What or who is K? – is what I would be wondering if I’d happened upon this blog post and its title, and I’d want the blogger to explain it, preferably in the first few lines.
K = Korea (South Korea to be more precise)
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(so maybe, don’t read this post…)
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Years ago I discovered the intense (and often brutal) soulful beauty of South Korean films. A few of my all time favourite films are South Korean.
I’m a Cyborg, but That’s Okay is probably the one I love the most.
My second fav is Oldboy (by the same director)… I tried watching the American remake and gave up after a few minutes in (actually I watched a few minutes more than that because I was worried about being biased and unfair about it) because it just wasn’t the real and original Oldboy. Something vital was missing (it might have been Han – more about this later).
My third favourite is Hansel and Gretel, which to me captures everything you need to know and understand about a relationship with a Narcissist. It’s a horror story about three children who hold adults hostage in a gingerbread type of house and try to turn them into perfect parents – if the adults fail or refuse, they get coerced with threats, then tortured, then finally discarded to be replaced by new adults.
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Recently I’ve discovered the joys of K-drama (South Korean TV Shows). It’s an acquired taste (which once acquired may turn into a raging obsession) if you’re a ‘Westerner’ . It can take a few episodes to get into a show (there’s so much packed into each show and each episode of a show – most K-drama shows are only one season long but their one season = 10 seasons worth of info and story of a US show), and you may need to rewire your TV Show watching brain to be in sync with a different style of presentation (you, the viewer, are treated as intelligent and able to follow intricately complex storylines and characters with little explanation – the explanations come in pieces and you have to piece the puzzle together using not just your mind but also your emotions). And you do have to read subtitles (I have to admit that in the past few years I’ve developed a preference for watching shows and films with subtitles… not sure why, I think because it engages me more, I really have to pay attention, get involved, and I also rely more on the acting abilities of the actors).
Even the ‘light and fluffy’ K-dramas can be complicated and intense. There always seems to be a serial killer or some other villain doing bad shit (oppressing the good, abusing their power, etc) often thinking they’re the hero – which is a classic Narcissist stance (Narcissists invariably think they’re the hero, and that everyone else is the villain – your ‘proof’ that they’re the villain is to them their proof that you’re the villain). Death is a constant factor, as is corruption and human nature in all of its ugly gory glory.
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K-dramas I’ve watched thus far:
Strong Girl Bong-Soon – Best K-drama, imo, to start off an obsession with K-drama. Funny (even though there’s a serial killer in it). Sweet with a big side order of feisty. Weird in a relatable way. Great cast.
Oh My Ghost(ess) – Intriguing conflicted characters. Awesome bad guy who at first seems to be such a nice guy (beware of those who are too nice). Makes you hungry all the time (apparently the sign of a good K-drama is if you crave food while watching it – see this blog post: 20 Things Newbies Need to Know About Korean Dramas by randomsoju – this is a great read too if you’re a blogger, loved the ‘homework’ rant).
Black – gave up halfway through watching because it was too convoluted and the female lead was too irritating. I did read the recaps of the episodes I didn’t watch and… I’m relieved that I stopped watching it when I did.
Healer – This is recommended as a ‘gateway’ K-drama for those new to the genre, as well as being a favourite among fans/addicts of the genre. IT IS AWESOME! If you’re a loner, outsider, freak, weirdo, introvert, etc… this one is for you! Great characters all round. Good story. Loved that the female lead was intelligent, thought for herself and took the time to think things through rather than getting carried off by a misunderstanding.
A Korean Odyssey (Hwayugi) – this is a Hong sisters K-drama – they’re a writing team who do K-drama with a twist (often taking K-drama tropes and messing with them, referencing other K-dramas, and poking fun at Korean Wave). This is a K-drama version of Journey to the West – there’s a funny and fun ‘Western’ version of this airing atm: The New Legends of Monkey . Loved Hwayugi for the laughs, the mythical characters, because Devil King is sooo awkwardly cool, and the demon stories (which are relatable from a humans being human and creating hell on earth for ourselves and others perspective – ie Evil Mouth who is a demon that makes people be horrible to others online, or the demon who was created by people hating themselves when they weighed themselves on scales at a gym). Wasn’t quite as invested in the ‘love story’ as perhaps I should have been because the female lead was annoyingly stupid (perhaps due to her being the representative of humans and human nature), and the chemistry between her and the male lead was a bit meh. But Zombie girl/priestess was brilliant!
Nine: Nine Time Travels – I almost forgot I watched this and got several episodes into it before giving up. I almost forgot I read all of the recaps of all the episodes until the end after I stopped watching it. It still doesn’t make any sense. It’s another one of those filed under: I’m relieved that I stopped watching it (please note: there are many popular TV shows from various nations that are filed under this for me, so my opinion is just my opinion).
Bad Guys – Stylish noirish thrillerish. Lots of testosteronish antics along the lines of Bruce Willis in his Die Hard heyday, Jason Statham, John Woo, Tarantino-esque entertainment. I watched this after I saw the film – Train to Busan – and frigging loved Ma Dong-Seok’s character. He’s one of the main cast of Bad Guys, and his character is sweet super strong crazy. All the main Bad Guy characters are great. The story is a mess, and rather silly, but you won’t care because that’s not what it’s about.
Bad Guys: Vile City (City of Evil) – watched this because it’s the sequel/spin-off of Bad Guys, but it’s very different from the original. It takes itself more seriously than the original and tries to tackle more serious fairly current political issues. I gave up watching it in the middle of the 4th episode – when I decide that doing the dirty dishes is better than watching a show… I don’t have a dishwasher – I am the dishwasher… the show is done for me regardless of how good it may be.
