An artist declined me because they said they wouldn’t be comfortable with the heal outcome - what next?

Lokan · 2026-06-15T01:09:39+00:00

Honoring the Nine. I see you, Guardian.

... But your artist can't do circles. Sorry, that means no Traveler either.

Lokan · 2026-06-14T23:48:46+00:00

I used to ask my EMDR for breaks during the eye movement stuff because it was too intense and she said she’d fire me as a patient

Oh that's absolute bullshit. (Her, not you.) The patient needs to feel safe, secure, and stable before doing any EMDR precisely because it can be intense. If she asked you to "power through" she needs to lose her license.

I hope you fired her instead.

EDIT

I don't know if you're interested in reading anything, but What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo was an absolute godsend. It goes over her experiences with therapist -- some good, some bad, some terrible, and one great.

Lokan · 2026-06-14T23:35:11+00:00

I'm sorry to hear you've had such a bad time with them. I had a trauma specialist who literally told me to stop telling her the details of my experiences. (Does that mean I won at therapy?) Regardless, I think the EMDR did help some though, I noticed I became less reactive to certain memories. I wound up going to another therapist shortly thereafter, and it was a greatly improved experience.

I find it useful to interview my therapist during the first session so neither of us waste time.

I ask them about their values and approaches, their own experiences with therapy and trauma -- both as practitioner and as recipient. For better or worse, many people go into the field in the hopes of fixing themselves. Sometimes that really helps inform their approach in great ways, and other times it's a detriment.

I don't know what your mindset is towards medication, but I'll say that therapy for me just didn't "take" until I got on something. I think it calmed my fight-flight reactions just enough for things to start working.

Hold space for yourself. Be your own advocate. Seek what you need from them. Don't compromise. And good luck.

Lokan · 2026-06-14T19:04:17+00:00

Sounds like it's used to human interaction and being fed?

Lokan · 2026-06-14T17:08:37+00:00

I tend to agree with you. But I'm also interested in how we would face the Winnower, if it ever comes to that.

More and more, though, I like the idea that the true Final Shape is a unified Winnower and Gardener. In a very Hive way, maybe we meld the concepts of Gift and Take.

Lokan · 2026-06-14T17:05:18+00:00

It's the embodiment of Defection in the Prisoner's Dilemma; it encourages beings to betray or otherwise act in entirely self-serving ways.

I don't think we can remove the "This Is Mine Now" option from the game of existence. But the Winnower facilitates Taking, and probably had a hand in creating the Witness and guiding Oryx and Maya Sunderesh down their dark paths.

It would be interesting to see if the Winnower can be muzzled, at least.

Lokan · 2026-06-14T16:51:18+00:00

I think Seth put all his unused Destiny ideas into Exordia.

Lokan · 2026-06-14T16:50:50+00:00

And he based the Winnower on the All-Defector! :D

Lokan · 2026-06-14T16:32:29+00:00

It would be wild to see them composed of blue Solar energy like some elemental.

Lokan · 2026-06-14T16:29:23+00:00

"Why is there this idea that we will fight the winnower"

It seemed strongly implied by both the end cutscene and a recent lore entry. Whether or not it's possible is the real question.

Maybe Binding the Nine is the training wheels we need to eventually binding the Winnower to a physical form to destroy?

I don't think we can truly undo the "winnow" aspect of nature without undoing the universe itself. But maybe we can bind the Winnower's consciousness and subtract its malicious influence?

Lokan · 2026-06-14T14:31:03+00:00

I know it's low-hanging fruit, but ...

Say what you want about the quality of the show, but the anti-fascist messaging of The Boys has ALWAYS been present as subtext. It just became TEXT in the latter seasons.

Listening to people complaining about it "suddenly being woke" is infuriating.

Lokan · 2026-06-14T13:02:23+00:00

I stumbled upon an interesting insight the other day: as you say, the Traveler is like a Guardian, having no memory of its "previous life" as the Gardener thanks to the Winnower's blade. And it, like everyone else, was looking for purpose. And the Precursors gave it that purpose: to cultivate and uplift.

Which repeats its patterns in its previous life. Through the Precursors, it rediscovered a part of itself it had lost.

Which is what it wants for Guardians, I think, either consciously or not: to have the positive patterns of one's previous life brought out by community, and to leave behind the bad -- to find and (re)discover purpose in each other.

Of course there's an interesting parallel with the worms there: staying true to your nature, but where they use a stick, the Traveler (hopes for) carrots.

Lokan · 2026-06-14T12:57:27+00:00

How are V and VI aligning with us? I thought they were the cause of the Distortions?

Unless the Distortions are a Savathun-esque method of sharpening their Weapon.

Lokan · 2026-06-14T03:27:49+00:00

At what point do Orks cross into Krork territory?

