#the locus of control of the universe is NOT within me

[kerryweaverlesbian]

magic isn't real. 'intentions' and thinking and saying or not saying words in particular orders does not influence the general luckiness of ones future. there is no foreshadowing in real life.

[naisilla]

The Emperor's New Muse Part .5

Odyssey Kayn x Reader

content: coming up with a 'how to save the universe' plan, some "bonding" time with the members, and finally a more definite backstory to our character.

A/N: Apologies for the delayed post this should've come out earlier but I've been struggling with a bit of writer's block because I am making this whole story up as I go gliding by the seat of my ass or however that saying goes. Anyway, I hope it's worth the wait! Knowing that at least a few of you are invested really helped me keep going so thank you all!!

And that's how you came to become the newest recruit member of the Morningstar, and also how you found out about the universe's impending doom.

You gave Sona a judgemental side eye, like... really? You plan on saving the universe with these people!? The Templar, however, ignored your stare and continued to look out the window with her back turned to you. Looking as mysterious as ever.

Currently, the Morningstar was blindly traveling through deep space. Destination: unknown, as long as it was as far away from Kayn and his locus armada. So far there was no sign of them on your tail, you could relax for now.

"So what's the plan? on saving the universe?" you ask looking towards the front of the ship where Jinx was goofing off in the pilot's seat doing anything but actually steering the ship, Yasuo was close by at the control center holo screen.

"We're currently in the drafting stage of our master universe-saving plan" Jinx says while tinkering away at something you assumed was highly hazardous.

"Seriously? you guys don't have a plan yet? What have you been doing this whole time?" It was hard to believe that no progress had been made within the last three months. Aka the time Kayn got his hands on Rhaast, the universe's greatest threat without fully understanding it.

"It's been hard to think straight, that insane ordinal is constantly chasing us down. Every planet we stop at to stock on supplies or rest from travel is crawling with the empire's military and Kayn is never far behind." Yasuo says with a frown on his face.

It was true, you had just witnessed just how quickly the Demaxian Empire was at tracking down wanted criminals. Only, the morning star crew weren't nearly as high priority as they were targeted to be. They were just a bunch of rag-tag space pirates.

It was clear that Kayn was obsessed with getting Sona back for his personal gains. Once fiercely loyal to his emperor Kayn has become obsessed with his personal hunt, he will not hesitate to kill any who cross his path. The ordinal was slowly corrupting into something dark and consuming.

That scythe was the catalyst for all of this. According to Sona, no one knew what Rhaast truly was, but it was undeniable that he or it wasn't the "sentience of ora".

Rhaast clearly wanted to open the ora gates, but for what purpose? Immediately you figured opening the ora gate was the last thing the universe wanted. Sona confirmed from her upbringing within the templar order she had heard of a time long ago when an ancient civilization, extinct for eons, once opened an ora gate. "Annnnd they're all dead now, so it must've gone well for them."

Sona doesn't know what's actually behind the gates but she has seen visions. Visions of which none of the Morningstar or you were aware of. She saw silence. She saw the vast well of time. She saw a moment stretched into an eternity. She saw lingering stillness and glacial quiet. She saw dark stars and black suns frozen in a void of endless shadow. She saw monstrous, silent deities lurking in a corrupted cosmos.

Yet she never spoke of them, Sona was a quiet and mysterious templar after all. The only reason you believed in this religious fanatic was because you could see it in her eyes, the horror. Behind a calm and neutral expression was a gaze that carried worry and fear. Whenever you would steal a glance with the templar it was like looking into a void, one that stared back into your deepest reaches. Sona knew many things, and yet she remained quiet about them, almost as if she was uncertain about whether or not she wanted to save the universe.

You had decided for yourself that you would take charge of planning the next course of action, borrowing a tablet from Yasuo you had snuck off by yourself to figure out what exactly one was supposed to do next.

Sitting down in the saloon of the ship, you began to develop a plan. From what you now know Kayn had to be stopped, the ordinal is so obsessed with his quest for power that he's becoming unstable.

He was being puppeted by that alien scythe whose intentions were far more dire than Kayn could realize. Rhaast wanted the ora gates to be open and it was clear that whatever lay beyond that gate was something never meant to be unlocked.

You needed to stop Kayn from opening the gate, the only reason he hasn't just gone straight to the gate immediately is because he needed Sona to unlock it. Only Sona knew how to do this which means she was a highly valuable asset, good thing she was on your side for now.

Was it possible to destroy the ora gate? If you could manage that then there would be no threat of anyone opening it ever. But it was unclear as to how these ora gates worked, no one truly understood them at all that the risk of something just as disastrous happening. How would one even go about destroying something so incomprehensible?

Ok so destroying the ora gate isn't a likely option, you delete that plan from the tablet.

Looking for the whereabouts of the ora gate would be a start, that way you'd know where to go and where Kayn would be headed at some point.

According to Yasuo, Sona had told him that there were in fact, multiple ora gates in the universe. All are located throughout the furthest reaches of the universe, far beyond the darkest corners. Knowing which one Kayn would go to would be impossible to predict.

Rubbing your temples, you grunt and delete that plan route.

Let's take a step back from the end game. The ordinal Kayn, instead of trying to intercept him at the gates or destroying one perhaps we needed to go straight to the source of the problem.

It wouldn't be hard to find Kayn. He would always come to you. If you had learned anything, it was that this insane and obsessed man was smart, and calculating and when you had something he wanted, it wouldn't be long before he pounced.

You type down "KAYN" in capitols. He was now the focus of your plan. There were a few options of how you could go about this. You could be a mediator and persuade Kayn to give up his pursuit for power, Or perhaps separate him from that damn scythe. Destroying Rhaast was also a good idea, oh wait an even better idea! We kill Kayn!

Just as you were typing out that last thought you feel the weight of someone leaning onto your shoulders, their shadow looming over your head as they nondiscreetly look at your plans.

"Whatcha doing?" Jinx asks with her eyes glued to your plan's title. She snatches your tablet from your hands and brings it close to her face as she intensely stares at it.

Sighing you grab the tablet back trying to focus on forming more ideas- "He's so cool~". You snap your head, pull a face, and look at Jinx as if she lost her min- yeh she probably has already.

"Jinx, please. Anyone but him. Kayn is evil and you're...chaotic neutral." You groan realizing there's no point in reasoning with the loose cannon.

With pacifist, petty, and genocide plans crafted, you went to showcase each of them to the Morningstar crew.

Sona true to her character wanted to take the peaceful route, but even she knew negotiating with such a cruel and ruthless person held little chance in successfully de-escalating the Ordinal.

Yasuo liked the idea of taking Rhaast from Kayn, the thought of taking away his power source was enticing to the captain of the crew. Although you weren't sure if you could trust Yasuo with the sentient scythe. Not that you were assuming the captain was immoral or corrupt but, nobody should've ever come into contact with whatever Rhaast is.

Jinx and Malphite unsurprisingly wanted to go the chaos route, already suggesting which weapons would best tear down the Locus Armada and the Fractal Sheer.

"I carry enough weapons to seize a medium battle fortress!" Jinx proudly exclaims standing before you. You simply nod and half smile "uhuh that's great jinx" your voice passive agressively giving off an annoyed tone.

She grins and dumps her current arsenal onto your lap, you jump in your seat. Did she seriously just throw live weapons at you?! "These are my best friends!" She says picking up the rocket launcher from your lap. "This is fishbones! I modeled him after Sharkpedos, He's always worried about me." You blink stunned.....he?

As she's showing him off she uses one hand to move the jaw of the rocket launcher up and down like a puppet. "I'm worried Jinx maybe we should try a less dangerous option, I like (Y/N)'s other plan to take the scythe instead." Jinx rolls her eyes at the rocket launcher she's ventriloquizing before throwing him to the side, followed by the sound of it crashing onto the ground.

"Yeh he can be a bit of a buzzkill, anyways this is Pow-pow!" Jinx says now picking up the mini-gun making your lap feel a ton lighter. She spins it around and you duck as the barrel comes towards you before shooting a desperate look to the others- oh, Sona and Malphite are gone and Yasuo is reading some book clearly unbothered. Great you're stuck with Jinx then.

"I love your plan to destroy the locus armada! let's shoot them up and watch their bodies fall together!" Jinx says playing on a raspier and higher-pitched voice for the minigun. Jinx then pulls out a lightning projector "This is Zappy she's my stun gun, she's more unstable than I am! Watch this!" Jinx then suddenly tosses the gun onto an empty couch like how one would casually throw their phone on a bed, only, when the gun softly bounces onto the lounge chair it explodes. And Jinx had thrown that on your lap just earlier...

Yasuo gives Jinx a glare flicking his eyes up from the novel he was currently reading, his nose still buried between the pages.

Not giving a single shit about Yasuo Jinx continues to introduce you to her "friends" such as the Flame Chompers, which are curiously sculpted in the likeness of Malphite's head; and the Super Mega Death Comet, an interstellar portal lifted from one of Jinx's old mining jobs.

"You should see the ship! I heavily modified the Morningstar with so many offensive weapons!" Jinx says happily grabbing you by the arm and dragging you on yet another tour of the Morningstar. And after an hour of being overstimulated with interacting with Jinx..... you were still unsure as to what half of Jinx's modifications do.

Finally, Jinx had gone off to wherever leaving you to mentally recover by yourself. So far regarding your "Plan" no one could agree on which one to go with, personally, you were leaning to the separate Kayn from Rhaast. You could kill Kayn if it comes to it. But between the two it was Rhaast that was the true danger.

That would not be an easy feat, Kayn alone was an intelligent and strong fighter. His eyepatch and left arm are clearly ora augmentations making him a superhuman. He now wields a sentient alien scythe and he has a whole personal army at his disposal.

There was no way the five of you could possibly win against him in a fight, it would take some grand scheme to outsmart the Ordinal and gain the upper hand.

Something crawls along your shoulder, and immediately your mind races to some giant ugly alien spider, you see how messy the interior of this ship is, clearly no one is cleaning the ship so of course it would be crawling with pests. You go back and forth on whether to scream for help or smack the bugger into smoosh.

To your relief, a familiar face peeps up at you. Warm round eyes that contrasted with its cool blue and green complexion and a goofy wide smile beamed up at you. "Hey little guy" you coo at the lizard. "How did you get here?"

The lizard chirps and clicks seemingly happy as you scratch its head like how one would pet a cat. "Let's return you to Yauso"

After walking through the layout of the ship you finally found Yasuo, sitting by a large window on a red carpet with incense and candles laid around him, his nose buried in a novel.

His eyes flick up from his book to look at you. "Ah I see Space Lizard has found you".

"Space Lizard? don't tell me that's what you actually call them."

Yasuo shrugs his shoulders. "We really couldn't decide a name for it, we'll probably never will. We plan to sell it for a profit"

"You're selling them!?"

Yasuo shrugs again. "That is why we stole it from a maximum-security nature reserve." Your jaw drops.

"You actually managed to pull that off?" Yasuo nods with a smug smirk on his lips. It was impressive but a part of you just felt for the innocent animal, he seemed happy and healthy here it felt wrong to give him away for money. Your thoughts get interrupted by bubbles floating towards your face and popping upon contact with your nose.

Surprised you turn your gaze and see that Space Lizard is blowing bubbles. You're unsure as to whether to be amazed or grossed out but by Yasuo's smile, you can tell that at least he secretly likes it.

"So you guys are really space pirates huh?" you ask as Space Lizard climbs down your arm and onto your outstretched hand.

Yasuo nods with a proud smile. "Yep, real space pirates". He turns a page in his novel. "It's a lot different from my old life, I would've still been living a life of luxury if it weren't for the framing of my brother's death."

Right, you remember Yasuo briefly mentioning that earlier. "I'm sorry for your loss" Yasuo merely shakes his head dismissively. Lowering his book.

"Don't worry about it, I'll get justice for my brother" he said quietly, his gaze turning downward. You couldn't help but feel drawn to his pain and frustration. Despite the cocky and careless personality he usually exhibits, he was clearly hurting.

Yasuo pauses and shifts in his seat "I should've been there, if I would've been there then-"

You nod your head not letting him finish but acknowledging the obvious truth, he'd been beating himself up for this incident for a long time, and from the way he spoke you could tell it was a huge weight on his shoulders.

"The empire screwed me over, they blamed me for something I didn't do. My brother had grown distant with me in recent years, He was off being a hero while I was spending my nights in a drunken daze, aimlessly wandering between high-end nightclubs. To him I was a disgrace, someone to be ashamed of, I wish I could prove him wrong. But now I'll never get the chance."

Space Lizzard had jumped down from your cradling hand and moved over to where Yasuo was sitting to perch himself on his shoulder, nuzzling its head against Yasuo's face as if to comfort him. A small smile returns to Yasuo's face.

"I know I'm not the only one who's on the run from the empire, You mentioned how you managed to escape punishment for sabotaging a locus armada ship back. But that's all we know about you, what made you turn against the empire?"

A sour snort escapes you, a bitter taste returning to your mouth. "I've hated the empire since the beginning" Yasuo looks at you confused.

"Why is that? What happened?"

You swallow down the rising pressure as the memories of your past rush back. "I used to live on one of the few planets that weren't claimed by the Demaxian empire. Of course that wouldn't last long. They always have to keep expanding, taking planet systems by force."

You recall your old home planet "My homeland was beautiful, it was bountiful with nature and wildlife and we lived in harmony with the land, we were a lot more primitive with technology. We didn't have much need for it. I was just a little girl when they arrived...."

"The Demaxian Empire was brutal, they came in guns blazing, declaring our planet and its land as their own. They had no regard for the lives and cultures they were erasing. Our planet was the gateway to the Outer Rim, a new frontier that the Empire craved. To them, our way of life was primitive and unacceptable.

I still remember them bringing their warships into my planet's orbit, demanding we bend the knee to them. When we refused. They bombed our planet, destroying much of our infrastructure and reducing our population to just a fraction of the original number.”

The look in your eyes was one of a faraway expression, there was a slight tremble in your hands and your whole complexion had paled.

"When the smoke cleared there was nothing left. The land was leveled out, the villages were torn to the ground and all of the plant life, and the animals were gone. They came in and wiped out our entire people in the name of expansion and development. But left after draining everything of Ora. Apparently our planet wasn't good enough to colonize. All that slaughter and ruination for nothing!" you say clenching your teeth. 

"The nightmare didn't end there however. With our home now uninhabitable we had to leave, some submitted themselves to the empire and lived lives of servitude and slavery. Others like myself fled to distant planets like Piltron and Zaun. Desperate to find stability in living." By now you had seated yourself next to Yasuo who surprisingly was listening to your rambling, his novel was closed and by his side, and Space Lizard while perched on his shoulders looked at you intentively.

"I had nothing to my name, no ID, no money, no family. I was used to living off the grid with no influence by technology and government systems. Without any ID it was an unimaginable pain in the ass to intergrade into society. No vital records office could obtain any identity due to my home planet never being a part of the Demaxian system. I couldn't get a stable job or any proper schooling, I was left to figure shit on my own because Demaxia doesn't have time for my kind.

I had to struggle with low-end jobs that paid under the table, there was no dignity in my line of work not when the turnover rate of a nuclear powerplant worker was so high, and more people were dying of negligence faster than new hires were acquired. I was fortunate, if you could call it that to be a mere janitor in Zaun's power plant system. But that didn't come without prejudice from the locals.

