no more questioning who we’re talking to when we say “girl help.” it’s carly rae jepsen

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no more questioning who we’re talking to when we say “girl help.” it’s carly rae jepsen
yk what i'm kind of glad pjo characters can't swear cause if they could it would be a bloodbath fr. someone does somethin and percy all like oh die in hell you fucking dick asshole-lookin bitch
i was looking through an old magazine i had and well. this was in it
september 10, 2015
Whisper of the Heart 1995 • dir. Yoshifumi Kondō
no bc soul eater is genuinely the most insane show ever it starts out pretty normal but the further you look it just gets crazier. there is a city centered around a school that trains people how to hunt down and kill demons and witches in pairs. one person in each pair can turn into a weapon. there is a character named soul eater evans who eats souls. he is not the main character. the main characters are his bestie and her bestie. the president of the school is a paper-thin (literally) incarnation of death itself, who somehow has a son who shoots guns with his pinkie fingers and once hoverboarded from the states to egypt for funsies and is fundamentally named Death Jr. some of death’s closest friends are a teenage priest who constantly listens to music on skull-shaped headphones, a milf, the sleazebag dad of the protagonist, and a mad scientist who both has a weird homoerotic tension with AND has tried to dissect said sleazebag dad. off-key recorders are used as a recurring motif in the soundtrack. the soundtrack is one of the best i’ve heard in an anime. the sun and moon are both alive. this all takes place in nevada.
FLORENCE PUGH as AMY MARCH Little Women (2019)
in which an emperor pushes his wife down the stairs and pretends she tripped
I don't mean this in any jokey or disrespectful way; is there any truth to the alchemy in say, the Full Metal Alchemist anime? The symbols or transmutation circles?
Actually the author of FMA did a ton of research into historical western alchemy. The whole law of equivalent exchange is a real alchemical concept from hermetica, and one that sir Issac Newton expounded into the law of thermodynamics.
The elrics dad, Van Hoenhiem, is based on a real alchemist named Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hoenhiem. At one point Pride even references the real alchemists name.
Basically everything about alchemy in FMA is taken from primary sources, down to the symbology of transmutation circles to the color scheme of Edwards design.
The way alchemy works in FMA doesn’t resemble the way real-life alchemy is or was supposed to work, however, FMA is still packed full of references to real-life alchemy. The most obvious one is Hohenheim’s name, but there are plenty more! (Ed and Al also share their names with real-life famous occultists, Edward Kelly and Alphonse Constant (Eliphas Levi), but this might be a coincidence.)
It is probably no accident that Ed’s color scheme is black, white, and red. The three main stages of alchemy are names the nigredo, the albedo, and the rubedo. Nigredo, the black stage, is when the matter of the Stone “dies” and putrefies, representing spiritual death. Albedo, the white stage, is when the matter of the Stone is washed, boiled, and turns to vapor, which condenses back into water, and the cycle repeats. This represents spiritual ascension and unification with the divine. Finally, during the rubedo, this “volatile” matter becomes “fixed,” crystallizing into the Philosopher’s Stone. Ed also has gold hair and eyes, which is fairly self-explanatory. Gold is a metaphor for the state of spiritual perfection.
The “Flamel” symbol of a serpent nailed to a cross that’s on the back of Ed’s coat, painted on Al’s pauldron, and tattooed on Izumi’s chest is the “crucified serpent,” which actually does come from Nicolas Flamel. It represents the completion of the Great Work, the union of the fixed and volatile, the mercurial serpent physically nailed down to the cross with its four arms representing the Four Elements (with Quintessence in the center) and the reconciliation of polarities. It also demonstrates the death and mortification of the old body that is necessary for the Philosopher’s Stone to be reborn:
The wings at the top of FMA’s “Flamel” is probably meant to represent Mercury’s Caduceus, and maybe also the resurrection of the snake. The crown references the “King” that is a metaphor for the Philosopher’s Stone. The Flamel symbol also bears resemblance to the Staff of Asclepius, which represents medicine in the real world.
