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surreptitious-elixir · 1 year ago

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BDSM Rituals and Routines

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BDSM and Domestic Discipline Archives

Jolynn Raymond

April 19, 2014

JolynnRaymond

(updated on

March 23, 2015

)

If you’ve been here before or read any of my posts in the BDSM archive, then you know I’m big on writing about the responsibility of the dominant’s role in any BDSM relationship be it domestic discipline, Master and slave, babygirl/Daddy, or whatever your dynamic. Dominant doesn’t mean you sit back and your slave or submissive does everything and you do nothing. It means you are taking on the responsibility for the life of another human being so you’d better be ready to work hard. If they are yours, you must care for them as they serve you.

I’m also one who tells people if things aren’t going well, if your submissive is not obeying you, if your slave is acting out or your babygirl is having tantrums, then take a long look at yourself and the world or relationship you have established for the both of you. One of the things that must be examined and carefully tended in order for any power exchange relationship to run smoothly is rituals and routines. You can have all the rules in the world, you can punish your s types every day (not recommended), you can tell them they are not doing as the both of you agreed upon all you want, but before you give up, explode, or decide the relationship just isn’t working or that they are a bad slave, go back to the beginning and look at your rituals and routines. If they have slipped, there is a good chance your relationship is going to have problems.

I am not perfect. I have a medical condition and a job which make me highly stressed and leave me exhausted. I’ll point the finger at myself and say that sometimes I fuss, get angry, or feel that my D/s relationship with Beauty is out of whack and that she isn’t doing what she is supposed to as far as household chores. This is really our biggest bone of contention. She procrastinates and I have tried every damn homemaker’s helper guide and website that makes schedules and written out chores, put up hour by hour details all to no avail, she simply has time management issues. The thing is, it doesn’t matter what schedule I have her trying to keep, she doesn’t succeed when the other aspects of our relationship, the rituals and routines aren’t being done.

She will be the first one to come to my defense and tell me its okay because I’m tired. My tired is really tired, exhausted. I have seizures if I push myself too hard and as the wonderful caretaker she is, she knows my physical limitations and when I need to rest. That’s all good, and I love her for knowing me so well and wanting to take care of me so I don’t implode, but our relationship suffers when the rituals and routines we established are absent too long regardless of the reason. It took me a long time to accept being cared for like a child when I can’t do anything for myself. The dominant is supposed to care for the submissive, not the other way around, but even when Beauty is doing so much because I can’t do it for myself, I have to remember the structure needs to stay in place. Of course it can be absent for a few days or even a week if I can’t walk, speak, and am confused and can’t problem solve, but if they are absent for too long, the structure of our relationship and its dynamic will suffer, even though neither of us want it to.

So now after that long babble I will get to the point of rituals and routines. Rituals are the special things you do in your relationship that makes it unique or makes it special for the both of you, and routines are how you live your day to day lives. These can be BDSM and vanilla based. Every relationship has its routines, but BDSM relationships are much more likely to have rituals. You might think that the specific BDSM rituals are more important because they are specific to the power exchange relationship, but I believe both have equal importance.

Some of our routines can be pretty mundane but that doesn’t make them unimportant. Dinner on the table around 5:30, turn on the heater in the downstairs bathroom 10 minutes before I’m going down for my long soak in the tub. Have a mug of hot tea ready to be microwaved so it can be brought to me as soon as I’m ready to sit down after work, send a text to show me you are up by the time expected. Do x, y, z chores on whatever given day. Make sure I always have something to drink, I could go on. If you look at these you will notice that they are pretty much made up of things Beauty does to tend to me, our home, and our pets. If these things don’t get done, there are issues because Beauty is expected to carry out her routines which make our lives run smoothly, and which help me come home to a tranquil place after my crazy day.

Now let’s look at our rituals. Saturday evenings we have an hour set aside for open communication. I’m not saying we don’t communicate every day, but this hour is when we, or especially Beauty can talk frankly about anything that isn’t feeling right for her. Sometimes getting her to do this is like pulling teeth. She never wants to say something hasn’t felt right, or that I missed doing this or that for her that’s important. I really want her to tell me because her feelings and needs are just as important as mine, and the things I don’t do because I’m stressed or tired and forget or just don’t do because I don’t have the energy are important. They make her feel loved, wanted, needed, secure, and provide the structure and discipline she needs.

Good girl spankings or as they are called in DD, maintenance spankings, are very important. These aren’t super painful and aren’t meant to be. They aren’t for punishment, they are to bring us closer and keep the balance. The implement used is my hand or the leather slapper she loves. They are done over my lap in our bed. There is no corner time attached to them, no lecturing as they are being done. There is usually an orgasm for her built in and cuddling after with her curled up in my arms and on my lap. I absolutely cannot do these daily but I should. They are good stress relievers for both of us. They involve intimacy which is so important. They let her know that I care about and love her. Our relationship suffers when I let these slide, and they do take a good deal of energy so I am guilty of doing just that.

The wearing of her collar every day is both a ritual and a routine. Beauty’s collar isn’t one that is a simple ring of steel that locks. Hers is a very intricate and beautiful necklace that cannot be worn in bed or in the shower. There was a time when she would ‘forget’ to put it on and it drove me nuts. I felt as if she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. She received her collar when she received her ring in the same ceremony. It made me feel awful when she wasn’t putting it on. Guess what? That was on me. When other things slide, she feels less valued and less mine. The collar indicates her ownership status and her submission to me. When she was feeling too blah and dirty (need to shower, not dressed for going out of the house, sloppy) to put it on, it was because I wasn’t doing what I’d promised. I wasn’t giving her my part of our D/s relationship but expecting her to carry out all those routines that keep our lives running smooth and make my world comfortable, and she wasn’t feeling good about herself which is my part as her dominant to make sure of. Why do you want to be owned if the one who owns you isn’t meeting your needs?

The collar lost some of its meaning. This was a huge issue. I was shocked, hurt, you name it. I was stunned and I shouldn’t have looked at it as her doing something negative, I needed to look at what was missing and what the collar meant to her. We needed to work the kinks out of our kink relationship and that didn’t mean punishing her more for not doing her chores, it meant getting back to the time for talking, the good girl spankings, the support for her issue with procrastination and time management, not fussing at her or spanking her with the hairbrush. You can’t just do one, the bad ie: spanking and punishing, without doing the good ie: loving spankings, good communication, support that helps the routine hold up.

When I was fussing at her instead of supporting her, when I was expecting her to do all her stuff and not being a good dominant by doing my part that included intimacy of BDSM play and being the one in control and doing it the right way with taking care of my responsibilities, she didn’t feel like she was good enough and therefore wasn’t remembering her collar or deliberately leaving it on my dresser. This is kind of painful to write and it’s hard because our friends think we have this wonderful marriage and great D/s relationship that so many people long for, but our D/s side was going way south and that in turn was hurting our marriage because the foundation it was built upon, the rituals and routines were a mess. I can blame it on my state of mind and Beauty will be the first one to defend me because really, my work is hell, but even when every day is hell, I have to be the wife and dominant I signed on to be. I can’t expect her to do all the s in the D/s if I’m not doing the D part.

So we tweaked things. Some of it helps me to relax so I don’t let the stress of work slide over into home. I’m taking steps so I don’t become as depressed. Part of this has to do with menopause too but even with that and my health issues, I have to do my part. It’s hard, but when I see her starting to slip, I have to turn right around and look at myself. So what are some of our routines or rituals I know others do?

Make the collar as important as it is and value all it stands for. We have friends who have a wonderful routine that takes place every morning and each night. When Debbie’s collar comes off at night it is placed in a special bowl that remains by the bed. When they wake up, she gives Steve the bowl and he places her collar on his bare chest as they lie in bed because it warms the collar for her. It’s nice and warm from his body heat so when he puts it on her a little while later it isn’t cold impersonal metal.

When I go to bed before Beauty which is all the time during the work week, she tucks me in and we do a little cuddle. Before it’s time for bed she turns on the heated mattress pad to warm the bed, fixes the covers and such like I like them, makes sure I have fresh water in my water bottle so all is right and she can just cuddle and say goodnight. On the nights we go to bed at the same time, we cuddle and hold hands while we fall asleep.

Good girl spankings are a must. Don’t give punishment spankings if you aren’t also giving good girl or nice loving spankings for pleasure. It isn’t right and it causes an imbalance. If BDSM play is a part of your power exchange then it needs to happen. It’s our recreation, it makes good feelings in us both, it releases stress, and it brings us together through intimacy. If I am too tired I need to remember that BDSM play releases a lot of stress and less stressed means less tired.

When I come home from work, whether Beauty picks me up because it’s an I can’t drive day or if I drive, the routine/ritual is I come in, wash up, get in my comfy clothes, and then we sit on the couch and Beauty rubs my feet as I have my mug of tea. My massage therapist said I had lots of ‘crunchies’ in my feet and carry my stress there. Some days I hobble once my work day is done and I have the chance to distress. Beauty rubbing my feet helps them not hurt, gives us time to talk about my day and her day, includes touch so it’s bonding, and help me let go of all the crap that happened or all the due dates of stuff that is spinning in my head. It may appear like a ritual that is really just for me, but it helps me let go and be in less pain, so trust me, it’s good for us.

Rituals can be a high protocol position of greeting when the dominant arrives, or a position that you begin any play session with. We have a ritual where Beauty takes up a position and asks me to do with her as I will. That means game is on. Whatever we are doing to play, we have begun it whether it’s role play funishment, or a caning massage. The words mean we have begun play, I am orchestrating what I have planned, and she can relax and go to her head space.

The difference between routines and rituals is that one is more of a day to day thing without intimacy or bonding attached though eliminating routines WILL screw up your intimacy and your bonding. The routine is dinner served by 5:30. The ritual is my plate served first, three squares of Dove dark chocolate with a glass of milk are served right after dinner and before she is doing kitchen clean up. The routine is make sure the bedroom is ready at least ½ hour before bedtime, the ritual is cuddle, tucking in, nose rubs and I love yous.

The routines is hot tea ready in a serene household when I get home from work or a mug of hot tea in the car when she picks me up. The ritual is a foot rub while I drink my soothing tea (not in the car of course!) but when we get home. The soothing touch relaxes me and is intimate. The routine is do as I have asked you and have chores done. The ritual is I always say thank you, recognize the good things she has done through praise and good girl spankings and cuddling. The routine is wear your collar every day, the ritual is I put it on even if she takes it off when she gets home from driving me to work at 6:00 a.m. and goes back to bed for a bit.

The routines are how the relationship runs, what it looks like, what it includes that meets both the dominant and submissive’s needs. The rituals are the oil that makes it run smoothly and the gas that makes it run at all. How do you show praise and respect? How do you make each other feel loved and wanted? How do you make that symbol of your D/s relationship have special importance? How to do add touches be they positions, words, or deeds that make you D/s relationship more than the cookie cutter I read how to do this in a book kind of relationship?

If you are dominant, make sure routines are clearly set and understood and make sure you don’t forsake those rituals that make your relationship uniquely yours. If you are submissive, communicate. It’s okay to say something isn’t realistic because of x, y, or z. It’s okay to ask for things and I’m not talking about material things but yes those matter too. It’s okay to make mistakes too, but it’s also okay to say sorry.

Rules, routines, rituals, ways of service, ways of communicating, ways of play, way of punishment are all part of a good working healthy relationship. To achieve this both partners must believe what is set out is important. It’s the dominants job to create loving, secure structure. Don’t always look to what the s type is doing wrong and just punish. Look to the why are they misbehaving or failing to do as required. Is it special enough? Does it need a ritual attached to make it more meaningful? Yes they are supposed to have an innate and sincere desire to serve only you, but if they are not getting their emotional and physical needs met things will start to drop away. Routines are important, but rituals are vital. They don’t have to be Old Guard, they don’t have to be typical BDSM, but they do have to be something that both of you feel binds you in a very special way.

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skvaderarts · 3 years ago

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Hiraeth Chapter 57: Safeguard

Masterlist can be found Here!

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Safeguard

Note: I had to play DMC2 for this. Again. Mourn my untimely death. Thank you.

(-~-)

On either side of the walls that surrounded the courtyard stood a menagerie of dilapidated structures, some clearly the remnants of statues, other what remained of pillars that could have been structural at one point or another. Nothing remained overhead, so it was difficult to tell. What was clear was that this place was ancient, a relic of a bygone era long before the time that anyone he personally knew existed. And there was a strange kind of intrigue that came with that.

Looking over at the young guardian as they traversed what remained of the path laid out before them, the Darkslayer couldn’t help but notice the aura of this place. In truth, it had been a lifetime since he’d felt anything like it. The Qliphoth had reeked of blood and death, the catacombs underneath the city where Dante’s office had been when they were teenagers had reeked of decay, mold, and rot, and the walls and halls of Temen Ni Gru had held the stench that only stagnant air and malevolence could produce. This was entirely different. It was strangely familiar. He dared say that it resonated with him. But he knew with every fiber of his being that he had never set foot in this place or the sprawling grounds around it before, so how could that be even remotely possible?

“Who constructed this edifice, and what was its intended purpose?” He spoke bluntly but without malllace. After all, he had not been wronged in any way. But he had to admit that there was something imposing about this place despite the fact that it was clearly not evil. In a way, it was almost as if the imposing building that stood before them was actively trying to drive them away, making it known that they were not welcome on these hallowed grounds. They did not belong here. That much was a fact.

Stopping for a moment to survey the grounds, Lucia looked over at him. They had not been standing terribly close to one another, but they were within comfortable speaking distance. Her hand slowly slid down towards the blade at her waist, something clearly making her warry of this place. Perhaps the very energy of this place unsettled her in the same way that it unsettled him?

“This ruin is what remains of a temple where the devils that ruled this island were worshiped. They demanded much of my people, and much was lost. Your father ventured here when we needed him most, and with him by our side, we managed to defeat the foul devil Argosax and lord Sparda sealed him away, never to return.” Her eyes slowly traveled towards the remnants of the stone hallway that encompassed the edges of the grounds, something seemingly catching her eye. “We were entrusted with the artifacts used in that ritual. This is the main temple. After Argosax’s death at Dante’s hands, we consolidated the remaining Arcana and reset the traps. It seems that your father set a few of his own. And for that we are grateful.”

Her words caught him slightly off guard. He was somewhat sure that Dante had mentioned that her people had worked with their father before, but the fact that he might have had something to do with putting a spell of some sort on the grounds of this temple that would still be in place? For what purpose? “What would be the purpose of these traps? Have they just activated now after all this time?”

“One can only assume that it is a defense mechanism against whatever happened that allowed the Arcana that you returned to me to be taken from its home, but this is not the source of that artifact. We kept it in a clock tower. This was the home of another artifact until recently. The holy chalice.” her eyes remained focused on whatever was over there, just out of her line of sight. Something has happened here during my absence. My mother contacted me to say as much. And that is why I had to return so suddenly. Forgive me if I-”

Vergil raised his hand slightly, unwilling to allow her to continue to apologize for something that wasn’t even remotely her fault. None of this was her doing. She had not been here to guard this place with the rest of her clan because she had been assisting him and the rest of his family. He would no sooner blame her for having to return to her duties than he would anyone else. “Your responsibilities lie elsewhere. I know that.”

She seemed to understand, nodding to herself as she broke away to assess what she perceived to be a possible threat. Vergil allowed his hand to rest on Yamato’s hilt, ready and willing to back her up if necessary. After all, it was below his dignity to stand by and allow her to do battle alone, even if the foes she was doing battle against were not much of a threat to her life. “Thank you for your understanding.”

“You see something.” His breath was barely a whisper, but she understood what he said regardless. It wasn’t a question and she knew that. A quick now was all it took for him to fall in line behind her, making sure that nothing was going to get the better of them from behind. He refused to allow his opponents an easy way of gaining the upper hand.

Without warning, a ball of fire jetted forward from behind the rocks and several heads popped up from throughout the ruin. The figures wore different colored robes ranging from back to red as they brandished their staffs, clearly ready to attack. This had been an ambush from the moment that they had stepped foot on the grounds. Much to his irritation, he had just been too distracted by the temple itself to see that.

(-~-)

“Genuinely, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone try to eat a burger while holding it like that.” Sirrus continued to stare at V as allowed his head to rest on his right hand, his elbow having gone numb from the pressure of being embedded into the table for this long. But they had nowhere better to be until after he was done eating, and he didn’t want to suggest that they take it to go. It would probably get wet in the rain anyway. Best to just finish it while they were there. “How very… particular.”

V allowed his eyes to direct back towards Sirrus, a slight bit of humor creeping back into them. He succeeded in biting the burger and then chewed it, admittedly pleased by the taste. He only had a few more bites left at this point, but he knew exactly what his companion was talking about. It wasn’t the first time that he had been called out for eating things in an odd way.

“As a general rule, I don’t like the sensation of having wet hands. It just feels wrong to me somehow.”

Sirrus seemed intrigued, sitting up somewhat instead of continuing to look at V in a sort of dreamy, hyper-attentive gauze. He’d been listening to V talk, sure, but he was much more concerned with the state that he had found his friend in. V had seemed so utterly broken to him in that instant, and he wanted to make sure that everything that had happened that day had not weakened his resolve. He cared much for his friend. V meant the world to him, and all he truly wanted was for him to be safe and happy. He had been neither of those things at the moment in time.

“Does that mean that you never wash your hands, then?”

Truthfully, he wasn’t sure if he’d actually wanted an answer to that question or if he just wanted to keep V talking in the hopes that something he said would eventually make him laugh. He knew he needed it. But he was actually surprised when the young summoner answered his somewhat rhetorical question. After all, it wasn’t as though he needed to. He could’ve just laughed it off as a silly joke and continued to eat.

“Indeed, I do. It’s more about the texture of the substance on my hands than it is the actual fact that they are wet, I think.” He took another bite out of the burger, delighted by the fact that there was a pickle in this part. He was actually quite fond of tart snacks like this. The next time he went to the grocery store, he would have to pick up a jar of some sort of pickled vegetable. “For example, water is just fine, but I despise the sensation of oil and grease. Sauce is an especially egregious offender in this regard. Something about it is just disgusting to me. It’s just too thick.”

Repressing the urge to full one laugh at that revelation, Sirrus held his hand up to his face and laughed into the back of it, shaking his head slightly. He’d never heard something this strangely specific and ridiculous before in his life, and he honestly didn’t know what to say about it. But if that was indeed how V felt about it, then that was the reality of the situation. Nothing that he could say or do would make it any different.

