#parabola

[marejadilla]

Edward Minoff

“Parabola” Oil

“Storm Surge” Oil

[realsafari]

why am i laughing so hard????

parabola.

[thatsbelievable]

[honeymongering]

Figuring out a Silverer outfit for Arden. :3

[johnybones56]

I love when Fallen London wants content to not spoil things but it was very clearly written when the concept of what's "late-game" or "a major spoiler" was very different.

It's always saying stuff like "He briefly mentions Parabola but before you can ask what that is he changes the subject" and it's like dude I have a studio apartment there, me and my friends all go birdwatching in Parabola on the weekends, you just need to know which birds are safe to look at.

[septiccoffeefreak]

Look. Look I KNOW Parabola has nothing to do with being plural. I KNOW it's about spirituality and the human experience and cherishing being alive. But THESE:

ARE SOME PLURAL ASS LYRICS.

[fathomlesslyqueer]

Ms Bean: opens an orphanage

Ms Bean, weeks later:

Time for a field trip, little ones!

[house-of-mirrors]

Entering Parabola unintentionally is all too easy. Entering with purpose is a greater challenge, but not outside the skill set of most people. Exiting Parabola when you haven't attracted its fickle attention is simple enough, but leaving when it hasn't decided to let you go is most difficult indeed. [...] Leaving too quickly will have a deleterious effect on your body and psyche. You may not develop nitrogen bubbles in your blood, but dreams can still hurt you. Shards accumulate in the mind, and phantoms can follow you to the waking world. The mirror is hungry and takes from those who try to bypass its channels.

Happy birthday to @the-insouciant-scientist with this fic about traveling through Parabola! I had fun exploring this setting, crafting prose, and integrating the Neathbow.

Read it here

[geraldofallon]

Fallen London Species: Focused Albatross

[alexander-the-greatest1987]

[esteemed-excellency]

the concept of the folly is subjective and it has been suggested that the definition of a folly "lies in the eyes of the beholder"

[neathyingenue]

Drew this a while ago but just now getting to post it!! Here's a sketch of Silvia's Parabola reflection. I'm calling her "the Daffodil Maiden." For an overexplanation of the Yucatec Maya, Welsh, Spanish, English, and Catholic visual references-- look below the cut :)

Also I *am* working on the OC gouache portraits (got one done and two sketched out) but my hip is injured or something?? making sitting down painful so I can't paint :/ As soon as I can, I will get to work on those again!

The majority of the reflection's garment is based on the huipil of the Yucatec Maya, specifically the versions worn in the jarada, the national folk dance of Belize. Silvia's is embroidered with daffodils, the national flower of Wales. The flared hem is ruffled and gathered, trimmed with ribbon, a nod to European textiles/sewing techniques and Spanish folk-dance costumes. The ribbon sash thing is also part of the jarada costume--here I want it to constrict Silvia a bit.

The long unstyled hair is taken from the pre-Raphaelite painters, who depicted idealized versions of Victorian youthful femininity. Specifically I'm thinking of Waterhouse's 'Lady of Shalott,' because that poem is about a mirror and a forbidden glimpse of a desired reality. It's too perfect for Parabola! The halo, though, moves us into the more austere Catholic ideal of the virgin saint, most notably Mary the mother of Jesus.

I specifically took inspiration from the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico and the Americas, who legend states appeared to an Indigenous peasant, St. Juan Pablo. There is a lot of debate among Latin Americans about how the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe should be interpreted. Is her apparition the Church's attempt to redirect and control Indigenous goddess-worship? Or does it represent an important step toward inclusion in Christianity for Mary to appear to an oppressed non-white person? Does she represent colonial control, or the resistance to it? Although Silvia was never Catholic, Catholicism is one of the most recognizable impacts of Spain's colonialism in the Americas, so I wanted to visually depict that tension in this design.

The daffodil rod references iconography of St. Joseph, Mary's husband. Legend states that his walking-stick flowered with lilies to show everyone that he would be Mary's husband and Jesus's legal father. Joseph is the patron saint of fathers, immigrants, exiles, and workers, so that's also relevant to Silvia's backstory.

With this design, I'm trying to convey Silvia's complicated relationship to her cultural identities, as well as her deep desire to be seen as morally pure and good. I think she would be uncomfortable with how European and maidenly her reflection is--because it would force her to confront the fact that her moral code, no matter how radical, still smacks of European philosophy and Catholic ideals of "purity."

[alexis-royce]

Shame the Academic doesn't like Parabola much. I imagine that's exactly what they'd see in the war against their reflection, right? The one that had the cards. It'd be so sad.

