#Vacuum Salt Plant

[hutiapendra]

Denizens of The Sunken: Type Wheel, KEMC Diamond, and Habitats

Some researchers have asked what all the graphic icons in our encyclopedia entries mean. The following document should explain them all.

PART 1: THE TYPE WHEEL

The creatures populating the Sunken Island can be classified under ten (eleven) different Types, and five (six) different Cores. This diagram illustrates the relationships between Types and Cores.

The inner wheel contains Cores, the intrinsic origins of a creature. The outer wheel contains Types, the modes of a creature’s existence. Cores have certain Types associated with them, though a creature may deviate from these common links entirely.

Cores:

MUTANT: Life as we know it, twisting and accelerating beyond explanation.

UNDEAD: That which is no longer alive, echoes clinging to this world.

EGREGORE: Collective concepts brought to life, human ideas.

CRAFTED: That which was deliberately built, taking on life of its own.

HAZARD: Life inimical to other life, parasites, forces of nature.

Types:

VERMIN: Beasts. That which scurries, scratches, consumes. The rage of a thousand cornered rats.

WEED: That for which growth and movement are one and the same. Plants. Fungi. Sessile animals.

SHELL: Corporeal undead. Cadavers. Dust. Fossils. Rot. Food.

SOUL: Incorporeal undead. Ghosts, grudges, hauntings. Aftershocks of history.

RUMOR: Beings born from whispers. Legends. Cryptids. Bogeymen. Fear. Uncertainty given flesh.

DOGMA: Beings born from rules. Philosophy. Religion. Information. Code. Conviction given flesh.

MECH: Automata. Mechanical monsters free to self-replicate, free from their origins in human factories.

CHEM: Homunculi. Chemical processes running rampant. Water, salts, fuel, coarse stone, refined crystals.

PHYSIC: Forces of nature. Extreme heat and cold. Storms. Blunt impact. Distant stars. Disasters passively harmful to life.

PLAGUE: Invaders. Parasites. Infections. Consumers from within. Pestilence actively harmful to life.

Blank:

A Type and a Core at the same time, Blank is defined by absence. Some would call this a 'normal' or 'neutral' attribute, but there is nothing normal about a creature devoid of an identity. What little unites these Denizens involves empty vacuums, blistering cold, and unfilled vessels. Blank creatures are rare, and they tend to behave oddly when exposed to other life forms.

-----

PART 2: THE KEMC DIAMOND

Damage varieties:

All Denizens have the ability to inflict harm on others. That includes you, reader. Please familiarize yourself with the risks inherent to field research before going outside to catalogue the wildlife.

KINETIC: Harm inflicted with physical means, such as claws, fists, fangs, or infection. By far the simplest form of danger to understand, but no less deadly.

ENERGY: Harm inflicted by emitting high levels of energy through comparatively small amounts of mass. This may take the form of fire, electricity, radiation, among others.

COGNITIVE: Harm inflicted by assaulting the mind and senses. Creating illusions, manipulating emotions, and altering memories all fall under this category.

METAPHYSICAL: Harm inflicted by locally rewriting the rules of reality. What was fiction a moment ago is now a fact of life, and yesterday's laws of physics are today's fairy tales.

-----

PART 3: HABITATS

The icons above represent the various environments a Denizen may call home. The Sunken Island is very humid and situated well within the tropics, so many habitats such as deserts and glaciers have never been present here. Other icons may be added to the Denizen Encyclopedia if those presented are insufficient.

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That should cover everything, for now. If you have any other questions, please direct them my way!

-Dr. Calypso Ceiba, Postdoctoral ecologist for the Denizen Project

[khaire-traveler]

🧼 Subtle Hygeia Worship 🐍

Practice hygiene to the best of your ability; wash your hands, brush your teeth, take showers/baths, etc.

Take care of your physical and mental health; see a doctor if you can, talk to a therapist if able, etc.

Take your medications if any

Drink herbal teas, especially those with healing or calming properties (stomache, headache, etc.; DO NOT USE HERBS TO TREAT SERIOUS CONDITIONS PLEASE)

Get a candle that reminds you of her (no altar needed)

Wear jewelry that reminds you of her

Keep a picture of her in your wallet

Support mental and physical healthcare or humanitarian organizations

Volunteer at a homeless or animal shelter

Donate hygiene kits to homeless shelters; these are almost always in great demand, actually

Keep your space clean; clean your bathroom and room regularly if able

Get a mug with a cute snake on it (here is one, here is another, and here is a third; I just wanted to look up cute snake mugs lol)

Have a stuffed animal snake (here is one, here is another, and here is a third; cute ones are weirdly hard to find, so I wanted to help lol)

Have imagery of cups, snakes, fruit, or healing objects (anything you associate with it) around

Drink white wine or clear sparkling grape juice (or anything similar, really)

Grow your own garden, especially herbs and produce of your own; tend to plants

Engage in activities that make you happy! Do things you enjoy

Learn about medicinal applications of herbs

Eat well; eat fruits, veggies, etc.

Drink water regularly; hydrate or diedrate, baby 👉😎👉

Practice compassion and love towards yourself

Write affirmations on sticky notes and place them in spots where you'll see them often

Take a self-care bath or shower, especially with soothing herbs like lavender or jasmine

Keep a self-care/self-love journal; write about things you are grateful for (small things like the fact that you liked your socks that door or you have something comfy to sleep on; doesn't have to be big), make a list of your personal strengths at the end of each month and see how you grow, write reassuring messages you think would help you to hear in that moment

Wash your hands/anoint yourself with salt water to cleanse yourself of any energy you don't want (only when necessary)

Have a skincare or body care routine

Try to get in enough sleep; work on your sleep schedule

Start your morning by stretching your muscles or doing some light exercises if you can

Engage with relaxing/calming activities at the end of each school day, work shift, or straining day; find a way to decompress

Be gentle with yourself when you're having a difficult day

Take care of a sick loved one or a loved one who is having a hard time; support those you love

Cook a warm meal for a loved one

Bathe or washcloth bathe a pet; make sure they're eating well; take walks or play with them

Cook a warm meal for someone in need

Learn about/research health conditions that you or your loved ones have; get a better understanding of these things

Know your healthcare rights; know your HIPPA rights (if in US)

Practice being more comfortable asking for help; everyone needs a hand sometimes

Take frequent breaks from screens; make sure to go outside for some fresh air

Take a walk/hike; doesn't matter where

Exercise; get some movement throughout your day, even just basic stretching

Start a morning and/or nighttime self-care routine

Spend time with loved ones

Eat three meals a day

Feed neighborhood dogs, cats, birds, etc.

Practice kindness towards others; holding the door for someone, offering to help someone carry their things, giving compliments to a stranger, etc.

Clean anything you regularly interact with; clean these things when it feels appropriate; mouse and keyboard, car, shower, toilet, doorknobs, sinks, etc.

Do any household chores, especially things like vacuuming, sweeping, or washing dishes

Acknowledge and celebrate even just the little ways you were able to take care of yourself in a day; even something as simple as brushing your hair or wearing a comfy outfit

Engage with a local community; join clubs, join support groups, volunteer at places, help with food/toy drives, etc.

-

I'll likely add more later on. This is my list of discreet ways of worshipping Hygeia! I hope someone finds it useful. Take care, y'all! 🩷

Link to Subtle Worship Master list

[hannahssimblr]

“Granny?” Ivy cries. “I hate granny.”

“You’re not supposed to hate your grandmother,” I point out as I unwind the vacuum cord. “Even if she is… the way that she is.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“Alright, well maybe don’t tell the truth in front of mom and dad.”

“Ugh! For how long?”

“I don’t know, a few hours. Five, maybe.”

“Five hours?” 

“Bring a book.” I find a socket behind a potted plant and fumble with the plug. “Or you can have my iPod. Actually, you can have and keep it.”

“Okay, but whenever we put on music at her house, she complains and says it’s the devil’s.”

