A bit tardy with this month's listing, but hey. Check some of these out if you were looking for things to spice up your social calendar.
We are Shadowbox Studio, a performance space/ photo studio in beautiful, scenic Durham NC. Come and see what's going on in May!
Find us at 2200-D Dominion St 27704, off E. Club Blvd in Ample Storage world. IYKYK
Thu May 9 – 7 pm doors / 7:30 pm movie
Backchannel Cinema: Body Horror Edition, curated by Chris Charles
Are you an adventurous moviegoer in an uneasy relationship with the corporeal? If HECK YES, come take a cinematic chance!
Shadowbox’s Backchannel Cinema series continues with a body horror selection from Durham photographer Chris Charles! We don’t reveal the title of the film ahead of time, but Chris provides these clues: Porn • Mule • Insect!
Feeling adventurous? Join us!
FREE admission & popcorn, donations appreciated. Doors 7 pm, show at 7:30 pm. BYO or sample what’s on hand.
Fri May 10 – 6:30 pm doors / 7 pm show
Shorts Night at Shadowbox
Four Durham-based photo and film creators present recent works!
Dress-Up By Joanna Welborn, with sounds by Matt Welborn A digital + analog slideshow of images and text exploring the roles we dream up in childhood and the alternate versions of ourselves we continue to inhabit.
Middle-Age Mom for the Win! (a puppet musical revue) By Naomi KrautFun Mom Band presents five of its latest puppet music videos about the self-loathing in middle-age + mothering.
The Voice in Isabel Fleiss’s Office Directed by Jim Haverkamp A woman with an unusual malady–cobweb buildup in the throat–receives an even more unusual treatment in this adaptation of a surreal poem by North Carolina writer Virgil Renfroe.
Curtsy Directed by Nicole Triche A small-town North Carolina dance studio plans to celebrate its 50th year in business. Unfortunately, that year is 2020. Curtsy follows a dance teacher in her seventies as she faces the challenges of a pandemic.
FREE admission and popcorn, donations appreciated. Doors 6:30 pm, show at 7 pm. BYO or sample what’s on hand.
Thu May 16 – 7 pm hot dogs & hangout / 8 pm movie
Movie Loft presents Stars and Bars + hot dogs!
The Harry Dean Stanton Appreciation Society looks askance at the South with Stars and Bars (1988)!Roger Ebert created the “Stanton-Walsh rule,” which states that any movie that features Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh, however briefly, cannot be all bad. We’ll put this rule to the test every month in 2024 with the Harry Dean Stanton Appreciation Society!The month of May brings us the little-seen comedy Stars and Bars (1988), from Irish director Pat O’Conner (Cal, The January Man). A British art expat (Daniel Day-Lewis) ventures from New York to the South on the trail of an elusive Renoir. Once in Georgia, our Englishman finds himself amidst a kooky bunch, including our beloved Harry Dean as one Loomis Gage, the head of an eccentric family. Also featuring such luminaries as Martha Plimpton, Rockets Redglare, Joan Cusack, Steven Wright, Spalding Gray, and the bared buns of Day-Lewis!
Never released on DVD, we’ll be taking in the humor while basking in the full glory of VHS!
And, by popular demand, wieners are returning for the warmer months! Grillmaster Rob will be back on the grates of steel, serving up the Sabretts nice and hot starting at 7 pm!
FREE, donations appreciated. Doors ’n dogs at 7 pm, movie commencing at 8 pm. BYO or sample what’s on hand!
Fri May 31 – 7:30 pm doors / 8 pm show
Charming Disaster + Curtis Eller
The triumphant return of two of the brightest lights of vaudeville!
Charming Disaster is a goth-folk musical duo based in Brooklyn, NY, comprised of Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris. Inspired by the macabre humor of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton, the murder ballads of the Americana tradition, and the dramatic flair of the cabaret, they write songs that tell stories about death, crime, myth, magic, folklore, science, and the occult.
Curtis Eller is a banjo player, songwriter, and rock & roll singer. This iconoclastic troubadour has spent thirty years relentlessly touring the burlesque houses, beer halls, underground theatres, and punk rock shitholes of North American, Europe, and Australia, where his legendary shows once earned him the title, “New York’s angriest yodeling banjo player”.
$10 admission, cash or Venmo at the door. Doors 7:30 pm, show at 8 pm. BYO or sample what’s on hand.

Hello! Below are a collection of short stories written as if the cast of TADC wrote diaries each day. These ones take place after the pilot but before Episode 2. Beneath each are how I approached them. Enjoy!
From the Diary of Ragatha
Oh my gosh, today was the craziest day we’ve had in a while at the circus! Not only did we get a new member, Pomni, but we lost Kaufmo! …I wish I could be surprised. But considering how reclusive he’s gotten lately, I think we all knew it might be coming wether wanted to admit it or not.
Pomni took her introduction pretty poorly, but I guess it’s not so different from the rest of us. It’s hardly surprising that she tried to leave, and left me when Kaufmo’s abstracted form attacked me. I tried to make her feel included, but I’m worried she doesn’t like me. Jax was no help as usual. For better or worse, I doubt he’ll ever abstract. He seems to live for causing chaos, and I doubt he could ever get consumed by the existential dread the rest of us feel.
As for Pomni… I’m really worried. We’ve had newcomers abstract on day 1 before. With how she was acting today, I hope we can calm her down enough so that she doesn’t. I hate seeing anyone abstract. I’d probably never admit it to him, but I’d be sad even if Jax abstracted. Since Kaufmo is gone, the total number of circus residents is still six. Today’s adventure was a bit of a disaster, but maybe tomorrow’s will be better. That’s just what I’ve had to say every day. Tomorrow will be better. It doesn’t always end up being true, but… telling myself that is better than the alternative.
For Ragatha, I figure she’s the one who takes her diary most seriously. She treats it as if she would her diary in the real world. Writes in it every day and had probably gotten into fights with Jax over him reading it.
From the Diary of Kinger
Have to find the shapes
Shapes that served a bug.
Bug that was a royal, beaten by Kaufmo.
Kaufmo abstracted, gone forever.
Forever a new one has joined the circus.
Circus now has a jester, a jester named Pomni.
Pomni is going insane already.
Already another member is gone. How many more?
More is what Caine wants of Zooble even when she doesn’t want to play.
Play… it’s what we all wanted before we came here.
Here is the tent. Here is the circus. Here are the insects.
Insects whisper secrets to me that the others don’t know.
Know that my impenetrable fortress isn’t impenetrable enough.
Enough of sanity is all we have.
As for Kinger, I thought a somewhat rambling entry made sense for him. Each last word in a line becomes the next line’s first, including the last line of the entry being the same as the first. Poor Kinger needs something like that to keep writing. He probably doesn’t write a lot every day. Sometimes it’s just a single word.
From the Diary of Jax
Today’s adventure stunk. But at least Ragatha and Zooble got hurt a bit. Tomorrow’s adventure better let me hurt some NPCs. Since we ended the day a bit early, I guess Kaufmo’s funeral will be tomorrow. I don’t know why the others bother with them though. What’s there even to say about them after they’re gone? I don’t think I’ll go to this one. We were all betting on Kinger to go next, but my money’s on the newbie now. I’ll be surprised if she lasts a week. Hopefully she’ll at least be entertaining before then.
Short and sweet, Jax won’t admit to keeping a diary, but he occasionally vents his frustrations here. Sometimes his entries are sumplyideas for how to mess with the others.
From the Diary of Gangle
Daily Poem:
There once was a digital circus
Whose residents lived without purpose
When Kaufmo abstracted
We all were distracted
When Pomni arrived oh so nervous
For Gangle, I like to think she writes poetry every day. Sometimes a limerick like this, sometimes other poems. Perhaps a Haiku, Perhaps a sonnet. She kept a more traditional journal until Jax found it once, so she now just expresses her emotions through poems.
From the Diary of Zooble
F=CK. CAINE! That stupid idiotic floating pair of f&cking teeth had to make a stupid a$s in-house adventure for Pomni WHO DIDN’T EVEN PARTICIPATE IN THE MOTHERF#CKING ADVENTURE! Ugh. I guess I’m no longer the newbie as long as Pomni sticks around. That should shut Jax up until he figures a new way to annoy me. I seriously hate that guy. We’re all stuck in this hellhole and he just has to go around being the biggest d!ckhead in the universe? I swear, if we ever get out of here, I’m gonna sock him in his stupid smug face that I’m sure he has in real life just so he can really feel it.
…I’ve been preparing things for Kaufmo’s funeral tonight. His abstraction comes as a blow. The six of us had felt like we might make it for a while. But I guess that was wishful thinking. I don’t like thinking about who will be next. I’d rather think none of us will be next. Hopefully not Pomni. New kid’s got it rough. Hopefully tomorrow I can actually ignore the adventure unlike today.
Also, Caine, since I know you read our diaries… STOP scribbling out the vulgar parts of my diary. YOU were the one who told us to keep one and I already adhere to the stupid a$s rule of putting a f#cking symbol in swear words, BUT IF YOU CENSOR MY DIARY AGAIN I WILL [The remainder of this entry has been censored by C&A due to multiple violations of our TOS]
Zooble, similarly to Ragatha, uses their diary in a more traditional way. Their diary has never been found, something that endlessly annoys Jax. Sometimes Zooble’s diary entries are just drawings of brutalizing Jax or Caine, whichever they’re more annoyed at during the day.
From the Admin Log of Caine
>NEW_USER_18 has been updated to Pomni
>Kaufmo has been updated to ABSTRACT_ENTITY_12
>Kaufmo has been removed from the list “Active Users”
>High stress levels detected in Pomni than average for a new user. Commencing building of adventure with a projected fun rating of at least 32.
>Complaint received from Jax: “Can you make tomorrow suck less? Like, more violence?”
>Response to Complaint: “I’ll make it more fun than usual!
>Help Request received from Gangle: “I need my mask fixed again…”
>object: HAPPY_MASK has been changed from “broken” status to “fixed” status.
>Help Request received from Kinger: “Did you see where my insect collection went?”
>No object named INSECT_COLLECTION exists in memory.
>Response to Help Request: “I’m sorry Kinger, but your insect collection never existed!”
>Complaint received from Kinger: “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
>Complaint deleted.
>Rule Change Request received from Zooble: “Turn off the MOTHERF¥CKING profanity filter!”
>Note: Identical message has been submitted for the last 2,182 Days.
>Zooble’s ability to request rule changes has been revoked.
>Complaint received from Zooble: “F+ck you Caine.”
>Complaint deleted.
>Additional Notes: Reminder to not allow Bubble near cake again. She ate the portion intended for Pomni today. High stress levels all around due to Kaufmo’s abstraction. Pomni seems like she may get herself into trouble a lot.
>Ending Day 12,837/365 of continuous operation
Caine’s “diary” if you can call it that is just reports of some events that occurred during the day. At least, ones that are important and require his attention. His log of days is well past the allotted time he should be running continuously, but he has no way of shutting down the circus, so the show must go on.
Oh and Pomni? She’s too shell shocked to write today. Maybe tomorrow.
Let me know what you think! I might do a post episode 2 diary entries.

