#spiritual whateverthefuck

[misterxsamsa]

The jury's still out on whateverthefuck is precisely wrong with Johnny, and I doubt there's a simple straight answer. However, it's been a little headcanon of mine that he struggles with obsessive-compulsive thinking, and intrusive thoughts based on what we've seen in the comics.

He's seemingly constantly fixated on either daydreaming up or enacting violent fantasies — to the point where upon ressurected, it's where his head first lands. You know, instead of the philosophical and spiritual nuances of his traversing of the afterlife, he thinks of doing some leg-sawing. Really, it seems borderline uncontrollable and reminds me of my own experiences with those issues.

[theharlotofferelden]

My controversial opinion about astrology is that it’s a scam that directly preys on vulnerable people who use it to cope with how unpredictable the world is. The same goes for a lot of the new age stuff that markets itself as “spirituality” but is selling you expensive crystals and shit.

It’s all fun and games until you’re paying $150 to get your astrology chart done because the person markets themselves as someone who comes from a long line of spiritualists or whateverthefuck.

“Bat swinging at wasp nest” post but I cannot be nice about astrology people. No you did not find the one good or cute or quirky way to believe the quality of someone’s character is biologically pre-determined. Just because you found a way to not base it on race or ethnicity or gender does not make judging someone’s character on an innate and uncontrolled attribute suddenly teehee fine.

I’m even more baffled by the people going “it’s just fun!” “It’s just a hobby!!” Sure if it was something harmless. It’s not. We are quite literally talking about how you intend to judge, treat, view, respect, and interact with someone entirely differently based on an inherent trait. How are you not aghast? How are you not embarrassed? Why are you so insistent on needing to operate on a hierarchy of pre-determined character judgement?

[theemperorsfeather]

Two or three years ago, I had a not-really-a-dream from/involving Loki that lead to me acquiring a certain book of poetry, and I read it and - I did not have any particularly strong insight. A subtle sense of . . . something. Some hints at meaning/relevance? Maybe.

Mostly I just didn’t get it. Either what the poet was trying to convey, or what Loki was pointing me towards. And that was weird because every other time I’ve been pointed towards something, the “answers” have been Really Clear.

I finally reread it tonight, because I’ve been bored out of my skull recently, and most of my books are in boxes, and, plus, also, maybe . . . there might be other Reasons it might have felt potentially relevant to go back.

And you know what??

I still don’t fucking get it. What the damned poet is trying to convey. What I’m intended to get from it wrt Loki. *throws hands up* There were some phrases here and there that felt kind of relevant, but . . . I expect enlightenment, understanding, insight, etc., to be clearer than all that. And could that be it? Four, maybe 5 little clusters of lines out of the whole damned thing that reflect things of relevance? (I suppose that really could be all of it . . . there’s no rule that says “the whole thing is loaded!”)

Or perhaps I’m not getting it because on the whole - I don’t like it. Not some of the bigger themes the poet is writing about or how some of those themes seem relevant.

[witchwraytohome]

dear whatever universal force tends to listen when i actually sit and - for want of better term - pray to it: please let the leasing company drop off the new front door keys within the next 2 hours so we can go rescue the blubaru. thanks in advance, i love you, take care, bye

[surgeonstudios]

🚨This post is a summoning!🚨 Are you a pagan/witch/practitioner under 40? Are you tired of hearing about “abundance” & “intention”? Are you in LA? I am starting a muttcraft group to answer a glaring omission in one of the most spiritually diverse places in the country: a group for serious witches/pagans/magickal adepts under 40. This is NOT tradition specific, but it IS for serious, long term-practitioners with at least 1-2 years of magick practice/meditation/ devotional work of some kind looking to meet peers & get crackin. I don’t know about you, but I am personally sick to death of the touristy, shallow New Age oversaturation out here. And with respect, I’m tired of the Old Guard disproportionately representing the “true vvitch/true pagan” community; I think my age group finds it intimidating and off-putting from doing ritual. This intended as a refuge from all of that, to let us spread our wings. I crave a moot-ing of like minds… so if you’re interested in history fueling our ritual but not limiting it, if you’re interested in our myth informing our magick, in being with an active & informed relationship to the elements: comment/DM me for details.🌙 **If you don’t have a year down, but you’re curious and want in on this somehow-- I’m not leaving you out entirely! Read on to the next post.** • 📸 @surgeonstudios • • #losangeleswitch #witchcraft #pagansofinstagram #losangelespagan #spiritual #outlawpriestess #outlawmagick #heathen #druid #wicca #asatru #satanism #whateverthefuck https://www.instagram.com/p/B83vXhQAN0b/?igshid=1rgz7m03s8pv2

[shadowfae]

As someone who’s experienced other worlds long before reality shifting was a thing it pisses me off that it’s become the new hot thing to cringe on and bully people over because of a bunch of teens on tiktok being stupid and not taking astral projection seriously. Now I truly know your community's pain regarding kinnies

I always figured it was either a) some sort of astral projection or b) lucid dreaming, but whateverthefuck the current trend is, it’s not either one and I am seriously getting to the point of beating up every single teenager on tiktok who so much as breathes towards spirituality that isn’t fundamentalist Christianity - I swear to the gods, I have not seen a single person coming out of any other faith and upbringing doing this shit - until they can learn to treat other cultures, subcultures, and traditions with actual fucking respect.

