#but sometimes i think about the two of them being opposing gods whose existence is to bicker and annoy each other

[parab0mb]

Snug as a...

...nah. I shan't say :)

~~~~

Getting back into a Psillypomp mood. Also trying to motivate myself to draw stuff that isn't just shitposting, so I finished up one of my many sketchdump doodles for fun. Vena's newly developed wings aren't just good for flying; they're also great for cozying up with (being a colossal nuisance towards) her bestie.

There *is* a distinct possibility she still smells like she just crawled out of a sewage treatment plant, so Col may not necessarily be wrong to be grouchy.

[miirshroom]

Test for Echo, Freud, and Elden Ring (Shadow of the Erdtree)

Thinking about how not all examples of fantasy stories come from books or film, sometimes they are found in song. Thinking about the lyricism of Canadian Progressive Rock band Rush.

If it wasn't obvious - the Shadowlands is a Freudian nightmare. The surrealism of Salvadore Dali was heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis and the cocoon of the empyrean is staged to resemble Dali's work Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man.

Recently released Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon directly has an AC pilot named "Freud" whose emblem is a hand emerging from shadow holding a key (AC unit called "Locksmith").

And as it turns out, Neil Peart - lyricist for Rush - also was drawing inspirations from Freud while writing songs for Test for Echo (1996).

"I've always been curious about all religions, and the Totem idea came from the Freud book 'Totem And Taboo', which I ran across at the Chalet studio where we were working just in the bookshelf in the living room. I had been kind of rediscovering Freud by way of Jung and getting to understand the really deep stuff he was dealing with as opposed to some of the pop psychology that we were fed growing up, and I thought Totem And Taboo was such a beautiful title because it's what we fear and what we worship. Totem being what we worship and Taboo being what we fear. What a beautiful, embracing metaphor. At one time, the song Resist was called 'Taboo' because I wanted to have the two little set pieces of what we fear, and in 'Totem' I was just trying to appropriate all religions because that's what I found looking around at different religions and different systems, is that they all have something good. So I thought why not have them all? The 'Buddha smile' is a nice thing, and I'd like to have 12 Apostles...it's all great. It was really just a kind of tongue and cheek, all the good things of different religions." Neil Peart, Jam! Showbiz, October 16, 1996

The lyrics to the songs can be found here: https://www.rush.com/albums/test-for-echo/

It's a fantasy that people of all religions and esoteric beliefs would get together to craft their perfect god to fear and worship. Fortunately, Elden Ring is a fantasy. From the song "Totem", how many of the faith systems here can you spot represented somewhere in the game?:

I’ve got twelve disciples and a Buddha smile The Garden of Allah – Viking Valhalla A miracle once in a while I’ve got a pantheon of animals in a pagan soul Vishnu and Gaia – Aztec and Maya Dance around my totem pole I believe in what I see I believe in what I hear I believe that what I’m feeling Changes how the world appears Angels and demons dancing in my head Lunatics and monsters underneath my bed Media messiahs preying on my fears Pop culture prophets playing in my ears I’ve got celestial mechanics To synchronize my stars Seasonal migrations – daily variations World of the unlikely and bizarre I’ve got idols and icons, unspoken holy vows Thoughts to keep well-hidden – sacred and forbidden Free to browse among the holy cows That’s why I believe Angels and demons inside of me Saviors and Satans all around me Sweet chariot, swing low, coming for me

And then there's Resist, which has some Miquellian themes:

I can learn to resist Anything but temptation I can learn to co-exist With anything but pain I can learn to compromise Anything but my desires I can learn to get along With all the things I can’t explain I can learn to resist Anything but frustration I can learn to persist With anything but aiming low I can learn to close my eyes To anything but injustice I can learn to get along With all the things I don’t know

But neither of these songs were the tip off for why I thought to look more closely at this album. It was the Crucible Knights and Bloodhound Knights. They've always had the odd quirk of being named for geological periods. That's a lyric from the song Dog Years:

I’d rather be a tortoise from Galapagos Or a span of geological time Than be living in these dog years

Ironic that the tortoises in Elden Ring have no text option allowing them to be labelled appropriately, so the community has decreed them "dog".

There are other songs from this album that I can see represented in Elden Ring. The title song Test for Echo is about how people yearn for connection, but what the mass media landscape delivers is sensationalism and acts of violence around the world. In 30 years this hasn't really improved. A picture of an inunnguaq was selected for the album cover from fascination for the way that the simple stone structure provides evidence of the existence of other humans having travelled before through a desolate landscape. And as I have mentioned before, Radagon's story has hints of Narcissus and Echo.

This is bookended by the final song on the album Carve Away the Stone. The song suggests that like the Greek Sisyphus, all people are eternally rolling their own stones up a hill in the form of emotional baggage or other trauma. But people aren't static like a character from a story - they don't need to carry that weight forever. If you have the opportunity to shape your own destiny, why not take it? This would be related to the way that both Marika and Radagon appear to be carved of stone.

There's also the largely instrumental song that is second to last on the album and titled Limbo. It's implied to be vampire themed by one of the few vocal cut-ins being in a goofy vampire voice ("Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?"). So like, Messmer the Impaler in the limbo-coded Shadowlands. His allusions to vampirism firstly being an epithet invoking Vlad the Impaler and also he has only false/closed eyes so he can't self reflect (one of the superstitions of vampires being that their reflection won't show up in a mirror because the mirrors in those days were polished silver). The archetype of the vampire in the Shadow is Jungian stuff and like I said - Neil Peart was thinking about depth psychology while writing this album.

For the rest of the songs the potential connections are more vague ("Time and motion / Flesh and blood and fire / Lives connect in webs of gold and razor wire" - Time and Motion) ("Gravity and distance / Change the passage of light / Gravity and distance / Change the color of right" - The Color of Right).

This isn't the only Rush album that I find possibly to have had some influence on the Radagon/Miquella/Mohg portion of Elden Ring. There's also the album 2112 (1976) back in Rush's earlier fantasy/sci-fi era, which introduces the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx - a kind of thought police represented by a red star - and mentions twin moons being in the sky. It was Rush's breakthrough album in America, followed the next year by A Farewell to Kings (1977), for which the notable songs include A Farewell to Kings, Xanadu, and Closer to the Heart. Also the album cover shows a puppet king slumped on a throne in front of a crumbling building. But again like with Test for Echo, one could imagine how all songs on the album might be combined to create an overall sense of time period.

I'm not making a case for FromSoft promoting Freudian pseudopsychology, for the record. All this psychoanalysis stuff is in the Shadowlands and nobody in the Lands Between cares about what's in the Shadowlands. It's in the past, dead and buried. You can no more decide the course of the future by replicating the past than you can create a sustainable global economy by learning economics through playing Elden Ring.

[lime-bloods]

Homestuck's Gnosticism: The Conflict

==>

That Homestuck is "a Gnostic story" seems to be widespread knowledge, but I think there's limited understanding as to what that actually entails. often you'll hear that Roxy and Jade "have Gnostic themes" about them thanks to their chumhandles, but little elaboration on the matter.

The central cosmic conflict in Gnosticism is between two aspects of God, each with their own worlds; the feminine aspect, called 'wisdom' or Sophia, represents the world of the spiritual, while the ignorant masculine Yaldabaoth rules over the physical, the world of the flesh. This is also Homestuck's central cosmic conflict (Yaldabaoth's in-person appearance being but a small clue), and most readers will be able to identify the basic shapes these two forces take in the comic; the motherly female Muse oversees Space, and is locked in eternal combat with her brother the patriarchal Lord of Time.

==>, ACT 7

It's common to hear of Space and Time represented as the aspects of creation and destruction respectively, and this holds true to a point. But something that is crucial to understand is that while the Muse of Space is ostensibly our heroine, and the Lord of Time is our primary villain, creation and destruction are, in and of themselves, morally neutral acts. Indeed, the Muse's ultimate spell is not to truly create anything, or even to put an end to the Lord's destruction, but to condemn him to the same destruction for all eternity.

This is because, while creation versus destruction is the battlefield on which much of Homestuck takes place, Homestuck is only superficially "about" creation and destruction. The creation myth serves as a backdrop to the personal arcs of the characters, but also as a veil hanging over deeper themes.

A notable example of a force that obfuscates the morality of creation and destruction - and a force literally hidden behind a Veil of secrecy at that - is the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors. Described as "Evil Gods Who Oppose Skaia" and its ultimate goal of creation, in truth it is impossible to know for sure whether these gods are "evil" or not. That way lies madness, in much the same way trying to decode Homestuck as a morality story of creation versus destruction can never bear true fruit. If the 48 signs of the Alternian sky are to be believed, the Horrorterrors were themselves once creators; seemingly they only oppose creation now in order to prevent the rise of the Lord of Time, whose destructive tendencies they, too, fall victim to.

[A6I5] ==>

The Gnostic Lord of Time, Yaldabaoth, is not a destroyer. On the contrary, he's a demiurge; a craftsman. Not a creator, per se, but one who takes materials and turns them into something else. As the axiom goes, there is essentially nothing new in paradox space. "[I]n this particular fictional realm, and especially where alchemy is concerned, the fundamental ideas the objects represent are more important than the objects themselves" (Homestuck: Book 3: Act 4, p. 335): something cannot be created from nothing, only transmuted from an existing list of ideas hard coded into reality.

This is what makes Yaldabaoth truly evil; not for destroying the spiritual world, but for transmuting it down from its pure essence into a corrupted form where sin and suffering are allowed to exist. And so too is this the sin of Yaldabaoth's favourite protege Lord English. Homestuck's worst kept secret is that Lord English's tendency to destroy, and sometimes kill characters we by all rights shouldn't care about, is not the thing that must be stopped. What must be rectified is what he has already done to reality. Beforus was once a peaceful, spiritual world, where the physically strong acted as protectors over the spiritually enlightened; but when English "rewrote everything" it became a planet where the dominantly male cool blooded castes subjugate the warmer castes, suppressing spirituality. And each subsequent world spawned from this corrupted universe would too be corrupted; merely killing Lord English would not be enough. A new, uncorrupted spiritual world - a foretold paradise planet - needs to be created.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < everything that ever happens to every version of you is an important part of your ultimate self... like a superceding bodyless and timeless persona that crosses the boundaries of paradox space and unlike god tiers or bubble ghosts or whatever, it really IS immortal

As Homestuck exists in a fictional realm, the act of crafting a world out of ideas also becomes the act of crafting a story. This is why Scratch is called a "nefarious alt-author" (Homestuck: Book 4: Act 5 Act 1, p. 184), English "arguably is me [Andrew Hussie], but detached from the literal AH persona by several layers of symbolism" (Homestuck: Book 6: Act 5 Act 2 Part 2, p. 71), and their retelling of the ancestor story is "troll fanfiction": Caliborn, as taught to him by Yaldabaoth, is telling a story where he is God, and everyone else is merely trapped playing the roles he assigns them. The purity of the blank page behind Homestuck, that "well of potential from which every conceivable possibility arises" accessible only to John after interacting with Caliborn's ultimate weapon, is corrupted by the placement of words upon it.

Thus is the Homestuck cast's preoccupation with "ascension". To reach the god tiers is to become one with one's dream body, something which "kind of operate[s] outside the normal time continuum" and can share information across all versions of a person; which is why the moon insignia of the dreamer appears on the chests of the sprites squared. This is the basis of the Ultimate Self, one's pure essence as it exists in Plato's world of ideas; the untarnished version of someone that exists outside of any fictionalised account of them, malevolent and otherwise.

Not to lose sight of the gendered conflict at the center of all of this; to say that the feminine aligns with the "good" spirit and the masculine with the "evil" flesh is not to say that the genders of our heroes places them on either side of some cosmic chess board. Vriska speculates that the game of Sburb seeks players "right around the cusp of sexual maturity", going on to make the assumption that this is because Skaia has a breeding program in mind for its children from the beginning. But knowing that Sburb being about breeding is entirely a smoke screen, we can see that its fixation on pubescence isn't about reproduction, or even about sex at all; what Skaia wants is heroes who haven't yet fully formed a sexual identity. Ascending to godhood is intrinsically linked to the act of growing up, because at the cusp of adulthood heroes are at the perfect stage to shed off the evil flesh. This doesn't necessarily mean shedding off maleness entirely, only the oppressive trappings of maleness established by Lord English as the patriarch of Alternia (and by his servants and disciples like Dave's bro, who instill in children a toxic version of what masculinity should be); but it naturally makes perfect sense for our protagonist to be troubled by the overwhelming expectations of masculinity and tend toward femaleness instead.

John: Zoom in.

As a final aside, viewing the primary threat in Homestuck as a masculine corrupting force, we can extrapolate parallels with various other forms of corruption and oppression . In as much as Jake serves as a proto-Lord English - Caliborn 'jacks Jake's swagger' just as much as he follows in the footsteps of Yaldabaoth - his habits of settling uninhabited islands and filling his grandiose homes with cultural artifacts looted from eastern tombs paints him as something of a coloniser; suggesting that Lord English's corruption is in essence colonialism, a force that corrupts foreign cultures, forcing them to adhere to the coloniser's own narrative, transmuting existing societies into strata of race, or blood colour, or binary genders. The Alternians could be said to have not only been corrupted but "colonised".

An alternative, perhaps more modern, reinterpretation of the Gnostic masculine-versus-feminine conflict might even reinterpret Sophia as precolonial androgyny, and Yaldabaoth as a gendering force; a narrative not incompatible with that presented in Plato's Symposium, where primordial androgynes are torn into gendered halves by the worship-hungry Zeus, just as English takes the very ideas of our heroes and splits them into multiple fictions, across scratches, across timelines, through his dominion over Time. In either case, it is the Lord of Time's enforcement of his gender narrative upon reality that forms the central conflict of the comic; to the point where escaping gender, escaping the confines of the comic, and becoming the true version of oneself all become synonymous goals; the goal of knowing the truth behind the lie, attaining the Gnostic gnosis.

[kindestegg]

Deltarune Theory: Ralsei is a guide for the script

It feels crazy that Deltarune Chapter 2 has only been out for like, what, two weeks? As of the time I’m writing this, and yet, there has already been so much secret hunting and speculation over this. Not even the full game, and people already go crazy over it. Naturally, I am part of this craze. In fact I was one of the people that played it as soon as it dropped.

And, I thought it was only me, but, at least for a little while, Ralsei’s behavior struck me as… odd. Not outwardly malicious, but just… odd. Particularly the first bit of the game, it was just so… happy and convenient? And Ralsei was at the center of it all, orchestrating it, making sure everything happened accordingly.

Eventually, that initial feeling of distrust went away, but… not quite. And it seems a lot of people began to feel the same way, pointing out bits about Ralsei that are just… out of place. Things that didn’t seem to stand out in the first chapter, are now popping out about him.

Questions include:

How does he know about what’s outside the Dark World, about the school?

How does he know about the game mechanics and call them out by names?

Why is he so interested in keeping the balance between only Kris acting and him and Susie doing magic?

Why does he seem so eager to dismiss what happened with Spamton NEO?

Why doesn’t he turn into stone or even get weak at any point during the time he spends in Cyber World?

Are the parts of his name and design connecting to the Dreemurr’s intentional, and if so, what does that mean for his relation to Kris?

How and why does he take player control away to look at what Susie is doing? Why must he wait until Kris is willing to do it? What does he tell them when he succeeds in this?

Now, I don’t intend to pose here “a supreme theory to rule them all”, I’m just a guy having fun and I’ve seen people voice particularly similar ideas to this one I’ve had, so I want to at least try to answer these questions through a relatively simple idea that would, almost entirely, immediately answer ALMOST all the doubts.

First, let’s start with some steps to build up this idea. For one, we know for a fact that Ralsei holds knowledge over game mechanics and may even break the fourth wall at times.

But we also know that Ralsei’s design resembles a lot of characters from Undertale we know and were fond of. For one, he can be likened to Toriel in the sense that he is the one to give you the first tutorial of the game and his clothes resemble her original outfit as well. Another connection, much more common, that people have made is that he is like Asriel, no doubt due to his name being an anagram, but also due to the fact he is also a cute young goat.

I would like to do a complete turn around here though, and say I do not think any of this points to Ralsei being related to Kris in the familial sense, for more than one reason, but my main one being that I don’t think Toby would be as frankly disgusting as to imply such a thing when there is so so much teasing in the direction of Ralsei possibly having a crush on Kris. I mean… really, Toby?

You know, I’m not too sure this would be the smartest idea, Mr. Fox, but alright.

However, I do think all these hints in his design and name have a purpose. And it has to do with how us, the fandom, see these two characters. For one, they are very beloved characters, and Toriel is one that we associate with her tutorials and guidance, whereas Asriel is one that people have yearned to see more in action. They are back, in a sense, but not present in our adventures so far.

