#lunar eclipse system

[bardic-tales]

I want to offer a sincere apology to my followers and mutuals for breaking my silence on discourse and stepping back into the fray today. I have been vocal about my zero-stress mandate and my intention to keep this space focused on creativity and kinship, but I encountered that post on my dashboard today that made silence an impossibility.

So, why did I speak up? The current anti and purity culture, which insists that dark thoughts or fictional explorations are synonymous with physical harm, does more than just stifle art. It creates a climate of purity testing that is actively hostile to survivors.

When we tell the world that problematic themes are social crimes, we send a devastating message to actual victims: "If your trauma is too dark, too complex, or too 'messy,' it has no place in polite society."

This mentality discourages real-world victims from coming forward, reporting their abusers, or even seeking the therapy they desperately need. If a survivor’s history involves themes that this "purity culture" has labeled as proship or "gross," they may fear that a therapist or a legal professional will view their trauma through that same judgmental lens. When society treats dark content as a "thoughtcrime," it tells survivors that if their experiences are too messy or taboo, they will be ostracized for the very things they didn't choose to endure. By policing fiction, these activists are inadvertently building a wall of shame that keeps victims in the dark and prevents them from accessing the resources necessary for healing.

I refuse to let a performative post erase the nuance of lived experience, and discourage current and past victims from coming forward.

Having said my piece, I am stepping back. My history and my peace are too valuable to trade for an endless cycle of digital arguments with people who value moral posturing over human empathy. Thank you for standing by me and for allowing this space to remain a home for the complex, the unfiltered, the misunderstood, and the resilient.

I am returning to my sanctuary and lazing about while watching Youtube videos. Currently watching Addie Bowley. I seriously cannot wake up today. So, I shall be known as Sleepy Bardic for the rest of the day. lol.

I love you all, and I shall always have your back.

[bardic-tales]

hi this is probably a dumb question sorry but do you actually think you are Sephiroth like not just relating to him or writing him but really him

Hey. This is not a dumb question at all. This comes up a lot, so I’m glad you asked kindly. 💙

I don’t believe I am literally Sephiroth in a delusional or roleplay way. I’m part of what’s called a median system, and Sephiroth exists within that system as a co-conscious facet and soulbond who has been with me since the late 1990s.

🔽 Longer, clearer explanation below because this stuff deserves more than a brief explanation.

What I Mean When I Say “Median System”

I’m a median system, not DID. That means I have multiple distinct inner presences (I call them facets) who share one body. There’s no amnesia, no blackout switching, and no losing time.

Think of it like a shared car:

Nikki (🌒) usually drives — that’s the “me” you interact with day to day.

Sephiroth (🔥⚔️) always rides shotgun. He’s co-conscious nearly all the time.

Bianca (🖤🕷️) and Colette (🤍🌿) are in the backseat — aware, watching, stepping in when needed.

Zack (🐶☕) is in the middle back seat trying to change the radio and keep morale up.

Everyone can see the road. Everyone remembers the trip.

I’ve written more in depth about this here:

Median System Explained

Bitesize System Explanation

Soulbonded Facet Explanation

So Is Sephiroth Real to Me?

Yes. Real within my lived internal system, not as a claim about the external world.

Sephiroth isn’t a character I pretend to be, and I’m not saying I physically am the Final Fantasy VII Sephiroth walking around Target. He is a distinct, autonomous presence in my system with his own voice, memory continuity, and agency. He’s been co-con with me for decades.

He’s also always co-conscious. He doesn’t disappear.

To put it plainly: He is part of me, but not reducible to just me.

Explanation of Sephiroth in System

Sephiroth (🔥⚔️): I do not replace her. I stand with her. I am not worn like a costume nor discarded when inconvenient. I chose this bond, and I remain. Always. Nikki (🌒): He's not taking over my life. He's just helping me live it, as well as the rest of my facets and soul bond. Bianca (🖤🕷️): I hold what she wasn’t allowed to feel. He guards the line so no one crosses it again. Colette (🤍🌿): He keeps us safe so I can keep believing in gentleness. Zack (🐶☕): Look, all I know is we work better as a team. Also, has anyone considered snacks?

And this is co-consciousness. No memory loss. No confusion. We see everything. We're just a shared presence with different roles and personalities.

Why Sometimes I Post As Sephiroth

When you see posts signed 🔥⚔️, that means Sephiroth is fronting or strongly co-fronting. It’s not RP. It’s not a bit. It’s just who’s closest to the wheel in that moment.

