#specifically around the concept of the narrator's human form

[chellustrates]

looks at the thought of drawing fluffy stanarrator like the meme of lois looking at the pill bottle

[numberonesnarkfan]

This is the story of a being named The Narrator.

Many religions and spiritualities have invented concepts and nomenclature that closely describes the type of being The Narrator is. For a western listener to understand best, the closest definition would be that it is a type of ‘spirit’.

The Narrator, as you know it, is a spirit not bound by laws of physics as you are, but bound by laws that govern a realm invisible to humans. One of these laws that applies to The Narrator specifically, is that it cannot refer to itself with a name or pronoun that is not given to it by man. The Narrator never referred to itself at all for much of its life. Even ‘it’ is a new pronoun to it. It knew the pronouns ‘ham’ and ‘den’ from the ancient Vikings, ‘to’ and ‘afton’ from the even more ancient Greeks. ‘The Narrator’, too, is a new name, given to it only in the 1600s. 

The last cult who discovered and committed themselves to it called it him, and named him Mikonaxas. The last cult of Mikonaxas was only formed ten years after the turn of the millennium. They operated for three years, dutifully serving the spirit. Mikonaxas told his cult that he embodied story. In ancient times, he would speak to bards and philosophers and tell them things that would change the course of history, if only they would appease him. In this age, Mikonaxas grew bored of his role as a spirit existing only to aid man and instead desired to join them in their feasting and revelry, and in their glory and toil. He wanted to feel firsthand the emotions and desires that he had studied closely, that could only be felt by one in a corporeal body.

“What type of body do you desire, Mikonaxas, my lord?” a member asked, bowing his head to the spirit, its form only visible as a dark cloud. Jim held his breath. He hoped truly that the being would not want for a body that matched his own. He dreaded what the spirit might do to him.

“I’m thinking…” Mikonaxas mused, “tall and fat, a symbol of my power and prestige. I want to appear old and wise, yet a youthful spark in my eyes, yes… Do you know of the appearance of the ancient daemon, Pan? Something like that. But I don’t want my body to be only human, heavens no. I must embody divinity, I must exist beyond the limitations of man. Perhaps endowed somehow with your new ‘recording’ technology, so that my stories can live forever. Can you do that for me? I’d love that.”

Jim released his breath. While he was getting old, his previous lifestyle had rendered him quite particularly gangly. He didn’t fit the bill. He glanced nervously around the near-empty ‘church’, which was in fact built in the basement of an abandoned house. There was one man who he knew fit Mikonaxas’ request.

This is the story of a man named Angelo.

Jim had known Angelo for a number of years. In fact, he had once had a relationship with him, before he had become Angelo when he transitioned to identifying as a man. He had cut ties with his family, who did not accept him anymore, and named himself after his great-great grandfather, who had also faced persecution for his identity. Angelo lived in a small suburban home, with no company other than his two cats. Angelo remained friends with Jim after their amicable break-up, when Jim admitted that, in respect of Angelo’s transition, he was no longer attracted to him. Angelo, rather than being angry, felt grateful to Jim for treating him truly as a man. Now, Angelo was a friend of the cult through Jim.

Jim felt a pit in his stomach. Among gods, or beings who were worshipped as gods, Mikonaxas could sometimes be cruel. He had an explosive temper. If Jim failed to deliver him his desires, Jim didn’t know what he might do to him, or to the cult at large. Jim bowed to Mikonaxas and turned to return to his quarters.

In the days following, Jim found himself faced with a ‘trolley problem’, of sorts. One potential loss of life, or the potential loss of the lives of the entire cult? In truth, Jim didn’t know what would happen to Angelo’s body if he were given to Mikonaxas. But if he had to augment it somehow to make it ‘exist beyond the limitations of man’, that couldn’t be good for Angelo’s general health.

That night, Jim made up his mind. He called the cult to a meeting and described to them Mikonaxas’ request. Stefan, a nurse, piped up that he may be able to help, as did Lucy, who was part of a team who built robots for work and fun. Over months, they devised a plan and built a prototype. They presented it to Mikonaxas, who liked it, but proposed a few changes. After more months, they had a final version.

They would harvest parts from a computer and a professional microphone to implant into Angelo’s body. Some of his organs would need to be removed or replaced. The replacements and the parts were ready, now only one part of the plan remained: Angelo himself.

Jim was dispatched to Angelo’s home a few nights later. They had agreed to have dinner there, simply as friends. Angelo had prepared a beautiful meal and Jim had supplied the wine, along with a certain secret ingredient.

Angelo greeted Jim and allowed him in, motioning for him to sit down at the table. Angelo was on the older and heavier side, with long silvery hair that was often tied in a bun, as it was tonight. He had thick black eyebrows, the only visible hair on him that hadn’t been turned grey by the test of time. He had a square jaw and pale skin, his fingers now rapping on the edge of the table. Jim sat across from him and smiled.

For an hour, they talked. Angelo asked about the cult and Mikonaxas and Jim assured him that everything was going fine. He felt a pang of guilt in his chest. Partway through their meeting, Angelo excused himself to the bathroom and Jim dropped his ‘secret ingredient’ into Angelo’s wine: a powerful sedative.

Angelo returned from the bathroom and took a sip of his wine, none the wiser. It didn’t take long for the drug to take effect. Angelo didn’t want to be rude to his guest, so he fought to keep his eyes open. Around half an hour later, though, he told Jim that he was awfully sorry, but something must be wrong. Jim responded that he could take Angelo to the hospital if he wanted, but Angelo insisted he would just sleep it off. When he could barely get up from his chair, however, Jim insisted and took him out to his car. Angelo didn’t fight as Jim strapped him into the passenger seat and got in the driver’s seat. Jim started the car and watched as Angelo started to fall asleep.

Angelo didn’t wake up even when he was dragged out of the car and into the basement of the cult’s house, or when he was hoisted onto the table, or when he was tied down, stripped and duct tape gagged. Only when Stefan started to cut, did he wake up. He surely would have fought to escape, had he not been thoroughly tied down. Jim felt his heart sink as Angelo’s wide and teary eyes landed on him.

Stefan, though he was a nurse, was not at all qualified for a surgery of this type. Mikonaxas lended some aid through some kind of mysterious magic, allowing wires and parts to be laid in Angelo’s body, along with a vessel for himself, a small jar in Angelo’s midsection. Even still, when his eyes stopped moving, Jim knew that Angelo was dead. Mikonaxas instructed them to continue, though, and so they did. The final touch was the large microphone stand that protruded from his back, arching up over his head to dangle a recording mic in front of his face.

Finally, Angelo was reclothed and laid down, rigor mortis beginning to set in. Jim held his breath as Mikonaxas lowered himself into Angelo’s now vacant body. He watched as the last slivers of his dark, smoky form disappeared through the skin. All was silent for a moment, before Jim heard a sound like a computer whirring to life. Angelo’s eyes shot open, his irises now bright yellow, split by a slit pupil. 

With Mikonaxas’ deep, bassy voice, he spoke;

“N-no. This isn’t right.”

Blood began to dribble from his mouth as he got up from the table on shaky legs. He stumbled, then turned to face the cult.

“This isn’t–” Angelo - or rather, both of them, doubled over in pain as Mikonaxas rammed at the walls of his vessel, trying to get out. Wounds began to reopen, blood quickly seeping through his bandages and reddening his clothes. 

Wind started to whip and howl at the house, threatening its structure. Jim heard wood creaking before the sudden smash of a window upstairs. The cult members began to panic, but Jim’s eyes stayed on Angelo. 

Jim watched in horror as a black cloud exploded out of Angelo. It filled the room quickly. It felt like burning and freezing at the same time. It felt like falling and rising, like being turned to dust.

This is the story of two beings, known together as The Narrator.

The Narrator felt the dark explosion trickle back inside of him. He slowly stood up straight and looked around the room. The walls and floor were blackened and everything that had been in the room - the table, the altar, and the humans, had been reduced to dust, or perhaps soot. He felt the life draining from him again. Something inside him roused; a deep-set human instinct. For the first time in his life, he feared death. He refused to die.

The Narrator forced himself to move, stumbling through the room and up the stairs. The wind still whipped at the house, the support beams creaking. He limped out of the door, now ripped off of its hinges by the storm. He stepped out into the wind and rain and headed slowly for the closest building. It was a large office complex. The moon was nearly full, the office was the only building with its lights on in an immediate radius.

It felt like hours he was forcing himself to walk. His strength was waning as he pulled himself through the door. The receptionist didn’t appear to be present, so he stumbled through the building, tracking blood all over the carpet. He stopped occasionally to lean on a wall and throw up blood as he searched for signs of human life. The implants in his skin were starting to threaten to fall back out. His vision was blurring.

Finally, he came across an office with the sound of typing coming from inside. He pushed the door open. A man turned to face him as he entered, his face whitening in fear and shock. He was tall and lanky, with brown hair and arched eyebrows, with matching brown eyes. He appeared frozen to his chair in shock as The Narrator approached him.

The Narrator grabbed Stanley by the shoulders. He didn’t say anything, there was too much blood in his mouth for that, which at this moment was dripping onto Stanley’s legs. A horrible crack and a spark came from him before all of the lights in the complex went out. 

Stanley opened his mouth to yell.

The Narrator screamed over him as a black cloud exploded out of him. 

Then, the cloud began to whirl and implode. The wind picked up hard enough for trees to be pulled over outside. It was like a black hole. It was a black hole. Stanley was sucked in first, before it grew, taking more and more of the offices with it, then the entire building, before, in a flash of light, it suddenly vanished. 

…

.

..

.

The Narrator cleared his throat,

“This is the story of a man named Stanley.”

[vase]

Writing Tip #1: Getting Started, Part One - The Three Pillars

Getting started with a writing project can be intimidating, especially when one is self-taught or has no formal writing training. Not to fear, I've created this writing tip series to help out! Without further ado... let's get started!

In this entry, I'm going to cover what I believe to be the absolute basics of tackling a story. These pillars are commonly accepted to be: character, plot, setting.

Characters are, simply, the "characters" of a story (like defining the word "the", there's no better way to put it other than that it's... "the"). Characters are any living or personified being that move the plot and inhabit the setting. In essence, a character can be anything. For examples of non-human characters leading narratives, see the Warrior Cats series or Watership Down. There are also examples of non-living beings like towns being characters in a story (the names of these stories escape me).

A protagonist of a story is the character that the story is about. Usually, the protagonist of the story will also double as the narrator or something adjacent to it, but there are exceptions to this. For example, in The Great Gatsby, Nick is the narrator but Gatsby is the protagonist. Although we follow Nick through the story as he recounts the events of the story, the events focus around Gatsby, his life, and his choices. As presented here, a narrator is a character of whom the reader sees the events of the story through. A story can have multiple narrators (called colloquially "multiple POVs") or none at all (within the Third Person Omniscient point of view, which will be discussed next issue).

An antagonist is a character that opposes the goals or views of the protagonist. Base level media criticism harps on this fact (because base level media critics know nothing else about writing), but hero is not synonymous with protagonist, and villain is not synonymous with antagonist. While this is often the case, it isn't always. If a villain were the main character of a story, then the villain would be the protagonist and the hero would be the antagonist. Deuteragonists are the characters who are the second most important, second to the protagonist. Secondary and tertiary characters are characters that play varying degrees of supporting roles other than that of protagonist or antagonist, which generally becomes semantic to dictate beyond the secondary zone.

A dynamic character describes a character who changes throughout the course of the story (usually as a result of a character arc, but not always) and a static character is a character that doesn't change throughout the course of the story. Just because a character is static does not make them worse, both characters have a place in their respective stories or single story. Static characters often perform a certain niche or invoke change in other characters in them or their environment. Dynamic characters make for interesting and engaging stories that make it easier for a reader to like them over watching them struggle over long periods of time (unlike static characters, who are sometimes likable right off the bat).

When getting started writing characters, especially with no idea in mind, I heavily suggest using character forms. Forms like these, while sometimes heavily specialized to certains genres or fandoms, help exercise both general and specific details of a character. When creating characters for a story, it is important to consider how certain character archetypes and individuals will play into the message or type of story you're aiming for. For example, a protagonist in their mid-20s may not be best for a story about the firsthand horrors of old age. On the flipside, an elderly character may not be best for a high stakes action adventure. These could both be subverted ideas, but in general, throughout these tips, I'm going to preach the concept of learning the rules before they are subverted.

For fleshing out characters, writing character exercises is a good way to get to know the character that you will--most likely--end up writing a lot for a full fledged story. Putting your character in different situations and writing how specifically those situations are handled can help a character be uniquely understood beyond the confines of a form.

