#I guess I am at my core a hedonist | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

funkymbtifiction · 2 years

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Hi Charity! I wanted to ask if these things are normal for 713/731 tritype to experience (or maybe I am mistyped?). I also think that my instinctual stacking is sp/so, if it makes any difference.

In moments of self-doubt and contemplation, I think that at my core I am very shallow and boring person, and on top of that, I am not very kind and gentle, kind of very...self-centered. I know that the image what other people see of my is vastly different from the reality, and I can't stand when try to get close to me and go past that constructed image. I guess I really don't want them to see how actually bad and imperfect I am? It's fine if I choose to show to other people the "bad sides" but it still feels more like an act than an honest display vulnerabilities, if it makes sense.

Sometimes I think that I exist not as a person but as a concept in somebody's brain, and what they do if fill the gaps where the "real" personality should lie. Lately I've been thinking that I lack depth as a person, especially since the teenage angst kind of came to an end, I am usually pretty content with my life even if something bad happens. I think because of that, it's very hard for me to emphasize with other people who are just actively sad all the time, crack jokes about how "terrible" the life is and only talk about how depressed they are. Not to demolish their suffering but I just don't understand it anymore. This negativity upsets me but also makes me think that maybe it's me who is so shallow and emotionless at my core that I can't experience deep emotions and I can't empathize with them (I always had low-ish empathy but I think it went down significantly as I grew older). Sometimes I think that there is really nothing underneath my confident and easygoing image and the skills I possess.

This does sound like a strong 1 fix "tearing into a 7 core." A 1 would be judgmental about the flighty nature of 7, and attempt to ground it and make it more "responsible." There would be more super-ego attached to the need to be reliable, get things done, and not be as "selfish." The 'constructed' image is also 3ish, yes -- 3s feel deeply uncomfortable the closer people get to them, out of a fear that unless they are impressive, they will face rejection. The are also afraid that underneath their work/success/appearance, there is nothing substantial inside them, that they are "hollow." So they find it hard to be openly vulnerable with other people/in relationships. 3s also find it hard to connect to their deep inner feelings -- as one 3 said, she puts her feelings in a jar on a shelf, tells herself that she will get to them later, and then that never happens. So 3s out of all the heart fixes have the hardest time with identifying with their feelings -- it's not that they aren't as deep, emotional, or resonant as other types, but that the 3 can't SEE those things in themselves.

It's hard for 7s to be negative, but they also have a line to 1 and can become self-crucial even without a 1 fix. The difference is that the 7-9 bounces back from this quicker than the 7-1, who tries to rein in their hedonistic impulses and be a "better person."

Do other 7s also feel shallow, especially when interacting with 4 cores/fixes when their depth and uniqueness is right in your face?

I could see how that might happen, yes.

#question #enneagram #enneagram 7

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wisteria-lodge · 4 years

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Character Analysis: Sorting Pirates of the Caribbean

So @sortinghatchats is brilliant. Absolutely my favorite character (and person!) analysis system. Instead of one house, you get two - a PRIMARY (your motivation, why you do things), and a SECONDARY (your toolbox, how you get things done.) Here is a very stripped down refresher, and here is my explanation for why I am saying Lion, Bird, Badger and Snake instead of the names of the Hogwarts houses.

IDEALIST PRIMARY Lion - I do what I feel is right. (MORAL) Bird - I do what I decide is correct. (LOGICAL) LOYALIST PRIMARY Badger - I do what helps my community (PEOPLE MATTER) Snake - I do what helps me/my inner circle (MY PEOPLE MATTER)

IMPROVISATIONAL SECONDARY Lion - Charge! React! Smash the system! Snake - Transform, adapt, find the loophole. BUILT SECONDARY Bird - Plan, make tools, gather information. Badger - Community-build, caretake, call in favors.

Now let’s talk Pirates of the Caribbean! I’m mostly focusing on the first film because it’s the best and my favorite, but I do mention 2 and 3.

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Jack Sparrow is the classic Snake secondary. He’ll improvise an escape, improvise a weapon, wait for “the opportune moment.” He’s never fought fair in his life and doesn’t feel the tiniest bit bad about it. He’s silver-tongued. When he’s in a tight spot, he’ll tell you exactly what he thinks you want to hear. And if he knows you don’t trust him, he’ll reverse-psychology you on purpose.

It’s hard to see past his theatrical, charming, over-the-top way of doing things, and that’s on purpose. The last time Jack told someone what he actually wanted, he got himself marooned. No wonder he “plays things close to the vest now,” living in his secondary, and making people guess his motives.

At first he appears totally pragmatic, always on the side of the person who can give him the most stuff. But I don’t buy it. Jack Sparrow has a weird code of honor. Maybe not one he’s comfortable with (“you can never predict when an honest man is going to do something incredibly… stupid.”) But it’s there. The way he’s introduced - alone, respectfully saluting hanged pirates – that’s letting us know it’s not just his own freedom he values.

I like that little moment after he rescues Elizabeth when he makes it clear that she doesn’t owe him anything. “I saved your life, you saved mine, we’re square” implies that there’s a right way to do things, and that the wrong way is making people feel obligated. Jack has similar moments with Gibbs. Every time he says “keep to the Code,” he’s reaffirming that no one has to save him. When his crew abandons him, Jack shrugs and says, “They’ve done what’s right by them. Can’t ask for more than that.”

This means that Jack Sparrow has a Lion primary. But he’s a pirate, so his felt morality is less right vs. wrong and more free vs. trapped. Apart from that he’s actually kind of a classic Lion - perfectly happy on his own, so long as he doesn’t have to compromise his morals. In a deleted scene we learn that he turned pirate because he refused to be a slave ship captain, and that’s in character. He only wants the Black Pearl because the Black Pearl is freedom. That’s the message he teaches, as an unconventional mentor. He cuts Elizabeth out of her literal corset, and prods Will out of his figurative one.

(and a magic compass that points to whatever Jack wants most is a gorgeous metaphor for a Lion primary, guided by their feelings and intuition. Their internal compass).

Elizabeth Swann has a pirate’s soul. She ends the story as Pirate King. But when we meet her, she is a high-class lady deeply suspicious of the rules. She’s not on board with the latest fashions, eager to ditch her table manners, and she’s real friendly with Will - even though it makes her father bluster, “The setting is not entirely proper!” Miss Elizabeth Swann is stifled by her situation (her corset is too tight.) She’s got a whole life planned out for her, and it’s a nice life. Port Royal is a nice city and Norrington is a nice guy. But still. The thought that this is where things are going makes her uncomfortable.

Elizabeth wants to be able to act based on her gut responses. And as long as the pirates are also doing this, she’s on board. But she ditches the Pirate Code the moment it contradicts her own internal felt morality.

ELIZABETH: All of you with me. Will is in that cave and we must save him! (…) GIBBS: There’s the Code to consider. ELIZABETH: The Code. You’re pirates. Hang the Code, and hang the rules. They’re more like guidelines anyway.

She’s been using the pirate way of life as a way to justify and explain the way she’s always felt. And when you put things in that order (I like this system because it supports what I already know to be true) that’s a Lion primary. Also, the advice her dad gives her is just so perfect for a Lion: “Even a good decision if made for the wrong reasons can be a wrong decision.” You’re doing the smart thing Elizabeth, not the thing you feel is right. It’ll make you miserable. Stop it.

When it comes to secondaries, Elizabeth definitely has some Bird skills. She collects data (about pirates), and can put a plan into action. But it’s a model. When she’s in trouble, when things are serious, she goes improvisational Snake secondary all the way. Elizabeth lies to Barbossa, tells Norrington what he wants to hear, pretends to be drunk to put Jack off his guard. She improvises weapons, and she plays into “proper lady” stereotypes so people underestimate her. Gibbs actually recognizes this, and calls Elizabeth “daft like Jack.”

Elizabeth and Jack do house-match, which is why they always seem to get each other. Elizabeth can pin Jack down and make him give her a straight answer. She’s the only one who can consistently trick him. And when she kills him – well, he forgives. Easily. It’s never even a thing. If he had been in Elizabeth’s place he would have done exactly the same thing, and he knows it. And he knows she knows it.

(it’s kind of neat how at the end of the first movie, the two of them are trapped by Norrington, then freed by Norrington, and go off to form the core of their respective pirate crews.)

Will Turner is a charging Lion secondary who deals with challenging situations by laying all his cards on the table and throwing his sword at something. This makes him a really good foil for the Snake secondary leads, and I will never get tired of watching Jack make faces, and say variations of “how about this time we don’t just run in screaming, yeah?”

JACK: Do us a favor. I know it’s difficult for you, but please, stay here. And try not to do anything… stupid.”

WILL: Let her go! BARBOSSA: You’ve only got one shot, and we can’t die. JACK: Don’t do anything stupid… WILL: You can’t. I can! JACK: … like that.

JACK: So what’s your plan then? WILL: I row over there, search the ship until I find your bloody key. JACK: And if there are crewmen? WILL: I cut down anyone in my path.

To be fair, Will does start off with a Badger secondary model. Badgers care about things being fair, and Will gets annoyed at Jack for cheating, and annoyed at Elizabeth for stealing the medallion. He’s also really leaning into the hard work aspect of the Badger secondary by practicing sword fighting three hours a day. But this doesn’t seem to be a secondary that’s especially good for him. It makes him tense and uptight, and by the end of the first film he’s completely thrown it off.

I really considered a Snake primary for him, based on how single-mindedly he goes after Elizabeth. Movies 2 and 3 just keep throwing Loyalist conflicts at him. (Will can stay with Elizabeth or save his father, but he can’t do both!) But I think he’s actually a Badger primary.

This boy cares about his communities a lot. He doesn’t think he can be with Elizabeth (even though she clearly likes him) because of “propriety.” He believes society when society tells him she’s out of his league. He covers for a boss who spends most of his time passed-out drunk, probably out of a sense of loyalty, or because he feels that’s what he’s supposed to do. He starts off the film completely dehumanizing pirates, but slowly learns his lesson – a very Badger primary character arc. And then, when Will rescues Jack at the end, it’s not because Jack is his (the way a Snake primary would parse it) but because Jack is a good man who isn’t being treated right.

(also the “part of the ship, part of the crew” refrain that Will’s new crew chants as he takes over for Davy Jones is very… dark Badger magic. You are becoming part of the whole.)

Hector Barbossa is the definition of a Burnt Primary. He can’t want. He can’t allow himself to want. Wanting is off the table. (because he is an undead skeleton.)

