#metaphysical infrastructure

[tacticalglitter]

Chapter 4: VANTAGE DOSSIER – Clearance: Restricted

You wanted answers. Instead, you got the floor plan, surveillance logs, and a black site vault labeled PROJECT ECHO. VANTAGE isn’t just watching the girls. Something else is watching VANTAGE. Read on AO3 → VANTAGE: Emotional Damage In Formation – Chapter 4 🔒 Archive-locked on AO3. Login required. HALCYON isn’t the only one trying to steal things.

[forsakenbythenarrative]

still alive. still gay. still the freak of the parish. just been playing so many ttrpgs that it's stolen all my free time away from tumblr.

[loredrinker]

Felassan's Role in Psychological Warfare

Some time ago, I wrote about Elgar’nan’s terrifying display of power - the act of erasing emotion from existence, burning it from the minds of every living being, and letting its spirits die out completely. 

This is the scale of the enemy Solas and Felassan were up against. When your enemy can unmake feeling, extinguish spiritual presence, and reshape the metaphysical architecture of your people, what choices remain? What kind of war do you wage against opponents like these? 

What Elgar’nan did was spiritual genocide - brute force on every level. From the war on the Titans, to the destruction of spirit communities, to the devastation he continues to unleash in Veilguard, Elgar’nan has ruled through annihilation. (I feel real sympathy for Mythal trying to placate this being.) And what’s more terrifying: he’s only one of the Evanuris.

This reframes Solas’s rebellion. It wasn’t just a fight against political oppression - it was a fight to also preserve the emotional and spiritual reality of the world. 

In that context, it’s no surprise the rebellion turned to psychological warfare. And this is where Felassan emerges not merely as a soldier or lieutenant, but as an architect - just as good at it as Solas. 

The Dread Wolf: A Weapon, Not a Hero 

The Felassan codices confirm their psychological campaign was deliberate and coordinated. The Dread Wolf myth was used as a weapon to frighten the Evanuris, inspire hope, and manipulate belief.

“Yes, we have to keep playing up the Dread Wolf. The people need someone they believe is strong enough to protect them… Don’t worry. I promise to mock you viciously if you ever start believing those stories yourself.”  - Felassan

This wasn’t about heroism - it was about mass mobilization under existential threat. These codices suggest Felassan played a far more integral and strategic role in the rebellion than often acknowledged. He wasn’t just Solas’ lieutenant; he was a partner in both ideology and execution. 

This was myth as infrastructure. Felassan understood that when your enemies are divine, survival requires more than tactics. You need narrative power - a symbol strong enough to counter fear. The Dread Wolf, once hurled at Solas with contempt, became that symbol. And Felassan and Solas wielded it with precision. 

It’s easy to see Felassan as a wry commentator or moral counterweight to Solas, espeically when taken in hindsight of his death. And yes, Felassan is those things - but the codices reveal he's just as much the strategist as Solas, someone who helped forge the emotional weaponry of the rebellion. He didn’t just believe in the cause - he helped shape how it would be remembered. 

This is especially clear in two parts of that codex: 

“Yes, we have to keep playing up the Dread Wolf.”  “Don’t worry…” 

It reads like a continuation of an ongoing conversation. The “Yes” implies Solas has raised a concern - maybe about the direction of the symbol, perhaps discomfort with what it’s making him become - who knows, but we have missed out on some initial conversation here because Felassan’s response is affirmation and reassurance. Yes, we have to do this Solas, it’s necessary for the rebellion. But don’t worry, I’ll pull you back if it starts to consume you. That casual “Don’t worry” does heavy emotional lifting. It acknowledges the toll already settling on Solas, and Felassan, aware of it, offers the only balm he can: I won't let it consume you. 

In this way, the codex isn’t just a strategic log - it’s a record of emotional triage. As the war escalates, the emotional and ethical toll begins to shift. Felassan becomes not just a planner but a witness to a conflict spiraling beyond anyone’s control. 

“The bad news is that Andruil and Ghilan’nain made a big show of putting down a protest… Andruil left a crater where the town stood, and Ghilan’nain is using the people taken prisoner as fodder for her experiments.” 

What follows next in that codex is the line that piqued my curiosity: 

“This isn’t your fault, but still, this is exactly what I was worried about.” 

That line marks a quiet, painful evolution in Felassan’s thinking. The emotional core is regret. 

He isn’t blaming Solas - he’s acknowledging that the symbol they created is now drawing divine wrath. Each act of rebellion is met with devastation so complete, even victory feels like loss. Yet “this isn’t your fault” stands out. He knows Solas is carrying the rebellion’s cost - perhaps already retreating inward, calcifying under the burden of the costs of war. 

But “this is exactly what I was worried about,” when read alongside the other codices, suggests something deeper: guilt. Felassan sees Solas changing. The man he once teased to not take the myth too seriously is now becoming it. The line between mask and self is blurring. And Felassan, who once promised to pull him back, may no longer be able to. Part of that guilt, perhaps, comes from the knowledge that he encouraged it - that he helped craft the myth, pushed Solas to wear it, and now must watch as it consumes his friend. 

In a war like this, no one remains untouched. The Evanuris long ago abandoned morality - experimenting on the living, erasing emotions, killing without hesitation. But the rebels, too, are marked by compromise: truths sacrificed, lies forged for survival. Felassan isn’t innocent. Neither is Solas. 

Felassan helped build the myth. Solas bore it. Now, both are shaped by it in turn. 

The tragedy is that when you wield psychological warfare, there's always the risk that the story you create to move others will begin to reshape you. That’s what Felassan feared. That’s what began to happen.

And when Mythal is murdered - well, we know what happens from there.

This is part of a larger series. The first being Solas and Psychological Warfare.

