I'd like to add to your absolutely beautiful response about Taylor's music and the conversation about it. Thank you for sharing.💚 I like to say that Taylor's music allows me to both better understand myself and to escape myself if I need to. I can listen to Better Man and think about going no contact with my father or think about Taylors experience with Jake if its too hurtful for me in that moment.

That duality is the IT factor for me in her music and I can't imagine it without it.

Friend what an equally beautiful and thoughtful and REAL thing to share. Yes x1000000000

—woke up from literal sleep to write down the thoughts that clicked for me after I made this post about the Mike/Hopper hug last night, so. Here's the expansion of all of that lmao.

people always talk about the way Mike looked conflicted when El kisses him in S3, on top of the way he seemed fine with them breaking up until she initiated the relationship again (because of the absence of Hopper). I think this is 100% true, and it’s also the start of Mike’s spiral about protecting her we see through S4.

Mike’s “care” in lieu of "love" for El (and lack of ability to tell her he loves he romantically) is directly correlated to Hopper telling him to BE CAREFUL re: El right before he died. Almost as though Mike didn’t even have space to think of El as a true romantic partner— he was too busy trying to hold up the end of her missing “dad," and why he didn't know what to do when she started talking about how she didn't belong (because he's fourteen and not capable of filling the shoes of her father lmao).

the reason why Mike said “I was worried too much about El” is because he was—he was worried in a way suited for a father, not a boyfriend (thank you @emily-tumbles-on for that tag lol).

It’s also why he was so willing to let El go back to Owens—it’s a trusted (-ish) adult figure who could help El in a way his 14 year old self could not. It’s also why he immediately seems okay with letting her go once she says she wants to + throwing away her letter, right up until he realizes where El went is dangerous again, which meant he has to restart the protector-in-Hop’s place worry (which he doesn’t want, but feels powerless to step away from in his paladin-oath-responsibility mind).

When Mike & Will get into it at Rink O Mania over Will not telling Mike what was going on, Will interprets it as romantic attachment when it’s really giving “worried parent” not boyfriend.

That entire “you should have told me” also DIRECTLY REFLECTS the way Mike sees Will as his actual partner and equal no matter the time or distance (like in S2)—and expects him to help shoulder leadership responsibilities the way romantic/life partners would by helping him look after his charge (El).

The whole painting is confusing af for Mike because he does not see El as his partner or lover, but his responsibility in Hop’s absence—and Will, in his projection, is conflating his romantic love for Mike into the familial one between Mike & El. That's also why Mike feels so insecure about not being responsible enough (!!!) and why he looks dejected the way a parent would when you tell them you want do something they used to think was fun before having a kid when Will says “we could just play DnD and Nintendo for the rest of our lives.”

The van scene takes on a whole new meaning when you think about how the second Will made it about El, it forced Mike into a mental conundrum because he felt loved as himself at first…only to have it thrown back in with this wildly inappropriate parental responsibility he has for El because of Hop’s loss. (I watched the van scene again with this in mind and...lmao. Mike's expressions make absolute sense once you keep this conflation / confusion in mind)!

Yet another reason Mike and Jonathan need to have another conversation is because both of them have been suffering from a severe parentification—Jonathan for Will, and Mike for Eleven.

Hopper returning leaves space for both of them to move back into age-appropriate selfishness/relationships (aka think about their own wants and needs with Nancy and Will for a change) because Joyce doesn’t need Jonathan to fill the “man of the house” space, Will is going to “come of age” and have Mike, and El is gonna have her dad.

....all that to say these (and probably a million more things) become WAY clearer when you realize Mike is carrying the burden of Hopper's absence not as a boyfriend, but as 14 year old boy filling a parent space...which makes me really glad Hop didn't really die in S3 all of a sudden lmao. And also...Duffers. FREE MIKE WHEELER 2025

hi! I'm a big fan of your translations, thanks for sharing! I was wondering if you've ever done your own translations/interpretations of the names of the characters in mdzs?

hi!! ahh thank you! yes, I do have a (wip) post with my translations of character titles (eg cssr) and proper nouns in mdzs here! and I actually have been meaning to post an analysis of the mdzs surnames for a long time, so I'll use this ask to do so! thank you for reminding me!!

note: the characters are in traditional chinese :)

魏 Wei

this one is pretty self-explanatory for anyone who can read chinese. on the right is a 鬼 gui radical, which means ghost! for our lil 鬼道之王 king of the ghost path <3

(this radical also appears in a lot of words for "soul," such as 魂魄)

藍 Lan

I've often seen people simply say 藍 lan means "blue," and that wouldn't be wrong but it also wouldn't be completely correct. similar to how wwx clarifies that the 義 yi of 義城 yi city is not that of 俠義 heroic justice, but that of 義莊 coffin home, the in-universe definition from chapter 18 is that the lan surname is derived from 伽藍 qielan, which is a loan word from sanskrit, “saṃgharāma,” meaning buddhist monastery.

溫 Wen

溫 wen means temperature, warm. the wens do love their sun. pretty straightforward!

金 Jin

also straightforward. the jins are rich and opulent, and 金 jin means gold!

聶 Nie

here's where things get interesting. this is the one that made me think more about the surnames, and the reason why they're written in traditional here. I had always read nhs's name in simplified (聂) but when I saw it in traditional (聶), it clicked.

not only does 聶 nie mean "to whisper," but nhs has three 耳 ears in his name!!

AND INDEED, NHS HAS EARS EVERYWHERE, AND HE IS ALWAYS LISTENING. 👂👂👂

江 Jiang

this one I had to think about for a bit. of course, there's the most direct answer, which is that 江 jiang means river—and the jiang's are, of course, well known for their lotus pier and rivers and such. but a more interesting thought that occurred to me was that 江 may be a reference to 江湖 jianghu, aka rogue martial artist communities who aren't affiliated with mainstream society often seen in wuxia fantasy novels. those part of the jianghu do not adhere to government/law, but rather live under individual moral codes of conduct re righteousness, justice, vengeance, etc. quoting jeannette ng's essay on wuxia:

In Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts History and Postcolonial History, Petrus Liu translates jianghu as “stateless”, which further emphasizes that the hero’s rejection of and by the machineries of government. Jianghu is thus a world that rejects the dictates of the state in favor of divine virtue and reason, but also of a sense of self created through clan and community.

the jiang family precepts and ideals seem v aligned with this aspect of jianghu morality—after all, jc never lets us (or himself) forget that wwx's acts of vigilante heroism are those of an ideal jiang.

Bonus: 莫 Mo

mo xuanyu was only ever a blank canvas. 莫 mo means nothing, no one, none. </3

Hi hello hi could you give some writing tips/advice? (If it's not too much to ask of course ^_^) Especially with multi chaptered story planning? I'm in awe of your skills I'd love to learn how you do it :O

ooooh sure Monnie :)

uh I’m not really the best at planning multi-chaptered junk. I try my best lol, so I can only offer what works for me, somewhat.

Advice? Umm

Write down any idea you get IMMEDIATELY. You think you’ll remember later. You won’t. Get that Notes app out and WRITE. You have no idea how many times I’ve had to do this while walking to class, grocery shopping or hanging out with family. (If you’re driving, try to associate your idea with a key word, then don’t forget the key word. When you bring it up again, you should be able to remember your earlier thoughts.)

Jot down plot beats aka What You Want to Happen. I like to write down the things I’d love to see happen in the story before any kind of planning. For example, I always knew I wanted Y/N to find Sun and Moon at the junkyard. It was the first thing i ever wrote down, and I wrote the story around that. :) The list doesn’t have to be eloquent, it just has to be readable and easy to understand so you know what to interpret later.

