#but when I have to devote a full section to explain what process tracing is

[thatfrenchacademic]

So deep in the methodology section that the next time someone even mention the word causal inference I am going to start chewing on their laptop without any explanation.

[transsergio]

The Invitation (read on AO3)

Moreid / Gen / 1561 words

The BAU is finally invited to the yearly FBI gala, and Spencer wears something new. Derek escorts him.

-

Spencer traces the raised script with his finger. The FBI’s winter gala is not something the BAU usually attends, so he’s missed out on this gold-lettered invitation for several years. This year, though, Erin Strauss has extended the party to them. Spencer suspects she’s receiving some sort of award and wants Hotch to see what he will never attain – upward mobility. It doesn’t help that the BAU has been on thin ice for a record number of weeks, making attendance more than “suggested”.

The morning they’d received the smooth, creamy envelopes warranting their presence, the bullpen had buzzed. Obviously the profilers were invited, but so were interns, clerical workers, and anyone else whose position fell under the BAU’s umbrella. It was going to be an expensive party, and Spencer was prepared. He had black-tie regulation suits in his closet. They were tailored and everything (at Penelope and Derek’s insistence once they’d seen how his coat consumed his shoulders). But something about them felt… off. They weren’t itchy or uncomfortable, but when Spencer looked at himself in the mirror, he felt like a mannequin in a store window. Too crisp. Too clean. So, he went shopping.

Spencer hadn’t been in the women’s department of a store in nearly a decade. He thrust himself into hormone replacement therapy as soon as he could afford it, roughly three years ago, but even before then he’d avoided the section. With his short haircut and a face that said he was either an ugly girl or a porcelain doll of a boy, people usually relied on other context clues to gender him. Wearing boy’s clothes, using the men’s bathroom, and jogging to the boys’ half of the gym when the coach separated a class by gender all helped. People usually didn’t question him, especially now that his voice had dropped and his little body fat had redistributed.

This felt most like freedom. Spencer no longer worried about caging himself in, speaking as little as possible, and the oversized fit of his shirts. He was still binding, but had found a groove in his own collection of sweater vests that kept him flat. He was realizing that his chest wasn’t really an issue anymore, regardless. It was no longer a dead giveaway that he wasn’t cis; and what was so great about being cis, anyway? Gender was a vast and personal experience that Spencer was only just starting to explore. While masculinity was what he’d chased for so many years, the distinction between masculine and feminine was growing increasingly blurry. Fabric was fabric draped over human form, and human form was pliable under their own hands. Had Spencer not developed a jawline by his own medical intervention? Had he not participated in his own evolution?

Spencer found himself nearing prom dress boutiques. He didn’t ask any of his team for help; this was something he wanted to discover on his own, and he wasn’t ready to answer any questions about whether he liked this fabric or this shape. He wasn’t sure if he would be truly comfortable in a dress, or if he simply admired the fashion. Once inside, he spent a lot of time touching. He got a sense for textures he didn’t like (gritty, shimmery layers scratched) and for what he did (smooth, cool satins were pluses). And then, the cuts and colors. There were so many more choices than men’s styles offered. Spencer tried to solve it like a puzzle. Somewhere in these shops was a dress he would feel most like himself in, that complemented his hair and skin, that went with his eyes. He wanted to find an extension of who he was, much like he had when he first came out to himself, trolling Goodwills for a new wardrobe – but this time, without making the attempt to hide in plain sight.

“Reid?”

Spencer turns, no longer lost in thought. He stands in the parking lot of the gala hotel, just beyond the yellow glow of a streetlamp.

Derek is looking at him. Derek, who teases him when he flunks his firearms qualification. Derek, who’s arriving in a standard suit and not smiling, for once. Spencer doesn’t particularly mind that part. He feels like Derek is in on a joke he isn’t most of the time, and he’s finally caught Derek off-guard.

“Hey,” Spencer says softly. He’s not so much afraid as he is uninterested in explaining himself.

Derek walks around Spencer’s car to take in the full view. Spencer wears a plum gown that poofs slightly from his waistline, but not excessively. The purple material extends up and is snug against his chest, his torso under a layer of lace that halts at his shoulders. It is technically sleeveless, and Spencer’s shaved his underarms for the occasion. The lower half is slit up to his knees and exposes his strappy silver heels. They’re short. He wouldn’t be standing if they were over two inches tall.

Derek’s hands are in his pants pockets. He takes a moment to read Spencer’s expression, who hopes he isn’t giving anything away.

“No makeup?” Derek asks.

Spencer rolls his eyes. “No. I’m not very good at it, so.” He shrugs.

Derek nods. He comes closer in a few strides. His shoes are freshly shined and reflect the parking lot lights.

“Were you comin’ in, or waiting for someone?” Derek leans against the side of Spencer’s car. Spencer considers telling him he hasn’t had it washed in at least a month, but figures Derek knows that. Derek seems to know a lot that Spencer doesn’t, ironically.

“I’m… not sure.” Spencer swallows. He doesn’t want to admit the rest. That he’s happy, that he’s had more fun swishing around his apartment in this dress than he has in a long time, doing something purely for himself. That if he were going to be alone in that ball room, this wouldn’t be a problem. That the last thing he wants is to put Hotch in hot water. That this will make things harder, and however useful he is to the team, it won’t compare to this new challenge he’s voluntarily imposing on them.

“Well, you got a date?” Derek is conversational. He talks like Spencer’s in his khakis and it’s another morning by the coffee machine. It’s a little grounding, a little exhilarating.

Spencer licks his lips. “No, nothing like that. I’m debating whether I should get back in my car or not.”

“Did you forget something in it?”

“Uh, no?”

“Then what’s the hold up?”

Spencer looks at him, truly, for the first time. Derek’s eyes are softer than Spencer usually finds them. They’re deep. He might trip into them and never come out. He’s focused on Spencer like minutes don’t matter. It’s a scrutiny based in full-hearted devotion that Spencer’s never seen before.

“I don’t… know.” Spencer says. He feels his eyebrows crease, his lips slightly pout, as he struggles. He does know. He won’t admit it here, not with a majority of the FBI waiting inside where they could see it all over his face – but the terror is shrinking. Derek is warm, and here, and gentle.

Derek sighs. It isn’t exasperation or impatience, like many of the sighs Spencer’s familiar with, but thoughtful. Derek refuses to look away as he says, “I get it. The fear that you’ll show this part of yourself and have to live with the judgment. I have my own secrets, kid. But you’ve gotta know the whole team will be behind you, no matter what. We won’t let you do this alone. I won’t let you.”

Spencer can’t stop himself. “How could you understand what this feels like? What’s Derek Morgan, ladies’ man and hunk of the office, got to hide?”

Derek scoffs with a grin, the kind that lights up his face. “What do you think, genius? I’m telling you, I get it. I’m glad you think I’m hunky, though. Was worried you weren’t getting my signals.”

“Signals? What signals?” Spencer feels his brain come to a screaming stop. He hates when it does that – when it processes new information too fast, and doesn’t know what to do with the rest of him. He’s still, like a beautiful scarecrow letting its arms wave in the wind.

Derek stands upright and shakes his head. “Nah. I’ve given you too much of a head start already. You come find me when you’ve figured it out.”

Spencer’s about to protest when Derek offers him his arm. Spencer reaches for it cautiously, as if he might startle Derek and bring the reality of the gesture crashing in. That Derek is essentially sacrificing himself for Spencer’s sake. For the life of him, Spencer can’t figure why, but Derek is already leading them towards the building.

“This isn’t a case, you know. You don’t have to do this,” Spencer whispers. They’re nearing other agents as they move through the parking lot.

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t have to save me.”

Derek slows and turns in toward Spencer. His breath heats Spencer’s ear. “I’m not. I’m taking a pretty boy to a good meal. Is that so wrong?”

Spencer shivers. Derek takes his silence as a no, and they keep walking.

“Besides, you sit by Elle, and I don’t think we’ll have a problem.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure she’s wearing a knife."

[loreweaver-universe]

I’ve had a couple of people express confusion about the fact that I hate this kid so much more than the genuinely gross asshole creep Kawazu, so let’s go on a tangent and talk about someone I hate talking about in any way, shape, or form: Christine Weston Chandler.

And boy howdy should you stop reading here if you don’t like hearing about this creep, because--not joking--my autistic ass has nightmares about her.

