#[ ill do a writeup. eventually. one day ]

[strongfuck]

so i went with a lightning scar type “tattoo”; the starting point on his spine is where his main eridium injector was, and because the power that manifested in him is electrokinesis, it created lightning scar-esque lines on him :)

[canmom]

L'Aventure de Canmom à Annecy - Vendredi 1: Short Films 5

Olá from Portugal! I am recovered from travelling, and it's time to finish my Annecy writeups...

Friday I ended up waking up pretty late, all those late screenings catching up with me. I spent a while writing up Thursday in my hotel before realising that my computer clock was still on UK time. This meant I missed another chance to fruitlessly queue for Mars Express, I missed the new film Toldi by Marcel Jankovics, and I even missed Graduation Films 1 which contained the eventual winner of the category. So, rip. 仕方がない。。。

I got into Annecy just in time to catch the next block of short films. I elected to go to block 5 at Pathé because afterwards I could scoot into Bonlieu for Tunnel to Summer. More on that in a bit lol. Let's cover short films 5!

We begin with La saison pourpre by Clémence Bouchereau from France. This one was really neat. It's traditional animation in pencil, depicting a group of people, mostly children, who live naked in the roots of a mangrove. It made great use of partial drawings, just enough to recognise you're looking a character's arm or legs or cunt or whatever, depicting the tense interactions as the nameless characters hunt, play, and find themselves threatened by a storm. The sound design is also really strong. I feel like the nudity works for this film, although I could understand having qualms. The characters' eyes are just dots, and their expressions opaque, but the context and the way the interactions are framed expresses plenty of tension and emotion. I can only guess what motivated this film, but it ended up being really absorbing.

Ce qui bouge est vivant by Noémie Marsily from Belgium was kinda eh to me. A woman's voiceover narrates an existential crisis as we get a series of disconnected images, most of which I struggle to remember now (don't do your writeups four days later lol).

D'une peinture... à l'autre was better than I expected. By this point I saw quite a few films that used a rough oil-painting like effect and a lot of them don't use it very well, but here the paintings - which depict a camera flying around through a painted world establishing (I assume) a context for the two paintings it's about, was solid.

I don't know that I really picked up on the implied contrast between the two paintings, which both depict a reclining naked white woman and a Black woman in two different poses, but I looked them up while writing this post. The first is Olympia by Édouard Manet. Here, the white woman is looking directly at the 'camera' position, and the Black woman is clearly framed as a servant; apparently this painting caused controversy at its time, partly for many symbols that suggest the white woman is a sex worker, partly because she is recognisably a well-known model at the time. The second painting is Le Blanche et la Noire by Félix Vallotton, a response to Olympia; here the Black woman is chilling on the bedside smoking a cigarette instead of trying to present flowers, regarding the sleeping woman on the bed - apparently to suggest the two women are lovers, since this pose would usually be assigned to a man. The animation in the second half progresses in a different direction (right to left rather than left to right) and reframes the scenes from the first half.

I was not familiar with either of these paintings so all I could really do in the moment was appreciate the animation. But tbh I'm kind of glad they didn't put a context card up front because that would make it feel painfully didactic. I wouldn't mind seeing this film again with more of an idea what it's getting at.

Carne de Dios directed by Patricio Plaza, animated in Mexico and Argentina, was one of the strongest entries in this set. It depicts a priest during the colonial period; at the outset he encounters an indigenous girl running through the field with some mushrooms, which he knocks out of her hand and crushes. But, he falls ill, and finds himself in a church, where an older indigenous healer is preparing to treat him with the same mushrooms. From this point on the film goes full psychedelia; the priest dreams of the statue of Jesus on the cross turns into a giant, who devours him. Inside the guts he finds himself sucking on kaiju!Jesus's nipples and getting fisted by a giant kaiju finger (don't ask why kaiju!Jesus is inside his own stomach). It's strongly presented with traditional animation so if you enjoy ridiculous psychosexual imagery it's a fun one.

The next morning, the priest wakes up after his bad(?) mushroom trip terrified to find the healer seemingly dead; he flees from the area.

The imagery of the priest's dream is interesting, for poking at the weird sort of sex obsession-revulsion in Christianity; it's also better for the film that the priest didn't really Learn A Valuable Lesson or anything. The animation was extremely cool, and I'm definitely immensely curious to see what this team does next.

Love Me True by Inés Sedan from France depicts a woman who gets into online dating, and becomes infatuated with a man who mostly wants to take her to group sex and has very little use for her otherwise. She has a bad time; eventually she turns to other men who treat her as poorly. It's another one that uses rough paint textures and relatively limited animation, set to a voiceover narration. I think I'm coming to feel that voiceovers are a technique that is tricky to use effectively. If they're redundant with the animation, the animation should be allowed to speak for itself.

27 by Flóra Anna Buda depicts... I think it's a daydream? But essentially a girl in a cramped family situation (her brother catches her masturbating and teases her about it cosntantly) standing at the window and then going out to have a lot of sex. It's got a highly abstracted style where everyone is big old shapes. By this point I was definitely starting to think of short films 5 as the porn block lmao.

Tongue by Yoshida Kaho flashes by in just two minutes. With a very stylised approach to drawing that's basically what they call "corporate memphis", it shows a woman who bites out tiresome mens' tongues and stores them in a box. For feminism, you know. I think it could have stood to be hornier with it, like make the tongue biting really juicy. But that would weaken the metaphor lol.

The final film was Eeva directed by Morten Tšinakov and Lucija Mrzljak from Estonia and Croatia. I needed to scoot out of the theatre early to make sure I could get into Tunnel to Summer, so I didn't see this film. I think it actually got an award so that might have been a mistake if it was really good! The description of it is...

It's pouring down with rain at the funeral. There's a lot of crying, too much wine, several woodpeckers and a couple of dreams that fill in the gaps.

...so make your own guesses as to what kind of film it was.

So, solid collection with a couple of really strong ones. From this point on the day was all anime...

[catspinach]

ive been meaning to vent on here about work for a long time now so here

i was hired in as a shift supervisor at a brand new starbucks with all brand new employees aside from another supervisor, Mylah, who is a 4yr partner(remember her), and maybe 2 others or so. none of us knew what we were doing. i was barista trained separately from the rest, followed by supervisor training, and then a week off. I came back and had no idea what the hell i was doing, and everyone was mad that i didnt know what to do??

Mylah trained me, and it was brutal. She would critique everything i did, and I always defended myself, saying "why do i need to do it that way if this way gets the same results?" and she did Not like that lmao and the entire training was incredibly tense.

Months pass, and she is worse than ever. she's had several lectures about her behavior but not a single writeup. Nothing has changed. She trained a new supervisor a few weeks ago, and she treated her the same way as she did with me. At some point she slammed a freezer and started shouting, making her cry, and Everyone in lobby turned their heads. i felt awful and wanted to say smth, but I'm genuinely scared of her. Everyone is. Several people have admitted to me that they call off when they see Mylah on the schedule.

The other day, the lobby was empty, and we were free to talk about all the harassment we've faced with her. I cant even remember all of it there's so much but uh here's a list of stuff i remember:

My manager gave Jenn some extra hours, and when they came in, Mylah cornered them, asking why they stole all her hours?? Jenn was comfused because they were literally just added to the schedule so that they would have enough bodies on the floor. Apparently Mylah was pissy at them for the entire rest of their shift, which sucks bc they were already working 12hrs that day:'(

I became friends with a barista named Diana, who is hispanic, and Mylah (white) would always say rude things that made her uncomfortable, saying its okay because her bf is mexican ._. It became a problem and eventually Mylah started looking through all her stuff to get her fired, and succeeded. Diana told me that Mylah would joke with the other baristas about how im stupid and bad at my job, and she said she always stood up for me which definitely did not help her with this whole situation but I greatly appreciate her for it, and we still talk!

Anna said Mylah was talking to her about me and how i do my job wrong. she said i don't face the bills the same way in the deposit bag, and that I dont fill in the money order right so I'm the reason we have so many goddamn nickles, and she said I don't double count the drawers and that's why there's so many mistakes with the deposit. the funny thing is, i DO face the bills the same way, I have never even DONE a money order because that's morning's job, I TRIPLE count the drawers bc i have anxiety, and nobody has EVER said anything to me about the deposit being off.

At some point someone said ret*rded, and Mylah is autistic and was rightfully mad, and brought her to the back to yell at her. not sure what she said but when she came back she went up to me, and only me, and apologized. so like that really hurted but okay whatever ill just go kill myself ig

Mylah was opening one day and told Morgan that since I was closing that it would probably take longer than usual to close? I asked Morgan how Mylah was with closing, and she said that nothing gets done until the absolute last minute, and it takes at least half an hour to finish closing. My record is 2 minutes past close.

Jenn and Taylor told me that I'm their favorite out of all of the shifts, because I make sure to get everything done, I am fast, efficient, and if they have a question I will do my best to figure out a solution for them. Apparently, when they ask Mylah a question, she answers with, "I dont know man, I just work here" and walks away. which like. mood. but she's getting paid 20/hr compared to the baristas at 15/hr, and there is absolutely no reason that the baristas should have to pick up her slack.

Anna used to be friends with Mylah, and they went to get piercings together, and Mylah thought it would be super funny to snapchat Anna having a panic attack about the needle! outside of work, but still fucked up

theres more idk

Mylah got it in my head that I'm the worst of all of the supervisors, and when I found out I was almost all the baristas' favorite, I started visibly shaking with relief! Ive been trying so so hard to make up for how "bad" i am at my job in fear that everyone will hate me otherwise, and now I gind this out and I don't know how to handle this information jdgdheb

I asked them if they would like to talk to the manager as a group, hoping that will show her just how serious the situation is. I don't usually pray for someone to get fired, but I want her ass permanently out of my sight asap

[songofsaraneth]

Ok now that I have time/space to breathe again, I wanted to do a writeup on the unusual reaction I had to the second Covid vaccine dose. I debated posting this, because I don't want to go against the "I was vaccinated and it's fine!" encouragement train. And I 1000% encourage EVERYONE to get vaccinated if possible. But I have not seen much documentation of the averse symptom I got, except in some case studies I specifically looked up so details below. Big TMI/gross warning however. 

Mostly I'm posting this because I had to do SO much self-advocating/arguing with the Dr at my urgent care clinic, and if you're not as read up on weird medical issues as I am, you might not be comfortable doing that. But IANAD, just describing my experience and what I read, which ended up being very long because it was awful and I have a lot to complain about I guess, sorry.

Basically: for me the vaccine triggered an inflammation response, which in itself is normal. The usual muscle aches/joint pain/slight fever. It also triggered an outbreak of ulcers in my soft tissues. Basically, a bunch of canker sores in my mouth/throat. I am already prone to getting these when I get sick or stressed out, so no biggie, annoying and painful but I could handle them. Canker sores are distinct from cold sores in that they form inside the mouth as crater spots, usually around the size of a pencil eraser (though can be bigger or smaller), and will develop a white film across the crater as they develop and start to heal.

An unfortunate fact I have learned: the mouth is not the only exposed “soft tissue” of the body. this group also includes genitals.

So 2 days after the vaccine I noticed a "burning sensation"/rawness downstairs, which turned into a sharp pain, especially when going to the bathroom. I obviously knew this was abnormal and because of what was happening in my mouth, had a pretty firm idea of what was happening, but was ready to brace myself through the healing process. However by day 5 I had 8 red, crater-like sores on the tissue of my vulva. Essentially they are open wounds, and urine is an acid, so you can imagine the hell that using the bathroom had become. Even just sitting hurt.

As someone healthcare-averse, even I knew this was untenable, and went to Urgent Care for the first time in my adult life. I told the NP what was going on, how they matched the canker sores (NOT cold sores) in my mouth in onset/form--and she immediately, without even looking, diagnosed me with herpes.

Lots of people have herpes or other STIs, and that's fine. I know I do not have any, and wanted to pursue treatment for what I was sure they were--Non-sexually acquired genital ulceration (NSGU). I had even found three case studies of COVID patients who had developed them. I had spent several harrowing hours on google images making sure that the sores I had did not match any STI I may have magically acquired during a year of social distancing. I even brought up multiple case studies, including a woman who had them as a Covid reaction in a neighboring state. Didn’t matter. She looked at them and went “Yikes! Herpes!” and prescribed me: 

1) an antiviral, which I said I did not think would do anything because the trigger for this was a vaccine not an illness. She said it was probably a herpes flare up already in my system. I reiterated that I have had similar sores in my mouth since childhood and that all my past doctors and dentists agreed it was not viral but something related to an immune response. She said the antivirals should clear them up in a few days.

2) a topical 5% lidocaine ointment, aka an oral grade numbing gel, which was essentially what I was after anyway.

I would have preferred a steroid course to the antiviral, but agreed to start taking them until she got the results of the bloodwork I needed to come in the next day for. I asked how many days after taking them I would expect to see a difference/if she would reevaluate treatment if they didn’t have an effect in a certain amount of time, and she said if they hadn’t cleared up by Monday then she’d look into other causes (spoiler, they did nothing in that 4 day span). to her credit, when she saw me pick up my bike helmet (because my car had been at the mechanic for a month by then), she was properly horrified that i was having to bike everywhere with this situation and printed off some coupons/called all the prescriptions into the grocery store pharmacy next door instead of the CVS my insurance likes a mile away.

So eventually I got home and took my pill & went to put on the ointment so I could use the bathroom for the first time in 8 hours. I’ll spare you the details but suffice to say I had an extremely, overwhelmingly painful 10 minutes of application. Like absolutely awful burning feeling. However once that faded, I was indeed actually numb, and so I figured it was worth it. Got my bloodwork done on Friday (biking there & home again). On Saturday, I thought that you know, maybe a prescription anesthetic shouldn’t be doing that or at least have some sort of warning? And read the details on the jar.

Good things about lidocaine: it is a powerful numbing agent and lasts pretty well for an hour or two.

Bad things about lidocaine: you cannot get oral grade lidocaine without added mint flavoring.

I happen to be EXTREMELY sensitive to mint. Like I still can’t handle breath mints or mouthwash, and used bubblegum flavored toothpaste until I was 14 and found a brand with half as much mint flavoring as is typical. Even if you’re not, mint has no business being anywhere near genital tissue. Even on an average person that could cause awful burning. to make a long saga shorter I had a very frustrating back-and-forth with urgent care involving many rerouted phone trees, visit in person, unhelpful receptionists, and attempts to find over-the-counter alternatives. All were fruitless so I just  suffered all weekend until the urgent care Nurse Practitioner called me back on Monday and was suitably apologetic/outraged about the mint thing, and looked up every OTC product that might work as a substitute, since she couldn’t find any prescription level without mint. On Tuesday she called back again having found this:

It’s 4%, so just below prescription strength, while not oral grade, it’s actually fine for soft tissues as long as not fully ingested/internally applied. And most importantly, ABSOLUTELY NO ADDED FLAVORINGS. there is also a spray version that comes in a bottle, which under no circumstances should you try because it uses alcohol as a propellant and I had a very bad 5 minutes after testing that one. But the cream one is fine and brings blessed numbness in around 5 minutes with only minimal contact pain--they are still open wounds after all. 

I use this for the next 7 days. By this point the sores have gotten worse and larger, and then started to heal and shrink again. Mouth canker sores go through a similar ~2 week process, so this is about what I expected.

Finally the results of my bloodwork came back, and I was negative for all STIs. The NP was dumbfounded and apologized, and agreed to look up more information/treatment options for cases like this in the future. I’m not surprised her reaction was to assume herpes as it IS very common, but I’m sure other women experience NSGU’s and receive improper treatment. If you look them up, they’re even mentioned as being predominantly a problem for “young or prepubescent women” which, reading between the lines--it’s not that these become less likely if you’re older or sexually active. Doctors just make assumptions and don’t always look past the easy answers.

So if you or someone you know ends up with these--from the Covid vaccine or as a complication of upper respiratory infections in general (as they ARE an immune response and can just Happen to you)--here is what works as treatment. If you can see a doctor you trust, still do that. But if they don’t listen or if for some reason you can’t seek treatment, here is the course of action I recommend: 

Pick up that over-the-counter Pain Relief+Lidocaine NON MINTY numbing cream ASAP. Sores go from “annoying” to “excruciating” in only 3 days, so it’s best to get in person or with rush shipping. Sit in front of a mirror and gently apply with a q-tip, and wait 5 minutes for the medicine to take effect.

Pat gently dry with toilet paper, don’t make wiping motions. If you don’t feel clean enough, pat more with a wet washcloth and rinse it out, or hope in the shoer for 5 min just to rinse.

There may be pus or reside from the ointment that doesn’t go away with just rinsing. Every 2 days I made a half-strength bath of epsom salts, NUMBED FULLY, and then took a 10 minute bath to fully cleanse the area. the salt will sting terribly if you wait any longer, so I recommend standing and rinsing after this time.

The vulva is more exposed to air than the mouth. this may cause the sores to crack/bleed as they dry out. to avoid this, after using the restroom and cleaning yourself, you can apply a thick coating of Aquaphor on top of the sores. It will need to be rinsed off before you apply more numbing cream however, so if that is too many steps I recommend just using the Aquaphor overnight.

You may think its ok to get up in the middle of the night to pee without the numbing cream bc you have to go really bad and just once will be fine but it is NOT you will REGRET IT.

Unfortunately if you have sores on both sides you may develop what is known as “kissing sores”, aka sores directly opposite each other that touch when the area is not spread open. this means that after an extended period of time (overnight), the sores will try to heal into each other and opening the area back up painfully rips the tissue apart. INStEAD of ripping them apart, take a washclosh, run it under warm water, and do a hot/warm compress on the area. this will loosen the sores back up and separate them painlessly.

This is not exclusive to people with a vulva, they can also happen on scrotal/anal tissue. However it does seem to much more frequently affect people with typical XX sex organs. 

If you develop these, PLEASE fill out an averse reaction form or your country’s equivalent. Also, I’m so sorry and if you need emotional support or have questions please feel free to get in touch.

Most likely, these will not happen to you--the vast majority of vaccinated people have not had this as a side effect. But it IS popping up more and more, and it is good to know about it in advance so you can be prepared to deal with and treat it without as much anxiety and all the hoops I had to jump through to get good care. Overall I’m still glad to be vaccinated, but if I had known this was a side effect, as someone already prone to canker sores I would have waited to vaccinate until my car was fixed a week later a the very least :|

[roadsiderose]

Huckleberry Finn and the Missing Prince

I read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when I was a kid, and I think I liked this book more than the one on Tom Sawyer. I chuckled reading this theory for the first time, it brought back memories of the book. 

This post was originally posted on the reddit forums by /u/wren42. I scour the forums for posts like these, that show the literary or historical significance of plotlines, characters. Here it is...

Introduction

A while back there was a post about our favorite subtle allusions in ASOIAF, and I mentioned Huck Finn. A few posters were curious to see a longer writeup of the parallels -- so here it is. =)

The chapters detailing Aegon’s travels on the Rhoyne have often been noted by astute readers as containing references to another famous river trip - Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

There are obvious parallels in narrative and the imagery GRRM chooses: Young GrifFinn wears an iconic straw hat and travels down a river on a barge having adventures.

If these similarities weren’t blatant enough, GRRM drops this bit in ADWD:

The Upper Rhoyne was full of snags and Sawyers, any one of which could rip out the Shy Maid's hull. Griff did not want to hear it. What he wanted was Volantis.

A sawyer is an unusual and archaic word -- “a fallen tree stuck on the bottom of a river, where it constitutes a danger to boating” -- it’s also of course the name of Huck Finn’s partner in crime Tom Sawyer.

Most people assume the connections stop here, and that these cheeky winks are just a cute cosmetic reference, like the Wheel of Time or Harry Potter easter eggs.

However, when you dig deeper into Huck Finn, you can find connections to a popular tinfoil subplot:

**I believe Young Griff’s similarity to Huck Finn is actually an intentional subtextual clue to his Blackfyre lineage. **

The story of Huck Finn contains thematic and narrative elements that GRRM may have purposefully drawn from in crafting the Blackfyre subplot. George is known to do this - he draws heavily from English and French history as well has various mythologies both for world-building inspiration and specific plot points. I believe that GRRM included the Huck Finn references because he was amused by the cleverness of the thematic parallels with the Blackfyre story.

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" isn’t just the story of a kid floating down a river -- it features mistaken identities, blood feuds between two aristocratic houses and the extermination of the male bloodline of one, and a pair of con artists who falsely pretend to be royalty "the duke and the king" and put on a mummers show to scam money. These themes are reflected as in a dark mirror in GRRMs secret fAegon Blackfyre subplot.

The False Nephew

The core conceit of the blackfyre conspiracy theory is that fAegon is not the long lost son of Rhaegar, but in fact a descendant of the bastard Blackfyre line, found by Varys or the Golden Company(depending who you ask), and put forward as a pretender in order to hijack the throne.

So how is Finn similar to fAegon?

Both Young Griff and Finn falsely pretend to be the Nephew of an influential family to cheat them.

Huck Finn’s plot is rife with cases of mistaken identity, disguises, con-men, and pretenders. However the most notable is his identity swap with the infamous Tom Sawyer. Near the climax of the story Finn arrives in a distant town and insinuates himself into a wealthy family by pretending to be the Nephew of Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas Phelps. He uses this position to help effect the escape of his friend Jim from slavery.

Why does this matter?

The true Aegon would be Daenerys’ nephew -- but Young GrifFinn isn’t truly her nephew, he’s a fake. The mistaken identity in Huck Finn is paralleled in fAegon’s false claim and attempt to steal the throne from Danny.

And this isn’t the only such clue -- Huck Finn features other cons and pretenders, even some who claim, laughably, to be nobility.

Noble Pretenders and Stolen Inheritance

In Huck Finn two con artists “The Duke and the King” pretend to be royalty and perform various stunts to rob people.

They introduce themselves as the long-lost heirs of noble houses, one to the Duke of Bridgewater, the other as the Lost Dauphin, the King of France Louis XVII.

Louis XVII’s actual history is of keen interest here, and with it we start to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

History of the Lost Dauphin

During the French Revolution, where the long standing dynastic monarchy was overthrown, Louis XVI was imprisoned and executed. Louis XVII was actually the second son of the king, but his elder brother had died leaving him as heir apparent.

Little Louis-Charles was technically recognized as King by the nobles but never ruled and was kept imprisoned by the new Republic government. This is where the conspiracy theories start to spring up.

Immediately after his father’s death, plots were hatched to free Louis-Charles from confinement, but these came to nothing at the time, and eventually he died of illness in captivity under mysterious circumstances -- it being suspected that his doctor was murdered by poison. However, popular theories abounded in the day and for many years afterward of conspiracies to smuggle the child out of confinement in the Temple tower. They proposed that the autopsy and burial records had been falsified, and that in fact the boy had lived and been spirited away.

Rumours abound and when the monarchy was restored some 20 years later, hundreds of claimants pretending to be the “Lost Dauphin” came forward to attempt to take the throne.

GRRM The Histrogrifter

This is perhaps one of the most famous stories of a lost prince in European history, and GRRM would certainly have studied it in preparing his narrative around the Targaryen Restoration. It’s well established that he based the history of westeros on English and French history and this plot could not have been overlooked.

Thus, the appearance of a Dauphin pretender in Huck Finn can be taken as something GRRM would have noted, given he’s included references to Huck in fAegon’s chapters. Here is an obviously false claimant pretending to be the long-lost heir of a royal bloodline whose throne is about to be restored - a juicy intrigue to parallel in his own story!

And indeed, in fAegon we have an heir presumed dead after a revolution, only to supposedly have been spirited away by Varys during the sack of King’s Landing, and appearing later as a false claimant when the original line is restored. The similarity to Louis Charles is stunning.

Scammers, Swindlers, and Mummers

The antics of the “Duke and the King” provide the basis for other allusions in ASOIAF as well.

Later in the story the group arrives in the town of the primary target -- a recently deceased nobleman who has left a large inheritance to his daughters. The “Duke” pretends to be the missing heir of this nobleman to swindle the Heiresses of their fortune -- again paralleled by fAegon’s royal pretensions attempting to steal the Iron Throne from Daenerys. But of course, the Duke, like fAegon, is a fraud.

The two con-men engage in a variety of schemes, one of which involves putting on a play -- or mummer’s farce, if you will -- entitled “The Royal Nonesuch” -- ie a play about false royalty. The play is a bawdy flop and complete ripoff of the town’s populace, and they eventually have to flee for their lives or risk being hung.

These themes are also hinted at in the Duke and King’s theatrical fumbles -- in addition to the “Royal Nonesesuch” the pair practices scenes from Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, and Macbeth, the former of course being the archetypal tale of feuding families (which we will revisit shortly), while the later two are again stories about wars to usurp a throne.

These theatrical elements have been worked into AOSIAF via references to fAegon as the “Mummer’s Dragon”, and parallels in his story to those of Richard and Macbeth. It has been theorized that, just as the townspeople turn on the Duke and Dauphin when they learn the truth, the people of Westeros will turn on fAegon when his false identity is revealed.

Family Feud and the Extermination of a Male Bloodline

So we’ve established the falseness of fAegon’s claim, but how do we get to the Blackfyres, specifically?

The answer comes from another conflict Huck stumbles upon during his adventures.

The Blackfyres were a branch house of the Targaryen dynasty, started from a bastard line. After the wars that settled the legitimacy of their claim, they retreated into the east, and ultimately the male bloodline was believed to have been wiped out. Did GRRM draw inspiration from Huck Finn for this part of the story as well?

Huck Finn’s parallel to the Targaryens and Blackfyres comes in the form of the conflict between the Shephersons and Grangerfords. These two bitter rival families are engaged in a 30 year blood feud, and Huck quickly becomes entangled in their war. Notably, the Grangerfords have a son Huck’s age who he befriends, and is then shocked to see gunned down in a firefight. Like the Blackfyres, the males of the Grangerford family are wiped out, ending the feud. This section can also be seen as an additional reference to Romeo and Juliet, as the final confrontation is kicked off by a forbidden tryst between children from opposing families.

If GRRM is drawing on Huck as a model for fAegon, then this conflict should play a prominent role in his story. fAegon should be not just a royal pretender, but a pretender tangled up in a long standing blood feud between two aristocratic families -- the Blackfyres and Targaryens.

One other subtle hint in Huck Finn supports the idea that fAegon is from a bastard royal line.

During their elaborate plot to break Jim out of captivity, Huck and Tom form a secret nation, complete with a royal coat-of-arms. Among the many superfluous and conflicting components of the crest, Tom insists they include a "bar sinister" -- the mark of a bastard line.

Finn and the Future

So we’ve established a strong connection between Huck Finn’s narrative and the Blackfyre subplot in ASOIAF -- but what might these parallels say about the future of fAegon’s story?

At least two plotlines from Huck Finn appear to be relevant here.

The ending of Huck Finn centers on the plot to free Jim from slavery out from under Tom’s Aunt Sally (which, you recall, parallels Danny as fAegons ‘aunt’). Tom hatches an absurdly complicated plan based on his ideas from romantic adventure stories.

This romanticism is reflected in Young Griff’s naivete and impulsiveness, traits that will likely lead to his downfall. In wanting to live out his romanticized vision of a great Conquering King, fAegon will be led to make unrealistic and foolish decisions. fAegon’s ultimate fate will likely be failure and defeat, brought on by his own naivete. Like Tom and Huck, he will act based on how he imagines a romanticized story would go, rather than on the practicalities of the situation, and in the end will be betrayed by the cold hard reality.

The second portion of Huck Finn that may become relevant is the fate of the Duke and King when their frauds are discovered. In the case of the “Royal Nonesuch”, they are run out of town at risk to their lives when the people discover they’ve been swindled.

It’s quite possible that fAegon’s claim will be delegitimized in some way, and the people of Westeros will turn against him. Where they first hailed him as a hero, once his true identity is discovered they will resent being duped and rise up against his claim.

How might this happen?

As a final spurious bit of tinfoil- in attempting to identify the true identity of the Duke after trying to steal the girls’ inheritance, the town is forced to exhume the dead brother’s body for evidence. While we can’t say for certain this detail would have any bearing on GRRM’s plot, it could perhaps be read as a hint about the identity of some trueborn heir in a certain crypt…

Were several claimants to all argue for their legitimacy, it would be a beautiful and subtle allusion on GRRMs part to mimic Huck Finn again in the conclusion of fAegon’s arc, and have Jon emerge as the true heir as a result of evidence exhumed from the Crypts of winterfell.

Thanks for your attention, I hope you enjoyed this little literary float trip. =)

[castellankurze]

I was bored and out of roulettes to run the other day, so I decided to make Jiro’s family.

This got long so the writeup’s behind a cut.  Don’t say I never do your dashboard any favors.

Top (left) - Lord Heihacheiro Kuroda, Daimayo of the northeastern region bordering the Bay of Yanxia.  Heihachiro was known as a just and equitable lord who balanced the iron-handed dictates of distant Imperial rule with even-handed treatment of his subjects, taking advantage of his friendship with Lord Kaien.  Despite that, he often had a reputation for a stubborn streak of his own, and rarely permitted himself to be argued from a chosen stance; he was also firmly of the belief that a man’s character was unimpeachable barring the condemnation of his peers, an old and outdated view under modern Imperial Doma. He was slain in the failed Doma Rebellion, when the Fortunate Sons of the XIII Imperial Legion marched in support of their brethren in the XII and burned Kuroda Castle.

Top (right) - Hiroka Takimoto, wife of Heihacheiro.  A daughter of a minor clan from northern Doma, where the mountains border on the Azim Steppe and the fierce xaela tribes roam the land.  Hiroka spoke three languages and could write in fluent Doman and Hingan and it was said that as a warrior Heihacheiro’s finest strategy was to marry her, for though she was pale and often weak of health, her sharp mind would lead to a revitalization of the Kuroda lands which had then fallen into difficult times.  Despite that, their marriage was a political one and it was said Hiroka did not particularly like her husband very much, considering his character a relic of bygone times, and it was said that between her and Lord Kaien, she was the more likely of the two to argue down her husband.  Hiroka went missing following the Doman Rebellion, but eventually was found in the port city of Kugane, having fled with a few personal riches which she has since used to fund a growing mercantile business.

Mid (left) Ichiro Kuroda - Firstborn son of Heihacheiro, Ichiro was the darling of his people.  Energetic and dynamic, rare was the day when Ichiro was not seen attending to a dozen different distractions, taking over the running of his father’s fields at a surprisingly young age.  He was also highly talented with the blade and on visits to Doma Castle would often seek practice bouts with the samurai of nearby Monzen.  He kept his hair unfashionably short in flagrant defiance of tradition, claiming it merely served to impede his vision when permitted to grow - a claim often considered an underhanded jab at his contemporaries.  During the Doma Rebellion Ichiro Kuroda gathered what forces were willing to fight against the Garleans and sent his brother to safety before sallying out to meet the Imperials in the field, intending to strike down their leadership himself.  It was said that he slayed a full platoon’s worth of men before crossing blades with Decurion Celsus pyr Nerva, who cut him down.  His body was never recovered following the battle, an act held as proof of Garlean perfidy, and he is yet mourned and celebrated by the remnants of those who dwelt within the Kuroda lands.

Mid (right) Jiro Kuroda - The legitimate Jiro Kuroda, secondborn son of Heihacheiro by his wife Hiroka.  Jiro was a more enigmatic figure, standing ever in the shadows of his father, his elder brother, and his...other brother, prone to sudden mood swings and unpredictable behavior.  Perhaps discomfited by his status in life as the ‘second’ son, Jiro nevertheless showed promise with a sharp mind for figures and transactions, though in time these manifested as a talent for underhanded dealings, and despite the distance between Kuroda Castle and the capital, it was quietly said that Jiro Kuroda knew more of the Doman underworld than the crime lords themselves, and had contacts in the Confederacy of the Ruby Sea as well.  Heihacheiro was loathe to rebuke his son for his eccentricities, seeing in him a possibility wherein one day the Kuroda lands might become a powerful center for trade.  The Garlean response to the Doma Rebellion ended that dream, however, as Jiro literally dragged his unconscious half-brother from the killing fields and escaped aboard a refugee ship, only to fall victim to that selfsame brother when he was caught serving as an information broker to Garlean agents in Radz-at-Han, strangled and left for dead in a darkened alley of the kind he had come to know so well.

Bottom (left) Ryoko Inomata - Also known as ‘Ryoko Twintail’ a reference to her preferred hairstyle.  Ryoko was born in Yanxia, a poor child to poor parents who left home at the earliest age possible with dreams of becoming a renowned actress and singer.  In this quest, she defied the odds and proved herself a quickly-rising star in the theaters that catered to the landed and wealthy.  It was in one such performance she caught the eye of Heihacheiro Kuroda, who at the time was passing through a particularly acrimonious period with his wife Hiroka and found himself smitten with the talented beauty.  Not realizing he was, in fact, married, Ryoko quietly returned the Daimyo’s affections for a period of several weeks while he visited Lord Kaien in the capital.  It was only after he’d returned to his lands and her belly began to swell she realized the enormity of her error.  Swallowing her fear, she bought passage to Kuroda Castle and came face to face with the man’s wife.  Precisely what transpired will never be known - perhaps Hiroka intended to hang Ryoko’s presence around the neck of her philandering husband - but Ryoko was permitted to stay safely in the Kuroda lands, playing to smaller, but nevertheless devoted attendees.  When her child was born she named him Longtail, but in secret his name was Jiro, chosen in defiance as a name meaning ‘second son.’  Ryoko was slow recovering from her pregnancy and remained ill of health long years afterward, and when her son was not yet ten years of age she died tragically young, mourned by adoring fans that spanned half the breadth of Doma.

Bottom (right) Jiro Kuroda - Also known as Jiro Inomata, Jiro the Long-tailed, or most simply Longtail, he is the actual second-born son of Heihacheiro Kuroda, preceding Jiro Kuroda proper by nearly two years.  Named for his most distinctive feature - a tail nearly twice the length of that boasted by most raen, Jiro was a hardworking and diligent, yet nevertheless brooding child.  After his mother’s death, he lived with this family or that, working whatever chores needed doing that day.  Though his parentage was never spoken of aloud, it was all but an open secret amongst the Kuroda family.  Ichiro in particular was quick to reach out to Longtail, favoring him with an inclusion to the training of the blade he was undergoing himself, while Lord Kuroda oft permitted the peasant boy to attend his son as friend and bodyguard, which enabled the young Longtail to live, if not at the Lord’s table, than within a good double arms’ reach.  His relationship with his other half brother was less cordial - a quirk of genes had given Longtail pale hair like his grandsire rather than anything resembling his mother’s soft red, and the two of them bore a startling resemblance to one another, a fact which sat ill upon both.  Longtail dreamed of one day being acknowledged his father’s son, a dream he thought dashed when the Garlean Empire laid siege to Kuroda Castle and Ichiro bade him spirit his younger brother away from the fighting.  This he did unwillingly, only for his path to cross the site of his own father’s demise amidst the confusion of the night.  Distraught and enraged, Longtail struck out at the slayers of Lord Kuroda only to be shot by an arquebusier and left bleeding out amidst the fields.  He awakened days later aboard a ship fleeing Othard, having been rescued by his half-brother, an act which proved tragically ironic for the would-be Lord Kuroda when Longtail caught him selling information about the refugees to spies of Garlemald.  Once more enraged beyond words, Longtail closed his hands around his brother’s throat and emerged from the alley into which they had disappeared now styling himself the true Jiro Kuroda.

[keptin-indy]

Dresden Files: Salem

I’ll try to post these on Mondays or Tuesday, since that’s when I do the previous weekend’s writeups.  Feel free to ask questions if anything not clear or you just want to know something!

Background info

If you know the Dresden Files books, this game starts during the events of Changes, but with some small changes.  If you don’t know the books, the relevant info is that wizards and “Red Court” vampires have been at war for some years now and the main character, Harry Dresden, just managed to set off a really powerful curse that killed all of them.  For some reason, during the fight leading up to that, the Wardens - wizard cops - were unable to help him because “they were sick”.  The big change in this campaign is that the illness was a deadly plague set off by the vampire ambassador who had just been by and it killed a swath of the powerful people who had gathered to meet her.

I’ll try to link Dresden-specific terms to wiki pages for people unfamiliar with the universe.  There may also be some easter eggs in the links sometimes...

Setting (in the GM’s words)

If anyone in America were asked to compile a list of the locations important to the occult history of the country, it would surely include Salem.  The town is nearly universally associated with the witch trials of the 1690s.  Everyone, clued-in or not, associates Salem with witches, and, in this world of the occult, associations can have power.  In this case it has lead to Salem having probably the largest supernatural community on the east coast of North America.  That area includes (for the supernatural community at least) Boston as well.  

And community it is, much more so than many other cities around the globe.  Salem is a geographically small town, yet rich in history, emotions, and magic all attracting a different crowd from the spooky side, if they didn’t have some structure and order there would be constant conflict (well, more-constant conflict).  The city has evolved a particular brand of stability, with regular gatherings of all the major power-players in the city.  This isn’t a court or anything so formal as that, but usually neutral parties will side with the aggrieved party in conflicts, preserving the status quo.  Until recently these gatherings were informally lead by [Warden regional commander] Michael Rowland, one of the more powerful denizens of Salem, how they will shake out going forward remains to be seen…

Characters, or at least what was known about them at the start of game.  The Dreseden Files RPG is set up so that most of the PCs had met each other by the start of game, but we weren’t a coherent party yet.

Murchah O’Dougal has lived in Salem for a long time.  He switches jobs every few decades, but it’s Salem, so people have caught on that the tall, thin, taciturn, middle aged man isn’t your vanilla mortal.  Additionally, he likes taking long walks on the beach...the parts under the water, without the benefit of breathing gear.  He’s not a very social man, but he helps out where he can, especially if it involves ghosts, which he can see and interact with.  He’s the one who convinced Eunice to leave her nursing home.

Eunice Featherham’s son married a witch.  Now, Eunice was an intelligent woman and knew there was no such thing as magic, so it was pretty insulting that her daughter-in-law could use it.  It was even more insulting that she taught it to their daughter Evelyn, but then both her son and the witch had to die in a house fire, leaving Eunice to raise Evelyn the Right Way, eg without magic.  Over the years as Evelyn grew up, Eunice could feel her age catching up with her, and when it was time for her granddaughter to go to college, they sold Eunice’s house for tuition and put her into a nursing home, where she eventually died.  Damned if that was going to stop her, though, not when there were so many people who needed her sage advice, starting with the nurses at the home.  In desperation, the home called the Salem Witches’ Circle (kind of a magical chamber of commerce), who asked Murchah to talk the irate ghost out of terrorizing the staff.  

They also called Dr. Evelyn Featherham, who was now living in Boston as the city’s only therapist dealing with the supernatural.  After a long struggle with Eunice’s parenting, Evelyn had finally reclaimed her magical heritage and was using her experiences to help others through situations they couldn’t explain to anyone else.  One of those people, 10 years ago during her clinicals, was a teenage mage grieving over the loss of his father.  Now, though, she had to deal with being permanently haunted by her grandmother and trying to convince her receptionist not to quit because of the new office ghost telling her how to answer the phone correctly.

Once upon a time, a witch found a tiny black kitten in a dumpster.  She had been looking for a familiar, so it seemed like serendipity and she took him in and named him Sir Adler Toebeans.  She was absolutely not expecting her cat to start talking a couple years later and even less to change his shape into anything he felt like.  It seemed her kitty was in fact some kind of fae or at least a changeling, though he didn’t have any more idea what he was than she did.  Regardless, she switched awkwardly from pet mom to real mom and Adler eventually moved out and got a job at Count Orlok’s Nightmare Gallery, where he worked in the museum itself and made short films as both advertising and subtle education. [A note on pronouns: I’m using “he” because Adler has presented as slightly more masculine than anything else during the game.  He doesn’t seem to have an innate sex or gender, so I may switch back and forth with “they” depending on how game goes/the situation.]

A wizard with a mysterious past came from Syria to America and fell in love with a woman whose high-society family had profited off of the supernatural while disdaining them as people.  The pair ran away together and she was disowned, so they settled in Boston where he took magical odd jobs and she tried to figure out how to be working class.  Eventually Sebastian “Baz” Bassam was born and later his sister Olivia, and their father began to teach them how to control their magical talents.  When Baz was 14, his father was killed in a multi-car pileup, but not before his uncontrolled magical energies shorted out an entire hospital wing, unintentionally taking a lot of people with him.  This large-scale violation of the First Law of Magic brought the attention of the local Warden-Commander, Michael Rowland, and when Baz subsequently brought down a possession victim with his therapist during his grief counselling, Rowland decided to train the boy alongside his daughter Sylvia.  These days he’s a full-fledged Warden who likes to think of his duties as magical community outreach rather than beheading first ans asking questions later.  He also looks like a cheerful Syrian lumberjack.  [Note: Dat’s me!  It’s going to seem like I spent a narcissistic amount of time on my own character in the writeups, but a) the first arc just has a lot of Baz-plot and b) when the GM asks if anyone is doing anything, the others haven’t really answered much and I hate to leave the GM hanging.]

As part of his education in control, Rowland sent Baz to a Tibetan monastery when he was 19 to learn meditation and healing with the monks there, traditional allies of the White Council of Wizards.  While there, Baz befriended a litter of Temple Dogs, newly returned from having been dognapped and taken to Chicago of all places.  One of the puppies was notably rambunctious and ended up outside the monastery walls trying to eat a yeti several orders of magnitude bigger than it.  The puppy ran back to the temple, yeti in hot pursuit, and hid behind the Warden-in training, who fought off the yeti and saved the puppy and monks from the puppy’s own bad decisions.  As a “reward”, he was given the perpetrator so the monks wouldn’t have to deal with it.  Baz named him Samuel Gompers Bassam and took him back to Boston, where he grew into a very large Tibetan Mastiff who can see spirits and whose teeth technically count as a holy weapon, which he mostly uses against Baz’s shoes.  At one point while attempting to eat a ghoul, Sam met Adler as a dog and brought him back home, where he stayed for a few days before abruptly turning into a bird, thanking Baz for his hospitality, and leaving before any questions could be asked. [Note: Yes, Sam is a PC.  One of my friends decided it was an awesome idea to play an actual, only slightly magical, non-talking dog.]

Session 1

The town of Salem had been enjoying an uneventful Fall, supernaturally-speaking.  Even Halloween, always an anxious time for those in the know, had gone by without any major mishaps.  That all changed one night in November, when every practitioner or supernatural being in the world awoke from vivid dreams of the world ending in fire and blood.  Many people recognized the dreams as the psychic backlash from some kind of spell, and those with more magical experience further narrowed it down to some kind of worldwide curse effect even though such things were thought to be impossible.  Around Salem, the Community woke in terror and reached out to one another.  The shapeshifter Adler called his mother in the Witches Circle, who told him that calls had begun to come in from several of their members, including some of the older ones, who were so shocked by the experience that they had been taken to the hospital.  Dr Evelyn Featherham likewise checked in with the Circle and headed to the hospital herself to volunteer for on-call psych services.  Her late grandmother, Eunice Featherham, checked the news on the constantly-on TVs in her nursing home and saw confused reports rolling in of simultaneous coups and assassinations in several South American countries, which she assumed was the work of either the CIA or Communists.  Finding that news less than interesting, she floated out to track down her granddaughter.  Murchah O’Dougal, always watchful of the ocean for reasons known only to himself, walked into the Bay, but saw nothing amiss; whatever he was looking for had not been disturbed by the hideous dreams.  Baz Bassam, Warden of the White Council, immediately checked on his mother but found that her sleep hadn’t been disturbed at all; presumably meaning that regular mortals were unaffected by the spell’s backlash.  He called his sister at college, who most definitely had woken up, but had nothing to offer her besides assurances that they were all okay for the moment.  Knowing Warden-Commander Rowland was in Edinburgh at the moment, he called head witch Mary Harrison, who was coordinating a makeshift command center to coordinate help to those who needed it and a response, should it become necessary.  Before heading over to lend his help there, he checked in with Warden Command at Edinburgh, but found chaos there, too.  The wizard who answered the phone said that they only thing they knew right now was that the Red Court appeared to be no more.  From what they could tell, every single member had been wiped out at once by a spell.  Once they had more information, they’d be sure to get back to Warden Bassam, but in the meantime they had to figure out who was in charge of the Wardens.  This was almost as alarming than the giant curse as far as Baz was concerned, but with no more info coming from Edinburgh, all he could do was head to the witches’ command center and try to keep people calm and safe until more news came out.

After a long, sleepless night, morning came with no more information.  Invitations went out to the members of the Greater Boston supernatural community from Ian Fitzpatrick, the caretaker of the largest neutral territory in the area, Hamilton Hall.  Before the meeting in the evening, one of Edinburgh’s army of clerks called Baz to read off the last wills and testaments of Michael and Sylvia Rowland, naming him as heir to their magical holdings.  Baz was gutted, as Michael Rowland had been his mentor and surrogate father-figure since his father’s death, and he’d grown up and trained alongside Sylvia for nearly ten years.  The clerk couldn’t tell him how they had died or any details about what was happening within the Wardens; only that he would likely get “official” notification of the Rowlands’ deaths at some future date.  That the lawyers were working faster than the Wardens was significant cause for alarm all on its own.

That evening, Fitzpatrick welcomed representatives from all the major power blocs and notable individuals into Hamilton Hall, formally allowing everyone through the threshold.  Baz sought out Mary Harrison before the meeting proper began and warned her about the deaths of the Rowlands and magical killing of the Red Court.  Fitzpatrick brought the meeting to order and announced the Rowlands’ deaths himself, calling for a moment of silence that was observed by most people present, with the notable exception of the representatives of the Winter Court (and Eunice, though due more to her difficulty hearing than any disrespect).  Adler asked how they had died and Fitzpatrick said there had been an attack on the Wardens in Edinburgh, which was the first Baz had heard of it.  Ignoring that for now and trying to give the impression of a calm and level-headed authority figure who wasn’t grieving, Baz announced that he knew where the nightmares had come from and explained the curse that had taken out the entire Red Court.  The gathering was shocked that something that large could have happened and that the threat of the Red Court was suddenly gone (though the Summer Court and Daniyah, a powerful local sorceress, seemed less surprised), and Fitzpatrick adjourned the meeting , saying that he knew full well some people were going to use the situation to jockey for power.  He gave them a week to get it all out of their systems and then he would call another meeting to see where Boston should go from there.  The jockeying and networking began before anyone even made it out the doors.  Baz asked Daniyah what she or her spirits knew about the attacks, but she would only tell him that “things” were awakening that had lain dormant for many years.  Knowing it would do no good, Baz continued to press for details and was informed that the city faced two threats...from within and from without.  Eunice floated from group to group eavesdropping and overheard the Winter Court proposing to murder someone for the sole reason that the scarier warden was dead now, which she dutifully reported to Baz with a stern admonition to stop them.  Without more details, Baz simply went over and stood meaningfully by the faeries.  Meanwhile, Adler took on his dog form and sought out Sam, warning him that his wizard was in danger and offering his help guarding him for the next few days.  Sam, in turn, told him to be aware of Daniyah, who no longer smelled purely human anymore, but instead like some kind of spirit, and also her owl familiar, who was definitely a spirit, though he hadn’t been able to figure out what kind without licking it.  Baz turned around to see a familiar black dog incongruously petting his own dog, and asked if he would stick around and answer some questions this time.  Adler agreed, but answered everything as literally as possible without offering any information was wasn’t specifically spelled out and some that was.  He told Baz that he had enjoyed the name he’d given him last time and to keep using that, and that he would follow and protect Baz along with Sam while the immediate danger hopefully passed.  Seeing that Baz was distracted from his rightful duties, Eunice got into an argument with the Winter Court, but her attempt to spook them into following the straight-and-narrow backfired when they scared her right back, startling her back into a dementia episode.  Baz and his two large dogs circulated amongst the other faction heads, assuring them that he was as dedicated to keeping the peace as his predecessor and generally attempting to politic.  Murchah drew him aside and offered to train him to use the sword he carried and Baz tried to find a polite way to tell him that he had specialized in swordplay for years.  Unconvinced, Murchah asked to see his fighting stance and was pleasantly surprised to find that Baz was not merely boasting.  

Finally, the meeting broke up and Murchah headed back out to his ocean patrol, only this time he noticed strange behavior in the fish.  Not being a spellcaster himself and having no way to track magical energy, he called the Circle, who told him to call the Warden.  Baz had not yet made it home, so Murchah left a cryptic message with Baz’s mother to call him back.  Eventually Baz returned home with one dog more than he left with and reintroduced “Fenrir” to his mother, warning her this time that he was definitely sentient and could talk (though Adler refused to do so on principle now).  He returned Murchah’s call, but with nothing more to go off of than “the fish are weird”, decided to let it wait until morning.  Adler insisted on sleeping in Baz’s room, which required some setting of ground rules, starting with a promise never to harm his mother.  Adler agreed, but was less forthcoming in answering Baz’ questions about his nature or allegiance, saying only that he wanted to protect both Sam’s human and the city balance he represented as a Warden.  He otherwise revealed only that he could take on many forms, though he wouldn’t say if he had a natural or default one, and that he usually worked at Count Orlok’s Nightmare Gallery, where he could use his skills to great effect.  Baz was both fascinated and slightly frustrated at the mysterious creature playing bodyguard for him, but when he found that Adler could use computers, he immediately handed over the password for the email account Olivia had maintained for him and begged his help keeping in contact.

“Fenrir” woke up early the next morning and got the household coffee, which he served to them with creepy mostly-human hands on a dog body.  Betsy (Baz’s mother) was relieved when Baz gathered the dogs and put on some swimwear to meet Murchah at the beach.  After some discussion about everyone’s underwater capabilities, Baz conjured air bubbles around his and Sam’s heads while Adler turned into a Lovecraftian fishman, and the group followed Murchah into the Bay, but Baz was at a loss figuring out what was causing the irregularities Murchah claimed to see.  Sam happily ate one of the affected fish.  Returning to the surface, Baz asked Murchah to call Dr Evelyn Featherham, who was more sensitive to tracing ongoing magical effects than he was, but shortly after her receptionist answered the phone, the poor woman was shoved aside so that Eunice could do her job “better”.  Talking around the old ghost, Baz asked the receptionist to pass the message along when Evelyn had a free moment.  Evelyn eventually had a chance to call back from her ghost-proofed office and promised to come out during her lunch break.  Murchah hired a boat so that Evelyn (followed, of course, by Eunice, who was determined to chaperone her daughter meeting a young man on a beach) wouldn’t have to get her work clothes wet, but she couldn’t see the magical eddies from above the water and ended up having to do into the drink anyway.  Unfortunately for her, only Adler seemed to be adapted enough for underwater hunting of this kind, and he realized that the fish were all swimming in a huge circle tens of miles across.  The group returned to the boat to track down the center of this circle, which was occupied by a “fishing trawler” that didn’t seem to be doing any fishing.  Adler turned into a bird to scope it out and noticed that some of the “fishermen” milling around on deck not fishing were concealing decidedly non-standard tentacle-arms.  When he reported this back to the group, Eunice immediately floated over to the trawler and began haranguing the people on deck about their terrible work ethic.  The “fishermen” were not expecting a sudden ghostly tirade and very sensibly tried to escape her senile wrath.  Taking advantage of this distraction, Adler changed from a bird into a rat, dropping onto the deck and scurrying below.  One of the doors inside was both locked and well-sealed, so he disconcertingly grew hands in order to pick it.  The door swung open, revealing the rat with hands on the one side, and a number of tentacled cultists chanting around a circle on the other side.  Adler scurried out of sight, but the cultists merely locked the door rather than give chase.  Adler tried to direct Eunice’s wrath downstairs, but she found that the room was warded against spirits.  Adler again reported back to the other boat and Murchah drew up alongside the trawler so the mages could board and follow the shapeshifter below.  Adler once again picked the lock and Baz opened the door and demanded to know what was going on with as much gravitas as a man wearing a tank and swim trunks could manage.  The cultists rushed to attack the newcomers while Murchah ran straight for the summoning circle and began disrupting it, hearing unsettlingly familiar and ancient voices whispering in his head while he did so.  As Baz and Sam fought the cultists, Adler transformed into a hideous claw monster and jumped into the fray, startling everyone on both sides.  Eventually the cultists were knocked unconscious and Evelyn could examine the remains of the circle Murchah was still determinedly wrecking, declaring that it had been meant to awaken something deep in the ocean.

[mojavejourneys]

I need to do a full writeup of vampire Maxie’s abilities since I actually haven’t covered that. And because I’ve been thinking about it a lot too XD

(These abilities are based on him being about ~200 years old)

It should also be noted that he does have different levels of power according to the lunar cycle, though he’s not totally dependent on it. Powers requiring more focus are easier during a full moon and harder during a new moon. Most powers work readily on humans and lesser vampires (i.e. younger than he is).

Base Abilities:

Supernatural Speed - He can run fast enough that he would be seen as a blur to the human eye. It requires him to focus a little though, but it’s almost second nature to him.

Supernatural Strength - He can easily pick up heavy items and throw them long distances. For reference, he can pick up a destroyed car and hurl it a good few feet away. Again it does need focus to use but it’s another of those things that’s second nature.

Mind Reading - He can easily read the minds of humans and pick up on surface thoughts, but he can pry a little deeper. However, to read deeper thoughts he has to first form a blood bond with the human (covered in more detail later)

Supernatural Flight - He can channel his power to allow his wings to let him fly temporarily. This requires constant focus to maintain however, and he can sustain flight for a few hours (up to eight in a full moon)

Telekinesis - Maxie can move things with the power of his mind. Simple telekinetic movements can allow him to deliver a shove or bring a small item to him, while ones requiring more focus will let him move larger object and even throw a person. Using this power requires him to maintain eye contact with the thing to be moved.

Heightened Senses - Maxie has a stronger sense of smell, enhanced vision and heightened hearing, allowing him to track movements and sense where something is with very little effort.

Heightened Libido - Yes, Maxie has a far stronger libido as a vampire. He has far more stamina and has intense sexual urges that need to be sated. Some of the surviving pre-war vampire mythos calls this the ‘mark of the vampire of lust’, a title that Maxie dues take pride in.

Vampiric Allure - Maxie has a general aura around him that makes him somewhat more enticing. However, focusing this power allows him to draw humans in, almost compelling them to come to him.

Compulsion - Maxie can compel another to do what he wants them to do. He can do subtle compulsion (where he gently nudges a person’s thoughts to his liking), full compulsion (where he plants the thought in the person’s head and continually mentally nudges them) or aggressive compulsion (where he compels the person to do his bidding and gives them no semblance of free will over their actions). He must maintain eye contact with his target until he ‘releases the compulsion’ (where he finishes planting his thoughts and allows the target to act, except in aggressive compulsion where he has to maintain the eye contact until his target has finished doing what he wants them to do). He can compel multiple targets at the same time however this requires more focus, and he is unable to aggressively compel more than one target.

Healing Factor - Maxie can heal many injuries far more quickly than humans can. Severe injuries require him to take more human blood to initiate the process.

Miscellaneous abilities include his responses to threats and duress. He typically responds with hissing, growling and baring his fangs. He tends to be grumpier in the daytime and tends to hiss a lot more when he needs to feed.

Blood Bonds:

Maxie can form blood bonds with humans by constantly drinking small amounts of their blood. The bond doesn’t form through infrequent contact, rather it only forms if he regularly feeds from them in small amounts, and it must be regularly maintained. As he feeds more, the bond grows stronger and allows him to eventually use the human he’s bonded with as a conduit for his powers.

Level 1 - Very basic awareness of the human’s presence and general state of health.

Level 2 - Easier to read surface thoughts and can track the human’s location more easily. Can also feel if the human is threatened or in pain.

Level 3 - With a bit of focus he can ‘see’ through the human’s eyes, seeing what they see.

Level 4 - Can ‘see’ through the human’s eyes with less effort, can also channel some basic telekinesis. Increased awareness of the human’s pain and threat levels.

Level 5 - Can channel more advanced telekinesis and can read the human’s deeper thoughts with a bit of focus.

Level 6 - Can channel his stronger telekinetic powers and can even channel basic compulsion. Deeper thoughts are now easier to read.

Level 7 - Able to use nearly full telekinetic powers through his human conduit and can even try some stronger compulsion. The human’s thoughts are also now completely open to him at this level.

Level 8 - Able to now use his strongest compulsion through his human conduit and now has full awareness of the human’s surroundings, health and any threats.

If he wants a more permanent bond with the human, he can feed them some of his blood. Under normal circumstances, feeding from the human alone will only get a blood bond up to Level 4. But feeding the human some of his blood will allow the bond to strengthen and will also slow down the rate of decay of the bond, plus it also will stay at Level 2 permanently (i.e. the bond can still decay but will not decay to any lower than Level 2).

It should also be noted that the human who does drink his blood may feel a little put off by food for a few days (temporary side effect, not permanent, and doesn’t mean the human will turn). However, they may feel a little more empowered and will have an increased libido for those few days too, as well as increased sexual desire for Maxie. Maxie can repeat the process to increase the lowest permanent threshold, however care must be taken to ensure the bonded human doesn’t get addicted to his blood and risks suffering withdrawal symptoms that can incude cramps, shakes, nausea and personality disturbances.

Performing the blood bond after sex will mean the side effects persist longer, but the increased desire and libido are a lot stronger. It will also mean the permanent lower threshold of the bond is locked at Level 3 (rather than level 2) and opens a weak telepathic link that the human can tap into with training.

Turning:

If Maxie wishes to turn another human, then he has to feed the human he wants to turn a lot of his blood (at least five times more than would be needed for a blood bond), then he must quickly drain the human’s remaining blood. He can tell he’s drained it all when he starts to taste his own blood rather than the human’s. This is a very dangerous step since while the human is conscious enough (i.e. not fully drained of their blood), the pain of turning will be very noticeable. While the human doesn’t have to be fully drained of their own blood, Maxie prefers to do so since then they won’t be conscious during the turning process.

Once he’s done that, he and the human then (ideally) sleep underground for a minimum of two nights. It can be done above ground too but then this means they must sleep for a minimum of six nights. During this time the human will turn into a newborn vampire and Maxie will then be their maker. The newborn will be ruled by instincts and so Maxie must now guide them.

As a result of Maxie creating a new progeny, he has certain powers over them:

Calling - Maxie can say the name of his progeny out loud and they will be compelled to answer him.

Commanding - If Maxie issues a command to his progeny, by prefixing his command with ‘As your maker, I command you to...’, then the progeny will be compelled to carry out that command.

Telepathic link - Maxie has a very strong telepathic link with his progeny and can mentally speak with them at any time.

Empathic link - Maxie can sense his progeny’s health, how well-fed they are and can feel if they are undergoing any stresses or if they are in pain. The progeny can sense these in Maxie too, although to a lesser degree.

Maxie can release his progeny from the maker-progeny bond by holding their hands, maintaining eye contact and speaking the words ‘As your maker, I release you’. The telepathic and empathic links remain open but weak, and Maxie can still call for his progeny, although they will no longer be compelled to answer the call.

Feeding:

Maxie needs to feed regularly to survive, and at his current age he can go for a couple of days without feeding, although this is not recommended for him. If he doesn’t feed regularly or doesn’t take enough blood to satisfy his cravings then his powers can become weakened and it is harder for him to keep himself composed, as vampiric instincts will eventually override his want to look as human as possible.

He can feed from many sources of blood but each has different levels of sustenance for him.

Completely draining a human - This can easily stave off his craving for a while but Maxie prefers not to do this since it does mean that one source is then only usable once. Except if it’s a raider or something then he has no problem.

Taking a sip from a human - Maxie’s preferred means of sustenance. He can take just under a pint of blood from a human with no ill effects. This does stave off the craving for a while and provides some sustenance, though he does need to sip from several humans to completely sate him.

Completely draining an animal - This works in a pinch although Maxie gains very little sustenance from it and it doesn’t sate his craving for human blood at all. In theory he can survive on animal blood alone but it would make maintaining a less feral appearance far more difficult.

Taking a sip from an animal - An almost pointless endeavour since it provides little to no sustenance or any craving ease.

Drinking from a blood pack - It will ease the craving and provide some sustenance, though it’s more an ‘in a pinch’ moment since Maxie prefers his blood to be fresh.

One caveat though: If the person he’s feeding from has ingested garlic recently, the garlic taint can persist in the bloodstream long enough for it to have an effect on Maxie. Though since he can usually smell the garlic, it’s usually not an issue unless he’s running on instincts. The amount of garlic-tainted blood and the strength of the taint can affect how long and how strong the effect is.

Weak garlic taint (24-48hrs since ingestion) - Any amount can induce mild nausea.

Moderate garlic taint (12-24hrs since ingestion) - Small amounts induce mild nausea. Larger amounts can induce stronger nausea and mild cramps.

Strong garlic taint (6-12hrs since ingestion) - Small amounts can indude moderate to severe nausea. Larger amounts can induce very severe nausea, cramps and vomiting. This level can also drains Maxie’s power slightly.

Intense garlic taint (0-6hrs since ingestion or someone who reguarly eats garlic) - Small amounts are enough to induce severe cramps and vomiting. Larger amounts can result in cramps, shaking, severe vomiting and can drain Maxie’s power very quickly. If he were to completely drain the blood of a human with this level of garlic taint, he would be unconscious for a long while and may risk death (not from the garlic, but secondary effects).

Not feeding properly can also give Maxie a lot of pain and his powers either become harder to use or cannot be used at all.

Weaknesses:

Maxie does have some common weaknesses.

Garlic - The stench does him no favours and ingesting it can have some strong effects on him.

Sunlight - Sunlight will burn Maxie’s skin and although he can heal, burns from sunlight take a lot longer to heal. However, he can just about handle going outside on an overcast day.

Wood - Even long-dead wood can still harm Maxie. A stake to the heart or the head would kill him outright, but if he is staked anywhere else he may be able to survive if he gets help and the stake is removed.

Fire - Burns can be healed, although for Maxie it takes him longer to do so.

Lack of feeding - Not feeding for a length of time (or not feeding properly) can make Maxie weak. His powers will be harder to use and garlic/sunlight will act more quickly on him. It is possible for him to die from simply not feeding (which at his age can be up to seven days of not feeding at all or several weeks of not feeding properly)

[talkaboutit]

#TheGirl you DATE vs #TheWoman you MARRY.

NOTE 📝 THIS POST IS PUBLIC #TheGirl you DATE vs #TheWoman you MARRY #Types of GIRLS. Behind schedule. I apologize.. ⏰ Let me hit the nail on the head in order not to keep us waiting. Its the second write 📝 up for the DAY. Usually it used to be 1. Okay here we go. TYPES OF GIRLS. * The fashion freak...Many girls engage in activities of fashion,just a few of them do with fulfilling purpose. Others just do to attract attention.In a world of many crazy fashions, some girls find it difficult coping in an environment where there is a need to put up with so many oppourtunities. Fashion is great, it is important, as a matter of fact it is neccessary. This implies that everyone wants to look good and be seen as a public display of great values.Yet never loose all of it to been a fashion freak.You will eventually meet people everyday and when you do,it would matter alot if you are dressing fine or bad. * The pushy girls... In my previous writeups, i have onced talked about these kind of girls.They are the ones that tell that spouse what to do. They give him directions to his carrier and know he should run it. They would go to the extent of getting anything out of thier man. They would even tell you when to take them out, propose to them and eventually marry them.So manty of them have forgotten that a man needs to make plans for himself according to his pockets. * The achieving girl...This type of girl wants to see her self smile, She is after carving a carrier for herself. She doesnt want to see herself fail because she wants the best man for her future. * Daddy’s Girl... This girl may be 25, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love to spend quality time with Daddy. In fact, not only does he financially subsidize her, but he’s also the first person she calls when her car breaks down, her boss yells at her, or she has an extra ticket to a concert. Hey wait a second; isn’t that supposed to be your role? Then there’s the time you find Daddy polishing his machete collection and staring at you. When you break up with the Daddy’s girl, she doesn’t seem to notice; she’s off to Tahoe to ski with Dad that weekend. * The Party Girl... This girl always knows where the party is. Not only that, but she has friends wherever you go, and they all have funny stories about that time she got wasted and made out with other people’s boyfriends. Then, what do you know, you find her in a closet doing the same thing when she was supposed to be in a relationship with you. You try to dump her but she’s too busy making out with that random guy to listen. * The Jealous Girl...This category of girls are intimidated easily by anything. I mean anything. They get jealous of anyone around them. They wish they had what you had and would sometimes do the ultimate to take or get it from you. * The Gossip Girl... This girl talks your ear off about her friend, her friend’s friend, her friend’s boyfriend’s friend, and that guy’s cousin. All of her stories seem to be about someone in a bad situation that your girlfriend can pretend to empathize with while she secretly acts better than them. You break up with her after you start fantasizing about Miss Jealousy, who was at least focused on you. Ill continue tomorrow hopefully ill mention ur own category. ☺ #WhatGroupDoYouBelong #WeAreWhoWeAre. Define your class #GirlsGirlsGirls Hope it helps....... 😘 😘 😘 😘 😘 Thank you for always READING 📖 ☑ 👊 👊 👊 👊 #TheGirl you DATE vs #TheWoman you MARRY