interest piqued your interest. 

“Can you elaborate on that?” You asked as you shorthanded notes. He paused, collecting his thoughts before continuing while looking at his hands. 

“I mean this with all due respect. You. Director Fury. The people on the street. People have changed. You’re a woman who was a field agent for the FBI, I only knew a few women who carried a gun in the 40′s and they had to work endlessly just to get a foot in the door. You take orders from an African American man and people genuinely respect him, no more segregation. That’s amazing, I didn't think I’d ever get to see that. People seem more abrasive on the street, but are so much more accepting.” He seemed to ramble, but every word was perfectly chosen.  Not knowing what else to say, you softly smiled bobbing your head up and down.

“A lot of that progress was actually made in the 60′s/70′s and still even today.” You remarked, finishing off your notes as you looked up to him. He smiled down at his hands before meeting your eyes. 

“Well, if I woke up and nothing had changed- I’d be a whole lot more worried.” 

Immediately after you excused yourself, you were ushered into a meeting with Director Fury. He quickly skirted around his desk and into his seat, leaning into his desk as he prompted, “Well...?”

You quirked an eyebrow, cocking your head to the side, “Well what, sir?”

His good eye narrowed in on you, deadpanning as he continued, “Could he work in the Avenger’s initiative?”

You sighed, flipping through your notes. “Do you want him because you think he’s a good fit, or because he’s an American Hero and the public will react well?”

He just stared at you, tell you your answer. Finally, he continued, “Are you telling me he’s not a good fit?” 

“I don’t know yet, There’s still a lot to learn.” You nodded, not liking the gut feeling you got. You had a lot of respect for the director, but every now and then his hidden intentions made you uneasy. 

“Like what?” He pressed, voice stern as he leaned in. You slid the file across the desk as you squared your jaw. 

“Well, I only did a baseline, slightly modified psych eval. He fell asleep in 1945 and woke up in 2011- like every veteran, it’s likely he has PTSD, which he would know as shell shock or combat fatigue.” You began, eyebrows furrowing at the eccentricity of the situation, “He’ll need to be reintroduced to society, socialized to today’s societal norms. And that could arise or create issues all in of its own.”

Fury flipped open the files, eyes darting over your notes as the two of you fell into silence. It was a loaded silence, and you felt the pressure of it as you watched it. Slowly, your brain ticked through ideas. “Sir, I may have an idea?” 

He motioned for you to speak without looking up from the file, you nodded as you began training your eyes on the hair tie you were fiddling with, “First, you move him to DC. Closer to SHIELD headquarters first of all. Secondly, New York’s a lot to take in any way.  DC is still a big city, but is less likely to overwhelm him as much. Over a period of 6 months, you can assign an agent to reintroduce him to the world. Monthly, have him meet with a psychologist to gauge his progress. In six months- that would be June, right?- I’ll meet with him again.”

You paused, looking up to see Fury watching you intently, so you kept going, “Then, after the six months, I’ll draw up an official profile, and we can revisit the Avenger’s Initiative conversation then.” 

He stared at you for a moment, eye narrowing before nodding, “We’ll cut out the middle man. You’ll be in charge of getting him out in the world, and monthly you’ll report to me about his progress. In six months, we’ll discuss his involvement in SHIELD.” 

Your eyes widened and you resisted the urge to drop your jaw, “Sir, you want me... babysitting... Captain America?” 

He smirked, the file in his hand slapping against the pristine desk. 

“Think of it as real-time profiling.” He chuckled as he walked out of the room. You couldn’t do anything more than gape after him. 

____

Two weeks later, coming up on the end of January, Steve was issued a clean bill of health- even with the super immunity, they played it safe by revaccinating and running a ridiculous amount of tests- and the two of you were relocated to DC. In those two weeks, you set to work. You were issued a SHIELD credit card, to use for ‘Steve related costs’- funnily enough, Steve was still awarded his pension, adjusted for inflation. You bought him furniture, new clothes, a cellphone, and tracked down his belongings. You mentally thanked Howard Stark for paying to have Steve’s belongings stored.

Annoyingly enough, they placed you back in your old apartment which made it incredibly annoying to unpack your belongings. Steve was your upstairs neighbor. He was almost your next-door neighbor, but you suggested even a floor's worth of distance would give him a better feeling of independence. You had gotten the feeling that Steve valued his privacy.  You now regretted your suggestion as you heard him pace around at all hours of the night. Despite sneaking into several Nazi bases, he was a very loud walker. 

Despite his nocturnal habits, Steve was nothing but polite and thankful as you helped him. He’d been extremely attentive when you taught him the basics of how to use his cell phone (how to add contacts, make calls, text, take pictures, download apps and music, use google), and he picked it up pretty fast. It was a slower process teaching him how to cook, so for the first few weeks, he usually ate with you, or stuck to sandwiches. You got him 

The task that truly overwhelmed you was figuring out how to go about actually reintroducing him. Coma victims felt lost enough after a month, but 72 years (give or take) was a long time- and a lot had happened. Politics, History, Technology, Culture, Pop Culture. The task made your head spin. Spencer was a big help, more than happy to take you up on your challenge of creating a thorough timeline of everything he could think of- which was a lot. Everything from politics to pop culture, but you redacted the bits about the serial killer knowledge. 

The timeline was very helpful, as Steve would break it down by decade. In the 1950′s he took interest in rock ‘n’ roll (he was not a fan), the Korean war, the beginnings of Vietnam, Alaska and Hawaii becoming a state, and the invention of color TV. Then in the 1960′s, it was JFK (election and assassination), The Space Race (he was astonished that not only was there a man on the moon, but we also had colored video of it), integration of Ole Miss (and then consequently the Riots of Ole Miss), the Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, The Beatles, Civil Rights movement, the height of Vietnam, and Nixon.

Steve decided he was better off for sleeping through the sixties, “There was a lot going on, even in the 40′s I was basically propaganda for Stocks and Bonds, who knows what I would have “represented” with all that going on.”  

Then in the 70′s, it was Disney World, the end of Vietnam, Star Wars, death of Elvis, and things becoming digitalized. 80′s was similar: the election of Reagan, first space shuttle launch, assassination attempts on Reagan and the Pope, first female supreme court judge, first woman in space, Chernobyl, decommissioning of nuclear warheads, and the fall of the Berlin wall.  Then in the 90′s, it was the Hubble telescope, Gulf War, dissolvent of the Soviet Union, OJ Simpson trial, and successful cloning of a Dolly the sheep. And then, the most modern, the 2000s, the second Bush presidency, 9/11, invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the rise of cell phones, first iPhone, North Korean tension, the election of  Obama, and death of Osama Bin Laden. 

You were very careful to keep most of your opinions to yourself, as it was very important to let Steve decide his own opinions. When he wanted to know more about the subject, you always jumped in to help him research- it was like a refresher course in World History. (Spencer Reid was a constant contact, and you were grateful he didn’t ask what you were up to, and Garcia was amazing at finding playlists to really explore the music of the decades, and for fashion trends.) 

Like Natasha, Steve had become a friend. Believe it or not, under all that 1940′s manner and modesty, he had a good sense of humor. And after spending nearly all of his time with you, he finally loosened up and showed you. Of course, it helped that he was honestly one of the best guys you knew. He was honest, well-mannered- a perfect gentleman. Just as you listened to him, he listened to you when you were having problems (usually when one of the BAU got hurt or was going through something). Helping him get used to the world felt less like an assignment and more like off time. 

It took a while, but by March you settled into a weekly routine. Monday/Wednesday was reserved to show Steve around the city, exploring new things and old- introducing him to new and old things. Fortunately, DC was a hotspot for museums that Steve seemed to enjoy. Over the past two months, he seemed to warm up to you- you’d even dare to call yourselves friends. Tuesday was reserved for Natasha, she’d come and hang out with you- and work out with you, you might have passed your field test, but that didn’t satisfy her. 

“I’ve seen a lot of agents that passed this test get their asses handed to them. I’d rather not see you do the same. Well, unless I’m the one doing it.” She smirked after, in fact, heading your ass to you. You’d just rolled your eyes and get up to go again. “But you are getting better. It’s getting slightly more difficult to hand your ass to you.”

Afterward, she’d hand you a water bottle and take you to lunch/dinner. Every now and then, Clint would come with her. You and Clint weren’t close, but it was comforting to know he tolerated you. Or at least pretended to for Natasha’s sake. 

Thursdays were reserved for the BAU, when they were in town. Sometimes that meant stopping by the office with coffee offerings and ‘book club’ with Reid, and sometimes that meant ‘family dinner’ at Rossi’s. Derek slowly seemed to completely forgive you, but still gave you shit on a near-daily basis. Prentiss, JJ, and Garcia made girl’s night a more frequent event, and you were still working on convincing Nat to come with you one night. And on the rarest of occasions, Hotch would call you up to babysit Jack. 

Fridays were to recover from Thursday nights- (Surprisingly babysitting was almost exhausting as a night of drinking at Rossi’s). Friday afternoons were reserved for Fury to call you and harass you for details about Steve. 

Weekends were for larger expeditions like taking Steve to neighboring cities. Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Richmond were all on the shortlist, and New York was a constant. Thankfully, Sunday ( or at least Sunday Afternoon) was reserved for you. 

That was your time to rest, relax, and recharge. On rare Sundays that you were already home, Steve would stop by after his morning run after picking up coffee and breakfast from his favorite breakfast place you had shown him- an old fashioned diner with amazing breakfast- as a small thank you for your help. (Truthfully, you only knew about it because Gideon had treated the whole team to breakfast after the jet landed one day at six AM).

But on most Sundays, you got home mid-afternoon. You’d run some errands, maybe cook yourself dinner and a movie. But most importantly, you were home and ready to rest and relax.  

So at 7:23 PM, you were startled out of a nap by your phone vibrating off your desk. You shot up looking for the source of the disturbance, slowly becoming aware of your surroundings as you dove off the couch for the offending device. Quickly reading the caller ID, you tried to clear the sleep out of your voice as you picked up. 

“Hotch?” You asked drowsily, propping yourself back up on your elbows as you drug yourself up. Your eyebrows crinkled, it had been a long time since you got an impromptu call from Hotch. 

“(Y/N), we need you to come in.” He started, straight to the point as usual. Your mind became steadily more cleared as you wrenched yourself off the comfortable couch. “We have a case, and it’s bigger than we can handle. We’re calling in JJ as well.” 

You were speeding into the kitchen, starting a pot of coffee- knowing this phone call meant a long night- as you responded, “Hotch, you know I want to. That I’d be back in the BAU in an instant. But I have to get clearance from my supervisors, take off of my assignments, and that could take-” 

Your worries were cut off by both Hotch’s voice and a knock on your door. You listened to Hotch’s voice as you set out a mug before letting Steve in- not even sticking around long enough to smile at him as you returned to the kitchen. 

“You’re already cleared, and cleared to use SHIELD intelligence. Anderson is coming to get you in 30 minutes. Pack a go-bag. You’ll be briefed in person. This is highly sensitive.” His voice was stern, but you picked up on how fast he was talking- a habit he had when was anxious. You bit your lip, putting the mug back in the cabinet and retrieving a travel cup instead. 

“Hotch...” You paused, eyes flicking to Steve who looked at you with concern in his blue eyes, he’d probably just come back from an evening run and was hoping to mooch off your dinner, “Is everyone alright? Are you safe?” 

“It’s Emily. I’ll see you soon.” 

And with that the line went silent with a click. You sighed, relishing the last minute of peace before spurring into action. Leaving your phone on the counter, you went to retrieve your old go-bag. Steve was hot on your heels, “(Y/L/N), is everything alright?”

You didn’t miss a beat, retreating into your bedroom- which Steve never followed you into, instead, waiting in the hall as you threw things into a bag. You shoved business clothes in, neglecting the pajamas- knowing the team wouldn’t sleep until the case was solved. Dry shampoo, face wash, deodorant, toothbrush and paste, and makeup were quick to follow; these were the toiletries that you could use in a police station bathroom to freshen up. Just like old times. You’d honestly forgotten to answer Steve’s question, mind-boggling all of the very few details Hotch gave you. 

He’s calling JJ in- so this is a multibranch operation, probably organized crime, It involves Emily, she worked for Interpol, so international organized crime... You breezed past Steve again, tossing your bag onto the couch and gently tossing your SHIELD tablet on top of it. Just as quickly, you turned to go back to the bedroom but ran smack into the super-soldier. You’d almost forgotten he was there. But he grabbed your arm, minding his strength so it didn’t feel threatening. “(Y/N), what’s wrong?” 

Even with the analytical part of your brain working through the situation, you couldn’t help but worry for your friend and the possible danger she was in. You wanted to cry but knew it wouldn’t help anything, instead, you took a deep breath, “My old team just called me in, there’s a case they need my help with. One of my friends might be in danger. If they’re calling me in, it has to be bad.”

He slowly let go of your arm, and you could tell his mind was somewhere else, but he offered a quiet sentiment as he let you pass, “With you on the case, your friend has nothing to worry about.” 

Not knowing what else to say, you retreated back to your room to get dressed. After slipping into some of your old work clothes, you attached your holster and slid your loaded gun into it. Taking a deep breath, you looked in the mirror, Just treat it like a routine case. You don’t even know if Prentiss is even hurt. Just do your job. 

____

You repeated that in your head as you buzzed about the apartment, finally, with Anderson ten minutes out, you shouldered your bags to leave, or at least to wait outside. Nervous energy bubbled in your stomach as you turned to the blonde who was still eyeing you with worry, “I shouldn’t be gone more than a few days. You should be fine but if not, call Fury and he’ll send someone. There are leftovers in my fridge. I’ll have my phone if you need me and-”

Steve cut you off with a soft smile, knowing your rambling wasn’t an insult, “(Y/N), I’m a grown man. I lived on my own for years before I was even a soldier. I’ll be fine.” 

You sighed, running a hand through your hair and smiling apologetically “Sorry, Steve, I know.” 

“Just be careful, don’t do anything stupid or reckless.” He ordered. This time you actually smiled, recalling all the stories of his own reckless stupidity. 

“That’s your MO, Mr. I’ll Sky Dive into a Nazi base by myself.” You teased, pausing when your phone dinged. Anderson was waiting. Steve chuckled, ducking his hand and crossing his arms over a broad chest. 

“Yeah, yeah.” He chuckled as you turned to leave, “Seriously, be careful.”

You turned back for a moment, nodding your head like a promise, “I will.” 

_________

Shorter than usual and I don’t really like it, but I think Y’all know what’s coming. Also, should I put a romantic interest in this?? 

Taglist: @irishfaulk97 @viarogers @toboldlyscream @benji-booxx

[sepublic]

Barraki

           The Powers That Be are those Xians who reign above the rest. They are the most powerful of Xia’s elite, upper-class; Members of its upper-echelon of society who hold great dominion and control over various facets of Xian existence. These range from the duplicitous Roodaka, CEO of the all-powerful Vortixx Industries; To Turaga Dume, the powerful and authoritarian dictator of Artidax; And Nicron, the incredibly wealthy banker and economist of Stelt.

           But amongst the Powers That Be, there exists a group of six individuals; Hidden beings elusive from the sight of the public and even most Xian nobles. These select six have had their faces hidden for millennia, and are the most powerful of the Powers That Be. Even the likes of Roodaka and Dume must bow before their absolute and total power, because these shadowed figures control the Codrex; The Eternal Engine and Xia’s primary source of power. No army could hope to match theirs if it doesn’t have any power to run on, and for this reason and more, these six individuals reign supreme as the most powerful Xians in existence, and arguably Xia’s true ‘kings’.

           Their name? The Barraki- The warlords of Xian past, who led and fought their armies in the War of Six Kingdoms… Approximately eight-hundred years ago.

           Centuries ago, before Xia began its industrial revolution, there existed six warlords of rising power; Pridak, Ehlek, Carapar, Kalmah, Mantax, and Takadox. These up-start conquerers succeeded in building empires larger than any other seen in Xian history, absorbing and assimilating neighboring kingdoms into their arsenal and establishing total control. Their famed visages were spread across their respective empires, with statues and offerings and other forms of tribute dedicated to them. The six Barraki were regarded as the most powerful Xians in all the land, and to some, were practically gods.

           The Barraki were momentous, with all of Xia more or less gathered beneath at least one of them; Something never before seen with any other empires in history. A select few groups retained independence, such as the nomadic Skull Raiders or the northern kingdom of Iconox; But generally speaking, wherever one stepped, they would be within the borders of a Barraki’s empire.

           Predictably, the Barraki were not sated with just a sixth of Xia; And upon encountering the empires of one another, declared war. Each hoped to have total control over the entire island, and be forever remembered throughout Xia as THE Xian Emperor. Thus ensued the War of Six Kingdoms, by far Xia’s bloodiest and most brutal conflict. Young soldiers were freshly-churned out and slaughtered, villages and cities erected before being burned down, as the Barraki directed the entirety of their kingdoms’ efforts towards conquest.

           But one day, just as the War of Six Kingdoms began to reach a stalemate; The Barraki vanished, seemingly from thin air. Decapitated and leaderless, their empires collapsed as others attempted to take control in the ensuing vacuum of power. Six kingdoms fractured into many more, and eventually, the dust settled and Xia resumed its normal business prior to the creation and expansion of the Barraki.

           Shortly afterwards, Xia’s industrial revolution began. Inventors and engineers began devising brilliant schematics for powerful machines that could change the face of Xian industry, mechanizing the process of mass-production. Factories were built and devised, and complex technology and lights spread that relied on electricity and other intricate forms of energy to be fueled. Xia itself became engulfed in this wave of technology, reliant on the machines that made up the island itself; And in turn, the entire island of Xia became dependent on the Codrex, the Eternal Engine that powered it all.

           Despite conspiracy theories, the Barraki did not die; If anything, they ascended. Rumors of a massive ‘treasure’ at the core of Xia, a secret worth dying over, reached their ears. Eager for an advantage over the others, the Barraki set out in the dead of night with a small group of their most trusted followers and attendants, and explored the caverns below Xia. There, they came across one another, and after a brief conflict, the six Barraki headed off alone to Xia’s core.

           There, they found a titanic, metallic sphere; An ancient machination potentially older than Xia itself, located within its heart. Entranced, the six Barraki recognized that they had found something larger and grander than even all of them combined; And so they reached out and touched it.

           Like the Great Forge of Okoto, the Codrex activated –or perhaps reactivated- at the touch of six, powerful souls. In a burst of energy, the Codrex’s mechanisms began to turn, generating pure energy that had no outlet to go, building up.

           Upon being struck by the flash of energy, the Barraki were changed. Like the Mask Makers who awakened the Great Forge, they were imbued with pure Life energy that rendered them immortal beings with superhuman qualities and attributes. Feeling the raw power coursing through their veins, the Barraki realized they had found Xia’s greatest secret; And like any secret, it would cease to be a secret if everyone knew of it.

           A quiet agreement was made over blood that night, signed with the massacre of all their nearby attendees and servants to keep quiet. The six immortal Barraki agreed to go into hiding; It seemed that the best way to rule Xia with the Codrex was to do it from the shadows. If their subjects saw them last eternally throughout the decades without aging, inevitably people would try to find out the truth of their immortality; And in turn, they would learn of the Codrex. Thus, the Barraki must remain hidden, to the chagrin of some like Pridak or Kalmah- Although Mantax and Takadox were perfectly fine with this.

           Through proxies and puppets, they contacted engineers and inventors. By analyzing the Codrex’s ancient mechanisms, these inventors were able to reverse-engineer the Eternal Engine and create advanced forms of technology. A great city was established and founded, right above the Codrex, and its powerful machines and factories all got their power from massive underground cables connected to the Eternal Engine below. The Barraki began to rule through proxy, puppet-leaders, often assassinating minions once they had reached their usefulness and trading them out for fresh blood; No one could truly be trusted at this point.