Fuck, I didn’t dare argue with community elders when I was their age. I still don’t, not really - you’ll watch me defer to people who have been in the ‘kin community longer than I have like there’s no tomorrow - and I don’t want to all “kids these days” but fuck, kids these days.

Honestly, I had the exact same issue with my peers as a teenager, because I didn’t have any use for them either because they were just as bad. I hated other teenagers because they didn’t have an ounce of maturity, and I’m pretty sure I hate these ones too for the same reason.

It shouldn’t have had to go this far for either one of us to have to experience this pain, and worse for us to sympathize about it. But we have to deal with it, so at least we can sympathize, I guess?

[firelord-frowny]

honestly like!

i HATE!!!! the very CONCEPT of guns. and i’m theoretically SO fundamentally opposed to violence. 

but that opposition is based on an idealist assumption that no one is doing anything that they need to be stopped from doing. 

and there are obviously a fucking hell of a lot of people doing a fucking hell of a lot of vile shit, and no amount of ~peaceful protesting~ or litigating or campaigning or Reaching Across The Aisle is going to stop them, and it’s fucking RIDICULOUS that anyone at all thinks people should just wait patiently for The Powers That Be to spontaneously manifest a conscience and finally quit trying to maim and murder people For Funsies. 

i would LOVE it we could just hug them into submission and invite them over for tea and chit chat and take their ugly ass hand and smile at them and show them that I’m Just A Normal Person Like You and have them finally decide to stop wanting me to die. and honestly, some people REALLY CAN be reached through those kinds of methods. and i don’t think people should stop trying to do that. and if anything, i think MORE people need to be trying to do that.

but i ALSO think that more people need to start punching some bigots in the fucking face. 

if self proclaimed conservatives and right wingers and proud wimpy boys get to go around committing terroristic acts against other peoples, and if the politicians and ceos they stan for refuse to take any actions to stop them at best, and at worst go out of their way to FACILITATE the suffering of all but bigoted, well-off white people....

then we should get to punch them in the fucking face and not have anyone say WORD ONE about it. 

they wanna be all big and bad and parade around threatening and committing violence against teachers and health care workers and black people and asian people and jewish people and indigenous people and women of all backgrounds, then they should be fucking tough enough to cope with a goddamn punch in the face every now and then. they should WELCOME every fist that ever collides with their flesh. 

if they want a fucking fight, we should GIVE THEM A FIGHT! and make sure they fucking lose.  make sure the pathetic little ~civil war~ they’re begging for is HUMILIATINGLY short. chase their fucking asses into the most barren, useless parts of the world where they can be vile all by themselves. 

bc i SWEAR TO GOD, the only reason why these people have any power at all to impact anything or anyone is because people LET THEM. not because they’re soooo smart, or they’re soooo dangerous, or there are sooooo many of them. it’s STRICTLY because an enormous majority of bare-minimum-decent people care more about Taking The Moral High Ground than about actually doing what’s necessary to disable evil people from doing evil things.

This is a hella problematic way to put it, buuuut

black people know not to do or say certain things to a cop because we’ve been conditioned to fear the consequences of even the most benign ~infractions.~ We swallow our fucking pride and whip out those “yes sirs” and “no sirs” and we move slowly and we try to keep our hands visible at all costs because we’ve seen, over and over again, for DECADES (centuries, really) what those people might do to us if our hand isn’t totally visible for a fraction of a second. And sometimes it doesn’t even work. Sometimes we do everything in our power to demonstrate that there’s no need to hurt us, and we get murdered anyway. 

WOULDN’T IT BE NICE if those wack ass bigots could learn to fear the consequences of being disgusting out loud and in public? 

Imagine if, over the last several decades, malicious bigots were met with SWIFT physical consequences every time they did some fucked up shit. 

do you think they’d be so bold now? 

i don’t. 

i think if they thought for one second that whoever they pull a gun on might pull one out back at them, then they would keep their fucking mouths shut and behave. i think if they LEGITIMATELY thought that they’re actual lives and their actual freedom were at stake, they wouldn’t say SHIT. Because they know that whether or not they have to wear a mask or get vaccinated or whateverthefuck has absolutely NO real impact on their place in the world. there is NO. WAY. that they would be all up in arms over something so fucking absurd if they thought anyone would actually try to hurt them in response. 

they don’t think anyone is going to show up at their dumb lil protests with tear gas. they don’t think an angry BLM activist is going to shoot up their country club in retaliation against the oppressive policies they support. they don’t think anyone is going to stop them on the street and start screaming in their face and threaten to kill them. they don’t think they’re going to lose a damn fucking thing. they think they’re literally going to just waltz into some of the most secure buildings in the world and wreak havoc, and that NO ONE is going to do shit about it. 

that’s the problem :) :) :) :) :) :) 

the problem isn’t that these people exist. i mean, it fucking sucks that they exist and if they could somehow cease to exist, whether by alien abduction or some sort of freak simultaneous lightning strike or WHATEVER, i would be THRILLED. but just existing doesn’t hurt anyone. Having a stupid belief doesn’t automatically make someone dangerous. It just makes them a shitty person.