However, I do think that when Barbossa is healthy and y’know, not cursed, he’s a Snake primary. His beloved monkey is a little nod to the sorts of Snakey bonds he would like to form, but isn’t able to at the moment. Apart from that, he values self-care, and is a bit of a hedonist. He likes pretty things. He likes putting Elizabeth in pretty dresses. He likes elegantly prepared food, antique furniture, and nice hats. (Things start getting serious in the sword fight after Jack cuts off his feather.) This is why I think his redemption arc is so funny. Once his primary unburns, and he’s able to want things safely, he pretty much becomes a happy-go-lucky good guy overnight. And you know, I completely buy it.

As for secondary, I’m going with Badger. Barbossa community builds (he’s a much better captain than Jack.) He gives morale raising speeches. Leader of a mutiny is pretty classic dark Badger stuff. Marooning Jack, and dropping Bootstrap Bill into the ocean tied to a canon are both very ruthless, very public acts that are all about weaponizing community as a way to dehumanize your enemies and cement your power.

James Norrington starts out very Establishment (like Elizabeth.) But unlike Elizabeth, he seems to enjoy the way he can just see his life all laid out. Work his way up, become Commodore, marry the governor’s daughter. He proposes the second after he gets his promotion, it really is like he’s working from a checklist. It’s a very rigid Bird primary.

And he follows the law: “One good deed is not enough to redeem a lifetime of wickedness.” But more than that, he is comforted by following the law. When Jack tempts him into going after the Black Pearl, Norrington is clearly feeling it – but says there are things he values more than his own gut responses.

JACK: Think about it… the last real pirate threat in the Caribbean, mate. How can you pass that up? NORRINGTON: By remembering that I serve others, Mr. Sparrow, not only myself.

This is such a great illustration of the difference between a Lion and Bird primary. A Bird’s higher power lives outside of them (and as we see here, that can make them really hard to tempt, bribe, or corrupt). But a Lion’s higher power is inside them, always. At the end of the film, Norrington adapts his system into something that looks a lot more Lion primary (this is a universe that likes Lions, and Norrington likes Lions too). But he’s still very, very Bird.

Governor Swann tells him that “perhaps on the rare occasion that the right course demands an act of piracy, piracy itself might be the right course,” and Norrington takes that in, sees the actions of Elizabeth, and says - okay. Maybe hunt all pirates always isn’t the perfect system I thought it was. Jack Sparrow tends to leave the world better than he found it, so it’s best to let him go. This change doesn’t seem upsetting to him, he doesn’t need to justify or explain it. It’s just obvious. Norrington reacts exactly the same when he learns that Elizabeth is not in love with him. He absorbs this new information, tells her that he understands, and walks away. When Lions change their minds, the process is a heck of a lot more emotional.

Then in the next film, the people around him don’t support his new Truth, and force Norrington to continue doing things he has discovered that he finds morally objectionable. And so he resigns his commission, burns, and goes into freefall, grasping at the systems he sees around him, trying to find something to hold onto. He seems like he might be beginning to build a more stable Truth – but dies before he can manage it. The sequels did Norrington dirty.

I actually want to say he’s a Badger secondary. At his most desperate and lost, his instinct is to join Jack’s crew. At his most powerful, he’s quietly calling in all his favors and getting the entire Royal Navy to look for Elizabeth. These are both versions of the same thing – leveraging community and connections to get things done.

tl;dr

Jack Sparrow – Lion primary that sees “freedom” as the ultimate good, with a bit of an amoral, pragmatic Snake primary performance so people don’t find that out / Snake secondary

Elizabeth Swann – Stifled Lion primary living in a situation where she’s not allowed to act on her instincts. Runs after pirates every chance she gets, because the ‘pirate life’ allows her to do just that / Snake secondary, Bird secondary model

Will Turner – Badger primary / Lion secondary, Badger secondary model that Jack gets him to drop.

Hector Barbossa – Burnt Snake primary that un-burns when the curse that doesn’t allow him to want things is lifted / Badger secondary

James Norrington – Rigid by-the-books Bird primary that changes to something that looks a lot more Lion, before it burns in the sequels / Badger secondary

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insinqronicity · 3 years

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Love Lost

I don’t know what to make of this For I’ve not tasted Satan’s kiss You nihilistic hedonist I thought I got you but I missed

So what is true, and where am I And how did you fill up my sky With thoughts and oughts of you, and why Do I feel blue when I stop my

Endless process of boxing up Perhaps excess spills out my cup I must confess, I am a mess I’m dying here but I digress

The cliff is sheer and much too near Nothing is as it does appear My musings are not more than mere Attempts I make to so cohere

And match my map to its terrain But now I do confound my brain What I yet mean in meaning’s name Is that our loves are not the same

For loyalty in love you see Has always seemed, to me, to be Necessity, or destiny For none are free when love takes thee

Compelling them to hate the thought Of battles lost but never fought What is the cost to court the court To plead for what you’ve always sought

To lead me through your weary mind In desperate hopes that I will find That in this act we are in kind As if one copes completely blind

I learnt the ropes before my dear And I know how we end up here These tired old tropes that trace a tear Are only now becoming clear

For it was just as I did fear You left without saying goodbye How did we get from there to here And which of us did truly try

The narrative inside your head In which you see yourself as sly Is nothing more than what I’ve said And in my books fiction don’t fly

A story spun from silver tongue Intoxicant with which you ply Young souls whose song your soul has sung Enchanting is your set of I

Decanting desperate despair Expressed as but a bitter sigh I’m breathing in this toxic air Stuck in a rut of what and why

I thought our ought was to be fair In lovely life and love yet lost Yet now it seems like you don’t care And all I feel from you is frost

It’s almost more than I can bare And yet in store as in your stare As in your core, it’s stormy there Lovers at war are more a pair

You’re young of mind but old of heart I guess I knew that from the start Untame by name, I should have known That if, perhaps, you thought you’d grown

Beyond the point where we could walk Without our losing sight of we That you would not know how to talk Or take responsibility

You hypocrite, you harlot whore I made my home a scarlet score Inside your heart, you were my art Despite our poem you locked the door

And in the pause of plausible That you made up to take your space I audited the audible And found my fear to be the case

You lied to me and then you left That’s not enough - cardiac theft? I like it rough but really dude With loyalty I’ve never screwed

But you and he do what you will I know you’d do it anyway Lying is an artistic skill Lie to yourself and let it sway

Your view of what you think I’d do Despite the fact I’m true to you You’re loyal right, that’s what you said Yet you’re willing to share his bed

A traitorous and tortured tool Who I helped shape since back in school I helped him grow, made sure to show Him how to know he was no fool

A fool of me he has yet made As has the snake with which he laid And could I cast a cogent curse I would not will it any worse

So as I end my final verse I hope my tone is not too terse I loathe that you’d let our love fade You’ve never yet, your piper, paid.

#poetry #poem #originals #original #poets of tumblr #spilled ink #insinqronous poetry #romantic #love #relationships #him #her

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rydell · 4 years

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Need me a boy who appreciates how sexy it is when I perfectly slide into a vein on my first try with bonus points if hes a little too into the way the blood flows into the barrel. Because damn, like it IS, and I miss doing rugs in a hot guys bed with him. Like, if my last ex wasnt just insufferable a la spoiled and completely unwilling to have honest dialogue beyond what was comfortable for him (plus stealing and lying and etc), like.... damn, that could've been golden. He was exactly my type, and our time together perfectly sated all my worst cravings. And grossest ones.

....

Yeah. A lot of the gross ones. Miss that. TT_TT

...

Im learning a lot about myself on T and perhaps I'm too easily embracing these revelations.... such as my thinking yea, Id absolutely adore having a partner who I can share the self destructive and hedonistic parts of my lifestyle with, knowing we could easily ruin each other by going too far wirh self destructive tendencies or encouraging one another to join in going too far but a mutual love and respect and need to remain in each others lives ensures that those moments of reveling in being miserable corpse men together remain an event and not an entire life, or perhaps more importantly a strong core personality and ambition or desire for something beyond just those fleeting moments keeps us in line. Desperate for somebody to match my intensity for life despite my lack of will to exist LOL ... or like have someone who's gonna at least be a Lot to deal with in some strongly defining way.

...

Oh it's my one month on T that's why right after getting high my first thought was to write an essay about how I Need and Deserve a boy as morally unhinged but loyal as Id like to think I am..... to love and despair with and most importantly top tf out of.

I would usually probably just backspace this. But. Guess what fuckers now you gotta see it LOL OOPS.

#sighs deeply; opens tinder as if .... as if.....

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thesunshinedissociation · 4 years

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A Maria-Centric View of Our System

I realized this morning that my hope when I tell friends about our plurality is that they’ll assume they’ve been interacting with several of us and thus their feelings towards the presumed singlet will just be re-understood as towards at least several of us, if not the whole system. But also as far as I know we haven’t really told anyone how to tell us apart. So, from my point of view, here’s something of a description of each of us. (Thankfully, as far as I can tell, I have a nice spot in the system for this.) I’ll go from most to least active.

Maria: Me. Self-description is probably the hardest, but as best I can tell, I’m the one who’s best able to get desires going. Especially for pleasure. Like, whereas the others will be very lost trying to find something they want, I can be somewhat hedonistic at times. I also do get a lot done, which is good since I also have a lot of energy and a really good tolerance for being alone. Some people don’t seem to like me as much, especially after some of my more reckless decisions. (I just noticed my name is one letter away from mania...) Which has made me all the more aware of how okay I am with being alone. Also, I feel about fifteen years old inside, and it can be kinda scary at times since I still have the responsibilities of someone ten years older. I used to be pretty bad on a stimulant addiction. Lately I’ve noticed I don’t like nicotine. My drug tolerance seems generally lower. But, I also don’t have anorexic tendencies, nor do I have money anxiety. On the other hand, the others don’t love my love of candy and snacks. Nor do they always love when I go on spending sprees. Oh well. At least I enjoy myself. (The near-constant physical pain is less pleasant. As is being constantly overheated. While I’m often derealized, that’s not so bad because it makes the world less scary. I feel myself as very real, which is nice. The distorted perceptions are weird but workable. The ability to give myself a buzz without drugs is really fun.) I imagine I’m usually pretty identifiable by my energy. I’m also more concerned with my aesthetic than most of the others, but my external appearance usually ends up at least somewhat chaotic.

