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warrioreowynofrohan · 4 years ago

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Rhythm of War Review

PART 1

It feels a little separate from the rest of the book to me at the moment because I read it pre-release, but I think it did a good job setting up the rest of the plot. I greatly enjoyed Navani’s perspective and ideas throughout the book, and the first section established her much more firmly as a character than any of the previous books; her couple of chapters in Oathbringer were more focused on politics and her relationship with Dalinar, so it was great yo see much more of her scientific side.

When I first read Part 1 it felt very Kaladin-heavy, but after completing the book I see how it was necessary to establish his burnout in order to set up the rest of the plot. And Chapter 12 (A Way to Help), in addition to being our only chance in the book to see our trio together, did a great job setting up Kaladin’s later work with mentally ill people, both by establishing the need and showing what kind of help was needed. I was nonetheless quite frustrated by Kaladin reacting to Shallan’s DID with “that would be nice...”. She’s having serious problems, Kal! She’s your friend and could use support, not you regarding her issues as a neat way to take a holiday from one’s own brain! Kaladin’s very kind and caring with those he chooses to protect, as we see with Bridge 4 in TWOK and the mentally ill people in Chapter 25, but sometimes I think he’s not a very good friend. I know he was not in a good place, but in Oathbringer when they were in Shadesmar Shallan had just had a complete breakdown and she still went out of her way to emotionally support Kal, so it would be nice to see his friendships become a bit more two-way. (For similar reasons, I liked seeing the moments of Shallan-to-Adolin emotional support in Shadesmar in ROW, because a lot of their relationship in OB was her relying on him; it felt balanced in ROW as both supported each other.)

PART 2

I loved the Shadesmar arc! The emotional arcs for both main characters were very strong - I had been looking forward to seeing Adolin’s reaction to (in-universe) Oathbringer, and it did not disappoint; the conflict between genuinely loving Dalinar and being unable to forgive what he’d done was well-drawn. I was so pissed off at Dalinar in that last conversation! You burned his mom to death, you do not get to take the moral high ground and lecture him. And I do see a difference between killing innocents, as Taravangian does, and killing someone who’s effectively declared war on you and has a history of treason.

I also liked Adolin’s sense of being generally at sea with his purpose in the world. He’s been trained primarily as a warrior and general, and his combat skills have been made virtually obsolete by the Radiants. And at the same time, the reader can see what makes Adolin special, and it’s not combat skills - though those do give him a big heroic moment in a pinch - it’s his care and compassion for others. The way he interacts with Maya and slowly brings her life is absolutely beautiful. Chapter 35 was such a wonderful Shadolin moment (and starspren are amazing!); he really gets her and understands what she needs. Chapter 24 was sweet too, though super cheesy.

I spent the entire Shadesmar arc side-eying Veil and Radiant, especially with Veil’s takeover stunt at the start, but in the end they genuinely were supporting and helping Shallan. So in retrospect I do like scenes like the one with Veil trying to draw Shallan out by drawing Adolin badly.

Spoeking of drawing, I love the spren art, it’s some of the best art so far, and fascianting to see how they all look!

Kaladin finding non-violent ways to protect, culminating in pioneering Rosharan therapy - and Teft insisting on staying to support him - was everything I wanted for him. His arc could have just been that, and I’d have been perfectly happy. Chapter 25 (Devotary of Mercy) is still my favourite in the entire book.

Unfortunately, then Odium’s forces had to show up and SPOIL EVERYTHING. I’m rather appalled by how quickly Urithiru fell - the enemy forces were literally in the pillar room by the time anyone noticed them.

PART 3

Part 3 was a real slog for me, partly because it is a slog and partly because I hit it at the height of my sleep deptivation. (It’s really...not a good thing to be reading on zero sleep at the literal darkest-hour-before-dawn.) Kaladin’s arc in Urithiru is just so exhausting; he’s so clearly worn to the boneand everything feels so hopeless. Kaladin’s had bad times before - Bridge 4 in TWOK, for example - but then the reader could see progress even if Kaladin couldn’t. (Kaladin: I’m getting nowhere and failing at everything! Everyone else: Kaladin, you were literally just miraculously resurrected.) Here, though - well, I genuinely spent the whole book from Part 3 through to the climax thinking that they would lose Urithiru.

Navani’s arc, and Venli’s, I did enjoy.

The other section of Part 3, in Emul, just felt rather disjointed. It had some interesting moments, but it didn’t have a sense of cohesion or of where it was going. I was entertained by Dalinar’s musings on the merits of despositism and the need to free Queen Fen from having - horrors! - a parliament. (I wonder if the Fourth Ideal will be something like “I will recognize that it can sometimes be beneficial to have people oppose my decisions.”)

PART 4

Again, adored the Shadesmar arc. Really strong character arcs for both Adolin and Shallan, combined with excellent plots and a strong sense of momentum. I was pretty sure Maya would be crucial in the trial, but that didn’t make the moment any less powerful (though Sanders probably shouldn’t have tried quite as hard to replicate his “You. Cannot. Have. My. Pain.” moment from Oathbringer). I need to put together a proper post on the theme of choice in Oathbringer, because that moment - combined with Kaladin’s fourth ideal and the conflict with Lirin over the way he’s inspiring the resistance - really crystallized it for me. To treat a person’s choice and sacrifices as something done to them is to devalue their volition, their agency. Maya is put in the horrifying situation of being used as a prop and treated as evidence of a point that she is diametrically opposed to and turned into a weapon against someone she loves, and it’s enough to drive her to regain her voice and speak for herself. I am very curious to know what specifically led the spren to agree to the Recreance!

I did not remotely guess what Shallan’s secret was, even though in retrospect the Cryptic deadeye should have made it incredibly obvious. I think her fear that she’d lose Adolin if it came out was overblown - he already knows she killed both her parents, he’s not going to be fazed by “I was so distraught over having to kill my own mother in self-defence at age ten that I broke my Radiant oaths”. But obviously it’s not something Shalkan would be able to consider duspassionately. Her arc was rather terrifying once I realized that Formless was, well, basically her, but more specifically, Shallan’s idea of the monster that she was, and her breakdown was driving her to “accept who she was” as being that monster. I like Shallan and was never that into Veil - though she was fairly good in this book and went out well - so I’m not sad to see the back of her.

I haven’t managed to work through all the espionage/mole elements. Yes, Pattern used the box to talk to Wit, and Radiant killed Ialai so Shallan wouldn’t, but who’s Mraize’s spy close to Dalinar?

This arc ended too abruptly. I think Sanderson could easily have traded a Kaladin chapter in Part 3 for an extra chapter wrapping up events in Shadesmar; maybe one where Shallan first goes to see Testament.

I enjoyed the Urithiru arc in Part 4 as well. Switching to Bridge 4 points of view other than Kaladin was a good move - we already know he’s worn to ribbons, so we don’t need to be inside his head to see it. “The Dog and the Dragon” was amazing, and the most appropriate story ever for Kaladin. (I get how Wit’s schtick of telling incredibly topical stories and then saying “no, I don’t have a point, what point?” would be really aggravating in person.) It was nice to see him be gentle with Kaladin for a change, the way he is with Shallan - his two previous encounters with Kaladin read as rather baiting, which annoyed me.

Dabbid was - I don’t know quite how to say this, but his inclusion struck an amazing balance in this book. Navani’s arc is all about two amazingly smart people doing science and making incredible breakthroughs, and that is sincerely valued and given importance by the narrative, and then you get chapters like Dabbid’s and one of Taravangian’s emphasizing that a person’s value and ability to contribute is not determined by their intelligence.

Navani’s arc continued to be excellent. All of her research, and the way the story took you through the process, and her complex relationship with Raboniel, was great.

I loved Venli’s character development, and growing willingness to take risks for the sake of others. To me, her arc parallels Dalinar’s in the last book in some ways. If we can love the story of a bloodthirsty conqueror growing to become a good person, why can’t we equally love the story of a coward coming to become a good person? There seems to be a tendency to be more drawn to strength, even in its most terrible forms, than to weakness. To me, Venli’s confession to Rlain and acceptance of his disgust at her was one of the book’s great moments. (And I can’t understand people saying her arc took up two much space. She had 5 chapters in Part 3, and 4 in Part 4. That’s not very many! I’ll grant that the flasbacks packed less punch than some earlier flashback sequences because we already knew the main events - Brandon acknowledged that even before the book came out - but I still liked them well enough, and Venli’s present-day arc was excellent.)

Anyway, the amount of space I’ve spent on this section relative to Part 3 is another strong inducation of the differences in how I feel about them!

PART 5

I should probably start this section with a discussion of Moash. I’ll try to keep it summarized. here - I could, and may, write a short essay on his development through The Stormlight Archive. The first thing that jumps out about Moash’s arc in this book is his reaction to Renarin’s vision in Part 1. I think that vision is showing Moash who he could still be, in a similar way to Shallan’s inspirational drawings of people - both use the Surge of Illumination. So it’s not that Moash is irredeemable; Renarin is specifucally holding out to him the possibility of redemption.

And Moash’s reaction is to run away in terror. Because he desperately wants his decision to be irrevocable. He desperately wants there to only be one possible path forward for him. Because if there are alternative paths, it means he can choose them, and that would mean facing guilt, facing the fact that his past choices were wrong, and his current choices are wrong. And that is exactly what Moash sought to avoid by giving up his pain and sense of guilt to Odium.

Moash is, nonetheless, very much Moash and not Vyre, as evidenced by his continuing obsession with Kaladin. As with his above need to not be wrong, here he needs to feel that he’s right, and the only way he can feel that he’s right is if Kaladin - whom he still deeply admires - makes the same decision as him, and if Moash can convince himself that he’s doing Kaladin a favour in driving him to that point. It’s ironic that he’s given up almost all feeling abd become almost enturely detached, but his worst actions are driven by his attitude towards the one person in the world who he still does have very strong feelings about. By the end of the book, he’s comprehensively broken, to the point that even when his ability to feel is restored he’s unable to even feel genuine remose over the cold-blooded murder of a friend. I don’t know where he’ll go from here - it would be ironic if he was only ever really appealing to Rayse-Odium, and Taravangian-Odium found Moash too much of a flat villain for his purposes and cast him off.

As the plot climaxes go, I thought the ones for Navani and Venli were excellent and very satisfying. I enjoyed Kaladin’s as well and found it cathartic, but it a was moment we all knew had to come, so it didn’t have quite the kick of some of Kaladin’s other big moments. I did love his reconciliation with Lirin. One of the themes of the book was finding common ground despite deeply felt disagreements - with Navani and Raboniel, with Navani and the Sibling, and with humans and singers/Fused more generally - and Kaladin and Lirin’s reconciliation fit well with that. I am far more favourable to Lirin than most people - if you’ve lived as a pacifist in storming Alethkar, which values the lives of its people slightly more than it does crem, you’re going to have been right a solid 95% of the time, where everyone else was wrong. I can make allowances for the other five percent, especially when Lirin’s life lesson from the last five or so years has been “resisting oppression and standing up for what you believe in will destroy everyone you love”.

And on the topic of finding common ground, Leshwi’s reaction to the revelation that Venli was a Radiant was one of the single most beautiful moments of the book, and one of my absolute favourites. It’s gorgeous and moving, and at the same time rather tragic, because - what might have bern different if Venli had revealed herself to Leshwi at the start of the book? How much of the conflict could have been avoided. Singers don’t appear to attract spren as strongly as humans do, which makes Leshwi drawing joyspren particularly powerful. And then the bittersweet note from “My soul is too long owned by someone else”. (Come to think of it, this is another inverted paralell to Moash. This is someone realizing “I was wrong about everything and I’m so glad about that because it means I have a chance to be someone better than I was.”) Oh my goodness, I would love a Leshwi chapter in a later book, just to check in on her and see how she’s doing in her new life with the Singers.

I also loved the climax of Navani’s arc, and was so relieved, because up until that very moment I wasn’t sure if the Sibling would survuve uncorrupted. I know that some people weren’t pleased because the Sibling didn’t even like her, but to me that became a core part of the story, like I said above - people who deeply disagree finding common ground and common cause. That is a key element of being a Bondsmith - the process of bringing people together in spite of their differences - and something that fits Navani so well given the rapport she found with Raboniel. (Though I was conflicted about the latter. On the one hand, she made amazing discoveries that enabled her to save Urithiru. One the other hand, she...kind of collaborated with the enemy and gave them terrible weapons out of intellectual curiosity and a desire to prove herself?) I will grant that it makes the series, and the characters with the most crucial importance to Roshar, rather Kholin-heavy.

For Taravodium, all I can say is - YIPES. I have no idea how to process the implications of that, but I feel like it will be bad. Really really bad. (Taravangian is probably my least favourite character in the entire Stormlight Archive. The attitude of “I am so brave and selfless for doing evil things and look at how wonderful I am for sacrificing my own morality for the benefit of all, you petty selfish people wanting to be good could never make such a grand sacrifice” drives me absolutely nuts. It’s a complete inversion and twisting of morality, and intensely arrogant.)

Dalinar’s encounter with Ishar was fascinating, and I’m very curious to see where this goes. The spren experiments were deeply creepy! And the way Radiant Oaths can temporarily restore a Herald’s sanity was fascinating - I’m very eager to see where this goes in the next book. I suspect that Dalinar may have made a very serious mistake with regards to this trial my combat, and I have no idea how/if they’re going to fit Szeth’s whole arc into the ten days before the duel. I’ve been eagerly anticipating Szeth’s arc ever since The Way of Kings!

#brandon sanderson #the stormlight archive #rhythm of war #row spoilers #kaladin #shallan #adolin #dalinar kholin #navani kholin #leshwi #moash

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theritualofourexistence · 4 years ago

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Odes to Old Gods

I started this year intending to journal about things I survive. Then at the end of the year, I could look back on my challenges and think about them in a more positive way--wow, look at what I overcame! The plan was to document everything, both good and bad, so that I could think about them more as experiences and lessons learned than as... good and bad.

Needless to say, I stopped keeping track of those things in April.

Earlier this month, I pulled out the journal again to update the list. I ended up quitting on that too.

I do think, though, that in a less chaotic year, thinking about my life this way would be good practice. So, here I am, sharing my list with you in the form of an end-of-year, wrap-up blog post.

A few quick caveats:

This year was hard for literally everyone except maybe Jeff Bezos.

It is not healthy to compare challenges or struggles or suffering.

I am not sharing this because I am looking for sympathy... I believe that being vulnerable is a very important part of the human experience but we can all also use a reminder that we never really know all of what anyone is experiencing. We shouldn’t need that reminder to treat others with love... but the older I get, the more I think those reminders might be necessary.

Things I have survived in 2020:

- A bit of a stalking experience in January which has since been resolved.

- Losing my job, hunting for a new job, securing a new job, training for the new job.

- My first Harry Potter tattoo for my ten-year tattooiversary.

- The fires in Australia.

- An absolutely wonderful trip to NYC with my dad when I got to see both Beetlejuice and Hadestown and have an enormous strawberry cheesecake milkshake from Junior’s.

- Losing Kobe Bryant.

- Parasite absolutely CRUSHING the Oscars.

- Having a really, really good visit with my grandparents in March before all hell broke loose.

- Weinstein being convicted and sentenced.

[Everything after this point happened during a global pandemic.]

- Losing Grandmom. I was unable to attend her funeral and still have not had the chance to grieve this loss with my extended family.

- Losing my health insurance.

- A Zoom party for my Grammy’s 80th birthday.

- Losing Breonna Taylor. And George Floyd. And so, so many others. This is the first year I have really committed to understanding the current race-related issues this country faces and BOY, do we have work to do.

- The stress but success of orchestrating a safe family trip so that I didn’t have to go an entire year without seeing my brother.

- Losing my shifts at my primary job due to virus-related concerns.

- Countless other family happy birthdays over Zoom.

- My 60-year-old mother returning to work face-to-face with a student population that largely ignores all virus-related guidelines despite her working tirelessly for months this spring to offer UHS providers an adequate work-from-home option.

- Being diagnosed with hypertension.

- A nightmarish friend trip. Despite our best laid plans for a safe and healthy visit, Mother Earth decided to trap me 90 miles north of my best friends for 4 days. I eventually got to see them for about 12 hours and honestly, it was worth it. That is the only time I’ve gotten with them all year.

- Losing Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

- The selection of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

- Our sweet girl Clio being diagnosed with a seizure disorder and then coming down with a life-threatening upper respiratory infection.

- Learning that my grandmother would be voting for Trump in the 2020 election.

- The actual election.

- Losing Rooster, my sweet, sweet boy.

- Learning that my uncle has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

- Missing Thanksgiving with my extended family.

- Getting really excellent holiday gifts for my favorite people.

- Missing Christmas with my extended family.

- Safely spending some holiday time with my immediate family.

That is FAR from everything. But I don’t have the energy? Capacity? Time? to sort through everything.

Here are the things from this year that I am still currently surviving:

- A global pandemic! And all the associated chaos. With my asthma and high blood pressure and obesity, I am considered high risk and am still not able to safely return to my primary job.

- Hypertension! More on this later.

- Grieving Rooster. In the days after we said goodbye, I wrote a memorial that I will eventually share here. Psychology has recently analyzed data suggesting that losing a pet can be equivalent to losing a relative... I have never felt grief like this. It’s been over a month. I cry every night.

- Managing Clio’s health. She is still adjusting to her seizure medication, which she gets twice a day, and is still on medication to help with lasting symptoms of the respiratory infection. She is fussy about food and her weight fluctuates a lot week to week. She is also a feral rescue who has only ever been handled by me, my mom, and our vet. If mom and I are ever going to vacation together again, we will need to find someone who can manage catching and pilling her twice a day... no easy feat. Fortunately, at the moment, vacations aren’t really a thing for either my mom or I and I am working hard to approach these concerns in a cross-that-bridge-when-we-come-to-it way.

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This year has been overwhelming. The last two months alone have been overwhelming. And they would’ve been overwhelming without the added spice of a global pandemic. The number of Americans we have lost to this virus has doubled since I last posted here in mid-August. Some time this week we are likely to reach a point where we’re losing 4,000 Americans per day. PER. DAY. This year has been overwhelming.

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There were some good things this year, of course. I am so, so thankful for all the time I got with my immediate family and the very brief but vital time I got with my friends. Fortunately I am only ever a text away from my closest friends and we are able to message pretty much every day. I am also extremely glad to have found a place in the fantasy enamel pin community. The family I’ve found in pin-land has carried me through some of my lowest points this year. I spent more time in view of the ocean than I typically do in a given year... even though much of that time was still riddled with anxiety. I did art this year. I read books this year. Some really important ones, in fact. If you read nothing else in 2021, read The New Jim Crow. I also got tattooed! I’m going to include those here because I think the significance of each reflects something interesting and important about all I have survived and am surviving this year.

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In January, I got my first Harry Potter tattoo! My favorite quote from the entire series is delivered by Hagrid during the Triwizard tournament:

”What’s comin’ will come, and we’ll meet it when it does.”

I got that incorporated into a tattoo. In January.

Also in January I got a “Prisoner of Donuts” tattoo... because life just wouldn’t be manageable at all without donuts.

In March, I got a bird of prey carrying a book to represent one of my all time favorite poems, “On Thought in Harness” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The final lines of that poem:

“Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen. Depart, be lost, but climb.”

In July, I was able to safely navigate getting a tattoo that symbolizes the saga told in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. LOTR is my first and oldest fandom and the story is still so, so important to me today. The lessons I learned from Tolkien when I was a kid also carried me through some of my hardest moments this year.

