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mikemcdougal-photo · 2 years

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Self Awareness, Discovery and Loss

When I decided to add a blog to my page, I had ambitions of regular updates and using this space as both a place for new photos, and to continue my journey of mental self-diagnosis. Since that attempt life has been turned upside down multiple times and finding the time to relax, let alone sit down and have time to write has been next to impossible. In the 4 months since then, there have been tears of sadness and a few mixed with joy. There has been growth, love, loss, devastation and a crushing sense of defeat.

I started therapy in February. I stopped therapy in March. I love the idea of virtual sessions because human contact, but once a month isn’t frequent enough for me to get the answers that I’m looking for; to give whatever is wrong with me a name(s) so I can further learn how to cope and maybe not hate myself as much as I do. My therapist was great and easy to talk to, but if that’s a path that I choose to stay on (and I hope I do), I need more frequency and the answers would probably come quicker with more consistent, in-person visits.

My 38th birthday was toward the middle of March, so Brittney and I took our annual drive to whatever city or town I found to explore and photograph. This year I chose Manchester and Tullahoma. We’ve been through multiple times and hiked Old Stone Fort Archeological State Park at least twice, but this drive was to find an old gas station sign that I photographed in 2019 and then just drive around and make photos. I haven’t had a birthday that great in a long time. I was able to revisit some old photos and recreate them in better conditions and with better focus & direction and I was able to do it with my best friend.

The next morning, we were awakened by the news that Brittney’s mom, Mary had unexpectedly passed. Brittney was obviously devastated and seeing how bad she hurt when she told me is something that will stick with me for the rest of my life. I don’t ever want to see her hurt like that again. We’re two months post and my eyes still well up everything I think about it. I’ve always prided myself on my relationship with my in-laws and not being the stereotypical partner who hates them. They loved me as their own and I look forward to every visit to Ohio. I not so secretly could see us relocating there one day. I love the area, and I love the concept of an actual working family who mostly live in close proximity who get along and want to hang out with each other. I hate that her mom will be missing from our visits going forward. I hate that Brittney can’t call her. I hate that her family has to go on without her. With unanswered questions and unresolved emotions.

I won an award the other night in a community photography show and my first thought was to let her know. She championed my artwork and loved showing it off. During the time I was painting she acquired to different pieces that still hang on the wall. She always shared my photos and the one I received an award for was actually her last Facebook post. She loved her family and she loved bragging on them.

We left for Ohio three days later. The ride wasn’t as somber as I thought it would be but we were both tense due to lack of sleep and stress over the entire situation. Frankenstein can’t be left at home for extended periods of time so he was along for the trip, sitting in Brittney’s lap for 10 hours. Once arriving it became extremely clear to me that processing was going to be harder than I thought. I thought seeing her family in a way I’ve never experienced would make it feel real. It didn’t. I kept waiting for Mary to make an appearance and it never happened. I disappeared multiple times to quietly break down by myself, so my emotions didn’t make it harder on anyone else. I spent two afternoons by myself, driving around and taking photos. I’m happy I was able to take the opportunity to clear my head during all the chaos but still felt bad for leaving to go do it.

The next day there was a small gathering for family to say their goodbyes. Quiet and fighting back tears. Standing against the wall knowing I’m worthless in the situation because there isn’t one thing I can do to rectify it but at least hoping that would be what I needed to convince myself it was real. It wasn’t.

Mary was laying on a table, covered with a blanket and wearing a Purple Rain shirt. She looked at ease, like she was napping. As different family members came into the room and started to gather, a lot of sad tears turned into happy stories and memories being shared. People shared their goodbyes as they left and Brittney absolutely broke my heart saying “Love You, Mom” as she walked out of the room. In our 13 years together we haven’t experienced the loss of a family member, especially one as unexpected and sudden as this.

The last batch of photos I edited were from the day after we returned from Ohio. Brittney encouraged me to make stops along the way, and I did, and then had a full meltdown after accidentally deleting 20 or so raw photos from our last stop in Lexington, KY before making it home. On top of our MacBook not being able to handle the workload of my photos anymore, both USBC ports are worn out making keeping external storage connected is a scary task. We have a new computer on order that was supposed to arrive in May. We were notified that due to supply chain issues our system was on backorder and now expected at the end of June. I have a 70gig backlog of editing right now and it’s not even June 1st. It’s been hard not being able to edit while creating new work.

Fast forward to mid-June because I can’t focus on one thing long enough to complete it and my iMac showed up and as of today, I am completely caught up on my workload. It feels weird but ultimately makes we want to get back in the car and keep driving.

A trip I have repeatedly planned on put off finally happened. I went to Cave City, KY. A place I haven’t been for close to 20 years, maybe more, but long before I appreciated the scenery that I do now. I’m working on a blog post outlining that trip but it’s nowhere near being complete. What matters is that I held myself accountable and completing the trip that sparked my joy in wanting to travel and photograph these old places.

I’ve been thinking about attempting therapy again. I feel that each day I become more self-aware of my actions and mannerisms. The way I come across to people and the way I present myself. How sometimes I feel like two different people in how I act, almost like I completely mold my movements and speech to whoever is around me. I just need to give it a name. Anyone who has spent any amount of time around me can tell you that I suffer from severe anxiety and depression. Anxiety to the point that I hurt. Most human interaction sets me completely on edge. Exceptions are anything involving my art or job, excluding public speaking. A series of events that led to a series of events led to my current state of depression. These are the obvious. I need someone to sit and diagnose me and further give these things names. I have questions about borderline personality disorder. I have even more questions about adult ADHD and Autism. I have these puzzle pieces that I am desperately attempting to put together and when I do, I feel like it will finally answer a lot of questions.

I’d also like to know how absolutely nothing feels real. Absolutely nothing. Maybe a simulation theory but more of just a there is no fucking way any of this is real. I am not a living being surviving on a rock that happens to be in a certain special radius from its star to facilitate life and I’m sure as shit not stuck on that rock with religious nut jobs and MAGA lemmings who blatantly choose to ignore things like science and their flagrant racism that hides behind the guise of whatever *think* Christianity is or is supposed to be.

I’ve also been thinking about death a lot and I’m not sure if I can explain how. I have no concept of time elapsed. I do not believe that I am 38 years old. It’s just not possible. I’m not 38 and my dog didn’t just turn 13. I’m sure things discussed earlier in this post help with the surge of thoughts but dying scares the absolute shit out of me. Fucking wild that little ol’ depressed me who spent more time that they’d like to admit thinking about the big “S” would be so terrified of death. Partially because those I choose to keep close to me are few and far between and there is no life without them. Partially because the thought of dying myself because even as an Atheist, I can’t help but wonder if when it happens if it’s lights out for good or do I wake up in an alien land watching alternate universe me absolutely suck at playing video games? As an artist I’m allowed to feel this fucking crazy, right? This means I’ll be super famous after I die.

#mike mcdougal #photography #mental illness #therapy #art #mcdougal #ohio #tennessee #kentucky #minimal

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zensharks · 3 years

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rfa love languages

summary: what each of the rfa members’ love languages would be (words of affirmation, qulaity time, physical touch, acts of service, receiving gifts)

characters: jumin han, zen/hyun ryu, yoosung kim, jaehee kang, 707/saeyoung choi

a/n: as i finish the other routes there may be an updated version to this coming, including v, saeran, and possibly vanderwood :]

warnings: none ^^

wc: 1.5k

- - - - - - - - - - -

jumin han

giving and receiving gifts

rich mf-

he’s used to receiving gifts from his father every time he meets with him

whenever jumin sees you he’ll often have picked something up for you - small gifts that show his attentiveness and how much he cares for you

despite opening up to you much more over time he’s still wary with emotions and communication, so he shows his love by paying attention to the things you like ^^

when the two of you are out together he pays very close attention - he’ll pick up on it every time you point out something you like

(he keeps a note for these types of things)

jumin can spend hours (and i mean hours) picking out gifts for you

he often second-guesses whether he has the right idea, although it always seems to work out no matter what he chooses

quality time

jumin’s life is 90 percent work

(much to his dismay)

he’s come to terms with this as a fact, but he has a slight bitterness to this since it limits the amount of time he can spend with you

when you are together, though, his attention is only on you; work takes a backseat

he understands that he can’t be with you all the time so when he can, he spends the time focusing only on you

you are jumin’s top priority (with elizabeth at a very close second) - even during work hours he’ll check in on you occasionally just to make sure that you’re okay

he also offers to take you on all of his business trips, he secretly feels very guilty about the frequency of these outings

(maybe not so secretly - when it comes to you he finds it harder to hide his emotions, and he’s still not fully sure why)

zen/hyun ryu

physical touch

very close to you. very.

this man clings to you like a puppy-

personal space? don’t count on it

(unless you ask ofc)

whether it’s holding your hand while in public, pulling you tight to him while the two of you watch tv, or holding one of his hands over yours as you sit behind him on his bike, zen always likes to be able to feel that you’re with him

when you’re having an off day it’s easy for him to tell, he’ll sit down next to you and hold his hands tightly over yours so as to reassure you that he’ll be there for you in any way he can

soft traces of his fingertips on your hand when the two of you are close :]

zen speaks through touch, saying “i love you” by pulling you into a tight embrace every time he sees you, one of his hands always holding the back of your head close into his neck

but when you hug him first--

he melts into your arms whenever you’re the first to make a move

physical touch is his expression of love, so when you return the gesture he’s reminded how much you care for him

words of affirmation

calls you pet names alllllll the time

he’s always telling you how proud of you he is and how much he appreciates having you in his life

zen worries that you don’t feel like you deserve him or that you aren’t on the same level as him, so he constantly reassures you that you are the only one he wants

he still doubts himself often, convincing himself that he’s only offered the opportunities he is because of his looks

reassuring him that he’s valued for many reasons apart from face value is the ultimate comfort for zen

when he’s away at a shoot that he wasn’t able to take you to, you can be sure that zen will be calling you every night that he’s away

he’ll text you telling you to not pick up the phone, just so that he can leave voicemails for you to listen to when you miss him ^^

- - - -

zen’s love languages being both touch and words of affirmation often results in the two of you wrapped up in each other, filling the silence every now and then with quiet whispers of how much you love each other

yoosung kim

quality time

he’ll often have you over for days on end, not wanting to let you go

you’re the only person that takes top priority over lolol :>

he’d never make you watch him play unless you asked, yoosung always gives you his undivided attention when you’re together

this man really maximizes the time you spend together

he looks at you when you speak as if he’ll forget your face when you leave

there used to be a hint of worry in his expression as he listened to you, but it faded over time as he realized that you won’t be going anywhere

his face lights up when you show up at his door unannounced, no matter the circumstance yoosung is always glad to take time out of his day to spend it with you

words of affirmation

along with quality time, he feels truly loved when you tell him

maybe not directly, but reminding him that he can trust you and that you’re proud of him makes his face flush like nothing else

yoosung still doubts himself a lot and struggles with finding a sense of direction, so he feels a great sense of comfort when you reassure him that there’s always time to figure it out

in all the time you spend together, the space is often filled with these small reminders for each other - yoosung feels most loved through words of affirmation so he does everything he can to return that to you

he’ll often tell you how much he appreciates and values you, you have a huge place in his heart and he needs you to know ^^

jaehee kang

acts of service

jaehee my beloved-

this woman knows work.

she’s familiar with doing tasks for others due to her job

because of her busy schedule and workload, she understands the value of helping others and showing you care through helping and completing small tasks for them

jaehee bakes for you ehe ^^

if you were to live with jaehee, you would often be welcomed home by your favourite dessert waiting for you

it’s her favourite way of showing love - she knows exactly what you like and finds joy in making small treats for you, knowing that you’ll appreciate it

(seriously, how does she have the time)

unlike professional work, nothing that jaehee does for you tires her

the look of appreciation on your face when you return home makes it all worth it

this doesn’t only apply to her helping you out, though -

you know that she has a heavy workload, so before she gets home for the night you often choose to complete all the mundane house chores for her (washing the dishes, making the bed, etc etc)

it’s always the same - “you didn’t need to do all this for me, it’s okay”

(she secretly appreciates it though - you can see jaehee’s expression shining underneath a suppressed smile)

she’s used to having all the work be put on her, so having others do tasks for her makes her feel cared for and appreciated - the fact that someone is willing to go out of their way to ease her workload makes jaehee feel important in a way that she’s unfamiliar with

707/saeyoung choi

acts of service

“god seven will protect you!!!!”

need i say more?

seven does the absolute most for you

if he sees you doing anything monotonous or tiresome, he’ll offer to do it for you even if he’s already overwhelmed with his work (“no! nope! nono!! that's my job!”)

he even cleans the house for you ………

occasionally he’ll ask vanderwood to let him clean instead, just so you can know that he did this for you

the smaller gestures like cleaning and doing house chores aren’t all he does though, seven feels a heavy responsibility over you and is very attentive to your safety and wellbeing

if he feels like something is off, he’ll do whatever he feels necessary to keep you safe, instantly switching his focus to you to make sure that you won’t get hurt

physical touch

extremely clingy

if you were to sit next to him while he’s working, he’d keep his focus on his screen but silently rest a hand on your leg or hug his arm around your shoulder, pulling you nearer to him and smiling at your closeness

seven’s 5’9 ass just envelops you when he hugs you

again, he feels the need to protect you, so even if he doesn’t mean to, he’ll be holding you as tightly as he can to keep you safe

when seven makes a breakthrough in his work or when you tell him about something that made you happy that day, he’ll grab your hands and the biggest smile will show up on his face, as if to tell you how happy he is and how much he loves you without needing to articulate the words

(yes this man is not very good at making sense when he speaks)

physical touch takes some of the pressure off as it doesn’t require him to talk coherently, so he feels like he can really express his emotions without needing to force something out that isn’t genuine

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

thank u very much for reading to the end, i hope u enjoyed ^^

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blacksunscorpio · 4 years

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I have a stellium (Venus, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) in Capricorn in the 11th house and I cannot for the life of me find any reliable resources on what this means, particularly in terms of the 11th house. I'd be grateful for any help.

Planets in the 11th House The 11th House

is Ruled by Aquarius/Uranus. It is a Succedent house which indicates the themes are purpose and stabilization [or lack thereof]. This house is ruling the area of group associations, network, community, friends/peers, philanthropy, & humanitarianism. When your planets fall in this house, it indicates the Planet in particular will play out themes regarding related to Aquarian/Uranian archetypes. A native with this placement in particular can often have a “mass appeal”. There can often be a “detached disposition as well. For more insight:

Sun in the 11th

A dynamic placement. Natives with this luminary can have immense social [Uranus] influence. They in particular operate in a society based manner. They feel driven to navigate social networks. They typically seek to make a change in the world. Driven to leadership positions, this native may head up Civic lab duties or general charity/philanthropy work. Typically this placement gifts natives with good public speaking skills-they excel in politics as well. No. 42 Bill Clinton, No. 44 Barack Obama, Margaret Thatcher, Britains “Iron lady”, etc are a few examples of eleventh-house Solarians. On a smaller scale, eleventh-house suns are the first to organize clubs in school, or as adults to lead or join an organization designed for social change.

Moon in the 11th

Finds “comfort” in groups. If they wish to communicate a message, there is a level of deep caring involved. These natives often use the moon's emotional nature to express their views artistically. They can often gain trust in people. They are able to lea and enact social change by gaining said trust. There can be this “therapy” theme among groups they are associated with. The moon's caring nature has an equal but opposite need to be cared for in return. The give and take involved in social networking is comfortable terrain for eleventh-house moons. Oprah Winfrey, MLK, Bruce Lee, Winston Churchill, & John Lennon are among a few Lunar 11th house natives.

Mercury in the 11th

Quick silver running the show in the 11th/working with Uranus indicates a native quick witted, rational, talkative and generally light on their feet in social settings. They thrive here, especially with communication involved. They can chat up a storm and gain the attention of crowds. This is often difficult for many but not for someone with this planet living in the 11th. They have an advantage actually. Mercury loves to socialize and can be very chatty. They tend to keep conversations broad and non-personal which compliments the eleventh house's focus on social and group dealings. Debating over social issues is their forte but they can be detached as well. If harshly aspected, it can make someone a bit fanatical over social issues. However, Mercury here can keep track of facts and figures and keep their information accurate. They can also come up with original though processes and ideas on how the “collective” can operate at a higher frequency. They are the out of the box/original thinkers who come up with all kinds of new ideas and inventions. Social intercourse is very important to them.

Venus in the 11th

Powerful magnet placement. This native loves charming and associating with groups/friends/and peers. This is the person you want to host you when you’re visiting from out of town or just having some sort of housewarming. They are an agreeable, friendly, kind and gregarious individual that enjoys company. Nothing is too extravagant or too much for their associates and/or friends. They have an instinct for putting guests at ease, exercise tact in catering to their diverse needs, and delight in bringing congenial people together. You’ll often find this person is attracted to liberal movements and gravitates to art geared towards change or revolution. They enjoy theater, shows, concerts- anywhere there is a collective group of people loving on each other. The type of person who would have been a shoe-in at Woodstock. Etiquette is highly involved when dealing with groups. They are the ones who seek diplomacy among others. The type of person who tends to be the mediator between friends. Great effort is made to always consider the social consequences of actions and statements.

Mars in the 11th

Can indicate conflict or greatness. Because Mars is ruler of the first house, the native is pre-programmed in a way to be more “I” centered. Therefore, this attitude can class with the group oriented energy of the 11th house. If the Mars native is leading the group, they feel satisfied. However, too many “group” projects or god-forbid, following the orders of social institutions can make Mars liable to get frustrated, and if pushed to the limit, erupt. They can be a disruptive force because their independence can broil issues with cooperatives/peers. They can often be the center of controversies because of this. On the other hands, when harnessed or significantly well aspected, they can be demagogues or champions of the under-dog. They should take care to follow standard rules though, because paying fines and in general, dealing with other punishments society inflicts due to rule-breaking [Uranus/Rebellion & Mars/ War] can be more common than the 11th House Martian may be comfortable with.

Jupiter in the 11th

Tis placement makes a native gifted with the power to beneficially influence the collective/friends/coworkers and peers. They will usually have ideas that inspire others. This makes them the perfect types to spearhead or lead out group events, projects, movements, and teachings. The great “socializer” who can often find success through networking. They will “know everyone”. It’s very common for these people to be quite popular. They’ll typically have a friendly and outgoing persona and may even have many friends outside of their native country. Jupiter's success [regardless of house] lies largely in its ability to roll with the punches things and keep a light, global outlook [Jupiter equals expansion]. In the eleventh house, this laidback style puts them far ahead of most people by not getting entangled in the drama of any particular person and instead focusing on the dynamic of the group. Charisma and confidence, live here, making them excellent in leadership positions.