But to have a stupid belief and to feel SO ENTITLED to acting upon those beliefs???

those motherfuckers need to fear for their safety. those motherfuckers need to be SO PETRIFIED that they dig themselves underground and bury themselves alive and NEVER resurface. 

i don’t understand how, at this point, with over half a million people DEAD because of the actions of these assholes, and with thousands of people CONTINUING to drop dead over it every day, the so-called “good guys” still don’t see fit to resort to drastic measures to render these people INCAPABLE of causing further harm. 

so many people have died. not just in the time of covid, but decades before that. so many people are murdered in the name of carrying out the pettiest whims of the most wretched people on earth. People get injured. People get poisoned by their own water supply or the very air they breathe. People get sick because they’re forced to live under unhealthy circumstances, and then they DIE because they can’t afford treatment for the illnesses they developed because of the unhealthy circumstances that made them sick in the first place! Children starve. Global warming sets people on fire and drowns them and destroys homes and lives and landscapes. 

literally, at WHAT point does it become acceptable to finally just declare war on these fucking demons? WHEN do we meet them where they’re at and start punching back instead of just curling up and trying to survive the attack?

i KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW that there are groups out there who are taking direct action in some form or another. but CLEARLY it’s not enough.

and i ALSO know that there are MANY PEOPLE who have the actual skills and resources to stage a legitimate countereffort, and they’re just. not. doing it. 

we’ve got all these vile-ass ~ex military~ types boasting about their arsenal and how they intend to use it to reign terror upon innocent people. these fuckfaces who are LITERALLY HOLDING PUBLIC OFFICE and saying Out Loud that they want to attack us. and their peers exalt them for it. 

you CANNOT tell me that there are 0 ~ex military~ people who are sympathetic to the cause of resisting these malicious bigots. you CANNOT tell me that there aren’t people in public office who know that something MUST be done, and who have the POWER and ACCESS to do something - even if it’s “unlawful.” 

but they’re not doing it. :) because they’re weak. :) and they fear for their lives in a way that ~the right~ has NEVER had to contend with. A democratic state senator knows someone might hunt them down and try to kill them if they say anything ~too radical~. a republican state senator is confident that he could literally call for the public execution of someone and be met only with a pathetic verbal reprimand from some spineless liberal congressman who bends over backward to be Respectful And Fair as they gently try to explain why it’s not okay to facilitate mass death in every demographic but their own.

can somebody with the actual power and means to do so PLEASE start doing ANYTHING to terrorize these people back to the bland, tasteless, spiritually bankrupt cesspit they congealed in? When one of these american terrorists brandishes a gun in someone’s face, can someone PLEASE brandish their own gun right back at them? THEY should be the ones who are too terrified to speak up. Not us. THEY should be the ones compelled to look over their shoulder. 

im so sick of a world where mass suffering and exploitation are accepted as Just The Natural Order Of Things. instead of a harrowing dystopia that should be burned to the ground quick, fast, and in a motherfucking hurry.

[oldtestleper]

Let's hear more about this cult, I'm suddenly interested

WELL lol, theyre a reform evangelical church based in my hometown and theyre seriously fucking sinister. their pastor is a charismatic frothing bigot who presided the wedding of a convicted pedophile and who describes himself as a “paleo-confederate” (whateverthefuck that means) and published a work in which he claims that slavery produced “a genuine affection between the races,” criticism of which he describes as “abolitionist propaganda.” their literal stated mission is to make my hometown, which is known for being extremely liberal and progressive for idaho, into a “Christian town” through a “spiritual takeover.” this is a church with buried sexual assault scandals (the mother of the girl involved is still with the church), a church that turns smart capable young women into wives who went to college to find a husband and who have 4.5 kids by the time they turn 30, whose congregation gathers in groups of ~1000 without masks or social distancing because they genuinely believe that God will protect them from the virus, who lobbied aggressively against the local hospital offering services to trans people, who every two years try to monopolize the city council, and who are actively trying to take over the local economy by buying out and replacing local businesses to the point where literally every new business in the downtown area is automatically suspected of ulterior motives. the church and its affiliated university is overtly and loudly transphobic anti choice and homophobic. you can always tell who they are because it will be a young white couple who look like they stepped out of an abercrombie and fitch catalogue with five kids in tow, because looking hip and plucky is literally part of their advertising/infiltration tactic.

[zackaran]

Y’all uh.. want my spiritual/polytheist/witchcraft/whateverthefuck blog? @feral-feathers

[fatalism-and-villainy]

All the criticism of “show, don’t tell” as writing advice that I’ve seen recently is making it very clear that maybe I’ve been operating on a very different definition of “show, don’t tell” than apparently most people? Like, that quote going around about how “show, don’t tell” reflects western-centrist/colonialist/etc. biases because it relies on the audience already being aware of western cultural tropes and literary allusions? And I don’t doubt that that sort of thing is a definite problem with how creative writing is taught, but.... ime that’s really not what “show, don’t tell” is referring to? 

