#that is. the extent i have found in my local area

[stolen-stardust]

the struggle of wanting to start the process of converting to judaism vs now living in scotland and would need to commute to glasgow or edinburgh to be in any larger community … strugglin

[makingspiritualityreal]

9th and 12th Houses - How Far is Foreign?

An interesting insight, that adds to depth of understanding of Astrology through diving into Vedic resources is the change in perception between the 12th and the 9th house.

In popular Astrology circles, both of these houses are commonly associated with foreign lands. However, as you explore the meaning of these houses more, you begin to understand them deeper in polarity with their opposite.

The actual house of foreign, far away travel (or relocation, depending on the chart) is the 9th house. That is because the 9th house is the opposite of the 3rd house.

Say you are European, and you lived your whole life in Europe, and you travelled around different European countries to explore the continent. This is the 3rd house. It is the expansion beyond your local home country into exploring its nearest cultural environment, and at the end of such a pilgrimage, you end up with a personal understanding of your individual, cultural identity, which moves you to its emotional interpretation in the 4th house.

But then lets say you travel or move from Europe to Asia, either of the American continents, Australia...take your pick. This is the activation of the 9th house. Because you are no longer exploring just the back yard of a culture with a certain degree of similarity, you are entering a completely new physical world.

This is why houses 9, 10 and 11, and 12th to an extent, are found in charts of famous people. You need to be able to participate in an energy, an idea, that is going to spread into foreign lands to truly be famous. This applies even if we're talking about online success, which is the way people get recognition nowadays. Otherwise, you are at best a local singer on your continent or your country's music festival. There is nothing wrong with that of course, as many people love to contribute to their community and they're happy doing so, but it's still an accurate observation. You need to be able to go far away to touch foreign people from many cultures.

You might wonder, how does the 12th house fit into this? Clearly, it's part of the whole 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th house group, so it should also rule foreign lands. But the 12th house is actually more than that. The 12th house rules a fantastical, foreign idea, that might not necessarily be grounded in truth, but can be accessed from anywhere.

Up until the 11th house, through 9th and 10th, we are dealing with more or less tangible ideas regarding foreign lands. Let's say in the 9th house you relocated to a completely foreign culture, in the 10th house you found a way to tangibly join the most prominent physical environment of the world through that culture, in the 11th house you met some of the most prominent, affluent people in the world. I don't have any 11th house planets, but to give you an idea of how it works, my husband has Venus conjunct Mars in the 11th house, we live in the Las Vegas area, and he plays sports and is casually friendly with some of the wealthiest people in the world, who own successful businesses, own several, rich properties across the world, and spend a lot of their time either making a lot of money or travelling the world, or both. We are not one of those people, but it should give you an idea of what the 11th house is. It's the creme de la creme of the physical world. I don't personally interact much with these people, as they are my husband's friends, not mine, and I don't play sports with them, but I have a deep awareness of how advanced socially and financially this particular group is, having travelled to many poorer parts of the world. There are people in this world, starving, so in comparison to them, the 11th house society is the top 1% of 1%.

You might think, well, the 11th house is everything, so how can the 12th house be more? The 12th house is more because it sells something even the 11th house people can't resist, it sells the ultimate fantasy.

In the 12th house we move on to people so wealthy, they barely even interact with others. We move to intangible concepts, physical areas and objects, that provoke people to spend obscene amounts of money simply due to some idea. The 12th house is not just real foreign travel like the 9th house, it is the embodiment of the realisation of all fantasies. That is why Venus is so happy in the 12th house, because it enjoys the ultimate idea of fantastical luxury.

The foreign area that we travel to in the 12th house is not this globe, it is deep inside us. By the time we realise all our fantasies in the 11th house we can feel tired, or even jaded. But in the 12th house we are stimulated to all of our secret, hidden desires being provoked and coming true. This can be done not only within our home, within our room, but completely within our minds. Those, who are successful in the 12th house are those, who made those fantasies concrete enough for them to come true.

What if you could taste and smell the finest perfume created on this planet from purely natural oils? What if you could touch the finest fabrics, created in corners of the world you never even dreamed of? What if you could live this dream, every day, surrounded by an infinite kaleidoscope of the pinnacle of perfection achieved by our planet until this time? "What if?" is the exotic, "foreign", "far away" dream of the 12th house.

To offer up an example, in the last few years, youtubers living in rural areas from all over the world have popped up on the internet, offering videos from their seemingly idyllic life. That is the definition of the 12th house fantasy, devoid of the actually reality of having to take the 9th house physical pilgrimage of travelling to rural China and enduring all the difficulties involved with facing the reality of such a location.

This dream, that can seem excessive, becomes even clearer in the context of the 12th house's polarity, the 6th house. The 6th house is the tough battle of dealing with the ugliness and conflict of this world. That is the reality of this physical world for most of us, we get up every day and deal with conflicts, that we have in front of us. It is exhausting, and so the 12th house is everything that heals and soothes the pain of any conflict that ravaged us in the 6th house. It's the world offering no resistance, it's all boundaries being breached. After all, in our dreams, or fantasies, we want everything to be perfect and smooth.

Ironically enough, the karaka of the 12th house is Saturn. As someone with significant 12th house influence, it is pretty clear to me why. In order to have only the finest dream come true, to really live in a beautiful fantasy, one actually needs to do a lot of research, be picky, critical and have background expertise and know-how. Otherwise, even as just a consumer, you would be easily fooled, hoodwinked into a fake product, or end up overpaying on something, that is not worth the money you invest into it. Scrutiny of Saturn is necessary for our fantasies to be smooth. It is not something, that is given to us that easily. Saturn also rules isolation, and if the 9th house is foreign, the 12th house is the pinnacle of remote. The 9th house is what is foreign and exciting to us, mentally and physically, but the 12th house represents the most remote corners of both the physical world, and our minds.

This is why the 12th house is the furthest away from the 1st house, our basic, natural, physical life. Because the furthest thing on this planet is not a foreign continent, it's a journey inside our minds and emotions, the ability to blend discernment and internal surrender to divine perfection. It is the full depth of untapped potential on the very bottom of our subconscious, a research and response to all collective physical resources available on the planet, a gold mine waiting to be explored, exploited, and enjoyed. And it is tapping into this gold mine, that has the power to tempt, seduce, and attract people from all around the world into directing their energy towards us, even if we're physically just sitting in our room.

[sirfrogsworth]

A Scam... Tutorial?

I was watching Photoshop tutorials and YouTube recommended this video to me.

And I was already skeptical. Clarity is an extremely powerful and useful adjustment in Lightroom and Photoshop and I could not think of a reason why anyone would recommend *not* using it to the extent they were using ALL CAPS.

But I was curious if there was a new technique I was unaware of. It's impossible to know everything regarding Photoshop and I learn new stuff all the time.

So I gave the video a chance.

To quote my late father... what a crock of shit.

I have seen a few scam videos in my time, but I cannot think of ever seeing a digital art tutorial scam. I found myself angry and a strongly worded comment just flew out of my brain.

I continued...

"First, no one should use clarity and texture at 100%. And I think showing the effects at 100%, as if that is a normal workflow, is highly misleading. You are creating a problem that does not exist and then offering a solution to it. And then you are using a provocative title to attract clicks. Not to mention you may be convincing beginners to abandon clarity and texture altogether when it is one of Camera Raw/Lightroom's most powerful tools. People should absolutely use clarity and texture. That is a crazy thing to tell people.

Second, high pass sharpening is… old school. It works but it can create a lot of nasty artifacts if overdone. (Personally I find it too crunchy and prefer smart sharpen on a smart object so it is non destructive). Clarity and texture are much more modern approaches to help bring out detail and I find they actually produce *fewer* artifacts than typical sharpening filters/techniques. And if you have trouble with clarity or texture adjustments in the bokeh areas, then use a local adjustment that doesn't affect those areas. You can even do a separate clarity and texture layer and use the opacity slider and the blend if and masking just like you did with the high pass. Why are you acting like you can only make a global clarity adjustment?

Essentially you are giving a worst case scenario of a clarity/texture adjustment just so you can make your technique seem like it is orders of magnitude better.

