#arcane jargon

[feyosha]

Computers are very simple you see we take the hearts of dead stars and we flatten them into crystal chips and then we etch tiny pathways using concentrated light into the dead star crystal chips and if we etch the pathways just so we can trick the crystals into doing our thinking for us hope this clears things up.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Uncleftish Beholding

For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.

The underlying kinds of stuff are the firststuffs, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff.

The firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts. These are mightly small; one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most unclefts link together to make what are called bulkbits. Thus, the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling together in ices when in the fast standing; and there are yet more yokeways.) When unlike clefts link in a bulkbit, they make bindings. Thus, water is a binding of two waterstuff unclefts with one sourstuff uncleft, while a bulkbit of one of the forestuffs making up flesh may have a thousand thousand or more unclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and chokestuff.

At first it was thought that the uncleft was a hard thing that could be split no further; hence the name. Now we know it is made up of lesser motes. There is a heavy kernel with a forward bernstonish lading, and around it one or more light motes with backward ladings. The least uncleft is that of ordinary waterstuff. Its kernel is a lone forwardladen mote called a firstbit. Outside it is a backwardladen mote called a bernstonebit. The firstbit has a heaviness about 1840-fold that of the bernstonebit. Early worldken folk thought bernstonebits swing around the kernel like the earth around the sun, but now we understand they are more like waves or clouds.

In all other unclefts are found other motes as well, about as heavy as the firstbit but with no lading, known as neitherbits. We know a kind of waterstuff with one neitherbit in the kernel along with the firstbit; another kind has two neitherbits. Both kinds are seldom.

The next greatest firststuff is sunstuff, which has two firstbits and two bernstonebits. The everyday sort also has two neitherbits in the kernel. If there are more or less, the uncleft will soon break asunder. More about this later.

The third firststuff is stonestuff, with three firstbits, three bernstonebits, and its own share of neitherbits. And so it goes, on through such everyday stuffs as coalstuff (six firstbits) or iron (26) to ones more lately found. Ymirstuff (92) was the last until men began to make some higher still.

It is the bernstonebits that link, and so their tale fastsets how a firststuff behaves and what kinds of bulkbits it can help make. The worldken of this behaving, in all its manifold ways, is called minglingken. Minglingers have found that as the uncleftish tale of the firststuffs (that is, the tale of firststuffs in their kernels) waxes, after a while they begin to show ownships not unlike those of others that went before them. So, for a showdeal, stonestuff (3), glasswortstuff (11), potashstuff (19), redstuff (37), and bluegraystuff (55) can each link with only one uncleft of waterstuff, while coalstuff (6), flintstuff (14), germanstuff (22), tin (50), and lead (82) can each link with four. This is readily seen when all are set forth in what is called the roundaround board of the firststuffs.

When an uncleft or a bulkbit wins one or more bernstonebits above its own, it takes on a backward lading. When it loses one or more, it takes on a forward lading. Such a mote is called a farer, for that the drag between unlike ladings flits it. When bernstonebits flit by themselves, it may be as a bolt of lightning, a spark off some faststanding chunk, or the everyday flow of bernstoneness through wires.

Coming back to the uncleft itself, the heavier it is, the more neitherbits as well as firstbits in its kernel. Indeed, soon the tale of neitherbits is the greater. Unclefts with the same tale of firstbits but unlike tales of neitherbits are called samesteads. Thus, everyday sourstuff has eight neitherbits with its eight firstbits, but there are also kinds with five, six, seven, nine, ten, and eleven neitherbits. A samestead is known by the tale of both kernel motes, so that we have sourstuff-13, sourstuff-14, and so on, with sourstuff-16 being by far the most found. Having the same number of bernstonebits, the samesteads of a firststuff behave almost alike minglingly. They do show some unlikenesses, outstandingly among the heavier ones, and these can be worked to sunder samesteads from each other.

Most samesteads of every firststuff are unabiding. Their kernels break up, each at its own speed. This speed is written as the half-life, which is how long it takes half of any deal of the samestead thus to shift itself. The doing is known as lightrotting. It may happen fast or slowly, and in any of sundry ways, offhanging on the makeup of the kernel. A kernel may spit out two firstbits with two neitherbits, that is, a sunstuff kernel, thus leaping two steads back in the roundaround board and four weights back in heaviness. It may give off a bernstonebit from a neitherbit, which thereby becomes a firstbit and thrusts the uncleft one stead up in the board while keeping the same weight. It may give off a forwardbit, which is a mote with the same weight as a bernstonebit but a forward lading, and thereby spring one stead down in the board while keeping the same weight. Often, too, a mote is given off with neither lading nor heaviness, called the weeneitherbit. In much lightrotting, a mote of light with most short wavelength comes out as well.

For although light oftenest behaves as a wave, it can be looked on as a mote, the lightbit. We have already said by the way that a mote of stuff can behave not only as a chunk, but as a wave. Down among the unclefts, things do not happen in steady flowings, but in leaps between bestandings that are forbidden. The knowledge-hunt of this is called lump beholding.

Nor are stuff and work unakin. Rather, they are groundwise the same, and one can be shifted into the other. The kinship between them is that work is like unto weight manifolded by the fourside of the haste of light.

By shooting motes into kernels, worldken folk have shifted samesteads of one firststuff into samesteads of another. Thus did they make ymirstuff into aegirstuff and helstuff, and they have afterward gone beyond these. The heavier firststuffs are all highly lightrottish and therefore are not found in the greenworld.

Some of the higher samesteads are splitly. That is, when a neitherbit strikes the kernel of one, as for a showdeal ymirstuff-235, it bursts into lesser kernels and free neitherbits; the latter can then split more ymirstuff-235. When this happens, weight shifts into work. It is not much of the whole, but nevertheless it is awesome.

