#also anyone work w/ Circe?

[dark-points]

Before and after: Circe’s altar edition! I picked this up from a thrift store for five bucks and am really happy with the results. Used four shades of gold paint, a random gold tassel I had lying around, and decoupaged a ton of artwork depicting her! It was a lot of fun designing this! It’s not entirely done as I am going to rig something on the bottom to hang a rolled up altar cloth (made of pig suede of course) under. I don’t have a ton of space so this will be hung up on the wall and anything involving more complicated spell work or candles will be done on the cloth in the safety of my kitchen counter or outside.

[look-mom-percys-on-the-tv]

Ep 5 reactions

spoilers beneath the cut for s1e5 and minor spoilers for most of the books, but I censored the traitor's name. mostly positive tone.

ANNABETH SAW THE FUCKING FATES

"Im the last one to realize this aren't I" A LITTLE BIT

I love Percy admitting there he was really ONLY in it for Sally. Poseidon does ONE good thing and all of a sudden it's "wait I think the conspiracy to start war betten the gods is... important?" SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MEET REASONABLE PARENTING EXPECTATIONS? A certain god could be taking notes, specifically the patent of [REDACTED]

go off Percy with the emotional intelligence. A for effort

and an A PLUS to Annabeth for the sharing important info and being vulnerable.

I see that coat covering the bike seat. there's human skin on that thing, isn't there?

LIVING the portrayal of Ares as man-baby who starts twitter fights. average maturity level of anyone who likes war.

"there's no fear in you, is there?" STAWPPP

THEY KEPT THE MANHUNT PLOT🎉🎉🎉🎉 also the Gabe is Gabe-ing. Manipulate mansplain manwhore on the most literal level. except disney probably cut the womanizer bit.

the whole "Im immature as shit but my threats are real, I hold all the cards" THE GOD OF WAR IS GODOFWAR-ING

"can I walk them to the door" IS HE GONNA RUN FOR IT? they're really letting Grover miss out on this quest, huh? I mean I guess it makes sense. PLUS it means more Grover-exclusive scenes! MY BOYY

that's a lie. there HAVE to be corny movie nights at camp, right?

ALSO botl movie date, anyone?👀👀👀👀

is that? a JOKE I HEAR??? poking fun at Percy? a little. Genuine? ALSO TRUE. If you told me that "amusing" line was Liften from the book and I've just forgotten about it all five million times I read it, I WOULD BELIEVE YOU

Annabeth who complimented Circe's loom when Percy got cursed🤝 Annabeth who complimented Hepheastus when Percy got trapped

the way she says push before telling him what it is😭😭😭

WE'VE MET BEFORE. I'M 24. A FAN!? GROVER WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING AT

songs about feelings that was PERSONAL

*insert Coach Hedge talking about nature*

Annabeth asking what Ares need the kids for if he wants the bolt/thinks their quest means nothing🤝 Grover gaslight girlbossing : doing detective work under Percy's nose

OOOH good detail with Percy being caught up with all the "3000 year-old goss" because HIS MOTHER TOLD HIM hi sally i fuckign love u

"don't even try to tell me not to be weird about this" we love an honest queen. While I kinda miss book Annabeth being a bit stompy and whiny at this part, I do think that the show version suits its own characterization of Annabeth, saying whatever she thinks needs to be said.

this whole show, I've been able to see everything. episode five DO NOT be the one to let me down! PLEASE!

THE SONG omg i wasnt expecting that. miraculous movie flashbacks fr.

W CONVO. DOUBLEYOU CONVO. nothing to add. perfection.

Also. don't shoot but the song choice unironically fits Hephaestus's story.

SWIMMING

is that a giant gold naked statue of Hera? to taunt them for cheating on him? hypocrite.

"they like to ignore what doesn't fit their narrative" [REDACTED] APOLOGISTS TAKE NOTES.

also, SMOOTH AF

okay there's no way Annabeth doesn't know that story. there's ONE way to take a god's power and she doesn't know it? at least let them tell it in tandem! a little "Yeah I recognize the chair, what of it?" THEN let the touchy-feely boy present the bargain. AT LEAST.

SHE'S NOT LEAVING WITHOUT HIM

"do you need some help?" "FUCK OFF" that's Annabeth

in the one hand, I am not a fan of depriving Annabeth of her super wisdom hero moment. on the other hand, placing responsibility to fix things on the perpetrators instead of those kids from Season ONE queen shit, and showing people can change. slay, but PLEASE let Annabeth do some more puzzle shit!

THE SHIELD LOOKS SO BIG IN HER HANDS

THESE FUCKIGN TWELMVE YEAR OLDS

OH so [REDACTED] and Ares conspired to make sure the trio never makes it there, not just using the magic things that activate at a certain place, but also by DIRECTING THEM TO THE TIME FREEZE ON PURPOSE

TO SUMMON WHAT

that interaction. SO THEM

YOU KNOW WHO WHATTED THE WHAT

[spiderversegf]

hi!!! it's so exciting to see all the ppl working toward being librarians! hooray! i dropped out of college and have now worked as an circulation page for almost 3 years (yippee!) my library is relatively small w only 3 Librarians, the rest of operational staff circ pages. you don't have to get your mls by twenty-five to get your career started.. i would like this to be some encouragement to anyone who also wants to work in a library but doesn't have the desire/means/etc. to complete an masters!! or just isn't sure if that's what they Really want to do; if you find an non-librarian position available, it's worth applying to– you never know where it'll lead. loving this little librarians moment on your blog! ty 📚🥠☮️

yes !!! i worked in libraries before i ever got my masters and that experience was monumental for me in knowing what i wanted to do ! even if you don’t have a degree you can be a page, clerk, library assistant, work circulation, or even just volunteer to see how it fits w your life! thank u for the addition auden! <3

[sporesgalaxy]

I proclaim myself fan of Avis and her sisters, they deserve their own fandom (???)

Thaaaank youuuuu!!! i dont feel like ive written enough that id even WANT them to have a fandom rn, but i CAN offer you a big dump of first-draft Info About Them that I've made up and may tweak as I go along!!!!!

•••

I did a bunch of age math that'll change how i draw them going forward ⬇️

AGE WHEN AVIS BORN:

-> Nadette & Luperca : 15

-> Maritza : 10

-> Lindie : 6

-> Arleigh : 4

-> Lee : 3

Mom & Dad: 34

AGE WHEN CIRCE ARRIVES:

Avis & Circe : 17

Nadette & Lup: 32

Mar: 27

Mar kids: 7 & 3

Lindie: 23

Arleigh: 21

Lee: 20

Mom & Dad: 51

WHAT'S GOING ON WHEN CIRCE ARRIVES:

Nadette: Has a cool wife. lumberjack coded? palistrom tree carer

Lup: Childless & unmarried & living like a hag in the woods <3 needs a weird pet. doing her own thing, not that into the family business

Mar: husband and kids. beautiful carving skill

Lindie: hung up on someone but single. decent at carving & great at palisman care

Arleigh: demon boyfriend <-said nonbinarily. also doing her own thing instead of family business.

Lee: Closest with Avis but in the sibling way where they kinda wanna kick each others' ass. Often left "in charge" of Avis, in theory. Competing with Avis to dodge Storefront Duty.

AGE WHEN PHILIP ARRIVES:

Philip: 22

Circe & Avis: 24

Avery: 2

Nadette & Lup: 39

Nadette's apprentice: 20

Mar: 34

Mar kids: 14 & 10 & 7

Lindie: 30

Lindie Adopted Kid: 3

Arleigh: 28

Arleigh kids: 5 & 2

Lee: 27

Mom & Dad: 58

WHAT'S GOING ON WHEN PHILIP ARRIVES:

Nadette: Has informally adopted a wayward adult. Officially, they're her apprentice.

Lup: still rocking the woods hag life. has maybe a few weird pets. Happily a cool aunt who looks after kids when her sisters need a break.

Mar: has TEENS now...

Lindie: Divorced?? I'm just giving her perpetual relationship issues. Loves & cherishes her kid tho don't worry.

Arleigh: Bit of a socialite!! Gotta think of what she does.

Lee: Kinda just.....staying at home? w mom & dad? mostly doing the same thing she was b4 Avis moved out? Maybe a little stuck?

Avis: Moved out, but she and Circe both still do jobs for the Clawthorne Family Business for regular income. Circe is also kind of a handywoman around town! Usually at least one of them is able to stay with Avery no problem, but the fam is there to help when necessary.

Avery: sees Lee & his gma & gpa the most of anyone in the family, followed by Lindie & her kid and then Luperca. Arleigh & co live a bit far, Mar's kids are mostly a self-sufficient unit at those ages & don't need to be babysat as much. Nadette is busy and Luperca is happy to be a cool enough aunt for the both of them (Lup teases Nadette for this).

P.S. Don't ask me for details about the Clawthorne Family Business.... I am going to just see how far I can get without having to make up how Palisman Goods & Services work in detail. I simply don't want tooooooo

[drewtanakagf]

Can we talk for a second about how Piper isn't good Aphrodite kid rep? I don't wanna sound like a hater! But even though the children of Aphrodite are often treated like a joke (*smacks Riordan with my makeup bag*), they actually do have their own canonical powers related to love, attraction, and beauty. But Piper doesn't demonstrate any of them (except for her "kaleidoscope eyes" since Aphrodite kids can canonically change their hair and eye colors if they want), only Charmspeak. But while Charmspeak is a rare power for an Aphrodite kid to have, it's not unique to them. Anyone who learns magic can Charmspeak like Circe and Medea. When describing her past to Annabeth, she thought Piper could be an Hermes kid because she said she could be persuasive which Hermes and his kids could be (implication that Hermes kids could Charmspeak?), not to mention Piper would steal things to get her dad's attention. If it wasn't clear that her godly parent was female, then Piper would make more sense as an Hermes kid. Given that the series treats girly-girls/any girl who has a personality that's not "aloof, rough, and tsundere with a soft side" really poorly (and not even the tomboyish female leads are treated that well), it shouldn't be a surprise that Piper doesn't use any power specifically tied to her mother's domain of love. This just makes Piper come off as an Aphrodite kid in name only. - 💄 anon

I feel like everytime you step up to bat (the gossip column) you just pull that baseball bat back and hit a homer. your batting average is insane.

baseball metaphor aside, I do think that piper's uniqueness is obv integral to her character but also just lowk a result of Rick writing himself into a hole. Because he characterized aphrodite kids as "aloof rough etc" like you said and when it came to creating a new character that was a child of Aphrodite he needed to subvert that to appeal to the "girl power" that Piper ended up embodying (the success of that is a different conversation). Just thinking about it, I think that in the time that TLH came out making Piper into a the quintessential aphrodite kid would have flopped so bad bc the badass teen heroine trope was on the rise. And compare that to Annabeth? Like Piper would have been hated so much more.

