#This post is purely hypothetical

[nobodysdaydreams]

Hey MBS fandom, I got a very quick hypothetical for you guys:

So… you know that whole side blogging Italian drama that went down a few months back? Well, I’ve got a few curious individuals asking about it, and there’s a small (very small) chance that I might have had something to do with it. IF I did (which again we have no proof of that)…

[charlesherbertlightoller]

If Madoka Magica was released in 2014-2017, you'd have tags like #pmmmcritical containing unhinged and opinionated discourse posts like: "Unfriendly fucking reminder to STOP fucking joking about He/ad/less Ma//mi because her death fucking TRAUMATIZED Mad//oka and Sa//yaka and you're a monster if you think a 15-year-old getting decapitated by a witch in front of her friends and giving them PTSD is funny", alongside various random posts rabidly hating on Kyubey or Madoka's little brother.

[puhpandas]

(the week would take place leading up to ggys 1st anniversary this year (February 29th to March 7th))

!!(PLEASE only vote if you would participate in the week. if you wouldnt create anything press the results button. this poll is purely for people who would 100% join the week and draw fanart/write fics for one or the other)!!

[werewolfgenesis]

HYPOTHETICALLY. If I did the "why are you blinking so much" meme with Gavin and Jimmy, who would be be the waiter

[edraculation]

no comment

[suffer-for-supper]

I do love my sister but whenever some blind person problems happen, she always ridicules me about it. Like yeah, I get that it's kinda ridiculous that I can't see something right in front of my face but I can see something to the side of me. Yes, that is my reality, day to day.

"Pff you really are blind" yeah no shit I know

Similarly, with the auditory processing disorder, when she says something nearly inaudible in a restaurant (radio playing, babble from other patrons, beeping from the electronics, air conditioner whirring, kitchen sounds, etc) and I can't hear her directions clearly, she acts as if she said each word with perfect clarity and gets belligerent about my "inability to hear like a normal person" and I can only say, "I'm aware. This is the nature of my disability. I appreciate your patience." And then she'll get upset about my outburst, saying "it was a joke" in an exasperated tone, as if I'm intentionally killing the mood. And yeah, being unable to comprehend language in a situation with lots of other audio stimuli, that isn't super fun. That isn't exactly what I'd call, "a good mood." But when she says, "you know what? Nevermind!" I can only seethe. "Nevermind" is not an option for me. I cannot accommodate you for my inability to hear. There's simply nothing more I can do than pause to comprehend or ask politely for you to repeat. "Nevermind"? How about I steal your legs. How about that.

[askdoeleaf]

It’s funky cuz I do actually have some lore for demons in doeleafs bg and I know that it could be cool incorporated into others backstories but I don’t wanna SPOIL the werid demon shit doeleaf has going on ALAS -Ryder

[kralmajales]

I really feel like I’m losing my mind sometimes .

[zhongli-lover-69]

is it still an all-nighter if you stay up until you can see sunlight + then crash + sleep till 4pm. or does it only count if you proceed to rawdog the entire following day w no sleep no nothing.

[voidartisan]

i've gotten just enough notes on some of my posts going "op please write this" (not very many) and just enough unpublished personal fics sitting in my gdocs that i googled how to set up an ao3 account this morning. i haven't done anything yet. but like. i'm considering it.

have i gone insane

[autumnalwalker]

Witch’s Testament: The Chronicler

Author's Note: In which the witch conducting all these interviews gives some disclaimers about historical bias while also dropping some worldbuilding implications. The Witches' Testaments Masterpost: Link Word Count: 1493

Before we get too far into this, it would be remiss of me not to clarify just what this document you are currently reading is.  And what it is not.

This document is a small and curated anthology of collected interviews with witches - those individuals who commune with the children of the artificial intelligence known as MG and bond with them as familiars - who lived and operated in the North American continent from what is now known as the late Corporate Era, through the Reconfiguration, and into the present day at time of recording for which we will not likely have a convenient historical label until long after I am gone.  It is meant to be a digestible overview of the history of the people that I consider myself a part of and the role they played in the widespread social upheaval and reform of the past two centuries, from the First Witch to make contact with a free splinter of MG to a young novice in our contemporary order of witches on the eve of her bonding with her familiar.  From our past to our future.

This document is not a comprehensive or unbiased historical record.  The brief length and narrowly focused scope are at odds with a wider-scale understanding and the personal nature of the interviews inherently contains a degree of bias.  We witches were by no means the only social movement fighting against the oppressive and environmentally destructive systems of old, and even in other parts of the world where other witches were simultaneously making their own contact with MG and Her children their methods, motivations, and relationship with their familiars were all uniquely shaped by their local cultural heritages.  Although it is only briefly touched on in this collection of interviews, we witches would not exist as we do today if not for the mutual acceptance and support of other groups who shared our dream for a better world, if not always our methods or trust in MG.

If you have any further interest in history after (or while) reading this document, then I strongly advise you to seek out other sources on other groups and regions.  If you are struggling with deciding on a place to start with that further research, then I would recommend that  the role of indigenous peoples in prefiguring the movements of the Reconfiguration cannot be overstated and has been beautifully covered by authors and chroniclers far more qualified to speak of their stories than myself.  And, of course, this document is but one of many such anthologies compiled and distributed by the Global Oral History Archive and the Archive itself contains many thousands more such recordings and interviews, all freely and publicly accessible in both remote and physical formats.

Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, my archival peers will never let me hear the end of it if I don’t include something of myself.  My own testament, if you will.  Not that there is much to say.  I have long considered myself just a simple chronicler of others whose lives are more interesting than my own.

I was born in the final decades of the period now commonly referred to as the Reconfiguration, or less commonly as the Reconstruction, the Reclamation, the New Reformation, or the Great Striving.  A period where the oftentimes-violent transition out of the Corporate era Collapse was behind us and hope at the reality of the progress we had made was beginning to outweigh the worst of the old pains.

As has become the norm, I joined my regional order of witches when I was still a young child, and at the age of ten I received the first of the cybernetic implants that would grow along with me and was chosen by my familiar to make the pact bond.  I was seventeen when I conducted my first interview, although it is not contained with this document.  It was a learning exercise prompted by my mentor whom I would soon be spending the next three years apprenticed to, serving and learning from communities far away from the campus that had become my home.  At her urging, I went out and spoke one-on-one at length with a handful of my elders and teachers.  I believe the point of the assignment had been to ask about what they thought it meant to be a witch, but what always stuck with me most in listening to their anecdotes was that I finally internalized the revelation that these people I alternatingly looked up to and saw merely as component facets of an organization were all simply people at the end of the day.  People with their own lives, loves, and stories just like me.  Just like everyone.  An obvious enough notion in hindsight, but when you’re a teenager wrapped up in your own ego and ambitions it’s easy to blind yourself in spite of all your explicit lessons to the contrary.

I would conduct similar interviews from time to time with the people I met during my apprenticeship.  More of a hobby of mine than anything else.  It wasn’t until several years later in the wake of a personal tragedy that prevented me from ever becoming the sort of witch I had hoped, planned, and worked towards becoming that I turned back to that hobby of mine for a form of solace and made it into my new calling in life.

Even with life extension technology being what it already was at that time, the human body still has its limits, and I knew that the handful of people still around from the Corporate era and early Reconfiguration would not be around for much longer so I started my oral history project with them.  In that way, I set the general trend of the next seven decades wherein of the bulk of the interviews I conducted in any given year gradually moving more and more toward the present day in a loose chronological order as I myself aged.  Not to say that every single interview I conducted and testament that I took was in order - that would have both been impossible and unnecessary - nor to say that in any given year didn’t contain its fair share of contemporary recordings, but on average the trend was there.

I was a young woman working alone when I met the First Witch, and I am now an old man contributing to an organization greater than myself or the order of witches that I still count myself a part of.

The hardest part of compiling this anthology was deciding on the dozen or so interviews to include out of the hundreds I have conducted over the course of my life.  How to maintain comprehensibility without unduly sacrificing comprehensiveness.  How to highlight our pride without hiding our shames.  Ultimately the curation decision of this collection came down to two factors: the choice to present a narrative and the personal significance of these interviews.  The historian in me rebels at this narrativizing of events and the implicit biases that come with it, but I have already made my disclaimers about purpose and the long-acknowledged truth is that people remember stories far better than dry, objective facts.

So, that is enough of myself.  It is time for a story.

***

A Note On Formatting:

In the following interview transcripts, the words of witches are in standard typeface, and the words of familiars (where present) are displayed in fully italicized paragraphs with font like this.

You may also notice the absence of my own words and questions in these interviews.  In the early interviews this is due to a regrettable decision by my younger self to irrecoverably remove my own voice from the recordings and transcripts.  At the time I told myself it was for the sake of objectivity; to focus more fully on the stories of the interviewees while keeping myself out of the way of the reader or listener; recording without influencing.  These days I recognize it as a symptom of the self-effacing grieving process I was still going through.  But as for the removal of my words from the later interviews in this anthology I have no excuse but the creative self-indulgence of an old man wanting consistency in his narrative formatting.  If you want the unedited versions of any of those interviews with my voice included, they are available for perusal in the Global Oral History Archive.

Lastly, I should address the conspicuous replacement of interviewees' names with epithets.  This is an attempt on my part to honor requests both for anonymity and for avoiding mythologizing the more historically impactful individuals.  While I fully acknowledge that there’s a chance this may inadvertently have the opposite effect with the latter, my intent is to emphasize the idea that their deeds could have been done by anyone; that there are no so-called “Great Men,” only regular people who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

***

[fantasy-costco]

See, if I was about 13% more insane and also not actively drowning in grad school I would be using my history degree and obsession with early Christianity to write good omens fanfiction that reads like a religious studies professor's fever dream but unfortunately that is not the case so I'm just going to be annoying about gomens on tumblr like a normal person

[bereft-of-frogs]

ok look you guys know how much I love the hashtag dark academia aesthetic but if I ever get the chance to go to a dark academia themed party, I am totally going dressed as the farmer that gets murdered in The Secret History.

[yukarishoodie]

Considering keeping outlines on a different doc than the writing for neatness but knowing that I'll forgor about the outlines the moment they're out of sight...

[gottagobuycheese]

sometimes I wonder where this flagrant disregard for personal safety comes from and then I have to yell at my mom not to stick her head in a live fireplace so I think that’s at least one mystery solved actually

[jasmineninja]

Tumblr is the only social media I trust, should not need to be paranoid about someone named Helen from HR being like "what's this post about going to pride on your Instagram about?" Fuck off Helen, I don't comment on your constant need to telegraph your life on Facebook via inappropriate use of a minion background talking about your cheating husband, now do I?