With enough strength, lightweight unclefts can be made to togethermelt. In the sun, through a row of strikings and lightrottings, four unclefts of waterstuff in this wise become one of sunstuff. Again some weight is lost as work, and again this is greatly big when set beside the work gotten from a minglingish doing such as fire.

Today we wield both kind of uncleftish doings in weapons, and kernelish splitting gives us heat and bernstoneness. We hope to do likewise with togethermelting, which would yield an unhemmed wellspring of work for mankindish goodgain.

Soothly we live in mighty years!

[feyosha]

Curse of Typography

Cursed with the gift of prophecy, but the prophecy is always a typo.

[piltoversfinest-caitvi]

Katie Leung at 2023 Facts Gents Con

There has been news circling around about season 2 Arcane development as well as the Q&A recorded at the Facts Gents. Take some information posted with a grain of salt but I believe them to be plausible

Some questions for Arcane:

Q: In the voice acting were you able to be together in the studio for like scenes with interactions for example between Caitlyn and Vi

Katie: No... so I have not met Hailee who plays Vi. Normally when you do voice acting for something like Arcane, you are just in a box, so you have a producer on one side of the room with a glass pane between you And then it's just me and then the mic and the monitor with the lights or the animation and sometimes if Hailee's done her Vi lines before me then I'll get to hear the stuff that she's done and then I can respond to it. But most of the time there's a director on the screen who will just say the lines to me and then I have to respond and not that they are not great actors because I'm sure they could kind of give me a performance if they want it but I think they try and keep it neutral so then I'm responding to Vi saying something that might be potentially romantic and (the actor) will just be very dead and then I'll just have to kind of respond in the way that I would want to respond as caitlyn so it's funny that because when they put it together, it sounds like we're all in the same room because so much emotions that's carried forward in the voice acting but I've never met Ella or Hailee or anyone for that matter so it's great what they can do

Q: How did a process feel for you because voice acting is different from real life acting and how excited are you for the second season?

Katie: Oh my god I just did some recording for season 2 of arcane a few days ago and I can say that it's looking really good. It was a project I went into without knowing how big it was going to be how incredible the animation was going to look. I heard of league of legends before because my brother is a huge gamer and I used to be a big gamer as well but I never played it so... I did it because I knew he was a big fan so yeah I'll just do it cause I have time. And these guys, you know the creators, they sound really nice so I remember them sending me just photos of Caitlyn And this is the character you're going to play. And she looks really cool so I really yeah uh I went to the recording studio like you know it was just me and the mic and that was kind of strange because I wasn't really sure what they wanted and I wasn't sure you know with the storyline I didn't know what they were talking about when they were talking about piltover and um just all these kind of different jargons that are in relation to League of legends so I was a bit confused about what I was doing and seeing And then once the animation came in and I was able to see some sketches I was like oh my god this looks really cool and then when it came out last year I was just blown away

Q: Which line from Arcane is your favorite? (@ 2:30 Sunday) Katie: Oh that's a hard one because I feel like I really enjoy all the scenes between Vi and Caitlyn and like the moments they have. The most precious moments are the ones where they don't say anything to each other. But if I had to choose a line probably when Vi calls her cupcake and she says shut up. Yeah, that's a really cute moment

Q: Which character storyline are you most excited about for season 2? Katie: Uh…… I think I'm excited mostly.... I'm just trying not to give anything away but I think with season one for Caitlyn she like I felt her pain in season one, you know she had, there's a lot of kind of weight on her shoulders uhm kind of to do the right thing she's kind of like she's a justice warrior She wants to do things correctly and she wants to do things for the people she believes in equality and justice and all these and uh obviously she's a bit of a goody goody two shoes um in comparison with Vi and I think we get to see a different side of her in the next season so I'm really excited for people to see that arc, that journey um and also it's been really exciting for me to play that as well.

Q: What kind of dynamic do you think Caitlyn will have in the upcoming season with Vi

Katie: Oh…. I can't tell you that, I mean, all I can tell you is that….. no no I can't tell you.

I'm telling you a lot by not telling you

Q: If you come to facts as a cosplayer who would you dress up as Katie: Oh my god that is a really good question. I think I would dress up as Caitlyn because I just did some recording of season 2 and she has some incredible costumes. She looks really good. Yeah I mean I can't say anymore but I would love to dress up as a Caitlyn you know her costumes are really cool

Q: When you did the voice acting, did you have any props or cosplay items that you could use? (@ 6:35 Sunday) Katie: No, um, I think it would have been helpful to have like something I could hold on to because there are certain moments when Caitlyn, you know when she's fighting, .. Okay I'm giving stuff away now ..

But when she's maybe in action whether she's running or she's fighting or just breathing heavily or trying to climb out of something I think it's always helpful to be able to grab onto something but there's nothing that you can because they're afraid you might make extra background noise so everything has to be like in the air.

So that can be difficult so I would have liked to have some props for sure but it, there's only ever like a glass of water and the pages with your lines on it and the microphone.

Even when you're running, you have to just be like you have to pretend you're out of breath in place so I'd say it's definitely not easy to do voice acting but it's so much fun when you get the hang of it.

Q: What do you think Caitlyn's Spotify playlist looks like? Katie: Oh god, I don't think she would want anyone what's on her playlist but if she had to... it would be like 90s, R and B, literally, I'm just listing the stuff that I listen to. A bit of rock, a bit of grunge, I'm thinking of TLC I think she would love a TLC, maybe see Dr Dre, maybe Linkin Park, yeah, put up everything

Q: What nickname do you think Caitlyn would have for Vi? Katie: Oh.... do you know what I think she would probably call her by her full name. Violet. I think that would be quite a tease because I think Vi is such a cool name. I'm not sure Vi likes her full name to be honest, I think there's a reason why she doesn't, cause, Violet is, I guess I would see it as quite feminine and quite lovely and that's a last thing Vi would want to hear. As Caitlyn, I probably would call her Violet.

