#but the same is true for a lot of other human motivations
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on laios's approach to his consumption and desires
i am so sick of people making laios’s entire thing about “eating monsters” and turning him into someone that would eat a pokemon or whatever given the chance, when his entire thing is actually about both being the monster that’s eating, and the human being that’s getting devoured. because “monsters eat humans, that’s why they’re so cool (and everything i want to be).”
laios’s interest in eating monsters stems from his desire to understand the individual species, and has since he was a child reading about their taste in books. it most definitely isn’t from an innate fascination with their value or specific usage as food. laios doesn’t eat monsters the same way that a human eats animals! this is most obvious when you compare him and senshi, who is focused specifically on the usage of monsters as a food item, and a foil to laios - who is willing to eat whatever just in order to understand it a little more.
he may be curious how specific species taste - do walking mushrooms taste like regular ones? do nightmares and living armor taste like regular shellfish? - but these questions stem from a desire to understand them deeper and in turn get closer to a world of animality. personally, i think he would be offended at the idea that his desire to eat monsters stemmed from something so human-centric.
(notice how he seems to care significantly less about being a ‘murderer’ than a ‘dragonslayer’ lol. )
we know that laios has been curious about the taste of monsters since he was a child, but he still takes it seriously. the only reason he eventually resorts to eating monsters with his party in the first place is because they were in a situation of life or death - and laios, like a monster operating under the rule of ‘kill or be killed’, knew that they were going to need to do so in order to achieve their goal on such low supplies. but he isn’t a surplus killer, nor does he kill solely for the sake experimentation or pleasure! he's actually extremely respectful towards monsters, all things considered.
on top of everything... even though laios is clearly pleased about getting a chance to eat monsters initially, since he finally gets to fulfill a childhood desire - this actually sours for him fairly early on. in the monster tidbits page for the cockatrice, we see him lament on the fact that the information he'd idolized for so long ended up being totally fabricated, and doesn't seem too happy about pursuing his 'dream' of comparing the taste of cockatrice and basilisk anymore. i think this says a lot about his motivations and feelings when it comes to consuming monsters overall.
basically tl;dr - what i’m saying is - yeah, laios eats monsters, sure… but he wishes he was a monster too, and he wants his own human form devoured. with this idea in mind, you can consider that by eating monsters, he becomes closer to them, and a little less “human”. (even though he knows it isn’t that easy.)
this actually has A LOT of influence over late-game spoiler-related events - but i'll keep all late-game spoiler meta talk and panels under the cut:
even in death, laios's ultimate dream is to be consumed by monsters and become part of the natural world! but i think what's most indicative of this approach laios has towards consuming monsters is when kui kind of makes it incredibly obvious during the fight with the winged lion, lol. it's the definining point of the entire thing, isn't it?
laios, finally becoming his true monster form, is so overwhelmed by an unstoppable desire to consume his human self, erasing it from existence. he's so overcome with this desire to consume himself that on a surface level, it actually almost ends up becoming his downfall...
..but laios knew this would happen already, and with it in mind, he incorporated it into his ultimate monster self. he allowed himself to be able to consume other's desires - including the winged lion's. by consuming the demon disguised as himself, he's able to get to the core of the demon's appetite...
his same "kill or be killed" monster mindset is what allows him to win against something beyond human comprehension, something even beyond the human-monster dichotomy of this world. laios's existence as a monster and approach to life under these carefully considered rules of respect and curiosity are exactly what literally save everyone's lives, including himself and falin. it parallels all the way back to his initial decision to eat monsters at all as a last-resort decision of life or death to save someone he loves! laios saves the day by not being aligned with humanity at all!
through this laios gets to prove his love and devotion for those he cares about despite how far removed he feels from the human experience. he doesn't need to be understood by humans, nor does he need to understand humanity... as long as he has his strong desire to keep those he loves safe and love them with all his heart, it doesn't matter at all. this entire fight is one giant reflection of laios's inner workings throughout the entire series, and i don't see enough people view it through that lens.
laios is such an important character to me, and this wasn't even supposed to be a meta post, but i got so tired of seeing people make jokes about laios eating monsters nonstop!!! thanks for reading! check out my dungeon meshi tag for more long posts like this one :)
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🍿Astro Notes ✨
🍿What I personally love about Scorpios and Capricorn is that they are so real. They will tell you the real opinion and review on it. They show very realistically the things that are happening in the world or if they go to a city they will give a real opinion of what they though about them.
🦋The 12th house is a hidden house that does not show outwardly like other houses. But it shows through the energy-you can feel this house & you can understand it. But when you have synastry with someone here , it is important to trust your intuition even if you don't know what will happen. To trust through the unknown.
🩵Capricorn rising people have no mercy when it comes to betraying them or doing something bad. Once you lose their respect, it's over. They will never look at you as the same person again. Because when they respect someone, they show that person means a lot to them.
🧚🏼♀️Don't lie to mercury in scorpio because they will know the truth before you lie about it. They immediately feel when someone is not telling the truth or when someone is fake, duplicitous, hypocritical. They can read people instantly. If you lie to them, you will end up looking stupid.
🍬And when it comes to Mercury signs. The smartest signs are: Sagittarius (they have a very intelligent mind, they say things very well and can explain them. A very knowledgeable character). Scorpio( they will analyze everything beforehand and are very good at assessing the situation. They delve into the actual conversation and think very psychologically). Virgo ( they are smart and intelligent. They explain things very well).
🍪Individuals with a Taurus moon in the 8th house tend to have deep and intense emotions. They may be very loyal and steadfast in their emotions, and can be possessive or jealous in relationships. These individuals may also have a strong desire for stability and security in their emotional life, and may have a tendency to hold onto grudges or emotional wounds for a long time.
🧁On the other hand, individuals with a Leo moon in the 5th house tend to have a more dramatic and expressive emotional nature. They may be generous and warm-hearted, and may seek validation and attention through their emotions.These individuals may also be creative and passionate, and may enjoy being the center of attention in their personal relationships.
🧃Overall, while Taurus moon in the 8th house individuals may be more reserved and focused on building emotional security, Leo moon in the 5th house individuals may be more outgoing and dramatic in expressing their emotions.
🍭Pisces moon- Pisces is the sign of depths of emotion, and the Moon represents your instinctive emotional reactions and some- times your hidden dreams. Pisces is also the astrological sign of sorrow and self-undoing. If you have the Moon in Pisces you have deep feelings and an innate understanding of the human condition. You are very dreamy and like to live in a romantic fairy tale.
🥃Scorpio moon- You are very clever at hiding your true feelings. This is also one of the more difficult lunar positions. Though you are driven by strong passions you tend to deny that they are your motivation. There is usually a secret sor- row or trouble in the lives of Moon-Scorpios that very of- ten concerns family problems or health. If u have sun in earth sign this accentuates your managerial talents and capacity for authority and leadership. If u have sun in air sign this bestows deep mental powers and an ability to captivate the public.
🌙Moon sign usually represents more hidden aspect of your personality. It is a pervasive influence, but it is likely that other people sense the influence of your Moon sign in your character rather than see it on the surface.
🔥Aries Rising- u usually have strong likes and dislikes and you are never shy about expressing them. You are an activist and doer rather than a thinker. You like to be noticed. Aires people are accident-prone. Because you are impulsive and quick to rush in headlong, you usually don’t look where you are going. Are prone to accidents with fire and sharp instruments.
🍫Taurus Rising- Owning things can sometimes become a mania; you covet possessions and once you own something you guard it jealously and are heartbroken should you lose it. You never resign yourself to the fact that things break, tear, wear out, get lost, and are stolen. They are very attached to things and really hate the fact that they lose something.
🍸Gemini Rising- you have an excitable nature that is You travel, change residences and occupations, and often marry more than once. quick to react to any stimulus, to come up with an answer to any question and also to get upset easily. You love puzzles,games,books. You travel, change residences and occupations, and often marry more than once.
🧊Virgo Rising- Emotionally, it’s hard for you to show your feelings. For many of you, a marriage partner brings property or wealth. Later in life they frequently become property owners, often in a foreign country.
☁️Scorpio Rising- tend to have a secret love affair at least one time in their lives, and usually marry more than once. Astrologers have observed a strange pattern in which Scorpios often lose their first spouse to death. The influence of Pluto bestows powerful feelings and emotions, a sense of purpose, persistence, determination, plus the imagination and ability to make a successful start in a new direction.
Sagittarius Rising- they are often subjected to the fact that they are very disturbed by injustice. Sometimes much more than libras. You like to travel, see new places, learn how the rest of the world lives. You fear that if you take success too seriously, life will become boring. You are impulsive, sometimes reckless. To take action is the main thing, to do something about a problem. You don’t always stop to consider where all the activity may lead. Marriage is not the most important thing in your life. U have a tendency to marry the wrong person (at least once) and get into unhappy romantic situations from which they must extricate themselves.
🎸For personal readings u can sign up here: https://snipfeed.co/bekylibra 🎸
-Rebekah🧚🏼♀️🍬🧃
#astrology#energy#zodiac signs#planets#astrological houses#astrology observations#birth chart#moon#rising signs
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Any analysis of how Undertale deals with Pacifism and how it tries to guide the Player towards it has to take a deep look at Papyrus. Because Papyrus is the one character in the game who will never kill, the one actual ‘True Pacifist’ in the game’s main cast.
I mean, the Player can be an even bigger Pacifist. Papyrus does still FIGHT, and the Player can get through an entire run without draining a single sliver of HP. But… they can also be the world’s biggest murderbastard and literally stab reality to death.
Toriel would very much like to not kill, but she is also fully capable of doing so.
Same with Asgore, but he has a lot more actual blood on his hands. Undyne and Mettaton are both fully 100% willing to kill to accomplish their goals. Sans is non-violent in most runs because he’s too lazy and depressed to do anything, and when he is motivated into actions - it is in the form of a FIGHT to the death. Alphys… the timeline is a bit fuzzy cause both she and Mettaton love lying so much, but it seems like she did sincerely add deadly weapons to Mettaton cause killing humans would make him more 'useful' and then had second thoughts once she developed a parasocial relationship with the Human Child and THEN she and Mettaton started hatching their little play-acting plan. I think??
With Papyrus there is NONE of this ambiguity, we know for sure - no matter what timeline or what may come - The Great Papyrus will always choose MERCY.
And the interesting thing about that is on a Meta-Sense, Papyrus is a very rare example of the game giving MERCY towards the Player.
Because the game starts out being really obtuse with the Sparing mechanic and how it works. If you want to be a Pacifist in Undertale from the get-go, you’re gonna have to work for it. You're gonna have to figure it out on your own and commit to it and believe that it's possible. It's basically a test of your own belief in non-violence and your moral integrity. Then, the RUINS end with the Toriel boss battle - in a way, that’s probably the hardest Sparing puzzle in the whole game. And it’s very very easy to accidentally kill her. (I’d almost say that’s the intention of the battle, to try to goad the Player into Resetting so they can see how the game remembers across RESETs)
And then we have Papyrus, and it’s not just that his ‘Sparing Puzzle’ is something as simple as outlasting him and letting him run out of dialogue - and it’s not just that he’s the only boss that will just give up and let you continue if you lose to him enough times. it’s also that, just as Papyrus is the only boss incapable of accidentally killing the Player - he’s also the only boss that the player is incapable of accidentally killing.
(Okay, fine, to be pedantic, there’s also Asgore)
I mean, the Player can certainly kill him if they want to - but draining Papyrus’s HP just makes him skip through his battle dialogue right to the end of it. It’s designed in such a way that, no matter what Route you're on and no matter what approach you take with Papyrus - you will always end up on this screen.
Unlike basically any other Monster in this game, including the major boss battle just before him - you can’t kill Papyrus accidently. You can't kill him without also having Sparing him as an option. The game kinda treats killing Papyrus as one of the Worst Things You Can Do because killing Papyrus will always be a deliberate, considered action done to a person who will not kill you and who has stopped wanting to FIGHT and has extended a hand of Mercy. With the game clearly communicating what you need to do to Spare him at that moment.
And that means that - even if you killed before, even if you don’t have the patience of a True Pacifist, even if you spent all this time in the game without even trying to engage with the Sparing mechanic… as long as you don’t want to be a Huge Rat Bastard, the game is basically gifting you with the very very easy option to not be. Being a Pacifist in Undertale is usually a challenge - a puzzle to be solved, a test to pass. But as long as you aren’t intentionally trying to be the Worst Person - the game is basically giving you Papyrus.