I didn't understand why, I still don't, we were all in the same boat and yet I was treated differently. Over time I learnt the ways of the streets and how to survive them. I kept my head down, I minded my own business. Despite being surrounded by thugs and gangs I managed to stay out of it by blending in. Of course, there were a few times I messed up" You say, pulling up your shirt, showing a couple of scars along your torso. Scar tissue in round formations pulled taught towards the center, the classic sign of a healed bullet wound. There were others too, a couple of singular lines dragging across your torso also, the result of getting shivved.

"I was never going to escape the pits of the lower class, no matter how many hours I worked, how many side jobs I had, despite living as frugally as one could survive on. I could never escape being a blue-collar in the slums. The empire's system is so rigged that if you want to live comfortably you have to be born into it. It's so unfair! So many people suffer in poverty and filth because the stupid king is more focused on colonizing more and more planets with stupid rich assholes who don't even spare a thought for the people who keep their obnoxiously pampered lifestyle afloat!!!" Yasuo jumps back a little at your heated outburst towards the end, his usual calm and suave demeanor now tense with a startled wide eyed stare.

It was clear he felt awkward about being called out for his old lifestyle. You sigh and shake your head.

"I'm sorry I don't mean to take it all out on you specifically, I've never really talked about any of this and I suppose all those years were bottled up for too long." Yasuo's gaze softens, his hand goes towards his belt and he passes you a flask, you raise a brow questioningly but take his offering and take a swig instantly feeling the distilled alcohol kick you in the throat with a powerful punch. You cough and sputter looking at him shocked.

"What the hell is this?"

"Pure distilled Polmos Spirytus Rektyfikowany Vodka"

"...." You stare at Yasuo silently before dowing another swig, then another. Letting out a gasp and wiping your lips with the back of your hand as the satisfying burn of the alcohol soaked itself into your system.

"Better?"

"Better."

You noticed the velocity of the ship shifting and turning into the landing procedures, curiously you looked to Yasuo.

"Whats happening?"

Yasuo shrugs "Looks like Jinx is taking us to a pit stop."

Part six: Here

A/N: So I've had this idea as headcannon for ages but never had the chance to implement it into the story so free lore content below!:

Piltron and Zaun is a rather unique planet in my Odyssey story. Piltron similar to its Runeterra counterpart (Piltover) is the higher class planet to Zaun. Piltron is a hollow planet that exists as an outer shell that hovers around its inner planet Zaun. To access Zaun you need to travel between the tectonic plates of Piltron via colossal industrial elevators. Piltover isn't a perfect shell that entirely encases the inner planet Zaun but is cracked into multiple districts that are tethered to its center Zaun via cybernetic tendrils to avoid floating out of Zaun's atmosphere. If you've seen Transformers: The Last Knight you'll know that I've taken inspiration from the scene of Cybertron being spacebridged into Earth's orbit (see image below).

Zaun Center, like the earth's core, is made of a uranium deposit that is harvested through fission (nuclear power plants) that power both Zaun and Piltron through the cybernetic tendrils that also hold the two planets together. Zaun is made up of the working class while Piltron homes the more upperclass citizens. Piltron and Zaun are allied with the Demaxian Empire and stand as the main manufacturing planet of the weapons and technology of the empire.

Despite being a part of Demaxia, Piltron, and Zaun have the least amount of empire enforcers due to the trust between them and the core worlds. Plus because of the unstable levels of radioactive activity in Zaun, most enforcers don't hover around for long. Sure in this age we have radioactive protection suits but Zaun is seen as dirty to rich snobs.

[adamworu]

Have you seen Codex Entry's video titled "The End of Evangelion Is (Not) A Happy Ending - An Analysis & Critique"? She makes a lot of interesting points in that.

First things first, it keeps hitting me how numerous the death threats were that GAINAX got. The contempt of man, followed by a disgusting lack of consequence has always been a central theme in Evangelion. Seeing just how painful the imitation of art to life is feels like opening old wounds. They were instrumental in EoE's conception among other things (Anno putting his feelings into film being another). The quick flashes of ire in written form really helps give EoE that unshakable bitter, pessimistic feel.

(warning for strong personal talks of suicide under the cut)

Anno's mental health worsened at the main series' end. People weren't satisfied with how it ended. They drove him to the point of contemplating suicide. If Anno's reflection of himself manifest through some of the characters, this makes Shinji's state before the infamous sequence even more haunting.

The interviewer asked 'What stopped you?' to which Anno replies 'The prospect of pain. I didn't mind dying I didn't want it to hurt.'

I didn't want it to hurt.

As someone with fluctuating highs and lows of mental health, this struck me more than I'd like to admit. During my periods of contemplating ending it all, one of my greatest fears was the pain. That death isn't the peaceful embrace from it all. That your lasting regrets die with you as your loved ones would eventually find you and become horrified at the fleshy shell that once had a name. You hear their faint screams, your strength is all but gone, and that flickering light within you is snuffed forever.

'Faced with the reality, I stopped.'

I think there's something even more painful about the end. There is no pain, but was lies on the other side...if anything?

EoE asks what if self-loathing becomes our being? Who you are affects your very being. And Shinji's self-hatred seeps into the cast, then the whole world. Considering Shinji's status as an audience surrogate, this sort of thing is very much aimed at the audience, especially those targeting Anno and GAINAX.

I personally don't think, however that EoE is an inverse to EoTV (series end). I do agree with her (Codex Entry), however that EoE is the horrifying reality of if the wrong person turns their back on humanity. EoE is more the explicit version on how humanity came to be in Instrumentality. I still wouldn't call it pessimistic even after all these years. EoTV sees the characters with more self-fulfilled arcs in the very end. There's a sense of catharsis from cast and viewer alike from having climbed a mountain of epiphany and acceptance. EoTV feels more convenient, albeit not unnaturally so.

EoE is more explicit with Shinji's flaws. They stare him in the face with no hesitation. These fears are far uglier and portray him less favorably. Less sympathetically. He views the girls and women around him as how they'd be of benefit. His ire isn't just about the realization that they're people with feelings and complexities deserving of empathy. It's also that those girls and women can as well as do hold the right to exist without him. He sentences the whole world to metaphorical death by way of relinquishment of the AT Field due to his own insecurities. His locus of control is viewed externally. His deterministic point of view harms everyone around him. The train scene is shown here and it parallels his talk with Leliel in episode 16. He blames his reality rather than hold himself accountable.

This is the importance of 'What is your hand for?' It's a gentle nudge into the prospect of free will. It's not just a doctrine of freedom, but one that argues that you are culpable.

My one and only pet peeve with the essay is the confusion of happiness and positivity multiple times throughout. EoE isn't happy, but it is positive. If we were to look at EoE as its own universe rather than a metatext, it is intensely depressing. It tells you that with your hands you can better the world around you. With the fact that it's self-aware considered, it acts as a cautionary tale, that intense self-loathing and disdain serves not just to poison you, but others. We don't all have the ability to damn the human race to metaphorical death until to bring them back because we don't exist. Shinji is understood in Codex' video to be an audience surrogate to great detail. EoE is the existence that did not want to be. Rather than being nihilistic and ireful, it grabs the audience with trembling fingers, saying 'For the love of God, be empathetic. It won't kill you! You are ruining everyone around you with your contempt for outside agency and your arrogance. Please...!'

End of Evangelion is Nyquil. It tastes strong and it tastes bad. Everyone needs bad tasting medicine if they want to get well. So drink the damn medicine.

[thequeenskeep]

Chamber of Reflection🪞

Incompatibility

“Fear is the mind killer. It is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn my inner eye to see its path. Where fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” -Frank Herbert, Dune

Every person I’ve ever met has been a reflection of me. They have possessed my best and worst traits. They brought out the monster and the angel within me, and broke me down to my most vulnerable self. Reflection and introspection are the most daunting tasks we experience as humans. They are fundamental principles of self mastery and energetic alchemy, an initiation of your will; and can often elicit a feeling of cosmic horror.

Most believe that manifestation is the act of willing a new image into reality. However, the image is already present. It is reflected to you everyday. Manifestation is about locating the image in the chaos of creation. Identification begins with compartmentalization. Our mentality and actions are the only thing we have the ability to influence; therefore it is our greatest responsibility. Focus your energy on strengthening and cleansing your mind. Defocus from all elements hindering you from identification of Self in creation. Your new reality will cost your old one.

Intuition is produced by our nervous system. Nervous system dysregulation is a result of suppression and displacement. It disrupts our intuition. Nervous system regulation does not equate to being unfeeling or neutral. Everything we experience is simply energy. Proper utilization of intuition requires identification. We must feel everything to the fullest extent for potent accuracy. Without this skill we can be easy manipulated and dissuade from our truth.

You are the mirror. Life is the simulation of your mind. A mirror is incapable of seeing itself, so the Universe puts things in your path intending to reflect you back to yourself. As the mirror, our locus of control is minute. We can only feel and respond to images, we cannot affect them. When you look around, try to discover yourself in your surroundings. Do you like what you see?

[tawakkull]

ISLAM 101: SPIRITUALITY IN ISLAM: PART 115

The meaning of Tasawwuf

Part 10

So far we have spoken about Tasawwuf in respect to Islam, as a Shari‘a science necessary to fully realize the Sacred Law in one’s life, to attain the states of the heart demanded by the Qur'an and hadith. This close connection between Shari‘a and Tasawwuf is expressed by the statement of Imam Malik, founder of the Maliki school, that “he who practices Tasawwuf without learning Sacred Law corrupts his faith, while he who learns Sacred Law without practicing Tasawwuf corrupts himself. Only he who combines the two proves true.” This is why Tasawwuf was taught as part of the traditional curriculum in madrasas across the Muslim world from Malaysia to Morocco, why many of the greatest Shari‘a scholars of this Umma have been Sufis, and why until the end of the Islamic caliphate at the beginning of this century and the subsequent Western control and cultural dominance of Muslim lands, there were teachers of Tasawwuf in Islamic institutions of higher learning from Lucknow to Istanbul to Cairo.

But there is a second aspect of Tasawwuf that we have not yet talked about; namely, its relation to Iman or ‘True Faith,’ the second pillar of the Islamic religion, which in the context of the Islamic sciences consists of ‘Aqida or ‘orthodox belief.’

All Muslims believe in Allah, and that He is transcendently beyond anything conceivable to the minds of men, for the human intellect is imprisoned within its own sense impressions and the categories of thought derived from them, such as number, directionality, spatial extension, place, time, and so forth. Allah is beyond all of that; in His own words,

“There is nothing whatsoever like unto Him” (Qur'an 42:11)

If we reflect for a moment on this verse, in the light of the hadith of Muslim about Ihsan that “it is to worship Allah as though you see Him,” we realize that the means of seeing here is not the eye, which can only behold physical things like itself; nor yet the mind, which cannot transcend its own impressions to reach the Divine, but rather certitude, the light of Iman, whose locus is not the eye or the brain, but rather the ruh, a subtle faculty Allah has created within each of us called the soul, whose knowledge is unobstructed by the bounds of the created universe. Allah Most High says, by way of exalting the nature of this faculty by leaving it a mystery,

“Say: ‘The soul is of the affair of my Lord’” (Qur'an 17:85).

The food of this ruh is dhikr or the ‘remembrance of Allah.’ Why? Because acts of obedience increase the light of certainty and Iman in the soul, and dhikr is among the greatest of them, as is attested to by the sahih hadith related by al-Hakim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,

“Shall I not tell you of the best of your works, the purest of them in the eyes of your Master, the highest in raising your rank, better than giving gold and silver, and better for you than to meet your enemy and smite their necks, and they smite yours?” They said, “This—what is it, O Messenger of Allah?” and he said: Dhikru Llahi ‘azza wa jall, “The remembrance of Allah Mighty and Majestic.” (al-Mustadrak ‘ala al-Sahihayn, 1.496).

Increasing the strength of Iman through good actions, and particularly through the medium of dhikr has tremendous implications for the Islamic religion and traditional spirituality. A non-Muslim once asked me, “If God exists, then why all this beating around the bush? Why doesn’t He just come out and say so?”

The answer is that taklif or ‘moral responsibility’ in this life is not only concerned with outward actions but with what we believe, our ‘Aqida—and the strength with which we believe it. If belief in God and other eternal truths were effortless in this world, there would be no point in Allah making us responsible for it, it would be automatic, involuntary, like our belief, say, that London is in England. There would no point in making someone responsible for something impossible not to believe.

But the responsibility Allah has placed upon us is belief in the Unseen, as a test for us in this world to choose between kufr and Iman, to distinguish believer from an unbeliever, and some believers above others.

This why strengthening Iman through dhikr is of such methodological importance for Tasawwuf: we have not only been commanded as Muslims to believe in certain things but have been commanded to have absolute certainty in them. The world we see around us is composed of veils of light and darkness: events come that knock the Iman out of some of us, and Allah tests each of us as to the degree of certainty with which we believe the eternal truths of the religion. It was in this sense that ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab said, “If the Iman of Abu Bakr were weighed against the Iman of the entire Umma, it would outweigh it.”

Now, in traditional ‘Aqida one of the most important tenets is the wahdaniyya or ‘oneness and uniqueness’ of Allah Most High. This means He is without any sharik or associate in His being, in His attributes, or in His acts. But the ability to hold this insight in mind in the rough and tumble of daily life is a function of the strength of certainty (yaqin) in one’s heart. Allah tells the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in Surat al-A‘raf of the Qur'an,

“Say: ‘I do not possess a benefit for myself or harm, except as Allah wills’” (Qur'an 7:188),

yet we tend to rely on ourselves and our plans, in obliviousness to the facts of ‘Aqida that ourselves and our plans have no effect, that Allah alone brings about effects.

If you want to test yourself on this, the next time you contact someone with good connections whose help is critical to you, take a look at your heart at the moment you ask him to put in a good word for you with someone and see whom you are relying upon. If you are like most of us, Allah is not at the forefront of your thoughts, despite the fact that He alone is controlling the outcome. Isn’t this a lapse in your ‘Aqida, or, at the very least, in your certainty?

[mmikmmik2]

It is interesting to me to interpret One/One-One and Amelia as, thematically, explorations of the tension between "people need to be willing to change and take responsibility for their actions" and "people's behavior is often affected or even controlled by forces that they do not have the capacity to personally change".

Infinity Train portrays people as products of circumstances outside their control: their world, their species, their mortality (or lack thereof), the home environment and family dynamics they grew up with, prejudices and oppression they face within society, and so much more. The writing acknowledges that people's most harmful behavior and worst decisions often are evoked by specific contexts, not their fundamental natures. But ultimately the show is about personal growth. Personal choices. Personal responsibility. Characters are allowed to be hurt or angry with the world, and interpersonal relationships are important in every season, but character arcs that are framed as "successful" or triumphant always have a major moment or moments where protagonists own their behavior and make an internal choice to do what's right for themself. Stuff like all three Olsens together constructing a new and healthier family dynamic, or Min and Ryan finding community with other Asian musicians, is largely outside the scope of the show.

Whether it's One saying it's up to passengers to help themselves or One-One thinking the train "fixes" passengers, the true conductor focuses on individuals improving themselves and/or becoming improved and treats the train like a neutral growth medium. He doesn't seem to understand that passengers need to engage with their lives outside the train to grow (if only emotionally), that the train ruins lives by taking people away from their families and homes and jobs, and that the train itself is a context in which denizens and passengers live - a context that can actively bring out the worst in some passengers.

