#and the metaphysical aspect that (in this setting) can cross into that

[bittershins]

I've been thinking about star wars and the expectations and features of certain types of storytelling - mythopoetic, war drama, politicial commentary, tragedy n all that jazz - a good bit lately, but ever since I finished screechers reach I've been caught up about folklore and fairytales as a bit of worldbuilding. I wanna know what Jedi fables look like

[theinmara]

Mythology of girldragongizzard

This contains spoilers for the first three books, but also explains things further than the series is likely to take it.

First came the Artists

The Artists, with a capital “A”, are a group of supernatural beings that can manifest physically as any creature they wish. And the word “Artist” is simply the most recent English word that most of them like to use to describe themselves when speaking English. They’ve used many names in every language.

There are 900,000 of them. The reason for this arbitrary number is unknown. And they do not themselves know their own origins, though they have stories they tell each other about it, and they all speculate.

Most of them believe they spawned from the Earth itself to help usher life into existence and keep it flourishing for as long as possible.

Their Arts

Each of them has a single Art that they perform better than any other Artist.

When thinking of an Art, do not think of drawing, painting, playing an instrument, writing, or anything like that, though these are names for some of the Arts that exist for them. Think instead of broad aspects of the universe itself, or of life, that can be roughly described by a skill of some sort.

For instance, the Artist of Garbage Collecting would be the being that best understands and can even manipulate the way that waste flows through a complex system, whether that waste is excrement or discarded leavings from the workings of other Arts or technology, actual garbage. This Artist’s Art comes into full play when lifeforms take an active role in managing their own waste, such as creating midden piles and sewer systems. And this is what sets them apart from Entropy Itself.

Another example is Chapman, the Artist of Physics. There are actually a number of Artists concerning different aspects of physics. But Chapman specifically works with the flow of energy through complex systems. This a very broad Art, but it can be narrowed down to specific tasks. And the way that Chapman tends to practice hir art is through creating circuitry to control and direct energy. But since the energy sie is manipulating is more than simple electricity, hir circuits do not look like anything a human would understand or recognize.

Their Media

Media is a separate concept from the Art itself. The Art describes what is perceived and manipulated. The Medium is the tool through which they most commonly do that.

The medium that Chapman uses to do this can be anything that can channel energy in a circuit that sie designs. Usually metal is involved, but it’s not strictly necessary. This can look like weirdly criss-crossing stitches in a wound, esoteric tattoos, etching in the back of a metal pendant, or drawing with graphite on paper.

While the medium that the Garbage Collector might use these days would likely be spreadsheets, since that is what is used most to calculate numbers and figure out how to direct systems to be most efficient in relocating refuse. Only, the Garbage Collector would not need to submit the spreadsheet to anybody or any system, because more is at work in their Art than mundane physics.

Artist’s of What?

Other examples of Artists include the Artist of Evolution, the Artist of Reproduction, the Artist of Carcinoforms (crabs), the Artist of Biological Flight, the Artist of Wheeled Transportation, The Artist of Poetry, the Artist of Boiling Shit as if it is a Hotdog (this is an idiom and refers to far more than the physical act), etc.

Remember, there are 900,000 of them. That’s nearly a million. There’s quite the variety, and their Arts can be very specific sometimes.

Other metaphysical functions and abilities

Besides their Arts, the Artists have a number of other abilities that they can use.

They can perceive the entire electromagnetic spectrum, for instance.

As of yet, no Artist has ceased to exist, no matter how suppressed their existence might become, meaning that they are apparently immortal.

They can inhabit any system that is complex enough to carry their form of thoughts, which not only includes lifeforms but such things as storm systems or sufficiently complex computer networks. Even systems that seem more abstract than that. The Artist of Economics likes to reside within the stock market itself.

And they can incarnate. Which, to them, is a broad term that describes several possible mechanisms. The word, after all, means “become meat”.

Given enough time and resources, an Artist can create a living body to inhabit from scratch.

An easier technique is to choose a fetus that is about to be conceived and possess it, become it, and hatch or be born as that new lifeform. This, of course, requires experiencing childhood for that lifeform. Humans are a typical choice for this, since it’s usually easier to practice an Art while human.

The quickest way to acquire a body is to possess a fully grown one. Usually, this requires at least the subconscious consent of its dominant inhabitant(s). And doing so almost always results in a plural system, at least for the time being that the Artist is present.

There are other, subtler abilities that Artists have, such as being able to drag memories and information through systems that otherwise wouldn’t normally be able to support them. But it would be prohibitive to list them all here.

The shorthand for all of this is that they are like the Elemental Spirits of the Arts. Some people may even think of them as gods, though Chapman and Ptarmigan would object to that.

Why hasn’t anyone heard of them before?

Actually, we all probably have. But not typically as their true natures.

While the Artist of Mythology and the Artist of Metaphysics would both be the first to say that calling any human religion or spirituality a misunderstanding or lie would be deeply incorrect and the wrong way to think about it, it is also true that many of the stories of the supernatural that humans tell have their origins in contact with the Artists.

Most of the Artists have had deeply personal and traumatizing encounters with humans that have significantly impacted human cultures and history unpredictably.

Also, the Artists have encountered Other Things. Other metaphysical beings that they have not been able to fully comprehend, or that are embodiments of other human beliefs. And these encounters have often not gone well.

As a result, most Artists now try to hide. Many of them have taken a vow of secrecy, like Chapman’s, to help remind themselves to stay hidden. But they are not a monolithic culture or people, and there is a lot of disagreement as to how to go about doing this. And some Artists still work openly, if in remote areas or situations that offer some kind of plausible deniability.

Weaknesses

The Artists are neither omnipotent nor omnipresent, and they aren’t even remotely omniscient. They have physical limits that are usually defined by what system they are currently inhabiting, and the fact that each one is specialized for their particular Art.

One way to significantly weaken an Artist is to deprive them of systems to inhabit. Killing all living things within a wide area while suppressing the weather and destroying all electronics will significantly dampen an Artist’s ability to not only practice their Art but to also think and act in other ways. They might even lose memories that are important to them.

Another, more difficult and lesser known way to hurt an Artist is to hit them with a set of inverted waves specifically tuned to their existence. This is the same as active electronic noise suppression, but on a metaphysical level. Beings that can do this are typically only certain other Artists. But it is possible a dragon or two might develop the ability.

Their other general weakness, the thing that keeps them from completely controlling the world, is that they all disagree with each other. They are siblings that have been sharing this planet for possibly 4.5 billion years. They are so sick of each other’s shit.

What are they doing?

Mostly, they’re just trying to figure out why they exist and what they should do about it. They’re playing and learning and trying to make friends whose presence will help them feel better about existing. Friends who are not Artists.

Tiny, fleeting, short lived mortal beings are actually pretty good for this, because they get old so they don’t get old. Which is to say, they age and die so fast that they don’t become bothersome to be around. Also, mortal beings have such a different perspective, so many different perspectives, that listening to them and learning from them is a constant source of enrichment.

This is one thing every Artist can agree on, and so part of what they are also doing is trying to keep life viable on Earth for as long as possible.

The more complex that life is on Earth, the better existence is for the Artists. So, also, the chaos caused by their disagreements is useful to them. Their different philosophies and methods cause such variation that nothing is ever actually boring. There’s always something new and surprising to explore somewhere.

There are some beings, such as Säure, who think that the Artists are more orderly and controlling than this, and that they exist specifically to bring civilization to the world and to shape it in some specific way. They think a better word for an Artist is something like Architect. This, it turns out, is hilariously wrong, but so hard to disprove. Part of the problem is that some Artists embody this misconception. There is, after all, the Artist of Conspiracies, and they’re no help in this at all.

Then came the Dragons

Technically, humans came first and developed civilization and colonization before they invented the word “dragon” by which the very concept of a dragon could come into existence. But, the core collection of beings that we call dragons have existed much longer than that.

The word “dragon” is obnoxiously broad in definition, though. It is so broad, that some people who know about the Artists have come to classify the Artists as dragons, too. This doesn’t come up in Meghan’s books, however, and is only true in the sense that language can be Like That.

And also, it seems that dragons didn’t take physical form until August 24, 2024, for some reason that has not yet been discovered (and may never be).

Originally, the beings that became dragons were relegated to story and myth, sometimes inspired by encounters with other beings (such as Artists and the Others), but often by imagination and primordial fears. Prior to that, dragons existed as instinctual memories of predators that all life seems to carry within it.

Looking back on hir own memories, however, Chapman feels like sie can pick out points in the evolutionary development of life on Earth where dragons may have manifested physically before. But if they did, they were not called dragons nor recognized as a coherent collection of beings, and maybe have been mistaken by Artists and everyone else as mutations of the life that was already present. And they may have functioned as such.

The physiological reality of dragons today seems to indicate they are particularly suited for this kind of role, where they accelerate evolutionary diversity and adaptation in a number of ways.

But now, the dragons’ symbiotic relationship to humans has shaped them even further into something that might be more persistent, maybe even permanent.

What is a dragon?

A dragon is a type of monster.

Originally, the first monsters to be classified as dragons had a few common traits: They had something serpentine about them, they were solitary, they ate people, and each one was really very different from the others.

As the word grew in popularity, and spread through multiple cultures through trade and/or colonization, it also grew in size and scope. All sorts of things have been called dragons, including various extant and living plants and animals. And the need for a dragon to be serpentine or lizard-like to be called a dragon was discarded long ago, though it is still one of the most common traits. Dragons, at least, almost always have tails.

There are some scholars who will call a sphynx a type of dragon, also a gorgon, or a naga, or a lung. There are creatures, monsters, spirits, and other beings from cultures around the world that have existed for longer than the word dragon that are now called dragons by many people.

And it turns out that this broad modern classification was all that was needed to manifest each of these beings into physical existence on August 24, 2024, the day of dracomorphosis.

More specifically, dracomorphosis seemed to begin before that date, in the development of creatures, mostly humans, that were instead actually dragons. Some humans call them therians or otherkin, but there are dragon therians and otherkin who have not experienced dracomorphosis.

What is the dracomorphosis?

The word “dracomorphosis” was coined by Meghan Estragon Draconis to describe the event by which many dragons in the world transformed from being purely mythical or fictional beings into extant living creatures with metaphysical abilities and powers.

Almost every extant living dragon today that is known was originally mistaken for a human being, though there may be exceptions.

We use the term “mistaken” here because while they were physically identical to human beings and scientifically indistinguishable from human beings, not a single one had a human identity. They all knew, on some level, who and what they were.

Exactly how and why this happened in this way is not known. The date of the August 24, 2024 seems to have several coincidental significances to it, but otherwise has no relation to dragons in any way that anyone can discern.

It is also believed that Meghan Estragon Draconis was the center of the dracomorphosis, or at least, the first dragon to physically undergo it. But, also, there is no explanation for this. It had to happen to someone first, and she just happened to be it, as far as anyone can tell.

Her being first has, unfortunately, gotten the attention of Artists and other dragons alike, and the result is that her story is receiving extra attention, and some of her words and theories, such as “dracomorphosis”, are making it into the common lexicon.

More study of this phenomenon is definitely needed.

What does all of this mean for other mythologies and spiritualities?

Not much, besides the proof of existence of Artists and dragons and their experiences and abilities.

Other metaphysical and supernatural beings might still exist. Other mythological creatures might still manifest in a similar way. There may be people today who know the truth.

It is unlikely that the girldragongizzard books will delve into these other stories, however, since they are focused specifically on the dracomorphosis, and Meghan in particular. But if other people have experiences and truths to share, they are certainly welcome to write their own stories.

But what is written here is the word of the Artists and the dragons, and should be considered the definitive truth about them.

~ Benejede, the Storyteller

[obeetlebeetle]

mm ok for necromancy to work a planet must be dead. john killed the planets and when he 'resurrected' that scrap of humankind, he sent them to 'live' on those dead planets, he set them up to perform death magics by the dozen so that he could learn from their mistakes. and then he made of them an army, sent that army across the galaxy to kill more planets so that there could be more places for the necros to 'live'. he has control over the river. he can summon it. more and more evidence points, in fact, to his tampering with it -- choking it with souls until they decay, fall like whales into stoma mouths, never crossing which seems to have been some original intention. christian theology amiright? and boe calls necros zombies and are they wrong? really, are they? my point being: were they ever really alive? when harrow goes to hell she lies waiting inside the tomb of alecto's body. we already doubt every aspect of the story that john presents us with. doesnt it seem likely that rather than all that resurrection, he instead found a way to blur the physical and metaphysical realities? the houses are/in hell.

[delicehm]

what would that hatchetfield x homestuck crossover be like btw

I don't quite remember the idea

But

Paradox space isn't the whole multiverse, but a region inside it with defined laws of metaphysics, just as Black and White with all universes connected to it(the laws are drastically different)

Between them is a big void, different from Void of Homestuck or whatever counterpart is in Hatchetfield(I don't remember if emptiness was discussed there). Yes, voids can be very different with different characteristics and this in-between can have a different names, such as Abyss or Ginnungagap.

It's extremely hard to get through it because it technically has no laws, no matter, no anything and thus nothing can keep a solid form

It can be fixed by enough not reality-warping, but reality-defying powers

...

Like helding or BEING Ultimate Truth, not just conductor of Metaphysical Law, but The Law itself

And Lords in Black are all the Laws of Corruption, different aspects of it and thus can have a stable enough domain to cross the Ginnungagap

And from time to time they do(at least try, most of time, Webby won't allow them usually) and find themselves in Paradox Space

And there, they loose most of their powers... Not right wording. Their influence is not enough to warp reality that warps itself back, to redefine laws that have thousands or repairing systems and that always is overseen by being similar to them in terms of power(in other words, if everyone is a super, nobody is) and they fall from high universal level to city level

One day, Tinky sneakes into Paradox Space and began to make fun from destroying stable time in one city of Earth C. It was a huge ass anomaly that affected basically everything slightly connected to the city. Dave couldn't stand the fact that there is some idiot playing with Time believing that this is some Witch that awoken her title powers(it is possible without the game and was shown a few times in comic. It can't warp local-universal physics that much without the game tho) and now tries to revolt against rules of reality not understanding that by breaking them they'd kill everyone. He didn't know, tho, that it wasn't a Witch(bard would be closer, but not enough). The Time itself wasn't the one and only he would use in any spot of Paradox Space, but something different, less mechanical, more fluid, not defined and stable, but chaotic with no set of rules except for will of One behind it.

It would feel good, if the One wasn't so... Terrible. Dave was disgust

And now, Knight tries to adapt to new sword and navigate in Time-Storm to show that prick behind the curtain that nobody fucks with his Time, especially not to harm people.

The fight between weakened trickster-God and warrior-demigod with centuries of practice begins.