And what is even more infuriating is that you can do clarity/texture AND you can do high pass sharpening *together*. Why are you acting like it is one or the other?

I'm so confused by your motivations. Did you invent this clarity problem just so you could make a click bait-y title so you can then sell your little panel thing? And then you used an old school sharpening technique that many have abandoned so it seems like you have secret knowledge that was lost? And I could argue it isn't even a better solution. It's just a different way to achieve similar, if not worse results.

This is like if you put a pound of sugar in lemonade and then said, "Wow, this is way too sweet! You should try my superior lemonade that has a normal amount of high fructose corn syrup."

Lastly, if clarity and texture (set at a reasonable amount) aren't enough to produce sharp, detailed results, then it might be worth considering your actual photography techniques. Modern photography with modern sensors and lenses should be able to produce extremely sharp results without having to juice the hell out of sharpening filters in software. 20% clarity and texture (if that) plus a little bit of smart sharpen is usually more than enough to bring out detail in almost all of my photos and I have never been accused of having soft images.

So, if you are getting soft results, you might need to adjust how you are capturing your images. Are you using a very small aperture like f/22 on that macro image? That could be a diffraction issue. Perhaps it would be better to use a larger aperture at the lens's sweet spot and then do a focus stack.

I mean, I can't think of any other reason a person would need to do 100% clarity and texture unless they completely bungled the actual photography or were still using a kit lens.

I'm sorry but this video is a mess."

Let's look a little closer at what he did to his example.

He started with this.

Then he applied clarity & texture to MAXIMUM. Which, again, is like adding a pound of sugar to lemonade.

And by golly, it looks pretty bad!

Then he used his secret ancient high pass technique to get this.

Which looks a hell of a lot like the unsharpened image to me. And the high pass sharpening is probably only visible when zoomed in to 100% on the full resolution image.

Which is one of the issues with this technique. It isn't even noticeable on social media—the place where the majority of photos are viewed these days.

And then after showing you this groundbreaking effect that does almost nothing, he tries to sell you his Photoshop panel.

Yes, that' looks intuitive. Just hit the blue checkmark to do... something?

And what is this green eyeball with a crescent moon inside?

Only $50!

And if you want to know what the purple X button does, you need to pay another $15 for the tutorial on how to use it.

Neat.

Just to prove this is all a scam I'd like to show you an example of my own.

Here is a picture of Otis with no clarity, texture, or sharpening applied.

And here is a reasonable amount of sugar. I set the clarity and texture to where I felt they looked best.

Wow, that looks better. Not only that, you can actually see the difference at social media resolutions!

Now let's add a pound of sugar. MAXIMUM CLARITY GO!

Yep, that looks a bit rough. Because no one does this ever.

And now let's see his high pass sharpening technique.

Barely a difference on social media.

Okay, let's try zooming in 200%. Maybe that will give the high pass sharpening the victory.

Normal...

Reasonable clarity & texture...

FULL BEANS CLARITY & TEXTURE!

High pass...

Just as I said, the high pass introduces crunchy sharpening artifacts.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I much prefer the subtle clarity and texture. Perhaps the details in the eyeballs aren't quite as crispy, but in the version that isn't zoomed in, I don't think you feel like the image is soft and the normal clarity and texture adjustment added contrast and actually noticeable detail to the image.

In the end, except for the pound of sugar, these are all subtle adjustments and other photographers might be the only ones who would ever notice. The original Otis picture was probably fine to most people. So disparaging the clarity slider was even more unnecessary.

Why does this matter?

Being a beginner at photography is frustrating. There are so many resources to choose from and it's very difficult to know who is competent and who you can trust. If someone just starting out was recommended this video they could be easily be convinced it is legit. And it could set them back in their progress because they think useful tools will actually make their photos worse. They will waste a lot of time doing a time consuming old school technique in Photoshop when they probably never needed to even leave Lightroom in the first place. They could move two sliders to get similar or better results and it would only take literal seconds.

Time is valuable to a lot of people. And he seems intent on wasting everyone's time. And what sucks is that I have no real way of exposing this dude on a scale that would do anything.

I also just really hate the idea that educational content is being used to scam people.

This is some PragerU shit right here.

[resart]

Wrath of the Righteous features a roster of splendidly written and enjoyable companions, but the majority of their interactions are, sadly, easily missable on individual playthroughs. A collection of camping banter made by the amazing @neverwintrians remedies this issue to some extent by making some of the dialogues easily accessible for all the players. Since the characters’ input goes much further, a good while ago, I started a project to record all their comments and interjections. The idea was to copy-paste them from the localization file into a convenient spreadsheet. Since a new wave of players pick Pathfinder games after playing Baldur’s Gate 3, and we have more DLCs on the way to reignite the interest of the old fans, I figured it’s about time for me to share the results so far. Whether you want to use it for all sorts of analyses, as an inspiration or a reference for fan content, are simply curious, or want to get a few laughs: here you go.

Now, a few notes to keep in mind.

The data is still incomplete. My current playthrough goes very leisurely, and I only finished Act 3 recently. Almost everything past this point, save for some crucial parts of the story I revisited, comes from the run during which I wasn’t yet using Toy Box. I intend to continue slowly patching the holes as I go on, but please take what you see in the later chapters with a grain of salt for now (and don't expect to see Ulbrig's lines there).

Having that said, the branching, especially in later acts, gets crazy, so naturally, I wasn’t and won’t be able to find every last bit of dialogue on my own. What you see is based on my Angel playthrough, in which I haven’t even activated most of the romances. I managed to cheat my way into some interactions that normally would be unavailable to me, but the results were mostly confusing. Cells highlighted in yellow contain dialogues that I found via game files but either have some of the information missing, or I simply wasn’t able to trigger them while playing. There are also red cells that include lines that, to my knowledge, might not have been implemented since I found them in localization files, but the blueprints folder doesn’t confirm their presence in the game.

So here’s where I have a request for you all. If anyone can help me fill in the already existing blanks or spots a dialogue is missing and can provide a screenshot or a transcript of it, please contact me. I will add it to the document and credit you. All I need to know is when and where the conversation occurs, what/who the companions are reacting to, and if there are any specific requirements to see it.

The areas of special interest are:

mythic path exclusive interactions,

romance exclusive lines (especially in Acts 4 and 5),

Greybor’s, Arueshalae’s, and Lich companions’ lines during the celebration in Heaven’s Edge

late game dialogues for corrupted Arueshalae

I also want to thank GardathWhiterock from Pathfinder reddit, who advised me to look into the blueprints folder. Once I figured out how to work with it, filling up the majority of the blanks became super easy.

I will most likely edit this post in the future to note some important updates and milestones. For now, I just hope you guys will find anything of interest in what I have gathered.

[mesetacadre]

Aviation in the USSR

A collection of excerpts from Anna Lousie Strong's The Soviets Expected It, compiled for @czerwonykasztelanic

[...] Or the guerrilla detachment which captured six German planes, destroyed five of them, and sent the sixth to the Red Army, piloted by an amateur air enthusiast, who was a tractor driver in ordinary life. Lt. Talalikhin’s initiative is already a Soviet aviator’s tradition. Exhausting his ammunition in a fight with three enemy planes, he rammed the tail of one enemy with his propeller, smashed the tail of another enemy plane with his wing tip, and then bailed out of his own plane safely. Moscow parks displayed the wreckage of the German planes, and other Soviet pilots quickly copied the tactics. An aviation technician, Konikov, won renown by attaching the fuselage of a plane he was repairing to the front platform of a military train whose locomotive had been bombed by the enemy; he thus pulled the most necessary parts of the train to safety.

pg. 14

The Soviet people glimpsed and felt victory. For the first time they began to feel that they were no longer “backward Russians.” They were beginning to challenge the world. With this went a proud sense of their unity as a nation. Cotton growers in Turkestan exulted, “We have conquered the Arctic,” though they themselves would never see the snow. Bearded peasants, who had never sat in an airplane, began to talk about “our conquest of the air.” Young Nina Kameneva expressed the mood of the country’s young people when she broke a world’s altitude record in parachute jumping and remarked on landing: “The sky of our country is the highest sky in the world.”