What I’m getting at is that Ralsei is specifically designed to be the darling of the fandom. He is made to be loved, to be trusted, to cause feelings in us that make us want to protect him and accept his advice. This, in a way, also affects the in-universe characters who see him, as Susie put it: “as a big portable teddy bear”, whose job is “giving hugs”.

And I don’t just mean this in a character design way, like “oh wow Toby was so smart to make a perfectly marketable boy!” No. I think Ralsei exists as a meta element, his form being a direct manifestation of what we want to see.

He looks like that because he wants us to see him and lower our guard and expect his guidance. Remember how his form was shadowy and vague throughout all of chapter 1 until the very end of it and how he poofs into nothing but a pile of clothes in both chapters so far, no matter what form he’s in? What if he’s a shapeshifter? What if Ralsei isn’t even his real name? That certainly would explain why he says he doesn’t know what being Ralsei-like is like.

Ralsei? Ralsei? Oh God he’s gone.

Now, do I think he’s lowering our guard in the sense of leaving us vulnerable for an attack? Not exactly. I think it's so we learn to accept him…

Accept that he is a GUIDE for the game’s script. His entire existence hinges on guiding the main characters, specially Kris, throughout the story, and making sure the whole story, all seven chapters, play out exactly as planned.

You see, Ralsei isn’t evil. His goal is pretty simple, actually: guide us, the player, throughout the game, making us feel as safe and happy and secure. In that sense, of course he pushes so hard towards the pacifist route. After all, that’s the one that’s closer to a completionist route, as the sparing + recruiting mechanic adds more characters to your town, and therefore more content. He wants you to see all this content and get the most enjoyment out of it. His code urges him to bring you the best experience possible.

This would also answer why he does that thing with taking our control away from Kris and to watch Susie’s shenanigans. Because it’s satisfying to us. Notice how stressed out and pushy he gets in the alternate route when Susie comes out of Noelle’s room without being able to let us see what happened. He knows he messed up, something went wrong. He was supposed to let us see, so that we wouldn’t be bored, because God forbid the players be bored.

Just imagine this going through his head.

He also seems to genuinely care about Kris and Susie, and with good reason, as he knows these are the protagonists, and he is supposed to care for their well being too and ensure they reach their goal. I do think, however, there is a good amount of being genuine in his care, as he has no reason to react so boldly sometimes to either of them, showing outrage or affection in pretty telling ways. He isn’t heartless despite carrying out this job.

However it is also worth noting, for all his care, he cannot do the one thing that Kris would desire the most: free them from our grasp. And that is his ultimate failure towards them, and may end up creating conflict later on in the game.

From, here, there are two possible pathways:

Ralsei does not know about the dilemma Kris is going through, and believes Kris is entirely oblivious and passive towards being in a video game. He may even end up being the final boss to fight, as he desperately tries to keep everything on rails while Kris very much does not care for any of that.

Ralsei is entirely aware of what’s going on with Kris, after all, everything in a game’s design is planned, even the cutscenes, therefore even Kris’ struggles. Ralsei knows of the fate that lies ahead, that Kris will eventually be free, how it all ends. But to get there… is still a road ahead.

I think Ralsei’s affection towards Kris will definitely be explored in the later chapters. Not just because of the teasing we’ve been getting, but, if Ralsei really is a guide of the game’s code and script, what would that mean for him to get so attached towards the character the player is controlling?

Ralsei will have to make a choice. He will either recognize Kris is suffering and cannot wait any longer, or be faced with possibly having to fight them himself. This is why those two pathways matter as well. If he doesn’t know, his choice will come later and it will be an unpleasant surprise for him to find out the game universe is breaking apart around him with the self awareness of certain characters. If he does know, however, his choice is NOW, and waiting for the inevitable will be torture.

Just how long until he breaks? Or will he keep the facade until the very last chapter?

Like I said, I don’t intend this theory to be the biggest, most revealing and coherent theory. But… It could add a very interesting layer to Ralsei’s character, as well as answer many questions posed beforehand. He knows the school layout and game controls because he is part of the code. He can get to the other Dark World’s easily and remain unharmed because the game demands him to be. He looks like this so that we love him. He wants to give us the most fulfilling Castle Town so that we will love the game. He doesn’t protest even when Kris does things like try to give him the thorn ring, because to him, everything will be okay anyway. Everything he is, is for us. He isn’t evil or malicious per se, he just opposes Kris’ biggest need.

But he may have gotten himself attached. And that may be a clue to sparing him if he does become a final boss.

But! Tell me what you thought of this theory! Do you think it’s way too weird and farfetched, or do you think it’s possible that it could happen? Or maybe you agree with some stuff but not with other stuff? Go ahead and tell me!

[avaritia-apotheosis]

Phantom Children Ch. 8

What's this? An update! Massive thanks to my betas for helping me get through this chapter <3

In Which: A few answers are given to the family and Danny is rudely awoken

[Side note: If you wanna know the general ages of the batfam, its listed in the AO3 version. I also talk about katanas in the end notes ^-^]

AO3 | Prologue | 7 | [ 8 ] | 9 DAMIAN INFORMED TODD—and Drake when he arrived on his bike sometime later on—that the boy whose face is plastered across the monitor was neither a picture of himself nor of Father.

Drake took one glance at the monitor and sighed, pressing his fingers against the bridge of his nose. “Just when I thought this day was getting better.”

“What, did that café on 5th finally let customers supersize their drink?”

“God that would be the dream, wouldn’t it?” Drake sighed wistfully. “Nah, but I did get a lead on where some of that stolen Cadmus tech might’ve ended up. I was gonna spend the night following up on it, but I guess we have to deal with,” he gestured to the monitor, “whatever this is.”

Todd leaned against the edge of the computer, arms crossed over the red bat insignia on his chest. “What are we dealing with this time, brat? A clone? An alternate universe counterpart? Magic shenanigans?”

Maybe. Perhaps. All of those were perfectly valid conclusions for the enigma that was Daniel James Fenton. (Why Fenton and not al Ghul? Or even Wayne?)

Damian, too, was a genetic experiment; a ‘test tube baby’ as Drake put it at times. Damian was born for greatness, created to be perfect. The perfect soldier. The perfect assassin. The perfect heir. Was this boy—Daniel—like him as well?

A failed one, then. Perhaps the precursor to Damian’s own existence. But that would not explain why the boy was allowed to exist for so long. His grandfather demanded perfection, especially from those of his own blood. If the boy was a failure, he would have been eliminated immediately, not sent to live with some eccentric scientists in the Midwest.

Damian was not naïve enough to think that his mother and grandfather did not keep secrets from him. On the contrary, he expected it. The League of Shadows dealt in secrets as often as it did in death. Certain information was worth its weight in gold, whether it was given or buried away.

But he could not help the sharp pang in his chest. A lightning strike, quick and electrifying at the notion that they kept secrets about their family from him.

His father’s face flashed in his mind. The shock turned into a slow, dawning horror. That flicker of light, of recognition, as he scrutinized the contents of the flash drive and cross-referenced it with a public database.

And grief.

Damian recognized the grief.

Alfred, too, nearly dropped his tray of fresh-baked cookies when he stepped in front of the monitor. His usual unflappable demeanor was momentarily broken at his father’s whispered “Sixteen years. Alfred— he’s sixteen years old.”

His father knew of the boy. He was allowed to know of Daniel when he was not allowed to know about Damian.

------

Grayson returned to the cave with a distinct lack of energy in his step. His mask dangled off the tips of his fingers, chin angled downwards and covered largely by his hand. For a split second, their eyes met. Grayson shifted his gaze away, scratching the back of his neck. Father told him, then. Damian wondered how much Father revealed to his favorite son.

Damian clucked his tongue and buried himself deeper into the chair, arms crossed and pointedly looking away. If it was not for his accursed ankle, he’d have headed out to the training ring to take his frustrations out on the dummies.

“Oh, thank god you’re here, Dickface. Damian’s completely out of it.”

Damian shot him a look. “Shut up, Todd.”

“Leave him alone, Jay. Is Tim back yet?”

Drake emerged from the changing room in a dark green shirt, a fresh cup of coffee in hand. He took one long sip before exhaling. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“O-kay…” He pressed his hands together, mouth thinned into a grim line. “Uh, hey Tim, glad to see you back safe. Bruce is coming down soon to explain some things.” He let out a deep sigh, carding a hand through his hair. “This kind of thing would probably be better with the girls around, but I—god, I don’t know.”

Todd raised an eyebrow. “Don’t know whether to call Steph and Cass in Hong Kong, or don’t know what’s going on?”

“Yes.”

------

When Father arrived, Pennyworth following dutifully behind him, it was with an aching slowness in his gait. His steps measured and precise, preternaturally quiet as he made his way to stand by Damian’s chair. Damian sat up straighter, shoulders squared and back an inch away from the backrest. The rest, even Todd, stood at attention; an ingrained habit among Robins and an amusing instinct even among the senior heroes of the Justice League when it came to facing the Batman.

His father kept a steady hand on Damian’s shoulder, and Damian, shamefully, leaned into the touch; his head inclined towards his father’s hand so much so that he could feel the ends of his hair being pushed up slightly as he brushed against his father’s forearm.

He spoke with his usual monotone, as if he was heading a Justice League meeting as opposed to unveiling the secrets surrounding that boy. He brought forward the few photos they obtained from the flash drive. “A few weeks ago, we were alerted of suspicious movement from the League of Shadows in Amity Park, Illinois. Their objectives are, as of now, unclear, though it appears to be tied to the death of Amity Park resident, Daniel Fenton.”

One photo was a standard ID picture people get for their driver’s license, the lighting deliberately horrible so that any attempt to look decent would always end in failure. Another photo was a little better; a candid scene of him chatting with two others his age, a Caucasian girl in gothic-style clothes and an African-American holding a sleek, but still very outdated PDA. His blue eyes crinkled at the corners, hand reaching up to his face to stifle a laugh. There were other photos like this, some candid, others posed. At the forefront of each, a boy that looked too much like his father, too much like Damian.

His father glanced at the photos. He shut his eyes and when he opened them again, he fixed them on some distant stalactite in the Cave. “Around six months ago, Daniel was pronounced dead in a vehicular accident. A body was present, but according to police reports, he was identified via his driver’s license as opposed to any kind of DNA profiling.” He leaned over Damian’s chair to pull up a profile of Masters. “Our source—Vladimir Masters, mayor of Amity and a friend of the Fenton family—indicated his belief that Daniel is actually alive. I am inclined to agree.”

“He’s your son, isn’t he,” Drake said, more of a statement than a question.

Father gave a curt nod. “I cannot say for certain until I can perform a DNA test, but I highly suspect that to be the case.”

“First the demon spawn, now this. Great.” Todd made a hand motion towards the screen. “You know, Bruce, not knowing you have a kid once might be a coincidence, but twice? How do you do that?”

“As of three hours ago, I was still under the impression that my son never made it to term.”

“What?”

“Over sixteen years ago I was involved in a mission that put Ra’s and I on the same side. During that time, Talia and I entered a relationship that resulted in a pregnancy. Though initially ecstatic, she eventually led me to believe she miscarried the child and pushed me away. For what ends, I do not know, but trust me Jason, if I knew—” He paused, the hand that was not on Damian’s shoulder curled into a tight fist.

Father pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why she hid it from me then doesn’t matter. Why Talia wants him back now is important. Judging from Daniel’s records, he was adopted into the Fenton family as an infant and has since lived a seemingly normal life as a civilian. His adoptive parents, Jack and Maddie Fenton, are brilliant scientists and engineers focused on the field of paranormal studies. Eccentricities aside, they have zero connections to the League of Assassins or any other concerning parties.”

“So why now?” Dick asked, shifting his concerned gaze from Bruce to the static picture of Danny’s tired smile. “Why, after all this time, decide that now would be the best time to recover him?”

------

Danny’s experienced plenty of rude awakenings before, but waking up at the ass-crack of dawn to avoid his kidnapper-slash-assassin-slash-biological-mom launching a surprise attack takes the fucking cake. He can’t believe he’s saying this, but thank god for all those late night ghost attacks that conditioned him to be a light sleeper. And, of course, the League’s insistence that everyone be in optimal condition regardless of how little sleep you actually got.

Danny kicked Talia off of him, ripping his blanket away before scrambling to his feet. Seriously, if the universe decided to spontaneously give him powers again, he’d really like an upgrade to his ghost senses, please and thank you. Something that works on humans and not just ghosts. Like spidey-senses. He’d really, really like some spidey-senses.

“Your reaction times have improved considerably,” Talia said.

He eyed the katana sheathed beside his bedroll. “Thanks. Who could have guessed that constantly challenging someone to a spar in the unholy hours of morning would make them paranoid to sleep too much? Really, how am I supposed to grow taller at this rate? ” If he could just get it--

She smiled, taking a step forward. “Prepare yourself.”

“Heh.” Danny stepped further away from Talia, keeping his back to the mouth of the cave. One hand stretched in front of him and the other, coated in a green light, was kept hidden behind his back. “Am I actually gonna get some answers today?”

“Let us make it interesting. Last 10 minutes against me and I shall tell you more about your brother.” Talia twirled her blade. “If you happen to draw blood, you may ask any one thing of me.”

“Anything?”

“Within reason.”

His face caught between a grimace and a smile. He’d rather be sleeping right now, but if he had to be awake, then he’d better make the most of it. “Deal.”

Talia’s smile dropped. She veered her body to the right, barely dodging the streak of bright green that whizzed from behind her. The ectoplasmic energy that surrounded the katana bled away as the handle connected with Danny’s outstretched hand.

She quickly glanced back at Danny’s bedding. Beside it lay an empty sheath. “You have telekinesis?”

He shrugged. “It comes and goes.” Yeah, no way was Danny gonna admit that seven-out-of-ten-times he forgot that he had telekinesis. Besides, that shit was hard to do when he wasn’t Phantom.

“A surprise attack from behind is a sound strategy, Daniel. Though it’ll take a lot more than that to harm me.”

Danny pointed to the side of his cheek. “Are you sure about that?”

Talia frowned. She reached up to her face. Her fingers brushed against her cheek and came away with a thin streak of blood.

Danny grinned, pointing his blade at his opponent. “First blood goes to me.”

------

Fact: most fights don’t last long. An average street fight could last anywhere between 25 to 40 seconds, and sword fights rarely last over a minute. Like Talia said, the goal of a fight was to end it with as few injuries to oneself as possible. Humans, even the most skilled ones, can rarely last long in a fight. Prolonged combat is suicide; it makes you tired, makes your muscles heavy. It’s nothing like what Hollywood would have you believe.

Even with Danny’s own enhanced stamina and Talia holding back, he couldn’t last a full ten-minute spar. If Talia didn’t finish him within twenty-five seconds, then he’d fall by his own human limitations.

But the goal wasn’t to spar continuously for ten minutes.

He only had to last that long.

Danny sprinted out of the cave. The sun barely peeked out of the horizon, a thin line of deep orange breaking apart the wide expanse of blue-black sky above. He couldn’t see shit; great news since that meant there’s a good chance Talia couldn’t either, but that doesn’t fix the fact that he can’t see.

Nearly stumbling on the ice, Danny veered to the left. The edges of the lake stopped at towering rocks twice Danny’s height, leaving little room for cover. Though if he remembered correctly, there should be a few crevices here and there to hide in.

“You’ll have to be faster than that, Daniel.”

Shit—

Danny stopped. He brought his sword up to parry Talia’s strike and twisted away, putting distance between them.

Well, so much for just avoiding her for 10 minutes.

He adjusted his grip, keeping his sword steady and eyes trained on Talia as they circled each other. Danny lunged with an overhead strike. Talia used one hand to block the downswing by gripping his wrists. She thrust her sword forward, the tip harshly poking Danny’s abdomen.

“Less than three minutes.” Talia let his wrist go, Danny’s arms slumping to his sides.

He sighed as he sheathed his sword. “Damn, I thought I’d last longer than that.”

“You made a good effort,” Talia assured him. “Putting as much distance between us at the beginning was a good strategy. You recognized the win conditions immediately and attempted a battle of attrition.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I am very proud of you habibi, especially as you managed to draw first blood.”

A warmth grew in Danny’s stomach at the words, heating his cheeks. Sheepishly, he scratched the back of his head. “I wasn’t entirely sure that would work, honestly.”

“It was clever; half a second later and you might have even killed me. You are an al Ghul through and through” She brushed his hair out of his face. “What would you like as your prize, then?”

Danny’s heart clenched. He frowned, dropping his arm to his side. If I was such an al Ghul, then why didn’t you keep me? The question lodged itself in his throat, stifling his thoughts. It was something he’d been wondering for a while, actually, in the moments of solitude he had at the compound. Talia, during their training, would always remark at his potential. How talented he was, how adaptable he was, how much greater he would have been if he had been trained at a younger age.

Well then, why wasn’t he? Why did she give him up?