CWC is the autistic author of the infamously awful webcomic Sonichu, wherein a Sonic/Pikachu OC has adventures in a utopian town populated by other Sonic character/Pokemon fusions.  It’s poorly drawn, even more poorly written, and would have been consigned to the heap of innocently terrible internet fancomics except for two things.

First, Sonichu caught the attention of 4chan.

Second, Sonichu held the attention of 4chan, because Christine is the walking fusion of the worst social stereotypes of autistic people and basement-dwelling neckbeards.

We’re talking about someone who once walked through a crowded mall trailing a paper heart on a string, “fishing” for a true love.  Completely seriously.  Someone who has been banned from several places for creeping on people and given restraining orders multiple times if I recall correctly.  Someone who would sign off the end of Sonichu chapters with a completely serious “Remember, stay straight, kids!”  That’s just a small sampling of her antics--which she completely unironically thought were normal behavior, mind you--and that’s not even getting into her squabbles with 4chan.

4chan mocked CWC, as 4chan is wont to do.  CWC responded directly, attempting to refute their mocking jabs as if you could argue with trolls in any kind of successful manner.  When they ramped up their mockery in return, she ramped up alongside them, eventually culminating in trolling wars with such highlights as tracing her dick to prove it wasn’t weirdly shaped and devoting an entire section of Sonichu to a trial of her biggest and most vocal trolls that ended with their torture and violent deaths.

God, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I spent a couple nights voraciously reading up everything I could on her back when I stumbled across this walking nightmare in college, and have regretted it ever since.  If this account sounds vague, it’s because I’ve blotted out and aggressively avoided anything to do with CWC in the last five years or so because of what she does to me psychologically.  Talking about her tends to give me panic attacks, actually, but since Paranoia Agent episodes seem to be the Loreweaver Talks About Mental Illness Power Hour, let’s lay this out.

I am autistic.  I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at age 21 prior to it being merged with the general autism diagnosis, and that retroactively explained SO much about the way I acted as a child and growing up--the stuff that was in retrospect sensory issues or my having the social skills of a dry clam, for example.  (One of the primary defining traits of autistic folk, as far as I have experienced, is that we simply don’t come packaged with the mental software that absorbs, processes, and replicates subtle, situational, or nonverbal social cues and language that neurotypical people have installed right out of the gate.)  As a child, my only diagnoses were ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder; the doctors at the time didn’t even think to think that somebody as evidently “functional” as me, with a high tested IQ, could be described as autistic.  Medical understanding of autism has come a long way since then, but growing up, all I knew was that other kids thought I was weird, and that I got interesting reactions out of them by playing it up and taunting them about it.

That all changed when I was a little older than Yuichi.

Heading out of middle school, I was upset that people didn’t like me--what wasn’t to like?  I was so much smarter and more fun than any of them--and lamenting the cruelty of the world when I got to thinking.

It’s a long story and this post is already getting long, but the short version is that I figured out the whole “If everyone you meet is an asshole, you’re probably the asshole” principle, and then dedicated my teenage years to mentally beating myself up if I stepped out of line from how I thought a neurotypical person would act.  I didn’t know the words “pass for neurotypical” at the time, of course, but I wrapped myself tighter and tighter around those vague and nebulous rules until I started to crack under the pressure.  I developed chronic depression and an untreated anxiety disorder, and that little voice in the back of your head?  The one that lists out every embarrassing thing you’ve done when it’s three in the morning and you’re begging your body for sleep?   That was on full blast, all the time.

I am who I am today because I forced myself to learn how to understand and appreciate other people, but I did it in such a damaging way that it was essentially chronic self-harm...and when I see other people who don’t understand the lessons I whipped myself with all those years, who act not just in socially clueless ways but in actively creepy ways or condescending narcissistic ways, that voice in the back of my head starts shouting again about how terrible I am and how many mistakes I’ve made.

Every time I come across CWC in a discussion on the internet, this happens.   Every time.  I’m having kind of a rough time typing all of this out, actually.  CWC is the worst timeline version of myself.  She’s emotionally stunted, narcissistic, arrogant in spite of her incompetence, and most importantly, at least when I last looked into her seriously, was completely incurious and unwilling to consider self-improvement.  She is my worst self-loathing made flesh, and my emotional reaction to coming across people that embody the worst aspects of myself, the ones I’ve done my best to purge over the years?  It’s high-strung, turbulent anger.

In the same way that I see a lot of who I could have become in CWC, I see a lot of who I was in Yuichi--the smugness, the arrogance, the self-importance, the condescension, the narcissism.  Unlike Kawazu, who has underdog elements and actually is shown working and struggling for his goals to some extent--and whose job is literally to ask questions and investigate things--Yuichi is just...an ass. THAT is why I react so much more violently to him than to Kawazu.   Kawazu is regular, mundane awfulness; Yuichi is a dark mirror of myself.

Man, that sounds pretentious, doesn’t it.

Anyways. I’m gonna go take a quick break after typing all of this up.  Whoof.   That’s why I dislike the kid so much, emotional reactions, self-loathing, yadda yadda.  See you in a couple minutes for the rest of the session.

[zippdementia]

Part 76 Alignment May Vary: Portents and Prophecies

Welcome to the continuing adventures of Alignment May Vary, our twice a month gaming group! We’ve been playing the same narrative for three years this month, with tons of twists and turns along the way. You can now hear the dramatized episodes at our website, Alignment May Vary.

In the last session, long time player character Aldric was killed by another player character, Imoaza, in an unseen betrayal out in the cold of space. Carrick, the third PC, is unaware of the betrayal as the group tries to figure out what to do about their current predicament.

Days pass. The situation on board the (still unnamed) Surveyor ship goes from desperate to grim. The power surge used to fight off the asteroid spiders has left the ship’s crystal depleted. What fuel they have is being used to keep life systems active, but this will fail within the week and the party is adrift in some unknown corner of space, surrounded only by asteroid dust and the wreckage of previous ships who have become stranded here.

The dreadful monotony, the slow wait for the end, is broken by one major event: a capsule adrift in the wreckage around them suddenly comes to life and starts sending out a signal. Retrieving it and bringing it on board, Carrick and Imoaza find it is a life capsule identical in most ways to the one they saw Carrick’s double in, back on Faerun. That tells them this is Surveyor technology, though it looks older even than that capsule. Carrick, accessing his Surveyor memories, figures out how to open the capsule, to reveal...

... nothing. The capsule is empty.

But it wasn’t empty very long ago. Its inhabitant has the ability to shift through space using the ethereal plane and now he appears beside the party, a hulking humanoid robot with red glowing eyes who raises his hand to stri-- or no, raises it in greeting to Carrick.

“Ah! Greetings. My name is Milosh. Are you the Surveyor?”

“No,” Carrick replies. “At least not the one you are probably looking for.”

“Ah! My visual senses tell me you are a 93% match for the Surveyor. Ah! I have come to serve the surveyor and stop the prophecy.”

Meet Milosh, our new PC (following Shando, Abenthy, Trakki, and Aldric... we’ve had quite a few player characters over the course of this epic).

Milosh, the Seeker of Prophecy

Milosh is a Warforged out of the recent Wayfinder’s Guide to Eberon. He is, visually, a little like a Mechanical Groot. He is, personality wise, a lot like the Paper Clip office assistant from 1997′s Microsoft Word. His backstory is that he was created by one of the Surveyors ages ago, centuries ago, to hunt down and stop a certain prophecy, a prophecy we’ve heard about before, involving the three figures: a devil, an angel, and a dragonborn. But while he was traveling to his destination, which would eventually become known as Faerun, his ship was caught in the Asteroid Spider’s webs and destroyed. He managed to escape and has been floating in stasis ever since. In the ages that have gone by, his memory banks have been damaged and now he cannot recall the full prophecy or even his full abilities. But he does know how to transform his right arm into a variety of weapons and tools and uses this to form a variety of special attacks, including a photon blast and a drill arm.

His personality is a little... simple. He says “Ah!” before every sentence, usually while holding up a finger, and runs off of very literal interpretations of his surroundings, relying on old programs in his working memory banks to get him through situations like combat or social etiquette.

This leads to some awkward (and funny) moments, such as when the party tells Fiona that Aldric has passed. She isn’t sure how to respond and also being a robot doesn’t do the best job of it...