pg. 46

Moscow can make all the implements of war, including planes and motor trucks, inside the city. [...] Moscow’s sky is covered by an air defense that was the marvel of the London experts who visited it after the war began to make suggestions and found it far superior to London’s. Anti-aircraft shells make a thick blanket at four distinct levels to London’s one, and observation planes patrol the heavens night and day. Moscow’s four million people also offer a night-and-day defense.

pg. 51

Alma Ata, the capital of this area, has grown from a town of 60,000 to a proud young city of 260,000 in the ten years since the railroad reached it. Its life has leaped at once from the nomad epoch to the airplane. The railroad is too slow to tame the wastes of Kazakstan. From Alma Ata Airport the planes shoot forth, east, west, south, north, on new discoveries. [...] Kazakstan is only one of the energetic regions behind the Urals. South of it lie the lands of the Uzbeks and Tadjiks, where some of the largest textile mills of the U.S.S.R. work up the locally grown cotton and where automobile and airplane parts are produced by mass production in the historic city of Samarkand.

pg. 58

I have traveled many times on the Trans-Siberian. In the spring of 1935, I went from Vladivostok to Moscow with a stop-over in the Jewish autonomous territory whose capital is Birobidjan. The train was crowded with pioneering people in warm woolen clothes and padded leather jackets, engineers, Army men, developers of the Far East. [...] An army engineer who shared my table at dinner was celebrating his return by airplane from the northern wilderness by consuming a whole bottle of port and bragging about the Far Eastern pioneers.

pg. 59

According to Pierre Cot, the French Air Minister, who visited Moscow in 1933, the Soviet air arm was at least equal to the best in Europe in numbers, technical equipment, and, above all, in the productive capacity of the aviation industry.‡ Thus, by the end of 1932, which ended the first Five Year Plan, the Soviet Union had reached the level of Western Europe in armaments – a fairly modest level judged by standards of later years.

pg. 65

Other official indications of the extent of the Red Army’s mechanization come from Voroshilov’s report in 1934 [...]. Five years later [...]. He claimed that the “bomb salvo” of the Soviet air force (the number of bombs that can be dropped by all planes at once) had tripled in five years and had reached more than 6,000 tons.

pg. 66

Soviet airplane pilots also hold many world records, both in altitude and long-distance flights. Their conquest of the Arctic and its difficult weather has accustomed them to the severest conditions. Americans well remember the Soviet pilots who twice made world records by flying from Moscow to America. These were individual exploits, but the development of Arctic aviation on which they were based was the work of large numbers of pilots and implies a whole air tradition

pg. 67

Parachute jumping has become a national sport in the Soviet Union. Soviet people are probably the most air-minded people in the world. Training for air-mindedness begins in the kindergarten. Small tots play the “butterfly game” and jump around with large butterflies pinned on their hair, gaining the idea that flying is fun and a natural activity. Children in their teens make jumps from “parachute towers” which are far rougher and more realistic than the parachute tower in the New York World’s Fair, which was copied from them. The sport is popular not only in the cities but on the farms. Several years ago a Ukrainian farmer told me of his trip to the nearby city with a group of farm children, all of whom immediately formed in line in the recreation park to go up in a tall tower and jump off under a parachute. “I thought it very terrifying,” he said, “and wondered why the park authorities allowed it. Then I saw that my own thirteen-year-old daughter was at the head of the line. These children of today aren’t afraid of anything.” At an older age, Soviet young people jump from airplanes, learn to operate gliders, or even become amateur pilots in their spare time. Every large factory, government department, and many of the larger collective farms have “aviation clubs,” which are given free instruction by the government. Probably a million people in the Soviet Union have made actual jumps from parachutes. It is not surprising that the Red Army was the first to use parachute troops in active service several years before the Germans adopted them. In 1931 a small detachment of parachutists surrounded and cleaned up a bandit gang in Central Asia. The making of airplane models by young people is taken seriously in the U.S.S.R. In 1937 over a million school children were spending after-school hours in aviation model stations. At a later stage, young people of talent create real airplanes and demonstrate them at Tushino aviation exhibitions. Owing to the wide interest in aviation and the public ownership of factories, a bright Soviet youth who invents a new type of airplane may get it constructed by his factory sports club and show it off. At one of the aviation festivals I attended, I saw a score of different amateur planes, including every possible shape of flying object – short, stubby ones, long thin ones, others shaped like different kinds of insects. They added greatly to the gaiety of the occasion. Whether or not they produced any really valuable new invention, they at least encouraged the inventiveness of their makers.

pg. 72

In the past two years, especially, all this training has been given a very realistic turn. [...] Only a month before the Germans attacked the Soviet borders, 7,000 Moscow citizens practiced a special drill in repulsing parachute troops over the week end. The large numbers of such trained citizenry, both among recruits entering the Red Army and among the older citizens assisting it, greatly add to the Soviet Union’s total defense.

pg. 73

[rjzimmerman]

Lessons From a Burning Forest. (New York Times)

As a reporter, I’ve experienced the aftermath of several disasters, including dam bursts, landslides and floods. But nothing quite prepared me to witness the extent of the destruction in Canada’s boreal forests that I saw in June, one year after the record-breaking wildfires of 2023.

At one point, my colleague Bryan Denton and I drove for an entire hour and saw almost no living trees in the forests we could see from the road. Much of the landscape was covered with blackened stumps of trees that burned last year. Residents told us the burned trees revealed hills, rivers and towns that they had never seen before.

I’ll be open with you: It was alarming.

We were there reporting how parts of North America’s boreal forests are failing to regrow because of the more frequent, bigger wildfires that have become a hallmark of our changing climate. One of the strongest pieces of evidence of this shift is the gradual decline of the black spruce, a humble species that has dominated these landscapes for thousands of years.

In short, my article shows how the dwindling number of black spruce trees is deeply transforming this vast ecosystem, which is one of the planet’s biggest storage systems for planet-warming carbon dioxide. What’s troubling is that black spruce evolved to exist with fire — just not fire that happens this often.

Losing any part of the black spruce forests will make the global struggle to keep temperatures below catastrophic levels harder, and it may mean our climate models are too optimistic.

But I also want to share what researchers and local Indigenous leaders told me: There is a lot we can do to adapt, particularly borrowing from traditional fire-management practices. These won’t save the immense boreal forests from global warming, but they could help communities adapt.

Indigenous people are some of the most directly affected by this new age of wildfires. According to government figures from April, 80 percent of First Nations communities in Canada are in wildfire-prone areas.

Many First Nations elders say they have been forced to change their traditional fire-management practices.

For centuries, Indigenous Canadians burned their lands during the spring, when the grass was dry and the forest was wet, in what are known as cultural burns. Elders looked for cues that can’t exactly be marked on a calendar, like signs the local snow was almost ready to melt, or when the ducks started to nest, as elders in Alberta explained in a 1979 documentary.

These burns protected their homes from insects, induced lush sprouting that attracted animals they hunted, and, perhaps most crucially, fireproofed their communities. The flames weren’t hot enough to kill the trees, just burn branches and leaves that, if left unattended, could fuel bigger fires during summer.

But near the end of the 19th century, Canada started banning cultural burns and fining anyone who practiced them. Slowly, what were meadows became flammable forests, and blazes grew harder to control, Cardinal Christianson said. “This idea of fire suppression or fire exclusion has got us in this problem,” she told me.

In 2020, a paper published in the journal Nature found that fire suppression increased the risk of wildfires for many communities in the Canadian boreal forest.

[copperbadge]

Whenever I think about “mental images” or “a song stuck in your head” these days, I think about aphantasia and how that impacts perception. (Aphantasia is the condition of not seeing images or hearing sounds in your head -- most of the population does, but those with aphantasia do not, or do to a very diminished degree.) 

I’ve talked about how I don’t have locked mental images of my characters or their homes and such. Things can move around as needed -- like a sofa can move across a room, or a lamp might change tables, depending on what the action needs. I assumed nobody actually had mental images, it was just an agreed-upon method of describing nonvisual imagination. Having found that’s not the case at roughly the same time as I was diagnosed with ADHD (a few months apart) I think about it a lot. 