“No, I actually kind of love it. It’s exceptionally quirky!” Sirrus laughed slightly, but his tone was no less sincere. He genuinely did care about what was going on with V, even if his unrelenting sense of humor wouldn’t allow him to convey that with any degree of seriousness. “Although it does seem like it would be a bit miserable. I wish you luck coping with it.”

V nodded in appreciation and picked up a thick napkin to wipe his hand on. “We should head back. It’s getting late, and I must admit that I do feel worse than I did earlier today. I should not have strayed away from the range of the hex for this long.” He stood up, steadying himself. Perhaps it was simply the nature of eating food that heavy, but he had to admit that he was somewhat sleepy. Not in the sort of way that would lead to him actually going to bed early that night, but in the kind of way that meant that it was time to curl up under a blanket and relax. “Thank you for dinner. It was quite good. And for everything else. I think I needed this more than I realized.”

“I believe that during times as severe and unrelentingly bleak as these, normality and simplicity are the only things that truly bring us out of that darkness.” Sirrus stood up and joined him, ready to catch him should he need it but more than willing to assume that he could handle catching his balance by himself. V had made it this long without his aid. He was more than capable of taking care of himself. Well, most of the time. “There is no need to thank me for doing the bare minimum that I can to help you. We're not far away from your home. It should not take us very long to get back there. Would you prefer that we hail a cab? I don’t mind sharing my umbrella with you if you don’t.”

V looked out of the window for a moment before nodding ever so slightly to himself. He then turned back to Sirrus and gave something akin to a small smile and tilted his head in the direction of the door. “Then perhaps we should simply walk back.”

Happy to oblige him, Sirrus placed what seemed to be a large sum of money on the table before heading over to the door and opening his umbrella. V had one of his own, but it was probably better that he keep it closed and focus on keeping his balance in the rain. After all, he wasn’t wearing a jacket, so holding up his arms to keep the umbrella over his head would only sacrifice much-needed warmth. He didn’t mind sharing the umbrella with him in the slightest.

For a few minutes, they walked along in silence, simply enjoying the company of one another and the sound of the rain as it came down in a furious downpour. It was more ice than rain at this point, the chilly autumn air now closer to that of winter than anything else. October was a beautiful month, but this rain had no courtesy whatsoever.

“Somehow I completely forgot to mention before that I have something for you. It may prove useful, all things considered.”

V slowed to a stop alongside his companion. Another gift, then? Perhaps he should look into giving him one as well. Now he was starting to feel a bit ungrateful. “I get the impression that you enjoy giving me gifts?”

Chuckling to himself, he nodded and then shrugged. He shifted the umbrella to his right hand, digging through his pockets as he searched for whatever it was that he was looking for. He would be lying if he said that V was wrong about that. He did indeed enjoy giving him gifts. Seeing the mixture of surprise and happiness that crossed his face as he tried to process what was going on would never become less satisfying to him. Of that much he was certain.”

“Guilty as charged. Although this one has a more practical use than the others I gave you.” Ah, there it was. Just what he had been looking for. He felt his hand brush against it as he gripped it and pulled it out of his pocket. To say he would have been irritated if he’d lost this or managed to leave it at home would be an understatement.

“More practical than an entire house full of furniture? Somehow I find that incredibly difficult to believe… ” He stopped dead in his tracks as he saw what he was being held out in from of him. In Sirrus’s hand was a simple onyx bracelet with a chain clasp. Between every three or so stones was a metal loop that matched the chains on the lower section of the bracelet that led to the clasp. All in all, a high-quality but not at all flashy piece of jewelry that was entirely unremarkable aside from the slightly larger green gemstone of some sort that hung from the center off of a metal loop of some sort. And in truth, it was strangely to his liking. He had worn a bracelet on a few occasions in his lifetime, but this would easily be the nicest.

“Do you mind holding this for a moment?” Sirrus said pleasantly as he held it towards him. V obliged breathlessly, entirely unsure as to how to process this particular gift. He wasn’t so much confused as he was deeply unsure as to the implication of this specific trinket. It wasn’t that it seemed expensive so much as it was the fact that he was being gifted something of this nature at all.

V opened his mouth to speak before closing it again, genuinely unsure as to what to say. He’d never received this kind of gift before. He was admittedly flattered by his newfound friend’s continued generosity. But there was something that he did want to make clear to him at that moment. Something that he felt needed to be said considering what had just transpired between them. He just hoped that it didn’t come out half as needlessly unkind as it did in his head.

Believe me, I know that. But I appreciate why you would feel the need to clarify. I have been rather fiscally negligent lately. I sincerely apologize if I’ve made you uncomfortable. That was not my intention.” A gentle look of understanding passed across his face. He was more than slightly aware that it was the nature of extravagant gifts to make people uncomfortable, and the last thing that he wanted to do was make V uncomfortable. He got the impression that he wasn’t accustomed to receiving gifts. “This bracelet has a protective ward built into it that should help mitigate Belial’s influence, if only slightly. It has other effects as well that should be beneficial to you. Namely the effect it has on hostile demons. I went to fetch it after everything that happened earlier. I thought you might like something that made you feel more secure. Less alone. I get that impression from you at times, and I understand how awful it feels to be in a room filled with people but still alone. “

He seemed to recoil slightly as he said that, the mention of that seemingly causing him no small amount of distress. V noted that quietly as he held the bracelet up towards the moonlight, admittedly quietly excited about the gift. He hoped that he wasn’t being unkind. He knew that Sirrus meant him no harm, but it occurred to him at that moment that this gift might have more significance for his companion than it did for him. Had Morgan actually been onto something with her joke…?

“Thank you I… I’m not sure what else I can say… This is…” He paused, genuinely at a loss for where to even try to find the proper words. He was utterly blown away by how wonderful this gift was, especially considering that it was apparently magical in nature. Perhaps it was just best that he be happy about the gift and not go into a self-imposed existential downward spiral. “You said it has other effects?”

“Oh, yes it has several. I’m sure you will see soon enough. I sense that we might have company, hence my timing. I was going to wait until we arrived at your house but...” He gestured towards the empty wooded lot across the street from them and, without warning, a shadowed being dropped down off of the top of the small warehouse next door. V shook his head and readied his cane. It seemed that Sirrus’s intuition was on the money. He too had the feeling that something wasn’t quite right around the area they were in when they had left the diner, but now he was sure of it.

“Perhaps we should dispose of it before we head back? If you’re feeling up to it. Otherwise, I can just strike it dead where it now stands and be done with it.” Sirrus withdrew his blade from the inside of the coat he was wearing with casual disinterested dismissal. V got the impression that this particular demon wasn’t very high on his newfound friend’s threat index.

No, I think that we should take care of it. If nothing else it should be a good opportunity to practice while I still have the chance.” V allowed Shadow to join him, the deep abyssal fur of the devil being much less likely to draw the attention of anyone who might happen upon them. He would summon Griffon if he felt the need to.

With a smirk the two-headed across the street, ready to see what they were up against. And as soon as they both came close enough to see it, they stopped dead in their tracks. It seemed they might have bitten off more than they initially bargained for…

“Oh. Oh.”

(-~-)

The rules clearly state that before the big battle I get to write two smaller battles as a reward for having to play DMC2 for research purposes. Sorry, that’s just what the rules say. I don’t make them XD anyway, I hope you liked this chapter! I’ll see you again on Wednesday! And thank you for the awesome comments you’ve left this last week. They really made my day!

#Hiraeth #V #Sirrus #Vergil #Lucia #My Devil May Cry OC #DMC #DMC5 #DMCV #My Post Devil May Cry 5 AU #My Post Devil May Cry 5 AU OC's #Fic #My Post Devil May Cry V AU Fanfiction #My Post Devil May Cry 5 OC #FanFic

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janedrakey131 · 4 years ago

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zukka hp au part 5

I’m so flattered people like this au. I didn’t think I’d be posting again so soon, but I had some more ideas last night. If you’d like to catch up:

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 part 12 part 13

If you would like to join the tag list

My brief, very long, not at all fleshed out plan based roughly on what year Sokka is in and other associated events:

First year

Sokka’s first year is boring

He meets Zuko, makes some friends in his house, probably a bunch of OCs

He finds the kitchens on day 2

Hogwarts just hires people who like to cook, who cares whether they’re magical beings or humans or whatever, there’s all sorts of really cool kitchen magic though

He’s always asking questions in class and you can tell why he’s a Ravenclaw

He wants to learn about everything

And once he knows how to do more than shoot a few sparks, he’s going to start inventing

He’s going to do some truly awesome things with transfiguration and potions

And I can’t wait for him to start arithmancy

Like let me tell you, Sokka is a genius, and he’s probably going to be the only one who understands magical theory

This just ended up being a rant about Sokka, so moving on

Second year

The fun starts

Katara and Aang are finally here

Sokka doesn’t know Aang is the avatar

I’m very tempted to have both Katara and Aang be in Hufflepuff

And they run into Sokka in the kitchens

He does a double take, like who is this boy with my sister??

But Aang’s a sweet kid

So Sokka is immediately like we’re bros now, I don’t make the rules

Iroh starts working at Hogwarts (sorry, I changed my mind from herbology) as the potions professor

He comes in on the train with Zuko who just got banished (I actually...might change the specifics)

Sokka doesn’t know what to make of that

Azula is also skulking around annoying Zuzu

But I think she secretly cares a bit and threatens anyone that looks at his scar wrong, because Zuko helped her a lot with some stuff

I think she’s going to be in the same year as Katara and Aang? I’m not sure

I have plans for Azula

I think Mai and Ty Lee are going to be in Zuko’s year, but closer to Azula

Mai and Zuko will date at some point

I think Mai will end up with Ty Lee

But she and Zuko had a short relationship

I think it was more expected of them by their families that they date

But they’re good friends now

I’m not doing this betraying and cheating and hurting other characters to find out who you are thing

Everyone is having wholesome relationships that just don’t work out

(Sidenote, I’m changing things, and characters might end up a bit OOC for atla, and I’m really sorry, but this is just wish fulfillment for me)

Anyway, there’s a plot to find the avatar

The mini gaang (toph isn’t here yet) learn the prophecy (still working on it)

Third year

They find out about Sokka and Katara’s mom

I don’t think Hakoda really knows what happened either. I don’t think he was in the country at the time

I also have some ideas for the water tribe/fire nation beef, but I just made the realization that if I spell everything out in these posts, what’s the point of writing for Ao3 XD

But spoilers, it’s going to be pretty angsty

But I like happy endings, so I may find a way to fix it

Ish

I have this whole idea that if Suki or the Kyoshi are also werewolves, they have really cool rituals to respect and honor the moon spirit and that allows them the ability to turn into wolves whenever they want and not just the full moon

So other people can also be born as werewolves, but different groups have different ways of being a werewolf

Also, I believe I said Zuko starts following Suki around thinking she’s the avatar

And then Sokka decides to fake being the avatar (I completely forgot when I said this would happen, so I’m assuming it’s this year or the next)

This is about when Sokka’s letters to Hakoda start going on about Zuko’s everything even more

Fourth year

Zuko (Zuko’s fifth year) witnesses something unspeakable

Sokka is kidnapped

Zuko saves Sokka

That’s all the detail I have on this XD

But the unspeakable thing and the kidnapping are going to be this year’s mystery

Zuko, the idiot, still thinks Sokka is the avatar at this point

Aang is like no

But doesn’t bother to say he is

So Zuko thinks Katara is the avatar for a hot sec

But has some nonsense logic that there’s no need to stop following Sokka, because if he or his sister are the avatar, of the two, Sokka’s more likely to give something away

Which okay, Zuko, not actually terrible reasoning, except Sokka’s been leading you around by the nose for ages

There’s none of this the avatar rotates which element they can use

Because that’s predictable

And half the fun is that Zuko is trying his best, but has zero clues

Fifth year

This is the big question

I’m not sure what to do with this year

I hope Sokka can start inventing

I want him to make some cool shit

There won’t be an equivalent of the DA as far as I can see :( I can’t figure out how I’d structure that

I think it would be really cool to see them all learning how to use their elemental magic though

Toph and Zuko don’t really need the help

Katara and Aang have always had to deal with all the crap going on, so they haven’t had much time for it

I’m wondering if I should bring in Paku

Aang has it rough, because air magic users are really rare now

So I think he might work with Iroh, because he’s studied other styles of magic extensively

Sixth year

I think Mai had to figure out she was bi

I truly think Zuko doesn’t have time for gender

For like five years, he’s like DO YOU KNOW WHO THE AVATAR IS and if you don’t, he’s already forgotten who you are

So my headcanon is that he’s pan and when he and Sokka eventually get together, Sokka doesn’t know anything about his orientation and just knows he dated Mai, so he’s like “are you cool with me being a dude? Sorry, I just know you’ve dated Mai, so just checking haha?”

And Zuko’s so done with all the random crap he’s dealt with that he’s like “wow, you have a dick? Congratulations”

But then realizes Sokka’s actually concerned and talks it out

Anyway, everyone’s leveled up now, we’re all masters at elemental and non-elemental magic (seriously, Sokka could’ve sat for his NEWTs last year if he wanted to. He’s that far ahead and magic is that intuitive for him)

I have no idea what will happen this year lol

I kind of want an invasion of Hogwarts, I know I’ve been trying not to just blindly follow the books completely :/ So I guess we’ll see?

I’ll have to work on that

I’m such a sucker for the villain waits until the end of the school year to attack

Because it’s so dumb

Like I will find the avatar! *shakes fist* But education is important, kids

Like okay, Sozin

Maybe I can have Roku finally escape that mirror

I kind of want the past avatars to be spirits that anyone can interact with

But most people don’t know how

So the Kyoshi can interact with Avatar Kyoshi as well as other relevant spirits

Seventh year

????

The plot?? Who knows yet

I do know that Zuko’s graduated

And they’re all crying and like wtf do we do now

Because Sozin’s still around and they’ll miss him

And finally Zuko leaves

And he shows up as the assistant DADA professor and he’s like “Hi, Zuko here” and then he’s like “I mean, fuck, Professor Zuko, I mean, fuck...just call me Zuko. You guys all know me”

And the gaang is all like wtf Zuko, we thought we would only see you for breaks

And he’s like you really thought I’d leave you

The plan is that he’ll be an apprentice for a year or so and then take over as professor

Toph punches him so hard, Katara has to heal the bruise

I can guarantee a happy ending

I’ll do whatever angst on the way, but they’ll all be happy

I’m like 89% sure they’re all going to end up working at or around Hogwarts (why work for the government, when you can invest in teaching all these talented kids)

One more thing, there is going to be rep in this au. I know there’s at least one aro ace character. Multiple bi characters. One gay character. One pan character. One trans character that I know of, but I need to plan that out a bit more. Some of these orientations and identities, I can’t speak to personally. For instance, while I know a decent amount about the medical aspects of transitioning, I don’t think I’d be able to write the experience of gender dysphoria and give that its due right now. So unless it’s something I have first hand experience with, most of the individual emotions as part of figuring things out might happen off screen. That doesn’t mean I won’t bring up issues the characters may have had in the past, but any that I talk about, I’d have to do more research into first. Also, partly because this is mostly from Sokka and Zuko’s perspectives, we’re mostly going to be present for what other characters tell them about their experiences

I hope you continue to enjoy this au! Sorry, this got so insanely long. The next couple weeks are going to be a bit crazy for me, so I thought I’d write this up while I had the chance. I’ll be back soon though! If anyone has any suggestions or questions, please let me know :)

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 part 12 part 13

If you would like to join the tag list

#zukka #hp au #part 5 #atla au #atla #zuko #aang #sokka #toph #katara #azula #sorry this is so long #next ones will be shorter #maybe #lgbt rep #next up is magical theory #i hope i can make this a fic

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cecilspeaks · 4 years ago

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173 - The Hundred Year Play

Quoth the raven: [bird noises] Welcome to Night Vale.

Listeners, some exciting news from the world of theatre! The 100 year play is about to reach its final scene. Yes, this is the play that has been running continuously since 1920. Written by a brilliant playwright Hannah Hershman, designed to take exactly 100 years to perform. And the tireless volunteer of the Night Vale Players Playhouse have been going through those scenes, one after another, for decade upon decade. There’s little time to rehearse, for each hour brings new scenes and each scene will only be performed once the play moves on, in order to keep up with the tight schedule needed to execute the entire script before a century elapses.

It is a monumental work of theatre, but like all work, it must some day cease. Today, specifically. I will be in attendance at that historic moment, when the final scene is performed and the curtain closes on the 100 year play. More soon, but first the news.

We bring you the latest on the lawsuit “The estate of Franklin Chen vs. the city of Night Vale”. As you know, this case has grown so large and complicated that I’ve not had the time to discuss it in my usual community radio broadcasts. But instead, have started a true crime podcast called “Bloody Laws, Bloody Claws: The Murder of Frank Chen”, in which I strive to get to the truth of just what happened on that fateful night when five-headed dragon Hiram McDaniels met Frank Chen, and then later Frank Chen’s body was found covered in burns and claw marks. It’s a confounding mystery. The Sheriff’s Secret Police announce that it seems really complicated and they’re not even gonna try to solve that sucker. “Oh, what?” a Secret Police spokesman muttered at an earthworm he found in his garden. “You want us to fail? You wanna see us fail? That’s why you want us to investigate this case, to see us fail at it?” The family of Frank Chen say they merely want the appropriate parties, in this case the city of Night Vale, Hiram McDaniels and an omniscient conception of God, to take responsibility for their part in this tragedy. The trial is now in its 10th month, and has included spirited re-enactments of the supposed murder by helpful Players Playhouse performers in between their work on the 100 year play. 3 changes of judge and venue due to “some dragon attacks and constant interruptions from a local audio journalist, who hosts a widely respected true crime podcast”. Still, with all this, we near a verdict. Judge Chaplin has indicated she will issue her ruling soon. “Like in the next year or so?” she said. “Certainly within 5 years. Listen, I don’t owe you a verdict, just because you’re paying me to do a job, you can’t rush me to do it. The verdict will be done when. It’s. Done.” Chaplin then huffed out of the courtroom followed by journalists shouting recommendations for episodes of their podcast to listen to.