Saturn in the 11th

This placement is actually well-placed believe it or not. Why? Because of Saturn’s ancient relationship with Aquarius. It was actually the ruler before Uranus was discovered. A native with Saturn in the 11th is likely to be discriminating in their choice of associates/friends/colleagues, etc. Because of Saturn’s association with time, and longevity, the relationships that they do form will usually be long term and enduring. Not unheard of for them to associate with people older than them or groups that have a more austere vibe. Law and order are things they appreciate. If “age” isn’t a factor, they can often come across as distinguished intellectually or more Mature to their social group/peers/community. They can often perform more of the serious work and duties in organizations. However because rules are often broken or not adhered to in social groups, Saturn here can often be frustrated. So, Institutions like school and corporations where there is [traditionally] a good amount of structure makes Saturn more comfortable. If they are not IN said institution they will create it [Uranus/Innovation].

Uranus in the 11th

Uranus is in its ultimate bag placed here in the 11th. This planet rules this house. As a result, this native can be extremely friendly, but this disposition walks hand in hand with not wanting to become too attached to others. So they thrive in “acquaintance” like environments/relationships. The Uranian rebellious streak can rear its head as well and this native can often see frequent and/or sudden changes in their social circles, organizations, & communities. They hate complacency and are attracted to forward-thinking and out of the box, thinking associates. They hate to conform. They make even opt out of doing something/buying something/going somewhere if “everyone is doing it”. Uranus placed here doesn't feel threatened by differences and believes their acceptance makes them superior to those who are unaccepting [you’ll usually see this with harder aspects involved]. They need to take care not to be too zealous in their quest for social change or they could risk leading others in the wrong direction.

Neptune in the 11th

A native with Neptune placed in the 11th will tend to be attracted to artistic, “boho” and quirky associates. Friends may often be Neptunian types. I.e dreamers, spacey, a tendencies towards idealistic thinking, or spiritual and inspirational. At the worst, they can attract friends who are disloyal, deceptive, or people with substance issues. Friendships can be murky here so they need to be sure to pay extra attention to whom they associate with. They also need to take care not to get swept up in group movements at the risk that they can be mislead easily–they can find it difficult to determine where their individuality ends and the group begins. However, they are the ones who want to heal the group. To find ways of inspiring and leading in creative and artistic ways.

Pluto in the 11th

Natives with The Lord of transformation living in the 11th often are drawn to radical social reform tend to be acutely aware of the power dynamics in groups, friendships and societal institutions. There is a deep obsession with these themes when placed in this house. Often when these natives step into a group setting, they immediately sense the power structure or others easily sense power with them. It can be unnerving to some. They need to take care not to think to deeply about what friends, associates, co-workers or peers think of them. Frankly, everyone is going to have an opinion and they will make themselves crazy obsessing over what others think. They may have difficulty trusting others/institutions/ or general “group-think”. They want to know the ins-and outs of why people do things. They can have a tendency to keep their guard up against the idea of someone exploiting them or by being exploited by the power of groups or organizations. To the point where they may downright avoid group situations as a whole. However when someone in their social circle passes the “trust test” they are very devoted.

Honorary Mention: 11th House Stelliums

When one has a convergence of planetary energy from 3 or more planets [a stellium] in the 11th, this indicates a native who may be “everyone’s best friend”. They can be quite popular, take part in many groups or organizations, etc. They’ll often be the most social of the zodiac. They will often try to cater to their peers and society. They’re always wanting to help. They need to take care not to become “people pleasers” as a result. They think about the big picture and enjoy subjects that allow them to interact with groups/friends/peers. You may find people with this particular stellia involved in protests, or working simply working to make significant changes in their communities. I want to mention, 11th house is where one can experience both inclusion as well as exclusion. Often simultaneously. They need to make sure they don’t set themselves up to be scapegoated. However, they often find their tribe at some point. Oddballs or people who are considered “strange”, “unusual”, “crackpots” which are all synonyms for “geniuses” ;). A stellium here may very well indicate 11th house dealings are integral to that person’s life. This is especially significant if the north node is placed among the stellium.

#11th House Astrology #Uranus #Aquarius #Sun in the 11th #Moon in the 11th #Mercury in the 11th #Venus in the 11th #Mars in the 11th #Jupiter in the 11th #saturn in the 11th #uranus in the 11th #Neptune in the 11th #Pluto in the 11th #11th House stelliums #astro asks #hope this helps #astro tumblr #bruja tips #astrology

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izzyfandoms · 4 years

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Lies Have Never Tasted So Sweet

SHIP: Emceit

CHARACTERS: Emile Picani, Janus Sanders and Remus Sanders

WARNING: Lying, mild sexual implications from Remus, swearing

GENERAL TAGLIST: @quillfics42 @aj-draws @phantomofthesanderssides @phlying-squirrel @sly-is-my-name-loving-is-my-game @because-were-fam-ily @imtryingthisout @a-creepycookie @emo-disaster @littlestr @spooky-scary-virgil @fuyel @mimsidoodles @soupgremlin @aroaceagenderfluid @birdsbookshiddeninrealbirdsskin @quirkalurk @gingers-trashy-stuff @iinyxtello @justaqueercactus @melodiread @mrbubbajones @glassferns @pun-master-logan @gayturtlez

Masterpost

A Series Of Soulmate AUs Masterpost

Emile was someone who always liked to look on the bright side of things.

He liked to stay positive – to be cheerful and happy as much as possible, for both himself and those he surrounded himself with. Happiness spread happiness, and he was a sunshiny influence on everyone around him.

But sometimes it was difficult to stay positive, with Emile’s soulbond being the way it was. Out of all the different kinds of soulbonds in the world – and there were many, many kinds – the ability to tell when your soulmate was lying was the one that led to the least number of meetings. It wasn’t a way to communicate, nor was it a way for them to track each other down, nor was it a way to identify their first meeting. It was useful for soulmates who’d already met, but didn’t really come in handy when trying to find them in the first place.

It was difficult, sometimes, to stay positive that one day Emile would meet the love of his life.

He tried, though. He tried to be positive and hopeful, and he also tried to be truthful – or stick to little white lies that hurt no one, because he needed to make sure his soulmate could still find him, even if dishonesty made him uncomfortable.

Apparently, his soulmate had no such qualms.

The fireworks that burst in Emile’s chest whenever his soulmate told a lie were undoubtably a good feeling: sometimes making him so bubbly he giggled. But their frequency was often... concerning, as he could never forget that every firework was set off by a lie.

What kind of person was Emile’s soulmate, if they lied so much and so often?

And what did that say about Emile, that that kind of person was his soulmate?

But Emile wasn’t one to judge so quickly. All he wanted was to meet his soulmate, and he knew he’d love them no matter what.

The first thing Emile noticed when he woke up was the firework-like feeling in his heart, earlier than usual, but not too surprising. It happened once. Twice. Thrice. Four times in a row, before it calmed down again, and Emile took a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling as he waited for it to start up again.

To his surprise, it didn’t, so he sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He patted his bedside table a few times, before finding his glasses and slipping them on.

The fireworks returned once in the shower, startling and causing him to almost slip, though he caught himself just in time.

Twice during breakfast.

(The first happened while he was pouring milk into cereal, making him jolt and spill milk over the side of the bowl.)

And then it didn’t happen again until Emile reached the building he worked at, which was simultaneously both a disappointment and a relief: a feeling which Emile was rather used to at this point. As he approached the front doors, he could hear two young men about his age having a conversation just between the building Emile worked at and the next. They were only a few feet away from him, and talking loudly enough, so Emile overheard them without having to strain to listen.

“Wow, I just love the shirt you have on, Remus,” said a masculine voice, dripping with sarcasm.

The moment the words left his mouth, a firework went off in Emile’s chest, and he paused, his hand freezing halfway to the handle of the door. He swallowed. Was that a coincidence, just some interesting timing? Or...

Another voice laughed loudly, followed by the sound of someone clapping another on the back. “Ha! I see you’re still as dickish as ever, Jan. Never change!”

“And I see your clothes are just as clean as ever.”

Another firework.

Emile turned his head, finally taking a look at the man with either impeccable timing or a soul that would fit his perfectly. He was short, though Emile was, too, with curly black hair, a yellow button-up shirt and a black bowler hat on his head. There was a shiny, coiled snake-shaped earring hanging from the one ear that Emile could see, and he wore a pair of clean, lemon yellow gloves.

His expression was amused, with a half-smirk and raised eyebrows, and he was by far the most attractive man Emile had ever seen. Emile’s breath caught in his throat, and he knew.

He knew.

Well, he figured he should probably check first, just in case he was wrong, but he knew.

Emile pulled his hand back from the door handle. He snuck a quick glance at his watch. There was still half an hour left until his first patient of the day arrived. He let out a sigh of relief. He had time to wait, and listen to the man who he hoped would start lying again.

His eavesdropping was probably incredibly unsubtle, but the man wasn’t facing Emile, his attention fully on the friend in front of him, so he fortunately didn’t notice.

“How is Roman?” Emile’s maybe-soulmate asked his friend.

The friend blew a raspberry. “He sucks! He’s so annoying. Yesterday, he stole my cereal, and then he wouldn’t even admit to it! Asshole.”

The maybe-soulmate clicked his tongue.

“You have my sympathies,” he spoke in that same smooth, sarcastic tone, with a slight hiss on the ‘s’, making his friend let out an exaggerated mock-offended sound, hand over heart.

(Firework.)

“Rude! You know, maybe you’d get laid more if you weren’t such a bitch.”

“I’m sure.”

(Firework.)

“Whatever. Did you know that ducks have corkscrew-shaped penises?”

The maybe-soulmate let out a disgusted sound. “Wow. I’m so glad you told me that.” (Firework.) He then let out a sigh. “Why are you like this?” He asked in a regular tone.

His friend shrugged and grinned at him. “Dunno.”

Emile’s heart was pounding harder and harder with every firework that went off inside of him, so loud that he could feel it in his ears. His hands were shaking and he was sure his staring was probably very obvious. It was a wonder he hadn’t been noticed by the pair, yet, though a mother with her child had given him a weird look as they walked past him.

“Well, as fun as this conversation is-” (Firework.) “Don’t you have work, now? It’ll piss Remy off if you’re late, you know how he gets.”

“Ugh, who cares? Fuck that bitch.”

“You should care, he might fire you.”

“He’s my cousin! He won’t fire me.”

“It’s Remy. You’re annoying, of course he would.”

The tiniest of fireworks went off in Emile’s chest at the word ‘annoying’. Apparently, the maybe-soulmate was fond enough of his friend that he only sort of found him annoying.

The friend huffed and crossed his arms. “Whatever. I don’t care.”

“You should care. If you’re unemployed you won’t be able to afford all that inedible food you like so much.”

“I can eat garbage!”

“Literally, how are you still alive? You’re going to poison yourself and die young.”

Emile waited for a firework that never came.

The friend shrugged again, showing that he apparently had no qualms about poisoning himself and dying young. The maybe-soulmate sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes for a brief moment as he took a deep breath.

“What am I, your mother?” He asked his friend. “Go on, shoo!” He made shooing gestures with both hands. “Get to work!”

The friend tilted his head back and cackled, but began to walk backwards in the gestured direction.

“Ha, kinky!” He called out as he turned and continued to walk down the street.

“There is nothing kinky about me making you go to work so you don’t get fired,” the maybe-soulmate shouted back, louder than he probably intended, as his expression turned sheepish at the few stares that came his way after that.

He sighed again, and Emile was suddenly struck by the realisation that he really, really needed to talk to this man now, before he walked away, or he might never get the chance to find his soulmate again. And he was now almost certain that this man was his soulmate. So many fireworks at just the right times had to mean something. This couldn’t have just been a coincidence.

He took a deep breath, grounding himself and clenching his hands into fists.

Then, he marched over to the man he hoped was his soulmate – perhaps a little too determined and aggressive, as the man gave him a slightly alarmed, confused look when he stopped in front of him.

The first thing that slipped from Emile’s mouth was a lie.

“My name isn’t Emile Picani,” he said, before cringing internally.

Perhaps that wasn’t the best introduction.

The other man gave him a bewildered look, but the moment the lie came out, his hand shot up to cover his heart.

“What?”

“I- just- hear me out. Humour me. Please lie to me, just- just quickly. I’m testing something.”

Realisation crossed the other man’s face, and his eyes widened. He looked Emile over quickly: a down and up that was over in an instant – just a quick flick of his eyes – but made Emile’s heart beat harder and faster.

“That’s-” the other man breathed. “Okay. Uh... I hate your cardigan.”

Firework.

“I hate your hat,” Emile said back, and the reacting twitch of the other man’s eyebrows at just the right time made him feel like he was floating.

“Your make-up is appalling.”

Firework.

“I don’t like your hair.”

“Wow...” the other man looked back at him with an astonished expression that Emile was sure was mirrored on his own face. “That’s- that’s not a coincidence.”

Emile shook his head. “No, I... I don’t think it is.”

“That’s- you’re my-”

“-Soulmate,” Emile finished.

The other man took a deep breath. “Wow...” he repeated.

“Yeah...”

There was a beat.

Then, the other man lifted and held out one gloved hand for Emile to shake. Emile took it without hesitation, shaking it easily and enthusiastically. Before he could stop himself, the delight that was filling up inside of him bubbled out of him with a giggle, and the other man gave Emile a soft smile in return that made him feel like he could do anything.

Climb a million mountains. Dance amongst a million stars.

It felt like he could do anything, anything he wanted, just as long as this man kept looking at him like he hung the stars in the sky.

“I’m Janus,” he finally introduced himself. “Janus Sanders.”

“Emile Picani.”

Janus’s smile turned into an amused half-smirk. “Yeah,” he said. “I got that.”

“I, um...” Emile trailed off, finally releasing Janus’s hand and adjusting his pastel pink tie. “I have to go – work. I have a patient coming soon, and I have to finish my paperwork before then. But, um... can I get your number, maybe?”

“Absolutely.”

Emile smiled, relieved, especially at the distinct lack of a firework in his chest. The astonishment and enthusiastic smile on Janus’s face spoke for themselves well enough, but it was always nice to know for sure. They exchanged numbers quickly, before pocketing their phones again.

“I suppose I’ll see you around, Emile,” Janus said, speaking his name slowly, like he was tasting and savouring it: like dessert.

It made Emile feel warm and fuzzy inside.

“Have a horrible day,” Emile said.

Janus’s smile grew at the resulting firework, making Emile’s matching smile grow, too.

“Have a horrible day.”

(Firework.)

#me #writing #emceit #sanders sides #sanders shorts #emile picani #deceit sanders #janus sanders #sympathetic deceit #remus sanders #sympathetic remus #soulmate au #human au #a series of soulmate aus #fluff

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elminx · 3 years

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Energy Update: Uranus stations retrograde, 8/17/21

This is going to be a very Uranian week so hold onto your butts, pack your patience, and expect the unexpected.

The setup: Uranus is heavily in play all week. Uranus stations retrograde at 14 degrees Taurus on Thursday as well as making a trine to our Mercury-Mars conjunction in Virgo all week. All of this will re-activate our Saturn in Aquarius - Uranus in Taurus square energy once again. (I know, I'm sick of it too).

As one of the outer planets, it can be hard to quantify how Uranus feels on a personal level. Unless the planet is heavily aspected in an individual's chart, Uranus is normally seen as a generational aspect - it takes ~7 years for Uranus to move through each sign and so it impacts all children born within 7 years in a group fashion. It is the planet of change, rebellion, and independence - where you find Uranus in your own chart will indicate where you feel the most need to rebel and be yourself - both by house placement and by sign.

To understand Uranus's strangeness, I illustrate with this point: Uranus is the only planet to be named from Greek mythology rather than Roman. In this we see the nature of the ice giant - the energy of Uranus, though unusual, cannot be held back in its differentness. The truest expressions and most strong forward momentum of humanity are shown to be led by their call - over and over again. Uranus is the great rule-breaker - the king of "Don't Tell Me What To Do". You see this most often in its natives: both people born with Uranus heavily aspected to their personal planets or Aquarians as the outer planet is one of their co-rulers. The great ruler breaker has been at odds (square or sitting 90° apart) with Saturn for all of 2021 - this is our Irresistible Force Paradox - Uranus is the Unstoppable Force and Saturn is our Immovable Object. Since the square last went exact, they have been pulling away from each other - Uranus has been moving forward and Saturn retrograde has been moving backward. This has done a bit to lighten our load - to create much-needed space between where we've been and what we need to change to get where we are going. This comes to an end on Thursday as Uranus joins Saturn in retrograde - now the two planets are moving backward in motion together. This is going to shift this tension point inward for a month until Saturn stations direct and moves quickly to reignite this square energy last in the year. The five degrees of space between Saturn and Uranus is the most that we are going to get for this very challenging aspect - maybe take a moment and savor the in-between over the course of this week. Herein you find one of the secrets to success in handling Uranian energy: let it be. We humans will never be able to harness the powers of the outer planets. They are part of the outer force of energy that happens to us, all we can do is live in it. Uranus dictates the changes that are beyond our control, all we can do is learn to control how we handle the change. In a way, this Saturn-Uranus square is teaching us what is within the scope of what we can change (Saturn in Aquarius) and what we cannot (Uranus in Taurus). This week is focused on the latter. This energy is going to make a lot of people feel uncomfortable. The more that you hold onto the illusion of control this week, the harder this energy will be on you. The big flex will be to let it go to let it flow. With both Mercury and Mars in the mix, this shit will get personal for a lot of people. If you're feeling really "in it" this week, know that you are right on time. You may need to change something about the way that you are communicating or working to get what you want - stay open-minded to sudden changes in work or your personal life. Yes - "Open Minded" - that is a very good way to describe the upper frequency of Uranian energy. This week is a great week to practice your "Yes and" mentality. Despite our Mercury-Mars conjunction in Virgo, this isn't a great week to make plans or at the very least, to expect to plan your plans and then follow through. Uranus in Taurus is indicative of natural disaster - keep an eye out for the earthquakes, tidal waves, or volcanic eruptions in your own life. If you've been wearing self-imposed blinders, the effects of Uranus this week may feel like they came out of nowhere. Look again. Anything that is coming up now has likely had the writing on the wall for quite some time - at least through the beginning of the year or longer. Notice the breakups and the breakdowns. What happens in your life is happening for you, not to you. It will be okay. My natal Uranus is closely opposed to my Sun and Mercury so I have to live the Uranian experience and "It will be okay" is one of my favorite mantras to remind myself. You may never come to be a person who enjoys change but resisting it only ever hurts you. I have an old oracle deck that I bought probably in '96 or '97. In a card called "River," the author wrote, "When you step

into the river of life, you have three choices: you can sink, you can swim, or you can float along." As a life-longer swimmer, this has always stuck with me - both the general sentiment but also that you need to know how to do each of these three things. None is the right decision or the wrong decision in any given situation - not for sure. Not always. But it does take a very discerning eye to know the difference. When you try to swim upstream, you quickly tire. If you simply let the current take you, you make no efforts to control the outcome. If you sink without purpose, you'll drown. How do you know which is the right action? The answer here also lies in Uranus for as well as being the great breaker, he is the great Awakener. Your intuition may be especially heightened this week, if so, acknowledge it. Stay very aware and with it. Checking out during this process will be very detrimental - this is a week to stay in your own life. Uranus is the crack in the cosmic egg, the skin that grows so tight that it breaks to begin the shedding process. This is a week to really dig into the differences between fear and intuition. Fear happens anytime we encounter something that is not part of our normal programming - it's our body's defense mechanism to keep us in stasis. It is, incidentally, controlled by the planet Saturn which is always concerned with what has always been. Uranus has the opposite ideal - our ice giant says that the status is NOT quo. Uranus is always leading off into the wilderness and the unknown. Uranus drives us all to stand up on our own two feet so that we can see. I am called to return to the Icelandic joke that I made some time back: When you are lost in the forest in Iceland, Just Stand Up. Here the Irresistible Paradox is formed: we are so fearful of the unknown that we are afraid to even LOOK at it. We lie down and then, we get lost. But the answer lies in the connection point between Mercury and Uranus - you need to open your eyes. Sure, there will be uncertainty in anything right now but you can alleviate some of your uncertainty through careful observation. Lastly, this is a week to be prepared. As I said before, Uranus in Taurus is contraindicated for natural disasters (I find it interesting that we are in the middle of this transit as we really get our first serious looks into what climate change is doing to our planet). We are also, here on the east coast, facing the threat of a tropical storm. It's a good week to check your emergency preparedness - to make sure you're still stocked in TP and canned goods or whatever you might need to get yourself through a rough patch (apply this metaphorically as needed.)

