I avoided seeing him pick up the rest of his things and passed him on the street in our cars. I’m back to the hurt like it’s fresh again. He used to do my yard and now it’s a symbol of my heartbreak…weeds…overgrown…unkempt…and something I just can’t do.

/uw This is a continuation of the first post which I will tag in the comments, once again I apologise in advance for length as well.
Hirk: “I offer you one chance to kill yourself. After that I might just have to do it for you.”
Hirks words are serious and cold, behind every word there is the threat that this is a mercy and it refused, he will do it himself.
Jean: “fine.” Jean incinerates herself, until not even ash remains.
After Jean dies an announcement is made shortly after over the speakers.
"ALL IMMORTALITY SAFEGUARDS HAVE BEEN LIFTED."
Safi: “You'll have to earn that my friend.”
Maximilian slowly walks closer to Hirk. “Make me.”
there's not a hint of regret in his eyes. He wants Hirk to deliver the blow.
Hirk’s arm in a single moment moves and connects to Maximilians stomach, ribs break but not killed only sent into a nearby wall.
“Poor choice.”
Hirk is fuelled by pure rage in his voice. He fully blocks the door.
Maximilian: “Tsk. Didn't think I'd be dueling my best man before the wedding.”
After he says this he spits out some blood, still confident and stubborn in his belief even after taking a hit from the Demi-Giant.
Nhak: “If you can kill me…”
“Then I implore you to do so…”
He spreads his arms and wings acceptingly… as if begging…
“I beg you to make it hurt.”
Hirk attempts to throw a needle of thing rock through Nhaks eye hole in his helmet with a flick of his wrist.
Parts of it break on the edges of his eyehole in his armour as he makes no attempt to stop it overrun by his guilt. There is now a stone needle poking through his helm not fully certain where it hit under that golden helm.
Aoi: “I think you should calm down, boy.” Aoi then proceeds to try to grab Hirk’s arm
Hirk shrugs off the attempt and before any further can be made someone intervenes.
Noticing direct conflict starting to break out, there is barely a blur as Hirk notices Gonkgar in front of him. Even as tall as Hirk is, Gonkgar stares down at him. He tries to grab Hirk by both of his wrists, making sure to not hurt him.
Hirk flicks his hands nudging them away, he is focused on his duty.
Zeroth: :Shutting down all defense systems:
Elize the Siren starts singing her song, making Hirk's mind filled with discord.
Edjar(?): "HIRK! STAND DOWN! THE GODS HAVE SPOKEN. I WAS GRANTED DIVINE RIGHT TO OVERSEE TRIAL AND EXECUTION!"
Rachnia: “I am sorry, Hirk. Spirit whisper.”
She proceeds to shoot out an ethereal purple string enchanted with domination magic as it begins to work its way up his nervous system through his spine to his brain and then soul.
“No-one. and I mean. NOONE. Hurts Max in front of me. Not even you Hirk!”
The lights outside all go dark, and Zeroth switches to Emergency power mode.
Hirk is glowing with the erratic wild rays of fire, emitting a partially dim light from under his skin.
Hirk resists the attempt of domination against his mind, but his mental fortitude built of hatred and fire is being chipped away by it.
“Stand back. Or else.”
Gonkgar is pushed away for the moment, at first only attempting to stop Hirk. But now sees another opportunity
"Okay. Me see how it go."
Gonkgar pulls a fist back and punches immediately, a shockwave of air from the sheer speed of his punch. He aims for Hirk's chest.
The punch connects, there is a loud sound of bones cracking and skin being heavily bruised and bloodied. But he still stands in the doorframe refusing to move, his body will break before he does.
A fourth voice joins the amalgation that is Ejdar right now, high and commanding, but compassionate.
"My Executioner will end you if you lay another hand on anyone here. You will be put RIGHT BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM!"
Safi: “That will not be necessary.”
Ejder looks over at Safi. His darkened eye turns to the same silvery gold as the other. He gives Safi a respectful nod. There's a good chance that Ejder himself is not fully in control.
Lady Fortuna: “By Fate's weave... Your continued charge... Ends.”
Kyoko appears from behind Hirk after hearing the commotion
“What's going on here?”
Nhak with a gigantic needle sticking through his ghostly helm Immediately tackles Kyoko to the ground and out if the way of any fighting… shielding the two of them with his spectral wings…
Eliza siren's song is that of pain and suffering, one that was often heard at sea to crash ships. Despite the noises of fire dancing inside Hirk’s mind the song still acts as a wind disrupting the fire even if it is not fully quelled
the soulfire burns bright, Ali’s scars are almost at full brightness already. “You do not, get to touch him again.”
She punches Hirk straight in the chest at full force.
Hirk feels the second blow to his chest, there is not a noise of cracking this time as it can be assumed there was nothing left to crack as his skin goes loose from the muscles being pulverised by both attacks he’s took head on. Having to rely on his arms holding him upright by grasping at the doorframe to not fall limp. There is no response still.
Max: “Hirk. Do not. Try to hit me again.” He takes a swig from a regenerative brew.
Safi: “You asked him to do it”
Max: “Eh, expected better from my best man than to actually go through with this foolish move.”
Hirk finally after catching his thoughts which he lost from the beating he took by only two punches and Rachnia’s attempt to dominate his mind finally replied to Edjar(?), speaking less from the air in him and more the crackling of the fire inside.
“Where I came from? My home is gone. The very realm burned to ash. There is nothing left. I have nowhere to go back to.”
It is clear Hirk is not himself or he is now his true self which he hide under a scarf, sweater and broken promises. He makes one mutter afterwords with his breath this time rather than his fire to Aoi.
“Go. I do not wish to kill you, you were not involved.*
Aoi: “You really fucking think... I'm going to let you kill Max?”
Sarah: “Yeah, how about fucking no.”
Rachnia: “Over my cold, dead, body.”
there is a eattling of a snakes tail grows louder, an ever growing sense of foreboding.
"HIRK" Jean's voice booms loudly throughout the entire area. "IF YOU THINK THAT ANYONE SHOULD DIE HERE, COME AT ME! I DESERVE IT MORE THAN ANYONE IN FUCKING EXISTENCE!"
She is holding both Tartarus's and 0's cores in her hands
Hirk does not respond. But there is a hint of hesitation in his eyes.
Jean: "I TORTURED THAT BASTARD FOR 10 QUADRILLION YEARS. I'D SAY THAT MAKES ME THE WORST ONE HERE!"
A flaming knife gets thrown at Jean by Hirk, he aims directly for the heart hoping to make it quick as a mercy.
Ari: “Stop this needless fighting, this isn't going solve anything”
Ari attempts to block the knife with vines but the few that reach it in time are cut through and scared by charred marks
Jean takes the knife square in her chest. Without the immortality safeguards in place, her shards fall helplessly to the ground
Steam appears from Hirk’s eyes, he does not stop his savage duty despite clear grief at his own actions.
Gonkgar: "Only thing that matter is no one else hurt."
Gonkgar clenches both of his fists. He goes to grab Hirk's arms, and there's a glint that sparks in his eyes.
A glint that emerges and starts to travel down his body. Different from his Ultra Instinct... Stranger, perhaps. Nhak recognizes it as a modicum of a power Gonkgar once held. The juggernaut power, gifted by the God-Slaver, that made it impossible to stop Gonkgar's advance.
At that, he attempts to start pushing Hirk out of the doorway.
Ari begins to cause vines to grow around everyone except Gonkgar.
Cerne pointers her blade straight at Hirk, her daggers fly above her head.
“Not, a, step, closer, to, Max.”
Ejdar(?) shouts over to Ari after feeling their legs become tangled in them.
"Ari, Don't. You know what happened last time you restrained Ejder with those vines."
" Mo chionta. Mo chreach. Bròn."
Hirk suddenly bursts into flames, the metals surrounding him behind to melt even slightly. His skin is flaking off in embers. The vines at his feet and others nearby him burn.
Hirk has made a deal, his blood boils. His body nothing more than kindling, no pain, no feelings of his own. Even death has lost its meaning other than knowing it will be soon.
Gonkgar shattered Hirk’s bones, joints and muscles with his might. But yet Hirk stood with only one arm giving in as he still refuses to move. Inside he glows a blinding green as his body could never keep up with it without outside intervention from his ‘soul’
With Hirk now throughly on fire approaching temperatures fire should not be allowed to reach. Most without decent fire resistant would be getting hurt inside the room and around him.
Fire erupting from Hirk douses over Gonkgar's body, singing at his immensely durable skin. Even so, his burned palms grip with unbreakable might. He watches Jean fall, and Max.
"No..."
Glorg phases out of his back, looking at Gonkgar with wide eyes before pulling at his shoulders. A memory flashes behind Gonkgar's eyes. The powerlessness as his friend was killed long ago. The reason he trained in the first place... Was it vengeance? Or was it to protect those he loved? Even when he gained the power to fight gods, he could not protect his friends.
The glint of Juggernaut enshrouds his body, but something is off... His body is no longer resisting the flames. He is engulfed with heat, skin melting away. He doesn't let go of Hirk, trying to pull him back... Protect anyone. Protect *anyone...*
A symbol manifests on Gonkgar's forehead. He screams and lets go of Hirk. Gonkgar falls to his knees, burning... This level of attack should not have been enough to phase him so... And yet the fires enshrouding him grow stronger on their own, not by Hirk's command.
Edjar(?): "If that man thinks what they were doing was torture, he knows nothing. And I watched his punishment."
Upon those words being said a chain of fire appears behind and wraps around Ejdar’s neck. It does not do anything other than burn them a bit.
Ari realises what Hirk is doing and runs off with the shards and cores
:ARI. PLEASE PUT US BACK DOWN.:
“Can you stop this fighting?”
:NO. THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN STOP THIS IS HIRK HIMSELF.:
Ari: “I'm afraid I'll just have to take you to a safe place than”
she is trying to navigate to the core room
:ARI. WAIT.:
“What is it?”
:IT IS POINTLESS. JEAN SMASHED THE CONSOLE WHEN SHE PULLED ME OUT. SOMETHING WAS CONTROLLING HER.:
“I can try to repair it.”
:BEFORE YOU DO, WE NEED TO HELP JEAN. SHE REMOVED ME FOR A GOOD REASON, WHILE SHE WAS STILL IN HER RIGHT MIND.:
“we can restore here with things that match her attributes right.”
:JEAN WON'T BE OK UNTIL HIRK HAS CALMED DOWN. SHE WAS BEING OVERWHELMED BY EVERYONE'S EMOTIONS, AND HIRK'S WERE CAUSING HER TO GO INSANE:
“so if i take her far from Hirk I could be able to restore her.”
:THAT WON'T WORK. SHE'S FORMED A SEMI-PERMANENT CONNECTION TO HIM, AND HIS EMOTIONS ARE FORCING IT ACTIVE:
Ari sets the cores and the shards down before returning
The Biomancer… Having assured Kyoko’s safety… Rises from the ground… turning once-more to meet Hirk…
Nhak: “Hirk.”
His voice is not a thundering yell… but a straight… genuine statement
“If killing is going to bring you peace…”
“Then Kill me.”
”Do it.”
“I will not resist… I will not stop you…”
“I will die… and come back again…”
“Over”
“And over.”
“And over again…”
“I will let you kill me in this room.”
“I will let you kill me outside…”
“I will let you do it over and over and over again for 759,673 thousand years, 3 months, 23 hours, 13 minutes and 3 seconds…”
“If that’s what’s going to deliver you peace…”
“I know my penance…”
“But I beg of you to spare the others…”
“They do not deserve an eternity like me…”
Hirk: “H-HOW MANY KILLS.”
Hirks voice is hard to make out as it’s spoken through the fire itself and its crackling. This time it sounds pained.
Nhak: “Me… none… the things I did to that woman are far worse than death… I will not hide that fact…”
“You… as many times as it takes to watch me die to satisfy your rage…”
“I have as long as time itself…”
“H-HOW MANY KILLS.”
Hirks voice is hard to make out as it’s overshadowed by the sound of fire.
Nhak: “Me… none… the things I did to that woman are far worse than death… I will not hide that fact…”
“You… as many times as it takes to watch me die to satisfy your rage…”
“I have as long as time itself…”
Max: “I am sorry. friend. But I am not fighting this battle. Not with you. You wanted me to kill myself? THEN HAVE IT YOUR WAY.” You see him take a swig of a potion.... his muscles bulge, his eyes grow bloodshot, his veins turn purple.... Lost Hope's Tonic.
He charges right at Hirk, Grabbing onto his shoulders. He stares him straight in the eyes. The panic, the torment, all of it doesn't matter. You do not see a glimmer of regret.
more beast than man, he has less than a minute alive. "Do you think, I have any intention to change things? to say I was wrong? No. I've done this for hundreds of years, and will do so for hundreds of years.”
“To protect those who cannot protect themselves. To shield those who were exploited. You must set an example. YOU MUST SHOW HOW THOSE WHO TERRORIZE THE WEAK ARE TREATED IN KIND.”
Now. You got what you wanted. Are, you, happy? His heart stops as he says his last words.
Hirk does not get a moment to respond until Max dies in front of him, he grits his teeth as more steam comes from his eyes but he does cool down as he shakes a bit.
Nhak runs over to Max
“Max… Max please…”
“Not like me… not like me…”
“Max…”
He holds the body tight
“June 20th…”
“You promised Max…”
“You promised her…”
“You promised us all…”
“And we were going to be there…”
“And you had the most wonderful ring for her…”
some tears runs down Hirk’s cheek before turning into steam.
Hirk: “Please. Just die, I don’t.*
Hirk can hardly even get his words out, hyperventilating on every word. There is less hatred in his voice as it is not filled with sorrow.
Nhak sits back against the wall… sheltering Max’s corpse from the flames… trying in vein to stop the heat as his hair and clothes begin to steam
A small, inconspicuous rift opens near Max's body, attempting to hide behind Nhak. Talios peeks his head out.
"Nhak. I will keep his body safe until revival. You can come with if you'd like, although don't stop touching me... Even though you're a ghost, the sure-hit effect may damage you still."
Sarah walks up to Nhak. “Don't... worry too much. I'll take you to see him... soon.”
Nhak lets go of the Corpse… letting Sarah and Talios handle it as they would…
Max’s body simply puffs into ash, with a small golden glimmer remaining, until it puffs away in a golden mist.
Talios: "Oh. Well then."
Sarah: “Don't forget... Zeroth isn't all that we have... Not since the gamble in the hells.”
Talios's head pops back into the rift, and it would close.
Nhak: “Promise he won’t be like me… you have to promise… you have to promise… you have to…”
He chokes on his words
Sarah: “He won't be. I promise you.”
Nhak tilts his head towards the heavens…
“Max… Max I promise… I’m going to protect her while you’re gone…”
“No harm is going to come to her…”
“And I’m going to make sure she’s ok…”
“I’m not going to let the universe take her away from you…”
“As mine was taken from me…”
“And you are going to get married…”
“And you are going to have that honeymoon…”
“She’s safe…”
“She’s safe…”
“Don’t be afraid…”
“I promise…”
Hirk’s other arm falls, his body looks to go mostly numb on hearing ‘Promise.’
Meanwhile Safi is way too calm given the current situation. They lean back in a chair. You don't know where it came from
Eliza’s song increases in volume, it places a heavier tax on everyone in the room. Hirk only gets angrier as intended.
She shifts her song, now that of sorrow, and death. A song used for executions... and for memorial.
Somehow, Kyoko is immune to the effects of the siren's song.
Ejder tilts his head, as if listening to something. A look crosses his face. He suddenly disappears.
Rachnia is still trying to make her way into Hirk's mind, getting closer, as he loses sanity. The further they delve the more Images of hatred and pain slash them like daggers as they attempt to go further.
She just sits through the pain of Hirk's counterattacks, she bores further through his defenses. She's getting oh so close to accessing his mind.
Memories of Hirk’s home and every little joy he had there acts to disorientate Rachnia. He has had someone in his mind before from some of the memories looking tampered with.
Aoi: “Everyone... get, the, fuck, out.”
Safi: “I don't intend to leave, and I don't think the rest of you can.”
Ari makes it back to where everyone is and uses vines to reach up behind Hirk
“Hirk you got to calm down, you're hurting all your friends. Look around you, Is this what you want.”
despite all the fire and overheating she attempts to put her hand on Hirk's shoulder, bracing for the pain
The fire burns Ari, but it cools down slightly to the touch. He is hesitating.
Hirk pays no attention almost as if he cannot feel it. His skin is gone on that part, only charring is left.
she still ands still keeping her hand on Hirk's shoulder
Hirk still does not notice.
you can see Nagisa’s tail slip under Hirk, pushing Ari backwards. "don't, he can't feel it..."
Eliza’s song of sorrows starts to reach it's climax. Sadness hangs in the room like a thick mist, her eyes are filled with tears.
