#but that doesn’t mean Primordial was the second one made because. well. the event is about how he was the one that came BEFORE Albedo

[dkniade]

Rhinedottir, “Dorian” Primordial Albedo, Albedo

Warnings: abusive parent, PTSD / trauma symptoms, neglect, abandonment

My interpretation. Based on information from mainly the version 2.3 event and Albedo’s character stories.

(Vaguely related critique on storytelling & plot, and praise for V2.3 trailer multimedia storytelling at the end.)

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Starsilver, Dorian, and “Useless” Things

It’s interesting. In Act I, Paimon said,

“some [Starsilver ores] are really bright and shiny, and others just look like regular lumps of rock with a little shiny bit here or there,” and “Anyway. It's all the thief's fault for wasting our time!” and “do you want us to bring all of this ore back? Or did you wanna sort through and get rid of the useless bits first? There's no point bringing the bad ones back if it'll ruin the quality of the paint.”

It’s definitely implied that Rhinedottir did SOMETHING to Dorian if he hears such comments about sorting ores and ultimately respond with,

“Indeed, the sorting process is necessary. Humans are such practical creatures. They only want those things that are good. Once they have learned to distinguish between good and bad, they will never stop comparing things in their minds. Useless things should be disposed of at the outset.”

Obviously a metaphor about himself. Things... People don’t usually compare themselves to useless rocks and “things” that should be immediately thrown away while sorting ores, right…

It’d sound different if Dorian only responded with, “Indeed, the sorting process is necessary. They’re useless things that we should dispose of at the outset.”

And then Dorian even attempts to take Albedo’s identity instead of trying to form his own, as though he feels his own self is not good enough, as though he feels he’s a failure. Albedo certainly did not hesitate in calling him the failure of the project. Albedo’s somewhat like Rhinedottir in that sense, since Rhinedottir did not deem Dorian to be good enough to keep him and let him live.

But in order for me to write Dorian consistently, I have to come up with an idea of exactly what Rhine did/said (that aspect is quite vague in canon) because PTSD symptoms, in this case due to (implied) abuse, can vary based on the trauma, right… I’ve always written it with the background of a verbally & emotionally abusive & neglectful Rhinedottir in mind, since Dorian’s quotes implies he has low self-esteem. She did abandon them both ultimately, after all, in the pursuit of knowledge and life-creation. If I can come up with a solid history of what Rhinedottir did, then how I write Dorian should be much more consistent because to oversimplify it, I guess, trauma symptoms are all cause-and-effect…

Rhinedottir did X, therefore Dorian does Y and has problems with Z. If Dorian does Y and has problems with Z, then he must’ve suffered from X. And then there are other factors like, let’s see, support & basic needs, setting, environment, etc.

Monsters, Albedo, and “Arrogant” Wishes

In Act III, Albedo tells us,

“Monsters mutated with Durin's power and blood are also creatures of Rhinedottir, just like me. You must beware of all such creatures. The only thing is that sometimes, when I think about how mighty the power of alchemy is, I feel so small. As beings who set foot in this world, how arrogant are we in desiring to control our destiny, and in desiring to create? Is creation an arrogant act, Traveler? If not, why do we call the ones that created us and control us, "gods"? If it is, then what qualifies us to call ourselves creators? How far must we take our reverence and respect, and what purpose does it serve?”

And then, when the Traveler asks, “How did you feel when you took out the impostor?” Albedo says “Nothing special. But... Whenever I think about it, I feel a twinge of grief.” And that’s the end of the conversation.

Okay, so here I interpret that Albedo has a mindset of “I’m a dangerous creature like Durin and the Fellflower, so you should stay vigilant. I feel so small, and it’s arrogant of me want control in my own life and create something of my own. How much should I revere and respect my master (mother) who created me?” Now that would imply he’s experienced trauma due to Rhinedottir’s treatment

seems to me like

Rhine: listen to my orders, finish your assignments perfectly, else I’ll abandon you. you’re not in control of your life. do you want to be dangerous like Durin

Young Albedo: I have to listen to her else I’m a failure and I’ll be abandoned and I’ll be a dangerous individual who only brings destruction by existing

That’s basically Dorian’s mindset during the event in a nutshell, I feel.

critique on storytelling & plot, and praise for V2.3 trailer multimedia storytelling utc. (again)

It’s so odd… I’m reading the event’s transcript more closely again and on the surface the plot makes sense (no particular plot holes & everything’s tied up), so it’s easy to think, well, it’s a pretty nice story. BUT I just can’t shake off the feeling of how I got a different interpretation of the plot based on the very well-edited V2.3 trailer, and how vaguely unsatisfied I feel after watching the full playthrough.

See, I really like the event’s trailer section though.

It hinted at the danger of Dragonspine (setting), showed a cute moment of Amber building snowman (contrast for next piece of info), Eula’s suspicion towards the imposters (conflict), Albedo’s missing notes (conflict), an avalanche (conflict, turning point?), and even an “off” Cryo-wielding Albedo as its final scene (climax?). The trailer makes the plot seem like it’s fantasy/thriller. I initially thought Albedo has finally gone rogue (“If one day, I lose control…”) and was pretty excited for the event. Also the music uses the motif associated with the Art of Khemia— it shows up whenever Albedo talks about life & creation & alchemy—which gets beautifully resolved in “Paths Divided” (Albedo’s monologue OST) and there are variations AND THE CRYOBEDO CLIMAX USES A HIGHLY SPED-UP VERSION OF DRAGONSPINE’S MAIN THEME “SNOW-BURIED TALES” along with, as a fellow fan had informed me (thank you) clacking sounds from the Spanish flamenco dance form to symbolize Eula, which also shows up in “Dance of Aphros”

The trailer cut out most of the unnecessary parts in the canon plot, kept the Primordial Human Project a mystery (Albedo vaguely mentions it without context but he’s always observing humans so it’s not suspicious), and utilized a narrative soundtrack so it was very tight✨

[taranida]

It's not a lake, it's A. Wake

In the introduction post I’ve made when I’ve just created this blog, I put a few points, that I consider pretty telling of what kind of theories one might see here. One of them was “Alan is the ocean;” meaning, of course, that Alan is the Dark Place. And it has nothing to do with metaphors or tortured madness of his mind.

Alan is the ocean because Alan was connected to the Dark Place long before the whole Bright Falls ordeal happened. Sadly, it’s very hard to tell if the Dark Place existed at all before Alan or if it was retroactively written into reality; I would assume that it did exist at least as a primordial ocean: we have Ahti as a testament to the Dark Place being (a part of?) a primordial ocean and Door as a testament that it is the In-Between. Both of those entities stand out even in the Dark Place, not bothered by its shenanigans, and seem to be pretty comfortable — chilling on the streets of the Writer’s city or dancing with the mop. If anything, both of them showed that they are more disturbed by their time in our world. Ahti has a breakdown in Valhalla, and Door even left his loved ones in a questionable manner to get out. Yet, there are some hints that the Dark Place might’ve been at least shaped to what it is now by Alan. We’ll get to it.

So, how does Alan fit into the narrative of being the primordial ocean, the Dark Place, the In-Between and the Master of Many Worlds, if he (doesn’t even remember his own birthday) wasn’t born before the late 70’s? Door was a man grown in the 80’s; Ahti was kicking in the 60’s, as we learn from the Control’s Foundation; Cauldron Lake gave a headache to the natives centuries ago — all predate even Alan’s birth, let alone his ability to make a coherent story. Well, let’s explore this.

The main question here is: what is time for the Dark Place. I would say it’s just a suggestion; the Dark Place may or may not recognise this concept as something meaningful, but surely refuses to follow it as a rule. We see confirmations all over: in the first game we are shown the clock, that runs backwards, changing the events of the past and hiding the ultimate loop from us, in AWAN we have Mr. Scratch, who sends Alan back in time per the rules of the story; in the second game… what is there that doesn’t defy time, really? “Everything happens all at once and never” is as true as “tomorrow will never happen,” because the time is an idea, most likely, introduced by Alan himself not to go crazier than he already does, hence the wordplay and semantics are important.

But let’s look at what was for sure rewritten retroactively and shown us without the need to piece together hints and come to this conclusion (I am looking at Tom Zane right now and might lightly go into “who wrote whom” this time). We for sure know that the ultimate loop of the first game happens behind the screen: Alan sits to write with the last page in the typewriter, and the last page is this:

Not much text can be seen here, but there is a full version of it:

It’s a bit hard to read (hashtag FreecamForRemastered), so here’s the text:

In the cabin, two stuffed ravens stare at Wake and Alice from atop a bookshelf. Wake is surprised to find his typewriter sitting on the desk. Alice has planned the whole thing behind Wake’s back to get Wake here. Wake feels angry and betrayed. Everyone keeps pushing him to do something he is not ready to do. Wake and Alice argue about it. Suddenly, the lights in the cabin start to flicker. Unseen by Wake and Alice, Barbara Jagger stands in the shadows of the cabin. As soon as it began, the flickering stops and Jagger is gone. Alice is startled by the flickering lights. Wake is too angry to stay. He needs to cool off, to clear his head. Wake storms out of the cabin. He is certain that Alice will not follow him into the dark. When Wake gets to the car, he hears Alice. She is screaming in terror, calling his name. There is a splash of water and then silence. Alarmed, Wake picks up a flashlight from the car and rushes back to the lake. Wake is surprised to see that the cabin is dark, the lights are out. He looks for Alice. Wake scans the dark water with his lamp. He sees her form underwater, sinking into the darkness. He draws a shuddering breath and dives into the black water. Wake wakes up gasping from a nightmare. He is in the car. The car has crashed against a tree. It’s night. He is bleeding from his forehead. He has hit his head. He staggers out. He calls out Alice’s name. There is no reply.

And it already has differences from what we learn in the playthrough of the game: Alan never got to the car; Alan had a flashlight on his person; the screams were heard all the way to the cabin; Alan got into the cabin, not scanned the lake; the car didn’t crash against the tree. All those little details, they are all wrong for us. Most importantly, this manuscript is written in third person and present tense, when all of the manuscripts we can find in the first game are in first person and past tense (if the POV character is Alan, of course). It’s not a Departure we play, it’s the Departure that Alan wrote to allow Alice to escape.

This page flash is followed by the clock going backwards and the time adjusting itself to the moment when Alice is surging up from the lake. She also tells us in the second game that her stay in the Dark Place was a bit different:

“I remembered being trapped inside that lake, a dark ocean with echoes of myself, my fears, my photos. Inside a dark tide of madness. The same events and images, looping again and again. And then I saw a light. Your light. You dove in just as I swam out.”

…than in the manuscript that Alan wrote in his penultimate loop in the first game:

We can assume, he rewrote it to keep Alice’s sanity intact. She did, after all, have a nyctophobia, and just being trapped with a malevolent darkness around — for her — will be worse than looping with photos and events, even if he couldn’t completely protect her from fears and dark madness, he had to stay true to the concept of the Dark Place.

But, again, this might be reality retroactively rewritten or the memories rewritten; the clock and the cutscene of Alice being dragged into the lake are enough to know for sure: Alan can and does rewrite the past.

Alan can toy with time by writing loops into reality less subtly. In AWAN his whole winning strategy was to exhaust Mr. Scratch with loops and prevent him from killing Alan by rewinding time (might not be the first time; surely not the last). The whole plot of AWAN is the proof that time is a weapon and an effective one: loops are not designed to run in circles or start fresh every time, they can be consciously used and abused by Alan to reach his goals. He can rewind, he can start fresh, he can start from the particular point in time, keeping the allies’ memories intact, he can even pull radio-shows from other nights just to hear how his loved ones do. He can also mess everything up, and the reality together with the Dark Place will put things into place. In the “Emma Sloan” manuscript, we have the date:

In the “Lost in the Dark Place” manuscript, the time spent in the Dark Place:

On the radio, Alice agrees with the two years:

“It’s been two years. I— this sounds awful, but yes, I believe he’s dead. Otherwise he would’ve... well, you know.”

You might guess what the issue is here. Alan could not be missing for two years in 2011; he dove into the lake in September of 2010, even if it’s the very end of 2011, he’s missing for only one year and three months. Yet, this ussie was glanced over; or AWAN, contrary to my belief (and Alan’s), actually takes place in 2011, and Alan pulls the interviews from a very far future. Both possibilities prove the point: time is just a suggestion. In fact, it might be a suggestion so much, Alan is lost in it completely. 2011 and 2012 merged into one thing in his mind, and writing and the Dark Place delivered.

There is also Control’s AWE where the alert goes off far in the future; it’s just one of the things that can suggest the time being bent, I will not go into details about the others, since they are not as solid as this one.

In the second game… boy, do I really need to talk about time there? Allow me to be as short as possible: between each draft of Initiation Alan goes through the loop of Return, that resets again and again: we have loops within loops, and our reality, the world bound by the laws of time, waits patiently when Alan will finish walking around Noir-York, collecting echoes, watching Night Springs, and dancing in his musical, just to rewind to the very moment Nightingale crawls up from the waters of the lake. In one playthrough we can see Alan being shot with the bullet of light at least four times. And one playthrough where Return happens four times takes, let’s say for convenience, a week. The first playthrough is not the first big loop of Initiation-Return Alan goes through, it’s not even the first with Saga Anderson as a hero; she, too, is stuck there for multiple loops already (immunity to the story, my arse). How much time Return ignored while our world was frozen? Who knows! A lot.

Just to hammer it down, let’s also throw in the Time Breaker episode. There time was broken so much, eternity lost its meaning. It is a failed story, I want to stress it, nothing from there made its way into reality in anything more than echoes, but the very fact that Alan can write something like this is telling. He also didn’t fail because of this tremendous amount of time he chose to ignore, the time spent as a tree or hanging on the tree wasn’t an issue there.

And, as the last nail in this coffin, that you can choose to ignore: AWR might or might not be yet another set of loops of the first game: Alan did add the Coffee World and other things he needed to establish for Return, effectively rewriting the past.

All of this paints a pretty clear picture: Alan is above and outside the very concept of time; time is his tool, a point in the story, a toy.

Now, let’s forget about that for a moment and talk about Alan’s life before he encountered Barbie as the Dark Presence. His previous works matter. There are several things that point to him being able to affect reality before 2010 (however many 2010’s he looped through).

Known works of his, that are canonically confirmed being written before 2010 are: the Errand Boy story, the Alex Casey novels, the Night Springs episodes “Over the Threshold, Darkly” (the Control one), and whatever the name was before Alan adapted the episode into AWAN’s “Return,” plus a number of others, that are not specified to my knowledge (yet, we can guess some from the ones that are featured in the first game). All of them, one way or another, are connected to reality.

But before we will talk about it, I want to note one thing. The assumption that Alan is… not a “creative writer” but merely a clairvoyant stenographer of sorts, due to his inspirational visions in the second game is quite popular, yet I strongly disagree and would challenge it. In short, every writer, in one way or another, takes inspiration from reality or other fiction (that was inspired by reality), it’s a given and doesn’t make someone a mere stenographer; we have solid evidence that the events of the Alex Casey novels are different from the life of the real FBI agent Alex Casey; the visions are short plot ideas, meat on these bones must be added for it to be a proper work of art; the Dark Place does not realise any fiction that is not a genuine act of creation:

Therefore, no, Alan is not a clairvoyant stenographer, he is a creative writer. And a good one for that matter; at least I had a blast with “Errand Boy” and an excerpt from “Return to Sender.” With that out of the way, let’s return to the point.

From the works we know, the “Errand Boy,” probably, is the weakest argument, but it did contribute to the Bright Presence’s role (if not even existence), yet it was realised too close to Cauldron Lake and probably pretty deep into the loops, so I won’t go into details with it.

The Night Springs episodes, on the other hand, are somewhere in the middle. We know that all of them were written at the very beginning of Alan’s writing career:

And some of them were realised (or foreshadowed, if you chose to believe that the episodes from the first game have one or two written by Alan, as I do) in the past. Now, I know this is a touchy subject for the community, but at this point, I think, the bigger confirmation of Control being Alan’s work, can be only Remedy’s statement, which reads “Alan wrote the events of Control.” The script of “Over the Threshold, Darkly” is the start of the whole Hiss ordeal and the establishment of the Federal Bureau, which deals with the paranatural, as well as Trench’s (and, one might argue, Darling’s) fate. And if the Hiss and Trench (Darling) at the moment of the writing could be years away from the events that were described, the FBC might or might not have been momentarily turned into what we see it as.

There is also this tricky reversed part in Balance Slays the Demon, that was written for AWAN:

It will happen again, in another town, a town called Ordinary

One can choose how to interpret this line, of course, but we can be certain: the boys are doing their seer/connected-to-the-Dark-Place thing and sing about the truth, that will be. Now to the interpretations. We can take the context of the song and assume that in the Ordinary the “Balance” (Hedron/Polaris/Jesse) will slay the “Demon” (Not-Mother and her bunch). We can take “it” as “AWE�� or “the overlap,” meaning the Altered World Event will happen there; an overlap, similar to the one in Night Springs, Arizona, will open. Or we can infer that, given that the song is playing in AWAN, yet another script for the Night Springs will start to come true in the past in the town of Ordinary: the setup for “Over the Threshold, Darkly,” or there might be a different one. Or all those together at once might be true.

The line also could be written off as a teaser for This House of Dreams, since it promises a future event, not stating that something already happened. But here comes this whole thing about the concept of time: we already established that the Dark Place couldn’t be bothered by it. In RCU the concept of something happening in the future for something to happen in the past is as logical as it is for us in reverse. The future influences the past as much as the past influences the future.

There is yet another moment when Alan’s works might’ve played a major role. Mr. Scratch’s involvement in the story. Was he truly in Departure, or was he introduced in the script that was later turned into AWAN’s “Return”? Or was the episode of Night Springs “Man in the Mirror” written by Alan, and that’s why we were treated with Mr. Scratch? The personality of the double in the episode surely matches the sadistic playfulness we see in AWAN.

Let’s move to the Alex Casey novels. In the dialogue between the FBI-Casey and Alan, we learn that the books have, as Casey himself put it, “echoes” of his life, as if he were watched. And then Casey says a peculiar line, reminiscent of the Hitchhiker’s:

“You think you’re God? You think you can just make up stuff? Play with people’s lives and kill them when you think it adds to the drama?”

It goes like this:

“I think you like using people, Wake. Taking their lives and twisting them into your stories. And when someone gets hurt, it’s kickass material for the next one. […] This is not your playground. And I’m not your fucking creation.”

The answer to this is even more curious, but let’s take this apart first. Casey is clearly upset (he even spills his coffee!) and trying to prove that he’s not Alan’s creation. It goes a bit against what he said about echoes: if he felt that he’s being watched, then, surely, the logical conclusion will be that Alan is a creepy stalker, and Casey needs to file for a restraining order (or not, the Alex Casey series is finished; some other legal action maybe?). But for some reason Casey flairs up about using people, getting them hurt, and then using their pain. Why is that? Did he check the dates on the publishing of the books and the events of his life that coincide with what is depicted there? Casey gives us nothing concrete, but the two last sentences heavily hint, that the fictional Casey went through things before the real Casey experienced them himself. Alan, most likely, didn’t create FBI Alex Casey per se, but he did influence his life with his writing.

The response Alan gives to Casey’s outburst is very telling:

“It doesn’t work that way. Even in the Dark Place, where the rules hardly apply, it’s very complicated to make fiction come true. I saw visions of what’s happening, what will happen, dreams. I tried to use them in my writing. I understand how dangerous it is now, even with a paralyzing amount of planning. I think I stopped writing. I think I gave up. But there’s a manuscript. Maybe I forgot not to write. The Dark Place makes you forget.”

Yeah, real cute word-salad, Alan. What I want to draw attention to is this line:

“Even in the Dark Place, where the rules hardly apply, it’s very complicated to make fiction come true.”

Even in the Dark Place… so, what about the outside of the Dark Place? More rules, but, you know, in general, it’s kinda a thing? A bit more hoops to jump through, a bit more fidgeting with the Clicker, a bit more annoyance, but you’ve been there, done that?

He does follow up with “visions,” but at this point it’s very hard to follow — what he’s talking about: the Dark Place or the real world before the Dark Place? Or both, because he’s confused and his head hurts? While I’m not going to claim that Alan is not a capable parautilitarian, who, indeed, can peek into other people’s lives and dreams or even other dimensions and could see into Casey’s future this way, it doesn’t change that, if taken at face value, he kind of admitted to being able to make fiction come true even outside of the Dark Place. Allow me to make an example, so we are all on the same page, let’s say one is playing basketball and states, “even in training, where the rules hardly apply, it’s very complicated to dunk.”

Let’s also not forget that Casey is not the only FBI agent whose life was in one way or another affected by the Dark Place and Alan: Finn, Robert Nightingale’s partner, went missing because of some “craziness in the east” at least some months before September of 2010. Did Alan write it? We don’t really know, since not much in general is known about Robert Nightingale, his partner, and his motivations; but somehow the agent was convinced that Alan is at fault for the “craziness.” We also don’t have more examples of Alan’s previous works to claim this was realised through writing. But he did somehow influence what happened with Finn and Nightingale long before Bright Falls and from outside of the Dark Place. We are not talking AW1 or AWAN level of “outside of the Dark Place,” because all the fiction (or visions) that came true in those games was created inside the Dark Place, and after Alan was already tightly connected to it…

Or was he always? Herald of Darkness, really, is such a gem. Let’s take a look at what the boys have to say about it with their “visions of what’s happening, what will happen.” We will skip through Alan’s and Door’s parts, after all, if you reading this, there is a chance you know them well enough or at least know where to find the lyrics.

On the nightmares, the Clicker and being drawn to stories:

C'mon in and listen Lost words you've been missing Of the fire you're bearing The eye of the darkness, your light […] So here is a clue Of hope to remember Visions, they come true Obeying the light switch too

It’s all about baby-Alan (according to the manuscript from the Well-Lit Room — 7 y.o.), who was still waking up in the middle of the night and couldn’t sleep, because he was horrified. The eye of the darkness — his light? Visions come true obeying the Clicker? By the way, we are talking about a kid who’s suffering from a rare congenital condition, that makes him overly sensitive to light. He is blinded by bright light and prone to migraines, as stated in the guide to the first game. Almost like those Taken that lived through the first game and then were suffering severe photosensitivity per “The Alan Wake Files.” This also heavily enforces that Alan’s line “even in the Dark Place, where the rules hardly apply, it’s very complicated to make fiction come true” can be taken literally: it is hard and complicated, with a bunch of rules, much more so than in the Dark Place, but possible in the real world: visions, they come true.

