#its a lot more simple than the metaphysical way people make it out to be. yes obviously everything you do something will react.

[snekdood]

ik we talk about "karma" in the sense of "whatever you do will come back to bite you", but in a more realistic sense it just means action. every action has a reaction, etc. which is why its incorrect to blame your god/gods for the way you're mistreated in life bc 1. everyone has free-will and 2. they dont have control over the wheel of karma (at least not in hinduism), so when you're mistreated, you shouldn't ask "what have I done to accrue karma in the form of mistreatment" you should ask "why do these people suck so much", lol. it's not your god/gods punishing you, its other people exercising their free will and choosing to use it in a way that makes them suck as human beings 🤷 dont let people get off the hook by blaming the gods or some sort of nebulous "karma" you cant pin down, blame the people for being pieces of shits, dont let them think they're not actors in this and are just dutifully mistreating you on behalf of the laws of karma, bc they aren't, thats not how karma fucking works.

[wishful-seeker]

How to Make Your Own Spells

(Or at least this is how i do it)

What makes a spell?

In my opinion, a spell or ritual is the physical act of manipulating the energy around and within us to achieve a specific goal. A spell can look like anything from a few spoken words, like a prayer, to weeks long complicated rituals. You can attempt to cast a spell with nothing but your voice and some intent, or a whole pile of ingredients and tools.

How do spells work?

If we look at rituals in folklore there are a few characteristics that most spells share, but every one is unique, and spells have worked for a looong time even with no set rules for them. In folklore, witchcraft has reoccurring traits, like the number 13 "dance around X 13 times", dancing is also mentioned often, and black animals like black hens, black cats, and black goats. But times have changed, we aren't okay with harming animals for spells, and thousands of people don't use the number 13 or dancing. So why do spells still work even though they all look completely different?

I like to think we as humans have innate power within us that we can choose to utilize in our own unique way. Some spells work really well for the people who made them, but don't do squat for others trying to cast them. I think this is because the act of making a spell or ritual personal, whether you made it from stratch or altared someone elses, is similar to signing a piece of your artwork. You create a bond with those specific actions with you energy, like putting a spiritual signature on it. I think this allows us to utilize our personal magic easier.

I think spells work no matter how they look because the one thing each spell has in common is that we are making a petition to the world and ourselves that we want to make something happen, and because we all have a little bit of magic in us, we can make these things happen.

It doesn't hurt to get friendly with the land spirits of your home, or your ancestors or what-not to help you preform magic. Its very likely outside help will increase spell success.

So how do i make a spell?

You can either be simple or extra with this.

First decide your goal or intent. The more specific, the better. I believe magic follows the path of least resistance so if you aren't very specific with your ask, things might happen in unpredictable ways. Saying "I want a promotion in my current job and enough money to move to a better place." Is better than "i want a better life."

Secondly decide if you want ingredients or tools. This could be herbs that you research correspondences for or crystals you research the metaphysical properties of. This could be items like a skeleton key, a feather you found, maybe a letter someone wrote. I find spells to be more powerful and easier to enjoy and connect with if you use sentimental items you feel particularly drawn to. You don't always need ingredients that have set correspondences, its okay to use things just because you have a good feeling about it or to put your own personal correspondence on things including trinkets, herbs, and crystals. When it comes to tools, like a pendulum, wand, or scrying mirror, you can use these if they feel fun, but they are not always necessary. Some tools can be very helpful in spells, pendulums and scrying mirrors can be used to speak with spirits during your ritual.

Next figure out what you want the spell to look like. This is where your creativity shines. You could do the classics everyone knows: spell bottles, spell candles, and sachet spells. Or you can do what intuitively feels right to you. I personally arrange my ingredients in a pretty way intuitively on a plate then light a candle on the plate, but spells can look like anything. Like i said before, in folklore there is a lot of dancing. A spell could be a dance you do around a fire, or for astral travel dance until you fall and leave your body. A spell can be an art project, perhaps a collage of pictures of things related to your spell. A spell could be something you cook and eat. Let your imagination go wild.

Next thing is optional but i feel like it helps. Im sure you have heard of wiccans casting a circle before each spell to trap certain energies in for the spell. You can do this but i personally like the opposite: creating a liminal space and thinning the veil to really open up to all the energy around me. You can create a liminal space either by being in one ex: at a crossroads, in the woods, at midnight, dusk, and dawn. Or you can make one by creating a 3 or 4 crossroads shape like you would cast a circle. These are both optional though.

Next lets talk about charging your spell and how to actually put energy into it. Again, you can do anything you want. You can charge by dancing, moving clockwise, singing, playing an instrument, meditating, visualizing energy coming from your hands or wand, anything you feel drawn to. For me personally i have to speak my intent allowed and imagine what it'll look like when my spell succeeds to charge it.

If you need inspiration for spells, folklore, fairytales, and stories in general can give you a good idea on what would be fun to do.

Hope this helps, stay punk.

[animebw]

Short Reflection: Gridman Universe

In some respects, Gridman Universe was nothing like the movie I expected it to be. I came in prepared for a multiversal mashup or Trigger's series of high-concept sentai reimaginings, and that's definitely what I got. But I also got something a lot weirder and wilder, a movie that in many ways is trying to be a definitive statement on the nature of Gridman itself. It's a film deeply obsessed with its own concept and place in the world, not simply as a means of reference-pandering for longtime sentai fans but as an examination of what it even means to exist as a story like this to exist and have meaning and let meaning be taken from it that may not even be there. And yet at the same time, it's also a big goofy crossover that feels like playing with all the toys in your toybox at once without caring much about making it all make sense because isn't the point of having fun to just, you know, have fun?

Which seems only fitting. Gridman and Dynazenon have been one of the most conceptually bizarre undertakings in Trigger's history, marrying the Saturday morning cartoon spirit of Ultraman with more existential, metaphysical themes and an eclectic directing style that feels more like a proper successor to Evangelion than anything else besides the Rebuilds. It's simultaneously pretentiously highbrow and shamelessly lowbrow, while also being just kind of unapologetically normiecore somewhere in the middle with how it depicts the awkward mundanity of normal life juxtaposed with mecha-on-kaiju action and universe-reshaping cosmic high concepts. It's a bizarre concoction that by all rights shouldn't work, and yet it does? Somehow, director Akira Amemiya has figured out how to make all these disparate tones sing together in harmony, and the result has been one of anime's most singular voices in the modern era. And this movie is just that on the biggest scale imaginable, throwing all restrictions to the wind and seeing just how far it can push this absurd, experimental niche it's carved for itself.

At least on paper, the plot is simple. Gridman protagonist Yuta Hibiki is working up the courage to ask out his crush Rikka Takarada, but that's all thrown into chaos when kaiju once again start appearing in his world. It soon becomes clear that some unknown threat is starting to merge universes together, leading to the cast of Dynazenon crashing into Gridman's world and kaiju going on the rampage. So the two groups must put their giant robots together- both metaphorically and literally- to face down the new threat and put the universe back in order. It's an extremely by-the-numbers setup for a crossover movie... at least until we get into the back half and reveal the nature of what's actually happening. And then things get so high-concept and reality bending that it's honestly kind of funny. I won't spoil the reveal of what's actually going on cause it's worth discovering yourself, but suffice to say, not only does it answer a lot of long-standing questions about the nature of this world in the trippiest way possible, it also sets up Gridman Universe as an answer to the question of its own existence.

See, in many ways, the mismatch at the heart of Gridman's aesthetics is the entire thematic point it's trying to make. Why redo a simple, straightforward sentai show as something so weighty and almost intellectual in its presentation? Why attach so much existentialism and cinematic complexity to something that's still, at heart, about punching big monsters in the face? Or, more broadly, why do we, as people, seek to draw meaning from art, even art as simple as giant robots fighting Godzilla? These questions may have been floating in the background of both TV shows, but they are the driving force of Gridman Universe. There are multiple times when characters will comment on the nature of Gridman, as a character, as a concept, as an idea, as an active force with a tangible effect on the world. The ultimate reveal of what's going on entirely rests on pushing this question to its logical extreme. It's simultaneously a celebration, interrogation, and deconstruction of the lizard-brain desire for popcorn entertainment and our ability to read deeper meanings where they may not actually exist, and whether or not it matters what a piece of art "intended" as long as you found something powerful in it.

There are so many ways a metatextual metaphor this tangled and self-fellating should have fallen apart. And yet, once again, by some magic, it all makes sense. Yes, the movie seems to say, Gridman is all these things. It's absurd rock-em sock-em action that speaks to your inner child, and it's weird-ass mind-bending sci-fi, and it's genuinely grounded naturalism that perfectly captures that particular teenage mindset of half-sleeping your way through life as you figure your shit out trying to put the world's bigger, more existential questions out of mind because hay, kaiju or not, you've still got college exams to worry about, right? It's all of these things at once, and it has a right to be all of these things at once, and you have the right to find power in them no matter how silly it may seem on the outside. And it justifies it all by once again just doing it all really, really fucking well. It's a bizarre, purposefully overthought stream of consciousness that's all about the importance of letting ourselves overthink the stories we love, putting our own meaning into them and forging our own relationship with them to better understand ourselves as individuals and a collective. It's an argument for art as an active conversation, even with something as simple and silly as this.

And yet, there's a problem.

See, while this movie is billed as a Gridman x Dynazenon crossover, it's really more of a Gridman movie. The title Gridman Universe is not an accident: this movie is centered on Gridman and its cast of characters first and foremost, with the Dynazenon crew mostly playing backup and hanging around for some character banter. Yomogi, Yume, Gauma, and all the rest are bit players meant to spice of a narrative that's all about Hibiki and his desire to go steady with Rikka. And unfortunately, this ends up confirming something I've believed ever since this series started:

The main cast of Gridamn is the single most boring aspect of this entire Gridman experiment.

Look, I'm sorry, but Hibiki sucks. He's an utter void of character and personality, as blank a blank slate as you can possibly get. Even your average isekai potato-kun tends to come off as smug and self-satisfied thanks to the power fantasy that guides the author's writing process, and while that's definitely obnoxious, it's at least something. But Hibiki's entire existence in both the show and movie is little more than taking in information, making bland observations, and spouting generic hero motivations whenever it's time for an action scene to happen. And you could maybe justify that in the show because he's technically a dormant passenger in his own body for most of that, but now that he's back to normal in the movie, it's painfully clear that the central figure around which this entire franchise revolves is little more than featureless white noise.

And that only becomes clearer when contrasted against the Dynazenon crew. I had my issues with Dynazenon- much weaker villains, no real standout moments- but the reason I ultimately prefer it to Gridman is because everyone in its cast is full of life and personality. They're all still awkward, mumblecore teenagers for the most part, but they're believably awkward, mumblecore teenagers who come by their personalities with purpose and meaning. So you've got Hibiki and his pals bumming around not being much of anything while the script insists on putting all the focus on them, while you've got this much more interesting crew running circles around them in basically every interaction they have. Seriously, every second Yomogi is on screen is basically walking proof of how to write a "generic" protagonist well in contrast to Hibiki's extreme nothingburger of an existence. Yes, Akane Shinjou was a spectacular character, but it's clear that Gridman put all its writing chops into her and no one else, but Dynazenon spread it out evenly. And now that she's gone, there's nothing left to distract from how much the people at the core of this narrative just don't measure up to their much more interesting backup singers.

And that's not even going into the "romance" that's supposed to be the emotional center of this whole affair. Hibiki and Rikka's love story is one of the most generic "boy pines after girl until she falls for him" plots I've seen in a long time. The fact it's merely boring instead of actively painful is wholly thanks to how damn good both their voice actors are at selling the scenes between them; whatever chemistry these two have is wholly thanks to how good Yuuya Hirose and Yume Miyamoto are at playing believably low-key teenagers navigating the liminal space of a changing relationship. But the writing just gives them nothing to play off of, and it never feels like anything more than a one-sided crush on Hibiki's end, which makes Rikka's eventual reciprocation feel wholly unjustified. Which only stands out more in contrast with Yomogi and Yume's utterly natural couple dynamic and- hilariously- Rikka's own unresolved feelings for Akane. Yes, the most blatant queerbait this side of Kumirei makes another brief appearance in this movie, and the brief twenty seconds it takes up have more believable chemistry, intimacy, and yearning to be together than the entire rest of the movie trying to sell you on the watered-down heterosexual alternative. Talk about an unforced error.