“Not all music, just the Rolling Stones.” I point out. “Actually, Mick Jagger. She said he was the devil personified, remember?” I think she came up with that line in the sixties, thought it was poignant, and hasn't stopped saying it for the rest of her life. I don’t even listen to the Rolling Stones. She just assumes all my music must be theirs, because she hates it with the same vigour as she did Beggar’s Banquet. 

“‘Oh, what are you reading, Ivy? Something by some old cowboy?’” Ivy says in this plummy, pretty spot-on impression of Granny Hyland, who also likes to call everyone she doesn’t like a cowboy, for reasons I could never grasp. That includes me, of course, that time I shaved my head.

“‘I’d prefer that children didn’t speak at the dinner table, and that they ate all of their disgusting, soggy peas and carrots that I’ve put no salt on. And don't scrape your cutlery on my ugly plates!’” Ivy goes on. A direct quote, probably. 

I swear I can see Granny now, sitting there, all thin and powdery in her musty, Glasnevin Victorian that one of us is one day cursed to inherit. She’s always seemed so old, even though she’s still only in the first half of her sixties. How she would sit there at the table, gripping her knife and fork over Christmas dinner with those weird, rheumatic hands and jawing on about manners, she was like a turn of the century relic. 

My decision to throw a party tonight has condemned my sister to an evening of that, and for that, I’m guilty. 

Ivy throws herself onto the settee, her hair spilling over the floor. 

“Move your rat tails or I’ll suck them up in the hoover,” I mutter.

“Why are you hoovering? Irene does that for us.”

I sigh. “I guess I’m the cleaner today.”

“Why?”

“Because mom and dad said so.”

She frowns. “Why would they say that? If they want the house cleaned, they would just phone her to come and do it.”

“Yeah, I know, but they’re teaching me a lesson.”

“A lesson about what?”

“I don’t know, hoovering, I suppose. Move.” I scoop her hair out of the way, then hit the wrong button on the hoover. The cord retracts and tightens. 

Ivy sits up. “Who’s coming to your party? Anyone cool?”

“Define ‘cool’.”

She shrugs. She doesn’t really know what cool is in an Irish way, only in that glossy, American tween show way she knows from watching TV at her friend Ella’s house. I’ve wanted to tell her nicely that if those smiley kids wearing belts on top of their t-shirts from her beloved Camp Rock went to school here, they’d have the contents of the canteen bins chucked over them while inside the bathroom stalls, but they’re cool to her, so I just let her enjoy it before she realises. 

“It’s just gonna be some people from school, that’s all.”

“What about your friends from summer?”

I laugh awkwardly. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll ask them. They probably won’t come.”

“Why?”

“Because they live far away, and it’s short notice.”

“You should ask. You’re going away tomorrow. Maybe they’d come because it’s the last chance to see you.”

“It won’t be the last chance. I’ll be back.”

“Yeah, at Christmas,” she says, as though Christmas is the year 2036. 

“Uh, yeah. Christmas. It’s not that long.”

“It is! It’s ages away! And also-”

“Ivy! I’m hoovering now. It’ll drown you out even if you keep talking.” With my foot, I whack the button, the correct one this time, and the machine roars to life. Ivy yaps on, but I just move my hand like a sock puppet. “I can’t hear you!”

She sticks out her tongue, and I stick out mine, but when she’s turned away and become interested in a bird out hopping around on the patio furniture, I pull my phone from my pocket and tap out a hasty message. 

Having a goodbye thing at my house. Will you come? 

It’s several minutes before Evie replies, and by then, I already assume that she won’t, in that kind of sad, desperate way, familiar to me only from my pubescent MSN days. By the time my phone vibrates, I jump. 

Okay, what time? 

I type back:

Seven. Look, I know you’re in Offaly, obviously, so you’re welcome to stay if you need to. There’s a few people crashing here. 

She won’t come. She definitely won’t come. Especially not if she has to sleep in my house. Who am I kidding? There’s all that stuff about her strict mother, and being around boys, and-

Ping.

Yeah, sounds cool. I’ll be there. 

Oh. 

Cool. See you later.

Beginning // Prev // Next

Corresponding LG Chapter

[koipudding]

:,)

love love jy being strict with his partner and ordering them around. it’s easy to go mindless and just obey, but it’s nice isn’t it? finally you get to take a break and relax, not having to make decisions or decide everything on your own. not taking the initiative every single time something must be done…

after a long day at work, you come home to him. he takes your jacket and your cardigan, hangs them up and guides you to sit. “just sit down.” he whispers, handing you a bowl of soup, rice, and a small plate of braised meat with sugar cane.

“Hm?” you just nod, eating whatever he feeds you.

the house is clean. the kitchen organized. the plants have been pruned, and the smell of fresh linens fills the room. he actually did his chores. he did almost all of the chores. You can smell the remnants of the vacuum cleaner, and see the garbage taken care of. you get a bit distracted, almost emotional at the sight of your home completely devoid of dust and the clutter organized.

“got some over here.” he wipes your cheek, and drags you to the bath. you rest against his pec as he fills the warm bath with bath bombs and salts.

“s’warm…” you slur, almost falling asleep against him.

he laughs, his chest rising with the vibrations and squishing your cheek.

“don’t wanna think. s’too bright.”

when he rises you whine, trying to drag him back down. He smiles gently as he reaches up to dim the lights. your eyes finally peel open in the dimmed light, your head clearing.

“what time is it?” you look up and press your cheek against his jaw.

“it’s currently past six, my dear.” He rubs your scalp and washes out the conditioner…

‘when did he have time for that…?’ you muse to yourself, but you ignore it and let him do as he pleases. it’s warm. and you’re dizzy from the day’s work. he doesn’t help much; massaging your skin and hair as you drift off.

“sleep. i’ve taken care of everything.” he whispers, before toweling your hair dry. it gets fuzzy from there. warm arms carry you out of the bathroom; the bedroom is finally clean, since his movements remain steady and rather linear compared to before. when he jostles you, you tucks you a bit closer, and firmer.

the cool sheets of the duvet and pillows make way for you and him, and you dive back under as he raises the covers over your chest.

a/n: this got out of hand lmao. Not a lot of jing yuan ordering you around per-se, just taking the lead and expecting you to follow him in your vulnerable state. I wanted to be self-indulgent; I spend a lot of time taking care of everyone around me (eldest daughters will understand the pain), and the idea of having someone take care of me is festering somewhere, and jing yuan is the perfect subject to put all my silly fantasies on. I'll probably edit this later. I wrote this instead of studying for calc.

[geddyqueer]

did you know you can plant a tomato seed and sprout it and nurture it and repot it a few times and fertilize it and build a greenhouse and transfer the plant into your greenhouse and water it and water it and water it and prune it and water it and nurture it some more for like six months and then watch it like a hawk as it grows tomatoes and then pick a beautiful tomato at peak ripeness and slice it thinly and put it on a slice of toast with a thin layer of mayo and some salt and pepper and eat it and then orgasm so hard you get blasted out of the earth's atmosphere and die in the vacuum of space and get reborn as a beautiful soul in the great cosmic vat of soup. it's easy

[honey-minded-hivemind]

Heres some quick ideas for Bleeding Hearts and Missing parts au that i had!

-When Reader isn't ghost stalking the X-teens or haunting the Brotherhood, they hang with the adults. They run into the lab when Hank is overworking to cause all the screens to break and get him to eat lunch, play chess with Charles where he actually has to plan his moves since Reader only moves their pieces when he isn't looking so he doesn't actually see them, stuff like that.

-That strange 'dead' zone that Reader actually made is still there but no one knows what to do about it. Like the deadzone, Reader can cancel mutations, bringing extreme pain if someone tries to use it anyway, but it kinda turns on at random. (Resulting in Peter face planting at 70mph)

-There were other kids in the facility with Reader. They didn't last very long.

-Reader can transport through TVs like the lady from the Ring.

