#Doctor Who Apocrypha

[doctornolonger]

The Killer Cats of Gin-Seng

In Survival, the last regular serial of Classic Doctor Who, the Doctor and Ace visit a planet of humanoid cats called ���Cheetah People”. The Cheetah People are highly telepathic: they can mentally control and inhabit their pet cats, and they can even teleport between planets. Most notably, one of them is played by Lisa Barrowman, better known as Bernice Summerfield.

But this wasn’t actually the first time that humanoid cats had been set to appear in Doctor Who. In 1977, script editor Anthony Read commissioned his former collaborator David Weir to write the Season 15 finale, a four-part serial set on Gallifrey. The request was to explore society outside the Capitol with an emphasis on morality, a theme which Weir had written well in the past. So he pitched a story about Gallifreyan civilization of humanoid cats.

The Gallifreyan cat-people would have mirrored real-world cats’ dual penchant for both sophistication and savagery: they would appear advanced and civilized until the Doctor wound up in one of their elaborate gladiatorial displays! Weir delivered his scripts on time, and production proceeded to the point that Dee Robson designed costumes for the cat actors.

Ultimately the story was cancelled: Weir, by all accounts an excellent screenwriter, dramatically overestimated the show’s VFX capabilities and budget. But executive producer Graham Williams later mentioned the idea at a fan convention, so it became well-known in fandom (albeit under the false name The Killer Cats of Geng Singh). As a result, when Survival finally brought cat people to screens, fans naturally canonwelded the two.

One of these fans was Adrian Middleton, editor of the Apocrypha fanzine. Here’s how Apocrypha issue 1 covered the cats:

Apocrypha on the Killer Cats

THE GIANT CATS     -16,000,000

The first intelligent mammalians on Gallifrey evolved from its version of the sabre-toothed Tiger. These giant cats developed a rudimentary form of empathic communication, which allowed them to influence the actions of their prey.

Over an extended period of time, the cats developed a finer telepathic ability, allowing them to actually control other species. This became a necessity as feline culture grew, as their physiological form prevented the use of tools to build or write with. Thus, in spite of their intelligence, the cats could not establish a true civilisation without anthropoid assistance.

FELINOID CIVILISATION     -14,000,000

Early Gallifreyan hominids soon became the tools of feline culture. The first buildings on the planet were built by hominids but designed by cats, taking the form of vast stone arenas, in which the cats would use lesser species for sport - hunting and killing for pleasure rather than survival.

HOMINIDS     -14,000,000/-13,980,000

Forced to live alongside saurian and feline predators, Gallifrey's first hominid tribes evolved as creatures of guile and stealth. Communities were established using primitive communications. These hominids were the cave-people, the tree-people, and the river-people.

THE FALL OF THE GIANT CATS     -13,980,000

The hominid tribes had at first been easy prey for the cats, easily manipulated as a supply of muscle and food. Ultimately, however, the development of feline culture accelerated the development of hominid culture. Being made to use their hands and having the telepathic parts of their minds manipulated awakened a new sense of purpose within them. Seeing the cats as their slavers, they rebelled, exposing the cats to a coup so bloody that the species was all but wiped from the face of the planet.

THE LEGEND OF THE VANISHING CATS     -13,800,000

It is rumoured that, after their defeat by the hominids, the giant cats fled to the mountains, where they hoped to restore their numbers (perhaps in an effort to restore their power over the hominids). Often hunting parties would venture into these mountains, bringing back the occasional cat. It seemed that the mental strength of the hominids had come to match their feline contemporaries.

Other psychic powers were attributed to the cats, including the power of teleportation. In Gallifrey's southern hemisphere, atop one of its highest mountains, there stands a crudely erected stone circle. Gallifreyan archaeologists determined that this was built by the cats themselves. Legend states that the giant cats emigrated by mass teleportation to another worlds. Few giant cats were seen from this time on, and those that did appear bore no telepathic powers. However, smaller domestic cats, or Kitlings, retained this ability.

WHY LINK THE KITLINGS FROM 'SURVIVAL' WITH THE KILLER CATS OF GALLIFREY?

The 'cat' theme is one that has been expanded on greatly in recent years. Colin Baker's cat motif and 'I am the cat that walks alone' slogan, followed by Eric Saward's novelisation of 'Slipback', set a pace followed by 'Survival' and the 'Cat's Cradle' trilogy.

Upon learning about 'The Killer Cats of Ginseng' by David Weir, everything seemed to fit into place. Cats can't exist everywhere in the universe, they have to come from somewhere - we have Earth cats, and Gallifrey has telepathic or empathic cats, just like the Kitlings.

Commentary

Since the 90s, a few stories have referenced the killer cats idea. Gary Russell’s VMA Invasion of the Cat-People mentions “mercenaries of Gin-Seng” alongside the Cheetah People in a list of felinoid species (hence the “canonical” spelling); there’s a similar offhand mention in Big Finish’s Erasure. But there’s only been one actual appearance of one of the cats: Daniel O’Mahony’s Faction Paradox short story “The Return of the King” (pdf).

“The Return of the King” is a prelude to the author’s 2008 novel Newtons Sleep. In that book there’s a glimpse of “the nocturnal delegations of the wild things, whose sharp bright teeth and claws gleamed in the dark of their robes.” The prelude elaborates,

[Time Lord Thessalia’s] oracle stays at the window, seething playfully below his hood. He has fiercely intelligent eyes, neither as sharp nor as bright as his scar. His mouth is a succulent white smile in a lightless face. His people have nothing but contempt for the rituals of the Great Houses. She’s little better than prey to him, a bloodless snack for his long teeth and hungry mind. He breathes, honeyed air purring out of the cavities of his body.

A killer cat kept as a Time Lord’s personal oracle … as @rassilon-imprimatur​ once noted, a funny recontextualization of The Mark of the Rani’s reference to the Lord President’s “pet cat”!

This was my first exposure to the killer cats, so I always took it for granted that they’d always had psychic or oracular abilities. But in fact, as best as I can tell, there was zero hint of this in the original serial. I tracked down every published description of the story, and they all amount to the same few repeated bits of information: Gallifrey, humanoid cats, and a gladiatorial arena. Richard Bignell ultimately told me, “No summary of Killers of the Dark exists. Even David Weir couldn’t recall anything about it when I spoke to him.”

So when “The Return of the King” features an oracular cat-man, it’s not just a reference to the unmade Classic serial. It’s a reference to fan interpretations like Middleton’s which canonweld that serial with the psychic Cheetah People.

And in some ways, it seems to be referencing Middleton’s version specifically! In “The Return of the King”, the above quoted memory is interrupted by commentary:

Your first oracle? ‘My last.’ You think? But his kind were vanishing from the world. ‘They were escaping the War. They could see it coming.’