[illarian-rambling]

You know what, I AM having a bitchin day, and hope you are too!

I have come for your ask game >:)

Hit me with Sepo, Yewbury, and Aloe Vera pls!

Sepo - What's something that, without fail, will always make this character angry?

I'm not gonna answer for Sepo, because he gets angry at every minor inconvenience, so let's hear from one of my new guys!

Faalgun is a kind and understanding man. He knows what it's like to fail others and, more importantly, to fail himself. He makes an effort to be forgiving, especially when he knows someone isn't lashing out on purpose. That said, he has zero tolerance for laziness or insubordination. Faalgun practically grew up in the Flying City navy. He has had it drilled into his skull again and again to always do his part, and to always shut up and listen to those who outrank him. So when others don't do that, it just baffles his mind. He usually ends up going full drill sargent. After all, in a place as deadly as the void of space, the hesitation that insubordination can bring might be deadly, and letting ship maintainence slide is surely a recipe for disaster.

Yewbury - What classes could you find at a college in this world?

A lot of the normal ones, though they'd cover more in-world themes. The main difference involves magic. On Illaros, magic and science are so closely intertwined as to be inseparable. Chemistry and alchemy are studied side by side, runes are integral to the field of mechanics, and magic is even involved in things like archeology and art. Sorcerers (people with inborn magic) also need a specific education to hone their gifts. They're common enough that most universities will offer classes for sorcerer-specific studies.

Here are some class names you might see:

Runic and Mundane Engineering 102

Advanced Microbial Alchemy

Araunian Studies

Elven Culture (This one is controversial because there are two main elven cultures and they hate each other)

Arcane Signature Reading: Sorcerers Only

Aloe Vera - Are there any skills you have in real life that you've been able to include in your writing? (Ex. chef describing food, martial artist writing fight scenes)

Ok, so the martial arts example is just me, but I've talked about that before, so I'll talk about something else instead. I write pretty good jargon. I'm good at making some fake word for alchemy or runic science sound real. I get this from being in STEM. Honest to god, this is what I'll use my chem minor for. Arnoflouric acid, Tamm units, tonality, Anbane's equation. I'm turning my academic terror into something fun!

Thanks for the asks!

[miodiodavinci]

good news!! i am 25% of the way done with the first draft of my portfolio!! (read: partway through like 50 pages of intensely jargon driven mini essays that are each evaluated by several arcane and strangely worded rubrics)

bad news!! the intense euphoria of nearly being at the point where i can Finally take a break and do what i want without the stress of deadlines hanging over me for the first time in nearly a year paired with the soul-crushing reality of needing to finish the remaining 75% of this project is giving me such intense waves of anxiety and nausea that it is actively preventing me from working on more of the project

[feyosha]

We don’t really work like that; that’s more the purview of the likes of, say, @wizard-council-bureaucrat. We’re more about how you use it.

To illustrate with the example of Soul Drain:

Are your casting components made out of the correct materials (bone, mummified flesh, vinyl, etc)? How’s the line work on your sigils and glyphs (did you use the good chalk?). Are you making sure to keep the outputs of one Soul Drain at least 4 meters away from the inputs of any others? (I would say try it and see but you won’t live to see just don’t do it) When was the last time you checked your staff for cracks? (it’s like falling from a 6’ ladder; most common and most boring way to die on the job site)

We’re about how you do it.

And frankly we’re mostly concerned with making sure you don’t accidentally die a boring death.

If you wanna attempt Apotheosis we won’t stop you. We will tell you when what you’re about to attempt has been attempted before and resulted in a smoking crater. Less cop, more caution sign.

Wizards are not naturally immortal, in fact creating their own form of immortality is their graduate thesis.

[eternalglitch]

Hi!! I rlly look up to your writing and was wondering what tips you have on handling heavier topics like in LFLS? Particularly was there any preparation or specific research you found that helped with themes like brainwashing? Thank you!!

Lots of research went into areas that I had less prior knowledge– some examples I can think of for different types of research I did:

-Spent three hours reading police interviews for families that had a loved one go missing for more than a week

-Googled differences of a panic attack and overstimulation

-Interviewed a friend on panic attacks

-Interviewed a (different) friend on overstimulation

-Researched written ASL in books and media

-Talked to four (and counting) people that are fluent or studying ASL after doing my basic research and prep so that they don't have to explain the obvious to me

-Discuss themes of trauma and my approach to them with beta readers that have more firsthand experience than I do (basically sensitivity readers :})

-Researched various injuries on Google

-If I need anything else, I might toss a request on Twitter or here for anyone with know-how that would be all right talking to shoot me a message :}

My rule of thumb is that details that seem minor to the writer might mean a whole lot to someone reading it if they have that life experience, so the more research you do, the better. When possible, actually talking to people and hearing what is done wrong in other works and what they wish was done right is by far the best thing you can do.

But this is true even for less serious topics! I've had people find little details that only certain people could catch the actual meaning of, and they tend to get very excited about it. Some of these are actual comp sci jargon Donnie says is stuff that is factual and taught in colleges, Hueso uses a "fake" Spanish swear word in the last chapter because he's around kids (the English equivalent is using heck instead of hell or goshdarnit instead of goddammit), plus many more!

Research can make your writing feel stronger and more impactful. And for more serious topics, do your due diligence so that even if you DO make a mistake, you can still feel like you did the best frontend effort you could. Then you learn from whatever was incorrect and correct it if possible and keep going.

