#did tumblr remove... underlining...

[softgrungeprophet]

something something the frequency with which peter parker angrily wishes death upon people in his inner thoughts, a la "diebullseyediebullseyediebullseyediebullseye" (asm#596)

(he's pretending to be venom with a suit made of unstable molecules)

"Kill Johnny Storm! Dispose of the body!! Collect insurance!!!" (ff#17) etc...

this of course is only two (mostly) humorous examples but there are definitely more lmao

[skylarphilece]

BRATZ SIM DOWNLOAD 🩷

THE BRATZ - in my sim style are now up for download! Free DL 🩷

(1) Everyday outfit is included in the download! Each sim uses similar skin details cc so be sure if you download more than one, to remove unnecessary or duplicate files ✨

thank you tumblr for all the love you’ve shown on this project! 🥹 take a trip down memory lane with me and watch the latest episode of TOWNIE TOONS featuring the girls with a passion for fashion!

👆🏽 click underlined to watch 🫶🏽

did we just become bffs? More of my socials HERE ✨

[angellayercake]

did anyone ask for "i hate writing" yet?? I'm terribly curious what that could be!

I am sorry I am only seeing this now. I'm not sure if it is me being incompetent or Tumblr or both but anyway 🙃 apologies!

'I hate writing' is my working document for Banchetto because writing it (or not writing it as the case usually is) stresses me out so much! I know I haven't updated in forever but I genuinely am still chipping away at it. I am just way too overinvested in this story and although it is all planned out in full actually getting from outline and draft to finished is a difficult process haha

But saying that I do have something finished from the next chapter so here it is a treat/apology 💜

The shift was subtle at first as you had spent a great deal of time in his rooms anyway. In a matter of days that time grew longer and longer until you rarely left on more than an errand from morning to evening. He would ask you to sit with him as he worked, join him for meals, linger in the kitchen as you prepared and even once attempting to help you clean the dishes. That is until he ended up dropping a plate in his inattention, the resounding crash making your heart skip a beat in a much less pleasant way then it usually did around him. You couldn’t even begin to be annoyed with him though, his apologetic puppy eyes forcing you to let him off with only a banishment to the kitchen table and a kiss to the tip of his nose. 

Affection was easier now, not always so underlined with that awkward tension you had almost become used to. He liked to touch you. To lace your fingers together across the table when you ate, rest his hand on your waist when you stood together, play with a lock of your hair as you spoke, press a chaste kiss to hand or your cheek in passing. You had been hesitant at first to return his affection so boldly but the way he would glow when you reached for him first, his wide smile emphasising your favourite creases at the corners of his eyes, was enough to override your self consciousness. 

There was still tension there, hot little frissons if you look into his eyes a bit too long or his body rests a little too close. Part of you wants to chase it but there was no need to rush. You chose to relish in this period of getting to know each other better, talking about your likes, dislikes, views and opinions. Other times it is like you just wanted to exist together. It is comfortable in a way you never imagined you could be with him but you are more sure now than ever that ‘Papa Emeritus III’ who had led the Ghost project and the church was only a very superficial part of who he was. 

There’s a childlike glee in him every time he tells you stories of his life peppered with ridiculous puns and dorky jokes that feels so far removed from the persona you had though you had known previously. And yet you can see how he thrived as a performer and took to that role so naturally. He puts his whole self into recreating the tale he is telling with animated hands, exaggerated expressions and often silly voices whether he is talking about his misspent youth, rising through the clergy ranks or touring adventures. You would start to feel very uninteresting in comparison until he would start to tease stories from you. Your worst cooking disasters that have him crying with laughter and disbelief that you could ever make a potato explode. But when he asks you of your family and your childhood you see a sad wistfulness in his expression that makes your heart hurt and you hope that one day he might open up about some of the harder parts of his life as well. 

[netscapenavigator-official]

I actually wanna do a debriefing of my "Most Fuckable Ghost in Luigi's Mansion 3" Polls, so here goes:

And fyi, the titles aren't just underlined for style. They're hyperlinked to the respective poll. So be careful. Also, this a really long post with a lot of photos.

Part 1: The Basic Enemy Ghosts

Initially, this poll started off with two front runners. Goob and Hammer took off before any of the other three got any votes. Goob took the initial lead, but Hammer quickly passed them. As the poll got more votes, however, Goob slowly increased in popularity, while Hammer fell behind. The others began getting votes, too, resulting in...

5th Place [6 Votes]

Hammer!

~

3rd/4th Place (Tie) [7 Votes]

Oozer & Slinker! (Sorry, I can't put them side-by-side. Oozer's image is too tall, and Tumblr's auto-formatting crops his head off.)

~

2nd Place (Runner-Up) [10 Votes]

Trapper! (y'all are NASTY)

~

1st Place (Most Fuckable) [13 Votes]

Goob!!

~

Part 2: Bosses (Levels B2 - 7)

This poll, unlike Part 3, did not omit anybody. However, the keen eye will notice that there is no ghost listed for Level 1. That's because there isn't one. Level 1 is the lobby, and it is the only floor in Luigi's Mansion 3 to not have a boss ghost. This is most likely so that the player has time to orient themselves with the game, as this is the floor where the player first battles any ghost. Therefore, Goob could technically be considered the "boss" of Level 1, but not really, so I didn't count it.

Initially, Steward took off in popularity, shortly followed by Chambrea. I can't really say that I'm surprised, as, in my opinion, the third part of this poll had far more fuckable options. Either way, these two were the front runners for a long time. Steward took the lead first, but Chambrea later overtook him. Eventually Steward came back, and the two were tied for quite some time. However, at some point in the middle, Amadeus Wolfgeist had a sudden surge in popularity. He rocketed to the top and remained there for quite a while. Eventually, though, his lead became less and less as others began getting votes, including the former front runners.

Doctor Potter, the Boss on Level 7, is one of two ghosts in all three polls to receive zero votes. It appears the Luigi's Mansion crowd on Tumblr is not only anti-environment, but also anti-GILF.

8th Place [0 Votes]

Doctor Potter (L7)...

~

5th/6th/7th Place (Tie) [1 Vote]

Chef Soulfflé (L2), Kruller acab (L3), & King MacFright (L6)!

~

4th Place [2 Votes]

Clem (LB2)! (i don't know about y'all)

~

3rd Place [9 Votes]

Chambrea (L5)! (this concept art does her dirty with that gummy smile lmao)

~

2nd Place (Runner-Up) [11 Votes]

Amadeus Wolfgeist (L4)! (nvm what i said earlier, y'all are apparently pro-GILF after all)

~

1st Place (Most Fuckable) [15 Votes]

Steward (LB1)!! (i'm starting to sense a very basic theme here...)

~

Part 3: Bosses (Levels 8 - Rooftop)

This poll omitted Level 11's boss(es) because, while it's never explicit said anywhere, the three of them are very much coded to be little girls. So I, obviously, excluded them from a "Most Fuckable" poll. It worked out, though, as that meant Parts 2 and 3 could have the same number of options.

Speaking of options, I did originally have Level 11's Nikki, Lindsey, & Ginny in this poll before I saw their image and realized they were kids. As a result, I decided to make Part 2 the bigger poll, with it initially having Morty. Once I decided to remove Nikki, Lindsey, & Ginny; I moved Morty to this poll to even things out. However, a keen observer might've noticed I made a goof of this poll: Despite changing the title and poll options to reflect the addition of Morty... I completely forgot to add his photo... even worse, I completely forgot to remove it from Part 2. I did eventually notice, however. Before either was reblogged and my horrid mistake was immortalized forever, I was able to edit both posts and correctly put Morty's reference photo where is belonged.

Also, because Morty's photo came at a later date, you can actually tell that it's higher quality than the others. This is because I made the initial poll on my laptop. On my laptop, the preview images loaded at a decent resolution, so I just saved them, not thinking much about it. I didn't realize the Super Mario Wiki was down-scaling them until after I had all the pictures uploaded. Oh well. However, when I realized I had messed up Morty's photo, I didn't have access to my laptop. Therefore, I had to make the edit on my phone. On mobile, the Super Mario Wiki down-scaled the photos a LOT more, so I had no choice but to open the image link and use the original file.

(For this debriefing, I'm using ALL of the full-res photos because who doesn't love extra pixels?)

This was the most voted-in poll, with 52 votes.

I expected King Boo to do abnormally well (because he's King Boo, duh), but I also expected Hellen Gravely to do a lot better than she did. While King Boo and Hellen started off well, Hellen quickly fell behind as people started voting for Serpci. Serpci rocketed to first place last minute and maintained that lead for quite a while. Eventually, however, King Boo made a come back and the two were tied up until the final day of the poll.

DJ Phantasmagloria and Morty were also late-comers to the game. They both weren't really present in the first few days of the poll. I expected Morty to do abnormally well, too, because of how friendly he is, in the game, compared to the other ghosts and bosses. DJ Phantasmagloria I was torn on. I didn't personally choose her, but I knew she might have a decent chance if she found her audience. Both Morty and DJ Phantasmagloria rocketed up in numbers in the second half of the poll's timeline, and I think they both held first place at one time or another.

Captain Fishook, the Boss on Level 12, is the second candidate in all three polls, alongside Doctor Potter from Part 2, who received zero votes. Unlike Dr. Potter, I'm more okay with this one... I mean, he's literally a fish. I probably would've been more mad if he had gotten votes. I debated whether or not to even include him, but I did just in case someone complained.

8th Place [0 Votes]

Captain Fishook (L12)... (yes it's spelled like that, according to the Super Mario wiki)

~

6th/7th (Tie) [1 Vote]

Ug (L9) & Johnny Deepend (L13)!

~

5th Place [6 Votes]

Hellen Gravely (L15)! (I AM FUMING!! HELLEN IS LITERALLY MOTHER! HOW DARE YOU ALL!!!!)

~

4th Place [9 Votes]

DJ Phantasmagloria (L14)!

~

3rd Place [10 Votes]

Morty (L8)! (I suppose we can have one personality king...)

~

2nd Place (Runner-Up) [12 Votes]

King Boo (Rooftop)! (we love a plus-sized King... like slang-wise... not monarchy-wise)

~

1st Place (Most Fuckable) [13 Votes]

Serpci (L10)!! (Hellen was fucking ROBBED)

~

Conclusion

The three Most Fuckable ghosts in Luigi's Mansion 3 are:

Serpci (L10), Goob, and Steward (LB1)!!!

~

However, if we want to democratize things:

3rd Place [25% of poll & 13 Votes]

Serpci!! (Level 10)

~

2nd Place (Runner-Up) [30.2% of poll & 13 Votes]

Goob!!

~

1st Place (THE Most Fuckable) [37.5% of poll & 15 Votes]

Steward!!! 🎉 (Level B1)

~

(Somehow, even when all the options were ghosts, y'all still managed to choose the basic white guy. I'm never making another opinion poll again.)

[mel-the-pirate-prompt-reblog]

Not to bring up "old" stuff, such as the OTW May Signal bit that was removed after some backlash, I wanted to see it. I threw the OTW into the Wayback Machine, went back to May 9th, and was able to see just what they pulled from the Signal after the community backlash to see what they regret adding to this month's Signal.

So I copy-pasted it, since I bet others who didn't read it wanted/want to, too. You can also read it directly from the OTW May Signal on the Wayback Machine here.

Quotes and etc are under the cut. All blue text is a link.

This is what they cut out of May 2023's Signal:

For Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, the OTW’s Legal Chair, Betsy Rosenblatt, was interviewed about AI legal issues*. Betsy pointed out that having AIs learn from works such as fanfiction meant that they weren’t only using old works from the public domain to learn about the world. “That means that machines will learn how to describe and express a much more contemporary, broad, inclusive, and diverse set of ideas.” What’s more…

"I’m also intrigued by some of the expressive possibilities that AI may create. Will DALL·E or ChatGPT become characters in fan fiction? Surely they will. I want to read the fan-created stories where DALL·E and ChatGPT fall in love with each other (or don’t), get into arguments (or don’t), buy a house together (or don’t), team up to solve (or perpetrate!) crimes….

Will fans will take up this challenge?"

Thought it might be worth noting that the OTW did add this about AI and Data Scraping on the Archive on May 13th.

*The interview is still up, but just in case, I'll be pulling the link from the Wayback Machine instead of the actual link.

I will be highlighting a few important points (imo) in case people don't want to read the entire interview. For longer highlights, I will be adding bold/italics/underline to help people keep from jumping around the text and read out of order (I know I do, and that tends to help me).

Because I'm having Thoughts about AI scraping, I might make a Tumblr-esque essay and put my English major to use looking into some of this interview (If I ever do, I might add a link to this post). Highlighting things and reading through this interview makes me want to pull my stuff from AO3, and I've only just started posting there a year ago.

Highlighting phrases and sentences does not mean I agree with them. It means I think they are important to see and consider.

Here's the interview that Signal links to:

...Betsy Rosenblatt is the legal chair for the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), a nonprofit dedicated to preserving fan works.... The interview with Betsy follows.

Katherine: When you think about AI technology, fan works, and copyright, what excites you? And, what keeps you up at night?

Betsy: One of the things that excites me—which is probably a bit off to the side of what most people are talking about with AI and copyright—is that AIs are reading fan fiction now. For a long time, machine learning relied almost exclusively on data sources that were known to be in the copyright public domain, such as works published prior to 1927 and public records. The result of that was that machines were often learning archaic ideas—learning to associate certain professions with certain races and genders, for example. Now, machine learning is turning to broader sources from across the internet, including fan works. That means that machines will learn how to describe and express a much more contemporary, broad, inclusive, and diverse set of ideas.

I’m also intrigued by some of the expressive possibilities that AI may create. Will DALL·E or ChatGPT become characters in fan fiction? Surely they will. I want to read the fan-created stories where DALL·E and ChatGPT fall in love with each other (or don’t), get into arguments (or don’t), buy a house together (or don’t), team up to solve (or perpetrate!) crimes….

As for what keeps me up at night, I remain mostly optimistic. I think it would be a very sad turn of events if some of the newly begun litigation about data crawling and scraping ended up preventing machines from building contemporary, inclusive, broad-based data pools to draw on. I think it would be very sad if people turned to AI-created works instead of finding, exploring, and making fan works of their own. But I don’t think either of those things is very likely to happen. Fans make fan works because they love doing it. They feel compelled to tell the stories they imagine, and they want to share those with communities of other fans. They use fan work creation to build skills and find their own voices. I don’t think that the emergence of new technologies will stop them from doing that.

Katherine: Artists have filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that AI companies violate copyright law when they create databases of copyrighted images to “train” their AI image products. At least one of the companies in the suit, Stability AI, says that this is a fair use: “Anyone that believes that this isn’t fair use does not understand the technology and misunderstands the law.” What questions would you like to see a court ask when analyzing whether ingesting copyrighted works to create AI-training databases is a fair use?

Betsy: I tend to agree with Stability AI’s statement. I would like to see courts consider the “training” process separately from the process of generating works. It is, of course, possible that a machine could generate an infringing work. But the process of training that machine involves something very different—turning expressive works into data and creating relationships based on that data collection. We call it machine “learning” for a reason. A well-trained machine won’t generate an infringing work, but it needs as large a pool of data to work from as possible to do that. The mere fact that an AI can create something infringing doesn’t determine whether the gathering of information is infringement. Consider the classic Sony v. Betamax case: The VCR can be used to infringe, but it has noninfringing (fair) uses, and therefore the VCR does not inherently infringe. I recognize that the analogy isn’t perfect, but I find it persuasive. In general, courts have found that “interim” copying isn’t infringement—that is, copying isn’t infringement when it occurs inside a machine and does not, itself, make copyrighted works perceptible to people—and I think courts should continue to follow that logic.