Compare:

Legend states that the giant cats emigrated by mass teleportation to another worlds. Few giant cats were seen from this time on, and those that did appear bore no telepathic powers.

And so Middleton explains how the cats vanished in O’Mahony’s telling, and O’Mahony explains why they vanished.

Afterword

While we’re on the topic of why, why did O’Mahony choose to revive this specific idea in “The Return of the King”?

One of the places I checked for Killers of the Dark details was issue 336 of Doctor Who Magazine. Imagine how thrilled I was to find that the relevant “Accidental Tourist” piece, located one page after a Faction Paradox ad, was written by none other than O’Mahony himself!

Part of his reflection was particularly striking. He recaps the wild undefinedness of the Doctor’s backstory, a topic I’ve discussed before on this blog. But in his telling, the uncertainty extends past The War Games all the way to The Deadly Assassin.

After all, The War Games declared that “the Doctor’s people are the Time Lords”, but “who are the Time Lords?” was still left undefined. In the Time Lords’ many subsequent appearances, they were simply walking plot devices, and lore details were left to the wayside. Contradictions were rife. Who was Rassilon to Omega? Is their planet called “Gallifrey” or “Jewel”? Who or what on earth are the “First”, “Second”, and “Third Time Lord” who exiled the Doctor?

It was The Deadly Assassin which first dove into the details by featuring the Time Lords like they were any other of the show’s alien cultures. And for this, it was widely panned: “the fans had voted it the worst story of Season Fourteen and published reviews vociferously attacking its ‘betrayal’ of the Time Lords. The BBC practically disowned it, physically vandalising the master tape to placate Mary Whitehouse.” In other words, the stage was all set for a discarding of Holmes’ Time Lords.

O’Mahony writes in his conclusion,

The Deadly Assassin could have remained a one-off, its vision of the Doctor’s homeworld set at odds not just with the Gallifrey stories of the past but also those of the future. The Killer Cats of Geng Singh was the last chance to slip the leash. Williams loved the Time Lords but he had a raft of other ideas he could have put into play, not least the frustratingly deferred Guardians who were clearly intended as a new rung of the series cosmology above and beyond the Time Lords. The premise of Killer Cats was also to counterpoint the Time Lords with another Gallifreyan species – a race of humanoid cats that delighted in bloodthirsty gladiatorial contests alongside a highly refined culture. This wasn’t cribbing from The Deadly Assassin, this was building something new that would expand the newly-forged mythology of the series. In fact, with the cat-people on board and the Guardians waiting in the wings, the possibilities for Time Lord mythology were fluid. It might be possible to return to Gallifrey and find something new and exciting each time, different Gallifreys, with a mutable and ever-expanding history.

However, thanks to Killers of the Dark’s cancellation, Williams and Read were left with a slot to fill on short notice, and for The Invasion of Time they ultimately turned back to Holmes’ ideas. The Deadly Assassin wasn’t discarded or undermined, it was reentrenched.

This was the real moment that the Time Lords as we know them were crystallized: a real-world anchoring of the thread. This was when the whimsically-named planet “Gallifrey” definitively transformed into the rationalistic, stagnant, bureaucratic Homeworld that would feature in the Faction Paradox series.

Because in FP, by the time Grandfather Paradox enters the scene, the Great Houses are total strangers to whismy. It’s only through the course of the War that their understanding of the cosmos is broadened and stranger things begin to return to the Homeworld (with great vengeance).

By showing us a cat in the flesh, O’Mahony is finishing the housekeeping: just as the Intuitive Revelation banished the Pythia, the Eremites, and the Carnival Queen; just as the Grey Eminence unwrote Gallifrey’s first childbirth; and just as the Eternals “despaired of this reality, and fled their hallowed halls” at first hint of conflict – the Killer Cats have to leave to set the scene for the War to come.

P.S.

In Baker’s End, Tom Baker wound up “the King of Cats”. What does this imply about the Other?!?

[walks-the-ages]

Look what i found on the archive!!!!!!!

Someone uploaded it only a day or two ago 👀👀👀👀👀👀

Faction Paradox fans and those who want to get into it-- check this out!

[crystalromana]

‘And I’m only half here,’ said Charlotte grimly ‘Why stop messing about now? You should have stayed at home watching these Golden Girls of yours if you weren’t prepared to get involved in real people’s lives. They’re messy and not always in the order you’d like and sometimes too short, and they’re not always better for having you in them, but you either face that or hide away somewhere, don’t you?’ The Doctor kissed her. ‘What was that for?’ asked Charlotte. ‘To shut you up,’ he said. ... Any consequences [of temporal distortion] which haven’t happened yet we can worry about later

Apocrypha Bipedium

This being between Time of The Daleks and Neverland (and being written and published in the gap between Neverland and Zagreus) is so urgh

[msue0027]

Why couldn’t I get into something normal, or at least something with consistent canon? Now I am digging into depths of Whoniverse (and we all know the canon doesn’t exist (it is what you want it to be (a bit like Schrödinger’s canon: it both exists and does not, and a bit like a Young Experiment, different when observed, and in 3 places at the same time))); and I am studying Arthurian legends – where every source gives you different facts. And I’m trying to make sense out of it. And create for those universes. It’s fun. And the greatest torture.

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 66

The Seventh Doctor was once frozen in ice in the Antarctic for over a million years after a skirmish involving Ice Warrior prisoners. Over time, his clothes had degraded dramatically, but he survived because he had put himself into a coma. He was accidentally awoken by an Antarctic expedition in 2012. Despite having memory loss, he brought up the names of his companions, such as Mel, Ace, and Hex, even referring to a woman on the expedition as "Ace" while he tried to remember everything. (Audio: Frozen Time)

A "monster," or "the Green Terror," had stowed away on the TARDIS when it had been caught on the First Doctor's jacket as a spawn. It eventually attacked the Fourth Doctor and K-9 when the TARDIS materialized inside solid rock. (Short story: Stowaway)

Thr Capricorn Killer was originally an office worker who had been suddenly turned to a vampire one night. Following his change and an altercation, he started killing and drinking people's blood. Eventually, he encountered the Fourth Doctor and Romana. The Fourth Doctor said, "I'm afraid someone brought you into our world. This is the only help I can give you. Now hold still. This won't hurt a bit." He then proceeded to stake the Capricorn Killer with a walking stick, something which hurt quite a bit and caused him to dissolve to ash. Then the Doctor went about his day like normal as though he had not just killed a man without second thought, asking Romana if she wanted to go for a steak at a restaurant. (Short story: I Was a Monster!!!)

