#The Nine Billion Names of God

[laventadorn]

i sincerely think it’s a terrific literary experience to read something that makes you feel like you’ve learned something extremely profound but can’t explain in the slightest. ursula k le guin said “the artist deals with what cannot be said in words . . . the artist whose medium is fiction does this in words: the novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.” the paradox of that is in itself amazing. i love to read a thing that is — not confusing, that’s not the right word, because confusion can make you feel helpless. rather, something that transmits to me some depth of meaning that i can’t begin to explain. i feel like i’ve touched or heard resonant truth, but what the heck was it? i know it, but i can’t put it into words.

[voodoovoidoid]

reading all the Arthur C. Clarke books in my college's library rn and realizing 90% of Clarke's stories is the Torment Nexus and then me realizing that I've lived my entire life with the Torment Nexus

[bending-sickle]

so i’m watching doom patrol because a) mark sheppard is in everything and b) i hope brendan fraser is having a good day

and i am having a goddamned riot of a time

[misojohnist]

finally came up with a good poll idea so, for posterity:

[theseventhveil1945]

What should we call you then? Any of the nine billion names of God. Your Lordship will do, or J.C., Eric, Bert, Barney, Entwhistle. I know exactly who I am. THE RULING CLASS (1972) Dir. Peter Medak

[faerromagnetic]

Harrow the Ninth, Thoughts part 3

Finished the book! Harrow wasn't even insane, everyone was just gaslighting her. Gideon the First WAS attacking her. Ianthe was lying all the time, because Harrow told her to do so. Augustine and Mercy were lying to keep their cover, Johnny G. was lying because he also didn't know anything, even Harrow was lying to herself.

I understand, why both Lyctors had to kill John. But the consequences of what they'll do is insane. Obliterate 9 planets. Kill, likely Billions of People, Again. Who's to say killing off all life in a planet post ressurection won't make another Ressurection Beast to wreck havoc in the Universe. In an awful way, Mercy and Augustine are recreating the sin that John did. With likely the same consequences.

I can't agree with killing the Emperor, yes he deserves to die, but the price of doing so would have been too steep. I'd lock him in a tomb, and have him empower Dominicus for eternity. Killing John, and Dominicus in turn leads the nine houses to be put under the control of Augustine or Mercy, and through that connection, the Blood of Eden.

We don't even know who tf the Blood of Eden is! For all we know they're Fanatics and Zealots. With a name like that I'd bet money on them hyper religious freaks and Zealots. Probably some Brotherhood of Steel, Adeptus Mechanicus style cult. Likely the type to uncritically worship Nostalgia and the Past.

I'd stick with John honestly. Maybe John Gohn could be better one day, and I HOPE he was telling the truth about his regrets. If he didn't, well fuck him then. Warhammer 40k had the right idea for God Emperors. Turn the bastard into a living battery. I think, a part of Jod was hoping the 8 in GtN, would crack the formula. Maybe that's why he was hoping they would take it slow, do it with years of study and preparation. So, I can't really hate Ianthe for what she did. Or maybe, I just fell for Jaius Gaius sad wet cat act.

Also, Harrow and Gideon definitely opened the stupid tomb. Gideon found Harrow in the Tomb. So Alecto was definitely released. Maybe, partially? But she's still out there, somewhere. Maybe the girl living with Camilla. Who knows

I am, so very very happy I got my prediction about the Sleeper right. Once I realized Gideon was alive and consciousness inside Harrow, there was only one suspect. Gideon's Mom. Where else was a friggin Haz Suit ever mentioned except the one her Mom was found in. Considering Palamedes mentioned that you bring your last memory with you when you died, of course her Mom remembered being in a Haz Suit

[ossifer]

What of the Sun?

AKA: Alecto, Gaea, and Uranus—why John Gaius is connected to Dominicus.

Special thanks to @the-sword-lesbian for inciting me with this question, and then going on to listen to all the conspiracy board rambling that ensued whilst offering up her own excellent questions:

Alecto, Gaea, and Uranus

Alecto is, as we know, named after the Fury of the same name from Greek myth whose name literally translates to ' the implacable or unceasing anger'. John, after becoming God, took the surname Gaius, the masculine form of the name Gaia.

