#discordia writes

[tessadiscordia]

Imagine being trained to hunt and slay monsters. For generations your family has fought on behalf of the Church against the otherworldly forces of darkness, and now you have been selected to pick up the mantle. Your family and the Church make a fierce warrior out of you. You earn the fear and the respect of your kingdom. Now imagine venturing deep into the lair of a great and powerful vampire queen, you feel her all-encompassing presence as you take the first step into the grand hall of her castle. Standing face to face with her, you know that you are way out of your depth. In the blink of an eye she's ensnared you. You can only stand there, trapped in her embrace as she sinks her teeth into your neck, only then able to process what is happening to you as your mind slips into unconsciousness.

When you awake, you find yourself sat in a cushioned chair in front of a mirror. Within the reflection you see yourself dressed in a frilled pink dress with a diamonds adorning your neck, catching the reflection of the candlelight around you. Your hair is done in beautiful braids and decorated with a cute little bow. Your cheeks flush at the sight. You never knew you could look this pretty. You hear the vampire's voice behind you comment how adorable you look right now. You feel her hands gently caress your shoulder, and you are acutely aware of how soft your skin has become. You no longer appear as that imposing warrior you once were, the reflection in front of you is more becoming of a princess. You remain fixated on the mirror image where an invisible hand twirls a strand of your hair between unseen fingers. Your vampire mistress' husky voice fills your mind.

"Look at you... the perfect daughter I've always wanted."

The next few weeks are a blur. You can hardly recall them. She dresses you up in the cutest outfits, always coupled with a white ribbon wrapped neatly around your neck to conceal the marks that have been mysteriously appearing on your neck every night. You find yourself dressed in a flowing black gown sitting in a gorgeous master bedroom, decorated as you would have seen your former place of residence decorated had you been able to... wait, what were you thinking about? You swore you were forgetting something important. Someone important. Far away in a distant land where you belonged. Parents... a family... people to whom you were duty bound. No, that couldn't have been right. Your only family stood right beside you, picking out earrings from your nightstand. The woman who had taken care of you your whole life. You had no recollection of ever leaving her castle, and you couldn't imagine why you would ever want to. She had been so good to you. Spoiled you. Pampered you. Made you pretty like you always wanted to be. You were safer here, and much happier than you had ever been, with your mother.

"Try these on, sweetheart."

She slips the earrings on you and holds out a mirror, allowing you to admire the two spider-shaped pieces of gold adorned with crimson gemstones that now dangle from your ears. Halfway in a daze, you smile and tell her, "I look beautiful, mom."

"I'm glad you feel that way," your mother purrs. "My daughter is the prettiest girl in the world, and she should never forget that."

You exhale softly and lean into her embrace. She hugs you tightly. You find comfort in the feeling of her hot breath on your neck, a sensation you think should be familiar but feels entirely brand new to you. Your unwavering love and trust for her are the only thoughts that occupy your mind.

[huntedsmark]

various witchlight doodles and backlog!

[bowtiedauthor]

The Gospel of the Misaligned

Verse #4 of The Erisian Verses

I. Invocation

O Eris, patron of the off-kilter,  holy is the misfit, the twisted thread,  the one who walked backward  and still arrived before the others.

I sing now not of saints,  but of those who were never canonized —   the wrong notes in the hymn,  the skipped beats in the holy drum.

May their names remain unaligned  and their truths unverified.

II. Me? You?

You were born on a day that didn’t quite happen,  between Wednesday and the echo of a laugh.

The doctors called it anomaly. The priests called it sin.

But the stars whispered your name in an accent no one could trace.

Your shadow refused to follow. You learned to walk ahead of it.

You wore clocks as jewelry, not to tell time —  but to remind it it could not own you.

They called you off-beat, off-brand, off-script.

But when the Tower began to hum, you were already humming back.

They will not include you in the histories. You broke the symmetry too early.

Your story will be told in chalk, in graffiti, in the corners of coded texts mistaken for error.

You will not be remembered. You will be recognized.

And when the archives burn, your name will be spelled in ash on the walls of dreams.

III. Final Beatitude Blessed are the misaligned, for they are already on the true path —  the one with no map, and no destination, and all the sacred wrong turns.

-4/10/25

[marune2]

Norm Family day

Tag Faust is @heinrich-18 oc

Discordia is @lyranova oc

Ida Faust is my oc

——————————______________________

As Tag whas 17 years old

Tag: oh what are you reading whit big bro‘s Discordia Darling?

Discordia: it’s a crime book this time

Tag: oh nice I have a book for you reading club idea it’s called „Faust from Goethe“ it’s psychological and dark too let’s say Ida love too read it

Discordia raise a brow : you let’s her reading it?“ remember the last time ida whas reading whit them

Tag: oh yes my little darling gremlin love this stuff and at least she read this and Not Morgan’s romance book wo are adults stuff too at least this

Discordia : sure even I don’t see why let’s her reading it………..“seufs

Tag: Ida will do it anyway my dear even we don’t approve it at least it’s are just books you did remember what happened because Nacht whas bored because he whas intelligent and bored and now we have a Emo problem child

Discordia: don’t talk abaut him but it’s true what a shame he is at least we have Morgan

Tag: you did say it but I don’t say what against you you have you reason to think like this

Discordia: to be honest how can Morgan be related too him they share just the same face Morgan is like a angel and Nacht is a just a shame for the wold

Tag: wow today you are friendly but what ever…..

[all-consuming-sea]

Office Discordia: Zero-Player Tic-Tac-Toe Paradox

"They were just games. There's no solace within this odd kinship of forgotten entertainment, no special comfort. Maybe she was always just meant to be a mine-sweeper sort of person."

[thecharlesfortcabal]

[cryptotheism]

Trying to write about the discordians is insane. "yeah they made of conspiracy theories for fun magic reasons, but also one of the guys who wrote principa discordia was involved in the investigation around the assignation of JFK bc he served in the military with Lee Harvey Oswald."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Doublethink sump linkdump

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

Trigger warning for #eikositriophobia: this is my 23d linkdump (Hail Discordia!), an erratic Saturday purge of the open tabs I haven't managed to blog this week; here's the previous 22:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

When I was a kid, I idolized Harlan Ellison. I loved his prose styling, his stage presence, the way he blended activism and fiction, and the way he mixed critical nonfiction with fiction. As a 17 year old, I attended a writing workshop that Ann Crispin was giving at a local science fiction convention and she told me that I had the makings of a great writer, just as soon as I stopped trying to be Harlan Ellison.