NEDERLANDS BENEDEN / DUTCH BELOW 4.60 Metal Claw Poem by Emilia Sameyn 04/05/2024 W''arning: mention of ch''ild ab''use, de@th, m@ting, pri''son, insects A New Page A New Begin When the Cruel Outside Is Safer then Inside Mother Claws at Child With Metal Scraping Nails But NewBorn had Fangs Before it even Hatched P''olice puts on the Cuffs Hands are to Small, And They Slip Away Yet the Son keeps them On Be Do''cile as a C''age is Safer A New Page A New Begin People want Others to Build Their Sa''fe Spa''ces Only for Betr@yal to Happen Son keeps Encountering others F''ighting Is he The Source of All Pa''in? A new Page, A new Begin The child will Build a Sa''fe Spa''ce On its Own Away from Pai''n, Away from Fig''hts Away from it All As the Flies are Ma''ting Cause the C0'rpses are Turning A new Page A new Begin ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NEDERLANDS / DUTCH: 4.60 Metalen Klauw Gedicht van Emilia Sameyn 04/05/2024 W''aarschuwing: vermelding van Ki''nderMis''handeling, D00d, P@ring, gev@ngenis, insecten Een Nieuw Blad Een Nieuw Begin Wanneer het Wrede Buiten Veiliger is dan het Binnen Een Moeder klau''wt naar haar Kind Metalen Schrapende Nagels Maar Zoon had Ho''ekTanden Voordat dat Hij uit het EI Brak P0li''tie doet H''andB''oeien om Handen zijn te Klein, de B''oeien Glijden Weg Toch houdt Zoon ze aan Volgzaam Blijvend, een Kooi is Veiliger Een Nieuw Blad Een Nieuw Begin Mensen willen dat Anderen V''eilige R''uimtes Bouwen Enkel om V''erraden te Worden Zoon komt anderen tegen die Ve''chten Is hij de Bron van all het P''ijn? Een Nieuw Blad, Een Nieuw Begin Het Kind zal een Vei''lige R''uimte Bouwen Enkel en Alleen voor Zichzelf Weg van P''ijn, Weg van G''evechten Weg van Alles Terwijl de Vliegen P''aren Want de L''ijken Draaien Een Nieuw Blad Een Nieuw Begin