Do you like my work? Please consider supporting my writing by Buying Me A Ko-Fi.

#witchblr #words #mine #energy update #August 2021 #Saturn square Uranus #Taurus-Aquarius #Uranus #Uranus retrograde #Uranus station #Uranus in Taurus #Uranus trine Mercury #Uranus trine Mars #healing through astrology #astrology #transits

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marsandchariot · 3 years

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Mercury Retrograde through the lens of Reversals

No matter their ubiquity, Mercurial retrogrades always seem worth discussing—whether as a scapegoat for mishaps or as an invitation to subvert our typical approaches and modes of living in relation to communication, coordination and planning. Mercury is the planetary androgyne, ruler of Gemini and Virgo, and the messenger between the underworld and the surface world, facilitating an exchange of information between what is perceptible and what is not. Robert Hand describes Mercury as “neither the maps themselves, nor the languages, nor the mechanical media in which data is stored, nor…any of the representational signs themselves. It is the process of creating the maps or the languages, of storing the data or the signs, and of making sure that maps created in one medium correspond to the original set of experiences, ideas or signs that the map represents.” Beyond material practices, such as reading and writing, we might also see Mercury’s mapmaking technology incorporate psychic, spiritual, and mental health tools.

We decided to consider some principles of this retrograde through the lens of the Star—Aquarius’ equivalent—paired with the Magician—the equivalent of Mercury—in reverse. As in the case of retrograde versus direct, a reversal is not strictly the binary opposite of the upright position.

Looking at the Star and the Magician, it’s hard at first to see the similarities. But both have something to say about balance, given the positioning of their arms, the actions of their hands, and both figures are surrounded by verdure .

However, the way these figures inhabit their surroundings is quite different. In the Star, there is a sense of freedom and openness. Often this card conjures for me the image of Milton’s Eve in Paradise Lost when she is drawn to and mesmerized by her own reflection in water (a moment that also makes me think of Lilith). She turns away because of the insistence with which Adam demands her attention, prescribing the narrative that she should be concerned only with his needs and desires.

But, within the Star, one is able to remain in that space of meditation and reflection in service of their deeper, at times imperceptible desires, and in doing so they are better able to attune themselves to the vibrations of the collective. An inner space in service of receptivity and attunement is an ideal space of creativity, where ideas can self-generate without judgement, and pour out, seemingly without end. Without disruption.

Here is where we see concepts of Mercury creeping in. The Star is about the free-flow of ideas, tapping into the unconscious to see and contemplate what is drawn forth, what fills the cups and fertilizes the earth (or The World, the card that seemingly “ends” the cycle before beginning again with The Fool’s leap into the unknown). The Star asks how these ideas might manifest in the material world. What kind of inner environment are our thoughts creating and cultivating? How does ideation contribute to expressions of our desires? Our highest selves?

And of course we cannot ignore the stars, the card’s namesake. Above the figure’s head, the cluster of stars in the light blue sky conjure up the ever-presence of the constellations and their mythologies. They genuflect to how and why we read our birth charts, a snapshot of the stars and planets in the sky at the time of our entrance into the physical world, in order to understand the influence and trace impressions left by archetypes in the makeup of ourselves.

The bird over the figure’s right shoulder (from our perspective in the Smith-Waite card) is simultaneously among the stars and sitting in a tree--either caught in the act of landing or preparing to take off. As Rachel Pollack points out in Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom:A Book of Tarot, the bird “is an ibis, a symbol of the Egyptian god Thoth, who was considered the inventor of all arts, from poetry to pottery. Literally he taught the first artists their techniques, but on a more symbolic level, we can say that all creative action stems originally from the pool of unformed energy.” In the image of The Star, the figure simultaneously gazes into and draws from and disperses water, a symbol of this vibrant and unformed energy.

Somewhat similarly (but importantly different) the Magician has all their creative tools at the ready. Like anyone who practices an art or skill or ritual, the Magician has collected all the tools they will need and has set the table with them. With their Hermetic pose--“as above, so below”--the Magician calls to their muses or gods or guides, creating (both literally and figuratively) a bridge for communication. The card signals an understanding of this relationship between the physical and the spiritual, the inner and the outer, the importance of this connection, this communication (here is Mercury again).

However, where the Star expresses/embodies this relationship nakedly and mostly only via cups and water, the Magician has on layers of clothing and all the different kinds/methods of tools at hand (the pentacle = earth, the cup = water, the sword = air, the wand = fire). The Magician tells us we have the ability to create, that we have all the tools we need, but asks how we will use them. Will we use them? Do we know how to use them? Are we acting as a conduit? And if so, for what? Or are we skipping this important first step of opening lines of communication which the Magician is enacting for us, focusing on material means rather than psychic or spiritual cultivation?

It makes sense that the Magician is linked to Mercury. The archetype reminds us that all of our tools for communication/expression need a space at the table. All of them need tending. The cup represents our emotions; the pentacle, our material conditions; the sword, our thoughts/words;,and the wand, our actions. No wonder when this card is reversed (or when Mercury is in retrograde) we feel as if we are fumbling, that we have lost control of how we form expressions, as well as how we receive them. The tools we usually trust are overwhelmed by the frequencies they encounter. Even on our best days, it can seem difficult to align all these facets of our relationship with the world, being reversed (or in retrograde) makes it all that much harder.

We can also think of The Star in reverse. During a Mercury retrograde in Aquarius, as a collective we might feel even more psychically blocked, like all of our thoughts are stuck, or we are not easily understood; like we can’t get anything out of our head and materialized in the physical. We might feel unable to find the right words, create narratives that make sense; we feel we are disconnected from reality when what we are more feeling is a disconnection from our inner selves. Maybe we feel too much the demands of others, allowing ourselves to be distracted. Perhaps our thoughts are feeling more like mud than flowing water; instead of a reflective pool we see only the dregs of the earth.

Aquarius zooms out to look down, gaining perspective by separating and floating above. By this vantage, Aquarius seeks to understand and design solutions to meet the needs of the collective. But sometimes the presence of the collective looms larger in the imagination than it does in lived experience. You may feel a pull to perform or provide in a way that creates undue pressure on yourself and your individual activity. Even in solitude, you may feel a lack of time for yourself or energy for your own interests. When the demands of others resound louder for us than our own needs, and we lose track of what those needs are, we are vulnerable to injury and self-desiccation--mentally, spiritually, physically. Sometimes it is easier to imagine and respond emotionally to a lack of collective compassion than it is to cultivate compassion for ourselves. Wherever Mercury is transiting your chart, issues related to that house (and planets with which Mercury is copresent) are lighting up for you. Wherever this is occurring, it is likely that what’s needed is to unplug from whatever theater of others’ perceptions you are enacting in order to impose judgments on your own inner world. Once you disengage from this enactment, you may better receive the input provided by your feelings. It is this feedback--rather than the feedback of judgment--that can inform you on next steps to take in working through blockages imposed upon your activity at this time.

The Star can remind us to look at how Mercury is affecting us personally in our own individual charts so that we can productively work to counteract any “negative” responses or at least to prepare, like the Magician, with whatever tools are at our disposal, and, like the Star, in congress with the flow of energy within.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 1ST

It may feel difficult to transmit or communicate your needs in the way you’re used to. What strategies—especially nonverbal ones—that otherwise yield results are for these next few weeks falling flat; what you’re putting down isn’t getting picked up. Ask yourself what you are attempting to attract—is it assistance? Reassurance? Solidarity? Praise? Channels you usually trust to bring in important feedback feel blocked, or murky. You’re not being rejected; your signal just isn’t cutting through the fog right now. You may have to ask explicitly for what usually arrives naturally, or you may have to change the way you’re communicating the sense of gap or need you’re experiencing; it’s not as perceptible or legible as you think.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 2ND

You may experience issues in articulating professional or otherwise transactional boundaries. Things you’re accustomed to doing for others feel during this time like they outweigh the returns you receive. This retrograde might give you a sense of, “What have they done for me lately?” Instead of stewing in this feeling, consider boundaries for the future; don’t let moods determine what you’re willing or unwilling to do. Re-draw your contracts and commitments, and instead of centering your highest energy and capacity, take some consideration for days when your energy is low and your capacity is slim. If you set professional boundaries with these in mind, your commitments will not pose as much of a burden on the days when you would rather do anything but honor them. Our senses of personal injustice can make us feel incredibly alone. These boundaries will be your advocate when you feel unsupported, your proof when you are disbelieved.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 3RD

Generally speaking, since about this time last year, normal routines have been upended. You may be experiencing a specific or micro increase of this disruption. This could be anything—from finishing a TV show you were religiously watching to no longer having access to a regular medical prescription. You’ve reached the end of a supply of something nourishing—perhaps sooner than you anticipated. It’s okay to grieve even the smallest expirations of our daily rituals and routines; we can’t always predict how deeply felt these losses may be when they occur, and they can set off emotional chain reactions that feel much larger and more all-consuming than the ritual itself. Forgive yourself for reaching “the end” without something to take its place, and try to open yourself to whatever will next captivate your attention. Devote time to closing the gap between the end of one thing and the beginning of another, without putting pressure on yourself to immediately fill the gap. Time spent searching for something to do is as worthy an activity as the new task or routine that will eventually occupy you.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 4TH

You may be experiencing issues in regard to living situations. I think it’s important to consider this phrase not just in relation to the circumstances in which you currently reside, and the attendant issues of rent, roommates, etc, but also as it applies to childhood, memory, and permutations of wider-spanning political or ecological situations. In framing political stances or inquiries, we are often implicitly asking about our rights to life, and what the standards of living ought to be; we situate ourselves as one surface in a tessellation of needs that though theoretically fit together in congruence are necessarily different in expression. How is it that we can live with others? What is our past experience of others—living together or not—that informs the way we see ourselves as part of a community among them? 4th house issues may describe the ways in which we are haunted by childhood experience. When a cosmic body enters the 4th house, it is stirring up past or congealed—but not quite healed—topics. What feels irresolvable usually feels inexpressible; if something feels difficult to express it may be due to an attempt to express a vulnerable truth that in our past was not heard or was misinterpreted in some way. To be misunderstood and disbelieved by our family, in particular, plants the seed that we may never be believed or accepted by the people closest to us. It may feel easier to make an announcement to the world than to one close friend. How does our audience change the way we attempt to resolve our issues in language? Instead of seeking validation or consummate belief, to whom can you turn in order to feel heard? If there is not an individual in your life who fulfills this need, is there a way in the meantime to crystallize your language so that when a trusted friend presents themselves, you are prepared to share with generosity, lucidity, and confidence?

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 5TH

You may have to adjust your expectations for what you’ve been working on. Maybe things have been flowing easily and have now somewhat stalled. It seems like there comes a time, usually towards the 8th month, when a childbearing person can only utter the phrase, “I’m ready for them to be out of me!” 5th house Aquarius placements may feel a similar blockage in production, where they can envision this form that is fully articulate within them and yet not prepared to be in the world. It is extremely uncomfortable. To switch organisms: in the final stages of avian birth, the pores of the eggshell have expanded to allow entry to proteins that feed the bird embryo. This is to say that the stability of the shell is compromised in order to support the growth of the organism held within. Without this compromise, the bird could not be born. So, 5th house Aquarians, I offer two directives—firstly, hold on to what’s inside you, without seeing the discomfort as a failure to produce, trusting instead that the urgency you feel is itself part of the productive process; secondly, make sure you have not sealed yourself off from elements of nutritive change, even if you consider yourself in final or definite stages of your current occupation or project.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 6TH

You can justify taking time for yourself. You may feel as if you need to create structure to occupy your unstructured time, especially since opportunities to engage with others can suddenly feel few and far between, leaving us lonely or lacking in some way. Otherwise you may feel the need to fill time with a “productive” activity. But we cannot underestimate the importance of planned planlessness, even when it feels almost too abstract to defend from the invitations and schedules of others. If you are feeling overwhelmed, it is likely due to a lack of unstructured time—an important resource in our efforts to physically and psychically recharge. Your unstructured time is not a blank space in your schedule that needs to be filled, but an important period of replenishment, one in which those things to which you may not usually attend will float to the surface in order to be considered.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 7TH

Our conditions of estrangement are not set in stone. Who do you need to check in on, and how are you going to do it? Zoom and Facetime have gotten a lot of play as resources of connection in light of reduced ability to be together in person, but this may not be the way you want to communicate with everyone you’d like to connect with. Think about the people you have been meaning to get in touch with, and then consider the medium by which you would most like to reach them. Think about the people who are in your thoughts but for whatever reason—perhaps an anxiety of it seeming “too random.” Make a point of reaching out in some way to the person who’s crossing your mind but you’ve refrained from contacting due to ideas of communication only being normal if it’s consistent (though obviously respect the boundaries of someone if they’ve explicitly asked you not to contact them). Consider too your specific reason for reaching out. Honor the impetus for someone’s presence in your mind. You don’t have to reveal what might be considered pertinent information—if what causes you to reach out is a movie, book, etc. you thought this person might like, give yourself permission to make this the center of your connection.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 8TH

We might consider the illuminative potential of the retrograde as it sheds light on where we confuse judgments with feelings. While feelings offer feedback on our experience of circumstances in our lives, judgments preclude us from seeking alternative actions and reactions to circumstances outside of our control by entrenching us in cycles that confirm our judgments of ourselves and others. We lose touch with the way we feel and instead translate that feeling into an assumption of others’ negative opinion of us. Sometimes it is easier to either judge ourselves or to defend ourselves against this perception of others’ judgments than it is to investigate how it is we feel. We may seek to change ourselves as we imagine we are in others’ eyes, or perhaps we lash out at those by whom we feel judged. What is important to remember is that this emotional activity is something only we have access to--those against whom we defend ourselves cannot see the inner workings of our feelings and judgments. The 8th house can speak to a need to untangle oneself from the action of the interior, or to calibrate emotional experience to actions we can take rather than judging ourselves through the imagined perspectives of others.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 9TH

As in what’s potentially unfolding in the 2nd house, you may be sorely feeling a lack of returns for what you’re investing in the institution of which you are a part. But this isn’t quite speaking to an issue of money or professional work. It’s more like a situation where you are speaking to God and God isn’t speaking back--not a lack of support, or a lack of reward, but a lack of faith as its own reward is preventing you from feeling connected to both individual and collective purpose, or your individual purpose as it operates within the collective. Frustrations arise from an inability to derive your own reasons to continue participating or contributing. Maybe a community that was previously physical or in person has become excessively diminished by a translation, for example, to Zoom; or, by going on hiatus, a gathering that once provided stability has instead created instability through its absence in a way that feels unsolvable. The dedication you used to feel as a kind of moral directive, in short, is simply not there. Consider the nature of your faith; what does it need in order to survive? Does it need routine? Does it need an object or material representation? Does it need to create, nurture, revise? Faithlessness often contributes to cycles where we feel disinclined to invest energy in what we perceive as inauthentic structures, or structures that are not demanding or imposing enough that we feel the immediate effects of transformation. Remember that these structures cannot convince you of authenticity, and structures alone cannot work positively upon you without your consent; if you are waiting to be forced into alignment, it will not happen. Find opportunities to enter into ritual practices without objectives of self-conversion; decenter your own belief as a kind of challenge that practitioners have to meet in order to “win you over” or “convince” you. The point of faith is not to be scrubbed of your own skepticism--that’s not what truly compassionate institutions are designed to do. An institution that seeks to remove your powers of discernment is not truly interested in helping you to cultivate an individual purpose or process. What matters on your part within a worthy institution is a willingness to explore the options available to you, and to incorporate from those offerings however they feel useful in the project of daily existence.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 10TH

Similar to action in the 1st house, you may be experiencing a block in what you’re transmitting to others--not just socially, but professionally. You may feel your efforts, into which, due to this current stellium, you’re able to pour tremendous energy, are going unacknowledged or unappreciated. Remember that while your head is feeling heavy with a crown, others may feel this weight elsewhere in ways that are less visible and bring them to places of depletion. It is likely that in many ways your frustration is a version of what others are experiencing, but the way that you experience it in the context of a public or social role can make you feel as if you are alone and everyone is against you. This can feel extremely unfair. What’s needed here, however, is radical empathy, a recognition that your access to language to describe the unfairness you feel is something to which others at this time may not be able to access in their own situations. What you are perceiving as tacit criticism is in reality the general atmosphere of isolation and alienation as it influences the dispositions of others. If you are looking to see yourself reflected positively in the behavior of others, you will be disappointed. It may feel that your efforts are floating into the ether rather than manifesting in any material way. But this is the work of the Aquarian midheaven (which may be located here for you, if Aquarius is in your 10th house). To respond to the needs of the collective means often to work without evidence of efficacy or receipt. Trusting in these effects may help ease the pain in what you experience as invisibility.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 11TH

Here instead of an imagined collective you may actually be dealing with a group of people of which you are a part, perhaps a group you are even responsible for governing or organizing in some way. And the truth is it is difficult to continue to provide for people when the resources available to us are so lacking, even if we refer only to the resources of knowledge and information. You are at a loss to provide answers. You cannot give a date at which others’ lives as they know them will resume. You cannot tell people how to live. When you are called upon to offer guidance, try not to think in macro terms of how to live, but rather in the realm of dailiness, of what can be done in increments that build towards a practice rather than an outcome. Study your own habits for clues. Experiment in your own life with diverse and alternative strategies. By diversifying your own knowledge sources and practices, you will be better prepared to honor the unforeseen circumstances that arise among the collective to which you are offering support.