Another example is the “Green Lion” on the flag of Amestris that acts a symbol of the military and is referenced a few other times:
In real alchemy, the “Green Lion” is a symbol of antimony ore and represents the Philosopher’s Stone in its “imperfect” state, before it’s been purified. The Green Lion eats the Sun (representing perfection and Gold), causing a solar eclipse, representing the nigredo (death), the first stage of the Great Work. Amestris was created for almost exactly that reason, and it is far from “purified,” with corruption running deep into its core.
The image of the lion eating the sun appears in the show, when Ed and Ling are in Gluttony’s stomach:
There’s also the transmutation circle itself, which looks so realistic, I actually thought it was real when I first saw it online:
Here’s a real magic circle:
Real magic circles are from ceremonial magic, not alchemy, but the text around the outside of the Human Transmutation Circle does reference alchemy. The “peacock’s feathers,” the spotted panther and the green lion (as previously mentioned), the progression of black, gray, white, and red, all are metaphors for chemical reactions that are supposed to take place in an ideal alchemical procedure.
Some of the more complicated transmutation circles that appear throughout the show are also based on real designs from manuscripts. There’s this design on the wall of the Fifth Laboratory:
Here we see the Sun and Moon (more on that in a minute) and three symbols of Mercury, which represent their unification. This looked very realistic, so I did some searching and this is what I found:
It’s not exactly the same, but it’s clearly an image from an alchemical manuscript, and it’s very similar.
The designs on Ed and Al’s doors are real. The design on Ed’s door is the Kabbalistic Tree of Life as depicted by Robert Fludd in his seventeenth-century book Utriusque Cosmi:
The design on Al’s door comes from an alchemical manuscript called The Marrow of Alchemy by George Ripley (as in, the Ripley Scroll). It depicts the alchemical process:
I haven’t managed to find where the design on Mustang’s gate comes from, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that one was real, too.
One more thing I want to draw attention to is this dialogue between child-Ed and child-Al in ”He Who Would Swallow God.”
Edward: “The Sun is male, representing masculinity.” Alphonse: “The Moon is female, representing femininity.” Edward: “When the Sun and the Moon overlap, then the two genders become one.” Alphonse: “In other words, the union represents a perfect being.”
The Sun and Moon are kind of a big deal in alchemy, and they are associated with maleness and femaleness respectively. Their role in real alchemy is as the metaphorical “parents” of the androgynous Philosopher’s Stone, the perfect being:
The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.
—The Emerald Tablet
Through the “chemical wedding” of the Sun and Moon (sulfur and mercury), the Philosopher’s Stone is produced. I actually didn’t consider that a solar eclipse might be a symbol of the chemical wedding, until Ed and Al explicitly pointed it out in that episode. That’s not what an eclipse traditionally represents in alchemy (that’s the Green Lion swallowing the sun, the nigredo and dark night of the soul that follows the first chemical wedding), but I still think it makes sense.
(An image of the Chemical Wedding itself actually appears on the door to the exam room in the 2003 anime.)
Alchemy in FMA mostly doesn’t resemble real alchemy beyond those references. Real alchemy isn’t equivalent exchange — changing something into something else of equal value — but rather, metamorphosing something into a more improved version of itself. Theoretically, this would be turning “lead” into “gold,” the most base form of metal into the most perfect form of metal (as was believed). But real alchemy isn’t about chemicals, and it never really was. Real alchemy is a spiritual process, meant to transmute the soul from its “base” human state into a “perfect” spiritual state. The way to do this is to separate out the “subtle” from the “gross,” i.e. the higher spiritual self from the mundane and earthly human self, and then joining them back together so that the spiritual self purifies the mundane self. This is summarized by the Latin phrase “solve et coagula,” to dissolve and to congeal, or alternately, to separate and to bring together. FMA parallels this with its two parts of alchemy being deconstruction (solve) and reconstruction (coagula). Therefore, the character whose goals and motivations come the closest to those of real alchemists is… believe it or not… Father.
