My grandmother is a bitch.

Roll on the seventeenth when I can go up to Dad's place.

Thank you, that is all.

The shapeshifter as trickster

Something that hit me out of nowhere; shifting shape is somehow parsed as lying. The Mystique thing. Multiple faces like veils tied around a ‘real’ body, a ‘real’ identity, obscuring it. A tease maybe. A deception, definitely.

And I’m not saying there aren’t people who do that, but the possibility of having more than one shape and all shapes being true doesn’t really seem to be one that’s allowed to enter heads.

When trying to stick to one shape, one identity, has always been the thing that felt to me like lying; hiding stuff, trying to be predictable, trying to be boxed neatly so that people can see me and understand.(And somehow it’s my responsibility to be understandable, not theirs to try to understand…)

It’s tiring…

…and not surprisingly Knux has no truck with this whole ideology whatsoever.(And have I mentioned how glad I am that I met my Echidna?)

Shape shifting for me is truth telling, because the truth is bigger than one story. Shape shifting is nakedness, brazen and bold. Here I am. All of me.

...well, this is a new one.

Yesterday my mother went out to a parent/teacher meeting at Ian’s school, mostly OK save for flu. She came back doubled over and clutching her stomach and asking Ian(he was closest at the time)to call 999.

I went in the ambulance with her to the hospital, and I’m not sure why. Duty, maybe. Curiosity. Probably some of it was that I wanted to get out of the house and away from Ian, too. I didn’t feel upset the way I would if someone I loved was sick. I haven’t loved my mother for years…if I ever did in the first place. You need a personality to be capable of love, and as soon as mine developed it was in opposition to my mother’s. Opposing personalities can be reconciled, but…not in this case. There’s just too much bad blood between us for me to ever think of her with affection.

On the other hand, I DEFINITELY wasn’t gloating. I didn’t feel good about it at all.

I wasn’t sure what to feel, really. I felt blank inside. And vaguely panicked. Slow-motion panic. I didn’t scream or shout. I’d been reading Tales of Symphonia fics online the previous night; somewhere at the back of my mind I thought about blank-faced ‘angels’ with their souls locked up, and the famous Aurion poker face. I always thought that face was a trick; something he, and others I know, had learned how to do in order to conceal their emotions. Now I wonder whether sometimes stuff happened that they didn’t know how to deal with, didn’t know what to feel about…so they just went blank. I was wearing that face.

Symphonia also made me think of the Orchestra, and thinking of the Orchestra made me think of other Packs, and I wanted very badly to be with a Pack just then-somewhere warm and noisy with lots of friendly people. I wanted to see long-time rivals bicker and long-time lovers snuggle.(These are sometimes the same people of course, and sometimes they even do both at once…)I didn’t want to actually talk to anyone, though. Just sort of sit there and be warmed by other peoples’ normal lives-or what passes for normal life, in a Pack. A good, accustomed weirdness. In a way I would have preferred to be with the Orchestra than with my own Pack or with the Emblem Packs. People in those Packs know me well, they’d want to talk to me and involve me in things. The Orchestra are friendly but they aren’t so close to me, and they have their own problems right now with a couple of unexpected and troublesome visitors to host. They’d probably let me sit down someplace, and just carry on whatever they were doing around me. That was about all I felt up to, really.

I didn’t talk to my spirits. My mind had sort of shut down. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, even if they were in my head, even if they were parts of me.

I wonder what the paramedics and the folk at the hospital thought of me. The blank-faced teenager who sat very still and stared at the wall, or read a book silently.

Though, a lot of people in the Accident and Emergency waiting room were quiet…everyone was, actually, save one babe-in-arms. Maybe that’s normal. I got a chocolate bar and some terrible tea from a vending machine. I felt very cold, physically and mentally; the tea and chocolate helped a bit, but not much.

Before my grandparents picked me up and took me home again, I found out what was the problem, at least. A urine infection-probably. The weird thing is, though, my mother didn’t display any of the usual symptoms of urine infection. And I’ve had urine infections before, and they were annoying and painful, but they didn’t leave me doubled over and shaking uncontrollably. The healerfolk think it’s possibly something to do with her recently having had a coil fitted.(The thought of those things has always freaked me out a bit. I suppose I shouldn’t comment on methods of contraception, since I’ve never had a reason to use any of them; still, there’s something creepy about fitting metal semi-permanently into your reproductive organs. And what about TSS?)

She’s staying in the hospital overnight, at least; don’t know when she’ll be back, though the doctor said it will be okay, it’s not life-threatening.

I also feel annoyed at how useless I was. Of course, I’m not healer trained, and I did all I could in the situation, and professionals were there who had the thing in hand, and it’s not like I ran out and left her in trouble, but still. Something real happened here for once-a genuine emergency-and I was useless. It makes me feel ineffectual, resentful and annoyed. Also annoyed at myself FOR feeling like that, when it’s so pointless.

*sighs*

I hope I never have to go through this again…though, with my mother getting older, odds are I probably will. Or something along these lines, anyway.

Starry, starry night

I love how it gets dark early in winter, and I love Christmas lights. Not the tacky reindeer and Santa sort so much, but fairy lights.

There's frosty blue ones in the trees in the Market Square, and golden ones in the restaurant in the Conservatory Village. Multicoloured ones just about everywhere. They remind me of stars-it's been cloudy recently, but tonight there were some of those visible too, as well as a very bright full moon.

It's like at this dark nub of the year we feel the need to pull down heaven like a blanket, borrow a bit of starfire to warm ourselves up. Athene was talking about how she can't get used to Christmas in Atlanta, where it's all sunny and bright but people put out elaborate light shows anyway; what's the point? Atlantans must amuse themselves however they can, I suppose, and there are worse ways, but I agree with Athene, for what it's worth.

