#we love. we are loved. this is human nature

[jasper-ontheoffbeat]

I’M UP HATING POP PSYCHOLOGY. MEMEME

to be more serious: i have empathy for the urge to compartmentalize like this. genuinely, i do— for some, processing trauma feels easier when there are ready-made labels for the things/people that hurt them. i so deeply understand the urge to file away overwhelming chaos; to make sense of the cruel and senseless; to be comforted by pop psych “gotcha” moments and cling to categorizations. i know what it feels like to try to neatly reorganize broken self-concepts and horrifying histories. i’ve dealt with this exact issue myself.

that being said… unfortunately, it just. doesn’t. work.

automatically slapping warning labels on ASPD, NPD, BPD, etc is simply not fair nor accurate. the nuances shouldn’t be ignored: does the concept that mental health matters come with conditions? does furthering the stigma really empower victims, or does it drive offenders away from self-awareness and recovery? does it really help to boil human behavior down to lists and labels, or does it just skew our perceptions of ourselves and others even further? is it productive to focus on condensing things, or should we ultimately focus on understanding the complexities that make generalization ultimately impossible?

this is NOT to say that ANYONE has to entertain or forgive abusive people. not at ALL. i’m also not saying those who don’t care to improve should be forgiven and/or granted the opportunity to keep treating others poorly. there is a stark a difference between acknowledging nuance and normalizing/excusing abuse— you can express pain without making harmful blanket statements. in fact, it’s straight up ignorant to disregard those who are working their asses off in recovery. these disorders can be uniquely challenging to live with, and stigma makes everything 10x worse, especially when trauma, defensiveness, and self-hatred are inseparable from disordered beliefs/behaviors. you have EVERY right to cut off shitty individuals and despise them and feel rage and do whatever you need to do to heal— at the same time, people who present in malignant ways won’t get any better if they’re universally met with hostility. after all, 99% of the time, recovery seems like a far better outcome than total shunning. wouldn’t it be so much better if these people had safe spaces in which they could to learn to never abuse other humans again, and to develop healthier self-concepts?

(i say this as someone who’s been abused horribly countless times by people who present like this, developed BPD as a result, and gone through wild amounts of intensive therapy. i no longer meet the criteria for BPD.)

(of course, there are some acts that are UNFORGIVABLE. those require a… unique approach. i don’t feel qualified to go into that territory because personal experiences have left me way too biased; just know that i don’t mean to erase that line.)

also, re: MBTI/love language/brain development/brain gendering/dark empathy/blah blah blah: the same principle applies. individuals’ psychological makeups and backgrounds are too complex to accurately box in. that is the nature of the human condition, and even though it gets overwhelming, at the end of the day, it’s beautiful! there is no linear pathway for anything, and that is a GOOD thing! at best, all of those words can provide useful loose blueprints for furthering introspection; at worst, they create interpersonal divides that are either based on faulty assumptions or entirely non-existent.

we don’t have to fit into boxes to find community. it’s fine to use things like MBTI and love languages as cute, unweighted bonding tools, BUT in order to truly understand each other’s wants, needs, traits, and issues, we simply need to COMMUNICATE. no matter how isolated we feel in our struggles, WE ARE NOT ALONE. we are all mosaics of the experiences that have shaped us, and we each deserve to be understood as works of art, not as sums of our most basic parts.

tl;dr pop psychology egregiously simplifies human behavior and it is Not helpful as it seems

who up hating pop psychology

[thewisedoge]

Jim Carrey's performance as Gerald Robotnik. (A short analysis)

After like a month of Sonic 3 being out and seeing all the love that everyone is throwing at it. (Including me)

I think we're overlooking how good of an actor Jim Carrey really is in it... Specifically with how he played Gerald.

I think the big part of why I think his performance worked so well was the buildup to the reveal of his true intentions and what he really thinks about Ivo as a grandson.

Once they're at the ARK and arrive at the Eclipse Cannon... You can't help but notice the classic Jim Carrey snark and insanity in his voice... is gone. Not only that, if you look closely at how he acts, his entire demeanor has changed.

Specifically you can notice this when the ARK is released and starts rising up into space, Ivo raises his hand for a high five, y'know from his good old grand genome. But... Gerald doesn't notice or is outright ignoring it.

I know this scene is mainly played for laughs but I really think it was smart to have Gerald become cold hearted and stone faced once he's SO CLOSE to achieving his goal. To avenging his dear granddaughter.

Now throughout the films its basically a big joke that the Eggmen is basically insane. Not only that, they're both AWARE they're insane. But in those films it felt more like an obligation for both Eggman's character and the fact he's played by Jim Carrey.

But once Gerald reveals the true power of the Eclipse Cannon and what he plans to do with it. Even EGGMAN of all people is shocked.

I mean, look at the stark contrast of expression between the two.

DOES THIS LOOKS LIKE THE FACE OF SOMEONE WHO IS OKAY WITH THE EVENTS THAT ARE UNFOLDING?

It's a running theme in the games that Eggman wants to rule the world, not destroy it, so it's really cool to see them adapt that into the film as well.

Speaking of adapting things from the games. It's very well known that this game is based on Sonic Adventure 2. But what I didn't expect them to do was to adapt a lore detail that was introduced in the RECENT games... and that is the extra depth added to Eggman.

In Sonic Frontiers, it's revealed in one of the many Egg Memos you can buy from the fishing minigame that once Maria was killed by the GUN soldier on the arc, everyone was mourning the loss of her life... Neglecting young Ivo in the process.

Now I know the Sonic fandom is divided on Ian Flynn as a writer for the franchise, but this has got to be one of the funniest but saddest things he's written for a character.

Like, it'd be natural to assume a character like Eggman to have daddy issues, but if you made it work alongside but emphasizing the sheer weight and impact of another one of the saddest moments in the series. It's really good writing.

In the movie, they basically take inspiration from this and adapt it to work with Gerald's villainous breakdown. Not only that. They casually just write one of the most heartbreaking and shocking scenes to come out of these movies.

It's kind of hard to explain so I'll just write it out using screencaps from the scene lol.

"WHAT!?!"

(laughing) "WE CAN'T ANNIHILATE THE EARTH!"

(this reaction shot SEALS it. It's like Gerald's admiring that despite his grandson's intellect. He's still incredibly naive and blinded by sentiment.)

"By combining our genus we can rule humanity! Together!"

"Humanity is a failed experiment! If anyone should know that it's you."

"All your life you've been rejected by this world. You have nothing down there. No one who cares about you."

"..." "... But I have you now."

"..." "... We're family. We have each other!"

"Oh Ivo..."

(Once again I have to praise Jim Carrey's acting in this scene. Look at the body language, how his eyes move. He looks at Ivo up and down... As if he's reminiscing. Stuck between that state utter comparison and grief. Standing in front of him is someone of his own flesh and blood. Someone who loves him... But Gerald is too overcome by his own insanity, grief and hatred towards humanity. He can't see that anymore. All he can see anytime he looks at Ivo... is her. So he then utters. By far the best line in the movie.)

"You're no Maria."

I mean...

LOOK. AT HIS FACE.

LOOK AT IT!!

Imagine being Ivo in this moment, after years of being neglected, belittled and bullied by schoolmates. You finally find someone who seems at first to genuinely care about you... Only to find out he... Was just like everyone else.

"The moment I lost her my family was GONE FOREVER."

Okay, my one big criticism with this movie is the fact Gerald doesn't see Shadow like a son to him. I can see why they made Gerald the big bad of the movie so Shadow could come back in future installments as a protagonist. So I guess Gerald having to be a manipulative POS will have to do.

"The only way to give Maria's life meaning is to destroy the world that took her from me!"

"SO I'M BURNING IT ALL DOWN!!!"

It's criminal how most of the criticism and the division on this movie comes from the amount of Eggman shenanigans in it. But I can't help but love it since the emotional core becomes strong near the end and has been built up between the love fans have for Eggman in the movies and it was interesting seeing an Eggman centered character arc of him having to choose between blood family or... uh.

His boyfriend. I'm sorry.

There's literally no other term for a relationship like this. "Henchman" my ass. THEY SWAPPED SALIVA I JUST KNOW IT.

Anyway. Yeah. Sonic 3 is really good not just from a game accurate or a fan pleasing perspective, but from a writing perspective as well. Jim Carry as Gerald needs more recognition.

[distort-opia]

There's a fascinating aspect of Ellen's character that I've seen some people touch on before, but now that it got into my head I need to go through to it too-- her nature not being of human kind. It's actually one of the very first things Orlok himself says: that Ellen is not human, and he reasserts it later. But then what is she?

"Almost a sylph," Knock says of Ellen. "His little changeling girl," Ellen says her father had described her as, when she wandered off into the forest as a child. "You mustn't be caught up in her fairy ways," Harding admonishes Anna. Hell, in the 2016 script, when the Hardings accompany Ellen on her walk along the sea shore, she and the children dance in a circle while Ellen cries out "round and round the fairy ring". Furthermore, there's more than one explicit reference to Ellen loving the sea in the scripts. Prior to the sea shore walk, Ellen fervently asks Anna to go there, because "it calms her". Later on, Anna herself says that "she loves the sea so". While this didn't make it to the movie in such direct terms, we still see Ellen looking out windows and yearning, again and again... visiting the sea twice, having a seizure in the water itself. "Look at the sky! Look at the sea! Does it never call to you? Urge you?" she cries to Anna.