At the same time though, I'd argue that the subverison of the aphrodite kid stereotype has more weight on the story. Because Piper doesn't rly belong and tbh none of the lost trio do (i mean, they stay in chb for maybe just over a year combined? And then they all just kinda disperse across the country. Or die in jasons case lol) and the lack of an obvious commonality as an anchor just drives home the fact that Piper is "other". Which works so well bc she doesn't rly have that sense of loyalty to CHB esp in TLH (she sticks to what she knows). I just don't see HOO hitting the same if piper didn't carry the ruggedness she has.

But to the point of charmspeak, yeah, if you learn the magic you can do it but I think her use of charmspeak as a testament to her character is more important than just having it, as illustrated by Drew v Piper in TLH.

Additionally I think she certainly shares traits w the rest of the cabin like her stubbornness and her affinity (almost need tbh) for romance.

As an aside, that's kinda why I have a love hate relationship w the contrast between Drew and Piper. Because I like that both sides apparent, but I would like to see the middle ground of being an aphrodite kid, like w Lacy or Mitchell.

Overall though, it is rly curious that Piper's powers hve nothing to do w love/appearance.... esp considering jiper was huge to the plot of tlh and hoo AND that her appearance is commented on often ("You're a knockout")

tl;dr: rick dropped the ball as we know, but it does add dimension to piper's character.

[cardworksartblog]

Hi uhhh. So yk animation v minecraft? Yea me and a friend made an au w some ocs lol. Heres the desings for canon characters i came up w bc u guys r probably Bored. Circe and her weird bug r there too dont mind them, click/tap for better resolution and quality, yadda yadda.

Summary of the au is basically. DnD esque universe where King Mango's son Gold gets sucked into a rift in dimensions and then spat out on the other side of the world at age like 4. Abt like 7 years later Mango hears rumours abt his son possibly being Alive, and puts out a bounty as a last ditch effort to see if its true; anyone who can get his son back to him gets half the royal treasury.

Me and my friends ocs who are a band of bisexual assassins with History w mango see this and go 'oh we'll just pick some random 11 year old up and trick him lol', accidentally getting The Actual Kid mango is looking for. Theres a problem tho bc victim, whos the grim reaper, basically sends their forces after them bc good technically shouldnt be alive. Also chosen, dark and circe are bounty hunters and have a hit on the assassins bc they killed a duchess.

Im still working on the story layout for the rw story so like. Yea enjoy hearing abt my adventures in hyperfix hell. Character tidbits under the cut lol

Character titbits;

Green may or may not be a homunculus. I do not confirm nor deny this idea as canon.

Red is the Beast King's runaway child (the beast king is herobrine).

Purple isnt pictured bc i havent designed them yet but they were basically given as a gift to mango by their father, the Fae King.

Yellow lived in a semi futuristic dystopian underground colony completely shut off from the rest of the world and escaped getting executed for trying to give the general public redstone bc of a reactor melting down and fucking exploding.

Gold gets wings and a pair of mini brass weapon scythes after they and the assassins win a fight against victim at the end of the journey. They're essentially like vic's blessing and way of admitting they were defeated fair and square.

Circe came out of the same rift that teleported gold onto a whole different side of the earth. She and gold lived at the same orphanage for a few years before she decided to run away to find answers bc her eyes are fucked up. Shes like an isekai mc but ends up being the source of the rifts and its a Whole Fucking Thing.

Sec was made by a god of creation semi intentionally, whereas chosen was made accidentally and treated like a servant and dark was made from the raw energies of the war that killed victim and turned them into a god of death instead of a god of harvest. To avoid the other gods reacting badly to a second 'chosen one' his creator sent him down to the world w no memories. Seconds whole purpose for going on adventures is to find out where he came from.

Blue was the first one to join sec on his journey and is a normal guy aside from his immunity to poisons.

The living hollowheads r all demigods lol.

[moonstonediaz]

for the ask game: give me recs please! they can be books, movies, songs, poets, artists idc i’m good w anything 😊

ooooohhhhohohohoh anon, do you know what you’ve done to me? recs for anything? buckle in, my friend, this might get weird

BOOKS:

The 7-1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle: i read this one last month and it was amazing! such a good murder mystery. it kept me hooked through every single page. if you love a good mystery, try this one out.

The Song of Achilles: this is already a widely known book, but hand to god i hadn’t heard of it before this past year. it…ruined me. in all the best ways. i shove it in everyone’s face now. if you haven’t read it—DO IT.

The Georgina Kincaid series by Richelle Mead: one of my all-time favorite series. it’s about a succubus living in seattle who works at a book store. it’s got demons and imps and vampires and angels and nephilim and an adorably shy author. it’s so fucking good, i’ve read the series at least 5 times now. incredibly well-written.

anything by Richelle Mead, actually. i’m a huge fan of all of her work. i was introduced into her work with the Vampire Academy series and i’ve read everything she’s written since then. they just finished casting the VA tv series for Peacock, so that’s something to look out for!

MOVIES/TV:

i’m super into horror, so if that’s not your thing just skip on down. also worth noting that i rewatch a lot of stuff. like more than i think other people do.

The Conjuring movies: they’re all incredible. that’s all i can say.

The Haunting of Hill House/The Haunting of Bly Manor: they’re not the same story but they’re equally great. i’m getting ready to rewatch Hill House bc it’s been a while and it’s fuzzy in my memory. Bly Manor makes me sob. the queer story they tell hits me so hard and the ending leaves me a mess, but it’s so worth it.

Midnight Mass: a new addition! i almost didn’t watch this due to some comments i saw on twitter, but i changed my mind and. omfg. i wouldn’t have forgiven myself if i never watched it. (Mike Flanagan is?? a genius?? he also did the two Hauntings mentioned above. his work is incredible.)

NBC’s Hannibal: listen. i will never ever shut up about it. i went in watching it before i knew Hannigram-the-ship was even a thing. but 👀. pushing the ship aside, the show is amazing. the cinematography is beautiful, the sets are elaborate and elegant. i’m obsessed. as a fan of Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal, i didn’t know how i’d feel about Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal but he adds something special to the character that’s so intriguing to me. (i wouldn’t explicitly list this as horror, but it IS gory. be forewarned.)

MUSIC:

eehhh i’m hesitant to recommend anything in this category for two reasons. 1. i do not branch out very often, if at all. 2. i don’t meet a lot of people who enjoy the post-hardcore type rock that i’m in love with. but! i’ll say what my current favorites are:

Eidola: their lead vocalist, Andrew Wells, is….okay. you ever feel really down and you can feel yourself going to a dark place, and then you go outside and the weather is perfect—like, 65 degrees and sunny and windy—and you just stop and feel the sunlight on your skin and it’s almost as if it’s warming you up from the inside? and suddenly that dark place isn’t so dark, and you feel something like hope? THAT is Andrew’s voice to me. (also he’s a beefcake and i might be in love with him) and their lyrics are so poetic and beautiful and they strike me right in my soul. so, if i’m recommending any of their songs to anyone, i would have to go with Perennial Philosophy or Elephant Bones. or Tetelestai. or Dendrochronology. and Sri Vishnu Yantra makes me scream sometimes. they’re literally my favorite band, i’d recommend it all. and ok so, they do mostly clean vocals but they also have screams in most of their stuff. and that’s why i never recommend music, bc most people balk at it lol. but it’s not heavy metal. it is not. heavy. metal. people sometimes make that mistake.

Circa Survive: another huge favorite of mine. the same type of genre, no screamo though! i’ve been listening to them for, god, over a decade now. similarly to Eidola, their lyrics are very beautiful, and paired with Anthony Green’s vocals and their instrumentals i just?? i can’t describe it. i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about their albums, mainly bc their stuff goes back to when i was in high school. so listening to their discography is like being in a time machine for me. it’s hard to recommend just a handful, but some songs i’d recommend are I’ll Find a Way, Through The Desert Alone, Flesh and Bone, and their entire new EP, A Dream About Love. specifically Drift, but the EP is only 6 songs and they’re all great.

[bright-eyed]

re: your mythology vs. fanfiction thing, i think it has to do with the oral nature of folklore as well versus the written nature of fanfiction. one thing that kind of upset me about, say, madeline miller's work was that she was putting words in mythological character's mouths and then putting it in ink and selling it as the end-all-be-all. whereas folklore emerges spontaneously and isn't the result of one person but a collective, like you said. i think poetry and art about myth is a better medium for it than novels and tv shows because of this aspect

yeah agreed esp your last point, in my experience poetry and art abt myths and legends seem interested in the preceding stories, and so they feel like expansions. also wrt what you said about writers of novels and tv putting words into the characters’ mouths, i think poetry and art is also better about not doing this because it doesn’t take itself so seriously. poetry and art are given more artistic license than novels and tv are or should be given. also, in terms of poetry (which i’m more familiar with than art) i find the poems about myth hardly substantial enough to be anything but responses to the work, whereas novels tend to invent. and like you said re: madeline miller, i agree w that too. i haven’t read circe yet, but from my reading of the song of achilles, it seems less of a expansion of myth than a gratuitous alternate universe fanfiction where her problematic otp can be together. and i don’t necessarily detest it on principle but i don’t hold the same level of respect for it as i do something like... anne carson’s translations of classic plays or antigone by jean anouilh, and i definitely don’t think of any of these works the same way i think of people actively contributing in their own culture’s stories and beliefs. (in fact i think modern reinterpretations of greek myth in particular tend towards actual disrespect but that’s another thing)

and i think that’s another thing. true retellings and reinterpretations of myths and folklore and so on by everyday people come out of a life of active engagement with those stories. like... christians do not reinterpret the bible like they reinterpret some novel or tv show. they do so as active participants, and as makers of their religion. i think this is maybe the important distinction that can be made to highlight how fanfiction is not and can never take the place of folklore. the original work or “canon” exists outside of the control of the consumer/fan writer. mythologies, religions, folklore, all of that is made by and for the people, is created and rewritten all the time to suit the situations of the people of that culture in that time. it’s not so simple as “take old story and make new one by copy pasting certain facts and using the same characters” like it’s so much deeper than that. it’s culture breathing.

and fanfiction is just.... not that deep... and imo anyone who thinks it’s genuinely comparable to religion just cuz “people change the stories” is giving fanfiction too much undeserved credit, and probably needs to reconsider their relationship to media if they find it similar in any way to any sort of spiritual belief.

