#the very popular one (bast)

[sol-ulfr]

Merytmwtheryt -> Sölulfr

For reasons that I will be keeping personal for the most part, I will be leaving the Kemetic Pagan path and moving to a more Norse-centered one. This means I won't be posting Kemetic-related things anymore. I'm very sorry if that's what you primarily follow me for! But for me it's time to move on to something else.

I will be adding all of my Kemetic tags to this post so you can see things about specific Kemetic deities or topics if you would like to.

Thank you to everyone who has joined me on my journey so far! It's been a pleasure, and I hope you stick around 💕

[mask131]

I know that this is a band-aid over an open wound, but in case it might cheer up someone out there, remember that "Sandman" isn't all Neil Gaiman.

Now of course, yes he did create the Sandman comic, yes he was the writer and leader of the main series and various little complementary stories, and yes everything with the "Sandman" title on it probably has him gain some money in his pockets (I don't know exactly the legal ramifications of the Sandman franchise). [EDIT: @lackingabilitytodothing clarified the money business in those terms: As DC owns all the rights to the comics they publish and comics writers at the big 2 earn a one time payment for their "work-for-hire" work, Gaiman does not profit off of Sandman comics. Also he doesn't own the IP. DC does]

But you can remember that "Sandman" became a franchise part of the DC Universe and a property of the DC Comic. As a result, there is a LOT, a LOT of spin-off series where Gaiman was not involved or barely. Series he did not write, he did not chose the artists for, and where his involvement usually goes either "I was proposed X author to do a spin-off series and gave my blessing", or "I gave advices to the creators of the series from time to time but they kept ignoring me so I left" or even "I just checked the basic premise and then walked out to let them do their thing", with even some where it was "I never had anything to do with it".

In fact, it was why these spin-offs series had such a hard time getting popular and couldn't fly of their own wings easily ; why so many people did not bother looking at them (If the original creator isn't there, it's no good, it's just "glorified fanfiction") and why a lot of people dislike them ("Only Gaiman does it right"). Mind you, on the later point I have to admit the quality of those spin-offs is very varying, especally since they expand in a lot of different ways and retcon a lot of different things, resulting in conflicting timelines.

But if you are curious about checking them out one day, here are the Gaiman-free parts of the Sandman franchise:

1/ The Dreaming (1996-2001)

An anthology about minor inhabitants of the Dreaming and the adventures of various dreamers, created by various guest-artists. Neil Gaiman was merely a creative consultant on this series, but he was apparently dissatisfied or un-seduced enough by the worldbuilding elements introduced in "The Dreaming" to complete counter-it with the release of "Endless Nights", making Dreaming "not-canon" (and the series also did poorly because of how it was constantly compared to Gaiman's Sandman in unflattering terms).

2/ Sandman Presents

Originally, "The Dreaming" (90s run) was an anthology series but then shifted into a continuous storyline. However, to keep the idea of bringing guest creators and one-time artists each adding their fragment to the Sandman universe, the line of "Sandman Presents" was created, a set of mini-series and one shots. "Thessaly: Witch for Hire" ; "Bast: Eternity Game"; "Love Street", "Merv Pumpkinhead, Agent of DREAM", "Petrefax", "The Furies", "The Corinthian: Death in Venice" and far more yet...

Several of these mini-series proved popular enough that they spawned their own series. Such as...

3/ Lucifer

Created by Mike Carey in 2000, this series was a follow-up of the very successful "Sandman Presents: Lucifer - The Morningstar Option". It is currently one of the most famous Sandman spin-offs thanks to the TV series adaptation "Lucifer", despite... the TV show being VERY very different from the comics.

4/ Dead Boy Detectives

The other most famous spin-off of the Sandman, thanks to the recent series adaptation, and just like "Lucifer" it was originally a "Sandman Presents" line (also called "The Dead Boys Detective"). However beware, if you want to have the full continuity between "Sandman" and "Sandman Presents: The Dead Boys Detetive" you'll have to go through a Gaiman-written story, in "The Children's Crusade".

5/ WitchCraft

A mini-series exploring the characters of the Three Witches. Had a sequel, "WitchCraft: La Terreur".

6/ Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold

A mini-series about Destiny by Alisa Kwitney.

7/ God Save the Queen

A 2007 series also made by Mike Carey and about a big crossover of Sandman, The Dreaming (90s edition) and The Books of Magic.

8/ The Sandman Universe

The biggest and most recent spin-off project of the Sandman comics. Created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Sandman in 2018, it started with a series of comics overseen by Neil Gaiman though written by different artists (Gaiman wrote nothing in these series). It started with the introductive one-shot "The Sandman Universe", opening four different reboot/continuity series: The Dreaming reboot (by Simon Spurrier), House of Whispers (by Nalo Hopkinson and Dan Watters), a Lucifer reboot (by Dan Watters) and a Books of Magic reboot (by Kat Howard and David Barnette). [I have not talked about the Books of Magic franchise despite it being closely linked to the Sandman one, but that's because this post is already getting way too big].

After these four initial series, tons of other mini-series and reboots were launched, again written by many different people outside of Gaiman, several of them still going on to this day. The Dreaming reboot got a sequel (The Dreaming: Waking Hours), Hellblazer series, a Locke and Key crossover, and the "Nightmare Country" series by James Tynion IV (which got a sequel, "Nightmare Country: The Glass House").

All of that to say... Sandman hopefully isn't just Neil Gaiman. Its branches spawn into many different universes of the DC world, and there were many other authors who poured their ideas and concepts into the Sandman world.

(And I have not even covered ALL of the Gaiman-free spin-offs. The Sandman franchise is REALLY big)

[teaandchoux]

Not sure if this fandom still exists, but I found an old notebook from grade 5 that has the translations for these symbols in Artemis Fowl books. I originally thought they were for decorative purposes but it turned out that they weren't, so younger me had a ball decoding these.

For those interested, here are all the ones I've done:

Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident

One of the strangest creatures on the Earth, or more accurately below it, is the common stinkworm. Stinkworms can only survive below the Earth's crust and so have never been seen by humans. The stinkworm can grow to a length of fifteen centimetres and a diameter of up to eight centimetres. The bigger a stinkworm is, the more meat there is in its soft boned skeleton and the more valuable it is to a merchant. Stinkworms are big business in the fairy world and have been for thousands of years. They are very versatile creatures and can be boiled, fried, baked, or even eaten raw though this sushi approach can be difficult to swallow as the stink associated with the worms does not disappear until they are cooked. The current favourite way to eat the stinkworm is in a dish similar to bolognese substituting stinkworms spaghetti. Deep fried on a skewer is popular among the younger generation. What makes the stinkworm so delicious is its juices. When the worm is heated in a pan or oven it bastes itself in a delicious spicy juice which even the best chefs have failed to reproduce. This juice is in fact earwax from the hundreds of ears that cover each worm's body. Some more sensitive fairies cannot forget that they are eating earwax and do not enjoy eating stinkworms, but most are entranced by the flavour that they are quite prepared to ignore where it comes from. Goblins in particular love stink worms and are constantly inventing new ways to consume them. The rarest and most prized stinkworm dish is a stir-fried bowl of stinkworm ears. The ears are shaved from the worm's body, rolled in flour and then lightly fried. This dish takes hours to prepare and costs a fortune. Goblins believe that if you eat a bowl of worm ears then you absorb the worm's memories of the places they have visited. This is not an appealing thought when you consider that a stinkworm's favourite environment is fresh troll dung.

---

Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code

One of the fairy people's most popular pastimes is a card game called Bottoms Up. This game is almost the direct opposite of the human card game Poker. In Bottoms Up, the objective is to end up with the least valuable hand possible. There are four suits: Acorns, Toads, a weird shape known as Splats which is thought to be based on the shape of a stinkworm would make if it were stepped on by a troll, and of course, Bottoms, which gives the game its name. Historians tell us that the curved 'w' shapes which represent Bottoms are actually supposed to represent ocean waves but gamblers prefer to call them Bottoms and now the name has stuck. If a player realises that he is in danger of assembling a good hand, which is bad, he must trick his opponent into taking his valuable cards. The most valuable cards are a golden Acorn, a king Toad, an eight-pointed Splat, and a mega Bottom. There is also a hologrammed wild card which can be anything the holding player wishes it to be. If you are tricked into taking a wild card then you must get rid of it in the next two rounds or it freezes at its current value. When playing Bottoms Up, it is very important to hide any behaviour which might betray nervousness or glee. These behaviours are called 'tells'. An elf's 'tell' is to toy with his pointy ears, sprits sometimes flap their wings causing a downdraught which is never a good idea in a card game, gnomes eat anything they can reach including insects and pieces of furniture, and dwarves lose control of their internal gases. Once these gases build up past a certain point, it becomes almost impossible to hold them up. So if you see a dwarf with a red face, it is a good bet that he has a very bad card, which is good.

---

Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception

There has never been a regulated scientific study of a dwarf's special abilities; what we know about them is based on folklore and hearsay. The most famous of these abilities is the dwarf tunnelling method by which they eat dirt and air before expelling them out the other end. Though the actual force of this expulsive have never been measured, several witnesses have reported windows breaking more than twenty metres away. It is said that a master recycler than finetune his gas emissions so that instead of a widespread blast of flatulence, he shoots out a concentrated column of wind. Legend has it that one such master recycler, a certain Blurt Diggums, was so accurate with these columns that he could turn on a light switch from the other side of the room. Dwarfs themselves use casual terms to refer to strength of their gas emissions. A shirt-flapper is a gentle emission that would barely inflate a child's balloon, a pants-ripper is a sturdier blast and would certainly blow a hole in even the sturdiest material, a nought-to-sixty is a sight whopper and could accelerate whoever dropped it to dangerous speeds, a strap-yourself-down is about as strong as it gets and could help a dwarf achieve flight, and finally, the legendary dark-side. If released in a mountaintop it could put a dwarf into orbit. there is no evidence that a dark-side is anything more than a myth. All the same if you see a dwarf on a mountain with a red face, take cover. You can't be too careful around dwarf wind.

---

Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony

The demon scrolls tell of a warlock that will come to save our people but I couldn't rely too much on the scrolls. They also say that rabbits are supreme beings and that the best cure for a sore throat is a poultice of dung and old socks. Hence trust the scrolls at your peril. There are however a few basic tips for survival in a demon tribe that might be helpful if you were a human and had never actually met a demon before, which is unlikely to say the least. If you were a human, you wouldn't be able to read this in the first place. So, demon survival tips. First, never stab a demon with his own sword. This is the ultimate insult and will result in a vendetta that could go on for generations. It is fine to stab a demon with your sword, he will congratulate you for managing that but only poor warlocks lose their swords and then get stabbed with them. If the opportunity arises, give it a miss. Demons have a pretty comprehensive system of sign language ... (I couldn't find the rest unfortunately)

---

Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox

From the collective correspondence of Opal Koboi, a series of letter between Koboi inmate number [cannot be identified], Atlantis maximum penitentiary, and Wing Commander, Vinyaya, Haven Council.

Koboi: "My dear Wing Commander, while I realise that my first probation hearing is not due for four hundred years, I feel that it would be in the people's best interests to release me before then. After all, the humans are becoming more sophisticated daily and a genius such as myself will be needed to ensure that fairy technology remains superior to human technology."

Vinyaya: "Dream on, Koboi."

Koboi: "I am sensing negative vibrations from you, Wing Commander. Do not be so quick to judge, people can change, surely you can accept that. I admit that once, I found the idea of being the planet's supreme power an attractive one, but who hasn't secretly nurtured the dream of wiping out humanity and utterly dominating one's own peers? I see now that this dream might be unacceptable to some narrow-minded fairies and I am prepared to swear on my pixie honour that should I be released I would not attempt to take over the world again."

Vinyaya: "On your pixie honour. Wow, I'll send the transfer shuttle right over."

Koboi: "I see now, Wing Commander, that you never had any intention of sending the transfer shuttle right over. In fact, you were being sarcastic. Mocking me from the safety of police plaza before i realised that the shuttle was not coming for me. I packed by belongings so that I could be ready, including my collection of model seahorses which I fashioned form chewed cardboard. My favourite seahorses, Twinky and Goodboy, were broken in the process. Twinky cries every night over her severed tail and Goodboy does not look so dashing without his head. Your callousness leaves me no alternative but to place you in my revenge list. When I am finally free of this horrible place and elevated to my rightful position as Queen of the world, you will take my place in this cell and I will send you troll minions to issue daily beatings with batons fashioned from seahorse tails. A fitting punishment, I am sure you agree."

Vinyaya: "See you in four hundred years."

[kunosiu]

My top 10 favorite Arashi's Music Videos

To celebrate the 25th anniversary and the fact that MV are now available on YouTube (what a time to be alive...) I wanted to compile a top 10 list of my favourite Arashi's MVs. And it turned out to be quite hard. My last cut from the list ("truth") was painful. 😭 But I did it.

Just couple of things before we start.

This is my very subjective list. If your favourite MV isn't here, I'm sorry, we just have different taste.

I'm choosing basted on the MV itself. For example, I love "I seek" as a song; it's my go to karaoke song, but MV for it is... Not my cup of tea to say the least. In other cases, like "Bittersweet", live performances outshines MV itself.

MVs are in chronological order. Don't make me rank them, I can't 😭

And now, without further ado...

1. A･RA･SHI

What can I say? It's their first MV, it's their debut song... It's iconic. It's also nice to see how far they've come. They are still babies here. 😭

2. Kitto Daijoubu

I honestly forgot about this until I was watching all MVs on November 3rd. And omg, it's so fun! The bad green screen, 4th wall breaks, rainbows, Arashi acting silly... it has it all!

3. Happiness

Let's be honest: you knew this was coming. If someone held a gun to my head I asked me to choose one of Arashi's MV as my favourite, I'd choose "Happiness". Aeons ago, someone said that this MV is 100% Arashi in Arashi and I can't disagree. You have it all: Arashi acting silly, pure chaos, Ohmiya... A LOT OF OHMIYA. And some small moments for other pairings too. xD

And it was also the first MV of them I saw.

4. Crazy Moon~kimi wa muteki~

This maybe an unorthodox choice because it's a very simple dance MV... And that's the reason I chose it. Arashi don't have any other video like this. Just them dancing to the song in an empty hall. Without any backdrop or outfit change. They had to sell it to us by just dancing. And I think they succeeded. The choreography is interesting and bravo to the stylist because I think they all look so good here.

5. My Girl

Story MVs are rare in Arashi videography. Practically just "Aozora pedal" and "My Girl". And since my best friend hates MV to "Aozora pedal", I have to choose "My girl" xD

But in all seriousness, it's really cute story where Arashi play siblings who are moving out of their family home after the death of their mother. Their mom is Photoshop monstrosity made of different parts of members' faces xD But MV it's cute nonetheless.

I remember all the fan fiction this video inspired... Good times... xD

6. Troublemaker

This is the first MV I remember waiting for. And I don't wanna say it is here just because of nostalgia. I think it's just really good video on its' own merits. I like stop-motion sequences, I think those suits are impeccable outfits and... there's a lot of Ohmiya. xD Look, I'm a simple gal, if Ohno and Nino are acting cute together, I'm putting the video on this list. xD

7. Aozora no shita, kimi no tonari

I think this maybe another unexpected entry. It's not a very popular MV. It's very simple. And maybe that's why I like it. It was shoot in outdoor locations; stylists again done wonderful job - they all look so good. I love their individual shoots, especially Aiba sitting on the edge a platform looks angelic. And the bbq at the end... ♥ This MV just feels cosy.

8. Fukkatsu Love

It's just good, I don't know what else to tell you guys. I love the parts they shoot in those long takes... Touma is there! It's just so good!

9. Don't You Get it

Another obvious entry I think. They all look good here, they all acting goofy, Sho and Nino do magic tricks, Ohno has hilarious face expressions whenever you pause the video, there's a doggie and Ohmiya dance (I've told you, guys xD)

10. Do you...?

We started with the their first MV, it's appropriate to end at their last. (AT THIS MOMENT! I HOPE 😭) "Do you..." if wonderful homage to Arashi's journey, full of easter eggs to all the previous MVs. And it might be its' only flaw - that it doesn't work so well in a vacuum. But if you were on November 3rd 2020 when this MV and Arashi's last album dropped, you were feeling it. You were crying, you were smiling and you tried to notice all the references to previous MVs. Maybe even at the same time. xD

And that's all. 😊 Thank you if you made it here. Please let me know your favourite MVs! As I've said, this is very subjective list and I had to cut off a lot of MV I love to make it just 10 videos T_T.

[ascendingaeons]

Embracing Life, Embodying Love

In the spring of 2021, my father passed away after his battle with pancreatic cancer. During my time as his caregiver, I began to have vibrant experiences with the Netjeru both in waking life and in my dreams. It was around that time that the words “Embrace Life” kept funneling into my awareness. I had an experience involving Source Energy that I wasn’t quite ready to process and I clung to Set, Bast, and Sekhmet like a small child with a voracious need for comfort. They were my safety in the wake of this daunting ocean of newness. Resistant to change, I ruminated on those words: “Embrace Life”… What did that even mean?

I’ve lived more in the few years since than I have in all my previous years combined. I became a Reiki practitioner and began doing readings for others. I moved cross-country with my then-fiancé, from South Texas to Western Massachusetts, despite some of my best friends thinking I was crazy and about to ruin my life. I got a good-paying job that I absolutely hated and, after sticking it out, quit without burning any bridges with my old boss. I now have an amazing job in healthcare. I had my belated honeymoon at Disney World where I ran into three people from my hometown and had the most intense vision quests I’ve ever experienced. I came to love and appreciate Netjeru that, as a Setian, I had always avoided—in particular, Aset.

This past year I’ve been focusing less on divination and theurgical practice. The Netjeru and my Guides were always present despite my being closed-off, but they often felt so far away. I couldn’t remember the last time I performed Reiki on someone until I recently offered it to a patient with back pain. As I sat there, eyes closed and focusing on my breathing, I wasn’t sure if I was helping him but after about 20 minutes he was happier and pain-free. That was the theme for 2024: “Am I doing this right?” Most of the time the answer has been a resounding “YES!” but my anxiety was often a barrier to receiving it with gratitude. That’s when I started to realize that despite my worries I was in fact “Embracing Life” and had been for a while.

A popular motif in Kemetic art is offering the ankh. One of my favorite depictions is from the temple at Kom Ombo where a smiling Sekhmet offers the Gift of Life to an unnamed pharaoh. There is so much adoration and pride in Her Countenance, so much so that you can see the very lightness of Her Heart. For so long “Embracing Life” has felt like a duty, something that, while precious, is heavy to bear. There is something that lightens the weight and illuminates all of the inky shadows: love. I once thought of love as a lighthouse beacon that each of us had to seek until we reached its shores. That’s not how I met my husband at all! We met on a dating app after we both rage-quit, tired of not meeting the person we wanted. It was by luck or fate that I logged in one last time and saw his picture. The rest is history.

Love keeps you going when your body and mind are ready to call it quits. Love is what makes you really smile when your face has been hurting for weeks. Love is growing even when it’s scary. Love is reconnecting with your inner child. Love makes you swell with pride, gratitude, and excitement at things someone else might think are small. Love is believing in something so completely, trying again and again until you finally succeed. Love is celebrating the new as much as mourning the old. Love is knowing you hold the whole world in your hands. Love is being able to forgive, allowing two hearts to embrace when two minds want to be right. Love is loyalty, fighting tooth and nail for what truly matters. Love is creating peace in a storm.

In those precious moments where we find ourselves fully open and vulnerable, we open the door to the greatest of divine gifts, immortalized in granite and limestone as the freely-given ankh. When we walk with our heads held high, our hearts open, wearing a genuine smile and arms outstretched to receive the bounty of the living Cosmos… that is Embracing Life. A rule of manifestation is that we will always receive precisely when we are ready to receive and Embracing Life is a very dynamic way of shattering barriers, both internal and external, until one finds themselves liberated from fear-based decision-making.

I’m sure in a few years I’ll have a better understanding of this concept but for now, I’ll leave it at this. To Embrace Life is to Embody Love. Do so and there is nothing you cannot achieve.

[catulhu333]

Sharess was originally a good aspect of Shar *and* Lolth?

...and perhaps the fragment of remaining goodness from both evil goddesses, with all three being possibly originally the same entity? (At least in late 1st and early 2nd edition AD&D lore)

Depictions (from left to right) of Shar, Sharess and Lolth, from 2003's Faiths and Pantheons

It might be a bit obscure, but rather than Bast merging with/absorbing the goddesses Felidae and Zandilar the Dancer; Sharess was originally intended to be a Chaotic Good aspect of Shar, as seen in her very first description in the original 1987 "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting": "Sharess, a CG aspect of Shar worshipped in Calimshan, Waterdeep, and by idle rich or decadents all over the Realms. Sharess is a goddess of lust, free love, and sensual fulfillment, and is worshipped in prolonged fests with scented baths, music, good food, dancing, and other gratifications."

This when asking one of the writers/editors, Matt Sernett about this, he confirmed that Sharess was actually meant to be a benevolent aspect of Shar, and this not being a misdirection as presented later in lore.

This was basically repeated in 1988's "Empires of the Sands", as well as in the 1993 2nd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, though the latter further suggesting Sharess' benevolent nature might be an act, or that Sharess became a separate being from Shar by this point: "The true nature and identity of Sharess is unrevealed. She may he a direct part of the evil Shar, preparing her following for despair and loss. Or she may be a new thing entirely: a goddess of excess."

This starts to become even more interesting with 1991's "Drow of the Underdark", in the section with the short dictionary of Drow language. There "valsharess" is explained as meaning "Queen", and "Quarvalsharess" "(the) Goddess" in Drow language, specifically and only meaning Lolth (other goddesses are are written as quar'valsharess, and not starting with a capital letter).

The same sourcebook, details the syncretic She-Spider cult - who seemingly consider Lolth and Shar to be the same goddess. The cult was opposed by both goddesses, which is curious, seeing Shar's eagerness to subsume other deities. Though Lolth did latter possibly send her priestess (Malabeth Tr'rudena) to infiltrate the cult.

A card from TSR's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Trading Cards, depicting Malabeth.

This is a proof (along with the mention Shar worship is relatively popular among Drow), of such syncretic cults between the two goddesses existing, as well as one of the hints Shar and Lolth are or were to a degree aspects of each other. Similarly how Sehanine Moonbow in both 2nd edition and 4th edition, was stated to be aspect of Shar's sister, Selûne, most notably first in the above mentioned 2nd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting: "Sehanine: Sehanine is an intermediate power among the elves of the Realms, for they refer to her as an elven version of Selûne, the mortal goddess of the moon."

Indeed, Sharess herself might had been a hint at the connection between Lolth and Shar.

There appeared more hints overtime, like similar antagonism between the 2 pairs, Shar and Lolth becoming both connected to the New Moon, and even more in late 3.5 edition and 4th edition/Nerath lore. For example, it was stated at the very end of 3.5th edition that the god Mask is Shar's son, mirroring Vhaeraun being the son of Lolth. The two gods are very similar, both being gods of thievery connected to shadows, as well as Vhaeraun being called the "Masked Lord", "Masked Mage", "Masked God of the Night". Furthermore, both gods share near identical titles - Vhaeraun being called the "Lord of Shadow" and "Shadow Lord"; Mask being known as the "Lord of Shadows" and "Shadowlord". Both having a similar to near identical symbols. With there being theories, and hints before this reveal, Mask and Vhaeraun might be connected, maybe even aspects of each other, Mask even kinda hinting in one novel (1998's "Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad" by Troy Denning) he is the same as Vhaeraun.

Symbols of Vhaeraun (left, from 1998's "Demihuman Deities") and Mask (right, from 1996's "Faiths and Avatars")

Pictures of Vhaeraun battling his son, Selvetarm (left, from 2004's "Player's Guide to Faerun"), and of Mask (right, from 2003's "Faiths and Pantheons") On Nerath, in turn Lolth and Sehanine are described as sisters, like Shar and Selûne are. So the (at least initial) opposition to the She-Spider cult from both, being possibly from not wanting for their connection to be revealed; or alternately be merged back by the power of belief.

Though to be clear, this could work either way if Shar and Lolth are or were aspects of each other, or not. As Sharess, in her original lore, possibly sprung into existence from the worship of the syncreticism of Shar and Lolth, that arose among drow, and then spread to other races/species, possibly originally named "Quarvalsharess"; before the name became shortened/corrupted among non-drow into just "Sharess". Or even started out named already Sharess among even drow, shortening from Quarvalsharess, to emphasize the "Shar" part.

It's probable Shar at least had more control over the Sharess aspect than Lolth (seeing Sharess was directly stated to be connected to her), and possibly the new goddess, in part absorbing or mirroring whatever benevolent aspects the two goddesses had, became an independent being. This quite probably being at least in part also caused by "Time of Troubles", when gods were forced into singular avatars, this event would have cut-off Sharess from both Shar and Lolth. Especially seeing the possibility of Sharess being an independent entity, was first mentioned not long after the Time of Troubles (ie when 2nd edition Forgotten Realms setting was set).

Depiction of Sharess, from 1995's Polyhedron #109

Soon though, Sharess was given a different origin (first in 1995's “Forgotten Deities: Sharess” in Polyhedron #109, then further developed with some changes in 1997's "Powers and Pantheons" and 1998's "Demihuman Deities") , if still being connected to Shar, and (more indirectly) to drow, and being an amalgamation of aspects of multiple goddesses (but different ones); it's still though an interesting possibility/alternate origin for home campaigns.

Or perhaps even theorizing some part of Shar or even Lolth did get into the divine merger that was Sharess. ("Was", as in 5th edition lore, Sharess was basically split back into Bast and Zandilar).

[utilitycaster]

re: your actual play post, apart from critrole are there other actual plays that are doing the whole "bad guys/neutral but not up to the mark" that you mentioned?

for cr, it's interesting and i guess kind of inevitable that we've gone from traditional heros -> reluctant heros -> neutral heros(?) caught up in the storm

i don't watch a lot of actual plays other than the popular ones, but it is very interesting to see the general trajectory the actual play space is moving in

I feel like the Mighty Nein are not really part of this trend - they're not as publicly acknowledged as Vox Machina, and they do take an unorthodox "not up to the task" (or more accurately "too traumatized right now for the task, we need to work through some shit first") route for a while, but they are pretty unambiguously working towards a heroic cause by the midlevels (and VM started off pretty scrappy too; we just didn't see them until they got respectable). Bells Hells do feel a little closer to this, though still leaning heavily towards the heroic. I think it's possible for them to decide to pull the ripcord, as they said, after their current mission; but I doubt they will, so they flirt with the theme but I don't think will go all the way. Which to be clear is the norm.

I mentioned a few things in my tags, so:

Candela Obscura chapters 2 and 3 flirt with this. In 2 the circle other than Sean is imo heroic, but also working a little outside the lines. Sean does make a turn that I don't think makes him the bad guy - it's pretty clear it's an act of misery and desperation - but does position him in a place that a lot of TTRPGs won't go. Chapter 3 is complicated because to be honest we don't really see the logic of Candela's actions in the final episode and some don't entirely follow for me, but Rajan and Elsie's discussions do cover this territory: as monsters, what side are they on? I think Candela Obscura is a game that really supports this should someone wish to push it there.

Trinyvale (side campaign for NADDPod) explores this in that the characters eventually develop into absolutely toxic assholes while still saving the world; however, this is a very very silly campaign in general so it's played for the humor.

Similarly, in Burnt Cookbook Party (spoilers - I'm not totally caught up but this spoils a pretty major aspect of the show that comes up pretty early), two of the characters go fully evil and the party fractures. HOWEVER, this campaign is set in a time loop, and so the consequences are lessened since we know the results aren't permanent (and indeed the big PvP moment is when the time loop restarts).

I feel this is something that Burrow's End (D20) sort of wanted to explore, but Last Bast was so obviously a police state that it was pretty clear the characters' desire to disrupt an existing stable society was in fact good.

This is all really speculative on my part - I watch/listen to a lot of actual play but there are plenty of major shows and infinite minor ones I don't follow at all or even know about. Obviously Critical Role or D20 are going to have more a footprint here than, say, BCBP. But I think people are trying to tell stories that interrogate whether, just because you met in a tavern or whatever, you should be tasked with saving the world, either because you're not actually that great of people or because you're not sufficiently competent in this particular situation, and that's really interesting to me. I think the reason I don't have any terribly clear answers is because it's really hard to do this and then find what that party should do instead.

[randoimago]

Jumping on the last train! Hello! May I request Franky for 3,000 Follower Celebration Friends to Lovers, Confessing Feelings? Btw, I've recently read Spy x Family novel "Family Portrait" and maaaan... Franky's unlucky again with love life *sigh* I wish for him to have a girlfriend or even a wife (!), he deserves to be happy!

Shared Secret

Fandom: Spy x Family

Character(s): Franky Franklin

Type of Request: 3,000 Follower Event

Note(s): Ooh I didn't know there was a spin off. I mean, with how popular it's getting, I'm not surprised, but now I need to read it (I have been keeping caught up with the manga and Franky needs happiness)

Franky knows he had to be hitting some kind of limit with asking Loid for favors. But these favors are small time for the famous spy so Franky didn't think they're too bad. Especially because it's to make you happy!

Yeah, he's friends with you and he's talked in depth with you about things you like and your dreams and aspirations and all that hopeful stuff. But Franky didn't really talk to you about things like if you have a date lined up for the night or if you have a crush on someone because he's afraid of the answer. Not that he'd ever admit to being afraid.

But Franky took to asking Loid to just keep an eye or ear out if you might be seeing someone secretly or whatnot. Loid, of course, tells Franky to talk to you like a normal person, but he still returns with information for Franky.

But Franky has finally runned Loid's patience dry and the favors regarding you are done. Franky just hasn't realized that until he sees you the next time you visit his stall.

He greets you like normal and you give a "hello" back. Franky is your friend - and also secretly in love with you - so he notices something seems to be up with you and he's nervous. Are you finally dating someone else? At least, that's what he thinks at first, but Loid hasn't said anything about it. So, being a good friend, Franky asks you what's wrong.

You're a tad nervous as you hesitate and it causes Franky to feel nervous too. And then you finally say what's been on your mind. “So according to Loid, you’re in love with me, too?”

Franky's selective hearing kicks in at the wrong part of your question. His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. How the hell could Loid betray his trust like that?!

“Oh, that fucking bast—" Franky pauses as his ears finally catch up with his brain. "Wait, did you just say too?” His eyes are wide and he knows he's heating up as his heart is pounding in his chest. There's no way he heard you correctly. You had to be just kidding... Unless?

A smile displays on your lips as you were very much enjoying Franky's momentary panic. "Yeah, I'm in love with you. I didn't say anything because I didn't think you were interested," you admit to him and his jaw drops.

"Of course I'm interested in you! I thought you weren't interested in me!" He explains and his voice is louder than he meant it to be. But he doesn't care. Hell, he hopes people are listening so they know that you're going to be his partner and no one else's.

It's laughter between you two next as you realize how dumb you each were as you plan an actual date. Not a hangout like usual, but a real date.

Meanwhile, Loid is disguised on a nearby bench and breathes a sigh of relief that he can stop looking into both of your love life's for the other. The man is tired.

[huskyremix]

Let’s talk about the Farm Animals of the land! For most of your animal care, goods, and know-how, stop by the Kneady Kritter’s Ranch run by our dear Forneus. However, you won’t find all matter of barnyard friends here, as there are ones that are a rarity to own let alone see even amongst the most experience of ranchers.

Animal List!

Sunspot Dairy Cow

A sweet, docile cow that enjoys basking in the sun all day

Berryspot Dairy Cow

Dairy cow that produces strawberry milk, energetic and a bit high maintenance

Chocospot Dairy Cow

Dairy cow that produces chocolate milk, smart and a little timid

All cows love to be groomed and given plenty of affection!

Silver Coat Alpaca

Loved for their soft, easily dye-able wool and easy going demeanor. Their horns are used for scattering hay and scratching on trees. Grooming competitions featuring them have been growing in popularity lately

Baapher’s Goat

Despite their scary looking appearance, these goats are prone to anxiety when not around other animals or people. Their horns are used for showing off and fighting over mates. The cheese made from their milk is considered a delicacy amongst the most famous gourmets. 

Snake-Eyes Chickens

Hen

Typically with brown feathers and black leather-y wings, the wings have the marking of an eye in order to scare away predators. Able to fly, but only for a short time. Non fertile eggs have a yellowish hue, while fertile eggs are more orange

Rooster

White feather coating with green leather-y wings, their wings have a more stand-out eye pattern than the hens. Have a tendency to try and start beef with other animals that get too close to their flock, but can easily be distracted with a snack

Red Crested Duck

The females are white in color with a red crest on their chest, while the males are green and gray with a similar red crest. Fairly small in size, but known to produce large eggs

Tea Worms

Little bush worms that grow herbs and flowers on their back that are used for making tea and medicines. The kind of herbs/flowers they grow are dependent on their diet, as well as the climate.

Lover’s Pig

Sassy and vain, these pigs are popular amongst the rich and gourmets. They use their sensitive snouts and shovel-like hooves to dig up wild plants, commonly used to sniff out rare variety of mushrooms

Fire-Spark Coat Sheep

There’s a myth that these sheep were originally birthed from sparks that came out of a forge of a God. Despite their name, they’re not very fond of being out in the heat for too long.

Cosmos Coat Sheep

Ethereal and a rare sight, these sheep are similar to their Fire-Spark counterparts but with a blue and violet coat. Anything made from their wool will fetch quite a high price.

Wulvoo Herding Dog

A hybrid species of dog and wolf, these large and overly fluffy canines make great companions and farm workers. They will make a deep, roaring bark to alert those of trouble.

Baste Cat

Considered to be good luck amongst farmers, they are natural hunters and will keep any pest at bay. They have also been known to be very motherly to other animals, being seen to knead and comforting expecting mothers.

Carousel Runaway Pony

Legend says that a witch cast a spell on an ordinary horse carousel once, bringing life into the inanimate ponies stationed to the ride.

[persephoneggsy]

decided to be cringe and made a marvel OC to ship with Miguel (bc i’m not really vibing with his more popular ships)

her name is Celenia Bast, she goes by “Cel”, and she works as a low-level engineer at Alchemax. She’ll occasionally cross paths with Miguel O’Hara, a smug coworker that she fucking hates. 

She works two other jobs due to having to support her two younger sisters and an infirmed grandfather, and had to give up on her dreams of owning her own workshop. One day, buried under stress and bills, she snaps and decides to start a crime spree. Inspired by the Heroic Era’s Black Cat, she prowls the rich neighborhoods of Nueva York to take what she pleases. She’s far from a Robin Hood-esque hero, however; all her ill-gotten gains go towards just herself and her family - she cares very little about anyone else.

Well, except for Spider-Man; Cel is absolutely infatuated with the wall-crawler, delighting in making him fluster and chase her (that he’s also ripped probably helps). She really wants to know who’s under that mask... obviously, once she finds out, she’s in for a rude awakening.

[rj-drive-in]

The Powers-That-Be Department:

There are always those who profit from pandemonium.

CHAOS CRAWLS BACK © 2024 by Rick Hutchins

“Please sit down, Deacon Chappel,” said Bishop Knight. “Here you go. Your profile says you like your coffee black.”

“Thank you, Your Grace. You’re very kind.”

The lighting in the office was subdued. There were no windows, but there was a second door in a dark corner next to one of the bookcases. A couple of rubber tree plants added a little color. Bishop Knight sat down slowly behind his large mahogany desk.

“So you are interested in the position of Public Relations Director?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“And you think you can do better than Deacon Smith.”

“Ever so much, Your Grace.”

“You’re very young,” observed the Bishop. “Deacon Smith has much more experience.”

“I have new ideas, Your Grace.”

Knight steepled his fingers and frowned thoughtfully. “But Deacon Smith seems to have done a very good job these past few years. Our polling is better than it’s ever been. We are well represented on several popular TV shows. Several of our political candidates have performed favorably in Boston and Presque Isle.”

Chappel did not quite pound his fist on the Bishop’s desk. “It is not enough!” he said firmly. “For too many centuries has the House of Bast been lumped in with the Unspeakable Cults. We are more accepted now because we strive to be inoffensive, yet the late-night comedy shows still make offensive jokes at our expense. We must not beg, we must demand. Demand justice for our lost generations.”

“But in doing so, do we not risk alienating the very people who have supported us?”

“They are not innocent, Your Grace. They carry the guilt of their forefathers just as we carry the pain of ours. They should be made uncomfortable. They should not be absolved. They owe us and they must pay!”

Bishop Knight sighed thoughtfully and nodded. “You have given me much to consider. But I do have other candidates that I must interview, my son. I will be in touch with you when I have made my decision.”

Standing quickly, Deacon Chappel bowed. “Yes, Your Grace,” he said. “Have a most pleasant day.” The office door clicked softly behind him as he departed.

For several moments, the office was silent save for the ticking of a clock somewhere among the shelves. Then the door in the back corner opened. A black silhouette, very tall and angular, stepped through but remained cloaked in the shadows.

“Your opinion, Bishop?” it asked, in a voice as deep as it was penetrating.

“His ideas will fail,” the Bishop replied without hesitation. “His approach is counterproductive. He has not the slightest understanding of how to nurture our fragile relationship with mainstream culture.”

“Agreed,” said the dark figure.

“All the progress we have made will be lost,” continued the Bishop. “There will be division and conflict, and all the old prejudices and hatreds will return with a vengeance. There will be bloodshed, sir. Decades of bloodshed.”

“Agreed,” repeated Nyarlathotep. “Let us then proceed.”

[dontexpecttomakesense]

I don't know why I'm making this post, because I'm 100% that if it bring in anything, it will be problems, but whatever.

So like, why did the boycott against Hogwarts Legacy fail?

Because it was on twitter. Believe it or not, in spite of being one of, if not the most, popular social media, less than 10% of the world's population has an account that is active at least once per month. That means that any protest that is not targeting something that is already inside the twitter ecosystem itself, has a ridiculously low reach.

Furthermore, by twitters own admission, 90% of the content comes from the top 10% accounts, which again, it means the content that is being creatd on twitter has very low reach beyond twitter itself and similar minded chambers.

The boycott against Hogwarts Legacy didn't fail because sudently everyone is transphobic and agress with JK Rowling, it failed because the bast majority of people that was going to buy the game probably doesn't have a twitter and doesn't know about they boycott or about Rowling's views on trangender issues.

[mask131]

Egyptians gods: Bastet

Bastet is without a doubt one of the most famous goddesses of Ancient Egypt today.

Everybody heard of the cult and worship Ancient Egyptians dedicated to cats. Cats were sacred animals for them. Originally domesticated around two thousand years before our current era, they were loved due to their habit of hunting, killing and eating rats. When you had cats around, plagues were less likely to break out AND the harvest and fields were safe! Through time, this love took on a religious and sacred aspect, and cats became honored, respected and pampered members of every household. When a pet cat died, the humans that lived in its house had to shave their eyebrows to signify their grief. When the cat of a temple died, the entire town mourned. Each pharaoh had a personal cat, dressed in jewelry and that shared their master’s meal. Cats were mummified, just like humans, and were placed inside a necropolis – showing how important they were for Ancient Egyptians. Egyptians even had a firm belief that when a fire broke out somewhere, cats would just jump in the flames and stop the fire by their sheer power! Cats were a BIG deal in Ancient Egypt.

And the goddess of all cats, the cat-goddess, was Bastet (or Bast), the goddess of the city of Bubastis (a name that means “the house of Bastet”, Per-Bastet in proper Egyptian), in the Delta. However, originally Bastet wasn’t a cat goddess: in her oldest incarnations, Bastet appeared as a woman with the head of a lioness, usually wearing the ankh and a scepter. It was only later that she became a cat – somewhere around the Third Intermediate Period. Sometimes a full cat, wearing jewels or nursing her kittens, other times a cat-headed woman holding a sistrum.

Bastet was, just like several other goddesses (Maat, Hathor, Sekhmet, Tefnut), considered one of the “daughters of Ra” – which meant more than just her having the god as her father. The daughters of Ra were goddesses that embodied the power of the sun, each one reflecting a different side of the sun’s light. Each of them was another identity of the “Eye of Ra”, whose function was to help create and re-create life on Earth, by bringing light and by fighting off the darkness. While sometimes merely depicted as sisters, for many others Bastet and Sekhmet were actually one and the same: a same feline goddess, that when angered or triggered, became the furious lioness embodying the destructive and killing aspect of the sun, while Bastet was rather the benevolent and kind side of the solar light. It was for example written in some texts that Bastet became Sekhmet for the night, to protect ferociously Ra during his journey throughout the dangerous and demon-filled underworld, only to return to being Bastet in the morning. Starting in 2500 BCE, many lioness statues were replaced by cat statues in Sekhmet temples, which with time became Bastet temples. [It is theorized that maybe Sekhmet and Bastet began as one same entity, which was later split into two]

But who was Bastet, by herself, on her own? Bastet was, as I said, the kind and benevolent aspect of the light of the sun. Bastet was the embodiment of sweetness, gentleness and tenderness. People depicted her as calm, peaceful and loving. She was a benevolent and very popular deity associated, just like Hathor, with music and dancing – her rites in Bubastis included musical ceremonies, religious dances and ritualized sex. The festivals of Bastet also included a LOT of alcohol – which was justified by the need to prevent Bastet from becoming Sekhmet, putting the burning lioness to sleep by making her drunk. Bastet also embodied maternal love: she was often depicted taking care of kittens, either breast-feeding them, or keeping them in a basket. She was a goddess prayed to at every birth, so that she would protect the newborn. In fact, Egyptians had the habit of making a small cut in the inside of the elbow of the baby, and place in it a few drops of cat blood – this was to make sure the child would attract the favors of Bastet. Keeper of peace, protectress of the house, Bastet was also believed to prevent the spreading of contagious diseases, and to protect humans from evil spirits. No need to say that her cult was practiced more intensely by women, since Bast was the goddess that helped them give birth and take care of the home.

A fun fact: when the Greeks established a correspondence between their gods and the Egyptian ones, they decided that the goddess corresponding to Bast would be… Artemis! It might be surprising to choose the goddess of the hunt and the wilderness for a goddess of peace, maternity and home, but this is actually easily explained by Bast’s “primitive” form as a lioness goddess, which made the Greeks confuse her with another lion-goddess, Tefnut (who they also identified with Artemis).

[20dollarlolita]

I really enjoyed reading about your latest embroidery exploit. My mom and I recently bought an embroidery machine together. We've been on the fence about getting a magnetic hoop. I'm assuming your endless hoop is magnetic. Do you think it's worth the money to get a magnetic hoop? It seems to make repositioning easier when multi hooping. We're also having issues with hoop burn. Fortunately I'll only have to pay for half if we do get one. I'm here for all the overly detailed embroidery talk.

The mega endless hoop is a clamp hoop, but this would have worked a whole lot better if it was a magnet.

You can see how I had to fold the fabric and stabilizer to get it under the hoop here. It was quite a pain. This is because the mega endless hoop is intended for doing borders, and I'm using it at a 90 degree angle from how it's intended to be orientated.

Magnet hoops are great, because the whole issue of where you put the clamp doesn't exist. The clamp just stays on with a magnet, so no clamp needed. However, some magnetic hoops (like the ones Viking makes) assume that you're using them for quilting. They don't have enough grip to grab something thin like quilt calico, and assume you're putting a whole batting sandwich in there. If you can find one that works well with thick and thin fabric, snap it up. The DIME snap hoop monster seems to be popular at my store, because the magnets go all the way around the whole edge. On other magnetic hoops, the magnets are often several separate pieces. While this is a lot easier to hoop for endless and edge-to-edge pieces, sometimes it doesn't grip thin fabrics as well.

That said, the mega endless ALSO doesn't grip thin fabrics too well. I decided to handle this just by stacking stabilizer onto the back of the project until it decided to behave.

As for hoop burn, in almost every project except for endless, I float the fabric on top of the hoop. Most machines have a program to automatically run a line of basting stitches outside the design. So, I hoop stabilizer, then lay the fabric on the stabilizer, and then baste it down.

If the line of basting will leave holes in the fabric when it's removed, I'll break out the sticky stabilizer. This is some silk noil on top of some offbrand Wet'n'(not quite)Gone (sorta)Tacky. No hoop burn, because the hoop isn't holding the fabric. I'd like to say that the number of times that I've had to break out the sticky stabilizer instead of just using the basting line is very small.

I also do this floating method with the basting line because it really reduces puckering. It's also a lot easier to get things on straight. If I'm matching some stitching lines, I can hoop the stabilizer and then turn the fabric around all that I want, before basting it down. It's a lot easier to match stripes or something when you can freely move the fabric independently of the hoop.

Other advantages of basting line is that you can easily use a piece of fabric that's smaller than your hoop, or use something that's hard to hoop like a t-shirt. Also, running the basting line works like a corner check to ensure that the hoop won't hit anything. It gives you a preview of where the design is going to go, so you can also fix position issues before you actually commit to stitching.

I do use sticky or fusible stabilizer for endless/repositionable projects, because you have to move the hoop and the fabric together. It's such an annoyance, but I don't think re-hooped projects are meant to be anything other than annoying. If you want to save a bunch of money, you can always baste regular non-sticky stabilizer to your endless projects.

If your machine has auto presser foot up/down, it probably has a function like this where it'll sew a single basting stitch when you tap the foot pedal. If your machine has a knee lift, you can also set it to a wide zig zag and just tap the foot control a couple of times before raising the foot control and moving it.

So, if you don't want to spend $84 on real Wet'n'Gone Tacky, you can get some regular Wet'n'Gone for $19 and then spend some quality time with your machine to baste it down.

Or you can go bother your friend with a machine with a free-motion stitch regulator (mostly the Berninas with BSR), set it for 1-2 stitches per inch, and then just pull the fabric through the machine as smoothly as possible. The machine will sew big stitches across the fabric and you'll save yourself a ton of time. I'm not about to buy a Bernina just for this function, but I'll definitely borrow one at work for this function.

So yeah, the short version of that is that, if you want to do multi-hooping projects, you probably want to invest in some kind of hoop that makes adjusting the fabric easier than re-hooping over and over. If you're having hoop burn or trouble orienting a single-hoop project, try to avoid putting the fabric in the hoop.

Thanks for listening to my machine embroidery ramblings! :)

[aetheltrythh]

How I got into the Dreamling ship

When I first saw The Sandman, I thought, 'Cool, cool, it's good that Dream has a friend' because I know all too well what is it to be lonely. But I didn't read anything more into it. Then, when I started searching for fanfics, I was like 'Why on earth are there so many Dream/Hob fics?' But I ignored them and went on to search for the F/M ones. Well, there weren't that many that were good😄 (don't know what's the situation now, hopefully better). So, out of curiosity, I read Moorishflower's That I Should Wedded Be and MonstrousRegiment's The Uses of Adversity (I don't remember in which order), and I was sold :D. I just couldn't go back to looking at Dream and Hob the same way I did before. But still, it wasn't my immediate go-to when I gathered the courage to start writing smut. My first explicit fic was Dream/Calliope (awful, won't link it), my second one was Dream/Bast, and only my third was Dream/Hob. I never went back after that :D. The latest one has 23,5k words of soft-kink goodness. Funny. If you told me a year ago that I would write M/M smut... or any smut, I would be rather disbelieving (although, is it even M/M when Dream has no gender and is merely male-presenting... mostly, unless he decides for other forms...). Anyway, fuck terminology, it's easier to write than F/M, which should supposedly be closer to me, except it isn't. And when it comes to Dream, M/M feels more right to me. Dreamling is great fun, has a big potential for hurt/comfort and angst, and Hob being so old gives it so many topics to explore. I love them.

Regarding why Dreamling is so popular after the Netflix show, this post is a very good answer.

[cleverhottubmiracle]

We independently evaluate all recommended products and services. Any products or services put forward appear in no particular order. if you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. The Iron Snail The Wild History of Hemp You Never Knew About The USS Constitution, AKA Old Ironsides, is one of the most famous ships in history. Aboard that ship was 120,000 pounds of non-psychoactive cannabis rope. When Betsy Ross first sewed the American flag, she held in her hands non-psychoactive cannabis canvas. The word “canvas” comes from the word “cannabis,” AKA hemp. Porsche, one of the best car makers in the world, made a car out of hemp. The CEO of Hemp Earth flies around in a plane made of hemp. Hemp has been called “The Miracle Fiber” – the plant that will save the world. But it won’t. The Porsche was only partially made out of hemp and couldn’t be in the rain, and the CEO of Hemp Earth hasn’t finished building the hemp plane in over eight years and can’t raise the funds to finish it. And now he’s talking about building a hemp spaceship. So why is Patagonia investing so heavily in hemp? Why is everyone screaming about hemp t-shirts? After doing some reading online, it turns out the topic of hemp is a very sticky, icky topic, and I just want to let you know that I’m trying to separate hemp from that other plant that is also hemp. I’m trying to look at hemp from an incredibly nerdy lens. Is it actually important to the world? Does it matter at all? And then that should be fine. The Iron Snail Fun fact: besides the shoes that I’m wearing, which are from the company that makes the very famous anti-poaching boots, Jim Green, and my Bradley Mountain backpack, I am covered in 100% hemp – all Patagonia hemp.   The Problem With How We Talk About Hemp The Iron Snail The first thing you need to know before we can actually even get into the discussion is that hemp is never put up against anything correctly. Everything is miscategorized with hemp. Hemp fiber and clothes should not be compared to cotton. Hemp-crete should not be compared to concrete – everything is messed up because that’s not essentially what hemp is. So, let’s talk about cotton, and then I’ll tell you why everything is messed up. Why Cotton Became King The Iron Snail There are many fascinating reasons why cotton is the most popular textile on Earth – everything is made out of cotton. The big thing is that cotton is the perfect blend of everything: it’s strong enough, it’s soft enough, it can be made into really tough workwear like duck canvas or jeans or twills and stuff like that, or it can be made into something very very delicate like cotton gauze. So it can basically do everything. The Iron Snail There’s also a ton of other reasons why cotton got so popular. It was the first fiber and then fabric to get industrialized. It was a huge export for the U.S. and Britain. There was nothing holding cotton back, and there wasn’t anything holding hemp back for a very long time. It was required in the U.S. that every farmer grow some hemp in certain areas, and then people were obviously like, “Maybe this plant does something else.” Understanding Hemp vs Cotton The Iron Snail But that’s not the whole story because hemp, I don’t really think, would have ever been in every single shirt that people are wearing and every single sock and every single pant. Cotton is made from seed hairs – that explains it. When hemp is a bast fiber, hemp is actually not really that closely related to cotton, but it’s related to things like jute, linen, nettle, sisal – all of those things that don’t sound that appetizing. To put it in a different way, hemp is more related to a burlap sack than cotton is related to hemp. Being a bast fiber, it has some incredible benefits, but it also has some major drawbacks. But you may be thinking, “Well, people wear linen a lot. Why don’t they wear hemp a lot?” It’s because of those incredible things that also give it a drawback. The Science Behind Hemp’s Strength The Iron Snail So, if you’re like me and you read all these things that say hemp is one of the strongest natural fibers in the world, you would probably think, “Well, what the heck is the strongest natural fiber in the world? I want that one!” You can’t have that one, neither can I, because it’s spider silk. So, no one really officially says that hemp is the second strongest, but I think that’s what it is. Hemp is also very closely related to jute, which you may be familiar with if your Birkenstocks ever came apart – there is a jute layer underneath the sole. And jute is a very, very strong material, not as strong as hemp, but it’s not something that you look at and think, “I want to wear that.” And that’s because jute is very rough and coarse. But what makes hemp and jute so strong is that since they are bast fibers, they come from the stock of the plant as opposed to the seed, and the seed only has little wispy hairs on top that don’t ever get too long. So they can’t be as strong because, as we know, the longer the fiber, the stronger it is. And with that, a lot of the time comes an added thickness, which is where you lose some comfort. The Comfort Factor: Breaking Down the Science The Iron Snail Just some guidelines to set: typically, clothing fabrics and fibers start to get irritating when they are over 20 microns thick. Some people say 24 microns, and some people say 30 microns. But 20 is kind of that area where, all of a sudden, your wool sweater is a little itchy, and it’s poking into you. Cotton typically ranges from 9 to 22 microns, linen is typically 10 to 25 microns, wool goes from 10 to 35 microns, and then you have hemp. Wool is considered the classic itchy material at 10 to 35 microns. Hemp is 10 to 50 microns, so it trends higher on average. The Iron Snail Is it just super unbearable to wear? No. Is it really even super uncomfortable? No. Do you get used to it like two seconds after you put it on? Yes. But the first time you put it on, you may be thinking, “This is not as comfortable as that other shirt I wore somewhere else, so I’ll get that other shirt.” The Real Secret: Why Patagonia Loves Hemp So then, why is Patagonia investing so heavily in making hemp t-shirts and other hemp clothing? The secret is in this Idaho potato. I am not wearing 100% hemp today. Actually, my jeans are an incredibly weird blend. I don’t even know why Patagonia used this blend, but we shall break this down into three pieces: Number one: okay, hemp is not comfortable, but it’s amazing for all of these other reasons – why isn’t it used more? Number two: why is Patagonia investing so heavily in it? Don’t forget, organic cotton wasn’t a thing until Patagonia made it a thing, invested a ton of money in it, made the infrastructure for it, and then it blew up. So, is hemp the same thing? Number three: there is a solution that can change the world in a big way, but it’s not the solution that most people propose, at least I think. The Hemp Divide: Why It’s Not Taking Over (Yet) The Iron Snail Number one: why is hemp not taking over the world? The answer is because it’s hemp. It’s an incredibly divisive plant – people either love it or they hate it. So what happens is people that love it say it’s the next miracle thing, it destroys cotton, it’s better than all this, it can power our cars, we can make planes out of it. And then the other side says, “No, you just want hemp for a different reason.” So then it kind of goes kaput, and since it’s so divisive, you basically can’t get in the middle. Hemp has to destroy everything for some people to be right, and it has to be useless for other people to be right. So, both angles push it towards the extreme when, in reality, hemp is kind of right in the middle. Cotton is cheaper and softer, and people like to wear it more. Then you have jute that handles kind of the industrial rope end of things, just not quite as strong. Hemp plastic is not as structurally sound as regular plastic, hemp-crete is not as strong as concrete – there’s a whole mess. When in reality, hemp is great and amazing and the best of the best for some things, but not everything. The Future of Hemp: It’s All About Blends The Iron Snail So why is Patagonia using hemp at all? What is it good for? Blends, baby, blends! Hemp is good for everything, but not if you take everything else away. But if you add in hemp and you mix it into the pot, everything changes. If you have hemp in a shirt, the shirt is more durable and abrasion-resistant. If you add hemp to plastic so that it’s 25% hemp plastic, you reduce plastic usage by 25%. Then, if you look at base layers, for example, merino was great because it keeps your temperature regulated really well, but you need to add nylon or polyester so it doesn’t rip and get destroyed – it stays better for a longer amount of time. You can replace those synthetic fibers with hemp. You can also add hemp to socks, so your socks will last way, way longer. By using hemp in different ways, we can reduce a lot of things, all while growing things in a more sustainable way and all of that, and then hemp becomes very, very powerful. Patagonia’s Long Game The Iron Snail Sorry, I forgot the most important part of this article: Patagonia is in the stage where they’re just trying to build infrastructure and get farmers growing hemp in the U.S., getting machines to process this hemp. Also, when we first started processing cotton way, way, way back when, it wasn’t the same cotton that we know now – we didn’t have different staple lengths and genetically engineered cotton plants that were super long and soft and thin. So over time, what we should see is a refinement in hemp where it does get softer possibly, it does get cheaper, it’s way easier to process, and it’s used in a lot more things. So boom – it’s already way better. Patagonia is the beast that is going to make all the processing and growing and XYZ way, way easier, and it could theoretically become the fabric of the future. There are a lot of factors that go into play, but that is why Patagonia is investing so heavily in it. Obviously, they think there’s going to be a big return somehow, in some way. So that’s why. Watch This Review The Potato Philosophy: A Final Thought The Iron Snail In closing, hemp t-shirts are a lot like food, specifically the potato. Many people think a potato is the healthiest food in the world, and it just may be, but this weird thing happens if you eat only potatoes and nothing else, you die. So you need to eat other things that are also very good for you. I’m aware that a potato was the worst example that I could have picked because you can survive exclusively on potatoes if you also drink milk. Anywho, it’s time to cook this bad boy up for dinner. Goodbye! This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here. The Iron Snail is a men’s fashion vlog (and now article series!) starring a young man named Michael and featuring a snail no bigger than a quarter. The two are set on taking over the world of fashion by creating a clothing line to end all clothing lines. Until then, we’re here to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the best clothing out there, from the highest quality raw denim jeans to the warmest jackets to the sturdiest boots…the Iron Snail has got you covered. Source link