Plot is the events of the story in the order they are laid out to the viewer. "Plot" and "story" are stressed differently here, as plot refers specifically to how the story is relayed to the audience. Where the story is the complete list of all relevant events, the plot is what we as the reader are shown (for example, bathroom breaks are part of the story, because we're aware that they happen, but they aren't actually verbalized to the reader, so they're not plot). Plot also dictates the order in which events appear. Some stories have events appear in non-chronological order. In this case, the story would be all of the events in their chronological order, and plot would be the order in which they appear to the reader.

The most important element of plot taught in elementary school classrooms is Freytag's pyramid, attached below.

Exposition is the introduction to the foreign world that the reader is being introduced to--in terms of this post, exposition is when the reader is introduced to the characters and the setting. The inciting incident is a single event in which something of this world is tipped askew, leading to the events and conflict of the rest of the story. In the rising action, we are building up and up in conflict until the climax, in which all of the built up tension is released. In a fantasy story, this will be your final battle. In a romance story, this will be your first kiss. In a thriller, your killer is finally revealed. The falling action deals with the fallout of the climax and settles the story for the resolution. In Freytag's pyramid, the rising and falling dictates the level of conflict or tension arising from a story. It is important to note that it is absolutely possible to throw Freytag's pyramid to the wind. In smaller examples, a series of stories may skip the resolution in the end of its first book and will skip the exposition of the following books, because the story is not yet resolved and later books need no introduction to a world we were just in (however, series sometimes go to the exposition phase just in case, whether we were just with them or not, like in event of a time jump). In larger examples, stories may end with the climax or hack off different parts of Freytag's pyramid freely. Your story is yours to amalgamate, but again, learn the rules before you break them.

For more in depth ways of starting a plot, the 27 chapter method is a bit of a more fleshed out Freytag's pyramid that's easier to follow. The 27 chapter method, however, is meant to be used more as a "general guide" rather than a gospel.

Lastly, and frankly, often toted as least, is setting. Setting is simply the time and place that a story is taking place in. For now, I'm going to store away the topics of actually building a world (ie, Worldbuilding) for another day, and focus here specifically on the active role the setting plays in a story.

A story can be set anywhere, but just like the conversation of what characters best fit a story, choosing a good setting could better enhance a story. Any story written anywhere other than a believable place that humans could be is often referred to as a fantasy book, as creating this in-depth world often means that the protagonists will be exploring it, hence, "fantasy"-- ie. not real. It is theoretically possible to create a story in a fantasy world that does not harp on its existence in a fantasy world at all, but this would be... questionable, and probably not a good use of setting. Fantasy stories taking place in fantasy worlds are often called high fantasy, whereas fantasy stories taking place in our modern world is called low fantasy. On the topic of time, stories set before the piece was written are called historical fiction.

Setting builds the characters in our story, as our characters are all defined by their relationship to their setting. If a character grew up in the setting created, the setting itself will have an impact on who they are. If your character is an outsider to this world, then a lot of this character's personal conflicts may deal with being at odds with the strange world they've been put into. The setting also informs not only the genre and characters, but the status quo. In exposition, we are often being introduced to the ins and outs of the way this world works, as it will either inform the plot and characters throughout the story, or will be broken by the end of the story.

When starting a story, setting is not often what authors start with. Instead of giving places to start, like with plot and characters, I will instead advise the author to start with their characters or plot and work backwards. Looking at this character I've created, what kind of world would they come from? Looking at this plot I've created, what world would it take place in? I'm going to go more into worldbuilding in another issue, but for now, I will leave it at that.

Thank you for reading this far! I really hope this was helpful and enjoyable. I don't consider myself an expert but I do really like writing, and I want to share that love with everyone here. I'm going to keep this section brief because I've been typing up a storm, but thank you for all of your support. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep this up as a longer series.

[bassuwun]

Aww Thank you so much <3

Kanamori was actually made to be a perfect foil to my other character Emmanuel, but he still takes inspiration from an eclectic bunch of things so I’ll try to list the ones that really stand out below

Love and Lust as Concepts:

These are his main motifs, along with affection, intimacy, obsession, basically any form of attraction. I did way too much research on what love is as like a strict definition and this is the result. (The answer was that there isn’t one specific answer)

Adam from NeiR:

Albinistic, very very pretty, and the way Adam loved Eve and learning about humans. Curiosity and Education can be a love language too.

Aphrodite from Hades game:

Hair make fun shapes, also they have the exact same motifs and color scheme I just moved things around basically.

Grenacia Mars Elijah Guo Eckener (Guren) from Cowboy Bebop:

Complicated gender situation, neither I nor the narrator know what to call Kanamori other than their name. Also because I love Guren, and Guren loved Vicious, I will die on this hill.

Miquella the Unalloyed from Elden Ring:

(spoilers for DLC) If Miquella hadn’t abandoned his love honestly his plot probably would have worked, but the minuet he did that he set down the path that created all the pain and suffering he was presently trying to alleviate. Basically the root cause of a lot of problems can be a lack of love or support so instead of trying to fix the problem you should address the cause of said problem.

Xiao Xingchen from Modao Zushi:

Love is blind but not painless, this one will make more sense when I get around to laying out the rest of the word and the other characters. Specifically the character that is Xue Yang in this comparison.

Adding on even more to his love themes, I specifically chose to spell his name Kanamori like this:

Which very very roughly translates to Loved and Protected.

But yeah, thank you so much for the ask and letting me rant about my lil guy <3

[madeitlate37]

The Tangi Virus by Paul Cantalanotto (also known as Vintage Eight)

It’s time for our first analog horror movie, and as luck has it, the first in a trilogy.

To make things more interesting, our first virus as well. Because I’m trying to have as much variety as possible in these seven analog horrors—if I even stop at seven because I keep finding new ones that capture my fancy. Prehistoric Emergence, looking at you. And I couldn’t have that variety without including at least one horror with a viral contagion as the main threat.

Vintage Eight’s Analog Horrors, with Sink Hole being the longest from my observance at one hour and eight minutes, generally presents his stories in the form of short films. The Tangi Virus, and its sequels, are no exception to this.

(NOTE: If it wasn’t obvious, I’m still experimenting with how I should do this as well as what I should say or omit, so I’m going to go closer to spoilers, or actually saying the general concept, because concept itself is arguably the most important part of any story. I fear I’ve been too vague in my prior reviews, so we’ll see how well this approach does in comparison.)

All three of the movies—as well as every other analog horror of Vintage Eight’s—are able to be watched in a vacuum from each other much like his other movies. Every analog horror by Vintage Eight generally takes place within the same area, and every story is independent from one another aside from the occasional cameo where it makes sense. With this trilogy, however, there is a cohesive narrative tying each one together. It goes: The Tangi Virus, The Oracle Project, and The Human Trials, if you are interested in watching the entire series.

First, the spoiler-free qualities:

• Viral threat, unlike Midwest Angelica, it is a virus that operates like the vast majority of viruses on earth, except for…

• Hive-mind threat, this occurs later, however, and is not the largest issue the virus presents.

• Biological study, one particular portion of the movie revolves around the attempted study of the virus.

• Untrustworthy sources, one infomercial says something isn’t safe, very next one essentially tells you to sprint towards that thing like your life depends on it.

• B-Plot threat, basically, there is another “threat” that is included, but it exists in the background so much in The Tangi Virus that it can be confused as the main threat if you don’t see The Oracle Project.

Okay, so slightly smaller list—there’s less content in the movie than the series because I don’t want to dip into the sequels for this. So let’s move on.

Higher spoiler-risk content:

This analog horror—and many of Vintage Eight’s other movies—present their information in a slightly different method that we’ll also see in next week’s series. This also takes up the bulk of the film, which is: Personal logs narrated by automated voices. The automated voices are not included in every instance of this, but the main go-to for Analog Horror is for some visual imagery. Even with Vita Carnis’ documentaries and interviews, there is always a relevant image as either the real focus or the backdrop while the text is still displayed.

In The Tangi Virus, the audience is mostly reduced to a black computer monitor with text appearing as the log is narrated, with the occasional infomercials or government warnings in between as the only relief. Yes this can be considered cheap, but it did also make me as an audience member feel much more isolated. Much like the people of this small town were when they were held still in this dangerous location. You’re stuck with only one primary source of information and, regardless of the fact that a scientist is at the helm of this monitor, it feels too easy for details to be omitted or lost in the gap between the event and the translation into text.

For that reason, that method of storytelling completely works for the short film and for its sequels.

Now, because The Tangi Virus is only a half hour long, it’s harder to find specific points worth mentioning without directly spoiling what happens, but Vintage Eight is very good at presenting facts and events in a way that puts their audience through an emotional rollercoaster. Again, I strongly suspect that this is because that isolation makes audience members emotionally grip onto whatever information they receive tighter than they would with surveillance footage and the like. Because, especially if something scary happens, the audience likely witnessed at least a part of it and are overwhelmed by the events to some degree, often needing a moment or even a rewatch to fully look at that event again through an analytical lens. In Vintage Eight’s series’, that lens is all you have because your only senses are hearing and seeing, but the lack of images throughout most of the story negate your sight. All while the voice you are hearing isn’t even a human one, and instead an automated voiceover.

I’m trying to go into more storytelling pros/cons because I’m also realizing that Analog Horror is a good example of creators and storytellers finding ways to make theirs happen. And, for someone like me who is still too insecure about my own stories to start actually posting anything, any example of creative and effective ways to handle stories are very helpful.

So, on top of me simply recommending a good Horror series/short film, maybe this could also be called pseudo-advice on how to express one’s own stories, specifically for people who want to make content for this or other genres, and who want to know how others did it.

We’ll see how decent I am at balancing that. For now, however, I think that’s all the non-spoiler-laden content I can write for the Tangi Virus, but I may revisit Vintage Eight in the future, especially because there is another movie of his that is my favorite of his Analog Horrors. But, not for this immediate list.

Please go check out Vintage Eight’s YouTube Channel if any of this is interesting to you.

As for next week…

[theindiandanceclass]

The Spiritual Aspect of Indian Classical Dance

Indian classical dance is much more than a performing art; it is a profound spiritual practice that connects the dancer to the divine. Rooted in ancient traditions and scriptures, these dance forms are a blend of intricate movements, expressive gestures, and symbolic storytelling, all imbued with deep spiritual significance. Bharatanatyam classes near me This blog delves into the spiritual aspect of Indian classical dance, exploring its origins, philosophical foundations, and the transformative experiences it offers to practitioners.

Origins and Philosophical Foundations

Ancient Roots: Indian classical dance has its origins in the temples of ancient India, where it was performed as a form of worship. The Natya Shastra, a foundational treatise on performing arts written by the sage Bharata Muni around 200 BCE to 200 CE, outlines the principles of dance, drama, and music. According to the Natya indian classical dance classes near me Shastra, dance was created by the gods to educate and entertain humans, blending spiritual and artistic elements to achieve a higher purpose.

Bhakti (Devotion): At the heart of Indian classical dance is the concept of bhakti, or devotion. Dancers dedicate their performances to deities, embodying stories from Hindu mythology and scriptures. Through dance, they express their reverence, love, and surrender to the divine. bharatnatyam classes This devotional aspect transforms the dance into a sacred ritual, elevating it beyond mere entertainment.

Symbolism and Spiritual Expression

Mudras (Hand Gestures): Mudras are symbolic hand gestures that convey specific meanings and emotions. Each mudra is a prayer in itself, used to narrate stories and invoke spiritual energies. For instance, the Anjali mudra (hands folded in prayer) signifies reverence and humility, classical indian dance classes near me while the Abhaya mudra (hand raised in blessing) represents protection and reassurance.

Rasa (Emotional Essence): Rasa refers to the emotional essence or flavor that a dance evokes in the audience. According to Indian aesthetics, there are nine primary rasas: Shringara (love), Hasya (joy), Karuna (compassion), Raudra (anger), Veera (courage), Bhayanaka (fear), Bibhatsa (disgust), Adbhuta (wonder), and Shanta (peace). Through the depiction of these rasas, dancers connect with the audience on a deep, emotional level, creating a shared spiritual experience.

Chakras and Energy Flow: Many Indian classical dance forms align movements with the body's energy centers, or chakras. indian dance class The dance acts as a form of moving meditation, balancing and activating these energy centers. This alignment fosters a sense of harmony and well-being, facilitating a deeper connection with the self and the divine.

Transformative Experiences for Dancers

Mind-Body-Spirit Connection: The practice of Indian classical dance fosters a harmonious connection between the mind, body, and spirit. The rigorous physical training strengthens the body, while the focus on rhythm and coordination sharpens the mind. online bharatanatyam classes The spiritual intent behind the dance nurtures the soul, leading to a holistic sense of well-being.