Also in July I got a Plumpy tattoo. That’s right. Plumpy. From Candyland. If you haven’t played the game in a while, you may not remember Plumpy. He’s one of the first characters you meet on the game board... and one of the worst cards to see when you’re close to winning the game. You could be three damn squares from the finish line and pull the Plumpy card and back to the beginning of the board you go. Plumpy is a really great reminder that even when we have no choice but to lose ground, we can gain that ground back again. And hey, once you pull the Plumpy card from the deck, you likely won’t see him again for a good long while.

In October, I was able to safely navigate getting my second Harry Potter tattoo. Neville has always been one of my favorite fantasy characters and I chose to carry him with me permanently. His courage, despite so, so much bullshit, inspires me every day. I also got a nautical tattoo for my mom’s ancestors who came to this country and fought in the Revolutionary War. Just as my family has a long and proud history of fighting for what matters, I too will carry that banner, even if it looks very, very different in the modern age. My third tattoo of the appointment is a cuckoo holding playing cards, a nod to one of most important stories I’ve read: Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” This book has informed not just my personal journey with mental illness but my passion to work in the field as well. My final tattoo of my October appointment, less than a week before the 2020 election, is a weeping Lady Justice.

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This year has made me look critically at things I very comfortably ignored for a long time. I would hope that it has done the same for most of you. Very little if any of this year was easy for me... but the most important lessons are never easy to learn. I’ve spent this year more worried and more angry than I’ve ever been before... and all I hope to do moving forward is use that fear and that anger to make this country, this world, a better place. Miss me with your resolutions this year. Every single day we should prioritize surviving and treating others with understanding and active love. I worked hard to do that this year and I will continue to work hard to do that every day. I’m proud of the work I’ve done. And in case it wasn’t clear, I’ll be dragging as many of you as I can on this journey with me. If you really feel the need to make a resolution this year, resolve to learn. Resolve to understand. Resolve to read The New Jim Crow and then TAKE ACTION. Take action with your votes and your voices and your money. Resolve to act.

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This year wouldn’t let me escape it without being put on blood pressure medication, despite my best efforts to lower my blood pressure without it. Although I had gotten back down into a healthy range for a few weeks, RBG’s death and the landslide of utter shit that followed that completely wrecked all the progress I had made. I’m not happy about adding a new medicine to my regimen. I’m not happy about adding a new chronic diagnosis to my already lengthy laundry list. I did not expect 30 to look like allergy pills and three daily moisturizers and foot stretches and Metamucil and acid reducers and migraine medication and iron supplements and six prunes a day and chronic pain and blood pressure medication... but here we are. I’m exhausted from working so hard to be healthy just to have all that work not be enough. I feel very much like my body is giving up on me... and that is a feeling I am struggling with a lot right now. My soul is a vibrant but powerless passenger in a car speeding towards the edge of a cliff.

I’ll keep trying though. I start my new medication tonight. Hopefully it helps. Hopefully the side effects are manageable. I don’t really feel like I can handle much more... but I guess we keep going until we can’t.

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I have no expectations for 2021 to be better. I don’t have much hope for it to be better either. This vaccine will saves lives and that’s really good news. But a lot of other things will be difficult, will stay difficult, will become difficult. I’m going to try to keep fighting, and I hope you do too.

“What’s comin’ will come, and we’ll meet it when it does.”

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purgatoryapotheca · 5 years ago

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List of Types of Graveyard Dirt

GRAVEYARD, GRAVES DIRT

THIS LIST DEALS WITH THE TYPES OF GRAVES THAT ONE WILL COLLECT DIRT FROM---

A lot of people really have no idea that there are different types of graveyard dirt and that in reality, the intention of your spell work should dictate where your dirt comes from. There is also energy from things that happen to grow or its location in a Graveyard or Cemetery that is based on energy, when it is not from a specific grave an offering to the guardians at the gates is sufficient unless it is from a grave that is dictated by its location then a further offering to the spirit within that grave is important as well.

1, 4, 7, 9 and 21 locations are considered important in the strength of the dirt for certain spell workings or rituals

In Santeria or Afro-Brazilian and other workings, the multiple gatherings of different types of dirt are used in creating protection and calling in the orisha’s.

The following is a generalized list of the different types of dirt and what it’s good for.

TYPES OF GRAVES-----

Abortionist (very old grave): This is usually a discounted medical person or a woman that had no medical training and performed abortions, this is a negative use type of dirt, to cause distress to an ill person.

Abused: Dirt from the grave of a person who was physically or emotionally abused can be useful in giving strength and will to remove either yourself or someone from an abusive situation

Abuser’s Grave: This type of dirt would be used in workings dealing with driving a couple apart or causing confusion. Making them stop loving each other, but be careful this can cause a fight so bad that they could seriously harm each other. (See also Gambler’s Grave)

Adolescent (from ages 11 to 19): This dirt is known to cause and promote inattentiveness and irresponsible behavior.

In particular, dirt from the graves of those who are ages 17 to 19, make a good additives in spells where you want to promote interest in another person, romantic involvement, romantic gestures, promote sexual attraction, increase lust, and increase sexual appetites.

There is nothing like budding sexuality to bring about all things sexual and romantic.

ACTOR, ARTIST, DANCER, MUSICIAN, Singer, Composer, Writer and others in the Creative Arts: Dirt from the graves of these creative persons, could be used to inspire a creative spark, and possible success be sure that their type of work is the same type that you want to do. Be sure they were successful and happy in their life, check their back ground history to avoid any of the pit falls that they may have encountered.

An Atheists/ Infidel’s Grave or someone who doesn’t believe in God: There is a magical working using this to cause disruption in a person’s home, to break up a couple or disrupts a person’s place of business

A Catholic’s Grave: If you get dirt from this type of grave (man or woman) from the breast or heart area this is used to help who ever has left you return to you, this can be a family member of any age or someone you seriously care about

(I need to tell you something about this, I was asked to help find a family member who had left unexpectedly after an argument and was gone for more than a year, the family wanted to find this person, so I did a ritual using this type of dirt, but the vision I received told me that it was not going to be good news, so I told the family of what I had seen, well two weeks later the body of this family member was found in a shallow grave. they had been murdered but made to look like they had just left, even a suitcase with some clothes were buried with the body, the person who did this crime was arrested and brought to trial. So sometimes it can have a sad conclusion, be prepared for that.)

Cheaters: Dirt from the grave of a cheater works well for bringing about love triangles and promoting urges to cheat.

Child (from ages 2 - 10): This type of dirt is a wonderful aid when the appearance of child-like innocence is necessary. It also works well for aid in developing new friendships.

Gathering dirt from a poor child’s grave for use in spell work will also aid in acquiring basic necessities (a home, food, etc).

Dirt from a Child’s grave or a 12 year old Child: There are two types of uses for this type of dirt to get people to leave either out of your home (like an eviction or a person who is a “sponge”) or a person you dislike in the neighborhood, I think a 13 year old or young teen would be better because they almost always are rebelling or threatening to run away from home because they don’t like parental authority.

Doctor or Nurse: This dirt can be used either to promote healing or cause illness, depending upon the intent of your casting.

Elderly: This dirt is particularly useful in situations where wisdom, knowledge, and know-how is necessary.

A Family member who truly loved you: For love and protection, best to take from the heart area and give a goodly payment.

Fireman: Protection but mostly for the home especially from all things fiery, especially good if a family member is a fireman, make into an amulet.

Gambler : If you know, for a fact, that the gambler was good, then this dirt can be used to increase luck, better odds, and heighten intuition.

If you are unsure of whether or not the gambler was lucky or not, the dirt can be used to promote someone into taking unnecessary risks.

There is also a negative aspect to using this type of dirt.

The old timers usually referred to a Gambler’s grave because they’d be drinking and taking their woman’s money for gambling but in the 21st century terms I’d say a person who is an abuser, this type of dirt would be used in workings dealing with driving a couple apart or causing confusion. Making them stop loving each other, but be careful this can cause a fight so bad that they could seriously harm each other.

Gangster ---If one wishes to do harm, or to force or coerce someone to act in a certain way, one might use the dirt of someone who "died badly" -- before their time, through execution (not by the law), because their spirit, once invoked, would be inclined to perform evil deeds or to seek very strong justice with little compunction.

A Good Person’s Grave: Excellent for peace in your home and in your work place

Infant : Let’s start with dirt from a Baby’s or Infant’s Grave ---There are a number of magickal workings that use this type of dirt---for example~~~

A Baby’s grave is good for peace in your home, or to have people get along in your home that live with you.

It can also be good for keeping the law away and there is an old time spell that can be use. I will post these spells later in another post

If there is a person you like and you want them to notice you be it man or woman you can use it.

Or to bring back a person into your life.

It can be used to get a job, and there is a formula and spell for that as well.

Also if you have a baby of your own and it has terrifying dreams or cries in a terrifying manner you can use this dirt to help the baby to rest, by putting it in a non-metal jar in the room. It is believed that a negative spirit is surrounding the frightened baby and the bright spirit light caused by this dirt will chase away such negative energies.

Also it can be used to make someone move out of the area. To do this, put together a dirt dauber nest (type of wasp) and dirt from a baby’s grave, put it in the sleeping area (if the person is living with you) of the person you want to have move out, or near the front porch of a person’s house, they will hear the frightened, terrified cry from that spirit and it will make them move or leave. Only they can hear it not anyone else.

Dirt from an infant’s grave can be useful in spells of fertility, or to ensure that someone becomes totally dependent upon you, or when you need to appear indispensable. Also because a baby's vision is somewhat blurry, this dirt can be useful when you need someone to cast a "blind-eye" to something that you're doing

Infant/child who died on Friday the 13th : because the spirit of a young child is fairly obedient this dirt can be used to cause trouble or bad luck to someone.

Infant/ who died on Halloween: Much the same as one that died on Friday the 13th only worse, might be used to haunt a wrong doer, especially a rapist.

INFANT WHO LIVED TWO DAYS OR LESS: Dirt from the grave of a baby who lived less than one day is particularly effective for certain workings where "worldly" influences need to be kept to a minimum.

INFANT OR BABY THAT NEVER CRIED: Usually this means a still born baby, for some reason using this dirt is supposed to make your hens lay eggs if they don’t, good for Urban farmers I guess, I think the formula that is done with it is to help keep the chickens calm to lay their eggs. I have been told also that the dirt from this type of grave is also used in magikal workings concerning being able to enter a place without being seen or making noise. In some other cases to cause lameness or the inability to walk in a person. There is more on this but I have to research it further.

But what I'm concerned about is that it means if the baby was still born, it also means that the spirit never at any point truly entered the body before birth. That is one of the things about souls, they usually don't enter the body completely until the last few hours before birth when they enter the body of the baby is when the contractions begin, now that is not to say that they don't go in and out of the body from time to time while the body is in Utreo but usually the spirit/soul of the child is hanging around the mother/parents in general to see if this family is going to be a good fit and also if it will fulfill the Karmic life path of the new soul. Because the fetus growing inside a woman's body is in essence "a parasite" until it can live independently outside the body, some spiritualist and theologists have also said that the soul doesn't truly enter the body until the baby takes its first independent breath, that is why for ages it has been important to hear the baby cry upon birth.

Lawyer / Judge : This dirt should be used to assist in winning court cases, settlements, etc. It is also helpful when injustice is an issue or when you're rights are being violated.

Madame (female owner of a brothel): For spells dealing with sexuality

MASS DEATH: Either by a major accident in which the unnamed are buried or those who died in a mass suicide (think Jones Town), this type of dirt could be used in major physical harm or death. (Be very, very careful)

But there are different kinds of mass graves. The mass grave of a group of people who were ambushed and slaughtered would be far different than the mass grave of a group of brave soldiers who volunteered for a battle and died there just as the ossuaries where Christian monks donated their remains to the building of highly ornamental bone-chapels, constructed entirely of the skeletal remains of religious devotees. Or from a mass grave of Holocausts victims of WWII

There is no "one size fits all" way to work. You are working with the spirits of the dead. Your contact with them is essential to the work because you have to remember Graveyard work is SPIRITUAL work.

Mentally Disturbed / Insane: To cause insanity, mental instability, etc.

WARNING: When collecting this dirt, do remember that you're dealing with the spirit of someone who was obviously mentally disturbed.

Millionaire: from the grave of a wealthy person might be incorporated into a working for prosperity.

Murderer / Murderess/Killer: The older the dirt, the better in this case. Dirt from the grave of someone who has taken human life and has been executed can be extremely powerful in matters of revenge and causing harm. Use this to drive someone far, far away from you or for hexing, cursing

WARNING: Do be aware that incorporating this type of dirt into your magickal practices can even cause DEATH! This is very unstable energies involved in this type of dirt, know well who is buried and see if they were without moral compass or killed in the heat of passion or self-defense but was found guilty. Sometimes the graves of old cowboys who were hung just for cattle rustling or for doing what he felt was being loyal to the brand maybe better.

There is a sub-category to this

Dirt from the grave of the Unjustly Executed: For example the men and women who were executed during the Salem witch trials, their energies understand revenge for what was done to them, and can be a bit more stable. But even then use extreme caution.

This is the type of grave that you have to be sure this person was executed only to discover that they did not commit the crime, use this persons grave to bring about justice if you feel you have been victimized.

Murder victim/Murdered: This dirt is very useful in matters of injustice or wrong-doing.

A NATIVE AMERICAN CEMETERY: Be careful it has to be from a Cemetery not a sacred burial area or ground from the old timers.

Dirt collected from the graves of Native Americans is the perfect additive for spells and charms of protection. It can also promote a connection between you and your Native American Spirit Guide or to help summon your guide.

When collecting from a Native American Cemetery or grave, it helps to know what would be best to give as an offering or payment, do not use any kind of alcohol, but see what they would prefer, either pollen or corn something that ties into their native American beliefs, it’s possible that payment in using either buffalo nickels or Indian head pennies might be good, but meditate with the spirits of this cemetery to be clear what would be correct.

Nearest Relation: This one is used for protection or to keep the law away, or to protect you from someone who seeks to do you harm, take it from the head and pay this relation a goodly amount of money 50 cents a dollar and bury it right where you take the dirt. Then you can use it in your magical working.

Pet: Dirt from the grave of a personal pet can be useful in matters of the heart, loyalty issues, and protection.

Policeman: Excellent for protection spells, especially for the home or business This is used for protection and they are supposed to “Protect and Serve”, usually from the grave of an officer who died in the line of duty is best---this is a very powerful type of dirt and you do have to give serious payment

Practitioner of Magick: Literally, dirt from the grave of a practitioner can be used for anything.

Priest Nun / Priest / Pastor: Used in situations where spiritual guidance and spiritual protection are needed. Also used on occasion to convey the appearance of goodness and innocence to the outside world.

A Religious Person’s Grave: This is different from a Good Person’s Grave, this dirt is more for Hex breaking, because a religious person always prays to God for assistance. If you feel a negative working is being done to you, making you feel unwell, causing you to lose work, or disruption in the home this dirt will help in a magical working to break that Hex. Lots of times it is someone of your family that always seem to have a direct connection to God, so this is good for Hex breaking and protection especially if taken from the heart area.

Roadside death: There are two uses for dirt from a Roadside Death, the positive is for safe travel, and the negative is the same as Mass Death only it would appear as an accident, in the negative aspect it’s used for revenge. Negative workings I do not recommend.

A Sinner’s Grave: Much like an abusers grave except you can use it to have unwanted people leave your home to never return, or if you are fed up with your marriage or your boy/girl friend and you want to breakup but you want to win the divorce or breakup, that is to come out good in your favor, then you use a magical working with this dirt. A Sinner is not necessarily an abuser but someone who sins and never repents.

A Sinner’s Grave After 9 Days: If you want to get rid of someone or leave your home and never come back get this dirt after the person has been dead for 9 days, get the dirt from the area of the sinner’s left foot, leave payment there and make sure its carefully covered, sprinkle it around the house or put into the 4 corners of the room where the person sleeps, whatever dirt you have left over (because you don’t want the dirt to be obvious to the person) tie it up in a handkerchief and throw it into running water and the person will never stop walking.

Soldier: Used for bravery, strength, quick thinking, and getting someone to obey or follow orders, rules, etc. -Spells of protection and domination. (Also of courage) A soldier is obedient and strong and loyal and this dirt can be used in protection and hex breaking as well as domination or to gain courage (as in an amulet or mojo bag)

It’s important to use common sense here. Try to choose a soldier that you think (or know) believed in the kind of cause that you're trying to obtain.

Also, dirt from the graves German soldiers from Hitler’s era make great additives for anything occult related as Hitler was into all things occult.

DIRT FROM 21 soldiers GRAVES: You are asking for nearly a platoon of men and women for very serious protection and courage.

Suicide: For negative workings to drive someone who has done you or your family a serious wrong

A Sunken Grave: If a man leaves his wife or girlfriend and she wants him back she is to get dirt from a grave that has sunken (very old, the coffin may have collapsed) at the head, but she better be sure she wants him back.

A Woman’s Grave: There is a magical working where dirt from the head of a woman’s grave will help a man bring back a woman who has left him.

Woman who died in childbirth: To avoid mis-carrages

Each one of these types of Graves has a specific purpose, with a little thought I’m sure you can think of a few more purposes for the uses of dirt from a specific person’s grave.

But one thing you have to do is to know and learn about the various individuals, what they did, what they were like, usually in obituaries especially if the person was liked or had done positive things, with that information you can make plans to visit that person’s grave to see if they’d be willing to work with you. Going through old micro film records of newspapers and reading the Obits can help.

It does mean you have to know your community pretty well, and I do recommend that you never go alone, especially if the cemetery is not in a good part of town.

Now it is not unusual to go to very old cemeteries such as a boot hill if you live in the west to find a grave of an old time law man or outlaw, even old historical graves can be helpful.

But go respectfully, only take a small amount and remember you have to pay for it and do not desecrate a grave.