- Reader does have their own room in the mansion! But no one ever actually sees them in there. Even if they check in the middle of the night, they aren't there. They know they go in there because all their stuff is in there, and they sometimes hear crying or scratching coming from there, but if they go check, it's empty.

- Lance is actually 100% convinced after a bit that Kitty and Reader are actually twins, and wonders how to get Reader's blessing.

- Reader likes to mess wirh the Brotherhood a lot but actually only genuinely dislikes Fred and Mystique. Fred was the one who got a deer head in his backpack, but that was small potatoes to what they did to Duncan. Todd and Wanda are their favorites since they mind their business.

- Reader knows Sabretooth and vibes with him sometimes. They smell like Logan, so he knows they're one of his brother's brats, even if he doesn't know their name. They are both weird people who hunt for something together in complete silence before agreeing to do it again in two months.

- Reader does not have a uniform and was never officially cleared for missions. They just pop up when needed in an oversized Ultraman t-shirt and pj pants.

- Smaller x-teens like Kurt and Laura are regularly picked up by Reader. They get no say in this.

- Similar to their room, no one sees Reader eat any more. They did before the facility, and they sat down with everyone with a plate of food, but it's always empty without anyone seeing them eat.

I love those headcanons! I'm not sure I can add to them right now, but I love them!

Reader usually vibes with everyone, unless they're being a jerk. The moment someone acts like a jerk, they're doomed. They end up with a deer head stuffed in their bag, or frogs in their desk, or bright neon hair, or have their house and room haunted until they make amends or they're considered fully punished.

Reader cuddles with the other teens at night, so they aren't alone, and so they feel safer. Logan will also join them, or the Professor will, since Reader feels safer with them if no one else can spend the night with them around.

Reader's dead zone is an anomaly that scares the cr*p out if the Brotherhood and the Acolytes, and they're convinced it's cursed. Wanda loves it, everyone else hates it. Sabretooth amd Reader vibe every two months by hunting some large animal, share its guts and meat, then merrily go on their way back to whatever they do when not hunting prey. Reader gifts Todd a little frog, he names it Mini Todd. Fred works to appease the ghost, Lance sets up salt circles, vanilla candles, and little crystal spheres and silver mirrors, and Pietro simply uses a vacuum cleaner to go Ghostbuster on it. Reader is highly amused... until the candles nearly burn down the house after the vacuum cleaner also caught fire, so Reader had to stop the fire and basically crush it out of existence. So now everyone in the Brotherhood is certain there's a ghost, and Lance claims it's Reader (who he thinks is Kitty's long-lost twin, who he needs to win over so he can be with their sister and NOT be chucked in a tub full of acid or have his hair dyed violet...)

The Brotherhood try to collect Reader peacefully, and tell the X-Men for once they want to help and be respectful of a poor, fellow mutant... then Reader pops up, and they scream loud enough to scare off a murder of crows and shatter glass. So now they're convinced the X-Men are haunted, too...

So... what do they do?

Decide to save them!

(Someone call Pietro and Wanda's dad, quick! He's old, so he might know what to do-!)

(Hahaha, @sugar-soda ... you have opened another arc to the story... laugh and rejoice if you want, for it shall be funny! Mwahaha~!)

[vigilant-insomniac]

Ashes rain upon your scalded palms pt 2

Prev | Chapter 2/3 | next | or read on AO3

Word Count 3571

Complete Wordcount: 9655

Maddie builds a Thing and finally seeks out the Ghost to get some answers. She had to find Danny. She had to save her son. The Ghost was her best lead, and if she had to face it, armed with nothing more than her determination, she would.

Contains: Maddie & Danny, Post apocalyptic vibes, and the usual bucket full of angst! @phicphight submission

------

Chapter Two

Before she could save anyone, Maddie needed to be more prepared than she was. Fenton Works was very much out of the question, since the only part of it still standing was the leftovers of the Portal. Scavenging from it felt like a bad idea. 

But, there should be some workshops around that would carry the necessary equipment to build a very rudimentary shield or device. Jack's ancestors had a lot of know-how on how to contain evil spirits without high tech. Maddie had used their papers in a lot of her research and was pretty confident that she would be able to build something from what she would find lying around. 

Danny had been an apprentice at a copper smithy, and she was fairly certain she still knew the layout of the workshop from when he had shown her around. 

Mind made up, Maddie grabbed whatever she found promising in her current location. Which included the vacuum. That was some of the most advanced technology she would find in an average household, and if Jack’s ancestors got this far by just relying on analogue mechanics and plants, she could definitely do even better with some cutting edge tech. She also found a jar of salt that would help as a rudimentary protection against ghosts.

The radio she found was a bit too bulky to carry around, so she hoped that the workshop had one. 

Her walk through the outskirts of the ruined townscapes felt eerie, she didn’t quite feel the same gooseflesh inducing sensation as she had closer to the portal, but she felt on edge in a way that felt purely instinctual. 

The copper workshop was easy to break into since it decidedly lacked one of its walls. Maddie had hoped to escape the heat some more, but to get to the coppery, she had to get back into the zone of destruction, which meant that the buildings wouldn’t be intact anymore. 

Still she was lucky. The workshop was mostly in one piece. Ash still coated everything, but she could still see that only some parts of the main room had really caved in. 

So she started to rummage and explore. 

Fairly quickly she had gathered a generator and fuel, enough copper and tin to build almost anything, tools to cut and bend, and wires and components from the vacuum. She even did find a radio that was in just as bad a state as the rest of the technology she had found so far, but still, it was a welcome addition to her arsenal. 

The best thing was the soldering station though. In less time than she could have hoped for otherwise, she managed to build a construct that, in theory, should act like some kind of vacuum. 

She didn’t have a container for the spirit she was hoping to catch, so she would need to watch out to keep the generator up and running. 

As long as it did, the suction of the device would keep the ghost from going anywhere. It was a risk though. Even the generator itself was about to just fall apart, and her fuel supply was a joke at best. 

She still needed a weapon. That was the conclusion she arrived at when she looked at the somewhat misshapen pile of wires and plates that were soldered together sloppily. To think she was going to bet her life on a device that was maybe as big as a dinner plate, that was untested and unheard of….. 

A glance at the sky made her stomach sink. It was hard to tell with the diffused lighting, but slowly and steadily the sun had made its way across the sky. It was August, so days were fairly long, but she maybe had two more hours before dusk. Once it got dark, she’d be even more defenseless. Running would already be difficult enough with all the rubble, but in the dark? When ghosts were the most active too? 

Maddie turned around and tried to find something that would work as a weapon. 

There were the workbenches and the cupboards and the drawers with tools. She opened them haphazardly but nothing really stood out. She did manage to find a knife, and there was the salt she had pilfered from the house earlier, so she might be able to at least coat the blade and hope the theories were sound. 

While she looked for another, better, alternative, her eyes fell on something she had dismissed as another pile of broken equipment. 

She drew closer though, on her search, and noticed that the misshapen lump was a tarp over something. 

Her hands moved carefully and she held her breath when removing the tarp shook up a cloud of ash and dust. 

It took a moment to clear, but when it did, Maddie let out a shuddering exhale. Before her was a half finished telescope. It showed off craftsmanship and passion even in its half finished state. And it would never be finished. It would never be used to look at a night sky. 

This was Danny’s. 

There was paper under the parts. Plans and schematics, and more than a few drawings of constellations, that Danny would surely have gotten into trouble for, to be writing them on the margins of his work as just an apprentice. 

Maddie couldn’t help the anger that flashed unbidden. She would fix this. Danny would get to see the stars through his telescope. She was going to find him and then bring him back somehow. They would find a way, and then Danny would finish his telescope and she would finish the portal and make sure nothing like this future would ever happen. She would eradicate every ghost beyond existence before letting them use her portal as a bomb. 

“Focus on the tasks at hand, Maddie,” she told herself. She had her ghost trapping device, and she had a knife that she could coat in salt. 