[ispybluesky]

All for circumstance and fortune if that’s not too much, I wanna know Everything

SORRY THIS TOOK ME ALL DAY AAHHH

CIRCUMSTANCE

their voice: it's soft and medium-pitched. he doesn't usually raise his voice above speaking level even if he's agitated

their smile: he usually does a closed-mouth smile, it's hard to get him to grin with his teeth! but even his little smiles are usually genuine, since he's not the type to fake smile

their greatest achievement: he's something of a prodigy in the order and he's really talented and innovative with the lady's gifts

their insecurities: he's always worried about getting in trouble because despite often getting in trouble he's very unwilling to stray from the things he wants to do, so he's always trying to like.....fit his own desires into the framework of what he's supposed to be doing? and he's always a little uneasy about that because he knows he's supposed to be the order's golden child

their shortcomings: imdnfndndnf he's SO like........rigid?? that's not quite right and neither is stubborn, i described him as unbending and i think that's the closest? he's very much not the kind of person to be deviated from a path or way of thinking, not because he refuses to be swayed but just because he's so singleminded. he's also kind of naive and unsuspicious but luckily for him his tunnel vision makes him harder to manipulate. also he's. kinda lazy. fhfngndnf

how they deal with grief: outwardly he shuts down and powers through it, but it makes him prone to just like crying at random times and he also will become more emotionally withdrawn and prone to trying to do stuff by himself. if he's allowed to exercise by himself while he's grieving he'll sometimes go too hard and hurt himself

how they like to dress: he likes loose unrestricting clothing when he's not wearing his vestments because he is, unfortunately, a jock. he probably wears dresses a fair amount, but he also likes loose tank tops and shorts, that kind of thing

what they like to eat: he likes salty foods like grilled fish and he likes soups!

their theme: if the question is thematic arc i'm still hammering that out but his theme song is natsukage by KEY

their fashion sense: he really likes bold patterns and interesting fabrics despite his own tendency to wear plain neutral colors most of the time

their family life: he loves his mom and his little brother!!! him and fortune are close (both emotionally and in age) so they spend a lot of time together. their mom is a [term for luck-bearing person] while they're both [luck-using people] so they don't spend as much time with her, but they try to have meals with her at least once a week and they see her around the order with some regularity. the order isn't small but it also isn't super big so mostly everyone knows each other and it has that kind of familial aspect

their romantic life: he gets hopeless crushes on cute boys but never actually enjoys being around them fhsjdngndnf or like does enjoy being around them but in the same way you like being around people you're friends with. he's never actually dated anyone and he's never met anyone he's wanted to like actively chase after, but he does get a fair amount of confessions from people who like aloof-looking prettyboys

their embarrassing memory from years ago: when circumstance was little the room he shared with fortune was such a mess that once in the middle of the night a pile of his stuff collapsed onto fortune's bed and buried him and they had to get a bunch of adults to excavate him. fortune has never let him live this down

how they react to burning their tongue on food: sticks his tongue out, maybe does a small "ah", immediately goes to get an ice cube on it

how they react to a brainfreeze: that gif of paul rudd in front of a computer going "oh shit!!!" and closing his eyes really tight

their dreams: he dreams of a day when the order's outposts are connected more firmly and he can travel between them more often

their ambitions: he wants to discover new applications of the lady's gift!

how they sleep: face down upside down on the bed so his feet are on the pillow. he usually wakes up one or two times a night unless he's really tired

their reaction to betrayal: he'd search desperately for a reason to forgive or excuse them, and then afterwards he would just be sad

their reaction to a mystery love letter: fgdhjfj probably unfazed.....if whoever sent it approaches him he'll kindly let them down but if there's no sender name then he won't do anything about it

how they react to pain: a hiss through the teeth unless he's around fortune or his mom AND it's not a big deal in which case he's a huge baby and wants to be coddled

what they're like on two hours of sleep: imfngndndnf he functions poorly on no sleep so he always feels really normal and rational internally but from the outside he doing really dumb stuff, like how when you're drunk you think nobody can tell but it's super obvious

how they act when they're sick: whiny and dramatic, if he has a cold he Is dying. if he gets some kind of stomach bug or a bad flu though he just becomes a zombie until it's over because he hates it so much

what motivates them: he's really motivated by the order's job (balance of luck, that kind of thing) because he knows it's important job

why you enjoy them: that;s my son...i really enjoy how like gentle and mothering he is sghsnfnfndf

FORTUNE

their voice: an upbeat kind of husky voice, clear with coarse edges

their smile: big bright grin! he's an expressive boy so you can almost always see what's happening on his face

their greatest achievement: every time he outshines circ it feels like an achievement to him. also once he cooked a big dinner for the order and it went off perfectly

their insecurities: he's got a bit of an inferiority complex abt circ being better at using the lady's gifts....he's also a little insecure about how slowly his hair grows. the people at the order are always telling him how well he follows rules compared to circ but he's always sure they're just saying it to make him feel better

their shortcomings: he's envious and a little mistrustful....he has a lot of trouble not comparing himself to others (Esp Circ) and seeing where he falls short instead of where he excels in comparison. he's also got a lot of drive and not very much place to put it which results in him being unnecessarily competitive about Everything

how they deal with grief: it ferments very quickly into bitterness if he doesn't talk with anyone about it, he also tends to get angrier and pick fights when he's going through stuff

how they like to dress: very similar fashion style to circumstance (they steal each other's clothes sometimes) but he tends towards more long-sleeved shirts. he finds the underlayers of the vestments pretty comfy. both him and circ are pretty into big jackets and straw sandals as well

what they like to eat: he likes light cold foods, like a bagel or some cucumber slices or stuff like that

their theme: rever's edge (b-6) by the pillows

their fashion sense: he likes loud color blocked stuff but doesn't like stuff with patterns on it

their family life: he's super close with his brother & fairly close with his mom + he's so generally cheerful & outgoing that he's kind of the equivalent of that classmate that everyone likes

their romantic life: running joke that he should be [a luck-bearer] bc his luck w relationships is so bad (mostly unrequited crushes, a handful of breakups: he tends to put people on a pedestal and it causes problems)

their embarrassing memory from years ago: he once got an important visiting member of the order's birthday wrong and threw them a surprise party on the wrong day....it went fine but he's mortified every time he thinks of it

how they react to burning their tongue on food: AGHHH HOT HOT HOT, accepts the ice cube circ is already handing to him while also flipping circ off because he Is laughing

how they react to a brainfreeze: goes fetal, shoves the pad of his thumb against the roof of his mouth as fast as possible

their dreams: he daydreams about being a famous chef

their ambitions: he's very ambitious!!! i don't know enough about how the order works to explain what his ambitions are!!! help!!

how they sleep: worlds SLOPPIEST sleeper, he knocks out immediately and stays asleep through hell and high water, mouth open + drooling + starfished at a weird angle across the bed w at least one limb hanging off + at least one pillow is on the floor every morning. if you put a cat on his chest he will wake up immediately

their reaction to betrayal: jovial resignation that masks hurt and anger & you will find him in the gym hitting a punching bag at 1am

their reaction to a mystery love letter: he'll think about it all day and go around asking everyone if they sent it (but is really casual and jokey about it because if this is a prank someone is pulling on him then god dammit they are not gonna get a reaction)

how they react to pain: if he gets a minor/sudden injury he gets Angry and then has to tamp that down, bigger or duller hurts he bears with aplomb and tries not to think about it. he lets circ fuss over him because it makes him feel cared for even though externally he acts like he hates it

what they're like on two hours of sleep: HUGE kid at a sleepover at 1am energy (bro......do you think pigeons have feelings???) + he gets super weepy

how they act when they're sick: he doesn't get sick very often but when he does he knocks out for one to three days depending on severity of illness and then is perfectly fine. circ, who once had a head cold that lasted a month, will never forgive him for this

what motivates them: he wants to be good at a lot of stuff (versatility!!) and get praised

why you enjoy them: he's a good boy!!

[anthropwashere]

phango19: we go around, one foot nailed down

\o/ 30th DP fic and it’s the infamous dissection trope \o/

(you know I had to do it to ‘em)

Legit though, I’ve been wanting to write a DP dissection fic since, jeez, since I joined the fandom in '13 probably. It's practically a rite of passage to have one of these under your belt, isn't it? So here's me, giving you the gift of Danny Having a Bad Time.

There'll be some notes about the research I did for this one for the curious at the end, but apologies to anyone with an ounce of scientific know-how. I almost failed high school chemistry and that was something like 12 years ago. I am but a simple idiot with Internet access. Please call me out if there's something egregious in need of correction; otherwise... blame it on ghostly handwavium?

Title comes from TOOL’s “Pneuma.”

AO3 | FFN

=

It had been agony, at first. But like anything he’s ever set his mind to, it’s gotten easier with practice. 

He’s had plenty of opportunities to practice.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t wish he could quit the whole ugly business right this moment. Burn every file, lock the lab up for good, and pray for no more nightmares. But this ugly business needs doing and he’s the only one for it. He can’t allow Maddie to shoulder any more of this burden than she’s already insisted on. He won’t let those white-suited bastards lay so much as a finger on his family either, not while he’s got any say in it. There'll be hell to pay for going toe-to-toe with the GIW, but that's fine. He doesn’t care what happens to him anymore, so long as Maddie and Jazz are kept clean of all consequences.

If his luck holds out the courts will be hashing it all out for a while yet anyway. He’s never had a head for fine print or subtlety, nor doing anything so morally gray as—well. Everything lately. What should be done is clear as day to him, but if the courts agreed that easily with the GIW he wouldn't have a chance to make up for what he’s done.

He needs to do that much. 

The courts and those bastards will eventually agree he doesn’t have a leg to stand on, regardless of blood relation or his wealth of experience in an incredibly niche field. Sooner than later those bastards will come, and when they do there's only so much protest and fighting spirit they'll indulge in. That's a fight he'll lose once it comes, but in the meantime those bastards and all their clever little monitoring devices can’t come within 300 feet of Fenton Works without causing an uproar.

He has to take advantage of the time they have left.

This evening the house is empty, just him and—

Well.

Maddie’s out there fighting the good fight, Jazz and Sam and Tucker at her side. The three of them have got more experience than Maddie and him ever realized. They’ll be just fine. They’ll handle whatever toothy specter is out there terrorizing the good people of Amity Park and make sure nothing gets in the way of his work. He needs the peace and quiet. No distractions. He needs to do this by the book.

Working by the book isn't a habit he’s ever had to cultivate, not with Maddie there to shore up his madcap inventions with reams of reproducible data and neatly labeled blueprints, all hard copies done in triplicate and the digital files regularly updated to a secure server off-site. You can’t ever be too cautious when you’re putting pseudoscience to the test and winning, Maddie always said with a grin, and he’d kissed her every time for being so much more brilliant and beautiful than he deserved. What would he do without her? How far could he have gotten without her? Would Danny still be—

He swallows.

Best to banish that train of thought before it can run him down. No distractions. No what-ifs, no maybes. Not if he wants to make up for what’s happened. What they’ve done. What he's done. This one’s all on him, no matter how Maddie tries to tell him otherwise. Either he fixes this or—

Well. 

There is no ‘or,’ is there? 

He presses the record button on the Jack Fenton-improved observation rig. Blinking red lights and a momentary whine of feedback means he’s good to go. “Nov—”

Too hoarse. Clarity and enunciation are key here. Slow and steady. He’s got to do this right, each and every time. He clears his throat and begins again.

“November 24th, 2006. 9:43 p.m. This is the ninth full examination of the ectobiological aberration self-identified as ‘Phantom,’ legal name Daniel Fenton. General details of the aberration's previously accepted physical characteristics can be found in the recording and transcript of the first examination. General details of the aberration's current physical characteristics can be found in the first, second, and third examinations. Detailed characteristics that have remained unchanged between forms—the wholly living, the selectively living, and the wholly deceased are also recorded in the first and second examinations."

“For the record, I still don't think I qualify as an 'aberration,'" the body says.

