#where i feel like. when you get older religions or myths in stuff like this

[wellnoe]

one of the things i think is cool about robert eggers’ films, even when i’m not super into them, is that he really seems to completely embrace an imagined historical perspective? like his films end up being completely saturated in that perspective yknow. which is interesting.

[mistbow]

Water Armatus, Bow and Arrow

I’ve always thought that it is interesting that the Water Armatus wields bow and arrow, especially since it holds many significances in the Japanese culture that Zestiria draws many inspirations from. I believe it’s a deliberate choice that the Divine Artifact needed for Water Armatus is a bow too, so I will try to elaborate more on this, since the many meanings for it might not be apparent to people who aren’t familiar with it.

Remember: Symbols can have more than just one meaning.

First off, and I know we start with the ending part here, but since it’s actually stated in the novel, I will talk about how Mikleo offers to go first, as the whistling arrow (嚆矢). Our first symbolism, but far from the last, for the Water Armatus.

「スレイ、最初に僕を撃ち出せ」

「ミクリオ……！」

息を飲むスレイをミクリオは決意に満ちた瞳で見つめる。 最初に撃ち出す仲間を迷うであろうスレイの気持ちをくみ取った提案だった。

「この旅の終わり、僕が嚆矢となる」

僕たちの決意と覚悟を最初に撃て。

“Sorey, shoot me out first.”

“Mikleo...!”

Mikleo looks at Sorey, who gulped, intently with eyes full of his determination. It was a suggestion that took into consideration the feelings of Sorey, who had been hesitating about which friend he would shoot out first.

“At this journey’s end, I will become the whistling arrow.”

Shoot our determination and resolve first.

The whistling arrow (嚆矢) often symbolizes “dawn” or “beginning”, since it’s used to signal the beginning of battle. Particularly, around the time of Heian period, an arrow with a whistle (kabura, 鏑) attached (so often known as kabura-ya, 鏑矢 as well) would be shot, not only to alert the enemy, but also to ward off evil spirits and alert friendly kami to lend their support through its whistling sound. Befitting for the seraph whose Divine Artifact is a bow, since he does this to reassure Sorey, as well as to ask for support for him from the friendly kami—other seraphim that will come after him. Mikleo is also the one seraph who has been with Sorey since the beginning too, even before Sorey became the Shepherd. Since the dawn of the Shepherd (導師の夜明け).

(An arrow that flies straight and steadfast signifies no hesitation for its resolve.)

But bows and arrows mean so much more than this, so I would like to take a look at other meanings too, as well as going earlier than straight-up the final battle. The first obvious thing that stood out to me is that in Japanese, bow and arrow (弓矢, yumiya) is often a symbol for the battlefield, since 戦 (read as ikusa), meaning war or battle, used to be written as 射交矢 (also read as ikusa), roughly meaning exchanging arrows (射交わす矢). Hachiman (八幡神), the Shinto-Buddhism syncretic divinity of archery and war, is also known as Yumiya Hachiman (弓矢八幡), because his messenger is a dove that symbolizes bow and arrow. Hachiman’s wife, Himegami (比売神), often refers to Munakata Sanjoshin (宗像三女神), the three matriach kami associated with water born from the ukehi or oath (宇気比, 誓約) between Amaterasu and Susanoo (I will talk more about this when I talk about Mikleo’s association with water divinities in Japan, since it can get even more interesting if you dive deep and go down this rabbit hole, and I tend to overthink this kind of stuff anyway).

However, going back to a time even older, the ancient times, bow and arrow used to be written as 箭霊 (read as sachi), with 箭 being the outdated kanji for arrow and 霊 being the kanji for spirits, representing 霊威 or mysterious power. The word 箭霊 (sachi) here has the same reading as 幸 (sachi) meaning happiness, thus bow and arrow are also associated with happiness and blessings. As such, in Japan, where the animism of primitive religion remains strong, the bow and arrow is also a tool for divination of good fortune. In terms of shamanism/sorcery (呪術, jujutsu), often it is also called 天之返矢 (ama-no-kaeshiya, Divine Returning-Arrow), and this word comes from the myth in Kojiki, where a bird named Nakime (鳴女) who was sent down to earth to check in on Amewakahiko (天稚彦 or 天若日子). Amewakahiko shot the bird with his bow. The arrow pierced through the bird, but the arrow flew all the way to heaven. Takamimusubi (高御産巣日神) saw the arrow and threw it back at the earth where it hit Amewakahiko while he was laying in bed, killing him.

There are also Narugen (鳴弦), which is used like a weapon or musical instrument to exorcise invisible demons and evil spirits, and Hama-ya and Hama-yumi (破魔矢・破魔弓), symbols of the bow and arrow’s magical power, as seen in myths and legends.

Hama-ya, in general, has come to mean ceremonial arrow to ward off evil. In Buddhism, there is a legend that the gold bow and arrow held by Umarokya (烏摩勒伽), one of the four yaksha who follow Shoumen Kongou (青面金剛), the blue-faced Vajra, is the origin of the Hama-ya, and Ryuujin Hamaya (龍神破魔矢), the dragon deity, is named after it. The tip of hama-ya needs not to be sharp, since it is used to purify, as to remove the obstacles, not to target and break the person themself.

(I’d like to also remind that the seraphim are based upon Four Symbols, and Mikleo is based on the Azure Dragon. This can even be seen in the Water Armatus’ Banish Blast, 水神・清龍, which can literally be translated to Water Divine: Azure Dragon.)

There is this one story, the tale of extermination of Nue (鵺)—a Japanese mythical creature with a monkey’s head, tanuki’s body, tiger’s limbs, and a snake tail—in “Heike Monogatari” (平家物語) where the Emperor was afflicted with an illness, but when Minamoto no Yoshiie (源義家) plucked the bowstring three times, the evil spirit was dispelled and the Emperor was restored to health. However, the source of the disease itself was not dead and continued to threaten the Emperor. Minamoto no Yorimasa (源頼政), then, climbed to the rooftop of the Imperial Palace at night and shot an arrow, and in just that one shot, slaying the source of the disease, a monster called Nue, with Yumiharidzuki (弓張月, representing the bow or the Moon, the crescent moon that looks like a bow).

And thus, the bow and arrow is associated with purification or exorcism (祓い清め) of the mind (心) from taint (穢れ), malice (邪気), evil (魔), and disaster (厄), as seen in a lot of metaphors in Japanese. The pure-hearted is said to be able to immediately hit the bull in one hit. The arrow of the noble is destined to strike the enemy and hunt the beast of fables.

Now we turn to Buddhism. Senju Kannon (千手観音) or Senju-Sengen Kanzeon Bosatsu (千手千眼観世音菩薩), the bodhisattva of compassion and mercy, is perhaps the most widely worshipped bodhisattva in Japan. Senju-Sengen (千手千眼) literally means Thousand Arms and Thousand Eyes, originating from the fact that she has one eye in each palm of a thousand arms. These thousand arms and thousand eyes represent Kannon’s vastness of mercy and the abundance of means to save, as endeavors to relieve every living thing. In her many hands, she holds many objects, and each of these objects varies in meaning.

Two of them are houkyuu (宝弓) and houzen (宝箭), a bow and an arrow, respectively. Houkyuu stands for “increasing the honor” (“栄官を増す”), but more relevant is the meaning of houzen, which is “chance meeting with good friends” (“良き友に巡り会う”). A poetic way of saying reconnecting with true friends.

The final version of Aqua Limit, Aqua Limit: Ultima, is actually called アクアリムス・リユニオン, or Aqua Limit: Reunion, in Japanese. This indeed foreshadows their reunion in the epilogue, that they will meet again, and it is by chance (through a connection that ties them, that cannot be seen, yet can be felt, or it is precisely because it’s not seen that it can be felt stronger). Neither knew how long it would take, perhaps it would take centuries, but they could finally get there, reuniting with each other, in the end. Reunion of true friends. Mikleo, the bullet, the whistling arrow, is that connection with true friends that will never fade way, even as he is shot to the risk of his death in the final battle, and after this, Sorey will go to sleep to purify Maotelus for who knows how long. Eons, perhaps.

(Mikleo himself doesn’t consider himself as Sorey’s true friend, since he thinks that as a seraph, he can’t perceive the world the same way as Sorey does. It’s why he invited Rose to join the party. But true friends complement each other, just like how Sorey and Rose have different approaches [sees in different ways], Sorey and Mikleo complement each other through their differences.)

In Buddhism (especially Shingon Buddhism), there is a deity that is often associated with bow and arrow, Aizen Myouou (愛染明王). He has a very distinctive appearance, wearing a shishi (獅子, magical lion)’s crown on his head and sitting on a lotus flower. Sometimes, he is depicted with two heads: of his own and of Fudou Myouou (不動明王, and I believe I’ve talked about Sorey being a Fudou Myouou figure here), symbolizing a commingling of subjugated, complementary energies, and in Japan, they are both enshrined together, Fudou Myouou and Aizen Myouou on the left and right of Dainichi Nyorai (大日如来, I talked about him and his symbolism more in the context of Zestiria here) as the principal object of worship. In Nichiren Buddhism, in the Great Mandala Gohonzon, Fudou Myouou’s bīja “हां” is placed on the right and Aizen Myouou’s bija “हूं” is placed on the left (more on Sorey and Mikleo and Right and Left here and here and here, also while we’re at this, the Left, when paired with the Right, has significance in Shinto here, so there are many layers of meanings to this).

Aizen Myouou is known for transforming worldly desires (kleshas) into spiritual awakening, as seen from his name literally meaning “Love-Stained Wisdom King.” In Nichiren Buddhism, it is said that if Fudou Myouou embodies “life and death (saṃsāra) are precisely nirvana” (生死即涅槃, shouji-soku-nehan), then Aizen Myouou embodies “worldly desires (kleshas) are precisely enlightenment (bodhi)” (煩悩即菩提, bonnou-soku-bodai), which are the two tenets of hongaku (本覚, the innate or original enlightenment). This is because Aizen Myouou doesn’t deny love, and he is indeed known as the Buddha in charge of love, marriage, family harmony; of relationships and connections in general. His name, Aizen (愛染), can also be interpreted as the color(s) aizen (藍染).

I say uniquely Japanese, because the colors are indeed called Japanese blue; depending on how many dips, the shade changes--not just in value but also hue. The lighter it is, the closer it is to blue-green hue. The deeper it is, the closer it is to indigo blue hue.

(I also must say that the lighter green-ish blue shade is called 水色 too. Literally the color of water. Commonly translated as aquamarine.)

Like the traditional Japanese blue shades, Sorey's blue is more on the deep indigo blue side in its hue and Mikleo's blue is more on the light aqua blue. Meanwhile, Water Armatus (the two of them) is the "balanced" blue in the middle.

(I have an entire Twitter thread too for this too here)

Finally, I want to talk about a certain saying that also originates from Nichiren Buddhism:

やのはしる事は弓のちから、くものゆくことは・りうのちから、をとこのしわざは・めのちからなり。

The original writing is rather hard to read because it’s written almost entirely in hiragana, but it can be transliterated as follows:

矢の走る事は弓の力、雲の行く事は竜の力、男の仕業は婦の力なり。

Which can be translated to:

It is the power of the bow that determines the flight of the arrow, the might of the dragon that controls the movement of the clouds, and the strength of the wife that guides the actions of a man.

(Remember, again, that Mikleo is connected to dragons/竜, that he is based on Azure Dragon/清龍, and clouds are connected to rain/water and thunder/lightning, two elements associated with Mikleo and Sorey respectively.)

This is from the letter of Nichiren Daishounin (日蓮大聖人). I hope the meaning is obvious enough even without my explanation.

The bow and arrow work in tandem. Without the bow, the arrow cannot work. Without the arrow, the bow cannot work either. It is in the relationship, that even a relationship between a husband and a wife is likened to this.

The same dialogue from the first Water Armatus battle above is repeated again in this scene:

MIKLEO: Sorey, I’ll do the aiming. SOREY: Right. And I’ll pick when to fire.

Despite the Armatization being literally a process of becoming one, of two different physical bodies becoming one, interestingly the human and seraph still retain each of their own consciousness. They don’t blend into one, and the workings of this can be seen in Sorey and Mikleo coordinating to handle the timing and aiming, respectively, when in Water Armatus. Armatus does work in mysterious ways, and it perhaps cannot be described in feelings known to common humans.

SOREY: By the way, Mikleo. SOREY: Because of the Squire pact, I can’t see out of my right eye anymore. SOREY: So... SOREY: Lend me your power! MIKLEO: Got it, Sorey. I’ll do the aiming. SOREY: Right. And I’ll pick when to fire!

The manga outright makes Mikleo act as Sorey’s eye when aiming at the target, while Sorey handles the timing because of this. This communion, tacit understanding is a major part of their bond, after all, even without the Armatization. The novel also makes it a point that Mikleo offers to do the aiming because he has realized for a long time already that Sorey is blind on his right eye.

異体同心 種族は違うが、同じ想いを抱いて育った。人と天族の可能性を示す。

One Heart in Different Bodies They are of different kinds, but they grew up embracing the same feelings. Showing the possibilities of humans and seraphim.

Exactly because they’re different that they can understand each other, can complement each other, as has been said before. I’ve talked about how Mikleo had needed to learn this, shortly, when I said he didn’t consider himself Sorey’s true friend, but even Sorey needed to learn about this.

SOREY: Wait, hold on now! MIKLEO: You’re right, I am stubborn as a rock! SOREY: Huh? MIKLEO: I admit it. I’m hell-bent on becoming a Sub Lord. MIKLEO: But there’s something important that you don’t understand! SOREY: I do understand! I just didn’t want you to get involved! MIKLEO: Get over yourself. SOREY: ! MIKLEO: Do you really think this is your dream alone?

SOREY: This is our dream.

Sorey’s flaw in the beginning is that he tends to carry everything by himself, that he doesn’t want the people he cares about to be hurt because of him (or what he thinks as his own responsibility, and not anyone else’s). He was alright with sharing happiness, but afraid to share anything else, even though it was implied that Michael failed as a Shepherd because he carried that burden alone. Even when Sorey and Mikleo fought (because they cared too much about each other), this had already had an effect on Sorey: he didn’t feel the excitement of exploring ruins, he couldn’t see the Earthen Historia, he wasn’t able to de-Armatize at will; and it was only when he accepted Mikleo’s offer to help him, that he could do all these and more (like how Alisha was finally able to hear the seraphim’s voices.)

MIKLEO: I know because it’s you; you were thinking that you didn’t want me to be involved, or that you didn’t want me to carry the burden. MIKLEO: But it’s too late for all that. MIKLEO: Our journey began a long time ago already. MIKLEO: It’s not just your dream. SOREY: ...Yeah. SOREY: This is our dream!

A relationship is balanced if it’s two-way. Their bond is meant to show the limitless possibilities of how a human and seraph can work together to reach their dream together, the dream of coexistence, of being together. To be together is to share not just happiness but also sadness. It’s because life is not lived just by yourself alone, but also with others.

I won’t let you carry this by yourself.

Even until the very end. Just like the power of the bow determines the flight of the arrow, the arrow that flies straight and steadfast without any hesitation for its resolve, warding off anything that is evil, purifying the heart from taint, calling for friendly divinities to aid them. It will reunite them, the true friends, no matter the odds, just bet on that one chance. And this love is not to be denied.

You’ve matured through the course of this journey, and I’m proud of you for that, but don’t forget, I’m also here, right next to you, and I won’t let you carry everything by yourself.

唯一無二の 互いに誰よりも負けたくない相手。だから成長できる。今までも、これからも。

The One and Only They do not want to lose to each other more than anyone else. That’s why they can grow. Until now, and from now on.