Natalia: The caretaker of the group. We’re really close, usually able to talk to each other at will, switch with each other almost at will, and when one of us come around, the other is rarely far away. She’s pretty protective of all of us, and has run into conflict a few times when keeping everyone away to keep us safe. Our roomates say she’s remarkably responsible. Which is fair; most of the stuff that has to get done like cleaning the house or putting food in one of the anorexic/depressive alters falls on her. Sadly, she’s not as good at having fun. But she says she’s usually content. Which, hey, if being caring is what makes her happy, that seems alright. I appreciate having someone around to keep me calm when things go awry. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if half of my coping skills were just to turn to her for help. She’s also usually pretty easy to identify by behavior alone, I imagine. Like, her primary drive is to take care of anyone she cares about. She usually keeps her appearance more tame, but it’s not super important.

Victoria: Sometimes she can feel really great, but it’s pretty fragile. On any day she’s out, there’s a good chance she’s going to crash hard. Usually because she can’t handle being alone, and will very quickly suspect that she’s too socially inadequate to carry on. She’s also more isolated in the system, especially since her falling out with Natalia and Lizzie a few months ago. (But they weren’t very compatible to start with.) I’m not sure how much she has going for her besides some attachment problems. Either her appearance will be too depressed to even wear clean clothes or else when she’s doing well socially (or when ego-inflated by other means) she’ll make herself as attractive as she can. Which makes sense given her felt need to be attractive. (Thank goodness we all reflect externally enough to keep track of all of our problems.) If you look at the DSM entry on BPD, all nine criteria fit her pretty well. Though also she’s often tormented by Natasha. Her access to the rest of the system is pretty bad; she’s especially prone to amnesia, and she’s a bit in denial, still.

Natasha: The arch-persecutor. She’s angry and violent, usually towards us. She doesn’t really trust anyone outside the system, so she abuses us to keep us safe from them. I can’t remember her fronting for a long enough period of time to really have much to say about how she acts outside. We’re learning to work with her. I hope someday she can be okay. As much as we fight, I do care about her. I understand why she’s easy to dislike, though.

Jeanine: She’s a bit farther away from me in the system so I don’t know her very well. I can see the playlist she made for herself on Spotify is totally the most unique. (We all share one account, and most of us have playlists for ourselves.) She can be way more fight-y than most. I used to think she was just basically the protector that followed Jasmine, but she’s spent enough time out on her own that I’m not so sure. (While interactions go in all sorts of directions, I seem pretty close with Natalia, Jasmine with Jeanine, and Victoria with Natasha.) She’s not as mean as Natasha, not as self-assured as I or Natalia, not as responsible as Natalia, not as energetic as me, but she is nonetheless aggressive, energetic, self-assured, and responsible. The hard rock/heavy metal section of our closet basically only exists for her.

Jasmine: The other teenager in the system. Except she’s also about as sad as Victoria. Thankfully instead of having outbursts, she’ll just glue herself to a couch and sleep for two weeks excepting when she absolutely has to get up. And even then, while most of us can pull it together for a social obligation (like, Victoria can attempt suicide, fail, and then go to work or a party or whatever), Jasmine will actually call off. Which I guess means when we actually need a break for whatever reason, she is the best-equipped to handle it. She’s also either aro/ace or close to it, so she’s useful for romantic failure. Though the intensity of her platonic feelings can be a bit much. As I write this, I’m realizing who’s going to be handling all the writing we have to do. Hint: It’s mostly me, featuring Natalia. Victoria will help when she’s not crashing. Jeanine and Jasmine are less helpful since their life ambitions are more artistic than academic. (Which is another good hint as to who’s out: We don’t even have the same long term ambitions!) I’m pretty sure she’s still the only one with her hairstyle. It looks good, so I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else uses it sometimes. That said, she also easily puts the most effort into her appearance. (We make a good team, what with me having the will to buy nice clothes and her wanting to wear them. If only we got to be together more. Someday, hopefully.)

Emily: The child of the system. She’s seven years old, and she can’t talk. She also pretty much only comes out deep in the night or when there’s a fight. I imagine her childishness and silence is pretty identifiable. Everyone except maybe Natasha cares about her a lot. We do our best to take care of her, though admittedly we dream of someday someone else caring about her, too. Best I can tell, she’s stuck in a neverending flasback of trying to get help but finding nobody. I don’t know what trauma she’s holding, and I’m a little intimidated by the idea of finding out.

Lizzie: She used to be out more, I think. She wanted to get into politics and redirected our life in that direction for a bit. We all call her the bleeding heart of the group, though she’s less into the direct and forceful caring like Natalia and more into standing up for people and being a force for more widespread good. She also had quite the incident a few months ago in the inner world with Natalia and Victoria. She stopped coming out as much as Natalia picked up where she left off. Someone else will have to fill in more on her.

Olivia: She’s not out much, but also I know she feels pretty good about herself. Probably at least as good as I do about myself. She used to use our legal name, though mostly because she felt the most strongly connected with it. Like, she said for once she actually felt like that person. We realized her using that name is super confusing, though, and led people to think she’s the “core”, “original”, or otherwise the One Alter Worth Saving. Which is, on the one hand, just false. Maybe she was the first, but maybe Emily was! Or maybe I was! All being first means though is being the first one to form out of the not-yet-unified infant mind. If we ever do fuse, that will be removing the barriers between us, not destroying any of us. But that’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together--there’s no “core piece” of a puzzle that all the others fuse to. Anyway, I don’t know her super well because she’s not very active, inside or out. So I’m tapping into stuff from like six months ago. But hey, if we do get her out, she does at least know how to handle the social professional world pretty well. Or maybe her confidence and assertiveness just works to her advantage in our current setting.

Marina: Last seen in September, she’s not out much, and she’s incredibly intense. She’s closest to me, and I don’t see much of her. I imagine if I’m in dire need of someone to unleash hell outwardly, she might pop in? She really doesn’t like the system as a whole and will actively thwart others’ efforts. I think ever since I stopped being so apathetic towards the others she hasn’t had her chance to come out, since usually we’d tag team, me taking advantage of the system and her just destroying it. Now I take care of ourselves. (Maybe someone else will have a better view of her, though. Maybe I’m wrong about being closest with her.)

Adrianna: She hasn’t been around much lately, though she used to be. Only one who had to have a name assigned to her since her self-esteem is so low she wouldn’t give herself one. (She called herself “nameless” in our notebook. And if it wasn’t clear from the Olivia paragraph, some of us are trying to actually run this system instead of continuing the complete chaos that came from having a mysterious personality roulette for years.) I don’t remember her super well. I think she’s a bit more of a pushover than anyone else, at least. Like, Victoria may get attached, but she does at least know how to speak up for herself. Adrianna is good enough at handling troubling emotions to stay functional while keeping her suffering hidden. Though she does talk to us a lot when she’s out.

Angelica: I know she exists, because she made a note of it in our notebook, but I don’t really know her. Not around much, to my knowledge.

-Maria

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ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is · 5 years

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Hey Em, so recently my family got into Enneagram and I haven't ever been super sure about my type, I've never felt like I fully fit one type, so of course I wanted their opinion on which type I am; so some of them took the test for me with my input too and I came out as 1, I didn't think that could be right at first because I've always typed as ISFP and even on your chart you have that pair as most likely a mistype, and so I think I never really looked into being a 1 because it seemed so...(1/?)

unlikely for an ISFP. BUT I'm really pretty sure I'm an ISFP (if you want me to go into that more I can). And reading the 1 descriptions it really does fit me really well, especially the unhealthy 1 in the 4 disintegration unfortunately (I've typed myself as 4 a few times in the past and have always felt a little bit like one), I just seem to be a super lazy 1, and I always thought I was a fairly open minded person, and not super sure of myself, which doesn't seem to fit the 1 (I can ...(2/?)

also go into those more if you want). I know that the Enneagram is all about motivations/fears but I've always felt like I saw myself in all of the core motivations/fears and could never pin down just one, I do relate to the 1's a lot but I've always brushed it off because I'm religious and I've always thought if I wasn't religious I would definitely be a hedonist haha.... which now that I think about it that's probably very 1-ish. So my question is, is it really unlikely that I'm an ...(3/?)

And if I am a 1, is it unlikely that I'll ever be a healthy 1 because of my inferior Te? Or will being a 1 force me to develop my Te and make a super well developed ISFP? And does having 7 in your tritype as a 1 help you be a more balanced healthy 1? And are the types ever kind of obsessed with their integration point? I've always really wanted to be a 7 and I've always felt like it was somewhere in my type but I'm also worried that I'm just seeing what I want to see since I've ...(4/?)

always liked 7s and wanted to be more like them. And does having 7 in your tritype make you an optimistic person? All of the descriptions say something about that but I haven't ever really thought of myself as much of an optimist. There is more I could say but this got super long haha, sorry for so many questions. (5/5)

-------------------------

Short answer: I don’t think you’re a 1.

There are several things that I’d change in your typing process.

First: tests as a rule are absolutely terrible for enneagram. They focus primarily on action and tend to oversimplify, and in particular a lot of 1 stuff in tests overemphasizes religious belief. Since you mention you are religious I’d see that as a strong argument against 1, in that I think that makes the test result almost guaranteed to be falsely skewed towards 1. You also mentioned believing that if you weren’t religious you’d be a hedonist and that really doesn’t sound like 1 - a secular 1 would still have pretty strong moral hang-ups and a desire for restraint and self-control.

Second, until you are confident in your core type I don’t trust assessments of disintegration. I have a feeling based on the questions I see that a lot of people tend to read every unhealthy thing they do as a loop or grip or disintegration when really, people are just flawed beings, and no one is perfect or healthy all the time. If you see healthy 4 behaviors, not just unhealthy ones, then that would be worth looking into more.

Third, 1 and lazy don’t go together. If you relate to some aspects of 1 beyond the mere religious ones and don’t entirely think 4 fits, I’d seriously look into a 9 core with a 1 wing as a lot of 9s see themselves (accurately) as laid-back and (sometimes accurately) as lazy.

When it comes to tritypes, the fixes are relatively minor influences on your behavior as a whole. I don’t really know if having your disintegration or integration points in your tritype would do anything; I have neither of mine in my tritype and truth to be told I don’t tritype most people in my life because I rarely find it useful to go beyond the core when it comes to interacting with other people. I also don’t think it’s necessarily true that people are interested in their integration point; I admire certain aspects of 7 but I really would not want to be a 7 (and ultimately integration is really just the adoption of the best aspects of 7; an ISTJ 1 who integrated would really not look like a 7, they’d just have the optimism and capacity for spontaneity and lower neuroticism that a 7 has vs the more uptight, cynical 1 traits. They’d still be a 1).