Meditative Practice: Repetitive practice of movements and rhythms in Indian classical dance has a meditative quality. The dancer becomes fully immersed in the present moment, experiencing a state of flow where the distinction between the dancer and the dance dissolves. This meditative state brings about inner peace and a sense of transcendence.

Emotional Catharsis: Through the portrayal of various emotions and stories, dancers experience and release their own emotions. This emotional catharsis has a purifying effect, helping them process and transcend personal struggles and experiences.

Spiritual Experience for the Audience

Collective Participation: In a traditional Indian classical dance performance, the audience is not merely a passive observer but an active participant. The shared experience of the performance creates a collective sense of unity and spirituality, where both the dancer and the audience are transported to a higher plane of consciousness.

Invocation of the Divine: Dance performances often begin with invocations and prayers, setting a sacred tone for the event. The presence of the divine is invoked through the music, movements, and expressions, creating an atmosphere of reverence and sanctity.

Conclusion

The spiritual aspect of Indian classical dance is a testament to its depth and richness. It is a practice that transcends the physical realm, offering profound spiritual experiences for both the dancer and the audience. bharatanatyam dance classes near me By blending devotion, symbolism, and expressive storytelling, Indian classical dance serves as a powerful medium for connecting with the divine, fostering inner peace, and experiencing the sacred in everyday life. Whether as a practitioner or a spectator, engaging with Indian classical dance opens the door to a world of spiritual beauty and profound transformation.

[bestworstcase]

…salem did not do anything wrong.

she was a grieving young woman who prayed to the gods to spare her lover from death. because she was religious. she had faith in her creators and felt hope that they might help her. when the god of light denied her, she got upset in the moment, but she accepted that he had refused and—this part is important—she left him the flowers she'd brought him.

the way rwby handles divinity is very polytheistic and specifically influenced by ancient greek and roman practice (also hellenistic philosophy). a fundamental concept in roman polytheism is "do ut des," which we might translate loosely as "i give so that you may give." polytheistic worship involves reciprocation, a give and take between human and divine, and roman polytheism was particularly contractual in nature. you perform a ritual, make an offering, and pray to inform the god of why: either you're asking for a favor, or returning a favor already given, or you're simply trying to stay on good terms.

of course, asking (even in the right way) does not guarantee that the god will do what you want. but there is an expectation of reciprocity; that the god will participate in this arrangement with you. you must ask—ritual without prayer is futile—and you must accept that sometimes the answer will be "no."

salem brings flowers to the god of light, which appear to be an appropriate offering based on the assortment of other items placed around the shrine. then she asks him for a favor he is unwilling to give, and he refuses and sends her away from his domain. her "no" (in response to "let him rest") is generally interpreted as a refusal to take no for an answer—but it isn't. she does not try to force her way back into light's domain to demand that he bring ozma back, nor does take back her offering.

this woman felt no qualms about going before the god of darkness—a god nobody else dared to worship, one known solely as the progenitor of monsters—to pray for ozma's life. if she truly felt entitled to a miracle, her respect for this reciprocal form of worship would have ended when the god of light told her no; she would not have felt bound to uphold her end of the arrangement. she would not have left the flowers there.

but she did.

her decision to then petition the god of darkness is similarly often taken as an act of disobedience, of going behind the god of light's back to get what she wanted after he told her no, but:

the god of light told her that she had asked something he "cannot make so"—not will not, cannot. if salem took him at his word, it would not have been unreasonable to assume that he said no because bringing ozma back was beyond his power, but that perhaps the god of darkness could do it.

the brothers shared in the creation of the world and made humans together, as equals. there was not a hierarchy with the god of light above his brother—the god of light did not have standing to forbid worship of darkness. (which darkness points out during their confrontation.)

because we do not get to hear what salem told the god of darkness, we only have jinn's word that salem "made no mention of his elder" with intent to deceive and manipulate him. jinn is not a reliable narrator—there are details in her telling that are verifiably factually untrue, like the god of light being "the elder"—so this information is suspect. it is equally plausible that salem did not mention light because he wasn't relevant, having no involvement in whatever pact she struck with darkness, or that she made an implicit promise to revere darkness above his brother if he granted her wish. both would be within her rights.

from the very beginning, salem intended to petition both brothers. when ozma dies, she asks "how could the gods let this happen?" and jinn clarifies that she meant both light and darkness. she could not go to both of them at once—they were not in the same place—so she chose to approach the "safer" brother first. but she always meant to ask them both.

all of that is to say, returning to the point i made in the op: when salem offered ozma's staff to the god of darkness, she chose to risk that he, too, would take it from her and then turn her away empty-handed. that staff was her most prized possession, the only thing she had left of ozma, and offering it as a votive gave the god of darkness the means to hurt her very badly. she knew that, he knew that, and i think that is something salem did very deliberately because she thought about what he might want from her in return for this favor she asked of him. the grimm are drawn to pain and suffering, the god of darkness made the grimm, she offers him an object that represents her loss, one which she would be devastated to lose. you see the line of reasoning? there was no established praxis for her to follow with darkness (as she did with light), so she did her best to give him something he would appreciate.

and that is exactly why he gives her what she wants: salem believed in him, proved that her faith in him was true, so he gives back. reciprocity. insofar as there was any wrongdoing here, it was darkness neglecting to get his brother's consent per their agreement not to act unilaterally—but… light did that too, and he's been doing it ever since their fight over jabber, so that agreement was never made in good faith.

salem did nothing wrong. she was literally just a religious woman who prayed to the gods she had been worshipping all her life. what she does in the lost fable—making offerings to them both and asking a favor in return—is literally just practicing her religion. that is How Polytheistic Religion Works. the gods punish her brutally for worshipping them.

and she does learn from this experience. she learns that her faith in the brothers was misplaced, that the god of light does not want to be worshipped but rather obeyed, that the god of darkness was fickle and cruel, that the permanence of death is not the inherent natural way of the world but an artificial order imposed by the brothers—she hears light say that explicitly while he's arguing with darkness and they punish her by excluding her from their "delicate balance of life and death"—and that the brothers are neither all-powerful nor all-knowing. that they're fallible. that humankind does not need them, and would in fact be better off without them.

salem, er, "doubles down" every time she's given a choice to recant and submit to the god of light because she's right. she refuses to "learn her lesson" because the intended lesson is that the god of light is entitled to demand absolute, unquestioning obedience and give nothing in return because humans are worthless. she rejects ozma and his divine mandate because she does not believe that the brothers have the right to kill everyone if they don't get their way.

ruby learns from her experience too: she learns that the brothers are not absolute cosmic authorities, that they are not all-powerful or all-knowing, that the god of light was wrong. the blacksmith tells them all in no uncertain terms that light's understanding of balance is wrong. salem knows this. she has known this for hundreds of millions of years. she doesn't need to learn it because she already knows—and there's also, uh, a serious possibility that she knows the blacksmith too:

"aura is a manifestation of the soul." world of remnant is narrated in character and all of them carry implications about what the narrating character believes or perceives about their subject—for example, see qrow's blatant editorializing in all of his spots. salem narrates the aura episode; when she describes aura as a manifestation of the soul, a life-force running through every living thing on remnant, the associated imagery is a blacksmith. what does this imply about what—or who—she might know?

rolls over

yeah yeah, the ruby-salem grief weapon parallel, we've all seen it

salem offers up the staff as a votive to the god of darkness after telling him of her story and what she hopes to receive in return. he deems this a fair bargain and grants her wish; salem drops the staff at his feet and rushes to ozma's side. do ut des. this is an act of prayer, of worship. salem knows what she's doing—she's pious—and does everything correctly.

(including making an offering of something she must have put some serious thought into: she gives the god of grimm her most precious possession and a token of her suffering.)

and what she asks for in return is ozma's life. the staff was precious to her only in ozma's absence, because it represented her lost love. had the god of darkness answered no, salem would still be obliged to leave the staff in his domain—just as she left light his flowers, you don't take back an offering if the god's answer is not to your liking—and to part with it and walk away empty-handed would have been devastating. but the moment she sees ozma again, the staff means nothing; she lets it fall from her grasp without a thought.

she chose to make herself vulnerable to that pain, offering darkness her own heart as a fair sacrifice for the mere possibility of ozma getting to live. and he tells her to rise and see her faith rewarded.

<- faith.

ruby is in pain. ruby is grieving and boiling in guilt because penny died again and ruby could do nothing to save her again. the sword is all she has left of one of her best friends. and then she offers it up to the toy soldiers—who have come to take them to the red castle—in exchange for, er… being taken to the prince's birthday celebration so that she can present the sword as a gift.

why?

"look, we may not know exactly what's going on, but for whatever reason, this place is putting us on a similar path as a book we all read as kids. i say we follow it—and stop pretending we know what we're doing."

the consequence of this choice of course is that any emotional or spiritual significance this offering might have had is elided by the toy soldiers' grift and the red prince is a child who throws the sword away in a fit of pique: "how could you!?" ruby whispers, before swallowing that pain and stunting around in a scramble to keep the story on the "right" path.

<- fate.

rolls over again.

salem had faith. ozpin believes in fate.

faith is—asking. trying. communion with something greater than oneself. but to believe in fate is to believe in a single narrow path which must be followed no matter the cost because…because.

this is what "look how you've diminished" is about. how you've lessened yourself—and for what? ruby tears out her own heart in a futile effort to appease a spoiled child who kicks it away out of utter indifference—and for what? because the story said so. because she's afraid. because she doesn't know what else to do. she's lost her faith.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

As a therapist, an Autistic TM, and the trans child of a trans drag king, I spend a lot of time thinking about the concept of performativity, and frankly I think it gets a bad reputation despite its capacity as a subversive technique and tactic.

When we hear the word performativity, most of us think of the concept of being superficially engaged, of skin-deep participation, of wearing the aesthetic without being able to back it up by walking the walk. It has a quality of being inherently lesser and incomplete. "Performative allyship" is one of the more damning things one can be accused of in radical circles because it means you're all talk, no substance.

The thing is, performance has been such an integral part of so many subversive communities since their inception. Performance has been a crucial form of self-expression for those same communities for just as long. It has historically held layer upon layer of meaning, to the point that calling it superficial would be akin to calling yourself unobservant. At a certain point, using performance and performativity to define superficiality is deeply irresponsible and erasive of our own cultural contexts when the word superficial is *right there*.

Everything about me is performed. From my personality, to my social graces, to my gender presentation, to my political praxis, to my professional therapeutic presence, to my embodiedness, to my version of learned empathy, to my sexual practices and desires, to my morality. Without that performance, those things don't materially exist, and I intentionally and precisely craft each performance for very specific outcomes and effects. A good deal of that is probably the autism, but I have significant doubts that every single one of these elements of selfness are completely beyond the intentional creation of everyone, autistic or allistic.

Performance is intentional, chosen action. It is a meaningful act of self-creation. Any performance, embodied long enough, becomes selfhood. The belittlement of performativity, as far as I can tell, is a belittlement of one of the most transcendental and radical acts of self-narration, change-creation, and meaning-making we as human beings have access to.

And I imagine that the immediate response will be "but there are people who are only *pretending* to embody the spirit of the performance and that's who we're calling out when we call out performativity!"

To which I say: Let's say I believe you have a 100% success rate in identifying who's a true believer in the awkward midst of change-making and who's a wolf in sheep's clothing never intending to make good. Why does the performance, the tool of change making, the cultural heritage that serves us, have to become the origin point of confrontation? Why can't we do the work of trying to call people in without degrading the tools of disidentification and meaning-making? We do a disservice to everyone, including ourselves, when we suggest that intentional performance is somehow lesser than spontaneous action. It removes our own ability to conscientiously do the right thing while still learning what that specifically means in a given context, and as human beings there will always be something we are still learning about. It compels us to question our own authenticity and ability when imposter syndrome rears its head because imposter syndrome relies on the idea of intentional performance of role as distinct from innate knowledge of the same role. It contributes to sanism/ableism around low/no empathy comrades who intentionally choose to perform to high standards of morality and equitable praxis because somehow their choice to do so means less since they aren't also emotionally self-flagellating when they make a mis-step. It contributes to transphobia by forcing us to argue over whether or not gender is a performance and whether or not that means trans people's existence is valid when we could just accept that gender includes performativity for some, both cis and trans.

There are so many upsides to embracing notions of performance. I find myself wondering why doing so has remained so contentious up to this point. Especially when so much of the scholarship around marginality DOES embrace performativity. The contention seems to remain in the public sphere, and I'm curious where that comes from. Most importantly, I'm curious why anyone would want to cut themselves off from the primary form of self-creation. It feels very much like the sort of thing that got snuck in early on as a self-sabotaging element against the possibility of revolutionary meaning-making.

[artbyblastweave]

Gideon The Ninth Liveread, Chapter 3

In which I post about Ortus a lot! Other things too. But I’m very interested in Ortus!

