#lotus-eater

[hexusproductions]

Got an even BETTER idea for the arranged marriage AU prompts and y'all are either gonna hate it or love it

[wordisdrawn]

lotus-eater [LOH-tuh s-ee-ter] noun; a person who leads a life of dreamy, indolent ease, indifferent to the busy world; daydreamer.

[journeyintowriting]

Word of the Day: Lotus-Eater

Lotus-Eater (loh-tuh s-ee-ter)

Noun

1. a person who leads a life of dreamy, indolent ease, indifferent to the busy world; daydreamer

2. Classical Mythology. a member of a people whom Odysseus found existing in a state of languorous forgetfulness induced by their eating of the fruit of the legendary lotus; one of the lotophagi

[hexusproductions]

Enemies

Summary: One of Lotus-Eater’s encounters with one of his worst nemeses, Black Hawk. Author’s Note: I wanted to write something for Heroic AU Jackdaw (or in this case not so heroic). This was meant to be quick but it took me an hour wtf

Something was broken. Something was definitely broken.

The woman he was meant to be protecting was bleeding out. Tears were running down her face and she looked like she was barely holding it together.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Lotus started to pull himself to his feet. He’d made it barely two steps towards her when a hand gripped him around the throat, throwing him against the brick wall. Lotus yelped before falling to his knees, and that same hand tangled in his hair and wrenched painfully, yanking him down to the ground.

“You make me sick.”

Lotus tensed at the feeling of the hunting knife digging between his shoulder blades, gritting his teeth. Black Hawk leaned down, applying more pressure to Lotus’s head and driving it into the gravel, spitting venom despite the wild grin on his face.

“False heroes. You’re only in it for yourselves.” He removed his hands for a second only to drive his boot down on Lotus’s skull, grinding down. Lotus’s fists clenched as he suppressed a whimper.

“Demanding a fucking spotlight.”

Black Hawk’s eyes flashed as he shifted his weight.

“Let’s see how good you look crushed against the pavement.” He said as the foot on Lotus’s head began to glow with a faint light. Lotus’s eyes widened before he struck out his arms behind him, lilac strings lashing out and managing to loop around Hawk’s other leg. Wrenching his arms forward Black Hawk shouted as he toppled backwards, hitting the ground hard. Lotus scrambled to his feet as fast as he could as Hawk’s foot extinguished uselessly. Lotus limped over to the woman and helped her to her feet, slinging her arm around his shoulders as Black Hawk pulled himself to his feet.

“Fake, fake, fake!” Hawk spat, and he picked up his knife and jabbed it in the woman’s direction as he snarled, “Good people die because you save pieces of shit like this!”

“Good people die because you kill them.” Lotus snapped. Black Hawk growled and started forward but Lotus’s hand snapped out again, snatching the knife from his hand and into the hero’s. It only made Hawk hesitate for a second before he was moving forward again, and Lotus backed away slowly, throwing the knife away. He glanced around quickly before gently removing the woman’s arm and setting her carefully against the wall, expression softening for a moment in a silent promise before it hardened again as he turned back to Black Hawk. Hawk’s feet glowed again and then he was launching forward, crashing into Lotus and bringing him down. Lotus cried out in pain but as soon as he hit the ground his legs locked around Hawk’s waist, flipping the two of them over. Summoning the strings again he pinned Hawk’s wrists with one hand while the other handful of strings latched around Hawk’s neck. Black Hawk snarled again and struggled but Lotus kept pulling, cutting off the villain’s oxygen. He clenched his jaw again as pain repeatedly shot through his leg, but still he didn’t stop, unable to be pushed off. It seemed like forever before Hawk stopped moving. Lotus checked his pulse before dissolving the strings, almost falling off of Hawk when he went to stand.

The woman was looking at him with wide-eyed fear and concern, much more of the latter, when he limped back to her and pulled her arm around his shoulders again.

“Come on, we need to get you to a hospital.”

[hexusproductions]

Lotus-Eater and Gabriel

A short Heroic AU fic

“Why do you keep following me?!”

Lotus lifted his head and smiled, despite the taste of blood in his mouth.

“Because you’re cute?” He suggested. Gabriel glared from where he stood in front of the hero. Lotus lost the smile and instead tried tugging against the restraints around his wrists.

“I know I’ve been trouble, but how about you untie me and we can talk, hmm? I can explain everything.”

Gabriel scowled and stepped forward, grabbing the collar of Lotus’s shirt and shoving him against the wall.

“Why are you following me.” He repeated. Lotus grimaced before his charming air faded to something more serious, locking eyes with Gabriel.