Katherine: Will the Supreme Court’s 2021 Google v. Oracle decision have any bearing on this case?

Betsy: I hope so. That case highlighted that we shouldn’t be locked into one definition of “transformative” work, and that copying for the purpose of engaging in a different technological use can be transformative copying.

Katherine: What would you say to online creators who might be discouraged by AI technology?

Betsy: You will always make your work better than an AI can. What matters about your work is that it comes from you. That makes your work irreplaceable, and it will always remain so.

[vairiance]

One of You asked for it, and you got it! In this post I will rank every single new Pokemon in Scarlet and Violet (...so far?? Maybe?). Note that this is solely based on my preference, mostly of the design, but maybe some battle elements as well. This is already going to be a super long post, so let's jump right in. Just be ready for some extremely well edited images.

Disclaimer: Under the cut lies every single Pokemon design contained in Scarlet and Violet. If you do not wish to be spoiled, throw your device out the nearest window.

Also, some titles are underlined and some aren't. I know I underlined them all, so blame Tumblr. If I made any spelling mistakes, that was Tumblr's fault too.

'D'elete These:

This tier is for Pokemon that suck. I hate them so much and wish I did not have to ever look at them. Okay I only hate a few of them, but I do wish I could never see any of them ever again.

Spidops

We got a poison spider, we got a lightning spider, folks we even got a water spider, and now, get ready for... an uncomfortably humanoid spider! Look, props for finally getting a spider with 8 legs I guess, but otherwise I just think it looks weird.

Capsakid

I'm not fully sure what they were going for here, but Fire/Grass is a typing that I've wanted for years, and I'm not thrilled with what we got. Anyway, I just can't quite get a grasp of what Capsakid is supposed to be; like if you told me nothing about it and showed it to me, I'd have no idea what I was looking at.

Tandemaus/Maushold

I hate these abominations. I actually thought they (it?) were quite cute at first, but everything I learned about them made me dislike them more. The weird clothes, the strangely doll like design, the fact that we're somehow supposed to just be fine with considering what is clearly 2 - 4 beings as one unit... this isn't a Hydreigon or Magneton or Kangaskhan situation where there's a clear organizational structure, this is 4 whole ass organisms. These mauskids are being smothered by over protective parents. With really weird mouths.

Frigibax

This design is probably supposed to be a little ugly, and well, mission accomplished. It looks like a sickly bean.

Cyclizar

I don't know why, but I already wasn't a huge fan of a motorcycle lizard. However, the fact that the wheels are apparently JUST FOR SHOW is blowing my mind. Everyone in Paldea rides these things like motorcycles, and even puts them in god damn parking lots which is DEFINITELY not morally sound, and yet the wheels are just there to look weird? Come on.

Pawmot

Whoever designed this should be ashamed of themselves. How do you start with something as cute as Pawmi and arrive at this horrific thing? I can only assume that they had a design in mind, but lost the plans for it, and then just decided to paste the head on a nearby flour sack and call it a day. Design alone, this is my least favorite Pokemon this Gen.

Shroodle

I think I may just be missing the point here. What am I looking at? A baseball cap? Why does it look like this? I don't think Grafaiai needed a pre evolution at all either, so this is just a very perplexing Pokemon.

Gholdengo

All things considered, this is my least favorite Pokemon this Gen. I hate that something that looks like a shiny inflatable car sales balloon thing has super good stats, typing, and a ridiculous ability. It means everyone uses it nonstop and now I have to witness this cursed stack of cylinders day in and day out. I hate this.

'C'harming, But Flawed

This is for Pokemon that I don't hate, may even like, but some details about them just don't sit right with me. I don't think they should be removed, just... heavily altered, in at least one key way.

Quaxwell

Quaxwell has definitely used racial slurs. I'm afraid I cannot be any clearer with this.

Oinkcologne

SO many Pokemon this gen have amazing first stages and then weird final forms. Lechonk is great, and I was expecting a hugely powerful and awesome fat pig friend, but instead we get... a pig with makeup? That's wearing cologne? Who designed Lechonk and then said "I want this to become a seductive porcine"?

Tarountula

Okay, A+ name, I will give it that. In fact, overall this Pokemon is fine and even a little cute, it's just also a little uninspired for me. Not much else to say here.

Houndstone

Listen I know that saying bad things about dogs is the worst thing you can do in America, but this thing gives me nightmares. In fact it may be the single creepiest Pokemon design there is, for reasons I cannot fully articulate. Looking at it gives me the skeeves, but given that this is definitely at least partly intentional, I have to give it some credit.

Flittle

It's fine I guess, it's just a bit too amorphous for me. Like I wouldn't see that and think "baby ostrich" or whatever flightless bird it evolves into. Also the first 4 I caught had the same bad nature so it can sit in C tier forever.

Wugtrio

Idk why Wugtrio is so low. I think Wigglett is funny because of the concept of is just resembling Diglett way too much, but Wugtrio feels like it's running the joke a bit too far into the ground. I'm also not sure why it's pink. And, I love pink, but... it's a little random.

Veluza

It's fine, I guess. I mean it's a pointy fish, not a lot more to say.

Hero Palafin

If you HAD to design a bipedal weird ass heroic dolphin, I guess this is about as good as it would get, but... WHY would you have to???

Scovillain

Okay once again, great name, no notes there. But the design is just... it looks fake, you know? Idk I feel like it's a very unpolished design, the kind of concept art you would scribble on a rough draft to expand on later. But I love peppers so, I'll deal with it, I guess.

Frigibax

This was supposed to be Arctibax. Whoops. Anyway, yeah, it's cool (heh), but just a little to wonky looking to get fully behind.

Pawmi... I mean, Pawmo

Yeah my bad this was supposed to be Pawmo, the second stage, but again, not gonna change the image. Anyway, Pawmo is a little funny looking, but round enough that it still looks cute. Hopefully nothing happens to it next...

Kilowattrel

Seriously the names this generation are top notch, all of them. But this bird is definitely seeing the sins of my past. The overall design is fine, but the way they made its eyes horrify me in ways I just can't overlook.

Squawkabilly

I forgot this Pokemon, completely. I love comical pompadours, but the fact that I can unironically look at this bird and describe its expression as lecherous makes my skin crawl.

Flamigo

Uhhh this is like, just a flamigo right? I mean, flamingo. Like, apart from the knot neck, it's just a flamingo. Cool, I guess.

Klawf

If I had a dollar for every odd numbered Generation featuring a goofy looking crab that's designed to be a physical attacker whose lore described its pincers as being delicacies, I'd have 2 dollars. I'm not sure why they ripped off Crabominable, and then also included Crabominable in this game, but whatever.

Bramblin/Brambleghast

Idk the designs are pretty cool but I think we have enough haunted plants for one franchise.

Gimmighoul

Unclear how much of this is from my strong feelings about its evolution, but while its kind of cute, just generally not a lot that I like about it. It's fine, no huge issues, just not my thing I guess.

Brute Bonnet

Not a fan of this design, doesn't really add much to Amoongus and doesn't look that cool. Also I understand, I think, what they were going for with the paradox names, but I think they all sound really weird.

Sandy Shocks

Yeah same deal really, it does add a lot to Magneton which is neat, but I just don't personally love the way it looks. It's kind of cool though I guess.

Iron Hands

I dislike most of the future Pokemon because they simply raise too many questions that I know will never be answered. Why are they all robots? Is there no flesh in the future? Are they androids? Do they even live? What fuels them? Can they feel? Do they emote? We will never know. Anyway this one looks like a pencil.

Iron Bundles

They took something as cute as Delibird and made it somehow even more soulless than the other future Pokemon. Irremissible.

Tinkatink/Tinkatuff

I actually really like this line's concept, but I think it's stretched out a little bit too much. Its stats are so low even in the final form I feel like they should have just made Tinkaton a single stage Pokemon with a neat concept.

Toedscruel

Something about this Pokemon just doesn't sit right with me. I think the gimmick was cute with Toedscool, but with extra legs and mean expression suddenly just make it a bit too menacing for my taste.

'B'retty Good

I couldn't think of any fitting words starting with B okay anyway, this tier is for Pokemon that are good overall, just with one or two things holding them back in a major way. Overall I definitely still like these Pokemon, just not as much as I could.

Floragato

Yeah I mean, this is about what a middle stage Sprigatito would look like. Nothing to really comment on.

Quaquaval

Pretty cool design overall, I like the striking colors and I adore the peacock tail. I just think it's a bit too weirdly proportioned to like fully. Head's too big, feet are weirdly shaped, and for some reason a pelvic bone the size of east Texas. Just a weird combination of figures to me.

Nymble

Fidget spinner bug? Weird, but I'm interested.

Greavard

I KNOW okay, I see the notes in my gifs, I know everyone loves this thing, but it's just a bit too... idk, it's not as horrific as Houndstone, so I do like it, but I guess it's just a bit too mouth heavy with the design for me to fully like it.

Wigglett

A simple design that isn't very striking, but a hilarious concept to just mimic Diglett in a silly way.

Dondozo

Extremely creative concept with it and Tatsugiri here, very interesting. The design itself is also really cool and striking, honestly I think maybe it should be a little higher but I, again, will not change any images. Sorry.

Dolliv

Cute grass Pokemon, no issues with that. Just nothing too striking enough to be placed higher.

Varoom/Revaroom

Cool concept and design, I guess, but it feels like these were designed specifically to allow for the Mad Max battles with Team Star. Seems like a weird Pokemon concept to come up with organically.

Orthworm

Huge. Gracious. Beautiful. A little too stupid looking to be higher in the list, but just stupid enough to be this high.

Baxcalibur

I loved this Pokemon a lot, however, seeing it use Glaive Rush by backwards sliding across the ground dropped it several tiers for me. It's a creative concept, which is why it is still in B tier, but just too silly for me to like unironically.

Glimmet

Very cool concept, I like it a lot. Only reason it isn't higher is because it doesn't actually bloom or anything, but it's a solid setup to a really pretty and cool Pokemon.

Tatsugiri

I mean yeah it's pretty cool, we haven't gotten a Water/Dragon type that wasn't a legendary in forever (I think) so that's neat. I also like that it's small and unassuming but actually pretty powerful, although this feels a bit at odds with its dex entry. The color changes are cute too I guess.

Naclstack

This line has the best names in the game, hands down. I like the first and final stages a lot more though, they have some clear and interesting inspiration but this stage seems a little boring compared to the others.

Wattrel

See? When its eyes don't haunt you, it's actually a pretty cute design. Although upon closer inspection, I can definitely see the foreshadowing there.

Maschiff/Mabosstiff

Mastiff Pokemon are great, I like them both a lot. I think their faces are just a little slightly too humanoid for me to fully get behind though.

Flutter Mane

Pretty cool upgrade of Misdreavous, all things considered. Not a whole lot different though so, that's fine.

Iron Thorns

If I wasn't a Godzilla fan I'd probably like this less. But I get the reference, and Tyranitar is always cool, so no complaints here.

Tinkaton

Yeah, see, on its own we have a really cool design. Something about the overall design is a little off for me, can't quite put my finger on what, but that aside, it's a really cute and hilarious design. I just wish its stats were a bit higher.

Charcadet

Cool and cute little guy. God awful shiny for some reason though, possibly the worst in the game.

Toedscool

Incredibly hilarious. Whoever thought of this is a genius. Watching this thing run around fills me with joy. Not higher just because I'm laughing too hard to change it.

'A'lmost Perfect

Pokemon that are almost perfect, but are held back by one very minor issue or so that I just simply cannot move past, or there's just something about them I don't quite like.

Combat Tauros

They took a simple concept, made it cool, and didn't change much. Nothing to say there, except that the eye size and horn shape are just awkward enough to demote it a tier. Sorry.

Crocalor

S for fashion, but I can't help but feel this design is a bit offensive. However it is extremely clever, I think the main reason for the demote to A is because it required evolving Fuecoco the Flawless.

Skeledirge

Let me be clear about one thing: Overall, Skeledirge is probably my favorite final form this Gen. Partly because it is the adult form of Fuecoco the Flawless, but partly because it is what I would be if I was a Pokemon. I large, lazy reptile with bad hair whose signature move is to sing an unrequited love song so badly that it causes fire damage, and who was so lonely that they imbued their hat with life. Anyway, it's in A tier because it gets a bit too jagged for my liking, and also I cannot for the life of me figure out what is happening with its flames. It doesn't look like real fire, yet clearly is. What is it. Please help me.

Meowscarada

I wanted Torracat to stay on all 4's, and then we got Incineroar, who was awesome, but not as cool as I think a normal tiger could have been. I still love Incineroar though, and Meowscarada is in a similar boat. Wish it didn't stand, but now that it did, the design is neat. I just wish it didn't look so constantly smug.

Dundunsparce

Amazing. Only way to evolve Dunsparce is to give it an extra of everything. Beautiful concept, just doesn't quite pop enough for S tier.

Lokix

The main thing holding it back from S tier is that it just seems to have a lot going on at once. Like it's a masked rider with chainsaw legs who also does sick kick tricks? Also, why is it named Lokix. This name does not address the fact that it has chainsaw legs. Imagine if that stupid anime was called "Guy Capable of Jumping" instead of Chainsaw Man. That's what this is like.

Rellor/Rabsca

OHHHH I GET IT, they just switch the first and last syllables of the names. I literally just got that while I typed this. Nice, that's really clever. Anyway, dung beetles are unique animals and I think they've implemented them pretty neatly. I dislike dung and insects strongly so the fact that I like these things at all is saying something.

Espathra

Okay did Spain have notable relations with Egypt because I feel like there's a bit too many references otherwise. Well anyway, it's a cool Pokemon, held back only by the weirdly trim haircut. I know exactly what they were going for I just think it looks a bit too much like a perfectly groomed human's. Should've tried to mimic a secretary bird a little more maybe.

Tadbulb

Cute, though a little unnecessary. I think Bellibolt would've been fine as a single stage. But hey, it's a cute smiling little baby, nothing wrong with that.

Bombirdier

Oh man this thing is really cool, for such a simple concept. Something about just a mean ass bird dropping rocks on you just clicks for me. I think I also just like triple STAB potential, I always like abilities that give multiple STABs.

Nacli/Garganacl

Again, excellent naming, and much more precise designing done here. Don't get me wrong, I cannot STAND facing Garganacl because it seems to be the teacher's pet. Ability gives it status immunity and Ghost resistance and unique move that hits Water and Steel types harder and has decent defenses overall AND has Recover? That's just a flawless Pokemon, dude. You gave Toedscruel "Mold Breaker but actively and harmfully worse" and then gave this salt rock all that? Did the devs get mushroom poisoning that they cured using salts or something?

Fidough/Dachsbun

Very funny and cute designs. Can't go wrong with dogs... I mean you know, that are alive and don't look like people. However, I do not like that they look delicious. I do not want to feel like I want to eat a Pokemon, ever. I barely tolerate it with Alcremie because at least it doesn't resemble a life form.

Slither Wing

I haven't yet seen this thing in action, but it looks pretty cool. I'm terrified of moths but Volcarona has an awesome design, so this is pretty cool too. I don't quite like that it walks like a normal bug though, kind of ruins a bit of Volcarona's design.

Iron Treads

All of you haters can go to hell this design kicks ass. Really clever that it only resembles Donphan from the right angle, not sure why the other mecha Pokemon don't have the same creativity.

Iron Moth

Yeah I mean, awesome mecha version of Volcarona, no mistakes there. I mean, other than the general mistakes with the robot Pokemon.

Iron Jugulis

Well that is definitely the worst name this gen, wow. Anyway, that aside, the design is awesome, and I love the callback to Hydreigon's original concept of being the XYZ Dragon Cannon from YuGiOh.