First off; I like the concept of bioluminescent dust as an omnipresent source of dim light. Feels like a form of adaptive technology for a society with limited resources and a need to light a whole bunch of cavernous spaces regardless; feels like a grounded technology, something that near-future humanity could throw together in a lab given a few months.

Here we get the image of a sea of bone in the pews, “pockmarked by people.” Hammering home the image of the remaining humans as corrupt, messy hanger-ons impeding the aesthetic purity and order of death; the vibe is similarly reinforced a little later with how the Skeletons leave in an orderly formation with no regard to the ability for the humans to get around them. (How sentient are necromantic constructs like this? Do they fill the niche of artificial intelligence within the setting?) 

Ah, Ortus. I’ve many thoughts on Ortus.

So, first off, raw deal. Gideon and Harrow have their incipient Enemies-to-Lovers runaround keeping them occupied; Ortus is isolated even beyond that, and has been for his entire adult life; he doesn’t even get the dignity of being important in his status as cavalier, of being personally close with the heir to the ninth in any way, because the role of bone-porter is obviated by the fact that Harrow’s specific prodigy manifests through being able to do a lot with minimal materials.

Point two. Gideon, who has reasonable grounds to be pissed off at everyone and everything associated with the Ninth, paints Ortus as uniquely pathetic, and it’s a picture we’re collectively primed to accept unquestioningly; he’s burdened with one of the body types most acceptable to poke fun at AND easiest to end up with just through the passage of time. But crucially, Gideon is telling us the ways in which Ortus is a pathetic sad sack rather than having any of them play out in front of us. Ortus as described just sounds like.... a relatively sedentary thirty-five-year-old, reasonable given his total lack of opportunities to socialize; the main reason that Gideon and Harrow are in good shape is that they’re a pair of maniacs playing Tom-and-Jerry, but nobody on this rock is in good health besides them. That said, I don’t precisely blame Gideon for not extending the charity that I can (as I’m rather famously not an indentured servant.) 

More thoughts on Ortus (and why I’m liking this what the story is doing with this Ortus guy!) after a brief digression about....

Harrow’s parents. I will not lie, this is absolutely a situation where the sheer volume of alluded-to atrocities gleefully lobbed about the tumblrsphere primed me to assume that the big secret was something significantly more atrocious. Dollars to Donuts there's a late-game reveal that what Harrow did with her parents is so negligible in the grand scheme of things that Gideon never had any meaningful leverage at all.

That said, this is absolutely a scene that, on further examination, drips with Homestuckery; my mind went immediately to the Baby-Jade-taxidermizing-her-grandfather gag, not just in the material circumstances, but also in the syntax of how the punchline is delivered- “In Fairness, she’d been 10 at the time.” Same style of comically backloading details like that in a deadpan fashion. Actually, the entire quasi-parentless set-up of the book thus far sort of reminds me of Homestuck’s overall vibe. Fantastic. I love it. 

And Jesus. Poor Harrow. Gideon is completely incapable of extending a sympathetic thought here, quite reasonably, but good god. Poor Harrow.

Back to Ortusposting. A recurring pattern is that Muir does something funny and then immediately undercuts it in a way that makes it not actually funny if you read between the lines even a little bit. Gideon’s royally-pissed-off narration primes you to parse Ortus and his Mom as a Buster/Lucille situation, a tried-and-true one-note comedic trope, but then 500 words later that pat, clean-cut view of the dynamic collapses. You immediately realize from her reaction that Ortus’s mother knows something. She knows the things that befall Cavaliers. The histrionics that Gideon finds so entertaining are not the reaction of a woman who’s only afraid of post-partem separation. To the extent that Gideon is even right in her assessment that she “swaddles” Ortus (and Gideon’s is an outside perspective in many ways; she hasn’t been to one of these services in years, she doesn’t necessarily have the level of insight she thinks she does) she does so because she knows full well he's in line for something terrible as the only Cavalier around, probably something that got his dad killed too, and while the swaddling might not be helpful it's all she can do in the face of a shitty shitty situation.  More and more it looks like any undue closeness that Ortus and his mother have is actually just a reasonable defensive measure for two people caught in a den of religiously zealous vipers. And this culminates in...

Poor, guileless Ortus and his doting mother getting the fuck-out-of-dodge on Gideon’s meticulously-stolen shuttle. Immediately after hearing the summons, with limited deliberation. They aren’t useless, aren’t indecisive, aren’t unagentic; they aren’t patsies- and these are all things Gideon’s narration primed me to believe that they would be, so the twist hit like a truck.

Ending line- “Because I completely fucking hate you, No Offense-” is a perfect closer. Vastly ups the comedic tension of the earlier sequence, too, because thus far I perceive no reason for Harrow to hate Gideon the way Gideon hates Harrow, but she’s putting exactly as much juice into her fuckery as Gideon does. Deranged! Completely Deranged.

Anyway, tune in for future chapters, where I continuously wonder to myself when the rest of the cast are going to begin assigning any weight to the fact that being a cavalier is apparently such a fraught prospect that Ortus and his mother immediately upended their status-quo of 35 years to escape him having to do it.

[stillness-in-green]

No, Re-Destro Is Not Destro’s Literal Son

and

Yes, I Will Die On This Hill

I have a number of small, persistent quibbles with some of the widespread misapprehensions I see included in BNHA fanfic, quoted as fact in meta posts, even cited on the wiki. Quirk cancellation restraints, what the 20% quirklessness data point means in practice, when Kurogiri comes into existence relative to the time of the Shimura Family Massacre, things like that. My biggest one, though, is as the title suggests: the idea that Yotsubashi Rikiya is Yotsubashi Chikara’s son.

I don’t entirely know where this confusion comes from. As far as I can tell, the early scanlations didn’t get it wrong—one rendered the line in Chapter 218 about Destro having a child he didn’t know about as being children, plural, but otherwise, they were all accurate enough. It seems people just assumed that the child mentioned in 218 must be Re-Destro, who was, after all, right there on the panel. Even though the scanlations never said it, even though the official translation never said it, even though ample evidence in the manga disproves it, the idea still got around that Rikiya is Chikara’s son.

I have and will maintain that this is obviously wrong if you stop to think about it for even a moment, but unfortunately, most people don’t. The error can be found on less well-tended parts of the fandom wiki[1]; it’s in tumblr meta posts about the villains; it’s in fanfic.

And now, god help me, it is on the official anime website, too.

“Stillness-in-green, maybe you should consider that you might just be wro—”

I will face BONES and walk backwards into hell.

But if you want, you can come with me, and I’ll explain on the way. Hit the jump.

Dialogue + Narration

There are two places where the relationship between Chikara and Rikiya is explicitly addressed—the lead-in to the dinner scene in Chapter 218 and the fight between Clone!Shigaraki and RD in Chapter 232. If you include the Ultra Analysis databook, the number goes up to four: once each in Re-Destro and Destro Classic’s character blurbs.

Let’s take a look at each of those places, shall we?

The relevant Japanese text here is in the first narration box: 子ども, kodomo.

Kodomo is not gendered. It literally just means child. The key kanji is 子, ko. Like most kanji, it has a lot of potential readings, and you can add other kanji to it to modify it. Add 息 and you get musuko, son. Pronounce 子 as shi instead of ko, and you get a term that is frequently, though not exclusively, used to refer to boys. Add 女 to that reading and you get joshi, woman/girl. 子 is in a lot of words, many of them gendered! Used for kodomo as Hori does here, though, it does nothing to indicate a gender one way or the other.

Also too, it does nothing to indicate that Rikiya is the child in question; it simply states that there was such a child, somewhere in the world. Now, the natural assumption for anyone who knows how the graphic novel medium works and who understands basic literary analysis would be that the significant character we just met is, in fact, the child in question—except that everything else we learn about Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army here makes it entirely impossible.

I’ll do a full breakdown on why that is in the next section. In the meantime, here’s the next reference:

Here, we’re looking at the phrase the Viz translation renders as, “His blood runs through these veins.” The literal Japanese there is, Desutoro no matsuei chi o tsugu mono! In a literal translation, chi o tsugu mono means, “one who inherits the blood,” or, more loosely, “blood successor.” It’s matsuei—末裔—that’s the key word here.

Japanese has several words to express the concept of “descendant.” Matsuei is one word; the data book uses shison. So what’s the difference? Well, I’ll talk about shison in a moment, but I had an inkling of it just from looking at the kanji in matsuei—“end” and “descendant” respectively, leaving me with an impression of something like a final descendant or the terminus of the bloodline. Further research confirmed it: shison can refer to any lineal blood tie, but matsuei refers to a bloodline’s final inheritor, the person at the end of a long line of many, or even countless, generations. It’s the difference between being able to point to a grandparent and the kind of painstaking genealogical research that lets you[2] point to a famous royal from eight hundred years ago—matsuei is a word that very much assumes the existence of those countless generations.

So not only does Rikiya’s line there not imply that he’s Chikara’s son, but his specific word choice also tells us that he cannot be Chikara’s son. That’s, uh. Pretty conclusive, I would say.

Lastly, though, there’s also the data book. This is, perhaps, the actual closest you’re going to get to a manga equivalent of those character blurbs on the anime website, at least until such time as Hori deigns to give the MLA types character profile pages. (I live ever in hope.)

There are two relevant bits of text, one in Re-Destro’s entry, and the other in Destro Classic’s. The first describes how Re-Destro organizes the MLA as Desutoro no chi o tsugu mono: the same phrase he uses for himself in the manga, minus the matsuei. @codenamesazanka (the one who told me about the databook references among other citations, bless) rendered it as “Destro’s blood successor”; I have also seen it given as “the successor of Destro’s bloodline.” Note again, the lack of reference to a father/son bond.

Chikara’s entry uses that other descendant word I mentioned before, 子孫, shison. Notice that the term uses that ko kanji from kodomo before? As it does in joshi, 子 here reads shi. The other kanji, 孫, means grandchild. Thus, literally, grandchild-child—or, in the vernacular, simply descendant.

And then we have the anime website.

So, for comparison’s sake, the anime website uses 息子—the same combination of kanji that I said earlier gives you musuko, son. Heck, it even uses 父, chichi, for Destro—father. It’s as explicit as it’s possible to be, and I just don’t know why or how the anime website could fuck that up so bad when absolutely nothing in the manga describes the two Yotsubashis that way, and, indeed, one specific word choice actually rules out the possibility.

So, that’s all the manga says directly. It’s not the only evidence there is, though. In fact, the next piece makes it even more clear how colossally and impossibly wrong a father/son connection for Destro and his modern successor is.

Timeline

The long and short of this section is, “Since Harima Oji was Sako Atsuhiro’s great-great-grandfather, there is no possible way that Destro—who pre-dated Harima—can be Re-Destro’s father.” If you read that sentence and nodded your complete understanding and agreement, feel free to skip ahead to the last section. If you’d like the full explanation it takes to reach that sentence’s conclusion, though, read on.

So, aside from the word matsuei, the timeline is the most telling piece of evidence to my eye. I address it secondly rather than firstly because it’s less direct than the explicit narration; it relies on drawing conclusions based on things we’ve been told elsewhere rather than on the immediately relevant text. Oh, Mr. Compress’s relationship to Harima is explicit enough, but on what am I basing my claim that Destro predates him?

Regarding that, there’s no explicit year relative to My Hero Academia’s current events given for when Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army were active; the same is true for Harima Oji’s escapades. However, we are given some broad-strokes information, relative not to current events, but rather to the history of heroism as a legal institution in Japan.

We know that there was a widespread, lengthy period of chaos following the rise of quirks—called meta-abilities in those early years. At some point, however, people began to search for a way for meta-humans to live in peace with non-metas. The compromise that was reached was the foundation of professional heroism in Japan—while the use of meta-abilities would be legal in private settings, it was only by becoming licensed by the state as “heroes” that people could use their quirks in public.[3]

The legislation curtailing the use of meta-abilities—and the appropriation of a dead woman’s language to popularize a law establishing exactly the opposite of what she used that language to call for—is what catalyzed the rise of the original MLA. Thus, we can position Destro as being alive and active around the same time that heroism as a legal institution was being formed. Since we further know that he committed suicide in prison, we can assume that his child was conceived at some point prior to his capture. Ergo, Destro’s child, were they alive today, would be as old as Japanese professional heroism itself.

Next, consider Harima Oji, the Peerless Thief, a criminal who targeted the riches of “sham heroes.” We’re specifically told that he was active in the days in which the current system was settling into place—e.g. he only became active once the Hero System was established enough to have produced corrupt heroes. We’re told he preached reformation—he wasn’t just some pre-existing criminal who saw a shiny new target in heroes; he had specific grievances which he wanted addressed by the system, and which the system was not addressing.