I was present, you know, on opening night of the 100 year play. Ah, how the theatre buzzed! Of course this was partly the audience, thrilled to be at the start of such an unprecedented work, but mostly – it was the insects. The Night Vale Players Playhouse had quite a pest problem at the time, and still does. It’s difficult to do pest control when there is a 100 year long play being performed on stage at every hour of every day. The curtain opened those many years ago on a simple set of a studio apartment, a kitchen, a cot, a window overlooking a brick wall. A man sits in the corner deep in thought. A doorbell rings. “Come in, it’s open,” the man says. A woman enters, flustered. She is holding a newborn. “There’s been a murder!” she says. “The victim was alone in a room, and all the doors and windows were locked. “My god!” the man says and springs up. “Who could have done this, and how?!” the woman tells him: “It turns out to be the gardener, Mr. Spreckle. He served with the victim in the war and never could forgive him for what happened there. He threw a venomous snake through an air vent.” The man sits back down, nodding. “Aah! So the mystery is solved.” As a playwright, Hannah Hershman did not believe in stringing up mysteries a second longer than was necessary. The baby in the woman’s arm stirs. “Shush, shush little one!” the woman says. The man looks out the window where he cannot see the sky. “It might look like rain,” he says. “Who knows?” Thus began a journey of 100 years.

And now a word from our sponsors. Today’s episode is sponsored by the Night Vale Medical Board, which would like to remind you that it is important to drink enough water throughout the day. Drink more water! Your body cannot function without water. Without water, you are just dust made animate. Water forms the squelching mud of sentience. Try to have at least ten big glasses of water. Not over the entire day, right now. See if you can get all ten of them down. Explore the capacity of your stomach. See if you can make it burst. You will either feel so much better, or an organ will explode and you will day painfully. And either one is more interesting than the mundane now. You should drink even more water than that. Wander out of your door, search the Earth for liquids. Find a lake and drain the entire thing, until the bottom feeders flop helplessly on the flatlands. Laugh slushingly as you look upon the destruction you have wrought. The power that you possess now that you are well hydrated. Move on from the lake and come to the shore of an ocean. All oceans are one ocean that we have arbitrarily categorized by language. The sea knows no separation, and neither will you when you lay belly down on the sand, put your lips against the waves and guzzle the ocean. The ocean is salty. It will not be very hydrating, so you’ll need to drink a lot of it. Keep going until the tower tops of Atlantis see sky again for the first time in centuries, until the strange glowing creatures of the deep-deep are exposed, splayed out from their bodies now that they no longer have the immense pressure of the ocean depths to keep their structure intact. And once you have drunk the oceans, turn your eyes to the stars. For there is water out there too, and you must suck dry the universe. This has been a message from the Night Vale Medical Board.

20 years passed without me thinking about the 100 year play. You know how it is. One day you’re an intern at the local radio station doing all the normal errands like getting coffee and painting pentacles upon Station Management doors as part of the ritual of the slumbering ancients. Then 20 years passes and everything is different for you. Your boss is gone and now you are a host of the community radio station, and there are so many new responsibilities and worries and lucid nightmares in which you explore a broken landscape of colossal ruins. So with all of that, I just kind of forgot the 100 year play was happening. But they were toiling away in there, doing scenes around the clock, building and tearing down sets at a frantic pace, trying to keep up with the script that relentlessly went on, page after page. And sometimes one of the people working on the play would wonder: how does this all end? But before they could flip ahead and look, there would be another scene that had to be performed and they wouldn’t have a chance. So no one knew how it ended. No one except Hannah Hershman, the mysterious author of this centennial play.

Soon after becoming radio host, during the reading of a Community Calendar, I was reminded that the play was still going on, and so decided to check in. I put on my best tux, you know it’s the one with the scales and the confetti canon. And then took myself to a night at the theatre. I can’t say what happened in the plot since that first scene, but certainly much had transpired. We were now in a space colony thousands of years from now, and the set was simple, just some sleek chairs and a black backdrop dotted with white stars of paint. A woman was giving a monologue about the distance she felt between the planet she was born on, which I believe was supposed to be Earth, and the planet she now stood on. I understood from what she was saying that the trip she had taken to this planet was one way, and that she would never return to the place she was born. “We… are… all of us… moved… by time,” she whispered in a cracked, hoarse voice. “Not… one of us dies… in the world… we were born into.” Sitting in my seat in that darkened theatre, I knew two facts with certainty. The first was that this woman had been giving a monologue for several days now. She wavered on her feet, speaking the entire four hours that I was there. And I don’t know how much longer she spoke after I left, but it could have been weeks. She was pale and her voice was barely audible, but there was something transfixing about it, and the audience sat in perfect silence, leaning forward to hear her words. The other fact I understood was that this woman was the newborn from the very first scene. Not just the same character, but the same actor. 20 years later, she was still on that stage, still portraying the life to the child we had been introduced to in the opening lines. She was an extraordinary performer, presumably, having had a literal lifetime of practice. And that was the last time I saw the play, until tonight, when I will go to watch the final scene.

But first, let’s have a look at that Community Calendar. Tonight the school board is meeting to discuss the issues of school lunches. It seems that some in power argue that it isn’t enough that for some reason we charge the kids actual money for these lunches. They argue that the students should also be required to give devotion and worship to a great glowing cloud, whose benevolent power will fill their lives with purpose. Due to new privacy rules, we cannot say which member of the school board made this suggestion. The board will be taking public comment in a small flimsy wooden booth out by the highway. Just enter the damp, dark interior and whisper your comment, and it will be heard. Perhaps not by the school board, but certainly by something.

Tuesday morning, Lee Marvin will be offering free acting classes at the rec center. The class is entitled “Acting is just lying. We’ll teach you how acting is just saying things that aren’t true, with emotions you don’t feel, so that you may fool those watching with these mistruths.” Fortunately, Marvin commented: “Most people don’t want to be told the truth and prefer the quiet comfort of a lie well told.” Classes are pay what you want, starting at 10,000 dollars.

Thursday Josh Crayton will be taking the form of a waterfall in Grove Park, so that neighborhood kids may swim in him. There is not a lot of swimming opportunities in a town as dry as Night Vale, and so this is a generous move on Josh’s part. He has promised that he has been working on the form and has added a water slide and a sunbathing deck. He asks that everyone swim safely and please not leave any trash on him.

Friday, the corn field will appear in the middle of town, right where it does each September, as the air turns cooler and the sky in the west takes on a certain shade of green. The corn field emanates a power electric and awful. Please, do not go into the corn field, as we don’t know what lives in there or what it wants. The City Council would like to remind you that the corn field is perfectly safe. It is perfect and it is safe.

Finally, Saturday never happened. Not if you know what’s good for you. Got it? This has been the Community Calendar.

Oh! Look at the time. Here I am blathering on and the play is about to end. OK, let me grab my new mini recorder that Carlos got me for my birthday. It’s only 35 pounds and the antenna is a highly reasonable 7 feet. And I’ll see you all there.

Ah. What’s the weather like for my commute?

[Shallow Eyes” by Brad Bensko. https://www.bradbenskomusic.com/]

Carlos and I are at the theatre! The audience is a buzz, with excitement yes, but also many of them are the insects that infest this theatre. The bugs became entranced by the story over the years, passing down through brief generation after brief generation, the history of all that happened before. The story of the play became something of a religion to this creepy crawly civilization. And so now the bugs are jittering on the walls, thrilled to be the generation that gets to see the end of this great tale.

The curtain rises on a scene I recognize well. It is the simple set of a studio apartment. A kitchen, a cot, a window overlooking a brick wall. A man sits in the corner deep in thought. A doorbell rings. “Come on, it’s open,” the man calls. A woman enters. She is very old, tottering unsteadily on legs that have carried for her many many years. “Please take my seat,” the man says with genuine concern. “Thank you,” she says, collapsing with relief onto the cushions and then looking out, as if for the first time, noticing the audience. I know this woman. I first saw her as a baby and later as a 20-year-old. It seems she has lived her whole life on this stage, taking part in this play. “My name,” the woman says, “is Hannah Hershman. I was born in this theatre, clutching a script in my arms that was bigger than I was. My twin, in a way. I started acting in that script of mine before I was even aware of the world. I grew up in that script, lived my entire life in the play I had written from infancy to now.” And she rises, and the man reaches out to help, but she waves him away. She speaks, her- her voice is strong, ringing out through the theatre. “The play ends with my death, because the play is my life. It is bounded by the same hours and minutes that I am.” the audience is rapt, many have tears in their eyes. Even the insects weep. “Thank you for these hundred years,” Hannah Hershman says. “This script is complete.” She walks to the window. “It might look like rain,” she says. “Who knows?” The lights dim.

Thunderous applause, cries of acclaim, and Hannah Hershman dies to the best possible sound a person can hear: concrete evidence of the good they have done in the lives of other humans.

Stay tuned next for the second ever Night Vale Players Playhouse production, now that they finally finished this one. They’re going to do “Godspell”. And from the script of a life I have not yet finished performing, Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Many are called, but few are chosen. And fewer still pick up. Because most calls are spam these days.

#welcome to night vale #welcome to night vale transcripts #episode 173 #the hundred year play

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holy-mountaineering · 5 years ago

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This Tree of Life is for an anonymous friend who shall go unnamed but they are not unloved!

Think of this spread as a sort of quantum map, or even the land of a regular map, everything is happening at once, in each place. It’s important to think of yourself as moving “through” the map but you are also simultaneously everywhere at once. For the sake of this specific experiment, think of this as a map. Maybe as a person, the Qabalistic Adam Kadmon.

Where we’re starting the journey from is Kether, the monad, the first sign of creation. We’ll call this your hometown, since it is where you’re from originally. Here we have the “meh” card, Queen of Swords, or how you feel about what you think and your reasoning.

Ideally, this Queen is the “caller out of bullshit.” She is watery (intuitive) enough to feel when a facade is being put up and airy (intelligent) enough to cut the shit and address the fakery. The difference between someone trying to take advantage of another and a person who accidentally causes misfortune is the intention of said individual. Don’t be fooled by kind wolves or rabid sheep.

She rests at her throne with the head or mask of a man and the sword of her mind she severed the head/mask with. Her expression is one of disinterest, she’s done this many times before and shall again and again. It is her nature.

Be aware of intentions, even your own. Be wary of situations and people talking from behind masks they wish to use to obscure their true meaning. Especially be aware of yourself and your masks you hide behind.

In Chokmah, which is like your freeway getting you out onto the road out of your hometown is the always welcomed X Fortune, Jupiter, Kaph.

The “wheel of” Fortune is the rotating of things from confusing and/or destructive to beneficial. The gods Hanuman and Sobek to Crowley represented these ideas and the spinning ��Wheel of Fortune, ol’ Fortuna is the constant motion of life and our experience stuck in it.. The Sphinx on top has waited through the turns patiently and meditatively and now It is on top again.

Expand your influence through patience. It’s getting better just you wait.

In Binah, which is ruled by Saturn and for the sake of this reading we will call the first stop on your roadtrip. You haven’t really arrived anywhere but you’re stopping and getting a chance to repack your car in a more efficient way. Sitting in Binah is the fuckery of the 7 of Swords, Futility.

This is the main thrust of the Will through the mind being thwarted by in helpful organization of ideas. Each sword with a planetary sigil are like the spikes in a parking garage, one way. It isn’t that the ideas or aspects represented by these swords are “bad” just that their placement and yours are not lined up in the best way right now.

Mentally and communication wise pull back from what you’re going at and work on how your organizing the information in your head.

In Chesed which is ruled by Jupiter and again for the sake of this experiment we’ll say involves your influence and benevolence in your current trip is the 9 of Cups, Happiness.

I call this ‘mutually beneficial relationships’ or expanding influence (Jupiter) going or being pulled both ways (Pisces). Each cup has its own source but everything is flowing into each other down to the base of the 3x3 structure. There is a lot of water and all it represents and it hasn’t reached its peak yet and is still driving upward and outward.

Cultivate relationships and connective feelings that aren’t lopsided or just giving/taking. Keep building you’re not done yet.

Across the Tree in Geburah, which is Mars Town, where you find your drive and what you’re trying to accomplish/conquer is the popular tonight Atu XIX The Sun, Resh, Sol.

The Sun is The Lord of Light and Life, the center of our little Solar System. Everything in the fairly large gravitational pull of the Sun is affected by it which pulls everything to it. If it weren’t for The Sun, nothing in our Solar System (named after Sol, The Sun Himself) would be where it is or nearly as well lit or full of life.

This more or less self sufficient little nuclear reactor in space gives life and light but also pulls small things which cannot maintain an orbit around it in for the final burn. bright and full of life and light but deal not with bullshit trifles.

Center yourself but be aware of what you effect and how. Keep pumping out the power but make sure it’s that good good renewable energy.

In Tiphareth, the Sun and center of gravity holding all this in place, the heart pumping the blood through this, your heart is the (more fuckery) Princess of Swords, the earthy part of Air.

This is the material situations that manifest from your way of thinking and communicating! You have to understand that we literally create reality with our perception, thoughts, and language. And that can get messy if we don’t keep them in check.

Get your head into the game as they say, you’re here right now and what is going on in this moment is what you need to focus on. Stay away from nostalgia and daydreaming, think on your situation, not possible scenarios.

In Netzach, Venus town, where you have the realization about how this is going to change you as a person with a personality is well EXTRA FUCKERY, self fuckery, if thou wilt. The 9 of Swords, Cruelty (to self and then by proxy, others).

Like the other 9s this is a massive building up, in this case of Air, mind, thinking, communicating. This is beating yourself up about a decision that must be made. Astrologically, Mars in Gemini relates to action being thwarted because of a split mind on a matter.

You are mentally at a fork in the road and you need to make a choice one way or another.

You’re building up a lot of ideas but you need to decide which way you want to go or it’s going to keep tearing you up mentally. There is a lot of force and mass here, move it or lose it.

In Mercury Town Hod-ville, where all the Universities are and everyone has real intellectual shit going on is a whole new way of thinking and perceiving, Atu XX The Aeon, Shin, Fire.

Think about where you are now and how you go about doing things in general. Do you remember a time before this point in your life when you acted differently and didn’t have this kind of understanding of the world? The Aeon is a new understanding and thus a new way of acting in your life.

Harpocrates giving the sign of silence has to do with the meditative process of accepting this new law of life. You must truly grasp the meaning of this change in order to act in the new “spirit of the age” if you will.

You are being born anew through fire and blood, you are emerging from the egg in the background and coming forth. What you take away from this will be with you forever but one day will also be improved on and brought to a new level.

On the Moon in Yesod, the receptive and reflective place that is a lot about the feelings that you’re picking up from all this is the organized 6 of Wands, Victory.

This is organizing each action to interact with another to create friction at the intersections. 6s are like the idealized form of each of the suits, in this case FIRE or action, movement. Victory is achieved through strong organization. Here the strands come together to form the rope you pull yourself up with. Each piece is strong on it’s own but when you twist them together correctly you have a much better tool.

Don’t do isolated things, use each action to build on your goals.

Down here in Malkuth-istan, the everyday life mundane, waking up pooping, and going to work world is a wedding! VI The Lovers.

These Lovers aren’t about romantic love as much as it is the ‘Love unites the divided.’ This is the ceremony part of the alchemical wedding or the announcement of the intention to dissolve duality. Coagula.

All inverse and adverse elements of the card are brought together under the blessing of the Initiator who is giving the sign of the enterer. This is to say he is blessing your entering into this union of your shadow and conscious self.

You have some work to do on making a more unified you. There are issues that once brought together and balanced make more sense. Bring opposites or aspects of yourself you’re not familiar with/comfortable with together in your life to make a more complete whole. Set intention to do this, maybe even formally.

SO, whenever you get over being over “it all” and you realize it’s just a stuck point, shit will finish getting different, again. This change in “luck” should give you a chance to look at how you’re organizing your own funeral, so to speak. If you feel like you’re pushing a fucking boulder up hill, maybe don’t. Maybe figure out a pulley system or conning someone else into doing the work like your little one eye’d Friend, lol.

And you’ll gain more important influence by surrounding yourself with folks who give and take in relatively equal proportions. I know, I know, this is “The Dream” but it is possible to cut off people that just sap your “love force” leaving you with nothing but force. Refocus on YOUR goals and YOUR Light and the things in Orbit of you will makes sense and hold their satellite positions and continue to do their little (and big) jobs. But this is all done by GETTING YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME. If you see yourself as a lone wolf fighting winter alone, winter will eat your ass every time, and not in a fun ass eating way, more in an ice giant just gobbling you up. You make your reality, possibly more than most, so make it one that puts you at the center so you can get shit done.

You aren’t going to grow from this garbage heap if you don’t stop beating yourself up about every goat-forsaken choice you make! Your total understanding of your standing in the Universe is about to get a reboot anyhow, so just surround yourself with people and energy that allows you to build toward that anomalyous “self goals” thing we’ve been kinda talking about. You’re doing one “Supreme Ritual” that is your life, so make it all Work together instead of weird little stand alone actions you do every once and a while when it suits your fancy, Your Path requires a fuck load more that that from you.

And speaking of demands, that wedding… You’re hanging in there (pun absolutely intended) to do Greater things, and Greater means integrating. Like I was just saying about that 6 of Wands, bring it all together as a “Supreme Ritual” of your Goatdamned life and get out there and fucking take it, announcing that you shall take what is yours, which is of course, only you…

Well, there you are anonymous bud and Odin friend/family/familiar.

Beat down the walls and Goatspeed on your journey UP!

-Frater N0vght

#tarot #divination #cartomancy #occult #magick

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rpgsandbox · 6 years ago

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5e + OSR

Layout designed for utility

Streamlined gameplay

Highly compatible

Five Torches Deep (FTD) is a streamlined adventure game combining the best mechanics and principles of 5e, the OSR, and modern game design. The core of the game is familiar to anyone who has played 5e or previous editions of the game, but every mechanic has been pared down, modified, or expanded upon to create a coherently gritty, resource-focused, roguelike, old-school experience.

The game’s about tough choices, risk vs reward, and using as much out of character smarts as in-character mechanics. It’s just about everything we (Ben and Jess) have come to expect from an OSR adventure game: brutal, challenging, streamlined, and accessible.

Introduce 5e players to OSR

Modular design and layout

FTD is meant to ease the introduction of OSR mechanics and principles to those already familiar with 5e. The core is largely compatible with the current edition, but the more FTD mechanics and subsystems you add, the more “OSR” it feels. As such, you can plug and play to hack up your own amalgam of FTD and other systems.

5e skeleton, OSR meat

Succinct but complete

Modern layout for ease of reference

FTD is a blend of old and new, digital and tabletop. It loots the corpses of four decades of gaming in just 48 packed pages. It’s able to comprehensively recreate an authentic OSR experience while bringing plenty of new subsystems to the table. Heavier than Knave or Into the Odd, more concrete than the Black Hack, less epic than 5e, more familiar than the White Hack, and less “edgy” than LotFP. It hits the sweet spot between post-clone ultra-light rules and burdensome mechanics.

