Hello speaking of piercings are you aware of At Pinpoint by chaentics? bc it makes me insane https://archiveofourown.org/works/79824911/chapters/209488781
hiii!! YES I HAVE!!! YES i was literally just talking to one of my moots about that fic!! and also!! @rozzed is one of my moots too!! OPENED MY EYES I TELL YA. ITS SO FUCKING AWESOME everything they write is. SOOOO YUMMY
and this is once again my plug to you all. do you know about the fic about summer. have you read the fic about summer. will you read the fic about summer. when will you read the fic about summer. PLEASE.
Sure, [Thing] almost definitely sucks - and I'm only adding the "almost" because I'm speaking generically, not vaguing a specific discussion - but if it exists, it is mostly likely performing some kind of a function, and that function needs to be assessed and considered for a better replacement.
It isn't enough to take the blown tire off your car; you need to replace it with something, whether that's a new full-size tire or a spare that'll do good enough until you can get the new tire. If you just get rid of the blown tire you haven't actually improved the situation.
Sometimes it's okay to push for the removal step first and let the replacement step wait - but other times it isn't, and that's especially true when talking about big social systems. And even if it is sometimes feasible to let the function go un-performed for some length of time, you have to assess whether that's true in the given situation you're talking about.
What I'm talking about is very closely related to Chesterton's Fence, but I like to call it EADM's Moldy Wall. It goes like this. There is a wall in your house that has taken severe water damage and is full of mold. That wall has to go, no question about it; it's disgusting, it's making everyone sick, it is absolutely a harmful and noxious presence. But before you break out the sledgehammers -- figure out if the wall is load-bearing. Getting rid of the moldy wall doesn't do you much good if you cave in the roof in the process. If the wall isn't load-bearing? Cool, glad we checked, now let's sledgehammer that fucker to death! Maybe we'll build a new wall once it's all cleared out, maybe we now have an open floor plan, but either way nothing is stopping us from KILLING! THE! MOLD! WALL! If the wall is load-bearing? VERY COOL, so so glad we checked, let's get something in place to prop up the load and hold the house together while we sledgehammer the fuck out of that disgusting moldy wall, then replace it with a nice shiny new load-bearing wall that is free of mold.
The difference between Chesterton's Fence and EADM's Moldy Wall is that Chesterton is talking about determining if something has a useful function or not. I'm talking about situations where we know the thing in question is bad and needs to be removed, but asks instead about how we need to go about the removal in a way that doesn't give us new and worse problems.
Religious Conflict in Werewolf the Forsaken Part 1
So one of the most compelling features of Werewolf: the Forsaken is the notion this pseudo-faith based battle that happens between the factions. The common backstory that unites them has enough contradictions and mysteries, enough things that don't make sense that there is ample room for disagreement. The fact that this disagreement spirals into brutal warfare is what makes the conflict between Forsaken and Pure so interesting to me.
In this lecture post, I'll talk about my own take on the backstory that underlays this conflict. In future posts, I'll share my thoughts on the actual conflict that arises from it.
A brief overview: in a mythic time and place, the Spirit World and the Physical World were barely a breath apart. Our paleolithic ancestors were able to enter the World of Spirits through their dreams; Spirits could enter the Flesh Realms by their will. Obviously, this cross-contamination meant that the balance could be thrown out of whack, with Human shamans potentially garnering too much power by enslaving Spirits; Spirits could create little fiefdoms of Human slaves if they so willed it.
To keep the world from going one way or the other, Father Wolf appeared on the scene. Now, Onyx Path pretty clearly laid out that Father Wolf is something called a 'Pangaean', which is like...a Spirit but not, because it also has access to Mage: the Awakening Spheres. I actually do not like this blatant explanation of his nature, so in my stories: Father Wolf's nature is mysterious. Some say he's a God in the sense of Mother Luna; some say he's something entirely other (a Pangaean); some say that he's just a Werewolf that gathered godlike power to himself (I like this possibility, because it implies that Werewolves existed *before* Mother Luna invested them with her Change).
Father Wolf's job was to keep the world in balance by ripping apart transgressors; those things that were in fact too powerful for him to deal with he usually Bound into places they couldn't leave (Idigam on the Moon, Cthulhu-esque horrors beneath the Sea, etc.). In the meantime, he had a plethora of offspring called the Firstborn.
The nature of the Firstborn is, from what I remember, kind of poorly explained by Onyx Path which I like. Those are the demi-god figureheads of the Tribes (Covenant equivalent for Vampire); I think in First Edition it was stated that they were the offspring of Father Wolf and another Spirit of some sort. I usually take a different tack:
The Firstborn are indeed Father Wolf's children, but assuming he's a Werewolf, he mated with powerful shamans, heroines, or women whose nature bestrode the border of human and inhuman. This means the Firstborn are 'human'-born, and like Father Wolf, primordial Werewolves of the ancient days.
I digress. Father Wolf became old (how, if he's a God?) and let some horrible shit slip through his claws; five (known) Firstborn agreed that he needed to be removed so one of them could become Alpha, while three (known) Firstborn refused to commit patricide. Now, what's interesting about this: if Father Wolf absolutely had to be put down, why is it that his death sundered and messed up the world so much? Was it just inevitable, or is the whole tale a lie and the truth quite different? What does that say about the Forsaken Firstborn?
Who, indeed, is the villain in Werewolf: the Forsaken? The ones trying to keep the world in its post-Sundered, shitty state of decay, or the ones desperately trying to bring it back to a state of harmony that just so happens to be awful for 99% of Humanity?
It's a great backstory, and one that I think sets up the conflict in Forsaken quite nicely. Next time, I'll talk about how that's actually implemented.
Freya, I gave my good friend A Marvellous Light for Christmas and he’s just texted me to rave about it (including some specifics of the sex scenes, haha). Thank you for writing a book that not only I obviously loved, but is also something I can shove in other people’s faces with perfect confidence.
you clearly have an excellent friendship and I am HONOURED that he found the sex scenes worth texting you about
People should read more in general but I don’t want to tell anyone what to read because everyone has their own taste. I only don’t like when someone says nonfiction books are better, I just don’t get it, as if stories that are made up are only for children or something, as if nonfiction isn’t sprinkled evenly with made up things. I’d suggest those people read more fiction xD And tbh, when I like a book that I’ve just read I always want everyone else to read it too. Right now it’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
Liddy this is maybe a weird thing to comment on but I love that you have an emily who you refer to as "m'Emily" bc I also have an emily who I call "my emily." Emilys are good!