What Father wants, or at least what he says he wants, is knowledge. He wants all the knowledge in the universe. That’s what most occultists want, actually. Most occultists want to either merge with or become alike to God, although they all have different theories and methods of doing that. In FMA, the Philosopher’s Stone is an alchemical catalyst powered by human souls, but in real life, the Philosopher’s Stone is (long story short) a metaphor for the perfect being that Father wants to become. The real Philosopher’s Stone is a being that is a perfect balance of male and female, sun and moon, dark and light, human and divine. It is therefore whole and complete. As I understand it, a person who has become the Philosopher’s Stone can, theoretically, have the power and knowledge of a god whilst still being able to live on earth as a human.
By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. So was the world created.
—The Emerald Tablet
Father’s “perfect” form is a perverse version of this ideal.
(This form gives me some very confusing emotions.)
“As above, so below” is the Hermetic Principle of Correspondence, the closest thing to a real Law of Equivalent Exchange — it is the idea that the Macrocosm (God, the Universe, Truth) reflects the microcosm (humanity), and that by affecting one, you affect the other. The goal of the alchemist is to become the Philosopher’s Stone, the place where Human and Divine meet and become one thing.
I can’t believe it took me until now to see “As above, so below” represented here. Even the episode’s title makes that obvious! But despite that blatant symbolism, there is no healthy convergence of divine and human here. Many occultists believe in something called “ego death,” which I used to think meant losing one’s individuality, which sounded a lot like being trapped in a homunculus with a torrent of other screaming souls. Only now, after watching this show, do I understand what “ego death” really means. This scene is pure ego on Father’s part:
HEAR ME GOD! I DEMAND YOU ANSWER THE CRY OF MY SOUL! COME TO ME! JOIN ME! YES, I WILL NO LONGER BE BOUND TO YOU OR YOUR CONSEQUENCES! I’LL FORCE YOU DOWN TO THIS EARTH AND INTO MY BOWELS! YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BE ABSORBED!
—”Eye of Heaven, Gateway of Earth.”
This isn’t a genuine attempt to understand God, this is just an inferiority-superiority complex. Father doesn’t care to understand anything about God. All he cares about is himself, and acquiring power for himself. Power is all he’s after, to assuage his inferiority complex. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting power (e.g. Mustang), but godlike power to command the universe is a byproduct of having properly completed the alchemical process and become the Philosopher’s Stone. It is not the end in and of itself. “Ego” isn’t having a sense of self, it’s the inability to understand the spiritual. It’s viewing everything in a mundane lens, having all your motivations be ultimately small and petty, no matter how grand the spectacle. It’s wanting power or glory or whatnot just to make yourself feel better, but not having the self-awareness to actually admit that. The first stage of the alchemical process is nigredo, death — watching your old self die away so that it can be reborn as a better version of itself. Father never understands this, and The Truth says as much.
The Truth is a personification of the Hermetic Principle of Mentalism:
Who am I? One name you might have for me is The World. Or you might call me The Universe. Or perhaps “God.” Or perhaps “The Truth.” I am All, and I am One. So of course, this also means that I am you.
That’s basically it right there. God is All. All is God.
The reason why the Homunculus never grew beyond his days in the flask is because, despite wanting to acquire knowledge, he never actually learned anything. Trying to drag God down to Earth is sheer hubris, not because Earth is too far beneath it, but for the opposite reason — it can come down to Earth whenever it likes. It is everywhere and everything. And the Homunculus never did any of the introspective work needed to find God within himself. He tried to separate out (solve) his perceived “flaws” (the Seven Deadly Sins, i.e. the other homunculi) but did not reintegrate them back into himself (coagula), thus only completing half the alchemical process. He is neither human, nor divine, he only steals Hohenheim’s human shape and Truth’s divine power. He never broadened his thinking or improved himself mentally/spiritually, and thus can’t become alike to God. He never became more than what he is, the dwarf in the flask, and thus his Gate is blank.
Edward, by contrast, loses almost everything in attempting human transmutation (nigredo), and then accepts his own humanity at the gate of Truth (albedo), losing the ability to perform alchemy but becoming a better version of himself (rubedo) — thus, completing the alchemical process. In the end, he’s free, which is all Father wanted to be. He acknowledges that you don’t have to use alchemy or whatnot to become more than you are, because who you are is enough.