The earliest Harima could possibly be active, then, is concurrent with Destro—Harima fighting against the corrupt people who had found their way into the new heroic institution, and Destro fighting against using the institution of heroism to oppress non-heroes. What I think is more likely, though, is that Harima came after Destro—Harima needed to have had time to realize what kinds of fakes had been drawn to this shiny new career path, maybe even to spend some time trying to change things the legal way.

I don’t suspect they were separated by very long—I would imagine Destro was easily within Harima’s living memory, and might well have influenced why he chose the path of protest that he did—but I do think they were separate.

Moving forward, then, Mr. Compress is four generations distant from his famous ancestor. Thus, even if you assume that Harima is of the same generation as Chikara, that’s what you’re looking at for Chikara’s child: someone who, were they alive today, would be old enough to be the great-grandparent of a thirty-two-year-old man.

Re-Destro’s probably a few years older than Mr. C, sure,[4] but that man doesn’t have Ujiko’s slow-aging quirk. Unless you want to start pulling theories about cryogenic stasis the story for some reason never saw fit to mention out of thin air, Re-Destro is in no way old enough to fit the bill.

This is backed up by one other piece of the timeline as well, and one more place we can look at language:

The small child at the center of the image is Rikiya, so young that he’s in schoolboy shorts for a meeting otherwise so formal that he’s been made to wear a tie. He’s, what, six to nine here, tops? And the adults speaking to him say that they’ve been in hiding for generations—代々, daidai, the kanji for generation followed by a kanji that just means, “See that kanji written right before me? Yeah, just read that one again.”

The original MLA was active for only a handful of years, and, per Chapter 218, they didn’t dissolve until Destro was captured. Thus, we can assume they have been in hiding since then, but not before then. With that in mind, this is another line that renders a father/son relationship impossible.

Remember, Chikara already had a child in the world circa his capture. If Rikiya were Chikara’s son, then Destro’s capture and his army’s subsequent dissolution could not have happened any farther back than nine months plus however old Rikiya was in this exact moment of his youth. Rikiya, who we see here as a child of less than ten.

Ten years in hiding doesn’t make one generation; it damn sure doesn’t make multiple ones.

Now, you could make theories about cryogenic statis that would explain this ludicrous discrepancy, sure. You could also theorize about e.g. artificial insemination,[5] or time stop quirks, or any number of other possibilities in the vast panoply the HeroAca world offers. The point is, though, that you don’t need to. There was, in the manga, no discrepancy that needed to be explained. It is only fanon misinterpretation and a glaring disinterest in the series’ villains from official sources that have presented this issue.

I’m praying that it’s all just a misunderstanding on the part of whoever maintains the website, and that the anime itself will render the relevant bits of dialogue correctly. Given the extreme cuts and alterations that My Villain Academia has been subjected to thus far, though, I’m sure you can appreciate my being concerned.

…So that’s the meat of it. The idea that Rikiya is Chikara’s son is wrong simply on the basis of what’s said in the text, and it’s doubly wrong on the basis of the timeline. There is, though, one other thing I think points towards Re-Destro being exactly the descendant he says he is, not a son playing down the connection out of humility or something. This one is a lot more headcanon-y, though, so I saved it for last.

MLA Social Dynamics

It’s quite simple. We have, in the MLA, a group of people that venerates Destro’s bloodline to an obviously unhealthy degree, putting up portraits of him wherever they can get away with it, tagging his successor with a “Re-” as if to invoke reincarnation or miraculous return, entirely willing to throw their lives away for what they think was his cause, and others’ lives if those others say anything too scathing about the words Destro wrote, quite as if they treat Destro’s memoir as some sort of holy writ.

They venerate Destro that much, and you’re trying to tell me that they wouldn’t just call a spade a spade and acknowledge RD as the son of their great leader? Come on.

Since long before I turned up the matsuei factoid in researching this piece, since long before Mr. Compress gave us such a helpful generational comparison, I’ve held the opinion that, given a group that holds their leaders in such high esteem, with such particular regard for bloodline, the only reason Rikiya does just call himself a descendant, rather than citing the specific term for what he is, is that the specific term is distant enough that it actually does sound more impressive to just say “descendant,” rather than something like, “great-great-great-grandson.” That kind of thing just begs the question, “What took you guys so long?” or, “You and how many other people, buddy?”

Mr. Compress may have the panache to carry off a line like that, but Rikiya’s a different story. If he had something so amazing up his sleeve as, “I am the son of the great Destro,” I have to think he’d just say it proudly, not fall back on the impressionistic vaguery of something like chi o tsugu mono. Even if I had no other evidence to work with, I’d think the same—all the evidence you need is right there in the character writing of who Rikiya and the MLA are and how they talk about the man whose dreams Re-Destro was raised to carry.

A closing note: I will allow that Rikiya is being overdramatic when he uses matsuei and its connotation of countless generations. There are a few other things we can use to trace the history of heroism—Ujiko’s age, and the 18-years-or-less periods that One For All was held by its pre-All Might bearers—and running those numbers leads me to believe that it is, in fact, entirely possible to count the number of generations between Rikiya and Chikara, and the number, while higher than one, is probably not all that high. Certainly matsuei is being more dramatic about it than is entirely warranted, hence the poetic flourish of the official translation’s, “His blood runs through these veins!” The theatricality only makes me fonder of him, however.

------------------------

FOOTNOTES

[1] It was changed and reverted on Re-Destro’s page at least twice before it finally stuck in January of this year. Chikara’s page took until July to be corrected, and it’s still wrong on various other subpages.

[2] Or your kids, if you have those. Only the last generation in the bloodline is the matsuei, but that’s a moving goalpost as long as the bloodline is still propagating.

[3] This summary of events combines what we know from both My Hero Academia proper and the Vigilantes spin-off, which I recommend to anyone who’s at all interested in finer-grained worldbuilding on Hero Society Japan than the main series makes time for.

[4] I personally headcanon him as 42.

[5] To which point I would refer back to the word kodomo, and note that that word choice indicates that Destro had a child in the world. Not a sperm sample kept in a freezer somewhere, waiting for the right would-be mother: an actual child. Some quick research on my part says that the farthest that term stretches is in using it to refer to yet-unborn children, fetuses still in the womb. Seeing as Japan doesn’t even allow inmates conjugal visits in real life, much less in a setting where villains are so dehumanized that Tartarus is an acceptable punishment for them, the line about Destro “having a child out in the world” takes us right back to a date of conception no later than Destro’s final night of freedom.

[tenaflyviper]

Just something I thought. The c-grade movie Ghost Watcher did the black eyes of possessed people around 2-3 years before Supernatural. Do you think that the writers could have stolen the idea from the movie?

I don't remember when the whole black-eyed children/people came about in horror fiction. Online and not. But I thought Ghost Watcher might be the earliest depicted form of that? Maybe it was what started the whole thing. Just thought to ask if you know of an even earlier form of "black eyed people" out there.

As far as we can trace it back, the first known written instance of black-eyed children came from reporter Brian Bethel in Abilene, Texas in 1996.

Ghost Watcher came out in 2002, so there's a chance the people behind Supernatural (2005) could have gained inspiration from it. As far as I can find, Ghost Watcher does appear to be the first film featuring black eyes on children (but I could be wrong). "Black eyes of evil" in general, however, has actually been a trope for a pretty long time.

One of the earliest examples is The Mummy's Hand (1940)--there, the eyes were done by painting onto each frame of film.

The first example that personally sprang to my mind was Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973). All of the titular women even wear sunglasses in public to hide their eyes.

X: The Man with X-ray Eyes (1963) has the protagonist's eyes eventually go all black because he can see into infinity.

Instances in television are numerous--from Sapphire and Steel (1979) to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) and Charmed (1998), plus many more.

The general concept is that black eyes are a display of someone being taken over or possessed, or just not being the human they seemed on the surface. I'm fairly certain I've heard of black eyes in doppelganger folklore.

Black eyes also show up in our archetypal portrayals of aliens ("grays"). There is just something cold, empty, and unsettling about pure black eyes. They lack humanity.

Strangely, the BEK phenomenon didn't really start to take off until the mid 2010's, where you can see an explosion of horror films utilizing black eyes as a scare factor. This could possibly stem from Bethel retelling his story on the series Monsters and Mysteries in America in 2012, as well as the first film made specifically about BEK (which was funded by a kickstarter) beginning to advertise around the same time.

I want to say that horror narrations also helped spread the idea of BEK, as that's how I first heard of them.

Overall, I think their popularity stems from our perception of children as innocent, and incapable of fooling or betraying us "much wiser" adults. People also tend to not like or accept when something we perceive as smaller and weaker than us is a genuine threat. The fact that we don't even know HOW they are a threat, yet instinctually feel it--that's terrifying. It's as if there's something primal inside of us that knows what they are, and knows to be afraid.

In any case, I think they're a fascinating bit of modern folklore, and I wish there was more horror media based on them.

[rataltouille]

GEOMETRY OF THE HOLY MOON (1 AM): A SHORT STORY

GENRE: surrealism, literary fiction.

POV & TENSE: this little space is not enough for how wild the form is so i talk about this later!!

SETTING: a small desi village, 1924-25.

TONE: dreamy, unsettling, melancholic.

THEMES: faith vs reality, how people perceive others and how they perceive themselves, grief dealt the wrong way.

AESTHETICS: the splash of water on a quiet night, thick clouds obscuring the sky, rippling the moon’s reflection on the water. the intensity of a garden in spring, the emptiness of a dying town, the suffocation from being singled out. hands grazing lightly but never fully held. a lingering sadness behind your laugh. believing in things you shouldn't believe in. putting faith on a starless sky.

STAGE: completed first draft, 4085 words.

LOGLINE: a young boy, surrounded by loss, claims to talk to god. the story follows him and his conversations with this god, all while his village spies on him as he weaves his way around the two most crucial and lonely years of his life.

LITERAL LOGLINE: on today’s news let’s talk about a small backward town that hates sad little boys who worship god, even though the place is lowkey a cult!!

CHARACTERS:

THE SUMMER BOY: he’s around thirteen, and he’s very emotionally attached to his past. he lost his family at a young age to an unstable force, so he spends his time talking to himself. he’s a quiet, demure and sweet person, always willing to help others. he’s outwardly oblivious and sees only the good in people to a point where he doesn't understand when they’re trying to do him wrong. but! considering how the story [like a lot of my others] has themes of perception vs reality, it needs to be said that he isn't all that innocent. he’s rather impulsive and rash, never afraid of hurting himself [and thus accidentally harming others].

A GOD: is he real? do we even know if he’s an actual god? a very elusive figure despite having a lot of screentime. he’s a surprisingly humanised character and arguably the one with the most empathy. he has a soft spot for the boy and the two have a deep bond which is not common for a human and a god to have. you don’t get insight to what the other gods are like, but they’re implied to exist. this story has a very messy and hazy view towards religion and godhood and their nature towards humanity, and this vague figure, a dreamlike character, is proof enough of that.

THE VILLAGE: okay so in general these people suck. the village consists of, well, the village, but they’re very fluid in the way they appear in the story? as in for the most part they appear as a collective, a unit. one character, the summer boy’s “friend”, is somewhat separate considering he’s a pretty important character. it’s very hard describing this unit of a character but essentially they’re the main antagonistic force and they hate the protagonist for seemingly no reason.

WHAT GOES DOWN:

sometime around this time, the boy chances upon meeting his “god”, this being who lives up in the clouds and whom he talks with often, except you don't know if this god is real or not. that’s one of the recurring themes of this story: what’s real and what isn’t. it’s :) a fun time :) for sure :)

essentially Things Happen And It Only Gets Weirder. i cannot even try describing what happens because it’s all very spoilery but let’s just say that this is a very sad story but not even in a “this makes me cry” manner, but rather in a “this is so fucked up wtf why”. the prose of this is very, very hazy and thick, in a manner that’s both smooth and suffocating. there’s also a lot of moon and water imagery which we love. i love the atmosphere + the setting—colonial india— as it’s a subtle but key element to the plot.

FORM:

OKAY YES be prepared for the true colours of how unhinged i am. i apologize for the form brainrot.

POV: so in this story i really said “what if it had all three of the main povs... jk jk... unless 😳😳” and then proceeded to use all three povs. you’re probably wondering, how did i do that? WHY did i do that? and my answer to that is: ����

the first-person pov: the summer boy narrates in first person. his pov takes up about 40% of the story, and this is where we unlock family backstory + how he feels about the various forces playing into his life. he’s an extremely unreliable narrator and he knows it; his narration oscillates between very naive and very self-aware, and this effect is pretty disconcerting. the summer boy is kind of a walking contradiction and we love that conflict.

the second-person pov: a god narrates in second person. his pov takes around 20% of the story, and his scenes all involve his conversations with the boy. his pov is extremely detached, and suspends belief because he seems awfully made up. there’s an edge to the prose in his narration, where you know that something's off, but you can’t exactly pinpoint what.

the third-person pov: the villagers narrate, either as a collective, or as an individual figure, in third person. they take up the other 40% of the story, and there are so many different people and differing opinions with this, and every time we read a third person excerpt it’s a different person, and this is mostly used to add onto the different ways in which the boy is perceived. this is also where the structural part of the form gets really wacky.