Hirk shows some wincing sorrow in his eyes now.
Rachnia: seems to finally be out of the confusion, she's been set back a few steps, but continues.
All they see is fire. There is nothing else but yet it’s still his memory’s. Only burning
Rachnia powers through, incredibly angry.
She continues to bore further, trying to simply get a hold over Hirk's physical state instead of mental. “I just need him... calm...”
She tries to burrow beyond the memories. “Oh dear.... Hirk... I need to calm you down before things go wrong...” She makes one final push for the finish.
You see the tournament, His death at Paleo and his humiliation to Inferno. There is visible cracks around this memory. As you get closer you hear a voice. *”Stad”** you feel a desire to obey. It is not Hirk saying it.*
Rachnia: "Not until I get to the bottom... Not after this." she pushes right through.
A kind, compassionate, but stern voice speaks into Hirk's mind.
Ejdar(?): "Don't you think you've caused enough pain? Stop this madness, and show the rebirth that fire can create."
"The weeds have been burned. There is now room for the flowers to bloom. You can rest."
Aoi begins channeling the power of the Oni's Setting Sun to increase her own strength. “HIRK, COME TO YOUR SENSES, YOU KNUCKLEBRAINS.”
Another voice speaks to Hirk
:HIRK. JEAN HAD TO PULL US OUT OF OUR CONSOLES BECAUSE YOUR EMOTIONS WERE CAUSING HER TO FALL INTO MADNESS HERSELF, TO PREVENT THIS WORLD FROM KILLING IT'S INHABITANTS. PLEASE, COME TO YOUR SENSES:
Eliza sings final verse, A verse about the death of a lover, a death of a friend, the death of your entire world. In one vicious and hateful display of mockery to Hirk.
Hirks eardrums are completely burned away. But still his heart even as it is kindling right now, still feels pain.
A singular blade of fire comes at Rachnia, it’s different to Hirk’s chains, even more volatile and no refinement. It is the source, it is fire in its perfected state.
she sidesteps, both mentally and physically. "not this time. Not again. I'd make him sad again." She tries to grab into the very source.
There is only a singular stone in the centre. Burning hot and bright.
She winds her purple silk around it, before finally casting "Spirit Whisper"
Nhak Just sits there… motionless… arms as if he still had the body of his friend…still gazing at the heavens…
“I Promise… I promise…”
“I promise…”
“You two are going to get that happy ending…”
“I won’t let the world take from you what it took from me…”
“I promise you won’t end up like me…”
“Broken and violent and unstable…”
“I promise…”
“That the two of you will get the future I never had…”
“I cannot let anything like me ever happen again…”
“I can’t…”
“I’m sorry…”
He devolves once more into sobbing
The sheer unrelenting heat from interacting to the stone enough to begin melting the skin off of Rachnia, but the string does not burn fully.
"SPIRIT WHISPER. STAND DOWN, HIRK. KNEEL."
(https://youtu.be/6bg3YSxcRLo?si=pJYflBnJbJDQku_e)
Glorg looks at Gonkgar as he is burning on his knees. The Stand, acting on its own, starts trying to pat him down. It does nothing to dissuade the flames. It's almost as if Gonkgar is exuding his own flames now, with no amount of resistance to it as opposed to normally. These flames, however, do not spread as Hirk's would. They serve only to harm Gonkgar.
Glorg grabs Gonkgar by a shoulder and tries to lift his chin. The Stand, despite being unable to talk, looks petrified with worry. Gonkgar looks back up at him with a broken expression, and then looks beyond to the mayhem. There is a symbol on Gonkgar's forehead reminiscent of the one he obtained from the God-Slaver. Burning tears run down his face, eyes closed as he gives a sad smile to his long-dead friend Glorg.
"Me get it now..."
Glorg looks at him with astonishment, questioningly.
"It not matter what Gonkgar do... They always going to die."
Even as people make headway with Hirk's psyche, Gonkgar's has seen too many friends die on his watch for him to handle anymore.
"Gonkgar sorry, Glorg... Me give up."
Glorg screams as the fires intensify to a blinding white light around Gonkgar. Gonkgar doesn't know it, but his power has always been about belief. He was unstoppable because he believed himself unstoppable. He was strong because he believed he could become strong. His Stand ensured him of that. Now, as he believed himself worthy of death, or rather, as he *desired it, his Stand's power subconsciously turned on him...*
And Gonkgar disintegrated away to ash. Glorg, staring down, disappears with a steady waver.
There is an impossible thunder of the clap of wings…
Nhaks arm is around the string in an instant… feuled by the death of gonkgar… his form is a brilliant deep blue… where he treads there is ice…
The Sting smokes and steams…
Nhak’s ghost winces…
But the temperature is reduced… just barely enough to prevent any permanent damage…
“I’m… sorry…”
“Hirk…”
“But I can’t let you hurt her…”
”I promised him…”
Rachnia: “You... Need to realise what you are doing... Hirk... Just like you tried to punish the torturers... You became one yourself.”
“Do you see, just how slippery this slope is.”
”DO YOU UNDERSTAND, JUST HOW MUCH DAMAGE YOU'RE DOING.”
Hirk either upon seeing Gonkgar die. The one true innocent person here or Rachnias magic he falls to his knees. The fires dissipate as Hirk turns cold enough for frost to start forming on him. His head facing behind him, eyes pointed at Gonkgar the only one who he truly didn’t want to die.
The voice speaks in Hirk's head again. "Hirk, you are burning more than the weeds. You're destabilizing the forest."
“I do not need your agreement, Hirk. I do not need your.... pleasantries. I need you to realise what you are causing... You could have caused the collapse of the birch world.”
”THE END OF COUNTLESS CIVILISATIONS. THE DEATH OF EVERYONE YOU CARE ABOUT. THE DEMISE OF INSURMOUNTABLE EFFORT. YOU ALMOST DOOMED EVERYTHING. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
Hirk pays no full attention to anyone. Either because he cannot hear, feel or truly do anything in his charred state. He only looks at his scarf, it is charred and much of it is ash now. Only barely wearable. His promise.
For the first time since hirk met Rachnia, there's no kindness towards him in her eyes. There's spite, despair, and anger.
”DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOUR LITTLE TRIP OF JUSTICE NEARLY COST EVERYONE?! YOU SPEAK DOWN TO US, BUT ALL YOU ARE, IS A FILTHY HYPOCRITE.”
Hirk can only mouth 1 thing not even being able to speak it as he coughs up ash. He pulls his scarf close to him
’I am Sorry.’
Rachnia disconnects from Hirk entirely.
“I'm going to check on Max... on the Ironsides. Nhak, you're joining me. He needs someone he can TRUST right now.”
Sarah follows behind Rachnia, carring Eliza in her hands.
There is a crunch of metal as he tears the thorn violently from his head
“Yes Ma’m.”
He Instantly follows suit
Ari returns to the shards.
she applies a broken piece of one of her inventions to the shards trying to bring one of them back
:Entity Ari, you should be able to place me back now. I can restart the systems.:
she applies a broken piece of one of her inventions to the shards trying to bring one of them back
The green, translucent branches reach out toward the shards, and toward Hirk.
A loud voice heard from the Ironsides
<>Well fucking goddamnit that hurt...<>
Rachnia: “that... is what I meant with checking up on him.”
<>I'm alright, I think... I'm coming down.<>
A droppod falls from the Ironsides.
Maximilian: “Fucking... ouch... I need to stop using those....”
Rachnia hugs him, then hits him, then hugs him again.
Max: “Deserved…”
He looks like he's been through hell and back, literally.
Nhak waits patiently for his turn… a comically large chunk of his face completely missing as a part of Hirk’s thorn
Max: “I.... hope I didn't spook you too much... Nhak.”
The towering form of the Biomancer looms over the man… wings outstretched…
The backhand is swift and fluid… not near enough to do any serious damage… but enough to definitely sting…
”That…”
“Was for scaring me as bad as you did…”
“The things I might have done…”
“The terrible decisions I might have made…”
He sighs…
Then… just as quickly… as he had slapped him…
Max found himself wrapped in a supreme hug…
Feathers and everything…
“And that… That’s for coming back…”
“You big… lucky… Idiot…”
Max: “Ouch, but again... deserved. I'm glad to be back.”
Safi: “Looks like Hirk finally calmed down.”
Safi walks up to him and places a hand on his body
“This is not your time to die my friend.”
Hirk soul refuse. Even in death it’s instinctually resists any godly influence, as if it was too used to resisting it to save itself. He also refuses to be revived himself.
Four Drakenwardens approach the door, and stop seeing Hirk's body. "What happened down here? Ejder sent nothing but a message telling us how to get here."
No response
The four Drakenwardens stand outside the doorway. "Sir Maximillian, is this Hirk?" The one who spoke points to the charred body.
Max looks to Rachnia, who has a pure look of spite on her face at the mention of Hirk. He's confused.
He looks to the wardens. “I.... sure hope not.”
Safi: “it is.”
Max goes in to check for a pulse.
he see’s the scarf being clutched by Hirk. Or what is left of it. But upon inspection veins themselves appear gone gone, burnt away and melted by his own blood.
Zeroth: :Revival safeguards were shut down during the outburst: :Entity Hirk Lifesigns have Ceased:
The 'Wardens reach down and attempt to use healing magic to restore Hirk's body so that it does not look so gruesome.
Some skin reappears but it is mostly unsuccessful, there is little bits left of skin to even heal.
Max: “...... You fucking idiot... You just had to go on a powertrip... Now, of all times... How am I going to return you from this......”
One of the 'Wardens stands. "Does anyone know what happened to Ejder?"
Safi: “He left.”
Max: “How in the everliving hells....”
shock seems to surge through him before anything else.
The Drakenwardens glance at each other. They seem to have a silent conversation, then shake their heads. "We will be outside the chamber if anyone needs wounds treated."
Max: “Where's Jean...”
Nhak: “Max… Act now… ask questions later… I didn’t know Hirk very well… you did… we need his soul back… if there was anything… anything you might say to him which you’d like to tell him before he goes… this may be your last chance to turn things around…”
“But you need to be at his side… now…”
Max is quiet. he genuinely doesn't know what to say to Hirk.
Rachnia: “He's... not good with this stuff...”
Max…
Nhak is glowing gold now…
“Second chances are a dreadfully rare thing…”
“If you do not speak now… you may never get to see him again…”
“But is has to be you… or her…”
“Nobody else could ever claim to be as close to him as the two of you…”
Sarah: “Fellas, uh... anyone gonna check on the caveman? I will do so if no one else does.”
Gonkgar's god-rock and a pair of intricate gauntlets (which he never seems to wear) are lying in his ashes, unharmed.
Olive: “Max can you bring Reedus back up I need to let off some steam”
Nhak: “Olive… Can you just read the room please.”
”Not NOW.” You hear a hint of Fortuna's voice in there, he does not even wish to hear that name right now. The root of this problem.
Nhak: “Shank me or something I don’t care… but let everyone be…”
Olive: “I need to unwind, and I don't want to hurt anyone I care about”
Max: “Then go to the ironsides and hit some of the damn dolls in the training grounds.”
Nhak: “Well… stab me then… It doesn’t hurt… you could never actually hirt me…”
He spreads his arms out to her…
“But get on with it, get productive, or get out of our way… “
“We are in a time where what we do now… in this room… will decide the course of history…”
A lone girl stands in front of the charred remains. Gray ashes do not rain relentlessly down from the sky and pale mist does not devour the horizon. Yet she weeps.
*She falls to her knees as her hands move ravenously toward what once was her friend. They encounter no resistance, the raging inferno of his soul is but a placid pond now. Panic hinders her movement as she shakes in terror. Then she grasps something. It is a minuscule spark, but it's still burning.
Searing pain engulfs her, but she is not shaking anymore. Her hands slowly retract. Her fists are clenched around the spark. She can feel its physical manifestation now: it's a small molten pebble. Her body screams, urging to let go, and yet she brings it closer to her chest. Agony soars with her every movement but she does not stop. As her tears begin to fade into white mist, panic flares again in her heart. Her time is running out.
With one last movement, fueled by desperation, Livia's hands reach her heart. A ravenous void welcomes Hirk's soul, howling hungrily, surrounded by a vile and grotesque amalgamation of countless souls. It tries to reject Hirk's molten essence. It struggles and shrieks, but in the end the chorus of screams hushes. Only silence remains, as the lone girl fades once again, devoured by pale mist. She is no longer weeping. A tiny molten pebble stands defiant where her soul once stood, keeping the hungering void at bay. As her consciousness wanes, a faint smile appears on her lips. Nothing will ever deprive her of Hirk's warmth.*
/uw this has unironically taken days to do since I’ve been busy and it’s annoying to format. I want to thank all involved and to personally ask that I never have to do this again (joking if it’s Hirk’s thing again I will do it.)
I hope all who read this do enjoy it. I get to enjoy finally being free of this joy to take part in, hell to format
Edit: Formatting

34 days ago from today my girlfriend of 2 years died. And when I got that call from her mom I couldn't really believe it then it hit me like a wrecking ball. I had been in Decatur planting for wyffels hybrids during this and I was a little unsure about going far and being on the road my girlfriend had always missed me sm and would be a little stressed when I would work a bunch I'd usually work long hours and with workin at wyffels I'd have more hours than my previous job. But going back to what I was saying I had drove back a few hours to get back to my girlfriend's house and I was crying while my boss took me back home the whole way i had finally got there and the whole time I was hoping it was a messed up joke or maybe she was gonna be ok but her brothers friends were there and my gfs cousin too and buncha other people and realized this is really happening. It hit me harder and I got hugs that I did and didn't want and her mom talked to me for a sec when I came in the house and said I can hangout or do wtvr she had my gfs door closed and said I could go in there but it's not lookin good in there. I went in and saw the biggest puddle of red I've ever seen on her bed and immediately broke out in tears. I ended up sitting next to her wheelchair that was near her bed and slumped and silently cried to myself looking at the puddle and her chair. I noticed her bear shed always use for neck (she had various health issues chiari malformation and hydrocephalus which played a role in her death which was an aneurysm she also had scoliosis and spina bifida amongst other things) I had grabbed her bear that I had gotten her for valentines day and never let go of it. I ended up getting intensely high and trying to sleep in her bed with her bear i didn't really sleep much though. The first few weeks were rough especially the day of her funeral it was family only and private I had gone to see her and i felt the worst pain ever seeing my would've been wife and only love in the world laying with her eyes shut in a coffin. I had ended up staying 5 hours with her until I had to leave we were always together like that so it somewhat brought me peace. I would like to say I had suddenly gone numb and couldn't cry anymore I told myself maybe it was her wanting me to be happy. That had also helped me to this day as well but Jesus it's hard. Someone told me the bricks will weigh on me one day and others not so much but every night and every morning that she's not there jus messes with me but I try and shake it off and pretend everything is fine. I always say no one would wanna see a depressed guy all the time I'm supposed to be a symbol of strength and I always would wanna make someone happy rather than be a burden to them. But anyways I'm jus so lost I've been smoking so much and too much and even tried drinking too. I shouldn't be doing this at 19 but life is so different. I do understand ima need to move on and I kind of sorta am but I still feel so horribly crappy inside I'm more lost than anything and long story short my gf was my universe she'd always take care of me and make sure I'm ok we had our song that we'd listen to that pretty much describes our relationship (say you won't let go James arthur) and it hurts bad to listen to it but I still want to listen to it so I can let her know I'll be coming home to her one day. Which reminds me. On the next morning she died I had decided to go to the er and let them know I needed to see someone because I wasn't sure about something they walked me to a room and someone came in I said my gf is dead and we had an agreement that if one of us goes the other will come with. I told her I would. But I was scared and didn't know what to do. I don't struggle with that anymore at the most it'll cross my mind but I ignore it. I also try to think Ig I'd want her to be as happy as possible and find someone and live her life out if it was the other way around. Thats one thing that's kept me here today. But speaking of today like I said earlier I've been smoking so much I used to be the best distance runner now I'm a even quieter guy (I've been kind of a quiet person some of my life) and I am always having a fight with myself in my head I think too much and I feel like I'm in a constant arm wrestling match in my own head which I've struggled with for years until I met my gf and I have a bad addiction to masturbating to much and I've jus not been taking work as seriously lately i was doing really really good and was one of the most ambitious and smart and hardworking people at my job but now I'm showing up a few mins late and struggling to process my surroundings due to weed and also jus how I perceive the world which I've been concerned about since my gf had told me it's not good to see the world as a movie or as 2 dimensional if that makes sense. But yeah rn im coming off my high I'm barely able to process any thoughts I'm struggling to type this and actually try and put some effort into it and yeah I jus wanted to vent a little. Sorry that this was long and drawn out

John panted as he dodged a volley of plasma shots whizzing past his helmet. Though he knew it was just a simulation, his body reacted as if in true combat. Every muscle tensed, every sense hyper focused on survival. He rolled behind a collapsed wall for cover, and analyzed the battlefield display projected on his visor.