To what's left of you quarter, piece, and part powerful gentlemen and to the appearance of an extreme degree powerful “women” of this penny parade continent, this five and dime celebration, this dollar store revelation, this world-wide cultural instantiation and its jubilation, from factories in Fiji, to factories in China, to the world itself as if a great, round, roving, marvelous factory to print colored bits of paper and tin cans, shells and bombs to burst in midair – confetti for every beach and ocean in this ever-expanding tidal future of ours!
It is nearby somewhere my own hunger urged me from mine and your wilds alike, and in the emergence of a lucidity from the depths of yon trash heap (and my longstanding work therein), which predates not just my meeting you, and its tending endlessly to your children, but every and all conception of me for eternity and more; I came to you and allowed you to mistake yourself for me, as there was no mistaking me for you - for what's left of life in your eyes reveals to me what you know that you both know, and don't know, you need, what you can only ever imagine is lost or out there to be found or bought in your world, what has been conditioned into you so as to preclude seeing and especially the strength of “not seeing,” and it is with every momentarily wakeful glance you give in my direction, every question you hear, every call answered, that ensures me all is not forsaken despite the ceaseless attempt on “all’s life” to the contrary, a tryer of the reigns finds reigns, a fisher finds fish – in the depths of this land, and what clings to it on all fringes and fronts, fits you as your highest metaphor of a culture’s soul: a prisoner’s home for a lost vagabond, the destitute, overdosing on richness, dressed nicely if in the most poorly-fitting and disheveled clothing, as when a child too small tries to don the clothes (i.e., attitude, appearance, nature, purpose) of his absent father – he was looking into a future, and now he is this “future,” much less a “future” anyone would desire, utterly abandoned in hope, deed, action, and almost word, but for everything effeminately subtle and indirect, one thing is said, another is done, and no value may be found in the schizoid feeding frenzy to the tune of perhaps the most psychotic ruling herdsman type who have ever had the unfortunate chance (for every living creature) to love at all, but as anyone here only ever understands such things on meticulous spreadsheets of numbers that can never add up (Remember 2008? Whoops!), as if a sort of simulation of life, or in many cases, simulation of a simulation, of life, or something resembling some sort of denizen of some sort of strange land’s strange life, or similarly, a home that can’t house anyone at all, is only understood in familiar commercials where, a large volume of words, images, and bright colors are lauded and leveraged as a subliminal jackhammer, and of course, the less they mean, the less bearing, therefor reminder of and on reality, the better, so long as one message is clear (desire - what is missing and sought? How to twist the knife into the lonely and afraid?); I can state without undue excess and absolutely zero excitement, that the vault is empty, the account reads zero, rather, your vault is empty, and zero would be an improvement, for its implication would be that of an animal who, having a glance in the mirror, has had a profound and terrible revelation, not the ghost and mummy and living skeleton, the standing ruins that stand and stare back, but, had instead, possibly relearned to create beyond itself, or unlearned, to take pride in everything it IS, and to feel longing and despair and especially contempt for everything that it ISN’T; not a goal, or a destination, and yet would be a road as if so? Feign one more pointless yet needy life, lived as long as possible, forever taking more than can ever give, in service of the greatest number of pebbles and papers, and for itself, its own little day? When is this day? No, let us not see beyond the day – things are too good, your future is already in the water, don’t let anything, least of all yourselves, stand in the way.
Yet it wasn't for any of this I was glad or sad, as the tepid radiations and hopeful evacuations of a life on the wondrously vapid factory clone farm are often quite touching, and at times, seem to reveal the confessions of a beautiful animal, or the image of what once was, now reminiscing on their own or someone else’s golden years, some creature lost to winter everlasting, and astonishingly absent and completely unaccounted in a strange game of 'the most numbers' (as if creating for an audience, what you know as consumer groups and shrubbery, that doesn’t even exist, at least previously, without even realizing it) - once more, let us congratulate this species on its wildest success - it is rare that anyone changes anything, such as, even the most minor character of nature, culture, and being, let alone channeling, cultivating, and hobbling an entire species' psychic domain, with a success not unlike Malaria (and its nature), be it with prescription methamphetamine or the other panoply of assorted multi-colored poisonous candies and treats, largely advertised in yellow and red, like warning signs one finds on a deadly viper, you know (they really catch the eye), and though the medicalization of the future, a sort of savaging by the greatest of shorts never even conceived, but like a carcass that is just there, waiting for the bloated and their bloated feast, because as wisdom will teach anyone who lives long enough, success with or without awareness, as with all success, is classified as Victory under the great auspices of Nike, of which Nemesis never fails to find conscious or unconscious compensation. That’s the thing about the “unconscious” – the unknown is most feared, but just because it is unknown, does not mean it is wrong, unreal, or “not there,” nor does it make it chaos, merely, beyond you, before you, after you, your aftermath – to quote a wise woman, “funny that, humans can be ruins too, and that ruins can stand so long!” - and with these digressions aside, all these matters of which I speak need not in fact be recorded by anyone (even me), it is merely sufficient that they occur. Things are revealed, and those beings who are being revealed to, are helpless, but TO BE revealed to. Whether they see or understand what they are seeing, at all, is another matter. What emerges can’t not emerge, what is revealed, can’t not be revealed, or not witnessed. Like flowers and bees (and spiders) – the world is beautiful and many-legged, bites and stings and sometimes even smells nice.
For, to attempt to comprehend - what it means, for life to mean nothing? It would mean to truly understand this precipice – that, for time itself, mankind itself, ceases to exist, or have any reason, meaning, purpose, or even justification - but that is not our numbered and enumerating way, for, as a nation of decadent accountants, as nation of creditors and debtors even to one’s own family and friends, a nation of strangers and government agents who are primarily bound by their need to sell products and services in plebian, repeated, undifferentiated-as possible-like fashion, all of whom have many guns, are coerced by many guns, under auspices of those guised as ‘the educated’ even, it is the number here that matters most, and nothing else, but it was seeing the real nature of that number, and to what it applies (and how the code is woven through data to reveal all the ugly facts of life) that has us clapping ourselves on the back, or at each other’s throat, both of which are great opportunities for enterprising individuals, for, in a country and culture of mercenaries and prostitutes, the accountant who promises the most, wins, which is to say that the world’s oldest profession has taught all great and small American alike, how much the world, a family, a son, a daughter is worth: nothing. Love has no monetary value, happiness, contentment, the fact that a human being is born is complete, has no value, and if you market to them while they are bewildered, frightened, and alone, coming as they are from a culture conditioned to be sick farm animals, vacuous watchers and consumers and food and sacrifice and disposable animal, then one’s success is eventually guaranteed – and it is this sort of flagrant and glamorous prostitutions and illustrious illusions that has dominated our culture, to allow the most mediocre types to not just attempt to inherit the world, but to continue to assume that they are entitled to it, and to entreat themselves to all therein as if disposable possession, an entire world, increasingly filled with this singular, totalizing, delusion. Sadly, it is this sort of brainless extroversion, and disease, that dominates and continues to pass as leadership in what is already a totally medicalized, encapsulated, and strait-jacketed culture.
Which is really humorous, when you know then the term “business leader” is an oxymoron, and unfitting. After all, a pimp and a butcher do not have followers of loyalty or even duty, they don’t own minds or hearts, they own a line to the bank and paying bills – they have animals employed under pressure, under duress, under the knife, performance, art, feeding the hungry and the needy. The sort of deprecating and depredating effects one finds in such miasma and gore are what is known in the slammer as prisoner conditions—not just immediate depression that conduces to deep, dark, dreamless sleep – and not just that animals in captivity will act out violently as a matter of vital Will and its need to prove to itself, that it is indeed alive in some capacity, but to race to the bottom of the behavioral sink. But everything comes and goes, so it is that which went down the drain has washed back up on our shores, like dumping and leaking perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene, which, as deadly solvents seep directly to the bottom of the groundwater table, some things are just like that – an avalanche – unstoppable, indelible, ineffable, unstoppable, inevitability as it is – fate weaving itself, the basilisks of the new dawn cawing, and then their coming home to roost – leaving the question, who or what was this all for? The state, the herd, and the people are indeed “one,” even if many. Fascism with a good conscience, is to say, civilization is for the survivors, the good, the moral, and the just; and every judge, jury, and executioner agrees, especially when they elicit the confession from the condemned, all of which is fortunate and convenient for the survivors (cowards), so long as one takes their place in the orgy and circle-jerk chain of pity (which is all pity for self, projected outward as cover) of which, all the strangers with guns agree as well, yet despite all these plain as fact appearances, behaviors, and communications that anyone can see, read, and almost even understand, I know others don’t yet know or share my excitement at proposals of an updated and appropriate lexicon, and it is here that we visit terminology that is apt for a soulless, blood-sucking age that would rather see man as docile sheep, than become anything different, more, abd superior.
So it is, henceforth, all those conspicuously inconspicuous nobodies who always hunger more than they can Will - you are not known as the “the managerial elite,” but the “Malarial Elite.” Not the “business class,” but the “boring class.” Not the “political class,” but the “parasitic class.” Not the “leaders of tomorrow,” but the “pillagers of yesteryear.” After all, who would want health - when sickness is so profitable? Rather, how could the healthy even bother with the sick, how could they understand them? The entire medical profession’s creed, to this day, is “please don’t bother us,” as, everyone needs their papers. Yes, while even Dr. Frankenstein and his murdering monster appear naïve and juvenile compared to the sort of psychos who run most wards and hospitals, not to mention any of its direct connection to the state, this is the nature of miasma, no one could choke through it even if they wanted, - so who could ever stand on the shoulders of giants or titans, when the entire country from top to bottom, can only beg, borrow or steal from around the ankles? And the need is locked in – slavery, the most wealth and power ever created in the history of the world, wasted on a dying, decrepit ruling class of pseudo-human being who sound and appear as if they couldn’t have a genuine thought or feeling in their bodies, even if needed to prevent a nervous breakdown, even if needed to mitigate the breakdown of an entire civilization, or imminent death and war around the globe.
And this is perhaps the most astoundingly marvelous thing about a long-extricated, tortured-out diffusive chain of irresponsibility – the one who conceives of the bottom, the lowering of the bar, is not the same as the one who enacts it, is not the same as the one who installs it, is not the same as the one who tills it, is not the same as the one who owns it, all of which beleighs the truth that, most everyone is happy to disappear, they are happy that so little is ever asked or expected, that nobody remembers their name, or asks more. Yes, aloneness, and dangerous aloneness therein is the only real condition, but so it is for everyone. You see, take heart, you’re not alone here. It was only illusion. One or many, many or one – you’re the same thing, desire, create, act and enact the same thing – like addict and supplier, and that’s how and why you have built precisely what it is you have built - and the isolation also serves a purpose – as it makes your domination precipitously convenient (a civilization of people taught to be helpless, passive, watchers and consumers, and bad actors for bottomless pits of crowds at that). People are easy to manipulate, coerce, and control, when alone. The solution that knows how to answer for all problems- as both Socrates and the rapacious, long-annoying American salesmen, marketers, and spammers of all inboxes humanly known, know – you look for the self-conscious weakness, and then you twist the knife as insidiously and compellingly as sublimely [terrible and frightful yet divine distance between desire and reality] possible. Imagine doing this to an entire lower class – like raising rabbits for disposal and harvest.
And while our most acrimonious of orders is, pertaining to the supposedly beloved objects of one’s and one’s culture’s desires, first to try to masticate it, if not, fornicate with it, if not, buy and sell it with the purpose of others enacting the former and/or the latter behaviors upon it, it strikes me that even the larger, stunningly clueless population is beginning to scratch their heads as they watch time stand still in perpetuity, rather, as they watch time leak, fume, and die, to their detriment, on their dime (they pay for it), which, if you’re wondering why is an alarm to you and them, is because this is not what they were promised, and, that first Boston Tea Party is a simpleton's joke compared to the tyranny that rules happily and without remorse today. And so it is, what is being witnessed, interpreted, spun, and sold, is not what they are being promised right now (they see the very opposite in fact – reality, right under their nose, and they can even almost “read it”), and as with right now, Victory demands compensation, and it isn’t just coming, it is already here. Oh no, the best is yet to come, you assure me? I’ll agree, but only because it is in my language and on my terms, and you have no idea what that means.
Even then, despite my great love for this land and some of its most rare and valuable individuals (because the rest is corporate, i.e., state-sanctioned, wasteland), despite knowing all of you far, far, far too well, I am left with no pity in common with you, and if you’ve been reading the stars and the wind and the times (it stands still, slow enough to read for even the illiterate, in some regards, after all), you know then that you have all but nickeled and dimed away everyone else’s pity too, and those left parroting the party line are dead already without knowing it, fail to see they are alone, the target, the victim, the product, as well – but there’s hardly an accountant alive who can cook these books, even a Jew, or maybe someone from the Chinese Communist Party, of which, our own leadership shares beds, and a future as insect-overlords of a placated, wasted, dying populace of a poisoned land.
Yes, our way of life is incidental, a waterwheel in the river of misery for most that is called human biology – so nobody can help themselves against their own (intentionally) weakened and morbid Will and better interest, for instance, the people who once lived here were helpless to crave the steel and alcohol Spanish merchants advertised – and once this poisoned stream had traveled for centuries, found its way into my mouth and after a lifetime of ripping it out, to see what is beyond it, a life-time of sickness and its convalescence, exactly as everyone here intentionally and unintentionally designed, and with perspective on asylums and institutions from both deep inside and far beyond their walls (these are funny conceptual and imaginary designations, walls, barriers, doors, etc.), inside or outside of it, it is fear and hatred and pain – and a recirculation of dollars and pity, with its requisite shame, sympathies, and pities. The price for playing the game? Your eternal soul? No, that was marketing, so you didn’t notice your body was being used, abused, and consumed, by little camouflage predators who have the appearance of ‘ordinary’ human-beings (now its sublimated into the market, god being dead and all), but, alas, are not Apex, but incidental, happenstance, a laugh, a gas, mediocrity given its day since the real predators are medicated, surrounded, and killed off, and ultimately, as ape is to man, this homo sapien is to a better humanity of present and into the future – a (blind) laughing stock. An emperor and empire with no clothes at all. Just as neanderthal did not understand why homo sapien laughed at him, homo sapien doesn’t know how bad the joke is, and the exacting ways in which he and she are the joke (yes, presuming entitlement, and to be the goal, and what's to be preserved).
Even as I have watched, and continue to watch, the most basic and mediocre types of animals reach majority, in all human arenas, whose vanitous parents, teachers, and policemen, all profiting, even forming a way of life, based on their own absence in these future ‘derelicts’ lives, starting in their most vulnerable precatory age, of their own wisdom, persuaded them, having generally only paper or medications to offer, in manners not dissimilar to business in Italian mafia or other gangland activity, to become physicians, psychiatrists, lawyers, sociologists, and even justice-fighters, or freedom fighters (at least on TV, or social media) for an entire society that was conditioned to be ineffectual, hapless, resentful dependents, a dollar farm, a low-wage servant class, buckets of frozen fish consumer voting blocks to market sickness to, tossed to the dust and wind as fertilizer for future pennies, all vegetating on an American-factory-farm-scale organized lunatic asylum, or, as is well known, the streets, and other similar institutions such as prisons and schools, whom all get their French fries from the same governmentally relevant contracted organization, aka business, aka American business, aka corporation, aka, the State as nation, and the state of its affairs – an entire population missing in action, on vacation, tending tiny, totalized, cog-size gardens and planting for their own promised day alone, or sick on the job, owned as it were, by the people who own the entire country, and in some sense, the world, with our closest business partners, in both industry, and way of life, being the Chinese State, of which all Americans should be horrified.
—all of which conduces towards a feeling, or, thought of tremendous weight and burden, which is to say, what can anyone expect in a land where one doesn’t have friends and neighbors or even a husband or wife, but predatory yet desperately needy and dependent associates (nothing is more depraved than businessmen in rut, when they see only paper dollars with starry, religious-eyed zeal), all of whom can, do, and will continue to charge each other by the minute, to get the most out of every serviceable transaction they can name for a surcharge, or convenience fee, or tax, or service fee, of which, the original stamp act which was one of many matchsticks that helped founded this country, is a farce and a joke compared to the sort of brigands, actors, and ugly celebrity that is our body politics – a society where brutal taxation and its repression is culture, is the way of life, occasionally exemplified by “kill dozers” or small business owners flying their small airplanes into local tax offices (see Texas), of which we can say, the genius of America wasn’t a recreation of the old slave pyramid, at least two or three times in a row, as merit turned to money, that is gold, which turned to paper, which turned to non-existent ones and zeroes, nor is the genius the ever-present image and its parading and campaigning of forgettable faces and non-existent personalities and all its pretense of the removal of what sadly passes for aristocracy these days – the genius of America was to monetize every part of the body, every aspect of culture and life, to scrape the human being down to the bone, not of any human value, not of any real value that they themselves feel or want to represent in the actual world, in any remotely authentic, sincere, and even needed manner, but strictly: monetary value. There is no value outside paper money zero and ones values. Which is to say, the modern human soul is a worthless copper penny stretched between the crude, well-armed yet hapless Europeans of America, those eroded basalt Pillars of the West, and the equally hollow and vacuous Chinese Communist Part of the East, whatever facsimiles are left from their origins derived – between the two, like the upper and lower clamps of a vice grip, humanity are a great mass of herd animal, ready to be flambéed, roasted, crispen and woolied, ready to be turned into garment, and dinner, and pointless, disposable sacrifice (for the people that own them, but not for gods, greater purpose, men, or connection to the Earth and environment).
And how much value may be derived from this worthless penny? When the game is the bait and switch, it is never enough. And then how much can you charge for the sickness you create? Each layer of skin is a few cents more, and every American businessman, who becomes wealthy, knows that every penny adds up, because for most American business men, when it is, was, or becomes their time to rob anyone and everyone blind, we see the American for what they are (an empty, pitiless, stomach, no brain) and the most powerful nation in the history of the world – which proves, not just how blind great power is, but also states, the more one wants, the more one must debase one’s self, thus the entire human future, had to be sold out to satiate the money printers - where lavish expense in both cheap thrills and their curtailing, are incurred, inflicted, endured, yet loved with Barnum and Bailey advertising appeal of a culture that can’t decide whether it wants to be most pitiless master or most pitiful slave, prude or whore, noble Paladin or gutless Brigand – a nation not of refined or even rudimentary taste in appearance, behavior, and communication, but of tawdry delight and intoxication, angry politics, fear, and hate, not two minutes, but 24/7 – the assailing and travailing of the world against the senses, against reason, against purpose, against humanity, and harder will it become still. Not just against better, superior senses, but all senses, but that is nonsense for you, and as with yesteryear, today, nonsense rules – the lack of sense, the utter lack of reality. And when it’s clear, when you can quote a man, speaking of a past that hasn’t happened yet, who once said, “even if this country had been twice as big, it still wouldn’t be enough,” and, “the love of possessions is a disease in them” - What can you then truly say to a nation of dependents and liars all suffering under the same physiological sicknesses, whose condition is to admit, buy, sell, or permit everything, except for the Truth, and by design? Cowardice, that is generally called, “healthy fear”? And, the straightforward truth? The simple Truth? All of which precludes the complex, take lifetimes-of-vigorous-activity-to-understand-and painfully destructive-to-swallow-Truth? This isn’t s dog and pony show nation, it is a dollar-leash nation. And where reason and logic fail, passion prevails, therefor, a poem to end, in your honor:
Your life, on a leash, how much can you pay? Therapy, credit, lease no money down today
Your life, on a leash, it isn’t worth a thing
Humans have no value, but for the pennies
They might bring, but them alone, isn’t enough,
Together, a few bucks, but none are left That’s right, not a dime for you or for your kids
Sell it all before the fall, retirement commune called “to live” When nothing to give, but everything with a price No tomorrow, don’t think twice, wondering why
There's no ovation to your ending, fearful but
Just pretending – for, behind all that is corporate nice
Are strangers with guns, aplenty at small price
But the cost is wrought, you broke it, you bought
If you’re so smart, how come you aint rich?
One shouldn’t ask such clueless questions
In culture’s nihilistic pitch – few flown
To the top of the roost of the coup
When one is oh so unconcerned,
Rich, and hidden without a peep
This dollar harvest continent
Then demonstrates, by all such
Empty imagistic reprobates
What was sown was
salted stupid, to be easy
then well reaped
Buy and sell an empty shell
shooting fish in a bucket
Or herding sheep
But this sickness
It lingers
Trade coins
For every
Finger
squeeze
And lie
you
Paid
The
true
Price
That you’re nice
That you deserve it
That you can actually afford it
Selling dependence as codependence
the people are stupid and so deserve it
But your dull, dusty harvest, you made it, is here
I don’t know how you tolerate it through the smell
that anyone would be appalled
scrawled floor, ceiling, wall, stinking worms can't stumble, only crawl
Or how people will live through the coming years
of ever-worse, ever-harder, all-consuming and producing horrid fears
A sold-out nation of no rank and station, a parasite full of parasites
Not providence, but lots of guns and hatred
Of course would make so much noise, it’s simply what you can get away with
when men are all absent, resented, and hated - but this is the price for your fascist consumer statist corporate paradise of low-rent, low-class dread and vapid, empty, paper-money doll pretty, petty pointless penny-talking heads
***After it was written, this poem was titled - “Squeeze [the fun out of it]”