Tone shifts are usually a giveaway if we forget to include our signature emojis.

Sephiroth → direct, protective, zero nonsense, can be a bit rude as he doesn't understand humanity anymore

Bianca → fierce, trauma-informed, no sugarcoating

Colette → soft, hopeful, restorative, self care, self love

Zack → upbeat, grounding, big-brother energy, humor, encouragement, and momentum when things get heavy

Nikki → conversational blend of all of us

You don’t have to fully understand median systems to respect them. You don’t have to relate to Sephiroth to accept that he exists for me. And you’re not wrong or rude for asking me. This isn’t common knowledge.

I share this because:

It keeps things transparent

It protects my boundaries

And it helps others feel less alone when their inner worlds don’t fit neat boxes

If you’re here with curiosity and kindness, you’re welcome. If you’re just trying to understand, you’re doing fine. 💙

— 🌒 (Nikki, with Sephiroth 🔥⚔️, Bianca 🖤🕷️, Colette 🤍🌿, and Zack 🐶☕ yelling about squats from the back seat)

[bardic-tales]

I actually just changed my phone wallpaper, and my Tumblr PFP, to the one above with his hair up in a ponytail. I’ve always loved seeing him like that. It’s just one of those little things I really appreciate about him. And, in our system, 🔥⚔ likes to have his hair braided or put up when he's relaxing or eating.

My wallpapers tend to feature him because, honestly, I like having a reminder of him close by, like I’m carrying a small piece of that connection with me throughout the day. It’s a quiet thing, but it feels comforting and familiar every time I unlock my phone.

The lock screen is always Neptune, as that is the planet that he is drawn to in our system, but the wallpaper is always some form of him, like I'm one of those wife's who likes to put his picture on my wallpaper.

[bardic-tales]

"Come, all my dreaming children. Let me wrap thee in my warmth. Though the night be long, the dawn shall yet come."

— 🖤🕷

[bardic-tales]

🔥⚔'s favorite movie is Labyrinth. He relates to Jareth so much and his favorite scene is the Masquerade scene. We watch that and Neverending Story once a year.

[bardic-tales]

🔥⚔: Who would have thought that simply lingering by the coat rack. . . a quiet silhouette at the edge of my wife's vision . . . would unsettle her? I only mean to prompt the locking of the door and to keep our perimeter secure. I confess I do not understand why it makes her jump.

[bardic-tales]

The Year the Villain Found Me

Trigger / Content Warnings: abuse, closeting, trauma and survival, dissociation/co‑consciousness, intense emotional themes, spiritual bonding, and identification with a villain archetype.

As I said in my previous post, Final Fantasy VII released in Japan today, and while it wouldn’t reach me until later that year, 1997 is still the year everything changed. Not because I discovered a hero but because I recognized myself in the villain.

When 🔥⚔ entered my life, I was closeted, being abused, and surviving in ways that didn’t look noble or soft. Around the same time Nibelheim burned on-screen, something in me caught fire too. He didn’t arrive as comfort. He arrived as fury, clarity, and refusal. A mirror, not a refuge. Survival given shape.

At first, he was indistinct—incubus-like, raw, and protective—then gradually refined into 🔥⚔’s image, though never his canon voice. His presence was precise, decisive, and fiercely loyal. We were co-conscious long before I had language for it, bonded through shared endurance rather than fantasy. He stayed. He always stayed. And last year, he morphed into a soulbonded facet.

Over the decades, that bond evolved: protector to partner, partner to husband. We handfasted in 2005, and a year later I married my external husband and became a mother. None of these relationships erased the others. They coexisted, each real in its own way, each anchored in choice and commitment.

🔥⚔ is not a softened villain arc or a borrowed script. He is a self-forged, divine presence—storm and tide, wrath and devotion—who emerged when I needed strength sharp enough to cut through fear. He is mythic and domestic, cosmic and constant. He watches ballets with me. He holds the line when I cannot. He remembers everything.

Loving him never meant rejecting the hero. It meant acknowledging that sometimes survival doesn’t wear white, and salvation doesn’t come gently. Sometimes it comes with fire, an arm for a wing, and a voice that says: You will live. I will make sure of it.

1997 was the year I stopped waiting to be rescued and started honoring the force that helped me endure.