If you accept his Mercy, you are accepting the game’s Mercy. That sort of benefit-of-the-doubt assumption that maybe all of the LOVE you might have accumulated so far was all due to honest mistakes or panic or an attempt in self-defense. That you still deserve this one chance to prove that you are not intentionally, maliciously cruel - or at least not like the Worst Person in the World. Even if you did kill before, you still deserve at least one friend.
And Sparing Papyrus leads you to his wonderful Hangout/Dating Sequence and to his Phone Calls and they all add so much wholesome charm to the Undertale experience and no matter what happens Papyrus will always think the best of the Player and he will always trust them and it also makes Sans also kinda your buddy by default. And more than just adding a little bit of wholesome charm into even the more LOVE-filled Playthroughs, I think this is meant to try and incentivize these players into trying out the Mercy mechanic a bit more.
Whatever it’s, like, for future playthroughs or Resetting the game right there to try a True Pacifist Run right there and then or just trying to be a little kinder for the rest of this current playthrough - especially since there’s an emphasis about the close friendship Papyrus has with the upcoming boss Undyne, and to a lesser extent with his idol and next-next boss battle Mettaton. It’s like “well, if you didn’t figure out how to spare before, this is how you do it? And isn’t it nice to have a friend? Isn’t it nice to not have to kill this lovable skeleton man? You should do this more often wink wink nudge nudge!”
And it’s like… all of Papyrus’ loved ones care about him so much but they also look down on his pacifism. They see his inability to kill and desire to make friends as simple naivete and that’s why all tend to hide the truth from him all the time. About what will happen to the Human he will capture, about what his new Human friend might’ve done, about the fact that they view him as so naïve.
They admire it on some level, that’s why they want to protect it, but they also see it as a weakness which is why they want to protect it by lying to him all the time. But, you know, Undyne says that if Papyrus goes into battle he’ll be ‘ripped into little smiling shreds’ and that is certainly what happens every time a Player chooses to refuse Papyrus’ Mercy and the game’s Mercy and press that FIGHT button…
But have you thought about all the times that doesn’t happen? All the careless or violent players who were offered that skeletal hand of friendship, accepted it and then carried that offered kindness forward for the rest of the game? All the players motivated to do good for the sake of their buddy Papyrus? All the Murder Routes stopped because the player just didn’t have it in them to kill someone who believes in them so earnestly?
Like, no, it’s not a surefire thing - especially since Papyrus has so much less narrative power than the Actual Unkillable Time God that is the Player. But it happened, and it happened many many times to many players. Papyrus offered Mercy, the game offered Mercy. And much like Frisk’s Pacifism, it comes from a place of seeing the honest goodness in your ‘enemy’ and can inspire them to become a better person - this little sparkle of goodness being passed forwards.
And I think that’s beautiful, even if it didn’t happen in every timeline. Any potential future where Papyrus’ kindness can have such an effect on the Player and thus the entire trajectory of the Underground validates his kindness and pacifism on some level - even if there are also always the potential worlds that it backfires completely.
And there’s also one other way in which the Great Papyrus Proves Pacifism Pays. One that is a bit more practical, perhaps. And one that Papyrus himself is not even aware of.
Papyrus’ boss battle can be a surprisingly challenging one specifically because he is the only one who doesn’t kill the Player.
Like there is a reason why Papyrus will just offer you to skip his Fight after you lose to him three times, because if he didn’t do that - there’s an honest risk that the Player can get stuck in a much stuckier way than anywhere else in the game.
Because, like, for basically any other character in the game, being killed is the Worst Thing that could ever happen to them. For everyone except the actual Player Character because we are an Actual Unkillable Time God and dying is nothing more than a minor annoyance that sets you back to your last SAVE Point. So, leaving aside Papyrus’ admirably kind intentions - there is not much material difference from the Player’s perspective between getting Captured and getting a more traditional GAME OVER. Except…
Except getting Captured does not undo everything that happened in your inventory during the battle. In every other Undertale battle, if you use all of your items but still lose - the GAME OVER at least means you get your stuff back. But because Papyrus doesn’t kill you, any healing item you’ve used during the battle is still used. I have watched so many Undertale Let’s Players waste all of their valuable items on their first Papyrus battle and then have to face him again without them and thus do even worse in their second go… and then their third go... and thankfully then Papyrus offers them to skip the fight.
And while that technically can be circumvented by just manually closing the game and opening it back again on their pre-battle SAVE Point, a lot of players are gonna reflexively Save over it if they pop over to the Shop or the Snowed Inn before their second attempt at the battle. If Papyrus didn’t offer that chance to skip his battle, it could’ve easily become a softlock situation for a huge chunk of players - because he doesn’t kill the Player.
Most of Undertale deals with the value of non-violence from a standpoint of morality and kindness and personal connections. Since most people do die when they get killed. But when dealing with an Unkillable Time God like the Player, Papyrus proves that not-killing might actually be the most practical solution.
Of course, it doesn’t seem like Papyrus is aware of any of this. From his perspective, he is just offering genuine mercy to a being just as ephemeral as he is. But it accidentally turned into one of the most effective methods of blocking the Player’s way… at least he didn’t offer us an opt out so soon after that.
And it’s interesting when comparing him to how his brother Sans - one of the few people actually aware of the existence of SAVEs and RESETs - deals with the Player. Because the Sans boss battle at the end of the Murder Route is entirely based on the concept that death is nothing but an annoyance to the Player. Sans is less trying to kill the Player (the way Undyne the Undying did), he is simply trying to annoy the Player into a ragequit. But he is still killing the Player.
Now imagine a Sans battle where he has all of his usual annoying tricks, but also instead of killing you - he captures you just like his brother would’ve in a happier timeline. And while it’s not a fool-proof plan to stop the Player in their tracks - he could very easily stick them in that sort of softlock situation where they have to battle him again and again without any Healing Items. Forcing them to either abandon the game or RESET the whole world back the way it was - just like Sans wants them too.
But instead, by killing the Player, he is just allowing that perfect second-third-fourth-fifth-sixth-try where they get all of their Stuff back. And he does actually knows that. And why doesn’t he do that? (Speaking here from an in-universe character study perspective. Obviously the Doylist answer is that the game doesn’t want to Softlock you even in the most deliberately-frustrating part of the game).
Maybe, even though he intellectually knows that killing the Player will be of no help - he still does it because he wants to. Because he just wants to get back at the evil murderous monster that took his brother from him and destroyed his entire world even if he knows it’s actually ineffective. And this thirst for bloodshed is, ironically, blinding him from a new exciting way to actually practically stop that murderous bastard who is themself motivated entirely by bloodshed.
Maybe he just can’t do something like that. Reducing an enemy to exactly one HP and then stopping is not a feat anyone else in the game is capable of pulling off - even the ones who would obviously use such a thing (like Toriel or a Player with a Pacifist intentions). Maybe it’s something that requires a lot of hard practice and discipline and carefulness, that Sans never thought to put in because he didn’t see it as a useful skill the way Papyrus did.
Maybe that wouldn’t have worked anyways. After all, and that’s something I kinda touched on in a previous Overly Long Rambly Hot Take - Sans’ War of Attrition against the Player is greatly helped by the fact he can’t remember every single previous try and so he can’t get exhausted the way the Player can get. Obviously, without a GAME OVER induced RESET that will not apply. Which is especially notable because… Sans’ laziness is literally what brings him down at the end of that Boss Battle.
So maybe, while Papyrus, as long as you decline his offer to skip the battle, is capable of offering just the same Battle as before over and over and over again.... It’s possible that Sans just won’t be able to pull off two or three or more battles of the same intensity and difficulty in a row without a RESET to undo his own exhaustion.
But I think it’s at least worth considering the option, y’know? That after all this time of viewing Papyrus’ kindness as sweet-and-yet-kinda-foolish-naïveté - that exact viewpoint made Sans overlook the perfect solution to dealing with his little Murderous Time God problem. Cause he just never considered that while killing might be fully morally justifiable in this situation and very very satisfying, that does not necessarily mean it is actually the most practical solution. And that maybe, in a weirdly twisted way, Pacifism WAS the answer.
#undertale#ut#utdr#under tale#papyrus#the great papyrus#papyrus undertale#papyrus ut#sans#sans undertale#sans ut#sans the skeleton#papyrus the skeleton#undertale analysis#undertale meta#genocide route#genocide run
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pacts and their marks: demon au
Summary: Where you've accidentally summoned a demon (you’re an exorcist) and now you’re in a pact with them! They’re now your assistant of sorts, some more willing than others…
Characters: Venti, Xiao, Lyney, Wanderer
Content warnings: minor injury and blood (Xiao), mentions of fire and smoke with allusions to death (Lyney), mentions of death and human experimentation (Wanderer)
Generally speaking, Venti likes to float rather than walk if he can help it; he’s gotten the habit of flitting around your form often, hanging off your shoulders and clinging on to you absentmindedly. You might be more annoyed about it if it wasn’t for his voice as he greets you, light and deceptively soothing.
Venti’s music hypnotizes the heart. Whether it be singing or another instrument, he has the ability to convince any being, living or dead, to do as he wishes—so long as his melody isn’t overpowered by their strength of mind.
Honestly, sometimes you wonder if he’s testing the safety-precautions of your pact. You’re invulnerable to his powers thanks to it, but with the way he endears himself towards you, you wonder if his true motive was to steal your affections in another way.
He’s one of the rare demons that blend in with people well. You found him as a spirit living inside an antique lyre; while Venti says he was sleeping there for a lack of anything to do, you have a feeling that there’s another story behind his attachment to the item. He often uses it in battle—its strings glowing with an old magic that matches the shade of his eyes and braids.
You sometimes forget how deadly it is to lose one’s mind in the heat of a fight, when Venti’s lying next to you on the bed as he scrolls on your spare phone. Noticing your attention he peers up, twirling his hair—currently unbraided—between his fingers.
For how much he teases you about praising him, Venti’s never mentioned anything about playing his music to get rid of your nightmares. One time, when you were especially sick, you recall him singing a song in a language you didn’t recognise.
It was hauntingly beautiful, and so was the way he brushed his hand through your hair, too gentle compared to the demons you had to hunt down.
Xiao’s most unique feature had to be his wings; the same dark shade as his hair, dipped in streaks of teal.
During a quiet night, he’d told you they used to be white as snow and gilded with gold. But an angel that kills to protect is destined to fall from the clouds, shrouded by the ghosts of those they have slain.
You know there are others like him, but he says they’ve succumbed to corrosion. He is the only one left, and is one of the only demons you’ve met that hunt down their own species. In an effort to save him from his own corrosion, you’d made a pact with Xiao to link your life forces.
Despite how he’d told you to leave him, his spirit still reached for yours—towards any form of light and warmth it could meet. Xiao still finds the marks of the pact distasteful, however, always glancing at the dark patterns now etched into your skin. You tell him it’s more reassuring than not, now that you can summon him with a call of his name.
If there’s one word to describe his powers, it’s destructive in every form of the word. Xiao leaves the battlefield entirely demolished after a fight. Sometimes he struggles to control his strength, but it’s been getting easier to do so with your presence to balance his.
He prefers to throw himself in as the weapon. Which is why when you’re the one that gets injured this time around, all Xiao can do is panic. He holds you in his arms, frozen as he realizes he cannot help.
Thankfully, it wasn’t a serious wound. But after that, Xiao has been a lot more protective of you; almost hyper-aware.
“W—What are you doing, Xiao?” You flinch as he bites into your palm, drawing a small line of blood.
Xiao hums. “Did you know that even using your blood, I can only heal you a limited amount with our pact?” Another bite, this time with his fangs, frustrated. “Keep that in mind the next time you plan on getting hurt.” You’re lucky the hospital could treat you this time around.
All Lyney knows is that he was reborn in a fire. At the back of his mind, he’s searching for his siblings—though he’s not sure where they are.
Like smoke filling a room, Lyney’s able to create illusions that trick all the senses. At your first meeting, he’d tried this on you; only for one of your protective amulets to diffuse his powers, revealing a larger demon he’d been working with that’d been ready to devour you.
Suffice to say, Lyney was quick to switch sides once he noticed that you were winning. That, and the demon he was working with turned out to have lied about having a lead for him. After noticing your potential as a partner, he’d been quick to scout for your help.