I was sitting and eating dinner in the restaurant at the Conservatory Village just a few hours ago, looking out of the window into the darkness with the reflections of the gold fairy lights on it, and thinking of Indra's net. That's the other thing stars remind me of, stars and fairy lights both; that infinite shimmering mesh of golden beads, all linked.

There are many worlds, and they don't all share the same sky-I've known that since I was tiny. Lucy Pevensie talked about the Narnian constellations-'dear old Leopard!' she said, seeing it again after a sojourn in the world of her birth, away from her kingdom. The stars were different there. But she was a world-traveller, and all the worlds are linked, regardless. More recently I heard Haras-uquara talk of a million lights reflected in a million mirrors, and that's the way of the worlds, she said, that you can't tell which are real; all are, or none. We pass from reflection to reflection. And though not all worlds have the same stars, I can't think of any that have no stars. Presumably there's some that do...but then, I'd wager they have something else just as good.

And all the worlds came, ultimately, from the same place. I believe this; one word spoken, a fount of gold. B'raishith...

So maybe, just maybe, they do share one destiny.

It's hard if not impossible-probably impossible-to know for sure, but when the lights glitter you can't help wondering.

What I do know is that this is here, and I am me, and this is here because it has a position in the 'Verse, it is linked to everywhere else, and I am me for the same reason. And I am very small, but I have friends in many places, and time to sip tea and look at the stars.

Utterances of the Menagerie of Doom(which is what they decided to call themselves now that FDB is no longer wholly appropriate...)

Because Athene did this with Pesky Stefen Rhymer. On the basis of 'why not?'

This will be updated erratically. Whenever they are particularly on form.

__________

“Fuck biology, we’ll just buy you a pair of kitty ears. On a headband, you know. No-one will notice the difference!”


“Puppy.”

“Puggle.”

“…you two are conspiring against me.”

“We’re conspiring for you, and don’t forget it.”


“You can’t see the Floating Island with those eyes.”


“I’m not going to tell you what I believe. You’ll only try to imitate it.”


“The Universe can always use another pair of helping hands, especially if they have spikes on and are not above dealing out a few punches.”


“There’s always something worth guarding.”


“What?! You’re my guardian angel not my libido! Are angels even meant to get-”

“Ahem…Geburah, dear.”


“Being different is one thing, being unique is another. Being unique sucks, so it’s a good thing no-one really is.”


(while dancing about at the bus-stop to a song they were looping in my head, and trying to get me to join in) “Dignity? I’m a cartoon animal! You can’t get much more undignified than that.”


“You can and should feel guilty for anything you did that made the situation worse. But feeling guilty for there being a situation at all is ridiculous. It’s just being masochistic. And not in the fun way.”


“You can’t ask a demon why it destroys stuff-well, you can, but you won’t get a straight answer and you probably won’t get a truthful one either.”


(I have a skin allergy that makes trouble if I don’t take medicine for it regularly. I’d missed a few doses, and I was sitting at the computer and scratching my belly.) “You’ll scratch off all your fur if you carry on like that.”

“I don’t have fur!”

“…Which proves my point!” (yeah, I walked into that one…)


(discussing Athene’s cohorts)“All [Vanyel’s] plans sooner or later come down to ‘blow stuff up’. Usually sooner.”


“Also, we killed binary. I think Knux stabbed it.” (Knux, I should mention, has taken to wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the message BINARY IS FOR BADNIKS. He doesn't need to wear t-shirts, so I assume he is only doing it for the lolz.)


"It never was, because it always is!"


(in response to the line ‘hanging upside-down like a bat and playing the ocarina’, in ‘out’)“Add that to the list of ‘things we haven’t done yet, but must do someday for the shock value’.”


(while talking with Athene about the fact that half the world freaks out if you Believe in anything, while the other half freaks out if you don't Believe exactly what they do)"So basically there's no room in the world for people like me. But I knew that already."

*headshake*"It means that if you want space you have to carve out your own."


"If packing is such a fucking depressing chore, what is unpacking?"


(when I got the idea that the Master Emerald must Never Be Touched In Any Circumstances)"That sounds like the sort of 'cosmic' bullshit Tigris would come up with."

The Huntingdon flop

So apparently I cannot crossdress. I don’t know what it was exactly, probably my voice, maybe the aforementioned doe eyes, but everybody in Huntingdon yesterday knew me for a double-X-chromosome at once.

I have also learned something. If a man tries to crossdress, and cannot do this convincingly, then he is likely to get, in the best case scenario, a lot of funny looks, and in the worst case scenario, a great deal of grief. If, however, a woman tries to crossdress, and cannot do it convincingly, then absolutely nobody will notice that she was trying in the first place unless she has gone to false-moustache lengths.(I didn’t.)

It makes the whole business with the duct tape seem like a lot of unnecessary pain, I must say. Whatever else I do with my life, I’m NOT doing that again.

It’s all somewhat annoying.

The day wasn’t a total loss, however. I had fun pottering about a couple of streets in Huntingdon, got a copy of Hotel Dusk and ate a very nice meal at the George Hotel.(A sort of platter consisting of a warm baguette and ham and cold roast chicken and a whole gooey baked Camembert cheese and cherry tomatoes and two sorts of pickle and olive-oil-and-vinegar dip on the side, and afterwards a suet pudding with blackberry-and-apple filling and custard.)I also liked the way I looked, dressed as a boy. I verged on androgynous, and that pleased me. If only it wasn’t so painful to bind my breasts…

Ah, well.