ALWAYS BE RESPECTFUL!! AND ALWAYS MAKE PAYMENT

Reference:

http://spiritinfo.blogspot.com/p/types-of-graveyard-dirts-for-reference.html?m=1

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koiandjelly · 5 years ago

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So Fila’s actual past isn’t very detailed, because she’s not a main OC, and I haven’t spent a ton of time actually thinking about her as a character lol. 98% of my Creativity goes to my original content characters, cuz someday when I finish actually crafting my worlds, I’m gonna write a book. I’m aiming for the lofty goals of making a full, fleshed out, intricate— just fuckin’... a whole ass Multiverse system comparable to the Lore content of Tolkien’s works, or The Elder Scrolls— gah fuck y’know what, I’m changing this post from being about my Fantasy Life OC to being about my creation baby, the effort of about 6 years (I am 20 years old, and although I didn’t know it at the time I started, I was 14 when I made the shitty Fire Emblem Manakete rip-off race that I’m gonna actually now talk about, because holy fuck this ain’t gonna fit in a parenthesis “btw have some info” bubble)

A’ight so I have a hard time keeping track of time, especially in a large scale across years. Apparently it’s related to being severely depressed without medication (communication error on my part, my parents are very lovely and helped me ASAP when I spilled the beans) while also having moderate to severe ADD. So, ya know, keep in mind that I was yet another terribly depressed 8th grader when I talk about my creation’s early days. I wouldn’t experience that time of my life for any sort of payment ever. It was goddamn miserable, because when I was midway through the age of 14, not only did the aforementioned depression spring up, but I also realized I was bisexual (And I live in the infamous state of Alabama, for reference. Don’t fear for me though, I was too unnoticeable to be bullied if anyone did know, and my wonderful mother, whom I love and cherish with all of my heart, is one of the few Christians that actually... like... do what their own God tells em to. That is, Jesus. I’m an atheist and have a general discomfort about the idea of super powerful entities actually existing irl, but I do agree with the stuff I’ve heard and remember from a decade ago in Church about Jesus. Good guy. But yeah my mom not only accepted me and reassured me when I came out, but she’s gone even further and is of the opinion/fact that lgbt folks are, really, good and normal and that God created them, so she really genuinely just... loves and accepts me. There’s no “I love you despite of this” in the equation and I am so grateful. But again. I digress)

Pause after that sidetrack, to recap, all of my medical issues began to emerge about 6 months before I turned 15. Including what I hate most, the emergence of my Fibromyalgia and Sjogren’s Syndrome, and for an added kick to the flesh, an undifferentiated connective tissue disorder. Meaning, as what I understand it to be, a nameless chimaera of many symptoms in a way that the disorder either is it’s own thing, or just can’t easily be recognized as any one disorder. And I had anxiety. If I recall correctly on *that*, forgive me cuz it’s been a while since it’s been diagnosed/brought up in a significant way, I have or had either general anxiety *and* social anxiety, or just lightweight versions of both, or something, but at the time I was horribly shy and I couldn’t even talk to the teacher after class about schoolwork, even though I tried rationalizing it to hell and back that I shouldn’t be scared— as you’ll guess, shit didn’t work out til I got medicine for it, because no amount of logic and rational thought will change the fact that I was struggling because of a literal disorder, an error of the brain, and as with that walking with two shattered femurs ain’t gonna work, trying to talk when the talk machine broke... ain’t going to goddamn work.

God. I am rambling a lot. But anyway, shit fucking sucked as a teen for me, because I got that wombo combo, prepare for trouble, make it double, precision strike at my existence as a person during fucking already difficult puberty— I am rambling. It’s 4:55am as of this sentence lmao. I had a nasty cocktail of both mental illness and physical disorders pop up once puberty hit me, so I, through many events starting from loving to draw as a toddler, to play pretend stories of heartbreak, betrayal, and death as best an 8 year old could understand via playing with Polly Pockets, and all the creative power I inherited from my Dad, plus the motivation borne through a need to escape, I started making my own characters.

So, to return to the present state of my creations, which will now be referred to as Bounding Beyond the Stars, or BBtS, I’m gonna get some things out of the way. Just to clarify, yeah? I have created my worlds in a way that is specifically meant to stand apart from the irl universe as we know it. I’m certainly not a knowledgeable researcher with any level of comprehension on Spacial law and quantum physics and shit like that. So hey, if something ever seems... like, off, or wrong? Unless it’s pretty obviously wrong in the “hey you just googled how a thing works, and misunderstood it, and made a detail based on a failure to understand stuff and that’s dumb in a catastrophic way that even a high school level viewer would notice...” kind of mistake, then hey, shoot me a message. But if some sort of universal rule seems fucky in the way that it doesn’t make sense, but isn’t a catastrophic structural error... well, Imma use that sentence to start a better one. For an example of a catastrophic error, perhaps... this: “This planet has no seasons cuz of its shape and axis! And it is also like twice as big as Earth!” That would be catastrophic alone because anyone with a grasp on planetary gravity or something, may go and think “if it’s that big, gravity’s gonna be way more intense”. And you’d be right! Which is why I usually account for those things with... *Magic*.

Before I split this post for Length reasons, and I’m sorry the majority of this was me rambling about how my general experience with life sucked from ages 14-17, I’mma state something very important about all my creations.

Magic, which will be explained in depth at a later point, is a fundamental, essential, and omnipresent force of not just any one universe in my Multiversal Trio. It is a key piece of Reality itself, as magic is the flow of many multiples of millions of unique and mysterious energies, concepts, and laws existing anywhere that Is.

To end this post, I’m going to put a quick summary and explanation why I’m rambling about any of this: The rant about my age and circumstances at the start are relevant because it’s necessary context for the tone and type of writing my creations are built upon. The foundations of BBtS are borne from a sometimes angsty, sometimes genuinely upset 14 year old who found escape in the art of Creation. There have been many, many, many heavy edits, rewrites, scrapped info and ideas, and even more info built upon it. It used to be pretty pointlessly edgy in a lot of ways, and redundant in grimdark, morphing into *grimderp* plot devices and character traits. The way it’s written today, I like to think the lore of my many high fantasy-alien societies, and all its denizens and creators and whatever else, are still written to be dark, be dangerous, even angsty... but more skillfully so, with the sort of nuance a 14 year old wouldn’t really even begin to understand. Cuz I still like high stakes stories with real consequences and character deaths when appropriate. And I enjoy characters who have tragic pasts, but now that I’m older and I’ve seen and read about and done so much more— I can write that stuff *better*. And more over, what I’m most satisfied with, is that I’m more in touch with myself as a person, and I’ve evolved many of my personal beliefs and ideals and all the things of the world I can have opinions on. But most of all, I’ve reached a point where I have consumed enough content from others to where I have figured out how to write something that should be interesting, and maybe a bit new, because I put a looot of Damn focus on identifying, and understanding, writing structure, cliches, plot holes to avoid, character traits to handle differently, and just generally making something that’ll appeal to both me, and my audience, should I get that far.

#original content #ramble #long ramble #worldbuilding #personal history #long post #fantasy #sci-fi #science fiction #it’s currently 5:24am as i think of appropriate tags lol #sleep deprived #late night/early morning thoughts

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jessiewre · 5 years ago

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Day 52

Tues 25th Feb

#prawnsforBarry 🍤🍤🍤

We sat at breakfast excited to have our, sorry Phil’s, new mustard accompaniment. We even managed to convince Wendy the waitress to try it. She said she liked it, but it was hard to tell if she was just being polite or not!

As had become a daily occurrence, we began to discuss when we should leave Watamu and move on. When we would actually start travelling again. Whenever we had this conversation, we seemed to add on a day - and so far we’d done this at least 4 times. We had somehow ended up on holiday while on holiday.

With Phil’s run on the Sunday, we knew we had to move and agreed we should arrive in Moshi (Tanzania) by Friday at the latest. So when Philly Tours discovered there was a daily direct bus from Mombasa to Moshi, it was decided - we would go to Mombasa on the Weds to get the 7am bus the next day. Or the Thurs. Ok probably the Thursday.

Ok well with that plan in place, we went to see my little tailor mate to order more clothes didn’t we! They were so nice and cheap, it made sense to use this opportunity to replace the pair I lost while flailing about in the Nile. So Phil ordered an extra pair of shorts and I asked for two pairs, plus a pair of culottes style trousers. I personally wanted to get the same sizing Phil had for his birthday shorts, as they were soooo comfy, but Phil said they were a little too baggy and ill fitting. He had a point to be fair, so the man measured me up but I tried hard to make it clear that I didn’t want the clothes to be too tight and uncomfortable. Watch this space.

After that, we went to the pool and as we approached, I could see that Barry was lay on the far side. He had his shades on and hadn’t noticed us yet.

‘Barry’s over there Phil’ I whispered.

‘I know’ he said ‘But I can’t be arsed right now, I’ll chat with him later’.

But the attraction of Phil was too much for Barry and he could smell him for sure. Within 30 seconds, Barry was out of his lounger and on his way over. Oh we could see that he wasn’t happy from his walk. And he didn’t need to be asked why, so he saved us a job and launched right into it.

‘I was meant to go on that boat trip today weren’t I.’

We nodded along.

‘They pissed me off so I sacked it off’.

Oh shitt. There’d been some drama in Barrytown. Well we were in by this point, so we couldn’t help but dig for more. Not that we needed to ask, we would have definitely found out either way.

‘Oh dear, what happened??’

‘Well...’

Barry took a deep breath.

‘Some bloke met me at the front of the hotel, but there was no tuc tuc, so I said Where’s my tuc tuc? And he pointed to the beach and said Boat here. So we walked to the beach and there was no boat so I said Where’s the boat mate?? and THEN he pointed to the end of the bay. He was saying I had to walk to the other bay! So that pissed me off. That pissed me right off. I told him, I said, I don’t like walkin’. Ya know?So we eventually got to the other bay and there was a load of Italians sat about waiting for the boats and I’m looking at these boats thinkin’...I don’t fancy that. They were not even that big these boats and I thought Ya know what, I can’t be arsed with this. So I got up and walked back. Fuk it. Only lost $20, I don’t even care’

And that was Barry’s boat trip.

Being the great friend that he is, Phil got into the pool with angry Barry to cool him down and comfort him with kind words and a quick head rub.

Kiddddinnnnnnggg

They just chilled in the pool and actually had a lovely chat about food, Barry telling Phil about the food available at his local in Cyprus.

‘You’ve got your Pork chops, Lamb, Olive oil, Salt, pepper - its gotta be dun’ mate’

Yes Barry, quite.

Despite the inspiring meat chat, we had a cheap and simple VEGETARIAN lunch at our hotel consisting of rice, lentil Dahl, spinach and chapati and actually got ourselves organised enough to do an activity. Unheard of! I swear, the longer we had stayed in Watamu, the lazier we’d become, and an excursion out was a much needed rarity. We arrived to the Turtle Ocean Conservation and everywhere you looked were recycled items lovingly used to ingeniously build and decorate. The gardens were lined with glass bottles as flower bed edging and there were sculptures of animals & big displays made from plastic waste. It was one of those places that had a special feel about it, like it was made out of pure love and good vibes. Real wholesome like 🤓

Ruth, a passionate & knowledgeable environmentalist, showed us around the small centre and explained the many problems they (the turtles & sea life) were facing on a daily basis - pollution, lack of education, plastic waste, over-fishing, poaching - to name but a few. They had one resident turtle in at that moment. She’d been found in a fisherman’s net and was struggling with various health problems. They hoped to nurse her back to health and eventually release her back into the ocean. Luckily turtles never formed bonds or any attachement with their human carers, so once they were healthy, the release was easy - they swam straight off without looking back. It was even more important to get them better if they were a female turtle as they had the potential to reproduce. It could take months or even years before she was better - one turtle was in for 6 years before its release!

Female turtles can have over 2000 eggs in a lifetime, but due to all the obstacles they now face, it’s likely that only 1 or 2 of those eggs will go on to have their own eggs. People often think that turtles are doing really well as they see lots of pictures of them and they have so many eggs in their lives, but its a misconception. The population is rapidly decreasing.

We ended the tour passing past an entrance to a garden area and I asked Ruth if we could go in. She said yes, but she didn’t seem to think it was really worth a look. I don’t know why, as there were some amazing art sculptures in there. There was a huge jellyfish made from plastic bags and a massive turtle made of bottle tops, plus there was a sort of turtle graveyard with all the shells they’d collected from the poaching. The whole area was like a sort of secret garden, with winding paths and hidden corners and it was clear to me that this garden could be utilised and made more of a feature for the centre. It would be far more engaging by adding a challenge or treasure hunt type activity. I discussed it with Ruth and explained my idea, saying they could have a simple paper sheet with tasks & questions to answer. They could sell for like $1, and then kids could go round the garden finding the answers by using fact boards placed around the garden. SICK IDEA RIGHT!? Well she thought so too, and said she was definitely going to make it happen when the next volunteers arrived! WOOP WOOP 🙌. Shame we were leaving Watamu and couldn’t stay to help. I would have smashed that. I decided I’d drop her an email afterwards to check up on the idea and see if she needed any help with it. And get a cut of the profits obvs.

The whole centre runs purely from donations and running their tours, so if you would like to donate to help the turtles, every little helps. I will post a link up after this post.

Phil had already planned to use our trip out as an opportunity to do a run and so donned on all his gear and headed off while I waited for a tuc tuc. The driver and I then overtook Phil halfway back and even the driver said Phil was ‘very fast’. I smiled proudly and agreed with him. I waited for him to finish that sentence with. ‘...for a muzungu’ but he didn’t. Wow it was a proper compliment.

We went for another late afternoon dip in the sea accompanied by a beach bar beer, and Barry the stalker appeared in the bar next to ours - it was the same bar he went to every evening to be fair. A man of habit was our Barry.

No point sitting on different tables though Barry eh...so he followed his hearts desire and came over to sit with Phil. I was there obviously, but we all know by now Barry only has eyes for Phil.

‘Someone’s sat in my seat tonight’ he said, nodding towards ‘his’ bar as he arrived.

Nightmare. Barry had rocked up to his bar and someone had sat in his favourite seat. What an absolute joke.

Phil and Barry discussed many things, one being Barry’s marriage and subsequent divorce. Why didn’t it work out I wondered? No doubt there were various reasons, but maybe Barry going to the pub 3 or 4 nights a week didn’t help. Just a thought. But for Barry it was ‘necessary’ to have his pub time. Essential. I asked whether his wife (sorry, ex-wife) ever went out, or was she just at home with their child, while he was at the pub and he said ‘I gave her every opportunity to go out with her friends’. I choked on my drink laughing as it reminded me of something Phil says sarcastically on a regular basis - ‘Thank you for the opportunity Jess’.

But my favourite topic of the evening was Barry’s ‘banter’ chat.

‘Phil, do you have banter with your mates?’

He didn’t wait for a reply

‘Cos I do.’

I interjected at this point to mention that we both enjoyed dabbling in a spot of banter from time to time, but Barry was a mans man and I’m not sure he heard me. Boys will be boys right.

‘Me and my mates used to go to this one pub a couple of nights a week and bloody hell the banter was ‘ilarious. One time, my mate went to the loo and we barricaded the door. Completely blocked it, he couldn’t get out! Oh we had sucha laugh. Another time, this guy started a fight with my mate, over nuffing, and we all jumped on, then the barman - he was a big lad - he just picked the fella up and THREW him out the door! Honestly it was HILARIOUS. Oh ha and once, we got a painting that was on the wall, took it off, and we screwed it to the ceiling. Oh god, the landlord didn’t find it for weeks! Honestly Phil, so funny mate....’

Listening to Barry’s bountiful banter tales of mischief and man fun was thoroughly entertaining (gosh imagine the thrills of it. I can’t wait to get home and do the painting on the ceiling trick at my, sorry, Mum and Dads house) but I decided to leave them to it and walk up to my tailor bloke to collect the items before he closed.

My plan was to try the new items on and give feedback if necessary. But by the time I walked down the beach and then the pitch black beach road at high speed, I was sweating so profusely that I wasn’t thinking straight. I lost approximately 3 litres of sweat trying on the various shorts and trousers only to discover they were FAR too tight for me - but the boss guy wasn’t even there and I was SO hot that I just paid up and ran out of the shack. As I walked back along the beach, I already decided I would have to go back the next morning to get the trousers changed at the very least.

By the time I got back to the lads, Barry and Phil had settled in for the night and had even got themselves double stacked chairs to sit on for additional support (Barry was not a small chap). My plan to eat at a nice restaurant I’d spotted was rapidly fading away and in a desperate attempt to entice me to warm to the idea of a romantic meal for 3 on the beach, Phil announced he wanted prawns for dinner.

Now let me tell you - Phil has never, EVER, in his life ordered prawns. He has occasionally eaten prawns off my plate, and ONLY when I have thoroughly de-shelled and prepped them as though he was a baby (or Roy McCusker). So I could hardly say No could I, and to be honest, I was impressed by his boldness and also intrigued to see how the hell he was going to handle de-shelling prawns for the first time in his life. All with an audience (ok, just Barry). This was going to be a sight to see.

After we ordered the food though, Phil decided to announce he was going for a quick shower, so Barry and I finally got some time to ourselves. Great. It’s what we’d both been craving.

I stuck with what I know and chatted about different countries etc and ended up showing Barry some pictures of Mexico on my phone. Easy win. But suddenly a WhatsApp message popped up on the screen and it was a video of Phil singing as he got into the shower. I VERY quickly swiped it away and thought PHEW, I’ve just about got away with that one. I continued to show pictures of Mexican cenotes when another message appeared. This one was something like this

🤪🥰😍

Ok well this one was also cringe, so I quickly shifted the phone away to turn it onto airplane mode.

And thank god I did, as the next message Phil sent me popped up on the screen just as I moved it from Barry’s view:

#prawnsforBarry

Ok so at this point, I told Barry the phone was no longer working.

Phil returned (THANK GOD FOR THAT) wearing the newly altered mustard shirt, but Barry pointed that the pocket was still on the wonk. Dammit he was right as well. During the hour wait for these prawns, the topic I’d of how we met was bought up. I happily told Barry we met in a gay club and that we both had best friends who were gay. That’s right Barry. GAY. Oooh how was this going to go down I wondered...

We started off ok. Barry said he used to know a guy at work and he invited him to some of his dinner parties a few times. How nice of you Barry.

Lovely. But where’s the ‘but’...?

Ah ha, here it is

‘I don’t have a problem with it...’

Yes Barry, go on...

‘I don’t have a problem with it...but...’ (there it was) ‘...but when it comes up on TV and there’s two blokes kissing, I mean, ya know I don’t wana see that’. Barry pulled a face of disgust.

It was my turn to jump in

‘But I suppose two girls kissing is ok to see?’

Barry raised his eyebrows and avoided eye contact.

‘Well...you don’t see so much of that do you, its always blokes’

‘Apart from in porn right? Lots of men don’t mind gay kissing when its women doing it and its for their gratification. Kind of ironic really isn’t it!’ I said.

What I also wanted to say was:

I hate to break it to you Barry but you DO have a problem with it.

People are allowed to be uncomfortable with it, that is their right, but they need to understand that therefore they DO have a problem with it. And if that’s the case, then it would be better for everyone if those people kept their prejudice and judgement on the matter completely to themselves. It is homophobic to say ‘I don’t wana see that’ and talking like that is not helpful to anyone.

But what I actually explained to Barry was that of course he was not alone in his discomfort and many men and some women of his generation, and other generations too, would feel uncomfortable. This was likely due to the fact they had not been bought up to see gay culture and had been surrounded by homophobic language, media and culture in their life. If they were conscious and aware about why they felt the way they did, they might feel more comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I’m not sure how much of it he took in. Things went rapidly downhill after this when I mentioned the plastic straw issue to the waiter and Barry forgot he’d already told Phil about his Greta Thunberg joke meme (he definitely didn’t know it was a meme, but it was a meme). I managed to hear properly this time. Are you ready? Apologies in advance for this.

He described it as a picture of Greta Thunberg and at the top of it, it said ‘F**k the climate’ and at the bottom it said ‘I’ve discovered c**k’..

Not only was it a bizarre and offensive, it was not funny.

What IS funny is how a 70 year old man was so uncomfortable with two men kissing, but completely comfortable making a gross sexual joke about an autistic child.

Phil spoke up in response this time and said ‘Wow I mean, its pretty rude and its not really very funny. Anything she does for the climate is fantastic really’, while I said something like ‘Wow, isn’t she like 15 years old??’. To which Barry awkwardly said he thought she was 16. COOL WELL THAT MAKES IT OK THEN MATE.

So anyway - #prawnsforBarry - Phil somehow dealt with the prawns completely independent of my help which was actually unbelievable and I glowed with pride. The pace at which he was able to consume his dinner was far slower than he would have liked due to the amount of prep work required, but he got on with it like a trooper. His achievements of combating prawns alongside not being a sexist homophobe really shone that night and we went back to the hotel agreeing that we’d have dinner just us two the next day.