           And as that famous city of legend grew and expanded, the knowledge of its technology spread. The rest of Xia began to industrialize, and more cities allied with that City of Legends, sharing in its massive swathes of infinite energy, none the wiser as to its source. All of Xia became rooted in technology, separating further into a strict lower and upper-class. To compete with anyone else, a Xian must have powerful technology; But that technology was useless without an energy source. And by controlling Xia’s main source of energy, the Barraki had total dominion over the entire island…

           Since then, the Barraki have ruled from the shadows, guiding Xian politics, economics, and so forth. They have influenced and swayed Xian culture from the shadows, directing upper-class nobles and elites from the darkness. Only the most esteemed of the Powers That Be know of their existence, and it is a true privilege to meet the Barraki first-hand and learn of the six who control all of Xia.

           Xia became more or less ‘conquered’, save for the district of Zakaz; But that needed to remain lawless, so as to create a thriving wartime industry. Inevitably, the Barraki found themselves bored, having found total control, but being unable to flaunt it. They wished for more lands to conquer, but there was nothing beyond Xia except the endless oceans and their raging hurricanes.

           Then came Kratakal, the Rahkshi from Okoto. Through the son of Makuta, the Barraki learned of another land out there; The mythical island of Okoto, a natural paradise of spirits, elements, and power. It was a land brimming with life-energy, the very thing that the Codrex generated, the very power that made the Barraki immortal. They saw the reality-warping abilities of the Kraata and became obsessed. Plans were discussed of launching a Xian invasion of Okoto, so the Barraki could relive their old glory-days as warlords and conquerers.

           Alas, it was not meant to be; The massive hurricanes beyond Xia ensured that travel between islands would be nearly impossible. A small, sleek canister could make the voyage, but ultimately it would be an impractical venture. The likes of Pridak were incensed, not caring about the cost because to the warlords Okoto was THEIR right, as kings entitled to ruling. If it weren’t for that blasted ocean, they could easily invade Okoto; The Brotherhood of Makuta and its swarms of Skull Spiders would be no match for them, they reasoned!

           Once again, it seems as if fate smiled upon the Barraki. The Shadowed One, leader of the Dark Hunters, succeeded in hijacking the Codrex right beneath their noses. This would normally be a disaster; But with Makuta’s Mask of Life, The Shadowed One transported the entire island of Xia right next to Okoto, before being foiled by an Okotan expedition and slain by his own lieutenant Lariska. With the Codrex back beneath the Barraki’s control, the island of Okoto was now just beyond the shores of Xia, barely even a few miles away…

           Since then, the Barraki have mobilized their armies. They have begun to exercise their authority, pulling together nations, governers, and soldiers to invade Xia. The six warlords, eager to conquer Okoto after all this time, have now kickstarted the Xian-Okotan War. Now, their forces clash with the Okotan Alliance, who stands against their mindless expansion and conquest.

           On the side, a Xian rebellion, a revolution unlike any other has begun to brew. With Xians seeing that a better life IS possible through Okoto, many have had enough are choosing to rebel. Thanks to the Okotans, knowledge of the Codrex and its role as Xia’s primary energy-source has spread throughout both lands. Now a rising rebellion is forming across the island, hoping to overthrow the Powers That Be, and leading them is the Order of Mata Nui; a secrective organization that has recently revealed itself and hopes to defeat the Barraki.

           With all bets off the table, the Barraki have revealed themselves. And while many question how these six warlords are alive after all this time –with some theorizing them to just be impostors- there are those who know the truth. The Mask Makers Ekimu and Makuta recognize the effects that an ancient machination has had on those six, having felt identical immortality themselves.

           While the Barraki lead a war against the Okotan Alliance, they also lead a war against the rebellion; The Core War, named after the primary objective of the Eternal Engine. Whoever controls the Codrex, controls Xia’s power and thus the entire island by consequence. The Barraki are incensed by the blatant insolence of their subjects, and hope to suppress them. In the process, they have formed a tenuous alliance with the Brotherhood of Makuta. The Barraki know that Makuta is not to be trusted, and likely intends to betray them (they have their own plans vice-versa)… But regardless, the Brotherhood wants the Okotan Alliance gone, and so do the Barraki.

           These aligning interests are for the best; With the Brotherhood’s capture and execution of Kratakal, they now control the Kraata and the means of creating them. And without Kraata, the Barraki can’t power their Exo-Toa armies. Thus, the Brotherhood and Barraki are allied, and under Makuta’s orders, Roodaka is producing Exo-Toa and various other war machines for the six warlords at a fraction of the cost. Together, the Barraki will take over Okoto; And in time, they will prepare for Makuta’s inevitable betrayal, and deal with the Mask Hoarder later.

           After all, that fool couldn’t even conquer an entire island! Meanwhile the Barraki have control over Xia, AND will soon dominate Okoto. Soon… for now, they are secretly paying the Nynrah Ghosts and other engineers to create ‘bootleg’ forms of Kraata energy and wave-lengths, hoping to find a way of powering the Exo-Toa without the Power Serpents. Kraata are simply life-energy, and the Codrex produces this constantly; All they need to do is replicate that special wavelength, and perhaps they’ll be able to power their Exo-Toa without need of the Brotherhood!

           Once THAT happens… They’ll be prepared to eventually betray Makuta. But for the timebeing, that upstart failure has his uses.

           There are six Barraki warlords;

           Pridak is the self-appointed leader of the Barraki, a title that means little practically-speaking. Easily the proudest and arrogant of them all, Pridak believes it his divine right to rule and conquer, having clawed his way from the bottom and arriving at the top. Thus, he believes all his victories are earned, and that more are due to him. Pridak is a ruthless, vicious individual with a penchant for bloodshed and a love for battle. He is hot-headed and can kill subordinates on a whim before perceieved slights against his godly honor. Nevertheless, he can still manage to be practical… It frustrated him when he couldn’t invade Okoto at first, but he nevertheless listened to reason. How else could he be such a brilliant tactician, having created the largest empire of the Barraki?

           Suave, confident, and charismatic- These all describe Pridak. He believes himself to be the peak and pinnacle of physical being, and it is not hard to see why; He loves posing for paintings and sculptures. A few parties have seen him roam around entirely naked for guests to enjoy his beautiful, sculpted physique. Pridak is terrifying and intense, and demands total loyalty from guests and minions; Once, he ordered a noble to kill her husband to prove her loyalty to him, reasoning that words meant little without actions to back them up. Pridak is entertained in combat and loves to personally participate in it, enjoying a good fight as well as brutally tearing apart his enemies.

           Takadox is a beautiful, dazzling Barraki. Once a pharaoh in the deserts of Zakaz, even before he found the Codrex he had scarlet eyes; Enchanting eyes of psychedelic beauty, like staring into a kaleidoscope of colors. Since his beginnings, Takadox has had the unique ability to hypnotize others, and since becoming immortal those abilities have become even more powerful. Through hypnosis, clever manipulation, and ruling through proxies, Takadox was able to back-stab his way to the top.

            He is an incredibly charming and distracting individual, with a beautiful voice like a siren’s. Takadox is musically-gifted, and it is considered the greatest honor to listen to him sing. Takadox is both a composer and a conductor, having penned brilliant works of music before leading orchestras of the most skilled musicians into playing them. Much pressure is put upon performers to convey his music, and failure can mean execution.

          Takadox loves to treat others as puppets, toys, and play-things, utilizing his hypnosis to completely control servants. He has employed it upon performers to better control them, and he greatly enjoys forcing people to do things they never would through hypnosis; It makes Takadox feel powerful and superior. He is a natural sadist, making his slaves do his bidding and exhausting them to the point of death, knowing they can’t refuse, and has had many he has hypnotized –ranging from servants to nobles that have angered him- dance for his amusement. Takadox has used his hypnosis to access the secrets of others, and values total control over anything else. A master-manipulator, he doesn’t need to be flashy, and is fine with pulling the strings from the shadows.

          Ehlek is a Lekara; A race of aquatic beings found both on Xia and Okoto. Ehlek succeeded in uniting the Lekara clans scattered around Xia’s shores, rivers, and lakes, uniting them beneath his banner and controlling most of the island’s water-source. By controlling the waterways, transport between his empire was the fastest and most efficient, making up for a geographically smaller size; Ehlek managed to expand his armies beyond the shores by inducting kingdoms bordering him, but regardless it seems his specialty was in the water.

          Ehlek is aware of his outsider-status as a non-human among the Barraki, and knows that they underestimate him for allegedly being limited to the water. However, Ehlek understands that water is also the essence of life, and far-outdwarfs the land with its oceans; He believes that in the end, HIS armies will rule, expanding into the vast oceans while his fellow Barraki remain isolated on comparatively tiny islands.

          He is a high-strung, short-tempered individual, capable of bearing grudges eternally. Ehlek has a tendency to lash out bitterly at those he perceieves as having wronged him, or even just for having things that he does not. Since his ascension as an immortal Barraki, his temper has cooled; But he can nevertheless be an impulsive, wrathful leader, and he has employed incredibly brutal executions in the past, being a person with little trust.

          Hailing from darker regions of Xia, Mantax and his people were taught by necessity to hide and lurk in the shadows, striking rapidly and concisely. A master of stealth and assassination, Mantax led an army of samurai against his rivals, with his own personal clans of shinobi to perform murders on select individuals. Mantax is a stern, secretive individual; He is the least socially-inclined of the Barraki and not much for small-talk, always keeping an eye out for danger. For everyone he meets, he makes sure to understand exactly how to kill them should the need arise; To Mantax, he has no friends or allies, merely enemies he hasn’t killed yet.

          Easily the most elusive of the Barraki, Mantax is an incredibly patient and cautious warlord. He knows when to cut his losses and retreat, and prefers subtlety and being unknown. He appears the least to nobles in formal events, instead using his time gathering information on others, surveying Xia, and training his own fighting skills. Information and secrets are the key to victory for Mantax, and he is always vigilant and keeping a close-eye on is fellow Barraki. To call him paranoid may not be entirely correct, as it would imply that Mantax’s wariness is unfounded.

          Carapar is a loud, boisterous, and seemingly-agreeable individual. He hailed from the steppes and plains of Xia, leading nomadic tribes on horseback as he swiftly raided, conquered, and pillaged his enemies’ settlements. Carapar is proud of his raw, physical strength and prowess, being the largest of the Barraki. Unlike the others, he likes to be seen as approachable and amicable, like a friendly politician who will gladly shake one’s hand and brightly smile at them. But beware- Carapar is at heart a treacherous, cunning individual with a mind for dirty tactics. He has no honor, and will resort to any trick in order to win; Once, he violated the rules of parlay with an enemy tribe, poisoning the food at their feast to ensure his victory. Yes, there were also children present at that feast; But he does not care.

          While his tactics can be subtle, by the end of the day Carapar is a brute in how he considers others. Since his rise to power as an immortal Barraki, Carapar has often visited subordinates unprompted, hoping to charismatically pull them into his circle of supposed trust. He has led frequent hunts with honored guests, occasionally heading into Nynrah to kill Vorox and take them as trophies; He has a penchant for displaying the heads of creatures, and even sapient enemies, that he has slain. Sometimes a servant will exceed his patience, and Carapar will drop the façade entirely before bluntly getting his point across.

          Kalmah is a hedonist, an emperor who once led legions of centurions to conquest. Now, he throws the most lavish, extravagant parties; According to him, he fought for the right to be a king, so it only makes sense that he lives like one. Kalmah prizes luxury, wearing the finest threads, all while greedily hoarding wealth. The flashiest of the Barraki, Kalmah suffers from frequent boredom and will hold brutal games and gladiator matches in the Coliseum Atero, all for his personal amusement.

          He has a penchant for the finer things in life, such as delicious cuisine, and he has a zoo of exotic animals and beasts, many of whom are the last of their king, and others from Okoto itself. Unfortunately, Kalmah is also a sadist, and he enjoys subjecting his pets to cruelty. Sometimes he’ll feed others to them, or force nobles or servants that have displeased them into facing off against beasts in the arena. Kalmah can be loud and spoiled about what he wants, and believes himself worthy of praise. He enjoys parades, and would rather not dirty his own hands, being displeased with the ‘lesser’ facets of life and preferring servants do the deed for him. Kalmah is highly possessive of his wealth, and to have his own possessions dirtied is a personal insult to him by extension in his eyes.

          The six Barraki wielded armor and weaponry in the past; Since their ascension amongst the Powers That Be, they have since taken to wearing more modern clothing. Nevertheless, they’ll still dress up every now and then, either to show off or train and hone their combat skills, ensuring they remain sharp as ever. And with the recent Xian-Okotan War, the Barraki have begun to don and wield their old armor and weapons like the good old times…

          In combat, Pridak wields his Shark Tooth Blades; A pair of incredibly-sharp swords, said to be crafted from hundreds of carefully-compressed shark teeth. They are of a beautiful craftsmanship, and capable of scarring even Protosteel; Weapons befitting of a king, in Pridak’s eyes. Pridak’s Shark Tooth Blades of a beautiful ivory that is stark-white, an identical coloration to his armor.

          Takadox wields a pair of long, thin blades that are slightly-curved at the end; He prefers to hold them upside-down, as part of his confusing, dance-like fighting style. Ehlek has a pair of Protosteel tri-talons that he attaches to either hand, to shred opponents with. Mantax wields a long sword, but also prefers daggers and hooks. Carpar has a wide, dual-edged blade, while Kalmah relies on a pair of whips in combat, as well as a crossbow, preferring to keep his opponents at arms-length.

          As a whole, the Barraki jointly-rule Xia as part of the League of Six Kingdoms. They hold the most wealth and stocks in just about every property and company out there, and their authority is absolute. With a snap of their fingers, they could rend an entire city razed, and there is no one who is permitted to disobey them. Even incredibly secure locations like the Archives must fully-yield to the authority of a Barraki, who is immune to rules that are normally uniform amongst all.

          The Barraki have orchestrated Xian politics to ensure an oligarcy with them at the top, keeping workers in line while having a select group of nobles for their upper-class. Xia is structured to leech as much power and wealth as possible from the island and its inhabitants, with even a war-time economy established in the district of Zakaz. To those that know them, they are truly the most terrifying people in existence; Servants are usually dominated by the most advanced and loyal of machines.

          Those who ARE alive are tied to their masters for life, with their living quarters established upon the various properties, mansions, and villas that the Barraki own. They regularly trade out servants and puppet-leaders, but the pay from them is also very good at least. Each of them have quarters in the Coliseum Atero’s tower, and at its peak is a meeting room for war-strategies and other important events. Among those who know them, the Barraki often host extravagant events to flaunt their power and wealth, and will occasionally sharpen their skills in combat against desperate slaves and the like. Just about every powerful Xian on the island answers to them, and is vulnerable to their control over the island’s power-supply.

[eclipsing-maestro]

Vitale Maestro

The Basics ––– –

Full name: Urashiki Vitale Yamikozui / Maestro

Race: Drahn (Auri of the First) + Ghost (Chronal Dissacoiation)

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Bi/Pansexual

Marital Status: Married

Age: 28

Nameday: 12/16 (16th Sun of the 6th Umbral Moon)

Physical Appearance ––––

Hair: Black Hair (Angel of Death/Kuja Style)

Eyes: Ghost Faded White Pupils/Blue Limbal Rings/Jet Black Sclera

Height: 62.4 inch/ 5ft 3.5 inch

Build: Well-Toned, Mild Physically Fit

Distinguishing Marks: Tribal Tattoos (Arms, Legs, Upper Back, and Under her Breasts) + Battle Body Scars

Common Accessories:

Bandages (Wrapped around Both her arms from Fingers tips to abit below her shoulders, and Legs from Toes to Thighs, covering some of her battle scars)

Edensgate Choker/ Omega Rings of Slaying on Index, Middle, and Ring Finger on both hands/ Edensgate Earrings on both Horns/ Makai Mask

Personal ––––

Profession: Freelancer Assassin

Hobbies: Fighting, Drawing/Painting, Training, Hunting, Cooking, Playing Musical Instruments, and Reading Books

Languages: She is Mute and Lost her Voice, so she uses Sign Language, but she can understand Hingan, abit Xaela Language, Amaurot/Ascian tongue

Residence: Babylon Citra (In Larcade), The Crystarium (In Hydaelyn)

Birthplace: Amaurot ( Vitales Anscestry is from another universe that came to The Star to escape the endangerment of their fallen universe. These outer humanoids are called Maestros)

Religion: Unknown

Patron Deity: Unknown

Fear: Forsakened and Forgotten

Relationships ––––

Spouse: Her Childhood Best Friend

Children: N/A

Parents: Unknown Wherabouts

Siblings: 6 Sisters (2 of them are her Twins/Triplets), 4 Brothers

Other Relatives: (Wayyyy too much)

Pets: BeeMo (Fat Cat), HunHow (Black Hayate), Speedo (White Whitteret)

Traits ––––

Extroverted / In Between / Introverted

Disorganized / In Between / Organized

Close Minded / In Between / Open Minded

Calm / In Between / Anxious

Disagreeable / In Between / Agreeable

Cautious / In Between / Reckless

Patient / In Between /  Impatient

Outspoken / In Between / Reserved

Leader / In Between / Follower

Empathetic / In Between / Apathetic

Optimistic / In Between / Pessimistic

Traditional / In Between / Modern

Hard-working / In Between / Lazy

Cultured / In Between / Uncultured

Loyal / In Between / Disloyal

Faithful / In Between / Unfaithful

Additional information ––––

Drinking Alcohol: Moderately

Smoking: Abandoned habit

Other Narcotics: Never

Medicinal Drugs: Sometimes

Indulgent Food: Sometimes

Splurge Spending: Never

Gambling: Sometimes

RP Hooks ––––

Anomaly Mysteries : Vitale is from another universe, but she was also from a distant history. She ventures to knowledge and understanding into the mysteries of the 13 shards, the era of The Star, the universe and the planet she comes from, and the mysteries of exploring other dimensions or very relatable ones, even if it’s within the Multiverse exploring it like a library. She does not intend to know everything than what she knows about Time and Space, because in her aspect, “knowledge is a blessing but it is also a curse” and it might be unsafe to see much. But this tends to be a venture she goes solo in, yet rarely ever does. In Hydaelyn, she’s into the Chronicles of the New Era, mainly Omega since she and Omega are as you would say “partners in crime” when exploring the very essence of the world and many others. She acts as a wandering ghost, hence being a living ghost herself suffering from Chronal Disassociation, it could be something vital so that way she can understand the meaning of life, even if it means fighting towards it as she is a warrior of supernatural aspects. Yet no longer a warrior of light, she tends to walk the path of her origins and the path of her liking, which is understanding the concepts of many other stars and life that is within and beyond out there to such a beautiful yet hidden, forbidden phenomenons of outer space and the outer worlds distant to the two universes she’s familiar of, but keeps at a stable amount so it wouldn’t feel like she’s seeing too much, but would you be willing to prepare your mind and spirit to journey this far like she has? Something like this for Vitale, is just a very rare hobby.

Redemption: Despite traveling to other worlds, Vitale is on a road to redemption. Her sins of Wrath has caused her to be absorbed in vengeance, for she has not lived a good life. She’s been sacrificed, betrayed, heartbroken, scarred, taking scars, mentally broke down and even at points where she almost lost her life. This however did change her ego where she sees that the entire world has no faith in good, and she became a vile demon by heart, responsible for genocides and chaos throughout Hydaelyns realm, since she grew up majorly than her own universe. Once took up the lance of the Dragoon, then the Shield of the Paladin, the Greatsword of the Dark Knight, and many other teachings, her pity, her worries, and her empathy was what made her weak, and soon it was casted aside for more power, as melodramatic as it sounds. But now shes goes all out as a Samurai and Dark Knight majorly. Time has passed for her, the daemon within she finally awakens and finally accepts, and now she wishes to redeem and make amends. She is aware of her unforgiving actions, maybe her unforgiving existence, but even through that blank expression on her face and the oblivion vibe she carries, she continues to walk the road as a Samurai, and a Specter... a ghost. Though there is many more secrets about her still hidden, she wouldn’t mind joining other Warriors or fighters out there to at least be of aid in their stories. Aiding the stories of others, that she believes, is an objective to her road of redemption. Putting aside the ravenous will she once bared, but she is a Chaotic Neautral. She may be of a free agent of sorts, but she does have a free will, it’s up to you if you wish to trust her.

