Cane23

This was a rather bittersweet ending. Are you ever going to resolve this triangle, or will they stay miserable forever? 🤔

This was very popular sitcom in ex yu...even today!😂 Oh, I like the comedy of errors...and irony in painting ignorance of the nobles...

First a dangerous espresso machine, then a giant meatball… this is a whole menu of disasters! 😁

Messina - as in Sicily?! I thought they’d already reached Palestine… so there’s more sailing?

Finn is someone Ian needed more than the fellowship. So, he got the consolation prize… and a man! Not bad - not bad at all! 😁

Daniel believes he is longing for Malik, but what he’s actually longing for is the unrepeatable state that Malik unlocked. The first experience with Malik wasn’t just sex, dominance or chemistry...it was the collapse of Daniel’s old identity and that can only happen once in that form. You can be reborn…but you cannot be reborn into the same birth again! Even if Malik walked into the room in the final scene - the outcome would not be the same. Because Daniel is no longer the man he was - the shock is gone, the unknown is gone and the “firstness” is gone. And firstness is doing enormous work in that original encounter. So instead of revelation, we’d likely get - comparison, and comparison kills transcendence. It would be “a bad sequel to a genius movie” because the original works partly because it was unexpected, total, irreversible - a sequel tries to reproduce the effect consciously. That shift, from experience to intention almost always degrades it. For Daniel, that would mean...instead of being taken - he would be waiting for something to happen and instead of surrender - anticipation and evaluation. So, even Malik could become insufficient...which is terrifying. For sure, sex would be intense, meaningful...even destabilizing again, but it would not be identity-breaking in the same way - it would be a different experience. Daniel’s tragedy is that he doesn’t want a different experience - he wants that exact one! What Daniel, actually, misunderstands - he thinks Malik is source of the feeling. But the story shows the feeling came from a specific alignment of conditions as vulnerability, surprise, being seen, surrender, timing, psychological readiness...Malik was the catalyst, not the entire equation. Daniel is now chasing Malik through other bodies and... fails. He's imagining Malik which is... partial relief, but if he finds Malik again that would be most likely be new kind of failure! So, he is trapped in an impossible loop - what he wants cannot be recreated, but he doesn’t yet understand that What fulfilled Daniel most in the chapter was not sex, domination or intensity, but unconscious, unperformed closeness with Alec, which is the opposite of what he’s chasing at the end. Therefore, the deeper truth might be - Malik opened the door, but Malik is not the destination!

Another ginger... Mr & Mr Smith...great!

Calm before the storm...Call me Natasha - Natasha Storm! 😁

Each of them went to confront the witch without a thought-out plan - basically walking in just to get captured. What was the point? Tyler, Taine, and Charlie...an unholy trinity whose greatest enemies are themselves. So much wasted intelligence… okay, and some muscle too! 😁

Lloyd’s a pleasant surprise. Based on his earlier descriptions, I thought of him as a weak link - someone Ser Val took pity on, good only for domestic jobs. It seems there are many more talents hidden in that boy.

There was a TV show on Christmas - At Tea with Judi Dench, where her guest was Kenneth Branagh. At one point, he offered a beautiful insight: “When we’re lacking words, there’s always poetry to help.” I’d add a few philosophers to that thought as well… so here’s Nietzsche again, for my friends: “Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.”

Combined with guilt over Charlie, it looks like Taine wasn’t only running toward Tyler-he was also running away from Charlie. If only that could solve the mess of the shared bedroom and switched bodies! 🤪

Tactics as old as time - how to defeat your enemy? Dehumanize them. After all, killing rats is not the same as killing men. Rats are pests; they’re disposable, they’re seen as disgusting. Killing humans, even those labeled as infidels, always brings some moral dilemma.

Is this what you're looking for? https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.tarheelwriter.com/offline-stories/CarrotsandCeleryPart1.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj2y-2Ct8CTAxXlHhAIHYMSFI4QFnoECB4QAQ&usg=AOvVaw1-5QYGHECVqm-BPHlPhred

Radoslav is a Slavic name, but this part of the Balkans was Eastern Orthodox, not among the nations that participated in the Crusades - especially after the barbarian conquest of Constantinople by the Venetians during their journey to the Holy Land in 1204. Nevertheless, some northern Slavic tribes, such as those in Bohemia (modern-day Czechia), might have participated.

You're not going to make it easy for them, are you? Demons and witches are nothing compared to emotions… and they have eternity to dramatize over it.

That will be interesting to find out because, yes, Charlie was cruel on the train, but he seemed genuinely intrigued by the hemiplegic philosophy professor. Could it be possible that he saw something hidden inside the broken body, the same way Tyler saw something in Charlie’s body?

Oh, c'mon... 🤣😂🤣

Ah… those VCR and VHS days - where to hide them, how to exchange them… Teenagers today have so many choices… ‘It’s not the ’90s.’ Hehehe, good to see there’s still a ‘vintage’ video category!

Btw, @Seraph28 - I wanted to oppose your line in the comment on the previous chapter - ‘Daniel Baumont has undergone a complete metamorphosis’ - but this chapter gave the answer. He has only just started; nothing is ‘complete.’ His integration is going to be a hell of a ride, as it always is with @CasualWanderer82's characters. 😉

I’m still Jungian at heart… just following the sources @CasualWanderer82 leads us through.

Well, his philosophy is like a buffet - you don’t have to take every dish. Nevertheless, I liked the wordplay! 😁

Yes, this quote is famous worldwide. While reading the new chapter of the @CasualWanderer82's story, it made me want to revisit Friedrich Nietzsche a bit… so I found another quote that might suit this story as well: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

Oh, I understand the bureaucracy thing very, very well! We have counter clerks in our public institutions who are very efficient as gatekeepers. They behave like rulers of the universe. You wait more than an hour in a queue just to be told that one paper is missing… or that she is on a lunch break… or that for that particular request you have to go to her colleague, where the queue is twice as long as the one you were waiting in…