They are actually in the stalemate situation and none can win or escape another. That is, until Webby comes and help Dave to beat the shit out of her brother and takes that goat home

TL;DR. Tinky gets into Paradox Space. Meany Horrorterrors weakens him. He fucks with random city. Dave says that he can't fuck with random city. They begin conceptual fight. Webby intervain(is it the right word? Did I even spell it right?) and takes Tinky back to Black and White

[ramrodd]

Atheist & Christian Book Club with Dr. Bart Ehrman October 2021

COMMENTARY:

As I say, Bart Ehrman is a purveyor of the dialectical Marxism of the critical historic method of Post Modern Historic Deconstruction of the anti-war counter culture's contrarianism summed up in the generational motto "Question Authority".  It has made him rich and famous.

The thing is, in the larger anthropology of literature, history never rises above the broken pottery of archeology. It can't. It is forensic in nature and, by definition. its subject is dead. The art of history is to venture beyond the bounds of forensics and fill in the vitalism of the milieu and elan vitale of the particular personalities of the milieus with the fuller anthropology of the LOGOS of any narrative. Scout is more than her Cristian name of Jean Louise and that's the LOGOS that does not exist in the broken pottery of Ehrman's Dialectical Marxism.

Ehrman stipulates to this in principle, but, when it comes to defending his particular interpretation of text. he reverts, defensively, to the forensic boundaries  of the broke pottery of textual analysis.

For example, at timestamp 34:00, jovial, open=minded Bart gets his panties all in a know when challenged about the actual effect of textual variance and reverts to the classroom authoritarianism of his personality by demanding that, in the de-harmonized version of the Gospels he prefers, an issue of  Atonement and a difference between Paul's understanding and Luke's. This particular issue is important to Ehrman because his entire business model is based on making issues like this fundamental to the veracity of the entire Gospel harmonic. It's like they say about lawyers: if you have merit on your side, argue merit, If you don't have merit, argue the law. And if you have neither merit nor the law on your side, kick up some dust.

His is an example of Ehrman kicking up dust.

I am a process theology guru, like the guy who coinded the Army recruiting slogan, Be All You Can Be. From my perspective, there are at least 5 narrative threads that converge at the cross within the context of Enoch's 7000 year Epoch, which is a very handy template and totally Hegelian in aspect. In terms of atonement.

Jesus is atonement for God's vanity in the Book of Job and God's faithfulness to Free Will as the essential grounding of the doctrine of human dominion in the Newtonian universe. Jesus is the anti=Apocalyptic Messiah who was sent to redeem Jerusalem from the theological dead end of Jewish Eschatology.  Paul's doctrine of atonement is based on the redemption by Jesus of Eve's Total Depravity which is Moses' justification  the corruption of the 7th Commandment, while Luke's doctrine of atonement is the triangulation of Melchizedek with Jesus and Romans 13:1 - 7 that informs the author of the Letter to  the Hebrews )who I contend is Theophilus).

For the Romans, everything that happened between the 1st Covenant between God and Abram in Genesis 15 was set into motion by Melchizedek and created the cultural tube the produced Jesus as the sinless Jewish person, but that Resurrection acted like an Etch-a=Sketch in regards to the Total Depravity bullshit of Moses and replaced it with the New Covenant described in the Gospel of Peter. Jesus is the promise of The One that  the 5th Amendment and the Love Thy Neighbor clause of the Greatest Commandment are the eteranal and divine sanctuary in the Metaphysically necessary atheism of the Liberation Gosple of Jesus, George Washington and Pope Francis.

The great value of Ehrman''s apostasy is that it utterly destroys the basis of Calvinism, generally, and the TUPIP doctrine, in particular, but its unforgivable sinfulness is that it denies the Holy Spirit as the basis of the Liberation Gospel of the atonement doctrine of God and the Gook of Job.

I went to Vietnam on the basis of the Liberation Gospel, so Bart Ehrman can just go fuck himself with the Fascist sophistry of his dialectical Marxism.

[oswald-privileges]

ALL RIGHT BUT YOU ASKED FOR IT

Power of Three as a series is just. full of weaknesses, most of which come down to poor continuity and structure. I'm not gonna try and fix ALL of those, bc that'd be laborious as hell, but I will pick out things that I feel are the most egregious as case studies.

What Po3 does have, tho, is an absolutely shining strength in the concept of its three main characters. After twelve books of Blandly Heroic Protagonist Syndrome, Jayfeather is an absolute godsend. He's angry! He's rude! He's unhappy! He's not nice. I Love Him And He's My Son. Lionblaze has his invincible pride (hah) and emergent bloodlust, and Hollyleaf has her moral absolutism and certainty. These are good starting points for characters. Sadly, the lack of continuity undermines what could have been three really good character arcs.

So! I present to you:

HOW TO MAKE "WARRIORS: THE POWER OF THREE" NOT COMPLETELY SUCK ACCORDING TO MY PERSONAL TASTE; A NON-EXHAUSTIVE, NON-CONSECUTIVE LIST BY ME

ONE

- Have there be a persistant, overarching series threat. Sol is a character with amazing villain potential who does literally nothing except hang around, and do exactly 2 Bad Things completely off-screen. This Is Not Good.

- Instead, have him be present from the second book onwards- initially introduced as a friendly but enigmatic outsider who is slowly revealed across the series to be a complete black hole of a personality, a social parasite quietly rearranging whatever community he's a part of to just-so-happen to benefit him as much as humanly possible. His "preach individualism not starclan" methods are not so much values as one strategy out of many. (to those who know me- yes i have a type. no i will not apologise.)

- Maybe his ultimate goal is to dissolve and centralise the clans or something so that he can live out his life as a political puppetmaster in all the cat-luxury he likes. idk it's hard to imagine overall stakes for this rewrite BECAUSE THE ORIGINAL DOESN'T HAVE ANY

TWO

- For gods sake you don't have a series based on the premise of "the main characters develop super powers" and then only have the second power confirmed by the end of the fourth book. I understand the first book mostly focusing on Jayfeather- his powers are obvious from the start, he's got the strongest personality of the three, he gets access to most of the prophecy plot stuff because of them. But you NEED to have the other two show an interest in something concrete happening to them beyond that, and you need to at least hint towards the other two having something unique to them even if nobody clocks it yet.

- Have Jayfeather tell his siblings about the prophecy by the end of book two at the latest. The amount of time he spends noodling around not sharing it with them is inexcusable. It's not that it's out of character for him to hang onto a secret for a bit, it's just that there's no point and it slows everything down. It would be equally in character for him to go to his siblings and be like "look, i'm SPECIAL. well you as well but ALSO ME". Boy starts off as desperate for recognition, what can I say

THREE

- Have Jayfeather discover that StarClan don't withhold signs or information on purpose for the sake of "building courage and faith" or whatever nonsense. Seeing and communicating the future is metaphysically very difficult, so interpreting signs and messages is a genuine skill, or even an art. The cats of StarClan, however, really are just ghosts, much more similar to living cats than the currently living believe. This is the impotus for Jayfeather's discarding of his reverence for StarClan, which remains consistent throughout the series.

- Have Hollyleaf and Jayfeather both still change their cat careers in the first book, but put place more attention on the fact that they basically switched jobs. Have a scene where they end up yelling at each other, because can't the other see how lucky they have it? The tension breaks when they realise they've both lost something important to them- Jayfeather his chance to prove he's as capable as a sighted cat, and Hollyleaf her path to helping her clan in the way she thinks is best. They commiserate together, and reluctantly promise to do the best they can with their lots, so they don't waste the path the other wishes they'd taken. This closeness is eroded over the series as they disagree more and more on the subject of StarClan and its role in their moral choices and obligations.

FOUR

- Speaking of Hollyleaf! I nearly threw my phone across the room when the first Omen of the Stars book claimed that Hollyleaf "worked so hard to discover her power to help her clan". Where, Ms Erins??? I would have LOVED to have seen that!! Hollyleaf expresses absolutely no concern over the details of what power she has/will develop, and only has a couple of scenes even touching on her ambitions to help her clan. She has some vague ideas about becoming leader and like one scene where she gets to do some leadery things, but that never gets followed up on. What does happen is that the whole "warrior code" thing becomes more and more a part of her personality (for no clear reason) until she snaps.

- Hollyleaf going off the deep end is something I wanted so badly to get into and be moved by, because I could see where it comes from! Her moral certainty is fascinating, especially since it's based in something as abstract as the warrior code- which, when you think about it, isn't really... anything. There's no concrete set of rules that make it up, no traditional wording or cat philosophers, not even any fables. It's a handful of agreed-upon, common sense rules- don't cross boundaries, don't take prey that isn't yours, respect your ancestors, and don't murder. That's it!

- So, combining the above points, I think Hollyleaf not being one of the Three should stay, but both the audience and the characters are given good reason to believe she is. By around the third volume, make it so that Hollyleaf has found that her power is to get cats to "Do The Right Thing"- i.e. what she wants them to do. She sneaks off often to see Sol, who teachs her how to use this power. Her siblings are concerned about this new power, having already gotten a glimpse at what Sol can do, but she's confident that she can only use this power for good. Volume-specific plot happens, Sol manipulates her into causing him to win, she is shocked and horrified, and vows to stick ridgedly to what she knows is right i.e. The Warrior Code

- However, the more fervently she tries to stick to this abstract idea, the less it gives her results, the more her power seems to be failing. Believing that StarClan is taking her power away from her, she becomes caught up in a faith-guilt spiral that puts her in the position to snap at the end of the series. By that point it's clear to her siblings that Hollyleaf has no power- she was just very, very good at persuading people to do what she wanted.

FIVE

- Lionblaze is a girl now because I Said So. This Cat Is Trans And There's Nothing You Can Do About It.

- Her relationship with Heathertail stays the same- childhood sweethearts who are torn apart as they begin to understand the nature of the societal divides that exist between them.

- This can be used to contextualise the whole "half clan/outsider blood" thing as a cultural contradiction. In reality, inter- and outer- clan relationships aren't at all rare. They can't be, otherwise the whole society would be inbred out of existence in like five generations. But if at least one society of humans can spend a good 200 years pretending Sex Is Bad And Sinful Actually then cats can have persistant cat-racism in the face of all logic. Heathertail clocks this contradiction, Lionblaze doesn't.

- Her relationship-to-power arc doesn't need changing all that much either, other than starting much sooner and being more consistent. At first, she's completely overjoyed by her power, since unlike her siblings, it lines up so well with her ambition- become the finest warrior any of the clans have to offer. As the berserker rage aspect becomes more prevelent, she becomes more and more disturbed by the fact that she isn't disturbed by what she can do, and that she doesn't want the escalation of her power to stop.

- Tigerstar still does his thing, but Brambleclaw knows about it. He recognises the signs from when his father used to visit him, and tries to train Lionblaze in his own way. She ends up caught between wanting to be a good warrior, and testing the limits of her power.

SIX

- Jayfeather can stay basically the same because he's my perfect little angy boy and nothing needs to change. His arcs can be strengthened by having a more robust relationship with Yellowfang where they try to out-bitch each other, and coming to terms with his internalised ablism. Maybe he has a chat with Mothwing about faith a couple of times. Him furiously lashing out at being offered help transitions into an acceptence and understanding of his abilities more naturally. He never stops being A Grumpy Old Man.

- All fucking past-lives unexplained time travel goes in the BIN. Doesn't fucking happen. You can have that lore dump sprinkled across the books, or come from going deep into the tunnels and having a surreal meeting. Make it properly eldritch-level scary, shake Jayfeather's confidence in the idea of them being just a bunch of ghosts.

SEVEN

- Have the way Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight present very clearly as parents to the Three be explicitly, textually unusual. One of the things I liked so much about the first series was an almost total lack of emphasis on who was mated with who, and who was related or not. It felt very real to how feral cat colonies form, where raising kittens is a communal job. This gets completely dropped the moment series 2 starts and now the cats have monogamy.

- This emphasis on the family unit and fostering close relationships between parents and kittens is deliberate on the part of both Leafpool and Squirrelflight. Their aim is to cover for Leafpool so she doesn't lose her role as medicine cat- something she already gave up Crowfeather for before she was pregnant.

- In that little bit of backstory, have a robust reason for both Leafpool and Squirrelflight to leave the camp while Leafpool is pregnant and giving birth, possibly one that ties into the present day story in some minor way. I don't know how, it would just make that element of the story a lot more ground than "we left, the kits were born, then we came back and everyone was cool with it"

- When it comes to the "I am Not your mother" reveal, Jayfeather and Lionblaze are confused and hurt that they were lied to, but come to the reasonable conclusion that well, since they were raised mostly by Squirrelflight, saw Leafpool often, and are loved by both, they don't hate her. Lionblaze has something of a crisis over being half-clan, possibly initiating an attempted reunion with Heathertail. Jayfeather is more concerned with how other cats will think it makes him lesser, something he's still sensitive too.

- Hollyleaf, meanwhile, completely fucking snaps at the way her mother Violated Part Of The Code. It's a completely irrational reaction, but expected because she's been growing more and more reliant on The Code for the whole series, and less and less stable in her attempts to aid her clan and train to be its new leader.

- Squirrelflight is the one to murder Ashfur. This is easy to work out while reading- she's literally the only one of the four with a motive who isn't a perspective character. The mystery is less around finding out who did it, and more about why she did it (it's very ambiguous as to whether it was an accident or not). The main tension comes from who finds out when.

- Lionblaze is shocked, awed by how far she'd go to protect the three of them, and reassures her she did the right thing (as a way to salve her own uncertainty over her own longing for violence). Jayfeather makes it all about himself because he's Jayfeather- upset that he didn't know immediately, instead of, you know, figuring it out in a few hours because he can basically read minds. They try their best to hide it from Hollyleaf, who is already rattling around the final volume as a full-on antagonist, but are unsuccessful. This almost costs them something incredibly important- possibly Squirrelflight's life.

EIGHT

- the whole plot with the Tribe Of Rushing Water is a MASSIVE can of worms that could be removed from the series without issue. As it is:

- Characterize the Tribe as uncertain of how to fight other cats, because yes, they haven't had to do this before. DON'T characterise them as pathetic, doing whatever their leader says without thinking, and with ancestors who have Given Up

- Have some of the Tribe be really good at the violence. Worryingly good. Have others be sickened by what they're being asked to do.

- Have some of the clan cats reflect on what they've done. Hollyleaf would be all for introducing this society to jesus The Code, but even she might be horrified at being thanked by a tribe cat who can't wait to get out there and win themselves glory, only to be killed a few hours later

- The Tribe begin a new tradition of marking the walls in the mud they use as camoflage in order to commemorate their battles, and memorialise the fallen. One of the characters reflects on the fact that in a generation or two, the Tribe will feel like it's always been this way. How many of their own traditions- those that feel almost like natural law- started out the same way?

- Have Sol as the leader of the invaders, or maybe having insinuated himself into the tribe as a "mediator" and doing his charismatic cult leader thing.