Now, allow me to digress a little, because we need to explore the Clicker very briefly. Alan described it to Alice as a source of a magic light, that can make nightmares go away; in the first game it was a source of a magic light and a key; in the second game it became an amp as well. With the source of a magic light, everything is pretty simple: Linda Wake, Alan’s mother, convinced him about that, using his father as an argument — everything of his father’s took on mythical proportions in Alan’s mind. We see this magic light thrice: when Alan clicks the night away in the Well-Lit Room:

When he summons the Bright Presence in the apartment, and when he “fills [the Dark Presence’s] heart with light”:

Yup, Alan’s first OoP, that he created is a glorified flashlight.

The Clicker as the key was established by the boys of OGoA in The Poet and the Muse:

And now to see your love set free You will need the witch's cabin key Find the lady of the light gone mad with the night That's how you reshape destiny

And Alan did use it as a key in a way: he took the Clicker out before jumping into the lake. Considering how the first game was stressing the “key” quality of the Clicker, an argument might be made, that without it in hand, Alan would just crash onto the waters below, and only the possession of the “key” allowed him to enter the Dark Place instead of expiring. In the second game, the Clicker suddenly became an amp; who exactly decided on this quality we don’t really know, I would bet on Scratch (Alan will follow any belief Scratch has, since he himself doesn’t remember the truth anyways), but Alan agrees and the boys, too. Funnily, one might say it was used as a key more in the second game than it was in the first: Scratch opened an overlap with it, letting the Dark Place to seep into our world, then it was used to close the overlap with the new ending of Return (not to mention what had happened on the shore of Cauldron Lake). Why do we need to know all this? Because, no matter if the Clicker, aside from being a glorified torch, is a key or an amp, little baby-Alan, seven years old, was either closing and opening his connection to the Dark Place, the source of his nightmares (as the AW1 episode one “Nightmare” shows), and a powerful reality-bending dimension; or through the amp quality of the Clicker could make the visions come true.

So, the boys in this part of the song spelled it for us: Alan was at least connected to the powers of the Dark Place and his light was the eye of the darkness.

Moving on. On getting famous and fame’s impact:

The story's the end-all A piece of true fiction Made meaningless in The face of creation […] Fighting the nightmares Torch and a light switch A gift or a curse A reality made of dreams

The story, as far as I understand now, is the last Alex Casey novel, I might be wrong, so we will skip it — there are other ways to look at those words. But “fighting the nightmares with a torch and a light switch” and “reality made of dreams”… well, that sounds an awful lot like Alan’s already in the story! And the torch here is a metaphor or a flashlight? Actually, both will do. The reality is already made of dreams; and it’s not only about Alan’s dreams coming true in the most cheerful and nicest meaning.

But in the last part there is much more.

He could write a new story Like Tom Zane before him And maybe they'd be happy once again

Tom Zane, as we know from This House of Dreams, wrote a story for him and Barbara to have a private island in the Dark Place, where they can live their happy-ever-after. The problem here is: we are not yet at the point in the song when Alice will be kidnapped, it’s still what could be instead of the whole ordeal with the Dark Presence. One might interpret it as “if Alan would just write a new book, they won’t be in need of a vacation in a place with a shrink,” but Tom’s name is there. And the only story, to our knowledge, that influenced the happiness of Tom’s and Barbara’s was the Last Poem, that was no mere poem, but a story that shaped the Dark Place. Which, again, points out that Alan could make fiction come true before Bright Falls by just writing away all his and marriage’s problems.

Still he's the torch bearer And it couldn't be much clearer A war needs its warrior, true and right But the darkness within him Held her hostage Had he seen her drowning Would have saved her from the darkness of the lake

Alright, here we have a very confusing part. Alan’s torchbearer and a warrior true and right, okay, that’s fair. The problem is — he’s also the darkness, that holds Alice hostage, the very darkness he’s supposed to fight against. And, by the way, “had he seen her drowning”? I’ll get back to this.

To finish with Herald of Darkness, let’s just remember that the song with this name is about Alan. He’s a Champion of Light as much as he’s the Herald of Darkness, especially now, when Mr. Scratch, the only entity that was not in its core Alan himself, is gone and cannot fill those shoes.

To summarise everything that was established: the Dark Place knows nothing about time, Alan has been connected to the Dark Place since he was born, and he is both the light and the darkness.

What do the other characters have to say about this? Mr. Door points out that all the rules Alan follows are self-imposed and that he doesn’t know who’s under his mask, before politely asking to play his part in Door’s business or stay out of his way. Ahti says about that “fearing the master is the root of wisdom,” and it’s not really clear who’s the master there, since after that Ahti comforts Alan by saying that Mr. Door is just playing his role and, if something, Alan can just shove him into a film, as it was done with Ahti himself. Here, I guess, will be a great time to remind, that the Dark Place is in Ahti’s bucket:

And that the quest to find the Master of Many Worlds, always leads to Alan. I’d say the roles are: Door is the wise one.

Dr. Darling in his research of the Dark Place concluded that it is a dreamscape and the dreamer has a voice, weirdly similar to his own.

I don’t really know where I should put Noir-Casey, since he’s Alan’s figment of imagination as Barry was in the AW1 DLCs, yet he’s a character with enough agency to be considered, so I will slap him in between. After Alan shoots him, Noir-Casey has an internal monologue, that ends with:

“I was the dark place, the source of it all, the vessel. Me and the writer, we were the same.”

In different circumstances, I wouldn’t take those words at face value, but here they mean exactly what they say: it’s not a metaphor, it’s the truth. There are many truths like that sprinkled throughout the game — so blatantly, it’s hard to take them seriously.

Finally, Alan himself has something to say about this. Well, aside from proclaiming himself the Master of Many Worlds in the end of the Final Draft.

“If time is not a straight line, then there are loops beyond loops; these loops vast complex superstructures beyond what’s happening to me now ahead of me, and I’m there as well, a version of me, something I have become some elevated, enlightened version, an archon, a demiurge, a demon of some sort playing a secret game, building something his past self, a pawn to get him there, a deus ex machina pushing me there.”

He’s not wrong, we know that there is a deus-ex-machina-Alan, that calls on the phone, and there is an elevated version of him, that told the boys of OGoA that something is coming. Alice as well said, that there is only one way out of the loop: ascension or destruction. We saw both, but ended on the ascension.

Given that the most powerful entity established as of now, Ahti, is not only in Alan’s film, but also had a breakdown because of the story, we can estimate Alan’s ability to influence both (many) worlds. ‘Tis tremendous.

With this knowledge let’s look at the games with a thought that Alan is indeed the Dark Place, the vessel, the source of it all.

Tom Zane was written by Alan or Alan assumed the role of Tom for some time, placing Alice as Barbara. “Had he seen her drowning” is not only about Alice, it’s about Barbara as well. By the information we have, before the Dark Presence, they were very similar: both (blond) sweet, nice ladies, both muses to their respective writers, both drowned (even if Alan twisted it to Alice being held as a hostage), both were written back (success differs). Given that the story is a spiral and loops could be endless with different events, this moment from the video for “War” by Poets of the Fall can easily be a hint from yet another loop:

There are supporting lines in the game, where Alice’s voice says Barbara’s words and Alan’s — Tom’s. And the photos from This House of Dreams, that states that this lady is the poet’s girlfriend that drowned.

And this lady does look more like Alice than like Barbara, as we know her from the games.

In the Herald of Darkness furthermore the line “had he seen her drowning” is curious not because of the “seen” part, clairvoyance and all, we know, but because of “drowning” (Alice is dead theory might happen™). Alice had drowned per Herald of Darkness; even the first game calls it into question, as does the board in QB:

Let me sprinkle more things, I believe, can tie this up.

The Dark Place itself is something Alan created for Alice, to save her, it’s tightly connected to her and the tragedy that happened, hence it’s wet and it’s dark. He wanted her to not only return to him, but also not be far from her comfort-nightmare-zone (because he wouldn’t believe that death is a bright and nice cheerful place; if he would even allow himself to believe it, he might’ve lost the ability to drag her back from there). The Dark Place is an ocean, a lake, a body of water because Alice drowned. It is also awfully similar to the dark room every photographer uses. It makes art “real” — develops film into physical pictures, and to make those physical pictures one must find a correct way to do so. Just like Alan loops, searching for exact steps to make the story work, what solution to use when and for how long.

The Bright Falls is Night Springs and was created by Alan to spin this tale of “Alice is held hostage by supernatural darkness” in a spooky town with questionable history and a haunted lake instead of her drowning. Was there a town before Alan started to search for the way to save his wife? Who knows! But if there was, it was surely quite different. This is the tabletop game “Night Springs”:

This is the overview of Bright Falls. Find 5 differences.

Yes, Sarah does say that there is a joke that Night Springs was inspired by Bright Falls, but not to this extent, otherwise she would surely point it out (they even stole our map!). For Alan, though, it’s only natural to use Night Springs to make a town where all those supernatural things can take place; he needed a playground, and when he needs one, as AWAN and NS DLC show, he turns to Night Springs.

And lastly, I wrote that much about the relationship between the Dark Place and time not only to hint that the story could be written starting from any date (who else won’t be surprised if in the future games we will see Alan writing the very creation of Cauldron Lake?), but also to highlight one important thing. The only character, who can manipulate time that drastically is Alan. He’s the one to create loops, he’s the one to make Mr. Scratch “send him back in time” instead of killing him, he’s the one to stall the world for Return to play out again and again, and he’s the one who dies only to be back at the safe spot in the story to adjust things. Not only his cutscenes with touching the forehead point on him dying and looping back, even the casual death during the playthrough shows him dead on the floor, not the message that this is not how the story goes. Story for Alan allows his death, and every time a player is killed, we have yet another dead Alan (F for all the Alans we lost along the way).

With all this said, we have an immortal being, that cannot be killed, can split himself into multiple other beings, can change reality in a way that anything, no matter how far into the past (or the future) it happened, will become the new truth, who shaped the primordial ocean after his wife’s tragic passing, turning it or a part of it into the Dark Place, kept dreaming the surroundings to fit his needs, and is considered the Master of Many Worlds. I think Ahti’s Sankarin Tango sums it up nicely, so I will leave you with it.

Once, he mistook an ocean for a lake, he told us in a poem In the depths of that mystery he spent his whole life Under a dark ocean, in the shadows he wanders Searching for a way back into the light to his loved one Alone, the hero continues his journey into the night That burden on his shoulders forever like a promise In this game this fool is struck down again and again Only a moment's rest in death before he's called back again Time breaks into eternity, a gunshot echoes There’s never a happy end for him This story has been told many times before The hero has a thousand faces and a hopeless path Alone, the hero continues his journey into the night That burden on his shoulders forever like a promise In this game this fool is struck down again and again Only a moment's rest in death before he's called back again

[tigerkirby215]

5e Olaf, the Beserker build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Phroilan Gardner. Made for Riot Games.)

Olaf sounds like ProZD’s Archibald voice. Especially Olaf’s voice lines for using his Q it sounds exactly like ProZD’s “Huah! I think that enemy got the point!” Like I’m not crazy right? Please tell me I’m not the only one who hears this.

Anyways Olaf has been on my To Do List ever since I realized that I haven’t made a single champion whose name starts with the letter O. My desire to make Olaf was only further accentuated by the Sentinels of Light event, even if his inclusion in that event could best be summed up with...

But I won’t ignore Olaf just because the Sentinels of Light event was a flop. He’s still a compelling character that I have actually gotten some requests to make. After all: the dual-axe wielding Barbarian is an iconic image!

I mean, Olaf is probably just going to be 20 levels in Beserker Barbarian so I don’t know why you need me to make a build for that.

GOALS

C'mon, I won't hurt you - We’ll need ways to heal when we harm in the middle of combat.

Death by steel! - Swing axe, throw axe; unga bunga me play Olaf.

The might of Lokfar approaches - I didn’t manage to do so with Mundo but Olaf is going to need to have CC immunity.

RACE

Olaf is a human; feel free to pick a different race like Goliath or even Custom Lineage to justify him being Iceborn but Variant Human is still the best option. Increase your Strength by 1 as well as your Constitution, grab any skill proficiency of your choice as it honestly doesn’t matter much for Olaf (maybe you should’ve been Custom Lineage for Darkvision after all?), and the Primordial language because I’m sure you picked up on the language of the wild.

For your feat you have a choice: Dual Wielder will let you wield two d8 Battleaxes (instead of d6 Handaxes) and also increase your AC by 1 while dual-wielding, but the Fighting Initiate feat will let you grab Two-Weapon Fighting which will let you add your Strength modifier to your second axe’s swing. I persually opted for Dual Wielder as it gives you more benefits overall, and we’ll be getting ways to throw axes without having to hold onto them first.

ABILITY SCORES

15; STRENGTH - I mean, you’re a shirtless Barbarian running around with two axes. You thought this would be a DEX build?

14; CONSTITUTION - The reason you can’t die is because you’re so hardy. Sucks!

13; CHARISMA - Despite Riot’s great attempts at writing you as poorly as possible you do still have some sort of Charisma. Remember that Charisma is force of personality, not necessarily good looks or personal hygiene. Charisma is needed for Intimidation as well as multiclassing.

12; DEXTERITY - You need to be quick on your feet to run at your enemies with reckless abandon.

10; WISDOM - If you were wise you wouldn’t be trying to kill yourself.

8; INTELLIGENCE - You stopped caring about education the moment you were born. Battle is the only thing in your blood!

This build is also quite viable with Point Buy, going for a stat array like 15 / 12 / 14 / 8 / 8 / 14 if you want lower mental stats but higher combat stats.

BACKGROUND

The Uthgardt Tribe Member background from the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide is basically the Outlander background but you actually belonged to Freljordian society once. Regardless you do get proficiency in Athletics as well as Survival (”Survival” as in finding food to eat, not as in keeping safe on the battlefield!), a musical instrument or artisan’s tool of your choice (choose whatever you fancy and make your own Olaf, as long as it’s something a warrior would do! I personally opted for Smith’s Tools to sharpen your axes), and a language of your choice (pick whatever language they spoke back in the villages.)

Your background Uthgardt Heritage is the Outlander’s Wanderer feature with extra steps: along with being able to find food and water you are also treated well by nomads and wanderers who have heard of your glorious battles!

(Artwork by Marie Magny and West Studios. Made for Riot Games.)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - BARBARIAN 1

Starting off as a Barbarian because what else would we be? You get proficiency in two skills from the Barbarian list: Intimidation is an obvious must and Perception will help you find good fights to take!

As a Barbarian you get Unarmored Defense equal to your Dexterity plus your Constitution, which is currently a 13... Well Medium Armor is an option if you want to finally put on a shirt. And of course as a Barbarian you can Rage to deal more damage and resist incoming damage! You can’t cast spells while Raging, but that won’t matter, right? It’s not like I’m about to give you caster levels.

LEVEL 2 - FIGHTER 1

Quickly hopping over to Fighter to further your martial skills. You can grab a Fighting Style like Thrown Weapon Fighting to draw weapons in the same action you make to throw them, and also do +2 damage with thrown weapon attacks. See? Told you we’d be able to throw axes easily!

You also get Second Wind for some not-quite-Lifesteal to keep you in the fight to claim even more glory! Certainly not to stay alive.

LEVEL 3 - FIGHTER 2

Well another Fighter level for Action Surge is certainly worth it, as you can push yourself to destroy your foes!

LEVEL 4 - FIGHTER 3

But we need one more Fighter level to be able to get our axes back after we throw them. Eldritch Knights get Weapon Bond, allowing them to always keep two weapons on hand and never lose them. While bonded with a weapon you can’t be disarmed of them, and you can use a Bonus Action to recall a weapon if it’s not in your hands. My suggestion would be to bond to a Battleaxe and a Handaxe, so you can’t be disarmed of at least one of your main weapons and can also call your thrown axe back to throw it again!

You also get Spellcasting as an Eldritch Knight: You learn two cantrips from the Wizard list, and three spells as well. You may be thinking “wait; didn’t you dump Intelligence?” That is correct, but you don’t need Intelligence to cast Light to see with your dumb human eyes (I mean technically you need Intelligence if you want to cast Light on someone else but it’s probably easier just to light up your axe and throw it at them) or Prestidigitation, which is a better spell for creating bonfires than the actual Create Bonfire spell.

Your leveled spells have to be from either the Evocation or Abjuration schools, but thankfully Absorb Elements and Shield are both from the Abjuration school and also don’t need Intelligence. Protect yourself from damage to have a truly glorious death! Because it’s not like blocking attacks will keep you alive.

You can also learn one spell from any school and uhhhh... Pick your poison between Jump and Longstrider, to make it easier to chase your foes. Are there probably better spells? Yeah, but do they fit Olaf?

(Artwork by Xiao Guang Sun and West Studios. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 5 - PALADIN 1

Jumping over to Paladin for a few abilities, such as Divine Sense to find some things that will put up a good fight like Fiends, Undead, or... Celestials? I’m sure they hit hard! You can also find a good desecrated (or consecrated) battleground with this ability, as I’m sure there will be good enemies there! You only know of an enemy’s type however, not their name. And if they’re hiding from you this ability won’t make it any easier to find them.

You also get Lay on Hands, which is like lifesteal you can give to allies! You have a pool of hit points equal to your Paladin level times 5, and you can use it to either heal (at a rate of 1 point per hitpoint) or neutralize a poison or disease affecting a target. (5 Lay on Hands health to neutralize one poison or disease.) Dying to natural causes isn’t a glorious death, brother!

LEVEL 6 - PALADIN 2

We’ll also need second level in Paladin to get a Fighting Style, but since Wizards of the Coast hates fun you can’t can’t take Two-Weapon Fighting, and since we’re running around in our birthday suit Defense also isn’t an option. The best official Fighting Style you can take is Blind Fighting (Blessed Warrior is okay too if you want Guidance I guess) but talk to your DM about potentially letting you take Two-Weapon Fighting? It’s not like it’s OP or anything (in all honesty it’s kinda shit.)

Paladins also get... more Spellcasting?! Disgusting! Well this spellcasting is based on your Charisma modifier instead of your Intelligence, which might be why we have it at a 14. But even so you can’t prepare that many spells: Divine Favor will let you empower all your attacks with more damage for some Vicious Strikes, Cure Wounds will again be acting as life-not-quite-steal, and Shield of Faith will let you or an ally absorb more blows, not that you want to live or anything. Also remember to check the Player’s Handbook to see how many spell slots you’d have after mixing two casters together.

But I still think the best course of action for your spell slots is to use them for Divine Smite! Throw caution and magic to the wind to make a Reckless Swing that does extra Radiant damage (depending on the level of the spell slot used.) The Smite deals 2d8 of damage for a first level slot, and an additional d8 of damage for every slot above first. (The simple way to remember this is that you roll a number of d8s equal to the spell slot used plus one.) If the enemy is a Fiend or Undead the damage increases by a d8! The maximum level spell slot you can use for this is a 4th level slot (for 5d8 damage, or 6d8 against a Fiend or Undead), but I doubt we’ll get spell slots that big.

LEVEL 7 - PALADIN 3

We may as well take a third level in Paladin for a Sacred Oath, and you swore an Oath of Glory in battle! Along with Guiding Bolt and Heroism being added to your spell list (as if you can cast spells lmao) you get two Channel Divinity options: Peerless Athlete turns you into... well, a Peerless Athlete with advantage on Athletics and Acrobatics checks. You can also carry, push, drag, and lift twice as much weight as normal, and to top it off the distance of your long and high jumps increases by 10 feet. This boost lasts for 10 minutes which should be more than enough to give it your all in battle!

Alternatively for some more not-quite-lifesteal Inspiring Smite can be activated after you Smite to give yourself or nearby allies within 30 feet temporary hitpoints. The total number of temporary hit points gained by this ability equals 2d8 + your Paladin level, and you can distribute them amongst yourself and your allies however you wish. Technically the most gameplay-accurate way to split the Temp HP would be to take it all yourself but being helpful has its benefits. A battle is truly glorious if fought alongside an army of companions!

You also get Divine Health, because Glory doesn’t die on sick days!

LEVEL 8 - PALADIN 4

It’s about time to take that 4th Paladin level to finally get an Ability Score Improvement: +2 to Strength for stronger axe swings is an obvious choice!

You can also prepare another spell like Bless, which will make it easier for you and your allies to smite your foes and survive their blows! Wait, what was that about surviving?

(Artwork made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 9 - PALADIN 5

Since it’s so close we may as well take the 5th level of Paladin so you can finally make an Extra Attack. That means you have two attacks normally and a third attack with your Bonus Action thanks to Two-Weapon Fighting!

You can also prepare second level Paladin spells now, and the Oath of Glory gives you Enhance Ability and Magic Weapon as spells you can cast. Believe it or not these are actually useful, even with your low spellcasting modifier!

LEVEL 10 - PALADIN 6

The 6th level of Paladin is honestly too good to pass up: even though Aura of Protection is only adding +2 to all your saving throws (since your Charisma is kinda uhhh... not good?) that’s still +2 to all your saves, as well as the saves of your allies within 10 feet. That’s like, two whole Rings of Protection!

Speaking of rings: Warding Bond was added to the Paladin spell list thanks to Tasha’s and it’ll let you take damage for your allies to die in their place! As long as you don’t mind wearing some platnium rings in your beard, at least.

LEVEL 11 - PALADIN 7

What we’re really here for is the 7th level of Glory Paladin. Aura of Alacrity will increase the speed of you and your allies within 5 feet (not 10, because Wizards of the Coast are weird) by 10 feet, so you can charge at your foes with the might of Ragnarok!

LEVEL 12 - PALADIN 8

But we may as well take the 8th level of Paladin for another Ability Score Improvement: cap off your Strength for the deadliest strikes possible.

You can also prepare another spell but it would be wise to wait for...

(Artwork by JoJo So. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 13 - PALADIN 9

9th level Paladins can prepare third level spells like Crusader’s Mantle to give all your nearby allies the Divine Favor buff to rush into battle with you! But the main reason we’re dipping this deep into Paladin is for the two spells from the Oath of Glory: Protection from Energy perhaps isn’t all that fitting, but Haste is insanely useful and powerful. More attacks, more speed, more... armor? Well, it’s no matter. More glorious battle!

LEVEL 14 - PALADIN 10

10th level Paladins won’t be swayed by magic swaying their hearts! Aura of Courage will let you (and your allies within 10 feet) laugh in the face of death as you gain immunity to the Frightened condition!