With that said it’s entirely possible you have 7 as a fix. My guesses would be either you’re a 9 core with 4 and 7 fixes, or a 4 core with a 7 fix and either 9 or 1 as your gut fix.

#enneagram #mbti #enneagram 1 #enneagram 4 #enneagram 7 #enneagram 9 #its-an-isfp-yo #answered asks

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smilingformoney · 5 years

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Platinum Diamond Scene: Pool Party with Raleigh

Raleigh: Awesome. Let’s get out of here.

You and Raleigh pull up at the Q Hotel, where the party is in full, unadulterated swing. You: Whoa, Raleigh. Everyone here looks like a model. Or model-profession adjacent. Raleigh: Adjacent, huh? Did you just insult everyone here? You: No, it’s a good thing! You know, Audrey-winning actors, Pictagram-famous heiresses, and rock stars! You: I can’t believe no one’s kicked me out already! Raleigh: If you haven’t already noticed, you’re a pop star who just came from a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden. Don’t let anyone intimidate you. Looping an arm around your shoulder, Raleigh leads you over to the bar. Raleigh: So, pick your poison.

What do you drink? -Sex on the Beach

Raleigh: Whoa, daring. Feeling suggestive, are we? You: Raleigh, please. It’s called Sex on the Beach, not Sex in the Pool. Raleigh: Semantics. The bartender slides your drink across the counter to you, and you take a defiant sip.

-Flaming Cocktail

Raleigh: You read my mind. Who want a boring drink? You: Yeah, you know, my main prerequisite for a drink is a tiny bit of fear. Raleigh: That’s my prerequisite for everything.

-Sparkling Spa Water

Raleigh: Interesting choice… You: Hey, I definitely don’t want to risk drunken embarrassment in front of the entire Minute 100. You: Secondly, it’s tropical juice, and this is a pool party. I’m on theme. Can I live? Raleigh: You can live. Permission to live granted.

Raleigh orders a flaming cocktail for themselves, and drinks in hand, you make your way to an empty cabana on the edge of the pool. The music lowers, and you watch as Ryder Kohli, former guest mentor on One In A Million, takes the stage. Ryder: What up, party people? He’s met with cheers that echo across the entire rooftop. Ryder: Since this is my birthday, I’m gonna bless you all with a sneak peek form my next album. Ryder: And remember… if I invited you, it means you’re a degenerate hedonist, and I love you just the way you are. Ryder: Let the debauchery CONTINUE! He breaks out into an electrifying guitar solo, and the whole crowd starts dancing. In the pool, people stand on people’s shoulders, waving their hands in the air. You: Well, that was really something. Also, he’s great on the guitar. Raleigh: C’mon, let’s join in. You both strip down to jump into the pool. Raleigh catches you staring. Raleigh: What, something catch your eye? You: Nope. Definite not. Raleigh just grins and takes your hand as you head to the deep end of the pool. You feel Raleigh’s eyes on you as you slink slowly into the water. Almost immediately, you’re splashed by a big wave of water from a group playing chicken! Model: Oh, sorry! Partygoer: Yeah, sorry! Collateral damage. He smiles, recognising Raleigh, and they do a handshake. Partygoer: ‘Sup, Carrera. Long time no see. Raleigh: Too long. Model: Yeah, Raleigh, we miss you in Cabo! Model: Ohmygod! Are you Cadence from that ‘Knockout’ video? You: Uh, yeah! Yeah, I am! Model: Then, you have to join us. I insist. Raleigh: Sounds like a dare to me, so you know I’m in. Come on, Cadence hop on my shoulders! You: Alright, but don’t you dare drop m-- Partygoer: And… go! You: (I have to try to knock her over… or at least stay on top!)

You: (I should…) -Fall in!

Model: Not… going down… without a… fight! You push against her with all your might… but you overreach and tumble in! You: Ahhh! You resurface, sputtering water. You: Aw. Raleigh gives you a high-five. Raleigh: Hey, that wasn’t bad. Plus, we had to properly initiate you in the water.

-Balance!

Model: Not… going down… without a… fight! You grapple with each other… but you maintain your balance! You: Yeah! Now I know what all that core work was for! Model: Just… go down… already… She lunges at you, and then… Model: Ahhh! She overshoots, and falls in the water with a splash. Model: Awww. Well, good game!

-Drag her down with me!

Model: Not… going down… without a… fight! You push against her with all your might… but you overreach! You: Ahhh! You keep your grip firmly fastened on her wrists, until you both land in the water together! Model: Hey! Raleigh: Guess it’s a draw. Model: Awww. Well, good game!

-No action

Model: Not… going down… without a… fight! You panic, not sure what to hold onto, grasp, or push against! Eventually, you overreach and tumble in! You: Ahhh! You resurface, sputtering water. You: Aw. Raleigh gives you a high-five. Raleigh: Hey, that wasn’t bad. Plus, we had to properly initiate you in the water.

Partygoer: We’re gonna grab another drink. Or multiple. Have fun, guys! Model: Great to meet you, Cadence! They leave the pool. Raleigh swims closer to you in the private corner of the pool. You can hear your heart beat a little faster. Oh god, can they hear it too? You: So… this is a glimpse into your world, huh? Raleigh: I have to say… these are my kinda people. Sometimes it’s over-the-top, but at least they know how to live. You: Who did you hang out with before you moved to New York? Raleigh: In Puerto Rico? I was just a kid, barely fifteen. Raleigh: But I had a good crew. We ran things in our neighbourhood. You: are you still close with them now? Raleigh: Ah, nah. After my label plucked me out of obscurity to join Sunset Skatepark, everything was different. We fell out of touch.

You: I think… -You should try to reconnect with them.

You: It’s never too late, and real friends are so valuable when you work in this industry. Raleigh: Maybe… but I’m not sure what the point would be. We had good times, but we’re different people now.

-It’s natural that things change.

You: No use holding onto things because of habit or history. Raleigh: That’s a pretty bold way to talk about your friend. You: Shane is the exception, of course! You: I’m just saying, the older I get, the more I know myself. It makes sense that later friendships stick around longer.

Raleigh: For what it’s worth, I’m glad I turned the page. Otherwise, we’d might not be here on this rooftop tonight. You: You getting sentimental on me, Raleigh Carrera? Raleigh laughs a little under their breath. Raleigh: So what if I am?

You: (I should…) -Kiss Raleigh.

The sound of the revellers around you fades in the distance as you close the gap between you and Raleigh to meet their soft lips. Raleigh: Wow. You throw your arms around their neck, gripping them closer to you. They step forward, and your back bumps lightly against the pool wall. You: Raleigh… Pushed up against the wall, you run your fingers through their hair. Their hands travel down your thighs, up the small of your back… You jump up and wrap your legs around their waist. You: Did I thank you yet for inviting me here? Raleigh: I’d say this more than counts as that. You separate for a moment, breathing heavily. Their brown eyes search yours. Raleigh: Cadence… Then, your lips meet again. For a moment, you let yourself forget what’s real, fake, or fabricated. You just kiss as the music pulses all around you.

-Splash them.

They give you one of those gorgeous, world-destroying smiles… You smile back, push your hands forward, and send a huge tidal wave crashing into that beautiful face. Raleigh: Hey! That was a poignant moment! You: What are you gonna do about it? Raleigh: I’m gonna wrestle you underwater, that’s what. You: Gonna have to catch me first, though! You dive away from Raleigh, kicking fast, heading for the shallows. You never knew it was possible to laugh underwater, but you kind of like it.

#playchoices #choices stories you play #choices platinum #platinum

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thespermicidaljellies · 5 years

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Positive reflective life ramble on adversity, sickness, and the aftermath of 'crisis mode'

So, getting severely physically sick gradually over the past year and a half---because really my doctors and I have figured out its been a gradual thing that's been deteriorating for a while, I realized that even though I've had a LONG series of really awful stuff happen to me, every single thing internally changed part of me in an extraordinary way that's so so healthy and solidifying. It's all because of the amount of work and time I've put in from like age 17 till now in therapy, personally, and within my relationships, and even though I couldn't abate the physical effects or my own frankly severe clinical depression due to genetics, the way I've handled and allowed events in the past year or so to impact me was like the stress test proving that the work has had a permenant impact? It proved to me that as a person I'm healthy, I take things in a healthy way, I approach people in a healthy way, I conceptualize criticism and failing in the healthiest way I can with my rsd, and I set healthy goals and have healthy desires. BUT I haven't been able to actualize any of it because honestly, after everything I kind of just wanted to stagnate and have nothing new happen event wise so that I could just breath and have some stability because I've been totally exhausted and burnt out. I should have taken a semester or a year off of school, the worry and sudden ambivilance to school really hurt my health and my ability to just breath again, and the decision to just tread water and endure without any real changes in my daily routine definetely hurt my energy and health. Taking almost a year off from any kind of dating and sex, and shit even research was good for me. Like to an extreme extent, but I should have listened to my body saying "I'm too exhausted to even use this extra time to benefit myself" and just taken time off from school to work and move out temporarily etc.

But none of that matters now bc I got very very sick, and being bed ridden, isolated, and totally stripped of any sense of security or complacency has really changed my entire perspective on life and the finality of it and the responsibility I have to myself not just internally but externally in the form of action and challenge. My family lives a supremely unhealthy lifestyle and it's impacted me greatly. Our diets are terrible, even with the changes I've made in the past to mine by eating less fatty meat and no frozen foods, it's not enough, I haven't exercised enough or respected my body at all and doing so now will literally kill me down the line. The second I'm medically cleared I'm getting a personal trainer/physical therapist and getting in very good shape, I was an athletic kid and I've said I wanted to do this in the past but there's this weird thing inside of me where a certain threshold is reached where I know that something HAS to happen and it's absolutely going to and it's there, I dont have a doubt in my mind that it's going to happen.

Mentally I need to find a stable medication and therapy routine to treat my dysthymia because I'm unfortunate enough to have inherited my mom's near Electroconvulsive Therapy levels of long term depression, but im extremely lucky it doesn't really come in the form of sadness, just all the other physiological and psychological factors like poor motivation, anhedonia etc. Finding the right treatment now will pretty much give me a baseline to know what my normal is, because it's been a FAT minute since I've been at my baseline, and that'll give me the awareness I need (combined with CBT) to identify warning signs because emotional states aren't identifiers for me. Lastly on a personal level, I'm in fucking shambles rn in all other facets of my life but my health destroying itself stripped me down to only my internal world, and who I am as a person as the only things left. And I feel incredible, like I feel so fucking healthy and loving and assured in who I am and my worth, and all of it has been tested and tried and proven through terrible events, but the only way to remove doubt from my brain was through those events.