NINE

- Cinderheart isn't a reincarnation of Cinderpelt. She's just named after her bc Cinderpelt saved her mother from a badger. this is because I think the reincanation thing is stupid and I can't think of a way to make it good.

TEN

- No more using tails as hand gestures like covering people's mouths. Never. None of it. It's expunged from existence.

Disclaimer: I haven't read Omen of the Stars yet, so I can't account for anything that might happen in that series that's grounded in Po3. I'm like... two thirds of the way through the first volume. I'm Not Impressed.

[practicalmagicintuitions]

HC reading

DISCLAIMER: If you will send me an Anon, I will answer the same tone as your ask, opinion is written.

All information and statements made in this reading or any other post of mine are all alleged until proven to be fact and for entertainment purposes & usage only. All information stated is based on my intuition and my tarot cards. Opinion only. The readings have no intention to cause any harm to the individuals, people featured in it.

Cards pulled on 19th September

I barely thought about the question The Moon and the 2 of Pentacles felt out. I was thinking a little because I haven’t thought about that question deeply yet, but I decided to keep that 2 cards as a summary of the reading and go back to it if I don’t understand something and the very end of the reading.

My question was how his next few weeks will look like.

Queen of Cups rx, Death rx,( clarified by the King of Cups and the Devil rx - both fell out so I kept both) 5 of Swords, 3 of Swords rx, 10 of Swords rx, Knight of cups rx

What I see is a lot of balancing, wanting something but resisting the change at the same time. Inner and outer battles.

Death rx could be many things one of it is resisting to change, something couldn’t come to its end. For example, a relationship is over but they cannot move on, stuck in. And I think they cannot really move on because they have some codependency between them (QofCrx). If this card represents a person, they are someone who cannot control their emotions, mood swings, hypersensitive to criticism etc. This also could mean heartbreak. I think the truth is the blend of this. There is this emotional insecurity and neediness that is not let something reach its end. Denying your own feeling to make someone else happy. New energies, new impulses don’t reach him and he is operating on those old ones that should be let go. He is somewhat lying to himself that he can juggle between new and old, that he can grow but can remain the same. On a physical level that could mean depression, sleep deprivation.

However, these two-card is facing each other like in a battle when the oppositions are ready to attack. So I think before he can move on or he can battle for some change he has to face the forces that don’t let him choose or move on (QofCrx. It could be another person or one part of himself) The next card is the 5 of Swords. 5 of S is a change, a battle, a battle coming to an end card and top of that his card suggests very strongly a bulling person or situation. Ungraceful win or mental suffering. With this card is very important that who you identified yourself with on the picture. The bigger figure, who won, who has a smug smile, who probably a bully and won unfairly, or the 2 little figures, who are defeated, humiliated, bullied. 

5ofS is losing the moral compass and integrity and I feel this could be a realization of his that he reached that point. He lost those things, his moral values and wants to break free (Devil rx) but he is stuck. Maybe he has to balance between his own mood swing or someone else’s. 

With those conflicting emotions, thoughts, I feel he is in an early phase of transition. This King (King of Cups) is emotionally responsible and with the Devil rx maybe he wants to break free from some emotional attachments. The King of C is the pleaser, the father figure, the dominant one so maybe somehow his father is playing some role in it.

Death rx is a very interesting card because if we think the upright is about rebirth the reverse should be about being stuck, not remain the same but Mary K Greer is saying this card could mean “emerging from the death” coming out from a stagnant period. (keep this meaning in your mind it will be important at the end!)  And I think the Devil rx is supporting this meaning but those cards as a whole suggest for me such an inner conflict, battling with yourself, what to do, what to decide. As the song says “ Should I stay or should I go”? 

5 of Sw, 3 of Sw rx, 10 of Sw rx, Knight of C rx

In this whole spread, there are cups and swords. Heart vs mind, emotions vs logic and a clear head

Both 3 and 10 of Sw rx means healing, escaping from something fatal (NOT necessarily in a death-life situation!! more like on an emotional, metaphysical level as Death card doesn’t mean physical death ), the swords are falling out. But that doesn’t mean the experiences or the process is not painful. Oh boy… it is, it is painful. but instead of the light end of the tunnel is a train it’s like…. we can still have hope it’s not a train. 

What a little worries me is the Knight of Cups rx because this is again, juggling, mood swings between seeing the positive aspect of this or feeling sulky and moody. With this RX  knight the problem is that he is overly romantic, daydreaming or the opposite, he feels everyone is leaving him and reject him. He is in emotional turmoil. And I feel even he won his inner battles and start to heal he will check back to the past. Not necessarily reconnect with an old flame but starting to live in the past and asking “what if…?” and starting to replay the past decisions, emotions and those are not healthy.  I think all of those will leave him emotionally insecure and confused. 

The relationship now (at the time of the reading)

2 cards felt out face down and when I flipped the first it was the Lovers. And I was WOW that is something new, how exciting, second was the World rx. I pulled 2 clarifications on the Lovers: the Empress rx and the Strength. First, let’s see these 4 cards. 

When I was thinking about the Lovers card’s sudden appearance after 6 months in the first time I felt (because of the other cards) that some seducing going on like they were doing it when I pulled the cards or some other games were going on like she was trying to convince him about something and she was seducing him to get what she wants.

The World rx is unfinished business, no closure, something is not finished yet, unfulfillment. 

I think she (because Emprx is always her in my readings) feels that this relationship is not dead yet or she is not ready to give up. Look at the Strength card. There is a woman, taming a lion, a beast with her, kindness, will, determination etc. This card is also the first card in the second set of sevens we can separate the Major arcana (1-7, 8-14, 15-21), so it could mean a new chapter too. I feel this is what she wants very badly. However, in this situation, the question is who has the real strength? Maybe she is on her way to use convincing tactics but in real life, she wants something HC has or something that she cannot get if he doesn’t want to give. And I think this is the relationship itself or some aspect of it.  

The World rx  is still not a bad card could mean success but that success is not what you wanted or how you imagines it. There is a serious anticlimax here. And it’s a very short-lived success, if at all. So no matter what female tactics she uses for keeping alive the relationship if HC doesn’t want to give the relationship another round, she can do anything, she won’t succeed.

On a very direct level, it could mean that the whole world is watching them and she feels the pressure of it “the world’s burden on her shoulders” Maybe there is a lost connection and she wants to make up this with sex or being physical. 

With the Emp rx and the Strength, I see a serious manipulation going on. 

The rest of this spread is The High Priestess, 2 of Swords rx, Ace of wands rx. If you want to imagine the “spread” it’s 5 cards, HP in the middle, on the left the Lovers ( without signifiers) and the World rx, on the right the 2ofSrx, AceofWrx .

Why is this important? I am studying the HP atm because for me this is the most fascinating card, I always have a hard time interpreting. Many people saying this is a secretive woman, someone with secrets etc...I think this is such a simplifying way to handle this card. HP is not secretive in a gossipy, mean girl way or someone who is cheating etc. She doesn’t share her knowledge because we are not ready, not because she is enjoying that she knows something we don’t. She is a gatekeeper. On the card, she is sitting before a veil (veil between the worlds), she has some sacred text in her lap. In the RWS deck, this is the Tora, in my personal deck, this is the Book of Shadows. She is aware of those deep truths, ancient knowledge. This is not some simple secret or gossip.The High Priestess wisdom in the light in the Hermit’s lamp that separates him from the complete darkness and shows him the path he has to choose.  On the veil, there are pomegranates that link her to Persephone whose faith was living between two worlds. She keeps those worlds apart.  (this was my short essay on The High Priestess for you,welcome :D )

So what is the significance of all of this? That I think in the spread THP separates the thing NV wants to achieve and the truth or the thing she wants to avoid. On the left there is the manipulation, the seducing, trying to tame the beast, trying to make it sexual again on the right distance in a relationship, cold heart, love cannot come through because of the crossed swords, no sexual desire (Ace of Wrx). A of Wrx is infertility, impotency or not wanting the other sexually anymore. This card upright is a phallic symbol that’s why it is connected to sexuality, fertility, pregnancy, in reverse not just the lack of this but a thumb down too. It’s like giving a thumb down to the relationship and this is not just an “ I don’t like something”.In ancient times that means a death sentence to gladiators. It’s like the death sentence of this relationship. And I feel very symbolic that the first card was the Lovers and the last is this in this spread. A polar opposite in meaning that is separated by THP. The HP is not passive, he is the epitome of eternal stillness, the boundaries between two extremes. I feel this relationship like the whole reading is about duality ( 2ofPent, 2ofSw, THP, Judgment) as the first row of this reading, swords vs cups, mind vs emotions. These two things are battling in him.

The outcome of this relationship

Judgment, 3 of cups rx.

Numerologically the Judgment (XX 20=2+0=2)

On the Judgment card, an angel blows her trumpet and people rise up from their coffins. Do you remember what I said about the Death rx?  That one meaning of this is “emerging from the death”. Clarity, decision made, realization, powerful understanding. Also means huge transformation. In a relationship could be a Karmic connection. With the 3ofC rx is the realisation that the relationship is no fun anymore. More work than joy. I don’t mean “it’s a pr “, I mean their time together is less fun more work in the relationship. Or no matter how much they try the fun is just lost.( for example they can have sex, the real desire is gone) Also, this is the drinking card so maybe the realisation they over partied and drank way too much in this relationship and they don’t like each other that much if they are sober. Also could mean infidelity or a third weel in not necessarily a cheating sense, for example, one of them has a friend/parent etc and that person is so involved and present in the relationship that the other feels it’s a third party in this. This card also means no reconnection, mistrust.

I think the theme of this relationship and his next few weeks is balancing and trying to conquer himself. Battling between mind and heart, logic reason and emotions. 

This reading has a 2nd part, I pulled some cards on 30th.

For now, I will only reveal from that reading one thing. I asked about timing and breakup. I got the 5 of Swords. So this card means October 3 times. How is this possible? 

1.Methond - days, weeks, months, years

Swords are weeks, so this card means 5 weeks from 19th September

2.Method Seasons

Swords means Autumn. October is Autumn.

3.Method Astrological corresponds

Swords : Air signs. Gemini, Libra, Aquarius. 

Libra is September 23 – October 22. 

However, I felt I need a 2nd card, a clarification. It was the Hanged Man. This means, delays, no time period available. I interpret this as the break up will happen in October but we won’t know about it for a while. And yes, I am prepared that she or someone maybe reading this and they will organize something in October, but this doesn’t change the fact that I am getting October SINCE April. That’s why I said in a previous ask that, this is a joke from Universe if they won’t break up in October. 

I hope you enjoyed this reading.

Be blessed. :) 

[vincent-frankenstein]

41: “You did all of this for me?” With Moceit plz?

Summary: Deceit loves getting sick. He loves having to lock himself away in his room to protect his reputation, to protect himself from being coddled. He can’t let the others see him in such a state. But then they find out, and Patton won’t let him ride it out alone. 

Warnings: sickness, weakness, Banter and teasing, sympathetic deceit

Pairing: moceit with like, background familial dlamp 

@figurative-siren-song uwu

Deceit just loved being sick.

Really, it was such fun! It involved all of his favoritepastimes — such as being unable to leave his bed for days on end, and coughingup a lung every time he tried to speak, and sneezing his goddamn brains out every five minutes. He could think of no grander way tospend his time lying curled up in bed, trying to force his stomach to staywhere it belonged.

And the added bonus of being completely and utterly trapped? Well, that wasjust the cherry-on-top.

Obviously, he could let the others see him like this. Such glaringsigns of weakness would never be used to his disadvantage! Why, they'dprobably drop everything to care for him, to nurse him back to health like the"family" they claimed to be!

Not.

He sneered, glaring balefully at the cup of tea on his desk. It hadlong since gone cold, but he couldn't risk going out to get a new one. It wastimes like this where he almost wished things could go back to how they used to be;at least then he'd have access to the old kitchen, the one in the Others' partof the mindscape, where he knew he wouldn't be seen. There could be any numberof sides waiting for him in their newer, grayer commons, and the thought ofanyone seeing him in such a state made his stomach churn.

Besides, he doubted he'd survive such an encounter. With how his head ached,one boisterous laugh from Roman or offended screech from Logan would be enoughto kill him. He wasn't too keen on the idea of dying. Surpringing, Iknow, from the embodiment of self-preservation.

But he was hardly needy. He could handle a few days on his own. He greetedhis solitude with open arms, and —

Oh no.

He barely had a moment to hiss a panicked curse before the bed dropped outfrom under him and he was tugged down-sideways-up until the living room floorrose up to meet his feet. He staggered, pressing his hand over his mouth andstumbling into the banister.

"Deceit?" Oh. Good, good, good. That was Patton's voice.He could hear Logan shifting beside him. He was in the commons, how fun! Definitely not a terrifying prospect. "Are you okay,kiddo?"

He shifted against the stairs until he was leaning nonchalantly, and crossedhis arms, lifting an eyebrow. "Of course not," he said, digging hisfingernails into his arm to keep from coughing. He was met with four confused,disbelieving stares.

"I've got a more important question," Roman declared. "Arethose Scooby-Doo pajamas?"

Deceit's nose twitched with annoyance. "...No."

"They totally are!" Roman's laughter was like tiny explosionsagainst Deceit's aching eardrums. It took everything in him to not wince.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I wasn't allowed to have leisure clothes,"Deceit snapped. "You have oh-so-much room to judge, Roman, in thatsale-rack Halloween costume of yours."

If Roman's laughter was tiny explosions, his offended squawking was likeshoving a bazooka into Deceit's ear and firing. "'Sale-rack Halloween costume?'"he repeated, one hand clutched against his chest. "How dare you?!Do you have any idea how much effort I put into this outfit?! Weeksspent planning and sewing —"

"Falsehood," Logan cut in, raising an eyebrow. "You told meyourself you simply conjured it up on a whim."

"Wh — but — okay, but, the emotional effort —"

"Now, now, kiddos, let's not fight, okay?" Patton said, holding uphis hands placatingly. "Roman, your outfit is lovely. And Dee, yourpajamas are super cute!"

Deceit blinked. "...Thanks," he said drily, to which Pattonbeamed, completely genuine. "Alright, can we get to whatever dilemma youneed my help with? I wasn't in the middle of something."

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure your midday nap is way more important thanhelping Thomas," Virgil said with a roll of his eyes. Deceit opened hismouth to retort, but Logan lifted a hand.

"Enough," he said evenly. "Deceit, I assume you're aware ofthe surprise party that Thomas plans to throw for Joan's birthday nextweek?"

"What? No!" Deceit placed a hand against his chest,feigning surprise. "Why would I know about that? It's not like I suggestedit!"