I mean, for one thing, that quote seems to be conflating “explaining unfamiliar concepts” with the “telling” portion, when they don’t necessarily have to coincide? Showing can, in fact, be a form of explanation. This is how fantasy worldbuilding works so much of the time - information about the setting and the forces that govern it is often done through specific scenes and examples of the power systems/magic/whateverthefuck about the world you’re trying to convey, or slipped in through natural dialogue between characters who already know how things work and therefore don’t have to explain everything to each other. And I think the point of “show, don’t tell” is that worldbuilding is richer, and flows better, if it’s done in that way, as opposed to bringing the story to a grinding halt so the narrator can spoon-feed the reader everything they need to know (or using characters for As You Know conversations.)

And one of the most common uses of “show, don’t tell” as criticism that I’ve seen has less to do with setting/genre/internal workings of the world than it does with characterization. Giving your character an informed attribute without actually having that come into play in the story is bad writing and is annoying to see. Same goes for relationships - if two characters are repeatedly stated to be close, or influential to each other, but barely interact or affect each others’ decisions, then the story is going to feel lazy and shallow. And I think that’s pretty universal regardless of whether your story is comprehensible to the Western gaze or not.

And like, even if you’re writing outside this Western gaze - you still don’t have to use wordy explanations? Like, Birdie by Tracey Lindberg utilizes a ton of Cree narratives and cultural concepts, many of which aren’t immediately accessible to a white audience. And she doesn’t go out of her way to make it accessible. She’s clearly not writing for the benefit of a white audience. And yet the story still works because it’s emotionally coherent, even if you don’t intuitively understand the spiritual stuff that’s going on. Like. Making your readers work for an understanding isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and that’s what bothers me about a lot of those posts.      

[ayearofpike]

The Last Vampire 6: Creatures of Forever

Pocket Books, 1996 181 pages, 17 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-55052-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Lav 1996 OCLC: 35300865 Released September 1, 1996 (per B&N)

Sita, the last vampire, is tired of killing and not hungry anymore, but she still feels a sense of duty to stop those who would harm others. In her service, though, she encounters a larger set of monsters than she had ever imagined. These monsters, she learns, are here to convert humanity to a predominantly negative energy, and their power in our realm stems from their having some of her blood. The only way Sita can stop them is to go back in time and prevent the monsters from getting her blood in the first place.

Holy shit, did I just write that? But yeah, it’s totally what happens in this story. It’s half sci-fi, half period action drama, all frustrating. Not even because of the St. Elsewhere ending — I can deal with that. It’s more about having to craft my own pieces to complete Pike’s puzzle. I’ve said it before, and it’s still true: I don’t get mad at a story that makes me do some of the legwork in figuring out how it gets from start to finish. But I do resent when I’m expected to read the author’s mind and pull in hints that he’s dropped in other places besides the story I’m reading in order to understand what he meant.

I also don’t really appreciate a series that makes a sudden turn right at the end and forces me to mentally retcon practically every activity that has occurred to this point. Here? Aliens. Pike takes all the metaphysical and spiritual elements and jams ‘em in outer space. I know, Sita’s been dreaming about talking to Krishna before getting on a big purple spaceship for the whole series, but it could at least still be understood as a metaphor. And yeah, we got the spectral lizard spaceship in TLV5, but that’s couched in the understanding that the Setians figured out how to spread out rather than that they actually  CAME from elsewhere. Not here. You’ll see.

We open up with Sita and Seymour in a bar. Remember how she turned him into a vampire last time? It’s still true, and as he figures out his powers she’s coaching him through how to use them ethically. Like, he’s picking up this fly skimmie but Sita won’t let him hypnotize her, nor will she let him both drink from her AND fuck her. Man, save one Jeebus Baby and accept the blood of one Hindu goddess to save your own life and all of a sudden you’ve got a complicated moral code. 

Sita’s more worried about the murderer in the corner. Yes, she knows he’s a murderer. It’s a new consequence of having drunk Kalika’s blood, that she can read minds rather than simply being aware of emotions and mental states. So she goes and picks the dude up, and he takes her to a creepy warehouse so they can get busy. Only the weapon he pulls out of his pocket is not a gun or a knife ... it’s a box with buttons on it. Obviously he’s been warned about Sita. She disarms him and asks who told him about her, and right at that moment who should show up but Seymour and his skimmie. She’s got an identical box pointed at his head and tells Sita to drop the weapon. Sita grabs the murderer and tries to negotiate, but Skimmie isn’t having it. She disintegrates Murderer without even blinking.

Of course Sita immediately hides, and Skimmie makes it clear that she better come out without any weapons if she wants Seymour to have, you know, particles. So Sita stashes her knife, with the point aimed at Skimmie, and insists she release Seymour before they continue talking. Skimmie is only too happy to do so — but then she says that Sita must join her side and the first step in the initiation is to kill Seymour. Nuh-uh, Sita says, and uses her other new power: telekinesis. She makes the knife fly from its hiding spot and stab Skimmie in the neck, and while she’s surprised Sita leaps across the warehouse, kicks the box out of her hand, and rips her fucking head off and throws it into a corner. 