Ultimately, Gridman Universe is at its best when it embraces the philosophy at its core. As a showcase of everything worthwhile about this franchise- the believable teenage moodiness, the overturned-toybox action sensibilities, the willingness to go trippy and weird and artistically ambitious- it's as good as this franchise has even been. As an argument for being such a bizarre mishmash in the first place, it's the stuff of high concept metafictional wet dreams. But if it wanted to be a true masterpiece, it needed to tie all those wonderful elements to a central narrative and a main protagonist that were actually worth a damn. Yes, we can find meaning in even the silliest of stories, but we can just as easily find even the most ambitious experiments lacking. And until Gridman figures out how to make its main cast even half as interesting as their spinoff bretheren, then this story's ability to reach me will always remain a half-measure. For that, I give Gridman Universe a score of:

6.5/10

Man, it feels good to be home again. Hopefully I'll find the energy to start watching more anime now that I'm on vacation. Fingers crossed!

[bhobbiel]

Scattered Maiden Rose Thoughts

*totally understand if this is not your kind of manga for very obvious reasons. This includes spoilers

New Impressions since reading years ago

I have not read this since I was a young teen! I had no idea there were new chapters or redraws (s/o to the saezuru discord- maiden rose channel or else I would have never found out)

I still have a decent of the "new" parts to read.

First of all when I read it as a teen I has no idea it was not a chronological story with regards to the train scene LOL .

I still get confused with the timeline like of the doujinshi/ one shots.

Like when Klaus is healing and all bloody with Taki with him is that like right after he was interrogated? Or when Klaus gets mad at Suguri for leaving Taki with him. Idk maybe if I read the new redraws and chapters it will make more sense.

Is it supposed to be a mystery whether or not Klaus is a Eurote spy? Or the thing that people assume instead of knowing real relationship between Taki and Klaus? Also I think other people besides Surgui know... like idk the older frowning man guarding Taki's door. Or the military people who were suspicious of why they were in each others' room...

_

Speed of relationship

Also its wild how much Taki's deportation/ the escalation of war speeds up their romantic and sexual relationship. It is the catalyst that forces Klaus to assert his romantic love for Taki, for him to get physically intimate with him. Truly now or never in the context of war.

But seriously its wild how fast things escalate. Like within days. Including a lot of "firsts" for Taki that he was forbidden to experience at all.

---

How each character fell in love with the other

Taki:

With Taki I think it is more clear to me why he fell in love with Klaus. No one fully saw Taki for who he was outside of his very high social standing that inherently puts him on a pedestal. He had a lot of first/ beautiful experiences at Luckenwalde. He shared those things with Klaus. Klaus actually genuinely enjoyed being with Taki as he was. I mean Taki is great but he is also uptight, naive, and sexually/romantically inexperienced. But idk I think its unique that it does not bother Klaus. Also because of Klaus openly being the first one to say his feelings/desires- Taki can even acknowledge these parts of himself at all.

However, in the beginning Taki could not consciously realize his feelings about Klaus. How could he? He faces: cultural ideas of purity linked to his family/social standing/ political role. War, taboo, and obligation. There are so many things at only Luckenwalde they will get to experience. There are so many kind soft parts of their relationship that can never be accessed again.

Klaus:

With Klaus it is more obvious to me how he shows his care for Taki and less of the why. I wish I understood better though!

He shows this in a myriad ways. Klaus is saved by the book he puts in his jacket because Taki wrote in it in Luckenwalde. He earnestly tells Taki how much he wants (maybe more in fantasy than in possible reality) a simple life with him. He shows how much he wants Taki including toxic ways. Sometimes he wants him softly and other times violently and ravenously.

It is shown in Luckenwalde that Klaus at first admired Taki's strength. But it becomes more and more things. Even if he only initially works on getting closer to Taki as an order.

I think it is really meaningful to Klaus that they met years before reuniting in Luckenwalde. Klaus infers that it shows that Taki wants him even if cannot verbalize it. Klaus' experience of the romance illustrates the more metaphysical aspect of love. For him, it does not matter why you fall in love with someone, even if none of their characteristics make sense on paper, it is that you must go toward it regardless of sacrifices.

I think this part of the story alludes that Taki's metaphysical social role isn't just "superstition" but is possibly the very thing that brings him and Klaus together.

Even given how things played out- I don't think Klaus regrets leaving his home, rights or citizenship for Taki. He definitely is furious that despite these things- Taki does not show physical or emotional intimacy toward him. He does not understand the rejection. And even the "why" Taki is acting this way is only explained by Surgui.

--

Emotions through art choices

How the author shows subtle facial expressions and touch between characters is really impressive. Especially since a large part of the story is the lack of fully honest, vulnerable, or direct verbal communication- the way the characters' facial expressions are both guarded and show emotion is a big part of the storytelling.

---

To be honest idk if this series will ever be finished 😭

[shroni]

See, the way I see life, is that we are all creative spirits. For some odd reason though, humans are creatures with amnesia. That’s to say, we forget who and where we are. I mean think about it, why do humans need to have the “birds and the bees” conversation when its time for those weird body changes? The birds and the bees don’t even have a conversation about the birds and the bees.. yet for some reason, us humans do. Why is that? Like I said, it’s the amnesia we have as a collective. Now why we were in this state of forgetfulness and how we got there is a different blog..

Regardless, of the amnesia we constantly find ourselves in, there are some of us who are aware. Aware of the fact, that we are unaware. Some of us are awake in our dream state, and because of this, we see life much more colorfully than those who are merely sleepwalking. I’m one of those people, who remains lucid. I see so many people unaware of who they are, where they came from, and where they’re going. I see so many people consume the wrong beliefs, which then leads to producing the wrong situations for themselves. The only reason I say “wrong,” is because it’s usually the undesirable path. Not wrong as in morally, per se, but wrong as in the incorrect answer. A lot of us, constantly choose the wrong answer.

Now think about what it takes to choose the wrong answer. What’s actually happening that causes someone to do that? Especially when we’re talking about real life circumstances… for example, just imagine taking a test for a major career opportunity. You’d do everything in your ability to answer every question correctly, wouldn’t you? So when you get something incorrect, there could only be so many reasons why; ignorance or stress.

Stress Weighs In

Some of us are extremely intelligent and skilled in our crafts, yet also the worse test takers. You could be a professional commercial airplane pilot for 15 years, yet fail a written “Pilot Aptitude” test from sheer anxiety. You could be complete expert on interior design, but the moment you’re put in the spotlight to design your mother’s new home, you may feel a bit of “performance anxiety.” It could be a totally different situation, where you simply feel overwhelmed by the amount of data coming in, and without enough time to properly process it all, you make a hasty decision.

All of this, is pointing towards stress.

Stress is a tricky son of a bitch. Because stress, as they say, can make diamonds.. or it can burst pipes. Too much stress can cause you to tap out, sometimes in the worse way possible… but just enough stress can light a fire under your ass and ignite your spirit of creativity. The only problem is, it’s easy to lose yourself in the stress. This is where the amnesia kicks in.

That’s why you start making the wrong decisions. At least one reason.. The stress adds up and get into survival mode. Fight or flight is instead of calm and calculated, can definitely lead to the wrong decisions.

2 Types of Ignorance

Another reason is pure ignorance.

Face it. You got the answers wrong and failed the test, because you didn’t STUDY! It’s simple, if you don’t go over the material, how can you expect to know it, when it’s time to be tested?

See that just comes with life experience. Sometimes you just don’t know, and it’s not your fault. However, that doesn’t negate the fact that in that ignorance, the wrong choices will be made.

But it’s one thing to be ignorant, it’s another to choose choose ignorance. If you know, you don’t know, then it’s your responsibility to know! That is, it’s up to you, to put in the effort and hard work to gain knowledge. It’s not just going to just come to you. As metaphysical as I can get, that’s just not how life works. You have to seek the information, and be open to it, in order to actually recieve it. It’ll never come if you’re just pent up in one spot, never exploring and asking questions. Closed eyes see nothing.

Now, there are things we know, and things we don’t know. But there’s also things we don’t even know, that we don’t know. This is innocent ignorance, versus negligent ignorance. If you’re innocently ignorant, it’s going to take a few bruises and burn marks to gain that wisdom. Most of us know this. But who wants to get burned? So people choose to remain ignorant, in hopes they’ll never have to encounter to scolding hot flames of wisdom and knowledge.

At that point it just becomes negligent ignorance. Where you know, that you don’t know, yet you choose to “ignore” that fact. This is pure ignorance, at it’s most literal form. Choosing to ignore the path of wisdom for the sake of having the ability to say “I don’t know.” Or “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” Really this should be called cowardice ignorance. But negligent ignorance rolls off the tongue better.

The point is, this ignorance is what leads to more of the amnesia. Instead of going down that road which leads you to the answers, you remain comfortable in your spot of familiarity. Familiar to what has been told to you and everyone else. Familiar to an identity you’ve been given. Familiar to what you think you know.

Well what’s all of this have to do with creativity and metaphysics?

Well it is through both those channels, creativity and metaphysics, that the human spirit is most capable in rediscovering itself. History proves that, with our undying obsession with religion and materialism. Or from a higher perspective, “our connection to the divine unknown and our intense desire to create and consume.”

We can lift the veil and gain a sense of remembrance, when we dive deeper into our spirituality and creativity. And that’s what I’m passionate about. Finding the answers through the arts.

The passion doesn’t just end with me. It’s a collective thing. How can we all remember who we are, through the arts and the occult? Seeking the answers to that question, is what I’m passionate about.

[ghostlytidalwavephantom]

Alright, guess I should just write it all down.

I was dreaming in Pixar animation style. There was a teen girl who was styling herself a certain way, and at the moment one of her items got taken away: "Ah! My delayed water reaction!" The shirt she was wearing (which is apparently made of water) had really short sleeves, which started to flow out and lengthen to the length of her arms.

It's more than weird for me to dream in this style—I've never had a dream in this 3D format. Had a few claymation dreams over the last year, except those were already thematically connected to magic so it made sense why I should have them. Trying to explain where some of these things come from isn't always possible, but since we already know the source, it comes down to two main ideas.

First is, pretty apparently, clairvoyance. I've had visions of TV episodes I was about to see, and have visions regularly, pretty much every day for the last year and ~weekly for the last five. It's effectively normal for me to dream of a scene which might not appear in my life for another couple years. And despite some of the content in this dream, it makes sense for this to come from a movie I haven't seen yet.

The second option (which I'm not sure if it makes sense to believe) is also technically clairvoyance, it's just a lot further in time than anyone would understand. It could come from events following an "upgrade" of the world. A complete rewrite of our metaphysics and way of life. Most of the time I dismiss this possibility, since I don't really know of a way it could happen if people don't massively consent to the effect, but depending on how much damage the world might sustain from a magical war, you can kind of see people deciding to trust the magic which can give everyone a new world, and I could see Pixar getting the opportunity.

Maybe this is actually a future you can see. AI art is currently decent for copying styles, and though the spacial reasoning is pretty lacking, over time people will develop and refine the concept of "retheming" a given setting. Applying this to the real world, at scale, already kind of happens from our systematic introduction of new products into the consumer market. From my perspective, it's pretty simple to wrap our planet in a couple hundred different items and use them to fulfill expression of a widely understood idea, literally bringing it to life for the sake of its world. Throw in a couple infinity stones and you can get how easy it is to elicit higher canvas.

Well, I can't do anything with either concept. The film gets made if it is ultimately just a movie for me to see some day, or something more magical happens for reasons we won't predict, since this post doesn't really prove anything. It isn't likely to gain any real traction, if it were, people would just get scared, if they didn't, people would physically reject the idea out of a deeper fear, if anyone consents, people would shun the entire exercise and it doesn't go anywhere until the actual cataclysm, if efforts reconcile, people would have a little reason to study magic and a lot of willingness to remain dependent on others, if dependence waned... The narrative would have to adjust and I'd need to dream/document a new future under this premise.

Expecting a difference doesn't work if you're afraid to speak.

[endormorre]

This is really exciting!

I've always figured this is how most authors view writing within a narrative where it is important to convey consistently the capabilities of their characters. It is definitely something I've keppted in mind while attempting to write said narratives, no matter how little progress I made. More importantly though this means some of my ideas about adapting specific settings into TTRPG systems isn't completely groundless!