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sparklessswift · 5 years ago

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19 Things I've Learned in 2019

1. “The desire for positive experience is itself a negative experience. And paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive experience.” — Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck)

I always thought that "How To Be Happy" things on the internet are true and those things can really change your life if you will try to do so. But while reading this book, I've realized that it's not. That the irony behind thinking of ways to be happy and positive just reminds us of what we are not and of what things we failed to have that we've always wanted. The more we try searching for ways on how to be happy, the more we can't attain happiness.

2. The quality of your life depends on the quality of your choices and decisions.

I've learned that you are the only one who's accountable for everything that you choose to do, for every thoughts that you entertain and for every decisions that you make. The quality of your life is shaped on whatever you want it to be. Whenever you feel like you're carrying a huge amount of emotional baggage, it's because you chose to carry it anyway. You chose to entertain the melancholia, you chose to let it enter your life. Do not blame your situation or even other people. Change the way you see things, make good decisions and choices and the quality of your life will be better.

3. Music is a form of enlightenment towards our true emotions.

I found out that longing to hear sad songs that we can relate to whenever we are feeling sad isn't a sign of tolerating sadness, it means we are trying to fill the gap between what we know and what we feel. Finding the perfect song that explains exactly the way we feel helps us figure out the right words to describe our current emotion. It makes us feel that we are not the only one in the world who's suffering. It's relieving to be so connected to a song that you feel as though, it was written for you.

4. Forgiveness is a nice thing to do.

There are times when we feel as though, people and even ourselves are not worthy to be forgiven and that no amount of apology will cease the burning fire. But one thing I do learned this year is that, forgiveness means letting go. Do yourself a favor and let go of the bad memories, what's important is that you took it as a learned lesson. Let go of the grudges that you kept for so long, it will give you a peace of mind. Let go of the idea that forgiving without hearing an apology is not necessary in life, it is. Forgive yourself for all the mistakes you've done in life and forgive those people who have hurt you as well. Release the pain by forgiving so you can finally move on.

5. Self loathe is the most toxic form of hate.

I've learned that there is nothing more toxicating in life than hating your own existence and body. It's like badly wanting a poisonous thing even when you know it is bad for you. It's like loving the lyrics to Taylor Swift's song "ME!" because it radiates self-love but there's always a cringeworthy feeling whenever you sing the words "I'm the only one of me, baby that's the fun of me" because you can't feel the message it conveys. And it feels like, no amount of motivation from other people can cure the poison in you. I know it's easier said than done but remember that only you can free yourself from self loathing so might as well start appreciating small things about yourself and sooner or later you will realize that it's fun to be the only one of you.

6. Being 18 is challenging. While it may be true that each year has its own challenge, being 18 is quite different. It's the time when your mind starts forming questions about life, existence, and future. It's like a climax to your own story, exciting as it may seem but it contains setbacks, challenges and a hundred thousand pieces of inspirations needed in order to thrive harder. In order to believe that you can pursue your dream of reaching the happily ever after.

7. Appreciate high school moments while they last. Realizing how fast the time has flown after my journey in high school is something I wish I was ready for. Funny how we're so attached to a moment from the past (e.g. graduation) that everytime we remember it, there's this bubble of thoughts appearing in our heads with the line “it felt like yesterday” and it feels so bittersweet. If there's one thing I can teach the other generations, it is to always appreciate each moment while it lasts. After all, moments will become memories that will forever be stuck in our head so might as well enjoy your high school life and make good memories out of it.

8. We are all temporary in everyone else's lives and that's normal. It feels relieving when you realize that each person that we meet has a temporary role in our lives. We are bound to lose connection with someone whom we thought will never leave us, we're bound to cut ties with people who are not good for us, and we're bound to be left behind or leave not because we want to but because we just crossed paths with each other, we aren't really travelling the same path not as what we thought we are. Learn how to appreciate someone's presence and learn how to accept someone's absence.

9. Do not drown yourself in the thought that internet validation is important. It is definitely okay to dump the idea that you're living in the wrong generation if you think likes/reactions, comments and shares are not important. Most people today still haven't come to realize that the internet has not just open-sourced information, it has also open-sourced insecurity, self-doubt, and shame. And we have to open our minds about it. Life is happier the moment you realize that you should not give a damn about what other people think of your posts.

10. Do not jump on hate trends in social media just because it's in. Cancel culture has made a noise in the internet this year and suddenly everyone are bragging their freedom of speech because they are jumping on the bandwagon (or should I say, we're? 😂) But one thing I do learned from all the hate trends is to be discerning. This is the best time you can practice cherry-picking and only utter a word when you think you really need to or when you think it is appropriate to do so. Just as Taylor Swift said, “You just need to take several seats and then try to restore the peace and control your urges to scream about all the people you hate”.

11. Being attached to someone does not mean you're into that person. Attachment is way too different than love and even infatuation. It needs not to be stereotyped. Sometimes all you have to do is to give yourself the benefit of the doubt about how you feel and you will realize the true value of a person to you.

12. The hardest struggle in life that we can ever experience is something that is related with our family. Indeed home is where the heart is. Family is our major source of inspiration and it can also be our major source of distraction whenever there are unforeseen circumstances going on. And I think dealing with those circumstances is the hardest struggle to face because there will always be a pain in your chest wherever you go that is inevitable. The pain that lies deep within you but bleeds through the surface of your body that you can't hide.

13. College is way too different than high school and you should be ready for it. Of course, culture shock will always be there the moment you enter college. You will start comparing high school and college in every single details, you will randomly reminisce high school memories while walking in the hallway and you will remember how easy passing the exams and getting high grades back then. In my first semester in college, I've learned that you will never survive if you are ill-spirited, proscrastinator, lazy and weak student. I've learned that college is survival and in survival, you should not come with unnecessary gears. I'm sorry Taylor Swift but in college, you should not bring a knife to a gun fight.😃

14. It's okay to have few friends atleast they are real. Making friends is hard and no one can convince me otherwise. People's intentions to you are confusing nowadays and it's hard to trust another set of new people. I've realized that the amount of friends has nothing to do about how you enjoy your life. What's important is that you have friends who are honest as the day is long.

15. Listen more, say less. This year I've learned the value of lending ears to those who are in need of it and even to situations that require much understanding before saying an opinion to avoid any conflict. Do not be easily carried away by your emotions to the extent that you're no longer thinking if what you are going to say is appropriate to the situation. On the other hand, there are times that people who are venting out their problems do not need any piece of advice, what they need is someone who is understanding enough to spend time listening to their rants.

16. Things that are gonna make your life more interesting are things that you should say yes to. — Taylor Swift

Progress doesn't come in the blink of an eye. You need to challenge yourself to do new things in order to make a progress. It is even more okay to step out of your comfort zone sometimes in order to grow. Life will be more interesting when you accept challenges with conviction.

17. Follow accounts on social media who are good for your mental health. Do yourself a favor and start unfollowing accounts that triggers your anxiety, insecurity and self-doubt. Your feed should only contain things that motivates you and people that inspires you to be like them. It should not be a place to start who-did-it-better or who's-best-at-life competitions.

18. Acceptance takes time. I have learned that it is okay to still question things that happened to you 6 years ago. It's okay to still cry everytime it pops up in your head, it's okay if you are not a hundred percent healed and it's okay to have a mind with not enough understanding about the situations that you've been to even if it happened a long time ago. God put you there for a reason. You have to keep in mind that acceptance has no definitive time frame. Healing doesn't wait for you to be ready for it. It will just happen.

19. Procrastination can ruin your goals in life.

There will be no further explanation, there will just be procrastination. 😎

#writers on tumblr #writing inspiration #creative writing #spilledthoughts #2019 #2019taughtme #taylorswift #artistsontumblr #calligraphy

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plague-of-insomnia · 6 years ago

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🍋 🍌

Thank you for the ask 💕!!

🍋 Your descriptions are transportive

Wow... 😶☺️🥰 Thank you.

🍌I want to pick your brain about your creative process.

This will be a long post, FYI.

Chaos.

Haha, I’m joking.

Or am I?

Honestly, I’ve tried a lot of different things over the years, including outlining, and it never works for me bc my characters control the story. I really am just their interpreter, putting their lives and words onto virtual paper.

I’m a “character first” kind of writer (as opposed to a “plot first”), and that means I could probably tell you what any of the main cast of my stories ate for breakfast on the morning of their 8th birthday, but I couldn’t tell you what happens in the end, or sometimes even in the next chapter, bc I don’t know until I “get there.”

I’ve done my best to break my process down into 8 steps.

Step 1: The Idea

When I first get an idea, it usually comes to me in terms of a really vivid scene, like the chapter in Where Demons Hide called “Spark of Madness.” Usually that scene ends up in the beginning of the story but not normally the first chapter. Sometimes it’ll give me some story/plot to help me begin to flesh out the idea more, like in that example, where the main antagonist/conflict is introduced, though normally I have to work at it a bit more.

Step 2: Flesh Things Out

This is where I brainstorm, usually thinking about the main characters, who they are and what their flaws might be and what they might want to help me “find” the story. Sometimes I’ll make a character sheet (normally I don’t if I’m working alone bc I don’t have to). I do normally make a file for notes where I’ll jot down possible ideas about the characters and where the story might go.

I’ll be perfectly honest and say while this process does get me jump started, most of the notes I jot down I don’t end up using bc as the characters and story formulates, they both tend to change from my original ideas.

Step 3: Research

This can often be tied in with #2 and it’s not as if it just stops here. But as I often write about disabilities, mental and chronic illness, I like to make sure I can get as much info about the disease/condition I want to represent as possible so that I can:

represent it appropriately and accurately and

so I can find story/character details along the way.

For example, in my novel UnConventional, I was able to talk with a friend who is not only an orthotic user (and has been for years) but is an engineer of sorts so he understands very well *how* they work. By talking with him about various orthotics and his own struggles with them, I was able to find new plot and character details that help make the story more vivid and real and also allowed me to drive it in directions I may not have been able to otherwise.

Step 4: Write, Write, Write.

Two things you need to know about my writing process:

I usually do better when I write out of order.

I need to visualize the scene in my head to write it effectively. My “writers block” comes from not being able to see things in my head

My method isn’t the most efficient, but it’s how my brain works, and I’ve learned to go with it rather than fight it.

I brainstorm with myself (or a friend or my husband if possible) when necessary, or sometimes I’ll just close my eyes in a quiet place to allow myself to “see” the next series of scenes. Before I can forget the vivid movie I saw in my head, I do what I call a “scene sketch.”

I call it a “sketch,” bc just like a sketch is usually the foundation for a piece of art, mine are the basic structure for a completed scene. I do this also if I have a pretty solid idea but don’t have the time to write or I’m too tired or something like that, bc sketches allow me to simply sit down and flesh them out to create a completed scene.

They’re kind of like what an outline might be for other writers but less organized. Sketches are like a little treatment of a scene, including the basic setting, an idea of POV, and even dialog and body language, but jotted down really quickly without quotes or dialog tags. Sometimes there’ll be things like “maybe this happens” bc once I actually write the scene I’ll know if that idea feels right or not.

Here’s an example from a rejected chapter of WDH (I ended up going in a slightly different direction):

Seb answers when room service knocks. Bard is hovering, maybe bc he heard Seb’s scream. He sees the bad bite on Seb’s bare chest, sees he’s trembling and drowning more than ever, his eyes almost pleading for rescue. But when Bard asks if he’s OK he smiles and says yes, sir. Takes the food from the room service person and says he’s been ordered to wait on the guests personally. Shuts the door in Bard’s face.

Sometimes these sketches can be very detailed, other times it’s more of a general, quick jot of what happens or the scene I want to set. It depends on my brain and the scene.

I like to set goals based on scenes (or sometimes chapters), and do my best to complete a scene in its entirety if possible before I stop. If I can’t bc of time, then I’ll write a really brief sketch so I know what I need to do when I pick back up again so I won’t forget.

I’ve been writing and editing long enough that depending on the project I’m able to self-edit as I write. That doesn’t mean I don’t revise or edit later, but it saves some time overall as I am more aware of certain things than I used to be.

Because I write out of order, my process often entails being a puzzle master and piecing things together. Especially for something like Where Demons Hide, which has a lot of flashbacks, since I write those separately from the main story, I then have to figure out where they “belong.” I’d say 98% of the time for this fic I have already written the flashbacks before the chapter(s) they end up in.

My original serial fiction I write in a similar fashion, where I often will write scenes out of order and then assemble them into chapters later. So sometimes I’ll make a kind of “outline” of plot points that I need to cover. It’s not so much a fixed thing as a memory aid and place for me to put notes of ideas that might come to me that aren’t completely fleshed out.

Step 5: Rest

Once I’ve completed a chapter, I try to let it “rest” for at least a few days, if not longer. Especially if it was a long chapter or something that was difficult to write and took me awhile so I’ve been working on it for days or even weeks at a time.

I do this for three reasons:

“In process” brain lies often and says a scene/chapter sucks and I should just burn my computer/phone and take up accounting instead, and that the pacing is awful and it’s boring and lots of similar untruths.

Especially if the chapter took me a long time to finish because it’s lengthy or complicated or has difficult subject matter or whatever, it means there’s a good chance I’ve been working on it for days or even weeks and I’m SICK TO DEATH of it and never want to see it again, so taking a break from it is a welcome relief. It’s like taking a vacation after you’ve been working overtime for months. Sometimes I’ll do writing-adjacent things during this time, like reading, organizing/typing my notes, jotting down things I need to work on, reading/watching stuff that will energize and inspire me. Other times I work on another project or other scenes/chapters in the same project. Sometimes I’ll just take a break if I’m feeling burnt out or stressed.

I can come back to the project with fresh eyes, so that I can read it and see what things are actually good (suck it, in-process brain) or what things may still need work in a way I couldn’t do so soon after finishing.

Step 6: Revise

I revise in different ways depending on how much I feel something needs fixing. The first revision is my chance to see how the puzzle pieces knit together, work on scenes that I noticed aren’t pulling their weight or that need to be fleshed out. Sometimes this means I will completely, totally rewrite—and by that I mean “retype.” I open a fresh document, and referencing the original, start over. This allows me to streamline and better hone my language and ensure each scene is working hard.

This is something I do if I feel like a scene isn’t working as-is or I have a shit-ton of notes and comments on the first draft and it’s so chaotic I feel like I can’t focus anymore. This is especially helpful for dialog.

Other times the revisions are less drastic. Sometimes I means moving a scene around or deleting one that isn’t working. Sometimes it means finding all the times I’ve repeated the same word and fixing that, or fixing places where I’ve used the same sentence type too often.

Revision can be a very long process, depending on the quality of the first draft and what my goal is. If it’s just fan fic I’m doing for fun, then I don’t obsess too much: usually 1-2 read throughs and adjustments are OK. If it’s something I’m going to submit for publication, then that’s a different story bc the quality of the edit of your submitted draft makes a good impression (or a bad one).

Step 7: Beta Reader

If I have one, which I don’t always, then this is where I’ll send it to them. Usually what I want in a beta reader isn’t stuff like proof or copy editing, but rather “big picture” stuff. I want them to tell me: “this scene isn’t working” or “this feels contrived” or “I don’t like the main character.”

It can be frustrating and disheartening to get feedback that means I have to go back and do some major revising, but that’s why they’re there, bc often it’s either things I couldn’t see bc I’m too close to the story, or stuff I was in denial about (lol). Listening to my betas always leads to a better draft.

