“Of the five types of daughters described in this book, the Cipher is least able to emerge from the prison created by her unacceptability to her mother.  It is the Cipher who is least able to traverse the high wire of her own adulthood. The Cipher absorbs the displeasure of her overwhelming, narcissistic or uninvolved mother, which instills and festers within her.  She is afraid of everything, but she is terrified of one thing in particular: her own anger.  ’I hate fighting with people,’ says one Cipher… Everything about the Cipher is reduced to a single struggle—all her energies are funneled into the one battle she is willing to mount: She wages war against anger. For if she were to release it—if she were to really retaliate in response to her childhood humiliations, to her complicity in her own degradation—it would blow away the world.  And then she could be motherless, a fate too horrible for her to imagine. Within the meek, modest, delicate maiden is a time bomb, ticking away with murderous rage… There is a ‘self’ however reduced, way down in the bottom of the Chipher’s soul, a striking force straining to get out.  Isolation and self-denigration don’t mute her violent thoughts—they are always intruding, scaring her to death. Most Ciphers insulate their rage by never leaving their mothers, if only the ‘mother’ in their heads.  By denying her own anger and being her mother’s willing victim, the Cipher is protecting both of them. Rather than ‘kill’ her mother, the Cipher instead kills parts of herself.  Because she is unable to believe in herself, the Cipher believes she would die right along with her mother if her mother were to die. Ciphers are like overripe fruit that is bruised by the slightest touch.  It is too perilous for them to have a self, one that is capable of expressing outrage.  And so they implode.  They are chronically fatigued, or they develop eating disorders.  They take drugs or drink too much.  Or become depressed. For the most delicate Cipher, like the most fragile Angel, the struggle to stifle her anger slowly engulfs her, overheating to such dangerous levels that she simply disconnects in her head. These Ciphers lose all contact with reality—all feelings, all appetites suddenly cease.” - A very Fury-relevant passage from Victoria Secunda Photo Credit: Flickr/Marina Refur

“Of the five types of daughters described in this book, the Cipher is least able to emerge from the prison created by her unacceptability to her mother.  It is the Cipher who is least able to traverse the high wire of her own adulthood.

The Cipher absorbs the displeasure of her overwhelming, narcissistic or uninvolved mother, which instills and festers within her.  She is afraid of everything, but she is terrified of one thing in particular: her own anger.  ’I hate fighting with people,’ says one Cipher…

Everything about the Cipher is reduced to a single struggle—all her energies are funneled into the one battle she is willing to mount: She wages war against anger. For if she were to release it—if she were to really retaliate in response to her childhood humiliations, to her complicity in her own degradation—it would blow away the world.  And then she could be motherless, a fate too horrible for her to imagine.

Within the meek, modest, delicate maiden is a time bomb, ticking away with murderous rage… There is a ‘self’ however reduced, way down in the bottom of the Chipher’s soul, a striking force straining to get out.  Isolation and self-denigration don’t mute her violent thoughts—they are always intruding, scaring her to death.

Most Ciphers insulate their rage by never leaving their mothers, if only the ‘mother’ in their heads.  By denying her own anger and being her mother’s willing victim, the Cipher is protecting both of them. Rather than ‘kill’ her mother, the Cipher instead kills parts of herself.  Because she is unable to believe in herself, the Cipher believes she would die right along with her mother if her mother were to die.

Ciphers are like overripe fruit that is bruised by the slightest touch.  It is too perilous for them to have a self, one that is capable of expressing outrage.  And so they implode.  They are chronically fatigued, or they develop eating disorders.  They take drugs or drink too much.  Or become depressed.

For the most delicate Cipher, like the most fragile Angel, the struggle to stifle her anger slowly engulfs her, overheating to such dangerous levels that she simply disconnects in her head. These Ciphers lose all contact with reality—all feelings, all appetites suddenly cease.”

- A very Fury-relevant passage from Victoria Secunda

Photo Credit: Flickr/Marina Refur