Oh My Venus – Based on the synopsis I thought I would hate this, but I gave it a go because K-drama fans seem to love it. After 2 episodes I’m really loving it, it’s smart, funny, and not at all what I was expecting…
There are quite a few K-dramas which I haven’t watched but which I’ve watched through the eyes of Dramabeans – as in I’ve read through their thorough, entertaining, and excellently written full recaps (plus comments and reactions – which are hilarious as well as thoughtful, and thought-provoking). Some I’d like to see for myself but they’re not available on Netflix or Prime (and I’m a lazy brat – K-drama subtitles have changed the meaning of the term ‘brat’ for me. Kamsamida for that). Others… I’m glad I read the recaps, but they’re not for me (eg. Heirs, Boys Before Flowers).
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Throughout my relatively new obsession with K-drama I’ve been asking myself the question – Why am I suddenly into this? What does it mean for me? What’s the purpose of all of this for me personally? I know this will end someday and this is a phase, what is this phase all about? (this is one question for me).
While trying to figure out why I’m suddenly into K-drama, and what that means for me, I’ve explored several options:
1 – There’s something about K-drama which reminds me in many ways of the Japanese cartoons (and the thoughts/feelings they used to evoke) I used to watch as a child which helped me to escape and also make sense of my experiences. There’s a term in K-drama which refers to a certain type of character trope – ‘Candy’ – which comes from one of those Japanese cartoons – Candy Candy. I watched that one regularly, saw many but not all of the episodes, and found it engrossing. I sort of both loved and hated that cartoon for various reasons. I never really related to the character and yet I did.
My fav Japanese cartoons were – Saint Seiya – and – Lady Oscar – neither of which I saw in its entirety, but they still stayed with me because something within them ‘spoke’ to something within me.
Japanese cartoons will suck you in to rip your heart out, shred it, stomp on it, and still give you hope, which it will then kill repeatedly while never totally killing it. Death is a regular feature, sometimes it’s metaphorical and sometimes it’s not, sometimes it’s a bit of both and added extras – like you die again and again but are still alive, how can this be?
2 – There’s something about K-drama which… reminds me of being, living, and growing up partly Italian (Southern Italian… where the Korean concept of Han… sort of has an equivalent, and also… the north gets more attention than the south, sometimes it’s like the south is an afterthought). Aish! Could that be it!? What I’m trying to figure out!?
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excerpt from: seoulsync – 7 Important Korean Concepts That Explain Much About The Culture
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3 – There’s something about K-drama which… reminds me of my own upbringing, the things I was made to feel I should be, do, have, etc, but which I lacked, would never achieve, have, do, etc, because of… various reasons. While my upbringing was what could be considered Boho… it had a conservative undercurrent which to this day I can’t shake off (I’m like a really messy tidy person, a foul-mouthed prude, a mistake-making perfectionist, or something equally off-kilter which doesn’t quite belong anywhere and feels it a little too deeply but tries very hard to not bother anyone with my deep and dirty feels).
There are other numbered options I could list… but… I hate lists. Lists are such brats!
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I was struggling a bit with figuring things out, going down rabbit-holes… uncertain of where I would end up (like it matters…)… wondering if my inner Alice would just get lost or cut in half by all the portals she keeps stepping through during busy-body mode…
Then this morning I happened upon the concept of Han while exploring the ‘psychology’ of K-drama (if you have a current obsession… don’t ignore it, explore it, but do so from odd angles).
There are many articles on this, and all of them caution people about the complexity of the concept of Han. Basically, if you’re not Korean…. don’t even try to understand Han. But understanding Han will help you understand Korea… maybe.
I get it… as a non-Korean I won’t ever understand Han… and yet, something about Han seems so familiar.
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excerpt from: The Korea Times – Psychology of Korean Han by Jon Huer
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Maybe this is what it’s all about…
finding the familiar in the unfamiliar and other somethings along those lines…
tbc…
I realise that this post is most likely not for you. I realise I’m indulging, once again, in my own navel gazing whatnot. But if you made it this far down and along…
free feel to share whatever is going on with you atm regardless of whether it’s relevant to this post, subject, etc, or not – it may be without either of us realising it *shoulder shrugs with interest.
If you don’t tell me… how will I know?
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An Upturned Soul 
I love what you said about being “a really messy-tidy person, a foul-mouthed prude, a mistake-making perfectionist …” My, does that resonate. I completely, completely get that. These contradictory weirdisms made me feel like a freak and I was always fighting with myself about it (and others couldn’t understand what I was doing). They are much better aligned now, probably because I decided to just accept those divisive tendencies and get on with them.
I may try the K-shows. Certainly I’ve become disenchanted with a lot of American shows and then started watching a lot of British and European shows (Babylon Berlin, for example). 🙂
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Thank you 🙂
I think that everyone has those internal divides, which is why relationships are so important to us, particularly the ones which highlight those divides. I think we all assume we’re supposed to pick a side and stick with it. This is a myth we pass along from person to person, generation to generation – you must choose to be one thing – the ‘good’ thing, and must not be the other thing – the ‘bad’ thing. So we think that we should be one thing and not the opposite other thing. We have to decide whether we’re tidy or messy, and be the one we choose and not be the one we don’t choose. But there’s a pull within us towards the other thing, the opposing sides are drawn to each other, seeking to reunite and become whole. When we’ve chosen to be the tidy person we become drawn to messy people, our focus is on the mess of others, a mess we want to tidy up… and yet underneath our noble cause is a slight twinge of – I wish I could be messy, why must I be the tidy person, why must I spend my life tidying up the mess of others, why can’t others be who I am so that I can be who others are, etc.
I think what we’re aiming for is to do what you’re doing, which is to accept both sides within us, and discover what happens when the divides unite together.
Over and over you see it play out on TV shows – the whole opposites attract, clash, try to win over the other side, etc, and the happily ever after is when they merge, blend, meet in the middle.