Recently I was playing with form and picked up the thread of an idea I’ve had for years, which is to write a novel as if it were a guidebook to the place you’re reading the novel about (I’m sure it’s been done before, and Italo Calvino has done something like it with Invisible Cities, I just think it would be fun to try). It occurred to me that while I don’t visualize things in terms of furniture in a living room or where people are in a space, I do have a firm and unchanging idea of what a city as a whole looks like, including some mental images.

Even before visiting Menton Garavan, where Fons-Askaz is located in an alternate world, I definitely knew what went where in Fons-Askaz. I know what the harbor and coastline are shaped like, where most of the local residential housing versus the tourist housing is, how the main street is shaped and where several landmarks sit along it, their names and what purpose they serve. I know where the one really divey dive bar is. And I do see images of all of them, but only partial -- specific angles of sight, mainly (I can see both main entrances to the pedestrian shopping area called the Promenade, but not most of the Prom itself, for example). 

When I considered this, I realized I could do it to a limited extent for Galia also, and for other fictional places I’ve written about, like Lea from Six Harvests or Low Ferry from Nameless. I could draw rough maps of most of those places -- I don’t have the map itself in my head, but rather a combination of non-visual knowledge and a series of vague mental snapshots. I don’t know the actual layout of the palace, but I know what it looks like from the train station and I know what I would see standing at the windows in Gregory and Eddie’s apartment. I can see about three different views of Wild Mayer’s farm in Six Harvests, and I know the layout of Lea’s main street. It’s like for every fictional city or town that I’ve written about, I have a series of mental postcard images. 

I have no idea why, or what it means. Probably it’s just that like many neurodiverse people I navigate by landmark, and I live in a city so recognizing urban landmarks and “views” is vital. I don’t need to “navigate” my apartment so I don’t care where the sofa is, but I have to know what the neighborhood looks like when we’re getting close to my bus stop so I know when to ring the bell to get off. 

Possibly it means I should have become an urban planner. 

Kind of fun, anyway, now that I’ve figured out I can do it. I can’t really “walk around” Fons-Askaz, but I can do a sort of flyover. 

[galadrieljones]

Are you taking writing prompts from that list? If so, then, uh, how about Traveler's Inn, a folded letter, and hopeful for the lovely Sene?

Thank you ^_^ Here is Sene Lavellan and Thom Rainier in the Hinterlands, not long before the events of Veilguard.

Solavellan | 1600 words

Lost and Found

She sat at the bar, at the Red Fox tavern in the Hinterlands. She had been to the Red Fox many times, had once lived there, in fact, several years before, when she made it a regular habit to visit Lace. That month, she was bored, so she had started a little a hunting class, in the village, teaching a group of children, sitting in a circle by the lake. She showed them how to fletch arrows and how to build long bows from simple things in the environment. She showed them how to shoot arrows into clay jars. And each day, when she was all finished, she came back to the Red Fox, where everybody knew her name, but not in the diplomatic sense. In the neighborly sense, which was a comfort.

Thom Rainier was also in town. She remembered how he first showed himself earlier that day, standing off to the side as she taught her little class, sipping some sort of brandy out of a wooden cup. He knew to meet her there, as he'd been caught by one of her many couriers running messages to friendly faces in the area. Something she liked to do whenever she traveled anywhere. The thing about being Sene was that, even as much of her old people had gone their separate ways in the years before, nearly all of them still, to some extent, found home here and there with the Inquisition, and if Sene was nearby, they would come to meet her. Building bridges in Ferelden, reconstruction efforts in Orlais, natural disaster relief, diplomatic negotiation, bandit management, etc. etc. Even when she was alone, she was never truly alone.

That week, Thom was in the Hinterlands on an errand from Josie, who had sent him to negotiate an Inquisition treaty with a local group of separatist mages, just south of Redcliffe. Sene saw Thom and Josie often, as they spent a great deal of time at Skyhold, but she, herself, rarely spent extended time at Skyhold. Her nomadic roots had won out over the years. She liked to travel around, stay at inns with the commoners. Of course she was always escorted by a heavy detail of intimidating Inquisition soldiers, all of them still under Cullen's command, but other than that, it was almost like being normal. Almost.

The Red Fox Inn, if you'll recall, is inside a cave, and that night, it twinkled with lovely, magical candlelight, and it had a tree inside, growing all the way up, up and out the top, a natural skylight, which the moonlight poured through on clear evenings. Surface dwarves and free apostates loitered here. It had a cozy atmosphere, if not witchy, with warm brews and bartenders who tended toward magic. There was always a bard, who sang late into the night.

Thom showed up around nine-thirty. Sene was drinking her champagne, alone, mostly staring at her hands and listening to the music. They'd had a plan to meet, after his negotiations at the separatist base, but he was late. When he sat down, he ordered a whiskey, up, and seemed tired. When Sene asked what was going on, he sighed and handed her a letter, on stained paper, folded in quarters.

"It's from Lace," he said. "Postmark is Minrathous."

"Where did you get this?" said Sene. She took the letter, but she didn't want to open it.

"I stopped at Lace's house, to pick up her mail, as humbly requested. Imagine my surprise to find a letter, sent to her residence, but addressed to you."

"I spend a lot of time there," said Sene. "Especially when Lace is away. She probably thought it would be faster than trying to reach me at Skyhold."

"You should read it," said Thom. The bartender gave him his whiskey, and he swallowed it in a single gulp. He ordered another. "Right now."

"Did you open it?" said Sene, surprised.

"I might have."

"Thom."

"I was curious," he said, dropping his head in shame. "I'm sorry, Sene, but I know why they're there. Solas, he was my friend. He is my friend. It's been almost ten years. I just want to know."

"You want to know what?"

"If he's alive," said Thom, emptying a few silvers onto the bar as he was served another. "That's all. So, read it, won't you? I may have opened the envelope, but I was too guilty to actually read the thing myself." He took a long gulp, slower this time. His eyes were watery as he looked at her. "Go on, Sene."

Sene did not want to read the letter. Her stomach hurt as the bard switched songs. It was a love song, one Sene had heard before. Somewhere nearby, a group of fancy tourists from Orlais, sharing their third pitcher of mead, burst into raucous laughter.

"I still feel him," she said, holding the letter in her fingers, imagining the old days, when he would have been there with her, at the Red Fox. It was one of his favorite haunts. "In dreams. I let him in. I just do."

"What does it feel like?" said Thom, understanding. He finished his drink. "Or do I want to know?"

"It just feels...familiar. It didn't used to. I used to be angry with him, all the time. But now, whenever I feel him, I think about Haven, because I think I miss Haven the most. I can tell he likes it there. Everything is so simple. We talk, sometimes. Sort of."

"Have you been back to Haven?" said Thom. "Since it all went down?"

"Yes," said Sene. "I went once, with Abelas, years ago, right before the Exalted Council. I went back with Ameridan, too. It's empty, forgotten. But in my dreams, it's like it used to be."

"I remember once, at Haven, I got so damned drunk at the pub, Solas carried my ass home, all by himself. I was leaning against him so hard, thought I might break him in half. But you know Solas. Strong as a bloody ox. He snarked at me the entire time. Maker, I miss those days."

"Me, too."

"So, open the letter," said Thom. "And, please, Inquisitor, drink your bloody champagne. I don't want to be tipsy on my lonesome tonight." He signaled the bartender for a refill. "Fucking separatists. The treaty succeeded, but not without considerable...diplomatic stress."

Sene smiled at this. It was funny to her, the lengths to which Thom was willing to go to learn diplomacy, for Josie. She took a long drink. So long, the bubbles filled her head with stars. Then, she looked at the letter, and she unfolded it slowly.

"What's it say?" said Thom.

Sene stared at the words. The handwriting, it wasn't Lace's, or Varric's for that matter. She was shocked. Her heart felt high up, like it was beating in her throat, and in her forehead. She felt dizzy all of a sudden and had to steady herself against the bar.

"Sene?"

"It's not from Lace," she said, looking up at Thom. She showed it to him, put it right there in front of his face on the bar. "Thom, it's not from Lace."