“Where is Aldric? He’s dead?? Oh! I guess... Wow!”

... but she tries to give Milosh some advice, at least. Fiona tells him that bad news is best given with a smile and exuberance. And his response...

“Ah! I am unable to smile.”

The group also tells Milosh about the suspected traitor somewhere on the ship, the one who changed the bearings on the party in the first place, dropping them on Hell, and the one who erased the footage showing evidence of the deed. Milosh agrees to try and help them discover who the traitor is.

Good Moments of Interlude and Development

This session was mostly interlude, originally meant to be a quick connection to the next event, but the players got really into the roleplaying here and so the session became an elongated exploration of the personalities on the ship and their response to the various situations going on. Here are the best moments...

Milosh, with the help of Fiona, tries to access his old memories and also hack into the computer mainframes and learn more information about the traitor. What follows is a fun little hacking mini-game, where Milosh has to devote different levels of energy to different tasks, increasing his chances in some and decreasing it in others, then rolling to see what is successful. Ultimately, he fails to access any thing coherent from his memories, and he also fails to pull out any detailed information about the traitor, but it is still a good moment of personality development for him and gives us a chance to play around with some improvised mechanics. It also sets up the next good scene...

While Milosh plays around inside his head, Carrick and Imoaza decide the best clue they have for discovering the traitor is the ripped piece of leather. They go to talk to Krisp, who has leather gloves, and who the find in the darkened and otherwise empty bridge, staring out into space. This is a good roleplaying moment, as the three of them talk about Aldric. Imoaza keeps her cool and neither of them suspects that she actually murdered Aldric. Krisp is depressed, and asks Carrick if he ever just looked out at it all, at space. He is not his usual boisterous self and is instead contemplative, saying that this is never how a captain thinks they are going to end their days, but now he has captained TWO ships to his death. He also says that it wasn’t fair Aldric had to die, while Krisp had two chances to live his life. Carrick asks about the Horn of Green Company and the horn gets bequeathed to Carrick and renamed the Horn of Silent Sounding, for its power has fallen quiet and it makes no sound. This scene is interrupted by Milosh accidentally tying his memory visions into the bridge mainscreens, replacing the view of the stars with a crazy scene of Nazragul proclaiming his dominion over the world and flashes of an Aasimir and a Tiefling they don’t know. Carrick asks Krisp if he ever knew a Tiefling, and Krisp responds he did, then says it couldn’t possibly be the same one. The whole time, Imoaza is trying to look at Krisp’s gloves, but she ultimately sees no rip or tear.

Carrick meets up with Alyss, who says she wants to celebrate Aldric’s memory. She had built him a bike in secret and planned to teach him to ride, but now instead she gets high with Carrick on some drugs and takes him for a race around an empty cargo bay. The two sit for a long time, reminiscing and bonding until Carrick realizes she always wears a leather jacket. He asks for it, and she thinks he is coming on to her. Thus follows a pretty amazing scene, where Carrick is examining the jacket, then looks up to see Alyss is down to her bra. He is stunned, even more so when she leans in to kiss him. He tells her awkwardly he is a virgin and that he can’t do this, that he isn’t in a headspace to do it. Alyss is surprised and feels a little dumb herself for jumping to conclusions. She ends up telling him it doesn’t have to be awkward between them and not to worry. However, as she is getting dressed, Carrick notices that she has recently covered a hole in her jacket with a new patch. In honor of Aldric (it reads, “The Green Company”) but there is a lingering question now as to her innocence.

There is a funeral for Aldric, with some suitably bad speeches from Krisp. Among the lines he offers are this gem: “We will all be dead soon, but that’s longer than Aldric got.” Milosh accesses his memory banks and uses his vocal processor to play sad music in honor of Aldric. Aldric’s goblin kids are there, Alyss is there... heck, everyone is there except, noticeably, Otto (one of Krisp’s lieutenants). We’ll come back to this in a moment...

Maybe my favorite moment is when Milosh and Carrick hunt down Alyss, with the goal of figuring out if she was the traitor. Milosh asserts he has sensors in his hands that can detect traces of DNA on the leather scrap and, if he can gain physical contact with Alyss, he can see if the DNA is a match. Carrick agrees they should try it and so they find Alyss near her chambers in the mid section of the ship and Carrick introduces her to Milosh.

It’s such a great scene. There is some sexual tension left over between Alyss and Carrick and Alyss plays it up for fun, making Carrick as uncomfortable as possible. Then, knowing Milosh is such an outrageously naive personality makes all of his approaches to the situation hilarious. He boldly sticks out his hand and says (ah!) he understands that humans have a custom wherein they must grip hands when they meet and he would be delighted to try it. Bemused, Alyss takes his proffered hand and Carrick breathes a sigh of relief, thinking they now have their sample. Then Milosh says, “Ah! Now we must stay like this for two minutes.”

“It takes that long to get a sample?!” Carrick whispers in Milosh’s ear.

“Yes,” Milosh explains loudly. “This process takes five minutes to gather the appropriate data.”

Now thoroughly wierded out, Alyss extracts her hand from Milosh’s grip and he fails to get the sample. So then he tries another tact: he asks to see her jacket. Suspicious now, Alyss asks why and Carrick stutters and speaks for him, saying that he’s hoping Milosh can make a copy of it for him to wear. Milosh barely registers that this is an attempt at skullduggery and manages to keep silent until Alyss, after a brief hesitation, agrees to the request. “This your new wingman, Carrick?” she asks, making light of the situation. Carrick doesn’t get the joke. Alyss sighs and explains, “because he got my shirt off for you, again. Nevermind...”

Milosh examines the jacket while Carrick tries to distract Alyss, asking about Otto’s absence from the funeral. She says she hadn’t noticed, but then she hasn’t seen him around in a couple of days.

Suddenly Milosh says, “Ah! Surveyor, I have new information! The sample matches the jacket.”

Now armed with evidence, Carrick turns on Alyss and confronts her, demanding to know why she erased the footage of the ship’s sabotage. She cocks her head and says, as if it’s obvious, “Because I didn’t want you to see that it was me on the footage.”

And right on cue, hearing this, Milosh says, “Ah! Surveyor, I have new information!” As if that wasn’t painfully obvious.

Alyss proceeds to give an explanation for her actions, though not an apology. She says that in life, she was the leader of a powerful cult that worshipped Asmodeus and in death she sought to join his retinue in Hell, only to find he had disappeared during the Blood War. Obsessed with finding him, she wanted to bring to pass the prophecy that the Abyss would return if a devil ever left Hell. To do that, she needed outsiders to come with a ship. She secretly resurrected old technology, excavating it from the deserts around the Hell city, and eventually built herself a ship capable of at least leaving the atmosphere. She also fixed up tech that could detect when a ship would pass through Hell’s space. That is how she found and got onboard the Surveyor’s ship.

“I checked the original coordinates, you know,” she tells Carrick. “It was heading for a corner of space ruled by the Mind Flayers. That would have been a bad fate for you all, if you’d even survived to see it. By the time I boarded your ship, a critical failure had occurred in one of your engines. You had left warp space and were drifting slowly towards your destination on momentum alone. It would have been centuries before you reached it. In a way, I saved you by bringing you down to Hell.”

She further tells him that she has a piece of Asmodeus which she will use to find his body in the Abyss, once the way becomes clear. But she does not elaborate more and, not seeing her as an immediate threat, Carrick lets her go to contemplate what all this might mean.

Moving On

During the funeral Imoaza happens to spot Otto down a corridor and he is acting very strange, walking around stiffly and stopping to stare directly at her. Curious, she follows him down several corridors to a large room where she sees Otto addressing in a foreign language all of the Fiona and Bobs, the androids of the ship, gathered and floating cross legged in the air. Startled, she tries to flee, but suddenly is targeted by a psychic attack! Fending off visions of Aldric and Hecate (for those who don’t remember, that’s her dead daughter, who has been trying to kill her for a while), she runs down the ship’s corridors with Otto in pursuit. He catches up to her, but does not attack. Instead, he explains that he is not Otto, but is simply borrowing Otto’s body to be able to observe the crew and see if they can help his people.

It is soon revealed that Otto has been taken over by a Githzerai psychic, whose myriad companions have also taken over the systems of the Fiona’s and Bobs and who now proceed to hold the players hostage... well, sort of. In a mutually beneficial way.