There are some great US TV shows, but what I find is that the first season is the best, and if it gets renewed, what was so good about it becomes diluted as it tries to last far longer than it perhaps should have done. Or the original team which made it what it was moves on and a different team takes over thus the creative vision for it goes away with them. Or the network interferes with what the creatives are doing, and the plot and characters change to suit ‘ratings’. One of my biggest pet peeves is when a show goes from focusing on individual stories in each episode to mainly focusing on some soap opera to do with the main characters which drags on episode after episode. So many procedural shows have been ruined for me by making it into a soap opera about the personal lives of the characters, and the soap opera is the same one, the same formula, used in so many shows littered with every annoying trope possible.
Something similar can happen with blogging and blogs too.
Something similar can happen in our personal lives 😉
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Yes – there are some great American shows (I’m watching Mindhunter on Netflix right now). It suffered from set-up angst in the first episode but became much better as a dramatised version of the beginning of criminal profiling. I agree that there’s a strong tendency to baby an audience and I give up on many serials after the first one or two seasons.
Yes, blogs and lives can wind up in similar places. 🙂
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Oldboy…yeah, the American version was done by Spike Lee and he is hit or miss (nowadays more miss). Sometimes it’s best to leave certain foreign movies as is because they are actually better that way, especially with these two cultures because there is a spirituality that is missed when translated to American.
My favs: Thirst (Korean vamp movie about a priest), Audition (Japanese horror that was gross but so awesome!), Ringu( The Ring was great but then America should’ve never did a sequel and definitely shouldn’t have done a reboot, that was horrible!), and Ju-on( The Grudge, didn’t need an American version and no sequel).
My anime favs: Inuyasha, Spirited Away (Alice in Wonderland in the realm of the dead), Princess Mononoke (hubby hates the wolf scene, but I love the forest god), and Metropolis ( i love the way the characters are drawn, too cute).
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Thank you 🙂
The reason I gave the Oldboy remake a chance at all is because of Spike Lee directing it. Perhaps if I’d seen the remake without knowing it was a remake, I might have enjoyed it and thought it was great. Or if I hadn’t seen the original. No way of knowing though.
Sometimes remakes can be good. I can’t think of any atm but I’m sure there are probably ones I’ve enjoyed.
One of the things about when Hollywood makes remakes of foreign films is that the Hollywood version always seems to feel the need to explain everything too much as though they think that the audience is stupid and can’t figure things out for themselves. It’s like Hollywood doesn’t want anyone to think for themselves – they want to tell us what to think and feel in detail, and don’t want to allow us to have our own thoughts and feelings. It takes away a lot of the fun of watching because you’re given too much information and very little is left to the imagination. Some of the best bits of films are what the viewer adds to it with their imagination, when we write our own story into the story we’re seeing making it comes alive for us personally.
One of the great things about Asian cinema is that they throw the viewer into the deep end from the get go, and then leave you to figure it all out for yourself. They often seem to start in the middle of a story, and the beginning of the story gets shown in bits and pieces somewhere along the way, often through flashbacks. That’s in some ways how life is because the beginning of our lives or a story in our lives often gets forgotten, is blurry, and we’re kind of always in the middle of it trying to figure out how we got there, how did this happen, what lead us here.
Thirst was very good, such a refreshing take on the Vampire trope (it was also by Park Chan-wook – Oldboy, I’m a Cyborg, Lady Vengeance, etc). Audition, that scene when the girl goes kiri kiri kiri! I think I saw the remakes for The Ring and The Grudge before watching the originals, but I can’t remember, the originals were darker, stranger, and more confusing which made them more chilling. Love love love Spirited Away!!!
K-drama has done quite a few remakes of US and UK shows, but I haven’t seen any of those yet.
I agree with you that sometimes it’s better to leave an original in its original form as that is it’s best form and in remaking it essential components may get cut out, but then again seeing the remake might be how someone gets introduced to a culture, to a place and people, to new ideas and ways of perceiving, making what is foreign less foreign, making the ‘scary’ unknown something a little bit more known leading to further exploration. It can be a way to unite the world bit by bit, showing us how to blend our differences, how to connect the dots between our similarities, and how to reconnect with those things which sometimes get lost along the way.
Here’s a thought – both you and I grew up with narcissists, and both you and I prefer the originals to remakes… could that be partly because growing up with narcissists we experienced our original selves constantly being ‘remade’ by the narcissists in our lives. The narcissists didn’t like our original version, perhaps because we were too foreign for them (and the narcs had no intention of reading our subtitles to bother to get to know us in our original form), we were too ‘unknown’ and thus scary/confusing for them, they wanted to turn us into a known which they could control, they wanted our story to be the one they gave us, they wanted our feelings and thoughts to be what they wanted them to be, they wanted for us to be characters they wrote in their own trope-filled show/film. What do you think?
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I definitely agree that we were trying to be remade. I think parents make this mistake alot. It’s easier to see and understand the top layer of a person, a child for instance, but children are built in layers because they have to grow up, they have to experience and come up with their own conclusions. Narcs are insecure about everything that’s why they try to shift the attention onto them all the time. They’re vampires, it’s what they do.
I’m glad that we were able to get from under our narcs because like they can be addictive.
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Hi Ursula,
What a pleasant surprise when I stumbled upon your blog two weeks ago while looking up a Capricorn’s character…I truly enjoy reading your posts, some of them took me on a mental trip, some made me chuckle, while several posts threw me into retrospect.
“If you don’t tell me… how will I know?” These words kept popping up in my mind, like it’s speaking to me because there are things I couldn’t say to a certain someone in real life…so I decided to share with you here, and maybe you have some advice for me.