"Who the hell is it from?"

"It's from him," said Sene, seeing the words, the dark ink, how it bled off the page in places where the letter had been stained and dampened on its journey, all the way from Tevinter. "He's in Minrathous. It's from Solas."

Together, they read the letter, which was not long. It said:

Dearest Sene. I have heard it is easiest to reach you by way of Scout Harding these days. I know you spend a lot of time in the Hinterlands, and in some ways, so have I these past several years. I don't know why I'm writing you. It's been so long. I have been alone under these ancient, wounded skies. It will be best if this letter is lost on a freighter, while crossing the Waking Sea. Maybe shredded by pirates. If it never reaches you at all.

But should it reach you, then perhaps that is a sign. If, like me, it finds itself lost, then found again. What I must do, it will be soon, vhen'an. Keeping you safe, and all of our friends from the old days, that is the one thing I have considered most of all. Ensuring your safety is, in fact, why this has all taken me so long. Again, I don't know why I am writing this, other than to say, I have enjoyed our dreams together. The scent, the sounds of them. The fireflies in your hair. Your hair, which is always the same, even when I can tell you've tried to change it. I still love you, Sene.

-Solas

"Maker's fucking balls," said Thom. He seemed overwhelmed, as if this was absolutely the last thing he expected. He took Sene's hand. She had begun to cry. "Sene. Are you all right?"

As she cried though, she did not feel sad. She felt hopeful. Just to hear from him, directly. To know it wasn't all just dreams and quiet inklings in the middle of the night. Much of Sene's anger, she had put it away years before. Save for on rare occasions, when it consumed her, as the briefest blaze. Mostly, she had found acceptance, but she did not expect this letter. She folded up the letter and put it in her pocket. Then she dried her tears on her sleeve. "Yes," she said. "I'm all right, Thom. Let's have another, shall we?"

She ordered two more whiskeys, up, and they drank them in jovial remembrance, telling stories about the old days, as they listened to the bard play a familiar song.

[micewithknives]

top 5 archeological finds and also top 5 pop albums

Someone else asked me archaeology finds personally so we're going to role with generally for this one:

Australia ones specifically, because I think theyre kinda underrated in the general scheme of global archaeology

The Lake Mungo burials (New South Wales). Definitely not underrated, the area is now world heritage listed. But they made SUCH an important impact on repatriation legislation, and the way Aboriginal people are allowed to interact with the archaeology of their own ancestors. I literally recommend the Message From Mungo documentary to everyone.

Murujuga underwater archaeology in Western Australia - a 7000 year old underwater site, which many hope will a) impact the way Australia's underwater heritage legislation interacts with Indigenous heritage (its currently very lacking) and b) gives more hope and research avenues for more Indigenous underwater archaeology projects in future

The extent of the (now world heritage listed) Budj Bim cultural landscape (Victoria), and specifically their eel trapping and storage areas

The various Yolŋu ship rock arts in Arnhem Land (Northern Territory) (they include some VERY detailed Indonesian ships, and as more research is being done on them, it appears to be increasing the amount of time Makassan people have been in contact with northern Australia).

Mabuyang Island (Torres Strait) excavations. Excavations from the early 2000s in the Torres Strait islands have found not only extensive trade with Papua New Guinea, including ceramics. But ALSO evidence of local pottery making on some islands. This is the only area in Australia known to have participated in ceramic technology so far.

Top 5 pop albums: (Sadie I literally had GOOGLE whether a bunch of albums were pop music, so i am taking this question... loosely). (Apparently i listen to a lot of pop-adjacent genres, but pretty much no pop music generally, however i will admit it makes for the MOST Superior Cleaning Playlists).

Stories for Monday - The Summer Set TECHNICALLY pop-rock according to google but i dont care, bc it will always be one of my favourite albums ever. (I struggle with whole albums sometimes but i will always listen to this one the whole way through).

Misfits - The Valla. Idk what genre this counts as. but i like it.

The Good Witch - Maisie Peters

Treaty - Yothu Yindi Not an album. Also not technically pop. BUT it was on the top hits radio playing at the shops the other day and it was stuck in my head all week. So it counts. I said so.

Healing Hurts - BLÜ EYES

[stormyrainyday]

omg ty for the tag @offworld-lamb

Friday Kiss Tag!

Rules: from your Story/WIP, share a kiss. It can be any kiss, from familial pecks on the cheek, forehead kisses, platonic smooches, to full-blown makeouts

And, as always, if you don’t have a kiss to share—no worries! You can always use this as a writing share tag as well.

Rules: Share a snippet of your writing!

fought demons deciding if this should be from a crackfic or from a serious work LMAO. Here's an extra shenhe/lumine fic chapter that's buried in my ao3 somewhere.

Lighting injuries were uncommon outside of Inazuma; in the rest of Teyvat, thunderstorms were far and few in between, and on the rare occasion they struck, most relished the opportunity to stay inside and take comfort by the fire, listening to the smattering of water falling on their roofs. Even those that do brave the torrents know to listen for the hiss of electricity, and take cover as soon as they are able.

Lumine, as it happened, did not sustain this particular burn from a storm, however. In her fight with Childe for Morax’s gnosis, a harsh bolt of Electro energy caught her from behind, sending searing pain down her back. At the time, she’d sworn profusely from the pain. Now, she was just grateful it missed her spine. Though the potential neuropathologies were curable, Dr. Baizhu had said the rehabilitation process was brutal. As it was, she’d escape with a scar and an interesting story to tell. 

Treatment was thankfully straightforward: cool compresses, burn ointment, and painkillers. In her room at the local inn (an accommodation provided to her by Lady Ningguang after saving the city from imminent doom), Lumine sighed and downed the pills, wincing at the bitterness. Then she uncapped the ointment, bracing herself for the task of applying it. Couldn’t Childe have hit me in the leg? Arm, maybe? Anywhere else would be less of a pain in the ass to apply. 

A knock at the door startled her. Quickly, she stood and opened it. Shenhe entered without preamble. Lumine didn’t mind; after their kiss on the beach, in the wake of Osial’s defeat, their feelings for each other were clear. There was no longer a need for formalities. Truthfully, she’d only locked the door to get the grateful people of Liyue to leave her alone. Lumine knew they meant well, but gods she was tired of people on her doorstep asking if she needed anything. 

Shenhe sat perched on the edge of the bed, like a bird about to take off. Her eyes traced the boundaries of the room– noting the exits, she explained once to Lumine. Having spent so much of her life outdoors, being inside often felt like confinement rather than comfort. 

Lumine smiled tiredly at her, before reaching for the ointment again. 

“Hey Shenhe. Busy day?”

The dark-haired woman nodded. “Though most of the Harbor was spared, the city wasn’t prepared for so much rainfall. The flood damage will take time to repair.” She’d taken to assisting with the reconstruction efforts as a way to re-enter society. It put her considerable strength to use, and her knowledge of the surrounding areas made her valuable in resource accumulation. Though she was still clearly uncomfortable being around people, the sense of community that formed after collectively experiencing disaster made people kinder, more empathetic– in other words, she received a warm welcome from the citizens. Her own role in the defeat of Osial didn’t go unnoticed either. She’d acquired her own share of admirers, something Shenhe found more than a little strange.

“Mmm. I don’t have any doubt that Liyue will recover.”

Lumine turned the tube in her hands. She was sick of the herbal aroma, and dreaded having to contort her body to reach all areas of the burn. The thought of the raw, pink skin stretching made her wince. She felt Shenhe’s gaze follow it, then slide to the edges of the injury peeking out from beneath her clothes. Lumine hadn’t let her see the extent of the damage, always tending to it when she was alone. 

“Lumine, give me the medicine,” Shenhe said, holding out a hand. 

“What? No, it’s fine. I’ll manage.”

Shenhe simply plucked it from her hands instead. “Remove your shirt.”

Heat spread across the girl’s cheeks. She almost wanted to protest, but Shenhe’s stern gaze left no room for argument. It’s not intimate, it’s practical. When did I become such a stickler for modesty anyway? 