He breathes. Swallows. Chooses to ignore the interruption. 

“This examination will consist of further study of Phantom's physical deterioration, to include the taking of samples of hair, skin, bone, and various fluids and tissues as necessary. Additionally I—" 

He hadn't identified himself, despite the GIW's explicitly written protocols on ghost examinations. He curses inwardly, decides not to bother. He's the only examiner on any of the recordings, after all.

The body takes advantage of his pause to add, “Oddity maybe. Hell, anomaly sounds pretty cool. But aberration? That makes me sound like I'm on the verge of a villainous origin story or something."

He presses on through gritted teeth. "I'll be conducting several tests as outlined separately—exact location in the Phantom file will be added to this examination's transcript—to see if it's feasible to separate the Phantom aberration from Daniel Fenton's remains."

"How many times do I have to tell you that Phantom has always been—"

"Danny."

The body sighs. Well. Its inhabitant does anyway. "Sorry, sorry."

He resists the urge to thank the body. He resists the urge to pat its mottled green hand. He doesn't trust his voice to remain steady if he does either.

"External examination.” He describes the body from toe to tip, his voice measured, unhurried, detached. Dark green skin, healed as flawlessly as it had seven times before. Untamed black hair that shines a glossy green in the harsh overhead lights. Eyes red as holly berries that shine with the predatory gleam so common among true ghosts when the overhead light hits them. The skin is firm, and firmly attached to the lean muscles beneath, and those too still conform to the bones as if the body hasn’t been dead for months. The body is as limp-limbed as a ragdoll in his hands as he goes through the checklist. He confirms that it’s continuing to lose weight incrementally despite no outward signs of decay or starvation—

(Can a dead thing still starve? God, but what were those two years like for Danny? All those worries, those fears, all those questions without answers, and now….)

Nothing untoward or abnormal—in shape, if not in color—can be noted. A normal male distribution of body hair. Teeth in fair repair. Gums, tongue, and oral cavity all normal, albeit pale green. Symmetrical and normal in appearance are checked off wherever they need to be checked off. On, and on, and on. An exhaustive process that embarrassed the body’s inhabitant horribly the first few times. Now it’s borne in silence, with only an occasional gruff sigh.

No deformities. No injuries, except for the postmortem thread that’s bunched up at weird angles as the body stubbornly insisted on healing practically overnight. He makes a note of it as he takes a small pair of shears to the tangles, snipping and pulling as needed. The small holes trace out a capital letter Y that’s gone a bit hunchbacked and knock-kneed. Another day or two and that scar will be gone, replaced by a new one that will stretch stark and symmetrical, for a little while. The small holes left behind don’t bleed. There isn't any blood or ectoplasm pooled or pulsing through the body. The heart is still, a fist-sized lump of dark green muscle. He'd drained the clay-colored fluid that had operated as blood out into a jar marked DP Specimen #58 - 3.85ltr ecto found w/in complex circ sys(!) w/ unk contaminant(s?). It hasn't clotted, and the body hasn't produced more.

They don't know why. They still don’t know why the body continues to heal. There’s not enough energy in the remaining ectoplasm to generate such a speedy recovery, but neither does it heal enough. Danny’s ghost—the aberration—is still bound to this inanimate, impossible corpse. Danny is still trapped.

Not to mention that the healing seems to be failing incrementally as the days pass. He doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t know if they’re running out of time or not. He doesn’t know what will happen to Danny if—

There’s no ‘if.’ He’s fixing this. 

He has to.

“You’re staring,” the body says quietly.

He swallows, shaking himself out of it. “I—I will now begin the internal examination to compare the body’s current state to that of the eighth examination conducted on November 16th. Additionally, with the data gathered from the previous examinations and tests conducted upon various tissue samples and the body itself it’s believed that optimal results might be achieved with as little biological interference as possible.”

“You said full examination,” the body interrupts. “Brain included?”

“Brain included,” he confirms. He can’t quite keep the apology out of his voice. Not as if those bastards would notice an ounce of kindness if it—

Focus.

The body doesn’t breathe. It can’t. Those lungs gasped their last 36 seconds after Maddie landed a neat hit on Phantom with a full 450 milliliters of their experimental paralytic. 

(He’d said it himself, not 24 hours before that day. Enough to lay out a ghost ten times his size! What a damn stupid, blind idiot he was.)

The inhabitant inside the body makes the sound of a slow, steadying breath. It shouldn’t shake. It shakes anyway. “Just. Don’t keep my face c-covered any longer than you have to.”

Danny’s made this request each time. As if he’d forget to give Danny what mean comforts he can through—through this. Danny had screamed all throughout that first examination. Not out of pain—he insisted he couldn’t feel anything anymore—but out of sheer, visceral horror. He doesn’t blame Danny one bit for that. 

(He’d hoped removing the brain would do the trick, that it would free Danny’s ghost, put him out of his misery. But it just grew back. There are three of them resting in glass jars of glowing formalin now. At the rate he’s going the entire lab will soon be nothing but bits of Danny in jars.)

“Sure thing,” he whispers, and picks up the scalpel. 

He narrates as he works, making small notes on the diagram at his elbow with a gloved hand that grows damp over time with green fluids. He makes the initial incision, running over it repeatedly where necessary, and inch by inch peels the anterior thoracic musculature and subcutaneous layers away. 

(He’s almost gotten used to making these incisions, to applying the necessary force as pulls the layers apart. The motions have almost become habit. It’s all the sounds of peeling the body open that continue to haunt him.)

The flesh folds like a thick blanket, draping over the body’s elbows out of the way. There’s no need at this time to study the neck musculature or organs. He leaves that stretch of skin where it’s meant to stay. He focuses on cutting away the pale bits of fatty tissue that might interfere, fully exposing the deep black bones of the body’s rib cage. 

(That had been a hard shock, the first time. He’s almost used to the sight now.)

As with the body’s hair and eyes, the bones have a faint green gleam to them. The same iridescence of a raven’s feathers. They yield to a rib cutter the same as any human’s would. He makes the cuts close to the sides rather than near the breastbone; he wants to get a good look at the heart and lungs in situ today.

The inhabitant begins to breathe rapidly. 

He pauses, the front of the body’s rib cage gripped carefully in both hands, pulled halfway out. “Do… do you want me to move the mirror?”

Oh, but he had put his foot down about the mirror. There was no way, no way, he would force Danny to observe as his own father cut him open—did this to him. Danny had asked first that his eyes not to be taped shut, because laying there paralyzed and feeling nothing in the dark was so much worse and anyway his eyes don’t seem to be going anywhere, right? The third examination is when Danny had asked for a way to watch him work, and he’d protested and blubbered and even shouted, enough that Maddie had called down the stairs in a voice thick with tears if everything was—if everything was—did he need help?

Yes, he needed help. But he didn’t tell her that. He told her everything was—was—that she needn’t worry, that he had everything handled. 

Danny had asked again. Again and again and again, and every time he said no, told Danny all the reasons why he wouldn’t, couldn’t, would never—

But Danny kept asking.

I want to understand, Dad. Please. I’m gonna go crazy if I all I do is just lay here until you and Mom fix me. I—this is all I can do. I want to see what you’re doing to me, instead of trying to imagine. Please. Please, Dad.

He’d relented for the seventh examination. He’d attached an arm to the observation rig above the table, attached a mirror to the arm, and messed with the angle of it until Danny said he could see himself perfectly. 

It had been such a terrible thing to do to Danny, but Danny had thanked him all the same.

The body sighs, chuckles weakly. “N-no. No. I just—hate that sound. That—cracking. Gets—gets me every time.”

He nods, not trusting himself to speak. He tries to be as gentle as he can, separating the breastbone from the clavicle, but some sounds are unavoidable. After setting the rib cage aside he swallows, and swallows again. His voice betrays him anyway. “M-mediastinum intact again as well. Comparable in color to previous examinations. The residual fatty thymic tissue present….”

And on. And on. Cutting and pulling and weighing, comparing weights and textures and colors to the eight other times he’s already done this.

How many more times will this be necessary?

Danny breathes, sometimes, hitching like he means to say something, or like he's trying not to cry.

 Danny doesn’t do either, but he hates himself anyway.

“Decellularization continues apace,” he murmurs near the microphone, tracing a careful finger across one lung in the scale. It and its twin had been a vivid lime green in the beginning, but like nearly every other organ it’s begun to shed its inhabiting cells, leaving a colorless scaffolding in the same rough shape of itself behind. 

Ghost organs. He’s never heard of such a thing happening outside of a microbiology lab. It’d almost be funny.

He doesn’t know what it means.

 He doesn’t know what any of this means.

The accident should have killed Danny completely, left a well-cooked corpse and an entirely separate ghost behind. Not hybridized him. Not at the risk of this. Their paralytic is what killed him—

(his son, his boy, little Dann-o, gone gone gone and it’s all his fault)

—but if he’d died another way would this have been the same result? This powerlessness, this fading? There’s no knowing, and that most of all is what keeps him up at night.

He finishes comparing all the numbers to those previously recorded. Then samples are taken and the cell debris drained, all the vials and containers marked appropriately. Lastly he bags the organs he intends to keep for study to minimize leakage, leaving the rest in their individual trays. If he were to place them all back in the body the bags would—somehow—vanish within a few days, all the organs reorganized and reattached exactly as they should be. If he doesn’t, new ones will take their place. 

Maddie suspects this to be the cause of the decellularization. The body is drawing on its own limited materials to regenerate because the ectoplasmic core once sustaining it has been snuffed out. None of their instruments can even pick up that Danny’s still in there, but there he is all the same. No one knows what to make of that.

All in all, it’s been over an hour by the time he carefully suctions out the last of the fluids pooled within the emptied cavities, filling and marking one more container to join the collection on the stainless steel counter. He’d lined the interior of the body with cotton, the first time. It had gone the same way as the bags, vanished or vaporized or who even knows. He doesn’t bother this time, returning the unbagged organs to rough approximations of where they should be. He gives the small intestine up as a bad job, grimacing apologetically. In the space where the right lung sat he places an oblong monitoring device small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. Something clever Maddie cooked up to measure all sorts of things, all potential avenues to make sense of the body’s physiology and shake the ghost clean of it. It shouldn’t be too intrusive once the lung grows back. Not that it matters.

It’s far too late to save their son. They know that. That doesn’t make this any easier.

“Brain next?” The body asks once he’s finished up the new Y incision. 

“Brain next,” he confirms wearily, setting aside needle and thread. “Your moth—”

He bites his cheek hard enough to taste blood, but that’s not enough to take back the slip. No familiarity. No acknowledgement of their relationship. No divulging more details than strictly necessary. That had been part of the agreement.

He wiggles the rubber block out from under the body’s back, moves it to support the head, cards his fingers—a fresh pair of gloves on—through its thick dark hair. Danny can’t feel it but hums a wordless thanks anyway, watching in the mirror. There’s the faintest shiver of motion at his eyes; not the eyeballs themselves but of a fey light within. It’s the only sign anyone’s still in there.

