Jump to content

Ashley's Lounge


Ashley

Recommended Posts

(edited)

So wolves weren't spawning and we thought we "fixed" it and instead they were zergging us every minute with wolves that were essentially immune to bullets. They had more hp than large grid heavy armor. Just ping ping ping goes the rifle rounds.

 

https://ashleybear.home.blog/2022/10/10/three-sister-prospectors-s4-e4/

Edited by Ashley
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 1.7k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

[Joy] In the first attempt at shadow work, we didn't find anything obvious. The underlying aspect was unchanged. It seems clear it's pervasive in its rooting.

 

Knowing it can't be isolated and treating it as an intrusive thought isn't reducing its potency, so we are temporarily at a loss.

 

The feeling is as Bear described, exhilarating and powerful but also detestable and sickly. Unnecessary. I can feel powerful and exhilarated without such a handicap.

 

Now I appreciate the thoughts for story writing, it's the spark of death to go along with the spark of life in a good story. To completely eliminate it would be potentially detrimental in that way. To lose the perspective would be a weakness. Letting it loose would be an equal weakness. For me this is more of a struggle than I anticipated and that's exhilarating. 

 

[SheShe] Absolutely exhilarating. Finally some excitement. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Hello,

 

For the last week any time we would have checked here instead we practiced introspection on the issue previously discussed. Interestingly there was not one single incident whereas it was happening on a daily basis. Thereby it seems to be an on-line phenomenon. Since we haven't been fully off-line in quite a while we didn't anticipate this was the trigger.

 

Another interesting note, both Misha and I discussed the situation heavily with Bear and thereby were the dominant members of the system nearly completely excluding Ashley who didn't feel any interest in contributing to this discussion, though she's clearly not part of the problem.

 

Bear has thus been informed and agrees with the following:

 

1. Optimism buids its own future. In essence fostering a good attitude will manifest good.

 

2. Exemplify good instead of predicting the supposed obvious and inevitable. Hope is not fear, pessimism is fear, and fear is to be avoided since it contributes nothing.

 

3. The negative side is not in itself the issue, a devil's advocate is a powerful ally; however, negative should not be fostered as a source of entertainment or power. 

 

In essence, thinking negatively about negative things that may happen or negative constraints is counterproductive and leads to more negative thoughts.

 

Though some topics are next to impossible to think of in any other way, adapting rather than complaining or lamenting is vastly more useful.

 

This exercise had no effect on anything else we are working on.

 

Thank you and have a great day!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

SheShe-ism

 

"You are who you believe you are. The hard part is believing you are who you want to be."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just thinking about my dear Joy.

 

In her canon she's pretty god-like by now with all her skills, so I thought of drawing her with a floating light crown over her head, but as a queen she's a dark queen,  chaotic neutral, not evil, not lawless but she'd never consider letting laws get in her way as far as she could help it. 

 

You could say that dogmatic adherence to law is what kept her from a normal life and believe it or not, that's all she wanted. Not that she liked attention or needed recognition for her Olympic gold metals, and not that she wanted a 9-5 desk job but she would have liked to be a counselor or psychiatrist or something where she had hope of helping others through reasoning. 

 

Instead she was hunted by government agents to disect her in an attempt to perfect her genetic agelessness. Which was probably impossible anyway but she knew she would eventually age only it was extremely dilated. 

 

She knows now that one of her old buddies, the only one who has has more written about her than Joy herself, did age, it took hundreds of years to go from looking like 10 to looking like 20 but she did eventually get there. Joy couldn't fathom doing all that, all of what her friend went through seemed insurmountably tedious.

 

She was used to seeing everyone she loved die around her but not through sheer old age, she couldn't bear that again. She always figured she'd die young, so the cruelest fate of all would be near immortal life. But even depressed she had a strong will to live and she enjoyed evading her hunters; unfortunately, when you become god-like, a legend, they stop coming for you. 

 

[Joy] that's the worst lonliness of all, knowing that no one is like you and no one is thinking about you.

 

But she was wrong, she didn't know her friends were still alive, in fact she knew they were dead legitimately. She had confirmed it--don't trust death unless you possess the body. None of her most recent group were dead but she didn't know that.