Next would be finding said ghost, and getting answers. 

She nodded to herself and began pulling the tarp back over Danny’s unfinished telescope. It felt strangely mournful, but fitting in a way. She just didn’t like this association with her son. He had to be alright. 

Maddie couldn’t stay here any longer. Time was of essence. 

Quickly she found another tarp, folded up half heartedly on another shelf, and began gathering her makeshift machinery in it. She’d have to sling it over her shoulder so she would have her hands free to carry around the generator. She cursed internally that there was nothing like a battery that would both fuel an invention like that, and survive 100 years in an apocalyptic oven. 

It mattered none. She wanted to get out in the open. Ghosts would be at an advantage anyways, whether she was within four walls or an open field, but with their supposed ability to walk through walls, which she herself decidedly lacked, she didn’t want to encounter the energy where she could be cornered. 

The ghost had been around the portal and some part of her, the one that would shudder when she thought about going back to the epicenter of it all, knew that they were connected. She would bet that the ghost was the one to blow up her portal in her future. 

It still mainly counted as a guess, but it was the only lead she got, so there was that. 

She looped the tarp around her torso and made sure it would hold the delicate machine. Her handkerchief was back over her mouth and tied behind her head. The knife was in her belt and just one motion away. 

So with a grunt she hefted the generator on her shoulder and began to move back out into the open. 

Even just after a few meters, every step was already a struggle, and in no time she felt sweat run down her back. 

One foot in front of the other. 

Breathe in hot air, exhale hot air. 

Find Danny. Save him. 

Find Danny. Save him. 

Find Danny. Save Him. 

The mission became Maddie’s mantra throughout the trip and no matter how much her legs shook, she didn’t stop until she could make out her portal's shadowy silhouette again. 

Heat flared up and gooseflesh rose on her arm. Not yet to the same extent as it had back then, when she saw the ghost. But she knew it must be close. She could even feel its eyes on her. That, or her mind had decided to give in to the heat. 

But it proved her right. She hadn’t been certain before, but now she would dare say, the ghost wouldn’t come find her without an added incentive. She had made quite some noise back in the coppery, and had almost expected to be discovered. So if it didn’t seek her out itself, she had to come to him. 

The problem just now presented: setting up would take some time. 

The closer to the portal she got, the longer she’d had to endure the heat, which already felt more than she could handle for long, and the more likely it would be that the Ghost would actually engage her before she was done. 

She put down the generator with a resounding thud. Her legs almost gave out. Maybe she didn’t have that much room for choice anyways, it felt impossible to lift the generator back up again. 

At least she was at a relatively flat part of the whole mayhem. 

It would have to do. 

Maddie began setting up her invention in silence. It was unnerving. The heat and exhaustion were making her hands shake and more than once she almost broke something off. 

The sun was now definitely reaching towards the horizon too, so she felt compelled to hurry. To rush. 

The threat of being stranded here at night sat in the back of her mind- she felt uncomfortable to even take a moment to double check if everything was connected properly before turning on the generator. 

The disc shaped machine sat in place though. No wire disconnected and all parts undamaged from her trip ups during the walk. 

There wasn’t a lot of fuel, so she had to make it count. Meaning, she had to get the ghost to come to her, before turning it on. Otherwise it might run for minutes or hours that she couldn’t spare. 

She could still feel the ghost. The hair on the back of her neck, that refused to lie flat. It was somewhere around here. And just because she couldn’t see it, didn’t mean that it couldn’t be watching her this very moment. 

Her running hypothesis was that the ghost had, for some reason, destroyed her portal to use it as a bomb. So, assuming it didn’t know all that much about tech, she could bluff her way through this. 

Her mouth felt dry. Find Danny. Save him. She had to do this. For her son.

She kept her hand over the switch of the generator. For her son. 

Deep inhale and hope her voice would hold after a day of impure air. For her son. 

Showtime. 

“VILE SPECTER! YOU MAY HAVE CLAIMED THE FENTON PORTAL, BUT YOU SHALL NEVER HAVE MINE. I WILL TEAR THROUGH THE VEI-” 

Green. 

Her vision was filled with the sight of a pair of glowing green eyes inches away from her own. She flipped the switch and for a terrifying moment she couldn’t breathe. She was in a furnace and any inhale would surely burn her lungs. Instincts screamed at her to runrunrun get away! 

But her SON. Her SON needed her. She stood her ground even as teeth were bared and a growl made the very air oscillate. 

A maw filled with razors opened so close she could feel its hot breath on her throat. Black smoke coiled around her like bindings. 

Then the generator hummed and she could only sink to the floor with her entire being shaken, while the ghost thrashed and spat in fury at the sudden interruption of its meal.. 

The Disk was doing its job. It sucked the ghost towards it, like on a retractable leash. It had a bit of a radius it could struggle against, one that Maddie had to stay conscious of, but it couldn’t get away. It was confined, even if it hadn’t sunk in for the creature yet. 

It screeched furiously and Maddie wondered suddenly if it was even capable of human speech. It had to. If it didn’t, her whole plan was about to fall apart. 

For now, she could get back into her composed self. She was deeply shaken, the ghost had appeared out of nowhere. From one moment to the other it just had been there. Right in her face. It could have snapped her neck before she would have known what had happened. 

Now she would be relatively safe. As long as the generator held. 

The Scientist in her made her stop and observe for at least a moment. This still was quite groundbreaking, even under the circumstances, and who knew when the next time would be, that she could look at a ghost from such a short distance. 

Now that she looked, she was fairly certain the ghost would be able to understand human speech after all. It only hissed and snarled right now, but it was fairly humanoid. It was built like a lanky teenager. Long limbs ended in clawed and blackened hands. Its body looked like it was covered in a black fabric that stretched over bony ribs and shoulders. The face was distorted in its fury, but while the features were humanoid enough, they were also somewhat otherworldly. Its white hair that was as long as it was tall, hid some of it, but she could still make out the most important bits. The eyes were a shade of green shed never seen before. Glowing and bright. The sclera was black though, which added to the strangeness of the green. Its bone structure looked rather delicate for a being this terrifying. Now that she looked closer, not much muscle could be seen either. Yet she had no doubt it would be able to overpower her with one hand. 

Well, she would like some answers before that became the case. 

“Stop that.” she ordered with a hoarse voice. The ghost growled in response. 

“Let me guess, it’s your first time being caught? Then let me tell you the rules. I ask you questions, you answer them. If you do, you will be let go, and will not learn what sort of inventions I'm keeping in my lab coat.”

It still snarled at her, but it had its eyes locked onto her now. It definitely understood, it just didn’t seem to agree. Maddie fought to suppress a shiver at the intensity of its glare.

“Why did you destroy the Portal.” 

More posturing was what she expected, but it actually froze for but a moment. Not for long though. It found renewed energy to throw itself against its incorporeal restraints. 

“Hah!” she scoffed, “So I was right! You are the one responsible!” Maddie hissed herself. It didn’t take a verbal reply to get answers. Its behavior was clear enough. 

“So you just decided to do all this?” she gestured around the wasteland, acutely noting the rise in temperature. “You somehow blew up the portal, about a century ago, to do what? Was this your goal? To turn a whole city into a hellscape?” Her voice rose and for the first time the creature seemed to not just want to get out of its cage, but away from her specifically. 

"Answer me!” She yelled and the ghost all but flinched. 

"Why did you do all this?!” Maddie’s fists shook as she held them pressed to her side. She wanted to kick and bite and tear apart. But this thing. She wouldn’t stand a chance. It made her sick. 

The ghost didn’t reply. 

“No matter." Maddie took a steadying breath. It was getting hard to really think. The air was thick and heavy. The temperatures have been steadily rising and her makeshift mask was soaked and starting to make it even harder to catch her breath. 

“What I’m really here for is to find Danny. You have something to do with this, don’t you?!” She snarled not less viciously as the ghost had. “You’re the key to finding him, so I will not let you go, until you tell me where he is!” 