Amelia won't work on herself or engage with her everyday life or accept responsibility for her actions. As Conductor she insisted the only way things could get better was a complete return to her old life, refusing to grieve, ignoring that 33 years of misery and violence had changed her into someone who no longer belonged in that life. Amelia kept scrabbling for excuses for herself in Book One - happiness was impossible in a universe without Alrick, and she became Conductor because One wouldn't help her, and she kept hurting Tulip because Tulip kept interfering and provoking her. But when she did calm down and hesitantly implicitly admit she was wrong, it was as pushback against the idea that she could still get better.

So, you can think of the true conductor and the false conductor as bad takes about the core theme of the show, i.e. personal growth and responsibility, from opposite ends of the same spectrum. Placing too much responsibility and culpability on people as individuals; refusing to be responsible for actions taken as an individual. Casually wrenching people away from their support systems and putting them in danger; refusing to construct a support system or engage in any kind of self-care.

Anyway, to go out a bit on a limb - this works pretty well with the seasons in which each of them has been more prominent.

Tulip needed to figure out the parts of her life that really were her responsibility and under her control, the risk and uncertainty she had no choice but to live with, and ways to be happy and satisfied within those boundaries. That kind of recalibration of the locus of control isn't the fundamental core of Min and Ryan's problems the way it is for Tulip, but it's still a big part of what the guys had to learn. Appropriately, Books One and Four had fairly equal narrative importance for One-One/One and Amelia.

Lake's problems are overwhelmingly due to the world around them and the way people treat them - they could and did develop as a person, but there's only so much growing they could do as a traumatized child in a hostile environment. Hence One-One, symbol of cheerfully callous disregard for their emotional needs, appears as a Book Two antagonist.

Grace and Simon, while they very much did not receive a fair lot in life, desperately needed more than anything to take a long hard look at their own terrible behavior and grow up. The Book Three conductor appearance was Amelia. Who had been kind of working on self-improvement since Book One, but was still largely an embodiment of self-centered, self-pitying stagnation - exactly the attitude that Grace rejected as she took responsibility for her actions and worked to change.

This definitely isn't the only meaning I'd read into the false conductor vs true conductor relationship, and Amelia and One/One-One definitely play many different narrative roles throughout their appearances, but I do think it's an interesting angle.

[distinctlywhumpthing]

Apart 2: Talking is overrated.

Whumptober No. 2 - TALKING IS OVERRATED garotte | choking | gagged

CW: Suicidal feelings, manipulation, shock collar, electrocution, dehumanization, captivity, Whumper POV, explicit language.

@alittlewhump, thanks for being my devoted beta-reader and muse.

Previous — Masterlist — Next

June 13, 2011

The silence.

It’s not only about Emma—none of it is. It’s just as much about me. That shouldn’t be a surprise. You know what I am, what I’m capable of, where I fall on the spectrum of divergence (insert whichever word is most comfortable for you beforehand). On my side of the scale, it’s almost a requirement to be some kind of narcissist. However, this means something different to me than it does to others with similar predispositions. I can see why some appreciate the bouquet of sounds they can arrange or feel pride in painting a masterpiece in flesh and blood. I can’t say I hate either but working externally obviously has limits, is limited.

I could have told her talking was overrated because it was.

I could have told her silence was eternal, it’s the sound at the end of the universe. It’s all that will remain. It’s holy in itself and even better that it comes from someplace sacred.

Her soul had been mine from the beginning, just as mine was inherently hers.

Her body was soon to follow, she’d given me her life with both hands.

It was her mind that would take everything to become mine but it would be worth every sacrifice she had to make.

“Emma, come here.”

She looked up from the book she was looking at but not reading, curled delicately in the armchair in the corner of my office. With some effort, she got to her feet and crossed the room. She was still not quite back to full strength but was getting there. Timing was crucial. The solitary confinement, after the rest, collapsed her. Blank, frozen, waiting. A gaping black hole that would consume anything and everything it was given and never be satisfied. I couldn’t let that go on forever. She wouldn’t be able to handle the destruction.

As soon as she was within arms reach, she had her hands on me, gripping my forearms, pulling me closer. Seeking warmth and pressure and skin-on-skin.

I lifted her up to sit on the edge of my desk so we were face-to-face and brushed her touches away. “Stop that. I need you to focus.”

Her chin trembled but she folded her hands in her lap, equally hungry to please. Her wide eyes searched my face.

“How are you feeling?”

Emma looked down. “I don’t know.”

But I did. “Oh, Emma.” I dipped my head to catch her gaze and when I straightened she followed, like a magnet, unable to break away. “You don’t want to die anymore but you don’t want to live either. Hm?”

She nodded, face a little blank, but eyes heavy and full as they held mine. She was empty, starved, weak.

“There’s nothing left for you to hold onto, aside from me.”

Tears started running down her cheeks, shining paths gleaming. She blinked through them to maintain eye contact, her brown eyes so deep.

Fuck, she was so beautiful when she cried, especially in this broken state.

I balled my hands into fists in my pockets. “You need to find your strength again. We both know it’s there. But instead of being forced to turn it outward, giving it to others like you’ve had to do your whole life, you need it for yourself. It’s your locus of control.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” she whispered, voice breaking on the last word.

I had to clear my throat. “I’m going to help you, Emma. I’m going to give you something to control. I know you’re strong enough. You’ll be so perfect, Emma.”

She blinked at me slowly. “Really?”

I reached for her face and she leaned forward to meet my hands. I brought my forehead to hers, wallowing in the warmth of her eyes this close. “You’ve always been perfect to me, Emma.”

Her fingers found my shirt and she gathered handfuls of the fabric, pulling it taught across my back. A grounding, neutral pressure. Without even meaning to she always found ways to make this easier for me.

She smelled so sweet as I traced her hairline and temple with the tip of my nose. I kissed her wet cheeks, tasting her salty tears on my lips. Hers parted, forever hopeful, warm exhale tickling my jaw, filling my nose, and becoming too much.

I held my breath and stilled. “Control, Emma.”

“Please—” she moaned, turning her mouth toward mine.

All wrong, too far.

I pulled away, stepping out of her reach before the unpleasantness could spread.

She was flushed and a little breathless. “Sorry.” There was none of the bitterness that she used to carry, now she was just left wanting and needing, desperate.

“Don’t apologize, do better. Tell me what you want.”

Emma didn’t even hesitate. “I want to feel something different. I want you to help me find strength. I want control.”

I stepped forward and took her face in my hands again. “My Emma.”

Her perfect mouth lifted into a gentle smile.

“Say my name, one last time.”

She raised one eyebrow. “Wyatt?”

“Again.”

With a little more feeling, “Wyatt.”

“Again.”

This time she knew what I was chasing. “Wyatt,” she purred, from deep within her chest. A moan, a whisper, a sigh. Possessing me with the very utterance of my name, like it wasn’t even mine, or anyone else’s to use and belonged to her alone.

I sighed, the air shuddering out of my chest. I waited out the pleasant shivers staring into her eyes. “Thank you.”

She smiled again.

I walked around the desk and put the collar on her from behind, locking her in with the small black key. When I returned to stand in front of her, she didn’t even look surprised.

She was incredible. I had been expecting maybe a little disbelief, if not full-on betrayal, but she was searching my face, already deeply focused. Just a hint of that mesmerizing fear.

“Do you understand how this works?”

Emma opened her mouth to respond then closed it and nodded. It would be hard not to miss the two small prongs resting against her throat.

“Good.” I ran my fingers over the soft leather again.

She swallowed under my touch. The collar was perfect. It sat flush—because it was custom-made—against her smooth skin, the interruption only making her neck look longer. It was thin and subtle. Honestly, I’d paid an exorbitant amount of money to avoid any bulkiness and it was worth it. She looked perfect in it.

Emma was watching me closely. Her expression had changed to one of anticipation. I knew that she was likely wanting to bite the bullet to see what she was up against rather than be surprised later.

I pulled the remote out of my pocket and showed it to her.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head but there was fear behind her bravado.

I laughed. “We’re going to have to work on that attitude.”

Emma grinned at me. Challenging, defiant, so delicious.

My pulse sprinted in my chest. I held my breath and waited.

“Fuck off. You love it.” She rushed through the words, eyes widening as the electricity ran through her for the first time.

“Ow.” Another shock. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Fuuuuuckk!” Third shock, each stronger than the last. Her face twisted, angry and afraid.

“Take it off!” she cried. Fourth. She gripped the desk and stopped breathing as it tore through her. Her eyes were alive with pain.

I wasn’t breathing either.

“Wyatt, pl—” Five. Tears ran down her cheeks and she reached for me with trembling hands, shaking her head.

Emma sobbed and got a sixth shock, her back arching.

I caught her before she fell off the desk.

As soon as she could move again she wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my chest. It was enough to muffle her sobs so that the collar didn’t register them.

I held her close and stroked her hair. “You are strong enough to do this.” I tilted her face up to mine.

She was still out of breath, still crying, still pleading with her eyes. But underneath it all, she was beginning to find what she needed.

“It’s all about control, Emma.”

Previous — Masterlist — Next

@gearbee @whumpy-writings @writer-reader-24 @deluxewhump @no-whump-on-main @maracujatangerine @whumptakesthecake

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Qualia

My latest Locus Magazine column is "Qualia," and it argues that every attempt to make an empirical, quantitative cost-benefit analysis involves making subjective qualitative judgments about what to do with all the nonquantifiable elements of the problem.

https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/

Think of contact tracing. When an epidemiologist does contact tracing, they establish personal trust with infected people and use that relationship to unpick the web of social and microbial ties that bind them to their community.

But we don't know how to automate that person-to-person process, so we do what quants have done since time immemorial: we decide that the qualitative elements of the exercise can be safely incinerated, so we can do math on the quantitative residue that's left behind.

We can automate measurements of signal strength and contact duration. We can do math on those measurements.

What we *can't* do is tell whether you had "contact" with someone in the next sealed automobile in slow traffic - or whether you were breathing into each others' faces.

The decision to discard the subjective *is* subjective.

When the University of Illinois hired physicists to design its re-opening model, they promised no more than 100 cases in the semester and made unkind remarks about how easy epidemiology was compared to physics.

Within weeks, the campus shut down amid a 780-person outbreak. The physicists' subjective judgment that their model didn't need to factor in student eyeball-licking parties meant that the model could not predict the reality.

The problems in quants' claims of empiricism aren't just that they get it wrong - it's that they get it wrong, and then claim that it's impossible for anyone to do better.

This is - in Patrick Ball's term - "empirical facewash." Predictive policing apps don't predict where crime will be, but they DO predict where police will look for criminals.

Subjectively discarding the distinction between "arrests" and "crime" makes bias seem objective.

40 years ago, the University of Chicago's Economics Department incubated a radical experiment in false empiricism: the "Law and Economics" movement, which has ruled out legal and political sphere since Reagan.

Law and Econ's premise was that "equality before the law" required that the law be purged of subjective assessments. For example, DoJ review of two similar mergers should result in two similar outcomes - not approval for one and denial for the other.

To this end, they set out to transform the standards for anti-monopoly enforcement from a political judgment ("Will this merger make a company too powerful?") to an economic one ("Will this merger make prices go up?").

It's true that "Is this company too powerful?" is a subjective question - but so is "Will this merger result in higher prices?"

After all, every company that ever raised prices after a merger blamed something else: higher wage- or material-costs, energy prices, etc.

So whenever two companies merge and promise not to raise prices, we have to make a subjective judgment as to whether to trust them. And if they do merge and raise prices, we have to subjectively decide whether they're telling the truth about why the prices went up.

Law and Econ's answer to this lay in its use of incredibly complex mathematical models. Chicago economists were the world's leading experts in these models, the only people who claimed to know how to make and interpret them.

It's quite a coincidence how every time a company hired a Chicago Boy to build a model to predict how a merger would affect consumers, the model predicted it would be great.

A maxim of neoliberal economics is "incentives matter" - and economists have experience to prove it.

The Chicago School became a sorcerous priesthood, its models the sacrificial ox that could be ritually slaughtered so the future could be read in its guts. Their primacy in models meant that they could dismiss anyone who objected as an unqualified dilettante.

And if you had the audacity to insist that the law shouldn't limit itself to these "empirical" questions, they'd say you were "politicizing" the law, demolishing "equality before the law" by making its judgements dependent on subjective evaluations rather than math.

That's how we got into this mess, with two beer companies, two spirits companies, three record companies, five tech companies, one eyeglasses company, one wrestling league, four big accounting firms - they merged and merged, and the models said it would be fine, just fine.

These companies are too powerful. Boeing used its power to eliminate independent oversight of its 737 Max and made flying death-traps, and then got tens of billions in bailouts to keep them flying.

What's more, these companies are raising prices, no matter what the model says. The FTC knows how to clobber two companies that get together to make prices higher, but if those companies merge and the two resulting *divisions* do the same thing, they get away with it.

The only "price-fixing" the FTC and DoJ know how to detect and stop is the action of misclassified gig-economy workers (who are allegedly each an independent business) who get together to demand a living wage. In Law-and-Econ terms, that's a cartel engaged in price-fixing.

That means Lyft and Uber can collude to spend $200m to pass California's Prop 22, so they can pretend their employees are contractors and steal their wages and deny them workplace protection - but if the workers go on strike, *they're* the monopolists.

In Law-and-Econ land, the way those thousands of precarious, overstretched workers should resist their well-capitalised bosses at Uber and Lyft is to form a trade association, raise $200m of their own, and pass their own ballot initiative.

As I wrote in the column: "Discarding the qualitative is a qualitative act. Not all incinerators are created equal: the way you produce your dubious quantitative residue is a choice, a decision, not an equation."

There is room for empiricism in policy-making, of course. When David Nutt was UK Drugs Czar, he had a panel of experts create empirical rankings for how dangerous different drugs were to their users, their families and wider society.

From this, he was able to group drugs into "drugs whose regulation would change a lot based on how you prioritized these harms" and "drugs whose ranking remains stable, no matter what your priorities."

Nutt was then able to go to Parliament and say, "OK, the choice about who we protect is a political, subjective one, not an empirical one. But once you tell me what your subjective choice is, I can empirically tell you how to regulate different drugs."

Nutt isn't UK Drugs Czar anymore. He was fired after he refused to recant remarks that alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than many banned substances. He was fired by a government that sat back and watched as the booze industry concentrated into four companies.

These companies' profits are wholly dependent on dangerous binge drinking; they admit that if Britons were to stop binge drinking, they'd face steep declines in profitability.

These companies insist they can prevent binge drinking, through "enjoy responsibly" programs.

These programs are empirical failures. The companies insist that this is because it's impossible to prevent binge drinking.

So Nutt made his own program, and performed randomized trials to see how it stacked up against the booze pushers' version.

Nutt's program worked.

It was never implemented.

Instead, he got fired, for saying - truthfully - that alcohol is an incredibly dangerous drug.

The four companies that control the world's booze industry have enormous political power.

So here we have the failure of Law-and-Econ, even on its own terms. Instead of creating an empirical basis for policy, the Law-and-Econ framework has created global monopolies that capture their regulators and kill with impunity.

That's why it's so significant that Amy Klobuchar's antitrust proposals start by getting rid of the "consumer welfare" standard and replacing it with a broader standard: "Is this company too powerful?"

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/06/calera/#fuck-bork

Image: OpenStax Chemistry https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Figure_24_01_03.jpg

CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

[aces-to-apples]

Applefic Masterlist

Sorted by wordcount within fandom, with summaries, chapters, ratings, and notable tags included, all under the cut. Bundled by series when applicable.

