#i was also wearing a mask like a godless heathen so

[quaranmine]

I also managed to piss off a guy today on the way to work just by wearing a light blue dress shirt. Very unintentionally, mind you. I didn't choose the color on purpose, I just own a lot of it (my phone case and purse are also both light blue, and I pair a fair bit of my workwear with navy.)

He was like, "You have a lot of color coordination today." Not in a friendly way.

Me, startled because I didn't expect to be spoken to: Oh! Thanks :)

He immediately glared at me, rolled his eyes, and got off the train since we were rolling into the next stop. I think I pissed him off by taking it like a compliment when he was trying to insult me lmao (by assuming a light blue dress shirt with brown slacks and a silk neck scarf is....a political statement? maybe?) Like whatever he was trying to do just immediately backfired when I acted cluelessly pleasant in return.

[pandor-pandorkful]

Gay SKULMUST to You and Yours

I wanna decorate but I don’t wanna deal with the nebulous resentful feelings of “I basically rejected chistianity when i was 5* (*children’s service or whatever when they made the kids go up front to get churched on during holiday service instead of letting us play in the basement, that was like baby’s first social anxiety trauma for me. and made me the godless heathen i am today.) and never looked back and also I loath the capitalist connotations of the holiday” and also I don’t really have decorations besides my homosexual glittlerbombed tree that I’ve had out all year because moving is hard and it makes me happy to see it sparkle rainbowly.

so I guess I’m making up my own holiday, Plaguemas is maybe too on the nose... while I was writing this I was gonna call it SKULLMAS, but while searching to make sure that wasn’t already a thing didn’t bring up much I felt like it was still too... idk. Obvious?

So I’m calling it SKULMUST (all caps, all the time) after skulls and my favorite (and hard to get in the US) soda, julmust! (The “must” loosely translates to unfermented fruit or juice, so I guess I’m calling my fake holiday “skull juice” hahaha) Because I mainly have glitter and halloween decorations. And I’m not buying more decorations.

Pandor’s SKULMUST Manifesto(? jk it’s a bulleted list)

SKULMUST is for anyone who wants to appreciate some cheesy x-mas vibes, but rejects the religious and capitalist connotations of Christmas

SKULMUST is for anyone who wants Halloween to be a 4 to 6+ month holiday instead of one day a year

SKULMUST is for anyone who is getting tired of MERRY CRISIS all the time and just wants to feel a little happy, as a treat.

SKULMUST begins whenever the first store decides to start putting out the halloween decorations (the earliest I’ve seen is mid May) and ends when you get bored with it. (This sounds like it goes against the anti-capitalist sentiment I laid out prior, but it’s mainly 1. irony and 2. just admit it, you celebrate the pumpkin watch every year and you know it.)

SKULMUST encourages recycling and crafting to make your decorations, only buy more supplies if you really need them and only support small independent businesses

SKULMUST has no dress requirements but one: WEAR A FUCKING MASK*. Other than than that, create your own SKULMUST costume vibe! Ugly sweaters + general Gothiness + Dickensian Victorian floof + early 2000′s Emo mall kid... listen to your heart and go buckwild. (*in SKULMUST future, when we’ve presumably gotten rid of this plague, wear masks in remembrance.)

Entertainment of SKULMUST: Muppets Christmas Carol (preferably a copy that doesn’t cut Belle’s song), Whisper of the Heart (Ghibli’s love letter to depressed young creatives and a damn fine film), Metropolis (1927) or Metropolis (2001). MST3K S05E21. And like I guess Nightmare Before Christmas, if you wanna like be obvious.

Spirit of SKULMUST: If you have the means, donate to a non-shitty charity or directly to anyone who’s having a rough time. Make Charles Dickens proud.

Decorations of SKULMUST : Primarily up to your own tastes, but the general thesis of SKULMUST is the blatant unholy marriage of skulls and skeletons to garlands and wreaths, but like also GAY. (You don’t HAVE to be gay yourself to celebrate SKULMUST, but I am gay. So like, as the creator of this bogus holiday, I sez the decorations gotta have that vibe. I will relax the “don’t buy stuff” rule to allow emergency December Diamonds ornament purchases.) Do you have a motion activated screeching rat decoration? Put a santa hat on it’s head. Or whatever! You keep SKULMUST in your way, and I’ll keep it in mine! But yeah like regardless of your background, you’ve got a skull. Embrace the skull, celebrate the skull. Glam up some skulls!

Slogans of SKULMUST : Gay SKULMUST to You! Queer Tidings! WEAR A MASK AND SOCIAL DISTANCE THIS SKULMUST! An isolated and weird SKULMUST to all! (I need suggestions for more, they just need to be primarily LGBTQIA+ and plague punny.)