Their eyes are better, brighter. As The Academic stands before something that isn’t quite a lush dinner table, and almost is a looking-glass, the eyes of the person seated across from them are what The Academic notices first. The eyes and the brightness in them.

It’s only after that when they notice the second eye.

The second eye is a vivid green yellow: shapeling arts, no doubt. Such an easy fix, and both are protected behind tinted spectacles. It’s confusing, because the rest of this body does not match the gleam in the gaze. The cheeks are lean; belonging to someone who has been stepped on time and time again. The frame is thinner and the arms have less muscle-the reflection has been skipping meals- and their clothes belong at the university; lab coat stained with ink and whatever they’ve been too absent-minded to clean. This person clearly no longer lives at The Bazaar. They’re back in a townhouse, or-god forbid, some unfashionable remote address.

The reflection’s eyes aren’t meeting The Academic’s; instead, they’re responding with their own appraisal. They take in The Academic’s opulent garments with amazement, and The Academic begins to swell with pride. But as soon as their lip curls and a fang emerges, the reflection blanches; a wholly uncalled for spot of judgementallism. The claws cause them to turn away in disgust; scholarly curiosity sated, the answer repellent.

The hair on the back of The Academic’s neck is standing up, and their clenched throat easily climbs to a high-pitched, inhuman timbre.

“What. Have you suddenly drawn a line in the sand, you hypocrite?” Fists clench. “Wasn’t there some bit about removing the board from your own eye before commenting on the mote in your neighbor’s?” There’s nobody in this dream but the two Academics, and the feeling is decadence itself, unleashing the Curator voice without the robe.

Lesser beings on the chain can feel the danger standing before them when a Master speaks. Even before the claws and the neddy-men and the aerial attacks, a human body simply cannot argue with their betters-

In the mirror, a gloved hand reaches lips, and those lips laugh, and it’s horrible how beautiful the sound is. It couldn’t be heard when they were speaking timidly, but their voice is low and rich. It’s such an ordinary transformation, so terribly mundane in comparison. One needn’t rearrange organs or grow new ones or defy the chain, and the soft, gentle sound belongs in Veilgarden.

“My apologies.” Their face is far from pure; that’s contempt in the tilt of the brow, the pinching of the cheeks. But there’s a softness too. Pity.

The Academic can feel their chest tightening. Lungs shuddering.

“It really is quite a thing you’ve accomplished.” And there’s no irony, no smirk, just more of that bold-faced speech, as though the thoughts in their head need no massaging(messaging) or preparation before reaching another pair of ears. “I assume it’s not quite done yet, but it really is remarkable.”

The Academic’s knees are locked in place, spine rigid. If they loosened by the slightest fraction, something would give. “Thank you,” they push through gritted teeth, “it has come with lessons. They have been generous.” The push too much, and a vicious grin slips out: “Pages’ collection has been particularly enjoyable to peruse.”

The Academic’s pride is a dirigible, an Obliterator-class, looming and bold and another stifled bit of mirth escapes the lips of the reflection, and the hit explodes the ballonet. Would to god it were a precision strike; but it’s not Veils tittering and choosing an insult meant to chill. It’s not Pages, artfully striking in a way meant to wound and enrage and spur on revenge twofold. It’s just a sorry little human, one who spills anything on their mind, who shares precious truth and intel with the unwashed masses like so much spare change, tossed into an urchin’s sooty mitts.

“Those books must be interesting!” Two eyes, wide with scientific curiosity. “What have you learned about the stars?”

“Why, a fraction of everything, my good fellow!” The Academic grins and adjusts their monocle. “The sailing patterns of wings which catch solar winds! The secret laws of sunlight! The wisdom of minds which stretch back millennia!”

And they are lying, for the answer is nothing. The Academic has learned nothing from their ascent into a new form. The Masters are a bickering cluster of glorified bats, they are outcasts from their kind, the lowest of the low, tricked in turn by immortals and humans alike, turning on one another in desperation. The lessons they teach are vapid and empty and as cheap a payment as legally possible, as befits their spendthrift nature. The future they promise is cold, and however magnificently a human excels among his peers, a runt of a Curator will never, ever be accepted. There is a future with The Masters on their journey home; but once they arrive the loom of fate runs out of thread. It refuses to show another stitch. Perhaps a new exile with an unfamiliar cast of rejects. Will Cards even make it one city before it meets its end? Will it even get a well-burial, or is even that indignity too good for a glorified ape?

What has The Academic learned? They have seen the frozen space between spaces, the precious meaning in the space between meanings and hearts. They have charted portions of the Zee three hundred times over, stood at the very peak, and done battle on the Neath’s roof. They have put their hands on the loom of fate, tasted the futures available to London, and assisted a colleague in breaking the boundaries of the concept of death and fate in one strike.