You can also prepare another spell like Aura of Vitality: you can use it to heal yourself but healing your allies will lead to a far more glorious story to tell of your death.

LEVEL 15 - PALADIN 11

I promise that we’ll go back to Barbarian levels soon but 11th level Paladins get a huge boost to their damage output thanks to Improved Divine Smite. This ability affects all your attacks (not just your Smites despite the name) to give them an extra d8 of Radiant damage. This has obvious synergy with your choice to swing two axes since your Two-Weapon Fighting attack will also get that extra d8 of damage!

LEVEL 16 - PALADIN 12

Okay but let’s quickly grab the 12th level of Paladin first. You can either increase your Constitution for more health and AC, or your Charisma for better saving throws and spellcasting. I personally opted for Charisma but if you value health and AC then Constitution is good too!

Oh and yeah you can prepare more spells, but there aren’t really that many other third level spells I want.

(Artwork by Alvin Lee. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 17 - PALADIN 13

That’s because 13th level Paladins finally get 4th spells which most importantly means Freedom of Movement! There you go you finally have Ragnarok’s CC immunity! You also get Compulsion which sure would be a good spell if you had any Charisma to actually cast it.

But you can also prepare more spells like Aura of Purity so you and your allies can shrug off whatever your foes might throw at you to stop you from reaching them, or Death Ward which you ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT USE ON YOURSELF.

LEVEL 18 - PALADIN 14

Okay but the 14th level of Paladin gives you Cleansing Touch, letting you cleanse spells without spell slots to cast Freedom of Movement. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier and regain all expended uses at the end of a Long Rest.

You could also perhaps prepare another spell like... Aid? I don’t know really by this point the magic is secondary. We’ll be going back to Barbarian soon anyways.

LEVEL 19 - PALADIN 15

But 15th level Glory Paladins get Glorious Defense, and we can’t pass that up! When you or another creature you can see (technically an enemy if you so desire!) within 10 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to grant a bonus to the target’s AC against that attack equal to your Charisma modifier. If the attack misses you can make one weapon attack against the attacker as part of this reaction, provided the attacker is within your weapon’s range. You can do this a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, and regain all uses at the end of a Long Rest.

LEVEL 20 - PALADIN 16

But since it’s so close one final level in Paladin would be good for one final ASI: again more Constitution means more health and AC, but more Charisma will boost all your Paladin abilities!

Speaking of Paladin abilities you can prepare one more spell before we start taking more Barbarian levels... honestly you can pick your poison as it won’t matter much when your Raging!

...Wait.

WHY NO BARBARIAN LEVELS?

There’s a lot of things that I can’t do as a Barbarian. The most notable option that would be restricted if I went pure Barbarian would be Freedom of Movement, and while crowd control is somewhat rare in D&D being able to ignore it is far more important to Olaf as a character.

There’s also no Barbarian that has lifesteal besides Path of the Beast, and the only Barbarian that can throw its axe easily is Path of Wild Magic. Obviously neither of these fit Olaf.

Ultimately Paladin gave us more of Olaf’s abilities. The only ability that Barbarians have which fit Olaf other than Unarmored Defense and I guess Unarmored Movement would be Feral Instinct. But even the Barbarian subclasses don’t fit Olaf with the only ones which make any sense being maybe Totem Warrior? (Despite Olaf’s title Berserker wouldn’t fit him well, mostly because Berserker is a bad subclass.) But we miss out on so many of Olaf’s actual abilities by making him a Barbarian.

tl;dr Barbarians can’t do magic and Olaf has a ton of abilities that can only be recreated in D&D with magic

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Urge to kill rising... - Two-Weapon Fighting really doesn’t get the respect it deserves by the D&D community. You wouldn’t be able to get three attacks as a level 11 Paladin in any other way, meaning that you can truly capitalize on Improved Divine Smite. Not to mention the general increased DPS of 3 attacks and 3 chances to Smite!

Faster to battle! - It was not my intention but Glory Paladins are surprisingly good team players with a variety of spells and abilities that can keep your team alive and increase their strength in battle.

Obliteration! - You’re fairly hard to kill... oops. But between decently high health, spells to defend yourself, and damn high saving throws no matter how you increase your Charisma you’ll be quite a challenge to eventually take down! Sure your AC might suck... we should probably talk about that.

CONS

The worth of a man can be measured by the length of his beard, and the girth of his belt buckle - Hey remember that one Barbarian level I took pretty much entirely so you could have Unarmored Defense? Yeah honestly it’s gimping you hard, to the point that even Mage Armor would give you more AC. Honestly playing this build as Fighter 4 / Paladin 16 would be far better as you’d get one more ASI at the cost of actually having to wear armor. Hell going full Paladin 20 would give you the Living Legend capstone which is crazy strong, and while the loss of Action Surge would hurt you can grab the Thrown Weapon Fighting Style with a feat. (Or just take Two-Weapon Fighting style with your Variant Human Feat and run around with Hand Axes.)

If you’re really dead-set on going unarmored beg your DM for a Barrier Tattoo: either a Rare one (you’ll still need 14 DEX for something something legally-not-Medium Armor) or a Very Rare one (so you don’t even have to worry about Dexterity.) You can even go the Tahm Kench route and grab Eldritch Adept for Disguise Self to look unarmored if it’s really that important to you.

Well that was a pretty long con to say “Barbarian Olaf bad.” What else is there?

Chop chop! - Who would’ve guessed that dumping both mental stats would make you a dummy? While Aura of Protection saves you to some extent the party won’t be turning to you for any History checks.

Finally, some fun! - You have a rather silly amount of spells relative to your spell slots, and a good number of them are Concentration as well. Throwing all your slots to the wind to Divine Smite with reckless abandon sounds fun but managing both your Concentration and your spell slots will take some effort.

But your choice to go in without armor is just a self-handicap after all: you really want to die, and prove yourself in death! Fight the toughest fights and take down the strongest foes until you finally prove your prophecy wrong and fall before the blade of the mightiest foe! But perhaps you should instead sit down and have a muffin, and think about why you truly want to die die die.

(Artwork made for Riot Games.)

[realityhelixcreates]

Lasabrjotr Chapter 79: The Rites of Blood and Knowledge

Chapters: 79/?

Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: pg 13(Blood)

Relationships: Loki x Reader

Characters: Loki (Marvel),Thor(Marvel) Wanda Maximoff, vision, Bruce Banner

Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending (Canon-Divergent), Party Time, In Reference To Blood Mixing Mentioned In The Eddas

Summary:  The great ceremonies begin.

The dreams were powerful that night, whisking you off to far away places, off to the increasingly familiar form of the gargantuan space artist. There was a strange nostalgia out here that you were slowly coming to recognize as being not your own. How could it be? You had never physically been here, only visited in dreams.

With green and blue sparkling at your right and left, you drifted along in their orbit, yet another asteroid in a primordial star system.

First Wielder.

The concept filtered through your mind, trailing a warm and wistful longing behind it.

Peace. Eternity. Creation.

Before battle. Before separation. Before imprisonment.

Before all.

The star system was strange: every time you came here, the sun was a little different. A variable star, its brightness oscillating, it was still young and new.

There was only one planet in this system, located fairly close to the star. The presence of the colossal giant perturbed the asteroids and gas around the star, but their great mass prevented them from coalescing.

Comets formed in great numbers from the gas and ice beyond them, whizzing past them, inspiring new drawings. Asteroids clumped up against them; a brush of their great hand sent them flying, to collide into one another, to spin away from their unstable orbit, and join the comets on their cross-system journey, to crash into the singular planet.

The colossus watched with the patience of true immortality, as the planet burned and erupted, filled up with water, and clouds, and sky.

Thoughtfully, they regarded an asteroid they held in one hand, then, with their color-stained fingers, they began to draw.

The wistfulness and regret reached their peak, and you woke up in the empty bathtub, with a thought ringing in your head.

The Wielders always came to a bad end.

                                                                            ******

Loki was somewhat disgruntled to discover that you'd been having these dreams without him. He didn't scold, but his concern was clear. You described them in as much detail as you could, but, to your dismay, he didn't have any explanation for what you'd been seeing while you slept.

It would just have to remain a mystery. The upcoming day was going to be far too busy to dwell on it.

Both you and Loki had dressed in your absolute finest, your armor polished bright, your skirt covered in embroidery, your chest and neck festooned in beads of carved gold and pearl. You still felt a little bit like you were so buried in finery that you became invisible, but you tried to carry it with pride. All of this had been put together especially for you, and that hard work deserved to be shown off.

Loki was so magnificent in his fur-trimmed cloak, and elaborate helmet, you had to firmly tell yourself not to spend the whole day just staring at him all moon-eyed.

Maybe just a few hours.

Today, the Second Feast, was really the main event, as far as this Buridag was concerned. At noon, you would participate in the Blood Taking ceremony, wherin you would 'mingle blood' with the royal brothers, in order to be formally adopted into Asgardian high society. This would cement your status as high enough to advise Loki as one of the most important members of his personal entourage. And before the evening feast, you would perform the ritual that would confirm you as an official Seidkona.

But before that, you would have the time to run around and enjoy the festival.

It was set up like a combination job fair and reenactment fest. Stalls lined the streets and filled courtyards, peopled by the crafters of Asgard. Smiths, armorers, and carpenters, goldsmiths, lapidaries, scrimshanders, and glassblowers. Weavers, spinners, leatherworkers, and dyemakers, artists, musicians, chefs, academics, mages, stonemasons, construction workers, scribes, dancers, and cheesemongers. All the sights, and sounds, and scents, and flavors that made up Asgard were being demonstrated and celebrated.

Your Father and Tara joined you in the streets, and Loki reluctantly released you into their care, having some preparation left to do.

Tara, flouncing around in an apron dress and domed brooches very much like your usual style, gushed over how beautiful you looked, and your father, rather sheepishly dressed in an Asgardian greatcoat and cowl, agreed openly.

“You look like a princess.” he said. “A real one. You...You walk different now. Talk different. You look so strong.”

“Is it me, or are all these people following us?” Tara asked, not very quietly. A few chagrined people in the crowd that flowed in your wake down the street peeled away, and wandered in different directions. The rest either had less shame, or had orders to keep watch over you.

You spared the group a glance. There appeared to be a solid mix of Asgardians and humans, several of which had their phones out. You surmised there would be a new wave of photos of you on the internet over the next few days.

“Keep your cowl up dad.” You advised.

“Want me to run them off?” he offered.

“Nah. I don't really mind if they take pictures of me. Can't really hurt anything.”

“Wasn't so great last time.” Tara pointed out. “I spent a lot of time stanning for you.”

“Well, last time was sensationalized bullcrap. This time is a nice festival. I mean, check out that guy!”

That Guy was a glassblower in his stall, spinning a huge, bubble thin amphora of rose pink glass. You had seen its like before, but never seen one made.

“Oh, they age crystal mead in those! The pink lets in the right wavelengths of light that give it it's shimmering quality.”

“What's crystal mead?” your father asked.

“Don't try more than a few sips, if anyone offers.” you warned. “Asgardians have iron guts. Their booze is way too strong.”

“Yeah, they warned us about that on the plane.” Tara said. “And yesterday, it looked like they had everything divided up by species, so no one got the wrong thing.”

You took them around to various demonstrations: spinners spinning yarn, brewers preparing several of Asgards many alcoholic beverages, apothecaries showing how basic medicines were made, a cobbler putting together a nice pair of boots.

“So, Asgard's really advanced, right?” Tara asked. “Why is everything like Ye Olden Times?”

“Asgard's never had that big a population, even at it height. There just isn't that much demand for mass production. Most things are bespoke, or self-made. Quality depends entirely on the maker, so that, of course, becomes a competition. And that, in turn, becomes a matter of cultural pride. Also, they have thousands of years to get good at what they do, so Asgardian made goods are super high quality, and they judge personal worth by that. I don't think they'll ever automate; it would go against a lot of what they stand for.”

You snagged the three of you a traditional Asgardian snack; fat sausages, wrapped in savory pastry. You thought it might be good to have something else in your stomach before the first ceremony.

Tara called them Asgardian corn dogs, which you couldn't wait to share with Loki, if only to watch his nose wrinkle with disdain over the undignified term.

“So when do we have to let you go?” Tara asked.

You checked your phone for the time, stuffing the last of your sausage into your mouth.

“Eh, I've got a few minutes left. Better start heading over though.”

Your winding path through the courtyards took you past minstrels, impromptu dances, and games, to a large, tall dais that had been put together as a temporary mirror to the throne room. It towered over the City Hall courtyard like a ziggurat. You'd be up there soon enough, but currently...

“Who's that?” your father asked, pointing at a man standing at the top. “Doesn't look like Thor.”

You squinted up at the figure, his bright armor shining in the rarefied sunlight.

“Ah, That's Heimdall. He's the Guardian of Asgard, and god of...uh, sight? I think? Vigilance? It's not quite that neat and simple, you know? The whole 'God Of' thing is a bit more complicated than that.”

“So that's a god?” your father asked. “How can you tell? Are they all gods? What does that even mean?”

“All good questions. Mostly because they are very hard to answer.”

Your father and Tara jerked at the sudden new voice, and, not for the first time, you found yourself amazed at how easily a man of the sheer size and importance as the king of Asgard could sneak up on people.

“Your Majesty.” you said calmly, inclining your head. Your father and Tara dipped into awkward bows, a little awed by the mythical figure before them. Thor didn't necessarily demand obeisance, but he didn't exactly discourage it either; he let people act as they felt appropriate.

“Not every Asgardian is a god.” Thor explained. “Those that are go by the term 'Aesir', a common name through most of the realms for beings of that type. You are born Aesir; you cannot become one by outside influences. However, Aesir nature doesn't always become apparent at birth, it often doesn't manifest until adolescence. As for what it means to be Aesir...that doesn't have so straightforward an answer. I leave it to the philosophers, who, incidentally, are in booth seventy-eight.

Anyway, I have come to collect your daughter for the ceremony. There isn't much time left, so we'd all better get in place. If you go through those two poles there right now, you can get very good seats.”

“This could get a bit weird.” You warned. “It's a ceremony more ancient than any recorded human practices, so it's probably going to seem archaic.”

“Oh, it's not so bad.” Thor said. “It's been updated and refined over all those years. For instance, everyone remains clothed now, and there are at least seventy percent fewer entrails used.”

Your father coughed, and you rolled your eyes. Thor's sense of humor was difficult for you to understand, considering how serious he was about everything. The thing about Thor's jokes was that he might have been joking about something that had really happened, or he might have been joking about something he'd completely made up, but he would never specify which.

“On that note, I've got to go.” you said. “Entrails to sort, and all that.”

Your father coughed again, Tara patting him compassionately on the back.

“Good luck!” she called to your receding back.

                                                                                ******

“Now, you've been fully briefed on what will happen during this ceremony, correct?” Thor asked, as the two of you loitered near the back stairs of the temporary dais. People were filtering in to seats and standing room around the courtyard, waiting for things to start.

“I think so.” you said. “If I've got this right, there's going to be a special dance-”

“The Alignment of the Celestial and Worldly bodies, yes.” Thor said. “It symbolizes everything that must come together to bring the 'adoptee' to the greater 'family'. In this case, it will tell the story of how you came here to join our family.”

A soft warmth crept up your neck, and heated your ears beneath your helmet. You knew it was all socio-symbolism, but the notion of 'joining the family' hit differently now that you were on intimate terms with Loki.

“And then all the braziers will have some kind of incense thrown in, and in the smoke, we'll all go up the stairs like we're magically appearing. Honestly, it sounds like it'll look really cool.”

“All ceremonies contain a bit of theatrics.” Thor agreed. “Perhaps that is the most important part. Or that's the part that makes it important. I wish we still had some of the traditional ceremonial incense, but we just don't have access to the materials anymore. You would have liked it; it was much more floral than most of what you have here. We did manage to get some lavender though. That should be nice.”

“Maybe one day, when the Bifrost is more stable.” You said. It did sound very nice. “Loki said that you, and he, and Heimdall will sing a blessing song?”

“Yes, a divine blessing from a trio of Aesir. It's got to be three. And then...”

“Yeah. And then.” Loki had told you about the bloodletting. He had been very frank about it. “I know. I'm nervous, but not afraid.”

Thor nodded. “Sometimes there are unforeseen effects, but never anything bad. You'll be perfectly safe.”

“I know. The nervousness just comes from knowing it'll hurt. Even if just for a short time.”

You buckled under Thor's hand when it came down on your shoulder, enveloping the whole thing.

“Loki would rather slice out his own guts than draw your blood, trust me. He's been trying to figure out how to get around it for weeks. Unfortunately, the blood is the most important part of the magic. It carries all of the power. It's very old magic: according to him, this is practically the only part of the ritual that has remained unchanged from the beginning.”

“Did there really used to be entrails and naked people, or was that a joke?”

“Ehhh, well, yes and no. This ceremony originated with the Vanir, and they are not opposed to nakedness under certain circumstances. In this case, everyone who attended was expected to leave the clothes they came in at the door, and wear a special loincloth instead. This was actually to prevent violence, by barring hidden weaponry from being brought to ceremony grounds. So rather than pure nudity, everyone was dressed as scantily as was possible.

As for entrails...unfortunately yes, that was also a part of it. A seer would perform a divination using the entrails of a slaughtered animal. That practice was going out of fashion, even before the war, and I don't think anyone today even remembers how it was done.”

You shuddered. Yes, it was a different culture, and a long time ago, but it still grossed you out.

“I'll have to remember to thank Loki for trying to get me out of it, even if he wasn't successful.” You said. He really did put in a lot of effort behind the scenes. If only he were more open about some of that effort, so you could appreciate it more.

“He was adamant about the bull.” Thor said. “Demanded a private ritual the night before. Put your helmet up on the pillar, then sacrificed and butchered the beast himself. Insisted on it. Did our ancestors proud, but you know he knows his way around a knife.”

“I wish he'd told me. I was really stressed about that whole thing. I'm glad, in the end, that he was thinking of me, but I really wish I'd known. I wouldn't have lost so much sleep!”

“It was a little last minute.” Thor admitted. “I approved it the instant he explained, but we had to do it pretty much immediately afterwards. He really should have told you, but I fear my brother is usually more invested in the making of plans, rather than what to do once they come to fruition. I feel you will be a positive influence on him, though.”

Even though he was wearing his eyepatch, rather than the mismatched prosthetic, his one blue eye was open and sincere.

“I think so too.” you said. You already were influencing each other. It was impossible to live so close, to sleep in the same bed, without doing so. But Loki did have a bad habit of assuming things, a by-product of his upbringing as a leader, you supposed. You would simply have to speak up more.

Perhaps you had gotten too comfortable. But perhaps you wanted to be too comfortable. It might be a holdover from your year of struggle, but having someone who wanted to do so much for you was very tempting. You knew it would be better to strive for a balance, but you also knew that, unless Loki somehow diminished himself severely, the two of you would never truly be equals.

But you admired that greatness, and somehow, those all too common flaws in him made him easier for you to love. They made him so real.

An ambling drum beat started up, accompanied by the brassy ting of zills, and a flute. Loki joined you and Thor in peeking out around the dais, just as a group of dancers spread out around the courtyard.

You'd been told that the dancers represented personages from history and legend. You were pretty sure that the three women who orbited the dance stage equidistant from one another must be the Norns, and you assumed the cluster of people standing beneath a glittering tree branch and clanging their zills were probably meant to be the ancestors of the royal family.

The dance told a story of a woman dressed like you, and a man dressed like Loki, wearing silver bells at their wrists and ankles that jingled with every step. They made everything look so much more graceful and sensual than it really had been: Holding hands like the rune branding had been on purpose, dancing circles with each other, like everything had been friendly and not at all awkward from the very beginning. How elegantly 'you' swooned into 'his' arms, while the assassin was caught. How triumphantly 'you' defended 'him' against the Huldra. And how beautifully 'he' clasped 'you' in a romantic, yet properly chaste embrace.

There was none of the blood, none of the fear, or anger, or petulance, or confusion. No loss, or loneliness, or uncertainty.

But that was how it worked, wasn't it? None of those things could be shown to the general public. This was ceremony. This was spectacle! This was what would be remembered.

The pair danced away, out of sight, the ancestors retreated, and the Norns raised their arms in unison. All around the courtyard, attendants dumped incense into the torches and braziers, sending thick smoke and mysterious perfume wafting over the entire area.

“Show's on, darling.” Loki said, grasping your shoulders, and leading you up the stairs. A new wave of anxiety washed over you as you rose above the sweet smelling clouds like a legend. Heimdall stepped aside to let you pass, Loki and Thor leading you right up to the edge of the elevated platform, where waited a podium, upon which rested a brass bowl. An unfamiliar rune was stamped on its bottom. So that was where the magic would happen.

Thor held his hand out over an unlit brazier just in front of the podium and concentrated. Scarcely a moment later sparks danced between his fingers and jumped to ignite the fuel. The light illuminated the clouds of incense, obscuring the audience. Cut off thus from every other person out there, you didn't flinch as the trio of gods each placed a hand on you, and began to sing.

You couldn't help but wonder if they had done this before. It was a complex song, with rising and falling harmonies, parts layered over one another, something that couldn't have been easy to learn. As their voices dipped and flowed, you felt the power rising, just like out in the camp, months ago. Why could you sense divine power? Was it because of your magic? Was there anyone out in the crowd that could feel it too?

Thor's good eye had begun to sparkle with crackling white energy, the power of the blessing he was singing into you. You assumed Heimdall, behind you, was lighting up orange, and when you turned your head to glance at Loki, you were suffused with the gentle glow of the blue light from your dreams.

All of the anxiety drained out of you at the touch of that light, your arms dropping to your sides as relaxation took over.

Everything was all right. Loki was right beside you. Thor and Heimdall were with you, their voices reverberating through you, their blessing upon you. The rare winter sun filtered down over you like a blanket, as the last notes of the Aesir's song filled your head.

Loki gently took your hand, gazing earnestly into your face as the calming light faded from his eyes.

“Forgive me, my love.” he whispered.

A sudden, painful jab, ripped you out of your cocoon of sunny calm. With a sharp cry, you turned to stare at your fingertip, pierced deeply by the tip of one of Loki's knives.

Loki held your hand over the brass bowl, letting the blood drip, enough to cover the rune at the bottom. Then he tenderly bandaged the tiny wound, lines of regret around his eyes. Thor held his hand out for a slash, and then Loki turned the blade on himself. Blood slowly filled the little bowl, as a light throbbing started in your head. Every drop that rippled its surface was like a giant heartbeat within you.

