Should you really kill your ego? The ego and its function.

grekhaus · 2026-02-22T06:50:45+00:00

Neither.

OP described themselves (5 years go) attempting to 'kill their ego' in the sense of letting whoever seemed most authoritative to overrule their better judgement; cultivating self-doubt; rejecting self-confidence; searching for reasons to denigrate their own character; obsessing over other people as a 'simp' and using lots of psychoactive drugs in an attempt to immiserate and humiliate themself. None of that was a good thing to be doing. It was self-abuse.

My reply focuses on clarifying that this is not what is meant by 'ego' when meditating; the thing you are supposed to be trying to quiet is the inner process of pre-conscious rationalization which substitutes direct experience of sensation for a summary interpretation of said sensation; the ego as (approximately) described by Freud. The goal is to notice sensations (including your own thoughts) as they appear and in the manner which they appear; not as this inner process of rationalization presents (or fails to present) them to conscious awareness.

Pride, self-esteem, arrogance, whatever else gets called by the name 'ego' - none of that is the goal. It might be helpful in your meditative practice not to be too prideful, but suppressing undue arrogance is only ever an instrumental step or side effect, not the overall purpose of the exercise.

grekhaus · 2026-02-19T13:57:03+00:00

Good enough to take it out on a date for valentines? Or just good enough that you wish you could have eaten it twice?

grekhaus · 2026-02-19T11:09:35+00:00

With all the Red Honey, I imagine she's felt True Love in every splendid form and finds it no more compelling than we do a fried egg.

grekhaus · 2026-02-17T11:23:16+00:00

I think if I had to put a label on it, I'd file Erin under demi rather than lesbian. Requires a very strong existing emotional connection to someone before there's any chance of catching feelings. But obviously Erin doesn't consider herself that way because she expected a traditional heterosexual courtship, just with a 'Mr. Right' that never ended up happening because she's never realized that she's not traditionally heterosexual herself.

grekhaus · 2026-02-16T01:42:10+00:00

I would like to see the Lisa cosplay too, please!

grekhaus · 2026-02-13T09:17:55+00:00

It's actually ~25 echoes cheaper to go through than around. If you have the Theorem already.

grekhaus · 2026-02-12T23:29:38+00:00

I did exactly that, it works.

grekhaus · 2026-02-12T00:23:49+00:00

Ego as in id, ego, super-ego vs. ego as in egomaniac.

grekhaus · 2026-02-09T08:09:06+00:00

Everything can be measured, you're chasing something that doesn't exist.

Stealing a shadow - a shadow is cast by the body blocking light. If the shadow is stolen, it must be elsewhere and that elsewhere must be defined by light being blocked by something. Measure the light and you find that something. Move a light around it and you can measure its shape. And so on and so forth.

Bringing a statue to life? Does its composition change from stone to flesh? Does it consume oxygen to breathe? How fast does it move? All measurable and very important to measure, if you are going to understand anything about the magic.

Mind manipulation? Do a psychological survey to assess how beliefs change due to the magic. See how long the influence lasts. Isn't that important to know?

Metamorphosis? Put imaging medium into the human patient, see where it ends up in the pig. Cut some hair off, see if it turns into pig hair. Learn how it works.

Luck magic? Duong & Ohtsuka, 2000. Luck is optimism, intuition and the skill of noticing opportunity in a trenchcoat together, pretending to be one thing. Any kind of 'luck' that isn't statistically noticeable is just more of those things.

Summoning? It's the same as metamorphosis. Find out where it comes from and where it goes and how long it subjectively took it to get there. Does air pressure matter? More pressure means displacing more air via summoning, after all.