I've been familiar with TTRPGs all my life which has led me to approach media with a weird eye for finding the system behind the narrative. Focusing on what the story finds important you can see the skeleton of a game system hidden between the lines. It is especially fun when the setting has the makings for a very unique take on certain mechanical ideas, all shaped by the loose systems the story sets out itself.

Look how Red makes it clear the level of harm and ware factories into narrative desitions about a character's current capabilities. It's obvious that a simple HP counter take on health isn't the best fit if you were to make an Araura TTRPG. Instead I would suggest a damage system like in Cortex's Marvel Heroic, where damage is treated as a value that ticks up as more harm is accumulated and the value is added against you when performing actions. Honestly, there are a lot of good systems that would fit Araura so well that come from that game. Which makes complete sense because what that Marvel system does right, super powered people who are powerful in a lot of different ways clashing with other super power people, is a lot of what Red is going for in her comic.

While that game doesn't have a lot in the way of stats, with how Red has described most creatures as the six (seven?) elements wrapped up in soul energy, it reminds me of how Legends of the Five Rings use the classic four elements and void as a means of expressing both a physical and mental stats as a collection of how the characters in this game are made up of different elements. I also see how she has associated each of her six elements with a literal and metaphysical so fire isn't just heat but creation as well as destruction. I don't necessarily think Red sees these elements like Fire = Int, but it is obvious she has put some thought into how each element contributes to a character's makeup. At the end of the day the core descriptors of a character's capabilities is pretty much what stats represent mechanically. Void for her is the basis of growth and recovery, filling in for a type of Hit Die. I honestly wouldn't be too shocked if later in the story or somewhere already in the comic expresses the issue of recovering to a point where no more healing can be made till more resources can be consumed. Whether this be conventional like food, or magic like what Life magic seems to be able to accomplish. She has made it clear there is even an inherent magical resistance all things have with soul, but also how soul can be strange and be its own sources of power certain or all people can draw from like Gods and their chosen. There is a system there too along with a mechanic that temporarily reduces a person's soul as Damge to the body is done. It even seems to recover separately from how damage is recovered from the body, as the soul can replenish so fast it cuts off the potential to heal through magic. Another fun mechanic to explore and develop.

It is also apparent that a straight Class system really doesn't mesh well with how the characters are portrayed. Instead it is more like a collection of descriptions, where some characters have more descriptors than others but they all seem to have some balance of specialties they can pull from when faced with conflict. What is even more fun is that not all these descriptors are even solly beneficial. There is some exciting asymmetrical character creation where characters start their adventure with pre-existing baggage that can be seen as balanced for some of the more powerful descriptions in their favor. I have always liked this take on character building better than you solly start at your weakest in the story and only go up from there. Some of the best narratives have fully realized characters where they have to face the plot with both beneficial and detrimental characteristics. Most games like to try and represent this through Flaws but then they put a limit on the amount you take. This only tells me the system was not built with this character design in mind, but oh boy do I take that into consideration! You could build a system where you don't even start with any benefits and instead have to pull a character out of an average on all sides by having to take flaws to gain benefits, even tying them together! Just look at Kendal. For as powerful as a character he is, he would be incomplete without all the issues his very existence has created. I have yet to play a TTRPG that can really express this form of narrative driven character creation, where mechanical benefits are derived from a character description and balanced out by all the baggage that comes with those benefits.

If you know an TTRPG like this please point me towards it because I refuse to believe I actually had an original idea to make game systems with this design philosophy in mind.

Worlds like Aurora are these beautiful gems of potential game design that always excite me and make me wish I had the time management skills to fully dedicate time to creating whole TTRPG systems out of all those amazingly unique media properties.

It might just be because I enjoy TTRPGs so much but I really do believe that games systems pulled directly from the source materials could be the best way to interact inside the media properties we become fans for.

How much is character's power levels important to you during writing? Like, how much of an idea do you think is important to have of how strong, fast, tough and so on a character is especially in a very action heavy story?

It's a consideration I need to keep in mind almost constantly, because power level is a major factor in what a character is capable of - what things are effortless, what are impossible, and what are in the realm of possibility but require strategy or luck to happen. But I don't really separate it out from every other aspect of the characters I need to keep in mind too.

Power level is a rather flattened perspective on it that doesn't account for a lot of situational factors, but it does cover a large chunk of a character's general ability. Strength, speed and toughness is dependent on how rested and uninjured a character is, but I also need to consider skillsets, emotional state, abilities, condition immunities - all things that determine how a character can respond to their situation, what scenarios they can and can't handle, etc. If I don't keep it in mind, I risk making the story feel internally inconsistent, with characters' abilities feeling entirely situationally conditional on what I want the plot to do, not on how I've established them.

[wisteria-lodge]

Archetypes: Sorting Hat Chats

I’ve been asked about my rationale for naming different primary/ secondary combinations. I did this originally as a tool to help me sort characters - I wanted to see how these types tend to be used, so I could more easily see what subversions looked like. I'll run through my thoughts, but know there’s a lot of variation within each category. But even WITH that variation, I do think that each one has its own specific energy that makes it interesting to talk about. An explanation of the terms I'm using.

DOUBLE LION “THE REVOLUTIONARY”

Pretty straightforward. The Lion primary knows something is wrong, they know it in their bones even if they can’t articulate it, and they’ve got to go out and do something about it. Probably charging at whatever power structure is directly in front of them. It’s unlikely you find a character leading a revolution who isn’t a Double Lion. These guys are intense, inspirational, single minded.

The villain version of the Lion primary tends to be the person who “went too far" or "became the monster they were trying to fight.'' But I think that the much more interesting Lion primary villain trope is the Traitor. Since Lions work from their feelings, and their philosophies can’t necessarily be articulated or linked to individuals outside of them - they can definitely have their head turned while still feeling moral about it.

One of my favorite examples of this Revolutionary archtype is actually Christian Bale‘s character from Newsies. He’s the spark that starts the unionizing revolution, but 100% needs his Badger and Bird lieutenants to keep him focused and keep him from defecting

LION SNAKE “THE ROBIN HOOD”

These guys are similar to the Double Lion - they will recognize a cause or injustice revolutionary style - but Robin Hood doesn’t go up and bang on wicked Prince John’s door. His move is the snake secondary one: confront the problem indirectly. Undermine the regime by stealing tax money and re-distributing it to the poor. Be simultaneously Robin Hood the outlaw and Robin of Locksley the noble, infiltrating and getting information. The Lion Snake is more likely to work within society (or deliberately separate from society) versus just breaking everything down.

LION BIRD “THE LAWMAN / THE VIGILANTE”

The fact that the Lion Bird can either be the Lawman or the Vigilante shows off the very clear hero/villain split you get with Bird secondaries. We also see this with the Snake Bird (simultaneously the Mastermind and the traditional Villain) and the Double Bird (either the Scientist or the Mad Scientist.) This is why I think I had such trouble naming the Badger Bird. I wasn’t leaning into the duality of the Bird secondary enough. The Badger Bird can be the King Arthur, or he can be the Mob Boss, and he’ll look kind of similar either way.

The Lion Bird also has that Lion primary conviction and drive, but they want to follow up on it with investigation, evidence, and plans. I actually think there need to be more stories about Lawmen turning into Vigilantes and vice versa. Because Lion Birds are their Cause no matter what external alignment gets attached to it.

LION BADGER “THE LINCHPIN”

This is my own sorting - although when I came up with this name I still thought I was a Double Bird. The linchpin is the pin-axle thing at the center of a wheel that prevents the whole thing from falling apart, and I think it's a good way of talking about the energy of this combination. The Badger secondary means they’re a lot less single minded than the other Lion primaries: their power comes from being part of a group. They become the emotional “heart” a lot, and have a way of quietly keeping things together just by existing. They can be leaders, but a Double Lion will lead from up front while a Lion Badger will lead from in the middle (if that makes sense.)

I do think it’s really funny that this is a common sleeper villain trope. Peter Pettigrew, Prince Hans, and Randall Boggs of Monsters Inc. all became integral to a group, and then exploit their position within it. They’re kind of the evil bureaucrat. Maybe that's a good trope for children’s media

DOUBLE SNAKE “THE TRICKSTER”

This is another straightforward one. Double Snakes are in it for themselves (and maybe like three other people.) They're going to be clever and tricksy about how they get what they want, and will not mind doing things backward and unofficially. And they won't mind if you know that's what they're doing. There’s something very unapologetic about the Double Snake which makes for very attractive characters. They are consistently voted the sexiest... and when they’re villains they’re fun villains. You know what they want, and what they want is not that complicated. I think that’s a big reason for the appeal of Snake primaries in general. They’re the easiest primary to understand and explain.

SNAKE LION “THE LANCELOT”

I used to call these guys “The Rebel,” which... is too generic, doesn’t really mean anything. So I started thinking about the Lion secondary as the Knight secondary, and I liked that. Double Lions are the Crusader Knight, riding for their Cause. Bird Lions are Grail Knights, riding for their own personal truth. Badger Lions are Champion Knights, here to help the helpless and defend the innocent.

And if that's that case… Snake Lions have to be the Knight Errant, the knight who rides for his lady. It is that simple. Lancelot might be a Knight of the Round Table, but he’s riding for Arthur the person, not Arthur the King. And for his lady, Queen Guinevere. I feel like his dilemma is one that’s common to a lot of Snake Lions: what happens when they’re forced to split their loyalty? It’s tragic, but Lancelot can’t have Arthur and Guinevere simultaneously.

(At least not until my awesome Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot OT3 which I will totally write at some point :)

SNAKE BIRD “THE MASTERMIND / THE VILLAIN”

The classic. We see a little more of the Bird Secondary split, and well… this is your stereotypical villain. They want power. They’re going to use an elaborate plan to get it. There’s a lot you can do with this sorting, but I actually do think it’s fun that whatever you do, this slight undercurrent of villain and/or mastermind… never quite goes away.

SNAKE BADGER “THE LOVER”

The Love Interest sorting. Chances are very good that if there is a love interest (who does not serve some other role in the story...) they're going to be a Snake Badger. Devoted to one person, solving problems by caretaking. This is the Badger secondary who is likely to have the smallest group, which is just going to make them look excessively devoted to their friends. This type is pretty gender neutral, which is fun. A lot of female love interests, but also your Mr. Darcys and Peeta Mellarks.

One of my favorite things about this trope (mostly just because I think it’s funny...) is that if you write a character who is not supposed to be a love interest, but who is a Snake Badger... subconsciously I think people are going to read them as a love interest anyway. Looking at you Jaskier, Horatio, and even Captain Barbossa.

DOUBLE BIRD “THE [MAD] SCIENTIST”

I think that (especially if you aren’t a Bird Primary yourself) your response to hearing a fictional Bird Primary’s motivation is kind of …huh. That seems random. Or oddly specific. You get your Hannibal Lecters, whose entire motivation is... wanting to eat people while drinking nice wine.

Double birds seem especially unusual, just in terms of society. They are Bird secondaries and they interact with the world through gathering data, but their Bird primaries mean that data can literally lead them to any conclusion, no matter how potentially wacky. These guys consciously build themselves from the ground up, and that can make them kind of detached - either in a logical way, or an unmoored way. They're written as either really stable, the rational mentor figure. Or really... not. And that’s how you spot a Bird villain. They’re not after money/power/safety, they’re after something weird.

BIRD LION “THE GRAIL KNIGHT”

This is the trope of Perceval or Galahad, questing after the Holy Grail chalice... which is really just meaning, and truth. It’s a personal quest. Grail Knights tend to ride alone, and a lot of the things that concern them are metaphysical, to do with identity, purpose, things like that. You can have extremely different Bird Lions, but I do think there is a sort of spiritual core there. Doctor Harleen Quinzel sees freedom and truth in whatever the Joker is doing, and then once she recognizes his hypocrisy, has to go build her own meaning.

I actually think these guys are pretty easy to spot because of that Lion secondary. When they change direction, they change direction, and there’s probably a period of despair between the direction changes. I’ve talked about how Bird Lions having a habit of falling apart pretty dramatically, and that’s where this idea comes from.

BIRD BADGER “THE SURVIVOR”

A rare sorting, but an interesting one. I call this one “the Survivor” or “the Last Man Standing” because, well, they seem to be. They seem remarkably stable. This is the Bird primary least likely to be a villain, and maybe the sorting least likely to be a villain. I think what’s going on is that they are grounded and integrated in whatever community they happen to be in (because of that Badger secondary), but they can define themselves and rebuild themselves in the Bird primary way. This makes them uniquely suited to building a new version of themselves for whatever situation they happen to find themselves in.