Step 8: Proofreading/Copyediting

The last step. I’ve done this professionally so I’m usually pretty good at finding typos and inconsistencies myself, but some people will hire someone like me to do that work bc they don’t have the skill or the time. Even if it’s “just for fun,” proofing is important bc it affects readability, and it’s embarrassing to me if I post something with glaring proof errors 😶.

~~~Anyway, that is roughly how my brain works. I don’t know if this is what you were expecting or wanting, but here it is!

#my answers #my writing process #positive feedback #ask chie

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prissyhalliwell · 6 years ago

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This banner art is brought to you by the lovely @timelordthirteen!

Author’s Note: A big thank you to everyone for being patient while I wrestled with a stubborn plot in this story. I am happy to say that everything is FINALLY figured out and I will be posting the final four chapters over the next four weeks! But like, for real this time ;)

P.S. This chapter is dedicated to @nropay for the adorable Fairy Gardener fanart that she did recently. Please go love on it: https://nropay-gallery.tumblr.com/post/180140343899/fan-art-for-the-fairy-gardener-by

Summary: The heroes face off against the fairy queens, but Fiona is still hiding a couple secrets up her sleeve. Read on AO3

CHAPTER TWENTY

Rumplestiltskin was enjoying the look of confusion on Regina’s face. If he had known telling the truth was this much fun, he would have started doing it years ago.

“So let me get this straight,” Regina said, massaging her forehead to ward off a headache. “Not only is the Black Fairy your mother, but she got her twin sister to help her kidnap her own grandson and they’ve been holding him hostage for the last 300 years?” At Rumple’s nod, her eyebrows rose. “You’re telling me the munchkin that just left is older than I am?”

“Time moves much slower here,” Belle said. “I mentioned that at the cottage, remember?”

Regina shrugged, flopping back on the couch she had conjured upon her arrival. “My mind tends to wander whenever you start talking.”

Before Belle could rise to Regina’s bait, Rumplestiltskin cleared his throat, drawing both their attention. He couldn’t let them waste time on a pointless argument right now. While toying with Regina had been a nice distraction from his darker thoughts, it was time to get serious now that she was caught up on the day’s events. Bae had warned them that Blue would be on her way, which meant that Fiona and her sister could walk in any moment now. They had to be ready for them. “Alright,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Everyone clear on the plan? We’re not going to get a second chance at this.” “The plan sounded a lot better before I knew we were going up against your mother,” Regina grumbled. “Should I be worried?” After everything he had just told her, Rumplestiltskin was surprised she had to ask. The Evil Queen demanded revenge for the smallest slight; how could she even imagine he could forgive his mother for what she had done to him? To his son?

“Of course not,” he replied stiffly. “That woman may have given birth to me, but any connection we had ended then and there. If she gets in our way, I’ll take whatever actions necessary to defeat her.” He gave them both a grin he didn’t feel. “Besides, I’ve been an orphan most of my life. What’s a few more centuries? “Rumple,” Belle said softly, “you can’t just ignore - ” “That’s exactly what I’m going to do!” Rumplestiltskin growled. He’d tried so hard to contain the anger that had been bubbling inside him since Fiona had told him the truth. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by it, not now. Not when he was so close to having his son safe again. “I don’t owe that woman a thing!” “I’m not saying we don’t stop her,” Belle said gently. “But maybe there��s more to the story than we know. What if there’s another side to her?” “Yes, perhaps I should just split her in two and see if one of them will bake me cookies,” Rumpelstiltskin sneered.

No sooner had he said the words than an image of the Jekylls lying dead on their laboratory floor popped into his head. He shook the thought away, feeling slightly ill. He had tried not to think of them much in the past few days, letting the planning for the trip to the Dark Realm keep him busy. Apart from the realization that the men’s life forces must still have been linked despite their separation, Rumplestiltskin had gained nothing from the experiment except the knowledge that the splitting serum was useless to him.

Regardless, that was not something he needed to worry about right now, he reminded himself firmly. There would be plenty of time to kick himself over his failure once they were all back home. Belle frowned, watching his face worriedly. “I wasn’t thinking of anything as drastic as that. Besides, we already have powerful twin fairies to deal with. I don’t think we need any more of them running around.” “According to the hobbit, they don’t like each other too much,” Regina drawled. “If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll kill each other and save us the trouble.” “If they managed to get along for this long, they can probably survive a few more centuries.” Rumplestiltskin thought once again of the Jekylls, begrudgingly working together for a goal they shared until they could take it no longer. “If the prize is worth it, anyone can work together. For a while, at least.” Regina snorted. “Meanwhile, they’ll be plotting the entire time how to kill one another. I know if I had a sister as powerful as I was, I wouldn’t wait for her to come after me. I’d grab both halves of that wand and strike first.” “That’s the part that doesn’t make sense,” Belle said, biting her lip in concentration. “Neither of them seemed that concerned about keeping their half of the wand from the other. Fiona must not be guarding hers if Bae could find it so easily, and Blue had her half well-hidden from the rest of us, but Fiona could have easily walked through the portal and grabbed it at any moment.” She frowned. “We need more information.”

That was an understatement, Rumplestiltskin thought wearily. There was so much they didn’t understand, especially when it came to why Blue and Fiona needed so much fairy dust.

When going up against rivals, he was always careful to make sure he knew everything about them: their desires, their weaknesses, and even their past. There was a lot to be learned from the decisions someone had made in their life, and it usually revealed a lot about what they might do in the future. But after all the lies were cleared away, the sisters’ past was essentially a blank slate. There wasn’t much they could learn from an absence of facts -

Rumplestiltskin's head shot up as his brain registered his thought. He turned quickly to Belle. “What do you know about the Golden Fairy?” he asked.

Belle’s mouth quirked into a smile. “I seem to remember asking you the same question not too long ago...”

He shook his head. “No, I know the legend of how she supposedly died, but what else? If she was the very first fairy in existence, the most powerful fairy who ever lived, why don’t we know more about her?”

She sucked in a breath. “Do you think they’re hiding something? Or covering up her death somehow?”

“Why not? They’re covering up her life,” he groused, rubbing his chin in thought. “It makes more sense than anything else at this point. Why else would we know so little about such a powerful being?”

He could see the wheels turning in Belle’s mind. “But clearly she did die or she wouldn’t have let her daughters get away with all of this.”

Rumplestiltskin shrugged. “We don’t know anything about her. Perhaps it was her idea and they’re just following in her footsteps. The only thing we know with any certainty is that they must be stopped.”

Belle’s eyes grew large. “What if she’s not dead? Maybe they have her locked up somewhere.” Her face lit up. “Perhaps she could help us! She is your grandmother after all - ”

“My...what?” Rumplestiltskin stopped abruptly. He had followed the family connection as far as Blue, but he had somehow failed to follow it another generation back. The realization that the Golden Fairy was his grandmother hit closer to home than he liked. Not only was he part of the very race he had always despised, but he was essentially descended from fairy royalty, or the closest thing the fairies had to it.

This would take some serious rethinking of his identity at some point.

“I don’t need any more relatives today, thank you very much,” he said roughly, suddenly wishing they would drop the matter.

Regina snickered. “But Auntie Blue has such a nice ring to it!”

He pointed a finger at her. “I’m warning you.”

“What are you going to do? Flap your fairy wings at me?” Regina cackled. “Can overgrown lizards even have wings? You’d just - ”

Her taunt was cut off as Rumplestiltskin waved his hand. A second later, the space where Regina had been sitting was occupied by a furry black and white creature.

“Rumple!” Belle yelped. “Is - is that a bear?”

He leaned back against the bars, feeling pleased with himself. He didn’t know it until much later, but he had just invented the panda.

Back in the Enchanted Forest, Reul had come to a realization of her own. Today was just not going to be her day.

After putting up with the Evil Queen’s antics for a good part of the morning, she’d been whisked away by one of her lieutenants, who had led her to the two unconscious guards in the tunnels. She had wasted no time after that in heading straight for the library. This entire situation stank too much of her counterpart’s sparkly spawn and Reul was eager to get him taken care of once and for all.

She strode through the portal, finding Fiona sitting calmly at her desk, clearly waiting for her to arrive. It was hardly surprising; Fiona was always waiting for her when she came through. Whether it was a telepathic connection they were unconscious of or a side effect from what they had gone through, Reul had never found out. As it was, she had more important things to worry about right now.

Before she could speak, however, Fiona said nonchalantly, “I had some visitors today.”

“Rumplestiltskin?”

She nodded. “Along with your renegade fairy and a portal jumper.”

Reul scowled. “Jefferson. So that’s how they got in.”

Fiona wrinkled her nose. “They smelt slightly of pickled fish.” She glanced sideways at Reul. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with your horrid habit, would it?”

Reul simply sniffed.

With a roll of her eyes, Fiona rose from her seat and beckoned for Reul to follow her. They set off down the tunnel side by side, neither willing to expose their back to the other.

“Does the boy know?” Reul asked.

“He found them first, actually.” Seeing the look on her face, Fiona continued. “They’re in my prison, so he’s of no help to them.”

Reul frowned. “You didn’t lock him up somewhere?”

Fiona gestured to the stone walls surrounding them. “More so than he already is? This entire realm is a prison.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “I usually leave being redundant to you.”

Reul ignored the slight. Unlike Fiona, she knew when to shut up and think. Rumplestiltskin and his friends had found their operation. The time for petty jokes was over.

They walked around the corner and into the chamber that held the prison. As they drew closer to the bars, Fiona let out a gasp. It took Reul only a moment longer to see why.

In the prison were two figures she had expected, and one she had not.

“I thought you said Jefferson was with them,” she said, frowning.

“I did.”

“You didn’t mention Regina either.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Fiona said, gritting her teeth. “Clearly, they’ve been busy.”

Rumplestiltskin leaned back against the bars, arms folded behind his head and looking as relaxed as if he were in the middle of a picnic. He gazed at the two of them lazily. “Glad you could join us, Blue. It’s a family reunion at last.”

She ignored him. “Where’s the Hatter?”

Regina smiled. “Enjoying far better company than any of us at the moment.” She wrinkled her nose. “Even I’d prefer an invisible cat to a bunch of pretentious fleas.”

“Why you vile little - ”

Fiona cut her off. “You can insult us all you want, highness. It won’t change the fact that you’re locked up in that cell.”

Regina’s smile widened. “Who said we’re locked up?”

Reul felt a shiver run up her spine. She looked from Fiona and back to the other three. “You’re bluffing. No magic can escape those bars.”

“Care to make a wager on that?” Rumplestiltskin grinned toothily from where he stood. “Our freedom against your - oh wait a minute.” He made a show of patting down his pockets before pulling out the now reassembled Golden Fairy’s wand and pointing it straight at them. “My wand.”

Before Reul could react, light burst forth from the wand. The bars of the prison hurtled forward, slamming into her and Fiona and knocking them to the ground.

Reul groaned, her head spinning as the bars pinned her in place. “This is all your fault,” she wheezed.

Fiona lie beside her, breathing heavily. “Shut up and push.”

“I remember telling you that 350 years ago and look what trouble that got us into!”

Fiona ignored her taunt and Reul focused her magic on pushing the bars away from them. Beside her, she could feel her other half doing the same. With their combined power, the bars slid off them easily. They stood up, ready to face their attackers.

Rumplestiltskin and Regina both stood with fireballs hovering in their open hands. Belle stood behind Rumplestiltskin, his body shielding her from harm.

The solution was obvious. If Reul could get to Belle, she would be able to control the Dark One. Or better yet, she could use the sorcerer’s son to hold him back.

“Where’s Baelfire?” she hissed to Fiona.

“Oh, he’s rounding up the children and preparing them for an escape.”

Reul turned her eyes from the others to stare at Fiona. “What?!”

Fiona smirked. “Didn’t I always tell you I was the smarter half?” An enchanted cuff materialized in her hand and she slapped it on Reul’s wrist, blocking her magic. With a wink, Fiona disappeared, leaving Reul alone to face their enemies.

“Oh, fiddlesticks!”

Fiona appeared back in her office a moment later. She seated herself comfortably in the chair behind her desk before waving her hand, summoning her grandson.

Bae looked started as he appeared in front of her desk, his eyes growing even wider as he saw her. “Wh-what’s going on?” he stammered.

“I think it’s time we had a chat.” She gestured to the chair behind him. “Do sit down.”

He regarded the chair as if it had fangs. “I’d rather not.”

Fiona nodded before sending the chair flying toward Bae, knocking his legs out from underneath him. He fell back into the chair with a huff.

“See? Isn’t that better?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. “I think it’s time we put all of our cards on the table. I know you gave your father my half of the wand so he could escape.”

Bae’s mouth opened and closed rapidly, reminding Fiona of a fish gasping for air on the dry sand.

“But how - ”

She chuckled. “My dear boy, you couldn’t have been so foolish as to think I didn’t know you were always in here, did you?” She pointed to the corner bookshelf he had always hidden behind. “Do you think I would have allowed you in my study if I didn’t want you here?”

Bae’s eyes grew wide. “You knew?”

She nodded, a smirk stretching across her dark red lips. “The only reason Ruel didn’t detect your presence was because my magic was hiding you from her.”

Her grandson looked at her in astonishment. He was clearly struggling with this new information, so she gave him a few moments to think it over.

“I don’t understand,” he finally said. “Why would you want me here?”

Fiona chose her words carefully. Bae was an intelligent child, but he was also an emotional one. Despite everything that had happened between him and her son, she could see that Bae still loved his father. She’d have to explain herself carefully or risk alienating him and jeopardizing her future plans.

“Oh, I have my reasons. Getting one over Ruel was always great fun, and I wanted you to see her for who she truly is. I knew you’d never believe a word I said otherwise.” She gave him a fond look. “I know I can be harsh at times, but I’ve never lied about how I feel about you or who you were to me.” Her eyes gleamed. “I don’t believe in being a hypocrite.”

“If you care about me, then you can’t let her hurt my papa.” Bae looked at her pleadingly. “He’s your son! You can’t let her kill him.”

Fiona giggled. “Whatever made you think I was going to let her do that?” Her laughter stopped as she sensed a presence outside her door. Her magic reached out, immediately recognizing the intruder.

She waved the door open. “No use lurking outside, Rumple. My magic sensed you the moment you came near.”

Her son walked through the door warily, eyes falling on Bae before flicking back up to meet hers. “Ah mother, I was wondering where you’d gotten to.”

Though the endearment had been said snidely, Fiona beamed at him. “Is Reul dead?”

Rumplestiltskin regarded her curiously, his brilliant mind clearly trying to chip away at her. But he would need more than his intellect to figure her secrets out. Her son was clever - hardly a surprise considering she had given birth to him - but there were ancient magics that even he in all his years as the Dark One hadn’t encountered.

“No,” he said finally. “But she’s not a threat anymore. I was more worried about where you’d scampered away to.”

She gestured towards Bae. “As you can see, I’m just having a little chat with my grandson.”

Bae regarded his father silently from his chair. Fiona could sense his longing to run to him, but it was more than the threat of her magic that held him in his seat.

“Since we’re all here, we might as well have a family chat.” She pointed towards another chair. “Take a seat, Rumple.”

Belle didn’t really like being left alone with Regina to guard Blue. But she had sensed Rumple’s need to confront his mother on his own and hadn’t wanted to interfere. Besides, she didn’t trust Regina to watch Blue by herself, even if the latter was unconscious at the moment. Who knew what sort of twisted deal they would come up with if left on their own?

For the most part, Regina was lounging on her couch and doing a great job of ignoring her, which suited Belle just fine. She didn’t like the woman nor did she understand the weird antagonistic friendship the queen had with Rumple. Eventually she’d have to ask him about that, along with a hundred other questions.

Blue began to stir and Belle pushed her thoughts aside. There’d be time enough for them after they got themselves out of this mess.

It took Blue a moment to come around. When she did, she zeroed in on Belle’s face, her own contorting into a scowl. “I always knew you would prove to be a disappointment, Bluebelle.”

Once, her former mentor’s words would have hurt her. Now, they were only laughable.

“Me?” Belle laughed mirthlessly. “What in the world could I ever do that would come close to this?” She spread her arms to encompass the cave. “You’ve stolen children from their families, enslaved them for your own gain, and lied to every fairy who has ever served you.” All the anger and betrayal that Belle had felt since she’d learned the truth bubbled to the surface. “I can only be grateful that I’m a disappointment to someone like you!”

Beside her, she heard Regina let out a low whistle. “The little fairy’s got teeth.”

“I have two words for you, Regina,” Belle growled. “ Poison. Ivy.”

Regina sniffed and looked away, but she could see that the queen had paled slightly at her words. Belle considered it a win.

It was only when Blue began to chuckle that Belle turned her attention back to their prisoner, who wore a smug expression on her face.

“This is too precious. You claim to have the moral high ground while working with the Evil Queen and the Dark One.” Blue smiled at her patronizingly. “You really are in over your head, aren’t you?”

Belle stared her down, realizing any fear she had once felt had vanished. Blue couldn’t hurt her anymore. Or the children she’d forced to work in the mines. “It’s over, Blue. No one is on your side anymore. I’m going to tell everyone what sort of person you really are.”

“You think anyone will listen to you? The Dark One’s whore?”

“Hey!” Regina, eyes flashing, marched over to Blue and poked her hard in the shoulder. “You might want to keep better track of your tongue, unless you want me to remove it for you.”

Belle opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Being defended by Regina was hardly the strangest thing that had happened that day, but she still hadn’t been expecting it.

Regina caught her staring wordlessly at her and shrugged. “Don’t read too much into it. I still think you’re an annoying little flea.” Without another word, the queen turned and walked back to her couch before flopping down once again.

Blue for her part looked just as surprised as Belle felt. The other fairy looked as if she was going to speak, but Belle beat her to it.

“She’s not bluffing,” Belle said matter-of-factly.

A glare was Blue’s only response. Clearly, she had taken the warning to heart. A tiny part of Belle was almost sorry. A darker part of her, the side she rarely acknowledged, would have liked to see Regina put Blue in her place again.

The three lapsed into silence, giving Belle time to think. Sitting there between Blue and Regina, it was clear to her just how far she’d come since running away from the glen.

It was odd how things had turned out, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way. She’d tried her whole life to fit in with her own people, only to find acceptance from the very enemy she had been taught to hate.

The motley crew of characters she’d encountered in the last few months had become her family without her even realizing it. Jefferson with his strange quirks and eccentricities had quickly wormed his into her heart. Rumple somehow inspired an equal level of love and exasperation from her, which she was still trying to figure out. And while she knew she’d never be able to call Regina a kindred spirit, the queen was still a part of this new family Belle had found since she’d left her old life behind.

Flawed they may be, but she had discovered who she was with them. Just like them, she wasn’t a perfect hero who never made mistakes.

She was simply Belle, and for once, that was enough.

Author’s Note: Thanks to everyone who suggested animals for Regina to turn into, but panda was the winner! Here’s a video of Lana Parrilla talking about the Evil Panda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LpH7xjyudU

#rumbelle #rumbelle fic #rumplestiltskin #fairy belle #the fairy gardener

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elfnerdherder · 6 years ago

Text

Ill Intentions: Chapter 22

[Support my Patreon] [Read on Ao3]

A special thanks to my patrons: @sylarana @evertonem @jenacar @frostylicker @starlit-catastrophe @kenobi-is-king Mendacious Bean, Duhaunt6, Superlurk, and Cecily!

I don't have my computer with me, so this sadly won't have the cover art done by kenobi-is-king! Thank you all for your support in my writing, and I can't wait to pick up The Unquiet Grave after this!!

Also, due to this being posted on a Tumblr app on a chromebook whose internet won't load due to bad connection, it won't allow me to add the entire chapter. It ends about partway through, but until I'm back on the west coast I won't be able to load the rest of the chapter onto Tumblr! Sorry for the inconvenience!

Chapter 22: End Scene

When Tattler News released the ‘Special Edition’ of ‘Will Intentions’, Nicole pinned her copy to a corkboard much like Will’s. She’d already snuck into his apartment, taken photos, and recreated something of his workspace within her own office, to better step into the shoes of what his fans were calling ‘a vigilante move’.

To partner with the Tattler News release, she’d also released a special post on her blog with a ‘tell all’ interview courtesy of Freddie Lounds, coworker and ‘close friend’ of Graham. She’d already received four more subscriptions, as well as twenty new messages in her inbox, thanking her for her hard work.

I saved an image of the handkerchief! someone had commented. I’ll try to find one like it at the store. Maybe I’ll cosplay it.

Lounds had asked to see the handkerchief Nicole had mentioned, but it was never revealed in person. The look on Lounds’ face when she was told ‘no’ made Nicole more than grateful she’d put a lock on her jewelry box before the reporter had shown up.

As for her end of the bargain, she’d passed his manuscript along to her agent. Anything more, and she’d have her own story about uneasy trips to the FBI to tell her readers.

Abigail didn’t speak to Will until they were somewhere in Vancouver, BC. She spent most of the trip with her earphones in her ears and her head towards the window. Given the time, Will didn’t press her. It seemed she’d been playing a game with him for almost as long as he’d been playing a game with Hannibal.

And yet, no; what game do you think you’re all playing?