Essentially, it turns out the players have invaded, by accident (or at least they think it’s by accident), a sector of space that is being fought over by the Githyanki and the Githzerai. The Githyanki have had the upper hand for many years and have captured an ancient Stardock carved out of an asteroid deep in the asteroid field and have essentially barred all ways in. The Githzerai “bored” a new way through the space between space, but their path was discovered recently and retaken by the Githyanki. In this same battle, the leader of the Githzerai lost his son, Ezria, to the Githyanki and Ezria is now being held captive on Stardock. The Githzerai cannot go after him because the Githyanki are scanning for ‘zerai brain patterns and would detect them immediately.

What the ‘zerai want the players to do, therefore, is to send a team of three humanoids into this space-between-space, and from there have them enter and infiltrate Stardock, rescue Ezria, and return. If they succeed in saving their kin, the ‘zerai will help them by using their prodigious powers to recharge their crystal with enough energy to get them to Faerun. This long space journey is nearing its end!

The players agree to this (their only other option, honestly, is to float out here until they become space dust). They are the perfect candidates, besides: a warforged, a yuan-ti, and a half elf with the brain signature of a Surveyor are unusual enough that they will definitely slip under the Githyanki radar.

And so the Githzerai open a portal to the space between worlds and the players teleport through... though not before Immerstal takes Carrick aside and warns him that Imoaza now carries the Rod of Storms and that could be a very dangerous thing for the universe, if she fails to control its power. Or chooses to abuse it.

And one last thing...

Alyss sat crosslegged on the floor of the ventilation chamber, the altar to Asmodeus before her. Her hands were clenched tightly, her nails drawing blood from her palms as she concentrated. With a gasp, she made the connection and opened her eyes as in front of her a portal appeared.

“Took long enough.” The taunting voice of Puck broke her concentration and she turned to him with a snarl.

“It wasn’t easy to tap into the Gith’s power. And it won’t stay open for long.”

The little impish devil hovered in the air lazily, raising a red bushy eyebrow at her. “Are you sure you are ready for this? The abyss is not a place for those who are not fully sure of who they are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What did you tell Carrick about your past? Did you tell him the truth?”

“What I told him doesn’t matter. I know who I am. But more importantly, I know my purpose.” She grunted and rose to her feet. “Coming?”

[bignoisytumlover]

Rude Hungry Wake Up Call Pt 3: The Payoff

The walk from the vending machine to the cafeteria building seemed like an endless journey. Luis felt like he wasn’t getting any closer, and the empty morning campus—by virtue of all the other students spending their Saturday morning in bed—did not ease this feeling. Also, every few seconds his mental complaining would be interrupted by the loud noises his belly was making. He wrapped his arms around his roaring gut, as if trying to stifle the noise. He could feel his belly fighting back, wobbling as if to break free.

“Quiet down!” Luis said, exasperated. His belly angrily replied.

GRROOARGLE!

“You’ll wake up the other students, that’s why!”

NNNRRRARGLE GROOOAN!

“Well there’s no need to be rude about—“

GRRROWWLLLLL!

“That’s not—“

RRRAAAWWRRGLE GRRRRRMMMBLE!

“Hey would you let me do the talking?!” Luis yelled. His stomach gave out a slightly less loud grumble in reply, but toned down it’s barrage of noises as Luis turned the corner to the cafeteria. Luis looked up at the stone building the way a tourist looks at a monument, with awe and excitement. He could already imagine the inside of the complex, with special sections devoted to different types of food. It was like heaven to him.

Luis’ stomach interrupted his thoughts yet again, and he looked down at the wobbling mass peeking under his shirt. “Calm down, only fifteen more minutes till the cafeteria opens, buddy.” His stomach glorbled obediently, the pangs of hunger growing ever stronger. He sat down on one of the benches in front of the building, desperately hoping no one else would decide to have an early breakfast this morning and be subjected to his belly’s performance while they waited. Thankfully, no one else on campus seemed to have left their building yet.

Luis’ belly let out another loud, thirty-second long GROOOAAAN, and he used both hands to soothe his aching, empty tummy. Luis moaned as well, cursing his new-found appetite as the minutes ticked away closer to opening time. As he sat their feeling his stomach growling and gurgling, he wondered if he would even be able to make it to breakfast. By the time he realized that the lights inside the establishment were starting to turn on, his stomach was literally growling non-stop.

However, Luis finally jumped to life when he saw what he had been waiting for: the green light outside the door turned on, signaling that the cafeteria was now open. He stood up and walked briskly through the door to the register that stood between the door and the food beyond. He was a little comforted to see that the register was being manned by Bill, a portly gentleman who worked the cafeteria who didn’t seem to judge Luis every time he came in.

“Good morning, Luis!” Bill said jollily. “Feeling the need for an early morning snack?”

Luis blushed lightly as he handed his ID card to Bill. “You could kinda say that…” His belly growled loudly, and Luis noticed Bill smirking. He clutched his belly with both hands and blushed even harder.

“Don’t worry buddy, I know what you mean.” Bill swiped Luis’ ID through the register, which beeped twice. He handed Luis back his ID card, and said, “College will do that to ya. Enjoy your meal!” Bill smiled, and Luis smiled back.

“Thank you, sir!” And with that, Luis bolted into the cafeteria. His first stop was the breakfast cook area, where he placed an order for four omelets of various kinds. After the cook confirmed the order and began to make them, Luis sped to the self-serve section, where he began loading several plates full of bacon, eggs, biscuits and gravy, donuts, sausage, and breads. Luis balanced the multitude of plates on the tray, and carried it over to his usual seat in the corner by the window. After placing them down, he went back to the omelet station, which by then were finished cooking. He thanked the cook and brought them back to his table as well. Finally, he grabbed several glasses of chocolate milk.

Luis, finally done searching for his food, admired the display before him on the table. A bystander might have imagined the food was for a group of people who had not yet returned to the table, but Luis—and his gut, which was growling in anticipation—knew that this was all for him. Salivating, he began to chow down into his food, savoring the greasy bacon, the savory omelets, the sweet donuts, the refreshing milk, and more.

About a halfway way through the meal he stopped temporarily for a break. He exhaled deeply and leaned back. As he did so, he felt his gut push its way out from under his shirt and over his waistband. His belly, which for what seemed like an eternity had felt as empty as a deserted cave, now gurgled happily at the mass of food inside it. Luis gently rubbed his fingers over his belly, moaning a bit at the feeling. However, he was interrupted by a small growl from his belly, reminding him of the remaining food. Obediently, Luis began digging into the food, forgoing all manners and making noises that would normally never be allowed in polite company as he ate. He could feel the food particles building up on his cheeks, but he didn’t care. He ate, and ate, and ate; and all the while he could feel his belly growing rounder, his shirt continuing to ride up.

Finally, Luis laid back once more, this time marveling at all the empty plates in front of him. He also looked down and marveled at his belly, which at this point was not even being hidden. The blob of fat now stuck out more than usual, pressing against the edge of the table. He burped as he rubbed it again, loving the soothing feeling it gave. His belly also gave an appreciative gurgle as it enjoyed the feast, and Luis gave it a pat. “You’re very welcome, buddy.”

Luis, with some difficulty, slid out of the booth and stood up, gathering up the dirty dishes on a tray, and brought them over to the conveyer belt that brought the dishes to the washer. He then hobbled his way toward the exit, having to lean back a little bit to counteract the weight of his new food-baby belly. He passed by Bill, who seemed to look quite impressed and flustered. Luis waved bye to Bill, and exited the door as a group of students who he did not recognized went in; all of them stared at his gut, which was on full display. And maybe he was drunk on a food high, but Luis didn’t feel embarrassed—in fact, he proudly stuck his gut out even more and placed his hands underneath it, jiggling it slightly.

Luis walked back to his dorm building, his belly making happy gurgles the whole way home. He swiped his ID card on the door to unlock it the building door, slowly made his way to his dorm room, and opened it with his card again. Luis noticed his roommate was still asleep (not surprising), so he closed the door gingerly as he made his way in. He slipped off his pants and lifted off his shirt, leaving them in a heap on the floor.