Oh, also I love the channel on youtube called Cinema Therapy. I recommend their stuff, it's a therapist and a movie guy watching shows and films and talking about it. I love the Arcane one for the concept of guilt and what is guilt's purpose for use in lfls.

[feyosha]

Attention Science Enthusiasts and Chem Majors!

Reference for the non-chemists:

Alkaline Metals: putting water on these will set them on fire. Combines explosively with Halogens to produce salts, which are largely impervious to heat.

Halogens: corrosive as fuck. Includes Fluorine and Chlorine. Combines explosively with Alkali Metals to produce salts, which are largely impervious to heat.

Mercury: thanks to Cooper Pairs and Quantum Weirdness, is liquid at room temperature despite being heavy as Lead. Turns Aluminum to mush. Will drive you mad.

Dimethyl Cadmium: 2 methyl’s on a Cadmium! A Metal, directly on Carbon Functional Groups! Carcinogenic, Teratogenic, Neurotoxic, Lipophilic, with both acute and chronic effects, this shit will wreck your cellular machinery like an industrial mining apparatus turned on a neighborhood brownstone.

Azoazide Azide: hello yes I would like to order 14 Nitrogen atoms, but, can they all be exclusively single bonded in a second-order Azide? Whaddya mean it’s the least stable molecule ever fabricated? What do you mean it self-immolates in isolated conditions?

Sand: it's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

[REDACTED]: goo

[sciencestyled]

A Stake in the Code: Van Helsing's Wild Foray into Bioinformatics

Let me tell you, dear students, about the day I discovered that monsters don’t always lurk in dark castles or foggy graveyards. Sometimes, the most sinister creatures hide in something far more diabolical—data. Yes, you heard me right. While you imagine your brave professor charging through the night, crucifix in one hand, holy water in the other, you must now picture me hunched over a glowing screen, battling spreadsheets and strings of code. How did it come to this, you ask? Well, sit tight, for this tale involves an unfortunate encounter with a conference on modern science, an espresso machine with a grudge, and, of course, Dracula.

It all began when I was invited—lured, more like—to a prestigious science symposium. A splendid opportunity to expose these modern "men of logic" to the perils of the undead, I thought. Instead, I was met with a barrage of jargon, acronyms, and more slides of molecular models than I’d care to recount. I made it through the first day, my senses numbed by an endless stream of buzzwords—"genomics," "data analysis," and, shudderingly, "algorithms." Oh, the horror! I was sure that even a vampire bat would be driven to stake itself in frustration.

However, my despair peaked during a presentation by a rather excitable researcher on a topic called "bioinformatics." Now, I had no idea what kind of nefarious creature this was, but the term "bio" immediately set off my vampire-hunting instincts. Perhaps this was some new breed of blood-sucking pestilence? The researcher, with the fervor of a man possessed, prattled on about deciphering genomes, comparing them to vast tomes of knowledge that could predict diseases, track mutations—essentially, the modern-day grimoire of disease.

I tried to stay awake by guzzling coffee—until the machine itself turned on me. One ill-timed splutter, and I was doused in scorching liquid. As I wiped the caffeine from my waistcoat, it hit me: bioinformatics was a science of tracking. Not just tracking disease, but tracking the malformations of life itself. It was a code, a pattern, a series of markers… much like the bite marks of our nocturnal enemies! If bioinformatics could trace illness, then surely it could predict vampirism—or at least explain why Dracula’s hair had the consistency of damp hay.

My interest piqued, I cornered the researcher after his talk. Through a series of incomprehensible diagrams, I learned that bioinformatics involved massive troves of genetic data, all neatly catalogued and ready to be mined for clues about humanity’s most terrifying afflictions. This was no mere science. This was a battlefield. And as we all know, I have never met a battlefield I didn’t like.

I had found a new crusade. In bioinformatics, I saw the potential to eradicate vampiric curses at their source—by identifying genetic markers long before the first fang ever punctures a jugular. Picture it: no more garlic garlands or holy water showers! Imagine a world where we can pinpoint who is destined to become a creature of the night with a simple blood test. No more guessing whether your charming neighbor is just a night owl or plotting your demise.

Of course, there were skeptics. My students, bless their skeptical hearts, scoffed. "But Professor," they cried, "surely science can’t predict something as mystical as vampirism?" To which I replied, "If it can decode the human genome, it can decode Dracula!" Armed with this newfound knowledge, I plunged headlong into the arcane realms of bioinformatics. Genomes, sequences, databases—they became my prey, and like any great hunter, I stalked them with unyielding determination.

Thus, I resolved to pen my insights. Not just for posterity, but as a rallying cry. For if we can battle genetic ghouls with modern science, perhaps we can rid the world of vampiric plagues once and for all. And so, dear students, I present to you my findings—my digital stake in the dark heart of bioinformatics. Let us see where this madness leads...

[feyosha]

Oh it’s all fun and games exploring spaces that fail to meet basic axioms… until your circulatory system starts following infinite parallel but untouching trajectories and ceases to be a circuit.

Reality Anchors! Every! Time!

[dontcallpanic]

So, I'm doing adulty things like contacting banks and sorting taxes and creating work contracts and throughout it all I am haunted by the idea that whoever linked all this terrifying admin with demons knew exactly what they were doing.

You want to access this money/power - well you're going to need all these arcane texts (identification documents). You need to present them in the exact right order and if you get them out of order then poof the demon (admin person) vanishes. If you get through that stage you need to say the magic word (provide passwords) and again if you submit any one of the numbers/letters out of order then the whole thing goes up in smoke... or alternatively the wrath of the demon is unleashed and you loose access to your (money) power. Obviously, IF you get everything submitted in the right order with the right magic words then you are allowed access (but at what cost!).