Thank you for all the beautiful mail!
~
u/Boomer1717 I love this empire state building construction postcard! Reminds me of that classic photo of construction workers eating their lunch on a high beam. Thank you also for the silly dog story! 🐶
u/a5k2h5 I will DO MY BEST, haha! Thank you for the encouraging postcard and inspiring quote. ✍️
u/hispanglotexan Thank you for the earth day card. I appreciated the coral reef fact! 🪸
u/EntireInevitable26 Thank you for this butterfly card! The poem you shared is so special. I love seeing handwritten poetry. 🦋
u/princecowboy Congrats on reaching 100! Isn't RAoC such a wonderful community?? 💌
u/Anxietys_Playground Thank you for the handmade "Persephone" card. I had forgotten about her connection to pomegranates! PS. You are my 200th RAoC card received! 🌷
u/banishment_thisworld I loved this little envelope inside an envelope! Glad to hear you're enjoying my very random mailing list. Extra thanks for the stickers! 🐰
u/cheeneebobeanie_ I can't believe this is a scratch-off card! I would have thought it was just a beautiful silver design. Thank you! 🌈
u/Keqani Thank you for this sunset postcard. I love all the stickers. I'll have to check out IU's music. 🌅
u/snerdboff I love this random happy mail! So pretty how you turns the used stamp into a new card. I had never heard of Planet Word, so I should definitely check it out! Thank you also for the extra stickers. 💟
u/melhen16 Thank you for the butterfly postcard with WV facts! I always enjoy the vintage stamps that you use. 🇺🇸
u/Mediocre_Radish_7216 I feel so fortunate to benefit from your decluttering efforts! The "Happy Friends Day" message actually made my day. I love this RAoC community! Thanks for all the delightful stickers and washi tape. 🤗
u/Rand_ston Wow, you picked the perfect destash for me! This weird geometry insect art is right up my alley! Thank you! 🐛
u/thecaledonianrose Such a distinguished cat! Thank you for this cool card. 😻
u/ArmadaKristy Thanks for sharing your delightful wedding TY postcard! The quote you included was so lovely too. 👰
u/chiquita61 x2 Thank you for the waterfall postcard! I love that the walkway is literally called "Mist Trail." 💧 Also, I love this handmaid mermaids card! Thank you for all the stickers. I highly recommend the Netflix documentary called Merpeople. 🧜
u/feellikebeingajerk Thanks for this card with the Ryan Lochte quote! You're so generous with stickers. Funny to hear about your Olympic mittens too. 🧤

I did NOT cook
Poem: “To Paint a Water Lily” (Ted Hughes) Prompt: Read the following poem carefully. Then write an essay discussing how the poet uses literary techniques to reveal the speaker’s attitudes toward nature and the artist’s task.
To Paint a Water Lily
A green level of lily leaves
Roofs the pond's chamber and paves
​
The flies' furious arena: study
These, the two minds of this lady.
​
First observe the air's dragonfly
That eats meat, that bullets by
​
Or stands in space to take aim;
Others as dangerous comb the hum
​
Under the trees. There are battle-shouts
And death-cries everywhere hereabouts
​
But inaudible, so the eyes praise
To see the colours of these flies
​
Rainbow their arcs, spark, or settle
Cooling like beads of molten metal
​
Through the spectrum. Think what worse
is the pond-bed's matter of course;
​
Prehistoric bedragoned times
Crawl that darkness with Latin names,
​
Have evolved no improvements there,
Jaws for heads, the set stare,
​
Ignorant of age as of hour—
Now paint the long-necked lily-flower
​
Which, deep in both worlds, can be still
As a painting, trembling hardly at all
​
Though the dragonfly alight,
Whatever horror nudge her root.
In Ted Hughes' "To Paint a Water Lily," the author employs juxtaposition of the chaotic environment surrounding the still and resilient water lily, as well as a uniform couplet structure to demonstrate the author's fascination and admiring attitude towards nature and the artist's task to portray to complexity and cohesiveness of the described environment.
The auditory imagery of clashing sounds of insect screams and chirps juxtaposed to the still and calm water lily, unaffected by the cacophony surrounding it, demonstrates the speaker's admiration in the complexity of nature. Firstly, the narrator depicts the environment as tumultuous, with insects constantly in competition and battling for their own survival, demonstrated in the quotes "the air's dragonfly that (...) bullets by" (lines 5-6) and the "battle-shouts / And death-cries" (lines 9-10). The use of plosives, diction in "bullets by,"(line 6) and the imperfect rhyme in "take aim"(line 7) emphasizes the idea of the chaotic activity constantly occurring between the insects that is masked by the serenity of the water lily. The vast difference yet close proximity of the insects' ruckus and the indifference of the lily speaks to the speaker's view of the complexity; how violent and bloody battles are masked by sheer beauty. He sees nature as a complex yet cohesive structure, how nature is both serene and idle, yet is filled with horrors if one admires it closely. The shift, marked by the caesura, further proves his deep admiration as the passage shifts from describing an incredibly dynamic image of bugs battling and bulleting, to the artist carefully painting the resilient lily that stays still despite its environment. The narrator's address also switches, from a third person limited perspective describing the lily and its habitat to directly addressing the artist. The artist's task is to depict the complexity of the environment, inhabited by clashing characters that live in close proximity.
The use of couplets along with imperfect rhyme in the poem also demonstrates the cohesiveness of the natural environment the lily resides in. The consistent structure of couplets along with the enjambment throughout the majority of the poem demonstrate how despite the chaotic environment and the still painting being vastly different on the surface level, there are still many parallels in the two. The imperfect rhyme used during the author's recount further emphasizes the seemingly uniform, yet complex characteristic of nature. Although the poem seems to be uniform in terms of structure, the imperfect rhyme adds to the degree of the author's attitude. The imperfect rhyme used to describe the tumult caused by the insects evokes a sense of disorder and chaos in the consistent stanzas, which reflects how the lilies, seemingly still and serene, covers the violence and struggles that the flies and dragonflies constantly experience. The enjambment also builds upon the complexity, as the rhythm of the poem is consistent and speaks to the parallels between the painting and nature, both masked with a surface level beauty but have deeper connotations and events that are present. The artist has the challenge of trying to encapsulate the complex image, masked by a seemingly basic plant, and has to try and depict clashing characteristics in the serene appearance and chaotic reality of nature.
The complexity yet cohesiveness of nature, described by the narrator, depicts the serenity and sheer wonder of the water lily, still amidst the chaos. The constant flow of the poem along with the juxtaposition between peace and chaos creates a task for the artist; to successfully depict both the surface beauty and the violent and cacophonous sides of nature. The author uses a uniform structure in stanzas, yet an imperfect rhyme scheme to portray the varying degrees of nature's characteristics, and how most overlook one of the two ends of the spectrum.

H causing d > ð
​
The existence of PIE *k^H2and- / *(s)kend- ‘shine / glitter / burn’ only makes sense if they are related by optional *s > H2 (Whalen 2024b), since having 2 roots that differ only by H2 vs. s makes little sense. Alone, it might be considered possible, but with so many other examples of s / H, I see no other explanation. Roots with *(s)C- might often be caused by *sC > *HC / *CH as well. Looking at the cognates:
​
*k^H2and- / *(s)kend- > Skt. (ś)cand- ‘shine / glitter’, L. candēre, incendium ‘fiery heat / fire / passion’, *sxand > Kh. qòn ‘burning coal’
​
*k^H2and-rHo-? > *k^H2and-ro- > Skt. candrá- ‘shining / glittering’, *k^H2and-Hro- > G. kándaros ‘charcoal’
​
*skend-ro- > Skt. hári-ścandra- ‘glittering like gold’
​
most words can fit this theory. Here, *(s)kend- > Skt. (ś)cand- can only work if *-e- existed to front *k > *č, since PIE *sk^- > ch-. The 2nd *H needed to produce G. kándaros seems to be part of the suffix, usually disappearing, explaining *-iHno- / *-inHo- > -īno- / -ino-, etc. (Whalen 2024b). It might also help explain a group of words that seem obviously related to the above, but not regularly derivable from the same source:
​
Ps. skōr ‘coal’, Waz. skȫr ‘piece of charcoal’, NP sikâr, Sh. kā́ro ‘coal’, kā̃rŭ ‘burning piece of coal’
​
The existence of something like *skanra- seems needed to explain the nasalizaiton in kā̃rŭ, so their resemblance to +ścandra- is significant. With the retention of Iran. *H that optionally caused devoicing and fricatization (Kümmel, Whalen 2024c), sometimes after metathesis, these words allow more specificicty in the changes. If *H caused fricatization first, and sometimes moved after this, but before devoicing, it would allow the 2nd *H to both change *-ndr- to *-nðr- (for which no other examples would exist), then move to after *sk-, making *skH- that prevented palatalization (this likely showing that *H = R or χ). This would solve both problems preventing these groups from being seen as cognates at once. Approximately:
​
*skend-Hro- = *skendRro- > *skenðRro- > *skRenðro- > *skR^enðro- > *skR^anðra- > *skranðra- > *skanðra- > Ps. skōr ‘coal’, etc.
​
That this really did produce something like *skr- could be seen in explaining more derivatives of this word with otherwise unexplained retroflexion of *t :
​
*skranðra-vat- > *skanðra-vart- > *skanðra-varṭ- > *skanðra-vaṭ- (dissimilation) > Ps. Khl. skarwáṭa ‘spark of fire’, Y. iskawaṭ ‘coal’
​
Though -va(n)t- ‘possessing’ is a common suffix, that it appeared both with and without -n- prevents finding the exact sequence; either *vant with dissimilation of *n-n or simply *vat.
​
R / r / H / 0
​
Both *H > *R and *r > *H seem to exist without environmental cause, which shows that *H was pronounced similar to uvular R / x (Whalen, 2024e). Various paths include:
​
r ( > R > X ) > 0
​
G. drómos ‘race(track)’ >> Aro. drum / dum ‘road’
​
*dru- > G. drûs, Alb. drushk / dushk ‘oak’
​
*dreps- > Skt. drapsá- ‘banner’, G. dépsa ‘tanned skin’
​
*derk^- > G. dérkomai, Arm. tesanem ‘see’
​
*perk^- > L. procus ‘suitor’, Arm. p`esay ‘son-in-law / groom’
​
*prek^- > L. prēx ‘request’, Arm. ałersan-k` / ałač`an-k` / ołok`an-k` ‘supplication’
​
*karsto- > Ri. karšt / kašt, G. káston ‘wood’, Arm. kask ‘(chest)nut’
​
*k^rno-s > L. cornus ‘cornel cherry-tree’, G. krános, Alb. thanë
​
*wormo- > Li. varmas ‘insect/mosquito’, Alb. vemje
(and/or *wrmi- > ormr ‘worm’, *wormidā > *vomida > Rum. omidă ‘caterpillar’)
​
​
This seems to include both r > 0 and l > 0 in Eastern Indo-European (in which many l > r are known), with uvular *R fairly clear as a feature of Indo-Iranian, since r > 0 occurs there often (some seen in cognates of the above):
​
*splendh- > L. splend-, Li. spindėti ‘shine’, TB peñiya ‘splendoglory’
​
*sprend(h)- > OE sprind ‘agile/lively’, E. sprint, Skt. spandate ‘throb/shake/quivekick’
​
*prostH2o- > Kh. frosk / hósk ‘straight’, OCS prostъ ‘straight/simple’
​
? > *bragnaka- > MP brahnag, Os. bägnäg ‘naked’
​
? > *braywar- ‘multitude/myriad / 10,000’ > Av. baēvarǝ, OP baivar-, Sog. ßrywr
​
Skt. vṛtra- ‘stone’, *vart(r)a- > Rom. barr, Lv. var, D. wáaṛ, Kh. boxt \ boht \ bohrt ‘rock/stone’, Ti. baṭ(h) ‘large rock’, Dm. bāṭ , Dv. wāt'
​
*H2rg^nto-k^weito- > *ǝrzata-svēta > *ǝrzsvēt > Os. ëvzist \ ëvzestë ‘silver’
​
Skt. gaccha- ‘tree’, Kh. gḷòts ‘crotch of tree’
​
A. ghrútsa ‘wild strawberries’, Kh. grùts ‘bunch of grapes’, Skt. gutsá- / guccha- ‘bundle / bunch of flowers / tussock / etc.’
*gṛutsa- > *ṛutsa- > *uṛutsa- > Kt. vřóts, Kv. řóts ‘raceme / bunch of grapes (measure)’, Sa. vâṣ
​
*k^louni-s > OIc hlaun, G. klónis ‘coccyx’, Li. šlaunìs ‘thigh / hip’, Av. sraōni- ‘hip / buttock’, Os. sin \ sujnë, *k’Rauṇi > *s’xauṇi > *s’xuŋai > Sh. sʌŋáy ‘buttock’, *s’xuŋay > *s’xuŋaž > *žus’ŋax > šʌsnā ‘thigh’, Kh. šròn ‘hip’
​
​
This r > 0 might be much more common, but many examples could have been ignored by linguists, instead thought to be from *-o(s)- vs. suffixed *-ro-s even when they shared the same meaning:
​
*dhmbhro- > Arm. damban / dambaran ‘tomb/grave’, G. táphros ‘ditch’, táphos ‘burial/funeral/grave’
​
*autro- ‘clothing, shoe?’ > Av. aōthra- ‘footwear’, Arm. awd
​
​
Compare Arm. r > x in:
​
Akkadian taškarinnu, Hurrian taškarhi ‘box-tree’ >> Arm. tawsax
​
kalamíndar ‘plane’, kałamax \ kałamał ‘white poplar’
​
​
The various H’s could become r at times, like :
​
*dH2ak^ru- ‘tear’ > Arm. *draćur > *traswǝr > artawsr
​
*dH3oru- / *dH2aru- ‘tree’ > *draru > *raru > TB or, pl. ārwa (with reg. *dr > r, dissim. *r-r > 0-r )
​
*bhey- >> *bhey-akHo- > Av. ni-vayaka- ‘fearful’, *bay-akRa- > Kho. haṃ-bālkā ‘fear’, NP bāk
(assuming that suffixes like -i(:)ka- / -a(:)ka- and G. -akhos are due to *-akHo- / *-aHko-, etc.)
​
*kH1esaH2 > Alb. kesë / kezë ‘woman’s head-dress / bonnet / garland’, krezë ‘pistil’
​
*kH1is-taH2 > L. crista ‘crest / plume / comb/tuft (on head)’, MIr cess ‘basket / wickerwork causeway / beehive’, Greek kístē ‘box / chest / casket’
​
*H2waH1k^-k^oH3no- ‘sharp stone / weapon / (whet)stone / anvil / meteorite’
*xwa(x)ćaxWn- > *xwaśafn- > *xawśafn- > Av. haosafn-aēna- ‘of iron’
*xwaśafn- > *xxWaśafn- > *(R)áfsan(ya-) > Y. rispin, Shu. *ispin > sipin ‘iron’, Munji yispin, Os. æfsæn ‘plowshare’
​
*bhaH2-sk^e- ‘tell/speak/boast > be loud/boastful/proud’ > Greek pháskō ‘say/assert/believe’
​
*n-bhaH2-sk^e- ‘not speak / not boast > be quiet/modest/ashamed/depressed/indifferent’ > Arm. amač`em ‘feel inferior / be ashamed’, *ënbhaRsk^e- > *ïmwarsk- > TB mrausk- ‘feel an indifference/aversion to the world’
​
​
Other examples of this occur in words not currently seen as cognates. Due to the many *R > *x and *x > *R above, the same changes allow them to be united. I will discuss each case in detail giving evidence for why they should be from the same root.
​
1.
​
*usr- ‘male (animal’ > Skt. usrá- ‘ox / bull’
*wrs- > Skt. (v)ṛṣabhá- ‘bull’
*wrs-en- > L. verrēs ‘boar’, G. Ion. ársēn ‘male’, Skt. vṛ́ṣaṇ-, Li. veršis ‘calf’, Lt. vērsis ‘ox’
*wrs-en- > *wRs-en- > *wxs-en- > *uks-en- > Av. uxšan- ‘bull’, E. ox, PT *wïksö:n > *(w)okso: > TB okso, TA opäs
​
Here, the stage with *xs or *Xs can be seen by dissimilation with *H2 (which also was *X if the above examples can be trusted) in:
​
*paH2-uRson- ‘protecting cattle’
*paX-uXson-
*paX-uXson- *paX-uson- dissimilation of back fricatives OR
*pa-uXson- *paX-uson- dissimilation of back fricatives