Edgar Allan Poe took part in a seance with the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and some others. During this seance, a young girl named Abigail was possessed by evil forces trying to come into this world, connected through a ram's skull carved with a pentagram. Poe knocked a candle onto the skull to stop this, causing it and Abigail to go up in flames. Poe later recounted this in his diary but commented that he felt as though he had opened another gateway to let the evil in by doing so. The very next day, Poe was found wandering the streets of Baltimore, disoriented, and he died not long afterwards. A "mysterious stranger" visited his grave and left him roses and a cognac bottle. (Short story: The True and Indisputable Facts in the Matter of the Ram's Skull)

Because of LaMort, or Death, the Seventh Doctor felt the same sharp, raw pain that he had felt when Susan had left him and when all of his other companions left. He described his companions leaving as "Little deaths as they'd left him. Sometimes bigger deaths. Real deaths." (Short story: Virgin Lands)

The Eighth Doctor has been known to wear eye shadow. (Short story: Growing Higher)

Jamie has been known to take the precaution of chopping up the Second Doctor's recorder, not that it ever stopped him from producing a different recorder from somewhere. (Short story: Twin Piques)

There was massive beef between K-9 Mark I and Mark II. They fought a lot in their missives to each other and only buried the hatchet when the Fourth Doctor regenerated. (Short story: Jealous, Possessive)

A copy of "The Diary of an Edwardian Adventuress" by Charlotte Elspeth Pollard is at the Library of Kar-Charrat, the same place the Seventh Doctor and Ace once visited (as Daleks were invading). (Short story: Apocrypha Bipedium)

The Master once became producer of a show called "Make a Star," where many singers competed to become famous. He wanted to release songs as of yet unwritten to unravel the timeline. The Master later teased the Doctor for not guessing that he was involved, given that "Make a Star" is an anagram for "aka Master." (Short story: Hidden Talent)

The day after Barbara and Ian left in the TARDIS, Barbara's mother, Joan Wright, reported them missing to the police. A year later, she had not given up hope of finding her, and she shared a dream with Barbara on board the TARDIS. Barbara told her mother that she would return. (Short story: A Long Night)

The Fourth Doctor was once attacked by an entity representing all of the people who have felt fear because of the Doctor's actions and who was attempting to make the Doctor also feel that same constant fear. The Doctor was not afraid when the entity put him in cave full of people missing limbs and a terrifying creature that bit off the Doctor's arm, when the entity made the Doctor an old man in a wheelchair being tended by nurses, or when the entity put him in a padded cell. The entity eventually sensed a thought from the Doctor - that he was afraid of losing his mind. (Short story: The Fear)

Chloe and Arthur owned a bed and breakfast that the Sixth Doctor once visited. In this bed and breakfast, Chloe and Arthur were killed by hundreds of other versions of themselves over and over every day. The next version would come knocking, and the current would go outside and meet their fate. Eventually, the Doctor came to stay and also joined the ritual of repeatedly dying. After dying enough times, the Doctor decided that none of them will answer when someone came knocking, thus breaking the cycle and freeing them. (Short story: The Death of Me)

Long before The Doctor's Wife, the TARDIS took on the form of a woman called Iraj. Iraj (who I will from now on refer to as the TARDIS) had encountered Romana I just before her regeneration and decided that she wanted to play a trick on the Doctor. The TARDIS took on the form of Princess Astra and was annoyed when the Doctor barely noticed her. The TARDIS proceeded to put on three other bodies, forcing Romana to stay put when she lost her temper. The TARDIS eventually put back on Astra's body, only this time wearing the Doctor's clothes. Romana was still frozen when the TARDIS eventually returned, telling her all about an adventure she had had with the Doctor with Davros and Daleks, but she was still annoyed that the Doctor had barely noticed her. After convincing the TARDIS that the Doctor does care for her, the TARDIS helped Romana regenerate, and to Romana's surprise, she took on the form of Princess Astra! (Short story: The Lying Old Witch in the Wardrobe)

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[innocet]

You’ve heard of doctor who canon get ready for doctor who apocrypha

[the-frosty-mac]

i mentioned this on twitter but Lawrence Miles of Doctor Who/Faction Paradox and Michael Kirkbride of The Elder Scrolls are inherently linked in my mind for some reason. Perhaps their status as the figureheads of apocrypha in their respective fandoms? Not to mention how experimental their stories tend to be

[tgrailwar-zero]

Hey Lune, we understand if you can’t answer this, but uh, are there any other uses to trigger keys apart from the “gather enough and you can enter the core” one? Caster at least seemed to want one of them, but it didn’t seem like it was extremely high priority for her?

"Not really, the Trigger Key is basically a 'post-game' thing? Once a Servant wins the war, then they can either collect the Trigger Keys for a bigger reward, or just sit back and wait for the Admin to come, I think! So nobody is really stressing about them right now, since there's not much point if the war is still happening. As far as I know, at least. Maybe the Admin has more uses for them?"

LUNE explained, as you walked down the steps and out of the inn, seeing a number of people gathered outside.

It seemed like the level of 'awareness' that the NPCs had regarding the war varied from place to place- the people in the Nameless City seemed to have little to no awareness- or those two girls were just mean for no reason. The mind of a teenager, even a virtual one, was hard to parse.

However, in this town, you could see people watching from their homes or stepping outside to watch the duel. Apparently the news spread relatively quickly, as HISTORIA stood next to a figure in a white hood.

His face was familiar, yet still hazy. However, based on the sideways glare he was giving KUKULKAN, it seemed like his memory was a bit on the clearer side.

HISTORIA stepped between the two, prompting introductions.

"Ah, there you two are. K, this is the town doctor."

KUKULKAN held out a hand.

"Nice to meet you!"

He didn't return the handshake.

As much as you expected a confrontation, he merely looked at you and KUKULKAN, and said:

"Get this over with and leave."

Before he stepped off to the wayside, hands in his pockets. HISTORIA chuckled, shaking his head a bit.

"Don't mind him, he's not the most social. But now we can determine the terms of combat. Again, we're fighting until surrender. Special abilities are allowed, but True Name releases regarding Noble Phantasms are banned. We've been given permission to fight within town limits, but try to keep collateral damage to a minimum. The Doctor will stop the fight if things get too out of hand, and also proclaim a winner himself if the bout goes on for too long without a clear victor. I won't be fighting, Lune will. I'll just be 'damage control'."

LUNE and KUKULKAN both nodded their heads in understanding, as they both separated, each walking several paces away from each other.

As soon as LUNE was a fair distance away, they began to shimmer with a bright light, their outfit shifting. Ribbons and frills spilled out from around them, as a long, ornate blade appeared in their hands, shining with a holy light. It didn't seem entirely like battle attire, and yet it seemed fitting.

"…What's that look about? Don't think I can fight in these clothes?"

"That's not it at all. You just seem happy in that outfit. I trust that you'll give it 100%?"