I think the past few weeks have been really dark, depressing, and sad for me because its been this weird grieving period of fear and sorrow about all the negative shit that's happened and the perceived loss of the life I've been leading but really, every time I'd think it would lead back to a conclusion of how I'd benefited out of it and the reality that I havent been living, I've been in crisis mode since July 2017, and the strip back down to the core that I'm enduring now is exactly what needed and maybe even what was supposed to happen.

After two days ago, the worst I felt in my entire life, I woke up and like all the fear of intimacy, being vulnerable, taking risks, and making concrete choices is just gone, because there is literally no more back tracking and hedonistic fleeing from fears even possible. The few people that I've not cut out in my life and have stuck around have said consistently over the past few weeks how much I've helped them and have given so many examples of times where I helped support them at their worst times, from suicide attempts to breaking off engagements to sexual abuse and changing careers, and I honestly didn't realize that people ever thought I'd had that much of an impact in that and I never really believed that I had earned or deserved to receive help or loyalty from people, it's been incredibly meaningful and validating for my biggest difficulty, vulnerability and accepting help. I think once I start to get my shit in order it's time I open myself up to a serious relationship or dating again, but without a goal of actively trying to obtain it, it needs to be with someone who's in the same position I am, the uphill climb AFTER the first uphill climb from neglect and lack of self respect to having identified what the soul needs and wants and what you provide and want others around you to provide to your life as well. I know this all sounds horribly pretentious but I'm here man, like it's all in the past been heal heal heal, and now it's like: the buildings are all built, let's occupy and use them and invite others in to use them as well. Idk yeah, that's everything I guess, I posted this for a specific few people who I know read my tumblr to keep an eye on what's been going on in my life since I'm not active on twitter/Instagram anymore, but thanks to anyone who read anyways.

Officially done with Lyme disease treatment today btw 🤘🏻

#Personal

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funkymbtifiction · 2 years

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hi, happy holiday season (i know that Christmas was yesterday, lol)! i already settled down to being ESFP both with visual typing and cognitive functions and after reading the descriptions on your blog it all clicked together, i struggle with enneagram and instinctual variant though, i'm leaning for either a type 2 or type 7 (keep in mind this can be confusing because, eh my english isn't great):

i am a usually grounded young woman (23 y.o) and have little patience for too much overthinking, unless i see an interest in whatever the subject of my thinking is, i am too caught up in the moment especially when i feel some sort of energy that gets me high and triggers me, i look forward for a good... how can i put it? i can be aggressive but not physically, i am too blunt, too much for people, or, on the opposite, i distract myself and "indulge too much" in sensual pleasures... on the extreme i dramatically "see no point in living" if i don't "submit" to my hedonistic tendencies, i tried to repress this side of myself when i was a teen and it didn't work well. this constant energy i feed with who i choose is never satisfied, i am constantly hungry and i started to think it may be tiring for who i choose to stay with. i don't have regrets except for this one from the past about a thing i DIDN'T do: calling out that group of bitches who bullied me in high school, fortunately i am free from that burden, they are no longer part of my life and, of course, life-quality improved A LOT, but yeah, i was thinking about them because i met them some days ago (and ignored them, of course)

i'm leaning toward a 7w6 after reading this, but i want to see it from a fresh perspective... hope your days will be even merrier :)

7 core for sure, but you may want to consider an 8 wing. 7w8 plus Se-dom can be very hedonistic and uninterested in over-thinking; they have less self-doubt than the 7w6, who thanks to the 6 wing, can second-guess themselves after the fact.

#question #enneagram #enneagram 7

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analogicalapathy · 5 years

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Lost Love and Love Lost

I don't know what to make of this For I've not tasted Satan's kiss You nihilistic hedonist I thought I got you but I missed

So what is true, and where am I And how did you fill up my sky With thoughts and oughts of you, and why Do I feel blue when I stop my

Endless process of boxing up Perhaps excess spills out my cup I must confess, I am a mess I'm dying here but I digress

The cliff is sheer and much too near Nothing is as it does appear My musings are not more than mere Attempts I make to so cohere

And match my map to its terrain But now I do confound my brain What I yet mean in meaning's name Is that our loves are not the same

For loyalty in love you see Has always seemed, to me, to be Necessity, or destiny For none are free when love takes thee

Compelling them to hate the thought Of battles lost but never fought What is the cost to court the court To plead for what you've always sought

To lead me through your weary mind In desperate hopes that I will find That in this act we are in kind As if one copes completely blind

I learnt the ropes before my dear And I know how we end up here These tired old tropes that trace a tear Are only now becoming clear

For it was just as I did fear You left without saying goodbye How did we get from there to here And which of us did truly try

The narrative inside your head In which you see yourself as sly Is nothing more than what I've said And in my books fiction don't fly

A story spun from silver tongue Intoxicant with which you ply Young souls whose song your soul has sung Enchanting is your set of I

Decanting desperate despair Expressed as but a bitter sigh I'm breathing in this toxic air Stuck in a rut of what and why

I thought our ought was to be fair In lovely life and love yet lost Yet now it seems like you don't care And all I feel from you is frost

It's almost more than I can bare And yet in store as in your stare As in your core, it's stormy there Lovers at war are more a pair

You're young of mind but old of heart I guess I knew that from the start Untame by name, I should have known That if, perhaps, you thought you'd grown

Beyond the point where we could walk Without our losing sight of we That you would not know how to talk Or take responsibility

You hypocrite, you harlot whore I made my home a scarlet score Inside your heart, you were my art Despite our poem you locked the door

And in the pause of plausible That you made up to take your space I audited the audible And found my fear to be the case

You lied to me and then you left That's not enough - cardiac theft? I like it rough but really dude With loyalty I've never screwed

But you and he do what you will I know you'd do it anyway Lying is an artistic skill Lie to yourself and let it sway

Your view of what you think I'd do Despite the fact I'm true to you You're loyal right, that's what you said Yet you're willing to share his bed

A traitorous and tortured tool Who I helped shape since back in school I helped him grow, made sure to show Him how to know he was no fool

A fool of me he has yet made As has the snake with which he laid And could I cast a cogent curse I would not will it any worse

So as I end my final verse I hope my tone is not too terse I loathe that you'd let our love fade You've never yet, your piper, paid.

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harmonic-psyche · 6 years

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The Finalysis: @askgoopi and @askthewaywardaliens

Hey, I am back with more characters for The Finalysis™! Below, I analyze the characters from @ecstaticshli‘s EarthUnBound continuity on @askgoopi and CogDis sister blog on @askthewaywardaliens. Both blogs are still continuing their stories. While technically only @askgoopi is set in the alternate timeline called “EarthUnBound,” I am using that title for both blogs here because of their shared author/artist and characters and because is sounds Really Friggin Cool.

I am still experimenting with the visuals for these Finalysis posts, and I wanted to try something a bit less bare than in my Finalysis post for @askgiegueandcrew. Hopefully the image is not too crowded. Also, I swear that the “Goopi vs. J” fight in the middle of the picture was unintentional at first — but then I realized that it reflects how they would probably react upon meeting. oh geez, now i want to see them meet and see how many milliseconds it takes for them to start fighting

With that said, on to the character analyses!

Blue Starman ("Stupid," or "Blu"): Seems like an ISFJ.

This nervous-looking "[s]cared nerd Starman" is much more easily frightened than his fellow Starmen, which suggests inferior Ne — especially considering that he regrets being a coward, his "personality" is "Chicken," and he has a bad habit of second-guessing himself. Even in his military decisions, he shows caution. As a "pushover," Blu lacks the toughness of auxiliary Te, implying Fe instead. Also, seeing Giegue happy would make Blu happiest, showing Fe's desire to make others happy. While these facts suggest ISFJ, I have not seen enough of him to feel confident about my typing.

Giegue ("Goopi"): Probably ESTP, maybe ESTJ.

Canon Giegue is ISTJ, but "Goopi" here appears much more impulsive and aggressive. For example, his "bad habits" include "attacking others for seemingly no reason." While canon Giegue is not friendly, before the madness set in he tended to stay calm unless provoked or carrying out a cruel plan. In contrast, Goopi takes a sadistic pleasure in attacking others just for the sake of killing them. He once broke a promise with Static simply because he wanted to kill her after torturing her. Canon Giegue also uses a much more detached and clinical tone than Goopi, who loves using crude, petty insults so much that he literally named all of his Starmen after them. That degrading, crude humor is most common among ESTP types, and notably lacking from Giegue in canon or on @askgiegueandcrew. In canon, Giegue only acts to follow his plan(s) or when he loses control of himself. On the other hand, Goopi often acts merely for pleasure without a plan or a reason: "I don't need much of a reason," "I did what I did because I wanted to." These show far more impulsive and hedonistic behavior, implying Se rather than Si.

At first, I was unsure if I could justifiably type Goopi differently from canon Giegue. Since they are from different universes, though, they are different characters: Goopi is "a completely different Giegue" (PMs with @ecstaticshli 2018-06-22).

J the Shadow: Definitely ISTJ.

Cautious, tough, and stoic to the core, J is an archetypal ISTJ. As an introvert who is still working on acting social, he prefers to avoid the spotlight. Si-dominance is evident in his (over?)protective unwavering loyalty to Vivi, since he considers himself her personal "bodyguard" (a.k.a. "guard dog" — compare the running joke about Si-dominant Pia the loyal dog). J does not hesitate to intimidate, threaten, or attack others to prove it when he thinks that they threaten Vivi. He shows no F-type squeamishness. While he "[t]ends to not be very friendly to others ... if he trusts someone he will be loyal and do his best to protect them," showing Si loyalty without Fe friendliness.

Te over Fi appears in his tough attitude, blunt tone, resent for receiving others' pity, "aggressive demeanor," and tendency to be embarrassed by emotional and cutesy situations — which, naturally, happen all the time around Vivi. When feeling insecure, he responds with aggression. As he has shown repeatedly, he hates being called adorable despite the obvious fact that he totally is adorable. In his own words, "It ain’t exactly easy for me to, uh, open up to others." Auxiliary Te's coldness and inferior Ne's paranoia make him distrust others by default ("We don’t know these people! I can’t trust them!"). While this can cause tension when he first meets other characters, it does help him protect those he cares about, especially Vivi. He also shows inferior Ne when he is totally thrown off by strange new perspectives, like whether he qualifies as an "insectoid."