Recorder: Vitale is a Recorder. Though she is known as a RiftWalker, there is more to her than that. As a Recorder, Vitale has the capabilities of seeing branches of timelines that are created, destroyed, or overwritten. Those eyes of hers aren’t just for show after all, they just represent that supernatural power within. She cannot predict the future however. As a recorder she can only acknowledge and analyze the other branches of the past and the currently made present, or the choices soon to be made by whoever. This is something that she keeps a secret from everyone except her relatives, and the people of her universe. She’s a wanderer of a hidden supernatural art of power, yet she tends to play the “Timelime Analyzing” character, but her Recordings are not always 100% and she is aware that she could be wrong, but she can detect paradoxes within the rift of time and if things to go wrong, either by the choice of the Warrior of Light, she will either return to her universe and just relax like go fishing or something, or approach the Adventurer and play mind games with them (similar to how Accord did with Zero in Drakengard 3), but in the end, this is a part of her she never reveals because despite all, she and the Maestros want to live a normal life to escape the truth of their abnormalities that’s not of this universe, but only to theirs.

Dark Themes: Vitale is all about dark themes, deep mysteries, or vile events. She tends to be cautious but if it ever happens, then it’s no biggy to her. Any type of dark theme story etc is always suitable! Either it consists spooks, violence, fighting, or being the end of the world, then that’ll be alright! Would love that

Far East: Always love Far Eastern stories or events. Would be fine if it was Hingashi, Othard, Doma, or the Azim Steppe! It’s funny too for me mostly because despite Vitale being a Xaela, know that she is not of the Steppe (just like how she’s mistaken for being a dude cus I made her a hecking tomboy FFFFF), but it is understandable that it does confuse the very eye, since she is from another universe. It does indeed confuse a lot of people but ever so, your muse always has the privilege to ask who Vitale really is, or just say what tribe of the Steppe she’s in an her answer will just be “I’m not from here” LOL but not that Far Eastern settings, but even the aesthetics too. Either a dark theme also! A huge nerd when it comes to Ninjas and Samurais and everything else. Vitale is a Wandering Samurai, a Ronin, so she always uses a katana but she also has her Dark Knight aspects mixed with her Samurai ways, so not just a katana, but just the way of the blade in general.

What I’m Looking For ———

Friends

Rivals/ Enemies for a Challenge

Combat/ Spar / Battle to the Death

Influence

SuperNatural themes

Dark themes

Mysterious themes

Funny Moments if optional

Aiding stories of others

Anything at all

Contact Information  ––––

Either here on Tumblr DM or Discord! If Discord feel free to DM on tumblr for it ^-^

[minezgarage]

Top 5 Minecraft Adventure Maps From 2019

And yes, I'll admit, it acquired me with a bounce scare, you jerk. Gotta squeeze in all the spooky maps I can before it turns into unwell-fitting. The Cursed Forest is a competently designed little adventure, with romps via a forest (duh) darkish tunnels, and graveyards alike. Dare I say, the lighting in Fortnite is simply so dang good (especially on Pc, after all) that it makes even newbie maps just a bit more terrifying. Yep, you are studying that proper. Someone went and Fortnite'd the Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil. You begin out in the woods and are forced to flee from a gang of Fortnite zombies, straight into the mansion itself, just like RE1 intro. It's far from a 1:1 recreation, however I discovered myself chuckling at how the structure reminded me of the early phases of that basic survival horror locale. I've but to watch The 100, but I hear good issues, and this recreation of the space station that the main cast survives on appears to be like impressive as hell.

Nightly fireworks

ESL Premium Certified recreation server

Craft 20 Paintings

26 Fake trap

This RPG survival map is also known as Imperial Lands, and is massive. Although this map is not straight impressed by any one explicit fantasy world, the influences of A-List titles, such as the Morrowind collection, Oblivion, the Fallout series, and Assassin's Creed. This map spans eleven cities, eight villages, three secret empires, and over 250 quests. The quests comply with an open-world style similar to these designed by Bethesda Studios, and provide about forty hours of gameplay. There can be a useful economic system with a financial system, and jobs to earn money. Be certain not to miss the hidden roller coaster railway which gives an astoundingly long 20 minute experience. This was certainly one of the first adventure class maps to look in Minecraft, and has been a longstanding favorite ever since. It plays much like a graphical version of traditional textual content-primarily based adventure games like Zork, by dropping the participant into the center of a dungeon, with a number of signs to tell them their goal, and never much other assist. It's essential to remedy puzzles, hidden doorways and passageways, sound blocks and Minecraft's first excessive score board. It presents about 20 minutes of gameplay. 2. Deep Space Turtle Chase!

As well as, Lego launched three different units over 4 thousand items in 2016. See high 18 listing above. With 2,464 bricks, the Lego Ferris Wheel sits simply outside the largest units ever made, nevertheless, this is likely one of the cooler units I've seen in some time. If you buy separately the Lego Power Functions motor, the Ferris Wheel will turn. With 2,996 bricks, the Lego Shield Helicarrier is the set for 2015. Minifigs included in this set are, Lego Nick Fury, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Maria Hill, in addition to 12 microfigs. Rounding out Fun with Minecraft Maps are Quinjets, fighter jets, and ground assist vehicles (unsure how typically this automobile lands). With the Avengers being very popular as of late, this matches right into the Lego line. Well, I just must say, this will be a kind of classic Lego sets that every Simpson's fan will need in their assortment. At 2,523 items, that is one in all the biggest units Lego has produced. The Simpsons home consists of all the minifigs and a really detailed format.

A darkish grey means a low pillar; a light gray means a high-up pillar. This gives a Minecraft world that has the proper form, however has no features—it's made completely of clean stone. I get the options from Paul's other image. At every (x,z) coordinate I verify the color of the corresponding pixel of the characteristic image. If it is darkish inexperienced, I put a layer of grass on prime of the graceful stone. If it's dark purple, I put down a layer of stone brick. And so on. The result is a three-dimensional world that represents the information discovered on a two-dimensional map. The world we created is faithful to the original map, but it does not appear to be the actual Fort Washington of 1860. Our world only shows what the map exhibits. https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/7/20952214/minecraft-most-important-game-of-the-decade-2010 are three-dimensional constructions made from various supplies, not the uniform two-dimensional outlines proven on the map. We could characterize trees and vegetation in Minecraft if we knew the place to put them, however they don't seem to be shown on the unique map, so we don't have them in our world.

After some waiting, mostly you'll receive a dino egg. Occasionally the cultivator would explode and a Failuresaurus, a Zombie Pigman or a Creeper would spawn. Thankfully, the explosion is not going to deal any harm to you or to any close by block. The cultivator as a substitute would leave in its place a block of water supply. Of fear it breaks, it is steered to set a hopper under round two blocks from the system in order that when the culture vat blows up, the dropped objects could be caught. Now for the DNA is what you obtain when you place a bio-fossil, frozen meat, or regular meat in an analyzer. When you put the DNA in a cultivator you will get either a dino egg or an embryo. DNA (any kind) is needed to craft a Dinopedia. An analyzer is a specific block which is the fundamental element to make every thing else in the mod. It necessitates a relic, a bio fossil and 4 iron.

[nadziejastar]

It’s Canon: Lea and Isa are Officially Soul Mates (Analyzing Organization XIII’s Weapons)

No. VIII - Axel (Flurry of Dancing Flames)

An assassin who puts his own agenda first, and everything else on the back burner. Wields fire.

Axel’s Chakrams are Ashes, Doldrums, Delayed Action, Dive-Bombers, Combustion, Moulin Rouge, Blaze of Glory, Prometheus, Ifrit, Magma Ocean, Volcanics, Inferno, Sizzling Edge, Corona, Ferris Wheels, Burnout, Omega Trinity, Outbreak, Double Edge, Wildfire, Prominence, Eternal Flames, Pizza Cut (joke), and Conformers

Axel (along with Saix) has extremely fascinating weapons when we look at the symbolism. I always liked Lea and Isa together as a couple and I suspected that the writers of 358/2 Days did too. But when I actually took a very close look at the weapons and what they truly represent, I realized that the writers must have LOVED them together. No, seriously. It’s extraordinary how many references there are which share a common theme: the Sun and Moon, masculinity and femininity, the balance of opposites and yes, even romantic love.

The Sun represents our ‘outer-world’, our identify, our personality, our ego.  It represents how we ‘shine our light’ out into the world, the present moment, and our yang or masculine archetype expression. The Sun offers us strength, courage and illuminated insight of the Soul.

The Moon represents our ‘inner world’, our hidden emotions, desires, our shadow-self, our fears, worries and our dreams. It represents our feelings, our unconscious beliefs, the past and our yin or feminine archetype. The Moon offers us the ability to feel, learn from the past and unlock and express our essence.

“I want everybody I meet to remember me. Inside people’s memories, I can live forever.”

Axel’s starting weapon is called Ashes. I think the name actually refers to two mythological stories. The first myth is that of the Phoenix from Greek mythology. Axel’s iconic weapon, his Zero Gear, is Eternal Flames. Associated with the Sun, a Phoenix obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor. Because it is continuously reborn from its own death, the Phoenix also took on the characteristics of regeneration and immortality.

The Phoenix is a very important symbol in alchemy. Interestingly, many of Saix’s weapons relate to alchemy as well. The process to create the Philosopher’s Stone was called magnum opus, or the “great work”. It has four stages: nigredo (black), albedo (white), citrinitas (yellow), and rubedo (red). Birds are are used to represent the progression through the colors. The final stage was symbolized by the Phoenix. Three of Axel’s weapons in 358/2 Days are based on these alchemical stages.  

The Phoenix dies in a show of flames and Combustion. Its claim to fame is its ability to be reborn from the ashes of its former, who dies in a literal Blaze of Glory. This is one of only two weapons that Axel can upgrade to ++ status. In alchemy, nigredo, or blackness, means putrefaction or decomposition. Many alchemists believed that as a first step in the pathway to the Philosopher’s Stone, all alchemical ingredients had to be cleansed and cooked extensively to a uniform black matter. In psychology, the term became a metaphor for the “dark night of the soul”, when an individual confronts the shadow within.

Burnout represents albedo. It is a Latin term meaning “whiteness”. Following the chaos of the nigredo stage, the alchemist undergoes a purification in albedo, which involves the washing away of impurities. In this process, the subject is divided into two opposing principles to be later coagulated to form a unity of opposites during rubedo.

Outbreak is the weapon with the yellow rim. It represents citrinitas, a term given by alchemists to mean “yellowness.” It is a term used to refer to “transmutation of silver into gold” or “yellowing of the lunar consciousness.” In alchemical philosophy, citrinitas stood for the dawning of the “solar light” inherent in one’s being, and the idea that the reflective “lunar or soul light” was no longer necessary.

“Bet you don’t know why the sun sets red. You see, light is made up of lots of colors. And out of all those colors, red is the one that travels the farthest.”

Flame Liberator, Lea’s Keyblade actually represents the rubedo stage. It is a Latin word meaning “redness” that was adopted by alchemists to define the fourth and final major stage in their magnum opus. Both gold and the Philosopher’s Stone were associated with the color red, as rubedo signalled alchemical success, and the end of the great work.

The Phoenix represents the freeing of the spirit from the bounds of the physical. It builds its nest which at the same time is its funeral pyre, and then setting it alight cremates itself. But it arises anew from the ashes, transformed. The Phoenix now realizes the nature of the spiritual; he has in this sense attained the Philosopher’s Stone, the spiritual core of his being. The true self manifests in wholeness, a point in which a person discovers their true nature. The Sun is analogous to the soul transmuted and illuminated, representing the perfect union of spirit, soul and body; the Omega Trinity. This is the center point of equilibrium sought by the alchemists.

The second myth has to do with Axel’s title, Flurry of Dancing Flames.The Hindu god Shiva has many representations in art, but perhaps the most famous is as a dancing figure within a circle of flames known as Shiva Nataraja, or Lord of the Dance. His dance is called Tandava, and its symbol is Agni, or fire. Tandava, the masculine form of dance, is forceful, often manifesting anger. According to Hindu legend, Shiva almost signalled the end of this universe by performing this dangerous dance after the death of Sati.

Sati spurned the advances of rich kings to the point where she left for a forest to escape the constant proposals. Eventually Shiva consented to make her his bride. Elated, she went to share the news with her father. However, upon her father’s expression of his disapproval of her marriage, she immolated herself, praying to one day be reborn as a daughter to a father she could respect. When Sati self-immolated, Shiva couldn’t control his anger, pain and agony.

Unable to bear the loss of his wife, he covered his entire body with her ashes as a sign that she will be with him forever. He then went into meditation for many years, ignoring all his godly duties. It was not until Sati was reborn as the goddess Parvati that Shiva finally came out of meditation. Thus the Tandava symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction, as well as birth and death.

This very is interesting because Saix also has Shiva imagery in his weapons. And one weapon’s etymology ALSO references an act of self-sacrifice…in a fire, no less. Hmm. Sounds like there was some kind of self-sacrifice story planned originally. Maybe Isa offered himself up to be experimented on to protect Lea?

Shiva and Parvati then merge together and exist as the same being called Ardhanarishvara. It is depicted as half-male and half-female, equally split down the middle. The right half is usually the male Shiva, illustrating his traditional attributes. Ardhanarishvara represents the synthesis of the masculine and feminine energies of the universe and illustrates how the female principle of the Goddess Parvati, is inseparable from Shiva, the male principle of God.

“A powerful djinn with control over scorching flames hot enough to turn the whole world to ashes.” —Dissidia Final Fantasy Summon Compendium

Ifrit is a very popular summon in the Final Fantasy series, associated with the element of Fire. Inferno is one of his strongest abilities. They are also supernatural creatures in Islamic culture. The Ifrit are a class of subterranean djinn and held to be death-spirits, drawn to the life-force or blood of a murdered victim, seeking revenge on the murderer.

“As long as we remember each other, we’ll never be apart. Got it memorized?”

Ifrit shares its shape with another weapon, Omega Trinity. Omega is the name of the Greek letter representing infinity, so the natural meaning would have to do with his vow to never be apart from his two friends. I do think that’s one of the meanings. However, hidden in the weapon’s shape is another meaning.

According to alchemy, the Tria Prima are the three substances of salt, sulfur, and mercury that make up all things. These chemical substances are said to have similar properties to the three celestial elements that flow out from the mind of God into creation. These forces correspond to divine trinities found in many religions, like Christianity.

When salt, sulfur, and mercury are combined, it creates what is called an alchemical marriage, the symbol of which is the Ouroboros. The Ouroboros is the snake eating its own tail in the shape of a circle, representing unity, eternity, and how the beginning and the end coincide. It is associated with the the idea that all-is-one; light and darkness, Sun and Moon, masculinity and femininity, etc. He is the bride and the groom, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. If Ifrit represents death, then Omega Trinity represents rebirth.

“Living explosives, prone to destroying themselves along with their enemies with their powerful “Self-Destruct.” Bombs take the rage built up by being attacked and transform it into energy. This, in turn, makes them grow, sometimes to incredible sizes.” —Dissidia Final Fantasy Files

Many of his weapons refer to bombs or explosives. Bombs are also enemies in Final Fantasy. A Delayed Action bomb is an aerial bomb designed to explode some time after impact, with the bomb’s fuzes set to delay the explosion for times ranging from very brief to several weeks. 

“Go on, you just keep running. But I'll always be there to bring you back!”

A Dive-Bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target simplifies the bomb’s trajectory and allows the pilot to keep visual contact throughout the bomb run. This weapon is one of the two that can be upgraded to ++ status, implying that it’s particularly important to his character.

I also couldn’t help but notice that many of Axel’s weapons were shaped like the symbols commonly used for the chakras. Even Lea’s frisbee shares this shape. Just as there are 7 colors, and 7 Guardians of Light, there are 7 chakras designated to each of the colors. Axel’s weapons are based on the red chakra, the Root chakra. This is the chakra of security. It is comprised of whatever grounds you to stability in your life. It is the most important and fundamental chakra. The Root Chakra provides the link between our energetic system and the physical world and is the base for our life force energy. When these energies are blocked, our vitality and zest for life are also compromised.

Delayed Action in particular seems to incorporate the smaller petal design of the second chakra into it as well, the Sacral chakra. Associated with the water element, it’s characterized by movement and flow in our emotions and thoughts. Its symbol is the Crescent Moon. It’s the center of our feelings and sensations. It’s particularly active in our sexuality and the expression of our sensual and sexual desires. 

Doldrums are areas around the earth centered slightly north of the equator between the two belts of trade winds. The large amount of solar radiation that arrives at the earth in this area causes intense heating of the land and ocean. This heating causes various forms of severe weather, such as thunderstorms and squalls. Hurricanes originate in this region. The doldrums are also noted for calms, periods when the winds disappear, trapping sailing vessels for days or weeks. Without doubt, the doldrums are probably one of the hottest places on Earth. In the doldrums, the Sun becomes a laser beam and sailors are exposed to raw, piercing heat from sunrise to sunset.

Moulin Rouge is French for “Red Mill”. It is a cabaret in Paris, France. Its iconic red windmill originally had a Sun in the center and a Crescent Moon at the top. The original house burned down in 1915 and the new house no longer has the Sun and Moon design on the windmill.

Ferris Wheels is probably a reference to the Disneyland attraction that opened as the Sun Wheel. 

Both Moulin Rouge and Ferris Wheels use the achemical symbol ☼ for gold. Gold was associated with Sun and was one of the most prominent alchemical symbols, representing spiritual, physical and mental perfection for human beings. 

The tips of the rays, however, have the same shape as one of the symbols for silver. ☽ is also one of the alchemical symbols for silver. It was one of the seven base metals to an alchemist and often associated with the Moon. Silver was believed to have feminine qualities and associated with purity. ☽☉ is the symbol for platinum. Alchemists thought that platinum was the mixture of gold and silver and that is why the symbol was created to look that way. 

Ferris Wheels looks like it is made of platinum. Moulin Rouge is the black and red weapon. Sol niger is a term in alchemy meaning black sun. It can refer to the first stage of the alchemical magnum opus, the nigredo. The black sun is used to illuminate the dissolution of the body, a blackening of matter, or putrefaction.

Lea: You know what? I’ll bring ‘em back myself.

Ienzo: Huh? How, exactly?

Lea: Why do I always get stuck with the icky jobs?

There are several other weapons that are either silver or platinum, and all are shaped like the Root chakra of security and stability. Ashes, the symbol of death is one. As well as being a Solar phenomena, Doldrums also refers to a dull, listless, or depressed mood. Dive-Bomber is the aircraft that dives directly at its target for greater accuracy. It is platinum with red tips. Inferno and Combustion are just red and black. They might be a symbol of Ifrit’s desire to avenge the murder victim and the Phoenix’s death at the pyre. Inferno is a also a perfect circle, symbolizing the cycle of death and rebirth. 

And all the weapons have the “X” symbol incorporated into them. This is probably a reference to Saix and Axel’s relationship throughout the game. The only exception is Delayed Action. The bomb that doesn’t detonate right away. It it has black petals with red dots in them. A sign of rubedo within nigredo? It’s also shaped like the sensual Sacral chakra. Oh, I get it. That kind of delayed action.