Couple of months ago, I met a lady. She is a lecturer in the institution where I am attending a course. Unknowingly, I was gradually attracted to her. Her wits, her intellect, her humor…well, maybe not unknowingly, I love the way she delivers herself/her lesson that simulates my mind to think and learn and I could draw a lot of inspirations from her. Like a muse… Now the spoilers are like from the k-dramas, quoted from the blog you recommended “the female lead character is older than the male lead character”, it’s “one-sided love – a crush” and she is married.
Honestly, I’ll be happy to remain friends with her and may/may not confess my feelings to her. However, last time we text I mentioned my longest relationship with a woman that could have be a narcissist or just narcissistic…At first, she seemed really interested to know about my relationship with the woman but I put it off to tell her another time. Then I told about my unhappy childhood, drug-induced wild days and alcoholic addiction… After that day, there was no text from her, not sure why, perhaps she did not like the drug thing or maybe she is having stressful time at work…
You might already have guessed that she is also a Capricorn…haha
(I could resonate with the Han idea, especially in my last relationship, had a lot of it pented up in me and the Capricorn lady can sense it, only she can sense it.)
Thanks for letting me spill on your comments page.
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Thank you very much 🙂
Sorry for the delay in posting your comment and replying to it, WordPress seems to be having a few technical difficulties and keeps popping comments into the spam folder.
I love how you’ve described your relationship story using Kdrama!
I’m not sure about offering advice since that’s always tricky, but I can share some thoughts based on what you’ve told me, and when you read them pay attention to your reactions to them because the best advice is the one which comes from within – our internal guide sometimes communicates in code, such as gut feelings, strong reactions to ideas, etc, kind of like you reacted to “If you don’t tell me… how will I know?”. It’s not always easy to know what we’re telling ourselves to do and not to do, which is why we sometimes talk with others to help us clarify our own thoughts/feelings.
First thing which struck me was that you’re in a teacher/pupil dynamic – which may be something that she is very aware of, and she may be being careful of the boundaries involved in such a dynamic, not wanting things to get too personal between you because it blurs those boundaries… for her that could be a problem with serious repercussions for her professionally.
A person’s Sun sign can only give you a sketch of their general personality – for more than that you need an entire natal chart (and even with the natal chart… there’s the human factor to consider). The Sun sign is sort of the structure of a personality, in Capricorn the structure can be quite rigid. A typical Capricorn tends to have a code of conduct which can seem rather antiquated at times (even a non-typical Capricorn will have a code of conduct which may be perplexing, and seem as though it’s from ancient times). Status is important to Capricorns, so your particular Capricorn Noona/Sunbae will be conscious of her status as your teacher, this will be important to her, she’ll want to be first and foremost a good teacher to you.
Another thing which struck me – Why is she texting with you? How did this texting interaction begin? – Did it start off as teacher/pupil chat to discuss matters connected with lessons which later wandered into more personal chat? Does she text with all her pupils (or at least the ones who are genuinely interested in what she’s teaching)? Or is this texting with you unusual for her?
Her interest in your previous relationship stands out – Why did she want to know more about your longest relationship with a woman who may have been a possible narcissist? What’s going on on her side of the conversation? Does it connect in any way with what she’s teaching and what you’re studying? If it has nothing to do with her class… then her interest in it may be due to personal experience on her side of things – thus, who is her narcissist? Usually only people who have had experience with narcissists tend to be interested in the subject of narcissistic relationships/relationships with narcissists, unless of course you’re studying psychology or criminology.
Q: Is she also experiencing feelings for you? If she is having feelings for you too, are those feelings perhaps challenging her Capricorn structure and status? Is she happily married or is there something going on in her marriage which has her heart and mind wandering a little?
I’ve been married for 20+ years… marriage goes through many stages, some of which are rather boring ‘romantically’ for both sides of the marriage equation. I quite like the ‘boring’ (partly because it really shows you if you are truly in love with someone and if they are truly in love with you or if you were just in love with the idea of love), I’ve never really been that into ‘romance’… but if I wasn’t such a weirdo, I could definitely see myself getting into all sorts of relationship triangles and quadrangles (especially if I was a teacher who had students who saw me as a ‘muse’ – the muse factor is very alluring, addictive, particularly for the muse), although I would never want to hurt my partner like that because that’s just awful (Capricorn antiquated code of conduct mode enabled).
As a blogger of posts which sometimes discuss some intense subjects, I occasionally get some very intense comments – It’s a bit like that life trope of people finding it easier to talk to strangers. I don’t always know how to respond to comments where people share way too much personal information all at once without any warning or preamble, small talk, getting to know each other first info, which is deeply meaningful to them. So, maybe when you shared yourself with her in such an honest and open manner, telling her about your “unhappy childhood, drug-induced wild days and alcoholic addiction” she just didn’t and doesn’t know how to respond.
Her text silence could mean many things. If she’s anything like me (and I don’t know if all Capricorns are like this… I have a lot of Virgo too in my chart which is a real stickler for proper behaviour, and I have Venus in Pisces which makes me hella sensitive about how other people feel/are feeling/might be affected), even if she was swamped in her own life (personal/professional), she’ll be aware that she hasn’t replied to you and it will be nagging at her. Each hour which passes without her replying to you will be making her feel more and more guilty/ashamed/awkward about not responding, the more she delays responding the more difficult it will become to respond.
Why hasn’t she responded? Maybe what you shared triggered something personal for her which she hasn’t dealt with in her own psyche and life. Maybe she feels/thinks that all her responses aren’t adequate – perhaps she’s never dealt with those sort of issues in her own life and doesn’t have the knowledge of personal experience to answer you. We’re living in such overly-sensitive PC-mad times where anything we say is never right and prone to getting us into trouble… maybe she’s trying to come up with a respectful reply which honours you and your sharing so deeply of yourself.
What can you do to break the sudden ice?