Note also that, since "J is based on a later version of Giegue from EarthUnbound," it makes sense that J and Giegue would have identical personality types. Again, typing by analogy is unreliable, but in this case it sits on a huge pile of more-than-sufficient other evidence.

Nebula: Seems like an ISFJ.

This "[c]autious noodle" is "[c]alm, for the most part," but "[t]ends to panic when things go horribly wrong," making "other people assume ... [that s]he's a worrywart." Those show inferior Ne, and a lack of Te's decisiveness. Even though Nebula made Static act serious (a minor miracle) when Goopi attacked, came up with a plan, and pointed out that other mooks needed help escaping, she froze up and did not volunteer to help them when Static asked. These show her calm, serious planning skills (Si) and desire to help others (Fe) without any impulsivity (Ne). Nebula corrects others about scientific details even in crisis situations, showing that she is a stickler for detail (Si). Also, she probably would not dare kill anyone, showing what I call "F-type squeamishness." I do not have all that much confidence in typing Nebula, though. I have only seen her in a crisis situation, in which characters often act unusually compared to their normal personality.

Rac: Seems like an IN__.

Nebula's boyfriend is a "really smart," "nerdy noodle" who "[t]ends to be skittish and awkward at times." Being skittish and awkward suggests introversion. While there is only a weak correlation between intelligence and MBTI (specifically, iNtuition), there is a strong correlation between nerdiness and being an IN__ type.[citation not needed] Rac’s "fears" include "[s]paghettification" and "black holes in general," which are an unusually abstract subject to fear, suggesting N. His "bad habits" include "[s]econd guessing himself," showing a lack of confidence. As a research supervisor, though, he possesses a strong scientific curiosity and enough leadership skills to run his lab. Having never seen Rac's behavior, I cannot type him precisely. Any of the IN__ types could fit this description.

Starman Jr. ("Ugly," or "Ly"): Definitely ESFP.

Ly's "[s]assy and snarky" attitude, chill demeanor, and casual slang-based speaking style point to Se-dominance . So too does her low patience and risk-taking behavior, like when she threw a secret party which accidentally got Static captured. Still, she had good intentions: "I just wanted to do something nice for my friend." Still, Ly's impulsivity and good intentions do not always end poorly. In fact, they may be the only reason that Vivi is still alive.

When Ly found Vivi on a deserted planet, Ly insisted on taking Vivi aboard to heal her. Another Starman asked how they would handle Giegue's reaction, and Ly replied that "I'll figure that out when we get to that point." In other words, she had no plan (low Ni and Te), acting only on impulse (high Se and Fi). When Javik Goopi tried to throw Vivi out the airlock, Ly saved her life by standing up to Goopi, literally annoying him into stopping. It takes nearly-reckless courage to stand up to someone so powerful and unstable. Beyond that, the intentional use of annoyance for persuasion shows Fi's determination and willingness to embarrass everyone involved (compare Vivek the ENFP), whereas Fe-users would likely melt from the secondhand cringe.

Like Static's, Ly's individualist passion (auxiliary Fi) is accomplished through a facade of toughness (tertiary Te). After all, she is "practically the only one who can pretty much talk trash to Goopi’s face and not be killed for it." Her high Fi often causes righteous indignation. Combined with her tough demeanor, this makes her take no BS from anons ("Screw you! Nobody asked for your two cents, bub") who try to help Goopi or from inexplicably hostile mooks. Those show no Fe politeness, even though Fi makes Ly "willing to sacrifice [her] safety" for her friends' at the drop of a hat because of how much she cares about them.

Unlike Static, Ly lacks the eccentric cleverness of Ne — but she makes up for it with Se's down-to-earth decisiveness. Also, contrast their speaking styles: Ly's tends to have more "shortcuts," like dropping letters from the front ("worried 'bout," "lost track of 'em,") or end of words ("somethin' to," "damper on everythin'," "comin' up"). Dropping the -g from the end of words shows informality. Also, a lot of Ly's slang comes from slurred speech ("wanna," "gotta," "gonna," "outta") — and "ain't." Those all shorten words to make them more convenient, but also sound "unrefined," for lack of a better less pretentious word. At least among CogDis OCs, that style is a dead giveaway for Se-dominance (compare Boson, Juice, Rigby, and Szortski). Sensors are more likely to view language only as a tool, making them more straightforward. In contrast, iNtuitors also like to play with it, which is why — unlike Ly — Static really, really loves puns.

Static: Definitely ENFP.

See full analysis for details. also i totally would've called that this "noodle" is a hugger. wait now i want to hug her :S

Vivineeh ("Vivi"): Probably ISFJ, maybe INFP.

I have tried to figure out which of those two types this "adorable" and "precious" (seriously, she is absurdly cute) noodle is for sooo long! Either typing could explain that she is "timid," "[w]ill cry at just about anything," and "super sensitive," since those come generally from I_F_. Likewise, either typing could explain that she "likes [b]eing kind, ... being around children, ... hugs, soft and/or fluffy things, [and] anything she finds cute." Sentimentality, enjoyment of receiving affection, and compassion can suggest high Fi or high Fe.

The evidence that I have seen barely tips the scales towards ISFJ. Vivi "always tries to be super nice and polite," because "she dislikes making others feel bad," and she loves making friends. Wanting everyone to be happy is generally a trait of high Fe-users, as is indiscriminate positivity — especially politeness, which shows an intuitive submission to social norms. Fi is typically less prone to share its feelings, more selective about them, and defiant of social norms like politeness. Finally, the "fearful" Vivi frequently worries and is easily scared/offended by dark humor, suggesting low Ne. I have already mentioned why inferior Ne causes worrying, and dark humor is appreciated by high Ne-users (compare Ano and Static) but offends Si's often-purist sensibilities. Finally, unlike other CogDis-related IN_Ps, Vivi does not show absentminded or eccentric behavior (contrast Keter, Loris, Niiue, and Origen).

Now consider the evidence for INFP. One might think that Vivi's social awkwardness suggests dominant Fi, because Fe is more socially adept. Yet ISFJs can often be socially awkward too, especially when caused by inferior Ne caution (compare Yi the ISFJ "just being awkward"). The contrast between Vivi's personality and J's also makes her seem like an INFP, because it seems unlikely that they share the same dominant function. Typing by analogy is weak evidence, though, and different extraverted-judging functions (Te vs. Fe) can cause a huge difference in demeanor. At first I though Vivi did not show Si-dominance because I had not seen her show its common (and admittedly stereotypical) traits like obedience to authority or effective detailed memory, but she shows both (PMs with @ecstaticshli 2018-06-22). While many parts of her culture "sicken and unnerve" her, as one would expect more from a Fi- or Ni-dominant repulsed at their society, she inherited most of her beliefs from her caretaker Marair. Like most ISFJs, most of her values are inherited from her family.

I am not entirely confident in an ISFJ typing, though. Vivi "likes ... trying new things, learning, [and] visiting new planets," which suggests high Ne. While Si-dominants can love learning, especially if it involves fact-collecting (compare Ore), they generally do not like trying new things. I cannot explain why Vivi likes trying new things, such as visiting new planets, using an ISFJ typing. In fact, she can be downright "adventurous" if she does not feel threatened (PMs 06-22). Similarly, Vivi's "hopeless romantic" idealism is more common among daydreaming INFPs than concrete ISFJs. As a Geik, Vivi seems more like an ISFJ, but as a Gieeg, she seems more like an INFP — but since they are the same character (PMs 06-22), I cannot type them differently.

Alright, that concludes my analysis of @askgoopi and @askthewaywardaliens! Unless I forgot any characters. I considered including some of the other Starmen who serve under Goopi, and probably ought to add the Last Starman featured in recent posts — especially since he may have a type very rare to CogDis (canon and fan-) characters. But since most of them appear almost exclusively in the background, have minimal dialogue, and lack Charahub entries, I realized that I would not have enough material to make a guess at their personality types.

I am unsure whose characters I will analyze next. Hopefully it will take less time to post the next part of Finalysis. Until then, goodnight!

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itsunpublic · 4 years

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A friend said, this year didn’t make people go crazy. It just made everyone, who they truly are, come out more intensely.

We are all amplified versions of who we are at our core. How true that is.

Why this year has been so hard for me bc it has been a year of deep soul diving. Of allowing myself to feel deep feelings buried beneath 10 million more.

Who I am down in the core is flighty. I live with guidance of a moral compass. I have deep feelings and emotions that I realize not everyone has. I feel things strongly, I’ve learned to react to feelings more calmly. It’s been a struggle.

You are who you become when you grow up absorbing the outside world. You’re told what to be, how you should act, what is right and what is wrong. At least in my family. You only knew what you knew and you tried to embody that. Even as you knew you didn’t like it, you try to rebel. You tell yourself you’re not living your life as they tell you, you march to the beat of your own drum, and you don’t realize the emotional battles that are going on inside you. Why you feel so different, so disconnected. So detached from the traditional way of life. And I tell yourself ‘it’s ok. I’m okay. I got this, when really I didn’t.’

This year I cracked. I cracked open and I am so thankful. It all needed to come out. I needed to die and rebirth. My soul had died and I detached from so many people, while keeping those that really understood me around. It’s sad to realize even my family aren’t one of those who understand. In fact, they’re one of the ones who don’t. I’ve always sensed this, but not to this level of awareness.

First, my mom, and my oldest sis. Now my middle sis. I realize on this trip just how different we are. Now I understand just how different everyone is. I’m told this before but you don’t truly understand it until you go through this. Now I really get it. So many things I’ve heard and thought I knew before have been reshown to me in a different and eye-opening way. Like a-ha I get it now. I feel it now. Knowing is feeling. For me, at least.

I learned I assign everything a morality to it. I believe there’s a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things. And the reason why is because I follow and internal moral compass. Every action has a deeper spiritual rightness to it, to advance you to the next stage. I believe in evolving, in growing, in learning for improvement. I guess not everyone has this deep held belief. It’s interesting to put a label to it-bc of morality. As to why I always thought in the way of right and wrong. And how I’ve been criticized for it so many times and yet why I still couldn’t understand why doing so was so ‘wrong’. If everyone had a deeer purpose to life than just being hedonistic, that everyone wants to grow and grow in layers, how could there not be a right or wrong way to do this. There’s only one direction we are going, right?

How interesting though to finally crack that code. How interesting though this came from my friend Jenny, who has enlightened me on myself in a day’s work. How amazing it is she also helped me realize so many other eye and heart opening realizations. So amazing, I have friends in all the right places and I am so blessed.