Magma Ocean is shaped like a red and black yin-yang. You can even see the dots as a reference for the design. Yin and yang are two sides of a dualism. Yin is passive, feminine, and subdued. Yang, in contrast, is active, masculine, and expressive. You can use any color to represent yin or yang, so long as you can bring out the contrast. In Chinese culture, Red is a very positive color representing good fortune and joy. Black represents stability, calmness, the unknown and that which is dormant.

The actual term magma ocean refers to a theory of planetary formation. In the last giant impact, the Earth was struck by an object the size of Mars. This impact is believed to have formed the Moon. The Moon-forming impact was most likely the origin of the last major, deep and global magma ocean on Earth. Magma oceans may survive for millions to tens of millions of years.

Corona and Prominence refer to two specific Solar phenomena. Solar prominence refers to the glowing, red loops of plasma that extend outward from the photosphere, the lowest layer of the sun’s atmosphere. The corona is the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere. The corona is usually hidden by the bright light of the Sun’s surface. It is only during a total solar eclipse that the Sun’s corona and prominence are visible to the naked eye. In other words, it is only when the Sun and Moon are directly aligned that you can see these features of the Sun;s light. Prominence is Axel’s Zero Gear, a weapon said to draw forth its wielder’s true worth.

I also noticed that some of his weapons are purple, a color not usually associated with Axel. Wildfire and Double Edge are the purple ones. Wildfire also incorporates the color silver into its design, symbolizing a union with the Moon. Double-edged means something having two contradictory aspects or outcomes. Wildfire is actually called Rapid Spinner in Japanese, a reference to the chakras.

The Sanskrit word chakra literally translates to wheel or disk. In yoga, this term refers to the swirling wheels of energy throughout the body. The Third Eye corresponds to the colors violet, indigo or deep blue. It is considered the eye of intuition and intellect. This chakra has two lotus petals dedicated to the Sun, the other to the Moon (e.g. light and dark, or male and female) merged at the center.

The sixth chakra occurs exactly where the bindi is placed. A bindi is a decorative mark worn in the middle of the forehead by Indian women. In Hindu metaphysics, Bindu is considered the dot or point at which creation begins and may become unity. The bindi’s purpose is to enhance the powers of this chakra, specifically by facilitating one’s ability to access their inner wisdom, allowing them to see the world and interpret things in a truthful, unbiased manner. It is at the point of the Third Eye that the two main energy streams in the body are said to terminate and merge with the central channel, signifying the end of duality. The symbol for this chakra is the syllable OM, and the presiding deity is Ardhanarishvara, who is the half male, half female Shiva.

The bindi, especially a red-colored one, also serves as an auspicious sign of marriage. As the Hindu bride steps over the threshold of her husband’s home, her red bindi is believed to usher in prosperity and grant her a place as the family’s newest guardian. In Hinduism, the color red represents honor, love, and prosperity; hence it was worn to symbolize these qualities. One of the red weapons is named Corona, which also means crown of the head. In Japanese this weapon is called Crowning. A topor is a type of conical headgear traditionally worn by grooms as part of a Hindu wedding ceremony. According to a legend, the Topor was created because lord Shiva wanted a special crown for his wedding ceremony.

Prometheus, in Greek mythology, is one of the Titans, the supreme trickster, and a god of fire. His intellectual side was emphasized and he was considered a forward thinker. Prometheus lit a torch from the Sun and brought it back to man. However, Zeus was enraged that man again had fire. He decided to inflict a terrible punishment on both man and Prometheus. Saix’s weapons are all about astrology (and alchemy). Axel is the only other character whose weapon references a god associated with a specific Zodiac sign. So I think it’s fair to make the connection.

Prometheus represents Aquarius. Aquarius people are the visionaries of the zodiac. Aquarius rules emotional detachment, unpredictable energy and rebellion. Those of the Aquarius zodiac sign are humanitarian, philanthropic, and keenly interested in making the world a better place. They are also quick to engage others in this process, which is why they have so many friends and acquaintances. Aquarius is the most humanitarian astrological sign.

Aquarians are one of the most friendly and entertaining signs of the zodiac, and thus they can be  fun to spend time with. Their eccentric and empathetic nature leads them to be great advice givers, always happy and excited to help those in need as well as to have a listening ear. They make great friends, and work hard so that more introverted signs can come out of their shells. Their curiosity with the world means that they are always willing to accompany friends into new adventures. They are also generous givers, so if you are ever in need, an Aquarian will not hesitate to share whatever they have with you.

Aquarius can be eccentric and energetic. They are deep thinkers and highly intellectual people. They are able to see without prejudice, on both sides, which makes them people who can easily solve problems. If there is no mental stimulation, they are bored and lack motivation to achieve the best result. Although they can easily adapt to the energy that surrounds them, Aquarius-born have a deep need to be alone and away from everything sometimes, in order to restore their energy. 

Despite their friendly nature, they have a reputation for being outsiders - ones that cooly observe society, while sometimes also feeling detached from the systems that run it. Although they can be quite aloof, they are also deeply concerned with humanitarian causes. Aquarians tend to care very much for the welfare of others and society as a whole. 

Loyalty and honesty are two of the most important traits an Aquarius will look for when choosing who they like to spend time with. Aquarius will do anything for a loved one to the point of self-sacrifice if necessary. Freedom is important to Aquarians, which is why they like to keep things light on an interpersonal level. Amiable and cheery by disposition, Aquarius-born tend to have a plenty of social charm.

Although Aquarius-born are communicative, they need time to get close to people. Considering that they are highly sensitive people, closeness to them means vulnerability. They may have a lot of acquaintances, but many have very few close friends. Aquarians easily make friends with any other sign of the zodiac, but their friendship is particularly appreciated by the more quiet signs - as their extroversion can balance the other’s introversion, and bring the quieter person into larger groups.

Axel’s weapon Prometheus is actually shaped like the symbol for Mars ♂. It represents his weapon, the lance, which the astrological symbol is based on. Mars is also known as the “Red Planet”. The counterpart of Mars among the Greek gods is Ares, of the zodiac sign Aries. 

Thanks to its ruling planet Mars and the fact it belongs to the element of Fire, Aries is one of the most active zodiac signs. It is in their nature to take action, sometimes before they think it through. Its representatives are naturally brave and rarely afraid of trial or risk. They possess youthful strength and energy, regardless of their age and quickly perform any given tasks. Aries never does anything half-heartedly, so if you are spending time with someone under the Aries zodiac sign then you will feel the full force of their zest for life.

An Aries is ready to be the hero of the day, fly away and carry many endangered, powerless people on their back. Those under Aries often have a very positive attitude and are less inclined to feel pity for themselves than some other signs. At times they can be quite hot headed, given their propensity to seek out justice. If harnessed properly, the fire that burns inside them is something that will fuel their actions, and will push them to become defenders of both themselves and others.

You know what’s really interesting? Saix has a weapon that matches Axel’s Prometheus. It’s called Horoscope. It’s shaped like the astrological symbol ♀ for Venus, and it has the Mars symbol going straight through it. This weapon is one of only two that Saix can be upgrade to ++ status, so it is implied to be very important to his character. It’s pretty and pink and it even has a shape reminiscent of a spiky seashell. One of Venus’ iconic symbols is the seashell. And the middle part is gold, for the net of Vulcan.

There is a well-known myth concerning the forbidden love affair between Venus and Mars. Venus was the goddess of love and beauty, and was considered the fairest of all the goddesses. Venus was married to Vulcan, the god of fire and the forge. Vulcan was notoriously ugly – one of the ugliest of the gods.

At one point, Venus took up an affair with Vulcan’s brother, Mars. Handsome, young, and clean-built, he is irresistible to her, and they make passionate love in Vulcan's marriage bed. When he learned of the relationship, Vulcan was outraged and he crafted an unbreakable golden net to trap the adulterers. According to the legends, whenever Venus had an affair, Vulcan would get so angry he would erupt a volcano. This is supposedly the reason there are so many volcanoes. Hmm, if this was supposed to be a horoscope...

...It’s funny, because Axel has a weapon that is actually named Volcanics. It shares a shape with Prominence, his Pandora’s Gear and his Mystery Gear, Conformer. They are shaped like a symbol used in Buddhism and Hinduism known as a Manji (Japanese for whirlwind). Conformer is called Fuma Shuriken in the Japanese version. “Fuma” translates to “wind demon” in English. So it is literally the wind demon shuriken.

The Manji is a symbol representing the harmonious interplay of opposites. The horizontal line unites light and darkness, while the perpendicular line symbolically connects heaven and earth. These two combine to form a cross representing the universe in harmony beyond the limits of time and space. In Hinduism, the symbol with arms pointing clockwise (Ura), symbolizes the Sun, prosperity and good luck, while the counterclockwise symbol (Omote) symbolizes night. All of Axel’s weapons are Ura, of course.

Also, if you look in the middle of them both, you see that Volcanics has a ⊕ , the Sun Cross symbol. And the Fuma Shuriken has a Recusant’s Sigil in the middle. The “X” of death. Mystery Gear is supposed to bring out one’s true personality, so what does that say about him? 

…Phew, I guess that covers it. This meta took me like a month to make. There is no way that the writers put that much symbolism in if Saix and Axel were not viewed, at least internally by the staff, as a romantic couple. This officially proved it to me. Beyond a shadow of a doubt.

[deathgatesideblog]

Dynamic Theory as Applied to The Death Gate Cycle

[Continued from Part 2]

Part 3: Other Possible Examples of The Dynamic in The Death Gate Cycle

Haplo/Alfred is easily the clearest form of the Dynamic in Death Gate Cycle, but it is an interesting exercise to examine other potential candidates, which I have done below. My hope is that these analyses will illustrate that The Dynamic is a spectrum, and very much open to interpretation. In order of what most to least Dynamic:

Hugh/Iridal: Considering how long I’ve been a proponent of the Haplo:Hugh::Alfred:Iridal mirror theory for a while, it probably comes as no surprise that Hugh/Iridal would display elements of The Dynamic. Like Haplo, Hugh has fallen into the trap of ignoring his feelings and treating them as a weakness, isolating himself from society by, well, being an assassin (which also qualifies him for the Nightmarish trait of being “particularly brilliant/an expert in his chosen field”). On the other hand, we are introduced to Iridal as someone who longs for an ordinary, domestic life with her husband and child. The two of them are instantly intrigued by each other. Iridal sees and awakens in Hugh the possibility of feelings that he himself had thought were long dead, whereas Hugh (eventually) pulls Iridal out of endless longing for her fantasy of ordinary domestic life and helps her see reality, a reality that includes accepting her own strength and power to change her fate. They are explicitly stated to be similar in that they have both trapped themselves in prisons of their own making, essential to any good Dynamic. Hugh demonstrates his Absolute Nightmarishness by being instantly obsessed with Iridal and doing dumb stuff for the sake of getting her attention (see the banquet scene in Dragon Wing), and also arguably in the sheer drama of his Depression Breakdown at the beginning of Hand of Chaos. Hugh also proves how much he’s changed by dying for Iridal’s sake (and then coming back to life). Iridal’s Sweaterboyishness is more obvious in Hand of Chaos, when she sets out to help Hugh get his life back together. They play off of each others’ strengths more, and Iridal’s Hidden Sweaterboy Brilliance manifests in her powers as a mysteriarch. On a lesser note-- I didn’t bring this up as a defining trait of the Dynamic, but it has been theorized that “Absolute Nightmares flip tables, while Sweaterboys break mirrors,” and I feel that Hugh and Iridal meet that qualification more than any other example in Death Gate Cycle.

Alfred/Orla: Alfred/Orla, while not the strongest example of The Dynamic, nevertheless represent an interesting form of it in that Alfred, who is primarily a Sweaterboy to Haplo’s Absolute Nightmare, actually serves as an Absolute Nightmare for Orla during Serpent Mage. While this shift in archetype points nicely to the “I’m You, Aren’t I?” aspect of Haplo/Alfred’s Dynamic (and in fact is pointed out in the narration whenever Alfred frets about how he’s doing something that Haplo would have done), we can also analyze Alfred/Orla’s Dynamic on its own merits. While Alfred describes wishing he could assimilate with Sartan culture during his stay in Surunan, Orla notes that he is not really trying all that hard. He still uses mensch clothes and a mensch name, a sign that he refuses to let go of his peculiarities. This marks him as a loner among the Sartan, and he hides some of his feelings, or is at least ashamed of them, especially his doubts about Samah’s actions.  Orla, on the other hand, is unsatisfied with her life, as both a member of the Council and Samah’s wife. It is Alfred that opens her eyes to how stifled and limited her life up until meeting him has been, and inspires her to make her own choices. Again, not the strongest example of a Sweaterboy, but close enough. Their status as The Dynamic becomes clearer when analyzing their interactions with each other. Again, we have Alfred, the Absolute Nightmare, immediately captivated with his Sweaterboy, seeing something there that others miss. Orla finds Alfred’s deviances from the norm fascinating instead of offputting, and sets herself up as his guide in Surunan (a true Sweaterboy caretaker instinct). The two of them instantly forge a romantically-tense friendship. They have a lot of similarities, which is of course crucial to The Dynamic, as both are going through very similar conflicts (and both have lots of Sweaterboy tendencies in the first place*). Through each other, they each become less lonely and begin to actualize themselves. Overall, I would say that Alfred/Orla is not the purest form of The Dynamic, but certainly qualifies as such and is worth consideration due to a few interesting variances from the usual Dynamic.

Marit(/Haplo):  Marit, or Marit/Haplo, as the case may be, is tricky to place. When we meet her in Into the Labyrinth, her issues are a sort of hodgepodge of both archetypes. One might be tempted to classify her as an Absolute Nightmare: she certainly believes that feelings and companionship are potential vulnerabilities and thus avoids them. But on the other hand, is she not also a Sweaterboy, trapped in the prison of societal convention and in need of someone to drag her out of it, her society being the Patryns in the Nexus who work for Xar? Likewise, she has been in love before-- a Nightmarish trait. But she also has more of the Sweaterboy’s fierce, protective, and grumpy personality than the Nightmare’s Extra(tm)/eccentric/dramatic one. It doesn’t help that Haplo, during the two books they interact, is well on his own way to “I’m You, Aren’t I?” with Alfred’s Sweaterboy. Has he become Marit’s Sweaterboy, then, encouraging her to open up to him and acknowledge that she is allowed to want companionship and love? Or is he her Absolute Nightmare, too, drawing her away from what she considers to be normal and proper with his eccentricities? She does say, after all, that Haplo is no ordinary man, which seems to put him in that role. It’s quite a conundrum, and I would like to propose, in addition to AN Marit/SB Haplo and SB Marit/AN Haplo, four additional possibilities: 1. Marit is simply not part of any Dynamic. That’s very possible, and it doesn’t preclude her having a happy, satisfying relationship with Haplo.** Not every happy relationship is The Dynamic, and that’s okay. 2. Haplo/Marit is a case of what is commonly referred to as “two Nightmares making it work.” A possibility, but still difficult since even ascribing them roles in the first place is no simple task. 3. Haplo/Marit is a Dynamic that is simply more dynamic than most-- that is to say, there is no definitive way to classify them as one archetype or another. This is rare for Dynamic couples, but not entirely unheard of: Woody and Buzz from Toy Story are widely considered to be Dynamic, but there is still a lot of debate to this day about who is who. 4. Marit is her own Absolute Nightmare and her own Sweaterboy, and her Dynamic is a personal, internal one. This idea-- that one person may contain both archetypes and find The Dynamic as an individual-- is a purely theoretical application of the Dynamic, and one I’ve never seen outside of technicalities, such as Garnet (SU) embodying The Dynamic by virtue of being a literal fusion of both archetypes. However, I think that if any character were to do it, Marit is a strong choice: the internal nature of her character growth and the push and pull of her two natures within herself until she can embrace both of them is rather suggestive of The Dynamic.

Aleatha/Drugar:  I kind of hate that I’m even including this, but. Well. Aleatha is a pretty solid Absolute Nightmare: she’s got the rejection of society, the eccentricity, the flair for the dramatic, the secret Big Feelings, especially of personal inadequacy that she disguises with her Extraness(tm). And it is hard to argue that she is not particularly brilliant in her chosen field (that being flirtation). Drugar isn’t as clear of a Sweaterboy, since he no longer really has any way to be ordinary, other than to cling to his dwarvenness. What Drugar does have going for him is the fierce, grumpy aspect of the Sweaterboy, though, as well as his determined protectiveness and caretaking of his Absolute Nightmare. Overall, I would say Aleatha/Drugar does not quite have what it takes to be considered Dynamic: there are too many discrepancies. The most obvious factor at work here is the unrequited love between them that is simply Not Dynamic At All. Aleatha isn’t as interested in Drugar as a Nightmare has to be for the Dynamic to work, and Drugar’s growth isn’t as changed/inspired by Aleatha as a Sweaterboy would ordinarily be. Still, there’s at least potential, there, and had just a few things been slightly different, we might have had another true Dynamic on our hands.

Paithen/Rega: You can make the argument, but not a very good one. Paithen is pretty extra, and he’s sort of separated himself from his family and elven society by interacting with humans and not finding them totally repulsive. He doesn’t quite have the whole “hiding his Big Feelings” part of the Absolute Nightmare, which is a definite problem. He does display at least some kind of emotional repression when he refuses to admit that he’s in love with Rega, though. Rega is definitely the more ordinary of the two, though frankly she doesn’t really display much of the brilliance that defines the Sweaterboy. The fact that Paithen takes such an immediate interest in her does help, though, as it is just as important that the Sweaterboy be brilliant in the eyes of the Nightmare. Another, lesser aspect of The Dynamic is that the Absolute Nightmare is the one who says “But daddy, I love him!” while the Sweaterboy immediately moves in with the eccentric they meet on the beach***, and they certainly qualify for that. However, as with Aleatha/Drugar, while the personality traits themselves are kind of sort of there if you really reach, there’s not the level of each of them affecting each other and helping them grow and heal and being ultimately more similar than they are different that really defines The Dynamic, so overall I’m going to say 0/10, this isn’t The Dynamic.

I don’t really have a great way to end this, sorry. The Dynamic is good and pure though, and I hope that somewhere in these ramblings, I’ve given y’all something to think about, if nothing else. Personally The Dynamic destroys me daily and I needed you guys to understand what I meant when I mentioned it, so that’s pretty much what all this was for.

So... yeah. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

*Arguably, Alfred/Orla fits better as “two Sweaterboys making it work,” but for the purposes of this analysis, I chose to focus on the Nightmarish traits Alfred displays during Serpent Mage. **I think one complication of assigning roles to Haplo/Marit in The Dynamic is that while we see Haplo affect Marit a lot, Haplo has already gone through his character growth by the time he meets Marit again. This has the effect of creating a somewhat more one-way dynamic, which can be happy and satisfying for both parties, but is, by definition, not The Dynamic. ***From Disney’s The Little Mermaid, with Absolute Nightmare Ariel and Sweaterboy Prince Eric.

[multipleservicelisting]

Caligula’s Garden of Delights, Unearthed and Restored

The fourth of the 12 Caesars, Caligula — officially, Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus — was a capricious, combustible first-century populist remembered, perhaps unfairly, as the empire’s most tyrannical ruler. As reported by Suetonius, the Michael Wolff of ancient Rome, he never forgot a slight, slept only a few hours a night and married several times, lastly to a woman named Milonia.

During the four years that Caligula occupied the Roman throne, his favorite hideaway was an imperial pleasure garden called Horti Lamiani, the Mar-a-Lago of its day. The vast residential compound spread out on the Esquiline Hill, one of the seven hills on which the city was originally built, in the area around the current Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II.

There, just on the edge of the city, villas, shrines and banquet halls were set in carefully constructed “natural” landscapes. An early version of a wildlife park, the Horti Lamiani featured orchards, fountains, terraces, a bath house adorned with precious colored marble from all over the Mediterranean, and exotic animals, some of which were used, as in the Colosseum, for private circus games.