Once it was full, Thor and Loki began singing again, lifting the small bowl between them. They held it up to the sun, and then poured it onto the burning brazier. The fire sputtered, sizzling, sending a huge cloud of smoke directly into your face. You gagged on the scent of burning blood, practically bathed in it, a layer of death-scent on your skin. The song cut through it, thrumming in your ears, an echoing promise of cherishment and fidelity.

The blood burned down into nothing, the smoke slowly clearing. All of the people in the courtyard came back into view, the upturned faces solemn. The dancers below picked up the chorus.

And you understood them.

Loki took your hand and lifted it up, flourishing to the crowd. They cheered, while you stood there, stunned. You understood what they were saying, their enthusiastic calls, their songs. The blood smell lingered in your nose, the throbbing swiftly receding from your head.

He led you to the stairs down as you wobbled, but you never made it all the way down. Dizziness overcame you, and you collapsed into Loki's arms.

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV: A Synthesis of Aether

#FebHyurary Day 17: Food + Day 18: Music

A/N: So I had too many ideas for yesterday, but knew for today touching on Synnove’s aether synesthesia would work well, and then I said, “DT YOU FOOL YOU CAN COMBINE BOTH DAYS FOR HER AETHER SYNESTHESIA.” And lo: a fic! Mostly dialogue, I haven’t done a dialogue heavy ficlet in a loooong time so I feel a bit rusty, but this was a fun exercise!

RATING: T WORD COUNT: 1455 WARNINGS: None!

---

[Installing SCAEVAN SYSTEMICS operating software.]

[Installation successful, running update cycle.]

[Updates complete. Archive Node Unit 453 now online. Please specify primary user.]

“Synnove Greywolfe.”

[USER: SYNNOVE now registered. How may I assist you today?]

“Please stand by for audio recording.”

[Standing by.]

The node’s lights dimmed from bright grass green to soft seafoam as it partially powered down, its northern and southern hemispheres slowly rotating in opposite directions.

Synnove lowered her hand and glanced over at Rereha. “All right, you can babble now,” the Highlander said.

Rere took her hands off her mouth to tug at her braided pigtails and beamed at her. “Whatcha doing?” she said, in the sing-song tone of someone feeling exceptionally nosy, rocking back on her heels.

Synnove rolled her eyes and set her hands on her hips. “Y’shtola’s working on a compilation of aetheric synesthesic perceptions as a downtime project,” she said. “She asked me if I was willing to contribute, to which I obviously said ‘yes.’ But because I’m not often able to spend much time in Revenant’s Toll that doesn’t devolve into Warrior of Light or Ironworks business—”

“—audio recordings you can send or give her are more convenient.”

“Careful, Rere, or other people will begin realizing you’re smarter than you pretend to be.”

The lalafell gasped. “Madam, you wound me!”

She received a satisfied smirk in reply as Synnove added, “And what better way to create an audio recording than with my new archive node?”

Rere pulled herself up onto Synnove’s desk, sitting on the edge and kicking her feet back and forth as she leaned back to rest on her hands. “Did you liberate it from the Ironworks?”

“I purchased this fair and square, I have a bill of sale from Jessie herself.”

“Nero’s OS?”

“The fact you know that term is vaguely frightening, but the man does have an unparalleled understanding of Allagan technology and if you tell him I said that, I will hang you by your toes from the edge of the Steps of Faith.”

Rere mimed locking her lips.

“Hand me that stack of paper, please.” Synnove pointed to Rere’s right. The lalafell snagged it and dutifully handed it over.

The arcanist shuffled through them, humming tunelessly as she did, before she came across the correct page. “All right,” she said, mostly to herself. “Start with Y’shtola’s list of baseline sensations today and go from there.” Louder now: “Begin recording.”

[Audio recording now live.]

Synnove automatically straightened her spine and rolled down her shoulders in the same way she did before she began a lecture for the fourth-year arcanist students. In a clear, strong voice: “Synnove Greywolfe recording for Y’shtola Rhul on the 18th day of the Second Umbral Moon, 11 Year of the Seventh Astral Era, on the subject of synesthetic perceptions of aether. I personally perceive aether, in addition to visual manifestations, as both taste and sound. Occasionally, one sensation will dominate the other, and certain sounds and tastes aren’t exclusive to one elemental type.

“For this recording, I’ll describe the overall generalities I associate with different elemental aether; variance is high depending on factors such as location or origin, in terms of ambient or crystallized aether, or in the case of spells, if they are being performed correctly or are altered in some capacity.”

“How to spot the catastrophic boom just before the boom becomes catastrophic and it’s too late to do anything about it.”

Synnove sighed. Rere giggled.

“Y’sthola, remind me to recalculate the angle needed to ensure Rere lands in Silvertear if thrown from the highest tower in the Toll.”

“Hey!”

“You’d be fine, Hydaelyn likes you best.”

Rere pouted, lower lip pushed out to the point of exaggeration, which meant she wasn’t actually offended.

“To get back on topic: fire. Fire aether most frequently tastes like hot spices, such as peppers; coffee; red meat, such as buffalo; bitter chocolate; cherries; wine. Sound tends to be uniformly brass instruments such as horns and trumpets; very occasionally it can sound like metal striking metal.

“Earth aether is auditorily simple and gustatorily complex. The sound of earth is always rhythmic and steady, if not outright drumming; the sensation of it echoing follows fairly often, too. Taste runs a huge gamut: savory or sweet seasonings, such as cumin or cinnamon; white meat, such as pork; most vegetables, particularly green or starchy vegetables; certain fruits such as apples and figs; bread; cheeses; stews; whiskeys.”

“I’d call most of those foods ‘homey.’”

Synnove frowned thoughtfully. “That’s a fair assessment,” she said after a moment. “Earth aether tends to ‘taste’ comforting.”

“Does that mean Tyr is the ultimate comfort food?”

“Does that mean you want to go flying out of my office window into the harbor?”

“I’m going to shut up now!”

“See how long that lasts,” Synnove said under her breath while her sister smiled beatifically. “Where was I… Ah, wind.”

The Highlander frowned. “Wind aether is another oddity, taste-wise. Mint tends to present quite frequently, along with sweet chocolate, white grapes, vanilla, white wine, arak, olives, and scallions. Thankfully when it seems to be a combination of flavors, it’s complimentary…” She shook her head. “Sound is similar to flutes, chimes, whistles. Bit stereotypical, honestly.

“Lightning…” Synnove paused, frowning again. “Sound tends to be similar to specific string instruments such as violas and cellos; deeper sounds. Low notes on a piano or harpsichord, sometimes simple humming or vibrations. Taste does not tend to be strong, but most frequently has manifested as berries and/or stonefruits. Alcohols such as gin, palm wine, ouzo, and brandy.”

“That is not the element I’d consider boozy,” Rere said idly. She had lain back on the desk and was staring up at the huge arched ceiling of the tower office, twiddling her thumbs.

Synnove shrugged without further comment, already looking at the next item on the list Krile had transcribed on Y’shtola’s behalf. “Water is what one would think would be boozy but I have legitimately never tasted ‘boozy’ water aether before. Tropical fruits dominate; in terms of savory, as horrifically stereotypical as it is, seafood. But almost never in a way that makes sense, I once found a water cluster in a bluefin tuna’s belly that tasted like Coerthan oyster confit.”

“I remember that, you made the weirdest face.”

“I still can’t find the words to describe just how fucked up that taste versus visual dichotomy was. In any event, water aether also sounds like string instruments, mostly harps, dulcimers, and brighter pianos. Also, a very specific drum… Rere, what’s that staccato-sounding drum the Flames have been using in their parades of late?”

The lalafell picked her head up. “Snare drum?”

“That’s the one. Timpanis on occasion, too. And finally…ice. Sound leans towards woodwind instruments like the clarinet and piccolo, as well as bells. Any bell. Taste…hmm. Slaw, fruits that freezes well, fruit juices, Thavnairian sweet tea—”

“That is not tea, that is an abomination.”

“—some melons, cucumbers, white rum, wintergreen.”

“I still can’t believe you’ve never come across ice aether that tastes like the Bismarck’s root beer float.”

“They introduced it to the menu last year.”

“So?”

Synnove sighed that heavy, gusting sigh everyone who spent longer than thirty minutes with Rereha learned. “Y’shtola, I see a note here about Primordial Light and Dark, but I’ll do that in the next recording along with variations and discrepancies, as first, I need to beat my sister over the head with a grimoire—”

Rereha hopped down from the desk and ran for the office door, shouting BYE Y’SHTOLA I LOVE YOU BEST over her shoulder as she did.

“—and second, I’m hungry and now is a good time to break for lunch. Recording end.”

[End of recording. Is there anything else on which I may provide assistance?]

“No, that will be all for now—ah! Before I forget. Please create new nodal designation of own choice.”

[Clarification requested.]

“Pick a name for yourself.”

[…]

[Accessing imperial Allagan databases for repository of birth certificates. Scanning records.]

[Archive Node Unit 453 rename complete. Archive Node Unit 453 is now Kleio.]

Synnove smiled, pleased. “It’s nice to meet you, Kleio.”

[…Thank you. Database scans are currently inconclusive as relates to instruments in modern usage versus those of Allag. What samples are available to provide edification?]

The Highlander cocked her head, staring at the silver-and-green node for a few long moments, before another smile, this one slow and delighted, crossed her features. “I have a few orchestrion rolls that include solos and chamber music that you could listen to while I have lunch, and I can provide lists of which instruments are used in each piece.”

[That would be satisfactory.]

“Perfect! Let’s get you set up…”

[blackypanther9]

Part 35 - The Guardians...

No one's POV...

"Who are they ?", Frigga asked.

"These are people. The leader is Peter Quill, he calls himself Star - Lord too. He is from Midgard, but got kidnapped as a little kid from Yondu Udonta. He isn't complete human either. He is half human half Celestial. His father, Ego, is his biological father and the Celestial. ...He is a filthy, dirty butthole. No, worse...he is a Monster."

"Can I ask you 3 questions ?", Thor asked.

"Go ahead.", you said.

"Okay... First: Who is this Yondu ? Second: What's a Celestial ? And third: Why is this Ego a Monster ?"

"Not even Laufey knows that. But I will tell you in short. First: Captain Yondu Udonta was a Centaurian , leader of an exiled faction of the Ravagers and adoptive father to Peter Quill. When Quill betrayed the Ravagers and stole a Orb for himself, Udonta led the hunt for his former ally. He even went in contact with Ego, who wanted Yondu to help him.  

Second: The Celestials are an ancient race of entities that possess vast matter and energy manipulation abilities. They were present long before the dawn of the galactic communities and even the Asgardians. They were notorious for their utilization of the Infinity Stones.    

And third: Ego was a Celestial, a primordial and an extremely powerful being. A ruthless, megalomaniacal entity possessing a god complex, Ego only desired to find some meaning and had attempted to do so by conquering the entire universe via an omnicidal extinction-level event known as the Expansion, which would terraform all life-sustaining planets, via the implanting of alien seedlings, to extensions of himself. This process however, required two Celestials, so Ego traveled through the cosmos, impregnated various extraterrestrial species, and thus siring thousands of children, and then hiring the Yondu Ravanger Clan to abduct and transport his offspring. When his children failed to inherit the Celestial gene, Ego would then kill them all painlessly. And that were thousands ! And he killed the women he made pregnant ! He planted some sickness inside them to kill them. It is sick !"

They all stared at you in pure shock.

"Anyway. The next is one of my friends, he is such a cool guy ! Rocket Raccoon. He really is a Raccoon. He was a lab rat. He isn't really a.....well...I don't know how to explain... He is a robot or something... But works like a human being... Then we have someone...I like because he is brave as hell. His name is Drax the Destroyer. He once was in a war, lost everything and got in prison. He is strong and you never feel him in your presence until he makes a noise.", you giggled.

"Then we have Groot. He is a...What was his kind called again...? .....Ah ! A Flora Colossus ! I believe he is the last of his kind... I am not sure anymore, it's been a while I saw him... And lastly...my last best friend... Gamora... I believe you saw her Loki ? Green skin and long red hair."

Loki froze.

"I did. She hates me.", he mumbled the last part.

"You are wrong. Anyway... I know Gamora and I trust her. We met once or twice by accident and we became friends, but she doesn't know that I was there too."

"Which species are this Drax and Gamora ?", Sif asked a little interested.

"Drax is a....I don't know species.... Gamora is a Zehoberei. I can show you pictures of them also. If you want.", you offered.

They all nodded and you opened some other files. The first one was someone with and then without a mask.

"This is Peter Quill.", you said.

Then some being was in another window. You put your finger on it and said...

"This is Groot."

"This is Rocket."

"This is Drax."

"And this is Gamora."

(All Google)

Part 36

Masterlist with all Chapters of this Story click here !  

[godsofhumanity]

What are some of your headcanons/characterizations for the other titans in your CronusXRhea story?

the stuff under the cut, i have to stress, is all from my comic, and i know a lot of it isn’t supported by actual myth, but that’s where the creative license comes in i guess!

EDIT: i had some new thoughts about these titans and i decided to give them a little more shape,, but i didn’t want to delete my original thoughts, so my old ideas are striked-through (struck-through?) and my new ideas are just normal.

the order of the characters** here is major characters to minor:

CRONUS | titan of time. has the ability to freeze time, and make it reverse, but not to go forward because technically speaking, there is no one “future”- different decisions result in different scenarios happening, so Cronus can’t really control that. personality wise- he’s smart, loyal, determined, but he’s also willing to bend the rules, believes in the philosophy “no such thing as cheating”, paranoid, and a little insane.

RHEA | mother of the Olympians. doesn’t have any particular powers. she has the ability to heal minor wounds, and she's good at fighting- with a weapon and without. she’s ambitious, witty, kind, and passionate. she doesn’t hesitate to step into the role of a leader, and is prepared to take great risks if she believes the cause is just. Rhea's also a bit of trickster- she has an awful sense of humour which is why she gets along with Cronus and Iapetus so well. she enjoys pranks.

OURANOS | father of the titans, god of the Heavens. he’s created by Gaia after she desires someone to be her equal and unconsciously brings Ouranos to life. as a consequence of being Gaia’s “equal”, although he’s not a primordial himself, he has power on par with them. personality wise- he’s arrogant, cocky, condescending, possessive, powerful, cruel and scary. he has pretty much no redeemable qualities. he hates his children and gets rid of the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers because he believes that they could potentially pose a threat to his relationship with Gaia; he is extremely jealous of Gaia’s love for her children, and his need for her to only show him attention is his primary motive.

GAIA | mother of the titans and other “monsters”. Gaia has a somewhat ambiguous personality. she values her children above all, and doesn’t hesitate to kill Ouranos after he throws her beloved children, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers into Tartarus where she cannot reach them. she is neither good nor evil, she is simply motivated by her maternal nature. she has no favourites amongst the titans, but is pleased when Cronus takes on the challenge of deposing Ouranos. however, she later is more than willing to help Rhea then depose of Cronus because she doesn’t care for arrogance, and, once again, hates Cronus for when he repeats Ouranos’ mistake and imprisons the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers.

COEUS | titan of magic and witchcraft (in my AU that is!!). his wife is Phoebe, and for the events of the story, they have only one child born- Asteria. Rhea seeks Coeus’ help when she requires a potion to make Cronus’ vomit back out her children, and to also strip him of his powers. Cronus also seeks Coeus’ help in creating a potion to amplify his powers, and though Coeus is reluctant to help, he is forced to after Cronus threatens to have an “accident” befall his family. personality wise- Coeus is rather timid, he prefers to sit on the sidelines and warns Rhea that her plan to depose of Cronus may result in Cronus himself killing her. he is kind and well-natured, and though sometimes he has moments of self-doubt, even after Cronus threatens him and his daughter, he doesn’t rat Rhea out to Cronus and tell him about the potion he made for her, so there’s that.

MNEMOSYNE | titan of memory. her main role is in the Castration of Ouranos arc. when Cronus activates his time powers for the first time and reverses time back to when Gaia first gathered the titans together, Mnemosyne is the only one who remembers that all these events have actually happened before. personality wise- she’s generally pretty chill. she’s kind and generous, and also rather talented when it comes down to the arts, and this is something that is reflected in her children, the Muses.

OCEANUS | titan of the oceans. Oceanus is the eldest of all the titans, and perhaps, the wisest. his power is to communicate and control sea-life. when Gaia gathers her children and tells them about her plan to depose Ouranos, Oceanus is reluctant to take action because he knows how powerful their father is, and he knows the risk is great. Cronus calls him a coward for this, but Oceanus is undeterred. although he does help his siblings fight Ouranos, he is always cautious of the consequences of failure. he takes Rhea’s side against Cronus. personality wise- Oceanus is level-headed, wise, and stoic, but he doesn’t like taking risks.

TETHYS | titan of the oceans and rivers. Tethys is the wife of Oceanus, and her ability is to control the rivers and the seas. she, like Oceanus, is cautious about taking down Ouranos. she supports Oceanus when he advises against Gaia’s plan, but also joins him when he agrees to fight with Cronus. Tethys takes Rhea’s side against Oceanus. personality wise- she is noble, and righteous, and hates arrogance above all else. 

IAPETUS | Iapetus is perhaps the only other titan to rival Cronus in terms of cunning. he takes Cronus’ side throughout the whole story because he believes that he plays to the winning side. Iapetus isn’t exactly selfish, but he does seek to protect his own hide first. he takes Cronus' side during the Titanomachy because he believes in Cronus- Cronus is the one who liberated the Titans from Ouranos, and that means a lot to Iapetus. although Iapetus is older, he's always looked up to Cronus, and they've always been thick as thieves. Iapetus is Cronus' right-hand man and the trust that they place in each other goes both ways. when Cronus reveals to Iapetus what really happened to his and Rhea's children, Iapetus' admiration for Cronus is so strong that he's not even horrified by Cronus' atrocities- rather, he proclaims that his loyalty is even more steadfast than before. there is no stage where Iapetus doubts/betrays Cronus. personality wise- he enjoys playing games and tricks, and he is one of the chief architects of the plan to castrate Ouranos.

HYPERION | titan of light. he is married to Theia, and doesn’t really have a significant role in the story. he doesn't really "choose" a side during the Titanomachy, but the magic of Crius forces him to take Cronus' side. fortunately for him, he escapes punishment in Tartarus when his children (Helios, Selene, and Eos) beg Zeus to have mercy (which he grants). personality wise- he’s generally a fun guy, never gloomy and always positive. he's a little narcissistic though, and he loves flattery.

THEIA | titan of brightness and sight. she’s married to Hyperion, and is the eldest of Gaia’s daughters. her only real role is when a young Cronus jokingly says that he’ll make Theia his queen to irritate Rhea. personality wise- she’s kind and loving, though more quiet and timid than her other sisters.

PHOEBE | wife of Coeus and mother of Asteria (and Leto but Leto isn’t born yet in the story). again, she doesn’t really have a role, but personality wise- she’d be very artsy, and generally chill. she has some degree of prophetical powers, and Zeus makes her an oracle during his reign until Apollo is born (and then Apollo takes on that role).

CRIUS | titan of the constellations. IRL, Crius doesn’t really have much of a mythology- there’s no role listed, just that his wife was another goddess named Eurybia and he had a few kids, and then was chucked into Tartarus. so, he also doesn’t have much of a role in my story either, but he also takes Cronus’ side, and ends up in Tartarus with Iapetus because of it. idk why, but i imagine his personality being similar to Oceanus’, and so, Crius helps Cronus because he thinks that Cronus is in the right, and takes second place in terms of loyalty to Cronus (Iapetus being number one). Crius is one of the most intelligent from the Titans, and he's pretty crafty, though he isn't evil. Crius serves Cronus for similar reasons to Iapetus.

EURYBIA | goddess of mastery over the seas. her main role is as Crius' wife, but I wanted her to take Cronus' side not because she particularly believes in Cronus' cause, but because Crius fights on his side- so it's more of a question of allegiance to family rather than allegiance to authority. Eurybia's siding with Cronus causes lots of heartbreak within Crius' family :/// but i just didn't like the idea of having every wife in the story being sidelined and not fighting. on her wikipedia page, Eurybia is described as having "a heart of flint within her", so i imagine her to be very headstrong and powerful, and i just can't imagine that she sits in silence while her husband goes fighting. personality wise- she's very friendly, confident and bold, where Crius is a little more aloof.

THEMIS | titan of justice. again, pretty much no role in the story. she takes Rhea’s side of course (since she’s on the side of justice), and with Rhea, is one of the first to agree with Cronus’ plan to get rid of Ouranos, and she’s enthusiastic about it as well. personality wise- she’s similar to Rhea- she’s headstrong, loyal, and outspoken.

**only out of the Titans + Gaia + Ouranos

[weaselbeaselpants]

All you need to know about my sucky rewrite

Since the actual show’s getting greenlit here’s my sooperoriginal ideas of my reboot/rewrite/reimagine thing called “Happy hotELL”

The cast of “Happy hoteLL” are renamed versions of the Hazbin cast:

Charly, Vee (she’s nick-named “Vaggy” by Engel) Engel, Niftie, Hux, Alastair, Lord Satan and Lilian, Flim-Flam and JibJab, Karen Killjoy, Sir Pantsless.

The main villains would be human!archangels based on Estus Pirkle and Kirk Cameron.

The main demons under Charly all embody a deadly sin in how they ended up in hell: Engel = Wrath (hated himself and other people), Niftie = Envy (tormented people at school in order to impress a boy), Hux = Lust (stalked/objectified various women in his life), Vee = Pride (too proud to admit she made bad choices), and Alastar = Gluttony (for reasons already discussed here).

Setting

The “afterworld”, the setting our characters inhabit, is separated into three sections: HEAVEN which is where the Archangels rule and were “good” souls go; HELL, which is the main setting of the show and where the archangels swoop down to purge of all the “bad” souls that end up there; and LIMBO, a primordial pocket-dimension with no direct portal to through the other two worlds. Limbo turns out to be the place the archangels, the true rulers of Heaven, are hiding. The mortal or ‘human’ world is between Heaven and Hell and is accessed by similar means to how it is in Helluva Boss. 

Angels and demons which were never human are referred to as ARCHANGELS/OVERLORDS and CHERUBS/IMPS. Ascended/damned souls are those of people who’ve ended up in either Heaven or Hell.