Gingerly, she pulled the shirt over her head, but kept it wrapped around her arms, which she folded protectively over her chest. Then she turned her back to Shenhe, revealing the burn in all its shiny, painful glory. 

She heard the woman suck in a breath. It began at her left shoulder, then snaked across her back in angry red starbursts, ending just beneath her ribs on the right side. Small lines erupted like branches from the main injury, resembling a fern. Lumine snuck a glance at the tiny mirror on the wall. The burn looked uglier now, than it did when she first received it, parts of it beginning to scab over– all part of the normal healing process, she reminded herself, but it did little to console her.

“I know it’s hideous,” Lumine said quietly, keeping her gaze averted. “Give me the ointment. You don’t have to do this.” 

“Nonsense,” Shenhe snapped, though without hostility. “Sit down.” She gestured to the bed, standing up to make room.

Lumine took her seat, cross legged, slouched slightly to better expose her back. More objections floated on her lips but she swallowed them. She was more grateful for the help than she cared to admit. 

Shenhe sat beside her, attention undivided as she squeezed the salve onto her fingers. Lumine braced herself for the touch.

As Shenhe made contact with the injury, coolness spread across its harsh lines, the pain seeming to evaporate into the medicine. Lumine couldn’t help but sigh as the tension left her. She visibly relaxed as Shenhe’s fingers gently massaged her skin, tracing over the muscles of her back and releasing the tightness. Her cold touch soothed the burned skin, a feeling so blissful it nearly brought tears to Lumine’s eyes. She closed them, just in case some really did escape. It didn’t feel like this when she did it herself. In fact it was almost as if…

“Shenhe, are you applying Cryo over it?”

Shenhe paused. “I am. Does it hurt? I’m sorry, I used to do it for myself all the time, when I’d burn myself. I’ll stop.”

“No, please don’t. It’s perfect.” She turned over her shoulder to meet Shenhe’s eyes. “Thank you.”

Shenhe smiled at her, close lipped as her smiles always were, like it was a secret meant just for her. Lumine straightened a bit, leaning back to press a gentle kiss on her cheek, lips meeting soft skin. 

“Turn back so I can finish applying this. Now is not the time,” Shenhe chided her. There was no sternness in her voice however; Lumine giggled as she watched heat rise in the other woman’s cheeks. She cupped her face gently, and stole one more kiss– a playful one on the lips, this time– before complying. 

She’d make sure to resume her show of gratitude as soon as Shenhe was done.

[beebascloset]

Ethical Alternatives to Dolls Kill

While Dolls Kill offers kawaii, punk, goth, and streetwear fashions, they’re an unethical fast fashion company that has been accused of stealing designs from small creators. They’ve also been accused of promoting rape and racism (implying that only white people can be goth, selling a Native American headdress as a costume, and supporting police during the Black Lives Matter movement) and having a lack of transparency in how they reduce their impact on people, animals, and the environment. With this in mind, here are some of my favorite alternatives I found (you can tap on the titles to access the sites)

LOUDBODIES

This Romania-based retailer offers sizes from XXS-10XL, and you can even make a custom order for free if you'd like! Many of their pieces are pricey, but they do offer an affordable line of fashion. Their values include sustainable and recycled materials, made-to-order clothing, low waste production, OEKO-TEX certified fabrics, carbon neutral shipping, body-inclusive models (see above) and locally-made clothing. They also offer worldwide shipping.

NOCTEX

NOCTEX is great for dark, goth, edgy fashion. They’re based in Canada and ship internationally. Available sizes only include XS-XL, but this retailer uses reclaimed and deadstock materials, and also have low-waste production. They offer many items including tops, dresses, pants, skirts, footwear, and accessories like bags, makeup, and jewelry, so there’s a lot to choose from!

Uye Surana

For lingerie lovers, this is the place! While they’re based in New York, their clothing is ethically made in Columbia, with cute designs that come in sizes XS-5XL, so it’s quite inclusive! Items include bralettes, undies, stockings, camis, and garter belts, so go on and be adorably sexy, my loves.

KILLSTAR

Despite being introduced by Dolls Kill, the UK brand Killstar is actually more ethical. In fact, they’ve cut their ties with the brand over the owner’s support of police during the BLM movement. They’ve donated to charities that promote ending racism (whereas Dolls Kill promoted racism to an extent) and they also promote individuality. They offer sizes XS-4XL (from what I’ve found) and they even have men’s clothing!

Broken Promises

Another brand that left Dolls Kill, Broken Promises is based in California. Offering sizes XS-3XL, this brand offers clothing that caters to skate culture for all genders. Their clothes are also sold at Zumiez, so if you don’t want to shop online and you would prefer to go to the mall, you’ll probably find them there!

Disturbia

And another UK gothic brand that was promoted by Dolls Kill, this family-owned business has been going strong since 2003. Their website claims that sustainability is “a core value in [their] ethos”, and their goal is to create fashion that doesn’t harm the environment. They’re committed to recycling and reducing their carbon footprint, and all of their leather is false or recycled to reduce animal cruelty. They have a fully traceable supply chain with manufacturers in the UK, China, Portugal, Turkey, and Morocco, all with safe production facilities. Rest assured, your money will be going to a great place.

Cyberdog

Ravers, this one is for you. Catering to clubbers and DJs since 1994, Cyberdog offers neon and dark streetwear. They’re based in London, and their flagship store is located in Camden Market, so anyone who lives around the area (or would like to visit) can see these rad designs in person! (P.S: A huge downside is that they only offer sizes S-L, so this brand has the smallest size range on here)

Gothic Lamb

“The home for melanated misfits”, as their designer calls it, is black-owned and offers sizes from S-5XL, making this brand one of the more inclusive ones on this list. The owner, who calls herself Lucy, founded Gothic Lamb in the summer of 2016. She was inspired by brands like Killstar and Disturbia, however, she found that there was a lack of representation at the time, as she felt that none of the models looked like her, so she decided to create her own. While there is a small collection, it’s still a great collection and it’s a great place to purchase from if you like supporting black-owned businesses.

publicspace

A vaporwave-streetwear brand based in Los Angeles, CA, they support and collaborate with artists to create their designs (hence why they’re named publicspace). Though they have a small collection, their size range is XS-3XL, so it’s mostly inclusive.

Shop secondhand

You can also shop on Etsy to purchase from independent designers. A much cheaper option would be to shop secondhand. Sites like Poshmark and Depop are great for shopping secondhand, especially if you want to buy from fast fashion brands like H&M and Shein without giving them your money. Alternatively, you can go to your local thrift shop (do not shop at the Salvation Army, they are aggressively Christian, homophobic and transphobic) or consignment store. You can give your unwanted clothes and other items to these places (consignment stores will give you a certain percentage of their price for the item) to help people and need.

In conclusion, please do not buy from unethical fast fashion retailers and consider shopping ethically, whether it be for new or used clothes.

[crowgvts]

hellooo I’m brand new to punk. do you have any advice for finding any sort of punk community in Real Life?

honestly I'm not gonna be too much help on this I don't think because there simultaneously is and isn't a "proper" punk scene in my area in the same way I've seen it in other places which is probably because I live in a town

basically, in my area there's not really what you'd count as separate groups of alt subcultures or anythin, we all just kinda mingle and I'm one of maybe ten (at most) people I know of in my area who would consider themselves punk. A lot of people don't bother with a category, they dress how they like and listen to whatever they want and don't really label it. Like it's to the extent that it was a running joke for a while that me and two other friends were the punk scene in the area

and the way I found that generally alternative community was basically just through talking to people I thought looked cool about music n stuff, which lead to me meeting their friends and their friends etc etc and eventually finding those other punks (and we all seemed to develop a temporary hivemind that lead us to all drink in the same place for a good while but don't do that there was so much drama and I do not promote underage drinking in public lmao)

Going to gigs also helps! As I've said before, it doesn't have to be a punk gig! Literally just finding local bands you like and going to their shows is going to introduce you to even more bands and more venues which is how I eventually found the more local punk bands I listen to via the venues I regularly go to advertising their shows and a few of them playing shows with the other bands I already regularly went to see

imo don't JUST hone in on trying to exclusively find a "punk scene" in your area, because in some cases such as in my area there isn't a definable punk scene, more just a general alternative community and that's literally fine!