Outlines aren’t supposed to be pretty and neat. They’re there to help put things in a cohesive narrative. The order of events, if you will. If your outline is simply:

- Wake up

- Meet friends at bus station.

- Cute new guy at school.

- Partners in project. Shock!! Chapter Ends.

Then that’s fine. It’s supposed to serve you and you alone. The rest will come when writing your draft.

Feel free to change your story anytime you want. It guarantees a final story you’re most satisfied with. I’m currently on CCRT’s fifth outline. There’s some stuff I’m good with and others I KNOW i want to go back to and re-workshop. Don’t stress, that’s the fun of it: getting to ask “but what if…?” Again and again until you’re happy with the results. Your readers will appreciate it tenfold. As an example, here’s the outline for Chapter Three: (you’ll see some details crossed out or that didn’t make it in)

The published result is much more detailed, right? Feel free to prepare as messy as you want. I promise y’all the first outline looked NOTHING like this sbshshs

Write at your pace. The world can wait. Writing the story is a treat you gift yourself and allow others to enjoy. Don’t let anything deprave you of the joy of the meticulous process. If they can’t wait, they’ll learn to or walk away, and in the end, who’s really losing here?

Go crazy, go stupid, go batshit. WRITE WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT!! SELF INDULGE!! ITS YOUR STORY!! AT YOUR PACE!! IN YOUR STYLE!! YOUR WAY!! OWN IT AND LET GO!!

and yeah these are the things I can think off the top of my head lol. repeating these in my head like a mantra help.

Multi-chaptered stories may seem too Big or Ambitious to tackle and it can intimidate sometimes. Take it one step at a time. You’ll get to where you want eventually. Enjoy it.

ending this a bit abruptly but uh

Hope this helped? Feel free to ask for anything else!

Who is Ouroboros?

Ok, let's talk crazy theories.

Watched first episode of Loki. That shit was so intense. This season already set up an insane amount of potencial and I really REALLY hope it delivers.

So let's start with the theory that it is all a time loop and the person who prunes Loki in front of the elevator is his future self. Most popular theory suggest this goes down on the final episode, when the characters become aware of the loop and have to rush to complete it.

This would make the start and the finale of the season the same scenario. It would give a special meaning to the first episode being titled "ouroboros". (If this is true it would be very cool if the final episode is also titled that, we start the same way we ended)

The Ouroboros is a common symbol in myth, represented as a snake or sometimes a dragon eating its own tail. It's suppose to represent the cycle present on nature, the eternal birth and re-birth of things. Things that fall and then rise only to fall again. The beginning is the end and the end is the beginning.

In the show, Ouroboros is not just a concept here, is a chararacter.

Him. Is implied he is one of the founding members of the TVA, or at least one of it's first employees. He also seems to be one of the only people in the TVA who has never had his memory erased.

That, and his unique comprehension of the science of time, makes him very valuable, maybe even vital to the functioning of the TVA. Thematically it would make sense, that the "ouroboros" (aka the cycle itself) is what holds it all together.

And you know who is also an Ouroboros in norse mythology? Loki's son. The snake Jörmundgander.

Now here comes the REAL crazy theory I've seen: Ouroboros is Loki's "future" son in the show. (I say future with comas because the flow of time in this show is more complicated then that, but you know what I mean). That is why his color is green in contrast to the brown, yellow and orange of the rest to TVA.

And, Jörmundgander is also one of the monsters to bring the Ragnarök. Now, Ragnarök is something that already happened in the MCU. Or is it?

Maybe, the destruction of Asgard is not the actual Ragnarök, is just what the characters interpreted as when their world got destroyed. But what about an event that would sink it all in chaos and bring the complete destruction of the universe? Now that sounds more like a real Ragnarök.

The Ragnarök also has cyclical significance. It talks of a cosmovision where everything is destined to be destroyed in chaos, only to be re-born. That is also why Loki has been interpreted as a chaos deity. He is the one that unleashes the Ragnarok, the agent of chaos, his children are the monsters that destroy it all.

We know the war between timelines is the big treath that could destroy everything. Could this be our true Ragnarök? Is it a coincidence that a Loki variant, Sylvie, was the one to probably set it in motion when she killed He Who Remains?

Ever since Avengers: Secret Wars was announced, is been a common theory that in it, the MCU will be destroyed (or close to it) and then re-set. Would make sense if we take the Ragnarök analogy.

Taking the wild assumption that all this is true, could we be looking at a major player here? If Ouroboros represents Jörmundgander, could he be the key to destroy and maybe re-start eveything?

If they went with this rout it would be really cool, actually. I'm aware they probably won't and I'll have to make a fanfic about it but one can dream.

Squid Memes Squidbeak Splatoon (part 2)

Part 1 Here

More Harbor because he gave me Brain Worms

Born and Raised in Littol Beeg Bluff (yes the same Littol Beeg Bluff from "The Ballad of Dusty Grumpton" in the Factory Reset AU. I'm allowed to re-use my own ideas if I damn well please)

Comes from a blended family, and his stepmom and younger siblings (twin boy and girl around eight) are actually Koopa Troopas of all things.

The only playable Agent to both know and like his parents

Seriously Habor's moms are fucking awesome. Everybody in the NSS loves Harbor's moms

About 80% Humboldt Squid (aka Jumbo Flying Squid), which is why he's so fucking tall. It also means that he's really fast in swim form, to the point that he could probably outswim someone who'd filled all the slots on a piece of gear with Swim Speed Up without any Swim Speed Up investment of his own. (this is inspired by Lucky, another, very different version of Agent 4 made by EikaPrime on Ao3)

Eight

Yes she just goes by Eight. She was a little self-conscious about it at first but then she found out about SMG4 and the other SM64 Blooper Youtubers and no longer gives a shit

If she remembers her old name yet she's not mentioned it

Obviously doesn't remember her parents, but given the Domes are the kind of place where you can Start Training to Become an Advanced Military Hardware Engineer and Elite Soldier at Fucking Nine Years Old, I imagine she wouldn't have many memories of them even without the Amnesia

Contrary to popular fanon, my version of Eight doesn't have a scar from the Test Failed Bomb. This is because Respawn Pads (as long as they're fully functional) completely erase whatever the fatal injury was, leaving no trace apart from maybe some phantom pains if it was particularly nasty

She does, however, have plenty of scars from all the other shit she went through in that hellhole

Managed to complete every single test before she escaped

My version of Eight is a single year younger than Marina canonically is when they meet so I'm not going the Off the Hook Adoption route for this one (maybe in another AU with a more lose interpretation of Canon, but given this AU is specifically meant to adhere to Splatoon Canon as much as possible we're out'a luck this time), though she does still become very close friends with them

She's got Craig literally right there for any potential adoption attempts anyway

Very rarely speaks, but is expressive enough that most people can tell what she means anyway (you know Ferb? It's the exact same thing as what Ferb does)

Doesn't have a weapon preference. She's comfortable with any weapon she gets her hands on

Except Splatanas

She fucking hates Splatanas and everything they stand for

Configuring Frye's Palette in the Memverse was legitimately harder than dealing with her own Palette's stupid "Hacks or Chips, you can't have both" Gimmick Bullshit

Andi Finn

Has no fucking idea who her parents were and does not care

Actual supergenius who could probably build a functioning replica of Grizz's rocket out of scrap metal from just her memory of fighting on top of it. Never learned how to read before the NSS got ahold of her because she lived alone in the desert

Swears more than Bob

Can't remember where she learned Salmonid from

Somehow even the homeless kid has better hygiene than Paige

Made up her last name on the spot when she was signing up for a Turfing License (if you're wondering how she managed to sign up for a Turfing License when she couldn't read; With Great Difficulty)

Figures she probably isn't a full Inkling given her weird beartrap beak but doesn't give enough of a shit to take a DNA test about it

Yet

Paige dragged her home to their apartment almost immediately after the final battle against Mr. Grizz and she never left. It's not an official adoption but that's only because Paige is a bit oblivious to their own feelings on the matter and Andi doesn't know that paperwork is supposed to be involved

Almost exclusively calls Paige "Cap" even when they're out of uniform. I mean, she can't very well call them "Mom" or "Dad" since they're nonbinary, now can she? Paige has no idea that's what she means by it and just thinks it's a nickname because Andi gives everybody nicknames. Usually as insults

It took her 333 tries to get through "Splitting Crosshairs" (I legitimately Cannot beat that stupid kettle no matter how hard I try and want her to share my frustration but also want all four agents to have 100%ed their respective adventures so I'm just having it take her a comically long time to do)

Mains Explosher because it's the closest she can get to a Turf-Legal grenade launcher (for now...)

The Eternal Hunger, Devourer of the Bear

Is fine with people using Crabcake instead

Uses It/Its exclusively

Officially designated Agent 5 I will die on that hill

Was "The Eternal Hunger, Stabber of Ankles" before going through Return of the Mammalians

Will stab anyone who points out that it didn't actually eat Mr. Gizz, he just exploded

Extremely eloquent, but most people can't speak Salmonid so it just sounds like it's making the same gurgley noises as every other Smallfry

Once looked Marie dead in the eyes and said "No one will ever believe you" in perfect Inklish while they were alone. Has never said anything else in anything other than Salmonid where someone can hear it

Andi and Crabcake fucking hated each-other for the first third of their adventure before bonding over kicking Frye's ass and now they're inseparable

Actually gets its own uniform after everything's said and done. It consists of a little high-rez safety vest (like the one on Paige's field uniform), an earpiece (suction-cupped in place since it doesn't have external ears) in the same style as Andi's headset, and a clean black-with-thin-yellow-racing-stripes-on-the-sides pants...wrap...thing

It also got a new switchblade from Sheldon (the old one got lost in the space battle after it turned into Hugefry) with the same kind of black-with-blue-LEDs aesthetic as Paige's gear and a blade made of Sardinium

Also thinks that it and Andi are already adopted by Paige but that's for Salmonid Culture Reasons instead of Not Having an Education Reasons

Got separated from its swarm during a Run a few months before Return of the Mammalians. It wasn't too fussed about it and figured it could handle itself in the desert for a while and then either reunite with that swarm if it ran into them or join a new one if it happened to come across one. Because Salmonid Culture

Considers the NSS its current swarm

Survive meta roundup post

Wrathful route meta (plus everything pre-tl split, my most comprehensive post)

Ramblings on how Aoi's desire for power is marred to her "team mom" role in Plutomon (which will be likely my most fav re-interpretation of Plutomon's lore ever lol)

On Aoi's and Saki's parallels during their adult evolution cutscenes and moral shadow events

On how Shuuji's writing keeps in line with Adventure's compassionate look at children's struggles (and evidences the philosophical core of the game)

On how Plutomon's assimilation plan ties to the game's core conflict between individualism and collectivism

On Aoi's character arc in Moral (Aka the game's answer to her struggles)

Explanation on occult references in Miu's Evo line + Holy Beast assignment

Comparative between Saki and Mimi to better understand Saki's nuances

On the framing of Shuuji's breakdown in part 5

Comparative between Survive and The Night of the Galactic Railroad to better understand ideas around self-sacrifice in Survive.

On the dramatic irony in Aoi's and Shuuji's corruption arcs

Ramblings about Saki's avoidance and how it reflects in the way she relates to others.

On Aoi's dog symbolism

An observation on a pt5 scenario that foreshadows Saki's wrathful recklessness

More on Aoi's and Shuuji's parallels

Breakdown of Aoi's values.

The partnerships of Digimon Survive, Part one, Part two

tbh I’m relatively new to francophone scholarship on the French Revolution and I unfortunately cannot read French-- but just from skimming the autotranslations of this article by Pascale Pellerin, Algeria writer Kateb Yacine’s 1984 play, Bourgeois sans-culotte ou le specter du parc Monceau, presents as possibly one of the most compelling dramaturgical interpretations of the French terror and Maximillien Robespierre’s historical memory imo and should honestly be considered a primary example of his radical influences. Yacine unfortunately died while revising the manuscript, so it was never published in the form he intended, but there have been partial translations online, and a clip from the posthumous 1988 Paris performance is on youtube as well.

The play on Robespierre was commissioned by and performed mostly in Arras, aka Robespierre’s hometown, but it would be remiss to shrug Yacine’s interpretation of the French Revolution as a provincial hagiography or redundant to previous French leftist nationalist discourses. Bourgeois sans-culotte is thoroughly a transnational story about revolutionary violence and freedom, and a critical recuperation of Robespierre’s legacy from the perspective of France’s former colonies. For Yacine especially, it was important to highlight the parallels in historiographic receptions of the “reign of terror” to colonial propaganda of the Algerian Revolution and other anticolonial guerilla struggles in Haiti, Vietnam, and Algeria

Posting my favorite sections from Pellerin’s analysis, translations provided by google lmfao; highlights & underline mine--

“Kateb Yacine's piece constitutes a circular vision of History of which Robespierre would be the centre. Whether one is in Indochina, in France, in Algeria, in the 18th century or during the Algerian war, the image of Robespierre speaks of the violence of History and its justification in the face of the violence of the oppressor, that of monarchical power, that of colonialism, that of Nazism. The representations of the guillotine, the Terror and Robespierre constitute a major ideological challenge for Kateb Yacine and take on a particular meaning depending on the place and the space.” (p4).

Note: Yacine’s conspicuous influences from Marx and direct homage to the opening line, “a spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism," from The Communist Manifesto.

Note: Yacine’s decision to weave his autographical self and experiences in colonial Algeria into re-telling the French Revolution.

Note: Yacine’s portrayal of the guillotine as indeed a “ambivalent tool”-- not as a post-Thermidorian carcicature of popular violence against the bourgeoise-- but due to its later mobilization by the French colonial government in the execution of over 2300 Algerian revolutionaries 1956-63.

Note: Yacine’s mediations on Francophone historiography and moralization of the “Reign of Terror”; direct resonances for Algerian revolutionaries on the role of terrorism in struggles for national indepedence from French colonialism

Note: Yacine’s explicit affirmation of Robespierre as the original and legitimate symbol of an enlightened French republic-yet-to-come, in spite of the revolution’s failure to manifest it.

Note: Robespierre attempting to reach Karl Marx prior to his confrontation with de Gaulle, the latter of whom mocks Robespierre as “[having] nothing of a man of action.” Empower by his meeting with Marx, Robespierre responds to this attempted demasculation [perhaps paralleling popular portrayals of his feud with Danton?] with, “And you, the great de Gaulle, you have subdued the generals, but you have not seen Second Lieutenant Le Pen, who is threatening to take power” (Yacine in Pellerin, pp27).

Asks that I will never really answer. My apologies; life gets busy and I get distracted.

I'm dropping these here today, so I can clear out some of the asks from my inbox. Apologies for some of these going back to when Trigun Stampede was still airing. >_< If I don't have a clear and concise answer, I'll let things sit in the inbox but they occasionally do fall off my radar.

Uuummm sorry Anon, I meant to give this more of a response but as I got angrier at Stampede, I just couldn't bring myself to give you a well thought out reply. My overall vibes for the Christian themes that were missing in Stampede had to do how they kept a lot of the surface content, images/style/design from the original but with the sci-fi emphasis removed the weird esoteric Christian stuff and made it look that way. Vash was more willing to engage with others in the original manga/'98 anime based on what Rem taught him. Yet, we never get why he does what he does in Stampede. By changing Wolfwood from being a traveling preacher where Vash lambasts him with 'thou shall not kill' the nuance of his character's moral conflict is lost. He's a trained killer for a quasi-religious organization that might be using a Zia in a really not cool way. We also do not see him act in a self-sacrificing way, which he does from the get go in the original. The angelic body horror was gone, replaced by a sci-fi reading of plants and the concept of plant worship was missing in there as well. There is a lot of internal dialogue that many of the characters pose through the anime and manga and its just gone from Stampede and it revolves around forgiveness, violence, and justice.

For me, the complete re-interpretation of the world and loss of the moral conflict that all characters show hurt the Christian (and Buddhist) themes that underpinned the original. It really came down to how the characters acted and talked. There is no point to a gunslinger who is almost completely passive when one who is active but uses a non-lethal method based on principle. There is a chapter where Vash gets taunted by some enemy for how bad his target practice is until they determine he was that accurate at shooting someone but not killing them. The best way to summarize is that they took some of the aesthetics of the original and didn't follow through on how the characters acted. There is so much contemplation in the original and that is missing in the remake.

Let's just make this a list: 1.) Leo would actually have a real girlfriend. I already have issues with White, I think adding her in as a quasi-girlfriend was a disservice to Leo's character. 2.) Zapp would be white. Less of a manwhore perhaps? 3.) Chain would be cute as opposed to cold and distant. No drinking assholes under the table and vomiting in her bathroom later. See Meryl Stryfe.

4.) K.K. would have boobs, and somehow be more sexy than an awkward and doting mother. See Rem and Luida. 5.) Steven's scar would be smaller or missing to make him a real lady killer. Either they'd lean way too far into Steven's shady side or they'd clean it up completely. Like he'd wink at women as opposed to sleeping with them to get intel. Be Klaus #1 fan! But like all the time, making himself to work too much. His hangry side would either be missing or played up for laughs. 6.) Zed would be dropped because he's the non-human team member. What's the point of having him? 7.) Luciana Estevez would only appear in her super sexy doctor form not her silly clone or normal form.

8.) They would try to create lore and filler to explain things that you have to assume are just how things work. Or they would info dump as opposed to leaving it up to you to worry about things and figure it out from the context. 9.) The entire cast gets aged down, because having a bunch of 30+ cast members who don't have all their shit together is too embarrassing aka very realistic. e.g. K.K. has a house husband (not a good mother like Rem and Luida in Stampede), Steven will die single and alone, Daniel will die single and alone, Patrick carries a torch for Guinness but is single, Abrams is a walking disaster.

10.) Character designs which are super unique and fun, especially in the manga all get 'isekai treatment' were they look homogeneous. The whole point of the diversity of the cast is lost. Women are short and cute, men are tall and slender or tall and buff. No other options.

11.) They attempt to rationalize the 13 Kings and give deep meaning behind their behaviors. Which maybe we will get that someday, but part of the fun is how fucking chaotic they are.

12.) Hellsalem's Lot is an empty city. Somehow, the city lacks people on the streets and we don't get the rooftop betting scene between the giant stomping creature and super-sized Riel. Sex, drugs, gambling are minimized in their version.

13.) The entire Prosfair story line is cut because it is so fucking bizarre and awesome; they wouldn't understand the point of the entire game.

14.) The OST is bad.

Hey Clyde can you elaborate on the “No because…Ted was so deeply traumatized” GIF please?

Of course!

Obviously that's Tomlinfonda's post/argument, so I can only speak to my own interpretation of things, but basically it's acknowledging the tragic implications of our finale. Ted goes back to his son, but far more than that he isolates himself from everything and everyone else. It's all well and good to make headcanoned claims about his life in Kansas --"He's Ted Lasso. Of course he'll make a ton of new friends!" -- but based on what we're shown on screen, AKA the canon, Ted has rejected everything but his role as Henry's father.

He is no longer a premiere league coach, he's a kid's league coach for Henry.

He's no longer keeping some distance from Michelle post-divorce/post-dating Jacob for his own comfort and mental health, he's closely co-parenting with her for Henry.

He's not BFFs with Beard anymore, attending pivotal moments like his wedding, he's spending quality time with Henry.

He's no longer a part of the Richmond community or the Kansas community (we don't see Ted happily chatting with some extra at the game, an easy way to show that he's forming new bonds, nor has the series introduced Kansas friends he's still in contact with) he's a part of the Being Henry's Dad community.

I'm going to talk about this a lot more in the giant-ass meta I'm working on, but the tl;dr is that no one (that I've come across) is upset that Ted went back to Henry, only that the show implied that he gave up EVERYTHING ELSE to do that. Instead of having Henry come to London, or doing the work to make Kansas feel like a place Ted wants to be in for reasons other than this being where Henry currently lives, everything we get implies isolation and discomfort. No one is there to greet Ted at the airport (a sharp contrast to Rebecca tearfully seeing him off, previously begging him to stay). Michelle's house is a dull, sad-looking color pallet compared to the vibrancy of Richmond. She keeps literal distance from Ted, remaining in the doorway while Henry runs to his side and watching him walk in with arms crossed. We know he's not comfortable with her dating Jacob (quite understandably). Ted is not shown to attend ANY of the pivotal moments of his found family: wedding, book signing, giant get-together, despite having the time and financial means to do so. There are no more Diamond Dogs. There's no scene of him baking. No details to remind us of why he once loved his home state, like sunflowers and BBQ sauce. Ted can no longer challenge himself with the complexities coaching a premier team, despite having just come off of a brilliant season that involved re-inventing a whole new strategy. He's back to giving Season One advice of "Be a goldfish" - AKA just ignore what's bothering you, work to literally forget it, rather than engage with it as a means of self-improvement. It's a fine bit of advice for a missed goal, but in the context of his final line of the show? It reinforces the reading that Ted has regressed. Significantly.

"That's not true, Clyde, he's stopped running away from Henry now!" Ehhh has he? I mean yes, he's literally, physically there, but how healthy is that going to be for either of them in the long run if Ted hasn't addressed the root of his anxieties and, as Tomlinfonda's post says, has "killed every part of himself" that's not fatherhood? Ted was happy in London, thriving, right up until his mom unexpectedly arrived and gave him a massive guilt-trip about long-distance parenting. After three seasons of promoting, fighting for, and fully embracing non-traditional relationships, the series end with Ted panicking, going back to where he's "supposed" to be so that he can be the Mid-Western Nuclear Family Father™ that his mother expects. Why? Because Ted lost his own father and he's terrified of doing the same thing to Henry. I've even seen fans talking about how Ted has successfully broken a "cycle" by going home, but what the show and those fans both fail to realize is that living in another country and dying by suicide are not the same thing. Ted never "abandoned" Henry and we sure as hell can't equate him taking a long-distance job/moving permanently to somewhere he loves with his own father's death. If anything, this ending feels like the OPPOSITE of breaking that cycle to me. Moving between parents in two different countries, or moving permanently to London might hold a number of challenges for Henry (even though this is a show where characters frequently make huge life changes without any of the realistic consequences and I don't understand why these challenges are suddenly relevant now... ) but is that really worse than growing up with a father who, based on these last ten minutes, does not come across as happy to me? Who's presented as comparatively isolated? Who isn't shown engaging with anything that's not related to his son? Who may be back here in part due to outside pressure and his own, panicked assumptions? Who, according to what's shown on screen (remember, everything else is a heacanon) he has no identity now outside of his role as a father? I wish someone had ASKED Henry what he wants because despite the clear excitement about Ted coming home, this is a kid who is emotionally intelligent enough to realize what's been making his dad happy. No, you can't put that kind of decision-making pressure on a real child, but a fictional one in a trope-heavy show? Let Henry decide to move/continue long distance because more than wanting his dad beside him 24/7, he wants his dad to be happy.

Because... seriously. If we're worried about Ted potentially repeating the cycle of suicide, I'd say removing him from the support system he's slowly built over three years, denying him major connections with his friends, removing the intellectual challenges he loved, plopping him back in a state he's outgrown, keeping him close to an ex-wife and former marriage counselor now dating said ex-wife and a mother he's harboring a lot of anger towards, plus leaving us on the implication that he's backsliding by trying to ignore his problems instead of tackling them because, you know, he hasn't seen his therapist in months and all the people who know him well enough to challenge him are an ocean away... that's all a bit more concerning than an ending that says, "Ted needs to figure out how to parent Henry from London long-term" or "Ted needs to figure out how to integrate Henry and Michelle into his London life."

Parts of the fandom: Thank god Ted went back to Henry :) All he needs is his son :) He's improved so much in his mental health :) I'm so proud of him :)

Me: I've NEVER been more worried about Ted than I am now :/

It's an ending that says your child is the only thing that matters. Your friends, your career, your hobbies, what you need for your mental health... give all of it up despite, as the rest of the show argues, the fact that you don't have to. The problem is 100000% NOT that Ted ends the series with Henry. I wanted and fully expected them to reunite. But Ted reunites in a way that has him rejecting everything about himself that doesn't directly support his son, all of which is based off of -- imo highly inaccurate -- anxieties about what a "real" father looks like and the presumed fragility of kids. Ted rejects three years of growth and family because he fears that not doing everything that's easiest for Henry -- be there 24/7, don't make him move, don't complicate things with his mom, etc. -- will somehow make him feel the same way Ted feels after the death of his father. In reality, these situations are nothing alike, Ted is feeding the very anxieties he's been working to overcome, Henry has not displayed any significant difficulties with an unconventional family unit, and a happy, supported Ted would ALWAYS be a better father to Henry than one who feels trapped and isolated. The show could have easily given us a reunion while allowing Ted to keep all that he's built -- Rebecca lays out how that can happen right on screen! -- and instead the show chose to have Ted sacrifice everything but Henry when it's oh so clear he never had to.

Which yeah, feels tragic to me. Or at the very least incredibly bittersweet, with a huge emphasis on the bitter. There's nothing wrong with those endings, but it's not a conclusion that I think fit Ted Lasso's genre, or served the rest of the series well.

Ascended Masters

In mid-1950s, the automatic writing practitioner Dorothy Martin, aka Sister Thedra, received a communication from an entity calling itself Sananda – the “galactic name” of Jesus in the Ascended Master Teachings. After conveying spiritual teachings to Martin and her esoteric group, the Seekers, Sananda “revealed” that a global cataclysm would destroy the Earth in 1954. The enlightened Seekers, would, however, be rescued by a flying saucer and taken to Ananda’s planet.

Many Seekers quit their jobs, gave away their possessions, and waited for a flying saucer that never came to rescue them from a cataclysm that never happened.

This true story was described in the pioneering social psychology work When Prophecy Fails, by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, published in 1956. I re-read this book often and take it as a warning. Like Dorothy Martin, we, as practicing magicians, receive signs and communications from beyond the ordinary. One of our challenges is not falling prey to self-deception.

Why are we in danger of self-deception? It’s tempting to interpret any extraordinary experience as evidence of success at magic. Our subconsciousness reflects back what we give it – the principle that Robert Anton Wilson summarised as “what the thinker thinks, the prover proves.” If we read about Egyptian and Indian deities, our subconsciousness will dress our experiences with these symbols.

Add to this that the astral-mental regions are full of elementals and larvae that can pose as helpful guides to feed off our astral matrix. It is conceivable that the entity moving Dorothy Martin’s pen was one such mischievous elemental.

This deceptive allure is sometimes called “glamour.” Certain authors, like theosophist Alice Bailey, pay much attention to keeping safe of glamour in their writings.

One tactic for dealing with glamour is disregarding all unusual phenomena. In certain teaching orders, the prevalent practice is to invalidate any experience a student might have as “illusion,” “Maya,” “distraction” or some such. This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If we wish to study magic, we must study the effects of magic.

So let’s look at some practical ways in which we can address such phenomena. I would recommend, first of all, detached journaling of such phenomena. Then, their analysis with respect of whether they flatter and whether they impose themselves. The soul mirrors are an invaluable tools for their examination, and a good magic hygiene a way to prevent them.

One of my favourite esoteric authors, Paul Foster Case, wrote that the true Voice will never flatter and never command. I understand flattery to mean anything that arouses self-importance, such as suggesting that a person is exceptionally talented, successful, and chosen for a special mission or favour. Flattery may come in form of a messiah complex: a notion that the individual has been chosen to save others. Or, conversely, it may come as a belief that we will be spared something that “ordinary” people are due.

Let’s go back to the story of Dorothy Martin and see how it compares to these suggestions. First, Martin didn’t practice detached journaling, but took every transmission from “Sananda” at face value. She allowed “Sananda” to flatter her as a chosen “channel” of teachings beyond her level of spiritual maturity, and command her to prepare for the rapture on the threat of cataclysm. The Seekers as a group didn’t take their deteriorating familial, social and professional relationships as a warning that something was amiss. Finally, the group was open to any and all influences to the point of exhaustion, rather than consuming information mindfully and cultivating balance.

Developing resilience to glamour is a prerequisite to a sustainable and productive magic practice, and I hope that these musings will at least serve as a reminder of this, just as When Prophecy Fails serves as a reminder to me when I get a bit carried away.

This article is not written by me. I only shared it. To learn more about this article, you can click this link: https://perseusarcaneacademy.com/post…

Not a request!!! Just a thought;

But will you ever consider writing a full on one-shot of the self aware enstars au? I’ve been reading some of your discussions about it and it’s low-key interesting …I love your work as well so I’m interested in reading your interpretations on it! Because in a lot of yandere stories, it mostly relies on dialogue to tell us all about the character and plot of the story. There’s also physical descriptions of actions which is made very clear cut and just generally straightforward that it is a yandere story. Which I feel like it’s easy to lose interest on such stories because you can usually predict how it’ll go. There’s also the entire POV thing, wether it be 3rd, 1st, or 2nd, I feel like you could use each of these perspectives to throw the readers in a loop. Wether it be being vague to the point everyone is always switching the blame, red herrings with false implications, etc. And I think it’s kinda hard to feel the scary aspect of a yandere story when it’s clearly in front of you. There’s not a lot of room for interpretations for it. I usually like reading a story that’s more “show don’t tell” vibe when it comes to yandere, because as a reader you also feel unnerved not knowing the characters…but they know you, don’t they? But you don’t have to know that yet, don’t lose you head over it silly…It really starts to make you question intentions, second guess, and having to re read each paragraph to find any foreshadowing. Hell, maybe you start to go crazy as well.

Which is why I like the idea of a self aware au, you’d probably just find yourself outright denying everything. That the game is iffy and is worth deleting (aka more complications) or you’d full on always blame the lag or a bug. But specifically self aware au where the mc gets transported into their world, it’d be 100% more harder, considering having to adapt in a new world and slowly realising your entire existence. I feel like it can slowly spiral to an unhinged mc that’s just succumbing to their reality, losing their marbles while at it, and bunch of dudes go crazy for them.

But what do you think of how the mc/reader would react? In a self aware au setting, I think there’s many possibilities and each oprutunity can lead up to some spicy drama lol…

Ps. I love your work! You’ve really worked hard and I hope it continues to pay off! Hope you have a great day <3

First of all, thank you for the very thorough ask, I love seeing what you guys think about certain aspects!

To answer your question, I'd definitely be up for one day writing a one-shot centered around the idea of the yandere self-aware au! All it comes down to is me suddenly getting a good idea on what I could write. The way I go about writing scenarios vs headcanons or rambles is pretty different

For headcanons it's usually good enough to simply start with certain ideas and then it kind of develops from there because I get more ideas as I'm writing and the structure of headcanons or rambles allows me to simply add on any ideas I just had without disrupting the "flow" too much

With scenarios, I usually like to plan out most of what happens beforehand. So I have a certain idea and the steps of what needs to happen in order and at what conclusion I want to end it all on. I can still improvise some of the dialogue or smaller parts but usually I have an outline I need to follow so it all makes sense because it's like an actual story you read from beginning to end that needs to follow a single flowing narrative

It's a lot more work and I need a better idea of what I want to write about, which is why it's usually rarer for me to post a scenario, it just takes a lot of time compared to headcanons.

What I mean to say is that I'm open to the idea of writing a one-shot for the Au, I'm just waiting for the day where an idea suddenly appears in my head and I know exactly what to write. So it may take a while to get to that point but it's definitely not out of the question!

I'm also a fan of "show, don't tell" and subtle foreshadowing and I like trying to incorporate some of that into my writing, though I don't know if I always succeed at that. I particularly throwing in a line and repeating it in the end where it has a different meaning djdjd The "unknown" parts are what keeps me on my toes as I read a yandere story. Of course, having read a lot of these stories over the years you start to get a certain feeling for tropes that might appear so I'm genuinely impressed when something manages to surprise me. I love the slow realization of all the hints the author dropped in the beginning and that it didn't just come out of the blue.

The reader being unaware of what is actually happening, only being able to guess is really interesting and you're right when you say that a self-aware au lends itself well to that!

I feel like no matter how much I think about this kind of AU and how suspicious it would be for a new line to appear or something of the like, irl I would never realize something like that would be happening to be honest djdjdj Like I would sit there and be like " I guess they added a new campaign :)" or think it was some sort of glitch. Knowing of the tropes in writing would not help be in actually realizing the problem if I were in that exact same situation, so I can't blame the readers in these scenarios that only think the app is acting up or something. We as the actual readers might be aware that it's yandere related but no one would actually believe that if they were in the same situation

So yes, the game starts glitching and ominous things happen and yet the player is not aware at all. You just know something is happening but you don't know *what*

But really, imagine something like that happening to you and you're suddenly in the enstars world, you would be so disoriented and scares as hell💀 Like, how would you even get out of there?? How did you get there in the first place?? What is going on??

You'd be so stressed that you'd have an even harder time picking up on any unhealthy behaviors from the characters, too distracted by the fact that you're somehow talking to a living, breathing game character.

Like

Mika: "Oh I'm so so glad to see you! I don't deserve to be in your presence but I would do absolutely anything for you! Just say the word and I will get rid of anyone that bothers you because I love you so much!!"

You: Is that Mika Kagehira from the hit mobile-game Ensemble Stars! Music and Basic, available in the appstore and Google play as well as in qooapp? Oh my god

Like, you're just in utter disbelief that any of this is happening while all the characters go bonkers because you're finally with them. I can definitely see you slowly losing your mind because it's all so surreal and you don't know what to do or who to trust

Hello prospective and current people we interact with aka peeps. 

This is a Reboot Starrk blog of Solitariusdeluna. Re-established 25.8.22

If you’re new here, welcome. You can call me mems. been here in the indie part of the bleach rp fanfom for well over 12 years. 

Mun is well over 21+ and blog is 18+ 

Here are some important points to know and read before interacting with this blog!

 ✘  This is a canon-divergent, private and selective blog of Coyote Starrk which is also quite heavily personal headcanon based. Which is also a fancy way of saying my interpretation, yo.

✘ His main verse is right after the winter war and will eventually lead to post-Quincy arc.

✘ Shipping is undecided. But if it happens we’ll see how things go. 

✘ Starrk can be found alternating between karakura town and deep within the Rukongai forest (district yet to be determined). This also means he will be making appearances within the Seireitei.

✘ Activity fluctuates a heck of a lot, and is most times low. Consider this a low to medium activity blog. Which means sometimes I write a heck ton and other times not really. Because rping is just a hobby not a job.

✘ IN THIS HOUSE: And contrary to popular fanon; Starrk does not just nap. like all the time.  

✘  And no, he is not a lazy bones person who just naps most of his life away and that perception of him is pretty much rejected on this blog. Kindly, do not give me that crap if you’re thinking of interacting with us.

✘ Starrk is powerful. He just chooses not use his powers. Remember that he was Primera Espada in case your muse decides to fight him.

✘ There will be days when I will only write headcanons, days when i will write some replies. Days where I will only write drabbles and days when I do nothing but lurk. All is well. 

✘ We don’t mind pre-established relationships on this blog especially with regards to the arrancar and they are certainly more preferable than beginning stages.

 ✘ If you would like to interact, send us any of memes you see me reblog. Or, you can always feel free to just shoot us an ask anytime! IC or OOC questions are welcome!

 ✘ I rp only with mutuals. However, I also accept asks sent in from non-mutuals, especially from personal blogs who ask ooc or even ic questions. Be it for character development or if you’re just saying hello to the muse or mun. we appreciate it~

And lastly, to all my followers, kindly remember; “you can’t pour from an empty cup, take care of yourself first.” Self-care is important. So remember to take care of yourself. But also to be kind to others.

ETHEREO-REALISM

February 2020

Declaration of Intention:

The movement declares a new wave of expression. Neither realism or abstract.

Perpetually seeking it’s purpose, it’s meaning.

What artist has never questioned this rethorical question? What is art?

What's the point of making art? Plato’s theory of Mimesis states that all art is mimetic by nature. Art is imitating life. He believed that “ideas” are the ultimate reality. Art imitates ideas and so it is imitating reality.

Why after all, after the invention of photography and specially now in the digital era , would we continue to reproduce the world as we see it, as we feel it, as we experience it. Just like Sontag and Barthes inquired into the nature and essence of photography, I inquire the need to re purpose photography. It has been two years since I wrote this essay, the beggining on my manifesto, in which I state that painting,the beaty of drawing and illustration has and  will never died. It’s meaningful beaity surpasses it’s utility.

IN FACT.

What we as a society,thought would kill the visual arts,aka the and distribution of photographic cameras in the 1900s, SAW THE RENAISSANCE OF MODERN ART. The avant-garde movements. The ultimate rebellion against capturing reality.

On our continuous search for purpose through artistic expression we question the futility of our actions. To sell or not to sell? That is the question.

Abstract art might upset many classical artists, probably more than to the average person. Abstract art confounds its viewers, how are we supposed to deal with an art completely untethered (inalterada) , from the world of recognizable objects? Why should we? BUT. Freed from the burden of realistic representation it  gives space to more interpretation. Since then,the history of art has been diveded in two opposites,often rivalries. In my attempt to explore both sides equally, first I must agree on a convienience marriage between the figurative ( the terrenal plane)  and  the abstract (the astral plane) we intent to explore the three bases  of human needs; emotional, spiritual & carnal.