Heaven and Hell both have class systems. Imps and Overlords and Cherubs and Archangels are SUPPOSED to rule over all the human souls in their care. But Heaven’s archangels have gone missing - abandoned their posts for the peaceful content of limbo - leaving human angels to rise up and over time dictate how Heaven is to be run and who gets redeemed....this is as bad as you think it is, as the human!archangels care only for their “purity” over everyone else and keep people who should be allowed into heaven out just for not being to their standards - like Vee. The Overlords of Hell are unaware of this and have been unknowingly doing the human!angels’ business for hundreds of years. 

>The implication that this system for disposing of evil souls has failed is made well before the second season twist because damned human souls (Alastair) have become overlords and exist in Hell without being purged as an open secret, even to Charly’s parents. The only reason the true Overlords oppose any of the human!Overlords’ reign is because it disrupts their order in Hell, not out of any sense of justice.

There is NO monotheistic deity in this world; angels and demons used to live in “pantheons”, aka tribes, across the earth where they created life and the ecosystems there as well - thusly, they became gods to the people of these regions too. Satan and Lilian are from what would come to be the Abrahamic angels. In time, other mythologies’ underworld counterparts - and even some benevolent gods - would have the power diminish on earth and they’d have to live in Hell if they didn’t want to be wiped out by the crusades the Archangel’s influence over humans. Understandably, a lot of non-Abrahamic angels and demons are NOT fond of this appropriation/erasure of their culture and want their own realm’s back, even trying to run their own redemption operation/afterlife control in secret or in limbo. (Imagine Charly meeting a Vivziepoped versions of Hades and Persephone or Oxhead and Horseface telling her to fuck off and her just being like “I KNEW someone had the same idea! I JUST KNEW IT! <3<3<3″)

ALL mortal souls are supposed to be sent to hell but a great many of them are KEPT from heaven because of the human!archangels. 

A demon is redeemed by either setting right a wrong they did in life or sacrificing their happiness for another. This is what happens to Vee at the end of the first season, which leaves Charly without a manager through season 2.

Satan’s backstory is a parody of Paradise Lost as he was the most beautiful angel in his pantheon before the others kicked him out. In revenge he took Lilian, their “first woman”, for his wife and rallied up an army which apparently ended with one mass-extinction event on earth.

There’s a section of Hell where demons who represent different vices/drugs live. It’s referred as “Viceland” and is treated like a kitty theme park.

Demons (overlord, imp, or damned-souls) can all be summoned by mortals who know their way with unholy magic. They’re summoned at really inconvenient times and for really worthless deeds and this would be a great source of comedy for the show and an excuse to get characters to the mortal realm.

Story

The first episode/pilot/episodes/minimovie/whatever would be basically the same as the pilot but with a few tweaks:

It shows a person dying, going to Hell, becoming a demon, and being purged (which the audience not quite knowing what just happened to him) with Engel happily takes the dead demon’s things once the dust clears. Then Charly and Vee’s limo pulls up to him and ask him if he’s interested in a “new gig”. Que title and credits.

Charly initially opens the hotel with the promise that it will be a place for vice and booze but lets it slip that it’s a front for rehabilitation. Once Engel’s story is picked up on by the network, Vee and Charly’s assistants (Flimflam and JibJab) attack Karen and destroy the news station.

It’s Engel - not Vee - who recognizes Alastair as the threat that he is - later it’s revealed that Engel was present during Alastair’s initial takeover and that his radio frequencies damaged Engel’s eye. Vee doesn’t believe him until she sees Alastair’s absorbtion powers, which is when she allows him to stay employed by the hotel to help take Alastair down.

Alastair stresses the need for Charly to keep him working with her a secret, ESPECIALLY from her parents. He’s technically a criminal in hell and he convinces Charly that her parents will be impressed with her bad deed once the jig is up.

The rest of Season 1 would probably be Alastair setting up the hotel while the main cast of demons become more aquainted with each other and the different levels of Hell.The end of season 1 would feature Alastair double-crossing Charly and consuming the hotel in his likeness while it’s hosting a demon’s ball - in the hopes of getting enough souls to reignite his takeover. Vee, Engel, and Charly manage to escape the hotel and Charly overpowers and defeats Al by destroying his microphone - thus releasing all the souls he’s trapped, and then destroys his physical form.

Season 2 would start with a face reveal of Satan, Charly’s father, as he forces her to eat Alastair’s heart which will put him under her control. She does, but Alastair’s conscience manifests inside Charly’s head and mocks her ideas throughout the season. Also in the opening Vee would become and angel and ascends for Heaven, leaving Charly to manage the now very popular hotel alone until Engel rises up to become her #2.

Season 2 would be more explorative, with more stuff featuring the demon’s lives as humans, Charly’s role in Hell, and even Vee in Heaven. We’d learn more about the way Hell, Heaven and Limbo work as Charly manages to redeem a couple more damned souls. At the end of the season, the demons discover a dead cherub with a message from Vee begging Charly for help. Charly first attempts to pass through the hidden realm of Limbo to get to Heaven, but Hux runs off with their means to get there, so instead she vomits up Alastair, the only other demon who knows how to get to heaven, and he assists them on the condition that he be granted amnesty once they return to Hell. In the end, Charly and co. discover Heaven’s corrupted state and realize the Archangels are missing, Vee looses her wings but ascends into a fallenangel, and they all escape the bloodthirsty angels due to Lilian’s interference.

The Overlords of Hell prepare for a new war with Heaven and Charly’s parents send her to the mortal realm for her protection. In the mortal realm, Charly and the demons disguise themselves and their base of operation as a bed and breakfast. Charly has trouble reeling in the overexcited demons who are out of place in this new time while also keeping Alastair, who has stashed away with her, from trapping souls. 

Halfway through season 3 Engel and the other motel staff find out Alastair’s human identity, which he was desperate to hide, and bring his now elderly human daughter to him. This causes Alastair to freak out and consume the bed and breakfast. Once Charly brings him to, his physical takes on that of a baby deer but his psyche and abilities are completely nulled.

While this is going on Vee, Hux, and Charly’s parents have their own adventures in Limbo where they meet the Archangels who have no idea how corrupt Heaven has gotten in their absence. It’s only through Hux and Vee that the main group is finally all reuninted in Hell where the finale takes place :

Engel and Niftie ascend into fallenangels and alongside Vee lead a brigade against the angels who now want to wipe out all the demons; Charly guilt trips her parents and the Archangels into taking action and combining their power to dismantle the angel’s weapons; Alastair comes back and personally takes out the main human!archangel and himself by throwing them into the center of Hell; big stupid happy lesbian ending fartjoke.

end

Characters

Charly’s relationship dynamic to her parents is flipped: her father, Satan (he doesn’t like being called Lucifer) LOVES her. He shares a lot of her personality and at worst doesn’t take Charly seriously or cares about her ambitions. Lilian, Charly’s mother resents her daughter. Lilian was hoping her daughter would bring forth the apocalypse but Charly doesn’t want to do that. It’s implied Charly’s optimism and need to help people comes from her father’s days as an Archangel, and her mother especially hates the angels for casting her out, which leads to her resenting Charly.

This doesn’t stop Satan from being genuinely impressed with his daughter’s achievements and for Lilian to be be the panicked-parent when she learns that Charly has broken into Heaven at the end of season 2. 

The Royal Family is not actively malicious. They’re more like privileged jailers on the top of the Hell-foodchain. The most evil things about them are their apathy towards human atrocities (and their subjects pain, of course), their occasional bouts of sadism, and their genuine glee at the thought of destruction - namely the apocalypse, which Satan and Lilian speak fondly about like a married couple would their retirement plans.

After Charly shows her true form while taking out Alastair, the other Overlords and Imps (i.g. Karen and 666 News) start heaping praise on her out of fear that she’ll retaliate for all the mockery they made of her when she unveiled her plan. Charly is uncomfortable with this.

Engel is BAD at his pornstar/sexworker career. He tries to sell himself as a sass-master incubus but can’t achieve this status in the demon hierarchy because of his short fuse and violent nature.

Engel thinks he’s in hell because he’s gay and likes crossdressing. In reality it’s because he was a member of a crime family and a murderous gangster, named Anatole Slinkoff. The first people he killed were his father and brother as he was assisting a young-up-and-coming rival who would eventually become his boss.

Speaking of that boss, Anatole fell in love with him. On Anatole’s birthday he and the boss got drunk and he ended up confessing his feelings. The boss invited a sobered up Anatole back to his flat the following week and seemed to return his affections with a kiss...which was then followed by a fatal stabbing. Engel never got over the heartbreak/betrayal.

Engel starts off as a toxic enabling jackass who lives in denial and uses sex and drugs to cope with how unhappy he is with himself. In season 2 he becomes Charly’s #2 and builds a strong friendship with her. Also in season 2 Engel meets his father, brother, and mother who are also in hell for their crimes. His father and bro amazingly forgive him for killing them while Engel’s mother - a god-fearing woman who would beat Engel if she found him wears makeup or playing with dolls as a child - asks him for forgiveness, saying she’s the reason her family and he specifically ended up where he did. After Engel patches things up with them he tries to locate the souls of the people he killed and in the process finds out his old boss went to Heaven. At first Engel sets out to kill his boss and get revenge, but upon actually finding him living in fear in Limbo, he can’t bring himself to do so and instead chooses to just not forgive him.

Engel ascends/becomes a fallenangel in the final season when he meets an imp with a similar taste of humor and style. Rather than rush into a relationship as he’s done with every person he’s got with since he ended up in hell, Engel tells his new lover he wants to wait until he’s stable for a relationship, which triggers his transformation.

Molly doesn’t exist. Molly is instead the name of Engel’s feminine alterego and later the name Engel takes up as a fallenangel.

Vee, like Engel, also thinks she’s in hell for all the wrong reasons: She ran away from her controlling parents, thinking she could live on her own just fine. She could not. Instead she wound up turning to a life of crime and prostitution to support herself after a plethora of bad decisions and heartbreaks. When her parents sent word out all over the country, begging her to come back and that they were wrong, but she still refused. In the end one of her clients ended up strangling her. Her soul SHOULD have been one that went to Heaven but was barred off by the human!archangels for being a “thug”. Vee tried to get herself purged after her first few months in Hell, convinced that she deserved it, but Charly saved her and the blast instead only took out one of her eyes. Vee and her story are Charly’s main inspiration to open up the hotel.

Vee and Charly obviously have a romantic relationship from the start but Vee doesn’t see their love as anything serious. When Vee becomes an angel at the end of season 1/beginning of season 2, she rather cruelly leaves Charly without a second thought and discards their relationship is ‘passing sin’. It isn’t until she spends more time in Heaven, seeing the other angels’ being restricted (including her parents, who admit to actually being miserable in Heaven) and finding her rejection notice from the human!archangels that Vee realizes she does love Charly and that her redemption was always HER doing, not someone else’s.

Vee makes the unwise decision to confront the Archangels (whom she doesn’t know are actually human souls) about this treatment. They respond by locking Vee away and performing a “purification” on her which is like electroshock therapy. This sedates Vee into a mindless drone, much to the horror of the cherubs, angels, and eventually Charly and the gang.

Vee, in her purified state, doesn’t want to leave Heaven and go back to Hell. Charly, realizing the woman she loves is gone, tearfully tells her she won’t ask Vee to be anything she doesn’t want to be and that she loves her. This confession breaks through to the real Vee. Their happy reunion is cut short however by the human!archangels who rip off Vee’s wings, causing her and Charly to fall. It’s here though that Vee again ascends, this time into a fallenangel, and grows her own pair of wings and an angels’ weapon which she uses to kill Perkins, the head archangel and save the rest of the cast.

Throughout season 3, Vee and Charly’s parents turn the Happy Hotel into a refuge for human souls and imps while the angels and demons prepare for new spiritual warfare. Vee also tracks down Hux and multiple other “lost souls” in Limbo in her search for the Archangels.

Vee commands Hell’s army alongside Molly and Niftie in the show’s final climax and she gets a happy ending running a shanty motel in Limbo alongside Charly.

In life, Niftie was a teenager who tried to grow up too fast and gave up her hobbies and interests to impress her childhood friend (whom she was in love with). By following the lead of a more popular classmate, Niftie became a bully who ruled her school’s social status. Then she learned that her “teacher” had been in love with the same guy and he was returning her feelings - which drove Niftie into a rage and she tried killing the both of them on their senior prom night. She tried running them over with her car, putting the girl in the hospital, paralyzing the boy forever, and ruining her reputation at school (for saying she couldn’t drive when she did; not for the attempted murder). The boy she loved hated her, and the rest of the school bullied her until she gave in and took her own life in the bathroom.

The other demons are especially sympathetic towards Nifty. Charly finds it horrible that she end up in hell at such a young age. Hux is very protective of her. However, Niftie is more self-aware than she appears; she acts more childish than she actually is because she wishes she was still a kid, but does NOT like being treated like a literal child - especially by Charly and Engel. She only warms up to Charly when Hux abandons her and she’s forced to be an authority figure under Engel while the group stages things out in the mortal realm.

In the mortal realm, Niftie ends up coming across her old hishschool friend, now an old woman in a wheelchair, who believes it’s her fault everything ended the way it did. Niftie tells the lady not to feel guilty and instead apologizes to her - which ignites Niftie’s ascension into a fallenangel.

Hux was a moderately successful show magician. Heartbroken by being unable to woo a woman he loved with his success, he turned to drinking and took up relationships with women who worked under him  - all of these relationships were toxic and Hux would break their hearts and ruin their lives. When Hux arrived in Hell it was during a purge. He found his original sweetheart there but she, not him, was purged, cementing Hux’s views of redemption and justice...that there is NONE.

Hux is mostly apathetic and disbelieves along with everyone else in Charly’s plan UNTIL he finds out that one of the women he hurt escaped into Limbo. When the main cast tried to use their one passage to Limbo to get to Heaven in season 2, Hux takes the pass for himself.

In Season 3, Vee finds Hux enjoying his time in Limbo and calls him out for his selfishness. Hux introduces her to all the women he wronged, who DON’T forgive him, and also his new business in Limbo selling drinks that make people recall their past lives.

Together with Vee, Hux thinks up a plan to have the overcrowded souls of Hell and Heaven wait out the war in Limbo while simultaneously kicking out the Archangels so that they won’t notice the influx of souls in their realm.

Sir Pantsless is the show’s biggest buttmonkey and is constantly abused. He’s a tiny demon trying to ride off other Overlord’s success and who’s design is a wimpy, trying-to-hard version of Charly’s dad. In life, Sir Pantsless was a Victorian-era businessman who lived a long, happy life of abusing child-workers in factories and getting away with all his evil deeds. Charly’s dad even admits to keeping him out of the purge purposefully because he finds Pantsless’ pain amusing.

Themes and other stuff worth noting

If there’s a lesson I guess I’d try to push with the ending of this rewrite it would be, ironically, that neither Heaven nor Hell hold your true morality. It’s on you for making mistakes; it’s up to you to overcome them - you literally have to go through hell - to fix them! It also shouldn’t be up to Heaven and Hell how punishment/enlightenment works or why it’s worth anything.

This is NOT supposed to be an antireligion/antiChristian story. Not at ALL. It’s anti absolutism and anti religiousSUPREMACY story.  I know then that people will probably not want me basing this version of Heaven off Evangelicals, but like Viv, that’s the religion that closest for me to criticize. If I were Jewish or Hindu or Muslim I would so be about tearing their hypocrisies down....but I’m not. I know all about the injustices in those religions but I’m not comfortable tearing them a new one as a white Christian. My mother’s fam are recovering Christian Science-folk. Also, have you watched anything about Left Behind? It’s genuinely an eye opening experience when it comes to Americanized Christianity and even the lore of Hell and Demons in regards to the book of revelations.

Lotsa references to The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost with the implication that these works are fan fiction to the demons of actual events with Dante never even making it out of Hell because he was too prideful. (Charly’s father has two faces in his wings/comb which are constantly chewing parts of Dante like chewing gum).

I know Viv says she’s hoping to get Weird Al to voice Lucifer. Personally I think a better unlikely but TOTALLY FITTING devil would be mah man Martyn Jacques of The Tiger Lillies. They even have a circus motif!

Engel probably claims his name is supposed to be misspelled on purpose. In reality, it’s cause he was drunk when submitting his resume to be an incubus and made a typo for his new name.

Vee’s human name is Marianna Posada. GET IIIIIT.

Alastair’s human name is Edward Hastings. Edward being the name of the American Murder Song which inspired my Alastair, while Hastings is the last name of the man who helped doomed the Donner Party.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 69

Obligatory pun - Nice.

Now that I have that out of my system and can therefore stop making horridly adolescent puns about it, this really is a pretty important chapter.  We finally see what is going to become of Else!

This is also a particularly long chapter - 4500 words, probably my longest to date.  Happy Insert Winter Holiday, Everyone!

I seriously considered splitting it (you can probably figure out where the break would be), but cooler heads prevailed (namely, @satan-parisienne, my beloved beta/sister/IRL!Tyche, and @baelpenrose, my constant source of mutual squeeing).

This is being queued up on December 23, to post on December 24.  I still hope to have a chapter to post next week, especially since what I have is so thematically appropriate for the date ;)

After Grey’s revelation of our timetable, the Council decided that negotiations with Else would take place within twenty-four hours.  To his credit, Eino promised to deliver the lexicon, but admitted that there would not be time for the precisely worded questions to be drafted and approved.  Since we also didn’t have time for Grey to locate another person who had spoken directly with Else, the questions were ultimately unnecessary – I had been making up questions on the fly for Else to this point, so I had no problem continuing to do so.

Once Xiomara closed the channel on our end, I tried to stand.  Almost immediately, my traitorous knees objected and I was only saved from hitting the floor by Xio’s quick reflexes.  “You’ve been on bed rest for the last three weeks, take it slow, dumbass,” she grumbled.

I forced myself into a standing position, propped up on the bed. “I have to talk to Conor and Maverick, and I’m sick of seeing the inside of this bay. Either get me the closest thing we have to a wheelchair, or I’m going to crawl to my quarters.”

“You do realize that even the Ark has backless hospital gowns? Everyone on the Ark would see you practically naked.”

I grabbed her shirt, and my pride was mollified when she leaned forward and gave me the illusion that I pulled her down. “Either get me a moving chair, or I will crawl down the corridor. Naked.”

With a barely-suppressed chuckle, she helped me into some clothes and onto a transport in the corridor. “While we are on our way, I’ll go ahead and give you the rundown of everyone you are going to ask about.  Derek and Sam came out of everything mostly unscathed.  They’re a little more jittery than usual, but that’s honestly to be expected.  Alistair is grumpy as hell from being flat on his back for so long, but once he was notified you were awake, he limited his bitching to the sheets, the mattress, and the lack of exercise.  Charly is awake and alert, but tired and nervous… dropping by to see her would probably be a good idea, honestly.  Grandma Kim is Grandma Kim and taking everything in stride.  Zach is completely undaunted and unimpressed.”

The slouch I had been suppressing made itself apparent in the wake of my relief. “So, everyone is okay?”

“Well, Hannah and Thor are still asleep, but they’ve been upgraded from comatose to just ‘asleep’.  Nixe is breathing on her own, the new lungs are working fine.”

My breath left my body suddenly. “No brain-damage?”

“Not comparatively, no.”

Good. Allowing myself to take in the condition of the real Ark, several things caught my eye. “Xio….”

She grinned and shook her head, locks flying. “Ah. You saw the trees.” I nodded dumbly, speechless. “As soon as they were approved to get out of bed, Derek and Sam started pestering Conor to start setting up the trees for Insert Winter Holiday.  Apparently, they were behind schedule, and Derek was very upset about that.”

“And they’re already done?”

“Are you kidding?” she laughed. “They just started yesterday.   Even with both of your boyfriends helping, they still have at least two more days to finish.”

“They’re already decorated,” I murmured.

“Sam was bored while he was on bed rest,” she shrugged. “So there are a lot of really intricate bows to put on all the trees.”

“Awesome,” I gushed enthusiastically. “I love trees that are over-decorated.” When she quirked an eyebrow at me, I rushed to reassure her. “No, I’m serious. The more heavily decorated the better. I know not all cultures do trees for winter holidays, but if there are trees, I love seeing them absolutely covered.” Truth be told, the decorations were helping dismiss some of the melancholy that came from knowing that I almost missed Insert Winter Holiday in everything that was going on. I shook my head to clear the thoughts. “So, I’m going to guess the trees are the reason we are most certainly not headed toward my quarters.”

With a blinding grin, she shook her head. “Nope. They should be somewhere on Level Eleven. That’s where we’re going.”

Soon enough, we stumbled upon an energetic argument between Maverick and Derek. “But this side looks nicer!”

“That’s not how it was placed last year.  The same side should show. That’s why Sam put more bows on the correct side.”

“How can you even tell!?”

Conor was standing back, smiling like he was watching the cutest thing he had ever seen.  When he glanced up and saw me, the smile vanished and he promptly reached between them to point in my direction. “Looks like our girl is up and around.”

Astonishingly, Derek beat them both to me and reached to tap my hand three times in succession, dropping his hand to his side each time.  My heart swelled with emotion, realizing that he essentially just gave me a bone-crushing hug. “Yeah, I’m okay, Derek. Just tired and a little weak.”

I braced myself for a much more physical greeting, but was saved when Conor and Maverick stopped dead in their tracks and backed up slightly.  In their rush to make sure I was okay, it looked like they tripped the proximity alert in Derek’s implant. “Did you do that on purpose?” I asked in hushed tones.

Without looking up, Derek flashed me a knocking gesture, positioned between his body and mine so the other two couldn’t see it. “They get carried away, and if you didn’t walk down here, they may hurt you by accident.” A brief pause. “Besides, they were in quarantine with you. I haven’t seen you since you brought me your blanket.”

“I missed you, too.  And Sam. Looks like he was busy, by the way.”

“You have no idea. Zach was practically buried under Sam’s bows. I got lucky. Mac kept trying to play with them and accidentally tore one to pieces. After that, Sam stopped piling them on my bed.”

“If you see him before I do, let him know the bows are beautiful.”

“Duh. Sam makes the best bows. But I’ll tell him you said that.” With that, he stepped around to the other side of the transport so my partners could approach, with a warning to them about being gentle and not breaking me.  Xiomara was practically vibrating in her seat from suppressed laughter at this point.

“Hey, you two,” I said softly as they gently checked me over before giving a very restrained double-hug. I took a moment to just breathe them in before breaking the news. “Trees look great – are there more this year?”