As he had earlier in the morning, Luis caught himself in the full-length mirror once more. His belly was noticeably bigger—probably added a good few inches to its circumference. It was rounder, like a ball, and seemed to sag over the waistband of his briefs. Luis rubbed it gingerly with his hands, tracing the shape. He was in awe of it, marveling at how it added to his girth. His hands could also feel his belly gurgling along as it processed his meal. He looked down at his belly happily, realizing once more how much he enjoyed this sensation. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there admiring his belly, but he was pulled out of his trance by his roommate.

“Umm, bro, what are you doing?” his roommate asked groggily. Luis yelped and flushed bright red.

“NOTHING! I mean, nothing, just… just…” He couldn’t really think of anything to say that would explain what he was doing. All he did was turn slightly to hide his expression.

Thankfully, his roommate re-collapsed back onto his bed and began snoring. Luis breathed a sigh of relief. He would have to be more careful in the future. He also re-adjusted his undies; he couldn’t hide how much he liked his new appetite and its consequences.

Suddenly feeling very tired himself, Luis lumbered into bed, hefting himself up and onto the mattress. He felt his belly jiggle a bit as he went down, sloshing and gurgling. He lay face up on the bed, stroking his belly lovingly as it gurgled and purred, working hard on its meal. Luis loved the sounds it made, and found it very soothing along with his belly rubs. After a few minutes of listening to the sounds, Luis drifted off into sleep, a wide smile on his face.

THE END

[newstfionline]

Inside The World’s Largest Walnut Forest

By Peter Ford, Roads & Kingdoms, July 2017

ARSLANBOB, Kyrgyzstan--Nestled in a lush valley of Kyrgyzstan’s Chatkal mountain range lies the village of Arslanbob, home to both the world’s largest natural walnut forest and a legend, the truth of which is harder to crack than the nut itself.

“This is a secret,” said Roma Tohtarov, a guide with the village’s Community Based Tourism (CBT) organization, before continuing: “During the Soviet times, Red Army soldiers came with saws and cut down a large number of walnut trees and sent them to Rolls-Royce in England to be used to decorate the inside of their cars. Mr. Churchill had seen a piece of wood from here before the war, and asked Stalin for some wood in exchange for weapons.”

Verification of the story proves elusive; the luxury car manufacturer did not reply to questions and the story does not appear in any public records.

But it is an example of the kind of legend that villagers have passed on through the generations about the forest. Such is the central importance that walnut trees play in Arslanbob.

Hugging the 6,500-foot-high slopes in the shadow of the Babash-Ata mountains, the sprawling, ethnically Uzbek village is home to 16,000 people, most of whom have livelihoods that revolve around the annual harvest of the walnuts.

Families spend the long winters extracting the nuts from their soft outer covers and cracking the hard shells. Pretty much everyone, old and young, is involved in the process.

“Full nuts we sell, broken ones are made into oil--we rub it on our skin in winter to keep warm,” explained Tohtarov. “Of course, we also eat them,” he added, “but by the end of autumn everyone has eaten too many and are sick of them.”

Fortunately, there is a wide international market for walnuts not consumed locally. According to the United Nation’s trade statistics database UN Comtrade, 1,200 tons of walnuts were exported by Kyrgyzstan in 2016, worth $2 million.

They come from a forest that spreads east and west of Arslanbob in a confusing network of trails that weave through the dark green of the forest, punctured by patches of grass pasture and blossoming wild apple trees.

As you enter the forest, the smell of wood and coal fires near the village gives way to an earthy richness, as the muddy ebony paths crisscross over and around undulating hills. Tire tracks from Lada Niva cars-- the tank-like 4x4s ubiquitous across former Soviet states--mingle with horse and donkey hooves, churning the cloying mud into an even thicker mess, greatly slowing attempts to walk.

Recent nursery-grown walnut trees line up in regimental rows, while the older trees stand alone. In some of the deeper sections, trees are 500 years old, according to Tohtarov. Walnuts from these trees are prized for their superior flavor.

“October 2 is the beginning of the walnut season officially, but in September people start to collect from the trees closest to town, to stop the kids from getting them and trading for ice cream,” he said.

During the harvest season, hordes decamp to the forest, setting up makeshift shelters to allow for easier walnut collection, and the whole event has a carnival feel, with people sharing food and gathering around campfires to sing and share stories.

Story telling is an important part of Arslanbob culture, leading to various explanations over how the walnut trees came to be in the valley.

“There are two similar stories involving Alexander the Great, and at least two others saying important Islamic men brought the seeds from paradise to plant here,” Tohtarov explained.

“I don’t believe the Alexander stories, but about the Farsi or Arabic visitor bringing the seeds, yes, it must be true. Someone had to bring the seeds for the trees, as how else did they come here?” he asked as he slipped and slid up the forest track still muddy from the morning’s downpour, occasionally panting for breath, a result, he joked, of spending the winter months eating walnuts and getting fat.

Zahid Ubayidullaev, a former guide who now devotes his time to running one of the homestay options for visitors, explained the Alexander stories over hot black tea and walnuts at the single-story house built by his grandfather.

“When Alexander and his army was crossing the area, some of the soldiers got sick. Alexander sought the help of the local people, who gave them some of the walnuts to eat, and the men all got better. In gratitude Alexander did not attack them, and they accepted him as their king and built the village here,” he said.

“The other version says that after fighting nearby, some of Alexander’s men were injured and couldn’t travel with his army as it continued its journey. So they were left behind in this valley and expected to die. They ate some of the walnuts and recovered and decided to live here, which is why some people have blue eyes and light curly hair,” he said, repeating the somewhat common idea that classically European features sometimes exhibited across Central Asia can be traced back to Alexander’s rovings.

The forest has played an increasingly important role in the village since the fall of the Soviet Union. In the Soviet-era, everyone had a basic income and guaranteed work, with potato farming the primary occupation. Collecting the forest’s bounty was simply an additional source of food and income. But upon independence in 1991, Kyrgyzstan lost the financial support that Russia provided. Lacking the petrochemical resources of fellow -stans Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, citizens found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. In Arslanbob, residents quickly looked to the forest to provide their needs.

The village’s economic fortunes now rise and fall on the strength of the walnut harvest. This year, for the second year in a row, residents are concerned that the walnut yield will be disappointing.

On a recent visit, vigorous spring showers had added to the muddy remnants of a late dump of snow that blanketed the valley in up to a foot of snow. Drifts of what at first glance looked like a plague of fat green caterpillars turned out to be a carpet of dead walnut flowers, discarded by the trees after the frosts that accompanied the snow.

The seasonal nature of the harvest has led to efforts to diversify employment options in Arslanbob, primarily in the form of tourism. Efforts to bring in outside visitors to experience the natural beauty of the area have been decades in the making.

Speaking at a 1995 conference in Arslanbob convened to explore ways to preserve the forest, then-forestry minister T.M. Musuraliev waxed lyrical: “The walnut forests of southern Kyrgyzstan represent a great recreational asset for the population. The pure air, with the fragrance of trees and flowers, healthy, clear water, hundreds of picturesque gorges, mountain waterfalls and lakes attract thousands of tourists yearly from other Central Asian countries.”

Visitors have generally been welcomed by the community since.

“The rise in tourism has been broadly accepted by the community. Some of the older and more religious men do not like the tattoos or shorty-shorts on show, but that is about it,” explained Hayat Tarikov, Arslanbob CBT manager and a former forest ranger.

Speaking from his photo-festooned office near the village square, he added: “Its life. We have to change.”

The CBT network has proved an increasingly source of employment in the village, Hayat explained. In 2001 there were seven people working at the Arslanbob CBT. In 2016, that figure had risen to 162, with locals employed as guides, cooks, porters, homestay hosts, and drivers.

In concert with the growing tourism industry has been government-led efforts to protect the forests from overuse and exploitation.

“There is now a tree nursery where new walnut trees are grown and later transplanted to the forest. Cutting the living trees for firewood is banned; instead, the forest rangers identify the dead trees and branches that people can use instead,” said Hayat.

The 1995 conservation conference identified key areas that were threatening the forest, which at some 74,000 acres is a shadow of the former 1.5 million acres that the forest of wild walnut, apple, pistachio, plum, almond, and pear use to cover. Prior to 1917, logging was unchecked. In 1945, the forest received protected status, which limited the felling of trees, but not the damage caused to the forest’s ability to grow and replenish old trees from overgrazing by domestic animals, fuelwood collections, haymaking, and the almost 100 percent collection of fruit and nuts.