(9.4.20)

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prixmiumarchive · 7 years

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Goodbye Judas

Or, A Theme I Notice I Love

I have weird Unemployment Restlessness right now, and so I have been piddling at many things such as pointlessly organizing my tumblr things in a behind the scenes way that literally no one cares about. I was trying to find a theme to maybe switch to, then started to work on one myself. Now I’m getting too damn tried to continue for now, but while I was thinking about what feel I wanted for my theme an the fiction I’ve been enjoying most-recently, I was kind of caught on two of my favorite lines from stuff right now. One is from my long-time and probably all-time love, Doctor Who, while the other is from Wonder Woman, the thing I didn’t even expect to like. Then, I was reminded of something else, too.

I have skipped around Doctor Who this year. I still haven’t seen what seemed to be the thematic pin for the season, Extremis. (I got really behind and skipped to TDF, and I’ll catch up later.) But a friend of mine in the roleplaying community pointed ou the quote to me around the time it aired, and it was echoed literally and thematically in The Doctor Falls. The quote that the theme of this season centers around is:

Only in darkness are we revealed. [...] Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis.

Then, my new love, Wonder Woman had Diana learning a hard lesson through experience that, while not the same, complements this very well, in my opinion. Steve Trevor puts it into words when he says:

It’s not about ‘deserve.’ It’s about what you believe.

I say he put it into words, but that doesn’t mean he’s the only one getting the idea. Steve is great and here’s a Mary Sue article chewing over gender equality and Wonder Woman. But the point here is, Diana sort of sees and already knows the lesson she has to learn, in some ways, before she ever enters the world of men. Her character arc has a lot to do with learning how to accept and deal with that lesson. No matter what inspiring genesis of humanity story she believes, that anyone believes, whether it is true or whether it’s not, one can only look to it as one facet of where we are now. Even if we believe that humans were created to be good, to love, and to be just, we must accept that we have taken on many traits that are at odds with that fact.

Diana, in her innocence and optimism, wanted to believe that the negative, horrible traits she was seeing in humanity (and men in particular) were caused by the influence of the God of War. That made things neat, tidy, and gave a particular, singular thing to blame and to destroy in order to save the world. However, she must come to terms with the fact that there is no simple way to put things back the way they once might have been. Hippolyta (I think) warns Diana that men are easily corrupted. No matter what the original, pure potential might have been, the fact is that war and evil have found their way into the hearts of humans. But the hope remains that, at their core, they may have well been created with a better and higher purpose. And that belief, that love should win, even when it doesn’t, is what becomes Diana’s banner in the end.

And while I was sort of meditating on this while trying to figure out the mysteries of HTML and CSS, something I hadn’t even thought about in a while came to mind. If you’re a long-time mutual, you know that in 2015, I got really into Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works. It’s available on Netflix and good, part of a much larger, mind-bogglingly and stupidly complicated thing (universe?) called Type Moon, which consumed me in good ways and bad. In some ways, as a result of fandom experience and prejudice, I kind of quickly left behind the particular installment that hooked me into this network of stories in the first place.

I don’t want to spoil the Big Twists of UBW, in the off-chance a person who hasn’t seen it wants to watch it, since it is my good guess that of the three stories I am referencing in this post, Fate is the least likely most of my followers will have consumed. Because anime, and stuff. But I know some of you have or at least have a functional knowledge of what I’m talking about, so I am just talking about this because it really pricked a little scab, in a good way. In so many stupid, awful ways, 2016 was a trying year for me that made the things I loved feel like burdens, like chores, and like there was no real meaning but distraction behind them. I hate that, and this little moment I’m having has kind of revivified something I lost in the muck. It’s really strange, how good it can feel to just feel like you found a link to fuse past-you to present-you that feels good rather than like a weight of regret and embarrassment. And this is one of those things for me, realizing that 2015 me valued the same lesson that now-me is so enchanted with and trying to take to heart.

I won’t summarize Fate UBW because I’d be here for another thousand words. But I will suffice to say that its male protagonist, Emiya Shirou, is intended by the creator to be a critique of the typical shounen hero, common to anime anime at teenage boys. He experienced a great trauma as a child of which he was the sole survivor, rescued by one of the catalysts of that trauma and raised by him. Being raised by his father-figure-savior, he wants to become just like him because of the joy he saw on this man’s face when he saved him. Shirou, on the surface, seems pretty normal, but he basically was allowed to respond to his trauma by living vicariously, unchecked. He functions as a dutiful, typical exampleo f the above trope in pretty much all ways, prior to his involvement in The Plot as it pertains to him.

He carries a certain self-spun ideology with him into The Plot. If you need a pointer, i will cheekily describe it as The Hunger Games with Mythical Heroes and Witches and Wizards. (They’re called magi in this, so actual fans won’t kill me.) His ideology is that he wants to achieve a world that is fair and just enough that no one will ever need to cry. This brings about a whole heap of trouble of him, both seen and unseen, because he is actually presented as selfless to a fault. For those of you who do know what I am talking about, this is why Unlimited Blade Works feels like the most natural progression to me. In this story, rather than the other two canon-AUs (routes), he actually confronts this and deals with it rather than Option A) Embracing it Fully or Option C) Burn it All Down for My Equally-Needs-Help Girlfriend.

Anyway, in UBW, Shirou’s ultimate confrontation with his ideology is not necessarily what one would think. I don’t speak Japanese, so I cannot be completely sure of the purest import of the line, but when Shirou’s foil is arguing with him about what nonsense all of it is, one subbing ground translated it in a way that I really liked. (And if I’m remembering it correctly, it isn’t the official translation of the line.) He says, in response to the refutation of his ideology:

Just because you are correct doesn’t mean you’re right.

And I just love that, in terms of excessively hedonistic or utilitarian arguments against doing the right thing. Sometimes, even if a person can make a point about why it’s frankly stupid or inefficient to do the right thing, you just do it because it’s kind.

I found a subbed clip of the part I want to quote. If you even think you might watch, don’t watch past 2:00.

For this part to work, to explain what I remembered tonight that makes me feel like there might be some spark of continuity between what has moved me for the past several years, I have to transcribe a conversation. (Again, I’m copying subs, so like, people who understand Japanese forgive me.)

Archer: Hey, that’s Hell you’re walking into. Shirou: This is what you forgot. I admit that at first it was just admiration. But at the heart of it all was a wish. The wish for this hell to be undone. The unfulfilled wish of a man who only wanted to help others, but who lost everything in the end. Archer: Even if that life will be that of a machine? Shirou: Yeah. Even if that life is dripping with hypocrisy. I'll keep striving to be a champion of justice.

And I just love that my mind came back around to this at last. Even if that life is dripping with hypocrisy. That feels like something the Doctor might say. That feels like what Aries tried and failed to shake Diana with. And it just... means a lot to me, as a person, and I hope that I’ll keep learning why and what it means in practice.

By the way, the title of this post is my favorite little line in ‘Last Stardust,’ the song playing in above-linked clip.

#doctor who #wonder woman #fate stay ubw #fate stay series #emiya shirou #conventional blogging tag #archer #mine #mymeta #long post #like a super long post #like you should only read this under three circumstances #circumstance 1: you love me #circumstance 2: you love all three of these fandoms #circumstance 3: you love one or more of the fandoms and are curious about one of the others AND like me rambling about shit

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angelofberlin2000 · 7 years

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Photograph: Jake Chessum

Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield on Martin Scorsese’s new film Silence

Silence stars Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield talk about the cathartic experience of shooting Martin Scorsese’s epic

By Joshua Rothkopf

Posted: Tuesday December 20 2016

“ ‘What’s that bird?’ ” It’s maddeningly early for a Sunday morning, but Adam Driver, gleeful with his coffee and smoked salmon in the near-empty Brooklyn Heights café that’s his local favorite, is setting a scene. “We were shooting in the hills of Taiwan, and Marty kept hearing a certain kind of bird, asking everyone around, ‘What’s that bird sound I’m hearing? What’s that bird?’ It was really important for him to get it. And I don’t remember that bird! It was a detail I wasn’t absorbing. But Marty was so open, in the midst of everything, to be aware of how the space was affecting the story.”

Marty is, of course, Martin Scorsese, the high priest of American cinema, maker of Mean Streets, Goodfellas and, occasionally, something that challenges and floors even his most ardent fans. That movie this time around is Silence, the director’s long-cherished passion project come to fruition after nearly 30 years of development. Based on Shusaku Endo’s controversial 1966 novel about faith under fire, the film follows the plight of 17th-century Jesuit missionaries who travel from Portugal to Japan, which was at the time a mystery to the West.

In Scorsese’s execution, Silence is more than just an Oscar contender, more than a masterpiece, even. It’s simply the kind of thing that doesn’t get made anymore. It explores a spiritual agony last probed by Sweden’s mighty director Ingmar Bergman while being swaddled in a smoky fable-like texture that even Akira Kurosawa would have envied. And if you’re wondering if Marty ever found his bird, rest easy: The film’s opening seconds in the darkness build to a deafening roar of chirps, the shriek of a land that won’t be tamed.

“There’s a short list of directors that, if they call—no matter what they’re asking for—you do it,” says Andrew Garfield, leaning in as if confiding a secret, the most obvious one in the world. “And Scorsese is at the top of that list. I had just finished my stint as Spider-Man. I wasn’t aware that it was over yet, but I kind of had that feeling. I was doing a lot of reflecting. That was a really difficult learning process and a wonderful one as well.”

Garfield and Driver make up the emotional core of Silence as a pair of young novitiates who, Heart of Darkness–style, head into the wilderness searching for their missing mentor, who hasn’t been heard from in years. Along the way, they are tested by a brutal regime that doesn’t want their foreign beliefs spread, even as converted Japanese Christians harbor the holy men as fugitives.

But there’s another story here: that of two actors, both 33 years old (Jesus would smile at that), both at a crossroads of success and personal satisfaction. Silence has been their crucible, and they’ve emerged from it hardened and recommitted to chasing their art to a degree that’s noticeable.

Driver, the soulful ex-boyfriend of Lena Dunham’s character on Girls and a brilliant portrayer of millennial squirminess in Noah Baumbach's While We’re Young, now chafes at his popular status as a Bushwickian sex symbol. “I’m kind of mystified by it,” he says, “because a lot of times, I feel disconnected from my generation.” An ex-Marine who arrived at New York’s Juilliard School in 2005 with a strict sense of discipline and a fierce work ethic, Driver has never known what he terms the “shitty-apartment part” of young strugglers (he loves his “gravely quiet” hipster-free neighborhood). Shaking his head, Driver won’t say a word about next year’s Star Wars: Episode VIII, in which his villainous Kylo Ren from The Force Awakens reappears. Instead, he pivots our conversation back to his passion for personal expression, even in a galaxy far, far away: “Because J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson directed those [Star Wars] movies, they still feel like independent films to me. They don’t sacrifice story for spectacle.” (Before the year is out, Driver will also be seen in Jim Jarmusch’s bus-driver haiku, Paterson—as small and lovely as it gets.)