"Of course! Watch me, Historia! I'm in 'Holy Knight' mode, after all!"

KUKULKAN shot you a look. She clearly wasn't happy with your lack of faith in her mana control, especially after specifically assuring you all it would be fine beforehand.

"Speaking of, be nice, Lune. I know His Majesty let you carry around more… 'tools' than usual upon summoning, but don't get carried away."

LUNE, who had finished doing a few skirt-twirls while the others were talking, finally settled a few paces away.

"C'mon, Historia. They're the ones bragging about how big and strong and powerful they are. As a paladin, I've gotta show them what's what! Besides, I can feel His Majesty's pressure on my Spirit Origin. I can't lose!"

"In fact, why don't I give K the first shot? Fire the biggest mana burst you can at me, if you think you're such hot-shots, huh? But if you don't take me out in one hit, then you're gonna super regret it!"

KUKULKAN furrowed her brow, before you felt her mana start to rise, concentrated in her fists.

(Stats will update on the pinned post after each Main Post!)

Servant: Kukulkan

Statistics:

Strength: C

Endurance: C

Agility: B

Mana: EX

Luck: A

NP: B++

Starting Health: 7/7

Starting Mana: 13/13

[spiegelgestalt]

Lostbelt 4 is really peak FGo

FGO currently has a "finish the story" -campaign so I used it to finish lostbelts 4. It has a lot of similarities to Apocrypha (including Lakshmi who just looks like the lovechild of Shirou and Jeanne) which I approve of. Some random observations under the cut. Spoilers for LB4 obviously

Peperoncino is best boy and I can't decide if I ship him more with Daybit or Asvathaman

Lots of interesting Indian mythology which I do know nothing of but am now curious about. Has anyone any suggestions where to start?

GOREDOLF THE RACER!!! I love you, you loser!

Absolutely love Ganesha (and Ganesha/Karna) just wish they would stop fat shaming her (but I admit her NP always makes me smile because I'm a bad person)

Arjunas face whenever he sees Karna gives me life

Some really interesting observations that the search for a perfect world has some really nasty connotations (I just wish that it would be less accompanied with the whole Status Quo is the best possible world -stuff)

Asclepius is scarily similar to some doctors I know

I'm 90 percent sure that there will be a way to save the lostbelts - I felt like the game hit me really over the head with that idea

[sleepymarmot]

spoilers for "A Memory of Mystery" (Kemel-Ze quest) and the Telvanni Peninsula sections of the main quest

I was disappointed when I started "A Memory of Mystery" and realized this was the advertized Sotha Sil appearance. I'd thought he would participate in the main quest!

Ouch.

I played with a new character, so naturally Sotha Sil didn't recognize me. It made perfect sense, too — why would a construct made in the first era know what his original was doing centuries later? To my surprise, I found on UESP that he does recognize the character who's done Clockwork City or Summerset. There's an explanation, too:

How do you know about the last time we met? "I know because the Sotha Sil who made me knew. Knowledge, foresight—whatever name you give it, it is my burden."

This conversation repeatedly hammers in the fact (first introduced in CWC) that Sotha Sil can see both past and future, and all of it exists as one fixed timeline to him (like in Story of Your Life). This is a thematic counterpoint to the main quest of the expansion: both Hermaeus Mora and his minions perceive various alternate possibilities, and fate is woven from separate threads and can be changed. For example, here's dialogue with Hermaeus Mora in "Fate's Proxy", first quest of the zone story:

"Leramil has done well and brought fate's chosen into my unrelenting gaze. All other outcomes are now excluded. From this moment, fate's ever-branching tree begins to grow again. And with it, new possibilities emerge." What's this all about? "It concerns beginnings and endings, secrets too dangerous to reveal, and the stability of the threads of fate. Hidden rivals threaten my realm, and thereby threaten all of reality. If they succeed, fate will unravel and doom both our worlds." Then how do you know that there's a threat again Apocrypha and Nirn? "Every possible fate unfolds before me. They all lead to an event I thought erased from chance eons ago. If this course isn't altered, Apocrypha falls, reality unravels, and Nirn is destroyed. This enemy eludes me, but you are my secret advantage." If you can't determine who they are, how can I? "That is the reason fate chose you. Your instinctual ability to succeed no matter the obstacles placed before you, no matter the odds. Follow the threads I selected for Leramil. See where they lead. That is the key to saving both our realms."

And Scruut talks a lot about "contradictions" in "Fate's Lost Dream". They seem to be something the natives of Apocrypha can sense physically (like the Doctor can perceive fixed points in time in Doctor Who):

"This mortal served the Great Eye, but he died before he could tell me about the other Daedric cultists that scamper about. They're creating an intolerable contradiction in reality. Makes my tentacles ache." A contradiction in reality? "Something here undermines a fate recorded by Hermaeus Mora. Likely foolish mortals trying to change what has already been written. To fix this, I could use some help." "I assumed this would turn out to be some pointless mortal delusion. A minor contradiction, easily resolved." "Another contradiction in a flood of discrepancies." "They're probably stomping through my master's realm now, causing all sort of contradictions." "Contradictions cling to those tools like void-ticks adhere to a Watcher's tentacles." "The contradiction they were compelled to create hangs heavy in the air."

If Sotha Sil is sure that fate is immutable while Hermaeus Mora is sure that fate is malleable, one of them has to be wrong. Which of them sees the full picture and which is limited?

[atozphantomsquadron]

XXV- Life

For a brief time after Cole’s death, I was completely unaware of what was happening around me in the church.  I vaguely sensed Gabe getting up and moving away from me.  I heard more than I saw, which wound up being a conversation between Gabe and Abaster, one that I still don’t quite understand.

Gabe was the first to speak, after a sound which might have been a fistfall.  “Get up!  Get up, damn you!”

“Who do you think you are?” Abaster challenged.  “Do you know who I am?  I’m Alastair Abaster, God’s right hand on Earth!”

“I am sent by He who is called I AM!”  Gabe’s voice made glass shatter in my soul.  It became booming, even more so thanks to the microphones.

“But … but how?  I’m … I am the Guardsman, God’s knight-errant …”

“You have some funny ideas, Alastair.  What made you think you were the one trusted with that duty?”

“It’s in the scripture, in the apocrypha … the angel Gabriel came to a doctor and crafted the Sword from the dust to cut down the sinful …”

Gabe laughed.  “Do you really think I would let the likes of you be the bearer of MY SWORD?”

Abaster stammered.  “What?”

“I crafted the Sword for a doctor, this is true.  The doctor’s name was Ezekiel Sha, his father was a knifemaker by trade.  When they immigrated to Europe, the name became Westernized … into ‘Sharpe.’”

Abaster panted.  “So that means …”

“That’s right.  He was the Guardsman.  Just who in the hell do you think you were serving, dealing death and destruction, summoning the undead, killing innocents, destroying the world?  It damn sure wasn’t God.”