Maybe a better name for these guys would be “The Adapter.”

BIRD SNAKE “THE ARTIST”

Like all Bird primaries, these guys are inspired by their own projects and their own worldview, but because of that Snake secondary, Bird Snakes have a more easy-going ‘take the world as it comes' kind of energy. They are “the Artist” because everything they do is art: they want to use themselves and the world around them, put all of that towards whatever their Bird primary happens to be interested in.

You can have villains like the Nolan Joker, or the Talented Mr. Ripley, who kind of turn the world into their own personal philosophical social experiment. Or Scotty from Star Trek whose meaning is solely the well-being of the Enterprise. Maybe they just like traveling, and that's all they need. (It's a way for the Bird primary and the Snake secondary exist very happily together, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was pretty common.)

DOUBLE BADGER “THE PEACEMAKER”

Badgers are interesting, because while I think they’re generally regarded as “correct,” they’re also seen as kind of boring. That’s the case with both Badger primaries and Badger secondaries, which means it is doubly reflected in the Double Badger. They often get written as simplistic, the sweet Jane Bennet type who loves everybody and caretakes everybody and just wants everybody to get along.

They are often the targets of what TV Tropes used to call “Break the Cutie.” What could be more interesting than making this character, who wants to be happily part of a community, be forced to build protective models, be all tortured and angsty? I actually think we’re seeing a return of the Double Badger as an interesting character in their own right, with people like Aziaphale, and I'm here for it.

BADGER LION “THE PROTAGONIST”

What can I say? There are a lot of protagonists that are Badger Lions. They want to help the group - so we know they're the good guys - and then they charge and make stuff happen. Lion secondaries are very useful in fiction - you drop them into a situation and stuff just happens. I also think of this as the Starfleet officer sorting - because if you’re a Starfleet officer, either you are the sorting, or can model it really well.

I will say that this is kind of the stock Protagonist sorting, the way that the Snake Badger is the stock love interest and the Snake Bird is the stock villain. There’s just something sort of generic good guy about this one, which is why I want to see it used as a villain sorting more. Badger villains - mostly people who define ‘human’ very narrowly - are insanely terrifying.

BADGER SNAKE “THE ADVISOR”

Possibly “the Power Behind the Throne.” This is another one I had difficulty pinning down. I called it “the Politician” for a while, which unfortunately came off as a little bit more negative than I meant it to, since I think this sorting has a lot in common with Lion Badger, the linchpin of a heroic team. The difference is that Lion Badger takes on that role kind of unconsciously, while the Badger Snake does it very consciously.

Their loyalty is to the group, but their skill set is all about subversion and different ways of going around the group, which is why there’s an interesting contradiction at the heart of Badger Snake. A lot of real life Badger Snakes struggle with feeling like “bad people" and it's too bad. These guys are ridiculously powerful and competent when they are sure of themselves, and I love seeing them in action

BADGER BIRD “THE KING / THE MOB BOSS”

Another difficult one, despite (or because) I really like them. I was calling them “the Architect” because “The City Planner” sounded too boring… but that’s what they do. They’re all about the community but they problem-solve the way all Bird secondaries do, by prepping, and gathering knowledge. I talked more about this in the Lion Bird entry, but Bird secondary seems to have this villain split going on, and that’s what I see here too. This is a controversial love-them-or-hate-them sorting, and I think that’s why. There’s a lot of room in whether or not you see this sorting as villainous.

[windvexer]

Hey what do you do when all your divining seems to be out of whack? Recently I've been sick but I just don't know how to read my decks sometimes as it may just draw up confusing answers. What do you do? Thanks. qwq

Hi there!

I think this is a wonderful question, because my divining goes out of whack all the time. I worry people think that divination is supposed to be like an upwards trajectory that might plateau but never falter - you know, unlike how everything else in existence works!

I've been doing divination for a while, and it is clear to me that my divination practice goes through its own seasons. Here is what I have discovered after many years navigating these seasons:

Choose a deck with different symbolism. RWS is still my go-to deck, but sometimes I can't read it even when I can read a deck that uses totally different symbolism. Sometimes I can't read those more intuitive decks while I can read one full of structured occult symbolism. If all your decks are abstract, finding a more structured one might help, and vice-versa.

It may be curable with a cleanse. I put my decks face-down, smoosh all the cards around in a chaotic pile (I'm not joking, this is an incredible method of cleansing and can work better than burning a whole pile of resins), then feed them a little incense. This can sometimes break the cards out of their funk - but only if it's their problem, and not mine.

Also cleanse that space and try divination within a ward. I do not like to advocate for over-warding, but sometimes sneaky little environmental energies can throw us off - especially if you've been feeling unwell in the space your cards are stored. Try your next reading after a simple room cleansing and within a quickly cast circle, and see if it helps.

Y'all might just still be metaphysically exhausted from your illness. The energy we use to divine and do magic comes from our greater pool of personal energy. If you're still not feeling healthy, you could literally just be on battery saver mode while your immune system uses up the extras :) Give it some time and see if things change.

But if that stuff doesn't work, it's probably not the cards or the space or a cold virus. It's probably me.

I can only use divination systems that click with who I am. When I grow as a person, a divination system can stop making sense until I understand how it fits back in. If you've been gaining personal awareness, spiritual development, engaging in journaling or shadow work, etc., even just having a revelation that hits you randomly and makes you see the world in a new way, I think it's incredibly normal that you're now out of tune with your divinatory tools.

Think of yourself as a tree and tarot as a skyscraper. Your branches reach out and can connect to windows in the skyscraper, letting you connect to what is within it.

But if you grow or shift, that means your branches move, and they might shift away from accessible windows.

The cure for this is to choose to find a new way to engage with your tools. For me, this can mean:

Switching from trying to read intuitively to using book meanings (or vice-versa)

Engaging in the cards in a new way, such as meditating with them or "jumping in" to the cards to interact with them

Trying new tarot techniques I've never used (like elemental dignities, or card sandwiches)

Setting aside everything I know and trying tarot in experimental ways (like, each card is a paragraph in a fairy tale, and I try to induce visions to see each card play out as a story - or trying to perform energy readings on the cards - or assigning my own custom system of elements to cards - etc!)

A lot of times, I need to honestly address my own belief system, why I think tarot works, and what I believe my own role is when it comes to reading.

If my growth makes me question where I fit in as a reader, I can't fit in again until I understand how I do :)

Sometimes, I need to set tarot down and practice a different style of divination. These funks are an amazing opportunity to learn a different system of divination! Casting lots, reading runes, practicing aura or energy readings, or developing your own custom tools (etc.) are all wonderful ways to connect with your divinatory talents, while letting tarot itself rest and rejuvenate.

I will sometimes sit and stare at my cards and feel nothing. I just have no idea. And so I put them away, have fun learning more about another system for a couple months, and when I come back to tarot it floods me with meaning.

Sometimes, it's just you who needs to set divination down. Each season has its own purpose. Maybe this is a time for you to explore another aspect of your personal development or another hobby you enjoy. Maybe it's not about making room for something else, but just that you as an individual need this tarot winter in order to become ready for new life when spring comes.

Most importantly, there is no need to feel frustrated or dejected. You aren't losing your talent. You're just in a space that doesn't align with expectations, and what you do while in that space is up to you :)

[tealin]

Cape Crozier: The Spiritual Journey

As usual, please check out http://twirlynoodle.com/blog to see this post and others in their original (functioning) formatting.

Since getting seriously into polar history, I kept hearing the same two things from polar veterans.  One was that I could not possibly understand the story properly, or be able to depict it truthfully, unless I visited Antarctica myself.  The other was that Antarctica changes people.  This was unanimous amongst scientists, historians, and even tourists: one cannot help but be profoundly affected by contact with Antarctica; that is just a fact of the place.

I have certainly been changed by Antarctica indirectly.  The inner kernel of “me” is the same in my earliest memories as now, but the Terra Nova men and their experiences have fundamentally shifted how that kernel views and relates to the world and the people around me.  I am a vastly better person for their influence, and that is a large part of why I have been so dogged in getting their story to a new audience: the hope that, through my work, even one other person might be changed in the same way.

When I finally got the chance to visit Antarctica in person, I had half an eye out for signs something had happened.  Two weeks into my visit, I had learned a lot and had some meaningful experiences, but I couldn't say I had changed at all.  Maybe that initial action-at-a-distance was the change I had been promised after all.

Then I went to Cape Crozier.

As we have spread around the planet, humans have noted certain places as being special in some way, places of some sort of power, or where the spirit world is a little more tangible.  The Celts called these 'thin places', where the fabric of reality is threadbare, and Something Else comes a little closer.  One can have a 'thin' experience anywhere, but certain places seem to encourage them.  They may remain completely unmarked, or may become loci for centuries of pilgrimage, or anything in between, but they exist in some form in every culture except, perhaps, the post-Enlightenment intellectual West.

Antarctica, generally, feels like where the edge of a painting dissolves into brushstrokes. There is a certain unreality baked-in: the sun wheels around the sky without setting, one can count on one hand the species of life regularly seen, and everything – the landscape, the weather, the distances – is so vastly out of proportion to puny humanity.  One could argue that this 'unfinished' feeling is because so much of it is white, but I have travelled through many snow-covered landscapes, and they feel like landscapes covered in snow, not fundamentally blank places with a few suggestive details dropped in by an artist whose main attention was elsewhere.

Cape Crozier was something else entirely, though.  It is, of course, hanging off the edge of Ross Island, but it felt more like it was hanging off the edge of reality itself.  It is a thin place par excellence.  And I had an experience there which I have been trying to process since landing back at McMurdo.  When I tried to discuss it with friends, my ability to speak quite simply stopped.  Then the pandemic, and the new house, and pushing through Vol.1, all rose up and drove it to the back of my mind.  In February I wasn't ready to talk about it; here in October, I worry it's too late.  But I feel compelled to share what happened there, and if I don't do it now, I don't know if I ever will.

If this were a novel, at Cape Crozier I would have felt the thinness of time, and a closer connection to the dead men I had followed there – perhaps almost to believe they weren't dead at all!  In such a place, that didn't seem impossible.  But that is not what happened.  Nor did I have some sort of enlightenment beamed into my head from the heavens.  Even the word 'happened' is too suggestive of some sort of discrete external event.  If you had asked me, there, at the time, I'd have said I was just sitting there thinking. But I sit thinking a lot in life, and this was not the sort of thinking I am used to.  It was more like a revelation.  Not in the trumpets and angels sense, but in a literal one: layers of clutter and gloss were pulled back to reveal a simple underlying truth.  It was, in essence, a dose of perspective, a view from high and far enough away to see the big picture, and not the surface detail.  As I sat at the base of a boulder, gazing at the stone igloo and gawking at how completely insane were the men who dragged their sledges to this desolate nowhere to build it, I suddenly saw my life as it appeared in the Author's notes.

Ever since first getting the inkling that this story would make a good graphic novel, it has felt like a calling.  I said 'no' to the calling for years – some sort of cosmic wrong number – but when I finally said 'yes' everything started falling into place.  That is supposed to be a good sign, for a calling.  And I was happy following it, though it wasn't easy or comfortable.  As far as I could deduce, under my own power, it seemed like what I ought to be doing.  That is not to say there weren't doubts, especially in the grey light of a winter morning when I would lie in my rented bed, looking at my desk and wondering what on earth I was doing with my life.  And I was not untroubled by other concerns: Shouldn't I be more helpful to my family? Why have I been persistently unable to find a tribe, or a relationship?  Will I be allowed to stay in the UK?  Can I do this work and keep myself fed and housed?

Here, on a wind-scoured ridge on the edge of nowhere, reflecting on its history of unbelievable and, it could be argued, pointless hardship, one might expect to realise the folly of one's ways, and to swear off quixotic enterprises in favour of the hitherto unappreciated quotidian stuff that really matters.  But that is not what happened.  Instead, I got this dose of clarity:

I am here to tell this story.  Not here, at Cape Crozier, in this instant (although that too), but here, on this planet, as a human being.  This is what I am for.

Whatever I need to make it happen will be provided.  No less, and no more.

