#shores of loci

[canmom]

VR observations, 10 months in

I've been a game dev for 10 months now. It's pretty great, I'm enjoying it a lot, I get to spend my days doing crazy shader shit and animations and voxels and visual effects. Hopefully the game that will come out of all this will be one people enjoy, and in any case I'm learning so much that will eventually come back to the personal ~artistic~ side of things. I can't talk about that game just yet though (but soon it will be announced, I'm pretty sure). So this is a post about other games.

Mind you, I don't actually play very many VR games, or games in general these days, because I'm too busy developing the dang things. but sometimes I do! And I think it's interesting to talk about them.

These aren't really reviews as such. You could project all sorts of ulterior motives if it was. Like my livelihood does sorta depend on people buying VR headsets and then games on them. This is more just like things I observe.

Headsets

The biggest problem with VR at the moment is wearing a headset for too long kinda sucks. The weight of the headset is all effectively held on a lever arm and it presses on your face. However, this is heavily dependent on the strap you use to hold it to your head. A better balanced and cushioned strap can hold the headset still with less pressure and better balance the forces.

The strap that comes with the Quest 3 is absolute dogshit. So a big part of the reason I wouldn't play VR games for fun is because after wearing the headset for 30-60 minutes in the daily meeting, the absolute last thing I'd want to do is wear it any longer. Recently I got a new strap (a ~£25 Devaso one, the low end of straps), and it's markedly improved. It would probably be even better if I got one of the high end Bobo straps. So please take it from me: if you wanna get into VR, get a decent strap.

I hear the Apple Vision Pro is a lot more comfortable to wear for long periods, though I won't have a chance to try it until later this month.

During the time I've been working at Holonautic, Meta released their Quest 3, and more recently Apple released their hyper expensive Vision Pro for much fanfare.

The Quest 3 is a decent headset and probably the one I'd recommend if you're getting into VR and can afford a new console. It's not a massive improvement over the Quest 2 - the main thing that's better is the 'passthrough' (aka 'augmented reality', the mode where the 3D objects are composited into video of what's in front of you), which is now in full colour, and feels a lot less intrusive than the blown out greyscale that the Quest 2 did. But it still has some trouble with properly taking into account depth when combining the feeds from multiple cameras, so you get weird space warping effects when something in the foreground moves over something in the background.

The Vision Pro is by all accounts the bees knees, though it costs $3500 and already sold out, so good luck getting one. It brings a new interaction mode based on eye tracking, where you look at a thing with your eyes to select it like with a mouse pointer, and hold your hands in your lap and pinch to interact. Its passthrough is apparently miles ahead, it's got a laptop tier chip, etc etc. I'm not gonna talk about that though, if you want to read product reviews there are a million places you can do it.

Instead I wanna talk about rendering, since I think this is something that only gets discussed among devs, and maybe people outside might be interested.

Right now there is only one game engine that builds to the Vision Pro, which is Unity. However, Apple have their own graphics API, and the PolySpatial API used for the mixed reality mode is pretty heavily locked down in terms of what you can do.

So what Unity does is essentially run a transpilation step to map its own constructs into PolySpatial ones. For example, say you make a shader in Shader Graph (you have to use shader graph, it won't take HLSL shaders in general) - Unity will generate a vision pro compatible shader (in MaterialX format) from that. Vertex and fragment shaders mostly work, particle systems mostly don't, you don't get any postprocessing shaders, anything that involves a compute shader is right out (which means no VFX graph), Entities Graphics doesn't work. I don't think you get much control over stuff like batching. It's pretty limited compared to what we're used to on other platforms.

I said fragment shaders mostly work. It's true that most Shader Graph nodes work the same. However, if you're doing custom lighting calculations in a Unity shader, a standard way to do things is to use the 'main light' property provided by Unity. On the Vision Pro, you don't get a main light.

The Vision Pro actually uses an image-based lighting model, which uses the actual room around you to provide lighting information. This is great because objects in VR look like they actually belong in the space you're in, but it would of course be a huge security issue if all programs could get realtime video of your room, and I imagine the maths involved is pretty complex. So the only light information you get is a shader graph node which does a PBR lighting calculation based on provided parameters (albedo, normal, roughness, metallicity etc.). You can then instruct it to do whatever you want with the output of that inside the shader.

The upshot of this is that we have to make different versions of all our shaders for the Vision Pro version of the game.

Once the game is announced we'll probably have a lot to write about developing interactions for the vision pro vs the quest, so I'll save that for now. It's pretty fascinating though.

Anyway, right now I've still yet to wear a Vision Pro. Apple straight up aren't handing out devkits, we only have two in the company still, so mostly I'm hearing about things second hand.

Shores of Loci

A few genres of VR game have emerged by now. Shooting and climbing are two pretty well-solved problems, so a lot of games involve that. But another one is 3D puzzles. This is something that would be incredibly difficult on a flat screen, where manipulating 3D objects is quite difficult, but becomes quite natural and straightforward in VR.

I've heard about one such game that uses 3D scans of real locations, but Shores of Loci is all about very environment artist authored levels, lots of grand sweeping vistas and planets hanging in the sky and so on. Basically you go through a series of locations and assemble teetering ramshackle buildings and chunks of landscape, which then grow really big and settle into the water. You can pull the pieces towards you with your hand, and then when you rotate them into roughly the right position and orientation relative to another piece, they snap together.

It's diverting, if kinda annoying when you just can't find the place the piece should go - especially if the answer turns out to be that there's an intermediate piece that floated off somewhere. The environments are well-designed and appealing, it's cool to see the little guys appearing to inhabit them. That said it does kinda just... repeat that concept a bunch. The narrative is... there's a big stone giant who appears and gives you pieces sometimes. That's it basically.

Still, it's interesting to see the different environment concepts. Transitions have this very cool distorted sky/black hole effect.

However, the real thing that got me with this game, the thing that I'm writing about now, was the water. They got planar reflections working. On the Quest! This is something of a white whale for me. Doing anything that involves reading from a render texture is so expensive that it's usually a no-go, and yet here it's working great - planar reflections complete with natural looking distortion from ripples. There's enough meshes that I assume there must be a reasonably high number of draw calls, and yet... it's definitely realtime planar reflections, reflections move with objects, it all seems to work.

There's a plugin called Mirrors and Reflections for VR that provides an implementation, but so far my experience has been that the effect is too expensive (in terms of rendertime) to keep 72fps in a more complex scene. I kind of suspect the devs are using this plugin, but I'm really curious how they optimised the draw calls down hard enough to work with it, since there tends to be quite a bit going on...

Moss

This game's just straight up incredibly cute.

Third person VR games, where you interact with a character moving across a diorama-like level, are a tiny minority of VR games at the moment. I think it's a shame because the concept is fantastic.

Moss is a puzzle-platformer with light combat in a Redwall/Mouse Guard-like setting. The best part of Moss is 1000% interacting with your tiny little mousegirl, who is really gorgeously animated - her ears twitch, her tail swings back and forth, she tumbles, clambers, and generally moves in a very convincing and lifelike way.

Arguably this is the kind of game that doesn't need to be made in VR - we already have strong implementations of 'platformer' for flatscreen. What I think the VR brings in this case is this wonderful sense of interacting with a tiny 3D world like a diorama. In some ways it's sorta purposefully awkward - if Quill walks behind something, you get a glowing outline, but you might need to crane your neck to see her - but having the level laid out in this way as a 3D structure you can play with is really endearing.

Mechanically, you move Quill around with the analogue stick, and make her jump with the buttons, standard stuff. Various level elements can be pushed or pulled by grabbing them with the controllers, and you can also drag enemies around to make them stand on buttons, so solving a level is a combination of moving pieces of the level and then making Quill jump as appropriate.

The fact that you're instantiated in the level, separate from Quill, also adds an interesting wrinkle in terms of 'identification with player character'. In most third person games, you tend to feel that the player character is you to some degree. In Moss, it feels much more like Quill is someone I've been made responsible for, and I feel guilty whenever I accidentally make her fall off a cliff or something.

A lot is clearly designed around fostering that protective vibe - to heal Quill, you have to reach out and hold her with your hand, causing her to glow briefly. When you complete some levels, she will stop to give you a high five or celebrate with you. Even though the player is really just here as 'puzzle solver' and 'powerful macguffin', it puts some work in to make you feel personally connected to Quill.

Since the camera is not locked to the character, the controls are instead relative to the stage, i.e. you point the stick in the direction on the 2D plane you want Moss to move. This can make certain bits of platforming, like moving along a narrow ledge or tightrope, kinda fiddly. In general it's pretty manageable though.

The combat system is straightforward but solid enough. Quill has a three button string, and it can be cancelled into a dash using the jump button, and directed with the analogue stick. Enemies telegraph their attacks pretty clearly, so it's rarely difficult, but there's enough there to be engaging.

The game is built in Unreal, unlike most Quest games (almost all are made in Unity). It actually doesn't feel so very different though - likely because the lighting calculations that are cheap enough to run in Unity are the same ones that are cheap enough to run in Unreal. It benefits a lot from baked lighting. Some things are obvious jank - anything behind where the player is assumed to be sitting tends not to be modelled or textured - but the environments are in general very lively and I really like some of the interactions: you can slash through the grass and floating platforms rock as you jump onto them.

The story is sadly pretty standard high fantasy royalist chosen one stuff, nothing exciting really going on there. Though there are some very cute elements - the elf queen has a large frog which gives you challenges to unlock certain powers, and you can pet the frog, and even give it a high five. Basically all the small scale stuff is done really well, I just wish they'd put some more thought into what it's about. The Redwall/Mouse Guard style has a ton of potential - what sort of society would these sapient forest animals have? They just wanted a fairytale vibe though evidently.

Cutscene delivery is a weak point. You pull back into a cathedral-like space where you're paging through a large book, which is kinda cool, and listening to narration while looking at illustrations. In general I think these cutscenes would have worked better if you just stayed in the diorama world and watched the characters have animated interactions. Maybe it's a cost-saving measure. I guess having you turn the pages of the book is also a way to give you something to do, since sitting around watching NPCs talk is notoriously not fun in VR.

There are some very nice touches in the environment design though! In one area you walk across a bunch of human sized suits of armour and swords that are now rusting - nobody comments, but it definitely suggests that humans did exist in this world at some point. The actual puzzle levels tend to make less sense, they're very clearly designed as puzzles first and 'spaces people would live in' not at all, but they do tend to look pretty, and there's a clear sense of progression through different architectural areas - so far fairly standard forest, swamp, stone ruins etc. but I'll be curious to see if it goes anywhere weird with it later.

Weak story aside, I'm really impressed with Moss. Glad to see someone else giving third person VR a real shot. I'm looking forward to playing the rest of it.

...that's kinda all I played in a while huh. For example, I still haven't given Asgard's Wrath II, the swordfighting game produced internally at Meta that you get free on the Quest 3, a shot. Or Boneworks. I still haven't finished Half Life Alyx, even! Partly that's because the Quest 3 did not get on well with my long USB A to C cable - for some reason it only seems to work properly on a high quality C to C cable - and that restricts me from playing PCVR games that require too much movement. Still though...

Anyway, the game I've been working on these past 10 months should be ready to announce pretty soon. So I'm very excited for that.

[undiscovered-horizon]

hello! if you accept requests for one peaceLive action (I hope)

could you write reader x sanji and I have a strange idea

what if with reader flirting.... another cook? and Sanji feels not just jealousy, but double jealousy... it's very strange, I know, but still I think it's quite interesting.

thank you in advance🙏💕

Enjoying my work? You can leave me a tip on Ko-Fi | Have a request?

The smell of spices, ripe fruit and freshly made food hits your nostrils. It's markets like this that truly show the genius loci of the place. Mobs of people roll through the narrow spaces between stalls that are bending under the weight of displayed products.

You glance at Sanji, who's walking next to you. Judging by the bliss on his face, you'd think you're in heaven and not some unmarked island in the middle of nowhere.

Then a specific aroma reaches you - something you haven't smelled in a long time but could never forget. It's tangy, creamy and herbal...

"Can you smell it?" you turn to Sanji, suddenly stopping in your tracks. Excitement bubbles inside your chest and cherished memories of beautiful days with wonderful people flash before your eyes.

"You'll have to be a little more precise, love," he answers with undeniable fondness in his voice. His thumb is softly rubbing the skin of your hand.

"Lemon tarragon sauce," you say as if it's the most obvious thing. Looking around, you catch a glimpse of a pot filled with yellow-ish, creamy dip. "Right there!"

Tugging at his arm, you pull him in the direction of the stall and the source of the delightful smell. The market stand is managed by a man around your age. He has a head full of black, dense curls that perfectly suit his tanned skin. There's a clean dish towel tied around his neck as if it's an ascot. Skilled, muscular hands move between pans, pots and counters as he's restlessly grilling meat, fish and prawns to put them in cones made from newspaper and layer the tarragon sauce on top.

The street cook looks up from the dishes when he notices customers approaching. As his dark eyes set on you, the man suddenly perks up and a playful smile curves his raspberry-coloured lips.

"Mademoiselle," he says with a certain intensity to his voice. It almost sounds like he's asking you something.

Sanji immediately cringes at the man's tone. This suave, decadent drawl is something he's also used the very first time he saw you. And considering the fact that you're tightly holding his hand, it had worked perfectly. Now just to make sure that this terragon-smelling, ascot-wearing sleazy guy isn't as successful.

"How can I thank you for brightening up my day?"

"I'd love a serving of prawns with tarragon sauce," you say thrilled. It seems that you're either missing the flirtatious aura surrounding the man or you're willfully ignoring them.

Sanji feels his chest tighten and a bitter taste fills his mouth. Why would you be so excited about someone else's cooking? Worse - what if you will prefer that guy's food over his?

The street cook gets to grilling freshly caught prawns. His fingers skilfully dance in the air as he seasons the seafood and mixes it in the pan. Garlic and lemon pepper fragrances overthrow your senses.

The ascot-wearing man gives you a curious look. "What are you looking for at the end of the world, flower?" he asks.

But before you can answer, Sanji cuts in. "We're on a shore leave," he answers coldly. "Won't stay for long."

"That's a shame," the local chef continues unaffected by Sanji's impertinence. His eyes are fixed on you, eating you up like you're the local delicacy and not the seafood in the pan. "At night the island looks even better. Not that it could compare," he says with a wink.

In a swift move, the man moves the prawns from the pan onto a page from a newspaper. He quickly rolls the paper into a cone. Clearly, he's been doing this for a very long time.

"You're from around here, right?" you carry on the conversation.

"Born and raised, ma cherie," he answers with pride. That shouldn't come as a surprise - ever since the Marines built a base on the surrounding archipelago, the islands have been filled with immigrants who couldn't care less about local traditions and customs.

Sanji feels his irritation only growing, hearing how the pet name rolls off the man's tongue naturally, as though he's calling you by your given name. It feels wrong down to the marrow of his bones.

"So, as a local, can you recommend something to pass the time?"

The bitterness Sanji involuntarily tastes on his tongue is mixed with sweetness that only you can bring him. Of course you don't notice the flirtatious tone - you just want the tarragon sauce and something fun to do before tomorrow comes and the Straw Hats are off for another voyage.

Then, another nice thought stirs inside his head. Maybe you're too deep in love with Sanji to even notice another man's interest? The idea makes him giddy like he's a schoolgirl with a crush. He almost misses the next part of the conversation, too busy with his adorable, a little cringy, daydream:

"While the weather is still good and the nights are warm, skinny dipping is quite popular," the local cook answers while pouring tarragon sauce over the grilled prawns. "Much better with good company," he purrs out. "Prawns with tarragon sauce, on the house." The man hands you your order but with only one cocktail stick as though the blond chef next to you doesn't count as a customer.

Excited, you take the paper cone from the street vendor. But before you can try the food, Sanji takes the stick and takes the first bite.

A frown enters his face as he chews the prawn. Then he sighs in disappointment.

"Do you seriously call this cooking?" he asks the ascot-wearing man. His voice is laced with anger and disbelief. "A fishman would make a better sauce. It's missing white wine and anise. And there's too much garlic."

You hiss his name out but Sanji appears unaffected. Forcing a polite smile, you turn to the street vendor, who's glancing between you and your boyfriend with a look of superiority. "Thank you for the food and sorry for Grumpy over here."

Only when you're a few paces away from the vendor and definitely out of earshot, do you confront Sanji about his mordant humor.

"No need to get snappy."

He forces his lips into a thin line. "His food is shit and he keeps making piss poor attempts at flirting when you're clearly," he lifts your intertwined fingers, "not a mademoiselle." Although Sanji quotes the word in mockery, it sounds delicious coming from him. If you weren't already sharing his bed, right now you'd be seriously considering it. Planning it even.

"So that's what this is about?" you ask as laughter forces its way out of your chest. Considering how whipped you are for Sanji, it seems ridiculous that you could think romantically about other men. "You're jealous about a smooth-talking cook. Sounds like someone I know."

"Does it?" he picks up on your banter. That familiar, playful smile returns to his face. His eyes momentarily light up, flashing you a glint of various emotions: desire, amusement, adoration. "How many smooth-talking cooks have you seduced?"

You shrug your shoulders and shake your head dramatically. "Don't know. Never bothered to count. I'm just looking for someone to make me lemon tarragon sauce any time I want."

Sanji's hand again rubs the skin of your palm. His other hand reaches for your face, fingers brushing against your jaw. "For you, little dove, I'd make tarragon sauce every day."

"With white wine and anise?" you ask, leaning in slightly. His scent of cigarette smoke and frying oil fills your lungs. Suddenly, the market around you is nonexistent and there's only Sanji.

"The best lemon tarragon sauce you've ever had," he murmurs against your face. His nose brushes against your cheeks.

"I already have the best."

His lips taste like lemons, butter and herbs when he kisses you. Honestly, this is the best version of the sauce you've ever had.

[dipodiidae]

fallen london extensions/addons

i only log in when there's new content these days but i wanted to make a list of extensions i found helpful for newer players. bolded names are ones i can personally vouch for/have seen a lot of people use. descriptions are mostly taken from the addon descriptions themselves because tumblr ate my original draft and i don't feel like typing everything out again. PS: Switch to Firefox.

Goat Farmer (Firefox/Chrome): Calculates and displays your total wealth each time you visit the Bazaar page in Fallen London. It includes options to exclude certain items from the calculation. (My note: mostly useful for figuring out how many Echoes you get if you liquidate everything you have in order to buy expensive items.)

Conversion Helper (Firefox): Collects each tier of convertible items in your inventory into its own category for convenience. (My note: A "tier" is a term for items that sell at the same price at the Bazaar; for example, Memories of Light and Memories of Distant Shores are "tier 3" items that both sell for 0.5 Echoes each.)

Fallen London Favourites (Firefox)/Playing Favourites (Chrome): Allows you to mark storylets and options inside storylets with green/red marks, moving them to the top or bottom of the page respectively. You can also choose to disable discard and action buttons for certain storylets and cards. (My note: Definitely recommend this one, it saves you so much scrolling.)

One-click Wiki (Firefox): Adds a small "button" near the storylet title. When clicked, this button opens a new tab with a Fallen London Wiki page corresponding to the current storylet.

Small Mercies (Firefox): Just... a lot of small UI changes. Some of them are helpful (like showing the amount of Favours for each faction you have in the sidebar), some of them are silly but mildly beneficial (like sorting the "A Mystery of the _th City" qualities in numerical order).

Quirk Master (Firefox): Telegraphs storylet choices that influence your quirks, if the game doesn't already tell you they do.

Duly Noted (Firefox): Lets you leave small notes on the branches and storylets in the "Fallen London" browser game. (My note: For clarity, the notes appear within the storylet itself.)

Masquerade (Firefox): Lets you switch between alt accounts more easily within the game UI.

Genius Loci (Firefox): Plays background music whenever you're in specific locations. You'll have to supply your own music. Intended for the Fallen London/Sunless Sea OSTs (which can be found online), but I guess you could add your own music?

Chandlery (Chrome): Displays your current number of actions/opportunity cards in the tab title so you can keep an eye on it when you're tabbed out.

[see-arcane]

Of Debt and Death

And a dream that flows between them like a river.

Ao3 link here

“Centuries. Centuries he has been doing this.”

Jonathan looks up. He doesn’t remember how he got here. A moment ago he was sinking. Or was it floating? Either way, he drowned. Smothered. There is a certainty now as there was before that the Count is near. The closeness of him in Piccadilly had struck a deep and profound cord in him even in the crowd. Now that cord is an entire hellish violin playing until it screeches.

Here! He is here! Up, go, hurry!

But there was only the drowning. The sweet-bitter crush of a blanket around a strengthless babe who kicks and struggles to no avail.

Then, suddenly, here. The boat.

The ferryman has his back to him, hood drawn up against a frigid mist. Black shores hint at themselves through the fog.

“He has done this for almost half a millennium. Did you ever suspect as much in the castle, even with his dust-choked riches? An old monster, surely, but not ancient. Surely he couldn’t be. The people knew him. The people feared him. The people knew then all that the professor had to scrape from a library. You would not have lasted were it not for them and their holy icons, their gifts and knowledge. They know what it is to slay his kind.”

Still though he is, something thrashes violently in Jonathan’s heart. Wanting, needing, fighting to move. To be aware.

The Count is here.

Somewhere close. Near enough to touch. Jonathan eyes the mist warily.

“Do you truly think none have tried what you and your little pack mean to attempt in so many hundreds of years of horror under his reign? None at all? In times of war, in hours of bereft madness, they tried. Lances before the stake, sword before the saw. They tried. The most he lost were new conscripts and his temper. Ash to flesh, mist to teeth. He came back. Through steel and Cross and fire, he has always come back. And taught grave lessons to his enemies each time. He means to teach you all the same. Only he will not waste you on mere slaughter.”

Figures move on the black shore now. Watching them pass. Hazy as they are, Jonathan knows them all. Children. A mother. Sailors. Lucy’s wedding band glints as she waves.

“He will not let you go, Jonathan Harker. If he must lose any of the other jackals in potentia, you will still go on to suffer him. Through her. Through the cudgel he means to make of her and your heart. You have cost him too much to go free and he will have you bowed and bloodied at his feet. You may yet let him for her sake. Once he lures you back. All of you, so sure, so prepared, will lope after him to the genius loci, his realm of power. The land that worked against you from every angle, every muscle of Nature and Supernature. And there you will all do worse than die.”

Let me go. Please, something is wrong, I know it, I know the Count is close, he has done something, he is doing something, I need to go—

 “Oh, yes. He has, he is, he shall do worse. God has not seen fit to stop him in four hundred years. He left humanity a few holy tin shields and wished you all luck. And when the Devil’s best student marks a soul to be his in eternity, he shrugs and lets the game go on with a lenience to make Mephistopheles seem a prude. Both will burn you, burn her, as they have burned untold victims in the past. Which is all to say that you will do as all the men and women of history have done when pitted against him.”

The mist thins. What had been a sparse milling of figures now revealed itself as a legion. Dead faces staring out at the river in an endless menagerie of souls reduced to cattle.

“You will lose. Because you are only what all his enemies have been before, what he sold his own soul to conquer unfettered. Mortal meat waiting for the butcher. If you want to win, to save her as more than a lifeless corpse or a mobile one, you must be something other than that same heroic chattel.”

I am no Faust.

“Nor could you be if I desired someone worth making the offer. I may not have time to rest on my laurels, but I have counted him as a nuisance not worth bothering with so long as he kept to his mountains. There are so few of his kind that make true trouble. But now he means to play a global tyrant. England is only the first step. Its colonies will follow. Its neighbors after them. The world is a throat and he is the tick who wishes to drink it dry. If God and the Devil consider Earth forfeit to laissez-faire, it falls to us and our like to do the work of seeing him pay a toll long overdue. So, to you I make my offer. To make you something else. To make yours what is mine. To end what should have ended on a battleground lifetimes ago.”

Jonathan rights himself on the boat. The river is leading into a cave vaster and more lightless than the void between stars. He tries not to stare at it, to focus on the back of the ferryman’s hood.

I will make no promise I do not understand the facets of. I will not be trapped again by details never given to me.

“As is wise. But desperation ever makes decisions on our behalf, Jonathan Harker. Your choice will be no airy whim. It will simply be the only choice to make. I do apologize for that. Gods and devils are not alone in rigging their games. Know this, at least. There shall be no need for a contract. No signatures in blood or fealties sworn. Such pageantry is not for us. No more than it was the day Peter Hawkins signed you on. The offer and its vocation will simply be ready and waiting for you. Make the decision. It will be done.”

Jonathan’s hand lands on the ferryman’s shoulder.

The Ferryman turns.

His eyes are burning hollows. His eyes are all that is left that could be called a face.

“Wake. She is calling to you.”

And he is in the bed with Mina.

And he is in a nightmare.

And he does not wake from it as she tells them all of the Count’s visit, her blood and the Vampire’s staining his breast.

And his body sits and breathes and listens.

And as his mind swims back to a boat on the River, a sickle grows where his soul should be.

[whatthecrowtold]

#unhallowedarts "Everything, alas, is an abyss, — actions, desires, dreams, Words!" - Baudelaire's "Fleurs Du Mal"

Carlos Schwabe "Destruction" (1900)

“You know that I have always considered that literature and the arts pursue an aim independent of morality. Beauty of conception and style is enough for me. But this book, whose title (Les Fleurs du Mal) says everything, is clad, as you will see, in a cold and sinister beauty. It was created with rage and patience. Besides, the proof of its positive worth is in all the ill that they speak of it. The book enrages people. Moreover, since I was terrified myself of the horror that I should inspire, I cut out a third from the proofs. They deny me everything, the spirit of invention and even the knowledge of the French language. I don't care a rap about all these imbeciles, and I know that this book, with its virtues and its faults, will make its way in the memory of the lettered public, beside the best poems of V. Hugo, Th. Gautier and even Byron." (Baudelaire in a letter to his mother)

Don Juan in Hades

"When Don Juan descended to the underground sea, And when he had given his obolus to Charon, That gloomy mendicant, with Antisthenes' proud look, Seized the two oars with strong, revengeful hands.

Showing their pendent breasts and their unfastened gowns Women writhed and twisted under the black heavens, And like a great flock of sacrificial victims, A continuous groan trailed along in the wake.

Sganarelle with a laugh was demanding his wage, While Don Luis with a trembling finger Was showing to the dead, wandering along the shores, The impudent son who had mocked his white brow.

Shuddering in her grief, Elvira, chaste and thin, Near her treacherous spouse who was once her lover, Seemed to implore of him a final, parting smile That would shine with the sweetness of his first promises.

Erect in his armor, a tall man carved from stone Was standing at the helm and cutting the black flood; But the hero unmoved, leaning on his rapier, Kept gazing at the wake and deigned not look aside."

He turned out to be right. Victor Hugo himself wrote enthusiastic lines to his younger fellow melancholic, just a couple of his weeks after Baudelaire’s evil flowers sprouted from the booksellers’ shelves and were read in Paris salons and cafés while the Moloch of a metropolis around them swallowed its own children. In hecatombs. On a daily basis. Baudelaire was certainly not the first who found the urbs worthy enough for a good yarn or to inspire poetry. As backdrop or a scene, with the big city lights illuminating the dramatis personae. But never as an end in itself. He found a way to integrate his Romantic predecessors’ otherworldly Gothic mindscapes from their grim fairy tale-like settings of ruined castles, lofty mountaintops, dark forests and other exotic spots, rooted in history and legend, into a grim, contemporary reality. Paris had become the Castle of Otranto, an autotelic location inhabited by a genius loci of disillusion, pessimism and melancholy in their ugly and morbid actuality. Filled to the brim with black Romantic symbols and imagery. And while Baudelaire barrages the reader - his likeness, his brother – with biblical tropes and ancient mythology and not the likenesses of the miserables from Rue Trou à Rats it is impossible to imagine his picturesque, morbid misery in another light than that of the dim streetlights of the dark metropolis. Literary modernity had begun in earnest with “Les Fleurs du Mal”. And what earned the poet a lawsuit for offending the public moral of 1857 and forced him to publish his works abroad, can now be found as “epoch-making” in schoolbooks.

Posthumous Remorse

"When you will sleep, O dusky beauty mine, Beneath a monument fashioned of black marble, When you will have for bedroom and mansion Only a rain-swept vault and a hollow grave,

When the slab of stone, oppressing your frightened breast And your flanks now supple with charming nonchalance, Will keep your heart from beating, from wishing, And your feet from running their adventurous course,

The tomb, confidant of my infinite dreams (For the tomb will always understand the poet) Through those long nights from which all sleep is banned, will say:

"What does it profit you, imperfect courtesan, Not to have known why the dead weep?" — And like remorse the worm will gnaw your skin."

When the poet lay dying at the age of 46 in Dr Duval’s hospital in the Quartier Chaillot in Paris, after a stroke he suffered the year before in Brussels that left him paralysed on one side and incapable of speech, cared for by his ageing mother, there were really few things left that he had not pursued within the framework of a stereotypical vie de la bohème. Picking up the Great Pox when he was 18, dawdling in the Parisian demi-monde while letting his law studies slide, experimenting with every type of narcotics available, drinking, of course, like a sailor on shore leave, squandering his inheritance, making several suicide attempts, living with his Haitian mistress Jeanne Duval, an actress and dancer of mixed French and black African ancestry, while declaring popular courtesans to be his muses, being always in debt and indulging in Wagner and whatnot. And, as a sideline, Baudelaire squeezing the idea, the spirit and the awareness of modernity out of the chaos of his own life and the labour pains of the industrial age and pressing it in the shape of a poetic language that was and his unheard of in its quality and depth.

Spleen

"I have more memories than if I'd lived a thousand years.

A heavy chest of drawers cluttered with balance-sheets, Processes, love-letters, verses, ballads, And heavy locks of hair enveloped in receipts, Hides fewer secrets than my gloomy brain. It is a pyramid, a vast burial vault Which contains more corpses than potter's field. — I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon, In which long worms crawl like remorse And constantly harass my dearest dead. I am an old boudoir full of withered roses, Where lies a whole litter of old-fashioned dresses, Where the plaintive pastels and the pale Bouchers, Alone, breathe in the fragrance from an opened phial.

Nothing is so long as those limping days, When under the heavy flakes of snowy years Ennui, the fruit of dismal apathy, Becomes as large as immortality. — Henceforth you are no more, O living matter! Than a block of granite surrounded by vague terrors, Dozing in the depths of a hazy Sahara An old sphinx ignored by a heedless world, Omitted from the map, whose savage nature Sings only in the rays of a setting sun."

All poems quoted above are from Charles Baudelaire's "Fleurs du Mal" (1857) - the imagery for Baudelaire's epochal poems was created by the Swiss Symbolist Carlos Schwabe (1866 - 1926) for the 1900 edition, complete and bilingual, linked as facsimile below.

[sunlitmcgee]

just. Genus loci Tommy opens his eyes and he sees Everything. Feels Everything. Feels, sees, smells, hears, tastes. He's inside every leaf on every tree and can sense the way the water fills in the grooves each time a wave batters against Snowchester's rocky shore. He's in the deep chill of the arctic at the same time he's drenched in the heat of the desert. Saltwater on his lips. It's quietest underground in the caves and deep caverns. There's a twinge when he feels himself in pogtopia and Logstedshire but...it passes. He can focus on anything else now.

And the first thing he notices is Oh...tubbo is crying...

[sleepymarmot]

YOU - "So you don't know what to write?" CINDY THE SKULL - "Have you ever tried your hand at graffito? When faced with a blank wall, most people write unimaginative stuff like *Pigs Go Home* and *Mona was here*." CINDY THE SKULL - "We rarely see pigs 'round here, though, just Union cads -- and my name's not Mona, so..." EMPATHY - She wants it to be something true -- and *total*.

---

TRICENTENNIAL ELECTRICS - No one replies, but the static grows stronger like rainfall. Then a female voice speaks out, completely different from the one before. Glorious and *total* somehow. Crawling inside your head. SHIVERS - FOR THREE HUNDRED YEARS I HAVE BEEN HERE. VOLATILE AND LUMINOUS. MADE OF SODIUM AND RAIN.

---

SHIVERS - I AM A FRAGMENT OF THE WORLD SPIRIT, THE GENIUS LOCI OF REVACHOL.

---

YOU - Wait, what exactly is an *innocence*? ENCYCLOPEDIA - The highest category of historic individual -- an embodiment of the World Spirit.

---

ONE DAY I WILL RETURN TO YOUR SIDE - The graffito has been painted over the traces of the fight that took place here. It smells of blood and heavy fuel oil. REACTION SPEED - This was Cindy the SKULL. YOU - Looks like Cindy the SKULL finally found the words for her masterpiece.

YOU - "Does this have anything to do with 'The Return' Klaasje is waiting for?" KIM KITSURAGI - "Could be. In Revachol West, someone somewhere is always whispering about Le Retour..." He squints his eyes at the writing. "It's an *aerograffito*, meant for Coalition aerostatics in the lower troposphere." INLAND EMPIRE - The return to her side. RHETORIC - The return of light.

INLAND EMPIRE - What if the words are not directed at the people of Martinaise, or even the Coalition aerostatics above the city -- they're meant for something above even those... SetVariableValue("plaza.graffito_concept_god", true) --[[ Variable[ ]]

---

ESPRIT DE CORPS - The officers go, leaving behind the writing -- still smouldering. ONE DAY, it says, I WILL RETURN TO YOUR SIDE. THE DESERTER - "Always waiting." The old man turns his eyes from the shore and back to you. YOU - "For what?" THE DESERTER - "For her to return." KIM KITSURAGI - "Her, who?" THE DESERTER - "Girl Child Revolution."

---

YOU - "Yeah, I lit it on fire. It was a poetic gesture." JEAN VICQUEMARE - "I knew it. Didn't I tell you, Trant? I told you it was our shitkid." TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "The line is from Lu Jiatun's 'Mirova 82', isn't it? About Girl Child Communism -- the titular *returning* character. The ghostly apparition of..." He looks around and, noticing the impatience of his companions, stops himself. "Good choice, Harry." ENCYCLOPEDIA - He is correct. It was the Seraise poet Lu Jiatun who in the Fifties of the last century composed a...

The words Cindy finds are *total* — like the voice of La Revacholière. They’re addressed to something high above — nicknamed “god” in the game data. The closest thing to gods this world seems to have are innocences, as well as the World Spirit they embody. According to La Revacholière, the World Spirit does exist, and she is a fragment of it. The Deserter thinks the writing refers to a different entity/idea anthropomorphized as feminine — the revolution. Trant and Encyclopedia clarify that it’s a line from a century-old work of literature, referring not to revolution but to communism, and the choice of the word “titular” is interesting — might the girl child be synonymous with the city of Mirova in that case? According to Inland Empire, the return is not by, but to someone who is referred to with she/her pronouns.

[junawer]

The Drowned Man (Ao3 / GoogleDoc / story under the cut)

What lights a world gone blank with despair? You were here once; you will be here again. — Joanna Klink, Winter Field

Dramatis Personae: DIRAE (FURIES) GENIUS LOCI (REVACHOL) KIM KITSURAGI (HAUNTED) HARRY (LIVING; DEAD)/BLOATED CORPSE OF A DRUNK (DROWNED)

DIRAE — Did he wash up on the coast, rough sand now clinging wetly and coldly to Kim’s trousers and to the body in his arms? Or did he wash up at the port, the faded and cracked mosaic pieces on the ground impressing into Kim’s knees and their intricate pattern framing yet another corpse? It did not matter. He was the city's child and to the city he returned. And Kim knelt all the same.

GENIUS LOCI — Shores. Places of return. As natural for the living to walk along as for the dead to wash up on. An artwork, made puzzle. And on it, a human, made corpse.

DIRAE — He had seen her footprints on the ocean’s surface — again. Pale traces on shifting blackness, promising, directing, forcing. His vision thus chained, they had pulled him down. A relapse — typical, predictable. He was an addict in more ways than one, addicted to other things than substances. In a way, he found her footsteps on the bottom of the ocean.

GENIUS LOCI — A chain leading into the darkness of the water, itself bound to its depths and pulling any gaze down with it.

KIM KITSURAGI — ‘I have hell inside me’, Harry had once said. And I have this winter cold inside me, Kim responded in thought, this very morning, this very moment. What would he say now?

HARRY (LIVING) — “I was here.”

KIM KITSURAGI — Kim looked at Harry and the corpse stared back.

HARRY (DEAD) — “I am here.”

GENIUS LOCI — Harry had washed up at the earliest hour. The sun was still hidden. The matutinal sky was blue, the ground was blue — a forlorn blue —, and blue was his skin, his soul, Kim’s aching bones. 

DIRAE — He came back, returned to his side for one last time.

GENIUS LOCI — Everything shivered in the winter air while Kim tried to quench the quiver in his own limbs.

DIRAE — Harry would have let the cold seep into him, like a ghost air and rain would move freely through. When the wind grew in strength and silenced the rest of the world or when the dripping of water became the only whisper, when the temperature dropped and muscles began to shudder. That’s when Harry became more statue than human, an antenna, a receptor, at the very eye of a storm. Kim never saw him so calm and unmoving, so bereft of his inner turmoil than in these moments. When the storm inside Harry stopped in order to listen to the storm outside. A great cacophony of vibrations and voices. The rings and chimes of Revachol. A grand symphony of reality. The city talked to him, Harry had once declared. And Kim had watched him, regarded him, waiting patiently, each and every time. The city was quiet now that her favourite messenger had passed — or rather, voiceless and unheard. Did she weep for her herald? Mourn? Wail, now without ears to hear? What were Kim’s own lungs doing? Holding screams and only releasing sighs? Cold air within as without. A haunted equilibrium. 

GENIUS LOCI — On the waves ice blocks groaned and crystals sang like ocean chimes, shimmering like an ever-shifting mosaic of their own. A silence that only allowed its own sounds. Dark flotsam few and far between. One wished them gone and one day they were but that only made one look for them again.

BLOATED CORPSE OF A DRUNK (DROWNED) — “You should see sunlight underneath these waves. Underwater disco.”

KIM KITSURAGI — Kim was holding him, regarding him, once more. The sea had been kind to Harry’s body. Kinder than to the flotsam floating and drowning still, black and shadowy — forgotten, uncared-for garbage. At first glance, no obvious unnatural discolorations on the skin. Surface smooth and pale and blotched, white and blue and violet, his mouth open as if to speak, eyes glazed and fixed and seemingly harboring pale itself. He was speaking to Kim without words and looking at him without sight. No reek of death from within. No reek of death from without. Kim was waiting for a breath of alcohol, a lifeless breath on both the living and the dead but a part of Harry nonetheless, anything but the smell of the bay and harbor and the cold in his nose. He hoped for some remnant of Harry but the salt of the sea stuck to his wet lungs. And to Kim’s it did too, until it would give way to smoke again.

BLOATED CORPSE OF A DRUNK (DROWNED) — “My body is harboring tales already told. Can you retell them?”

KIM KITSURAGI — Harry’s face looked expectant, curious, as if his inner cabinet of thoughts was still hard at work taking in and making sense of the world, conceptualizing recollections and writing poems. Though it had been a chorus of distinct voices, Harry’s thinking had been strangely organized, mad and fragmented, yet structured, dissected, precise. It could hold all the beauty and terror of the world at once. His mind, though strewn and his memory smudged by drugs and alcohol, could sharpen like fate’s scissors and his cerebral fingers would snatch the threads of the world, the threads of any story. 

DIRAE — Harry was now too dead to hear the voices inside his mind, so Kim’s quiet face pleaded with the drowned expression for him to be the one to hear them now, to wade directly through the sea of Harry’s thoughts. To have a kind of drowning of his own. To keep this special madness of his, to therefore keep Harry himself.

BLOATED CORPSE OF A DRUNK (DROWNED) — “A last lullaby for the drowned drunk. I’ve heard the song so often. Sing it to me again. Sing the song sung so commonly. Cradle me in deductions, in detective anecdotes.”

KIM KITSURAGI — Examine the body, Kim's mind urged.

BLOATED CORPSE OF A DRUNK (DROWNED) — “The field autopsy.”

KIM KITSURAGI — No, not yet, he decided.

DIRAE — He could end this moment anytime and continue with merely looking at the body from above and writing observations down instead of keeping vigil and thinking intimate thoughts. But Kim let his feelings wash over him and drown him, he let his lungs be filled, and by that, he simply let them be. He was calm. He didn’t know how not to be. His mind was for keeping thoughts and his lungs were for trapping screams. All trembles remained inside his gloves.

GENIUS LOCI — Wet death was soaking Kim’s clothes, giving his own limbs a glimpse of the watery abyss.

BLOATED CORPSE OF A DRUNK (DROWNED) — “It’s warm down there.”

GENIUS LOCI — Frost covered Kim’s bones. It felt permanent. 

DIRAE — They had always stored the cold and aching. 

GENIUS LOCI — The freezing man held the frozen one.

BLOATED CORPSE OF A DRUNK (DROWNED) — “It’s the softest of sensations when coldness turns to warmth.”

DIRAE — Kim was cradling an ice sculpture, malformed and solid. The rigidity of Harry’s limbs and face were an utter deviation to his former, always stirring and flexible, now forlorn liveliness. And yet, Kim could not keep himself from wondering whether Harry had always been like this — dead, merely acting at being alive, oft forgetting his lines.

GENIUS LOCI — A drugged and drunken, broken body falling to the ground and rising from it again and again.

HARRY (LIVING/DEAD) — “I-”

DIRAE — “Exist?”

GENIUS LOCI — Kim held him all the same. He held him like a lover in a warm bed in the dead of night — or like a survivor holding a martyr. A partner. A different kind. Or perhaps a similar one. Or just truly, simply a lover holding another — one alive, one dead. Matters of love remained difficult for Kim. Seldom did he have someone in his arms, even having Harry had been rare. Now he had him in his embrace, for as long as he wished, for as long as he could endure, until the cold would take him, too.

DIRAE — Kim wondered whether Harry had thought he was dying in her arms. Did he die delusional? Or brokenhearted? No, he died delusional and brokenhearted all the same. He had been a haunted man.

KIM KITSURAGI — He could have died in loving arms, in these very arms right now.

DIRAE — Kim looked into his eyes. Gazeless eyes were easy to impose one's gaze on. They did not see him anymore. He had dreamt of somebody else. 

KIM KITSURAGI — Oh Harry, and so had she.

DIRAE — He drank and sunk, this drowned drunk. He drank in the world and then drank from the southbound road of oblivion, found at the bottom of incalculable pithoi. 

ΕΡΙΝΎΕΣ — Πίθοι που περιέχουν κατάρες. Πίθοι των μαστίγων. 

DIRAE — He drowned the pithoi. Wishing to drown himself with them. He sunk and drowned behind the mirror of his eyes, where all of creation was reflected. And then in his very own reflection on the mirror of the water.

GENIUS LOCI — Waves, rising and falling. Washing away sand. Bodies washing up. Faded and cracked mosaic on the ground, partly ripped out by the tide — an artwork, made puzzle, weathering wind and tide and never seeing its lost pieces again, and on it, a human, made corpse.

DIRAE — He was haunted, and a haunting he himself became.

------

Ἐρῑνύες (Erinyes) = The Furies

πίθοι (pithoi) = jar (storage of wine, oil, grain, other provisions), grave-jar (ritually, a container for a human body for burying, from which souls escaped and necessarily returned); Pandora’s “box”

Πίθοι που περιέχουν κατάρες. Πίθοι των μαστίγων. (Pithoi pou periéchoun katáres. Pithoi ton mástigon.) = Jars containing curses. Jars of scourges. (source that cause great pain and suffering or destruction)

[womenfrommars]

Debunking myths about Jewish history

1. ‘’Ashkenazi Jews are white Europeans’’

Let’s start with the claim that’s been propagated the most on the Internet. The claim is that some ethnic Jews are indeed Middle-Eastern (e.g. Sephardi and Mizrahi), but that the Ashkenazi Jews specifically are (white) Europeans. This claim simply isn’t supported by scientific evidence.

The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring nonJewish communities during and after the Diaspora.

(...)

The m values based on haplotypes Med and 1L were ~13% ± 10%, suggesting a rather small European contribution to the Ashkenazi paternal gene pool. When all haplotypes were included in the analysis, m increased to 23% ± 7%. This value was similar to the estimated Italian contribution to the Roman Jewish paternal gene pool. (Hammer et al. 2000)

About 80 Sephardim, 80 Ashkenazim and 100 Czechoslovaks were examined for the Yspecific RFLPs revealed by the probes p12f2 and p40a,f on TaqI DNA digests. The aim of the study was to investigate the origin of the Ashkenazi gene pool through the analysis of markers which, having an exclusively holoandric transmission, are useful to estimate paternal gene flow. The comparison of the two groups of Jews with each other and with Czechoslovaks (which have been taken as a representative source of foreign Y-chromosomes for Ashkenazim) shows a great similarity between Sephardim and Ashkenazim who are very different from Czechoslovaks. On the other hand both groups of Jews appear to be closely related to Lebanese. A preliminary evaluation suggests that the contribution of foreign males to the Ashkenazi gene pool has been very low (1 % or less per generation). (Benerecetti et al. 1993)

A sample of 526 Y chromosomes representing six Middle Eastern populations (Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Kurdish Jews from Israel; Muslim Kurds; Muslim Arabs from Israel and the Palestinian Authority Area; and Bedouin from the Negev) was analyzed for 13 binary polymorphisms and six microsatellite loci. The investigation of the genetic relationship among three Jewish communities revealed that Kurdish and Sephardic Jews were indistinguishable from one another, whereas both differed slightly, yet significantly, from Ashkenazi Jews. The differences among Ashkenazim may be a result of low-level gene flow from European populations and/or genetic drift during isolation. (Nebel et al. 2001)

Here, genome-wide analysis of seven Jewish groups (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek, and Ashkenazi) and comparison with non-Jewish groups demonstrated distinctive Jewish population clusters, each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations, and variable degrees of European and North African admixture. Two major groups were identified by principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analysis: Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews. The IBD segment sharing and the proximity of European Jews to each other and to southern European populations suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry. Rapid decay of IBD in Ashkenazi Jewish genomes was consistent with a severe bottleneck followed by large expansion, such as occurred with the so-called demographic miracle of population expansion from 50,000 people at the beginning of the 15th century to 5,000,000 people at the beginning of the 19th century. Thus, this study demonstrates that European/Syrian and Middle Eastern Jews represent a series of geographical isolates or clusters woven together by shared IBD genetic threads. (Atzmon et al. 2010)

2. '’Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of the Khazars’’

Another popular idea on the Internet, which is also associated with the alt-right, is that Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of the Khazar people, from the Khazar empire (roughly 600-1000). This culture completely died out and there are no direct descendants, so genetic testing is a bit difficult.

However, there still has been done genetic testing that confirms this hypothesis to be false.

Employing a variety of standard techniques for the analysis of population-genetic structure, we find that Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations, and among non-Jewish populations, with groups from Europe and the Middle East. No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews with populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly with the populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region. (Behar et al. 2013)

However, if the R-M17 chromosomes in Ashkenazi Jews do indeed represent the vestiges of the mysterious Khazars then, according to our data, this contribution was limited to either a single founder or a few closely related men, and does not exceed ∼12% of the present-day Ashkenazim. (Nebel et al. 2005)

3. '’Palestinians are indigenous to the land of Israel, so the Jews can’t be indigenous’’

First off, it has been established that Jews and Palestinians share the same ancestry:

Archaeologic and genetic data support that both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites, who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian and Anatolian peoples in ancient times. Thus, Palestinian-Jewish rivalry is based in cultural and religious, but not in genetic, differences. (Arnaiz-Villena et al. 2001)

If Palestinians are considered native, then so should Jews, since both descend from the ancient Canaanites.

Furthermore, the Hebrew Bible states that Philistines (’’Palestinians’’) came from Caphtor, which has been identified as modern-day Crete, an island that is part of Greece (see also Finkelstein 2002). Other contestants for Caphtor include Cyprus and Cilicia (modern-day Turkey).

Archeological evidence also supports this theory:

Modern archaeologists agree that the Philistines were different from their neighbors: Their arrival on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in the early 12th century B.C. is marked by pottery with close parallels to the ancient Greek world, the use of an Aegean—instead of a Semitic—script, and the consumption of pork. (National Geographic)

This was more recently confirmed by DNA evidence:

Now, a study published today in the journal Science Advances, prompted by the unprecedented 2016 discovery of a cemetery at the ancient Philistine city of Ashkelon on the southern coast of Israel, provides an intriguing look into the genetic origins and legacy of the Philistines. The research appears to support their foreign origin, but reveals that the reviled outsiders were soon marrying into the local populations. (...) The four early Iron Age DNA samples, all from infants buried beneath the floors of Philistine houses, include proportionally more “additional European ancestry” in their genetic signatures (roughly 14%) than in the pre-Philistine Bronze Age samples (2% to 9%), according to the researchers. While the origins of this additional “European ancestry” are not conclusive, the most plausible models point to Greece, Crete, Sardinia, and the Iberian peninsula. (Idem)

Now, this doesn’t mean that modern-day Palestinians are mostly European, as the research also found that the Philistines were mixing with the local populations. This also explains why modern-day Jews and modern-day Palestinians are genetically very similar (see above). It is highly unlikely that modern-day Palestinians are the direct descendants of the ancient Philistines.

However, the name ‘’Palestine’’ is derived from ‘’Philistia’’:

The first records of the Philistines are inscriptions and reliefs in the mortuary temple of Ramses III at Madinat Habu, where they appear under the name prst, as one of the Sea Peoples that invaded Egypt about 1190 BCE after ravaging Anatolia, Cyprus, and Syria. After being repulsed by the Egyptians, they settled—possibly with Egypt’s permission—on the coastal plain of Palestine from Joppa (modern Tel Aviv–Yafo) southward to Gaza. The area contained the five cities (the Pentapolis) of the Philistine confederacy (Gaza, Ashkelon [Ascalon], Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron) and was known as Philistia, or the Land of the Philistines. It was from this designation that the whole of the country was later called Palestine by the Greeks. (Encyclopædia Britannica)

Modern-day Palestinians are the descendants of local populations who converted to Islam due to Islamic conquest. Likewise, Jews are the descendants of local populations who left the country. Despite this, both groups are genetically related to each other. This is because Jews have been a relatively isolated group of people, since the religion of Judaism doesn’t permit interfaith marriage (unless a non-Jew converts into the faith). In other words: the fact that the Palestinians may be indigenous to the land of Israel doesn’t negate the fact that the Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel.

Our findings corroborate previous studies that suggested a common origin for Jewish and non-Jewish populations living in the Middle East (Santachiara-Benerecetti et al. 1993; Peretz et al. 1997; Hammer et al. 2000).

(...)

According to historical records part, or perhaps the majority, of the Moslem Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD (Shaban 1971; Mc Graw Donner 1981). These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistorical times (Gil 1992). On the other hand, the ancestors of the great majority of present-day Jews lived outside this region for almost two millennia. Thus, our findings are in good agreement with historical evidence and suggest genetic continuity in both populations despite their long separation and the wide geographic dispersal of Jews. (Nebel et al. 2000)

4. ‘’Well, the Palestinians were there first’’

As discussed before, the ancient Philistines from the book of Deuteronomy are said to have immigrated from Caphtor, which has been identified as island in southern Europe. The ancient Philistines have no direct descendants because they mixed with local populations. The ancient Philistines are also mentioned in the book of Genesis, which mentions they came from Egypt. According to rabbinic sources, this refers to a different people from the Philistines mentioned in the book of Deuteronomy. As discussed before, modern-day Palestinians descend from neither of these people. Palestinians maintain they are the descendants of the ancient Canaanites:

Both Israeli and Palestinian politicians claim the region of Israel and the Palestinian territories is the ancestral home of their people, and maintain that the other group was a late arrival. “We are the Canaanites,” asserted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last year. “This land is for its people…who were here 5,000 years ago.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said recently that the ancestors of modern Palestinians “came from the Arabian peninsula to the Land of Israel thousands of years” after the Israelites. (National Geographic)

As discussed, modern-day Jews and modern-day Palestinians are genetically very similar. This was again established by a recent study:

Finally, we show that the genomes of present-day groups geographically and historically linked to the Bronze Age Levant, including the great majority of present-day Jewish groups and Levantine Arabic-speaking groups, are consistent with having 50% or more of their ancestry from people related to groups who lived in the Bronze Age Levant and the Chalcolithic Zagros. These present-day groups also show ancestries that cannot be modeled by the available ancient DNA data, highlighting the importance of additional major genetic effects on the region since the Bronze Age. (Agranat-Tamir et al. 2020)

According to the Bible, when the Israelites left Egypt, they conquered the Canaanites, who were already living in the land of Israel. Joshua 10:40 mentions there are no survivors of the ancient Canaanites. However, the Bible was written much later after these events took place. The study referenced above supports the hypothesis of continuity, i.e. the ancient Canaanites were not completely wiped out by the Israelites. Instead, Canaanite culture slowly morphed into other cultures, including the culture of the Israelites. As referenced under 3., it is likely both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites.

The Bible itself also mentions the Canaanites continued to exist in Judges 3:1-3 and explains the command to the Israelites was only given to teach them warfare (not to actually annihilate the Canaanites). It is more likely the Canaanites indeed continued to exist:

We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age. (Haber et al. 2017)

To put it differently, in the land of Israel, the ancient Canaanites were not destroyed, but rather subsumed by the Israelites. The Jews have maintained this culture and tradition. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have not. Palestinians didn’t maintain any tradition from the ancient Canaanites. Instead, their culture, tradition, and language can be traced back to the Hejaz, a region in the west of modern-day Saudi Arabia. This is also the birthplace of the religion of Islam.

Indeed, up until recently, Palestinians were not even called ‘’Palestinians’’. Instead, they were referred to as ‘’Palestinian Arabs’’. A report from 1946 gives more insight. In Chapter VI, titled ‘’The Arab Attitude’’, it states the following:

The Committee heard a brief presentation of the Arab case in Washington, statements made in London by delegates from the Arab States to the United Nations, a fuller statement from the Secretary General and other representatives of the Arab League in Cairo, and evidence given on behalf of the Arab Higher (committee and the Arab Office in Jerusalem). In addition, subcommittees visited Baghdad Riyadh, Damascus, Beirut and Amman, where they were informed of the views of Government and of unofficial spokesmen.

Stopped to the bare essentials, the Arab case is based upon the fact that Palestine is a country which the Arabs have occupied for more than a thousand years, and a denial of the Jewish historical claims to Palestine.

This report states Arabs have lived in Palestine ‘’for more than a thousand years’’, referring to the Islamic conquest of Palestine in the 7th century. Clearly, Palestinians are identified as Arabs here, by Palestinian leaders themselves.

Another report from the same year supports this view:

In addition to the question of right, the Arabs oppose the claims of political Zionism because of the effects which Zionist settlement has already had upon their situation and is likely to have to an even greater extent in the future. Negatively, it has diverted the whole course of their national development. Geographically Palestine is part of Syria; its indigenous inhabitants belong to the Syrian branch of the Arab family of nations; all their culture and tradition link them to other Arab peoples; and until 1917 Palestine formed part of the Ottoman Empire which included also several of the other Arab countries. The presence and claims of the Zionists, and the support given them by certain Western Powers have resulted in Palestine being cut off from other Arab countries and subjected to a regime, administrative, legal, fiscal and educational, different from that of the sister-countries. Quite apart from the inconvenience to individuals and the dislocation of trade which this separation has caused, it has prevented Palestine participating fully in the general development of the Arab world.

You can see the story changed overtime. The Palestinian claim to Canaanite blood is an ad hoc claim that is meant to predate the Jewish presence in Israel.

In general, the Palestinian claim to Canaanite roots also erases the fact that the Israelites drove the Canaanites out of Israel, to Lebanon. The remaining Canaanites were subsumed by the Israelites. Therefore, if Palestinians are native to the land of Israel, and if they descend from the Canaanites, then they must also descend from the Israelites. However, Palestinians attempt to bypass the Israelite link, claiming to not descend from the Israelites. I believe they likewise deny that the Jews descend from the Israelites, claiming that instead the Jews are just Europeans.

This wouldn’t be the first time the Palestinians changed their narrative either. They used to claim they descend from the ancient Philistines, referring to Genesis 21:34 as proof:

And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for a long time. (New International Version)

As such, the Palestinian PM argued they have lived in the land of Palestine before Abraham. (Video is in the article.)

As explained earlier, the Philistines immigrated from southern Europe, and the Palestinians are not directly descended from them, given the DNA evidence. The ancient Philistines have disappeared as a people, because they mixed with local populations. That also explains why modern-day Palestinian DNA is not mostly European, as would be the case if they directly descended from the Philistines.

Recommended further reading

‘’Are Jews Indigenous to the Land of Israel?’’

‘‘Jews and Arabs Share Genetic Link to Ancient Canaanites, Study Finds‘‘

‘‘The Canaanites weren’t annihilated, they just ‘moved’ to Lebanon‘‘

[lailoken]

‘Heathen Survivals’

“In Scotland, as in other parts of the British Isles, the conversion to Christianity was largely led by foreign saints who were of noble birth or royal descent. They converted the tribal kings who then forced the new religion onto their subjects. For this reason the process was resisted by the lower class, and even by some members of the ruling power elite. The Chronicle of Lonecast recorded that as late as the 13th century Father John, the parish priest of Inverkiething, seduced young village girls so they danced wantonly around an ithyphallic stone idol. He allegedly 'stirred them to lust and [to] use filthy language' while leading a procession around the churchyard holding aloft a representation of 'the male organ of generation' on top of a pole. At Loch Mournie in the 17th century the local minister condemned his practitioners for continuing to practice the pagan ritual of sacrificing bulls. Twenty years later Hector Mackenzie of Mellon, his two sons and his grandson were summoned before a session of the kirk (church) elders to explain why they had killed a bull on their farm "in ane heathenish mannere". In his defense Mackenzie told the elders the sacrifice was an attempt to recover the health of his sick wife. It was not recorded who the animal was sacrificed to.

In 1650 a woman was called to account before the kirk elders for killing and burying a lamb under the threshold of a house, a magical liminal place. She told them she had sacrificed one of her flock of new-born lambs, the healthiest, so the rest would be protected from disease. When Isobel Young was charged with sorcery in 1692 for burying a live ox, her son told the court it was common husbandry practice and nothing to do with witchcraft. In a program broadcast at Hallowe'en 2009 the local radio station on the Isle of Lewis mentioned a letter written by a 17th century visitor to the island calling on the laird and the church to outlaw 'barbaric customs' at that time of year. The writer said he had seen a bull sacrificed and its blood spilt on the earth and ritual bonfires blazing on every hill. (Letter from Linda Fallows to author 31.10.2009)

On the Isle of Mull disease broke out in the herds of cattle in 1767. It was decided to take drastic measures to deal with the outbreak. A need- fire was lit on a hilltop without the use of flint and by friction between two pieces of wood. 'Need' is from the Old English niedfyr and the Old German nieten, meaning 'to churn'. The fire had to be lit before moonrise and during its lighting an old man chanted an incantation. Then a sick heifer was sacrificed and the diseased part of the animal was cut out and burnt on the need-fire. The rest of the good meat was then cooked and eaten by all those present as the fire gradually burnt down.

An ancient druidic cure for epilepsy still practiced in the Highlands at the beginning of the 20th century required the sacrifice ofa black cockerel. A hole was dug near to where the patient had experienced their last fit. The bird was buried alive while an incantation was read out calling on the earth to "swallow the evil". Shortly afterwards the sufferer would recover and, it was claimed, would have no more fits during their life.

In 1909 when a farmer died on Orkney his grieving family sacrificed his prize heifer. This was said to be an offering to the hogboy or hogboon, from the Norwegian haug-bui or haug-buinn meaning 'mound dweller'. This was the Norse term for a tutelary or guardian spirit associated with ancient burial mounds. Sometimes the hogboy was believed to be the shade or earthbound spirit of a former owner of the nearby farmstead or the ancestral founder of the family concerned. They remained earthbound to watch over their property, land and descendants and to monitor the progress of the estate down the generations.

In the 18th century Martin Martin said that the inhabitants on the Isle of Lewis still performed sacrifices to an ancient sea-god called Shoni or Shoney on Hallowe'en (October 31s). They brewed a special beer and after sunset threw cups of it into the sea. Afterwards everyone went to the local kirk and sat in the pews in silence while a candle was lit on the altar. This candle had to burn down and go out before they would leave. The rest of the night was then spent in the fields drinking, eating, singing and dancing. It was believed this ritual would ensure a good crop of seaweed used as fertilizer on the fields and therefore a bountiful harvest for the next year.

In the Hebrides St Michael, the patron saint of horses, horsemen and boats, was spoken of in the 19th century as "the god Michael". On the saint's feast day of Michaelmas (September 29th), a special bannock or oat cake was baked inside a lamb's skin. It was then blessed at a special Mass by the priest and dedicated to the saint. It was also a traditional custom on the same day to hold horse races and, unusually, both men and women participated in these events.

As well as blood sacrifices there was also a folk tradition of making offerings to the genii loci, the 'spirits of a place' or nature spirits, that inhabited the countryside. In 1697 when Martin Martin was travelling through Scotland he said country people still held pre-Christian beliefs. Although they claimed to outsiders that they were God-fearing pious folk, secretly they believed the hills were inhabited by spirits and made offerings to them. These entities could appear in an instant from their natural hiding places whenever they wanted to startle a passing traveller.

In January 1657 at Cullen in Forfarshire Margaret Philp was arrested on a charge of practising witchcraft. Her servant, Isobel Imblaugh, who may have been related to Philp's husband as they shared the same surname, testified she had seen her mistress have dealings with a spirit taking the form of a talking hare. Imblaugh said she had seen Philp put out a bannock, a jug of beer and a piece of meat for the sprite and the next morning it was all gone. On another occasion the spirit-hare had allegedly entered the house through an open window and drank the beer left out for it in a bowl. In the 19th century superstitious Highlanders left offerings of milk at 'fairy hills' (prehistoric burial mounds) and standing stones for the faeries known as brownies.

Aspects of pagan moon worship also survived in folk magic and folk customs. People believed warts could be cured by a simple ritual at new moon. When its crescent was first seen in the night sky a handful of soil was taken from under the right foot of the sufferer. This was then made into a paste using the affected person's saliva and spread over the infected part of the skin. This was then covered with a dressing and left until the lunar disc had waxed to full and then waned again. It was removed when the crescent of the next new moon was seen in the sky. It was said that this procedure was always successful in removing the blemish. Unmarried women also performed a ritual at the new moon to divine who their future lovers or husbands would be. When they could see the lunar crescent in the sky they sat astride a gate or stile without any underwear on. They then recited the following charm:

'All hail to thee the moon, All hail to thee, I privy good moon, declare to me, This very night, who my husband shalt be'

Various wells and springs all over Scotland were visited until comparatively recent times for healing purposes. Many of these places were said to have specific properties to heal diseases and illnesses in a throwback to pre-Christian times. For instance any well dedicated to St Tegla was claimed to be able to cure the 'falling sickness', probably dizziness caused by fluctuating blood pressure levels. St John's Well at Balmanno in Kincardshire was frequented by parents taking their children to be cured of rickets, a once common disease caused by malnutrition. St Kilda's Well cured deafness and drinking the waters of Trinity Well in Perthshire was reputed to be able to cure even the so- called Black Death, or bubonic plague.

St Fillan's Well near Tyndwell in Perthshire was visited by those suffering from mental illness. They were first dipped in the water by their carers and then taken to a nearby chapel. Once inside they were tied up and the chapel's bell was placed on top of their heads. The patient was then left in this uncomfortable and rather undignified position overnight. When their relatives returned the next morning at dawn they were supposed to have been cured.

Another well used to try and cure the mentally ill was situated on the isle of St Maelrubla on Loch Moree in Ross and Cromarty. Near the well was a tree where pilgrims hammered coins into its trunk as offerings to the saint or the spirit of the well. There were also the remains of a stone altar on the island allegedly used by the druids to sacrifice bulls on in ancient times. When St Columba arrived in the area he reconsecrated it to the Christian faith.

People suffering from depression, anxiety, or other mental problems were rowed out to the island in boats. Just before reaching landfall they were thrown out into the shallow water and then dragged by ropes the rest of the way to the shore. Once at the well they were forced to drink the water and a piece of their clothing was cut off and hung from one of the branches of the tree. An offering of a coin was then made by hammering it into the trunk. It was said that the well's healing properties were negated when a shepherd threw his mad dog into it. This apparently caused the spirit who inhabited the well to leave.

Some of the holy wells were only potent at certain times of the year. One example was at Craigie, which only possessed healing properties on the first Sunday in May. Its waters were said to be a powerful antidote to all known diseases, malefic witchcraft and the baleful influence of the Good People or faery folk. Crowds gathered at the well and colored threads and scraps of clothing were hung on the shrubs and rocks surrounding it.Other wells were given offerings of pins, needles or coins in a far memory of the sacrifices given to water deities in pagan times.

The prehistoric megalithic monuments of Scotland still retained their special nature after the conversion to the new religion. An ancient custom of holding legal courts at stone circles for settling property and land disputes survived into historical times. The bishop of Aberdeen held one at the Ring of Peddles and a nobleman called William de Saint Michael was summoned to attend it. He was asked to explain why he had seized some property from the Catholic Church. Forty years later the son of King Robert II of Scotland held a special court at a stone circle and called the bishop of Moray to justify why he was making a claim on some land at Badenoch. This ancient custom also survived in Wales. In the 1980s a man asked a council official to meet him on neutral ground at the Pentre Ifan cromlech near Newport in Pembrokeshire to discuss a longstanding property disagreement.

Following the conversion of the pagan Scots prehistoric sites like stone circles, standing stones and burial mounds were popularly believed to be the meeting places of witches, the haunts of spirits of the ancestral dead, and the habitat of faeries, elves and goblins. One witch was seen to regularly visit a local standing stone for unknown purposes of a magical nature. Another, Helen Rogie of Lumpahana, was accused of building a cairn or pile of stones on a hilltop for the practice of alleged 'devil worship.' She was probably making offerings to, or doing rituals involving, the genii loci.

In 1649 the male witch Andro or Andrew Man was accused of setting up a stone as an idol. He was seen to perform a "superstitious ceremony", taking off his hat to bow to it. In his defense Man claimed it was only a boundary stone marking the edge of his land and the beginning of his neighbor's. This is interesting in itself as in prehistoric times standing stones were often erected for just this purpose, to divide one tribe's land from another's. Such boundary makers were also regarded as having a magical liminal significance. The kirk refused to accept Man's explanation and decided he was performing some kind of “heathenish practice". He was ordered to break the stone into four pieces.

One of the earliest recorded examples of witchcraft in Scotland was in the 2nd century CE when King Natholocus consulted a famous witch living on the sacred island of Iona. The King had just lost an important battle with a rebel army who were trying to overthrow him. He sent a messenger to the witch to ask her advice about what he should do next. Unfortunately after consulting the spirits she predicted the King would be murdered. This dastardly deed would not be carried out by one of his enemies, but by somebody close to him who he trusted.

The King's messenger demanded to know by whose treacherous hand his master would be killed. The witch gave a mocking laugh and replied; "Even thine, so shalt be well known within these few days." The man returned to court in some distress and at first he was reluctant to pass the witch's prediction to the King. He thought if he told the truth the King would put him to death. However, if he kept it secret one of the others present might tell the King anyway. Only one possible alternative was left. Just as the witch had predicted, he entered the King's bedchamber during the night and stabbed him dead while he slept.

St Patricus or Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was a 5th century Romano-British subject allegedly kidnapped by Irish pirates and sold as a slave to the king of the Dalriada tribe in Scotia. However an alternative story says that Patrick was forced to flee from his home country of Scotland to Ireland after being attacked by the witches of Dumbarton. He fled in a boat across the sea to escape them as he knew the dark sisterhood were unable to cross water. 

During the 7th century King Kenneth became so concerned at the widespread practice of witchcraft and wizardry in his Scottish kingdom that he passed a new law condemning its practitioners to death. Three hundred years later King Duffus (who reigned from 962 to 966), the son of King Malcolm I, fell ill with a mysterious malady and began to physically fade away. His physicians could not help him and they began to believe some form of witchcraft was involved in the ruler's dramatic and potentially fatal decline in health.

A few days after the King became ill word reached the court that a number of witches had been gathering nearby to magically bring his death. A young girl who worked in the royal kitchens had been overheard threatening Duffus' life. The governor of Forres Castle immediately ordered her to be arrested and interrogated about the alleged plot. She named her own mother as the head of a witches' coven casting spells against the sick King. As a result of the servant girl's confession several women including her mother were detained. They were caught red- handed in the act of roasting a wax image representing the King over a fire. Once the image had been destroyed and the witches summarily executed the King recovered his health.”

—

Scottish Witches and Warlocks

by Michael Howard

[codedredalert]

atop the wall, wisdom cries out [One Piece, Robin] -- oneshot

Robin-centric character study || 1052 words

She has the split-second to wonder if all great turning points in history are like this—destiny at the mercy of a momentous decision—

(Written for the OP Tarot Project High Priestess and Eight of Wands cards.)

High Priestess Upright: Intuition, insight, sacred knowledge, things yet to be revealed, reflection. Reversed: Secrets, information withheld, disharmony.

Eight of Wands Upright: Movement, action, alignment, abrupt changes, quick decisions. Reversed: Delays, frustration, resisting change, internal alignment.

Explanations of references in the end notes.

Warnings: canon-typical violence

(On Ao3)

===/\===

.

             (1) Lesson: A cup of water is not yours until you drink it. Likewise, knowledge.

All scholars of Ohara memorise via the method of loci, and Nico Robin, at eight years old, is no exception. Her favourite is a temple hewn from stone, a wise king's magna opus as reconstructed from academic blueprints. There, she stores the lessons she learns: a kind elderly lady still calls for the marines in the night after she's fed you; a knife in the hands of a frightened child can still slit a soldier's throat; a powerful man is still not quite immune to the intrigue of a beautiful woman.

She drinks deeply from the cup of knowledge and suffering, and two pillars form in the forefront of the temple. The first is who she has always been—the pursuit of good things, knowledge for knowledge's sake, building up, preserving, and leaving a legacy for all humanity. The other is who she discovered she was when the world government placed a bounty on her head—an immovable strength, manifesting in guile, bloodshed, and conquest.

Her surprise is only at how readily she accepts these as her foundation—the twin load-bearing columns of the woman she now is.  

.

===/\===

.

             (2) Aphorism: Scientia potestas est. (Translation: Knowledge is power.)

"Read it," demands Crocodile. Then he raises a hand to call her to pause and adds, almost smugly, "Out loud."

He thinks he's clever. Robin smiles. He's not stupid, but Robin is really,  really clever.

She hadn't intended deception when she'd first sought out the most comprehensive history of Alabasta. (Three archaic hand-scribed manuscripts and a yellowed but hardly-used guide. It was technically restricted access, though that hardly mattered in the face of Robin's devil fruit.) She had merely wanted to know—the first pillar of Nico Robin.

She recites this knowledge from memory, trailing her fingers along the runes of the poneglyph before her, retrieving the words  verbatim as she walks through the temple rooms in her mind. She fully expects Crocodile to interrupt her, to point to one word or the other and demand its meaning. She already has the textbook explanation on why translation is an imperfect art on the tip of her tongue. She doesn't get that far.

He's never been a patient man, especially when it comes to failure.

.

             (3) Quote: Death never takes a wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go.

He deals her a mortal wound and leaves her to bleed out in the collapsing tomb of this country's kings. The age-old stone crumbles and groans, weary and slow to return to dust. She closes her eyes and waits.

It's surprisingly peaceful.

.

.

             (4) Comment: As implied ibid, "life is full of surprises".               (5) Fallacy: Appeal to pity.

Straw Hat Luffy saves her and she demands 'why' but receives no answer. As she dusts herself off, she decides a fitting consequence for his unwelcome charity. She invites herself to his crew.

A strange group—they actually accept her, welcome her into their lives and their home despite being enemies three days before.

Over time, she learns that if she drops into a light doze below deck beside Nami, the next morning will come with warmth, the smell of breakfast wafting in from the adjoining kitchen, and that strange, unconditional acceptance.

.

             (6) Study: Repeated exposure to similar situations without negative stimuli result in dissociation of situation and stimuli.

.

. . . and she is . . . happy?

.

             (7) Supra (4).

.

===/\===

.

             (8) Truism: Nothing lasts forever.              (9) Quote: Only a fool can be happy.

The government finds her, as they have many times before. This time, however, she can't bring herself to offer these people as sacrifice in her place. She tries desperately to think of an alternative to the offer laid before.

She becomes the illusion of stillness, there is no stillness in her. Her mind is structure and movement all at once—the earth in revolution beneath the temple's foundation stone. Her mind moves as the celestial bodies, a million miles a minute, yet imperceptible. She is perfectly grounded as the centrifugal force tears her apart.

A lifetime ago, she was taught to smile when she wants to cry, so she smiles now. A mind built by the wisest men in history and it yields no solutions, so what use is it? What use is she? She's only good for secrets, sabotage, and smiles like sweet poison.

Even the greatest temple cannot stand forever.

.

             (10) Quote: The only way to have a friend is to be one. Nb. This implies friends are worth having. Comment: The author agrees.               (11) Quote: There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for.               (12) (Non-)issue: Hobson's choice.               (13) Principle: Occam's razor.

 .

She takes the offer.

.

===/\===

.

             (14) Policy: No man left behind.

The friends she tried to save came for her. They stand in proud defiance of the authorities that have wronged her all her life, figures of would-be legend backlit by the sun, their shadows stark and black, bridging the deep chasm she stands on the other side of, alone.

It borders on the absurd. They shouldn't have, it makes no logical sense. And yet, there they stand.

.

             (15) Quote: When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

She fails to understand and finds that for once, she does not need to know. Equally illogical hope wells up in her. (The temple is shored up, its glory to be restored. Not yet, but in the future promised.)  

"Say you wanna live," shouts Luffy, and he waits for her answer, as if he has all the time in the world. As if time itself will yield to his force of will.

It almost does. The mad rush of adrenaline blocks all noise except the rush of blood in her veins, her captain's voice ringing in her ears. She has the split-second to wonder if all great turning points in history are like this, destiny at the mercy of a momentous decision, all the world in bated breath.

She doesn't stop to wonder if she dares. The second pillar of her identity commands her to be bold.

.

             (16) Proverb: Fortune favours the bold.

"I want to live," she cries across the divide—

.

                                   —and—

.

             (17) Supra (4).

.

.

                                               —she is saved.

.

.

.

===/ENDNOTES\===

 At the risk of these notes being longer than the actual fic (I got too hyped by the thought of pseudo-academic formatting and used way too many probably-obscure references), here's helpful notes so you don't have to ask google:

 the method of loci— (loci being Latin for "places")— is a strategy of memory enhancement which uses visualisations of familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, or mind palace technique.

 magna opus— Latin for "great work", especially the greatest achievement of an artist or writer.

 aphorism— an observation which contains a general truth/ a concise statement of a scientific principle, typically by a classical author.

 ibid— a citation signal to refer to a single work cited in the note immediately preceding. The abbreviation of ibidem, being Latin for "in the same place".

 supra—  a citation signal used to refer to an earlier-cited authority. Supra is Latin for "above".

 truism— a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting.

 nb— a citation signal to draw the reader's attention to a certain aspect or detail of the subject being discussed. The abbreviation of nota bene, which is Latin for "note well".

 Hobson's choice—  A forced or false choice. It is believed that the phrase derives from Thomas Hobson (1545–1631) who ran a horse rental business in England. He rented out horses but insisted that customers took the horse nearest the stable door. The choice his customers were given was "this or none"; making it effectively Hobson's choice of horse. — (source)

 Occam's razor— Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor) is a principle from philosophy that the simplest solution is usually the best one.

===/END\===

(On Ao3) ( patreon ) ( kofi ) ( paypal )

[kurgy]

7 for Liuvo and Vex I'm in love with them,,,

hell yea lets go

7. First words vs Last words

fist words:

The setting was the same, a dingy old tavern in a dingy old town, what was different though, was the man watching him from across the bar.

Vex was currently engrossed in an arm wrestle with a burly man who bet 5 coppers he could beat him. Vex didn’t really care about being the strongest, or in this case looking the strongest like the man whose hand locked with his, but he needed whatever coin he could get, so he agreed.

The moment they started they had amassed a small crowd, cheering and whooping as their muscles flexed. He wondered how long he should let this go on, the man clearly trying as hard as he could while Vex barely broke a sweat.

He locked eyes with the man watching him. A short, thin man, with graceful curves and delicate features. A soft round face and beautiful magenta eyes that contrasted his unruly pastel pink hair. LAge red rams horns and long tail, a tiefling. He watched with a hint of awe, and when he noticed Vex watching him, he gave a smile that shone with brilliance Vex had never seen. His pink lips mouthing “win” and Vex’s heart thudded in his chest, swiftly crushing the man's hand in his and crashing it onto the splintering wooden table. He yelped in surprise, the crowd cheering and tossing a few coins Vex’s direction.

The man was defeated and Vex collected his coin. He sneered and whispered insults under his breath as he walked away, but Vex didn’t much care. It didn’t matter what people thought of him. He glanced back towards the tiefling who was now missing from his previous spot, Vex almost looked around before the man plopped himself suddenly in the seat opposite Vex, smiling across at him with an air of beauty and grace Vex wasn’t sure how to approach. He wasn’t exactly a very cultured man.

“Hello.” The man said, his voice light and delicate. Vex swallowed hard.

He grunted in response, choosing instead to count all the coins he’d picked up, keeping his eyes down cast.

“You’re very strong, aren’t you?” He said with a giggle, outstretching his hand across the table to Vex. “My name is Liuvo Loci.”

Without thinking Vex took his hand, gently holding it and bringing it to his lips as he had once done with the countless lords and ladies he’d once fought for. He realized his error when the tiefling said nothing, a look of surprise on his face as Vex released his hand. “Apologies.” He said. “Habit.”

Loci let out a cute laugh. “No, no!” he said. “It’s quite alright. Such a gentleman, I simply wasn’t expecting it is all.”

Vex cleared his throat, depositing the coins into his bag. “Is there something I can help you with?”

Loci’s smile faltered. “Yes.” He said in a serious tone. “I’m on a quest.”

Vex raised his eyebrow at the man.

“The seaside city of Khubela, along the south coast of Heton, do you know it?”

“No.” Vex answered. He didn’t know the maps well, and hasn’t been out long to know the area. If it was south, that means it was across the country. He was trying to escape Heton, after all.

“It’s an isolated community, unrecognized by the king. No, outright ignored more like.” he continued. “It’s home to a religious group calling themselves the Mae, servants of Maeyar.”

Vex wasn’t a religious man, and had no input to give, remaining silent prompting Loci to continue.

“They’re dangerous.” He said. “They steal and kill, indoctrinate all those born female into a coven, the brides of Maeyar. They’re kept separated from all others, valued only for their virginity, and once they turn 18 are taken to their shrine on an island just off shore, and sacrificed.”

Loci clearly expected something, but Vex wasn’t sure what to give him. Finally he spoke again.

“I need your help.” He said, but Vex answered before he could finish.

last words:

"NO!" Liuvo screamed, this couldn't be happening. It couldn't be. Vex was strong, he was a man of his word and his and his unwavering courage stood like steel even in the harshest of times. He always fought, he always survived, so why, now, does he stand still? Why doesnt he fight back?

Lukas held the blade up above his head, ready to strike, while Vex simply closed his eyes, ready to suffer the consequences of Liuvo's actions.

He dragged him into this, dragged them all into this. Kaerou, Syl, Arya...Vex. If it wasn't for him, the wouldn't be here. If he hadn't disobeyed his father back then, he would have stayed a bride of Maeyar, he would've been the one to die. Not Vex.

Vex would have escaped Heton. He would be free to live his life. He wouldn't be sacrificing himself if Liuvo's place.

His feet were moving, the others calling after him but he dodged their grasps as he dashed forward, screaming for Vex. Begging him to stop, to fight, to survive. Begging him not to leave him alone. Not to go somewhere Liuvo cant follow.

The sword was swinging down, the soul gem glimmering in the sunset. Once it makes contact it will all be over, you can't free a soul once trapped in the gem, he wouldn't let Vex be trapped again.

Liuvo was fast, grabbing hold of Vex's arm, noticing the lack of strength he was exerting and using that to his advantage, planting his feet firmly, and using every ounce of strength to wrench Vex backwards, and away.

He fell back in surprise, opening his eyes as their gazes locked together. "Loci?"

Tears spilled from Liuvo's eyes as fear gripped his heart. But Vex was safe.

"I'm sorry." he said, and then he screamed. It was a pain he'd never experienced before, searing hot and an unbearable pressure from his back as the blade cut clean through him, although leaving no wounds.

He could feel it, his very essence being pulled from his body, leaving him cold like the dead as he fell to his knees, dead eyed and gasping, gathering the last of his strength as he looked deep into Vex's wide eyed stare, fear and dread over taking the mans face as Liuvo chocked out his last words.

"please...forgive me."

[babylon-crashing]

Lakes, lochs, ponds, and pools are bodies of water surrounded by land that can be either fresh or brackish. Some are manmade, others natural, and some are actually springs. In some cases, they have an underground source; in other cases, they are filled with rain water or seasonal runoff. Wales, Scotland, and England are full of tales of ghosts, witches, magic, and monsters that inhabit these calm bodies of water ...

If you visit a lake on a stormy or cloudy day, you can use the water to work weather magic. Lake water can be used to exorcise baneful enchantments, illness, and spirits. The most important thing to remember about lake water is that it can be used for many things, especially sympathetic magic; like attracts like.

Practitioners traditionally circumambulated a lake three times before entering it to bathe for healing reasons. Offerings, frequently of bread or cloth, were left on the shore or in the water. Coins and other gifts were given to the lake spirit or genius loci. In Dumfriesshire, near Drumlanrig, healers approached a loch called Dhu Loch, or Black Loch, and threw a piece of clothing over their left shoulders into the loch, then carefully gathered water from it without letting it come in contact with the ground. They then turned around sunwise and went home without looking back, as that would break the charm. (page 88)

... from, Annwyn Avalon. Water Witchcraft. (Weiser Books. 2019)

[skepticaloccultist]

The Problematic Idea of Old Spirits

There is an often misunderstood concept that the idea of tradition is "old". We look back across history and we perceive centuries ago as a "long time" in the past. And to us, mere mortals bound in physical flesh, time is a never ending river on which we drift. Centuries seem essentially untouchable in their antiquity, millennia unknowable eons.

But the earth is much older than we can imagine. Its crust has broken and changed a thousand thousand times and more. Mountains worn to plains, oceans lifted to landmasses, the earth is in a constant, albeit slow, upheaval. Reinventing itself with each passing day over billions of solar revolutions.

We speak of "old spirits" and "old gods" as if they inhabited the same physical form that we are bound to, when they do not. The 'genius loci' of the landscape exist without the shroud of flesh, are not bound to our sense of linear time. They are timeless beings, existing at once across the breadth of change in their habitats. The planes of existence in which they inhabit do not conform to our understanding of the physical world.

Occultists rarely describe the mechanics of magic, of the science of spirits and the practice of the craft. Most simply do not understand the wiring under the board, those that have achieved some understanding often lack the formal language in which to describe what it is we do and with whom. The rest are clueless cosplayers pantomiming at a magic they can not comprehend.

When we speak of the spirits of the landscape we often limit our understanding of these beings to the culturally appropriate stereotype we have been raised to understand. Religions have long given explanations for various spirits, ranging widely in accuracy, though all religions share an absolute lack of any ability to define their cosmology in terms that can be measured scientifically.

Yet magic and its practice is not religion. It is in many ways counter to religion, for unlike religious thinking which is dogmatic and circumscribed, the way in which the magician/witch thinks must be flexible and adaptable. Capable of rearranging itself in order to perceive beings and ideas that exist beyond the scope of our cultural understanding of reality.

Time, to these spirits in which we traffic, does not occur. Through countless stories from the shores of every continent we are regaled with how time is warped when dealing with these beings. How we may think we have had a ten minute exchange with them, but in fact it was a week. How a weekend spent in the sunless lands turns out to be a decade or more.

We must give up notions of tradition, of "old ways", as nonsense. It is not to say others didn't practice these things in the past. It is to say that if we are to understand our experiences with these things, that the form of the landscape is more relevant than the perception of time, that the perception of reality we hold is a mishmash of culture/language/and the physical variables of our bodies, that we are merely manifestations of similar beings to these landscape spirits yet bound in flesh, limited to the three dimensions of perceived reality, we must abandon the confining terminology that represents age, time, and tradition.

The thing we call tradition is alive and evolving every day. The practitioners of the path die and are replaced by more of us each generation. Yet the path always exists, like a river, in all places. At the mouth, along its length, and in its headwaters simultaneously. Thus are the spirits with which we communicate not bound by the irredeemable sense of the "here and now."

In our forthcoming periodical FOLKWITCH we intend to shed light on the various facets of this thing called landscape magic. Its inhabitants and the mechanics behind our communication with and understanding of these spirits via the very landscape in which they exist.

[twistedhaloau]

Twisted halo deepdive #3: Cloud 9 studios

Setting

Layout

The studio is nothing like it once was, in a place that was once bustling with busy animators, infighting voice actresses, overworked musicians, and corporate espionage there is now only the dark and quiet embrace of the ink. The studio is slowly falling apart however has now become more of a cursed location rather than a tangible place within our real world. In fact it exists within yet outside of our dimension due to the tampering and influence of the Ink machine dwelling within it.

As mentioned above the studio is falling apart, the walls are leaking, ink is tucked away behind every wall almost always ready to burst through the boards and planks, hallways have been flooded with viscous ink and artificial light is hard to come by. However oddly enough even without electricity the artificial lights run and the walls and planks will always repair themselves much like a wounded body will eventually scab and heal. The place is an eldritch location, a genus loci if you would and it is almost incomprehensible. It contains hallways that twist into impossible architecture, stairways that lead to nowhere, impossibly large oceans of ink and expansive caverns, and an overall structure that is continuously shifting and changing which aids in eating away at the sanity of those who dwell within it. 

Within the studio residents from the ‘real world’ will eventually lose their comprehension of time and space, there are barely any working clocks down in the studio and after a while residents begin to lose track of how many days and nights they have spent within the accursed place. Even if they find a working clock time works very differently in the studio in that it speeds up and slows down in an unpredictable pattern that is extremely disorienting to residents. 

The studio is constantly building upon itself and for this reason you can never truly map out the studio, it is making additions every minute and if you were to reach the edge of the studio you would see planks of wood slowly forming more spaces for you to explore. The studio has grown so massive that it could be considered a country or small world in of itself.

History

Founded in the years just after the Great War, Drew Stein Studios was the creation of two young men with a pencil and a dream, Joey Drew and Henry Stein. In those early years, the studio was hardly known, an old run down office building indistinguishable from the hundreds around it in the outskirts of the city, and in a like fashion, the short animations the duo produced barely scraped the American Zeitgeist of the time. Every now and again a short little animated ad for floor cleaner, or some odd soda, just enough to keep the lights on, and not much more.

That is until the duo captured lightning in a bottle, with the creation of the Bendy cartoons. With the people’s eyes on them, for good or for ill, the duo soon found themselves with a team beneath them. That small team eventually expanded further, to in-house musicians, voice actors, editors and revisionists, the whole nine yards. The studio was no longer surviving, but thriving. 

It thrived, at least, until the book was thrown at them. The Good Book. 

Despite the family friendly antics of the shows seminal character, those of the cloth felt it’s portrayal of one of hells own was bordering on an outright endorsement of satanism. How could a demon, dancing or otherwise, have a kind heart? It was downright unchristian.

They say lightning never strikes twice; and if you asked them, it wouldn’t be clear who caught it this time, but the creation of Alice Angel was not only the solution to their problems with the church, but elevated their ratings to new heights. Her high marketability and decrying of the flapper lifestyle made her an instant favorite within the households of Americans across the nation. Alice soon overshadowed her demonic counterpart, who had taken a role closer to antagonist to the lovely angel, his mischievous streak now no longer being all in good fun. 

With the rapid success and acceptance of their new poster girl, the studio re-branded to Cloud 9 Studios, and production of Alice Episodes kicked into full swing. The Angel herself had been voiceless up until this point- Joey and Henry never agreeing on an actress that could fill her roll- until one miss Susie Campbell, a bright, kind, exuberant girl with the chords to match, chipped in hers. The Angel now had a voice to call her own, and the people fell in love with her all over again. 

But the golden age wouldn't last forever. The economic crash soon to come would put great strain on the studio. They never failed to put out an episode, but everyone felt the scarcity. Tensions grew between the original duo, who now regularly squabbled over matters of business and contributions to the studio’s flagship product. Joey was well known to harass his employees, and though Henry kept his partner in check, the magic of the studio slowly began to bleed out. Even so, not one soul left, whether through loyalty, fear of economic ruin, or fear of Joey's wrath. 

That was, until the second Great War called the young men of America to a foreign shore. The studio hemorrhaged half its work force throughout those months, and had no choice but to replace its staff with a newly emboldened mass of female workers, of which most notably was Allison Pendle. Another voice actress, who’s station was not so lofty as the Lonely Angel herself, but was nonetheless one she took pride in. 

But even this didn't seem to put the studio right again. 

Joey and Henry, over irreconcilable differences, had officially split. Joey had changed. The man was always a notorious womanizer, a common trait for the time, but he went beyond that in the absence of his friend. The quality of the animation dipped in this interim, and while the show still remained popular, it was definitely on the decline. And with it's fall came the rise of Joey’s true colors. 

Abuse, harassment, degradement. It was as if Joey had made it his personal goal to make everyone as miserable as possible. The details of what the employees suffered at the hands of their boss are not well known, but what is, is that poor Susie received the worst of it. So, one day, with a heavy heart, she left her station, and the angel behind. 

With that, the studio’s fate was sealed. The show became lifeless, a husk of its former self. The last trace of heart and soul bled out, and nothing remained to take its place. When ratings dropped, the studio scrambled to squeeze as much money out as possible. Blatant product placement, soulless shilling, the whole nine yards. But it was too late. At least, so it seemed.

Those men from the church had the right of it. Joey had dabbled in the occult, and believed he had finally found a solution. This was his creation, his great work. He could not, would not let the show, the studio that he built with his own two hands go quietly into the night. The characters lacked heart? They lacked soul? Well, what if they were given one? Not one that mattered, oh no, certainly not his. A janitor, a messenger. Someone who wouldn’t be missed. Like peeling away layers of skin, Joey would tear out the workers soul, and feed it into his ink. 

Cloud 9 Studios exploded into popularity once again. The characters seemed livelier than ever, as if they could almost jump off the screen and shake your hand. And while the public was slow to accept her, Allison Pendle was a serviceable replacement for the darling dancing angel. Joey Drew had done it again. 

And yet still it wasn’t to last. His miracle ink soon ran dry, and the characters diminished once again. One life was not enough. Two lives and the cartoon lasted a week. Ten lives and it lasted two. The human soul has diminishing returns, and there was only so much blood he could spill in a day. What could he be missing? Maybe they were all into something. He replaced the soul, in every sense, but these coffin stuffers were the dregs of the studio. They lacked heart. Real love for the show, for the characters. For THE character. 

When he called upon Allison, she answered. Perhaps it was in fear of angering her taskmaster, perhaps a promise slipped off a forked tongue. Whatever the case, Allison made for fine Ink. The weeks passed by, and months after that. With her, the show never lost its luster. Sure there was talk when the angel fell silent, but that was the way of things in the business. The show was at last truly saved. No more lives need be taken. 

But… what of the studio? Sure, it was lucrative beyond measure… but Joey was an old man. Not terrible so, but age wore heavy on his brow. Disease had taken root, and grew within him as an inverse tree. What would become of the studio when he was gone? He built it with his own hands, with his dream and his dream alone. Who would take over when he’s gone? Who could carry on his legacy? Would he be forgotten, his studio turned to rot? No one could stand to the challenge, this he knew. No one was an equal to Joey Drew. In that moment, as he lamented the failure of his cells, he was struck with inspiration. He could breathe life into the pages, he could transfer soul into the inert. His ink had the power to make living that which never lived. What could it do to a person? 

The first experiments were failures, but not without promise. The inken blobs little more than insults in the vague shape of man. But, they did not seem to die. Stomp them, slash them, hack them apart. They would simply retreat into the ink. There was still something missing. The conversion was imperfect, the soul was diminished in the transfer, there was little to sustain the creature spawned. Quantity over Quality was the simple answer to a simple question. 

The machine was the complicated answer. A terrible engine meant to grind the sediment of one's being, with an equally terrible efficiency. Constructed with the help of a dubious contractor, one by one employees were fed into its pipes. Out of fear they willingly, and unknowingly, walked into the slaughter. The creatures that took shape finally had form, a form that delighted Joey. Alice Angel, his greatest success. They were fractured, of course, broken by the trauma of splintering, of a hundred souls swimming in piecemeal. But Joey would be different. Joey would be master of the well. He would rise in the ink. 

Those employees that remained were gathered into the chamber of the machine, and, as the black Ichor spilled forth, each and every one drowned in the ink, their essence siphoned down, deep into the terminus, where Joey sat upon his throne. Joey had defeated death, with not but a pencil, with not but a dream. Or so he believed, as his act of mass murder bore sweet fruit. 

Only the miscalculation of a single handyman, one pipe that could not bear the strain of a thousand lives, burst beneath the pressure. The process was incomplete. Human souls and ink spilled out across the hardwood floor. 

As Joey, in ink clad, was overcome by the flood, one soul saw out through the chasm of screams. One soul saw him weather the viscous current. He was imperfect, and yet the ink still bent and flowed to his will. What could a perfect being accomplish?