I have decided something, though, as a result of all this ruminating on the problem. Every Thursday there is a market in St Neots town square, selling normal markety things-food and drink, sweets, electrical goods, and clothes.

One of the clothes stalls sells shirts. Black button-up ones with pictures on them-skulls and roses, wolves, dragons both European and Asian, motorbikes, wizards…The fellow that runs it is a long-time marketgoer, he’s been coming to St Neots every Thursday for years. I’ve always rather admired those shirts, but I’ve never bought one. Because they are men’s shirts. Or rather, geek-boys’ shirts. But the boy bit stands. So, up till now, I’ve just sort of looked wistfully at them, and walked on.

But now there’s the echidna stirring under my skin, and I’m conscious all of a sudden of the bone spikes on my fists. Breaking boxes has to start somewhere.

I’ll buy the wolf shirt, or maybe the one with the purple dragon, or whatever one looks prettiest when I see what’s on offer. I’ll wear it with my skirts-that’ll cause some second looks-and I’ll get some glitter gel to put in my hair, because I like things that sparkle. Maybe I’ll spike it up. Maybe I’ll pull it back into a tail again; I rather like the way it looks when I do that, I realised today. It’s not exactly a rat-tail; it has far more aplomb than that.

There’s ways and ways to genderfuck.

Only that makes it sound like the payoff is counted in other people’s confusion and embarrassment, and it isn’t-or not mostly.

Really, it’s about having a bit more elbow room, carving out a little space for me to choose what I want and not cut off any limbs that might hang over the edges of the Procrustean bed. It’s a small thing, of course; just a choice of clothes. But every little helps.

Some random rambly shit about bodies & sexuality, & my weird head

I have pretty eyes. Big and deep brown, with long eyelashes. Bambi eyes. People have complimented me on them before now. Sometimes they say I should swap my glasses for contacts(no thank you; the thought of floating something on my eyeball just grosses me out and anyway I’ve worn glasses so long they feel like part of my body now)so as to render my eyes more visible, make the most of them.

I remember looking in a mirror, aged about thirteen or fourteen, and not liking what I saw. This was of course commonplace. But it wasn’t always about imperfection in my face and figure…Sometimes I’d look, and see those big Bambi eyes. They looked like they belonged on some baby creature. They looked vulnerable.

And I thought, ‘I hate that. I don’t want to look that vulnerable.’

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, sometimes, be in that space, be the small thing held in warm arms, and be comforted. But I didn’t want it all the time, and I didn’t want it to be the thing people saw when they saw me-regardless of what I wanted.

I was hanging out with some of the Final Fantasy spirit folk at this point in time, so I had no shortage of pretty girls to observe. I never really thought the thought in so many words, but I sort of formed an assumption-sexiness is something your body does to you. If your features add up in a certain way you’re ugly and there’s nothing you can do about it; if they add up in another way you’re pretty and there’s nothing you can do about that.

That girl I talked to back then, for instance; my friend in the blue wool cardigan. She’s pretty; by her world’s standards she’s what everyone would think of immediately if someone said ‘pretty’, slim dark-eyed and dark-haired. That’s always there, whenever anyone looks at her. It’s like she’s always in some sense on show. Not that she flaunted herself or anything, or revealed anything much. Her clothing was otherworldly of course, since she was too, but basically it was a cardy and bike shorts and a top no more revealing than the sort every Thulc girl in town was wearing. But her prettiness was always on display, even if her tits weren’t. She was an attractive woman, and people could see that straight out whenever they saw her. Her attitude didn’t have anything to do with it. Didn’t matter whose pants she actually wanted to get into, didn’t matter what she thought about people looking at her. She was on show, and everyone could see. She could have dressed in sackcloth and ashes and she’d still have been pretty, and she’d have gotten a lot of ‘what the fuck?’ comments on top of that.

Of course prettiness didn’t make her a weak person-and anyone who thinks beautiful women have to be weak should go to a dozen worlds I could name, make an observation like that to a hundred deadly and determined ladies. Go on, I dare you-but it did inject a quality into her strength, a kind of defensiveness. Don’t look at me like that-I’ll show you what a pretty woman can do…But that didn’t stop them from looking. Touching, yes. But not from looking.

She was a powerful being and a sexual being. She could offer or withhold as she liked. And she was with folk who respected that she had the choice of it, decent folk. And she dated, and the relationships went their way, and lasted for a while, or not, though sometimes she was turned down, and sometimes she turned other people down, but for the most part she had a pretty good time…

…but that prettiness. That bit of her that was there for anyone to see, a free sample of her. That vulnerability. A bit of her given away before any interaction even started. And yes, with some people she wanted to give that away, there’s one boy I know she wanted to give that to, wanted to give him the sight of her, wanted him to want it-

-but she didn’t get the choice about that bit, and nobody asked.

She was sexy. It was the way her body was. It was a fact that she simply could not get away from.

She didn’t seem to have any problems with this, didn’t even think about it probably. Like I wasn’t consciously thinking about it. But I was noticing. Somewhere, I was noticing.

And time passed, and my hormones kicked in, and I begin to notice something that puzzled me a little. The thing that seemed to make the difference about whether I was attracted to someone or not wasn’t physical. It was…well, it was a whole lot of things, different in every person, but all mental. Mind, I could appreciate physical beauty just fine, but it was just…stuff. Like how a waterfall or a sunset is beautiful. It was when I noticed an interesting mind in a well-formed body that I would start getting interested. And I don’t mean interested in a relationship, I just mean horny! I could not, and still cannot, muster up any attraction for a physically good-looking person who I know nothing about.

Hmm, I thought. Interesting.