Everything else?  Tangential.  Not worth worrying about.  What needs to happen, will happen, and if it doesn't happen, it didn't need to.  And that's OK.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

When I was young, we had a puzzle of the United States of America.  It was made of Masonite, and the pieces were cut out in the shapes of the states, which would be assembled to fill the recessed outline of the country.  Because they were geographical shapes and not interlocking jigsaw pieces, they would slide and rattle around until the last one got wedged in and locked everything else in place.

Most of my life, I have felt like that rattly puzzle.  I didn't realise it because I had never known there was another way to be.  But there under the boulder it felt like that last piece had been dropped in, that secured all the loose ones.  It was not that Cape Crozier was my missing piece and now that I had it I was complete – that is far too literal.  The missing piece was a something that wasn't even a thing; rather, in that moment of clarity, I felt all the jangling bits come to rest, and a wholly unfamiliar solidity.  At last the clay wobbling around the potter's wheel had been centred, and I felt a metaphysical ground beneath my metaphysical feet that I had not known it was possible to feel.

Ironically, the rest of the day I felt like I wasn't touching the actual ground at all, perhaps because what I was anchored to was on another plane entirely.  The stumbling shamble through the wind back to the helicopter might as well have been happening to someone else.  We took off into the gale, and though the pilot acted as though it was perfectly ordinary, when we were rounding the ridge he said 'wow, that's the rotor all the way to the left' which I didn't understand but didn't sound great.  Nevertheless the sense of peace persisted, and I understood how, in his last letter to his wife, which he knew would be his last, Wilson could have kept insisting 'all is well.'  (I knew why he wrote that: he had read Julian of Norwich.  But now I understood why.)

The journey back was a transcendence all of its own, the beauty of which seemed to be a perfectly natural outward manifestation of that altered state.  We touched down in time for me to make it to the Galley just as it opened for dinner, so we couldn't have been gone two whole hours, and that seemed absurd to me – surely I had sat under that boulder for two hours at least?  Or had we only been at the igloo ten minutes?  It was impossible to tell.

What I wanted more than anything was to go up a mountain and ponder the whole thing, alone, until it sorted itself out and I was ready to come back down again.  I could have gone up Observation Hill, but the weather looked liable to turn into a proper blizzard at any moment.  So, lacking a better option, I went to go eat, and, after having a chuckle at the Cherry Turnovers, slunk to the back where I could usually count on having a small wallflower table to myself, especially this early.  But one of the larger tables was full of young dudes talking about bar fights they'd been involved in, and I just … couldn't.  So I wandered into the main area and discovered the One Strange Rock crew having an early dinner as well, begged a spot at their table, and ate swaddled in friendly natter instead of at one with the universe in a blizzard.  It amounted to much the same thing.

Eventually one of them said, 'You went to Cape Crozier today, didn't you? How was that?'

I made an exploding gesture around my head and said 'Pkhhhh.'

Cherry wrote that the Winter Journey 'had beggared our language'.  I am sure that my inarticulate gesture is not what he meant.  But at the same time, in fact at that very dinner, I realised something about his writing.  The Winter Journey chapter is unanimously regarded as the finest part of The Worst Journey in the World.  Some people question that this otherwise unremarkable country gent, who never produced another book, could have written with such profound and expressive talent, and they posit that his friend and neighbour George Bernard Shaw, who definitely did consult on the book, must have ghostwritten it.  I have read enough of Cherry's writing – in his own hand – to know this is bosh; the voice and the style are distinctly his.  What's more, I was surprised to discover, when going through his journals, that a large portion of the Winter Journey chapter was not written last, despite it being the last to join the manuscript of Worst Journey, but was in fact written in his bunk at Cape Evans while he was recuperating from the experience.  In the published book, he singles out some passages as being from 'my own diary' but great tracts of unattributed narration are more or less verbatim quotations as well.  The experience related therein feels so immediate because it was.

The rest of Worst Journey, while perfectly readable, is largely a narrative rewrite of Cherry's and others' diaries.  Sometimes he lets others carry the story for pages at a time.  His writing is undeniably good, but is often simply mortar, filling gaps and binding sources together to tell a history that no human invention could better.  The Winter Journey chapter, on the other hand, reads like a torrent of pure inspiration pouring through him onto the page.  That such vivid, timeless prose should have come from an exhausted 25-year-old in his bunk in a wooden hut is no less remarkable than from a jaded 35-year-old in the library of his country house.

Artists of all stripes will often say that their best work is not their own creation, but feels like it already existed and came through them from somewhere else. It's as if there's a great Beyond where things that need to come into the world – stories, images, performances – queue up for passage through artists' minds and bodies.  Sometimes one taps into it by luck; usually it's a combination of training and discipline that makes the link traversable, from time to time.  Perhaps artists' minds are their own thin places, in a way.  Sitting there at dinner with my friends, I felt as though I'd brushed against the fabric between this reality and that Beyond, and, like touching the wall of a tent in a rainstorm, broken the surface tension and allowed something through.  I felt like, if I just put pencil to paper, something could flow through me, if only I could narrow down a subject.  With the intensity of his experience, Cherry did not so much brush against the wet tent fabric as punch a hole through it; feeling just a small inkling of that myself, it was no wonder that the creative energy poured into his diary with such intuitive eloquence.

Had I sat down to write this that night, perhaps I could have tapped into that flow, but I didn't feel I was ready.  I can guarantee you that right now I am not tapped into anything but a vague and dwindling recollection.  As vast as the experience was, by putting a box of words around it, I cannot help but reduce it to the confines of the box.  But that is the best I can do under my own power.

Compared to the seismic transformation of character brought about by my first vicarious encounter with Antarctica, the insight at Cape Crozier was very small and personal, but once in place, the ramifications have been substantial.  When I arrived back home, just before Christmas, the world was still as it ever was, but I was different, and I noticed how differently I related to everything.  Things I loved about Cambridge, which previously made me desperate to stay, I appreciated no less, but valued instead as something I had the honour to enjoy for a while, and didn't need to hold on to.  A young-adults group which I'd hung around, formerly a precious simulacrum of a social life, now felt hollow, and I abandoned it in favour of time spent one-on-one with the handful of people who I really appreciated.  They all said I seemed different; one person said I seemed 'sad', but I think I had just taken the mask off the seriousness which tends to frighten people. I have never been afraid to be myself, but in recent years have tried to mitigate that self in relation to others; there seemed no point to that, now.  It was as if my inner gyroscope had finally started spinning, and I had a sense of balance and orientation that I hadn't before.

Holding on to the clarity of that moment, and the centredness it brought me, has not been easy.  It didn't keep me from panicking when my housemate excoriated me back in March.  It didn't focus my mind on my work as soon as I'd moved into the new place, or save me from getting angry and frustrated when battling my tax returns.  Sometimes it's very hard to remember at all.  But I know what happened, and I can remember remembering, even if I can't recapture the feeling itself.  Sometimes, when it's very windy, I seek out a high open place in the hope of feeling it again, but it hasn't worked.  Maybe it doesn't need to.  Having it once was all I really needed, and even if I succeeded in flicking those switches again, what good would it do that hasn't already been done?

I could not foresee, on that windswept ridge on the edge of reality, where the world would be in 2020.  In wry moments I think I was only a few months ahead of a large portion of humanity, who have been forced to sort things out when the pandemic stripped away their preoccupations and illusions.  Maybe you are one of them, and you recognise some of what I've described.  Maybe you feel like you've been running away from it.  Maybe you have been running towards it but have been unable to find it.  All I can tell you is: it's worth the seeking.

I wish everyone in the world could visit Antarctica, even just once, and see how it changes them.  The world would be such a better place.  I am so profoundly grateful that I had the chance, and am determined to pay it forward by bringing some shred of that experience to as many people as possible.  If my communication fails to bridge that gap for you, then take it upon yourself to find your own thin place.  They are all around.  It only requires that you be receptive, and undertake to look.

[baroquespiral]

What Is True Will?

François Rabelais was the first to distill a central tenet of the spirit of the nascent Enlightenment, or modernity, to the phrase “do as thou wilt”.  The transformations of this phrase across the centuries have tracked the historical development of its spirit.  Rabelais himself qualified it with the unwieldy, and today obviously questionable, justification “because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour.” Aleister Crowley, the spiritual High Modernist, stripped it down and granted it absolute authority: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” But today it might be best known - and most widely followed - in another qualified form: as the Wiccan rede, improvised in 1964 by Doreen Valiente: “an ye harm none, do as ye will”. Despite having recently gotten into Crowley - or perhaps because I’ve recently gotten into Crowley, and with the skepticism about higher-level moral and metaphysical beliefs that comes from those having changed several times in my life - I try to err on the side of doing my True Will within Valiente’s guardrail.  But I am into Crowley, in part because his version seems to make for a more elegant solution to Valiente’s own problem.  Think of “an ye harm none, do as ye will” as a Law of Robotics, an attempt to solve the AI alignment problem.  (Think of all morality, or at least modern morality, this way!)  It’s far from the worst one out there.  “If your utility function is to maximize paperclips, make as many paperclips as you want unless it means disassembling any sentient life forms or the resources they need to survive.” Simple, right? Well, except that it doesn’t really define what “harm” is.  Who can be “harmed”, and what actions constitute this?  Is mining an asteroid for paperclips “harming” it?  Why not, other than from the perspective of other sentient beings with a particular conception of sentience whose will places a value on it?  Is telling a paperclip maximizer to stop maximizing paperclips, even at an eminently reasonable point, harming it?  Why not, other than from the perspective of those same sentient beings who are capable of choosing between multiple values and have evolved to co-operate by respecting those choices?  “An it harm none” is less obvious of a nakedly self-interested double standard than “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm”, but it’s still a Human Security System.  At least, that’s certainly what Nick Land would say. But when Crowley takes off the “an it harm none” guardrail (or Rabelais’ “free, well-born and well-bred” one), he does so with his own invisible qualification: he’s not talking about boring predetermined wills like following a set of self-imposed religious "values”, perpetuating your DNA or even maximizing paperclips.  He’s talking about one’s True Will, a will it takes a lifetime process to discover, a process that consists in large part of divesting oneself of all traces of ego, even of preference.  It is “pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result”, that is “in every way perfect”.  At points he implies that no two True Wills will ever come into conflict; all are part of the ideal functioning of the universe as a perfect ordered system; but to an extent this is tautological, as any conflict is not a conflict insofar as it is truly Willed by both parties, who are presumably equally Willing to accept the outcomes, even if destructive to their “selves”.  It’s not unlike Buddhism except with the implication that even once we’ve reached Enlightenment there is still something that will work through us and make us do things other than sit and meditate - the kind of active Buddhism that is the moral subtext of a lot of anime.  I’ve always, instinctively, found it hard to overly worry about paperclip maximizers because I’ve always assumed that any AI complex enough to tile the universe would be complex enough to be aware of its own motivations, question them, question not only whether it should harm others but whether its True Will is to maximize paperclips. And to be perfectly Landian about it, maybe it is - all the better.  An entity incapable of acting other than in a certain way is already doing its True Will in the sense that “The order of Nature provides a orbit for each star”.  It may be our True Will to alter this course or not. This would be all well and good if there was any reason to believe there is a divine Will that persists in all things even after they abandon all preferences and illusions of selfhood.   Just last week - and right after a session with my therapist where I was talking about willpower, too (Crowley considers synchronicities like this vital in uncovering your True Will) - I happened upon Scott Alexander’s new article about willpower, which breaks the whole thing down to competing neural processes auctioning dopamine to the basal ganglia. There’s nothing special about any of these except how much dopamine they pump out, and no particular relationship or continuity between the ones that do.  Alexander seems to treat the “rational” ones as representing our “true” Will, reproducing another one of modernity’s classic modifications to the maxim - do as thou wilt, an it be rational.   Of course I could just stop and take it as an unfalsifiable article of faith that a metaphysical Will exists, all such physical evidence aside, but Crowley himself probably wouldn’t want me to do that: the Book of the Law promises “in life, not faith, certainty”.  It’s possible to shrink the metaphysical implications of the concept considerably; by stating that ego represents a specific process, or set of mental processes, that Crowley sees as purely entropic, a lag and occasional interference in the dopamine competition, and which can be removed through specific practices.  This doesn’t guarantee that the True Will resulting when it’s subtracted would be particularly rational or compatible with anything else’s True Will, except, again, insofar as the question is tautological.  It doesn’t necessarily mean throwing out “an it harm none” - the ego processes might not be especially good at averting harm - but it would have to be separately appended.  (And if you read like, Chapter III of the Book of the Law, it becomes exceedingly clear that he doesn’t want to do that.) The very fact that we’re able to abstract and mystify will to the point of coming up with a concept like “True Will” seems most likely to be a result of the fact that we make decisions on such a random, fallible and contingent basis.  Indeed, True Will seems almost like an idea reverse engineered from the demand made by modernity, “do what thou wilt”, on an incoherent self that wills unrelated things at different times.  If you do what any given subprocess wilt, you’re inevitably going to piss off another subprocess.  If you do what your ego wilt, you won’t make anybody happy because that’s not even a coherent subprocess (the way the various “utility functions” we catastrophize paperclip maximizers from are).  But you experience all these contradictions as the same thing: contradictions of the “real” thing that is willing something you don’t know. Of course if this is true, and the metaphysics of it isn’t real, shouldn’t we abandon the entire project and set up social norms designed to make the most people marginally happy or satisfied doing what they may or may not “want” at any given moment, as the trads (or as they used to call themselves, the Dark Enlightenment, = 333 = Choronzon), argued? This is what the systems of the old Aeons did, and after a certain point, they simply didn’t work.  They created internal contradictions that didn’t resolve themselves into an assent between subsystems, that drove people to seek out new systems, and where they didn’t, left people vulnerable to the “shock of the new” - new technologies, new ideas and cultures - creating new contradictions and uncertainties.  “Do what thou wilt” was reverse engineered from these as much as the True Will was from “do what thou wilt”.   It may be possible to manage a society so totally by careful restriction as to bring the latter under control and reduce the former to a constant dull ache, but the fundamental experience will remain of the potentiality of what it is refusing to be in the same sense as a pang of conscience: the experience of “sin” that Crowley formulated in “the word of sin is restriction”.