He makes the incision across the crown, sloping from behind one ear to the other. The scrape of the scalpel against bare bone makes Danny suck in a breath. He peels, he cuts, he peels. He whispers an apology as the anterior flap covers the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the chin. The inhabit’s imagined breaths come faster than ever, but it’s only the dark that upsets him. It is. The dark, the numbness, the helplessness. A hell that can’t be imagined, only experienced.

He moves quicker now, his narration stuttering in favor of action. The posterior flap peeled and cut and folded out of the way, then both of the temporal muscles severed. The scalpel traded for a blade like a bread knife to etch out a rough guideline around the crown of the exposed skull. Then the hammer and chisel.

Danny whimpers all throughout.

As soon as the brain—the same gray-green color of mold—has been removed, he gently pulls the anterior flap back, lets it dangle over empty space as he wipes the body’s face clean of a few green drips. “Keeping this one for testing, I’m afraid,” he says.

“Okay,” the body whispers.

“Nearly finished now.”

“I know. I’m okay.”

He doesn’t acknowledge that. He can’t afford to. The brain—what a brilliant kid, a professional ghost hunter, reaching for the stars since he first realized they were up there, the sum of his son cradled in his hands and this isn’t ever going to get any easier, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not—

He takes a deep breath. Steadies himself. Sets the brain carefully aside to be dealt with shortly. Soft as Jell-O, brains are, but unfathomably powerful. Science has only scratched the surface of what goes on in that three-pound mass. Danny might still be—somehow—tied to the body, but maybe the answer lies in the brain. 

Nearly finished. He can do this.

The skullcap is held awkwardly in place as he sews the scalp closed. It’ll be good as new in no time, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still take care to make the stitches tidy. He uses the back of his hand, the cleanest part of his glove, to smooth the dark hair over the seam.

“This concludes the ninth examination of Daniel Fenton, AKA Phantom,” he croaks into the microphone, and at last, at last, he can kill the recording. As soon as he has he reaches up to nudge the mirror askew so Danny doesn’t have to stare at himself a second longer.

“Done,” he says, his voice gone hoarse again.

“Yeah,” the body says.

He stands there a long, long minute, braced on the examination table staring down at the twisted corpse of his son, both splashed with any number of ghostly-bodily fluids. Arms shaking, his knees rubbery, breathing through a throat of sand. He’s tired. He’s tired. He doesn’t know how much longer he can do this.

As long as he has to. As long as it takes to help Danny. That’s how much longer he has to. No ifs, ands, or buts. 

“Are you okay?” Danny asks.

He laughs. It comes out wetter than he meant it to, but it’s fine. All of the recording equipment is off. The only person who’ll see him cry now is Danny. “Sh—shouldn’t I be asking that?”

“Maybe,” Danny says, “But it’s not easy on anybody. Is it?”

“...No. No, it’s not.”

He’s made such a mess of this corner of the lab. Maddie’d be furious with him if she saw. Not that she will. He’s cordoned it off with tall curtains and begged her on bended knee to leave this whole ugly mess to him. She hasn’t looked yet. He’d know if she had. He's seen the way her eyes linger on the curtains while they're working in another part of the lab, how her hands fumble, how her mouth thins. She's not slept more than four hours at a time since—

Since.

"Quit staring," the body orders. "Mom'll blow a gasket if you leave the lab like this. So c’mon now. Hop to it."

He laughs again, sniffling thickly as he pats the mottled green hand nearest him. Danny can't feel or see him do it, but it feels right to do it all the same. "You're a good boy, keeping your old man on task."

Danny hums. "Somebody's got to."

Well. That’s true enough, isn’t it? He’s always needed a firm hand to keep him focused. It’s been Maddie since the day they met in college, his rock in all things. All things but this. He won’t let her carry this burden. Not the messiest parts he can protect her from anyway.

So. Another checklist.

Juggling trays full of specimens off the second examination table to the counter so he can wipe the table clean. Then cleaning the body. Then moving the body to the second table so he can clean and sterilize the first. 

(Like a twisted game of musical chairs, Danny had joked once. Neither of them had laughed.)

But before that comes organizing and storing all the specimens for Maddie to study tomorrow with that eagle eye and incredible patience of hers. She’s doing the real work, laying out all the pieces of Danny to see what makes him tick, working on a way to free him even as she tries to understand him. They’ve dedicated another corner of the lab to this; nearly an entire wall, really. All their other work has gone by the wayside, shelved apart from the necessity of dealing with any ghosts that slip out to wreck a little havoc. 

Funny, how few times that’s happened—since. They’d worried, once Jazz and Sam and Tucker had told them the whole terrible truth, that the ghosts might celebrate Phantom’s condition. Take advantage of his helplessness to get revenge or at least run amok in Amity Park. They know news got out; the ghost Phantom had been after the day Maddie got her lucky shot in had gotten away. 

But there’s been nothing. Almost nothing, apart from a few non-sapient threats. Mean and cunning things, but nothing half so dangerous as they’d feared would come. Danny doesn’t seem surprised, or worried for that matter. If he knows something though, he’s staying quiet.

Once he’s passed back through the curtains the body says, “Jazz visited me again last night.”

The curse slips out him before he can help it, anger and worry and shame and grief a hot migrainous mess hammering away at his skull, matching the pace he’d chiseled at Danny’s. “She knows better—!”

“Yeah, and I told her to get out too.” Danny chuckles. “She never listens though.”

“I….” He sighs and shakes his head, exasperated. “...Yeah. She gets that from your mother. How is she?”

“Figured that’d be obvious.”

“She won’t talk to either of us,” he replies, and goes to clean and disinfect the table and floor. Easiest to get that done with before he spends 20 minutes hunched over the sink and autoclave. His back’s already clamoring for a hot shower and a handful of ibuprofen after—

Well.

“She’s not as angry as she was,” Danny says in a pause between clangs. “She hardly cried at all this time.”

“Good. That’s—good.”

“Hey, Dad? Do me a favor?”

He’s at Danny’s side at once, taking one hand in his and leaning enough to be in more than Danny’s frozen peripheral. “What is it?”

“She’s gonna try to sneak Sam and Tucker down here this week—”

“What?”

“—so can you make sure the security system will let them in?”

His knee-jerk reaction is to put his foot down, to remind Danny and then Jazz of how tenuous a position they’re in with the GIW, of how they can’t afford the littlest slip or look for loopholes or do anything to risk Danny—

But.

Danny’s been down here so long now. Alone apart from him, from Maddie’s voice on the other side of the curtains, Jazz’s midnight visits. Just his family and the ceiling and hours of silence and a hundred experiments and failures and—

And that’s no way to live. That’s no way to live at all.

“Is that what you want?” He asks.

“I… I really don’t want them to see me like this,” There’s nothing but revulsion in Danny’s voice, self-loathing and guilt and horror. “But they’ll do it no matter what I tell Jazz, and I don’t want them to get caught either.”

“Okay. Okay then. I think I can finagle three days before anyone might notice. Make sure she knows.”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

He goes back to cleaning, finishes the area and moves to the instruments and trays. Ectoplasm is notoriously difficult to scrub out. It takes time. The smell of bleach burns his eyes and nose, eventually overpowering the citrus sting of ectoplasm. Once the autoclave is set to run he tosses the latex gloves into the hazardous waste bin and takes a moment to let his hands breathe. Never did like the feel of latex, but his usual pair don’t allow him the finesse he needs for—well, this kind of work. His fingertips have gone pale and wrinkled. His fingers ache. His wrists are on fire, to say nothing of his shoulders and back.

How many more times is he going to do this?

“How do you feel?” He asks.

“I’m fine,” Danny says. Too quickly.

“Be honest, kiddo. Please.”

“I… Cold. Heavy. Like I got stuck phasing through the ground, and any second I’m gonna slip up and go solid and it’ll—” Danny makes a small, miserable noise and falls silent.

He rubs his aching eyes, gritting his teeth against every stupid, useless thing he wants to say. He’d asked, hadn’t he?

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s been months.”

“I know.”

Danny’s voice breaks. “I have to get out of here.”

“I know,” he repeats. It’s the only thing to say. He’s exhausted all apologies. “We’re trying, son. We’re working on this day and night. We’ll get you sorted, you know we will.”

“...Yeah. I know.”

He forces his aching legs to the cabinet to pull out a fresh sheet to drape over the body, then Danny’s comforter over that, pulling them both up to the body’s chin to hide the edges of the incision. “Eyes open or shut tonight?”

“Um. What time is it?”

He glances at the wall as he carefully swaps the rubber block under the body’s neck for a plastic-wrapped pillow. “Just after midnight.”

“When will Mom be down?”

“Six sharp, same as always.”

“Right. Um. Shut’s fine.”

He gently tugs the medical tape off the body’s face, smoothes the eyebrows flat and brushes the bangs aside. The green skin feels even colder on his bare fingers. 

This is the part where he bids his dead son good night and retreats upstairs. This is the part where he passes by Jazz and Maddie with his eyes firmly on his feet. This is the part where he near boils himself in the shower until he feels almost clean again, scrubbing his skin raw to wash the smell of ectoplasm away. This is the part where there’s only nightmares followed by silent hours spent staring at the ceiling of their bedroom, trying to imagine how helpless and terrified Danny is down here.

He stays where he is, hands braced on the table again. He asks the question that's festered in his gut ever since Jazz threw herself over Phantom's prone shape and spat the truth out through a stream of furious tears. "...Why didn't you tell us?"

Danny is quiet for a long, long time. Then, "I was always gonna end up on this table."

He shudders, pulling away. "We— you don’t really think that. Do you? We love you, Danny. We wouldn't. If we'd known, we wouldn't have."

Another long silence. Then, "Good night, Dad."

“I….” He shuts his eyes, weary in a way he’ll never find the words to express. “Good night, Danny-boy.”

He shuts the lights off on his way up the stairs.

=

Notes: Decellularization is cool as hell. Check out the >Wiki page< for it, and if you don’t some close-up pictures of a pig heart >here< is a fascinating DIY to create your very own ghost organ as a Halloween decoration! (Scientists are amazing.) For the rest of the research I did for this, I’ll just say that boy! You sure can find some extremely specific How-Tos on the Internent, huh? I sure learned a lot this week!