AO3: TheAceApples

Ko-Fi: acestoapples

Up-to-date as of January 2, 2021

Red vs. Blue

“Haat Verd”, Rating: Teen, Crossover: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Words: 5980, Chapters: 2/?

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Trooper/Trooper Relationships

- Work Summary -

Barriss Offee took a right turn when before she might have taken a left, everything changes, and six years into the Clone Wars, the 501st and the 212th find themselves in a strange temple with no way out.

At the end of "Test Your Might", Caboose isn't the only one to step back out of the Testing Grounds.

“Unfortunate Luck”, Rating: Explicit, Words: 3614, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Locus | Samuel Ortez/Lavernius Tucker, Post-Season 13, Not Season 15 Compliant, Sex-Pollen, Temple of Procreation, Oral Sex, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Unsafe Sex

- Work Summary -

Somebody accidentally activates the Temple of Procreation.

Tucker and Locus reap the benefits.

“swap meet” series, Highest Rating: Teen, Words: 5130, Works: 3, Latest Work Chapters: 1/3

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Role-Swap, Simulation Trooper!Sam, Mercenary!Tucker

- Series Summary -

Prompt by Norcumi: Role swap! Locus ended up a sim soldier, and Tucker somehow ended up a merc

“Lost Relic”, Fusion AU: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Rating: Teen, Words: 1636, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Non-Graphic Violence, Implied Sexual Assault

- Work Summary -

The aftermath of a quest for a hammer and two groups of very interesting people.

“A Planet Named After A Song”, Rating: Teen, Words: 1593, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Alternate Season 11, No Chorus, Background Relationship Agent Ohio/Sherry

- Work Summary -

"Colorful Space Marines Convicted of Corruption"

It takes Carolina considerably longer than ten seconds to calm down after she sees it.

“Where Sleepy Dragons Lie”, Fusion AU: Sword Art Online, Rating: Teen, Words: 1428, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Locus | Samuel Ortez/Lavernius Tucker, dragon!Tucker

- Work Summary -

Blood Gulch Online has glitched—yet a-fucking-gain—and now Tucker is a motherfucking dragon. He's not exactly upset by this development.

“where there’s poison, there’s a remedy” series, Highest Rating: Teen, Words: 2615, Works: 2, Latest Work Chapters: 1/5

Notable Tags: Time-Travel, Alternate Season 15 Ending

- Series Summary -

Nobody notices a shimmer in the air when there’s a portal to the past and a dead man staring them in the face.

“Attentive Listening”, Rating: Teen, Words: 1237, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Locus | Samuel Ortez/Lavernius Tucker, Slice of Life, Miscommunication, Post-Season 13, Not Season 15 Compliant

- Work Summary -

@izzybutt prompted: “And that’s how I ended up standing naked on the Brooklyn Bridge on Christmas Eve.”

“simmons says”, Rating: Teen, Words: 1183, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Dick Simmons/Agent Washington, Genderbending, fem!Agent Washington, Post-Season 13, Pre-Season 15, Fluff

- Work Summary -

Two nerds doing nerd things.

“Cognitive Dissonance”, Rating: Teen, Words: 724, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Humor, Original Characters, Genderqueer Character(s)

- Work Summary -

Some Federal soldiers discover what Locus looks like under his helmet and have a hard time coping.

“Deux Décimales Zéro”, Rating: Teen, Words: 665, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bilingual Tucker

- Work Summary -

Lopez Dos.0 doesn't speak Spanish, and neither does Tucker.

“fluffy and sweet”, Rating: General, Words: 598, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Franklin Delano Donut/Lavernius Tucker, Post-Season 13, Pre-Season 15, Coping Mechanisms, Off-Screen Character Death

- Work Summary -

Some things you don’t just get over, and people have a lot of different ways of dealing with trauma.

“Are you drunk?”, Rating: Teen, Words: 561, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Slice of Life, Freelancer Shenanigans, Pranks and Practical Jokes

- Work Summary -

@randomalfonso asked: “if you’re still up for the short fics, how about York and Wyoming with the drunk one?”

“missed connections (and other tragedies)”, Rating: Teen, Words: 285, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Agent Carolina/Agent York, Time-Travel, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Bittersweet

- Work Summary -

Sometimes the universe gets things out of order.

“burning love”, Rating: Teen, Words: 231, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Locus | Samuel Ortez/Lavernius Tucker, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Self-Harm

Star Wars

“king of the damned” series, Highest Rating: Mature, Words: 15,710, Works: 3, Latest Chapters: 3/?

Notable Tags: CT-5597 | Jesse/Kix, CT-5597 | Jesse/Darth Maul, CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Mind Rape, Memory Manipulation, Implied Sexual Roleplay, Mind Control, Order 66, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Untranslated Mando’a, Fix-It Of Sorts, CT-5597 | Jesse Lives, Obsessive Behavior, Possessive Behavior, Weird Power Dynamics, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Trauma Bonding, That’s Not How The Force Works, Force-Sensitive Jesse, Dark Side Jesse, Enemies To Reluctant Allies, POV Outsider, Grief/Mourning, Obi-Wan’s Final Message, Mentioned Alpha-17/CT-5597 | Jesse, Tumblr Ask Box Fic

- Series Summary -

Sometimes, bad guys make the best good guys...

“Codywan Week 2020″ series, Highest Rating: Mature, Words: 10,115, Works: 7

Notable Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Concussions, Mandalorian Culture, Fix-It of Sorts, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dehumanization, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, clone culture, time-travel, Canon-Typical Awful Treatment of Clones, Discussions of Murder, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Implied/Referenced Future Rexsoka, Fae & Fairies, Changeling Cody, Discussions of Child Murder, Emperor Cody, Sith Cody, force-sensitive cody

“A Non-Comprehensive Guide To Force-Sensitivity” series, Highest Rating: Teen, Words: 9074, Works: 2

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Not A Jedi!Obi-Wan, Not A Sith!Maul, Families of Choice, Found Family, Mandalorian!Maul, Skywalker Family Shenanigans, canon timeline what canon timeline, Force Shenanigans, Tatooine Slave Culture, Referenced Satine Kryze/Darth Maul, Referenced Satine Kryze/Obi-Wan Kenobi, george lucas is a hack, dooku takes qui-gon’s place in the narrative because i like him better

- Series Summary -

Even the Force has its favorites, and sometimes it takes care of them, too.

“got me all beguiled”, Rating: Explicit, Words: 5241, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: CC-2224 | Cody/Anakin Skywalker, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Minor Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Established Relationship, Fuckbuddies, Interrupted Sex, Safe Word Use, Safer Sex, Anal Sex, Threesome - M/M/M, Getting Together, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Polyamory, Dom/sub Undertones, Light Dirty Talk, Oral Sex, Spitroasting, Face-Fucking, Finger Sucking, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Overstimulation

- Work Summary -

Commander Cody and General Skywalker don't have a relationship so much as an agreement. They're both willing to amend it for General Kenobi, though.

“wilderness”, Crossover: Stargate SG-1, Rating: Teen, Words: 5240, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: A Star To Steer By ‘verse, Star Fever, Feral & Savage Opress, Darth Maul & Vala Mal Doran, Goa’uld Atrocities, Sith Atrocities, Referenced Mind Control, Long Author’s Notes

- Work Summary -

Vala is eight years old when she meets her daddy for the very first time; his new wife glares daggers at her when he isn't looking.

She’s thirty when the leaders of the local rebellion drag her from Qetesh’s throne and spend a week beating her to within an inch of even a Goa’uld host’s life.

“Renegade”, Rating: Teen, Words: 4983, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Time-Travel, Original Clone Trooper(s), Post-Umbara, PTSD

- Work Summary -

Noun: a person who deserts a party or cause for another.

“Family Before Honor”, Rating: Teen, Words: 3505, Chapters: 2/3

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, The Deserter AU, Character Death

- Work Summary -

Desertion: an act of leaving military service or duty without the intention of returning.

“half-dozen of the other”, Highest Rating: Mature, Words: 3199, Chapters: 21/21

Notable Tags: Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Canon-Typical Violence, Clone Trooper Reconditioning, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, LARPing, Pre-Canon, Misunderstandings, Miscommunication, Kinks, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Drunken Shenanigans, Morning After, Fae & Fairies, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Strip Poker

- Work Summary -

Six sentence (and a little bit longer) stories prompted over on tumblr. Index inside.

“on your mark”, Rating: Teen, Words: 2118, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Dogma/Darth Maul, Pre-Relationship, Relationship Negotiation, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Vampire!Maul, Past Abuse, Past Dogma/Pong Krell, Discussions of abuse, Anxiety, Autistic Dogma, Stealth Sugar Daddy AU, Non-Graphic Discussions of Blood Drinking, Contracts, Magical Realism, Star Wars Rarepair Exchange Treat

- Work Summary -

Nobody calls them "thralls" anymore.

“omne trium perfectum”, Rating: General, Words: 1903, Chapters: 2/2

Notable Tags: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi/CT-7567 | Rex, CC-5052 | Bly/Kit Fisto/Aayla Secura, Polyamory, Original Clone Trooper(s), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Non-Traditional Soulmates, Happy Feet AU, Background Trooper/Trooper Relationships

- Work Summary -

The song becomes love.

“war stories”, Rating: Teen, Words: 1569, Chapters: 3/?

Notable Tags: Obi-Wan Kenobi/CT-7567 | Rex, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi/CT-7567 | Rex, Snapchat AU, Snapchat Format, Tag As I Go, Time-Travel, Bickering 

- Work Summary -

A series of stories, sometimes ongoing and sometimes self-contained, caught on holocamera by ARC Trooper Fives throughout the war.

“new romantics”, Rating: Teen, Words: 1430, Chapters: 2/?

Notable Tags: CT-5597 | Jesse/Darth Maul, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks

- Work Summary -

The many AUs of ARC Trooper Jesse and Darth Maul.

“through victory, my chains are broken”, Rating: Teen, Words: 862, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hardcase Lives, Darth Maul & Hardcase

- Work Summary - 

The Death Watch aren’t the ones who find the escape pod.

“Dab’ika Vaar’kara”, Rating: Teen, Words: 810, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Camp Half-Blood, half-baked worldbuilding, Ficlet

- Work Summary - 

anonymous asked: “19 [Summer Camp AU] and 99 [Magical Accidents] with Cody and Rex for the mashup tropes please!” @ anon, I saw your very clever request for a Camp Half-Blood AU and, obviously, I greatly approve.

“cheese and chocolate”, Rating: General, Words: 547, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Fluff, Sick Character, Tumblr Ask Box Fic

- Work Summary -

Cody has the sniffles and Obi-Wan's cooking abilities are limited, but limited to comfort food.

“blue was my favorite color (until i saw you”, Rating: Teen, Words: 401, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Dogma/Hardcase, Force Sensitivity, Force Ghost(s)

- Work Summary -

The aftermath of Umbara.

“it don’t run in our blood”, Rating: General, Words: 383, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Jedi!Satine, Duke!Obi-Wan, Mandalorian!Maul

- Work Summary -

Some things change while others stay the same.

“tentatively abandoned AUs”, Rating: Teen, Words: 4653, Chapters: 4/?

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Skyrim Fusion, Inspired by Anastasia (1997 & Broadway), Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Treasure Planet Fusion, Original Clone Trooper Character(s)

- Work Summary -

WIPs that are pretty much guaranteed to go unfinished at this point.

The Magnificent Seven 2016

“she wore it wonderfully well”, Rating: Mature, Words: 5836, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Emma Cullen/Vasquez, Post-Canon, Wall Sex, Anachronisms

- Work Summary -

The Unconventional And Wholly Unintentional Courtship Of Emma Cullen And Diego Manuel García de Vasquez.

“flux capacity”, Rating: Teen, Words: 3998, Chapters: 5/5

Notable Tags: Joshua Faraday/Vasquez, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Genderqueer Character(s), Bigender Faraday, Genderfuck, shifting pronouns

- Work Summary -

One time Vasquez decided Joanna Faraday wasn’t someone to fuck with, one time Vasquez decided Joshua Faraday might in fact be someone to fuck with, one time Vasquez decided to see if Joshua Faraday had enough room in life for another love, one time Vasquez decided that Joanna Faraday was the craziest person he’d ever met, and one time Vasquez said to Hell with it all.

Or: One introduction, three kisses that weren’t, and the start of a beautiful relationship... of some kind.

“honey, we got your disease”, Fusion AU: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Movies, Rating: Teen, Words: 3392, Chapters: 1/4

Notable Tags: Joshua Faraday/Vasquez, Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks, Original Character(s) Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Genderqueer Character(s), Bigender Faraday, Genderqueer Red Harvest, shifting pronouns

- Work Summary -

Jumanji is the bane of Joshua Faraday's fucking existence.

“taste the bright lights”, Rating: Explicit, Words: 2903, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Red Harvest/Vasquez, Post-Canon, Drunk Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Unsafe Sex

- Work Summary -

Red Harvest and Vasquez, after Rose Creek.

“gunpowder and a spark”, Rating: Explicit, Words: 1633, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Teddy Q/Vasquez, Hand Jobs, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot

- Work Summary -

Shooting guns out by yourself is a dangerous business when you're not very good and your crush is visible from space.

“strangers in the dark”, Rating: General, Words: 994, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Red Harvest/Vasquez, Time-Travel, Outsider POV

- Work Summary -

The desert has a strange magic to it, make no mistake.

“melting point”,  Rating: General, Words: 952, Chapters: 1/?

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Leverage Fusion

- Work Summary -

A collection of fusion ficlets and one-shots that otherwise won't leave my brain.

“The Ice Man”, Rating: Teen, Words: 856, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags - Red Harvest/Billy Rocks/Vasquez, Alternate Universe - Leverage Fusion

- Work Summary -

A hitter playing grifter is a bad joke.

A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms

“The Sun, The Moon, And All The Stars”, Fusion AU: Winx Club, Rating: Teen, Words: 9465, Chapters: 3/3

Notable Tags: Crack Treated Seriously, Background Relationships, Pre-Brienne of Tarth/Jaime Lannister, Lannister Family Shenanigans, No Incest, Female Friendships, Genderqueer Character(s), screw canon timeline and screw canon genealogy

- Work Summary -

When the twin heirs of Queen Joanna of the Westerlands are born, the capital planet of Solaris celebrates for nine days and nine nights: three for the princess, three for the prince, and three for each Solarian sun. Soothsayers and sibyls, fortune-tellers and prophets, all agree that the children of the Sun and Moon carry great magical power within them—one shall assuredly become a Guardian Faery of the Western Realm, and the other a great hero like those of old to bring peace to all the Magical Dimension.

On the morning that Queen Joanna’s death is announced, every light and fire in Casterly Rock is extinguished in honor of their beloved queen. It is regarded as the darkest day in the history of the Realm of the Sun. Few revelries are thrown when word spreads that their queen’s last child survives, but some brave souls whisper about the Prince of Stars, whose gentle light echoes that of his mother’s.

“canis lupus familiaris”, Rating: Teen, Words: 987, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Outsider POV, Ambiguous Time-Travel, Ambiguous Greenseeing

- Work Summary -

“Get her a dog, she’ll be happier for it.”

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

“concupisces”, Fusion AU: Fright Night, Rating: Teen, Words: 1347, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Implied Pedophile!Grindelwald

- Work Summary -

For the kinkmeme prompt:

After a new neighbor moved into the house next door, Credence discovers that he is an ancient vampire.