Something notable about the Alecto of myth is her parentage: she is the daughter of Gaea (also spelt Gaia), the personification of the Earth, who was fertilised by the blood of Uranus, the personification of the sky (who was also Gaia's son and husband). Uranus' blood was spilt when his and Gaia's youngest son, Cronus, castrated and overthrew him, with the blood from his severed genitals falling upon the Earth (Gaia) and birthing Alecto in the process; Cronus is sometimes interpreted as also being Chronos, the personification of time.

Dominicus, the name John bestowed upon the resurrected Sun, has its origins explicitly stated by John. It is derived from Psalm 27:1, which he partially quotes while talking to Harrow: “The Lord is the source of my light and my safety, so whom shall I fear?”

“A myriad ago, I resurrected nine planets,” he said. “And I reignited the central star, and I called it Dominicus. As a reminder. Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea, quem timebo? God is my light.[...]

Dominicus and Thanergetic Stars

He said, As the world went up I remade us both. I hid me in you … I hid you in me. And when we were together … once the shaman had claimed the sun … I became God. He said, It wasn’t enough. He said, The ships … the ships were still full of people. I reached our hand out into space. I extended. I struggled. He said, I bit through the sun first. It’s human nature. That started things going. Once you take down the sun, you’re cooking with gas, pardon the pun.

It’s a dark and cold and unlovely part of space, and the stars there are old and were nearly dead then. We nuked them with thanergy and now they’ll shine forever, but the light is not the same …

From the glare of the plex window, beside some perfectly ordinary white twill curtains, the buried monster turned herself so that she was lit in the light of the undead stars.

THE MITHRAEUM, THE SEAT of the First Reborn! The Sanctuary of the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the bolthole of God—the removing place of hallowed bones, and the ossuary of the steadfast! A space station hidden forty billion light-years from the ever-burning light of Dominicus, lit by thanergetic starlight, set in the midst of the circumstellar disc, an ancient jewel within so much dead gravel.

As we see from the above, stars are implicitly naturally thalergetic in character, and through necromantic intervention (nuked them with thanergy) can be rendered thanergetic: undead and everburning, emitting thanergetic starlight. Curiously, nuked them with thanergy is eerily close to how flipping a planet is described by Harrow:

You drove the point of the bone-sheathed blade into the talc—obviously you never wanted it to have an edge of any kind, ever again—and using the sword as your focus, drove a killing lance of thanergy right into the planet’s heart. The planet did not quake, or howl, or freeze, or writhe, skewered on your necromancy’s tines. You began the cascade outward, as you had been taught. A wide thanergetic scythe sheared out into the mantle, deeper into the minute thalergy of the rock, into the solid stone’s buried recollections of the day its ball of dust was formed.

Flipping a planet involves focusing thanergy into a killing implement that is driven into the planet's heart, its soul, inducing a cascading thalergy-thanergy reaction that fuels itself, thanergy decaying thalergy into more thanergy and burning through it:

The thanergy scoured through the soul like a lit taper touched to flimsy. The living flush of this rocky outcrop began to die in dizzying, concentric rings: flipping, the thanergy feeding on the thalergy as locusts fed on wheat. As the soul tore away, an extra thanergetic bloom fanned the fire of what you had already done.

Planets, as we are told in Harrow the Ninth, have souls: a communal soul, arising from the thalergetic complexity of the microbial life present on them much in the same way a human's soul emerges from the thalergetic complexity of its internal microbial life.

“And what has a soul?” “Anything with a thalergetic complexity significant enough to … have a soul. So, humanity.” [...] “A planet’s a ball of dust. Its thalergy comes from the accumulation of microbial life. You can’t consider it one coherent system.” “Call it a communal soul,” said her Emperor. “What’s a human being, other than a sack of microbial life?