Familiar but fresh

Comprehensive adventure play

Favors cleverness over crunch

FTD strips 5e down to its skeleton and fleshes it out with mechanics focused on resource management, clever problem solving, and streamlined OSR gameplay. Combat is a last resort, magic is dangerous and wild, and every ability matters.

Character Creation: there’s only four classic races, each with a distinct method for generating ability scores and class restrictions.

Character Classes: warrior, thief, mage, or zealot. Classes follow the design structure of 5e (scaling proficiency bonus, class features at set levels, etc) with more specialized “archetypes” unlockable at level 3. These archetypes bring in classics like the Barbarian, Warlock, and Druid without completely reconfiguring the class itself. And with only four starting classes, it’s easy to roll up a random character at level 1.

The Zealot class, all on one page

Level 9 Cap: PC play beyond level 9 is a different type of game. FTD focuses on dungeons and adventure, not domains, strongholds, and cataclysms. This makes a tighter gameplay loop: delve into dungeons, fight monsters, learn spells, acquire loot, repeat.

Ability Scores: the classic six abilities return, but special attention has been paid to ensure that ability scores and modifiers have a mechanical impact. Your STR score defines how much Load you can carry; your CON how many hours you can go without rest; your CHA the number of retainers you can command, and so forth.

Default DC: the assumption is that (almost) all tasks and checks are DC 11. This expedites gameplay and helps make it more predictable and transparent for the players.

Advantage / Disadvantage: easily the most elegant bit of tech from 5e (and the games that they took it from). Enough said.

Inventory and Resource Management: a system to track carried load and supplies. Should you bring heavy weapons and armor or leave enough room to abscond with more loot? Equipment can be used, damaged, foraged, crafted, and repaired. The system adheres to quick but logical gameplay (no dice, no bean counting, but very light abstraction).

The rules on "Supply" and replenishing consumed items

Retainers and Hench: in proper old-school style, PCs are expected to travel with a retinue of retainers and loyal followers, called “hench.” There’re rules for specific types of retainers and the commands you can give them in battle.

Wilderness Travel: distances traveled and resources consumed depending on terrain, light, and weather. The interplay between Travel Turns, supply, and resilience makes for difficult choices.

Travel Turns: a simple system in which the GM regularly rolls on a table every hour in a dungeon or day in the wilderness. Travel Turns create a cyclical ritual: mark spent torches, reduce supply, note hours traveled (make a Resilience check as necessary), and track if monsters spring an ambush or stumble into the party.

Volatile Spellcasting: all spells can be cast quickly - demanding a spellcasting check with potentially calamitous results - or over the course of hours, which necessitates no such check. Casters then must decide if they are willing to risk wandering monsters or a potentially high DC that could result in loss of limb or sight.

Spellcasting is simple but harsh

Rest and Healing: rests have been broken into “safe” and “unsafe,” which have different mechanical effects on healing and exhaustion. There are few quick ways to restore HP, encouraging the need for consumables and cautious rest. High-level characters need days to rest sufficiently and heal back to full.

Debilitating Injuries: any time a PC is reduced to 0 HP, they will die unless an ally resuscitates them. After being stabilized, the incapacitated adventurer must roll on an injury table; many of which have consequences that result in permanent Ability Score damage. Parties beyond level 1 usually comprise of mangled adventurers that bear the scars of their past mistakes.

Monster Generation: Quick monster generation: refer to monster category, HD, add any relevant techniques, and done! Techniques and tactics allow for enormous flexibility in only a few pages. FTD makes monster creation or conversion a cinch, and can be done on the fly.

Tools and Principles: guidelines on how to get into the mindset for OSR play, an adventure framework, and even generators for charged situations and dungeon layouts (including a novel technique leveraging a classic six-color puzzle cube).

Written, designed, and laid out by Ben and Jessica Dutter

Game design consulting by Ben Milton

Art by Sebastian Rodriguez and Per Folmer

Graphic design consultation by Jean Adaser

Graphic and logo design by Sam Mameli

Every page and spread has been meticulously edited and organized to make reference at the table as easy as possible. Information has been contained to a single column or page or spread, and every sentence is concise and without fluff. The double-wide layout makes it ideal for planting on the table and being able to quickly reference the right section.

Careful consideration was paid to the legibility of the fonts, tables, and flow of information on the page. There are as few "widows" and "orphans" as possible, no paragraphs flow across two pages, and everything is internally hyperlinked and referenced.

Since the format is US letter paper (11” x 8.5”) it prints easily enough at home; perfect for group handouts. While we're going with a glued binding, the book still lays pretty flat due to its extra wide format and softcover. The book is being printed on the heaviest paper and highest quality color available from DriveThru, making it both beautiful and sturdy.

Kickstarter campaign ends: Thu, June 6 2019 6:00 PM BST

Website: Sigil Stone Publishing

#RPG #kickstarter #Five Torches Deep #Sigil Stone Publishing

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wirewitchviolet · 5 years ago

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RPG Campaign Setting Thoughts - The Actual, You Know, Setting

Continuing along from here and here, I suppose I should take a moment and get my head out of the clouds with all this structure of the planes and metaphysics malarkey and put down a few words about, you know, the actual world people are going to be going on adventures in... but I don’t wanna!

I’m actually kinda serious with that. I’m still not sure to what degree this whole thing is something I’m really going to sit down and do something with vs. a total pipe dream vs. just some general thoughts on what changes I’d push towards if in a relevant position at a big company and all, but one really big issue I’d want to seriously address if I end up actually publishing anything here is the fact that everything about fantasy RPGs is entirely too white, and unfortunately, I myself am also entirely too white.

As previously mentioned, I 100% want to have orcs coded really heavily as colonialist European types as a major setting antagonist, to push back against decades of appallingly racist coding, and by extension I’d like to have humans who are visually and culturally representative of, you know, the rest of humanity. Some having to deal with orcs raiding and planting their flags everywhere, others totally not dealing with that and having their own much more interesting things going on. Get away from the stock imagery of castles and knights in a barely repainted England, get some cool stuff inspired the rest of the world in there as some basic imagery and all.

And... yeah I’m just not really qualified to do that. More importantly though, I know a ton of people who ARE, and they’re all super cool, and don’t get enough chances to do this sort of world-building. I don’t want to make my ignorant stab at a setting heavily informed by Indian history and folklore when I know someone who’s both an experienced game developer and a Hindu Pandit. I don’t want to play around with fantasy-Jerusalem when thinking about that is basically the life’s work of one of my favorite people in the world. I could keep going with this. I have a lot of really amazing contacts I would absolutely love to just give blank checks to to collaborate on a campaign setting full of all their personal passions and drawing on their heavy historical and cultural knowledge bases.

But... I’m also unemployed, barely able to keep a roof over my head, and fully aware how generally doomed any sort of project like this is and I doubt most of the people I’d be inclined to tap would want to commit to something like this even if I could pay them what they’re worth. Really, I’m the worst person to try to put together some sort of cool overqualified world-building all-stars team and make a setting together, and if someone else wants to take the initiative on that I am all for it, but, if they are nobody’s telling me. So... for now I’d just kinda like to keep the details really sketchy about specific nations and all that and stay focused on my weird non-culturally specific fantasy weirdness. Keep the real meat and potatos stuff in the dark until I get committed enough to kickstart a book and try to sign on cool writer friends as stretch goals or something.

Races for instance! I think I’ve mentioned before how much I just don’t like them, and I’m used to not really caing about them having done a lot of Pathfinder writing, but like Pathfinder, I kinda want to keep all this as backwards compatible with Pathfinder and 3.X as I can, which means I don’t want to drop them entirely, and I already have orcs. So... OK.What can I do with everything else that’s not just borrowing some real-world culture?

First off, we have dwarves. I.... really don’t particularly have any strong feelings about dwarves. The one big problem coming in the unfortunateness of “dwarf” referring to, among other things, the fantasy race, something a bit different in Norse mythology, and actual human beings with a rare condition that leads to a lot of discrimination. I’ve yet to meet anyone who actually has a vocal problem with that, so, please give me feedback there if you have any. Otherwise... I think dwarves kinda fall under “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” Dwarves are exactly the same in every game that has dwarves. Nobody’s had cause to put a new spin on them, which over the years has made them into this really big fantasy touchstone. Something to be said for that stability.

Next up we have elves... and OK, here’s my spin. Elves actually mature and age at the same rate as humans, BUT, every 30-70 years or so, they... basically have a Doctor Who regeneration. Big metamorphising event, they end up with a radically altered appearance, possibly some significant changes to their personality, possibly some memory loss. We keep the staple of elves being functionally immortal, and the sort of physical mutability present through the whole history of fantasy RPGs to one degree or another, but we get a nice out for the whole Immortal Blues issue you usually get with elves, where they outlive everyone they meet. If you’re a teenage elf, you can go hang out with a bunch of teenage humans, grow up together, have a lot of adventures, and then when everyone else is getting old and dying and it’s just depressing, you do your whole elven ritual of renewal thing, and tada. You’re young again, maybe a redhead this time out, maybe a different gender even. All that kinda fades from immediacy, like your old life is just a story you’ve heard a lot, and you’re free to go make new connections with new peers. I think there’s a lot to that as a foundation for cultural stuff, and an interesting setup for telling stories. Needs to be a proper racial power of course, with some restriction on how often it can be done, but hey. This also keeps them from becoming stuffy traditionalists with ancient cities. On a long enough timescale they’re kind of all nomadic drifters.

Half-Elves, which again, are their own race here, probably get a weakened version of that. Maybe they change a little less when they try that renewal ritual. Maybe it doesn’t always work, or it’s really unpredictable. Definitely they have a cap on how often they can do it, so you still have the long-lived but mortal thing going.

Half-Orcs... I need to think about some. The whole “they’re their own race” thing gets all the gross rape crap sweeped nicely away, but they still have to resemble orcs enough to face discrimination to a degree, since, that’s what you have half-orcs for. I might break my rule about no real world cultural models and have them largely stand in for vikings? There’s enough similarity to how I’m doing orcs for confusion’s sake (nautical raiders and explorers and all), an association with violence and generally being all big and tough, but pretty clear We’re Not With Them vibes?

Halflings, I am sticking with my earlier pitch about essentially being humans just created at a different scale. Honestly I’ve always kinda resented D&D even having them, because I mean, everything else has some basis in someone’s folklore, but halflings are just a race swiped directly out of a book series that was super popular at the time, then forced to change the name for copyright reasons. And they clearly just exist to make Bilbo expies, with the stealth bonuses and all. I would totally give them the boot if I could get away with it, but, yeah, tiny humans essentially.

That still leaves gnomes, where I’m still stymied. Again, I really love Pathfinder’s take on them to death, and kinda just want to keep that.

I think that’s a decent spread of new ideas and old ideas that won’t clash with properly varied human culture, right? Next update I’m probably going back to gods and magic. Have some very very nerdy thoughts about the spread of religion based on bored wizards working out astral projection to flesh out.

As always, feedback on any of this is appreciated.

#game design #worldbuilding #RPG campaign setting #D&D

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confrontingbabble-on · 6 years ago

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“...when I think about mindfucks I think—as a former Evangelical—about Evangelical Christianity, which traffics, wholesale, in mindfuckery...

1. It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship (with your imagination...!). ...it’s one of Evangelicalism’s favorite ways of saying, We’re not like all those other (obviously false) faith-based belief systems. We just love Jesus and Jesus loves us, and he loves you, too. From the inside, this relationship thing feels really real and really good. But from the outside it’s a bunch of transparent hooey. Your born-again Christianity is a love relationship—with a character whose name and history you got from a set of ancient texts that were compiled and handed down by a vast hierarchical organization that once torched dissenting texts (and people). And this not-religion has sacred writings and rituals and leaders and schools of systematic theology, and it dictates what people are supposed to believe and how they’re supposed to behave. And it provides all the same social functions and structures as religions.

2. That’s the OLD Testament. In my childhood Bible, the Old Testament is bound together with the New Testament in a gold-stamped blue leather cover with these words on the title page, “The words of Scripture as originally penned in the Hebrew and Greek . . . are the eternal Word of God.” This statement is followed by a verse from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever (Is 40:8).To Evangelicals, the Old Testament is the timeless Word of God, except when the vile atrocities described there become inconvenient or when people quote horrible verses—say those that demean women, endorse slavery, condemn homosexuality and shellfish eating, promote the idea of Chosen bloodlines, or make statements that are scientific nonsense. Then it’s just the Old Testament, and Evangelicals pull out all kinds of fancy “supersessionist” language to explain that those verses don’t really count because of the “new covenant” or the “Dispensation of Grace.” But just try suggesting that a Bible believer take the Old Testament out of the Holy Bible.

3. Yes, no, maybe. God answers prayer. Except when he doesn’t. The New Testament says, And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive (Matthew 21:22; Mark 11:24). But everybody knows that in the real world that doesn’t happen. Christians face bankruptcies and bad test scores and death at the same rate as other people. God answers prayer at the margins of statistical significance, if at all—even when parents are asking for their kids to get healed from cancer, or kids are pleading that parents stop hitting them.How does one explain that? The age-old Christian answer has been that when your prayers aren’t answered you should doubt yourself rather than God, assuming that your faith was too weak or you wanted something you shouldn’t. But Evangelicals have come up with something even more clever: God does always answer! It’s just that he sometimes says no, or maybe, instead of yes. That ask anything and it shall be done Bible verse really meant, ask selectively and he might say yes.

4. Be selfless for your own sake. If you want to be great in God’s kingdom, learn to be the servant of all, say the lyrics to one Christian song. Got that? “If you want to be great,” not “if you want to do the most good in the world.” Granted, learn to be the servant of all beats some other paths people take when they seek status, but it is a path to status nonetheless, which is why the church is full of self-proclaimed servant leaders who actually aspire to great man or woman status.

5. Christianity is humble. According to Catholic theology, pride is one of the seven deadly sins. Evangelical preachers tell us it was Satan’s original sin. Pride cometh before the fall, so humble yourself before God. Couple this claim about humility with the idea that you should preach [your version of] the gospel to every creature—and things get turned inside out and upside down.Famed Puritan hellfire-and-brimstone minister Jonathan Edwards said, “We must view humility as one of the most essential things that characterizes true Christianity.” Edwards also expounded with righteous certitude about the torments of the wicked in hell—wicked meaning anyone who didn’t share his Puritan beliefs.Anyone who has spent much time in an Evangelical church community knows that superior humility can be a powerful form of one-upmanship. But competitive humility aside, what could possibly be more arrogant than thinking the universe was made for mankind, that only we bipedal primates are made in the image of God, that all other sentient beings are here for us to use, that you happened to be born into the one true faith among the tens of thousands of false ones, and that the force that created the laws of physics wants a personal relationship with you.

6. Christianity isn’t sexist; God just has different intentions and rules for men and women. Just because in the Old Testament God (identified by the male pronoun) makes man first, puts men in charge (male headship), gives men the right to barter women and take them as war booty doesn’t mean they’re unequal. Just because the New Testament forbids women to speak in church, tells them to cover their heads and submit to men, and excludes them from leadership positions doesn’t mean that women are inferior to men!

The Bible may be rife with stories with predominantly male protagonists. It may show women competing to have sons. Genealogies may be determined by paternity. God may convey his word exclusively through male writers and may take the form of a male human. But that doesn’t mean men and women are unequal! They’re just “different.” All of those generations of Patriarchs and Church Fathers and Reformers and Preachers who said vile things about women—they just misunderstood the Bible’s message on this point.

7. Believe and be saved. Right belief, according to Evangelicalism, is the toggle that sends people to heaven or hell—as if we could simply make ourselves believe whatever we want, regardless of the evidence, and as if the ability to do so were a virtue. Right belief makes you one of the Righteous. Wrong belief makes you one of the Wicked. God may have given you the ability to think, but you follow logic and evidence where they lead only at your own eternal peril. If you don’t believe, it’s because you secretly just don’t want to.Granted we all are prone to a greater or lesser degree, to what psychologists call “motivated belief,” meaning we have a tendency to selectively seek evidence for things we either want to be true or, more rarely, fear to be true. But this is hardly a sign of robust character or moral virtue. Quite the opposite.

8. God loves you and he’ll send you to hell. And once you die, it’s all irreversible. George Carlin put it best: Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man … living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

OK, Carlin didn’t have his theology right, at least not from an Evangelical standpoint. You don’t go to hell for violating the Ten Commandments. You go to hell for not accepting Jesus as your savior. But yeah, he loves you, loves you, loves you, and if you don’t love him back and worship him and accept his gift of forgiveness for your imperfection, he’s going to torture you forever. Wrap your brain around that definition of love.

9. Free choice under duress. Why is the world full of sin and suffering if God is all powerful and all good? Because he wanted us to worship him of our own free will. He loves us too much to force us, so we had to be able to choose—so the story goes.But, if what he wanted was love and adoration, freely given, then why did he entice us with promises of heaven and threaten us with eternal torture? Can someone really love you if you demand their love at gunpoint?

10. Lean not unto your own understanding. Faith is just believing. Trust and obey. Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong (1 Corinthians 16:13). The fool has said in his heart there is no God (Psalm 14:1).

The idea that your own mind, logic, and the evidence in the world around you is not to be trusted may be Evangelicalism’s biggest mindfuck, because it is subtext in all the others. Any doubts are just evidence that your mind (and basic human decency) are shaky. Since doubt is a sign of weak faith—and sometimes even direct from the devil—you should never ever trust what you think, feel, see or experience over what the Bible says and the Church teaches. Walk by faith, not by sight. Stop asking questions! “

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington.

https://valerietarico.com/2019/02/08/evangelical-christianitys-ten-biggest-mindfucks/

#nonreligious #atheist #agnostic #secular humanist #skeptic #Religion #Christianity #religious insanity

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zygzags · 6 years ago

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Magic Stuff (basics?)

This post was inspired by my best friend, who wants to get into the Craft, but doesn’t quite know where to start, or what’s what quite yet. So, with no further ado, here’s how to get into witchcraft, even if you only have a barebones basics idea of what witchcraft even is.

EDIT: I originally posted this when I was @everywitchway, but since I deleted everything from that blog and started fresh, I’m re-releasing stuff off of my old digital grimoire I wrote for tumblr. Please don’t repost. Only I can repost me. XD

Can I be a witch?You may be thinking that witches are old white ladies with black cats and pointy hats, but really, anyone can be a witch. As long as you want to be a witch, and you incorporate some level of magic into your life, congrats, you’re a witch! You officially have permission from someone (though of course I’m no authority, I’m just some random on the internet). Some may say you have to be initiated by another witch or by a coven to call yourself a witch, but those folks are going off of the ideas and rules of their own specific practice. They can’t say you can’t be a witch by their rules, because you don’t have to follow their rules. If they refuse to see you as a witch, then that sucks, but they aren’t the boss of you, and you can identify as a witch if you dang well please.