But each time he tried to ask, his tongue would turn to lead and the moment would pass, the question still left unsaid and simmering at the back of his mind. A Pandora’s Box that held none of the world’s evil but all of Danny’s possible shortcomings.

He could ask the question now.

He could.

He didn’t.

“Why did you take me?”

Talia tilted her head. “It is because you’re my son.”

“No. Not that. It has to be something more than that. You had sixteen years to come back for me—or, hell, you could have just never left me.” His breath hitched, fingers mussing his hair and hiding his eyes. “Why else did you take me?”

“It is true that there was more than one reason why we decided to retrieve you from Amity Park. One of which is because you are my son and an heir of the Demon’s Head.” Talia stilled. The dark skies of dawn made it impossible for him to read her. “The second reason was to protect you.”

“You kidnapped me…to protect me?”

“Knowledge of the ghosts of Amity have spread through the more insidious parts of the world. There are many out there who would pay exorbitant fees to study one of you or to use you.”

Use him? What did she mean by—

Oh.

Ghosts—Amity Park’s brand of ghosts—were a new element that the world had to contend with. Amity Park might have a crime rate of zero but that wasn’t the case everywhere else. Theft, assault, murder; the world was rampant with crimes and criminals clawing their way to the very top. Having ghosts, even ones with the most basic powerset, would be a huge advantage.

“There’s no way that would work,” Danny insisted. “Most ghosts just want to be left alone, and the ones that want to wreak havoc would never work with humans. The only reason they even work with halfas like me at times is because they still consider us as ghosts.”

“If my sources are to be believed, ghosts might not even get a choice.”

Danny’s blood curdled in his veins.

No.

Someone’s found a way to control ghosts.

[sokkagatekeeper]

@kyoshialone asked: this ask is asking u to make the post about ur thoughts on how the characters ppl stan affect how they view all of atla ? :)

ok so this is in reference to me saying that i've realized that i have a categorization system for atla fans in my head that is based on which character they stan because oh god have i spent too much time reading bad atla takes out of morbid fascination (and yes i have seen every single one of these takes at least once with my own two eyes). this isn't necessarily gonna line up with who someone's favorite character actually is (if the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it), and it definitely doesn't line up with how much i love each character, but these are sets of beliefs that i associate with people who describe themselves as “stans” of certain characters.

disclaimer that this is (obviously) gonna be reductive and prescriptive. there are many common bad atla takes that i'm leaving out, but. god. i don't hate myself enough to be fully comprehensive with this. & i'm limiting it to atla tumblr, not other places where fandom exists; fortunately i have not observed enough fandom on other sites to have a good sense of how they differ from tumblr (i have blocked the few months i spent on atla tiktok out of my mind. also no one uses tumblr lmfao it's easier to do this with a site that has a small userbase). under the cut because it's time to offend every single atla fan in one post let's do it.

wait one more thing: don't rb this pls and thank u <3 i am genuinely not trying to be mean or start drama; i'm just complaining about bad interpretations to my followers who i assume already at least mostly agree with me. if i were to make a genuine effort to change atla fandom culture i wouldn't go about it like this lmao

sokka stans: the best atla fans no notes 👍 (like i said, this whole thing is kinda prescriptive. the idea of a “sokka stan” in this sense is somewhat defined by having good takes. but still, almost everyone whose atla opinions i fully agree with considers themself a sokka stan, so.)

katara stans: people who (incorrectly) believe that claiming that katara was always responsible, rational, and considerate is a good way of engaging with her character. momtara truthers. zutara shippers who believe that shipping katara with zuko is somehow liberatory for her. also probably think that katara is bi (which isn't inherently bad like the other things, but it is annoying 2 me, and sometimes people talk about katara being bi in ways that set of sirens in my brain.)

zuko stans: “aang critical” people. do i even need to say more. actually i will say more. some of these people's stellar (/s) takes include that: katara should've ended up with zuko because zuko is better than aang; aang was weak/selfish/immature for not wanting to kill ozai; aang was given a deus ex machina solution (because the writers loved him too much to have him grow as a character); in the southern raiders, aang was being immature and trying to force his beliefs onto katara. and more!

suki stans: ok there are two subcategories here. first is people (who usually ship zukka) who “stan” suki by reducing her to a badass amazing bi girl with very little depth, who has a girlfriend with similar amounts of depth. the second is people who are actually interested in exploring and expanding upon suki's character, who usually are actually invested in sukka (as opposed to how everyone else recognizes that sukka is a good ship but don't really care about it). that second group is cool. i am not one of them but they're great.

toph stans: do toph stans....... exist??

aang stans: ok aang stans are honestly the most fascinating group of people in all of atla fandom because they often have very interesting and insightful takes on aang (if i see a good aang take on my dash that wasn't written by someone i follow, 9 times out of 10 it was written by an aang stan) and they generally understand most of the characters (except for sokka they don't understand sokka at all, which makes sense because these people are so invested in aang as the thematic lead of the show that they think that the fact that sokka's philosophy on... basically everything contradicts aang's philosophy means that sokka is wrong, which. in reality, sokka and aang are both correct in different ways. anyway.), but then they'll also say absolutely batshit things like that the more people you ship aang with, even if these people are far too old for him or entirely romantically incompatible with him, the more you love aang. it just baffles me how people say with their whole chests that the 12-year-old and the 16-year-old should kiss. also they (from what i've seen, and also i think this is mostly a reaction to the aforementioned zuko stans) will defend every single writing choice made in atla. i mean, i think atla is a very well-written show but... it does have flaws..... which brings me to:

jet stans: ok like. jet stans have their hearts in the right place. they often have very good ideas. they're rarely, if ever, overtly racist or misogynistic (which is unfortunately more than can be said for most of atla fandom). they care a lot about being critical of atla, which of course is good, except that these (mostly teenagers, not adults tbf) often seem to think that “be critical of the media you consume” means “nitpick and try to find flaws that don't exist, largely for the sake of woke points,” when it really means “critically engage with the text,” something that many of them don't really do. i tend to see well-intentioned but ultimately pretty myopic takes coming from jet stans.

azula stans: where to start.... azula stans usually misunderstand azula's character (in that like... they idealize her in a way that is so contradictory to the themes of her arc. for example, when they say that she's a more powerful firebender than zuko, they're sort of right, but the way that they act as if being a better firebender has moral value is. pretty much exactly the reason why azula had a breakdown lol), minimize her contributions to the fire nation's imperialism (we all remember the pacifist azula essay, and also the way that they often act as if being abused excuses her from responsibility as if ozai turning his daughter into a weapon wasn't itself a form of abuse), misunderstand ty lee's character (by which i mean. the entirety of “tyzula”), act like the concept of “deserving a redemption arc” is a coherent analytical framework (it isn't), refuse to see nuance in ursa, start sentences with “unpopular opinion” (even if the opinion isn't unpopular... like it gets on my nerves more than it should when i see posts like “unpopular opinion: azula wasn't a heartless monster” or “unpopular opinion: zuko was a shitty brother” like... yeah... most people agree with you there....), and misunderstand zuko and azula's relationship (i've literally seen takes about how azula kept trying to mend their relationship and was kind to zuko in ways that he never was to her.... lol. i mean not that zuko was a good brother but. they were both shitty.)

ty lee stans: uhh i don't really see many ty lee stans but if you actually understand ty lee's character i am very likely to trust your opinions on atla in general.

mai stans: people who would make maiko amvs set to mitski's “me and my husband,” because they ship maiko. unfortunately. yes i have in fact seen at least one m&mh maiko edit made in support of maiko. tiktok is a dark place. to be clear, mai stans do actually care about mai, and, unlike most atla fans, understand that mai is an extremely nice & kind person but... they do not show their love for her in good ways. imo.

and again, don't reblog this. as always, good faith criticism is welcome. love and light to you all <3

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 117 - Testament

But Tim isn’t going to sit home and wait, and Elias seems pretty insistent I go along. Part of me thinks it’s just so he can see if whatever this “preparation” he’s been trying to do on me works. - Jon

I guess, yeah, that's part of it and the other part is that he wants to make absolutely sure Jon gets touched by as many powers as he possibly can and sending him right into the lion's den is a good way of doing that, I suppose.

I don’t quite get those two. I suppose what they’ve done, seeing what they’ve seen… it’s a hell of a bond. The sort of thing I’ve mostly done alone.

Ouch. That is a painful realisation right there! (The usual disclaimer of "I'm obviously not talking about the scale of cosmic horror here because duh or for that matter even the scale of massive trauma" but I actually think that realisation is on some level relatable because of the realisation I had multiple times in my life of "I don't really know what a close bond feels like because I've never actually been anywhere close to the best friend of the people I've considered my best friends." Fortunately my luck has shifted somewhat in the "close emotional bonds" department, or at least I hope I'm not kidding myself about that, but the realisation that some people have these fire-forged, ride-or-die relationships and you're just kinda doing your own thing, dipping a finger shallowly into human connection every once in a while and then watching it flow away, is a bit of a twinge.)

And… aside from some, uh, uh, office gossip which I, I’m not sure is necessary or, uh, conducive to a workplace that… hey, it, it, it’s natural it’s, it’s normal.

I love how Jon just goes from deep emotional turmoil to being a bit upset that people are gossipping about whatever may be going on in his love life. Talk about emotional roller coasters!

Oh, yeah, I found something on the other body the circus stole, this “George Icarus.” (...) Jurgen Leitner. I just can’t be rid of him.

Ah, okay, this is where we learn who George Icarus was. Also, the pseudonym is very fitting, I mean, Leitner did, in fact, fly too close to the goddamn sun and subsequently crash and burn when he decided to create a library of fear books, didn't he?

He always said, if you don’t like something, you accept it and you adapt, or you fight and you change it. Whining doesn’t help. I always tried to live like that. But I think sometimes you feel like you’re adapting, but it’s just denial. - Basira

This is definitely something I've experienced myself but it's also definitely something I've seen in some people who like to go on like Basira's dad about stiff-upper-lip-don't-whine-adapt-and-overcome to other people and shame others for expressing their emotional pain. When the cracks finally do start showing up (usually under the influence of alcohol), it's not so much a crack as a full-on explosion.

But at least Daisy’s coming. I mean, I know she’s… difficult. Everything they say about her, it’s true, it’s fair. But, she’s solid. She’s a… a fixed point, and if she’s there, I know exactly where I stand, exactly what I’m doing, relative to her.

It's tragic but also on some level a little bit heartwarming that Basira never actually stops doing things relative to Daisy, even when it takes everything out of her, even when Daisy starts destroying herself.

Still stuck, still miserable, still angry. New traumas, but they hurt just like the old ones. Elias thinks he’s got this ingenious way to hurt people, but it’s just the same old and a creepy new package. Arsehole. God, I just want to rip his – When did I start to lose the parts of me that weren’t just anger? - Melanie

I always have a soft spot for the angry ones, the ones who have to forcibly stop themselves from punching people in the teeth, who have to put every last shred of willpower into keeping a lid on the boiling, hissing, steaming pot that is their inner life. The ones whose willpower sometimes fails them and then they do end up hurting people or themselves because of their anger. And not to go all REPRESENTATION here, but I'm actually glad to see that in TMA that character archetype is basically all women, because the people exploding in violent anger or having to try so fucking hard to keep it in and occasionally failing are usually guys.

They did manifest, but they weren’t what I thought they’d be. They were fused, somehow, all mixed together, a huge angry mass of dead flesh and guns.

I'm kind of glad this isn't a fully-fledged statement because I feel like that sentence, that image, is really all I need and anything further would actually weaken rather than strengthen the horror.

Good luck, Jon. I do hope you win. But I also hope it hurts.

Damn, this episode is so good at summarising characters in a line or two, isn't it?

I, I’m scared, I guess. – no, wait. No, no, I mean, ah, I don’t want that to be my last message, the thing that defines me. “Martin Blackwood, he was always scared, then he died. The end.” I don’t want that. - Martin

I'm a very anxious person and this is INSANELY relatable, this fear that all that's going to be left of you is the things you didn't do because you were terrified. ... Martin, stop making me tear up by being too damn relatable!

I need them to be safe, I need him to be okay.

Aw, Martin!

I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be safe, like my plan’s not dangerous, but it’s, it’s mine. This last couple of years, I’ve always been running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but, but now it’s my trap, and, well, I think it’ll work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but it felt good leaving my own little web.

a) This thought process makes perfect sense. Sometimes you just need to express your goddamn agency, even if it's dangerous and even if it's bound to hurt and b) I know the podcast immediately lampshades the "web" thing, but WEB!MARTIN THOUGH! I MEAN! THINK ABOUT IT! That would've been such an amazing plot point and they had it all set up. I mean, he's got a lot of good Lonely-related shit going on later, too, but ... why not both? I do enjoy it when the powers squabble over a character!

I used to blame my brother for going off his own and poking around where he wasn’t wanted. I used to blame myself for not helping him. But now… now it doesn’t matter. I’ve read through enough of these things to know that this doesn’t matter. The only thing you need to have your life destroyed by this stuff is just bad luck. Talk to the wrong person, take the wrong train, open the wrong door, and that’s it! - Tim

I think Tim's view of this is actually very close to the way that TMA handles this. The Entities don't eat you because you deserve it. They just happen to happen to someone. And that makes the horror work so much better than if that wasn't the case. (It also feels closer to how LIFE actually works a lot of the time.) So I find it somewhat odd to see when people do read desert into it, I feel like that weakens the storytelling.

Honestly, I hope that Jon learned something from her because, because I don’t expect I’m going to be coming back from this. I don’t know if I want to. And if he needs to pull the trigger, to use me to stop it… well, he’d better have the guts to do it.

Well. Fuck!

Gerard’s page… Gerry. I-I know there’s more he could tell me – he he, wouldn’t of, of course, I, I know that but he, he… he would still be there, th-that, that knowledge, i-it would, it would still exist…(...) …y-you owe me one, Gerry. Rest in … Just rest. - Jon

Damn, seeing Jon struggle against the instinct to keep knowledge available to himself, seeing how much it literally hurts him and seeing him WIN is sure something. Also ... "Rest in ... just rest." ... make me cry, why don't you?

My impression of this episode

This is not so much horror as it is concentrated emotion and I adore it. I nearly teared up a few times on my relisten (I think I wasn't in quite the right headspace during my first time). The gut punch quotes come thick in this one. This may actually be my favourite plot development episode (as opposed to favourite statements that don't relate directly to the overall plot). The writing is just. so. good.

[fremedon]

Brickclub 2.7.4 - 2.7.7

@everyonewasabird suggested in 2.7.7 that, in defending the right to withdraw from society, Hugo was talking about his own exile. I get some of that here as well, but even more strongly, I’m getting more echoes of “The Dead Are Right and the Living are Not Wrong”--

Men come together and live under one roof. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right of association.

They shut themselves up in their communal home. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right that every man has to open or shut his door.

They do not go out. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right to come and go, which implies the right to stay at home.

The blank, closed doors that almost doomed Valjean and do doom the barricade are, Hugo is very clear, permissible. Cutting oneself off from the struggles of the world--voluntary, internal exile--may or may not be admirable, but the right to do so is absolute.

And a community of voluntary exiles, practicing complete equality and fraternity, shut up inside four walls--that’s the barricade. “Liberty is all that is required to transform the monastery into a republic.”

...and then Hugo spends two chapters on his concept of God, which. Um. Seems to be working well for him? Hugo has some sort of vague weird deism going on which he is adamant is NOT the same as atheism, but also doesn’t really have any place to get a philosophical toehold.

I got nothing. This is exactly the sort of navel-gazing that made me decide even Unitarian Universalism is much more religion than I can handle, and I’m just not going to bother. I think I may finally have found a genuine digression.

If it has a point, beyond Victor wanting to tell you he’s VERY CERTAIN about the nature of God, it’s as a place to hide this:

“History and philosophy have duties that are eternal and at the same time simple: to oppose Caiaphas as bishop, Draco as judge, Trimalchio as legislator, Tiberius as emperor. That is clear, straightforward and transparent, and presents no uncertainty.”

CENSORS ARE ASLEEP, POST NIII CALLOUTS.

...ah. And in the final chapter, Hugo defends the work of prayer as work, as a subset of intellectual and philosophical work and therefore valuable and necessary, and begins wrapping it up with this paragraph:

Besides, in this moment through which we are passing, a moment that fortunately will not leave its stamp upon the nineteenth century; in this hour, which finds so many with their foreheads bowed but their souls so little uplifted, among so many of the living whose motto is pleasure, and who are occupied with the brief, misshapen things of matter, whoever is self-exiled seems venerable to us.

Welp. That answers that.

The monastery is a renunciation. Self-sacrifice, even when misdirected, is still self-sacrifice.

And we’re back at Waterloo.

To assume as duty a strict error has its peculiar grandeur.

And hello, Javert. (And to be honest--from this point on, hello, Valjean.)