High fences of dead branches and barbed wire now partition the forest areas closest to the village. Locals can rent land from the forest ranger, in exchange for a percentage of their harvest.

Tohtarov said outside visitors had begun to influence how people in the region care for the forest, encouraging a culture of not littering during excursions.

It is also helping reintegrate the Arslanbob community into Kyrgyz life, after it recoiled following anti-Uzbek violence across the south of the country in 2010.

That year, a vacuum of power in the wake of the country’s second revolution in five years saw violent clashes between the country’s Tajik and ethnic Uzbek populations, resulting in the deaths of at least 200 people--mostly Uzbeks--and causing large numbers briefly fleeing over the border for safety.

“There were no problems in Arslanbob thankfully, but there was a big drop in tourists that year,” Tohtarov said.

Further strengthening the tourism industry and ensuring the health of the forest is the best course of action in safeguarding Arslanbob’s economy and culture, the local guides believe.

“In the future, I know that the forest will be bigger than it is now, with bigger older trees. The roads in town will be asphalted, the road to town will be bigger, and the Internet will be better,” said Tohtarov, explaining his vision for developing the village.

“I hope that a factory or industry will open here to give people jobs, maybe making t-shirts or shoes, and some apartment buildings so that the urban sprawl will stop. I hope that people here will better understand nature and not throw trash everywhere, inshallah.”

For former ranger Tarikov, the preservation of the ancient forest is the key.

“If I had a million dollars, I would make a wall around the forest with checkpoints, great rangers with good salaries, and really encourage the wildlife to return,” he said.

“Do you have a million dollars?” he asked, somewhat hopefully.

[utterlypure]

A story for Ariadne

You were born on the isle of Crete in ancient times, in a year when your people still danced in honor of the bull. But for you, there would always be a dark secret behind that dance—

Your trouble must have started with your name. Your parents named your sisters sensible things for princesses: Phaedra, the shining one; Xenodike, justice for the stranger. But you they dared call Ariadne, and what mortal woman can live up to such a divine epithet? "The most holy" — you were born a mere girl. "The totally chaste" — like all women, you were fated to marry someday.

Were you old enough to know what it meant when the beast was born into the world? Surely you were old enough, as time passed, to recognize the shame that Minotaur brought to your family, to your people. What could you do then? You did the most you could possibly have done, princess: you stepped up among your siblings to claim responsibility for tending him.

From the court artificer you learned the secrets of the Minotaur's prison, the labyrinth built to contain him; from your people you learned the sacred dances through that terrifying place; from within yourself you drew the magic to empower them. There in the court of Knossos, you danced to keep the bull sane and contained by the foreign sacrifices to him. For centuries the bards would remember your performances; someday, the singers of the Iliad would recall your mysterious dancing grounds in the designs on the shield of Achilles.

And in your dance alone, you knew you were whole and holy, just as your name claimed.

But you grew older, and your innocence began to fade. You knew what you danced for, and you knew how much blood was shed. You knew your twirling steps through the labyrinth fell to the beat of death. And what mortal girl could live with that? Still you danced, but your heart wept.

When you were a young woman grown, then, a hero came to the island, bright of face and full of hope like the proper servant of the gods he was. He was the prince of a city across the sea, full of sunlight and olive trees, with no dark secret at its center, and he came to put an end to the beast you danced for and save his own people in the process. You loved him desperately.

So for this prince you betrayed your name: you profaned the holy bonds of family and gave him the secrets of the labyrinth which let him kill your brother, the Minotaur; you gave him a magic thread which led him safely to the beast. You betrayed your name twice: in your heart you desired this Theseus, and you planned to throw away your pure maidenhood with him and become his wife.

He slew the beast and he took you away.

But mortal men always make mistakes, and Theseus made the mistake of stopping his ship at the little island beyond the port of Heraklion, Dia; that little island known to be holy to the Nysan god, he of the bull and the vine. You were both tired, though. Perhaps he simply couldn't have known.

And as you slept there on the shores of that isle, exhausted from your adventure, Theseus looked upon you and saw who you really were and where you really belonged. The gods to whom he was loyal whispered dire threats in his ears of what would come if he took you away from your sacred home. So with their blessing, he fled, and he left you there—

When you woke, you saw his ship departing, and you were alone. You raged then in the surf; you yelled curses after him as you saw your love sailing away. You had betrayed your name once for him, but you hadn't even had the chance to consummate it.

Dionysos stole you then. He came to you, dancing as you once had with the joy of his love for you, and so the bull-god offered to take you home as his bride.

You saw in him terror and beauty, and you saw you could love him more than you ever loved a mortal prince, if you let yourself.

In the darkness of Dia, you turned your face away from him, and you did not listen to his pleas.

At last he offered you a gift: a holy crown of laurels, shining as bright as the stars, and he swore to lift you to the sky with its power. He swore to make you a queen among the gods, where you belonged.

So you let him place the crown upon your head, and you let him raise you up to the stars, where you could dance with him for ages to come.

No two ancient sources tell the same story of Ariadne. This is not uncommon; the concept of a single overarching religious canon is a relatively new concept in the West. Some Classical poets attempted to popularize pan-Hellenic versions of myths, but they were not authoritative.

The above is my version of Ariadne’s story in the Homeric through Classical eras — the one that has come down to us from the Greeks. Most of my actual sources are collected here on Theoi.com, but my reasoning for assembling them the way I did bears further discussion.

A number of my ideas come from Károly Kerényi’s (also called Karl or Carl, if you’re looking him up on Amazon) section on Ariadne in his book Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. I don’t take all of his conclusions as gospel, especially given that the author died in 1973 and therefore sadly missed almost half a century of research and discussion, but he had a useful habit of explaining his sources and logic such that readers could follow along and draw their own conclusions as necessary. Combine that with the fact that he is one of the very few Dionysian scholars who even gave Ariadne serious consideration, and he’s an invaluable source to me. The aforementioned book itself was the first major study of Dionysos that I read, and I highly recommend it to devotees willing to slog through somewhat dry mid-twentieth-century academic text and step lightly around some questionable inferences.

Now to address my story.

You stepped up among your siblings to claim responsibility for tending him. There is no direct historical evidence for the idea that Ariadne was specifically the caretaker of the Minotaur, but of all the children of Minos and Pasiphae, she is the one whose name comes up most in connection with her half-brother and his dwelling-place the labyrinth. As I make a point of trying to give agency to Ariadne where the original texts do not, I made this her decision.

The court artificer. A number of elements in this tale are attributed to one “Daidalos,” often identified as a singular culture hero by that name. However, Kerényi devotes some verbiage to discussing how this name originated in a pan-Hellenic title rather than one man’s name. It is likely that the name’s use in Crete predates the concept of Daidalos as a single trickster-hero. To keep the focus of this story on Ariadne, I’ve identified him simply as a fixture of the Knossian court.

The biggest change I’ve made to the common tale was to add Ariadne’s past as a performer of sacred dances. This is, again, an idea I borrowed first from Kerényi, but which I feel suits Ariadne very well. Its usage here in specific may be traced to a single line in the Iliad, as mentioned in the story, where the labyrinthine design on the shield of Achilles is compared to “the dancing grounds Daidalos made for Ariadne.” On its face, this is slender evidence for quite a significant addition. But given the persistent association of Dionysos and the women around him with ecstatic ritual dance, I consider it an important part of Ariadne’s story that should be restored here. I will talk more about the significance of dance to Ariadne and the “Dionysian women” in another post. It’s quite a daunting subject.

The choice to characterize Theseus as a loyal “servant of the gods” comes from another source entirely: Morris Silver’s Taking Ancient Mythology Economically, which mentions that the earliest Linear B appearances of the name Te-se-u describe its bearer as a servant of the gods. The text goes on to speculate that this meant he was a hired worker of some kind, but in later sources, he was definitely a prince, and that’s important to this story, so I kept that part.

It’s common to suggest that Ariadne, like her cousin Medea, was compelled by a goddess to love and assist the heroic prince who came to her land, but I haven’t found many good sources on that. In any case it doesn’t fit with my version of the story, where she falls in love with him because he represents freedom from the darkness of her duties in the labyrinth.