You don’t have to be any specific race, religion, gender, sexuality, or other label to practice witchcraft. Some say you have to be a woman, but witches of all genders are present in the community! Some say you have to be straight, but witches of all sexualities are everywhere! Some say you have to be a specific race, but witches have existed in every corner of the world and every shade of skin for as long as humanity has known how to think about how things work. Some say you have to be Wiccan or Satanic, and both of those religions are valid, but not required! Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and other witches are totally a thing!

This also means that jerks can be witches, though. Racists, sexists, and more can and do exist in witchcraft communities. This sucks, but all you can do is vow to do your best to be the best version of yourself. They are, unfortunately, allowed to be witches too.

How does MAGIC even work?

There are so, so many theories on how magic works, and you can subscribe to any one of them, multiple, or none! You can totally make your own theories and ideas. The most popular ones include...

PLACEBO THEORY: The idea that magic works only because we’ve tricked our brains and bodies into thinking it does. Magic, in this case, is the “sugar pill”. If you’re confused, do a quick google, and learn about the placebo theory in medicine.

ENERGY THEORY: The idea that energy flows and exists everywhere, and can be manipulated by a practitioner to create a change in perceived reality.

DEITY THEORY: The idea that a practitioner can get in good standing with a deity, and use that gained favor for help when they need it. Deities aren’t spell ingredients, and shouldn’t just be USED, but some practitioners believe that their magic works because a deity sees fit to MAKE it work.

QUANTUM THEORY: The idea that a practitioner can manipulate the tiniest bits of matter through magic, to create a change in perceived reality.

UNIVERSE THEORY: The idea that a practitioner is part of the universe, and that if they push hard enough with their will, they may be able to have an effect on the universe as a whole. Think... an ant in a bubble. If that ant tries hard, the bubble may move the way it’s trying to steer it.

PERSONAL THEORY: The idea that a practitioner can use their actual personal soul/energy to manipulate perceived reality.

ECLECTIC THEORY: Multiple of the above, or other theories!

Okay, cool. What do witches even do?

Witches do so, so many things. The only things that seem truly universal are spells. All witches, generally, do SOME sort of spellwork. This can be as small as making a wish when you blow out your birthday candles, or as big as a fancy ritual on the blue moon. You can still identify as a witch, even if you haven’t done a “proper” spell yet, because magic is everywhere, and you’ve already likely done some degree of magic without even realizing.

Where do I start?

GET A GRIMOIRE. A grimoire, book of shadows, or magical journal is the first and most important step in your journey. I’d recommend sticking to a plain old spiral notebook, or filler paper in a binder at first. If you’re like me, you’ll likely jump notebooks and get new journals, and if you have a really nice, fancy notebook, or are going for an aesthetic, it can be really hard to actually DO anything in it. Don’t be like me and immediately buy a hundred dollar Italian leather embossed grimoire on day one. Your grimoire should be usable without fear of messing up. Digital Grimoires are also totally valid, and a word/google document or an evernote/OneNote notebook are perfectly useable. I personally have like... a bajillion physical grimoires AND digital ones going. Don’t worry too much about it, just have a way to keep track of what you’re learning.

RESEARCH: Research the moon, research the stars, research the sun, research herbs, research crystals, research anything you can. Don’t use tumblr as your only source, and take EVERYTHING you read with a piece of salt. Even what you find in published books by big names can be riddled with misinformation and cultural appropriation. Try to find reputable sources (Google scholar is A+), and compare what everyone says. If only one person says it, maybe it’s what that one person thinks. If a BUNCH of reputable people say it, it’s more likely to be true. The first thing you should do beyond (and maybe during) your research phase is.....

PROTECT YO SELF. Some magic can be dangerous, especially if you’re working with spirits or entities you can’t see from the get-go. Learn at least one or two methods of banishing, one or two methods of cleansing, one or two ways of warding, and maybe what sorts of things repel bad energy and malicious entities. If you’re not working with entities at all yet, don’t worry overmuch, but it can be nice to have ways to keep bad vibes away, or protect yourself from other witches. Jerks do exist in the community, and witches have been known to curse one another. It’s fairly rare, if I’m being real, but it’s still some good stuff to know.

HOW DO SPELLS WORK? Look into the parts of a spell, the structure of it. Maybe learn about how to cast circles, if that sounds like your kind of thing. If you want to work with elements, learn to call the elements. Look into what you feel you’ll actually want to use in a spell, and write it down! All in all, most spells involve some sort of hyping-up of energy, building and directing it towards an intent, and releasing the energy to do what you want it to do. This is, of course, just one way a spell works, and there are plenty of other ways.

CORRESPONDENCES? Oh yeah. They tend to be made out to be a major big huge deal in the community. “What’s ___ good for?” Is a common question. However, a better place to start may be “What’s good for ___?” Make a list of things you may want to do with magic, and then see if anything you have on hand has a correspondence that fits. If you can find something that works, great, write it down, and use it in that spell. I personally used incense, salt, a candle, and a water bottle in my first spell, and it went perfectly fine.

OTHER STUFF is cool too. Once you get past the things above, you can start getting deeper in. Sigils are cool, and so is divination. You can get further into spells, or focus in on herbal and crystal healing, or check out astrology. You can learn to meditate and then to astral travel, or you can try your hand at enchanting objects. All in all, your path is yours, and you can do so, so much with it.

Things to watch out for:

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION: No, you’re not “smudging” when you wave around burning sage to cleanse. You’re smoke cleansing. Smudging has more to it than just smoke, and is a Native American thing. If you’ve not learned how to properly smudge from someone in a native religion, you shouldn’t be using the term. This is just one example of culural appropriation, but honestly, the problem exists in every single culture. Some other things you shouldn’t be using without checking in with an existing member of that culture/religion include: voodoo/hoodoo, Kabbalah/Qaballah, chakras, dreamcathers, karma, the third eye, spirit animals, etc. All in all, if you’re not sure, ASK. And if you’re asked by a member of another culture/religion to stop doing something because it’s offensive or appropriative, do your best to listen and understand.

GURU’S AND WITCH IDOLS: No one is the witch pope, king/queen, boss, or master. No one knows everything. I’ve been practicing for years, but if a beginner who just started today knew something I didn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised. We’re all still learning. We’re all wrong sometimes. Don’t look up to any witch too much, don’t put any other human on too much of a pedestal. You have power, and you have value, and you are magic. No one saying otherwise has the authority to do so.

BUYING ALL THE THINGS: Again, don’t be like me. It’s incredibly tempting when you first start out to run out and try to buy all the tools, all of them. You’ll want a wand, and an athame, and a fancy chalice, and a deck of cards, and and and.... But you need exactly ZERO of these things to be a witch and do magic. You, on your very own, with nothing else, are magic, and can do magic, and can be a witch. Don’t break the bank on your first day. Take your time, and when you’re financially able and something calls to you, you’ll know you’re ready to make that tool yours.

D-D-D-DISCOURSE: On social media especially, someone’s always bickering with someone about something. Witchblr is a wonderful resource, but take EVERYTHING you read, even this, with a grain (or large chunk) of salt. No one is the witch authority. No one is always right. No one knows everything. Everyone’s wrong sometimes. Be careful who you trust, and even more careful who you decide to make an enemy. It’s easy to be angry, take the challenge and try to keep the peace.

#by the maestrex #text #27th #November #2018 #November 27th 2018

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kierongillen · 6 years ago

Text

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 39

Spoilers, obv.

And we collapse forward on the keyboard and twitch a while. This has been nightmarishly hard. I suspect the last arc will be hard (as nothing in WicDiv is easy) but the things we were juggling here were something else.

Before we dive in, some top-level thinking. The advantage of the way WicDiv is constructed is that we know what we're doing. A friend was just rereading the first arc, and noted how certain elements and approaches simply changed as the tone of the book solidified – while also noting that every direction we did take was there from the off. We knew the What We Were Doing but not always the specific How.

(Not least, as I was a hot mess in 2014. I'm amazed the WicDiv scripts weren't just bahsjasjfaglagsfk.)

But the problem with knowing the direction of the book is you're tied to ideas you may wish you hadn't put in play. Because a five year book is enough time to change significantly in what you consider a good idea or not – and even if you still think it's a good idea in the abstract, it doesn't mean it's an idea you would necessarily want to do any more.

At this point, there's various things flying around. Firstly, Laura has rejected her godhood. That's great. That's clearly the arc of the book. Secondly, Ananke is running her own eternal scheme with its eternal rules. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Ananke (and I'm using “Ananke” for “Ananke and Minerva” here) is significantly deceiving people on some key matters, and using the holes in their knowledge to her advantage. At this point in the story the same thing happens to her. We see that her own perception is also incomplete.

So – what's the thing she's missing?

I fell upon Maiden/Mother/Crone as a structure to create a relationship between Ananke/Persephone/Minerva. What action would Ananke buy?

It has to be archetypal and mythic. Cheaty postmodernism doesn't work. Myth is brutal and basic and ugly and wrong.

So – if the Mother archetype has a child, Ananke's doomed forever. It breaks the little eternal circle and Ananke thinks herself trapped in that sensory void forever.

There's nothing in the above specifically and individually which worries me too much. It's how they intersect with the rest of the plot, and how we can chart a line between them all without saying anything we don't want to say, or without causing undue emotional distress in a way we're uncomfortable with.

We end up with our solution, which is merely our best solution, which means it's far from perfect. We do as much as we can, and try and touch on stuff as gently as we can to avoid any fair misreading of the story. Even so, there's resonances in there I dislike.

There's a sentence that is said all the time in writing room situations: “This is the bad version.” It's said when people are brainstorming, and asking the audience to know this isn't good, but they are good enough writers to make it better – it's just a structure of the sort of things that the narrative could delineate.

It's easy to imagine The Bad Version of this plot. Laura finding out she has to have a kid to save the world! Baal and Baphomet fighting over who's the father! An issue cliffhanger where you think Laura's own choice has doomed the world! I shudder. Like, someone with a different aesthetic to me would have done all of the above.

Instead, what we try to do is what we have to do to make the story work, and do it in the safest way possible. It's the guiding aesthetic of most of this issue, in terms of separating the two key threads – namely not confusing Laura's choice to have an abortion and Laura's choice to reject godhood.

But still – I spent four years trying to think of something that Ananke would buy, based on our implicit story, which wasn't this, and failed. I'd rather not have gone this way. I'm happy with the issue, but it was a heartbreaking amount of work as I take all of this intensely seriously.

So, to return to the opening, the problem with being as structured as WicDiv is means that you are tied to decisions you made years ago, without which the story simply breaks.

DIE (aka Project Spangly New Thing) rejects this kind of plotting. It's just as messy emotionally as WicDiv (hell, even more so) but leaves the characters a lot more narrative freedom. I'd have done it anyway (because I hate to repeat myself) but the experience on arcs like this certainly feeds into it.

Anyway – I'll be talking some specifics in this as we go through, as I suspect it may be useful for people thinking about the impact of choices.

Jamie's Cover: Ananke in her cavewoman chic. That means 2 “persephone”, 2 “minerva” and 2 “Ananke” covers for this arc. The symmetry seems fun.

Phil Jimenez's Cover: I first saw Phil's work in his pop-thrill issues of The Invisibles, an obviously influential work on yours truly. We worked together on Angela: Asgard's Assassin together, which was a thrill, and this glam-metal take on her. He's also very lovely. As such, Minerva in full-on catwalk mode is a great take. I love these kind of maximalist high-thrill ones. And LIZ's ‘When I rule the world’ has just come on my WicDiv shuffle at this point, which seems appropriate for Minerva stomping down a lightning-catwalk. Also, Dee Cunniffe (who has flatted nearly all of WicDiv) provides colours. Nice work, Dee.

Page 1-2

Black spaces. Like the opening of the arc – C's idea, I believe. Also, ensuring we get our page turns right. We dropped the recap for once. Normally we'd drop it in the mid-point of the issue instead of the first interstitial, but it would have broken the space.

Obviously mirroring the start of this arc.

The first obvious bit of delineation: this is ten days after the end of last issue. Laura stopped being Persephone 10 days ago. As such, anything that happens now is not connected to that.

The biggest reading we wanted to avoid: “Laura's abortion is the ritual by which she rejects and escapes the Persephone-Mother archetype”. Especially if people, either pro or anti choice, could make an argument we're saying we're saying the act is human sacrifice – a reading which seems especially possible in a story that already has human sacrifice in it.

Page 3-4-5-6

Reestablishing what folks have been up to in the gap – in short, bits and pieces, bits of information the characters should exchange, etc.

The Cass/Woden dialogue is stuff I'd have liked to get into issue 33, but was cut due to space and focus. It was Mimir's scene, and as he's been silent for the whole book, he gets to speak. The “He stole my life/I stole his” was all that was required. This is detail. Interesting detail, but detail. And, yes, loaded.

There's a lot of “starting other stuff” in this sequence – clearly the “ritual” is going to be important next arc.

I love what Jamie is doing quietly with Mimir and the boxes at the back of the room on page 4. Like, I wonder what's in each of those boxes, right? There's some horrible pure objectification here. Like, Pokémon. Got to catch them all.

You can tell that Woden is more chill with Minerva, right?

It was originally written with Minerva noting that mind-controlled-sex-is-rape at the end of page 4. That felt frankly aggressive, as if we were using it as a punchline. Instead, we soften it, and move it mid-panel, which changes the feeling around it, hopefully.

On page 6, I really like the “Hmm. You're learning.” It still makes me laugh.

Making the gun's controls REALLY VISUALLY OBVIOUS is not exactly subtle, but 100% needed to make sure the scene make sense.

Page 7-8-9

With a month gap between issues, it's possible that the reader may not have noticed that we've changed the issue structure from the rest of this arc. It's not “past stuff then present stuff” like the others. It's at least one reason why we didn't give a preview – that and that the first pages of the issue are entirely non-characteristic in terms of where the issue goes.

Anyway – first page is a pure repeat from issue 34, so a free page. This issue is a little longer than normal, due to normal cheats. It's actually 20 new pages long... plus one new panel.

Page 8 is very peak Jamie, plus Matt, for a certain mode. I never get bored of seeing what they do with blood together. Ananke's expression in panel 4 is just particularly well chosen. This isn't how Minerva feels last issue – that's after thousands of years of dwelling on it. This is first exposure. You don't go straight to AGRGRHRHRHRHH.

And back to the still angle on the third panel. Like, the static nature of these seems important in terms of mood.

I really hope Ananke isn't licking that knife.

Page 10

I spent the best part of a day trying to work out what to name this interstitial, after naming it a few things previously. That we end up with a very limited Bowie nod says everything. Anything else seemed to create resonances we were trying to avoid. Once more, the aim is to separate the two decisions from Laura as much as possible.

Page 11

I know drawing London kills Jamie, but I'll miss seeing stuff like this monthly when it's gone.

We don't know Laura's walked out of a clinic for a few pages, but it was important to just give her space here.

Researching locations in London, in terms of placing the events, the timing, what would be available, and Laura's condition after an abortion and trying to find a way to be sensitive to all of that as a writer. Ideally, I was looking for an option around Highbury & Islington, as I always prefer to reuse settings. In practise, this was best.

Page 12

I basically described Beth's crew as Valkyrie-plusses. As in, the mini-bosses in a videogame. Elite models for a basic troop type.

Toni pushes to the front, as he's always been the most talkative of the Other Two. Writing this I realised who he is here – he's basically “Imagine Marvel Boy, if Marvel Boy was a total idiotic dipshit.”

(Instead of the “mostly idiotic dipshit” he was in YA. Love you, Noh-Varr! KISSY FACE.)

I believe Jamie laughed at this a fair bit.

Page 13-14

I considered various captions for Laura here, but no matter what they did, they blurred the line between her abortion and her abandoned godhood. As such, the relative silence was considered more effective.

13-14-15-16

A lot is packed into this space. In an ideal world, I'd like another page for it, to extend Beth's choice to shoot or not, but it's all there.

Key delineations here: obvious restatement of the 10 days since she's been a god, to ensure it's clear. “Panel 3”; Beth never knowing (nor caring) where Laura has just been; Robin actually being human; Laura's privacy being respected; the “I've got more imminent problems” to separate her being shot from this; most importantly, Laura never knowing that this decision was important to Minerva, and never letting Minerva's mistaken beliefs impact her decision. Laura' abortion is her choice and doesn't need a bunch of mythic stuff attached to it for her.

The “shame” line resonates with another, more optimistic, line on the first page of Young Avengers. This speaks to the books, and the choices and the attached psychology.

Page 17

Oddly, the “no cameras in the bathroom” information we've set up allows this scene. Minerva isn't someone who would vocalise much if someone could have hear. You can imagine her looking in each booth to see if someone's around. I did consider moving to captions for a page, but Minerva getting captions for this one event seemed aesthetically off.

Page 18

Self-evident interstitial, and so long a bit of text I can hear designers wincing.

Page 19-20

Earliest scene so far in WicDiv. I did consider having it set after the murder, with the grandson coming back to hear her last words, but the “alive-dead-alive-dead-alive-dead” was getting a bit silly. A quietly magical breakfast conversation seemed the way to go.

I think the bleakest and darkly funniest thing in the issue is the “Eventually, we'll learn. It may take a thousand years, but someone will figure it out.” Oh, you total optimist, you.

I do like the mood of the colouring for this.

Okay – the key structural bit for safety-proofing this plot? The absolute minimisation of the gap between discovering the fourth rule, discovering Laura has had an abortion and then discovering that the fourth rule is just a lie. The longer it hangs, the more it is letting people live with an idea we find reprehensible. The thing I knew when starting this arc is all of this had to happen inside the same issue – the problem there being, that it also had to be foreshadowed enough to not come out of nowhere. And if you foreshadow too heavily, it's as same as saying “this is where it's going”.

Anyway – that wrapped up, we move towards the end...

Page 21-22-23-24-25

The continuation of last issue's end. Laura and her captions.

Some perfect McKelvie expressions, and some key beats. Like, this also adds shade to last issue – I forget if I mentioned that one of the key beats of the series (Laura rejecting her godhood) being dramatised by her swapping a SIM card seems absolutely key to where we are.