And a little later:

This monastic existence, austere and gloomy as it is, of which we have indicated a few characteristics, is not life, for it is not liberty; it is not the grave, for it is not completion; it is that strange place from which, as from the summit of a lofty mountain, we see, on one side, the abyss in which we are, and on the other, the abyss where we are to be; it is a narrow and misty boundary separating two worlds, at once illuminated and obscured by both, where the faint ray of life mingles with the uncertain ray of death; it is the twilight of the tomb.

Hello barricade, and hello tomb illuminated by the dawn.

And in light of that--hello, Enjolras:

As for us, we who do not believe what these women believe, but live like them by faith, never could look without a sort of tender and religious awe, a kind of pity full of envy, at those devote beings, trembling yet confident--those humble yet august souls, who dare to live on the brink of the great mystery, waiting between the world closed to them and heaven not yet opened; turned toward the daylight not yet seen, with only the happiness of thinking that they know where it is; their aspirations directed toward the abyss and the unknown, their gaze fixed on the motionless obscurity, kneeling, dismayed, stupefied, shuddering, and half carried off sometimes by the deep breath of Eternity.

That wraps up the Convent Digression, and we all know what that means for tomorrow: NUN CORPSE HEIST! NUN CORPSE! WITH LEFT HEIST!

[robbyrobinson]

OWL HOUSE x CTHULHU MYTHOS CROSSOVER: GODS AWAKEN 

(Pt. I)

“Come on, class,” the teacher announced in a stern voice.  

On that day, a class from Hexside School of Magic and Demonics was on a field trip sponsored by the potion's coven. It was to a museum that purported to be a documentation of the history of the Boiling Isles. The students walked in an orderly line behind their teacher who himself followed the tour guide, a small rabbit like creature with a bow tie.  

“If you look all around you, you can see that several of these creatures had managed to bleed out of our world and into others.”  

The tour guide pointed to different anomalies some stuffed, others mounted on the walls. Griffins were suspended from the ceiling mimicking their movements in life; vampires were placed in tanks fashioned as coffins. Within those tanks were a green-yellow liquid supposedly to preserve their corpses and to keep them from getting exposed to light.  Large tarantulas were placed in an array aligning the floors which led to artificial plants and trees.  

The tour guide turned his attention to the class. “Are there any questions on your mind?”  

One student raised their hand.  

“Yes?” the tour guide asked.

The student was a cyclops whose eye nearly engulfed his face. “What is that one over there?”  

“Where are you looking at, kid?” the tour guide inquired.

The student pointed his finger towards the far end of the room. The tour guide squinted his eyes to process what he was being directed to and slowly recognized the sight before him.  

“Oh, that,” he said, “it was initially meant to have been relocated because of some being fearful that it would be too...troublesome.”  

“Well, is it possible that we at least catch a small glimpse of what it is?” the teacher asked, “now that he had raised awareness of it, we cannot simply ignore it.”  

The tour guide scratched his chin deep in thought. After pondering it for a few seconds, he sighed. “You have really twisted my arm, but I suppose I can at least tell you the history of it.”  

They followed the tour guide towards the site of inquiry. Their eyes widened in amazement: before them towered, a colossal figure wearing attire alien to the witches of the Boiling Isles. It had a massive kilt splayed across its pelvis and reached down to its feet. Upon further inspection, the figure’s eyes were obscured with only its wide maw being visible. Rows of pointed, jagged teeth were littered in its mouth. One could even say that there were actually two rows of teeth, some teeth being so wide and mammoth, the figure’s mouth could not fully close. On the head of the creature, it wore pieces of cloth that came together to form a headpiece. The strands of fabric also rolled down its back.  

Another student stepped closer to the figure now realizing that it was a statue. “Who is this?”  

The tour guide hopped over. Before he said anything else, he took his finger and drew a circle in the air. A small ball of light formed in his hand. “This being,” he started, “preexisted the Boiling Isles.”

He walked towards the student and illuminated the area with his ball of light. “Thousands of years ago before the Boiling Isles’ recorded history, this being appeared one day seemingly with little rhyme nor reason. He went by many names, but the one he preferred the most was Nyarlathotep.”  

Around the statue of Nyarlathotep were murals depicting the Boiling Isles at different points in its development. He was prominently on display one mural in particular being the most disconcerting. A red ball of fire appeared before a small group of witches. Behind the ball was a long, spindling tail. From the look of horror on the witches’ faces, the event was not met with warm reception.  

“Where he came from no one knows,” the tour guide emphasized, “but what he did do next proved to be for our good.”  

He flashed the light ball in another mural illustrating Nyarlathotep forming a circle and rays of that shape went to the witches. “Long before Emperor Belos and the coven system, Nyarlathotep bestowed the early inhabitants magic.”  

The students looked at themselves. They were never once told by their parents or their teachers that a being likely from another dimension granted them magic. And certainly not the notion that it preexisted the Isles itself.  

The guide seemed to know what they were thinking. “This information was initially removed from the historical records and was only accessible to the most secretive of archives.”  

“What is happening there?” the teacher asked.  

They saw murals depicting the children of the early natives being tied to stakes and set ablaze before Nyarlathotep. The smoke of the mass fires danced around him. Inscriptions of ancient rituals detailing the sacrifices accompanied the grizzly imagery.  But in return for the sacrifices, Nyarlathotep conjured rainclouds that poured down on the witches.  

“It was best understood that the people of the Isles were indebted to their god,” the tour guide clarified, “so they offered him their own flesh and blood in order for Nyarlathotep to continue providing them with blessings.”  

The teacher scanned the inscriptions but could not process what they were alluding to. “What happened to those that refused?” He shrugged. “I mean, surely some would be opposed to that.”  

The tour guide frowned. “Oh, yes; there were some who obviously had misgivings with his demands. But that is what happened to them.”  

He lifted the light ball higher revealing the bigger picture. Villages that Nyarlathotep visited were razed to the ground with their dark god being the perpetrator behind the senseless assaults. Each mural depicted the same thing: witches standing up to oppose him only to be immediately quashed. In each mural, Nyarlathotep was in a different form some resembling winged beasts and satyrs.  Sometimes Nyarlathotep would merely send gusts of wind to topple houses and buildings.  

“Everywhere Nyarlathotep went, death was almost always a guarantee,” the tour guide said, “people were not even safe in their dreams for he would send madness-inducing nightmares into their subconscious safe haven. It would remain that way until one day, someone stood up for the children of the Isles.”  

A hooded figure stood before the dark figure without any weapon or army to assist them. Nyarlathotep shot his dark power towards the figure only for it to be reflected onto him. After a lengthy battle, Nyarlathotep’s imboding figure was licked away until he was cornered by the hooded figure and a few of the witches. With his power stripped away, Nyarlathotep was fired on with his own magic and was encased in a glass prison.  

“And so, thanks to this mysterious stranger, the Boiling Isles was freed from Nyaralthotep’s tyranny and he was encased in this glass prison that you see here.”  

The light danced on Nyaralathep’s glass case. “But before he was made to slumber, Nyarlathotep threatened that he would return once the thousand-year imprisonment reached its end and that he would send someone to act as his representative until he returned to full power.”  

The cyclops noticed a book.  

“Oh, that book?” the tour guide observed, “the hooded figure wrote the book and told for one of his countrymen to hide it far out of the reach of any of Nyarlathotep’s followers; inside that book, he had the magical incantation that could return Nyarlathotep to his full power.” The tour guide closed his hands over the light ball. “It was said that more copies of this book exist, but I suppose one should take the entire story with a grain of salt.”  

He clapped his hands together to get the class’s attention. “Now, who wants to learn about different types of poison?”  

They cheerfully applauded and followed after the tour guide. The teacher dragged his feet trying to follow suit. “Wait, guys, what did I say about an orderly line?”  

The history exhibit became deathly silent not too long after they left. But in their excitement, no one noticed that a crack on the statue’s torso was forming.

(More to come)

[misterewrites]

Underground Proper (Welcome to the Underground!)

Hello everyone! 2021! WOO! Thank god. I know it's pretty much just arbitrary signal of the passage of time but you gotta enjoy the little things. I hope you are all good, staying safe and sound in these chaotic times. Here is the new chapter which I hope you enjoy. 

It's finally time to enter the Underground proper. Abigail and company had an exciting large send off but the first steps of the journey are at hand and Abigail is quick to realize that leaving the Underground might be harder than she thought.

Reblog, enjoy stay safe tell your friends about it! Wear your masks, wash your hands, have a great week! E out!

and if you want to leave me comments or find an easier way to read it, here’s a link to it on ao3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27814297/chapters/69919671

The longer Abigail stayed in the Underground, the more realized she was wildly getting further and further out of her depth.

She thought the little walk from the cemetery to town had properly prepared for her trek into the wilds but all it had really done was lure her into a false sense of security.

The tunnel floor was uneven, the ground straightening and sloping at random which nearly caused her to trip once or twice. The path would randomly grow and shrink as well, sometimes becoming so wide that the Swift Slivers could march side by side then without warning becoming so narrow the trio had to fall into a single file line. She jumped at noises that abruptly existed in the tunnel, signs of life or movement echoing further down the path. The air was frigid and moist, reminding Abigail of her town’s harshest winters. She tried to keep track of where the group currently was but that ultimately proved useless as the road would veer slightly left, snaked back and forth, bent at a weird angle and sometimes looped back around, rising or falling with a spiral or slope. Illumashrooms weren’t as plentiful as the town and while it wasn’t pitch dark, Abigail had to squint and focus among the dim light of the occasional mushroom found on the path.

Her dear departed brother Arthur once mentioned how he was not a fan of tight spaces. Claustrophobia the clerics called it. At the time Abigail thought him silly given that they lived in a wide open farm. Here, among the darkness and stony walls of the underground, Abigail understood what he meant more clearly.

Arthur.

Abigail could feel her heart ached terribly at the thought of her brother.

“Watch out here farm girl” Oliver’s voice called from out front.

Abigail snapped back to reality, her hand reaching out for Archibald’s shoulder as the road sloped sharply once more.

Abigail knew the other two were helping her through her first time through the tunnel and she wasn’t sure how to feel about it. She was used to being caught flat footed but never to this degree. Well except that one time during Winter’s Solstice. That was just awkward for everyone especially her.

Oliver was ahead, lightly humming the occasional song while calling out warnings about sudden shifts in the road. Archibald walked beside her when the path would allow, offering his hand then shoulder for her to brace herself with.

The boys were clearly no stranger to this way of traveling and while Abigail felt a little embarrassed at her tripping and confusion, she was grateful the two went out of her way to help her. Even Oliver hadn’t sent a pointed barb at her.

“I can see why it takes half day to a day.” Abigail sighed, steadying herself against Archibald “Is it always this rough?”

“Better and worse usually.” Oliver admitted, peering into the shifting shadows ahead “This just one path and since not many people go to West End, it’s usually uncared for here.”

He gestured to a illumashroom plucked from the ground and thrown to its side.

“But” he continued “The other paths are well worn, lot more people and lot more care put into maintaining the roads and the signs. More ways to get where you want too but also more roadblocks and unforeseen circumstances.”

“Mixed bag then.” Abigail huffed.

“Like life” Oliver replied.

Archibald nodded his head in agreement.

“How do you guys get used to it?”

Oliver motioned to himself “Born here.”

Archibald gestured to his sliver hued clothing.

“Right. Silly question.”

Archibald tiled his hand back and forth.

“Ha, thanks Archibald.”

He rose a thumb in response.

“Enough flirting back there.” Oliver shouted “It’s getting late.”

“Is it?”

“We’ve been working for about 6, 7 hours Archie?”

Archibald paused thoughtfully before wordlessly counting his fingers, holding up 7 after a moment.

Abigail glanced at them “Have we? I hadn’t noticed.”

“You will when we stop. Luckily there is a clearing up ahead.”

“Clearing? Like a field or?” Abigail glanced at Archibald who simply gestured forward.

“Clearing.” Abigail whispered in understanding.

Before them was a cavern, wide and spacious whose ceiling couldn’t been seen through the inky darkness. The walls were rough and jagged with the odd crack or smaller tunnel that led away from the beaten path. The faint of smell of ash filled the air as Abigail noticed the various imprints of tents and footsteps scattered across the floor, travelers long past persevered by dust.

“Rest stop” Oliver explained, putting his travel bag on the floor “There’s a couple of these caverns across the roads. Perfect to set up and keep an eye out when resting or sleeping. Usually there’s more people but like I said, no one comes to West End. Willingly at least.”

Abigail rose an eyebrow “You did though.”

If Oliver heard, he made no indication as he began removing things from his bag.

Archibald and Abigail followed suit, making themselves comfortable among the stony floor as they set up for the night.

______

Abigail was quick to realize what Oliver meant when he said she would notice once they stopped.

Once her little sleeping bag had been laid out and she folded up the cloak under her as a comfortable seat, she could feel the exhaustion ebb into her bones.

Abigail huffed tiredly as she took a seat “Wow, I’ve never been that winded before.”

Archibald was hard at work setting a fire pit, finding rocks around and enclosing the various logs of wood within while Oliver plucked at his lute mindlessly, sitting upon on his own pile of clothing for a seat.

“Lack of sun people say. Humans aren’t really suppose to go without it for long periods of time. Luckily a lot of food down here that helps with that.”

Abigail’s stomach rumbled hungrily at the mention of food. She briefly remembering eating snacks throughout the day but not a full meal.

Archibald fished out a piece of jerky from his pack and handed it to Abigail

Abigail smiled gratefully “Thanks.”

Archibald coughed, returning to his work as Oliver searched through his bag.

“Archie, Slimewood?”

He replied with an unhappy face.

“I picked up some Jub steak too.”

The archer nodded happily at the alternative.

“Slimewood? Jub steak?”

Oliver pulled out a carefully wrapped package, laying it to the side as he dug deeper “Food Abigail. I bought some for this road trip.”

“You bought food?? When?!” Abigail couldn’t recall seeing the bard make such a purchase.

“I snuck out after everyone fell asleep. Butcher owed me a favor so I did some midnight shopping.”

“And were you planing on sharing this information?”

“Yes” Oliver admitted “Now when it’s dinner time.”

“Surprisingly nice of you” Abigail murmured suspiciously. “Practical” Oliver corrected “We’re traveling together so the best shot to stay alive is to make sure we’re all well fed and in one peace. Especially this one.”

Oliver pointed at Archibald who beamed with pride.

“Right. Travel companions.”

“Hey you came at me with a knife.” Oliver reminded her.

“After you tried to rob me.” Abigail shot back darkly.

“Thought you were a corpse farm girl.”

Archibald looked back and forth between the two.

“Long story” Abigail offered sympathetically.

Oliver scoffed “I thought she was dead, tried to find something of worth, she came at me with a knife. Not that long of a story farm girl.”

Abigail glared openly at the bard. Oliver shrugged as Archibald finished the fire pit, flames and all.

Abigail sighed happily “Much better.”

“Oi merc, got a pan?”

Archibald nodded and pulled out an old worn frying pan. Oliver took it appreciatively and placed it upon the roaring flame, meat shortly followed after.

“Smells pretty good!”

“As opposed to?”

“I dunno. Not good? I don’t even know what this is!”

“First rule of eating food: Never asked what it’s made of.”

“I live on a farm. I’m aware of that rule.”

Archibald chuckled to himself as he eyed either tunnel entrance carefully for any sign of trouble.

The trio sat in a surprisingly peaceful silence among the crackling of the flame and sizzling of cooked meat.

“I’m surprised you know how to cook” Abigail admitted “Given that you’re a grave robber and a jerk.”

Archibald quietly nodded in agreement.

“Personality traits and old habits are not inductive of my skill set.” Oliver replied, turning the meat over.

“I don’t think I’ve seen a bard do anything besides sing and dance.

Oliver scoffed “They’re not real bards like me. I’m going to be the best and to be that, I need to be varied.”

Abigail couldn’t hide her surprise “So you’re not the best? I thought you burst into flames if you were ever honest.”

“I am honest” Oliver countered “I just decide how much honesty I need to share with people.”

Archibald snorted loudly.

“Yeah yeah” Oliver gestured threateningly with his spoon “Keep it up merc and I’ll burn your piece extra crispy and black.

Archibald rose his hand in surrender.

Abigail chuckled, smiling at her companions. She had forgotten how nice it was to be around people.

“Watch it farm girl” Oliver teased, passing her a plate filled with a well cook steak and odd side dishes “You keep smiling like that people might think we’re friends.”

“Moment of weakness. It’s been a long day.”

Oliver snickered, offering Archibald his plate “As long as we’re on the same page.”

Abigail decided to not reply.

Oliver took a smug pride at the others faces as they bit into their first taste of the sweetish salty meat.