Chien-Pao

Hey these legendary Pokemon have a stupendous design overall, and them being directly based off of Chinese legends/artifacts is SUPER cool. I think they made this guy a bit too long and weaselly though, I was expecting a muscular leopard, not a noodle with spikes.

Koraidon

Lovely, extremely striking and extravagant design. Seriously, a huge breath of fresh air after the drab nonsense that was Galar and its legendary Pokemon. However, we have the same issue with Cyclizar: WHY THE WHEELS, IF THE WHEELS ARE NOT GOING TO BE USED???? WHO BENEFITS FROM THIS??? DID FRED FLINSTONE MAKE THIS POKEMON???? The wheels are the ONLY flaw I hate it so much.

'S'imply Perfect

Here we are: the very top. The Elite *counts quickly* 30. The greatest new designs in the game, who are either flawless or whose flaws I just simply do not care about. Let's begin.

Blaze Tauros

HELL yeah, this is one of the coolest Pokemon I've ever seen. Just an awesome looking bull, can't possibly be any cool- IT'S HORNS GLOW RED WHEN IT FIGHTS OH MY GOD. Seriously can't stress enough how awesome and cool this thing is, love it to death.

Aqua Tauros

Maybe unpopular but I like this Tauros a lot too. Not as strikingly awesome as Blaze Tauros, to be sure, but very cool, creative, and its horns still glow, so what else do you want? Different stats? I- well, yeah, I guess that would be cool, but who cares.

Paldean Wooper

You cannot improve upon perfection, friends. But you can make it Poison type.

Sprigatito

Sassy Grass cat, very nice. Cute. Quadrupedal. No notes, great job.

FUECOCO THE FLAWLESS

AHHHHHHHHH. Fuecoco the Flawless is the best Pokemon ever, I will not budge from this stance. I will die on my hill and continue to haunt it for generations to come. If you dislike Fuecoco you shouldn't be allowed to breathe. Tell me if you disagree so I can find you and throw you into a river.

Quaxly

Yeah Quaxly is fine, very funny design for a duck to be really obsessed with its hair, but I should've known they would go too far when it when it evolves. But for now, love it. Best trio of starters since Gen 1 or 4.

Lechonk

Another contender for best name ever, not just in the game. I had such high hopes for this fat little guy. But for now we can rest easy with having a handsome and fat little friend.

Farigiraf

Awesome name, cool design, and a long overdue evolution of a terrific Pokemon. I just wish Twin Beams was a better move.

Finizen/Palafin

I'm counting both since they're the same design, and that design is SO good. Base Palafin has one of the cutest designs ever, even if it's just a dolphin with a heart on its chest. I've wanted a dolphin Pokemon for years, and it did not disappoint... much.

Smolliv

Based on my notes I don't think I have to explain this little guy's charm. Cute, smol, olive.

Arboliva

I expected Smoliv to become, based on the leaks, some weird uncomfortably feminine thing like Jynx. But what we got is super cool, looking somehow like a wreath, tree, and angel all at once.

Bellibolt

ROTUND.

Cetoddle/Cetitan

A very interesting and adorable concept. Cetoddle waddling around on land is an amazing sight to behold, and Cetitan being a really cool whale Pokemon is awesome too. Love it, would've been nice if Cetitan was a bit better competitively but, otherwise I like it a lot.

Pawmot

Does anyone feel like having multiple electric rodents is kind of pointless? And are we still getting them now that Ash is going away? Well, anyway, Pawmot is cute, and has yet to become an affront to the eyes, so that makes me like it more.

Glimmora

Man Glimmora is amazing, the concept, the ability, typing, and it's sooo pretty too. I love crystals and I love flowers, and combined we get just a beautiful Pokemon. If only the actual champion knew how to use hers.

Grafaiai

In many ways this is peak character design. It's SUPER unique, combining not only 2 things that are nothing alike (graffiti and aye-ayes), but also using an animal not that many people may be familiar with, generally speaking. If designs can be successful, I think this is the most successful one out there.

Great Tusk

Oh my god YES. I loved Donphan so much, my only issue with it was that it was a bit small and not as intimidating as I would have liked it to be, and Great Tusk fixes both problems. I just wish it was a normal evolution or form and not something that's going to just break the lore of future generations. Also why are all the Paradox Pokemon genderless? I mean, the future ones sure, but the ancient ones? Is sexual reproduction just a modern fad in this lore?

Scream Tail

Please someone animate and get the Jigglypuff actress to have Scream Tail singing this. This is so funny I love it so much. I need a Pokemon band consisting of 2 Toxtricity, a Rillaboom, Skeledirge, and Scream Tail. Pokémore.

Roaring Moon

The only problem with this design is that it just kind of shoves in our face the fact that Mega evolutions will never return. Otherwise it's just very simply super cool. Anyway if you made it this far reply telling me your favorite kind of sandwich no cheating if you just skipped here although I have no way to enforce this at all.

Iron Valiant

Awesome. I wish to GOD it wasn't a robot, and in fact I think it's in the like, A+ tier rather than this one, but its cool enough that I'll allow it for now. I wish the Paradox Pokemon all had unique moves so that we could get this thing some unique cool action, but I guess they're all broken enough.

Ting-Lu, Wo-Chien, Chi-Yu

Like I said, the creativity on display here with turning the classical objects into Pokemon designs is an incredible show of talent. And none of these have any distracting flaws like Chien-Pao, so color me impressed. Not sure what these guys are doing in Spain, but so be it.

Miraidon

See how cool Koraidon could have been if it less obviously had a wheel stuck in its neck? Miraidon is just super cool and slick looking, and it actually uses the more subtle wheels it does have. This also may just be because I haven't seen it in game, but it looks way less obviously like a machine than the other future Pokemon. It's got the LED eyes obviously, but beyond that it looks no more or less organic than many other similarly designed Pokemon.

Armarouge

Very solid design, the living armor concept is just very neat. I like the way it fuses its arms to shoot fireballs too, although again its shiny is terrible.

Ceruledge

Yeah we all know Ceruledge is the coolest, shadow flame blades are hard to ruin in a design. Also, more Fire Pokemon need to have different colored flames, not just the Ghost ones. Look how cool it gets when it happens!

Kingambit

I'm going to level with you guys, I think this thing's head horn and mustache blades (a very common phrase) are way too big. However, adding one to my team increased by win percentage by a full 10%. So, yeah, I have to have this absolute menace in S tier. Also its evolution method is really cool, it felt like you were in a very short anime or something.

Clodsire

When I said you couldn't improve on perfection I was WRONG. This absolute friend is the peak of design. You cannot make a better Pokemon than this sac of mucus. You know I'm right. And it has such incredible detail in its facial expressions too, along with just being a very cool Pokemon. I named mine Clodette.

Annihilape

This is hilarious. Primape dies and instead of going into the afterlife it just becomes more furious. Relatable.

And that's it!

[heybadgirl]

why did tumblr remove all my fucking underlines???? bro?

[1-50thofabuck]

All the World’s Monsters Readthrough

The following has not been proofread. It may contain typos, I may use the same words or phrases too many times, and so on. Tumblr also removes a lot of formatting such as underlines. Maybe I'll fix or update it in the future; maybe I won't. (Things like underlining being removed is beyond my control.) If there are serious corrections as regards facts presented, I will definitely amend such points. Please feel free to comment such corrections; or any comments at all. I want to read through with all of you!

All the World’s Monsters: 

A Readthrough, Part I

Longwinded Introduction

This is a feature I’ve been wanting to work on for quite some time. Originally I wanted to write it with another person, and had various ideas on how that would work, but that didn’t happen. It’s a readthrough of the world’s first monster collection for an RPG. That I’m aware of, anyway - there very well might be some obscure or unsung prior volumes on the same topic(at the very least, perhaps zine monster collections?). I’m talking about Chaosium’s All the World’s Monsters. It’s an interesting book for sure, in a number of ways. 

For one thing, not so much had become standardized. What information was important to know about a monster might vary by personal taste or by the specific version of the game being played. All the World’s Monsters was released after Holmes Basic but before the AD&D Monster Manual, which was the first of the AD&D books to be released(because I guess they figured people could still use the monster stats with other versions of the game while they completed the other core books). 

Holmes Basic, for those unaware(and I won’t go into it too far because you can find plenty of histories on this out there with all the detail you’d like - skip this paragraph if you know about this already), was created as a way of introducing people to the D&D game as presented in the original white box set and Supplement I: Greyhawk. It was also a way of teaching people how to put those pieces together, or at least, one of the ways to do it, since the white box game was sort of all over the place, and difficult for people to grasp - especially if they had no prior boardgame knowledge beyond Monopoly and no wargaming knowledge. It kind of assumed you knew a lot of terms of general procedures for the more advanced board games and such, and that you would otherwise fill in the blanks. Holmes Basic did that for you. Furthermore, and it’s my understanding that this was more of a “Gygax shoehorning stuff he wanted in” aspect, but there are a few references to AD&D concepts and even the game itself, such as the exhortation to purchase AD&D if you wished to know how to have exotic characters like halfling thieves, or progress beyond 3rd level. (With the OD&D books you could do that anyway, and this was just a sales pitch.) It also introduced something closer to AD&D’s alignment system, except that you couldn’t play any neutral character besides a true neutral one: no neutral good, no chaotic neutral(there goes half my players!). 

There’s a lot to say about this version of the game, and some people play this one exclusively, even coming up with retroclones such as Blueholme! And some of what I have to say on it will be relevant, because All the World’s Monsters was written with the assumption that Holmes Basic reflected the standard we would be seeing from that point on, including little oddities never to appear in any other edition or version of D&D ever again!

Another thing that makes the book so intriguing is, being the first of its kind, there were so many monsters out there that hadn’t been statted yet - at least in a published book that others could look at and draw inspiration from. So until they got statted in AD&D’s Deities and Demigods, who could argue, “officially,” how many hit dice a shoggoth should have, what its AC should be, and so on? The original books gave no stats for any kind of sphinx - what would an androsphinx’s HD be? Same as a lion? More? What’s a lion’s HD anyway? Spotted lions are listed in the OD&D encounter tables, but there are no statistics for them(in the white box set, anyway). Or how about an elephant - how many HD should it have? What should its AC be? While the white box told us that rocs are sometimes large enough to prey on elephants(an incredible concept rendered rather banal now by overuse), it didn’t tell us what statistics an elephant should have. How would you stat it, without peeking at your MM?  Guess, what would you give them? Highlight the following for the answer: 

Tumblr won't allow me to set text to white because why would it? I'm leaving the "highlight the following line" bit out of stubborness at not allowing the formatting I require. (11 HD, AC 6)

So at that time, there were a myriad animals and monsters that had never before seen print in the form of D&D/AD&D statistics. This gives a lot of room for creativity - you couldn’t look at some other book and say “Gee, I gave this monster 9 HD, but the official ones are 4/this unofficial supplement gives them 5. Did I overrate them that badly?” Maybe so, maybe not. 

Statting animals and monsters is more art than science, though there’s some of that, too. The fact is, these are fairly arbitrary measures, and if you attempt to work out the official stats and come up with some kind of formula, you’ll drive yourself insane. Many things in the game, admittedly, were varied for the sake of variation. Weapon damage, for instance, was stated to have been made up for the purpose of variety - there’s no real reason that one weapon causes 2d4 while another causes 1d8 other than providing a wide spread of different dice types and combinations for weapons. (Yes, 2d4 gives you a bell curve with average score of 5 and a minimum score of 2, but the reason for this wasn’t because the weapon itself logically should, but rather to provide a variation.) I suspect that wolves being described as far smaller than they actually are was for a similar reason - wanting lower-level characters to be able to fight creatures that low-level monsters(goblins) often ride, but also to offer dire wolves, wargs, etc as upgrades. (Which still could have been done with properly-sized wolves, so maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree…)

Not only were so many animals and monsters unstatted, but again - formatting, and even rules weren’t fully codified or formulated yet. To some degree, many wouldn’t be until 3e made a concentrated effort to make everything formulaic with very specific processes and rules for everything, as well as to “balance” every monster and class, a task monumentally failed. As a good example of the lack of cohesion, look up monsters that strangle or drown and see how many different ways it’s done. I’m not saying this to knock the “old way” - there’s a reason I play old versions of D&D almost exclusively. Restricting yourself with unnecessary formulas and intricate templates is not typically of benefit, and having the flexibility to model things in different ways is superior to having to consult a list of codified formulas to make sure everything adds up. 

But at this stage, even some of the few things that became standards had yet to come into play. In most instances, there were no examples to follow to determine, say, how almost any given special ability a creature might have should be modeled. So even this had to be determined by what were essentially fans writing for their favorite game. 

As you can see, this was an exciting time, and an incredible opportunity - to set in black & white, in numbers, all the different things that D&D/AD&D classifies as “monsters” - anything that isn’t a PC! Setting down on paper, for the first time, so many different monsters. Devising rules for powers and abilities that nobody had created(at least publically available) rules for. Incorporating rules that would only exist for one basic introductory iteration of the system. (Not that they knew that!) Having the chance to determine formatting and all kinds of things that nobody had yet done.

Worlds and cosmoses full of things that still needed to be expressed in numbers and ability descriptions were waiting to be codified. This was, in fact, one of my misconceptions about the book when I purchased it - I thought it was more like Monsters of Myth and Legend by Mayfair as part of their Role Aids line, where they went through all different world mythologies and folklore in order to stat out all the various legendary monsters. All the World’s Monsters was really just a compilation of monsters submitted to Chaosium, and most of them are provided by but a handful of people - but we’ll explore that as we get into the actual readthrough.

Book Description

The first thing one will notice, besides for the eye-catching red background with stark black art, is that it’s sideways. It’s designed to be flipped or turned “up” from the bottom, so the spine is to the top. Similarly, the back cover is read sideways, spine upwards. I don’t need to do a critique or commentary on the art here; it’s pretty cool. I’m pretty uncritical of art, especially in low-budget/indie publications, and especially if the content is otherwise good. 

To the back cover, we’re told the book is “an encyclopedia of the strange, the bizarre, and the deadly,” with “265 monstrous and dangerous creatures,” all by creators from the North American continent(or at least, most of it). We’re given sample stats for a kodiak bear - remember, there weren’t(to my knowledge) stats for any bears yet. (I didn’t consult the back cover before writing the bit about bears, previously.) Actually, we’re given the description, not the full stats - so we can’t read through and critique a set of stats just yet! But there’s an interesting part even here.

For instance, the description mentions that the kodiak can “fight at full efficiency so long as it has one-fourth of its hit points left.” There were some optional rules in OD&D that included dexterity reductions and various penalties at different percentages of HP loss. Such rules are difficult to implement, particularly at low levels, when a small hit will often take 75% of a PC’s HP, and adds yet another element(or two or three or four) to track. Regardless, people surely used those rules, and I imagine this part of the description was a special ability that applied only to those using these kinds of rules. 

A kodiak mother gains bonuses in combat to protect her young and kodiaks have a chance of a hug attack, nothing too noteworthy or mind-blowing.

We end with a note about this being the third printing(it’s what I’ve got), there being another volume out, and a third on the way, and a line about the editors. Steve Perrin is one of them, and the blurb mentions that he’s the “co-author of RuneQuest,” a game I like very much, personally. Then some info about Chaosium and where you can write for info and so on.

The book itself is 109 pages, with the last 3 pages unnumbered, as they are tables, specifically, a monster level chart, to help with placing the monsters found in the book on the appropriate dungeon level, and a table for creating random monsters. Perhaps we’ll roll up a few in a future installment for fun.