Recently I’ve been puzzling this out a bit, and it’s been prompted by noticing a spirit or two(most of my friends are spirits)who seem to do this whole sexiness thing differently to how I saw it.

Spirits who, on pure physicality and according to my tastes at least, are not attractive. Just plain, or even a bit ugly or grotesque.

But I’ve seen them being sexy…It’s strange. I wasn’t turned on myself, but I could see the intention and the power that they could call up, an attitude, a way of moving differently, a look about them that’s just impossible to pin down…It was sexy, though it wasn’t aimed at me, wasn’t meant to be, and didn't register on my internal radars. Does it make sense to say that I could see the sexual power that they had even if it wasn’t one that touched me? And even though they weren’t doing anything overtly sexual, like stripping or whatnot?

I’ve seen them, and for them sexiness isn’t something their bodies do to them. It’s something they do to their bodies. Or with their bodies. And there’s no defensive air, no feeling of vulnerability-though they weren’t always doing it, calling up that power, for someone who they wanted to see them! Sometimes they seemed to just be doing it for the sheer joy of it.

It’s hard to put words round all this. I keep typing and then deleting things, trying to capture the concepts shifting in my head.

It’s just, sexuality always seemed to me to be a sort of vulnerability.

But I’ve read stuff people’ve wrote, about sexuality being power, being empowering. And I never really understood that. Only now I think I start to get some idea of what they meant…

I. Hate. Headcolds.

Hate them with a fiery passion.

I can't smell anything, can't taste hardly anything, I'm cold all the time, I keep coughing up catarrh, having uncontrollable sneezing fits, and getting spinny-headed! Aaaargh!

Whatever anyone says, though, I am not putting my feet in a bowl of hot water and mustard. I feel bad enough already without having mustardy feet. I'm not drinking Lemsip either. That stuff tastes like chemical doom.

Mum had this too. She was OK in about a week. So, at least this won't last long.

I just want to know, why couldn't Ian catch it instead of me?

This is not a charitable attitude, but it is very hard to be charitable with a head cold.

Another lesson in never, ever, ever underestimating Guardians in red

As if getting one life's lesson out of him wasn't enough, another followed on its heels!

...I'll give a little background. For those that don't know him...There's this thing, okay, this relic. A Power item, strong Power. Legendary level. The Master Emerald. And he Guards it. With his life. It's that important, honestly. Important for his world and important to him.

Well...awhile ago I was seething at dinner 'cause Ian was making out like I was stupid. Retarded. It's his favourite insult. We were arguing, and I was furious angry...I wanted so bad to win. Just once, I'd like to! To make him stop saying that stuff about me!

I stayed angry for ages after that. I mean...it's different when some person in town just hurls an insult at you, and you can walk off. When it's your brother making snide snooty comments whenever you see him, and you can't walk away 'cause you're in the same house, and he goes on, and on, and your mother won't shut him up, can't shut him up...so you just have to listen, and you feel so miserable...

Then, in the bath-why is it always in the bath?-I calmed down enough to get partly into ambit again.

And he talked to me.

I can't remember the exact words, but it was something like this.

"Don't you see? You have won.

Look, I guard the Master Emerald. That's why I fight. It doesn't matter how bruised or bloody I am at the end of a fight. It doesn't matter if the other guy is laughing his head off at me. It doesn't matter if I've made myself look like a total idiot, as long as the Master Emerald is safe.

There's always something worth guarding, and you are guarding something. You fight like someone on the defensive. What's your Master Emerald? If it's your sanity, you've won. If it's your ability to talk to spirits, you've won. If it's your creativity, you've won. If it's your life, you've won. None of those are things he can harm or steal. He's lost every battle before he even begins. Nothing he does can make the slightest mark on the Master Emerald.

If your Master Emerald is your pride, it was a false jewel, and needed to be shattered anyway. But I think you're better than that.

I'll tell you what really could destroy your Master Emerald. Your OCD, if you don't get it under control. But you're spending all your energy fighting battles that don't really matter, instead...and trust me, you aren't the first to make that mistake, I know what thereof I speak. Remember how I was tricked into fighting Sonic and Tails, while Robotnik stole up behind me. That's what you're doing now. Fighting things that are really harmless, while the true threat makes a grab for the Emerald."

Of course, all of it is damn true. He's as sharp as his spikes, sometimes.

And knowing it helps. I still get angry and sad, but now I know I can hold on tight, clench my fists, and tell myself 'The Master Emerald is safe'. That helps me get through. It lets me refuse to argue without feeling that I'm losing the fight. It lets me ignore what Ian says. Or my mother. Or her boyfriend.

It helps a lot.

...Thanks, Knux.

Echidna

So Athene directed me to this post; http://takingsteps.blogspot.com/2007/01/seam-of-skin-and-scales.html

Which is something that I’ve read before, but never really understood.

Till now anyway.

It started with-well, you’ll laugh-it started with a game I picked up on a whim and a memory of a glowing review in ONM magazine because I was a bit hungry for the mechanics of turn-based RPG, because I wanted a new challenge, Something to Do.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.

Never had anything to do with blue hedgehogs and the like before that. And certainly didn’t expect to find a, a character. That’s the only word for it. One of the side characters. Got totally hit from left field. Thwacked between the eyes by a blast of strong personality from this side character, this cartoon red echidna with spikes on his fists.

I was linking before I even knew it, and I didn’t expect that.

So I’m linking, and I’m confused, and I’m turning it over in my head, asking him…why? What’s a person like you doing in a game like this? You’re better than this. You deserve better than a near-sexless ageless anthropomorphic cartoon grotesquerie of a body and a silly frivolous game for a world. Wouldn’t you want a different body? Human and real. Strong and handsome and sexual. Don’t you want a story more serious, a world and a name and a history that better fits your mind?