Conor nodded, shoving a hand through his shaggy hair. “We started cultivating them last year, so they would all be about the same size.  As soon as we were given permission to get up and about, I figured everyone could use the cheer.”

With a heavy sigh, I nodded my head. “You know how I feel about throwing food at people to help recover from a crisis.”

Maverick nodded solemnly. “But, last year when Insert Winter Holiday happened, there wasn’t a crisis, was there?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but Xiomara beat me to it. “No, there really wasn’t, unless you count all of us being abducted for our own good.  Which makes this more a need to feel normal than anything else.”

“That was kind of the point last year,” I grumbled.

“And it worked,” she reassured me. “Just like it will work this year.” With that, she issued a very pointed look, silently reminding me why we were here.

Taking a deep breath, I turned back to Conor and Maverick.  “The reason everyone feels better is because Else is dying.”  Both of the looked confused, so I clarified. “They are killing themselves in an effort to stop hurting us.  They aren’t eating, and they aren’t spreading.  If something doesn’t change, they’ll be extinct in less than two weeks.”

“This is bad,” Maverick stated uncertainly, looking between the rest of us for confirmation.

“It is,” I nodded. “Because they are sentient species, we can’t just let them die off without trying to help. And,” I held up a hand to prevent the inevitable questions and objections, “I don’t mean just letting them go back to making us sick.  Xio and I talked to the Council, there are two solid options on the table as far as relocation – a dying planet or a nebula. The trick is, Else has to agree to whatever is decided.”

“And if they don’t?” Conor asked in the calm tone he always used when he knew he didn’t have all the information.

“If they don’t agree to anything, and keep dying off, we think there is a chance that they will drop below some kind of threshold for sapience.  In that event, it’s mostly likely that they would forget to restrain themselves, start multiplying and spreading again.”

“So, they would dip below sentience and pop back up?” Conor tilted his head skeptically. “I’m not getting something.  Usually, the plants I cultivate don’t end up with feelings and the impulse control of toddler.”

“To begin with, we don’t know how sick we got before they developed that level of intelligence,” I pointed out. “Second… if they do evolve back into sentient status, there is no guarantee they would be the same – version, for lack of a better term.  Different neural connections are what give us our own personalities… this Else wants to help us. What if the next one doesn’t? Worse, what if it wants to actively hurt us due to some primordial memory?”

“Better the devil you know,” Maverick murmured.

I sagged in resignation at what I had to tell them next. “Pretty much.  Which means humanity needs to negotiate with Else to figure out a solution both sides can live with.” Closing my eyes as tightly as possible, I braced for the torrent of words that would inevitably come.

Instead, I got two beats of silence and Maverick speaking softly. “Is there anyone who can do this instead? Anyone at all?”

“Not that Grey has been able to locate,” Xiomara responded over my shoulder as I cracked an eyelid.

What I saw was a clearly upset Conor biting his lips and holding Maverick’s hand, which was resting on the taller man’s bicep.  “Conor?” I asked slowly. “Are you angry?”

He took two deep breaths before answering. “Yeah,” he finally sighed, tension dropping from his body. “But at the situation, which I can’t do anything about.” Gently, he put both his hands on my shoulders and rubbed my arms lightly. “How soon does this need to be done? Is there more time to find someone who isn’t you?”

“No one knows at what point Else will basically devolve into just another bacterial infection,” I admitted. “So, we want to do this as soon as possible, and regardless of the option chosen, as soon as an agreement is reached, they’ll be placed in coldsleep in the interim to prevent further degradation of us or them.”

“You’re being cagey.” Both he and Maverick pinned me with very pointed looks. “That’s never a good sign.”

“No more than twenty-four hours.”

More deep breaths as he stepped away, one hand on his hip, the other rubbing his neck as he paced in a small circle.  “That should be enough time to get the rest of the trees up, as long as we just let Derek call the shots on placement. Mav, can you manage to do that?”

He shuddered. “I may need to just find something else to do.   I can only handle so much.”

Conor nodded. “Right then.  You keep our bonnie lass company while they get her ready, let me know when they plan to start. I’ll be there, even if I have to tell Zach and Derek to just – I dunno, space the damned trees out an airlock.”

“Conor, you don’t – “

Two long strides and he was back in front of me, stroking my hair. “Love. I’ve mucked up in a big way lately, letting myself be too afraid and not being there like I should be.  ‘S not fair to you, ‘s not fair to Mav being pulled like that.  I understand if you don’t want me in there, with the way I’ve been acting, but otherwise? I’ll be parked by your berth til we land this lady on the colony if I have to be.”

With a sniffle, I nodded my head silently. Xiomara was not as convinced. “Conor, if you lash out one more time, I will take you into custody, do you understand?  I could not believe that you raised your voice the way you did before – you are one of the kindest people I know.”

“Understood, ma’am.” He managed to sound only slightly embarrassed by his previous behavior.

Wiping my eyes, I straightened the best I could. “Okay. I need to head back to the med bay – I’m exhausted. Maverick, ride back with me?”

“You got it, Sophie.” With that, he hopped in behind me in the transport

Twelve hours and a nap later, I was in my all-too-familiar berth in medical, being hooked up to an infusion drip for medication.  By grace alone, there was no need to hook me up to any wires like there would have been on Earth – they could monitor my brain and cardiac activity with scans instead.  “No sedation if I get mad again, okay?” I demanded sternly. “I need to be clear-headed for this.”

“I make no promises,” Grey replied in a very similar tone to when they observed that my plants had grown. “If your heart rate becomes dangerous, or you show signs of an anxiety or panic attack, I will sedate you for your own sake.”

Ugh. Grey was back to being logical. “Can I at least request the minimum effective dose, nothing more?”

One dark eyebrow arched. You are on thin ice, it screamed. “That is acceptable, provided it does not endanger your health.”

Before I could do more than scowl, the door hissed open to reveal a daunting number of people. In addition to the entire Council, I saw Tyche, Antoine, Alistair of all people, Zach and Derek.  Bringing up the rear was Conor, who quickly darted over to my far side, beside Maverick.  Tyche and Antoine took up their now-usual positions on my other side, with my sister’s grey eyes colder than I had ever seen them, daring the Council to try to make her move.

They better have Archimedes’s lever if they plan to try that, I mused. Gently resting a hand on her arm in solidarity, I turned to face the breathless man who just sat on my opposite side. “You made it,” I whispered.

“Told ya I would,” he grinned. “Can’t abandon you and Mav to do this alone.” He glanced up and his brows instantly furrowed. “Why’s the Council here?”

Maverick tackled that one, having been present for the initial explanation. “In case any solutions are suggested by Else that weren’t already covered by the Council, but have merit.”

“Okay… How’re they supposed to know what is discussed, exactly? Noah can only get vague hints, can’t they?”

Grimacing, I rocked my head side to side in hesitancy. “Yes and no? They know the lyrics to songs that are stuck in my head, sometimes.  Or at least understand the concepts enough to make it seem like he does.  We are going to try having me stop and repeat, slowly and emphatically, what Else is suggesting if they go off script.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“I’ve – I may have been given executive authority in an emergency,” I admitted.

Conor whistled through his teeth. “Sophie. That’s – that’s a lot of pressure.”

“No shit,” I muttered before turning to everyone else standing in the room. “Okay, is this my entire watch party, or are we still waiting?”

Simon spoke up – he was getting better at that. “This is everyone. And a few extras, but I am not going to be the one arguing with your family, especially since the majority agreed to stay out of your way.” He coughed and rubbed his neck before explaining the obvious exceptions. “Tyche and Antoine are claiming official capacity.”

My sister held her head high, chin out – if there was an encyclopedia entry for not gonna budge, that profile was probably the photo next to it.  “Should something happen, the responsibility would fall on me to identify candidates for her replacement to suggest to the Council. Since I would rather not, I am staying to observe and ensure it doesn’t come to that.”

Before Antoine could do more than straighten his spine, Grey spoke up. “Mr. Costa is a medical professional, and I have requested him be present, in that capacity, for this procedure.”

Eino attempted a token argument. “Councillor Hodenson, you are a doctor. Can you not – “

“I have a doctorate. Three, actually: biochemistry, genetics, and molecular chemistry.  None of that replaces practical training, which Mr. Costa possesses and I do not.”

The educator’s hands went up, mollified. “I stand corrected. Objection withdrawn.”

“Okay, can we please get on with this before I have fourth thoughts?” Second and third were out the window at this point – I had been lying in the berth with nothing else to do but worry for nine hours at this point.

“Any further objections or inquiries from the Council before we proceed?” Grey asked drily.  When only silence followed, they nodded. “Per my reports, Else can currently only communicate when a person is in a REM state. Our previous attempt involved Sophia being lucid during this process, to great effect.  However, I believe that her complete immobility is what caused the difficulty in relaying information back to Miys.  I have adjusted the medication to allow for voluntary muscle control in order to allow her to hopefully subvocalize while relaying information, as this has shown to provide accurate communication with Miys.  Sophia is already aware, but to ensure there are no surprises, a spinal block will be placed in order to limit motion to head and jaw. This is only to prevent flailing and potential injury to Sophia.”

Tyche and Conor both turned toward me with wide-eyed stares. I just nodded. “We’ve tested it a couple times to make sure I could still talk.  It’s the same way Noah kept me from hurting myself further when I came aboard, originally.” Unspoken was the fact that being held down freaked me the fuck out, whereas I had found the spinal block did not do the same thing when I knew to expect it.  In theory, dream-me would never notice the difference.

Grey continued. “Miys will begin transmitting Eino’s lexicon into Sophia’s lingual implant.  Sophia, please recite the lexicon once it starts transmitting.  This will allow us to monitor communication, both from us to your implant and from you to Miys.” They looked around the room. “It is essential that no one speak unless absolutely essential that they do so.  Sophia will perceive this as being whispered, and it is imperative that she hear the lexicon accurately.”

“I love you,” I whispered to the four sitting around my bed, before I started reciting a list of words.  True to Eino’s promise, his team had put together a much more concise recording, one which looped back to the beginning.  Within thirty minutes, I had completed the entire list twice: once completely out loud, once seeming to trail off as the sedation took effect. The spinal block gave a similar sensation to being weighed down by a heavy blanket, making it more therapeutic than nerve-wracking, and only encouraging the sedatives.  When I stopped speaking aloud, Grey nodded to confirm that I was still subvocalizing effectively.  Not long after that, my eyes drifted closed.

I opened my eyes to find myself standing in the familiar dream-Ark, still reciting the lexicon. So far, so good. I wanted badly to call out and check on Else, but determinedly stuck to the script.  Tears of concern flowed down my cheeks as I completed repetition after repetition. Were we too late? Was the threshold closer than we expected?

Threshold. Late threshold.

“Else!” I cried in relief. “Are we too late?”

Threshold further.

“The threshold is further away? Is that what you mean?”

We mean threshold further away.

Belatedly, I remembered I needed to supplement the lexicon with my questions. “That would be a yes. Thank goodness.  I was worried you would be – no longer here.”

We are here.

“We know what you are doing.  You don’t have to kill yourself. We don’t want you to go extinct. We want you to live, just like you want us to survive. I’ve been sent to discuss options. Most likely relocation, like we talked about before.”

We do want you to live. What are the options?

There we go. Much more coherent.  I sat cross-legged on the floor, craning my neck around. “Is there any chance you can try to… manifest or create something for me to look at? I keep trying to see you, just out of habit, and it would be easier if I had something specific to look at.”

I will try.

Slowly, a fuzzy yellow blob came into focus on the floor in front of me. It was about the size I associated with a corgi, but bright yellow.  I couldn’t help the grin that stretched across my face as it slowly drew on grass-green eyes and too many stubby appendages.

Else looked – cute, for lack of a better term.  Like an oversized, fuzzy, cartoon caterpillar

“That works,” I laughed.

I tried to manifest as non-threatening as possible.

“I think you nailed it.” I couldn’t help wondering if this was what Else would look like as a larger being. One could only hope. “The people on my ship have asked me to negotiate with you.  They are monitoring the best they can what I am saying, but there are going to be times that I need to repeat something to be absolutely sure. When that happens, I am going to do this – “ I touched my ear with my hand. “That way it is clear – to me – that I am repeating it for my shipmates, okay?”

Okay.

Still going well.  “Like I said earlier, we know you have stopped feeding, and stopped reproducing.  There is a serious chance that you won’t be sentient anymore… you won’t be you.”

I don’t want to hurt anyone.

“But… Else. If you stop being you, you won’t remember that you don’t want to hurt anyone.  What is the first thing you remember?”

Hungry.

“Exactly,” I pointed out. “You’ll just be hungry, again.  We want you to stay who you are now – intelligent, with feelings, and able to communicate with us.  And we hope to help you with that.”

Help how.

“Well, you and I already talked last time about taking you to a nebula, or to an iron rich planet with no atmosphere.  We can even place beacons to let others know you live there, so maybe a species who doesn’t depend on iron to survive can find you.”

We really like humans.

I sighed. Of course they did. “The problem there is that we need the iron you eat so that we can function properly, just like you need it.  Even if you die faster without it, we can still die without constant transfusions.” I focused on what it was like being in medical, sick and scared, connected around the clock to a machine that basically fed Else. “Humans cannot thrive like that. But you can thrive without us.”

I was one-third my current population when I realized I was hungry.

That stopped me dead in my tracks. “Wait. Did you just tell me the threshold for you to be sapient?”

Yes.

Breathless, I reached up to touch my ear and focused as hard as I could. “Whoever is speaking in fractions out there, I owe you dinner.” I repeated it several times in a whisper, praying it made it through clearly. Finally, I turned back to Else.  “The information you just gave us creates more options, Else.  We can ensure you survive.” I stood and started pacing around the now-wiggling caterpillar.  “If we remove you from our bodies, can you survive in a culture?”

Yes. There are several of me in cultures now.

Right.  Grey’s tests. “If we removed you, placed you in cultures, would you promise to stay in the cultures and start reproducing again?”

I can, yes.

“Next step: Half of you in a nebula, to guarantee you would survive, and half on a planet?  You could potentially be like Miys, and develop more individuals of your species without risking your sentience.”

Thirds.

“Not thirds, halves.” It seemed confused by the change in fractions.

Nebula, planet, Ark. Thirds.

Not as confused as I thought, apparently. “You want us to keep part of you on the Ark!?” I asked incredulously.

All options. One-third of me in a nebula, ensure survival.  One-third on a planet, meet a new species.  One-third on Ark, in culture, stay with humans. Absurdly, it wiggled even more, as though excited at the idea.

I repeated the proposal back to the Council and Miys, again praying they heard me.  After several minutes of hoping in vain, I received nothing.  Knowing that much more time was passing for them, if I hadn’t had a response by now, it wasn’t coming.

“I need to think this through,” I said aloud. “The Council agreed to taking you to a nebula OR a barren world… surely they would agree to both of those, no problem…. But they didn’t agree to you staying on the Ark, except in coldsleep.” I changed direction and paced clockwise this time.  “They – we – also had no idea that you would be willing to stay in a culture, like some fish in an aquarium.”

Aquarium. I like that. Can I stay in an aquarium instead?

“On the scale we are talking, it’s basically the same thing, but please don’t push your luck,” I scowled at the wide-eyed caterpillar.  That thing was just too fucking cute, which was decidedly not helping me.

Executive authority. Executive authority.  I had the power to make this decision, but probably because they knew I would agonize over it. With a groan, I stopped in my tracks. “Else, if we let part of you stay on the ship, we need a guarantee of good behavior.  Meaning, if you infect us again, you have to agree that we are taking that entire third of you to the nearest nebula or planet. Do you understand that?”

The caterpillar fucking bounced, like it was happy. Yes, I understand. And I agree to those terms.

I was going to regret this. I just knew it. Huge mistake.

“Welcome to the Ark, Else.”

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[marshmallowgoop]

Goop Plays Kill la Kill the Game: IF (Ryuko Episodes 1-4)

I don’t think I have anything really constructive to say.

Episode 1

Well, okay, that’s not true.

My biggest complaint about these episodes—and especially this first one—is that the repeated cutscenes are kind of a drag. I feel like there are definitely ways to make the same events from a different perspective more engaging than this. Much of Ryuko’s episode 1 is literally just the same exact content from Satsuki’s story with absolutely no differences at all.

But that said, I did quite enjoy what was different.

Of course. It’s me.

To avoid going straight to the obvious examples, I still love these stylish opening sequences. The black silhouettes against the red is such a great aesthetic.

And, uh. I definitely inwardly squealed about what Senketsu says in this introduction....

Senketsu: Then... due to fate, or perhaps coincidence... Ryuko acquires Kamui Senketsu. She returns to the academy, but this time, she has an ally...

Yes she does have an ally (sob).

Lol at “or perhaps coincidence,” though. Suuuuure, Senketsu. Sure.

And yeah, I know. It didn’t take me long to get to the obvious examples. What can I say. I love them.

Seriously, fair warning, but practically everything I’m gonna write about this episode—and the following three—is mostly just gushing about these kids. Repeating the cutscenes sure felt tedious, but seeing more dialogue shared between Ryuko and Senketsu made the experience worth it. 

Yes, I am so desperate that any interaction between them is pretty much A++++ for me.

I do have to say that their first conversation is... pretty curious, though. (And I’m not sure how I feel about Senketsu moving all weird when he’s talking, which... didn’t really happen in the anime.)

Ryuko: What’s wrong, Senketsu?

Senketsu: Doesn’t something feel... off?

Ryuko: Nah, I feel great. Better than usual, actually.

Senketsu: Odd. To me, it feels as though time has been... compressed. What’s even more strange is that after all those battles, you’re not even winded.

Ryuko: For a bunch calling themselves the Elite Four, I guess they’re not as big a deal after all.

Senketsu: No. It’s not so much that they’re weak. Perhaps you’re just too strong.

Ryuko: Let’s talk about it later, Senketsu. It’s time to deal with the boss bitch.

First off, it comes up later throughout these episodes, but those with Life Fibers in them seem to sense that something is iffy about time. And that’s actually my second major complaint about these episodes. Everything happens so quickly that nothing really has an impact, and this issue is far more obvious in Ryuko’s story than Satsuki’s because Ryuko arguably has a lot more dramatic events happening all at once: losing to Satsuki, discovering who killed her father and getting Senketsu torn up as a result, beating Nui in battle so badly that she’s convinced she put Nui down for good (which, again, uh), and then repairing Senketsu and agreeing to help Satsuki... I mean, in the anime, stuff like this took more than several episodes to happen, and here, everything goes down in like a half hour.

While I can appreciate that there is seemingly going to be some sort of justification for this breakneck speed—and if I could hazard a guess, I’d say it probably has something to do with Ragyo’s comment about how the world in the game is “distorted”—it’s still kinda sad that so much content is rushed through.

But that said, I wonder why Ryuko doesn’t appear to be affected. She’s also a Life Fiber being, but perhaps her Fibers haven’t been “activated” yet? But then, why is she so powerful?

Lots of “hmms” here.

And for more “hmms,” is Ragyo referring to Senketsu here? Or Ryuko? Or both?

Ragyo: Well, well... It seems when one allows their instincts to guide them, they are led to some amusing surprises. I thought the Primordial Life Fiber was reacting to Junketsu. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

I wonder if Ragyo realizes that Ryuko is her daughter at this point, but I’m gonna say probably not.

Still, curious stuff.

But to get back to Ryuko and Senketsu, I gotta say that it’s pretty amusing that Satsuki’s side of the story didn’t include any awkward pauses as Ryuko talks to Senketsu, lol. I am glad that they are talking and Satsuki just didn’t hear it, though. One of my first complaints was that there wasn’t enough Senketsu action back when Satsuki’s episode 1 footage dropped.

And, oh, Senketsu, you are ever so perceptive. Still sad we don’t get to see Senketsu/Satsuki bonding in the game....

Senketsu: She could have easily ripped me to shreds if she wanted to. So, why didn’t she finish me off when she had the chance?

And last note on this episode, but as much as I love Ryuko and Senketsu, I still want like ten hours of all the characters just talking. Interactions like this crack me the heck up.

Uzu: That Matoi chick’s a tough cookie, all right. But she’s nothing compared to Lady Satsuki.

Nonon: Well, DUH! We don’t need a monkey to tell us that.

Episode 2

Episode 2 is where Ryuko’s story really starts to pick up.

Especially to me. Because a lot of it is just Ryuko and Senketsu talking. Lol.

I don’t really have anything constructive or insightful to say about much of what they talk about, but I definitely have reactions.

Like...

Senketsu: Junketsu is a Kamui just like me. We’re not all that different from one another.

Please don’t say that, Sen. You are very different from Junketsu.

And I love how Ryuko just keeps asking Senketsu what to do in this episode. You really see how much she trusts him as her partner. It is so sweet.

Ryuko: Senketsu. Got any ideas on how to beat her?

Ryuko: Then what should I do?

Well, at least until Ryuko totally ignores his last suggestion there, pfft. Maybe don’t ask if you don’t wanna listen to his answer, Ryuko.

Senketsu: Don’t trust her!

Ryuko: Shut up, Senketsu.

On the subject of Nui, though, the advertising stating that Ryuko “asks Nui to train her” is totally misleading. It’s more like, “Nui taunts Ryuko, and Ryuko is Ryuko, so she doesn’t back down.” Which makes a lot more sense.

I kinda have to have a chuckle at Ryuko’s super blase attitude, though.

Ryuko: Okay, Nui. What do I gotta do to get strong enough to beat Satsuki?

Nui: All you have to do is give up your humanity. There is a chance you’ll die, though. Wanna try it?

Ryuko: Sure. Bring it on.

Senketsu: Ryuko! No!

“Yeah, whatever, I’ll give up my humanity to beat Satsuki.” Oh, Ryuko.

Also, Kill la Kill is basically people going “Ryuko no!” and Ryuko going “Ryuko yes!” and I loved this bit.

Really, there’s just a lot of stuff I loved this episode. Like how Mako is totally not paying attention to any of this...

Or how Nui pulls this giant radio phone thingie from her dress and Ryuko is just like whatever about it omg...

I mean, as much as I would have liked a lot more from this game, this stuff is so charming and lovely that I don’t feel bamboozled or ripped off. After all these years, this is the kinda content I’ve been dying for.

But for a more “insightful” comment, we again get the sense here that there’s something messed up about the timeline. Just like Senketsu, Nui makes note of how strange it is that things are going as quickly as they are.