Ok I’ve spent way longer on this and thought too deeply about SKULMUST than I intended. Gonna go dig thru some boxes and make a SKULMUST wreath now. Or go to bed. I got sleepy!

[storyunrelated]

Theodicy - Persons

People like to discuss the made-up persons of their made-up worlds, don't they? Certainly, this is the impression I get.

Let's list out some of the meatpu- ngh - 'characters' I've concocted for this thing.

Amphibalus

The priest. The main-ish character. A man out of time. Indeed, a man who died and was brought back over the course of years by the surreptitous application of small godly power. Awoken too soon on account of changing circumstances he is rushed back into the world of the living without a very clear idea of what he's meant to be doing or even what happened to him in the first place. A trifle confused, the divine mission entrusted to him comes back in dribs and drabs.

Petronilla and Pigeon

An agent (not a spy!) from Diag Heg sent in to gather intelligence, mess things up and generally be their woman on the inside. She is assisted in her clandestine task by her minuscule god*, who is called pigeon. Pigeon likes pigeons and mainly works with pigeons. Using pigeon Petronilla utilises birds to peek into places a human being would be noticed sneaking around in and also to send messages. She will bump into Amphibalus while he is busy doing something relaxing like running for his life and things will progress from there.

The leader

The small case letters are important. The leader is not superior to anyone in Diag Fol, you see? For we are all equal now! All brother and sisters! It's simply a question of arrangement. He is the head and we are the body, the whole moves as one.

Or something like that. He's the man who lead the liberation of Diag Fol that resulted in the slaughtering of the small gods. He's not personally involved in obstructing Amphibalus from whatever his mission is but he is the one giving the orders that make his life difficult. So there's that.

But the liberation of Diag Fol was over seventy years ago now, near enough. It surely can't be the same man? And he's been assassinated at least a dozen times. So maybe it's not him? With the mask he always wears (to avoid pride, you see? For he is the head and the people the body) it's difficult to tell who he is. Perhaps it's a legacy title? Passed on in secret to whoever is next in line?

Unknown. All unknown. And unimportant, surely. All that matters to the outside world is that there is always the leader no matter what happens, and whether it's the same man or a replacement his agenda has not changed and his scope has not shrunk. He means to take what happened in Diag Fol into all others beyond the walls. Maybe even beyond the sea, if he's feeling up to it.

Most feel this would be a bad thing. Just on instinct.

Stratfield Turgis

A member of the Council For Interaction, one of many councils that now oversee life in Diag Fol. Stratfield Turgis and the Council For Interaction are charged with developing the weapons that Diag Fol will need to take its liberation into the greater world. As such she deals with the leader quite often and - as things develop - her creations will likely be called upon to stop whatever starts, uh, developing.

I haven't worked that part out yet.

She mainly exists to be someone who can interact with the leader without being the leader and also as a means of showing the horribly advanced weaponry those in Diag Fol are somehow putting together. Horrifying weapons! Things that none have seen before in the Diags!

Ronan Pascal

The latest in a long line of crusading knights errant who like to throw themselves against Diag Fol. Every so often those who wish to prove their mettle and their piety against the godless, murdering heathens will either band together or head off alone to go and slay the evildoers and break stuff and what have you.

Typically they die without accomplishing much because they're disorganised, outnumbered, outgunned and generally unprepared. But it’s the thought that counts.

Ronan is doing surprisingly well. He has tact, you see, and is taking things a day at a time and being careful not to bite off more than he can chew. He has an agenda. He has specific targets. He and his minuscule god (that lives within - or is? - a bladed weapon, named Thyrfing and with a passion for righteous murder) will not rest until they have killed all member of all Councils and even the leader himself. Cut off the head and the body will die!

He mostly exists to be an outside force who will be a spanner in the works.

And later on he'll, uh, discover something...something important.

Fuck what a load of bollocks...

*Whoa, hold up. 'Minuscule' gods now? What's that about?

I'm glad you asked, me.

Basically, 'small' gods have jurisdiction and power over an area and specific things within that area, 'minuscule' gods attach to things and to people. For example, most Diags have a taxi service to help the people get around. Each taxi has their own minuscule god which is what lets the thing move at all (it's unpowered, mostly, though you can find the occasional powered or horse-drawn one). The small god of the taxi service oversees safety for all the journeys undertaken in the Diag.

You following this?

Anyone hailing a taxi must perform whatever ritual the minuscule god requires of its passengers and then also thank and acknowledge the small god that oversees all taxis in the area. Failure to do so can have adverse consequences.

And this goes for just about everything in a Diag and beyond. Not just taxis.

Is it obvious I'm building this whole thing brick by brick as I go along?