Two key expressions – the glance to camera with “I'm not a god” and “So what? So do you.” I could marry Jamie for these.

Matt working the blacks and the ochres here is fascinating.

Thought experiment: originally the layout on page 21 had two captions in panel 3 and two in panel 4. I moved the first from panel 4 to panel 3. Why? A single caption always has more weight in a given space. Having two in each was effectively giving no extra weight to any individual caption. Instead, three in one makes that the conversational beat and the one over the spiral-staircase means the latter just hangs there.

(In short: less dialogue/caption in any space makes the line more important. SPACE=MEANING is what I've been saying all along, usually with panel size. As in, “bigger panels read as more important.” But the same sort of thinking applies to lettering in terms of the space it is allowed to “control.”)

End of page 21 – a final restating of the two events being separate. Laura choosing to have an abortion is something she decided when starting to put her life back together. It's not a cause of her stopping being a god – if anything, it's something that's resulted from her new state of mind.

Lots in terms of mode in 22, but I love how Jamie has handled the nudity in the second panel. As in, she's a girl changing for bed, but she's never presented as something to be objectified, to looked at. Laura is always someone we're meant to be. We are meant to inhabit her, and her us.

The panel at the start of 23 is the extra panel we squeezed in. One panel for this amount of extra material, leading to the better reveal seemed a good choice.

Did I mention I lost a line I really liked last issue? The “At long last, I know what I'm not” was originally “I know what I am/and I know what I'm not.” Which is pretty and elegant, but also confusing with this ending – the “what I am” is “not a god” and what I'm not” is “a god”. Prettiness only goes so far, especially as it's not as if Laura's going to stop and explain that.

Lots of key bits of dialogue in these pages, obviously. “I distrust anyone who tells me who I am. Especially if I agree” and all that.

Obviously in storytelling choices, this is reprising, in an inverted way, the end of The Faust Act. Instead of a flash of light, fading into darkness, darkness emerging from light. Also, really strong choice of expression in that final panel.

Referencing ‘Dancing In the Dark’. Springsteen's is obviously great, but I'm thinking of the Downtown Boys' cover which is much closer to where WicDiv is coming from.

I choke up at all this scene. Been a long way to get here, Laura. Onwards.

The trade collection for Mothering Invention is out in October. We have two Specials before next arc, WicDiv: 1373 (out at the end of September) and WicDiv: The Funnies (out in November.)

We're then back in December, where we begin our final arc.

It's called – “Okay”. Including the quotation marks. Yes, we're going out on another Bowie reference.

Thanks for reading.

#WicDiv #the wicked and the divine #writer notes

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suzanneshannon · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 7: Standards

It was the year 1994 that the web came out of the shadow of academia and onto the everyone’s screens. In particular, it was the second half of the second week of December 1994 that capped off the year with three eventful days.

Members of the World Wide Web Consortium huddled around a table at MIT on Wednesday, December 14th. About two dozen people made it to the meeting, representatives from major tech companies, browser makers, and web-based startups. They were there to discuss open standards for the web.

When done properly, standards set a technical lodestar. Companies with competing interests and priorities can orient themselves around a common set of agreed upon documentation about how a technology should work. Consensus on shared standards creates interoperability; competition happens through user experience instead of technical infrastructure.

The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C as it is more commonly referred to, had been on the mind of the web’s creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, as early as 1992. He had spoken with a rotating roster of experts and advisors about an official standards body for web technologies. The MIT Laboratory for Computer Science soon became his most enthusiastic ally. After years of work, Berners-Lee left his job at CERN in October of 1994 to run the consortium at MIT. He had no intention of being a dictator. He had strong opinions about the direction of the web, but he still preferred to listen.

W3C, 1994

On the agenda — after the table had been cleared with some basic introductions — was a long list of administrative details that needed to be worked out. The role of the consortium, the way it conducted itself, and its responsibilities to the wider web was little more than sketched out at the beginning of the meeting. Little by little, the 25 or so members walked through the list. By the end of the meeting, the group felt confident that the future of web standards was clear.

The next day, December 15th, Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen announced the recently renamed Netscape Navigator version 1.0. It had been out for several months in beta, but that Thursday marked a wider release. In a bid for a growing market, it was initially given away for free. Several months later, after the release of version 1.1, Netscape would be forced to walk that back. In either case, the browser was a commercial and technical success, improving on the speed, usability, and features of browsers that had come before it.

On Friday, December 16th, the W3C experienced its first setback. Berners-Lee never meant for MIT to be the exclusive site of the consortium. He planned for CERN, the birthplace of the web and home to some of its greatest advocates, to be a European host for the organization. On December 16th, however, CERN approved a massive budget for its Large Hadron Collider, forcing them to shift priorities. A refocused budget left little room for hypertext Internet experiments not directly contributing to the central project of particle physics.

CERN would no longer be the European host of the W3C. All was not lost. Months later, the W3C set up at France’s National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, or INRIA. By 1996, a third site at Japan’s Keio University would also be established.

Far from an outlier, this would not be the last setback the W3C ever faced, or that it would overcome.

In 1999, Berners-Lee published an autobiographical account of the web’s creation in a book entitled Weaving the Web. It is a concise and even history, a brisk walk through the major milestones of the web’s first decade. Throughout the book, he often returns to the subject of the W3C.

He frames the web consortium, first and foremost, as a matter of compromise. “It was becoming clear to me that running the consortium would always be a balancing act, between taking the time to stay as open as possible and advancing at the speed demanded by the onrush of technology.” Striking a balance between shared compatibility and shorter and shorter browser release cycles would become a primary objective of the W3C.

Web standards, he concedes, thrives through tension. Standards are developed amidst disagreement and hard-won bargains. Recalling a time just before the W3C’s creation, Berners-Lee notes how the standards process reflects the structure of the web. “It struck me that these tensions would make the consortium a proving ground for the relative merits of weblike and treelike societal structures,” he wrote, “I was eager to start the experiment.” A web consortium born of compromise and defined by tension, however, was not Berners-Lee’s first plan.

In March of 1992, Berners-Lee flew to San Diego to attend a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force, or IETF. Created in 1986, the IETF develops standards for the Internet, ranging from networking to routing to DNS. IETF standards are unenforceable and entirely voluntarily. They are not sanctioned by any world government or subject to any regulations. No entity is obligated to use them. Instead, the IETF relies on a simple conceit: interoperability helps everyone. It has been enough to sustain the organization for decades.

Because everything is voluntary, the IETF is managed by a labyrinthine set of rules and ritualistic processes that can be difficult to understand. There is no formal membership, though anyone can join (in its own words it has “no members and no dues”). Everyone is a volunteer, no one is paid. The group meets in person three times a year at shifting locations.

The IETF operates on a principle known as rough consensus (and, often times, running code). Rather than a formal voting process, disputed proposals need to come to some agreement where most, if not at all, of the members in a technology working group agree. Working group members decide when rough consensus has been met, and its criteria shifts form year to year and group to group. In some cases, the IETF has turned to humming to take the temperature of a room. “When, for example, we have face-to-face meetings… instead of a show of hands, sometimes the chair will ask for each side to hum on a particular question, either ‘for’ or ‘against’.”

It is against the backdrop of these idiosyncratic rules that Berners-Lee first came to the IETF in March of 1992. He hoped to set up a working group for each of the primary technologies of the web: HTTP, HTML, and the URI (which would later be renamed to URL through the IETF). In March he was told he would need another meeting, this one in June, to formally propose the working groups. Somewhere close to the end of 1993, a year and a half after he began, he had persuaded the IETF to set up all three.

The process of rough consensus can be slow. The web, by contrast, had redefined what fast could look like. New generations of browsers were coming out in months, not years. And this was before Netscape and Microsoft got involved.

The development of the web had spiraled outside Berners-Lee’s sphere of influence. Inline images — a feature maybe most responsible for the web’s success — was a product of a late night brainstorming session over snacks and soda in the basement of a university lab. Berners-Lee learned about it when everyone else did, when Marc Andreessen posted it to the www-talk mailing list.

Tension. Berners-Lee knew that it would come. He had hoped, for instance, that images might be treated differently (“Tim bawled me out in the summer of ’93 for adding images to the thing,” Andreessen would later say), but the web was not his. It was not anybody’s. He had designed it that way.

With all of its rules and rituals, the IETF did not seem like the right fit for web standards. In private discussions at universities and research labs, Berners-Lee had begun to explore a new path. Something like a consortium of stakeholders in the web — a collection of companies that create browsers and websites and software — that can come together to agree upon a rough consensus for themselves. By the end of 1993, his work on the W3C had already begun.

Dave Raggett, a seasoned researcher at Hewlett-Packard, had a different view of the web. He wasn’t from academia, and he wasn’t working on a browser (not yet anyway). He understood almost instinctively the utility of the web as commercial software. Something less like a digital phonebook and more like Apple’s wildly successful Hypercard application.

Unable to convince his bosses of the web’s promise, Raggett used the ten percent of time HP allowed for its employees to pursue independent research to begin working with the web. He anchored himself to the community, an active member of the www-talk mailing list and a regular presence at IETF meetings. In the fall of 1992, he had a chance to visit with Berners-Lee at CERN.

Yuri Rubinsky

It was around this time that he met Yuri Rubinsky, an enthusiastic advocate for Standard General Markup Language, or SGML, the language that HTML was originally based on. Rubinsky believed that the limitations of HTML could be solved by a stricter adherence to the SGML standard. He had begun a campaign to bring SGML to the web. Raggett agreed — but to a point. He was not yet ready to sever ties with HTML.

Each time Mosaic shipped a new version, or a new browser was released, the gap between the original HTML specification and the real world web widened. Raggett believed that a more comprehensive record of HTML was required. He began working on an enhanced version of HTML, and a browser to demo its capabilities. Its working title was HTML+.

Ragget’s work soon began to spill over to his home life. He’d spend most nights “at a large computer that occupied a fair portion of the dining room table, sharing its slightly sticky surface with paper, crayons, Lego bricks and bits of half-eaten cookies left by the children.” After a year of around the clock work, Raggett had a version of HTML+ ready to go in November of 1993. His improvements to the language were far from superficial. He had managed to add all of the little things that had made their way into browsers: tables, images with captions and figures, and advanced forms.

Several months later, in May of 1994, developers and web enthusiasts traveled from all over the world to come to what some attendees would half-jokingly refer to as the “Woodstock of the Web,” the first official web conference organized by CERN employee and web pioneer Robert Calliau. Of the 800 people clamoring to come, the space in Geneva could hold only 350. Many were meeting for the first time. “Everyone was milling about the lobby,” web historian Marc Weber would later describe, “electrified by the same sensation of meeting face-to-face actual people who had been just names on an email or on the www-talk [sic] mailing list.”

Members of the first conference

It came at a moment when the web stood on the precipice of ubiquity. Nobody from the Mosaic team had managed to make it (they had their own competing conference set for just a few months later), but there were already rumors about Mosaic alum Marc Andresseen’s new commercial browser that would later be called Netscape Navigator. Mosaic, meanwhile, had begun to license their browser for commercial use. An early version of Yahoo! was growing exponentially as more and more publications, like GNN, Wired, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, came online.

Progress at the IETF, on the other hand, had been slow. It was too meticulous, too precise. In the meantime, browsers like Mosaic had begun to add whatever they wanted — particularly to HTML. Tags supported by Mosaic couldn’t be found anywhere else, and website creators were forced to chose between cutting-edge technology and compatibility with other browsers. Many were choosing the former.

HTML+ was the biggest topic of conversation at the conference. But another highlight was when Dan Connolly — a young, “red-haired, navy-cut Texan” who worked at the supercomputer manufacturer Convex — took the stage. He gave a talk called “Interoperability: Why Everyone Wins.” Later, and largely because of that talk, Connolly would be made chair of the IETF HTML Working Group.

In a prescient moment capturing the spirit of the room, Connolly described a future when the language of HTML fractured. When each browser implemented their own set of HTML tags in an effort to edge out the competition. The solution, he concluded, was an HTML standard that was able to evolve at the pace of browser development.

Ragget’s HTML+ made a strong case for becoming that standard. It was exhaustive, describing the new HTML used in browsers like Mosaic in near-perfect detail. “I was always the minimalist, you know, you can get it done with out that,” Connolly later said, “Raggett, on the other hand, wanted to expand everything.” The two struck an agreement. Raggett would continue to work through HTML+ while Connolly focused on a more narrow upgrade.

Connolly’s version would soon become HTML 2, and after a year of back and forth and rough consensus building at the IETF, it became an official standard. It didn’t have nearly the detail of HTML+, but Connolly was able to officially document features that browsers had been supporting for years.

Ragget’s proposal, renamed to HTML 3, was stuck. In an effort to accommodate an expanding web, it continued to grow in size. “To get consensus on a draft 150 pages long and about which everyone wanted to voice an opinion was optimistic – to say the least,” Raggett would later put it, rather bluntly. But by then, Raggett was already working at the W3C, where HTML 3 would soon become a reality.

Berners-Lee also spoke at the first web conference in Geneva, closing it out with a keynote address. He didn’t specifically mention the W3C. Instead, he focused on the role of web. “The people present were the ones now creating the Web,” he would later write of his speech, “and therefore were the only ones who could be sure that what the systems produced would be appropriate to a reasonable and fair society.”

In October of 1994, he embarked on his own part in making a more equitable and accessible future for the web. The World Wide Web Consortium was officially announced. Berners-Lee was joined by a handful of employees — a list that included both Dave Raggett and Dan Connolly. Two months later, in the second half of the second week of December of 1994, the members of the W3C met for the first time.

Before the meeting, Berners-Lee had a rough sketch of how the W3C would work. Any company or organization could join given that they pay the membership fee, a tiered pricing structure tied to the size of that company. Member organizations would send representatives to W3C meetings, to provide input into the process of creating standards. By limiting W3C proceedings to paying members, Berners-Lee hoped to focus and scope the conversations to real world implementations of web technologies.

Yet despite a closed membership, the W3C operates in the open whenever possible. Meeting notes and documentation are open to anybody in the public. Any code written as part of experiments in new standards is freely downloadable.

Gathered at MIT, the W3C members had to next decide how its standards would work. They decided on a process that stops just short of rough consensus. Though they are often called standards, the W3C does not create official standards for the web. The technical specifications created at the W3C are known, in their final form, as recommendations.

They are, in effect, proposals. They outline, in great detail, how exactly a technology works. But they leave enough open that it is up to browsers to figure out exactly how the implementation works. “The goal of the W3C is to ensure interpretability of the Web, and in the long range that’s realistic,” former head of communications at the W3C Sally Khudairi once described it, “but in the short range we’re not going to play Web cops for compliance… we can’t force members to implement things.”

Initial drafts create a feedback loop between the W3C and its members. They provide guidance on web technologies, but even as specifications are in the process of being drafted, browsers begin to introduce them and developers are encouraged to experiment with them. Each time issues are found, the draft is revised, until enough consensus has been reached. At that point, a draft becomes a recommendation.

There would always be tension, and Berners-Lee knew that well. The trick was not to try to resist it, but to create a process where it becomes an asset. Such was the intended effect of recommendations.

At the end of 1995, the IETF HTML working group was replaced by a newly created W3C HTML Editorial Review Board. HTML 3.2 would be the first HTML version released entirely by the W3C, based largely on Ragget’s HTML+.

There was a year in web development, 1997, when browsers broke away from the still-new recommendations of the W3C. Microsoft and Netscape began to release a new set of features separate and apart from agreed upon standards. They even had a name for them. They called them Dynamic HTML, or DHTML. And they almost split the web in two.

DHTML was originally celebrated. Dynamic meant fluid. A natural evolution from HTML’s initial inert state. The web, in other words, came alive.

Touting it’s capabilities, a feature in Wired in 1997 referred to DHTML as the “magic wand Web wizards have long sought.” In its enthusiasm for the new technology, it makes a small note that “Microsoft and Netscape, to their credit, have worked with the standards bodies,” specifically on the introduction of Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, but that most features were being added “without much regard for compatibility.”

The truth on the ground was that using DHTML required targeting one browser or another, Netscape or Internet Explorer. Some developers chose to simply choose a path, slapping a banner at the bottom of their site that displayed “Best Viewed In…” one browser or another. Others ignored the technology entirely, hoping to avoid its tangled complexity.

Browsers had their reasons, of course. Developers and users were asking for things not included in the official HTML specification. As one Microsoft representative put it, “In order to drive new technologies into the standards bodies, you have to continue innovating… I’m responsible to my customers and so are the Netscape folks.”

A more dynamic web was not a bad thing, but a splintered web was untenable. For some developers, it would prove to be the final straw.

Following the release of HTML 3.2, and with the rapid advancement of browsers, the HTML Editorial Review Board was divided into three parts. Each was given a separate area of responsibility to make progress on, independent of the others.

Dr. Lauren Wood (Photo: XML Summer School)

Dr. Lauren Wood became chair of the Document Object Model Working Group. A former theoretical nuclear phycist, Wood was the Director of Product Technology at SoftQuad, a comapny founded by SGML advocate Yuri Rubinsky. While there, she helped work on the HoTMetaL HTML editor. The DOM spec created a standardized way for browsers to implement Dynamic HTML. “You need a way to tie your data and your programs together,” was how Wood described it, “and the Document Object Model is that glue.” Her work on the Document Object Model, and later XML, would have a long-lasting influence on the web.

The Cascading Style Sheets Working Group was chaired by Chris Lilley. Lilley’s background was in computer graphics, as a teacher and specialist in the Computer Graphics Unit at the University of Manchester. Lilley had worked at the IETF on the HTML 2 spec, as well as a specification for Portable Network Graphics (PNG), but this would mark his first time as a working group chair.

CSS was still a relative newcomer in 1997. It had been in the works for years, but had yet to have a major release. Lilley would work alongside the creators of CSS — Håkon Lie and Bert Bos — to create the first CSS standard.

The final working group was for HTML, left under the auspices of Dan Connolly, continuing his position from the IETF. Connolly had been around the web almost as long as Berners-Lee had. He was one of the people watching back in October of 1991, when Berners-Lee demoed the web for a small group of unimpressed people at a hypertext conference in San Antonio. In fact, it was at that conference that he first met the woman that would later become his wife.

After he returned home, he experimented with the web. He messaged Berners-Lee a month later. It was only three words:“You need a DTD.”

When Berners-Lee developed the language of HTML, he borrowed its convention from a predecessor, SGML. IBM developed Generalized Markup Language (GML) in the early 1970’s to make it easier for typists to create formatted books and reports. However, it quickly got out of control, as people would take shortcuts and use whatever version of the tags that they wanted.