We must shed off the burden of high expectations of traditional mastery, and become understtanding of the misunderstandment of the abstract. With the abstraction of realism , the distraction of subject matter is no longer apparent, with it,art can directly act on the soul.

Declaration/ Statement of Intent We are against the XXI century popular movement of the superficial & fake. A movement which illustrates the complex imagery of dream or subconscious visions and irrational space and form combinations. Ei. George Grie modern surrealist dreamns, dark gothic, inspirational romanticism etc. Etherealism explores the conscious, existencialism & expressionism

⦁ Rivalry between classic and modern painting must stinguish ⦁ That each artist must find it own way into abstraction (if they belong to the classics & reject the unkown, the uncertainty of the abstract) ⦁ To explore our subconscious-idealism ⦁ To disfigure reality into our reality ⦁ the introduction of Psychoanalitical realism ⦁ Do not fear the de-construction of matter ⦁ neither the composition of life & perfect beauty ⦁ Meditation through mind and body will lead to your true expression. ⦁ Emotion and consciousness are realities ⦁ Intuition ⦁ Anti mimesis- imitación de la naturaleza como fin esencial del arte ⦁ to use whenever its possible our melancholy &  neurasthenia ⦁ the equilibirum of Apollonian & Dyonisioan artistic natures. ⦁ Emotion and consciousness are realities. ⦁ Artistic feeling & Intuition ⦁ Symbolism ⦁ Colour ⦁ Perspective ⦁ Nature ⦁ Space ⦁ Distorsion Realism

Art is currently in a dormant phase.  Stuck either in the past or thrilled by the hope of selling abstract pieces.  Society is blinded by the superficiality of fast produced images, suberged in constant self hatred , racism,borders and conflicts. We are afraid of feeling & the reality of life. Real-ism, real raw artistic expresion. It's absolutley neccesary to get rid of superficiality , superficial beauty, superficial erotism, superficial sensuality, superficial fanatism, superficial instant gratification attention-It's ESSENTIAL to search into the reason and meanings of art making.  The lack of purpose comes with the death of art.We are in search of sources and origins of structures of signification.imaginary world's  evoking our visual experience. The pursuit of realistic optical effects, we artists still the attempt to achieve extraordinary realism. But why is this? What is the use of this mimesis and is it worth our time to observe it with awe when the world around us it self is all around us in pure form.since the Romantics vision of artists, artistic endeavour roots from a deep need of expressing a vast variety of emotions ,sometimes beauty,sometimes ugliness. When "Realism" emerged in the mid 19th century , it was at the same time when photography was emerging and getting the attention into every aspect of our lives. photography.We can find cameras in technological devices, a large range of photography cameras , digital & analog. Everyone has access to photography. But the aim of realism was not to glorify mythological or historical figures. BUT to depict the reality around , every day people and places of the time, in no way idealized or sentimentalized. NOT to paint in a photographically realistic manner aka naturalism and this theme has been prelevant throughout human kind history, to depict us humans and our enviroment, our landscapes, the people & their beliefs.  It was SHOCKING to paint like life it self, it still is, but it can somehow lack purpose and meaning. It's done for the sake of beeing able to. Sometimes, essential and neccesary skill to become an artist. The development and use of linear perspective; helps in crafting the appearance of a three dimensional world on a two dimensional surface. Shocking immediacy and impact. Looking back to the ancient classics, the greeks, who represent the IDEAL figure. The desire to depict life itself, has long played out in three dimenions. The IMPACT of the wildly uncanny feeling of realism. Realism emerges as a strategry amond many thats combined with other approaches and employed toward a wide variery of ends. Disrupting many people's expectations about what art should be, showing us the often aggresivly unartful side of every life, and acknowledged the invasiveness of advertising and consumer culture. While the subjects of photorealists paintings aren't usually that remarkable, the skill involved in their reproduction often is. Cries for help as we drown in an image saturated world or the death rattle of the great pictoral tradition. ABSTRACT Throughout the time spam of ( 1780s-2020) artists have demonstrated that things that exist in the world can often look abstract eg. James McNeil, Victor Hugo, William Turner. Artists became increasingly interested in depicting things non-naturastically, the early stages of abstracting things, ie stylizing,symplifying, flattening it. Reaching the 20th century artists were painting familiar themes in unfamiliar ways, using  intense vivid  colours in broad brush strokes that critic dubbed them the Fauvs or Wild Beats.  Or as the case of Hilma Af Klint (1862-1944) was painting mostly abstract works as early as 1905 as a form of spiritual communication. The main interest was in the spiritual and the occult, science and the depiction of of invisible forces , recently discovered such as  electromagnetic fields. Annie Besant / Charles Leadbeater had published images in 1901 they called Thought Forms, illustrating their belief that ideas, emotions and sounds manifest as visual auras. Then the Cubists came along, the Futurists in Italy, German Expressionists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who used abstraction and rich unreal colours to depict the chaos and anxiety of the streets-city life. As Kandinsky's interest in to commune with the spiritual, he claimed his art was quote " What the spectator lives or feels while under the effect of the form and colour combinations of the picture".  Abstraction was not opposed to Realism. It was realism. The immediacy & pictorial realities of color and contrast,by Sonia Delaunay & her first disk was considered the first and purest obstraction at the time. As she illustrated an influential book of poetry combining abstraction and typography, a style she extended into painting and fashion. The sentimentalism of expressionism, this style is filled with emotion, spontaneity, and movement; you can feel an artist’s mood almost jump off of the canvas at times. It’s all about painting a feeling or experience that is shared with the world through the canvas.

"For this reason we call on all those in the world of science who know that art is a fundamental requirement for our species, that they may direct part of their research towards discovering that malleable substance full of light and instruments that will produce sounds which will enable the development of four dimensional art."- Concrete Art or White Manifesto?

Awareness of seeing is invisible. Awareness of hearing is silent. Awareness of touching is intangible. These three awarenesses are part of one indivisible personal awareness.

Personal awareness exists beyond both entropy and negentropy, it cannot seek itself or avoid itself by trying with direct personal effort.

To succeed in harmonizing mortal personal awareness with eternal transpersonal awareness, remain sensitive to sensitivity and aware of awareness, divesting from seeking or avoiding direct personal effort.

...Here I think that Taoism makes a decision to conflate the absence of subpersonal qualities of personal consciousness with an assumed absence of sensed qualities in sense itself. While I think this is false in an absolute or scientific sense, it is true enough locally that it is quite profound and leads to a useful philosophy for living our personal lives. This is the “Eastern Way” toward the attainment of a fully satisfied selfless self, in diametric opposition to the “Western Way” toward material attainment by a forever unsatisfied self that is selfishly ‘full of itself’.

Going back to the re-interpreted text, I think that the advice given is that to follow the Tao, aka seek ‘flow states’, one should, seemingly paradoxically, neither try nor avoid trying to take personal action. Perhaps it is the opposite of the Western sentiment attributed to Thomas Paine and George Patton “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” The Eastern sentiment could be read as “Do not seek to lead or follow. Get out of the way.” The idea is to use personal motivation to integrate itself with transpersonal sense and motives rather than to assert its personal agenda onto the rest of the (interpersonal, subpersonal, impersonal, transpersonal) universe. ...MSR proposes that while it is true that our personal cocoon of insensitivity causes a disconnection with all other conscious experiences, this disappearance of consciousness is no enigmatic ‘non-existence’ or ‘suchness’ as Taoism suggests. MSR suggests that beyond the sensory cataract of personal experience is not a grand nothingness to which all sense returns, but one lone Holos or totality within which all experience is preserved forever in some sense (similar to the concept of the Akashic Records).