And then there's contracts. You have this really long, jargon heavy (occasionally latin) document that definitely gives rise to the expression 'the devil is in the details.' On the face of it, it's just a bunch of symbols and paper but if you sign your name to it (and names have power), because we all believe in it and build our entire society on this stuff, it takes on this imense power. So we get that whole be careful what you sign your name to warning. And it may have tricky little clauses that trip you up or are designed to entrap you (very fae). Also if you happen to break this contract really, really terrible things are going to happen and people are going to hold you VERY accountable for ALL your actions and there's a chance you might loose everything you worked hard for. If that's not a demonic contract/ deal with the fae, I don't know what is!

And Taxes are similar in that you need all these symbols (numbers) written down in the right order, in the right place and if you get one symbol out of place, the demon (HMRC) is going to rain fire and brimstone down on your soul (fine you heavily). Of course, if you refuse to even engage with the demon (HMRC) said demon will hunt you down and still rain fire and brimstone down on your soul. - There's definitely something to be said about not giving your name to demonic creatures in the first place because that's absolutely how they find you! So then there's something here about trading your name for power (access to money and things we need to live?).

Does this make accountants, demonologists? I hope so.

And in future should I have to write an encounter with a terrifying demon I am definitely going to imagine the kind of terror and stress that my tax return inspires!

Yes... I am going insane with all this bureaucracy and yes, imagining I am making an arcane deal with a demon and/or the fae is making me feel better about it!

[luxe-pauvre]

Democracy, Rosenfeld explains, requires a fine-tuned relationship between expertise and scepticism. Experts use methods, jargon, journals, conferences and so forth to acquire knowledge. But researchers express scepticism about each other’s work in peer review, and the public raises doubts about what experts are up to. ‘Pluralism,’ she argues, ‘along with a dose of scepticism inherited from the ancients, has, in theory, been a key characteristic of modern experiments with popular rule from the start.’ The problem today, according to Rosenfeld, is that expertise and scepticism are out of balance. Postmodernists writing arcane books do not help matters, though they are not the main culprit. Populist leaders share stories that they and just about everybody else know are false. People live in social media bubbles, and outlets cater to this development by publishing sensationalist stories. Like Jonathan Rauch in The Constitution of Knowledge (2021), Rosenfeld does not want experts to impose their dogmas on the public. Rauch and Rosenfeld envision a contentious public sphere in which experts and laypeople debate ideas and proposals. That said, they worry about the rise of ‘post-truth’ politics dominated by tribalism rather than a commitment to seek the truth. They both share a Platonic sense that the wise should have the final say about what stories may circulate in society.

Nicholas Tampio, Scepticism as a way of life

[rhetoricandlogic]

Mirror, Mirror in the Ward

Ava Reid

Tue Sep 12, 2023 10:00am

There are few things more elementally fairy tale than mirrors. From classic fairy tales Grimm’s “Snow White” and Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” to ancient myths like Narcissus, there is an intrinsically magical quality to mirrors.

Yet they are almost overwhelmingly sinister objects: In “Snow White,” the evil queen is moved to a black, murderous rage by the words of her magic mirror. In “The Snow Queen,” shards of mirror-glass blind Kai and infect his heart with hate. And vain Narcissus is so enraptured by his own reflection that he wastes away on a riverbank, unable to tear his gaze from the face of the handsome youth in the water.

Modern and contemporary fantasy gives us mirror-as-portal: from Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass to Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. But these mirrors are hardly less malevolent. Alice’s mirror transports her to a psychedelic world where she is bedeviled by sentient chess pieces and talking animals. In Jonathan Strange, stepping through a mirror lands you in an ancient labyrinth of roads and bridges, suffused with arcane and baneful magic.

So, perhaps mirrors are simply vexing as much as they are sinister—at best, chaotic neutral.

[Content warning for discussion of mental illness, disordered eating, and suicide.]

Beyond the realm of fantasy, feminist discourse frequently paints mirrors as symbols of women’s oppression, extensions of the male gaze, or representations of shallow, image-obsessed beauty culture. “Mirrors are crafty,” Margaret Atwood writes—in this poem, the speaker is a woman trapped within a mirror, reflecting only the vain desires of her male lover. There is something undeniably poignant about this metaphor, which is why it is deployed so frequently across various pieces of media, and why it resonates so deeply with so many women.

And I count myself among those women—sort of. For years, while I navigated the hellish landscape of eating disorders, the mirror was a totem that I carried with me at all times. Capricious and cursed, it guided me, for better or for worse. It made up the order of my world. Most anorexics will echo this sentiment: we are both in love with and terrified of mirrors; obsessed but also repulsed.

Obsessed: because we believe the mirror is the ultimate arbiter of truth. Repulsed: because we believe the truth is that we are disgusting, unlovable monsters. A powerful totem indeed, imbued with some mystic knowledge that the rest of the world can’t be trusted to bestow.

The idea of mirror as arbiter of ultimate truth is one that I clung to quite fiercely—to my own detriment, but also, strangely, for my own salvation. My eating disorder grew ever-more consuming, unfolding long black tendrils in my brain. Reality began to hold itself at a distance. Shadows blurred the corners of my vision.

I had no word for it at the time, this slow but inexorable slipping. It would not be until years later that I was gifted the medical jargon to explain what was occurring. These false beliefs that hardened like diamonds in my mind were delusions; the wispy strains of darkness that disappeared at an eyeblink were hallucinations, all of this comprising a grim label: psychosis.

A month-long stint at an eating disorder treatment center passed over me like water. It did nothing to dispel the visions or voices.