"Percy is a terrible name for a vampire"

“You Play (But Never Games)”, Rating: Unrated, Words: 483, Chapters: 1/?

Notable Tags: Original Percival Graves/Credence Barebone, Vampire!Graves, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

- Work Summary -

Percival catches a scent.

The Umbrella Academy TV

“look at the way (we gotta hide what we’re doing)”, Rating: Explicit, Words: 3129, Chapters: 1/2

Notable Tags: Diego Hargreeves/Vanya Hargreeves, Pseudo-Incest, Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Mentioned Ben/Klaus, Mentioned Allison/Luther, Netflix/Comic Fusion

- Work Summary -

Nothing is the same when they get back.

(One thing is the same when they get back.)

BBC’s The Musketeers 2014

“lives not lived”, Rating: Teen, Words: 926, Chapters: 2/?

Notable Tags: Ana de Austria | Anne d’Autriche/Porthos du Vallon, Original Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

- Work Summary -

Various AU ficlets.

Ch. 1: 1x02, "Sleight of Hand", canon divergence Ch. 2: pre-show canon divergence

Kingdoms of Amalur

“calcified hearts”, Rating: Teen, Words: 655, Chapters: 1/1

Notable Tags: Fateless One & Famor | Bloody Bones, Genderqueer Character(s), Neopronouns

- Work Summary -

Why struggle against Fate when it is so easily shifted?

[breesays]

THE Reflective Blog

Of COURSE I get food poisoning on my birthday. At breakfast! I won't get into detail but let the record reflect. 

It's a weird year. And I love birthday parties and themes but yo, I cannot get behind the zoom festivities. Catch ups and webinars, sure. Parties? Nah, son. Furthermore, we are quarantining so we can spend Christmas with my NEW BABY NIECE. Priorities. 

But, I have turned FORTY.  I'm not one of those people who laments about getting old. I believe words have a lot of power, so even joking about "falling apart" holds weight with the universe. Much of my unresolved anger at my Dad is about him  being “close to death” for decades. Lamenting. Warning. Sometimes, even wallowing. No "Carpe Diem." An external locus of control. 

All my mom's friends outed me on FB. "Happy 40th!" Ok, well, like only like a third of my friends knew my age before you posted that but thanks. I've been a fairly late bloomer in most aspects of my life--relationships, reading (why read chapter books when the others come with illustrations?), college, career--although marriage and having a kid at latelate-thirties feels on par for Los Angeles, eh?

Interview question I would never ask: Do you feel older? LTRR: (making that abbreviation a thing) The food poisoning may have altered this answer but Tim got it too and he is a fresh-faced 33.

All I really feel is grateful. I'm not a super ambitious person. When I was younger (youngest) I started eliminating careers before anything else--no doctor, no dentist, no cop (no blood/guts). I wanted to be a teacher until I realized they make no money. But I taught some things--PeeWee sports, TurboKick, kids bootcamp. 

At some point I just started saying "I just want to be myself, and get paid for it."  And that happened! The writing / editing / hosting combo with occasional travel and a rental wardrobe was IT. I wrote my own questions, wrote my own scripts. I found myself (my face) autoplaying while looking up articles on Rolling Stone and Consequence of Sound. 

My bucket list items have been particular and weird. But I was an embedded blogger on WARPED TOUR. In 2008! I woke up to hearing The Academy Is... sound checking. It was sweaty and grueling and incredible. AND I was on the entire Bamboozle Roadshow 2010 tour, which no one remembers but it was All Time Low and Third Eye Blind (yep) and Good Charlotte and I really wanted them to play "Festival Song" but they never did.

I got to follow the trajectory of a band I loved so much AND become friends with them. It was all luck and kindness, but I think you know a lot of shitbirds have been discovered within the “scene.” I am so grateful to have grown up with such good guys. 

(Jack Barakat is in TWO of your pictures, OK?)

I've interviewed so many interesting and inspiring people. Brandon Boyd. Emily Haines. Aaron Bruno. Paramore. Michael Franti. Kathy Griffin. Tom Dumont. Andrew WK. Pete Wentz. Soupy. Alison Mosshart. My Chemical Romance. Korn. The Pixies. Ellen Page. KT Tunstall. K Flay. All Time Low, who perpetually derail my interviews. This is by no means a comprehensive list.

I've worked with Leslie Simon and Tony Pierce and Karina Kogan and Allan MacDonell and Jennifer Schwartz and Yasi Salek (twice!) and Mark Oshiro and Elise Varnell and 5SF. I’ve had interns who became good friends.

I've been to SXSW and Sasquatch and Coachella and Bonnaroo and it was my job! 

I’ve thrown some pretty great themed parties. The proof is in the pics.

I have a husband who looks like Keanu Reeves and loves to cook, two sweet adopted cats who entertain and provide emotional support daily and a painfully adorable son who motivates me to do rediscover the world AND stay silly. 

I have books I have internet I have a mom's club I have compassionate friends and incredible neighbors. I'm healthy I'm agile I'm resourceful.

[cinaed]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Red vs. Blue Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Michael J. Caboose/Sheila, Agent Carolina & Agent Washington (Red vs. Blue), Michael J. Caboose & Leonard L. Church, Dexter Grif/Dick Simmons Characters: AI Program Epsilon | Leonard Church, Agent Carolina (Red vs. Blue), Michael J. Caboose, Sheila (Red vs. Blue), Dexter Grif, Kaikaina Grif | Sister, Dick Simmons, Agent Washington (Red vs. Blue), Agent Washington's Sisters, Locus | Samuel Ortez Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Sabrina the Teenage Witch Fusion, Developing Relationship, Magic, Miscommunication, Teenage Drama Series: Part 38 of The Best of Carolina The Teenage Witch Summary:

Miscommunication and misunderstandings abound as Carolina attends a special dinner, Church feels like a third wheel, and Simmons spends some time at the leyline.

Series summary: Carolina: The Teenage Witch was a sitcom series that aired on ABC, and then the WB network, over the course of six seasons, airing directly after its parent series Sabrina: The Teenage Witch each Friday night. Similar to its predecessor, it centers on the life of Carolina Church, a teenager who discovers on her sixteenth birthday that she’s a witch. Although a spin-off, Carolina: The Teenage Witch featured a host of original characters, with the occasional guest star and name drop from its parent show, and rare crossover episode. It also took a more serious tone, focusing on the half-mortal witch and mortal discrimination and the corruption within the Witches Council.

Notes: A self-indulgent Sabrina The Teenage Witch fusion that has gotten out of control, but I’m having fun with it!

[serious-time]

Back to the Future

Buckle up because we are taking this thing to 88 mph and making a trip to the past. We talked about how to begin in the last post and today we are going to examine that a little more and more importantly what led to this lifestyle conviction that I currently have. I'm a believer in the thought of a firm understanding of ones past is ensiential for growth and success. There's many other factors but that's a topic for another post. The first stop in this journey in time is 2010, Lacey Washington and an IslandGuy covered in Seahawks gear. I was a smiling, happy go lucky guy with the best sense of humor (in my opinion lol) yet the truth was that beyond the surface view of what the world experienced when it came to me, I was depressed, I hated my body and so many things about myself. To paint this picture, I was 296 lbs, tired all the time, inactive and unmotivated. I attempted to change those things but each time I failed because at a fundamental level I didn't understand the reasons for why I was like this. The truth was that everything I disliked about myself were symptoms of a greater problem and that was a lack of any love for myself. When the motivation is purely external it's easy for things to waver and fall by the wayside because those things can change in the blink of an eye and they rely on things outside your control to motivate you to act. One study conducted in 1998 at university of Columbia by Professor Claudia Mueller ( https://befirst.space/2019/08/08/how-to-stay-motivated-the-locus-rule/ ) demonstrated the difference and effects of being motivated by an external or internal locus of control. Meaning weather the participants believed they had control or no control over why they performed well meant the were more or less motivated. The idea that stuck out to me was the fact that when they believed that their good performance was based on their own ability to work hard they were more motivated to take on more challenging tasks that take the easy way out. The moral of the story is that don't worry about what's happening around you as much as you concern your self with what you're doing and why. If you have a firm understanding of what you wanna accomplish and why then take the time to work hard at that goal and gain your motivation from the belief and knowledge that you can do anything you want to do. I know that you can and if you're reading this then hear these words closely, you are worth it, you are capable and you can do it. Power forward and make it happen for you. In short back in 2010 I let all the outside factors control why I did what I did and I never truly achieved the goals I set out after until that came from within myself. I'm a different man today than back then but we'll need to fire up that Delorean, time that lightning strike while we hit 88mph again and travel back to the future which will take another post at another time. Until then.... I'm Islandguy and these are my thoughts.

// ........Thanks for the support, my social media links are below ❤️:

New video link:

https://youtu.be/mLxRvK6pNkc

*YT: islandguy

*SC: jkeialoha

*IG: 1slandguy

*Blog: serious-time.tumblr.com

*Email: islandguy.athlete@gmail.com

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#gymlife #weightloss #shred #transformation #summershredding #fitdad #motivation #fitness #bodybuild #keto #anytimefitness #proofinthepudding #westcoastsupplements #healthylifestyle #bodytransformation #beastmode #gains #workout #fitnessjourney #fitlife #gymrat #lift #doyouevenliftbro #sendit #HFSRU #BEASTIN (Beast+Justin=BEASTIN) #vibes #pushit #summershredding2019

@teamwestcoastsupps . Check these guys out for some good tips and help to push to your goals! Support local business!!

[rolypolywl]

Welcome to day 8!

So, today I want to talk to you about sleep.

You may or may not know this, but your sleep schedule can have a huge impact on your weight loss journey.

So let’s start with the obvious ways it affects you. As WebMD says, “When you’re short on sleep, it’s easy to lean on a large latte to get moving. You might be tempted to skip exercise (too tired), get takeout for dinner, and then turn in late because you’re uncomfortably full. If this cascade of events happens a few times each year, no problem. Trouble is, more than a third of Americans aren't getting enough sleep on a regular basis.”

And it gets worse: “Skimping on sleep sets your brain up to make bad decisions. It dulls activity in the brain’s frontal lobe, the locus of decision-making and impulse control. So it’s a little like being drunk. You don’t have the mental clarity to make good decisions. Plus, when you’re overtired, your brain's reward centers rev up, looking for something that feels good. So while you might be able to squash comfort food cravings when you’re well-rested, your sleep-deprived brain may have trouble saying no to a second slice of cake.”

And, as Shape explains, that “drunk” effect does more. “research published in Psychoneuroendocrinology found that sleep deprivation makes you select greater portion sizes of all foods, further increasing the likelihood of weight gain.”

So just in terms of sleep deprivation’s immediate results, you tend to eat and drink more, of worse things, you tend to skip exercise or activity, and you’re likely to give in to cravings of any kind. Plus, with that staying up late because you’re full thing, you’re likely to impinge on the next night’s sleep, and start a vicious cycle.

But, when you get down into your body’s systems and chemicals and hormones and things, it actually gets worse for you.

For one, there is an effect called “metabolic grogginess”. Shape references a study that says, “Within just four days of sleep deprivation, your body's ability to properly use insulin (the master storage hormone) becomes completely disrupted. In fact, the University of Chicago researchers found that insulin sensitivity dropped by more than 30 percent.”

And there’s more. Shape continues, “Hunger is controlled by two hormones: leptin and ghrelin. [...] Research published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that sleeping less than six hours triggers the area of your brain that increases your need for food while also depressing leptin and stimulating ghrelin.”

And, “When you don't sleep enough, your cortisol levels rise. This is the stress hormone that is frequently associated with fat gain. Cortisol also activates reward centers in your brain that make you want food. At the same time, the loss of sleep causes your body to produce more ghrelin. A combination of high ghrelin and cortisol shut down the areas of your brain that leave you feeling satisfied after a meal, meaning you feel hungry all the time-even if you just ate a big meal.”

What’s more, sleep deprivation can affect your metabolism. As HealthLine explains, “Your resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the number of calories your body burns when you're completely at rest. It's affected by age, weight, height, sex and muscle mass. Research indicates that sleep deprivation may lower your RMR.”

And, it can impact your exercise! Shape says, “Scientists from Brazil found that sleep debt decreases protein synthesis (your body's ability to make muscle), causes muscle loss, and can lead to a higher incidence of injuries. Just as important, lack of sleep makes it harder for your body to recover from exercise by slowing down the production of growth hormone-your natural source of anti-aging and fat burning that also facilitates recovery.”

We’ve all heard that you have to rest your muscles when you are breaking them down and building them up, and it turns out that that rest relies on sleep!

HealthLine adds, “A lack of sleep can cause daytime fatigue, making you less likely and less motivated to exercise. In addition, you're more likely to get tired earlier during physical activity.”

So you might not even make it into the gym in the first place, or complete your exercises if you do!

And, there’s a twist to this story. Psychology Today’s Dr Michael Breus pointed out two things to watch out for. Some people sleep instead of eating, doing a thing called narcorexia. He says, “Let me be clear, using sedatives to trigger weight loss—essentially by sleeping through parts of the day when one might otherwise be eating meals—is unhealthful and downright dangerous.”

And, there’s a second twist. Oversleeping is bad too! 12 plus hours of sleep a night has negative side effects too!

He says, “As with too little sleep, there is a greater risk of obesity among people who sleep too much. The risks and problems associated with oversleeping go well beyond weight gain. Too much sleep is linked to a number of health problems, including: Problems with cognition, including memory problems; Depression, anxiety, and other mood problems; Increased inflammation in the body; Body pain; Increased risks for heart disease and stroke; Greater all-cause mortality risks.”

But, getting sleep isn’t just an absence of all those negative side effects. There are positive ones too! The Sleep Doctor explains,

“Contrary to what many people think, sleep is not an inactive state. During sleep our bodies are doing lots of important work—repairing cells and tissues, restoring full, healthy function to our immune system, consolidating memories and rebooting the neural cells and networks of the brain. We’re burning calories the whole time. For a 150-pound person, the estimated calorie burn over a 7-hour night of rest is just over 440 calories. That’s a 40-minute jog on a treadmill!”

Further, the hormone melatonin and cool night temperatures are both linked to “good fats” in our bodies. There are apparently three kinds of fat: brown, beige, and white, and the first two are “good”. The Sleep Doctor says,

“In contrast to white fat, these so called “thinning fats” burn calories, help keep insulin working properly, help regulate blood sugar, and guard against obesity. Studies in mice show that animals with higher amounts of brown fat are leaner, and have better metabolic health. Research involving humans has shown brown fat is linked to lower body mass.”

That just blew my mind! So sleep does a number of good things for our weight loss plans, and our bodies in general, and too much or too little sleep does bad things.

So what can you do to get the right amount of sleep?

Well, most of these experts agree that 6 hours is too few, 12 is too much, and that 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night is the sweet spot. Obviously, some people don’t fall into this category, but most do. Teenagers, historically, have needed more like 10 hours a night, and some people biologically only need 4 or 5, because of their genetics. But most of us should be aiming for that 7-9 sweet spot.

Now, currently, I work nights, so my sleep schedule is a mess. But even when I was working a day job, I struggled with sleeping well. So I have looked into this quite a bit.

The first big thing is this: 1. Medications can cause sleep problems. 2. Sleep issues can be a symptom of other conditions, like depression, or of physical issues, like pain or acid reflux.