Don’t you want that?

And I’m linked enough to hear his reply, and he says ‘No.’

Very firmly. And I’m more confused than ever so he elucidates. ‘This is my body, and this is my world. This is my story, mine to me. Do I puzzle you? I’m not under any obligation to change because you think the parts of me don’t match up. I’m happy how I am.’

But people see you as a joke!

‘A joke, a cartoon, let them laugh! Do you think I care? And can you really not see the attraction? Wouldn’t you like to throw the seriousness of humanity to the winds for awhile? I think you’re a tiny bit jealous.’

And he withdrew from the link, leaving me with a lot to think about.

In my head all that day I put two and two together, and I ended up with five-and-a-bit. I’ve come up with some ideas. I think I understand that post now.

After all, Echidna was a monster too.

I am Echidna and I revel in my grotesquerie. It’s about dichotomy; it’s about contradictions; human, animal, real and illustrated, skin and fur, a mammal that lays eggs. It’s about not fitting in any box, because any box would be too small. Don’t you dare cage me; I drip poison, I have spines. Touch me and you’ll hurt.

I am Echidna, and I have my weapons; I have bone spikes on my fists. I use them to carve myself out elbow room. I use them to climb up out of all the boxes. I can fight, and I will fight, to protect my own existence. It’s self defence. I’m not about to let anyone cut off my tail, mutilate me so that I can be better defined. I am defined by me and by God; anyone else can get the fuck away!

I am Echidna, and do I look ridiculous to you? A comic muddle of roles, genders, ages, species-I hear your uneasy laughter. I don’t care if you think I look funny. I have my own brand of dignity. I am King of the cloud islands, and in my kingdom I shall do as I damn well please.

I am Echidna, and yes, I can do sexy. Twilight-purple bedroom eyes, and does it come as a surprise that I can dance like I’ve got emeralds at the meeting of my thighs? And I can do sexless. Naked and unashamed, can you Adam and Eve it? Because love is sweet, and sex is good, but there’s more to life than kissing. I can put sexuality on the shelf; it does not become another trap to define me.

I am Echidna, and this is not feminism because it is not about being female it is not about being male it is about being it is about being whatever I can be it is about being myself having room to stretch myself out to be childish and parentlike and wise and gullible and suspicious and scared and scary and animal and spirit and modern and ancient and very near and oh so far and gregarious and a loner and reserved and loudmouthed and stone and water and fire and ice and male and female and both and neither. I do not have to pick just one.

I am Echidna, monstrous Echidna, and I never have to pick just one.

Half-term holidays

Eating doughnuts a lot. And drinking milk. Don't know why.

Worrying about gender identity. There, I said it.

DS, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, and Sonic: The Dark Brotherhood.

Artemis Fowl marathon. Invented a nickname for him, which is probably not a good sign. I want to draw him and Holly; pity I can't draw.

Waiting for the doctor to get in touch about my OCD referral.

Trying to control my temper around my bastard brother. Mostly succeeding.

Sporadic contact with Athene and Ash.

Life as we know it, I guess.

Nobody believes in Silvers...till they look in the mirror.

There's a LOT of warnings in books and games and films and what-all about anger. About the terrible things it does to the human brain.

And you know what? We never believe them. We laugh and call it cliche. A fantasy staple, keyword being fantasy.

Even I thought it was some kind of rare thing, if it ever happened.

Till I looked at myself and found out I was wrong.

Old Jack pointed out that one man may be placed so his anger kills people, and another may be placed so however mad he gets, he just gets laughed at...But the stain on the soul may be much the same. Not the stain of the guilt of consequences-that's something separate altogether of course. The stain of the anger itself.

It does twist you out of shape.

Sometimes I imagine what I'd be like with a chunk of Nethicite, and the image is not a good one.

But don't think I'm just putting myself down here. This is freaking endemic.

Don't believe me? Well, just think; if everyone could make 'Go to hell!' a performative statement when screaming it at their ex, the cliffs of Weep-not would be standing room only!

The Letter to Franziska

(This was originally posted on my now defunct Sygnus blog, which was originally a Discordian cabal headquarters until I got bored of the joke.)

The Cabal of Aeris (un)Risen petered out a long time ago, once people got bored of it. It is the end I expected of it-only fitting really. So this blog has lain vacant. I have decided to revive it as a more conventional blog, a space for me to ramble on. I do get Ideas sometimes, after all.

I decided this after receiving a revelation, In the bathtub, as it happens.

I felt I had to get my thoughts in order so as soon as I was out of the bath I went and wrote a letter to the person who was responsible for the sudden revelation. Unfortunately the Postal Service do not deliver to her address. But it helped me figure things out, to write it, at least.

And since it must be somewhere, it is here.

Franziska von Karma

Somewhere In Germany(Or Possibly Los Angeles)

Another Earth

Eight Years From Now

Dear Franziska

You will probably never read this letter and if you do you will not like its contents. I am from the world where you are part of a game and considered unreal. I do not agree with that assumption. That is not what I am writing about. I am writing about something else.

You get mad a lot. Everyone knows this. And when you get mad you hit people with your whip. Everyone knows that, too. You hit Phoenix Wright when you think he is being stupid in court, and you hit him when you think he is being smart in court and will make you lose the trial. You hit him over and over when he has won a trial and you have lost. You hit the judge when he doesn’t agree with you. You hit witnesses when you don’t like their testimony. You hit Detective Gumshoe when you think he is being stupid or talking about something you think is irrelevant. You hit a lot of people for talking about things you think are irrelevant. You hit people for talking about things you don’t want to hear. You hit people when something bad happens to you, even if they had nothing to do with it, because you are angry and want to take it out on someone. Maybe you even hit your brother. I heard him talking to Phoenix once and he called you a wild mare and grinned. I think he might’ve said something like that to your face before now, and you might’ve hit him for it. I think you really might.