The border situation had been tricky, but the homeless man –Mike, Will kept having to remind himself –was more than true to his word at getting them across. Once across, it was the sort of drive done by someone who had a very important place to go with little time to get there. They stopped for gas and nothing else. The next couple of days was nothing but yoo-hoo’s and donuts, Will’s dreams bleeding into the waking hours of watching hill after hill of white pass by. Blankets of it draped along the interstate, but the plows had done their job. If their car appeared suspicious, no one stopped them. The more they kept to normal hours of traffic where it was difficult for cops to keep an eye out, the better. Hannibal remained in the backseat and only got out when absolutely necessary.

“I’m not sorry for not telling you,” Abigail said by way of greeting. Will stood beside the passenger door, a cup of shitty gas station coffee in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. His watch had died somewhere just before the border. Since ditching his phone, he hadn’t felt the need to dig through his bag in order to charge the thing, seeing as how one without the other was somewhat of a moot point.

He glanced to the black, blank screen, and he wondered why he was even still wearing it. He hadn’t thought about his steps since Hannibal’s office. Streak broken. He wasn’t sure if that meant something, and if it did mean something, he wasn’t ready to unbox it yet, much the same way he wasn’t quite ready to unbox that there was another person inside of his head that killed people so that he didn’t have to.

“I didn’t tell you a lot of things,” he replied.

“You didn’t call, either,” she said, and it took him probably longer than it should have for Will to realize she sounded almost hurt by it. He wasn’t quite focused; maybe the watch having a blank face was more of a problem to him than he thought.

“If I’d known Hannibal had gotten to you first, I would have been…more forthcoming,” he admitted. When she didn’t speak, he took a drag from his cigarette and continued, “hell, when he was breaking into my apartment, you could have just let him in. I asked Beverly to house you because I didn’t want to make you a target of yet another serial killer.”

“I didn’t actually get fired from Subway. I quit.”

Will hummed in agreement. “Figured that an hour into the drive.”

“I followed Beverly following you sometimes, too.”

“We could have all carpooled if you two communicated better.”

“You first,” Abigail shot back.

That was fair. Will’s cheeks ballooned, and he blew air out slowly, counting back from ten.

“Abigail,” he said, and the look she gave him made this so much harder. “You’re…not guilty of anything, really.”

“Says the guy that called me ‘the knowing bait,’” she retorted.

“No, I mean it…” he sighed and looked around the decrepit gas station pointedly. “I’m abetting a murderer.” Silence. He scowled and continued, “right now, you could walk away and not face any legal persecution should you go back to the states, whereas I would go to jail. That guy in there –”

“The one you stabbed –”

“I don’t remember stabbing –look, him too. The three of us would go to jail, but you wouldn’t.”

His cigarette had burned too low; he let out a hiss when it singed his fingers, and he stubbed it out on the tire before tossing the butt of it in the trashcan by the pump. Too late, he saw the warning on the pump that said not to smoke while gassing up. Will glanced about, but there was no one to scold him on the dangers of such endeavors. There was only him and Abigail at the moment, and he’d have almost welcomed Hannibal coming to interrupt them. He could imagine how a psychiatrist would be a much better option for giving advice than he would.

Abigail looked out past the cars parked just at the treeline, the expanse beyond it. Her expression was difficult to read, a mix of something pained and something hopeful.

“I don’t have anything else,” she said, and when she looked back to him, she smiled. In that moment, he’d have called it genuine. “I told you before, I’m looking for closure. Since that’s all that seems to matter to me at this point, I’ll stick around until I find it.”

Will sucked air in sharply, frowning. “The consequences –”

“I know how to juggle consequences. I can weigh the risk of pros and cons.”

Given how long she lived under the roof of the Minnesota Shrike, he believed her. When it was time to go, they climbed back into a beat-up Tahoe they’d swapped somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and she made a point to lay her head in Will’s lap, much like she had back at the apartment.

Much later, Will would find a polaroid of the scene tucked into his jacket pocket, the colors washed out and faded but still good. He tucked it into his shirt pocket, to preserve the color.

“I’m just outside of Tattler News, Jerry, and here we’ve got not only fans of the paper demanding answers, we’ve got some of Will Graham’s ‘avid fans’ here with signs! Just this past evening, as we know, Will Graham’s apartment was invaded by the FBI, boxes upon boxes removed from the scene as they attempt to glean over anything they can in order to find both him, as well as the Chesapeake Ripper. So far, there is no information revealed as to whether or not they have any solid leads to their whereabouts.”

“Now, I know we’re dealing with the Chesapeake Ripper, Chet, but I think what’s interesting are the avid fans of Graham’s you’ve got gathered around you!”

“Yes, these people aren’t here for news on the Ripper, they’re actually here for Will Graham. You can hear some of them in the back, chanting –you can hear it, can’t you?”

“Yes, of course!”

“They’re upset that the suspect in the disappearance of Hannibal Lecter –”

[Continue on Ao3]

#hannibal #lias scribbles #hannibal fanfic #writing #hannigram #slowburn hannigram #dark!will #grey!will #journalist!will #hannibal x will graham #abigail hobbs

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spineofdeathwing · 6 years ago

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Response

The sincere level of cherry picking in this post is absolutely laughable and abhorring. I’ll start from the top to bottom of ‘evidence’.

The first discussion and issue of Hu'lon was that I saw a pattern in something that I had seen in a lot of my members past; it escalated due to Hu'lon refusing to communicate, and through the grapevine I just heard that they wanted to ‘not put it in the Accord’. I was concerned, and I reached out - the first time, I was met with stalwart refusal to communicate, so I backed off due to knowing that they had a legitimate social issue. I approached later on, and as you can see, the discussion was very forward and after clearing up my concerns with them, I backed off and that should have been the end of it. For the officers reaching out to people - I apologize if I prefer to discuss things over solving everything with a block button and refusal to speak.

Moving onto the part about me being tired of this. I had my current best friend leave the guild in the middle of the night, after seemingly everything was good (again, due to a lack of communication, I was not made aware that the other person was uncomfortable.) I suffer from BPD - i.e. Borderline Personality Disorder, which, if any of you have associated or learned of it, is the behaviour of absolute fear, anxiety and melting down when you’re met with someone leaving you. Tiao Lin was one of my best friends, and I still consider them to be, and I was in absolute tears when I made these messages. There is no guilt-tripping, there is legitimate depression and anxiety happening when these messages are happening. Conveniently, they left out the part where I explained such.

Moving onto the art 'requests’. I asked every single one of my artists in the guild - which, my guild has quite a number and I sincerely admire each and every one of them - if they’d like to collaborate in an effort to recruit people. This was clearly outlined in the picture: HERE at the top, almost cut off and further cherry picked.

Moving onto Tiao Lin once more, I reached out to a few of the stable people that I know she would make good friends with so that she would feel more at home in the guild. She suffers from anxiety and I genuinely wished her the best. I messaged three people to just reach out for her - if she felt anxious because of something, then she should always have a way to help and heal with her guild. I do not believe this was something that is wrong.

People were hurt by her departure. She blocked and removed everyone without a word.

One hurt person, that didn’t wish to include them in our recruitment post anymore. Note that I was still actively attempting to defend her.

Another hurt person. Both close friends of hers.

As you can see, I talked and discussed with all of them. I never made the claim that the whole guild absolutely hated her, because I never told everyone she had left - I had elected to keep that a non-topic until it had been fully closed, because I knew from their patterns of behaviour that they can have these blips of panic. I did not fault her, and I explained to those people further into the conversation how and why it happened.

More art requests - this was very clearly a joke, and taken out of context.

Now, for these claims of racism and others. Correct, I did say them, in private games with friends that I had been around for months at this point. Note in the first one that Tiao Lin (Sylvissa) was clearly leading the joke towards what I said, and I just expanded on an edgy joke. There is no hatred, no calling other people these words, nor is there any sort of malicious intent behind it. It’s a joke. By holding these words so high in the realms of taboo, you give them the power behind them. If, at any point, someone mentioned that they were uncomfortable with what I said, I would be more than happy to apologize, and not say it again, which - with another cherry picked screenshot, I did HERE .

For the second member of the Accord that you listed that I was upset about creating alts; they’re still very much in the guild, and we’ve discussed this in length before to ensure that there will be no misconstrued information again - they do not feel wronged. They are wronged however that you, Hu'lon, used them without permission just to push your letter. They used sixty dollars of their own money to boost a character, and when you had finished with them - you blocked them. You made them cry because of your actions. Your entire argument on these things is based on exceptionally out-of-context statements that I’m appalled you think you can spread to other people just to scorn and ruin my guild.

This is laughable .. Wey is a friend of mine and that is clearly taken out of context once more - and the bottom snippet has never happened. I haven’t run HFC in years; nor have I ever done a commission that had horns in it - and if I had, WMV doesn’t 'not’ export horns. It’s attached to the body model. This is clear and utter bullshit once more just to push an agenda.

Onto the worst, and final point. Hu'lon, you dug through five years of drama and unburied it in an effort to burn me, and my guild down. Yes, I faked having cancer. Five years ago, as a teenager with an undiagnosed mental disorder, which is now diagnosed as BPD - which I also have much more control over, nowadays. The circumstances revolving around this are as follows: I ran a guild called Mistborn, that had around two-hundred to three-hundred members. Due to conspiring between my officers as they found it humorous to antagonize me and make me meltdown; they managed to collapse my guild within a week. At this point, I had never dealt with something this heart-sinking and strenous - my BPD forced me into an absolute panic, and craved for nothing other than emotions of hatred from people. Yes, I claimed that I had cancer in an effort to gain pity, because at this point in my life with my mental disorder - I couldn’t think of anything else. I was in a panic.

Since then, I have apologized to every person that was involved with me, back then. Extrenously. I know that doesn’t make up for it, but I’ve moved on. They’ve moved on. You had one of the officers that -caused- that meltdown tell you that it was not my fault, but you elected to bring this up because you wish to become a martyr for.. whatever cause it is that you’re standing for. I’m not absolving myself because of my mental disorder, but I took every step necessary to cleanse any ill-will that people had from me back then, to which most understood once they heard the full story.

To end this all off, I will summarize. Yes, I had some extrenous issues in the past that have led to the reputation that I have today. I have been working day-in and day-out to attempt to make rights where I made wrongs in the past, but this is stuff from five years ago.

To Tiao Lin - I don’t blame where you stand right now. You’re always welcome to talk to me again, because clearly there is a lack of communication. I understand - you have anxiety. I’ve attempted time and time again to try to help that, but apparently I missed the mark. I’m sorry.

To Hu'lon - I do not respect your attempts to become a martyr to take my guild down. You made claims that you’re hurt that everyone in the guild is turning against you - because you’re making rash decisions that could harm all of us, because of your grudge against one. You never made any attempt to get further information in all of this. You snipped out of context screenshots, and just worked to paint me as the bad guy time and time again. You are the issue with roleplay realms. Instead of discussing and talking like a rational person, you argue with the block and ignore button - without caring about the consequences that come with it, involving multiple people that you USED in these screenshots - and then aim to call me out.

If you read all of this, even if you do not see my side of the argument - I respect you for refusing to listen to blind lies. There will also be follow up posts from people that have known me since back then that -will- discuss in truth what happened, instead of your cherry-picked mess.

Remember when you posted evidence and claimed that I was threatening Wey? Here’s the actual commissioner. Picture 1. Picture 2.

Another commissioner that will happily back-up the fact that I do not do these kinds of things.

Another one. Picture 2.

And when you said I was trying to get free art from you? Here’s another artist in the guild.

And, now statements from my BPD. I asked these people to be absolutely honest about their experiences. These are not hand-picked to try to further my agenda, these are straight from people that have known me for years, and have struggled with my disorder with me.

Picture 1. Picture 2. Picture 3. Picture 4. Picture 5 (very important.) Picture 6. Picture 7.

I’d appreciate it if didn’t bring up stuff you weren’t personally involved to try to bring down me, and my guild from now on. If anybody has an issue with me, you may add me at Zushou#5130 and I will discuss any grievances, hatred, questions, or you can sit there flaming me. Doesn’t matter to me.

#Story #world of warcraft #Moon Guard #submission

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kiyabujayniah1996 · 4 years ago

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Reiki Universal Life Energy Pdf Prodigious Useful Tips

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Reiki Master Level 4

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Reiki Cure Psoriasis

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#Reiki Universal Life Energy Pdf Prodigious Useful Tips #How To Use Reiki Symbols Properly

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scrawnydutchman · 4 years ago

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My Animation Journey: Thomas van Kampen

Hey everyone! It’s been a VERY long time since I updated my blog, huh?

So for this post I thought I would do something a little different. For those who don’t know, I’m a professional animator. I have been for about two years now. I’ve worked on shows like Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series, Care Bears: Unlock the Magic and Curious George. I’ve also been a part of a few other projects before that like the crowdfunded feature film Dawgtown. Reason I bring all of this up is I figured it might be helpful to some folks if they knew how exactly I got to this position. Nowadays it feels like if you throw a rock you’ll more than likely hit an aspiring professional artist, but for as many as there may be a lot of them aren’t actually sure if they can make it due to a number of doubts. Maybe they can’t afford schooling. Maybe they aren’t in a region where the industry is prominent. Maybe they just don’t know what they have to do to get studio attention. I personally feel that the story of how I broke in to the industry is pretty unique so my hope is that reading it might help many an aspiring artist gain confidence and maybe even fill in the blanks for their own story. So without further ado, let’s start at the beginning.

Part 1: The Beginning

My entire life I’ve always been a storyteller. When I was in elementary school I used to make little comic books out of stapled pieces of printer paper and hand them out to my classmates. In high school I wrote a 100 page fantasy novel and wrote/directed a play in drama class. My grades were never all that good, but I always scored high in art and creative writing projects. Here’s a comedy skit I put together back in high school with my friends (warning: incoming cringe):

youtube

As a testament to my love for storytelling, I thought for a very long time my destiny lied in live action film making. But that didn’t exactly pan out the way I hoped. For one, I was rejected from my nearby institute’s video production course 3 times. For another, I didn’t exactly have all the skills necessary to direct a production involving multiple people. Film proved to be a difficult path for me because I couldn’t work around peoples’ schedules and I couldn’t find the locations I wanted for the types of stories I wanted to tell. Best I could ever do was comedy skits. All this compounded failure left me drifting for a little while after high school.

But then, on my 18th birthday, my dad pulled me aside to give me a proposal. He said that since 18 is such a milestone, he and my mom wanted to do something extra special for my gift. He told me I have two options: I can either get $100 dollars to spend on whatever I want . . . or, if I had something in mind for starting a career, he would spend as high as $800.

Obviously I wanted to take the latter. But I wasn’t sure what to do. Film wasn’t panning out. My mom and dad at the time tried to pressure me into app development and computer coding because they seemed like safe ventures, but I couldn’t entertain something like that. Whatever it is I chose, it had to allow me to tell the stories that I wanted to tell.

Then, it hit me. I suddenly remembered hearing about this animation program called “Toon Boom” back in high school comm tech. So I thought “why don’t I do animation?”. After all, I could already draw. Plus, with animation you don’t have ANY of the limitations of live action. You can create anything you can imagine with animation and you can make everything yourself from the comfort of your room. I knew it was going to be a time consuming thing, but after a bit of soul searching I knew this is what I wanted for myself. So I told my dad about it and he managed to find a student copy of toon boom animate for cheap on Ebay (back when it didn’t go by Harmony). So I got that for my birthday and got to work. I still have my very first cartoon here:

youtube

Oh yeah, it’s awful. I had a VERY rudimentary understanding of how animation worked. I drew everything haphazardly with my mouse. I didn’t know how to use motion tweens all that well so in some places I just copy pasted assets and rotated the drawings slightly. I stole copyrighted music (which miraculously I haven’t been caught for yet). I recorded the dialogue on my phone. Worst of all, I didn’t even know how to properly compress my video. Believe it or not, this took me a month and a half to make.

But you know what? Everyone I knew loved it. My feed blew up and everyone made a point to tell me how funny they thought it was. I remember my dad saying “toon boom seems like a good investment!” Needless to say, the positive reinforcement was very encouraging.

I’m hoping the takeaway here is two things:

1. Knowing what you want in life is a deep, soul searching process, but once you find it, committing to it isn’t all that hard, even if it’s tedious as hell.

2. The best way to get started in anything is to just, well . . . get started. Make something. ANYTHING. even if it’s not that great. For as poorly as this cartoon has aged, it resulted in me getting my very first commission from my brother where he asked me to make a music video for his band. It also resulted in me getting a drawing tablet for Christmas later that year. Even bad content is better than having nothing in your repertoire at all. Try getting your ideas out no matter what.

This boost in confidence eventually resulted in me going for making long form content. I wrote, animated, edited, voice acted and directed TWO episodes of a show featuring the character you see in my very first cartoon. The first episode took me half a year to create and the second took me a WHOLE YEAR. But you know what? I was showing clear signs of improving all the way.

Here are the episodes:

youtube

Part 2: Making connections

So at this point, my motivation to break my way into the arts was in full throttle. I was SURE that animation is what I wanted to do in life. Making little shorts was cool and all, but I still needed to learn how to get professional attention. So there’s a number of things I did:

For starters, I needed to know what employers were looking for when I apply for a job. I remember way back, around the time i was halfway through making episode 2 of the Peacock, I was talking to a friend of my brother’s at his birthday party. I told him I wanted to pursue animation professionally (I believe this was after we were talking about the music video I made for my brother) and he said that he knew a guy in Vancouver who was doing 3D animation. I asked for his name and then later that night looked him up on Facebook. Once I was sure I was talking to the right guy, I wrote him a lengthy message about how much breaking into animation would mean to me. He told me that he was visiting my home town for a little while anyway and he generously donated his time to answer my questions about the industry over coffee. He told me all about demo reels and how I would need to structure it and what kind of knowledge that studios were looking for and all that type of stuff. I was also recommended to talk to another professional in my home town and she told me to get started on a portfolio website. So I took everything they were telling me and started applying it.

my niece told me about this organization in my hometown that she found out about through the grapevine. This place called the “Quickdraw Animation Society”. It was this organization dedicated to helping local artists find their voice and gain the skills necessary to make their own animated films. I thought this was perfect!! College was sort of off the table for me since my dad highly encouraged getting an education at this trade school and he told me he wouldn’t pay for an education that didn’t guarantee a job at the end (and looking back knowing the kind of debt i could have fallen into, I kind of side with him on that one). But Quickdraw was offering animation courses for cheap! Even i could afford it on my part time retail salary! So I took Quickdraw’s classes and used them as a vehicle to start making even more of my own projects.

Here’s just one of several short animations I made while studying under Quickdraw:

youtube

But my involvement with Quickdraw didn’t stop there. I made a point to volunteer for them in their move and their fundraising efforts and their little animation showcases. I made a point to REALLY get involved with their community. That ended up being arguably the most instrumental decision in my career. After a while I got done making my very first Demo Reel. I was ready to start officially applying for jobs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx5OHGfYz-4

I know this reel doesn’t seem like much, but believe it or not, with the help of the Quickdraw Animation Society, this reel ended up getting me my first two major animation gigs.

The takeaway here is: get involved with a community. Reach out to people. Get yourself out there. Don’t be afraid to ask professionals questions and accept that a lot of this is going to involve relying on the kindness of strangers. Nobody gets anywhere without somebody helping them.

Part 3: Thomas the Freelancer

After I completed my very first demo reel, as fate would have it Quickdraw began emailing me among others about new job opportunities popping up. The first time they informed me of a job post, it was somebody looking for an artist to create animated backgrounds for a stage play performance of “Curious George”. I was among the very first to send my application and this was the very first time I used my demo reel to try and land a job. The next day, their recruiter contacted me on the phone and started with “thank you for including a demo reel instead of putting the illness on me to track down your work like other applicants”. See how important a demo reel is? I ended up creating every background for every scene of that play, which was projected onto the screen behind the performers as they did their thing.