Over the course of my first year in college, my mental health deteriorated quickly and drastically. There were the ordinary growing pains associated with leaving home for the first time, mingled with my own fundamental sense of unworthiness. This was exacerbated, of course, by the fact that I felt my admittance to an elite university was a fluke. I was a fraud, an idiot, and I was floundering.

The common wisdom is that mentally ill people isolate themselves because there is so much social stigma and shame surrounding mental illness. That is certainly true, and plays a large role in my own isolation as well. But I offer another explanation, which is harder to articulate, and more insidious. If you have spent the large majority of your life with a severe mental illness, you have had little time for anything more than brusque, grueling survival.

For example, the basic acts of eating and sleeping seemed to me, an anorexic insomniac, like exotic habits. I was intellectually aware that I needed food and rest in order to thrive, but I had no way of applying that vague platitude to my daily life. How one went about establishing close friendships was also a mystery. Once a conversation shifted beyond casual talk of classes and tv shows, I fell silent. What would I talk about? The month I spent tearfully sipping Ensure at an eating disorder treatment center? The shadows that flickered across my vision and the hateful voices that curled in the shell of my ear?

The cruelest trick of mental illness is the way it subtly removes you from your personhood. You become obscure to yourself. You grow to hold the world at a distance, and it does not even feel intentional. It seems only natural, because fear has built a cage around you and convinced you it is a fortress. It is not so much that you are afraid of judgment, afraid of being seen as sick and strange. You are afraid that, deep down, you are empty, save for this black chasm of terror. You are not a teenager, not a college student, not a friend, a lover, a sister, a daughter—you are the most adept escape artist.

And once you have been convinced of your own emptiness, the pain you inflict upon yourself becomes not only righteous, but necessary. Mental illness is illogical to the well-ordered mind, but to its sufferers, it has an irrepressible internal logic. And the logical conclusion of the belief that I was intrinsically worthless was to simply remove myself from the world.

The pain was there, of course. The scraping of an empty stomach, the icy pall of loneliness, and the electric jabs of fear, should never be discounted. But my first suicide attempt was engendered more by lack of feeling than by glut of it. This apathy did not break down until the electronic doors of the psych ward locked with grim finality behind me.

At eighteen, I was just a few months too old for the children’s unit, and by far the youngest person in the adult ward. The person on the unit closest to my age was a blonde, beautiful woman in her mid-thirties. She worked a prestigious corporate job that kept her glued to the pay phones in the day room, feeding them quarter after quarter so she could dial into meetings.

I never saw her cry or protest. She hardly seemed to acknowledge her surroundings; it was as if she were going through the motions of her ordinary life, oblivious to the windowless walls, the other patients’ hysterical outbursts, the squeak of our sure-grip hospital socks on the linoleum floor. To the aides, tapping her on the shoulder so they could administer her twice-daily medication in paper Dixie cups. She covered the receiver with one hand, took the cup with the other, and dry-swallowed her pills in a single gulp. In truth, it did not occur to me that this behavior was pathological. I was in awe of her competence, her normalcy. I found it difficult to imagine how she had ended up in the psych ward at all.

I was not so nonchalant about my imprisonment. Lying on the examination table, as my slashed wrist was scrutinized, a nurse in yellow Minions scrubs thrust a clipboard in front of my face. She told me I had to sign myself into the psych ward.

“What?” I asked in alarm. “I don’t want to.”

With no shift in her expression, she said, “If you don’t, we’ll send you to a state institution. You don’t want to go there. Trust me.”

I was too naïve, and too dizzy with the shuddering aftershocks of the pills I’d swallowed, to judge whether this threat was credible. So I signed myself in.

Within an hour of all my belongings being snatched from me, my sweatpants and their hazardous drawstrings being removed and thrown away, and being thrust behind the impenetrable, electronically locked doors, I was sitting on my glorified cot and sobbing hysterically.

When the attending psychiatrist, a white-haired man in a white coat, made his rounds on the first day, I was still sobbing in my bed. I begged for him to let me go. He looked down at me coldly and said, “This is why you’re in here. You can’t control yourself.” Then he left.

I remember my time in the psych ward more as individual moments rather than as a coherent narrative—thanks in part, I’m sure, to the mysterious cocktail of medication I was put on, which was different from my usual regimen. To this day I do not know what those pills were. I asked but was never told. Refusal of medication was not an option, and was punishable by a stint in the isolation room.

I ended up in the isolation room anyway, because I could not sleep. For three straight days and nights. I’ve always been an insomniac to some degree (a symptom of, among other things, bipolar mania), but in the psych ward it was more extreme than it had ever been. The staff, however, took it as a refusal to sleep, so I was put in the seclusion room. A bare chamber, about eight feet by eight feet, with no windows and blank white walls, and a crusty carpet which reeked of urine and dried sweat. In the center, a narrow bed, and me inside it, both sleepless and dreamless.

For three days I also did not eat. Strangely enough, my eating was not monitored or enforced, despite the staff ostensibly knowing my history of anorexia. My weight dropped by ten pounds during my time in the ward.

What did I do, then? Curiously, one thing that the psych ward does not offer is therapy. Aside from the daily rounds by the attending psychologist and the barrage of medications, I did not receive any other treatment during my stay. Most patients’ days were spent in the main room, watching a rotating collection of DVDs, the same dozen or so recycled over and over again. Cell phones were banned; laptops were banned; as was anything else that could connect patients to the outside world. But books were allowed. So I read.

Both to compensate for the fact that I felt like a complete idiot and a failure, and to try and maintain some semblance of who I’d been before, I read philosophy and poetry. Nietzsche and Sylvia Plath. But, mostly, I read Shakespeare. The Tempest was my favorite. Miranda, isolated on an island with only her all-powerful wizard father and his army of sprites and monsters. Naïve but desperately curious, lonely yet so easily moved to passion.