But maybe you never have hit him. Maybe you are angry that I think you might’ve. After all, he is your brother. I know you love him. And he loves you. Maybe you are horrified at the idea you would hit him, like he was an ordinary annoying person. If you haven’t hit him yet, though, I think you will. Someday soon he will say something or do something that gets you so mad you hit him and then afterwards you will be sorry but you won’t be able to take it back once you’ve done it and you will feel guilty about it for the rest of for ever!

But if I wanted to talk about that sort of thing, then there are a lot of things I could write and they would take me ages to list. I could write and write about how you are not a good person. I could write how you will not be able to go on this way without tripping yourself up. I could write about karma. It is in your name, so you should be able to figure it out.

And at the end of it you would probably say, ‘So what? I don’t believe in karma. I am karma. I am punishment.’

(I could quote at you then, though. You don’t care if people are innocent or guilty, you just want to punish them anyway. C.S. Lewis said that to act like that is to volunteer for the post of Satan in the divine scheme and that if you do his work you must be prepared to take his wages. Which I assure you are not good. But you would probably not listen to that either.)

You would say, ‘I know I am not a good person. I don’t need to be or want to be. I am not a wishy-washy, bleeding-heart, goody-goody, foolish weakling like Mr. Phoenix Wright. I am a von Karma. I am fierce and strong. I am perfect. I take what I want and the rest of the world has to obey me.’

And there are so many things wrong with this way of thinking that I cannot even begin to list them, but if you really want to be evil I cannot stop you.

There is one thing, though. You aren’t a strong, fierce, perfect von Karma. Nobody thinks you are either. Absolutely nobody.

Everyone thinks you are the crazy girl with the whip.

They don’t respect you. A lot of people are scared of you. Phoenix and Dick Gumshoe and the Judge and practically every witness you ever called to the stand and lots more people too-they are all scared of you. But when you have gone they laugh at you. They don’t think you’re clever or strong. They think you’re out of control. You don’t come across to people like your dad did. Your dad scared people like anything and made them hate him but they didn’t think he was crazy. They thought he was evil, and they were right too, but they didn’t think he was crazy. That’s because your dad didn’t hit people like you do, in front of everyone, even though it doesn’t help a bit. When your dad got angry he controlled it. He thought about what would be the cleverest and best thing to do in the situation. And then he did that thing, even if it meant not getting instant revenge. The one time he didn’t think, the one time he did a revenge without thinking if it was sensible to do it, he had to spend ages and ages and lots of effort covering it up, and even so it eventually got found out and came back and bit him!

Your dad was evil and very stupid about a lot of things but he was right about controlling anger. If he had let anger rule his mind like you do he would not have gotten anywhere ever.

And hitting people like you do doesn’t just not make people respect you. It doesn’t help you feel any better either. It just makes you feel even angrier, and every time you think about what happened you get angry again, and it eats up your mind and you can’t think about anything except how angry you are.

If you are still reading this, then you are angrily thinking, ‘How do you know?’ The answer is, I know because I was like you.

People would pick on me at school. They did it a lot because I was different. I was maybe one of twenty non-white students in the school of fifteen hundred people. And I was a fantasy geek. So people picked on me. They called names and laughed. I hated it when they laughed. I hated being made fun of. So I hit them.

I didn’t have a whip. I hit people with my fists. Or I threw things at them. I scratched them with my nails. I kept the key to my locker on a longish piece of string, and it was metal and sharper and harder than my nails so I took to scratching people with that. Or I swung the string like a very small mace-and-chain. These were the best weapons I could find. If I had had a whip I would have used it. If I had had a sword or a gun I would have used them too. I wanted to hurt the people that picked on me. I wanted them to be scared of me.

They weren’t scared. They just laughed harder. So it carried on for ages.

My mum and the teachers and everyone kept saying what I have said to you. It makes people laugh at you, they said. It makes you look stupid. I didn’t believe them. I thought that the reason they laughed still was because they were bigger and stronger than me and I had never won a fight. I had never managed to really hurt them. I thought if I could really hurt them then they would be scared of me and respect me and never laugh at me again. I went on thinking that way for years.

Then this week, only a couple of days ago, some people who had picked on me at school found me in town and called names there. That happens every time I come back to my hometown. I don’t go to that school anymore but they remember.

I thought I was going to get mad and scream. Maybe not hit them. I didn’t have anything I could use as a weapon, and I was carrying some fragile stuff. But I thought I would be angry.

I wasn’t. Or, I was, but not hot and horrible angry. I was tired-angry. Tired and annoyed and sad that they should be so unfair. I told them to shut up. I didn’t yell it. And I asked them ‘Do you even know why you’re doing this?’ I didn’t yell that either. They didn’t shut up and they didn’t respond to my question. So I just left. I had been leaving the area anyway. They didn’t follow me.

It wasn’t a fluke, cause a bit later on the same day some different kids started picking on me. And I did the same thing. Told them to shut up, and walked away.

I have never been able to do that before. People have told me to ‘Ignore it’ lots of times but I have never been able to till now. I have always been so angry. Too angry to ignore it. Even when I tried a couple of times I was still so hot with anger and I’d start crying, I’d try not to let the tears show where they could see me but I’d start crying and crying as soon as I was someplace they couldn’t get me. Being angry like that spoiled my life. It spoiled the food I ate and the games I played and the books I read and the music I listened to. I couldn’t ever get away from it.