Hmmmm…
You could try texting her something along the lines of – Thank you for listening to me. My apologies if I made you feel uncomfortable by sharing too much about myself. Maybe I shared all of this to test you and to test myself. Thank you for being such an inspiration to me, and a great teacher.
You were testing her, weren’t you? To see if she’s for real – or maybe I’m projecting. I tend to test people (this is apparently a very Capricorn thing to do, but I kind of think it’s a very human thing to do regardless of Sun sign) to see if they’re who they appear to be, if they’re who they say they are, if they’re who I have idealised them as being, and so on.
As for revealing your feelings for her to her. If I was you, I’d wait until I’ve graduated form her class to do that – and not just because I’m being a ‘ruthless’ Cappy only thinking about my status and ambitions, but because… to fall in love with your teacher is part of being in love with the subject you’re learning and which the teacher is teaching. The love for the teacher may be because the teacher is in love with the subject you’re in love with. The true test of love for a person is when everything else connected to them and to the love experience is no longer valid. Once you pass this class and don’t need it anymore, don’t need her anymore in her role as your teacher… will you still love her?
Kdrama often ends a season with the death of a main character – or a prolongued period of separation between the leads from their loved one. If the love survives death and/or separation = possibly true love. It’s an agonising trope for the viewer… but it’s a fairly down to earth view of real love.
OMO! I’m rambling (typical of my Mercury sign).
Another thing which struck me is – you’re an amazingly insightful and thoughtful person. Whatever you do will be blessed by that!
Best wishes!
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im a Pisces, moon in Capricorn, Mercury in Aquarius …i always wonder why the Pisces i met are not like me…now i knw.. Antiquated,me too… i learned a new word from tthe www
Q: Is she also experiencing feelings for you?
This is a question…i ask myself from day 1…
Once you pass this class and don’t need it anymore, don’t need her anymore in her role as your teacher… will you still love her?
A: Yes. becos it’s her mind that caught me…im a ‘mental’ person…her impression will last for a ..long…time
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i can be superficial for the view of others…But no NPD (i was v paranoid when young becos i talk to myself alot, in my head…more afraid i might develop DID, common term, Split/Multiple-Personality Disorder…)
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It’s not uncommon for people to find themselves not relating to their Sun sign.
There are several reasons for that.
Many interpretations for Sun signs can be superficial (only giving sound bites, only using keywords, etc), overly generalised (because millions of people every year are born under the same Sun sign, so a description is trying to encompass everyone within that sign), and very diluted (many astrological interpretations are simply repeating and rewriting the same thing over and over without reviewing and renewing it – a lot of the interpretations come from the work of a handful of astrologers who wrote astrology books which have become sort of bibles for subsequent astrologers (like Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs – http://sunsignsbylindagoodman.blogspot.com/2009/09/pisces-fish-february-20th-through-march.html), but the real meat has been eaten away over time. It helps to read the original material but sometimes it was written so long ago that it doesn’t fit modern times and the changes in people and society over the years) – to find a really detailed and in-depth perspective on a Sun sign you usually have to read the work of serious astrologers who have been working in the field for a long time and incorporate their own experience and studies into the subject.
Your Sun sign may not be the strongest placement in your chart (there’s a tool on Astrodienst which allows you to figure out what your dominant planet is, the dominant planet’s sign may be a more relatable sign for you – that tool ranks each planet’s strength in your chart, and sometimes the Sun is low on the ranking list. I wrote about how to do this here – https://anupturnedsoul.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/what-planet-dominates-you/), you might have a stellium (multiple planets) in another sign, or your Sun may be heavily aspected and every aspect adds to and alters your experience of the Sun’s sign.
For instance, my dominant planet is Mercury, it’s in Aquarius, like yours. It’s heavily aspected – squared by Mars in Scorpio, which is ranked second in strength in my chart, and trined by Jupiter/Uranus in Libra. My neighbour, who has only known me for a short time calls me ‘Google’ because of my tendency to look things up and then share everything I’ve found out about a subject. I’m completely nuts, and most people get this confused and dazed expression when I talk – so I talk with myself a lot because I’m pretty much the only person who understands what I’m talking about, and even then I’m not always sure what I’m talking about (sometimes I have to switch how I’m listening to understand it).
I also never really related to descriptions of my Sun sign… only recently have I grown more into the sign, and feel more in sync with it. My Sun is trined by Pluto and squared by Saturn which is are both heavy aspects. Pluto sometimes ‘hides’ what it aspects. Saturn tends to grind what it aspects down.
A lot of people relate more to their Ascendant/rising sign because that’s the sign we tend to use when interacting with the world (it’s often called the ‘mask’ we wear when in public), and it also tends to be how the world sees us, and therefore feedback from others may be more descriptive of the Ascendant/rising sign.
If you have planets in the 1st house of your natal chart, since this is the house of the self/personality, this can affect how you experience your self/personality.
There are different types of astrology, and sometimes a description of a sign is more relatable in another type of astrology. Some people have found more satisfaction using Vedic astrology instead of Western astrology – your Sun sign may be in another sign in your Vedic natal chart.
Pisces, of all the signs, is the most ‘mysterious’ = it’s hard to pin down. Some of the descriptions of Pisces really don’t fit the high profile Pisceans in society. A couple of the most ruthless CEO’s are Pisces Sun, and from the outside looking in they don’t seem to fit the typical Pisces profile.
When exploring your natal chart to understand a relationship/love attraction, you need to look at the 7th house of personal relationship, as well as looking the Moon (how we are nourished/nourish, emotional needs, the nature of the emotions/feelings), Venus (how we define love and what we are attracted to/what attracts others to us), and Mars (how we pursue our passions, what we’re passionate about), and what aspects those planets make to other planets in our chart, where they are placed in the chart (the houses/angles). Also, look at transits – fateful meetings usually coincide with major transits to our natal placements. If you can get a natal chart of your loved one, sometimes a placement in their chart will aspect a placement in yours and this interaction between your chart and theirs can help elucidate the relationship/attraction (relationships synastry charts).