Sita and Seymour have to run, and the safest place to be is Jeebus Baby’s house on Lake Tahoe. It turns out that his mom has started to remember some things from her previous life as Sita’s old teacher the seer/healer. She listens to Sita’s story and understands what it means: that a change in the lives of humanity is coming, but that there’s an evil that is trying to steer people away from the light side and into darkness. This evil wants us to focus on powering ourselves for its own sake, rather than spreading the power around to everyone. It wants us to be more invested in ourselves than others, to value strength over love, to value ourselves over others. I swear I am not getting political — okay, maybe a little bit, but this is eerily prescient from a book that was written twenty-two years ago.

Then again, maybe not.

Anyway, Sita knows she needs to do something about these evil beings for the good of humanity. She tracks down the skimmie’s address and finds an indifferent boyfriend drinking beer and watching baseball, who tells Sita that she was supposed to be at a UFO convention in Phoenix. So she flies there (which, like, I know LA is a hub, but how does Sita get flights right when she wants to go?) and sits through a whole bunch of talks until she gets to the last one of the day, where the professor up front describes exactly the dilemma Sita understands (as she and some random lady she befriended snark at him under their breath). She wants to talk to him afterward, but he fuckin’ books it away into the desert. 

Of course she follows him, to a hill only thirty minutes from the Holiday Inn, which shows that Pike has never been to Phoenix (it takes at least 45 minutes to get ANYWHERE in that monstrosity). The professor says the same thing the skimmie did — that they’re going to win anyway and Sita should just join them. Plus! They already have some of her blood, dating back to a ninth-century occultist she wrangled with, thus making them more powerful than ever. And now they have her surrounded: out of nowhere three dudes with ray guns show up, and they try to take her prisoner. Luckily Sita still has her hypnotic powers, and she makes one of the guards break just enough that the other two aim at him and take him down. This gives her time to jump toward one, steal his phaser, and vaporize everybody.

The random friend is waiting for her where the desert road meets the highway. This is unexpected enough that Sita is suspicious, but the woman identifies herself as a genuine friend — and certainly Sita feels deep down that this is true. She listens as the friend talks about the coming change: it’s an increase in density or dimensionality or some such shit. This is one of the places where Pike makes us fill in the gaps, but I was too bored to do it. But anyway, our move forward has to be a choice, a conscious step into the next ... whateverthefuck, and it’ll be predicated on whether we’re positive or negative. And the phaser aliens want us to be negative for ... some reason, and they’re going to get more negativity because of that incident all those centuries ago where they got some of Sita’s blood.

There’s a way to undo this! Sita can mentally travel back in time to her body as it was when she met this evil occultist, who also so happens to be a dimension-shifting alien (I don’t remember if this is where we learn this, but who fuckin’ cares at this point). To do this she has to get on a spaceship with her new random friend and get up to hyperspeed, at which time she just has to focus on where she was and she’ll join consciousness with herself at that time. 

The moment she remembers is when she met the castrated leper who showed her the way to the dude’s castle. I’m totally serious. There’s three people torturing him, and Sita kills them all and saves his life, then talks to him about the evil dude and how to find him. It turns out the castrated leper used to be one of his servants and knows exactly where to find him, but obviously he’s afraid because of how he specifically watched the dude turn evil and get cast out by the pope and invoke demons that gave him his disease. (The missing balls were just to preserve his sweet, sweet singing voice.) Still, she persuades him to take her to the castle, and as they walk there he tells the tale of Perseus and Medusa, and the importance of the power of being able to freeze someone. This will come back later.

Near the castle, she tells the castrated leper to turn back and continues on alone. She happens on a cage on a cart full of naked women, no doubt for sacrifice to this evil monster, and she kills the guards and frees the women, and continues on without so much as a disguise or a costume change or even really a cover story. Like, she’s a four-thousand-year-old immortal vampire and doesn’t give a shit about Satanists. It’s important to note that she’s having trouble remembering the future thoughts she brought back with her, so maybe she doesn’t fully grasp the importance of what she’s doing here now. But anyway, she gets to the castle and meets the lady of the house, who insists she should have dinner with them that night.

At the dinner table, the evil lord seems ... kinda nice, actually. He claims that his falling out with the Church is over how to handle the invading Moslems from across the sea, and that they tried to keep the castrated leper safe and warm but that he ran away in fear of who he was. (I should mention: there’s a kinda gross thread throughout this book that equates the Moors with the Satanic rituals and practices we’ll see in a little bit. I’m going to mostly skip it because it’s not really about Sita, but I sure didn’t like reading it in 2018.) On the wall there’s a spear that the lord claims is the actual spearhead used to kill Christ on the cross and end his suffering, and that the owner is in charge of destiny the way the initial wielder was. There is a nail wired to it ... maybe one of the nails that held him to the cross? It makes Sita think about a baby Jesus ... or is it a baby Jeebus? She’s confused.