This explanation has always reminded me of how the human body is explained in terms of a hierarchy of organisation and complexity: the lowest unit is the cell, cells come together to form tissues, tissues form organs, organs form organ systems, and the sum total of these connected systems is the human body. The soul, then, is implicitly the organisational level above the body: the body is the tissue, the soul is the organ; it is shown by Anastasia's tripod principle that the soul indeed plays a vital part in the functioning of the body:

“There was a bad option where your soul snapped straight into her body, leaving your body stuck with no soul at all, and that would have been a shit time all round.” “Would I have died?” Nona asked, interested. “You’d have tried to,” said Pyrrha. “The body needs thalergy and a soul to keep the lights on. Anastasia’s tripod principle. Body plus thalergy, but no soul, is basically a very weird vegetable … after a while it gives up and shuts down.”

Without a soul, the biological processes cease and the body shuts down; thalergy, in the absence of a soul, decays into thanergy. Flipping a thalergetic planet involves thanergetically disrupting its soul to induce a cascading thanergetic reaction. Thalergetic stars 'nuked' with thanergy become undead, ever-shining, thanergetic: they are flipped.

Stars have souls. Dominicus has a soul.

Why John Gaius is connected to Dominicus

You said, “So if you die, the Houses die with you. The star warming our system fails, and—becomes a gravitational well, as I understand it?” “Yes. A black hole, like the one that took out Cyrus,”

The Sun would need to be about 20 times more massive to end its life as a black hole. Stars that are born this size or larger can explode into a supernova at the end of their lifetimes before collapsing back into a black hole, an object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Ergo, the black hole part is a load of bullshit—but, you know, necromancy; the important part of that quote is that John claims that when he dies, Dominicus dies with him.

When Mercymorn tries, and fails, to kill John, Dominicus falters and does indeed begin to undergo a collapse: John's 'death' somehow affects Dominicus from all this distance away, and him coming back results in it stabilising again.

“Right,” he said, and closed his eyes briefly. Then he said, “The sun has stabilized. Hope the Sixth House didn’t get cooked in the flare.”

John says that he reignited the Sun, yes, but I think it goes deeper than just that: I think John put more than just Earth in Alecto's body, and more than just his soul in Alecto's.

Anastasia's tripod principle stipulates that a body with thalergy and no soul shuts down—Dominicus undergoes collapse when John's body is destroyed by Mercymorn, when his soul is decoupled from its material tether—John's soul is the Sun's soul.

“Once the shaman had claimed the sun … I became God.”

The soul of a planet is communal, composed of the sum total of the life present on it: John killed the life upon Earth by inciting a global nuclear war, then killing those humans who were spared the fate of atomic fire. He had to kill the world to put his hands around her throat. He became God by eating her, by hiding him in her, and her in him—the shaman claimed the sun.

He said, I bit through the sun first.

Alecto was born from the blood of Uranus being spilt upon Gaia by their son Cronus; Uranus is the personification of the sky, the husband and son of Gaia. John took the name Gaius when he reignited the Sun, after spilling its blood upon the Earth and creating Alecto: he became one with Gaia, tied his soul to hers and to the sun's.

The Mithraeum is 'a space station hidden forty billion light-years from the ever-burning light of Dominicus, lit by thanergetic starlight'. The ever-burning light of Dominicus contrasted by thanergetic starlight. Immortal, but alive.

“The eyes have it, John.”

He approached her, and she saw that his sclera were black as space. The irises were dark and leadenly iridescent—a deep rainbow oil slick, ringed with white. The pupils were as glossy black as the sclera.

The Emperor of the Nine Houses drummed his fingers over his belt. It still hurt you a little, to look into his terrible eyes: the irises like black shadows of the Canaanite white, that iridescent absence of colour, a shade rather than a tint; the purity of the white ring; then the matte black of the sclera. “A myriad ago, I resurrected nine planets,” he said. “And I reignited the central star, and I called it Dominicus[...]

You could study him without shyness: the shining iridescence of his irises, the unyielding black of the cornea and pupil, the long, square, urbane face.

And his eyes were just absolutely, insanely fucked up: deep black wells, this unreflective flat black. Even from where I was, I could see the white light that circled the irises: a cold, flickering perimeter.