MERCURY RX TRANSITING AQUARIUS IN 12TH

In The Twelfth House: The Hidden Power In the Horoscope, Karen Hamaker-Zondag writes, “To immerse yourself in the 12th house, as if losing yourself in another world, is a process that creates much more inner balance than might at first be supposed.” She describes material creativity--as in a craft--as a way to lose oneself; this kind of creativity is not about designing a project or planning an outcome, but on losing oneself in the action or exertion in the shaping of material. This might be work with clay, or wood; it might be a textile project, or cooking. Beyond the acquisition and cultivation of technique, distinctions and evaluations have no place here; a surrender to technique is about a spiritual investment in the moment without the caveat of outcome. A retrograde here is asking for you to climb out from a place of numbness and into a place of tranquility, which is a state of calm that is not empty or anesthetized but closer to a feeling of unconditional attendance--which is a lot like love. To give rein to embodied practice is to accept the possibility of learning from ourselves, even when we don’t intend to reflect and derive meaning from our experience. The 12th house asks us to trust in the unconscious production of wisdom and knowledge, which a ritual kinetic practice can help us to evoke.

Decks used: Star Power Tarot, Pamela Colman Smith Borderless Edition; Many Queens Tarot

#tarotcommunity #tarotblr #astrology #retrograde #mercuryretrograde #themagician #thestar

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lechevaliermalfet · 5 years

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In the Name of the Moon – A Look at Lunar Legend Tsukihime

There’s a popular joke in the Type-Moon fandom that there is no Tsukihime anime, but boy it sure would be great if there was one.

I had only ever been dimly aware of this attitude toward the Tsukihime anime myself. Watching it fansubbed for the first time in the early 00s, I wasn’t really plugged into the fandom, and the joke seemed like a minor thing to me. I had all but forgotten it by the time I was with my wife at Otakon in 2012, and we went to a panel about Type-Moon for fandom newcomers.

The panel was pretty salty about the Tsukihime anime, taking the joke about there being no such thing so far as to refuse to acknowledge it or discuss it. If I recall, they insisted on this refusal even when directly asked about it by someone in the audience. I also don’t recall them being all that complimentary about the Fate/Stay Night anime (the original 2006 series) for that matter. We had a long drive home after the convention – fourteen hours, give or take – and our discussion about the convention kept circling back to that panel.

She’d gone mostly to accompany me, I think, and because she didn’t have anything she wanted to do that conflicted with it. She had some minor interest herself, as she’d seen this supposedly nonexistent Tsukihime anime, and like me, she enjoyed it. So it was pretty irritating for her to go to this panel ostensibly for newcomers and then have them trash the one thing she’d experienced in the fandom. It was all the more irritating when you stopped to consider that at that point that it was, in all probability, one of the handful of things real newcomers might have experience with.

In its way, though, the panelists’ hostile and disdainful attitude toward the most accessible works in the general Type-Moon oeuvre did make for a suitable introduction. If not to Type-Moon and their work, then to the fandom, and the high levels of toxicity most of its assholes could and would display given the opportunity.

But I’m not here to talk about the Type-Moon fandom, except as it amuses me, or is relevant to the subject at hand.

The subject being this supposedly non-existent anime: Lunar Legend Tsukihime.

My own relation to the Western Type-Moon fan community is tangential at best. A couple of guys I know (one a good friend, the other an acquaintance), back in the early to mid-aughts, were moderators for the Beast’s Lair forum, basically the center of the English-language fandom community at the time. Of course, at the time, the fandom was almost brand-new. Tsukihime was all the rage then, because Tsukihime was almost all there was. Fate/Stay Night was new enough that there hadn’t really been time for the discourse around it to even form, let alone evolve much. And in those days, Beast’s Lair was basically the forum owner and a few of his online friends, and I feel like half the reason it existed was because at that point, it was more convenient to just have a forum than it was to get a bunch of guys together on an AIM group chat with that level of frequency. This was before Mirror Moon created a translation patch for any of these games. These were guys who bought the game direct from Japan, paid the outrageous import fees, referred constantly to a GameFAQs walkthrough, and died like men. It was that, or learn Japanese. Most of them opted for the walkthrough. Thank Whoever you believe in that the game runs windowed, I guess.

Fate, which has been the bread and butter of Type-Moon’s success for well over a decade now, was a commercial game. But it was one built with on the base of the huge support Tsukihime had garnered following its launch. Tsukihime itself was a doujin game, made when the guys at Type-Moon were a bunch of nobodies and had no real money to speak of.

Because they were nobodies, and because they needed the game to sell big if they were going to make the kind of money they needed to make, they did what a lot of Japanese doujin developers have done and continue to do, and will probably do until the end of time, and put porn in the game.

This is not unknown in Western development circles either, just for the record. But Japanese culture is in some ways more permissive when it comes to depictions of sex or sex-adjacent topics and material in their mainstream entertainment. Porn can net you a decent career, or at least a halfway-decent living, and it’s generally easier over there for porn artists in any field of endeavor to “go legit” and make the jump to the non-porn version of their field.

That doesn’t happen in the West, or at any rate not in America. Or very rarely. We have (for better or worse; there’s a whole separate debate there) a much sharper division between the porn and non-porn sides of the entertainment industry, and that barrier’s much less porous. But porn fans will support you. If the success ceiling is far lower than in the legitimate side of the industry, it’s also true that the floor is likewise lower.

So here we have Tsukihime. Not “porn with plot”, or even “plot with porn”, but “plot (…with porn)”. It’s there because they were worried the game wouldn’t sell without it, and so there’s not much of it in the first place. What I’m saying is that if you’re wanting to get your rocks off, you’re going to be a while.

Which is not to say that Tsukihime as a game is inherently like… progressive, or woke, or anything like that. Oh no. Nonononono. It’s horror (-ish, depending on your route), for starters – a genre that thrives on objectification and exploitation. And then it’s Japanese, which gives it an extra few layers of seeming weird to American sensibilities. So this is less like going down the rabbit hole and potentially more like falling into a snake pit.

I say all this to lend some context. When we think of Type-Moon today, we tend to think of this highly successful production house with a star franchise that’s rapidly hitting the market saturation point. If it hasn’t already (and I have a friend who maintains that it has). And that is absolutely not Tsukihime. Not the game, and certainly not the anime. No ufotable animating, no Yuki Kajiura composing, no Gen Urobuchi directing the critically acclaimed and popularly loved (and irritatingly overpriced) prequel.

This is Tsukihime. This isn’t the property that launched Type-Moon to stardom. That would, again, be Fate. This is the property that let them make Fate the way they did. Tsukihime is the visual novel world’s equivalent of some garage band you never heard of releasing their demo tape as their debut album, and the demo tape is actually pretty good, even as it suffers from having basically rock-bottom production values. It’s one of those things where the whole is more than the sum of its parts. You have to look at what it tries to be and tries to do, and like it for that. In that much at least, even as they differ in many other ways, that much is true of both the anime and the visual novel.

It’s worth it, though.

Phantasmal Fantasy

If we’re being honest (and why wouldn’t we be honest?), Tsukihime, at least going through the main route, is a little bit less straight horror and a little more what I think of as horror-fantasy. It isn’t horror because it’s rarely if ever actually frightening. But it uses horror aesthetics in a fantasy setting (urban fantasy, in this case), which may lend things a generally eerie and unsettling sense of ambiance and a particular feeling of threat to the main characters without ever quite getting your pulse up. It’s a hybrid genre I happen to have a huge soft spot for (I’ve been reliably informed that this is sort of My Thing). The entire Legacy of Kain series falls under that banner for me, as do most of the Castlevania games. The Dark Souls games all have it to some extent, and Bloodborne leans into it hard enough that it actually is kind of legitimately scary at various points. And then there are movies like Vampire Hunter D.

Lunar Legend Tsukihime, the anime based on the visual novel Tsukihime, was released in the early to mid 2000s. On a technical level, it’s very middle-of-the-road, with a bit of a generic visual style and workmanlike animation. But we’re talking about an anime based on a doujin hentai game. More mainstream visual novels’ adaptations tend to get better treatment. Tsukihime is well-regarded, but probably not really “popular” in the same sense as something like, say, Da Capo or Little Busters or Air, or... Look, Type-Moon’s getting the star treatment was pretty much going to be impossible at that stage. It took Tsukihime and the first Fate adaptation before we got to that point. That the Tsukihime anime happened at all is honestly kind of remarkable, and a testament to how much of an impact the game made.

Tsukihime takes place in the modern day (well, modern for the date of its release, which for the game was 2000, and for the anime would be 2003 or so). It’s a vampire story, of sorts, though the only creatures we’d recognize as traditional vampires are a minor threat at best.

Our main character, or at any rate, our viewpoint character, is Shiki Tohno. He’s part of a large, wealthy, and presumably powerful family, though he lives with an aunt and uncle whose ways and means are much more middle-class than his father, the head of the family. He was banished from the main estate eight years ago, shipped off to live with his aunt and uncle after an accident when he was about eight.

He doesn’t remember much about the accident. He (and therefore we) are initially told it was a car accident, and that it damaged his heart. He has fainting spells occasionally if he over-exerts himself, and otherwise generally anemic symptoms. Something to do with damage to his heart after the accident; it’s not really clear. The weakness makes him an unfit heir to be head of the family, hence his being put aside.

The real change in him is far stranger, and far harder to understand.

While recovering in the hospital, he begins to see odd lines running through everything, making the world look fractured. He discovers that if he cuts along those lines with a blade or other edged implement, the object will simply fall apart along those lines. It takes little to no force to do this. He could cut down a tree simply by dragging the edge of a knife along a particular line on its trunk, a line invisible to anyone but him. His attempts to convince others that these lines exist fall on deaf ears, and only cause concern for his mental state.

One day during his recovery, while wandering around outside, he runs across a woman named Aoko Aozaki who not only believes him, but understands what’s happening. She explains to him that he has a rare ability – perhaps the only one in the world with it – known as the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. What he is seeing is the inevitable destruction and dissolution, the “death”, of every person and object around him. The lines are the only way his brain can make sense of it, as this is something the human mind doesn’t readily grasp. She gives him a pair of glasses which make the lines go away while he wears them, and which therefore allow him to go on with his life as normal. She tells him that he mustn’t use this power of his unless absolutely necessary.

Shiki lives his life normally from that point forward, until one day while he’s in high school, he receives notice that his father has passed away, and Shiki is to move back into the main estate. Said estate is in the same town, so much of his day-to-day should remain the same – same friends, same school, same daily routine.

But a strange thing happens on his way to the manor after school. While resting in the park, he sees a young woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and a white sweater. From out of nowhere, he is overcome with a furious, murderous impulse. His body seems to move on its own, with no input or control from him. Off come the glasses, out comes the knife he carries with him, and he’s off chasing her. Bad things happen.

He wakes up in the Tohno mansion, having blacked out and been retrieved by Hisui, one of the two maids of the home. She dresses as a Western maid, while her twin sister, Kohaku, also a maid, prefers a kimono.

But his arrival at the manor comes with significant culture shock. In the wake of his father’s passing, possession of the manor and the position of head of family have both fallen to his younger sister, Akiha, whom he hasn’t seen since his accident some eight years ago. His memory of her is a little hazy, but he seems taken aback by the polite but stern young lady she’s grown into. Altogether, the four of them – Akiha, Shiki, Kohaku, and Hisui – are the only inhabitants of the house.

Shiki finds its size and sense of isolation intimidating, all the more because his daily life in and around the house is in for a massive shake-up. For starters, there’s a strict curfew, and also no television. When Shiki objects, Akiha puts her foot down, and seems determined that he will live according to the family’s ways and rules, or… Well, there is no “or else”. He just will, end of story.

So he sneaks out to go buy some snacks and magazines. On his way, he is accosted by one of his classmates, Ciel. But here, she’s dressed in an odd outfit, carrying a set of deadly-sharp swords, and seems intent on killing him until she satisfies herself that he poses no threat.

The next day, further weirdness ensues. He encounters the blonde lady, the one he thought he killed, very much alive and well. His initial relief that he didn’t actually kill her is quickly undone by her assertion that actually, he did, and with rare skill and gusto. She then goes on to describe the exact cuts he used to slice her into seventeen separate pieces.

Then it gets stranger.

She is, she tells him, a vampire, albeit not all that much like what you’d think of when the word comes to mind. And no, she doesn’t sparkle. Her name is Arcueid Brunestud, and she’s hunting an enemy of hers who’s in the area, and is responsible for a string of murders and mysterious deaths that have been occurring lately. She was doing well enough until Shiki came along murdered her. While she was able to recover from this inconvenience, their encounter has left her in a weakened state. Now she needs help, and who better than the one who put her in this position in the first place?

Twists, Turns, and Dead Ends

I’m a little conflicted about the problem with the Tsukihime anime. I can’t decide whether its creators overestimated what they could do in twelve episodes, or underestimated the material and the time it needed. I supposed it really doesn’t make much difference. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Bad news first.

There are some technical issues with the show, which are probably the least of its problems. The art style is kind of lackluster and workmanlike, and the animation is overall pretty by-the-numbers. There are numerous moments where you can see drawing or animation shortcuts were taken, and there are lots of long shots where the camera lingers on one place or on one person well beyond what’s necessary for drama. On the other hand, the more important action scenes do see a slight jump in quality, so maybe the producers were keeping something up their sleeve for when it counted.

The English voice work is serviceable. The actors’ voices are by and large a good fit for the roles, but the acting is occasionally a little wooden. The writing is somewhat off as well. Shiki disappears from his normal life for a while in the third and fourth episodes, and his friends’ and family’s discussions of it once he resurfaces don’t seem to agree on the times he was gone – at one point, even within the same conversation. This may be a translation or dub writing error, though. There are other weird gaffes (this time in the original script), such as that Shiki doesn’t notice that Kohaku and Hisui are identical twins. This despite the fact that their only notable differences are eye color and wardrobe.

But these are mostly technical troubles, and they’re things I can overlook pretty easily. The writing errors are never so serious that I get confused about what’s going on, and the artwork issues aren’t too out of line, either. Certainly I’ve seen other shows from the time that did worse and more often.

The real issues \with Tsukihime, and the problem most of the original game’s fans have, stem from the way it’s adapted from the game.

Like a lot of visual novels, Tsukihime has multiple routes, and many if not all of them are mutually exclusive. In fact, some don’t even involve Arcueid, who you’ll remember is one of the main characters. This presents some difficulties when making a TV series. On the one hand, there is a canon route, and you could probably make a decent twelve-episode TV series out of just that. On the other hand, there are lots of fans who prefer the alternate routes, who would be pissed if their favorite characters showcased in those routes weren’t given some screen time, and so you want to give them something. And, too, one of the intriguing things about a game like Tsukihime is all the lore and world-building that makes these divergent plotlines possible and interesting. Even when not pursued, elements of those routes may come up one way or another, and lend a certain richness and depth to the story. It would be a shame to leave that on the cutting room floor.

Another possibility the show’s creators could take is to craft their own continuity, essentially creating a story hybridized from multiple routes from the game while not adhering strictly to any one of them, and create a single story that way. This hypothetical hybrid story would then be better able to explore more of the background and lore, and incorporate that richness into its own new canon. But that would take probably more than twelve episodes, and twelve was all Tsukihime got. For anyone who’s curious about what this approach might look like, there’s a manga adaptation that incorporates elements of the other routes into the main story. It’s out of print now, sadly. Originally published by ComicsOne, it was taken over by DrMaster after ComicsOne went out of business. Then DrMaster themselves went out...

Anyway, the compromise measure that the show’s creators eventually decided on was to largely tell one story (the Near Side routes, particularly the Arcueid route), while throwing in bits and pieces from other routes… and then never following up on them. There wind up being a few non sequiturs and narrative dead ends or red herrings, almost as a kind of wink and nod to say that the show’s makers at least know those possibilities exist. But this results in the show being unfocused. For instance, a couple of episodes build up the Problem With the Tohno Bloodline, but this ultimately doesn’t figure into the story. This material comes from what the game refers to as the Far Side routes, and those developments largely go unnoticed during the Near Side routes which the anime’s plot focuses on. The problem is, again, that these are mutually exclusive as the presented in the original game. Weaving them together in the “new continuity” approach would be fine – maybe ideal for the anime, even – but it would take an amount of alteration to the continuity that the anime never makes. It winds up being less of a problem than it sounds like, but it does manage to be frustrating.

The main story, meanwhile, hints at interesting elements from the broader cosmological background that the game establishes (and which later Type-Moon games borrow and build upon), but many of those elements never quite leave the background. This leaves a frustrating sense of massive, powerful forces and entities moving in the background, that there is something far larger happening that we are not even quite glimpsing, but only being given hints of.

But if it sometimes seems that Tsukihime only scratches the surface of the greater and deeper lore of its setting, that lore and setting are still compelling. There’s an almost Lovecraftian sense of cosmic scale to the supernatural as it’s presented in Tsukihime. Arcueid, Nvrnqsr Chaos (no, that’s not a typo; it’s the real name of an adversary in the game, though the anime presents it as Nero Chaos instead), and her ultimate enemy, Roa – all of them are connected to higher forces and entities. The murders occurring in Shiki’s city are the most minor of problems in the grand scheme of things. This is what makes the anime both fascinating and frustrating. It shows us this conflict, but refuses to give the full context for it. So much seems to be held back; the full natures of these characters goes unexplored.