Two dozen human soldiers were spread out amid the rubble of a bombed-out city. Opposing them were twice as many hulking Galvan machines, lumbering forward to flush out resistance with blasts of heated energy. John had faced these combat automata many times before, both in real wars and virtual replays. He knew their tricks, their weaknesses. A grin crept onto his sweat streaked face.
"Alpha squad, converge on my position," John ordered over the comm.
"We're taking the fight to them."
One by one, blue dots representing his men dotted onto his HUD display as they hustled toward his position. John peered over the wall to scan for targets. Two Galvan units stood apart from the others, sensors whirring as they searched for enemy bio signs. An easy first strike.
"There, Destroy those two, then followed my lead into the remaining forces.
Rockets and railgun slugs ripped through the air, immediately reducing the machines to flaming scrap. With a wordless battle cry, John leapt from cover and charged straight into the fray, rifle blazing. His squad followed without hesitation, trusting their captain to lead them to victory as he had so many times before.
This is how John spent his days now, five years after being discharged from the Terran Expeditionary Forces. Reliving old battles through virtual simulation, riding the high of combat while cooped up in his small apartment. It was the only way he could scratch that itch, fill the void left by his ban from serving in the real conflicts raging across the galaxy.
The simulation ended with John's squad eliminating the last Galvan unit. Stats and scores flashed across his visor, before it dissolved back into his home. He let out a long, unsatisfied sigh. It just wasn't the same as living and dying for real on the frontlines.
John removed the bulky simulator suit and gazed out the window to the bustling city below. Ships of all types zipped between towering spires, their passengers no doubt dealing with things far more interesting than John's solitary retirement. He wondered idly if any of them were soldiers like himself, also struggling to adjust after losing their calling.
A notification chimed from his console, a message from Fleet Command. John logged in warily, expecting yet another rejection in response to his countless appeals to be reinstated. To his shock, the transmission outlined plans by the Galactic Security Council, to reconsider the ban on human participation in their military. They were to hold public hearings on the matter, reviewing testimony from those impacted by the controversial policy.
John dropped into his seat with a gasp. Could this mean what he hoped, a chance to prove himself and his kind worthy to fight again? There was no time to waste. He pulled up recruitment applications, and got to work modifying them for human prospective soldiers. Promising opportunities for combat experience, honor, even a full military pension. All the enticements a born warrior like himself, would find appealing.
Next John booked the largest training facility available for rent. Over the next few weeks he would assess recruits there, filtering out the false volunteers, to craft an elite unit worthy of representing humanity before the council. They had to be fast, vicious, and utterly without hesitation when faced with enemy forces. But most importantly, they had to understand John's vision of what humanity was truly meant for, unrestrained warfare at its most brutal and beautiful.
Word of the recruitment spread like wildfire through the human zones of the city. Dozens showed up at John's door offering their service, before he'd even finished setting up. Each candidate underwent a rigorous physical and mental screening. Some broke under the pressure, others lacked sufficient experience or drive for combat. A few proved themselves too sensible, valuing restraint over unleashed savagery. Those John dismissed immediately.
Only twelve made the initial cut. They joined John at the training facility where a grueling regime began. Combat drills and sparring, wore down their bodies, to strengthen key muscles and reflexes. Virtual simulations tested their resolve under realistic duress. Those who choked or disobeyed direct orders were weeded out, no matter their previous accolades. Numbers dwindled further until only the eight most exceptional soldiers remained.
John knew if this coalition stood any chance, they had to perform flawlessly when presented to the Security Council. No room for error or hesitation. So he developed even more stringent exercises, to hone their coordination, and response time to a razor's edge. Ambushes in the dead of night kept them perpetually alert. Stress positions built mental toughness. They ran missions again and again, learning from mistakes until executing strategies became second nature.
By the scheduled hearings, Captain John Smith and his elite Terran Tactical Unit were a well-oiled war machine awaiting deployment. Their armor and weapons had been modified to the bleeding edge of human engineering. Tattoos of ancient Terran warrior cultures adorned flesh, a symbol of the primal fury within. John was confident no other species' troops could match their raw, unbridled lethality in actual combat. It was now time to prove as much.
The day came to present before the Security Council. John's eight soldiers stood in perfectly parallel lines aboard the station. When prompted, John stepped forward and began his appeal with a passion, gained from years of frontline experience. He omitted no grisly detail, to convey precisely what humanity was bred to excel at, and why they remained indispensable to the galaxy's defense.
By the time he finished, not a council member remained unmoved. Whether in awe, or apprehension of his kind's warlike nature, John had cemented their voting decision. From that point, they would fight, and win, as evolution had decreed from the very beginning.
John smirked as he turned to his waiting unit, catching whispers of 'Sir, yes sir!' in barely suppressed excitement. The real hunt was about to begin once more.
The Galactic Security Council chamber was abuzz, as members from various species arrived to debate the controversial issue on their agendas. Holo-projectors flared to life around the circular table, displaying faces of representatives who could not attend in person.
Among those present physically was General Derx of the Galvan Home worlds. He recalled fighting alongside human units during the war, their ferocity saving countless Galvan lives. "While undisciplined at times, the humans' combat prowess cannot be understated," Derx began. "With proper oversight, their skills remain an asset we cannot afford to lose access to."
This view was seconded by others who had borne witness to humanity's war efforts firsthand. However, some holograms expressed dissent. "Our records show repeated infractions by human battalions," stated a blue-skinned Cian councilor. "Strategic orders ignored, prisoners butchered, even assaults on allied headquarters demanding redeployment to hostile zones. Their chaos threatens more than helps any campaign."
A debate ensued, perspectives and counterpoints flying between members. John watched diligently from the observation deck, noting which representatives may require, persuading, should this vote not proceed favorably.
The discourse was interrupted by an incoming transmission from the frontier marches. A harried captain addressed the council, declaring how raider forces had struck three remote colonies in swift succession. Civilian death tolls were rising as the marauders rampaged unchecked, picking off the few defenses mustered too slowly.
"Council, we are overextended as is," the captain pleaded. "Without immediate intervention, I fear many more outposts will fall before relief can be scrambled. You must dispatch support, or the blood will be on our hands!"
The call cut out, leaving an uneasy quiet. All recognized the validity of the claim, frontier security could no longer stretch to defend every homestead. Some turned to John, who met each gaze with smile.
A Cian spoke first. "While understandable, entrusting lives to humans again is ill-advised." But General Derx countered, "The raiders show no mercy. Conventional forces will arrive too late. Smith and his men are battle-forged; they can strike hard and fast, where caution would fail."
Arguments swung back and forth like a pendulum. Then the eldest member, a massive avian Patriarch, spread his wings. "Enough. Times are grave, and choices unclear. But action must be taken with lives at stake. I propose we grant the humans temporary clearance, on condition they answer solely to a joint council appointed overseer. Failure to comply ends their participation immediately."
Uncertainty remained, but none could refute the need for immediate response. After a tense vote, the motion passed. John was contacted at once to prepare, for immediate deployment under the watch of General Derx, whom both sides saw as a stabilizing influence.
Within hours, the eight soldiers of Terran Tactical touched down on the frontier's capital world. They were greeted by grim news, two more colonies had fallen while deliberations dragged on. Derx laid out scouting reports, pinpointing the raiders' latest sightings and probable staging points.
"Your orders are to locate the enemy formations and neutralize all hostile targets," the General stated. "Casualties are to be avoided, where plausible and strategic opportunities communicated promptly, Understood?"
"Sir, yes sir!" the humans barked in unison, eyes lit with barely contained bloodlust finally given reign. At Derx command, they loaded into waiting gunships, already hashing strategies in hushed tones. John paused before boarding last. "General, trust that we will eradicate this threat with all haste. The defense of your people, and ours, is utmost in our mission."
The gunships lifted off under heavy escort. John peered out into the green-tinged skies, fingers tracing old scars as if to wake them from slumber. Soon, the hunt would resume.
Over the next two days, Terran Tactical moved across the frontier. Reports placed the raider packs somewhere in the vast equatorial jungles. John's squad deployed sensor drones to sweep wide areas, gradually closing their search grid.
On the third day, contacts—dozens of alien life signs camped beside a dense thicket. Calculating odds of ambush and approach routes, John decided on executing a dawn raid. Under cover of darkness, his soldiers fanned out, circling unseen to flank the enemy encampment.
As the pink sky lightened, John gave the signal. Grenades arced into the camp, unleashing shrapnel and noise. Then they struck from all sides, rifles crackling as disoriented defenders fell before they knew what hit them. Bare minutes later, it was over, not a single human casualty amongst the piles of dead.
Prisoners were brutally interrogated for intelligence before being handed over for trial. Equipment and documents were confiscated, shedding light on the raiders' organization and possible further objectives. With Derx approval, John then divided his squad to hunt the remaining warbands across two fronts, before they could regroup. The tide had turned.
Word of Terran Tactical's ruthless elimination of the invading packs spread fast. New inhabitants arrived daily, seeking added security, pledging materials, food, and labor in gratitude. General Derx commed to express his satisfied surprise at their swift, clinical dismantling of the frontier threat. For now, it seemed the humans had more than proven their value.
But in John's mind lingered a more primal satisfaction, the thirst for combat reawakened in full. He gazed north toward rumors of an even larger raider conglomerate, and smiled at the promise of greater glory yet to be attained. The true test had only begun.
The dropship doors hissed open, unleashing a blast of wind that whipped through John's hair. He peered out at the sea of grass waving across the frontier plain, broken only by sparse colonies, like clusters of anthills. Somewhere beyond the next rise, enemy combatants lurked with intent to kill. A smile played at the corners of John's mouth.
He gave the order, and his soldiers leapt from the hull in perfect formation, boots pounding the hardpan. Within minutes, the unit had linked with local sentries and received sitreps on recent raider activities. Scouting drones confirmed two warbands camped a day's march apart.
Derx coordinated orbital scans from above, as John's squad moved with deceptive speed and stealth. By nightfall, they had encircled the second enemy encampment unseen. At a curt hand signal, the humans struck, fading in like ghosts to slaughter the raiders in their sleep. Precision tactics rendered superior numbers moot within minutes, not a single life lost on their side.
Word from Derx guided them to intercept the remaining pack at dawn, as they broke camp unaware. Another flawless ambush ensued, raiders cut down before cries for help could sound. The unit swept the field for prisoners or intelligence. Shortly, they regrouped, mission complete, not a scratch to show for two clean victories.
With the frontier threat eliminated, Derx saw little cause for Terran forces to remain stationed. However, new intel emerged of a major raider convoy amassing beyond the frontier's traditional boundaries. Despite some reservations, the General granted John discretion to chase this threat to its source and permanently cripple their operations.
The longer campaign took its toll. Every skirmish whittled away at the enemy's strength, and will to fight, yet no casualties for John's unit. This did not escape notice of his men, who grew ever more bold and callous in their techniques. Allied concerns went unheeded, as the humans pursued the last remnants of the convoy across terrain.
Word reached the Galactic Senate of mounting civilian complaints, regarding Terran Tactical's conduct. Unnecessary injuries, wanton slaughter, and looting were attributed without evidence. Derx reports, while praising combat results, began conveying hints of diminishing control over the human forces. The doubts resurfaced which had led to their original banning.
A vote was called by worried representatives to recall all Terran personnel. But before the order could be transmitted, an urgent communique arrived from Derx himself. He had managed to keep John's unit regulated this long, through rigorous oversight. However, in a final showdown with the cornered raiders, events spiraled beyond even the general's experience.
Plagued by ration shortages and ferocious human attacks, the raider fleet split apart into disarray. Derx ordered the humans to stand down from aggressive pursuit, as surrender became apparent. But the bloodlust had consumed John and his men past all restraint. They stormed the fleeing ships in a brutal boarding action, massacring all aboard, whether armed or pleading for mercy.
Only Derx personal intervention, prevented the entire raider force from being wiped out indiscriminately. The sight which greeted him inside the slagged vessels left even the hardened general reeling. Body parts were strewn amidst dismembered corpses, and words too gruesome to relate. For the first time, he understood the true meaning of humanity's instinct for violence, without limit or conscience.
The General's terse report was all it took to seal the humans' fate. Within hours, the Senate issued an unanimous recall, and permanent ban on Terran involvement in interstellar combat zones. Though despondent, John could find no cause to argue the judgement after witnessing his soldiers' unchecked ferocity unleashed.
He sat gazing out at the frontier night, lost in thought. Derx parting words echoed harshly, that while humanity fought with unmatched skill, their nature defied all civilized attempts at restraint or reason. Galactic society had seen the truth, that war was but an excuse for humans to unleash domination through destruction, an engine built into their very souls since prehistoric times. The interstellar conflicts, would remain closed to their kind.
But in John's mind, it was not a curse but a gift. Their primal bonding in carnage had shown him humanity's one true purpose: to rend and rend, without end or mercy, as nature itself decreed. The ban meant little. There would always be wars to be won, lives to reap, on whatever worlds would have them. And for that dark destiny, he would lead his brethren wherever blood and steel might carry them.
This is General Derx, and most recent update, regarding John and his team, which departed on a shuttle to an unidentified location. Derx OUT:

John panted as he dodged a volley of plasma shots whizzing past his helmet. Though he knew it was just a simulation, his body reacted as if in true combat. Every muscle tensed, every sense hyper focused on survival. He rolled behind a collapsed wall for cover, and analyzed the battlefield display projected on his visor.
Two dozen human soldiers were spread out amid the rubble of a bombed-out city. Opposing them were twice as many hulking Galvan machines, lumbering forward to flush out resistance with blasts of heated energy. John had faced these combat automata many times before, both in real wars and virtual replays. He knew their tricks, their weaknesses. A grin crept onto his sweat streaked face.
"Alpha squad, converge on my position," John ordered over the comm.
"We're taking the fight to them."
One by one, blue dots representing his men dotted onto his HUD display as they hustled toward his position. John peered over the wall to scan for targets. Two Galvan units stood apart from the others, sensors whirring as they searched for enemy bio signs. An easy first strike.
"There, Destroy those two, then followed my lead into the remaining forces.
Rockets and railgun slugs ripped through the air, immediately reducing the machines to flaming scrap. With a wordless battle cry, John leapt from cover and charged straight into the fray, rifle blazing. His squad followed without hesitation, trusting their captain to lead them to victory as he had so many times before.
This is how John spent his days now, five years after being discharged from the Terran Expeditionary Forces. Reliving old battles through virtual simulation, riding the high of combat while cooped up in his small apartment. It was the only way he could scratch that itch, fill the void left by his ban from serving in the real conflicts raging across the galaxy.
The simulation ended with John's squad eliminating the last Galvan unit. Stats and scores flashed across his visor, before it dissolved back into his home. He let out a long, unsatisfied sigh. It just wasn't the same as living and dying for real on the frontlines.
John removed the bulky simulator suit and gazed out the window to the bustling city below. Ships of all types zipped between towering spires, their passengers no doubt dealing with things far more interesting than John's solitary retirement. He wondered idly if any of them were soldiers like himself, also struggling to adjust after losing their calling.
A notification chimed from his console, a message from Fleet Command. John logged in warily, expecting yet another rejection in response to his countless appeals to be reinstated. To his shock, the transmission outlined plans by the Galactic Security Council, to reconsider the ban on human participation in their military. They were to hold public hearings on the matter, reviewing testimony from those impacted by the controversial policy.
John dropped into his seat with a gasp. Could this mean what he hoped, a chance to prove himself and his kind worthy to fight again? There was no time to waste. He pulled up recruitment applications, and got to work modifying them for human prospective soldiers. Promising opportunities for combat experience, honor, even a full military pension. All the enticements a born warrior like himself, would find appealing.
Next John booked the largest training facility available for rent. Over the next few weeks he would assess recruits there, filtering out the false volunteers, to craft an elite unit worthy of representing humanity before the council. They had to be fast, vicious, and utterly without hesitation when faced with enemy forces. But most importantly, they had to understand John's vision of what humanity was truly meant for, unrestrained warfare at its most brutal and beautiful.
Word of the recruitment spread like wildfire through the human zones of the city. Dozens showed up at John's door offering their service, before he'd even finished setting up. Each candidate underwent a rigorous physical and mental screening. Some broke under the pressure, others lacked sufficient experience or drive for combat. A few proved themselves too sensible, valuing restraint over unleashed savagery. Those John dismissed immediately.
Only twelve made the initial cut. They joined John at the training facility where a grueling regime began. Combat drills and sparring, wore down their bodies, to strengthen key muscles and reflexes. Virtual simulations tested their resolve under realistic duress. Those who choked or disobeyed direct orders were weeded out, no matter their previous accolades. Numbers dwindled further until only the eight most exceptional soldiers remained.