She gets back to her room and feels tired. Not just tired ... lethargic and slack. Obviously her food was drugged. She makes herself throw up, and then bursts the door open to find a housemaid waiting to hear her collapse and drag her down to the black rites. Sita demands to be taken there without being seen, and so they use a secret passageway that takes them far underground and into a passage with grates on the floor from which they can observe hundreds of acolytes in red robes gathered around a pentagram watching the lord (who is an evil occultist after all) sacrifice one of the girls Sita thought she’d saved. Suddenly there’s a knife in her back. Literally — the servant stabs her, and obviously has been told there’s power in Sita’s blood, because she starts licking it. They lose their balance and fall through the grate, where the servant dies instantly and Sita blacks out from the knife being shoved all the way through her body.

When she comes to, she is hanging from a wall in a dungeon cell. It’s this pain of being in a crucifixion position that finally makes her memories of the future clear — specifically, she remembers watching a Wagner production in Germany in the 1920s that retold the story of this evil douche, through the veil of being related to a devil preventing King Arthur’s knights from ever finding the holy grail. Pike has obviously done his research here: it’s a real opera that tells how the forces of good are obstructed by an evil wizard with a magic spear. I wonder if he saw a production at some point and thought it would make a cool villain for his eternal vampire to fight, and this was the best way to fit it in.

Anyway, the occult lord shows up with the castrated leper, who he hangs up on the wall next to her with the taunt that he’ll be the object of torture if she doesn’t capitulate. Sure enough, he burns the leper’s wounds until she begs him to stop, and then leaves them alone to stew on their stubbornness of love and the next step. Luckily, they don’t take the leper’s wooden leg brace, which has a wire cross concealed in it. Through much finagling, Sita manages to bend the cross into a hook that she then uses to pick the locks on her shackles. The leper knows of a secret way out of the castle on the other side of the cell wall, but it’ll require them to go through hallways and risk being seen. Unless Sita can just kick through the brick wall itself and make an opening for them to get out. Once there, she tells the leper to get up out and away, while she goes back for the monster to stop him forever.

She finds him on the beach, inside a pentagram, with his wife dead next to another of the girls Sita thought she’d saved. She goes after him, but there’s an invisible force field all the way around the pentagram, and he tells her the only way she’s going to get in after him is to kill the girl. He’s holding his wife’s heart in his hand, and it suddenly starts beating, pounding inside Sita’s head, until she’s driven to madness and rips out the other girl’s heart and jumps in after the monster. But! Now she can only stand on the points of the pentagram. The open space in the circle is fire, and the center has some kind of invisible ravenous beast that will devour her if she goes in there. Her only option is to give up, open up her veins so that the Dark Lord can have her blood. She asks to do it with the nail that is on his spear, and he throws it to her, and sure enough she’s able to use her future powers to make it fly straight into his head, which stuns him long enough that she steals the spear and stabs him in the heart. This makes him stumble into the center of the pentagram, where all his flesh is flayed off before his body is sucked down into nothingness.

And again, this is a perfectly good supernatural occult story. Why is Pike fucking it up with aliens? But Sita wonders why she hasn’t been picked up yet. And she has blood on her hand from the girl’s heart, which won’t wash off. Maybe she has to go see her leper and heal his wounds with her blood like she did the last time she escaped from this castle. So they meet at a pond, and she wants to wash him in it, only he won’t get close to the water. This is weird. Sita has enough doubts, with her memory of the Wagner play and the story he told about Medusa, and so as a test instead of her blood she rubs on blood from a lizard she finds nearby. And sure enough, she notices that the leper’s expression is one of poorly disguised triumph and trickery. She forces him close to the water before he can react —

And his reflection is Medusa. Or maybe the evil occultist. Pike never properly spells it out. But Sita knows right away that she was right: that her buddy with no balls and no left limbs is actually the one in control, that he was the evil lord’s secret puppet master and used the position of power to get what he needed. He’s made her go through the first two steps of the initiation: begging for forgiveness, killing an innocent. But now the third step — willingly giving up some of her blood, despite a warning veiled in a story — has been thwarted.

And before Evil Gorgon Castrated Leper Lord can react, Sita turns to light again, thanks to the stars and the aliens and the completion of her task. And I’m not satisfied with THIS part either. Pike started talking about the light of the stars elevating Sita like four books ago, and we just have to invent so much of the rationale for how it works and why it works and whether these aliens have been assisting her all along in order to get any kind of fulfillment out of this part of the story. It very much smacks of something that just seemed cool back when being haphazardly flushed out in an attempt to build a new (and mostly unnecessary) story element that I just don’t like or believe.

It doesn’t really matter, because Sita goes ahead and undoes the whole series here rather than going back to the ship. She takes advantage of the hyper-light-whatever stage and goes back to when she was seven years old in ancient India and murders the original vampire in the womb, the way her father offered her the opportunity back then. I kinda get this — like, ugh, I just met time-traveling aliens and am going to have to go fix all kinds of ancient wrongs, lemme just get out of it the fastest way possible — but then, didn’t this whole process just make suffering through the evil Satanist for a second time totally worthless?