Once those words were out, Abaster’s voice became strained grunts.  At this point I did finally look up, through the watery eyesight of my tears, and witnessed the occurrences at the altar.  Abaster, still in the armor but without the helmet, was kneeling in pain, his eyes wide with surprise.

“Forgive me … I have sinned … what have I become?”  He raised the Sabre over himself and thrust it deeply into his abdomen, like a samurai committing ritual suicide.  Only Abaster did not die.  Instead, his body began to deform, growing and shifting in grotesque proportion, his skin darkening, his hair disappearing, then eventually his body becoming nothing but fuel for the beast forming.  Gabe quickly grabbed Kitty and Cyrus and brought them back behind the pew.

The creature grew, until it pierced the wall of the church, collapsing it and revealing outside, millions of undead corpses marching toward us.  The sky darkened, clouds obscured the sun and created nighttime at noon.  The beast laughed, a sound which rattled all the corners of the church, threatening to bring the rest of it down.  Defiantly, Gabe stood up.

“Well aren’t you the proud artisan?”

The beast looked down at us. 

“Gabriel.  I shouldn’t be surprised, wherever there’s a Guardsman you’re not far behind.”

“The same could be said of you and the Invader, Abaddon.”

I had heard that name before.  My eyes widened and I looked up at Gabe.  “That’s Abaddon?”

He looked down and nodded.  “Indeed.  John wasn’t sure why this thing’s name showed up in his revelation, but he dutifully included the monster.  This is Hell’s swordsmith, he’s responsible for the Sabre and the Invader.”

“MURDERER!”  Cyrus launched one of his largest spells at the creature, but with no effect at all.  It simply turned to address the army of undead corpses assembling around us.  He continued to shoot the spell until Kitty finally pulled him back down.  This was the first time I ever saw despair on Cyrus’s face.

“It’s over.  Without a Guardsman, we’re lost.”

Kitty seemed to be agreeing through her body language, slumped and sad.  I had no words.  Only Gabe had something to say in disagreement.

“Guys, we’re not dead yet.  Abaddon thinks it’s triggering the apocalypse, but there’s some things it doesn’t know in regards to its timeline.”

Kitty seemed to have a glimmer of hope.  “What things?”

“Well for starters, when the apocalypse does come, it won’t be up to the likes of that thing to trigger it.  I also have my sources, too.”  Mysteriously, Gabe patted his hip, where I could see the bump of a cellphone holster.

Cyrus looked over to the battle, then back to Gabe.  “What do we do, then?”

Gabe placed his hands on both Cyrus and Kitty’s shoulders.  “You two, you need to distract Abaddon.  It’ll be easier than trying to distract the Invader, just attack his army.  Most of all, I need you to give me and Ariel about five minutes’ worth of cover.  There’s something we need to do.”

My two friends looked at each other like it would be their last time on earth.  They kissed briefly, then rushed into the battle, guns and spells blazing.  Gabe looked on after them and wished them godspeed.

Only then was I aware that he was approaching me once again.  The others had been keeping a respectful distance from where I had been holding vigil over Cole’s body.  Finally, Gabe crouched next to me and placed an arm around my shoulders.

“Ariel, my child, I need you to do something for me.”

My tears were unstoppable.  I sniffled and looked up from the body, only barely aware that I was coated with a lot of blood.  “Why?  What can I do, Gabe?  Without Cole, life is meaningless …”

“No it’s not, Ariel.  Not in the slightest.  I need you to do something for me, and I apologize in advance but it’s going to be weird, morbid, and possibly the most difficult task you’ve ever done.  Are you with me?”

I sniffled again.  Rendered mute by grief, I simply nodded.

“Good.  I need you to take Cole’s Sword and fight.”

My eyes widened.  What was I supposed to do with the Sword?  There was no way I could ever handle it, and I tried to tell this to Gabe.  He was hearing none of it.

“Bear with me, Ariel.  You can wield it.  You are Cole’s fiancé, had he lived you would have been flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood.  His love for you is the strongest love any Guardsman has felt throughout history.  Most importantly, though …” he placed his hand on my stomach. “… most importantly, you carry Sharpe blood within you.”

An unusual thing happened.  I became aware of my baby, right at that moment.  I felt a soft, weak pulse flutter under Gabe’s hand.  This surprised me.  “You know …?”

“Did you think I, of all people, wouldn’t?”  He winked at me.  “Your friends, your world, and your future all hang in the balance.  This is the moment.  This is your time, this is what your visions have been telling you.  You need to take up the Sword and seize your destiny.”

A long, last look at Gabe told me he was right, that he knew everything.  I slowly ran my hand along Cole’s side, searching for the Sword.  Eventually I found it, the leathery hilt waiting for a hand to take hold.  Gritting my teeth and yelping, I pulled it from its scabbard.

My vision swam.  So this was what it was like to draw the Sword.  I had the weapon’s entire history flash before me, every Swordbearer, every Guardsman and Guardswoman … yes, there have been Guardswomen in the past … all of them flashed before me.  When I felt like my eyes would explode, I realized that my body was growing, even though I had not wished it.  I panicked, not wanting to hurt my baby, not wanting to make things go wrong.  I didn’t want to lose the life that made this possible.

All of this panic was suddenly replaced by a sense of peace.  I sensed others around me, and when I looked behind me I saw a thousand Sharpes, bearing a thousand Swords, ready to combat a thousand enemies.  My heart rate slowed.

I felt hands on my shoulders, not a thousand but only four.  I looked immediately behind me and saw the four who were urging me on.

One was Ken.  He smiled at me, just like he had the first night I met him.  “We trust you, Ariel.  You can do this.  You can defeat Abaddon, let us guide you.”

One was 37A.  She bowed her giant head and snuffled through my hair.  =Let me give you strength of body, Ariel.  We are one, now and forever.=

One was Cole.  His eyes reflected the love we both felt, the love I felt was lost.  My heart jumped when I heard his wonderful voice again.  “I will give you strength of heart, Ariel.  My love will help you wield God’s weapon.”

There was a fourth person, one I did not recognize yet seemed familiar.  She had long blond hair which blew in the winds of the transformation, half-covering a gentle face with blue eyes and light complexion.  There was something about the twinkle in her eye which made me feel right, a feeling that magnified when she spread wings behind her.  “I will give you hope, mother.”

Mother?  She was my child, the new life I carried deep within me.  She was to become a Guardswoman!

All four of these people, the dearest in my life, slid their hands down my arms until all of us gripped the Sword tightly.  One by one, each of the others flowed into my body.  I felt stronger, energized, and more determined with each spirit that entered me.  When the spirit of my child entered finally, my eyes in the real world opened, within the armor of the Guardswoman I had become.