I like a little mystery. I like it when some things are unexplained, or when the answers are there to be found rather than to be given. It’s one of the things I love about Dark Souls and Bloodborne. But the story of Tsukihime fails to explore these mysteries in a way I find really satisfying.

I feel like this is the root of why a certain overly vocal segment of the fandom chooses not to acknowledge the anime. Coming to it from the game, I can see where it might seem a little disappointing. Many of these hooks can seem like teases to those who understand their significance enough to be upset that they ultimately don’t deliver.

But that’s not the experience that either I or my wife had watching the anime. We both came to it before we ever knew anything of the game. For us, those odd hooks were just moments where we went, “Huh. Weird,” and carried on watching the show. Sure, there was clear and unaddressed significance, but it wasn’t a problem. If anything, it made me more curious about the game.

The show may seem meandering to some, but to me, I just tend to think of its pace as sedate. It doesn’t really dig into the characters’ backstories, but it does help to develop them and give them room to breathe.

In particular, the anime spends a lot of time developing Arcueid. We see that despite her power, and her potential for wrath and violence, she’s surprisingly cute and innocent-seeming at times, and actually innocent when it comes to some things. You can see her interest in Shiki grow, but she seems unable to express it. Her attempts at being normal can come across as almost mocking, when they are instead sincere and well-meant, but hopelessly clueless.

What we learn of her story is somewhat sparse, but we know that she spends most of her time asleep, awakening only to deal with threats like Roa. The reasons for this are complicated, at least enough so as to be beyond the scope of this writing. Suffice it to say that there’s a wiki if you’re after more information. Just be warned: The writing there is pretty iffy. Anyway, Arcueid is capable of getting by just fine on her own (when some inconsiderate dick doesn’t just up and murder her, anyway), but it’s also clear that, thanks to spending most of her time asleep, she doesn’t really understand a lot of what’s going on around her. There’s a kind of obliviousness to her that might be frustrating in another character in a different show, but is somehow just endearing here. Like my wife said at one point: You just want to hug her. Which is not, you know, the normal reaction you have with vampires. “Aloof”, “compelling”, “seductive”… These are the words we tend to think of when it comes to vampiric “affection” in fiction. “Huggable” doesn’t really show up on the list. And yet, here we are.

There’s a certain cat-like quality to her. Elegant, graceful, mysterious, sometimes selfish, frequently endearing, and occasionally ridiculous. There’s comedy in her situation. Shiki, despite his powers, is otherwise kind of a dork who could not be more clearly in over his head, at least at the start. He spends most of the series bewildered, confused, scared, and very occasionally snapping and completely losing his shit against some eldritch horror. And yet he’s the one who has to keep Arcueid grounded (to the extent that this is really even possible) and basically explain to her how the world works. In some ways, it’s really Arcueid’s story.

The pace of the series helps it build a sense of brooding mystery as it explores the twin dilemmas of finding a way to stop Roa and figuring out Shiki’s uncertain place in and relation to the rest of the Tohno family. And as you might suspect, these two problems aren’t as separate as they first seem.

If nothing else, the opening theme is just about perfect. Subdued, mysterious, haunting; it sets the mood of the show almost perfectly, in a way that comes close to over-promising on what the anime actually delivers. It definitely sets a mood.

That mood is one I tend to get into around this time of year. I’m normally a night person in the first place. No amount of working mostly first-shift jobs over the last two decades has changed the fact that there’s some part of me that wakes up when the sun goes down, and wants to stay up until the sunrise. I like to be out and about in the dark. I can remember back when I was in college, I would be out with friends trying to find any reason at all to stay out as late as possible. Later in life, I’d duck out long after everyone else was asleep and go for roaming walks at night (at least, back when I lived in a reasonable neighborhood). With fall here, the urge just gets stronger.

There’s something of that feeling I get from Tsukihime, large portions of which involve that same nocturnal roaming, and take place in the nighttime times of life. And I enjoy stories about monsters and the supernatural – I went through something of a vampire fascination phase when I was younger, and still maintain a certain amount of interest – and so those things alone might have gotten my attention.

Fuck the haters; the Tsukihime anime exists, and it’s good. Not great, and not as good as it might have been, but it’s fine. If it’s not exactly gripping, edge-of-your-seat suspense, it’s still an entertaining way to spend the better part of five or six hours. Certainly worth a watch if you can track it down.

Tsukihime tells an odd, interesting story – moody, dark, weird, mysterious, fantastical – all things I like. A story of supernatural threats, monsters, mystery, and marauders in the night. It’s hard to think of anything more appropriate for fall – for October – for Halloween.

Availability

The DVD release for Lunar Legend Tsukihime was originally handled by Geneon in both Japan and the U.S., since they were part of the original production committee. After they folded, it was picked up by Sentai Filmworks, one of the several splinter companies that rose from the ashes of ADV’s implosion in the late aughts.

Geneon’s release was evidently a multi-volume affair. Which seems ludicrous today, when you typically buy an entire season of twelve episodes or so all at once these days, in a single set. But Geneon (which had previously been Pioneer) had been around since the VHS days, and a lot of those companies in some sense inherited the mindset that had governed the VHS release schedule, which was to release a volume every couple of months or so, with three or four episodes on each one, and that was that.

Sentai Filmworks’ version is a two-disc, single-volume set, so that would probably be the way to go. Especially if shelf space is a concern.

There is no Blu-ray release, and honestly, it’s hard to imagine what Blu-ray would really do for the show. At any rate, it seems to be out of print currently. Geneon, of course, folded about a decade or so ago. And although Sentai Filmworks lists it in their catalog, there’s no option to buy. And it doesn’t appear to be available for legal streaming anywhere. Like a lot of older (and I hate to think of this as “older” – I remember being an adult when it was new) – maybe I should say somewhat older anime – Amazon and eBay are your best bet if you’re interested.

Postscript the First – The Anime versus the Game

Tsukihime, as a visual novel with multiple routes, contains far more material than the TV series. HOWEVER, please consider this paragraph your giant, flashing, neon-lit trigger warning for content potentially involving sex, assault, sexual assault (of various kinds), incest, violation of consent, and more violence than the anime producers could show even with the series airing at otaku o’clock.

Just to be up-front for a moment, I haven’t played much of the game. Much of my information comes secondhand, or else is the result of reading the Type-Moon wiki and talking with friends who’ve played through it. I’ve yet to finish a single route. I’d like to, and I occasionally chip away at it here and there, but the problems are twofold.

The first problem – probably the main problem – is the low level of engagement. I get curious about visual novels from time to time, but they’re always a little too easy to put down, and a little too hard to pick up. And that may seem strange, since there’s so little to do in one. The amount of effort involved is nil. But that’s just the thing. I often wrestle with whether or not I even consider them to be games at all. And, look: It’s not like I think visual novels are unworthy of anyone’s time. They’re fine. Largely not my cup of tea, but fine. But what you do in a visual novel could hardly be called playing, any more than you “play” a Choose Your Own Adventure book. There are no mechanics, no maneuvering through the world, no use of skills. Just decisions to make, and those not very often. The thing about an actual game is that I’m mentally engaged, fully occupied and firing on all (or most) cylinders. When I want to play a game, that’s what I’m after. And visual novels just don’t offer that.

Of course, I do love to read, and so it would seem like they should be right up my alley for that reason at least. But no. The writing is actually my second problem.

So far as I’ve observed, which admittedly isn’t much, most Japanese visual novels translated into English are pretty awkward, and this is probably a combination of factors. One is that what constitutes good writing (in terms of how the language is deployed) in Japanese differs considerably from what constitutes good writing in English. It’s not just visual novels, mind you. The couple Haruki Murakami books I’ve read have both also seemed off to some degree as well. I think it’s just something in the translation, some difference between English and Japanese in the matters of word choice, rhythm, and flow, and the sense for how these things work in each. I sincerely think that making a Japanese work really sing in English would involve a level of change that most translators (and visual novel fans in particular, given their greater likelihood of being total Japanophiles) are deeply uncomfortable with.

But beyond the general problem of Japanese-to-English writing, there’s the problem of Kinoko Nasu in particular, who is Type-Moon’s writer.

Nasu is, I think, something of a Lovecraft disciple, with his cosmic-scale sense for horror. But he’s also like Lovecraft in another very important and distinct way, which is that despite having really interesting ideas that set my imagination on fire, he actually can not fucking write.

I’m sorry, Lovecraft fans, I really am, but it’s true. Deep down, you all know it. Lovecraft, for his part, was a man who at some point earlier in his life swallowed a thesaurus, and was then hell-bent on vomiting it out over every page he wrote ever afterward. He never used one word if he could find a way to use five or six to say the same thing, never used a simple, elegant, and concise word when he knew a more complex one, and his style has so little flow you’d need an electron microscope to find it. You could make a workout of running back and forth to the dictionary while reading his work. Or you could make it a drinking game. And then die, of alcohol poisoning.

He had some great ideas, once you got past the writing, and the multiple onion-like layers of intense racism. And he was intensely racist; let’s not forget that. Not just “racist because it’s the 1920s or ‘30s and basically everyone white is racist right now,” I mean racist even for those times. People back then were a little weirded out by how much he hated the Jews, and black people, and anyone else who wasn’t the right shade of paper-white. But even just focusing on his writing, the feeling remains that he was not the best vehicle for his stories, and that’s just how it is. The most aching, taxing, fucking grueling reading I have ever done on stories I still actually liked is mostly found between the covers of the various Lovecraft compendia I have lying around the house. I like his stories; I just don’t like reading them much.

Nasu may well be his reincarnation (and oh, would it ever have horrified Lovecraft to be reincarnated as a Japanese person). A common complaint I’ve heard about Nasu’s writing (from people who’ve read it in Japanese) is that he has good ideas, but just isn’t a skilled writer. Now, I’m not qualified to really dissect how he comes across in his own culture, but when translated into English, he’s a painful read. Maybe it’s the fault of the group responsible for the translation (Mirror Moon), but at the very least, I can confidently state that he should stay out of porn. His sex scenes have some of the least sexy and most unintentionally hilarious writing I’ve seen in my life. It’s why I think that even Fate didn’t really take off to become the absolute phenomenon it is until after we started to get anime adaptations of it. Those adaptations would all have been written by other people, or at least had some amount of editing or collaboration to dilute the worst of his influence, letting the good ideas shine through without Nasu’s own writing griming everything up.

I don’t have a lot of basis for comparison, but I feel like on a technical level, Tsukihime is pretty basic. The character artwork is nice enough, with a distinct style. The backgrounds, though, are in most cases very clearly photographs that have been filtered or otherwise manipulated so as not to clash too badly with the character art. This was probably a shortcut to save time or money, or both.

On the balance, I’d say it’s worth looking into, with the major caveat that there’s a lot of stuff in it that didn’t (and couldn’t) make it into the anime, that makes the story overall much darker and more sinister than the anime could manage. Unfortunately, it’s going to be hard to find. There’s only the original version released in 2000. There’s talk of a sequel and a remake, but the amount of time that’s passed for no more attention or work than the project has received, to the extent that these things have become running gags in the fandom. They probably are things that the higher-ups at Type-Moon really do mean to create at some point, but which aren’t a huge priority for them, and so are very, very back-burner projects.

As I mentioned above, the anime and the game are both similar in that their quality persists despite somewhat lacking production values. But the anime’s middle-of-the-road budget and somewhat generic style was never the problem. The game, meanwhile, was pretty clearly made on a close-to-shoestring budget, but this actually doesn’t matter nearly as much. Visuals novels live and die on their writing, ideas, and artwork, I think. Rarely if ever do they rely on really cutting-edge graphics for their impact. And in truth, Tsukihime the game was always going to be marred far more by Nasu’s writing than anything technical.

A nice upside is that, since we’re privy to Shiki’s internal monologue, he comes across as a more interesting character. He seems to sometimes just float through the story in the anime, with bouts of intensity here and there when things go wrong or he’s totally lost it. But the game gives us his thoughts, and we get a better handle on why he does the things he does.

For English-speaking fans, there are walkthroughs, of course. But if that understandably sounds like too much of a pain in the ass, there’s also a fan translation (unauthorized) by Mirror Moon. In addition to rendering the game into English, I believe it also introduces an option for removing the sex scenes. So for those who are uncomfortable with those, this will answer that concern, at least.

Postscript the Second – Alternate Takes: Kara no Kyoukai

Frequently referred to in English-speaking circles by its subtitle, The Garden of Sinners, Kara no Kyoukai (which Wikipedia tells us means something like “Boundary of Emptiness”) is an interesting story from Kinoko Nasu’s early days. It began publication (independently) in August of 1998, and is set in that timeframe. Originally a series of novels, it’s primarily known in the U.S. as a boxed set of seven movies (plus a stand-alone eighth) priced exorbitantly by Aniplex USA (the Blu-ray boxed set for the first seven will set you back a cool $400). These movies tell the story of a different Shiki, this time a young woman who wears a kimono, boots, and red leather jacket, named Shiki Ryogi.

There are pretty clear linkages between it and Tsukihime, though these are thematic rather than narrative, and the result of ideas being reused. Nasu began writing Kara no Kyoukai first, and seems to have cannibalized some of its concepts for Tsukihime. The two stories take place in alternate universes. As with Tsukihime, this version of Shiki also has the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, although Kara no Kyoukai’s Shiki does actually come by them after an automobile accident. There’s also a redheaded sorceress with the last name Aozaki (Touko instead of Aoko), and I want to say that I’ve read somewhere that they’re sisters, and that Touko traveled to this alternate reality from the “main” one where Tsukihime and Fate take place. She was initially envisioned with sort of pixie-cut blue hair, but was converted for the movies into a redhead like her sister Aoko, and Nasu decided he liked the change so much that it became canon.

But although it features a Shiki with the Mystic Eyes, she shares the spotlight with Mikiya Kokuto, who’s a dead ringer for the Shiki of Tsukihime. His personality’s different – he lacks Shiki Tohno’s deeply buried killer instinct, for a start. Mikiya has no special abilities beyond a knack for information-gathering and a better-than-average capacity for deductive reasoning. Moreover, even without any special powers of his own, he seems to move with relative comfort in a world full of sorcerers and mystical murderers, in part by keeping an open mind, taking nothing for granted, keeping his assumptions in check, and taking everything as it comes. He works as an investigator for Touko’s paranormal detective agency, Garan-no-Dou. Shiki is mostly the muscle.

Mikiya has a younger sister, Azaka, who in her turn looks an awful lot like Shiki Tohno’s sister Akiha. Except for in flashbacks, where she looks like a young Rin Tohsaka from Fate instead. As with Tsukihime, she is attracted to her brother. Unlike Tsukihime, the two of them are actually blood siblings, so... At least with Kara no Kyoukai, this profound failure of the Westermarck Effect is entirely one-sided; Mikiya has eyes only for Shiki. TV Tropes would undoubtedly describe it as Single-Target Sexuality.

There are any number of other parallels between the two, but these are the most obvious. Much of the background lore seems to be similar between the two series, although Kara no Kyoukai doesn’t use the same parts of it, and doesn’t dig into the parts it does use quite as much. It’s much less concerned with cosmic entities like Arcueid or Roa or Nvrnqsr Chaos, and more concerned with its characters as individuals, and how they relate to each other. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t dive into the sort of metaphysical strangeness on display in Tsukihime and Fate – Kara no Kyoukai is aggressively weird – but its metaphysical struggles are more self-contained, connected more directly to the characters and less tied to the cosmological backdrop.

The movies were released in Japan beginning in 2007, almost a decade after the novels began publication, and well after the successes of Tsukihime and the first Fate series. They’re animated by ufotable, and feature Yuki Kajiura as the composer. I’d encourage anyone interested to track them down, though I know the price tag can be offputting. Aside from high-quality video and sound, the set is pretty bare-bones. There’s no English audio track; in fact, the impression I get is that this is basically just the Japanese Blu-ray release, re-encoded for Region 1. This includes the movies’ proper titles not being displayed in English anywhere on the discs or cases, so you have to do a little sleuthing to figure out which movies are which. This is doubly aggravating considering that the intended viewing order isn’t chronological, so it’s not immediately apparent if you’ve started with the wrong movie. If you feel totally lost and like you’ve just come into the middle of things, then it’s highly likely you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. Thankfully, the menus are in English, and the subtitles are serviceable.

There’s a DVD version of the boxed set that costs less – I want to say the whole boxed set went for something like $200 – which is still a decent chunk of change, but more reasonable for a set of seven movies. Unfortunately, a quick browse of Amazon makes it seem even harder to find than the Blu-ray set. And, sadly, there are no legal streaming options for this series.

#type-moon #tsukihime #shingetsutan tsukihime #visual novel #anime #halloween #vampires #lunar legend tsukihime #arcueid #arcueid brunestud #shiki tohno

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howtohero · 5 years

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#215 Superheroes’ Pals

As your superhero career goes on you’ll find yourself spending more and more time in your superhero identity. You’ll find yourself fighting more crimes, saving more worlds, and making more enemies. But you’ll also, against all odds, and specifically in defiance of our sound advice, make some friends. A superhero’s pal is exactly what it sounds like, just a guy who is friends with a superhero. They’re not a superhero, they’re not any sort of specialist in anything, they don’t particularly help the superhero in any way. They’re just a friendly guy.