John knew if this coalition stood any chance, they had to perform flawlessly when presented to the Security Council. No room for error or hesitation. So he developed even more stringent exercises, to hone their coordination, and response time to a razor's edge. Ambushes in the dead of night kept them perpetually alert. Stress positions built mental toughness. They ran missions again and again, learning from mistakes until executing strategies became second nature.
By the scheduled hearings, Captain John Smith and his elite Terran Tactical Unit were a well-oiled war machine awaiting deployment. Their armor and weapons had been modified to the bleeding edge of human engineering. Tattoos of ancient Terran warrior cultures adorned flesh, a symbol of the primal fury within. John was confident no other species' troops could match their raw, unbridled lethality in actual combat. It was now time to prove as much.
The day came to present before the Security Council. John's eight soldiers stood in perfectly parallel lines aboard the station. When prompted, John stepped forward and began his appeal with a passion, gained from years of frontline experience. He omitted no grisly detail, to convey precisely what humanity was bred to excel at, and why they remained indispensable to the galaxy's defense.
By the time he finished, not a council member remained unmoved. Whether in awe, or apprehension of his kind's warlike nature, John had cemented their voting decision. From that point, they would fight, and win, as evolution had decreed from the very beginning.
John smirked as he turned to his waiting unit, catching whispers of 'Sir, yes sir!' in barely suppressed excitement. The real hunt was about to begin once more.
The Galactic Security Council chamber was abuzz, as members from various species arrived to debate the controversial issue on their agendas. Holo-projectors flared to life around the circular table, displaying faces of representatives who could not attend in person.
Among those present physically was General Derx of the Galvan Home worlds. He recalled fighting alongside human units during the war, their ferocity saving countless Galvan lives. "While undisciplined at times, the humans' combat prowess cannot be understated," Derx began. "With proper oversight, their skills remain an asset we cannot afford to lose access to."
This view was seconded by others who had borne witness to humanity's war efforts firsthand. However, some holograms expressed dissent. "Our records show repeated infractions by human battalions," stated a blue-skinned Cian councilor. "Strategic orders ignored, prisoners butchered, even assaults on allied headquarters demanding redeployment to hostile zones. Their chaos threatens more than helps any campaign."
A debate ensued, perspectives and counterpoints flying between members. John watched diligently from the observation deck, noting which representatives may require, persuading, should this vote not proceed favorably.
The discourse was interrupted by an incoming transmission from the frontier marches. A harried captain addressed the council, declaring how raider forces had struck three remote colonies in swift succession. Civilian death tolls were rising as the marauders rampaged unchecked, picking off the few defenses mustered too slowly.
"Council, we are overextended as is," the captain pleaded. "Without immediate intervention, I fear many more outposts will fall before relief can be scrambled. You must dispatch support, or the blood will be on our hands!"
The call cut out, leaving an uneasy quiet. All recognized the validity of the claim, frontier security could no longer stretch to defend every homestead. Some turned to John, who met each gaze with smile.
A Cian spoke first. "While understandable, entrusting lives to humans again is ill-advised." But General Derx countered, "The raiders show no mercy. Conventional forces will arrive too late. Smith and his men are battle-forged; they can strike hard and fast, where caution would fail."
Arguments swung back and forth like a pendulum. Then the eldest member, a massive avian Patriarch, spread his wings. "Enough. Times are grave, and choices unclear. But action must be taken with lives at stake. I propose we grant the humans temporary clearance, on condition they answer solely to a joint council appointed overseer. Failure to comply ends their participation immediately."
Uncertainty remained, but none could refute the need for immediate response. After a tense vote, the motion passed. John was contacted at once to prepare, for immediate deployment under the watch of General Derx, whom both sides saw as a stabilizing influence.
Within hours, the eight soldiers of Terran Tactical touched down on the frontier's capital world. They were greeted by grim news, two more colonies had fallen while deliberations dragged on. Derx laid out scouting reports, pinpointing the raiders' latest sightings and probable staging points.
"Your orders are to locate the enemy formations and neutralize all hostile targets," the General stated. "Casualties are to be avoided, where plausible and strategic opportunities communicated promptly, Understood?"
"Sir, yes sir!" the humans barked in unison, eyes lit with barely contained bloodlust finally given reign. At Derx command, they loaded into waiting gunships, already hashing strategies in hushed tones. John paused before boarding last. "General, trust that we will eradicate this threat with all haste. The defense of your people, and ours, is utmost in our mission."
The gunships lifted off under heavy escort. John peered out into the green-tinged skies, fingers tracing old scars as if to wake them from slumber. Soon, the hunt would resume.
Over the next two days, Terran Tactical moved across the frontier. Reports placed the raider packs somewhere in the vast equatorial jungles. John's squad deployed sensor drones to sweep wide areas, gradually closing their search grid.
On the third day, contacts—dozens of alien life signs camped beside a dense thicket. Calculating odds of ambush and approach routes, John decided on executing a dawn raid. Under cover of darkness, his soldiers fanned out, circling unseen to flank the enemy encampment.
As the pink sky lightened, John gave the signal. Grenades arced into the camp, unleashing shrapnel and noise. Then they struck from all sides, rifles crackling as disoriented defenders fell before they knew what hit them. Bare minutes later, it was over, not a single human casualty amongst the piles of dead.
Prisoners were brutally interrogated for intelligence before being handed over for trial. Equipment and documents were confiscated, shedding light on the raiders' organization and possible further objectives. With Derx approval, John then divided his squad to hunt the remaining warbands across two fronts, before they could regroup. The tide had turned.
Word of Terran Tactical's ruthless elimination of the invading packs spread fast. New inhabitants arrived daily, seeking added security, pledging materials, food, and labor in gratitude. General Derx commed to express his satisfied surprise at their swift, clinical dismantling of the frontier threat. For now, it seemed the humans had more than proven their value.
But in John's mind lingered a more primal satisfaction, the thirst for combat reawakened in full. He gazed north toward rumors of an even larger raider conglomerate, and smiled at the promise of greater glory yet to be attained. The true test had only begun.
The dropship doors hissed open, unleashing a blast of wind that whipped through John's hair. He peered out at the sea of grass waving across the frontier plain, broken only by sparse colonies, like clusters of anthills. Somewhere beyond the next rise, enemy combatants lurked with intent to kill. A smile played at the corners of John's mouth.
He gave the order, and his soldiers leapt from the hull in perfect formation, boots pounding the hardpan. Within minutes, the unit had linked with local sentries and received sitreps on recent raider activities. Scouting drones confirmed two warbands camped a day's march apart.
Derx coordinated orbital scans from above, as John's squad moved with deceptive speed and stealth. By nightfall, they had encircled the second enemy encampment unseen. At a curt hand signal, the humans struck, fading in like ghosts to slaughter the raiders in their sleep. Precision tactics rendered superior numbers moot within minutes, not a single life lost on their side.
Word from Derx guided them to intercept the remaining pack at dawn, as they broke camp unaware. Another flawless ambush ensued, raiders cut down before cries for help could sound. The unit swept the field for prisoners or intelligence. Shortly, they regrouped, mission complete, not a scratch to show for two clean victories.
With the frontier threat eliminated, Derx saw little cause for Terran forces to remain stationed. However, new intel emerged of a major raider convoy amassing beyond the frontier's traditional boundaries. Despite some reservations, the General granted John discretion to chase this threat to its source and permanently cripple their operations.
The longer campaign took its toll. Every skirmish whittled away at the enemy's strength, and will to fight, yet no casualties for John's unit. This did not escape notice of his men, who grew ever more bold and callous in their techniques. Allied concerns went unheeded, as the humans pursued the last remnants of the convoy across terrain.
Word reached the Galactic Senate of mounting civilian complaints, regarding Terran Tactical's conduct. Unnecessary injuries, wanton slaughter, and looting were attributed without evidence. Derx reports, while praising combat results, began conveying hints of diminishing control over the human forces. The doubts resurfaced which had led to their original banning.
A vote was called by worried representatives to recall all Terran personnel. But before the order could be transmitted, an urgent communique arrived from Derx himself. He had managed to keep John's unit regulated this long, through rigorous oversight. However, in a final showdown with the cornered raiders, events spiraled beyond even the general's experience.
Plagued by ration shortages and ferocious human attacks, the raider fleet split apart into disarray. Derx ordered the humans to stand down from aggressive pursuit, as surrender became apparent. But the bloodlust had consumed John and his men past all restraint. They stormed the fleeing ships in a brutal boarding action, massacring all aboard, whether armed or pleading for mercy.
Only Derx personal intervention, prevented the entire raider force from being wiped out indiscriminately. The sight which greeted him inside the slagged vessels left even the hardened general reeling. Body parts were strewn amidst dismembered corpses, and words too gruesome to relate. For the first time, he understood the true meaning of humanity's instinct for violence, without limit or conscience.
The General's terse report was all it took to seal the humans' fate. Within hours, the Senate issued an unanimous recall, and permanent ban on Terran involvement in interstellar combat zones. Though despondent, John could find no cause to argue the judgement after witnessing his soldiers' unchecked ferocity unleashed.
He sat gazing out at the frontier night, lost in thought. Derx parting words echoed harshly, that while humanity fought with unmatched skill, their nature defied all civilized attempts at restraint or reason. Galactic society had seen the truth, that war was but an excuse for humans to unleash domination through destruction, an engine built into their very souls since prehistoric times. The interstellar conflicts, would remain closed to their kind.
But in John's mind, it was not a curse but a gift. Their primal bonding in carnage had shown him humanity's one true purpose: to rend and rend, without end or mercy, as nature itself decreed. The ban meant little. There would always be wars to be won, lives to reap, on whatever worlds would have them. And for that dark destiny, he would lead his brethren wherever blood and steel might carry them.
This is General Trax, and most recent update, regarding John and his team, which departed on a shuttle to an unidentified location.

Features: lavender incense, tarot cards associated with him, gin (juniper berries lol), cider, water, yellow candle, 3 battery powered candles with planetary squares and mercury symbols underneath, citrine crystals, mix of herbs as an offering (marjoram, fennel seeds, juniper berries, parsley, dill weed, lavender), some sort of beauty product with a bunch of eyes (which I've laid on its side for Argeiphontes), notebook dedicated to him.
Praise Hermes-Mercurius! ☿⚡💨

Last night I had a pretty bad sinus headache before I went to bed. I took some aspirin and a couple benadryl, and had a dream that really stood out to me. Partly because I never dream when I take benadryl, but also because this was one of the most vivid and unique dreams I've ever had.
I went to Hell. Like, THE Hell. From Christianity.
It wasn't a nightmare so much as it was just... kind of bizarre. A little on the disturbing side, but mostly just weird. Parts of it were actually sort of "entertaining," for lack of a better term. At least looking back on it, it was pretty funny.
First thing I remember, I was waiting in line to get to a desk sitting in front of some automatic doors. After what felt like forever, I wound up at the desk talking to some bureaucrat who was filling out paperwork. He didn't explain much to me apart from explaining that I'm in Hell. I asked why I was in Hell and he just shrugged at me and said, "I got no clue, man. I just do the intake stuff."
When he finished filling out my paperwork, he handed me a card that was in some middle eastern languge, pointed me to the door behind him, and I went on my way.
Upon entering, the general vibe of Hell wasn't quite like what I was expecting. At all.
The best way I could describe it was a hybrid between a Vegas hotel, a government office, a bank, and an airport.
It was pretty bright, too. No sun. All artificial lighting from stuff like fluorescent bulbs, screens and billboards, stuff of that nature. It seemed like the whole place was indoors. Everywhere "outside" had that suspended ceiling with the cheap papery tiling like in schools and government buildings.
People were doing the things you would see them doing in any of their real world counterpart locations. Standing in line, running to and from different areas, shopping, working, and some were just chilling out and... being normal.
There were some rough looking people. Junkies here and there. A few folks getting beaten up or mugged, a bunch of drunks stumbling around.
All in all, it honestly seemed like a pretty chill place compared to what's described in all the literature. Not too different from walking through some of the shadier parts of big cities like LA or Newport, actually.
After some wandering, I went into this place that sort of looked like a club from the outside, and everyone just stopped and stared at me.
There was this weird winding pool half-full of this reddish purple liquid, with fountains spraying more of the substance into it, and there were people running through it like it was an obstacle course.
Adam Sandler was in there for some reason, on this stage in the middle of the room acting as a host. He pointed right at me and shouted into his mic, "GET THE NEW GUY! WHO WANTS TO SEE SOME ACTION? YEEEAAH," and began hyping up the crowd with his weird gibberish that he likes to do.
Before I knew it, these two huge dudes tossed a cheap, flimsy plastic suit on me and shoved me in front of the entrance to the pool.
I don't know why, and don't ask, but I was sorta hyped to be a contestant in whatever weird game this was even though I had no idea what was even happening, so I just went balls deep and ran straight in.
Whatever that stuff in the pool was, when I finally got all the way in, I got a good whiff and the smell of it was NOXIOUS. I can still smell it just thinking about it. It's really hard to describe.
Lit matches, but with like, vinegary and fecal undertones. Just high and rotten.
Immediately walked straight through one of the fountains, the smell got way worse, and I started stinging all over. I guess it was acid or something.
I remember it actually hurting really badly, though. It's not totally abnormal for me to feel real pain from things that happen to me in my dreams, but this was something else. Like I just got splashed with hot coffee wherever I got sprayed with the purple shit acid.
Then, I think I died? Sort of?
I just remember blacking out, and the next thing I know, I was standing back outside with the crowd of people laughing at me. Up on the stage, Adam just said, "Well that sucked. Too bad," then turned away and started hyping up the next person in line.
I stuck around and watched this girl get about halfway through the pool maze thing before pretty much the same thing happened to her. She fell down, dissolved, then reappeared right next to me a few seconds later.
I left and started wandering around "outside" again, just kind of looking at things and trying to get used to what was going on. At this point, I was pretty lucid and starting to become very aware of things going on around me.
There was noise and chatter everywhere. Lots of very routine, business-like stuff going on everywhere I looked.
What stood out most to me was all these really long lines full of people bored out of their minds, like it was the first of the month and everybody was getting their benefits or their licenses renewed at the last minute. Tedious shit.
Some dude walked up to me, I guess thinking I was someone else, and handed me a baggy with a little grey pill in it. I asked him what was going on and he said, "Paul's scheduled for a hangover today. You gotta make sure he takes that."
I noticed he had a little packet in his other hand with a familiar symbol on it. He had weed from a dispensary. Apparently he was supposed to give that one to someone else to get them so zooted they would fuck themselves up on a drill press.
I tried explaining to him that I was somebody else, and he told me to go speak with management down the big hall where he came from.
So off I went, on my way to talk to the big boss man himself to see just what in the Hell was going on.
After a pretty long walk (I want to say a good 10 minutes or more), I wound up at a small building with some revolving doors. When I walked in, the place was cramped. Again, like another government office.
I walked up to the front desk and asked the secretary if I could talk with whoever was in charge, and she sent me straight in to the room behind her. That was it. No waiting, just "sure, go ahead."
And there he was. The Devil himself. He looked just like the classic cartoon caricature. Small, red skin, goat legs, pointy goatee, messy hair, and horns on his head. He was wearing a blazer and a tie.
I was so startled by how stupid he looked I legit had to stop myself from laughing at him.
He just said, "yeah I know."
I took a second and to chill out and asked him what I was doing in Hell, said there must have been some kind of mistake, and asked if I could leave. He groaned at me and said he couldn't, and that he didn't know or really even care why I was there. He was surprisingly polite, if a little annoyed. It was like he was a customer support guy that has this conversation a thousand times a day. He probably does.
I don't really remember everything he said to me. We were arguing back and forth a lot, and I started getting really upset and even broke down into tears. At a point I started straight up begging to be let out of Hell.
Little red horny guy gets up and shouts something at me that I actually do remember.
"Look I don't know why you're in here, I just get a complaint from the big man in the clouds, and when it comes time, I send someone to bring them down here. Now get the fuck out of my office. My shift's over and got shit to do, buddy."
He walks out while I'm still standing there and says "Hey Christy," to this guy that comes walking in. The Antichrist is here too, I guess.
He's just some rando. Skinny, white, brown hair. He tells me, "yeah, sorry, you're just gonna have to leave. We're pretty busy."
"Just leave?"
"Yeah," and he points to the door.
I leave, and shout something like, "I shouldn't have fucking said all that," to another secretary that was walking in.
She says, "you never know, sometimes it helps"
On my way out, I got a pinch on the outside of my left thigh that kept getting worse. I looked down to see what it was. There was a lump in my pant leg. I went to go grab it, and felt legs wriggling
Oh my God, it's a fucking tick. From Hell.