Abaddon was at my eye level, and at the same size.  I looked briefly around and realized that I had grown to an even height, and my wings blew behind me, stretching out for what seemed like an infinite distance.  I settled into a swordfighting stance, holding the Sword before me, the blade threatening Abaddon’s throat.  Only then did I see some of the grotesque details of Abaddon’s body, the faces which made up his midsection.  The most recent of these, Abaster, was frozen in eternal shock and panic, forming the creature’s navel with his mouth.

Abaddon allowed fire to form in a ball in the palm of its hand, flinging the torch at me.  I cast it aside easily with the Sword.  Again and again, fireballs assaulted me, all of them cut down harmlessly.  Abaddon roared.

“You will not stop this!  Armageddon rises now!” 

It shambled into a run, trying to tackle me.  I held the Sword upright and dug my feet into the desert floor, catching the beast in mid-run and holding it there.  It reached an arm out to grab me, one which was quickly deflected by one of my massive wings.  Another reach, another swat.  It roared again, impotent against my strength.

I almost felt I should wait until it tired itself out, but eventually Abaddon resorted to swinging its fists at me, which I didn’t even need the Sword to block.  It head-butted me in the chest, to no avail.  Three of the seven horns on its head broke off when his head contacted my breastplate. 

“It’s not possible … die!”

At this point, I decided I had endured enough abuse from the demon.  I grabbed it by the throat and unfurled my wings completely, flapping them and eventually taking to the darkened, cloudy air.  I could feel how wide my wings spread, for nearly a mile on either side of me, as we continued to streak higher and higher into the atmosphere.  When I glanced over and was able to see the curvature of the planet, was able to look far away from Four Corners and could even spot the Pacific from my vantage point, I mercilessly flung the demon back down the way we had flown up.  I flapped to keep myself hovering as it rocketed down, leaving a friction contrail in its wake.  I still had my dragon vision as the Guardswoman, so I was able to follow Abaddon’s fall all the way down to the ground, when the beast finally crushed what was left of the Church of Christian Purity with its massive bulk.

I raised the Sword high above my head and closed my eyes in a brief prayer.

God … Jesus … Ken … Cole … guide me true and help me preserve God’s creation.

I angled myself so that I would be falling head-first … with the Sword’s blade pointing down toward the ground … and collapsed my wings into a dive position.  I felt the heat of the air friction threatening to cook me alive within the armor, but paid it no attention.  In the final seconds of my descent, the events of my life all came to mind.  All of the people who had loved or cared for me in the past … from Heather Lisle to the assistant chaplain, from Sonny Lauzanne to Kitty Lazarus, from Aunt Irene to Cyrus Salem … from Ken to Cole … I knew in my heart that I would destroy this demon to honor all of them, all of their sacrifice and their love and friendship.

In the last second, I heard Abaddon cry for mercy.  I alighted enough so that I would land on my feet and bent my knees to prepare for impact.  My two feet and the Sword hit the ground at the same time.  The Sword plunged through Abaddon like a hot knife through ice.  The demon’s dissolution came as a near explosion of fresh desert dust, coating all around it in the remains.

I withdrew the Sword from the ground, crouched down to a knee, and sheathed the weapon.  Closing my eyes, I felt myself shrink down to my regular, human form.  The tears came again, for now I was lost without Ken or Cole to guide my hands and heart.  I laid the Sword down next to me and collapsed in my sorrow.

The next thing I remembered was awakening in a familiar house, in a familiar bed.  It was my house on the rez.  I sat up in the bed as my mother entered the room.

“Oh good, you’re awake.  We were hoping you’d be okay.”  She set down a bowl of water and a washcloth on a table next to me and started wiping my forehead down.  I took her hand.

“What about the others?”

She sighed.  “The little man and the … er, tiger woman … they’re fine, they’re resting in another room.  Your white-haired friend Gabe is sitting in the living room with …”

She trailed off.  I knew what the next words would be.  “With Cole’s body.  I understand.”  I sighed and felt more tears starting to come.  My mother embraced me tightly, trying to comfort me.  I was unsure I could ever be comforted, not with Cole gone and with his child still growing.  I gently rubbed my abdomen in my grief.

My mother noticed this.  (She always noticed everything I did!)  “It’s rough, I know.  Raising a child without a father was a challenge.”

I looked up at her and wiped my cheeks.  “How …”

“Gabe told me.  Listen, I will do everything I can to help you, little Ariel.  We’ll raise your baby, we’ll make sure the baby has a happy childhood and becomes a happy adult.  It’ll be my chance to fix some of the mistakes I made …”

I pulled my mother, who needed comfort herself now, into my lap.  “You never did wrong by me once, mom.  I will always love you.  And I will always love this child, when she enters the world and before.”

Now it was my mother’s turn to raise an eyebrow.  “How do you know it’s a girl?”

“Oh … call it a hunch.”  I had no idea how to explain the vision I had experienced as the Guardswoman to my mother.  I simply left it as a mystery.

Eventually, once my mother was satisfied that I was cleaned up enough and able to stand on my own, we both headed out into the living room.  Gabe sat on the couch: the coffee table had been cleared in order to lay out Cole’s body, which was covered by a black sheet.  Gabe stood up and embraced me gently.

“Well done, Ariel.  Well done, indeed, I’m just so sorry it came under these circumstances.”

I accepted Gabe’s compliments and condolences in silence, simply clutching to the mysterious agent.  Some of what he had said to Abaster still stuck in my head, and I was unsure whether to mention it or not.  Before I got the opportunity to bring it up, however, his cellphone rang, blaring Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” from his hip.

“I’m sorry, I have to take this,” Gabe apologized as he unclipped the phone.  “Gabe … yes, I’m here in the Vibria house … he’s right in front of me, yes … yes, she’s here too …”

His eyes took an expression of surprise.  “Are you sure about this?”

I looked at my mother briefly, then back at Gabe, who was handing me the phone.  “It’s for you.”

Unsure about what to expect, I took the phone from Gabe and put it up to my ear.  “Hello?”

The voice on the other end was … extremely hard to describe.  How do you describe an eternal entity’s voice, anyway?  It’s not for me to judge.  It sounded like it came across infinite time and space to reach the small phone in my hand.

“Hello, Ariel.  I have heard your prayers for all your lifetime.  You have been a loyal servant.  You have served Me well.”

I shuddered.  New tears appeared in my eyes, but not of sadness.  Wonderment, perhaps?  “Thank you.”

“I understand that you were to marry Cole Kenneth Sharpe, and it is because of your love and its product that you were able to defeat Abaddon.”

“That’s correct.”

“Keep this a secret between you, Me, and Gabriel, but I have done this sort of thing in the past.  Would it be fair to say that you wish to spend the rest of your life with Cole?”