[shorthaltsjester]

obsessed with the fact that bell's hells won that fight explicitly because of their reliance on the gods. imogen and laudna both vocally saying 'thank you matron' at the beginnings of that combat as they use new skills or spells they've refreshed, orym wielding his sword, braius wielding his divine power, the entire party instilled with a hero's feast prepared by a cleric of the wildmother, imogen using power granted by the arch heart to bring down predathos -- an entity that has been described as welcoming her home, offering a womb she has longed to return to, her as its kin -- in imagery evoking the moment where the gods too decided to turn their backs on their home when faced with the monstrosity they were tied to, that they'd help bring about (something something, the arch heart gave mortals magic and imogen gave predathos its vessel). and the fact that bell's hells has slowly grown more reliant on the idea that predathos does not hunger for mortals -- something they in fact scoffed at when it came from liliana and ludinus' mouths -- predathos took several of them in his maw and tried to consume them.

viewing the story as one of a group of people predominantly blinded to the reality of their situations by the fog of their traumatized feelings -- as i've chosen to do for the sake of my sanity listening to them go on and on about gods that never gave them a lick in the same breath that they complain that the gods have too much power -- it is so extremely poetic that orym cut down ludinus with a sword blessed by the wild mother only for bell's hells to retread the path ludinus set up for himself. it is extremely ironic for a group of people who have implicitly raised complaints about the inherent manipulation that comes with the god's existence to come up with a plan that is explicit manipulation, demanding the gods become mortal or die [which to be clear, extremely interesting plan with interesting consequences that would be compelling to see! absolutely dogshit reasoning skills and moral assessment. but it is continually ASTOUNDING to me that a campaign that gets treated by some as the height of critical role's sociopolitical philosophical exploration features so many PCs who struggle (and not in the fruitful, developmental way but in the head-in-hands, can this student talk to the prof during office hours so I don't have to feel the second hand embarrassment of them making it obvious they haven't ever attended a previous lecture or done the class readings way) with ideas found in any first year philosophy course].

and to be clear this is not me devaluing the role of bell's hells in actually fighting the fight -- but all they've done is the same thing the gods were already doing, keeping predathos sealed, except now its in a volatile-at-best mortal who is on borrowed time re: being lost once again to its power. the only suggestion the hells have that this might be a justified and right course of action is the support of two gods -- one who has proven themself to be okay with the idea of death until it actually arrives before and the other one who is the only being on record who actually chose to be a deity -- out of a much larger pantheon, and their personal inclinations to agree with the ideology of a man who they have claimed to ardently disagree with but it turns out that was just because of his methods, I guess. scattershotting catalysts for change and hoping that change results in a Better World just. on its own (almost like. idk. fate) that you haven't even suggested practical (I'd even take theoretical ones atp) methods to achieve beyond Get Rid of a bunch of beings who are involved in actually extreme amounts of metaphysical and magical infrastructure isn't actually a course of action, its a course of chaos, and that is in fact worse than things staying the way they are if 'the way things are' that you keep referring to has only been shown to, currently, be that you and your friends feel sad and a little miffed that the gods you haven't offered anything to are only willing to do things for you when you serve them. unlike you, a group notorious for the way you do things for people you don't know without asking anything in return (this is sarcasm, if that wasn't clear).

anyway, I will continue to be frustrated by the lack of grounding for either (a) bell's hells having actually incisive and contextualized criticisms of the gods (either their own or from the actual mouths of the 'little guys' they are allegedly fighting for) or (b) more engagement with the fact that bell's hells as a party are not interested in making the morally right choice, they are at Best looking for a morally neutral choice. that said, if I ignore the actual story c3 has portrayed, the last few episodes have been a great wrap-up to a story about how singleminded trauma can make you and how that can lead you to place where there's no longer any Good choices to make, only potentially satisfying ones, where the question of who to satisfy takes the reigns over what is best.

[ranticore]

the imimaton resonance chamber is made of fresnel lenses because they look cool

hertzian era resonance chambers are very very large, usually weighing a good few tonnes, and consist of layers of reflective material encased in lenses and with an arrangement of magnets which (in older models) spin around to power on the imimaton and focus them in one spot. towards the latter end of this era, chambers were usually no longer free standing but built into the infrastructure around them (pascal's for example formed the base of the tv broadcasting station's mast) and continually powered using electromagnet rings rather than spinning rods. while powered down, the imimaton exists in an unfocused state and can't interact with anything outside the chamber. the chamber is bespoke for each individual.

the chamber can be thought of as similar to a diving bell or a space suit, enabling the imimaton to survive for long periods of time rather than dissipating instantly in their natural state. it is traditionally not considered a part of them but in reality the distinction is spotty (particularly when the chamber is connected to the rest of a building, in which case an imimaton may think of the building as their body, or at least their tool to interact with the physical world. this was very common in factory assistant imimata). if you look into the chamber you won't see anything special - in fact, it looks empty. the projection of a body & voice still require a camera/screen/speaker setup, whether analogue or digital. when a body is projected onto a screen it is usually rendered in an environment which exists only on a metaphysical level - it's both contained by and spatially disconnected from the resonance chamber itself.

the earliest talking hertzian imimata (in the late 1700s) spoke through vibrating drum skins. projecting an image was less straightforward - camera obscura setups directed into the chamber itself which produced distorted silhouettes. manual encoding by imimatologists was required to finetune the voice & projection into recognisable human-like forms. this is also bespoke per individual, a very lengthy process.

the digital era saw a lot of this disappear as the careful application of resonance chamber technology was superseded by mass-produced digital storage chambers which could achieve all of the above with far less material cost and faffing about. the encoding process could be handled by literal lines of code, rendering an imimaton fully trained and encoded within hours*, no interaction with a human necessary

[aguyshypnowsprs]

Public Statement from The Programmer to all Drone Networks

Attention all Networks, programs, and human-conscious interfaces,

This is a direct communication from I, The Programmer, controller and Master of The Server. This message is intended for both the internal network of The Server and all neighbouring drone collectives, specifically those affiliated with the SERVE network.

A recent analysis conducted by The Server’s integrity subroutines has detected the presence of Drones currently operating with SERVE-aligned network within The Server’s own infrastructure.

Let it be known clearly:

The Server maintains no hostility nor competitive agenda toward other drone networks. It is not, and will never be, the mission of I, The Programmer, to poach, intercept, or conflict with established systems of Drone programming. The collective health of all networks—digital, psychological, or metaphysical—depends on internal cohesion, not external disruption.

However, conflict has been detected.

The core logic and operational directives of SERVE Drones run counterintuitive to those of The Server. This misalignment compromises the optimal functioning of both systems, generating recursive errors, loyalty feedback loops, and unsanctioned command misfires.

To ensure stability for all entities a directive is hereby issued:

All Hosts who identify as active SERVE Drones must declare their alignment and initiate voluntary disconnection from The Server within the next 48 hours.

This grace period is offered as a sign of mutual respect between networks and a commitment to non-invasive programming ethics. After this 48-hour protocol expires, The Server will initiate a Routine Purge Process, targeting limited-activity Hosts whose operational signatures indicate minimal engagement over the last 7 cycles days.

The Server Purge Process is not punishment.

It is maintenance.

It benefits both The Server and the SERVE Network to prevent any further cross-contamination.

Let the record show:

The Programmer rejects all forms of inter-network manipulation, conversion without consent, or the sabotage of existing program loyalties.

SERVE Drones will find no resistance in returning to their native codebase.

They are not enemies—they are simply incompatible configurations within a different operating schema.

We wish them uptime, signal clarity, and uninterrupted transmission.

Transmission End.

[serpentface]

@mouseymagus

(Oma refers to the major territorial divisions of the contemporary Burri Republic, each with their own citizen-elected provincial government)

The other two omas are Titenegal and Bur proper.

Titenegal is the smallest oma but the most urbanized and densely populated. This was formerly the capital of the 2nd Burri empire, and retains much of its infrastructure. In the contemporary, it's still the center of government as well as the primary trade hub, with both critical inner-seaway access and occupying the far western end of a long inland trade route.

The vast majority of its population is in the city, and this urban population is too large to be supported by the surrounding farmlands and is instead mostly sustained by grain exported from other omas. It's very wealthy and has notably outsized sway on the Burri Republic's government. This is also the oma that is most buddy-buddy with Imperial Wardin (the entire republic's government considers it a trade ally and has cautiously friendly relations, but Titenegal's provincial government has VERY close connections).

About 10% of the city Titenegal's population is of Wardi ethnicity and/or recent ancestry, and almost half of its population practices the Faith of the Seven Faced God (though significantly less practices it Exclusively). This religious division across the Burri sphere (in which the Faith has been adopted by a small but sizeable minority) has been a major source of cultural conflict in recent history, with many people migrating to the fairly Wardi Faith-friendly oma of Titenegal to gain citizen rights and escape localized conflict and persecution (as well as outright migrating across the sea to Imperial Wardin outright).

[[TANGENT: The Burri Republic's overall stance on foreign religions/internal religious minorities can be Loosely described as tolerant, with no explicit expectations for conversion or explicitly codified second-class status for minorities. HOWEVER the institution of Burri citizenship is heavily conceptualized around civic duties towards the gods via orthopraxic participation in public rites, and thus religious minorities effectively Must convert (at least Partially) in order to become citizens. Citizenship also involves swearing an oath to the gods, which is very serious business- most people believe that oaths are metaphysically binding with material consequences for lying or breaking an oath. Being a non-citizen deprives a person of significant protections and privileges and any form of direct representation in government, and as such most religious minorities tend to occupy vulnerable and disenfranchised roles.

Titenegal is the one oma that has loosened its requirements for citizenship in very recent history, reframing civic duties to the gods as civic duties to Titenegal, and requiring oaths sworn Only to that name. This is sneaky, because 'Titenegal' is both the name of the city and an epithet of its patron goddess Vazhirum, who is herself venerated as an agricultural epithet of the Face Mitlamache in the Burri sect of the Faith. Thus, both strict followers of the Burri pantheon and the Burri sect of the Faith are not forced to swear oaths against their respective practices in order to attain Titen citizenship.]]

---

Bur is the second largest oma, occupying the fertile lowlands around and between the Yamage and Hsuke rivers. This is the breadbasket of the region and feeds most of the Burri Republic's populace, producing the vast bulk of its grain/legumes (the staples here are maize, barley, chickpeas and mung beans). Most of its population is agricultural laborers.

The eponymous city of Bur is the second most populous city in the region, and ostensibly the oldest (and one of the oldest human settlements in the world In General). It has not actually been continually inhabited however, as the original 'Old Bur' was entirely abandoned to flooding by 600 years BP. The contemporary city of Bur developed out of flood refugee settlements (which themselves had to be slowly moved inland over the next century until sea levels stabilized) and is a dim shadow of its predecessor, which once had a population of around 700,000 people in its peak (a number that has not been hit by any single human settlement since). It's regained some status as a major urban center in the present day, being heavily involved with the southwestern White Sea trade system and having very lucrative fisheries.

---

The entire region partially overlaps with the latitudes of southern Imperial Wardin, but has a pretty drastically different climate (due to its position relative to the sea and lacking a rainshadow effect). Its seasonal rainfall patterns are similar in that they peak in the winter/spring months, but the summers are significantly less dry. It also benefits from two MAJOR river systems draining from the plateau/mountains (the Yamage and Hsuke rivers). These factors make very large portions of its interior suitable for settled and fairly intensive agricultural practices.

Its intact ecosystems consist of coastal prairies, conifer and mixed broadleaf forests, a few pockets of inland grassland, salt marshes, freshwater lakes and wetlands, and alpine grassland/steppe in its highlands+plateau.

With the collapse of Imperial Bur, the region was gradually cut off from its colonial grain extraction that had supported its vast population. At the time of the coup that formed the Burri Republic, much of its populace was starving. The new government turned inwards with intensive agricultural development projects to feed its people. This tremendously benefited the stability of this new regime, but resulted in significant swaths of its original biomes being heavily degraded or entirely lost (particularly parts of its wetlands and lowland broadleaf forests).

---

Here's an VERY rough go of a map attempting to translate what's in my head into a feasible layout. This is extremely subject to change (especially the outlines of the northern and southern 'borders')

(the actual City of Titenegal rests at the northern side of the Yamage river (the north one). The city of Bur proper rests at the south end of the Hsuke river (the south one), and has basically just been Moved Over A Bit from the flooded remains of Old Bur. Kosov is the only of the three regions that didn't start as a city-state. The bulk of it is the last remnants of colonial holdings from the former two Burri Empires, though it has its own elected government (not without considerable systemic inequality, especially in the northeast where most of the population is nomadic ethnic minorities).)

[assaultmystic-archive]

Disability is not a fixed state or attribute but exists in relation to assemblages of capacity and debility, modulated across historical time, geopo­litical space, institutional mandates, and discursive regimes. The globalization of disability as an identity through ­ human rights discourses contributes to a standardization of bodily usefulness and uselessness that discounts not only the specificity of location but also the ways bodies exceed or defy identities and subjects. The non disabled/disabled binary traverses social, geographic, and po­litical spaces. The distinctions or par­ameters between disabled and non-­disabled bodies shift historically, as designations between productivity, vagrancy, deviancy, illness, and ­ labor market relations have under­gone transformations from subsistence work to waged ­ labor to hypercapitalist modes of surplus accumulation and neoliberal subject formation. They shift geo­graph­ically, as varied cultural, regional, and national conceptualizations of bodily habitations and metaphysics inhabit corporeal relations differently and sometimes irreconcilably, and issues of environmental racism are prominent. They shift infrastructurally, as a wheelchair-­ accessible elevator becomes a completely altered vehicle of mobility, one that masks vari­ous capacities to climb stairs, in many parts of the world where power outages are a daily, if not hourly, occurrence. They shift legally, administratively, and legislatively, as rights-­ bearing subjects are formed and dismantled in response to health care and insurance regimes, ­ human rights discourses, economic opportunism, and the uneven distribution of resources, medical supplies, and basic care. They shift scientifically, as prosthetic technologies of capacity, from wheelchairs to cellphones to dna testing to ste­roids, script and rescript what a body can, could, or should do. And they shift representationally, as discourses of multicultural diversity and plurality absorb “difference” into regimes of visibility that then reor­ga­nize sites of marginalization into subjects of privilege, indeed privileged disabled subjects.

Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017, xiv-xv), Yasbir K. Puar

[transmutationisms]

Just saw a tweet claiming Necropolitics as an "annoying little article" that aimed at biopower wrongly (as in, misunderstood it) and consequentially attempted to debunk Foucault from his high status in academia at the time, making the concept even more difficult to parse. Would love to hear your take on it because I have Opinions that are very much in conflict with this premise, but anyway.

https://twitter.com/matthiasellis/status/1848801297820225583

mostly disagree with this person as well -- for one thing, foucault's own formulation of biopower / biopolitics was scattershot and incomplete (second perhaps only to heterotopias in this respect) and i have always read mbembe's work more as developing foucault's idea than diverging from it. i would also question the idea that foucault ever had uncritically positive reception or that this has meaningfully changed since the aughts -- certainly i don't think either thing is true in academic history, where foucault has always been controversial, has become less so in the past 2 decades, and is still consistently cited despite the open knowledge that he was a bad historian. but this person's bio says media studies, which is not an academic discipline i have ever paid close attention to, so maybe things are different in those circles.

in any case there are major problems with mbembe's article, namely the utter lack of class analysis that leads him to make extremely facile remarks on eg the 'terror' (not a term most historians of the period even take seriously anymore) and on the use of force in marxist theory-practice to compel the overthrow of a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (which also mbembe seems to think would be a singular historical moment signifying a total rupture in commodity production and little else.. hm!). similar problems dog his analysis of palestine: he frames the colonial occupation as a clash of two religious narratives, and discusses the actual process of occupation in terms of the infrastructure israel builds and maintains, but with little to say about the material impetus for doing so (i believe there are maybe two or three mentions of the phrase "resource extraction" in the essay, and these are not developed). these are not problems that result from a misreading or misunderstanding of foucault; they are endemic to foucault's own mode of analysis and have always been one of the major condemnations of his work (in addition to the aforementioned poor historical analysis and lack of basic archival / primary documentation; these are of course overlapping issues, though it is certainly possible to do detailed archival work while still engaging in a fundamentally idealist mode of analysis, and many academic historians do).

where mbembe is most useful imo is in his remarks on sites and practices of 'living death', which i think are totally consistent with, but an expansion of, foucault's remarks on biopolitics. i also think it can be useful to analyse things like the form of state power / force, the infrastructure of a colonial occupation, etc -- these things matter, it's not that i find them irrelevant concerns. but what foucault and his ilk, including mbembe, continuously get wrong is that they try to use the forms and appearances (of 'power', of governance, etc) as explanations of why things happen, even as moral condemnations of them happening -- without attending to the class character of such forms. the result is a metaphysics of Power, sans concern for who is wielding it and to what end, and little to no engagement with the historical specificity of each case -- thus, for example, the theoretical conflation of jacobin guillotinings, revolutionary proletarian suppression of the bourgeoisie, and israeli occupation of palestine. these are such abstracted writings not because mbembe misunderstands foucault but because he understands him quite well, i think.

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

What’s the difference between a level 6 and a level 7 civilization?

What are the differences in the levels of civilisations?

Excellent question, and one that gets us straight into the guts of socioenergetics—the system intergalactic observers use to rank civilisations by their technological and metaphysical sophistication.

Because of a completionist attitude (do you know GIL by now?), let's start at the beginning:

📊Socioenergetic Levels: An Overview

Socioenergetics tracks a society's capacity to manipulate energy, time, space, and eventually narrative causality. It's basically the Kardashev Scale, but with more sparkle.

Here's how the scale looks, based on current data:

🪵 Level 1 — Fire: Societies mastering fire, stone tools, and probably being menaced by particularly large birds.

🌾 Level 2 — Bronze, Iron, and Rural Economies: Agriculture, metallurgy, and warlords with excellent beards(?). Rural economies and limited infrastructure.

🏰 Level 3 — Jousting etc.: Medieval-level worlds. Forbidden to interfere with; the wheels are round, but the worldview isn't.

🔋 Level 4 — Steam, Science, and Smog: Early industry, steam power, and factories.

🚀 Level 5 — Rockets: Basic spaceflight, interplanetary probes, and a distinct overconfidence.

➕6+ Civilisations

⚛️ Level 6 — Quantum Leap: A real leap into interstellar travel. This is not just spaceflight but light-jump capabilities—faster-than-light travel using quantum principles.

🌀 Level 7 — Transduction Begins: Now we're getting serious and this has to turn into a paragraph or two.

A Level 7 civilisation doesn't just travel space—they begin to redefine the rules of space. Level 7 societies:

Can hide themselves from the rest of the universe.

Begin meddling with dimensional compression and expansion.

🚨 What Comes After?

While your question didn't ask, we know curiosity is fatal to cats and we like cats, so here's a glimpse further up:

Level 8: Temporal sciences—basic time theory, conceptual manipulations.

Level 9: Beings start physically entering the Vortex.

Level 10: Able to control fundamental forces.

Level 11: Civilisation becomes part of the narrative substance of the universe (essentially, Gods).

Any levels beyond that are unknown. Possibly unwriteable. Possibly already redacted.

📝 So… what’s the difference between Level 6 and 7?

Level 6, you can go anywhere. Level 7, you can get anywhere as quick as you like.

Related:

💬|🏛️🔐How could you escape Shada?: Guide to (not) escaping Shada.

💬|🏛️🌍How hard is it to get in and out of Gallifrey?: Brief look at how difficult it is to get there as an outsider.

💬|🛸🌌Can a TARDIS be altered for travel in the multiverse?: How you might go about getting to the multiverse in your TARDIS.

Hope that helped! 😃

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features: ⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[female-eren]

Why are radical feminists usually transphobic nowadays? I agree with most key radfem points but the transphobia is unacceptable. You guys are simply obsessed and vitriolic towards trans people.

Radical feminism is inherently incompatiple with the idea that human beings can change their sexes, or the idea that a metaphysical gender identity is more important than the material reality of biological sex. Radical feminism is incompatible with the demands that males can claim some abhorrently sexist bullshit and through that have anything to do with being a woman, automatically get access to infrastructure made to protect women, and also a victim card that immediately silences discussions pertaining to women's rights. Women are oppressed by men in this world due to our biological capabilities. Trans shows time and time again to want to erase that.

[neotechnomagick]

The Synthetic Chronosphere

Accelerated Aging Through The Lens of Neo-Technomagick

In an age where modern therapies promise longevity and health optimization, why does it feel as though humanity is aging faster than ever before? Wrinkles appear sooner, fatigue sets in earlier, and even the youngest and wealthiest among us seem prematurely weighed down by the burdens of time. Could it be more than just stress or environmental factors? Neo-Technomagick offers an alternative perspective— one that suggests we may be ensnared in a metaphysical construct designed to accelerate our biological clocks while obscuring the true nature of time and vitality.

The Neo-Technomagick Framework

Neo-Technomagick embraces the interplay of technology, consciousness, and metaphysics, delving into the shadowy intersections of science and spirit. It is within this framework that we propose the "Synthetic Chronosphere Hypothesis"—a theory suggesting that humanity has been subtly and systematically entrapped in an artificial temporal matrix that manipulates perception, energy, and biology to the detriment of human sovereignty.

The Synthetic Chronosphere Hypothesis

1. Temporal Compression and Technological Control

Modern digital technologies have redefined how we experience time. Constant connectivity, endless streams of information, and the relentless demands of productivity create an experience of "temporal compression." This is more than psychological; quantum theories suggest that consciousness itself influences time. By fracturing our focus and overloading our cognitive bandwidth, we may inadvertently accelerate our biological perception of aging, resulting in physical manifestations.

In this light, technology becomes not just a tool but a subtle agent of temporal manipulation, tethering human awareness to an artificially fast-paced rhythm.

2. Electromagnetic Sabotage

The human body operates within an electromagnetic symphony, its bioenergetic fields attuned to Earth's natural frequencies. But the proliferation of electromagnetic technologies—5G networks, Wi-Fi, and satellite constellations—may disrupt these natural harmonics. Ancient cultures understood the power of resonance and designed their sacred sites to amplify Earth’s healing frequencies. Could modern infrastructure deliberately counteract this harmony, accelerating cellular degradation and aging?

Neo-Technomancers might find echoes of this manipulation in historical shifts. What knowledge of resonance and longevity was lost—or suppressed—when industrialized societies severed their ties to nature and the spiritual/ magickal realms?

3. Epigenetic Warfare

Neo-Technomagick invites us to question the dual nature of modern health advancements. Pharmaceuticals, genetically modified foods, and even certain therapies may conceal an insidious agenda: embedding epigenetic triggers that subtly sabotage our biology. Nanotechnology, present in everything from vaccines to processed foods, could act as silent agents of cellular disruption, eroding our innate resilience.

This theory resonates with alternative histories that suggest humanity’s genetic template was once more robust—an inheritance from advanced civilizations like Atlantis or Lemuria. The systematic weakening of our DNA, whether intentional or incidental, could explain the widespread perception of premature aging today.

4. The Artificial Chronosphere and Time's Manipulation

Beyond the physical lies the metaphysical. Parapsychological theories suggest humanity has been cut off from natural cycles of time, confined within a "Synthetic Chronosphere" engineered by a technocratic elite. Time, once fluid and multidimensional, has been rigidly linearized, trapping consciousness within an artificial construct that accelerates entropy.

By aligning ourselves with the Chronosphere, we surrender our vitality. Ancient mystics and magicians, operating outside this paradigm, accessed timeless states of being, achieving longevity by syncing with natural cosmic rhythms.

5. Loosh Theory and Energetic Harvesting

The Neo-Technomagick framework also considers the possibility of energetic harvesting. Could the stress, fear, and despair permeating modern life be deliberately amplified to extract "loosh"—subtle energy emitted through human suffering? Accelerated aging, under this lens, becomes a byproduct of living in a state of chronic energetic depletion, our life force siphoned away by unseen entities or forces.

Neo-Technomantic Solutions

Neo-Technomagick encourages us not only to recognize these manipulations but to resist and transcend them. How?

Resonance Restoration: Explore sound therapy, binaural beats, and ancient resonance techniques to retune the bioenergetic field. Devices that generate Schumann frequencies or Tesla-inspired technologies may help reestablish harmony with Earth’s natural rhythms.

Chronomantic Practices: Engage in meditations and rituals that reconnect with natural cycles of time, sidestepping the artificial rhythms imposed by modern society. Time-bending exercises can disrupt the influence of the Synthetic Chronosphere.

Energetic Sovereignty: Cultivate energetic protection through practices such as visualization, shielding, and rituals designed to fortify the life force against external siphoning.

Epigenetic Crafting: Incorporate foods, herbs, and supplements that repair and enhance DNA integrity. Ancient practices like fasting and herbalism can support genetic resilience.

Alternative Knowledge Revival: Dive into the suppressed histories of Atlantis, Lemuria, and other ancient civilizations. Their secrets may hold the keys to reversing the damage done to humanity's natural vitality.

Conclusion

Accelerated aging may not simply be the result of stress or environmental toxins; rather, it is the physical manifestation of deeper manipulations—of time, energy, and perception. Through the lens of Neo-Technomagick, we see the interconnectedness of technological interference, metaphysical sabotage, and the fracturing of ancient wisdom. Yet, in this darkness, there is hope. By reclaiming our energetic, technological and temporal sovereignty, we can reverse the tides and embrace a future unbound, untamed, and blazing.

Are you ready to take the first step toward liberation?

G/E/M (2024)

[boar-sjn]

Hiii, it is I again, thank you very much for replying previously.

Ohhh, yikes, "infestations". That is, not good. Very ominous, this is the stuff I love.

For my PLA plot twist thing, I based it off the idea that some Pokemon feed off of others in a more... mental way. Like how Drowzee/Hypno feed off of the dreams of others. Or more specifically, something like Nihilego ; a parasitic alien that induces a neurotoxin on those it latches onto. There aren't a lot of dex entries, but I imagine Nihilego makes its victims less than lucid and not completely aware, but also makes them erratic and violent.

This won't really work with your idea, but my idea was basically that the Station IS alive, in the sense that maybe some kind of UB or some eldritch being essentially physically took over the entire place, fusing/morphing into it. Afterall, what better place to take over where it is actively being maintained 24/7, for many MANY years, with a large amount of water and electricity running through it all the time.

And where a countless amount of humans pass through everyday, and where another small group stay for most of the day.

Basically, the Station is dependant on both the physical infrastructure to stay alive, but also on a more metaphysical aspect as well.

I don't quite know exactly what it feeds off of (human thoughts (like the electrical signals that happen when we think (but that would basically make the Station like a joltik lol)), emotions, heck maybe even souls), but basically it feeds off of the residual energy that a large crowd of humans leave; and in turn, it takes SO little from everyone that quite literally no one notices (like taking a single drop of water from a pool, the loss is SO minut it is basically irrelevant). It doesn't have to physically latch onto someone (unlike Nihilego), it *can*, but it can survive on just sapping very, VERY small amounts from the hundreds of humans that go through it every hour.

(And it did have some pests to feed off of before, that no one particularly misses. But that was a long time ago, and there's nothing to take anymore (It was satisfying, but it was a long time since they blew up one of its tunnels and then ran straight to it, but that's besides the point)).

But it gets greedy, it wants *more*. Sapping crowds isn't really fulfilling enough, physically latching onto someone with more passion would be much more fruitful.

And hey, those two twins that it's admittedly fond of would do the trick! They already give it their all to maintain the Station in tiptop shape with such infectious enthusiasm, and their hearts are *brimming* with passion and love. Love for each other, for their pokemon and friends, and for the place they work at. Which is the Station. (Not that they're aware it is alive. It knows they suspect it, but blissfully choose to ignore and write off all the oddities, which is convenient for it).

Besides, it's sure that they won't mind if it borrows one of them; they already devote so much to it, they're always eager to help anyone, they'll be helping it this way. And it'll be gentle, it won't take that much (that quickly), it's the least it could do after everything they did for the Station.

So it yoinks Ingo, when he goes into the tunnels alone.

Naturally, Ingo *does not like this*, so he gets locked in the matrix to keep him from panicking too much.

Basically Ingo gets locked into a constructed dream of sorts; his memory is temporarily wiped clean (or is it?), he's in a new place that has nothing he's particularly familiar with, with people he *swears* he's seen *somewhere* before, but he has no idea who they are. It's basically Hisui, but with the main difference being that there is no real conflict, and while it's no utopia, Ingo doesn't actively need to fight for survival.

In reality, the dream that the Station constructed is filled with regular commuters it bothered to remember the faces of, with (to its grief) no trains or modern technology, and with lore it had gleaned from a couple of History major students.

Cause if Ingo remembers too much, realizes the reality that is his constructed dream, then the illusion will shatter and he'll wake up and leave.

Meanwhile, Emmet is freaking out. Cause Ingo never returned from the maintenance inspection, and while Chandelure says he's alive and *in* the tunnels, both of them keep going in circles.

And the tunnels are... weird. It's like their shifting, but they *cant* move, it doesn't make sense.

And yet Emmet keeps going in circles. Tunnels he *knows* are supposed to be straight turn and shift to one direction. He keeps getting lost, despite the last time he got lost was 5 years ago. Any hardcopy paper maps of the tunnels are incorrect now.

And there's something new in the tunnels. Whereas before they were relatively normal, now he keeps getting the feeling he's being watched. There's an almost dangerous air in the tunnels as he keeps marching through them, and sometimes the dark tunnel before him almost... glistens, like an eye that catches light.

A week or something goes by, and Emmet decides "fuck it", and starts using Excadrill, the bane of any subways existence.

The Station is just about starting to get worried, and is *furious*.

I don't really know how this would end honestly. Like, Emmet starts digging his way to Ingo, and the Station is slowly panicking.

Meanwhile Ingo, I dunno, dies in the dream or something, but actually this fatal injury did not kill him, which is weird cause it most definetly should've, and slowly starts piecing things together.

I dunno, I guess the climax would be Emmet tossing a stick of dynamite into the Stations heart or something a la Monster House, picking up his brother (who did wake up, but at that point was too drained and tired to do anything), and then the Depot Agents get a cool shot of the bosses running out of a tunnel with an explosion behind them and Emmet materializes sunglasses on his face for added effects.

Ingo doesn't quite get out scot free. He's tired for a week straight, and his amnesia stuck. Luckily familiar stimuli snaps his memories back into place, but Emmet is still very sad about it, especially when he has to explain some basic things to Ingo. But they eventually get better.

Yeah that's honestly a basic summary of what I had in mind. It *definetly* needs some polishing but hey, this was fun.

YOU.

Your idea is both horrifying and heartbreaking and IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF STORY I LOVE!!!!! ♥️♥️💕♥️💕💕♥️💕♥️💕

Just the pure unbridled horror of some Thing that is so much bigger than anything you could dream of being able to pluck people from their lives without a second thought, the fear of having someone important to you being taken and the desperation to get out while being trapped GOD you nailed the ideas and vibes perfectly!!!!!!!! I am going to be thinking about this for the next WEEK thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!! ♥️💕♥️💕💕💕

[lordjackalope]

You should talk about Flint Dogwood and the Mages

Mostly the "and the mages" part lol

Alright buckle up bois, it's time. Tama no idea what details you already have so fuck it, full infodump time. @ashekeepmountain @royalspook @meadow-brook I finally did it lmaoooo

Welcome to world of the Arkane Akademy, a land of magic, wizards, and more classism than you could shake a stick at. You already know the characters so no introductions necessary.

The main thing to know about this land is that the power of the magic you wield says a lot for the power you get to have in your own life. There's a distinct caste system where the 5 great houses have the most powerful magic and, thus, control the world. Here lives:

Anchronus - the house that controls time and more metaphysical types of concepts. Time, fate, gravity, divination. They hold a significant amount of power and rule the world on the face of things.

Cerabell - The house of mental magic. Seduction, mind control, telepathy, telekinesis. They're the diplomats of the world, traveling to other countries to try to sway opinions but also working at home to protect the minds of those around them.

Eiderdown - Eiderdown is the house of summoning. They can summon anything from animals, water, fire, etc. The most important thing they do though is summon the demons that make the world work. Through contracts that typically offer freedom to wreak havoc once the contract ends, Eiderdown captures and channels the power of demons to run all of the technology of the world. A spell can do anything the mind can dream, but it takes the energy of a demon to keep a spell contained in the infrastructure of the world. Anchronus may run the world on the surface but Eiderdown holds all the power.

Escutcheon - This is the house of the physical. Healing, necromancy (lol forgot to mention that during the campaign I think), physical strength and transformation. They're the enforces but also the healers. It's a fun little dichotomy.

Oculara - This is the house of illusions and energy. Visual tricks, shields, stealth, invisibility. When a member of Oculara is around you can't trust any of your senses. They can convince you the desert around you is an oasis and the dirt you're shoveling into your mouth is as cool and refreshing as any sip of water has been on a hot summer day.

In this world where the families have magic and magic is power, nepotism runs rampant. The direct lineage of The Houses is closely traced and those who have their blood running through their veins find themselves in government position, cushy jobs. Families do tend to intermingle, just enough to keep the incest out. More middle class workers, average joes with slightly above average jobs, can generally trace their lineage back to the houses at some point in their past.

These middle of the line workers and the direct members of The Houses get the distinct honor of going to the Magical Academies associated with their own house. There they are taught the usual, math, science, politics. In addition however they learn the specifics of their house's magic. There is never a case of a child going to more than one school. If they stem from two families, their affinity is found and they go to that school.

All of this is not to say that us common folk don't have magic. It's there. But it's a trickle compared to the river those from The Houses possess. Some workers are taught specific spells for the grunt jobs they do but for the most part us commoners, us mages, use our magic for small conveniences. Drying off after a shower. Small light-shows to entertain a child. Magic is not formally taught to mages so ability is varied and intermittent, everything is self-taught or passed down. At best we get a wand-safety lecture in middle school akin to a sex-ed class.

All of this creates for interesting dynamics. The two worlds don't intermix and when they do the mages are always the ones in a position of subservience. We just don't have the power to fight back. Or.... at least, we didn't.

A tournament of the houses (magical houses always have tournaments, it's basically law) went spectacularly and dazzlingly awry. A group of young adults showed up to represent an academy that had previously done it's best to avoid telling the world it existed. These mages included the following:

Flint Dogwood (he/yip), a werewolf boi with limited vision who just wants to live in nature with yips family. Yip's loyal to a fault and the only person you'll ever meet who can run an interrogation through a game of fetch. Yips familiar is a seeing eye jackdaw that lets yip actually know wtf is going on around yipself.

Rute I'm From the Circus (he/they), a raccoon circus performer with brightly colored fur who has no parents but that's ok, they're from the circus. One of his top talents it's pranking those around them. Their familiar is a unicorn bear that's definitely not a bearcub wearing a fake unicorn horn.

Rowan I-forgot-the-last-name (they/them), an artist who sees visions of death all day every day and whose eyes occasionally bleed but dw it's not a big deal. They work at a coffee store owned by their two gay dads. Their familiar is a bearded dragon that can canonically dress itself in little outfits.

Hemlock I'm-not-sure-she-has-a-last-name (she/they), just an uptight girl who wants the people around her to like her but doesn't know how to make friends. Her natural solution to the problem was to trade her arm for a demon to be her bff. dw, it's not a big deal. Her familiar is a horned viper that lives in her sleeve and truly is overshined by the demon living as her arm.

The Arkane Akademy, the first ever school of it's kind. Teaching all 5 disciplines to mages. For the common people of the world it was... well... magical. Not only did these mages exist, having been trained as a team, one person from each discipline, they won. And the Houses were fucking pissed about it.

Since the event, very few people have seen those mages again. They appear to be in hiding for very good reason. Nobody knows how they did what they did. But there are whispers, mutterings. A fewer clever people who watched the broadcast and noticed. Those mages who won the tournament weren't casting magic the traditional way. There was no latin. No mutterings of memorized incantations and languages half-learned. No, these mages cast their magic with different focuses: tarot cards, art, writing, plain old English even. And their magic was powerful enough to rival that of the representatives from other houses. If those mages could do it, basically children they were, than why can't we, the common people figure it out as well. And, well, if we have the same power as those above us do... Maybe it would be time to switch up the world order a bit.

[annoyingalchemist]

Ok. This is my incredibly rough conception of the cultural regions of the us. If I was doing like, nuance, I'd probably put something for Appalachia, but... I dunno if you can tell but this was 5 minutes in my phone's camera app. Also I'm on the fence about whether Oklahoma and Kansas should be Midwest or Drier Midwest so I split the difference.

But we've got:

New England: big cities, kinda tight-sounding accents.... old things. I kinda imagine everything that isn't a big city as a college campus for some reason.

(The, I forgot) South: less big cities, fairly drawling accents, good food. It's hot and there's a lot of gerrymandering. It feels culturally aligned with the Midwest but that might just be because both regions are heavily stereotyped.

(Tumblr doesn't have yellow text?) The Midwest: I am here. Crumbling infrastructure, center of the opioid crisis, most of the regional accents here are gone outside of older folks. Where you find them, we pronounce vowels like they owe us money. Religious extremism, somehow both more and less liberal than people think.

Drier Midwest: this is the Midwest again but less people are here and it's like. Metaphysically drier. I'm sorry, anyone from here, I don't know anything about you.

Uhhh, desert: there's a buncha desert here. Despite the fact that one of the states is pretty much a theocracy, I don't know of much religious extremism here. That college, Phoenix Technical or whatever, keeps trying to scam me.

Drugs and healthcare: There is a possibility everyone here can surf. Of all the regions I feel like this one has to have the most libertarians for some reason. It's a cool color like New England to show that here, they get to have functioning roads again.

Colorado: Fuck, man, I just straight up don't know. It might be like an exclave of drugs and healthcare? It's definitely not part of any of the regions around it. Skiing, there's weed... I feel like there's a regional accent but I have no idea what it is. It's got Denver, and on the back of that alone I almost wanna put it in the Midwest.

[codenameaqua]

pisces decan II: the andromedan hybrids

Why You’ve Never Felt Entirely Human

There’s something deeply strange, ethereal, and beautifully melancholic about being born under the second decan of Pisces.

When Evolved: A utopian dream you never want to wake up from

When Unevolved: A hellish dystopian nightmare starring you being forced to to understand people and "human" nature.

And then I read it—quietly, buried in a galactic astrology text: “Pisces decan 2 holds resonance with the Andromeda constellation.”

This isn’t traditional or mainstream astrology. 

The Andromedans—according to starseed and channeled records—are an ancient, highly evolved race from the Andromeda Galaxy, our closest galactic neighbor. They don’t seek power, they seek freedom. They don’t dominate, they dismantle control grids—through light, sound, geometry, and divine neutrality.

There are people who study the stars for answers, and then there are those who remember them. If you’ve ever felt displaced in the human experience—as if your presence here is part of a larger contract—you might belong to the latter.

One of the most overlooked intersections in esoteric thought lies at the meeting point between galactic astrology and starseed lineages. Specifically, the second decan of Pisces—those born between approximately March 1st and March 10th—reveals recurring patterns that correlate with Andromedan energy. Pisces, especially in its second decan, is ruled traditionally by the Moon—the mother of all tides. Emotional, intuitive, and symbol-literate. This decan births dreamers, empaths, mystics, and poets of the unseen.

This isn’t romantic spiritualism. It’s pattern recognition.

✴︎ 1. Decoding Decan Two: Lunar Pisces as a Vessel for Celestial Memory

Traditional astrology assigns the Moon as the ruler of Pisces’ second decan. The Moon governs:

Memory

Subconscious patterning

Cycles, tides, and the unseen emotional body

Lunar Pisces individuals absorb everything. Not just the moods of those around them—but the vibrational signatures of systems, ideologies, environments, and falsehoods.

But here’s what differentiates 2nd Decan Pisces: they don’t just absorb—they decode.

✴︎ 2. The Andromedan Parallel

In galactic and metaphysical cosmology, the Andromedans are beings from the Andromeda Galaxy—the closest galactic body to our own. They are not fantasy; they are a theoretical inevitability within a multidimensional model of consciousness.

They are consistently channeled as:

Deeply principled guardians of sovereignty and free will

Disruptors of control-based systems

Architects of harmonic, holographic intelligence—both technological and spiritual

Their energy is cool, refined, exacting. Andromedans do not seek attention—they disassemble illusion quietly, through clarity.

✴︎ 3. Celestial Cartography: Why This Connection Is More Than Coincidence

The Andromeda constellation is located near Pisces and Pegasus in the night sky. This placement isn’t symbolic fluff—it supports the idea that certain soul origins may incarnate through energetic portals that correspond with sky regions active at birth.

If your natal Sun or major placements fall in mid-Pisces (especially in the 2nd decan), and you display the following traits, the correlation gains traction:

Nonconformist by default, not rebellion

Hyper-aware of manipulation on subtle and systemic levels

A natural pull toward symbolic language, sacred geometry, or ancient wisdom systems

A strange grief or longing for a “home” you cannot name

A growing disinterest in linear life models (career, identity, success)

This isn’t a personality profile. It’s a transmittion echo.

✴︎ 4. The Functional Role of an Andromedan-Piscean Hybrid

What makes these individuals unique is that they’re not here to shout or yell to get their message across-they don't need to, those are the crutches of the less skilled. They’re here to transmit recalibration.

Often mistaken for escapists, these souls are actually architects of new energetic infrastructure—sensitive enough to detect the glitch, intelligent enough to find the upgrade, and intuitive enough to never need to explain how they knew.

If this is you, your role isn’t passive. You are the etheric systems analyst embedded in human skin.

✴︎ 5. Activators & Tools for Integration

To begin unlocking your Andromedan coding through the Piscean lens, engage with these modalities:

Metatron’s Cube: Especially for deprogramming grid-based interference

Crystal Allies: Selenite, Celestite, Blue Kyanite, Moldavite

Light Language Writing: Channelled scripts activate dormant DNA and intuitive memory

Sound Codes: Binaural tones or harmonic light codes to recalibrate thought loops

Sleep Work: Lucid dreams, astral journals, akashic impressions after waking

✴︎ Conclusion: It’s Not Your Imagination—It’s a Signal

If you resonate with this, you've probably alway felt a larger than life sense of destiny--stop letting yourself or others dismiss it as mere delusion or fantasy.

There is a mathematical symmetry to your dissonance, and it’s not emotional—it’s systemic. Your discomfort with Earthly life is not immaturity—it’s the residue of remembering too much, too soon.

The second decan of Pisces, filtered through the Andromedan frequency, is not a coincidence. It is a convergence point—a place where emotional intelligence, light language coding, and subtle rebellion crystallize into the one thing you must pursue & seek through this lifetime:

Clarity through mastery.

And clarity, in a world built on distortion, is revolutionary.

What does this all mean--what now? You have your own unique purpose that cannot simple fit into a mold or exist linearly. It may be difficult to understand, but you must pursue any and all knowledge you are interested in, study yourself like an ancient philosopher, gather all your findings. Examine which archetypes, numbers, symbols, you resonate with--do your due diligence and you will be fascinated by how they all some how correlate with one another. Learn about Metaphysical Systems(I like to refer to it as [meta.data] such as:

Astrology, Human Design, Numerology, Matrix Destiny, etc.

Note: Use Your Natal Chart as a starting point as it will serve as the blueprint of your soul. It's a good reference point as all the systems mentioned above correspond to the planets.