The reason I mentioned this – “Once you pass this class and don’t need it anymore, don’t need her anymore in her role as your teacher… will you still love her?” – is because I often fall madly in love with the minds of others, especially when I’m studying their teachings, but as I reach the end of my studies, the love begins to dissipate, and moves on to the next teacher and their teachings. This is very much connected to my Mercury, and the planets aspecting it – I also have the asteroid Eros in Aquarius which tends to get excited by anyone who introduces a new way of thinking and perceiving (for more on Eros – http://www.falconastrology.com/natal_asteroids.htm)
I wasn’t questioning your love for her, so much as sharing my own experience of myself in a similar scenario. I’m an INTP and can get carried away analysing and questioning everything. My apologies if I crossed a line and hurt you.
If she is also experiencing feelings for you – they may not be what you hope for them to be. Feelings are like Pisces, very mysterious, hard to pin down, often misinterpreted, misunderstood. What we see may not be what is there, what is there may not be what we see. Love comes in many shapes and forms, and those shapes and forms change as we move along the flow of the love experience, shifting, phasing in and out, dying, rebirthing, etc.
As for you ever having NPD… definitely not. I’m not a professional, but you have way too much self-reflection, and are thoughtful of others in a manner which comes across as genuine. The way you’ve structured your comments to me are not how someone with NPD would do that. You may find narcissistic traits and behaviours in yourself, these are normal and natural, all humans are narcissistic – it can tip into being unhealthy when in pain, when suffering through a difficult period, when dealing with personal trauma/anxiety/depression, but it usually moves through it and comes out the other side tipping back into the healthier manifestation of normal and natural narcissism. We can all be selfish a-holes sometimes, sometimes for a long time – this is being human. We learn from the experience, and one of the things we learn from it is to cut ourselves and others slack.
I know someone with DID, and they got very annoyed with me when I compared having many sides of myself which are often different and at odds with each other with their experience of DID. There’s actually a Kdrama which has a main lead with DID (Kill Me, Heal Me) – I think my acquaintance would be seriously pissed off with that drama’s portrayal of the disorder, but I think they’d also be glad that it was being made mainstream, raising awareness and hopefully removing stigma.
Talking with yourself is perfectly normal, most people do it but not everyone is consciously aware that they’re doing it – so your being aware of doing it could be considered a sign of higher awareness and consciousness. Talking with yourself is about getting to know yourself – ever thought we have is an inner discussion, a voice within opening up a debate within. Unfortunately most cultures have at some point turned talking with yourself into something abnormal (a sign of madness), not sure why but humans have a way of turning what’s natural into something unnatural and turning what’s unnatural into something natural.
If you want to test the theory of other people talking to themselves out – next time you’re in a conversation with someone, analyse the conversation. The surest sign of someone talking to themselves is when they’re not listening to you, have completely misunderstood what you’ve said and refuse to be corrected because they’re certain what they heard is what you said (in other words… what you said has been replaced with their own voices in their head which were talking over your voice, and are louder to that person than your voice), and are talking to you (more like ‘at’ you) but what they’re saying just doesn’t seem to fit you, what you said, were talking about, or what you thought was being discussed. You’re there but not there, it’s like they’re talking to someone else (themselves, or someone else who isn’t there – who is still really themselves). A lot of people talk to themselves when they’re talking to other people because that’s the only way they can communicate with themselves, but… they’re usually not listening to what they’re saying (from the angle they need to be listening), so they miss an awesome opportunity to solve a personal puzzle, get some inner guidance, get to know themselves better.
Social media is often just a lot of internal monologues which think they are dialogues 😉
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“I think… if it is true that
there are as many minds as there
are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
My dominant planet is the Moon, surprisingly had Scorpio at No.1 power ranking in house 5, but i definitely relate to Capricorn with only Moon in house 7…I consider myself quite a typical Pisces (Eros is in Pisces too) but there are times I get stone cold with people, haha guess that’s Capricorn’s influence maybe but there then again, these fishes have mutable forms and those high profile Pisces are the highly evolved ones…
The questions you asked regarding my tutor were fairly reasonable, no offense at all really 🙂
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Excellent quote and use of it!
Moon in Capricorn, according to mainstream astrology, is a challenging Moon to have because the Moon is in what is known as its sign of detriment – the sign opposite the one it rules, Cancer, where it is at home and most comfortable. Cancer is viewed as the sign of ‘Mother’, whereas Capricorn is viewed as the sign of ‘Father’, and the Moon is viewed as being nurturing/nourishing… which for whatever reason is considered to be the realm of Mother rather than Father. So the Moon in Capricorn is viewed as being not at home there, uncomfortable, restricted, and in some ways ‘exiled’ from its home and natural nurturing and nourishing way of expression. But is that really the case? Some mothers (like mine) devour their children – which is a visual/mythical act connected with Saturn (Capricorn’s ruler), and aren’t ‘mothering’ but smothering, while some father’s (not mine – who was the classic ‘absent father’) can be more nurturing/caring/nourishing than mothers.
Challenging placements are hard but also deeply rewarding (soul-centered astrology – see Alan Oken’s work – views difficult placements as being the most auspicious for the evolution of the soul. Because it is hard, it creates the most movement within).
Going stone cold with people may well be your Moon in Cap – it is a Capricorn thing to cut people off, but the cut off usually comes after many chances given, and there’s a final straw which snaps the camel’s back and that’s the end of that. The moving finger writes. It could also be a Scorpio dominant thing – Capricorn and Scorpio have quite a bit in common, both signs hate being messed around by people. both signs tend to rather blunt, but their bluntness has a cutting edge.