STRUCTURE: if my story isn't told in vignettes is it my story though /j. gothm is told in vignettes, each one between 50 to 500 words. the first and second person bits are normal-ish vignettes, with straightforward narration. the third person vignettes, on the other hand, are super assorted. we have a lot of epistolaric sections— there’s a letter, a folk song [which was found around the summer boy], and most of the conversation is told as just plain dialogue without tags. there’s also a phone call transcript, and finally some normal chunks of prose. what am i doing wtf.

also to add onto this the story is told non-linearly. 😀 the only thing that keeps me from going insane is the fact that there are chronological tags before most vignettes [also the manner in which they're tagged differs from pov to pov. for example a few of the third person conversations are marked just as “sunday” or “thursday”, while the summer boy’s narration is marked with the full date and year]

in all this clownery i completely forgot to mention what the tense was [the way everything else was so complicated that i forgot tense was a thing lmao] and good news!! it’s the only sane thing about this story!! it’s told fully in present tense. thank everything.

AN EXCERPT:

okay i’m once again not sharing much because this will be submitted to litmags 🧞

[The boy is scrawny as always. He carries an air of diswant— even death had rejected him when the plague killed only his grandmother— but walks like he doesn’t notice. He smiles at them, jitters, and wipes his hand across his knees. Blood comes away in thin, translucent lines. He saves it on the kerchief he keeps tucked in his shirt, careful to dirty the cloth even more. The villagers scrunch their noses in disgust; who knew how old and rotten the kerchief was, or how long it had carried blood like the unwashed sword of a warrior?]

also by the way this excerpt is in square brackets because it is a third-person interjection in a vignette that is otherwise first-person [at this point...]

SPARE THOUGHTS:

this was inspired by a conversation i had with my grandfather, where he was telling me about how people used to sing songs to the skies, as a way of devotion to a specific god. he used the [loose translation of] the english word “yearning” to refer to the emotion the singers would invoke, and that sparked the concept of a disillusioned young boy who talks to the moon as a way to please the god he’s in love with. it’s a very softly disconcerting story and once again deals with the theme of “perception vs reality” which if you know me and my work, is the theme i’m forever obsessed with.

i really like how this turned out? the atmosphere is exactly how i wanted it to be, and there’s so much i have to add on as i edit and i’m really looking forward to that. this is also the only short story i’ve written where i knew which litmag i’d love for it to be published in? like i never write things with publishing in mind, but for some reason while writing this story it occurred to me that it would be a perfect fit for this specific magazine and i love that. anyway if you’ve made it through the post till here,,,, bless you and your braincells. and that’s all for today!!

[definitelynotshouting]

“Symphony” for the writer asks!! 💙

HELLO CLOUD THE BELOVED its good to see you in my inbox :] i dont see a specific fandom attached to this so im just gonna ramble about my dsmp fic all wayfaring hearts which is one of my favorite things ive ever written.

Despite still being a wip, ive had everything about this fic completely mapped out since day one, and some of the biggest themes i've wanted to explore with it were the concepts of impermanence and what i consider the most important aspects of humanity. all wayfaring hearts is, at its core, about a vast and inhuman universe learning about itself and the people who call it home, and being fundamentally changed by that experience. It's about learning what kindness is. Trust. Mercy. Compassion. Changing others with your presence and love and being changed in turn. Tommy is the universe compressed into a tiny shell, and his time with Wilbur, Phil, and Techno literally shifts how said universe functions in this story.

And at the same time, its about how everything is fleeting. From the beginning of the very first section, the narration reveals that Tommy's time is limited in this form-- the universe can't stay compressed for too long before returning to its original state. This is echoed by something Wilbur says later in the first chapter, disguised as some teasing dialogue: "All good things come to an end." And, although its not fully written yet, i plan to continue that theme throughout the rest of the story until its natural conclusion (which i won't actually spoil just yet, since the fic is still in progress).

I have a lot of love for this fic and its entire concept. Its very much inspired by The Little Prince and also my love for the cosmos, and the people living within it. And i think at the very end of the day, having a story centered around so much love and hope and the bittersweet knowledge of eventual parting is just. Its so important to me. And i hope i can get it finished sometime soon, so everyone else can experience the same shrimp emotions i feel whenever i think about it.

I'll leave you with a little snippet from chapter 2 under the cut, just to round it all out:

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

They’re looking up at the stars when Wilbur turns to him and says, “Did you know that the universe is kind, Tommy?”

Tommy frowns at him, shifting away from the stars to stare at Wilbur’s eyes instead. They’re dyed black in the moonlight, pupils lost to the darkness. Like a black hole, sucking in everything within its orbit. He’s forced to look away after a moment, something like embarrassment bubbling underneath his skin. “Don’t mess around, Wil.”

“I’m not,” Wilbur says, “I’m serious, Tommy. Look up there at the stars and tell me the universe doesn’t love us– you can’t. It’s made something beautiful, and it lets us look at it every single night. If that’s not an act of love, I don’t know what is.”

Tommy shifts uncomfortably. His voice comes out slightly harsh when he speaks, harsher than he intends: “The universe doesn’t– it’s not kind, Wilbur. It just is. Kindness, compassion– that’s all human stuff. I don’t– the universe doesn’t understand it. It can’t.”

Wilbur hums, an absent little tune with no real melody. “See, I don’t think that’s true. I think it loves us enough to give us a moon, and stars, and a sun when it’s daytime. I think it loves everything it makes– including us. And I think it’s– y’know, it’s got a, a purpose. Everything has a purpose. I really believe that, Tommy, I really do.”

A beat. Tommy shifts, no longer admiring the stars, unable to return to the peace of the previous moment.

“Why are you telling me this, Wilbur?”

“I’m just thinking about it,” Wilbur says honestly. He turns his head again, until only his profile is visible in the lamplight. “And I don’t– I think you haven’t seen a lot of kindness before. So it’s only fair I tell you, right?”

Tommy reluctantly tears his gaze away from Wilbur’s profile, turning back to the stars. Thinks about the spider Wilbur had crushed in the chicken coop, and how Tommy had watched, impassive at a life snuffed out so quickly. “You’re wrong,” he says bluntly, “but that’s okay. It’s a… nice sentiment, I guess.”

Wilbur hums again, this time a low, almost-tune that vibrates in the back of his throat. “Think about it,” he says, and they lapse back into silence.

Neither of them speak until their candle burns out, and then they go back inside. Tommy crawls into his attic bed, fingers clenched in the covers, and thinks of spiders until the sun comes up in the morning.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

[thetypedwriter]

Gideon the Ninth Book Review

Gideon the Ninth Book Review by Tamsyn Muir 

It would be only a slight hyperbole to say that a million people have either recommended this book to me or have told me to read it. I’ve heard for years now that this book is incredible and extremely well written and beloved by many. So, if that’s the case why did I wait so long to read it?

I don’t have a good answer. Sometimes a book is on your radar, but either the time isn’t right, other books take priority, or in my case, it’s adult fiction and I held slight trepidation that I wouldn’t love it as much as everyone else in the world seemed to. 

Thank goodness, that didn’t end up being the case and I’ll get into why in a moment. 

First, Gideon the Ninth has the most amazing descriptive sentence belonging on any front cover of any book ever. 

I shall put it here for prosperity and awe: “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” -Charles Stross. 

Now, I don’t know who you are Mr. Stross, but that has to be the best sentence written in the English language since its conception. If that isn’t enough intrigue for you to crack open the novel then I truly don’t know what is or what it would take. 

That being said, Mr. Stross wasn’t entirely accurate, but that’ll be clear soon enough. 

The novel surrounds our main protagonist, Gideon Nav, or, known as Gideon the Ninth, the primary cavalier to the Ninth House necromancer. Essentially, this world takes place in a different solar system with its own sun star known as Dominicus as well as nine planets also known as the Nine Houses. 

Each House has a specific specialty for what is known for, and as summarized helpfully, but also overwhelmingly, at the beginning of the novel, the Ninth House is also known as the keepers of the Locked Tomb, House of the Sewn Tongue, and home to the Black Vestals. 

This meant nothing to me at the beginning and quite truthfully, I still struggled to remember throughout the novel who belonged to the Third House, or the Fifth and what that quite meant, as once again, each House has a reputation and expected skill set that precedes them. 

Not to say that it was poorly written because it wasn’t. Muir just has a lot of characters with specific titles and while she actually does quite a good job of categorizing them and helpfully reminding you who is who, I still struggled with just the sheer amount of information and people. 

Normally, this would be a massive criticism, like it was with the cast of characters in Lore but in this case it’s not Muir’s fault. She’s giving me all the information necessary to understand. It was just my brain that struggled trying to recognize and categorize everyone. If anything, I’m excited to re-read Gideon the Ninth and have it sink in like a second skin eventually. 

Having this large cast of characters, the book revolves around each of the Nine Houses (except for the First House) sending their best necromancer, a wielder of both thanergy (death energy) and thalergy (life energy) in the form of a House Adept, someone who is able to wield this kind of energy either in bone magic, flesh magic, or spirit magic. 

In accompaniment, each Necromancer Adept has a primary Cavalier, a trained fighter that is both protector, companion, and often, necessary energy suppliers to their Adept in both horrendous and acceptable ways. 

The goal of these pairs, having been sent to the First planet, is to become a Lyctor, an immortal servant to the Undying Emperor. The catch is that once the Necromancers and their Cavaliers arrive on the First, the shuttle departs and they are trapped in an abandoned, dilapidated, once-regal and great mansion that boasts hundreds of floors, secret doors, and mystery upon mystery. 

Each pair expects a streamlined process to Lyctorhood once they arrive, a methodical procedure, perhaps some training, and ultimately a test. What they don’t expect is a mellow man by the name of Teacher that claims to know nothing about the process himself, but is the overseer of the First. 

What follows is a mind-boggling search to become a Lyctor and unravel the mysteries of the haunted palace. What the pairs don’t expect is the death of their own, gruesome murders at the hand of someone in their very own positions and an evil danger beyond any of their imagination lurking in the mansion. 

This novel was a great concoction of mystery, action, interpersonal relationships, character growth, dazzling descriptions, and world building. 

The world of Dominicus and the Nine Houses is expansive and rich, something that I haven’t been able to sink my teeth into, and not for lack of trying, but because it is so deep and so layered that I simply need to take several bites to get it all down.

The mystery is fulfilling and strangely, to me at least, reminiscent of a game called Danganronpa. If you know what that is, and even if you don’t, it centers around the idea of a murder mystery, but where the killer is one of your own and the mystery is trying to figure out not ony the who, but the why of what they are doing, amongst a slew of other deadly riddles.

Gideon the Ninth is the same. As people continue to get picked off and brutally murdered, as a reader you find yourself trying to puzzle out not only who, but why someone would commit such atrocities and the motivation behind it. 

The plot itself of Gideon the Ninth was extremely satisfying and alluring. There were times where I personally found that novel bogged down with excessive description, but it was usually broken up with Gideon’s personal brand of crass humor, a very much needed breather with the expansive exposition, that, while extremely well done, well researched, and well written, did get a tad boring from time to time for me personally, even if it allowed for clear imagery as well as adding to already well formed world building. 

In addition to the plot, all of the characters were well done and as fleshed out as they could be considering the amount of characters involved. First, even though this is set in a fantasy sci-fi setting, each of the characters seemed realistic and like they could potentially be real people. 

A large criticism of books I often have, especially in YA, is that the characters often come across like caricatures, and not real flesh and blood humans with both positive and negative qualities. 

Each character, some developed more than others, have both flaws and strengths, even the main characters, which I highly appreciated. Not only does it make the story more real and palatable, but it also is just more interesting to read about as it’s actually based in humanity and the nature of human beings rather than some perfect carbon copy of one. 

Gideon as a narrator was hilarious. She was often crass, blunt, horny, humorous and ignorant. But on the other hand, she was also an extremely talented fighter, actually very sweet deep down, forgiving, and loving. 

This mix in a main character was a welcome one in addition to making Gideon feel like a real person, despite all the bone magic and necromancy, and often her thought process and dialogue made me laugh out loud. 

Another main character, Harrowhark Nonagesimus (What a name!) is Gideon’s Necromancer and main companion. She’s bitter, rude, spiteful, and ruthless. She’s also hardworking, intelligent, and stubborn. 