That’s when they developed the Document Type Definition, or as Connolly called it, a DTD. DTDs are what added the “S” (Standardized) to GML. Using SGML, you can create a standardized set of instructions for your data, its scheme and its structure, to help computers understand how to interpret it. These instructions are a document type definition.

Beginning with version 2, Connolly added a type definition to HTML. It limited the language to a smaller set of agreed-upon tags. In practice, browsers treated this more as a loose definition, continuing to implement their own DHTML features and tags. But it was a first step.

In 1997, the HTML Working Group, now inside of the W3C, began to work on the fourth iteration of HTML. It expanded the language, adding to the specification far more advanced features, complex tables and forms, better accessibility, and a more defined relationship with CSS. But it also split HTML from a single schema into three different document type definitions for browsers to adopt.

The first, Frameset, was not typically used. The second, Transitional, was there to include the mistakes of the past. It expanded a larger subset of HTML that included non-standard, presentational HTML that browsers had used for years, such as <font> and <center>. This was set as a default for browsers.

The third DTD was called Strict. Under the Strict definition, HTML was pared down to only its standard, non-presentational features. It removed all of the unique tags introduced by Netscape and Microsoft, leaving only structured elements. If you use HTML today, it likely draws on the same base of tags.

The Strict definition drew a line in the sand. It said, this is HTML. And it finally gave a way for developers to code once for every browser.

In the August 1998 issue of Computerworld — tucked between large features on the impending doom of <abbr title=”Year 2000>Y2K, the bristling potential of billing on the World Wide Web, and antitrust concerns about Microsoft — was a small announcement. Its headline read, ”Browser standards targeted.” It was about the creation of a new grassroots organization of web developers aimed at bringing web standards support to browsers. It was called the Web Standards Project.

Glenn Davis, co-creator of the project, was quoted in the announcement. “The problem is, with each generation of the browser, the browser manufacturers diverge farther from standards support.” Developers, forced to write different code for different browsers for years, had simply had enough. A few off-hand conversations in mailing lists had spiraled into a fully grown movement. At launch, 450 developers and designers had already signed up.

Davis was not new to the web, and he understood its challenges. His first experience on the web dated all the way back to 1994, just after Mosaic had first introduced inline images, when he created the gallery site Cool Site of the Day. Each day, he would feature a single homepage from an interesting or edgy or experimental site. For a still small community of web designers, it was an instant hit.

There was no criteria other than sites that Davis thought were worth featuring. “I was always looking for things that push the limits,” was how he would later define it. Davis helped to redefine the expectations of the early web, using the moniker coolas a shorthand to encompass many possibilities. Dot-com Design author and media professor **Megan Ankerson points out what “this ecosystem of cool sites gestured towards the sheer range of things the web could be: its temporal and spatial dislocations, its distinction from and extension of mainstream media, its promise as a vehicle for self-publishing, and the incredible blend of personal, mundane, and extraordinary.” For a time on the web, Davis was the arbiter of cool.

As time went on Davis transformed his site into Project Cool, a resource for creating websites. In the days of DHTML, Davis’ Project Cool tutorials provided constructive and practical techniques for making the most out of the web. And a good amount of his writing was devoted to explaining how to write code that was usable in both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. He eventually reached a breaking point, along with many others. At the end of 1997, Netscape and Microsoft both released their 4.0 browsers with spotty standards support. It was already clear that upcoming 5.0 releases were planning to lean even further into uneven and contradictory DHTML extensions.

Running out of patience, Davis helped set up a mailing list with George Olsen and Jeffrey Zeldman. The list started with two dozen people, but it gathered support quickly. The Web Standards Project, known as WaSP, officially launched from that list in August of 1998. It began with a few hundred members and announcement in magazines like Computer World. Within a few months, it would have tens of thousands of members.

The strategy for WaSP was to push browsers — publicly and privately — into web standards support. WaSP was not meant to be a hyperbolic name.” The W3C recommends standards. It cannot enforce them,” Zeldman once said of the organization’s strategy, “and it certainly is not about to throw public tantrums over non-compliance. So we do that job.”

A prominent designer and standards advocate, Zeldman would have an enduring influence on makers of the web. He would later run WaSP during some of its most influential years. His website and mailing list, A List Apart, would become a gathering place for designers who cared about web standards and using the latest web technologies.

WaSP would change focus several times during their decade and a half tenure. They pushed browsers to make better use of HTML and CSS. They taught developers how write standards-based code. They advocated for greater accessibility and tools that supported standards out of the box.

But their mission, published to their website on the first day of launch, would never falter. “Our goal is to support these core standards and encourage browser makers to do the same, thereby ensuring simple, affordable access to Web technologies for all.”

WaSP succeeded in their mission on a few occasions early on. Some browsers, notably Opera, had standards baked in at the beginning; their efforts were praised by WaSP. But the two browsers that collectively made up a majority of web use — Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator — would need some work.

A four billion dollar sale to AOL in 1998 was not enough for Netscape to compete with Microsoft. After the release of Netscape 4.0, they doubled-down on bold strategy, choosing to release the entire browser’s code as open source under the Mozilla project. Everyday consumers could download it for free; coders were encouraged to contribute directly.

Members of the community soon noticed something in Mozilla. It had a new rendering engine, often referred to as Gecko. Unlike planned releases of Netscape 5, which had patchy standards support at best, Gecko supported a fairly complete version of HTML 4 and CSS.

WaSP diverted their formidable membership to the task of pushing Netscape to include Gecko in its next major release. One familiar WaSP tactic was known as roadblocking. Some of its members worked at publications like HotWired and CNet. WaSP would coordinate articles across several outlets all at once criticizing, for instance, Netscape’s neglect of standards in the face of a perfectly reasonable solution in Gecko. By doing so, they were often able to capture the attention of at least one news cycle.

WaSP also took more direct action. Members were asked to send emails to browsers, or sign petitions showing widespread support for standards. Overwhelming pressure from developers was occasionally enough to push browsers in the right direction.

In part because of WaSP, Netscape agreed to make Gecko part of version 5.0. Beta versions of Netscape 5 would indeed have standards-compliant HTML and CSS, but it was beset with issues elsewhere. It would take years for a release. By then, Microsoft’s dominion over the browser market would be near complete.

As one of the largest tech companies in the world, Microsoft was more insulated from grassroots pressure. The on-the-ground tactics of WaSP proved less successful when turned against the tech giant.

But inside the walls of Microsoft, WaSP had at least one faithful follower, developer Tantek Çelik. Çelik has tirelessly fought on the side of web standards as far back as his web career stretches. He would later become a member of the WaSP Steering Committee and a representative for a number of working groups at the W3C working directly on the development of standards.

Tantek Çelik (Photo: Tantek.com)

Çelik ran a team inside of Internet Explorer for Mac. Though it shared a name, branding, and general features with its far more ubiquitous Windows counterpart, IE for Mac ran on a separate codebase. Çelik’s team was largely left to its own devices in a colossal organization with other priorities working on a browser that not many people were using.

With the direction of the browser largely left up to him, Çelik began to reach out to web designers in San Francisco at the cutting edge of web technology. Through a stroke of luck he was connected to several members of the Web Standards Project. He’d visit with them and ask what they wanted to see in the Mac IE browser. “The answer: better standards support.”

They helped Çelik realize that his work on a smaller browser could be impactful. If he was able to support standards, as they were defined by the W3C, it could serve as a baseline for the code that the designers were writing. They had enough to worry about with buggy standards in IE for Windows and Netscape, in other words. They didn’t need to also worry about IE for Mac.

That was all that Çelik needed to hear. When Internet Explorer 5.0 for Mac launched in 2000, it had across the board support for web standards; HTML, PNG images, and most impressively, one of the most ambitious implementations of the new Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) specification.

It would take years for the Windows version to get anywhere close to the same kind of support. Even half a decade later, after Çelik left to work at the search engine Technorati, they were still playing catch-up.

Towards the end of the millennium, the W3C found themselves at a fork in the road. They looked to their still-recent past and saw it filled with contentious support for standards — Incompatible browsers with their own priorities. Then they looked the other way, to their towering future. They saw a web that was already evolving beyond the confines personal computers. One that would soon exist on TVs and in cell phones and on devices we that hadn’t been dreamed up yet in paradigms yet to be invented. Their past and their future were incompatible. And so, they reacted.

Yuri Rubinsky had an unusual talent for making connections. In his time as a standards advocate, developer, and executive at a major software company, he had managed to find time to connect some of the web’s most influential proponents. Sadly, Rubinsky died suddenly and at a young age in 1996, but his influence would not soon be forgotten. He carried with him an infectious energy and a knack for persuasion. His friend and colleague Peter Sharpe would say upon his death that in “talking to the people from all walks of life who knew Yuri, there was a common theme: Yuri had entered their lives and changed them forever.”

Rubinsky devoted his career to making technology more accessible. He believed that without equitable access, technology was not worth building. It motivated all of the work he did, including his longstanding advocacy of SGML.

SGML is a meta-language and “you use it to build your own computer languages for your own purposes.” If you hand a document over to a computer, SGML is how you can give that computer instructions on how to understand it. It provides a standardized way to describe the structure of data — the tags that it uses and the order it is expected in. The ownership of data, therefore, is not locked up and defined at some unknown level, it is given to everybody.

Rubinsky believed in that kind of universal access, a world in which machines talked to each other in perfect harmony, passing sets of data between them, structured, ordered, and formatted for its users. His company, SoftQuad, built software for SGML. He organized and spoke at conferences about it. He created SGML Open, a consortium not unlike the W3C. “SGML provides an internationally standardized, vendor-supported, multi-purpose, independent way of doing business,” was how he once described it, “If you aren’t using it today, you will be next year.” He was almost right.

He had a mission on the web as well. HTML is actually based on SGML, though it uses only a small part of it. Rubinsky was beginning to have conversations with members of the W3C, like Berners-Lee and Raggett, about bringing a more comprehensive version of SGML to the web. He was even writing a book called SGML on the Web before his death.

In the hallways of conferences and in threaded mailing lists, Rubinsky used his unique propensity for persuasion to bring people several people together on the subject, including Dan Connolly, Lauren Wood, Jon Bosak, James Clark, Tim Bray, and others. Eventually, those conversations moved into the W3C. They formed a formal working group and, in November of 1996, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) was formally announced, and then adopted as a W3C Recommendation. The announcement took place at an annual SGML conference in Boston, run by an organization where Rubinsky sat on the Board of Directors.

XML is SGML, minus a few things, renamed and repackaged as a web language. That means it goes far beyond the capabilities of HTML, giving developers a way to define their own structured data with completely unique tags (e.g., an <ingredients> tag in a recipe, or an <author> tag in an article). Over the years, XML has become the backbone of widely used technologies, like RSS and MathML, as well as server-level APIs.

XML was appealing to the maintainers of HTML, a language that was beginning to feel somewhat complete. “When we published HTML 4, the group was then basically closed,” Steve Pemberton, chair of the HTML working group at the time, described the situation. “Six months later, though, when XML was up and running, people came up with the idea that maybe there should be an XML version of HTML.” The merging of HTML and XML became known as XHTML. Within a year, it was the W3C’s main focus.

The first iterations of XHTML, drafted in 1998, were not that different from what already existed in the HTML specifications. The only real difference was that it had stricter rules for authors to follow. But that small constraint opened up new possibilities for the future, and XHTML was initially celebrated. The Web Standards Project issued a press release on the day of its release lauding its capabilities, and developers began to make use of the stricter markup rules required, in line with the work Connolly had already done with Document Type Definitions.

XHTML represented a web with deeper meaning. Data would be owned by the web’s creators. And together, computers and programmers, could create a more connected and understandable web. That meaning was labeled semantics. The Semantic Web would become the W3C’s greatest ambition, and they would chase it for close to a decade.

W3C, 2000

Subsequent versions of XHTML would introduce even stricter rules, leaning harder into the structure of XML. Released in 2002, the XHTML 2.0 specification became the language’s harbinger. It removed backwards compatibility with older versions of HTML, even as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer — the leading browser by a wide margin at this point — refused to support it. “XHTML 2 was a beautiful specification of philosophical purity that had absolutely no resemblance to the real world,” said Bruce Lawson, an HTML evangelist for Opera at the time.

Rather than uniting standards under a common banner, XHTML, and the refusal of major browsers to fully implement it, threatened the split the web apart permanently. It would take something bold to push web standards in a new direction. But that was still years away.

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perfectirishgifts · 4 years ago

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The Art Of Asynchronous: Optimizing Efficiency In Remote Teams

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/the-art-of-asynchronous-optimizing-efficiency-in-remote-teams/

The Art Of Asynchronous: Optimizing Efficiency In Remote Teams

Since the pandemic began, organizations have struggled to convert remote operations to a more sustainable model. A major contributing factor comes from a deep reliance on real-time, synchronous communication, compensating for lack of structure, visibility into work, and self-management skills. Synchronous communication may be getting in the way of your organization’s success may include calendars full of meetings, workforce burnout, long-hours worked across time zones, inefficiency, and decreased productivity. The most successful remote organizations are able to maneuver between asynchronous and synchronous communication and collaboration, optimizing for efficiency, inclusivity, and wellbeing.

The most successful remote organizations are able to maneuver between asynchronous and synchronous … [] communication and collaboration, optimizing for efficiency, inclusivity, and wellbeing.

What is Asynchronous Communication?

Asynchronous communication is defined by messages that aren’t shared or received in real-time. Common ways teams experience asynchronous communication and collaboration are through a string of threads in email, project management systems, customer relationship management and content management systems, messaging tools, shared documents and digital whiteboards, and video recording tools. One pitfall many teams face is using asynchronous channels in real-time, classic examples are dropping everything to respond to non-urgent messages or emails, creating a vicious cycle of reactive work and unproductivity. The challenge for organizations is both in setting standardized rules and expectations for communication and enforcing them.

What are the Benefits of Asynchronous Communication?

Building an organization-wide communication strategy that maximizes asynchronous methods brings lasting benefits to companies of all sizes. With reduced reliance on synchronous meetings and messaging to get work done, workforces see increased productivity, time for deep work, and thoughtful responses, while enabling a more seamless employee experience regardless of location and time zone. These benefits create a more inclusive and supportive environment allowing for both introverts and extroverts to contribute equally, and allows individuals to optimize their workday for their own personal efficiency preferences, not needing to be as tied to dedicated 9-5 hours.

“The criteria can feel blurry while deciding when a conversation should be moved from async to sync or vice versa. The trick is in not forcing it and finding an optimal balance between the two. If before a meeting you retrieve updates on task completions, project statuses, blockers or additional context then real-time communications can be reserved for topics that benefit from immediate exchanges such as brainstorming, problem-solving, or decision-making,” says Tariq Rauf, CEO and Founder of Qatalog, a work hub that asynchronously funnels tools, people, projects and goals together under one digital roof. “Discoverability can also eliminate dependency on sync communications, and unlock new levels of collaboration. Too many team leaders forget this. Making documents, goals or processes accessible across teams is a simple but powerful collaboration habit because it allows colleagues to discover information relevant to their work, on their own time, without disrupting productivity and flow.”

Helen Kupp, Product & Strategy Leader at Slack’s Future Forum shares how to make flexible schedules work for teams, “For many people, 9-to-5 workdays, regular meetings, and ‘always on’ interactions were never the right work environment. It resulted in burnout among women with children, barriers to advancement among underrepresented employees, and other issues. That’s become truer than ever in the pandemic. Rather than being chained to a day full of back to back meetings, asynchronous communication and work puts individuals back in the driver seat — in control of when to engage in content and messages from others, and when to instead carve out time for deep focus work. That balance is key to productivity. More importantly, each individual’s situation is different. I’m a mom to a new baby, so my most efficient deep focus time may be different from yours. Asynchronous allows us to tailor work to each individual’s optimal work situation, and unlocking productivity.”

What are Best Practices to Optimize for Asynchronous Communication?

Given the reliance asynchronous puts on tooling, it’s important that organizations are intentional in not overwhelming their workforce and infrastructure with a sea of apps, creating information and communication silos, and wasted expense.

Asynchronous tends to rely on written communication, so it’s important to both screen for written communication skills and train the workforce on improvement. Video recording tools like Loom help the sender provide verbal and visual context, supplementing written communications with a high context, human-centered opportunity to collaborate and connect asynchronously.

Plenty of tasks and meetings can be moved to asynchronous channels, but should we be reliant on asynchronous only? No, there is still a time and place for synchronous. Work should be organized into three categories:

Type 1: Synchronous & Collaborative

The work that we’re used to doing together in an office should now be reserved for interactive tasks that will be more valuable with real-time engagement between multiple team members on a phone or video call — scenarios in which producing a result together is urgent, a conversation that will be enhanced by active listening, or thinking quickly on your feet as a group. For example, performance reviews, group brainstorming, trust-building activities, team decision making, and strategic planning.

Type 2: Asynchronous & Collaborative

In asynchronous and collaborative communication, a two-way exchange is expected, just not at the same time. Messages are made accessible to all by sharing openly across tools, channels, tasks and projects. For organizations that see the value transparency has on overall success, the vast majority of asynchronous communication often falls into this category.

“Status meetings is a simple but powerful example of asynchronous communication. Our Future Forum research showed that teams that moved status meetings from live meetings into asynchronous, written updates actually scored higher on sense of belonging than those teams who kept the live meetings. That’s because asynchronous updates do a couple of different things. First, it signals that live team time is reserved for higher value team-building activities. Second, it makes the updates & information more accessible to everyone on the team — they can consume the information, ask questions, and provide feedback in a deeper, richer way than in a quick sync meeting”, says Helen Kupp.

Type 3: Asynchronous & Independent

Messages that aren’t intended to have a response fall into asynchronous and independent. Routine status updates, and FYI’s are great examples of things that are better done independently to guard for people’s time, and being done asynchronously provides for another benefit, recorded information that can be easily referenced any time it’s needed, leading to more self-managed teams, and less taps on the virtual shoulder.

“Discoverability can unlock new types of collaboration. Specifically, making documents, updates, goals or processes accessible across an organization can allow colleagues to discover new information relevant to their work, on their own time. If someone comes back from vacation and they need to catch-up on everything, they’re likely to seek updates across teams and projects. For some items, they’ll want to turn on a tap instead of a firehose. So, rather than schedule meetings to retrieve updates, asynchronous communication can give them a chance to review updates at their own pace”, says Tariq Rauf. Read more about Qatalog’s tips for sharing updates effectively.