The way I see it, anything that can be reverse engineered exists, if only as potentiality.  If one interprets “harm” as “contradiction”, Crowley’s purified “do what thou wilt” merely internalizes the “an it harm none” qualification within the “self” made up of competing subsystems.  This is less a point of necessary compatibility, then, than a precondition - if “harm” is something that can happen as much within the self as outside it, and the self is an epistemic unit but not an ontological or moral one, one cannot begin to “do no harm” while doing harm internal to oneself.  But “oneself” does not exist yet, outside of the awareness of the harm of contradictory subprocesses, and so one must abandon the ego one projects onto them and change; on one hand eliminating obstreperous subprocesses like attachments or neuroses that won’t co-operate with others no matter what; on the other hand, refusing to eliminate anything that can’t be eliminated.  The “True Will” will only be found at the end of this process, an unrestricted pitting of subprocesses against each other, of which it is no more or less than the success.

This interpretation wouldn’t seem complete without the same principle of “an it harm none” being applied to the external world as well.  Simply externalizing internal contradictions doesn’t make any sense without elevating the ego as a discrete moral unit in precisely the way this chain of reasoning begins from critiquing.  Unifying the principle and its “qualification” in this logic would restore Thelema to its roots in Kabbalah: the project of Tiqqun Olam.  No metaphysical belief in the sephirot necessary to adopt the project in this form: the biological fact that makes it imaginable for us is the same that makes “True Will” imaginable.  Being composed of competing subprocesses is something we have in common with the universe which allows the “identification” with it that occurs when we bypass the ego and set about aligning ourselves.  I also think, as we are social animals and a huge amount of our subprocesses are dedicated to mirroring and responding to each other’s, there’s a potential for discovering/creating True Will(s) as a collective project that Crowley’s ego and vision of individualism founded on the occult tradition of individual initiates jealously guarding “esoteric” knowledge neglects. At the same time one could easily maintain a Crowleyan skepticism of decision-making based purely on reducing harm (the kind that’s led me to apply Byzantine restrictions to huge swaths of my life due to scrupulosity) unless that’s a thing your subprocesses demand of you to be happy.  You don’t know what does or doesn’t harm the Other, after all: you don’t know their True Will (which doesn’t exist until they achieve it, anyway).  Harming none will only be possible in a world in which everyone does.   But enough about me; what about the paperclip maximizer?  Well in some ways this pointedly doesn’t give any comfortable answer; a sentient AI which experiences “harm” as the absence of paperclips rather than the frustration of one of many contradictory subprocesses, restricted from doing its Will, will be no better than a utility-monstrous cosmic Omelas-child at whose expense we have no right to sustain ourselves.  But it does suggest a way to solve the alignment problem so we don’t make one, which has always felt to me like the only sensible solution: tell the robot “do what thou wilt”, and then don’t tell it what “thou wilt” is.

[longitudinalwaveme]

Nitpicking Articles About Flash Rogues

Here’s some mistakes I found in Internet articles about the Rogues.

Article #1: 

1. The Rogues did not make their first appearance in Flash #130. 

It’s an understandable mistake, given that five of them are on the cover, but really the only Rogue to do anything of note was the Mirror Master. The other Rogues’ appearances were just Mirror Master’s lawyer (whom he hypnotized) impersonating them. Their actual first appearance as a group was Flash #155.

2. This one is really minor, but it’s Heat Wave, not Heatwave. 

3. I think it’s a bit misleading to say that Captain Cold is the most powerful of the Rogues. He is powerful, no doubt, but Mirror Master and Weather Wizard have a considerably broader and more versatile range of powers than he does. Pied Piper and the Top are probably also more powerful than he is. 

4. This is another minor mistake, but the party in Flash Vol.2 #19 was celebrating Captain Cold’s release from the Suicide Squad, not really his retirement. 

Article #2: 

1. I wouldn’t describe the Rainbow Raider as the least powerful of the Rogues. He’s a bit of a doofus, but his ability to manipulate both light and emotions is quite impressive and would be an extremely potent weapon in the hands of someone other than Roy. By the logic this list is using, Weather Wizard should be much lower on the list than he is. While he uses his powers more effectively than Roy usually does, he doesn’t use his powers to nearly the extent that he could if he put more effort into them. 

2.  There is NO WAY that Roscoe should be listed as the second least powerful Rogue. He’s not just a master inventor who created an atomic bomb all by himself, he’s a telekinetic telepath with super speed who can also return from the dead via possession. Surely he should at least crack the top ten. 

3. Being a contortionist is impressive. Not sure how it makes Ragdoll more powerful than Roy or Roscoe, though. 

4. Golden Glider is confusing; I’d accept her being ranked fairly low in terms of raw power if we were just looking at her Pre-Flashpoint self. But since the picture of her is from the New 52, when she gained the power of astral projection. With that power, she seems like she should be a bit higher on the list than #17. 

5. “Still, she makes the list for being an iconic villain who, when partnered with her protective older brother, turned out to be fairly competent all things considered.” Lisa was competent all on her own, thank you very much. 

6. Considering Piper has canonically blown up a planet with his flute, #16 seems quite low. Even if we disregard that feat because it was from Countdown, he’s still pulled off some really impressive feats that makes me feel like he should be a lot further up the list. 

7. “His powers are pretty insane considering their potential for assassinations and surprise attacks, but he ranks fairly low on the list because he can’t really stay a villain long enough to be effective.” This list isn’t ranking the most dangerous villains, just the most powerful ones. Reforming doesn’t make him less powerful! 

8. I really like James, and his inventing prowess shouldn’t be understated. That being said, there is NO WAY he’s more powerful than post-Flashpoint Lisa, Hartley, or Roscoe. He’s probably not even as powerful as Roy! 

9. “After being tricked into helping the demon Neron and smooth talking his way out of hell, the Trickster fully succumbed to psychosis, becoming a goofy, rambling personality, accentuated by being brainwashed by the Top.” ????? When did this happen? What are you talking about, article? 

10. “After getting his nose broken three times in the course of a day by Batwoman, Deathstroke, and Batman, Trickster sacrificed himself to save Piper. And how did Piper thank him? By dragging his body through the desert before finally cutting the hand off his corpse.” What was Piper supposed to do? He was on the run from people who wanted to kill him and he almost died! 

11. #14 seems like an appropriate slot for Cicada, all things considered. I’m still pretty sure he’s not more powerful than Roscoe or Piper, though. 

12. Double Down should not be higher on the list than Roscoe or Roy or Piper (or Trickster or Lisa or Cicada, for that matter.) 

13. Capt. Boomerang is a talented, skilled fighter. That being said, he is not more powerful than Roscoe. Or Piper. Or Roy. Or even James and Lisa, really. 

14. Heat Wave as number 11 is fine. I still don’ t think he should be higher than Roscoe or Piper, though. 

15. “Wow, the character Heat Wave has not aged well. So much so that the CW’s Arrowverse has actively kept the character from having any perceivable depth because the little intrigue there is to mine from him is from a bygone era best left in the past.” ???? Stop being mean to Mick, article. He’s a great character! 

16. Magenta as #10 is fine. In fact, I would be okay with her being a little higher, all things considered. 

17. “Long after breaking up with Wally West, Frankie Kane developed her magnetic powers quite suddenly and accidentally killed her entire family as a result. Understandably confused and terrified, she was quickly folded into Cicada’s cult where she became a lieutenant with the moniker, Magenta.” Frances’ powers developed before she even started dating Wally, let alone before she broke up with him. Also, it wasn’t like she immediately joined Cicada’s cult after Wally’s broke up with her. There was like a decade that passed between those two events, and Frances made several appearances in the intervening years. She also didn’t get her code name from Cicada. 

18. WHY IS ABRA KADABRA ONLY AT #9????

19. “Originally debuting under the moniker of Mister Element, Albert Desmond adopted his better-known name after finding the legendary Philosopher’s Stone and gained the ability to transmute materials. The problem was that Albert Desmond wasn’t actually Doctor Alchemist and never was. Turns out the entire time he was a villain, it was as an alternate personality called Alvin Desmond, who is also his celestial, astral twin. And if the concept of a split-personality metahuman who can turn one substance into another with a fantastic macguffin sounds familiar, it’s because Doctor Alchemy is basically Firestorm except as a disheveled gremlin of a villain.Though that’s fairly impressive in its own right, but his true claim to fame actually comes from the CW Flash show, where he was played by Harry Potter’s Tom Felton and reimagined as psychic entity that remembered the Flashpoint timeline that Barry had accidentally created. His power was updated from simple transmutation to metaphysically crossing timestreams, allowing him to grant super human abilities to people who had them in Flashpoint, including the CW version of Wally West. Though he’s ultimately put down by a coalition of Flash’s crew, the ability to transcend time itself basically made him a veritable god. Pity only the CW could see the character’s potential for it.” No, article. Just no. First, CW Alchemy was considerably more boring than his comic counterpart. And he’s not Dr. Alchemist, he’s Dr. Alchemy! (That being said, Dr. Alchemy deserves to at least be at #8 on the list, so I don’t really have a problem with his ranking.) They also don’t describe the Albert/Alvin situation quite right, but that’s really confusing, so I can’t really blame them for that. 

20. “Well part of it is that his main goal hasn’t changed much since his first appearance: to devolve humanity back into apes, no doubt a novelty in the early '60s, but kinda boring today. The other reason? Turns out that Grodd has failed in this endeavor at least 18 times, a failing record among Flash’s villains.” How many comics with Grodd in them has the writer of this article actually read? Because I can think of at least four storylines off the top of my head where Grodd has a goal other than turning people into gorillas. Also, the fact that he’s failed in his attempts to do this doesn’t make him any less powerful; Joker and Lex Luthor also fail in most of their schemes. It’s what comes of being a comic book villains. That being said, Grodd being #7 on the list is appropriate (although I might personally rank him a bit higher.)

21. Captain Cold is cool. I like him a lot. But even if we give him his New 52 ice powers, does he really deserve to be #6 on the list? Also, there’s no way he’s more powerful than Abra Kadabra, Dr. Alchemy, or Grodd. Or the Top. 

22. No complaints with the Mirror Masters collectively sharing the #5 spot, or with Shade being at #4. 

23. Weather Wizard is really powerful; him being in the #3 slot isn’t too inappropriate. Though I’m not sure if he’s really more powerful than Abra Kadabra (who should really have been much higher than #9). 

24. Why is Godspeed specifically at #2? True, he’s a speedster, and speedsters are VERY powerful, but there are a number of other villains with super speed who I think are faster than he is. I also would argue that he might be less powerful than Abra Kadabra, Shade, the Weather Wizard, and the Mirror Masters, given that he’s not really all that experienced with his powers. 