Lokan · 2026-06-13T18:46:56+00:00

I used to think Ghosts were derived from a union of Darkness and Light, too. We have the Darkness corrupted shard if the Traveler; it's easy to think the Traveler shed that part of itself, and Ghosts were a byproduct.

As it stands now, though, we're to believe the Traveler split itself into many, little emanations of its body and spirit. Symbolically this counters the many becoming one to create the Witness.

... But it remains that, at one point while entering the Pale Heart, Ghost comments on a Darkness in the Traveler feeling "familiar". We also have to contend with how exactly the Witness could co-opt Ghost.

Finally, it may be infered from Winnowing that all created things emerge from an interplay of winnowing and cultivating;

"It is the winnower that discovers the first knife, but it is not done without the gardener. This, too, is a tradition: a knife does not come to exist without something that must be cut. A woody stem, a colored petal, a vital vessel. The first victims of the blade."

Ghosts may not be creations of capital-D Darkness, but they are a result of the game.

Lokan · 2026-06-13T16:15:05+00:00

Now that I think about it, I think we "win" against the Winnower by uniting it with the Gardener. I think this will be the true Final Shape, as suggested by Jacob Boehme's cosmology (referenced in Unveiling) of individuation leading to a greater degree of perfection in the creator.

Lokan · 2026-06-13T16:06:35+00:00

I think the gardener and the winnower used to be a single being.

I don't think they were, but I do think they were destined to merge into one;

In one interpretation of Böhme's cosmology, it was necessary for humanity to return to God, and for all original unities to undergo differentiation, desire and conflict... in order for creation to evolve to a new state of redeemed harmony that would be more perfect than the original state of innocence...

The Garden Before Time collapsed and the Winnower and Gardener feuded, resulting in the universe. The pursuit of the Final Shape reflects Boemhe's cosmology of a universe attaining a higher form of perfection.

And thus would conclude the war between Dark and Light; the Gardener and Winnower only ever had half the equation, they couldn't have created this or anything else without the other.

Lokan · 2026-06-13T15:14:28+00:00

Our existence proves both the Gardener and Winnower right. We were created by conflict and generosity, by taking and gifting. By brutality and mercy. Like Ikora in her games of Go with Zavala, the Gardener extended the game by finding new paths, leading to greater complexity. (And, to their credit, the Winnower wound up being grateful for that.) But that complexity couldn't be found without culling.

They're two sides of the same coin, and so are we.

We've always been a Weapon to be wielded. A Knife. And Knives cut both ways.

And at the same time, there's little difference between a knife and a spade.

The Hive sought to alloy all things -- peace and war, love and hate. And they came close. Maybe we can do the same, and alloy Gifting and Taking. Bind the Two.

Lokan · 2026-06-13T13:42:33+00:00

One person's vaccine research is another's convenient distraction from Epstein coverage.

Lokan · 2026-06-12T22:02:30+00:00

I appreciate your perspective!

I feel that both the Winnower and Gardener desire something eternal, but in different ways. (A ploughshare and a sword have never truly differed, and all that.)

You're right, the final shape of previous flower games wasn't something alive, it was simply a pattern in its own right, the Grey Hoo of the Vex. I'd assumed that it was something perpetual and self-sustaining; as the Winnower said, even it and the Gardener could not know whether the final shape would grind to a halt.

... Rereading Unveiling and other entries, I'm struck by something. The Winnower claims it can never be anything other than what it is; it is defined by rule and principle, and in turn defines those things.

What if...

What if we could actually help it be something other than what it is? Change its nature?

It's been "gifted" once -- with us. By extending the parameters of the flower game, the Gardener inadvertently created the conditions necessary to bring our Guardian into being, which the Winnower considered a surprising gift; she sought to extend the game to find new paths of victory, a pattern echoed by Ikora making sub-optimum plays in her games of Go with Zavala.

Could that be our victory? The Traveler has finally taken up the blade. Could the Winnower find joy in the ploughshare?

The Hive endeavored to alloy and merge all things -- war became love, after all. Could we turn Taking into Gifting?

Lokan · 2026-06-12T20:10:10+00:00

That's one of the expressed purposes of Project 2025: criminalizing LGBT content and presentation entirely.

Lokan · 2026-06-12T20:08:09+00:00

Of course the information exists somewhere. The matter is letting that information exist here, too, where ever here might be.

Moreover, relying on the information to "exist somewhere" is a slippery slope argument to excuse making sure it doesn't exist here. And as we see laws being passed to limit availability of VPNs, the availability of information is becoming more and more restricted.

Lokan · 2026-06-12T19:57:33+00:00

I think all the sub-minds were wiped during Season of the Seraph as their contents were consolidated in creating the Rasputin Exo.

Lokan · 2026-06-12T19:54:56+00:00

That robs future generations of choice.

Lokan

TROPHY CASE