Logan continued as if he hadn't spoken. "Thomas is about to spend aprolonged amount of time with Joan to brainstorm ideas for the channel. We needyou to, ah —"

"Keep his mouth shut," Deceit finished, and Logan nodded."Well, as fun as that sounds, I do believe I'll have to pass."

"What? Why?"

Because his legs had begun to shake, and he doubted he could stay uprightfor much longer. Because his throat ached and twinged with every word out ofhis mouth. Because his head pounded, black spots dancing in front of his eyes,and he just wanted to sleep, goddamnit.

"I have some personal business to attend to," he said simply.

Virgil huffed. "'Personal business?'" he repeated, raising aneyebrow.

"Yes. I'm afraid I must nunya," Deceit said.

Patton's eyebrows furrowed. "What's 'nunya?'"

"Nunya business," Deceit said. He shoved away from the banisterand drew himself to his full height. "Roman is more than capable of comingup with excuses for our dear boy Thomas. Now, if you'll excuse me —"

"Hold on, you expect me to do your job for you? After you insulted myprecious outfit! Ha! Fat chance, Lyin' King!" Roman declared,setting his hands on his hips.

"Technically, you insulted his outfit first," Logan said. He dugaround in his pocket for a moment, drawing out an index card. "'Nocap.'"

"Well, yeah, of course there's no cap!" Patton said, a smilegrowing on his face. "Dee's not wearin' his hat!"

Logan's groan was like stepping on a landmine. Deceit couldn't help butwince, pain wracking through his skull, pressure building inside his forehead.Black spots danced before his eyes. When the world slotted back into placearound him he found every eye in the room on him, and he shifted beneath thesearchlights, eyes narrowing.

"You don't look very okay, kiddo," Patton said, with concern inhis eyes. Deceit's nose twitched.

"I assure you, I am fine —"

"Yeah, bullshit," Virgil said. "You look like shit. Well,shittier than usual."

"How kind of you to say, Virgil," Deceit said, with a roll of hiseyes. "I must say, you're looking quite shitty yourself, as usual."

Virgil hissed — and Deceit made the ultimate mistake of hissing back. Thecoughing fit that followed had him wheezing for breath, tears building in hiseyes, and when it finally subsided he was met with the worst punishment of all:pity.

"Oh, honey... you're sick," Patton said softly.

"Well, now the pajamas make sense!" Roman said, nodding tohimself, as if that was the most important aspect of their conversation. Deceittook a step back, eyes narrowing.

"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not," he said, voice ragged. "It definitelymatters."

"Yes, it does," Logan said. "As metaphysical beings, we areincapable of dying, but that doesn't mean we can't get sick. Any illnesses wedo manage to catch should be treated properly, lest they become worse."

"Gee, sure wish I'd thought of that!" Deceit said, in ahigh-pitched tone that made his throat ache. "Oh, wait, I did. I wasresting before you all decided to drag me out here!"

Logan blinked. "'My bad,'" he said awkwardly, pulling out a vocabcard.

"Yeah, if I had known you were sick, I never would have made fun ofyou," Roman said, and to his credit, he did look genuinely apologetic."Your pajamas are quite becoming."

Deceit yanked his shirt into place and rolled his eyes. "Thank you,Roman," he said, only half sarcastic. At Roman's pressing stare, hesighed. "Your outfit is ridiculously ugly as well."

"Hey! Oh — wait, thanks!"

"Now am I allowed to go rest?"

"Of course." Logan straightened his tie and nodded. "Myapologies for dragging you into this, Deceit."

"I don't accept your apology." Finally he was free to sinkdown, and he did so with great relief, collapsing onto his bed with anexhausted sigh. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and pretended like the roomwasn't rocking around him.

And that's how he spent the five hours that followed: curled up atop hisbed, shivering and miserable. He considered it a worthy use of his time. Whatelse could he have been doing? Something productive? Unrealistic.

When the knocking first began, he had sunk so deeply into the throes ofexhaustion that he brushed them off as hallucinations. But then came a voice,muffled through the door: "Dee?"

Ah. Patton. Far be it from him to let Deceit simply rest. He lifted himselfas well as he could, wobbling dangerously, and hissed out a vague response.

"Okay, well, there's no need to be like that," Patton said."I've got somethin' for ya downstairs, if you feel down to seein'it!"

"I definitely need some inane movie night right now,"Deceit hissed, words lisping and slurring. His room had grown quite cold, buthe hardly had the strength to turn on the heat. "I'm doing just fine in here,thanks."

"Dee, I know you," Patton said. "You're probably hidin' inthere with the heat off, wallowin' in your own self-pity."

"... No I'm not."

Patton sighed. "Take it from me, hun," he said. "That's notgonna make anything better. You can't hide from your sickness and jus' hope itgoes away."

Deceit groaned. "I can damn well try!"

"No. No, you can't," Patton said. "I promise, it's not amovie night. Or, well — not technically. Would you just come down?"

"I'm afraid this illness is terminal, Patton," Deceit said."They've already had to amputate both my legs. I can't walk."

"Oh, poor baby," Patton cooed — and then he gently pushed open thedoor and stepped inside. He rubbed away the goosebumps on his arms, shivering."Oh, honey, it's like a freezer box in here! And you're not even under anyblankets!"

"I like the cold," Deceit insisted, stubborn as ever. Hesniffled, burrowing into his pillow so he didn't have to look at Patton'ssympathetic frown. "Leave me to die, Morality. It's far too late forme."

"Not if I have anything to say about it!" Patton rolled up hissleeves and — hefted Deceit into his arms, and oh, oh wow, he was reallystrong — and he nestled Deceit against his chest and carried him out of theroom.

Deceit hadn't the energy to struggle, but even if he did, he doubted hewould have. Patton's touch was burning fire against his skin and he melted intoit, eyes slipping shut. He hadn't realized how cold he'd truly become until thewarmth drove the ice from his bones, bringing feeling back to his fingers andtoes.

The living room had been thrown to chaos — the couches pushed aside, theircushions torn from their seats to become building blocks for the grandestblanket fort Deceit had ever seen. Patton set him down in the center and stood,brushing off his hands.

"Wh... what is this?" Deceit asked, eyes narrowing. The jolt ofwarmth had brought clarity back to his mind, and with it came that familiar,sharp suspicion. The living room was dark, the lights dimmed to a comfortableglow — and the Netflix startup screen shone on the tv. None of the others werein sight.

"Well," Patton said, lowering himself down to the edge of the fortto sit. "Virge told us about your tendency to hide away wheneveryou're feelin' less-than-okay."

Ah. A betrayal, then. He knew there was something shady behind this.

"And, well, I know the feeling..." Patton twisted his handstogether in his lap, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the back of his otherhand. "So I figured, if you gotta feel miserable, you might as well do itcomfortably!"

Deceit raised an eyebrow, and Patton stood. "You've got full access toNetflix, and there's a couple different heatin' pads in there. I'm cookin' upsome chicken noodle soup for ya, and then I'll get outta your hair. We'll all stayclear of the commons for ya."

Deceit blinked. He glanced around the fort, this time with wide-eyedconfusion rather than suspicion. "And you did all of this... for me?"

"Well, yeah!" Patton said, as if it made all the sense in theworld. "I care about you, hun. We all do."

...Huh. For the first time in his life, Deceit was stricken speechless, notby fury, but by care. He looked down to his lap, and then back up atPatton, and forced bitter truth to coat his words. "Thank you," hesaid, more genuine than he'd ever allow himself to be otherwise.

"'Course!" Patton beamed. "Alrighty, I'm gonna go finish up that soupfor ya! Then I'll stop botherin' you —"

"You're not," Deceit said before he could stop himself. Pattontilted his head to the side; the sight was undeniably adorable.

"Not what?"

"... Bothering me," Deceit finished lamely. "You don't haveto... leave. If you don't want to."

Patton's lips parted in a little 'o' of surprise — and then he smiled, andit looked like the sunrise. Deceit leaned closer to the heating pad at his sideand pretended that that was the reason for the flames blazing across his face."Are you sure?"

"I mean, it's not like I care either way," Deceit said. Brusquely,he snatched the remote from its pillow-throne and began clicking throughNetflix. His eyes narrowed. "As long as you don't get too close. I wouldn'tfeel terrible if you got sick."

Patton made a little squeak, almost inhuman in how touched and excited itwas, and he nodded, hair flopping down in his face. "Soup for two it is,then!" he said, and bounced off into the kitchen.

An hour later, Deceit fell asleep against Patton's chest.

A few days later, Patton got sick.

Deceit built him a blanket fort.

[acovenofcaffineandchaos]

Types of Witches

These are loose definitions of types of witches. You do not have to be any one type, these are simply ways to identify oneself if you feel that the type fits, and recommendations or thoughts are welcomed in the comments Green/Garden Witch

A Green witch is a witch whose practice surrounds the use of gardening, herbalism and generalized plant life, hence the title "Green". Green Witches will be meticulous when it comes to their gardens, will grow lots of plants including herbs, flowers, foods and even things we would consider "weeds". Each and every plant seen around the Green Witch's home would have some sort of use to that Witch (yes, even the grass!) Indoors you may see more plants, either being grown in pots, or being dried for use. A Green Witch will use plants in almost every aspect of their craft, from casting spells, to cooking their meals, and even cleaning their homes. They're practitioners who focus mostly on one aspect.

Sea Witch

A sea witch has strong ties to water and the ocean and uses that element often in her practice. Sea and ocean magic will often use sand, shells, driftwood, or other elements that come from that place. Sea witches feel connected to water and ancient folklore involving sirens, mermaids, selkie, etc.

Kitchen Witch

Kitchen witches are very home-based, often incredibly nurturing, and love to make their home a truly special and sacred space. They love to cook and brew and use herbs, sometimes gathered from their own garden. When practicing they combine their own personal and individual magical energy with essential oils, herbs, food, and everyday objects to create their spells, rituals, and magic.

Elemental Witch

Elemental witches study and practice based on the four elements: earth, air, wind, and fire. An elemental magic is craft based on honoring and working with each element. An elemental witch may have an altar for each specific element. Elemental witches call on the elements when casting spells and performing rituals, and may even have an element that they personally identify with and work towards finding.

Crystal Witch

A Crystal witch works most commonly with stones and crystals, this can be during spell work, rituals, or even storing energy in crystal they connect strongly with. Anything that involves crystal use may be used by a crystal witch. They often have an extensive knowledge of stones, including their metaphysical properties, and if they have any toxicities.

Eclectic Witch

An eclectic witch does not have one set religion, practice, tradition, or culture that they pull from. Their practice derives from many sources and, ultimately, becomes the witch’s own. They may worship a higher being, or their practice may be primarily secular, or it might be its own kind of spiritual. An eclectic witch ultimately makes their own “rules” with their practice—it is entirely unique based on the individual witch

Hedge Witch

Hedge witches have little to do with plant life (though plants may play some role in their craft). The term "Hedge" refers to the border that surrounds ones property. Hedge Witches work between two worlds; crossing the "hedge" between this world and the world beyond, or the "other-world". They spend a lot of time communing with either deities, ancestors or random spirits of whom they meet on this plane, while also working within this plane.

Draconian Witch

This refers to a witch who calls upon dragons, the power behind Arthurian myth, or uses dragon imagery as a focus in their craft. This can be in astral matters, or spells and rituals.

Cosmic/Star Witch

Cosmic witches are contemporary witches who look to the cosmos, astrology, and astronomy and work those elements and celestial energy into their practice. Also called “Star Witches”, these witches often follow the planets and the alignment of the stars and base their spells and rituals on the different placements.

Lunar Witch

A specialized version of a Cosmic witch, these witches focus solely on the energy of the moon as it waxes and wanes throughout the wheel of the year. They may feel a certain draw to moon phases or full moon during the year, sometimes leading to Seasonal Affective Depression during the brighter months of the year. Often they also work lunar deities or spirits, but this is not always the case.

Solar Witch

A specialized version of a Cosmic witch, these witches focus solely on the energy of the sun as the earth rotates around it and its energy fluctuates throughout the wheel of the year. They may feel a certain draw to warmth and sunlight, sometimes leading to Seasonal Affective Depression during the dark months of the year. Often they also work solar deities or spirits, but this is not always the case.

Chaos Witch

This is a witch who connects to storms and strong energy fields, and offensive magic. They believe that the ends justify the means, and thrive in chaos, often harnessing emotional energy to fuel their spell work. If they do work with a deity, it is likely to be a deity that in their pantheon is a trickster god, such as Loki in the Norse pantheon for example.

Animal Witch

Magick that is strongly tied to the animal kingdom, which includes a deep appreciation for all animals, and most often usage of animal materials in spell work. An animal witch will most likely be one who loves animals, a person who animals are immediately "drawn" to, and those who appreciate the natural world. Some animal witches might also use bones, wings, feathers, fur, skin, scales, etc. from deceased animals in their magick, if they choose to do so.

Dream Witch

These witches are more mindful and usually work with internal magick, mainly via interpreting dreams and/or engaging in lucid dreaming. They can “de-code” symbols and messages in the dream, similar to how others would use a divination technique. The dreams may not always be good or bad to them, but they always have meaning.

Music Witch

Magick that is worked with music, musical chimes, or rhythm. A Music witch might hum/sing, clap, sing chants during spells, play instruments (the kind doesn’t matter), or even simply play music during spell-work, magick, or rituals to channel focus or energy/power.

[anncanta]

Dracula BBC as an alchemical novel

I noticed a long time ago that the stories that S. Moffat and M. Gatiss tell do not just have two or three layers (in fact, much more), but most often turn out to be such a complex field in which all the numerous levels work independently and at the same time manage to merge into a holistic melody. Actually, this is why their texts often ‘from the outside’ look strange, incomprehensible or meaningless (apart from those cases when they really are like this).

The thing is that stories of this kind are arranged in such a way that the plot, as a frame, ‘holding’ ideas and meanings on itself, is, so to speak, open — like a system of corridors leading in different directions, up and down, into those dimensions of the narrative that are currently needed by the authors in order to convey their statement.

In this respect, the genre is very important, because by structuring the story at the formal level, it allows, let’s say, to enter it and understand where to move from the entrance. And there — well, depending on how far you are willing to go.

One of the best definitions of the Dracula genre that I have seen among the reviews written so far is a metaphysical detective.

Some might say that the term looks artificial, but bearing in mind that the story itself seems to be enough… hybrid, it would be fine to start a conversation.

This really has everything a good detective novel needs, plus philosophical and (almost) religious motives organically woven into the narrative, the idea of self-knowledge that pushes the boundaries of any genre, and a mysterious ending. So it’s easy to agree with the above definition.

But I would say that this is an alchemical novel.

Let me remind those who have not come across the works of C.G. Jung, who in his later work paid much attention to alchemy and secret religious practices: in the context of his research, alchemy is a way of self-knowledge and one’s own psyche in order to achieve a higher level of development and gaining mental and spiritual integrity.