[tobiasdrake]

What kind of Shenanigans would Haruhi drag Gohan and Videl into

What's interesting about that scenario is that it implies Haruhi exists in shared space and age bracket with Gohan and Videl. That would imply Haruhi attending Orange Star High School with them, which has... implications.

See, if Haruhi is at Orange Star High School, then that changes some important things about Haruhi. Because this Haruhi hasn't lived in a mundane world.

She's probably too young to remember Piccolo-Daimao taking over the Earth for a day and then being slain by a mystery child that vanished before anyone could get his name. Though she may have read about it years later. That's exactly the sort of thing that would catch her interest.

But she would have been eight or nine years old during the Cell Games: A massively publicized event where Cell went on TV and gave the Earth one week to prepare their best warriors and Stop Me, Fuckos. On the heels of killing millions, possibly billions of people. This event shaped the history of the Earth in a massive way.

She would have been glued to her television when they were broadcasting the Cell Games, just like everyone else on Earth.

Of course, that all wound up being nothing. None of those people died; They turned up alive and well like the afternoon immediately following the tournament. It was all smoke and mirrors. Mr. Satan set it all straight and defeated Cell with solid muscle action. Nothing to see here; Go home, folks.

But Haruhi, being Haruhi, wouldn't be satisfied with that. Ironically enough, changing her setting wouldn't change her circumstance. She's still the weird girl with annoying supernatural interests. OH MY GOD, HARUHI. Nobody cares about the golden people, Haruhi. They were just a bunch of frauds. Mr. Satan said so himself.

Her interpretation of the Cell Games would probably be that a bunch of espers showed up to fight Cell, which Satan and Videl are trying to cover up to keep people like her from meeting espers.

(They're actually space aliens but I don't know that Haruhi would make that leap when they're identical to humans and their main supernatural characteristics are levitating and shooting energy blasts. Esper seems like a more reasonable assumption.)

I don't think Haruhi would suss out that Mr. Satan's lying about defeating Cell. Martial arts aren't her field of interest. But I do think she'd go full conspiracy theorist about the espers. It is a government cover-up to keep us from knowing that there were real espers at that event. Maybe King Furry's in on it! You know what, he probably knows who that mystery boy from Piccolo Day was. He just won't tell us because that kid was a time traveler. Maybe there were time travelers at the Cell Games too!

Gohan would naturally ping her radar the second he set foot at Orange Star. He's a transfer student. There's always something up with transfer students. She would be studying him intensely for evidence of being some kind of supernatural creature.

She'd have her proof before his first day of school is out. Despite aggressively trying to keep his identity under wraps, Gohan has no frame of reference for how to behave within human limits. Itsuki Koizumi, he is not.

[nolanhattrick]

if you want to go more into the utah thing, pls do

okay, so i feel the need to preface all of this with

tij iginla deserved to be drafted high in the first round. i'm glad he went high in the first round. he worked hard to earn the place he was drafted. that being said, i do not think his technical ability is the only reason utah drafted him.

let's take a look at utah's owners.

the smiths are mormon, and follow most standard hypocritical mormon doctrine. they have five children and live in provo. can't find much on ashley but ryan went to business school at BYU provo because his dad worked there before he got cancer and also that's what good little mormon boys are expected to do after they go on their colonizer missions to brown countries.

link to the archived deseret interview, written by the mormon church

he often speaks to church officials about money and tech, since he owns multiple businesses in the tech space and owns four sports franchises. the above link is an interview he did with a mormon elder about allocation of church funds. from the horse's mouth, they admit to hoarding billions of dollars and wanting to convert essentially the entire african continent to mormonism for clout.

now. this is where we get into tij's selection.