So for this prince you betrayed your name. I have discussed Ariadne’s name before, both in this story and in earlier posts. It’s interesting to note that despite being named as the ultimate holy virgin goddess, she persistently betrays that expectation.

That little island known to be holy to the Nysan god. The earliest sources for the story of Ariadne place her death — and therefore, as I have discussed, her meeting with Dionysos — on Dia, not Naxos. It was probably transferred to Naxos to fit better with later holy sites of the Dionysian cult. I name Dia as a holy island here, rather than just some random bit of rock, for two reasons:

Its name. Dia is transparently a geographical version of the very persistent root Dios, which simply means “god” or “the divine.”

Being the place where Dionysos married Ariadne would probably have conferred some divinity upon the little island anyway, as well as an association with the god himself.

Incidentally, Dia today is an uninhabited national park accessible by boat.

So with their blessing, he fled. The stories do not agree on why Theseus abandoned Ariadne; many don’t even give a reason. But some of the stories say the gods commanded him to, and multiple pieces of ancient art show him being spirited away from the sleeping Ariadne by gods or a god. I take from this the implication that the gods believed Ariadne already “belonged” to another, more powerful entity than Theseus, and as their loyal servant in this story, Theseus would have accepted that judgment.

You had betrayed your name once for him, but you hadn't even had the chance to consummate it. When the Odyssey refers to the story of Theseus and Ariadne, explaining that she was struck down by Artemis on Dia rather than abandoned by her prince, the text notes that Theseus “had no joy of” Ariadne before her death.

Despite the violent undertones to the language casually used by the ancients of Dionysos taking Ariadne as a bride (see my earlier post on the matter), those sources that actually go into the marriage in detail tend to describe him making advances on Ariadne but leaving the decision to reciprocate up to her. The texts repeatedly focus on the presence of the crown of laurels, which Dionysos would later place among the constellations as Corona Borealis to symbolize Ariadne and his love for her, as a bride-gift. It is my final touch in this retelling to cast the crown and the power it represented as the object that swayed Ariadne’s heart — she would return to the home she’d fled from, but only if she could go back with the power of a queen and a goddess.

[biofunmy]

What Leonardo da Vinci Couldn’t Finish

The 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci will bring big doings to Paris this fall with the largest-ever and one-stop-only career survey at the Louvre. And New York gets a shot of buzz in advance with the opening at the Met on July 15 of a single-painting show of one of the most rawly emotional images in the Leonardo canon.

Leonardo was a star from the start. According to the 16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari, his contemporaries found him terrifically attractive. (Vasari calls him “divine” a dozen times in a 20-page Leonardo biography.) Genial, gorgeous, brainy and a fashion plate (partial to pink), he had the poise of a prince and a philosopher’s ruminative mind. In his long career as artist, architect, scientist and inventor, grace and talent combined to smooth his path from rural Tuscany, where he was born in 1452, to the courts of Milan and papal Rome, to France where, as pet artist to Francis I, he died in 1519.

But that ruminative cast of mind caused problems. Basically, before Leonardo did anything he had to know everything: how his paints and varnishes were made, how the human body was internally structured, and what creating art might mean in the cosmic scheme of things.

This entailed, Vasari notes, research, experimenting, lots of conversation, and long stretches of silent thinking, and rethinking. In the biography, he has Leonardo himself explain, for the benefit of an importunate patron, that “when the greatest geniuses are working less they actually accomplish more.” The net effect was that relatively little painting got done, and a lot of what got started was never finished.

The painting at the Met, “Saint Jerome Praying in the Wilderness,” on loan from the Vatican Museums, is one of those unfinished pictures. It was likely begun around 1483, and you see instantly that it’s a work in progress: fined-tuned here, slapped down there. Incompleteness is part of its power. And powerful this picture is, as dramatically rich as a three-act opera, with a full-throttle aria of scorching anguish at its center.

Equally important, its “non finito” state is formally instructive. It lets us see Leonardo’s distracted, stop-and-start painting method in action.

The picture is one of a dozen or so works widely accepted as being, without question, from his hand. It depicts an early Christian saint who, after a self-punishing stint as a desert ascetic, settled for years in Rome where he turned his attention to translating the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin. Many Renaissance paintings of Jerome (347-420 A.D.) show him immersed in this scholarly labor, usually accompanied by a snoozing lion, a kind of emotional support companion. The mood of such pictures tends to have a cozy Peaceable Kingdom vibe.

Leonardo’s painting does not. Here saint and beast alike are untamed. This is the Jerome of desert wildness, or maybe the one who ended up dying far from Rome in a rock-hewn cave near Bethlehem. Aged, nearly toothless, and sun-scorched, he holds a stone in his extended right hand, as if about to deliver a penitential blow to his chest. At his feet is the lion, sleek, alert, tail curled like a scimitar, mouth opened wide in a growl.

We know nothing about why, or for whom, the picture was made. Carmen C. Bambach, the Met curator who organized the exhibition, proposes that it was started soon after the artist relocated from Florence to Milan. Although it reflects Leonardo’s Florentine style — and there’s a tiny sketch of what could be a Tuscan church in the upper right corner — it’s painted on a panel of walnut, a wood commonly used as a support in Milan, but very rarely in Florence.

Conservators have found evidence that Leonardo left off work at an early point and picked it up again, possibly more than once, later. Standing in front of the picture, which hangs, spotlighted, in a darkened gallery in the Met’s Lehman wing, you can get a sense of restless layers of activity.

In some areas it never progressed beyond a preliminary stage. The lion, a tawny silhouette with washy internal detailing, is a compositional place marker. The same is true of Jerome’s unmodeled rock-holding arm. But beginning just below the shoulder, this changes. Flesh suddenly gains shading; musculature develops. This naturalism spreads to the face, a construction of sinew and bone that brings Leonardo’s autopsy drawings to mind.

Even within this clinical precision, though, certain features are hard to read. At a glance, the saint’s eyes seem to be sightless or downcast. In fact, they are directed upward to a fleetly sketched, apparitional image of a crucifix seen in profile.

And, enchantingly, just behind the saint, a misted landscape appears, bringing the refreshment of color — sky-blue, tree-green — to a penumbral scene. In the exacting depiction of Jerome’s face and torso we see the hand and eye of Leonardo the anatomist. In the landscape, we see the naturalist, the botanist, the weather-watcher, the world lover. It may say something about this love that we find traces of the artist’s fingerprints in the landscape passage where he dabbed and smooshed paint by hand to create a soft-focus atmosphere.

Still, the painting’s real focus is Jerome’s agonized face. And its real subject, to my eye, is inflamed spiritual grief.

What we know is that Leonardo kept the picture with him till he died, then another history took over. The work drops from the record until the late 18th or early 19th century when the Swiss painter Angelica Kaufmann (1741-1839), then living in Rome, acquired it. At some point, pieces were cut from the panel — probably with the idea of selling the more finished sections — and later reassembled. At the Met, thanks to raked lighting, you can see repair lines around the saint’s head.

Why Leonardo left this and other pictures unfinished, we can’t know. Ms. Bambach, who organized the Met’s 2003 Leonardo drawing survey and whose awesomely ambitious four-volume study of the artist called “Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered,” will appear later this month, suggests that the answer may lie in his relentlessly inquisitive personality: in a now-familiar internet way, every search for information he made turned up links to other searches, which he couldn’t resist pursuing.

And in this she’s in agreement with the forgiving Vasari, who wrote: “Leonardo’s profound and discerning mind was so ambitious that this was itself an impediment; and the reason he failed was because he endeavored to add excellence and perfection to perfection. As our Petrarch has said, the desire outran the performance.”

The result, both historians seem to suggest, is an art that, consciously or otherwise, privileges process over finish, experimentation over resolution: never having to say “done” was Leonardo’s comfort-zone mode. And in the case of the Vatican painting, this has a fantastic payoff: It leaves an expression of fever-pitch emotion ever burning. It will burn all summer, this furnace of anguished devotion. The Met better keep its air-conditioning on high.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Saint Jerome

July 15 through Oct. 6 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org.

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Email Marketing: A Quick Guide

Photograph is receiving e-mail approaches that established off quickly - based totally on how any person interacts with each other together with your business also like your website.

These “automated” strategies then head out to finish your request...

...they create associations and belief... they indoctrinate subscribers into your brand name title (so that they buy from you rather than your rivals)... they preserve men and women engaged... and lastly...