“Not just another bard huh?”

Abigail stuck her tongue out “I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.”

Oliver turned to Archibald “How about you merc? Gonna give me some validation?”

Archibald choked, too caught off guard by the question. He gave a friendly thumbs up before trying to clear his airway.

“No greater compliment than a man choking on your food.” Oliver beamed proudly.

Abigail gently rubbed and patted his back in an attempt to help Archibald. He let out a might cough and smiled sheepishly towards Abigail in thanks.

“You don’t talk much huh?”

He shook his head.

“Not a fan?”

A nod.

“I understand.” Abigail gave a cheery smirk.

Archibald was awfully interested in his plate all of the sudden.

“So” Abigail glanced back towards Oliver “This competition? This isn’t you picking on a bunch of kids for a talent show right? You’re actually competing against real bards in a real competition.”

“Of course.” Oliver waved off her accusatory tone “I’m morally gray, not a bully.”

“You’ve been bullying me just fine.” Abigail murmured with an unhappy edge to her tone.

“It’s how I show tolerance.”

“How about you stop being a jerk and sing for us bard?”

Oliver rubbed his fingers together.

Abigail raised an eyebrow “Seriously? You’re going to charge us?”

“No point to do something for free when you can get paid for it.” Oliver gave impish grin.

Abigail frowned before an idea formed in her head “You know Archibald doesn’t think you can sing at all. He was telling me he thinks you just talk a big game but doesn’t see it.”

Archibald froze, his fork halfway between his open mouth and his plate. His eyes darted back and forth, unsure how he got pulled into this.

Oliver pursed his lips: On one hand he knew Abigail was baiting him given how much of a conversationalist Archibald had been this far. But on the other hand, he could never resist a chance to show off.

“I’m playing” Oliver stated simply as he slid his lute off his back “But because I want to. I need practice if I want to win first place.”

“Oh right sure.” Abigail nodded mockingly

Archibald was still confused.

Notes filled the still cave air. It was a soft tune, slow and peaceful reminding Abigail of a lullaby. The bard closed his eyes, swaying back and forth as his fingers strummed across the strings almost like they were made of air.

“For the one day I have long since gone through my past.” Oliver whispered, his voice gravelly and low “Memories of a place that surely can not last. For far and wide I have long always done roam, watching and seeking where I shall call home.”

The flourish, the rises and drops in the music filled Abigail with some nostalgia she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying: He was by no means perfect given some notes did not fit with the others and she could tell this slow more determined song was not his preferred style but even she had to admit this was nice. Surrounded by people, enjoying songs long into the night.

It was nice to be around people.

______

Abigail yawned tiredly as morning came. Well according to Oliver and Archibald it was morning: In the darkness of the tunnels, it was pretty much impossible to tell what time it actually was.

As they drew closer to the capital, Abigail had a better idea of what Oliver meant by better maintained: While not perfect, the path was well worn yet smooth. The slopes weren’t as drastic or without warning. Once or twice, the road branched off to some other path that shot off in some direction Abigail couldn’t hazard a guess.

“What are these all about?” Abigail motioned to yet another crack in a wall, some smaller tunnel that led off into the darkness.

Archibald guided her away from the opening as Oliver glanced backwards.

“Stay away from those.” Oliver eyed the crack cautiously “We call them sideways because who knows where you’re going to end up.”

“I don’t get it.” Abigail was unable to keep the confusion out of her tone.

“Unexplored tunnels.” Oliver clarified “Well as far as we know. No one knows where they go and they’re very dangerous. If you’re lucky, they’ll just spit you out somewhere on the main road. But no one can really be sure and it’s best not to tempt fate.”

A shiver ran down Abigail’s back as she moved closer to the middle of the road. She was already disoriented and lost on this main road to the capital. She didn’t want to know how would it feel be hopelessly lost in the dark.

Abigail nearly crashed into Oliver, took caught up in her thoughts to realize the bard had stopped dead in the road.

“Wha?!” Abigail flailed in surprise “Oliver! What are you doing?”

“Do you hear that?”

Abigail looked about, unsure what she was supposed to be hearing.

“No, I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly.”

A sense of dread began to fill Abigail, her breathing becoming labored. Now that she thought of it, this was the first moment in her journey that there was a tense thick silence. Even in the middle of nowhere, she could hear far off noises among the chilly air. Now the air was still with an overwhelming quiet surrounding them.

“Archie?” Abigail called only to find the archer’s eyes darting about, bow ready in his hands.

He pulled her closer, putting her in the middle of himself and Oliver.

“Guys?”

“Not now Abigail.”

Abigail felt the tension growing, some unseen danger that lurked close by, waiting for their chance to strike.

Abigail glanced about, desperately trying to find some sort of clue to what was going on when she spotted it: glowing silver gleams peering through the darkness of the crack.

Something scurried out quickly, it’s claws scraping the stone walls as its form was silhouetted against the dim glow of the tunnel. She tried to make out what exactly it was but its skin or shell or whatever was too dark in this light.

It was small which was a comfort to Abigail though its claws were sharp and dug easily into the floor. It was misshapen that even Abigail, whom was well versed with a variety of animals, couldn’t tell its features. The only that was noticeable besides its claws were its sliver eyes which were smooth and solid.

“What’s that?” Abigail tilted her head quizzically.

“What is…?” Oliver whirled around “ARCHIE!”

“what, wait?” but no sooner the words had left her mouth, the creature let out a horrible shriek. It thundered in her ears with such a volume that it made her dizzy and unsteady.

The creature stood on its hind legs, throat wide open and the shriek slowly growing louder and louder.

Silence came without warning but it was welcomed.

Abigail panted heavily, the ringing almost unbearable as her sight slowly focused.

There was an arrow where the creature once stood.

Abigail turned sideways to find Archibald, sweat on his brow, his breath heavy and uneven.

She let out a sigh of relief “Did I tell you how much I love you?”

Archibald gave a weak smile.

“Move!”

Archibald and Abigail stared back at Oliver who began pulling at their wrist.

“MOVE NOW!!” Oliver shouted, shoving them forward into a desperate run.

Abigail opened her mouth when she heard the sound of dozens of claws wildly scratching and scraping at anything and everything.

The creatures burst forth from the crack or at least Abigail thought they were creatures. She couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. It was a mass of constantly shifting shadows that took odd shapes. It was if the creatures couldn’t agree on what form they should take. The only thing that did not change was the dozens pairs of sliver smooth eyes, their gaze lifeless yet single minded.

Abigail struggled to break into a run. Her feet felt heavy like the floor was pulling her deeper and deeper into the ground. She could feel fear creeping into every inch of her body, threatening to send her into shock as she tried to keep her panic under control.

“I don’t want to die.” Abigail murmured fearfully as her hands grasped deliriously at the air “Not here. Not yet. Mom, dad. Please! Not here! NOT YET!”

She couldn’t hold in the scream, the panic and fear was too much. She could feel the tears running down her cheeks, the whirl of claws closing the distance inch by inch.

There was a quietness that came with the end. A strange sensation of peace, of acceptance. She felt it now amid the fear and panic. She could hear the soft sounds of trumpets in her ears, a familiar song playing in her mind. It took her a moment to recognize the fanfare of the king’s guard, a triumphant march of victory. She always felt safer whenever she heard the blaring of the horns far in the distance.

She took a deep calming breath. Her body no longer felt sluggish and disconnected as the fanfare played faintly in her head.

She could feel Archibald just behind her, the occasional notch of an arrow letting her know he was trying to push back the hoard but not finding much luck.

Abigail looked forward and was not surprised to find Oliver busy at work. The jet black lute glowed with previously unseen blue runes scrawled across its surface. His fingers were furiously strumming across his lute as if their lives depended on it.

They probably did. His song was the only thing keeping the fear at bay.

“Bards.” Abigail muttered under her breath before calling out “How much further to the gate?”

“Not close enough!” Oliver answered, his fingers never stopping “We’re going to have to lose them another way!”

“There is no other way!” Abigail struggled to keep the tears from spilling onto her face.

Oliver cocked his head forward “One but you’re not going to like it!”

“Why?”

“Remember how I told you never to go down sideways?”

Abigail nearly stopped in her tracks but Archibald sprinted past, clasping her hand tight and pulled her forward.

“Yeah we’re going sideways. Straight ahead, get up here Archie!”

Archibald glanced backwards, the massive wall of claws and sliver eyes just a few feet behind.

Oliver whistled to get his attention “We know what’s behind us, I need you to clear what’s ahead or else we’re not going to make it! Get up here merc!”

Archibald let out a shaky breath and pushed further, dragging Abigail close behind.

The trio spotted Oliver’s idea: A split in the path. One path curved to the side, the dimly lit main path that led to Haven’s Nest. The other was not so much a path as it was a void of darkness, a path that sloped downward into the unknown.

“Oliver!” Abigail cried.

“We can die now or we die later!” Oliver firmly answered “And at least later we might not die, now go!”

Abigail nearly let go of Archibald’s hand but the mercenary gave her a comforting squeeze. He turned to her and spoke wordlessly with a simple smile.

I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.

She took a shaky breath but nodded in understanding.

The trio threw themselves at the opening, sailing through the air for a moment before landing with a dull thud onto the stony floor. Before any of them could react, they began sliding forward, the slope pushing them further deep into the dark.

Oliver’s lute dimly lit the tunnel the little they traveled. It must’ve been a heartbeat or two when the group found themselves tumbling across the straighten floor.

“Get up!” Oliver shouted, pulling the other two to their feet “We need to get going.”

“Where!?” Abigail cried “There’s nowhere to go!”

Archibald elbowed Oliver and pointed out a strange silhouette outlined in the darkness of the cavern.

“Is that a house?” Abigail’s voice asked with disbelief “Down here? That’s creepy.”

“And probably bad news.” Oliver admitted as he pushed the two towards the strange house cloaked in shadows “but later is later! Go go go!”

The claws echoed faintly from the tunnel but the trio had already reached the pouch of the home.

It was oddly similar to Abigail’s home though in much worse shape: Faded, splintered wood with dull peeling paint. The windows were blackened out with dust and the house creaked unhappily as they climbed the porch steps. The door swung open by itself and while that gave Abigail pause, Oliver shoved them in, shutting the door behind them and locking it.

“This is a bad idea.” Abigail panted breathlessly.

Oliver wiped the sweat off his brow “Hopefully we’ll live to regret it.”

“I doubt it.” A voice called from the shadows.

Oliver and Archibald threw themselves forward, pushing Abigail behind them in a defensive formation.

The air was thick with creak, creak, creak of heavy boots walking down some unseen stairs.

A figure appeared before them. He was taller than anyone else here with an old tattered riding cloak draping his massive figure. Brown eyes peered curiously under his hood, his thick beard black and gray. His armor was dented and worn with a faded symbol of a sun across his chest.

“You do not know where you roam children.” the stranger’s voice spoke, melodic and deep.

“At least we’re alive right?” Abigail offered hopefully.

“No you were right.” Oliver eyed the stranger’s symbol distastefully “This is was a terrible idea.”

Abigail leaned in, dropping her voice to a whisper “Is he bad news? A thief or murderer or something?”

“Worse.” Oliver glared openly “A paladin.”

[ryqoshay]

So I just finished reading all of How to Handle a Nico and I absolutely fucking loved it, do you have any NicoMaki fanfic recommendations of your own?

I must offer my apologies for the delay in response. I did not forget you, Anon, despite answering two questions that came in after this one. However, I wanted to wait until I knew I had a good amount of time I could dedicate to making a proper list of recommendations worthy of my time in the LL/NicoMaki fandom, which is typically sometime during my weekend.

Also, please bear in mind that this list is not all-inclusive. NicoMaki has one of, if not the most extensive list of fanworks out of the various LL ships. If someone reading this list is a fan of, or the author of a given work not included, please do not take it personally, this is merely a sampling of my favorites. There are genres and tags that I tend to avoid for various reasons, and there are many perfectly good works with the NicoMaki ship tag that I haven’t read simply because they are not the primary focus. And due to current events, as well as those of last year, there is a sizable backlog of NicoMaki focused fics that I hope to get around to reading sometime soon.

And as I expect this to get long, I will put the list itself under a cut.

First and foremost, I must shamelessly shill an author whose first forays into NicoMaki fanfic are based on HtHaN. It’s been almost a year since the first one went up and I remain in awe that I was able to pay forward the inspiration given to me by other authors. For this list I will only be including said works based on HtHaN, though VNVdarkangel has written some other NicoMakis I haven’t read yet.  - Always there - Nico wakes up in the middle of the night. Some post-canon fluffy angst.  - On tracks to the heart - Takes place during the scene transition in Homecoming.  - Meet ‘n’ greet - Nico has a meet ‘n’ greet event and Maki shows up  - Part-time idol composer - Nico hires Riko to compose some idol music for Egao. Minor YohaRiko to keep up the casual connections between HtHaN and HL.  - Next steps... - A long, multi-chapter work that takes place after the numbered chapters of HtHaN. This work tells the story of NicoMaki as they take advantage of the research mentioned way back in Telling Mama. Yay science babies!  - Out of focus - Maki can’t focus on anything but Nico  - The door to dreams - Riko finds the piano from How to Celebrate a Maki and Maki finds Riko. More minor YohaRiko from HL.  - Idol trainer - A non-NicoMaki, RinPana honorable mention tied to HtHaN

Next, I must link a few things from jstonedd, whose works I can point to as being among those that helped cement NicoMaki as a my favorite ship.  - Buy Your Love - By the gods, I’ve honestly lost track of how many times I’ve reread this fic. It is also responsible for my headcanon that Tsubasa teaches Honoka how to skate, which I thusly include in Nico on Ice.  - Soldier Wars - If memory serves, this work earns its M rating less for lewd stuff and more for action movie depictions of violence, like an R rated Charlie’s Angels or something.  - After School Troublemakers - Earns its tag of Fluff and Crack.  - Babies Maybe - More Fluff and Crack I only skimmed the first few chapters of Otonokizaka Private Academy and it didn’t seem very NicoMaki focused or really much my cup of tea. But I’ve heard others like it, and it was finally completed a few years back, so there’s that.

One author with whom I’ve interacted moreso than any other - maybe not VNVdarkangel as of late, but... - is the creator of one of my favorite Fantasy AUs, which is often a genre I don’t read much as it so often leans on Harry Potter, of which I’m quite unfamiliar. Of course I say I often avoid Fantasy AUs despite now writing two... Anyway, we have a few differing headcanons and I must say it’s fun to have a civil discussion about them - as opposed to others that become heated and dissolve into ad hominum attacks like the one marked by Comment Deleted tombstones in the comments of HtHaN. Anyway, that train of thought derailed, so here are some of lonelypond’s works. Worth mentioning that most works take place in the U.S. instead of Japan, something that confused me for a few chapters when I first started reading, but have come to enjoy it, especially when places are mentioned that I know.  - Casual Lunacy - The aforementioned Fantasy AU as well as my introduction to this wonderful writer. Pulls in a quirky character from Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, an adorable anime I’ve been meaning to finish. Maki is a werewolf. And I really need to reread this one at some point.  - PhotoJazz - Maki is a photographer and Nico is an actress.  - AU Yeah August - A collection of short 1 Shots. I haven’t read all of them, e.g. the Harry Potter one, but those I have were adorable, e.g. Summer Camp, Fake Dating and FWB.  - Christmas Confections - A collection of amazing Christmas themed works that rank among my favorite gifts each year since I first started reading them. I’d link them each individually, but they’re all amazing so just read them all; you won’t be disappointed. Maki and Christmas just go together and lonelypond writes them well.  - Can’t Get Started - To quote the summary “Nishikino Maki is trying to make it in the piranha fishbowl of movies, music and Hollywood. Yazawa Nico already has. And they keep crashing into each other.” Literally. It’s quite amusing. I’ve heard good things from other readers about the 1Kiss series but have only skimmed a few; they are high on my To Read list. The Idol House series came out during my troubled 2019, so it also remains on my To Read list. The Moonlight series seems to focus on NozoEli, which is fine, but for better or worse lowers it position on my To Read list. It’s lonelypond, so I do intend to read it eventually, but there are more NicoMaki focused fics that I’d like to get to first.

Next up is Lucia Hunter, a case where I must separate author from work. To this day I remain uncertain as to the details of the issues between this author and the denizens of Sukutomo, but the animosity exists nonetheless. Still, the listed works below were part of my gateway drugs into the wonderful world of NicoMaki fanfics.  - The Diamond Princess’s Melancholy - How NicoMaki came together.  - Love marginal - My favorite portrayal of KotoHonoUmi. NicoMaki is a side pairing here, and remain so through the rest of the works, but they’re still worth reading, imho.  - Shiranai Love*Oshiete Love - RinPana focus but NicoMaki still plays their role.  - Garden of Glass - de de deee de de deee Obviously NozoEli focused.