“No.” That was the first thing she’d heard from the ghost that wasn’t just a sound. Its tone was disbelieving. 

But then it said it again. And again. Anger rising and heat flaring. It’s body turned to smoke at the edges like it was getting singed. 

“you know something!” She yelled in the face of that admittance. The ghost lashed its tail like an angered cat. 

“Go away!” it screeched. 

“Not until i have found Danny.” She screamed back. It was flying in circles, looking for a way out of its enclosure. It was furious, Maddie could tell, but so was she. 

“What did you do to him? Whatever it is, he didn’t deserve it. He is kind. He is bright. And he deserved nothing you could do to him.” 

It turned to her and bared its fangs once more. “Oh, you didn’t like that, huh? Cant handle the truth that you are none of those things?” Maddie grit out.

“How would you even know?!” The ghost roared in fury and Maddie couldn’t take the heat anymore. She needed more air. She tore off her makeshift mask and gasped. 

“How couldn't I know,” she breathed into the unexpected silence " when I’m his mother.” 

The air that had been charged with tension until then, suddenly imploded. 

“No,” it began to mumble again, “No, this cannot be.” 

“I killed you.” it confessed, and Maddie had expected as much. What she wasn’t expecting was the shift in mood. Where before there had been anger, now there was despair. The sky darkened and flakes of ash started to fall like a sick mimicry of snow.

“So you did. And if you have any morsel of humanity left, you will give me back Danny.” Her voice was firm in the face of its dismay. 

“I killed you.” It repeated again. 

She was about to snap. 

“I killed everyone.” it whispered and the expression on its face distorted to one of pure anguish as it clutched its chest. 

Wind, something that had been absent since her arrival, picked up and whipped her hair around. Ash stung her eyes and exposed skin and she had to brace against the gusts of hot air. 

The ghost started to rock back and forth with wide unseeing eyes. 

“I killed them. I killed everyone. I-” Maddie reached for her knife nervously.

Its head snapped up and- 

crack. 

A noise that was akin to a clap of thunder suddenly originated from the ghost and everything stopped. 

The temperature too, cut like hot metal being plunged into water.

But Maddie barely even recognized it, when following the cracking sound, the ghost dropped the rest of the way to the ground like gravity had suddenly been turned back on and a ring of blinding light sprung forth from the center of its- his chest. 

It took barely a moment, but something had fractured and the ghost, like a broken illusion, got replaced with a human. 

He looked up and Maddie dropped her knife. Framed by black hair that pooled on the ground, her son's face, his eyes stared at her with an expression of utter grief and despair. 

“I know that Danny isn’t any of those things, because I am Danny.” There was none of the echo anymore. 

But this- surely this was a lie- 

“But I killed them. I killed everyone I ever cared about. Everyone is dead. They are all dead. It’s all my fault, If i hadn’t- I had to bury you. I killed you. I killed my own mother, my own family. I’m a monster. I-” in agony he doubled over and Maddie scrambled up to rush to her son. This was wrong. This had to be a mistake. She had to find Danny. (He’s here.) She had to save him! (he was already gone.)

Her hands hovered over his thin shoulders. 

“Danny-” The boy in front of her, didn’t even hear her. He curled up, and a scream built. The sheer desolation was palpable. Then the scream grew in intensity, it got hard to breathe again, she clasped her hands over her ears but it pierced right through, until it became a wail and Maddie knew nothing but her son's agony as if it was her own. 

The image of him kneeling on the ground next to her, his forehead pressed into the ash would probably be the last thing she would see. It made her heart break almost as audibly as whatever had broken in her son.

She knew whatever was happening would mean an End, and after a century, maybe that was what he needed. She embraced him then, even as her eardrums ruptured and her lungs burst. Maddie had found him. If only she could have saved him too. 

At least she would hold him, until this ashen world of gray, finally turned to black. 

“Time out.”

[nikofortuna]

JTTW Chapter 25 Thoughts

Chapter 25 for the @journeythroughjourneytothewest Reading Group! CW for food under the cut!

Sun Wukong is having a different kind of resting face.

What did the tree do though? The tree’s innocent! If there’s something Sun Wukong needs to dial down it’s the vandalizing of nature.

Oooh, side dishes! Let’s see if I can find some pictures of them, while also checking up on the Original Chinese for this.

Here we have the pickles or pickled cucumbers! Looking quite tasty!

The pickled eggplant. Also quite nice looking! I wonder how they were pickled exactly.

The radishes in wine sauce or pickled radishes with a lovely red-pink colour!

The string beans in vinegar. They look alright, but I personally can’t stand that kind of bean, so yeah.

Salted/pickled lotus roots, now guess who showed up when I looked for a picture of these! That’s right Zhu Bajie.

And lastly blanched mustard plants, looking good!

Our monkey doing monkey things will always be an adorable sight to imagine.

The Great Immortal Equal to Earth is such a Dad to those two. Really putting the Fu in Shifu.

In the J. F. Jenner translation the last line of the first poem about him reads “He sang The Moon Is High.”, which sounds so much like he’s saying ‘It’s high noon.’ but make it moon, which is so funny to me.

Yeees, the vacuum sleeve, wohoo! It’s so silly yet effective, I love these kind of tricks.

Bailong Ma just getting to chill with some hay. Oh to be the horse in this situation, neigh whole story.

So from Anthony C. Yu’s Notes monk’s robes could technically go spinny? Lovely!

Let the monk curse, he very much deserves it at this point. It’s honestly understandable that he’s gradually getting tired of his monkey’s nonsense, especially after such an ordeal that was in no way his fault and wholly avoidable.

[soleminisanction]

An earlier ask reminded me that there’s still one sequence of Batgirl (2009) that I’ve always wanted to break down because my frustration with it is palpable so…why not. This is as good a time as ever. Let’s talk about Issue 24 and extended fantasy sequence that makes up the very end of this series.

See, apparently—and I have not been able to find a first-hand record of the interview that confirms this, so take it with a grain of salt—Brian Q. Miller decided that, since the universe was getting reset in the wake of Flashpoint, his Batgirl was getting canceled and Stephanie was getting retconned out of existence for the New52, he would use a fantasy sequence in the final issue show off all the wonderful ideas he never got to do because of editorial meddling or whatever. Which is… fine. Y’know? I get it, it’s utterly self-indulgent but not an invalid way to deal with your book getting canceled before you can finish all you set out to do.

The thing is though, sequences like this don’t just exist in the vacuum of their Doylist explanation. The entire narrative point of fantasy sequences like this, whether they’re fear gas, or lotus eater machines, or especially the Black Mercy, isn’t just to have a cool spectacle for the audience to look at, it’s to take a part of the character’s inner life and put it on display for everyone to see.

So the question I’m asking here is: what does a Watsonian reading of finale sequence say about Our Heroine, Stephanie Brown?

Quick primer for those of you who may be unfamiliar: the Black Mercy is an Alan Moore creation, originally introduced in the story he wrote with Dave Gibbons for 1985’s Superman Annual #11 – “For the Man Who has Everything.”

If you’re my age, you may be more familiar with this story as a fantastic episode of Justice League Unlimited, which has the notable distinction of being the only Alan Moore adaptation that the old warlock actually likes. The basic story of both is the same: Batman and Wonder Woman (and, in the comic, the Jason Todd Robin) arrive at the Fortress of Solitude for Superman’s birthday, only to find that Mongul has trapped Supes under the influence of the Black Mercy, a magical alien parasite that digs its vines into its victim’s chest while trapping their minds in an illusion of their ideal perfect life.

“For the Man Who has Everything” is regarded as one of the best Superman stories ever written so it’s honestly kind of a surprise that the Black Mercy has only shown up a handful of times since then. But I’m not complaining, because it means the concept hasn’t been diluted much… with this appearance in Batgirl being a notable exception, in weird ways that make me really wonder what was intentional and what wasn’t.