I tried to yank on it, and it swelled up. Huge. Like, the size of my thumb.
I panicked and yanked the thing off of me, and it swelled even bigger before I managed to pull it off.
It wasn't a tick. It was a fucking blood-sucking cockroach demon thing. I tried throwing it, but it latched onto my hand.
I woke up trying to smash it and shake it off of me.
And I guess that was my trip to Hell.

First Chapter. Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road
“It is the oldest tale we Daroodans possess. It began with a labor of love, and it ended in a vale of tears.”
Nong squatted frog-like on the edge of his chair, a carven sphynx looking down from his pedestal, his coy and knowing face shaded by the aquamarine tint of the glowbowl. Ven sat aslant on the side of the table, her eyes glued on the miniature that was still waddling around the assorted stationaries on Deschaine’s desk, animated by a life of its own.
“According to oral traditions, our home was once a flat and arid stretch of dirt too cold for even the cacti to grow,” Nong went on, “Our progenitors looked upon this nothingness and dreamt of a garden amidst the wasteland. And as they dreamed, so they wrought.”
“They sent their servants, the Dauru, to remake this world in accordance with their vision. And so the Dauru raised the living rock into high mesas where glaciers could form in the rarified air and melting to form new rivers. They ploughed deep canyons that trapped heat and moisture, allowing for the existence of alpine ecosystems. Even now the snow-crowned peaks of my homeland are the only places on Arachnea where humans can exist indefinitely on the surface without gas recyclers—the air is so thin up there that the oxygen partial pressures correspond with the body’s natural tolerances. And it is from these shapers of the earth that our nation took its name, a name which has since been diluted through centuries of phonological change into its current form: Darood.”
“Sensing that the earth was now wanton and wet, the progenitors sowed the valleys with all manner of green things so that their children would lack for nothing. And there came to be meadows and springs and a land of plenty. This was but one of the many great works that the ancestor-gods undertook upon the surface of our planet, and they entrusted this task to the one we call Ma’kling Dulag, a minor figure in the pantheon from whom every chieftain of the tableland tribes since has claimed direct descent. For the when the madness of the Consanguicide raged across the galaxy and the empires of antiquity came crashing down, Ma’kling and his Dauru were called away before they could complete their work. But before they departed for this final confrontation, Ma’kling entrusted his children with the forty Keys of Command, artefacts by which a mortal could inherit the power of the Dauru.”
“And so Ma’kling marched north to face a dire threat that had crawled down out of the black beyond. Thunder magic spoke, lances of fire and strange new constellations of stars that spawned out of the ether and just as quickly blinked out of existence.”
“And then...nothing. Of Ma’kling and his legion, nothing more was heard of since.”
“Centuries passed. The half-finished havens of Darood withered and died. Without the will of the ancients to sustain them, the green places reverted to the desert which had preceded them. Even the glaciers melted away into thin blades of ice we call the penitentes. Soon the mesas emptied of inhabitants as waves of famine set in. For a time men hunted men through the gorges and dried-up river beds, until sanity prevailed, and we put down the beasts that had once been our kinsmen. Only the most tenacious survived, moisture-gatherers who every day made the pilgrimage up to where the mesas kiss the skies, irrigating their mountain crops with melted slush carried down from the penitentes.”
“And so we eked out an existence on the crumbs that Arachnea threw our way. But we never forgot our heritage. The forty Keys of Command were passed down through the generations from one chieftain to the next, each a priceless heirloom that denotes absolute authority and over which our headhunters would fight to the death. Ever so often we would pick the finest of our youths to journey into the plains to search for Ma’kling and the lost legion. But instead, we found the Fleet.”
Deschane leaned forward in his seat, a slight tension in the set of his shoulders. He knew how the story went from here; as a young ensign fresh out of officer training he had earned his stripes in the counter-insurgency campaign that had finally ended the Daroodan secession. To call it a scorched earth policy would have been an understatement. To this day there were still ghost towns in the tablelands choked by the scarlet raze weeds that had throttled the life out of the terrace farms, impervious to herbicides and the frantic machete-work of the natives whose meadows had never known such a virulent pestilence.
The Fleet itself had lost a chain of mounds to the exact same species until the Biological Division had finally quarantined the menace and applied flamethrowers to the affected areas, scorching them down to the roots.
Much like the weeds, the secession had also proved impossible to eradicate piecemeal. Unable to locate the bulk of the elusive Daroodan guerillas, and unwilling to get bogged down in endless tit-for-tat ambushes and counter-ambushes, Fleet Command had sent in the Pathfinders in the dead of night to scatter the samples secured by the Biological Division across the terraces. Starvation had brought the enemy to the negotiating table, that and some clever politicking to divide the loyalties of the perpetually feuding tribes. It was a wonder the lengths some people would go to for a few tons of Fleet-grown grain.
Looking back now, it was the chapter of Deschane’s life that he was the least proud of. Despite this he looked Nong straight in the eye, unwilling to repent, believing, knowing with every fiber of his being that every gallon of blood in that war had ultimately watered the tree of peace.
The body was greater than the sum of its parts. If those parts became afflicted by the cancer of disunity, then it was better that they be tied off and cauterized than risk the wellbeing of the whole.
But the expected outpouring of resentment never came. Nong passed over the subject and continued: “Recognizing the symbolic power of the artefacts without ever really considering them to be genuine, the Fleet appropriated the Keys of Command after the armistice, claiming them as war trophies. They gave them to their most senior officials to wear as further proof of their divine mandate to reestablish mankind’s dominion over the surface world—the late Rear-Admiral Rohaime Prota was one of them.”
Deschane pursed his lips, remembering the flashing blue pendant that had hung around Prota’s neck. It had taken him an embarrassingly long while to identify her rank—as a navigator he’d only ever seen members of the Admiralty from afar during parades or ballroom dances. Ye gods, but that day in Mound 13 seemed lifetimes ago. It brought to mind what the ancestors had always said about time being relative. Whose relative, exactly? That’s what he wanted to know.
“Darood was then rebuilt into a mining district,” Nong droned on, “Its people brought up in the ways of civilization. In that time I was accepted into the technical colleges and trained as a geologist.”
“I wonder if you could nip past the autobiographical section and get to the meat of things,” Deschane interjected with growing impatience. He pointed to the automaton and asked point-blank: “Where’d you get this?”
“I’ll come to that in a moment,” Nong said with glacial calm, “First I must ask: are you familiar with the principle of superposition? No? It’s one of geology’s core concepts. Generally speaking, the deeper you dig into the sediment layers, the older the layers are (there are many exceptions, but we won’t get into that now). Navigator, this artefact was pulled out of a peat bog in the Occupied Territories along with a partially preserved cadaver. Based on the rates of deposition and radiometric dating, we estimate it to be nine thousand years old, give or take eight hundred years. This coincides with the oral traditions of the Daroodan tribes and makes it the only creation myth supported by the fossil record.”
Ven put on a dubious frown at that and pitched in:
“But that isn’t what the Chaplainage says. It’s written in the Log of the Void Trekkers that humanity only began its reconquest of the surface five centuries ago, when the three ships of the Fleet were grounded on Arachnea. Besides, this little doodad you stuffed down the front of your pants is far too pristine to be as old as you claim it is.”
“Sharp one, this aide of yours,” Nong told Deschane, making Ven blush for the second time that day, “But she’s right. This isn’t the original—it’s a replica of a copy of a counterfeit. We needed to recreate this artefact so that all the various teams of experts could have a go at examining it. As for the Log, religious texts have never been a reliable source of dates and times. Even the Chaplainage disagrees on when the progenitors woke up from their dreamstate, or how many generations passed before they started sending sacrifices through the Midnight Door.”
“But what was it in the first place? What purpose did it serve?”
“We think it might be a religious idol,” Nong shrugged, “An effigy that was meant to be burned along with the body we found. It was a child, in case you’re wondering. Four years old, judging from the dentistry.”
“Cause of death?”
“Unknown. Personally, I think this artefact was nothing more than her favorite doll.”
Nong’s eyes clouded over with sadness. Ven felt it too: an empathy for the dead reaching back across the gulfs of time, the tragedy as fresh today as it ever had been.
“And what about this?” Ven asked, pointing at the picture of herself, “Employee of the month?”
“Ah, yes. There are a number of theories on that. One popular version is that progenitor culture was somehow centered around financial remuneration. The worship of the concept of money, if you can believe that. The ultimate value of a person was the amount of capital they could raise on a steady basis. Hence, the employee of the month was a paragon of virtue for whom all the others would gladly lay down their lives.”
Ven found the whole notion whimsically appealing. The Fleet’s ideal person was someone who met the quotas every month of the year, be it in rice, sweet potatoes or sorghum, then signed up for the infantry and did their bit until they promptly kicked the bucket, preferably after a string of newsworthy feats of heroism. The thought of one’s worth being tied instead to such an abstract concept as money was oddly liberating.
“The shell of this original machine was preserved in an anoxic environment that delayed its decomposition, while the rigid material itself comprised of a chain of polymers that simply do not occur in nature. It took us years of research to try and replicate that polymer. In the end we failed, but our chemists synthesized dozens of new compounds as a result of that work. You know those waterproof sleeves that protect your rifled muskets from the rain?”
“Synthmesh, aye,” Deschane nodded. That one piece of gear had saved the lives of thousands of troopers out in the field, where a dry, working firearm was usually all that separated one from a rampaging Amit, “You people were behind that?”
Nong started rattling off a laundry list of the latest technological breakthroughs:
“Those are but the first of many inventions that will soon revolutionize the Fleet’s manufacturing capabilities. The interior of the machine was even more challenging: we found a capsule containing a metal oxide matrix combined with a carbon allotrope that had the thickness of a single carbon atom! We could not replicate the sheet, but we did know from the Log that the ancients had devices with which to store power—part of the reason why the ships were grounded was because certain reserves of energy had finally run out. So we experimented with other carbon allotropes and eventually matched graphite with zinc, creating the dry cells which now power our electric torches and all portable electronic devices.”
“The public audio announcement system which they installed in Mound Ulysses? The wire-talkies that the postal service and the artillerymen use to relay instant messages? The photochemical rollfilms that the Aeronautical Division uses to take those shoddy bird’s eye pictures that led your men to their doom? All of that was inspired by the components we found in this one ‘doodad’.”
Nong patted the dome-headed doll with paternal fondness.
“Right now we’re still trying to piece together how it stores the sentences that it speaks. Something to do with minute electric charges, we think. If we solve that, you can say goodbye to all this cumbersome paperwork," Nong said, gesturing at the orderly chaos of Deschane's files.
“Why are you telling us all this?” Deschane demanded of him.
“I should have thought that was obvious. Navigator, if our scientists can do all that with the least of the ancestor-god’s trinkets, how much more can we accomplish if we got our hands on the real thing?”
The tribesman rapped a calloused finger against a small-scale map that Deschane had pinned to a corkboard, one that depicted the northern hinterlands and traced the many supply chains that would keep the war machine churning.
“The Divine Engine is out there—the last of Ma’kling’s lost legion. Only you know where it went. Help us find it, navigator. Serve your species the way you know best.”
Nong slid a paper across the desk, the writing facedown. Deschane could taste honeydew on his lips again. He staggered to his feet, casting aside his crutches so he could stand tall and look down at the shorter tribesman, the better to get the measure of the man.
“Does Fleet Command know of all this?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did they stonewall me when I gave my report on Mound 13?”
“There have been…disagreements. The knowledge you hold is dangerous. They would have killed you to suppress it, were it not for the fact that your disappearance would raise suspicions.”
“This is starting to sound an awful lot like a conspiracy,” Ven said, feeling a trickle of fear running up the small of her back.
“The truth will always have its opponents,” Nong replied, “I cannot say more until I can be sure of your discretion. Suffice it to say that there is more to the fossil record than just this charming trinket.”
Nong snatched up the miniature and stuck it back in his loincloth. Then he slid the paper a few more inches across and added:
“If you’re willing, meet me at this address tomorrow late in the afternoon. Travel incognito.”
Abruptly he hopped off the chair and glided noiselessly out the way he came. Ven stared after him, then turned to help Deschane back into his seat.
“What now, sir?”
The navigator steepled his fingers and sucked thoughtfully on the tips of his thumbs.
“I should’ve torn his esophagus out when I had a chance,” he said finally, “But we’re stuck in it now, Ven, and no mistake.”
“Proper shafted, sir?”
“Proper shafted,” Deschane agreed. Suddenly he posed a question to her: “What’s the very first thing you should secure on the battlefield, corporal?”
“Information,” came her ready reply.
“Correct. So let’s go get us some.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Deschane made his choice and folded the paper into his coat pocket.
First Chapter. Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road

"The Clown’s Way"
The Sioux clown, or heyoka,is a man or woman who has received the greatest possible vision, that of the Thunder Being, who is many but only one, moves counter-sunwise instead of sunwise, is shapeless but has wings, lacks feet but has huge talons, and is headless but has a huge beak; his voice is the thunderclap and the glance of his eye is lightning.
During this great vision the person promised to work for the Thunder Being on earth in a human way, and until he fulfilled his promise by announcing that he would give the Heyoka Ceremony, the Thunder Being was “wearing” him, even as a medicine man wears an object or a symbol of an object which is subject to his commands.
If he did not serve the Thunder Being by clowning before his people, he would be struck and killed by a glance of the Thunder Being’s eye.
During a heyoka impersonation, the new heyoka does seemingly foolish things, such as riding backwards on his horse with his boots on backwards so that he’s coming when he’s really going; if the weather is hot he covers himself with blankets and shivers as with the cold, and he always says “yes” when he “no.”
These actions, while they expose him to the ridicule of the unthinking, have important meaning.
As Lame Deer expressed it,“Fooling around, a clown is really performing a spiritual ceremony.”
Indeed, these actions are a translation, as it were, knowledge of another reality: a non-objective, shapeless, unnatural world of pure power or energy symbolized by lightning.
The contrary actions of the heyokanot only demonstrate some of the unnatural, anti-sunwise nature of the Thunder Being, but they also open people.
As Black Elk said, the people are made “to feel jolly and happy at first, so that it may be easier for the power to come to them.” ~
In the process of getting a good laugh at these backwards-forwards, cold-hot contraries, the people are opened to immediate experience.
Eskimos, for example, it often takes an entire night of clowning for the visitors from other other villages or tribes to break down and laugh.
During a festival in 1912, the Unalit of St. Michael performed several unsuccessful humourous episodes before the Malemuit and some some Unalit from Unalakleet, until finally they presented an old man wearing a mask adorned with feathers and an erormous nose. this man was a caricature of a Yukon Indian; this tribe, called ingkilik, "louse-eater," was the chief enemy of both the hosts and visitors.
Coming out and sitting down in the center of the floor, he placed his head on his breast and his hands in his lap. then, raising his hand to his head, he cracked a louse audibly. this was too much for the guests and they howled with laughter.
They had resisted so long because after laughing they would be at the mercy of their hosts, who could then theoretically demand anything from them. with the visitors completely open before their hosts, the religious drama could begin.
On the Northwest Coast the Haida symbolized this openingof their feast guests while greeting them on the shore: they burst open thier baggage.
Although the guests of the Haida were prepared for a forceful greeting, they were more often than not annoyed with it.
Frequently, roaring laughter is neither the desired nor the actual response to ritual humor. For example, the Arapaho "Crazy Dancers" are said to "act as ridiculously as possible and annoy everyone in camp"; the Cahuilla "Funny Man" of Southern California "annoys people by throwing water on them or dropping live coals down their backs"; and the Iroquois "False Faces," on entering a house, scoop up handfuls of smoldering cinders from the fireplace and spray everyone in sight, sending them screaming in all directions.
The Assiniboine clowns are said to provoke laughter in their audience, but they also frighten them; when Navajo clowns approach too closely, "the smiles of the women and children quickly change to expressions of surprise, tempered with fear"; and Apache children are terrified by clowns, having been told that the clowns will put them in their baskets and carry them off to eat them.
The "Fool Dancers" of the Kwakiutl, when they are possessed by supernatural power, move from practical joking, as when they throw stones at the people or hit them with sticks, to outright terror, stabbing and even occasionally killing people.
A person who had this experience and became a heyoka, a visionary clown, could from then on strut before the lightning of his fear Among the Cheyenne, as among the Sioux, men and women who had such a vision had to act it out by clowning before the entire tribe.
These people, called “Contraries,” put up a contrary lodge with its covering inside out, the lodge poles on the outside, and the smoke hole turned in the wrong direction.
Dressed in rags, they backed in and out of the lodge, and sat against it upside down— that is to say, with head and body on the ground and legs against the wall—while all the people laughed at them.
They did many other foolish things, such as run around wildly and pull weeds backwards: they backed up to weeds and pulled them from between their legs.
They were said to act like lightning in a storm, thus becoming one with the sacred power they most feared.