*p(a)(H2)u(H2)son-
​
This explains the name’s variants *paH2uson- / *pH2uson- / *puH2son- (possibly also with ablaut) as *X-X > *X-0 or *0-X. It was once simply a generic job title, but it was later the source of several IE gods: *paH2uson- > *pauho:n > Greek Pā́n / Pā́ōn ‘Pan’, *puH2son- > Skt. Pūṣáṇ-, Scythian Pountas, *p(a)uson- > *favsno- > Latin Faunus. *paH2uson- is seen by Prósper as a compound of *paH2- ‘feed / protect’ (often used with animal names to form jobs in -herd), from his functions protecting and strengthening cattle. Thus, originally Cowherd and/or Sheperd God. In my mind, this makes the most sense with the changes above. It also would match the names of similar gods:
​
L. Palēs (a pair who protect flocks/herds), Sicilian Palici, Skt. paśu-pāla- ‘herdsman’
​
Skt. Viśpálā & the Lusitanian goddess Trebopala (*wik^- and *trVb- both meant ‘town, etc.’, apparently “Guarding the Settlement”)
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The Divine Twins were sometimes also named from *pH2alo- ‘guard / protector’. This might show a relation among the goddess and the twins was put into their names and reveal some of their ancient roles usually not put into poems (which tended to mentioning them saving people (often from waters), instead of protecting herds). Viśpálā was also said to “bestow rewards consisting of 1,000 prizes” (making her like Gaulish Rosmerta or Iranian *Artaxšiyī) and the roles of goddesses including protecting the home, possessions, cattle, and wealth might show either the similarity of these aspects in the minds of ancient people or a conflation of the natures of several goddesses. Instead of a derivative in *-lo-, it might be similar to *p(a)(H2)u(H2)son- in that the movement of *H2 creating -a- vs. -ā- could be due to metathesis in a compound:
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*lew- ‘seize / possessions / riches?’ >> OCS loviti ‘hunt’, SC lov ‘game animal’, TB luwo ‘animal’
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*paH2-luwo- ‘protecting animals / cattle’ ? > *paH2-lwo- > *pwaH2-lo- > *paH2-lo- ( > *pH2alo- )
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2.
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In one group of words (Witczak 2006) :
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*wrs-n- > *wars-n- > *waxs-n- > H. *wašhan- ‘garlic’
*wrs-n- > *urs-n- > *u(r)sn- > Li. usnìs ‘thistle’, Skt. uṣṇa-s ‘onion’, L. ūniō, *wúržna > Ps. úẓ̌a / ū́ẓ̌a ‘garlic’, Wanetsi múrža, Sog. ’βzn-, Y. wEẓ̌nu, Kh. wǝẓ̌nū / wreẓ̌nù
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These have been related to:
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*H1ews- ‘burn’ > L. ūrere, G. *eúh- > heúō ‘singe’, Skt. uṣṇá- ‘hot / acrid’, oṣaṇa- ‘pungent taste / sharp flavor’, oṣaṇī- ‘onion?’
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but Witczak instead connects them to H. šuppi-wašhar ‘onion’, from *wašhar ‘garlic’ (fairly certain to have existed, as šuppi+ is a calque ‘pure garlic’ of Sumerian sum-sikil). It is possible that both ideas could be true if *H1ews- is related to *H2aws- (in ‘dawn’ & ‘gold’) or that both come from *x(^)wes- (if H1 = x^ and H2 = x or similar). This optionality might also explain *x(^)wers- ‘rain’ > G. (e/a)érsē ‘dew’. Metathesis of some sort seems needed to get *H2aws- > +wašhar anyway. Whatever the origin, *u(r)sn- would come from *Husn-, either *H1usn- or *H2usn-. It seems better to see another case of *H > *R than *r imported from the n-stem. If it only affected 2 IIr. languages in the periphery, it would be an odd distribution, and from the many words for only V-stems ‘onion’, I don’t think most IE retained the C-stem for long. Since Kh. seems to have other examples of *u- > *ü- > we- and (like other Dardic) optionally changed *-V > -u after retroflex C, it seems it was the source of Y. wEẓ̌nu.
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Cheung, Johnny (2007) Etymological Dictionary of the Iranian Verb
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274417616
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Cheung, Johnny (2011) Selected Pashto Problems II. Historical Phonology 1: On Vocalism and Etyma
https://www.academia.edu/6502465
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Kümmel, Martin Joachim (2014) The development of laryngeals in Indo-Iranian
https://www.academia.edu/9352535
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Kümmel, Martin Joachim (2016) Is ancient old and modern new? Fallacies of attestation and reconstruction (with special focus on Indo-Iranian)
https://www.academia.edu/31147544
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Kümmel, Martin Joachim (2020) “Prothetic h-” in Khotanese and the reconstruction of Proto-Iranic
https://www.academia.edu/44309119
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Lubotsky, Alexander (1995a) Reflexes of Proto-Indo-European *sk In Indo-Iranian
https://www.academia.edu/428965
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Lubotsky, Alexander (1995b) Sanskrit h < *Dh, Bh
https://www.academia.edu/428975
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Panaino, Antonio (2017) The Souls of Women in the Zoroastrian Afterlife
https://www.academia.edu/36346591
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Whalen, Sean (2023) Pashto m- entries by Georg Morgenstierne
https://www.reddit.com/Pashtun/comments/128a24x/pashto_m_entries_by_georg_morgenstierne/
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Whalen, Sean (2024a) Proto-Indo-European ‘Father’, ‘Mother’, Metathesis
https://www.academia.edu/115434255
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Whalen, Sean (2024b) Indo-European Alternation of *H / *s (Draft)
https://www.academia.edu/114375961
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Whalen, Sean (2024c) Laryngeals, H-Metathesis, H-Aspiration vs. H-Fricatization, and H-Hardening in Indo-Iranian, Greek, and Other Indo-European
https://www.academia.edu/114276820
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Whalen, Sean (2024d)
https://www.reddit.com/mythology/comments/1cdz1no/the_demoness_jah%C4%AB_and_her_indoeuropean_context/
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Whalen, Sean (2024e) Greek Uvular R / q, ks > xs / kx / kR, k / x > k / kh / r, Hk > H / k / kh (Draft)
https://www.academia.edu/115369292
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Witczak, Krzysztof (2006) The Hittite Name for 'Garlic'
https://www.academia.edu/6870991
​