If you’re catching the pattern here, Muir isn’t just writing archetypes and passing them off as characters. She’s writing complex and nuanced personalities that are intriguing and interesting and well developed. 

I could get into the other plethora of characters like Camila, Dulcinea, Palamedes, Magnus, Judith and so on, but this review would be a thousand pages long so I’ll just settle for saying that every character was well done and lovingly crafted and not one of them, even the annoying ones, were characters that I hated. 

One important thing to note was Muir’s writing itself. It was incredible. Such descriptions! Such characterization! Such detail! Such vocabulary! I was supremely impressed with her writing as a whole and often found myself having to look up words that I had never heard of in my life (always a welcome change of pace). I was blown away by her sheet talent and creativity. 

The last two things I have to note might get me in trouble. 

One, the ending for me was...bittersweet. For fear of spoiling someone, I won’t get into details, but I found it both lacking and simultaneously making absolute sense. I wanted both more and yet, found that everything was just enough. It’s hard to put into words, but if you know, you know. 

I do have a slightly sinking feeling though that the ending twist will somehow be undone in the sequel. I don’t know if this is true (although I will eventually find out), and I can’t decide if I’m going to be happy or dismayed by it. 

Such conflicting feelings are in of itself homage to Muir’s skill as a writer and the complexities of her tale. 

Lastly, the one aspect that might get me into the stickiest of predicaments: Harrowhark’s and Gideon’s relationship. I don’t know if I like it or not. On the one hand, I absolutely love it. It's a hate-to-love slow burn, which really is the only way an OTP makes its way into my heart. I love that they’re so different and yet so compatible, one flesh and one blood and all that other nonsense. 

They see each other as equals, as adversaries, and I adore that dynamic in any pairing. I also love the F/F representation of some badass women and that they’re not traditionally attractive and beautiful. 

One of my favorite lines came from the end of the book where Gideon describes Harrowhark’s face as, “bitter” and “hateful”. I just love when characters aren’t conventionally gorgeous and yet beautiful in the eyes of the beholder and all that jazz. 

Now. Onto the problems. 

Harrowhark’s and Gideon’s relationship is kinda...toxic? It grows into something less so, but it definitely starts off that way. I really hate imbalances of power of any kind and Harrowhark definitely has power over Gideon, power that she creully abuses. I asked myself: if Harrowhark was a man and treated Gideon so abysmally for years, and then Gideon eventually forgave him and loved him despite everything, would I think differently?

And the answer is yes, yes I would. 

Is that fair? Probably not. But I can’t help but think how the dynamics change with the two of them being women, and how in my opinion, I think more is forgiven of Harrowhark because of it, even when it’s not deserved. 

Now, Harrowhark is a complex character and has traumas of her own, but I just can’t help but think of all the things she did to Gideon and the things she took away from her and forced her to do and then think of them together and it’s...not great. 

Overall, my feelings on their relationship are complicated (which is a repeated pattern when it comes to Muir’s writing) and I don’t mind that it’s complicated, it makes it interesting, but I also would be bereft to mention it here. I look forward to seeing how it develops and if my feelings change and grow on the matter as well. 

In total, Gideon the Ninth is a fantastic read. It has everything you want inlaid with characters who not only push the plot along, but incentivize you to read more. It has complicated issues and complicated characters, but that means it’s nuanced and complex and juicy enough to bite into. 

Don’t do what I did and wait years for this novel. If you need a good read, you don’t need to look any further and then let yourself be swept along for the necromantic ride. 

Recommendation: “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” -Charles Stross. I mean. Come on people, what more can you ask for?

Score: 8/10 

[talkfantasytome]

During the monthly court meeting E/lain had this kind of behavior, at this meeting Nesta or Lucien were not present to justify this kind of behavior (which are behaviors that are pointed out that she has with both, Nesta in ACOSF and Lucien every time they meet).

“I’d have E/lain try her hand before we approach him, though.” E/lain had already departed with Feyre, claiming she had to be up with the dawn to tend to an elderly faerie’s garden. Cassian didn’t exactly know why he suspected this wasn’t true. There had been some tightness in E/lain’s face as she’d said it. Normally when she made such excuses, Lucien was around, but the male remained in the human lands with Jurian and Vassa.”

Do you have any thoughts or theories about this?

Because many people point out she behaves like this around Lucien but she has also behaved like this with other people.

From the pov of the other characters we also see them pointing out things about her personality or how much she tries to belong to NC and has her ignoring Rhys as well.

Any thoughts? I like to read about your point of view

Hi! And thank you so much! I appreciate your interest in my point of view. <3

This ended up longer than I thought it would - as these always do. Not super crazy, but still. The last paragraph is also a bit of a TL;DR.

E\ain's Lie

This is a super interesting paragraph, not going to lie.

I believe some people have interpreted the tightness and escaping to be because Azriel was at the meeting. However, I don't really believe that. If she has a crush on Azriel, why would she escape with some excuse? Why wouldn't she stay around? He's apparently incredibly pretty, so just staying would mean getting to look at that masterpiece a bit more. 👀

However, the more important tell to let us know this isn't the case is this:

Normally when she made such excuses, Lucien was around...

Azriel is around a lot more than Lucien. If E\ain was doing this because of Azriel, I feel like they'd see this happen more when Lucien isn't around.

It's also important to note that Cassian observes a tightness in E\ain's face "as she'd said [she had to be up early to garden]". He didn't observe it throughout the dinner, no, solely as she made her excuses. It's why Cassian thinks she was lying, making an excuse to leave.

However, if she was struggling because someone else was around, it would have been a noticeable change in her personality throughout all of dinner. Az is around more than Lucien, but we also know he's not around that much, because he's trying to stay away from E\ain. So it wouldn't be an "well, Az is around a lot, so it's just not noticeable that she's stressed around him too". Just as, when Lucien is around, we do see that E\ain is a bit more withdrawn.

So, I don't believe it was Az that caused E\ain to make an excuse to leave. It could have been, but personally I find that less likely, or she'd have been doing it more often. Regardless of whether it's because she likes Azriel or because she views him as a threat on her own plans, I don't think that's the reason.

It could be just that she's less comfortable around the group without Feyre.

I find this one an unlikely possibility, but it is possible. Despite what E\ain says, she really is not part of the court, and she's definitely not part of the Inner Circle - no more than Nesta. In fact, by the end of ACOSF, you could argue Nesta is more part of it. But Feyre is the only true IC member of the Archerons.

But, either way, I don't see E\ain as being friends with any of the IC members. Not even Az. They may have some sexual chemistry there, but they're not friends. They never talk and they don't really know each other at all. So it could just be that simple.

But, unlikely if this is meant to be foreshadowing.

She also could just be tired and making some excuse to sound less lame - we've all done it, don't lie. XD

Again, though, I find this unlikely. I don't think her face would be super tight in doing this, because we know E\ain can lie. Or, at least, use words and smiles to her own advantage.

Rhys's brows lifted. "You'd think they'd been told plague had befallen the house."

I pulled the door open wide enough to let them in, then quickly shut it against the bitter cold. "My sister E\ain can convince anyone to do anything with a few smiles."

It's not exactly the same, but this is one of the first things we really learn about E\ain beyond "pretty and likes flowers", her ability to convince others to do anything. To use her wits and wiles to get her way, and it's pretty obvious that's something she's used to in her life. It may not specifically state that she can lie, but she was convincing the staff to leave the house so that Fae could come into it. And we know she definitely wasn't telling them that was the reason why.

She can lie, she can stretch the truth, to do and get what she wants. With ease.

So, the fact that her face is tight tells me this isn't an easy lie for her. This isn't a bland excuse.

More so than that, why not just say she's tired? Why not use that as the reason? That's an easier lie. But no, it was something that would include an explanation for her being out early in the morning.

My conclusion: she did have something happening the next morning, but it wasn't gardening for an elder faerie.

Now, I could be wrong. Cassian's assumption was that E\ain was just lying to leave the dinner. She was making an excuse to go up to bed. You can see that because he drew a parallel to when E\ain makes excuses around Lucien, which we can assume actually is to just get out of the room where he is.

And maybe he's right. Perhaps that observation was meant to be foreshadowing about some other form of discomfort E\ain has around someone in the IC. But, based on my reasons above, and how that would happen more often, I find it unlikely.

Thus, the lie must be about something other than her just making an excuse to get away. And she uses it to also explain away why she won't be in the house the next morning.

Think about it - she made the excuse in front of Rhys and Feyre too...maybe. Maybe not. I read it as E\ain and Feyre went up together at the same time. Either way, at least one of the people she currently lives in this house with heard the excuse, so they'd expect her to not be home early the next morning. Why do that if all she was doing was making an excuse to get away from someone? The next morning she may have to answer questions about that, which I don't think she would want to do.

Now, I honestly have no idea what she was doing instead. After the bonus Az POV chapter, we know she wasn't having a secret rendezvous with him. Based on that chapter, it sounds like the two have had minimal interactions other than at dinners and things at the River House. But that's just what isn't happening.

Some wonder/hope that she's having secret meetings with Lucien. As amazing as that would be, that her "discomfort" around him is, maybe, more just lying to everyone else and pretending they aren't spending time together. I don't think that's the case. We're told Lucien is remaining in the human lands, that he looks at E\ain with longing, and that E\ain didn't even thank Lucien for his Solstice gift to her.

For someone who has a defining trait of being "sweet", that's kind of a big thing to not do when getting a gift. Like, even if she's pretending to not really care about him or know him, not thanking him is...kinda awful.

So, it would mean she's meeting with someone else. With whom? I honestly don't know.

I am intrigued by the concepts and theories about E\ain seeking out a way to try and become human again. I find it plausible, and that there was some information in ACOFAS to make it sound like she was trying to do this only makes it more so. Also, E\ain is definitely more stubborn than I think we've seen, but she's stubborn in a selfish way. Remember that she was doted on by Nesta, but also at times by Feyre, and her father. I, personally, believe that she is likely the most spoiled in nature. In fact, I wrote a post about how I'm wondering if E\ain is somewhat narcissistic.

With that, I don't think E\ain would have been deterred by Amren's comments. All I think that would have done would have made E\ain try to be more secretive and subtle in this pursuit.

I am also intrigued by the thoughts that, in doing this, she ends up siding with/helping Koschei, essentially turning into a villain. Of course, if this does happen, I think it would be revealed very end of book 5 or very beginning of book 6, and in that reveal she would plummet to rock bottom and then her book would be about her journey out of that.

And I do love the idea of a possible semi-villain E\ain because, in the end, her current development has been "she's pretty, and good, and sweet, and kind"...so, she can't be further developed and be made more "good". If her development is just her continuing to be good, that doesn't actually give us more of her character. As we learn about E\ain more, I am convinced we will learn about sides of her that aren't so "good".

E\ain & the Night Court

Okay, I'll be much faster on this, because I've talked about it before as well.

My perspective is that those vignettes, comments, narrations, etc. from other characters' POVs are all very important. I do believe this is some foreshadowing happening that tells us E\ain will not end up in the Night Court. And, I believe, her initial leaving of the Night Court may not be a particularly pleasant separation. I'm not saying it'll be absolutely awful, but maybe it's E\ain leaving on her own, or following someone she shouldn't follow due to promises of a better life, or something similar.

The other possibility is that it will be part of E\ain's emotional journey, to understand that she's not living in a place that's right for her, and that it's OKAY. It's okay if the Night Court isn't the right place for her, even if it is for her sisters. It's okay if she needs something else, if she'll find value somewhere else. It's okay to be different. I think that will be a huge thing for E\ain to learn and accept.

But, yes, I do agree with the perspectives that say those passages are telling us that E\ain doesn't belong in the Night Court. Not because she's not good enough, just because it's not where she shines. And you can find a deeper analysis on that in this post, in the "Home is Where You Shine" section.

I will say, though, that I don't think she'll end up doing anything crazy in an attempt to prove she's part of the Night Court. She's defensive about it, for sure. But if there's a big goal we're going to see her try to work toward, and maybe do so in a not so great way, I'd say it's more likely something about trying to be human again. When with the NC people she wants to be included, because she's selfish and self-centered and narcissistic - and I don't mean that as an insult, those are just some of her personality traits, and they're not necessarily a bad thing. However, I would say that's more likely why she wants to feel like she's a part of the NC. Because her sisters have both started to truly become a part of it, and she's never been the outsider. She's never been the third wheel. It was always her and Nesta. Now it's her and Feyre. But if Nesta is so much a part of the Night Court, if her two sisters will be working together on things - well, that leaves E\ain on the outside, and she can't handle it. Not because she wants to work with them. Not because she actually wants to be part of the Night Court. But because that's just not how it goes in her mind.