If you decide to get yourself a pal in your superhero identity you should know that you are needlessly endangering this poor person. But also, hey props to you. Making friends is hard. And I know you’re not exactly in a position where you can be rejecting friends. Plus, in your defense, most superhero’s pals initiate the relationship themselves. They’ll show up to all your battles and snap pictures or they’ll just tail you until you agree to hang out with them or they’ll hurl themselves out of a window and hope that you’ll swoop in and save them. (Or maybe not just you, maybe they don’t care who saves them from their act of self-defenestration. They just want a superhero friend and aren’t especially picky.) If this is the case, then just being their friend might even seem like the safer option. Then they can just text you when they wanna hang instead of jogging out into traffic or lathering themselves with bbq sauce and then wandering into the lion pit. (Not the enclosure in the zoo, the inexplicable pit of lions that was left in the middle of your city after some supervillain plot that nobody can remember.) Plus, a rejected pal might just turn into a jaded and resentful supervillain. Or you might just genuinely like them and want to be their friend. These things have been known to happen. But the whole entire reason you have two identities is to protect your loved ones, so if you have loved ones in your superhero identity, well that’s just a paradox waiting to collapse in on itself. You might have to invent a third even superheroic-er identity. An identity that is so super that is diverts the attention of all your enemies, but so aloof that they don’t pick up friends and hangers on. <Oh! I actually think that lion thing was one of mine. The plot was to put a lion pit in the middle of the city and then wipe everybody’s minds about how it got there.>

It’s a bit harsh, but having a superhero’s pal is very much akin to having a pet. They can’t look after themselves on the level that they’re going to need to. You’re personally responsible for their safety. But they love you a whole lot. So it’s not all bad. Your superhero’s pal can always be counted on to go to bat for you in the court of public opinion. They’ll sort of be like your mascot, but without the doofy costume. You’re going to have a monopoly on doofy costumes in this relationship. Anytime you get attacked in the press or on Greg Greginski’s new show “Superheroes are Bad with Greg Greginski” or in an online chatroom (and be sure, you are being maligned in the chatrooms. Frequent topics include “Haha did you see when he tried to show how high he could kick and then fell on his butt” or “Haha did you know this loser didn’t even know about the online chatrooms”) your pal will jump in there and defend you with an astounding amount of increasingly ostentatious epithets. The trade-off though, is that whenever they’re in trouble, you’re expected to come help them. Superheroes’ pals usually receive a direct line of communication to the superhero that they are palling around with. (Occasionally in the form of a special signal watch, less occasionally in the form of a regular old telegraph). This can be a bit of a culture shock to you, as you’ve been very diligent not to give your personal communication device’s number/hailing frequency/extension to anybody who is not a fellow superhero, world leader, or your mom/maternal figure. But this guy’s your pal and pals give each other their phone numbers. It’s just part of the deal. Be warned though, there’s a bit of a learning curve to giving your personal contact info to a civilian. Be prepared to receive emergency distress signals late at night and rush over only to find out that you’ve just been invited to a pizza party or that your pal just needs someone to quiz him on his Spanish.

Another thing you should know about civilians who become close personal friends of superheroes is that soon, they’re going to become tired of just being the civilian pal. They’re going to hear all of your stories, or witness your grand feats, or watch you fly off with your sidekick or your living hover board (Shoutout to Brandy the living hover board. She’s like a modern day magic carpet who can do sick loop-de-loops and always has the hottest of hot goss.) and they’re going to start resenting their roll on the sidelines. So they’ll try their hand at becoming your sidekick, or partner, or if they’ve got a obnoxiously inflated sense of importance, your mentor. On paper this might seem like a fine idea, who wouldn’t want to fight crime and hang out with Brandy the living hover board with their best friend? But unless and until they can bring something useful to the table, they’re just making your job much harder. The last thing you need when fighting crime is a bumbling civilian who thinks they know how to fight crime because they’ve watched their super powered friend do it a dozen times. But that’s not good enough! That’s nothing! I once watched my friend snowboard down a mountain during an avalanche while being chased by no less than five (some sources reported four but I swear it was five) abominables snowman but does that mean I can do it too? No! Of course not! I would die probably nine different times before making it to the bottom of the mountain. (And that friend... was me.) No it wasn’t, it was Dale. (Who’s Dale?) Oh you don’t Dale? (I don’t think I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting this Dale.) Oh you should, he’s a great guy, he’s good at skiing. Anyway, your civilian pal isn’t even observant enough to have worked out your secret identity and they think they’ve been paying enough attention to face off against Knife-Man? The man who is made entirely out of superheroes’ pals stabbing knives??? Fat chance. However, you shouldn’t just rebuff your friend outright. (See our earlier point about rejected superheroes’ pals.) If your civilian friend asks you to let them join you in the field tell them that you’re definitely interested, but only if they prove that they can make a valuable contribution in the field. This will inspire them to actually work for what they’re yearning for. With any luck they’ll learn how to fight or start studying nuclear physics or join the police academy and soon enough, you’ll have a new valuable partner in the field.

In this vein, many superheroes’ pals will, at some point or another, attempt to gain superpowers. This will invariably always work, every time. Sometimes they’ll even gain powers without even trying. But just as assuredly, every time a superheroes’ pal gains powers, it will only be for a short time. Any time a civilian gets close to a superhero they become 100 times more likely to gain superpowers from a supervillain experiment or a life saving blood transfusion from their superhero pal or just because some fifth-dimensional imp thought it would be an interesting new wrinkle to whatever story they’re observing. It’s one of the fringe benefits of being buds with a superhero I suppose. But just as your pals learns to control or accept their powers, they will, every single time, lose them. This is just one of those areas of life where the status quo reigns supreme.

Superheroes’ pals are one of the most novel aspects of superheroism. They’re part fanboy, part asset, part best friend who is just kept in the dark regarding a significant chunk of your life. Superheroes’ pals can be relied on to defend you in the public eye, to lend an ear when you need someone to talk to, and to write extremely flattering biographies about your life that don’t even mention the time you accidentally blew up a planet or the other time when you spilled spaghetti sauce all over your costume. Superheroes’ pals, they’re like regular pals, but super.

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myectjourney · 6 years

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ECT procedure #27 (7/18/2018)

This is my twenty-seventh electro-convulsive therapy procedure & my fifteenth bilateral procedure.

Pre-treatment analysis:

This is my first appointment in 2 weeks which means I had a pretty long break.

To be honest, it really hasn’t been so bad! I had a day or two where I felt a lot of anxiety or depression mostly based on things happening around me but sometimes those kinds of things are unavoidable. I really felt like these last two weeks went pretty well and I was happy to notice some of my memories coming back to me. This is a huge deal for me because losing some of my memories was the hardest part of doing ECT for me. In fact, one of those days I was feeling a lot of anxiety was actually yesterday because I was/still am really nervous and doubtful about going to ECT today mainly because I feel like I’ve made so much progress with regaining memories that I am scared I am going to lose all of that when I go back in today. Part of me thought “maybe I should cancel and just stop doing ECT altogether. I am feeling mostly fine and my depression is manageable now (which is wasn’t before) so whats even the point of going back? I want to remember the things I forgot more than anything right now.” but then another part of me thought “I need to go back and finish what I started. There is a reason they tapper you off so you don’t go into a full depressive relapse. Do you want that? No. You have to go and take the risk.”. It’s never fun to be felt like your own brain is pulling you in two different directions.

So here I am, about to drive up to my appointment. I decided that it was worth the risk and even if it sucks to feel like you are recovering memories just to have them ripped from you again, it’s not worth being SUPER depressed all the time. It’s not worth feeling like you want to die all the time. It’s not worth sitting on your couch or bed wondering what is wrong with you because you have a mental illness or multiple mental illnesses and hoping that somehow you will just fade away from existence.

Remember that if you can when you are also feeling doubt about going back to your ECT appointments. Remember THERE IS A REASON THEY SCHEDULED YOU THE WAY THEY DID. This is the treatment plan they thought was best for you so you can have the best results and recovery.

I understand what it’s like to have that doubt and anxiety in your head that tells you “Is it worth going to if I feel crappy about going and that in its self is making me more depressed and anxious?”. I wonder that too and am going into my appointment feeling that way. “Is it worth it?” is the big question. I don’t have all the answers but I can say if you can manage to get past that doubt, I think it’ll be okay and you will make it through. If you can’t get past it, maybe you should stop because maybe that means it isn’t working out for you OR maybe your shock level needs to be upped or if you are doing unilateral, maybe you need to switch to bilateral. EITHER WAY, make sure you tell your doctor what you are feeling and thinking. Get their opinion on what to do next. Don’t just quit out without saying anything because that could potentially make you so much worse. I will always say this over and over again: communicate with your doctor! I can’t even emphasize how important that is. If you don’t, you will be stuck with that doubt forever and possibly spiral into that pit of fear and depression again and doctors can only help you to the best of their abilities if they know what is going on and you are fully open, honest, and receptive.

I plan on bringing up my doubts today before they shock me and will update on what they say if I can remember. If not, I will schedule an office visit to discuss these fears and doubts.

For all the people out there reading because they are getting ECT, STAY STRONG! You are doing your best and you GOT this! <3

Post-treatment:

I feel like this treatment session went well. I talked with my ECT doctor about my fear of losing the memories I am regaining and before they put me under for my procedure, they reassured me that one ECT treatment will not reset my all my progress with my memory. They also reassured me that my recollection of memories will improve as I go down on the frequency of treatments as well. Hearing that definitely helped me feel less anxious before the anesthetic was injected.

This confirms what I was saying earlier on how it is so important to talk to your doctors about how you are feeling not just physically but mentally. It can also be beneficial for you if you are already getting these treatments done because keeping it all bottled up and not having your questions answered can counteract your progress because it’ll make you feel more anxious and depressed.

That aside, after I woke up I felt fine. Just a hungry and a little spacey as usual. The rest of the day I was able to do things like run a few errands with the help of my partner. I didn’t feel like I lost much memory after this session. Maybe a little harder to recall the previous day but it wasn’t completely wiped from my brain or anything.

Over all, I’d say things went well.

Results:

Long-term Memory Questions: All questions answered correctly with minor hesitation.

Short-term Memory Questions: All but one question answered correctly with minor hesitation.

Slow cognition: Yes (minor)

Memory loss: Yes (minor)

Attention span: Good.

Tiredness: Yes (minor)

Trouble retaining newer memories: Yes (very minor)

Symptoms:

● Headache (moderate)

● Loss of balance (minor)

● Fatigue (minor)

~ End of ECT day #27 ~

#ect #electroconvulsive therapy #electro-convulsive therapy #electroshock therapy #electro convulsive therapy #Personal Experience #medical procedures #ect reference #ect procedure 27 #twenty-seventh ect procedure #procedure #depression #anxiety #ptsd #bpd

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onyx-archer · 6 years

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My Idea for the Future of Comic Books.

I've been telling people in my personal life that like comics (and few that at least like to hear about weird ideas I have) that the current release method for comics is slowly killing the industry, among other things. I've put a lot of thought into how to fix the problem, and while I'm no expert, I think it comes down to a number of factors. All of it will be under the cut, as to not overwhelm you if you don’t want to read it. Keep in mind that this more or less entirely pertains to the Big Two (Marvel and DC), but can be applied to all but the smallest publishers really.

All of the issues I can see with the industry are as follows:

1. Limited Distribution: The Direct Market makes it harder for people to get into comics. Be it because of the hobby's requirement to go to a hobbyist store of some kind, or hope that they can find a copy on Amazon. Digital stuff does help a little, but that leads into the next problem.

2. Digital Prices/Digital Marketshare: From what little we as a community know about digital sales, thanks to a few bits of info that can be gleamed from smaller, indie creators, we know that there isn't a super huge digital market for comics yet. This would probably improve if the publishers stopped charging print cover prices for digital books, but that probably won't happen any time soon. Of course, digital markets come with the advent of piracy, but it's not like that was entirely avoidable thanks to scanning groups.

3. The Release Format: I'm gonna say something a little controversial here: single issues aren't really worth the price at this point. I say this because of how story arcs for comics these days are typically written; stories are very rarely self contained single issue affairs anymore. This also plays into the comics only being available for purchase through extremely limited channels, whereas you can sell a graphic novel or a trade paperback in more easily accessible markets than hobbyist stores like Comic Book stores. The single issues also tend to sit unsold because it's easy to over ship them, which is evident in basically every comic book store in North America.

4. Marketing: This issue is mostly aimed at Marvel, but can be applied universally. A big issue Marvel has is that they launch books with little fanfare, only to cancel them 6 issues in because of low sales. The books basically just get axed because they aren't marketed properly to potential fans. Tent pole titles like Spider-Man get marketed, sure, but for every Spider-Man or Thor, there's a character with a smaller fanbase that's getting snubbed because the big books hog all of the marketing budget, making it harder for them to gain any sizable fan traction.

I could also throw overall quality of storytelling/writing, but that's more of subjective issue in most cases. After all, just because I don't like the writing of recent Spider-Man material doesn't mean nobody does. I could also throw in my problems with people in the comics industry being shitheads on social media, but that’s not important right now.

Anyway, my solution idea attempts to address the 4 big problems. It's basically as follows:

1. Changing Formats: This here's probably going to get me the most flack, but I don't really care. What I'm suggesting is a complete overhaul of the format of comics into something a little more enticing, and potentially profitable: graphic novels. Now, the industry already releases trade collections, but I think given the fact that most comic story lines are written for trade collections already, we might as well just get graphic novels instead. This has a number of benefits, but I'll get into that more as we go. One I’ll bring up now though is that Graphic Novels, over all, have a better shelf life than individual floppies.

2. Dial Back The Number of Releases: A big issue some smaller titles have right now is the lack of marketing, and this suggestion is a pretty reasonable way to limit the issue. What I'm suggesting is, along with the change in format, a company like Marvel only releases, at most, 4 things a week. Preferably, 2-3 books, but 4 is still within reason as far as I'm concerned. This, combined with a format change, will cut down on the ugly look of a pile of unsold issues, and can be stored more efficiently. It will also allow for a more efficient marketing, and less clutter on shelves, and if all companies adopted the practice, less competing for a reader’s attention.

3. Quarterly Release Schedule: Something that would be a byproduct of going to a graphic novel format would come with a release drawback, but at the same time, it would make each release easier to justify purchasing. If I only had to buy Spider-Man 4 times a year, for 20-25 bucks a pop, I'd be happy. Of course, to make sure you don't misunderstand, each volume would have to guarantee a conclusion to the story being told by the time the last page is turned. Sure, an ongoing subplot that ties stories together is fine, but it would make things easier to recommend to fresh eyes, as a more complete feeling story is more satisfying, and is easier to keep up with and/or remember.

4. Writer Rotation: This is a simple thing, but it's basically necessary to ensure a release schedule of graphic novels. The benefit of superhero material is that writers go from project to project with enough frequency, barring a few notable exceptions, so this would be a huge boon for a format change. The ideal number of writers is 2, but it can work with 3 or 4, but no more than 4. This would require a bit of teamwork on the part of the two writers, but it would allow for a more efficient output, giving each writer a window of 3 or so months to draft subsequent releases. I would also have at least 2 different main artists on board, just to make the process less daunting for a single main artist. This would come with the caviate that a writer can only remain on the book for, at most, 4-5 years at a time, to prevent burnout and/or creative stagnation. (I probably explained this poorly, but hopefully this one made sense)

5. A Variety Title: Something to keep things a little less stale, I’m proposing that each week, there’s what’s effectively an anthology/variety type book. It would, hypothetically, be similar to something like Weekly Shonen Jump, only it’d be under specific brandings. Marvel is easily the one company that I can point to an example of: Amazing Fantasy, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, etc. Basically, these would be weekly titles that focus on a subset of Marvel’s characters for a number of purposes.

Short, self contained oneshot stories to help with the less frequent main title releases.

Test new solo titles for unproven characters before committing to a larger book.

For the sake of showcasing newer writers to the public to gauge reactions before handing them the keys to a bigger title.

The big thing is that these would be released monthly, and wouldn’t count towards the previously mentioned release of only 3-4 books a week. They would also be sold cheaper, and individual stories could be sold cheaply in a digital format.

6. Ship To Non-Specialty Stores: A benefit of a format change would be a wider set of options for the release of books on a more frequent basis. Book stores, or other retailers that have book sections (like Walmart) wouldn’t have a problem with stocking the stories in their book sections, allowing for more eyes to be on the comics. This would have to come with the caveat of either having a rating system like video games in a easily visible place, or simply limiting the more mature stuff to Amazon and more specialist stores. Still, it allows for more potential readers to find the books easier.

7. Lower the Digital Market Price: This one is a harder pill to swallow, but realistically, this would have to be done. Heck, this idea alone can ignore all of the previous ones, and that alone would probably boost digital sales. Most people buy digital goods because it’s marginally cheaper in some cases, and they don’t have to go anywhere. The cheaper price is usually the result of not needing to print actual copies of a product, but comics have failed to grasp this concept. I think it’s a no-brainer if you change the format, but it’s obviously something the current format needs to do too.

So yeah, that’s some shit I probably put way too much thought into, but those are just some ideas I have when it comes to fixing American Comics. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

#Comics #Comic Books #Rambling #Ideas #Ideas to Fix Comics #Graphic Novels #Marvel #Marvel Comics #DC Comics #DC #I'd put indies in here #but it's mostly for the big two #some thoughts #rant?#Fixing Comics #American Comics

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marypsue · 6 years

Text

Nonny, I don’t have thoughts.

...I have an entire AU.

(Here’s a link to Hive, in case you haven’t already read it and don’t know what the fuss is about)

...

Dipper and Mabel leave without a fuss at the end of the summer. It’s best for everyone, this way. Fewer questions.

Each of the twins have been ‘the weird one’, at one point or another. They haven’t yet both been ‘the weird one’. There are whispers about flowers in the attic, about birth defects, about demons. At least they have each other, but the distance between Piedmont and Gravity Falls is excruciating, and grows more so by the day.

The forensic report, afterwards, says that the fire was started by a filmy scarf that Mabel had carelessly left draped over a lamp too long, too close to the bulb. Only the bones of the house remain, scorched black and warped with heat. Only the bones of the Pines parents remain, scorched black and fragile with ash. Nobody’s fault.

The children’s great-uncles are already waiting at the hospital when the ambulance arrives.

...

Gravity Falls is home, and family, and heart, and everything else that anyone could ever want, a perfect little sanctuary tucked away in the hollow of a valley in the middle of nowhere.

Mabel is content there. Dipper is not.

It’s - difficult - to want something for yourself, when you’re part of something so cohesive, something that is so good and warm and right. But Dipper’s very expensive camera equipment is gathering dust, and the anomalies of Gravity Falls still haven’t returned, and - somewhere, very deeply buried, he and Stan both remember Mabel’s carelessly-tossed scarf.

In the end, Stan takes Dipper’s side, and Dipper takes his first Bigfoot-hunting trip.

It’s only a day trip, a little ways down the coast. He can’t imagine being away any longer, any farther, not now. Not yet. But - it’s exhilarating. Like a salt sea wind to the inside of the head.

The world doesn’t have to be bound by the town limits of Gravity Falls.

...

While Dipper’s becoming the darling of the online cryptid-hunting community, Mabel’s building a sweater empire. She’s manning (womanning?) her booth at the Bend farmers’ market when she meets Henry.

Henry is six feet seven inches of gangly, freckled, bespectacled redhead, and Mabel looks up into his hazel eyes and has to have him. Not like she had to have the Princess Cornicorn playset for Christmas when she was eight years old. More like she had to have her brother when he was only halfway assimilated and there was a hollow spot in the middle of her and she needed she needed she needs -

It’s a year before she tells Henry what her family, her town is. Before she gives him the choice.

He chooses to stay, of course. By now he’s already practically one of them.

(Mabel doesn’t turn him. Not yet. But it’s not as though he’s leaving, not now. It’s not as though he has anything else left.)

...