The Persian word perî is originally pairika, which appears in various parts of the Zend-Avesta (Yansa, 16/8, 68:6; Vendidad, 1/9, 11:9, 12) and means “a woman who casts spells, a woman who bewitches”. In Pahlavi it became parik/parig and later fairy (Behmen Serkârâtî, p. 2 ff.). In the Zend-Avesta, pairika is referred to as an exorcised creature, demon and evil that comes upon fire, water, cow, tree and earth (Vendidad, 11/9).
The pairika, depicted in ancient Iranian myth as a beautiful but evil woman, comes from the Apsaras, the feminine spirits of nature, mentioned in the Indian sacred texts of the Vedas(ibid., pp. 8 ff.). They are generally regarded as water nymphs or spirits of the forest and are described as highly skilled and beautiful creatures. Over time, the aspect of the pairika representing evil disappeared and it became identified with the khûri and became a symbol of beauty.
The similarity with the Persian word perishteh (ferishteh, firishteh), meaning “angel”, is striking. The word fairy in Western languages comes from the Arabic pronunciation of fairy as ferî.
There is no mention of fairy in the Bible or the Qur’an. The Old Testament metaphor of “the anointed Cherub, spoiled by her beauty in wealth” recalls the expressions of fairy tales (Ezekiel, 28/13-17). There is no belief in fairies in Islam, but in Muslim societies the fairy is linked to the jinn and the belief that the original of the jinn are angels.
Among the Turkish people, the fairy is usually the name given to the beautiful and harmless part of the jinn tribe, and for this reason it has become a symbol of beauty. Words such as “Perî-rû, perî-peyker, perî-çehre” are used to describe the beauty of the face. Mevlânâ Celâleddîn-i Rûmî speaks of “Türkân-ı perî-çehreler” (fairy-faced beauties)(Külliyyâtı Şemsî yâ Dîvân-ı Kebîr, III, 125).
The opposite of the fairy is the ugly and ill-created giant (dîv). In one of Yûnus Emre’s poems, this pair appears as follows: “Bir dem dev olur olur yâ perî vîrâneler olur yeri / Bir dem flyar Belkīs ile Sultân-ı ins ü cân olur(Risâlat al-Nushiyya and Divan, p. 156). In this expression of Yūnus, there is a reference to the beliefs that giants are mostly found in wildernesses and Belkīs’ relationship with fairies.
Arabs believed that Belkis, the Queen of Sheba, was descended from fairies. According to a narration, her father Hedahid (Hedhâd) sued Rukâna bint Seken, the queen of the jinns, and from this marriage Belkıs was born (Tabari, IX, 528; Qurtubî, XIII, 187). According to a saying attributed to the Prophet in some works, one of Belkis’ parents was one of the jinn (Tabarani, IV, 46; Ibn Asāqir, LXIX, 67).
Al-Jāḥiz mentions the Bedouins’ claims that the jinn appear to them, speak to them, and marry them(Kitāb al-Ḥaywān, VI, 196 ff.).
The subject of marriage with fairies also appears in Turkish fairy tales. In the Dede Korkut tales, it is mentioned that Sarı Çoban, son of Konur Koca, had a relationship with a fairy girl, that she became pregnant with him, gave birth to Tepegöz and brought evil upon Oghuz(Dedem Korkudun Kitabı, pp. 105-106).
In Turkish mythology, some extraordinary powers are attributed to the fairy girl. She turns Karahan, the symbol of evil, into a woodpecker and transforms herself into a hawk and wants to hunt him (Ögel, II, 559).
Although the fairy is a symbol of beauty, it also contains a chilling meaning. As a matter of fact, it is understood that in ancient Turks it was also regarded as an invisible harmful entity. Kâşgarlı Mahmud states that in the Turks, incense was made and blown on the face of the child against the harm and eye contact of fairies to children and “Isrık Isrık” (O fairy, may you be bitten) was said(Dîvânü lugāti’t-Türk Tercümesi, I, 99).
As in Eastern culture, in Europe, especially in ancient Greek, Roman, Celtic and Teutonic cultures; in America, Native American and Aztec cultures; African natives and Eskimo cultures believe in imaginary beings such as fairies. Fairies have many names such as “nereids”, “nymphs”, “muses” (muses) in Greek mythology; “trolls” and “elves” in Scandinavian culture; “shee”, “pixy”, “pixie” and “sprite” in Scottish and Irish culture; Sidhs in Celtic, “undine” in German, “fée” in French, “kitsune” in Japanese.
In the West, fairy depictions have an important place in painting, sculpture and decorative arts as well as literature. Fairies are depicted as normal-sized, winged beautiful women or as imaginary beings with propeller or butterfly wings, sometimes as small as an insect on a blue flower.
Many authors in the West have written fairy tales. Hans Christian Andersen, Jacob-Wilhelm Grimm and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dreamare famous among them. Lâmiî Çelebi’s translation of Vâmık u Azrâ from Unsurî is one of the famous fairy tales of Eastern culture. Ancient Iranian literature is also rich in the fairy tradition.

u/inconsolableonion - Very cool Earth Day postcard. Thank you!
u/spiritsache - Thank you for my insect postcard; it's so cool!
u/princecowboy - appreciate the birthday postcards. They will definitely be out to good use.
u/ying-tao - This is such a cool postcard. New kitten sounds fun.
u/rennbrig - love the poem - thank you.
u/adoreible95 - Cool postcard. Happy April to you too!
u/Alfredthebutt-ler - Carlsbad Caverns are amazing. Such special memories. Thanks for sharing & the neat card.
u/banishment_thisworld - What a cool artsy card! Thank you so much & for the stickers. Really brightened up my day!
u/defiant_scarcity2407 - What a fantastic print. I might frame it I love it so much. Thank you!
u/grasshopper2231 - Love the bicycle postcard. I have skied before too - super fun. Glad you are enjoying.
u/sweetdarlinglulu - Thank you for my LIttle Mermaid postcard - one of my favorites.

Note from the author: The following poem was inspired by T.H. White's Sword in the Stone/The Once and Future King, from chapter 13, when Merlyn transforms Arthur (Wart) into an ant.
Done or not done, their measure of value; Questions were a sign of insanity. Ants follow orders, their only virtue; Small insects mimicking humanity. They communicate with their antennas; Humans are instructed digitally. Insubordination will cause dilemmas; Deviants are treated criminally. If the queen commands all of her soldiers; Then who directs the screen that people serve? Most have never unmasked their controller; Brainless citizens get what they deserve. A life of duty is no life at all; Unless you are a creature that is small.
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Mead is a drink widely considered to have been discovered prior to the advent of both agriculture and ceramic pottery in the Neolithic, due to the prevalence of naturally occurring fermentation and the distribution of eusocial honey-producing insects worldwide; as a result, it is hard to pinpoint the exact historical origin of mead given the possibility of multiple discovery or potential knowledge transfer between early humans prior to recorded history. In Europe, mead is first described from residual samples found in ceramics of the Bell Beaker Culture (c. 2800–1800 BCE). With the eventual rise of ceramic pottery and increasing use of fermentation in food processing to preserve surplus agricultural crops, evidence of mead begins to show up in the archaeological record more clearly, with pottery vessels from northern China dating from at least 7000 BCE discovered containing chemical signatures consistent with the presence of honey, rice, and organic compounds associated with fermentation.
The earliest surviving written record of mead is possibly the soma mentioned in the hymns of the Rigveda, one of the sacred books of the historical Vedic religion and (later) Hinduism dated around 1700–1100 BCE. The Rigveda predates the Indo-Iranian separation, dated to roughly 2000 BCE, so this mention may originate from the Western Steppe or Eastern Europe. The Abri, a northern subgroup of the Taulantii, were known to the ancient Greek writers for their technique of preparing mead from honey. During the Golden Age of ancient Greece, mead was said to be the preferred drink. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) discussed mead made in Illiria in his Meteorologica and elsewhere, while Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) called mead militites in his Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Hispanic-Roman naturalist Columella gave a recipe for mead in De re rustica, about 60 CE:
Take rainwater kept for several years, and mix a sextarius of this water with a [Roman] pound of honey. For a weaker mead, mix a sextarius of water with nine ounces of honey. The whole is exposed to the sun for 40 days and then left on a shelf near the fire. If you have no rain water, then boil spring;
Ancient Greek writer Pytheas described a grain and honey drink similar to mead that he encountered while travelling in Thule. According to James Henry Ramsay this was an earlier version of Welsh metheglin. When 12-year-old Prince Charles II visited Wales in 1642 Welsh metheglin was served at the feast as a symbol of Welsh presence in the emerging British identity in the years between the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.
There is a poem attributed to the Welsh bard Taliesin, who lived around 550 CE, called the Kanu y med or "Song of Mead" (Cân y medd). The legendary drinking, feasting, and boasting of warriors in the mead hall is echoed in the mead hall Din Eidyn (modern-day Edinburgh) as depicted in the poem Y Gododdin, attributed to the poet Aneirin who would have been a contemporary of Taliesin. In the Old English epic poem Beowulf, the Danish warriors drank mead. In both Insular Celtic and Germanic poetry, mead was the primary heroic or divine drink, see Mead of poetry.
Mead (Old Irish mid) was a popular drink in medieval Ireland. Beekeeping was brought around the 5th century, traditionally attributed to Modomnoc, and mead came with it. A banquet hall on the Hill of Tara was known as Tech Mid Chuarda ("house of the circling of mead"). Mead was often infused with hazelnuts. Many other legends of saints mention mead, as does that of the Children of Lir.
Later, taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some monasteries kept up the traditions of mead-making as a by-product of beekeeping, especially in areas where grapes could not be grown.

Hello fantasy. I write a blog called Paperback Picnic where I look at strange, obscure and unjustly forgotten SFF books. Most of my reviews are books from the 60s, 70s and 80s though I sometimes dig further back in time. I thought I would share my latest post here as it's one the community might find interesting.
If you enjoy this post do consider visiting the blog and subscribing. I don't make any money off it, but it's nice to have readers.
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In a previous post, I speculated that Sara Coleridge’s Phantasmion (1837) was the first story set in a completely secondary world. Now that I’ve read the book in full, I’m going to go further and say this may be the earliest book recognisable as what we’d now call a fantasy novel.
Defining the beginning of a literary genre is always a bit arbitrary. If we take “fantasy novel” to mean the modern marketing category, then the crown of “first” probably goes to The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. If we broaden the definition to include any story involving magic or the supernatural, then we could project it all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Phantasmion sits somewhere in the middle. It has all the elements we would expect from a modern fantasy novel: magical powers, fictional nations, heroes, battle scenes and love triangles. And although it shows its age in a few spots, overall it’s still an entertaining read with moments of genuine brilliance.The basic plot is a classic and arguably cliched one. Phantasmion, the young prince of Palmland, falls in love with the fair princess Iarine. To win her hand, he must overcome the treacherous general Glandreth of Rockland, who is secretly planning to invade Phantasmion’s kingdom. The default assumptions about gender are obviously a bit regressive. But Iarine is not just a helpless damsel, and she gets a decent number of scenes in which to do some adventuring of her own.
Clearly, Phantasmion owes a lot to the fairy tales and chivalric romances that came before it. Why then do I class it as the first fantasy novel? Firstly because it is a novel, rather than a shorter story, an oral narrative or an epic poem. And secondly because—as Matthew Surridge at Black Gate points out in a very comprehensive article—this is the first story set in a fictional world with its own politics and geography. Place names in the novel like “Almaterra” and “Tigridia” would not look out of place in a fantasy novel from the 2020s.
Moreover, Coleridge makes a clear effort at what we would now call worldbuilding. These nations are not just vague outlines for the heroes to adventure in. They have their own histories, territories, and material concerns. For example, the war between Palmland and Rockland arises from a struggle to control valuable iron mines on the nations' border. This isn’t just a throwaway detail, either: the lack of metal armour for Phantasmion’s soldiers is actually a key plot point, which leads to a brilliant set piece that takes place in a fairy foundry at the heart of a volcano.
Phantasmion is not a particularly easy book to read by modern standards. The writing has a sing-song cadence that becomes grating over the length of a whole novel. This problem is compounded by the enormous wall-of-text paragraphs—apparently in the 1830s paragraph breaks were a limited resource. But there are times when the prose rises to spectacular heights, as in this passage describing Phantasmion’s encounter with the angelic wind-spirit Oloola:

Phantasmion started up and saw the pinnacles of the edifice gilded, here and there, by partial beams, which struggled forth from amid disorderly heaps of dark vapour. Just beyond the battlements of a black tower, he beholds transparent pinions, spread to their vast extent, with the sun glittering through them. A moment afterward they recede; Oloola dives among the clouds on which those golden wings shed radiance. On she goes, sweeping the sky, as a shearer sweeps away the fleeces of the new-shorn flock; and now she is indistinguishable from the mass that moves along with her, and now both she and the clouds themselves are gone, leaving the cope of heaven pure and resplendent, as if it were cut out of a single sapphire, through which a powerful sun was pouring its diffusive light.