Slowly, I also started to talk to some of the other patients, mostly the beautiful blonde woman who took incessant business calls. She, too, had been hospitalized against her will after a suicide attempt. Surreptitiously I looked for scars on her wrists, wondering if I would find cuts there that mirrored my own. We would spend whole afternoons talking, and sometimes even laugh.

“You’re so pretty and so smart,” she told me. “You’re going to be okay.”

With the rational wisdom of hindsight, I can see how pathological this comment was, too. Yet in the warped reality of the psych ward, in the perverse mind of a not-quite-recovered anorexic, it brought me a flicker of joy. Here was someone else, I thought, who saw the truth of the world the way I did. Who saw that physical beauty was essential to one’s humanity.

My emotions were still warped and blunted by the unknown array of medication, but I came, in a strange way, to love her. When she was discharged, I cried.

Yet the strangest thing of all was this: despite everything, my experience in the psych ward did not isolate me. Until then, mental illness had been my own private torture. Doing leg-lifts in my bedroom at night. Carving scars into my skin and then covering them with my sleeves. I wrapped this isolation around myself like a cloak, warm but impenetrable.

The psych ward ripped that cloak off, leaving me cold and revealed. But being exposed also meant I was no longer alone.

There are no mirrors in a psych ward. Broken glass can too easily be fashioned into a weapon—as the fairy tales will warn you. Despite this, I still saw myself reflected back. In the woman whose wrist bore the same scars as mine. In Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song” and “Lady Lazarus.” In Shakespeare’s tale of a girl trapped among bizarre beasts, made infantile by her seemingly omnipotent captor. Miranda’s, her wizard father; mine, that Charon in a white coat.

A book is a portal, much like Alice’s mirror. But unlike a mirror, which reflects only physical reality, a book builds its own symbolic world around you. It can be the shelter of a grand castle. It can be the promise of adventure at the prow of a ship. It can be the mystery of a gloom-cloaked forest. As Ursula K. Le Guin said, a book is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. There has always been a castle, a ship, a forest. So I began to trust this world within the pages—slowly, shakily, but irrevocably.

And so, although I did not know it at the time, the foundation of my own book, A Study in Drowning, was constructed behind the locked doors and within the windowless walls of the unit.

“I refuse mirrors. I refuse them for you, and I refuse them for me.”

A Study in Drowning opens with this quote from the Fairy King, the novel’s villain and a sinister chthonic spirit who has haunted the main character, Effy, for nearly her entire life. As in Britain’s traditional fairy ballads, the Fairy King seeks out vulnerable young women, plies them with magic and the pretense of love and devotion, then kidnaps and abuses them. The first rule he impresses upon his victims is this: no mirrors. They can only know themselves through his ancient and all-powerful eyes.

Within the set-dressing of fantasy and threaded through the arc of romance, A Study in Drowning is a book about mental illness. Effy fears that her hallucinations of the Fairy King will have her deemed insane, locked in an asylum and left to rot. It is not an unreasonable fear. While straitjackets, icepick lobotomies, and padded cells are now mostly the garish fare of horror movies, the core inhumanity behind these practices remains—in the form of 5150 holds and, of course, the mirrorless cells of the psych ward.

What saves Effy is seeing herself reflected within the protagonist of her favorite book—her world’s version, say, of Miranda. What saved me is much the same. We often talk, in media reception discourse, about a book itself being a mirror, and the power in that. The power in knowing you are not on an island, adrift. The power in knowing you are not alone. The king within the castle knows its walls are strong. The sailor at the prow of the ship knows it will reach the shore. The wanderer knows the forest can be traversed. And, if you allow yourself to feel the weight of the crown, the spray of the sea, the chill of the mist, you can know it, too.

In A Study in Drowning, a mirror is a symbol of power reclaimed. In the mirror Effy sees herself, truly—not through the eyes of the men who abuse her, or the world that stigmatizes her suffering. Yes, her pain is thrown into agonizing relief. But so is her strength.

Perhaps mirrors will always be the stuff of fairy tales, objects imbued with so much byzantine magic. Its broken shards can wound. The glass can crack like ice, plunging its victims into Wonderland. Dark-tendrilled vanity can lurk at its edges, waiting to poison wayward souls.

But maybe in some stories, the girl in the mirror can rescue herself.

[feyosha]

Relevant Spell List:

Embiggen: for when you only want to make part of someone bigger

Healing Word: just in case you overdo your Embiggen

Disable Semen: stay safe y’all

Cure Disease: see above

Hitachi’s Sphere of Power: conjures an invisible sphere of powerfully vibrating force. Adjustable.

Animate Rope: the classic

Animate Tongue: don’t know what you’re doing? This spell does!

Invert Genitalia: bottom surgery at sorcery speed

Lesser Telempathy: now you can let your partner know what you want while your mouth is busy!

Greater Telempathy: what feels good for you feels good for me too!

Amazon’s Clapback: turn a booty clap into a 15-foot cone of percussive force damage. 4d6 no save, lost dex roll falls prone

Crimew’s Polymorph: transform into a tCatHackerGirl

Sullivan’s Polymorph: transform into a large hairy beast with long powerful arms and a huge unit

Guillermo’s Greater Polymorph: allows the caster to modify any number of elements of their appearance in monsterfuckery ways such as but not limited to: eyes like black pools, long nimble elegant inhuman fingers, decoratively sharp teeth, decorative fins, tails, etc.

Johnsonville Slugger: transform your shlong into a shilleligh. 1d8 bludgeoning 2 handed

Ghost Hand: an extra hand. It’s handy.

Summon Tits: make your breasts arbitrarily large

Banish Tits: make your breasts arbitrarily small

my horny ass could NOT be a wizard

[watasemasaru]

Tell me about Twisted Wonderland? How is it?