See, this whole thing starts when Steph confronts her father, Arthur Brown, alias the Cluemaster, in his prison cell. And Arthur—a second-rate Riddler knock-off whose only experience outside of Gotham was an extremely brief Suicide Squad adventure to Iceland where everybody died—just, has a Black Mercy, an incredibly rare and dangerous magical alien super plant, sitting in his prison cell. As you do.

Arthur then puts Steph under the Mercy’s influence to cover his escape from the cell, but he doesn’t subject her to the Black Mercy for real, he crushes one of the blossoms and blows it in her face, which his dialogue implies is something he regularly does to himself as a recreational experience.

Which means that, despite the following pages making a big freaking deal about “spores in her system” and Barbara gushing about how special Stephanie is for being able to, quote, “fight the Mercy and win,” it’s all a load of shit. Arthur didn’t need to be rushed to the hospital every time he took this drug, so it would follow the Stephanie doesn’t either.  

That would actually make a lot of sense for Arthur as a character—for all his faults, he’s usually written as caring for his family and not wanting Stephanie permanently hurt (a sentiment she generally doesn't return). Hell, his last appearance before this one was trying to get revenge for her death. If that was intentional, it would mean that in the above panel, Stephanie knows that Barbara’s conclusion about her “fighting the Mercy” is full of shit and just, isn’t telling her.

I have no confidence that it was intentional—given the rest of the series I think it’s far more likely that Miller & Co. just didn’t want the icky flower vines to mess up Steph’s boobies and thus came up with a convoluted alternative that they immediately forgot the rules for—but I wish it was because it would actually be an interesting character turn. Black Mercy stories usually hinge on the emotional climax of the enraptured hero choosing to give up the beautiful illusion of a life they can never have in order to return to the hard world where they have real friends and heroic responsibilities waiting for them. Just ask anyone who still cries over this scene:

Stephanie not getting that moment and only escaping because it’s a temporary drug would imply that she’s still very susceptible to her own desires. It’s a way that she’s fallen short compared to others who’ve been subjected to the full Black Mercy experience. And who knows, maybe she could’ve pulled herself out of it if the illusion had lasted longer… but maybe she wouldn’t have. She can’t know. And that doubt could sit with her.

It doesn't. But it could, in a better story.

And then there’s the illusion itself. Keep in mind as we go through this, this montage, in-universe, represents Stephanie’s idea of her ideally perfect life. Just for comparison, in “For the Man Who has Everything,” Superman’s ideal life has him living on Krypton as a normal man, married with children, happy and content in his normal life. Batman saw his parents’ murder foiled and the life that could have unfolded without that tragedy to define it. Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), in another story, saw a world where his parents never died, his family is happy together, and his mentor Sinestro never turned evil.

Stephanie? Stephanie sees herself as Batgirl, posing dramatically and beating up random street thugs in a metaphorical continuation of her current status quo. Then there’s a sequence where she’s fighting the Queen of Fables alongside the four female heroes, all of whom except for Supergirl literally appeared out of nowhere in the last issue with no explanation because we need to pretend that Stephanie is very popular and well-liked and not a stuck-up loner who rarely leaves Gotham City and almost never talks to anybody but her boyfriend when she does.

But y’know, this scene makes sense right? Steph dreams of being a successful superhero and fantasizes about going on grand superhero adventures with other superheroes, fine. That’s all well and good.

Then comes the Blackest Night page which is just... ugh.

I am so glad DC vetoed this idea because it’s genuinely embarrassing. I get (finally! it several painful re-reads) that what Miller has been trying to do with Stephanie this entire book is pretend that she can be Captain America or Superman: a character who doesn’t so much develop or change as they do lead by example and inspire others to have hope for the future just by being themselves. So of course when he hears that Blue Lanterns are powered by hope he neeeeeeds that for his precious Batgirl—an idea that he apparently carried over to the Smallville Season 11 comics, but we’ll come back to that in a moment.

The problem of course being that Stephanie had never been that kind of character before Brian Miller decided she should be, and he did absolutely nothing to work his way up to earning her that status. So shit like this comes across as, frankly, blatant attempts to turn her into a Mary Sue, especially with how badly he refused to deal with her actual history and established character.

But again, remember: in-universe, this illusion isn’t being imposed on Stephanie, it’s being created by her, by her mind. This is part of her greatest desire. So where other heroes long to be safe and happy, surrounded by their families, Stephanie, apparently, wants nothing less than to be a literal Messiah figure. And I’m not exaggerating there—Blue Lanterns are supposed to be the holiest beings in the universe.

Just… the ego that implies. Yeesh.

After that comes a black-and-white photograph implying a time travel adventure where the three Batgirls (presumably from different eras in their own timelines) go back to 1944 to fly with the (male) Blackhawks. I’m not going to post it because there’s not really anything to say about it and this is already a long post but Stephanie’s stupid utility garter belt is drawn so HUGE it takes up her ENTIRE THIGH almost up to the crotch and it’s super distracting.

Then comes this scene.

Which mostly just drives home how much Steph hates her boring average school life given that she’s fantasizing about being attacked by supervillains at her graduation so her secret identity can be exposed to her entire graduating class. Thing is though, you’d think this should be a nightmare. Her identity has been exposed! She’s being attacked out in the open by supervillains and she doesn’t have her gear or weapons! Her classmates and—explicitly up in the audience—her mother are in danger, because Stephanie is Batgirl!

But because this is a Black Mercy illusion, we know it’s not a nightmare. This is, explicitly, something that Stephanie wants to happen. It’s part of her fantasy life, her greatest desire. And yeah, if we’re being generous, she probably isn’t thinking that people are going to get hurt. In her fantasy, she probably just gets to show off and save the day and be venerated as Gotham University’s Great Hero, like Buffy getting crowned the Sunnyville Class Protector. But even that, the most generous of readings, implies that she has never internalized the lesson that she should have learned back in War Games re: the great power of being a superhero coming with great responsibility. It absolutely flies in the face of anybody’s attempts to insist that no really, she’s only doing this whole superhero thing because she cares about other people SO MUCH.

Following that is page of what’s clearly Neo-Gotham, flashing forward many years into the future, where Steph is wrangling some kid into bed (while wearing her wedding ring on the second knuckle because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see it and that might imply she’s a single mom) with the Batsignal shining out the window.

Which leads us, at last, to the page I have the most to say about, and the one that is my biggest inspiration for make this post:

I. Hate. This page.

I hate it because it gets regularly reposted without context on Tumblr and Reddit so the Steph simps can gush over how much they wish it was real and how Stephanie should get to be every single member of the Batfamily because she’s just so awesome and not one of them ever stops to think about what any of it would or should actually mean in-universe or out.

This page exists because Brian Q. Miller was originally a writer on Smallville. He joined the team around Season 5, served as showrunner for Season 10, and used the connections he made there to get some comic book jobs, including Batgirl and the spin-off comic Smallville Season 11. In “Season 11,” they finally showed the Smallville version of Gotham City and Batman, who is accompanied by only a single sidekick: not Robin, but Barbara Gordon as an (adult) female Nightwing who eventually becomes a Blue Lantern (hence the Blackest Night page earlier).

Now again, I cannot find the original source for this so I’m going off fandom rumor and wiki trivia, but supposedly, Brian’s original pitch was that the Smallville character would also be Stephanie, making her the only Batfamily member to ever exist in that universe. DC’s editors supposedly made him switch to Barbara instead, which was smart of them, because it’s way more likely that the people picking up the Smallville comic would be excited to see her, one of the most famous pop-culture characters ever invented, and not a satellite character like Stephanie who’s only familiar to a niche market. (This for the record is the same reason Babs is the Batgirl in Gotham Knights.)

So that’s the out-of-universe explanation for why Brian would stick this idea here, but stop and think about this for half a second: why the fuck would Stephanie want to be Nightwing?