Anyway, thanks for reading! You’re great. <3

[ofcloudyskies]

⭐

good evening marina! <3 @lirapheus

i started a new thread, tumblr kept messing up when i tried to reblog the previous post again?? but we can keep it this way! if anybody else is reading, i hope they enjoy as well~

about glee, i think my favourite season is still s1! the idea for the show felt very fresh at that time and ‘don't stop believing’ always makes me feel nostalgic when i hear it on the radio. i also still have a soft spot for rachel/jesse st.james although that storyline was wild (omg when he crashed an egg on her head??? iconic)

yes, it is daiya no ace!! i'm still into it, even though the story is so long now, vol.1 of the manga had 400 chapters and vol.2 is at over 200 now omg... i also loved free! back in the day, it was one of the shows that got me into anime, i think? :D the more i get to know you, the more similar we seem, i'm also terrible at sports (actually you just mentioned swimming and volleyball, if you're good at any other i'm sorry!! haha) i really like playing voleyball but not with people who take it too seriously, i'm too bad at it to keep up. haikyuu manga has just ended last week, i'm still emotional about it!!! it kept the high quality over all these years, it has the most lovable characters. i hope you enjoy your rewatch! who are your favourites?

i don't really have any tv shows i'm into right now... currently i'm only keeping up with a few animes and exploring the world of chinese dramas. i've recently found out that swords, men with long hair and flowy clothes is an aesthetic i enjoy immensely!! my mind is completely consumed by this one chinese drama called the untamed, to the point of reading through its ao3 tag every night :D what are you watching these days?

we can start reading anytime, it's up to you! i’m not busy these days... i'm technically unemployed, but practically i help out at my parents office (it's located at my house so it doesn't feel like work at all) 

oh, for me 'circe' is the one book that keeps staring at me in bookstores... your cover of wizard of oz is lovely! i always love b&w with red, i have a ton of postcards from london with this color palette :D i actually took a photo of my favourite covers, most of them are from this polish small publisher of japanese literature, i adore their minimalist covers. and jane austin, obviously :D and thanks to you i realized how dusty my bookshelf is, whoops...

i'm so excited you like 'slowly'!! i hope you get matched with some cool people. i had a few nice conversations but in the end i didn't find anyone i'd keep writing with for longer and i stopped using it some time ago. there were so many people who only replied shortly to my questions but did not start any new topics and i don’t know how to carry the whole conversation on my shoulders, it's tiring... also there was this one guy that was easy to talk to and he also told me he liked talking to me but then he didn't reply for months. suddenly he wrote to me out of the blue again, we exchanged a few letters and he stopped replying again. i'm still flustrated about it??? and it's been a few months since then ahaha. maybe i'll try it again sometime cause i still adore the concept behind the app. i hope you have better luck than me :D let me know how it goes! on the other hand there's also postcrossing, have you heard about it? you get an address of a random person in the world and send them a physical postcard. it's really fun too c: but it's a one time thing, when someone gets your postcard, they can reply through the website but that's all.

today was so hot here but probably it still wasn’t as bad as for you in spain. i hope you didn’t melt today! do you live anywhere close to the sea? oh, actually i just remembered i know spanish! i understand almost everything but i'm so bad at talking, i can never remember the words i want. i guess i’ve never had enough practice, i mostly learnt in class. 

if you still read it today, sleep tight!

PS. catch a song that’s been on my mind for 3 days straight now! -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvdYFFkOgAA 

[insert-cleverurl]

hello!!! here's your prompt: think sleeping beauty except when knight!will goes to find the sleeping princess he instead finds nico, definitely not asleep. nico's parents locked him up with all the crazy thorn bushes and stuff because he was too "dangerous" and they came up with the sleeping princess thing as an excuse to make a maximum security prison for him. also nico can turn into a dragon and that's why they locked him up

oh that sounds very fun, and so as to not just have this in my ask box forever and somehow forget about it, I’m gonna do some plot points rn (because I don’t feel like working on the elams au I was so excited about an hour ago lmao)

a thing: I dug really deep into backstory instead of plot, as I do with everything lmao

nico mostly spends his days in the dilapidated castle summoning ghosts and skeletons and playing card games with them - sometimes he gets news of the outside world, but not a whole lot of people die near the castle. mostly knights, and Nico finds them all pretty annoying

will’s been training to be a knight ever since he was old enough - his father, Sir Apollo, was once one of the strongest and most trusted knights of the good King Zeus. at least, until he was cast out of the palace for crimes against the crown. will just wants to be like his father, make the king proud. 

“your father made some horrible mistakes, William. but he was a brave and strong knight - I believe you could become the better version of him.” - mr zeus

will lives by those words literally for like seven years

and then he hears through the grapevine that there’s a prince who was cast into an eternal sleep by a wicked witch (who turns out to be the bastard princess Hazel, who is not at all wicked and just wants to protect her brother) and he’s like “hey, saving that prince would totally boost my status up and maybe I’ll get a cute bf out of it too”

our boy is completely unaware that the good King Zeus and his wife Queen Hera actually sent Nico (their nephew/adopted son after Hades and Persephone died in a raid sometime after Hazel’s birth) sent Nico there because his powers were getting out of control

also they may have had a hand in Bianca’s death - but hey, they didn’t know the war on the eastern front was so bad. yes, they sent her regiment, the hunters, there, but they didn’t think anyone would die

so Will visits his friends for some supplies and heads out w/ absolutely no clue where to go except some vague directions young General Reyna (famous for climbing so high into the palace ranks despite not being part of the large extended family - and, of course, being close to the young prince, the poor girl, however does she feel? King Zeus was to have them married, she must be heartbroken) gave him

will goes and fights and gets in (and he maybe meets Hazel and her new coven at some point - Calypso, Circe, Hecate) and then he sees Nico and he’s like “hey what the fuck you’re not asleep”

Nico’s like “hahah ye my uncle thinks I’m going to kill him in his sleep and like at this point I might, his son’s way cooler than him anyways”

they talk, stuff happens, Will’s like “cool ok I’m getting you out of here” and it somehow happens

so they meet up w/ Hazel and her gals and collect some friends and Artemis too (she’s just like uhhh dad’s been kinda mean recently don’t like that) and they storm the palace and Nico gives a big and dramatic speech and in the end Zeus and Hera yields the throne to the next in line - one of the princes or princesses aka Jason, Thalia, Percy, or Nico (literally none of them want it but Nico gets out w/ “hey I've been trapped for like twelve years idk what's happening” and Thalia’s like “y’all know I’ve got an army to run” so Jason n Percy are like “u no what we can figure this out later”)

and then Nico and will are like “hey I kinda really like you”

“do you like like me” “yes you gremlin I like like you” and then they kiss and everything is all well and good and happy

wow this is gonna turn out to be really long isn’t it :// I'm probably not gonna finish in time here’s to hoping tho?

[movedthechangingman]

everyone knows how i Feel about johnzee but i do think their relationship/break up is essential for their current n52/rebirth characterizations. this is all my opinion and you dont have to agree w me so dont jump up my ass but wow these two are so fucked up

... like im fascinated by how terrible things became and a lot of my unfinished writing is abt the Complicated emotions n all and i do have a playlist about why and how they need to be in therapy and far away from eachother until they can work their shit out

i make jokes about how they would have become the alpha couple if they stayed together/got married but lmao its not totally untrue... i listen to anything from tallahassee or the previous alpha couple songs and its. Oh Huh. i never have and never will doubt that john and zee love/loved eachother but it did canonically turn rotten and i dont think its just because of her dads death its just...

zee is not a good person neither is john and i 100% believe they bring out the worst in eachother, i know JLD52 is very questionable for characterization but the absolute nightmare of codependent love/hate they have for eachother. john states flat out that hes cruel to her on purpose so he doesnt have to admit that he cant get over her... we know as of jld18 that zatanna mindwiping other people is still canon and its a trick she pulls on john in his first new 52 solo. she uses her power to warp his moral compass (and it was confusing for me? but seemingly she made him forget she did it in the first place). she mentions again in JLD that she intends to wipe his knowledge of backwards magic.

zatanna is just.. naive when it comes to john. she gives him endless chances to do better by her and their allies. and he fails her... again and again and again. she says she’ll never trust him again... and immediately does. that weird alternate wish fulfillment reality where she grows old with him and then goes apeshit because “she cant live without him” while also knowing its never going to be the real john. she wants a love from him he can never give her. john cant be happy

and now in rebirth.. god to know hes (unwillingly) been manipulating her the whole time... and like. since we havent gotten a follow up zatanna is just left with questions. did zatara force him to seduce her? how much of their relationship was a lie? her dad who was everything to her but controlled every aspect of her life without her knowing it. not necessarily on topic but zatara sucks so much but also i think its worth noting circe + zataras team up as two like master manipulators in rebirth (circe w diana and zatara w john/zee)... hoping that gets some follow up eventually. zees crying of “tell me you planned it. tell me you and my dad had a trick up your sleeve” kiiiiiilled me. she cant trust anyone at this point. however also fucked up but zatara using magic to make sure john cant speak about/tell zatanna what he made him do is so fucked up also

anyway this is probably illegible but wow you two are so fucked up! go to therapy! also worth nothing john and zee are two my favourite characters of all time but wow they really do make eachother worse anytime romantic shit gets brought up and i think tynions general writing style of making everyone clinically depressed makes sense for them considering the entire thing

[gotatext]

PREFERRED NAME — nora. i think i started going by it in like, 2009?? my full name is eleanor but i hated it n thought it was way too pretentious n i never felt like it fitted me so when i started writing on forums i decided i’d be a nora rather than eleanor and then my school friends called me it and it just kinda stuck, the only person who calls me eleanor is my mum

PRONOUNS — she / her / ethereal being beyond comprehension

AGE — 23 but i tell everyone im 21 because even tho time is literally fake im desperately clinging to that fleeting thing we call youth trying to catch it like smoke in my hands

PINTEREST — i actually have two. this one is my main one where i just cram all my shit n i’ve had it for years and some of its super unorganised. then i also have this one which is one i made for exclusively female characters. it started as mythological figures but now its like, women in literature and the occasional oc as well. variety is the spice of life!

DISCORD — lindsay lohan’s meth#8664

TUMBLR (PERSONAL/MUSE/RPH) — i used to be froseths but now im pvrscphones cos ya gal is a fucking whore for mythology 

OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE — oi oi guvna ere’s me twitta. also here’s my letterboxd n my goodreads if anyone still uses tht

MYER-BRIGGS — enfp / infp border .... the classic profile of a lit student

HP HOUSE — hufflepuff, am fuckin mad. 

ZODIAC — libra which is a joke because i am in no way balanced but i guess i AM indecisive and a peacekeeper so?

DO YOU BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY? — i believe it when it says good shits gonna happen in my life and blame it if bad shit happens but i don’t strongly follow it i just find it interesting

HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU STARTED RPING ON TUMBLR — maybe like 14?? my first rp blog here is literally so embarassing i wrote as clove from the hunger games n my best friend irl wrote cato :/ it was wild

WHAT YEAR WAS IT? — like 9 years ago?? 2010 maybs

NAME A RANDOM ROLEPLAY THAT STICKS OUT IN YOUR MEMORY — me n my friend ellie made this really cool group the summer before we left for uni which was loosely based on a concept mentioned mayb once in the divergent series, but it gave us loads of freedom to make it our own thing. it was called the fringe n it was like..... this dystopian society where people with different genes were cut off from the rest of society n lived in overrun slum cities where different groups had like, a monopoly over weapons, produce, etc.... my character jack was the leader of this lost-boy-esque tribe called the wolf pack who were hunters n used to run across the rooftops wearing the skins of animals they’d killed and engage in tribal rituals with sacrifices to the gods n shit. sounds lame but everyone there was so invested in their character arcs that it was a shame to see it go. but ! it kind of reached its end point so we blew it up w nukes n they all died. tragic.