History of literature knows several rather interesting attempts to describe the alchemical Work and, since cinema in this sense is no worse, if you wish, you can immediately name a dozen films that also touch on this topic. Well, Sherlock, being viewed from a certain angle quite fits into this paradigm, and I will not even start about Harry Potter — this is a classic of Jungian thought, expressed in literature and successfully transferred to the cinema.

What about Dracula? Everything is very interesting in it.

The first thing to note is that Dracula’s structure is not a mini-series. It’s not a TV show at all. This is a three-part film, all parts of which are closely related to each other so that none of them can be ‘taken out’ from the text without losing meaning and understanding what is happening here.

The second, — it is undoubtedly a novel. The novel as a genre has many definitions, I will not give them here, I will only mention an element that is important for our conversation, without which a modern novel is impossible. This is the growing up and inner change of the hero. If the hero came to the end of the work, being not the same he was at the beginning, most likely we have a novel. Another question is how the hero came to these changes.

And here the third aspect is important — the way the story is told and the ‘language’ used by the authors.

Act I

Dracula begins with a young man standing in the middle of a dark forest and waiting for a carriage that will take him to the medieval castle of some mysterious Count. A girl comes out of the carriage in which the young man reached this place, and asks him to take the crucifix with him, assuring him that he will certainly need it. The carriage leaves, the young man remains in the forest.

Look, you can ‘exit’ from this scene both into a gothic novel (in principle, an entertainment genre, to which you can add a couple of additional meanings if you wish) and into an alchemical story. The exposition will be the same. Let’s suppose we are talking about an alchemical novel. For now, just suppose.

Dark forest is a place between worlds, between everyday life and the other world, between consciousness and unconsciousness, between daytime reality and nighttime. Place of transition, no one’s land. The laws of consciousness are no longer dominant here, but the unconscious does not yet dominate. You can also talk with those who live in the real world and get from them the so-called ‘magic item’, which may help the hero in the future, but it is already difficult to return. And — what is important — you can only travel further with a guide from the unconscious. Carriages from the outside world don’t go there.

The young man is picked up by a strange cart with a mysterious charioteer, after which, having driven some distance through the forest, he finds himself at the gates of an ancient castle. Going inside, he sees an empty room and a table set for dinner. This is the second point of transition if you follow the logic of archetypal storytelling. While Johnny is nothing more than a guest, a stranger, a man who has nothing to do with this castle or its inhabitants. He crossed the border of the unconscious but did not enter into a relationship with it. And here he does what the fairy tales strongly advise against doing to everyone who finds himself in such circumstances — he tries local food.

The game is on. From that moment — not from the first bite, but from this moment, Johnny enters the reality of Dracula, the reality of his castle, and begins to interact with forces that are incomprehensible and beyond his control.

But this is not the most interesting thing.

Let’s skip the moment of the Count`s appearance — here the authors again make a nod to the gothic novel, and the whole situation logically unfolds like an old horror movie, exactly until the moment when several new details appear in the narrative.

The first is the invisible inhabitants of the castle, who write on the glass with inverted letters ‘save us’, and the second is a journey through the castle-labyrinth and the discovery of the map.

Remember I said that this story could be a gothic novel, and the plot is quite like a gothic novel? So, forget it. From now, there is no way to return to this genre. The gothic novel is about controlled horror. It’s about tickling your nerves in a safe environment. In this form, it moved into the cinema and settled there in the form of horror films. It has no other functions and building blocks. Moreover, the symbolic details. The scary house there is always just a scary house, and the worms crawl out of the walking dead because it looks disgusting, and the viewers love the thrill.

But let’s back to Dracula.

Why are the castle-labyrinth and map important? On a metaphorical level, the house represents a person, that Self that a person knows, ‘builds’ throughout life and which belongs to it. A castle-labyrinth in which it is easy to get lost, which does not have a map, indicates a lost person.

And it was not Johnny who was here lost.

Have you ever thought about why, after being sucked dry and killed, the lawyer threw himself from the roof of the castle and was fished out of the river by fishermen, Dracula did not leave him alone and went to the convent after him?

What does this ‘bride’ mean to him, in no use as a food, dagger stares and pursed lips, and even threatens to fight Dracula while walking on the ground? Although it is doubtful he could fight — he could barely keep his feet.

Pride? Wounded amour-propre? A sense of ownership?

No.

In order to understand why Dracula came for Johnny, you need to return to the search for the map and remember where Harker found it.

In the depths of one of the corridors of the castle hung two portraits — the image of the architect who built the house and his wife. About which ones the architect himself refers in his notes as the Moon and the Sun.

It is noteworthy that a woman is the Sun here, while in the alchemical tradition, the solar energy is male, and the lunar energy is female. I think this is part of the inverted reality of the Count`s psyche, where landmarks are confused and roles are changed. For what it’s worth, such landmarks are enough for Harker to find a way out.

But it’s important for us to understand who Johnny is.

He is not a victim of Count Dracula. Rather, from the point of view of the plot, he is his victim, but at the symbolic level, his function is completely different.

Jonathan Harker is a figure from the outside world who comes to the house of a person whose psyche is immersed in chaos, who himself does not know what is in his house, and is able to get lost in it himself, keeps monsters in the basement and feeds on them. This person has lost touch with reality in the literal sense of the word. (For anyone interested, read about literalized metaphors in British literature.) And then someone comes to him, and involuntarily begins to order his chaotic world.

It is no coincidence that during one of his conversations with the Count Johnny hears a crying baby. At the level of the plot, this is a real baby that Dracula carries for his next ‘bride’ imprisoned in the basement of the castle. But at the symbolic level, where all the inhabitants of the castle are parts of the soul of the Count himself, the baby is his split-off child self. Of course, destined for murder. And turned into a child of the night.

What happens next? At the moment when the process of ordering the psyche and contact with the outside world is launched, it is already difficult to stop it. Therefore, Dracula with a manic passion rushes to the convent and tries to regain Johnny. But the function of the guide has been exhausted. Other forces come into play.

Act II

The central scene of what is happening in the convent is undoubtedly the scene of the meeting between Dracula and Agatha. And in their meeting, everything is important, literally every detail. Strikingly, it is harmoniously built both on the plot and on the symbolic level. There is literally no redundant element there.

We will only note the main ones so as not to get bogged down in details.

The first moment — Dracula went out into the outside world, but he cannot just appear there. Until now, his whole life has passed in darkness — both literally and symbolically. We do not know what made him so, but he obviously at some point in his life fell back to animal, primitive instincts. Therefore, in order to leave his world and exist in the real, in the world of consciousness, he needs to transform.

This is the first transformation of the hero that we see — when at the gates of the monastery Dracula is ‘born’ from the skin of a beast.

Having been born, he approaches the gates, which are opened to him by a genuine, not escheat, and fake bride — Agatha. Anima.

And she doesn’t give him any indulgences.

In Jungian literature, it is often mentioned that meeting with an archetype is a difficult and rather painful thing. Especially if the person is not ready for it. And, of course, it is extremely dangerous to project archetypal qualities onto a real person who can represent them for a specific man or woman. But this is in life. And a work of art`s entitled to combine symbolic and real layers in one context.

Agatha treats Dracula harshly, in a semblance of an erotic scene, giving an outlet for his insane disordered sexual and animal energy, in some way, ‘shaking’ him and allowing his inner chaos to restructure and acquire a consistency suitable for connecting with the new and the unknown.

And then the victim, close contact, an attempt to absorb — and the hero falls into his Anima and at the same time goes to a new world on a journey on the water.

Act III

I think that the symbolism of water (amniotic fluid, the water of the unconscious, water as an information and life medium) is not worth explaining. But what is happening with Dracula in the sealed world of the mother’s womb — the ship, in order for no one to have any doubts, called Demeter, needs to be considered more closely.

From this moment, from the moment when his romance with Agatha starts and begins to develop, Dracula’s relations with other people become extremely important. Until now, he had no relationships with people. The ‘brides’ in the castle are nothing more than food and separate parts of his own personality. The first person he established a real relationship with was Johnny. And this — on one of the levels — is another reason why Dracula was so attached to him. You never forget first love.

On Demeter, the Count consecutively comes into contact with several people.

What kind of people they are is very important.

The first is still just a victim. A sailor-helmsman, whom Dracula eats only because he needs a specific quality that the man has. This is how children are friends with those from whom you can ask for a useful thing or write off homework. After the object’s function is completed, the friendship ends.

It’s more difficult with the Grand Duchess. This is a story about memory, desire, and youth, Dracula`s question to himself — can I be liked, and if I can, then why: because my appearance evokes memories of youth or because I am interesting on my own? The dance as part of their interaction indicates an attempt to ‘taste’ the relationship (the Anima looks in-depth with a smile) but turns into a bloodbath.

What is important here is that as the ship sails further into the sea, and the relationship between Dracula and Agatha becomes more and more intimate, the Count begins to get more and more nervous, and his instincts, at first completely tamed for a distant goal, become more and more out of control.

He collected these passengers in advance, calculating how many people he needed to eat in order to safely get to England. And in the first two days, he ate half of them. The tension rises, the anxiety elevates, no one is safe. Including Dracula.

The meeting with Dorabella on deck (I just want to say — ‘date’) is a naive attempt to flirt, a conscious — not a vampire’s natural — desire to please, a short, but independently built with great difficulty dialogue. The portrayal of her possible married life shown to the girl is a gift that is discouraging in its brutality. And the conclusion: no, nothing will come of it. ‘I am a vampire.’

But if you have already gone out into the outside world, do not expect that you will be able to hide. Whatever you think, but you have made your choice.

After the murder of Dorabella, the ship literally ‘boils’, the hidden truth comes to the surface in the literal sense, and Agatha reappears on the scene.

Act IV

Many viewers ask: why did Agatha take command of the ship?

And who else should be the captain of the ship called Demeter under these circumstances?

Falcons give way to turtle doves.

But let’s back to the text.

The confrontation-connection of Dracula and his Anima lasts for some time, after which it logically ends with immersion of both in water.

And here is another interesting point. The first part of the alchemical Work is completed, the hero went through two transformations, began to communicate with living people, and even made some progress, but in order to consolidate the result, the psyche must close off from the world and allow deep processes to take place inside. Therefore, Dracula falls asleep at the bottom for 123 years, and Agatha fell off the map.

In the XXI century, the updated Count discovers that everything has changed, but the hunt for vampires is still relevant, and he himself is quite ready for new achievements.

The trouble is that he has already learned the taste of the genuine, and therefore surrogates are not to his liking.

When I watched the film for the first and second time, I just couldn’t understand why Lucy was needed there. Silly, superficial, narcissistic, she has no interest in anything other than herself and her Instagram images.

‘How could such a girl interest Dracula?!’ viewers around the world yell. And they are right.

How indeed?

Well, she couldn't.

In order to understand what Lucy’s role in this story is, you need to watch the film from the very beginning. Then it becomes clear that Dracula’s relationship with her, their dialogues, interaction, jokes and flirting, her willingness to voluntarily let him drink her blood is a complete parallel, a repetition of the Count’s relationship with Agatha. Having found the experience of deep love within himself and has found a connection with his soul, the hero is desperately trying to reproduce it — and fails.

Review these scenes. How he looks at Lucy, how he walks arm in arm with her, how he tells her what a brave and extraordinary girl she is, how he holds her on his lap, and asks where she wants to go. In fact, he does everything he did with Agatha. But doing all this, he has empty eyes. An indifferent look, mechanical movements, and bitterness at the bottom. He has a young beautiful woman in his arms, she is obviously in love with him, although she hides it, she is ready for anything to make him feel good. And he is bored.

In the eyes turned to Lucy, not the greed of a vampire is — there are darkness, sadness, and endless repetition: ‘Not her, not her, not her.’

But the psyche, especially the psyche of an adult, does not simply abandon its habits, so Dracula repeats with Lucy the entire cycle that has already passed with all his ‘brides’. The catch is that Lucy is not attached to him, but to admiration for her own beauty, and when beauty disappears, their illusory connection falls apart, turning into horror and contempt. But here, too, not everything is so simple.

In the scene in Dracula’s house, where Lucy realizes who she has become, an important parallel arises.

Look. There are four characters in the room. The situation is difficult, tense, the conflict reaches its limit until it is resolved through love. But how is it resolved?

I mean, what does it look like structurally?

It’s very simple. The man and the ‘monster’ stand and watch the kissing of the man and the ‘monster’ next to them.

And then something happens not only with Jack and Lucy, who finally managed to find peace but also with Dracula. This is the highest point from which there is only one path — to catharsis. The fact that Agatha led him there is logical and obvious, but up to this point, he was not ready for it.

And the final scene. When all the pieces are on the board, all conflicts are realized and all the ghosts are brought to light, there are no enemies left. Except for himself. Except for that, which he didn’t allow himself to do. Except for the fear of being yourself.

The ending of this film is the pinnacle of the alchemical process. Transformation. At the level of the plot, physical death, freeing a five-hundred-year-old vampire and a woman who loved him for many years. And at the symbolic level — going beyond one’s own limits and gaining integrity.

Therefore, in the final, we see the sun. The sun is a symbol of a purified consciousness, transformed and fully realized itself.

Epilogue

For those to whom the interpretation that I have presented here seems strange or stretch, I will separately note the following. Any interpretation is, to one degree or another, a figment of the imagination of the viewer or reader, although, unlike postmodern literary scholars, I believe that there are right and wrong interpretations. And the correct interpretation is not at all what the author wanted to say. This is what the story wanted to say. Often they are not the same thing.

And the second, closely related to the first: no, I do not think that S. Moffat and M. Gatiss put such meaning in their story. I think that European culture, with its multi-layered nature and the ability to reflect on complex experiences through symbolic stories, is that powerful semantic field that generates such tales regardless of the wishes of screenwriters and writers. And that seems wonderful to me.

[arcticdementor]

Hindsight may very well be 20/20, but with that caveat out of the way, some events truly come across as historical in their importance even as they play out in realtime. We might not know what the results will be, but we can feel that something quite big is happening. Watching the fall of the Berlin wall was one such moment in recent history, and watching the twin towers fall was another one.

The retreat from Afghanistan should not have made the list, or least not the top of it. Yet, it has clearly already made its way there, being widely seen as something truly momentous by most if not all the people observing it. The reason it shouldn’t have had those same connotations as the fall of the Berlin wall is because it was not only planned in advance and decided upon by the 45th president, not the 46th, but because almost everyone at this point wished for the war to just end. But it is how it has ended that has really thrown back the curtain and shown the world the rot festering beneath. The Soviet Union was dying in 1989, when it completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan. It still managed to do so in an orderly fashion, with a symbolic column of russian APCs crossing the bridge over to Uzbekistan. The leader of the war effort, one Colonel-General Gromov, symbolically rode in the very last BTR, and then proclaimed to the gathered journalists that there wasn’t a single russian soldier behind his back.