“Because you’re better than this.” Lotus told him, “Do you honestly think that crime pays off? You’re going to end up in jail. Let me help you, Gabriel.” Gabriel’s grip tightened on Lotus’s shirt.

“I don’t want your help.” He growled.

“There’s something good in you, honey. I know there is.” Lotus said firmly. Gabriel shoved him against the wall again before releasing him.

“Don’t call me honey.” He leant around and untied the rope around Lotus’s wrists before gripping the back of the hero’s neck and yanking him to his feet, “If I catch you coming after me again I promise I won’t be as nice.” He all but threw Lotus towards the window. Lotus stumbled and looked back over his shoulder, lips pulled into a frown as he then picked his coat up from the floor.

“I’m right.” He affirmed, “And you know it.”

“Go.” Gabriel ordered. Lotus shook his head but nonetheless went to the window and climbed through it. Gabriel barely waited for his fingers to leave the windowsill before pulling the window closed after him.

[jaggedbee]

Lately, I’ve felt like I’m wrapped in a cloud—my soul seems distant, leaving behind only an empty shell of flesh. It’s not an unpleasant feeling, just one that leaves me uncertain of what to do with the space it creates. Making more wind chimes shall suffice.

[domjordanillustration]

The Lotus-eater Machine

From “Funlosophy”, a series of articles for a newsletter.

Sitting around in lockdown, staring at the same ten walls (or however many interior walls your house has), escapism can be a very appealing pursuit. There are many forms of escapism, but here we’ll be looking at a theoretical, sitting-in-one-place, ultimate method of escaping the humdrum or suffering of life in this world.

In the Homeric epic the Odyssey, Odysseus and his intrepid chums stumble across a land populated by the ‘lotus-eaters’. These guys do nothing more than sitting around eating from the Lotus plants that grow there, which puts them in a continual blissful state where the problems and cares of the world melt away into total insignificance. Odysseus was a stick-in-the-mud and stopped his men from partaking in the local culture, whisking them away to the next land, where they would be eaten by a cyclops.

Imbibing narcotics as a form of escapism is clearly something people have been enjoying for thousands of years, but the idea of ‘lotus-eating’ has been applied to philosophical discussion: to what extent would people choose to escape real life?

Robert Nozick put forward the idea of a lotus-eater machine, which he termed the ‘Experience machine’, a device that people could plug into that would simulate a perfect and happy existence. He was using the thought experiment to refute the philosophical concept of hedonism, especially in classical utilitarianism, but we’re going to focus on the aspect of escapism. The concept didn’t originate with Nozick, of course; the idea of an experience machine that simulates a better existence to real life has been the topic of science fiction at least as far back as the 1920s, and the conclusions drawn are often reflective of society at the time.

The main thrust of the thought experiment is, would you choose to plug in?

Our lotus-eater machine will perfectly simulate a blissful and wonderful life, with enough realism that you won’t be aware of its artificiality while you’re plugged in. Life will be exactly what you want it to be – the lotus-eater machine will be programmed to precisely your desires, and you will be ‘pulled out’ at ten-year intervals to check you’re still happy with the program. Each time you are plugged back in, you will have no memory of these checks, or indeed the outside world at all. The simulated life will be a perfect and fulfilling existence, free from regret or real-world-homesickness at least while you’re plugged in. You won’t see your friends or family, or interact with anything that actually exists, but the facsimiles in the simulation will be completely believable, quite possibly improved.

So, by indulging our escapism, exchanging the harsh realities of life for an ideal existence, are we losing anything? The world within is simulated, but as real to our minds as the actual world. Since the only thing we can be sure of in this life is our own experience, would this life actually be any less ‘real’, despite its artificial beginnings?

Consider whether you would choose to plug in. Would your choice be different if you were aware it was a simulation, and that the real world waited outside? If you object to the idea of living in a false reality, can you pinpoint what exactly you would be missing? If it’s “real interactions” or “real struggle and achievements”, are you sure this would matter if your mind was convinced all experiences in the machine were real?

Finally, imagine if, as you were reading this, you were suddenly woken, to find yourself sat in a machine, a technician standing before you. They explain that you have spent the past X years in their simulation machine, presenting a better world than the real one. They give you the option of leaving and heading into a world that would presumably be far less pleasant than the one you’ve been experiencing, the one you thought was the ‘real one’. Or, the technician says, you can plug back in, and continue to enjoy the life of the lotus-eater. What would you do?

[instantglittergiver-blog]

#wordoftheday