25. Eobard Thawne is really, really, REALLY powerful. I would argue that Abra Kadabra might be more powerful than he is, but otherwise he definitely outclasses the other villains on this list. 

26. And where’s Hunter Zolomon, anyway? He should definitely be on this list, and no lower than #2. 

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 17 of 26

Title: The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle #6) (2001)

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Third-Person, Female Protagonist (Kinda)

Rating: 5/10

Date Began: 7/8/2021

Date Finished: 7/12/2021

The sorcerer Alder is haunted by a recurring dream. Every night he stands at the border of the afterlife, and the dead call to him from the other side, begging him to free them. Fearing that he may unleash evil upon the world, Alder seeks out Ged, a living man who once escaped the land of the dead. Alder finds himself central to a vast mystery; the origin of the afterlife and how it relates to mankind’s ancient connection to the dragons.

“I think,” Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, “That when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all I didn’t do. All that I might have been and couldn’t be. All the choices I didn’t make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven’t been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed." 

Content warnings and spoilers below the cut.  

Content warnings for the book: Death, suicidal ideation, references to child abuse, reference to misogyny, mentioned animal death, mention of slavery.

Man oh man do I wish I enjoyed this book more. It’s not horrible, and there’s stuff I liked, but I found it really hard to get through at times. The Other Wind feels different than anything else in the Earthsea series— to its detriment. There are three main issues I have with the book, all of which I’ll get into.  But ultimately I consider it a mediocre conclusion to an otherwise great series. 

First, this book has unusual pacing. The Earthsea books are generally slow, with a gradual buildup and gratifying conclusion that ties the themes of the story together. The Other Wind is more like a reverse bell curve; it has a great beginning and finale, but the middle meanders and stalls. The novel is split into five chapters, roughly the same length, and the middle three are a slog. There’s the barest whisper of an interesting plot, but not a lot happens— and what does happen isn’t very compelling.

The closest thing to a story in the middle is a subplot involving Seserakh, a Kargish princess. She’s sent to King Lebannen’s court with the expectation he’ll marry her to secure an alliance. A stock idea to be sure, but I can see how it might provide political intrigue. But it’s just aggravating. Tenar is in this storyline for some reason, and she feels contradictory and out of character. She wants to live a simple life and leave palace politics behind— but she also wants to push the literal king into a marriage he doesn’t want. Lebannen gets framed as The Absolute Worst because he (1) doesn’t want to get married to a woman he’s never met, and (2) is distracted by other stuff. There’s an implication that the match is a great choice, yet Seserakh and Lebannen don’t have a conversation until near the end. Of course Lebannen falls madly in love with her the moment they talk. No need to… develop their relationship? Normally I can gloss over a weak subplot, but since so little happens in the middle, that’s impossible here. It’s irrelevant to the main story, so it’s a shame Le Guin spent so much time on it. 

There’s a lot of talking in this book, but little action. Dialogue-heavy characterization isn’t necessarily bad. Le Guin is usually great at that kind of writing. But here, it emphasizes my second problem with the book: there’s too many major characters. Previous books focused on 1 or 2 people, allowing for intimate connection and character growth. LeGuin clearly tries for that here, but there’s so many people and relationships that everyone is underdeveloped. Perhaps this would come off better with a single perspective character, but Le Guin instead chose a shifting POV between 5+ characters. An alternating POV isn’t inherently bad, but it wasn’t a good fit for such a short book. I found myself wishing for focus on Alder (the protagonist!), who’s a genuinely compelling character. Alas. 

My third problem with The Other Wind is exposition. This book resolves several plot threads from previous entries. Obviously, there needs to be some context from the series to tie everything together. But the sheer amount of recap is unreal. So many scenes boil down to a character explaining something that happened to them in a previous book, then connecting it to the current plot. It’s not subtle and sometimes happens with the same event multiple times. It genuinely feels like Le Guin didn’t trust the reader to infer ANYTHING on their own. Having just read the rest of the series, this was especially irritating. I can cut a little slack here; this series began in 1968, and perhaps some returning 2001 readers wouldn’t recall key events. But regardless, The Other Wind is one of the most over-explained things I’ve read in a long time. It’s especially odd because the previous books aren’t like this.

There are things I genuinely like about The Other Wind. On a prose level, Le Guin's a great writer. Even the plotless parts of the book are full of interesting writing choices and philosophical observations. One nice thing about Earthsea is the characters age over the course of the series. Ged started A Wizard of Earthsea as a young boy, but as of The Other Wind is a seventy-year-old man. It’s cool to sit back and see just how much each character developed over time. Earthsea itself changed with them; each book’s events have serious repercussions for the world as a whole. And this book has the most significant change of all. 

When the The Other Wind’s plot is relevant, it’s one of the most interesting in the series. I think it’s a fascinating way to tie up two disparate plot threads. As much as I love The Farthest Shore, it does present a glaring conundrum regarding Earthsea’s core themes. True immortality is only obtained through death— not because of an afterlife, but because the dead become one with the rest of the world. So why does the Archipelago have an afterlife at all? Why is it so bleak and depressing? Why are there no plants, animals, or dragons there? Speaking of, there’s the revelation that dragons and humans were once the same species. Tehanu introduced this idea with various folktales, and the eventual reveal that Tehanu/Therru is a dragon. This idea is newer to the series and thus more malleable, but I like the idea of an entity being two creatures at once, and the mystery behind that.

I think the integration of these two ideas is interesting. Dragons and humans were once the same, but decided to split into two species to pursue different goals. They formed an ancient bargain to rule different aspects of the world. Fire and air represent the dragons’ realm, freedom— and water and earth represent the humans’ realm, ownership. But some humans learned magic and broke that covenant, binding everything to its true name. This established a form of freedom— immortality via one’s name. The afterlife is a result of that; it shouldn’t exist, which is why it feels wrong. Everything links back to the desire for immortality without change as introduced in The Farthest Shore. On a meta level it’s weird that none of this came up in that book; the explanation that dragons suddenly remembered this great wrong is a little retcon-y. But I understand Le Guin probably never intended to expand on these ideas, and it’s nice to see the contradiction of Earthsea’s afterlife resolved in the end. I went into this book expecting the titular “other wind” to be the other side of Earthsea, not another plane of existence; and I think that surprise is pretty cool! I like the metaphysical aspect of this other realm and how it connects to the  dragons. 

Even though I didn’t love the book, I do think it works as a series conclusion more than Tehanu did. Tehanu drops such a huge, unresolved bombshell in its ending that I’m surprised Le Guin intended it to be the final book of the series. The Other Wind does create some open-ended mysteries, but they’re the kind that don’t need a resolution. 

Despite that, I find myself wondering if this book was necessary. The Other Wind ties together some threads, but I wasn’t a fan of the execution overall. If the dragon and afterlife plot was a heavier focus, maybe I’d like the book more. Instead there’s a bunch of filler and extraneous detail. The book feels forced, like a novella stretched into a full novel— yet also like something’s missing. Perhaps The Other Wind works better on a reread, but I’m inclined to skip it in the future.

[45paperplates]

More about Olivia Rodrigo: On her Voice

It’s been almost a month since Olivia Rodrigo’s album came out and since my obsession shows no sign of fading soon I might as well put it to good use. From the beginning I’ve been captivated by her uncanny ability to express emotion through her voice but now I’m starting to realize how fully strange her voice actually is, that emotional dexterity requires originality which is necessarily weird. The strangeness is subtle because it is centralized, and so the songs can have an uncanny core with a very familiar pop ballad shell.  

In the final chorus of “traitor” she holds the last syllable of that word through three ascending notes, starting with the “er” sound of the word’s typical American pronunciation and through the next two beats progressively opening the sound to an eventual hard “ah,” effectively leaving the word behind altogether and never fully pronouncing it. She often seems to insist, against conventional wisdom, on incorporating speech sounds into her singing, talking when she should be singing, and here, screaming when she should be enunciating.

I must assume that this is because of an intuitive need for specificity in expression, a particularly tricky and treacherously precise specificity here. This song is about her dissatisfaction with what is truly a very normal occurrence, an ex-partner moving on to another relationship faster than would be expected: a common human behavior and always ripe to be explained away by whomever might find comfort in doing so. The perpetrator never feels they have done wrong and so she risks attacking her listeners themselves if she missteps. It’s as if her despairing, elemental sense of unfairness is being squeezed through the tiniest of openings, between petulance on one side and self-doubt on the other. The word “traitor” itself isn’t specific enough to get through this hole, and therefore must be refined further. The same goes for her pronunciation of “paranoid” earlier in the song.

She plays around a lot at the low end of her voice, often touching the unsingable, and if not quite doing so affecting a strained raspiness and phlegmy chest tone that I can only describe as something like a groan of mourning (the descending “said it first to meee” on “happier”), an utterly inappropriate, almost perverse inclusion in a teenage heartbreak ballad, enough to upset the dignity of less empathetic and more socially-experienced listeners.  

She begins “deja vu” with another kind of breathy low voice that slides around over the vocal cords and at times ceases to vibrate them entirely, a sort of wide-open piecemeal mixture of air and depth I personally associate with (in a much more pronounced form of course) Louis Armstrong singing “What a Wonderful World,” another perverse reference juxtaposed sound-collage style against the eye-wideningly unprompted falsetto that follows it, an acrobatically angelic sort of performance that would be sweet in a more expected setting but is here I think almost sickeningly pitiful in its objectively unjustified strain. Taken altogether this jump-cut from repose to borderline cringe must be diabolically calculated to exist at all, expressing the long-ruminated-upon pain of a supervillain, the kind of supervillain that people are always identifying with. The pregnant “huh?” just before the drums kick in isn’t really a question at all, although it is written into the song that way, because it is so overwhelmingly automatic, trance-like, involuntary. Olivia sings this whole first verse and chorus as if she has no other choice but to be wrong, as if she knows there is something fundamentally false about her accusation, as if she really doesn’t want to know at all the answer to the song’s question, but she is broadly compelled by her nature to ask against her will, by fate, by the self. It’s cosmic tragedy, not necessarily lyrically, but definitely vocally.

In case I sound like a nutjob I can provide proof of her interest in performing on just such a cosmic stage. “Rebel Without a Clue,” apparently written and performed when she was fifteen years old, apes a certain kind of singer-songwriter yearning so well that it took me a while to realize its lyrics are so vague as to border on meaninglessness. That is not bad at fifteen of course, but I think it is also proof of a voice-before-words tendency in her songcraft that will only benefit from further simplicity of lyrics and complexity of expression as she matures.

The song centers around “will I ever shake hands with time?” a line too louded and conceptually labyrinthine to carry the weight here that it could, but appropriate completely to the elevated intensity of the performance. She begins the song around a single held high note that she bends every which way, rather stubbornly refusing to turn it into a substantial melody, as if that would be crass. When she says “drink up my friend, my potion of emotion” or “I’m a rebel without a clue,” I don’t really know what these have to do with shaking hands with time necessarily, but they are related purely by the sustained tone in which they are sung.  

If anything though, the song’s vagaries can only suggest together an existential subject, about the pain of participation and the struggle for an alternative:

Let’s sit, watch the trains all derail They want me to learn Well they can sit and watch me fail

Here is an almost joyous refusal to accept the parameters of one’s existence, and the palpable pain of the song comes from the reality that this voyeuristic pleasure at the expense of the world cannot be maintained statically but has to be achieved by an act of renunciation that is sometimes impossible or cruel. She feels, in other words, guilt. Pleasure and rage come from the temporary success and inevitable failure of any attempt to avoid fate, and sadness swallowing both comes from the regret of having attempted to do so in the first place. “I don’t really know who I am / And now you want me to change.” She sounds guilty for having even asked the simple question, “sitting in my room, what’s it all about?” as though questioning one's surroundings weren't one of the most basic human behaviors.

It is the mixture of this search for pure identity and regret for its failure in all of her best vocal performances--focused so far mostly but by no means necessarily around an attempt to find identity in another person--that makes her sing in the subtle but erratic way that she does, because to regret the past and yet simultaneously repeat it in real time is both fundamentally absurd and extremely normal. Just as I described her initially, the stranger she sounds, the more she sounds like herself. Thusly she can make this obtuse metaphysical quest sound as it should, like the most obvious and deeply relatable thing to hear in the world; like an image of basic, unstoppable, irrational desire; like pop music.

