#the rakshasa

[flojo67]

Melinda! Emma?

[nebulousmistress]

Taqgged by @bengesko

NAME: [redacted]

Come on, gimme your name: Neb

Your real name:

FINE

NICKNAMES: Mistress (by my pet), all 27 variations of my legit name in 8 languages (by everyone I know IRL)

STAR SIGN: Scorpio

That explains things: Hey, shut up.

HEIGHT: 5′2

FAVORITE COLOR(S): black, red, soft iridescence, deep saturated blues, Void, magenta

TIME RIGHT NOW: 730-ish pm

LAST THING I GOOGLED: garden claw gloves

NUMBER OF BLANKETS I SLEEP WITH: one sheet and one thin blanket. Any more and I get too hot and have weird dreams.

FAVORITE FICTIONAL CHARACTER(S): Vlad Masters/Plasmius, Dr. Rodney McKay, General Armitage Hux, Spock, Kirk, Bones, just the entire crew of TOS Star Trek, Captain Cardinal, Captain Kathryn Janeway, Adivion Adrissant

FAVORITE BANDS/SINGERS: Mono Inc, The Birthday Massacre, Cryo Chamber, VNV Nation, Assemblage 23, Seether, Five Finger Death Punch, Ghost, Lord of the Lost, Three Days Grace

DREAM JOB: Not interested. Here’s why. A job is what I do every single day to make money so I can afford to do the stuff I actually want to do, which I cannot do every single day or I come to not want to do it. So my ‘dream job’ is a job that will pay for my life without grinding me to dust so I can do Other Fun Things.

WHAT I AM WEARING RIGHT NOW: Black jeans, dark tank top. Giant fuckoff headphones.

WHEN DID I CREATE MY BLOG: 2012

CURRENT AMOUNT OF FOLLOWERS: 205

WHAT DO I POST ABOUT: Stuff. Work and life and selves and miniatures and fanfiction and just so much fanfiction adjacent stuff. Anything to separate myself from the job I have to do and the person I have to be.

DO I HAVE ANY OTHER BLOGS: @askthenightmonster an RP blog for Charlie the Night Monster from Don’t Starve that hasn’t updated since 2016 @veli-spawn-of-lissala another RP blog that hasn’t updated since 2014 @level12roguechemist my SFW blog in case anyone asks what kind of online presence I have since I’m not on twitter as myself, I’m not on facebook, and my linkedin hasn’t updated since 2015

WHEN DID YOUR BLOG HIT ITS PEAK: Right before tumblr’s last purge of bot blogs I broke 250 followers for the first and only time

WHO IS YOUR MOST ACTIVE FOLLOWER: @puppetmaster55 by far. also @holywritingpromptsbatbruh​ and @emperorsvornskr​ and @bengesko​ and @spirits-of-kin​

WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO GET A TUMBLR: the Through Danny Phantom rewatch, it was easier to keep track of everyone that way

DO YOU GET ASKS ON A DAILY BASIS: ‘Daily’? Lol, I barely get asks on an annual basis

WHY DID YOU CHOSE YOUR URL: I once introduced myself at a Munch as “And I’m [my pet’s] nebulous mistress” as it was my first time meeting the group. The term felt right.

TAG YOU’RE IT: idk go for it

[nebulousmistress]

On Resetting the Wards...

So I live in an old sugar refinery. It was remodeled and expanded in 1840. The original building dates to the 1770s sometime. So of course I live in the 1770s section. It was converted to apartments in the 1970s right before the Department of Interior started buying up the Independence Park buildings and very narrowly avoided becoming part of that park. Hence why the building still looks like a factory. The 5th floor was unsalvageable so we have a big loft apartment straddling the 4th and 5th floors of the building. I have old steam machinery in my bedroom, it’s great.

But that means the building remembers what it was.

Last night my partner comes home from work and is hit with a wall of smell, the smell of brown sugar. I come home a few hours later and get hit with the smell of cooking molasses. I wake up this morning and smell raw cane syrup.

It’s not coming from our pantry. We checked. It’s time to reset the wards.

But there are some caveats.