The Book’s Introduction Page

Opening the cover we get a title page and introduction. If you thought the sideways book was just a feature of the cover - it’s not. The whole book is like this. And I have to say, I tried to be open minded about it. I told myself “You’re using it the same as you’d use any book except for how it’s turned, it doesn’t actually make any difference.” I hate when something is done in a new way and everyone rejects it because it’s different. While I can see the flaws in it, I really loved the Monstrous Compendium stuff made with hole-punched pages for sorting in a looseleaf binder. I feel like it failed less because of the flaws in it and more because it seemed too different, and was simply dismissed out of hand. So I try really hard not to do that.

But the format really bugs me. 

Moving on to the introduction, I have to wonder how close this is to whatever introduction was originally written, since it opens by mentioning that this is the third printing. Mr. Perrin goes on to tell us that it was made for “games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, and the Arduin Grimoire.”

I have a few comments on this. Originally I wanted to say it was neat how this early one could simply reference D&D like that without a problem, but apparently the book did, in fact, cause a stir with TSR. I have not listened to the linked podcast, but the description says that this was the case. Once this readthrough is complete, I’ll go back and listen to the podcast; I’d like to get my own impressions, and maybe make a few guesses at some things, and see if I’m right or how much my ideas mesh with what they say.

Tunnels & Trolls(another game I quite like) is interesting since it didn’t really have monster stats, so using these in that game would be more for descriptive flavor.

As for the Arduin Grimoire, for those unaware, it was originally written as a sort of expansion and add-on to OD&D. This, too, caused problems, and it eventually became its own game(despite never playing it, its monster the “vampusa” remains a favorite of mine to this day). Gary Gygax mocked it in the form of a cursed item in AD&D, a book that drives the reader insane(one might have assumed it was a Lovecraft inspired item, but its inspiration was pure spite). 

It goes on to tell us that they have 50,000 monsters, and how they might not use yours and how they chose the ones that went in here, info about the art, where to mail feedback about the monsters you want to see. What’s of real interest here is the mention that Dave Hargrave and Paul Jaquays gave them permission to use some of their own copywritten monsters, but these had to be removed due to space limitations. They then recommend Mr. Hargrave’s Arduin Grimoire(I’m sure that helped endear them to TSR), among other things, as well as several publications by Jaquays. These were presumably the publications from which the monsters would have been taken, and we’re told they will be in future volumes of AtWM.

Table of Contents

Skimming through, there are some really neat looking ones. 

Archer bush? That was a later Mystara monster adapted into 2nd ed and currently 5e(not sure if it was in 3e or 4e or not and don’t particularly care). Sometimes it’s hard to say if multiple people had the same idea or one ripped the other off. Especially in this early time when lots of people were putting out monsters and few had previously, people were bound to have similar if not identical ideas. Such things have happened in much less likely circumstances. 

Some very odd ones right off the bat. Snake ape? On the other hand, things like “air squids” are why I read these kinds of collections.

Batarang. Was DC ever notified of this infringement?

Plenty of slimy monsters: blue horror(which I’m guessing is a slime-type?), red blob, maybe “brown ich?,” gelatinous blue horror(maybe the original isn’t a slime after all), green slime golem. Eh, maybe not as many as I thought. We’ll get a better idea as we read through them, I don’t want to spend all day browsing the contents. And neither do you, I’m sure!

Vampire bear. Heh. Brain stealer(geteit chemosit). Is that German? I feel like I’ve seen other monsters in here with similar names. Will have to see if that’s true and if they’re written by the same author.

Carnivorous… typo? Carnivorous typo. Typo, carnivorous. Are you serious? If this doesn’t end up being some kind of meta monster I’m going to be quite disappointed.

Here’s another thing about the formatting. It makes sense as a normal book, in that one column continues in the column to its right. But because of the formatting of the book, you expect it to continue down the column on the next page below it. It’s a small thing, honestly, but it’s noticeable. 

A lot of monsters that would see official stats later, as expected. Crocotta, cyclops, various demons - but no devils! There’s a “sun devil,” but since there’s no “devil” category I figure it’s a devil in the way a tasmanian devil is a devil - in a non-literal sense. It looks like there are some traditional powerful monsters from myth and legend among the demons, as Ymir(“Prince of Ice Demons”) is one of them, and some of these others may turn out to be similar things - it’s hard to tell from the names, such as “serpent king” and “twelfth plane,” which yes, is the name of a demon. As three demons are listed as “ice,” I imagine they were going more for a frozen Hell as opposed to a fiery one, which would be why they used Ymir instead of Surtr. The latter would have been a much more obvious choice, being a fiery giant who is to burn the universe to ashes as the grand finale of the final conflict between good and evil(yes I’m simplifying it, this isn’t a mythology lesson).

A good number of golems, including diamond, dust, the aforementioned green slime, ice(unusual but not impossible in a magical world, or in frozen places, where they’d be quite evocative), quicksilver(which would also appear in Mystara as simply “silver golems”), wood(ditto), and oddest of all - tar.

Ground octopus, like “air squid,” is the kind of thing I read these books for. Again, there’s kind of a similar monster in Mystara, the decapus, which tends to live in trees. Personally, my favorites are the octorocks of the Legend of Zelda series. While mentioning both air squids and video games, I’ll throw in that the Japanese Super Mario Bros 2 featured flying squids as well. I should also mention that I haven’t played video games in 30 years, so I will routinely recall things like this and not the 3,000 instances of them that have likely appeared in video games in the interim. 

I never thought I’d see triffids in a monster book. I love it! Some Lewis Carrol monsters, some from myth and legend, such as the “three sons of Argatron.” I had to look that up, by the way, as it sounded historical but I wasn’t sure. Google corrected me to some random other word first, and then when I insisted that it search for what I actually typed, it pulled the legends right up. I didn’t read them though; we’ll do that when we get to the entry! Man-Scorpion, another monster not yet statted. As far as I know, they’re usually called “scorpion men,” so the formatting of “man” first is an unusual coincidence and I wonder if there was some famous or classical text popular at the time that used that form. At any rate, it says “see Humbaba,” who, if I’m not terribly wrong, was not a scorpion man. 

There are several Lovecraftian things, including stats for Nyarlathotep. I believe I have probably 3 or 4 sets of stats for him, for various editions of D&D, and I look forward to contrasting them all and seeing how they compare, especially this earliest one to, say, the newest one I have. Of course, being published by Chaosium, they had the rights to these monsters.

Not so much the olog-hai, which was a direct property of the Tolkien Estate. If “hobbit,” a word Professor Tolkien did not even invent, had to be removed from early versions of D&D, one must imagine that the only reason the same didn’t occur here is that this book flew under their radar. (In fact, I believe hobbits were removed by choice, in order to prevent future legal issues, but this is another point I could be quite wrong on.)

Let’s move on and not spend all day speculating and rambling about a table of contents, shall we?

Creators

I don’t want to add up the number of creators used, as many are combinations of creators and so forth. Dan Pierson created the largest number of monsters, with 28 entries printed in the book. It seems like the average is about a dozen or a bit less, just glancing at the numbers and guessing. If someone cares enough to do the math, have fun. 

One little point is the last line: “There are 265 entries and 113 cross-references.” So out of these monsters, almost half of them are related to(in some way or another, whether as biologically related, as enemies, or whatever) others. If that’s what it means, that would make some sense given that some creators contributed a dozen or more monsters, and there’s often going to be such connections(such as someone creating a number of “ice demons”). This kind of thing is good, as it can be incorporated to give the denizens of your world, and your world by extension, more of a feeling of depth and history, that these monsters have relations, alliances and rivalries, and aren’t just a set of numbers. 

“Interpreting the Monster Entries”

An explanation of what the stats mean and so forth. There are a few points of interest here. They mention that random numbers are “expressed as die rolls,” in case you played D&D and somehow didn’t know what 3d6 meant. This is great though, as it saves the trouble of figuring out what to use to determine 3-6(it’s 1d4+2). There are reasons that Gygax chose to express numbers as, say, the aforementioned 3-6 instead of 1d4+2, which was to emphasize that the numbers were important and not how they were generated, opening people up to new dice rolling conventions and so forth. Unfortunately, what it mostly did was confuse people with some of the more difficult to interpret number ranges. 

We’re told that intelligence is abbreviated as IQ(as it is in the later GURPS) and expressed as a die roll - so instead of being told “very” or given a specific number, we’re given dice to roll to determine the intelligence of any given monster. (I do this in my own games and monster stats, so it’s nice to see someone else doing this a number of years before I was capable of playing.)

Most of the rest of the explanations are mundane and not worth reviewing, it’s basic information. 

One thing it doesn’t bother to explain or mention is the fact that it has a dexterity range for each monster in the same way it has an IQ range. Here, dexterity is abbreviated DEXT., which makes me wonder if the DEX abbreviation had been used yet on character sheets or was still a little bit away? Remember, this book was released after Holmes Basic and before a single AD&D book, including the first AD&D book released, the Monster Manual.

More importantly than the abbreviation is why that was there. It was there because in Holmes Basic, the melee combatants attack in order of dexterity, regardless of who won initiative or initiated combat. The Holmes book mentions the question of “who strikes the first blow?” as one unresolved in OD&D, which seems very odd. OD&D never really explained initiative at all, and expected you to default to Chainmail order of initiative. It may have not expected you to use the combat “phases,” but just the die mechanic that determined which side acted first - that being a d6 and the higher goes first. Later versions would have the lower roll act first, with the option to positively/detrimentally modify the roll by weapon speed. There is mention that dexterity might affect various things including initiative, but there’s no exact rule explaining how. Most people just assumed that the one with the initiative attacked first, and this was how the game has been played, for the most part, ever since(and I imagine, for most, during and before, as well). Personally, I think it’s great, and would enjoy trying the rule out. I favor using phases and aspects of combat that add some amount of strategy, where “I run up and attack” can often be detrimental to waiting for a more opportune moment and so forth. I’d prefer the combat phases, and have played with them for many, many years, but I’d be quite open to the Holmes Basic version of combat. (Someone want to run it for me?) 

As yet another digression, it’s funny how often I’ve played games with people that ran their system of choice for decades, sometimes since the game was released, and never knew how initiative actually worked in said system. People get so used to it working a certain way in lots of games, and they either never consult the rule in their own game, or forget it and replace it in their mind with another. I’ve played in multiple Marvel Super Heroes games where everyone rolled a d10 for initiative, and when I pointed out it was one die per side, the judges in each case looked at me quizzically and then continued doing it how they had been doing it forever. The fact that they had been performing the most basic part of their favorite game wrong for 30+ years was too much to consider so it was simply dismissed.

And with that, I’ll wrap this first entry. I hope it wasn’t too boring - I know I ramble and digress, but it’s kind of part of the point I suppose. I hope you’ll stick with me for the monsters, even if you found this part kind of weak, and that you’ll let me know what you think, as well, because I want to go over this with you, not just read a review to a brick wall. It’s not a review, it’s a readthrough, me and you, if you please.

So.

Let’s read All the World’s Monsters together!

[syrakhanistan]

OoC/Reference Log

((This nation is based on the work "Magical Girl Noir Quest", or MGNQ, a fanfiction of popular anime Madoka Magica. I did not write the original work, but I highly recommend it.

Syrakhanistan supposes the idea of a nation that exists within the dystopian, grimdark world that MGNQ shows the reader, and is indeed integrally linked. It's based on a small reference to a united Arabia seen on a background news-cast in one of the early chapters of the story (or was it from one of the Asks? I can't recall now, but it was there), but I caught onto it.

This will usually just be a mirror of the original nation found on the roleplaying site NationStates - same name of this nation, too - but will occasionally have small extras, ESPECIALLY if anyone wishes to interact with me.

As said in the pinned post, and in the description - feel free to interact with me at any time. Send an ask, or a message, whenever you feel like it; if you want a true anon ask, you can also use any free anonymous e-mailing service, such as AnonymouseMail, to send an anonymous ask to mfasyrakhanistan@gmail.com as Tumblr refuses to bring back the old anonymous ask system.

I do hope at the very least some old fans of MGNQ have some interest, or maybe just some other nationstates roleplayers. It would be a shame to just sit here posting with nobody batting an eye. Not that it would stop me - Syrakhanistan will prevail, after all...

Also, the titles of some parts of my writing SHOULD have underlining. But Dumblr keeps Dumblring and removing it. See, this shit is why I deleted all of my Tumblr accounts years ago!))

[skeppsbrott]

Unfortunately the post you reblogged about the perception of autism as something only cool people have was written by a terf. (I agreed with the post so I checked out op’s blog, got bad vibes, searched “trans” and found ugly stuff real fast)

Hi there anon!

So I've been waffling back and forth about how to reply to this but here is (sort of) where I have ended up:

Terfery is bogus. I don't need to elaborate on this. Terfery was embarrassing, destructive, self-cannibalising and reactionary when I first encountered it in like, 2012. In 2023, amidst a quite frankly astounding and terrifying backlash, even moreso. Socially isolating terfs from fellow feminists, activists, and (possibly) queers is a legitimate tactic of activism and I think it is a quite effective one. You treat our siblings, friends and allies like that while calling yourself a feminist? Go take a long walk off a short pier, mate.

And yet...

I do not really want to recieve messages like this.

I understand the impulse and I think the fact that you go out of your way to send me this underlines something important - we have a culture on this corner of the Tumblr that terfs ain't got no friends. It is not controversial to be like "yo fuck feminists that oppose trans liberation and have a gender-essentialist worldview" and that's unequivocally a good thing. I am glad that you trust my politics enough to send me this. I am glad that my politics shine through enough that I would obviously support your anonymous suggestion (except it is not a suggestion, you just gave me this information to, idk, fill out a bingo card and draw my own conclusions with, but nonetheless).

And yet, I do not really want to recieve messages like this.

I gave up social media activism many years ago. It made me miserable. It made me miserable to be around. It made my spaces of respit miserable and it meant I was always fucking on and I am not saying I am a great activist now but at some point you realize you'll just burn yourself out on that shit when instead you could like, idk, talk kindly to young queers who haven't worked out their internalised shit yet and help people come out of their freshly cracked eggs and support your older queer friends in their quests for parenthood in this wretched world. Make sure that anyone in your social circle knows that if they fuck around with gender essentialism they'll find out real soon but not because you make a big deal out of hating terfs but because you are loud and proud about having declared the old ways of doing gender over and done with. Hopefully?

I don't know. If you are my friend or you've followed me for a long time or we're mutuals or whatever and you see me behave in a way that makes you feel unsafe on my blog I think it is fair to reach out. "Hey, Skeppsbrott, this person you reblog a lot of art from is a quite vocal terf on their main blog and I really wish you wouldn't". "Hey, Skeppsbrott, I think you are being way too charitable to the debate happening on that post you just reblogged. This is my read, I hope you'll reconsider."

That seems actionable to me. Like yeah I probably should pay attention to the politics of people who very often end up in my reblog chains! I definitely should pay attention to the changing rethoric used by gender essentialists! I do not, however, want to spend energy wondering whether every post I reblog might possibly be made by a terf and feel guilty if I perhaps missed one. I also struggle with the anon ask as something that demands a response but which also demands it publicly. Would you have noticed if I removed the post but never replied to your ask? Would you get suspicious if I never DID reply to your ask? I guess part of why making it an anon ask is that the act of condemning terfery in an ask is more potent than removing a jokey and a little mean but nonetheless fair post about autism that got like three hundered notes. No one really suffers from that post, that's kind of the conundrum here. Either way, I am not here to scorch the earth, but then again -

"Hey, Skeppsbrott, this person you reblogged a post from is trying to become a tumblr funnyman so that they can infiltrate more people with transphobic propaganda"? Yeah. I guess that is not so different from what I commented above.

