#our name

[inhernature]

Audre Lorde said, "Every day of our lives is practice in becoming the person you want to be.... No angel is suddenly going to descend upon you, make you brave, courageous, true...And every day that you sit back silent....remember, terrible things are being done in our name."

[fenmere]

Harmless Free Radicals and the story behind Fenmere's Great Alliance of the Dragon People

We’ve basically told this story in our autobiography, but here's a condensed and more clear version of it.

Our comic, Harmless Free Radicals, will never be completed as is, for so many really good reasons, so we WANT you to read this. Especially if you were a fan.

The story goes like this:

The Great Sky Serpent Eh had 900,000 children, each one the master of an Art. Eh created the the world as a haven for them using ihn’s own body to build it. Eh covered the world with ihn’s hide to protect it.

Eh’s children had disagreements and faught. They eventually broke a hole in the sky and let Outsiders in by accident while goofing around. They then fought with the Outsiders. Then had children with the Outsiders, and that's how humanity was born. The children of Eh then broke into two factions who disagreed about how to proceed with the future: to always work to protect the world, or to escape through the hole in the sky to take a place in the rest of the universe.

The first of the children, Fenemere (or Fenmere), thought that the fighting was absurd, and that both goals were important and not mutually exclusive.

Fast forward fifteen thousand years or so. The tools necessary for Fenmere to do kihn’s work are finally in place, created by humanity.

Using the internet and humanity’s magic (to make things they believe in become real), Fenmere created a webcomic called Harmless Free Radicals that took place in an up to that point fictional town called Fairport. Fairport became real through the comic, but still existed in the land of the imagination.

By publishing the comic and making it about a mysterious scheme that keh was supposedly cooking up but wouldn't tell anyone about, Fenmere lured kihn's siblings to Fairport to trap them in its bubble of quasireality, with the goal of forcing them to sit down and discuss Fenmere's proposed treaty in a realm where they couldn't hurt each other. The realm of comics.

The Harmless Free Radicals were formed as a sort of elite trouble shooting group who were supposedly humans hired by Fenmere to do kihn's “mysterious” dirty work. To that end, they mostly goofed off in the comic and only referred to adventures they had off page.

It turned out that the Radicals were actually Fenmere's sibling allies in disuise. This is why Ian could convince anybody of anything with his graphic design, because it was his Art. And why Brenna could rally everyone around her to assist her by singing, as she was the Singer. Gretch was the Programmer, Brian the Warrior (who destroyed things with his power chords), and so on.

And that's why the comics were the way they were.

Fenmere had actually had most of this figured out by the end of the first year of the comic. We have notes that detail almost all of this, written at various times since. There were a lot of details to hash out, and those of us involved really only had a partial clue to what was going on, and none of us fully accepted that it might be all based on reality.

Finally, we just didn't know how to write the story so that it made sense. Key parts were missing, and we felt like it was something never really told before. We had disagreements about how to tell it, too. We were learning as we went. This made it really messy. Which brought more and more of us forward to help out and try to make it happen.

Somewhere by the fourth year of the comic, someone on our team figured out that we were a plural system, and decided to make the story about how a bunch of fictional characters were actually trying to leave their authors’ imagination and enter reality. This would eventually become the story for the Epic of Sally. Then we argued about whether that was something we wanted to be true or not, not really believing it was.

To that end, we latched onto an idea we’d had since before we started the comic, where everything in the comic was happening in Jenifer's head. Jenifer was a character who had had her own story about her imaginary characters coming to life that we wrote in 1996.

We didn't know if we'd ever revral that or just leave it as unspoken backstory, while Sally would be guided by Jenifer on how to make it to the real world.

Which she did, and that's when we came out as trans and came face to face with out plurality at the same time.

Here are the things:

- We signed Harmless Free Radicals under the name Fenmere the Worm under the conceit of making Fenmere seem real to readers

- Fenmere actually DID write Harmless Free Radicals, with the help of Ian, Brenna, Gretch, Brian, and the others

- It was about luring their siblings into Fairport to get them to come to an agreement as told in the background myth

- It really did do this! We actually became engaged in the story and had to interact with each other and come to agreements to do this!

- And, we are all the children and grandchildren of Jenifer and Eh, plus a small handful of walk-ins.

Literally, we are the characters in the comic, because they were based on us. And while what happened in the comic was fictional, the act of making it fulfilled the official plot of the comic. In every way.

We came out, became aware of each other, and then to make peace amongst ourselves and continue living and protecting “the world” (our body) we made an alliance between our various systems.

All of this was actually orchestrated and guided by Fenmere. It was her vision. The alliance is according to her ideals, though they were formulated with help from Eh, Jedekere, Benejede, Jenifer, and Phage. She is the one that put them together and wrote them down. She is the one who drew us together, literally, with a pen.

Which is why we name ourselves “Fenmere’s Great Alliance of the Dragon People”, or Inmara Ktletaccete Fenumere.

There's more. Lots about all the little details, like how we came up with our constructed languages, but by then we’re rewriting our comic. Which we might do some day. But a LOT of it is in our autobiography.

And we’ve got other novels we need to write.

[koreantunes]

Visit Original Link

SLCHLD - Our Name (feat. Rheehab)

[kittydukakis]

Just started the video because I was napping. Has anyone mentioned dan saying our name in the ad read yet?

[opalineessence]

Opal Opal Opal Opal

[quotesincolors]

[seidr-bound]

Our Name

Invariably there will be questions about our name & why we chose it. I’ve been a member of Tumblr for a really long time, and one thing that stands out is the need for true authenticity. We are attempting to bring more understanding to my (Rachel) heritage, Norwegian. 

Seiðr - pronounced Seey-ther in the nordic culture refers to a type of sorcery that was practiced during the last Scandinavian Iron Age. It was primarily composed of women, and in our modern interpretation of the practice of Seiðr it is believed that there is a tie to same sex relationships between women & non-binary sorcerers. 

In our relationship I am most definitely the sorceress. The one who makes her dance to my desires, and the one who captures her with my devil magic. That is the origin of our name. 

Because she is absolutely, and irrevocably bound to me in every single way. 

R