I can’t use salt. I’ve never been able to use salt. I’ve always reacted to salt the way an unwanted spirit does. It might be due to how I’ve never felt at home anywhere so no home can be warded for my use? Or maybe there’s a reason I call myself a rakshasa online. Either way, salt is out. I can barely use bells for the same reason even though I have bells for this purpose.

That seems like it could be a major hindrance. But I’ve never noticed it. I use chalk lines instead. I use ash and smoke instead. I use lines of wax. I use candles. I use tobacco.

I use a ward anchor. I constructed a copper and glass peacock for the purpose. It sits in the open between the 4th and 5th floor overlooking the great room. It fits both my background and my partner’s and doesn’t interfere with her Nazars or my Bodhisattvas.

Going to take Monday off of work. Need to examine the ward anchor, have my partner ring the bells while I go hide, then reset the wards. Then sleep. Resetting the wards always knocks me out.

[nebulousmistress]

just found your monster hux series and frankly im astounded....your worldbuilding and research is literally worlds beyond most, if not all, scifi pieces ive read. not even touching on the character work and plot (which are immaculate!!)! i love the amount of science, biology, and medicine here....as a feral engineering major with a passion for medicine who ALSO adores armitage hux, im having the time of my life (and if i am reading this instead of paying attention to my biomaterials lecture....shhhh). your writing truly is astounding and im so glad to have stumbled upon it!! cheers to hux the half-feral hound engineer of arkanis and his cadre!

Hard sci fi doesn’t just mean tech, though I try to keep the tech consistent and believable as well.

I appear to be a hard sci fi author stuck writing Star Wars fanfiction :P

Not even sure how, my degree is in organic chemistry (emphasis on exoplanetary systems). Though that degree has me building planets like a BOSS, I don’t even have an organic chemist in the Mad Science Corps, the rest are all just fringe fields I’ve interacted with.

I’m glad you’re enjoying it, dear anon! I don’t get to use my education much IRL so it’s been a major outlet for all of those evil planets and mad science ideas that rattle around until I say something Weird...

Until then...

[nebulousmistress]

Urg.

Called out of work today. I made the mistake of thinking I was going to work therefore I should eat something. That was not a good idea.

Going to see if I can write something later. I tend to write fairly well, if weird, while under the influence of a migraine.

[nebulousmistress]

Welp, I HAD all my students trained: 7AM is not a real time, don’t bother me. Then I got more students transferred into my class and they’re all trying to contact me at 7AM about an assignment I won’t even make available until 6PM tonight.

I said I was available to answer questions until 3AM tonight that was not a typo! I said I’m unavailable until noon that’s not a typo either! Get it through your weird diurnal minds!

At least I have some sane students. They ask all their questions at SANE hours like 2AM.

[nebulousmistress]

It’s no longer tentative.

I have accepted the posting of Adjunct Instructor at Temple University.

I’ll be doing online labs, which basically means I’m gonna Bill Nye this shit.

[nebulousmistress]

On Job Transitions

And weird diurnal people.

This is my second day in a row running on 2 hours of sleep.

Unofficially I got the job! I am an adjunct instructor for Temple University here in Philadelphia. It’s ‘unofficial’ because I was welcomed in and ‘recommended for hire’ by the lab head before ever being directed to apply for anything and I can’t teach until HR gets me that university email address.

However, this means I’m getting 7am texts for 8 and 9am zoom meetings. Yesterday’s meeting was a bust, I couldn’t get in and the recording told me nothing I didn’t already discuss with the lab head in person. Today’s meeting is in 45 minutes and my phone woke me up at 7am this morning.

I went to bed at 5. Because my furlough at the IRS doesn’t begin until after this week ends.

And if anyone wants to ask why I’m taking a leave of absence in order to work this position, here’s why. Because the lab head begins his work day the same hour I go to sleep and like any professor expects me to be available at any time during his preferred schedule. Even after I told him I work until 1am.

This is another reason why I never went to grad school. I can only conform my schedule to diurnal weirdos so much before I just stop going to class/lab/work/etc. I slept through an entire term during my undergrad because all the classes were 8am only and I cannot physically do that more than a few weeks at a time.

Hopefully this nonsense stops when labs start. He has me teaching afternoons and nights