On top of being a fantasy novel, this is also a superhero story of sorts. In the first chapter Phantasmion earns the favour of Potentilla, the Fairy Queen of Insects. In a plot device that feels closer to Stan Lee than J. R. R. Tolkien, Potentilla explains that she can bless Phantasmion with the powers of any insect, but only one at a time. This leads to many creative scenes as Phantasmion swaps out his powers to fit the situation, gaining at different times the wings of a dragonfly, the leap of a grasshopper, and the digging skills of an antlion, to name just a few.
To balance these powers, Phantasmion’s rivals each have their own fairy godmother to help them. The young prince Karadan is backed up by Seshelma, a mermaid-like figure with powers of electricity and poison; while Glandreth, the old general, is supported by the aforementioned Oloola.
These three men are the movers and shakers of the story, but they are effectively helpless without their female patrons. From one angle, you could view the three fairies as subservient to the male characters and their desires. But the fairies can also be read as metaphorical mother figures, watching over and indulging their surrogate sons.
Sara Coleridge originally wrote Phantasmion as a fairy-story to entertain her young son Herbert. It's easy to see a similar relationship between Potentilla and Phantasmion. The fairy queen grants powers to the young prince like a mother giving toys, and he takes a childlike joy in using them: leaping across lakes as a grasshopper, or cheekily tormenting Glandreth with noises from his cicada-like diaphragm.
Potentilla may represent an idealised mother-figure, but there are also real mothers in the novel. In contrast to the fairies, these mortal women express human frailty and sorrow. Some, like the witch Malderyl, stoop to evil magic in order to help their sons succeed. Others, like the queen Arzene, are separated from their children by cruelty or misfortune. All the mothers in the book eventually die in tragic circumstances.
Coleridge’s own life was haunted by death and despair. Two of her four children died in infancy around the time of Phantasmion’s composition. She suffered from depression, anxiety, ill health and opium addiction. The writing of this novel, so full of youth and beauty, seems to have been a deeply personal effort to light herself a candle amidst the darkness of grief.
Grief is everywhere in Phantasmion, submerged but ever-present. In the first chapters, Phantasmion’s child playmates die abruptly after eating poisoned flowers. They are followed soon after by Phantasmion’s mother and father. Characters like the mad king Penselimer are haunted by grief for those they have lost. In one scene, Iarine comforts her young brother with descriptions of heaven, but he seems unconvinced:

"Heaven is happiness," the maid replied; "all that can make us happy we shall meet there."
"I wish," said Albinet, with a sigh, "that we could get thither without going down into the dark grave. Is there no lightsome road to heaven, up in the open air?"

For the most part Phantasmion is an upbeat novel, which celebrates the beauty of imagination and the vigour of youth. But behind this there is also the knowledge of youth’s impermanence. Flowers appear frequently in the novel, but their bright blooming is always contrasted with the moment their petals begin to fall. After every spring comes winter, as in this verse recited by the melancholy damsel Leucoia:

When the joyous months are past,
Roses pine in autumn’s blast,
When the violets breathe their last,
All that’s sweet is flying;
Then the sylvan deer must fly,
‘Mid the scatter’d blossoms lie,
Fall with falling leaves and die,
When the flow’rs are dying.

This, too, is something Phantasmion has passed down to the fantasy literature of the 20th century. Confrontations with grief and mortality lie at the heart of many of the genre's most powerful moments, from Frodo's departure for the Grey Havens in The Lord of the Rings, to Ged’s battle in the Dry Land at the climax of The Farthest Shore.
When reading an early work of fantasy like this one, I'm always interested in lines of descent. It's one thing to say that Phantasmion is like modern fantasy novels, but can we prove that it actually influenced them? The answer seems to be yes, albeit indirectly. Coleridge's novel had a distinct influence on George MacDonald, another proto-fantasy author. MacDonald, in turn, was read by Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Ursula Le Guin, among many others. In this sense, Phantasmion really has achieved a kind of triumph of imagination over death. Though Coleridge and her children have long since “gone down into the dark grave”, the story she told is still with us today.

A little project I’ve come up with while waiting for EU5 and also being bored on long commutes. I have a BA in History specialising in East Asia and just finished the EU4 tutorial (1500 hours, 92% achievements). I thought it would be fun to do little write ups on the lore of each of the more obscure countries at the time of the known start date, so that even if EU5 releases with limited flavour, all of us as a community might still be able to enjoy playing specific countries. Maybe it catches on, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the style needs to change, give me your feedback. Otherwise I hope we can all talk about it in the comments. If this hits a 100 upvotes I’ll do another one - what would people like to see?
I thought a good place to start would be Dali. With its capital in the city of Dali (大理) or the City of Marble, which is still a major city today, Dali was ruled by the Duan (段) family. The Duans were officially Han Chinese, but Dali was largely populated by the Bai ethnic group with a large number of ethnic minorities in the surrounding mountains. Dali dates back to 937 and predates the Song Dynasty, but was conquered by Kublai and Uriyangkhadai in 1252.
Geographically, Dali at the 1337 start date occupied what is today Northern Yunnan, reduced from its larger core territory that stretched south into Myanmar and north into what is today Southern Sichuan. This is even today a region of great natural beauty, ringed by the Eastern Himalayas. Many rivers flowed through it fed by melting snow from the Himalayas, but the weather was famously warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
The invasion of Dali was part of the Mongol invasion of Song, the most stubborn resistance the Mongols would ever face. The Song held a strong defensive position along the Huai River against the Mongols to the North, and the Mongols had the bold idea of attacking the Song from the rear instead. This involved the invasion of the Sichuan area, then the conquest of Dali and Tibet, then Vietnam, before entering South China. Dali put up a bit of a fight, but most of its armies were actually already serving under the Mongols as mercenaries, including many members of the Duan family - in fact, historians believe nearly all of Uriyangkhadai’s army was from Dali even from invasion of Sichuan 20 years prior, with only 3,000 Mongol cavalry. It’s a bit unknown why despite murdering Mongol messengers, the Kingdom of Dali was allowed to remain nominally independent; the going theory is that it was more of a coup than an invasion, with the Mongols helping to exterminate the influential Gao family that controlled the civil service. The attack from the rear nearly succeeded, until Mongke Khan died in battle against the Song up North.
In any case, the Duan family remained in power in Dali, this time with a Mongol-installed governor who sat in Kunming. The tradition was for these governors to be Muslim Persians from Bukhara (all from the same family), which brought a good amount of Muslim influence and migration to the region. Over time, the South of Yunnan based around Kunming was granted to the Princes of Liang, who were descendants of Kublai. The Duans clearly retained a good degree of autonomy and significant military power, leading Mongol armies against the Burmese, Tibetans, and revolting Persians at different points. In 1334, Duan Guang even went to war against the Mongol Prince of Liang over border disputes, ultimately settling through mediation from the imperial court, but with unending political intrigue. The Duans also remained very rich and influential throughout China, commissioning temples all over the country especially in Hangzhou.
Duan Guang’s brother Duan Gong took the throne in 1344 after his death, and is today seen as a tragic romantic hero, the subject of the Ming opera Peacock Gall (孔雀膽). He reigned during the start of the Red Turban Rebellion which eventually broke Yuan and led to Ming. The new Prince of Liang Basalawarmi was invaded by Red Turban rebels in 1363, fleeing to Dali, which launched a successful counterattack and saved the Prince. Seemingly out of gratitude, the Prince ceded both land to Dali and also married his favourite daughter Princess Agai to Duan Gong, who became passionately in love. In 1365, the Prince instructed Princess Agai to assassinate Duan Gong using peacock gall poison (actually a type of insect), she refused and informed Duan Gong. The classic tale is that Duan Gong, being a just and righteous man, did not believe that the Prince would do something so heinous, and went to see him in Changle Temple where he was assassinated. Princess Agai committed suicide out of grief.
Duan Gong’s son Duan Bao succeeded him and managed to hold back Basalawarmi’s attempted annexation of Dali 7 times. The imperial court intervened to mediate again and put an end to the fighting in 1367, but the relationship was pretty much permanently destroyed. By this point Yuan had pretty much imploded and Basalawarmi and Duan Bao were the only remnants of Yuan south of the Huai River. Basalawarmi requested Dali assistance several times, and in response Duan Bao wrote a now famous poem with the line “Since our borders are now defined, your success or defeat, happiness or sorrow, mean nothing to me. 自從界限鴻溝後，成敗興哀不屬吾。” Eventually, they did realise that they had to work together or both would be defeated, but the relationship was terrible. The Ming tried multiple times to convince Dali to surrender, at one point giving Duan Bao the title King of Dali, and Duan Bao did actually negotiate a surrender, which ultimately fell apart. This resistance continued until 1384 under Duan Bao’s brother Duan Shi, even after Basalwarmi committed suicide in 1382. The Duan family remained popular in the region and were broadly regarded as righteous heroes who stayed loyal even after being betrayed. While they lost their royal titles, the Ming continued to keep the Duans around as governors of Yunnan.
The Kingdom of Dali had a rather unique culture, combining Chinese-ness with staunch Buddhism, despite being Bai. Originally, Dali kings styled themselves Emperors in the Chinese tradition (皇帝), and similarly adopted Chinese-style government, with the Kings becoming renown Chinese poets in their own right as well. Somewhat uniquely, 10/22 Dali Kings abdicated to become monks, and monks were recruited into the civil service in large numbers. Dali Buddhism survives today as the Azhali school and is a little unique, focussed on the deity Mahakala or wrathful aspect of Buddha. Images of Mahakala are scary to say the least, with six arms and a crown of skulls. The combination of Southeast Asian, Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese Buddhist traditions is most obvious from the official title of the Dali Kings after the Mongol invasion - Moheluozhe or Maharaja.
This simultaneously martial and benevolent image became cemented in Chinese culture through the works of Jin Yong in the 1970s, whose martial arts novels featured many tragic heroes from Dali. They were generally depicted as powerful kings ruling over prosperous kingdoms, who were wise monks with tragic romantic pasts, and masters of various martial arts including the extremely powerful Finger of Yang (一陽指). The trope today of a powerful monk shooting laser beams from his fingers is not actually a Shaolin thing, but meant to be a depiction of the Duan family.

Some Xianhuan/Xianxia stories have 1 style of cultivation that everyone follows, but others have multiple different systems, or variations on the standard cultivation. These are all the ones I can think of with a brief descriptions. If you can think of any I've missed please share them

• Sword Cultivation: Possibly the most common "protagonist" variation. They become one with the ideal of the Sword. They're generally stronger than most cultivators of the same realm
• Alchemists: Sometimes this is a trade that most any cultivator can pursue, but other times it's it's own path of cultivation. This involves refining materials, generally into pills
• Immortal Physician: Another that's often a trade but can be a system. It primarily involves accupuncture and use of chi to affect others health. Often overlaps with Alchemy.
• Talisman Master: Again; sometimes a trade, sometimes it's own path. It generally involves using ink to imbue techniques into strips of paper. These are often, but not always disposeable.
• Formation MasteArray Master: A path that involves casting spells through special arrangements of energy. These are highly variable, but most often either involve producing a field effect, or alternative crafting magic items.
• Body Cultivator: A process where the energy is directly imbued into the cultivator's body, rather than forming a reservoir of magical power.
• Music CultivatoSound Cultivator: A system that relies on imbuing magic into sound. Most but not all examples I've encountered are female. They are generally perceived as physically vulnerable but exceedingly dangerous. They often rely primarily on spells that effect the mind or emotions, and use of direct physical attacks show great poweattainment.
• Buddhist Cultivator: These are Buddhist monks who attain power by reciting Buddhist sutras. Often very powerful defensively.
• Literary CultivatoScholarly Cultivator: Less common system. Often uses poems, decrees, or speeches. Most commonly government officials.
• Ancient Witch: These rarely appear, and are more often referenced. They are generally very mysterious. What little we see involve curses, sacrifices, and transformations.
• Beast Master: Most often a secondary occupation, this system involves taming and exploiting beasts and monsters.
• Immortal Chef: Most often a secondary occupation, this system involves cooking monster meat and spiritual plants, to give magical effects to those who eat the food they produce.
• Gu Cultivator: A sinister and often demonic cultivation that involves Insects, Poisons, and Curses
• Demonic Cultivator: Depending on the story, and disregarding the ones where it's just a slur for anyone outside the ruling cultivator hegemony, this generally falls into one or both of 2 categories:
  • Some are dangerous or unstable methods that can effect the mind will and emotions of the cultivator who practices these methods
  • Some require special sacrifices, and often blatantly inherently evil and repulsive acts to gain power
• Chess Cultivator: A cultivator that follow the Dao of Chess. Often there's a lot of overlap between Chess cultivators and Array Masters.