Mikleo is the best support Sorey could’ve gotten, even if he didn’t ask for him himself.

May these bow and arrow represent happiness and blessings, just as they used to in the ancient times long past.

弓を構えて真実射抜け

Pull the bow and aim for the truth.

[cosmictulips]

1 and 19 for the polytheist asks :D

1. Were you born into your faith? If not, how did you discover it?

I was born into a heavy catholic family but was raised southern baptist.

just let that sink in lmao.

My struggle began with literally not understanding the bible lmaooo. I was so interested in the book of... revelations I think it's called that I didn't care for the rest haha.

but as I got older and started doing something called Christian Science, I just got more interested in other religions. to be fair, I never felt good at a church. I never felt like I could connect to God. and I always wondered how Priests would connect to god.

I remember something so fucking stupid that got me on the path to wicca haha. my friend was talking to me in art class and i had drawn like.. the four elements and she was like, oh so you're wiccan and I was like ??? what?

so I started googling it a bit and I found wicca. from there I learned about native american shamanism and for awhile I was like, yea I guess I'm wiccan.

but stranger shit started occuring like seeing spirits and having some funky ass dreams and i was like, wicca isn't answering everything. so I started this witchblog. wasn't good for much of anything it was just holding all the information I was interested in.

I have an older sister who is into chakras and that stuff and by this time I was becoming aware of what closed practices were, how the west ... uses those practices and so I wanted something that was very... cut and dry so to speak. which, I know now I would have to figure out on my own lmao.

but essentially, she ended up giving me my first tarot deck. and I hated tarot. and I was like, okay so I'm not a diviner but perhaps I could write to some sort of god.

so someone... Noonymoon or something, she was giving out these deity readings. and this was backkkk in the og days of witchblr haha. and I was like, I do want to worship a god. but, given my connection to nature I didn't want to be monotheistic. it never and still doesn't seem right to me that one powerful being...rules everything.

and that's when I discovered which gods wanted to work with me. I purposely stuck to Greek because I know their myths well and i love their culture and history.

in hindsight I probably should've chosen celtic LOL. but, it's fine. from there, I just started working out my kinks. like I found a tarot deck I really connected with. I found pendulums I like, and I suddenly didn't feel in pressure -and this is where we cut to the second question-

but yea, I discovered it through some people essentially. through my grandmother mentioning shamanism, my sister telling me to go into anthropology, my old friends telling me about wicca, my older sister who despises but gave me my first pendulum and tarot deck.

and then from old witchblrs who got me thinking haha.

19. How have your Gods affected your life?

well, that's also a funny story.

I asked aphrodite to send me the love of my life. she sent me two men. one didn't care enough and left within a few months. the other used me for two years to cheat on his wife.

and then every man who has sense come in has not been good enough for me. and I wouldn't even have to say it, they did . each and every one of them has told me that I'm above their league. that I'm too good for them and they want me to find me someone in my level.

I asked athena for guidance with school and I would proceed to flunk every fucking semester until I forced myself into a major that is risky but I know I would excel in.

since then I have found so many like minded peers. I don't feel so strange in what I'm doing, and I have basically gotten over my social anxiety.

I ask Hermes ... well. I don't ask hermes, I just ask him to get me to where I need to be safely, and along the way he sends me so many dogs! so many fucking dogs. I love them. I have to scream hermes every time.

I ask Eirene and Soteria to feel safe and at peace with my own body and I feel good about who I am. I ask Enyo and Ares to help me get over my anger issues and not only have I learned to control my anger for the most part but I'm not longer ashamed that I have it. I am proud to be aggressive when I have to be. I am proud to be the protector of my friend group and of what little family I call...family.

they have taught my what it is exactly that I've been feeling for so long. and they taught me to honor my rage but to also let it go.

and I guess in a way, they have all taught me many things. Aphrodite taught me to trust my intutiion and to demand more out of romance. Athena taught me to stop settling for things that don't sit right with me. Artemis has taught me to get out more. to enjoy the nature around me and to just... breathe to put it simply.

Then there's zeus.

he is my father figure to say the least. he... is still very intimidating to me lol and I try to make him proud. he wants me to be sure of who I am before I approach him. and it's funny cause right now I am sure of who I am. I am ALWAYS sure of what makes me me.

but then we talk. and he asks me who I am. he tells me not to be so hard on myself and is there to comfort me when shit gets rough. and suddenly it's like i don't know who I am.

and I think he's the reason why I've been getting into therapy. I've found some great exercises on youtube when it comes to that stuff because I can't afford a therapist right now.

he's made me grounded.

also quick shoutout to apollo for showing me so much classical music. my GODS i love the french horn haha

but yea. for better and for worse the gods are there helping me. and I try to honor them everyday.

[pumpkinpaix]

Anon here! I meant to ask for Hyoga headcanons sorry! I wrote Shun because I was reading your cute headcanons for him and the others and did word association, but I really like your headcanons and they seem really thought out!

alskdjlfskj yeah i was wondering, I’m glad you came back to clarify!! and thank you so much ;~; I love thinking hard about headcanons because I think it’s one of the best ways to understand characters ahaha. I’m glad it worked for you!! :DDDD anyways, some hyoga headcanons:

hyoga didn’t speak any japanese before he was orphaned and moved to japan. his mother only spoke russian to him before she passed, and despite him being half-japanese, there really wasn’t anyone present to teach him anything about it until he was adopted. he learned through trial by fire, essentially, and when you’re four or so, you can still pick up language fast--but only if you’ve got a good environment for it. hyoga, being scared and antisocial and grieving for his mother, didn’t really make friends well

there were two other orphans who tried often to make friends with him: one was shun, but that’s because shun tried to make friends with everyone at least once, even though he was largely bullied, and hyoga mostly ignored him until he gave up, and the other was a much more persistent boy who didn’t survive saint training. hyoga also mostly ignored him, but he learned japanese through constant, direct exposure. they weren’t close, but after the wars, hyoga finds out where he was sent, and visits to pay his respects to his grave

hyoga and shiryu speak the most languages out of anyone in their group at five apiece: hyoga speaks russian, japanese, greek, english and french, while shiryu speaks japanese, jiang-huai mandarin, standard mandarin, greek, and english. sometimes they mock-argue about it, and hyoga says he wins on a technicality since if they’re counting jiang-huai as a separate language even though it’s politically a dialect, then he actually wins because he speaks both southern and standard russian dialects, to which shiryu smiles and says, “if that makes you feel better ;)”

anyways the point is, hyoga speaks japanese with a very faint russian accent that’s nearly undetectable unless he’s agitated, and then it gets way stronger, like when he’s losing to seiya at super mario

wow that was just a lot of language headcanons

actually, I think hyoga and shiryu get quite close, especially after the war, because they share weirdly a lot of experiences, what with feeling both like diaspora in japan, even though they’re both half-japanese (i’m running with my “I think shiryu is half-chinese??” theory), being sent back to train near their birthplaces, losing eyes lmfao and never feeling quite at home anywhere.

hyoga is actually really into literature! i think i said before that that’s how he keeps up with his languages, but he also has a soft spot for russian folktales because it’s something he remembers his mother by and also is like. a little salty in his way? that he fights for a greek goddess and had to learn all this stuff about greek myth and is like :/ but what about the stories I grew up with?

anyways he’s a surprisingly animated storyteller and sometimes, during like, idk, bonfire nights? he’ll tell them all about rusalki and leshi and snegoruchka and the death of koschei

or maybe sometimes he’ll recite poetry! he doesn’t do it often because he’s not really like, a showman? but like. when the Vibes are Right.

when they’re older, they discover that the same stories told drunk are often hilarious, so sometimes they’ll ply him with some alcohol and clamor for their favorites

he has mixed feelings about religion: his mother was russian orthodox, but passed away so early that he never really like, got to experience it as a practice of faith. he was christened, and obviously he has that rosary cross, but that’s about it, besides like, you know, the way the faith of a parent is instilled in a child. he used to pray to saints when he was much younger and alone, but kind of like, in a way where he didn’t really understand. it’s also complicated because you know, greek gods? exist??? but in some ways, he still has a little of that childlike belief. he considers going back and getting confirmed in russia after the wars, since he missed the normal window for it training and fighting, but he’s not sure if it’s appropriate, if it’s what he wants, if it matters

he likes paintings and such, but he doesn’t really get it as much as he gets literature, but shun likes them, so they actually go to museums together quite often. hyoga is, however, weak for craftsmanship, and does eventually acquire a small, beautifully painted icon for himself, despite all of his conflicted feelings about his religion

hyoga, despite giving off touch-me-not vibes, actually really likes physical contact with people he trusts. for a a lot of their early friendship, seiya didn’t really touch him at all because he essentially got hissed at the first time he went to casually bump shoulders. but shun, being a person who likes physical touch and also somehow didn’t get the urge to seek it out beaten out of him, touches gently and reads boundaries well, so hyoga lets him in a lot earlier than anyone else.

ikki is kind of the same, actually? so honestly sometimes he and hyoga challenge each other to sparring matches just to like. touch another human person, even though neither of them acknowledges or really even realizes that that’s what they’re doing. :( fuck i got sad

hyoga prefers fruit popsicles to ice cream. why? idk it just feels right.

bonus shun language headcanon:

shun speaks some tigrinya, which he learned from june (i’ve decided this is her native language)--not fluently (which is why he doesn’t win the language contest, at least, not until he learns some russian), but enough to carry on private conversations when they don’t want to be overheard by others, but most of the time, they talk to each other in english or greek

[sparksinthenight]

Advice for Little Me

This is advice that I have for my twelve-year-old self. If I’d known all this at twelve my life would be a whole lot better.

1) Capitalists are horrible, manipulative, lying, selfish, apathetic, overwhelmingly dangerous, incredibly bad for society, wrong, and deeply disturbed.

2) Anyone who ever says or insinuates that they earned the wealth they have are the worst types of people.

3) Anyone who goes around measuring the value of a human being by how fancy their job is incredibly shallow, materialistic, lacking in understanding, and not worth your time.

4) No. No people did not "earn" anything through hard work. They got it through privilege, privilege, privilege, and privilege. The fact that they could afford a decent quality highschool education is already a huge privilege. And no, being poor when they were in college absolutely does not count as not having privilege. They got to go to college. That’s a privilege so many don’t get.

5) You know who's actually working hard? The people in the sweatshops, the mines, the agricultural plantations, the warehouses, etc. The people getting paid poverty wages as they work themselves to death. Have some fucking respect for them you’re not above them just because you were born in a rich family.

6) All humans have equal value.

7) And the value of a human being is inherent.

8) If you have a house and fancy furniture and a flatscreen TV and a car and a closet full of clothes and enough money to go to restaurants and golfing and shit and then you turn around and say you're oppressed I fucking hate you so goddamn much.

9) The voices of the poor people are fucking ALWAYS silenced in this world, all over the world.

10) There's men in suits somewhere defending capitalism and our centrist dads are defending them while most of the world are wage slaves.

11) The poor are always ignored, pushed to the side, and silenced.

12) Hi. Hello person reading this. Check out the Red Deal. It's fucking awesome. Please read it. It will save your soul and change your life.

13) Also my Wattpad account is here please check it out https://www.wattpad.com/user/Balladoad it won't save your soul and change your life but I write communist stories.

14) Your value is inherent. Child. Darling. Your value is inherent. You are alive. That is enough. You don't need a fancy job or a big income or a fancy degree or something. You're a human being trying to do the best you personally can with the resources and knowledge you have and in the situation you're in. Your value is inherent. Baby.

15) Check out the Red Deal.

16) Nobody is liberated. None of us are liberated. Especially under capitalism none of us are liberated. We are all equal. We are all capable of being free. Of having an equal amount of power. Of making decisions equally and democratically where everyone has a seat at the round table. Seperation is a myth. Wow that sounds like a fucking hippie thing to say but I mean it in the most practical, tangible way. We are all equal and we should be treated equally and under capitalism we are not. Not even close. We can all be together, all be comrades, all help and support each other, all protect and provide for each other, all listen to and understand each other, and all create a world where finally, finally people are free.

17) True freedom does not and should not feel forced. Corporate capitalists tell us that freedom is the ability to be successful in the capitalist framework. That is not what true freedom is. True freedom comes from within. It does not feel forced. It feels good and right and beautiful and true. It's not forced upon you it's something that sparks to life inside your own soul.

18) Sucess as a human being is about the kindness and compassion you show other people. Which is actually rather inversely proportional to how much money you make from what I've seen. At every step of your life seek out people who need help and help them.  

19) Children should all be treated with equal respect, reverance, affection, and love.

20) Your value is inherent. Human value is inherent. Valuing human life does mean valuing the continuation of human life but not just that. It means valuing the quality of human life too. It means valuing human happiness.

21) Take every opportunity you have to learn. Not learn trivial "knowledge" about string theory or CRISPR or valence orbitals. Real, important knowledge about how to be kind to other people. How to be respectful towards other people. How to uplift the downtrodden. How to be in solidarity with the oppressed. How to live in harmony with other people. How to tear down the walls that divide us. How to live in harmony with nature. How to have respect and reverence for nature. How to protect and defend the Land and Water. How to be brave to put the needs of others before your own. How to think for yourself and be your own person. How to live your life in accordance to the truth and intangible mystic forces behind everything that guide us all. Wow that sounded hippie.

22) People are exploited and oppressed. So many people are exploited and oppressed. They deserve better than this.

23) You shouldn’t go after power. Seeking power is the way to corruption. You should seek to destroy the unequal distribution of power itself so that all people can have equal power.

24) Absolutely power corrupts absolutely. Power corrupts whenever it’s not equally shared.

25) Money is power. It always has been, it always will be. It’s what determines if people are able to eat or not. It’s what makes us spend most of our time at our jobs working for our bosses and doing what they want us to do.

26) Learn history. Please.

27) Read books about the Holocaust. About slavery. About all the types of slavery that have happened in various societies not just the Transatlantic Slave Trade though definitely you should learn about that too. About the Irish Potato Famine, the Armenian Genocide. About colonialism. About settler-colonialism. About feudalism. About monarchy. About the Industrial Revolution. About segregation. About the genocide of Indigenous peoples. About workhouses. About the Witch Trials. About the French Revolution. About the Spanish resistance against fascism. About residential schools. About the 60s Scoop. About the Stolen Generations. About resistance against the Roman Empire. About so much more. Just read them. Make sure they’re not written through the lenses of oppressors and/or rich people though.

28) Recognize that while history affects the present day history IS NOT the present day and present struggles are unique and different though not altogether separated from history. The present day is the present day. It’s struggles are unique and the way that the struggle for universal equality and liberation manifests in the present day is unique.

30) Don’t trust Christian priests.

31) Actually be cautious of any rich, privileged person trying to teach you religion.

32) Just because someone’s older doesn’t mean that they’re right or they know more than you. Knowledge of the truth and wisdom comes from kindness, compassion, humility, and suffering. It does not come from age. A rich man born to a rich family who thinks he’s better than poor people and does not have humility and respect towards them is not someone who knows things, no matter how old he is.

33) Men are generally less trustable than women because they’ve been taught to believe they’re always right and as such do not question themselves and think deeply and critically about their opinions as much as women do.

34) This does not apply to men who are poor or mentally ill since society never teaches them that.

35) Despite this being an unpopular opinion, pain and struggle are actually really good teachers. If you’re suffering, you deserve better. You deserve to not be suffering. But still, use it as an opportunity to learn.

37) Gender roles are the biggest scam ever created.

38) But the even bigger scam is capitalism.

39) You do not need material wealth. It is inherently addictive and bad for yourself, everyone else, and the Land and Water.

40) It’s just stuff. It doesn’t matter.