When Caligula was assassinated in his palace on the Palatine Hill in 41 A.D., his body was carried to the Horti Lamiani, where he was cremated and hastily buried before being moved to the Mausoleum of Augustus on the Campus Martius, north of the Capitoline Hill. According to Suetonius, the elite garden was haunted by Caligula’s ghost.

Historians have long believed that the remains of the lavish houses and parkland would never be recovered. But this spring, Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Cultural Activities and Tourism will open the Nymphaeum Museum of Piazza Vittorio, a subterranean gallery that will showcase a section of the imperial garden that was unearthed during an excavation from 2006 to 2015. The dig, carried out beneath the rubble of a condemned 19th-century apartment complex, yielded gems, coins, ceramics, jewelry, pottery, cameo glass, a theater mask, seeds of plants such as citron, apricot and acacia that had been imported from Asia, and bones of peacocks, deer, lions, bears and ostriches.

“The ruins tell extraordinary stories, starting with the animals,” said Mirella Serlorenzi, the culture ministry’s director of excavations. “It is not hard to imagine animals, some caged and some running wild, in this enchanted setting.” The science of antiquities department of the Sapienza University of Rome collaborated on the project.

The objects and structural remnants on display in the museum paint a vivid picture of wealth, power and opulence. Among the stunning examples of ancient Roman artistry are elaborate mosaics and frescoes, a marble staircase, capitals of colored marble and limestone, and an imperial guard’s bronze brooch inset with gold and mother-of-pearl. “All the most refined objects and art produced in the Imperial Age turned up,” Dr. Serlorenzi said.

The classicist Daisy Dunn said the finds were even more extravagant than scholars had anticipated. “The frescoes are incredibly ornate and of a very high decorative standard,” noted Dr. Dunn, whose book “In The Shadow of Vesuvius” is a dual biography of Pliny the Elder — a contemporary of Caligula’s — and his nephew Pliny the Younger. “Given the descriptions of Caligula’s licentious lifestyle and appetite for luxury, we might have expected the designs to be quite gauche.”

The Horti Lamiani were commissioned by Lucius Aelius Lamia, a wealthy senator and consul who bequeathed his property to the emperor, most likely during the reign of his friend Tiberius from A.D. 14 to 37. When Caligula succeeded him — it is rumored that Caligula and the Praetorian Guard prefect Macro hastened the death of Tiberius by smothering him with a pillow — he moved into the main house.

In an evocative eyewitness account, the philosopher Philo, who visited the estate in A.D. 40 on behalf of the Jews of Alexandria, and his fellow emissaries had to trail behind Caligula as he inspected the sumptuous residences “examining the men’s rooms and the women’s rooms … and giving orders to make them more costly.” The emperor, wrote Philo, “ordered the windows to be filled up with transparent stones resembling white crystal that do not hinder the light, but which keep out the wind and the heat of the sun.”

Evidence suggests that after Caligula’s violent death — he was hacked to bits by his bodyguards — the house and garden survived at least until the Severan dynasty, which ruled from A.D. 193 to 235. By the fourth century, the gardens had apparently fallen into desuetude, and statuary in the abandoned pavilions was broken into pieces to build the foundations of a series of spas. The statues were not discovered until 1874, three years after Rome was made the capital of the newly unified Kingdom of Italy. With the Esquiline Hill in the midst of a building boom, the Italian archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani nosed around freshly excavated construction sites and uncovered an immense gallery with an alabaster floor and fluted columns of giallo antico, considered the finest of the yellow marbles.

He later stumbled upon a rich deposit of classical sculptures that, at some point in the horti’s history, had been deliberately hidden to protect them. The treasures included the Lancellotti Discobolus, now housed at the National Museum of Rome; the Esquiline Venus and a bust of Commodus depicted as Hercules, now at the Capitoline Museums. In short time, the sculptures were carted off, the foundation of an apartment building was laid, and the ancient ruins were reburied.

The latest excavation of the horti unfolded under the detritus of the residences, which had been evacuated in the 1970s in the wake of a building collapse. Much like the 2012 exhumation of Richard III in Leicester, England, the unburying involved a modern parking site.

Sixteen years ago, the three-and-a-half-acre property was purchased by Enpam, a private foundation that manages pensions for Italian doctors and dentists. Exploratory core drilling for a new headquarters and a six-level underground garage brought forth a wealth of first-century relics, from the type of window glass described by Philo to lead pipes stamped with the name of Claudius, Caligula’s uncle and successor.

As construction crews erected the five-story office building, archaeologists in a trench 18 feet below street level gingerly screened and scraped away soil. In a study lab across town, paleobotanists and archaeozoologists analyzed fragments, and researchers painstakingly repaired a 10-foot-high wall fresco painted with pigment made from ground cinnabar. The entire $3.5 million conservation and restoration project was underwritten by Enpam.

Ground was broken for the Nymphaeum Museum in 2017. “The new space, in the basement of Enpam, brings to light one of the mythical places of the empire’s capital, one of the garden residences loved by the emperors,” said Daniela Porro, the museum director.

What all of this does for Caligula’s seemingly irredeemable reputation is an open question. He emerges from Suetonius’s “The Twelve Caesars,” written 80 years after the emperor was bumped off, as utterly depraved: having incestuous relationships with his sisters, sleeping with anyone he liked the look of, using criminals as food for his wild beasts when beef became too pricey and insisting that a loyal subject who had vowed to give his own life if the emperor survived an illness should carry through on his promise and die.

Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge University, posited that while Caligula might have been assassinated because he was a monster, it is equally possible that he was made into a monster because he was assassinated. In “SPQR,” her rich history of ancient Rome, she argues that “it is hard to resist the conclusion that, whatever kernel of truth they might have, the stories told about him are an inextricable mixture of fact, exaggeration, willful misinterpretation and outright invention — largely constructed after his death, and largely for the benefit of the new emperor, Claudius.”

Whether Caligula got a raw deal from history is a subject of hot and unyielding debate. “There is clearly some bias in the sources,” Dr. Dunn allowed. “But even without that, it is difficult to envision him as a good emperor. I doubt these new discoveries will do much to rehabilitate his character. But they should open up new vistas onto his world, and reveal it to be every bit as paradisiacal as he desired it to be.”

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/3bDBxNi

[triunfo-di-sablika]

“You have to deeply analyze the history and colonial reality. The one of dutch enslavement and domination of a Black race in order to liberate your people.” _ Helmin Wiels

The gospel of Wiels reminds Curaçao every time that the creole white and dutch white ruling elite systematically degrades Black political, economic, financial, social and cultural leadership. They do it slick in a camouflaged manner that destabilizes a structural power build up of Black futures on the island or straight up in your face under the guise of 'dutch bluntness'. This time around it wasn't from an elite corner but more so out of the serpentine depths of the dutch white hooligan economic class.

This week the co-owner of the Miles Jazz cafe Hans Andriessen enraged and financially frustrated by Covid regulations hurting his business in the dutch white gentrification district Pietermaai called Curaçao a monkey island.  A disgraceful act for a venue embraced by Black musicians on the island and named after Miles Davis a Jazz legend, who he himself endured heaps of violent US racism.

Its a sad but sobering racial reality check to see how dutch white entrepreneurs have the boldness and feel that comfortable to spew raw racist vernacular on facebook to express their natural hidden racial hatred and ill perceived white might against a people that put food in their mouths and money in their pockets that they could never make back in the netherlands.

Online media research in Curaçao reveals that discussions of Black souls by the dutch public is a pestering epidemic. A daily doses of dutch racism can be found at news site knipsel krant curacao, the prime example of digital Black character assassination. A space where the lives of Caribbean Blackness is dehumanized with full approval of the dutch community. The normalization of calling Curaçaoans of African descent on their island "apes and jungle monkeys" has been going on for years on the internet if not for decades, centuries when the dutch are within their own private circles.

However the until now digitized backlash this has caused doesn't have its origins in this week's specific hate speech. The root problem is that this racial denigration is an expression of a dutch white hyper plunder ideology. It's anchored in the mind of the average dutch on the island and in the Netherlands. Black people are still enslavable to them, still seen as their property and Curaçao is their treasure island to become rich and wealthy on the backs of the people. And thankfully there's a growing Black minority who understands the importance for a power struggle to take back the economic and financial ownership out of the hands of white thievery to design their own destiny.

The outrage forced the other co-owner(s) of Miles Jazz cafe after several days of stalling and scheming to issue a statement that they suspended their partner. The fiery pressure of Black breath made them close their facebook account and instagram. The silence and white privileged defense of the dutch community and the Chamber of Commerce and VBC (Curaçao business association) is telling and not surprising because by nature they have to stand by their racist hooligan to prevent a domino effect and maintain an injust white wealth dominance in Curaçao. Calls for boycotting  or shutting down the cafe have been send out. The ancestral normal would most obviously be to enforce a Black owned entrepreneurial takeover and bring back life in Pietermaai the way it was before it got gentrified by dutch vulture project developers. Only 8 days are left to commemorate the May 30th 1969 racial labor revolt and this dutch Corona induced racism has all the atmospheric opportunities to spark a creative liberating flame to burn down this colonial calamity that has been a genocidal catastrophe for ages. Backing up our words and sentiments is essential and transforming them into a real life moves is the ancestral normal of taking steps on the journey for Black freedom.

[ironeyedkiller]

Drinks, Demigods, and Other Bad Decisions

Xhex: You're all fucking hopeless! You had all better pray that you never come across a full blooded sin eater, because they will make your their bitch in a heartbeat! [Spinning on my heel, I aim both palms at the push bar to get out of the training gym. I shouldn't have bothered for this first exercise. Not one single trainee could keep me out of their mind at all, let alone in a combat situation. Great plan. Pit the trainees against the symphath assassin for sparring to simulate a little real world stress. The collective jump as I slam the door open sends a jolt of satisfaction through me, and not strictly because because my bad side doesn't want to vacate their fragile psyches. At least one of them is still whimpering as the door swings shut behind me. Even their precious Primus was an open book, and that with my cilices on. If the gloves were off? Well, that's the entire reason what little restraint I have left has me pounding down the hall towards the garage. The rhythmic echo of my boot heels bouncing around a background as I sift through all the petty dramas and dirty secrets in case anything is actionable. I know everyone in that room was thoroughly vetted from the second their paperwork crossed the Brotherhood desk, but not every secret has a paper trail.] I need a fucking drink.

Vishous: *My back was pressed tight to the concrete walls of the garage, blunt pressed tightly to my lips when I heard the pounding of boots. Softer than a males but still on a mission. I turned my head in the direction and had to smirk. Xhex was stomping down the tunnel, a scowl of frustration on her face. Her short dark hair looked like she had ran a hand through it a couple of times. As she came closer I nodded and pushed off the wall. We had brought her in to see how the trainees would do against a symphath. I already knew it wasn't going well. "That bad?" I said through an exhale.

Xhex: [For a change, Vishous' voice doesn't set my teeth on edge. Then again, I'm grinding them so badly that I doubt anything could. My pace doesn't falter as I snap out my reply.] Worse. Do you want details on fraternizing? Substance use? What they call you behind your back? I've even got early childhood trauma on every one of them. [Pulling up short, I narrow my eyes at the Brother.] Do you have any idea what, or who, a snape is? One of them thought I was exactly like snape, and it did /not/ seem complimentary. I need to get out of here, stat, before I show them exactly why sin eaters are bad for the vampire population.

Vishous: *chuckling at the females response I put the blunt out on the bottom of my shitkicker and put the butt in my pocket.* "I'm pretty sure I know what they call me behind my back. That Snape character is a teacher from Harry Potter, popular with the kids nowadays. I wouldn't take it as a compliment." I muse. "We do appreciate you coming in and letting them have a taste. I am your ride. Want me to take you home?" 

Xhex: Harry Potter. Huh. [If any of them had tried a little more focus on pop culture, they might not be crying right now. Maybe the concept of holding one image was beyond the limited attention span of this generation. Next time, I'll have them try song lyrics, tv shows - wait - next time? Like I'm a regular teacher or something. A regular teacher who is about to go out and turn a few dozen humans loose on themselves and each other, just to take the edge off.] You're my ride? Great. [Not my first choice, but probably for the best, as I doubt any of the doggen could keep me out.] I'm not going home though, just drop me on Trade Street. I promise to keep the damages minimal, and human. 

Vishous: *Raises a dark brow, my diamond eyes slightly glowing.* "You know, normally I wouldn't ask but I'm fuck all bored and you look like you can use a drink." *Walks towards the Escalade and unlocks it using the key fob. I open the big ass door and get inside, turning to you before I start the engine.* 

Xhex: [Given the usual tension between us, the Escalade is a surprise. I half expected to be shown to a trunk. With a shrug, I slide into the passenger side] I definitely need a drink, but I doubt you want to watch a sin eater play with the drunken masses in the clubs. No matter how bored you claim to be. [My vision is already flickering red, my need to feed from my vampire side messing with my control. Without any conscious effort, I catch myself analyzing your grid, my bad side threading tendrils out for any weakness.] Sorry.

Vishous: *I simultaneously cut the engine on and the radio off, so that I can hear you. I start pulling the SUV out of the garage. It was slightly difficult to think clearly, how long had it been since I fed last? Not a damn clue. I had been so busy lately that shit was farthest from my though. * "I don't think it's the smartest move to cause a media uproar by mind fucking the humans, also more work for me to clean up your mess. So that is a no go. Why don't you get your shit together somewhere quiet. I'm headed to the Commodore. It has alcohol and your boss lives next door if you don't want to come inside. Those are your options till you get this *taps my temple* under control, feel me?"

Xhex: What are you, Vishous Poppins? Playing nanny to the symphath and defending drunks. [Letting my head fall back, I pinch the bridge of my nose, rubbing the underside of my brow with my thumb.] I really fucking hate when you're right. I'm too well known around Trade Street to get caught in the middle of anything. [Opening my eyes, my vision is still far from normal. If it were anyone else, I'd suspect ulterior motives behind this offer.] Pretty sure I won't need Rehvenge to save me from one drink. [Closing my eyes again, I focus on the sound and feel of the vehicle, trying to ground myself so I don't end up, well, grounded.]

Vishous: *smirking at the odd nickname, I pull out into the highway. About twenty minutes later I pull up to the Commodores garage and kill the engine. I step out of the SUV and make my way to the elevator with you in tow. I hit the top floor bottom and while it goes up I scan you, out of habit. Your color is off. At the top floor I step out and walk over to my door, punching in the passcode on the keypad and slipping the card key into the slot until a green light comes on and then a click. I turn the door knob and before pushing the door all the way open I stop.* "No questions about what you see." 

Xhex: [Rolling my eyes, I nearly pivot to pound on Rehvenge's door instead.] You mean this isn't your sex dungeon? If this is where you keep your vintage Barbie collection, you better believe I'll ask you how much they're worth. [Angling past you, I brace my shoulder against the door, pushing it open as I back in.] If only a tenth of your reputation is true, nothing is going to shock me in here. Unless you've gone furry. No judgment though, only surprise. [Cocking my head to the side with a smirk I maintain eye contact as I stop three feet into the room, letting all my senses other than sight thread out. An incredibly stupid move on my part, as I start picking up on human emotions in lower floors. Nothing for it now, except to bleed off a little of each. Lucky me, Rehvenge doesn't seem to be in the building, or this would be all kinds or awkward. I can't entirely stifle my laugh at the mental image of him rushing out to play overprotective brother.]

Vishous: *chuckling and shaking my head as you push past me, I close the door behind me. I leave you to your devices as I walk over to the kitchen and pull two glasses out, along with a bottle of grey goose.* "Cop keeps Lag here, if you prefer that over vodka?"

Xhex: [My nose wrinkles at the mention of O'Neal's choice of Scotch.] I'll take the vodka over an Islay any day, thanks. My taste runs to Highlands and Speyside. [Following you into the kitchen, the minimal decor barely registers as the nearby human grids have caught my attention.] I don't know how Rehvenge can come here unmedicated. The tiniest little push, and I could set off two murder/suicides. But I won't. Your downstairs neighbours, though? They both want a threesome with his friend, and the friend wants it too, but none of them has had the nerve to do anything. Until tonight.

Vishous: *I unscrew the lid and fill up both glasses, handing one to you before I down half my glass. The familiar burn a nice welcome down my throat. Locking my diamond eyes on your grey ones, I press my ass against the counter.* "Now I don't know you personally all that well. But I know enough to realize that your control is slipping. When was the last time you fed? Perhaps you should get your blood lust under control before you mind fuck the humans, and lose control, feel me?" 

Xhex: [The vodka provides a welcome distraction, my mind running through every cocktail that requires this liquid as I process your words. Sipping the drink, I maintain eye contact as I consider my response. No backing down from your stare for /this/ female.] You're right, you don't know me well. I kept myself hidden for three centuries, I know how to keep myself in check. This has more to do with loosening my control to play with your trainees than any blood lust. Though, I'll admit, it's been a while. Not like the Brotherhood with Chosen popping in at a moment's notice. I'll make some arrangement. 

Vishous: "Just because the Chosen are available doesn't mean shit. I wouldn't normally do this, but It could play out to both of our advantages. I'll let you feed from me, in return for your blood." *I finish my drink and move to pour another.*

Xhex: [Holy shit! Vodka really fucking burns when it goes up your nose! Choking on my drink, I look around for cameras, or maybe Lassiter.] Is this a joke? Some old school Candid Camera stunt? [Even as I speak, I feel my fangs drop. Damn the observant genius for being right.]

Vishous: *Holding back a true laugh as the female chokes on her drink, I simply shrug and take a few more swallows of my freshly poured drink. My diamond eyes glowing at her elongated fangs.* 

Xhex: [Glaring, I toss back the rest of my drink and slam my glass on the counter. The burn is killing the choking sensation as I pour another. Not like it's easy to drink from a glass with my fangs like this.] Feeding from Rehvenge is like feeding from family, but at least I know he won't try anything. Unlike when I used to pay in gold coin to take a vein. [Downing several swallows, I consider the option you've offered. This moment right here is probably the most civil we've ever been towards one another, and I'm not picking up on anything resembling lust, but still…] You first. [I tilt my head towards your gloved hand.] I'd rather not have that close to me. No offense. 

Vishous: *I set my glass down and flex the fingers on my gloved hand. I take the few steps over to you and hold out my ungloved hand for your wrist, my fangs punching out from behind my lips.* "No offense taken. Most don't even give me a second glance. I prefer it that way." *I tap the left side of my temple where my tattoos are.* "If nothing else, I am a male of my word. No harm will come to you here." *I could see her pulse throbbing on the side of her neck, could smell her hunger. Suddenly my throat became dry. That's when I realized how much I had let myself lack in the blood department.* 

Xhex: [Talk about your truth is stranger than fiction moments. If anyone had ever suggested I would let Vishous, son of the Bloodletter take my vein, and that I would take his in return, I would have probably cut their tongue out. But here we are.] Do you have anywhere to sit, or is it all stocks, racks and whipping benches? [Dimly I register a set of tall stools tucked along under the island, and pull one out, setting my heel on the crossbar to hike my ass up on the seat.] Nevermind, I found one. [Swallowing hard, I put my elbow on the counter like I'm getting ready to arm wrestle. The combat mentality doubtless stemming from the eyes locked on my neck. Shifting my weight, I stretch my arm up, ready to bolt if things get strange. Stranger.]