Episode 3

And aren’t they going quickly! Ryuko and co show up at the Cultural Sports and Grand Festival, and Satsuki has already chopped her mom’s head off. Most of this episode is the same as what happens in Satsuki’s story (but with more Senketsu talking, which I love, of course), so I don’t especially have all that much to say, but I will say that this part got my heart.

Ryuko: Sen... ketsu...!

My kids. I was kinda upset that I didn’t hear Ryuko shout for Senketsu in Satsuki’s story, so needless to say, I was glad to see that she does call for him after all. Even if they haven’t had anywhere near the bonding that they had in the similar point of the anime, she still loves him so much.

Episode 4

I pretty much just have gushing about this episode. Like...

Ryuko: Wait! Senketsu! Where is he?!

Ryuko ain’t got time for hugs! She needs to know her boy is okay!! 

She’s so desperate to find him...

Ryuko: Senketsu?! Senketsu! Where are you?!

And so happy when she sees him again...

Ryuko: You’re alive! Thank God!

And then Mako goes on and talks about how tightly Ryuko was clinging to him...

Mako: You were holding onto Senketsu’s scarf super tight.

Agh. My heart.

Just. Them.

Senketsu: Calm down. You can’t fight her in your current state.

Ryuko: Don’t worry. I’m calm. I’m not gonna go nuts again like last time. Promise.

They are so cute.

And funny.

Senketsu: You just said you’d stay calm and here you are not being calm again!

Pfft.

Anyway, my main criticism for the episode, as noted in my first write-up of the game, is that Ryuko apparently is convinced that she killed Nui (which, honestly, isn’t that clear here?) The fact that she doesn’t seem bothered or affected at all—and the fact that Senketsu doesn’t, either!—totally irks me.

But ey, that Shiro repairs Senketsu is great. I was hoping for Shiro and Senketsu bonding in the game because I think Shiro and Senketsu have similar relationships to Satsuki and Ryuko, respectively, and, you know, I almost kinda got it! I’ll take what I can get!

Buuut I’m a little confused. Didn’t Ragyo take part of Senketsu??? Or did I miss something??

Still, this game is just the most charming. Some of these interactions, I swear.

Like...

Ryuko: What do you think, Senketsu?

Senketsu: I find it too fantastic to believe.

Senketsu, you are talking clothes, and you find something too fantastic to believe? Okay, mate.

And I guess this is the justification for not putting Shiro on the roster (sob)...

Shiro: Please. I don’t “do” combat.

And ow...

Ryuko: Man. Satsuki’s family’s messed up.

And Mako is me, lol.

Mako: Yay, it’s Senketsu!

The story of this game is far from perfect, but jeez. I’m so charmed.

[awildpoliticalnerd]

Book Review: The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. By Robert Wright. (1994).

Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal is a look through the field of evolutionary psychology--at least as it stood at the book's writing in 1994. It's a promising work with a lot of insight. However, it can best be analogized to the peacock: If it survives, it does so despite the massive disadvantage of some obvious maladaptions. In the case of the peacock, the adaption is its oversized tail (or "train" as it's often referred to). In the case of The Moral Animal, it's Wright’s own unexamined moral and ideological biases presented as fact that lowered its potential. 

The big sell of the book is actually a rather interesting premise: Take the most famous proponent of the theory of evolution (Charles “the Chuck” Darwin) and use his life to demonstrate the principles of evolutionary psychology. Want to illustrate the theory that men are less biologically inclined towards lifelong monogamy thanks to our disproportionately small part in the baby-making process? Highlight the fact that Darwin literally sketched out a cost/benefit analysis of getting married in his notebook. Want to argue that young siblings should be both predisposed towards rivalry and cooperation thanks to kin selection? Give some (admittedly adorable) examples of Darwin’s many, many children. Because of this, the book was part popular-science exploration of a then-burgeoning topic and accessible biography on one of the most important scientific minds to ever emerge from the primordial ooze. When done well, this was the book at its best. It was discursive, informative, and enjoyable. It kept me engaged over much of the book’s nearly 400-pages.

(Lest someone use the opening example as evidence that I have no idea what the hell I’m talking about later in the review, let it be known that I know that the mystery of the peacock’s train was solved with the insights of sexual selection--that peahens select males with large trains because possessing one shows that the males have got to be pretty dang "fit" to survive with such a glaringly obvious disadvantage. Writing thematically consistent introductions is hard; I claim some artistic liberties here).

There are two core ways that this plays out throughout the book. The first is the odd insistence that every possible point that Wright could conceive of making in this vast subject was exemplified by good ol’ Chuck. And there were times that this was very clearly a stretch. The way he pursued his eventual wife, Emma, is described through a very genetic lens instead of primarily cultural terms (part of a supposed genetic predisposition towards the “Madonna-Whore” dichotomy for those of us with that infernal y chromosome). His differential patterns of grief for the loss of two of his children (he reportedly mourned the death of his ten year old daughter far longer, and far more intensely, then that of his infant son) are couched as being primarily due to their proximity to prime fertility age. His intense anxiety about publishing what would be his scientific legacy (you know, apart from being the 19th century’s foremost barnacle expert)? It’s the genes! It’s genes, genes, genes all the way down. 

I’d like to say that the book was always like this. Or, apparently, my desire to want to say this, my inability to do so, and the considerable amount of sarcasm required to pen these last two sentences are because of my genes. At least that’s the culprit if we were to take Wright literally. At times, he is positively (and ironically) evangelical about the power of our genetics in dictating our behavior. And it is to the rest of the work’s detriment. 

I’m not some biological denialist. I believe whole-heartedly in evolutionary theory. And, of course, the potential for any and all physical actions have to ultimately originate in the code that facilitates every biological process we undertake. But, first off, since natural selection works probabilistically, what do you think the odds are that, of the billions of humans to walk the Earth, the theory’s first popular progenitor is an acceptable exemplar of all of these processes? It’s laughably small. Literally smaller than the first common ancestor of all life on this planet compared to the sun. I don’t think that this means that Wright had to abandon the mission of using Darwin as an illustration--again, that’s part of what made this book so interesting--but it would be far better served if, instead, Wright said something to the effect of “we can see an imperfect analogy to these processes in Darwin’s life.” A small change but, as Wright knows, small changes can have a large impact.

I suspect that Wright’s self-admitted zealousy on the subject was partially spurred on by the fact that this book was written before epigenetics (the process through which different parts of the genome are activated/deactivated in response to environmental changes, changing the genes’ expression) was more rigorously demonstrated. I recall him adamantly insisting, once or twice, that genes “can’t be changed” once we’ve been conceived. At the time, that was the belief commensurate with the best available evidence. Although epigenetics do not disprove this, the truth is that our genes are far more flexible than originally thought. If genetic fixedness is what you’re arguing, it’s pretty tough to say anything other than “everything Darwin did ever is totally explainable through evolutionary psychology.” Even if it's not true. So I’ve decided to chalk this up to scientific progress and its inevitable, unenviable ability to reveal certain pronouncements as utterly wrong. It’ll undoubtedly happen to me; it happens to any practicing scientist. 

The second theme, though, is less able to be chalked up to the inexorable march of progress. That is the distinct, but related, assertion interwoven throughout the text that literally everything can be explained by evolutionary psychology. Moral codes? Evolutionary psychology. Selective memory of our own moral failings? Evolutionary psychology. Western social structures and the necessity of political and economic inequality? Survey says: Evolutionary psychology. 

These assertions are often manifest through what I call “cover your ass” language. We all know it; we all, regrettably, deploy it. It comes when the authors use absolute terms for the vast preponderance of the work and then say “now, do I really think that this explains everything? Of course not! But…” and then proceeds to make the exact same points, just with a couple of words interjected to signal intellectual humility. A few careful words do not erase the other 98% and the frames they collectively construct. Wright is arguing that evolutionary psychology alone can explain just about every social phenomenon, from the simple to profound. But the fact of the matter is that evolutionary psychology would be hard-pressed to understand why people on vacation with their families would bother to leave tips at restaurants despite the fact that they do, more often than not. (Seriously. Reciprocal altruism’s out since you’ll never see that server again. Odds are they weren’t related, so kin selection’s out too. Peacocking wealth contrasts with women’s supposed preference for mates who don’t needlessly divert resources away from her children. Tipping is a tough nut to crack for rational-choice-esque theoried like evolutionary psych). If it can’t explain something so banal as this, I have strong doubts of the deterministic account Wright explicates here. He will, almost begrudgingly, admit that social and environmental forces play a part in genetic expression. But he does not seem prepared to admit that it plays as big of a role as even the available evidence at the time did.

The more I read it, the more I felt that this book was symbolic of a lot of evolutionary science at the time: It contains real, interesting insight on genetic processes and their role (however expansive or limited) in complex interpersonal phenomena. These shouldn’t be undersold or ignored; I learned a great deal reading this book. The problem is that these insights come paired with uninterrogated moralizing, steeped in contemporaneous social events, passed off as timeless, objective Truth. The most obvious example (because of how often Wright returns to it) comes in the aforementioned asymmetry in male parental investment. Or, rather, the seemingly inevitable end-result: Divorce. This was often curiously paired with hand-wavey discussions of the Madonna-Whore dichotomy. Apparently, men who manage to have sex with women earlier in the relationship feel less inclined to see her as a viable marriage partner. Should a quickly-pairing couple (referring to the speed in which they decide to do the act and not, hopefully, the duration of the act itself) wind-up married, men are more likely to ditch the women--and ditch them for similar "kinds" of women. This discussion would often lead to Wright lamenting how women are engaging in sex earlier and earlier in romantic relationships. Things were better decades before this promiscuity was socially acceptable. Like back in Victorian England when Charles wed his beloved Emma. And the evidentiary linchpin, at times explicitly mentioned while only obliquely inferred at others, is the sky-high divorce rates that, Wright argues, came as a consequence of social structures being poorly designed considering our inherent genetic predispositions. 

Of course, we now know that the high divorce rates of the 90s were a temporary thing. First-marriages are lasting far longer than they did (on average) in the 80’s, 90’s, and early 00’s but divorces are just as easy (if not easier) than ever before. If it was entirely because of early sex and our baser nature, the pattern should continue. The fact that it doesn’t is both evidence that evolutionary psychology is more limited than Wright suggests and that the urgency imbued in his analysis was shaped by his own moral sensibilities rather than those seen in society as a whole, inculcated by natural selection.

This wasn’t all of the social critique Wright was inclined to wade in. All fields and theories have their critics. Good authors often anticipate common objections and address them in the text. He saw his most likely critics as less scientifically driven as ideologically so. Lofty prose to the contrary, he was on the attack far more than on the defense; Darwin found himself a new bull dog. His target: Those dastardly post-modernists. He often panned “post-modernism” for their critiques of evolutionary psychology, often claiming (without much evidence) that it stemmed from the post-modernists’ universal and fundamental ignorance about biology. Honestly, the way Wright so derisively talked about them, I was surprised that he didn’t bust out a couple of verbose “yo mamma” jokes. 

What makes his vituperative swipes so ironic 25 years later is that the post-structuralists were right. Many evolutionary scientists were predisposed towards advancing biologically deterministic theories of human behavior. Any practicing geneticist worth their salt today would tell you that human behavior is so dependent on genes' interactions with the social and physical environment that even things we take for granted as “hard-wired” (such as one’s sexual preference) has been persuasively shown to not be the consequence of singular genes--or even wholly the consequence of complex genetic interactions. This is a far, far cry from Wright’s portrayal in the book; I honestly think he would be aghast at this suggestion, as if it surrenders precious ground to heretical forces in the battle for all of science’s soul. And the post-modernists are consequently vindicated in questioning what kind of power is made manifest, and towards whom is it ultimately directed, when these assertions are given the pop-science stamp of total veracity. (Actually, despite it being basically their entire deal, I can’t recall a moment when Wright discussed power when issuing his disses of post-modernism. Instead, he discussed them in the same kind of shifting, ephemeral manner that paints them as boogeymen with accusations that were often equally grounded in reality. I think he would find his own intellectual horizons broadened if he allotted the same serious attention to their intellectual contributions as he demands for his subject). 

To shoehorn in a personal complaint that I had, the book was heavy in evolutionary theory but very, very sparse in social-psychological insight. Spare a chapter where Wright tried to rehabilitate Freud’s reputation (as successful attempt as one’s going to have considering how uphill that battle is), most of the psychology was relegated to sexual pairing preferences and over-general suggestions on morality and social bonding. The former was interesting and insightful; the rest woefully underdeveloped. I may be spoiled by books like Behave and How Emotions Are Made (part of these phenomenal works both touched on how evolution may bring around specific cognitive processes), but I think Wright could have comfortably fit interesting, more specific insights if he shed the weird moralism and extensive post-modernist vendetta.

I hate closing reviews with negatives, no matter how well deserved. Presumably that’s in my genes as well. So I’d actually like to conclude by saying that I well and truly learned a lot from this book. Some of it was less novel so much as it was a refresher (I have read a number of prominent books on evolutionary theory, including the oft-referenced Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins), but some insights were well and truly new to me and illuminating. The one that stands out the most at the moment is the game theoretic accounts claiming that monogamy ultimately serves men (while institutional polygyny would be better for women) and the argument that people are more rude in spaces with fewer permanent interpersonal ties. I also thought the point that adherence to cultural values are an expedient for environmentally contingent reproductive success was well argued. I don’t buy these arguments entirely, but I think they and other points are worth mulling over to extract the useful bits. But in order to get to these bits, you have to be attentive and willing to parse through a lot of things that, in the rat-race of ideas, deserve to be thoroughly out-competed. 

[dkniade]

Emotional Detachment in Albedo and Dorian

Warning: goes briefly into emotional and verbal abuse

Since Dorian’s observant and calm as himself anyway, does that mean I should half-imagine I’m writing Albedo when I’m writing Dorian? That feels kinda insulting to him🤔He talks about human nature indirectly while implying his true feelings, which is something Albedo’s done as well.

.

“The First Experiment: Elements”, Albedo’s Story Quest “Traveler Observation Report”

Albedo: “People are the same, they can understand, empathize, encourage, and support one another. When you're sick, a doctor can diagnose you because they are you. When something goes wrong, you can ask people who've made the same mistake for their experience, because you are them.”

Albedo: “But a peculiar person... They don't have much recourse for the things we take for granted. The essence of their life is fundamentally different.”

.

But Dorian takes on a much colder tone, fitting for his background as a failed experimental subject and, implicitly, victim of emotional and verbal abuse. What’s worse is that he doesn’t have a found family and friends, unlike Albedo with Alice and Klee, the alchemists, and the Knights of Favonius.

“The Snowy Past”, 2.3 event Shadows Amidst Snowstorms

Dorian: “Indeed, the sorting process is necessary.”

Dorian: “Humans are such practical creatures. They only want those things that are good. Once they have learned to distinguish between good and bad, they will never stop comparing things in their minds.”

Dorian: “Useless things should be disposed of at the outset.”

.

Even at the end of the event, while he directly adresses Paimon’s behaviour, he still doesn’t explicitly refer to himself although the second part implies that he’s talking about himself. He’s distant about his feelings.

“A Secret Born From Ashes”, 2.3 event Shadows Amidst Snowstorms

Dorian: “I think you are only so attached to them because you don’t have much fruit of this quality in your possession. When someone’s pockets are full and their spirit is fulfilled, they don’t easily fall prey to this kind of yearning.”

.

So, he doesn’t admit his own feelings, even when talking about comparison or how he’s similar to Albedo, as fun as it is writing him that way, which I’ve done here as part of a piece I’m writing.

“Do you look at me and see an imitation? An imperfect copy? How is it that you admire that Kreideprinz so much and not I, when I’m supposed to be—!”

Ah, unless… I create a situation that’d push him to that point? It’ll have to be an extreme situation that causes him to snap, and even then, that line above certainly doesn’t feel like it belongs to the same character as the canon lines…🤔

.

I feel Dorian’s canon reactions are not proportional to what he’s been through as “the failure of the Primordial Human Project” and a sentient human being. I’d like to explore this darker aspect of him, somehow. Research for this sort of thing… may be hard to read. And what’s more, the reason why I resonate with him— haha

[sweaterinvested]

— up, up, and away:;

SETTING   /   OUTSIDE THE PRIMRODIAL AUTO CLUB AND MC CLUB HOUSE. EVENT   /    PRIMORDIAL MOTORCYCLE CLUB 40TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY. TRIGGER WARNINGS   /   GUN VIOLENCE, BLOOD, INJURY, DEATH.

    Coming to the Primordial anniversary party wasn’t his brightest idea. Desmond is well aware of that. But Sutton had invited him, and he knew that despite the thin ice he was treading on with the gang that there would be people there he cared about. And of course...he didn’t want to say no to Sutton after she’d invited him— especially when his best friend had seemed so down as of late. So he was here for moral support, and perhaps there was the smallest kernel in his still bruised ribs that said he was here to simply prove that he wouldn’t be bullied into submission. But he wasn’t here to listen to whispers and spy and snoop today. No, he’d decided he would just be Desmond, the high-school English teacher, and get some of that glorious potato salad he’d heard so much about. At some point he’d meandered into the outside area of the party to the front of the shop, getting some fresh air and the like.

    Being a teacher in such a small town came with its own hazards, one of which being that he couldn’t go much of anywhere without running into a student, a parent, or a coworker. Today seemed to be a day for the first two of those roles, and it hadn’t taken long for him to run find AJ and his little sister, Iris. AJ had started off as, for lack of a better word, a nuisance. But Desmond knew that beneath the acting out, there must be a reason for it. So instead of writing him off as mini-Anthony, he’d taken the time to know AJ, and encourage him in his writing. In truth, the boy wasn’t bad at English, especially when it came to stroy-telling. In the end...he liked to think he and AJ had reached an understanding of one another, and were as close to friends as a teacher and student could get.

    It had been the reason Desmond had brought along a gift for AJ to this shindig for the boy’s birthday, grinning as he passed it along to the student he considered a success, the two of them bathed in smiles together before things shifted. Just a few moments later...something changed. A loud crashing sound, screams erupting from a nearby crowd, and a chill went down Desmond’s spine. Then he was hit, a solid mass coming into contact with the back of his head. Something warm trickled down his hairline, and he put a hand to the sticky substance on his skull to pull it away...ruby red.

    A little laugh erupted from him as he recognized the insides of a pie from the dessert table, and he turned to find the culprit. A young girl stood there wide-eyed, realizing her vital mistake “I wasn’t aiming for you!” she blurted out, trying to claim her innocence. “AJ was there, and then you walked in front of him!” Apparently, a food fight had broken out when he wasn’t looking. He should have just shrugged it off, and given the girl a free pass. But everything had been so heavy lately, and those few moments of lightness were ones he wanted to hang onto for as long as he could. So instead of grinning and saying ‘no problem’, he scooped up a pig in a blanket from his plate and tossed it her direction. His laugh came when he hit his target, and the girl’s stunned features slowly spread into a smile of her own. Her expression changed again, and a nearly blood curdling scream was ripped from her lips. So extreme was it that Desmond flinched, a frown coming over him. That was a bit dramatic of a reaction, wasn’t it?

    Everything that happened next came incredibly fast. The screams of joy coming from those in the food fight around him...moved, morphed into something much more sinister like the one that had come from the girl who’d been his target. And then the gunshots rang out, and the sound of the first one was like a punch to his gut. Pop! It only took a moment for the air to be filled with a downpour of the bullets, coming in quick succession. Pop! Pop! Pop! There wasn’t any time to think before Desmond was grabbing AJ by the collar to pull him to the ground, trying to make the boy less of a target. Next was Iris— who he brought down to the dirt and grass with him as well. Chaos was quick to come, robbing the happy destivity of its joy in only seconds, and groans of pain and terror pervaded the air. Desmond didn’t even bother to wonder exactly who was shooting. All that mattered was that danger and death were here to knock- no kick in the door of the security they’d been nestled in.

    Instinct kicked in, the deep-seated need he’d always felt to protect flashing through him as he looked for a place of cover, and adrenaline rushed through him. He had to get Iris and AJ out of here. A thickening in the trees caught his eye, as well as a large boulder that could hopefully create a shield for them. Desmond dared to peek his head up from the ground, trying to find a lull in the gunfire for him to make a break for it along with the kids. Finally their opportunity came, and he was unceremoniously picking the pair back up with him, directing AJ towards the trees with shouted words. He didn’t bother taking chances with Iris, scooping the girl into his arms to run with her to the treeline. By all means— Desmond shouldn’t have been able to do it, not in the state Andy had left him after the gas station run in. But adrenaline was a wonderful thing, dulling the pain of his bruised ribs to be barely noticeable as her ran with Iris and AJ.

    Finally they reached the place of safety, and Desmond put Iris to the ground once more, looking AJ in the eye, a confidence and fierceness there that gripped the teacher in times such as these. “Stay here. Look after your sister. Don’t move, and cover your heads.” Then Desmond was gone once more, diving back into the sound of terror and panic. The smell of blood had already seeped into the air, so thick that he swore he could almost taste it when he breathed. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation where he wondered whether or not he should be helping the gangs, rushing to save the people that he’d worked so hard to fix. There was no thought at all as he rushed back and forth between the safety of the trees, and the people still floundering about the scene of what was once a party, now turned into a murder field. People were at risk, and Desmond helped people. It was as simple as that.

    It wasn’t long before he had blood streaks painting his clothes, most of it not belonging to him, but rather the people he’d been helping. There had been one who’d stopped moving as he dragged them, the air no longer finding their lungs as they’d died in his grasp. There was no time to linger, though. Not now. Move on, and save those you can. But he had caught a few scrapes along the way, the sting of them fading with what should be the pain of his ribs. Still- the lines of red along his arms and face were angry and insistent as he went from place to place, person to person, dragging, and carrying, and guiding to safety. The process seemed endless, as if he was caught in a long tunnel running towards a light that was never getting closer, entirely unattainable. And yet he kept on sprinting because that’s all he knew how to do. He had never known when to stop, never known how to hold back when it came to things like this. That much was obvious with so many things in his life.

    First was Lettie. First was always Lettie in his mind— often forgetting to think of much else these days other than how he most likely had lost something so valuable in his life due to his inability to just let things be. Next was Andy. Desmond couldn’t just shut up and take a threat, couldn’t stop the continued words and such from slipping through his lips that had earned him the stench of gasoline and aching ribs. There were too many examples in his life to count, reaching back as far as he could possibly remember. The only thing that had ever stopped him was when he was made to stop, when his body quite literally couldn’t keep going, or his mind was scrambled to bits.