He often uses his illusions to fool enemies into fighting one-another, redirecting their attention away—but after the pact, Lyney seems to lose his larger-than-life traits and falls into a casual routine with you. It makes you wonder if he’d been human before this, though sometimes he’s more cat-like than not.
If nothing else, he does like to put on a show when you’re faced with a battle. He makes your job easy, considering that your bond allows you to see past his illusions and maneuver around enemies, finding the perfect blind spots. Despite the oddity of your partnership, you start to enjoy the pattern of working with Lyney, from your smooth conversations to his smarts.
One thing that does throw him off however, is when a demon you were trying to exorcize attempts to form a pact with you. Not that you can’t have multiple pacts at once, but it’s the first time you’ve seen Lyney openly aggressive towards an enemy, striking it with a sharp bolt of flame that diffuses it long enough for you to dispose of it.
With the threat gone, Lyney was quick to check on you, looking for any traces the other demon might’ve left behind. He calms down once he finds nothing, eyes widening when he realizes your faces are only inches apart.
“I…” He looks like he’s about to apologize, but decides against it. “Please don’t make a pact with anyone else. I don’t want to feel like that ever again.”
When you first met, Wanderer had tried to turn you into a puppet.
It was his power, after all—to attach strings onto any form and take control of them. These strings could be cut off, but it would only take so long for him to attach them again.
Most people don’t survive their encounters with him, but you’d managed to trap him into a pact right before things went dire. Now you could restrain his actions to a certain extent, though Wanderer would always push against your control, keeping you on your guard.
Many coworkers have told you to simply be rid of him—but just as you’d tricked Wanderer into a pact with you, he’s since linked your heart with his soul. That is to say, if he was exorcized, you’d be going down with him.
It’s a small relief to learn that Wanderer could also puppeteer other demons, thus you put him to work on the field by your side, turning into an unwilling duo. He has a habit of not doing anything unless you make it a ‘command’, leaning closer with a challenge in his eyes even as an enemy charged at the both of you.
Then, with a snap of his fingers, they’d stop mid-air. As large as the pact's patterns are on your skin, you had to admit that Wanderer’s power was a deadly one.
You’ve always wondered why he had no reactions to injuries; no matter how serious, you’ve never seen Wanderer express pain. Much, much later into your partnership, you learn that he’s become numb to physical sensations a long time ago. And that him turning into a demon was a gift of reprieve more than not, as he’d destroyed and escaped from an experimental facility shortly after.
During a fight where you'd been affected by a tranquilising venom, Wanderer had been the one to save you; your eyes met briefly as you felt his strings take a hold of your form.
“Don't make me look bad now.” He'd said. “Just relax.”
With not much of a choice, you allowed him to guide your movements. Somehow, it does feel different compared to your first encounter with his powers. With a push and pull between the strings, you could almost say it felt like a dance.
Were Wanderer's movements always this graceful?
Preorders for my wanderer fanbook and genshin letters are open! If you liked this, consider checking out the purple link on my pinned post!
#genshin venti x reader#xiao x reader#lyney x reader#wanderer x reader#genshin scaramouche x reader#genshin x reader#genshin imagines#genshin reader insert#genshin writing#genshin x you#genshin headcanons#traveler wishes
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I admire your patience with those readers who need you to spoon feed them the story. Everything is in the comics but they still manage to go pass it. I can't help but feel a bit sad for them? Do they not understand what they read? Are they not attentive when reading it? I'm legitimately concerned because I function so differently I can't fathom this. If you like a story, isn't it normal to make your best to grasp it's essence and reflect on it? I know I project a lot about this, everyone works and registers things differentely of course but sometimes it's very frustrating to see people consume any media and just completely miss all the important messages in it, or even just fail to get the scenario sometimes, and it feels like it's very common now... Idk I just wanted maybe to have your perspective on this? Sorry for the long post (Been here for a few years now and your a true inspiration to me. All my luv to you! ❤️)
You know, I'm gonna be honest. I used to stress out about this... a LOT.
As a story-brained person, this is definitely something that comes naturally to me, and perhaps to you, and to many other people who are wired similarly. To us, following the path of a story in an analytic, highly detail-motivated manner and unwrapping the themes can be as exciting as lifting up a rock to see the bugs underneath. It's an exciting mental activity that's stimulating and feels effortless.
And yes, as an author who spends literally 60% of my day thinking about this comic and how to draw it, panel it, script it, make it better (I script and panel in my head constantly)........ I have trouble realizing/dealing with the fact that some people are just here to CASUALLY enjoy the story that I am lowkey obsessed with.
But I've come to realize that... that's NORMAL! And healthy.
People have different attention spans for different things.
People have varied ways to read a story and engage with it.
People have unique interests.
People don't have the same amounts of energy to devote to reading!
Maybe someone missed a detail I lovingly and painstakingly put into the dialogue because they're reading the update late at night after a long shift at work. And maybe someone scrolled past the dialogue completely and just got the gist from looking at the art, because they're in a hurry to get to practice at their favorite sportsball.
And maybe someone just had a really bad day with a really bad encounter, and they're reading the update in a terrible mood and instead of seeing MY grey-morality narrative, they're focusing on all the negative points and misread the vibes because of their own biases that stem from places of hurt.
The thing is, I have to be okay with that as an author, because I will NEVER be able to get into my audience's heads and read this comic 'correctly' for my own sake.
They will always have a slightly different interpretation of things, and they will always misunderstand details and miss clues. And sometimes, they will be wrong about the way they read a character's motivations... and sometimes maybe they won't be! That's just a part of communication. That's a part of telling a story.
An imperfect delivery, and an imperfect reception should, in my opinion, be a natural and accepted part of storytelling. We're human, and we all have a different lived experience, and we will ALL have different takes on a comic, even if it's so close that we THINK we are both getting the exact same thing. That small human interpretation variation is a home-made touch that makes it feel more organic.
In short.... Not all light particles make it here from the sun, but damn the result is stunning anyway.
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Hey Dapper! As an avid follower of- and equally avid inspiration-taker from your work, first of all, thank you for the work you've put into all this. It is a treasure-trove of knowledge and inspiration that has certainly made me very happy. Can I ask for your thoughts on Tharizdun? I've been trying to form a concept of it for in my own world, but I've had little success.
Monsters Reimagined: Tharizdun, the Whisperer in Darkness
Being the default "god of madness" Tharizdun brings together two of my enduring gripes with d&d: gods that no one would actually worship and the enduring legacy of depicting people with mental illness as dangerous lunatics devoid of empathy and reason.
As he currently exists in the DM's toolbox, the whole point of including Tharizdun in your campaign is to act as the powersource behind whichever final fantasy style endboss wants to start the apocalypse before unleashing a mass of offband lovecraftian tentacles. Derivative, trite, his singular desire to inspire others to end the world is MCU levels of failing to give villains proper motivations.
We can do better
TLDR: Far In the wildest depths of the astral sea the ur-god Tharizdun is formless and thoughtless, yet dreaming. Resembling nothing so much as a cosmic nebula of oily clouds, a vast and shapeless expanse of churning primordial chaos that pulses with synapses of psychic lighting containing a consciousness older than time itself. Like a sleeper beset with sleep paralysis the chained oblivion thrashes against a reality it can only barely perceive, sending shockwaves of destruction across the cosmos.
While scholars of all worlds debate the true origins and nature of Tharizdun they can agree on two things:
It is more powerful than all the pantheons of creation, and it is terrified.
Inspiration: I wasn't originally going to do a whole monsters reimagined on Tharizdun, instead simply gesturing on what Matt Mercer has done with the deity (using the roiling chaos as a throughline for much of his Exandrian worldbuilding) and leaving it at that.
Around the same time I got this ask though I was considering doing my own take on Azathoth, the so called "blind idiot god" of the lovecraft mythos, inspiration struck and I decided to alloy the two concepts into what I think is a stronger whole. There's a lot of overlap in the two formless horrors, partly due to Tharizdun being a d&d's attempt to dip its toe into eldritch horror, without quite understanding the thematic framework involved.
Like many other things ( Minorities, the sea, decay, air conditioning) Lovecraft was terrified of objective reality. This might sound like a joke, but fundamental to his mythos is the fear that earth and the white men that lived upon it were not the centre of the universe created by a loving god. Lovecraft lived in increasingly scientific times and the science supported the idea of a universe in which humanity's existence was the meaningless product of random chance. Azathoth was this anxiety embodied in its most extreme scale: the capital G god of the universe which sat in the middle of all creation that was not only uncaring towards humanity (as many of Lovecraft's creations were) but the embodiment of ultimate unthinking chaos.
Trying to port Azathoth (and most of the other lovecrafitan pantheon) doesn't work because the conceits of the genre fundamentally clash. D&D DOES propose a moral universe, and goes out of its way to simplify morality down to such a cartoonish level that it has objective answers. In Lovecraft the horror comes from the fact that the cultists and their fucked up alien gods exist, where as the moral christian god doesn't... in d&d there's no reason for the cultists to worship the fucked up alien gods because the regular gods are both existent and quite nice.
The default d&d cosmology has multiple infinite voids of chaos including limbo, the abyss, and the far realm. I've already given my take on one of these, but I wanted an alternative for the origins of the weird that wasn't specifically focused on entropic decay.
There's a fascinating (and very depressing) history over the term hysteria and the connotations of mental crisis with feminine fragility. The word itself comes from the greek word for womb and there's something about the idea of "primal birthing chaos" that's worth playing with insofar as it makes weird rightoids Jordan Peterson deeply afraid.
Taking these thoughts as well as my earlier gripes in mind, its going to take a bit of an overhaul to make Tharizdun/Azathoth as a credible antagonistic force for a campaign. Also, this might be my own bias as an author showing through here but I don't go in for the lovecrafitan "truths too terrible to be understood". I think the universe is a fundamentally knowable place and if things exist outside our means of perceiving them then we'll just bullrush through and work out a temporary explanation on our way.
Here's my Fix/Pitch: Both Tharizdun and Azathoth are supposed to represent primordial chaos and formless madness. D&D's less than stellar history with mental health issues aside, we know that "madness" isn't evil and it isn't the antithetical opposite of order: It's flawed reason, it's an inability to comprehend, and it's deeply scary for those going through it.
THAT ended up reminding me of a famous quote from lovecraft himself; "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown".
What if we make THAT FEAR into the god? Imagine the panicked sensation of being woken from the deepest slumber by a sudden noise, the door opening or a loud bang going off somewhere on your street..... the phantom horror of something touching you, crawling over you in the middle of the night before you have any of your senses or reason or memory to tell you that it's just your partner or your pet or your own bed sheets. That's the stuff sleep paralysis is made of and it's been haunting us humans since the dawn of time. It's also the same horror of being born, of being a non-thing and then coming into existence in fits and starts without any understanding of the world that you're now
Now imagine there's something out there in the astral sea, the plane of dreams and thoughts... powerful beyond all imagining but created without the ability to ever fully wake up. It is stuck in that first moment of existence because it may well have been the first thing to ever exist and it's been trapped in the shapeless nightmare of an infant since the dawn of time
THAT is how you make a god about the horror of the unknown. A god that is antagonistic to us because it is sacred of us, and it is scared because it has no way of knowing us, knowing the reality it inhabits beyond its own fear.
Adventure Hooks:
The greatest threat Tharizdun presents to most beings in the universe is having a nightmare about them. Through the inexplicable paths of sleep an individual's mind may find themselves connected to the entity's own... receiving terrible visions as the thinking clouds of Tharizdun's body churn in a variable brainstorm. Some aspect of this communion will be twisted into something terrible, birthed into the cosmos with the same shrieking fear and confusion that inspired its creation. Some desperate few seek out this communion, thinking in their hubris that they can give shape to Tharizdun's creation, that the terror beyond time suffers collaborators or requests. (Yes, I'm yoinking the dream-spawning ability of beholders. They were already weird enough before they started getting involved with dream stuff)
Despite being a living entity, Tharizdun is also a place, a plane unto itself streaking through the multiverse like a collossal ameoba through the primordial soup. There are landscapes within the god, whole continents that form and erode through seasons of surreality as the paroxyc titan dreams them into being. One can create portals into these landscapes, even fly a jammership across them, but the act of doing so invites an even more chaotic backlash than visiting the chained oblivion in dreams, letting its terror leak out into the waking worlds.