Vishous: *I pulled out the stool beside you and sat down. My eyes watching your movements, I sensed an uneasiness. But if you didn't want to do this you wouldn't have extended your arm to me. I propped my elbow on the counter as well and took your extended arm with my ungloved hand. I moved my mouth close to your wrist, my diamond eyes watching your grey ones for signs I should stop. When there was no command for me to stop, no jerking back your wrist, I pressed my mouth to the soft flesh of your wrist and bit down hard with my fangs. My eyes still watching you and I swallowed mouthfuls of your blood. It wasn't Chosen blood, but blood of a warrior. I could feel it strengthen me, my senses becoming more focused.*

Xhex: [I honestly can't pinpoint why I asked you to feed first. Maybe to prove this isn't some joke, because who would really take half symphath blood over that of a Chosen? Or it could be that I'm still not sure about feeding from you. Easing back slightly on the stool, i have to wonder if this isn't the extent of your normal furniture. It's not quite a business arrangement like I used to make, and not a matter of mutual safety like Rehvenge, but it feels similar enough. My mind wanders, still too easily distracted and too eager to bleed off emotions, back to the three humans below. Pushing, nudging, loosening inhibitions on their mutual attraction. The worst thing to come out of this tiny piece of a mindfuck will be a very awkward breakfast in the morning. Unlike our surreal exchange, which is awkward right now with you watching me like I'm a scared rabbit.] I'm not going to bolt. 

Vishous: *I retract my fangs and lick the marks I made on your wrist. Carefully releasing your hand.* "That's good to know. Your turn." *I shrug off my leather Jacket, letting it fall to the floor. Now exposing my weapons harness, complete with daggers and Glocks. I extend my arm on the counter in front of you, wrist up.*

Xhex: [I pull my arm back slowly, careful not to snatch it away. Rubbing my wrist as you ditch the jacket, it's the daggers that catch my attention. Murhder never let his get out of reach. A true warrior is never unprepared, and that's what this is about; being prepared by being at full strength. Taking your extended arm, I flick my eyes up, narrowing them as I focus on yours. I know better than to try to get a read on your grid, but I'd pay a lot to know where this is coming from. Swallowing hard, I bite down before I can second guess all of this. It's been a long time since I've had blood this strong, if ever. The first mouthful hits, and my vision goes red, my bad side reenergized. My eyes shift, focussing on the pulse in the neck, as the flow from the wrist suddenly seems too slow.]

Vishous: *Watching you with diamond eyes as your fangs pierce my flesh. The pain vanishes within seconds and all I feel is the pressure from the seal of your lips. I notice your grey eyes shifting, your grip on my forearm tightening, and your body language shifting as if predator ready to take down her prey. I was ready for an attack, fully capable of restraining the female if need be. But her next movements caught me off guard.* 

Xhex: [Thrilled to have slipped the reins, my symphath side bleeds off bits of human emotion, so close to the surface. All the lust and desire I was stoking in them continuing to amplify even as I take a share. And on the topic of taking what I desire, I retract my fangs from the anemic supply at the wrist, striking quickly for the jugular instead. With a groan, I climb up to get closer. Even as I straddle the male, a part of my mind screams that something is wrong, but the bloodlust will not be denied.]

Vishous: *Her movements were quick but I braced myself as I felt her let go of my arm. The scent in the air changed, I had only a fraction of a second to see the lust in her eyes as she struck my throat. I threw out my hand to catch the lip of the bar as the momentum pushed us backwards. My gloved hand was around her back, holding her to me so she didn't rip a chunk out of my throat. My hand slipped from the bar and we went backwards, the stool rolled out from under me and Xhex was still feeding, her smaller frame straddling me. I had never allowed anyone to take my vein in such intimate manner, I was shocked, and at the same time, none of this situation felt like sex.* 

Xhex: [The blood down the back of my throat is a lifeline I've been without for too long. Swallowing greedily, a crash registers dimly, even as another wave of lust washes through me from the humans below. Damn. The blood for my vampire side, the desire for the symphath, and a male body under me? Too. Fucking. Long. The combination is overwhelming, and I roll my hips, half lost to the sensations. Once sated, I retract my fangs, lick the wound, and push myself upright. Staring back up at me are diamond eyes, one surrounded by tattoos in the Old Language. How the hell did I forget who I was feeding from?] Shit.

Vishous: *I was very wrong as the female on top of me started rolling her hips. I locked my hands on her thighs and groaned, narrowing my eyes as she pushed herself upright.* "What are you doing Xhex? You lost control." 

Xhex: [Good fucking question. In a gesture born of habit, I move my hands to rub them over the cilices under my leathers, only to find the space occupied. Snatching them back, I notice the wrist of Vishous' ungloved hand is still bleeding.] Sorry. You should seal that. [Nodding sharply towards the open wound, I rely on my memory of Rehvenge's penthouse to dematerialize to the wall of windows. Although, Rehv's side does not have a sex dungeon with a view. Sliding a section of glass open, I step out onto the balcony and take a deep breath. Scattering my molecules again, I head for my basement crash pad to try to make sense of everything that just happened.]

Vishous: *As her hands brushed the tops of mine and then retracted, I let go of her thighs and sat up as she dematerialized to the opposite side of my penthouse. I watched her open the window and a second later she was gone into the night.* "What. The. Fuck." *Shaking my head I stood up and brought my wrist to my mouth, licking it closed. I needed some more to drink.*

~~#AU #DrinksDemigodsAndOtherBadDecisions ~~

[spirit-science-blog]

So far, we have looked at the Demiurge, how the world's population is controlled, ET’s, and even the almost frightening integration with technology… But the question is, Why is this happening? Why is ANY of this happening at all? Is this just the product of a disconnected consciousness run wild? Is there a meaning behind the madness? Is there a definitive end to our suffering? And if we are being led somewhere… by whom?

Who, if anyone, is at the top of the pyramid? Is it aliens? Reptiles? The Elite? Perhaps there is no single leader, but rather a mass multitude of agendas going in different directions, or is this all just a part of a God’s master plan? Today, the QAnon movement calls it “The Deep State,” and to us, the first time we became aware of it, as mentioned in a book from the early 1990s, the ancient secret of the flower of life. In this book, they were referred to as “The Secret Government.” According to Melchizidek, the Secret Government has known about the extent of damage we’ve been doing to ourselves and the world since as early as the 1940s but have been desperately trying to keep it hidden from the public and sway us from our higher calling.

The concept of a secret government or a deep state is useful in explaining how government agencies can gain power by keeping secrets. Today, most of us are used to, and perhaps even indoctrinated into feeling secure in our Democratic model of government. It created a sense of all citizens being involved with and aware of what is going on, and if the citizens believe this (whether it's true or not), it builds trust, but this is not the natural state of power or control.

Throughout almost all of history, rulers and those in power had no obligation to be open to their populi, back door deals and secrecy were default settings, and have fewer people to answer and explain to give them more power naturally; power-seekers thrive in secrecy and misdirection.

When Greece introduced democracy, and the United States modernized it, it was considered ingenious and revolutionary and for the people. To protect it, American culture's entire ethos was built around a more open and citizen-run government. Eventually, it became the new standard for the most modern world and a source of pride for Nations that achieved it. But what if this sense of pride and security were an illusion, a front for the real operation, a modern-day, human edition, of the Holographic Demiurge? What if, behind the scenes, a power that influences not just the US government's direct actions and both sides of their political spectrum, but also other countries? What if there was a power that held influence over the US, the UK, and even China and Russia?

Power is checked in public but grows in secrecy, so it is natural to wonder: if power grows in confidentiality. How do we know that the most potent forces directing this play are not also the most invisible? What if some of the most significant conflicts and global events were architected by a secret world government...?

9-11

Not since the JFK assassination has there been a national tragedy so heavily imprinted in American minds — or one that has given rise to quite as many alternative explanations outside of the mainstream narrative. Despite taking place almost 20 years ago, over 42% of Americans today believe that the government and the 9/11 Commission "concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the attacks. All of this questioning created a massive alternative narrative of events covering everything from the days leading up to the attacks, their execution, and the aftermath…

The most infamous aspect of the theories is that the towers' collapse, specifically tower 7, resulted from controlled and deliberate demolition, rather than the impact of the planes. This is seen almost to be self-evident considering building 7 fell simultaneously as the other two towers, but miraculously without a plane even coming close. Surveys suggest that most people who see a building video quickly begin to question and doubt the official mainstream story.

A few days before the event, Jumping back in time, it is purported that the US government knew about the coming attack, days or even weeks in advance, and deliberately failed to prevent it or even purposefully allowed it to happen. This is even purported by Michael Meacher, a former British environment minister and member of Tony Blair's government in the UK.

This is found in the stock value alterations for the airlines hijacked leading up to the event when many put options were placed for American Airlines and United Airlines. This financial tool gives owners the opportunity of money if the price of the stock falls. Some economic and business journals have gone on record saying that this is evidence of unusual option market activity in the days leading up to September 11 that is consistent with investors trading on advance knowledge of the attacks...To put it into perspective, between September 6th and 7th, the Chicago Board Exchange recorded nearly 4744 "put" option contracts bought in United Airlines..then on September 10th, another 4516 stocks were bought in American Airlines… Naturally, the 911 commission says that the weird behavior was just “coincidental.” Nevertheless, these put options made someone a lot of money.

A separate line of suspicion stems from NORAD's actions (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) on that day. There's much speculation about whether NORAD issued a stand-down order to its fighter jets on 9/11, along with delays in the FAA to notify NORAD of the potential threat. According to FAA records, the NORAD notification about each plane's hijacking came just minutes before they would crash. Despite the FAA noticing unusual behavior, like a failure to stay on course and a shut-down transponder on American Airlines Flight 11 *sixteen seconds after takeoff,* NORAD would not be called to action or notified for over twenty minutes. In a country with the most robust and sophisticated defense in the world, a fumble this bad with such dire consequences can’t help but add to the mystery around what took place.

Now we get to the controlled demolition. This theory states that explosives installed in the buildings in advance were the real cause of the collapse and wide-reaching destruction. First shared by Dutch demolitions expert Danny Jowenko, who in 2006 said that the aircraft impacts and resulting fires couldn’t have weakened the buildings sufficiently enough to initiate a collapse and that they wouldn’t even have collapsed completely, nor at the speeds that they did, without additional energy involved to weaken their lower structures… concluding that “this was a controlled demolition carried out by experts,” something that has since been supported by some physicists, engineers, software developers, and modelers, along with a range of other fields.

The mainstream analysis, in contrast, asserts that the collapse resulted from damage to support columns mainly caused by the weakening of columns and floors by jet fuel fires. And, of course, you’ve probably seen the memes about jet fuel and steel beams.

Stephen Jones, a physicist at Birmingham Young University, and other researchers analyzed dust from the World Trade Center buildings. They reported that their findings contained nano-thermite evidence in the dust, which are products used in high-level explosives. When he informed the National Institute of Technology about his results, they argued that there was no way of knowing the dust he analyzed came from the buildings… When he asked them to conduct their study, they refused.

On top of that, eyewitnesses reported seeing and hearing explosions happening before the towers' collapse. The organization, "International Center for 9/11 Studies", has published videos indicating when such explosions could be heard.

The collapse of Building 7 also wasn’t even reported in the initial report, and NIST, the agency charged with investigating the event, took seven years to publish anything that even acknowledged it.

Looking into who was working in the building at the time, you find that it housed some pretty exciting residents, including a secret CIA office on the 25th floor, an outpost of the U.S. Secret Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and New York City's emergency command center… All of these secret offices go down the day of the attack.

Last but not least, we have the Pentagon. Theorists have argued that the damage done to the Pentagon wasn’t the result of a plane. Still, potentially a missile launched from inside the U.S. government, citing the impact's dimensions as evidence.

After all, how does a plane 125 ft. wide and 155 ft. long fit into a hole that’s only 60 ft. across? It’s worth noting that plane wreckage has been found at the crash site, and eyewitnesses say they saw a plane crash… Today, even the conspiracy theorists themselves disagree on the missile idea. Could the witnesses be paid actors in the know? Could the pieces of the plane be brought there? The only footage available is from this security camera, and conveniently, no frames are available to see what hit.

Whatever happened at the Pentagon, the question remains… How could a plane make its way not only into the airspace of one of the most secure military sites in the world but also crash into their most predominant headquarters? Like building 7, theorists hypothesize that incriminating evidence of government wrongdoing was targeted in the Pentagon attack.

They were observing the bigger picture then… why? The most common theory is that 9/11 provided the United States and the United Kingdom with a reason to enter into a war against the Middle East (most notably Iraq and Afghanistan), providing motive and support from the general public. Most theories about this suggest the US was after Oil in the Middle East. Others purport various banking, corporate, globalization, and military interests to create a globalist government. This one-world order could be run behind the scenes by the cabal.

But the most exciting theory comes from Dr. Michael Salla, who states that Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq at the time, had found remnants of a stargate built by the Annunaki excavating one of the Ziggurats - ancient Mesopotamian temples in Iraq. As a result, he had threatened to use it to interact with the Annunaki to bring about mass disclosure and domination. Thus, the orchestration of the 9 11 attacks was a deliberate ruse to justify the stargate's acquisition and other advanced technology into Western hands. To learn more about this mysterious species, please watch our Anunnaki Movie on Youtube.

If any of this is true, then that would imply that at that time, a secret government, with its hands in many countries, may not have had as much influence as they wanted with individual countries in the middle east. Or… If they did the whole time, purposefully staged this event, for an even bigger reason.

Mind Control

When we pull back the curtain on the workings behind the scenes, things become strange and even frightening. The most infamous mind-control experiment in history is MK Ultra, otherwise known as Project Bluebird. The terrifying thing about this is that it isn’t a theory… MK Ultra was a real documented CIA program, for which the CIA has faced repercussions legally. It’s well established that some of the experiments in the Ultra project were illegal. The US Government willingly experimented on its citizens without their knowledge or consent… Yet, no one seems to bat an eye… Perhaps because no one knows the true extent of what went on behind closed doors.

The official aim was that experiments on humans were intended to develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations to weaken individuals and force confessions through mind control. The program was officially authorized in 1953 but supposedly got reduced funding continually until its “disbandment” in 1973. The elusive Montauk Experiments, located at Camp Hero, Montauk, which began in the 1950s, again swirl with conspiracies and rumors of mind control, psychedelic drug experiments, child abduction, and even time travel. It seems incredibly coincidental that the Camp Hero events started in the 50s, also experimented with mind control. It doesn't seem to be a stretch to argue the two projects were connected somehow.

Interestingly, MK Ultra's events came to light in 1975 after an inquest by the Rockefeller Commission. Yet, efforts to find the background of Ultra were hindered by CIA Director Richard Helms's order that all MKUltra files be destroyed in 1973. As a result, the committee had to rely on the sworn testimony of direct participants and the relatively small number of documents that survived Helms's order. In 1977, a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered a cache of 20,000 documents relating to MKUltra, which led to Senate hearings later that year. As recently as 2018, declassified documents included a letter to an unidentified doctor discussing work on six dogs that had been made to run, turn, and stop via remote control and brain implants…

Current estimates place the funding and budget at roughly $87.5 million in today’s money during the experiments. Many early research focused on psychedelic drug LSD, whether it could be used to make Soviet spies defect against their will, and whether the Soviets could do the same to the CIA's operatives. When it first began, they didn’t test on strong-minded people, though… No… The drug's first tests were done on people with a mental health condition, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers… because - and I quote - “they couldn’t fight back.”

According to Tim Weiner, writing in the New York Times, they once administered LSD to a person with a mental health condition in Kentucky for 174 days straight, as well as giving it to their employees, military personal, and….scariest of all… Unknowing members of the general public, to study their reactions. Many of the drugs were often administered without the subject's knowledge or informed consent, which was a violation of the Nuremberg Code after WW2. This is the only place where the CIA got into legal trouble.

It’s thought that the aim of this was to find which drugs would bring out deep confessions or wipe a subject's mind clean to be able to program them as "a robot agent.” Later on, another part of the project worked at Menlo Park’s Veterans Hospital where they tested the effects of every kind of psychedelic on the residents there, everything ranging from LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and cocaine, and even DMT and AMT, another lesser-known psychedelic, similar to DMT.

In these experiments, adverse reactions were a pretty common occurrence. One operative who received LSD in his morning coffee became psychotic and ran across Washington, seeing a monster in every car passing him. The experiments continued even after Frank Olson, an army chemist who had never taken LSD before, was secretly dosed by his CIA supervisor and nine days later, plunged to his death from the window of a 13th-story New York City hotel room after falling into a post-trip depression and paranoia.

Some people did consent… and they were subjected to even more extreme experiments, such as being dosed with LSD for 77 consecutive days. However, the culmination of all this research was that by 1962, the CIA had developed a series of super-hallucinogens - most notably the BZ Compound, which was thought to hold tremendous promise as a mind control weapon. It was at this point that many academics and private researchers became disillusioned with the project. Perhaps the enormous asset we can learn from this revelation coming to light is not only the extreme methods employed by those within the deep state but also the acknowledgment that just as much as psychedelics can be used for therapy and healing, there is ample evidence now that they can also be used to create lasting psychotic states. It entirely depends on how they’re used, messing with the neurochemistry instead of harmonizing it with a higher consciousness.

While all of this was happening, they also experimented with hypnosis to create hypnotically induced anxieties and increase an individual’s ability to learn complex material and improve memory and cognitive ability. To do this, the CIA ended up setting up what were essentially concentration camps for study. And once again, we see the value and terrors that come with hypnosis, all the while in the mainstream world. It is laughed at as nothing more than superstition.

As Stephen Kinzer pointed out: “In areas under American control in the early 1950s, in Europe and East Asia, mostly Japan, Germany, and the Philippines, the CIA created secret detention centers so that the U.S. could avoid criminal prosecution and work in secret. The CIA captured people suspected of being enemy agents and other people deemed "expendable" to undertake various types of torture and human experimentation. The prisoners were interrogated while being administered psychoactive drugs, electroshocked, and subjected to extreme temperature, sensory isolation, and a whole host of other terrible things to understand better how to destroy and control human minds. These experiments likely developed a tremendous understanding of how the brain responds to various extremes and how it interacts and filters consciousness… but at what cost? And for what ultimate purpose? Could these techniques have been an influential decision in manipulating the mainstream narrative, perhaps behind 9-11, or even the Covid Pandemic?

After 1973, when this all began to come out to the public, it prompted several subjects or their surviving children to file lawsuits against the federal government for conducting experiments without consent. Although the government aggressively, and sometimes successfully, sought to avoid legal liability, several people did receive compensation through court orders… and this whole battle is still going on today. While the CIA insists that MKUltra-type experiments have been abandoned, Canadian investigative journalist Elizabeth Nickson (whose mother was a subject) claims that they continue today under a different name…

Returning to the beginning… MKUltra initially came to public awareness due to an inquest from the Rockefeller Commission. Generally, today, when you look into the question of the “Illuminati,” who are often presumed to be Secret Government, the Rockefeller family often appear at the top of the list in association or connection. However, it seems that in this case, the Rockefellers brought something nefarious to light. The question is why. Why would they rat out their operation if they were behind it? Was this all orchestrated as part of a singular greater intention, or are the Rockefellers playing a different game than assumed for so long?

Q-Anon

If the conspiracy theories are to be believed, then it would seem as though this secret government is compelling, pulling strings and influencing global events on nearly every side, as if pushing and pulling everything we perceive.

Finally, we must then explore Q-Anon, the theory behind who’s pulling the strings of everything… The Deep State itself. Originating from a chain of 4chan and 8chan posts by an anonymous user known only as Q, or the Q Clearance Patriot… This user began explaining the theory's outline, that there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles behind the scenes pulling strings on world governments, along with orchestrating an international child sex trafficking ring. They control politicians and the media to spin their narrative and control Hollywood to cover up their existence, pumping out shows and movies that foster plausible deniability. The Philadelphia experiment? Stargate? The Men Who Stare at Goats? Just movies, nothing more.