Perhaps at the end of the day I am just really, very, terribly equipped for social isolation tactics. I just can't really bring myself to do it. Call it trauma or poor constitution or whatever. It just brings me this great, deep sadness, where I look at who I was and can't help but wonder what I would have gotten lost in if there hadn't been people who looked me sternly in the eye and said "that's fucked up. Get out now before I too grow to hate you".

Or maybe I am just a coward. That is entirely possible as well. Even quite likely.

Thank you, anon, genuinely. I appreciate it. But maybe next time, don't?

xx

[thedarklinkfell]

did tumblr remove the ability to underline posts? or is it just photo posts?

edit: that’d be a yes

[devandahlcourte-work-in-progress]

Section 7. seven chapters, ending with chapter 36

I am reposting these first eighty-two chapters (in 22 sections) plus the prologue and the preface.

These posts will be the updated versions from my DeviantArt account, and since Tumblr may not display all the text correctly (it destroys anything I had in italics or underlined) I would still recommend reading everything there, on DeviantArt. They will also include internal links that navigate between the chapters on DeviantArt and will take the reader off Tumblr if clicked.

This came about because I noticed search engines were finding random sections of my book and displaying them along with some other people’s blog posts.

Okay, so that’s why I installed those internal links in each one… so that if anyone gets to a random section by way of a search engine and would like to read the story from the beginning, they can.

Only then did I realize that it wasn’t getting it’s search results from DeviantArt, but from old Tumblr.

There’s another problem at work here besides unrefined searches…

There is a new species of virus on the internet that likes to eat ancient Tumblr posts and barf them back up infested with adware - spyware - malware etc. The virus goes by names like TumGIR, TumBIG, TumPIK, or Tum(anything else but ‘blr’). The caps were added by me for emphasis so that maybe you can double check in case you’re not looking at an actual Tumblr post right now but one of these so-called “mirror” sites.

If you’re looking at this text through one of the counterfeit Tumblrs that I mentioned, then no link you click (assuming it even copies it with my links intact) will take you out; it will redirect you and show you all of the spam ads it wants to. So read carefully what url is showing on your browser right now.

If it is one of the untrustworthy ones I would suggest closing your browser window and doing whatever else you normally would in order to reset settings.

As far as my science fiction novel entitled “If And Only If,” the safest way to find it is by going to my Instagram:

@michelle.de.vandahlcourte

From there you can click on the link in my bio. It will take you to the beginning of the story on DeviantArt… the safe one! No malware.

P.S. None of this is Tumblr’s fault! It’s the malware/adware/spyware developers who are stealing people’s tumblr posts.

The actual content of this page appears below here👇

Section 7. seven chapters, ending with chapter 36

↩️return to previous section, section 6

↩️↩️…and if you arrived here because of a search engine and you would like to read this story from the beginning, click here.

Prajina and Alex

As expected, Alex had seen her, become curious, and followed up by digging electronically. A bit more carelessly than he was aware of. His trail was being analyzed by an older man who was thought of by her employers, prior to Prajina’s arrival, as essentially the second most intelligent human on earth. He was now third, if you believed in that kind of stuff. Nevertheless, since we can’t have Inigo Montoya following the Man in Black… club him over the head with a rapier pommel? Ha ha, no. Prajina just simply erased the appropriate files at NSA, DIA, CIA, etc. She could do this remotely from her office in Trieste in fact, using technology so advanced that it made Alex‘s 22nd century neutrino beam shenanigans look like “stone knives and bear skins” as Spock once said.

Prajina had also erased memories, using the old open-up-a-microscopic-wormhole-inside-someone’s-brain-and-perform-surgery-from-somewhere-else-in-the-universe trick that her alien mentors had taught her. The memories of NSA employees in key positions had been removed and false memories substituted for them that would be indistinguishable from reality in their minds.

It was legerdemain at first but had already become dull for her at this point; cleaning up after Alex‘s trail required a lot of this special attention and she’d become used to it already. More importantly, she now needed to have an actual conversation with him. But it had to be of his own free will. If he truly wanted to live in this time, the powers that be would not stop him. Even if it meant he was creating new parallel universes, being awarded that prestigious Ploughman’s prize for his work, introducing advances in mathematics – indeed new branches of mathematics – that shouldn’t have happened yet, and so on.

It came in the form of a FaceTime call. She made the trail easy to find, but not easy enough to be obvious to the information experts of the time. Tentatively, a gentleman scholar on the screen said “Praji?” The nickname she went by in high school and middle school... Because kids quickly learned that by deliberately mispronouncing her name, they could rhyme it with a most prominent part of the female anatomy. Kids had not changed significantly by their century. “Yes Alex, I am pleased to see that you figured out what was going on.”

Alex was very far from having “figured” anything out, apart from the fact that Prajina was here, and how to make contact using the trail of crumbs she’d left for him. He very much wanted to meet her in person, but didn’t know when he’d be able to manage a trip to Trieste. As he attempted to get the words out, and while debating himself about whether or not to mention waking and using the taco to transport himself there, the knock came on his office door. Nobody in their right mind would defy his metaphorical “do not disturb sign,” from students, or other tenured professors, or even administrators up to the chancellor.

Then he noticed the background on Prajina’s phone was no longer resembling any Italian city skyline and looked a lot like the familiar wood paneling and wainscoting in the hallway outside of his office. Of course, he realized that if the same aliens had sent Praji back, she might also be equipped with some kind of “transporter” technology. As he rushed to the door he briefly wondered if she had to use anything as ridiculous as a giant taco to get herself beamed from city to city… Never mind; that would be a discussion for another time.

Their hug lasted longer than he could justify under the friend pretense and he backed off a bit before she felt “him.” All he could think to say was “it’s been so long. I’ve missed you so much.” He tried to choke back the tear, but Praji was already Mona-Lisa-smiling at him and wiping it from below his eye. She revealed that it had only been a few months for her.

He calculated. She arrived in 2017 then. Many hours of conversation later, and after both of them had beamed (without the use of a taco) back to Trieste from Alex‘s office, Alex was feeling self-conscious about their first kiss. Yes, it was wonderful; as sweet as he had dreamed since he was a boy in middle school; his heart danced and the moon came out and sang opera for him. But she was still 19. Physically. He might’ve passed, he thought, for less than 45; maybe late 30s in certain types of lighting. Did it make her feel weird?

Lucy

Nothing whatsoever on the news about missing cops… At all. The lack of corpses, perhaps? She needed to find someone with a police scanner. Buying one at RadioShack would be simple enough. But what if they had videotapes of their transactions? The act itself might be suspicious. There must be an actual person who has one already.

There was.

Castadiva’s “Sleazy Uncle Raul” as she’d jokingly called him in the past. But she finally provided Lucy with some clarification.

Sleezy? Yeah, because he had purportedly molested another family member. But `Diva was never in any danger she reassured them glibly – he preferred males. As `Diva went on, Lucy eventually found out that the family gossip was skewed: he had merely provided refuge for the boy after his family had thrown the dude out at the age of 15 for finding out that he was gay. Gay Uncle Raul thought it was the right thing to do, as opposed to the boy’s own father’s decision to pick up a frying pan with hot oil from the stovetop and throw it at his son and scalding the kid’s forearm during the otherwise passé and predictable “get out of my house” tirade.

Then Raul had had the audacity to report the incident to authorities on the way to the ER with him… resulting in authorities being there to photograph his injuries on arrival and quickly thereafter resulting in child services removing his two younger siblings from the home. Everyone called Raul “vindictive” for this.

So word amongst daddy and other religious-fanatic relatives was that there must be something “sinister” going on under Gay Raul’s roof. The kid was a graduate-school-aged young adult now, had already fathered two male children as a sperm donor for different lesbian-couple friends, was by mutual agreement a part of their lives, and as an appropriate precaution – revenge according to the senile reactionary religious fanatic family grapevine – had made sure his parents never got to meet their only grandsons before they died. Raul and his partner were starting to be able to contribute to each kid’s homeschooling now, since they were a scientist and a mathematician respectively.

It was either set up a visit with Uncle Raul or continue to watch commercials on TV for that one news item that might or might not ever air, whilst suffering through commercials for the next episodes of “Friends, Seinfeld,” and “E.R.” or whatever driveling idiocy was on the other channels.

She was beginning to see what Keith’s criticism was based on. Lucycat already preferred Sid Meier's “Civilization.” She had once played on emperor level and conquered the world by 200 CE. But her score was much higher when she let it go on to the 1600s or so, built wonders and discovered everything up to “future technology number” whatever.

One of the just slightly disappointing things about the game: no explanation of future technologies beyond fusion power. But that was understandable, she guessed.

What level of future technology, she wondered, would a civilization need in order to make a giant taco come to life, read minds, and morph back-and-forth between a rock and a taco? And oh yeah, let’s equip it with the death ray too, just for shits and giggles. Okay, back to the issue: Cool Uncle Raul was the best choice. They would just go visit him as a small group. The three of them: Lucy, Keith, and Castadiva Talamantez.

Castadiva was her real name; her mom had seen Bellini’s Norma back in ‘79 and was in love with the aria – enough to name her newborn baby girl after it a year later. They went to see uncle Raul under the guise of a school project. As if any of them ever took homework that seriously! Castadiva was actually the most levelheaded of the group. Her favorite subject was home ec. Especially the sewing projects, which she rocked – Lucy supposed that when your name is Castadiva, you’re destined to become a fashion designer, or some kind of artist at least!

She knew how to play to her uncle’s idiosyncrasies. Don’t make it a science project, she decided. He’ll see through that and know something’s up. It’s a paper we’re doing for a government class. A group report they’d selected on police accountability. She was the only one who had access to the World Wide Web and the Internet. Keith had pondered with Lucy that they might actually be the same thing; they both made a point to learn more about it later. Apparently there was a big buzz on alt dot something-or-other about whether citizens have the right to listen in on police frequencies, and what if the cops went digital and started encrypting everything they said on the radio. They, of course, we’re taking the freedom of information side. This was sure to get him all riled up appropriately, she said; he was an old hippie at heart still.

It worked. He didn’t trust the government. Duh. Who did? By the grace of God, whom Lucy did believe in even though Raul didn’t, he had a sun-faded dog-eared poster on his wall – one of dozens – that in particular showed all of the 10 Dash codes. The old standard 10-4 plus 10-100 and maybe 10-20 were close enough to common knowledge. But what about officer down? And yes the police department had one for officer unaccounted for/failing to respond, etc.

“What’s the difference between that one and officer down?” Lucy innocently tried to give the impression that she thought the only reason an officer would fail to respond would be if she/he were in mortal danger.

No, he said it could just be equipment failure, or an administrative glitch like a last-minute rescheduling of the shift and someone forgets to log it. But he made it clear that he hadn’t heard that one in many moons. No comment like “oh, funny you should mention that one… just the other night,” and so on. There were numerous “officer downs” in the last several years, but nothing recently, and certainly nothing about four officers disappearing along with two of their cars. They were, however, experimenting with the new encrypted digital signals, though they weren’t standard yet for all communications. Then he wanted to talk about his ham radio, and his shortwave antenna rig that allowed him to clearly pull in broadcasts from Cuba. Keith wasn’t exactly sure what any of this meant, how it mattered, etc.

So the take-home message: the cops weren’t publicizing anything about the case. They certainly weren’t putting up roadblocks or having a nationwide manhunt for some multiple cop killers.

Next problem: surveillance video. Not the kind from dashboard cameras, but elsewhere in the city. Traffic light cameras? She had heard that ATMs now all have cameras. Have they always had them, she wondered? They needed to retrace their route as accurately as possible to see what cameras might be positioned along the way.

Her next suggestion was a bit elementary, but made sense. Change of appearance. No one had a valid ID on them that night, so there was no way the cops called in any names or drivers license numbers. They were all in high school and only three of them could drive. One was suspended, and the other two didn’t bring anything because they were all on skateboards. For their entire lives, the drinking age was too high for any of them to pass except maybe Jared. And he had a fake with a different name. One of the cops had easily spotted the fake I.D. and confiscated it.

So Jared was alerted never to use that name again, just in case they had radioed it in that night before being exterminated. The girls all had fun changing their hair colors and/or styles; some of the guys did too. Their clothes were nondescript anyway.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It turned out to be unnecessary to disguise themselves. No images were captured of any of them, Lucy found out years later from a source she couldn’t even have imagined in ‘96-‘97.

What happened next, before Martin Luther King’s birthday that year, was the best possible news imaginable. Lucy saw the female officer... alive! She was working security at the courthouse when Lucy went to take her mom to a court appearance for a DUI. Lucycat had always had a photographic memory for faces and it had only been a few weeks. She told Castadiva excitedly: That meant they could be off the hook... right?

Lucy and Diva put 2 and e together, applied the change of base formula for logarithms, and performed a few other elementary operations to come to their own unique conclusion. They hadn’t been attacked by a death ray, but rather “beamed” à la Star Trek. Lucy was generally regarded as the genius of the group. She joked, paraphrasing Herman’s Head, “that’s like being the Best-Looking Oak Ridge boy.” Castadiva chimed in with “or the best opera singer in...” She cut herself off, having previously promised Lucy that she’d stop disrespecting the place they were both from. Lightheartedly she made fun of her “hometown” too but it seemed like they both pined for it sometimes. Both girls often said they’d like to trade skill sets, `Diva wanting to be more SAT smart, and Lucy coveting her creative genius. They finally got ahold of Keith on Lucy‘s new cellular phone to tell him the good news. They recognized another one of the “dead cops” several days later; also very much alive.

Ambraluxia

“If one were to try an experiment in time travel,” she thought-questioned the baby “wherein history was completely reset and allowed to proceed forward without making any changes, then how would the new future look?”

The baby answered, “the same as before?” This was an opportunity to educate him. The Councilwoman ၕo ࿔ᠶóᡜ felt confident that an A.I. such as she would be a most excellent babysitter for her son. Ambraluxia had a lifetime of real world adventures in intergalactic space to share with young ᡜℏញ.

She retold her version of the story of “Earth” to the baby. Kids always loved that one. What was the difference between a time machine and a matter rearranger? Nothing, of course. The introduction of the observer into the scene made both of them merely approximations. If you could truly rewind the universe to an earlier configuration, there would be no observer in that universe to witness it because all of the atoms (as well as energy) in the observer would have to be reset to their prior arrangements also. Including those in brain cells. Every scrap of matter and energy must be reset in order for you to have truly reproduced the past.

At best, you’ve reorganized the universe into a very elaborate period-based theme park for an observer whose body and mind did not participate in the rearranging. Only observers outside could see it if it were absolutely identical to a past moment. So why had the professor’s mind not been correctly reproduced like the one of the character in that Sphere film? “Zero point vibrational energy is not the same for all sets of particles every time a universe is rewound?” was the baby’s innocent reply. Essentially correct she noted, smiling... So adorable at this age!

So the humans ended up “terraforming” Venus as well as Mars in this alternate future. The one called Young Padmanabhan (they both laughed about that one word- young! As if any human had ever lived long enough to be considered old by ᡜℏញ’s species) and his husband Eric, had been partially correct. Humans were attracting the attention of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, but not because of the implosion ablation of Venus’ atmosphere with some firecrackers. They didn’t know the rule of territoriality that gave humans unlimited access to all planetary resources in their solar system as long as they were on/in uninhabited places.

Now, starting a second galactic nucleus in such a way that you rip holes in the fabric of the universe allowing matter and energy from multiple dimensions to pour into each other… That’s just downright annoying.

Padmanabhan

“Why wasn’t the land checked thoroughly – they had the technology – before citizens were allowed to move in?” Padmanabhan hadn’t slept in 23 hours and ignored Eric‘s perfectly reasonable question, without meaning to. He was preoccupied with something his subconscious glimpsed in a photo from one of the news articles and was trying to go back over it. It was that feeling like when you dream a thing that shouldn’t be there and then the realization wakes you up. One time he dreamt an entire floor of his parents’ house that didn’t exist. He really didn’t want to be rude. “It was 2048,” he murmured absentmindedly, “you didn’t have to be a citizen to own a house yet.” Eric knowingly answered “oh that’s right,” as if he remembered any history or government from school.