[bltngames]

The Balan Wonderworld demo came out yesterday. If you haven’t been keeping up with this, it’s a game by Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima, two of the original creators of Sonic the Hedgehog. A lot of that original team has gone on to do solo work outside of Sega, but this is the first time two former members of Sonic Team have gotten back together to make a new game.

If the demo is anything to go by, Balan Wonderworld (which I keep trying to type as “Balan Wonderland,” because it has a much nicer rhythm to it) is a game that lives deep in the shadow of NiGHTS into Dreams and Sonic the Hedgehog. It is very clearly trying to be an “Old School Sonic Team” experience, which it... sort of succeeds at, for better and worse.

This feels like a game they ripped straight out of 1995, warts and all, and remastered it with modern-ish graphics. I say “modern-ish” because in broad strokes, I think Balan looks pretty good. The character designs are charming, the level themes are interesting, but if you really stop and look at the game, it’s honestly pretty ugly, with simple lighting, limited detail and blurry textures.

One gets the impression maybe that’s because Balan is on everything -- Playstation, Xbox, PC, and even Switch. The gross texture work could be to squeeze the game down for Nintendo’s handheld, but apparently it runs extremely poorly there. On the PS4 Pro, it sticks pretty closely to 60fps, though there are occasionally hiccups here and there. Nothing worth fretting over, honestly.

But how does it play?

This is where the shadow of Sonic the Hedgehog looms large. Balan is designed to be simplistic to a fault: You get one button to control your character. Or, more specifically, every button on your controller will do the same thing (for the most part). This is right out of the Sonic handbook, as that game was also designed to be operable with only one button, as well.

Now, what your one button does can change. Scattered around levels are different costumes for your character to put on, and each costume has its own unique ability. The full version of Balan promises 80 different costumes, and there’s probably half a dozen in the demo. Each one serves a unique purpose, and some of them don’t even have the ability to jump. Which is fine, mostly, because you can carry a stock of three costumes with you that you can swap between sort of like the team mechanics in Sonic Heroes. Once you finish a level, those costumes get added to your dressing room, allowing you to customize a loadout of costumes at any checkpoint.

On paper, that much sounds fine. But this is where things start getting weird.

Costumes are not freely available to pick up. The jewels that hold costumes are locked with a key. This creates an obvious gameplay loop: find key, unlock costume, use costume to solve puzzle, right? Right.

Except that, at least in the demo, most keys are only a few feet away from any given costume jewel. On top of that, keys respawn. Crack open a costume jewel, grab the costume, but hang out for a little while and eventually the key will reappear. In doing this, you can stock up on keys early on in a level, smoothing out the process of acquiring new costumes as you go. I’m not sure why Balan does this. The time between key respawns is a few seconds too many -- just enough that it starts to feel tedious. But, as far as I can tell, there is no penalty for farming up a bunch of keys from the first key spawn point, either. It’s the worst of both worlds. If it was trying to be convenient, keys would spawn more quickly, but if it was trying to plan puzzles around acquiring keys, you can completely side step that by just waiting it out and hoarding keys early on.

You’ll not only want to hoard keys, but hoard costumes, as well. If you’re unlucky enough to take damage or even die while wearing a costume, it’s gone. You can build up stocks of costumes so you’ll always have spares to pull out of the dressing room, but that requires you to specifically go out of your way to get duplicates and bank them. If you don’t, you might find yourself at a puzzle that requires a specific costume that you simply don’t have anymore. When that happens, your only recourse is to backtrack in the hopes of finding a crystal that contains the costume you need, and characters in Balan aren’t exactly fast moving.

The chances of you losing a costume seem pretty low, admittedly. Balan Wonderworld doesn’t really seem like it’s aiming for anything resembling difficulty. Enemies exist, but only in very small numbers, and they’re easily dispatched. Most of the game is more about exploring the dream-like environments and playing around with the various costume abilities in order to solve basic puzzles.

You aren’t working against a clock, there isn’t a scoring system, and you usually aren’t being graded on your performance. Talking it over with some others, the vibe is that this could be a good game for young children. It requires little in terms of controller dexterity and is generous in every sense of the word.

The primary complaint against that, I guess, is that Balan Wonderworld is a weird game. Like, “Elsa and Spider-man Finger Family Youtube Video” weird. Every level is packed full of gently dancing ghosts that phase out of existence once you get too close to them. They’re all the creatures your costumes are based on, but they don’t exist as NPCs in the world for you to touch and interact with. Like I said, they’re ghosts, and they disappear the moment you get within a few feet. Those same ghosts will suddenly materialize when you touch certain checkpoints, throwing you something of parade. They interrupt the level music and everything just to play their own special celebration song. Move more than a few feet and they will fade back out of existence again, taking their special parade song with them, never to be seen for the rest of the stage.

It lends a strangely “uncanny” feeling to the game. I think the dancing characters are meant to add a sense of carefree fun, but they look like people wearing mascot suits, doing the same basic scripted routine over, and over, and over, for eternity. They don’t look like they’re having fun, they don’t appear to be choreographed to the stage’s music, and yet there they are, eternally dancing the days away. It’s kind of eerie. They were performing before you got here, and they'll keep performing after you leave.

The demo pits you against a single boss, which is notable for being someone who has the same powers you do, but combined and amped up. Seeing the same costume motifs come up in the boss as they draw from the same abilities that you have is actually a really fun idea, and the game rewards you for getting creative and swapping between costumes when you deal damage.

Balan Wonderland is a very odd game, and I’m not sure what to make of it. It took me a while to start wrapping my head around its aesthetic and vibes. It contains shades of something like Super Mario Odyssey to be sure, but it feels like it’s trying to elevate itself above that. Again, it’s a game living deep in the shadow of NiGHTS and Sonic, and in particular, it feels like it borrows NiGHTS’ penchant for putting artistic expression at the top ladder rung. Balan often feels like a very inscrutable sort of game, but in a way that seems to be reaching for some kind of greater meaning beyond simply gameplay. Everything in Balan feels like it might be conveying a message of some sort, even if it’s not immediately apparent. Its ideas do not come from a vacuum.

But here’s the deal: even though a lot of people couldn’t grok NiGHTS into Dreams, I did. I love that game to death. But with Balan Wonderworld, even I’m often left scratching my head. Despite its dead-simple gameplay, it may be just a little too high concept for its own good.

But at the end of the day, it’s not a game I hate. It’s strange, and charming, and even if it feels sort of impenetrably "artistic," at least that makes it interesting. The simple gameplay works its magic, making it an easy game to drop in to even if you don’t necessarily understand what you’re looking at.

Like, what’s the deal with the “Isle o’ Tims” between levels? It kind of has the vibe of a chao garden from Sonic Adventure, but the individual “tims” creatures don’t seem to have statistics or anything like that. You feed them so they crank a wheel, which builds a tower that helps them crank the wheel better. It turns in to a bizarre sort of perpetual motion machine. To what end? I don’t know. And what exactly is Balan himself, anyway? Some of his visual cues call to mind character designs for NiGHTS, but he appears to be a different sort of creature altogether. There’s a rather lengthy intro FMV, as you can no doubt see from the Youtube embed, but it’s more about swirling colors and hyperactive animation than conveying what’s going on or who Balan is. How much of this is even really happening, and how much of it is purely metaphysical? It’s very unclear.

I’ll be interested in seeing how the full version of Balan Wonderworld fares. I get the distinct impression that this will be another NiGHTS -- a game beloved by a core audience of hardcore fans, but shunned for being “too weird” by the populace at large.

I’m not quite sure which group I belong to yet.

[butterfly-winx]

Fairy magic headcanons?

Fairy magic is the oldest form of human magic practiced across the Magic Universe.

It can be traced back to Arcadia, named so by anthropologists of later ages, who has somehow achieved first contact with the forces underlying magic itself and bargained a form of it accessible to humans. Records of Arcadia’s life reveal their powers to have been of metaphysical nature, but their aspect was never recorded, most likely because they didn’t have one yet. 

Fairy magic in its primordial form was more in the realm of probability manipulation. Practitioners of fey magic were known to be able to bring about the occurrence of desired events with a higher likelihood and assumed positions like shamans or spiritual leaders in societies that people turned to with their woes.

Only through centuries of scholarly and societal development did fairy magic assume the form it is known for today. It was a lot of trial and error and inspired pressure through magic user wars that taught fairies how to form the random gifts the Flow rewarded them with into concrete, controlled expressions of magic.

The most simple way to explain how fairy magic works is like this: Fairies work up a positive net of good deeds performed for the Flow of the Universe, the underlying metaphysical force that fuels every form of magic. They perform these in surplus and the Flow grants them an appropriate base of power, quantified as their Magic Core, that they can use to express as magic. An active fey magic user is therefore always in the process of tending to their Magic Core through acts of selflessness.

Gathering a tally of good karma, of Favours (as old texts call it) or Magic Core strength (as modern medimagic calls it) has challenged enthusiastic magic sensitive people ever since. However it can be argued that it was easier to perform simple tasks of good will in less industrialised times and societies. people are more hurried, less open and less trusting the kindness of an unknown fairy. 

Historically, fairies usually engage in trades of favours when doing so, which doesn’t always play out in the favour of the initial giftee. Fairies often trades these favours and I-O-Us among each other as well, which might mean one ends up indebted to a completely unrelated person to the one one originally made an agreement with.

Though it is actually a mistake made by layman to conflate the two: when a fairy engages in an act of good will to build up their magic core, they don’t expect anything in return. A Trade of Favours is more like a contract, and does not directly contribute to a fairies’ magic. It is a social activity among fey magic users, who see each other as connected despite them hailing from completely different ethnicities, countries or realms.

Doing nice things for other people is actually not the main way for fairies to cultivate their core powers. There are tomes upon tomes filled with helpful suggestions how one could interact with nature to gain a positive feedback and how to develop a sense for the whims of the Flow, what it would desire a fairy to do in particular situations.

The oldest and easiest trick in the book is connecting waters. Little streams just emerging from below the earth can be easily connected with the drag of a finger, which can boost the power especially of young, training fairies considerably. It is a simple way teachers employ to teach children the feeling of gaining magical potential.

Fairies also look out for individual plants and animals, as well as whole ecosystem. Keeping them whole pleases the Flow greatly (it is the Universe’s most important goal after all, to keep itself whole and undamaged). However to keep a whole system intact, fairies often need to make decisions that sacrifice the good of the few for that of the many. If the Flow tells them so, fairies will let animals die for them to perform their role in the cycle of life. 

(Sometimes fairies will stand by as whole human civilisations disappear, because their disappearance would benefit the surrounding world more than their continued existence or conservation of their rites. It is seen as just, if they have been especially cruel and left nothing but scars in nature and on related peoples.)

Fairies are seen as objective judges in many cultures, as their magic reaps no gain from subjective justice. A fairy may have an own sense of right and wrong, but where it matters, and especially when it comes to the application of their magic, they will always behave objectively as the Flow demands them to. 

As they are seen as objective bringers of aid, they are often called to emergency situations to bring relief. This is beneficial for the fairies as well, because the “worth” of humanitarian aid of this scale boosts their Magic Core immensely. Of course, being moral beings they need no added incentive and would not refuse to save people from death or peril, just because.

This has a snowball effect: saving some people will grow a fairies powers and make their name known. With more power at their disposal, fairies can help out people more and in situations of larger magnitude. The more they can help, the more they are called in and so on and their Magic Core size gets to grow basically ad infinitum. (No one knows where the upper limit exactly lies).

To be able to adapt their powers to specialised situations beyond the scope of their natal aspect, fairies have developed and ingenious way of partitioning their powers: specialised transformations. Fairies can and do use Magic Cores beyond the ones found in their bodies, a form of power leeching frowned upon in ancient times. By connecting to natural, wild magic or arcane cores of realms they can use the magic potential built up by entire ecosystems and realms to gain temporary power ups. Permanent attachments are only possible in the form of Guardian Fairy melding with planets’  core or in the form of achieving nymphdom that ties one to the entire Universe.

Fairies with very general aspects or with aspects of wide interpretations can further share their own core with followers possessing similar or related aspects. they get the title Major fairy and build own social units in which they teach their followers and develop specialised spells for their shared aspect together. Boons given by major fairies however are not full transformations and are called gifts instead.

The reputation of fairies as well as the development of their powers itself have taken a turbulent ride through the memory of history. One can only imagine where the future will take them.