    And it seemed that another instance such as that was now. Again he felt something hit him, though this time it was in his thigh. Once more his hand went to inspect whatever it was that had found him, and there’s a small sense of deja vu as that hand came away sticky and red. Shot. He’d been shot. There was a moment of almost wonder as he paused for a second, nearly unable to believe that this is what fate had in store for him. This pain he feels. The burning of the bullet searing into his flesh as more and more blood gushes from the wound in his leg. Isn’t there some important artery in his thigh? One that’s nearly always fatal if hit? But he can’t bring himself to worry about it as he limps forward on his crippled leg, looking for another person to help to safety.

    Still, he refused to stop— to quit— to let something other than good and right win. However, he’s not left with much of a choice when his leg gave out on him in the heart of where the party had been in full swing, crumpling to the ground under the weight of himself. He moved to stand again. Determined not to let this get the better of him. He would crawl if he had to. But just before he can straighten himself, something struck across his head...hard. Hard enough for his vision to blink out of sight, and make him see spots. Suddenly the world is even fuzzier, and his line of thought goes garbled and nonsensical.

    Why was he thinking about potato salad again when he can’t seem to figure out which way was up or down? This time he hit the ground without catching himself, not even realizing it’s rushing up to meet him until he was lying on it, face down. Everything was dark, and Desmond didn’t know if it was because his eyes were closed, or perhaps because he’s dying. Even if he’s not dying currently, he can’t imagine a passerby might turn him over to see if he’s alive or not. Why would someone try and help the English teacher who’s been snooping around far too much?  If he doesn’t simply die from whatever’s happened to his head, surely he’ll bled out before anyone gives enough of a fuck to find him, to notice he’s gone. Ignored just like he was for the first half of his life.

    Dying. He had thought of that more often than not as of late, mostly because of the rising tension of the clubs, and his meeting with Andy at the gas station. If he died here, at least it would be better than dying with Andy. Here he had done something, here he made a difference. And that was all he had wanted to do with the world. Make a difference. It was why he’d become a teacher in the first place, to teach the younger generation that they had the power to change everything if they wanted to, to make the world their own, and to form it better than their predecessors. Desmond had helped people today, helped AJ, and Iris, and plenty of other people he didn’t know the name of. He’d make a difference. If he died today..at least it wouldn’t be alone at a gas station, unable to fight back. He’d die a death worthy of a hero, having saved those that might not have saved themselves. And that was all he had ever wanted. The difference was made.

[twitchesandstitches]

Lilisheb the Shoggirl

Basic Concept: A nice and sweet girl who happens to be a gigantic shoggoth-like creature; her alien appearance is comedically at odds with the unusual situations she finds herself in. And it’s funny for a Lovecraftian entity to be a bit of a wallflower!

Appearance: A massive lime-green woman with a vaguely humanoid body, her body composed of a constantly shifting amorphous mass; new features continually drift in and out of being, additional limbs are common. Overall she has a fairly solid, thick build, but she’s just slim enough to qualify as curvy instead. She’s not usually super busty by the standards of my characters, but she can be! Black veins streak across her body, especially wherever she is about to change form. All her body is extremely soft, but not to the point of being liquid. She’s still solid, just… extremely wobbly. She’s got a lot of subtle details of marine life in general: gills, the sheen of scales, and so on, but she appears to base her form specifically on turtles and octopi in general. She likes those.

Her face is mostly featureless; huge, plump lips, several sets of eyes in fairly random places, and a slight swell where humans would have a nose. She does have several thick tentacles where humans would have hair.

Below the waist, her body is a mass of tentacles, notably thicker than her upper body; she can grow any number of these, and her arms are a similar part of tentacles. She had pseudopods instead of fingers, with very dextrous cillae; she can grow fingers, but prefers not to. She has a very plump and shelf-tier backside, and takes some effort to keep it all big and round.

Due to her shapeshifting abilities, she can take on pretty much any shape she wants, though she cannot alter her species; she is obviously a shoggoth girl, in any form. She generally prefers not to deviate from this base form too much, but doesn’t mind adding extra features such as additional eyes, breasts (for multi boob elements), or limbs.

Backstory: She is OLD. Like, super old, really old. She was old long before humanity ever made their first tentative steps into space, and she may well have been alive since before our most distant ancestors had even begun to walk upright on the plains of Central Africa. Consequently, not a whole lot about her is clear, as her vast age leaves her earlier times obscured by the fog of ages, and she would indeed like to know more of what she has forgotten over the years. It is clear, though, that she is a fairly ordinary woman of possibly the eldest known species in the multiverse. She’s lived through at least four different collapses (societal, galactic and even truly cosmic levels) and in conjunction with the constant disasters she sees on an almost daily basis, she’s become something of a hyper anxious nervous wreck.

She is a member of her species commonly referred to as a brood queen; she reproduces asexually, gestating and producing hundreds of offspring that she can then implant in physically receptive mortals - and in turn give her offspring some of their traits and gradually help her own people adapt to changing circumstances - and her relationships with mortals can cause her to gestate entire new species from them. AS a consequence she’s always been rather sheltered and tends to be very codependent on those around her for emotional support.

In fairly recent years, she has done her best to assume ordinary jobs free from stress and Adventure. She does well as an archaeologist, not so much seeing it as uncovering mysteries as remembering things that modern folk have forgotten or laid aside, but unfortunately that does tend to involve a lot of adventure. Invariably, whether she is a cleaner or manager or professor of magic, she winds up entangled in stressful situations.

Personality: Most people, blessed with powers that make humans look like wimps and a natural form of immortality - or something close to it - would probably be a bit arrogant if they spend all their time around those doomed to die by the advance of time. Lilisheb is not one of those people; fundamentally sweet, kind-hearted and as inclined to nastiness as a lump of jelly, she is deeply loving and is a stable center despite being a primordial mass of shapeshifting immortal flesh.

She’s very anxious in pretty much any high-octane situation or what takes her out of a comfort zone… which is bad for her since most of the events I write her into are full of ADVENTURE. This all despite her being borderline indestructible. She does her best to stay calm, which usually lasts for all of a few seconds.

Outside of constantly panicking when villains attack, giant monsters start fighting or she gets pulled into a treasure hunt as a meat shield, she’s a friendly and kind entity, doing her best to put others at ease. She is very affectionate, and doesn’t have much interest in social norms. She shows her love the ways that feel right to her, even if this means sucking you right into her with an overly affectionate hug! Her basis deamonir is like a combo of bubbly and sedate, easygoing but very cheerful about it. Because her people tend to take a very long response to anything, she comes off as obnoxiously airheaded to her people. She does her duties calmly and without emotion, and often serves as a living couch to her smaller friends..

Species: Her people are commonly referred to as shoggoths, but their own word for themselves - roughly translated into one human language - can be rendered as ‘eldlimi’, or eldlimus in singular. They are unbelievably old, and hold a competitive place for ‘oldest beings in the known multiverse’ alongside the Transformers of Cybertron, the giants of the elemental planes, and various precursor societies. They have little common appearance, generally manifesting as a mass of amorphous flesh that is almost liquid in its flowy-ness. They can learn to assume whatever form suits them, though they are often inclined to use certain morphs as a default. Tentacles, multiple eyes, and aquatic traits dominate their instinctive forms, suggesting that their true origin is deep sea.

Certainly the eldlimi are very, very old and established, having stood as masters of the cosmos time and time again. They hold a position for establishing cosmic councils where all civilizations can meet together and peacefully negotiate for the future, and did so shortly after recovering from their most recent collapse. Due to their age, they tend to not take ordinary mortals too seriously, but at worst they tend to infantilizing others, rather than cruelty or oppression.

Fandom: Original. While heavily influenced by shoggoths from Lovecraft’s mythos, she bears little resemblance to either them or their outlook in a practical sense. She’s more or less her own thing.

Abilities: As typical with her people, she is a shapeshifter and can remold her amorphous body into nearly any shape. She can manifest a seemingly limitless number of limbs, eyes or even produces mouths or relevant organs from her body. (Multiple breasts, mouths of any shape or more delicate, unusual transformations are well within her power.) On the same note, she can alter her body to produce certain liquids or chemicals as she sees fit, assuming she knows what they are made of and the details of their production. She could make herself lactate enormous amounts of super-nutritious milk, for instance, but not super-flammable organic gasoline unless she worked out its chemical composition first.

She can grow smaller or larger, with no real limitation besides the mass she has available to work with, though she naturally gravitate towards larger, squishier forms. She can produce as many eyes or limbs as she requires, but leans towards tentacles rather than hands or feet. While she can force her insides into a rigid framework like a skeleton or even an exoskeleton for armor, she finds this deeply uncomfortable and prefers not to. She also cannot change her body’s consistency from its natural spongey nature, and thus she cannot disguise herself as a different species.

Her body’s amorphous nature grants her some other advantages. She can extend her jaws and swallow anything whole no matter the size, as long as she can wrap around it, and make her digestive acids extremely strong; she could even shift them around into her egg chambers, flushing them with regenerative liquids as an unbirthing method. She can push herself through most gaps and flow out like living water, and she is absurdly flexible thanks to her lack of an internal skeleton. Many attacks will simply pass through her if she remembers to decrease her solidity, and those that do hit her will likely be regenerated very quickly by her immortal flesh.

On a more prosaic note, while she claims to have no useful skills, her sheer age means she has picked up an extremely wide variety of skill sets. She has likely done every single conceivable non-violent career in existence, from plumber to manager to economics expert to caregiver… it goes on indefinitely, even if she can’t remember it or if they were so specific to a certain time’s technologies and social norms that they no longer have applicability. This gives her an enormous range in practical abilities, and incidentally makes her a fantastic teacher.

Height: Varies enormously; since she is a shapeshifter, she can be virtually any possible height if she has the mass to do it. She can’t just grow to whatever height she wants, as if she doesn’t have enough mass, she won’t be able to even stand up under her own power. She typically stabilized at around twelve feet or so, barring exceptionally large meals or unusual magical circumstances.

Relationships: She’s a friendly, sweet and gentle person somewhat prone to developing infatuations with people she has just met, so she has a LOT of friends and casual lovers, though it can be very hard to understand exactly what’s going on in her head. She is by far the single oldest of my OCs, even older than the likes of eons-ancient Jord, and tends to drift into the role of a den mother among her friends for that reason. She doesn’t have any established relationships as of this post, but some possibilities:

Sekhma - she thinks Miss Dionsi is cool, but way too serious! Relax a bit, no need to go all evangelical and stuff…. She may be one of Sekhma’s customers, seeking help for her chronic anxiety problems.

Pavumi - She has NO idea what Pavumi honestly is and that deeply worries her. She may be akin to her own people… or to their makers. This worries Lilisheb a lot, even though Miss Ekidna is a really nice lady!

Hivluk - what a handsome young man! She adores him, he’s just so sweet! For his part, he’s fine with her advances, as she is not even slightly scary.

Toast - she’s a xenophile sweetheart who wants everyone to be happy; he’s a loopy killing machine who wants to kill all humanity for what are probably imagined slights. They don’t get along at all for those reasons, but would probably be decent friends if that wasn’t an issue.

Odina: Besties!!! Both of them hate adventure, and would rather stay home and enjoy mundane, slice of life things. When together, Odina tends to be the more practical and sensible between the two, and gets sandwiched into her body a lot.

Pred Level: Moderate predator, with some prey levels. She is not primarily a predator-type, finding it horrifyingly cruel to swallow friends whole and hurt them no matter how hungry you are. Against threats, ordinary animals or genuine monsters, though, she has little problem simply swallowing them whole with as little interest as if she had finished off a fast food plate. It’s not her first course of action, though, and she is very reluctant to do this.

Prey Level: She’s likely vulnerable to more serious predatory specialists, due to her lack of combat skills and general timidity. Her prey levels are fairly high, owing to both the shape of her body and her trusting, timid personality. However, because of her regenerating flesh, its pretty much impossible to kill her through digestion alone; even one speck outside that gut will regenerate back to the true Lilisheb!

Relevant Kink Material: Xeno stuff in general; her shapeshifting powers offer many possibilities for Big Sexy Monster Girls. Her vast size, kindly demeanor and romantic inclinations are great sweetness material.

[freyjuseggr]

So a lot of heathen, and neo-pagan, recon especially, theology is based off of the works of some prolific anthropologists and historians, so keep in mind that a lot of this is a lot less “ancient” than we often talk like it is. A lot of it is based off of these works.

So that said, a little bit on ritual. It is typically defined as “the established form for a ceremony” but for our purposes, I’d like to also add “an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner” or “a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence” So using these second definitions, ritual is defined by doing, or more precisely preforming. This will be important later.

According to Mircea Eliade (other ritual theorists make use of this distinction but do not go into nearly as much depth in how to designate sacred vs profane space), the space of the universe, of our world at least, is delineated into the sacred and the profane (the opposite of sacred, this is not a moralized word) two opposite states of being with clear distinctions. Eliade describes the sacred as “[manifesting itself] as a reality of a wholly different order from ‘natural’ realities” and “man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane” therefore it is helpful to understand that, for Eliade, the profane is our natural, mundane, world and we distinguish the sacred by its difference from the profane.

So when it comes to sacred space, that’s usually pretty easy. A church, a tree, an altar, a crossroads, a hǫrgr, etc. These are places in which the divine presence can be not only felt but observed. Whether it is the sanctity of the space that allows the divine to enter or the presence of the divine that creates the sacred is open for interpretation typically, but one does not exist without the other. And you’ll often hear about people purifying themselves before entering a sacred space, so as to not make it profane.

However temporal sacred-ness is a little more difficult to nail down. Using Eliade again, sacred time is “a primordial mythic time made present” meaning, when we are in a sacred time, we are in the ‘before times’ in which myth occurred. and it “represents the reactualization of a sacred event that took place in a mythical past” so essentially, sacred time is then repeating itself in a cycle, every time we enter into it, we are entering the same sacred time as before.

For Catherine Bell, time is an important factor in ritualization and the construction of tradition. She discusses tradition as being a paradox between an “atemporal order and the profane world of temporal change” and how “each is differentiated from but dependent upon the other.” This really doesn’t mean a whole lot on its own but in the context of myth and ritual, it is a way to set something up as ‘how it was always done’ or a sense of continuity in the context of the creation, and subsequent recreation, of ritual. This recreation of meaning, and therefore ritual is best explained by Ronald L Grimes “ritual meaning consists just as surely of the random thoughts and gestures that occur during a ritual” and so the ritual meaning is different from when they were first constructed just by virtue of the continual doing.

Ronald L Grimes discusses the different types of ritual time. “a time between the times” or transitional times or seasons, lifecycles, or a change in social status, is a displacement of the usual sense of chronologically ordered time. He mentions kairos or ‘a pulse of opening and closing’ described when we experience things we cannot anticipate, they catch us by surprise. As well as ‘anticipated time’ or cyclical time, which is like what Eliade describes, though maybe not quite the same, since we can anticipate the return of that time though many do not consider it a repetition. This latter kind of time, the return is what categorizes most traditional liturgical rites.

So what does that have to do with heathenry? many heathens consider only Eliade’s conception of ritual time, wherein ritual as we preform it is a recreation of the moment of the creation. However this is not a particularly practical way to look at ritual in the heathen context. There is indeed very little to be found of a real creation of any sense, beyond the recreation of ritual as Grimes explains it. I would posit that the sacred time in which heathen ritual typically exists is more along the lines of ritualization and construction of tradition. What heathens are creating when preforming ritual is the ritual itself.

When talking about Judaism and the Jewish way of viewing sacred time, the cyclical time of return seems to be the most accurate way to understand it. For them, the Shabbat has been happening since the creation of the world itself, it has been the way they have delineated time for themselves and is thus both tradition in the sense of Bell and cyclical in the sense of Grimes, while also invoking the idea of the mythic time as set up by Eliade. This traditional ritual time is sacred itself because God made it so. It was declared scared ‘in the beginning’ and has been at every time it has reoccurred since then. This is the definition and practical use of sacred time I was referring to in the op. The application of it is meaningful as both a religiously symbolic time as well as a regularly occurring time that is designated as separate from our profane time of the rest of the week, thus as per Eliade making it sacred.

Sources The Sacred and the Profane Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice Beginnings in Ritual Studies

one thing that i think i really do appreciate that Judaism has is the practical application of sacred/profane time. like heathenry would delineate space but it really always did a poor job of applying the notions of sacred time, even during holidays and ritual. and having a way to have sacred time actually mean something is very appealing to me

[katvontea]

Kathleen Lowrey is an associate professor of anthropology at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Alberta, in Canada. She is also serving as the chair of the undergraduate program – an administrative role which includes duties such as chairing a committee about courses, approving transfer credits, and running a special seminar for honors students in the department.

She’s also a feminist. However, according to some anonymous students and the higher-ups of her University, she is not the right kind of feminist. Because she believes that women are … women. Even worse, she believes that men cannot be women because they don’t have a vagina.

These extreme and radical views caused her to become “problematic” as she was pressured to leave her administrative role. When she refused to do so, she was fired.

Lowrey says she was told in meetings that complaints, made to the dean of students and the university’s Office of Safe Disclosure and Human Rights, were that her views on feminism were making students feel unsafe and there were concerns this was driving students away from choosing anthropology as a major. She doesn’t know exactly the nature of the complaints — or who made them — because they were made informally and anonymously, she said.

“My chair was hoping that for the good of the department I would resign from my position.”

She said she was also told she had been discouraging students from organizing Pride events, which she denies. It was this claim which led her to conclude the complaints centred around her views on gender.

Following a subsequent meeting with the dean of the faculty, she received a letter saying she couldn’t effectively continue in the role and her leaving would be in the best interests of the department. Lowrey said the letter didn’t expound upon the reasons for her dismissal, and she maintains she has never been given proper reasons for her dismissal in writing. – National Post, University of Alberta prof loses admin role over views on gender that made students feel ‘unsafe’

Lowrey is not a conservative that is looking to “own the libs”. She actually ascribes her intellectual formation to Marxism and radical feminism. While this kind of background should receive an enthusiastic thumbs-up from the social justice crowd, it is not enough anymore.

That’s because Lowrey describes herself as a “gender-critical feminist” which considers biological sex of primordial importance in fighting for women’s rights. While, only a few years ago, this precept was the norm in feminist circles, it is now deemed bad and “transphobic”.

Until what seems like a few minutes ago, there was nothing controversial about this opinion. But now there is. The only “correct” opinion to hold is that gender expression trumps biology in any rights-based claims. And in academic circles, Lowrey’s views, which she is at no pains to hide on campus and off, are a form of apostasy that cries out for punishment. – National Post, Barbara Kay: U of A professor holds the line on free expression

Lowrey boils her views on feminism down to a few key ideas: Men cannot get pregnant, lesbians don’t have penises, and biological sex is real. These views apparently made students feel “unsafe” and  “caused them harm”.

We are talking about a University (a place of the highest learning possible) being “harmed” by the pre-school teaching that “boys have weewees”.

In an interview with the Edmonton Journal, Lowrey explained the rationale behind her views:

“People should be able to express their gender in whatever manner they wish (but) I don’t agree with biological sex being irrelevant. I think treating biological sex as irrelevant has some really serious policy implications. As an example, housing trans-identified men in women’s prisons is not fair to women prisoners and I think it puts women at risk.”

“I said on the first day of class we’re going to read material in this class that are currently out of fashion in academia. You certainly don’t have to agree with me. Since this is a university, I think it’s important to be exposed to — this is important literature they should be aware of.

The university has said it’s perfectly OK to fire people for doubting that men can get pregnant, for doubting lesbians can have penises. The implications are very dangerous because this is a live issue in our contemporary Canadian democracy.”

She is also worried about students who agree with her but are afraid to voice their opinion due to the current climate of intimidation.

“They’re not paranoid. Because this is not an abstruse problem, it’s a live debate in our current society and for the university to take the position that if you’re on the wrong side of this, we’re going to fire you, is terrifying for students.”

Another worrying aspect of this story is the underhanded (and cowardly) way her situation was handled. Complaints were “informally” made by anonymous students, whom Lowrey doubts ever attended her class. Also, she was falsely accused of discouraging a Pride parade. When she was pressured to resign, Lowrey refused to do so, arguing that the onus was on the university to dismiss her and to explain its reasons in writing. The Dean of arts then dismissed her in writing with the vague reason:

“It is not in the best interests of the students or the university for Lowrey to continue sitting.”

In other words, Lowrey wanted the university to justify in writing the basic principle behind her dismissal. There was none. The sad fact is that Lowrey was probably targeted by the radical groups that are turning universities into indoctrination camps. And the university caved into the pressure. This is happening all over the world.

J.K. Rowling Also Under Attack

Until recently, the author of the Harry Potter series J.K. Rowling has been enjoying unlimited praise from the social justice crowd. However, things soured greatly when she began expressing her views regarding gender a few months ago. More recently, Rowling expressed her frustration towards an absurdly-worded headline that uses the expression “people who menstruate” instead of “women”.

The response to this tweet was immediate. And, of course, mass media amplified everything to make it a big issue. Somehow, the tweet was interpreted as being “transphobic” – even though she never expressed any kind of “phobia” towards trans people. Rowling was also accused of being a TERF – an acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”. Yeah, they’re good at inventing words for censoring ideas.

As if on cue, Harry Potter himself took his broom and flew into the debate to “correct” Rowling.

Faced with this kind of backlash, many retract what they say and apologize profusely. J.K. Rowling stood her ground and tried to clarify things. However, I doubt it will quell the Twitter bots programmed to attack anything that goes against the Agenda.

In Conclusion

Although I might fundamentally disagree with both Lowrey and Rowlings on a wide range of topics, we can at least agree on some basic facts. First, telling the truth is not an act of hate – it is an act of telling the truth. Second, one’s gender is based on one’s genitals. The words gender and genitals both come from the Latin root gen, which means “to reproduce”. Gender is based on one’s reproductive organs. The fact that one declares that they identify as another gender is all well and good, but it does not change one’s actual gender. However, that is what is being forced on the world right now. Some like cite WHO-funded “studies” from like 2015 to explain that sex and gender are not the same. How about the “studies” from the last several thousands of years before that?

I mean, there are currently men who “identify as women” competing in women’s sports and dominating them. Newsflash: Men and women have different bodies. Are we seriously that delusional?

This agenda is nothing less than insane. And they know it. For this reason, they do not encourage rational debates based on facts. Instead, they label those they disagree with as “hateful”. The result: University professors get shunned and authors get attacked by media, even though they did not say anything hateful.

As Rowling stated: “It isn’t hate to speak the truth”.

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