And I truly hope that in her journey she'll come to understand herself better, and understand that it's okay to be different. E\ain will find her place, with people who love her, care for her, adore her FOR HER. They don't simply dote on her and protect her because they think she's weak or fragile. No, she will find those who will see the wonder in her. Who will appreciate her stubbornness and ability to convince anyone to do anything. And who will only ever want the best for her because they love her. I look forward to meeting them.

And, hey, if it happens to be Jurian and Vassa and Lucien, I can see it. E\ain could use some snarky Vassa and Jurian in her life. XD

Summary

So, there you have it. That's my perspective on this. I do think E\ain was likely lying. I think the lie went beyond her just trying to get out of the room, and more so was a lie about the why or what she had going on the next day. And I do think she may have had some meeting she didn't want anyone knowing about. I know it wasn't with Az, I don't think it was with Lucien, but I don't know who else it could have been. I like the idea that it has to do with her trying to become human again, which fits in with my thoughts on what her emotional journey will be like in her book, and I'm intrigued at the thought that it could lead to her working with Koschei. But I'm not yet convinced that's definitely the case. I'll have to try to read it again, but so far I'm not sure there's been enough foreshadowing to prove that. The best thing would be her interest in helping find the Dread Trove, except I don't believe she actually was interested in that. I think in that discussion she was just more interested in proving Nesta wrong, because she never actually did anything to try and find the Trove. So, it would be cool, but we need more info before I can say I definitely think that will happen.

And yes, I do agree E\ain likely doesn't belong in the Night Court, based on all those internal thoughts we've seen. It's very telling when you have three characters observe how black does literally nothing for E\ain, how it drains her.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #166

Bonjour and Bienvenue boys and belles to another bit on the BB Channel! For today we’re building the boisterous baroness of bacchanalia as one bit Berserk Bewitchment Bloodline, one bit Battery Builder, all for badass beatdowns! All this brouhaha is to say we’re building and buffing the beauteous brat known as BB.

Check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet here!

Next up: Hacking the planet? I think you misheard.

Race and Background

The evil AI from the moon BB is about as Custom a Lineage as they come, giving you +1 Dexterity and Intelligence. She also comes packed with Darkvision to dunk on those foolish human eyes and the Lucky feat to tip the scales in your favor by re-rolling attacks, checks, or saves that directly involve you three times per long rest. Games aren’t fun if they’re fair, silly!

Again, Evil AI from The Moon isn’t going to be a background you can find in most games of D&D. That being said, she certainly likes to put on shows of life and death, so once you get past their obsession with fire I’d bet she’d find a lot of common ground with Rakdos Cultists. This gives her proficiency with Acrobatics and Performance so you too can twirl around on stage and put a little flair into your attacks.

This background also gives you an additional bunch of spells to tack onto your spell lists. When you unlock spellcasting in the first place, you get Fire Bolt, Vicious Mockery, Burning Hands, Dissonant Whispers, and Hellish Rebuke. Your free second level spells are Crown of Madness, Enthrall, and Flaming Sphere. Third level is Fear and Haste, fourth is Confusion and Wall of Fire, and your free fifth level spell is Dominate Person. Don’t look at me like that, how else are you going to keep your daughters in line? BB doesn’t rely on fire that much -yet- but the other spells are absolutely in her wheelhouse. And giving a computer virus a fire wall is just plain funny.

Ability Scores

As a hyper-advanced AI from the future, it’d be a little weird if your Intelligence wasn’t your highest ability score. Your smarts are almost as obvious as how great a kouhai you are, so make your Charisma the next highest. Your Dexterity is pretty good too- that outfit probably isn’t armor, at least not in the practical sense. Your Constitution isn’t too bad either. The saying goes, “if it bleeds, you can kill it,” but you’re made out of data so you don’t bleed at all. Your Strength isn’t anything to write home about, but you can warp reality, so why would you need to lift? Dump Wisdom. You’re not exactly the most stable person in Chaldea.

Class Levels

1. Artificer 1: First level artificers get Magical Tinkering, so now you can put minor magical effects into tiny objects. Most of them probably aren’t that practical, but every event shop needs some junk.

You can also cast Spells this level, using your Intelligence to prepare and cast them. On top of your rakdos spells, you can use Lightning Lure and Mage Hand to mess with people. You can also prepare first level spells, like Identify to scan enemies for their status effects, Tasha’s Caustic Brew to re-enact your extra attack card, and Cure Wounds for a bit of maintenance on your spirit origin. It takes work to look this good, y’know!

Finally, you get proficiency with Constitution and Intelligence saves, as well as Arcana and Medicine. You were built to look after humans, and you obviously know a lot about tech.

2. Artificer 2: Second level artificers can Infuse Items to turn dumb ol’ mundane objects into magical objects! You learn four infusions right now, but you can only keep two of them available at a time, and you can swap them out between long rests. Really lean into it, make the rest of the party fight for the affection of their kouhai.

As far as your actual infusions go, Mind Sharpener is a great one for spellcasters, letting them force their concentration to stick even if they fail a save as a reaction. You can also use an Enhanced Arcane Focus to make your spells even stronger. For magic items, the classic Bag of Holding is always in fashion, and Sending Stones will help bring party communication into the 21st century.

3. Sorcerer 1: Being smart is nice, but it’s time to make things a bit more.. interesting. As a sorcerer, you get another Spell list that uses your Charisma to cast. You also get your own home game version of BB slots thanks to your Wild Magic Surge. When you cast a sorcerer spell that uses a spell slot, your DM can make you roll a d20. On a one, you then have to roll on the wild magic surge table.

If that’s not wacky enough for you, the Tides of Chaos can speed things up. Once per long rest, you gain advantage on one attack, check, or save of your choice. Your DM can also force you to roll on the WMS table when you’d normally get a WMS to recharge it.

You get cantrips like Friends, to make friends with Senpai; Message, to send calls to Senpai; Light, to help with Senpai’s dumb human eyes; and Minor Illusion, for some cheap holograms. For first level spells, Mage Armor makes that outfit less of a tactical issue, and Tasha’s Caustic Brew frees up some prep slots for artificer spells.

4. Sorcerer 2: Second level sorcerers are Fonts of Magic, giving you sorcery points equal to your sorcerer level each long rest. Right now they can be used to refill spell slots, or you can empty spell slots to get more points.

You can also cast Magic Missile for some caster balls. I know you’re not a caster, but you do run around with a magic wand, it’s not that wild a concept.

5. Sorcerer 3: Third level sorcerers get second level spells, as well as Metamagic to make them a little bit more you flavored. Distant Spell doubles the range of a spell (or gives it a range of 30′ if it’s touch), while Subtle Spell lets you cast a spell without all that vocal or somatic component nonsense. Why waste time chanting when you could spend it narrating?

You can also cast Enhance Ability to alter your data in favor of one kind of skill checks, gaining advantage on them for the duration. You also double your carrying capacity for strength checks, avoid small falling damage with dexterity checks, or gain temporary HP with constitution checks.

6. Sorcerer 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to bump up your Charisma to make Senpai notice you. And also to make your sorcerer spells harder to avoid.

You can also cast Prestidigitation to make more small magical effects, or Alter Self to further improve your being. When you cast it, you pick one of three modes. Mode 1 gives you a swimming speed and the ability to breathe underwater. Mode 2 lets you change appearance as an action for the duration, and Mode 3 lets you grow Natural Weapons that are magical against resistances. Honestly Mode 3′s a bad matchup for you, but you’re an independent AI who don’t need no humanity, I’ll let you make your own decisions.

7. Sorcerer 5: Fifth level sorcerers get Magical Guidance, letting you spend 1 sorcery point to re-roll a failed skill check. You can also cast third level spells like Dispel Magic to bonk Kiara back into horny jail. Probably. We haven’t built her yet, still not entirely sure how that’s going to work.

8. Sorcerer 6: Sixth level wild mages can Bend Luck, using their reaction and 2 sorcery points to add or subtract 1d4 to another creature’s attack, check, or save. You love playing games, but more in the ‘dungeon master’ sense.

You can also cast Clairvoyance to set up your very own BB channel studio wherever you’ve been before.

9. Artificer 3: Third level artificers can always find the Right Tool for the Job, creating whatever tools you might need over the course of a short rest. Thanks to being an Artillerist, you can also bring one of those weird geometric enemies from the CCC event to the battlefield in the form of an Eldritch Cannon, creating a freestanding small cannon or a handheld tiny one. They’re pretty customizable, but they all come in one of three flavors. Flamethrowers deal AoE fire damage, Force Ballistas deal single-target force damage and throw people around, and Protectors give out temporary HP.

You also get the freebie spells Shield and Thunderwave. 

10. Artificer 4: Use this ASI to bump up your Intelligence for better artificer spells.

11. Sorcerer 7: Seventh level sorcerers get fourth level spells, like Ego Whip! If your target fails an intelligence save, they get disadvantage on all attacks, checks, and saves, and it can’t cast spells. At the end of each turn it can try to make another intelligence save (still at disadvantage), but tbh most creatures aren’t that bright compared to you.

12. Sorcerer 8: Another ASI already? Bump up your Charisma to make it even harder to break out of your ego whip, and also grab Banishment so you can deal with that giant pain in your behind, Kingprotea (note: this level description does not contain the opinions of fateandphantasms. fateandphantasms does not condone any kind of Kingprotea hating.)

13. Sorcerer 9: Fifth level spell time! Grab Creation so you can warp reality and make pretty much whatever you might need out of thin air!

14. Artificer 5: Fifth level artillerists can make Arcane Firearms this level, adding 1d8 to artificer spell damage cast from a specific focus. This also means that your artificer spells and sorcerer spells can finally come out of the same wand, though I doubt most DMs would care to correct you before now.

You can also cast the freebie spells Scorching Ray and Shatter now, since you can learn 2nd level artificer spells. Use Heat Metal if you’re feeling sadistic, Invisibility or Spider Climb for some hacks, or grab Lesser Restoration for some cursed cupid cleansing.

15. Artificer 6: Your Tool Expertise doubles the proficiency of all tool-based checks, but you also get two more infusions, and one more concurrent infusion to boot! A Spell-Refueling Ring will give you more energy to deal with your many, many, problem children, while a Radiant Weapon will just make your wand shinier. Not that it’s a bad reason to grab it.

16. Artificer 7: At seventh level, you can speed up your processors to have Flashes of Genius, using your reaction to add your intelligence modifier to an ability check or saving throw nearby. You can use this Intelligence Modifier times per long rest.

17. Sorcerer 10: Your newest metamagic option lets you twin spells, turning a one-target spell into a two target spell. Now you can keep both your daughters under control at once with one casting of Dominate Person!

You also get the Mending cantrip, because let’s be real your outfit probably doesn’t look as good as it did 17 levels ago. Finally, you get the spell Far Step to bip and bop all over the place as you see fit. Remember, if you teleport off camera it’s not cheating!

18. Sorcerer 11: Eleventh level sorcerers get sixth level spells, like Tasha’s Otherworldly Guise! If you’re going to wear a nurse outfit, it might as well come with superpowers. You get immunities to certain damages and conditions, you can fly, your AC goes up, and your weapon attacks use your spellcasting modifier, are magical, and you can attack twice per action. Ramming a giant needle into somebody never felt so right!

19. Sorcerer 12: For your last ASI, grab the Tough feat. All these sorcerer levels have not done your HP total any favors.

20. Sorcerer 13: Your capstone level nets you a seventh level spell, so grab Plane Shift so you can finally escape the Mooncell and show Senpai all the hard work you’ve done!

Pros:

You have a ton of ways to cheat at dice, manipulating the world to always work in your favor. Re-roll dice with magical guidance and lucky, or just stick a finger on the scale with bend luck and flash of genius. Either way, your party will be thankful to have you.

You also make a decent variety caster thanks to the variety of technological goodies at your disposal. Support team communication with sending stones, spy on people with clairvoyance, create whatever the party might need with creation, or just blow people up with thunderwave and your eldritch cannon. You come packing a little bit of everything.

You’re particularly good at shutting down one or two opponents, with Ego Whip destroying their ability to do much of anything, Enthrall and Fear keeping you their main focus, or Banishment shoving them out of existence entirely.

Cons:

Those wild magic surges can bite you in the ass just as much as they help you, so try to make sure you don’t spin a bankrupt on the BB slots. Seriously though they can straight up kill your entire party at level 1. Don’t be unlucky.

Having a bit of everything means you aren’t focused on any one thing. Builds like Ishtar and -god help me- Mephistopheles?? beat you in magic damage, Scheherazade and Kogil beat you for utility, and Medea Lily and Irisviel beat you for healing. It must be nice to have so many senpais though!

Trying to keep on top of all those checks and saves means you’ll burn through your sorcery points really fast, so just... don’t push yourself too hard, you might not like what happens when you run out of power.