I wondered what had changed, that I could suddenly ignore things. My mum said I must have had a subconscious epiphany. Then I thought of something. I had been replaying your game. I had been watching the trial of Maya Fey. I had been thinking about Phoenix and Maya. About Pearl Fey. And Miles Edgeworth. And you.

The subconscious mind does a lot that we don’t get informed of. I had been watching you.

I think I decided I don’t want to be you.

You are strong with your whip like I never was with my pitiful makeshift weapons. And people are scared of you like they never were of me. But they still don’t respect you. And behind your back, they laugh at you.

What would happen if you weren’t strong and scary anymore? If you still got angry and tried to attack, but couldn’t do it effectively?

They’d laugh at you to your face. They’d call you names. Spaz, they’d yell at you. Franziska the spaz! Needs locking up! Wild cat!

You’d get angrier and angrier. You’d kick and scream…You’d end up being escorted away by the bailiffs.

And people would say; You have to control your temper, Franziska. No-one will take you seriously unless you learn to control your temper.

And people would say; You can’t appear in court unless you learn to keep a lid on your anger. Maybe you should think of some other career, because while you react like this when you get angry you’ll never be a prosecutor.

And people would say; You’re an intelligent girl, but when you act like this you shame yourself. You act like a little child. We thought you were mature enough to be trusted with an important job, but obviously…

And there would be new insults, too. People would try to press your buttons, so that they could laugh at how angry you got. They would have material.

Your hair is blue. On my Earth, that would be impossible; even in your world, that is uncommon. You wear it cut quite short, for a woman.

You wear unusual clothes.

You are German. When you speak English you have a slight accent.

You have a mole near the corner of your eye. It is not very big, but it is noticeable.

You are an aristocrat. You were born in a mansion. Your family are old-moneyed, with a name that goes back generations.

These are just the small things. There is a big thing too-your father was arrested and imprisoned for murder. And during his career there were rumours that he did not play by the rules. Maybe there are rumours about you too.

But even if your father was free, and still practising law to this day-even if there were no rumours about falsified evidence or the like-the small things would be enough for people to use to make fun of you.

I don’t think the small things are good reasons to pick on you. Not just because it’s unfair. But because they are such small things. They don’t really matter in any way. They are things I note about you that are simply brute facts. They don’t strike me as being in any way funny.

Only if-as I have postulated-your power of fear over people was gone from you, and they began to tease-these small things would be things they would make a meal of. They’d try each of them, and others, till they found something that made you angry, and then they’d keep on needling you with that.

I have a very clear mental image of this happening. I can imagine how it would be. I don’t need to imagine hard. I just have to exchange the classroom corridor for a court lobby. The English village street for a wide sunny Los Angeles boulevard. Their insults. Your screams. Your hopeless attempts at retaliation. Your defiant tears.

When I think of that, it makes me want to hug you, hold you tight. But I know in the same breath that you’d hate to be shown pity.

I know also that your reasons for getting angry-your first reasons-are not good ones, compared to mine. You get mad for no good reason at all. You are cruel, irritable and impatient. You are not actually evil, I think, though you have rather tried to be. You could go either way. Your brother, though, thinks that you will figure things out eventually, and he is both the person who knows you best and a person so pessimistic he outdoes even a friend of mine who I recently heard referred to as Worst Case Senerio.

But, again…Effectively evil people know to restrain their tempers. So do effectively good people. So do simply effective people who don’t care much for great charity or great depravity but get along well enough in the world-‘neutrally aligned people’, in D&D parlance.

So maybe this wild temper of yours is just a basic character flaw. Rather worse than mine. But not insurmountable, surely. It doesn’t mean you are a pitiful person, either. You have so much going for you! You are intelligent, smart enough to pass the bar exam at thirteen years old. You are wealthy and wealthy twice over, both from your aristocrat’s status and your own high-paid career. You are beautiful. You are most certainly not the small, impotent person you feel like when you are in the grip of your own anger.

Franziska, when I saw you I saw my own behaviour magnified. At first I was deceived by the fact that you succeeded in inspiring fear where I failed. Now, though, I see the truth. It doesn’t make the people that picked on me any less deserving of getting punished, because they do deserve it. And it doesn’t mean that what you did was okay, or justified, because it wasn’t. You have a lot of ground to make up. You have a lot of growing up to do.

But I empathise with you, for it is no fun living with rage bubbling in you constantly. And even though they only dare laugh behind your back, they still laugh. You have not gained anyone’s respect…and I think you know that. You’re not stupid. And I pray that you will be able to master that rage-to look at yourself, or at someone like yourself, and realise what you look like to other people. And I am grateful. I am grateful that your example allowed me to examine myself.

As I said at the start of this letter, in all probability you will never read this, or even know it was written in the first place. But maybe. Thus I commend this letter. From my hand-

-to the Fairy Fey(who sometimes walks this world, I know)
-and from the Fairy Fey to the Phoenix bird
-and from the Phoenix bird to the Questing Blade
-and from the Questing Blade to you.

With my love.
Aquila Chrysaetos.

The Tiger and the Prosecutor

Now seems as good a time as any to introduce the world to Tigris.

Tigris is not a figment, not one of the little-spirits. He is me. This is the most important bit, the bit you must understand. He is a part of me that has been around for as long as I have. I have only recently personified him, but he's no newcomer.

He is what is called a Holy Guardian Angel by some.(See Promethea for more info.)Personally I think that's a bit of a misnomer. He doesn't guard me in the sense of stopping bad things from happening to me, he just tries to make sure I'll be strong enough to stand up to bad things myself.

Tigris is always right. This can get annoying sometimes, but that's my problem. He's just and true, fair, and humourous to boot. He is, in short, the best part of me. The goodness on its own, undiluted. That's what his sort of thing is. I like the term 'inner angel', or better yet, 'shoulder angel'. Everyone has one. We don't hear them much. But that's because we don't listen, not because they don't speak.

I think of him as a big old marmaladey-golden saber-toothed tiger, with a very English voice.(The voice, in fact, of the fellow who was reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on this old book-on-tape thing I had when I was tiny. I remember listening to it in bed, after lights-out...)But this is just a sort of shorthand, a quale. It helps me to personify Tigris like this, is all. It's the image that fits him, in my mind. It's easier to pay attention to him when I think of him as a being in his own right.

It's also easier to identify his opposite number when I personify her.

Her name is Franziska, and she is my shoulder demon. Again, not an actual demon, not an otherworldly being. Just me, in all the worst ways.

Unlike Tigris, her face and name are stolen directly from a character from a video game. Franziska von Karma. An unhappy and almost-unlovable little prosecutor-prodigy who I felt a sort of resonance with.

Franziska is weak and scared and angry about it. She is violent, out of control. Her self-esteem is in negative numbers, and she covers that by making like she's got a disgustingly large amount of pride, and lording it over everyone else. She is lonely and suspicious. She cannot bring herself to trust anyone. She's self-centred, too...can't see outside herself, and hates it. She is stuck in the hell of herself.

She is the voice in my head that is Tigris's opposite number.

She coalesced into an entity shortly after a revelation I had and a letter I wrote because of that revelation.(I shall post that here later; it used to be on my old blog at Sygnus before the site moved and everyone's blogs were axed.)And it's strange.

I don't seem to be able to hate her, now.

Oddly enough, neither does Tigris.

The Ambassador's Turnabout

I spent too much time with the spirits as a kid. I still do.

'Too much' not by my standards, never by my standards, but by the standards of The World At Large. For some reason introverts are frowned upon, particularly introverts that play video games and read fantasy.

These things are my life's blood. They are what makes the difference between living and just existing.(Of course, there's Ash. But she's not always there, through no fault of her own...And the spirits were first.)

Once I desired nothing so much as to leave this world for the world of spirits. Tuatha de Danaan, I called them; the everyoung, the lovely ones, Danu's children. A name borrowed from Celtic mythology.

These days I have things worth living for in this world, old muddy Thulcandra. But still...

...the silent planet doesn't do it for me, really. Too quiet. I want to hear the music of the heavens.

Back then I picked my penname; Ambassador Garnet Leona Alexander. Garnet and Leona from a boy with a gunblade and a girl without a horn, spirit people that I loved. Alexander from the eidolon mighty, defender of men. And Ambassador. Because I hoped to be an ambassador to that world.

Thing is, though, this girl wanted so much to be Tuatha, she got her wish. Yeah, my body's still Milesian...but I've spent too much time hobnobbing with spirits to be totally Milesian. And was I ever Milesian, down in my soul? I am as nervous and uncomfortable and halting with the people of my blood as I am expansive and cheerful and at ease with the little spirits with whom I speak.

(In the context of Thulcandra, within one little world, they used to call that sort of thing 'going native'. They sneered. Maybe some of 'em were jealous.)

Ambassador, I named myself, and ran away to Tir na n'Og, and oh how I hated Thulcandra's soil. Oh, how I hated her people. It was blood hot hate. It was the hate of the smart kid stuck with the mean jocks, taking refuge in pride.(That deadly sin.)It was the hate of a fox fleeing baying hounds. It was the hate of the panther with the collar chafing his neck. Ambassador, I said. But was I?

Ambassador brings part of England to France, part of France to Germany, Germany to America, and so on, you get the drift. Ambassador speaks for his country and brings it to the foreign place. Ambassador has a tiny, tiny bit of his native land to live in, a detached speck, and as soon as he steps out the front door he's Abroad again.

I didn't do that. I didn't want to bring any of Thulcandra into Tir na n'Og. I wanted to purge Thulcandra from myself. Let no speck of it taint the faerie world.

Which was really not fair to any of the parties involved. Thulcandra, Tir na n'Og, or myself.

Anyway. I was no Ambassador. Not then.

But now I look at that pen name, and I think. Maybe it's time I turned it about, flipped the situation on its head and did the (w)right thing by all parties.

Why shouldn't I become Tir na n'Og's Ambassador to Thulcandra?

It is right. I can tell. It is.

But it will be so hard. For an Ambassador is a diplomat. I must be fair and just and polite and understanding with Thulcandra, with the Milesians, with the world and the people who I still have to remind myself not to hate. I will have to make allowances for them when they don't understand me! I am not allowed the luxury of blind hate!

But then, no-one is, ultimately.

This is the right thing to do, and I must do it, and keep reminding myself to do it.

I am Ambassador of the fairy realms to Thulcandra.(Embassy still pending construction.)

A Resolution

Prompted by a screaming fit that my mother's boyfriend had at me recently.

When I have children, they will act up. Everyone's kids act up. I will tell them off for it, because that is the right thing to do.

But I will never, never say 'Aren't you ashamed of yourself?!'

I might say, 'Aren't you ashamed of what you've done?!', but there is a big difference there.

Little things like that are important.

The First Post of Postness

This is the blog of Agla, which will contain most things that I wish to talk rubbish about that do not belong anywhere else. Expect videogames, religion, occultism, food, and silliness.

I declare this thingamajig open!*Smashes bottle of grape juice against it*