The Totality of experiences are eternally present and experience-able in an Absolute sense, but all component experiences are diffracted through complex nested modulations of relative insensitivity. This diffraction temporarily limits the totality of sense experience to a single timeline of experience that senses itself in terms that echo the very condition of that temporary limitation. Each diffracted partition of the Holos is a temporarily temporalized version of eternal experience into an episodic stream of memory-laden feelings and thoughts. This is the the binding of our subjective qualities of experience, including the sense of being a subject.

...In MSR, I critique physical entities like mass and energy as reductionist quantitative abstractions that accidentally deny the underlying universal fabric of qualitative sense affect and motive effect. Primordial sensory affect and motive effect replace mass and energy as the local modes of participation. The physical universe of anesthetic-mechanical appearances is understood to be a kind of shadow of the Aesthetic Holos that reflects the ability of consciousness to partially divide and alienate itself for purposes of multiplying and enriching itself. The physical world is not an illusion, simulation or maya, it is just that reality in the local sense is an inverted reflection of reality in the absolute sense.

...Everything from social media to the Metaverse to AGI is expanding our connection to disconnection. I think that because of that grounding in disconnection, all of these projects are ultimately doomed to failure in the ways that truly matter to us, despite promising exponential success in the ways that Western-Materialist model and its virally expanding institutions have conditioned us to think that we should want. We dreamed of extraterrestrial conquest, and instead we are conquering ourselves with anti-terrestrial nauseas. We have mistaken the uncanny for the sublime.

...Taking this back to the Tao Te Ching, I propose that Lao Tzu’s error is only an error in the absolute sense, not in a personal sense. While we are alive, the transpersonal conscious experience that envelopes our personal conscious experience is silent, invisible and intangible. We can only get glimpses of it when we’re not looking and our envelope of limited personal awareness is slightly breached such as noticing synchronicity or completely opened up in a life altering event. When those larger breaches occur and the personal intellect is flooded with its version of transpersonal awareness, some contents are necessarily distorted and omitted. Personal awareness correctly identifies its contact with transpersonal awareness as more significant than ordinary experience but without any means to ground it in its ordinary sense-making terms. Hence, to the outside observer, the psychedelic or mystical experience is seen charitably as visionary or uncharitably as psychotic.

To temper that extreme, chaotic end of the spectrum of consciousness, MSR should be seen as only an outer framework of philosophy to point toward the possibility of a new synthesis between the systemizing and empathizing modes of awareness. That possibility would be fulfilled when people free themselves from pathological extremes and find common sense closer to the terrestrial center of our universe and the fully individual and human center of ourselves.

– Craig Weinberg (x)

I agree with most of this post and suggest reading it in its entirety, but I don't think that the concepts of "nothingness" and "suchness" are really where the error is located. I think the error is a disavowal of "everythingness" - but it goes the other way as well. Going beyond either duality or non-duality means recognizing that "nothingness" and "everythingness" are really the same.

What is "suchness"?

Difficult to describe in words - but the "suchness" of, say, a flower means its unknowable essence, which includes the fact that it points to, and implies, everything that exists beyond or outside of it (the Totality). It is merely an expression of everything that came before it, as well as the ultimate principles that determine how things evolve.

(And yet it is what it is as well - this flower, here - nothing other than that.)

"They say each thing conceals some hidden thing. Yes, it is the thing itself, this unhidden thing, That lies concealed within." (Fernando Pessoa)

And yet. All of these principles and how they evolve, all of this totality, is nothing other than what it is. None of it actually "means" anything other than: this is how things are, in this universe. There's no, say, universal signifier that says that this is the way things have to be. It just...happened this way. This implies that the opposite could be true. Every affirmation contains within it its negation, and vice-versa.

(Again, difficult to describe in words, because there's in sense in which it had to be this way, couldn't have been any other way.)

Not only that, but when we refer to Totality we have to take into account how things could evolve in the future. In other words, what we have is not an inert record, but a record that pulses with potentiality.

That potentiality, which exists...before or behind everything, is the sense beyond sense. It is the taught string of the lyre. The Totality is every way the string has moved in the past, and every way it will move in the future. But what of the silence to which the string returns when its vibration dies down?

"The Social Construction of Reality," Berger and Luckmann - Ch. 1 "The Reality of Life", paragraph-by-paragraph summary

I. Our first goal is to construct a theory of reality as it is experienced in everyday life.

II. To proceed, we must first clarify the foundations of knowledge in everyday life: the objectivations of subjective processes and meanings, by which the inter-subjective commonsense world is constructed, i.e. taking what is understood internally by individuals, and externalizing that understanding.

III. We're taking a basic crack at this effort of theory-building via empirical descriptions aka "phenomenological analysis".

IV. This analysis refrains from causal explanations, but acknowledges the interpretations that the analytic subject embeds within itself.

V. We assert that consciousness is intentional, i.e always "intending" or "directed", and we care about this aspect of consciousness in and of itself as opposed to the complexities of experience that result from this aspect.

VI. "I" - standing hereafter for ordinary self-consciousness in everyday life - am conscious of the world as consisting of multiple realities, and experience the transition between them as 'a kind of shock.'

VII. Of these realities, one is paramount; this is the reality of everyday life, 'impossible to ignore.'

VIII. "I" apprehend this paramount reality as already ordered and objectified; language provides the designations and relationships between objects that "I" encounter in this reality, from "my chess club" to "the United States of America.'

IX. 'The reality of everyday life is organized around the "here" of my body and the "now" of my present.' However, it also embraces other parts of reality at varying removes.

X. Everyday reality is shared with other people, and "I" understand there are certain aspects of reality we share, and aspects we do not share eg. their "here" is my "there" and so on.

XI. "I" do not doubt the reality of reality, except under extreme circumstances, and generally take for granted its "realness" as "I" continue to exist within it. However, reality is not always easily apprehended in any given aspect.

XII. When problems obtrude into normal "unproblematic"/familiar reality, "I" am able to recognize them as still part of reality even though they may be completely unfamiliar.

XIII. Other realities eg. dreaming, playing, etc. are embedded in the paramount reality, which consciousness can enter and return from 'as from an excursion.'

XIV. Other realities are entered as finite provinces of meaning where paramount reality is still paramount, but cannot provide good, or even adequate, symbolic/linguistic framing for communicating the "alternate" (theoretical, aesthetic, religious, mystical, etc.) experiences.

XV. The world is structured spatially and temporally. Spatial organization doesn't matter much for this analysis and can be ignored for now.

XVI. Temporal organization of reality is much more important, both internally and inter-subjectively. We have a personal/physiological sense of time, as well as culturally-shared calendars based on 'cosmic time,' and the interaction between these is complex as fuck.

XVII. "I" encounter time as continuous and finite, and all my existence is ordered by it. 'My own life is an episode in the externally factitious stream of time' shared with others, and the knowledge that our experience is necessarily finite structures much of our experience. Memento mori.

XVIII. The same temporal structure is additionally coercive in that it imposes an ordering on the events of my life. It also provides the context within which the events of my life are anchored and comprehended; "I" am "a man of my time." ---- Related thoughts: re: XIV: 'Play' can be understood, using this framing, as a special reality that can be fully represented using the symbolic/linguistic architecture of paramount reality, but which ignores or transforms the usual relationships of that architecture. Similar to surrealism in this sense?

re: XVI: cultural calendars and physiological time-sense can be thought of as the same phenomenon at two different scales and with two different systemic bases/substrates. Does this mean that some kind of "meaningfulness of time" is necessarily part of a complex (as opposed to simple or chaotic) system? An internalized time sense is a necessary basis for causal reasoning, this-follows-that, perception-response, etc. so probably yes.