41) If you’re in a situation where people are treating you like you’re better than other people just get the fuck out of that situation as fast as you can. And never fucking look back no matter what ANYONE says.

42) Have respect and reverence for nature. Learn from it as much as you can. But from like, nature directly. Not from people talking about nature. Unless they’re Indigenous. And pristine, untouched nature is better than nature that’s been tampered with.

43) The world runs on bonds of love more than bonds between atoms.

44) Work hard not for money or to increase the power you have but rather to humbly and reverently improve the lives of the oppressed.

45) But recognize that you can’t do everything and do what you can and don’t beat yourself up over the things you can’t do.

[blacknidstang]

Thank you dear @moodyxxsunflower for tagging me in this post 🖤🖤

1) can you listen to a song and quite enjoy it even if the lyrics are trashy? Most of the times no buy there are some exceptions.. i think it depends? Like if it's a party song then i guess the trashy lyrics can be good or something that is made for a vulgar mood(tho even then there are some trashy lyrics that are vulgar in a more enjoyable way than others). So not everything has to have deep meanings. but i do pay attention to the lyrics most of the time.

2) current lock screen?

3) something you enjoy which is collectively considered to be trashy? Where i come from people don't value anime/manga/manhwa/ff so they count them trashy i think. (Also ridiculous hardcore h*ntai. Love it. It's trashy but when brain is horny nothing makes sense. Also unironically enjoyed all the problematic non-con yaoi since teen age so that too?)

4) what kind of weather do you prefer? Cloudy, rainy, and snowy. (Also love summer rains)

5) current time? 2:43 pm

6) Is spinach more like green crap, or is it quite delicious in your opinion? very deicious. loves it a lot. everything gets better with spinach.

8) something you particularly like about literature? strange question! I mean what's there not to like? it’s my oldest and dearest friend! i haven’t been capable of reading long novels in recent but still, poems, plays, short stories and short novels, all of them are such a great source of joy. words can be so magical. they either drag that specific feeling or thought you’ve long had inside but couldn’t name or make you experience a whole new set of thoughts and emotions. words have such power over me, can make me feel joyous, make me cry, even turn me on (i prefer reading ff smuts over watching any p*rn lol :D)

7) fav poem? oh boy. Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven, Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll. there are so much i might not have in mind.

Also a lot from my country’s poets. basically love all of Hafez’ poems. Among modern iranian poems definitely Mehdi Akhavan-Sales’ “The Eighth Labour” (the poem is sort of a homage to an old persian epic where the hero goes through 7 labours) (and ofc so many more from him) and Ahmad Shamlou’s poem “Fairies” (a political poem disguised as a child nursery, dunno why everything in my life comes to this hahaha)

9) fav food? noodle! :D also pesto pasta, potato salad and any form of used mushroom. i also have a huge sweet tooth, so all the cakes and sweets are always welcome at any given moment.

10) fav myth? such hard question!

in general all of myths about world creation interests me. from abrahamic religions (which i consider myth, hope it's not offending anyone) to other older mythologies all across the world, these are my favorite stories ever.

birth of athena and anything related to her, also clytemnestra butchering agamemnon.

the after life judgment ritual in egyptian mythology. (i mean in general i got a big fat crush on anubis)

there are tons and tons of other myths that i might not recall at the moment but i greatly enjoy mythology, comparing myths and finding similarities between different nations’ stories and religions.

i’m tagging @myshadowsteppedcloser, @into-september, @yurayura-konoha. if you like! 💙

{everyone else that’s mutual please consider yourself tagged. i’m shy with tagging bc i don’t wanna bother people especially the ones who do not frequently talk with me or ones who i assume are not into these stuff. so if you saw these questions and liked it lemme see your answers :) }

[lightcomingthroughthedarkness]

hey, would you mind sharing what kind of spoilers for the new season are already out there (other than clarke/gaia apparently) that the previous anon mentionend? or do you have a link where i can look them up myself? i personally do not plan on watching, but for some dumb reason i still get really upset when i hear about stuff that is happening on this show, so i'd like to prepare myself.

This is basically what I got but please don't @ me if I get some of it wrong. I don't have the screenshots right now. And don't get all pissy with me about spoilers. If you don't want to see them, then don't look here. Episode 7x02 to 7x04 below the cut.

7x02:

Clarke and Bellamy are not in this episode.

We see flashbacks of Octavia and what happened to her in the anomaly. That scene under water, is Octavia swimming up to the surface and arriving at a new planet. Diyoza is already there and is in labor. When Octavia arrived, Diyoza had already been there for 3 months. Octavia helps her give birth to Hope and it's a call back to Bellamy helping Aurora give birth to Octavia.

Octavia, Diyoza and Hope spend 10 years on this planet called Sky Ring (because of a wormhole close by, time moves faster there than it does on Sanctum) Octavia is at that point older than Bellamy was when she went into the anomaly. Octavia tries to get back to Bellamy for 6 years but after disagreements with Diyoza (we see in the trailer) she sort of gives up after a while. Octavia writes Bellamy a letter, telling him that she now understands everything he did for her (as she has helped raise Hope), how she wishes that he is happy etc. Octavia tells Hope about her people, the same way Clarke did with Madi. Octavia promises Hope that she will bring "Clarke, Madi and Bellamy" to Hope (when Octavia tries to leave one of those times) and Hope asks "and Murphy?" And Octavia says "and Murphy".

This planet is also some sort of prison planet that is controlled by the people that control the anomaly. So at some point something happens that separates Octavia, Hope and Diyoza. Hope grows up on Sky Ring but we do not know what happened to Diyoza and Octavia after the second time she disappears in the anomaly. Most likely captured. Hope saw Octavia in 7x01 and that was a memory from their 10 years together that Hope can't remember.

Hope, Echo and Gabriel arrive at the same planet in "current" time. They spend a long time on the Sky Ring. Echo is desperate to save Bellamy but they can't get out. Turns out, there are two prisoners on the planet at different times and they start to make plans to escape and find Bellamy. They find out Bellamy was taken by some people called "the disciples" lead by a man named Anders. Echo also finds the letter Octavia left for Bellamy but Hope rips it away from her because she doesn't want Echo to touch Octavia's things.

Basically the episode is Octavia flashbacks and Hope, Echo and Gabriel arriving and trying to find out where they are.

7x03:

Bellamy is still missing.

Sanctum stuff. Clarke and Gaia under the tree as we see in the trailer, Clarke holding Abby's ring. Clarke says she has nothing left from her parents. Gaia says that's not true, you are here. Clarke then buries the ring and Gaia buries the flame. Gaia says "your fight is over" and Clarke says "may we meet again". Indra joins them, they have to deal with Sanctum.

Most of Clarke's one on one scenes are with Gaia in 7x03 and 7x04.

Murphy and Emori are staying in the palace. At some point Raven walks in on them and Murphy jokes about that happening for 6 years now, since they were on the Ring together. Murphy and Emori need to keep pretending to be Primes. Raven needs Emori's help with the reactors on Sanctum because there has been some problems and if they explode everyone will die. (We see that man, James die in the trailer). Basically they all need to fix it.

Tension in Sanctum between all these different groups. Wonkru are angry and want Madi to lead them, not only getting information from Gaia or Indra. Indra goes to get Madi, Clarke and Gaia stop her. Gaia tells Wonkru she destroyed the Flame. Wonkru are now angry and basically go back to their original "krus".

Raven is fed up with Wonkru and turns to Eligius to help with the problem (Eligius are trying to take over Sanctum). Then Raven, Emori and Murphy work on the reactor thing, Emori has to get in and fix shit, she has little time to do that. Murphy and Raven are stressed and when things go bad Raven yells at her to "get out of there" (trailer). Emori and Murphy get radiation sickness. Raven does not. Because of the radiation, Eligius are not safe and some of them die. Raven finds herself in Clarke's shoes so to speak, people dying in her "care". Murphy says something about welcoming Raven to "the grey world". One who dies is Hatch, his wife Nikki is not happy and attacks Raven. Raven thinks she deserves it for causing their deaths.

Clarke is still dealing with Russell, to kill him or not. She and Gaia sit on the porch, talking (trailer). Finally after their talk, Clarke decides not to kill Russell because things will get worse if she kills him.

7x04:

We see young Hope living alone after Octavia and Diyoza disappeared. She has learned to take care of herself. The anomaly comes back and she runs towards it. People come out of the anomaly. They are prisoners sent to Sky Ring to atone for their sins. Hope fights back but then later becomes friends with one prisoner. Hope learns how to fight from him so she can fight back the next time the anomaly comes back. At the time, Hope is 10 years old. Hope grows up and the anomaly comes back. The prisoner, her friend helps her so she can get into the anomaly but by doing so, he dies for her.

Back to Echo, Hope and Gabriel in their time on Sky Ring. The prisoners have some sort of chip/memory thing in them. It goes back to Becca and pre-end of the world stuff. If you access the memory chip thingy, you get information from people. Even if they die and have that thing in them, you can still get information. That's how the anomaly people find out stuff about people.

Back on Sanctum. One of the people Echo killed in 7x01 is found in the woods and brought to Clarke. Jordan then tells Clarke there are people (the disciples) on Sanctum and have asked for Clarke. Clarke goes to meet with them (trailer) but first she wants someone to take a look at the suit they have found. So Clarke goes to Raven. Clarke and Raven have a moment because Raven is upset and feels responsible for Eligius members dying. Clarke helps her process her choices and what that does to them to have to make tough calls.

Clarke goes to meet the people who called for her. It's Anders. Anders says that they are the disciples and need Clarke's help. Anders' - and the disciples' leader believe Clarke is "the key to win the last great war the human race will ever fight. You should know time moves much faster where your friends are, every second counts"

Clarke goes back to Raven who is working on the suit and finds out the anomaly is a wormhole. Raven asks "Bellamy, Octavia and Echo, where are they?"

Back to Echo, Hope and Gabriel. Still stuck on Sky Ring. It's been years. We find out Octavia told Hope greek myths (flashback), like Bellamy did to Octavia when she was a child. Echo is trying to trick the prisoner Orlando so they can get out of there and use the anomaly to get to Bellamy. They find out information about the face tattoos and what it means. Apparently it depends on what level you are as a disciples. Then there's something about the prisoners coming to Sky Ring having some sort of faith or religion. Gabriel talks to Orlando when he sees him praying. They talk about truth, belief faith etc. After a while Orlando and Gabriel, Echo and Hope make a deal to help one another out so they can go through the anomaly when it comes. But only if Echo, Hope and Gabriel promise not to kill the Orlando's family (the disciples) when they come through the anomaly.

Echo has now spent 5 years with these people and she promises that she won't hurt Orlando's people when they arrive. During this time, Echo and Hope have cut their hair, trained to fight and Orlando marks Echo and Hope on their faces with the anomaly signs so they can blend in and get through and around the anomaly. Echo is seen as a loyal person, even to the people she's spent 5 years with on Sky Ring. Then Orlando's "prison time" is up and his people come through the anomaly. Echo has tied Orlando, waiting for what will happen when the people come through. Echo had promised that she would let them live if they got help to get through the anomaly. Echo being Echo kills them all and Hope and Gabriel are shocked. (call back to when Finn killed those grounders in s2). Orlando who has helped them all these years and believed Echo, is horrified and cries when he sees what she has done (man gagged and crying in the trailer). Echo walks up to Orlando, tied and gagged, Hope and Gabriel yell at Echo not to kill him. Echo leaves Orlando with a knife to basically fend for himself. Maybe because she spent 5 years with him 🤷🏻‍♀️. Echo tells Hope and Gabriel that Orlando can't be trusted not to ruin their plan when they get to Bardo because they (Echo, Hope and Gabriel) are not Orlando's people. Hope and Gabriel don't argue and they don't help Orlando. Hope, Echo, Gabriel then leave in the anomaly that has arrived and their goal is Bardo, to get to Bellamy and it is also where Octavia and Diyoza might be. It has now been 5 years since Echo last saw Bellamy. We do not know how time moves for Bellamy.

Clarke and Raven find out there's information about Clarke in the suit they found. The disciples somehow know Clarke is called "Wanheda" because it says so on the suit/helmet. Clarke goes back to Anders and asks to see her friends. Anders tells Clarke they are no longer on "Penance" the real name for Sky Ring and that the prisoner there (Orlando) was betrayed so he killed himself. Clarke, believing Bellamy is there, says that she doesn't believe her friends would betray anyone. Anders does not tell Clarke that Bellamy was not there. Anders says he has proof. Orlando left a note. Clarke says she won't say anything until she gets proof that her friends are alive. Anders says they don't have to give Clarke proof, they already have a machine that taps into people's memories so they already know things about Clarke's friends and Clarke. Who are they getting all these memories from? Octavia? Bellamy? Diyoza? We don't know.

Clarke tells Anders she won't go with him and that she has friends with her. Anders says he also has friends with him, invisible like in 7x01, they appear. Apparently they can go into "ghost mode" like putting an Iphone on silence, lol. Then Jordan comes up, Clarke gets angry that he is there but turns out he is a distraction. Ander's friends are shot. Then Raven appears with her suit in ghost mode. Raven is yet again forced to kill people. She is upset. But they go to the anomaly stone (trailer). They don't know where it goes, what happens there etc. When they start to walk into the anomaly stone, Gaia tells Clarke she will stay behind with Madi. Raven, Clarke, Niylah, Miller and Jordan go (jump team). Gaia climbs up from the anomaly stone cave but is attacked by a disciples person in ghost mode. When Gaia wakes up, the disciple person is taking the anomaly stone offline (whatever that means) and she tries to fight them again but she is pulled through the anonaly and disappears. The anomaly stone collapses.

The jump team arrive at a snowy and windy planet. There is nothing there. They don't know how to survive or how fast time moves there. And they have no idea how to find another anomaly stone so they are stuck there. Episode ends.

[prehistoricalcats]

I'm really interested in your Cats universe! It seems like you have them living like humans but humans also exist? Can you describe your universe a bit more, if you'd like to? :)

I'd love to!

I must warn you though, this is a very in-depth universe, and even focusing on specific points and trying to simplify things as much as I could, I still managed to make to this about a mile long. Damn I wish Tumblr mobile let me do a read more cut

First of all, yes the Cats are anthropomorphic, and yes humans also exist in this universe. Anthro Dogs, Rats, and Mice all definitely also exist, and I'm considering a few other anthro races like Hyenas and maybe like Rabbits and some others, but haven't put too much thought to that yet.

Just for reference, if it's capitalized (Dog, Cat, etc) it's the anthro race, if it's lower case (dog, cat, etc) it's the fourlegger

Some Basic Terminology:

Non-human beings/non-human people - collective term for all anthro races

NHP - non-human person(s)

Furfolk - common English slang for non-human beings, not politically correct but still pretty widely used. There is also a version of this word for each specific race, Catfolk, Ratfolk, etc. (Note: Mice and Rats often are collectively refered to as Rodents or Rodentfolk)

Fourlegger - regular dogs, cats, etc. Used mostly by NHPs to differentiate between them and NHPs

Bald-bodies - humans. Used by NHPs, considered derogatory by most (nearly everyone uses it anyway)

Kit - kid, child, teenager (for Cats). Short for kitten

Tom - you know this one, an adult or teenage male Cat

Mot - an adult or teenage female Cat, an alternative word for "queen"

License Name - once called the "family name" back when it was still quite common for Cats to work for a human family in a residential household. Essentially this is the name that humans assign to Cats because Particular Names are often "too hard" for humans to remember/pronounce. It's their "official" name that appears on most legal documents, including their "license" which is essentially a registration card and number that all Cats are required to have. Most Cats have a license, and a license name, by age three, some get theirs as infants. Sometimes the parents have a say in what the license name will be, sometimes not. Sometimes a Cat will prefer their license name, some prefer their Particular Name, others don't care and will respond to either.