The name "chained oblivion" dates back to an eon when forces of celestial order attempted to keep Tharizdun contained in the hopes of preventing the escape of its creations or its contact with other minds. This period of the multiverse oft refereed to as the "Time of Quiet" sadly came to an end when the entity's bindings were shattered by a collective of villains and horrors today refereed to as the "Court of Fools" or "Troupe of the Final Void". The Troupe are a motley bunch, unable to agree on a theology but all wanting to pick at the slumbering titan like it was a scab on the skin of heaven. Some serenade Tharzidun with cacophonous music, others hurl saints and sacrifices into its body, some worship or hunt the god's offspring while others stab it with cosmic pokers, just to get a reaction. They want to wake the chained oblivion and don't care how much of the multiverse they have to burn to do it.
Like a mollusc producing pearls as a means of containing an irritating bit of grit, Tharizdun's roiling cosmic body will occasionally spit out an entire world or strange demiplanes as a means of dislodging something it could not pallet. While this has been the genesis of many realms both beautiful and terrible throughout the astral timeline, of late all these worlds worth taking have been colonized by the Troupe. Woe and pity to any mortal who calls such a world home, ruled over by tyrants who care only for destruction, unaware of a cosmos not coloured by Tharizdun's wake.
Titles: The chained oblivion, the spiraling titan, sire of stars, the Paroxsmal god, Lord of all Hysterics.
Signs: Stormclouds that look oily and churn with otherworldly light, formless nightmares and pervasive sleep paralysis, mass delusion, darkness that echoes with the god's muttering and the sound of distant flutes.
Worshippers: Ad hoc worship of Tharizdun tends to congregate around those who have received unwanted visions of the chained oblivion, as the harrowing experiance often bestows those that suffer it with an otherworldy weight to their words, to say nothing of occasional psychic powers. Many abberations likewise pay heed to the chained oblivion, either for directly giving them life or for its great and insuppressable power. Among these include Grell who refer to Tharizdun as "storm mother", The nightmarish Quori follow in the wake of the god's psychic emanations and make up a large faction of the court of fools, and the Kaorti, terrifying mage-things remade by exposure to the spiralling titan's heart who claim to be heralds for the entity.
Art
#monsters reimagined#outergod#tharizdun#lovecraftian#outer spheres#astral#kaorti#quori#far realm#planescape#spelljammer
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Genuinely don't think I've seen anyone talk about chapter 25 as a pivotal moment for Dazai so I'm gonna put this out here because I think his reactions here kind of negate that whole omnipotent Dazai interpretation which I hate with every fibre of my being.
Firstly, he's like, clearly caught off guard here. And don't try to tell me he wasn't, because this is just one instance of his genuinely horrified reaction to Q's release and when he realized what was actually going on with Atsushi, Naomi and Haruno.
Him being caught off guard carries significance here because you'd never catch him screwing up this bad later in the series - which is exactly my point.
I wrote a post earlier about how I don't think Dazai really is very much like Mori or Fyodor at all, and I stand by that, because their motives are different. Tldr for that post: Mori and Fyodor are ambitious and proactive, while Dazai is empty/numb and reactive.
What this leads me to believe is that Dazai is less a chess master like those two and more of a contingency planner - he's so good at "predicting" because he is uncannily good at thinking like his opponent and then planning for literally any possibility under the sun he can come up with. He's no gambler. Everything and everyone is practically (and unknowingly) micromanaged. It's almost paranoid in a sense, and I definitely think it's a trauma response to something he went through that we don't know about yet - after all, he was more than capable of this before he even met Mori.
...which brings to me to Mori's influence here. It's straight up like Dazai forgot how willing Mori is to gamble huge risks for a good outcome. It's like he forgot the mafia could be a real threat to his best-laid plans.
Going to throw out a wild claim here that I don't think is actually all that baseless - I think it's widely assumed that Dazai molds himself to what he needs to be (true!) but I think this misses the idea that he is also easily influenced by the mindsets of the people around him (see: the difference between Entrance Exam Dazai and early manga Dazai, the whole "the longer he was in the mafia the darker and more incomprehensible he became" thing from Stormbringer, how dark his eyes get in the prison sections with Fyodor, etc.). I could go on, but for the sake of not making this post too much longer, let's assume this is true because it suddenly makes sense as to why he failed to predict Q but predicted other events much later that were inherently more difficult to predict:
He was in the wrong mindset. He was thinking like an Agency member, and dare I say, he even got a little complacent. He started to get used to not having to manipulate every last variable - he was removed from a toxic environment - only for Mori to pretty much instantly fuck that up in one scene.
Let's also not forget what happened the last time he miscalculated Mori's intentions.
The consequences of this blunder could've been a lot worse and he knows it.
In his mind, thinking like an ADA member wasn't good enough to stop a potentially awful outcome - awful outcomes that could bring him pain. So, he goes back to what he knows - think like the demon prodigy. Think like Mori. Later on, think like Dostoyevsky. Because it seems to me that he believes as long as he is still working for the light that it doesn't matter if he uses these horrifically manipulative and inhumane methods of getting there. But he is wrong. Darkness within the context of good intentions is still very much darkness, and it hurts people all the same.
In the very next chapter, Dazai arranges Ango's car accident. And he only gets worse and worse throughout the series as he regresses back into his paranoid darkness that manifests as this omnipotent facade - his safety net that ultimately prevents him from developing in a positive, more human direction.
#bsd#bsd meta#bsd analysis#dazai meta#bsd dazai#genuinely wish when people talked about dazai's human qualities#that we talked more about his pain aversion#i really think it's central to every action he takes#he's guarded#manipulative#and always has a plan#how could this combination of behaviours not be related to his avoidance of pain?#storyrambles#god i hope this made sense
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i have another 2.1 character dynamic post in the recesses of my brain but i need to get this out first
star rail's 2.1 update main plotline leans a lot more into existentialism and absurdism than i thought it would which is a really nice surprise
like i thought before 2.0 that at most it was just going to be some "oh no capitalism bad ipc bad cults also bad" thing but honestly what we got is so much more interesting. the spoilers start now
also massive disclaimer i am not a philosophist and actually i really don't like philosophy because it makes my brain hurt and i would much rather just look at logical nice things like math and plants so. if i get anything wrong please correct me
acheron's past and how she became an emanator of nihility reminds me somewhat of the absurdist theme of how people always look for meaning when there isn't any, until they finally realize that the universe is meaningless
and the entire path of nihility basically is a road towards that realization that people tread on, and the difference between the real world and star rail is that in the real world here we have people who will see that and then go write a book about a guy not crying at his mother's funeral, whereas in star rail it seems that just accepting that the universe is meaningless turns you into a pathstrider or even emanator of the nihility (not sure if i remember the details, correct me if i'm wrong)
and then aventurine's whole motivation is trying to understand why the universe is so cruel to him, and to find meaning when you have everything except freedom, both of which are absurdist themes
the leap of faith argument often attributed to søren kierkegaard claims that even though there is no rational logic for believing in god, you should do it anyway because the alternatives are madness, suicide, and ignorance. this was one solution to the problem of confronting the universe's meaninglessness: choosing to believe in a higher being regardless
later world wars i and ii both contributed heavily to the rise of absurdism as people returned from the war, having seen so many others die around them, and then just going back to a normal society with none of what they as individual soldiers had contributed seemingly doing anything. and then it happened again, but on a much greater scale with even more deaths. both wars and the destruction they brought led many people to start questioning why a supposedly moral god could allow this suffering, and this is where camus comes in and says that actually religion and nationalism both aren't good solutions, and instead we should just accept meaninglessness and keep living despite the absurdity
and i think dr ratio's scroll thing kind of relates to that
he tells aventurine to open it when he's about to die, or when he's completely out of answers for the question of how to confront absurdity
and dr ratio's answer for aventurine is to just tell him to keep living, good luck
which is. yeah
it's the argument that there are more answers to nihilism than just 1) going insane, 2) pretending like it doesn't exist, and 3) dying
it's the bold claim that despite everything, you can still choose to live
sure nothing makes sense but that does not detract from your life. it doesn't need to make sense at all
and with the understanding that things do not need to fit our human definition of meaning, we can continue on knowing our true place in the universe
and with that aventurine walks into the very big black hole like look at that thing you cannot tell me there is no symbolism there
let's go back to acheron.
in the part where you get a snippet of acheron's conversation with some guy just before this cutscene, the other party states that "[IX] leave[s] woven strands of fate for humans to walk, and together THEY weave a great shadow...And this shadow silently envelops them."
which to me sounds like a statement on how people across time and space have again and again come to the same question, what is the meaning of life?
and acheron's whole color thing seems to mean that she is one of the few who, after walking so far on the path of nihility, somehow have not died yet, be it from madness or something else
like it seems implied that many many more have seen the meaninglessness of the universe and have not reacted as well as acheron has
ok i have more to say about the elation and how it in turn relates to the nihility but that will have to come later but there is. a lot of interesting things there to explore
once again disclaimer: I Am Not A Philosophist And Do Not Know What The Correct Definitions Of These Words I'm Throwing Around Are. thank you for coming to my ted talk that was more of a longwinded ramble
#hsr#honkai star rail#2.1 spoilers#hsr aventurine#dr ratio#(briefly but i think i might have more to say about him later once my brain gets working)#acheron#hsr analysis#i should make a tag for that because this is probably not the last time i'm going on a wild tangent about star rail#but bad#bad hsr analysis#someone save me and take me back to the luofu i don't want to be doing english homework while playing a supposedly relaxing upbeat game#or whatever it was that shaoji promised in the 2.0 livestream#i just want to go back and see dan heng and jing yuan and qingque and bailu and you get the point#get me out of this dreamscape.
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your psychic abilities
from left to right; intuitively choose the pile you feel more connected to. To make it easier, you can take a deep breathe, close your eyes and ask for guidance to your deities or guides. These are all general messages, so just take what resonates and leave what doesn't. This reading is timeless. If it resonates, feedback is always appreciated and motivates to keep doing pick a card readings. You can donate here.
pile 1
I'm getting clairvoyance 100% for most, if not all of you who chose this pile. If you are not yet aware of your clairvoyance, this means you still have some a bit of stuff to go through in order to develop it, but that developing the early stages will be quite easy for you.
Clairvoyance can come in many forms. For some of you, I feel like it will come mainly in dreams. You will be able to see entities trying to communicate through your dreams, you will see a lot of dream related symbolisms delivering you messages and guidance or straight up seeing the future through it. If it has ever happened to you to dream about something, even if small, than that happens, that is a sign of your clairvoyance.
For some of you, I'm also getting that you might develop it to see images related to your messages or straight up seeing some images of your future that will be sent to you by your guides as warnings, so pay attention to that.
I see some people may be able to see auras or even, in some cases, when developed enough, to see spirits. For people who will be able to see spirits, this could be only through your mind but I do feel like a small minority here might be able to see them as they would see another human being. For those people, I recommend using protection spells/sigils and protective elements and to try to keep your energy clear. Learning how to control the ability will take a while, but it should be done to protect you as seeing spirits all the time would not be the healthiest for you.
I feel like a good way for you to develop this will be starting guided meditations and guided visualizations exercises. Trying to astral project and lucid dream for some of you can also be really useful, especially if you have the dream related abilities. Looking at art and trying to interpret it, as well as scrying in mirrors, water or crystal balls can also help you develop these skills. I feel like for some of you, putting your feet in salt water can also really help.
I see some of you will be able to help people with their past lives too, by accessing them and seeing them.
pile 2
I see your powers are talking and potentially hearing too for some of you. The hearing would count as clairaudience.
The talking here feels like you have a true power to heal people through your words. You might be able to communicate with animals and/or make them understand you somehow, the same can go for children and babies.
I see like some of you are able to guide lost spirits to the afterlife with your words and prayers, so you can use this ability to help them.
Overall, I feel like your prayers and affirmations are really powerful, almost working like a charm or spell. You should research about chants, prayers, affirmations and incsntations as they will help you a lot and manifest the things you want very quickly, even if all you want is something like protection. Your gift also works for others, so you can use this anility to help others.
I feel like you can work on developing your hearing senses. You might be someone with a good hearing in general. You will be able to channel messages from your guides and other people's guides and these messages will help you. Trust the messages that you receive as they will keep you safe.
You might also hear some interference in technology or music stopping/not playing properly when spirits are around. You might also sometimes hear frequencies or music that isn't coming from earth. This is also a way for spirits to communicate with you.
Some of you might also be gifted in speaking publicly or know how to use words very well when talking to other people in general. I feel like you know how to get what you want out of conversations with people and easily make them feel understood and calm.