But none of that required the assistance of The Masters.

“Breathtaking!” If the reflection senses a hint of untruth, there’s no sign of it. “I did want to know what you’d learned.”

The Academic’s hand rises to the clasp around their neck. Via the language of dreams, they could share their self-knowledge with the reflection. They could pass the robe through the mirror. Give the reflection a taste of what it turned down.

To consent, or to deny?

The reflection turns away. Beechwood is standing there, and things click. The Academic is The Academic who became Cards.

The reflection is The Academic who threw The Marvellous. They recognized the limit of The Masters’ abilities, that the buy-in was as more costly than the entire pot. Their eyes were open during that final, fateful(fatal) hand of the match, and rather than be blinded by another chance at victory, the reflection saw the desperate bid from Beechwood. The subtle signs from one brilliant scientist to another, the moment to turn the game around on The Masters, to play a much greater game.

If The Academic were to pass the robe through the glass, would the reflection pass Beechwood though? Would The Academic get to read a thread of fate where that mind had survived?

Hands quivering, they go to unclasp the lock, to step away from the scaffolding-

But the reflection has already turned away. “I did want to know what you’d learned. But I’ve already read those stories, myself.”

And The Academic realizes that they never really had a choice, the reflection is denying them, it was the reflection’s dream, and they return the smallest smile-

Before lunging headlong at the mirror, fists beating again and again onto the surface, shattering it, their reflection multiplying. One who had ascended to the top of the social order, a crown atop their head, and no respect withheld by the masses. Another was studying arctic ice flows, publishing papers on the surface, a vital link between two worlds. One stared The Masters down, paperwork in order. They shook hands with poets in Balmoral, and their Violant pen protected London with red law and legislative fury.

But that first reflection was in facet after facet. A broken glass zoetrope of sated curiosity, to pity, and ultimately, head turned away in indifference.

The Academic couldn’t hear their own voice but they were sure they were screaming, claws raking, straining to render those shards into powder, but something held them back- a hand on their shoulder and a cloying tone. A stovepipe hat and buttons that gleamed like eye- no, eyes that gleamed like buttons- wait, that wasn’t right either- coat flapping in the golden mean and an endless fractal of fingers curling, curling around and around The Academic’s arm-

“D__n!” The Academic swore. Their voice had wandered back, but it still felt far away. “Another reason why I hate this place.”

“Parabola isn’t all bad,” The Manager replied, “why, one meets the most charming people there.”

The Manager gave The Academic a friendly pat on the head, and even though the sun had set, it didn’t quite seem to be ending. They coughed up a volley of cards, the posterboard thwaking out a shuffle as all 54 hit the ground and scattered.

The Academic gave an ineffectual tug with their bound arm. Either the Manager was still holding onto it, or a very impermanent straight-jacket was crawling onto The Academic’s body. If they didn’t stare very closely at it, it was going to eat up The Academic’s hands, and then their arms, and The Royal Beth was a wretched place to go about armless.

Another pat on the head, too many fingers curling around the now ragged locks of hair, gripping and pulling the whole person away, “But we can’t have you harming yourself, now can we? It’s much better to disarm someone, especially when they can cause so much havoc with even one hand.”

[the-avaricious-meddler]

The color green is often associated with envy.

[pardalote]

The edge of the parabola.

This is still kind of a work in progress. It's a failed/abandoned thing that I don't talk about much. It's a large, glowy tribute to a curve.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photography Credit: Brassaï, "Chartres in Winter," 1946

* * * *

"It is hard for most of us to believe that both angels and demons mingle with humans on Earth. Yet tradition teaches that they are rarely seen in their essential form; they go about their business in plausibly devised appearances, looking like regular people in order to pass unnoticed.

They are instructed, in fact ordered, to affect the lives of men and women, either to raise them to higher consciousness or at least higher ethics, or to seduce them downward to the animal sphere.

Their common purpose is to allow us to exercise our free will, to choose.

This free will is the unique power granted to men and women and which we must exercise or eventually lose. If either angelic or demonic influence was always stronger than our free will, people would be compelled to be good or to be bad. Real choice would not exist and free will would simply be a comforting fantasy. But in the actual struggle of forces, a man or woman can choose to follow the light with difficulty and at some cost, or not. The great Cosmic Design requires us to force our souls through this eternal struggle."

~ Lillian Firestone on how angels sometimes are not what they seem. From 'On the Train to Siberia' in Parabola

[Ian Sanders]