Then it hit him! “Eric! Either I’m dreaming or your alien theory just got slam-dunk-proven! Look at the people in this photo and tell me who or what you see please.” Eric smiled as he ported the monitor output to his head wire, closing his eyes. He looked pleased that he might actually be right about something requiring technical intelligence. “If you were dreaming, wouldn’t I be standing on a pyramid in sort of sun god robes with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at me?” Eric opened one eye to check `Rajan’s reaction. Only a weak smile. They had learned to communicate in old movie code and he woke up with bed-head that morning which both of them agreed resembled the pompadour-esque hairdo sported by Val Kilmer in the movie. Communicating in movie references became part of their inside humor. “OK, I’ll be serious.” He closed both eyes again to concentrate on the monitor.

“Oh there they are! I see what you mean now. What in the world are they wearing though? Blues Brothers? Or that Will Smith/Tommy Lee movie? He’s rockin’ it, but the Annie Hall thing just does not work for her…” His voice trailed off as he realized his husband’s stress level had just jumped again. “Don’t furrow your brow that way babe, it’ll make you look like Ernest Borgnine. I want my Jimi Mistry back!”

“Rolla dear, please, it was Tommy Lee Jones. The other guy was the drummer from some 1980s hair metal band. But tell me just so I know I’m not going insane, who is wearing those suits?”

“Well that remains to be seen, Kent, but we are looking at your two friends, Alex and Priyanka… um, sorry, Prajina. It’s definitely them.” Eric hadn’t connected the dots yet, as his head wire monitor only intercepted the image `Rajan wanted him to see, and not the whole article.

“How old do they look to you Eric?” He tried to remember, and then thought about whether this might be a trick question… Hadn’t the three of them all been born on the same day or something? Maybe it was in the same month. “Um, they’re about the same age as they were when I last saw them three and a half years ago, dear, over eighteen I guess; late teens to early twenties? Or maybe about like I’d expect them to look now. Why?”

Why? Because the picture was of a crowd of onlookers observing rescue workers – it was quite the miracle that no one was killed when the collapse happened – only a few minor injuries. It was at the site of the Kentucky sinkhole 92 years ago! The photo was from 2048. Alex and Prajina had time-traveled back into the last century. Either Alex was a much more prolific boy genius than he let on and had invented a time machine – not likely, as he was not known to be modest about his accomplishments – or aliens really were involved.

Meanwhile Eric had a very strange complaint: looking out their bedroom window into the city at night, on the balcony of a building across the street from them... Rajan hadn’t had any of his mind blogging features sharing things with Eric at the time. But Eric’s complaint out loud sounded like he was reading word for word about the hallucinations that his husband had after disconnecting his MindWire virtual sensorium rig.

He even made the Predator analogy, describing the shadowy things on the neighbor’s balcony. But no way had Eric been connected long enough to be experiencing these kinds of side effects. Rajan wondered if it was possible to sneak a virus in on one of the rom-macro-molecule chips... but even so, how does that have any influence on a person’s mind and optic nerves afterwards, when switched off? It had been too long a day and he just fell asleep. Of course Eric was there to cover him, straighten his head out, get his pillow comfortably under him, and put all his devices on the charging station for the rest of the day.

Brenda

A post office in the mall? She thought to herself to take her mind off it. Hmm, that’s something she hadn’t seen in San Antonio. This “galleria” in Houston was special, historically though. Cryptomancer’s parents had met there on their first date in the 90s when there was still a Bennigan’s overlooking the ice-skating rink. His real name, Bobby, made her think of the cyberpunk character, and like a dork she asked him if his last name was Newmark when they first met. Fortunately, he was just as geeky and responded “I can be, if you’ll be Steppin’ Razor.” Brenda held off on asking him why he had a PO Box in the galleria post office. Wasn’t snail mail kind of un-cyberpunky for him? Her mind couldn’t help drifting back to “it.” The “spot.” If it existed, how big was it?

Dammit, they weren’t supposed to get out of the car. If the restaurant they drove thru to satisfy their munchies hadn’t been spewing out a generously strong free WiFi signal, and if Bobby’s devices hadn’t already recognized the network from having joined it before, he wouldn’t have even gotten the notification (he had some, frankly, paranoid-sounding reasons for not wanting to use LTE when out and about) that led him to wanna go check his box. Perhaps a public restroom and some change she’d grabbed from his car console to get an emergency pad would take care of it? That was roughly the plan. She wasn’t supposed to have needed any.

But this was altogether different; her first time in six months. But also her first time ever for going out afterwards without bathing / freshening up in some way. Plenty of change available in all kinds of little compartments throughout his car, and no complaints from him naturally, as she’d simply mumbled something about “a vending machine.” He didn’t ask. Maybe he was focused on thinking about “them?” A possible strategy for her, to take her mind off it as they walked through the parking garage.

Them. Thirty-three people have made contact before today. That was not including Bobby/ Cryptomancer who was brought in for technical support. What Brenda noticed about all of them, starting back with Madhvi and Irving, was that they had copies of files or printouts about Stalko-Taco even though they weren’t fans. How weird is that? If you were a fan, not only was your memory of him (it?) utterly Destroyed, all documents you may have had to jog your memory of the story, and remind you that it existed, were just mysteriously gone somehow too.

That even applied to old Polaroid photos that Wheeler had had of himself trying to do Stalko-Taco cosplay in the outfit his mom started to make for him. She had chatted with his mom recently again, an otherwise normal woman as far as memory goes, and found that she still remembered nothing about it either. Brenda still hadn’t floated her “Happening” theory to Bobby or anyone else because she was afraid it was just too stupid and she was already a bit self conscious about being one of the few liberal-artsy-girls among this bunch of super brains. They’d most likely, she thought, shoot the idea down with their in-depth understandings of all things technology-related.

Okay, now she oozed. The feeling was unmistakable. They were going in their sweatpants and t-shirts for this. Sweaty workout clothes? Perhaps people would think they’d just been exercising? And of course Houston was hot as hell as usual. Yeah right. And her only sweat just happened to be in that spot! Obviously not blood. Would people think she was sexually aroused and that was her own juice flowing? Maybe they’d simply think she couldn’t hold her pee and had a slight accident that way. Or would they guess that the guy she was walking with had just fucked her a few minutes ago and it was his semen leaking out of her as she walked? Was it even that conspicuous that anyone could possibly notice?

“Seems that only if you didn’t really like Stalko-Taco, but had documentation about him anyway,” Bobby ventured distantly almost as if talking to himself but still momentarily glancing at Brenda, “your documents are intact!?” What had they done, he went on wondering aloud, contacted everyone in the fanbase, then Will Smith flashy-thinged them and confiscated their papers?

Maybe. But then why ignore the people who weren’t fans? Well perhaps they thought there wouldn’t be that many. A non-fan who for some reason still has copies of the story anyway? Unlikely? They were basically right, to a good approximation. Only 33 in the world so far.

Plus whomever we might discover today through this thing Bobby called his low-tech back channel; his PO Box. But first, and at last, a ladies room. He was dead set to proj on to his box, but could tell she really needed to divert over to the restrooms. But did she? What if the spot that she was Sooo sure was visible and the size of a pizza, was in fact the opposite of visible and she’d been worrying about nothing. There was enough of a lull in this weekday crowd flow that they had a moment of total privacy in the hallway outside. She quickly asked him “ok, be honest Newmark, can you see a stain on me if you look at my butt? Or from the front?”

Once he got it, he was sweet about it; no vulgar joking or anything. “Honestly,” he calmly smiled, “if you hadn’t bent over just right and drew my attention to it, I’d never have noticed. I’m positive no one else has either.” But yeah, he now agreed with her that the box could wait another several minutes or as long as necessary. And wanted to know if she’d grabbed enough change because he truly didn’t have a clue how much those things cost. It made her feel better to just deal with it while they were there.

She found herself thanking him for not being grossed out by it or thinking it made her seem slutty – in retrospect, kind of a sad commentary on other boys she’d known so far. And finally, as they reached the public facilities, tried to lighten up by pointing out that since he was the only other person who knew about the secret spot, it could serve as a reminder that he’d “marked her as his territory.” Admittedly she was going for this effect, but just hadn’t thought it would work so well. As the sound of her own flirtatious words still echoed in her ears, she could see him visibly Grow! The grey sweat pants were kinda baggy and his briefs weren’t tight enough to restrain it. Awesome.

She’d thought earlier about getting back to his place and showering and discarding their “workout clothes”, then possibly another romp between the sheets. He was sexually spent until later this evening – at night at least, with a possible afternoon nap, he could be ready to go again. Now she mused that maybe he wouldn’t need the nap after all.

The pad probably wasn’t needed either. But since she had made such a fuss about taking this detour... might as well go ahead and get it. But hurry up, she told herself; she wanted to see what was supposed to be waiting at this box as much as he did, and now with her pants down she saw that the thing was decidedly tiny. The best thing to come out of this was what had popped up in the hallway outside, she thought smiling wryly into the mirror over the sink. After rushing her washed hands under the dryer so she could get back to Bobby and their business, she was surprised to see him shuffling around the corner, slightly out of breath and with some generic store bag in his hand.

Instead of waiting patiently as she had been picturing him, he’d run to a kiosk they passed on the way in. It gave her a slight melting feeling as he handed her the shirt. He kinda fumbled for the words to try and tell her what he was recommending that she do; something almost all girls know about already, and so she nodded and thanked him warmly with a let’s-feel-if-that-bulge-is-still-there hug... as she had tied the sleeves around her waist faster than he could explain the configuration. In truth, she thought, while boys may or may not know about it and might just think it’s a fashion choice, it pretty much screams out to most women. The thing that wasn’t noticeable before had now been transformed into an unmistakable “oops” signal.

But most of us have been there or known a friend who has, so it’s not like anyone would have an attitude over it. It was just too sweet a gesture from him to not oblige him by wearing it as he had envisioned it.

So next stop, the box, to find out how many more “un-erasables” there were in the world (besides the current thirty-three) who could still remember Stalko-Taco.

Weird Shapes

She wasn’t sure what store the display was supposed to be for. It was kind of on the wall between a clothing retailer and a card and gift shop. It seemed rather a waste of money; if you were going to invest in uber-expensive hologram technology then you’d better make sure people know which damned store the ad goes with.

Bobby appeared to be impressed with it also. Being a techno-wizard, it didn’t matter to him so much what the message was – it was just pretty cool to see them showing off their advanced holography.

If they hadn’t both been in such a hurry they might have hung around and gawked like sightseeing tourists.

Meanwhile, if the inter-dimensional travelers had been able to pat each other on their backs... they might have been tempted to in celebration of their mastery of camouflage for once! For the next phase of their operation, in this same human city only a bit later, they wouldn’t need camouflage. It was almost time for the actual confrontation with one of the humans; the one they estimated could likely handle seeing their true form.

Back to Brenda

I could tell my new boyfriend was mad about the eraser situation. At first I mistook it for a general moral indignation, like how dare the government do this to citizens, but realized now that it was more personal for him.

He had never heard of Stalko-Taco. But he liked most creepypastas. Even the ones that weren’t especially his favorites, he had bothered to read and knew them in detail. He could recognize who each character was supposed to be on Madhvi’s DeviantArt. Naturally he had no memory whatsoever of Stalko-Taco. Which meant that he was in the other category. He was quite apart from this group of 33; he had most likely been a fan. Upon reading all of the unique documents that each of us had found, although Bobby had no memory of the stories at all, he laughed at parts; said “cool” at one point.

Yep, he had been a fan. And like millions of others, his memory had been erased. But not only that, his personal files on his computer had been deleted in a way that left no trace. One of the best hackers in the world had been hacked – something heretofore regarded as an impossibility had been perpetrated against him – and he was infuriated, no doubt.

That turned him vicious, as far as I could tell. High-ranking government officials in the administration had sent encrypted compressed steganographically hidden documents to countries they weren’t supposed to have contact with... they hadn’t of course. Not voluntarily. The great Cryptomancer had caused their devices to do it, though. He not only framed them, but the so-called “plaintext” files that he had encrypted, were in fact gibberish as she understood it. Batches of random numbers, he explained, that he’d generated with two different americium-type smoke detectors and two bananas, with two separate geiger counters. The time intervals between decay events from multiple sources being routed out of signals from two different detectors, he said, would be truly random.

At first Brenda didn’t get it. Basically it meant the NSA would be having shit-fits thinking they were unable to decrypt the “messages” when in fact there was no message, and simultaneously wasting both manpower hours and valuable CPU time – hopefully on some of the NSA’s most expensive equipment.

It gave him a warm fuzzy feeling, also, to think that powerful, high-level spooks in the government would be needlessly interrogating other government bureaucratic officials. He admitted that he was “a bit annoyed” by the erasers.

“A bit annoyed?” Brenda thought… She wondered to herself “what would you be like if you were really pissed?”

Among the letters he got were items from someone named Lucycat Beall in Santa Cruz. She claimed to have an original Yves St. Laurent in her closet that had been authenticated and wondered if he’d be interested. She pointed out that it had only been worn by the model on the runway where it was first shown. That was a lower level code that meant she was one of us. But with a modification: if Brenda was interpreting it right, she was saying that she had actually seen the original Stalko-Taco, in “person” as it were.

Did she mean that she had seen the first draft, and remembered it? That she actually knew the author? Was the author? No, it almost sounded like she literally meant that Stalko-Taco was real and not a story and that she had seen the actual taco. Well, once Bobby decrypted the message in her poetry, they’d know more.

Continue on to next section…

If And Only If

Copyright 2015

by Michelle Viviénne de Vandahlcourte

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

First Edition. © December 16, 2015.

Everything from here👇 and below is not part of the story but a comment section from DeviantArt, which I use to talk about why I gave this and possibly other sections a ‘mature’ rating.

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For this section I wasn’t sure if I should indicate that it has “mature content” when the upload questionnaire appears.

As anyone reading has figured out by now, this is a science fiction novel. Primarily. But some of the characters in it are humans. They have sex sometimes. But there’s no sex scene in it – without creating a plot spoiler – it’s just a character acknowledging that she recently f**ked another one and that she’s looking forward to doing it again with him later. 

I’m not sure if this qualifies for the mature content rating; it has survived in this form on my old tumblr for almost seven years now… and tumblr these past few years is well known for having hissy-fits over anything even remotely sexual.. and even some things that aren’t. But to avoid any problems I’m designating it as ‘mature.’

If this really causes anyone trouble, they can see the original ancient tumblr here…

vandahlcourte.tumblr.com/post/…

…and will have all the same files (including these newly re- proofread ones from just last month). It would just require a lot more scrolling. But also please note, that as you navigate through the old tumblr files, they eventually will want you to sign in or sign up for a tumblr account if you don’t already have one. Then you’ll also be able to see all my original posts from October 2015 which are fraught with even more spelling and grammar errors😅

[stagnant-water-comic]

Page 1 - Carrying Capacity ________ I do so love sketching freshwater environments.

Welcome to Stagnant Water, my new art project and first real attempt at a longform comic! This is a bit of an experiment for me, but I think it will be good to have a little storytelling practice. The style may change from time to time, but it's all my work unless otherwise stated. Thanks for reading! I hope you'll enjoy this story as much as I do.