After that, Quickdraw informed me of ANOTHER job post. This time it was a children’s book author in Edmonton looking for an animator to help her win an animated film pitch contest. The winners of this contest would get a grant of $10,000 to create their animated short which would then be featured on Telus’ Storyhive platform. I sent her my demo reel and she brought me on to help put together the assets we needed to make the cut. And guess what? We were among the few who were selected to earn the $10,000. This resulted in me flying for the VERY FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE to Vancouver, where we would attend a workshop detailing the conditions of the contest. I also happened to meet even more animation friends on the plane (they were sitting right across from me and were other winners of the Storyhive competition).

In the following months I would dedicate almost ALL my free time to this short film. I even quit my part time job so i could commit to it full time (a decision my dad was thrilled about, I’m sure). I did all the storyboarding, background design, character design and animation BY MYSELF. If anything in the development cycle was visual related, I was the guy that did it, taking notes from my directors all along the way. In hindsight, I definitely should have asked for more help since the final product has a few flaws, but this is still a milestone achievement in my career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmTuwIeEoqA

At this point, I had somewhat made a name for myself. I had credentials. I had recommendations from clients. Gerry Mouse would go on to be featured in multiple film festivals: My film festival debut in fact. As you can imagine, my ego was at an all time high. After the film released I updated my demo reel again and felt like I was ready to officially start applying for full time studio work in the industry.

As I would come to find . . . it wouldn’t be that easy.

Part 4: The Dry Spell

Gerry Mouse was the last big success of mine for quite some time. What followed was an entire year of doing ‘freelance work’ . . . .which is a polite way of saying I was mostly unemployed with only a few small gigs inbetween. I was relentlessly applying for studios all over Canada, hoping SOMEBODY would give me the time of day. In some places, a few studios even offered me the chance to do a test . . . but due to circumstances that I’m honestly embarrassed about in retrospect, I either failed them or couldn’t complete them at all. My dad eventually started pressuring me to get any kind of employment I could get my hands on, but even trying to find work in low requirement fields was proving to be fruitless. I was getting depressed, which was compounded on by the fact that I had gone through a hard break up around that time as well. it wasn’t ALL bad though. Around that time I made another short film called “A Lovely Stroll”, which would later be featured in both the Florida Animation Festival AND the Open World Animation Festival (which is kind of like my debut as a writer and director, not just the crews animation lead).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afN2v3pBiqQ

It was also around this time where I got a month long remote gig from a studio in Toronto that was . . . honestly? Best paying gig I ever got to this day. It’s too bad that never amounted to anything bigger. I also started doing a wee bit of animation for Dawgtown too, but that eventually ran dry due to production complications. The bulk of that time was just spent by me being depressed and uncertain about the future, earning what ever money I could with small commissions here and there.

Then, within my endless pushing of applications hoping for any studio in all of Canada to notice me, I happened to send an application to Copernicus Studios in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The human resources department responded to my application saying that they weren’t hiring at the time, but they were gearing up to recruit for something that summer and may contact me again with the opportunity to do a test months down the line.

And that’s exactly what they did.

When I received the animation test from Copernicus, I was more determined than ever. I was going to dedicate as much time as I possibly could to making this test look the best it could be. I remember spending VERY late nights being very paranoid about every little detail and frantically looking up whatever I didn’t know about Toon Boom at the time. After I submitted my test, I was counting down the days for their response.

They got back to me in a reasonable amount of time and asked if I would be interested in a video interview. I was freaking out and wanted to make ABSOLUTELY sure I could impress. I cleaned up as well as I could and made sure to answer all their questions honestly and concisely.

And then . . . they officially offered me a role on the production. You can’t imagine the rush of joy that went through me when I first read that email. After years of grinding and twiddling my thumbs I finally broke my glass ceiling. The idea of a random kid from Alberta breaking into a niche industry like that with no college education was unheard of. They told me in the video interview that the contract was for a Netflix animated adaptation of a classic adult Canadian sitcom. At the time I thought it was going to be Corner Gas. It turned out to be Trailer Park Boys. Once we got the news, I celebrated with all my family and friends and my dad and I planned my move to Halifax; a city on the complete opposite side of the country.

This next bit has nothing to do with the animation stuff, I just think it’s an interesting tidbit to share:

At first, my dad and I were struggling to find a place for me to live in the city. The problem was that my new contract wanted me to start in late May, but every lease of every apartment naturally wants you to start living there the first of the month. But, the biggest stroke of luck in the universe would happen to me. My dad happened to call one apartment’s office and explained to them what my situation was and they said

“funny you should mention that . . .I have two tenants here in my office RIGHT NOW that are looking for somebody to sublease for them and they need to be moved out by May 25th. If Tom subleases for them he can be in there before June no problem.”

WHAT. ARE. THE. CHANCES. OF. THAT??????

My apartment’s previous tenants were super nice too. for a thousand dollars they gave me their double sized bed, their microwave, their working desk, their couch, their vacuum cleaner and a bunch of other things to help me get started. They also went out of their way to get me nice things like a laundry card with $20 on it, a map of Halifax, a cupboard stocked up with insta-noodles, some cheap cutlery and bowls. . . . they went super out of their way to be nice to me on my first move and I’ll never forget that.

At the time I thought a stroke of luck like that was a sign from God that I was pursuing my destiny. To this day I think that still might be true. My takeaway here is don’t give up no matter what. Even if things seem uncertain at times, perseverance and tenacity will pay off in the end.

So with that, I said goodbye to my family and friends and moved to Halifax to begin my adult life as a full time PROFESSIONAL animator. I felt like I could take on anything.

And that . . . wasn’t 100% true.

Part 5: Growing Pains

I was very excited to work on my first studio production in house and it was through this contract that I met some of my closest friends ever. I learned more about toon boom and animation in 3 months than I did in 3 years of freelancing. But it wasn’t all fun and games. In fact, a lot of it was VERY VERY stressful and I ended up making more mistakes than I care to admit. In retrospect it’s easy to forgive myself because that’s just what happens when you’re that green, especially with a journey as unorthodox as mine, but at the time I did NOT take it well at ALL. See, at this point I was 100% motivated to be the best artist I could possibly be. As far as I was concerned not much else in life mattered that much. And that made me toxic. I had a hard time emotionally with taking criticism for my work. I started getting argumentative with my friends. I overworked myself. I tried to have a sense of humor for my problems but the self deprecating jokes only made me feel worse. What followed was nearly 2 years of feeling what the industry pros call “imposter syndrome”. I had it BAD. But luckily, I get by with a little help from my friends. I started opening up about what I was going through and luckily the people around me have been very reassuring about my right to be where I am. But the feelings of inadequacy DID end up leaving a dent in my work at the time and by the time Copernicus was recruiting for another toon boom show, I was not one of the few selected. But there WAS an alternative. They had just opened up some positions for their flash show (which was Care Bears: Unlock the Magic). They gave me the opportunity to do the flash test and I accepted. At the time I didn’t know very much about Flash . . . like, at all . . . but I sat down to learn as much about it as I could in the week that I had and I had done JUST well enough on the test to get myself another contract. From then on I spent nearly a year mastering Flash. Then, I was eventually brought on to Curious George to help on shadows and revisions. Then, shortly after, Copernicus asked me if I’d be interested in doing the builds test. I said yes, learned a bunch of stuff on the fly and got that job too. That’s what I’m doing right now.

The takeaway here is more an important lesson for when you DO make it rather than your journey to that point. When you break into the industry, you’re going to be met with a LOT of challenges. this industry is highly competitive and highly demanding. It’s not enough to be a skilled artist; you also have to have the grit to be a dependable team member. Matter of fact, at a time when my skill wasn’t cutting it, my grit was what helped keep me from washing out. And also, don’t be afraid to try new things. In an industry as volatile as animation being a jack of all trades is a HUGE selling point.

My advice is stay determined and, more importantly . . .try not to let failure get to your heart. keep your head up, allow yourself to heal, and forgive your mistakes. You’re not always going to stick the landing, but that’s okay. If you stick with it, you’ll still come out of that situation with more than when you entered.

Conclusion:

So why did I share all of this? I shared it because I know a lot of young, aspiring artists out there are uncertain about their future. I know you might feel like you can’t do it because you don’t know everything or you don’t have all the right credentials or you might screw things up if you try. I want you to listen to your heart and pursue what you want anyway. If I can make it, you can too. And take pride in the story of your journey. If you succeed, even given your circumstances, your story will be valuable in a way that mine couldn’t possibly be. I know a lot of my success has to deal with inordinate luck and I will forever be grateful for that, but I will always be just as grateful that I had the fortitude for when times were at their toughest. Go out there. Make what you want to make. Do whatever you can to learn the basics even if you can’t go to college. Ask for help. Get as involved with a community as you can. Whatever you start, stick with it. Be patient. Embrace challenge. Take those leaps of faith. Finally . . . forgive yourself for the times that you fail.

To finish off this post, here is a montage representing my animation journey from 2014-2020. Best of luck, all you artists out there

https://www.facebook.com/tom.vankampen/posts/10221173577866185

#animation #2dart #2d animation #toonboom #cartoon #career advice

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thercoon-blog · 7 years ago

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Liliana, Crumbling Oppressor

Let’s move on to another one of the nu-Origin five walkers, one that takes on the role of Persecutor in our Karpman Drama Triangle. Here we dive into the seriously mentally ill persona of Liliana Vess, whom I can find numerous mental health parallels in history, most notably in John Nash, the famous Mathematician. In order for the Drama Triangle to arise, a person must take on the role of Victim or Persecutor. Our first example of this occurrence is between our focus character, Liliana, and future Victim, Jace Beleren. Persecutors typically blame everyone else for everything, insisting something is their fault. Persecutors are typically controlling (Liliana has successfully bent the Gatewatch to her desires), blaming, critical, oppressive, angry and superior (we know Liliana has a serious god complex stemming from her dabbling in the dark arts). Each participant in this triangle takes on their role by acting upon their own selfish needs – something Liliana has done since day 0.

Let’s begin.

Liliana grew up on the most important (arguably) plane in the multiverse, Dominaria. Her father was a general and ruler, possibly for the Forward Order (a load of chaps fighting some dark force, possibly Belzenlok’s cabal). She had a name for herself as a bit of a hussy (that’s slang for hoe), and because of daddy’s extremely high ranking profile, this would inevitably bring on family meetings of “you’re bringing shame to my name”. Liliana cared little of her reputation, so from her absolute origins, we’re told she pretty much doesn’t care about anyone or anything other than herself. We also discover she’s a somewhat gifted sorceress/wizard whatever you want to classify her as. Possibly a cleric, I guess? She learned the healing arts from a lass called Lady Ana, similar to Gideon’s Hixus, however being the blasé cleric that she was, she thought necromancy would assist in her healing career. It’s an odd parallel to draw between two opposites but then I know nothing of the dark arts or restoration so who am I to judge her conclusions. She wanted a shortcut to be better, because that’s just Liliana. The shortest and simplest solution is always best, a self-destructive behaviour that will follow her and essentially rule her life from this point onwards.

Her father’s enemies corrupted her brother Josu with some sort of curse. Now this is where a crackpot theory comes in. If indeed her father’s enemies were the cabal under the rule of Belzenlok, then it ties one of Liliana’s four demons into her storyline long before she makes her pacts with them. One might posit that Liliana’s life had already been woven by a scheme spanning her entire life. This leads her to a test by Lady Ana, which in turn leads her to the Raven Man. That leads her to Bolas, who then brokers the deals with her four demons, including Belzenlok, which then follows on to the Chain Veil storyline where the Raven Man then takes charge of her future interests. So whose scheme is Liliana’s life led by? Bolas, or this mysterious Lim DulRaven Man? Anyway, Lady Ana tells her she needs to acquire Esis root to cure her brother. Her father’s enemies have conveniently burned down the grove where this tree grows.

She learns this when a curious man appears with the information. He then encourages Liliana to use her necromantic powers to revive the tree and make a potion out of it. Seems legit. It is at this point we can conclude Liliana is quite young and naïve, since undoubtedly a present day Liliana would have easily seen past this and probably let her brother die before raising him as a servant. Unfortunately Liliana loves her shortcuts, and loves to prove people wrong, so despite warnings from Lady Ana, she uses it on her brother. It cures him, but basically turns him into a shambling horror.

Pause.

A late teens early twenties girl, with little to no care for reputation or anyone but herself, zero desire for strict rules and guidelines, has taken her first massive shortcut. This in turn has forced her to witness her own family in a state of undeath, then forcing her to kill said undead brother. This is akin to you saying “damn the doctors” and giving your big sister cancer with the “best intentions”, then being forced to euthanize her. That is entirely fucked up, and very much easy to gloss over as a reader interpreting fantasy fiction. She sparks, and ends up on Innistrad – plane of zombies, stitched abominations and general gloom and doom horror. If any plane epitomises a person’s past nightmares, it is a perfect fit for Liliana. But she embraces it instead of running away. Despite her trauma she remains headstrong, it seems.

She studies under vampires and liches, becomes a master necromancer, but she stops short. They recommend she joins them in death fully to master necromancy, but the trauma of what her brother became stops her from fully committing to her path. She is not entirely without sense, and like Tezzeret, is living life by pure instinct for survival.

Eventually Sorin discovers she’s on Innistrad, and Sorin is a very old, very powerful and very solitary planeswalker that suffers no fools. He utterly stomps Liliana, to the point he deems her too paltry a threat to deal with. He allows her to be a guest on his home plane and play nice, or he’ll kill her. Just ask Nahiri how that goes. So the plane she’s adopted as her home is now yet another metaphorical set of rules that will remind her of her father. She returns to Dominaria after she’s confident she’s powerful enough to take on the Raven Man, but he miraculously escapes. Yet another failure for Vess.

Between then and Ravnica, it’s revealed that the mending happened, and Liliana is no longer all powerful, or immortal. Being the vain, shortcut taker that she is, she mixes up with Bolas and brokers a deal with a demon for more power. She uses that deal to make another, and another until her soul is eventually beholden by no more than four demons. In exchange for youth and power, she must serve the demons, and this is where she gets her tattoos from, eternally reminder her and everyone else that Liliana sold her soul for life eternal.

After some time, Liliana becomes mixed in with Bolas’/Tezzeret’s Infinite Consortium, sort of as a freelancer I suppose. After Jace defects from the group, Liliana is tasked with tracking him down. She befriends Jace and his accomplice Kallist (whom Jace will later swap consciousness with), and then has an affair with Jace. She stays loyal to Jace through a number of bizarre happenings, including ye olde consciousness swap story. It’s then revealed she was using Jace in order to remove Tezzeret as the leader of the Infinite Consortium. Liliana had sold her soul to Nicol Bolas of all people (just ask Tezzeret how that went), and this was one of her many tasks.

Liliana is altruistic. She dislikes rules and regulations, but now finds herself under the thumb of a 25,000 year old elder dragon planeswalker, and four demons that lay claim to her soul. In true Liliana fashion, she has ideas on how she can most easily escape said deals in the bluntest ways imaginable, but she hasn’t quite had the push to get her ego that big yet. Enter Kothophed and the Chain Veil.

Kothophed calls in a favour, and Liliana must obey. She’s sent to retrieve the Chain Veil, and ancient artifact from the now extinct Onnake civilisation on Shandalar. On her way, she’s attacked by one of Garruk’s Packleaders and kills it. My main man Garruk witnesses this, and decides she’s a target. Liliana retrieves the Veil and then Garruk attacks. Using the surprisingly powerful artifact, Liliana very easily sends Garruk on a Shandalar escape trajectory, and begins to muse at how much power is at her fingertips now. She wanders to a fortress on a random plane and utterly annihilates it, because the best way to test an artifact belonging to a race that is now entirely dead is to use it to wipe out another. She considers, and the urges to release herself from the thrall of Kothophed is too great, so she planeswalks and blast the demon to high hell. Her tattoos begin to bleed, which disturbs her somewhat. In true “simplest solution is best” she resolves that in order to make this pain stop, she’ll just kill the rest of her demons.

So, Liliana has gone from accidentally killing her brother with good intentions, to an egotistical maniac hell bent on returning her old power to her by any means necessary, even if it means permanently scarring her young but otherwise immortal body. That includes senselessly dispatching a demon that had a claim to your soul. Long term plans are not Liliana’s strong suit. Unlike Bolas, Liliana is a very short sighted, short term planner. What makes Liliana different from every other oldwalker is that she simply wants to be left alone to her own devices. While she doesn’t initially crave for the rule of planes or infinite power and wiping out all other rivals, she does want to live forever and be beautiful at that. She just wants to do what she wants as and when she decides to do it. Liliana Vess of origins is what we’d call a sociopath. Liliana Vess of post mending is what we call a psychopath. The key difference? Sociopaths don’t know what they’re doing is wrong. Psychopaths do, they simply don’t care.

Concerned by the bleeding of her tattoos, the Chain Veil, and her fate thus far, she returns to the plane of the Onnake. She resurrects the body of an old wise man who knew of them. The town is none too pleased with a necromancer, and do what any other old time populace would do: they chase her into a pile of wood (a barn) and burn it down. The man she raised begins speaking cryptic riddles about Liliana while preventing the flames from taking her. Just as she’s about to release her body to the sweet abyss, the corpse is revealed to actually be the Raven Man. He uses what appears to be the same potion as the one Liliana used on her brother, and her tattoos all turn the same colour and she is healed. In typical grateful Liliana fashion, she thanks the Raven Man by stabbing him and planeswalking away with the Chain Veil. I mean, stabbing your saviour is a bit of a dick move.

Liliana, enthralled by her experience decides to annihilate some more demons because she doesn’t have a better idea right now. She heads back to Innistrad to kill Griselbrand but can’t find him since he’s stuck in the Helvault. Garruk shows up and tries to splat her, but Innistrad isn’t short of local meatshields, so she sends a few dozen zombies to keep the guy occupied and escapes. At this stage Garruk is simply a nuisance in comparison to her other problems. Like a big, meaty bad penny with an axe the size of a tree. She heads to Thraben for answers while its under siege by the duo Gisa and Geralf. Mikaeus the Lunarch has already been killed in the battle, and so with her usual respect for the fallen, Liliana raises him from the dead to get her answers. She learns of the Helvault.

Flavourfully black cannot do anything to artifacts unless your name is Geth. It can however demand sacrifices. Liliana casts a spell that forces Thalia, the acting commander of the defence of Thraben, to either sacrifice her soldiers, or crack open a cold one the Helvault. Being the white-white character she is, Thalia smashes open the vault and all the demons (and Avacyn) are freed. Oh and Nahiri. Yeah, you can blame memerakul on Lilana kind of. Liliana tracks down big old G, slaughtering everything in her path (including angels, Liliana really hates angels). Using the Chain Veil, Griselbrand is no more. Easy? Nope.

The Chain Veil starts whispering to her, and this is when our all-powerful necromancer begins to remind me of the woes that beset John Nash. Now John Nash was a peculiar bloke in the beginning, but he was also a mathematical prodigy. This led him to massive success in his field, but the guy strived for more. Eventually people began approaching him for some pretty wild and exotic uses of his services, and wanting more to his life than occasionally teaching and working on cryptography, he agreed. This went on for many years, until eventually he was committed. It turned out that all these years, he had been working for people in his mind, doing jobs that didn’t exist, even imagining up his own roommate who he talked to and about to others frequently. He was utterly convinced that these people were real for years. Imagine having a best friend for a decade and then being told he didn’t exist. After stints in an out of psychiatric help, he maintained his sharp intelligence, but was besieged on a daily basis by his own brain, trying to convince him these people were real and these tasks he wanted to work on were a fabrication. Now, John Nash wasn’t aware of this until somebody else told him and convinced him. He had work colleagues, doctors, and a wife. Liliana has nothing, nobody. She’s hearing voices from the Chain Veil, she keeps seeing this Raven Man, so she’s convinced that the spirits in the Veil are real, and the Raven Man is some kind of planeswalking capable asshole of some kind. Like John Nash, Liliana is powerful, driven, and convinced of herself.