...they drive a predictable stream of income, on a daily basis of each and every 7 days of each and every and each calendar year.

And which is just the automatic side of factors?

Then you have acquired the handbook aspect of belongings... and although it'd be guided, it's no significantly considerably less crucial instead of automated aspect.

... there exist loads of resources for currently being discovered.

This 3-part guidebook has your entire issue you must recognize up to a full-scale eCommerce email advertising and marketing technique with no obtaining exterior support.

So enable us to go into it, but primary...

 It could be simple, such as sending an e-mail to people who abandon their buying carts. Or advanced, like possessing a lot of strategies that work with one another synergistically to multiple cash flow exponentially.

At the conclusion of the doing working work day, each time you show up powering the promotions provides, cost-free shipping and delivery and shipping coupon codes and information nurturing electronic mail messages -email advertising and marketing is about establishing associations.

...zero a lot much more, absolutely nothing a lot much less.

 There is considerably much more to e-mail advertising and marketing and advertising for eCommerce outlets and on-line suppliers than generally sending a weekly e-mail and one particular specific cart abandonment e-mail.

But we’ll get to that inside of a next.

Original, let us just take a glance at your assets, since like every excellent craftsman, we'd like the correct equipment.

Whenever we enter into the strategies section, you will see certain illustrations of every sort of email. Just before we do this, however, let us bounce while in the parts of the best ecommerce electronic mail.

The “From” Identify would be the identify that seems beside the e-mail handle in the event the electronic mail seems.

Now, some corporations need to get all extravagant by using a personal recognize although while in the “From” matter. They may be undertaking this as a result of the simple fact they contemplate it is gonna get them a target.

However, within our experience, ought to your design doesn't revolve near to comparable to your particular specific man or woman, like Oprah or Dr. Phil, you're much better off utilizing your product or firm title, equivalent to the occasion above.

This can be when I see lots of in almost any other scenario smart businesses generate a silly mistake.

They ship e-mails from your “no reply” email deal with, which includes noreply@google.com.

But when you train individuals to go track down your make connection with sort along with your website, or your aid area, does a single truly feel you might be organizing to pay attention to from them each and every time they have a single issue essential which you tell you?

Of course not.

Make sure it is simple for people to make the connection with you by utilizing an e-mail deal with they can deliver e-mails to, this kind of as hello@google.com. You'll lookup a great deal a lot more approachable, you will get a good deal a lot more shopper tips, and you may be considerably a lot more successful as currently being a result.

Additionally, by employing an e-mail deal with individuals can, in fact, reply to, you'll inquire individuals to reply to your electronic mail messages inside of your quite a few strategies.

 Set just, of each and every minor factor through earlier mentioned, devote almost all of your time and efforts and attempts centered on your subject line.

This jogs my memory inside the renowned estimate from David Ogilvy:

“On the common, 5 situations as numerous men and women go through the headline as go through your body replicate. When you've got obtained developed your headline, you've got invested eighty cents absent from your greenback.”

Usually, do not get caught up striving to ideal your...

...Employ absolute best processes, and dedicate your inventive juices arising with persuasive topic strains and screening them. Simply because that is precisely the place you will possess the most bang for your buck.

Permit me to share some ideas to the issue traces:

Litmus, an e-mail advertising, and marketing system recognized you might have only 4 seconds to seize someone’s desire and obtain them to open up and skim your digital mail. So when you might have ready your topic line, review it quite very carefully and figure out if it receives you hooked in four seconds.

Ideally, you must get that every one of the ways all the way down to 1 subsequent.

Fantastic advertising and marketing and marketing and advertising are about sample interrupt, nevertheless, if you're finishing up specifically the same concern as each and every particular person else, you are going to mix while in the furnishings and no one pays to focus.

So actually never use phrases each and every man or woman else makes use of when offering one thing. Phrases like...

When e-mail first commenced, personalization with someone’s title was new and obtained people’s curiosity. But these days, it is straightforward, and everyone’s carrying out it, so it does not function anymore.

 Most newsletters and email strategies start with significant open up charges, and after that reduce as time passes.

To mitigate this likely on, genuinely tend not to re-use topic traces, and do not make your subject traces as well corresponding to one another. Don't forget, great marketing is about interrupting someone’s sample, and also to attempt this; you have to maintain it thoroughly clean.

Becoming a regular common guideline, adhere to fifty figures or significantly considerably less.

Provided that most people scan their inbox, assist it to turn into simple on them when exercising regardless of no matter whether to open up your e-mail. In the event, you certainly must have a prolonged matter line, be certain which the 1st fifty figures would be the juiciest factor.

Tend not to preserve the punchline for the conclude inside the matter subject line just due to the fact several men and women will skip it.

Without a doubt, it is great to marketplace your products within the make a difference line, but no, it's not alright to make use of advertising make a difference strains in each email you deliver.

That means...

Geez!!!!!!!!!!!!

Make a difference strains framed as concerns are inclined to carry out much better.

The very first time you trick a subscriber into opening your e-mail by utilizing a misleading e-mail, they’ll be irritated at you. The subsequent time, they’ll dismiss you.

 Be truthful and quick about what your email contains, despite the fact that also at the moment getting strong.

Firms use urgency (i.e., . 24 hrs remaining!) a result of the reality it works, but like every single advertising and marketing approach also used typically, it loses it is functionality inside the celebration you over-do it. Use urgency when it is sensible, but genuinely don't get there at count on it.

I can not level out this ample. Assessment, Assessment, Examination. Although I've explained best methods right here for e-mail topic traces which will function for many businesses, you will require to check, tweak and improve to discover the ideal matter strains that perform to your organization.

The subject of matter make a difference strains is way also large to go over totally listed here, so I’ll level you to some great DigitalMarketer posts you'll be able to get a glance at (shortly following ending this post, obviously). Should you at any time struggle to return up with tips for matter strains, these posts may help:

When you have your matter line composed, utilize a free of charge ranking device like SubjectLine.com to judge your matter line.

Alright. Which is it for matter strains.

Like I described, we could examine about subject traces all day long prolonged, but we now have to transfer.

The pre-header textual content can be the textual content that would seem with your e-mail up coming to your matter line. It is what folks see right after they’ve to go through the topic line and performs work in identifying regardless of whether they’ll open up the e-mail, which implies you need to get it proper.

Feel regarding your pre-header textual content as getting a continuation of the matter line. Utilize it to broaden within your subject matter line, and dial up the curiosity and emotion that is certainly surely beforehand joined jointly together with the subject matter subject line.

 It truly is obvious that which you ought to have to complete. Genuinely tend not to empower it to head more than to squander. It is worthwhile true estate, and it pays to just get good thing about it.

A lot of the time, about eCommerce email marketing and advertising and advertising and marketing, substantially considerably less is way far more.

Substantially considerably fewer photographs. Substantially considerably less extravagant design facets. Substantially considerably less “pizazz”.

Though the discuss among what converts biggest - textual material e-mail or HTML e-mails - carries on to rage (undergo more than it outlined below and correct below), you'll be able to make sure of two products:

You have obtained to strike a balance; simple sufficient the email feels a minimum of pretty personal, extravagant adequate that it gets interested but without obtaining triggering the promotions tab.

Much like style and elegance, preserve the replicate simple also to the purpose. Keep away from obtaining smart or cutesy. Be apparent and concise.

The magic of various around the methods we’ll be talking about beneath is due to the timing and behavioral mom character around the e-mail, not an outcome of acquiring the very best replicate.

  Which can be your shoppers and when do they desire to endure e-mails? You may presently know this from historic information, or else you might be able to determine it out based on your consumer demographic.

 Get a glance at revenue and orders for time on a working day. This will likely very likely give you with an idea of when individuals would like to purchase, and these times will normally work best possible for sending electronic mail messages (notably if you time your e-mails to head out just ahead of receiving spikes with a presented working day).

And eventually, hop on more than to the competitors’ sites, indication up for their mailing lists, and find out each time they send out their e-mail.

Even so, be mindful of knowledge collected using this type of specific strategy, as your competitor may do not know what they are an enterprise with electronic mail. Make certain to take a look at whatsoever you find out from your other chosen sending moments.

Apparently, when thinking about cell optimization, it pays to maintain your e-mail basic. The less difficult the articles, the better can it be to style and improve the mobile show.