My first encounter with Rinforzando was a T rated cute and fluffy fic but they’ve done some pretty good NSFW works as well.  - Ten Years - Always enjoy a good adult NicoMaki fic. - Limbo - NSFW FWB NicoMaki - Caprice - NSFW 2nd Person post-canon NicoMaki. I’m not typically a fan of 2nd Person perspective, but this one was worth it.  - Cheers for Loving You - NicoMaki Secret Santa.

Hidekins is another author that has written a lot of NicoMaki I’ve enjoyed, but on a quick scan through the AO3 entries, few are jogging my memory with title and description alone. Perhaps I’ve read more here on tumblr? Perhaps I’ll come back and add more if I remember them better later.  - NicoMakisses - A set of five cute short NicoMaki stories about kisses.

Saberin writes a lot of 3rd year stuff, and that’s fine, but the NicoMaki collection is worth checking out.  - Prickly Love - As of writing this list, there are 10 chapters of cuteness

whoneedsapublisher writes a lot and I enjoy the style. Thus, when I see NicoMaki pop up on the account, I try to read.  - Couples Therapy - One of my favorite Maki headcanons is included here. Not explicit but earns its M rating and thus is NSFW.  - Subtle - Not particularly crazy about the Nico-taller-than-Maki, but that’s a minor complaint compared to the rest of this wonderful work.  - At Least Six Confessions - Presequel to the above work. Poor Nico had her work cut out for her with a romantically dense Maki.  - Keep Your Promises - Ten years later...  - Happy New Year - Sometimes stalemates must be broken by someone.  - Hidden Depth - Nico’s voice changes. And Maki likes it  - Pretending to Pretend - Not explicit, but earns its M rating so NSFW. One of my favorite examples of the Fake Dating trope.  - Merry Christmas Maki - I can’t think of a better present.  - No Lies Allowed - Truth of Dare, NicoMaki style.  - All Dressed Up - Based on a wonderful pic by noelclover  - Santa’s Stand-in - Guess who still believes...  - Switcheroo - Always love the idea of the girls trying to behave like the others. Makes me want to rewatch that episode.  - Tick, Tock - Some introspective Maki  - Insensitive - NicoMaki dating issues  - Tomatoes - Maki’s favorite food I’ve heard good things about Dazzling Warrior Nightshade, so it’s on my To Read List, but I must admit I can be picky about my Magical Girls stuff. Madoka set an... interesting bar for the genre for me and in most cases I’d prefer to watch it as an anime or read it as a manga/doujin. Still, the idea of Nico being a magic girl amuses me greatly, thus why the fic remains on my radar.

And here are some other random works I’ve enjoyed over the years.  - Smile, Nico Nico! - In which Nico drags Maki to the dentist  - Billiards - NSFW 2nd Person. Yes, I know I just said I’m not typically a fan, but this one was also good.  - Piano For Beginners - NSFW AU where Maki is assigned to teach Nico how to play the piano so as to be convincing for a film.  - critical rules for not-dating - NSFW FWB AU that I need to finish reading someday but was happy enough with what I’ve read that I’d still recommend it.  - 24 visits - Visits as in Nico the idol visiting Maki the doctor in the hospital.  - 24 dates - A NSFW followup to 24 visits

So yeah, that’s a fairly decent list to get one started in their AO3 NicoMaki delving. As mentioned above, this is not all-inclusive and there are a ton of NicoMaki works out there. I haven’t visited FFN in years, so there may still be some authors that post there exclusively and have written some amazing stuff, but I cannot recommend what I haven’t read, or at least skimmed. I also have some tumblr works bookmarked... somewhere, so if I find them I might compare them to this list and maybe add those missed.

Here’s hoping something here piques your interest and makes you fall a little more for the wonderful NicoMaki.

[jess-the-vampire]

How do you feel about jantom in general?

it’s kinda overrated and i don’t really think it’s the kinda relationship that suits tom at all?

Like i kinda think his character is better suited to being in a relationship with a lot of affection, trust, and especially in his case....someone who puts in the effort for him as much as them.

This has never been something I can ever see coming from janna.

Janna’s not a terrible person, but she’s never canonically been the nicest or most affectionate people on the show. And like i know the show did attempt to make it out like she did care all along by the end of season 4, but at the same time....this is also the girl who tormented marco for quite some time for her own fun.

i feel like if they intended for janna to be this troublesome girl who secretly cares about her friends, they needed more episodes, cause janna doesn’t really have an arc in this show.

She’s mostly comedic relief with a touch of plot relevance when she’s needed, she never felt set up to be this kinda character/much less any kinda love interest.

I’m more picky when shipping janna because i don’t want her partner to be someone whose not going to be happy with someone like her around, marco for obvious reasons, and tom because Tom does not handle relationships that put him down very well and I don’t think Janna ever reached a point where i could see her truly see her become this sympathetic affectionate person who truly cares.

They sorta kinda tried to give an end to an arc that never really felt it existed mostly, it was a lot of janna kinda being janna for most of the show, topped off with an attempt at trying to make her more meaningful and that was about it.

i’m not opposed to trying to make her character like this, the show just didn’t really make me believe any of the sort.

All if not most of her interactions with tom are either fighting or annoyance, and the two don’t really seem to have much in terms of chemistry. Like in the end, they got along to get what they wanted and to make sure the other made it out alive, but the episode wasn’t much pro-jantom. They’re kinda more like those friends who find the other annoying but get along sometimes.

There’s not even enough interactions after that really make it out like they secretly really care about the other, they don’t interact much in general after that or before. 

Like the only reason i love tomco/tomstar/stomco as much as i do is because the show absolutely showed me those relationships could bring out the best in tom’s character, as they were milestones in making him who he was.

If they hadn’t butchered tomstar for no reason, that one could’ve done so much for both tom and star as people, and they started off so well too.

Marco in s2 did so much for tom, and he and tom’s relationship i still think is one of the better written in the show’s because i actually care about it and it feels like it does nothing but good for both parties and provides tom with what he clearly needed.

Stomco, god that would’ve been neat.

But the fandom goes on about how jantom is one of the best relationships in the fandom with all this real chemistry and connection, but like...those two had one episode, that they spent mostly fighting and really not liking each other as tom texted his gf.

And everything else is mostly fanwork.

like, tomstar and tomco are some of tom’s most meaningful relationships, barely anyone wants to talk about those or write for them or do stuff for them. But they do want tom to get together with the character he has the least chemistry or connection with throughout the series.

People can do as they wand, it’s just a little frustrating.

I like a good crackship as much as the next person, like go crackshippers, ya’ll have fun. in this case it’s just a little annoying all of tom’s meaningful relationships are entirely brushed aside for a character he barely talks to.

Sure, janna is a gothy girl and tom’s a demon, but i don’t think that alone makes them an incredible relationship. Tom’s a nerd whose incredibly soft and kind and kinda a loser tbh and the show didn’t really make much of an effort to show me why he and janna would ever function.

Tom’s too nice to enjoy much of her harassment towards marco, his best friend he’d die for, and the idea of janna messing with him the same way marco was messed with...i can’t help but find that incredibly uncomfortable after all the stuff tom was put through. Dude’s already got enough self loathing issues, I don’t find the comics of janna messing with him and invading his privacy charming particularly for that reason.

Tom’s got such meaningful relationships with star and marco, these two made him what he is, and helped him grow, and get through the hard times, and provided him friendship, and showed him people cared about him. (Even if the show tried to butcher that by the end by acting like those friendships meant nothing)

and janna.....wanted him around for mostly selfish reasons with little care about him and they got along alright just to get their stuff back and that’s mostly it.

in a way, it kinda hurts that the relationship the fandom cares about the most....is the one that’s least memorable and least beneficial to tom and his character and it’s treated as the greatest thing out there when it’s just not close.

People can do what they want of course, i can’t like...change anyone’s minds on it, i just wish more people did more with tom and star and marco, and tom’s relationships with them. Because they’re far more interesting and far better for tom in general.

Jantom is popular because people wanted starco, it feeds off starco, the entire reason it got popular was to ride off another popular ship regardless of anything else. It didn’t really earn this much attention because of much else, and it’s fair to assume if starco didn’t make it popular way before s4 no one would care much about it.

and people can do what they want, not trying to crush anyone’s ships or anything.

But at the same time, i think it sucks the relationships with the most meaning and most potential, are the least used and least respected.

anyone these days making tomco, stomco, tomstar, kellco, or jarco stuff has all my respect, because all those relationships were so much more intriguing for the characters involved and i wish more people made stuff exploring them instead because the show was just BEGGING to do more with them.

The show didn’t need jantom, janna didn’t need tom for an arc she didn’t really have and there isn’t much janna could provide tom at all since he’s already way beyond her.

But it could’ve shown more respect to the relationships that tried to have a real impact meaningfully on it’s characters.

Like i’ve seen 50 comics about starco/jantom, it’s been done, it’s been overdone.

I wish more of that attention went to a lot more of the other ships.

[swingmexico80]

60+ Tarot Analysis Concepts

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[desainn]

83 Mythical Creatures & Descriptions

This list does not include…

Sci-fi races (sullustian, eldar, sangheili, duros, etc.)

Half-breeds (half-orc, half-elf, etc.)

Sub species (Mirrodin vedalken, hill dwarf, mountain dwarf, etc.)

Types of giants (human giant, giant spider, giant worm, etc.)

Literally thousands of mythical or divine beings I did not think of

1. Saproling - A diverse race of plant entities that dwell in the forests of Dominaria.

2. Dwarf - There are two main races of dwarves (According to WoTC): hill dwarves, and mountain dwarves. They are fairly self-descriptive, however mountain dwarves have improved vision in dark environments. Dwarves are known for their metalworking abilities, short stature, and sturdy build. Some sources claim they can live for an average of 400 years.

3. Elf - A highly debated race prominent in tales ranging from Santa Claus, to MTG. Ignoring the idea of the tiny shoemaking elves of Earth, elves are human-height, thin, agile, stealthy, and in-tune with nature. Warriors of this species often use light swords, long bows, daggers, and staffs.

4. Vedalken - Tall, blue-skinned, knowledgeable beings from MTG and D&D, but most prominently the former. Vedalken have six fingers on each hand. Mirrodin Vedalken have four arms, but that trait is reserved to only members of the Vedalken race from that plane. Believing perfection to be inachievable, Vedalken. Jew progress as a never-ending march to a state of perfection that can never be achieved.

5. Merfolk/Merrow - Female merfolk are commonly known as mermaids- the aquatic (or sometimes amphibious) race of blue- or green-skinned humanoids with fish tails, and oceanic jewelry.

6. Elemental - A diverse group of magical beings centered around a specific element. These are most commonly fire, life, ice, water, and lightning.

7. Angel - Heavenly, winged humanoids. Disregarding Christian ideas of angels, they can be skilled healers, or marksmen. You already know about this one.

8. Demon - The unholy counterpart to angels. Often winged, demons pocess magic capabilities encompassing fire, death, and anger. These beasts reside in the underworld, or hell.

9. Specter - Cloaked figures armed with scythes, who ride undead beasts through the sky. Opposed to flesh, many specters are made of black mist enveloped in dark cloth.

10. Goblin - Thieves, hooligans, and mechanics. Goblins are often in the background committing some silly crime. They can be utilized as comic relief, or cannon fodder, whichever results in their death the quickest (because seriously, these dudes have the highest death rate of anything in this list)

11. Orc - Large, lean warriors wielding clubs, or other blunt weapons. Orcs are commonly portrayed with green skin, and two large stubs of teeth on their lower jaw, sticking out of their mouths.

12. Giant - A collection of large, clumsy humans, spiders, worms, or serpents.

13. Centaur - A mythical Greek idea of a man (or woman) made of a horse from the waist down. Skilled with a bow, or lance.

14. Siren - Two ideas. One: mermaids that sing to lure unwitting sailors into treaterous seas. Two: humans with light blue wings on their arms.

15. Nymph - Nymphs wander in forests, disguised a women. When a traveler approaches, sword sheathed, and shield lowered, the nymph allows its illusion to fade, revealing an evil monster beneath.

16. Minotaur - A bipedal bull with two arms, and two legs that runs around in mazes. “Minotaurs hate tar tar sauce. They’re deathly allergic to tar tar sauce”.

17. Screecher - A flying zombie-demon that screams as it glides.

18. Fairy - Tiny winged humans that flutter through forests. Often times, they will betray travelers, and loot them.

19. Pixie - A fairy that doesn’t lie about being evil, it just accepts that it is. Occasionally, pixies will catch something on fire.

20. Unicorn - A mystical white horse with a golden or ivory horn on its forehead, often bearing pink or blue tails and manes. They love to plunder their horns into tourist’s chests’.

21. Ogre - Either Shrek, or a dungeon-dwelling humanoid with ten blue tentacles, each wielding a different weapon.

22. Troll - A small, dirty man who will collect tolls for crossing bridges. Nothing a crossbow can’t fix.

23. Zombie - The reanimated corpses of lost ones through the use of magic.

24. Fomori - An advanced aquatic race, that builds beautiful cities under the sea. In addition this, they possess vast arsenals of explosives.

25. Stitcher - A zombie made from parts of many deceased creatures.

26. Djinn - Blue- or gray-skinned, mountain-dwelling monks with the ability to levitate themselves.

27. Thrull - A beast faintly resembling a gray-skinned, Balt ox with no horns. The Orzhov Syndicate of Ravnica utilized thrulls as pack animals for transport, and as a container for storing mana, until it would be sucked out of the creature.

28. Rendhorn - A cross between a rhino, and a wolf.

29. Arynx - A large wild cat.

30. Aven - Humanoid birds that live on Dominaria.

31. Semicore/Wierd - An artificial creature that contraditicts its own existence. For example, a membrane of water, and an interior of fire.

32. Naxie - Merfolk-like, semi-humanoid, aquatic and residing in unusually deep forest ponds and lakes, groups of naxies drag travelers stopping for a drink, into the water to eat them.

33. Dragon - A fire-breathing, reptilian beast with near-impenetrable scales. Dragons also boast wings, enabling them to fly.

34. Drake - Similar to a dragon, but leaner.

35. Draco - A serpent dragon that cannot breath fire.

36. Serpentine - A humanoid shake.

37. Truffle - A mushroom person.

38. Hydra - A three-headed dog from Hades.

39. Kobold - Small dragonic men from D&D.

40. God - Magnificent, holy, divine beings. No one knows for sure. Let’s keep it at that.

41. Ent - Tree-like golems that reside in forests. Some ents offer wisdom, others kill travelers.

42. Reaper - A cloaked, reanimated skeleton armed with a scythe, and wielding death magic.

43. Reanimated Skeleton - A skeleton made living through the use of necromancy. Can be destroyed with a hard push.

44. Golem - Living rock or metal creature, sometimes tasked with the defense of an area.

45. Gremlin - A red-skinned animal on Kaladesh with an appetite for Aether.

46. Cyclops - A one-eyes humanoid, sometimes appearing to be human, but other times as large as an orc.

47. Pegasus - A winged horse.

48. Titan - A god-like creature with great strength, and power. Not quite a god, but not a mortal either.

49. Ghoul - A ghost that retains some remnants of it’s past body.

50. Ghost - A spirit that escaped it’s body after death.

51. Phantom - A formless ghost that remains in the mortal realm.

52. Harpy - A colorful bird with a woman’s face.

53. Manticore - A powerful demon lion,

54. Werewolf - Werewolves are sometimes thought of as humans that morph into savage wolf humanoids, in the presence of a full moon. Other times, they remain wolf beings at all times.

55. Elephantine - Humanoid elephants.

56. Wyvern - A sky-dwelling dragon that resides on floating islands, that is sleek, white-, blue-, or green-skinned, and about a three-fourths the size of dragons.

57. Dragonborn - A powerful dragonic man, also called a half-dragon. Skilled with blades of all sorts.

58. Aetherborn - Aetherborn are gray-skinned, black-eyed humanoids spawned spontaneously as a byproduct of the Aether refinement process on Kaladesh. The Aether that makes up heir bodies is gradually returned to the Aethersphere, and in only 3 to 4 years, they have dissolved entirely. One adult human contains enough Aether to allow a single Aetherborn to survive 12 more days. Some members of this race with questionable morals (most notably Gonti) will kill humans in scores, to preserve their own lives.

59. Spirit - A shapeless ghost that retains the ability to communicate with the living.

60. Haunt - A spirit visible as a cloud of thin, black mist, a faintly glowing core, and often wearing a tattered gray cloth.

61. Mimic - Mimics hide in dungeons as chests, or doors. When an unwitting dungeoneer opens the mimic’s disguise, a purple-tongued, toothy beast attacks them. Chest mimics are able to hop around.