Some of you also have this gift extend to nature, trees, flowers. You might have a green thumb because of this, as your energy and words can help plants grow beautifully. Have you seen that experiment of how plants grow when you talk positively towards them vs. how plants grow when you talk negatively to them? This is similar to it in a way.
Ways for you to develop these gifts would be listening to music, not neccessarily the music you always listen to, but those vibrational music videos you can find on youtube, as it will help you a lot to clear your mind and allow entities to talk to you. Volunteering at an animal shelter could also really help you, as well as spending time with nature. I feel like meditating can also help you a lot amd you could use those "communicate with guides" meditations, as that will train you to communicate with them and receive messages. Looking at yourself in the mirror, for some reason, can also help, especially if you affirm good things while doing so.
pile 3
I see most of you can be really talented when it comes to telepathy and able to know what someone else is feeling/thinking. Clair wise, I'm feeling clairsentience and claircognizance the most here.
I also feel like some of you are really talented spell casters and witches. You would really benefit from channeling strong spiritual energies or settong your intentions through spells or general rituals/offerings.
I am seeing many of you can teach people how to improve themselves or other valuable lessons in life. Some of you could even have a karma bringer quality to you and a lot of wisdom that was granted by guides and ancestors who protect you.
I feel like with your intuition, clairsentience and claircognizance, you might be really good at figuring out people's intentions and true personas and are rarely ever wrong about it. You are good with energies and usually are able to decipher them with time. Some of you could also be mediums and communicate with spirits or really good astrologers.
I feel like some of you could be great at divination and tarot reading, so that could be something to consider or work on expanding. I feel like you will find some decks that you really connect with, I mainly am seeing a deck with a black cover and maybe with witchy vibes, but it might change for some of you.
I also feel like some of you will feel some affinity with aquatic animals, maybe even with mythological ones like sirens, selkies, mermaids. This could also mean that you have a great talent for charming and seducing others using your energy.
I'm feeling like readings books about spirituality, psychic abilities and divination will help you a lot to take the first steps to develop this. I feel like lighting up a candle and focusing on the flame until you feel in a trance can also help you to achieve deeper meditative states and your intuition. For some of you, this can also be done by looking into the sea or water in general. Plants can lift up your mood and energy, so consider getting a plant if you don't have one yet. You can also try telepathy exercises and reading for people to train your abilities.
#pac#pick a card#pick a pile#free tarot readings#free readings#tarot readings#intuitive readings#pac readings#pick a card readings#pac reading#pick a card reading#free tarot reading#intuitive reading#free intuitive readings#psychic readings#free psychic readings
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Marry a Venus in 8h or Scorpio
While Scorpio and 8th House have some similarities: need for transformation, interest in deep and dark matters, intensity of emotions; they are still different as in 8th house deals with other people's money, a secretive life, lots of secrets, dealing with partnership, death and rebirth.
What is seen with these natives, especially ladies, is that their relationship or marriage is never "stable". You see how ladies like to flaunt their husbands, post pictures and how much they love their partner to social media and be in public eye? But these natives are the kind to hide their relationship. As if it is not true love if it needs public approval. Also, we see how couples stay the same way 5+ or 15+ years later as if nothing has changed; but for these 8th houser couples, they reborn so many times that they don't even know who they were 5 months back. Two different types of lives!
Here, the wife and husband/girlfriend and boyfriend are both cynical type, suspicious, reading people, their intentions, behaviour, motivations, emotions. They never relax until they get to the root of any matter and then pick another matter and question, question, question everything. Trust is important to them, even more than euphoria of love.
Why Trust?
Their life theme is usually that their childhood and relationship history are such that it is twisted, confusing, as if they were sleepwalking through a relationship and never really there. For this reason, when the relationship finally breaks down, they begin to realize how it was all just a delusion! Here, a relationship or situationship is the catalyst to bring all childhood memories to the surface and healing is a prerequisite to a better improved relationship. But all this is not easy! When they awaken from the state of "sleepiness" then their reality is shifted! Oh, I missed that red flag! Oh-he was keeping secrets from me! Oh, that was manipulation tactic! Oh, he was just like my father!! Their reality is shattered and results in cognitive dissonance, chaos, breakdown, obsessive rumination, ego dissolves, problems with self concept come to surface. "Healing" for them means to work on their Self Concept, that is, identity, confidence, self respect, boundaries, getting rid of emotional brain fog, learning what a relationship is supposed to look like, learning individuation.
8th house Venus is natural shadow worker. She intuitively knows the traits, flaws, faults, motivations, darkness and morbidity in other people. But her tendency is to integrate those dark parts in herself which is why 8H dissolves the boundary between right and wrong, bad and good, moral and immoral. To understand herself, she understands other humans. Not just the light and positive parts but the psychopathic, criminal, morbid, terrifying, scary human psychology. It is like food to her soul, to know the suffering and pain in the world. A sadist or a spiritually awakened being?
Since cognitive dissonance is a big thing for her, her no 1 priority in relationship is someone whom she can trust. Someone who will maintain her reality, will be honest, give her emotional security and keep her mentally stable. A dishonest or deceptive lover is her nightmare because the chaos of "figuring out my boyfriend" will drain her. She needs someone who is transparent and self aware so that her emotions are stablized and fears under control.
Husband
Like attracts like. Boyfriend/husband himself is mirror to these ladies. He is also suspicious, cynical, peeling layers of emotions, craving depth, has unstable self concept unless he is actively working on it, jealousy and possessive are not cute things, they are symptoms of weak Self concept. Since both parties are similar in nature, they understand each other. But not every marriage is that fulfilling! Sometimes partners are really incompatible or the awakening never happens, 8th house never activates. So, just 8th placement is not enough but the timing and dasha will determine how spiritual, healer, psychic they are.
Partner may have this past history, all or any of them:
Man with trauma, dark childhood
Loving a man with dark past
Scapegoat of his family
Fragile masculinity, emasculated by society
Emotionally neglected by his parents
Her man needs healing, security and understanding
He is a hunter type, fears abandonment, controlling
Mommy issues, his mom was a dragon, devours him, he is afraid of his femininity
Man is psychically penetrating, hyperalert, always reading the room, sensitive to energy, psychic types
Most Important
If Venus is in 8th house, this marriage is life changing. Transformative. Significant status difference between maiden life and married life. "Woah! She married that gentleman! He is so rich." Like in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennett marries Mr. Darcy who is high class, wealthy and royalty type. There is something luxurious, old money, typical about this marriage. A typical politically connected or socially prestigious family. Sometimes people say 8th house is Karmic, fated, to let go control, money owed to them. I wonder if it is their husband who is paying back her debts to her? Is that why marriage transforms her life? Is marriage a karmic contract to pay back her loan given to husband? Perhaps it is.
Forced to Inner World
At some point in her life, she realized that her life was not quite same as others. She got aware of "psyche" something which has no evidence and is not scientific or physically seen. But for these natives, they are intuitively aware of psyche and how it surrounds us everywhere. In Man and His Symbols, Dr. Carl Jung says how the primitive people were so unconscious that they simply acted on their impulses and the images they saw in their head. They even thought that the animals and trees were their soul/spirit and were deeply submerged in the unconscious. 8th house is like that state of unconsciousness and then you come to awareness with a shock and again go back to unconsciousness. We are living in a flow state and only when something crisis, emergency or catastrophic happens that we awaken and soon go back to the flow state. That "awakening" is the hallmark of this house.
Another thing to be seen here is that these natives are forced to live in the inner world. They do not choose spirituality but have no choice - are forced to choose it. Since their emotions and conscience are quite sharp, they "feel" their way through life. (Trigger warning death) Let's say you killed your parents' dog accidentally and hid it in their own backyard and then lied about it to your parents when they asked where dog is. As the days go by, you feel that regret growing larger and larger. It creeps on you, eats you from inside, feels heavy in your body. That "I did something wrong" feeling never goes away. Imagine living with that feeling 24x7, that is your conscience.
For these natives, their conscience is just hyperactive. It is their guide through life. If they dismiss their conscience, they are faced with external consequences in physical life. There is a saying "As above, so below" which fits to these natives, which means that the inner life and outer life are just the reflection of each other. If we sit back to think about the past, we realize how everything is connected to everything else. That nothing was random. Self-reflection and pattern seeking are highlighted in this house. Any planet that is placed in 8th or 12th house is partially submerged in the underworld and the only way to maintain a life is to dig that "hidden" something. Occult tools, psychoanalysis, reading people, meditation are really helpful to make the unconscious comprehensible. This way they can even avoid the unnecessary unpreditable sufferings of this house.
I have seen how native if lives absent mindedly, without thinking of their actions, they always face instant karma in physical life or the psychic life. In psychic world, they feel guilt, unexplainable regret, negative emotions, shame, depression, etc. If they ignore these symptoms for too long, it will all explode with a blast BUT the healing will finally begin. For the sake of your mental stability, keep doing self reflection and avoid unnecessarily events and suffering.
It takes some time and understanding to realize what Self awareness means. The society we live in, cultural and social behaviours are contrary to self awareness. We live in an extraverted, materialistic, narcissistic society; you have to just be opposite of that -- introverted, spiritual and empathetic. These natives are not born healers, they are wounded healers. They may even feel external locus of control and surrender to psychic forces because their life is just so stormy.
My only advice is: To keep your eyes open! Just because your friends or some celebrities can indulge in behaviours and get away with it, it does not mean that you can too. Instant Karma is something that happens in 8th housers life a lot. Once you identify it, you can then change your behaviour and language to avoid these suffering.
#astro community#astro notes#astro placements#astro tumblr#astroblr#astro observations#astrology#astrology blog#astro#astrology community#astrology notes#astrology observations#astrology tumblr#astronotes#sidereal astrology#vedic astro notes#vedic astrology#Venus in 8th house
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My thoughts on Spy x Family: EYES ONLY Guidebook (English ver) - part 2
Continuing from my previous post about the English version of the SxF manga guidebook "EYES ONLY," today I'll be going over Endo's interviews, as well as showing my favorite "fun" page spreads!
Endo's interviews with his editor Lin and other manga-ka
First off, let's address the elephant in the room: as some of you may have heard, a horrendous clickbait article was released a while back citing an interview from this book (when it was only in Japanese). The article claims that Endo states in the interview that he doesn't like Anya or any of the other SxF characters. Thankfully u/fuyukochii on Reddit had provided an unofficial translation of the interview, so most fans were able to see that this article was bogus. And now we have the official translation as further proof...
Lin, Kato, and Amu are teasing Endo about the fact that he tends to not draw handsome men ("ikemen") in his series. So when he finally did with Loid's design, they joking applaud this big sacrifice he made, to which Endo replies (again, jokingly) that this compromise to his preferred style is why he has no emotional attachment to his characters. Again, all the "laugh" and "clap" interjections in this exchange make it clear that they're all joking around. The article took this statement of his completely out of context and twisted the "no attachment" wording to mean total dislike. It's unfortunate, but false information gets published like this all the time, and often for more dire issues than a manga fanbook. But it seems like a lot of fans didn't fall for the clickbait, which is good. And now everyone who reads the book officially in English can see that there's no way someone like Endo who has such dedication to his craft could downright dislike it.
Moving on, I totally agree with Nishimori, Kato, and Amu's praise for Endo's work in the below exchanges…
The trait SxF has that they convey here is "balance:" balance between making its world believable, with enough serious conflict so that we care about what's at stake, but at the same time, stretching the veil of realism a bit to have comedic moments. There's also great balance to the characters in that none of them are totally good or totally bad, but because we know what's going on in their world and why they do the things they do (like what Nishimori mentioned about the scene with Loid), we can still sympathize with them.
Going along with that thought, Endo's responses on the below page further illustrates his balance between "dark" and "comedic."
I like how he says that he's not interested in grotesque violence as much as dark themes of the psychological kind…the dark side of humanity more than visual depictions of violence. We can see this in how he portrays the serious moments in SxF where, instead of showing actual horrific scenes of war, the focus is instead on the psychological impacts that war has had on the characters. Likewise, he mentions how perhaps "the comedic nature of their (the characters') daily lives is rooted in the severity of their reality." It's said that within comedy there's often some form of tragedy, and I think SxF is a good example of this as so much of the comedy has its roots in the darker aspects of life, like the fact that the characters have to lie about their true identities. But at the same time, Endo mentions that he doesn't want to shy away from the sad reality of war, which was a big driver for why he made the cruise arc. And again, his intention was not to show any kind of "good vs evil" thing, but simply what motivates people to do extreme things in times of war. His quote about how he never intended to show the Forgers as a completely righteous family is something I knew about before and I think is very poignant. It harkens back to what I discussed before about balance and the fact that his characters aren't shown as completely good or completely bad.