if you aren't as autistic about mormon history as i am, tl;dr up until about like pshhh iirc it was like 10 or 15 years ago it was literally like not possible for black mormons to hold positions of power in the church. mormon children were taught that dark skin was a sign of being "cut off from god" (lamanites) and depending on where you lived, that if you weren't white, you wouldn't be able to reach the highest level of heaven (in mormonism there are different tiers of the afterlife - three levels of heaven [celestial, terrestrial, and telestial] and then "outer darkness" which is basically just hell. you can only reach the celestial kingdom if you're the perfect mormon and pretty much anyone goes to the telestial kingdom, even like. rapists and murderers. you go to outer darkness if you defy god to his face basically. mormons are wild. yes i am judging you) which is like beaten into you from birth to be the worst fucking thing in the world because if you don't reach the highest level of glory you're separated from your family in the afterlife, and that would suck! that's what you spent your entire life trying to do! so by default getting denied that simply because you produce more melanin is. rancid!

so. career mormons, as i call them - or mormons that come from long lineages of pre-established mormons, especially utah or texas or idaho mormons (like ryan's family, and i'm going to assume ashley's family) - they very very very often have deep racism beat into them practically since birth. they might not think so, but it's there, and it comes out at the wildest times in the wildest ways. like, i grew up in an area with a LARGE mormon minority. a group of mormons tried to lynch one of my friends as a "joke". they literally tried to fucking lynch him. one of the only black kids in the area. because they thought it was funny, and couldn't conceptualize why that was wrong or why that action - committed by that specific religion, too - carried immense weight.

moving onto the hockey part of the ask.

i stared at coyotes stats for way too long last night.

tij iginla is a left shot forward.

we all know arizona was uhh. not the greatest when they made their exit from the league. tij put up some gorgeous numbers when he finished out this year in the w, and if he does well at development camp i think he does have a very good chance at being a name on the roster. i do.

i don't think he was the smartest choice for them technically, though.

like, come the fuck on.

and like i get that they're. they still have all summer. it's whatever. but out of their thirteen forwards, nine are left shots. they are not hurting for him!!

and like. okay. you could argue like. of those, bh and bo38 are rfa at the end of this season, mc53 and ak15 and mm63 and jm22 are ufa next season, they're practically bled dry for RWs.

and they have signed defensemen since day one of the draft. unsure how td33 is going to do with his injury over the summer, but if he comes back they'll be at the numbers they need.

i still don't think he was the pick utah needed technically. i don't think he was the perfect fit. i think the owners decided for the franchise and were able to justify it well enough with his numbers to themselves and everyone else to make it work, but i really truly deep down think that part of it was "look at us we are a brand new team. we are two perfect people that wear cool youth pastor clothes to fancy pants events. we're so hip and chill, we're going to make this black kid's dreams come true by drafting him higher than his dad. we're going to make him the face of the Utah Hockey Club" and then IMMEDIATELY put him in a fucking jersey that says property of. like that is deranged.

i know from an outsider's perspective this all can seem very reach-y but when you have lived with these people and been inside their minds and been raised inside the culture it is all very very thought out. it's deliberate. everything these people do is intentional. so i really honestly can't see these people doing this for any other reason than to make themselves look good. yes, i think tij is a very talented hockey player that deserved to be drafted high in the first round. but i think he belongs somewhere else, somewhere that will treat him well and somewhere he will be safe. because i guarantee you, he is not safe on that team. not when ryan and ashley smith own it.

[assortedvillainvault]

could you do a Hades and a trans male f/o with ocd and how he would help them/react to things? Only of you are comfy with it!

Hey there! Thanks for the ask and apologies for the snail trail it's taken to get these out.

I tried my best with these - I don't suffer from OCD/am not trans so if there's any inaccuracies please let me know!!

Hades x Trans+OCD!Reader Headcannons

Babe he has dealt, and will deal with, every single soul who has ever lived. Which is over 5 billion or so by now. This ain’t his first trans rodeo, just let him know and you’re good.

As a god he’s kinda beyond the whole 'gender' concept anyway, he just double checks his pronouns and moves on, busy guy whole realm to run and all that. But if someone disrespects you? You?? His S/O?? BOOM straight to Tartarus – he’s got your back babe just say the word.

While he might not be familiar with OCD through personal experience, or know the term, he’s not exactly unobservant.