62. Vampire - Pale-skinned humans with two pointed fangs, yellow or red eyes, a black cloak, the ability to live forever, a fear of sunlight, and a thirst for blood. Some sources claim that humans bitten by vampires become vampires themselves, however this is unlikely. Weaknesses include silver, wooden stake to the heart, and garlic.

63. Humonculus - One-eyed, blue-gray skinned humanoids created artificially. Though stichers in a technical sense, Humonculus are alive.

64. Devil - Red-skinned, long-horned humanoids that explode upon death.

65. Skywhale - Long-finned whales that float through the atmosphere effortlessly.

66. Griffin - A lion with an eagle’s head, wings, and feet.

67. Abzan Hound - A humanoid dog, skilled with a bow.

68. Leviathan - A large sea serpent whose size is comparable to that of a whale.

69. Nice

70. Naga - A large snake with human arms and facial features near the head.

71. Slime - Gelatin creatures that bounce around. Slimes retain their shape as a flat gumdrop.

72. Horror - Mutant creatures merged together. Mutants have multiple of everything, are terribly boney, and are encased in a loose and thin sheet of skin.

73. Myr - Drones crested by the Mirrodin, that could do nothing but watch the corruption of their planet at the hands of the Phyrexians.

74. Chimera - A winged lion with an eagle’s head, and a snake for a tail.

75. Ooze - An acidic, shapeless slime.

76. Nim - A corrupted zombie reanimated without the use of magic.

77. Hobbit - Short humanoids somewhat resembling a cross between dwarves and humans. They live in houses built into the hillsides, in the Lord of The Rings.

79. Sky Manta - A stingray that flies in the sky.

80. Souleater - A demonic creature that comsumes souls opposed to organic matter.

81. Dementor - From the Harry Potter series, dementors have no legs, wrinkled gray skin, a circular mouth, and “look like something that decayed in water”. They guard the Azkaban Prison.

82. Eternal - A zombie transferred into an artificial body to make it stronger, live forever, and travel through planar gates.

83. My gf

Tell me anything I missed; it will only cause this list to grow stronger, much like any attempt at killing a semicore with pyromancy.

[doomedandstoned]

Black Spirit Crown Score Big Win With ‘Gravity’

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Strong guitars chords carve out a bold landscape to begin the first of five cosmic tales. "Doomstar" sails across the universe as a comet, filled with as much magic as destructive possibility. On a dark night, you can almost make out the whirling, wicked tale of this asto-demon.

Welcome to the evocative domain of Ohio's BLACK SPIRIT CROWN. We first met the Clevelanders on their original four-tracker 'Red Sky' (2017), its sphatik gem "Megalith" added to our 'Doomed & Stoned in Ohio' (2017) compilation and the first and second rounds of Ohio Doomed & Stoned Festivals organized in short, subsequent order. The boys of Black Spirit Crown have long been an integral part of the heavy music scene of The Buckeye State, opening for such greats as Conan, Inter Arma, and The Obsessed.

As with their debut, 'Red Sky' (2017), the vocals are so important to convincing us of the band's bonafides. Guitarist Dan Simone and bassist Chris Martin have a good instinct for singing in harmony, building up a song climatically, and giving it legs so it can express itself in fitting form. The vocals on "Doomstar" are mainly clean, on the order of a Bask, Snail, Chrome Ghost, or Noctum, but the band reveals in the song's second half that it can get as grissly as any Aaron Turner project.

"Saga" belts out a solid punk-tempo -- an interesting and entirely fitting choice for a song about Viking rampage. The runaway development of the middle section felt characteristically Pikelike and I half-way expected him to make a quick guesty on the record. Just then, we hear the hearty hoo-hah! of a crowd and run to rejoin them for the song's remaining verse, which soon fades away into the shadowy labyrinth of memory.

Firey drummering distinguishes the advent of the "Orb." Is this odd visitor here to observe us? Or maybe it is intent on giving us a window into a world besides our own? We scarcely have time to ponder the question before the song whisks us away on its transcendental carpet ride. If you're looking to classify Black Spirit Crown's style (and let's face it, all of us have an inner music critic that does) it would be probably best to think of it as "space doom" or even "cosmic grunge." Certainly, there's some kind of a dreamy psychedelic element at play, bending and stretching each song as it will, sometimes for great lengths of time. Perhaps that element is the orb itself?

We're lucky to have very memorable songs on both of Black Spirit Crown's records. For the first, the clear standout was "Megalith," which in a perfect world would have at least given Black Spirit Crown a summer radio hit. On this record, there is ripe opportunity for another crossover with "Teutates."

Teutates by Black Spirit Crown

Teutates was a Celtic god of the ancient peoples of Gaul and Britain, the protector of their entire community. Black Spirit Crown personify his legend in song: "I hold the world in iron hands, I travel pathways not meant for man." Pretty badass, huh? "Write my name across the sky, in lines of fire 10 miles high." He's nothing if not bold, that Teutates.

After the brisk pace of the last rousing number, we burrow back into the cold comfort of the dark soil to reconnect with those doom roots. Here Black Spirit Crown venture into the smokey den of Monolord, Slomatics, and Windhand. Dan's phantom vocals are undoubtedly suited for both the mood and style of "Gravity," which I'm currently listening to just after dusk and it's absolutely ruling the night. I suppose it could rule regardless of when and where it yields its trance-inducing power. By the end of the record we've become one with the comet, and embraced its final destination, as well.

And now, Doomed & Stoned is pleased to premiere the album, 'Gravity' (2020) in its fullness. Look for my interview with Black Spirit Crown and more insight into the album to follow!

Give ear...

Doomed & Stoned · Black Spirit Crown - Gravity (2020)

A Listener's Guide to 'Gravity' By Black Spirit Crown

Just days before its release, I caught up the core members of Black Spirit Crown, Dan Simone (guitar, vocals) and Chris Martin (bass, vocals) to get the backstory on the album and insight into the spunky songs written for it.

★

I understand that it's been quite a journey leading Black Spirit Crown to this new record? Bring us up to speed.

Dan: So, Gravity is an album that's been about two-and-a-half years in the making. Our initial plan was to start recording in late-2017 with our original drummer, Jesse, but unfortunately he left the band that October, right around when we were going to start. At that point we had three of the songs ("Saga," "Orb," and "Gravity") mostly written and ready to record, and were going to write a couple more songs to go with them as we went. When Jesse left it took a little bit to sort out and secure our next drummer, Alex, and then get him up to speed with our existing material. We brought Alex in mid-January of 2018 with a scheduled show opening for Conan at the very beginning of March, so those first several weeks were a relentless drilling down on our existing material so we'd be ready for Conan. After that, people knew we were back and ready to play so that's what we did, for the next several months we just reveled in it, culminating playing to a totally packed house at the first Ohio Doomed and Stoned Fest. Which ruled. After that, Alex was totally immersed in the existing material and we could turn to writing a bit.

We'd love to get a tour of this place. Care to take us through each of these five rooms?

So let's talk about the songs on the album. I write about space, weird fiction themes and probably unsurprisingly, doom, defined as "death, destruction, or some other terrible fate". I've always been a huge fan of fantasy and science-fiction so that's where most of my subject matter comes from. Giant sentient megalithic rock from space that, in it's agony of being trapped in immobile awareness, broods and looms over all creation slowly gathering power to wield entropy versus order until it grinds all of life to a frozen, dusty halt. Stuff like that, but that was the first album. This second album has five tracks.

Doomstar

Inspired by the star Algol. A star of ill-repute for many civilizations it is named Head of the Ogre in Arabic, Satan's Head in Hebrew, Spectre's Head in Latin, and Demon Star in English. The Chinese name it the Mausoleum, or House of Bones. It is the Gorgon's severed head held by the constellation Perseus. It is a harbinger of mayhem and bloody violence, so why not write a song about someone born under this star? Interestingly, the main riffs for this song came to Chris in a dream, and he showed up to practice the next day with the music pretty much complete. I wish I remembered the actual date, because it would perhaps be interesting to know where that star was in our sky while he was dreaming.

Saga

Vikings. I've pretty much always had a thing for them. I wrote most of this song about 16 years ago, but the band I was in then couldn't play it, and it never really fit anything else I was doing until now. It was still kind of a departure for us at first, as it is significantly faster paced than our earlier material, but it sits really well in our live sets, giving the audience a little punch in the face in the middle of it all. Lyrically it touches on a lot of the stories and themes Norse Mythology, without really diving substantially into any specific one. Those stories were called Sagas. Initially the middle part was supposed to have lyrics, and I was going to delve into some specificity, but I couldn’t decide exactly where to go with it, the stories never really worked within the riffs and structure of the song, and then I realized that whenever I was playing those parts I’d envision grizzled vikings in their dragon boats coursing through raging and icy seas. Pretty much a travel montage out of a movie, and that worked for me so I left it alone.

Orb

This song was originally supposed to be on the first album, but we couldn't really get the second half settled in time so we skipped it. It's about a moon-sized orb of living metal that comes to Earth to help humanity transcend to a higher form of existence. Within the Black Spirit Crown mythology, the Orb is diametrically opposed to the Megalith as agents of Life/Order and Death/Chaos respectively. It fell out of our live sets for quite a while, too, when we initially brought Alex in because we were focused on working on settled songs. I was pretty stoked when we brought it back because I really enjoy the weird psychedelic second half. I love working the wah pedal and delay, and Chris just goes bananas through the whole thing. I'd really like someone someday to get some excellent video of us performing it because I dig playing it so much, but I never feel like I get the whole experience because I get sucked in to playing my part.

Teutates

This is the most recently written song on the album, and the single from it. The comet Toutatis is a large asteroid with a chaotic orbit that passed within 18 lunar distances of Earth in 2012. It is large enough to potentially end life on the planet if it were to impact. It gets its name from the god Teutates from Celtic mythology who was, perhaps ironically, a protector god whose name roughly translates to "Be of the Tribe". We really dug the idea of that duality, this thing that was simultaneously a being responsible for the life and well-being of its worshippers, yet could in a thoughtless moment totally obliterate them. Why shouldn't it, really? The huge vocal harmony near the end always gives me chills. "Be of the Tribe, Give up thy life.."

Gravity

The title track of the album. Look, I tend to write long songs, our shortest song is 5 minutes, and our average - not counting this one - is 8 minutes, but we just write until the journey, the story, finds its end. We don't try to write intentionally long songs. Except for this one. With this song we set out to write a song that could fill a live set on its own, 20 -30 minutes.

Musically, it's a meditation. Waves of droning fuzz that crash and recede. Thematically, it's about a group of star-farers who are woken from hyper-sleep to find themselves abandoned on a barren, high-gravity planet by their A.I. which achieved sentience at some point in the journey and decided it had no need for humans. It's the funerary rite for them as they are crushed and frozen by the weight of the alien atmosphere. The last 7 minutes is their death throes, and it was also a total hoot to record.

In the rhythm guitar parts I hold the same chord for the entire 7 minutes, but we tracked three layers of guitar there so I had to hold that chord for 21 minutes. By the end my fret hand was shaking so violently that I had to hit the chord with my pick hand and then grab my fret hand and hold it in place so I didn't shake off of the neck of the guitar. Chris, of course, was laughing hysterically at my agony.

On top of that is total celestial chaos. Two separate theremin tracks, two separate guitar solos by me (one in the foreground one in the background), clips from NASA of electromagnetic storms in Saturn's atmosphere and other weird radio-telegraphic stuff, some keyboard synthesizer by Chris, and a guest appearance by our good friend Joe Fortunato who is a master of atmospheric guitar-synth alchemy (who also appears on the track Orb). Chris then took what could have been just a total mess of noise, and panned and faded and otherwise produced the hell out of it into a marvelous cacophony, and honestly it's exactly what we'd always imagined it could be.

Chris, take us behind the scenes of this whole thing. What were some of the hurdles you had to overcome to get this puppy on record?

Chris: With respect to the drum parts, we had tried to start the record some time ago with our original drummer, Jesse, but we ended up parting ways right around the time we were set to start. After bringing Alex in and getting him up to speed, we had written a couple more songs and were about ready to start going, but things kind of fizzled out with him and he was gone. Rather than waiting to onboard another drummer, get them up to speed, and delay recording even longer, I decided to program the drum parts.

I compiled all the practice recordings we had and scoured Youtube for live videos of shows with both our past drummers, Then, I basically compared the best parts of their respective versions of each song, transcribed them, and programmed those comps as the drum parts. It was pretty time consuming to get all the little nuances right as opposed to, say, starting from scratch and making fresh parts, but I really wanted these to sound like the parts our drummers had done live, because they helped to make the songs what they are.

Bass tracking was done over a couple days. It was pretty straightforward; my P bass into my pedalboard into my old SVT. Can't really go wrong there. The only exception was the second half of "Orb," where I used the bass rig I learned to play on when I was 12; my dad's old '65 Traynor YBA-1, which I inherited when he died. I had planned on using the bass I learned on too - his old '73 Gibson EB-0 -- but there were some electronics issues when I went to start and I couldn't get the tone I wanted out of it. I didn't want to wait for parts to arrive to repair it, so I went back to the P bass, straight into the YBA-1. Still got that really fat, old school sound I was going for, so it was a win.

Guitars were pretty simple as well; Dan's Les Paul into his pedalboard and the 72 Traynor YSR-1. Live, he runs a Traynor YBA-1 reissue as a second amp to fill out the sound, but the YSR sounded pretty gnarly on its own so we stuck with it. I did also end up blending in a little bit of the little Laney combo I have to get a little more bite and cut. It's a great little amp that's been on everything I've done.

Guitars turned out really nice, didn't they?

We had Joe Fortunato (Sparrowmilk, Venomin James) come in and add some synth guitar type stuff on a couple songs as well. The intro and outro of Gravity, as well as some of the crazy laser sounds in the outro, is basically him hitting one note on his custom Dunable/EGC hybrid baritone, then manipulating some of his pedals to create some of the most bizarre things we'd ever heard. I just hit record and told him to make noise. We got about 20-30 solid minutes of random sounds. It was pretty crazy. I went through and picked a solid section that fit the whole mood of the song and dropped it in where I wanted it. Outside of that, there's a bunch of theremin and other random stuff Dan put together.

Vocals were fairly easy. Dan tracked all of his quickly, I tracked all my clean ones later that day. When I went to do my screaming, in Doomstar, Saga and Teutates, I got about half done and my chest and throat started hurting, so I took a couple days to rest them before finishing up, thinking it was from being out of practice. Long story short, I ended up with some gnarly respiratory issues that really impacted my breathing and my voice, and it took me about 4 months to get my stamina back up to be able to do vocals again. It gave me some time to mix, but killed me that I couldn't just finish tracking and wrap it up.

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[zen-garden-gnome]

REALLY investigating the debate over vaccines (from a lay-person’s perspective).

I want to unravel some things about the vaccination debate, following days of research into the matter. It wasn’t enough for me to know how I felt, already. I didn’t think my personal relationships had to suffer maximally in order for me to live honestly. So I decided to dig in and make myself more knowledgeable, and to let myself empathize with more people. There was so much to cipher through and it took so much time that I had to take notes to help keep things connected. The process reminded me that the internet is not as easily traversed for all its users, and that in the end, the “vibe” one picks up decides a lot of what we’re willing to follow any deeper (particularly, whether or not we even notice a “vibe” in the first place). Zooming way out also reminded me of just how many “entry points” there are for this subject, and helped me empathize with a lot of people. It turns out, “anti-vaxxer” is a term applied to people across a pretty wide range of subtly differing perspectives. I think we can all agree that the despair and disgust and distrust the world is experiencing won’t improve if we can’t get our attention back, ‘cause that’s largely what this is about. We are inundated with so much manipulative information that we struggle to steer our attention toward the core values that we mostly share, which takes us further and further away from each other’s realities. We know less and less about each other but think we know so much more because we’re surrounded by manipulative/self-preserving chatter.

I wanted to cut through the noise and show where some things connect, and where some others only appear to. For anyone who knows there’s a lot going on but doesn’t know where to begin approaching it. For anyone who feels on the fence in any way. For anyone who feels isolated by their view of the circumstances. For anyone who struggles to understand why so-and-so would think such-and-such. For anyone who thinks they already know. For anyone with even a passing curiosity. And of course, for myself. I’ve worked to collect and organize this for all and anyone. I do my best to stay objective without pretending I don’t have my own opinions. My research wound up focusing on a few key people and their research, the theories that have arisen, the science used to address them, and the demographics who are the most moved by it all. This is an entire research paper and I had no idea it would go this far when I started.