My heart raced.  The love that would save a life … was it Cole’s life to be saved?  “Yes, it is, more than anything.  I want him to know his children, I want to be with him … I want to love him forever.”

The voice laughed.  It was an otherworldly echo.  It was frightening and rapturous all at once.

“You have demonstrated the depth of your love, Ariel, simply by standing as the Guardsman in his stead.  You are more than worthy of this request.  Place the phone next to Cole’s ear.”

Obediently … I felt that there was no way I could disobey this voice … I pulled the sheet back from Cole’s head.  His eyes had been closed, but his face still showed the signs of battle, dirt and dried blood.  His flesh lacked the color of the living, it was bluing and becoming sallow.  I gently cleaned a spot on his forehead and kissed there before placing the phone in the crevice between Cole’s neck and shoulder, making sure the speaker was against Cole’s ear.

I could not hear what the voice on the other end said into the dead ear, but I kept a close watch over Cole.  He remained motionless.

Then his eyes opened.

I felt my heart jump.  I bit down on my fingertips, trying to keep from crying out to him.  His chest began rising and falling once more.  Slowly, the pink color returned to his face, and the light returned to his blue eyes.  His arm moved to reach up for the telephone, taking it away from his ear and handing it back to Gabe.

Finally he sat up.  He took a deep breath, then turned his head to look over at me.  The love was there again, the life, the depths of his emotion, all of them were present in those eyes.

They curled up when he smiled at me at last.  To my last day on earth, I will never forget the first words he said to me.

“Ariel … why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?”

I reached my arms out to collect him and kissed him deeply, happily.  He was alive once more.  My visions had come to pass … this indeed was a love that would save a life.

(Transcriber’s note: Shortly after the completion of this interview, Ariel led me to the site where the Church of Christian Purity had been destroyed.  I did note that there was a large quantity of different-colored sand at the site, which corresponds to her telling of the demon’s destruction.  I also noticed that nothing remained of the giant megachurch: its remains had by this time been reclaimed by the desert.  Some marriage records I tracked down eventually revealed the location of Jennifer Abaster, who apparently settled down after her brother’s destruction and married a small-time Nevada politician by the name of Carleton Regent.—DAM)

[doctornolonger]

Pulp covers for Craig Hinton’s Doctor Who novels, from the charity anthology Shelf Life (2008)

[walks-the-ages]

[ID: the cast of K9 (2009) standing around a computer monitor, all wearing 90's style purple glasses with horizontal bars across the lenses, with a purple alien in the back with tentacles coming out of her head, and K9 in the background hovering, also wearing purple glasses. end ID]

Seriously, what's not to love about this show.

[cosmique-o]

My back aches terribly hours ago but I find as I'm lugging around my bookstacks that I have a Dover Thrift Edition of G.K. Chesterton's Favorite Father Brown Stories. From Wick of Peedee Wah (that's how it goes, yeah?):

Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective. He features in 53 short stories by English author G. K. Chesterton, published between 1910 and 1936... Father Brown is a short, plain Roman Catholic priest, with shapeless clothes, a large umbrella, and an uncanny insight into human behaviour. His unremarkable, seemingly naïve appearance hides an unexpectedly sharp intelligence and keen powers of observation.

OK, so - it doesn't sound life-changing. Especially in 2023 (or am I saying that as some all encompassing cope for collective inadequacies?). I sure do talk about things in the context of 2023 a lot - usually in a joking, possibly sarcastic manner - a part of me thinks it is because - let's be honest - 2023 is one of the worst numbers ever discovered, or invented, or... Uh, found? Is found different than discovered? You bet your butt it does, and it is a sad state of affairs to see things so.

I have a vague memory bubble up with almost caustic vigor and boiling chaos. I think about a little festival held in Hamtramck years ago, and my very drunk 50-year-old friend insisting to dance with my roommate ("That's what you do... and she's like a fuckin' daughter to me! It's like a daddy daughter dance to music. That's what people do.") Getting all pushy and violently unaware of his state, the utter foolishness and desperation, my roommate seeing this (with her boyfriend next to her - who in all fairness should have just tipped my buddy on the shoulder or something and he would have just fell over and asleep - no fight neccesary. I am glad they're no longer together). My friend was so apologetic, in a 3D way - I felt a bit bad for him - he is a slave to many things. He was molested young, made an enormous amount of money and his ex-wife simply obliterated his entire stash, she took him for everything through the courts as he slipped into terminal obesity, terrible habits and, supposedly, a brain that is so "unique and damaged and overstressed" from, uh, drinking Milkwaukee's Best and smoking huge joints all day. He says the doctors want to pay him out big time, but he rattled off some garbage apocrypha about, jeez - I dunno - I know he said MRI machines will mess up your testicle(s) and sperm production. And that they're just too dang clausterphobic.

He is a great friend - I genuinely love the guy. I feel bad about insisting that he make drastic life changes over the years. I'm not sure he needs to, or it would help. He's had a rough life. He's got his beers and gigantic joints and a curmudgeon girlfriend... and two sons. And a granddaughter, who he has seen once. Son #1 distracted him with the baby while Son #2 ransacked $80k (eighty-thousand) in rare coins. They are both tremendous gambling addicts and I told him he needs to go nuclear. Sadly - to use that term a bit too much, SADLY! - he will just rattle off nonsense about karma, paying it forward, the Universe settling all its books eventually and realizing he needs to square things up and.... sadly... consider getting his adult grown thief sons in court. He should lock his door. He let's so many people in, and they steal from him and act unsavory and basically that entire - let's say, five block radius? - it is a veritable circus, a semi-ajar if not low-key open-air drug market that leans heavily towards pharmaceuticals. Genetic freakshow oddities go around to senile doctors and they see which one is far gone enough to simply ask "So what would you like?" or "Here, take these Oxycodoes, some deaf guy left them here and I don't know what the hell do to with them."

I tell him, take three, put on your favorite comedy and order some gratuitous food. Don't be lazy. Write down your abstracted, far-out inquiries - ask questions. Answer them later. Note takers have a natural aversion to reading their own notes later - myself included. I have a good fifty notebooks over the past 15 (fifteen) years. Woof. I have no clue if they're "good," but they must certainly be interesting. And I'd love it for others to find them interesting. That'd be really terrific and helpful. Well, let's just say terrific for now.

One more thing. A question - why do men hate each other? Not even in the Joe Rogan alpha-monkey shpiel. Why do they bring out the worst in each other? Why do they all seem jealous of me? I don't mean that narcissisticly. They just have this angry face of regret and longing when I am dominating the conversation or simply just doing my own thing. I think they're afraid of a lot of things. I fear nothing. I just really don't want to die - and I have that feeling I'll outlive everyone I know that deserved it. The types who tried, and put effort into learning how their bodies work. What diet is for them. How much exercise a day.

And then their genes give them a heart attack before their first grey hair grows in. Yeah. Their genes. Must be, right? Yeah?

[gaast]

Two classes I took in undergrad were Hebrew Bible and New Testament classes. I went to a Methodist school and you had to take at least one REL course to pass. (It was also a liberal arts school with a notable theater troupe, so we were also required to take at least one Theater course. I mention this in case anyone wants to get on a high horse about this.) Both these classes were held in the basement in the main chapel they have on campus.

So anyway, I'm an atheist, never been to any kind of church service, only ever read some of Genesis as assigned reading in 10th grade, but I was super excited for these classes because I was an English major. Do you know the kinda shit you miss out on in literature when you're not super familiar with the Bible? We weren't required to read the whole thing and I didn't (I did less than what we were assigned because, again, English major--I had so much the fuck to read). If you were following me back on my old blog at this point you might actually recall this era of my life.

The professors for these courses, who I believe were married, obviously treated the courses as biblical studies courses, rather than your Sunday School fare. One made several jokes about how you can get an entire degree, hell, a doctorate just by reading, as he put it, "one book." But frankly, everything I learned about biblical scholarship itself was fascinating. If you want to talk about media archaeology and the intersections of dozens, if not hundreds, of differently scholarly and scientific fields, look no further.

The content of the Bible is one thing--as a foundational text inspiring the thought and lives of billions of people, reading it is an odd experience. Learning about Genesis, the whole Torah really, you learn that several different apparent editors (called redactors) very clearly changed the text that we received over time. These redactors even have names (that scholars have given them). If Exodus was edited to lend more legitimacy to the priesthood, you can bet that P did that shit.

But it also verges into book history. Ancient authors didn't have a concept of plagiarism. If you read lines you liked and wanted to use in your own writing, you just copied them wholesale. This is the only reason why we have some surviving fragments of otherwise completely lost texts--for example, Jesus' beatitudes. And if you wanted to give yourself more authority, you'd sign your work as if you were some other actually famous person. Many of the epistles were absolutely 100% DEFINITELY not written by Paul, but they all say they were because that was the practice. (The epistles are ordered by date and the ones after Paul's execution are way more shit-Christian than anything Paul wrote. But they claimed to be Pauline and maybe that was enough to include them, or maybe their inclusion in the Bible was more because their ideology was agreeable. Speaking of...)

But also, consider this: so many people wrote so many books that could have found their way into the Bible. Religious leaders at the time decided what books to include in the collection, and what books to exclude. The Book of Enoch was incredibly popular in its time, but it's now considered apocrypha. Meanwhile, Ecclesiastes isn't even really religious in tone or subject and it was included. (It's also fun to think about why English style rules exclude canon biblical book names from the otherwise-standard italicization of book titles.)

And one more consideration: ancient biblical texts had this pernicious tendency to be written in ancient Greek, which didn't really use things like "spaces between words." To make more scrolls so more people had access to these texts, scribes, who often couldn't actually read, would have to copy the incredibly cramped handwriting of people who they may not have known, from a language they couldn't understand, whose characters they could easily have confused. This happened in a chain of people, from scribe to scribe from town to town, over the course of centuries. Beyond that, imagine copying a scroll of, say, the Book of Isaiah by hand. Can you guarantee that you'd never copy the same line twice in a row by accident, especially if you, again, didn't know the language?

So what even is "the Bible?" Is it the document we got all these millennia later? Is it the original scrolls as written by the original authors--which we can never and will never have? Is it somewhere in between? Should it include this book, exclude that book?

The Bible is still alive. It's a living document that scholars and faith leaders are still debating to this day. If you don't believe me, why are you a Protestant and not a Catholic, or a Lutheran and not a Quaker, or a Baptist and not a Muslim, or Jewish and not an Episcopalian, or an Eastern Orthodox Christian and not an Anglican? Its meanings and histories will be debated for as long as we do, for better or worse. And frankly, there's no right answer. The Bible contradicts itself. We have Lilith because people noticed that Creation happens twice in Genesis because a redactor added extra versions of the earliest Genesis stories to fit their own agenda. You ever read Genesis? It's right there. Two parallel Creations happen side-by-side. They both contradict each other. Jesus contradicts the Hebrew Bible, using people like Isaiah's words to assert that his coming was foretold, when Isaiah, as a prophet during the time of the split kingdom of Isarael, was speaking metaphorically to damn the people in charge (and the people writ large) who let a culturally and ethnically singular people become separated ideologically. Looking at it from one perspective, Jesus was a rabbi, but he was also a biblical scholar, working to recontextualize meanings that were ancient even to him. And yet many claim it mjst be followed dogmatically. How? It contradicts itself! Do I do nothing on the Sabbath or can I take care of some shit I gotta do? How soon after my brother dies do I need to impregnate my sister-in-law for him? Do you really want me to bring up Lot's daughters?

If this kind of shit doesn't make you want to be a biblical scholar I really don't know what could.

But for one last little thing. The Exodus didn't happen. We can get archaeological evidence for a surprising number of things said to occur in the Bible. We can say with reasonable certainty that yeah, Jericho was toppled pretty quickly, for example (probably not with the mere use of trumpets, but you know). We're also reasonably certain that Jesus existed, because EVERYONE agrees this dude was crucified, and if you were someone's follower at the time you'd do everything in your power to assert that he was execured by any other means because of just how humiliating crucifixion was considered, but allies and enemies of his claim he was crucified so that's honestly enough for us to say, yeah, he probably existed and died that way. But we can't find evidence for the Exodus. Ancient Egyptians were notoriously good record keepers and they never recorded the mass departure of a nation's worth of slaves. We'd also be able to see in the earth evidence of that many people walking anywhere, especially if they were wandering for forty years. But that evidence hasn't manifested. It's very unlikely those events occurred.

But that doesn't mean the Exodus isn't real. How many millions, if not billions, of people have accepted that the Exodus occurred in their shared history as a people? How has the fact of that belief shaped their self-conception and the ways they interacted with the world? How has this simple story influenced hundreds of generations of people, and how did it guide them through the numerous awful diasporas they were forced through over the centuries?

Even if the Bible is fictitious--and much of it is--fiction has a power over people. It influences us. That's why we consume it. The Song of Solomon isn't included in the Bible just because it says Solomon wrote it. It's in there because it reflected the thoughts, beliefs, and culture of the people who produced and read it. Anyone who writes fiction could stand to think a little more deeply about religious texts and the ways they affect people's lives. It might make us feel a bit more responsible.

[nerevar-quote-and-star]

Hermaeus Mora: You, you're an idiot!

Sheogorath, cackling madly: Everybody knows that.