The Junkyard - a slum, mostly populated by Cats, on the outskirts of the metropolitan area of an unnamed imaginary British city, comprised partly of makeshift shelters scattered throughout an actual dump/landfill/junkyard, and partly of several large shantytowns built on the unused land surrounding the dump

Some biology stuff:

Okay brief anatomy lesson before we begin

(For real though, please at least glance over that link before continuing, it is fairly brief and it makes what I'm about to try to explain a lot less complicated)

I've had to do some fantasy science to work out how Cats can have retractable claws without becoming less dextrous than humans (because I need them to be able to play instruments made for human hands). What I've essentially gone with so far is that Cats have extra bones in their hands/feet, which would make them unlike any other known tetrapod either living or in the fossil record, so the science side of me rebels at this, but the art side of me says it's a story about bipedal talking felines with mystical powers it's already science fiction they could have duckbills if I wanted them to (I don't), and so I think this is a decent compromise. I can go into further detail about the way the claws work later on if you like, but this post is already going to be pretty long so for now I'll just say that you can describe the claw as an extra joint attached to the end of the distal phalange.

Cats are super bendy, for the same reason that (fourlegger) cats are bendy. They have extra bones/joints in their spines. Cats have 7 cervical, 13 thoracic, 7 lumbar, 5 sacral, and 19-23 caudal. They have more sacral bones than fourleggers because they're bipedal.

Cats are habitual bipeds, like humans. But unlike humans, they are perfectly comfortable wandering around on their hands and knees. Though the bipedal stance is more comfortable and usually perfered by adults especially, most non-elderly Cats are still perfectly fine crawling on the ground on their hands and knees. You're generally more likely to see kits and young adults doing this, but older adults do it to. If they want to move fast or run, they use a bipedal stance. Beyond that it's just whatever feels right for the situation.

Some culture stuff

Cats and other NHPs (except Rats) don't need clothing to cover their privates. I'm not going to go into the anatomy of how that works. For now let's just imagine it's the fur that's hiding it. They do wear clothes, especially in winter, but it's not so much for modesty as it is for functionality and fashion. Basically clothes for Cats are for three purposes: to protect from the elements (cold, rain, sun, etc), to shut the outraged humans up, and to look good. It's pretty common in the summer to see Cats wearing nothing but some arm/leg warmers or other fashion accessory, and a belt/rope around their waist to store things on in the absence of pockets,(even if they also have a bag)

If you've ever owned or seen or been around a male rat you probably know why I say "except Rats" and I'm not going to get into it here, just know Rat men always where pants/trousers

Cats exist globally and have a variety of different cultures, often greatly influenced by the human culture of that region, but one of the most universal elements of Cat culture is the idea that "It's considerably dishonorable for a Cat to use anything but their own claws (and teeth in many cultures) in combat against another unarmed Cat." Translation: Cats generally frown on using weapons, though many recognize the need to know how to use them, because humans use weapons, and a claws against a machete or a cattle prod or a gun isn't fair. By the same line many modern Cats consider it okay to use weapons against a (dishonorable) Cat that pulled a weapon on you first, though many elders still frown upon this.

The relationship between Cats (and other NHPs) and humans isn't very good, and the relationship between different types of NHPs isn't much better. There's a social hierarchy that puts humans (especially white straight cis male humans) at the top. The hierarchy goes humans > Dogs > Cats > Rodents

About the Jellicles

The Jellicles are the name of a specific tribe that once was primarily a religious tribe. Back a really fuck long time ago when Deuteronomy was still a kitten, the Jellicles lived off the land and practiced their religion (still working out the details of that sorry but I do have a few things)

The Jellicle Choice is a real thing, though I haven't decided if it started with Deuteronomy or if he was the next in a line sorta kinda but not exactly like the Avatar. The Jellicle Ball is held every year and people used to come from all over hoping to be picked. The humans didn't like this mass gathering, and the space they had in their own territory couldn't quite handle it anyway, so the Jellicles had to start keeping the Ball's location a secret until the day of, to keep the attendance numbers down somewhat. A Choice isn't made every year, though there's always a chance one will be made, and they've had a dry spell for the past 20 or 30 or so years before Grizabella. They don't have to keep the locale a secret anymore, most people don't bother coming and some even think the Jellicle Choice is just a myth. Few people remember when the Jellicles were primarily religious

Deut was trained as a shaman from early childhood, and groomed to be the next leader since he was ten, but he's always been a performer at heart. At some point after taking over as lead, he met (a very very young) Gus and invited him into the tribe. With Gus's help he organized plays and small musical performances, slowly and gradually getting other members in on it as well, until putting on plays every now and then was just a part of Jellicle life. And it was a good thing too, because by this point the tribe had been forced to give up their land and had to move to an industrial slum in the nearest city. No longer able to live off the land, they turned to performance to make a living. This was all well before Skimble/Jenny/Jelly/Spara (Jr)/Griz were born. These days the Jellicles are known primarily as a tribe of performers. Every current member that was born into the tribe except Deut was brought up as a performer

The play we see is an actual play being put on by the Jellicles as a dramatization of the events of That One Particular Jellice Ball™ which happened three years prior to the current timeline.

I think that covers the basic rundown. You can also see this jumbled mess for my first attempt at explaining all this crap lol.

Oh yeah and before I forget, I haven't decided yet if "Peke" and especially "Pollicle" refer to a certain culture of Dog, a certain body type, or two specific gangs ("packs") that just happen to be mostly comprised of a certain culture and/or body type of Dog. But they do exist in this universe. At the very least they are fictional gangs made up for the Rumpus Cat comics (yeah he's a comic book hero in this), or else real gangs or cultures/types of Dog written into Munk's Rumpus Cat fanwork play.

There's also a very important event that I really need to go over at some point but it's a really heavy topic and this isn't the best time like politically to post it right now, or even for me emotionally to write it out. But I do need to get this out at some point...

[awed-frog]

Sorry i was going through your tag of greek mythology and in one of them you said apollo was a weird god and i just kept imagining why ?

Hello! Thank you for the question - I’m very happy you’re finding interesting stuff in my mythology tag! Unfortunately, I can’t direct you to any online sources because I’m going to share facts I learned in uni, I finished my degree before the internet started to get useful (our Google was actually this thing -

- and it was a bit slow, but beyond awesome). Still, I know I recced some general books about religion and mythology somewhere, and I’m sure you found those already. Oh, and as a foreword - as I’m sure you know, understanding Greek religion is a bit of a hassle because it’s a ‘natural’ religion, which means no official sacred texts or uniform canon or anything, so remember that what follows should come with a lot of footnotes.

I always liked Apollo, but he’s a bit of a frustrating god to study because he’s very complicated. Here are the three main reasons why I called him weird.

1) He’s very old but also foreign and we don’t know where from

If I remember this right, Apollo already shows up in Linear B, which makes him one of the oldest gods in the Greek pantheon. But: in most texts, he’s considered (and identifies himself as) a foreign god, who came from some other land and is not fully committed to Greece (for instance, in Troy he sided with the Trojans like other ‘exotic’ gods, such as Aphrodite). This would be puzzling enough - but on top of that, we don’t exactly know where he’s from. There are some clear connection to Middle-Eastern gods, but most sources place his origins up North (for instance, in the land of the Hyperboreans), which doesn’t make a lot of sense because most of the borrowed elements in Greek religion (and culture) tend to come from Mesopotamia. It’s also hard to understand why Apollo is still considered a sort of outsider in Classical times, so basically after he’s been ‘part of the family’ for two millennia or so? This isn’t the case with a goddess like Aphrodite, who’s also Middle-Eastern but was fully assimilated much more quickly.

2) He’s very distant but also not

Perhaps because he took over the duties of sun god as Greek religion developed and the more ‘basic’ gods were discarded, Apollo is often presented as the god who strikes from afar and doesn’t mix all that well with humans. This is consistent with general sun mythology (you need the sun but you don’t want it too overpowering because droughts are a catastrophe), but fits together very badly with other jobs assigned to Apollo. For instance, as the god of medicine he does interact with people in an extremely direct way (for instance, by sending dreams to the sick praying to him in his sanctuaries), and despite knowing full well Troy would fall, he chose to enter the fray himself and was very aggressive (and underhanded) in his attempts to delay the inevitable. This duality is also expressed in his relationship with women - most stories in this sense are marked by potential lovers fleeing him and rejecting him (possibly another sun-related metaphor), and there aren’t a lot of families or heroes claiming direct kinship with him. Which, again, is unusual, because Apollo is a very powerful god with a well-established place in the pantheon, so you’d expect more genealogy myths and more people bragging about some kind of relationship with him. And on top of all that, there is a very weird but consistent theme in iconography - Apollo striking the giant Tityos with a sword -

- while his mother, whom Tityos had attacked, veils her head in shame and horror. Here you see again this duality between remote distance and alarming proximity: the bow and arrows (Apollo’s ‘normal’ weapons) vs a sword (note the scabbard across Apollo’s back: the sword is clearly his, not wrestled from Tityos). This contradicts the whole ‘sun’ imagery, but it must have been a popular and well-known tale, because we find it again and again in iconography.

(Plus, it’s one of my all-favourite cups, so I’m always happy for any excuse to share it. I mean, look at how the characters fit inside the circle, at the transparent fabric of Leto’s veil, barely hiding her profile  - at the fancy bracelet Apollo’s wearing! Perfection.)

3) Apollo is both cold logic and childlike idiocy

I know that by reading mythology anthologies, you’re left with this feeling all gods are sort of dumbasses and also very changeable, but that’s not so true - except when it comes to Apollo. Like, a very early myth, appearing in the Homeric hymns, is how he gets outwitted again and again by baby Hermes; another story, also incredibly ancient, is Herakles making him look like a fool while storming Delphi. And yet, this is also the god of reason, of logic, of science and moderation. We’re supposed to consider him wise and even-handed, almost Buddha-like - despite the fact he often gets outsmarted and reacts to that in very vengeful, extreme ways (think of Cassandra, or of Marsyas). Again, it’s possible what we see here is simply layers on top of layers - an original sun god, far and indifferent to human emotion, but also the archetype of the Young God, destined to be sacrificed and reborn, and also the conqueror and devourer of the one Grossman beautifully calls ‘Our Lady Underground’ - because Apollo’s powers of prophecy are just him taking over older (and possibly unGreek) rituals.

Ultimately, Apollo’s a kind of ‘everything’ god, embodying things as different as prophecy and rationality, health and pestilence, wolves and mice and dolphins - unlike Zeus, who fits in the mold of the Indo-European gods down to a T, Apollo was clearly a bit of a mystery to the Greeks themselves - so much so that he was given a disjointed mess of odd jobs and tasks. In a way, this always made me like him more - knowing even his people didn’t understand him very well lessened the pressure for me to try and make sense of him. Instead, I sort of chose to consider him the original problematic fave and decided to keep studying in a more relaxed way - to simply read stuff and enjoy.

[oh-roman]

It's You

 read part five

part VI.

"I hate you," Bill's wife cries, trying to escape Bill’s tickling fingers.

"Mmhm, sure you do," Bill beckoned, watching a smile pull at her lips, before leaning over to press a kiss to his cheek. "Atta' girl," He huffs. "Give daddy some sugar," Except she only playfully rolls her eyes and sits up on the bed to pull her laptop onto her thighs.

Bill and Jade were high school sweethearts --and to their knowledge, they'd followed the perfect life plan.

Try not to get teary-eyed; their story's so cute it might make you sad how it ends.

So, it was all so unintentional how they fell in love, because well, Jade was never the type of girl Bill was interesting in, in high school.

He was quite picky about his girls (and still is).

Bill liked them confident, but not too cocky. He had a thing for plaid mini skirts and thigh highs, a fetish for lip gloss and those fishnet stockings the girls wore. Open toed shoes were cute, but only the kind that had a heel and straps. And God, did he love girls with brown eyes - - - the big doe eyes that made your heart swell.

Except Jade wasn't that profile at all. And for some odd reason, it attracted him to her even more. So, one day, mid-sophomore year in History, Bill sits down next to this girl--dressed like someone’s mom--and says. . .well he doesn't say anything. He just stares at her until she waves her hand in front of his face. She made him unbearably nervous and that's the moment, he knew he'd have to stick with her. Thank God for his persistent personality too, because he popped the question just a few questions after they’d graduated high school.

It was quite beautiful actually. They were young and crazy about one another, but young love only does so much. It’s an innocent flame and well, it only flickers for so long. It’s naive and overpoweringly emotional, so when Bill began to fall out of love with her, he didn’t say anything, in hopes of that burning fire coming back.

Although, it never really did and falling for Y/N wasn't much help.

The last thing he wanted to do was hurt his wife, although he couldn't stand the thought of breaking Y/N’s heart either. The more he loved, the more it hurt.

“Baby I've been meaning to ask you," Jade asks.

"Hm," he hums, running a hand through his hair. "What's that,"

"How's it been going with that girl Y/N," And he pauses. Speak of the fucking devil. He swallows thickly and tries to find some sort of composure. He sits up a bit and thumbs over his own bottom lip; a bad habit he has when he's uncomfortable. "Oh, y'know--it's been great--she's. . .smart," Nodding along with him, Jade raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t think much of it.

“That’s good,” She says, moving her laptop out of the way and lying her head on Bill’s bare chest. “Now, c'mere," Resting a hand on his thigh, she taps her fingers a little, gesturing for him to cuddle her.

Bill huffs a little and kisses her forehead. Jade smiles at the feeling. And you can't blame her. The feeling is indescribable--her head against his chest, feeling the steady vibration of his heartbeat, moving in-beat with his fingertips lazily running up her arm. With the dim light peeking through the window drapes, it's wonderful. So good, sometimes she can't see herself ever lying on these sheets without her. "Love you," she exhales, lazily closing her eyes.

He just wishes he felt the same way.

And Jade, she wishes he felt that way too.

He hasn't kissed her lips (and I mean really kissed her) in weeks now, unless the neighbors are watching.

And she just stays quiet, like she always is. She's a romantic and well, it comes with its own heartache, because she sees when he's smiling at phone, or blushing when he's getting all ready for work in the morning and she can't help but wonder why he's wearing his good cuff links (the Gucci ones he wore to his wedding) to go teach a bunch of college students about business management. Or, why he's all of a sudden taken such keen interest in the random girl next door. Or, last week when Jade was taking the trash out, she watched the same girl in his car, leaning awfully close to him.

No.

Jade's cried enough about it. Plus, Bill's a messy eater. Y/N was probably just picking a piece of lettuce of of his shirt (or chin?). Surely that's why. Well, it's the only logical explanation she thinks.

"Not with the girl next door. . .If he ever were to. . .she'd be older," Jade thinks. "Right?"

It's all a pressing matter and Jade has to push those thoughts out if her brain, for the sake of her marriage--or whatever remains from it.

Pressing a longing kiss right under eye, Bill closes his eyes too. He's never been big on religion, but he's praying now. For some sort of revelation; some sort of direction on what he should do.

And he lies there for what feels like forever, contemplating everything. Just as a Jade is, before drifting off to sleep.

Then, Bill understands.

It's scary almost how fast he's realized it and for a moment he snaps his eyes open and blinks a few times. Jade's snoring a little on his chest, arm draped around his stomach.

She's the one. She has to be.

He's careful when he moves her arm out of the way, quietly stepping off toward their bathroom. He's watching Jade from the doorway, slightly moving around a little, probably wondering where his body's gone. It's precious actually. That's why he has to do this--and fast. So, he doesn't hurt anyone too badly.

The light from a Bill's phone lights up a little and he's typing away--deleting and rephrasing almost everything, afraid of what she'll think. Y/N always has him feeling like a teenager. Adrenaline pumping and hand sweating. He's staring at the words on the screen, thinking of everything she could possibly think before finally fuck it pressing send.

He stuffs his phone in the pockets of sweatpants and runs both hands down his face in a tired way, before gripping the bathroom counter and starring himself in the mirror. "Christ," he thinks. "She's gonna kill me,"

"Billy," Jade cries out and his head whips toward their bedroom. Her arm's falling off the mattress. "Come back to bed baby," And he takes one last look at himself before sighing and flicking the light switch off. "I'm comin' sweetheart,"

The story never ends though. Unfortunately, some things just don't work out. Divorce is tricky. Bill's parents are still married. Fifty years going strong and well, a broken family was never what he sought out for himself. So, he makes sure to hold Jade extra close now, breathing in the scent of her vanilla soap on her skin. "Bunny," he whispers.

Her eyes flutter open and she looks up at him with a hint of desperation. "I'm sorry," is all he says and she immediately understands what he's referring to. "I love you too,"

Running his tongue across his bottom lip, Bill, holds her chin, moving it up a little, before caressing her lips with his. "Now," he says, swiping his thumb across the smile on her lips. "Get some sleep,"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Monday blues are a myth, Y/N thinks.

Because she feels absolutely great.

Class isn't until 11:30am, but she's applying a face masque at 8am, just cause. Some song by LANY is playing through her speaker and she's swaying her hips a little. Craziest thing is, she didn't even wake up this early with an alarm. Her phone died some time before she went to bed, so now she's just waiting for it charge some.

Her body just decided to wake up at the crack of dawn she guesses. Although, her dream was pretty eventful to say the least.

She remembers being in a car. A really old fashion 50's model (maybe a Cadillac) and in the dream she's wearing cat-eye glasses and a silk Chanel scarf around her neck, the tail blowing the wind. And she's in the passenger seat because, Bill's doing all the driving and he's dressed like a proper James Bond.

You know when the dream was so good, your brain won't let you forget it? Well, he kisses her right before she wakes up and somehow, she still feels his lips on her's.

Her thoughts are interrupted by her phone vibrating and she nearly leaps up and down like a child when she sees a message from Bill.

Except. . .

Wha-

Oh my god.

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tagged

@the-lonelyon3 @tinygayfungi @loveforbillskasgard @glxtter-dew @bringmebandimagines @shipping-not-sailing @lmayre17 @bill-istvan @skaryboybill @deathbyarabbit @pennywise-trashcan @guess-what-i-dont-know @skarswhat @hrhduchessofclarence

[ma-sulevin]

multiples of 4 for emma? :3

1) Age?

She’s 38 at the beginning of TLoU, and she’s just turned 39 before the end of it.

4) Height?

5′ 6″

8) Is there a meaning to their name?

Not in particular -- Emma Grace is just a good solid name for a girl from West Virginia. There were two other Emmas and an Emily in her grade.

12)   Do they have siblings? How do they interact with them? If not, do they wish they had siblings?

She had two older sisters and a younger brother before the outbreak. She fought with them all the time and they hated each other, but when it came down to it... they were the most important thing to each other. She goes back for them after the Nashville QZ falls, and... it’s not great.

16)   Do they have a lot of expectations/pressure on them from family to do great?

There was a LOT of pressure from them for her to go to college like her sisters and do something respectable with her life, but she’s fucking stubborn and she wanted to move to Nashville to follow her dreams.

20)   Do they wish they lived in a different family/household?

No. She misses them.

24)   Do they have a love/hate relationship with any of them?

Basically all of them, but now she misses them every day.

28)   Do they share classes with good friends?

She hasn’t taken a class in more than twenty years, but she’ll read a to-do book about anything.

32)   Do/Did they like their teachers? Was there a good one? Bad one?

She didn’t love school, and she didn’t have strong feelings about her teachers either way, honestly. Some of them were good and some of them weren’t, but overall, they were all keeping her somewhere she didn’t want to be.

36)   What is/was their school like?

The schools isn’t well in West Virginia. (points if you know what this is from, because that’s all I can think to say lmfao)

40)   How far do they plan to go with school? If they dropped out, do they want to go back?

She had no intention of going back for one more day after she graduated high school, and she hasn’t really regretted it since.

44)   Do they work? If so, what is it? If not, are they looking for one or even want one?

Before the outbreak, she worked as a waitress and at writing songs. She filmed a lot of stuff for YouTube and was mildly popular, and that was her focus right up until the world went to shit.

For a while, she just did what she had to do to stay alive and fed. She worked for FEDRA in the Nashville QZ, and then she worked with the Fireflies for a long time, and now she just lives in Jackson and she’s doing what needs to be done there. She works a lot with the animals and she knits a lot of socks.

48)   What do they do when they get angry, stressed, or upset?

She has two modes: she either snaps back and gets loud about it, or she totally shuts down and completely disengages. Some of that depends on who she’s mad at, and whether she has to keep hanging out with them after she’s angry, and how many times she’s been angry at them for the same thing.

The more times she’s mad at Joel, the more likely she is to just give him the cold shoulder.

52) Any allergies? How bad is it if they have it?

I think she’s allergic to wasps. It’s not really all that much of a problem, usually.

56) Do they even like going to the doctors?

She does it because she needs to do it, but she doesn’t love it. Sometimes you just gotta get something stitched up or a bone set or whatever, and it can’t be helped.

60) Have they ever harmed themselves?

Yeah. Nashville was a hard time, and so was post-WV.

64) Fav food/drink? Why?

She likes the beer they make in Jackson, but they never make all that much of it. She really misses Dr. Pepper.

68) Fav story (be it from a book or something like a myth/fable)? Why?

She never was much of a reader, but she had a secret soft spot for Nicholas Sparks.

72) What time period do they live in? If not earth related, on whatever planet they live on, what time period is it like there?

2033!

76) Do they wonder about their place/role in the world?

No, she just does what she thinks she needs to do and goes where she thinks she needs to go. She’s just searching for safety and happiness.

80) Do the people of this world have a religion or belief in a higher being? Does your OC personally believe in any?

In general, yes. She was raised Southern Baptist, but she never really believed in all that. She just did the lipservice and then moved away and hasn’t looked back since. If there’s a god, why is he letting all this happen in the world?

84) Are they handy?

Yeah! She’s had to learn a lot of things since the world fucking ended.

88) Any survival skills?

Oh, yeah. She can handle herself. Hunting, scavenging, gathering, fighting? She has all that on lock.

92) Do they have any regrets?

Leaving WV in the first place, but only because it meant she lost her family forever.

96) How messy is their room?

She keeps things super neat and clean.

100) Why did you make this OC and maybe even the world they live in? Just cause? Or for some other reason?

I didn’t make her intentionally. I was just playing the game, and my brain kept going “you can make an OC for this you know” and I was trying to ignore it, and then I walked Joel into the music store in Lincoln and my brain goes “fyi your OC wanted to be a musician” and I was like “shut the fuck up” and yet...... here we are.

[common-blackbird]

Scroll on



I’m not good with gaming and i never really imagined myself finishing any game, so this was a whole new experience for me... I really sucked. At one point i remember even crying when i just couldn’t fight smth. I hate asking for help (i’m infinitely grateful for it), or even looking “how to do this” bc i feel like i cheat, while when i just can’t beat smth in the game it makes me feel dumb.  But i learned that usually happens bc i’ve been playing for too long.

So where to start.... The thing i liked most is the lore. Not just the content of it (which is very entertaining) but also the way it’s portrayed: through conversations, through various notes you find around, and it’s not just “well this is how it is” but rather sometimes contradictory claims that reflect different cultures. I love how you only ever see one country, but hear a lot about the others (well mostly Orlais, but there are tidbits from other countries as well), but also various cultures. I also love how the complex situation is in the game. The question of mages, the repression of elves, the dwarves and their culture, the question of religion.

The game is really good at setting the moral ambiguity and make you have hard choices. Once you realise there’s a pattern it does get easier, but some just make you wonder a lot what is the better choice.

While we’re at it let me talk some quests and decicions.

Free the elves?

So the easiest choice (though i don’t really think there was much of choosing) is the elves-slavery in denerim. Free elves, free citizens, i don’t even understand how did they get to be second-class citizens (or maybe i just forgot, i’ look it up), but they literally did nothing wrong, aren’t dangerous and frankly, there’s so much wilds in ferelden, i don’t see what’s the problem. However, though i don’t know if that was implied, if you go strictly against slavery, but this was a deal made between ferelden and tevinter, you risk a decline in diplomatic relationship as well as economy i assume, so it could be a setback. But again, if you have free citizens elves that are not just piled in one place, you can freshen up your own economy with capable workers. Like, even if you regret breaking a relationship with tevinter (that doesn’t even happen but i was thinking about it at the time), and the elves riot and go against you once you do give them freedom bc lot of bad history between ferelden and elves i guess, it’s still a morally & practically easy choice.

Free the mages?

This was... hmm... mage rights... I LOVE how they went about this problem. So the mages are problematic bc doing magic also means you can get posessed by a demon which results in a catstrophe (like that kid that demolished redcliffe). So they’re locked into a circle tower where they are trained and have a rigorous discipline and are under the watch of templars who might kill them if they try to escape? Mages who actually do escape the tower get hunted down and are forced back, or they get killed, especially if they attempt the bloodmagic (immoral dangerous magic practice?).

It’s kind of obvious that the game leans more to the mage rights (i mean, i wish there was a more memorable templar who isn’t like “mages are bad” by default, but they are kinda trained that way. tbh i just wish we had more templars...). At first, the only mage (other than that one in ostagar) you acutally meet is morrigan, who... who is not a very good example of “why people think mages are bad”. She’s cool, she handles magic really good, yeah she seems to be against the world, but what can you exepect when templars would kill her on sight? Even when alistair is constantly suspecting her, he’s basing that on her being a mage, and not on her saying really creepy immoral stuff. So initially i was all for mage rights. Then things didn’t really help much in the circle tower bc all templars were for just killing all the mages bc things got out of hands. Retrospectively i get where they’re coming from, but still, they seemed really incapable at the time. But then i met wynne, and she told me her backstory. And what really stuck with me is that

1) they find out she’s a mage bc she set someone on fire = mages are dangerous

2) while one templar ignored her completely, the other templar that brought her to the tower was nice to her and carried her on his shoulder (which is very cute) = templars don’t have to be so antagonistic towards mages and

3) the circle tower does not only protect the people from mages, but also the mages from people, bc people are bigoted and scared and will kill a mage = a social/cultural problem.

In any case, i feel like simply freeing mages just like that would turn out to be a terrible mistake bc they are kinda walking time-bombs and they’d be ostracized from society which would make them turn desperate bc no protection, then you get easily corruptible, and so it brings lot of trouble. That being said, obviously, it’s bad to keep people locked up in a tower for life. So i guess i’m more for reforming the circle with mages being treated as humans and not walking time-bombs, templars not being taught to be antagonistic towards mages, but rather their partners(?) bodyguards(?), mages having right to employment once they prove they’re capable of handling magic well, and if needed take one templar with them so people can feel safe. The Circle is already institution made for the rights for the mages, it just needs a lot of work on it. Idk. there wasn’t much of the ~what’s it like to live in the circle~ since you walk into a disaster, so i don’t want to be all in for the mages or all against the mages. I’m a dwarf. Magic is domain i don’t bother to understand.

Orzammar social problems

Tradition vs. reform, at the cost of a monarch or a dictator. That was actually a really easy choice if you’re playing a dwarf. If i played a noble dwarf, i’d defintely choose Harrowmont bc he’s 1) nicer, 2) looks more capable, 3) doesn’t seem that powerhungry. But this also means that current system based on castes. Equality is not even a myth there, it’s an apocalyptic outlook. Which takes another form of a bad side when you have the ostracized casteless dwarves, stripped of all rights and treated like dirt (and that was my warden). So, harrowmont is the safe choice for a current state. Nobody really cares who’s on the throne bc nobody expects the system to change. But if you choose Behlen for a king (who’s accused of murdering his father), you get a reformist who is open to including the casteless in some form into the system. As canon fodder. Despite the grim outlook of being used as a canon fodder, it does open a possibility of upping your status based on the merits. The paragon system is already such a leeway to better your status (bc if you do something outstanding that the drawves, you are revered as a god), but it’s virtually impossible to do something of that scale as a casteless (unless you.. finish the game). On the other hand if you choose Behlen, it’s pretty obvious he’s powerhungry dictator. But i chose behlen bc my sister was his concubine and prospect of including casteless in any form would be a good offer for a casteless dwarf.

Kill/let the mother kill the child or do this bloodmagic-not-so-bloodmagic(?) ritual to save him?

Ah, my disaster. So, of course, i wanted to help the kid, and when the bloodmage said there’s a ritual that can be performed, i just needed to get other mages there, i chose that, i went to the circle tower, i did the whole damn mission there, got back to the kid and, like the fool i am, went straight to the boy instead of talking first to mages, which resulted in me alone dealing with him, which resulted in me making his mother kill him, get yelled on by alistair and there’s no option “it was on accident” to say to him (which frankly would be a terrible thing to say), and then he starts putting himself down bc now my warden is trying to justify herself, which is another level of misery bc i’m fighting a really nice guy who hates children being killed and feels bad that he’s angry about that. anyways, that was a mess from start to finish.

speaking of other messes,

Haven village mission

well, there’s no hard choice in this mission, it’s “side with fanatics who worship a dragon or be reasonable and find the urn”. (i do wonder what do you get from siding with fanatics now). but this mission was such a rollercoaster for me. I did everything backwards. You come into this creepy little isolated village where nobody likes you and they are some kind of fanatics of older gods. So it turns out that first you’re supposed to walk into one house and find a corpse there, which i totally overlooked so  instead i killed the merchant in the village, went to the church, killed everyone there, then went out and killed everyone in the village, i found genitivi (a researcher who got captured there), but i still couldn’t finish the mission until i got into that villagers house and saw the corpse that was supposed to be my first inkling of supicion for the village. So the whole storyline didn’t make any sense. And later, when i was supposed to walk humbly to the urn, i was supposed to first leave all my belongings on an oltair, so i did, but didn’t realise i was actually supposed to do that so i took them back and then i couldn’t put them back again on the altair, so i had to fight that guard there and died lol. I hated every part of that mission. it was creepy, hard and i’m lucky i didn’t smash the urn in the end.

The werewolf problem

That one was easy, like, the whole problem of werewolves is bc the head elf lives for too long and there’s nothing so fitting as holding grudges for eternity which endangers the whole clan. I have only one complaint and that is my god the forest is confusing. Each time i go into the forest i get lost.

The golem quest was fun bc that end with Shale randomly killing a chicken always gets me. I love it. Return to ostagar was on the other hand very uneventful for me, but i did see a video with what banter you have if you have wynne and loghain in your party and it’s really intense how wynne keeps attacking him.

Random thought, but today i watched this video about dragon age origins and the guy said that mages are best for combats bc they can do most damage in range, which is probably true, but tbh most of the time for me it was usually the mage who dies in the battle. Morrigan is super useful for attacks, and Wynne for defense, but they’re both as frail as daisies and i’m left with low-stamina melee fighters. And that happens when you’re fighting an archdemon. You’re crying as you drink your last health poultice. You wish you brought wynne. But wynne had been dying just as often, which renders her power of revival pretty useless.

And now, the characters. Lets start humbly with my own.

This game made me realise i’m bad at roleplaying. I scroll through tumblr and see how people just love the character they’ve created and they are so cool and seem so interesting. Me? let me show how i create my character: i don’t like using magic bc magic is often complicated so mage is out of the question. warriors are usually strong so i can’t relate, so i’ll be a rouge and talk people into doing the dirty work for me. i loved elves so fiercly as a kid i got fed up with them and can’t stand them so i’ll not be an elf, but humans seem boring so i’ll be a dwarf. After all i’m short, i can relate. Bonus points, they are imune to magic. Since i’m casteless, i decided to look ugly (i’ve been told my warden looks like the crying cat meme). In the end, compared to the rest of my warden’s family, she looked like an adopted child. At the beginning i had the idea that i would make this character grow from “in it for herself” to “a hero” bc it’s a typical hero story anyway, but in the end it was just a self insert with really dumb mistakes who doesn’t get what she’s signed up to. I guess it’s easier to actually make interesting characters once you already know the stories and the choices so it’s easier to choose according to the characterisation you make and not “what if i screw up?”.

Alistair

So after you get chosen by Duncan (a cool honorable guywho gives you chance to make something of your casteless self and then makes you drink poison), the first guy you meet is alistair - a fellow grey warden who used to train to be a templar (which is as far as we go in meeting templars) and happens to be a king’s bastard son. He is dorky, funny, a genuinely nice person and on level of insecurity that even surpasses mine. He’s impossible to dislike. What i really like about the characters is that they’re super simple, which makes them both their charm and their annoying trait. for example, he often puts himself down, which i relate and am symphatetic and am all “nah you’re really nice”, but the next time he does that i’m “mate, you gotta stop doing that”. But it’s still kinda cute.

What did irk me throughout the game is him being my senior, but making me the leader. I literally pass the test 1 day before everybody gets killed and he is the only grey warden who knows what grey wardens do. Not only that, he’s like the only guy with me at the beginning who knows where’s what and knows the culture. I’m a friggin dwarf who is afraid that i’ll fall into the sky, have no interest to get myself killed, but now i’m a leader. But that’s not even the issue, bc i am already the main character. The problem is when every character in the game acts as if i’m the only surviving grey warden when alistair is right there. “Only you can do that, oh you’re a grey warden”. Alistair knows more about grey wardens than i ever will. I wish they just mention “can either of you two”. It’s like he doesn’t exist lol.  I didn’t take him often to missions and pretended he’s doing some grey warden business i know nothing about. The only character who makes sense to completely ignore alistair as a grey warden is anora. But whatever, he doesn’t want any spotlight, so i guess he’s happy being considered “that sidekick grey warden”. Even as frustrating as it was, i really liked his avoiding of responsibility whatsoever and his low confidence, it really makes room for character growth.

Dog

the best character in da:o.

Morrigan

She’s obviously a polar opposite to alistair - overconfident, kind of mean, kind of selfish, her jokes are mean. I mean, when i imagine alistair i imagine a dog, when i imagine morrigan, that’s a cat. And while as a person i don’t really like her that much, but her dynamics with other characters are really fun. What really made me love her is that mystery “is she evil or not”, ( which I guess she’s not considering she’s still a buddy in later games(?)), but combined with her relationship with flemeth who also might or might not be evil. she keeps opposing her mother while being compliant to her. She does what flemeth asks bc she knows that flemeth is more powerful. It makes you wonder how terrible her upbringing was if you’re certain your mom has some fishy plans in which you might get killed in the process. But instead of just running away and doing exactly the opposite of what flemeth commands, even after hearing she’s dead, she still goes on with flemeth’s idea, so i’m guessing she just wants the demon baby for herself(?). In any case, her (justified?) paranoia with flemeth makes her really compelling.

SPEAKING OF DEMON BABY, turns out the reason flemeth saved the warden and alistair was so that the warden could convince alistair to have sex with morrigan. which means that if the warden is a guy, and let us assume a straight guy, she’s counting on at least 50% chance of the male straight guy hating morrigan so much he would sooner convince the other guy who definitely hates morrigan to have sex with her than doing it himself. Yikes.

Sten

Sten is a character you respect. Some things he said really resonated with me and it made me think a lot. His regret over killing that family totally flew over me at that time (bc zevran was talking his head off how he killed this guy and that guy so who cares about sten killing some family, i’m already going to hell for tolerating assassins and making a mother kill her child), but later it was quite peculiar that he’s so ready to kill me and he’s pretty ruthless at everything he does, so you’d think this big guy has no problem getting over this. His regret made me more interested in his culture and his rigorous honour-code. I’d really love to see Par Vollen. At the end i even told him i was going to be joining him on his way back to Par Vollen (i wanted a new character for awakening), but that didn’t work out sadly :(

Leliana

I think most endearing part of Leliana is that she truly seems to believe all the right things, even though you’re made suspicious considering she was (or is?) a spy. That woman talks so much. And she’s always in the right. Always.  Making a spy become a hardcore believer in god is cool, bc i always doubt her. She knows her way with words, she always says what you want/need to hear. Of course she would be playing a religious girl if that meant she could convince me that she’s harmless. But it’s also fun that she truly believes it and has a hard time convincing you that considering you keep doubting everything she says. I really like her.

Zevran

I was really surprised when i saw that Zevran is a fan-favourite. I guess it’s that he has a tragic-slave-turned-assassin backstory. I... am completely indifferent towards him. I’m sorry. He was just that one bisexual hedonist assassin who happens to have been a slave long time ago. I guess, by the time i got his backstory, i was already immune to angst... But thinking back, i really like that he’s the bad guy in his backstory, he’s the one doing betraying, while leliana for example got betrayed. And i’m a little bit sad that all he learned from that episode was that assassins are expandable, while, when you look at it, he fails to realise everybody in antiva is expendable.  That’s a really crazy country right there. I mean, he’s killing people right and left, and never really thinks back about them. Even if he doesn’t like to do it (which he never really said he does, but it’s not like he had a choice so let’s give a benefit of the doubt), he never really thinks about his victims. The only thing that made him realise that he was expandable was his killing of his partner/lover. (or if he figured that out, i didn’t notice it). But yeah, bragging about sex and death doesn’t do it for me i guess. I did love his banters with Wynne. You can see how she’s trying to get him to open up, to see that there’s more to him than a hedonist, and she just giving up every time when he makes it about sex.

Wynne

Wynne is my top 3 faves. She’s also the reason i’m not against the Circle. Before i met her, i was all “yeah mages should be free and don’t need any control” bc there’s just morrigan and a bad case of not-taking-care-of-your-child-mage posession thing. But then Wynne starts talking about her life in the circle and you see that it’s not just “we hate mages so we keep them imprisoned”.  You see that learning magic is hard (morrigan makes it look easy, ok?) and disaster can happen in a blink of an eye. And you find out how flawed she was, and it feels like she really learned from her experiences. And she’s so openminded and genuinely nice, typical granma-mentor-character. Best human in the camp.

Shale

Another one of my top 3 faves. Shale won me over the moment they murdered that poor chicken. I love having shale in my missions, they’re useful, they’re snappy, they’re perfect. And finding out that shale used to be shayle, a dwarf noble who willingly became a golem was one of my fave missions. I was so focused on the myth & legend of branka, that shale took me by surprise. And imagining a dwarf lady with shale’s personality makes me want to go back in time and meet shayle ;__;

Oghren

He’s pretty much like zevran: i like him, but too many alcoholic-jokes. Out of all characters, he looks like the biggest comic-relief. I like how insanely loyal he is. And I liked being his wingman x)

Loghain

I really like him. I shouldn’t like him as much as i do. i wish he could have been in a party earlier or without alistair-walking-out consequences. You start seeing that he’s not just a bad guy when you see that he’s always sad there when anora is scolding him. And I really loved that anecdote with him ruining every rose he touches so he found a rose and brought it home himself. Awww. If he didn’t order me executed at sight, i’d be his best friend. His paranoia (or justified fear?) of orlesian invasion made him do lot of political mistakes, but you can see he has good intentions. He’s not a bad guy. And he’s really clever. But also i will never understand how he didn’t get rid of Rendon Howe.

I’m so conflicted over him abandoning Cailan. I hated cailan, but to him, cailan was almost flesh and blood(?) I mean, he’s everything that’s left of two people he loved so abandoning him must have been terrible. I’m still trying to wrap my head around why he would go to that length to betray cailan rather than forcefully take him back by the means of drugging him and carrying him back to denerim. Maybe cailan was so problematic with his ideals before and this was just one decision too much. But then again, loghain was dealing with idealistic maric since forever. I don’t know. He’s just such a compelling character to me. I wouldn’t recruit him storywise bc i feel like his time was over. He had to die there. you know how in stories, the hero can’t live too long, bc there is no being the hero the second time. They’re always tragic. And since he attempted to be the hero again, he had to pay the price and become a villain.  And he needs to tragically die. Which makes him more memorable than saint marric.

Also i watched a video with what happens if you go back to ostagar with loghain and wynne and it’s whoa... wynne is merciless with her attacks on loghain.

Anora

MY QUEEN. I was debating a lot whether alistair should be a king or not and then anora showed up and everything became clear. She’s such an amazing person. You can see her as righteous, as powerhungry, as manipulator, as terrible or wonderful and all of that would be true. She’s ready to do everything to keep that throne. You can see she loves her father, but she is going against him and is relying on your mercy for his life, and accepts his death so quickly. She implies that, while she did love cailan, her marriage was arranged and her husband an idealistic fool and she’s not surprised how he ended up. And sure, she’s telling you all you want to hear: that she loved him, that she was warning him about what his idealism will get him to, but can you really trust her? Especially with cailan’s correspondence between arl eamon, where eamon is trying to get rid of anora, and empress celene, who’s suspicious to say the least. I could easily imagine she did not warn, but support cailan in his idealistic views bc he hinders her rule with his blind idealism. I could just as easily accept that she truly did love him, and she did warn him, but alas, her husband is a fool. Everyone is against her in the game, and if i didn’t get her to win that throne after everything she’s done to get it, it would just be sad to watch. which brings me to the mission:

Choosing a ruler

Anora proved more than anyone that she’s the best candidate.  Setting alistair on that throne would feel so ungrateful, he had no agency whatsoever in becoming a king and if i married him to anora, then i’d just get another pawn in her - or eamon’s - hands bc it’s obvious who’s playing the game here. I’d feel bad for alistair. He should get his own development based by his own merits rather than ~king’s blood~. Also with setting him on the throne you change nothing bc he can’t have kids anyway (unless you count the demon baby which would get this to another level of really messed up succession stories), and anora (according to eamon) seems to not be able to have kids(?) so they’re basically the same. Also, anora has unlimited time to rule, while alistair will die in what like, 10 years? and what then? Morrigan becomes queen regent bc she’s the baby-demon’s mother? That’s a disaster. And anora is right when she says that setting up a grey warden after they’ve been proclaimed enemies of the state only makes it look bad. I have learned that grey wardens, it turns out, are very political, but i just didn’t want to be. Also, alistair devotion was literally never towards marric and only for duncan. He even kills Loghain for duncan, and not for cailan. I really like anora being a queen. I know i can’t count on her bc she is ruthless like loghain, but also loyal only to the kingdom. It feels like, that’s the only thing she got to choose in her life and she’s willing to sacrifice everything for it. And that makes her a good ruler.

the ritual

oh man. that was... awkward. I knew it was gonna happen but... you know what i think? Sure, flemeth told morrigan what she’s gotta do, but, i doubt morrigan really knew what she’s getting into. I know the kid is a normal kid in the end, but i like to think that at the time, morrigan had no idea whatsoever what is this ritual going to turn up with. First, this this ritual feels like a fanservice. Second, on the matter of dub-con, i’ve seen a lot of people saying that alistair was non-con and morrigan is... a bitch?  i thought about it and all i saw was this: your mom, whom you hate and are convinced she’s going to kill you one day, tells you you’re going to have a sex with a guy you don’t know, who hates you, and have his child, and you probably don’t want children, who will definitely be possessed with a god-spirit-thing. So, you got two choices, while you’re traveling with your merry band: you won’t do it or you do it for yourself. So i guess morrigan saw an opportunity and decided to go along with it, but use it against flemeth. Which is a really sad thing bc the moment she decides to have the baby for the power for whatever reason, she is basically becoming flemeth herself (or at least her idea of flemeth: someone who uses children for her own gains instead of loving them). So knowing that, i can’t see morrigan being a bitch either way for deciding to take the ritual. She definitely doesn’t like alistair after all, and she’s becoming the person she hates the most + she acts like she doesn’t care about anything, but she also wants to save the warden. So yeah, i definitely went overboard with this, but i don’t see morrigan enjoying the ritual.

I do wonder what she’s planning to do with the demon baby tho. or how terrible is she at raising a baby. I mean, her tolerance and patience levels are really low. I also wonder whether she’s right to be wary of flemeth or is she only paranoid. Flemeth seems like much wiser and sees morrigan as a kid with her paranoia. She pretty much dominates. I would love both morrigan being totally off the track with her suspicious about flemeth and her being right to be wary of flemeth.

So yeah, that was a huge ramble. If you made it this far then i bow to you. Idk where i was going with this... i just wanted to get out my thoughts and have it in one place.  I probably said bunch of things wrong and misinterpreted the characters, made typos, forgot to say bunch of other things so, sorry for that.  i’m a newb. But i loved it! It made me go into fantasy mood.

[thecorteztwins]

Idea: Fabian/Pietro but is an Hades and Persephone AU :)

Ok, doing this under a cut both for length and content, warning for a LOT of discussion of noncon because IT’S GREEK MYTHOLOGY:

Ok, so firstly, the version of Hades and Persephone I’ll be basing this on is the original wherein he explicitly kidnaps her, he explicitly abducts her, she is not willing, she does not want to be there, she does not want to be with him, she just eventually gets used to it. I specify this because Tumblr has popularized a very sanitized new version in which Persephone and Hades are this cute happy couple and hooked up very willingly and it’s just all crazy Demeter throwing a fit. Now, I don’t think it’s bad to rewrite new versions of old stories. It’s GREAT. People have been doing that for ages, it’s why there are so many variations on myths and fairy tales. Hell, the Bible literally has books that contradict each other on how the same events went down. And a lot of my favorite works in media are just retellings of familiar stories. So I don’t MIND the idea of going “I am rewriting this myth into something I like better” in itself. But Tumblr has also spread the idea that this is “real” and “original” story, which...no, it is not. Without going too in-depth about ancient texts and translations and stuff, there is no secret older version in which Persephone ever wanted to be with Hades. It has always been a story of kidnapping and implied rape. And there’s no problem if you enjoy the new version that is popular now. I get why a lot of people would! But I just wanted to be clear on WHICH version I’m using, and what kind of content is going to be there. I’m trying to steer away from TOO much darkness here, but also not turn into cute and consensual either. I just don’t want people popping in with comments like “THIS IS WRONG, HADES WOULD NEVER/IN THE ORIGINAL THEY WERE IN LOVE/etc.” You know how people can be when your preferred version of something isn’t their preferred version/the popular version.OK, so Magneto is our Zeus (king of the heavens, lots of kids, isn’t a rapist like Zeus but he sure does enter into a lot of relationships with younger women and slanted power dynamics). Exodus is our Poseidon, he’s Magneto’s lieutenant, his second in command. He’s equally benevolent and destructive, just like the sea, and his sanity shifts like the tides. And Fabian is the third in command and thus given domain under the Underworld, considered the most undesireable of the territories. As in Greek myth, what it lacks in beauty and life (not just no living people/animals, but no flowers and plants and natural beauty either), it makes up for in wealth. The Greeks believed it was literally UNDER the ground, which of course is where gems and minerals were mined, hence why Hades was also the god of riches. In a swap from Greek canon, where Poseidon is as much of a horndog as Zeus and Hades only takes (literally) a woman once, Exodus is celibate and Fabian is...not. Fabian is, well, Fabian. And that seems counterintuitive, right? The seas are teeming with life, just as Poseidon had many children. The Underworld is by definition devoid of life, which is probably why Hades had only woman and it was his wife, and why they never (unless you scour some really obscure stuff) had any children. So, what gives?Much like Fabian started as Magneto’s favorite and first lieutenant only to be replaced by Exodus, it was originally so here too. The stoic, ascetic, loyal Exodus ruled the Underworld, as constant and true as death itself, while the ficke and fertile Fabian ruled the sea with many consorts and an endless stream of children. But Fabian decided to imitate the wrong religion and pull a Lucifer with an attempted coup on Magneto, and thus Magneto swapped his and Exodus’s positions. All of Fabian’s former concubines became lakes and streams, separated from the sea. All his children were transformed into the countless life forms that live in the ocean---the fish, the crabs, the coral, the seals, and so on. All of them once women and children. Cruel and unfair? Sure, but that’s how it goes with gods. Lots of collateral damage and people getting turned into animals/plants, mostly women who didn’t deserve it.Now that Fabian ruled the realm of the dead, Magneto also forced him to take on Exodus’s celibacy. No wives, no women, no children. No sex or fertility could fester in a realm by definition devoid of life. Fabian attempts to weasel around this law as much as he can, but Magneto makes it so that he can’t do anything with the dead souls there, and anyone living he tries to bring there will die the instant they enter. And he’s not allowed to leave. So he tries bargaining. The Underworld has metal, lots of it. You know what Magneto loves? Metal. You know what there isn’t any of up in the Heavens? Metal! Fabian will give him ALL THE IRON (because for some reason that’s Magneto’s fave instead of gold or silver, go figure) if he lets Fabian fuck again. Magneto agrees that he’ll let Fabian have ANY consort of his choosing, so long as he agrees to three rules:- He can only have ONE, and they must wed. No harem.- They must be divine or semi-divine. No mortals. This is the only bride he’s getting, so they have to last.- They must be a man. The justification Magneto gives is he doesn’t want any chance of children but actually Magneto just wants to fuck with him a little because he hates him.Fabian, naturally, turns this down because WHAT THE FUCK MAN! But as he gets more and more stir-crazy over the ages, he finally gives in, takes the bargain, and sets out on a quest to find THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMANLY GOD OR DEMI-GOD MAN HE POSSIBLY CAN!Magneto is amused.Anyway, Fabian watches the surface world for ages through caves, crevices, etc. Since Magneto has cursed him not to be able to actually set foot there, that’s how he sees out into the world of the living, through all the holes in the earth. He does this for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, because he’s that picky, but also getting more desperate with every century too.Enter Pietro, our Persephone, though the role he fills as a deity is more like that of Hermes/Mercury, the super-fast messenger of the gods. Fabian never met him before because he always thought himself too important to use a mere messenger, always demanding an audience with Magneto himself.Speaking of Magneto, he is the father of Pietro and his twin Wanda via a mortal woman. Giving birth to the children of a god placed a strain so great on her body that she dissipated into nothing upon their birth, and they were raised by Bova, the divine cow, until they were old enough to join the world of humans, at which point she left them with a worthy human couple who had lost their own twins. They grew up, discovered their godly powers and heritage, and joined the pantheon, but that’s another story.Anyway, Pietro has wed an elemental, Crystal, and they have a demigoddess daughter, Luna. The only time the super-fast Pietro slows down is to spend time with them (or his sister). Crystal, as an elemental, loves nature, so they’re all having happy family time in this beautiful green glade, splashing about in a lagoon with a waterfall.And the waterfall has a cave behind it, which Fabian can see from. Now, Pietro is pretty, but he’s hardly womanly. He’s got a sharp face and lean muscles and his personality isn’t what I’d call particularly effeminate, going by stereotypes. But he’s still lovely and lithe, and he fits the criteria given by Magneto---male and divine---and Fabian is DESPERATE at this point. So he sees this elfin, attractive dude and he’s just like YES THIS IS IT THIS IS DEFINITELY PRACTICALLY A WOMAN AND THIS IS THE ONE I WANT!So he tells Magneto he’s found his choice, and Magneto lifts the curse long enough for him to obtain his “bride”. Normally no one is fast enough to catch Pietro, he’s the freaking wind itself, but the moment Magneto gives Fabian the “okay” the ground opens beneath Pietro and swallows him up right before his family’s eyes. Next thing he knows, he’s in the Underworld and this huge dude in a cape is standing over him, yammering about how lucky he is to be chosen and how their wedding will be an event to remember for centuries and blah blah blah.Naturally, Pietro is less than thrilled, and punches Fabian in the face without even realizing who he is. He then zooms around the Underworld and realizes where he is, and that there’s no exit. Cue Fabian gloating about how there’s no escape for him and he’s his now. Pietro says that just because he’s HERE doesn’t mean that Fabian can touch him at all, and he does a damn good job of keeping away from the guy. Fabian is more frustrated than ever...then remembers that gods get hungry too. They can’t starve to death, but they do get hungry.And nothing grows in the Underworld. So Pietro is zooming around down there evading Fabian and all the forces he sends to capture him---monsters, Furies, ghosts, Cereberus---but he can’t escape his stomach. He’s ravenous. But he can’t find any food here. Why would there be? No one here needs to eat. As Pietro gets more and more desperate for a single scrap, who appears before him, pomegranate in hand, but Fabian.”Gods cannot starve, but we do hunger, as you do,” he says, as though Pietro needs reminding,”And I too am a god. Any food that is here is in my castle. Be my bride and---”He doesn’t even get to finish before Pietro snatches the pomegranate away and runs once again.Just like Fabian KNEW he would. He knew that Pietro would steal it and run. It was the plan all along.Pietro cracks the pomegranate open, but he only gets six seeds down before he feels the CHANGE happening. Something is WRONG with him. Has he been poisoned? Can a god be poisoned? He cannot die, but he knows he can suffer. And something feels very, VERY strange right now.He drops the pomegranate, and it rolls away, stopping at the booted feet of Fabian.”I was hoping you’d eat more before you caught on,” he says, “But you are, after all, a quick one.”PIetro demands to know what has been done to him. Fabian explains that everything in his domain becomes his when it enters. That’s why none of the other gods come here. And food does not grow here, but it can be brought here. And once it comes here, it also becomes his. Anyone who eats it becomes his---meaning, dead. In Pietro’s case, he can’t die, but it can take his godly powers. He is immortal still, but so long as he is in the Underworld, he will lack his famous speed.He can’t run from Fabian anymore. He fights him, but the larger man drags him back to his dark palace, carved from polished obsidian and basalt, coming out of the rock walls of the Underworld itself. It’s beautiful inside, so much so that Pietro is stunned for a moment in spite of his situation. This is not what he expected the dismal domain of the dead king to be; its opulence outshines even Heaven itself. He’s thrust into a plush and beautifully decorate room the size of a house, told that these are his chambers, and everything he could ever need or want is there. There’s a huge crystal tub with steaming groundwater pouring in, gilded and velvet furniture stuffed with the softest fur of slain animals, paintings (mostly of Fabian, admittedly) and trinkets and...gowns? There’s a ton of women’s clothing here?Fabian informs him he’ll playing the role of a wife, and Pietro freaks out all over again, screaming at him, throwing things, trying to attack him.This is a mistake. Fabian catches him by the throat and tosses him to the floor, reminding him that he’s not so fast anymore. And when Pietro grabs the nearest little golden statue---a smirking bust of Fabian himself---to try to beat his captor’s godly head in, he’s also reminded that Fabian has guards here, who tear his weapon from his hands and hold him back while Fabian smirks down at him in perfection imitation of the golden bust.He says Pietro will adjust. And that he’d better hurry it up because the wedding is already planned. Fabian has been planning it a damn long time, long before he saw Pietro. It’s gorgeous, it’s huge, it’s opulent, it’s over the top, and he is NOT going to have it ruined by an ungratefully reluctant bride! Er, femininely shy bride!The invites go out and Pietro’s name is on them and that’s when Magneto realizes just who it was that caught Fabian’s eye. And Wanda realizes what happened to her brother. Wanda is our Demeter figure. She’s actually more of a Hestia/Hecate combo in terms of her role as a deity, much like how Quicksilver is Hermes but is playing Persephone’s part here, and she’s his sister instead of his mother, but she plays Demeter’s role as the one person who speaks out against this, the one person who rages, the one person who grieves. She uses all her power to petition her father to go back on his bargain, but he refuses her. He’s not happy about this either, but he won’t become an oathbreaker. Not for Pietro. Maybe he would have for one of his daughters, but not the boy.Wanda tries to rescue Pietro next, but the curse of the pomegranate seeds keeps him bound there in the Underworld, one month for each seed eaten.Half a year, every year.So for half a year, every year, Wanda’s chaos powers go haywire, her witchcraft encircling the world, letting loose cold and winds and magic...and ghosts too. The reason there are so many ghost stories around this time? Wanda is fucking with the Underworld and yanking out as many souls as she can just to spite Fabian. But the wedding still goes on. Fabian still has his bride. Pietro is still trapped for six months a year, and he hates it. He fights it for centuries, even long after he knows he can do nothing. And slowly, he adjusts. He finds small but significant ways to rebel, ways to making Fabian unhappy without provoking retaliation. And some small, awful, shameful part of him...begins to enjoy that at least Fabian values him. Sees him as a treasure. Pays attention to him.The way his father never did. And sometimes, Fabian will throw some kind of attempt at real human kindness in there, something more than cold gifts of gold and jewels, something more than cold hands in the dark. Like when he let Eurydice have her chance to go back to Orpheus. That was for Pietro, because Pietro wanted it, because Pietro asked. It was admittedly not done out of REAL kindness or compassion to Pietro, but just in hopes it would make him more compliant out of gratitude. And Pietro realized he could begin to use that. To make things better for people in the Underworld in whatever small ways he could sway Fabian. He had a purpose here. He could be a hero.And so he became not merely Fabian’s new toy, but the beloved Queen to the dead, the one to whom they petitioned for aid, the only god who would ever hear their prayers. And every six months, Pietro would return to the surface world. Wanda’s rage and grief would cease, and Crystal would make the entire world blossom and bloom in happiness at his return.And Fabian would wait, knowing what was his would come back to him.Oh, and while I’m on this: Haven is Medusa. A religiously devout woman (Medusa was a priestess to Athena) who was wronged by a man and then she was supernaturally punished as a result, making her a monster/villain the rest of her life, as well as apparently pregnant the rest of her life (with Pegasus/the Adversary) and only giving birth at her death. Admittedly we’d have to change her rapist since it was Poseidon and EXODUS AIN’T ABOUT THE LIFE but yeah. And I’d make Monsoon our Pegasus, so her son instead of her brother.

[quothesquills]

👄 + luka orian

Chatterbox || Accepting

“First, you should know…it’s O’Rian. Second, that name should never come out of your mouth.”

She feels old. Older than this bar, for sure. Older than the smoke inside of it that clings to everything and gives the air a sour taste. Older than the street it is built upon, older than the city in which it resides. She can remember a time when none of it existed and that there was a lot more wild in the world. But that’s not the story that they’ve come to hear.

They ask about a man, and to explain him, she must first tell them about the Gods. It’s a good thing they’ve asked a Corax.

She waves a hand and has them sit. Orders a new round, and several after.

“Twice a year, two days are of equal length. Once in the spring, once in autumn. These days are balanced, and they are made for war, so that neither side has an advantage. Now, many myths become religions, many religions give names to the two sides. Seelie and Unseelie. Gawain and the Green Knight, the robin and the wren. Countless other pairs. Some might come closest when they speak of Lugh and Balor…but even the little witches of the Verbena do not know the whole story. The parts that were forgotten long ago.”

She takes a drink.“You say, but Quothe, how do you know, then? And I say to you…because I was there. You say, but Quothe that’s impossible! And I say…shut up and listen, kid, because I will only tell you once.” And make sure you don’t remember, after.

“The stories say that at Ostara, the spring equinox, the Oak Prince takes the crown and rules the lands of the old country for half year, at his height of strength and power come Litha…the mid of summer. His twin is the Holly Prince. Who regains the crown come Mabon, the autumn equinox, and he rules the dark half, at his height of power and strength at Yule, the mid of winter. And this…I tell you… is mostly bullshit. Notice I said…mostly.

“It is true, that once there were two princes. Born at the same day. One in the mid morning, scion of a God and his mortal lover. The other, born at the mid of night to the same God and his Consort and Rival, a Goddess who was also a queen. One was given the full favour of the Sun. The other was not so much shunned as… seen as lesser. And you might say, well…obviously, Quothe. The half mortal child could not be so blessed as his divine sibling. And you would be wrong then, wouldn’t you?

“The mortal prince spent his days roaming the woods and made friends with the wolves, the birds, the woods themselves. He could charm salmon from the streams and was beautiful to look on, all dark hair and green eyes. Long of limb and fair of form. The godling was also beautiful. Looked just like him, no shit, except he was red as the sun, red as blood. They were identical to their father. One did not know about the other for some time, and when they did first meet, they became the closest of friends. 

“Yes, I’m skipping details, we’d be here forever if I didn’t. Now, do you want to hear the story or not?” She lights a cigarette, becomes enchanted by the glowing ember of its cherry. “Some stuff happens, people are jealous, they make bad choices. The gods ain’t perfect, kid. Neither are people, and maybe that’s what makes it all work. And because we’re talking about Gods, you gotta know that eventually something must die. After all…they thrive on worship and sacrifice. The first to go was the Holly Prince, and his mother will tell you he might have been spared, if his father could have been bothered to have been there. I can’t tell you for sure, because I kind of missed that part. The second though, the Oak Prince, the mortal child, he was a sacrifice to the Goddess’ anger, to her need for a mother’s revenge, to salve what essentially boiled down to wounded pride over the rejection of the Sun. See…their father had chosen a human love over his consort. She didn’t take that well.“The mortal boy was set upon by a pack of wolves. They tore him pieces, swallowing great swaths of flesh and blood and even bone. Now this is where the story gets a little fuzzy. Everyone swears that the Goddess was responsible for the attack. Maybe she was. Some said she tried to intervene out of fear of the Sun’s wrath. Some say it hand nothing to do with her at all and maybe the Sun’s grandfather made one of those back alley deals, scooped up what was left and did some spooky god stuff in the background. But the problem was, there wasn’t enough left of the Oak Prince to put all back together, so they had to improvise. Scraped up some Wolf Bits and put it in the cosmic blender…and badabing.

“What do you mean, get to the point? That this is taking too long…Okay, okay. Ya wanna know about Luka O’Rian and what he has to do with all of this? FINE. He’s the owner of this bar, and he thinks you’re a dick. Now, get out before I gotta get the bouncer.”People. What a bunch of bastards.

[skeptic42]

Breaking this off the original thread.

Me:

This is what happens when people are given a little bit of knowledge, yet not taught to think critically.

When @ace-pervert says something like:

Yeah as long as you have things which can test them

He’s right in that not everyone has a LHC lying around the garage to just fire up and test for the Higgs Boson.  However, it is possible to get an education specializing in the right field and get access to a particle accelerator.  And run some tests.

But then you get worried when he says,

You almost never get the same result twice when testing something

This shows a complete and total lack of understanding in science and how it works.  If nature was as chaotic as he implies, then we could never know anything.  And before he whips out with the whole quantum universe thing, there are tests that we can conduct and repeat experiments.  Plus the quantum universe thing is only applicable below the atomic level.

What we can know can change.  Science doesn’t collapse and all knowledge disappear when we discover something knew.  Theories (that is not guesses or speculation, but testable, repeatable ideas supported by evidence through getting the same results no just twice, but hundreds of times) are adjusted.  It’s only when they are totally proven false, like cold fusion, that they get scrapped.  Relativity supplanted Newtionian physics, but we still use it because it works for things here on earth.