WHAT WEIRD ANIMAL WOULD YOU HAVE AS A PET IF IT WAS REALISTIC — a fox?? do ppl keep foxes? idk i’ve always just felt a sense of connection w them like when a fox stares at me im like this shit is life i am living and breathing in this bitch.... visceral

NAME THE FIRST SONG ON YOUR DISCOVER WEEKLY ON SPOTIFY OR THE FIRST SONG THAT COMES ON APPLE MUSIC / ITUNES SHUFFLE — everbody party tonight by cobra man n summer girl by haim..... not my usual stuff but big summer chillin vibes,.....

NAME A BOOK THAT YOU READ IN SCHOOL THAT YOU SURPRISINGLY LIKED — lord of the flies and also the handmaid’s tale. one of assignments was to write a chapter from another character’s perspective n i chose moira

NAME A BOOK YOU HATED THAT MOST PEOPLE LIKED — skellig. fuck off with ur asprin ugly bat man i don’t care. also of mice and men. don’t care about the rabbits or curley’s goddamn wife.

WHAT TV SHOW DID YOU RECENTLY BINGE? — im not a big binger bc i find it jst makes me depressed if i watch tv all day but im nearly finished stranger things season 3 n i recently finished euphoria (big rec but proceed w caution as quite triggering content)

FAVOURITE QUOTE — cool girl speech from gone girl. but also “there’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls” i know its like.... such an overused quote but it really encapsulates this kind of feral girlhood that a few of my characters like bridget n greta have tapped into. i also loved the line “i feel like i could eat the world raw” from song of achilles, that really captures this kind of.... pure n childlike enthusiasm tht i wanna achieve w rory 

LINK TO A VINE THAT EXUDES YOUR ‘ENERGY’ — this is my energy completely am always covered in glitter n staring broodily out of the windows of ubers at 4am like im in the sad bit of an indie film 

DO YOU WRITE OUTSIDE OF RP? WHAT DO YOU WRITE? — uhh.... not as much as i shd.... i want to be a writer so i shd be makin some effort to get my stuff Out Into The World but im just not.... lol. ive done a lot of poetry collections . i wnt to finish a novel @ some point too.

THREE YOUTUBERS YOU STILL TRUST — bold of you to assume i trust any youtubers

A CELEBRITY CRUSH THAT JUST WON’T QUIT — id literally die for saoirse ronan n timothee chalamet :/ chance perdomo also owns my ass. 

EVER MEET A CELEBRITY? SHARE YOUR STORY — i once high-fived dani harmer, the actress who played tracy beaker. today my sister text me tryin to make me guess what celebrity she just saw on holiday in wales and for ages she let me think it was timmothee but it was actually bradley walsh from the chase :/

WHAT’S YOUR PICTURE-PERFECT NIGHT? — i am in a bomb ass crop top and mini skirt, several scrunchies in my hair, glitter all over my face, wearing cowboy boots. we eat dinner in a trendy but affordable pub that doubles up as a cocktail bar n then we drink zombies or sex on the beaches n go to a rave where everyone is on the same wavelength n i share drugs with girls in the toilets and we swap numbers knowing we will never text each other but its ok bc in that moment we feel like we are soulmates and everyone is super drunk n touching everyone else n its all very visceral and we walk through the woods when the rave ends and lie in the grass because we wish to suck out all the marrow of life 

A CONSPIRACY THEORY YOU KINDA BELIEVE IN — princess diana was murdered 

ARE ALIENS REAL? — maybe the real aliens are the friends we made along the way

PLAY ANY PHONE GAMES? WHICH ONES? — love island game im addicted and way too invested in my fictional relationship with bobby, a cartoon

WHAT’S A FILM YOU LOVED WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG AND RECENTLY WATCHED, ONLY TO FIND OUT YOU DON’T ANYMORE — bold of u to assume i remember my childhood. but if we’re talking last 10 years angust, thongs n perfect snogging is so so cringe 

DO YOU COLLECT ANYTHING? — pairs of glasses belonging to other ppl when they break / get new ones even though i can see perfectly well. 

WHAT’S SOMETHING YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BUT YOU’RE TOO LAZY? — mythology...... always a craving and a wish i’d read like ancient texts but my school wasn’t good enough to do greek or latin or any of that shit n even tho i could read english translations i cant be bothered. also criminal psychology

THREE LANGUAGES YOU DON’T SPEAK, BUT WISH YOU COULD — italian, french and latin

MOVIE YOU’VE WATCHED MORE THAN 5 TIMES — ladybird, about time, angus thongs, shrek 2, what we do in the shadows, the history boys, atonement, coraline, the breakfast club, ferris bueller’s day off

NAME A FICTIONAL CHARACTER FROM TV/FILM/MOVIE/GAME/BOOK THAT YOU FIND YOURSELF PROJECTING ON / YOU RELATE TO — cecilia lisbon. rue in euphoria. alison brie in glow. adam parrish in the raven cycle. richard papen. olivia cooke’s character in thoroughbreds. allen ginsberg in kill your darlings. lily in sex education. holliday grainger’s character in the film animals --- i too am an aspiring writer who never writes and just gets drunk instead .

DO YOU FOLLOW ANY SPORTS? WHO DO YOU ROOT FOR? — no. cba

HOBBIES BESIDES WASTING AWAY HERE? — i go to the movies basically every day bcos i work in a cinema. im also a voracious reader n i occasionally do theatre or costume making

PLUG A TV SHOW / MOVIE / BOOK / VIDEO GAME / ETC… YOU WISH MORE PEOPLE WOULD CHECK OUT — where the wild things are (film by spike jonze).  animals. beats. the book fen by daisy johnson and a girl is a half formed thing by eimar mcbride. andy warhol’s biography from a to b and back again

WHOSE BRAIN WOULD YOU LIKE TO PICK, ALIVE OR DEAD? — phoebe waller-bridge on how i get her life. carey mulligan on how she got to be such a good actress n how i can become her. maybs wes anderson. maybs gillian flynn. i tend to listen to podcasts w the ppl i really wanna pick the brains of.

TEAM EDWARD OR JACOB? — edward :/

LAST MOVIE SEEN IN THEATRE — blinded by the light n i lovd it

DO YOU STILL READ? — when i finished uni i kinda got out of the habit but this week i finished two books so ive set myself the challenge of a book a week.

IF SO, WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING? — i finished song of achilles yesterday n i also finished call me by your name yesterday. started circe by madeline miller today, im also partway through milkman by anna burns and the plays of annie barker

ON A SCALE OF 1-10, HOW MUCH DID YOU HATE FILLING THIS OUT? – 3 i didnt hate it bcos at heart i am self-indulgent and love fashioning some sense of self when i feel lost in a world that is scary and constantly changing 

[mooculley]

DRAG AND GREEK MYTHOLOGY

RuPaul - Gaia

As the most famous Drag Queen, she is able to give fame and notoriety to anyone that graces her TV show. It is only fitting that she be the Mother of Life, Titans, and Gods - Gaia. Like Gaia, she can be quite problematic but is known far and wide regardless.

Bebe Zahara Benet - Nike

As the first winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race she is the Goddess of Victory, Nike. She was able to be the first to promote drag to the world as the first reigning queen and returned to All Stars 3 to try and snatch a second crown. 

Tyra Sanchez - Nemesis

The second winner of RDPR, Tyra Sanchez embodies the Goddess Nemesis. Nemesis is the Goddess of revenge and retribution. As seen from her season, she still has beef with many of the queens then and many of the queens today. She was banned from LA Drag Con and threatened any who attended.

Raja - Persephone

Seen as one of the most beautiful drag queens, Raja embodies Persephone, the Goddess of Spring, flowers, and much more. She does have an offseason, spring is only once a year, where she must return to the underworld. She has been seen to wear INTERESTING looks, offseason, on her series Fashion Photo Ruview with Raven.

Sharon Needles - Nyx

The Dark Goddess among us, Sharon Needles, embodies the Goddess of the Night - Nyx. Sharon Needles brought forth pieces of darkness and Dragula onto the RPDR mainstage and ended up snatching the crown. She is most famously booked on Halloween.

Chad Michaels - Zeus

Wanting to go by a male name, Chad Michaels embodies Zeus. She is a legendary queen with an almost identical impersonation of Cher. She was one of the most polished queens during her seasons and is one of the most famous queens today. Chad is the eldest winning queen and shares her. wisdom as does Zeus. As the first All-Star, she embodies one of the great Gods.

Jinkx Monsoon - Polyhymnia

Jinkx, since winning her season, is well known for her singing as she has released two albums. She also revealed this amazing trained voice while on drag race stunning many of her competitors and fans. Her voice has reached far and wide and even onto popular cartoon, Steven Universe, as she voiced Emerald. She embodies the Muse and Goddess, Polyhymnia the Goddess of Hymns, Poetry, Dance, Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent.

Bianca Del Rio - Thalia

A Comedy Goddess in her own right, it’s only fitting to be introduced as the Muse Goddess of Comedy herself, Thalia. Bianca’s comedy is loved by many as they follow her many tours across the world. She also pulls off stunning looks and never faced being in the bottom. Her comedy now shows on the big screen as Hurricane Bianca 1 & 2. 

Violet Chachki - Aphrodite

Known as one of the most beautiful and most polished queens of drag race, Violet embodies Aphrodite, the Goddess of Beauty and Love. Week after week, Violet stunned the fans with her looks and even upstaged the S8 finale, entering with a SNATCHED waist. Her beauty has even crossed into the realm of other artists, featuring in the music video, All The Rage by Allie X.

Bob The Drag Queen - Hestia

Bob The Drag Queen is more than just a comedy queen but also know to defend drag queens of color and formulate a sense of family among them. She has been the most politically focused during her reign as she tried to bring queens of color into the sisterhood. We have also seen her family compete in S10 showing the power of sisterhood and motherhood. Her support of Monet X Change and Miz Cracker was evident of their success. With all of these, she embodies Hestia, the Goddess of Hearth, Family, and State.

Alaska Thunderfuck - Circe

Alaska had amassed a lot of haters during her time on All-Stars 2 but did not care for a single moment of it. She used this hatred to push her stardom even further. Alaska is like Circe, who also did not care for her haters and even turned them into animals. Alaska is often seen using the image of the snake. Circe the Goddess of Magic is embodied in Alaska because she also has qualities similar to that of Sharon. She is also a supporter of Dragula.

Sasha Velour - Athena

Sasha is known often for her art, intelligence, craft, and strategy, she perfectly embodies Athena. Athena is Patron of the Arts and as the previously reigning queen, she promoted all forms of drag in her monthly show Nightgowns, even touring with the legendary Boulet Brothers and Dragula Supermonsters, Vander Von Odd and Biqtch Puddin. She showed her beauty, intelligence, craft, and strategy through her drag, especially with her iconic rose petal performance. 