Memory is a tricky thing.

Removing memories is an even trickier thing. And, while it’s possible to explain the existence of physical evidence left behind when the memories are erased, it makes it much harder to keep the dam from breaking.

Agents Powers and Trigger return to Washington uncertain of what they were doing in Gravity Falls in the first place. What they find in Washington only leads to more confusion. They were investigating Gravity Falls, but why? What was there that warranted so much surveillance? So much intrigue?

They’re the laughingstock of the FBI. They’re pulled up before their superiors more than once for pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp. Chasing down an x-file. Following a hunch.

But there’s something in Gravity Falls. And eventually, the agents make their way back to the source.

...

The longer and the farther Dipper stays away, the more his mind feels like his own.

He’s a fixture at conventions. He joins other hunters’ videos and drops in on podcasts. He’s always chasing myths and monsters across countries, continents. So long as he always returns to Gravity Falls, nothing stops him.

Her name is Mikaela, Kay for short. Her focus is ghost hunting. She and Dipper have run into each other at four of the five last conventions he’s been to. He’s sat in some of her panels. She’s insightful and brilliant and funny.

The thing in the back of his head snaps and snarls, but the convention’s in Maine and Dipper, emboldened by the distance and the head-rush of defiance, asks her if she wants to get drinks.

...

Mabel doesn’t assimilate Henry.

And doesn’t assimilate Henry.

Sure, he asked her not to. Sure, his entire life is basically within Gravity Falls now anyway. But - Mabel wants him. She wants, and yet, it feels like...like she’s waiting for something. Like Christmas morning. Like the spotlight to come up.

It’s exhilarating when they both propose (on the same day, through an honestly hilarious twist of fate), it’s brilliant, it’s wonderful, it’s everything...except, it’s not time yet. Dipper comes back for the wedding and everyone is home and even Grunkle Stan seems happy, genuinely happy and not just background happy, when Henry leans down and kisses Mabel, and if ever there was a perfect dramatic moment to give him a lungful of spores it would be this one, but...she doesn’t. Even she isn’t sure why.

And then, there comes a day when one, two, three little brand new sparks tug briefly at the back of her mind, and Mabel realises, oh. That’s why.

...

They’re in Japan, and it’s the middle of the night, and they’re flying out at an ungodly hour of the morning, but Dipper wakes up and knows that this is it. This is going to be his one chance.

He leans across the bed and shakes Kay awake, grips her by the shoulders like he can embed what he knows into her flesh. The basement. Mabel’s scarf. The sickening, sweet, slow tug of contentment.

“Whatever happens,” Dipper demands, giving Kay another shake. Her eyes are wide, frightened, and he thinks good. She ought to be afraid. Of this, of him. “Don’t - don’t let me convince you to join.”

“What?” Kay asks, and Dipper shakes his head. It’s already creeping back up on him, driving its hooks into his consciousness. There’s nowhere on this planet far enough away to be free.

“I’m going to try to tell you I’m happy. That we’re all happier, better, that you’d be happier and better too. Don’t listen to me. Whatever you do, don’t listen -”

When Dipper wakes up, Kay starts. She’s up, a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth as she throws the rest of her toiletries back into her suitcase.

“Hey,” Dipper says. “Was I talking in my sleep last night?”

...

Stan hasn’t been himself, since.

Strictly speaking, none of them have been quite themselves, since strictly speaking none of them are separate individuals any longer. But Stan - Ford thinks he took it hard. Possibly because of his age. Possibly because he fought.

A lot of things, Ford thinks, would be better if Stan hadn’t fought.

But he had, and now the damage is done, and Stan’s...not unhappy. The hive supports him, of course, provides a hammock of love and joy and positivity even when Stan’s own inclination is towards a low. There’s something melancholy in him, something Ford almost wishes he’d recognised when they were still children. Perhaps then things would have turned out differently.

Perhaps not.

But whatever the melancholy, it seems to have been the thing that gave Stan his edge. He doesn’t joke, as much, anymore. Doesn’t laugh like he used to. Of course he’s content, no one could be part of something as wonderful as their hive and be unhappy, but - every so often Ford can’t help a traitor thought that Stan could be happier.

So perhaps he has encouraged Stan’s tendency towards solitude. The taxidermy in the shed, the lone hunting trips - it’s all right, now. Stan’s one of them, part of them. Giving him his space won’t do any further harm.

It’s only when Stan’s thoughts explode with fear and pain all over the inside of Ford’s head that Ford realises how wrong he was.

...

The site is an abandoned mental hospital, shut down due to flooding in the lower levels. Kay’s got a new EMF ‘ghost box’ apparatus that’s supposed to let spirits speak in real-time using electromagnetic frequencies that she’s been dying to test out. Dipper’s behind the camera for once.

The first floor is uneventful. There isn’t much by way of activity, and Kay seems disappointed. The second floor, though, is full of cold spots and eerie feelings, sudden inexplicable anxiety and overwhelming sadness.

Kay’s in the middle of excitedly telling the viewers why these emotions might be transferred from spiritual residue when Dipper hears it. A bang, away down the closed-off hall to their right. He can’t help himself, he whips the camera away from Kay’s face to look through the window, and could swear he sees a flash of light through the dingy window set into the metal double doors.

“Did you see that?” he demands, pointing at the hall. Kay’s there in an instant, turning to mug surprise and excitement at the camera as she pushes open the doors and steps through.

And then she’s gone.

The forensic report, afterwards, notes that the damp from the flooded basement had caused the entire east wing to rot out from the inside. The first and second floors had both collapsed long before Mikaela ever set foot within its doors. She fell three stories.

Dipper stops going to conventions, after that.

...

The two government agents have cornered Stan, on a lone hunt. One of them’s shot him, while his mouth was open. One petal of flesh dangles limp, teeth chattering, from the bottom of his face.

Mabel pulls him back, into the crowd, out of harm’s way as the townsfolk press in. The younger of the two government agents is still waving his pistol around, like it’ll do anything, naked fear in his eyes. The older of the two has his back against a tree and the look of a man condemned to death.

“Stay back, all of you!” the younger agent yells, pointing his pistol in Ford’s general direction. Ford wonders if he’s the one who shot Stanley. “I’m warning, you, I’m - I -”

The hive closes like a fist.

...

“Congratulations!” the nurse at the hospital in Bend says, looking from Henry to Mabel. Her smile falters slightly at the sight of Mabel’s eyes, but she recovers impressively, tucking a baby into each of Mabel’s arms and one into Henry’s. “You’ve delivered three healthy, happy infants.” She looks at Mabel a bit oddly, again, as she adds, “They’re certainly the happiest, calmest infants I’ve seen in a long time.”

Mabel beams at the nurse. The nurse gives her a strained smile, and pats her knee through the hospital blanket. “Anything I can get you...dear...before I go?”

“No,” Mabel says, looking down at the little bundles in her arms. “Thank you!”

Three healthy, happy babies, she thinks, rocking the girls gently in her arms while Henry stares with astonished wonder down at his son. Three healthy, happy little queens-to-be.

Very soon, the Gravity Falls hive will no longer be alone.

#this is mary's fic tag #gravity falls #I banged this out in like an hour I've been sitting on these thoughts since I wrote the damn thing #THANK YOU for the opportunity to put them in a doc

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coopdigitalnewsletter · 5 years

Text

29 Jul 2019: Smaller Go basket size, pizzas should be for everybody, robots in the aisle

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: an Amazon distribution centre near Salford evaporates into the cloud.]

Amazon Go basket size

“Amazon Go shoppers spend on average between $7 and $15 per shopping trip”: research suggests that Amazon Go basket sizes are about half those at other convenience stores. It’s still early days for Go, so it may turn out that the smaller basket (or rather pocket) is the natural size for checkoutless store. If so, perhaps visit frequency will increase as shoppers get used to the concept.

(Checkoutless shopping startups to keep an eye on, from the same article: Standard Cognition, Zippin, Grabango.)

Domino’s pizzas aren’t for you when you’re disabled

Domino’s Pizza asks the US supreme court to say that disability protections shouldn’t apply online. The argument seems to be that accessibility litigation is increasing but because The Government has declined to give precise guidance on how organisations can comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, then everyone should be able to... just not bother complying? (It’s weird because it shouldn’t be too difficult to make the website fairly accessible: it’s some menus, choices and bit of geographic/language localisation, so… some forms, some pictures, some logic. Though it would have been cheaper to build it in from the start...)

It feels like this happens because it is still too easy to think of disabled people as “other”, a separate group of users whose access to a service could be thought of as a difficult-to-build nice-to-have use case rather than an essential. If everyone realised that one day they too will be disabled temporarily or permanently, there’d be less of this. Ability is temporary, and pizzas should be for everybody.

Event: 'Disability Confident' Celebrating diversity at work - Fri 13 Sep 8am at 151 Deansgate.

Robots in the aisle

Check out Marty in action: Ahold Delhaize has robots trundling up and down supermarket aisles looking for stock gaps. If it was a network of cameras and sensors (ie an Amazon Go store), instead of a moving, vertical figure with eyes and face, would shoppers feel differently about it? What should robots look like and how should they behave to reassure shoppers and colleagues? (Are they all called Marty or will they get their own names?)

Related: How contextual research helped us redesign the replenishing process in our Co-op Food stores.

Privacy vs competition (Facebook, again)

The US Federal Trade Commission will fine $5bn penalty for Facebook for privacy wobbles.

There can be a tension between regulation that strengthens privacy and regulation that supports competition. In the US, that tension is often discussed as if it’s either/or - governments shouldn’t strengthen privacy if it would dampen the vital competitive heat that comes from startups etc. The argument goes something like this:

Facebook negotiates and agrees with the FTC to do these new things which come with a hefty compliance burden. The new compliance things become something like a standard that other companies will need to follow in future. FB is better positioned than most companies to do the burdensome compliance things, so FB would welcome that regulation because it entrenches the company’s position vs nimble upstarts etc. (So GDPR would be anti-competitive according to this view, though you’d wonder if there’s a bit of “how very dare EU” coming from US firms indignant at EU interventionism.)

But even more than that, there’s a more direct reason that strong privacy regulation is in tension with competition: when the gov legislates or has a consent decree with FB that their privacy controls must be much stronger in future, it becomes harder to apply competition-promoting remedies to FB in future. The gov cannot later say to FB “you’re a monopoly so you must open up your data so that etc”. Conclusion: FB is probably delighted at paying only $5bn to never have to share data with any third party competitors.

There’s some truth in and some problems with that argument: if it is just left to the market, we know outcomes can be unequal. We can see that Big Tech are good at absorbing any startups that threaten them these days (which is how FB ended up with Instagram and WhatsApp). So perhaps regulation *is* the meaningful brake on big tech overreach in future.

Unprime

When we talk about Amazon Prime it’s usually in terms of Prime aggressively growing, capturing all of retail, never letting go etc. Yes, Prime’s a beast but it isn’t quite as clear cut as that: 28% of UK Amazon Prime customers say they signed up by mistake. And some percentage of Prime customers are very deliberately signing up to get access to the 15-16 July Prime Day deals, and then cancelling.

Other news

A working definition of Government as a Platform - good read.

US real estate/co-working startup firm WeWork secures 'financial inducement' of £55.7m in Brexit windfall :(

Store forecasting at Walmart scale - AI models (for technical readers).

"The attack then boils down to this: a vendor scans my QR code in exchange for me getting a free pen, and I retrieve a complete list of all contacts they’ve scanned on that device." - What happened when we hacked an expo?

A good example of an “Everything you need to know about how we use data” page, by Projects by If.

Co-op Digital news

We’re testing our ‘Pay in aisle’ app in Co-op Food stores.

Green is the default option for Co-op pension scheme.

Most opened newsletter in the last month: Tales from the crypto. Most clicked story: Communicating effectively through storytelling at Co-op Digital.

Events

Public events:

Northern Azure user group - Tue 30 Jul 6pm at Federation House.

Tech for Good live - Wed 31 Jul 6.30pm at Federation House.

Monzo show & tell Manchester - Tue 6 Aug 6.30pm at Federation House.

'Disability Confident' Celebrating diversity at work - Fri 13 Sep 8am at 151 Deansgate.

ODI’s Strategic data skills - Mon 16 Sep 8.30am online course (needs 3-5 hours/week)

Mind the Product - MTP Engage - Fri 7 Feb 2020 - you can get early bird tickets now.

Internal events:

Food ecommerce show & tell - Mon 29 Jul 10.30am at Fed House 5th floor.

Delivery community of practice - Mon 29 Jul 1.30pm at Fed House.

User experience future vision - Mon 29 Jul and every day this week 4pm at Fed House 5th floor.

Funeralcare show & tell - Tue 30 Jul 1pm at Angel Square 12th floor breakout.

Digital all hands meeting - Wed 31 Jul 2pm at Fed house Defiant.

Data management show & tell - Thu 1 Aug 2.30pm at Angel Square 13th floor breakout.

Membership show & tell - Fri 2 Aug 3pm at Fed House 6th floor kitchen.

More events at Federation House - and you can contact the events team at [email protected]. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, clever and considerate readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletterbot’s valet @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

#amazon #facebook #robots #disability

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whiskeyworen · 5 years

Photo

Cyrus reached into the armored box and withdrew the weapon. Almost immediately the blade was encased in an unnerving, spectral glow. From all the reports he’d heard, these things weren’t just sharp; they were monomolecular sharp. He gave the glowing axe a few practice chops, before giving it a twirl. The spectral light left a rather unusual but pleasant tracer in the air behind it, like afterimages. It was going to take some time getting used to that. Cyrus looked closer to the blade and... yes, in facet of crystal that made up the razor edge of it, he could almost see.... almost see... was that what he thought it was?... That’s when he heard the cough behind him.

“I was wondering why you took that lockbox down to the armory deck.” Tenna gave him a suspicious look. “I thought it might be payment, but instead of opening it around the rest of us, you went and hid. Do you know how long it took me to find you down here? There’s four decks to the gundeck ALONE!” Cyrus, caught off guard, tried to hide the axe behind his back, but its purple-pink shimmer reflected softly off the walls around him. “Tenna! I...didn’t expect you to follow me.” “I wanted to see what you got. Usually you have no problem showing us a new weapon you ‘acquired’.” She frowned, and pointed at the strange shimmer that seemed to be giving him a bit of an aura. “Now... just what in the Alchemy is that you have there? Even if my eyes weren’t especially sensitive to light right now, I’d be able to see that a mile away.”

Cyrus blinked, looked behind him at the glow, and sighed, defeated. “Fine... But for now you need to keep this between us. It’s something special.” With that, he brought the axe carefully around for her to see. He definitely didn’t want the blade to graze any part of him; who knew how much damage that could do. “Is that....?” Tenna’s eyes went wide, and she leaned in for a closer look, her pupils contracting against the shimmery glow. With a haunted look, she slowly linked gazes with him. “Cyrus... Is that a Dragonsblood Axe?... You were able to craft one? The Pact still has those things on lockdown, what with Kralkatorrik still on the loose.”

Cyrus nodded somberly. “It IS a Dragonsblood Axe. But I didn’t craft it.” He ran a hand along the neck and side of the blade. “We can’t. Only the Pact can craft them right now. And... I don’t think it’s a market we’ll be expanding into. We’ll have to leave it to them to do.” That got a raised eyebrow from his diminutive friend. Crossing her arms, Tenna gave him her best ‘Are you serious’ stare. “Cyrus, are you telling me we’re not going to try and make our own? How hard can they be to make? I mean, sure, some of the materials are exotic but...” “You don’t understand.” Cyrus shook his head, and put the axe back in the lockbox. “I learned how they make these from a...contact. We have no way to duplicate this. It’s physically impossible for US to do so.” “But why?” “For starters, you need a big shard of Brand crystal.” Cyrus sighed and started counting off the steps. “Sure, we can get that from anywhere along the Brand, but that’s the easiest part. Next we need a kind of resonance crystal that only Exalted and Zephyrites seem to know how to either summon or grow.” He gave her a look. “Know any Zephyrites willing to join the crew?” Tenna shook her head. “No...okay, so that’s a bit harder. But we could bribe someone! Give gifts! Something!” Cyrus gave a negative headshake, still counting off. “...Next we need a Forge, which we DO have... but the last step is a three-part thing. Dredge Oil for the cooling process; it’s the only thing that will bind the power into the metal just right, and not instantly evaporate. A choir of Zephyrites singing at just the right frequency... which apparently isn’t just about the notes being sung, but the psychic resonance of the singers in sync with each other.... and the last is to have a Crystal Dragon on hand. The Pact has...” He paused, and slumped a little, remembering how the handwritten note had gotten incredibly shakey at this part. “... The Pact had Crystal Dragon. She... was killed when the Pact tried to kill Kralkatorrik a few months ago.” Tenna had wanted to interrupt a dozen times, but that all stopped at the news of the Scion. Everyone in the know knew about Aurene. At least... most of the news about Aurene. Some things had been kept top secret apparently. Whoever Cyrus’s contact was, they were deep in the Pact. They might have even been on hand during the battle of Thunderhead Keep. “She’s....she’s dead?” Cyrus nodded sadly. He knew that The Plan had required the Dragons to be killed, but he’d long since modified that plan after certain information about the Balance went public. Even Scarlet hadn’t realized that killing the Dragons would unbalance the world. He’d never personally met Aurene, but he’d seen the Scion swooping through the skies around Kourna, dealing fire-y blue doom on Awakened and scarab-infested. Her efforts were probably the only reason he was still breathing, and not a nest for those parasites. That and she’d apparently eaten Joko, which gave him a good laugh. But that was all passed now. “My contact says Aurene took the full force of a Brand blast from Kralk himself. Either absorbed it or directed it away, because the Commanders were behind her. They got hit but... weren’t branded. They’re all in critical right now. I hear they got blasted several hundred meters through crystal and stone by his attack.” Cyrus’s eyes were hooded. “I hope they survive. I think we need to see that...I dunno... that we can stand up to Kralk’s attack.” He left it unspoken that if the Commanders lived unBranded, then there must be a reason, a way to NOT be Branded. But following that knowledge path could wait. There were greater things to do.

He gave himself a shake, closing the box, and turned to Tenna, crossing his arms. “So anyway... Yeah. We can’t make these things. I’m working on purchasing some more through proper channels with the Pact, based on our goodwill with them. We’ll make some donations of materials, supplies, things like that. We might even have to offer to transport troops for them. But it might be a long time before we see any more Dragonsblood weapons.”