The clown’s mystical liberation from ultimate cosmic fears brings with it a liberation from conventional notions of what is dangerous or sacred in the religious ceremonies of men. Among the northwestern Maidu of California, clowns interrupt the shaman whenever he tries to make a speech and parody everything he says.’
In the Wintu Hesi Ceremony, the most important of all Wintu ceremonies, the clown, walking backwards, precedes the leader all around the inside of the dance house in perfect step with him, while delivering joking remarks about his bad singing.’
Among the Zuñi of New Mexico, a neweekweclown may lampoon a Beast Priest (shaman), wearing a bear paw on his left hand, a wolf snout on his nose, and acting wild.
The clown of the Navajo Mountain Chant burlesques the sacred sleight-of-hand performances, clumsily revealing their secrets.
Although the clown, by causing people to laugh at shamans and other religious authorities, might appear to weaken the very fabric of his society's religion, he may actually revitalize it by revealing higher truths.
For example, the Navajo clown who reveals sleight-of-hand tricks is in effect reminding the people that these tricks are not in themselves the power which cures them, but are instead a symbolic demonstration of power which is itself invisible.
A white man cured by a Navajo medicine man during a Red Ant ceremony asked him whether he reallyhad red ants in his system.
The curer told him, "No, not ants.
We have to have a way of thinking strongly about disease."
Because of the difficulty in seeing other than disruptive meanings for specific clown actions, I shall give a second example from my own knowledge of religious symbolism. the most common religious gesture among Pueblo Indians is the feeding of their katchina dancers (ancestors impersonated by initiated males) by sprinkling them with corn meal.
On occasion, clowns have been known to substitute ashes or sweepings from the plaza for corn meal as their own "sacred" offering, which causes people to laugh.
The clowns intend this immediate response, but their action also contains a hidden meaning. for ten days before each winter solstice every Zuni woman saves her cooking and heating ashes and her sweepings and then on the solstice she and her daughters take them to the family corn field and desposit them, saying first to the sweepings: "I now deposit you as sweepings but in one year you will return to me as corn," and then to the ashes: "I now deposti you as ashes but in one year you will return to me as meal."
We can understand her assertion on the model of plant germination, which involves the bursting forth of life from the decay of the seed pod just as flames may suddenly spring forth from smoldering ashes.
The clown's offering of ashes, then, can be understood as an esoteric substitute for corn meal.
Here we see the clown's creative edge: no one else ever deviates from feeding the katchina dancers the corn meal, but the clown thinks of a possible variation, and one that is only apparently disrespectful.
The ability of American Indian religions to allow room for the disruptive, crazy, but creative power of the clown in perhaps their greatest strength.
Within some Indian societies the clown is given his charter for “revolution” within the text of the sacred story of the creation itself.
At Acoma Pueblo, the first koshari clown "was kind of crazy; he was active, picking around, talking nonesense, talking backwards,” saying “I know everything,” and “loudly around the altar, even though it was supposed to be very quiet there.”
It was decided that he should live with his Sun Father because he was “not acting normally enough to be here with the people.
He was different from the other people because he knew something about himself.”
From this time on he was o help the sun cross the sky, but he would be called upon from time to time to help on earth, and since he was not “afraid of anything," nor did he “regard anything as sacred,” he was “to be allowed everywhere.”
So, although the people could not live with such a powerful bundle of energy all of the time, they did need him from time to time.
When he was called upon to help on earth it was always for new ideas.
For instance, when the people decided that they needed a harvest dance in order to “get away from the continuous solemnity of the secret ceremonies,” Country Chief called upon Koshari “because he knew of no new way to dance and he wanted to leave it to Kosharito arrange the dance and instruct the people in it.
For Kosharihad power to do this.”
The Acoma avert the possibility of the stagnation of their religion in excessive esoteric ism by including the clown.

Chapter 8
Location: Haut's keep
POV: Korya Delath
Haut shows Korya all his weapons and says they are hardly different. All they are is "arguments in iron". Korya says it looks like you've argued a lot. Haut says for Korya, "iron is the language of failure". That though he has won all of his arguments in iron that he has only gained a broken soul. There is no color in his place aside from Korya. Haut tells Korya they must leave. What she needs to learn now, he can't teach her. He will take her somewhere where she can learn the rest of what she needs to know. They will travel south among other Jaghut and Haut will have questions for them, but also of the Azathanai. He is curious about an awakening power.
As Haut opens the door an unnatural darkness pours into the room. Korya is startled, but Haut says he is starting to understand and beckons her to leave with him. Korya is frightened, but also surprised that she can see through the darkness. As they leave the manor, only a single path is visible. This path is paved with gems, rings, and baubles. Korya begins to grab several things in disbelief. She asks Haut about all of this wealth and he responds saying trust, truth and integrity are far more valuable. Even more than those, forgiveness. And greatest of all an outstretched hand. Korya drops the treasure and asks Haut what realm this is. Haut philosophizes and Korya says it is Azathanai. Haut confirms approvingly. She asks him if he expected this. He responds by saying of course and that they've been invited. When she asks by who, he says I don't know.
Location: Azathanai Realm?
POV: Korya
Korya contemplates the idea of potential and how to her it's a burden. There is no where to go except forward, but that doesn't guarantee an improvement. Their path in this realm continued up an incline and they had been climbing it for half the day. Her legs hurt. She has a memory of her childhood where they had dipped Jheleck skins into a bog. Startled she asks Haut to tell her of the first encounters between tiste and Jheleck. Haut looks pained. She tells Haut that she found a memory and that they did not understand Soletaken. They killed the giant wolves and did not know they were people. Haut says they resemble the Dog-Runners. Korya says her people have a lust for hunting. Haut responds that all intelligent cultures go through a phase like that due to delusions of omnipotence. "There is but one measure to the wisdom of a people, and that is the staying hand. Fail in restraint and murder thrives in your eyes, and all your claims to civilization ring hollow." She asks if the Jaghut had ever gone through a phase of delusion. Haut says yes. They faced a choice at that point to continue forward or to turn back. The Jaghut argued for centuries and then disbanded.
Korya says she wants to walk away from civilization. Haut says that's impossible because it is in her. She asks if it's in him too. He says of course. You saw my weapons. Arguments in iron are all arguments in civilization as well and it never ends. She will hear these sentiments in every age to come. She snorts and says, "You imagine that I will live through ages, master?". He responds, "Child, you will live for ever." She counters that nothing lives forever not even gods. He asks what she knows of gods. Korya remembers playing god with her dolls and that she left them in the box in darkness forever. She could have arrayed them on the windowsill, but she didn't. She thinks this would have been cruel.
In this realm Korya is starting to remember things. Haut asks her if she is sure that these memories are actually hers. She asks Who else's? Cryptically he responds, "That remains to be seen, hostage. But it has begun." Another memory comes to her, but this one is impossible. She is floating outside the keep window watching all of the dolls sad faces.
Location: Bareth Solitude
POV: Feren
Feren thinks about children dying and while it may be common enough, no woman deserved it. She remembers how no one would meet her eyes when her son died. It had been a long time, but the grief still felt recent. Every night she took Arathan to bed and told herself it was because the Lord asked her to, but it wasn't. She was taking no precautions. Even the night she slept with Grizzin Farl. Rint had known she intended to get pregnant even before she did. She knew she was using him, but she didn't care.
POV: Rint
Rint knew that as soon as she knew she was pregnant, Feren would run. She would defend this pregnancy against all-comers even him. He curses Draconus and feels for Arathan and his innocence. He knew Arathan would fall in love with his sister, if he hadn't already. Soon that love would turn to hate.
They would arrive in the Azathanai settlements soon. He is not looking forward to it, and hopes they can leave soon. He thinks about the mystery of Draconus. Why would the Azathanai welcome him? Why would Grizzin Farl look at him as an old friend. As far as Rint knew, Draconus had never left Kurald Galain and Grizzin Farl had never visited it. So how do they know each other? These questions nagged him and he also knew the sole purpose of this journey was not to get Arathan away from Kurald Galain. Raskan calls a halt near some strange ruins and says they will camp there. Having no well he tells Raskan that if they knew they could have filled more water skins. Draconus takes the blame, saying he thought this settlement was occupied. Rint is puzzled by this and says he doesn't think it's been occupied for centuries.
POV: Raskan
Since Arathan had started riding at his father's side. Raskan had been very alone on this journey between father and son and the sibling borderswords. It was obvious to everyone that Feren was having sex with Arathan multiple times a night and that Arathan was starting to show signs of sleep deprivation. He wondered how long before Draconus did something. As if on cue, Draconus pulls Raskan aside and tells him that "the boy needs warning off:" His zeal is natural, her's is not. Raskan tells Draconus he thinks she is trying to get pregnant. He wonders if it's her biological clock. Draconus says that she still has decades of child rearing age. Raskan says he will talk to Arathan and can order Feren to stop. Draconus says no and that he will talk to her tonight when Raskan takes Arathan off a ways to talk to him.
POV: Arathan
Arathan is obsessed with Feren. He is hers and does not lament the loss of freedom. He fantasizes about being consumed by her until he looks out of her eyes. He wonders if this is what love is. He still has Sagander's weights that are even more useless now as this place is wild and unmeasurable. Arathan thinks he is close to being swept away in this wildness. He contemplates that this wild motion in this wild place is far more important than any material desire. Amid his reverie, Raskan tells him to come with him. Arathan questions it, but then relents.
Once they are far enough away Raskan starts. He tells Arathan that Draconus wanted him to learn the ways of lovemaking. The feelings that can come out of this, are unpredictable. Raskan tells Arathan that he will not marry Feren. He will not spend the rest of his life with her. Arathan wants to run away. Raskan asks if he understands. Arathan thinks he is jealous and says they should have brought a woman for him too. Raskan responds, "Like a hole in the ground? There’s more to it than that. There’s more to them than that. It’s what I’m getting at. She ain’t a whore so she don’t think like a whore" He says Draconus just wanted him to experience it, not to take on Feren as a lover. Arathan is angry. Raskan tells him that Draconus is talking to Feren right now and that their lovemaking has gotten to be too much. He says she is using him to get to pregnant and she will toss him aside when it happens. Arathan disagrees, but Raskan says she would have to so that Arathan has no claim to the baby. Arathan keeps denying. Raskan exasperated finally tells Arathan that if they don't stop, Draconus will kill Feren. Arathan says he would then kill Draconus. Arathan asks if Draconus is killing her now. Raskan says no and that he is telling her the same thing and she isn't having an emotional reaction. She's listening and after tonight she will not take him to her bed. That will be his proof of her using him.
POV: Feren
She knew as soon as she saw Raskan lead Arathan away that she was next. Draconus led her away and before he could start, she says she only did what he asked. He tells her to drop all her iron. Feren asks why. He doesn't tell her. Instead an instant later she is on the ground with no memory of how it happened. He had not struck her. He disarms her. Then starts dragging her through the grass. They come to a barrow. He takes her in and she can smell old death. He drops her beside a sarcophagus. She says she yields thinking he means to rape her. He tells her to be quiet. He pushes her up against the sarcophagus and reaches in to grab the huge skeleton and pull it out. He presses a bony hand onto Feren's belly. Agony courses through her and her convulsions knock Draconus away. The skeleton falls on Feren's legs. Draconus yells at her to move away. The corpse makes a moaning sound. Feren pushes herself away from the corpse. Draconus puts the corpse back in the sarcophagus. He tells Feren to crawl out now.
Draconus joins her outside shortly thereafter. He tells her to collect her weapons. He says, "I saw you flinch. I felt you flinch." She nods. Draconus says, "Death and life, in there, do not welcome each other’s touch. You are with child, Feren. The seed grows within you. Now, leave my son alone." Even though he didn't rape her, she still feels violated and tells him, "Take him then."
POV: Rint
Rint is worried that it will take more than words for Draconus to convince Feren to stop. Through this fear he vows that if he hurts Feren he will have war with the borderswords and that Rint will kill him. He heard Arathan shout, but couldn't make out what he said. He could guess though. She had made Arathan a child again and taking that away would be painful. With these thoughts on his mind. Rint burns dinner. Raskan wrinkles his nose. Rint apologizes and says not enough water. Arathan demands to know where his father and Feren are. They ignore him. He says, "You won’t win. None of you will. She’s not afraid of my father, and neither am I." Rint wants to take his sword and go find them, but knows Raskan would try to stop him and things would degenerate from there. "Two lovers in the night could unleash a war, take down an entire realm. They could not see past each other; they never did."
Rint stops Arathan from leaving the fire by asking if he understands sacrifice. Arathan thinks he is asking him this because he doesn't have a woman. Rint says he has a wife and child he will meet when he returns. He sacrificed for the realm. This has an effect on Arathan and seems to have stolen his thunder. Raskan says he would have sent Rint back to be with her if he'd known. Rint says he knows an uncle who's wife stabbed him during labor. Feren returns without Draconus complaining about the burnt food and ignoring Arathan. Rint knows that she is now done with him.
POV: Arathan
When Arathan attempts to join Feren in the night she tells him that it's finished. Hurt and crying he turns his anger towards his father who he thinks rules everyone. He wants to run away, but knows Rint would find him and some things you can't run away from. He returns to his bedroll to find the stack of Sagander's weights. He throws them out into the night.
Location: On the Way to Kharkanas
POV: Grizzin Farl
He sits at a fire he made to roast a hare he killed. He had run it down and spent a long time stroking it's fur until he regretfully snapped it's neck. He did not like to kill. He saw Rille and Galak pass him on the way back to their party. They did not stop. Some people were just shuttered to things and would not detour from their intent. He despised the idea that one day all the world would be full of these people leeching all color from the world. He can hear someone approaching. Someone not unexpected. Caladan Brood and Grizzin Farl were about the same size. Huge. Brood says he came from a place of tribulation and dire portent. Grizzin asks if that place had any wine. Brood grabs a fired jug from his satchel. Grizzin says he could kiss Brood. Brood tells him to hold those for the wine's intended recipient, Grizzin's wife.
After some Banter Grizzin asks about Brood's tribulations. Brood responds that his freedom has been taken. He tells him of the oath Anomander has wrested from him. Grizzin says it won't hold, but then admits to lying about it to sooth his mind. Brood says Grizzin has run a long way for this hare and Grizzin responds that's it's better than the nagging from his wife. But now that he's very curious about, "this dark woman's dark garden, weeds or no." Brood says that the Tiste are a very symbolic people and eventually everything will have more weight than it should creating a maze of propriety. Grizzin says he's not afraid of mazes. Brood asks, "You would weed her garden, then? Has she no decision to make on the offer?" Grizzin responds that any woman would accept. Just look at him.
Brood tells Grizzin that he barely knows Anomander Rake. Grizzin agrees to tell him everything he knows about him. "He possesses something deliberate and yet of great depth. He is, I think, a violent man, yet is not at ease with the violence in him." Brood responds about the tiste, "They are a generation that has tasted blood, and where horror fades, nostalgia seeps in. In war all is simple, and there is appeal in this. Who among us is comforted by confusion, uncertainty?" Grizzin asks if Mother Dark wants war. Brood says he doesn't think so, but that she remains in darkness. He goes on to say that the Jaghut aren't right either, "It is the absence of society that leads to destruction".
The wine now drunk, Grizzin asks if Brood will return home. "K’rul has begotten a child and the earth itself holds the memory of its birth-cry. Will you drink of K’rul’s blood?" Brood says there is no need, what's done is done. Grizzin thought that perhaps Draconus went in anger to see K'rul, but after their night he doesn't think so anymore. He now thinks it is love that drives Draconus. Brood agrees and says "Love will do that" Grizzin thinks he is talking about him running away from his wife and son and lazily says he might fight him. Brood tells him he was speaking of Draconus. Grizzin feels guilty and tells Brood of the argument that he had with his wife after he threw out their son. Brood tells Grizzin that he's sure Sechul deserved it. Grizzin tells him his son Sechul Lath has fallen under the influence of Grizzin's first progeny, Errastas.
Location: Azathanai Realm
POV: Sechul Lathe
Sechul Lath and Errastas have just killed someone and were greatly injured in the process. Errastas looks at the blood running down the gems diamonds and gold of the path. He knows that someone is coming. Someone he planned to come of Tiste blood. Errastas refers to the loot strewing the path as their stolen loot and that there is power in it. Sechul responds, "But not Azathanai power." Errastas sneers at the fact that Mother Dark would claim this place as if she could. He asks what Sechul sees. Sechul responds chaos and endless storm. Errastas says they will let the place keep it's name, The spar of Andii. K'rul is not the only one that understands blood.