By its nature, Q-anon is a Far-Right theory, and thus it argues that the cabal would have continued ruling the world were it not for the election of Donald Trump. In this theory, Trump is fully aware of the cabal and its workings of the Deep State, and in actuality… Top military generals recruited him to run for president in 2016 to break up this criminal conspiracy, end its control of politics and the media, and bring its members to justice. It’s believed that we would all be ignorant of this behind-the-scenes battle were it not for Q… Who has been revealing details directly from behind the scenes? A central component of the Q-anon theory is some coming “storm” or Grand Awakening where thousands of people, all of who are members of the cabal, will be arrested, possibly sent to Guantanamo Bay, or face military tribunals. The U.S. military will brutally take over the country, ushering in a New World Order… In another video, we explored the conspiracies around Trump and Time Travel, including an old book from over 100 years ago called The Last President, following the story of a character named Trump and a massive takeover and political change where this same thing happens. A brutal military takeover.

Q also purports that the cabal includes top Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, several entertainers, Hollywood celebrities, and leading religious figures. It’s curious then to ask if this is legit or just right-wing propaganda to attack the democrats.

Looking at all of this, we must ask… Who is “Q” specifically? This anonymous poster on 4chan claimed to be a high-ranking intelligence officer with access to classified information about Trump’s war against the cabal. But even today, no one knows who Q is… Speculation argues for everything from a simple troll or far-right activist to an entire network of people, entwined in the great battle going on.

Q Anon’s reveal is believed to have begun back during the 2016 election with the Pizzagate Theory. With the email account of John Podesta being hacked by a spear-phishing attack, WikiLeaks published the leaks in November 2016. They contained within those emails were supposedly code words for pedophilia and human trafficking (mostly centered around the letters “C” and “P” and more than natural levels of discussion around curious “pizza types,” believed to b in substitute for child pornography) that linked high ranking members of the Democratic party and other world elites to a pizza restaurant in Washington DC as the site of satanic ritual abuse. To date, however, no evidence of a ritual site was found at this restaurant. Is it possible this location was also a cover for an actual ritual site?

The story went viral online… Sometimes on Fake News websites, which added traction to the theory, a claim emerged that the FBI had raided Hilary Clinton’s home for evidence of the supposed sex ring. In 2020 Pizzagate took on a new life when it began to merge with QAnon, leading to the cabal theory's globalization rather than being US-centric.

Even Trump himself seems to be somewhat supportive, having shared posts from QAnon followers dozens of times on his social media accounts. However, when looking into the movement, there is a standard theory that Trump himself sends signs to the followers through secret codes and messages in things like press interviews. For example, whenever he mentions the number 17, it's taken as a sign that he is sending secret messages to his followers since Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet… He has even arguably embraced the movement, saying that “these are people that love our country.” In an NBC press hearing, when asked whether he was working to disband a cabal of pedophiles, he looked at the reporters and asked, “Is that supposed to be a bad thing?..... If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it,” ...which naturally was met with nervous laughter.

In the mainstream media today, there’s a lot of fear being perpetrated in the name of QAnon… So much so that there’s been a massive crackdown on anything conspiracy related on social media. Twitter recently banned thousands of QAnon accounts, arguing that they “engaged in harassment.” Facebook took down nearly 800 QAnon groups and restricted thousands of QAnon-related pages and Instagram statements. Part of the phobia is centered around reports of QAnon followers being charged with committing serious crimes in Q’s name… Which were reported on by mass media.

To be clear, then… this video itself, in the eyes of Youtube and Social Media, may very well be suspect and could be banned. To prevent this from happening, please visit the link in the comments to get free access to Spirit Conspiracies, to watch all of our conspiracy content, free of any form of censorship.

The Roots of Secrecy

Now, the question of a secret government's real existence and identity may remain a mystery long into the future. Suppose there is a power that can influence world leaders and governments from the shadows. In that case, it’s very likely that only a select few even know of the identity of those in power and most certainly would be sworn to secrecy. For example, even if NASA is hiding evidence of Alien contact, it would only be the highest few in the organization who know of it.

We are called to ask what kind of person, being, or powers would have so much influence as to directly or indirectly affect the greatest of world powers? Could it be a legion of some alien beings? Perhaps reptiles or otherwise, with advanced alien technology who threaten or even mind control the highest-ranking people to do their bidding?

And even more so, if there is an ongoing battle as QAnon describes, then perhaps there are two secret governments. Maybe a nefarious satanic cabal who has seized a great deal of power and an enlightened hidden power - working to provide guidance and protection for the good-hearted in control to create a positive change in a better direction, without sending the entire global population into a panic, and destroying all of society as we know it. You can imagine how this may all be received by the world, for if Q’s prophecy did come true, and there was a military coup, most of society would deem this a terrifying a horrendous thing, even if it was a necessary measure to protect us all from an even worse future. We’re not suggesting that this would be good nor bad, how convoluted the intentions get, behind so many layers of secret senses.

In the Flower of Life Books, Melchizidek explains that long ago, in Ancient Egypt, the ascended master named Thoth - upon requiring something to happen for the salvation of our species, would appear to a particular leader, demonstrate who he was through a miraculous feat, such as glowing or levitating, and then instruct them to take a specific action. While it’s effortless to fall into the fear that a nefarious mind controls all things, and indeed - the basis of our holographic reality may indeed come from the Demiurge, the false God - but could it be that ascended masters, such as Jesus, Thoth, or even the Anunnaki, also have been subtly influencing our species in secretive and mysterious ways?

According to the sources behind this information, it says that while many experiments are going on behind the scenes, along with enormous catastrophe’s to the earth's environment, knowing and cultivating the energy within your body, the toroidal energetic field of your heart, and the human Lightbody, often called a Merkaba; you can change everything. You can heal yourself and the world around you, for Spirit lives within you, and honestly, all things are possible. All it takes is an effort to learn and connect with the benevolent God spark within you.

The greatest challenge then might very well be that not everybody is looking to create this connection. It seems as though many don’t even care at all… the most significant part of this story is yet to come...

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Insects Quotes

Official Website: Insects Quotes

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• “Are you okay?” he says, still looking at me, and I feel my smile slip, fade, and the silence that falls over us then is so total I can’t hear anything, not the rush-hiss of my heart pounding in my chest, not the sounds all around us; insects, wind, and the distant clatter of others’ lives in houses built close but not too close because when we look out our windows we all like to pretend that everything we see is ours. But Ryan is not mine. – Elizabeth Scott • a country encapsulates our childhood and those lanes, byres, fields, flowers, insects, suns, moons and stars are forever reoccurring. – Edna O’Brien • A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still. – Samuel Johnson • A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. – Robert A. Heinlein • A net set up to catch fish may snare a duck; a mantis hunting an insect may itself be set upon by a sparrow. Machinations are hidden within machinations; changes arise beyond changes. So how can wit and cleverness be relied upon? – Zicheng Hong • A refuge is supposed to prevent what? The genes from flowing out of sight? This refuge idea won’t stop insects from moving across boundaries. That’s absurd. – Jeremy Rifkin • A single swallow, it is said, devours ten millions of insects every year. The supplying of these insects I take to be a signal instance of the Creator’s bounty in providing for the lives of His creatures. – Ambrose Bierce • A standard saying among fly fishermen is that trout spend anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of their time feeding below the water’s surface on the immature forms of aquatic insects. Some anglers are even more precise, but whatever the exact percentage , it’s safe to say that to fully appreciate any tailwater fishery you will have to learn the fine art of nymphing. – Ed Engle • A stray fact: insects are not drawn to candle flames, they are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame, they go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they’re so eager to get to the light on the other side. – Michael Cunningham • A tree is a thought, an obstruction stopping the flow of wind and light, trapping water, housing insects, birds, and animals, and breathing in and out. How treelike the human, how human the tree. – Gretel Ehrlich • A worm tells summer better than the clock, The slug’s a living calendar of days; What shall it tell me if a timeless insect Says the world wears away? – Dylan Thomas • Ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets’ treasured value. – Steven Erikson • All of nature talks to me – if I could just figure out what it’s saying – trees are swinging in the breeze. They’re talking to me. Insects are rubbing their legs together. They’re all talking. They’re talking to me. – Laurie Anderson • Although you should respect venomous snakes and approach them with caution, most snakes you encounter in an urban environment are harmless and beneficial because they eat insects, mice and other rodents. – Robert Pierce • An innocent bird is not innocent from the insect’s point of view! Only man can attain the rank of innocence through becoming a peaceful vegetarian! – Mehmet Murat Ildan • An insect is more complex than a star..and is a far greater challenge to understand. – Martin Rees • Around the steel no tortur’d worm shall twine, No blood of living insect stain my line; Let me, less cruel, cast the feather’d hook, With pliant rod athwart the pebbled brook, Silent along the mazy margin stray, And with the fur-wrought fly delude the prey. – John Gay • As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. – Franz Kafka • At seventy-three I learned a little about the real structure of animals, plants, birds, fishes and insects. Consequently when I am eighty I’ll have made more progress. At ninety I’ll have penetrated the mystery of things. At a hundred I shall have reached something marvellous, but when I am a hundred and ten everything I do, the smallest dot, will be alive. – Hokusai