“Do...you think I could get a sword?” She asked awkwardly, scratching her ear. “I mean, when we CAN get some more?” “We’ll see. I’ll put a sword as the top item on the next trade mission.” He sighed. “We might have to do some favors for the Pact though. They’ve been pretty thoroughly devastated over the last two years. We might have to go monster-hunting to remove some of the pressure from their forces.” Tenna grinned, an unnerving sight at any time. “That’s okay. It’s been a while since we’ve been in the thick of it. Kourna was tough, but we were basically holding fast there. I kind of want to test out my Solar Beam Cannon on something that won’t instantly evaporate when I hit it.” Cyrus chuckled, putting the lockbox in the armory and escorting his friend back up to the communications room. “Well, let’s see what’s happening in Elona then. Maybe we can find a Hydra to charcoal.”

#gw2 #Cyrus Sigismund #Tenna Danae #Dragonsblood Weapons #Aurene #Kralkatorrik #My Characters #asura engineer #Human Ranger #mourning Aurene

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awarisbrewinghq · 7 years

Text

AWARISBREWINGHQ would like to give a warm welcome to TALENE who has been casted as the role of JASMINE HAROLDS. As you begin to explore the hellish big easy please take a moment to review your map as this is your guide to stepping into the city. After this acceptance is posted you have twenty four hours to send in your account or risk loosing your role. Although if you reach out to us a extension will be given. Finally thank you so much for applying and taking a interest in us. Welcome to the family. Lastly we can’t wait to see your take on JASMINE.

The application clearly communicates the direction you want to take this character and also opens several paths to others, so I look forward to seeing how you play out her plots. When she was written, Jasmine was supposed to come off as a strong, yet emotional and empathetic person, who despite negative criticisms can step up to the plate and rise above expectations. I believe that you’ve communicated that and more. It’ll be cool to see her around New Orleans. Well done. – ADMIN DREW

⚜ OUT OF CHARACTER ⚜

Name/Alias: Talene

Pronouns: her/she

Age: 22

Timezone: EST

Activity: Hi again guys :D. My activity level will be high. I will be able to post constantly four to five days a week given my work and school schedule. If that changes due to the busy season for work or exams for school, it will be about three days to four days out of the week.

Preferable form of contact: Tumblr we’ll be best for me since I have the app on my phone and can access it quickly.

Triggers: RFP

Have you read the rules?: RFP

⚜ IN CHARACTER ⚜

Desired Character: Jasmine Harolds

Pronouns/Sexuality: her/she Heterosexual.

What attracted you to this character?:

I think it is easy to have bad experiences effect your outlook on life in a negative way. It can be hard to look past the negative and see the good. In the moment, all you can see is the bad. You hardly ever look ahead to see what life lessons will come from this hard time in your life.

Jasmine’s parents divorced when she was two. She grew up thinking that her mother didn’t want her. Even with that knowledge, she was happy living with her father. She was content, loved and really what more can a child ask for when you’re that young. For some, the knowledge of knowing a parent didn’t want you is a kick in the gut. I myself was raised by both of my parents. I don’t know who I would be if I was told my mother didn’t want me.

For Jas, it was a bit different wasn’t it. She grew up with the love a her father. A man that work to the bone to give her every allowance in life. Maybe even to the point of spoiling her… just a bit. Even with a bad start, Jas grew up to become the person she wanted to be. She could have been, harder, meaner, with a chip on her shoulder. Instead she’s a determined, graceful and empathetic woman.

Even after finding out she is a banshee she didn’t run from that knowledge. Instead, she set out on an adventure to figurer out just what she is and to find the woman ( her mother) that might have more answers that she needs.

So I guess you can add brave to her list of characteristics as well. This is the person that I find so fascinating, because how many of us in her position, would uproot the life they know to start a new one that is far less certain. I honestly don’t think I would. The fact that Jasmine did drew me into her. What stuff is Jasmine Harolds made of and how can I get some of it?

What are your future plans for this character?:

I don’t know why but I really want Jas and her mother to reconcile. Or at the very least attempt to. Maybe it is because I am so close to my mom now, even though growing up we’d butt heads a lot. I think as women, it’s important to have that bond with our mother’s. Though, I have a feeling it wouldn’t be an instant love fest. I would like for them to slowly build that relationship up. Or at least give it an honest try. Weather that works out or not is really up to Jasmine and Annica.

I would also like to see Jas come into her own as far as being a banshee. Some say it would be a curse being the seer of death. Somehow I think Jas would find a way to use her ability to help those that she can. Her first step is understanding what being a banshee is. They see visions of impending death. They are tied to a different… frequency that allows them to communicate with other banshees that allows them to gather information about what they have seen. Just because they see a death doesn’t mean that it is set in stone. These are things Jas would need and want to know. What will she do when she figures out how to be a banshee? That would be fun to see.

Friends, can a girl get some friends please. I feel like growing up she wasn’t unpopular but given the choice of hanging out with kids her age at the mall, or messing around with dad as he worked on cars. Jas would have chosen the ladder. In her eyes she and her father are like a dynamic duo . Why would she rather hang out with dad then with kids her own age? I think part of it was out of protection. Wanting to make sure that her father knew he wouldn’t lose her too. With that idea in mind, I feel like Jasmine making lasting friendships were few a far between. It would be nice to see her develop some friendships with people in her new life outside of her father.

“Love is like a virus it can happen to anyone at anytime”- Maya Angelou.

I definitely believe this to be true and would like to see how Jas handles falling in love. Especially, since she is a banshee. How much must she worry that she will see a vision of her father dying. The man who raised and loved her. It must be a constant fear for her. I think it would be hard for Jas to give her heart so completely to someone for fear of losing them. However, if she could what would that be like for her?

Please give us some head-canon’s, at least two is preferred:

So thinking about this, I had this idea. After Jasmine has been in town for a bit. It’s late night. Later then she normally gets out of work. She’s walking home near Bourbon Street and she starts to get the at feeling again. It just moments, before the scream that she knows is about to rip up and out of her lungs. She’s dizzy and sweaty, she’s trying to hold it back. It’s been so long since she had one of her fits, ( thats what she calls them) If she can just make it home, just a few more blocks. She stumbles and ducks into an alley way. Holding on to her chest, she knows she can’t hold it in much longer and so she doesn’t. Out of sight from pedestrians, she lets out her shrill scream. Allowing the blurred scenes play out before she collapses to tired to pull herself off the ground, Jasmine allows the darkness to envelop her. When she comes too, she’s in a small but very nice looking apartment (Or a big glamorous home not sure.) and meets Rosemarie a woman she had seen so many times before… almost everyday since she arrived. She should be, scared or nervous- i mean she doesn’t know this woman at all. However, she doesn’t have these feelings of apprehension. She’s at peace and calm that comes with meeting a kindred spirit. This was my idea as to how she is introduced to Rosemarie.

Another was for NATHANIEL TSAI. I keep seeing him come into the shop for a trim here, a shape up of his shaggy facial hair there. Each time he comes in, he tells her of this and that . All the mischief he got into the night before, how pretty she looks and how delicious it is that he has the prettiest thing as his barber. Jas being Jas, laughs him off and humors him. As long as he pays, his weird comments mean very little to her. Until one day they do; one dark, dank day he says something to her that sends a chill down her spine. Jas has never seen him so… distressed and unkept. His words ring in her ear as she watched him walk back out into the rain. She starts to wonder, who Nathaniel is and how he knows what she is when she isn’t even sure hereelf. In my head Nathaniel becomes some what of a confidant, in a weird, aloof sort of way. I see them having these serious conversations one minute and then him being weird the next( well weird to her anyway) but in a moment of crisis Nathaniel is someone she knows she can lean on.

The last ( for the moment) is that of Jas and her mother finally meeting. I see it happening at a bar, Not one in town but a little bit out of the way. Annica, doesn’t want anyone to know who Jasmine is to her. So the only way that she agreed to meet with her is if they went to this hole in the wall bar. There are no smiles, no heartfelt tears. Annica is totally cold and distant when Jasmine joins her. She demands to know why she moved to New Orleans. Jasmine thought all she wanted was to get information about what she is. However she ends up asking the question that she had never really had the courage to ask her father. Why she left? Annica bluntly tells her why, that she is a monster. That she is ashamed that she could have given birth to a murderer and demands that Jasmine leaves and goes back where she came from.

Well, Jasmine’s determination sets in. She refused to leave. Even going so far as to threaten the woman if she tries to force her to leave town before she can figure out just what being a Banshee means. She will reveal herself to the public. I said before that I would like for the two to reconcile at some point. However, I think the road to reconciliation will be a long tumultuous one. That will effect Jasmine more than she thought it might.

Para sample:

RFP

Anything else?

So in my head, Jasmine escape from the ‘voices’ is music. It’s very eclectic. Something with a beat that can drown out the noise so she can just escape for a few minutes. Her playlist illustrates that. However, as she meets people, experience things and learns about being a Banshee it will have an effect on her playlist. The idea is the music player on her page will be consistently changed on her journey and mood. So this list that she starts off with, basically is to help her cope with the ‘voices’ .

24k Magic- By: Bruno Mars. 2. Brick by Boring Brick (Acoustic) - By: Paramore. 3. Don’t Be Gone Too Long - By: Chris Brown and Ariana Grande. 4. Don’t Recall- By: K.A.R.D. 5. Hard Times- By: Paramore. 6. Love on The Brain- By; Rihanna. 7. Rumor- By; K.A.R.D. 8. That’s What I Like- By; Bruno Mars. 9. Wings- By; Little Mix. 10 Solo- By; Jay Park feat. Hoody.

“I’d rather be hated for who I am, than be loved for who I am not”. I’d like to make that Jasmine’s motto. She is the person that she is and she happens to like who she is. Even with the question of what she is, the thing that keeps her grounded is knowing that she is a good person. Not perfect by any means but definitely someone worthy of respect. She isn’t upset if someone doesn’t like her because she likes her. Why should she have to change herself to fit someone else’ idea of who she should be.

#awib.accept #submission #admin: drew

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uncle-ak · 4 years

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What Do You Say When…?

"I decided to share this with you because I know you wouldn't judge me for it…"

September is suicide prevention awareness month...

It felt so promising, the start of a new decade. The #2020Visionboard events that took place at the beginning of the year allowing us to envision better, thoughts of daring greatly, plans of stepping out of our comfort zone, exploring new territories, and or growing/expanding our horizon... We are in the last quarter of the year; it feels like we have been battling one thing after another since 'the ball dropped,' be it individually from the loss of a loved one to a worldwide pandemic that has completely changed our view of life and living. It’s almost like we were halted in our tracks. Not to talk of politics and racism…

I can’t put to words the rollercoaster of emotions I have been through between January and now. From watching a barely two-year-old girl child being laid to rest in January, then Kobe Bryant, followed by a series of heart-wrenching moments some of which are mentioned in my previous blog post. In addition to deaths from relatives, friends, and or their loved ones, coworkers, those I’ve worked with, and or were working with.

Have you had moments where the words, my sympathy, my condolence, Rest in Peace … etc were too hard for you to say or type? Moments where you felt numb, speechless? Moments when you said ‘not again,’ or you couldn’t explain the emotions/feelings brewing within from hearing about another death or any unexpected news? What do you say when...?

I work in a Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) aka Nursing Home and I have been there for a little over four years. I have known and worked with most if not all of the long term residents. The geriatric population was my first choice out of grad school primarily because it reminded me of growing up with my grandparents. Watching them wanting to maintain some level of independence even as their body and mind slowly went through the aging process is what drew me to work in that setting with the aim to facilitate independence as much as possible.

On the onset of the Covid-19 outbreak, changes were put in place in an attempt to decrease the spread and preserve health and life. It has been heart pausing to overhear comments like “I just need someone to talk to,” when walking down the hallway. Then you contemplate going to have a brief conversation because you aren’t scheduled to work with them and productivity scores are ringing at the back of your mind but you can’t just walk by like you didn’t hear that. Sometimes the conversation has you wondering; what do you say... to make them feel better, but it sometimes ends up being that all they really wanted was someone to stop by and hear them out.

When I changed my major from pre-pharmacy to psychology in undergrad, the goal was not to pursue a career in counseling psychology even though that’s what people thought. I went on to pursue a Masters in Occupational Therapy (background story) and I still get asked if I’ve considered a career path in counseling and the answer is nope! Part of being an Occupational Therapist occasionally requires me to put on a ‘counseling’ hat but not always as in the case of those who solely provide counseling services. I do love the mind/brain; in undergrad, I had fantasized becoming a brain surgeon thanks to Derek Shepherd in Grey’s Anatomy but the thought of cutting open the skull let alone when they are awake which is the case in certain brain surgeries, I decided I’ll do just fine interacting with the mind/brain externally. Preventive health and health management later became an area of interest in 2018, it has been a journey of discovery which still encompasses mental wellness (a passion of mine).

I've had a number of people share personal stories about themselves with me and they usually use this statement or some variation of it… "I decided to share this with you because I know you wouldn't judge me for it…" I’ve been told too many times to count dating back to 2016. More frequently this year than the past years combined from both men and women, some older than me. Sometimes people just want to share something about themselves without being judged, labeled, or put in a box/category. Listening brings me fulfillment because it brings relief to others. Last year I became a certified Mental Health First Aider (CPR in the area of Mental Health) to update my knowledge and skills as well as learn something new in the field of mental wellness. I've learned and continue to learn to listen in a way that makes people willing to share at their comfort level. What people share and the depth of the conversation depends on how ‘safe’ they feel with regards to what they are about to share and the listener’s ability to actively listen; there's a way to tell if someone is actively listening or not. It is a body language thing.

I've come to learn that not everyone knows how to actively listen nor has the ability and or skills, but everyone at the very least can 'hear someone out' depending on the hearer's state of mind/headspace. It is also ok to communicate if your state of mind/headspace doesn't allow you to actively listen to someone or just 'hear them out' rather than act like you are listening but your mind is in a thousand and one different places. I think people would appreciate that honesty upfront rather than 'fake listening'. Hearing someone out doesn't necessarily mean they want advice on how to handle a situation. If they do, they would ask, and even if they don't ask, if we listen actively, we can sense that they may want an opinion. There’s a way to listen for what isn’t being said but is implied. They may not necessarily apply your thoughts/opinions but it will make them feel better that they were heard.

So if someone asks for your opinion and does something otherwise, don't crucify them for it because what they are challenged by may be harder for them to explain in a way that makes sense to you, and maybe they’ve tried your opinion in the past and it didn’t turn out well. Just remember that “everyone is fighting a battle that no one knows about.” Hope that Chadwick Boseman aka T’Challa’s story is an eye-opener for us all. There is always more to what meets the eye and not to judge a book by its cover. Ask open-ended questions to give room for conversation and listen to understand, not to respond.

So, how have you been braving the year thus far despite all that it has been throwing at us? Any self-care strategies (aka coping strategies) that have helped you through to this moment? Anything new that you’ve learned? Sharing is caring, it may help someone out.

For me, I re-read certain books I’ve read before; What I Know For Sure, The Wisdom of Sundays and The Path Made Clear all by Oprah Winfrey. I read new books; No Such Thing as Halfway by Achu ‘Riflex’ Ebong Mba (currently available via his website ), The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer, The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi. I’ve been writing as well even though my last blog post was in June. I've been writing mostly for and to myself (not journaling), which is different from writing for others like blogging. I've been doing Zoom workout since April three times per week which has been a lifesaver given that I am a healthcare employee. It has been a ‘coro test’ testing my lung capacity and boosting the immune system; aside from the weekly COVID testing torture we have been mandated to do since July, yes the annoying nasal swabs.

Sometimes music therapy helped and long solo walks in my neighborhood. I've done more hiking this year than I have done combined since I started in September 2015 through last year. I remember when I first shared that I was going hiking back in 2015; oh my, the negative comments that came flying all from those who had never been hiking before. Well, here we are now all basking in the beauty of nature. Watching this unfold taught me that people bash what they don't understand or something they haven’t done or they tried and it didn't work out for them. If it's something you really want to do and it speaks to depths of who or want to be, then figure out how you want to handle all that is being thrown at you and brave it out. At the very least, you’ll learn something/a skill that can be applied in another area of life.

The past months haven’t been all glamorous, there have been days where I lay on the couch for hours not feeling like doing anything unless my bladder or bowel nudged me to move. I haven't had a full-time workweek since April; it's been tethering around 15-20 hours a week or less. I'm still grateful that some cha-chin is coming in. Grateful for the knowledge that helped me save weekly since 2016. Having to put a hold on the weekly savings this past July was a hard pill to swallow. Given that I'm an hourly employee, the drop-in hours meant a drop in income. Initially, I thought of dropping the savings amount and frequency to once a month to see how it goes, but it seemed to cause some anxiety.

Amongst all the other challenges, I'm grateful that I haven't had to dip into my savings thus far, grateful for life, health, family, loved ones, and friends. The drop-in hours at work provided room to explore other areas. That thought of exploring other areas didn't initially happen. With the initial onset of the lockdown, there were days of wallowing even though as an ‘essential employee’ I had an excuse to leave the house to go to work for a couple of hours on some days of the week averaging around three days. I'm grateful for knowledge and resources that sparked and nudged me in other directions such as figuring out how to grow my other passions (IG: nannez_fruitdlight and beyonddabookclub; Personal IG: mz_nanne one piece/post at a time to what I envision it to be in the long run, exploring other avenues/options of improving health and wealth. There are still some occasional moments of not feeling like doing anything but it is less frequent than before.

It’s been that type of a roller coaster… then Chadwick Boseman decided to show us how much of a real-life superhero he has been. I had added a pic he took with Lupita Nyong'o on my vision board in 2018 (my vision board was initially done in 2017) because something about their role in Black Panther spoke to me at a deeper level of inspiration. Even though it was ‘just a movie’ it represented and still represents something significant. Some quotes from him that speak to me personally;

Chadwick Boseman

“Sometimes you need to feel the pain and sting of defeat to activate the real passion and purpose that God has predestined inside you… Sometimes you need to get knocked down before you can really figure out what your fight is and how you need to fight it.”

“When I dared to challenge the system that would relegate us to victims and stereotypes with no clear historical backgrounds and no hopes or talents. When I questioned that method of portrayal, a different path opened up for me; the path to my destiny.”

“Because I said no at certain times, it made me available for things that got me to where I am... Know who you are first, purpose unfolds more and more every day. Be open to what essence is.”

“Savor the taste of your triumphs today, don’t just swallow them all whole without digesting what is actually happening here. Look down over what you have conquered and appreciated what God has brought you through.”

Thank you Chadwick Boseman for living and telling your story the way you did. Thank you recurrent and new readers. Now over to you; what have you been up to? How have you been braving the year thus far?

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