Thus, Edward becomes the best version of himself, which is what real alchemists aspired to be. He’s completed the Great Work, and therefore has no need for alchemy anymore. “That is the correct answer, alchemist!”
paul atreides / GODHOOD
sorry for being so alluring and entrancing it’s not my fault
Cassian Andor Appreciation Week Day 1: Song lyrics
“Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in.”
— Anthem, Leonard Cohen
I also want to call attention to this specific part of the lawsuit which I feel get left out of most of the articles and summaries - Black Women at Activision-Blizzard are micromanaged to an absurd degree and are often pushed into doing the work of their white male peers for them, while they spent the extra time off playing video games.
anyone else get embarrassed when their self indulgent daydreams are like too self-indulgent? like oh jeez the telepaths are going to judge me
#ah so when you’re not Catholic you think it’s telepaths lol
Running up that hill by kate bush is a great song. If you havent heard of it definitely check it out I like to listen to it and feel normal
Shogouki
I’m seeing lots of great resources being shared in the past couple days with info about the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the subsequent oppression of the Palestinian people. And precisely because of how valuable a lot of this info is, it seems important to me to point out some of the stuff being shared widely that is NOT true.
I’ve now seen this on both Tumblr and Twitter. It’s not true in the slightest. Israeli oil reserves are 0.005% of Saudi oil reserves and 0.009% of Iraqi oil reserves. There isn’t much oil in Israeli-Palestinian territory.
The fact that the Rothschilds are mentioned here- a very old money Jewish family who are common subjects of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories claiming that they run the world- should be another hint not to trust this.
I do admit that this particular portion made me pause bc of how bafflingly wrong and anti-semitic it was. I should also note that the rest of the post was correct in starting the scope of what is happening in Palestine. But not completely. It’s hard to summarize the conflict but there are great orgs out there that have dedicated themselves to making sure they can get the info out to people interested in hearing it
I’ve compiled some sites for folks interested in learning more and are looking for a one stop shop to read up on the basics:
• Jewish Voice for Peace’s primer with a ton of resources on how to get involved!
• Palestinian Youth Movement also has an excellent primer and is an organization worth getting involved in!
• Breaking the Silence is an org founded by former IDF/IOF soldiers who give testimonies about their experiences and advocate against the occupation and settlement of Palestinian land.
• Electronic Intifada is a news org dedicated to reporting about Palestinian activism both within Palestine and across the world. Helpful if you’d like to keep up to date with stuff.
• Another news org is the Middle East Monitor! They frequently report on Palestine! It’s rare to get unbiased reporting on the conflict so if you are a news junkie like me, throw this into your pool of sites you check out on the regular.
• Visualizing Palestine is a wonderful site that provides info graphics and maps that illustrate the scope of the occupation—seriously you should check it out. Dozens of scholars contributed to its creation.
•B’Tselem is an org that focuses on documenting as many human rights abuses committed by Israel towards Palestinians.
• A Palestinian Human Rights org, Al-Haq, which is based on Ramallah
• Code Pink has been a longtime supporter of Palestinian statehood. They have been involved in numerous anti-war protests which include the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Black orgs like Black For Palestine and Dream Defenders are dedicated to showing support for the Palestinian liberation movement! Black activists and Palestinians have been comrades in the struggle since the conflict began! When Ferguson went down, Palestinians were tweeting out their support and offering tips on how to combat tear gas—because the tear gas used against Ferguson protesters was the same as the ones used on Palestinians. Even the Zapatistas are down for Palestine.
These are just a few orgs that are out there but please know that misinformation is quite common, however it is sometimes intentionally spread by people to undermine and discredit the Palestinian liberation movement. It helps to remember this as you navigate through this info: Palestinians are human too and deserve dignity and safety just as much as anyone else.
Sincerely, ur friendly neighborhood former-SJP member ✊🏽
THE WIND RISES (2013) ☁️
She was beautiful, like the wind.