Nightwing is not like Batman, Batgirl, or even Robin, it’s not a larger symbol with a legacy behind it. If you say the word Nightwing in the DC Universe, you’re referring to only one of two things: either you’re Kryptonian and you’re referencing a legendary figure from your lost planet’s mythology (either a god or a culture hero depending on the continuity), or you’re talking about Dick Grayson. Every other character who has ever taken on the name in a non-Kryptonian context has done so because of their relationship to Dick: either to piss him off (Jason), because they were inspired by him (Cheyenne Freemont, the Nightwings, Nite-Wing in a negative capacity), or in memoriam/penance after his death (Damian in the first Injustice game).

But Stephanie doesn’t have that kind of relationship with Dick. At this point in her career, they’d barely spoken, and all of their meaningful interactions had been with him as Batman. Nightwing means nothing to her. She has no emotional connection to identity, not even the desire to be “part of the legend” that drove her to chase Robin and Batgirl. So then, why? Why is this part of her fantasy?

Well… because if Batgirl isn’t the second-most popular superhero in the franchise after the Big Bat himself, then Nightwing is. And all Stephanie has apparently ever wanted is to be everybody’s favorite superhero, loved and adored and told how she’s so very special and wonderful, forever.

---

In Conclusion – As you might’ve noticed back in the panels where Steph was getting dosed, Brian Miller actually calls out his own bookending, having started the story with a climax where Steph got exposed to a fear-gas-based-anger drug and ended it with one where she encounters the Black Mercy. Like I’ve said before, the narrative purpose of hallucination sequences like this are to lay the characters’ psyches bare and show us who they really are on the inside. 

In issue 3, Stephanie’s anger/fear gas exposure (and the resulting philosophically frustrating speech) presents Stephanie as someone whose primary motivation is her own self-interest, the sense of control and personal triumph she gets from being a superhero. All through the series, the way she handles her rare rescues (and, even more tellingly, the few people who don’t immediately recognize her greatness) only backs that up.

And now, the Black Mercy sequence, the very last thing to happen in the entire series, just solidifies it: after 24 issues, she hasn’t changed. Her only desire, the only thing she cares about, is that she gets to be a badass superhero who goes on adventure after adventure without worry or care for anyone around her, even after multiple people have literally died over the course of just this book. Who cares? They’re not Stephanie, so they don’t matter. It’s all about her. 

I will never understand what anyone saw in this series.

[witchesbeware]

Cleansing:

Cleansing can be internal and external

External:

-Something as simple as rearranging altars (with your deities permission)

-Vacuuming your house and picking up clutter

-making a concoction to clean and spray down magical spaces (I personally use a mixture of soap, peppermint, and salt)

-Putting salt around your house for protection

-Ringing bells and playing loud music to disperse stagnant energy

-lighting candles and incense

-Putting up colorful lights on altars

-Spraying a mixture of sea salt and water in the air

-Recharging and placing crystals

-Keeping plants around and taking care of them

-Imagining your soap, shampoo, whatever you have in the shower to be both cleansing and spiritually cleansing

-Take a bath with soothing herbs. (Or if you’re like me and get UTI’s you can just use epson salt)

-Using different forms of sage (meaning cedar, dried roses, etc. let’s leave white sage to our native friends.)

Smoke is the most cleansing because it has been said to be the only form that permeates our skin and soul

Internal:

-Asking the earth to help cleanse you. This can be as simple as imagining all negative energy flowing from the bottoms of your hands and feet back into the earth

-Envisioning fire sweeping through your home and burning away all of the negative things you don’t need

-Laying in a field or in nature and asking nature, Mother Nature, whatever you believe in to help cleanse you

-Roots from the forest coming up and taking away all of the negative

-Really anything to help clean out your soul and internally. Your deities and spirits can help you with this as well!

[lakelewisia]

"Methods of preserving food are always about slowing, eliminating or managing bacterial growth intent on breaking meat or plant cells down," they explained to the class crowded into the library workshop space. "Salt, vinegar, honey, cinnamon, not to mention vacuum sealing and such mechanical interventions--it's all been done for centuries, since before we understood spoilage as something other than bad spirits getting into the food." They hefted a leather-bound spell book in one hand and a wand of ash in the other and said, "And on that note, let's talk preservation via exorcism, binding, and warding for when it is, in fact, bad spirits making your milk go off."

[crinosg]

I hope you guys appreciate all the work I put into this shitty ass microsoft paint looking piece of crap, because it was a labor of love and it was not easy because MS paint is ASSS.

But yes, this is a chart mapping the various One Piece Logia users to the various elemental planes of DnD.

Making this I had some observations:

There are way fewer Logia than I thought.

You could argue that Crocodile could go in earth rather than Dust but I think he fits dust better

Ryokugu goes in Positive because there isn't really a plant elemental plane (at least in the canon dnd, there are rules to make one but its non canon)

I put Teach in Vacuum because that felt appropriate given how his devil fruit works.

I'm just gonna assume there's no water logia out there because that way leads madness. Also as seen with ice and snow an element can have more than one Logia.

Elements presently missing devil fruits are: Negative energy, Steam, Water, Earth, Mineral, and Salt.

Not counting any non canon devil fruits because A) non canon, an d B) most of them would be disqualified anyway because we established in Whole Cake Island a Logia has to be a natural element, and most of the non canon logias are not. If Katakuri is a "special Paramecia" because he's made of Mochi, then Paper, Syrup and "liquid" sure as hell don't count. Well, that last one might count, but again: non canon. Sorry Honey Queen.

[sparrow-orion-writes]

This house is not a house is not a house.

I stood in my room. The floor rough beneath my feet, the walls the same cream as malibu vomit, and closing further in. Where had my TV gone? It was there. The laptop is still playing discordant chords but I can't find it, and it remains out of reach. There's the ring of the fire alarm every now and then just to startle the palpitations in my veins.

Is this my room?

The bedsheets are all wet and my skin is a noose - tighter, tighter, oh god I can't breathe - there's red ribbons on my arms and stomach and they are wet. Wet like my face, and my face tastes of salt.

How very human, the room will cannibalise me as I cannibalise myself, and my skin will be served as dinner on a plate to someone who already assumed I was his to devour.

I wasn't.

I should've screamed.

The ceiling is the floor and I tiptoe along it, falling in reverse when the floor above my feet creaks and I collapse. The plants in my room are all dead. When did the sun go out? I can't see, I can't sleep, I'm so tired I can taste the static of the TV. Where did the TV go and why can I still hear the Fallout 4 tune playing? I lost my switch charger and the silence is full of memories that I don't want.

I used to love that beer, I was so excited to drink it again. First time in years. He drank three cans of it. Such a waste. Imported all the way from Malta, and I couldn't even drown in it fast enough. The cans are still on my bedroom floor. Where did my bedding go? It should be there.

Why are the walls at my sides, or the ceiling? I can feel the heat of the light press into my stomach, the dead flies are buzzing loudly. Come with us, they say, be free. There's a spider in the corner of my room that shakes it's head and spins it's web as if to say, I am the hunter, and so are you, you are not the fly, do not be the fly.

I wish I was the fly.

All of my things are on the ceiling now, I sit cross legged on an empty floor. It would be a good time to vacuum, but I don't remember where the door is now. I'll just sit here, maybe my furniture will come back down. Maybe I'll find my TV again. Maybe I'll get three cans of my beer back. Maybe he'll never have touched me at all.