Moon in Capricorn is in many ways a poignant Moon placement, because it often comes with personal emotional sacrifice, deep sensitivity which often goes unnoticed, and a refined sense of honour/nobility. Once you love someone… they will always have a place in your heart.
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Thank you. You mentioned about shapes and forms of love in your earlier reply, it reminded me of this Leo Tolstoy quote, one of my favorite.
The smothering mother and ‘absent father’ is pretty accurate. Whenever the father was present, the mother would be the center of attraction or center of the battlefield, another WWII “Bang!”…”Pow!” (flying chairs and pans), or you could be watching WWF championship Hahaha…Thinking back those times I could laugh now, but it was frightening for a five year old kid then. But thanks to them, I learned to control fear that in later years I will remain unfazed in emergency situations.
“Once you love someone… they will always have a place in your heart.” -No. A memory stays in my head, yes. The woman I love… she is my heart.
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That’s a very good observation about the blessing in the curse, the positive which emerges from the negative.
One of the things I learned while watching the war wage on in my own family was that those frightening raging giants were actually terrified children inside adult bodies. Their screaming in anger was really screaming in fear.
Being able to laugh at what once scared you takes courage 🙂
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First, being able to laugh about it takes no courage becos that past has already turned to dust -for me at least.
Second, there is a glitch somewhere…yes most of time I’m unfazed by any situation. But the first time I held a revolver in my hand (although only empty shells), my hand involuntarily trembled violently, without and withstanding my conscious control. I was then in training for a security post that had required to carry a gun, I never hell thought there would be such a reaction, becos i always enjoyed shooting games in arcade. I never thought of a real gun as frightening becos there is always safety swtich, you won’t misfire for no reason lol but that first time, I don’t know what happened. Till today I have no explanation. However, I did graduated the full course, though disappointed not to get Marksman for shooting becos that i always get in arcade games Hahaha It was very very embarrassing then becos i totally couldn’t control it and my mates were all stunned, I have no problem with real knifes or blades or weapons, only that time, the gun.
I’m a Pisces but really don’t like the common character of these fishes. On the contrary, these fishes have a healing power that I couldn’t deny. It is never my sole effort that things are or im healing. And only on this point, i agree Pisces are mysterious… I always wish to help others but couldn’t impart the idea as it gets implicit. Excuse me, my native is Chinese so sometimes my grammar is wayward hope for your pardon.
Note: The night I went sleepless, almost, was becos i wanted to verify that this person is also in my Ziwei chart, but i couldn’t pinpoint the location to get the exact degrees. Silly
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Please don’t worry about your grammar, your English is excellent and you express yourself clearly and concisely. The only hint I had that English was probably not your mother tongue is due to you being very polite and respectful, and also direct in a refreshing manner – that is a compliment 🙂
I grew up bilingual, studied in a third country where I struggled very much with the grammar, and I have dyslexia, so my own grasp of English is a bit of a mess. What I look at when I read comments is what is being said from the soul, who the person is within and behind the words. Words can be revealing, but they can also be deceiving, but there’s a constant and that is the person using words – who a person is is always there. I have Mars and Neptune in Scorpio in the 3rd house of communication = I like to look beyond appearances to find what lies beyond, I can get confused but the confusion isn’t always as confused as it can appear to be 😉
Your story of using a real gun is interesting. In some ways it shows a deeper understanding and wisdom of things as not being just things. The juxtaposition with using a gun in video games shows a finely tuned grasp of the difference between fantasy and reality.
A real gun can hurt real people, and if you’re the one in charge of that real gun that means you’re responsible for using a real gun which can hurt real people, even if the real person you hurt was committing a crime and you were hired to protect against that crime and the criminal committing it. Bottom line is a bullet from a real gun can kill a real person and even in a justified scenario – you don’t want to be the one who takes a real life, particularly if you take a life while protecting stuff. It’s slightly different if you’re taking a life to protect a life, but even then… the responsibility can be a burden too heavy to bear.
Taking lives in a video game isn’t the same at all as taking a life in real life, and most people know that, regardless of the media hype about video games making people violent, callous and careless about real life.
There is nothing common about you – this is both a blessing and a curse, it’s up to you to decide which one it is.
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Thank you for your kind words. After reading many of your posts, you impressed me as a remarkably perceptive person and can see things that others cannot. I very much appreciate your understanding replies to comments, ramblings rather.. 🙂
Now there are some questions for you…I do not think Dyslexia is a detriment as individuals with this learning disability are often highly talented or having specials skills. Your brain is not impaired only wired differently and due to this you have/can access/utilize the ‘right brain’ where ordinary people cannot. I briefly read about the MIND-Strengths in dyslexia (from Brock L. Eide, The Dyslexic Advantage). Do you have all of them? My guess is you’d have at least three I-N-D…and which is most prominent? “One of the things I learned while watching the war wage on in my own family…” that short paragraph from your earlier reply, I read and reread..’learned while watching’ lol during those times I was frozen; while you are learning, was it like you learned in that instant when war was waging or aftermath think back? But either way, the fact that you could see beyond the giants and their anger is mind-blowing. You couldn’t be any more older than I was when you first saw these happenings I guess.
I have finished Hwayugi and pretty much satisfied on the whole. Fully agree with you that the female lead was ‘annoyingly stupid’ haha well, the script had her that way to accommodate the ending maybe, and the actor portraying the Devil King was excellent in his craft. The Zombie girl was almost unnoticeable half the time, the priestess role added more substance, i thought they could do a spin-off entirely on the zombie/priestess story..