[adarkrainbow]

All fairytale fans heard about or know about the ATU, the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification, this international classification of folktales and fairytales in numbered types.

But do you know that there are other fairytale classifications? Local fairytale classifications? And since I am French let me present you...

The Delarue-Tenèze classification. Also known as "Le Conte populaire français" (The French Folktales), of its complete title "Catalogue raisonné des versions de France et des pays de langue française d'outremer" (Reasoned catalogue of the versions of France and French-speaking oversea countries).

This book/classification, created by Paul Delarue and Marie-Louise Tenèze, and published in five volumes between 1957 and 2000, is a study of folkloric fairytales inspired by the ATU, which it heavily borrows from and frequently references. However, the Delarue-Tenèze classification is an exclusively French system. That is to say all the folktales and fairytales studied there are originating from France, or present in countries that inherited some of French culture. The complete list of countries is: "France, Canada, Louisiana, French islands of the USA, French West Indies, Haïti, Maurice island, La Réunion". By studying, comparing and classifying the French-speaking (or French-written) fairytales of these various areas, Delarue and Tenèze managed to create a complete study of the history and evolution of essentially French fairytales, excluding all the types of stories that are typically not found on French-speaking lands.

It was thanks to the work of Delarue and Tenèze that we notably can reconstruct what the fairytales of Perrault, for example, ORIGINALLY looked like before the author took them back and rerote them. I evoked this during my Little Red Riding Hood posts (I think it was in the one titled "The dark roots"). Delarue and Tenèze, by accumulating all the French variants of the fairytale they could find, separating those that clearly were post-Perrault (they had elements newly introduced by the author) to those prior to Perrault (or at least not "contaminated" by their written cousin), and looking at the geographical repartition of these tales, they could identify which elements exactly Perrault cut out of his tale (the wolf serving meat and wine to the girl, the removing of clothes in the fire, the cat cursing under the table...) and thus re-create what the fairytale would have originally looked like.

In this extent, this work is deeply needed for whoever wants to study fairytales in France or the French folklore. Unfortunately, after two "complete editions" gathering all the volumes in 1997 and 2002, the publishing house of the catalogue fell on hard times, and closed in 2011. Since this date, the catalogue is out of print, and you can only access it by having second-hand copies or borrowing it at libraries.

However - and I just learned of this today upon looking at my references - the work of Delarue and Tenèze (both unfortunately deceased) is still continued today, or rather was taken back by a group of anthropological studies of Toulouse, who are preparing three more volumes to add to the original catalogue.

If you are interested in what each volume contains:

Volume 1 and 2 cover the "contes merveilleux" (marvelous tales/magical tales - aka the fairytales as we understand them today).

Volume 3 is about the "Animal tales", mixing animal-featuring fairytales, Reynard the Fox-type of stories, and other moral and fables inherited by popular culture from La Fontaine, Aesop and more.

Volume 4 is about the "Religious tales", aka all the French folktales, fairytales and local legends that show France's folk-Christianity, mixing the heavily Christian (Catholic-flavored) culture of France, "first daughter of the Church", with the countryside legends and tales of witches, wizards, fairies, giants and other ogres, turned into demons, saints, angels and Virgin Maries.

Volume 5 is the "conte-nouvelle" (the "short story-tales"), basically folktales that are realistic sounding and just sound like non-magical, non-religious life stories or local legends.

[dravikso]

Clairvoyance in Bygone Wisdoms (OC)

I was going to share my more normal iterator OCs first but I haven’t finished drawing them, meanwhile this has been sitting around for a while, so you’re getting my most canon non-compliant asshole lizard iterator first sorry lmao Their (uses any pronouns) name is Clairvoyance in Bygone Wisdoms, if you want more info it’s below the cut (which is below the image description)

[Image ID: Facing left, an iterator with a lizard-like design that has four arms and two legs, each with three fingers tipped with metallic gold claws. The pads of its feet and hands are vibrant red and yellow. Its body is primarily navy blue with a cyan underbelly which extends to its jaw and down its long tail, where it transitions into vibrant red and yellow before flaring out into a ribbon-like black fin with wavy metallic gold patterns. This motif is also seen on its crest, which is attached to a large red, yellow, and blue forehead horn before extending, decreasing in size, down to the base of its moderate-length neck. It has a long snout tipped in yellow and red, with two nostrils and three round black eyes on each side of its head, and long golden antennae styled as horns. It has long whiskers which extend from its chin and back of its jaw. Starting from its forehead to halfway down its tail, it has wavy glowing yellow stripes. It has a metallic arm and wires connected to its back. End Description]

So let’s start with why they look like That; CiBW is a later generation iterator, the first to be constructed in a previously low-priority area (due to difficult terrain) which was only utilised as space began to run out. Both her name and puppet’s design follow the idea of looking for a novel solution stemming from a lens of tradition, a view which became somewhat more prevalent as a fatigue from no solution being found set in. The puppet is designed around a creature from mythology local to the area where he was built which would purportedly grant ascension to those who had broken their five natural urges, as well as an additional sixth criterion chosen by the creature; failing to meet these requirements would condemn you to the great cycle forever. The puppet’s colouration is a combination of the original mythological beast’s rich colours as well as the known visual properties of void fluid, an artistic representation of CiBW’s name and goal. The puppet is partly biological, but primarily mechanical. The former is limited to a small amount of musculature, skin, adipose, and their eyes (this being an artistic decision taken by the Ancients so that CiBW could ‘see the world as they do’ such that it may metaphorically inform their work rather than any functional purpose). Light entry into these eyes is controlled by external sphincters rather than internal irises. The nostrils are for show only. Everything required by the organic parts of the puppet is provided via a tube attached to their puppet (alongside their arm and umbilical), those required metabolites produced by specialised bacteria.

They are very conservative when it comes to their purpose and goal, something which has caused tensions between her and the youngest iterator in the small group (which has only four iterators). CiBW perceives finding the Great Solution as their ultimate moral duty and will do whatever it takes to ensure that goal is being pursued to the greatest extent possible by himself and fellow iterators, utilising whatever measures may be required to achieve that (including less-than-ethical ones). There’s more I could write but I think I’ll leave it off there because I’ve been procrastinating while typing up this post, lmk via reblogs/asks/etc if you have any further things you want to know

[thegodthief]

Hello! Hope you are well. You had mentioned experience with the wandering dead and other ghosts. Hoping a bit of information might help with the one I've got on my hands. What type of thing might ..."eat" a ghost? And how tied to locality would you say they tend to be?

Short Answer: Another spirit. Living, dead, or otherwise.

Long Answer: If you look at this as a Predator/Prey problem, then you're going to set yourself up for a bigger problem later on. Especially if I overburden the metaphor by bringing the wrong predator to take care of this prey. Something that eats the lingering remnants of memory in that space won't do anything about the active parasite that wants you to feel guilty about what happened in that place even if you had nothing to do with it in the first place.

Any spirit can eat a ghost or devour what is causing the problem, but summoning such a spirit could fix one problem and create five others. Ghosts and/or hauntings to tend to be localized to an area, but to what extent is greatly dependent on the circumstances that caused the haunting in the first place.

Keri rambles under the jump.

Is it a ghost in the first place? Is it something that found a way to trick the living into giving it attention and it is having a feast as a result? Is it something that was brought in to deal with one thing and in the process created another?

Time to play Twenty Questions with your favorite divination set and/or patrons. If I was walking into this scenario (again), the very first question I would divine is if it is in my right to deal with this. If so, proceed. If not, what actions should I take to ward the space and/or get help.

Then it's time to find out just what are we dealing with. What is the nature of the problem and do I have the tools/skillset to deal with it?

Is the problem tied to this specific area or to a specific person/bloodline? Can the problem be transferred to a different focus instead, like this handy jar and/or rock. If tied to a specific person, will they have any part in the solution (usually: yes).

Generic actions that must be tailored to fit your circumstance and the cultural relevance of who you are doing the working for and where:

If you're going to go at it after all, purify yourself, your tools, and anyone with you before you begin the working itself.