[warmcozyblanketz]

things i need to do today:

write 30 cards

clean my whole darn house (or at least start)

propagate what is left of the plants my negligent partner killed while i was gone to hopefully clone them 🙃

things i have the energy to do:

make pasta and sleep

things i would like to do if i had the time & energy:

take an epsom salt bath

yoga/cardio/pt

put on a cute outfit

grocery shop

unpack

laundry

schedule a dmv appointment bc i have no id atm lol

misc other stuff i def need to do but am avoiding so hard im not even gonna think about what those things are

(I will most likely do none of these things)

things i will do:

cry

make pasta and sleep

nap

make coffee even though my therapist said to stop having caffeine so late (oops)

write the stupid cards 🎉

eat dinner

fill the cat feeder

cat waters

(most likely) not clean -- guess who tidied hehe 🤗

(most likely) stay in my pajamas ✅

things i MIGHT do:

charge the roomba

tidy clothes + dirty dishes + trash + misc objects

~start~ unpacking

collect laundry in a laundry bag

at least bring the walking pad out from storage

put teepee back together

wash my face before bed

reflection

completed more than i thought but also worried i burned myself out a bit for tomorrow..time will tell. proud of myself either way ^.^

Tomorrow

put on a cute outfit

change towel

propagate the planties

make dmv appointment

make grocery list

order groceries

finish unpacking

vacuum

put away laundry from last week

sort laundry to do

therapy 🕺

overall deep clean (as much as i can)

cook dinner

laundry (hopefully)

apply to backup job (maybe)

stretch/cardio/pt (maybe)

epsom salt bath/shower (maybe)

build new lego kit (hopefully!!)

:)

[aftonfamilyvalues]

"it wasnt explicitly my job but" so you have never worked as a janitor

sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, wiping down tables and chairs, changing the trash bags and bringing the full ones to the dumpster out back, breaking down boxes and recycling, cleaning windows and mirrors, cleaning toilets and sinks, refilling toilet paper and paper towels and soap dispensers, shoveling snow and raking the leaves in the outside area, salting the outside, covering the outside tables, watering the plants, changing lightbulbs/minor repairs...

can i ask why you sound so offended? or maybe im picking up on a tone that isnt there

[mariacallous]

I don't know if I agree with everything in this article, but it definitely is making me think:

Of All the threats posed by Twitter since it fell under sketchy new management in October, one of them doubles as a promise. Twitter will devolve into pornography.

Porn’s not my cup of tea, but you have to admire its ferocity and cunning. It’s a mega-genre, something the poet-philosopher Timothy Morton might call a hyperobject, ungraspable in its ubiquity and scale. In effect, porn online behaves like a predator plant, saturating the pixels with flesh colors, choking off biodiverse memes, and sowing vast digital acreage with salt.

Tumblr, which started as an artsy microblogging service in 2007, lost its allure when it was overrun by porn five years later. Chatroulette, which was founded in 2009 as a whimsical way to meet strangers, traded its lightheartedness for dick pics and leering goons almost immediately. OnlyFans, which began in 2016 as a platform for performers to post videos, now consists mostly of porn created by sex workers.

But most companies aim to marginalize porn. While OnlyFans has surrendered, Chatroulette and Tumblr appear to take a firmer stand than ever against it. Facebook and YouTube conscript armies of algorithms and humans to banish porn in deference to advertisers who don’t want brands debased by unwholesome adjacencies. Alone among the big social media services, Twitter allows users to post what it calls “intimate media.” But the platform also permanently suspends users who post upskirts, creepshots, revenge porn, nonconsensual erotica, images shot with hidden cameras, or media accompanied by incitements to violence. Pornographic images, which make up about 13 percent of all tweets, cannot yet be directly sold.

Porn in its place may be bankable, in other words, but too much of it in a venue styled as PG can scare off much bigger revenue streams.

Or so popular wisdom has it. Twitter’s new management, as usual, dissents. The volatile Chief Twit, Elon Musk, has torn down guardrails, eliminated moderators, and alienated advertisers all on his own with tiresome shitposting and hospitality to hate speech. Musk, whose personal fortune fell by $100 billion in 2022, pretends to insouciance about money in a way that’s unconvincing and hard to watch. When General Mills, General Motors, Pfizer, Ford, and Mondeléz International (the august maker of Oreos) stopped advertising on Twitter last fall, Musk lashed out at corporate America for its failure to respect the wishes of the founding fathers, who presciently mandated advertising on Twitter in 1789. Unchastened, half of the platform’s top 100 advertisers were gone in Musk’s first month.

Without moderators or advertisers, swaths of Twitter are now mangy empty lots crawling with vandals, lechers, con men, and swastikas. The time is perhaps right for porn, then. Porn abhors a vacuum. Especially where it can be ennobled as constitutional duty.

How in the world is this good news? I’ll tell you why it’s good news to me. Not only will it make Twitter2 easily quittable, but it’s pleasing to see things become what they deep down are. Twitter has slouched toward porn for years. “Slipping into DMs” is only one salacious meme in what long ago became an orgy of hyperstimulation, with people baring their souls, posting thirst traps, coyly subtweeting, and of course negging and prodding and simultaneously secreting dopamine and cortisol and God knows what other precious bodily fluids.

“I am mad for it to be in contact with me,” Walt Whitman wrote, of what he called “life’s atmosphere.” No doubt he also meant contact with the bodies of the many people he cruised and desired. Likewise, Twitter seems to offer contact with everyone, and the interface exists to make users mad for contact as it conjures life’s atmosphere of abrasiveness streaked with sweetness. The real Twitter was the friends we made along the way, as someone has surely tweeted.

That’s gone now. When the chief rolls in with tryhard trolling that misses the mark of humor, squealing in annoying feedback loops from his Wall of Sound, the warm chatter among the regulars goes silent. A pall falls. When Musk tweeted some horror fiction alleging that the spouse of a prominent elected official might have been perversely complicit in cracking his own skull with a hammer, something at the heart of Twitter seemed to die. Later, when he bellowed that Twitter in 2020 had abridged the constitutional right of trolls to post a Hunter Biden dick pic, another influx of refugees poured into Mastodon, which presents itself as a more normal haven for people fleeing Twitter.

“The Internet Is for Porn” was the catchiest song from Avenue Q, which debuted 20 years ago. That was before broadband, before social media, before the hijack of information space by influence operations and strongman solo acts like GOP trinity Kanye, Elon, and Trump. It was axiomatic back then. Porn was the internet’s reason for being, its prime directive. And it would have stayed that way had web information not been domesticated by corporations that wanted to hack our worldviews and pick our pockets for data, attention, and mobile payments.

But through all this, Twitter has retained the spirit of porn. Like porn, Twitter is not a family affair; for many, it’s also a shameful habit that they’re forever trying to quit. Since 2007, I’ve turned to Twitter to—the only word I can think of is learn. But I know its traps well. Users of Twitter, like consumers of porn, find themselves amused and stimulated, and then scroll compulsively, chasing the dragon of human connection, only to find themselves scrolling through doom, and finally scrolling for doom.

Information may or may not want to be free, but it often wants to be porn. What Musk has considered doing, according to various reports, is introduce paywalled video that would allow performers to get paid while Twitter takes a cut. Sound at all familiar? It’s the OnlyFans model, complete with a rip-off of the OnlyFans interface. The performers it’s tailor-made for are not, as it happens, cellists or mimes. They’re sex workers. And for discerning high rollers who prefer the backroom to the club, Musk has floated the idea of offering paid DMs—to be slipped into as usual, but for a fee. The online-porn business demands extreme discipline to keep it from turning criminal and leaves room for little else, but edgelord Musk is likely to fare better in the demimonde than he is on the main stage.

At the very end of 2022, NSFW content was the fastest-growing sector of English-language Twitter. It’s the way of the world, especially without diligent moderation. At the same time, the new louche Twitter comes with a harum-scarum idea of “free speech” as singularly applicable to obscene provocateurs like Jordan Peterson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, formerly banned figures who were warmly welcomed back to the site in November. “This is a battle for the future of civilization,” the Chief Twit tweeted. “If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.”

If Twitter is going to prey on users with hyper-arousing material and the illusion of intimacy, why not go all the way? Twitter should admit what it’s up to, tell risk-averse advertisers to go blow if they’re prudes, and turn full red-light district. It might scare away the squares, but Twitter can charge a mint for spank-bank material, and a premium for the kind that somehow prevents tyranny.