It's a visual novel where the concept is popular disney villains, but ikemen. The premise is Yuu (that's like the place holder name for you 🫵🏻 the player, you can obviously name urself whateves) are not a magic user, you're not even from this place, but somehow you've been summoned by the dark mirror and ended up in Twisted Wonderland, specifically Night Raven College. Currently the story is broken down into books and we navigate school life while also dealing with an issue of students (the villains) overblotting. Which they used too much magic and their emotions have tainted them.

Night Raven College is an all boys school of arcane arts (magic) and is divided into dorms that represents the The Great Seven (since these are "twisted" versions, the villains are seemed as benevolent). Each dorm has a house warden and a vice warden, usually the house warden is the one who is the specific iteration of a villain. Each student has a special spell that is unique to them as well!

Heartslabyul - this dorm embodies the Red Queen's strictness

Riddle Rosehearts - house warden and like the Red Queen, has a penchant for following the rules. His signature spell of Off With Your Head.

Trey Clover - based off a club card soldier, he's very mild mannered and a Riddle's childhood friend. His spell is Paint the Roses.

Cater Diamond - a diamond card, he's ur social media jargon magicam posting buddy. His spell is Split Card

Ace Trappola - he's one of your two main besties. He's the Yosuke to your Souji, Ryuji to your Akira. His spell is currently unknown

Deuce Spade - your other bestie and the more meat head of the two but a good egg (his mom is also soft butch and hot awooga) his sig spell is Double Down!

Savanaclaw - students here are representative of The King of Beast's Tenacity

Leona Kingscholar - Prideful and a little arrogant, he is easily jealous. He is snarky and a bit of a slacker (like any good cat tbh) His signature spell is King's Roar

Reggie Bucchi - a hyena beastman and the vice warden. He's a little impish and a trickster. His spell is Laugh With Me

Jack Howl - a wolf beastman who is very earnest and adheres to the hierarchy but not so much that his sense of justice goes to the wayside. His spell is Unleash Beast

Octavinelle - a dorm founded on the compassion of The Sea Witch

Azul Ashengrotto - the iteration of Ursula, he's intelligent and knows every loophole, a little Saul Goodman to be had in Azul. He's also rather fond of making money. His signature spell is It's a Deal.

Jade Leech - vice warden and a eel merman (Jetsam). He is has the disposition of a butler...but watch out, he's just as intimidating as his brother. His spell is Shock The Heart

Floyd Leech - the overtly chaotic mirror twin of Jade. He loses interest in things quick but easily excitable if something catches his eye, big ADHD energy. His spell is Bind the Heart

Scarabia - a dorm founded on The Sorcerer of the Sand's Mindfulness

Kalim Al-Asim - house warden who is not actually supposed to be a student, but his father bought him in with a large donation to the school. Kalim was insistent to attend when Jamil was accepted. He's unbearily positive and kind to the point of toxicity. His unique magic is Oasis Maker

Jamil Viper - is the better student and mage, but is Kalim's attendant, it would be "inappropriate" for him to be housewarden. He is calculating, careful, and aloof. His spell is Snake Whisperer.

Pomefiore - founded on The Fair Queen's tenacity.

Vil Schoenheit - the fairest of them all, he's an actor that people love as much as one loves an idol. He's beautiful and can be a little snotty, but he's kind when it's needed. His unique magic is Fairest One of All

Rook Hunt - based on the huntsman from Snow White he's an eccentric individual and French™. His ultimate desire is to find all different kinds of beauty. His spell is I See You

Epel Felmier - like his name, he is the poison apple. Epel is at odds with his fair appearance and what he views masculinity to be. He's a country boy and has a thick accent, but Vil encourages him to hide it. His spell is Sleep Kiss

Ignihyde - founded on the King of the Underworld's diligence

Idia Shroud - the arrogant but self deprecating weeb version of Hades. Idia is your typical gamer/anime trope character. He has a desire to be free and more outgoing but usually caves in on himself. His unique magic is Gate to the Underworld

Ortho Shroud - the humanoid younger brother of Idia. He's cute, charming, and polite and always trying to get Idia to come out of his shell. As it stands he has no signature spell.

Diasomnia - founded on the Thorn Fairy's spirit of nobility.

Malleus Draconia - the iteration of Maleficint. Because he's a fae he essentially has time blindness and is usually late or not at a housewarden meeting. There's a loneliness to Malleus because other students are so intimidated by him. His prize possession is a tamagotchi like toy. His spell is Fae of Maleficent

Lilia Vanrouge - old man in a cute guy's body trope. He's plucky and full of wisdom that belies his youthful looks. It said he is the iteration of Maleficint in her dragon form. His unique magic is Far Cry Cradle

Silver - a second year and bodyguard of Malleus who falls asleep at the drop of a hat and is beloved by animals. He was raised by Lila who found him in the woods. His special spell is Meet in a Dream

Sebek Zigvolt - the other bodyguard and an overzealous loudmouth (my stupid son). He is single minded (Malleus) and refuses to engage with anyone unless it's to berate them for not giving Malleus the proper respect. He tends to call the students around them humans (derogatory) despite being half-human himself. His father is a dentist and his mother, a fae, helps out. She's a tooth fairy lol. His special spell is Living Bolt

I love it, despite the fact it IS a gacha game as well as a vn, and never ever spend actual money on the damn thing their pity is a joke lol. It's better to just save your gems and keys for your favorites and call it good (I save for Sebek, Floyd, and Rook). You take lessons to level up your cards, exams to earn books to raise the card's spells, play twist tunes, and once you're in Idia's book, some retro game style mini games. There's also a little guest room at your dorm, Ramshackle, that you can invite a character to and design the room as you see fit!