The nuke is the last action, not the first. You don't want to piss off any local spirits as your first action. You want them to help you get rid of the thing.

Perform a blessing of the space and for all local spirits to establish goodwill to the locals and to set the problem apart.

Using the tools and connections you have, isolate and banish the problem. This is where things get tricky and you have to pay attention to feedback. Sometimes you identified the problem right at the first go, sometimes you start and you realize the problem is something else and you have to adjust on the fly. Sometimes it's a One & Done, sometimes it's going to take a while, and sometimes it's going to be a series over the course of time.

Call for a blessing of the space and the locals again. You want to end the working on good terms with them, even if you're never coming back to this place again.

AFTER YOU WALK AWAY BUT BEFORE YOU GO HOME: Purify yourself, your tools, and anyone with you. The last thing you want to do is to take any ticks home with you, literally AND metaphorically.

I know you asked about ghosts, but for all my experiences, I have only encountered one (1) haunting that wasn't something else trying to parasitize the living and even then it wasn't a haunting of a person but a haunting of place that I happened to witness. Resolving it took none of what I wrote above, but merely an acknowledgement that once that being was here and now they are not and I miss them too but we all need to keep going. And it ended.

[ourtriptoswedenandnorway]

Epilogue

Here are some observations I made throughout our trip. These are just my impressions and experiences and not based on actual facts. Also included below are a couple of recommendations.

Weather: The weather was totally unpredictable and changed hour by hour. When the sun comes out in Sweden, it seems like everybody wears shorts, regardless of the temperature. It could be because Swedes are accustomed to cold weather and have developed a high tolerance for it. Or, they just want to make the most of sunny days, even if they are cold, to enjoy outdoor activities and soak up as much light as possible after their long, dark winters.

Crime: I felt safer in Stockholm, Oslo, and Bergen than in any other European city I have been to. Not that I feel unsafe in Europe—it feels far safer than in the US. It felt like crime doesn’t exist in Scandinavia, but I am sure it does.

Poverty: In the nine days we were in Stockholm, we never saw a homeless person or someone begging for money. It is unclear to me why that is, but I would guess they have a more comprehensive welfare system that includes housing and other social services. It was refreshing not to see people living on the streets, like in San Francisco. In Oslo and Bergen, we saw a few people (less than 10) non-aggressively begging for money, but again, nothing like you see in major cities in the US, or other cities in Europe.

Diversity: I found Norway to be more ethnically diverse compared to Sweden. The Swedes in Stockholm seemed more homogeneous. The best way to describe the Swedes is blond, blue-eyed, physically active, and fit. It seems like everyone on the street is in their 20s, 30s or 40s and dresses like fashion-aware preppy members of a fraternity or sorority. I know it’s not true, but I can’t help wondering where they hide their ugly and older people—or maybe they just age really well.

Walkability: Stockholm, Oslo, and Bergen are all very walkable cities. And when they are not, public transportation is easy to use and runs frequently. Because of that, I don’t recommend the Hop On, Hop Off buses, even if you have a limited amount of time. I would only use them if walking around presents a problem.

Pedestrian Friendly: Stockholm and Oslo limit the number of cars in the central area of the city, making it relaxed and very enjoyable for pedestrians. The few cars that are there have very courteous drivers who yield to pedestrians. Drivers don’t seem to be in a hurry, unlike in the US. E-bikes and e-scooters, however, are everywhere and used by locals and tourists alike. Bergen, however, does not limit cars in the central area, and I found the city more congested. But still, car congestion was nothing like you would find in US cities.

Tourism: We encountered very few crowds or signs of tourists in Stockholm. It might have been because it was June and still early, but it was very refreshing to go to museums and move around the city without long lines. Most of the people we encountered in Stockholm appeared to be Swedish. The only exception was in Gamla Stan, the old town, which had tourist shops and plenty of tourists. But there is so much more to Stockholm than just Gamla Stan. In Norway, it was the same thing—we encountered very little tourism. Do tourists exist? Sure, but not to the extent we have seen in other major cities in Europe, or where it presented a problem for us. Bergen appeared to have more tourists than Oslo. The only time tourists and tourism got on my nerves was in Flåm in Norway, where everything seems to be geared around tourists from cruise ships coming in to see the fjords. But rather than hanging around Flåm waiting for our cruise to depart, we went for a walk out in the countryside instead.

Cash is King—NOT: Before we left, we got $200 in Swedish kronor and $200 in Norwegian kroner. We typically try to pay by credit card for everything, but most trips to Europe we still end up going to an ATM to get cash for small purchases, tips, museums, taxis, etc. Not so in Sweden and Norway. They are pretty much cashless countries—at least in the cities we visited. Two or three of the hotels even advertised they are “cashless hotels” and have no facilities to accept or provide cash. Most of the restaurants and museums we went to would not take cash. Buy a gelato, charge it! So we had a hard time spending our cash—we found the cruise ship tourist areas had the highest likelihood of accepting cash.

Tipping: After talking with a number of locals we learned that in Scandinavia tipping is welcome, but not expected. The staff in restaurants appear to be paid a living wage and are not reliant on tips. How nice that someone can make a living as a waiter. The only place I found that not to be true was in tourist areas, where restaurants and taxis try to take advantage of tourists who are not familiar with tipping customs and get as much money from them as possible. Most of the time, I tipped about 10% and still got US tipping guilt.

Honor System on Transit: In Norway, the buses, trams, and subways all work on the honor system. No badging on, no badging off. It works so much more efficiently. Most buses are articulated buses. A bus pulls up, and everybody just gets on, with people entering and exiting from all doors on the bus. While we were there, we purchased a 7-day transit pass, which you have to electronically activate the first time and then just need to make sure you have it with you whenever you use public transit in case someone asks. No one ever did ask, but supposedly, they have people who occasionally check. I came away with the impression that Norwegians are honest and trustworthy. I don’t think that would work in the US. How sad :-(.

Public Restrooms: Scandinavia has clean restrooms. During our three-week trip, I only encountered one restroom down by the harbor in Oslo that grossed me out. Otherwise, every restroom would get my Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

Unisex Restrooms: In Scandinavia, it was relatively rare to find separate men's and women's restrooms. One restroom, and a man, woman, or trans person just takes the next stall available. Makes sense and eliminates all the transgender issues related to restrooms that we have in the US. And if there is a queue, men and women wait the same amount of time.

Utensils To Go: Scandinavia is much more environmentally conscious than we are in the US. In Scandinavia, when you get food to go, instead of plastic utensils, you get wooden ones—a wooden fork, spoon, and knife. Sure, they have a lot of trees in Scandinavia, but it is also very environmentally friendly. Wooden utensils do taste and feel a little bit strange the first time you use them.

Pride: Scandinavians take a lot of pride in their country. And so they should. There is a lot they can be proud of, and in many cases, the US should model our society after theirs. I guess I am a late-blooming socialist :-). When you tell them you are from California, they ask, “How do you like Sweden/Norway?” They even appear to be proud of their Viking warriors who looted and terrorized most of Europe, unlike the Portuguese, who barely acknowledge their part in the slave trade (e.g., no museum there acknowledges or explains their part in the slave trade). I felt the greatest sense of pride from the Swedes—they appeared proud of their country, their traditions, their music (ABBA), and their history.

Sell It, but Don’t Use It: I found it ironic that all of Norway's public transit is electric, including their buses, and that Norway leads the world in electric vehicle (EV) adoption, yet oil makes up over 70% of Norway’s exports.

Packing for Scandinavia: The weather is very unpredictable in Scandinavia, and it rains a lot. Stockholm had the worst weather during our trip, but was sunny and hot the weeks before. Scandinavia is beautiful when it is sunny and wet when it rains. Essential items to pack are an umbrella, raincoat, waterproof pants, and waterproof shoes.

Laundry: It is not easy to find a laundromat in Scandinavia. There is maybe one in all of Stockholm and two in Oslo. And they are very busy. Using your hotel’s laundry services is prohibitively expensive. So bring quick-dry clothes that you can wash in your hotel room.