Trixie Mattel - Euterpe

Trixie Mattel is one of the most famous drag queens as she has been able to amass a huge following after her season 7 loss. From there she created her own youtube show under wow presents with fellow fan favorite, Katya. As she continued her career she began creating country and folk music, quickly rising in the industry’s charts. She embodies the Muse Goddess of Music, Euterpe with several successful EPs and an album and introduced many fans to country and folk music. She is one of the most successful queens of drag race and was even able to snatch the All-Stars 3 crown. You can find her on the small screen on the Trixie & Katya Show w/ Bob the Drag Queen or on her many tours.

Aquaria - Artemis

The Current Reigning Queen had gone full force throughout her season. Aquaria was rated as one of the top fashion queens by RuPaul herself, especially with her Sabatina look. She is incredibly well rounded as she was seen winning comedy challenges and fashion challenges. Aquaria embodies Artemis, protector of woman, goddess of the hunt, and virginity. She has recently defended her fellow finalists and the entire drag community from a pop singer. She paves the way for many young drag queens and all drag queens alike with her legendary looks, tiresome work ethic, and millennial attitude. 

Swanthula Boulet & Dracmorda Boulet - Hecate

The creators of Dragula and its three pieces, Glamor, Horror, and Filth, are only fitting to be the three part goddess, Hecate the Goddess of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Night. Swanthula and Dracmorda have iconic and legendary outfits and ideas that are brought into this world through Dragula World, Queen Kong, and their show The Boulet Brothers' Dragula: Search for the World's Next Drag Supermonster. Their platform continues to grow and give life, or death, to supermonsters near and far.

Vander Von Odd - Phobetor

The world’s first supermonster was just a baby drag queen at the time of filming but had held the three qualities of Dragula more than her contenders. She served iconic horror runways and floor shows and an utterly disgusting Filth during the finale. Vander Von Odd has become an incredibly successful drag supermonster and even performed alongside Sasha Velour during the Nightgowns tour. She embodies Phobetor, the God of Nightmares, as many of her looks are those you might only to have thought to see in your sleep. 

Biqtch Puddin - Thanatos

The world’s second supermonster, Biqtch Puddin, embodies Filth more than her predecessor. Her iconic janitor performance in the finale was a huge deciding factor as well as her constant dedication to filth the entire season. She often depicts herself as a filth queen but also a gaymer. With filth, she embodies the God of Death, where all beings rot in the ground. She has a large array of drag looks, including her sickening Wedding Dress look and her intergalactic style.

[devosdevine]

I’m a Witch.

Witch.

Why use that word? Mostly, because it's true.

Also, because it's an incredibly important word.

As Madeline Miller explains in her brilliant Guardian article, From Circe to Clinton: why powerful women are cast as witches, the word witch "reflect[s] our ideas about women back to ourselves." This lone syllable is a palimpsest of information about women's history: forms of feminine power, fear of feminine power, and the independence of women who hold power.

I learned I was a witch at age 11. Unfortunately, not by owl.

When I was 9, my progressive Episcopal school hired a remarkably conservative pastor. He taught my third grade Bible class that women were inferior members of the Christian faith. Convinced of my equality, I fought him openly. When the class reached Corinthians, I was exiled to the hallway.

Fortunately, I also spent that year studying Scandinavian history and mythology. I thus realized that pre-Christian spiritual alternatives existed, but the old gods still seemed distant, found only in fairy tales and books of ancient history.

Two years later, I stumbled on a curious volume at a used book fair. It was pink, with an picture of a beautiful woman on the cover and a compelling title: The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries. I took it home and devoured it in one sitting.

Running into my mother's bedroom, waving the book like a flag, I hollered, "Mom! I understand now! I'M A WITCH! Everything makes sense!" I was deliriously happy.

My mother lowered her newspaper and said levelly, "OK. But you can't ever say that to anyone else. They won't understand."

If you've met me, you know I'm a rules-follower. (Well, except when my Bible teacher tells me to accept my subservience.) I didn't speak the word "witch" to anyone else for nearly ten years.

Yet, I was a lucky wee witch: I had little supervision, an allowance, subway tokens, and all of New York City at my disposal. I bought a tarot deck at a comic book shop, made a wand from a branch found in Central Park, taught myself to meditate, and spent hours on the floor of Barnes and Noble devouring feminist classics and occult texts.

I paid scant attention to pop cultural depictions of witchcraft. It seemed a bit dangerous: would my curiosity indicate that I was, indeed, a witch? Also, I didn't want to get my information from Willow. I wanted real magic.

When I reached Duke University, I found a trove of resources in the Divinity Library, which was often empty and had a forgotten copy machine in the basement. I studied there, Xeroxing whole chapters from Doreen Valiente's works after I finished my homework.

I also found mentors: a married pair of witches raising their young daughter in the craft. They took me in, filled the many gaps in my knowledge, taught me how to perform rituals with proper tools and other witches, and coached me through many challenges. But they practiced in secret, because North Carolina wasn't a safe place to be a witch in the 1990s. So I practiced in secret, too.

Until I met my husband. Nominally Christian, he was remarkably sanguine about my beliefs and befuddled by my secrecy. We spoke Methodist vows at our wedding, but did so bathed in sunshine and surrounded by flowers, bees, and butterflies, so that I could feel the presence of the divine.

I stuck a toe out of the broom closet after my daughter's birth. As her primary role model, secrecy and sneaking around seemed like a terrible precedent to set. We decided to become an interfaith family: our daughter was baptized, but also included in my observances. Today, we celebrate all pagan holidays and some Christian holidays. Openly.

Yet, I didn't really leave the broom closet until we moved to Asheville, where I found allies, resources, and wise teachers including Byron Ballard, Becky Beyer, Sarah Chappell, Maia Toll, Jodi Rhoden, and Katie Vie. When I stopped hiding, I found my tribe.

--

So, what do I believe now?

Animism

I am an animist, which means that I perceive all natural things - rocks, plants, trees - as in some way alive. I also believe in divine immanence - an organizing force in the universe that is both holy and present in all natural things. I believe we can perceive divine order in the patterns of sacred geometry - pentagrams, spirals, stars, whorls, the Fibonacci sequence. (Here, let Donald Duck explain!) Thus, I believe nature is to be cherished, protected, and venerated.

Views about classic theological questions - the soul, the afterlife - vary widely among animists. Personally, I think our bodies and consciousness return to nature, but I really don't know what that means. I doubt my mind is capable of understanding it.

Paganism

Paganism is a polytheistic religious practice. I believe it is difficult for the human mind to approach the divine without some organizing principles. Gods, goddesses, myths, and stories help us conceive of the divine in a concrete way. Forming a relationship with one of these manifestations is a way to venerate the divine in the material world.

Views about classic theological questions vary as widely as you might expect among pagans. We have a "family goddess" and organize our veneration around her symbolism and incarnation.

Witchcraft

Witchcraft is a practice, not a religion. Thus, one can be pagan and a witch, pagan but not a witch, and a witch but not a pagan. I happen to be both. There are too many strands of witchcraft to list here.

Witchcraft, as I define it, is the practice of magic.

I think of magic as the conscious direction of intention on the material world. My practices are informed by Reclaiming, Norse, and Dianic Wiccan practices. (But I no longer use materials created by trans-exclusionary authors.) I'm also starting to learn about Appalachian folk magic, since I'm surrounded by it. However, I also think of magic and science as a spectrum: magic can be defined as a collection of observed (and still somewhat fuzzy) knowledge that has been passed down along generations but not incorporated into the laws and rules of "science." I read Sagan and Einstein along with spell books.

My daily spiritual practices include meditation; reading tarot; caring for our land; invoking, spending time in the presence of, and making offerings to our family's matron goddess; working on our family altar; casting spells; and taking classes in herbalism, mysticism, or history. Special spiritual practices are reserved for holidays known as sabbats and esbats.

Sabbats are the eight holy days observed by many Euro-American pagans and witches. They represent spokes on the Wheel of the Year. These are holidays for our family, and we have special traditions associated with each. Many are revivals of pre-Christian festival days, and fall close to popular holidays. Samhain is one of the holiest days of the year, often referred to as "The Witches' New Year." Yule is a lot like Christmas, so our family observes a full week of wintry celebrations. Imbolc is the return of the sun, a better version of Groundhog Day. Ostara is very similar to Easter. Beltane is May Day, and my daughter's school actually celebrates a version of it with costumes, maypole dancing, treats, and games. Summer Solstice, or Litha, is a time for staying up with the sun, catching fireflies, drinking champagne in the grass, and making strawberry shortcakes. Lammas is the first harvest festival; we visit local farms, make bread, and learn about food systems. Mabon, or Autumn Equinox, is the big harvest festival, and I see it as the kickoff of the "season of the witch," when everyone is getting ready for Halloween and I can luxuriate in feeling normal for a month! We carve pumpkins, pick apples, and decorate like love children of the Addams and the Griswolds.

Esbats are rituals held at the Full Moon and New Moon. These are special times for holding rituals and casting spells, so I set up a small ritual for my daughter wherein I teach her some new skill like grounding or casting a circle. Then I do my own rituals and spellwork after she's in bed.

--

My decision to leave the broom closet was informed by (1) a new sense of safety, because witchcraft is extremely popular right now, but also (2) a new sense of responsibility, because of the misogyny unearthed in the 2016 election.

Clearly, the election itself was informed by a persistent hatred of powerful women. "Witch" played a strong role in misogynistic descriptions and depictions of Hillary Clinton. For younger women, especially witches like myself, this was alternately infuriating and thrilling. It was both a denigration of us as individuals and a recognition of our political power.

As Kristen Sollee has explained, “Witches have always been politically radical, in my opinion, but it seems that even more American witches are these days because the internet allows for a new kind of organizing on a larger scale." After the election, activist witches began to organize, often via the internet or in spaces created by feminist entrepreneurs. W.I.T.C.H's many outposts. Intersectional feminist events at Hauswitch, Catland, Ritualcravt. (And many more I'm surely leaving out.)

Women who were witches - and women who weren't - began to see themselves reflected in the activism of witchcraft.

Then Donald Trump co-opted the term "witch hunt." It rang hollow. As Josephine Livingston said:

On the one side, we have the young woman. Her natal chart is fully indexed; she can read tarot. She knows that Planned Parenthood guards her liberty. Her interest in witchhood is bound up with her political conscience, gender identity, and sense of humor. On the other, the President of the United States. His witchhood is, by contrast, a simple claim: that enemies hunt him for no good reason.

Like Livingston, I believe that "the only sorcery effective against him is solidarity: more magic, more craft, more witches."

If you can hex, do it.

If you can work to regenerate the earth, do it.

If you can bind, do it.

If you have the power of persuasion, use it.

But above all...

If you're a witch, use the word.

It's a powerful word. It rings with history, beauty, pain, and magic. We could all use a little more magic right now, by which I simply mean a little more intention in our relations with the material world, and a little more faith that our intentions matter.

Then, as Miller asks, "perhaps we can at last celebrate female strength, recognising that witches – and women – are not going away."

“We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn.” It’s not a biological claim. It’s a tribal cry of belonging. A recognition of my powerful foremothers, the women who were called “witch”: Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Anne Boleyn, the herbalists, the alewives, the midwives, Hillary. 

I’m a witch.