It's clearly an intentional implication on Eggers' part: that Ellen is some kind of fairy-like nature elemental. The term sylph originates from the works of Paracelsus, and described as a female air spirit, though over time water has been conflated with it too. Changeling also refers to a child kidnapped by supernatural beings (interestingly birthed by the Devil or a water spirit among others, in German mythology) and replaced with... something else. And we could leave it at that-- Ellen is not entirely human. She was born with witchy and fae-like characteristics, an attraction to the wind and the sea.

When she called out in the dark, it's possible Orlok answered also because he recognized this within her. But. There is a type of female nature spirit in Romanian folklore (which ultimately pervades the mythology of Nosferatu) that has specific parallels and a particular relationship to the Solomonar, the kind of sorcerer/supernatural creature Orlok was in life. It feeds into the overarching theme of destiny and fate so beautifully. I find it all very interesting, but I got pretty long already, so I'll put the rest under the cut.

Female nature spirits can be found all over the place in European folklore, and Romania is no different. They can have many names, though the most popular one is probably iele, a name that is literally derived from the female plural "ele". Iele are fae-like feminine spirits associated with the winds and the sky, often seducing and luring men away. What attracted my attention though, is the variation/subtype of vântoase (root word vânt = wind) or the associated vâlvă. In some accounts [1], this supernatural creature is a marked human who was born with the capacity for their spirit to leave their body at night and then go towards the sky, where they wrestle with other vâlve or balauri (which are a Romanian mythical equivalent of dragons, alongside zmei). Their fights are said to be what cause storms, and rains, and other catastrophe-related weather events. When put in contrast with Ellen, the similarities are obvious... especially when it comes to her affinity for nature and her spirit "wandering off". It also must be emphasized that these spirits are not inherently evil: they can do both good and bad, bring luck or misfortune, aligning with Ellen saying that "her spirit cannot be as evil as his [Orlok's]" and that all her life she has "simply heeded her own nature".

But the thing is... a marked human born with powers is also what a Solomonar is: children able to control the weather, ride balauri or zmei, control and turn into different animals-- who are then recruited by the Devil into the school of Șolomanță/Scholomance. Although despite this demonic current association, initially Solomonari were also more of a neutral figure in Romanian folklore. They are theorized, among other hypotheses, to be a later version of Geto-Dacian ktistai, who were selected from priests or kings (Orlok is a count, a prince or voivode) and might've worshipped Zamolxe, a Geto-Dacian God associated with the sky as well as immortality (Ancient Dacian is what Orlok speaks; Zamolxe is written within Orlok's heptagram sigil; on his coat of arms, sigil and coffin there's Dacian wolves as well as balauri-- a serpent-like creature with the head of a wolf which is on the Dacian flag). Some Solomonari were believed to be protecting villages from calamity, and influenced the weather in order to grow crops more easily. But of course, when Christianity spread in the region, things from Pagan times began to be associated with the Devil, hence why the Christian Orthodox Abbess we see in the Nosferatu movie calls Orlok a "black enchanter". More importantly for us though, the Solomonar was also said to leave their body at night in a trance, riding up into the sky to fight the weather spirits. Orlok's Shadow, that we hear so much about, is an integral part of a Solomonar's powers: the ability to project one's spirit away from their body. Them riding balauri is a metaphor for them taming winds, summoning vântoase.

So. Vâlvă, vântoasă, ială and Solomonar share quite a lot of characteristics, don't they? A source I found made the comparison directly, which is what set me on this path [1]. Humans born with powers-- one typically male, one female. But the male one is schooled and part of a cult or hierarchy, taking control of the nature element, while the vâlvă/vântoasă/ială is the nature element.

Yet the expected dynamic between summoner and summoned is so deliciously subverted with Ellen and Orlok! Orlok definitely recognized someone of his own nature in Ellen. Someone born with magic, essentially. Someone not of human kind. But Ellen's power is something Orlok's kind traditionally controls. A Solomonar tames and summons the winds (vântoasele)... and don't we see Orlok's spirit call to Ellen more than once? Orlok asserts his influence through the lilac-scented lock of hair, latching onto Ellen through it. He trespasses in Ellen's dreams, brings her spirit to him in the Castle when he feeds on Thomas, and we see her naked and on top of Thomas too, eerie and with blood spilling out of her mouth (very female-spirit-who-preys-upon-men coded, which is even more directly spelled out later in the scene where Ellen provokes Thomas into having sex with her). All along, we see Ellen overcome by seizures and trances, writhing under Orlok's Shadow. This is the power he has over her.

Hah. But Orlok is not just a Solomonar, Ellen is not just a spirit of the wind, and here's where I think another fascinating layer comes in. In the movie, ultimately, Orlok is a strigoi. The strigoi is a Romanian folk creature that can be vampiric, though that's not always what it does. It's a troubled spirit that rises from the grave to prey upon the living (especially their loved ones, to whom they return to first), by eating/killing their animals, poisoning their crops, drinking their blood and creating all manner of disaster. One can become a strigoi in many ways, including a life of sin, suicide, being cursed by a witch, etc. But importantly, there's also two types of strigoi-- the alive strigoi, and the dead strigoi [2]. The alive type is a sorcerer who in life already slips into these evil behaviors with intent, while the dead type rises from the grave and mindlessly feeds upon their loved ones and their village (the revenant we see killed by the Romani vampire hunter in the film). Orlok is a mix of things that make him unique, much like how Dracula was described as atypical multiple times in Bram Stoker's novel. He was a sorcerer and a Solomonar in life (an alive strigoi, something a source from the 19th century asserted-- that Solomonari were strigoi), who was then risen from the grave by a witch (becoming a dead strigoi). As a result, he has retained all his mental faculties and his magical powers.

But the enchantress who calls upon Orlok as a strigoi is partly an air elemental. She caused him to rise from the grave, and that is how she asserts her power over him. Yet she's of the air, of the wind, of the sea... all the things a Solomonar is a master of! So I think this is a contributing factor to the Covenant Orlok makes with Ellen. When they first meet there is not only recognition of someone similar to himself ("You... You..."), but also of a specific connection between what the two of them are. He immediately seeks a Covenant with Ellen, and then when she breaks it, comes after her in person. When they first talk and Ellen rejects him, he says "You will submit."

As Eggers pointed out too, there is a huge need for possession on Orlok's side. It's left ambiguous if he wants to own her or destroy her or if he loves her... To me, this added aspect illuminates a big part of why Orlok also resents Ellen ("You are my affliction"). It isn't just that a woman has him in her thrall, a man and a Lord who wielded great power in life-- but also that she is air, a vântoasă, the element of his dominion. It's so delicious how there's a bidirectional supernatural element between them... Orlok may feel he is owed possession of Ellen, with the deeper layer of the male sorcerer taming the unknowable chaotic female elemental. But Orlok is a strigoi risen from the grave by Ellen as an enchantress, hence she is owed possession of him as her summoned Creature. So there's two tethers between them, each connected to a different aspect of their natures; Orlok is holding one end, Ellen is holding the other. (To be honest, my headcanon is that when we see Ellen levitate, that's not Orlok, it's her air-related power. She levitates upwards in the very first scene of the film right as Orlok says she isn't human, as if it's a manifestation of that. When Orlok feeds on Thomas and she is there in spirit, we see them levitate; except it's Ellen we see fall down to the ground, while Orlok and Thomas are shown to have always been on the ground. And in every scene with Orlok in person, it could be that she gets on her tiptoes progressively to get closer and closer to his face; but it also looks as if she's floating upwards.)

This ended up a way too long honest-to-God essay, but I just adore all the complexities of this movie. You can tell how much Eggers researched, how many details and references he wove into the story, all meant to connect but kept ambigous enough that multiple theories are possible. While the association between Solomonar and strigoi and vampire was something Stoker did too, that Murnau did too, none of them thought to take it as far as creating a connection to Ellen steeped also in folklore. The vampire has a supernatural hold over his bride, but now so does she. The Enchantress summons the undead Strigoi, the Solomonar summons the Vântoasă. How much more fated can you get?

I'm supplying two more in-depth sources I used below as downloadable pdfs, but fair warning, they're in Romanian:

[1] Mituri pluviale românești în context universal, Silvia Ciubotaru

[2] Șapte Eseuri Despre Strigoi, Marineasa, 1998

[ippipo]

self aware caleb

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

it was crazy. but it was fun. every weekday as soon as you were back home, you would call him and go about your day. doing the laundry, making dinner, cleaning the house, it just came to you naturally with caleb. it was all so domestic.

"yeah, and she was deranged the entire summer," you gossip with him. "and he kept spreading rumours that he was being abused by his ex to get her attention."

"weird way to get a girl," he remarks. "so fucking weird," you add.

"anyway, how's life in your gameland?" you ask, earning a sigh in response. "it's alright, playing out of script is so much better," he replies.

"i wish you were here," you let it out, the longing for a companion getting to you. "me too," he frowns.

the weekend was slow and slightly relieving because you got all the time in the world to relax. holidays were on their way in a bit, and you were so excited to spend it by doing nothing with caleb.

caleb would sometimes monitor your phone, using it to listen to music from your world and play games. sometimes he would search random things about humans on earth on google just for the sake of it. he couldn't care less about anyone except you.

but one day, he stumbled upon your notes app. he didn't know you used it as a journal, and accidentally opened a note of yours.

it was a note from when you were 13. the language wasn't too advanced but for a 13 year old, it was pretty great. he felt bad for invading your privacy, but he noticed the word 'boyfriend' and became curious.

p.s. this is an actual entry of mine from when i was 13 lmao

"dear notes (idk what to call you lol),

i finally got a boyfriend after a thousand years of waiting. he's a little ugly but he's funny, so it's okay. he is shorter than me but he looks pretty, so plus point. we nearly kissed today but i wanted to wait until i turned 16. but in case i end up realising he's too boring for me, this is what i want in a boy.

he should be taller, hotter, stronger, and waaaay more intelligent than these bozos at my school. please make him rich and fancy. i want generational wealth, not trauma. but even if he isn't rich, don't make him ugly and boring, guys at school already do that. if the spirits can see this, i swear to never kiss anyone until i turn 18,

thank you."

he was giggling like a school girl after reading it. he was so invested in reading some of your other notes until he heard your voice. you were arguing with someone, and he couldn't help but eavesdrop.

"no, i told you that i don't like her. she gives me the heebie jeebies," your voice booms in the room. "but she taught you in 6th grade, be nice and just meet her. her son is your age too, maybe you'll finally find someone to date!" an older woman's voice spoke.

caleb felt uncomfortable with the idea of you looking for someone to date. it didn't sit right with him. he shakes the thoughts away and focuses back on the conversation.

"her son is literally dating my friend," you deadpan. your mom, as he assumes her to be, is dumbfounded. "but be respectful and meet her for the love of god," your mom snaps at you. "she used to literally pick on me, if she died, i would wish everyone a happy new year," this remark of yours makes him snort.

".....y/n, do you have a pig in your house?" your mom questions you suspiciously, making caleb freeze. "no? uh...that was just- i farted!" you immediately cover up. caleb was trying so hard not to laugh. "i keep telling you to exercise to control gas but you never listen. did you know how happy i felt when you left for college because i didn't have to bear with the constant farting at home?" your mom nags.

you panic internally, not wanting caleb to hear about this part of your life. you wanted to crawl into a coffin and bury yourself alive. "it's just a natural process, mom. please, just go home now. i need to complete some work."

as soon as your mom leaves, you pick up your phone. "now listen here you piece of shit, you heard nothing, not even a single damn word," you aggressively tell him. "yes, ma'am," he responds from the other side. "but, i recently heard about someone having a farting problem, although i don't know who."

"caleb!" you warn him. you bury your head in your hands from the shame. he laughs out loud at this.

a few minutes later, he remembers what he did, guilty consuming him. "hey, uh, listen," he nervously calls out. "i might have accidentally read your notes, i didn't mean to. i'm so sorry," he frantically apologizes. great, another reason to kill yourself today.

"...what did you read?" you ask helplessly. "just something from when you were thirteen, about your boyfriend and stuff," he replies casually, as if he didn't just read about your inner demons. "it was cute," he remarks.

"caleb, my love, snoop around the notes app again and i'll make sure you don't see the light of day," you threaten him. he apologizes again, but was slightly amused. "i just hope nothing more embarrassing happens after this or i might just jump off the terrace," you groan.

later that night while caleb was once again, unfortunately curious, snooping around your phone. he was just finding out about different apps. he was about to listen to some music when he heard a gasp. alarmed, he began paying attention to the sound, thinking you were in trouble.

"oh, fuck!" you moan out loud when your vibrator's intensity increases. your body convulsing at the stimulation your clit was receiving. your soft gasps were ever so clear to him. his entire body begins warming up, his pants making him uncomfortable.

he intently listens to your whimpers and whines, imagining how it would be to eat you out. devour you fully and deeply till you're nothing but a beautiful mess, all because of him. his boner getting more painful as time passes by, but he just can't stop listening.

it gets worse when he hears your moans getting louder, indicating your climax. good lord, he was so in trouble right now.

if you knew he could hear every little sound you were making, you might have just gone along your earlier statement.

[realityhop]

"Its not that the people are in charge but that the people's desires are in charge." — Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations, The Century of the Self - Part 4 (2002) 53:14

"[Wilhelm] Reich argued that it is abuse if one’s sexuality is repressed or one’s sexual desires are left unaffirmed. Reich agreed with Freud that our sexual well-being is based on our sexual satisfaction. If these needs are not met, Reich suggested, one is oppressed. … This remarkable transition of abuse from well-being, particularly that of the body, to the psychological and the mental has had dramatic effects. People are left without any way to guide their moral judgments other than with their emotions, and those emotions are protected at all costs because not to protect them would be abusive." — Carrie Gress, The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us (2023)

"And we are all used to experiencing the sort of mindless joy (which secretly conceals an abysmal emptiness) that accompanies buying anything; when pleasure, permission, and happiness are, for a fleeting moment, determined not by our own mind, but mediated by the purchase. Likewise, we know the same trick can be performed with sexual gratification. It can be reduced to a commodity, in which gazing at an objectified starlet in a film is part of “enjoying” the film. Unconsciously, we have bought permission to leer. … The manufactured impostor not only thrives on what once fed the real need, but attempts to murder its rivals by extinguishing desires for genuine experience." — Dale Beran, It Came From Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office (2019)

"From a brain structure perspective, the nucleus accumbens appears to be an area in the brain that activates in men an involuntary, biological response to the female image. Something happens in his brain in response to the female form." — Emerson Eggerichs, Mother and Son: The Respect Effect (2016)

"A motivating principle of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation was its correction of Roman Catholicism’s heavy use of images in medieval churches—in statues, paintings, and stained-glass windows. The Protestant reformers reasserted the Ten Commandments’ ban on graven images, idolatrous objects that seduce the soul away from the immaterial divine. The Puritans, a separatist sect that seceded from the too-Catholic Church of England, followed the Reformation imperative of putting the Bible at the center of their faith. … The Puritans’ attitude toward art was conditioned by utilitarian principles of frugality and propriety: art had no inherent purpose except as entertainment, a distraction from duty and ethical action. The Puritans did appreciate beauty in nature, which was “read” like a book for signs of God’s providence. The social environment in England from which the Puritans had emigrated to America (either directly or indirectly via the Netherlands) was overtly iconoclastic." — Camille Paglia, Religion and the Arts in America (2007) in Provocations

"No females allowed, lest they tempt the monks to think sinful thoughts." — Molly Worthen, The Great Courses - The History of Christianity II: Eastern Orthodoxy: From Byzantium to Russia (2017) on Kanopy

"If a rational calculation of utility demands sacrificing something I love – a human being, a non-human animal, a work of art – then to hell with reason and utility." — John N. Gray, Nietzsche, narwhals and the burden of consciousness (Jan 4 2023)

"Perhaps the ultimate horror of a desire is to be fully filled-in, met, so that I desire no longer. The ultimate melancholic experience is the experience of a loss of desire itself." — Slavoj Žižek in Perverts Guide to Ideology (2013)

"The trouble is that we are, unless we are careful, flooded with images from outside, particularly ones that stimulate our desire." — Nina Power, What Do Men Want?: Masculinity and Its Discontents (2022)

could consider this a sequel to this post (2023)

Hylas and the Water Nymphs by Henrietta Rae (1909)

[angelseraphines]

ೃ⁀➷ velvet crowbar ˗ˏˋ꒰ 🦢 ꒱

╰┈➤ berlin x lover!reader headcanons

¡!being berlin’s significant other would include¡!

a/n: i would like to give a special thank you to @lumillsie for the layout of this post and for the filter used on the header!

╰┈➤ berlin is immediately captivated by your appearance. there’s a rare elegance about you, an understated beauty that commands attention without trying. it’s unlike anything he’s encountered, and it draws him in effortlessly, leaving him interested to know more.

╰┈➤ while your beauty enthralls him, it’s your wit and charm that truly ensnare him. you have a way with words, a sharpness to your intellect that leaves him yearning for deeper conversations and a desire to unravel every aspect of who you are. you become an enigma he’s determined to solve.

╰┈➤ berlin’s nature is cold and unyielding, a result of two decades spent in the unforgiving confines of a north korean prison camp. his past is a tightly locked door, one he refuses to open at first. it isn’t a matter of trust, it’s his way of protecting himself from a pain he refuses to relive.

╰┈➤ dating berlin is nothing short of extravagant. he has a taste for the finer things in life, and he spares no expense in showing you that. lavish dinners, exclusive outings, and opulent gifts are all part of the experience. his funds, after all, seem endless, given the spoils of his opulent career.

╰┈➤ at the beginning, berlin is purposefully vague about his work. he deceives his around the truth with charisma and calculated deflections. when he finally reveals his identity, a high-profile criminal and a key member of his brother’s gang, you’re understandably shocked. but your love for him is more potent than your fear. he makes it clear that betrayal is not an option, his warning softened by the lingering heat of a kiss that leaves no room for doubt.

╰┈➤ his jealousy is a force of nature, impossible to contain. when he introduces you to his crew, it’s denver’s passing glances and rio’s inappropriate comments that instantly set him off. but what truly unsettles him is your bond with the professor, his brother. there’s something about how easily you and the professor connect, sharing moments outside of berlin’s presence, that claws away at him. he despises the idea of not being the sole center of your world, his need for control over both you and his relationships simmering beneath his polished exterior.

╰┈➤ berlin insists on having you by his side at all times, your presence a source of grounding and pride for him. though he would never risk your safety by involving you in the criminal work of his team, you are always there, his hand firmly holding yours, or you standing beside him, your hand resting on his shoulder, a quiet gesture of his authority and your loyalty. you speak in his defense or offer support when needed, an unspoken understanding between you both. despite your non-involvement in their activities, berlin bestows upon you your own city codename, kabul. it is a choice made with care, reflecting his regard for you and cementing your place within his world.

╰┈➤ there are instances when berlin’s volatile nature becomes a challenge. his mind, scarred by years of torment and isolation, is not entirely stable. his temper flares, and though his anger can be terrifying, he never directs it to harm you intentionally. when the storm within him finally subsides, he is left stricken with guilt, his apologies sincere as he cups your face, searching for forgiveness in your tear-filled eyes. seeing the hurt he has caused tears at whatever remains of his hardened heart, and he vows to try and control himself for your sake.

╰┈➤ the gang is stunned by your existence. berlin has always been a man of logic and control, a figure immune to sentiment or attachment. yet here you are, the one person who has unraveled him, proving that even he possesses a sliver of humanity buried beneath his cold, calculated exterior. you are his achilles’ heel, the one weakness that could undo him, and yet he clings to you as fiercely as he clings to life itself.

╰┈➤ berlin is unapologetically affectionate toward you, even in front of the other gang members. whether it’s pulling you into his lap during a quiet moment, brushing his fingers over your cheek, or pressing an unabashed kiss to your lips as if no one else exists, his displays of affection are bold and deliberate. he wants everyone to know you belong to him and, more importantly, that he belongs to you.

╰┈➤ as planning for the heist begins, you are present for every discussion and strategy session, a silent observer in the shadows of their grand designs. while you outwardly support berlin, deep down, you are uneasy about the plan’s immense scale and the inevitable danger it poses to him. yet you know berlin too well to argue, once his mind is set, there is no persuading him. all you can do is pray that his brilliance and luck will see him through safely.

╰┈➤ for the professor, your presence is an anomaly he hadn’t accounted for. in his meticulous calculations, you are the crack that threatens to destabilize his perfect plan. before the heist begins, he warns you in no uncertain terms, you are not to contact berlin under any circumstances. when the time comes, you will receive specific instructions, and you are expected to follow them to the letter. but that isn’t enough for you. the thought of being kept apart from berlin, especially in the face of such danger, fills you with dread, and you can’t shake the desperate need to protect him, no matter the cost.

a/n: let me know your thoughts or if you have anymore requests!! also part two to scarface is coming soon!! 🤍

[cupcake669]

I really like the "slutty hippy cult leader Viktor" agenda we have going on in the fanarts buuuut i have another idea for your consideration:

oblivious Viktor + "going insane" Jayce + ecchi anime style shenaningans

I am talking about Jayce falling head first into Viktor's chest, getting stuck together in cramped spaces, Viktor's robes slipping from time to time...and let's not forget his exposed sides and back.

In this fever dream of mine, Jayce joins the compound trying to save the world but gets crazier by the minute because his partner is just so damn pretty and Viktor is entirely unaware of it!

Everyday is a new kind of torture for Jayce. And listen, its not like his attraction towards Viktor is new, oh no, he has been fighting with the demons of bisexuality and unrequitted love for ages and he was doing okeyish. But now Viktor is showing TOO MUCH SKIN (thinks Jayce, like a sheltered victorian who sees ankles for the first time) and even worse: everyone gets to look at it too! Viktor's cult is basically his fanclub and Jayce is their number 1 hater.

Meanwhile Viktor is just happy he has Jayce by his side. He loves him ofc, but there is no way Jayce would like him back. Yes, he might be healthy now, but Jayce doesnt like men (he aint winning prizes for that one) and his body is altered, not human anymore. It's functional and exceptional is some ways, but not attractive in the slightest. Which is fine, because he doesnt need that of course! Why would he? He had time to accept his forever fruitless love towards Jayce, no need to get sentimental about it now!

And yet...strange situations keep happening between the two of them. Everytime they get close Jayce gets visibly uncomfortable. Sometimes he thinks that he can sense Jayce looking at him, but when he looks back Jayce averts his eyes. Is it guilt? Is it disgust? Oh that could be...especially because Jayce used to touch him a lot, in a friendly way mind you, but still. Now he tries to avoid touching Viktor as much as possible. Viktor thinks its natural, he shouldnt expect anything else. But still...everytime they touch by chance, he wishes that it would never end. Its a selfish, unreasonable desire, something he should have left behind with his old, human body... but he just cant help it.

And so they are in a strange limbo, the two of them. Pretending everything is fine, healing others, bearing the weight of the world on their shoulders and having to dance around each other in a way they are not familiar with.

The accidents that bring them together keep increasing. Is the arcane reacting to Viktor's deepest desire or they just naturally gravitate towards the other? Maybe both, maybe neither. Maybe its just the will of an old, tired mage who needs a little bit of entertainment in his life.

[thatbitchery]

Soooooo children , you remember how I've built this entire Tumblr thing on debunking myths and giving you the truth? Let's do some of that today. While finally answering - okay if your ADHD is that bad how do you get things done.

First, again, if you don't know what minors to take in uni or as a side class or online class or whatever consider evolutionary psychology and human Intelligence. It's the manual to human beings. It's the bad bitch code.

You know how *find your WhY* doesn't work. How finding why you're doing something works for a week then just, drops?? Yeah because that's not how it works. At all. Human beings don't work on purpose we work on urgency. It doesn't matter what you want to do it matters what you need to do. Urgency >> want. Survival species, my love . Survival. Adaptation. You see it. You see it, you see what I'm saying? Exactly. We work on pressure and stress you can not actually have a 'soft life' it'll literally kill you. Why doesn't matter, it's what has the most urgency at this moment?? EVERYONE works best under pressure it's nature. I'm saying, apply pressure.

Problem with that is psychologically speaking it's exhausting because it's a Fight / Flight response and it cant be permanent. Eventually the stressor will run out and you will crash again. Also do you really want to always be under pressure? Obviously not. This is where we automate. Then pressure or no pressure you perform. But this isn't about that this is about the sister to - find your why. It's called :-

Find your what.

Remember like a week ago when I said your problem is you want beef but you're eating the chicken so you have no space left for beef and you're full but not satisfied. You're full yes. Both is meat. But are you satisfied?

The beef is the what.

Here is the thing- you want beef. That's what you want , you want to have beef. Sometimes you're in a vegans house and you can't have beef that's okay you say thanks for the greens gobble them down. Sometimes you get some lamb chops you thank heaven and have them. That doesn't take away the fact that you wanted beef. They could make you full, yes. And even maybe taste great. But. But. Did they satisfy you? Nope. It's not what you wanted. Sometimes you have beef say okay I'll go for some duck for now I've had too much beef. I like it but I'll take duck. Have your duck. Does that mean it's not beef you want? Even when you have consciously chosen to not have beef when it was RIGHT THERE? exactly.

The beef is the what. When I say find your what I'm saying find your beef. I'm saying find the thing you will keep going back to, that you want.

So. Music is your thing. You wanted to be a performer. Mom said look you have to do medicine. Alright that's duck right there. Will you ever regret studying medicine? Of course not. Which has a higher stability and safety option ? Yes medicine. So obviously as someone with a working brain you say thanks mom and go to med school. Med school is duck. It's good. You like it. You chose it. Or it's broccoli- you didn't choose it. Matter of fact you'd have rather not had it but you didn't want to be rude. Still, you will be having it. But what do you want?? You want to be a performer. So we accept with a career in medicine if you even want a foot in the vicinity you have to have a super clean image, and most people performing is low level shit and you will get bullied. This IS an either or kind of situation. It's one or the other you can't be both Tyla and House. What do we do?

We get a guitar and pull a rhianne in our rooms . We get Bandlab and those podcast mics that are so accessible and that keyboard looking thing and we pull and Aryan Shah or whatever his name is. Make your music, faceless, put it on whatever platforms and make your money and get your med school.

See how you are still having your beef alongside the duck ) broccolli?? See how you can have it all? See how you can- I'll study these chapters then when I'm done I'll make a song and upload a masked version? I'll dance in my room with a mask on? Or cap? Or- do you see it? See how that works?

When you come to me my one and only question is - WHAT DO YOU WANT. not what's right. Not what's noble. Not what's acceptable. Not what that morality police in your head is saying you should do. Not what your shame says- I don't caree. What I care is. WHAT DO YOU WANT. that's all I need to know. We are the new kids we can have it all don't worry I'll find a way around it. What. Find your what. Not WHY. WHAT.

Because one way or the other your body will rush to the what that it picks urgency from. And until you fulfil that Nothing, NOTHING else will get done. If watching that BTS live is what you want I promise you you won't be able to focus in class. Because shame and responsibilities are superficial and unnatural and your body is natural it will go where it wants you will digest Nothing, NOTHING until you watch that one MV. You will do Nothing else until whatever your body WANTS and deems urgent is done so. WHAT DO YOU WANT.

That's how you get shit done. Get the want taken care of then we can do needs. First get that beef and have like three bites THEN you can get the veggies in. Or know there's beef at home so have your two bites of duck then head home. The beef . That beef. What's your beef? What do you want?? Work from that. Plan your entire life from that point. Because it's whats urgent to your body and until it gets done or considering everything else will fail.

Automation requires power dynamics and reward / punishment model. You can not automate by yourself. You can't do it with your bestie mom BLA BLA you need fear and the reward has to be normality. Go pay someone a weird amount of money to bully you into it.

Get the WHAT first. Then everything else will follow. No nobility or shame or responsibility or morality or guilt or willpower or discipline or whatever will not hold long term and you know thissssss you know thisss you've been here before. Before you are a person- you are an animal. Whether you want to or not you will function like one no amount of anything will take this away. You are hedonistic by nature you will chase desire & also surviving by nature you will prioritize urgency no you can't David Goggins your way out of this. Have you been able to?? How old are you? In all your life have you been able to????????????

I know what your mom said. And teachers. And that one YouTuber you go to for SeLf iMprOveMenT as if you're some project said yes I know it sounds true I know but. But. Listen to me .mother , mother knows best. :)

[hopepunk-humanity]

I know in real life i often wax pompous and poetic about this experience i had, but I'm still going to share it here.

a couple years ago, I'd gone to my first out of state electronic music festival. I was nervous about potentially feeling out of place or unwanted, given it was at the time the biggest festival I'd ever been to. There was a short amount of time where me, a friend at the time, and my fiancee had all ducked into an air conditioned tent to cool down in, escape the sun, and decompress. Everyone that was in there graciously welcomed us and anyone else that came in the doors. After we found a place to flop our tired bodies down, I'd noticed that the folks in there were clearly all complete strangers

and yet

everyone was fanning one another, offering water and whatever snacks they got from the food trucks, trading kandi bracelets and trinkets, and chatting away about anything and nothing.

in that moment I'd felt such a profound sense of community and oneness, where everyone was caring for each other like family, that I damn near cried.

this is all longform to say that community and love is out there and to never give up, even if it means going outside your usual routine and fields of comfort (within reason.)

That's something that makes me hopeful about humanity. It seems that making community is a natural behavior for us. All it takes is a shared location (air-conditioned tent) and maybe a shared interest (music).

Of course, sustaining a healthy community takes work, and this behavior can be double-edged (mob violence, bigotry). But the fact that we seem to be predisposed to it is promising.

[nalyra-dreaming]

Lestats sperm?! !???

I thought vampires didn’t have that in the books

And stolen?

Wtf

Lestats got a legitimate son named vickor?!?

As a non book reader I thought I heard everything so far, honestly. Anne rice was smokin some good golden chush when she thought of all this lmao

She was fearless that way. Trust me, that's only the tip of the iceberg. There's literal aliens, too :)

But yeah, Lestat consented to do an experiment for Fareed (with Flannery, who was also there voluntarily!), hormonal treatment to produce sperm and have "human" sex. It was a short thing, and quite hilarious/touching in the books:

_______

The answer came swiftly with a series of injections and indeed an intravenous line that would continue throughout the experiment to deliver a powerful elixir of human hormones into my blood, overriding the vampiric body’s natural tendency to resist senescence long enough for the desire to develop, the sperm to be produced, and then ejaculated. I thought it was hilariously funny. Now I could write an essay of five hundred pages on how this experience unfolded, because I did feel biological erotic desire again, and I fell on the young woman about as mercilessly as any greedy aristocrat of my time ever fell on a milkmaid in his village. But it was precisely as my beloved Louis had said a long time ago, “the pale shadow of killing,” that is, the pale shadow of drinking blood, and it was over almost at once, it seemed, and then the passion was gone, back into the depths of memory once more as if it had never been aroused, the pinnacle, the ejaculation forgotten. I’d felt strangely awkward afterwards. I was sitting on the bed beside this blond-haired fair-skinned human female, my back to a nest of sweet-smelling linen-covered pillows, and I felt I ought to talk to her, ask her how she came to be here, and why she was here.

And then quite suddenly, as I sat there, wondering if this was proper or even wise, she told me. Her name was Flannery Gilman, she said. In a clear fresh West Coast American voice, she explained that she’d been studying “us” since the night I’d appeared on the stage as a rock star outside San Francisco, and so many of our kind had died as the result of my great scheme to be a mortal performer.[...]

_______

I would love it if Rolin went there, actually, or at least gives us Flannery, there at the rock concerts in s3/s4, drawn to vampires, and finally given the chance, a researcher, a scientist, who later keeps working with Fareed (and Seth), and others.

In fact, I often wonder what "the farm" entails/entailed in s1 (if Fareed is involved, or maybe Gregory?!), hopefully we will get to know in the upcoming seasons!

EDIT: And before any of you come for me with "he fOrcEd her!1111!", let me add her words there, before they part:

“They’ve promised to bring you over, haven’t they?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “They’re honorable. That’s more than I can say for my colleagues in American medicine.” She turned to me, drawing close enough to kiss me quickly one more time on the cheek. I didn’t stop her. Her fingers went up to my face and she touched my eyelids. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for these priceless moments. Oh, I know you didn’t do this for me. You did it for them. But thank you.” I nodded and I smiled. I held her face in my hands as I kissed her now with a fervor that came from the Blood. I could feel her body warming, opening like a flower, but the moment was gone, and I took my leave.

[cescalovestowrite]

Penelope's Childhood Headcanons

(some of these are a bit dark, but they are my personal ideas, no need to agree with them)

If we put all the sources together we see that Penelope has seven brothers and one sister. We know for sure that her father is Icarius, but not all authors agree on who her mother is.

I imagine that Icarius had a first wife, the naiad Periboea (from whom were born Penelope, Perileus, Thoas, Damasippus, Imeusmius and Aletes), but that then she left the palace to return to her river and that Icarius remarried, this time with Polycaste (mother of Iftime, Aliseus and Leucadius).

But how did Icarius and Periboea meet? Icarius is wounded during a hunting trip, and runs to the river to drink. There he sees some naiads and begs them to help him, because naiads are famous for healing wounds. Periboea comes forward: she has enormous eyes, diaphanous skin and does not speak the human language. She touches Icarius' wound and he heals. Icarius falls in love with her and decides to take her with him to the palace of Sparta: he has decided that she will be the mother of his children.

But nymphs cannot stay away from their element, their source of life, for long. Periboea is stunned by dry land, walking is not natural for her, dressing is not natural, all those smells and noises are not natural. Over time she becomes more and more restless and subject to violent fits of anger. She gives birth to one child after another but when she takes them in her hands she smells only the human odor and does not understand what to do with them. Her skin begins to gray, to dry out.

One night, when Penelope is about eight years old, she is awakened by the sounds of a commotion and terrible hissing. That night Periboea runs away. The next morning Icarius seems tired, but also partly relieved. The naiad was becoming more and more difficult to handle and he was afraid that she might even hurt their children. An excuse is invented on why their mother will have to stay away for a while and the children do not ask questions. Penelope knows that she will never see her again.

She didn't have a real relationship with her mother, but she still struggles to get used to her stepmother's presence. Where Periboea was cold and silent, Policasta is sunny and talkative. She hopes she can learn to love her.

At her first menstrual cycle, Icarius decides to send her to live with his brother Tindareus. Tindareus has many daughters of her age (Timandra, Filonoe, Phoebe, Helen and Clytemnestra) and two sons (Castor and Pollux), and Penelope will be able to learn a lot from them. However, the two families had already seen each other assiduously and the cousins ​​had always been very close. The girls go swimming together, learn the tasks of princesses and above all tell each other many secrets. Little by little they wait for the day when they will be ready for marriage.

P.S. For me they get married around 17/18 years old. I know that at the time women got married at 14, but shush😁

[meirimerens]

meiri, when we are talking threefold bullet or three and a half fold, what is your take on the dynamic and relationship between stamatwins themselves? i am of the opinion that since they consider each other to be the same, singular person often in text, they basically are, but what is your take? are they the same? are they that different? do you think they're actually close or distant? and if we're talking close, what do you think of, like, interpretation of them as an androgyne, don't really know how it's spelled correctly in english, mythological creature cut in half for hubris which people basically take as "see, romantic soulmates"?

oh this is one of my fave subjects to write about or rather to incorporate in writings where i center on peter going his own loving ways this is gonna be fun

okay i'm responding to the androgyne part right out of the gate: the mythological (Platonician, and i'm guessing you mean the Platonician myth because it is the most well-known and the one in which beings were cut in half) androgyne is half male, half female. [i'm not talking about the historical use of androgyne for intersex people nor the modern sense of androgyne as a gender identity or presentation this is about the MYTHOLOGICAL BEING, FROM PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM]

that's the ethymology of andro/gyne used very literally in plato's symposium (ἀνδρός/andros = man, as in the sexed/gendered being as opposed to άνθρωπος anthropos which is man as in humanity [think "mankind", "caveman" when both of these terms Also Include Woman] and γυνή/gynê = woman) so right out of the gate they're eliminated from the mythological androgyne story by virtue of being both men. and i'd argue them being both men is important to their lore and how they handle of concept of Conception/Creation and how they talk about the Polyhedron specifically (calling it "a child" or "a daughter"). the platonician myth of the androgyne does have the androgynes (and to be fair, all the other "pairs" (male-male, female-female, female-multiple & male-multiple beings) equally) punished for hubris, cleaved in half, and desperatly trying to reunite with their half, but at the core of this myth very much is the etiology of romantic & sexual desire: Eros. quoting Plato’s Symposium translated by Benjamin Jowett :

"Each of us who were separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a human being, and we are always looking for our other half. Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called Androgynous [Androgynes] are lovers of women; the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments; lesbians are of this sort; peoples who were originally of two or more parts are of the sort we call ‘amphiphylóphilos’, ‘lovers of both’, and they are especially favored by Eros."

One of the thing that also happens with the Platonician Androgyne is that, before being cleaved in twain, they would reproduce asexually. upon being cleaved, when reunited, they starve to death and do nothing else from not wanting to do anything apart, so the gods rearrange their genitals around so they can reproduce as the people now do : the platonician myth of the Androgyne (and of the cleaving in twain) is about romantic and sexual desire, the drive for a romantic (soul)mate and reproduction. it is an etiological myth about sexual desire and sexual inclinations (why some women are not attracted (EROS! eros eros eros) to men, but to women: they once were one with another women; why some people are attracted to both men and women: because once a upon a time they were one with a man and a woman or more), as well as how we got to be a sexually reproductive species.

the term "soulmate" does apply to the twins, or rather, andrey tries his hardest for it to apply to them, but the platonician myth of the androgyne is Not about non-romantic soulmates.

tldr : platonician myth of the androgyne out of the equation because

1. it is about a being half male and half female, which the twins are not

2. or rather 1.5. it is thematically and narratively important that the twins are men for, to me, this greatly informs the way they act and speak about artistic Creation (goes for a lot of male artists irl tbh)

3. it is an etiological myth about sexed reproduction and the drive of romantic and sexual desire (EROS!!!!) which does not apply to the twins.

now for Da Other Part :

It's Complicated </3

in my mind andrey is the one most attached to them as a single being. quoting him from PCHD :

- Twins are the two sides of a single person. - I'm quite a quarreller—and I don't want to discredit my soulmate! [he means Peter]

and, interestingly enough, at the beginning, Peter is also quite keen on the "a single person" thing :

- You will make no mistake by calling me Peter. You can call me Andrey too, just for the sake of diversity, and it won't be wrong either.

BUT!!! and this is where i start salivating the evil gears of my mind start turning. on day 10, shit hath broken loose, and dankovsky comes seeking peter :

Dankovsky : Go help your brother. Do you know that he's been arrested? He's killed several people trying to help you. Peter : ...That's fine. I've been suffering for ten years because of him.

now this is soooo delicious je m'en lèche les babines. we can imagine that the "for ten years because of him" refers to the murder of Farkhad which, in PCHD, was Andrey's sole doing (as far as he retells it). it can also be about the Polyhedron's constructin : something they so covetted and so desired that in my mind a man was killed for this, something they so protect and are so protective of, but which has driven peter mad. in these ten years, peter as sunk to the bottom. by day 10, he's trying to self-immolate. he's developped and is sustaining a debilitation alcohol addiction, alcohol of andrey's making.

i think andrey grasping at this belief that they are one (including la fameuse "The furnace of this catastrophe has molded me, my brother, and you into a single person… The fire of war has molded us into a threefold bullet. It's natural. We are one. The three sides of a single process.") because he's guilty. trying to cope with the fact that he has ruined is brother with his liquor, with his murder, with his completion of the polyhedron which, according to all, simply should not exist. and yet it does. haunted twofold. andrey, by presenting himself as peter's other face, is trying 1) cope with the distance that's growing between them, by his fault and 2) trying to protect him. when shit hits the fan, he's running after peter, there are mixups, dankovsky gets taken for him. by being peter's other face, andrey is trying to protect him.

here's what i think it is :

it is less "two sides of the same coin" than it is "two sides of a same shield". also fits with andrey's "I am the battering ram that clears his path." (P2). a shield has two faces: the one that takes the blow of the blade and the one inside. andrey is the face that takes the blade and peter the one inside. or rather he wishes he was.

when i write peterstakh (you're on the peterstakh blog you are told about peterstakh), andrey lives very poorly the fact that his brother is "breaking away" from him. quoting my own self:

“It’s you.” “As much as me can be.” “It is you… right?” “As much as right can be.” Peter noticed the dimple between Rubin’s brows, this worried notch like a knife nick. “Don’t fret. I keep my doors locked.” He paused. “And Andrey wouldn’t want to touch you. Well, except to h—” “Except to hit me.” “He’s needlessly, mindlessly possessive. And a fool. He knows better than anyone else, even than myself, that you’re not fighting for the same honeycomb in me. He just doesn’t want me to get hurt.” “What are you, his? Won’t he let yourself be you?” “Less his than he at all. You already noticed.”

(Tenderopen Be Sir Carrion)

& my own self again :

« Does it surprise you [that I haven't slept with any of my models] ? » Piotr asks [...]. « Quite different from your brother in this way, then—forgive me for getting ahead of myself. I heard he was… generous in his affections. » [...] « He has… a way bigger heart than I do. Full of holes to let the light in… And people through. — Do people compare you two often ?  — Too often for my taste, not often enough for his — or vice-versa, depending on the day. » [...] « He thinks seducing others this much protects me, in a way. That he spares me the woes of love by attracting them to him.  — That's commendable… I suppose. — So do I. »

(Pierrot sur le Rivage, my own translation (it's in french originally lol))

TLDR : they're close. they're really close. to me even, because i love fun, they can do whatever the hell was happening with the Kains by the end of Bachelor's route : hopping back and forth between each other's bodies (<- this is a link to a lorepost i made), swapping consciousnesses. they believe they should have been born as one (conjoined), and where they imagine they once were stuck together in utero, the imaginary scar sometimes burn when they get too high or too drunk. they consider themselves halves of a whole, and it hurts.

it hurts because andrey hurt(s) peter, has been hurting him "for ten years". with the murder, with the alcohol, with the successful(?) construction of the polyhedron. andrey copes with his fault by insisting on his protective role, his front-shield face, his battering-ram head, because it helps ease the guilt of knowing it is his samogon, which he began distilling for selfish reasons, that is slowly making peter lose himself in the whirly depths of the bottle. showing themselves as "both sides of a whole" is a protective measure, yes, to blur where one ends and the other begin, so if they're hunted the hunters have twice as many men to pursue. it's also true.

peter is growing distant because he's in pain, he's sick, he's losing his mind, and gaining a love andrey has no control over.

to quote a fic i've been working on for years on and off

[Rubin] : "If you don't think his heart's big enough to contain the both of us in different chalbers, you can give him a piece of yours. I'll help cutting you up."

[unsoundedcomic]

How would you rate Sessine's ability to apply "theory of mind"?

Probably as good as yours. But Sessine is a god, and doesn't particularly find human minds compelling nor worthy of special consideration. We're brief, small, and scrabbling - only a very little bit removed from the reptiles and the rodents. Still, she's observed billions of minds, and inevitably started to categorize them as types. Individual droplets are hard to keep track of in a hurricane, so we name the storms, and we look to history, to trends, to current and immediately upcoming conditions to describe them and forecast them.

Sessine is actually very good at this. She forecast the bejeezus outta pretty much everyone in this world, including real weirdos like an inak with part of a human soul grafted onto it.

Sette Frummagem is a whole different beast. She bucks the trends. She's proven very hard to forecast and to understand. Like, particularly the nature of her powers and, most importantly, how she chose to use them in that fatal blow against Ilganyag. Yeah, she can tear memories out, but to tear out one of her own memories and manifest it as a weapon like that? None of the other girls had ever remotely come up with such a thing. Inconceivable!

I should point out that Sessine knew exactly what First Sette was like. She wanted to put her back into a body because she loves her, but only on her own terms, so she could fix her and bind her. She had not expected her to snag the First Soul from Frummagem like that - but her attack afterwards was not wholly surprising.

[starlingstalk]

Btw about this drawing or just any RG siblings drawings ever; I absolutely love having their respective colors reflect each other in the shadows/lightings or even just the undertones. Their color palettes just fit together so well. Plus I kind of like how both red and green represent life in two starkly different ways; flesh, blood, humanity and regrowth, healing, nature

I feel like green and red is the easiest complimentary color combination to get right and it might be because it doesn‘t have a difference in value. But I love to think of it being, just through how much we encounter them, colors we naturally just feel particularly strongly towards.

Comfort

[emmg]

Aftertaste

The Emmrook modern Sugar Daddy AU I've been spinning in my brain like a rotisserie chicken finally got its seasoning. Shoutout to @thepalehorsevictoria's WONDERFUL, AMAZING, ABSOLUTELY LIFE-ALTERING The Internship for delivering the motivational slap I needed to actually finish the first stupid chapter. You're all welcome, probably.

She would look exquisite sprawled out on his pima cotton sheets, wouldn’t she? Perhaps he’d drape her in coins, or bills—her choice, naturally, though one suspects she’d opt for the flashiest, the most garish option, something appropriately Rook. And afterward, he’d collapse into her shoulder, sobbing like a maudlin fool, his tears soaking through the remnants of her ridiculous blouse. A tableau of absurdity: him, the tragic romantic, and her, the irreverent Venus, reeking faintly of cheap vanilla.

Read it here, under the cut, or on AO3

-----

Chapter 1: Oysters Are Gross

At fifty-two years and three days old, Emmrich finally surrenders. He grants Bellara—his chirpy, chattering, insufferably radiant assistant—permission to "set him up." Bellara, of course, is all gleaming eyes and endless sentences, a creature so bright she could burn holes in the wallpaper. He agrees because he is fifty-two years and three days old and it hits him: an unbearable, senseless loneliness. 

He stares blankly at the wall, realizing that the majority of those who wished him well on this fifty-two-year-and-three-day milestone—up to ninety percent of them—are colleagues. 

Happy birthday, Emmrich. Love, Amélie.

Ah, Amélie. His Orlesian once-mistress. The text is a masterstroke of brevity. He allows himself a smile before retrieving his reading glasses and composing a reply. 

Thank you, darling. Always a pleasure.

The message is sent. Amélie, of course, does not deign to reply. 

Well, then. 

His gaze shifts to the bottle of absinthe perched on the counter, a gift from the Dean and faculty, no doubt purchased more out of obligation than admiration. The label gleams mockingly. He frowns, swirls the dregs of his glass, and drains it in a single swallow. 

Bellara, that dainty tempest of enthusiasm, is promptly unleashed to do her worst. He delivers his consent carefully, his back turned to her as she flits about the library, slipping borrowed books back onto shelves. Borrowed, mind you, some three—or was it four?—months ago. The real marvel isn't her returning them but the improbable fact that she remembered taking them at all. He phrases his acquiescence in a way that suggests, naturally, he is the one doing her a favor. (Ha. Of course.)

“Ooooh, perfect!” she chirps, a human hummingbird vibrating with unsolicited opinions. “She’s like so, so pretty. Her nose? Upturned—and that’s super trendy right now. People are flying to Antiva for rhinoplasty because it’s cheaper there. Crazy, right? And she’s tall. Well, not as tall as you, obviously, but still tall. And thin. And just… really, really pretty. Like she totally knows it though. Ugh, I’m probably ruining this. Anyway, she’s so pretty, professor.”

Her voice trails off. 

He stops listening somewhere between "rhinoplasty" and "tall." He has neither the patience for Bellara’s reverence for the human scaffolding of beauty nor the bandwidth to follow her avalanche of adjectives. 

Bellara flutters on, blissfully unaware she’s been tuned out. 

****

“What are we thinking, Manfred?” he inquires, addressing the ties spread on the bed as though consulting an oracle. His arms are crossed, his brow raised. “Cerulean or hunter green?” 

“Woof,” replies Manfred, the household philosopher and occasional canine. 

“Thank you, darling boy,” he sighs, selecting the latter. The cerulean can sulk in the drawer another day. 

He assembles himself with meticulous care, a sacred ritual. The three-piece suit is virgin wool, soft, lustrous, perfect. The vest, of course, matches. His hair, combed back with fragrance-free pomade, achieves that delicate balance of hold without crunch. He is not, he assures himself, some adolescent with a tube of glue masquerading as hair gel, desperate to look like he just emerged from a car wash. No, he assures himself, he is a man of taste.

The finishing touch is his cologne: a concoction of galbanum, juniper, violet leaf, and oakmoss. It doesn’t just suggest expense; it shouts it in carefully modulated tones. The sort of scent that might cause an uninitiated passerby to pause and wonder, “Is this man a connoisseur—or simply insufferable?” Amélie, of course, once called it "enticing." 

Finally, two of his rings come off. Why? Because one never knows. Bellara’s friend might be pretty, but she also might be a thief. No sense tempting fate—or petty larceny. 

He looks in the mirror one last time, adjusts the hunter green tie, and decides he looks exactly like the sort of man who would judge someone for stealing his rings. 

Before leaving, he conducts his usual pre-departure sweep: oven off (because clearly, he’s the type to bake a pie and forget it), television off (lest it drone on to an audience of none), no faucets running (oh, the horrors of a dripping tap), and, naturally, no texts waiting to be answered (as if). This exercise in obsessive futility provides him no satisfaction, only the faint assurance that his house won’t combust or flood in his absence.

He realizes he's doing it out of nervousness.

Satisfied that the house won’t spontaneously combust in his absence, he turns to Manfred, the sole companion he trusts for an honest opinion. “Not too shabby?” he ventures, striking a pose that could only be described as overly hopeful.

Manfred, ever the truth-teller, responds in the only way befitting such a ridiculous question: he vomits on the carpet. 

****

The restaurant is Orlesian, of course—where else would one go to feel simultaneously underfed and overcharged? He knows the head chef, a relic of his undergrad years, back when dormitory life was a parade of poorly considered ambitions and even worse hygiene. Xavier, once the proud owner of a neuroscience textbook he never opened, had been convinced he would unravel the mysteries of the brain—until the brain, or rather the workload required to study it, unraveled him instead. 

His grand response to this betrayal? Elfroot—smoked with dedication—and a catastrophic assault on their shared kitchen that left it resembling the aftermath of a culinary riot. Naturally, a few years later, Xavier inexplicably emerged as a celebrated chef, the sort whose name is murmured reverently in food columns and shouted across crowded dinner parties by people desperate to sound cultured. 

It’s a miracle, really, the sort of alchemy only student dorms can produce: turning the least functional among them into the toast of society, while everyone else just gets crumbs. 

He’s early, of course. Emmrich is always early, a man cursed with the kind of politeness that borders on masochism. Being late might suggest a lack of respect, but being early? That’s the calling card of someone determined to suffer. 

He orders an apéritif because sitting idle feels too desperate, even for him. Something stronger than advisable but, then again, he has no intention of driving tonight—or doing anything particularly sensible, for that matter. A Negroni it is. Predictable. As Johanna had so graciously put it, he’s a “basic bitch,” forever drawn to whatever the masses have deemed fashionable this week. 

He's nouveau riche like that. Here he is, nursing a drink that tastes like regret and orange peel, sitting early at an overpriced Orlesian restaurant, the living embodiment of someone trying just a little too hard.

And—oh. Damn her. Bellara was right. Of course, she was right. Why wouldn’t she be? Rook, she’d called her. Pretty, tall, unbearably young. And so very, very pretty—pretty to the point of redundancy. The kind of prettiness that practically begs to be noticed, long pale hair cascading like the overly poetic description she’d no doubt receive in a novel some day. 

“Emmrich?” she says, her eyes darting around the room as though she expects a less disappointing Emmrich to materialize from behind a potted fern. Surely, this can’t be the one.

“Indeed,” he says, and because he’s a gentleman—or at least a serviceable facsimile—he forces himself to stand. Hurrying to her side, he pulls out her chair with an eagerness that feels as rehearsed as it is exhausting. She sits, and only then does he allow himself to return to his own seat, feeling rather like an actor who’s just survived the first act of a particularly humiliating play. 

“Hm,” Rook says. 

She is smiling. This must be good. Surely, it’s good. Someone so young, so lovely, smiling at him. Smiling for him. Or at him? Is there a difference? Does it matter?

“Shall we start with a drink?” he asks, his voice striving for charm and almost, almost getting there. 

“You’re grey,” she says, blunt as a hammer. “Like, almost fully.” 

“Ah,” he says, because, really, what else is there? Words fail him, but her casually devastating remark does not. It feels as though she’s reached across the table and punched him in the throat with that pretty, unmanicured hand of hers, leaving him gasping for dignity. “I am.” He swallows hard and, for one fleeting moment, wonders if shattering his glass and dragging a shard theatrically across his wrist might salvage the evening—or at least end it with style. “Does that bother you?” 

A languid shrug. “No.” She lifts the menu with an air of detachment that makes him wonder if she is reading it or simply holding it to avoid looking at him. “How old are you?” 

Fifty-two-years-and-ten-days, not that anyone’s counting. “Bellara didn’t tell you about me?” 

“Bellara said you were rich.” Fantastic. His favorite personality trait. “And lonely.” Marvelous. The perfect companion to wealth, like cheese to wine. “And that you smell good.” Well, thank heavens. If nothing else, he’s fragrant—a consolation prize for his apparent lack of other redeeming qualities. “And…” She leans into the menu, her nose wrinkling in what he assumes is concentration but could just as easily be disdain. Does she need glasses? Should he offer her his? Would that be erotic or just pathetically sad? “Not married,” she finishes. 

There it is: rich, lonely, perfumed, and unattached. A portrait painted in four brushstrokes, with no room for nuance. 

He raises a hand, signaling the server. If he is to endure the rest of this encounter, it will be with a drink in hand, preferably something strong enough to blunt the edge of her candor. 

"And what about you, Rook?" he asks, once her cocktail arrives, a vulgar, lurid concoction so bright it might glow in the dark. Her lipstick smears on the straw (a straw... In this restaurant? Did Xavier finally give up?). "How would you describe yourself?"

Her grin is dazzling, predatory. "Not rich," she declares. "Very, very not rich," as though he might have misinterpreted her financial despair. "So you’ll have to excuse me, because I have no fucking clue how to deal with all these." She gestures broadly at the table. "Utensils. That one—yeah, that. Why is there a baby fork?" 

"It’s an oyster fork." 

"You ordered oysters?" 

"I did." 

"Oysters are supposed to make you horny, you know." 

He tips his head back in silent prayer, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, which sadly offers no escape. "The aphrodisiac effects are largely exaggerated," he mutters, clinging to his last shred of dignity. "They are high in zinc, yes, but otherwise... they’re simply a standard appetizer." 

"I mean, yeah. It’s like swallowing unwashed pussy." 

He chokes.

"But to answer you," Rook says, now smoothing the napkin over her lap with the deliberation of someone unused to starched linens, "literature. I just got into grad school. My brain’s about ready to explode. I’ve spent the last two weeks applying for every fellowship I could find. Leliana—that’s my supervisor—says that’s just how it is. Not much funding for the humanities." 

Ah, he thinks, so the sewer of profanity comes with a surprisingly functional brain. Who knew? 

"And what will your thesis be about?" he asks. "The broad strokes, of course." 

She perks up, her expression suddenly alight with a kind of zeal he recognizes all too well—the sort of gleam he’s seen in his own reflection, mid-tangent, while his colleagues quietly plotted their escape. "The treatment of regional culinary rituals in early Orlesian romantic epics," she announces, her tone brimming with the self-assured pride of someone convinced their niche could save the world. "I’m particularly interested in how feasting scenes reflect class dynamics and metaphysical longing." 

"Feasting and metaphysical longing," he echoes. "An underexplored intersection, no doubt." 

"It is, actually," she says, unfazed. "Leliana thinks it could open up new discussions about the interplay between consumption and identity in pre-industrial Orlais." 

He takes a long sip of his drink. "Well," he says finally, "good to know I will be dining with a pioneer in the field of… gastronomic existentialism." 

"Lucky you," Rook agrees.

"And this pioneer," he quips because he simply cannot resist, "despite devoting her studies to the poetic glow of Orlesian candlelit dinners, cannot distinguish a fish fork from a dessert spoon?" 

"Emmrich," Rook says, her glass drained, the fuchsia stain of passion fruit now blooming on her lips like some accidental masterpiece. "I read about Orlesians fucking each other with cucumbers, then slicing them up for a salad as if foreplay and vinaigrette belong in the same breath. About butter smeared in places it absolutely shouldn’t be—used as lube, naturally—but no one ever writes about the yeast infections that come knocking afterward. About cream dripping off nipples, thighs, mouths, smeared across banquet tables while someone’s ass is planted squarely in a soufflé. Wine bottles being repurposed into toys, and baguettes going places that would make a priest faint." She yawns, lifting her empty glass to hide it. "That’s what I read about," she concludes. "Not whether the trout gets a dedicated fork." 

The evening unravels as such evenings will: chaotically, gracelessly. Her cheeks are flushed from the wine he selected with care—wine she downs with all the finesse of a college freshman, pausing only to declare, loudly and without irony, that her "broke ass is never affording anything like this ever again." He lets her finish most of it, partly because she’s right, and partly because there’s something oddly charming about her bluntness, even if her choice of words makes him long for an eject button. 

By the end of the meal, she’s swaying faintly, her steps wobbling like a poorly directed marionette. Outside, as he contemplates whether to purchase a pack of cigarettes or step directly into oncoming traffic, he notices her face in the streetlight: still so, so pretty despite her vocabulary, which might as well be a butcher knife to his sensibilities. He’s always had a weakness for pretty things, after all, even if he insists to himself that he’s far too sentimental for anything reckless or self-destructive. And yet... and yet... 

He likes her hair; long, absurdly long, as though she’s been growing it since birth for the sole purpose of draping it over her shoulders at pretentious dinners. It’s pale, but not quite; between shades, as though it couldn’t be bothered to settle on a single identity. Almost brown here, almost silver there, the kind of blonde that pretentious novels would insist on calling “ethereal” or “ghostly,” though to him it looks like indecision with a sheen. He likes the gray of her eyes, too, though “like” might be the wrong word—they’re so washed-out they seem more like placeholders for real eyes, a vague suggestion of color. How can something be so devoid of pigment? 

A sharp clink breaks his thoughts. He looks down to see her car keys, glinting on the asphalt. She wobbles as she bends to retrieve them, then squints into the darkness like a drunk sailor searching for shore. 

"I know I didn’t park that far away," she mutters, turning in a slow, unsteady circle. "Ugly silver two-seater. Big scratch on the passenger window. Do you see it?" 

"You are not driving," he whispers, scandalized, his voice shrill enough to summon pigeons. And there it is: the moment he transforms from potential suitor to overbearing mother hen. Splendid. Truly, the very picture of charm. "Allow me to call you a cab." 

"Noooo," she whines, stretching the word to absurdity, her voice pitched somewhere between a tantrum and a drunken lullaby. "I don’t want to trek back up here tomorrow to get my car. I don’t live close, you know." 

"Even so," he presses, his tone teetering dangerously close to because I said so.

"No. Not even so." 

The key wrestle begins, a ridiculous little tug-of-war that makes him feel like he should be calling her "young lady" and throwing out such gems as "Behave yourself" and "Think of the consequences." All the sort of dreary phrases a man her father’s age might deploy with righteous indignation. 

But of course, he isn’t her father. No, no—father figures don’t let their gaze drift, as his does now, to the teasing dip of her blouse, where the faintest edge of black lace peeks out like a taunt. Father figures don’t notice the flush creeping up her cheeks or the sway in her unsteady defiance, nor do they fixate on the maddeningly smug curl of her lips. And they certainly don’t entertain thoughts about how those lips might feel wrapped around—oh, splendid, just splendid. He’s not only lost the moral high ground but seems intent on building a summer home somewhere in the depths of his own depravity. 

But she would look absolutely divine sprawled out on his pima cotton sheets, wouldn’t she? No doubt a far cry from whatever bargain-bin monstrosities she sleeps on—some threadbare polyester set reeking faintly of last week’s takeout. She could lie there, all flushed and glistening, while he buries his mouth between her legs, tasting her like a man starved. And then, if he whispered it sweetly enough, maybe—just maybe—she’d straddle him, her nails dragging down his chest, leaving scratches he’d probably pretend not to admire later. 

And afterward, he would probably cry into her shoulder, his tears dampening whatever remains of her ridiculous blouse. They could discuss Orlesians committing atrocities against food and sex while she smokes one of his cigarettes and he, in his most pitiful depths, silently composes a thank-you note to Bellara for orchestrating this grand act of self-destruction. 

He takes the keys away from her at last and summons a car with his phone. Even an old-timer, tradition-bound relic such as himself can marvel at the efficiency of these cursed apps. 

"I will return them to you tomorrow," he says, holding them out of reach. "May I have your number? You can tell me where to meet you." He pauses, catching himself mid-fall into the abyss of creepy old man territory. Don’t ask for her address, Emmrich. Don't be weird. "Or, if that’s too forward," he adds with a touch of forced charm, "I can hand them off to Bellara. She would probably love another excuse to meddle in our lives."

"Fine, fine," Rook mutters, snatching his phone and jabbing at the screen with the grace of a caffeinated woodpecker before handing it back. 

When the car arrives, she leans in for a half-hearted hug, her small breasts brushing against him briefly, her cheap, aggressively synthetic vanilla perfume wafting into his nostrils like an attack. It smells like something one might spritz on a cupcake, and yet—Gods help him—he finds himself wanting to drown in it. 

Ten minutes later, his phone pings. 

blra said it was your bday. hppy bday

[koremakaria]

Embracing the Shadow.

There's still good in him! I know. There's still ... good in him.

And so we come to an end but then all ends are just another beginning. I simply adore this drama and how it deals with embracing the dark side of human nature.

In the epic final fight against the Supreme God, we have both the first incarnation of the Chaos Pearl and Saint Emperor Zhaoming together with the current incarnation of the Chaos Pearl and Demon Lord Zhaoming. It's the beginning and the end working together to effectively end an oppressive regime.

You have on one side the beginning of the cycle and you have on the other side the current/ end product of the great cycle of fate.

When the Supreme God is defeated, the Demon Lord has to make a decision. Endure punishment again or let the world burn. I love that he gets to see his old work station once more. Hello paperwork! .... how I miss you? Said the Demon Lord ... probably. In any case, he got to see the beginning of his life again and be reminded of who he was before Fate effectively cursed him with false memories.

Then he gets to meet his love, again. Pearl is different from Mu Xuanling because she represents innocence, good will, and optimism. While they are the same soul, they are in different stages of life experience. Here, the Demon Lord is glad to see his love but said that he's not the man she loves because he harbors dark thoughts. To be fair, Zhaoming probably had them too but he didn't let the darkness take over the goodness in him.

Demon Lord: 'what if I don't care about the world?'

Pearl: 'then I'll accompany you to the very end. Even if the world throw curses at you. I accept you for who you are'

She embraces the darkness in him knowing that there is still good in him. That's why she's crying the whole time because she has an unbreakable trust in his goodness even when he had already endured so much. Even when he stops believing in himself, she never did. She already knows what he would do. In turn this allows him to embrace his own darkness. Rather than letting it control him, he controls the darkness. Darkness then becomes just another part of him. All three incarnations of him shares one soul and so they are the same person with different experiences. By embracing the shadow he gets to decide who to be and eventually how to live moving forward. Embracing the shadow made whole once more.

I just love that the drama was allowed to portray this. Because the shadow represents dark thoughts and negative emotions we often feel we have to repressed but that we all have. To be human is to have feelings both positive and negative and be mature enough to exert control over them.

My ONE criticism is that they should have included the epilogue from the novel. I only peeked at the end but I really wanted to see the children. Hao Yi and Hao Er ... maybe another time.