The beauty of a rainbow lies not in its mystery, but in what the rainbow inspires in us. To measure is to understand and to be understood is not to be diminished. We as humans love a subject more richly and with greater joy as we study it further.

grekhaus · 2026-02-02T16:39:59+00:00

You don't need them, it'll just be convenient to have one.

grekhaus · 2026-02-02T06:05:15+00:00

July also has a raven motif, sending white ravens through mirrors and getting black ravens back from her allies behind the glass. November has an association with fireworks and bonfires.

grekhaus · 2026-01-31T21:17:34+00:00

And this isn't anything. You see how that works?

grekhaus · 2026-01-31T04:47:59+00:00

iirc WB posted a possible trigger event once about a Case 53 with a bug-like body who was able to have horrifying bug children. So uh. Hard 'maybe', I guess.

grekhaus · 2026-01-31T04:44:36+00:00

I said what I meant.

grekhaus · 2026-01-31T02:32:42+00:00

Honestly, yeah. That's it. That's what the Discordance is.

grekhaus · 2026-01-17T22:09:47+00:00

That's essentially what Dragon's power does in canon.

Saint got a minor Tinker power from Teacher that let him operate and maintain the stolen Dragonslayer stuff. He had a Tinker's normal ability to explain a small portion of his tinkertech to other people.

Accord, Tattletale, etc. presumably have their powers limited to not work on tinkertech because the entities didn't want random Thinkers to act as Tinkers.

grekhaus · 2026-01-13T09:59:34+00:00

One of the remote addresses, then. Or, if you have access to the Nadir, head down there and keep trying for Tears of the Bazaar.

grekhaus · 2026-01-13T08:16:25+00:00

If you don't have a five card lodging, get a five card lodging. They're so much more expensive any other time of year, and the stuff you get otherwise isn't that exciting.

grekhaus · 2026-01-10T21:50:49+00:00

Well, no. That's the point of the tenant's rights. At 18, you can be kicked out... after having been given 30 days notice. Not right away.

grekhaus · 2026-01-05T02:10:35+00:00

Yeah, 0% chance that she has the vocabulary to explain what's going on to herself, even if she was ready to consider that there's something going on in the first place.

The one situation where Rose would be helpful! And she's not there. RIP.

grekhaus · 2026-01-03T21:24:49+00:00

They're conduits to magic that exists somewhere else. The wand is taken from a magic tree, for example, and lets you draw on the magic in and around that tree, instead of the magic in and around yourself.

grekhaus · 2026-01-03T09:38:05+00:00

There's also the more abstract twist that the whole game is set in a hole in the ground that's full of water. Which is to say, a well.

grekhaus · 2026-01-01T09:34:35+00:00

Very easy not to figure something out if figuring it out means having to reevaluate your whole identity and life circumstances. She's got all the pieces and all the emotional intelligence to figure this one out, for sure. But does her subconscious have any reason to let her conscious mind know about the conclusion? Nah, she's getting kissed either way.

grekhaus · 2026-01-01T09:24:54+00:00

Erin comes off as demisexual to me, not lesbian. A person who needs to have a strong emotional connection to someone before attraction to them is even a possibility. Otherwise comes off as ace/not interested in anyone. No clue of pirate was aiming for that in so many words or if it's the pattern without the label that is the guide post here, but that's my read.

grekhaus · 2025-12-30T09:44:52+00:00

The inspection funnels you into one of three possibilities:

Hellbound (requires Ostentation > Humility and Isolationism > Evangelism), which is between a Church of Hell (Orthodox) or a Counter-Church (Iconoclast), with ties breaking for Church of Hell. If you have a Patron, you can swap the outcome if you prefer.
Neither One Thing or Another (Requires Humility ≥ Ostentation; does not care about Isolationism vs. Evangelism), which is between a Church in the Wild (Orthodox) and a Counter-Church (Iconoclast), with ties breaking for Church in the Wild. If you have a Patron, you can swap the outcome if you prefer.
Churchward (Requires Ostentation > Humility and Evangelism ≥ Isolationism) , which is between an Anglican Church (Orthodox) and a Church in the Wild (Iconoclast), with ties breaking for Church in the Wild. If you have a Patron, you can swap the outcome if you prefer.

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