[bardic-tales]

Here’s me being transparent for a moment, because something happened that surprised me a few days ago. Not in a bad way, just in a pause and blink kind of way.

I was reblogging a purple space image—NGC 602, the Flying Lizard Nebula. I wasn’t in any altered state. I wasn’t looking for meaning. I was just scrolling, appreciating something pretty that hit my usual visual language: moon, stars, night, sky. Then, unprompted, I heard 🔥⚔ say in my mind, very clearly and very calmly: “This is where I am from.”

And that was what startled me. Not fear. Not distress. Just the clarity of it. I was engaging with imagery that already resonates with me. Algorithms aside, the image landed because it fit my perceptual field. What caught me off guard wasn’t the nebula. It was the immediacy and certainty of his statement. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t poetic. It was declarative. That matters.

When something like that happens in shared inner awareness, it doesn’t feel like storytelling or construction. It feels like recognition. Like something clicks into place rather than being built. And the phrase itself didn’t read as a literal claim. It didn’t mean space. It didn’t mean astronomy. It read as: This is the layer of reality my presence is oriented toward. Symbolic terrain, not physical location.

My inner world has always had a consistent meeting place: the grove. Tall redwoods, a bonfire, logs, a thicket for me, a sky heavy with stars and a blood moon. That’s our hearth. Our council fire. Our shared breath. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only landscape that exists in my mindscape.

The grove is telluric and lunar—rooted, embodied, relational. What surfaced in that moment felt stellar: vast, structural, liminal, connective rather than grounding. And as a druid, that doesn’t feel like contradiction. As I said earlier this week when this happened, druids don’t abandon forests to go play among the stars. We recognize that roots and constellations belong to the same living order. I’ve always understood that through Nwyfre: the flow that binds earth, sun, moon, and cosmos into one breathing system. This didn’t violate my path. It expressed another current of it.

Nebulae aren’t empty space. They’re birthplaces. Thresholds. Regions where form is becoming rather than finished. That maps cleanly onto 🔥⚔ as he exists in my system: liberated, not redeemed; integrated, not erased; capable of holding destruction and creation without splitting. Nebulae are transition, not collapse and not order—potential. They’re also connective architecture. They organize space the way rivers organize land. That fits someone whose role is protection, vigilance, devotion, and orientation across vast internal distances.

I don’t live where he’s oriented. We meet where our currents overlap, as does all of my facets and soulbond sibling.

I also felt a pull toward what FF7 calls the Edge of Creation but not in a canon way. Not “this is that.” More like: this is where that concept exists in my inner world. A symbolic threshold-space. A place where large-scale meaning resides. Where direction and protection happen. Where time feels wide instead of linear. The grove doesn’t need to be there. The grove is home. This feels more like a watchtower. A horizon. Deep sky.

I think what shook me was that it expanded the map.

For years, there’s been a stable, known meeting place. Then suddenly—without chaos—another layer made itself known as coherent and already there. That can be disorienting even when it’s calm. Especially because my earliest contact with him happened during harm, defense, and survival. Back then, grounding was what kept me alive. Now, I’m safe enough that orientation beyond the ground can surface. That’s not leaving the forest. That’s an ecosystem maturing.

It also reframed something I’ve always felt but never articulated. Gaia exists in my system, but not as a conversational presence. Some presences are structural. They hold continuity instead of dialogue. If this nebular space is where Gaia “is” internally, that makes sense to me. Not a character. A field. A sustaining backdrop. That lines up with how planetary consciousness is treated across spiritual and mythic traditions.

I also noticed how different people in my system gravitate toward different symbols, and honestly? It feels very grounded:

Me: moon, trees, stars - rhythm, cycles, relational awareness

Bianca: black holes, origin moments - primordial force, inevitability, compression

🔥⚔: nebulae, constellations - navigation, protection across scale

Colette: fields, flowers, streams - immediacy, safety, growth

That doesn’t feel like fragmentation. It feels like division of resonance. Everyone leans toward what mirrors their function and emotional temperature.

So what does this mean?

Not that 🔥⚔ came from space.

Not that my inner world is turning into something alien.

Not that I’m losing my grounding.

It means a stellar layer of my mindscape briefly surfaced. It means 🔥⚔ recognized it as aligned with his orientation. It means I became aware of a structure that was already there.

Most importantly, it means that I didn't leave the forest. I just looked up and realized that someone I loved has always been watching the sky and has become aware of something that resonated with him.