On a related note, in the below comment, Endo acknowledges that Loid and Yor have "darker sides."
It's cool that he likes drawing those expressions. It seems like he makes a conscious decision to show their "darkness" at the right times.
It's also very interesting that so many elements of SxF were decided last minute, as mentioned on the below page.
I can't believe Anya being telepathic was decided on so late! Considering it's such a big player in the series' humor, that's very surprising. But Endo does admit on this same page that he hadn't planned out the story at all. Since he had only done short/one-shot series up to that point, I'm sure he wasn't expecting SxF to continue on that long. But once it became so popular, he had to keep fleshing out the story and characters, probably beyond what he originally thought. But considering how little he had come up with for the series initially, he's done a fantastic job keeping up its quality and continuity. It really was some crazy mix of timing, talent, and perhaps a bit of luck, that turned a series with no long-term planning and so many last minute decisions into such a hit.
Other parts of the interview highlight just how dedicated Endo is to his research and how he agonizes over the fact that he may have been inconsistent with something.
I also have to say that as I read through all of Endo's interviews and comments in this book, I admire how down-to-earth he is. Like, rather than sugarcoat things, he just says it like it is, for example, he said he doesn't reveal new character names that often because it's a hassle to come up with them (pg179), how he didn't give any thought to Anya's pink hair besides it being "cute" (pg181), how it's a lot of work to draw characters in a variety of clothes (pg178), and how the main emotion he feels with SxF getting an anime series is "tired" (pg174). But there's often a "laugh" interjection in many of these interview answers, so we know his comments aren't to be taken that seriously!
And here's his message to readers at the end of the interview. Definitely not the words of a man who dislikes his story and characters.
My favorite "fun" pages of the book
Since the Endo interviews were pretty heavy, I'll finish up this post with the lighter topic of highlighting my favorite funny page spreads in the book!
First off is a spread featuring all of Yor's cooking!
The sarcasm for these meal descriptions is hilarious, lol. And what was that dessert Yor made at the end of the cooking lesson chapter? Guess we'll never know.
The next spread from Anya's POV about her made-up spy group "P2" is absolutely adorable.
I love how they included all her mispronunciations of words. Also her calling Fiona "Agent Mean Lady," lmao!
And lastly, Yuri's collection of Yor photos (made with Anya's help!)
This is all just 4th-wall breaking fun as obviously no one was taking photos at these moments in canon, so Endo could just roll with the joke. Anya's inclusion in this whole gag is too good, from Yuri calling her an "unnamed collaborator" to her "Paparotsies, eat your heart out!" And I absolutely love her comment at the end about how she can't show Yuri some of Yor's less attractive expressions, lol. Pure SxF comedy gold.
I'll have one more post of EYES ONLY content coming soon, so stay tuned!
Continue to Part 3 ->
<- Return to Part 1
#spy x family#spy family#sxf#spyxfamily#loid forger#yor forger#anya forger#bond forger#yuri briar#fiona frost#tatsuya endo#sxf manga spoilers#sxf spoilers#sxf manga
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BSD VS LITERATURE: NO LONGER HUMAN
The second entry in my long running series to analyze every single book referenced in Bungou Stray Dogs, to try piece together the author’s intended meaning in referencing the work.
Osamu Dazai’s ability name comes from the author’s final novel “No Longer Human”, you may have heard of it. The novel contains several events from the author’s real life, but is considered semi-autobiographical because it depicts the life of a fictional character “Yozo” who much like the real life author attempted suicide a total of five times in his life before utlimately succeeding. Many believe the book to be his will as Dazai killed himself shortly after the last part of the book was published. As for the connection to the fictional character, more under the cut.
1. Disqualified from Being Human
Dazai as a character borrows several traits from Yozo the protagonist of the novel. He has the same habit of clowning and engaging others in a false persona, while it happens mostly offscreen the audience and Dazai’s coworkers are aware of the fact he regularly indulges himself in vices like drinking, having illicit relationships with women (its often referenced he has a long line of exes and women he’s left upset over him) and that he’s also constantly in debt.
Deeper than those surface level traits though, Dazai shares the same motivation as Yozo for his antics. They are both people who feel utterly alienated from the people around them, unable to connect with their thoughts and feelings and because of that they resort to always engaging them in a false, and comedic facade. They are fundamentally uncomfortable with ever presenting their true selves around others.
As a child I had absolutely no notion of what others, even members of my own family, might be suffering from or what they were thinking. I was aware of my own unspeakable fears and embarrassments. Before anyone realized it, I had become an accomplished clown, a child who never spoke a single word. No Longer Human.
Dazai is described as a child in the same way by Oda, who is arguably the character who knows him best. Even with Oda though, and the rest of the Buraiha trio as a whole though they were friends it carries the tragedy that they never were truly honest with one another, Oda never overstepped the clear boundaries between him and Dazai, Ango never let either of them into the secret that he was a government spy all along. Even that friendship which Dazai found comfortable, and was so significant to him he changed his entire life’s past around Oda’s dying words, he still placed an uncilimbable wall between the two of them.
“I thought you were similiar to Dazai at first, rushing into battle and wishing for death without even considering the value of your own life. But he’s different. He’s sharp witted, with a mind like a steel trap. And he’s just a child - a sobbing child abandoned in the darkness of a world far emptier than the one we’re seeing.”
He was too smart for his own good. That was why he was always alone. The reason why Ango and I were unable to be by his side was that we understood the solitude that surrounded him, and we never stepped inside no matter how close we stood.
But in that moment I kind of regretted not stepping in and invading that solitude. Bungo Stray Dogs, Volume 2.
There’s a supposed difference in Yozo, who is a drunken layabout constantly in debt who fails out of college and Dazai the super genius who is apparently one of the smartest members of the cast, but honestly if you peel back the layers of Dazai’s “Superhuman / Godlike Genius” status his and Yozo’s behaviors and treatment of other people is actually pretty similar.
Here is the secret of No Longer Human that a lot of readers miss in their interpretation. While Yozo can be a sympathetic character, because he’s genuinely miserable in his life, and the way he tells his story is highly relatable to the unhappiness of many readers, Yozo sucks.
If you look at his actions outside of his self-pitying narration, Yozo is a serial manipulator of people, especially those with a status weaker than him in society (women, and even chidlren) he strings them along often taking money from them until he abandons them. Yozo is considered to be so pretty and likable, people often relate to his misery and give him what he wants without him giving anything in return.
There’s four major women he interacts with in the novel. A married women he gets to pay for his drinks a couple of times, doesn’t see for months, and then commits suicide with her. His reaction to her death is very minimal and he doesn’t even seem to mourn her. Then, he becomes a kept man for a woman with a child for awhile gets her to pay for his drinking habit, has multiple affairs on her while living at their house (or at least it’s implied).He also comes to view the child as an enemy of his.
“I would like my real Daddy back.”
I felt dizzy with shock. An enemy. Was I Shigeko’s enemy, or was she mine?
No Longer Human.
He abandons them. (Surprise, surprise). Then moves on to marry a seventeen year old girl, specifically because she is a virgin. I probably don’t have to mention the predatory subtext there.
Yoshiko’s pale face was smiling as she sat there inside the dimly lit shop. What a holy thing uncorrupted virginity is, I thought. I had never slept with a virgin, a girl younger than myself. I’d marry her. [...] I made up my mind on the spot: it was a then-and-there decision, and I did not hesitate to steal the flower. No Longer Human.
That wife then gets raped and not only does Yozo feel little to no sympathy for her whatsoever, he then proceeds to just leave and abandon her because his image of her as a perfect image is ruined. He even refers to her as a possession he lost far earlier on in the novel.
Once in a while, it is true I have experienced a vague sense of regret at losing something, but never strongly enough to affirm positively, or to contest with others my rights of possession. This was so true of me that some years later, I even watched in silence when my own wife was violated. No Longer Human.
The last woman he gets involved with only because he has a morphine addiction and he wants to string her along so she can keep supplying him with morphine. If you strip away the thin veneer of Dazai as a master manipulator and superhuman genius, you are just left with his actions which include his constant manipulation of other people (children younger and more vulnerable than him) and even his own allies. He is a user, much in the same way Yozo is. This is just named characters, it’s implied offscreen that Dazai has Yozo’s same habit of burning through relationships and women like jet fuel.
Of course, there is a tragic reason for Yozo’s behavior it is implied he was violated by a female servant as a child, but that further adds onto the underlying point of the novel that Yozo’s genuinely miserable but he’s also the architect of his own misery. He is a victim who basically continues the cycle of abuse. His two primary methods of interacting with people is either manipulating them / stringing them along, or abandoning them. Even the Dazai who works at the agency keeps Akutagawa his biggest victim wearing the coat that Mori Gave him that represents the cycle of abuse just... wrapped around his little finger because it’s more convenient to use and dispose of him that way.
Akutagawa’s so insanely devoted to Dazai that he believes being abandoned was just a secret little test and if he performs well than he’ll finally get the carrot that Dazai has been dangling in front of his head for a long time. Dazai’s treatment of Akutagawa as someone to just conveniently use and then dispose of is something that leads to Akutagawa getting himself killed trying to earn that praise.
Dazai and Yozo have a similiar problem where they are pitiable in the fact they are victims themselves, they have been used in the past and it’s left them feeling alienated and unable to connect with others, but then they jump right into treating others as less than human too. Dazai has this strange paradox where he scolds Dostoevsky for believing in god and seeing himself as an agent of god or some kind of omniscient manipulator and that the real people who make a difference in the world are the people living in the world and struggling in it but Dazai... still doesn’t see himself as one of those people. Dazai’s like “You shouldn’t manipulate people like pieces on a gameboard...” but Dazai still views himself as one of the players sitting and watching things from on high rather than one of the pieces.
Dazai and Yozo are incapable of seeing themselves as human beings and eternally feel like outsiders when they try to be around others. However, at the same time they give no respect to the humanity or the feelings of other people. They don’t treat others like humans. Which is why they are essentially the architects of their own misery, they are alone because they choose continually over and over to either only engage in other people with lives, or treat relationships as transactional. These flaws of Dazai’s have been toned down since the dark age, but even Detective Agency Dazai still has this habit of looking down on other people. He has good intentions he tries to live by, but also in crisis situations tends to fall back on old habits.
2. Lover’s Suicide
Finally, there’s two relationships in the book that parallels Dazai’s two most significant relationships in the story. The tragedy of Oda in the dark era, actually mirrors what was Yozo’s most significant suicide attempt in the book. Yozo runs out of money and on a whim attempts to commit suicide with a married woman who had been more or less a longtime but distant acquiantance.
We threw ourselves into the sea at Kamakura that night. She untied her sash saying she had borrowed it from a friend at the cafe, and left it folded neatly on a rock. I removed my coat and put it in the same spot. We entered the water together.
She died. I was saved. No Longer Human.
This event mirrors the defining tragedy of Dazai’s backstory as depicted in the second light novel, and his reason for leaving the mafia. Essentially, Dazai finally becomes close to someone his longtime acquaintance Oda, who unlike him has a reason to live in raising children and dreaming of one day becoming an author. However, by the end of the novel it’s Oda who commits suicide and Dazai who lives.
“You’re such an idiot, Odasaku. The biggest idiot I know.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t have to do this. You didn’t have to die.”
“I know.”
Bungo Stray Dogs, Vol. 2
If you want to sprinkle in an additional homosexual subtext what Oda basically does is commit a lover’s suicide with someone else, by choosing to die with Gide. Which means that not only does Dazai survive while Oda dies, but Oda chose to commit a lover’s suicide with someone other than him.
Then there is Yozo’s acquiantance to longtime friend Horiki. HOriki is his only real significant friend in the novel, but Yozo absolutely despises him. Nothing healthy ever comes from their relationship, he gets Yozo addicted on cigarettes and alcohol, he drags him to secret communist meetings, however Yozo who frequently just abandons people never really gets rid of him.
Horiki and myself. Despising each other as we did, we were constantly together, thereby degrading ourselves. If that is what the world calls friendship, the relationships between Horiki and myself were undoutably those of friendship. No Longer Human.