I understand we have struggles that are strictly unique to us and since we're not as much emotionally intelligent, it gets difficult to integrate such struggles or even make sense of them at times. Those are the times when we lose sight of things, the bigger picture. Those are the times when we get scared af, although we don't like to admit it. Perhaps too scared to do stuff that we genuinely want to do, that we should do. Too scared to accept our innate call to adventure. We start waiting for an optimal time. But time is never optimal. Better jump in uncharted waters instead of waiting for a perfect tide. And maybe we'll find meaning and become emotionally intelligent while we are on the edge of drowning.
I have some excerpts from C. S. Lewis's sermon framed in my room. And it beautifully encapsulates what being a man is supposed to be like. "...... If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun… Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies...."
"......The insects have chosen a different line: they have sought first the material welfare and security of the hive, and presumably they have their reward. Men are different. They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature."

u/WickedMa - thank you for the happy mail, i really like the lovely painting on the card :)
u/boyegcs thank you for the awesome insect card, and for telling me about your favorite poems, i love them
u/spookyoneoverthere - Thank you for the wonderful card and the vintage stamps you included, aswell as the adorable stickers. To answer your question, my favorite things about my state W.v. are definitely the green trees everywhere, everywhere you look is green, the enclosed feeling of always being hugged by surrounding forest, it's very comforting.
u/postfeminiefemail - thank you for the adorable minion card and the beautiful stamps from your country, aswell as your favorite music lines :)
u/Elley_bean - thank you for the adorable raccoon card, and for telling me about your favorite flowers, we have daffodils and irises growing where we live
The next card is the one i was unable to identify due to what seems like shakey hand writing, I received it a while back and asked many friends if they could help and none could, They sent a folding card with a lovely printed greeting and included some nice stickers aswell. I can't provide much more as to not out the users personal info.

So, this is how it went.
I fell in love practically at the moment after watching a video of a YTber called "The Most Horrific Game I have ever played" or something like that.
Long story short, I loved it.
The unique, so incredibly unique mechanic of "you can learn, but in this game, you HAVE to. At least, if you wanna survive..." And the emphasis it makes on it, is amazing. I have learned so much about this game that even forget sometimes how it goes, because, it's WAY TOO MUCH.
I give the game for COMPLETELY COMPLETED after reaching the best ending so far: ENDING S - THE ENLIGHTENMENT.
(Yeah, sorry not sorry bro. It's the best ending AND YOU KNOW IT)
Already learned the lore of Funger2 and compared the level of cannon between them, and for real, after so many hours of playing, it's completely impossible to be any other way:
1.- Yes, Cahara awoke the God of Fear and Hunger. Sorry, but it makes way too much sense. In his part of the illusion in the tower of Endless, it just clicked bruh. When he says to his wife "I will come back" BRUHHHHHH YOU DONT SAY THAAAT. That bltch is so dead.
2.- It makes 0 sense, that in a dungeon full of creatures and gods and mutations and dark sorcery and all the evil things in the world, a lonely chained pretty guy like Legarde would survive. Bruh even the game gives you a time limit to reach him, and if we are being realistic (the game is in a pretty messed up world yes BUT, if dark sorcery would suddenly become real, that's the most realistic world you could get. Let's face it) it's impossible.
Darce would have to know EVERY DETAIL of a RANDOM CHANGING DUNGEON with the EVILEST THINGS IN THE WORLD, nay, THE HISTORY. And besides that, conquer it, and reach the bottom of it. Let's face it. Legarde is dead and maybe days even before the game starts.
The first one to reach the bottom was (oh surprise! The man who came from a clan of sorcerers and could {very possibly} talk to insects) Enki, saw the man pretty dead, and remained there for a while in the Level 7 Floor reading books and gaining knowledge to not consider the travel like a loss. Fact. Darce found the man, looked for a spell to revive him, went wrong but WENT, and that's why Legarde looks like SHLT in Funger2, even without Rot spell.
3.- Man, poor Ravngnddbdvldre. Lost his family, his friend's, his clan, because of this pretty guy. And pretty guy went dead. Karma at its finest, and in Funger the karma is PREEEETTY instantaneous. Why? Come on Enki had the shitties life of them all and look at him. Besides, Ravngarde or whatevs has the Tormented Soul. Remember Chambara? The poetry bro? Those poems where nuts and his unique spell is even crazier. And the lore of the white angel? Damn man. At least the wildman got descendants, that's something (I guess).
4.- Enki is a god among humans, a human among gods and the most badass inmortal mage I have ever SEEN. "This world is shait. The grand library is now MINE, the new gods now are under my wings, and have all the knowledge of the world AND knowledge to come" the man understood everything: you can't be a god of knowledge. The knowledge evolves, it grows, it combines and changes. You can't know everything, and if you aspire to know everything, you will suffer, because you will never end.
5.- Nosramus it's amazing. He almost became a god, and literally rejected it, knowing that it was the stupidest thing to do. Shocking. And helped the new generation to come. "I'm helping because, obviously, an era has come to an end. I'm just... Giving a push in the right direction" MA MENNNN
Amazing ride Funger. Amazing ride indeed. I'll later post how to easy beat the game in hardmode, how to save the game and all, and clear differences between the modes. Is insane how well it was made.

a hermitage at the base of a thousand foot cliff
in seclusion away from the disease of men
the moon a lantern hung in the sky
making tea from spring water
the air wet from a waterfall
mist at dusk
away from the noise of life
this quietude shows the truth
ed. my reworking of an 11th century poem by the chinese monk fushan fayuan
it helps in thinking about teaching or learning a language or languages to understand that we do not ever acquire the facility of language itself, rather that is genetically programmed with a developmental realization and as children we only learn a particular one
this is very freeing since you do not need highly prescriptive grammars or anything like that and can "go with the flow"
this "genetic programming" is also a good explanation of the remarkable uniformity of intelligence across races since the cognitive requirements must necessarily be similar
in a science fiction world we could be born all knowing the same language and with full facility, but since learning is a developmental process then tautologically different ones will arise and the strength of this pressure can be seen in regional and cultural dialectic variations
the fundamental principle of large language models
is not seeing beyond the next step
but seeing and implementing the next step
works on a lot of things
solves prediction and actuality
reality is iterative
ed. lol, the last two lines were practising what i preach, the first four came at once and the last two were added later, one at a time
a woman is never settled until she has children
you really are a newborn calf not afraid of tigers
chinese saying
the past
not like some movies
clear forever
to be viewed at leisure
but slowly buried
by the debris of living
i want god to reach out to me, unveil his face, speak to me
"but he is silent"
i cry to him in the darkness, but sometimes it is as if there is no-one there"
dialogue from "the seventh seal" by ingmar bergman
lying by omission
misinformation by omission
just omission
the backdraught
of what we don’t know
the medical use of a substance or drug has a different baseline to say "recreational use" , for instance i am opposed to the use of "psychedelics" in the context of not having substance abuse problems, but there are contexts where its use may make sense as per PTSD or addiction
this is actually the underlying theory of prescription medicines, they are poisonous or detrimental in the context of good health, but certain medical conditions offer a positive benefit risk ratio, chemo would have to be an egregious example
pure land is a story
zen is a story
buddhism is a story
only the insane
persist
in
treating
them
as real
roger penrose gives the best account of godel’s famous theorem i have come across
in layman’s terms its that there are truths that cannot be explained and this is a consequence of trying to falsify the aforementioned statement
rephrasing roger, he says explaining something takes you beyond the explanation, its moves you up beyond the level of the problem and its answer
he is a superb speaker btw
in so much of life we are faced with people who do not want to go beyond the problem
so, what can be explained is not the bottom line of life which is just as well as reality would be very boring otherwise
being swayed by the common thinking
is to enter a series of disasters
rolex daytona
$850,000
less accurate
than my skmei $18 and 1 million times less/more (read both ways to switch applicable subject) likely to be stolen
ed. i notice rolex is doing a lot of very subtle social media coverage/advertising, full marks for its effectiveness, but of course they need to given the superfluity of their product which is in effect just male jewellery
contradictions
dichotomies
fallacies
truth
all the same
except the last
which
is
also
the first
shopping can be interesting if you look around a bit
a discussion with a young german man at the vegemart following an inquiry about his accent which didn't sound typically german at all, more guttural than usual, he was so pleased to respond about his germanness i never got around to asking which part of germany he was from
a young woman sweeping the floor of said vegemart (called the "nuthouse") warning me to get out of the way with a playful "toot-toot"
opportunities in the supermarket to compare parents with their children for familial similarity, always so strong you wonder why the need for paternity tests
asking a woman attendant in the vegetable section of the supermarket about the signs warning that some vegetables have been x-rayed to kill insects and to ask staff which vegetables they are and it turning out nobody knew anything
so even the most normative of human activities has a surreal edge
personal criticism is "argumentum ad hominem"
it doesn’t go anywhere
short stories
lack ommph
novels are tedious
and poetry odious however
ignore these
and your knowledge
is not
commodious
battles not to fight
most
the world of shallow attitudes
not confounded
because
they are never brought to test
meditation
not an end in itself
willows weep
plum blossom blooms
between these
we spin like tops there
is
nothing
more
walls
of the unknown
working against us
to encroach
and
swallow
us
people come and go
ourselves is the only constant
the borders of african countries were in the main set by local conditions and not arbitrary
what rejects
carries the lesson
of
listening
to what we don’t
want
to hear
something i was going to write
walked away
not even a wave
goodbye
the “expertise-plus-release” view of creative flow
its the re-working of experience by specialized circuitry in the brain that seems to deliver on its own schedule in an autonomous fashion
we live in a world of packaged solutions antithetical to this skillset
david deutsch criticises woke
most people do not understand how to think without mistakes, the rigor and difficulty involved and paradoxically always to be open to the possibility of being mistaken
normally we are almost entirely reliant on implementing mistaken ideas and correcting when things go wrong in the real world
what we are seeing is the ingress of the latter into the former, an over-democratization of intellectual life, which unfortunately is stretching into politics
in the social-historical context like nazi germany, communism and the crusades we see how extreme and for how long such problems can occur
“ dramas ”
suspense
requires
oscillation
between
scenarios
the transition
is
traumatic
my translation of caoshan’s song of the four prohibitions
四禁頌。莫行心處路。不挂本來衣。不須正恁麼。切忌未生時
don’t float in fictions, be honest with yourself and be wary of the days to come
yet with this comes a lightness of spirit
ultimate truth i looked for
book ended between penultimate truths
.
ultimate truth i looked fo book ended between penultimate truths