But Harlan was a complicated figure. I attended the Clarion Workshop in 1992 specifically because he was our instructor, and came away bitterly disillusioned after he targeted one of my fellow students for relentless, cruel bullying, a performance that was so ugly that the board fired the director and permanently barred him from teaching the workshop.

Later on, Harlan became the kind of copyright maximalist who called for arbitrary internet surveillance and censorship in the name of shutting down ebook piracy. During a panel about this at a sf convention, he called one of the other panelists a "motherfucker" and threatened to punch him in the face. He took to badmouthing me in interviews, painting my position – whose nuances he certainly understood – in crude caricature.

But Harlan and I had many friends in common, people I really liked, and they were adamant that Harlan's flaws were not the whole story: if Harlan liked you, he would do anything to stand up for you, no matter the cost to himself. Famously, when Harlan taught Octavia Butler's Clarion, he demanded to know why she wasn't writing full time, and she replied that there was the inconvenient matter of making rent and groceries. He replied, "If that's all that's stopping you, come live in my guest house for as long as it takes, eat my groceries, and write." Which she did.

Which is great, but also: one of my own Clarion students told me about when his then-teenaged mother met Harlan at a sf convention and told him that she dreamed of becoming a writer, and he propositioned her. She was so turned off that she stopped writing forever (her son, my student, is now an accomplished writer).

So Harlan was a mixed bag. He did very, very good things. He did very, very bad things. When Harlan died, in 2018, I wrote an obit where I grappled with these two facts:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/28/rip-harlan-ellison/

In it, I proposed a way of thinking about people that tried to make sense of both Harlans – and of all the people in our lives. There's an unfortunate tendency to think of the people that matter to us as having their deeds recorded in a ledger, with good deeds in one column and wicked deeds down the other.

In this formulation, we add up the good deeds and the bad deeds and subtract the bad from the good. If the result is a positive number, we say the good outweighs the bad, and therefore the person is, on balance, good. On the other hand, if the bad outweighs the good, then the person is bad, and the good deeds are irrelevant.

This gets us into no end of trouble. It means that when someone we admire slips up, we give them a pass, because "they've earned it." And when someone who's hurt us does something selfless and kind and brave, we treat that as though it doesn't matter, because they're an asshole.

But the truth is, no amount of good deeds can wipe away the bad. If you hurt someone, the fact that you've helped someone else doesn't make that hurt any easier to bear. And the kindnesses you do for other people make their lives better, no matter what bad things you've done to others.

Rather than calculating the balance of our goodness or badness, I think we should just, you know, sit with our sins and virtues. Let all the harm and joy exist in a state of superposition. Don't cancel out the harm. Don't wave away the good. They both exist, neither cancels the other, and we should strive to help more, and to do less harm. We should do everything we can to help those we harm. No one owes us a pass because of the good we've done.

That's the lesson Harlan taught me, and he taught it to me by absolutely failing to live his life this way – a fact that exists alongside all of the good he did, including the great art he made, which I love, and which inspired me.

Not long after Harlan's death, I got a phone call from J Michael Straczynski, Harlan's literary executor. As part of his care for Harlan's literary legacy, Joe was editing a new anthology of short stories, The Last Dangerous Visions, and did I want to contribute a story?

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/harlan-ellison-last-dangerous-vision-1235117069/

Of course I did. Harlan edited Dangerous Visions in 1967: a groundbreaking anthology of uncomfortable science fiction that featured everyone from Philip K Dick to Samuel Delany. The followup, 1972's Again, Dangerous Visions, was, if anything, even more influential, including Le Guin's The Word For World IS Forest, as well as work by Joanna Russ, Kurt Vonnegut, David Gerrold, and James Tiptree, Jr.

Though some of the stories in these books haven't aged well, together, they completely changed my view of what science fiction was and what it could be. But The Last Dangerous Visions was a different (ahem) story. For complicated reasons (which all cashed out to "Harlan being very difficult to work with, sometimes for damned good reasons, other times for completely petty ones), TLDV was, at the time of Harlan's death, fifty years behind schedule. It was "science fiction's most famous unpublished book." Harlan had bought early work from writers who had gone on to have major careers – like Bruce Sterling – and had sat on them for half a century.

Then Joe called me to tell me that he was starting over with TLDV and did I want to contribute a story – and of course I did. I wrote a story for him with the title "Jeffty Is Five," part of my series of stories with the same titles as famous works of sf:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

Joe liked the story, but not the title. He thought Harlan wouldn't have approved of this kind of appropriation, and he wanted to do right by the memory of his old friend. My first reaction was very Harlan-like: this is supposed to make you mad, it's my art, and if it offends you, that's your problem.

But I remembered the most important lesson I learned from Harlan, about good deeds and bad ones, and I thought about Joe, a writer I admired and liked, who was grappling with his grief and his commitment to Harlan's legacy, and I changed my mind and told him of course I'd change the title. I changed the title because Harlan would never have done so, and that's rather the point of the story.The story is (now)) called "The Weight of a Heart, the Weight of a Feather" (a very Harlanish title), and it's about the legacy of complicated people, whose lives are full of noble selflessness *and careless or deliberate cruelty. It's about throwing away the ledger and just letting all those facts sit together, about lives that are neither washed of sin by virtue, nor washed of virtue by sin.

It's a good story, I think, and I'm proud of it, and I'm interested in what the rest of you think now that the book is out:

https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/products/book-fyhm

Harlan was the writer who made me want to get good at reading my stories aloud. I was a charter member of the Harlan Ellison Record Club, as you can see for yourself from the time Harlan (accidentally) doxed me:

http://harlanellison.com/text/paladin.txt

After nearly 20 years of podcasting, I'm actually pretty good at this stuff. I'm going to be podcasting a reading of this story – eventually. I am nearly done "de-googling" my podcast feed, ripping it out of Feedburner, a service that I started using nearly two decades ago to convert a WordPress RSS feed to a podcast feed. In the intervening years, WordPress has come to support this natively and Feedburner has become a division of Google, so I've been methodically removing Feedburner's hooks from my feed, which is now proudly available here, without any surveillance or analytics:

https://craphound.com/feeds/doctorow_podcast

I'll be writing up the process eventually. In the meantime, I'm about to embark on another podcast fiction project, serializing my novella Spill, a "Little Brother" story that Tor's Reactor just published:

https://reactormag.com/spill-cory-doctorow/

The first part of "Spill" will go out tomorrow or Monday. Reactor also just published another "Little Brother" story, "Vigilant," which I read in last week's podcast:

https://craphound.com/littlebrother/2024/09/29/vigilant-a-little-brother-story/

One of my long-running beefs with Harlan was his insistence that the answer of copyright infringement online was to create an obligation on intermediaries – like ISPs – to censor their users' communications on demand from anyone claiming to have been wronged by a post or upload.

This would be bad for free expression under any circumstances, but it's an especially dangerous vision for ISPs, who are among the worst-run, most venal businesses in modern society ("We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company" -L Tomlin).

It's hard to overstate just how terrible ISPs are, but even in a field that includes Charter and Comcast, there's one company that rises above the pack when it comes to being grotesquely, imaginatively awful: Cox Communications.

Here's the latest from Cox: they sell "unlimited" gigabit data plans that cost $100 for the base plan and $50 to add the "unlimited" data. But – as Jon Brodkin writes for Ars Technica – Cox uniquely defines "unlimited" as severely limited:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/cox-slows-internet-speeds-in-entire-neighborhoods-to-punish-any-heavy-users/

Now, you're probably thinking, ho-hum, another company that offered unlimited service and then acted like dicks when a customer treated it as unlimited, ::laughs in American Airlines::

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2019/11/13/unlimited-first-class-flights-for-lifehow-american-airlines-made-the-most-expensive-mistake-in-aviation-history/

But that's not the Cox story! Cox doesn't just throttle "unlimited" customers' internet to 2006-vintage DSL speeds – they slow down the entire neighborhood around the unlimited customer to those speeds.

As Brodkin writes, every Cox customer in the same neighborhood as an "unlimited" customer named "Mike" had their upload speeds reduced by more than two thirds, from 35mbps to 10mbps, to punish Mike. And they're not the only ones!

https://www.reddit.com/r/GNV/comments/gkicjg/comment/fr670cx/

Cox confirmed they were doing this, saying "performance can be improved for all customers in the neighborhood by temporarily increasing or maintaining download speeds and changing upload speeds for some of our service tiers."

Cox has been on a roll lately, really going for the shitty-telecoms-company gold. Back in August, 404 Media published a leaked pitch deck in which Cox promised advertisers that they were secretly listening to their customers' smart devices, transcribing their private conversations, and using them to target ads:

https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/

This isn't just appalling, it's also almost certainly fraudulent. As terrible as "smart" devices are (and oh God are they terrible), the vast majority of them don't do this. That's something a lot of security researchers have investigated, doing things like hooking up a protocol analyzer to a LAN with a smart device on it and looking for data transmissions that correspond to ambient speech in earshot of the gadget's mic.

My guess is that Cox has done a deal with a couple of the bottom-feedingest "smart TV" companies (as a cable operator, Cox will have relationships with a lot of these companies) to engage in this conduct. Smart TVs have emerged as one of the worst categories of consumer technology, on every axis: performance, privacy, repairability. The field has raced to the bottom, hit it, and then started digging to find new lows to sink to. This is just my hunch here, but I think it's highly likely that if there's a class of devices that are bugging your living room and selling the data to Cox, it's gonna be a smart TV (top tip: buy a computer monitor instead, and use your phone or laptop to stream to it).

Ask a certain kind of very smooth-brained, Samuelson-pilled economist about the enshittification of smart TVs and they'll tell you that this is a "revealed preference":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

As in, sure, you may say that you don't want your TV to secretly record your private conversations and sell them to Cox, but actually you quite like it, because you have a TV.

While this is a facially very stupid argument, it's routinely made by people who think they're very smart, a point famously made by Matt Bors's "Mr Gotcha":

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Comics turn out to be a very good medium for stringing up the revealed preferences crowd on their own petards. This week, Juan Santapau's "The Secret Knots" added to the Mr Gotcha canon with an equally brilliant webcomic, albeit one with a very different vibe, entitled "Remind Me Later":

https://thesecretknots.com/comic/remind-me-later/

Santapau really catches the zeitgeist with this one, which is more of a slow burn than a zinger, and which shows how online "revealed preferences" nonsense grooms us for the same bullshit in every corner of our lives, even our psychotherapist's office. Highly recommended – an instant classic.

"Revealed preferences" comes from the Chicago School of Economics, a field that decided that a) economics should be a discipline grounded in mathematical models; and b) it was impossible to factor power relationships into these models; so c) power doesn't matter.

Once you understand this fact, everything else snaps into focus – like, why the Chicago School loves monopolies. If you model an economy dominated by monopolists without factoring the power that monopolists wield, then you can very easily assume that any monopoly you discover is the result of a lot of people voluntarily choosing to spend all their money with the company they love best.

The fact that we all hate the monopolists we have to deal with is dismissed by these economists as a mirage: "sure, you say you hate them, but you do business with them, therefore, your 'revealed preference' shows that you actually love them."

Which is how we end up with absolutely outrageous rackets like the scholarly publishing cartel. Scholarly journals acquire academics' work for free; get other academics to edit the work for free; acquire lifetime copyright to those finished works; and charge the institutions that paid those "volunteer" academics salaries millions of dollars to access their publications:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/16/the-public-sphere/#not-the-elsevier

These companies don't just lock up knowledge and tie an anchor around the scientists' and scholars' ankles, dragging them down. Their market power means that they can hurt their customers and users in every way, including through rampant privacy violations.

A new study from SPARC investigates the privacy practices of Springerlink, and finds them to be a cesspit of invasive, abusive conduct that would make even a Cox executive blush:

https://zenodo.org/records/13886473

Yes, on the one hand, this isn't surprising. If a company can screw you on pricing, why wouldn't they scruple to give you the shaft on privacy as well? But The fact that a company as terrible as Springer can be the dominant firm in the sector is still shocking, somehow.

But that's terminal-stage capitalism for you. It's not just that bad companies companies thrive – it's that being a bad company is a predictor of sky-high valuations and fawning coverage from the finance press.

Take Openai, a company that the press treats as a heptillion-dollar money-printer whose valuation will eventually exceed the rest of the known universe. Openai has a lot of problems – a mass exodus of key personnel, a product that doesn't work for nearly all the things it's claimed as a solution to – but the biggest one is that it's a bad business.

That's the theme of a fantastic, characteristically scathing-but-deep Ed Zitron article called (what else?) "Openai is a bad business":

https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/

Zitron does something that no one else in the business press does: takes Openai's claims about its business fundamentals – its costs, its prices, its competitors, and even its capabilities – at face value, and then asks, "Even if this is all true, will Openai ever turn a profit?"

The answer is a pretty convincing "no." Zitron calls it a "subprime AI crisis" in a nod to Tim Hwang's must-read 2020 book about the ad-tech bezzle, Subprime Attention Crisis:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/06/surveillance-tulip-bulbs/#adtech-bubble

The fascinating thing about both Zitron and Hwang's analysis isn't that there are big companies that suck – it's that they are able to suck up so much money and credulous excitement, despite how badly they suck.

That's where power – the thing that neoliberal economists say doesn't matter – comes in. Monopoly power is a self-accelerating flywheel, as Amazon's famous investor pitch explains:

https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a

Once a monopolist or a cartel wields market power, they can continue to dominate a sector, even though they're very bad – and even if they use their power to rip off both their customers and very powerful suppliers.

That's the lesson of Michael Jordan's lawsuit against NASCAR, as Matt Stoller explains in his latest BIG newsletter:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/michael-jordan-anti-monopolist

Jordan is one of the most famous basketball players, but after retiring from the game, he became a NASCAR owner, and as such, has been embroiled in a monopoly whose abuses are both eerily familiar to anyone who pays attention to, say the pharmacy benefit manager racket:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen

But on the other hand, the fact this is all happening to race-cars and not pharmacies makes it very weird indeed. As with, say, PBMs, NASCAR's monopoly isn't just victimizing the individuals who watch racing, but also the racecar teams. These teams are owned by rich, powerful people (like Jordan), but are "almost always on the verge of bankruptcy."

Why is that? NASCAR rips them off. For example, teams have to buy all their parts from NASCAR, at huge markups, and the purchase contract prohibits them from racing at any rival event. There are a million petty schemes like this, and NASCAR carefully titrates its bleed-off to leave its victims almost at death's door, but still (barely) solvent enough to keep racing.

NASCAR also bought out all the rival leagues, and most of the tracks, and then locked the remaining tracks to exclusivity deals. Then the teams all had to sign noncompetes as a condition of competing in NASCAR, the only game in town – forever.

Hence Michael Jordan, a person who steadfastly refused to involve himself in politics during his basketball career, becoming a firebreathing trustbuster. Stoller cites Jordan's transformation as reason to believe that the anti-monopoly agenda will survive even in the event that Harris wins but bows to corporate donors who insist on purging the Biden administration's trustbusters.

That's a hopeful note, and I'd add my own to it: the fact that the NASCAR scam is so similar to the pharma swindles, academic publishing swindles, and all the other monopoly rip-offs means that there is a potential class alliance between university professors, NASCAR owners, and people with chronic health conditions and big pharmaceutical bills.

That high note brings me to the end of this week's linkdump! And here's a little dessert in case you've got room for one more little link: Kitowares "Medieval Mules", a forthcoming clog styled as trompe l'oeil plate armor:

https://www.kitowares.la/

Pair with old favorites like lycra armor leggings:

https://loricaclothing.com/collections/leggings-1/products/the-augsburg-legging

And a DIY crotcheted knight's helmet:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/590854477/knights-helmet-w-detachable-visor

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER s tories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; a nd SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/05/farrago/#jeffty-is-five

[coinandcandle]

Eris Deep Dive: Goddess of Discord and Strife

Eris (Ἔρις) is the Greek personification of discord and strife—more notably she was considered to be the daimona of the strife of war. She was not considered a goddess in the same respect as the Olympians until more recently.

While she was not worshiped in ancient Greece, she has become a popular deity in Discordianism, a modern religion, as well as being worshiped by solitary individuals. In modern day she is given a kinder but still discordant role, worshiped as a goddess of chaos and specifically necessary chaos; chaos invoked as the catalyst of change. She is also said to be the goddess of the chaos needed for artists to create.

Parents and Siblings

Her parentage depends on who is relaying the story. The most popular belief is that she was spawned by Nyx alone.

Nyx, no father

Nyx and Erebus (only because Erebus was Nyx’s lover)

Zeus and Hera (because she is noted as Ares’ sister)

Siblings will also depend. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, her siblings are:

Aether

Hemera

Moros

Apate

Dolos

Nemesis

The Keres

The Moirai

The Hesperides

The Erinyes

Oizys

Momus

Oneiros

Hypnos

Thanatos

Philotes

Geras

If she is the daughter of Zeus and Hera then the list of siblings would be way longer including all half siblings. She is specifically mentioned to be Ares’ sister in Homer’s Iliad. Too many to list, I will instead offer you the genealogy of Zeus and Hera.

Her full-blooded siblings would be:

Hebe

Ares

Eileithyia

Lovers or Partners

No lovers mentioned

Children

Ponos (Hardship)

Lethe (Forgetfulness)

Limos (Starvation)

Algea (Pains)

Hysminai (Battles)

Makhai (Wars)

Phonoi (Murders)

Androktasiai (Manslaughters)

Neikea (Quarrels)

Pseudea (Lies)

Logoi (Stories)

Amphillogiai (Disputes)

Dysnomia (Anarchy)

Ate (Ruin)

Horkos (Oath)

Epithets

Note that these aren’t historically attested, they do come from translated myths but that doesn’t mean she was called this throughout history.

Strife

Infernal Goddess

Mother of Cacodaemons

Notes

Often Eris is called a goddess of chaos in modern times, but in history she is recorded as the goddess of discord. While they seem like synonyms they are not, chaos is disorder and confusion; discord is argument or disagreement. While discord may lead to chaos, they are not one in the same.

This confusion may come from the conflation of Eris and the similar but still separate Roman goddess Discordia, who is the goddess of chaos and was often seen in a kinder light than the Greek Eris.

Eris is the last born of Nyx according to the Theogony.

She is noted in mythology to be particularly fond of the bloodshed of war.

Eris and the goddess of war Enyo are often conflated.

In his writing Works and Days, Hesiod says that there are two Erises; one that exists purely to plague mankind with strife, and the other is a kinder Eris who instills a healthy sense of competition in mankind.

Unfortunately Eris does not appear in mythology often, as is the case for many daimones, However her most popular roles in mythology are:

Throwing the (sometimes golden) apple into a feast with the words inscribed “to the fairest”, causing three goddesses, Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera, to argue about who the apple should go to. Eventually, not wanting to deal with it, Zeus made the human mortal Paris decide. Though her role was short, it was a huge part in starting the Trojan war in mythology. Read about The Judgement of Paris.

When Polytechnos and Aëdon said their relationship was way better than Zeus and Hera’s, Hera sent Eris down to create marital discord between them. She did just that, making them compete against each other. Polytechnos was completing a standing board for a chariot and Aëdon a tapestry at the time, so they made a bet on who would finish first. Whoever lost would present the other with a slave. It gets pretty dark and they end up getting turned into birds by Zeus, a common ‘kind’ gesture from him in mythology. Read more here.

Interestingly enough, Eris is pictured with Themis, the goddess of divine law and order on a vase depicting the Judgement of Paris. The two watch over the three goddesses.

In another painting, Eris is depicted wearing winged shoes and having wings herself. This could symbolize freedom and swiftness—sometimes sneakiness as well. This would make sense for Eris as she is considered in mythology to be a sneaky troublemaker.

There were no shrines known to be dedicated to Eris.

Discordia, Eris’ Roman counterpart, was associated with the type of discord needed for societal change and going with the grain.

Modern Deity Work

Seeing as she was not worshiped as far as we know in ancient times, these are pulled from mostly modern practitioners’ posts as well as general practices of Hellenism.

Correspondences

Rocks/Stone/Crystals

Gold, Onyx, Smoky quartz, moldavite

Herbs/Plants

Apples, hallucinogenic plants,

Animals

Venomous snakes, scorpions, ravens, foxes (all associated with other deities of chaos and discord)

Offerings

Apples with Honey

Honey

Fruits

Breads

Olive oil

Red meat

Wine

Blood (please be smart about this)

Gunpowder (again, don’t be dumb)

Imagery of war

Weapons or imagery of weapons

Acts of Devotion

Learn to embrace chaos as a catalyst for change.

Enter into competitions, whether they be sports or art contests, just go compete!

Learn about the history of war, especially the wars of Ancient Greece.

Join protests for what you believe in, breaking societal norms.

Pull a prank! She’s a trickster, what trickster doesn’t love a good prank?

References and Further Reading

Eris - Theoi Project

Eris - Britannica

Eris -World History Encyclopedia

Eris - Greek Mythology Link

A Guide to Worship Eris Cheat Sheet by screeching-0wl

Theogony by Hesiod

The Iliad by Homer

Works and Days by Hesiod

Subtle Eris Worship by khaire-traveler

[practically-an-x-man]

Alright, writer's deep dive- What made you think of Eris as a character? What's your favorite thing you've written for them? What's some facts about her that you haven't shared before?

Ooooh thank you so much!!

First things first... I'm not sure what originally made me think of Eris. I first created them as a character right after watching The Suicide Squad in theaters, so it's been close to 4 years - and a lot of redesigns! The original Eris was a much more basic character (cis female, with a much more heroic moral code and simpler backstory), and I'm not really sure where they originally popped up.

But I can say with the redesign and the Eris we now know and love, I really wanted to go a different direction from my other OCs: the others are all in the general "hero" range, with the furthest branches out being Ophelia's antihero leanings. With both Eris and Nikoletta (since I introduced them at roughly the same time), I wanted to explore some more villainous leanings and more complex moral codes. So I gave Eris a revamp, took those risks that I wasn't comfortable with when I first created them, and decided on a darker and more historical-focused view on Themyscira and the Amazons.

As for my favorite thing I've written.... oooh, that's a tough one. I think Vestalia probably has the most dynamic emotions, and I'm proud of how that one came together - especially with how it relates to Eris in those quieter moments, and the depth to their character there. I also really love Broken Pieces as a whump/body horror piece, I think that's got some of my most evocative language and I reread it regularly.

As a whole, though... I think Let Us Prey is my top favorite. I poured my heart and soul into that one, it's the story I've wanted to tell for Eris since I first created the character (even before the redesign), and I think it's just such a dynamic piece. Even the scenes that follow the movie feel unique to me, and it's just SUCH a good piece for Eris' character, their relationship with Rick, and my writing style as a whole. I really wish that one got more traction honestly, I tried pushing it hard when I first wrote it but still barely anyone ended up reading it.

And as for facts about her... hm...

Eris' sense for conflict is actually more closely inspired by the Roman goddess Bellona than the mythological Eris/Discordia herself - they're similar gods, and it was said that Discordia would travel with Bellona to her battles, but Bellona was the one more attributed to outright war and bloodshed.

I also view Eris' sense for conflict as sort of a nebulous, magical thing rather than strictly an emotion or ability. Of course it affects their strength in battle (making them stronger, faster, and more regenerative when they're surrounded by extreme conflict), but it also plays a role on their emotions. Eris can definitely be understanding and empathetic at times, but that is much harder when they're around conflict- even if Eris doesn't engage with it or personally feel any strong emotions towards it. That conflict doesn't exactly make Eris angry or combative of their own right, but it does make those combative emotions more intense and muffles the gentler ones. This is why Eris gets a spike of jealousy in A Fool's Errand, in the crowded bar, and why they're able to have a calm heart-to-heart in Vestalia (if Rick had been caught off-guard by the breakup or reacted with anger, the conversation would not have gone NEARLY as smoothly, and that's part of why it's such an important piece for them)

And as another note on that: in This Phantom Life, where Eris is locked in Arkham with power-dampening tech lining the cell, they're not just lacking motivation because of grief - with the power dampening tech, his sense for conflict is also dampened, so they're less combative than they've felt in centuries.

Eris' sense for conflict is a bit of a tricky thing to write, because I really do want it to feel like this separate entity to their emotions: sometimes something they lean into until it almost seems like their nature, other times a force that they end up fighting against instead, and something that threads along in the background regardless of their emotions or the situation.

Thank you again for the ask!!

[diogenescynic2288]

Sunday Sermon 2: On Laws

Happy Sunday to all again. I am once again writing to you as Pope Orion Orangutan Omnibenevolence Kosmos Yes or POOKY.

So, the last sermon I delivered might have seemed to offer instruction, advice, or command in regards to chilling and maybe being nice. That was not my intent. It was at most, a suggestion. I am not an Enlightened One. I'm not more in touch with the Divine than anyone else.

While I'm writing these, I do invoke my Discordian Pope title. That does not make me an authority. I took the expensive route to Discordian Papacy: I bought a ten dollar used copy of the Steve Jackson Games printing of the Principia Discordia and then made a fifteen cent photocopy at FedEx Kinkos of the page with the Be Your Own Pope card. That does not elevate me above anyone else. All who decide to join the Golden Apple Corps of Eris are equally in the Discordian Papacy.

I'll own up to a thing: back when I was in late high school or my year of college, I came to identify with the label of anarchism or libertarianism coming to it from left-leaning reasons. For instance, at that time, gay marriage was a controversial issue and not yet legal across the United States of America, and I had a simple stupid solution: marriage is no longer a legal status for anyone straight or gay, the government just doesn't do marriage anymore. Marriage equality achieved.

Anyway, as a budding anarchist, attempting to have a consistent moral philosophy of life, I started thinking about Christianity, particularly the church my parents had been raising me in. If top down authority and distinctions of station are evils when talking about the world of human politics, are they any less so when applied to religion? Long story short, maybe God exists, but he's a tyrant and All Clergy Are Bastards.

Today's reading is from The Gospel of Mary Magdalene I'm drawing my wording from The Essential Gnostic Gospels translated by Alan Jacobs published by Watkins 2009:

Then Jesus greeted them saying, “Peace be with you all.

Take my peace into your Selves; be watchful so nobody leads

you astray claiming “Look there, look here for the son of man.”

I tell you that the son of man is within you all!

Seek him inside; those who search diligently

and earnestly shall surely find him.

Then leave and preach the truth of the Kingdom

to those with ears to hear;

don't invent rules beyond those I've given.

Don't make laws like law-makers do

or else you'll be held back.”

After he had said this he left.

[I'm skipping a bit to get to the next part I want to quote]

Mary answered, “What's concealed from you I'll tell;

I saw him in a vision and I told him.

He said, “Blessed are you that your strength

wasn't shaken by my appearance,

for where the heart is lies buried treasure.”

[another skip still Mary talking]

When my soul had conquered ignorance it rose up

and saw the fourth power, which assumes seven forms.

The first is darkness, the second desire, then ignorance,

fear of death, power of the flesh, foolish reason,

and self-righteous pedantry.

These are the powers of anger and doubt; they ask,

“From where did you come, killer of men;

where are you heading, slayer of space?”

My soul replied, “What bound me is dead,

what enveloped me has been vanquished;

my desires are over and ignorance is no more.

In this life I was freed from the world

and the chains of forgetfulness.

From now on I will rest in the eternal now;

for this age, this aeon, and in stillness.”

So today's lesson from POOKY is: Yeshua and Miriam also say no laws, free yourself from ignorance and pedantry.

Good Day of the Sun unto you all.

[stellae-de-baphometis]

hi! would you happen to have any information on Sonnelion? she is mentioned in the dukante hierarchy i believe?? but i am having a hard time finding anything more on her, since she isnt too well known. thank you!

Hello! I have quite a bit to say on this topic, so I do apologise if this post is a little lengthy!

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find much information on Sonneillon either tbh. I haven't really had any personal experiences with her either. As far as I know, the first time she was ever documented was in Sébastien Michaëlis's book, 'Admirable History (Of The Possession And Conversion Of A Penitent Woman)', written back in 1613. She is cited as being a daemon of hatred (specifically hatred towards one's enemies) and is listed in the first of three daemonic hierarchies created by Michaëlis, but nothing more is said of her other than that. Here is Sonneillon's entry from 'Admirable History':

"Sonneillon is the fourth in the order of Thrones, and tempteth men with hatred against their enemies. His adversary in Heaven is Stephen, who prayed for his enemies."

According to Michaëlis, the names of the daemons listed in his hierarchies were told to him by the daemon Berith whilst he was exorcising a nun, so some of the daemons listed in his hierarchy might not be very credible. Other daemons listed in his book that are just as obscure include: Verrine, Gressil, Carreau, Carniveau Oeillet, Rosier, Verrier, Olivier, and Iuvart.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that these daemons are fictional or "made-up" though. It's possible that these daemons' names are a result of hysterical Christian extremists bastardising deities from other pantheons and writing them off as daemons; a practice that was probably quite common around the time this book was written. Hell, there were still witch trials going on at this point, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's how these daemons came into being.

I did some research, and the deity I could find that bears the closest resemblance to the little information we have of Sonneillon is Eris, the Greek goddess and personification of discord, strife, quarrelling, contention, and rivalry; especially in the context of warfare. Sonneillon's documented ability to incite hatred towards one's enemies in someone bears notable resemblance to Eris's ability to incite strife and contention in people. So it's possible that Sonneillon is a daemon that originated from Eris, but is now a distinct entity from her. Please keep in mind that this is only my personal gnosis though, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

In my UPG, I believe that most, if not, all daemons originate from (the bastardisation and demonisation of) deities and entities from other belief systems, hence why I believe Sonneillon likely originated from Eris lol.

That's pretty much all the info I have on Sonneillon tbh. I hope it was helpful! Sorry I wasn't able to provide more info than what I have written here. ;n;

+ . . . Divider Credit . . . +

📚 ~ SOURCES ~ 📚

Admirable History (Of The Possession And Conversion Of A Penitent Woman) - Wellcome Collection

Classification Of Demons - Wikipedia

The Encyclopedia Of Witchcraft And Demonology - Internet Archive

Eris, Greek Goddess Of Strife And Discord (Roman Discordia) - Theoi Greek Mythology

Eris (Mythology) - Wikipedia

[ashleybenlove]

@lifblogs asked me a few days ago if I was gonna share the list of books I read this year. So, I'm gonna do that.

Due to character limits, I had to separate the numbered lists, so first list goes up to 100 and then the second list is the rest.

Couple of notes, my list includes the date I finished reading and a couple of marks.

Their meanings:

Started in 2022: * This book is a reread: ** Did not write down the date but probably the date: *? (Basically I decided after I had started to include the date finished.) Special notation for Dracula and Dracula Daily: **!

Bold denotes favorites.

Eight Kinky Nights: An f/f Chanukah romance by Xan West* – Jan 1*?

Through the Moon: A Graphic Novel (The Dragon Prince Graphic Novel #1) by Peter Wartman – Jan 4

Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings – Jan 7

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte – Jan 12

A Brother’s Price by Wen Spencer** - Jan 13

Gossie and Gertie by Olivier Dunrea – Jan 17

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew H. Knoll – Jan 18

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler – Jan 22

Flying Dinosaurs: How Fearsome Reptiles Became Birds by John Pickrell – Jan 25

Promised Land: a Revolutionary Romance by Rose Lerner – Jan 26

Bad Girls Never Say Die by Jennifer Mathieu – Jan 27

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr – Feb 2

Artemis by Andy Weir – Feb 4

Hunting Game by Helene Tursten – Feb 7

How the Earth Turned Green: A Brief 3.8-Billion-Year History of Plants by Joseph E. Armstrong – Feb 14

Fortuna by Kristyn Merbeth – Feb 16

After Hours on Milagro Street by Angelina M. Lopez – Feb 22

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan – Feb 22

Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond by Robin George Andrews – Feb 28

Memoria by Kristyn Merbeth – Feb 28

American Revolution: A History From Beginning to End by Hourly History – Mar 5

Discordia by Kristyn Merbeth – Mar 6

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley – Mar 17

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester – Mar 18

The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen – Mar 18

Big Chicas Don't Cry by Annette Chavez Macias – Mar 19

Innumerable Insects: The Story of the Most Diverse and Myriad Animals on Earth by Michael S. Engel – Mar 21

The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783 by Joseph J. Ellis – Mar 24

Eragon by Christopher Paolini – Mar 25

Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive by Philipp Dettmer – Mar 25

Locked in Time by Lois Duncan** – Mar 26

Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur – Mar 28

The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict – April 4

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham – April 7

Bisexually Stuffed By Our Living Christmas Stocking by Chuck Tingle – April 8

Bloodmoon Huntress: A Graphic Novel (The Dragon Prince Graphic Novel #2) by Nicole Andelfinger – April 9

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell – April 11

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton – April 13

The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis – April 17

What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez – April 19

Cinder by Marissa Meyer – April 20

The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson – April 20

Eldest by Christopher Paolini – April 22

The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan – April 23

The Sentient Lesbian Em Dash — My Favorite Punctuation Mark — Gets Me Off by Chuck Tingle – April 24

The Pleistocene Era: The History of the Ice Age and the Dawn of Modern Humans by Charles River Editors – April 26

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie – April 27

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach – April 29

Absolution by Murder by Peter Tremayne – May 3

Matrix by Lauren Groff – May 6

The Color Purple by Alice Walker – May 7

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie – May 9

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume – May 11

The Dragon Prince Book One: Moon by Aaron Ehasz and Melanie McGanney Ehasz – May 13

Mind the Gap, Dash & Lily by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan – May 15

Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez – May 15

Atlas of Unusual Borders: Discover Intriguing Boundaries, Territories and Geographical Curiosities by Zoran Nikolic – May 20

How the Mountains Grew: A New Geological History of North America by John Dvorak – May 20

The Guncle by Steven Rowley – May 21

Brisingr by Christopher Paolini – May 24

Reflection: A Twisted Tale by Elizabeth Lim – May 26

Sailor's Delight by Rose Lerner – May 26

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World by Riley Black – May 28

Humans are Weird: I Have the Data by Betty Adams – June 3

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro – June 4

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer – June 8

Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut – June 9

A Tip for the Hangman by Allison Epstein – June 11

Cress by Marissa Meyer – June 20

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao – June 22

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us by Steve Brusatte – June 24

After the Hurricane by Leah Franqui – June 24

Inheritance by Christopher Paolini – June 25

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez – June 26

Dark Room Etiquette by Robin Roe – June 30

The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack – July 4

Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains by Bethany Brookshire – July 5

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin – July 7

Cosmos by Carl Sagan – July 10

1984 by George Orwell** -- July 11

What Once Was Mine: A Twisted Tale by Liz Braswell – July 17

Evolution Gone Wrong: The Curious Reasons Why Our Bodies Work (Or Don't) by Alex Bezzerides – July 20

The Planet Factory: Exoplanets and the Search for a Second Earth Hardcover by Elizabeth Tasker – July 21

Witches by Brenda Lozano – July 24

Son of a Sailor: A Cozy Pirate Tale by Marshall J. Moore – July 29

Winter by Marissa Meyer – July 29

As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale by Liz Braswell – July 30

Baking Yesteryear: The Best Recipes from the 1900s to the 1980s by B. Dylan Hollis – August 4

Half Bad by Sally Green – August 7

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly – August 14

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley – August 18

Gory Details: Adventures From the Dark Side of Science by Erika Engelhaupt – August 22

The Last Karankawas by Kimberly Garza – August 25

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore – Sept 5

Oceans of Kansas, Second Edition: A Natural History of the Western Interior Sea by Michael J. Everhart – Sept 7

Corpus Christi: The History of a Texas Seaport by Bill Walraven – Sept 9

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury** – Sept 12

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Sept 18

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera – Sept 20

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett – Sept 22

The Mammals of Texas by William B. Davis and David J. Schmidly – Sept 29

The Romance Recipe by Ruby Barrett – Oct 4

The 2024 Old Farmer’s Almanac edited by Janice Stillman – Oct 7

Half Wild by Sally Green – Oct 7

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James – Oct 7

Verity by Colleen Hoover – Oct 10

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence – Oct 15

Archaeology: Unearthing the Mysteries of the Past by Kate Santon – Oct 16

100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife by Ken Jennings – Oct 22

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie – Oct 22

Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe García McCall – Oct 22

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie – Oct 27

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler – Oct 28

The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found by Mary Beard – Oct 29

Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair by Sarah Schulman – Oct 31

The Great Texas Dragon Race by Kacy Ritter – Nov 6

Dracula by Bram Stoker**! – Nov 7/8

The Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser – Nov 9

Cascadia's Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami that Could Devastate North America by Jerry Thompson – Nov 10

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison – Nov 11

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney – Nov 13

Untamed by Glennon Doyle – Nov 14

Nimona by ND Stevenson – Nov 18

Dracula Daily by Matt Kirkland**! – Nov 20

A Mother Would Know by Amber Garza – Nov 24

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie – Nov 25

How To Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell** – Nov 27

Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie – Dec 1

Murtagh by Christopher Paolini – Dec 8

The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie – Dec 8

Icehenge by Kim Stanley Robinson – Dec 9

These Holiday Movies With Bizarrely Similar Smiling Heterosexual Couples Dressed In Green And Red On Their Cover Get Me Off Bisexually by Chuck Tingle – Dec 9

The Domesday Book: England's Heritage, Then & Now edited by Thomas Hindle – Dec 10

You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation by Julissa Arce – Dec 13

Himawari House by Harmony Becker – Dec 13

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck** – Dec 18

Born Into It: A Fan’s Life by Jay Baruchel – Dec 18

The Dragon Prince Book Two: Sky by Aaron Ehasz and Melanie McGanney Ehasz – Dec 23

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree – Dec 24

Half Lost by Sally Green – Dec 24

Understudies by Priya Sridhar – Dec 28

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir – Dec 28

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking – Dec 31

[loosesodamarble]

very curious about 🦅🦋🕊 for josele and her boys. feel free to pick one of them for any/all of these if you don't wish to do both. I just find it so lovely that she's managed to find two very different, but incredibly real and meaningful loves with both nacht and morgen.

Hi there, Renova! Thanks for sending in a few questions and, really, I like being answer a lot of questions about my ocs/ships.

And thanks for your sweet words about the relationships Josele has with both Morgen and Nacht. I do my best to make both dynamics work in their own ways while still being fulfilling romances (you know... even if one... uh... you know). 💖

..........

🦅: How good are their friends at being wingmen? Do they even help at all or just sit back watching the pining with a bag of popcorn?

I actually answered this question for Morgsele and Nacsele in this post.

But I'll summarize real quick here.

Morgen and Josele had Yami, Nacht, and Discordia (a cousin of the Fausts from my friend @/lyranova) as wingmen; effectiveness varies. Meanwhile, Nacht and Josele have most of the Bulls as wingmen but some are annoyingly against the relationship. Discordia also comes back.

🦋: How long did it take them to get out of the awkward early relationship stage? Have they gotten more confident around each other?

Morgen x Josele

It honestly didn't take too long for Morgen and Josele to go from awkward, freshly established boyfriend-girlfriend to a pair of annoyingly cute lovers who call each other every pet name under the sun (pun not intended). It's as the two of them cross a few relationship firsts (first date, first "I love you"s, first kiss) that their confidence as a couple grows. They're even comfortable enough to publicly propose to each other a few years into the relationship!

...

Nacht x Josele

So... Technically speaking, Nacht and Josele become an official couple somewhere during the 6-month period between Clover's first contact with Heart Kingdom and the Spade Invasion. (As I write it, Nacht returns to Clover earlier to handle some pretty serious business.) Not super early but at least by the halfway point, they're a thing. And well, while they kiss and hold hands early on, there's still a lot of hesitation. Dealing with Spade is one thing keeping them from progressing things, there's also the matter of Nacht's self-worth that makes him doubt his ability to love Josele "properly." But once the Dark Triad is taken care of and Nacht gets a thorough talking to by Yami, Nacht's worries start to crumble. Things do go slowly but Josele and Nacht make it work.

🕊️: Give just a general domestic tidbit for em (things they like about each other, routines, habits, and just overall sweet stuff)

Morgen x Josele

When relaxing together, their go to position was for Josele to rest her head in Morgen's lap. He liked that arrangement since it allowed him to see the way the light shined in Josele's eyes. Josele liked the simplicity of being able to rest on Morgen. She also found it fun to be able to sit up and surprise Morgen was a kiss.

There was an incident where Morgen, when called to meet with Julius, forgot that Josele had her head in his lap and stood up so abruptly she was thrown to the floor. She had a good laugh about it, as did Morgen after he spent a good few minutes apologizing/asking if Josele got hurt.

...

Nacht x Josele

It's canon that Nacht has a scar on his left wrist from when Morgen destroyed the relic connected to Lucifugus (Nacht was wearing it at the time). It's my headcanon that the scar is in constant pain, not severe enough to keep Nacht from using his hand but it aches enough for him to always feel it. He sees it as a reminder of his past evil self.

Anyways, Nacht doesn't let anyone but himself and Josele touch the scar. And Josele will kiss the scar on Nacht's wrist to comfort him. Just like how her regular scars are signs of her struggle and survival, so too is the scar Nacht has, regardless of what Nacht says.

[snowbriar]

Lost Siblings Theory

OK so I have a theory of what happened to the two other turtle siblings after our main four were rescued by Lou Jitsu and wanted to share. It goes something like this:

After losing four of his creations and his PLATONIC IDOL Draxum managed to rescue his last two. He tried raising them at first, even getting his goyles to help, but they all kind of sucked at caregiving for the two toddlers. Eventually, Draxum decided he needed help training and raising them, and went to Big Mama for assistance (They were on fairly good terms at this point in their lives) and when he told her that the turtles were basically Lou Jitsu's children, she jumped at the chance to volunteer to train them.

(Here's where my theory splits, because on one hand I am in love with sweet-discordia's headcanon of one of the children being trapped in another dimension and used as a 'reward' for Frida. But I'm going to go ahead and just write my original headcanon for now.)

SO in my original headcanon, Big Mama does a trade with Draxum for one of the turtles, the older one, who we've been told is named Frida. The terms of the deal is that she would train her to be more disciplined and to be a great fighter, but with arranged visitation (sort of like joint-custody). She wants the other turtle, too, but Draxum wants to wait until the younger one is older and also to see that Big Mama will keep her word.

She doesn't, of course. She alters the terms at the last second and decides to keep Frida as her own. The other sibling, I"m just going to call them Slash for now, of course doesn't understand why they can't see their sister anymore. Draxum is blunt and to the point about what happened, and Slash gets upset to the point of awakening their Ninpo. Draxum tries to restrain the kid, but their Ninpo combined with his magic ends up warping Slash away to another dimension. Draxum didn't stop trying to get Frida back, but eventually it became clear that she was brainwashed to follow Big Mama's orders.

Now this is all assuming he didn't just give the kids to big Mama in exchange for, like, some ooze or something. I was trying to figure out how they ended up with Big Mama without making him a terrible person who banishes one child to the nether world and gives the other away...

I think I like sweet-discordia's headcanon better than this 'seperated' theory, but anyway that's the idea :)

[marune2]

For you my dear @lyranova a happy Discordia she looks different if she is happy oh I love her I like her character really and her Qi more how you write her 🤭