Garfield, for his part, lashes out at his years toiling in the Marvel megamachine. “There has to be something urgent about the stories we’re telling,” he says, “otherwise we’re a part of the numbing of the culture. I think that was hard, doing the Spider-Man stuff. Because even though I felt an opportunity to do something for young people—adolescents who were going through the confusion of ‘What’s my gift? Who am I in the world?’—it ultimately became about shareholders and McDonald’s. It ended up flattened and made to appeal to everybody. That’s a heartbreaking thing.”

After that heartbreak, Garfield took some time off. He prepared a full year for Silence, training under the tutelage of Father James Martin, a Jesuit friend of Scorsese’s who worked as the film’s consultant. “He became my spiritual director for a year,” says Garfield. “He took me in as if I was training for the priesthood.” That, combined with Scorsese’s own homework assignments (“the most obscure movies, like black-market films that only three people had seen”) and even a 30-day silent retreat with Driver, coaxed a new actor to emerge, one who could take on Mel Gibson’s ferocious war picture Hacksaw Ridge—itself about a deeply religious man challenged by the realities of WWII soldiering—with confidence.

“I think there’s always been a longing in me,” Garfield adds when I ask if he thinks of himself as a spiritual person. “There’s a big hole that needs filling all the time. I mostly search for it in all the wrong places, like we all do: work, success, food, drugs, alcohol, validation. You name it. One of the things I understood in the process of making Silence is that we’re always worshipping something. We’re always devoting ourselves to something, even if we’re not conscious of it. So better to be conscious of it and choose what we’re devoting ourselves to.”

As for the director who inspired his two leads to lose a combined 85 pounds to better portray both literal and religious hunger (Driver looks painfully emaciated in the film), Scorsese himself sounds like the upstart 33-year-old who helmed Taxi Driver during a sweltering New York City summer in 1975. “I guess I’m looking for it for myself,” he tells me on the phone from Los Angeles, of his quest for something higher, a core element of even his most violent and hedonistic films. “I’ve always been very close to religion. I figured if I could pull myself through this picture, I might get a little closer to it, you know? The problem is, how do you act it out?”

Scorsese, Driver and Garfield all describe the birthing of Silence as difficult. Above and beyond the years of looking for funding—Scorsese was first turned on to Endo’s book in 1988 during the controversies over The Last Temptation of Christ—there was the matter of shaping the material into a script, a multidecade task undertaken by frequent Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks (The Age of Innocence). And then, even with the green light, the Taiwan shoot had its share of miseries.

“It was actually pretty painful,” Scorsese says of one particular scene: a moment when Garfield’s priest, captured by the Japanese and ranting in a haze of religious doubt, comes close to snapping. With its echoes of Raging Bull, specifically when Robert De Niro smashes up a Miami jail cell, the scene is arguably the summit the 74-year-old director has been working up to his entire career.

“The key there was Andrew, because I put two cameras on him and created this atmosphere in which he could just take off—in one take, by the way,” says Scorsese. “And it was—how can I put it?—excruciating. A lot of the stuff in this film was. Excruciating to the point where you feel pain in your back and your stomach and your head. It may have been cathartic, but I gotta say, none of this stuff was enjoyable.”

Driver agrees, saying he fed off the parallels between religion and the leap of faith needed to take on any role seriously. “Acting, a marriage, any relationship where you make a commitment to something—it’s filled with doubt,” he says. “But that’s actually a virtue of Scorsese. He sets an environment for people to take ownership of their parts. He actually hires you for your opinions. He wants you to rebel, to do something unexpected. He’s been thinking about this stuff for 28 years, and still he doesn’t have a ‘right’ way of going about it, which I think is amazing.”

Silence now arrives in a moment of global uncertainty, making it extra timely. A private meeting between Pope Francis and Scorsese’s family led to blessings and a message of hope for the days and months ahead. “He said, ‘Pray for me—I could use it,’ ” recalls the director. But in no small way, Silence already signals a mighty resurrection, even under the guise of a historical epic about religious repression. It’s a long-won triumph for Scorsese and an arrival for its two stars, poised to possibly join the company of cinema’s great tortured souls—the Brandos and the Pacinos. “I want my work to be as deep as it can possibly be,” admits Garfield. “I’m more aware than ever of human potentiality. And I think I need it all.”

#silence #martin scorsese #andrew garfield #adam driver

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martianarctic · 7 years

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Spring Breakers (2013) Review

I decided to revisit this film, having seen it not in the theatres, but as soon as it had been released to streaming. I vaguely remembered enjoying it, but after viewing it a second time (albeit slightly inebriated on THC), I have decided it is a great film and thus worthy of a review.

There is a part in this film that I think basically is the hub of the entire thing, which is a montage where James Franco’s character “Alien”, is playing a piano poolside a mansion overlooking Tampa Bay, and he and the surviving spring breakers are singing Everytime by Britney Spears. I mean, how can I not put a still of this in here.

This is followed by a montage of the four of them robbing people at gunpoint, including what seems to be a wedding(?) where a grills-in-teeth-grinning Franco smashes the brides face into the cake.

Due to the director (Harmony Korine) having wrote an infamous 90s film (KIDS) this film was expected to be edgy and in-your-face, it is certainly that. I also think people expected it to be good, since I guess KIDS was good. But it was kind of moreso good in the way that Blair Witch was good: it was a ride to a place you couldn’t get to anywhere else, at least at the time.

There is a plot and dialogue, but it does not get into the way of the visual expression, which is where the people who like it will enjoy this movie. Some college women are bored with being in college and want to go to Florida for spring break. They don’t have the money to do so, so they rob a restaurant to get enough funds to go. Eventually, they meet a white rapper and criminal named Alien, and then he amps up their adventures to a violent, ludicrous and visually satisfying climax.

This visual storytelling succeeds at telling us a satirical, offensive, and sincere story about the Breakers and also about our culture at large.

Who decides that something is satirical, offensive, or sincere? Or are they not mutually exclusive? Some say that satire “punches up” meaning that if it makes fun of certain kinds of people, it’s offensive, but if it makes fun of other kinds of people, it’s satire.

I partially agree, and think it’s satire when you’re talking about society as a whole and not just beating up one stereotype, particularly if that is a racial stereotype against minorities or against a sexist stereotype against women. However, everybody with any control over what they say and do is responsible, to some extent, of the state of the world, at any given time.

Somebody who was 18 in 2013 will be 105 in 2100 if they make it that far. The breakers are within the reach of seeing the world that scientists say will be an apocalyptic hellscape a finding our own government effectively disputes.

It is very tempting to compare this film to the book and film A Clockwork Orange, also a visually told reflection upon the state of society from the viewpoint of a gang of young people. Some accused Kubrick of using titillating imagery to express sexual violence- some would accuse this film of also pandering with gratuitous imagery of female bodies, sexuality, racism, and violence as well.

I think that’s the point. It’s hard to not find yourself enthralled with the imagery of sexuality and violence present here, and in a way that helps direct our discomfort with the situation inwardly. We should ask ourselves to reconcile what’s happening, with how we feel about it, versus what we know about it.

Society in the 21st century is extremely material, but at the same time it is highly spiritually awakened. There is a spirituality present in the Breaker’s musings, which forms much of the dialogue of the film, on what spring break means to them. There is almost a philosophical core to their motivations that nearly forgives them. They make a good case. I found myself reflecting on how the Breakers bemoan finishing college, for basically nothing, and I reflect upon my own choice to not finish college, because it did not suit my needs. And how I had that choice, because I am a man, and they did not, because they are women. Reflection upon privilege. Reflection upon society demanding we basically pay heavy tolls to be weighed as a good person (a college degree, or be a white man).

This materialism, and spirituality, collide head on in the film. The fanatical, radicalized need for the Breakers to have what everybody else does echoes Patrick Bateman in American Psycho: “Because I want to fit in.” What radicalized them? Who made them believe that the key to happiness is sex and drugs with a ton of new people in a beautiful place?

Wait, what’s wrong with sex and drugs with a ton of new people in a beautiful space? A friend of mine paid $1500 for Burning Man tickets this year, and they were stolen! Look! Look it happens in real life! What does that mean? Isn’t that interesting?

There are parts of the movie that feel exploitative, but I think that take is a bit on-the-nose. The constant imagery of the breakers in swimsuits could definitely be masturbation material for somebody I guess. But, may I offer that it is shown so much, and in such awkward situations that one begins to really view the Breakers not as lingerie models or exotic dancers but as human beings existing in the world, on the Planet Earth.

There is also some exploitative racism. Alien states that he grew up as the “only white kid in the neighborhood”, and of course, that’s bad because Black people are mean to white kids in their neighborhoods, because racism is universal! No no no no it’s not!!! James Franco also uses the N word and not in a friendly way either. But that’s OK because he’s basically black anyway. No no no no no! He’s not!!! The “villain”, Big Arch (played by musician Gucci Mane), is a black man whose accent is so thick its difficult to understand him, and he is having sex with two more well-endowed women because black men prefer women with big stretch mark booties! No no non no! they don’t!

But even this offensive racism is positioned, I feel, with purpose. The booty sex scene between Big Arch and two well-endowed females of darker complexion is presented with the same tenderness and eroticism as the threesomes between Alien and the Breakers. The relationship between Alien and Big Arch is that Alien was friends with Big Arch until Alien began to compete against him, and their conflict echoes that of appropriation and gentrification. “You need to get your white ass back on a surfboard and get out of here” big Arch says.

At the end of the film, after a violent confrontation between the two, we are left with a lot of questions. Questions about ourselves, our society, and our role in it. We are left reflecting on sexism, racism, materialism, and spirituality.

The film presents the characters as stereotypes, but ends up making us look at them as human beings.It presents their actions as being those of selfish, hedonistic people, but ends up making us reflect on our world instead.

What companionship, drugs, violence and sex do we need to feel OK as evolved monkeys on a rock, and how is society jacking us in, wiring us up, networking us into a matrix and amplifying that need to power the meat grinder of capitalism? Spring break, forever.

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