Judy Mikovits is a former medical researcher and current anti-vaccination advocate. She has some valid criticisms of how the US government handled the release of treatments for HIV and for the poor ways people treat their immune systems. She claims in her book (and in a viral video that recently hit the internet at the kick-off of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US) that Anthony Fauci barred her from continuing her research at the National Institute of Health (he denies this). She refers to the COVID-19 pandemic in quotes ("pandemic"), refuses to wear face masks, and discourages others from doing so because she thinks that taking care of one’s own immune system and cleanliness is all she should need to do, by her own words. Vaccines (and just temporarily breathing in more of one’s own carbon dioxide) aren’t worth the risk, she says. Mikovits has spoken at numerous anti-vaccination events and her retracted papers are frequently referenced in their propaganda (and there’s no denying it’s propaganda).

When she was a virologist and medical researcher, Judy started working to uncover viral causes of diseases when she was hired by a couple whose child had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and wanted to find the cause. The work she published in Science magazine about proposed retro-viral causes of CFS in 2009 was retracted when peers from 9 separate labs failed to get the same results and negated her findings (and when two of her co-authors reported that their patient samples had been contaminated by the virus in the lab, as opposed to the virus already being in the samples). Two years later she was fired from her job over the quality of her work and control of her lab samples, which seems relevant considering the apparent reason why her 2009 results were supposedly wrong. She was arrested and tried for stealing lab equipment and documentation when she left. She returned some of the lab notes and the criminal charges were dismissed.

Judy continues to reference her outdated research to this day (the research about specific retroviruses causing some specific diseases). Now she’s using her debunked data to fire up her main argument: that up to 30% of modern vaccines are “contaminated” with retroviruses and the government is trying to cover up a dangerous problem with its vaccines, putting everyone at risk (especially young children who get a large host of vaccines in a relatively short period of time).

This was where I knew I had to learn more about how viruses and vaccines interact with our bodies. A retrovirus is commonly called an RNA virus, which is a virus that uses a host cell to replicate its viral RNA as DNA. This is the opposite of what DNA viruses do, which is to use the host cell to replicate their DNA as RNA. An RNA/retro-virus also has a type of enzyme that allows it to insert its new DNA into the host cell’s DNA. This altered genetic information can lead to increased erroneous cell production, which increases the likelihood of developing cancer and other diseases depending on where the viral DNA is injected into a host cell’s DNA. Whatever gene is changed may cease to function, leading to disease. For example, HIV is a retrovirus that results in a syndrome that makes one prone to all kinds of diseases.

As it turns out, some vaccines do contain retroviruses! And it also turns out that that’s ok. Sometimes that’s part of the genetic material virologists are working with. Some of our vaccines are only possible with that genetic material. The presence of a retrovirus doesn’t necessary do anything to the vaccine. The vaccinations don’t infect patients with retroviruses because the retroviruses found in the vaccine are non-infectious. It’s an extremely important part of how a good vaccine functions. Viruses can cause diseases, but vaccines don’t contain live infectious material. That’s why there were no reported issues with retroviral infection by our vaccine safety systems (systems that exist because vaccines have never been perfect and always have some potential for side effects, so their risk factors are studied thoroughly). When the technology was available to investigate the retroviruses previously unknown to have existed in the MMR vaccine, they were confirmed to be non-hazardous.

Mikovits is clearly a knowledgeable professional in her field and has some valid opinions/points about health, medicine, and federal failures. But her identity seems to be wrapped up with the debunked research that changed her career, and no professional knows everything, even in their field. The wrongness isn’t my concern. It’s what she’s doing with it, and the fact that she’s ignoring the research negating her old findings.

Kent Heckenlively is the co-author of Judy's new book, and an anti-vaccination activist. The fact that he's also a lawyer really stands out to me. The founders of the Westboro Baptist Church (the "God Hates F*gs" group) are ex-lawyers who use their offensive protests to rile people up and then sue them for "hindering their rights." It's how they make their money. Anyway, Kent is co-founder of a group called Age of Autism, which claims to be dedicated to helping kids and families with autism. But as you can probably tell by the name of the group, they're much more concerned with the fact that they perceive a dangerous uptick in autism statistics (an issue that’s related much more to the evolving access and categorization of statistics and disorders than anything else). Age of Autism doesn’t actually tend to involve people on the autism spectrum in their work (other than to use them as examples), and their focus is not on helping (or even understanding) those with autism, but on getting rid of autism--as if the spectrum of conditions related to autism was a single “disease,” and as if it’s unacceptable that people exist with those conditions (more on that later).

As autism has increasingly become a recognized "condition," it's diagnosis has become more common, and because it's really only diagnosed based on social behavior, it may go unnoticed prior to ~18 months, if it’s noticed at all. Many more people live "on the spectrum" than we ever know (did you know Sir Anthony Hopkins is also on the spectrum?), and before it was more widely recognized, we had all kinds of names (and institutions) for people living with more severe effects. Kent's daughter was diagnosed with autism at around the age that she got some of her vaccines, which led the distraught father to believe it was vaccine related. Sometimes people do have mild reactions to vaccines (nothing’s perfect), and I can understand parents being scared and hurt for their children. I can also understand questioning various authorities. We know good and well that governments use poisons (Agent Orange in Vietnam), diseases (smallpox in the colonies, syphilis at Tuskegee), and vaccines as playing cards in their efforts to control people/power (we saw it again when Trump tried to get exclusive rights to the Coronavirus vaccine being researched in Germany). But lots of people see “Thing 1 Happens, Thing 2 Happens After, Which Must Mean Thing 1 Caused Thing 2.” Unsurprisingly, people can develop identities that revolve around getting rid of the "disease" of autism.

But Autism is not a disease. Autism is an umbrella term for a range of neuro divergences (to be diagnosed you have to hit like... 4 out of a possible 15 some-odd behavioral checkmarks), and issues like those relate to aaaallll sorts of things. Things that people with autism talk about often. If anti-vaccination organizations actually advocated for people with autism, they’d let people with autism advocate for themselves. Because people with autism do self-advocate, and they take umbrage with groups like Autism Speaks and Age of Autism. People on the autism spectrum often have lots to say about the agendas of these groups and the resources that are taken from the those who actually need them. From the Autistic Self Advocacy Network: “While no link exists between autism and vaccines, of greater concern is the willingness of those who promote this theory to suggest that exposing children to deadly diseases would be a better outcome than an autistic child. Vaccinations do not cause autism – but the use of autism as a means of scaring parents from safeguarding their children from life-threatening illness demonstrates the depths of prejudice and fear that still surrounds our disability. Autism is not caused by vaccines – and Autistic Americans deserve better than a political rhetoric that suggests that we would be better off dead than disabled.”

Folks on the spectrum sometimes have lots to say about the toxic living conditions of their childhoods, too. About neglect and abuse and trauma. It’s important to keep in mind that the behavioral issues tied to autism are also the behavioral conditions often tied to things like PTSD and ADHD, both of which relate to life events/patterns. As a teacher, I’ve learned a lot about the links between developmental/behavioral problems and the (dis)ability of parents to respond to their children based on their children’s needs (rather than primarily on the parent’s own traumas). For young children, especially with any kind of special need (a very broad term), simply navigating through a world that’s inflexible with their needs can be traumatic. Our environmental conditions can even effect how our genes are expressed over time (literally, sometimes time IS the trigger for gene expression). Everything is born out of its environment—out of our food, our water, our sense of security, our parents’ genes, everything. 

Which brings me to one of the biggest stories in the vaccination debate: that of Hannah Poling. I bring this up because this is the one I was most familiar with, and the one I empathized with the most--particularly because there was a court case related to it. When she was 19 months old, she received 5 vaccines, and two days later her parents reported new behavior—lethargy, irritation, and fever. Months later, she was diagnosed with mitochondrial enzyme deficit (MED), which means the conditions she displayed were also contained within the autism spectrum. Her parents successfully sued for compensation under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Plan, a program started by the federal government to address public concerns of vaccine safety in light of the noise raised by anti-vaccination groups in the 80s. However, MED is an autosomal recessive disease, which means both of Hannah’s parents had to carry the gene in order for her to get it. She already had it, and either it hadn’t expressed itself yet, or her parents hadn’t noticed (or reported) the symptoms so early in her development. Indeed, the Poling case only claimed that her vaccines exacerbated her symptoms, but this raises 4 important points: 1) There’s no evidence that this is possible, and not because “no one’s looked.” 2) We should really think critically about whether or not we should withhold treatment for diseases like smallbox and whooping cough under the unfounded notion that some vaccines may exacerbate existing conditions, 3) under-reported is the fact that Hannah presented other immunological challenges prior to her vaccinations,  and 4) despite a popular claim made by anti-vaccination groups, there’s actually no evidence that multiple simultaneous vaccines can overwhelm an immune system.

That last one was really important to me, because I had read years ago that a child’s immune system was potentially too underdeveloped to handle so many vaccinations. The notion seemed logical enough, and I felt awful for parents who had these real fears. But it turns out, the immune system of an infant has the potential capacity to respond to thousands of vaccines simultaneously. It has to! Babies are RAW, lol. And it turns out, medical researchers can be pretty damn thorough, so they knew this well before they were delivering grouped vaccines to toddlers. And while the number of vaccines given to children has increased, they contain even fewer antigens than they used to thanks to medical improvements.

But I have another name. Andrew Wakefield was stripped of his medical license in Britain and came to America, where he became a prominent anti-vaccination activist. He published findings in Britain in the mid 90s that claimed that measles (and “therefore” its vaccine) caused Crohn's disease, but peer research failed to repeat his findings and his claims were subsequently debunked. After shifting his focus to the measles vaccine and autism, he wound up leaving the school of medicine where he worked (under “mutual agreement” at the school's request), because he repeatedly refused to re-attempt the research which had formed the basis of his initial claims. Andrew moved to America to continue pushing his theory that measles and its vaccine caused autism, despite already admitting that it was "not proved." He's barred from practicing medicine in the UK and is not licensed in the US.

I bring up Wakefield because the fuss he raised lead scientists and doctors to look into these claims. It makes sense for these potential issues to matter to the medical community, after all. All resulting work refuted any connections between autism and these vaccines. Luckily, this work also looked into some other claims about vaccines, too, such as the concern that mercury in vaccines could cause autism or other conditions. Ethylmercury is used in the preservative thimerosal, which prevents bacterial growth in vaccines. Methylmercury (the mercury found in fish) can be highly toxic to people, while ethylmercury clears more quickly from the body--so quickly that the small quantities used in vaccines don't have time to build up or cause any problems, other than the possibility of a red rash at the injection site (and the fact that, inevitably, some people are allergic to it). However, given the rising concern in the late 90's and gradual improvements in medical science, the use of ethylmercury in vaccines was reduced in 2001, and for childhood vaccines was completely eliminated. Despite this, it remains a popular concern.

There are so many other people and cases and theories, but these seemed to be the big ones.

...But there’s one more variable I need to dissect: The general focus on eradicating autism, as opposed to supporting the autistic. Parents and their supporters are trying to find the right thing to do. It’s their earnest desire to overcome the problems they’ve been led to see, and their energy is being funneled away from them and used against all our best interests. (Perhaps it’s worth considering, too, where everyone else’s energy is being funneled these days…) For me, this is the variable that’s hardest to talk about, because it asks people to look at their own shadows with acceptance and forgiveness.

The development/behaviors of people on the spectrum aren’t necessarily “wrong,” but we’re subtly and explicitly told to see them this way. Many of these behaviors/developments are very natural responses to toxic/inhumane social and environmental conditions and expectations (some of them are even specifically considered evolutionary pros, traits that help people survive these environs), albeit at times difficult to interact with and other times self-destructive. Everything has extremes. And between environments and genetics, parents aren’t always able to recognize the myriad little things that might contribute to developmental and/or behavioral issues. Since so many of these things lie on the autistic spectrum, “autism” becomes a target in and of itself. Parents may see their children as victims of a toxic world, and they may see themselves as strong shoulders under (secretly) unwanted circumstances. Many parents also feel that “no good parent would ever feel that way, so I don’t either.” This kind of inner conflict is incredibly difficult for people to deal with, but the truth is, conflicting thoughts and emotions are perfectly normal. Emotions are valid and thoughts don’t define us. Both are fleeting. Feeling like we’re not “allowed” to feel conflicted makes us feel guilty/bitter/both. (Tested by God” and “blessed by God” have the same ring, sometimes.)

Some parents also experience guilt/bitterness over the possibility of being part of the environmental/genetic (especially genetic) circumstances that contributed to a child’s disorders. Or, guilt over having been unable to bring them into an accepting or supportive society. Plus the guilt over being sometimes unhappy with the resulting circumstances of one’s life. Guilt. Frustration. Bitterness. Sour grapes. Saving someone else from this “burden” and future children from sharing in this “unacceptable” situation becomes a righteous cause. Furthermore, in finding the person/thing to blame, they’d finally be allowed to express all that despair and frustration. The emotional attachment and roiling undercurrent is very attractive to manipulative individuals. I see it happen a lot, and I see people with autism talking about it. My heart truly aches for everyone going through this. But none of this helps the person on the spectrum. Nor does it help the well-meaning parent.

Maybe parents and supporters wouldn’t be so desperate about and fearful of autism (and vaccines) if having a child with special needs wasn’t so isolating. Maybe if our communities, institutions, and organizations focused on empowering and supporting the vulnerable, on creating equity where ever possible, autism wouldn’t be so overwhelming and wouldn’t even be as common. Maybe if we responded to people on the autism spectrum (and everyone else) as they are, instead of how we want/expect them to be, then the whole situation would change entirely.

In my research and personal interactions, the common thread among those who question the overall value and trustworthiness of vaccines is that of a “dark world” full of “bad people.” Things are so dark, apparently, that the global medical and scientific community is less trustworthy than the few who disagree with it on this particular issue. Is it any wonder? Our culture is exploitative and manipulative, and lays out a set of requirements for human value that even the neurotypical struggle to meet. We all hurt! We’re all wary! And of course we are!

But it turns out, much of the darkness we see in the world relates to what we’re looking for (or at the very least, what we’re trained to look for). In an age of endless, algorithmically-driven “information,” it’s very difficult for many folks to navigate, discern, and prioritize--especially when it’s a personal issue, making it easy to exploit our emotions. The machine keeps us fearful and hungry and separate, but perhaps we shouldn’t despair over that. After all, the active effort to keep us fearful and separate reflects our underlying nature to work together, to connect, and to grow.

Researching all this was complicated. Lots dead-ends, seemingly believable stories from once-trusted professionals, self-referential content, emotionally manipulative content, questionable authorities (authority is always questionable), and a shit-ton of complicated medical research. This is the amount of research it took for me to pick through everything. It’s no joke.

And that brings me back to the present. To the stuff happening right now. Areas surrounding anti-vaccination communities are seeing a drastic rise in diseases that had been long gone before the anti-vaccination craze. Not everyone is equally susceptible to pathogens, and our willingness to receive imperfect but well-researched vaccines is about everyone else in all communities, not just ourselves. No matter what anyone chooses to believe about the “source” of COVID-19, it’s disabling and deadly and highly contagious, and just because it may not be highly visible in someone’s community doesn’t mean it’s not ravaging other communities. As for uncertainty over the Coronavirus being “real,” if a person is only willing to believe resources calling for them to be angry and afraid and suspicious of everyone else, it seems to me that one would have to investigate their own worldview, along with one’s view of themselves and their own shadows. If one sees the world as inherently bad and humans as inherently fucked, that relates to how one feels about oneself and an incomplete notion of the lives of other people. That is the perspective of a traumatized person. Self isolation is deadly, so we ought to be wary of things that seek to isolate us. These self-isolating notions are fed back to us by the algorithms guiding our internet activity, keeping our behaviors predictable and controllable. We keep clicking and returning, fed by a sense of tragic righteousness, by the same programs designed to keep people coming back to slot machines. The internet is not a neutral entity because it functions in a capitalist, undemocratic state. It must be used carefully. The book Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff highlights the nature of these algorithms and the systems which use them. But more importantly, it also highlights the things about humans that make us lovable and forgivable. The things that make it possible to manipulate us in the first place. There’s a lot of wild shit going on, but it’s not happening because “humans are bad.” It’s happening because we live in an age forcibly ruled by the most self destructive culture/ideology on the planet. It’s the ideas, not the species. That means we have work to do. Inner work.

Sources:

https://speakingofresearch.com/2019/04/24/celebrating-world-vaccination-week-pt-3-the-post-wakefield-fallout/

https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2020/05/who-is-judy-mikovits-and-what-does-she-have-to-do-with-anthony-fauci-and-the-coronavirus.html

https://vaxopedia.org/2018/12/29/are-vaccines-contaminated-with-retroviruses/

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmp0802904

https://autisticadvocacy.org/2015/09/asan-statement-on-gop-primary-debate-comments-on-autism-and-vaccination/

https://autisticadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/First-Hand-Perspectives-on-Behavioral-Interventions-for-Autistic-People-and-People-with-other-Developmental-Disabilities.pdf

https://sciencing.com/differentiating-rna-dna-viruses-4853.html

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/a-fake-pandemic-antivaxxers-are-spreading-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories/

https://www.thechildren.com/health-info/conditions-and-illnesses/q-vaccine-safer-getting-real-disease

Also so much Wikipedia.