So first off, if you’re taking medications that might be causing it, talk to your doctor about potential adjustments. And if you have been having trouble sleeping for over a month, experts tell you to talk to your doctor about it.

Okay, serious disclaimer out of the way. Now, what else can you do about sleeplessness?

The experts tend to agree, so I’m going to compile the lists and advice from The Sleep Doctor, WebMD, HealthLine, and the Sleep Foundation.

1. Check your lights and schedule.

Our sleep cycles are controlled by our circadian rhythms, which operate on a 24 hour system. A burst of bright sunlight for 15 minutes early in the morning actually helps you wake up, setting you up to sleep at the right time. Similarly, you want to eliminate blue (electronic) light for at least an hour, though 2 or 3 would be better, before bed. In general, you want to dim your lights too, to get your body into sleep mode.

Now, if you need to be on your phone or computer after that deadline, then I suggest f.lux. It is made for mac, windows, linux, ios, and android, and you set it up to fit your schedule. It changes the temperature of the light on your device. Its great!

Along the same lines, stick to a schedule. Keep a bedtime and wake time the same every day, even on weekends. This will help your body get into a familiar cycle and make it easier to fall asleep.

Taking melatonin supplements can also help, as it is a sleep-related hormone. If your body isn’t producing melatonin at the right time, or in the right amounts, taking a supplement of 2-5 mg about a half hour to an hour before bed can help. They come in tablet form, and they also come in gummies!

Several other supplements, including lavender, Valerian, and magnesium, can help with relaxation and sleep quality too, but don’t work for everyone.

Now, as I’ve said, I struggle with this step particularly, because I work nights. So I’m already working against the sun and my circadian rhythms. So using lights to trick my brain, by creating “sunlight” in my “morning” and using f.lux to create “sunset” at my “night” is important. That and my sleep mask, to keep out the sun when I’m sleeping, is crucial.

2. Watch your intake.

Experts recommend no caffeine within 8 hours of bed, no alcohol or cigarettes within 3 hours of bed, no heavy meals within 2-3 hours of bed, and no drinks within 1-2 hours of bed.

Apparently caffeine lasts for about 8 hours, so you need to ideally stop it at least 8 hours before bedtime. Nicotine is also a stimulant, and causes similar problems. Alcohol and food both interfere with your sleep hormones like melatonin. And drinking too much (of anything) before bed can result in nighttime trips to the bathroom.

As someone who used to chug mountain dew right before bedtime in college, I can testify that drinking late and caffeine do nothing good for your sleep habits.

3. Exercise, but not too late. Nap, but not too much. Probably.

Regular exercise can help you fall asleep and sleep deeply. That said, if you exercise less than 4 hours before bedtime, MOST people get too much of a stimulant effect from it, the same as caffeine. Some studies have found that exercise later in the day doesn’t hurt, as it seems that some people are not as affected by this as others. This one is a little less clear cut than the others, but it is a good thing to check if you are having trouble sleeping. And some people found that doing something like yoga or tai chi is actually relaxing and helpful as part of a bedtime routine, unlike other forms of more strenuous exercise.

The studies into napping have had similar results to those of exercising. For some people, it isn’t a problem, but if you are having trouble sleeping, this could be a culprit. Experts recommend to eliminate naps, especially in the afternoon, if possible. If not, limit them to 30 minute or shorter “power naps”.

4. Check your bedroom space/bed.

Experts agree that your bedroom should be cool (60-70 degrees cool), free from noise or light that can disturb you. Blackout curtains or an eye mask can help with lights, and humidifiers, dehumidifiers (depending on where you live), fans, ear plugs, and white noise machines can help with temperature and noise. Even those little LED lights on your devices, clocks, and things, can be bright enough to disturb your sleep. And a partner’s snoring or tossing and turning can be the problem. One expert even says you should train your animals to stay off the bed so they don’t disturb you, but I can’t imagine convincing my baby not to curl up with me.

I will say, that my eye mask is amazing! You can get a normal one, but mine also has a gel insert, which you can chill, for when it is hot, and you can heat it, for when you’re stuffy or sore. It is glorious!

You should also have a comfy mattress and pillows. Mattresses only live for 5-10 years, and down pillows are about the same, while synthetic pillows only last about 2 years. Also, if you have allergies, your mattress and pillows might need to be deep cleaned or replaced more frequently, as they can gather those allergens. Further, a mattress that is too hard or soft, and pillows that are too thin or thick, can also cause problems with your sleep, and even after you wake, like stiff neck or back and hip pain.

Finally, your bedroom should be an inviting and relaxing space, lending itself to calming you down. And, as the experts say, your bed should only be used for sleep and sex. Don’t do work or watch TV in bed if possible.  And if you’re not sleeping, get out of bed, go elsewhere until you get tired, and then come back to bed. Don’t let your mind and body associate your bed with NOT sleeping.

I am particularly bad at this one, and it is on my list of things to work on.

5. Engage in a bedtime ritual.

For the last hour or so before bed, experts recommend turning off devices, dimming the lights, and doing a calming activity like reading or listening to calming music. Something that can reduce the excitement, stress, or anxiety from your day. Try relaxation techniques like taking a hot shower or bath (or foot bath, even), getting a massage, visualization, or meditating. I love my little foot bath! It can massage, exfoliate, everything!

About an hour or three before bed you should get away from work, stressful decisions, or things that make you anxious. If you have concerns, WebMD recommends jotting them down and then trying to let them go until tomorrow.

I used to be much better at this one, but again, since starting my new night-shift job, this has completely fallen apart. I have a small humidifier that I like, which also can make pretty, soothing, colors. It is small and wonderful!

And there are some great scents for it. Some are specially formulated for sleep, or relaxation, but others are simply helpful essential oils like lavender or eucalyptus. And you can buy sets with a bunch of them!

I also found both of those flavors - Lavender and Good Night - in sprays, which you can spray on your pillow or sheets to give you a burst of that soothing scent.

I also regularly used this meditation app, called Insight Timer.

There are meditations specifically for sleep, and you can pick ones with words or just music. These are also great for your morning wake-up, sunshine burst too. You can even create your own meditation mix. You can track your daily time and get stars for meditating so many days in a row without missing.

So those are my sleep steps:

My goal for this next week is to get back into the habit of my “nighttime” routine before I sleep, because I know this is something I’m not currently doing well with. What’s your goal for the week?

Remember, sleep is more important than you think! Share your sleep struggles and hacks with the hashtag #INeedSleep.

And please join me next time!

[judgestarling]

David Reich Resurrects Human Races & Everybody is Happy Because David Reich is Polite and Hence Not a Racist

On March 23, 2018, David Reich published an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled “How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of Race.” In this article, Reich attacks the “orthodoxy” (his word) of Ashley Montagu and Richard Lewontin on race being a social construct with no validity. He claims that the differences among the races are real and important, and that the races have been separated by 40,000 years of evolution, which he think is enough time for many differences to evolve.

Well, David Reich may be a big-shot geneticist at a very prestigious university, but his knowledge of population genetics and evolutionary biology seem to be meager at best, and his misrepresentation of the data and nomenclature can only be described as brazen. 

Let me analyze just a few paragraphs from his New York Times article.

“A recent study led by the economist Daniel Benjamin compiled information on the number of years of education from more than 400,000 people, almost all of whom were of European ancestry. After controlling for differences in socioeconomic background, he and his colleagues identified 74 genetic variations that are over-represented in genes known to be important in neurological development, each of which is incontrovertibly more common in Europeans with more years of education than in Europeans with fewer years of education.”

Well, I read the paper by Okbay et al. (2016) very carefully, beyind the title that contains the phrase “74 genes,” and I found out that only 15 genes are identified consistently across various analyses, not 74. These 15 genes explain less than 10% of the variation.

Also, the data on which Okbay et al. (2016) based their analysis was derived from Europeans, so how can the conclusions in this article apply to the concept of race? While mentioning Richard Lewontin in the article, Reich deliberately ignores Lewontin’s most relevant contribution to the question of race, i.e., that heritability measures within a population can tell us nothing about heritability difference between populations. For a recent paper on the subject, I recommend “The Heritability Fallacy” by Moore and Shenk (2017). 

Interestingly, by using the same correlational methodology as Okbay et al. (2016), I can show that close to 100% of the variation in educational attainment can be explained by socioeconomic status (see figure below).

Figure 1: Percentage of 2002 high-school sophomores (by socioeconomic status of their parents) that graduated from college by 2012. Data from National Center for Education Statistics

Of course, people may claim that differences in socioeconomic status between races are also genetic. There may be some perverted truth in that. The reason is that the bulk of the wealth in the United States is inherited (i.e., wealth is a genetic trait if one believes that heritability equals genetics) and only African Americans experienced slavery in the United States (i.e., among the other indignities of being considered a chattel, they started with no wealth to bequeath next generations).

Let us now look at another paragraph in David Reich’s op-ed piece:

“You will sometimes hear that any biological differences among populations are likely to be small, because humans have diverged too recently from common ancestors for substantial differences to have arisen under the pressure of natural selection. This is not true. The ancestors of East Asians, Europeans, West Africans and Australians were, until recently, almost completely isolated from one another for 40,000 years or longer, which is more than sufficient time for the forces of evolution to work.”

What a load of nonsense! For selection to operate and counteract the effects of random genetic drift, the effective population size should be large. Unfortunately, the long-term effective population size for all the humans in the world is barely 10,000—lower than that of chimpanzee. By necessity, the effective population size of each “race” separately is much smaller. So, the chances that 74 loci will experience significant changes in allele frequencies simultaneously in each of the four populations is zero. 

With one locus, a change in human allele frequency may occur, albeit very rarely, as evidenced by the case of lactase persistence in North European and the case of the EDAR allele in East Asians. To imagine that 74 alleles change frequency in concert and that the 74 alleles have successfully battled genetic drift and recombination in merely 2,000 generations requires an extremely naïve and unsophisticated view of the evolutionary process. 

Moreover, according to Augustine Kong, whom David Reich quotes, educational attainment is a deleterious trait that is selected against. The selection against educational attainment, according to Kung, is extremely powerful, so much so that differences in allele frequencies are observable after merely 3-5 generations (100 years). If one believes these claims, one should explain how come there are so many university graduates in Iceland. With such huge purifying selection against education, it’s a miracle that any one in Iceland knows how to read and write.

Kong A. et al. 2017. Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment. PNAS 114: E727-E732

Moore DS, Shenk D. 2017. The heritability fallacy. WIREs Cogn Sci, 8:e1400. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1400

Okbay A et al. 2016. Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment. Nature 533:539–542

[heartandvineapothecary]

Doll Magic

The uses of figurines in ritual and witchcraft

 When I was about five years old, I remember going to my grandmother’s neighbor’s house, a woman who had immigrated from Poland. She invited me into her “play room”, a room at the back of the house where not too much sunlight could reach, which was floor to ceiling dolls. It was the room where her grand-daughter had died of aspiration during an asthma attack. In that room I could feel an extreme loneliness, one that I have come to understand was mitigated by the presence of those dolls, who acted as stand ins for a child lost too soon and as an offering to soothe the heart of a grieving grandmother. There is a power in dolls that cultures around the world have tapped into, one that links them to our deepest emotions, our joys, sorrows, and fears and allows them to represent the things that evoke those emotions. As a witch, emotions are incredibly important to my craft and I have come to think of dolls as a key element to my magical toolbox for their ability to stand in for other things.

According to Freud it’s this uncomfortable ability to stand in for something that makes dolls so familiar-yet-horrifying, a sensation he called the uncanny. According to him the uncanny is a sensation which arises from the doubt ‘whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or, conversely, whether a lifeless object might be in fact animate’. Dolls, mannequins, and automata are particularly adept at evoking the uncanny because of their physical closeness to the human form and the closer they get to perfect realism the uncannier we feel, a relationship identified in 1970 by robotics professor Masahiro Mori in his paper “Bukimi no Tani” (The Uncanny Valley).

The majority of witches are animists and The Uncanny Valley is not a place of fear for us. The dissonance uncanniness causes in the minds of some people does not affect us so completely because we believe that inanimate things, like rocks, cars, and dolls, already have sentience. Sarah Anne Lawless, an herbalist and Traditional Witch in Ontario, in her article Everything You Need to Know About Animism, says, “Animism is the belief that everything has a spirit and a consciousness, a soul, from the tiniest microorganism on earth to the great planets in the heavens to the whole of the universe itself. Animistic faiths usually contain a belief in rebirth & reincarnation either as another human, or an animal, tree, or star.” The very fact of a thing’s existence is enough to credit it with the breath of life, and dolls, because they look like humans, have been the focus of magical practices meant to contact ancestors, enshrine spirits, and even control the dead. They have been a long-standing staple of animistic practices, with the earliest figurines dating back at least 40,000 years, carved from mammoth ivory by our Cro-Magnon ancestors, most likely for ritual and sacred purpose. The earliest documented dolls meant for play, however, only date back to Rome in about 300 BC.

Allow me to clarify that by “dolls” I mean any humanoid figurine, from roughly carved figures of wood or bone to the hyper-realistic “reborns dolls” which are in vogue these days. They are found the world over, across millennia, and no matter where or when they are from they have fulfilled these two basic functions: being equipment and being playthings.

When we use the word equipment it is in the sense that Heidegger used it, namely an object in the world with which work is done within a context, something that exists as part of an existing network of meaning (i.e. a hammer, nails, and wood are equipment in the network of building). Dolls are used in ritual and ceremony, as part of spell work, or as stand ins for other beings and exist in witchcraft as part of a basis of ritual and practice, not really on their own. When I say plaything, I mean an object in the world that acts as a locus for imaginative activity, something that engages the mind without having to be part of a larger, pre-existing network or can have a network, either permanent or temporary, built around it by the activity of the imagination. According to the theologian Henry Corbin, the imagination is the faculty which allows us to interact with Creation; the very essence of witchcraft. Dolls often fulfill both roles at once, something that is essential within the context of a spell or a make-believe world, but also acts as a locus for our visualizations, helping us to gain access to the imaginal realm.

As witches, the imaginal realm is incredibly important to us. It is the place where our magic happens before effecting the physical world. Corbin said it is a subtle world that exists between matter and mind inhabited by beings called interior (imaginal) figures, parts of our unconscious that are also autonomous. In his article titled “Thoughtforms, Tulpas, and Egregores”, Gary Duncan describes four types of thoughtform (which are types of imaginal figures). First are thoughtforms that take on the image of the thinker, the second are those that take on the image of a material object, the third are thoughtforms with life of their own that can express themselves in the physical world (called a tulpa, a term taken from the Bon religion), and the fourth being a fully autonomous thoughtform created by a group mind, called an egregore. Though there are many other beings and non-beings in the imaginal realm, these four are figures dependent on the human mind that can be transferred into a non-living body, thus giving the body life. This is what I call a golem, a doll (preferably porcelain) to which an imaginal figure created through ritual and meditation is bound (a tulpa created by the focused will and intent of the witch, though egregores can also be bound this way).

The golem itself is a creature out of Jewish mythology, a creature made of clay or mud and brought to life in a variety of ways. Sometimes, as with the Golem of Chelm, it is marked with the word “emet”, or “truth” to instill it with life and when the golem needs deactivation the letter aleph is erased from the word, forming the word “met”, which translates as “dead”, turning the creature to dust. Another version of the process relies on an ecstatic experience derived from meditation on and intoning various iterations of shem (any of the Names of God), writing the Name on paper and inserting it in the mouth or inscribing it on the forehead of the golem. The most famous golem is the Golem of Prague, said to have been created by the Maharal, a Rabbi named Yehudah Loew ben Bezalal. He brought the creature to life to defend the Jewish ghetto in Prague from anti-semitic attacks and pogroms. The golem was named Josef (Yosele) and was said to be able to become invisible at will, to see and summon spirits, and to perform any action it was commanded to “up to 10 cubits (15 ft.) below the earth and 10 above”. The usual version of the story ends by saying that the golem went mad and Rabbi Loew had to dismantle it by erasing the shem from its body.