The reason being that Yozo despite loathing Horiki senses that the two of them are alike in nature. There’s also something to be said about Yozo getting along more naturally with someone he hates, rather than the people in his life who constantly attempt to love him.
Horiki and myself. Though outwardly he appeared to be a human being like the rest, I sometimes felt he was exactly like myself. No Longer Human.
His relationship with Horiki reflects both the partnership of the double black duo, two individuals who loathe each other but had near perfect cooperation in their teamwork but also the foiling between Chuuya and Dazai. They are both people who do not view themselves as human, Chuuya because of the mystery of his origins as the host of Arahabaki and Dazai because his intelligence leaves him feelings isolated from the world.
He looked up in the direction of the sudden voice. It was a familiar voice, one that belonged to the person he hated most in this world.
Your birth itself was a mistake. We’re the same. Is there a really a point to suffering through all that pain for a life that isn’t real?”
The voice was taunting him.
[...]
“Screw you Dazi.”
Chuuya wanted nothing more than to slice off the ear the voice was whispering right into. He could see Dazai’s wavering shadow by his side, and he wanted to gauge out his eyes.
“That’s just proof that you at least somewhat believe what I’m saying. Because deep down inside you’re the same as me.”
Like, they hate each other, but they hate each other for the real person they are deep down on the inside. Which results in him and Chuuya having an entirely antagonistic relationship and yet at the same time Chuuya is the one person that Dazai can’t really bullshit or lie to, because sharing so much in common gives Chuuya some insight into Dazai’s darker tendencies.
Which results in a relationship where neither of them like each other, and yet both of them are just a little bit obsessed with each other. Despising each other and constantly together.
So in summary, No Longer Human is a work about a character’s difficulty to form relationships with others because not only do they not see themselves as human they also treat the others around them as lesser than humans. Yozo is a character clearly stuck in that cycle of abuse, whereas Dazai Osamu himself is someone struggling in the story to break that cycle and curb his own manipulative tendencies inside of himself, ironically because of the close relatonship he had formed with the one person he was ever even a little bit honest with Odasaku.
#dazai osamu#bsd meta#bungou stray dogs#no longer human#bungou stray dogs meta#bsd dazai#chuuya nakahara#Oda Sakunosuke#japanese literature#dazai meta
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I feel myself having so much less patience these days, and I don't like it.
Patience and compassion and kindness are things that must be cultivated like tender plants - they grow by the inch and die by the foot.
Seeing into someone's heart is something that takes a little effort, but the way to do it is by reframing your outlook, like you might adjust your vision to see through water. There are layers to a person, and you have to look past what they say or do on the surface in order to get to their true motivations.
And it takes patience and holding space for people, because they are used to operating in an unsafe environment. It's like when you go to the pond, you're not likely to see frogs right away. You might need to sit quietly for a half hour before the frogs re-emerge and float to the surface. But once you see them, suddenly there are frogs everywhere! You just had to wait until your mind allowed you to take them in. People's vulnerabilities and intentions are the same way. You might need to wait a while until the person is sure you are safe to be around, or they might have been exhibiting all of those vulnerabilities and motivations pretty openly; you just couldn't tell until you knew what you were looking for.
This gets much, much harder to do when you yourself don't feel safe, especially when you aren't (or feel like you aren't) being seen as human. You also (obviously) must see the other person as equally human to yourself, or this doesn't work. Perhaps a broken, deeply flawed person; but a person nonetheless.
I work in the domestic violence field, and so I end up talking to a lot of abusers in my professional life on behalf of my clients. I've found that it helps a lot to be kind. Why? Not because it's deserved, but because it's unexpected. They come into the situation ready to fight and argue, and instead, I speak to them kindly and explain why what my clients are asking for is in everyone's best interests. This seems to deflate them pretty immediately. They come into the situation thinking I'm the boss level for "fights with my ex (or whatever)" and then I listen. I take them out of earshot of my client, I let them vent (which helps me figure out what they actually want) and then I patiently explain our position and how we're offering to resolve the situation. And you know what? It works. A lot of the time, they were expecting me to treat them like a monster. But they're not a monster; they're a person who has done some inexcusable and horrific things, but they remain a person. I think about both my abusive exes, and the truth is that they're both people I loved, and loved for a reason. I wouldn't want someone else to hurt them (even if it was in cruel words only) just because they hurt me. Sometimes, the abuser is the father (or mother) of the client's children. There is typically always anger, but what good does it do for me to vent that anger for my client? Who does it help? Nobody. If we can't agree, then fine. I will do my job of asking the tough questions without mercy. But before that? Far better to de-escalate if possible.
Another conflict resolution thing: you have to remove the aggressive third parties that are angry on one side or the other's behalf. They tend to aggravate the party and escalate the situation by talking in the person's ear and saying how unfair this is and generally making it about their own feelings rather than problem solving.
But here too, finding out where the third parties who have involved themselves in the situation actually want is critical to diffusing this as well. They are people who are righteously (at least in their mind) angry on behalf of one of the parties because they love them and this has activated their protective side. And sometimes people really do need an advocate, yes. But sometimes (a lot of times) these third parties actually get in the way of de-escalation and problem solving.
All of this requires patience, effort, cultivation. And I work hard to do that. But lately my patience has been worn thin by too many people seeing me as subhuman, and it's really starting to wear on me.
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Just some lil' thangs you might not notice about the level of detail RDR2 puts into Arthur's interactions with horses if you aren't personally experienced with horses:
[Sorry if this has been done! I couldn't find a post like it in recent tumblr history, and hope I can at least add some thoughts that haven't been analyzed to death already!]
(First, a note about me: I was raised on a quarter horse ranch and trained by a cadre of old-school cowboys in the Western tradition. Some of them were excellent teachers and some of them were crabby-faced bastards who thought "horsemanship" = engaging in a constant war with your horse... which gives me a little insight into positive and negative horsemanship styles on display in RDR2.)
(Second, thanks to fellow horsegirl @mangocats for helping me compile this list!)
(Third, a simple note to say that although I playfully use the term "horsegirl" in this post, the notes here apply to any gender. Same goes for the use of terms like "horsemen," which is not commonly used in the Western equestrian world to indicate a rider's real gender.)
Now, without further ado:
Press X to Calm. Arthur uses a tried-and-true low-stress, gradual escalation method of approaching and calming a spooked horse that begins with establishing physical contact with one hand and slowly increasing contact until the horse is fully calm and is once more amenable to human direction & commands. This is usually a preferable method to getting a frightened horse under control imo, but it's a "soft hand" method, and not something you always see in machismo-loaded equestrian circles. I've written about this a little in another meta post, so I won't get too deeply into it here.
Overall Horsemanship Style. You'll notice that while he does occasionally drive them hard in emergencies such as escaping the law or chasing a train, Arthur never "forces" his horses to comply with commands; in other words, he doesn't use his strength to try and bully a horse into doing something, like crossing a river, or physically punish a horse to "desensitize" it. "Forcing" horses to do things using tack designed to create discomfort or using raw bodily intimidation + fear & pain-motivated negative reinforcement is a tragically common tradition in old-school Western riding (and still advocated by some popular TV equestrians whom I think are straight-up animal abusers... if you know you know). It's dismal, but for a lot of the cowboys I know/knew, when a horse isn't obeying, you need to "show it who's boss."
Arthur never approaches animals this way. By contrast, especially for the time period, he is exceedingly patient with horses and animals in general. We can even see this in his dialogue to wild horses; when they gradually calm down after the initial "breaking in" process, Arthur usually says something companionable like, "See, we're friends now."
And a sub-point on that: Horsemanship Temperament. Arthur never gets mad at or yells at his horse. Even when he gets chucked to the ground, he'll yell DAMN, THAT HURT, and then it's back to trying to calm the spooked horse. Which is exactly the right attitude to have. (Though if you've never been hurled face-first into a pile of sun-baked manure because your horse saw, idk, a twig on the road, you might not appreciate how even-tempered a character Arthur is for never succumbing to the temptation to yell, "COME ONNNN GIVE ME A BREAK IT'S A STICK YOU SILLY BITCH!")
Horse responsiveness. The horse emotional cues in this game are incredible, from their reactions to other animals and weather events to their reactions to Arthur. You can see the horse's neck muscles tense and relax when being calmed, their eyes changing in size, their head drop and raise in response to the reins, and their annoyance seeping through with stomps and pinned ears well before they start to spook. When Arthur speaks to his horses, you can even see a subtle ear flick backwards as they listen to him. When he gives certain commands (such as a mild squeeze of the knees to speed up a bit), a calm and attentive horse will often issue an affirmative snort; this is incredibly lifelike and essentially a "roger roger" between horse and rider.
I was also impressed that Arthur uses his thighs and his knees to cue his horse more than his heels. Usually you just see the dramatic heel cues in in video games, but in real life, a rider gently but firmly squeezes their knees/thighs far more often than laying into their horse with boot heels, which is a fabulous way to get sent to the moon.
One thing I would have liked to see is more riderless idle horse animations. Lazy or bored horses do a very classic pose where they rest their weight on one side, cock a hip out, and jauntily kick a back hoof up. It would have been right at home at the hitching posts in RDR2, and the horses are otherwise so lifelike, I find myself missing this little pose.
Historical bits. As players, we don't have much choice with this, since Rockstar matched bits to saddles rather than letting us customize them. With that disclaimer out of the way: Arthur uses a wide range of bits, some of them much harsher than others, designed to offer more control over a difficult horse's head through pressure points within the mouth. This is historically sound and far from obsolete in modern horsemanship, though I would certainly avoid using some of the harsher bits in RDR2 on my horses to avoid hurting them accidentally.
That said, it's important to note that "harsh" control bits (like those wickedly straight-shanked bits you see with some of the cooler saddle styles) aren't instantly or automatically painful. While many of us modern horsegirls may frown upon the just-for-the-hell-of-it use of many styles of old-school, Wild West bit, in the hands of an experienced horseman with a good sense of appropriate rein pressure (which we can assume Arthur is), even a curb bit should not be a tool of pain. In the hands of a novice, however, some of those bits would absolutely hurt a poor horse's mouth and are typically reserved for troublesome (potentially dangerous) animals who may need to be curtailed quickly. I'm assuming Rockstar chose them for style more than characterization... but I do wince when I see those hard stops with the straight shanks, every time.
Horsetalk. We all know Arthur baby talks horses, and that his babble to his horse increases in affection with bonding level and varies a little depending on the horse's sex. But he also does something peculiar and frankly delightful with his vocal modulation on certain horse chatter lines. In those moments where he seems to go a little vibrato, warbling his voice as he talks ("waiaiaiaiaiaiaiat! come bahahahahack!" he calls after a fleeing mustang), Arthur is actually mimicking calming/positive horse sounds (usually a friendly nicker or a greeting whinny) in an attempt to communicate in horse language.
While I think a TON of horsegirls have secretly nickered at our horses when no one else is around the stable, making horse noises at your horse is not a "traditional" training technique, and imo is something other gang members would definitely make fun of him for. It is also very adorable.
I wanted to add that while horses are excellent at noise commands (like whistles, clucks, kisses, etc.), they usually aren't very good at identifying spoken word commands, including their own names. Therefore, the majority of the talking Arthur does to his horse is just free companionable chatter, much like we babble to our house pets. The command is in the cluck, the leg pressure, the yah, the rein slap; it's not the spoken, "Come on, girl, here we go!" That's just Arthur being a horsegirl.
Saddle checks. If you pay close attention, in cutscenes and in the map, Arthur will occasionally reach down and test various pieces of his saddle. This is particularly true with checking the cinches (those big straps that loop behind the front legs and under the belly), which good riders often do, as saddles can adjust during a ride. Straps that are too tight or too loose will cause a horse discomfort, since they change the way the saddle rests upon them and distributes the rider's weight.
You can even watch the saddle shift when Arthur mounts and dismounts, reflecting the changed distribution in weight! This honestly floored me the first time I saw it. Rockstar really consulted people who know their stuff.
Bad Habits. IMO, Arthur's a little slouch-backed in the saddle. This is noticeably worse if he's hungry or sleepy, but even well-fed and rested, his shoulders drop and curve out his spine more than is ideal. This won't hurt his horse, but it will come back to bite him directly in the lower back as he ages, and I argue it's probably biting him in the ass a little now. (More on that below.)