The American withdrawal, by contrast, is a grotesque spectacle, laid bare to the eyes of the world in realtime thanks to the wonders of modern technology. The Soviet attempt at braving the graveyard of empires could, if one was charitably inclined, at least be construed as some form of tragedy (”we tried to help, but in the end, we accomplished nothing”), and the russians did their best to make the entire thing appear somewhat dignified and solemn. Thirty years later, the scene is closer to a black form of comedy. The American consulate was evacuated by helicopter, about one month after president Biden referred to just such an evacuation from Saigon as an example of how Afghanistan and Vietnam were not comparable. The entire government collapsed within a matter of hours, not months. Throngs of people gathered around the airports, desperate to escape; American authorities had no more guidance to offer american citizens stuck in Afghanistan than to ”shelter in place” and then presumably ask the Taliban for a visa once regular flight traffic resumes. Desperate people even clung to the airframes of departing cargo planes before falling to their deaths, like a grim re-enactment of frozen and starving german soldiers trying to escape by clinging to the last planes leaving Stalingrad.

…

There may be a deeper aspect to this than a lot of people might perceive at present. On the level of pure geopolitics, the utterly embarrassing debacle of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan can only serve to make China more bold in any future confrontation over Taiwan. The American eagle is faltering, and its rivals will not sit idly by for long. But this is probably the lesser of the big consequences of Afghanistan. There is another, much more significant implication of the collapse of the American project here, one with much more acute bearing on the immediate future of American society itself. To understand why, it’s useful to reflect on a certain political and historical point made by Carl Schmitt in his by now nearly hundred year old essay, whose english name is often rendered as The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. The essay is well worth a read in full today, and the reader might be surprised (or maybe not) at how relevant many of the descriptions of the ongoing political crisis in 1923 may seem to us today, nearly a hundred years later. The most relevant passage, however, deserves to be quoted in full:

”In the history of political ideas, there are epochs of great energy and times becalmed, times of motionless status quo. Thus the epoch of monarchy is at an end when a sense of the principle of kingship, of honor, has been lost, if bourgeois kings appear who seek to prove their usefulness and utility instead of their devotion and honor. The external apparatus of monarchical institutions can remain standing very much longer after that. But in spite of it monarchy’s hour has tolled. The convictions inherent in this and no other institution then appear antiquated; practical justifications for it will not be lacking, but it is only an empirical question whether men or organizations come forward who can prove themselves just as useful or even more so than these kings and through this simple fact brush aside monarchy.”

What Schmitt is saying here is very important, and it might very well end up being the true cost of the Afghanistan debacle. Every ruling class throughout history advances various claims about its own legitimacy, without which a stable political order is impossible. Legitimating claims can take many different forms and may change over time, but once they become exhausted or lose their credibility, that is pretty much it.

…

What Schmitt is saying is that when the legitimating claim for a particular form of elite is used up, when people no longer believe in the concepts or claims that underpin a particular system or claim to rule, the extinction of that particular elite becomes a foregone conclusion. Once Napoleon came along, it became increasingly impossible to actually believe (or at least effect a suspension of disbelief) that kings were born to rule and had a right to rule. As such, the only argument kings were left with in order to be tolerated by their own subjects became practical in nature: look at how useful this king is, look at how well his administration runs, look at how much stuff you’re getting out of letting him sit on the throne. But once you are merely left with practical arguments of that kind, as Schmitt rightly points out, your replacement becomes a question of simple empiricism. The moment someone more useful is found – like, say, a president – out you go, never to return. The replacement of Louis XVI with a republic was a world-shattering event. The fall of his nephew, Louis Philippe I, in favor of another republic, was a mere formality by comparison. By the time of his fall, not even Louis Philippe himself believed in kings being some sort of semi-divine beings. Certainly almost none of his subjects did.

…

Moreover, on a more practical level, the war in Afghanistan became another sort of crucible. In very real terms, Afghanistan turned into a testbed for every single innovation in technocratic PMC governance, and each innovation was sold as the next big thing that would make previous, profane understandings of politics obsolete. In Afghanistan ”big data” and the utilization of ever expanding sets of technical and statistical metrics was allowed to topple old stodgy ideas of dead white thinkers such as Sun Tzu or Machiavelli, as ”modern” or ”scientific” approaches to war could have little to learn from the primitive insights of a pre-rational order. In Afghanistan, military sociology in the form of Human Terrain Teams and other innovative creations were unleashed to bring order to chaos. Here, the full force of the entire NGO world, the brightest minds of that international government-in-waiting without a people to be beholden to, were given a playground with nearly infinite resources at their disposal. There was so much money sloshing around at the fingertips of these educated technocrats that it became nearly impossible to spend it all fast enough; they simply took all of those countless billions of dollars straight from the hands of ordinary americans, because they believed they had a right to do so.

…

Put plainly: managers, through the power of managerialism, were once believed to be able to mobilize science and reason and progress to accomplish what everyone else could not, and so only they could secure a just and functional society for their subjects, just as only the rightful kings of yore could count on Providence and God to do the same thing. At their core, both of these claims are truly metaphysical, because all claims to legitimate rulership are metaphysical. It is when that metaphysical power of persuasion is lost that kings or socialists become ”bourgeois”, in Schmitt’s terms. They have to desperately turn toward providing proof, because the genuine belief is gone. But once a spouse starts demanding that the other spouse constantly prove that he or she hasn’t been cheating, the marriage is already over, and the divorce is merely a matter of time, if you’ll pardon the metaphor.

I suspect we are currently witnessing the catastrophic end of this metaphysical power of legitimacy that has shielded the managerial ruling class for decades. Anyone even briefly familiar with the historical record knows just how much of a Pandora’s box such a loss of legitimacy represents. The signs have obviously been multiplying over many years, but it is only now that the picture is becoming clear to everyone. When Michael Gove said ”I think the people in this country have had enough of experts” in a debate about the merits of Brexit, he probably traced the contours of something much bigger than anyone really knew at the time. Back then, the acute phase of the delegitimization of the managerial class was only just beginning. Now, with Afghanistan, it is impossible to miss.

It is not just that the elite class is incompetent – even kings could be incompetent without undermining belief in monarchy as a system – it is that they are so grossly, spectacularly incompetent that they walk around among us as living rebuttals of meritocracy itself. It is that their application of managerial logic to whatever field they get their grubby mitts on – from homelessness in California to industrial policy to running a war – makes that thing ten times more expensive and a hundred times more dysfunctional. To make the situation worse, the current elites seem almost serene in their willful destruction of the very fields they rely on for legitimacy. When the ”experts” go out of their way to write public letters about how covid supposedly only infects people who hold demonstrations in support of ”structural white supremacy”, while saying that Black Lives Matter demonstrations pose no risk of spreading the virus further, this amounts to the farmer gleefully salting his own fields to make sure nothing can grow there in the future. How can anyone expect the putative peasants of our social order to ”trust the science”, when the elites themselves are going out of their way, against all reason and the tenets of basic self-preservation, to make such a belief completely impossible even for those who really, genuinely, still want to believe?

…

I find it very likely that most future historians will put the date of the real beginning of the collapse of the current political and geopolitical order right here, right now, at the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Just as with any other big historical process, however, many others will point out that the seeds of the collapse were sown much farther back, and that a case can be made for several other dates, or perhaps no specific date at all. This is how we modern people look at the fall of the french ancien regime, after all. Still, it is quite obvious that the epoch of the liberal technocrat is now over. The bell has well and truly tolled for mankind’s belief in their ability to do anything else than enrich themselves and ruin things for everyone else.

How long it will take for their institutions to disappear, or before they end up toppled by popular discontent and revolution, no one can know. But at this point, I think most people on some level now understand that it really is only a matter of time.

[occultwhores]

The Links between the Archetypal Feminine and Altered States of Consciousness.

Femtheogens: The Synergy of Sacred Spheres.

Femtheogens is a compound word made up of “feminine” and “entheogens.” Entheogens is yet another compound word made up from “entheo” and “genesis” that refers to the mystical and sacred properties of the psychedelic experience. Femtheogens, through its roots in “entheogens,” refers to the feminized sacredness of the experiences such substances can induce. Femtheogens is as much a word, as it is a concept. It refers to the capacity of the entheogenic experience to revive the broken sacred feminine and filter its essence through to us. This capacity is enhanced by the strong connections between the archetypal feminine and the entheogenic experience. The two share qualities that can heal, transform, and support the expansion of our consciousness. These qualities are also major points of suppression for both, as they run counter to our western mindset and emergent social paradigms.

Femtheogenic consciousness operates in the spheres of oneness. This oneness is a spiritual connection that reveals the reflections we emit to each other. We are all mirrors of our shared humanity, and we all hold each other within ourselves. This oneness is not only a metaphysical idea. It is the oneness that chaos theorists have called the butterfly effect, where a butterfly flaps its wings on one continent and causes a hurricane, weeks later, on another continent. This is the oneness that reveals itself in the intricate dance of cause and effect. It is the oneness of quantum physics and the oneness described by Rupert Sheldrake’s idea of morphic resonance. The feminine consciousness is by nature aware that everything is connected. This is a knowledge the feminine has always carried in her body’s centers of creation, where all life emerges and regenerates from. Similarly, in the infinite realms of entheogenic channels, we can witness the threads of our interconnectedness and interdependence. Here we encounter the pulsating presence of Indra’s net and meet the potential of reawakening our links with each other, nature, the divine, and ultimately ourselves. The invisible space of singularity that femtheogenic consciousness reveals us to contains Eros at its core. To recognize its presence is to awaken to the most powerful force in the universe.

The next femtheogenic consciousness link relates to chaos. We have battled for generations to tame chaos because we have perceived it to be one of our greatest survival threats. It hasn’t always been like that, the early Gnostics and Alchemists recognized chaos as a vital element of the creative process of transformation. Today we relate to chaos as a state of disintegration, rather than a stage of transformation. We have failed to acknowledge the inherent order it contains because its nature is creative rather than linear; it is not to be imposed, it is to emerge. In its field reside the rhythms of matter and the deeper wisdom of the creative process. For our ancestors the Goddess was linked with nature. Nature held the archetypes of the great mother on one end, seeming to give continually in a limitless way, and the devouring mother on the other end, turning ruthless and unreserved. As our early ancestors gradually viewed nature as a chaotic force that needed to be controlled, they reflected that onto the feminine, installing our unconscious collective link between the Feminine and chaos. But the archetypal feminine, in its dynamic aspect, has a creative link with chaos, and that is a link with the transformative and regenerative aspects of chaos. Entheogenic journeys embrace chaos and its transformative potential and teach us it is a valued stage in our unfolding process of individuation. During a deep entheogenic journey we are taken apart and then put back together. Chaos gives birth to a new order that is of greater complexity than before, a step further on our evolutionary journey. A big part of what drove our connection with nature, the Goddess, and entheogens underground is our collective difficulty to be with chaos, and femtheogenic consciousness holds the potential of reviving that relationship in a meaningful way.

The next femtheogenic consciousness link is boundary-dissolving experiences. Our societies are based on divisive boundaries that maintain the illusion of our separateness, and the ultimate and most dreaded boundary to cross is the dissolution of the ego. The ego has been a big part of our evolution, and as a concept in itself it can have many useful functions. What is dysfunctional is our need to hold on to it. The ego needs to undergo many deaths if we are to transform into a more authentic version of ourselves. We need to peel through the layers to reach through to the core of who we really are. The essence of feminine consciousness is based on the elementary feminine experience of boundary dissolution, motherhood, where the ‘Other’ is contained within oneself. That symbiotic bond between mother and offspring is not merely a physical one, as it extends way beyond the physical birthing process. Entheogenic experiences are also, by their very nature, based on the dissolution of boundaries on various levels. In these realms, the divisive lines between us and Other, conscious and unconscious, masculine and feminine, past, present, and future, dissolve, and that is the most threatening aspect of entheogenic consciousness for both individuals and the general status quo. Both the Great Goddess and entheogenic journeys deliver us to a point where in order to evolve, we need to transcend our boundaries, and release ourselves from the ego-driven mirage of our delicate reality.

The next femtheogenic link relates to the vital cycles of life, death, and rebirth. The most potent entheogenic experiences that people report the greatest and most profound changes from are journeys within a supportive set and setting, unfolding into the ultimate spiritual experience of ego-death. Femtheogenic consciousness allows us to flee our ego, if only for a second, and receive the wisdom that necessitates and even welcomes death.

By Maria Papaspyrou

[spookypetrine]

Bewitching the Elements: Earth

I have been away for a while and I am very sorry I had to move home and start classes. As I am writing this class has ended and I am looking for jobs. In between applying for jobs and tweaking my resume and cover letter I am also reading 'Bewitching the Elements' by Gabriela Herstik. If you look for this at your local book of metaphysical store it looks like this:

I have been working through the chapters and although long she encompasses a lot of aspects of each element from the crystals, to the zodiac, to tarot cards. It's super informative and I do suggest it for any baby witches out there starting on their journey into element work.

The first chapter is about the earth and using several techniques for ground oneself using this element. Also at the end of each chapter are questions to help you connect more with the subjects and integrate them more into your practice. I will be posting and answering each set of questions here so if you like the questions or want more info to shoot me a like or a message.

In what areas of my life do I feel supported and safe?

In March of this year after a grueling stay in the hospital with bacterial meningitis and sepsis in my spine and brain lining my 'friends' at the time kicked me out of their house (way to kick a girl when she's down). So I begrudgingly came home and my parents took me in. I was appreciative, but fitting what was a 3 story apartment into a room the size of a queen-size bed was a challenge. They have supported me and love me while I took classes and now through my job search (fingers crossed). They have been a treasure and I am so glad.

Now in my craft, my support system is my best friend of 7 years is Aubrey. She is my soulmate I am sure because we are the same person. She started me on this path and I have been all the better for it thanks to her. We share so many things in our practice and resonate the same energy so much so that we share the same deity and my patron visits her on occasion. We are thicker than thieves and without her, I would not be able to survive. My depression would have taken me out long ago if it hadn't been for her. She's the kitchen witch to my green witch and I wouldn't have it any other way.

What does it mean for me to feel grounded?

So like most when I think of being grounded I imagine being barefoot in nature celebrating the elements. However, in this sense grounding is not an adjective it's a verb and active practice. To ground to me is to silence the soul and let it be once with nature. No distractions, just you and nature resonating in harmony with the earth mother. Actively grounding is a consuming practice for most, but so rewarding once it is achieved.

What does my body need to be healthy and happy at this time?

Currently, my body needs water, fruits, and vegetables. It needs meditation and more magic outside of the cramped room I now inhabit. My soul in conjunction with my body needs love and attention from me. Following my self-care routine and body care routine to make me feel better about my appearance. I am a bigger girl and being desirable has held me back for a long time, but now I just appreciate and forgive myself and go about my life. I am working to change this, but it is a slow process and in the meantime, I still live in this body so I need to work hard to make it better.