If you’re particular about keeping your hands clean -and yeesh he can relate the soul stuff goop sticks – he just asks that you please please please don’t use the river water for washing. The Underworld's nine rivers ALL cause magic bullshit on contact, from accelerated ageing to memory loss, and neither of you need the stress ok. He can provide perfectly normal sterilised water on hand just ask the servants that’s what they're for.

You like everything just so, huh? Like down to the right angle and the minute? While he’s also gonna bring up practical issues of micromanaging (lack of time, fate, rampant minion idiocy and his family’s mere existence), he relates because he also runs a tight ship and hates his systems being disrupted – something simple being thrown off whack is a red flame rage trigger. You can be each-others chill pills. Hopefully.

If he spots you counting- shit babe want a job? There are reams of records in his office that need an organised eye and if you feel the need then who is he to stop you honestly. He’ll even pay you. Please help him.

Its almost soothing, in a used salesman board meeting type way, how he can talk you through the worst of the paranoia. Like. Ok, so what’s the worst that could happen babe? You could die? You are dating the Lord of The Dead. You’ve visited the underworld so often you’ve basically mapped the place! You know exactly what happens once ye old mortal coil is shuffled off! Who else can say that, huh? Course he’s gonna resurrect you, Olympus isn't exactly gonna notice.

And if you’re worried that through some kind of colossal, fates dammed fuckup, you’ll somehow harm him or the underworld? Babe. Sweetheart. Is your name Zeus? Or Hercules?? No?? You’re not knocking down walls or attempting to yoink a soul back upstairs? No?? You’re good. The place ain’t exactly made of tissue paper and neither is he.

Now c’mere, ok? He needs some snuggles and so you you. Lap time.

[little-miss-doe]

I see you, Brennan, with your Nine Billion Names of God scrolls.

[candiedspit]

Gorilla Mask

As Nina does my makeup–swivels the contour and punches the blush onto my cheeks, a star, she says, I’m gonna make you a star, don’t you worry baby you’ll knock ‘em dead, you see–I smoke a cigarette and check the time. I’ve got half an hour before the curtains split apart like the legs of a wonderful, beautiful slut. I imagine the audience packed into velvet seats, dressed in cocktail dresses and the suit he plans to be buried in. A Tuesday evening. While my manager insisted on Friday night, I insisted on the opposite. When is the best time to be transported? When you least expect it. After an eight-hour shift at some metal box downtown, moving papers and pushing phone calls. I know my people. I know what they need. 

Nervous? Nina asks, meeting my gaze in the vanity. You’re quiet. 

I shake my head. 

I fuck up, I go home, I say. And that’s the end of it. 

This is my first show in twenty three years. Last time I was on a stage, I was a young golden cat that people rubbed for luck. I could sing God to sleep. I feared nothing and wanted everything. Once, I kissed a girl for the first time twice. 

But that’s the hard part, right? Nina asks. Going home?

I laugh a dry laugh. 

That is true. That is always true. 

At the height of what you could call my career–that never ending totem pole, that white flash of light in which I saw nothing but mercury and moon shrapnel, I wrapped my limo around a city block. And that began the descent into capsules and deadbeat girlfriends. I broke my neck in the accident. Then, the pain pills began to taste like dust. And I needed something stronger to tether myself to the earth. 

It was always a good day when I was high. I could spend seven hours staring at the ceiling and it would feel as though I’d gone on Space Mountain a billion times. I had a sitting heart rate of one hundred and twenty three. I still did shows though they were more like human zoo exhibits. The public came to watch me die. I slurred through old gospels. I fainted during an encore. Once, I gave up. I sat on the stage unmoving and someone had to come remove me. After I went to rehab for the first time, I stopped doing shows. It was only supposed to be a year off. But I couldn’t stop going back. I got into all sorts of things. I huffed paint to watch the wall turn blue. I did coke off of someone’s wedding ring during the wedding recital. I chased some kids down the block for ten dollars. 