Bottom line, asynchronous messages can wait… so let them. Organizations need to set and articulate clear expectations in employee handbooks and communication charters that give workers structure for response time on various types of messages, so they can better self-manage their time, tasks, and energy. “Many of the norms and rituals of how we work together are unintentionally office-centric. The basic assumption is that everyone is working in the same place, at the same times. And honestly, when most companies were forced to make the shift to remote work at the beginning of the pandemic, many of the issues & challenges we were seeing around burnout, increase hours and meetings, etc. were from the fact that companies weren’t intentional about the change and mainly lifted & shifted old office practices onto videoconference”, says Helen Kupp.

Teams that differentiate and navigate between using asynchronous and synchronous communication instead of defaulting to real-time connectivity, have success in increasing productivity, and wellbeing in a remote environment. With some creativity, intention, and dedication, organizations are often surprised at how much synchronous work can effectively be replaced with asynchronous communication and collaboration, leading to happier, more productive teams that experience higher quality synchronous time together than ever before, no matter where they are located.

From Careers in Perfectirishgifts

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authoramandaleigh · 5 years ago

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Talking About My Journey with Anxiety and OCD

I'm not good at sharing. I'm starting with that sentence so if this doesn't seem like I'm sharing much you know why. It doesn't come naturally to me. I tend to keep things close to the vest. Here's an example. When I'm in the hospital the only reason my friends and extended family find out is if my mom tells them. I might not even mention it after it happens. So they may never know if it weren't for someone else telling them. That's just the way I am. So to share is not a natural thing for me. Maybe this has to do with my social anxiety, I don't know. Anyway, I know that we as a society have such a hurtful stigma against mental illness. Just the term often brings about feelings of shame. I want to change that. I can't do it single handedly but I can be a part of it, I can help. And I think that helping starts with sharing my story. Even if it's just some of it. You have to start somewhere, right?

I know it looks like I'm choking my cat here, I'm not. hahaha. Just hugging him and having him protest. He actually lets me hug and cuddle and kiss him quite a bit and does the same to me quite often. What does this have to do with anything? Well, Sawyer (my cat) is something that helps me immensely. Just petting him and cuddling with him calms me down. Oh, how I love this little guy. <3

So, my mom says she noticed signs of my anxiety and OCD (which is technically an anxiety disorder) from the time I was quite young. I don't really remember doing anything compulsive when I was younger, but that may just be because it was normal to me.

Wait. Before we go on, let me put the definition of OCD right here:

"Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder in which people have unwanted and repeated thoughts, feelings, ideas, sensations (obsessions), and behaviors that drive them to do something over and over (compulsions).

Often the person carries out the behaviors to get rid of the obsessive thoughts. But this only provides short-term relief. Not doing the obsessive rituals can cause great anxiety and distress."

This definition is taken from MedlinePlus. I include it because too many people believe that OCD only encompasses wanting things neat, orderly, tidy, et cetera. Like when you see someone line up their pencils in a perfect row. I'm not saying that isn't part of it I just want it to be clear that it is much different than what society tends to portray it as. A well known example would be someone who has to repeatedly wash their hands. For no apparent reason, they just keep washing. There are infinite numbers of compulsions, though. Counting is a popular one. And it's one that I share to a degree. Which I find sort of ironic because I hate math. (Just trying to diffuse a little humor...) My number of choice is 4. I count things in rounds of 4. Once I get to 4, I start again. I sometimes count my steps.

I prefer even numbers to odd. I find it hard to do anything in odd numbers. To give an example. the volume on the television. It has to be on an even number. If it starts on 26 I can't go up to 27, I have to turn it up to 28. Now, to throw a wrench in what I just said, there are exceptions to this even number rule of mine. One is if someone else puts the volume on an odd number. Then I don't have to change it because it wasn't me who did it. Something else, though. Well, it's hard to explain. There are certain odd numbers I'm okay with, but there are very specific reasons for it. The number 7, for example. I'm okay with that number. Why? Well, in history 7 is meant to be a powerful magical number. There are also 7 Harry Potter books. So, I'm okay with that one. There are others, too.

I'm not being neat and orderly isn't part of it for me. I do often have to straighten things out that are uneven. Like pencils. I fix the books on the shelves in Barnes and Noble. And I can't even tell you how many times I've said my room is messy and anyone there strongly disagrees and says it looks neater than their room ever has.

Trying to explain your compulsions to people, oh boy, is that a nightmare. Many people (including me) often try to hide these things, but sometimes it's just not possible because you HAVE to do it. You HAVE to. Why? Because if you don't, whatever the obsessive thought is will then happen. Does that make sense? No. And I'm well aware of that. But it's almost like two separate parts of my brain. Two separate voices. Two little beings on my shoulder. One telling me I don't have to and one telling me I need to, or else that thing will happen. The second voice tends to win out. What causes OCD? There's the kicker. We don't know yet. Here's another snippet from MedlinePlus.

"Health care providers do not know the exact cause of OCD. Factors that may play a role include head injury, infections, and abnormal function in certain areas of the brain. Genes (family history) seems to play a strong role."

It's often infuriating. I think some people may be able to do the compulsion a certain number of times and then go on. With me, yes, a number comes into play but I have to do it right. If I don't, I need to repeat the compulsion over and over until I do get it right. What's worse? Usually, I'm not even sure what right means. Something in my brain just clicks to tell me that I got it right and then I can move on with my day. I have spent fairly significant amounts of time trying to get it right. As I said, infuriating. And to try to explain it...might be more infuriating because it's so hard to explain. But the jury is out on that.

That brings us to anxiety. General and Social Anxiety. The first panic attack I remember having I was seventeen. We were going to Florida. I was on an airplane. I'm terrified of flying. I started having a panic attack because it wasn't as if I could get off that plane, and I was stuck doing something that terrified me to the bone. Even just writing that brings up some of that panic in me.

Things went pretty well for a while. What's interesting is, looking back, it's quite possible I had smaller anxiety attacks in the years between this one and my next big one.

This panic attack took place in college. I was twenty-one, sitting in the library with a few friends. I'm not sure to this day what brought it on. I know that my friend brought me home. I thought maybe it was because of the people around but I'd been in the library countless times.

I also remember sitting in my Poetry class after having been in the hospital and starting to feel a panic attack come on. Shortness of breath, light headed, this feeling in my chest...it's so hard to describe, so hard to do justice to it. I got up and nearly ran outside to get fresh air. Mind you, it was February. I had on a sweatshirt but I had a coat, too because it was freezing. I didn't bring my coat with me, I needed that cold air hitting my skin.

In one of my Literature classes, I felt the symptoms come on once more. I got out of class as quickly as I could and locked myself in a bathroom stall to ride it out. I think I threw up that time, as well.

Another time, I didn't catch the symptoms in enough time to get away and ride it out. I'd just come back from the ladies room, I thought everything was fine. I sat down in my Spanish class and it came on quite suddenly this time. My Spanish professor noticed and came over to my desk. She picked up my things and told me to come with her to her office. I sat there with her and she actually told me to call someone to take me home, that was how bad it was.

Social Anxiety. This is something I remember having for well, as long as I can remember. I didn't call it social anxiety I just remember always being nervous around people. I most definitely still am and would usually prefer to be alone. Or just with a small group. Again, just thinking about this makes me a little nervous. Honestly, there are very few people I've never been nervous around. Even the people I love.

I think my General Anxiety and OCD have gotten a bit better. What's difficult is trying to pin point why, what did it. I think routine is a part of it, at least for my anxiety. A lot of the time, my anxiety would stem from being literally paralyzed by not knowing what to do first. To the point that I just did none of it. This did not work so well for me. With a routine, I know what to do when. Maybe it sounds restrictive but it's really not. It's not a down to the minute plan every minute detail routine. It gives me enough structure to know when I'm doing my morning ritual, when I'm setting up medicine for the night, when I'm working on content or when I'm writing or editing, when I'm off of work for the day. And it's not rigid, I honestly believe it's more about the order of the things.

My mindset is another thing. And I'm sure some of you are rolling your eyes. I get it. I don't think mindset can cure anxiety disorders like some people do but I DO believe that it can help. Having a morning ritual with some meditation (by the way, it's only 2-5 minutes), reading and journaling has honestly done wonders. I also do yoga nearly every day now. I try to workout every day, too (and have been pretty consistent) but yoga is something I've grown to love. It's sort of another form of meditation. And carving out more time for writing my books is helping a lot. That's something I've quite recently started. I decided I was too focused on the media and not the writing. So I decided to change that and it's helped a lot. I mean, the writing is what I love to do. It's what I'm here to do.

Gratitude. Thinking about all the wonderful things and people I already have in my life. All the experiences. The books I've written, people I've met. The fact that I'm still here even though my doctors gave me until age sixteen when I was diagnosed with Nephropathic Cystinosis. I feel immensely grateful and I realize how amazing life is.

Trying to go easy on myself when I have a bad day. Sometimes it's going to happen. It'll be a struggle to get one thing done. Or even to get dressed. I'm making a more conscious effort not to beat myself up about it.

Music helps quite a lot. It's hard to be anxious belting out a song. Or if I am anxious (or irritable, etc.) by the middle of the song I'm usually fine. Reading, books, stories. Any type of storytelling helps. It always has. I'm quite attached to many fictional characters, as you know, but did you know those characters ease my anxiety and even my OCD at times?

I think over the past five years my anxiety and OCD has gradually gotten better. And in the last year I've seen myself make huge progress. It will never go away, and that is okay. It's a day to day thing. And I'm proud of how far I've come.

If you want to talk you can send me a message on Facebook, Instagram or through email. But remember, I am not a mental health professional. If you need to reach out to someone (and it is totally OKAY if you do) please look for someone in your area. Or, if you'd rather check into online counseling, BetterHealth is one site you could check out.

Here's a link to a free anthology where people write letters to their mental illnesses. It's a powerful book and it shows that you are not alone. Far from it.

#blogger #authorblog #anxiety #ocd #mental health #mental disorder #mentalillness

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maddiviner · 8 years ago

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The World of Grimoires, Part II: Choose Your Weapons!

If you’re going to have your very own grimoire, you’ve got to start with some raw materials. These will vary depending on what style of grimoire you have in mind, how you’d like to organize, and what you want it to look like.

Fancy?

Many, many witches over the years have told me the held off on beginning a grimoire until they could find “just the right book” to write it in and just the right tools to write with. Nine times out of ten, the most coveted blank books for grimoires are giant leather (or faux-leather) tomes that resemble something you’d see in a fantasy novel about witches.

Many also want to write in these books with quill pens dipped in magical scented ink, another old-fashioned technique normally seen nowadays in fantasy fiction. I’ll admit that I longed for such things myself when I was just starting my first grimoire, and have felt pangs of wonderment at the thought of owning them many times sense.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting that sort of setup, but anyone will tell you that it’s a bit impractical. Giant leather tomes are expensive and easy ruined by stray splotches of ink. Quill pens are difficult to work with at first, and require much practice to use correctly. Magical scented ink is nice, but can, again, be pricy, even if you make your own.

This is compounded by the fact that many new and experienced witches (including myself at times) have a sort of neatness obsession when it comes to their grimoire, wanting it to be perfect from the start and forever, with not a single splotch of ink out of place.

It often seems that, the nicer and more expensive the notebook or journal, the more perfect and neat we’d like it to be. Given how easy it is to completely ruin a new and expensive leather journal if you’re slinging around magical scented ink from a brand-new quill pen, you can see how this problem snowballs into quite a conundrum.

I won’t tell anyone not to buy an eldritch-looking leather-bound journal if they want, but I will say this: expect imperfections, especially in your very first grimoire. You’ll be getting your feet wet with the concept and are bound to make plenty of mistakes.

Regardless of what notebook or journal you get (if any), make sure it’s something you’re comfortable making mistakes in. It’s pretty horrible to see someone get a nice notebook, spill some ink or rip a page, and shelve the entire thing, afraid to touch it again.

A far better option than a very expensive blank book would be a moderately-priced undated journal such as a Moleskine or other more elaborate creations.I’ve made it no secret which publisher of blank journals I prefer, and have written at length about why I tend to choose Peter Pauper Press journals. These undeniably won’t please everyone, though, and there are many other publishers creating beautiful blank journals.

If you choose something like that, don’t buy it for appearance alone - consider if it’s well-made and will stand the test of time. One thing I always check is that the price sticker is removable and doesn’t leave much residue on the cover. Not everyone will care about this, but I find it neater that way.

I do recommend checking to see if the paper is of good quality. Cheap paper can lead to pens bleeding through, doesn’t handle markers and other decorating tools well, and can overall ruin your grimoire. I’m not saying you need extremely expensive high-quality paper, but just check to make sure it’s thick enough not to experience bleed-through.

Utilitarian?

Many witches prefer a more utilitarian approach, out of necessity or other concerns. This can involve a wide range of materials, and is often quite a bit more discreet than a giant leather book and quill pen. This is advantageous for those who’d rather not attract unnecessary attention to their practices. In truth, a grimoire can look like whatever you want, provided it gets the job done, and this includes appearing completely ordinary, like a normal notebook where you’d find a shopping list or accounting information.

Some are fine using a simple spiral-bound notebook available at any dollar store as their grimoire. If discretion is the most pressing concern, a normal college rule notebook is likely the best bet, but I caution against buying something poorly-made or with very thin paper, especially if you plan on decorating the inside later on.

Another option would be a packet of binder paper and a three-ring binder with tabs. You can create sections in the binder according to subject or whatever other organizational feature you might want to use. A binder has the advantage of being easily reorganized, removing and adding pages when necessary to create the grimoire’s intended structure.

If you want this feature, but still crave an old-fashioned leather-ish look, some suppliers online sell elaborately-decorated binders to suit that aesthetic. Another option is to buy good-quality printer paper and a hole punch. Then, you can actually print digital grimoire pages from your computer and insert them into your binder. If you have a particularly good printer, you can even add elaborate images and colorful decorations with clipart, public domain paintings, and other available artwork. You can even make your own in Photoshop or another program.

Digital?

Printing a grimoire is a great option that plenty of witches use, but just as many prefer to keep their grimoire wholly digital, existing only on the computer itself. If you struggle with handwriting or are simply more comfortable typing, either of these are wonderful ideas.

For a wholly-digital grimoire, I recommend an app like Google Docs, and I also recommend that you separate each entry or section into its own file, and organize them into folders for easy sorting. Google Docs has the advantage of being accessible from almost anywhere.

Another idea would be to purchase a small but high-volume USB drive to contain your grimoire. Some shops even sell rather beautiful USB drives that can be worn as jewelry. I personally know a technowitch who chose this route, and now keeps their grimoire in a small USB locket around their neck.

Increasingly, some witches are using blog sites such as Tumblr to create digital grimoires. If you go this route, be sure that the site you choose has an option to password protect your blog or, if not, that you’re comfortable sharing everything you’ll be writing there with the world.

Open grimoire blogs are quite an amazing and useful trend to have developed recently, particularly on sites where it’s easy to share content, like Tumblr’s reblogging system. These are great because they allow for you to quickly consolidate information provided by others into a sort of digital scrapbook that can be studied later or as needed.

If you create an open grimoire blog, please give credit where credit is due in everything you post. If you copy an incantation from a book, cite the book and author. If you include content (such as spells and rituals) made by other witches online, be sure they’re okay with their work being included in your grimoire.

And, give them the courtesy of linking back to their site when you post it. After all, you’d want them to do the same for you, and, truth be told, you can get into legal trouble for plagiarism. It’s rare, but it can happen, so it’s best to be honest, ask bloggers for their permission if necessary, and always credit them.

One of the advantages of a digital grimoire is that it’s quite easy to add images, and there are many beautiful public domain works of art you can use to illustrate your entries. If you’re good with Photoshop or a similar program, you can also create your own images there, too. If you have any skill with HTML/CSS3 at all, or are just good at copying and pasting, you can style the overall layout of your digital blog grimoire to your heart’s content, as well, using custom theming options available for most blog platforms.

I Have a Pen…

Last but not least, it’s important to consider the writing utensil you’ll be using for your grimoire. You needn’t have one specifically dedicated to that purpose unless you want, but you want to choose a pen that flows nicely, is legible, and doesn’t splotch the pages. For many, a simple ballpoint will do, but I tend to prefer felt tip or fountain pens, myself. If you decide to dedicate a certain pen just for your grimoire, you’ll probably want one that’s refillable and not meant to be just tossed after the ink runs out.

If you’re interested in custom inks (including magical scented inks!), investing in a fountain pen could be a good decision. These pens are easy to use and leave your grimoire with lines similar to what you’d get from a quill pen. Look for one that specifies it comes with a “converter;” this is a small gizmo which will allow you to fill the pen with custom ink, including colors you could mix yourself.

You can purchase scented inks, including stock formulas like Dove’s Blood Ink, from many metaphysical shops. You can even try mixing your own! Many websites and books give instructions for doing so, and I in particular recommend the ink formulas described in Scott Cunningham’s book, The Complete Book of Incense, Oils, and Brews. Make sure whatever ink you’re getting doesn’t bleed through the paper.

Beyond pens, what else might you need? If you plan on illustrating your grimoire, art supplies are a must. If you’re already an artist, you probably have your favored medium on-hand already, but if not, I suggest researching various illustration tools and choosing the one best fitting your personal aesthetic.

Keep practicality in mind, though. I, for example, adore watercolor, but rarely use it in my grimoires because it causes the pages to curl. Instead, I use soft pastels to illustrate over and around what I’ve already written. I’ve only just recently started illustrating the pages at all - all of my previous grimoires stretching back to high school were strictly writing with an occasional diagram.

While I’m not much of an artist, I do find it very soothing to add color to the pages of my grimoire, and the pastels blend to the point where they leave my writing visible beneath them. It’s a bit like a coloring book, but with no lines to worry about, just endless gradients of relaxing colors. This is great for me, as I often need to de-stress and do something fun after I’ve finished studying or writing for the day.

I’ll sometimes draw small illustrations, but they’re quite simple so far. As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, I have dyskinesia and my hands shake sometimes, making fine motions difficult. Still, I hope to learn more about art techniques in the future as I work further on these grimoires, and make them more adorned and beautiful as time goes on.

If you’re unsure what art medium is right for you, I suggest researching and, if possible, trying several. There are also a lot of resources for choosing markers, colored pencils, watercolors and other supplies to be found, oddly enough, on sites about bullet journaling. Bullet journaling, while normally quite simple, does often involve illustration, so the “bujo” crowd is knowledgeable about such things.

#magick #witchcraft #witch #grimoire #book of shadows #eliza.txt

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