#how are you speaking to spirits you dont believe exist? doing spells you dont believe work? practising magick you dont believe in?

[chemicalburns]

the amount of people who believe magick is just "spicy psychology" is baffling. how are you a witch who doesnt believe in witchcraft?

[kohakuriver]

I think that theory exists because ppl dont want to see romantic subtext between Chihiro and Haku because they see Haku as muchhh older than her.

However I think he's really ageless along with other spirits, especially as a river spirit. That even as the Kohaku River and his stoic nature, he is still around the same age as her spiritually like a preteen or so because he's a literal river spirit. Especially since of when he rescued her in that river, it was such an important experience to him. So I think in that bc rivers reflect, he is in a way a reflection of Chihiro. Water flows and takes shape and stuff. A river doesn't age, and the only way to "kill" it would be to fill it in like and I think that killed him emotionally and figuratively. Why he ultimately forgot his name. I also think her dropping her shoe in the river is another reason Haku is around the same age as her, and not a much older thing. I think his age is purposefully ambigious. And conceptually him being immature, even if he is stoic and composed, makes sense for the other aspects of his personally. That he's not old or young, he's a river. And, his ambigious age doesn't seem to be malicious or weird or anything, especially cause of Miyazaki's views. His age is ambigious in many aspects including emotional maturity, and he's intentionally a character that's hard to read and understand at first glance. So I assume it's like a very literal thing, that Haku is seen as old so ppl do not want to believe there was something between them or that there could be. Personally I think where the movie is, that their relationship is nor platonic nor romantic (transends that) but there is a potential for connection there, Haku just forgot who he was and Chihiro was worried about saving her parents. But when they see each other again I can see Chihiro falling for him and developing a deeper crush on Haku.

I think that's why they decided to cut the line in the English dub too, that they thought it would be wrong for Zeniba to tease her about that bc of how viewers would or might personify Haku as being an older person and be grossed out instead of thinking it's cute and funny.

(also more things 1. Howl is Haku theory is so weird 2. HMC is overrated imo and for some reason affects how people view Ghibli stories as like these cottagecore pieces despite most not being like that 3. I love your art)

First of all thank you so much for sending such a nice long ask about spirited away i think this is the first nice ask i got on here in like. 3 years? (originally anon was off because someone nasty was harassing me) And thank you for loving my art!! Alrighty moving on-

I agree on a lot of this actually! I don't think Chihiro and Haku's relationship is platonic or romantic (Though I have shipped them since I was a kid) and they have a much deeper connection just like most Ghibli duos. (Pazu and Sheeta, Ashitaka and San just to name a few) I also always personally saw Haku as a year or two older than Chihiro but ultimately being very ambiguous since these spirits obviously have a very different concept of age and time.

I would like to point out, despite Zeniba's dragon boyfriend line being cut in the english dub she instead says something along the lines of "Only love can break the spell" in a kinda teasing way which I think was supposed to replace the boyfriend part. She actually doesn't say that in Japanese at all! To me that line was meant to convey the same thing and was just placed at a different moment. (I wish I knew why though lol maybe because the boyfriend joke and her serious tone right afterwards didn't feel right? Your reasoning could also be the case though!)

In my opinion I think majority of english speaking fans ship them (and still do) But when that stupid theory came out sooo many people fell for it. I've seen some fans like the theory because of the reason you mentioned which is fine of course, I don't care what people headcanon. But majority of the people I've talked to were just victims to clickbait and misinformation because they always rejoiced afterwards and were like "I can ship them again!!" lmaoo.

TBH I think most ghibli theories just exist as some form of clickbait or because the fans run out of things to talk about in the movies so they just make stuff up based on conjecture. The sibling theory isn't even the first time this has happened with Spirited Away. (It has like 6 more wild theories that don't really make sense.) I'm usually ok with that even though it's obnoxious when it clogs up the searches... I just hate when people insist its canon!! It's like... did we even see the same movie?? and where are you getting your info from??? lolol

Also that part of you mentioning Chihiro's rescue as an important experience for him and it reflecting back on him... i love the whole Haku analysis so much!

AND THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT ABOUT HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE!! Anon come out and be my bff I can't believe someone else thought the same thing. Howl's moving castle is a bit overrated in the way that i hate that it's used as like a "spoke person" for Ghibli. But at the same time it's so much more than its romance and pretty backgrounds but some fans only look at hot anime boy :') I wish more people talked about Sophie and her character (movie and book version) and how she should have kept her magic!

[symphonicmetal101]

Citizens of the Devildom HCs

Ok, so this isn't my normal kind of post, this is kind of a world building thing, but I think its kinda cool and is the only thing I have motivation to write- so hopefully y'all like this, I have a part two brewing in my head, and it might actually get typed out-

Anyways, I think its about time we delve into what the "citizens of the Devildom" entails-

Firstly, I believe they would be split into three main categories-

Spirit

Humanoid

Monster/non-humanoid

Below the cut is me breaking each category down farther and a bunch of stuff I came up with, hcs of how I think this works- enjoy!

Spirits

- Wisps- these are fragmented bits of souls, usually of lower ranking beings, or cursed beings. Some have enough consciousness to lead people wayward in their travels through the woods or into the outer rings of hell, thanks to legends and myths leading people to believe that they would lead them to knowledge or fortune.

- Ghosts- these guys gain more power the longer they remain this way, however they also have a closer connection with their body the more recently theyve passed. This means returning their soul to their body only works if they were an extremely powerful being, or if there happens to be an extremely powerful being nearby to assist- they go through different stages once their connection with their body is completely severed, which can vary depending on how willing they were to pass.**** Stage 1, they cannot interact in any way with the living. Stage 2, only necromancers and those who actively seek them out can interact with them for short, unsteady chunks of time. (This is like..the absolute last chance they have to maybe return to their body.) They can move small objects, like keys or figurines, but it can be exhausting. Stage 3, they can interact with more living world things, and mess with animals a bit. Stage 4, they can show themselves to the living for short amounts of time if they wish to, or remain invisible. They can possess objects. Stage 5, they can switch between being seen or not, as well as now curse objects if they were a magic weilder before they died. Stage 6, They have full control of their powers, and can possess humans. As their power grows, they will be able to possess more powerful beings, the hardest to do being an angel.

Ghosts only exist because they

1. Dont realize theyve passed on

2. Have unfinished business, and have a need/want to finish it on their own, or they have someone they need to communicate with.

3. They want to be a ghost-

**** in some cases, a ghost is aware they have passed on, but refuses to accept it. They do not meet any of the three things listed above- these ghosts are still grow in power, but are extremely unstable and unsafe for others in the Devildom, not to mention humans. They are exiled to the outer rings of hell until they change, or in rare cases, make it to the human realm.

- Shadow People- they don't quite fit anywhere else- these are often confused for stage 4 ghosts, however they are different. They flow freely between the human realm and the Devildom. They fade into the shadows, and follow people. As they grow more powerful, they can manipulate other shadows of objects. They cannot speak, but between shadow people, they can communicate through touch, but to other people, there is perhaps a type of energy they feel, but they cannot touch or speak. There are very very few shadow people that can materalize into something physical, though when they can, they can be extremely dangerous, or completely harmless and just curious- best to just not piss any of them off.

Humanoid

- Vampires- Canonically, dont think these guys exist if they had an event about it, but whatever. These have your typical vampiric powers, which I'll sum up with shape-shifting, heightened senses, hypnosis, super strength/speed, immortality, and of course though not designated as a "power", fangs. Their diet in the Devildom are compareable to human diets, blood being more of a dessert food, and when eaten/drunk, usually from a common Devildom livestock animal.

- Succubi/Incubi- again, same sort of thing as vampires- ya know the powers they got, I wont get into it if you dont, bc this is not the right kinda blog to go into that.😂

- Witches/Warlocks

ok so heres where we break this down again.

First there are witch-born and witch-learned folks, witch-born being exponentially more powerful than those who just learn witchcraft, though anybody can.

After that we have Elemental, Potion and Spell-based, Healing, Sin-Directed, and Great Witches, which know a fair amount of each magic type, and have mastered two types.

Elemental witches, as the name suggests, study the elements and usually try to specialize in one element, and then branch out. The four basic elements, (air, fire, water, earth), are gateways into learning other kinds of magic, such as earth- metal, or air- poison, etc.

Potion and Spell-Based witches, again, the name suggests, create potions and spells. Many witches do these as a source of income. This kind of ties into Sin-Directed witches, who usually find one of the sins most appealing, then focus their magic and learning to create spells/potions that relate to that sin, however Sin-Directed witches are usually the offspring of a demon and a witch and can usual make people feel a bit o the sin they study just by touching them.

So if there is a Sloth witch, their potions and spells relate to a full nights rest, to relaxation, etc.

Healing witches are on the brink of Devildoms society, almost outcasts as their magic is one learned from angels, but takes the most control and power, thus are respected nonetheless. Do I have a potential Romeo and Juliet story to go with this? Possibly

Demons

- Ok, again gotta split this up into

Demon born vs Fallen angel

As well as Elemental vs Sin

Demon born- they are inherently more aggressive. Early years are a pain....young demons likely being the most difficult children in devildom to raise.

Fallen angel- depends whether they wantwd to fall or not this isnt important rn-

Sin demons- the result of either accidental offspring from the brothers, or years of dedicated servuce to any one brother allowing their sin to slowly corrupt and invade the family line.

Elemental demons- like elemental witches.

Included under the humanoid category would be other beings like merfolk, as well as necromancers.

Demons are also ranked from nobility down to imps.

Monster

There are way too many to get into for this, but there is no way everyone is humanoid in the Devildom- thus allowing hell to be a home for goblins, trolls, gorgons, monsters without names, SCPs/other cryptids- literally, everything. If yall want me to get more into it, then let me know- I think I might be able too-

[musubiki]

Mochi & Lime Lore/Overworld dump post

➞

- Mochi and lime live in an earth alternate, so like, humans, but not EARTH earth. still working on the name of the continent/region/world they're in, but its gonna be like a botw expansive map with a bunch of different climates and stuff all spread out

- it's probably also a modern-style monarchy. so their gonna have modern technology and stuff but its an excuse to maybe include a royal family (think hmc style ish??). but i don't think the story will delve into politics at all. let's just assume that the gov and economy is ok in this story LOL

- magic and fantasy creatures exist EVERYWHERE, but they hide from most humans and as a result mostly live in forests and such

- the power of magic came as a gift from the stars. the stars are like. i guess what people worship i guess?? so the stars are like the ‘gods’ here (i didnt wanna get into religion too much in this story either, but some plot-relevance will most likely involve some religion-like aspects like priests and whatever)

- technology was developed only because the power of magic essentially disapeared to humans. if witches were always integrated into society, tech probably wouldn’t be a thing

- witches are female only. at the origins of magic, it used to run in both sexes, but the only male with magic ability became insanely powerful and evil and the magic in males died with him. (big backstory, we dont have time to unpack that)

- there's an extensive history (same backstory) of witches not being accepted/feared in society despite being mostly human, so they live WITH humans, but don't expose themselves. 

- (the most valuable spell is the memory replacement spell, which works kind of like that app where you can erase whole people from photos. ie, it takes parts of the rest of your day or similar days to fill in the deleted memory with similar memories, so instead of seeing mochi battling it out with some masked dude, you think you just went to school and came home)

- witches in society caused a bunch of social problems. they had events similar to the salem witch trials and whole plagues started when a witch was discovered. (that crow-lookin plague mask WILL show up in this story i dont care. that shit looked cool and evil and i want it to show up)

- there are some witch ‘haven’ villages: small secluded villages that hide a witch or two within its walls, and don't get many visitors. these villages usually don't have much technology, as they rely on magic. (one of these places is the ocean village where Mochis grandmother lives, and another is where Mochis secret hideout is in the northern mountains)

- there are a bunch of urban legends of witches, bedtime stories, holiday tales, etc. but no one really believes they exist anymore. they just seem like cryptids or superstitions.

- the magical community power scale pretty much looks like this:

...with the cat at the top, followed by the crow/snake, then the spider/toad, and the rest of the witches are more of less equal in power, and then below that are the mages. the psuedo-magic is placed in its own box because it comes nowhere near true magic

- because of this power balance, all the ‘normal’ witches and mages are extremely jealous of the top five (sometimes theres even jealousy within the five)

- ‘mages’ are a broad term of magic users, which can range from humans, to fairies and mermaids. i think the familiars may fall into this catigory too, as they can use a small degree of protective magic.

- mages can be a lot of things, fire mages, water mages, ink mages, paper mages, etc. theres a LOT of them, mostly descending from ancestors who were given power by witches a long time ago, or maybe the offspring of a human and a spirit. long story short its a REALLY broad term.

- every witch, at some point during their magical maturity has to chose a successor. its usually their daughter, but not in every case. once their successor turns 15, together they conduct a ritual to begin the power transfer. (i havent decided if the ritual is when they get their familiar, or if theyre supposed to have them since birth?? probably the former)

- during the power transfer, the magical ability is slowly ‘drained’ from the old witch into the new witch over a period of time, usually about a year or so, and the old witch teaches and trains the new witch how to use magic and potions.

- however this is also the most dangerous time, because as the power slowly transfers, the old and new witches respective power levels are slowly decreasing and increasing respectively, and at the equilibrium (50/50 transfered) the strongest witches power roughly equates to the power of a normal witch 

- (which is especially a dangerous time, compared to say, at a 70/30 balance the old witch is still strong enough to defend the title)

- and due to the jealousy problem within the magic-user circle, this is the ideal time to steal the power of a witch. in Mochi’s case, the cat is highly sought after by other witches and mages, and because of this, cat witches are trained early on to be VERY good fighters, and usually have a few. like. ‘bodygaurds’ so to speak (ie. Lime)

- in rare cases, the power of psuedo-magic is enough to kill a witch at equilibrium as well

- if you kill a witch, all her magical affect on the world (potions, spells, cursed objects) disapears, and the power will either pass to the victor (if she dies by the hand of another witch/mage) or will return to the old witch (if she dies by accident)

- if a witch dies by accident, and she has no remaining female family, the familiar will wander the world in search of a new and worthy witch

- because of the female-only thing as well as the jealousy issue, witches try to only have one daughter, as to not deal with sibling jealousy. especially if they have a son first, and then a daughter, the boy usually sometimes ends up with resentment that they can’t have the same power

- a lot of witch-siblings end up joining the coattails

- for humor and story purposes, im making it so for some idiot reason no one else can figure out where Mochi lives and/or are too dumb to do the obvious plan of attacking her in her sleep or something. so they usually get attacked on the go.

- also maybe everyone understands that high school sucks enough as it is, so they also rarely attack during school hours

- every familiar is a different being, and they stay with their witch throughout their whole lives. they always retain the ability to talk, even after the witch no longer has the main power. after a witch dies, their familiar loses their voice, and either dies with them, or leaves to wander the earth forever

- after a witch loses her power to her successor, she can only do low-level magic and make potions (small levetation spells, foliage growth spells, etc. nothing big)

- there are also a lot of powerful spirits (they roughly fall into the mage catigory) that wander the earth and protect certain sacred places. a subcatogiry of spirits are the cosmic serpants, chinese dragon-looking things that rest in shrines and travel the skies during the night, bringing the elements with them (theres a cosmic wind serpant that protects the forest next to Oscars house, and its always pretty windy there)

- locals pray to the spirits for good weather, healthy crops, etc which the serpants are happy to give them with offerings

- theyre kind spirits, but also very firm and protective of their lands. if they sense any ill-willed trasspassers they WILL destroy them. they only reveal themselves when they want to, but most have mad respect for the witches. 

- mochi gives oscar a medalion with a witches seal so the spirits know not to fucking merk him on his ghost-hunting adventures

- another type of spirit are the forest gaurdians (like the little things in this picture) which care for the forests and animals there. they like oscar because he brings them little snackies like funyuns. 

- spirits are naturally attracted to magical energy, so when mochis around the spirit activity hikes up (que ominous wind gusts during spooky story telling at oscars house) 

- the 5 top witches are pretty well known throughout the magic/creature communities. even if Mochi hasn’t met them yet formally, her name travels fairly quickly that by the time she visits somewhere and introduces herself, they know shes the cat witch

- also, in the top 5, each witch kind of has their own little attributes that makes them, by nature, most suitable for their position. for Mochi, as the cat, she has the biggest heart (cares the most for people, has the most friends). the crow is has the most intellect, the spider is the most creative/detail oriented, etc.

- different regional areas grow rare ingredients, which most of them i will 100% make up since i dont know a lot about actual earth plants, so mochi and lime will travel to all different parts of the world for foraging. everyone kind of teases them about how ‘oooh youre just gonna live in this little city your whole life?? boring!! get out there!!’ and they just kinda look at each other 

[hellomissmabel]

Et coronam florum (III)

MASTERLIST

Pairings: Forest spirit!Bucky x wicca!reader

Warnings: Death.

Word count: 1.5k

Summary: Every spring, the forest spirits come to collect three gifts. These gifts allow the spirits to restore a part of your soul from a past life. But Y/N doesn’t believe in this tradition anymore and one year, the spirits take her with them into the forest.

A/N: I have the flu but managed to post it :) Written for @bithors

Series masterlist can be found here

After you’ve closed your eyes, you open them again in the meadow near to the royal castle. You’d expected Bucky to bring your sleeping body to the edge of the forest, but he has been so kind as to take you as far as your new home on the other end of the realm. A blush rises to your cheeks with a warm feeling as you think about it.

When you’re welcomed back at the palace, a worried prince awaits you in your bedroom. He is happy to see you again and wraps you up in his arms, kissing you chastely. “I was worried I’d have to cancel the wedding because you wanted to stay in the forest,” he jokes with a soft smile and another tender peck to the lips. You don’t have the heart to tell him the truth.

As another year flies by, you grow accustomed to your life as a princess and you realise you’ve suddenly got more than three things to be grateful for. For instance your husband Steve, who will make a fine ruler one day and a great father in less than nine months. You have your friends and your brother, who is now also living in the castle.

The people of the realm love you and they understand how important the work you do is. In the past year, you’ve successfully re-introduced the forest to them. The flowers around the forest are thriving and after a heavy storm flooded most of the land surrounding the magical forest, you and the people of your realm worked together into restoring the nature of your kingdom. Something your mother would be very proud of.

So when spring comes around again, you’re the first in line to see Bucky and the other forest spirits again. You’re impatient because you have no idea how he’ll react, but you’re also proud as you’ve now got three gifts with you whereas in the past two years you only had one. Steve senses your excitement yet believes it’s for a different reason. He still doesn’t know that your heart will always yearn for the existence of a forest spirit and the man you’ve come to desire so secretly.

Darkness falls over the entrance of the forest and you immediately feel there’s something wrong. Firstly, all the spirits should’ve been here by now to collect the gifts and give their blessings. Secondly and more importantly, this side of the forest is a long way removed from the darker areas of the woods. This type of darkness is unfamiliar and frankly, dangerous.

You tell everyone to go home and return tomorrow, as obviously the spirits won’t make it today. The people oblige and don’t question your decision, as they know that as a wicca you’re connected to the forest in more ways than they can understand. When it’s just you and Steve and some of the royal guards, you move towards the entrance of the forest. Very carefully, you call upon the spirits with a soft enchantment, Steve chiming in once he catches on to your idea.

Your singing voice grows silent once you hear mumbling coming from nearby rose bushes, a bit further down into the forest but not too far removed so you can’t call it trespassing yet. Asking Steve to stay back and watch out for any spirits, good or bad, that wish to tell you off, you venture closer to the whimpers. It is then that you see the rose bush has no thorns and all the roses are in fact a vivid blood red.

Next to the rose bush is the forest spirit, Bucky, his beautiful left arm wounded as it bleeds and the blood inspires the colour of the roses. The forest doesn’t let his life force go to waste and uses his blood to create more roses all around his body.

“Bucky,” you gasp as you crouch down next to him, cradling his half-conscious body in your arms. “What happened?”

He can barely speak, his lips moving slowly as quiet whispers leave his mouth. “Some of the spirits turned against the forest. They’ve witnessed some of the horrors in the other realms, men invading villages, killing children and raping women and young girls. They don’t believe anymore in the good of the people and started to refuse gifts until eventually the rebellion grew and they started attacking humans too.”

“I tried to stop them from burning down your realm as well. I succeeded in driving them away but they knew where to strike me. Y/N, I can feel the forest accepting my sacrifice. I don’t have long, Y/N.”

Carding his hair away from his eyes, you attempt a few spells and herbal remedies with nearby plants in order to save his life, but they’re all in vain as he is right, the forest has already begun harvesting his magical abilities. His time has come.

“I have served this forest for a century, Y/N. I am one hundred years old. It is time for me to go.” His eyes plead with you, to let him go, to let him die. “But I will never leave you. I will be yours forever.” He releases a deep yet shaky breath and points to the roses. “You fill find me in every rose. You will feel me in every flower that grows here.”

“Bucky… Tell me what to do. I don’t want to leave you here,” you beg with the spirit, pressing your lips to his forehead as you cry soft tears.

He shakes his head and coughs, his face contorting in pain. “You don’t have to do anything.” After taking your hand in his, Bucky’s blue eyes turn a dark green as he completes the transformation. It takes you a while before you figure out what he’s doing. He is restoring your soul, fully restoring your soul.

“They have destroyed the Tree of the past. Us spirits had to absorb the energy of the leaves, it’s the only way we could save your people. I am restoring your soul and you will be a very powerful wicca now. Your child will be a very powerful wicca too.”

You rest your fingers on his lips and ask him to stop talking as it only causes him more discomfort. You want him to go peacefully. “Thank you.” Your eyes are sad yet your lips curl into a small smile. “I love you.”

He does not say it back but you know he does too. “Y/N, in your past life… you and I did meet. I was still human and you were the daughter of a hunter. I saved his life when a stag almost killed him. In return he offered me your hand but I declined.”

“Why?,” you ask confused, surprised by all this new information.

“Because I wanted you to choose for yourself.”

And with these final words, Bucky’s life force leaves him and cascades into the field of flowers that his blood has created, growing all around you now.

Wiping away the tears, you drop Bucky hand gently onto the flowerbed, his body slowly being covered by roses without thorns. In the distance, you can hear Steve calling out for you as he enters the forest as well. He immediately knows once he lays eyes on your tear-swollen cheeks and he sits down next to you while you both watch Bucky’s body truly become one with the forest.

Nine months later you welcome a baby girl into your family. Her name is Rose, after the roses without thorns that now grow all over the kingdom. Three years later, you give birth to a baby boy and decide to name him Bucky. When they are old enough to remember things well into adulthood, you take them to the place where Bucky’s body still rests. The flowers are always there, always blooming, and every year on the anniversary of his death, you lay a flower crown down onto his grave.

You’ve ventured further into the forest, with the permission of the spirits who are aware of your connection to Bucky and respect you, a wicca of great power and poise. Together with Steve, you eventually open the forest to all the people, learning them to appreciate the beauty of nature and the essence of giving and taking. When you give to the forest, the forest gives back to you. When you take from the forest, the forest takes from you. In the end, nature always has the final vote.

Bucky’s memory forever lives on in your children and the work you have done for the realm. Your children grow up to be loving and caring wiccas, and upon your death you as well as your husband Steve both join the council of forest spirits where you are reunited with Bucky’s soul.

 Tag list: @melconnor2007 @learisa @mrshopkirk @dont-speak-just-read @buckybarnesappreciationsociety @beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep @lovemarvelousfics @pleasantdreamqueen @petersunderroos @palaiasaurus64 @ssweet-empowerment @lovemarvelousfics @rrwilson66 @reniescarlett  @lostinthoughtsandfeelings @barnes-heaven  @abovethesmokestacks @marvelrevival  @marvel-fanfiction @justanotherbuckydevotee @barnes-heaven  @heartmade-writingbucky @buckyywiththegoodhair @captnbarnesrogers @a-little-hell-to-raise @knittingknerdy  @milkywaybarnes @hymnofthevalkyrie  @feelmyroarrrr @justareader @howlingbarnes  @themcuhasruinedme @persephonesinferno @honey-bee-holly  @delicatecapnerd @tomhollandzs  @aletheladyinred @xbergiex @capbuckybuchanan @pegasusdragontiger   @sebstanchrisevanchickforever19 @sophiealiice @sarahmatthews7 @lumelgy @kudosia @moonbeambucky @suz-123 @breezy1415 @always-an-evans-addict @thefanficfaerie @4theluvofall @curvybihufflepuff @caplansteverogers @amrita31199 @isnt-the-blog-youre-looking-for @holomasque @pineapplebooboo @thefridgeismybestie @supernatural508 @supernaturaldean67 @cant-decide-at-this-moment @mehrmonga @specs15 @kanupps06 @daisiesandbooks101 @sarahgracej @jasurahe13 @nerdyandproud9 @geeksareunique @jesspfly @badassbaker @whenallsaidanddone @ailynalonso15 @thebookisbtr @animechick725  @true-queen-of-mischief @crazy-little-thing-called-buck @ugh-supersoldiers @california-grown @dreamer7black @flopmalum

[jakehawkfield]

in case anyone wants to know about this fantasy world that im very slowly building. im jotting down some facts

elves come from cold forests but their architecture looks like adobe buildings, pink adobe is really In

they used to all be hunter gatherers

there are still hunter gatherer communities, more on the hunting part, that are thriving

richer elves settle down and pay the h/g tribes to get them shit basically, so agriculture exists but isn’t too prevalent

there are huge untamed forests to the north, making this sustainable(for now)

humans live in city-states in plains/slightly mountainous area

think cyrodiil in terms of weather/flora

except a little hotter, because tothe south is a huge desert that is encroaching on this place

they are very much agricultural

some city-states, ususally to the south(towards desert) enslave orcs, other city-states have outlawed slavery

there is no overarching ruler, each city-state has a governor, all the governors are at a tense peace for now, though arguments over slavery are getting more heated

orcs come from the mountains

physically they are big and beautiful

hunter/gathereres that descended from mountains just cause they’re nomadic

humans slurped them immediately and began enslaving them, shaving down their teeth to dehumanize them and erase their culture and make them less dangerous as slaves

each tribe has unique beliefs and traditions

you can tell what family an orc is from by the shape of their teeth (if you’re familiar with orcs, it’s easy to tell the difference) like a genetic thing

they are considered to be able to work twice as hard as humans with half the food and water, which is why they’re valuable as slaves. (this is some propaganda shit by slavers)

in slavery-free citystates, orcs will live in the city or be farmers or whatever just like anyone else. some orcs are still in their h/g tribes, some have assimilated to city life. 

halflings are hairy and small hot forest people

hot as in temperate areas

but also fetishized, unfortunately

the deep forest is full of aggressive, xenophobic halflings so not much is known about these communities

the oldest race, in that it’s believed all the others evolved from halflings

non-tribal halflings live among humans like regular

it’s hard to find a pure-blooded halfling outside the forest, in fact pure-blooded ones look almost like monkeys whereas city halflings just look like hairy elves, and are usually some percent elf or human or whatever

frog people tend to live around the marshes

i havent developed them as much dhfs

small and amphibious

also a target of slavery, and in slavery-free city-states, generally not treated as intelligent beings because they just look like frogs

tend to work on the water as dock people or ship hands cause that’s the only places that will hire them

dwarves

also underdeveloped lol

mountain caves

few dwarves live above ground. like, many people of other races go their whole life seeing no dwarves ever

genetically, the ancestors of orcs. they’re like stout orcs with less teeth. so elfy ears, muscles, very hairy. not a far throw from halflings. 

other stuff:

magic is an ability every person has, like stamina. also genetics determine how powerful it may be, and with exercise, you can get more powerful to a reasonable margin. also like stamina. 

from most to least magical races: halfling, elves, frog dudes, humans, orcs, dwarves. halflings are typically very talented and dwarves can cast simple stuff like illumination spells and starting small fires and whatever.

however it’s totally possible an orc is more talented than an elf at magic, it’s all about magic

magic isn’t really that powerful by itself, but with a staff, one can become a powerful ass mage. 

daily magic is like, you start a nice fire in the fire pit, minor damage resistance/thicken your skin, minor levitation of objects. it’s mostly just convenient. Some communitites cherish magic, like elves and dwarves and use this shit constantly, but other communities see minor stuff like that unnecessary and even frown upon it, seeing it as prissy magician shit lol

enchanting items to give them magical properties/charms is common; charms are usually moderately weak unless a wizard is making them.

a wizard is a person with a staff. if you dont got a staff, you arent a wizard, no matter how powerfull you are.

wizards are very rare. the only way to be one is to be born into a wizarding family; all the families are elves. they have a literal family tree that’s magical on their property, and when a kid is born, a piece of the tree is taken and turned into a staff for them. once the kid and the staff have bonded, only that guy can use that staff, it just won’t channel anyone else’s magic. many wizards charm their staffs to splinter if someone besides themself touches it. the staff serves to channel and amplify its wizard’s magic, making his spells really powerful. A normal dude could probably fling a little spitball of fire at someone if he wanted, but a wizard with a staff could send like an actual projectile that will really do damage. nothing too crazy but like, actually useful basically. 

spells are cast by speaking words associated with it, with concentration and intent. with practice, one can cast a spell without speaking aloud, once they’re very familiar with the spell. 

the usual spell classes are possible. conjuration is only really available to wizards, cause it takes a ton of magic, but a reasonably gifted guy with no staff could like, bind a willing spirit to a doll or something, maybe. 

illusion magic, however, is very rare and dangerous cause it’s basically mind control, so it’s the only type of magic outlawed in most places with law. wizards will study it theoretically but have an agreement to not actually use it besides academically.

((the main story with nim jr. has to do with this lol))

god this is a lot. im still working on history of the different areas, and geography, and trying not to make this Generic Dark Ages High Fantasy cause we got enough of that shit in the world........if you actually read all that, jesus christ, why, but also im flattered

[tumblunni]

HEYO! oh man now my friend helped me get all inspired again for working on my Cathedral Tower Defense game so WOO lets have another long post of miscellaneous ideasies for storyness! may not be very coherant tho cos i am super tired and ill! but happy!! THANKS SUMMON-DAZE FOR BEING MY ULTRA BESTIE

* Okay now I am super sure that I’m gonna let you choose the gender of the protagonist! And I wanna keep it so that their name is Amity either way, cos that’s kinda stuck in my mind. Surname Amity, player gets to decide the first name, but people will still be calling you Amity a lot at first cos you start off all awkward and formal with everybody. You’re a newcomer to this cathedral town and nobody knows whether to trust you, from their perspective you’re this dangerous person theyre forced to accept just because they need you to help protect them, whether you’re good or bad. They’re all worried what price they might have to pay for this, trying to figure out how to minimize the damage if you turn on them... and its not like they’re bad people for being untrustworthy, they’re just scared people huddling in a church and trying to keep their families safe at any cost. So try and prove your worth to them, and help them learn to protect themselves too, and make this ramshackle settlement into a real home! ....anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, gender selection is a good! And it could be relatively easy to impliment too, cos of the situation. Doesnt even necessarily have to be a menu or anything, it could just be like sir amity/lady amity/master amity. Cos you’re this paladin knighto, itd make sense for them to ask for your title. And it could just be like a shot of protagonist’s badass silhouette in the gateway of the cathedral and then you get the dialogue choice to pick your identity, and its all Super Cool~!

* It also actually gives me more of an idea of what i could do for their design, like I dunno maybe they have some sort of face-concealing helm or headdress or something. I was just thinking of them being dressed like a generic nun or princess but maybe emphasize more on the knight aspect instead of the holy part? So like anyway, maybe they have a very all-concealing outfit and that could be the framing of the first scene instead, its like *pulls off the mask and you’re into the character selection screen* Orrrrrr maybe there doesnt need to be any magical setup for a gender selection and it can just be a menu before the first scene starts XD Or maybe you have a cool face-concealing helmet thing anyway, like all three gender options just have a different one, lol

* More random magical names i got via the cool name generator site summon-daze linked to me! Dunno if I’ll actually use any of these but im writing them down here so i dont forget. Berebath, Betnia, Amurziz, Jetre, Miemahl, Semdach, Batxahl, Sidefarch, Botolohn, Vausach, Thammoch, Droibhal, Lekonach, Zeidhal, Tieloch, Rabrohm, Maesur, Smoiroch, Baelbuhr, Axoth, Jige, Chushou, Hukru, Nejeget, Roucu,  Jinah, Aujus, Yekoth, Nugresah, Israfel, Jabriel, Tabris, Douma

* Also I’m remembering Jade Cocoon and how I liked that the different ‘families’ of monsters shared naming traits. Like how all those weird snake/slug cutiepies that i loved best were nushab, rashab, etc etc. And tamatoch and somethingtoch and so on. I think there was at least one where the modifier was a prefix too? I dunno why i’m talking about this, but there you go. I just think if i wanna do full original made up names for demon species then i wanna make em stuff that just... feels like that. I dont actually wanna make like five different elements of each one tho, i wanna have only one per element and then they have like two different higher level finalized forms. Like, the human characters can have two job classes each and the demons can have two specializations within an element. That helps me think about how to limit it down to four or five elements, if we can combine common fantasy elements together! And yeah I was thinking it’d be cool if the demon ‘job classes’ could have their own evolving appearances and new names!

* Thoughts for the ol elemental groupings! The only one I really have finalized is grass + poison = same thing. Florin, why u always the character that gets developed faster than everyone else XD And I’m thinking giving them their own made up names would make it easier! Like how in SMT you have spells being stuff like ‘media’ and ‘agi’ instead of cure and fire. But here (hopefully) it’d be easier to memorize cos its just the element names that’re fantasy words, and the attacks themselves would be a little more self explanatory. i just think it’d work cos like... the idea i had of rock and fire being one single demon type, you could just call that magma. But i mean, what can you call plant + poison? Except.. like.. plant. Cos poison is reasonably often a grass type skill anyway. And i mean, game creators dont often worry about making sense, what with how ‘grass’ is the common element name when thats just one plant in a million. I cant stop thinking about that now I’ve noticed it! I legit thought grass was a synonym for plant when i was a kid, i learned to read from pokemon yellow... ANYWAY IM GETTING OFFTOPIC AGAIN The other idea I had for groupings was fire + non-elemental together? I was just thinking like... aura. Non elemental/physical attack as a ‘magic’ could be fighting spirit! And thematically speaking it tends to be shown as fire effects in anime, i guess XD But then i couldnt put fire with rock and that means I’d have to redesign malachi again. his design ended up looking more firey than rocky :P Another idea is maybe darkness + non-elemental together? like, interpret non-elemental as ‘void’. Or light and dark could be together actually, that could be an interesting way to do it, instead of having them opposing. Like maybe the elements could be colours! Grey element, able to specialize into white or black but neither is any sort of ‘good and evil’. And then the rest could be like green or like.. instead of red maybe fire could be bronze and thats why it has rock skills too? or man, maybe rock and metal could be one element and fire could be grouped with something else. And would water and ice be too ordinary and boring? do they already kinda count as one element? should I throw in something else? GAHHHHHHH

* Ideas for the multiple religious groups aligned with each element! I’m thinking I want one of them to interpret the setting’s absent god as two deities. like, every perspective on this deity is a wildly different character, this one is just even more so! they’d see malahat (tentative name) as two people, but kinda more like a shared soul that can manifest as either a male or female form. But there’d be ambiguity and debates in the mythos over whether this is actually a genderfluid god, or if its ‘twins who were cursed to never exist at the same time’, or various other variations on the story. I wanna make it like real life, where even within (for example) catholocism, there’s different sects and different translations of the same text. And where there’s predjudice against minority groups and people like to twist their faith to ‘justify’ it, even when parts of the original tale could easily justify treating those people with kindness too. So there’d be some followers of the twins religion who are very openminded to LGBTQ people, and historically anyone trans was able to hold a unique position as a priest, being treated as someone blessed by god. But like in norse mythology, this wasnt necessarily a sign that society was 100% okay with LGBTQ people. Its kinda depressing to read about how trans women and gay men were considered the only people able to become a specific kind of witches, but also how you kinda HAD to take this one safety net in society to stop people from making you an outcast. It was like ‘make them fear me so they dont fuckin kill me’. You had to become a medicine person and at least claim to believe in these magic powers, you had to be blessed by the gods to prove you were like.. one of the good ones. Otherwise its like youre saying the gods made a mistake when they made you, or youre choosing to be a deviant against nature. i can only imagine how terrifying it must have been if you believed in that religion and had to like.. be forced to go against it and leave society, or be forced to lie about being chosen by a god for a higher purpose, while believing that any moment you might get struck down for lying. And then I read in other history books about how the concept of homosexuality was far different in that old society too, how male-on-male sex was accepted at sea as long as you were the dominant one and you were forcing something unwanted onto a lesser shipmate as punishment. Like ugh, rape being more socially accepted than consensual LGBTQ relationships! I guess the only solace is that we can never be 100% sure how much of historians’s theories are correct and what might have changed in retellings of history, but honestly I can believe the past is this fucked up when the present is already fucked up in different ways. BUT ANYWAY I wanna explore those themes in my story maybe. And I wanna do more research into the subject to make sure I’m doing it justice, even though its a very sad subject that might be quite stressful. Maaaaan, I remember how I used to obsess about researching norse myth as a kid, it was one of my first Special Interests and I really wanted to see all the different reinterpretations of Loki and write my own fanfic/adaptation/vaguely inspired original story about What If He Stayed A Good Guy. Man I had soooo much sympathy for the poor sod. I mean it depends on the retelling whether he was always evil or whether he was like a comedic neutral ally to the gods who just abruptly becomes evil and gets killed off without remorse in the final story. And gahhh he’s like the biggest LGBTQ bastion in the whole mythos, and how can I not feel sympathetic?? When we get all these stories about him being a literal genderfluid shapeshifter and giving birth to half of his children and just like seriously its like The Story Of the One Trans Man In Homophobic Transphobic Valhalla and he was probably meant to seem Bad and Funny and whatever but im gonna sit here and grumpily cling onto the idea that he was deliberately written as trans, or that if these gods actually do exist out there somewhere then Loki would support me. *pout* I just have a lot of good memories of how this was like the first sign of me realizing my own gender, back when I first learned about Loki in school and then devoured every damn history book about the dude. And got in a million internet pissing matches about how innacurate the marvel version was XD Also it sucks that we like to believe that modern times are always 100% more enlightened in every way, yet its modern adaptations that always censor out the bits about him shifting gender identities and getting pregnant once. ... man this has gone offtopic too much, im really tired but seriously its funny how teenage bunni had NO CLUE they were nonbinary, no clue why they got so obsessed researching gender-defying mythological figures and historians who created gender neutral pronouns in the 1800s. i was so supernaturally oblivious, holy shit...

[perspectivepodcast]

[Transcript] Side A: Climate Change

This episode was inspired by a conversation with a dear friend, Ajla. Because sometimes the best thoughts are only found thanks to the help of someone who’ll have enough love to rummage through the garbage in your mind and believe they’ll find something meaningful much more than you ever will.

In 1973, Dr. William Rathje, archaeologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, instituted the Tucson Garbage Project, also referred to as the ‘garbology project’. This was an archaeological and sociological study, carried on in the city of Tucson, Arizona, with the aim of examining the contents of Tucson residents' waste to examine patterns of consumption.

The funny thing was that although many residents volunteered to contribute to the project by sharing their consumption habits, the study made clear that the information shared by the participants were oftentimes not consistent with the quantitative data analyzed from the waste bins. For example, when asked about the number of beers they usually drank, participants tended to self-report more restrained alcohol consumption habits than their actual behavior. That is, if they had declared they drank two beers per week, it wasn’t rare that ten beers were found in the garbage every week.

Is it possible that throwing our waste away can be more similar to hiding what we ourselves don’t want to see about ourselves?

When I first found out about this project, it reminded me of a passage of Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise.

‘No one was around. I walked across the kitchen, opened the compactor drawer and looked inside the trash bag. An oozing cube of semi-mingled cans, clothes hangers, animal bones and other refuse. The bottles were broken, the cartons flat. Product colors were undiminished in brightness and intensity. Fats, juices and heavy sludges seeped through layers of pressed vegetable matter. I felt like an archaeologist about to sift through a finding of tool fragments and assorted cave trash. It was about ten days since Denise had compacted the Dylar. That particular round of garbage had almost certainly been taken outside and collected by now. Even if it hadn’t, the tablets had surely been demolished by the compactor ram.

These facts were helpful in my efforts to believe that I was merely passing time, casually thumbing through the garbage.

I unfolded the bag cuffs, released the latch and lifted out the bag. The full stench hit me with shocking force. Was this ours? Did it belong to us? Had we created it? I took the bag out to the garage and emptied it. The compressed bulk sat there like an ironic modern sculpture, massive, squat, mocking. I jabbed at it with the butt end of a rake and then spread the material over the concrete floor. I picked through it item by item, mass by shapeless mass, wondering why I felt guilty, a violator of privacy, uncovering intimate and perhaps shameful secrets. It was hard not to be distracted by some of the things they’d chosen to submit to the Juggernaut appliance. But why did I feel like a household spy? Is garbage so private? Does it glow at the core with personal heat, with signs of one’s deepest nature, clues to secret yearnings, humiliating flaws? What habits, fetishes, addictions, inclinations? What solitary acts, behavioral ruts? I found crayon drawings of a figure with full breasts and male genitals. There was a long piece of twine that contained a series of knots and loops. It seemed at first a random construction. Looking more closely I thought I detected a complex relationship between the size of the loops, the degree of the knots (single or double) and the intervals between knots with loops and freestanding knots. Some kind of occult geometry or symbolic festoon of obsessions. I found a banana skin with a tampon inside. Was this the dark underside of consumer consciousness?’

Sometimes I wonder: we are a consumer society, therefore our social ambition is to produce only with the aim of consuming what we produce. Does this mean that one day, when our consumer society will thankfully be over and done with, there will be no remnant of our time, of our society, apart from the waste we left behind? Will we be the ones who created nothing but refuse, who couldn’t create anything for the sake of creating something that would outlive us, and maybe speak about us and what we wanted to be remembered for?

One of the reasons why garbology in general, and the Tucson Garbage Project specifically, are a major source of information on the nature and changing patterns of human society, is because for those populations that did not leave any buildings, or writing, or tombs, or trade goods, or pottery, refuse and trash are likely to be the only possible sources of information.

Is it possible that waste, our symbolic festoon of obsessions, be they more or less toxic, will be the only contribution, the only sign of our existence that we will leave for the future? Do we really care in the least about what we leave as a sign of our passage on this planet?

It’s tempting to believe that death could be something spectacular. Funeral pyres, ship burials, fireworks. But that’s rarely how it is. Most often, it’s just a slow, gradual, unpleasant and unremarkable gnawing of all that is life. An unobtrusive agony. A forgetting, piece after piece after piece. A consumption. (The irony.)

I went out the other day and it was mid-February, in the Northern hemisphere. It was almost 20°C. It was beautiful. It was disturbing.

In another passage of White Noise, after a deadly toxic gas had leaked over the town the main character lives in, the sunsets became unnaturally spectacular.

‘We stopped on the parkway overpass and got out to look at the sunset. Ever since the airborne toxic event, the sunsets had become almost unbearably beautiful. Not that there was a measurable connection. If the special character of Nyodene Derivative (added to the everyday drift of effluents, pollutants, contaminants and deliriants) had caused this aesthetic leap from already brilliant sunsets to broad towering ruddled visionary skyscapes, tinged with dread, no one had been able to prove it.’

Later in the novel, the main character describes how gathering on the overpass to watch these newly dramatic sunsets had become a sort of ritual for the people of the town.

‘We go to the overpass all the time. Babette, Wilder and I. We take a thermos of iced tea, park the car, watch the setting sun. Clouds are no deterrent. Clouds intensify the drama, trap and shape the light. Heavy overcasts have little effect. Light bursts through, tracers and smoky arcs. Overcasts enhance the mood. We find little to say to each other. More cars arrive, parking in a line that extends down to the residential zone. People walk up the incline and onto the overpass, carrying fruit and nuts, cool drinks, mainly the middle-aged, the elderly, some with webbed beach chairs which they set out on the sidewalk, but younger couples also, arm in arm at the rail, looking west. The sky takes on content, feeling, and exalted narrative life. The bands of color reach so high, seem at times to separate into their constituent parts. There are turreted skies, light storms, softly falling streamers. It is hard to know how we should feel about this. Some people are scared by the sunsets, some determined to be elated, but most of us don’t know how to feel, are ready to go either way. Rain is no deterrent. Rain brings on graded displays, wonderful running hues. More cars arrive, people come trudging up the incline. The spirit of these warm evenings is hard to describe. There is anticipation in the air but it is not the expectant midsummer hum of a shirtsleeve crowd, a sandlot game, with coherent precedents, a history of secure response. This waiting is introverted, uneven, almost backward and shy, tending toward silence. What else do we feel? Certainly there is awe, it is all awe, it transcends previous categories of awe, but we don’t know whether we are watching in wonder or dread, we don’t know what we are watching or what it means, we don’t know whether it is permanent, a level of experience to which we will gradually adjust, into which our uncertainty will eventually be absorbed, or just some atmospheric weirdness, soon to pass. The collapsible chairs are yanked open, the old people sit. What is there to say? The sunsets linger and so do we. The sky is under a spell, powerful and storied. Now and then a car actually crosses the overpass, moving slowly, deferentially. People keep coming up the incline, some in wheelchairs, twisted by disease, those who attend them bending low to push against the grade. I didn’t know how many handicapped and helpless people there were in town until the warm nights brought crowds to the overpass. Cars speed beneath us, coming from the west, from out of the towering light, and we watch them as if for a sign, as if they carry on their painted surfaces some residue of the sunset, a barely detectable luster or film of telltale dust. No one plays a radio or speaks in a voice that is much above a whisper. Something golden falls, a softness delivered to the air. There are people walking dogs, there are kids on bikes, a man with a camera and long lens, waiting for his moment. It is not until some time after dark has fallen, the insects screaming in the heat, that we slowly begin to disperse, shyly, politely, car after car, restored to our separate and defensible selves.’

Perhaps, when the archaeologists of the future will rummage in the garbage we will have left behind to give some sign of what it was to live the way we lived, what they’ll find is that we were just too overwhelmed to do or know or feel anything. Too lost to understand, or even just to listen.

A couple of years ago, I saw this work from the Japanese artist Shimabuku. The title was The Snow Monkeys of Texas, and this was the artist’s statement:

‘When I visited the monkey mountain in Kyoto in 1992, I heard an interesting story. In 1972, a group of Japanese snow monkeys were brought from the mountains of Kyoto to a Texas desert. The first year, their numbers reduced dramatically. They didn’t know how to live in the desert with cactus, cougars or rattlesnakes. But in the second year, their population grew. Do monkeys adapt to new environments faster than people do? I wanted to go and meet them someday. In 2016, I finally visited them in Texas. I saw that they looked a bit Americanized, somehow. They are a bit bigger, and started to eat cactus. Now they know how to deal with the cougars and rattlesnakes. They have a new language to alert each other. When I spent few days with them under the Texan sun, I decided to make a mountain with ice for them. I filled a car full of ice bags. And I wondered, do they remember snow mountains?’

The video installation showed this group of snow monkeys observing and smelling and touching and playing and sitting on the ice for the first time. I believe it is important to note that the snow monkeys had been sent to Texas in 1972 due to habitat loss around Kyoto, that is when the monkeys became pests to businesses and residents of Kyoto, perforating the barrier between wild and urban spaces.

‘They come one by one. Some monkeys wanted to keep the ice to themselves, then they got bored,’ Shimabuku observed of the 22-minute video. ‘Some shared. Some were bossy […] like people.’ The snow became a forbidden fruit with many monkeys grabbing a handful and running off. But most of them nervously nibbled nearby with a shifting gaze. ‘I didn’t expect them to eat it. [In Japan] they eat flowers, trees and insects. But it is new for them to eat rattlesnake and cactus.’ When asked why it was important to test if monkeys remembered their place of origin, Shimabuku laughed and said, ‘maybe it is not important. Memory is a bridge between animals and people. […] Memory can be at a cellular level. The monkeys looked at the ice and they grabbed it. Some hadn’t seen ice for generations, and still they reacted spontaneously,’ noted Shimabuku.

I wonder if we already are Shumabuku’s snow monkeys, struggling to remember how we were supposed to live after alienating ourselves from ourselves, not knowing what to do, what to know, what to feel in the face of our own nature, a nature we only reluctantly admit to belong to.

Perhaps, the answers already are in the festoon of obsessions we are so careful to hide away in the dumps. If we were brave enough, if we had love enough to go and rummage in the garbage of our civilization believing we could find something meaningful in there, something deserving to be saved, perhaps we could find one good thought to build a future on.

[viralhottopics]

A human rights activist, a secret prison and a tale from Xi Jinping’s new China

Peter Dahlin spent 23 days in a black prison in Beijing, where he says he was deprived of sleep and questioned with a communication enhancement machine. Here he tells the story of his incarceration and expulsion from the Peoples Republic

Some nights Peter Dahlin says he tucks a big-ass knife under his bed in case intruders come for him as he dozes; others he cannot sleep at all.

Theyve kidnapped people several times here before, says the 36-year-old Swedish human rights activist, chain-smoking Marlboro cigarettes as he remembers the 23 days he spent in secret detention in China.

It has been a year since Dahlin became one of the first foreign victims of President Xi Jinpings war on dissent.

On 3 January 2016 Chinese security agents encircled the activists Beijing home and spirited him and his Chinese girlfriend, Pan Jinling, off to a covert interrogation centre he now calls The Residence.

Months have now passed but the memories of that spell in custody have proved hard to shake. These facilities are built to break you, the campaigner says during a seven-hour interview at a home in Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand where he and Pan have lived since he was deported from China amid one of the most severe crackdowns in decades.

The story of Peter Dahlin, told here in unprecedented detail, offers a rare and troubling snapshot of Xi Jinpings China, where an unforgiving offensive against civil society is now unfolding.

Peter Dahlin speaks on camera in a still from video released by China Central Television. Photograph: AP

In the four years since Xi became Chinas top leader in November 2012, feminist campaigners, journalists, academics, bloggers, publishers, human rights lawyers and even foreign non-governmental organisation workers such as Dahlin have all been targeted in what experts suspect is a coordinated Communist party push to prevent the development of organised opposition to the regime.

The political situation, which some call the most dire since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, has deteriorated so fast under the current leadership that one scholar claims Xi has built the perfect dictatorship an ever-more repressive system that nevertheless avoids major international censure.

During his stint behind bars the Swedish activist says he was given a firsthand taste of the harshness with which that battle for control is being waged.

He claims he was blindfolded and confined to a cell with expressionless guards who refused to engage in conversation but noted down his every move; was for days deprived of access to his embassy, the right to exercise or even to sunlight; was forced to endure exhausting late-night interrogation sessions conducted by hectoring inquisitors determined to paint him as a spy; subjected to a lie-detection machine intended to extract information about his work; and suffered periods of sleep deprivation that he believes were intended to weaken his resolve.

Dahlin, who until his detention had run a Beijing-based rights organisation called the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group or China Action, said during the seven years he lived and worked as an activist in China friends and diplomats had always considered him an optimist about the countrys future.

Those illusions have been shattered by the things he witnessed in the lead-up to his incarceration at The Residence.

For the first time I am not optimistic any more, he says. This is how China will operate for the next 20 years. Now its a new hard line.

The underground activist

Peter Dahlin arrived in China from his native Sweden in the summer of 2004, a 23-year-old political science graduate keen for a taste of the world outside a lecture theatre.

I was just there to backpack and learn, recalls Dahlin, whose travels took him through Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen, the south-eastern port where Xi served as vice-mayor in the 1980s.

Three years later he returned, throwing himself into human rights work alongside Hou Wenzhou, a Chinese activist he had met online.

Dahlins first project was a report denouncing the existence of an illegal nationwide network of secret detention facilities called black jails. It identified eight such prisons in Beijing.

About the same time Dahlin met Wang Quanzhang, a crusading civil rights lawyer known for his defence of Chinas downtrodden and outspoken criticism of the government. Together, in 2009, they founded China Action, a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to supporting human rights defenders in the one-party state.

Increasingly draconian laws make it effectively impossible for such non-governmental rights organisations to operate legally in mainland China. Instead the pair registered their group as a company in Hong Kong and decided they would strive to operate in the shadows so as to avoid attracting attention.

I decided we had a shot at doing something quite special, Dahlin says of the groups creation. The Swedish activist says he was partly driven by middle-class guilt but also a conviction that people should be the masters of their own destinies.

Ive never been particularly political, he says. Ive never paid attention to Tibet and these issues very much. I just believe in the idea of self-determination.

Whether it is Scottish people, the Catalan people, the Tibetan people or even just a village somewhere in China; that the people there should be the ones that have an influence, whether it is by forming an organisation, a labour union, their own media, whatever.

Guided by those beliefs, Dahlin set about building China Action into a small but potent force for social change.

With grants from institutions that included the European Union, the National Endowment For Democracy and the Norwegian Human Rights Fund it ran training sessions for human rights lawyers and investigative journalists and offered support to young Chinese campaigners traumatised by run-ins with the security services.

Just as China Action was ramping up its operations, however, the human rights situation in China took a turn for the worse.

The crackdown begins

Many accuse Xi of initiating the current chill but some trace it back to around 2008 when anti-government protests rocked Tibet just as China was preparing to host the Summer Olympics.

Deadly riots the following year in Chinas far west left authorities even more convinced that it was time to step up their controls over society.

In Beijing Dahlin sought to fly under the radar, moving into a one-bedroom studio hidden in the alleys around the 13th century Drum Tower and disguising his trueline of work with a series of legends.

He told some he was the son of a wealthy Swedish businessman who was in China researching the electric bicycle industry; to others he introduced himself as a legal researcher or expat English teacher, just to see the way the conversation dies.

Even my close friends didnt know about my work, he says. They knew I did something to do with an NGO and human rights but that is about it. I always operated with a cover.

A self-professed history geek, Dahlin adopted the surname Beckenridge an allusion to John C Breckinridge, the vice-president of the Confederate states but he maintained his first name. Any effective cover story has to have 90% truth and then 10% misleading you always keep your first name to avoid mistakes.

For a while the subterfuge paid off. Dahlins visas were renewed by public security authorities, despite the fact that his human rights work was officially illegal, and he sensed that police were happy monitoring the group from afar.

Were not a political organisation, he says by way of explanation for why his group was able to keep operating for so long. We dont deal with democracy issues.

President Xi Jinping: turned his country into a controlocracy. Photograph: Petr David Josek/AP

But by 2013, the year Xi became president, the climate had begun to change. First came a sweeping crackdown on Chinas already tightly controlled internet; outspoken bloggers were detained and publicly humiliated in an attemp to curb the wanton defamation of the Communist party.

Next came the obliteration of the New Citizens Movement, a collective of liberal scholars and activists who had been pushing for moderate social and political change. The groups leader, a respected lawyer called Xu Zhiyong, was jailed for four years. Another prominent member fled into exile in the US.

It was the start of what many describe as a concerted clampdown on civil society designed to extinguish organised opposition to Beijing at a time when Chinas fading economic boom threatened to undermine its political legitimacy.

Stein Ringen, a political scientist whose new book, The Perfect Dictatorship, examines the dramatic political tightening, said he believed that after a period of steely and foresightful analysis, Chinas top leaders had concluded they must tighten their grip over the population now that the era of mega-economic growth was over.

There is an absolute determination that the regime will persist and continue. That is number one for everything: the perpetuation of the regime.

Ringen, an emeritus professor at Oxford University, said that in just a few years Xi had turned his country into a controlocracy where an ingenious mix of hard and soft measures were used to ensure the partys rule went unchallenged.

It is so smooth that in some respects it doesnt even look dictatorial, he said. Most dictatorships are very clumsy, raw, inelegant. But this one isnt. They have it sussed.

The arrest

As Xis crackdown unfolded up and down the country, agents from Chinas ministry of state security, a mysterious spy agency tasked with snuffing out political threats to the party, began to move against Dahlins group, trying to recruit his assistant as a mole.

We were well aware that from at least 2013 state security and not just police were actively monitoring us, he says.

Dahlin began taking extra precautions, memorising the night flights out of Beijing and filling a brown leather satchel with bundles of cash, hard drives, documents, a change of clothes and his passport.

In the summer of 2015 the situation deteriorated further still. A sweeping police offensive against Chinese human rights lawyers the so-called 709 crackdown began, sucking in a very large number of people directly linked to China Action, including Dahlins friend and partner Wang, who was seized near the eastern city of Jinan on 3 August.

With those detentions Dahlin sensed the noose was tightening. Maybe there will be no more China,he remembers thinking.

Then on 3 January 2016 the end came. At about 2pm Dahlin realised China Action was under intense scrutiny when a Chinese associate reported being summoned to meet security officials who had grilled him about a Swedish man named Peter.

Shortly before 4pm the Swede sat down at his computer and began to type an email to a group of close colleagues with the subject line: Situation.

There now seems to be an active investigation, he wrote, adding that he planned to flee the country and might not return to China if things get bad.

Clear all papers, USBs, computers, phones, pads etc, Dahlin instructed his workmates. These things need to be done ASAP.

Dahlin spent the afternoon tying up loose ends: shredding documents, saying goodbye to his girlfriend Pan, and taking care of the couples cats, Poopi and Dou Gonggong.

He booked a seat on a 3am Cathay Pacific Flight to Hong Kong and from there planned to take another flight to Thailand.

The arrest of Peter Dahlin, as described to the Chiang Mai-based Mexican-American artist Nicolas Luna Fleck

But at 9.45pm just hours before he had planned to set off for the airport there was a loud bang on the door.

Are you Peter Dahlin? said one of the uniformed agents packing the alleyway outside. Well, yeah, the activist replied.

The Residence

About 15 miles south of Dahlins hutong home, not far from Beijings Nanyuan military airbase, is a drab, four-storey office block used for the interrogation of those deemed enemies of the Chinese state. Basically, it is a secret prison, says Dahlin.

In the early hours of Monday 4 January a convoy of police vehicles pulled up in the ground-floor garage of the U-shaped installation. Blindfolded, the activist was led out of one of the cars, into a lift and then along a corridor into a second-floor interrogation room.

You sort of just freeze It was sort of expected but still you realise that this could end badly or this could end very badly.

Dahlins first interrogation began about 2am that winter morning, as temperatures outside The Residence plunged to six degrees below zero.

Two male inquisitors sat opposite the prisoner, who says he was seated in a hard wooden tiger chair with leg shackles that were left splayed out on the floor. Metals bars crisscrossed the rooms only window.

The initial questioning was less intimidating than the surroundings might have suggested. It started fairly innocuously. They were just trying to get a sense of me. Who am I? What am I doing in China? Very basic questioning.

Dahlins ties to three persons of interest seemed of particular concern: the human rights lawyer Wang; Xing Qingxian, an activist from south-west China; and Su Changlan, a womens rights campaigner who had been detained months earlier for offering online support to Hong Kongs 2014 pro-democracy protests.

But it was a gentle introduction to life in The Residence for the sleep-deprived activist: three hours later, about 5am, the session was terminated and he was led into a rectangular cell across the corridor with beige padded walls and two small windows that were also covered by metal bars. Thick blackout curtains made it impossible to tell the time of day; three fluorescent lamps hung from the ceiling, including one directly above the bed. Even the toilet seat was suicide-padded, Dahlin recalls.

Also inside were two guards, part of a team that remained there and watched over Dahlin 24 hours a day and recorded every move or sound he made in a notebook but never uttered a word.

They would often stand up and go and stand and look when you take a piss, you take a shit, you take a shower. Its a bit odd, Dahlin says, adding with a laugh: Luckily Im Swedish and Sweden has a rather relaxed idea of nudity.

The following days were a blur of interrogations. They made it clear that they had followed me, surveilled me intently for a while and were well aware, they said, of what I had been doing.

Dahlin claims his captors demanded a map of who his group had been working with and became very, very angry after he refused to talk unless he was allowed to see officials from the Swedish embassy.

The activist says his interrogators then refused to let him sleep until he offered them detailed information and only relented after he protested to the centres boss a woman who gave her name as Mrs Zhang that his treatment violated the UN convention against torture, which China ratified in 1988.

She was very upset, Dahlin says of her reaction. And went on about how nicely Im being treated.

Eventually he was allowed to sleep.

As the questioning sessions continued, often lasting up to six hours at a time, Dahlin, who correctly suspected that Pan and several colleagues were also being detained in the facility, decided his best option was to avoid incriminating others by painting the officers a big picture with nothing in it.

But the interrogators hit back, telling the activist his friends and colleagues were turning against him. This is your only chance, they said. They are blaming everything on you. If you dont strike back it is over for you.

Dahlin says he held firm, telling his captors China should be proud of its human rights lawyers and flatly rejecting repeated demands for him to surrender information about them or passwords for email accounts and encrypted hard drives that had been seized from his home.

As night fell on the covert prison, unnerving sounds found their way into the activists cell from other parts of The Residence, which Dahlin estimated had been built to house about eight prisoners. I could hear raised voices. I could hear muffled sounds of what I assumed would be someone slammed against the wall and floor.

I was quite prepared that there was going to be six months of this. That was my timeframe. I was counting the days in my head.

As Dahlin floundered in the secret jail the world outside went on. Exactly one week after he was seized, on 10 January, David Bowie died in his New York flat, news the Swedish activist only received after his release.

Two days later, on 12 January, the first reports of Dahlins detention began to emerge in the international media. Having initially denied knowledge of the activists disappearance, the Chinese government now admitted coercive measures had been taken against him.

Three days later, on 15 January, a state-run newspaper published an editorial accusing the activist of funding radical political activists who were seeking confrontation with the Communist party.

Friends and relatives called for his release, warning that without access to his medicine, Dahlin, who has Addisons disease a rare hormonal disorder also suffered by John F Kennedy could die.

Cut off from the world in this hidden jail, Dahlin knew nothing of what was going on outside. He used music to help him cope with the boredom and stress, attempting to alleviate the tedium by remembering the lyrics of songs by REM, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

You think through everything. Not once or twice but 100 times for each thing. Every friend you had. Every relationship you had. Every date you had If you sit there for weeks on end with nothing to do you start having weird thoughts because there is nothing left to think about.

About 10 days into his captivity Dahlins ordeal took an Orwellian turn when interrogators told the activist they wanted to use a communication enhancement machine a species of lie detector to assist with their inquiries.

Peter Dahlin faces his interrogators. Illustration: Nicolas Luna Fleck

Electrodes were attached to the activists fingertips and small cameras trained on his pupils while he was asked questions. Dahlin suspects it was a clever psychological play to make him reveal details of his groups work and sponsors but the device appeared to fail.

They seemed to have some problem with the fact that my fingertips would sweat so they couldnt get good readings, he says. I dont think they got much from it.

On about day 13 of Dahlins stay at The Residence the omens improved. He was granted a visit from two Swedish consular officials who inquired if he had been given any fruit Only one small bite of an apple, the prisoner replied then left.

Two nights later came a second positive signal. At about 3am a group of officers came into his cell and one, whom he knew as Mr Zhang, perched on the edge of his rock-hard mattress. I realised something was happening, Dahlin says.

The confession

Zhang told the activist he would need to pen a self-criticism in which he confessed to a series of crimes.

Crucially, Dahlin should admit that the human rights lawyers with whom he had worked were criminals and taking money from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US-funded non-profit which has been demonised in countries such as China and Russia as an instigator of colour revolutions.

Even though they were not among our biggest funders, that was a very core point, says Dahlin, who believes the attempt to link China Action to the endowment group was intended to help paint his group as a hostile foreign force that had been plotting to undermine the Communist party.

The following night Dahlin received a second visit. We need one more thing, the officer told him. Lets make a video.

Dahlin knew immediately what was being suggested.

Since Xi had taken office apparently forced televised confessions had come back into vogue, used to humiliate a range of government foes including Gao Yu, a veteran journalist who was jailed for leaking a politically sensitive document, and Charles Xue, an internet celebrity known for his online outspokenness on social and political issues.

Within hours Dahlin had been ordered to remove his prison uniform, don his normal clothes and was seated in a room opposite a glamorous female correspondent from the China Central Television, the state broadcaster. He was handed a set of seven or eight pre-written answers that had been typed on to a sheet of A4 paper.

Prime time! the activist says he thought as the camera began to roll. Great!

Dahlin, who had lost nearly 6kg since his detention began, says he immediately agreed to the recording, knowing it would accelerate his release and, more importantly, that of his girlfriend.

I have been given good food, plenty of sleep and I have suffered no mistreatments of any kind, he told his interviewer. I have no complaints to make. I think my treatment has been fair.

The confession of Peter Dahlin

Dahlin says he tried to deflect blame from his Chinese associates by shouldering responsibility for his groups activities.

He refused to label the Chinese lawyers he had worked with as criminals but admitted: I have violated Chinese law through my activities here. I have caused harm to the Chinese government. I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

I apologise sincerely for this and I am very sorry that this ever happened, he concluded before the camera was turned off.

The next day those comments were splashed across Chinas party-controlled media with Xinhua, the countrys official news agency, using the interview to prove police had smashed an illegal organisation that sponsored activities jeopardising Chinas national security.

Dahlin, Xinhua claimed, had been planted in the country by western anti-China forces bent on stirring opposition to the regime.

As a reward for his video confession Dahlin says he was given a cup of Nescaf instant coffee and a couple of cigarettes. Less than a week later he and Pan would be free.

Dahlin says the final stages of his three-week stint in a secret jail were among the hardest, even though he sensed his release was imminent. I would go from a sense of serene contentment to being exhilarated to being incredibly despondent and thinking, Fuck, this is it. Im dead.

Goodbye to China

On the morning of 21 January he was told he had been granted medical parole and would soon be deported. Four days later, after being allowed a fleeting meeting with Pan, he was blindfolded and escorted back downstairs into The Residences garage.

Flanked by four burly guards in marital arts clothing, Dahlin was driven north towards Beijings international airport where he was told he was being expelled under the espionage act.

Stay out of trouble now, he recalls being told by one of the security agents, who escorted him on to Scandinavian Airlines Flight 996 to Copenhagen.

Peter Dahlins last view of China and his security minders

Onboard the passenger jet Dahlin turned on his phone and snapped one final photograph of China: asurreptitious shot of the security officers who had placed him on his last flight out of the country.

The flight attendant in first class police officials had used cash confiscated from Dahlins home to buy his ticket handed him a glass of champagne.

I killed it, Dahlin says. And then I had another glass. I had wine. I had a whisky. I had a beer and I had a coffee. All of the things I hadnt had.

Since touching down in Thailand in May, Dahlin says he has been gradually trying to rebuild his life.

After the trauma of 23 days in secret custody and seven years living with the daily stress of concealing his work, he says he is struggling to adapt to a more mundane routine and fears he may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Ive gotten so used to living a lie. It takes time to break that habit down.

I get weird-ass dreams that I never had before; anxiety; never being able to relax properly. I can deal with it but it takes time, he says. Your mind plays tricks on you. You hear things by the gate at night.

One afternoon Dahlin remembers suffering a panic attack when he lost sight of Pan, who moved with him to Chiang Mai, in a supermarket and concluded she had been snatched by Chinese agents as appears to have happened to a wave of Thailand-based dissidents and Communist party foes.

On another occasion Dahlins heart leapt when a group of Chinese men surrounded the couple at a local hotel. I thought, Fuck, is this it? Are they here to do something?

The here and now

Back in China, the situation is even gloomier. Recent weeks have seen a fresh round of detentions that suggest the crackdown on human rights lawyers has yet to run its course.

Dahlins former partner Wang remains in police custody awaiting trial. It is not a happy story, Dahlin says of his friend. I think he would rather die than admit defeat in this case [by confessing to crimes he didnt commit]. He is ready to be a martyr.

Stein Ringen said he believed the world had failed to grasp the scale of the repression now playing out in China, still viewing the country as a benevolent autocracy when in fact it had mutated into a very, very hard dictatorship which manages to look better than it is.

Peter Dahlin near his home in Thailand. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

The academic said he envisioned no change of direction while Xi, who will reach the halfway point of his anticipated decade-long term in late 2017, was in power.

Regrettably, I think the best we can hope for is that it doesnt get worse My money during Xi Jinpings tenure would be that what we have now is pretty much what we are going to get that is a hard dictatorship that is nevertheless tempered by some pragmatism Im completely bleak.

The alternatives I think are chaos that the control breaks and that China falls again back into chaos which it has done again and again over the last couple of centuries or that Xi Jinpings tightening of controls continues and pulls the system into one of fully fledged totalitarianism.

On the veranda of his new home, surrounded by wind chimes, hanging planters, and the soothing sound of bird song, Dahlin reminisces about happier times.

He speaks of his admiration for the Chinese campaigners still willing to sacrifice their freedom to promote change and fondly recalls nights spent at his favourite Mongolian whisky bar in Beijing.

You miss a few things because my exit consisted of going from solitary confinement into an airplane, he says. I left Beijing with a small bag, three books, two changes of clothes, some hard drives and a laptop.

You do seven years of something and now it is all gone: your work, whatever you have accomplished, your clothing, your furniture, my cats, my friends.

But with no political thaw in sight the activist said he doubted he would ever be able to return to the country he once dreamed of transforming.

I see no reason why they would ever give me a visa to go back. Why would they?

I think the only reason I go back is after the government falls. And Im not sure that is going to happen in my lifetime.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2hLNPam

from A human rights activist, a secret prison and a tale from Xi Jinping’s new China