Elaine left. And I moved to Memphis. I sat on the back porch smoking heroin, noticing the light ooze through the leaves and feeling every breath in my chest. And I tried again. And tried three more times. I went to a rehab in California where they served lobster rolls and where you had to soak in a hot tub for forty five minutes each evening. I went to a rehab in New York where you could see the skyline pressed against the dark coils of night and the nurses wore short skirts. I went to a rehab in Paris where I beat a lawyer at connect four three times in a row and couldn’t figure out the shower head. Then, I overdosed in South Dakota while visiting some cousins; thin, bare chested men who shoot pistols with one eye closed and drink moonshine for lunch. I died for an hour; saw nothing but a few abstract, pink lines. The rehab I was sent to there was the one that did it. Nothing glamorous. A cold turkey sandwich at noon. Librium in the mornings. After detox, you’re on your own. Gotta change the sheets. Gotta clean the bathrooms. Gotta set the tables. No television after nine. No phone calls in the morning. I was already old by then. And nobody knew my name anymore. What the hell is following the rules for a while? I called my mother halfway through my stay there, after a lunch of fried chicken with plenty of nerve and gallons of black tea. I told her where I was, and what happened. How I couldn’t apologize. 

Are you sorry? She asked. 

I could see her standing in the kitchen, backed into a slant of light, arms crossed. 

If you’re sorry, you won’t do it again. When you get out, you’ll know. So, we’ll see. 

Mama, I can’t do it again.

We’ll see, she said.

And hung up. I knew she was right. I had to be good. It wasn’t enough to want to be good. I had to be out there, doing good in the daylight. When I got out, I didn’t go back to the cousins. I went to Memphis and started going to meetings and church. I didn’t know what to believe but it needed to be huge, crucial. A giant cock to rub. A pleasure to be had. I read scripture on nights I couldn’t sleep. After months of this safety walk, the songs came. I was with my sister Diana; a spoiled eggnog of a girl, ten years younger than I am but we’re wired in the same ways. I can read her mind. I’d know her heart from look alone. It was summertime and we were at the fair together. It was the first time since getting out that I felt safe to be among the others, the extraterrestrials made of crazy glue and fireworks. 

And we were on the Ferris wheel, a thousand feet above the ground, everybody like throngs of specks of dirt below us, the stars as close as they’d ever been. I got a melody in my head like a buzzing gnat. And started singing. Diana stared as I sang, the words mush but the melody there. And we celebrated when I quieted down. I didn’t think I’d ever write another song again. 

But there it was–the massive, throbbing thing to believe in.

[thethirdromana]

Today's LOTR thoughts are on the theme of storytelling.

About a decade ago, I used to help run an open mic storytelling night in Dublin. (If you ever went to any Milk and Cookie Stories events back then - hi! Do make yourself known!).

We had some people who came who were expert storytellers, some of whom did it professionally or semi-professionally. We had some people who had a background in creative writing or stand-up comedy. And we had some people whose sole experience of storytelling was telling stories for their kids or younger siblings, or for friends down the pub. They were often extremely good at it.

In fact, the people who found it hardest were the people who were trying to translate a story that had been written for the page into something that could be told aloud. What makes for a good story written down can be very different from what makes for good storytelling. There are some short stories that work in both contexts (I bet the Nine Billion Names of God would be great either way) but most just don't - Hills Like White Elephants might be a great story, but it's not storytelling.

A great written story might include a lot of dialogue (a lot of modern mass-market fiction is 60%+ dialogue). Storytelling usually uses reported speech - if there is dialogue, it's often in repeated phrases, and doesn't do much to advance the narrative.

A good written story usually has rounded, realistic characters. Storytelling uses archetypes - whether that's the good king or the grumpy taxi driver - and when a character doesn't match an archetype, they're usually the opposite (the cowardly lion).

Written stories don't need to be told in chronological order. Storytelling usually requires chronology. On the other hand, written stories usually need more of a point than storytelling does; in storytelling, you can get away with a story that's a series of interesting things happening to a character, without there needing to be something that ties them all together neatly.

Written stories often benefit from unexpected or interesting imagery. Storytelling often benefits from familiar imagery - in part because it makes it easier to remember the story, in part because it makes it easier for the audience to follow along.