In what areas of my life do I have healthy boundaries?

Thanks to covid I have become more self-aware of the emotional issues I have and dealing with them. I have learned to put up boundaries on physical contact with people and set hard boundaries with others. If someone crossed those boundaries on purpose or ridiculed me for them they were immediately cut off. Never let someone make you feel uncomfortable or weird for having a boundary with them. If they don't respect your limits then they don't respect you and don't deserve your time or energy.

What areas of my life could use more compassionate boundaries?

So for this question, I am turning the compassion to myself which I don't often do. The boundaries I need to set for myself are ones on who I give my time and energy too. Time and time again I go out of my way and comfort zone to help and appease others at my own detriment. I need to start setting higher standards of the people in my life and who I spend my time with. Having compassion and caring about them does not mean hurting myself for them in any way including financially, physically, or emotionally.

What does abundance mean to me? How can I channel this Queen of Pentacles energy?

Abundance to me is having something to or near excess. Having enough of something for myself I can now comfortably share it with others as well. Now to embody the Queen of Pentacles energy I would definitely need to focus on growing and flourishing also taking part in more sensual activities cause as we know she is the Queen of Abundance. She fills your cup till it runneth over with gifts from the universe and for loving yourself and bring yourself the finer things. To thank her and embody this I need to perform more self-loving rituals in my everyday routine to show her my gratitude for all she has done in my life.

What am I looking to manifest in this phase of my life?

In this phase of my life, I am manifesting a successful and rewarding career that allows me to get my independence back. I have lost a lot in the past four years from my fiance passing in 2018, wrecking my car in 2019, my job in 2020, and my home in 2021. These years have not been kind and have made me suffer greatly and I feel I need to just rebuild. I need to manifest a successful and powerful future that allows me to become exactly who I need to be.

Well if you read this or stuck around till the end for any reason thank you. Typing these is like therapy for me and if you have any questions feel free to message me. I type these in hopes that my brutal honest with myself can help strangers on the internet be more honest with themselves. Because if you can be honest with yourself you can be honest with others. You owe yourself honesty in all forms even if it hurts and the techniques in this book can help you find your truth. Thank you for reading and also would any of you be interested in me posting my personal crystals and some info about them as well? If so drop a like or something.

Thank you,

Bree

[skvaderarts]

Apocrypha Chapter Fourteen: Simplicity

Masterlist can be found Here! Thanks!

Chapter Fourteen: Simplicity

Note: I'd love to know what you all think of the beach ark so far! I'm having a blast writing it, so I hope you've enjoyed it so far!

(-~-)

A hush fell over the quaint seaside sitting area that the pair found themselves under as they resigned themselves to silence, their minds and hearts heavy from the matter at hand. As the salty mist provided by the bay coated the pair in much needed moisture to help combat the sun's blistering rays, a gentle breeze picked up and shook the ancient tree they sat under. There was a certain level of peace and privacy that their surroundings provided them that they would be hard pressed to locate elsewhere, especially considering their proximity to the water. So they took the opportunity to think and clear their heads, safe from the prying eyes of the world around them.

Vergil stood with his back against the tree, his arms wrapped around himself as he pondered his next move. He was not fond of making promises that he couldn't keep, and as such, made a point not to do so. But in truth, he had no idea where to start looking for Vivienne. That trail had gone cold over two decades prior. He actually had more of an idea where Nero's mother might be than anything else, and even that was a longshot. The eldest Son of Sparda would need more information to work off of than he currently possessed if he hoped to actually achieve something worth wild.

This was going to be quite the undertaking.

Over on the bench just a yard or so away, V sat with his elbows against the tops of his thighs, his chin pressed into his cupped palms and he studied the ground in silence. He was far from used to being at such a profound loss for words. With his mastery of the english language notwithstanding, V was proficient in the art of speech despite his antisocial tendencies. So to have absolutely no idea what to say for several minutes on end was rather disconcerting to the young summoner. But despite that, he was determined to do something about that. He just had to sift through the murky pool in his mind and locate the particular topic he wished to discuss with his wayward father. That was proving to be quite the challenge however. And so he failed to progress any further.

The lack of diction between them dragged on for several agonizing minutes before one of them finally found the words to express anything close to what they were thinking about. If there was one thing they shared in that moment, it was a distinct lack of knowledge as to where to start the conversation they both knew they needed to have. V's mother's whereabouts were indeed important, but there was another matter they needed to get to the core of.

"You've grown quite again," Vergil said with an inaudible sigh, now sure that this might be one of the only aspects of his son's personality that caused him irritation. Testing the waters with his eldest child was not something he desired to do, but he was going to do so regardless. " Clearly you have something more you wish to discuss. I figured as much when I agreed to speak with you on these matters. Sugarcoating your intentions will get you nowhere. And I suggest you make haste. I suspect we will soon be missed."

V leaned in further towards the ground before taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. He exhaled slowly, opening his eyes with the same lack of urgency he his respiratory process possessed. A part of him had waited a lifetime to ask Vergil this, but he'd never been able to make his vocal cords produce the necessary sounds required to say what needed to be said. Perhaps a part of him was worried that Vergil might be insulted? That he might leave him to his devices again? It was a strange hell that V inhabited where he wanted as little involvement with his father as possible, while simultaneously wanting nothing more than to speak with him and then harboring the desire to make him suffer as he had made him suffer in tandem with those same feelings. It boiled down to a situation where he had no idea what emotions and impulses to actually act on, it the metaphysical war of attrition wagering within him kept him at a stalemate that he had a difficult time bypassing. There were times when his entire existence felt like a cruel joke, and this was one of them.

"... Do you have any idea what it's like to wait for someone to return every day for your entire life only to finally encounter them and immediately be tossed aside?" For perhaps the first time ever, V made direct eye contact with Vergil as he spoke to him. There was a certain fire that flickered in his eyes, indicating to Vergil that he was being quite serious." I am unsure as to whether or not I possess the capacity to forgive something like that, but a part of me attempts to every time that I am near you. I have yet to succeed. And I have no meaningful answer as to why that is. Maybe you can… enlighten me."

The eldest Son of Sparda had to do a mental doubletake to assess whether or not he was talking to his normally non confrontational offspring. To be entirely honest, that was the sort of blunt, no nonsense response that he expected to receive from his youngest child. Being told by V that he wasn't sure he could ever forgive him was as unexpected as it was brutal and crushing, and he wasn't entirely surprised or sure as to why that cut him so deeply. He had assumed as much in the case of both of his sons. But when it came to his classically inclined child, nothing was ever simple, not least his feelings towards him. V had been the subject or motivation behind many of his shortcomings over the last few decades, but that was to no fault of his own. He had been an autonomous being, going about his own life and perseverance in spite of his own struggles. Vergil would never sink low enough to pin the blame on him for his own decisions. But he would be lying if he said he didn't contribute to Vergil's motivation to do some of the foolish things he had done. At this point, he could only hope that V was still willing to give him the chance to not be the man he already assumed he was. 

He had to show him that he was not beyond redemption. 

But how to do that when he had been largely responsible for so much of the evil and pain inflicted upon him over the years? Where to start?

Vergil allowed his arms to fall back down against his sides, his posture shifting as he stepped away from the tree and migrated over to the opposite end of the bench where the young summoner currently sat. There couldn't have been more than five feet between them, a fact that V seemed to silently note as he looked down towards the ground in an effort to avoid the frustration  and anxiety that was threatening to penetrate the very core of his being. He looked relatively calm and collected on the outside, but he was practically screaming on the inside. And Vergil could tell that just by looking at him, a fact that V was aware of but was unable to reconcile. He both loved and hated this facet of his father's personality. Vergil was very good at reading him. Maybe too much for his own good.

"You have no incentive to do so," Vergil said quietly, his voice trailing off as he made an effort to not betray the internal conflict surging within him. He suddenly felt an immense desire to kill something. He would have to find something to occupy his time this evening." Let me give you one. I owe that to both of you, I suppose."

As he spoke, Vergil's gaze traveled to the side slightly. The distant look in his eyes told V everything he needed to know in regards to who he was referring to. The younger white haired descendant of the Dark Knight Sparda leaned in and locked eyes with his father in an attempt to drive his point home. There would be no mistaking his intentions.

"Then prove that to me. I believe in the actions of those around me, not the empty promises they fail to keep" V said firmly, his temperament unwavering and his gaze unflinching. For a brief moment, Vergil knew what it was like for other people when they spoke to him. It was like looking in a mirror, and he wasn't sure he liked what he saw there; what he'd left there. V's gaze cut through him like a plasma cutter through soft steel, never relenting. He knew definitively that this was the only chance V was capable of giving him, and that it was a leap of faith that he didn't make lightly. His son was choosing to take him at his word; to trust him unconditionally. That was not something he could just push aside and hope to achieve at his leisure. Whatever V asked of him was now a priority.

"Very well, then. Tell me what you want from me. What are you asking me to do?" Vergil said, returning the intensity that V was inadvertently sending him. There was no hostility present in their exchange, only the pain that came from the vulnerability and trust they were attempting to convey to one another.

For a moment, V looked away, blinking heavily as if flinching away from what it was he wished to say. After a moment of looking idly at the traffic to the left side of them, a sad, almost pained smile crossed his face. It was a fleeting and fragile thing, nearly imperceptible and small. But it carried the weight of a lifetime of suffering with it. Vergil couldn't help but wonder what weighed so heavily upon V's consciousness; what skellingtons slumbered in the dark recesses of his mind. Anyone who looked him in the eyes could see the truth in the pain that lingered in them. Perhaps that was why he avoided eye contact with others. After all, the eyes were the windows to the soul. And the soul that Vergil caught a glimpse of everytime he looked into them was one that had suffered enough in the short time that it had existed to last a lifetime. He would do what he could to mend that. That was what he was supposed to do. And that's what his father would have done if their positions were switched. He would honor the example set before him and rectify the mistakes of his past, even if he was just doing so in the smallest of ways.

"Great things are done when men and mountains meet." 

Their favorite poet had said that once. How right he had been.

"... I want the same thing now that I've wanted from you my entire life," V locked eyes with him again, the green orbs now slightly glossier than they had been mere moments ago. He had lost none of his intensity, something he shared with both of his parents," I just want you to care that I exist. I think Nero would appreciate that as well. Don't push us aside. As it stands, you're the only parent we have. Treat us like we matter to you. I've never experienced that, and I'm willing to bet that Nero hasn't either. Can you do that?"

Vergil nodded so slightly that it was almost totally missable, but V picked up upon it. Although brief in the grand scheme of things, he and Dante had known the love of their parents and had spent meaningful time with them. But be it intentionally or not, he had deprived both of his sons the care and attention they deserved from him. He could not speak for the motivations both of their mothers had possessed when they had chosen to remove themselves from their lives, but he could speak for himself. And he could admit that he should have been there. A part of him could care less if he'd known that Nero existed or not. Those were precious moments that he would never get to experience with them. He couldn't get them back, but he could stop squandering the opportunity that he currently possessed.

"Yes. Yes, I could. "How fortunate that the one thing V seemed to want from him was the one thing he had already planned to give him." I will speak with Nero. We have much to discuss. In the meantime, we should join the others. Dante will soon devize some convoluted plan to disturb us if we do not. There are too many witnesses for me to enact a proper revenge plot if he does so, and I have no plans to forfeit victory to him."

V nodded. Vergil was more than likely correct. He would go with him to join the others. His butt was starting to get sore from sitting on the slats on the bench anyway.

(-~-)

A wave of disbelief passed over the girls as Kyrie stood before them. Patty gaped, her hands clasped together and pulled tightly against her chest as she bobbed up and down in place. The young blond was absolutely thrilled to death by what they had just accomplished. Nico stood next to her, shaking her head in quiet disbelief. A part of her was admittedly irritated that she didn't have some sort of camera that she could use to document this priceless moment for all eternity, but she was more than a little bit sure that Kyrie was happy that wasn't the case. There could be no proof that she had ever done this. Rumors were enough.

Lady and Trish were just as shocked as their cohorts, but Trish just stared in disbelief and shock while Lady cackled like an immature schoolgirl. They were so angry that they hadn't dragged Nero along for this little shopping trip. But, to be fair, there was no way that they would have gotten Kyrie into such a sexy little number with him present. The poor girl already looked like she was going to drop dead from shock and anxiety just standing in the store dressing room.

"Well… h-how do I l-look everyone? Do I look okay?" She asked meekly, too embarrassed and put off by all the staring eyes to really know how to process their feedback. She wasn't accustomed to wearing a swimsuit, let alone a halter top styled one. Sparda above, she had to be out of her mind for agreeing to do this.

"You have to wear that to the beach, Kyrie," Lady said, tipping her sunglasses. The young brunette looked absolutely adorable in the simple blue and white polka dot swimsuit, and they would die before they missed the opportunity to knock the wind and the willpower out of Nero's body. Quite possibly his legs, too. He would drop dead at the sight of her.

"You look adorable. Lady is right." Trish said, giving her a gentle pat on the shoulder. She could tell that the young songstress needed reassurance. She wasn't as confident as them when it came to these sorts of things. A surefire side effect of her upbringing and environment. While things were becoming more modern and less stuffy in Fortuna, it was a slow battle that would take years to see meaningful progress. Everyone was too stuck in their ways for immediate change. 

Kyrie blushed harder. She wasn't used to being in anything that wasn't a long sleeve. She knew that how she was reacting was probably silly, but she simply couldn't help herself. As she considered the kind words of her companions, Patty pulled the ponytail holder off of her own hair and allowed her hair to fall down against her shoulders and back. She then pulled Kyrie's hair up into a messy bun and bound it into place, stepping back to admire her work. The girls all giggled like teenage cheerleaders in a cheesy sitcom and ushered the young brunette over to a mirror that was near to them, eager to show her just how cute she looked in the outfit they had picked out for her. She took a moment to adjust the ruffle one piece bathing suite and fix her hair slightly before putting on a brave face and turning back towards her friends. She trusted their judgement. They would never do something unbecoming to her. It wasn't in them.

"Do… Do you really think I look good in this?" She asked earnestly, allowing her hands to fall down against her sides before taking a deep breath. Kyrie had to admit that a part of her did in fact find the article of clothing they'd picked out for her adorable, but she wasn't sure if it was for her. It seemed like something that would look better on any of the other girls she was with. After all, wasn't she too… plain for something like this? She didn't have patty's golden blonde hair, Lady's stunning heterochromia, or Trish's… well, everything. And Then there was Nico. As far as she was concerned, everything about her meant that something like this was better suited for her. She had tattoos after all. She wasn't bashful about displaying her art to the world around her. Kyrie wasn't sure if she fit into this kind of group or this kind of outfit, even if Nero never shut up about how wonderful and lovely she was. She just didn't know what all these beautiful people saw in her.