But you have to be worried when you read,

it took so long for us to succesfully [sic] prove that the sun revolved around the earth

I’m hoping this is a typo.

provided you can demonstrate it exists to begin with which is impossible when it comes to things like intelligence which cant be tested directly but are assumed to exist but in truth are only hypothetic in nature and therefore not demonstratable.

First, there’s a difference between the abstract, like the mind, and the physical, like the brain.  Now, we know intelligence exists, we are currently using devices that result from using intelligence.  It also helps to actually define intelligence.  Being smart like Einstein and being a con artist like Trump.  Not the same thing, but some people can’t tell the difference.

We might not understand something, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.  Consciousness is a good place to start.  It does exist.  It can be tested.  It’s as immaterial as intelligence.

Next we have @chillimanjaro:

“There are dozens of aspects of reality we don’t understand, including other dimensions. We don’t fully understand things like quantum mechanics or even physics. Not fully.”

Other dimensions may exist, but so far only in mathematical formulas on paper.  We understand quite a bit about quantum mechanics and physics.  We don’t know everything, sure, if we did, we wouldn’t study it.  Our knowledge is expanding all the time.  We’re developing new tools and building more powerful ones.

As for “something beyond this reality,” it makes for great fiction and fun speculation, but if it can interact with nature then there would be a way to test it.  Just because there are wavelengths of energy that can’t be seen doesn’t prove that every other thing we can conceive of could exist.  We can conceive of a wizarding boy that goes to a magical school, but I think lending it credence instead of relegating it to fiction isn’t the best way to go about thinking about things.

That’s the great thing about curiosity and science, we keep looking for more answers.

Response:

chillimanjaro:

I’m not saying lack of understanding is proof of God existing. I’m saying that you cannot reasonably dismiss the concept of a diety just because you personally have not observed him. That regardless of what you or I say about a god has no impact on whether a god exists.

It’s not a matter of not observing or feeling a god, but understanding that all gods were created in the minds of men.

I could sit here and say I have felt the presence of God in my life. I could do that, but I know me saying that I believe I have felt God, that I’ve heard his voice, that I’ve had a religious experience is my anecdotal evidence and will be dismissed as such.

Very true.  People have felt a lot of stuff and been entirely wrong.

But I’d rather say that the dismissive nature of saying well I can’t see it, I’ve never felt it, I’ve never had that experience is not a proper way to address the question of Gods existence.

Again, it’s not a matter of not seeing.  I did give an example of something we can’t see, yet we know it exists.

You lack any faith in God existing because you’ve never seen anything to attribute that to the world and that’s all well and fine but that still wouldn’t determine the existence of God.

Nor would feelings or being able to conceive of a god.  Just look at history, all the gods were human or animal or hybrid, things people have seen, yet none existed.  The box you open has your god in it, yet no other gods.  Why?  Why is your god the one true god, but none of the other gods?  There may very be some super powerful being, but the idea is pointless.  god needs to be relegated to mythology, with the rest of them.  In the other box where you put all the gods.

To dismiss the possibility is just simply not reasonable.

To dismiss evidence is unreasonable.  To believe is unreasonable.  The possibility is not worth the effort or the time, except in fiction.

It’s as just as unreasonable as seeing the infinitely expanding universe and saying the only place with life on it must be our planet.

This is actually a very reasonable statement.  Is there life elsewhere in the universe?  Possibly.  Given the law of large numbers, it’s very likely.  Where the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe and the possibility of a deity existing differ is in one single point:

We know life exists in the universe.

And since it exists here, it is actually very probably it exists somewhere else in the universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies with hundreds of thousands of stars with trillions of planets.  It like the lottery, the chance of one ticket winning is microscopic.  The chance of a ticket winning is extremely likely.

I’m not saying that you must believe God exist because the chance is there that God does exist.

The greater chance is that god was created in the minds of men, like the 5,000 some odd other gods.

I’m saying very simply that that you can’t just say, nope not possible at all.

The possibility is a moot point, nor does it increase the likelihood.

All I can really say is that if you seek God, not to prove existence of God for yourself, but if you SEEK GOD TO FIND GOD you will find God.

Yes. When you really want something to be true, it is all the easier to believe it’s true when you don’t and can’t prove or disprove it concisely.  It’s even easier when that god is invisible, untestable, unobservable. unprovable, and exactly what you conceive.

Also comparing the Bible, and more specifically the gospel of Jesus Christ, to Harry Potter is not a valid comparison.

They’re both fiction, and mention real places.  

Harry Potter has been stated by its author to be fictional and is not that old.

Yes, we know it’s fiction.   However, the Iliad and the Odyssey are much older, yet we don’t believe they are real.  The Sumerian flood myth is even older then the bible, yet we know that wasn’t real either.

Something that has stood the test of thousands of years,

What test?  People being forced to believe it?

has the most original copies of any documents in the ancient world

Do you mean the thousands and thousands of fragments?  You do realize that copy means not original.   Some of which prove they’ve been altered (like the addition of the last several verses of Mark).  

 (and I’m talking ancient documents dated around the time that it is claimed Jesus did what he did) especially when it was widely persecuted with crucifixtion, prison, and being burned alive at the time it began and still faces persecution in many parts of the world has a bit more value than that.

This seems a little odd, like you’re running at least two ideas together.  I’ll try to pull them apart.

The only documents about the existence of jesus are the gospels.  Everything else was derived from that or from the people who believed it.  There are no original accounts (and the gospels are full of contradictions, read Bart Ehrman).

We do know that crucifixions happened.  Doesn’t prove jesus existed.  It just proves the writers used that along with the OT to fabricate the jesus story.

I’m not sure how people being persecuted today proves the bible true.  I think your working toward the logical fallacy known as appeal to popularity (many people believe it, so it must be true).

If people did not believe Jesus came back from the dead then they would have renounced their faith in him under scrutiny especially when faced with his same type of death.

Called it.  People believe because they wanted to believe.  Belief in gods was rampant at that time.  Many religions sprang up and had instant followers.  christianity happened to survive the ages, not through fact, but belief.

If they didn’t believe in the miracles that they claimed to have seen and were just saying so then they would have given up, not given their life.

That doesn’t follow.  Just because people gave up their lives for their beliefs doesn’t prove anything except they gave up their life for their beliefs.

No one actually saw anything.  (Why are there 4 different accounts of jesus talking to Pontius Pilot that differ in almost every way and yet none of his followers actually witnessed any exchange?)  We have 4 canonical and numerous apocryphal accounts, all created at least 30 years after the supposed events.  Yet somehow, no one wrote down anything at the time, only 30+ years later, during an age of illiteracy, rife with supposed gods, with many wandering illiterate itinerant apocalyptic preachers.  Jesus was a common name, derived from Joshua, a Jewish hero. The practice of giving your children great names hasn’t changed.

No one is out there dying for Harry Potter (except JK Rowling lol) but people refuse to give up their faith in Jesus and die for it plenty to this day.

I hope not.  But if people were, that wouldn’t suddenly prove Harry Potter is real.  There however is a possibility that J.K. Rowling wrote about real events, but due to the magic protecting muggles and keeping them out of the wizarding world we are completely unaware of this unseen world around us.  Rowling may have even had these events transmitted to her mind so as to foster further disbelief in the wizarding world and protect it from discovery.

I’d really recommend looking into Lee Strobel if you’re interested for more answers. They actually have a movie based off his book on Netflix last time I checked. It’s called The Case For Christ.

Wow.  Talk about coincidence.  (But when I think about it, it’s actually a very likely coincidence.)  I just read about his book.  Now I’ll have to go back and reread that article again, so I won’t address it here.

I’d also recommend that you actually read the New Testament of the Bible, not necessarily the whole thing but the first 4 books give a clear understanding of Jesus Christ.

I have.  I used to go to church.  Been baptised, believed it because everyone else did.  But when I started to develop critical thinking, questioning things, I began to realize that I didn’t believe it.  

I recommend you read it as well, but read it in parallel.  Find the stories that overlap.  See how they are different.  Read Bart Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted and Misquoting Jesus (I think that’s the names).  He’s a top NT scholar.  I don’t agree with everything he wrote, but he is good.

Another good one (though I will tell you that not everything between the pages of that book has the same value) is What Time Is Purple? It’s very short, shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes to read at max.

Maybe.  I have like 2,000 other books to read.

I recommend How to Think About Weird Things.  I’ve just started Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, it promises to be excellent.

[queerasfolkmagic]

Introducing myself

Hello folks, 

Having been here a while, I thought it was about time to formally introduce myself to you guys. Plus I’ve spent most of the day drafting a letter of introduction to apply for an apprenticeship, so my thoughts on who I am in terms of magical practice and where I’ve come from feels a lot more organised than it has for years. 

So the basic stuff. I’m a queer cis man living in the UK, but I grew up working class in Georgia. I’ve got a brilliant boyfriend who is a dyed in the wool atheist & sceptic who nonetheless is extremely supportive of my practice. I work in the arts, and have been working professionally as a poet, performer and installation artist for the past 15 years or so. However, I’m taking some time off next year from both my company and my arts practice to focus on retraining as a psychotherapist. In its own way, this feels closely linked to my renewed interest in magic, but more on that later. 

So my journey into magic - When I was a freshman in high school, a way-cooler-than-me senior sat me down in a patch of grass near our school and asked me if I’d ever heard of Wicca. I’m not sure why she singled me out – I was a pretty nerdy and way into fantasy novels, but she was friends with my older brother. It was the first time I’d ever heard of Wicca, but she lent me a copy of Cunningham’s Wicca: A Guide For The Solitary Practitioner, patted my head, and sent me on my way. I read the book from cover to cover and shared it with my friends, and we formed (or at least formalised!) our first coven. 

The 90s was a pretty good time to be a teen witch. The Craft came out, and you could pick up Llewellyn books at Barnes and Noble (even if your heart was pounding the entire time you walked up to the register). It was good, even in the Bible Belt. There was a metaphysical shop in downtown Atlanta we’d all make the occasional pilgrimage to when we could convince an older sibling to drive us down, or later when we started getting our own licenses. We traded books and stayed up late. We burned candles in the woods – scrappy copses of undeveloped lands at the edges of our subdivisions, our public parks, our back yards. I started wearing a pentacle and drawing green men on my textbooks. It was the 90s and it was exciting. I read a lot of Cunningham and Caitlin and John Matthews. Later I found Starhawk, both her fiction and non fiction. 

However, I remember that even at the time I felt like I got more out of books like Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s Faeries or pretty much anything by Charles de Lint or Terri Windling, and the bits of folklore that got slipped into their stories. I felt more resonance with current writers grappling with and interpreting myth and folklore than I did with people writing about modern witchcraft. Partly, it was because I felt uneasy about some of the claims around unbroken lineage a lot of writers were making, rather than admitting and owning a reconstructionist approach. Also, the emphasis around fertility never felt like it fit for me. As a queer kid in a small southern town, the last thing I needed was another dogmatic approach to gender. When authors talked about the Wheel of the Year, it sounded like a beautiful myth but one that felt so removed from me. The Horned God felt like just another straight guy – unknowable and unrelatable, 

 I spent a lot of time walking through woods, and trying to be open to what they contained. Looing back, I think what resonated a lot more with me was a sense of animism – something that was discussed briefly in the books I read, but never given the same sense of importance as Deity worship. 

Then things fell apart. My dad committed suicide and my mom’s addictions started spiralling out of control. My own drug and alcohol use increased massively. I started spending a lot more time at raves than I did in nature. By the time I finished high school, my sense of connection with nature and interest in spirituality of any stripe pretty much disappeared. Occasionally it would resurface. I went to acting school, and the Goddess showed up in more than one visualisation exercise – which was both powerful and uncomfortable. After I got sober I discovered Quakerism and connected to a different kind of god – not quite the Christian one, not quite the Wiccan one – but someone who felt like a loving father and also mysterious and awesome. Still, nothing really stuck. I moved to the UK in 2004 and religion and spirituality is pretty much a no go here.  

So fast forward a couple of years – I promise I’m getting to the end! Two things happened. I took my partner back to the US to meet my family, and the newness of seeing my family through his eyes taught me a lot including the fact that my family is witchy AF. We talk openly about seeing ghosts, we talk with our dead and they speak to us in signs, we share stories about premonitions and intuition, and we create little altars all the time. I know it sounds stupid, but I’d genuinely never really thought about it before. It was just my family. I though magic came from wise women in the woods, not my Aunt Nancy in Chicago. For the first time, I thought about magic as being an inheritance, and as something that bonds me to family both living and dead. 

 The second incident happened while on holiday in Cornwall when for the first time in years I took a whole week off and sat by the sea. I didn’t do anything else. I turned off my phone and just sat in the sunshine, slept when I was tired, ate when I was hungry, watched the waves and the moon and the bees and just listened. And a message came through loud and clear (and terrifying in its clarity).  

And so with both those things in mind, I opened myself up. There were a lot of mistakes. The first witchy book I bought after 20 years was a beautiful book on natural healing – gorgeous pictures, but mostly recipes for homemade bath bombs and raw smoothies and nothing on spirituality. I bought some santo palo and realised I do not like the smell of santo palo. I bought way too many crystals and tarot packs, all of which looked beautiful and felt dead in my hands. I started a tumblr page and followed pretty much anyone who looked a bit witchy and got lost down some unfulfilling rabbit holes. 

 Then one day I pulled out a tiger’s eye my best friend had given me in high school and I felt something. Something profound – a tingle in my hand and up my arm, small but undeniable. I found a tarot pack that started giving me startlingly clear answers. – turns out it was a basic vanilla RWS pack I needed! I found some great witchy podcasts – New World Witchery, The Witch Wave, and Betwixt and Between – who were talking about things that made sense to me. 

The world of witchcraft has changed SO MUCH in the past twenty years I was away! Wicca is no longer the only flavour! No shade to Wiccans, but it feels so good to see other traditions be given more airtime. I’d never heard of Southern Conjure, hoodoo, and cunningfolk practices, and it has been so exciting to learn a bit about them. I’ve found Judika Illes and Byron Ballard. I’ve rediscovered Cunningham – not all of it is relevant to me, The Magical Household is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Most importantly, I’ve started thinking again about what bits of folklore and fairy tales feel ‘right’. So while The Green Witch and The Sorcerer’s Secrets are on my beside ‘to read’ book pile, so is The Book of English Magic, A Treasury of British Folklore, The Long Lost Friend, and A Deed Without a Name. So is Brewers Book of Phrase and Fable and Red Sky At Night and In The Pines and The Book of English Folk Tales and fairy tale collections from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson.

So while I’m still finding my way,I’d like to be a modern-day cunning man. I’d like to use traditional and folkloric knowledge relating to my cultural and ancestral heritage (Irish, Welsh, Hungarian, Southern American, working class, queer) to help myself and the people around me deal with the challenges of being alive – finding security, dealing with grief, understanding their loved ones better. I’d like to be a repository for old ways and the creator of new ones. I’d like to be open and honest about my practices and my spiritual life. I’d like to be mostly kind and sometimes righteous when I need to be. I’d like to be on a first name basis with my ancestors and the land I live on. I’d like to spend time learning about little gods – house spirits, local faeries and land spirits, the birds who live in the local park, the spiders who make their homes in my garden – than building up big pantheons from other cultures. I’d like to celebrate the phases of the moon rather than the Wheel of the Year. I’d like to worship my mom and dad as the fierce, wonderful, loving, dangerous spirits they are. I’d like for casting a spell or talking to my ancestors to be as immediate an impulse as looking something up on Google. I’d like to be Sally Owen. Maybe Gilly Owen. One of the Owens, anyway. Definitely one of the Owens