A small note on formatting: While it may not be a strict standard, I plan on alternating each page's narrator/pov between the two main characters. Their dialogue will be color-coded, but I'll also make the speech bubbles different for colorblind readers. For reference: Quincy's text is purple with rounded bubbles, and Lya's text is orange with sharp edged bubbles.

note: this is a repost of the first page from my art blog because I'd like to keep things tidy. _________ [Start - you are here!]-[Page 2] _________

Image description under the cut:

[ID: A sketch-style comic page. At the top of the page is an illustration of a swamp shore with a sign that reads, “WARNING | ALLIGATOR TERRITORY | SWIM AT OWN RISK,” and depicts a simple icon of an alligator mouth and swimming figure. In the water is a vague silhouette of something that may be an open mouthed alligator or a log. Round purple text bubbles flow down the page and says, “There are no alligators in this swamp. The ecosystem cannot sustain such a large predator– they’re starved by competition– whose predation is much more comfortably attributed to the known danger of alligators.” At the bottom of the page is another illustration of the shore and sign, but the vague silhouette is revealed to be a log. The edge of a scaled shape is seen surfacing in the water. End ID]

[last-operator-standing]

Toll Of The Bell

Chapter 3 - Sonder

> Read on Ao3

> Chapter 1 (tumblr)

> Chapter 2 (tumblr)

> Chapter 4 (tumblr)

Summary: What now? He could roll over and accept the fate thrust upon him and die as Adler intended. Starting a new life away from it all couldn’t be that bad either. Or…

Or he could finish the mission.

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Warning apply this chapter

Words: 1.8k (7.3k total)

A/N: I'm sorry this one took so long asjdfjf I'm awful at keeping any sort of regular schedule- but i'm going to be trying much harder to keep the chapters flowing :') I'd love to hear any thoughts, and thank you all for the support <3 (p.s. Adler will be here v soon- Promise uwu)

"Please stop staring at me."

Bell has no intention of doing so. He's been staring down Lazar from the moment the man stumbled into the kitchen to join him at the table. The sunlight is harsh despite the closed curtains and the coffee fails to stimulate either agent's mind. This certainly isn't Lazar's ideal morning. The silence stretches on, but the uncomfortable feeling of Bell's eyes on him has him sighing loudly.

"Damn, Bell, alright." Lazar gives in. The chair scrapes loudly against the tile floor as he pushes back to stand, disappearing for a moment and returning with a bag. It piques Bell's curiosity; he was too tired to notice it last night.

A folder slaps loudly against the table and slides a few centimeters towards Bell. The Russian, unable to contain himself, surges forward to snatch it. "You're right about your buddy. Definitely a smuggler of sorts."

Bell flips the folder open and begins rooting through the contents. A picture of Kapano Vang is clipped on the inside. The first page has basic information. Name, call sign, date and place of birth. Bell's more interested in the finer details: A few suspected routes, potential cartel members, a list of what they believe is being smuggled. There's a few recurring words that catch his eye. Golden Triangle Cartel is scribbled at the bottom and underlined twice. Beside it, drawn in bold red ink and circled multiple times, Bell reads PERSEUS?

"What did you see yesterday, in those memories of yours?"

Bell gives a small shake of his head. "It was a bar, I think. He was there." He taps the portrait with a finger. "And someone else who knew us but.. I couldn't remember his face," The Russian gives a disappointed click of his tongue. "Or his name."

Lazar tries to offer a reassuring smile. "Hey, don't sweat it. It'll come back to you."

Bell wishes he could share in Lazar's positivity. He really does. But he can't be sure what brought the memories to him in the first place, or why they were so fragmented. After spending much of the night agonizing over any additional detail he might remember about Perseus or Kapano Vang or anyone else he had seen at that bar and coming up short, Bell's hope started to slip. In the end he could only point fingers at Adler and his MK-Ultra project. "So what's next?"

Lazar doesn't answer right away. He looks thoughtful. Even with their revelation on Kapano Vang and his cartel, they are nowhere closer to finding Perseus than they were before. They are back to square one.

"Well, I could try cross-referencing with MI6 again-" he means Park, Bell thinks with a snort "-and see if they have anything new."

Lazar's looking at him intently and Bell realizes he's waiting for a response. "Oh, uh. Yeah." Bell shifts awkwardly in his seat. "Whatever you say."

A week later, the two man team have no progress to show for their efforts. In that time, Bell's gone over the files at least a dozen and a half times and nothing's changed, nor have any new memories resurfaced. Lazar's cross-referencing has yet to unearth anything new either, telling Bell MI6 is just in the dark as they are.

"This isn't working, Laz." Bell slams the paper back against the kitchen table. His irritation is reflected in the other man's face but Lazar does a better job at hiding it. "We just have to keep looking," Lazar sighs. "We have the answer here somewhere."

Bell clicks his tongue in disapproval. "I've been over these files again and again. There's nothing here. We're not going to find Perseus on some piece of paper-" An idea strikes Bell. Something he never considered before now.

"Bell?" Lazar frowns. "You alright?"

"What if we look for that bar?" Excitement shines in Bell's eyes. Lazar's startled by his suggestion.

"I don't know-"

"C'mon, Laz, think about it. There was more than one Perseus agent there, in my memory." A plan was beginning to hatch in Bell's mind. From the way he's looking at him, Lazar doesn't like where he's going with it. "If we find that bar, maybe we can find one of those agents. Maybe even match some of these faces." He looks down at the file of unconfirmed but suspected Perseus soldiers.

"I don't know about this," Lazar repeats slowly, uncertainly. "If someone recognizes us it could cause some trouble. Especially if they recognize you. You helped stop Perseus the first time. No doubt his people are painfully aware of that."

Bell doesn't want to hear it, though. "It's just a risk we'll have to take," he argues. "I'm a spy, Laz. I know how to keep my head down."

After a bit of back and forth it's settled. First, they'll compile a list of bars in areas known or suspected to be frequented by Perseus. Then, while in constant contact, as Lazar insists, Bell will make his way through each alone and hope nobody recognizes him while he searches for the bar from his memory.

It takes two days to assemble a full list and another day and a half to narrow it down and map a route.

"I'm still not happy about this," Lazar grunts as he drops a duffel bag onto the table. Bell eagerly snatches it and begins shuffling inside. "You worry too much, old man."

The first thing Bell pulls from the bag is a change of clothes. They both agreed he needs something casual. And clean. It would make blending in with the crowd much easier. Too excited about the upcoming mission has Bell stripping where he stands. No time for modesty.

"C'mon, Bell, in the kitchen?" Lazar turns with a light pink tinting his face. Bell grins wide but doesn’t reply. The new outfit fits comfortably. He returns to the bag and roots around for his next prize. There’s a knife with a sheath and a small handgun waiting at the bottom. The knife is removed first. Bell carefully slides it free of its sheath. The blade is unusually slim and dark in color, and sports a dangerously sharp tip with partial serration of both sides near the hilt. Bell’s entirely absorbed in admiring the blade, so much so that he misses Lazar’s amused look until he speaks up.

“I thought you’d like that one.”

Bell returns the smile. “Oh, hell yeah. It reminds me of the one I had in-”

“Hey, Sims! You know reading that shit’s gonna make you go blind.”

“Yep! That’s why I want it alll up here.” Sims shot Adler a lazy grin. The commander slapped the book back against Sims’ chest.

“Bell, you’re with Sims. You usually bring out the best in each other.”

“RPGS! BRACE! BRACE!”

Bell watched in horror as a rocket collided with the chopper beside theirs. It careened dangerously before smashing into theirs, sending their own bird into a death spiral.

Everything was in chaos.

“Grab my hand! I gotcha! I got-!”

“We’ve lost power-!”

“We’re going down-!”

“BRACE!”

Bell blinks hard and his smile falls. There’s a knowing look on Lazar’s face and neither agent speaks a word about it. “C’mon,” Lazar gives a pat to Bell’s shoulder. “Showtime.”

The pair ride in silence. Lazar’s behind the wheel, giving Bell some time to think. He tries to keep the mission center focus, but the memories of Vietnam are overwhelming, fresh in his mind as if they just happened. And they’re not even real. I was never in Vietnam.

The car rolls to a stop and breaks Bell from his thoughts. “Alright, remember, coms on at all times.” Bell rolls his eyes and pops the door, deftly sliding from his seat. “I mean it, Bell!” But he slams the door without reply, turning towards the street. The small earpiece is already safely pressed into his ear and hidden behind his hair.

The checkered brick sidewalks stretch wide on either side of the street. There’s a decent amount of people strolling to and fro, some carrying briefcases and dressed in neatly pressed suits, others in casual attire with seemingly no important place to be. Lazar pulls off, leaving Bell to head for the first destination on his list.

The first thing Bell notices as he pushes into the first bar is the pungent mingling of smoke, alcohol, and sweat in the air. The floor beneath his boots is a glossy hardwood and matches the light oaken walls. The occupants chatter noisily, and although the sound is familiar, the atmosphere is not. This is not the right place. Keeping his appearance as casual as possible, Bell slips through the crowd and retreats out the back door. He glances around to confirm he’s alone before mumbling his findings to Lazar.

One down, seven more to go.

The second bar Bell stumbles into is smaller. There are less individuals milling around and the golden walls are all wrong from the dark cedar panels from his memory. The third bar is even less promising, while the fourth and fifth are so far from Bell’s memory that he’s positive he’s working backwards now.

Bell rejoins the thinning herd on the streets with a dejected sigh. This wasn’t working out. There’s two more bars to check and already it was getting dark. He’d hope for something; A clue, a new memory, a familiar face. Lazar keeps up with words of encouragement but Bell doesn’t have the capacity to share the optimism.

The sixth bar Bell checks holds a notable hushed atmosphere. Right away he’s stricken by the dark atmosphere. It felt.. Tense. Insidious. It doesn’t feel right, but for an entirely different reason. While most of the denizens ignore Bell, a few side-eye him dangerously. He steps to the counter and orders a drink, primarily to alleviate any suspicions from both inside and out.

Bell can’t shake the feeling of eyes boring into his back. It’s somehow different from when he first walked in and was certainly making him more uncomfortable. He shifts in his seat and tries his best to nonchalantly turn and find who the hell was staring at him so hard, but when he looks, he finds nothing out of the ordinary.

The feeling of unease doesn’t leave. He grows antsy and finally after paying with money given to him by Lazar, Bell downs the last of his drink and turns back into the streets. This is certainly not going the way Bell had hoped. The seventh bar is quite the walk from the sixth, allowing him some time to breathe and collect his thoughts.

The feeling of unease melts from Bell’s shoulders the longer he walks. Lazar’s quiet so he turns his attention outward and listens curiously to the broken chatter of the dwindling civilians.

“-think he talks about anything else?”

“Well, it’s not like-”

“Timur?”

“That’s not.. Point.. Why else-”

“Timur!”

“I just think you should consider-”

A hand lands heavily on Bell’s shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. He turns in surprise.

“Timur!” A man stands before Bell with a lazy smirk and a gleam to his eyes- as if he recognizes him. His dark hair is cropped close to his head and a pair of lightly tinted shades adorns his face. The accent is certainly not Russian, and it throws Bell off guard. “Hey! Remember me?”

[guiltysecretpasttime]

Adversity - 13-A

Fanfic update

I’ve decided to utilize this tumblr space to put in WIPs/partial chapters/unedited stories from my end. Then I’ll post it somewhere in Ao3 or FF.net. Maybe.

 In the meantime, here’s an installment of Adversity (the chapters here in tumblr aren’t updated – it would make much more sense if you check it out on Ao3 first before coming back here). In essence this is part of Chapter 13.

Keen to hear what you think about this portion :)

-

Adversity details

Multi-chapter, work in progress, AU, pre-LoK,

Latest status: up to Chapter 12 uploaded in A03

Blurb: Lin and Tenzin are both at the height of their respective     careers – she with the Metalbending Police and he with the Air Nation.     Questions about their future begin to arise and things come to a head when     Lin responded to an emergency call. Would her job take them from each     other forever? Eventual happy ending. Alternatively: The one where Lin and     Tenzin had to go through adversity like Lin’s dangerous job, a near-death     experience, temporary separation and memory loss, unplanned pregnancy and     Tenzin’s responsibilities before they end up with a family.

Tumblr chapters 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Ao3 link |   Ff.net link

---

Adversity – 13-A

 Tenzin clutches a warm towel and wipes it across her forehead. He did not know why and if it would help but he thought it might make her feel better.

Her chest rose and fell with each breath, no longer laborious or irregular. Nonetheless, he kept vigil and held one of her hands. It reminded him of incidents in the past years where he kept watch over her – that night in the Fire Nation Royal Compound when they first found her alive, those nights after missions that might have gone fatally wrong…

The day had started promising. But as always with the two of them, it never was easy…

Once he had the cabana in his view, he should have known that Izumi would have pulled something like this.

---

Tenzin received a message from one of the staff that the princess requested for lunch to be served at one of the beach cabanas. He did not think much about it; it has happened before and figured that maybe Izumi was being a good host.

There was only one person else in the cabana – Lin, who was looking puzzled and was frowning at something on the table.

His feet hit the sand and the earthbender turned to him. “Oh, it’s you.” She looked at him incredulously.

“Sorry to disappoint.” He deadpanned, seating across her. He did not ask questions, assuming that she was led to the cabana using the same ruse.

"I had no idea that you were the man that Izumi said that I'll be meeting for lunch." Lin flicked a note towards him. “Why is she doing this? I found that upon arriving here.”

He caught the paper that slid on the table.

It was in Izumi’s handwriting – informing Lin to please consider (consider – the word was underlined heavily, the insinuation not lost to the reader) this man that she has invited for her. And that they would be left to their own devices as the princess has taken the entire family off for a scenic tour of the island on Druk, Appa and Oogi.

Trust that Izumi would have connived with the rest of the family to pull something like this off.

Tenzin felt the need to apologize for their meddling family and did just that.

Lin shrugged, seemingly uninterested. “Is this supposed to be a test?”

“A test?” What does she mean?

“For me – or for you?” Lin asked back.

“Like for your memory?” To the airbender, it seemed like they were having a different conversation.

The earthbender looked vaguely uncomfortable now, hand lightly patting her belly. “Um no – I mean, for you – is Izumi…?” She trailed off.

For the life of him, Tenzin could not think of what the continuation was.

“Your partner?” Lin finally asked.

What.

“No!” Tenzin’s voice rose, surprised by the question that he did not even consider that the response might have sounded rude. “Of course not!”

“Don’t you protest too much?” Lin was amused. “It’s fine really – or is it a matter of security?” She was being nonchalant about it though Tenzin could have sworn there was a tiny bit of relief in her voice.

“What. No – it’s not like that.” Tenzin had to disabuse her of this ludicrous idea she had. “They’re all just meddling – they mean well – look, Izumi – she’s not my type -!”

Now you just sounded like a whiny teenager.

He cleared his throat and tugged at his collar. “Well, seems like they’re setting us up.”

“Whatever for,” She rolled her eyes then grinned. “Let’s not waste the food then.”

He found himself chuckling at that as Lin proceeded to scoop some food on her plate. “Joke’s on them though.”

Lin’s only response was a raised eyebrow.

“I actually intend to ask you out for dinner today.”

She paused and left her chopstick hanging in the air. “Dinner.”

He wet his dry lips. “Yes.”

“I take it you haven’t told them yet?” Lin examined the other dishes available to them. “What time do we need to get ready or we don’t know yet, depending on how soon they get back?”

Tenzin held the back of his neck as the heat crept up. “I mean, dinner – just us, you and me?”

As much as he did not want to admit, maybe Bumi was right – he did not have game.

Lin’s face was unreadable.

He was able to back-pedal when he heard it.

“Okay.”

 ---

The rest of their lunch went a smoother.

They talked about the mundane things – he talked about Republic City, she talked about the Fire Nation. She asked about what he does in the council and how the RCPD was when they left. He was more than happy to oblige and took the time to answer her questions in great detail.

Before long, when she declared that she felt too full for dessert, he invited her to walk along the shore. He pointed out a cluster of rock formations at the edge of the island.

Lin looked intrigued and they set forth.

He explained that Lord Zuko had told them when they were children that the rocks were formed when the volcano used to be active. It made for an impressive sight, tall and a bit forbidding.

That did not stop them though, Tenzin shared, as they would keep going back there to play when they were younger.

They stood beside the rocks, sandals soaked by the sea, small waves lapping at their legs.

He was in the middle of a retelling of the time Bumi had dared Su to race him to the top (not knowing that the kid can earthbend really well by then) when rather large wave crashed against the rock formation, spraying and drenching them with salt water.

He was laughing, saying he probably should have warned that that usually happens. His eyes alighted on her and was caught mid-laugh.

Lin stood stiffly, her eyes wild. One hand on her cheek (her scars), another on her chest - breathing erratically gulping air.

“Lin!” He immediately held her by the shoulders; she was shaking. “Lin!”

A panic attack.

Each breath rattled against chest as she started blankly, unseeing. Lin was insensible to her surroundings.

Tenzin scooped her up and ran as it all clicked.

Captain Tomasu did say that they had found Lin in the water.

Damn.

The minutes it took him to the rest house felt like hours. With the family away on whatever excursion Izumi and Iroh planned, he had to rely on the staff to come to their aid. Fortunately, the in-house healer was at hand.

The rest was a blur.

 He felt the moment she regained consciousness. Her breathing shifted yet her eyes remained close.

Tenzin continued to run his fingers on her knuckles, whether to comfort her or himself was unclear.

Lin blinked slowly, her breathing sped up. Her hand quickly slapped to her cheek, tracing the scar with shaking fingers.

The airbender could hear her murmuring softly.

“My name is Lin. I’m in Ember Island. I’m okay. I’m safe. We’re -.” Her eyes focused and saw Tenzin at the periphery. “The baby?”

Tenzin leaned forward, grasping both of her hands and placing them on her stomach. “Is okay. You’re both okay – I had you both checked. You just had a little panic attack.”

There was no use alarming her.

“Panic attack…” She whispered to herself. “I used to black out before…”

“I’m sorry,” Tenzin said quietly. “I should have paid more attention to you.”

“You couldn’t have known.” Lin said in an equally soft tone. To his astonishment, she pulled his hand up to her cheek and leaned on it. “You couldn’t have done anything.”

He extended his fingers, gingerly touching her cheek. There were still times in the past weeks when he could not believe that she was here and she was alive. Little touches like these were rare and he savored the moments to remind himself that she was truly there.

“The rice granary,” Lin began, staring at the ceiling, actively avoiding Tenzin’s gaze. “It exploded, you know, the man – the firebender –.”

The airbender waited, this was in the papers and the reports that he was very familiar with.

“He knew what he was doing,” Lin held on his fingers tightly. “He saw me and he set fire – I fell to the water. I felt like drowning – maybe I did.” Tenzin gripped her hand back. “It was really hot and there was a lot of metal scraps. I remember sinking and maybe removing my armor…” Her face scrunched, obviously thinking. “The current was fast, rapidly swept me away – it was so cold. I thought I was going to die.” She resolutely focused on the ceiling when she heard Tenzin’s gasp. “I don’t know how long it was – it was dark, then there was light. My lungs – they burned so bad. Next thing I knew – I was aboard Captain Tomasu’s ship.”

Tenzin’s own breath caught.

Could it be… her memories have returned?

“Don’t force it.” He rubbed her wrist back and forth, hoping to sooth her.

“It’s still blank.” Her face was troubled and eyes were shiny with unshed tears. “I don’t remember what happened before the explosion.”

Feeling her get distressed, Tenzin moved closer to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m Lin Beifong, my mother is Toph – we grew up together in Republic City.” She now turned to him. “I live in Republic City now…”

His stomach churned. “What’s the last thing you remember from before?” He asked cautiously, afraid of triggering something.

“I’m deputy chief, I think.” She racked her brains. “There’s this small apartment. I think I live there.”

Tenzin swallowed. This was from a time before they lived together, when they were still exploring their relationship.

“I’m not losing it, am I? That really happened?” Her green eyes wide, seeing reassurance.

He nodded, still silently contemplating what this meant.

“After that – it’s blank.” She released a breath. “Did something significant happen during that missing period?”

“You got promoted to Chief of Police.”

“Maybe that’s it…something to do with work.” Lin guessed absentmindedly, biting her lip.

He added tentatively. “We’ve also decided to move in together.”

The way she looked at him now – it was as if she was seeing him for the first time.

“You’re the father.” She stated it so plaintively with a hint of caution.

“That’s the first time you’ve told me that.” Tenzin attempted to downplay the significance of the revelation. “Don’t worry about it – you probably didn’t know you were pregnant back then before –.” He waved a hand around, at a loss for words on how to explain the situation.

“You’re not even questioning it?” Her voice was tight and her posture tense.

“Not at all.”

She finally let tears flow.

 ---

He embraced her, murmuring reassurances that he will be there for her and the child. He will be involved.

But somehow – there was still that gap in her memory. She was missing something crucial, she can feel it - it was about the Air Nation. The gut feel was of hesitation and wariness. What was it about?

She had talked to Aang the previous days and there were no mentions of issues with the Air Nation.

Maybe it had something to do with crime? With her promotion as Chief of Police?

If only her mother were around… Maybe she could help her piece her memory together.

Lin pulled back from the airbender, who suddenly looked at her with apprehension.

“What happens now – what if I don’t remember?” Now that she had part of her memories back – she hated the feeling of uncertainty.

“We’ll take it one day at a time.” Tenzin inched closer to her, gently cupping her face in his hands, wiping her tears. “Just know that you’re never alone.”

The sincerity in his eyes was enough for her. She did not even need to employ her seismic sense to know he was telling the truth.

She closed her eyes as he moved. She felt his lips on her forehead.

The airbender sat back down, a soft smile on his face.

She looked at their entwined fingers.

She will take this chance.

This was for her child. All for their child. And it will be enough.

[ashandboneca]

Racism, abuse, and why I don’t consider myself a part of the ‘community’

I’d like to talk about the event that pushed me away from the idea of a pagan community, and forced me inwards to further develop my own practice - and about the events of the last few years in regards to continued abuses in the pagan community. About 6 years ago, I started to look into the Norse pantheon. I had worked with Thor in the past, and about 6 or 7 prior to that I did an experiment where I worked with the Aesir for a month. At that point in my life, I didn't connect with them. I don't know why I didn't, I partially blame the terrible book I had for guidance, and the fact that the person who initially agreed to guide me flaked out. However, this time around I endeavoured to learn as much as I could from a reputable source, because the last time I had no idea what I was doing. I approached my friend, who is a practicing forn sidr heathen, and they agreed to teach me what they knew. We spent a number of sessions discussing cosmology and theology. I felt confident going forward, armed with book recommendations and a passion to learn further. I wrote a bit about my experiences openly on my previous blog with Odinn. Interactions with him were not sought after, but something that merely happened. When gods or spirits or ancestors come calling, you answer in some way out of respect. I wrote more about my experiences, and different techniques I utilized to connect with him. None of them were specifically Heathen - but I don't soley identify as Heathen, so I figured if that was an issue, Odinn wouldn't have shown up in the first place.

Some time later, my friend had messaged me to let me know they had gotten some hate mail about me via Witchvox (which no longer exists, but used to be a connection board for finding pagans and witches in your area, as well as open groups, etc). I was initially gobsmacked. Why the hell is someone emailing her in regards to something I did? Wouldn't have been more productive to email or message me to resolve whatever issue? I found it who it was. This person was, at that time, a member of a well recognized organization locally who put on events and rituals - an organization whose first mandate is "We hold that each one of us has their own path to follow to truth and spirit." To be honest, I had never really interacted with this person beyond being paid to do so in my former job at a pagan bookshop. We attended a few of the same events, but never really interacted. There was no real beef. I wasn't particularly fond of said person, but I had no real issues with them - so this came sort of out of left field. I sat on it for a bit.  I did not reply to the sender. Instead, I decided to post the initial email on my previous blog. Inevitably, someone is going to disagree with how you practice or what you do, even if you're not doing anything wrong. The  point I think is important to underline is that you do not need to stand for other people trying to tear you down, assert some kind of moral superiority over you, or telling you how and when you should be practicing, unless your practice is appropriative - in which case you should be taking a long, hard look at yourself. As heathenry is an open tradition, I had no concerns. I also think transparency is very important, and when people behave badly they often do so to gain something from it. Whether it is attention, drama, or they feel they are in a safe space to do so due to anonymity.  So, by posting the email (albeit in edited format - I removed all identifying information about said person, because I wanted to focus on the behaviour, not the person), I felt I was addressing something that more people should have been addressing. Afterwards, my friend received a few more emails about how I was 'pissing on their ancestors' and etc. My friend told them, in no uncertain terms, that the emails were unwelcome, the issue was none of their business, and to fuck off. I also got a few emails, a few messages on Witchvox, a few comments, and a lovely comment from a sockpuppet account here on tumblr, as well as finding out my writing was posted to be mocked because I wasn't 'heathen' enough - with screenshots! I did not respond to anything, just kept record of everything in case it was needed. I disagree with the idea of bringing in some third party who is uninvolved to do one's dirty work. If someone has an issue with how someone else is practicing, they need to question whether it's something to address. Bringing in someone uninvolved is both cowardly and childish. They did not ask to be involved, and I'm not sure what involving another person serves to carry a point. Fight your own battles, or say nothing.

There were a few other instances. A series of screencaps of this person’s continued racist, sexist, and abusive behaviour was provided to a few of us. A known leader was accused of racism and verbal abuse by other members of the community with credible evidence. This leader had a pattern of setting up multiple Facebook accounts and when one was found they would set up a new one with a new name. They talked at length about their feelings on immigration, POC in the Heathen community, and interfaith. They advocated violence and celebrated terrorist acts. Some really troubling, disgusting stuff.

We did what we thought was right - we emailed the organization to tell them and offer proof via said screencaps. In the response, we were told, and I am not bullshitting, that this person was a valued member of the community, that they are 'proud' of their heritage (uh, so am I, but I don't run my mouth off about diversity being white genocide), and that we could essentially go pound sand. I quote "own personal outlook on (their) culture and (their) path. (They are) entitled to (their) own practice as much as anyone of us are, and (they) cares deeply for (their) culture.  (They) makes a significant contribution to the Pagan community with (their) efforts through (group). (They are) a hard worker and has accomplished a great many things in (their) time on the board, a commitment that is not to be taken lightly. (They) fulfill (their) duties as a board member admirably."

Do I agree with their hot take on this? No. I think if someone comes to you with an accusation of that kind of wrongdoing, you have a duty to do some manner of preliminary investigation, because if you are in a position where you are teaching people and have authority, those students need to feel safe. You need to determine if the accusations have any truth, and if they are found to be false, feel free to stand behind and assert your belief in the accused. I truly believe the harasser/abuser showed their group the email, and they spun it in some way to discredit us.

Complicity via ignorance is still complicity - it's enough to tarnish an organization's good name. In the working world, business owners have been hung out to dry because of their racist, homophobic, or sexist employee's actions. The whole Kenny Klein situation happened for years because people excused his behaviour and allowed other people to be abused.  We are all finger-wagging and clucking when people try to bring up this behaviour  - don't be starting drama, oh that's just how (name) is, oh that's just rumours. Look, everyone - assholes, creeps, criminals, and predators exist in every faith, every organization. We are so quick to sweep it under the rug, so rushed to prevent judgement, that we always forget that one important fact. While I think it's important not to jump on every bad thing you hear about people, I do think it's important to have an open and frank discussion about proper behaviour while in a position of power. Especially if proof of misdeeds are being offered.

This group, and their lack of action, stood complicit in this person's bad behaviour. If they made the choice to stand behind a racist, bigoted person who spends their time trying to harass people online (I am not the only one, I have been told - there have been multiple people, including some of their own family members), that is their choice. They have made that choice, and they have chosen to accept any repercussions going along with it. They chose to stand behind an abuser.

Sarah Lawless, back in 2018, named a number of known abusers in the wider PNW community. The flack she received for being brave to stand up and call that shit out was disgusting.

Abusers are coddled and protected in pagan communities. They are viewed as elders, as productive members of the community,  as local heroes. While I have been fortunate to encounter very little sexual harassment in the pagan community, I have suffered other abuses and harassment that has shown me that, just like the priests and cardinals in the Vatican, pagans protect and believe only those in their clique. And there are cliques in the community, have no doubt about that.

Sarah pointed out that the ideal community is a fantasy - I agree. Stories I have heard from others about their own experiences in the 'safe and welcoming' pagan community would break your heart. One person I spoke with said 'it's scary to even fathom trying to approach anyone, because it's hard to know who to trust, who might lure you in and take advantange of you'. That is a sad statement, and one I know too well. I have a tendency to keep abuse like this close to the chest because I have been burned by people in the past. There is no spiritual support for people who get abused - no chaplains, no pastoral care, no therapists.

These were people who were putting everything on the line to be heard, and the vitriol and hatred and lies I had seen made my blood boil. This is precisely why people do not come forward. They could put everything on the line - in Sarah's case, the safety of her partner at the time and children - and people will still find a way to claim the survivors are lying. Why? What do the survivors get out of lying about their abuse? What person would come forward, knowing they will be attacked, confronted, slandered, and encounter more abuse, if they weren't telling the truth? Why would any survivor put themselves through that unless there is truth? The most stalwart defenders claim 'they couldn't have done it, I've never seen them do anything to me!' Humans are complicated and complex beings, with many facets and many faces. The face you see may not be the same face others see. The John Doe you know and the John Doe I know may be the same person, but very different relationships. 

It comes down to this: You can't 'believe survivors' if you're supporting abusers.

You can't support survivors if you're sheltering abusers.

You can't help survivors if you're siding with abusers.

You can't call it a safe community if you don't protect it's members.

Standing up for myself and others lost me “friends” who ditched me about the ‘drama’, and my community.  Something needs to change. It is inevitable that change will befall the community, and those denizens had better wise up quickly. There are a lot of young, vulnerable people looking for guidance and safety, and the community better fucking step up and prove they are willing to protect their members, or they have become no better than the Christian groups who continue to enable their abuse. We need willing leaders to push forward to make the community better. We need dedicated, smart, and savvy people to navigate a new and better future for paganism, because it's got a death rattle going on and it needs the kiss of a new life.

Burn the whole of the modern pagan community down. Burn down the groups that perpetuate abuse, that enable abusers, and grow something better and safe from the ashes. Dismantle the sexist, enabling, racist, oversexed community with it's abusive elders, cleanse it with fire, and create a place where people can come together without having to fear predators.

The only I have learned from watching my and other’s experiences is that we shouldn't call out wrongdoing in the community, because I have gotten abuse hurled at me for it and I have seen others who have done the same get more and worse abuse. People get mad, they accuse those who come forward of 'causing drama' or 'rocking the boat'.

That is a terrible lesson. A witch is sovereign unto themselves.

Bitches, this boat is rocking. Grab on, or drown.

This is my own story. I have posted links for further review down below.

Further reading:

Dealing With Toxic People in the Pagan Community

Sarah Lawless’ post about her suffered abuse, via the Wayback Machine

Abuse, the Pagan Community, and Our Commitments

Abuse Within Paganism - a taboo topic?

A Crisis of Faith

Authenticity and Racism in Contempory Paganism

This is not a new issue - via livejournal, 2006

Cultural Appropriation in Neopaganism