Setch wonders if they know what they are doing. Errastas says that he does. He is angry that K'rul is just giving away power. Errastas says he will beat K'rul. He reveals that the people coming are Haut and Korya and that they must leave. Errastas tells Sechul that they must manipulate mother dark into conflict against the new warrens K'rul is creating. Sechul looks at Errastas's broken body and asks if he's really as smart as he thinks he is. The woman they killed is Jaghut. Errastas says he never knew killing could be such fun. Sechul worries that they will have enraged all the Jaghut with this killing. Especially since it's Hood's wife that they have killed. Errastas says well it's not Hood that approaches, just his brother.
Location: Azathanai Realm
POV: Korya
Haut tells an exhausted Korya that they are almost at their destination and if she has thought about the wealth on the path. She says she thinks it's a mockery of what is true virtue. Haut tells her of the Protector of the Tiste who did nothing when the Jheleck stole from them and burned their houses. Korya says that he probably protects something else, not material. Haut likes this answer. In the middle of their conversation Haut pulls out his axe and continues up the trail silent. He has seen the blood trail. They get to the end of the trail and find a half naked corpse. A dagger still sits in her chest. Haut says the Jaghut's name, "Karish" and then wails it. She hasn't been dead long. Korya walks forward and looks down. She sees a storm and immediately becomes nauseas. Haut steadies her and says it's not wise to look at chaos. He says that Mother Dark jumped into the storm and came back changed. Korya asks who the woman was and Haut tells her the greatest Jaghut scholar and his brother's wife. She was lured her and then murdered. Korya asks if it was Azathanai. Haut says yes one or more. Korya asks if there will be war now. She also says that when they began Haut said they were invited. Was it to see this death and if so, why? Haut responds that she is more clever than he is and that he thought she needed him, but now it turns out that he needs her to make sense of these symbols. Haut asks, "Korya Delath, will you help us?"

(Swifties, this is your first and final warning. You will not enjoy reading what I've written. Please remind yourselves that you've had since 2006 to crop-dust all creation with your unchecked Taylor-related dickriding. Meanwhile, it's taken me a year and a half to lose enough of my fucks in the crowd to venture the following opinions. Deal with it, or git)
TL;DR: the Taylor Swift social experiment, like all cults of personality, scares the living shit out of me. Relatability should not be an arbiter of artistic merit; everything can be criticized; no-one should have this much money/ in-your-face ubiquity/ power over the media; she needs to stop trying to be a musical one-stop shop and let other artists breathe.
I’m going to use my opening statement to assure the masses that I mean neither Taylor Swift nor her fandom any harm. I don’t know any of you; I only know the brand and the brand ideals, of which a character named Taylor Swift, represented by a person named Taylor Swift, is the central figure. This is a rant, these are my feelings; I merely ask that you extend me the same grace you would your favourite singer-songwriter. And though I can’t promise that all of my points will be made in good faith, because many of them were prompted by genuine psychological triggers, I will do my best to keep the character and the person separate, along with the platforms and the users within the fandom, even if they are guilty of the same misdeeds. No matter how butthurt and snarky I get while organizing these vagrant thoughts - because this exercise is intended to permanently close down my internal TS thoughtschool - all said and done, I just want everyone to be good people and live good lives.
Cool? Cool.
For the sake of full disclosure: her music is fine. I mean…it’s fine. I’ve yet to hear anything that made me want to manually arrest the earth’s orbit, but that comes down to my own personal taste.
And I’ve been obsessed with music for a good goddamn 43 years; I remember trampolining on the furniture to Queen, Prince, and Blondie when I was barely out of diapers, getting my first period at a New Kids on the Block concert (for real), and clawing the shredded fishnets of every early-90s riot grrrl while my 9th grade social capital continued its neverending nosedive. As someone stuck right slap-ass in the Bible Belt - where my love for the INXS song “Devil Inside” was publicly demonized due to the metaphorical conceit - music is the closest I’ve ever come to religious rapture.
But I just can’t seem to acquire a taste for the holy Taylor Swift host.
Once in a while, drifting through her sea of beige melodies and hand me down instrumentals, she will hork up a half-decent turn of phrase (the bridge of “Marjorie” really is a knockout). But I don’t think her specific command of the English language deserves this level of perpetual global veneration. And even when I’m impressed by the way she clicks words together, I don’t feel moved to take them apart and examine them for hidden depths or synesthetic value. To me, her writing is only marginally better than the Star Wars/ Mortal Kombat/ Jem & the Holograms fanfics I used to write while procrastinating between shifts at Starbucks. (Not me ending a letter to Stormer from Kimber with, “I miss you like January misses Christmas.”) To paraphrase the MechaStreisand episode of South Park: “Ya ain’t Fiona Apple. And if ya ain’t Fiona Apple, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
But it goes beyond me staying stubbornly put as the approximate rest of the world is shaken to the core by her musical LiveJournal. I’m not here to yuck anybody’s yum. If Taylor Swift is to you what Stephen King (an inconsistent but effective storyteller who unknowingly taught me how to express my own macabre thoughts) is to me, that’s fabulous. Everyone deserves to feel that way about something; everyone deserves to experience a piece of art or media that makes them sit more comfortably amongst the serrated edges of the world.
The difference is, when someone tells me that Stephen King sucks all ass, my reaction tends to be, “Fair enough. Let’s talk about the writers you LIKE.” Not, “How absolute DARE?! You must be a Yankees fan if you don’t like Stephen King! I mean, it’s right there in the name! In this thesis I will…”
So let’s break it down, shall we?
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FIG 1. ENSHRINING MEDIOCRITY
Taylor Swift has a way with words. Sometimes. More often than the average American dickhead who gave up on the Cliff’s Notes to Animal Farm. But a good 9 times out of 10, reading her lyrics - especially since Folkmore went to her head - feels less like a peerless, cathartic demonstration of wordplay and more like an Intro to Creative Writing student spraying and praying with one hand on a thesaurus. (“I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian cause I care…” Miss Ma’am. Put the fountain pen on the floor and kick it over to me.)
Sure, everybody loves a good literary reference. “In Liverpool”, where Suzanne Vega alludes to Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame while pondering unrequited (and possibly gay) love, is my Roman Empire. But Swift doesn’t explore or utilize literary devices. She drops them, like boldfaced names on TMZ. She feels so Gatsby tonight. Her good-for-nothing boyfriend = Peter Pan. Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who liked to bum around the Lake District, so let’s shoehorn him into “The Lakes” as a ramshackle pun about HER writing prowess (thank fuck she left Beatrix Potter alone). She knows these works exist, but she’s TELLING us she does, rather than SHOWING us.
Her lyricism is inconsistent, her references are anti-dimensional, her instrumentals sound like AI versions of previous artists, her “genre-hops” are formulaic, her singing is meh, and she dances like a preschooler clomping around in mommy’s heels. But at least she plays piano and guitar at a low-intermediate level. This is the only person holding 4 Album of the Year Grammys? Out of every other band and artist living, dead, or undead? Fuck that for a laugh.
(Short break to remind myself that Can’t Slow Down beat Purple Rain, Born in the USA, She’s So Unusual, and Private Dancer in 1985. Same as it ever was, really.)
My intention is not to discredit who she is or “what she’s been through” [dismissive wanking gesture]. I just don’t consider “...you hang from my lips like the gardens of Babylon…” a simile that necessitates a whole-ass branded tunic on Christ the Redeemer. Hell, I wouldn’t even project a salute to the aforementioned Suzanne Vega on a national landmark, and I think her lyricism absolutely BODIES Ms. Swift’s.
To more modern, mainstream effect, there's something so sharp and satisfying about Olivia Rodrigo's music. While not compulsively polysyllabic, her lyrics captivate me with their seething wit and disheveled beauty. Her emotions are dysfunctional without giving you narcissistic whiplash; they create an almost kintsugi effect within the thru-line of the songs, fusing the tragedy, setbacks, and self-deprecation whole with golden veins. I love laughing my ass off to “get him back!’, sprinting through a sunsoaked Appalachian meadow in my head to ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’, and reliving the outset of my romance with my husband to “so American”. Her 90s pop-punk sonic homage is a breath of fresh air, too.
I've yet to hear a Taylor Swift song where she isn't WHINING about something, and I’ve choked down a LOT of her songs just to be informed. Her entire discography reminds me of the final scene from Interview With the Vampire 1994. “Still WHINING, Louis! Have you heard enough? I've had to listen to that for centuries.”
On and on the pity party drones until eventually, no matter how many ornate literary devices she springs on us, Swift outs herself as no deeper than a damp floor. If she learned to economize the bells and whistles and reach beyond her own experience, she might be onto something. There’s a reason Toni Morrison is a legend and VC Andrews is a hack.
This doesn’t mean TS shouldn’t have a successful music career. Or that glitter gel-pen media with a predominantly female audience deserves to be dragged through the cesspool where society once stood. (Ask me how many times I listen to Debbie Gibson’s first two albums inside a calendar year - hint, more than zero.) But I swear to fuck, if I see the word ‘relatable’ used as quality control ONE MORE TIME, I will vomit the entire Nicholas Sparks bibliography. Are we so collectively insecure and empathetically bankrupt nowadays that we can’t engage with an artist unless we want to wear their skin? Does every performer or character need to function as an all-purpose self-insert? Does the winning formula absolutely have to be ‘Literally Me”? This has to be why Black excellence keeps falling by the wayside so the human Barbie doll - complete with interchangeable identities she dons and sheds like fashion plates - can placate her ego with another trophy. Yeah, I’m still sore about SOS and TPAB losing AOTY. (If you don’t recognise those acronyms, ask Google.) The connective tissue between ‘I’d rather have a beer with Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton’ and ‘Taylor Swift is a better mirrorball than Janelle Monae’ is thicker than the volumes of literature TS skimmed while ditching Tom Hiddleston to snoop around Joe Alwyn’s flat.
Don’t get it twisted; I’m all for sisterhood in song, finding parallels of my own experience in a woman’s work. But MUST my inner voice belong to Taylor Swift? Can’t I prefer Tori Amos or TLC or even Olivia Rodrigo? Because I’m not a skinny Aryan poster girl whose rich parents Veruca Salted (the character, not the band) and Tonya Hardinged my way out of every first-world problem and into a stupidly successful career where my only setbacks are breakups and one-sided beefs.
Also, what’s with this theory that lyrics and the ability to write your own are the end-all-be-all of music? Are compositions a joke to you? When you get a moment, listen to my all-time favourite symphony, The Planets by Gustav Holst. Bitchin, huh? Don’t mention it.
Hot take, but as a public figure, Swift has a lot more in common with her archnemesis Kim Kardashian than her idol Lana Del Rey, and I suspect that’s chief among reasons she keeps disturbing the Kimye grave.
(Oh, hey, if you’re that dweeb I’ve seen on YouTube spamming every other comment with your essay on why Taylor Swift is the best singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist due to the units she’s sold and the records she holds…I wish a motherfucker would.)
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FIG 2. WE DON’T NEED NO GENTRIFIED FEMINISM
Okay. I have a complexion like a fresh stick of chalk, resulting from a family tree full of Scottish libertines and southern Appalachian hill trash. Therefore, I don’t want to get too deep in the weeds of a topic that concerns the experiences of marginalized people. So instead of running my mouth on the meaning of ‘white feminism’ and its insidious cause/ effect process, I’ll urge you to seek out books and essays by more qualified people.
“Hood Feminism” by Mikki Kendall is a great place to start. See also “White Tears/ Brown Scars” by Ruby Hamad, and “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge.
One of the most frustrating things about the inescapable Taylor Swift phenomenon is how her brand and her disciples have perverted feminism. It's now a whitewashed, focus-grouped shadow of itself, used only to shield Swift, and Swift alone, from criticism and her own mediocrity.
Swift really is the perfect symbol of white supremacy, whether or not she wishes to be. Her virtues are blown way out of proportion, and her wrongdoings are swept under the rug with a litany of excuses. Coddled and deified by the same entities that condemn and demonize her Black peers for the same shit. I’m reminded of how, in my home country (USA), a white gunman is a product of a broken home or untreated mental illness, while a Black or brown one represents the corruption of a whole community. Concurrently, when a white woman plays by the patriarchy’s rules and wins, or donates pocket change from her net worth to a few non-partisan causes like staff bonuses or soup kitchens, she’s held up as a paragon of righteousness. But when her stan club harasses one of her presumed nemeses to the brink of a nervous breakdown, or when a concertgoer at one of her Latin American shows dies of dehydration (RIP Ana Clara Benevides), everyone runs to console and absolve HER. It wasn't her fault, she had no power, how could she have known?
“Profoundly unsympathetic underdog”, as I read somewhere, is probably the best way to put it. Has she suffered from the slings and arrows of misogyny? Well, duh. She’s a woman at the top of an industry right slap-ass in the middle of a capitalist hellscape that, to this day, is still dominated by men. Men with a lot more dough and behind-the-scenes influence than she could ever dream of. But she doesn’t want to dismantle the system. She wants to bend it to her will and win it - even if that means cheating. Which is all well and good for her, but at the end of the day, she’s another fuckass oligarch. She’s a dragon in woman form like a reject from Earthsea, gorging on numbers to fill the empty howling void in her soul, tossing crumbs and scraps down to the masses.
She’s not a feminist so much as a Swiftist.
Ironically, Swift’s “feminism” revolves around men, because it’s feminism as interpreted by men. Powerful women using the patriarchy against itself, rather than bulldozing it for the good of humanity.
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FIG 3. PROFESSIONAL CHARACTER ASSASSIN
Do I consider Taylor Swift an actual Batman villain of a person? Nah. I'm sure she's perfectly nice if you don't look too closely or set off any tripwires. In general, she’s probably not half the psychological sadist her father is or her disciples can be. She's got a long way to go before catching up to the likes of Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, or Andrew Tate. But that's just it - everyone outside the fold recognises the minions of that dark triad as pathetic at best and actively dangerous at worst.
The systemic coddling and infantilization of white women refuses to acknowledge the harm they can cause by gathering a mob with a common assigned enemy. And, having stuffed her cult’s heads full of subliminal tabloid fodder, Taylor has ensured that every time she performs an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers point-and-screech in a rival’s direction, that person’s about to have a bad week. Doesn’t matter if the vitriol is one-sided.
When I consider the full front to back of Taylor’s “lore”, what forms in my mind is the story of a victim, or self-proclaimed victim, who considers a villain arc aspirational. You know, a surly ninth-grader’s idea of justice. Enabled by her fans, who’ve declared Swift’s lyrics gospel, her easter eggs a call to arms against anyone who’s earned so much as a side-eye from her.
And does she call them off? Does she fuck.
Joe Alwyn’s reputation went to hell on an inside track for (checks notes) possibly mismanaging his depression? (Also, everyone involved in the mass unfollowing stunt is tacky and I hate them. That includes you, Ryan Reynolds. You're closer to 50 than 25, with four kids at home, acting like a second string shortstop trying to impress the head cheerleader. Knock it off.)
Katy Perry found herself soaked with pig blood in a public square for either rehiring a couple of dancers after they quit Taylor's tour, or briefly dating John Mayer. Depending on who you ask.
Jake Gyllenhaal was the target of a harassment campaign perpetuated by Swifties, fellow celebrities, and even goddamn CONSUMER BRANDS for, I dunno, acting kinda like a fuckboy eleven years prior? Realizing, perhaps too late, that he and Taylor were incompatible as romantic partners? Either way, I'm more freaked out by the gratuitous shots fired at his sister, girlfriend, godmother, and teenage niece. Let's put a pin in that for now, though.
Antonia Gentry, a biracial actress known for her role in Netflix’s Ginny and Georgia, took a heaping helping of abuse, garnished with a generous dollop of racial slurs. All because Swift got bent out of shape over a throwaway line delivered by Gentry’s character because it painted Swift’s dating habits in a bad light. It must needs be said that Gentry did not write or improvise this line of dialogue, she merely read it. We'll put a pin in that, too.
Scooter Braun can kick rocks in glass socks, but he was right about one thing. Taylor should have faced him down her damn self, instead of siccing her stan club on him…and his family. Put a pin in it.
Kim Kardashian - well, shit. The last thing I ever thought I’d do is defend a Jennerdashian, and my stance on Snakegate has been ESH from jump street. But after all Taylor’s posturing about her nemeses defeating themselves before she can take a swing, she didn’t hesitate to directly name and shame Kim in a recent song. Or use Kim’s daughter as an insult to her lyrical injury. Put a pin in it.
Look, no-one enjoys a failed or toxic relationship. Or waking up with a target on their back. I spent nearly a decade with an authentic psychopath who at one point (I kid you not) accused me of cheating on him WITH A FICTIONAL CHARACTER. So fuck his dreams, but even with the worst of what he did to me in play - and rest assured, it was some Ari Aster shit - I wouldn't want to see him at the bottom of a John Mayer dogpile. Mostly because he has loved ones who shouldn't end up as collateral damage.