She heads back to Shandalar to find her own answers. She’s then confronted by an angel guarding the entrance and basically melts the thing, all the while it mumbles than Liliana has become a vessel of the Onnake spirits wanting to release themselves. She then has a vision of the Onnake’s extinction event, again seeing the Raven Man as an architect of their destruction. She indicates to the spirits talking to her that she’d quite like to learn such a spell. Her cockiness only grows from this point. She reaches the alter where she found the veil, but her own body refuses to put it back. She raises an Onnake skeleton to obey her command to return the artifact, but it also refuses to comply. Upon de-animating the skeleton, it throws the veil back onto her. By now Liliana should probably recognise when her body is being hijacked. An Onnake spirit materialises in front of her and tells her she’s the vessel of the veil of deceit. She tries to kill the spirit using the Chain Veil, and at long last realises that the thing is slowly damaging her body. Mentally defeated, she planeswalks away. For once, Liliana accepts her fate. Briefly.

She heads back to Jace to manipulate her Victim once more, trying to persuade him to help her kill her two final demons. Back to that old chestnut. He’s angry with the way she dealt with Garruk at this stage however, as he and Nahiri have separately tried to help the cursed beast master. She invites Jace to dinner, but it’s interrupted by Gideon begging for help on Zendikar. Jace immediately accepts, and then Liliana moans how he’ll spare time for his friends but not his wife – in essence. She’s furiously jealous that somebody else can manipulate him to their every whim. Jace informs her bluntly, that Gideon asked nicely, whereas Liliana tried to seduce him. Liliana’s façade begins to crumble from here on, and when a chronically narcissistic person loses the power of their fake front, things begin to unravel. They begin to see a need to reaffirm their role to themselves and others. As a necromancer and narcissist, Liliana is beginning to develop a god complex, and the combined presence of the Chain Veil and the coming Emrakul are only too keen to feed it.

Back on Innistrad Liliana is sulking in her mansion. Jace tries to escape two werewolves after arriving on the plane, and Liliana uses some zombies to drive them off. Jace informs her that he’s searching for Sorin, and being a human of pure survival, Liliana warns Jace that that may not be such a good idea. Jace goes to the manor, goes a bit insane, and then returns to blame Liliana for everything that happened. He tries to break her brain a bit, but the Raven Man that is quite obviously inside her head protects her and tells her to kill Jace. As it happens, the Raven Man is quite afraid of Jace, because of course he’s a mind mage, and might find him lurking inside Liliana’s head should he delve too deeply. Liliana then tries to get some generic geistmage to exorcize the Onnake spirits from the Chain Veil with a witchbane orb, but unsurprisingly it does sweet F.A. Honestly at this point she’s desperate, and I think even she didn’t believe it would work, but she’s willing to try anything to escape attachments to anything. Vess just doesn’t like to be tied down, unless it’s with Jace’s cloak. Giggity.

Emrakul arrives, and the Gatewatch and Thraben are under attack by masses of Eldrazi horrors. Convincing herself that she doesn’t need Jace, Liliana tells herself that she needs the Gatewatch to need her, so that she can use them to kill her final two demons. Realistically both of these are true. She’s desperate, but also an Oppressor. A team of four young neo-walkers are probably just as easily impressed upon as she was when she was younger. Equally four mages with their own specialties are a handy tool for killing demons and not getting your hands too dirty. That is how an Oppressor sees these people – tools. Liliana raises a colossal army of zombies to drive back the horrors and Emrakul, she even thinks so highly of herself that she can take on the titan, calling herself Innistrad’s “Last Hope”. As it turns out, she quickly learns that the Chain Veil isn’t quite that powerful, and Emrakul begins to overpower her. The Chain Veil as well as the Raven Man pretty much begs her to escape with her life, thinking that they can’t possibly win against this thing. Multiple personality disorder aside, Liliana chooses her own fate. Miraculously Emrakul uses Tamiyo to seal herself into Innistrad’s moon and the whole group survives. Jace asks Tamiyo to join the Gatewatch (she thankfully declines) and instead, as second choice, they ask Liliana to join. That worked out well didn’t it Vess? She agrees to their childish terms, knowing full well she has no intention of following their code unless it happens to coincide with some demons.

Liliana is short on patience however, and has a subtle distaste for wasting time on things that don’t concern her. The Kaladesh story comes to fruition, and Liliana notes a possibly entry into the good books of the highly impressionable and entirely chaotic Chandra Nalaar. The arrival of Dovin Baan triggers Chandra’s fury at the Consulate on her home plane, and Liliana plays on it. She takes Chandra under her wing, concealing the usual Oppressor tendencies, and instead takes on a role of Rescuer. She encourages Chandra to share her story, and then tells Chandra she should take revenge on Baral, Emperor Palpatine style.

They come across Tezzeret and Liliana pretty much flips her lid. She tells Chandra that Tezz is dangerous (and we know he’ll do just about anything to survive, same as Liliana), and they need to retreat. The rest of the Gatewatch arrive and scald Liliana for flying off with Chandra so fleetingly. Not wanting to risk her importance in the group, she heads back to her favourite tool and vouch man Jace, convincing him and Gideon to come to Kaladesh. Basically Jace will stick up for her when she does Liliana things. Who needs to convince a team themselves when they can have the defacto leader do it for them?

They join forces with the rebel scumrenegades and take on the consulate, blowing up some ships, confronting Tezzeret in the arena, only to have him escape and rob all the inventions from the fair. Liliana dispatches some troops rather too permanently for Gideon, he moans, but she snaps back at him as though he were a naïve child. You were like him too Vess, at some stage. She says she needs to strike at Tezzeret directly, because he won’t fight fair. She reveals that she’s a little more than weak in the knees for Jace, and wants to hurt Sucker-T for hurting Jace all those years ago. Liliana has somehow grown empathy. She heads off with Saheeli and finds Rashmi, the creator of the planar bridge, and brings her back to the renegades. The Gatewatch are now aware that Tezzeret has interplaner travel tech.

She convinces Gids to let her take on Tezzeret, as a cunning distraction for the Gatewatch to destroy the Planar Bridge. Suddenly she opts to use undead minions to “scare away” the consulate soldiers instead of killing them, leading us to briefly believe she’s taking the Gatewatch’s non-lethal approach some serious consideration. She makes it to Tezzeret and they then commence the most underwhelming planeswalker battle in the history of Magic™. Tezzeret initially believes Bolas sent Liliana to check on his progress. He then informs him He then tells Liliana Bolas is hidden on Amonkhet, where her third demon Razaketh is located. Before she can finish him off, the Gideon-Chandra missile hits and blows the whole fucking spire to bits. Tezzeret escapes with the core of the planar bridge. Liliana then suggests they head straight to Amonkhet to take Bolas on without giving him chance to prepare. What she actually means is, come to this god forsaken plane so I can kill my demon and escape while you all get fisted by the most powerful (known) planeswalker in the multiverse.

On Amonkhet more Chain Veil shenanigans ensue. Liliana gets eaten by a giant worm, but reveals to the Gatewatch that she used the Chain Veil to decompose the worm from the inside. What actually happened was the Raven Man assumed control over her body to prevent her death, using the power of the Chain Veil to kill it. They come across the gods, and the city of Naktamun, and she takes note of the mummified servants. She also derides the gods, as the only gods she knew were hubristic planeswalkers. She should know, she was one of them pre-mending.

The Gatewatch continues with the story, while Liliana… gets fed grapes and uses the mummified servants to her advantage. The Raven Man returns, warning her that she had gotten soft. The voice inside her head has noticed her change from egotistical psychopath to egotistical psychopath with a developing conscience. Jace approaches and he vanishes again, hoping to avoid his cover being blown. They follow one of Liliana’s shades and discover Razaketh’s true involvement in the afterlife and the plane itself. The mummies set upon them and they escape.

The gate opens when the Second Sun rests between Bolas’ horned statue, and Razaketh is revealed. This demon is vastly more powerful than the previous two. He can assume direct control over Liliana’s body (it’s become the town bicycle at this point). It’s a brutal reminder that Liliana is never truly free until every person involved in her soul’s enslavement is ended. He toys with her, but the Gatewatch come to her aid. They distract her long enough to raise some undead crocodiles and tear apart and eat the demon. It’s noted viscerally that Liliana actively relishes the act of consuming the demon via the animals she has raised, and brings us back to the harsh reality that despite all the pretence, Liliana is still cracked mentally. Bolas appears, whips the Gatewatch’s collective asses, and gives Liliana the option to betray her friends and await his command, or die. Liliana is a being of selfish desires, but most importantly, the raw desire to simply survive. She escapes, with other members of the Gatewatch as witnesses to her betrayal. A harsh reminder that she is not allowed attachments to potential Rescuers, and any attempts to do so will be met by harsh consequences. It’s also a blunt reminder that she is still at the mercy of Bolas and her remaining demon, Belzenlok.

She planeswalks to Dominaria to kill her final demon. As a writer, I am fully aware that the death of Belzenlok may not yield the results she hopes; in fact things may only grow more complicated for our psychopathic Oppressor. She is so singularly focused on one goal; she cannot see the forest for the trees. The only solution to the actors of the Drama Triangle is to deprive them of their payoff. Liliana’s superiority is crumbling, her authority is waning in the face of multiple actors within the group, and the blame has shifted significantly since their encounter with Bolas. Liliana’s role as an Oppressor is coming to an end. Three solutions remains – she leaves the triangle as a better person, she becomes a Victim, or, most likely, she ceases living.

#MTG MTG Story Dominaria Liliana Vess

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infolibrary · 6 years ago

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14 People Talk About the Moment They First Realized They Were Mentally Ill

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14 People Talk About the Moment They First Realized They Were Mentally Ill

The most dangerous myth about psychological health is that people with different disorders don’t realize what is happening to them and are unable to notice when they start to have trouble. In fact, this situation is only possible when a disorder is psychotic or when a person sees a completely different reality. But if a disorder manifests differently, the person experiencing the disorder still has the ability to think critically and they are still able to notice that something is wrong.

Bright Side learned about the most important signs of psychological health problems from the stories of people who share when they first realized that something was wrong with them. These stories made us think a lot.

***

I had been really depressed for a few months (I knew I had problems with depression) when I suddenly started feeling better. In fact, I felt great. I felt great for about a week. Then I started to feel incredibly wound up. I spent nearly $40,000 (which I didn’t have) in a few days, mostly on shoes. I stopped sleeping.

Very early one morning, I woke up obsessed with the idea that my shoes weren’t perfect, and I took the subway to my office at 4:30 a.m. to collect the shoes that were there and brought them home and arranged all of my shoes in the dining room by heel height and then alphabetically by designer. And then I got distracted and made cupcakes. And then I went back to my shoes and recorded every flaw I could see on each of them so I could take them to the cobbler.

And then my boyfriend woke up, observed me and my shoes, and my breakfast of cupcakes, and told me I had to go to the doctor. By that point it was still only 7:30 a.m. Looking back, the strange thing is that I didn’t notice anything odd about my behavior at the time. If not for my boyfriend, I would have gone to work that day as if nothing had happened. © Anonymous, bipolar disorder

***

Sitting in 7th grade social studies taking a test. Heard someone call my name. Turned to my sister to ask her if she heard someone call me… She hadn’t. Things got worse over the next few years. But it was then that I knew something wasn’t right. And I knew it wasn’t good. © Julia Yeckley, schizoaffective disorder

***

I had trouble discerning reality from my thoughts, usually early in the day or late at night. I was worried about things that I thought were real, when I had only actually thought about them. The moment that really scared me was when I woke up one morning, went downstairs to take a shower, and that’s when I woke up again, and it was only 2 am, and my alarm hadn’t rung. This happened twice in a row, so in my mind it was all an illusion. I started having doubts about what I thought I knew, what I thought was real, and what wasn’t. I told a few people about it, they all told me I was crazy. © weaselinMTL, schizoaffective disorder

***

I always knew I was an outcast and that I was different. I think around 6 or 7 years old is when I started experiencing mania, I would read in the pitch black darkness and try to maneuver my book to where the words I was reading would be illuminated by the light that would creep through the little gaps in the blinds of my window. If I got caught, my dad would get so mad!!

I didn’t know how to explain it to my mom and dad that my mind would race at 150 MPH and I’d worry about bills and school and growing up and a career and how much money I’d need to make a week/month/year to survive… Yes all that at 7 years old. © Сhristina Lewis, bipolar disorder

***

The breaking point in my life was the first time I felt uncontrollable rage. I blinked and my entire world changed. I was holding a long steel table and I was trying to kill my colleague with it. Fortunately, there was not enough room for the swing and I was stopped by the wall. Then, I tried to squash the guy with a table. 2 other guys grabbed me and it was only then that I came to my senses and started to understand what I was doing. © Doug Hilton, post-traumatic stress disorder

***

I was 16 years old. I had been being treated for depression for several months. But I wasn’t just depressed. I was having episodes of hypomania (later, when I was older, I had full manic episodes). I stayed up all night on school nights working on art projects that fell apart. At a gathering, I ran down the street without a shirt on. I kicked a hole in a wall during a tantrum. My energy was out of control. I would talk and talk like I couldn’t stop. I knew something was up.

At the time some pharmaceutical company was advertising a medication online by posting a survey that had questions about mood and activities, and it suggested I talk to my doctor about bipolar disorder. I found myself agreeing with the quiz, and suggested to my psychiatrist that I was bipolar. My doctor agreed with that assessment. © Paige Lauren

***

I knew something was wrong when I began to tell my friend why I needed Adderall to stay up at night (used in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy). I told him it felt like something was in my room. And the look on his face when I said it felt like that something was shoving me when I turned my back was a sign. The moment I decided to seek help was when a voice told me to be careful of the man who was behind me with a rope about to hang me. Everything’s good now and I have no symptoms, but I’m glad I talked with my friend and caught it early. © astupidsquirrel, schizoaffective disorder

***

I realized that my childhood wasn’t normal, and that an “imaginary friend” who is able to take control of their body isn’t a normal imaginary friend. Still trying to find a psychiatrist in my country who will be able to diagnose us, but the last one we saw was sure we were more than one in our head. She just didn’t have the knowledge to make a proper diagnosis (and I bet she wasn’t good at English either, we never talked about the resources I gave to her). © Celine Denca

***

When I was about thirteen, I started losing interest in activities I liked and my best friend commented that I seemed so serious and didn’t laugh anymore. Around the same time, I constantly smelled a dusty/smoky smell that no one else could smell. I went for a brain scan and everything was normal. When I was fifteen, my depression worsened, and about once a day I heard a voice that told me to kill myself. At the same time, my moods changed rapidly over the course of each day and I did not sleep a lot.

Sometimes when people hear about mood changes, they think of angry, violent people. I was never angry or dangerous to other people. I never yelled at other people or blamed them for my problems. Nor did I ever do anything to get attention. I hid my moods as best I could, and I did everything I could to be normal. I knew it wasn’t normal to hallucinate (the voice and smell), but I didn’t think anyone would believe what I was experiencing. © Jennifer Belzile

***

My legs started twitching again, I sobbed, I just wanted it to stop. I wanted everything to just stop. I wanted to sleep. I didn’t want to exist. My mom tried to calm me down, but I couldn’t be calmed. I felt like my body wasn’t mine to control anymore. The shaking came and went in waves, my body shook like a house in an earthquake. I had to tell her I needed help. I couldn’t live like this anymore.

That was my first and (thankfully) only panic attack. It was 11 pm, I had class the next day but I hadn’t finished my homework. I wanted to explain to my mom what was going on in my life. Why I was always jumpy and on edge. I was so so scared. I didn’t know how she would react. I feared judgment. I thought she would say I was lying, she listened calmly and told me she would set up an appointment for as soon as possible. © Marie Kuehler, panic disorder

***

During an anxiety episode caused by being in a crowded mall, I turned to my friend and said, in all seriousness, “If this crowd doesn’t start moving, I am going to start throwing these girl scouts over the railing.” We were on the second floor, with a children’s play area under us. I knew this. I did not care.

I only cared about getting out of there, and they were the immediate obstacles. Throwing them over the railing was the most expedient method of removing those obstacles. The fact that they were teens and preteens, had done nothing wrong, and would likely die and/or kill the children below did not matter. Even as I was thinking about it, before I said it, I knew it was monstrous. I knew it was a crazy thought from a diseased mind. I hated myself. I still said it. I still meant it. I still intended to act on it if necessary. He looked at me, wide-eyed, and then told the girls at the back of the group exactly what I said and why. They relayed it forward and the group moved out of the way rather quickly. I still felt horrible and added that to my list of things to address in therapy. © Erik Johnson, clinical depression, anxiety

***

It was probably the time I could hear my then husband breathing from 3 rooms away and wanted to go kill him just to make the sound stop (he was not snoring, and I did not attempt to do it)… That thought got me on the phone with my primary doctor ASAP. © Stacy Arguelles, bipolar disorder

***

I got up early, worked out, and was dressed ready for the day. I could do it today, everything can change today. I looked outside. I froze, I couldn’t go into work, I couldn’t go outside, I cried, and stayed in bed all day, trying to sleep off these emotions. It was then that I realized that I have been slowly declining and I am nearing the edge, the breaking point where something in life will fail.

I tried to deny how bad I was, since I was a fairly functioning person with absolutely no one truly suspecting that I was depressed and suicidal. I worked out, slept regularly, maintained my hobbies, but still could not escape the absolute void that was following me. Truly it was every day, the little things. Forgetting to eat, finding more excuses to not go into work, relying on coffee to “get through things” easier, saying no more often to any sort of social events. © Brittney Nichole, clinical depression

***

I stalked my therapist. I was seeing a therapist for about 4 weeks. We were still developing a relationship with one another. Before I started seeing him, I naturally Googled a way to find out more information about him, his practice, and possible patient reviews or complaints to see if he would be worth my time. He was a married man in his forties, with 3 kids, he was an active member of his church, and was in good standing with his clients. He had a polite demeanor and was overall a nice guy. There was nothing special about him.

I had been feeling depressed on and off, and it was starting to take a toll on me, hence, my visits to the therapist. I’d never heard of bipolar before. I just assumed that I had depression and my hypomanic episodes were just “bursts of energy.” During our fourth meeting, I was telling him how I was feeling disconnected from everything and everyone. I felt like I was just going through the motions of everyday life and I was tired of not having anything to ground me. I couldn’t feel happy and I was getting increasingly frustrated with my life.

I remember the exact words he said: “ A lot of people turn to religion in a time like this. Did you think about going to church?” Something snapped in me.

Is he trying to force his beliefs on me? He’s so pathetic that he needs reassurance that there’s life after death. Hahaha…what a weakling.

I left the session and headed home like nothing happened, still reeling with anger. I did not sleep at all for the next 2 nights. I was up, planning my revenge, obsessing over this polite, mild-mannered guy who just gave me an innocent suggestion that could help me. I remember trying furiously to dig up as much information about him as I could (even downloading things to allow me to explore the “dark web” to assist me with my search), pacing back and forth, basically climbing walls.

Suddenly, the perfect idea came to my head: I will seduce him. I was 24 at the time. A young, fit, attractive female. He will want to have sex with me. I will seduce him and he will cheat on his wife. He will destroy his perfect family. I managed somehow to dig up his address. I jumped in my car and drove to his house. My heart was pounding with excitement. This was the middle of the second night – I was running on virtually no sleep, yet, my mind was crystal clear. I was on a mission.

I wasn’t planning on doing anything, I just wanted to observe. I wanted to see him and his family that I wanted so badly to destroy. I was about a mile away from my destination, when my obsession began ebbing away. Sleepiness overtook me. I was tired. Hungry (I did not eat for 2 days). Weak. I suddenly started to feel deeply ashamed of myself. Embarrassed. Stupid.

I turned around and went home. I opened a bottle of wine and drank the whole thing, just to make those feelings go away and forget the past few days. I sank into an almost 2-week long depression after that. Why would I possibly want to destroy someone’s life like this? You’re a bad human being. Stay away from people.

Looking back at this, I often think that it was a dream, it wasn’t real, I’m not the kind of person who would do something like that. Maybe I was being possessed?

After that, I immediately canceled any future appointments that I had with him. I was too ashamed to face him. I couldn’t possibly look into his eyes and tell him what I did and what I was planning on doing. After that, I knew something was wrong.

And do you believe that a person with a mental disorder can diagnose a problem on their own?

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#Inspiration. Creativity. Wonder.#Psychology

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