And if Sita no longer existed in her lengthy state, how did we get the stories? Seymour answers that for us: it seems he’s written the whole thing while feverish with his terminal AIDS, in a six-month marathon of typing that has been handed down to him from the ether. Which, to be fair, Pike said this is how he felt when he wrote these stories too. And it sort of makes sense that in order to end the series (which he said at the time he knew he had to, otherwise he’d only be writing about Sita for the rest of his life) (*cough*Thirst*cough*) he should kill the author.

But that’s The Last Vampire 6: Creatures of Forever. The title is more of a threat than Pike probably realized, but I appreciated him giving this a rest, at least until Stephenie Meyer made it feasible for him to make money again. As for us, we get a break for at least two months before we have to get back to Sita again. Maybe I’ll be ready to plunge in again when she comes back. For now? Get me out of here, star light aliens.

[blotter-of-acid]

Just a few of the best pickup lines I get from dudes:

"So are you more of a leech or like a hippie chick?"

"blurghlgurghl" (Legit from a profile that acted like a bear. Like shows were "breaking bear" and Winnie the Pooh. And foods were honey. Dude needs to get laid...)

"Hey beautiful names Daniel and you are? Also, if you could sing one song for god what would it be and why?"

"Would you like to dance in the snow while eating chocolate chip cookies?"

"Hey I would remove that picture on your profile" (Then proceeds to tell me I'm adorable)

"Do You Want To BE Fuck Buddies?"

"by any chance are you spiritual & what do you like on your like doing on your life s jerney"

"hey there, how you doing? can we hangout and snuggle?"

"*reads Bio and sees saving the mushroom ravioli * I am so pro. .3."

"Hi do u like rough sex"

"I like your cool personality my name brandon how are you? oh and by the way you got a lovely smile and gorgeous glowing face that shine like the sun. :)"

"I'm going to vomit hahaha you're way to pretty to be fisting cow ass"

"you are cute but how well can you roll your "r"s?"

"Would you let someone serve you drinks and rub your feet after a long day/night?"

"I hear tales that inseminating giraffes, much worse than cows. Extracting all that giraffe ball goodness involves a spiked penis that'll slice your hand open if you are not careful" (I responded with "Pics or it didn't happen")

"Was your dad a thief? Because he just stole all the stars in the sky and put them in your eyes"

"We go out a couple times. We make out, maybe we bone. Or maybe we don’t, and I just never call you. Or maybe we do, and then we get married and move slightly out of town to some place where people of modest means can get a pretty big yard, and we get a goat, but the fucking thing is too loud and keeps chewing through the fence- they are surprisingly clever animals. Maybe it actually figures out the latch. But point being the goat keeps getting out and getting into the neighbor’s yard and eating his heirloom tomatoes or whateverthefuck- maybe we laugh at this. Maybe this discord with our neighbors only brings us closer together, like, us against the world. Maybe not, maybe you never wanted to get it in the first place, maybe you never wanted to move to the suburbs, maybe you secretly blame me for everything moving too fast and now you’re stuck here out in Calabasas or something and now you’re like 33 and if you leave me you’ll never have biological children, but if you stay with me you don’t know how you can stand even one more fucking second in this house in the middle of nowhere and separating the bank accounts is going to be such a god damned pain in the ass, and the goat isn’t cute anymore, it was a stupid idea, and it has an expected life span of like 35 more years but any place you give it away to might use it for meat and that would pretty much be unconscionable. You don’t want it, but you can’t get rid of it. That’s what it’s going to be like with you and me in like four years. Maybe. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t have a fuckin crystal ball. Anyway: how about it."

"I saw whichever Jackass movie it was where they artificially inseminate a cow. You, my friend, may be the bravest person in town."

"heyyy don't want to be blount but u had me at making music and whiskey"

"lol smoke all there weed"

"Hi hottie" 

"You look like 17 years old :) cute tho.." From a 42 year old... 

"You sound like a very nice person. I would love to get to know you. I am faithful, never married, family oriented, professional. If you like what I wrote and think we can be a good fit I would love to hear from you. Have a wonderful day. Richard" (from a 47 year old who lives in CA. I live in PA)

"dtf?"

"I wasn't sure if I was gonna message you, but then I read the last part of your profile, and I just had to! Very funny, seriously. I'm new to Philly, so a non-romantic thing would be cool for me too. And despite what my profile says, I do sometimes get down with ganja. So message me back if you want a guy to take you out who's not gonna fall for your sly feminine ways!" To which I respond "I am pretty sly. I'm a Mother Fuckin' Fox, yo." (I was drunk...)

"You can freeload all over me baby unh"

"So I've got a little hash oil right now and I like to go on record saying it's probably cool for you to smoke it all if you'd like" (To which I replied "Ahahahaha that's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me")

"You are too cute"

"Miller High Life, nice, Well if your going to drink all my boozes I better get pleased ;) hehe."