The group standing before her seemed to clue into her apprehension. Nico wrapped her arms around her shoulders, squeezing her tightly. "Now you listen here, lil missy. You're just as cute as the rest of us, and don't ya dare think otherwise!"

Patty planted her hands on her hips firmly, nodding in approval. Her face was as serious as it was compassionate. "I agree with Nico, Kyrie! You're wonderful! Why do you think we love to hang out with you so much, you silly nilly? We all see how pretty you are. Every single one of us. There's different types of pretty, you know? Don't compare yourself to us. Just be you, Kyrie! You're great already!"

Kyrie blinked away the moisture that had begun to form in her large brown doe eyes, flustered by the compliments and kindness she was being showered in. Her friends were right! She was pretty, and so was the outfit they had picked out for her! She was going to show it to Nero, or die trying. With a determined nod, she smiled, putting on a brave face. She was going to have fun on this vacation, and no one was going to stop her. And if they did, she had a posse comprised of the toughest girls around to back her up. It was going to be okay.

"You know what… your right! I do look pretty," Kyrie beamed brightly, her smile returning as she nodded in conformation," Let's buy it. I can't wait to show it to Nero and see what he thinks!"

The girls nodded and ushered her towards the counter before she could come to her senses. They were positive they couldn't talk her into this a second time, so there was no room for error. They had to get a receipt in their hands before she snapped out of whatever spell she had just fallen under, and get her outside in the sand. Time was of the essence.

(-~-)

I hope you all enjoyed this continuation of what was going on in the last chapter! Kyrie needed a little pick me up with other girls, damn it! She never gets to feel pretty XD Stay safe out there, and I'll see you on Friday! I look forward to reading your thoughts on things so far! You're all wonderful!

[olivedoesmagic]

Journal 17: Darkness My Sorrow [Chuuya Character Song]

Journal 17: Darkness My Sorrow [Chuuya Character Song]

So there's this app called Discord which is essentially just chatrooms for people who all like the same stuff. I’ve mentioned it briefly. Steller.Chaos is also someone who’ve I’ve mentioned before. He gives lessons on his “army of wax” discord server and we’re encouraged to take notes and share them. I don’t have a source for these because it was all centered around his (Leo’s) lecture. Leo is Steller.Chaos. So the following entry is basically just my notes from the reality shifting lecture, nothing fancy and all over the place almost word for word some of it, and the rest of it paraphrased. I hope it serves somebody well. It’s heavily reality shifting focused. -Olive

Realms and Dimensions are different.

In order to understand a dimension you have to understand how big a universe is. A universe is giant. The scales are huge. We aren’t even able to be seen on microscopes when you get to the spects of it. That’s why reality shifting is strict, and you have to be careful because you are going beyond it. There are things we haven’t even begun to touch on or discover in our own universe. Going beyond it. Regarding Dimensions, dimensions are in a universe’s reality that have a specific set, that have a set reality. Each one has its own set, it’s own reality.  Dimensions are so big and so vast it’s hard to pinpoint the exact definition. 

The difference between a dimension and a realm, is that a realm is a place that exists in a dimension and is different- it’s a place that you go to. The astral realm is going to be different in a different dimension that you go to. A dimension is place with aspects with features, situations, form and space. It’s measurable to form and stant. It can be measured essentially. A dimension essentially is existence itself. It’s definable in some sort of way. Realities are things as they exist in their idea, or as they be. Basically the state of existence. The reason why permanently shifting is not possible, realities differ depending on where you’re at. What is real for you is not going to be malleable like that. What is real in your reality is how it runs. This is why everything is not a simulation. All those “glitches” and “shit” are realities “crossing”, realities can cross. 

Then you come to realms. Realms are states in existence, that are present in dimensions. Kind of like dimensions dumbed down. Like the physical realm, the astral realm, and metaphysical realm whatever. They can sort of overlap with each other. The metaphysical realm is around us all the time it’s not exactly something separate from us. Theirs also different types of realms, such as the fae realm. The fae realm, is a realm that is metaphysical that can be physical if they allow you to see it, it is a weird cross inbetween it is a FAE realm, the fae are very interesting beings. Theirs lots of different realms because realms are also different versions of reality, like in the astral realm, lots of what is possible there is not possible in the physical. 

Then there are “waiting rooms” waiting rooms are places that exist in between realms and dimensions that exist between dimensions and all places in between. Some doors can lead to other dimensions and realms. The in between essentially. They are also different depending on where you go. They could even be “glitching” so to speak. Waiting rooms are places in between and you go there it’s just passing through like a lobby. It’s like a loading screen in a video game. 

Then there are pocket dimensions. Pocket Dimensions are tiny dimensions created in little pockets in dimensions. When you create pocket dimensions you are creating a pocket in a big dimensions. You can create these and put whatever you like there. You can visit them if you want to. But it goes on a scale. Regarding the sheer intensity of these places, theres pocket dimensions, there is waiting rooms, there are dimensions, realms, universes, realities, then the multiverse. Multiverse is the largest because it's the place of realities. 

Fictionalized reality is organized into different sections. For every action committed there's another action in another reality counteracted. So something being fictionalized is one of these actions thus them being nonfiction is a counteraction. Don’t discredit the work of authors they create the story, but the world they create works beyond them essentially? Yes this means theirs a reality where both you and I are fictional.

 There are infinite possibilities. Regarding all of this. Scripting is just writing down manifestation. Scripting is what you do to manifest, you're just writing it down. Where the word comes from is when theatre teachers put their own twist on a script for a play. The way it started being used in reality shifting is you shifting your own reality. 

When first shifting let the multiverse take you somewhere. It’s a lot easier, takes the stress off.  It’s the best idea. You can’t control the realities you visit, if you want that, have a dream reality you visit while dreaming and it will just stay there and you can keep visiting in your dreams.

There are universes that are rogue. That can’t be visited and can’t be journeyed to. The only ones that know whats going on there, are beings put in charge there.

And that’s where my notes end. I hope this genuinely helped someone it’s all kind of basic stuff. It’s based off a lecture by Steller.Chaos via his discord server which as of the writing here you can find linked via his tick tock account. Tick tock and discord will one day be dated but as of the writing they’re the most modern thing out there. I won’t pretend I’ve been reality shifting long. I don’t have the amount of knowledge that Steller does. That’s why I always point to him regarding where to look for more info.

But I am learning as I gauge this field. I’m learning how to shift, what to learn as I do, and more. Shifting will never truly be something unique to me, and it will always provide itself as an escape for others, but be that as it may it is something which I wish to shed a light on. 

-Olive Brimstone

10:41 PM

10/1/2020

[ardenttheories]

@fun-with-colors

I saw your tags. I’m here to theorise. 

Knights of Light, for as long as I’ve been able to understand them, have always seemed to me to be the type that just come across Knowledge. There’s no real intention on their part to find it; it just happens to be right there, waiting for them. 

They’re the kind that get messages from the Horrorterrors in their dreams, though they’re never aware that their dreams are from other beings. They can’t fully comprehend what they’re seeing, even in a dreaming state, and as a result transfer it into something they can analyse, find meaning in, and understand. 

For instance, when I originally had Dane (from my AU Ectostuck) classpected as a Knight of Light, one of his biggest theories was “mothman is real”. He got this information from the revelation in his dreams that he was going to be prototyped with a Mothsprite, and that he would die early into the game. In technicality, this would make him a Moth Man. 

If we want to go wholly narrative with this, then we can assume that a Knight of Light is physically capable of hearing or interacting with the narrative. They’re likely able to dream about it as if it’s an open book, or can just innately recognise it in the back of their head, as if it’s transcribed somewhere and playing out in a voice that their subconscious can hear. 

They might not be fully aware of what it is, and as such, they’re more likely to assume that they’re just good at Knowing things. But this also means that they can use the narrative in an exploitative way.

If the Knight of Light is a few steps ahead in the narrative and can “read” that their next reaction is to bow to a person they actually don’t like, they can completely avoid that outcome. They can exploit it by knowing what’s going to happen, and doing something else. 

Lets say that Terezi were a Knight of Light instead of a Seer of Mind. If she knew that killing Vriska on the meteor would much, much later on lead to a doomed timeline, and that letting her live would get them all killed, all because she had the narrative playing out in the back of her head at all times, then she’d know immediately that she’d just have to get the drop on Vriska and knock her out. 

She wouldn’t know why, per se, knocking Vriska out is the best option, but she’d know that it has to be done - and in doing so, she’d completely skip any of the events that led to Game Over. 

Of course, Knights of Light would also be able to tell if a narrative speaker is present, and they’d be able to exploit that voiced narrative in order to trick the narrator. 

A Knight of Light in Meat could’ve easily gotten the drop on Dirk because they’d have known almost instantly that Dirk was in control of the narrative. They could then use that Information and play along until such a point that Dirk can’t fight them back, and while they wouldn’t know he was the narrator or that he was using the narrative specifically, they’d be able to guess that Dirk had been controlling everyone the entire time and wouldn’t be swayed by his influence. 

(In other words, much like Dave, they’d hear Dirk’s voice in the back of their mind - but they’d hear it in full clarity, and they’d be able to decide what they do and don’t do, how much they give away.) 

Hell, a really good Knight of Light could be able to control the narrative itself without meaning to. If they exploited it to the full, they’d be able to change that narrative in their head - the actual narrative that they’re being exposed to - the same way that Dirk changes the narrative of Pony Pals. The original narrative would still be there, but you’d have sections crossed out or written over by the Knight of Light, subconciously or completely intentionally. 

I mean, this could even be done physically. Think of the book Calliope reads that details the story of the Alpha and Beta kids. If a Knight of Light got their hands on that and actually wrote over it, the things they wrote would come True. 

Light has so much to do with the Plot and Importance, it’s very easy to say that a Knight of Light would become the main character of any narrative they’re present in - likely turning something like Homestuck from the 2nd persona to the 1st - and that they’d have a significant effect on the narrative as a whole. I think, however, they’d never be fully aware of it.

Like, they’d get the idea and the concepts, but they’d see it as just that; concepts. A way to visualise what they’re doing rather than what’s actually happening. They’d only realise that as Truth if they ever become a Realised player or (more likely) the Ultimate Self, but even then I’d say it’s more lowkey. 

After all, Rose is a Light player - a literal Seer of the Plot - and she doesn’t have as much of a narrative grasp as Dave does (being that she isn’t aware that Dirk’s controlling the narrative in Meat, and doesn’t host any concern to the physical text during Candy, either. She sees the plot and the story, but not the words). It’d make sense that the Knight can interact, but can’t actually see. 

Of course, Light is a more metaphysical aspect - one of the idealist ones, rather than the realist Aspects, such as Time - so it’s always going to be a fact that it’s easier for a Light player to mess with the out-of-universe things. 

In that sense... A Knight of Light could be the player to recongise that they’re in a story, but see it as a sort of “alternate universe” sort of deal. I don’t think they’d realise that there’s a narrator - that Andrew Hussie, for instance, is writing Homestuck itself - but they’d know that there’s people who can see, and people who can help. They could likely exploit that by interacting with a real-world audience. They’d be 4th wall breakers, if they got really good at it. Knowing that something’s there, but maybe not wholly what. 

They’d also be able to exploit the things the narrative doesn’t focus on. I think I mentioned this before, but I’ll go over it again with a deeper focus; Dave has always loved breadsticks, but this wasn’t relevant enough for us to know, and thus wasn’t written in the narrative. There’s likely a thousand other things he likes that we don’t see - and it’s logical to think that there’s a thousand things he does that we don’t see, either.

For instance, we know that all the characters collect the Grist that drops from the monsters. We don’t see them do it, but they must do, because their Grist counter goes up.

We also know that they must eat and pee. It’s just... human biology. We don’t see it because watching that isn’t relevant to the story, but surely they must do. 

We also know that they must walk places without us actually seeing them do it. We don’t see every step of their travels; sometimes we just see where they end up. Maybe they picked a flower while walking. We’ll never see that flower, but it’s still there, on their person. 

Maybe they give that flower to someone else. We still won’t see that flower, because it’s not imporant. This flower could move from person to person and we’d never know. 

In the same vein, we’ll never know what happened between Dirk and Jake during their relationship word for word. We missed a lot of that. The build up wasn’t as important as the actual breakup and fallout; so there’s a thousand things they could have done and said to each other during that time that we’ll never see. 

Naturally, a Knight of Light could exploit this. Imagine they just randomly brandish an incredibly powerful item that the narrative isn’t prepared for, all because they did the quest for it off-screen. Imagine that they take detours all across the map whenever we’re not focused on them so that they can avoid specific points of confrontation later in the narrative, or so that they can help set up something off screen that ends up being invaluable later. 

A lot of what they do would have to have some sort of on-screen significance - it’d be a Knight of Void, probably, who hides things that’re never seen again within the narrative, and only they who can stop it from ever being revealled, thereby creating their own purposeful plotholes (that only stay irrelevant for as long as even the author doesn’t mention or explain it) - but they could exploit those lapses within the narrative wholly. 

There’s a lot that can come from the narrative when you really think about it, and I’m so glad I always read tags so I didn’t miss that! This post got so much longer than I intended it to be, all because I kept thinking of more and more that a Knight of Light could exploit within the narrative. I think I need to end it here, though, in case it gets too long. But, for a final thought:

When you read this text, you are essentially reading my voice. I am influencing the way you read things in a very clear and precise way. However, if you didn’t know that this was, in and of itself, a form of narrative, you wouldn’t maybe focus on the fact that I am a real person writing these words with a specific purpose. You wouldn’t know that every word is being transcribed from my thoughts onto a page, and that there is an overarching figure to contend with. You would know that there is a narrative being made, and that is as far as you’d be able to get. This is the experience of the Knight of Light.

They would be able to understand my arguments, and they would be able to garner everything they needed from them - but they wouldn’t know that these words have an author. They’d interact with the narrative, change it, disobey it - but they wouldn’t talk as if they knew that a wider figure, a god-like figure, is writing it all down.

In Homestuck, Rose knows there’s a plot but doesn’t focus on the idea of finding the author in order to change things, even though there is still an author physically writing their story even after Hussie (the character) has died, and their narrative focuses more on them as real people than as fictional characters. In some ways, this is because that would get too meta. A character who knows there’s a conceptual “story” is one thing; a character who knows they don’t truly exist, because everything they say is being written down by someone else, someone bigger, is another. 

So when you think about the Knight of Light, it’s always best to imagine that their influence ends with the in-universe understanding. They can break the 4th wall, but not come through it; they can exploit the plot, but not the author; they can recognise that a story’s being told, but not that there is someone responsible for it - at the very least, not someone who isn’t already present within the universe.