The other day I randomly read one of your old post, in there you divide the word ‘psycho-logy’, oh yes, and I never thought of that so plain in sight..sigh that’s me, dumb, like my mother used to call me. But seeing the psycho -logy really got me excited becos I’m going to use this lingo thingy to make fun of psychologists in my upcoming Chinese essay, ‘psycho -logist’ word play in Chinese would direct translate to ‘perverted doctors’…sounds fun to me and I have to thank you for the idea since it came from your post 😉
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Thank you very much 🙂
I agree with you that dyslexia isn’t a disability, and that it is a brain wired differently. It is mainly experienced as a disability within systems which have been created and structured by non-dyslexic brains for non-dyslexic brains, and because it is perceived by non-dyslexic brains as a disability, non-dyslexic brains view dyslexic brains as having a problem, a disability.
Several years ago I met this man who had just been officially diagnosed with dyslexia, and he was very happy with the diagnosis because now he would get certain government benefits due to his disability, and could use his official diagnosis at his workplace as an excuse to not do his job properly (he actually said exactly that). If his boss or colleagues objected, he could accuse them of discrimination due to his disability. I was so incensed by his attitude and his view of dyslexia. He got annoyed when I told him that I had dyslexia because he’d been trying to use it in our interaction as something which made him more special than other people. GAH! But then again all of his conversations were all about how special he was and how ordinary, boring, etc, everyone else was. He was very narcissistic.
I had a quick look at the MIND strengths. I can relate to all of them, but I would hazard a guess that all people can, both dyslexic and non-dyslexic.
The I-strengths are probably the most prominent for me, connecting random things, noticing patterns, and trying to perceive a bigger picture are things my mind does without my even thinking about it.
The M-strengths are very useful when doing the I-strengths – to connect random dots it helps to visualise them in a 3D manner, like stars in space. Patterns tend to be more noticeable when viewed like sound waves rather than just thought about. The bigger picture is seen better from shifting angles and perspective, like looking at the earth from above, like a map, like using Google earth.
To put things together you need to see the story, the narrative which forms and flows – N-strengths. For instance when a person experiences anger, their mind immediately creates a narrative to explain the experience of anger to themselves – Why am I angry? I am angry because…. Their narrative will most likely rely on a pattern with which they are comfortable and familiar – When I’m angry I do this, I become like this, I go over here and… and this will take them on a course from A to B to C, etc.
which leads to the D-strengths – if you know the narrative, you know the pattern, you can predict where someone or something is going to go (there’s always the possibility of variation in course, so unpredictability has to be factored in). Complex systems are made up of those patterns and narratives. Planet A follows this orbital route through constellation W to get to point B in space, and will continue on course (unless space debris big enough to knock it off its usual course smashes into to it) through constellation X to point C, etc.
The observer also has to be factored in to what or who is being observed – sometimes the observer is the space debris. 😉
With regards to ‘learning while watching’ – What else can you do while frozen other than to watch, and as you watch you learn (without always being aware that you’re learning through watching). Fear in particular stimulates the need to learn – you brain rewires itself, rewrites its programming, during a frightening experience (a recent scientific study in neuroscience has been exploring this concept, there are some articles about it which you’ll find if you search for – The Neuroscientific Case for Facing Your Fears).
You asked: “while you are learning, was it like you learned in that instant when war was waging or aftermath think back?”
I did both. I learned certain things in the moment and learned other things while reviewing the experience. I was an only child who spent a lot of time alone, so I had to figure things out by myself for myself. If I was upset or afraid, I had to comfort myself. I couldn’t rely on, confide in or trust other people as my parents played a lot of psychological games as part of their war. So I kind of got into absorbing knowledge from observing the world around me and people (and also from reading and watching TV) at an early age. I also got to relive the experience many times over. My parents fought almost every time they were in the same room together. They both had hair-trigger tempers. It was basically the same fight over and over again, even if they were fighting over something different (they often used me as a starting point for a fight – took me a long time to realise it wasn’t my fault, and that nothing I did or didn’t do made the slightest bit of difference. A lot of my learning from watching was me trying to figure out how to stop another round of the war from starting). If something repeats again and again and again, you get the opportunity to see it differently each time, to get another angle of perspective, to see the bigger picture.
It’s a bit like when you watch a film. The first time you see it there’s all this new information to take in – too much new information to take in. You see certain things as the images flash across the screen, you hear certain things while words are spoken, you miss certain things. When the film is over you may think back over what you just saw and heard, the images and words which stuck with you, but you’ve probably forgotten most of what you’ve seen and heard (unless you have one of those memories which never forgets anything). A while later you may recall something you saw or heard in the film and perhaps realise something which you’d missed while watching it. If you decide to see the film again, it may seem like a different film because you’re noticing what you missed the first time you saw it. The more you see the same film, the more you see and hear, noticing more things you missed previously.
If it was a scary film… if you see it enough times it won’t be scary anymore, or at least not like it was the first time you saw it. It has become predictable. Familiar. Known. Knowing that film may make other similar films predictable too – you now know that particular pattern and how it plays out.
The experience of being frozen, especially when it happens during childhood, tends to trigger the desire to never feel that helpless and powerless again. Depending on your unique configuration, you’ll decide on a course of personal action to learn and gain the skills you require to achieve your desired goal of never feeling frozen like that again. That internal picture you have of being frozen is a personal ‘muse’, guiding you on your life path.
Your essay sounds great! Someone once pointed out that the word Therapist = The rapist… and after that I’ve never been able to see it any other way. It’s fun to discover new ways of looking at things.
You have a wonderfully fluid mind, able to think on multiple levels with ease. There is absolutely nothing ‘dumb’ about you, I’m sure you know that. My parents used to tell me things like that too about myself, it happened most often when they were feeling bad about themselves and needed to make themselves feel better by making me feel bad about myself. There’s an intriguing concept known as The Dunning-Kruger Effect. Check it out and keep it in mind the next time someone does something inane like calling you dumb. Real intelligence knows there’s always more to discover and learn, and loves to discover and learn more.
“I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.” – Richard Feynman
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