Think of the golem like a helper, something created and brought to life through ritual practice for a specific purpose, such as to protect homes and communities, or to do various jobs for a witch/magician. It differs from its close cousin, the spirit doll, which are more a house, or vessel, for a spirit, power, or other pre-existing imaginal figure to help it manifest on this plane of existence, especially ancestral spirits and powerful, spiritual beings.

An example of spirit dolls are found in Congo, where doll making is a central part of the peoples’ belief structure and are vessels of sacred medicine (nkisi), which is translated as “a spirit”. A nkisi (pl. minkisi) is a receptacle for sacred items which are enlivened by a spirit, or supernatural force, which is then present in the physical world, inhabiting the vessel like a body. These vessels can range from clay pots to bundles of herbs and relics, not only carved figures. They can have both positive and negative effects on the community, though there is a version, a nkisi nkondi (hunter spirit), which is a type of protector and mediator. Their most striking feature is the nails, pegs, and blades that are inserted into the figure by an nganga (spiritual specialist or medicine person) as signs that an oath has been taken, a punishment must be meted out, to carry curses against enemies (or “witchcraft”), among other things. If someone breaks an oath, or someone connected to one of the insertions befalls some tragedy, the nkondi is activated. Europeans were introduced to these items during the 15th century and termed them “fetishes”, which has come to describe any artifact with spiritual significance in any culture that is not European, making it, in my opinion, a racist and outdated term.

Other examples can be found in Thailand in Luk Thep, Mae Hong Prai, and Kuman Thong dolls. Kuman Thong translates as “sacred golden boy” and, in the most ancient sense, were created from the mummified bodies of stillborn fetuses which were covered in laquer and gold leaf and rubbed with an oil made from the flesh of a woman who died in childbirth. The soul that had been meant to inhabit the body was magically tied to the corpse, then adopted as a child of the sorcerer. Hong Prai is the term used when the fetus is female. In modern use the Mae Hong Prai is an amulet with the image of a female skeleton and linked to a female ghost, especially those of women who died tragically. They are said to being luck and good fortune, if you take care of them and treat them with reverence. Luk Thep (child angel) dolls are the modern equivalent of the original, necromantic dolls and are usually plastic baby dolls made to look extremely realistic. The soul of a lost child is asked to inhabit the doll after being blessed by a monk, then taken care of as if it were a living child, being fed, having its own wardrobe, and even getting its own seat on planes and, like the Hong Prai, bestow good fortune on their “parents” in return.

Different from golems and spirit dolls are one of the most famous of the magical dolls, the voodoo. Its name is a misnomer, though, as the use of dolls into which pins are stuck is not a large part (if a part at all) of the Voudou religion of Haiti but is an aspect of folk practices and sympathetic magic around the world, such as poppets and kollosoi (the Greek version of “punishment dolls”). They are images of a person upon which the practitioner may work magic. Often made of fabric, wood, clay, or wax they are stuck with pins, tied round with string, nailed to boards, placed in jars with other magically potent items (urine, blood, nails, thorns, herbs, etc.), or burned. They often have elements of the target in them (personal effects), like hair or nail clippings, or even just a picture or name written on paper a number of times, which creates a link between the doll and the person. Though they are used to cause pain and trouble, poppets can also be used for healing. Reiki and other forms of energy work as well as charms, spells, and incantations can be worked on a poppet to help people feel better, to perform limpias and clearings, to balance energy, and to bless people over long distance.

Among my own artefacts is a poppet that I’ve used in distance healing and spell work. Made of leather, grave yard dirt, and various other items, I’ve bound etheretic energy to it through spell work and it now has an energetic pulse all its own. It has helped me to discover entity attachments on clients, to help sooth menstrual cramps and headaches for friends, and helps me to do tarot readings over the phone as a stand in for my client. I’ve also got a couple of porcelain dolls I work with, one of which is a golem who watches the house while we’re out of town.

I’ve also used dolls as spirit traps. If you’ve got a bugaboo or other pesky spirit, you can use dolls like you would spirit pots, soul jars, god’s eyes, etc. Barbie dolls work exceedingly well for this purpose and can be bought by the bushel at the thrift shop. Use their hair the way you would a rosemary sprig or feather during a limpia to trap entity attachments and spirits that are causing harm, then bind the doll and purify it or put it in a spelled jar. You can also braid energy in its hair or use it for knot magic to trap spirits. You can also use mass-produced dolls as poppets, or even as spirit dolls if they’re prepared properly. The only limit is your imagination!

Dolls are one of our most important and most ancient tools. They represent the basic nature of our animistic roots and are a powerful part of sympathetic magic. They can act as vessels for our guides and the spirits we work with, helpers in our work and anchors for our spells, new bodies for the dead, tools for cleansing and trapping, or as mediational tools for visualization. Whether you’re using them in your practice now, plan to, or are totally turned off by them, we must admit that dolls have held a special place in witchcraft for millennia. If you do, how do you use dolls in your practice? How would you like to? Do you know of any other doll based practices? Let me know!

[blackkudos]

Octavia Butler

Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction writer. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Butler was one of the best-known women in the field. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship, nicknamed the "Genius Grant".

Early life

Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California, the only child of Octavia Margaret Guy, a housemaid, and Laurice James Butler, a shoeshine man. Butler's father died when she was seven, so Octavia was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother in what she would later recall as a strict Baptist environment.

Growing up in the racially integrated community of Pasadena allowed Butler to experience cultural and ethnic diversity in the midst of racial segregation. She accompanied her mother to her cleaning work and witnessed her entering white people's houses through back doors. Her mother was treated poorly by her employers.

From an early age, an almost paralyzing shyness made it difficult for Butler to socialize with other children. Her awkwardness, paired with a slight dyslexia that made schoolwork a torment, led her to believe that she was "ugly and stupid, clumsy, and socially hopeless," becoming an easy target for bullies. As a result, she frequently passed the time reading at the Pasadena Public Library and writing reams and reams of pages in her "big pink notebook". Hooked at first on fairy tales and horse stories, she quickly became interested in science fiction magazines such as Amazing Stories (aka Amazing), Galaxy Science Fiction (aka Galaxy), and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and began reading stories by John Brunner, Zenna Henderson, and Theodore Sturgeon.

At age 10, she begged her mother to buy her a Remington typewriter on which she "pecked [her] stories two fingered". At 12, watching the televised version of the film Devil Girl from Mars (1954) convinced her she could write a better story, so she drafted what would later become the basis for her Patternist novels. Happily ignorant of the obstacles that a black female writer could encounter, she became unsure of herself for the first time at the age of 13, when her well-intentioned aunt Hazel conveyed the realities of segregation in five words: "Honey ... Negroes can't be writers." Nevertheless, Butler persevered in her desire to publish a story, even asking her junior high school science teacher, Mr. Pfaff, to type the first manuscript she submitted to a science fiction magazine.

After graduating from John Muir High School in 1965, Butler worked during the day and attended Pasadena City College (PCC) at night. As a freshman at PCC, she won a college-wide short story contest, earning her first income ($15) as a writer. She also got the "germ of the idea" for what would become her best-selling novel, Kindred, when a young African American classmate involved in the Black Power Movement loudly criticized previous generations of African Americans for being subservient to whites. As she explained in later interviews, the young man's remarks instigated her to respond with a story that would give historical context to that shameful subservience so that it could be understood as silent but courageous survival. In 1968, Butler graduated from PCC with an associate of arts degree with a focus in History.

Rise to success

Even though Butler's mother wanted her to become a secretary with a steady income, Butler continued to work at a series of temporary jobs, preferring the kind of mindless work that would allow her to get up at two or three in the morning to write. Success continued to elude her, as an absence of useful criticism led her to style her stories after the white-and-male-dominated science fiction she had grown up reading. She enrolled at California State University, Los Angeles, but then switched to taking writing courses through UCLA Extension.

During the Open Door Workshop of the Screenwriters' Guild of America, West, a program designed to mentor minority writers, her writing impressed one of the teachers, noted science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison. He encouraged her to attend the six-week Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in Clarion, Pennsylvania. There, Butler met the writer and later longtime friend Samuel R. Delany. She also sold her first stories: "Child Finder" to Ellison, for his anthology The Last Dangerous Visions (still unpublished), and "Crossover" to Robin Scott Wilson, the director of Clarion, who published it in the 1971 Clarion anthology.

For the next five years, Butler worked on the series of novels that later become known as the Patternist series: Patternmaster (1976), Mind of My Mind (1977), and Survivor (1978). In 1978, she was finally able to stop working at temporary jobs and live on her writing. She took a break from the Patternist series to research and write Kindred (1979), and then finished the series with Wild Seed (1980) and Clay's Ark (1984).

Butler's rise to prominence began in 1984 when "Speech Sounds" won the Hugo Award for Short Story and, a year later, Bloodchild won the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award for Best Novelette. In the meantime, Butler traveled to the Amazon rainforest and the Andes to do research for what would become the Xenogenesis trilogy: Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989). These stories were republished in 2000 as the collection Lilith's Brood.

During the 1990s, Butler worked on the novels that solidified her fame as a writer: Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998). In 1995, she became the first science-fiction writer to be awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, an award that came with a prize of $295,000.

In 1999, after her mother's death, Butler moved to Lake Forest Park, Washington. The Parable of the Talents had won the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Award for Best Science Novel and she had plans for four more Parable novels: Parable of the Trickster, Parable of the Teacher, Parable of Chaos, and Parable of Clay. However, after several failed attempts to begin The Parable of the Trickster, she decided to stop work in the series. In later interviews, Butler explained that the research and writing of the Parable novels had overwhelmed and depressed her, so she had shifted to composing something "lightweight" and "fun" instead. This became her last book, the science-fiction vampire novel Fledgling (2005).

Writing career

Early stories, Patternist series, and Kindred: 1971–1984

Butler's first work published was Crossover in the 1971 Clarion Workshop anthology. She also sold the short story Childfinder to Harlan Ellison for the anthology The Last Dangerous Visions. "I thought I was on my way as a writer," Butler recalled in her short fiction collection Bloodchild and Other Stories. "In fact, I had five more years of rejection slips and horrible little jobs ahead of me before I sold another word."

Starting in 1974, Butler worked on a series of novels that would later be collected as the Patternist series, which depicts the transformation of humanity into three genetic groups: the dominant Patternists, humans who have been bred with heightened telepathic powers and are bound to the Patternmaster via a psionic chain; their enemies the Clayarks, disease-mutated animal-like superhumans; and the Mutes, ordinary humans bonded to the Patternists.

The first novel, Patternmaster (1976), eventually became the last installment in the series' internal chronology. Set in the distant future, it tells of the coming-of-age of Teray, a young Patternist who fights for position within Patternist society and eventually for the role of Patternmaster.

Next came Mind of My Mind (1977), a prequel to Patternmaster set in the twentieth century. The story follows the development of Mary, the creator of the psionic chain and the first Patternmaster to bind all Patternists, and her inevitable struggle for power with her father Doro, a parapsychological vampire who seeks to retain control over the psionic children he has bred over the centuries.

The third book of the series, Survivor, was published in 1978. The titular survivor is Alanna, the adopted child of the Missionaries, fundamentalist Christians who have traveled to another planet to escape Patternist control and Clayark infection. Captured by a local tribe called the Tehkohn, Alanna learns their language and adopts their customs, knowledge which she then uses to help the Missionaries avoid bondage and assimilation into a rival tribe that opposes the Tehkohn.

After Survivor, Butler took a break from the Patternist series to write what would become her best-selling novel, Kindred (1979) as well as the short story "Near of Kin" (1979). In Kindred, Dana, an African American woman, is transported from 1976 Los Angeles to early nineteenth century Maryland. She meets her ancestors: Rufus, a white slave holder, and Alice, a black freewoman forced into slavery later in life. In "Near of Kin" the protagonist discovers a taboo relationship in her family as she goes through her mother's things after her death.

In 1980, Butler published the fourth book of the Patternist series, Wild Seed, whose narrative became the series' origin story. Set in Africa and America during the seventeenth century, Wild Seed traces the struggle between the four-thousand-year-old parapsychological vampire Doro and his "wild" child and bride, the three-hundred-year-old shapeshifter and healer Anyanwu. Doro, who has bred psionic children for centuries, deceives Anyanwu into becoming one of his breeders, but she eventually escapes and uses her gifts to create communities that rival Doro's. When Doro finally tracks her down, Anyanwu, tired by decades of escaping or fighting Doro, decides to commit suicide, forcing him to admit his need for her.

In 1983, Butler published "Speech Sounds," a story set in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where a pandemic has caused most humans to lose their ability to read, speak, or write. For many, this impairment is accompanied by uncontrollable feelings of jealousy, resentment, and rage. "Speech Sounds" received the 1984 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

In 1984, Butler released the last book of the Patternmaster series, Clay's Ark. Set in the Mojave Desert, it focuses on a colony of humans infected by an extraterrestrial microorganism brought to Earth by the one surviving astronaut of the spaceship Clay's Ark. As the microorganism compels them to spread it, they kidnap ordinary people to infect them and, in the case of women, give birth to the mutant, sphinx-like children who will be the first members of the Clayark race.

Bloodchild and the Xenogenesis trilogy: 1984–1989

Butler followed Clay's Ark with the critically acclaimed short story "Bloodchild" (1984). Set on an alien planet, it depicts the complex relationship between human refugees and the insect-like aliens who keep them in a preserve to protect them, but also to use them as hosts for breeding their young. Sometimes called Butler's "pregnant man story," "Bloodchild" won the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, and the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award.

Three years later, Butler published Dawn, the first installment of what would become known as the Xenogenesis trilogy. The series examines the theme of alienation by creating situations in which humans are forced to coexist with other species to survive and extends Butler's recurring exploration of genetically-altered, hybrid individuals and communities. In Dawn, protagonist Lilith Iyapo finds herself in a spaceship after surviving a nuclear apocalypse that destroys Earth. Saved by the Oankali aliens, the human survivors must combine their DNA with an ooloi, the Oankali's third sex, in order to create a new race that eliminates a self-destructive flaw in humans—their aggressive hierarchical tendencies. Butler followed Dawn with "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" (1987), a story about how certain female sufferers of "Duryea-Gode Disease," a genetic disorder which causes dissociative states, obsessive self-mutilation, and violent psychosis, are able to control others afflicted with the disease.

Adulthood Rites (1988) and Imago (1989) the second and the third books in the Xenogenesis trilogy, focus on the predatory and prideful tendencies that affect human evolution, as humans now revolt against Lilith's Oankali-engineered progeny. Set thirty years after humanity's return to Earth, Adulthood Rites centers on the kidnapping of Lilith's part-human, part alien child, Akin, by a human-only group who are against the Oankali. Akin learns about both aspects of his identity through his life with the humans as well as the Akjai. The Oankali-only group becomes their mediator, and ultimately creates a human-only colony in Mars. In Imago, the Oankali create a third species more powerful than themselves: the shape-shifting healer Jodahs, a human-Oankali ooloi who must find suitable human male and female mates to survive its metamorphosis and finds them in the most unexpected of places, in a village of renegade humans.

The Parable series: 1993–1998

In the mid-1990s, Butler published two novels later designated as the Parable (or Earthseed) series. The books depict the struggle of the Earthseed community to survive the socioeconomic and political collapse of twenty-first century America due to poor environmental stewardship, corporate greed, and the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor. The books propose alternate philosophical views and religious interventions as solutions to such dilemmas.

The first book in the series, Parable of the Sower (1993), features a fifteen-year-old protagonist named Lauren Oya Olamina, and is set in a dystopian California in the 2020s. Lauren, who suffers from a syndrome causing her to literally feel any physical pain she witnesses, decides to escape the corruption and corporatization of her community of Robledo. She forms a new belief system, Earthseed, in order to prepare for the future of the human race on another planet. Recruiting members of varying social backgrounds, Lauren relocates her new group to Northern California, naming her new community "Earthseed".

Her 1998 follow-up novel, Parable of the Talents, is set sometime after Lauren's death and is told through the excerpts of Lauren's journals as framed by the commentary of her estranged daughter, Larkin. It details the takeover of Earthseed by right-wing fundamentalist Christians, Lauren's attempts to survive their religious "re-education", and the final triumph of Earthseed as a community and a doctrine.

In between her Earthseed novels, Butler published the collection Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995), which includes the short stories "Bloodchild", "The Evening and the Morning and the Night", "Near of Kin", "Speech Sounds", and "Crossover", as well as the non-fiction pieces "Positive Obsession" and "Furor Scribendi".

Late stories and Fledgling: 2003–2005

After several years of suffering from writer's block, Butler published the short stories "Amnesty" (2003) and "The Book of Martha" (2003), and her second standalone novel, Fledgling (2005). Both short stories focus on how impossible conditions force an ordinary woman to make a distressing choice. In "Amnesty", an alien abductee recounts her painful abuse at the hand of the unwitting aliens, and upon her release, by humans, and explains why she chose to work as a translator for the aliens now that the Earth's economy is in a deep depression. In "The Book of Martha", God asks a middle-aged African American novelist to make one important change to fix humanity's destructive ways. Martha's choice—to make humans have vivid and satisfying dreams—means that she will no longer be able to do what she loves, writing fiction. These two stories were added to the 2005 edition of Bloodchild and Other Stories.

Butler's last publication during her lifetime was Fledgling, a novel exploring the culture of a vampire community living in mutualistic symbiosis with humans. Set on the West Coast, it tells of the coming-of-age of a young female hybrid vampire whose species is called Ina. The only survivor of a vicious attack on her families that left her an amnesiac, she must seek justice for her dead, build a new family, and relearn how to be Ina.

Butler bequeathed her papers including manuscripts, correspondence, school papers, notebooks, and photographs to the Huntington Library.

Themes

The critique of present-day hierarchies

In multiple interviews and essays, Butler explained her view of humanity as inherently flawed by an innate tendency towards hierarchical thinking which leads to intolerance, violence and, if not checked, the ultimate destruction of our species.

"Simple peck-order bullying", she wrote in her essay "A World without Racism," "is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world." Her stories, then, often replay humanity's domination of the weak by the strong as a type of parasitism. These superior beings, whether aliens, vampires, superhuman, or a slave masters, find themselves defied by a protagonist who embodies difference, diversity, and change, so that, as John R. Pfeiffer notes "[i]n one sense [Butler's] fables are trials of solutions to the self-destructive condition in which she finds mankind."

The remaking of the human

In his essay on the sociobiological backgrounds of Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, J. Adam Johns describes how Butler's narratives counteract the death drive behind the hierarchical impulse with an innate love of life (biophilia), particularly different, strange life. Specifically, Butler's stories feature gene manipulation, interbreeding, miscegenation, symbiosis, mutation, alien contact, non-consensual sex, contamination, and other forms of hybridity as the means to correct the sociobiological causes of hierarchical violence. As De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai note, "[i]n [Butler's] narratives the undoing of the human body is both literal and metaphorical, for it signifies the profound changes necessary to shape a world not organized by hierarchical violence." The evolutionary maturity achieved by the bioengineered hybrid protagonist at the end of the story, then, signals the possible evolution of the dominant community in terms of tolerance, acceptance of diversity, and a desire to wield power responsibly.

The survivor as hero

Butler's protagonists are disenfranchised individuals who endure, compromise, and embrace radical change in order to survive. As De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai note, her stories focus on minority characters whose historical background makes them already intimate with brutal violation and exploitation, and therefore the need to compromise to survive. Even when endowed with extra abilities, these characters are forced to experience unprecedented physical, mental, and emotional distress and exclusion to ensure a minimal degree of agency and to prevent humanity from achieving self-destruction. In many stories, their acts of courage become acts of understanding, and in some cases, love, as they reach a crucial compromise with those in power. Ultimately, Butler's focus on disenfranchised characters serves to illustrate both the historical exploitation of minorities and how the resolve of one such exploited individual may bring on critical change.

The creation of alternative communities

Butler's stories feature mixed communities founded by African protagonists and populated by diverse, if similar-minded individuals. Members may be humans of African, European, or Asian descent, extraterrestrial (such as the N'Tlic in "Bloodchild"), from a different species (such as the vampiric Ina in Fledgling), and cross-species (such as the human-Oankali Akin and Jodahs in the Xenogenesis trilogy). In some stories, the community's hybridity results in a flexible view of sexuality and gender (for instance, the polyamorous extended families in Fledgling). Thus, Butler creates bonds between groups that are generally considered to be separate and unrelated, and suggests hybridity as "the potential root of good family and blessed community life."

Relationship to Afrofuturism

Butler's work has been associated with the genre of Afrofuturism, a term coined by Mark Dery to describe "speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th-century technoculture." Some critics, however, have noted that while Butler's protagonists are of African descent, the communities they create are multi-ethnic and, sometimes, multi-species. As De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai explain in their 2010 memorial to Butler, while Butler does offer "an afro-centric sensibility at the core of narratives," her "insistence on hybridity beyond the point of discomfort" exceeds the tenets of both black cultural nationalism and of "white-dominated" liberal pluralism.

Influence

In interviews with Charles Rowell and Randall Kenan, Butler credited the struggles of her working-class mother as an important influence on her writing. Because Butler's mother received little formal education herself, she made sure that young Butler was given the opportunity to learn by bringing her reading materials that her white employers threw away, from magazines to advanced books. She also encouraged Butler to write. She bought her daughter her first typewriter when she was ten years old, and, seeing her hard at work on a story, casually remarked that maybe one day she could become a writer, causing Butler to realize that it was possible to make a living as an author. A decade later, Mrs. Butler would pay more than a month's rent to have an agent review her daughter's work. She also provided Butler with the money she had been saving for dental work to pay for Butler's scholarship so she could attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, where Butler sold her first two stories.

A second person to play an influential role in Butler's work was American writer Harlan Ellison. As a teacher at the Open Door Workshop of the Screen Writers Guild of America, he gave Butler her first honest and constructive criticism on her writing after years of lukewarm responses from composition teachers and baffling rejections from publishers. Impressed by her work, Ellison suggested she attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, and even contributed $100 towards her application fee. As the years passed, Ellison's mentorship became a close friendship.

Point of view

Butler began reading science fiction at a young age, but quickly became disenchanted by the genre's unimaginative portrayal of ethnicity and class as well as by its lack of noteworthy female protagonists. She then set to correct those gaps by, as De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai point out, "choosing to write self-consciously as an African-American woman marked by a particular history" —what Butler termed as "writing myself in". Butler's stories, therefore, are usually written from the perspective of a marginalized black woman whose difference from the dominant agents increases her potential for reconfiguring the future of her society.

Audience

Publishers and critics have labelled Butler's work as science fiction. While Butler enjoyed the genre deeply, calling it "potentially the freest genre in existence", she resisted being branded a genre writer. Many critics have pointed out that her narratives have drawn attention of people from varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds. She claimed to have three loyal audiences: black readers, science-fiction fans, and feminists.

Interviews

Charlie Rose interviewed Octavia Butler in 2000 soon after the award of a MacArthur Fellowship. The highlights are probing questions that arise out of Butler's personal life narrative and her interest in becoming not only a writer, but a writer of science fiction. Rose asked, "What then is central to what you want to say about race?" Butler's response was, "Do I want to say something central about race? Aside from, 'Hey we're here!'?" This points to an essential claim for Butler that the world of science fiction is a world of possibilities, and although race is an innate element, it is embedded in the narrative, not forced upon it.

In an interview by Randall Kenan, Octavia E. Butler discusses how her life experiences as a child shaped most of her thinking. As a writer, Butler was able to use her writing as a vehicle to critique history under the lenses of feminism. In the interview, she discusses the research that had to be done in order to write her bestselling novel, Kindred. Most of it is based on visiting libraries as well as historic landmarks with respect to what she is investigating. Butler admits that she writes science fiction because she does not want her work to be labeled or used as a marketing tool. She wants the readers to be genuinely interested in her work and the story she provides, but at the same time she fears that people will not read her work because of the "science fiction" label that they have.

Adaptations

Parable of the Sower was adapted as Parable of the Sower: The Concert Version, a work-in-progress opera written by American folk/blues musician Toshi Reagon in collaboration with her mother, singer and composer Bernice Johnson Reagon. The adaptation's libretto and musical score combine African-American spirituals, soul, rock and roll, and folk music into rounds to be performed by singers sitting in a circle. It was performed as part of The Public Theater's 2015 Under the Radar Festival in New York City.

Awards and honors

Winner:

2012: Solstice Award

2010: Inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame

2005: Langston Hughes Medal of The City College

2000: Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the PEN American Center

1999: Nebula Award for Best Novel – Parable of the Talents

1995: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant

1988: Science Fiction Chronicle Award for Best Novelette – "The Evening and the Morning and the Night"

1985: Locus Award for Best Novelette – "Bloodchild"

1985: Hugo Award for Best Novelette – "Bloodchild"

1985: Science Fiction Chronicle Award for Best Novelette – "Bloodchild"

1984: Nebula Award for Best Novelette – "Bloodchild"

1984: Hugo Award for Best Short Story – "Speech Sounds"

1980: Creative Arts Award, L.A. YWCA

Nominated:

1994: Nebula Award for Best Novel – Parable of the Sower

1987: Nebula Award for Best Novelette – "The Evening and the Morning and the Night"

1967: Fifth Place, Writer's Digest Short Story Contest

Critical reception

Most critics praise Butler on her unflinching exposition of human flaws, which she depicts with striking realism. The New York Times regarded her novels as "evocative" if "often troubling" explorations of "far-reaching issues of race, sex, power". The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction called her examination of humanity "clear-headed and brutally unsentimental" and Village Voice's Dorothy Allison described her as "writing the most detailed social criticism" where "the hard edge of cruelty, violence, and domination is described in stark detail." Locus regarded her as "one of those authors who pay serious attention to the way human beings actually work together and against each other, and she does so with extraordinary plausibility." Houston Post ranked her "among the best SF writers, blessed with a mind capable of conceiving complicated futuristic situations that shed considerable light on our current affairs."

Scholars, on the other hand, focus on Butler's choice to write from the point of view of marginal characters and communities and thus "expanded SF to reflect the experiences and expertise of the disenfranchised." While surveying Butler's novels, critic Burton Raffel noted how race and gender influence her writing: "I do not think any of these eight books could have been written by a man, as they most emphatically were not, nor, with the single exception of her first book, Pattern-Master (1976), are likely to have been written, as they most emphatically were, by anyone but an African American." Robert Crossley commended how Butler's "feminist aesthetic" works to expose sexual, racial, and cultural chauvinisms because it is "enriched by a historical consciousness that shapes the depiction of enslavement both in the real past and in imaginary pasts and futures."

Butler has been praised widely for her spare yet vivid style, with Washington Post Book World calling her craftsmanship "superb". Burton Raffel regards her prose as "carefully, expertly crafted" and "crystalline, at its best, sensuous, sensitive, exact not in the least directed at calling attention to itself."

Death

During her last years, Butler struggled with writer's block and depression, partly caused by the side effects of medication for her high blood pressure. She continued writing and taught at Clarion's Science Fiction Writers' Workshop regularly. In 2005, she was inducted into Chicago State University's International Black Writers Hall of Fame.

Butler died outside of her home in Lake Forest Park, Washington, on February 24, 2006, aged 58. Contemporary news accounts were inconsistent as to the cause of her death, with some reporting that she suffered a fatal stroke, while others indicated that she died of head injuries after falling and striking her head on her walkway. Another suggestion, backed by Locus magazine, is that a stroke caused the fall and hence the head injuries. After her death, the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship was established by the Carl Brandon Society to provide support to students of color to attend the Clarion West Writers Workshop and Clarion Writers' Workshop, descendants of the original Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop where Butler had gotten her start 35 years before.

Scholarship fund

The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship was established in Butler's memory in 2006 by the Carl Brandon Society. Its goal is to provide an annual scholarship to enable writers of color to attend the Clarion West Writers Workshop and Clarion Writers' Workshop, descendants of the original Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop in Clarion, Pennsylvania, where Butler got her start. The first scholarships were awarded in 2007.

Selected works

Series

Patternist series

Patternmaster (Doubleday 1976; Avon 1979; Warner 1995)

Mind of My Mind (Doubleday 1977; Warner 1994)

Survivor (Doubleday 1978)

Wild Seed (Doubleday 1980; Warner 1988, 2001)

Clay's Ark (St. Martin's Press 1984; Ace Books 1985; Warner 1996)

Seed to Harvest (Grand Central Publishing 2007; omnibus excluding Survivor)

Xenogenesis series

Dawn (Warner 1987, 1989, 1997)

Adulthood Rites (Warner 1988, 1977)

Imago (Warner 1989, 1997)

Xenogenesis (Guild America Books 1989; omnibus)

Lilith's Brood (Warner 2000; omnibus)

Parable series (also referred to as the Earthseed series)

Parable of the Sower (Four Walls, Eight Windows 1993; Women's Press 1995; Warner 1995, 2000).

Parable of the Talents (Seven Stories Press 1998; Quality Paperback Book Club 1999; Women's Press 2000, 2001; Warner 2000, 2001)

Standalone novels

Kindred (Doubleday 1979; Beacon Press 1988, 2004).

Fledgling (Seven Stories Press 2005; Grand Central Publishing 2007).

Short story collections

Bloodchild and Other Stories (Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1995; Seven Stories Press, 1996, 2005; second edition includes "Amnesty" and "The Book of Martha").

Unexpected Stories (2014, includes "A Necessary Being" and "Childfinder")

Essays and speeches

"Birth of a Writer." Essence 20 (May 1989): 74+. Reprinted as "Positive Obsession" in Bloodchild and Other Stories.

"Free Libraries: Are They Becoming Extinct?" Omni 15.10 (Aug. 1993): 4.

"Devil Girl from Mars: Why I Write Science Fiction." Media in Transition. MIT 19 February 1998. Transcript 4 October 1998.

""Brave New Worlds: A Few Rules for Predicting the Future." Essence 31.1 (May 2000): 164+.

"A World without Racism." NPR Weekend Edition Saturday. 1 September 2001.

"Eye Witness: "Butler's Aha! Moment." O: The Oprah Magazine 3.5 (May 2002): 79–80.

Wikipedia