These aren't hard-and-fast rules, but they're generally true in my experience. And of course, there's a difference between modern people telling stories at an open mic night and people - ancient or modern - telling stories as part of an established tradition of oral literature.

Where I'm going with this is that for a written novel, the Lord of the Rings is rooted in storytelling. I guess it's unsurprising - Tolkien is drawing on mythology and ancient literature, which come from oral traditions, and the story began as a bedtime story for his son. But it's surprising to me how much the Lord of the Rings, read in chunks, comes to resemble storytelling.

I feel like, at a push, if I had to tell the Lord of the Rings as a story (stuck in a cave? On a 3-month Mars mission? who knows), I could probably do a reasonable job. I can't think of many other series of half a million words for which that's true.

[stoicbreviary]

List the nine billion names of God, and you are still pointing to the same God; provide any tabulation of the virtues you wish, and the distinctions are but aspects of a single essence. . . .

[eggmacguffin]

I'm pretty picky about my apocalypse fiction in general but I LOVE LOVE a religious apocalypse

not like devils or demons or whatever. but like. rapture. There is a God, you just found out there is definitively a God, but he's done. He left. You don't know why and you didn't care before but now whatever ephemeral thing was causing the universe to chug on is gone and it's just you now. It's you and everything around you, still technically alive, but the clocks have stopped and the stars are going out all due to something so much bigger than you that you can scarcely conceptualize it. All because that something stopped caring, or got what it wanted.

I grew up southern baptist, a uniquely fucked up kind of USA christianity, AND in a household with an abusive parent, which is probably why my primary connection to christianity & the concept of an all-knowing all-powerful being is how fuckng terrifying the implications are in a good story

it's a shame that so much Christian apocalypse horror is written so badly bc its by like. christians asdfghjkl

Anyway watch Angel's Egg, play Iron Lung, read The Nine Billion Names of God etc etc

[ultra-francesca-mercury]

sept. 5, 1946

Queen frontman Freddie Mercury is born as Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar

Destined to one day be considered one of the greatest singers and songwriters of all time, Freddie Mercury is born into a diverse range of childhood experiences. Raised as Farrokh Bulsara in a family of Parsis (Persian immigrants to India), Mercury grows up practicing the Zoroastrian religion. Most of his childhood is spent in India, where he takes up piano lessons at seven years old. By the age of 12, he starts his first band, the Hectics, while attending St. Peter's School in Panchgani, India. A passionate fan of Western pop music, Mercury dazzles friends with his ability to play back on piano the songs he hears on radio. In order to escape the Zanzibar Revolution, Mercury and his family move to 22 Gladstone Avenue in Feltham, Middlesex, England, in 1964, when Mercury is 17-years-old. Mercury earns a diploma in Art and Graphic Design from Ealing Art College and joins a couple bands before meeting guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. Together, they start up Queen. This is also the time when Bulsara starts using the name Mercury, after the Roman messenger to the gods. With Queen, Mercury becomes one of the most iconic figures in UK music history. Queen's song "Bohemian Rhapsody" is in the Guinness World Records British Hit Singles Book as the UK's favorite hit of all time. The band has nine UK #1 albums and six UK #1 singles, not to mention 25 Top 10s and somewhere between 150 and 300 million records sold. Songs such as "Under Pressure," "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," and "We Are the Champions" continue to get regular airplay long after their initial releases. Mercury's solo albums, including his debut, Mr. Bad Guy (1985), also sell well in the UK (though not as well as Queen's), with one going gold and the other silver. For his efforts, Mercury is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2001), the Songwriters Hall of Fame (2003), and the UK Music Hall of Fame (2004). Mercury is also revered as a representative of the LGBT community. Mercury's death from AIDS complications on November 24, 1991, significantly raises public awareness of the disease. Following his death, the surviving members of Queen hold the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert on April 20, 1992. Held at Wembley Stadium and featuring a lineup of legendary musical acts, the concert is viewed by 1 billion people in 76 countries. Mercury's tragic, brilliant life takes him around the world multiple times and leaves behind a legacy of beloved music and social impact, all starting on this day in 1946 in Zanzibar.