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Insect', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_insect').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_insect img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Be able to recognize the dangerous snakes, spiders, insects, and plants that live in your area of the country.- Marilyn vos Savant • Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on. – Robert Southey • Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent – something like an infant – deep inside us all that really suffers in ways we would never permit an insect to suffer. – Jack Abbott • Ben: “Gorog’s no assassin! She’s my best friend.” Mara: “She’s an insect, Ben.” Ben: “So? Your best friend’s a lizard.” Mara: “Don’t be ridiculous. Aunt Leia is my best friend.” Ben: “Doesn’t count. She’s family. Saba is a lizard.” Mara: “Okay, maybe my best friend’s a lizard. – Troy Denning • Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy. – Emile M. Cioran • Bird taxonomy is a difficult field because of the severe anatomical constraints imposed by flight. There are only so many ways to design a bird capable, say, of catching insects in mid-air, with the result that birds of similar habitats tend to have very similar anatomies, whatever their ancestry. For example, American vultures look and behave much like Old World vultures, but biologists have come to realize that the former are related to storks, the latter to hawks, and that their resemblances result from their common lifestyle. – Jared Diamond • By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions and tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad’…By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. – George Orwell • By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. There is a legend that everything that falls into the waters of this river — leaves, insects, the feathers of birds — is transformed into the rocks that make the riverbed. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the current, then my pain and longing would be over, and I could finally forget. – Paulo Coelho • Cats are like insects. They should be left outside to clean up the garbage. – Michael Mewshaw • Compassion is an emotion of which we ought never to be ashamed. Graceful, particularly in youth, is the tear of sympathy, and the heart that melts at the tale of woe. We should not permit ease and indulgence to contract our affections, and wrap us up in a selfish enjoyment; but we should accustom ourselves to think of the distresses of human, life, of the solitary cottage; the dying parent, and the weeping orphan. Nor ought we ever to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty. – Hugh Blair • Each moss, Each shell, each drawling insect, holds a rank Important in the plan of Him who fram’d This scale of beings; holds a rack which, lost Would break the chain, and leave behind a gap Which Nature’s self would rue. – Benjamin Stillingfleet • Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium. – Johann Kaspar Lavater • English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled. – Bill Bryson • Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. – Francis Bacon • Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so amazingly know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves. – Fyodor Dostoevsky • Every living being on earth loves life above all else. The smallest insect, whose life lasts only an instant, tries to escape from any danger in order to live a moment longer. And the desire to live is most developed in man. – Hazrat Inayat Khan • Every man has the basis of good. Not only human beings, you can find it among animals and insects, for instance, when we treat a dog or horse lovingly. – Dalai Lama • Everything is a hero: A lighthouse which gives light to us; weeds that provide shelter to little insects; a water drop which quenches a thirsty ant! Everything that helps us to live is a hero! • Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. – Albert Einstein • Everything is important. To the smallest insect, even the mouldering tree, the deepest stone in the drift. – Marlene van Niekerk • For us, a pretty bird is a pretty bird; for an insect, pretty bird is an ugly enemy! – Mehmet Murat Ildan • From inanimate object, to microorganism, to plant, to insect, to animal, to human, there is an evolving level of intelligence. – Bryan Kest • From my earliest memories I was fascinated by animals. I would explore my backyard for insects and gaze at anthills until my elbows became sore. When I was 8, my mother bought me a book of North American birds and I’ve been keen on birdwatching since. – Jonathan Balcombe • Garden: One of a vast number of free outdoor restaurants operated by charity-minded amateurs in an effort to provide healthful, balanced meals for insects, birds and animals. – Henry Beard • Happy insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning’s gentle wine! Nature waits upon thee still, And thy verdant cup does fill; ‘Tis fill’d wherever thou dost tread, Nature’s self’s thy Ganymede. – Abraham Cowley • Herein lies our problem. If we level that much land to grow rice and whatever, then no other animal could live there except for some insect pest species. Which is very unfortunate. – Steve Irwin • Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days. – Terry Pratchett • How describe the delicate thing that happens when a brilliant insect alights on a flower? Words, with their weight, fall upon the picture like birds of prey. – Jules Renard • How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, how complicate, how wonderful is man! Distinguished link in being’s endless chain! Midway from nothing to the Deity! Dim miniature of greatness absolute! An heir of glory! A frail child of dust! Helpless immortal! Insect infinite! A worm! A God! – Edward Young • How would you like to have a thousand brilliantly colored cliff swallows keeping house in the eaves of your barn, and gobbling up insects over your farm at the rate of 100,000 per day? There are many Wisconsin farmsteads where such a swallow-show is a distinct possibility. – Aldo Leopold • Human beings ought not to draw in their antennae at every ungentle touch, like supersensitive insects. – E. T. A. Hoffmann • I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We’re all looking at the wrapping. But we won’t tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath. – Tom Waits • I craved your warmth. I hugged myself, rubbing my fingers up and down. I guess people are like insects sometimes, drawn to heat, A kind of infra-red longing. – Lucy Christopher • I do not see why men sheould be so proud insects have the more ancient lineage according to the scientists insects were insects when man was only a burbling whatisit. – Don Marquis • I fear no man, no woman; flower does not fear bird, insect nor adder. – Hilda Doolittle • I got a little studio in Chicago and practiced. I realized I had to earn some money. So I went to work for an advertising agency where my job was mostly drawing insects for a company that sold an insecticide spray. – Claes Oldenburg • I had that trapped feeling, like some sort of a poor insect that you’ve put inside a downturned glass, and it tries to climb up the sides, and it can’t, and it can’t, and it can’t. – Cornell Woolrich • I hate banana bread. It’s too suspicious-looking. I always thought the cooked banana looked like insect legs. – Elizabeth Berg • I hated the words. Each one was like a big live insect in my mouth. – Glen Duncan • I have always found thick woods a little intimidating, for they are so secret and enclosed. You may seem alone but you are not, for there are always eyes watching you. All the wildlife of the woods, the insects, birds, and animals, are well aware of your presence no matter how softly you may tread, and they follow your every move although you cannot see them. – Thalassa Cruso • I listen to the summer symphony outside my window. Truthfully, it’s not a symphony at all. There’s no tune, no melody, only the same notes over and over. Chirps and tweets and trills and burples. It’s as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning its instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the music mess of it. – Jerry Spinelli • I love insects. They are amazing. – Andrea Arnold • I never kill insects. If I see ants or spiders in the room, I pick them up and take them outside. Karma is everything. – Holly Valance • I personally feel that parachute files give a more realistic impression of an insect to the fish that views the fly, since the hackles are in the same position as the insect’s legs, and when tied with brightly colored hackles, these flies are easier to see on the float. A final advantage is that in rough water, a parachute-hackled dry fly will float longer and better than a conventional one – Lefty Kreh • I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness — a real thorough-going illness. – Fyodor Dostoevsky • I think it’s so archaic that cosmetic companies are still using animal by-products and insects in their products! It’s 2016, why is anyone still doing that? – Jeffree Star • I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity. – Percy Bysshe Shelley • I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing. – John Fowles • I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better. – Mary Oliver • I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life – but there was no one to tell me. – George Washington Carver • I was really interested in collecting insects. – Satoshi Tajiri • If all insects disappeared, all life on earth would perish. If all humans disappeared, all life on earth would flourish. – Jonas Salk • If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. – E. O. Wilson • If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish. – Jonas Salk • If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect. – Jacques Yves Cousteau • If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months. – E. O. Wilson • If you had an alien race that looked like insects, then they would build robots to look like themselves, not to look like people. – Kevin J. Anderson • If you see a thing that looks like a cross between a flying lobster and the figure of Abraxas on a Gnostic gem, do not pay it the least attention, never mind where it is; just keep quiet and hope it will go away – for that’s your best chance; you have none in a stand-up fight with a good thorough-going African insect. – Mary Kingsley • If you want to study one of these strange organisms, you had better have a good justification. It’s not good to say I want to study gene organisation in some obscure insect that no one’s ever heard about. – Thomas Cech • I’m always very interested in breeding. Raising cacti is breeding. My lotus plant collection is breeding. The insects are breeding. – Takashi Murakami • I’m writing a film called ‘Bug.’ It’s an original script, and it’s not about killer insects. It’s a thriller set in a high school. The bug of the title refers to a surveillance device. – Wes Craven • In handling a stinging insect, move very slowly. – Robert A. Heinlein • In my grandparents’ time, it was believed that spirits existed everywhere – in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything. My generation does not believe this, but I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything. – Hayao Miyazaki • In my life outdoors, I’ve observed that animals of almost any variety will stand in a windy place rather than in a protected, windless area infested with biting insects. They would rather be annoyed by the wind than bitten. – Tim Cahill • In my youth, I spent my time investigating insects. – Maria Sibylla Merian • In summer the empire of insects spreads. – Adam Zagajewski • In the future, I mean to be a fine streamside entomologist. I’m going to start on that when I am much too old to do any of the two thousand things I can think of that are more fun than screening insects in cold running water – Thomas McGuane • In the vast, and the minute, we see The unambiguous footsteps of the God, Who gives its lustre to an insect’s wing And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds. – William Cowper • In time they sank and decayed, and nothing is left of them except an occasional impression in stones, in stones now found in deserts and on high mountain peaks. Birdless forests block the sun in uninhabited lands. Insects swirl in the air. And then, in a majestic, bloodthirsty, and mighty heave, the spinal columns of the vertebrates rise as monstrous lizards and fabulous creatures; dragons flinging their fearful bellows up to a steaming sky… Slowly they become birds, birds as light as undreamt dreams. The searing roars become birdsong, whimpering flutes on warm nights. – Erik Fosnes Hansen • Insect life was so loud that when you parked the car and got out it sounded as if you had suddenly tuned into a radio frequency from another planet. – David Samuels • Insect politics, indifferent universe. Bang your head against the wall, but apathy is worse. – Don Henley • Insect resistance to a pesticide was first reported in 1947 for the Housefly (Musca domestica) with respect to DDT. Since then resistance to one or more pesticides has been reported in at least 225 species of insects and other arthropods. The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds. – Francisco J. Ayala • Insects are my secret fear. That’s what terrifies me more than anything – insects. – Michael O’Donoghue • Insects are not only cold-blooded, and green- and yellow-blooded, but are also cased in a clacking horn. They have rigid eyes and brains strung down their backs. But they make up the bulk of our comrades-at-life, so I look to them for a glimmer of companionship. – Annie Dillard • Insects are what neurosis would sound like, if neurosis could make a noise with its nose. – Martin Amis • Insects have their own point of view about civilization a man thinks he amounts to a great deal but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat. – Don Marquis • Insects leave (Madagascar periwinkle) Catharanthus roseus out of their diets. So, for that matter, do deer. The reason is that the plants are loaded with alkaloids so potent that they are the source of vincristine and vinblastine. These are drugs important in routines of chemotherapy for treating Hodgkin’s disease and certain forms of leukemia. – Allen Lacy • Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought Mosaic; underfoot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem: other creature here Beast, bird, insect, or worm durst enter none; Such was their awe of man. – John Milton • Is it reasonable to suppose that we can apply a broad-spectrum insecticide to kill the burrowing larval stages of a crop-destroying insect … without also killing the ‘good’ insects whose function may be the essential one of breaking down organic matter and maintaining healthy soil? – Rachel Carson • Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit. – Henry David Thoreau • It began as this desire to do this science fiction movie about perhaps one of the last insects left that nobody’s done anything on, which is the cockroach – and truly one of the most frightening insects. – Michael O’Donoghue • It skims in through the eye, and by means of the utterly delicate retina hurls shadows like insect legs inward for translation. Then an immense space opens up in silence and an endlessly fecund sub-universe the writer descends, and asks the reader to descend after him, not merely to gain instructions but also to experience delight, the delight of mind freed from matter and exultant in the strength it has stolen from matter. – John Updike • It was the hour when gauze-winged insects are born that only live for a day. – Lord Dunsany • It’s time to stop pretending I’m ok with things I’m not ok with like all insects and Foster the People. – Greg Behrendt • It’s very easy to make insects move. Because they do move mechanically without the rippling of flesh as you mentioned. They move more like real tinker toys and you can make models of them quite easily. – Michael O’Donoghue • I’ve always gone with Kafka’s model of establishing the world from the first line, as in Kafka’s famous line from Metamorphosis, “Gregor Samsa woke up from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect” (or beetle or cockroach, depending on the translation). I have to have that first line before I can go further. – Laurie Foos • I’ve become a much more serious young insect. – Andrew Denton • I’ve come to realize that the mark is the primal gesture, the internal connection of the caveman to the cosmos; an impossibility similar to an impulse in an insect’s nervous system that it could somehow reduce to dust a steel beam by endlessly crawling over it. – Joel-Peter Witkin • Large flocks of butterflies, all kinds of happy insects, seem to be in a perfect fever of joy and sportive gladness. – John Muir • Life is hard for insects. And don’t think mice are having any fun either. – Woody Allen • Little soldier, little insect You know war it has no heart It will kill you in the sunshine Or happily in the the dark Where kindness is a card game Or a bent up cigarette In the trenches, in the hard rain With a bullet and a bet. – Conor Oberst • Lobsters displays all three of the classic biological characteristics of an insect, namely: 1. It has way more legs than necessary. 2. There is no way you would ever pet it. 3. It does not respond to simple commands such as “Here, boy!” – Dave Barry • Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside. – Honore de Balzac • Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of men will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet – Mary Wollstonecraft • Many of the earth’s habitats, animals, plants, insects and even micro-organisms that we know to be rare may not be known at all by future generations. We have the capability and the responsibility to act; we must do so before it is too late. – Dalai Lama • Men should stop fighting among themselves and start fighting insects. – Luther Burbank • My 10th Sonata is a sonata of insects. Insects are born from the sun… they are the sun’s kisses. – Alexander Scriabin • My painting is not violent, it’s life that is violent. Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves, the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. We are born with a scream; we come into life with a scream and maybe love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death. – Francis Bacon • Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world. – Henry David Thoreau • Natural selection certainly operates. It explains how bacteria will gain antibiotic resistance; it will explain how insects get insecticide resistance, but it doesn’t explain how you get bacteria or insects in the first place. – William A. Dembski • Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. – Henry David Thoreau • No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity. – Edith Wharton • No one knows, incidentally, why Australia’s spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space. – Bill Bryson • No poetic phantasy but a biological reality, a fact: I am an entity like bird, insect, plant or sea-plant cell; I live; I am alive. – Hilda Doolittle • None of God’s Creatures absolutely consider’d are in their own Nature Contemptible; the meanest Fly, the poorest Insect has its Use and Vertue. – Mary Astell • Now summer is in flower and natures hum Is never silent round her sultry bloom Insects as small as dust are never done Wi’ glittering dance and reeling in the sun And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee Are never weary of their melody Round field hedge now flowers in full glory twine Large bindweed bells wild hop and streakd woodbine That lift athirst their slender throated flowers Agape for dew falls and for honey showers These round each bush in sweet disorder run And spread their wild hues to the sultry sun. – John Clare • Of all the systems of the body – neurological, cognitive, special, sensory – the cardiological system is the most sensitive and easily disturbed. The role of society must be to shelter these systems from infection and decay, or else the future of the human race is at stake. Like a summer fruit that is protected from insect invasion, bruising, and rot by the whole mechanism of modern farming; so must we protect the heart. – Lauren Oliver • Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths? – George Eliot • One cannot overestimate the power of a good rancorous hatred on the part of the stupid. The stupid have so much more industry and energy to expend on hating. They build it up like coral insects. – Sylvia Townsend Warner • One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads, “As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. . . .” When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories. – Gabriel Garcia Marquez • One of the really remarkably beneficial aspects of genetic engineering is that much of the previous methodology for controlling pests and so forth is through chemicals that affect a very broad spectrum of insects, for example, or fungicides that control fungi. – Nina Fedoroff • Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind. – Friedrich Nietzsche • People have this idea that nature dictates a sort of 1950s sitcom version of what males and females are like. That is just not the case in the insect world. – Marlene Zuk • Perfect hexagonal tubes in a packed array. Bees are hard-wired to lay them down, but how does an insect know enough geometry to lay down a precise hexagon? It doesn’t. It’s programmed to chew up wax and spit it out while turning on its axis, and that generates a circle. Put a bunch of bees on the same surface, chewing side-by-side, and the circles abut against each other – deform each other into hexagons, which just happen to be more efficient for close packing anyway. – Peter Watts • Plant consciousness, insect consciousness, fish consciousness, all are related by one permanent element, which we may call the religious element inherent in all life, even in a flea: the sense of wonder. That is our sixth sense, and it is the natural religious sense. – D. H. Lawrence • Politics is made up of two words: “Poli,” which is Greek for “many,” and “tics,” which are bloodsucking insects. – Gore Vidal • Primates need good nutrition, to begin with. Not only fruits and plants, but insects as well. – Richard Leakey • Say, will the falcon, stooping from above, Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove? Admires the jay the insect’s gilded wings? Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings? – Alexander Pope • She was afraid of all that and so much more, but what terrified her most was inside of her, an insect of unnatural intelligence who’d been living in her brain her entire life, playing with it, clicking across it, wrenching loose its cables on a whim. – Dennis Lehane • Shrimp are the insects of the ocean. They’re bottom feeders. So they’re delicious, but they’re the bugs of the sea. – Baron Vaughn • Since I turned the fields back to their natural state, I can’t say I’ve had any really difficult problems with insects or disease. – Masanobu Fukuoka • So important are insects and other land-dwelling arthropods that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months. – E. O. Wilson • So there you have it: Nature is a rotten mess. But that’s only the beginning. If you take your eyes off it for one second, it will kill you. Thorns, insects, fungus, worms, birds, reptiles, wild animals, raging rivers, bottomless ravines, dry deserts, snow, quicksand, tumbleweeds, sap, and mud. Rot, poison and death. That’s Nature.It’s a wonder you even step outside of your cabin, I said.My bravery exceeds my good sense, he said. – Lee Goldberg • So, when I say ‘match the hatch’, if the fish are taking the nymph, and you’re actually producing a replica of a flying insect, you’ll catch fresh air. – Rex Hunt • Sometimes human beings are very much like bees. Bees are fiercely protective of their hive, provided you are outside it. Once you’re in, the workers sort of assume that it must have been cleared by management and take no notice; various freeloading insects have evolved a mellifluous existence because of this very fact. Humans act the same way. – Neil Gaiman • Specialization is for insects. – Robert A. Heinlein • Specialization is for insects… The race of man? He’s a whole other creature. – Robert A. Heinlein • Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes. – Larry Niven • Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas. – Samuel Smiles • Suppose that insect wings developed primarily as thermoregulators and then were used for skimming and finally flying, evolving along the way. What would they be “for”? Or what is the skeleton “for”? For keeping one upright, protecting organs, storing calcium, making blood cells…? – Noam Chomsky • The air was calm and insects had not yet risen off the water, that crisp time of morning before the sun strikes, when it is still cool enough to work out solutions to sticky problems. – April Smith • The best gardener is a baby killer. Baby insects are much easier to kill than adults, and haven’t yet developed the big mouths and voracious appetite of the adolescent. – Janet Macunovich • The careful insect ‘midst his works I view, Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew, With golden treasures load his little thighs, And steer his distant journey through the skies. – John Gay • The clearest window that ever was fashioned if it is barred by spiders’ webs, and hung over with carcasses of insects, so that the sunlight has forgotten to find its way through, of what use can it be? Now, the Church is God’s window; and if it is so obscured by errors that its light is darkness, how great is that darkness! – Henry Ward Beecher • The colours of insects and many smaller animals contribute to conceal them from the larger ones which prey upon them. Caterpillars which feed on leaves are generally green; and earth-worms the colour of the earth which they inhabit; butter-flies, which frequent flowers, are coloured like them; small birds which frequent hedges have greenish backs like the leaves, and light-coloured bellies like the sky, and are hence less visible to the hawk who passes under them or over them. – Erasmus Darwin • The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, . . . when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man . . . . It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth. – Rachel Carson • The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives – all that was over. – H. G. Wells • The deeper men go into life, the deeper is their conviction that this life is not all. It is an unfinished symphony. A day may round out an insect’s life, and a bird or a beast needs no tomorrow. Not so with him who knows that he is related to God and has felt the power of an endless life. – Henry Ward Beecher • The eye sees the physical body, other individuals, even insects, worms and things. It sees everything that is within its range. The body too is a thing that the eye sees, along with the rest. So, how can we conclude that the body is the I? – Sathya Sai Baba • The German passion for bureaucracy — for written and signal forms . . . to move about, to work, to exist — is like a steel pin pinning each French individual to a sheet of paper, the way an entomologist pins each specimen insect . . . – Janet Flanner • The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every … minutest fiber. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge • The insect-youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring, And float amid the liquid noon! – Thomas Gray • The instinct of brutes and insects can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever-living agent. – Isaac Newton • The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes. – Ray Bradbury • The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects. – Chanakya • The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of the physical world which limit or challenge his control, the disease germs that attack him and his domesticated plants and animals, and the insects that carry many of these germs as well as working notable direct injury. This is not the age of man, however great his superiority in size and intelligence; it is literally the age of insects. – Warder Clyde Allee • The only clear thing is that we humans are the only species with the power to destroy the earth as we know it. The birds have no such power, nor do the insects, nor does any mammal. Yet if we have the capacity to destroy the earth, so, too, do we have the capacity to protect it. – Dalai Lama • The only sensible approach to disease and insect control, I think, is to grow sturdy crops in a healthy environment. – Masanobu Fukuoka • The Planet drifts to random insect doom. – William S. Burroughs • The poor dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend, Whose honest heart is still the master’s own, Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone, Unhonour’d falls, unnoticed all his worth, Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth, While man, vain insect hopes to be forgiven, And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven. – Lord Byron • The positive evidence for Darwinism is confined to small-scale evolutionary changes like insects developing insecticide resistance….Evidence like that for insecticide resistance confirms the Darwinian selection mechanism for small-scale changes, but hardly warrants the grand extrapolation that Darwinists want. It is a huge leap going from insects developing insecticide resistance via the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation to the very emergence of insects in the first place by that same mechanism. – William A. Dembski • The rain water enlivens all living beings of the earth both movable (insects, animals, humans, etc.) and immovable (plants, trees, etc.), and then returns to the ocean it value multiplied a million fold. – Chanakya • The Reproductions of the living Ens From sires to sons, unknown to sex, commence… Unknown to sex the pregnant oyster swells, And coral-insects build their radiate shells… Birth after birth the line unchanging runs, And fathers live transmitted in their sons; Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds, The same their manners, and the same their minds. – Erasmus Darwin • The rhythms of nature – the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birds and insects – must inevitably find their analogues in music. – George Crumb • The souls you have got cast upon the screen of publicity appear like the horrid and writhing creatures enlarged from the insect world, and revealed to us by the cinematograph. – James Larkin • The spider is an animal who eats mosquitoes. That’s why I love the spider – it is the only way we have to deal with these insects. – Louise Bourgeois • The transformation scene, where man is becoming insect and insect has become at least man and beyond that – a flying, godlike, shimmering, diaphanous, beautiful creature. – Michael O’Donoghue • There are men from whom nature or some peculiar destiny has removed the cover beneath which we hide our own madness. They are likethin-skinned insects whose visible play of muscles seem to make them deformed, though in fact, everything soon turns to its normal shape again. – E. T. A. Hoffmann • There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death. – Soren Kierkegaard • There’s no denying that the way horror has been packaged in the past has done it no favours. Lurid black covers adorned with skulls, corpses crawling with insects and scantily clad maidens being chewed into by vampires — all good clean fun, but it doesn’t do much to give the genre an air of respectability or seriousness to the casual browser. – Tim Lebbon • There’s this shop in New York I go to; it has bones and fossils and insects that are like works of art. I have a few on my wall. – Eva Green • These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes-nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad,’ to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil-all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called ‘insecticides,’ but ‘biocides.’ – Rachel Carson • Things without defense: insects, kittens, small boys. – Paul Fussell • Thousands of men breathe, move, and live; pass off the stage of life and are heard of no more. Why? They did not a particle of good in the world; and none were blest by them, none could point to them as the instrument of their redemption; not a line they wrote, not a word they spoke, could be recalled, and so they perished–their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than the insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal? Live for something. – Thomas Chalmers • Today I am sure no one needs to be told that the more birds a yard can support, the fewer insects there will be to trouble the gardener the following year. – Thalassa Cruso • Too many creatures both insects and humans estimate their own value by the amount of minor irritation they are able to cause to greater personalities than themselves. – Don Marquis • Tourists moved over the piazza like drugged insects on a painted plate. – Shana Alexander • Travel is said to be broadening because it makes us realize that our way of doing things is not the only one, that people in other cultures live differently and get by just fine. Insects do that, too, only better. – Marlene Zuk • TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n. An African insect (“Glossina morsitans”) whose bite is commonly regarded as nature’s most efficacious remedy for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist (“Mendax interminabilis”). – Ambrose Bierce • Unwittingly, every event and every microorganism – insect, fish, bird, animal, etc. – is playing a role that maintains a perfect balance to our ecosystem, which also includes our atmosphere. Have you ever considered that we, you and I, are also apart of that? – Bryan Kest • Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee, From Thee to nothing. – Alexander Pope • Very little makes me feel vulnerable these days. I hit my absolute apex of vulnerability when I returned to my home state of Louisiana, during the Gulf oil spill disaster, and witnessed mass devastation to every demonstration of life surrounding me – from grass, trees, bayous, insects, to animals and people – we all felt demolished. – Ian Somerhalder • war with poison and chemicals was not so rare in the ancient world … An astounding panoply of toxic substances, venomous creatures, poison plants, animals and insects, deleterious environments, virulent pathogens, infectious agents, noxious gases, and combustible chemicals were marshalled to defeat foes – and panoply is an apt term here, because it is the ancient Greek word for ‘all weapons. – Adrienne Mayor • We blame Walt Disney for goldenrod’s undeserved bad name. Despite Sneezy’s pronouncement, plants such as goldenrod with heavy, insect-carried pollen rarely cause allergic reaction. – Janet Macunovich • We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act. – Charles Darwin • We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics. – Bill Vaughan • We know of no behavior in ants or any other social insects that can be construed as play. – Bert Holldobler • We ought never to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty. – Hugh Blair • We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts. – Rachel Carson • We’ve got a good inspection system in Arizona managing products that come from other parts of the county that could carry insects that could become problematic. – Carl E. Olson • What a difference that extra 120 ppm has made for plants, and for animals and humans that depend on them. The more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the more it is absorbed by plants of every description – – and the faster and better they grow, even under adverse conditions like limited water, extremely hot air temperatures, or infestations of insects, weeds and other pests. As trees, grasses, algae and crops grow more rapidly and become healthier and more robust, animals and humans enjoy better nutrition on a planet that is greener and greener. – Paul Driessen • What is more obscene: the idea that one can apologize for the hubris and deceit that is Obama and his health care, or the actual need some have for an apology from an entity so evil that he would toy with the lives of millions as though they were insects and he God? This is hard to tell. – Ilana Mercer • What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his? – Emile M. Cioran • When harvests are exuberant, joy and health follow in their train; but let delusive prosperity draw industry from agriculture; let an insiduous disease attack one of its important products; let an insect, or a parasite, fasten on a single esculent, and mark the effect upon commerce and human life. Upon such an event all business is deranged. – Elias Hasket Derby • When I see nature, when I look into the sky, the dawn, the sun, the colors of insects, snow crystals, the night stars, I don’t feel a need for God. Perhaps when I can no longer look and wonder, when I believe in nothing – then, perhaps, I might need something else. But I don’t know what. – Michelangelo Antonioni • When the moon shall have faded out from the sky, and the sun shall shine at noonday a dull cherry red, and the seas shall be frozen over, and the icecap shall have crept downward to the equator from either pole . . . when all the cities shall have long been dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen, growing on the bald rocks beside the eternal snows of Panama, shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antennae in the glow of the worn-out sun, the sole survivor of animal life on this our earth – a melancholy bug. – William Jacob Holland • When we mistake what we can know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation of one’s ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine. Once that leap has been made, one input follows another, so that when the synthetic nitrogen fed to plants makes them more attractive to insects and vulnerable to disease, as we have discovered, the farmer turns to chemical pesticides to fix his broken machine. – Michael Pollan • When we seed millions of acres of land with these plants, what happens to foraging birds, to insects, to microbes, to the other animals, when they come in contact and digest plants that are producing materials ranging from plastics to vaccines to pharmaceutical products? – Jeremy Rifkin • When we usually think of fears, in comics or in films, it’s most often fears on a relatively superficial level: fear of murderous insects, of ghosts, of zombies, or even fear of dying. – Boaz Lavie • While an ant was wandering under the shade of the tree of Phaeton, a drop of amber enveloped the tiny insect; thus she, who in life was disregarded, became precious by death. – Martial • Who has the right to decide that the supreme value is a world without insects even though it would be a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight. The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power. – Rachel Carson • Winding her arms close around his neck, she closed her eyes. To be embraced, safe in a man’s arms when she had never expected it to happen again, this would be enough.Time sheltered their embrace, enfolding them within a summer scented capsule that felt endless and theirs alone. The fragrance of grass and sunlight and nearby water sweetened each breath. Theirs was the music of birds ans the lazy buzz of insects and the beating of two hearts. Yes, she thought, she didn’t need more. This would be enough. – Maggie Osborne • Words can enhance experience, but they can also take so much away. We see an insect and at once we abstract certain characteristics and classify it – a fly. And in that very cognitive exercise, part of the wonder is gone. Once we have labeled the things around us we do not bother to look at them so carefully. Words are part of our rational selves, and to abandon them for a while is to give freer reign to our intuitive selves. – Jane Goodall • You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, the creature of a season. – Zhuangzi • You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying or inquisitive, not bent on seeing things. Throw away a whole day for a single expansion, a single inspiration of air. You must walk so gently as to hear the finest sounds, the faculties being in repose. Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. – Henry David Thoreau • You shall find books and sermons everywhere, in the land and in the sea, in the earth and in the skies, and you shall learn from every living beast, and bird, and fish, and insect, and from every useful or useless plant that springs from the ground. – Charles Spurgeon • You were just a boy on a bed in a room, like a kaleidoscope is a tube full of bits of broken glass. But the way I saw you was pieces refracting the light, shifting into an infinite universe of flowers and rainbows and insects and planets, magical dividing cells, pictures no one else knew. – Francesca Lia Block

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'e', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_e').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_e img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'i', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_i').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_i img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );