#Overseer Sophocles

[theangrypokemaniac]

its fine if you dont like alola but can you not make incest jokes?

I'm not joking. I'm serious.

Alola, or, as I prefer, La Boca del Infierno, ain't all sunshine and smiles as it pretends. Beneath that plastic exterior lies true darkness.

What am I meant to think when I see this?

There's swimming pools bigger than the gene pools down their way!

Although described as 'twins', it's really triplets, but Lana suffers a prematurely ageing growth abnormality.

Children I expect to bear a similarity to their parents, but the moms 'n' dads ain't meant to look like each other!

Everyone here has blue barnets and Inside-Out Eye, where the pupil's the white and the white's the pupil.

Sight defects are notorious in the 'close-knit' communities.

Each insists on hair decoration, but it's almost part of their heads, which you can call bad animation or deformity resulting from too much intermarriage.

Momma's 'thing' just resembles lumps.

It's them space ticks at it again.

Even the hedgehog is round in this house, which may imply he's an illegitimate offspring of one of 'em.

What about inbreeding suggests practitioners won't stoop to even greater infamy?

Stufful's dad never arrived did he?

Funny that, and a bachelor like Oakie-Dokie residing nearby knew nothing about it.

All that bathing in Cuprenol does terrible things to a man.

Ever wondered what'd go down in the marriage of Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Well here you are, yer deviant.

A pair of pudding-faced, gormless Cabbage Patch Dolls, each with snouts, black button eyes and glandular issues, and they don't share DNA even when they do?

Oh yes, Lusamine met a total stranger also possessing her lime pies and effusive mane of unruly, ice-blonde slats.

Total coincidence there.

He came to Alola, he says. On a prison ship.

It's just one head in triplicate!

Oversized an' all: sure sign of genetic tomfoolery.

Dot Nose, Bridge Nose, Fish Eye: bloody serious case we have on our hands.

Now you understand why she failed to remarry: no other brothers cuts yer options ter nil.

Incest is of course, relative.

Whatever dæmon they worship, some are more pious about it than their fellow perverts.

The more dedicated the believer, the greater insistence on keeping things running in the family.

They'll show off their interwoven connections to the neighbours in a smug game of one-upmanship.

The more lapsed follower will tolerate copulation with distant kin.

These sinners are naturally despised and forced into menial labour, whereas the fanatics just so happen to be rolling in wealth.

Consider:

• Lana's family get by on a fisherman's salary, apparently.

Yeah, yeah, as if the state doesn't have to subsidise their medical bills.

• Sophocles don't go hungry, he has a lab, a giant hamster wheel, a portable hologram in a Pikachu, and he's so rich he not only had the roof fixed, but can move down the road in the meantime.

Oi! The rest of us get by putting a bucket under the leak!

• Lillie has every material possession possible, but no spine or company.

Oh the irony that top sickos should be so resistant to the lure of family obligation.

Hey, yer didn't say that earlier!

• Lusamine is fawned upon for her pwehshush research to the extent she can abandon her children, turning her daughter into a nervous wreck and her son a moody, absent drifter, and it's up to them to understand her work comes first.

• Mohn (by name and nature) fannied about with worm holes until he got sucked off by another dimension.

What did yer think would happen?

Yet on his return, is he knocked on his arse as he deserves?

No, because of incest privileges. The in-group take care of their own, and worse.

Mallow's mater and pater both share hair, thick brows and close-together peepers of murky green.

The contrast in noses suggests something lesser than siblings, but then again other differing aspects are forgivable.

She is of a lighter pallor, being dead, and wanting an open coffin, had a shave beforehand, which is a frightening nod to morality.

Woman, are you ashamed of our love?

Well Abe went along with it, thus is also culpable of this grotesque bristle denial.

Being unclean, he's gotta cook the dinner.

And this lot milk the cows.

On the surface, Kiawe's old 'uns aren't identical. You might think some heretical decency has finally sneaked in under the oppressive Alola regime, but it ain't that simple.

These people pray to a volcano as if an earthbound deity, so are nutters.

One aspect you must remember:

Ol' Granpappy the Island Kakuna, i.e. a dried-up chrysalis.

'Cause Pappy got Momma's tufts...

And Dadda's humourless mouth, oblong head, straight-line nose, rectangular eyes and pin pupils.

Well that's not how it's s'posed to go!

I'm thinking Granpappy, as one of them there Kakunas, is in a position of power high enough that he's able to wilfully flaut the laws he imposes on others, like how popes had kids in the Good Old Days and no one took a blind bit o' notice.

He's a rebel I tells yer.

He don't play by the rules.

No sister-wife for him.

Not when he's got a sexy cousin a-waitin'.

A little bit of new blood's crept in, disgracefully so, that's why the whole lot's punished by living near an active volcano.

Surrender 'em to the flames!

Kiawe makes such a big deal about Pappy, and sod the other three grandparents.

Except he only had two!

What is the explanation?

1. Bone-idle writing team.

Character design is foundational stuff. If yer can't even be arsed to do that properly, nothing you do is worthwhile.

I mean, come on, repeating the same model that blatantly?

Halfwits so limited in imagination shouldn't be working in any creative industries.

I blame modern diets.

A whole generation's grown up timid and risk averse because they were taught to fear E. numbers as kids.

I make it a rule to suspect any sod unaware of the joy of a blue tongue.

They've never lived, man!

Where did you think it'll end when dangerous, pretend edibles like houmous, avocados and quinoa replace the wholesome, nourishing fare of biscuits, cake and crisps?

Stop toying with the fundamental principles of the universe!

The mess of the modern era screams systematic abuse of too much kale and not enough sugar.

2. Incest

Alola is extremely insular.

It's implied to be a tourist destination, but no amount of degenerate outside influence appears to have diluted the weird customs it still upholds.

They didn't even think of starting a League until Ash turned up with all his wild exoticism, and why's that?

A. Inbreeding has destroyed their capability for innovation.

B. Many thousands of years ago, Alola got well annoyed its dirty habits weren't exactly catching on as it strove to spread the Satanic message.

Thoroughly confounded in its plans for world conquest, Alola shut itself off in a purification ritual, which is why later developments popular  elsewhere, such as replacing beasts of burden with machines, never caught on.

3. Alola isn't Hawaii, it's a combination of Australia, a penal colony, and Crete, where lived the lepers.

Specifically it's a dumping ground for all the regions' sex offenders to keep their own societies clean.

Of course, the guilty took their nearest and dearest along too, since they were on the receiving end, and loved it.

This explains the large amount of foreign Pokémon, since the owners are also from abroad.

Now I think 'anging's too good for 'em, but these wet-willy countries insist on storing up trouble for themselves, for if cinema has taught us anything, it is that mutants will always escape.

Nature finds a way, however abominable.

Since so many on Tumblr simply love Alola, they aren't about to admit the slightest weakness in the creators' abilities.

Therefore, incest is the acceptable answer to all and sundry.

[sublimegentlemanalpaca]

Explaining the FoE in case I’ve not done well enough in that.

Alright then... So...FoE stands for Fellowship of Eldritchicians. An organization of individuals who are skilled in or concerned with Eldritch matters. Admittedly Preternatural also works as a descriptor, but Eldritch just sounds cooler. Eldritch also serves as the surname for a group of individuals (the Eldritch Fellows) who have supported the Fellowship since it’s founding in the 3rdish century AD/CE. They have been supporting it as benefactors/Tutors since with several being more involved than others for a variety of reasons. A tiny organization known as the Monitors of the Miraculous, Monstrous, and Mysterious served as a sort of Precursor group doing so at the behest of one of the aforementioned Eldritch Fellows. A big point in the History of the FoE concerns involvement with the quest of the Holy Grail carried out by the Knights of the Round Table and others. The Goals of the Fellowship are generally as Follows. Observe and take note of Eldritch, Supernatural, Occult, Extranatural, or Preternatural and so on. If it’s a threat, they stop it being a threat. Eliminating this as a last resort or when absolutely necessary. Following certain events with the Holy Grail (at the behest/request of another Eldritch Fellow), the FoE also concerns itself with the retrieval/confiscation of Magical/Holy/Supernatural Artifacts and Items...or at least keep tabs on those who are in charge of it. (Though they’ve been in frequent Custody battles over the Holy Grail(s) in their custody). The Fellowship of Eldritchicians primarily has operated out of Europe and through out Asia since that is where they’ve been mainly needed (other areas like the Americas have generally managed exceptionally well without their interference?) still figuring this bit out I must admit. Though the FoE generally go where deemed necessary. If they’re involvement isn’t deemed necessary, they’ll leave well enough alone. Their involvement in America has generally gone no further than the Observation and in some cases Caretaking (as is the case with Dr. L Leeds looking after her Youngest Brother John Leeds). Things in America have generally been under the watch and purview of Overseer Archimedes. Leading the Uncanny Fellowship Observers. The Leadership of the FoE is Seven Overseers. One of these seven being the Founder and Arch Overseer (Grand Overseer? Some such word) of the FoE Alyss Violet Eldridge. Three of these Overseers (Cosmin Lungu, Morgan Maddox, and Sinbad Al-Amin) look over three of the FoE’s six or seven Academies. Then there are Overseer Sophocles of Alexandria (In charge of the Archives and the earlier Monitor of the Monstrous,Miraculous, and Mysterious). And Overseer Runa Ring Maker who looks over The Treasure House where all the Collected, retrieved, and Confiscated artifacts are stored and guarded and what not. Within the FoE are several Splinter groups (think like the Messengers or the Mystorians in Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica). These include U.F.O (Uncanny/Unique. Fellowship. Observers), and the Preternatural Intelligentsia. The PI (who have the Pi Symbol as their symbol...cause) being a very select group that are meant to do espionage stuff...Gathering info on the state of other Secret Organizations(The Institute of Maleficum (don’t remember how to spell it. Means Sorcery or something), the Hermitage, the Knights of Cobernic (custody fight over the Grail), and others.... After the business with the Grail (following the example of the three Grail Knights and excluding Lancelot) it was established that Eldritchicians should conduct business in teams of Three. These trios are ordinarily set up after studies/training has concluded or after General studies has been concluded but prior to advance training? Fields Eldritchicians are trained in (each trained in at least three, but there can be more) Wisdom/Knowledge/Naming/Magic... Faeries and Elves (including Politics). Demons (of all sorts) Astronomy is required before learning about Demons. Ghosts(ranges between Exorcism, Ghost busting, or Counseling) Undead things (Vampires and the like)(several Eldritchicians are such things) Eldritch Horrors (Lovecraft like stuff) Fantastical and Folkloric Fauna (Classic Mythology stuff, Cryptids. This does not include certain things. Wend*go$ and such (did I do that right?) are not covered...) not included. While Lumberjack creatures will be? (Hidebehind in particular is important). Primordial Darkness and Shadows. Angels. Magical Artifacts and Items. Undersea Creatures Storm Elementals. Alchemical stuff And...I think I got everything? The FoE recruits people by Senior Eldritchicians taking notice of people with potential for such work (usually having some Supernatural or Magical talent like seeing Ghosts, Making magical stuff, being supernatural like Faeries and Elves, etc...) and having the Headmasters of each Academy divide however many they pick up between the Academies. They have a max and minimum of Students (have to have enough for full trios with maybe a few extra for other duties). And go from there. This Story or whatever will likely focus on six individuals (more on them later) being recruited and joining the FoE for a variety of reasons. They’ll likely find themselves at the Archimago Academy, and several of the Eldritch Fellows making appearances prior to their roles as Tutors. Regular Teachers are senior Eldritchicians given the job for one reason or another... So...yeah. If you’ve got any questions about any of these ramblings. The FoE, certain Eldritchicians (have a list somewhere), the Eldritch Fellows, etc. Make of this what you will. Al, the Chronographing Cottager and Prince of Naming

[notnormalmydude]

There are legit laws to protect paparazzi just to be clear ------------------------------------- Baloo: Wait, Plums how did you know about the reporter? Plumeria: Everyone is all up in their boots about the champion so they're paying reporters and trial captains for information on sweet lil Bro. When Sophocles let slip he saw Lana in Malie doing shopping I had a bad feeling Baloo: Wait... They can just do that..? Plumeria: Yeah unfortunately Alola is so peaceful and quaint that any news that could be exciting or controversial will hit like bricks ya know? So kahunas, professors, Aethers and even us trial overseers can't do anything Baloo: That's super dumb... Like super duper dumb Plumeria: Joys of wanting a peaceful life unfortunately

[shewouldbuytheflowers]

Leader in dance of the fire-pulsing stars, overseer of the voices of night

Sophocles, Antigone

[slowlyteenagestarlight]

Jupiter, Gold, and the Birth of Athene

Pindar, speaking of the island of Rhodes, says that Zeus “rained down on the city with golden flakes of snow” at the time Athene was born from Zeus’ head, “shouting with a far-ringing cry, and all Heaven and Mother Earth shuddered before her.” (1) Homer also says that “upon them [the people of Rhodes] wondrous wealth was shed by the son of Cronus.” Strabo, after quoting Homer, adds that other writers “say that gold rained on the island the time when Athena was born from the head of Zeus, as Pindar states.” (2)

Gold-bearing gravel—with ingots in it—originated from outside of the Earth and, if we should look upon the Greek legend of Zeus and the golden rain in Rhodes as containing revealing elements, then the ingots came from Jupiter.(3) It could be meteoric gold, and as to the origin the ancients could err; but the event happened in human memory, actually during the Early Bronze Age, or at its end.(4)

In 1866 a human skull was unearthed in the interior of Bald Mountain near Altaville, in Calaveras County, California. The skull of Bald Mountain was reported to have been found in the shaft of a gold mine, in a layer of auriferous (gold-bearing) gravel, beneath four layers of lava, each separated from the other by four layers of gravel. The skull did not differ in structure or dimensions from the skull of modern man; however, it was fossilized.(5) In the gold-bearing gravel of Calaveras were also unearthed fossilized bones of the mammoth, the great mastodon, the tapir, horse, hippopotamus, rhinoceros and camel, all extinct animals in pre-Columbian America. But geologically the layer in which it was found belongs to the Tertiary, and therefore a great embarrassment was in store for the geologists and evolutionists. They divide the strata according to the fossils found in them and hold that in the Tertiary there could have been no human beings, for it is an age before the advent of man. But we have seen in the case of the Dead Sea that the great upheavals ascribed to the end of the Tertiary took place at a much later time, actually in the time of the Patriarchs, which is the end of the Early Bronze Age period. The auriferous gravels of California and of the Ural Mountains had their origin at this same time.

The rain of gold on Rhodes is assigned by Pindar to the time when Athene was born from the head of Zeus. The expulsion of the protoplanet Venus from the body of Jupiter followed, by decades or by centuries, the contact of Saturn and Jupiter, and the fantasy of the peoples regarded Venus as a child of Jupiter, conceived to him by Saturn.

The ancient Persians called Venus Tishtrya, “a magnificent and glorious star which Ahura Mazda [i.e., Jupiter] has established as master and overseer of all the stars.” (6) Plutarch described the events in the following terms: “Then Horomazes [Ahura Mazda], having magnified himself to three times his size, removed himself as far from the sun as the sun is distant from the earth . . . and one star, seirios [i.e., Tishtrya, or Venus] he established above all others as a guardian and watcher.” (7)

References

Pindar, The Seventh Olympian Ode, transl. by L. R. Farnell (London, 1930), p. 35.

Strabo, Geography,

[On another occasion Zeus is said to have come to Danae, the mother of Perseus, in the form of a shower of golden rain. See Hyginus, Fabulae 63; Apollodorus, The Library II. 4. 1; Horace, Odes, III. 16. 1. Cf. L. Radermacher, “Danae und der goldene Regen,” Archiv fuer Religionswissenschaft 25 (1927), pp. 216ff. Cf. Pindar’s twelfth Pythian and seventh Isthmian odes. A fragment of a lost play of Sophocles (1026) designates Zeus as “chrysomorphos"—having the form of gold. Rains of gold are reported also in the Chinese chronicles. See Abel Remusat, Catalogue des bolides et des aerolithes observees a la Chine et dans les pays voisins (1819), p. 6. The Scythians are said by Herodotos (IV. ) to have venerated certain golden objects which they believed had fallen from the heavens in early times. In the sacred texts of the Hindus it is said that “gold belongs to Brihaspati.” Brihaspati is the planet Jupiter. The Maitrayani Samhita I. 18. 6. Cf. S. Bhattachrji, The Indian Cosmogony (Cambridge, 1970), p. 318.].

[It is a remarkable fact that gold appears only in very recent geological formations. Sir Roderick Impey Murchison dedicated chapter XVII of his geological opus Siluria to this phenomenon: “On the Original Formation of Gold and Its Subsequent Distribution in Debris over Parts of the Earth’s Surface.” He argued, on the basis of his field observations in northern Russia, that gold is of recent origin:

Whatever may have been the date when the rock was first rendered auriferous [gold-bearing], the date of this great superficial distribution of gold is clearly indicated. For it contains in many places the same remains of extinct fossil quadrupeds that are found in the coarse drift-gravel of Western Europe. The elephas primogenius, or Mammoth, bos aurochs, rhinoceros tochorrhinus, with gigantic stags, and many other species, including large carnivores, were unquestionably before that period of destruction the denizens of Europe and Siberia.

The period of the distribution of gold in the late Pleistocene strata was that of the mass extinctions of the great quadrupeds at the end of the last ice age. next Murchison tried to determine the time when the rocks were first “impregnated with gold.” He wrote:

Now, it would seem as if these rocks, in the Ural, have been chiefly impregnated with gold, in a comparatively recent period. In the first place, the western flank of the Ural chain offers strong evidence that this golden transfusion had not been effected in this region when the Permian deposits were completed.

No sign of gold was found in these older strata.

Nowhere does it [the Permian debris] contain visible traces of gold or platinum. Had these metals then existed in the Ural mountains, in the quantities which now prevail, many remnants of them must have been washed down together with the other rocks and minerals and have formed part of the old Permian conglomerates. On the other hand, when the much more modern debacles, that destroyed the great animals, and heaped up the piles of gravel above described, proceeded from this chain, then the debris became largely auriferous. It is manifest therefore that the principal impregnation of the rocks with gold—i.e., when the lumps and strings of it were formed—took place in the intervening time.

Sometime between the Permian and the last ice age some event resulted in the infusion of the rocks with gold. Murchison tried to fix the time more precisely:

We cannot believe that it occurred shortly after the Permian era, nore even when any of the secondary rocks were forming; since no golden debris is found in any of the older Tertiary grits and sands which occur in the Siberian flank of the chain. If, then, the mammoth drift be the oldest mass of detritus in which gold occurs abundantly, not only in the Ural, but in many parts of the world, we are led to believe that this noble metal, though for the most part formed in ancient crystalline rocks, or in the igneous rocks which penetrated them, was only abundantly imparted to them in a comparatively recent period—i.e., a short time (in geological language) before the epoch when the very powerful and general denudations took place which destroyed the large extinct mammalia.

In another work of his, The Geology of Russia and the Ural Mountains, Vol. I (London, 1845), p. 473, Murchison presented his conclusions about the geological events which accompanied the deposition of gold:

. . . We conclude that the [Ural] chain became (chiefly) auriferous during the most recent disturbances by which it was affected, and that this took place when the highest peaks were thrown up, when the present watershed was established, and when the syenitic granite and other comparatively recent igneous rocks were erupted along its eastern edges.

Murchison, one of the founders of modern geology, insisted that it was during a major geological upheaval that gold became part of the rocks—it was the time of mountains being “thrown up” and molten rock flowing, before solidifying into granite. Murchison next wondered about the “agency” which deposited the gold in the mountains of the Ural and elsewhere. As a geologist he observed that “the material has been chiefly accumulated towards the surface of the rocks, and then by the abrasion and dispersion of their superficial parts, the richest golden materials have been spread out. . . .” (Siluria, p. 455).

This last observation is of fundamental importance, in that since the gold was deposited close to the surface, it could not have come from inside the earth.].

J. D. Whitney, The Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California (1880), pp. 268-269.

Yasht 8: 44.

De Iside et Osiride, ch. 47.

[pokemaniacal]

Grubbin, Charjabug and Vikavolt

Today’s Pokémon are probably the strangest thing Alola has thrown at me so far, and definitely spice up the early game a bit – electrical Bug-types with battery-like abilities, which (thank all the gods) conspicuously do not become butterflies or moths.  We’ve had beetle Pokémon before – Heracross – and even stag beetle Pokémon – Pinsir – but Grubbin, Charjabug and Vikavolt have little in common with either, as we’ll see.

Vikavolt’s species designation – “the Stag Beetle Pokémon” – immediately gives away what it’s supposed to be.  Stag beetles are a family characterised by their oversized, powerful mandibles; where Pinsir uses these to tenderise and brutalise enemies in close combat, Vikavolt instead uses them to charge up its Electric attacks.  This family includes some of the largest beetles – and by extension some of the largest insects – in the world, like the giraffe stag beetle, which can reach an impressive 12 cm long, not counting the mandibles (Vikavolt is quoted as 1.5m long, which probably does include the mandibles but is nonetheless downright terrifying).  Drawing on the beetles’ hard carapaces, Vikavolt’s design is very angular, with lots of sharp corners and straight lines, giving it an almost robotic appearance.  The Sun and Moon website describes it as “like a fortress that zooms through the forest,” which is an odd image, in that zooming through forests is not in my experience something fortresses are known for, but pushes the same sort of design angle.  It’s odd that the Pokédex says it “zips around,” and that the website talks about its speed and aerial acrobatic skill, since Vikavolt is very much not a “zippy” Pokémon, nor is it one that has much cause to be “on sharp lookout for an opening.”  Stag beetles, much like fortresses, are not exactly graceful in flight, so Vikavolt is slow, and not an actual Flying-type (though it does come with Levitate).  This is not a subtle Pokémon.  Vikavolt is forceful, rampant and destructive, like Genesect, Drapion or Scolipede.  From reading its flavour text, you get the impression that Vikavolt is very good at navigating around opponents to hit their weak points from unexpected directions, but using this thing is rather different: Vikavolt actually handles like a drugged whale, but has no qualms about blasting its way through any and all obstacles with overwhelming electrical attacks.  Still, I suppose they did give it Acrobatics and Agility, so I suppose I shouldn’t be too critical of any disconnect there.

What’s interesting about Charjabug and Vikavolt is the weird relationship they have in the wild.  Charjabug, we’re told, have a phenomenal capacity to store electricity (hence the battery-inspired design).  Vikavolt can take advantage of this by picking Charjabug up and carrying them into battle, slung under their bodies.  Charjabug’s extra power can then supercharge Vikavolt’s already devastating electrical beam attacks.  In the game, this tactic is represented by Charjabug’s signature ability, Battery, which enhances the special attacks of allies in multiple battles.  The ability doesn’t carry over to Vikavolt (who replaces it with Levitate), so at the moment its competitive relevance is pretty sharply limited, though I expect in future it will probably be distributed more widely (it sure kicks the cr@p out of Plus and Minus, while conveying much the same theme).  I suppose you can do a kind of support-focused Eviolite Charjabug in doubles (for those not in the know, a Pokémon holding an Eviolite that is not yet fully evolved gets a substantial +50% buff to both defence and special defence), but… ehhhhhhhh?  As for where this even comes from in terms of Charjabug’s flavour, larval insects spend most of their existence eating, storing energy in order to sustain their metamorphoses into their adult forms… so we might think that Grubbin, in a similar vein, are devoted entirely to charging themselves up with electrical energy so that, as Charjabug, they can act as power-packs for adult Vikavolt.  In turn, we may suspect that Vikavolt’s ability to generate its own electricity is relatively limited compared to more conventional Electric-types.  Charjabug, then, isn’t an intermediary stage in quite the same way as Metapod, Silcoon, etc.; it’s actually a fairly specialised organism in its own right that provides important support to its own much rarer adult form.  Of course, in the games, trainers’ Vikavolt don’t have the luxury of having Charjabug to assist them with free power… except for Sophocles’ Totem Vikavolt, who totally squanders the Battery bonus by using only physical attacks, a la Ghetsis’ Hydreigon on Black and White 2.

*headdesk*

Before me move on, a quick note on Vikavolt’s evolutionary path.  Actually playing with Grubbin in the game’s story is a bit of a pain, because Charjabug is one of three Pokémon (the others being Nosepass and Magneton) whose evolution requires exposure to a “special magnetic field.”  In Sun and Moon, this means you have to take them to the Vast Poni Canyon, close to the end of the game, and long after you will have first encountered an enemy Vikavolt (Sophocles’ Totem), which is extremely unusual for the past three generations (normally a Gym Leader’s signature Pokémon is one that either would have recently become available to you, or very soon will).  Three-stage Bug Pokémon in the past have been known for evolving very quickly, and being strong early- to mid-game choices as a result.  This is basically the key draw of early-game Pokémon – they tend to reach their peak power very quickly.  Purely because of the geography of the game’s setting, this is emphatically not true of Vikavolt, making a very odd departure from the way Pokémon availability normally works, to the extent that I almost think it has to be an oversight.

Once you actually get Vikavolt, it’s a pretty tricky Pokémon to use.  Vikavolt takes “artillery” to a whole new level. Painfully slow and with defences no better than decent, it nonetheless comes with a special attack score to rival some of the most powerful in the game, like Chandelure.  Certainly it has the strongest special attacks of any Bug Pokémon in the game, with even Pheromosa and Volcarona noticeably behind; among Electric-types, only Xurkitree and Mega Ampharos can best it.  The previous Pokémon to wear the Bug/Electric type combination, Galvantula, was able to wield incredible forces by enhancing the accuracy of Thunder with the Compoundeyes ability.  Vikavolt’s Thunderbolt (or Discharge in doubles) just blows that out of the water on raw power alone, but can’t match Galvantula’s blistering speed.  Bug/Electric, as Galvantula taught us, is a pretty solid combination.  You only have two weaknesses, Fire and Rock, and Vikavolt adds a useful Ground immunity, courtesy of the Levitate ability.  Bug attacks – for both Galvantula and Vikavolt, this is primarily Bug Buzz – cover Electric’s blind spot for Grass-types, and being a Bug-type also makes it thematically appropriate for you to learn Energy Ball, so it’s difficult for Ground-types to switch in and absorb your Thunderbolts with impunity.  Those three attacks form the core of Vikavolt’s offensive capabilities.  Flash Cannon is its other significant special attack, and is mostly useful to punish anyone who tries to counter you with a bulky Fairy-type special tank like Florges or Sylveon; if you’re confident your team can handle them by other means, ditch Flash Cannon.  Air Slash is technically there, but it’s a weak move and doesn’t really fill any major holes in Vikavolt’s type coverage.  Volt Switch, the special Electric-type counterpart to U-Turn, is on Vikavolt’s movelist as well.  It’s a fantastic move, and always worth consideration, but Vikavolt’s simply not the best Pokémon to use it, for similar reasons to Incineroar, Gumshoos and Toucannon: being slow with mediocre defences, it’s a very difficult Pokémon to get into play safely, and once it’s there, its time is best spent causing as much havoc as possible with its obscene special attack stat.  It shouldn’t be aiming to keep itself safe with a hit-and-run, because it may not live to do it a second time; it should be aiming to brutally murder things in, if possible, a single Choice Specs- or Life Orb-boosted attack.

Unlike all those other sledgehammer-style Pokémon I’ve been reviewing so far, Vikavolt actually learns Agility, and the thought of what this thing could do if it could actually move is nothing short of terrifying.  Even after using Agility, there are still a number of perfectly respectable Pokémon that will outrun Vikavolt, especially ones that carry Choice Scarves, so you’re probably never going to make Vikavolt a proper sweeper as such, but it might be worth playing around with.  Getting Trick Room support from your team is a bit difficult to pull off in singles, but makes Vikavolt damn near unstoppable for a short time if it works.  Alternatively, you can Thunder Wave things to slow down important targets in a way that helps your entire team, but playing support seems like something of a waste of Vikavolt’s talent for destruction.  If you’re facing multiple opponents, you can slow them all down with String Shot or Electro Web; these moves aren’t worth it in singles but can be useful support options in other formats.  Finally, Vikavolt can learn Roost for healing, so, like many Alolan Pokémon, you could theoretically try shoehorning it into a sort of off-tank role, dumping speed and putting a lot of points into Vikavolt’s HP.  I’m not convinced it has the durability to really make that work though.

In sum, Vikavolt is another of these Pokémon that Alola seems to like, with one or two very powerful tricks up its sleeve, but enough substantial flaws to make it very difficult to use and abuse.  It’s not really a glass cannon, but perhaps something of a porcelain one.  That’s an unusual role for a Bug-type, or for that matter an Electric-type, to have (I think the closest comparison is probably Magnezone), so although it’s just about the only Alolan Pokémon that effectively has no unique move or ability, I’m happy to call it pretty original on that score.  Its style is profoundly weird; it looks like a distinctly inorganic Pokémon, but it isn’t, and some of the writing team seem like they may have been a little out of touch with how Vikavolt actually fights.  On the other hand, it does some really creative things with the relationship between its different evolutionary stages, and the battery theme fits surprisingly well with an insectoid design base.  It’s a bit bizarre, but it’s undeniably very cool.

[amandaesouza-blog]

amanda e. souza: aesthetic + headcanons

“nothing vast enters the lives of mortals without ruin.”- sophocles (tr, anne carson)

- The Souza’s divorce was hardly dramatic. It was an inevitable conclusion, even in the eyes of their then-six year old. There was no yelling or sobbing or tossing belongings out of windows; just two people and eight years of marriage and the quiet realization that things weren’t working. But they had their careers. The Souzas liked their careers, possibly more than they liked most people. Maria Souza got her daughter on vacations and Daniel Souza had her the rest of the year and that was that. Divorce was stunningly easy so long as you never really liked each other.

- The thing was that Daniel Souza was an academic- studying Ancient Greek classics, specifically- and academics are a nomadic group. Amanda spent her childhood moving from college town to college town, staying five or six years before starting over somewhere new once  her father got a better position somewhere else. As a result, she never truly settled anywhere. After moving to Mount Wells for her senior year of high school, she made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t run away from making connections. Even after four years, it’s difficult to fight her urge to not settle, wait for everything to fall apart and go somewhere else to rinse and repeat.

- Social cues have always been hard for Amanda. One of her symptoms from being on the autism spectrum is a difficulty when it comes to reading microexpressions and navigating complicated social situations and it becomes very clear in the way she interacts. It takes her longer to respond then it might for others, working things out in her head to discern meaning and connotation, and she often will ask people to clarify what they say. It’s partly this that makes Amanda so hesitant to put herself out there, since she always worries that she’s embarrassing herself or offending someone by being too blunt. To compensate, she makes herself very agreeable. She knows enough to blend in so long as she isn’t the one people focus on.

- Staying on the sidelines is a choice that she made, keeping her head down instead of drawing attention for her very externalized issues. She’s good with people she knows, people who understand how she works, but among those she doesn’t she stumbles and stutters and falls apart. Amanda feels most comfortable in invisibility, observing rather than participating.

- For as much as she hates them, it’s all of these qualities that have made Amanda so uniquely suited to tracking the way different social systems work. Figuring out power structures- who to talk to and who to not, what qualities are considered bad or good, whatever dark secrets are making the machine tick- is a survival skill, not a hobby. But what started as small things that didn’t quite add up has evolved into a minor obsession. Mount Wells is even more complicated than anywhere else she ever lived, despite its calm facade.

- They started as doodles; layouts that were half temple and half maze scribbled on the margins of notebook paper. Over the years they’ve grown more and more complicated, until it seems only she can see the way out of them. She gives them to her friends, leaves smudged ballpoint versions on diner napkins, traces out designs when she’s lost in thought. They’re utter fantasy, as impossible as anything Escher drew, but she can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness about the fact that they’ll never be built. In the twenty first century, no one has any need for labyrinths.

- As an outlet for nervous energy, Amanda knits. She always has needles and yarn in her (ridiculously oversized) bag, along with headphones, and a pack of cigarettes, and mints, and at least eight dollars in cash at all times, and her I.D because she keeps getting carded, and about a million other things because she’s terrified she’ll be in a situation she hasn’t prepared for.

- Amanda’s middle name is what her father wanted to name her. She remains eternally grateful that she is not in fact named Elektra or, even worse, Clytemnestra.

- Amanda loves dogs, but not enough to actually take care of one. Instead she lives vicariously through her friends who have pets.

- The supernatural and otherworldly seems kind of ridiculous and overly New-Agey to Amanda, but she supports Dera nonetheless. She just refuses to ever have her fortune told. It feels creepy.

- Amanda’s half-brother, Claudio, is in many ways her complete opposite. He’s a twelve year old bulldozer, a troublemaker who’s already been made to leave two schools for being overly disruptive. He’s Amanda’s favorite person in the entire world, her little brother that can always make her smile and is too blunt to ever misinterpret. She doesn’t get to see him often, the result of living on different continents, but they keep in contact via technology. It’s nice, even if he does send her a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog memes.

- Maria Souza moved back to Sao Paulo after the divorce, where she continues her work as a contract lawyer. Amanda’s relationship with her mother is awkward, since she wasn’t really there to watch her grow up.

- Amanda is bilingual, speaking both English and Portuguese. She really only uses it among her family, since none of her friends here speak it.

- She also smokes, a bad habit she picked up from both her parents. She’s embarrassed about it, makes sure she does it with no one around and constantly pops mints to cover up the smell.

- Amanda was born in Houston, lived there for five years, lived in Madison, Wisconsin for four years, Boston for another four, and lived in Phoenix for five. Mount Wells remains the smallest place she has ever lived, the only place she can’t completely disappear. It was charming for the first year or so, before Amanda found herself unable to ignore the hidden rules and secrets. Now she wants desperately to know what makes it tick, a desire that interferes directly with her goal of keeping her head down and getting through school.

[merinomeri]

Best Friends! { Drabble }

{ I cannot believe- }

   From the moment she’d arrived in Alola, Lin was an outcast. Her oversized clothing that never seemed to stay in one place, her fluffy hair that looked more like a Whimsicott than anything else, and her uncanny ability to show up in places she really wasn’t supposed to be.

   She was too old to take an Island Challenge, but it didn’t stop her from stalking around and watching others. She was too old to be a Captain even, not that someone like her would ever be asked, anyway. And the fact that she seemed to settle on Ula’ula Island as her camping grounds only made things worse; Nanu certainly wasn’t fond of this...weird, loitering nuisance.

   But Ula’ula was her favorite, because that’s where Mount Hokulani was! Nothing could beat the view up there! She was a science nerd, in honesty, and wanted more than nothing to spend her time at the observatory.

   ...she was never really allowed, given her reputation. She snuck in once to watch a Trial-Goer, but, got chased out quickly by at least nine Charjabug that now had it out for her.

--- ---

   Today was different, though. During all of her time at the Pokemon Center’s Cafe, she’d noticed things.

   Molayne, head of the Observatory, would leave certain days, certain times, often with someone. 

   She gotten juicer details from gossipy Pokemon Center Patrons, and just like she’d learned, he was leaving the building with a pretty lady by his side.

   A devilish smirk crosses her face before readying herself. Time to have fun!

--- ---

   She’s actually able to stride right in. There’s no one at the welcome desk...no workers anywhere, it seemed. Would he really just leave the place open? He wasn’t that stupid, was he?

   “TOGE!” something rams into her leg, and hard. Lin manages not to scream, but, stumbles quite a bit-

   Ah. Togemaru, local mascot of this place. And a cute one to boot! With an uneasy laugh, she kneels down.

   “Helloooo Togemaru!~ It’s nice to see you too! Are you here to play with me?”

   The round rat pokemon quickly dashes away, leaving Lin to scramble to her feet and rush after it.

   “WAIT PLEASE DONT TELL ON ME-”

--- ---

   Togemaru stops at a door, just as it’s opening and is scooped up by the boy exiting.

   The frantic woman now does her best to compose herself and smile, despite the fact that she’s probably in HUGE trouble, considering who she’s standing before...

   “Wow!~ Amazing Trial Captain Sophocles! What an honor! Your super awesome Togedemaru led me right to you!~” she presses her hands together, and laughs, hoping not to get kicked out immediately.

   He seems to be processing this slowly. Studying her and her awkward movements...but that’s not what’s on his mind right now.

   “...it’s you. Why are you here?”

   Blink.

   “Ah...boredom?”

   Silence. You could literally hear the electricity running through the walls right now.

   Sophocles sighs, beginning to turn away from her; “...just get out-” 

   “WAIT! YOU’RE ONLY IN A BAD MOOD BECAUSE YOUR COUSIN’S OUT WITH SOME GIRL, YEAH?”

   He freezes, too horrified to look back at her. How would she know...?

   “You’re not looking so good because of that! M-Maybe we can hang out! I’ll kill this boredom, and maybe you won’t feel lonely! Deal?”

   It’s silent again.

   He’s not sure if he can really trust this...weirdo...but, at the same time, he doesn’t want to be alone...

--- ---

   “WHOOOAAAA!~” Lin squeals, trying to take in everything in the room. Her eyes sparkle as she skips around and studies.

   “This stuff is all yours?!”

   The boy, still holding his pokemon close, nods, a bit embarrassed by the reaction. He didn’t expect this...

   “This is awesome! All this space stuff, all these games...!” she laughs looking back at him. “I’m jealous, I gotta say!”

   “...’s Big Mo’s too...”

   Her smile fades. This cousin thing was a lot deeper than she thought it was. Then again, she could relate; its not like her family was ever around for her. At least he HAD someone.

   “...so um...wanna play a game?”

   “Why?”

   “Because you’re so sad! It might make you happy!”

   “How would you know?”

   Ouch. That’s a piercing glare from such a small guy. Lin tucks her hands in her pockets and laughs a bit nervously.

   “...I kinda know what its like to be the lonely one, you know? It’s not like I hang out with anyone...”

   Sophocles looks at her now. That...was true. No one really liked Lin...she got into too much trouble, she was nosy and awkward...of course she knew what being lonely was like.

   “...but why ME?”

   “ ‘Cause you’re lonely too! Big Mo’s out with some girl and not you! That’s not fun! It sucks! Us lonely people should stick together, yeah?”

   Honestly, he isn’t sure, but...maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try...cautious as he is, she doesn’t seem to be up to anything this time...

--- ---

   “YOU CHEATED-”

   “Heh, no, you’re just bad at this~”

   “YOU TOTALLY CHEATED!”

   Hours have passed, and the two have been playing games the entire time. She’s laughing and playfully pushing him around, and he? He seems distracted and enjoying himself.

   Lin manages to catch a glimpse at the clock though and panics. Molayne would be back soon, from what she’d remembered.

   “Ahh, this was real fun and all Soffy, but, I gotta go for now! It’s getting late!”

   As she begins to stand, something, or someone, tugs at the bottom of her hoodie.

   “...you’ll come back though...right? Next time he’s gone...?”

   Oh. Oh no. Right in her emotions. She came here for a selfish reason, but, she can’t help but...well...want to help him out!

   “Yeah, of course I will. We’re best friends now! It’s been decided!”

   She can hear him mumble something under his breath. Was that a ‘thank you?’ She’s not sure, but, she ruffles his hair affectionately before rushing out.

   This wasn’t the first, nor the last time this was going to happen.

[themonologuearchive]

Chorus - 06

From: Antigone, by Sophocles

Genre: Drama

Topic: City in trouble

Character: Male, many characters as one

Many – named one, glory Of the Cadmeian bride, Offspring of loud – thundering Zeus, you who protect famous Italy, who are lord of Welcoming Eleusius In the shelter of Demeter, O Bacchus, Inhabitant of Thebes, mother – city Of the Bacchants, by the flowing Stream of Ismenus, where the Dragon’s teeth were sown.

The flashing smoke Has seen you Over the double – crested Rock, where Corycian nymphs Go as your Bacchants By Castalia’s stream. The ivy – covered slopes Of Nysa’s mountains and The green edge, rich in grapes, send you, Visiting the streets of Thebes, While mortal tongues cry “Evoe!”

You honor this city Above all others With your thunder – smitten mother, But now, as the city and all her People are held by the violence of disease, Come with cleansing fast over The cliff of Parnassus or the lamenting crossing.

Hail, dancing – master of the stars, Breathing fire, overseer Of the voices of the night, Child of Zeus, appear, Lord, together with your attendant Nymphs, who in their madness Dance through the night with you, Iacchus, giver of gifts.

[newyorktheater]

Micari as Antigone and Asuka Fuse as Ismene

Micari (Antigone)

Micari as Antigone

Yoneji Ouchi as Haemon, and company

Micari as Antigone

Ethereal, stylized and visually stunning, Japanese director Satoshi Miyagi’s production of “Antigone,” at the Park Avenue Armory through October 6, fuses several theatrical traditions, some of them thousands of years old, some newly created. Twenty-nine performers, ghostly in flowing white kimonos, glide slowly and gracefully through the ankle-deep water that covers the stage of the Armory’s massive Drill Hall. Placed around them in this pool of shimmering water (made with 18,000 gallons of water) are boulders, meant to resemble a Buddhist stone garden. This is the setting in which Sophocles’ 2,500-year-old play unfolds, set into motion by Antigone’s defiance of her uncle King Creon’s decree that no one bury her brother, who had rebelled against the state. A half dozen of the characters – including Antigone, her sister Ismene, her cousin and fiancée Haemon, and King Creon — are each portrayed by two performers: One, squatting in the water, recites the lines of the character in Japanese (with English surtitles projected on the backdrop.) The other, standing atop one of the boulders, dances the part. These mesmerizing duets are the director’s clever modern adaptation of Japanese Bunraku theater, which traditionally pairs each human performer with a dancing puppet, rather than a human dancer. Similarly, Miyagi adopts Japanese Noh theater (a dozen of the performers play Hiroko Tanakawa’s eerie original music marked by heavy percussion) and Indonesian shadow play.

New York audiences can’t help seeing the immediate relevance of the story of Antigone’s defiance of political authority to do what is morally right, (which was applied most recently to the story of Michael Brown’s killing in Antigone in Ferguson.) In the (as usual oversized) program, Miyagi says that the message of Antigone “is needed in the current moment.” At the same time, though, the director offers a very Japanese interpretation of the play, in effect re-enacting a Buddhist celebration of the dead – paper lanterns with lit candles inside float on the water, which symbolizes the ambiguous, shifting border between life and death. This on occasion proved a distancing sensibility, which distracted me from some of the arguments over conflicting duties that in many productions form an intellectual spine of the play. There was also an unexpected prologue at odds with the usual tone of the tragedy, in which the performers, speaking a heavily accented English, quickly summarized the plot, accompanied by a kind of comic pantomime. These approaches jolted Western expectations for this ancient Greek tragedy, inducing occasional confusion and impatience, requiring adjustments. Still, there were just as many moments that inspired deep emotions: Yes, pity, maybe fear…. but also awe at the haunting beauty.

Antigone By Sophocles, Translation by Shigetake Yaginuma Directed by Satoshi Miyagi A Production of Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) Adapted by Park Avenue Armory and Presented in Collaboration with The Japan Foundation Hiroko Tanakawa, Composer Junpei Kiz, Space Designer Kayo Takahashi, Costume Designer Koji Osako, Lighting Designer Kyoko Kajita, Hair and Makeup

Cast: Maki Honda and Micari as Antigone, Kazunori Abe and Kouichi Ohtaka as Creon, Yuumi Sakakibara and Asuka Fuse as Ismene, Daisuke Wakana and Yoneji Ouchi as Haemon, Soichiro Yoshiue and Takahiko Watanabe as Tiresesias, Tsuyoshi Kijima and Katsuhiko Konagaya as guard, Tsuyoshi Kjima z pdsizf, Keita Mishima as Polyneices, Morimas Takeishi as Eteocles.

Running time: 105 minutes with no intermission Tickets: $35 – $175 Antigone is on stage and the Park Avenue Armory through October 6, 2019

Antigone Review: Greek Tragedy as Japanese Theater Ethereal, stylized and visually stunning, Japanese director Satoshi Miyagi’s production of “Antigone,” at the Park Avenue Armory through October 6, fuses several theatrical traditions, some of them thousands of years old, some newly created.

[how2to18]

THE GRAND EXPERIMENT continues. Reviewers, at least some of them, experienced a kind of wonderment at the appearance of the first three volumes of the Graphic Canon. Five years later, the wonderment has deepened to just this side of bafflement. Not that editor Russ Kick, known for his work in the underground press way back, and his exposure of government secrets later on, means to be secretive. Not in the least. Indeed, he is so attached to his indirect creation (that is, the work of the artist-adaptors, and only occasionally his own adaptation scripts) that he provides a sometimes intensive, sometimes casual introduction for each entry. He really wants this project taken seriously in the large field of comic art. And understandably so, since he has managed to create something unprecedented in comic art, at least in the English language.

Or perhaps the reader is only likely to infer that claim because Kick’s volumes have now reached thousands of oversized, intermittently color pages, and stand to reach many more. The initial series of three volumes covered assorted literary genres across the ages, from antiquity to present, in more or less chronological order. This was followed by two volumes of children’s stories, told without much talking down or dilution of the scary parts. Now we have passed on to the world of noir, where practically everything is scary, and not much in a supernatural way.

There is so much good art and fine storytelling in this latest volume that complaints and criticisms seem almost niggling. But I consider the vision or map rather too broad when we can go from Solomon and Sophocles to de Sade, from Boccaccio to Nathaniel Hawthorne to Agatha Christie, within a single volume. “Crime and Mystery” becomes, in the process, a catch all for the stories that fascinate the omnivorous editor, and for which he has found a talented (mostly very talented) set of illustrators who also usually functions as adapters.

But crime and mystery, as a generic category, might be defined more precisely as literary responses to the social realities of the last couple centuries. Slavery, mass slaughter, and so on are, of course, present in previous eras and just as monstrous as they are today. But what sets off crime and mystery as a genre, what makes it the object of endless treatments in every phase of popular culture, is modern property relations. The novel in general emerged to transcribe the drama of the worthy rising bourgeoisie against sinking aristocrats, and for Dashiell Hammett and Columbo right down to the classic years of Law & Order, the contemporary master class is ultimately the guilty one. Hammett himself, as a teacher of mystery writing in the left-wing Jefferson School of the 1940s, supposedly told his students, “Look for the money, always look for the money.”

Never mind. What is here is remarkable enough. I am especially drawn, for instance, to Sophia Wiedeman’s retelling of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in black and white with the use of one color, of course red. I am not sure that Wiedeman has captured the interiority of Hawthorne himself and his acceptance of guilt, as a descendant of New England’s pitiless Puritan settlers, for the American conquest of the land from its earlier inhabitants. But the fate of women, one woman, caught in the maw of patriarchal judgment — Wiedeman nails that, for sure.

Elsewhere in the volume, Rick Geary brings his vine-like style to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and captures the heart of the story, its essential action, in only a few pages. Another painterly Dostoyevsky, this one Hadar Reuven’s The House of the Dead, invokes the Holocaust with its scenes of men in beards in a monstrous prison.

Arriving in the 20th century, Sarah Benkin misses the crypto-racism of the wife and murderer of her husband in James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (“He’s so greasy!” the scheming missus says about her husband in the original), instead showing hubby as a jolly Italian American. She also misses the lust that drives her collaborator into the murder. But the essential story is here, anyway. Ellice Weaver’s full-color version of Iceberg Slim’s Pimp, meanwhile, works as a series of amazing paintings with a subordinated narrative.

It would be easy to go on indefinitely, but I’ll mention only a few more examples. Theo Ellsworth’s adaptation of Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is a 30-page comic novella in itself, so intense that the reader gets a feeling of emotional exhaustion, in a good way, pages before the end. Robert Berry has made a section of James Joyce’s Dubliners into a Mutt and Jeff dialogue of sorts, in a bow to the immortal (for old time comics fans) Bud Fisher as much as to Joyce. As I am an admirer of R. Sikoryak’s intriguing approaches to comics history, I find his rethinking of de Sade as a series of comic book covers in “Sadistic Comics” — with an improbably helpless Wonder Woman at the center — utterly delightful. That may exhaust my list of particular favorites in the volume, except for the adaptation of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’s short story “Talma Gordon” (reputed to be the first mystery published by an African-American writer) by C. Frackes, herself a rising feminist artist.

If I commit myself to describing particular stories, it’s because every generalization about this volume fails and must fail. While each piece, taken by itself, is not necessarily strong or convincing, together they convince.

Convince us of what? That is the question, at least for this reviewer. We can usefully examine The Graphic Canon from another angle. The international sweep of its cast of artists and writers offers impressive evidence of a global comics community. It also testifies to Russ Kick’s amazing capacity for outreach. But as with Kick’s career, we find the essential origins of the series in the breakthroughs of the 1960s and 1970s, breakthroughs that left behind so many of the limitations long imposed upon comic art.

The comics-reading public, mostly readers under the age of 30, know little of this history today. Superheroes of every kind; quirky and sexy personal stories of mostly inward or troubled youngsters; the occasional historical saga (March, eulogizing John Lewis within his lifetime) — these comprise nearly all of today’s menu of comics, to judge from sales and advertising on the web. Hardly remembered now, except as an influence on today’s graphic memoirs, the distinct comics of the Vietnam Era and a decade after profited from artists’ ownership of their uncensored comic art, delivering up marijuana use, feminism, denunciation of corporations and the government, and flagrant sex of every variety, often flavored with humor. (The Southern California feminist series Tits & Clits Comix comes to mind.) Contemporary readers, excepting academic or those with a taste for the “old stuff,” tend to be familiar with only a fraction of this body of work — perhaps R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman, along with slightly younger figures like Alison Bechdel, Lynda Barry, and the Hernandez Brothers.

Stop for a moment and contemplate what that origin of a new comics, a new comic art, meant. It was a ragged community (just ask the feminists), but it was a real one. It recalled, in American life and art, nothing so much as the Works Progress Administration artists of the 1930s or the group gathered around The Masses magazine in the 1910s. These had rebellion of form and content, narrative and style, written all over them, but also a vision of a different relation between art and popular life in a better future. In the comics world, this is what slipped away by 1980 or so.

The elevation of comic art followed, although its arrival at true respectability arguably awaited Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize in 1992 — and arguably, dolefully, also awaited the return of the cutting-edge comics publishing locus from California back to New York, its historic location. Today, with the advance of college teaching into visual culture, the comics canon is taught very much as the canon of literature has been taught forever. In part, this is the nature of canonization: the few remembered, the mass of artists forgotten.

But this is also the case because the comic art anthology, pretty much the foundation stone of underground commix, has practically ceased to exist. Post-1970s efforts, like Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s Raw magazine, could not be sustained financially. My own series of topical anthologies ended with the volume Bohemians (2014), because these efforts no longer seemed worth publishers’ attention. The annual Best of Comics anthologies and the more or less annual World War 3 Illustrated appear too infrequently, and have too few pages, not to mention idiosyncratic editorial tastes. Rumors of a revival of Arcade, the Spiegelman and Bill Griffith–edited anthology from the late 1970s, appear to be unfounded, for various reasons.

Altogether, we see too little work side by side — and more than that, we get far too little sense that comic art has a purpose comparable to the socialist modernism of a century ago or the counterculture of the late 1960s. Perhaps the website The Nib is the exception, because its social criticism comes fast and furious, day by day, topic by topic. But we need more, much more, with a dialogue among artists and their admirers, editors, and others. At least, this is my conclusion after 50 years as an editor.

Russ Kick’s Canon thus does something that too few venues for comic art do nowadays. It is, for now, the most sustained anthology of comic art in the English language — the best showplace of what comic art is today and what it can do. That’s quite an accomplishment.

¤

Paul Buhle was publisher of Radical America Komiks (1969) and has edited a dozen comics since 2005. His latest is Johnny Appleseed, drawn by Noah van Sciver.

The post Creating a Comics Canon appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[sublimegentlemanalpaca]

The Seven (?) Overseers of the FoE and the Purposes.

Alyss V Eldridge: Arch Overseer. In charge of the whole organization. Other Overseers answer directly to her. When not holed up in her office running things she is off on Odin like adventures seeking knowledge and Wisdom to bring back to the FoE’s Archives and the Archives of her father Alvis Vadim Eldritch. Never sends straight answers in correspondence. If she is just saying something without being cryptic or in some sort of cipher, then something is seriously urgent and possibly wrong. Also runs and organizes the Preternatural Intelligentsia. Six individuals(some official Eldritchicians, some not) who keep an eye on things like Faerie Society, undead Society, Secret Societies and other such things? Has a Symbol of a Silver Dagger, two Phoenixes (one Gray, one Rainbow) all encircled by the symbols of the various fields of study of the FoE. Sinbad Al-Amin: Second in Command of the entire FoE. He is in charge of running one of the Three main Academies (?) for the FoE as ‘Vice Chancellor’(?). He’s Human. Symbol of a Damascus Steel colored Compass Rose and two crossed swords. Morgan Maddox: Third in Command, Monster Hunter. Heads one of the three Academies meant to train Eldritchicians. Human? Symbol of a Spear, sword, Dagger and skull? Sophocles: In charge of overseeing the Collected Archives of the FoE. Only in charge of other Archivists. Forbidden from leaving the Archives (shackled to the place). One of the main Caretakers of Alvis when the Eldritch Fellow is asleep. In charge of the Caretaking of Alvis. Symbol of a Tome bound in Chains. Cosmin: Leads one of the three Academies for training Eldritchicians. A former Solomonar who still trains Dragons and teaches certain others how to do so. Lead the efforts to empty out DomDaniel so the FoE could use it for its Purposes. Symbol is a Dragon with a Staff in one talon and an Sack and Ax in the other. Overseer Runa: Elf. In charge of the main Treasure House of the FoE. All the relics and items the FoE has collected which all technically belong to the Eldritch Fellow Algimantas Varius Eldritch. Is usually invisible thanks to a Ring and often forgets she is invisible. Is the only one other than Algimantas or Alyss who can command the Apple guards or the Griffin that guards the Treasure House. Rarely leaves the Treasure house except for business requiring all Overseers to be present or to visit her sister and fellow Eldritchician Huld. Symbol of a Griffin, a golden Apple a Silver Ring, the Outline of a Cap, a Green Cloak Overseer Archimedes: A Mothman. No one is exactly sure what Archimedes is in charge of but he holds the rank, title, and authority of an Overseer. He seems to manage Communication among the FoE through the Hide Behind Network, the Night Crawlers, and Various birds. Might also keep track of little pockets of where the FoE Stations itself across the globe? Still figuring out narrative logistics of where and stuff. Is never far from Eldritch Fellow Alaire Vendel Eldritch. Symbol is a Foot Sole, One of his own black Feathers, a Hide Behind behind the foot, and of course a Question Mark. Make of this what you will. Al, the Chronographing Cottager and Prince of Naming

[sublimegentlemanalpaca]

A Current list of Eldritchicians those developed and under developed.

I will list the Currently thought up Eldritchicians. This might be repetitive but ah well. Will have their name, what Eldritch topics they’re familiar with, any particular interesting bits about them like if they’re part of a Splinter group or what have you. Hope you find this interesting, and if you have any questions be they important or otherwise...please ask away! Please? Alyss Violet Eldridge: First Eldritchician. The Arch Overseer, Founder and leader of the FoE. Adopted daughter of Alvis Vadim Eldritch. Raised by Alvis and the rest of his Fellows. Has learned a little of everything from the each Eldritch Fellow (even Alastor) Skilled in the Rapier, Carnwennanian Dagger, excellent persuader and diplomat (when necessary). Always has a book on her person. Has an Awoken Shadow. Is Dark skinned with unnaturally white hair. Wears three Rings. Her Overseer and Arch Overseer Rings on her left (An Iron Ring set with Amethyst and a Silver Ring set with Lapis Lazuli), and a Ring gifted to her by the Eldritch Fellows which is visibly made of Orichalcum with a brilliant blood red stone of some sort (a very philosophical sort). Immediate superior to all Eldritchicians. Will occasionally not wear her Overseer Rings and go about business as a simple Eldritchician, usually teaming up with Tomomi and Charles Williams. Overseer Secundus Sinbad Al-Amin. A Cartographer and Blacksmith from Damascus. Knows how to make Damascus Steel. Has learned from Alvis(Wisdom) Albus(Ghosts and Sea Creatures) , Algimantas (Items and Objects and Allan (Demons and things considered Demons and such). Vice Chancellor of the Academy for Eldritchicians. An avid Cartographer of Strange and unusual Locales. A friend to Alvis. Wears two rings. One is his Overseer Ring, the other is a Agate Ring which to my knowledge is a custom of Muslim men. If this is incorrect, please correct me. Overseer Morgan Maddox. A Scottish (or Welsh? I’m not sure yet) Warrior. Friend of Alyss. Heads the Saint Alyss Academy for Eldritchicians. Skilled in Spear, and Carnwennanian Dagger. The Overseer who ...oversees the paperwork for the occasional necessary extermination and such? Monster hunting and the like. Learned under the Legendary Scàthach before meeting Alyss and the Eldritch Fellows. As an Eldritchician Studied under Alvis, Algimantas, Albus, and Alaire. Her Spear is made by Albus from The bone of a Sea Monster, Silver, Cold Iron, Meteoric Iron, And Orichalcum. Has a Prosthetic Arm of Magic Silver made by Algimantas. Wears her Overseer Ring on her left hand. Overseer Runa. A Norse Elf who along with her sister Huld followed Alvis around for a month or two certain that he was Odin. When the two realized Alvis was in fact not Odin they stuck around all the same. Runa joined the founding Eldritchicians while Huld helps in managing the Archives alongside Sophocles. Runa is basically the Bard (or Skald I suppose) of the Overseers. Has studied under Alvis, Algimantas, Albus, Alaire (for storytelling). Wears her Overseer Ring on his left hand. Overseer Cosmin The Solomonar: as the Title suggests, Cosmin is a (former?) Solomonar. A Wizard (?) From Romanian Folklore (Mythology?). Controls the Weather and rides a Dragon. Runs the Grey School, modeled after his own Education as a Solomonar at the Scholomance. Already knew a whole lot but has studied with Alvis, Algimantas, Albus, Alaire, and studied with Algernon even. Wears his Overseer Ring Overseer Archimedes: A Mothman. Tall black winged thing . Best friend to Alaire. In charge of the Fellows In Grey, a Splinter group in the Fellowship that deals with Cryptids, Aliens, and so on. Does not wear his Overseer Ring nor any of his pins. He leaves all the stuff which denotes him as an Eldritchician with Alaire. Alaire being the only Eldritch Fellow to actually kinda sorta join the FoE. Sophocles of Alexandria: Head Archivist for the Fellowship. He is not really an Overseer....he is imprisoned in the Archives for having tried stealing a book from Alvis...this did not end well for Sophocles place of Employment, The Library of Alexandria (books were sparred, rest was destroyed). Can not leave the Archives. Medusa: Former Priestess of Athena, Gorgon. Studied Alvis’ Wisdom, Algimantas’ stuff (who she hates), Alpheas, and with Albus. In a Trio with Ismene and Prioska. Studied shapeshifters and transformation with Alphaes (spelling?). In a relationship with Ismene. Her serpent locks are Golden. Ismene: Former Priestess of Athena. Also a Former Statue. Still has some Statue characteristics. Studied with Alvis, Algimantas, and Albus. In a relationship with Medusa. Prioska Lakatos: A Vampire from Hungary. Skilled in Clockwork. Has a Coat she stole from Albus. Calls Albus Alucard. Studied under Albus, Alvis, Algimantas, and Alaire. On a Trio with Ismene and Medusa. Also a part of Alyss’ Intelligentsia (keeping track of other secret Societies and Spy things). Loves teasing Quincey. Quincey Johnathan Jack Harker: Eldest son of Johnathan and Mina Harker. Vampire Hunter. Studied with Albus (Ghosts and stuff), Algimantas, Alvis. Duel wields Bowie Knives (one belonging to his Namesake, the other made of Adamant by Albus). Is Bi...not always the brightest...Can see Ghosts. On a Trio with Horatio and Runa. Might be in a relationship with Huld? Lucius Abraham Arthur Harker: Second Harker Son and Younger brother to Quincey. Is not an Eldritchician. He is a ghost though and is haunting his Brother (‘To keep an eye on my dummy of a Brother so he doesn’t get himself killed). Will regularly set up Hauntings so as to set up his brother with Eligible Bachelors and Bachelorettes and so on. Huld: Norse elf who followed Alvis for months thinking he was Odin with her sister Runa. Might be in a relationship with Quincey? Learned from Alaire, Albus, Algimantus, as well Alewar (Eldritch Horrors In a Extra Planetary Or Lovecraftian sense), and Alwin (Fae and Elves). In a relationship with Quincey? Leader of her Trio? Horatio aka ‘Doctor Faustus’: A Danish Man recognized for dressing in all black. Wields a Rapier. Known as Doctor Faustus since he’s studied Demons with Allan and he studied at Wittenberg. Studied with Alaire and has an Awoken Shadow. It is named but he always says it so quietly, only Horatio and Alaire know the name. Quincey has been able to catch that the name of Horatio’s Shadow starts with an H...followed by an A. Horatio has put all his Eldritch studies into Shadows, Demons and Ghosts. It is rumored he gave his Soul over to Allan V Eldritch. Wields a Carnwennanian Dagger Or a Bespoked Bodkin. Leaving his own Shadow...Lighter for lack of a better phrase . In a Trio with Quincey and Huld. Aeschylus Adams: A Werewolf Ranger, and one of Alyss’ Intelligentsia. Think of a mix of Aragorn and Halt O’Carrick. Excellent Thief and Pick pocket. Studied with Alaire (Cryptids, Shadows, and Folklore), Albus, and Algimantas. Studied Druid craft and stuff with Alfr. In a Trio with Midas Little and Murdann. Dr. Mercury Little: one of Four Little Brothers (three of whom are a part of the FoE), differentiated From his brothers by his Seemingly unnatural Silver hair. Studied Angels and Alchemy with Aldread, Albus, Alvis, and Alaire. Murdann Eldritch: A Finwife From Orkney. First Wife of Albus Viggo Eldritch. Joined after having been with Albus for some years. Knows what Albus has to teach, learned from Alvis, and Alfr. An exceptional Healer. Regularly has Weaving Contests with Ismene and Medusa. In a Trio with Dr Little and Aeschylus. Open relationship with Albus. Dr. Hermes Little: Same as Doctor Mercury Little. Only he has white Hair. Eldest of the Little ‘Brothers’. Studied all the same stuff. In a Trio with Charles Williams and Clarissa Williams. Charles Williams: Once an Editor now an Eldritchician. Tried repeatedly to join the FoE and finally managed it after trying forever. Studied Alchemy and Angels with Aldread, Magical Items with Algimantas (specifically Relics), Ghosts with Albus, and a bunch of others (Alvis, Alwin, and Algernon). The Left hand of the Arch Overseer. Go to diplomat between other Secret Societies. One of Alyss’ Intelligentsia( occasionally answers to the Codename Walsingham). Also, I should mention he’s an ESPer....Telepathy, Telekinesis, and Pyrokinesis for fun ;) . Clarissa Williams: Alternate Charles Williams. ESPER, Can see Ghosts Naturally. Intelligentsia member (Code Name Francis). Dr. Midas Little: same as the other Doctor Littles except that his hair is Golden. In a Trio with Tomomi and Dr. Leeds. Tomomi.: a Kitsune, friend to Alyss since she (Alyss) was young. Expert on Yokai and things. Studied with Alaire, Alvis, Albus, Algimantus and Alpheas (because shapeshifting). Just decided to be the guardian of Alvis’ Bookshop when they were in Japan one time. In a Trio with Dr. Midas Little and Dr. Leeds. when not going on solo missions for Alyss. A part of Alyss’ Intelligentsia (Code Name Dee, because she wasn’t fond of Kit Marlowe as a Codename). Doctor Mary Leeds: 12th Child of the Leeds family and the immediate Elder sibling and Caretaker to John Daniel Leeds...aka...the Jersey Devil. A Medicinal Doctor. Studied with Albus, Alvis, Algimantas, and Alaire. Stood up for her baby Brother when he killed one of the Night Crawlers working for Archimedes. She keeps track of Her Brother to make sure he doesn’t cause trouble (otherwise Archimedes and Alaire will need to deal with him). Learned medicine from the Black Doctor Ghost. One of the Fellows In Grey. Developed the spray they use to wipe memories and things. Mr Erland Ranswell: A Grey Alien in a Grey Suit. One of Archimedes’ Fellows In Grey. A Linguist and Cartographer. Has endeavored to learn the Whooping language of the Fresno Nightcrawlers Employed by Archimedes and Alaire. In a Trio ‘officially’ but not really with Dr. Livesey and Dr. Mercury Little. Dr. Yorick Roger Livesey: Once a Ship’s Surgeon now an animate Skeleton (rather than a Ghost like most who stay at Albus’ Lighthouses). Dressed in Piratey clothes and wears one of Albus’ old Coats when not doing Surgery or what have you. Has studied with Albus, Alaire, and Alvis. As well as Algernon. Can not speak and communicates In two ways. Either sign language or a horrible creaking noise that has an echo of bone saws. The first is interpreted by a Talking Raven Named Apollo Teach, the second by a Talking Snake Named Asclepius Hands. Asclepius’ Voice is supposed to serve as an auditory Balm after hearing Yorick Speak. Dr. Livesey gets along with Murdann and Prioska. He works closely with Albus ( being his First mate in a way?). Teaches medicine at Sinbad’s College for Eldritchicians. When out and about he will wear gloves and a mask to hide the whole...being a Skeleton thing. Dr. Mercury Little: Same as the other Little’s his hair is Silver and he looks younger than Hermes Little. Miss Calista Flatwood: Archimedes Second in command for running the Fellows In Grey. Is the Flatwoods Monster.... Mister Ray Green: A little green Alien. Astro Cartographer. Teleportation technology? I don’t know. Just thought to have a little green man. One of the Fellows In Grey. Let’s see am I forgetting anyone...ah right. Rosemary: A Fairy, once Royal Retainer to King Alberich (who is now Alwin) V Eldritch. Corrupter of Words. A Member of Alyss’ Intelligentsia, Rosemary keeps his eye on the the goings ons of The Fae Courts since his Master has had to abdicate. Is ultimately Loyal to Alwin, but works for Alyss under Alwin’s orders. The expert on Fae among the Eldritchicians. The Nightcrawler Corp: A bunch of Fresno Nightcrawlers that act as Scouts and Recon and things. They are Archimedes’ Eyes and ears for all the goings ons of Cryptids and whatever else they’re asked to look into. They answer to Archimedes only or those who relay things from Archimedes. They communicate in a series of Whoops and Kicking. Only Archimedes and Alaire are fluent in their language. The Hide Behind Network/ Erebus Hyde: A Hide Behind was stalking Alaire once...only to get caught by Aldjoy (Alaire’s living Shadow). Alaire befriended the Creature, and gave it the Name Erebus Hyde. The Hide Behind Network is all Hide Behinds being in a sort of Hive Mind (A Hide Mind?) they are many....They are not Shadows as Alaire originally thought. But they are something...something Old...perhaps only younger then the Eldritch Fellows themselves. Certain Eldritchicians (Dr. Leeds, Horatio, Overseer Morgan and others) know when a Hidebehind is behind them, and they will be sure to make people who they’re giving messages to know they’re there. They all answer to the name Erebus Hyde...all address Alaire as Friend, (and Address all the other Fellows by that title)...others they’ll address by their relation to Alaire. Okay..I think that’s everyone! And in Trios to! Be sure to ask any questions about any of these Fellows you might have. Stuff subject to change. Make of this what you will. Al, the Chronographing Cottager and Prince of Naming

[sublimegentlemanalpaca]

A Dramatis Personae of sorts for all the thought of Eldritchicians at Present.

Leadership. Arch Overseer Alyss V Eldridge. Overseer Sinbad( Cartographer of the Curious, Weird, and Eldritch). Overseer Morgan. Overseer Sophocles of Alexandria (Head Archivist). Overseer Cosmin (former Solomonar). Overseers Runa. Overseer Archimedes(A Mothman. Best friend of Alaire Vendel Eldritch) Alyss’ Intelligentsia: Charles Williams (Editor and ESPer Left hand to Alyss). Tomomi (a Kitsune and Alyss Right Hand. Childhood friend to Alyss) Rosemary (Fae. Loyal to Alwin V. Eldritch. Not a formal member of the FoE). Prioska Lakatos ( A Vampire. Clockwork enthusiast. On and off relationship with Albus Viggo Eldritch). Autolycus Adams. Ranger (think a mish mash of Halt O’Carrick and Aragorn) and either Shapeshifter like his namesake or merely a Werewolf. Not certain yet. Note. Those in Alyss’ Intelligentsia (with the exception of Rosemary) still do other Eldritchician things when not doing Intelligentsia stuff. Other Eldritchicians. Quincey J.J. Harker. Human, knowledgeable with Ghosts, Vampires, and the sorts of creatures which are of interest to Alaire (Cryptids). Lucius Abraham Harker. A Ghost. Technically not an actual Eldritchician but is just haunting his dummy of a Brother. Medusa. That Medusa. Excellent Archivist, and handler of Eldritch materials. Hates Algimantas Varius Eldritch. Ismene. Former Priestess of Athena and former Statue. Murdann. A Finwife from Orkney. Excellent Healer and handler of Eldritch Materials. Knows of Eldritch things in the Sea, Ghosts, and Folklore things that Alaire would know. Wife to Albus V Eldritch. Clarissa Williams. Psychic Detective. Occasionally takes on Intelligentsia work but only if absolutely necessary. Knows of Ghosts, Angels, And Wisdom. Walter, and Stansby Williams. Thought form duplicates of either Charles or Clarissa Williams (no one is sure which? And no one has bothered to remember). Horatio, aka Doctor Faustus. Received his nickname for having studied at Wittenberg. This Horatio is knowledgeable in Ghosts, Demons, Cryptids....and Old Shadows. One of the only Eldritchicians to decipher and seek to learn this subject from Alaire. Other ideas to follow as I’m thinking to have the Eldritchicians be set up in teams (or perhaps squads works better?) of Three. Only current Team thought up is The Harker Bros and Horatio. More to follow surely. If curious about any...feel free to ask questions and stuff. Or not. Tumblr will probably eat this and make it look all messy destroying my spacing limited though it is. Make of this what you will. Al, the Chronographing Cottager and Prince of Naming

[sublimegentlemanalpaca]

The Staff of Archimago Academy (part 2)

stupid character limit.

Professor of Angels: Shared between Prof. Feather and Charles Williams. This Charles Williams is a lot like real Charles Williams. But with more psychic powers and less spanking women with swords.

Professor of Fantastic Beasts: Thera Dionyssa, a Fairy from Queen Titania's Court. Especially great with Underwater beasts.

Professor(s) of Cryptids: Dr. Ariel Pym (Human, possibly Psychic?). Pym is entrusted with a Nightcrawler Whistle Rattle (will explain if Asked) as a part of the Unique Fellowship Observers Branch. Trio with Prof. Feather and Madame Valdemar. The other Professor of Cryptids is Dr. Quinton Beckett. The FoE's expert on Time and Interdimensional Travel. Always seen in a Hawaiian Shirt. Also entrusted with a Nightcrawler Whistle Rattle. Often teaching or expermeating at William and Leeds Academy in New Jersey.

Professor(s) of Magical Artifacts/Relics/ and Making: Edmund Bacon. Human, has some Mechanical Prosthetics. Former employee at Algimantas Varius Eldritc's Ring Market. One of the best in making Prosthetics. Bacon shares the Professorship with Ismene. An Athenian woman from Ancient Athens who was a Statue then Un statuified thanks to Algimantas. Great it crafting magical items. Charles Williams also pops in now and then to lecture about Holy Relics.

Professor of Lovecraftian Horrors and Music: Madame Bernice Valdemar. A 'Saintly' Vampire (will explain if Asked) learned directly from Alewar Eldritch and usually tutors on the subject when he is unreachable. Plays the Viola de Gamba. A Protege of Intelligencer Prioska Lakatos but not an Intelligencer herself. Madame Valdemar also provides training in resisting and Breaking Vampiric Hypnotism and other forms of mental manipulation alongs her Partner Professor Feather.

Professor(s) of Astronomy: Phanos Kleinmann, Pancea Kleinmann, and Midas Kleinmann (Homunculi of the Kleinmann Family).

Medical Professor(s)/ Head Medical Staff: Alruna Kleinmann (head of Medical staff. Oldest Kleinmann Homunculi on the Archimago Staff), Pancea Kleinmann. Dr. Yorick Roger Livesey. An excellent surgeon who happens to be an animated Skeleton. Speaks through sign language or a unholy grinding/shrieking/wailing sound. Can be understood by ESPers who can see and hear the dead. Has two interpretors. A talking raven named Apollo Teach, and a talking snake named Asclepius Hands. Murdann E. Murdann is a Finwife, expert at Magical and herbal based healing. Is the Wife to Eldritch Fellow Albus Vigg Eldritch.

Library Staff: The Library of Archimago leads to the Grand Library of the a Fellowship that all the FoE Academy libraries lead to and is under the authority of the Overseer Sophocles of Alexandria. The Library staff of Archimago Academy includes. The Head Librarian Mr. Armitage and his many Ferret assistants. Reese Goodfellow ( A Goodfellow of the old Fae like Rhonwen, Rosemary, or Robin) and their two Ferret assistants. There is Medusa (yes that Medusa), who is in a relationship with the aforementioned Ismene. One of the best Archivists. There are also a number of talking Ferrets, Owls, Some Ravens from Runa's Unkindness. and about the Library and Academy is a Grey Cat by the name of Greymalkin Elric. Greymalkin is a Shapeshifting Cat, adopted daughter of Alyss and Runa, sister to Alruna Elric. Most often found in her Grandfather's Bookstores, the Libraries of the FoE or wandering back and forth between the Academies as she likes.

so there's the staff (at present) of the Fellowship of Eldritchicians Academy Archimago Academy. If you've got any questions relating to the stuff mentioned feel free to ask.

Make of this What you Will,

Al, the Chronographing Cottager and Prince of Naming

[sublimegentlemanalpaca]

Rambling thoughts concerning the Libraries of the FoE.

Each Academy (Archimago, Dom Daniel, Beowulf, Suleyman, Still unnamed Academy probably in Russia(I’m not certain. Some place Slavic?), unnamed academy in Japan (Kuebiko? Kuzunoha? Seimei?), and the unnamed Academy in America (Kidd and Leeds?, Leeds? Storm along?) has it’s own library. Each library having a head librarian and a number of other Archivists and recorders and so on on hand. Each library is staffed by Eldritchicians...but also Talking Ravens(at least one of Runa’s Ravens is on staff) Owls, Foxes, Cats, and in one case Ferrets. Every Academy has at least a Raven, and a Cat on staff. Some more. All library staff answers to the Overseer Sophocles, Arch Overseer Eldridge, and any Eldritch Fellow who shows up? Books are not allowed to leave the Academies though they may be taken out from the library. All these Libraries are linked to the Grand Library where the Overseer Sophocles is found. Hidden away in this Library is the Eldritch Libraries. Parts of the Personal collections of the studies of each Eldritch Fellow. This includes the entirety of Alvis’ archival work. Books from The Grand Library, or the Eldritch Library are not allowed to leave the Library. Ever. Taking them from the library will result in notable consequences. Hidden away in the Eldritch Library is the living quarters of Alvis who has one Eldritchician at least assigned at all times to look after him while he sleeps. A number of training Eldritchicians are usually assigned to either manage Alvis’ Bookshop (located all around the world, in each Academy and all in one place) as well as looking after the Eldritch Fellow and seeing to his birds (Grey Owls, Parrots, and Pigeons). Make of this what you will. Al, the Chronographing Cottager and Prince of Naming