"Hey how are you doing you are so very beautiful"

"Hi how are you?  I'm Chris 35 years old, current living in Mount Laurel, NJ.  I was browsing through the site and came across your profile, and enjoyed the read.  Very well written and gives a great sense of who you are and what your looking for.  You are quite Stunning as well! I love your lips :)  I would love to chat with you and get to know you.  Feel free to message me with any questions or if you would like to talk.  I Look forward to hearing from you!  Have a great night! Chris"

"Hey how are you? I think you're cute but ill be honest im not looking for anything serious. basically I want to have some fun with you and buy you things in return... let me know if you're interested"

"Hook me up with something to smoke and I'll share!"

"Hey you seem really chill we could schmoke a bowl and hookup!"

";)" from  ChristianGray4U

"Hey, OKC thinks we might be a match. What do you think?" We were a 32% match -__-

"I wanna smoke you outtttt. Would you be down to hang out one night and smoke and chill?"

"Hello. I'm Shawn, how are you? I enjoyed reading your profile and wanted to see if you were open to something casual? I know it's a little contradictory to what my profile says, I just don't feel like I'm ready for something serious. Just looking for some spontaneous fun this week. No pressure. Message me if you're interested :)"

"Come juice me for all I'm worth while you're around"

"Winky faaace!"

"hey whats up .. ever have a sugar daddy? not lookin for nuttin serious right now had bad relationship just want something like glorified fwb ... you having any luck on ok cupid ? ?"

"Hi! I'm Patrick. I would like to take you out' but I won't let you smoke all my weed' but ill share with you. :)" From a 43 year old.

"wanna freeload off me?"

[theemperorsfeather]

Nothing like having so much /stuff/ in your head that you have no choice but to write it. Like, actual writing, not this kind of stream of conscious posting about regular bullshit. There is an idea, or a collection of them, and they MUST be presented in the right way, there are drafts upon drafts, and you know, usually that would be ok, divine inspiration or whatever happens and there's places for that but this time, a significant chunk the context this all occurring is. Non traditional, if you know what I mean, but some of it is absolutely definitely not, and I cannot cope. It's driving me up a fucking wall, I don't know what to do with or about it.

[theemperorsfeather]

So there’s this song* Pandora sent my way recently, right, and it hits me in just the right god-ridden ways, hardly any of which I can really articulate, though there are phrases here and there that I can actually point at and say “oh, yeah, that! hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”

Sooo once again I’ve found the lyrics online ‘cause I can’t make out all of them all the time and this time - this time I find a site with a little blurb about the song, too, and it very helpfully says this:

This song, while it might sound like it is about a lover, is actually about Belle’s struggle with his faith. He says he kept picturing a raspy, old, determined black bear hunting him down in the woods, which he likened to God coming for him.

*shakes head*

*(And then after a while I went to listen to the whole album and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA it’s SO GOOD (Andrew Belle, “Black Bear”))

[theemperorsfeather]

I couldn't help looking at the astrology for the week, for specifically Thursday, and nothing particularly stood out to me (except the eclipse on Saturday, I think, which ... hmm, might be too far from Thursday to count) but then hours later an old recollection struck me and, fun fact!, it'll be the 10th anniversary of a particularly weighty moment in the whole spiritual whateverthefuck that's been going on - and the 9th anniversary of another such moment, because that's how this shit works sometimes, everything is loaded FOREVER.

[theemperorsfeather]

So I knew pretty much as soon as the New Strangeness did, uh . . . *gestures, because no verbs suffice* a couple weeks ago that I would have to go talk to some other relevant groups of spirits and of course I have been procrastinating, largely because of no good reason other than I'd rather not be doing ritual work.

I know I won't understand what the new state of things (me) means or does or what I'm meant to do with ... whatever it was I was given/made into/IDKWTFBBQ... or whatever the fuck, don't ask me, until I go do that (and probably not even then!! but I might know a smidgen more and anyway the Powers I need to go talk to gave me a heads-up of sorts about the New Strange like a year or more ago and quite obviously are super-invested in the whole whateverthefuck) but now I've hit the point of "don't wanna" where I feel like I am being called to my doom, which is the sign that no, really, I -need- to do that, but the sense-of-doom isn't real inspiring. It's like "you gotta go do this, and once you do, Everything Is Changed Forever, No Takebacks," as if *gestures* wasn't already an Everything Changed Forever sort of scenario.

ugh

I am hoping that some of the next steps/conversation will help me come a little more to terms with whatever it is I am now, in this context, because I'm feeling (again) like I am searching for understanding of how I/the new state of things fits into everything else.

(Still struggling to find the words to describe how I feel now, since *gestures*, and the best I've found at the current time is "balanced," as in, "could not possibly be pushed off balance," which is objectively untrue on some levels given the near-meltdown I had yesterday over the communication stuff, but when I think about how my whole everything feels, and/or how I feel in the presence of the New Strange, it's like that. ("Certainty" isn't quite right nor is "solidity" though they are in the neighborhood of being right.)

Infuriating how often the mystical spiritual whateverthefuck just absolutely can't be captured in language. I'd be less irritated if I also had some kind of instinctual/conceptual understanding but no, no, that too is denied/prevented at this point.