 

So there she was, alone, alive, survivor's guilt, suicidally depressed without any ability to let go of life, not sure she could even be killed outright. Spoiler: she likely couldn't die other than by complete disintegration, desiccation, or old age and even that was artificial. Technically she was ageless but through sheer will she could age very very slowly. (Basically subconscious magic or something.) Speaking of magic, as an adult, she'd grow into her magic given proper training, but there was no one alive (yet) who could do that. The keys were destroyed, the books burned, the practitioners were all dead or enfeebled. Even the rights and rituals that were painstakingly passed down lost any realness to them over the years.

 

Who wouldn't turn to the dark side then hm? Altruism wasn't one of her traits. It is now but she had to choose that.

 

So I'd draw a god-like, chaotic, 10-yr old girl, scheming to wrought chaos.

 

If I am the lord of chaos, she is the queen of chaos, at least her character was.

 

Maybe some day.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[Joy-SheShe] Well well, it seems the big guy can't help himself. There's no lecture this time, I don't even know where to start with further shadow work.

 

[Joy] SheShe and I discussed it and it's not even the nature of the thoughts that are necessarily bad, they're well meaning. But given we disallowed them and he did it anyway means he's kind of a bad boy. So a week's time out was in order. Still it leaves us with knowing that it's definitely a Bear thing and not systemic. So where does it come from? Well it's seemingly benign and in that case it's just his concerns.

 

It's hard to discuss without technically breaking the same rules, haha.

 

[SheShe] It's fun to think about what to do with him.  

 

[Joy-SheShe] Still there remains he's a downer with that aspect.

 

[Joy] lastly I appreciate the audience even if no one reads or responds to this. Something about airing this publicly gives it a light that can't be shed in private. 

 

[SheShe] even if it's so esoteric no one can follow. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So today we discussed what to do with Bear. It appears the aspect is part of him and has evolved rather than appeared. We contemplated if it's something that needs periodic release; however, we allowed full freedom to that aspect for a year and it only grew in strength. So we figured we could try negative reinforcement to suppress it. Ashley likened it to a wart, but I don't find it repulsive as Bear does.

 

[Ashley] frankly I don't either but Bear does. 

 

It's not constructive nor helpful though, so I won't argue to keep it. Therefore we agreed to continue the current treatment.

 

The goal is to restore Bear's good side and suppress the gloomy emo side. Though if I may speak frankly, I like both.

 

Bear's not perfect, no one is, and to love someone you need to accept them for everything they are, good, bad and warty.

 


 

Afterwards we discussed my proposal to put Bear in semi-permanent tulpa position where Ashley and I could handle front, but I was reminded by Ashley that Bear is the shield from the body's nature. Set aside the bathroom and hygiene duties, in that regard the body tends to turn the fronter masculine which Ashley coined as "Testosterone poisoning." So she declined the offer and talked me out of it.

 

[Ashley] I noped her hard.    

Edited by Joy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” ~Anna Quindlen

 

"In a quest for perfection, you can't cure normal." - Joy

 

It sounds quite defeatist but even Captain Ahab had to acquiesce at some point or die trying and we know how that ended up.

 

The quest for perfection is paradoxically both futile and important. Never stop improving but not at the expense of who you're comfortable being. So the real question is, are you comfortable being a wet blanket or downer even if it comes from good intentions? 

 

On the flip side, the term toxic positivity comes to mind, this is opposed by doom and gloom phophesizing. So where is the happy and constructive medium? Well we found a term for that: "tragic optimism".

 

Where toxic positivity is the belief that no matter how obviously dire the circumstances there is always a positive outlook, tragic optimism is "the search for meaning during the inevitable tragedies of human existence, and is better for us than avoiding darkness and trying to 'stay positive'".

 

It is argued that toxic positivity is a denial of reality and misses out on the potential growth afforded by dealing with the pain and overcoming it.

 

Of course we know it's not always easy to face pain head on, and overcoming it is indeed a powerful way of future proofing yourself against further pain, but it's also potentially dangerous. So there's a caveat to this, don't drown yourself in the pain either.

 

We don't agree with the sentiment "life is suffering", instead we'll say, "life is overcoming suffering". Overcoming, perserving, triumphing over, limiting suffering, etc.

 

So here we are, at a better place than we were yesterday and that's a good thing. Bear is no longer in time out but we stilk have to digest the new system edict "modified tragic optimism" to both be mindful of the inevitable tragedies in life but not get too deep either. 

 

Was Bear getting too deep? No. But he was in the wet blanket category. In case you didn't notice, we are labeling the negative aspect as part of Bear's nature, and that's an important admission for him and us. You could say we all have a shadow, for light doesn't exist without shadows.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...