Arthur's "behind the horse" etiquette isn't particularly lifelike. In RDR2 (as in life), sometimes idling or benignly messing around behind a horse will cause them to randomly kick, and any equestrian knows not to hang out aimlessly in the kick zone. IRL, if you're about to walk close behind a horse, it's good etiquette to reach out and gently lay a hand on a horse's hip to let them know you're going to pass behind them before you step into the kick zone. I would have liked to see an animation for this, but I'd guess this would have been a real pain to animate without "locking" Arthur in place (as with the petting and brushing animations), so I can't really count this against him in good conscience.
He also holds his reins in a full fist rather than between the appropriate fingers. This is a novice mistake, but I'm guessing this is an animation choice more than a characterization one, because I can't imagine getting those wobbly rein physics to rest perfectly between a model's wee little fingers. Which brings us to...
Reins. Arthur keeps a pretty tight (though not oppressive) grip on the reins when he has a horse in motion, facilitating quick communication from rider to horse and increased emotional response from the horse, and he tends to use both reins when he isn't holding something else. This increases control and often allows for clearer communication between horse and rider in comparison to the laxer "rein knot" one-handed Western style.
More on that point: Arthur sometimes holds the reins in one hand. This is not lazy horsemanship, but rather a mainstay of the Western riding tradition; holding the reins in one hand allows for a rider to keep one hand free for whatever they might need... usually rope/weapons. Using two hands, one rein in each, does deliver much more refined control (especially with a nervous or inexperienced horse), which is why you often see Arthur switch between one- and two-handed riding.
Rockstar also makes the clever choice to make reins “stretchy” so they move with the neck and simulate rider give and restraint, rather than having them just flop around at a static length. This makes reining feel a lot more dynamic and responsive, in my opinion.
Bareback vs. Saddle: To Rockstar's credit, riders' carriage when bareback is entirely different from the saddle carriage animations, and displays a lower center of gravity.
This note is a bummer, but it is, I feel, an important one to know. Arthur is WAY TOO BIG to ride a significant number of horses in the game.
Horses are not bikes or cars. In real life, it's extremely important to consider a rider's weight and height and general carriage when matching them with a horse, especially for long-distance rides... and unfortunately, Arthur is prohibitively huge. If I saw a man Arthur's size astride that teeny little Morgan, boots tips damn near dragging, I'd give him a piece of my damn mind.
That said, it's just a video game, so if you love that white Arabian or that sweet little Morgan, ride without shame; you are not hurting a pixel horse! But if you're into max realism or a horse an experienced rider like Arthur might conceivably choose for himself, go for something larger, leggier, and stronger. Though Rockstar fictionalized their breeds a little bit, I think one of their taller well-balanced styles like the Dutch warmblood, standardbred, Hungarian, Andalusian, or even one of those svelte Americanized Belgians suits Arthur much more comfortably. Online's Kladruber would also be an excellent choice for Arthur. (Ain't nobody saying SHIT to Arthur Morgan on a heavy breed like a Shire, though they aren't well suited for everyday long-distance all-terrain riding, and I feel sympathy pains about that leg spread just thinking about it. Speaking of...)
Real talk about Arthur's "swagger": Though I'm 100% sure it's a dominance thing for some crusty ol' cowboys, most equestrians don't saunter around Like That TM because they are listening to Rod Stewart croon If You Want My Body And You Think I'm Sexy at all times. That "swagger" is just... well... to be blunt, it's sort of what happens to your gait after you spend all day with your legs straddling a big animal moving on rough terrain.
Hang out with some adults who have ridden horses daily since they were wee beans and they'll tell you allllll about what it can do to your posture. Contrary to cowboy jokes, it's not so much about being bowlegged (which is massively exaggerated as it pertains to horseback riding) as it is about lowering one's center of gravity to compensate for things like muscle strain, spinal compression, and lower back pain. Due to the high impact nature of riding, many career horsepeople develop chronic back problems and "swaggers," and for some it's eventually more comfortable to ride than to walk.
Not saying you can't hc an Arthur who struts his stuff, of course! Just saying that, for those of you who might struggle to reconcile Arthur's blisteringly low self-esteem in his physical appearance with his "swagger," here's a horse world answer.
Knights Templar'ing it. This is another bummer for a ton of cute fanfic scenes, but riding two-to-a saddle is really not good for a horse. It's not just about raw weight, but about the distribution of that weight and where the pressure rests on a horse's back/organs.
A bean like Little Jack sitting right in Arthur's lap isn't going to add too much stress to a horse big enough to carry a tanky dude like Arthur comfortably, but a whole second adult sitting behind a saddle is a very different story. Imagine the difference between carrying someone piggyback versus having someone stand on your spine! It's all about the position.
Larger breeds can tolerate riding double for a while, but it should not be done for long distances, and it definitely should not be done if a rider expects to need heavy exertion from the horse.
Adults riding double doesn't happen too often in RDR2 (usually just during an emergency), so this isn't a critique of Rockstar or Arthur; it's more so a helpful realism note for fanworks. An experienced horsegirl like Arthur is sure not to ride double casually.
Pro-tip: If you want someone to teach your (non-bean-sized) OC how to ride a horse, consider having the teacher controlling the horse from the ground via a lead/lunge line while your OC sits in the saddle.
Oof, that smarts... When Arthur picks up hay bales with short sleeves on/bare hands, he makes a soundless "OOF OOOH EEEE OUCH" face. The first time I saw this, I absolutely lost it with glee. Anyone who has moved hay (or straw; they're different!) with bare arms knows how prickly and scratchy and itchy it is, and it's loving little touches like this that make RDR2's horses feel so darn real.
That's all I can think of for now! I hope this list was at least somewhat helpful, even if it's far from an all-encompassing resource on horsey stuff in RDR2. Happy riding, meatverse horsegirls & virtual horsegirls, and remember to always thank your horse :)
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I want to share some interesting discussion about Arturia (and Executor by extension), including some discussion about neurodivergency--a lot of this informs their characters and actions and shines better light on how it can reflect real life.
Also, here's her prequel comic which gives more context
The outcomes of her actions are not often good, but she's definitely not supposed to be evil/malicious/sadistic. She is ideologically driven and, because of her morality axis being different from most, genuinely believes what she's doing is good/correct. She has reason for what she does, such as being opposed to Laterano's limited empathy and discrimination, and what happened in her childhood.
It can be read as a commentary on how the vast majority would rather remain sheep to survive, then be true and (possibly) die.
Her motivation can be summed up as: she wants people to stop repressing themselves. Which theoretically sounds good on paper, but obviously impractical in practice. Sometimes honesty isn't the best policy.
Kriede's fate, his death, was out of his own real volition. What resulted in him wanting to save Ebenholz.
It's unconfirmed, but she may be a victim to her own Arts. She has no inhibitions about removing other people's inhibitions. Or she gaslights herself/disassociates when it comes to her mother's death. She was probably traumatized, but underreacted. To her, Mom dying and using her Arts on her mom are two separate things that have no causation.
She does not regret using her Arts on her mother. She does regret being unable to have helped her mother go further to achieve her dream before she died. Arturia considers it her own failure that Mom died before she reached self-actualization. At the core of it all, Arturia wants to see more people be like her mother, willing to act on what they truly want.
People's despair are all worthy of being addressed and felt and released. That's extremely relevant to her worldview. It's what separates humans from animals acting on instinct. Arturia doesn't care for the Seaborn and thinks they are beneath notice. They are Nothing to her. You can be Good or Evil, but you must be human. Have human desires, because animalistic desire is boring. Human irrationality is what makes them beautiful to her.
People who say that Arturia caused everything to happen in Hortus de Escapismo ignore the fact that the overall situation had been deteriorating long before she set foot there. If anything, she may have just sped up the process of things that were going to happen anyway. Which is not the same as causing it. Looking at it from the perspective of the people living at the monastery, it's reasonable that there would be depressing thoughts floating around everywhere. But the Abbot tells Arturia that her music soothes the pain.
Laterano's response to the situation did nothing to alleviate the actual problem, the material conditions (ie no food). If Arturia's abilities worked the way some people think they do, everyone at the monastery would've been dead in a week or less.
If you're debating jumping off a cliff, then she isn't going to make you jump, nor will she influence you to jump. If someone is worried about Arturia's Arts affecting them, causing them to do bad things they otherwise wouldn't have, because of intrusive thoughts, then they shouldn't even be concerned. Because Arturia is not interested in that. Acting on intrusive thoughts is not what she looks for. It's more akin to helping someone dive deep into their subconscious to face the thing(s) they refuse to face. Some people choose to take this back up with them to the surface. People who contemplate doing bad things for brief moments normally don't have those kinds of thoughts sitting deep within their psyche to drag up.
Arturia obviously needs therapy, but the most important thing to her is whether you have the conviction to act on your desires. Let go and embrace how you truly feel. The extremities of pain and despair (and perhaps even happiness) are among what she values. A very complicated individual.
#dltext#arturia giallo#at worst she's an irresponsible driving instructor and would certainly not be licensed#not the most upstanding person since people have died; but she means well :)#after all; what's so bad about people realizing their potential?#(rhetorical question)#there's a difference between removing restraints/indecision for someone to properly make a choice#and being the person making the choice#someone compared her arts to anti-depression medication; while they don't cause sui/cide#they make your brain functional enough to go through with it; if you really want to#but to write off meds entirely bc of an unfortunate side effect is unreasonable#arknights
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Do you think Belos is not as complex as his fans makes him out to be?
I don’t think it’s a case of more or less complex, it’s that a lot of Belos stans mischaracterize him to the point they make him a different character. The stans ironically completely erase what makes Belos, Belos.
The “Belos” a lot of Belos stans present is the guise he wears to manipulate others and himself, hiding his actual character and nature beneath.
Belos is one of my favorite villains, because he manages to be a truly reprehensible villain with no redemption in sight, while also having a lot of layers to his psychology. He’s a villain whose thought process/general psychology I find fascinating to think about, as I think it’s quite well-written and reflective of people like him in real life.
There’s this perception that in order to be interesting, a villain has to be sympathetic or redeemable in some capacity.
It’s popular to give villains sympathetic motives or backstory, and even redeem them, to avoid the simplistic “I’m doing evil things because I’m evil” type.
And this type of villain can absolutely work, it’s just not necessary for every story, or for a good villain. You can have a complex, layered villain whose psychology is fascinating to think about, without them actually being sympathetic in any way.
Belos doesn’t think “I’m doing evil things because I’m evil.” He justifies himself with a twisted line of thought built around his own selfishness, insecurities, immaturity, and possessiveness, as well as the Puritan ideology he embraced.
A big part of his character is that he warps reality in his own mind to suit his needs. That’s why his mindscape is literally layered, with the beautiful, heroic paintings at the start hiding the true, ugly memories. He isn’t just lying to other people; he’s lying to himself. He’s so caught up in his own delusions and persecution complex, he’s lost sight of reality and starts to be confused by his own lies, built into the very structure of his mind.
The show makes it clear how his view of the world, that he is an oppressed victim, is delusion. It shows Caleb embracing his brother warmly in the Boiling Isles, despite the aggression he displays. It shows people were friendly and trusting during the time period he arrived, and only lashed out at him once he began to kill and oppress, like the demons avenging their brother Blue Fang. His fake child disguise used to manipulate Luz is shed to reveal the true sinister man underneath as his real inner self.
His misery is of his own making. He killed Caleb, he refused to change. Even after four hundred years, he refuses to do anything but whine about what witches and demons took from him, despite the fact he was always the aggressor.
Belos’s story is the story of a man driven by an extreme selfishness, a desire for coddling and protection, to have everything revolve around him and his needs, at the same time as he claims to want to purge the sins of others for being selfish and evil. A man who is so caught up in his layers of lies and manipulation, he himself loses sight of what he believes, and eventually descends into crawling, whining slime. It’s a pathetic end that is his own fault.
But Belos stans want to ignore the story being told in favor of believing the simple narrative he presents at face value - that he was a mistreated kid whose brother abandoned him to cruelty and persecution on the Boiling Isles. They take the story to be a simple “tragic orphan was wronged and now he’s bitter” instead of an exploration of the psychology of this kind of truly reprehensible human being, who absolutely does exist.
The thing they portray is fine for a character story, but it’s not Belos. It’s so blatantly missing the entire point of his character, that they might as well just create an oc.
We have to shed this idea that a complex villain means a sympathetic one. You can have a rich, layered character who has basically always been a piece of shit, and remains so. Sometimes those are the best villains out there, depending on the themes of the story.
So no, Belos isn’t less complex than they make him out to be. He’s just a different character entirely.
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