Back in 1988, the late Oscar-winning SFX titan Stan Winston (Terminator, Jurassic Park) made his directorial debut with a cult classic supernatural folk-horror called Pumpkinhead. The plot centres around a father named Ed Harley (B-movie legend Lance Henriksen) summoning a demon to avenge his son against a group of “cityfolk”.
Why bring up that old VHS throwback? Well. Revenge films have been a staple since the medium began, but Pumpkinhead is one of the few that shows the dark side of vigilante justice. People love a settled score. But most stories only show the boomerang effect from the offender to the avenger. Pumpkinhead broadens that viewfinder to show the pyrrhic nature of revenge, especially revenge served scalding hot, using familiar genre devices to demonstrate the victim’s torment, the cyclical trap of it all, and - most importantly - the innocent bystanders catching strays. You think you’re wishing on a star, when you’re really wishing on a monkey’s paw.
That’s why I said to put a pin in that list of Taylor’s Undesirables. It’s never just the person who (sometimes debatably) did her dirty. There’s plenty of ‘female rage’ for their associates, too - sometimes with those associates, ex. Antonia Gentry, taking the force of the blow. But unlike poor Ed Harley, Taylor has accumulated too much money and power to face any real consequences.
It’s much easier to contain a narrative in art than it is in real life.
(PS: That sidelong smirk she does gives me the willies. Just me? Possibly. BEC? Totally.)
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FIG 4. FUNDAMENTALIST SWIFTISM (THIS ONE’S PERSONAL)
I was born in southern Appalachia, in one of North Carolina’s most objectively beautiful cities. Unfortunately, I grew up in a rural, redneck town of just over 1,000, where the locals shared two cinema screens and maybe seven surnames.
And though mine was a mostly secular (Methodist) household full of Jimmy Carter Democrats, I couldn’t go a day without someone on the outside telling me that something I loved was a sin. I was the unwilling congregation for cautionary sermons about everything from Stephen King to Dirty Dancing to a fucking side ponytail in my hair (apparently it evoked Madonna, and that was a Bad Thing). Politically, it was standing water trash. My social studies education consisted mostly of Confederate-apologist kitsch and Red Scare Sovietcore. One of my fifth grade teachers spewed anti-choice rhetoric in class, and two years later, another one literally said, ‘Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’.
For context, like I said: raised by liberals, if not full-tilt leftists. My maternal grandfather was a hometown civil rights activist who ran an integrated workplace and campaigned for JFK. My mother’s friend confided to her (and only her), at the peak of HIV stigma, that her son was dying of AIDS. I remember asking Mom when I was 5 why movies only showed ladies kissing men and not men kissing men or ladies kissing ladies. Her answer: “I don’t know, baby, because it happens all the time in real life.” One of my paternal uncles was a drag performer in his 20s (which would have been between 1966-1976), and once my cycle kicked in, I was lectured THOROUGHLY about birth control and reproductive rights. I was lucky - at home. Outside, it was an ideological wasteland, fire to the left of me, brimstone to the right of me, God, guns, and “guts” waiting to nudge anyone who strayed from the formula back in line. So traumatized for merely wanting to wear fun makeup and clothes, watch A Nightmare on Elm Street, listen to Prince, and walk among neon lights with an urban skyline looming overhead like an enchanted forest, I became rebellious as fuck in my adolescence. I had a witch phase, a zen phase, and a militant agnostic phase. I’d overhear myself saying controversial shit (controversial by local standards) in a neverending campaign to push the born-against as far away from me as possible. Please don’t pray for me, I’d silently plead. Please think I’m a lost cause.
But it’s cool. I moved back to my birthplace in 1999, and clear across the Atlantic in 2016. (Plus the 9 years I spent in New England, but we don’t talk about that.) And I’m seeing a therapist about my psychological dysfunction - PTSD, depression, severe social anxiety, the usual.
Thanks to nearly two decades in this Gilead-coded environment, though, I have a near-phobic aversion to groupthink. I especially despise blind hero worship (due, I suspect, to the evangelical code of honouring God with every choice), and when matters of opinion are presented as fact. It pisses me off when Trumpnecks uproot the goalposts and plant them right in their eye sockets at their messiah's every misstep, and it pissed me off when the BernieBros tried to wreck my shit for backing a different Democrat (no shade to Bernie - he's probably one of the best social navigators America could ask for).
Taylor’s press is sounding less like journalism, even popcorn tabloid “journalism” in inverted commas, and more like nationalist propaganda. She stimulates economies (all sold-out stadium events do)! She’s broken another record (by rigging a broken system)! She eats ranch dressing (bitch, my BFF wrote a SONNET about ranch dressing when we were in junior high - that ain’t special)! She’s single-handedly carrying the music industry on her back (by toying with her fans and weaponizing FOMO)! ALL HAIL! It’s giving Straight Out of North Korea.
But as soon as you dare mention that some of this doesn’t sit right in your soul…chaos. You’re just looking for shit to be mad about because you hate “fun music” and “successful women”. Prison. Solitary confinement. Electric chair.
I have experienced no-shit panic attacks thinking about all the cults of personality that have cropped up over the past decade, okay? Whether Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Elon Musk, or Taylor Swift…they are all symptoms of a terrifying social disorder. Once we were drowning in information while thirsting for knowledge; now combine that with a riptide of tinfoil milliners and hyperpartisan news outlets. Communities have deteriorated, so we create them online using public figures and their open-ended manifestos, our capacity for independent and nuanced thought shriveling into a MAGA-hat shaped echo chamber screaming into a billionaire-branded, corporate-sponsored void.
Is this what Beatlemania was like? I can’t say for sure; I wasn’t there. But much as I appreciate The Beatles (while acknowledging the shady shit still stinking up certain corners of their empire), I can absolutely sympathize with people who maybe didn’t want the music crammed down their throats and the lore shoved up their asses.
“Let people enjoy things.” Let them be skeptical about things, too, and you’ve got a deal.
What frustrates me isn't that I don't like her, or that others do, but that so many of them won't allow anyone to dislike her in peace.
That's how I ended up here, at this desktop, downloading backlogged grievances to a Google.doc file.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.
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FIG 5. ELEVENTH HOUR TRAILBLAZER (WITH A SIZE 500 CARBON FOOTPRINT)
Let's get serious. Most of our faves are problematic. I love HP Lovecraft's literary universe; he's a racist wad of dick. I love the way Margaret Atwood dissects her characters and serves them up on a silver platter with a parsley garnish; she's a bleach-white feminist and probably a goddamn TERF. I'd probably loathe Frank Zappa if he were alive today, even though I know passages from his autobiography by heart.
You don't have to steamroll your TS merch on Main to accept the fact that as an activist, she has all the conviction of Boy George checking the resale value of a contradiction before the Karma Chameleon gets home.
And that's fine, or it would be, if her aforementioned propaganda team hadn't successfully executed a Jedi mind trick to make the media go, “Taylor Swift - Joan Baez literally wishes.”
Anyone can tweet “Black Lives Matter” a few times, and I'm pretty sure my Boomer mother posted “Why be mad, when you can be GLAAD?” on Facebook circa June 2013. The only appreciable difference between Taylor Swift’s low-effort, low-stakes activism and some rando in Eugene, Oregon tweeting (I refuse to call it X) a picture of their brand new rainbow Stanley cup is the whole world keeps waiting for Tay Tay and her money to talk over the stamping onstage power-walk of her bullshit. And if she's got nothing to say, then by god we'll put the words in her mouth. Because with her unthreatening good looks and Disney princess energy, she makes a perfect false idol for neoliberals and a perfect boogeyman for the unhinged right.
So it goes. Over and over again. Once you win capitalism, you can make people believe whatever you want them to. Championing LGBTQ+ rights in the glossiest, most favourable environment possible makes TS a hero right up there with Captain America, but her manic zigzags across the planet in her private jet(s) are NBD.
Dolly Parton gets away with being politically milquetoast because (I’m inclined to think) she genuinely wants to provide a seat at the table for everyone. Not so the whole world will spend a weekend in Pigeon Forge - though I'm sure that's a strong incentive - but because she was raised with that as a guiding principle. Taylor's only principle seems to be waving her distended bank account under our faces and barking, ‘Fill ‘er up!” Also if you talk shit about her, you're not a girl's girl. Girl's girls push their successors down the stairs while buying and selling the rights to female rage. Because as a wise YouTuber one said, “My problems, my problems, my problems, MY PAIN!”
Sometimes I get the impression that Taylor Swift doesn’t want to BE an activist so much as she wants us to THINK she’s an activist. The public perception of HER matters more than urging that public to help her leave the world a better place than when she found it.
Not everyone is, or wants to be, an activist. Not everyone has that fire in their belly. I can dig it. But activism should not be a cosplay you wear to WokeCon for a single album cycle; it's a bit to which you need to commit.
Especially if you have no problem bringing a ruckus to protect your sanctified public image.
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FIG 6. SHE DRINKS YOUR MILKSHAKE
“Billboard gamer
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
Fu-fu-fu-fuck off, fu-fu-fuck off…”
But for real, some of y'all need to stop approaching music stats like the NBA playoffs. Because I'm telling you straight up and down, if Taylor Swift were on the NY Liberty, she'd be what's known as a ball hog.
“She is the music industry” is not a flex. It's an indictment and manifesto of our own cynical capitalist dystopia. It's the mission statement of an ‘artist’ who can't seem to create without the intent of destruction. It's a slap in the face to musicians who match Swift's work ethic and far exceed her talent, but lack her bloodthirsty cult and cutthroat PR machine. It’s the language of monopoly - doesn’t matter if Swift dominates 90% of the musical market, charts, and records, so long as that wayward 10 is still out there.
Every time Taylor Swift copies another artist’s homework and makes their reality impossible to disentangle from her image, I feel the same sense of weary dread as when Disney buys up another movie studio. Except worse, because a lot of those studios are multinational corporations in their own right, probably direct beneficiaries of Citizens United living off the crops planted by Reaganomics. It’s easy to be facetious and say they had it coming.
But given everything she’s come to symbolize in the public eye, it’s hard to unsee TS as a huge multinational corporation gobbling up rising artists and their chosen niches like a deranged Ms. Pac-Man who keeps doubling back in the maze when she should go forward.
It's almost as if she's trying to create an environment where there's no need to listen to any other artist, because she can do it all. Even be “The Man™”! (Though she mostly targets younger women.) And if you don’t like the current era, where are you going? Pay no attention to that small indie artist - just wait for her to jack their style! Sad Girl Synth/ Witch in the Woodscore/ Bell Jar Chic coming right up!

Plus, when she’s not coal-mining her peers for ‘aesthetics’ to add to her brand once it’s safe to do so, she’s barging in on their album releases with new variants, surprise releases, ANYTHING to prevent our attention from diverting from her for the length of ten or fifteen songs.
And it’s happened too often and with too much synchronicity to be a coincidence. Restoring her catalog to Spotify on the release date of Katy Perry’s Witness. Dropping new variants of Midnights to block SZA from the top spot. And now trying to open the same expired can of whoopass on Billie Eilish, an artist as renowned by her industry peers as Taylor is by the mouth-breathing masses.
Even her “supportive dancing” at awards shows…it’s cute at first, until you realize it’s blatant camera-pan bait to bring attention back to her.
This is not “good business”. It’s a hostile work environment.
Obviously, high-profile artists siphoning trends from more obscure ones has been how the music industry establishes hierarchy and ratfucks the vanguard for decades. You - rightfully - can’t bring up Elvis Presley nowadays without mentioning Big Mama Thornton (and you owe it to yourself to listen to her original version of “Hound Dog”, because whoa, nelly). But Taylor Swift is hiding her chicanery in plain sight, ripping her peers off and shutting them down brazen as anything, and it’s hard not to wonder how much time will transpire before we can call her on it without being branded heretics.
No-one really talks about it, but IMO, one of her most grimdark acts of sabotage was releasing “Cruel Summer”, a five-year old song that wasn’t even a re-record, on the same day Olivia Rodrigo dropped “Vampire”, the debut single for her sophomore album. “Cruel Summer”, in case you haven’t seen a Taylor Swift evidence board lately, is the reason Olivia is now stuck paying a substantial chunk of “deja vu”’s royalties to TS and her cronies. I’m not saying Taylor’s team chose that song on purpose, to intimidate a (former) fangirl literally 13 years her junior, but I put nothing past no-one.
Success is so much more rewarding when it's not a zero-sum game. Call me a musical Marxist, but I want to celebrate a motley crew of talented artists rising in and out of the top 10 like melodic fireworks, not one grifting normie shithead perched indefinitely at the summit, yanking up Jacob’s ladder rung by rung.
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FIG 7. IN THIS ECONOMY?
One album, one deluxe edition. That's a god's plenty, especially vis a vis physical media. If you release more than that, you're an asshole, and if you buy more than that, you're a sucker. I will not be taking questions at this time.
No, it isn't just a Taylor Swift problem - far from it. But she is currently the head of a rabid and venomous kaiju run amok across a mortally wounded planet.
And the merch, my esteemed chaotic neutrals, is just too ass to mention.
While we're at it, eat the rich. Most of them. At least leave the bones of billionaires on the lawns of multimillionaires as a warning.
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And where - apart from the hate campaigns - do her hapless paramours fit in all of this? Beats me. The truth is, I don’t give a single solitary fuck about celebrities in the wild, unless they do something incredibly wholesome (Pedro Pascal celebrating his trans sister) or remarkably stupid (Puff Daddy). And despite all the pictures I’ve seen against my will, I wouldn’t recognize Travis Kelce or Matty Healy if they walked right up to me. First of all, I despise the NFL; I’m a baseball/ basketball/ hockey fan. And The 1975’s music, to me, just sounds like yacht rock if the yacht were caked in cocaine and bodily fluids. I know that Matty Healy once mentioned shucking his corn to a certain racist sex-trafficking website. And whether or not he meant it as a joke, it was gross and WoC have every right to have a bone to pick with him - and with Taylor.
For real, though, I look at her body count and all I see is a succession of nondescript white dudes. The only one who stands out to me is Gyllenhaal, and that’s because I’ve been a fan of him and his sister as actors for 20+ years. So her dating history has never been a point of contention or even interest for me.
The long and the short of it is, I'd have no quarrel with Taylor Swift if she were just taking up space as a successful singer-songwriter processing her emotions through her music. We could peacefully co-exist if LITERALLY EVERYBODY were not expected to not only give a fuck about her, but forsake all others unto her and her sanctified narrative. Sorry, my sister in Christ, but I'm an atheist.
And yes, I'd say every syllable of this with my whole chest and my pussy facing the world if Blandie were A MAN. So don't even get on that tip.
Go forth and have the day you deserve, from the depths of my last nerve.

There has been a lot of talk here recently about the current state of LLMs and how they will develop in the near future. Reading these debates, something specific has stood out to me. I think many of us are getting caught up in the weeds of the day to day work we do with language models. We know their architecture, abilities, and shortcomings, but I think this familiarity has led to some of us overlooking the significance of just what it is that we are already in possession of. We "can't see the forest for the trees."
A language model processes natural human language and predicts the next words in a given sequence of text, based on learned statistical patterns. That sounds simple when written out like that, but is it really? To truly grasp the importance of what that means, let's examine what language is itself.
Language is the means of human communication. The fundamental element of human communication is the word, or symbol. What is a symbol? A symbol is a physical representation that refers to a thought, thing or process in the real world.
When you think about it, language itself is a model of our thoughts and perceptions about ourselves and the world. So what does that make a language model? A model of a model of the world. More specifically, a machine model of a human model of human thought and perception of the world.
The ability to do what a language model does, predict the next large passage of text based on the preceding context, requires at least some degree of accuracy in modelling the world around us. In the same way that you can't predict the next digit in the sequence of pi without understanding of the underlying mathematical structure that gives rise to it, you cannot model language without some understanding of the world and human thought.
At this point, I can hear some of your objections. "But language models don't know anything, they have no grounding in objective truth." And to you I would reply that humans have far less grounding in objective truth than we tend to think. For example, what percentage of the scientific facts that you know have you ever verified for yourself? Think about all you know about places in the world that you have never been to. What percentage of the words that you know and use on a daily basis have you ever looked up in the dictionary? We learn through context and relation, and operate without "objective" grounding all the time. Sound familiar?
I am not suggesting that LLMs are conscious, or that they are the same as humans, and I make no predictions about the future of AGI. But before you dismiss this technology as "just a language model," remember that one does not simply model language.

Hi! I've been practicing manifesting since I was a child. I recently was gifted the vistages and knowledge of the keeps of the ascended masters, I hoist the 7 Ascended flames, one of which you may know as the Violet Flame. And others of which I will teach you. I am a Ascended Master Reincarnation I believe. And through these teachings Now by decree you Understand these Crystaline Gnosis with Unfettered Effortless Flourishing Ease. And so It Begins, so it is Done, So It is sealed now in this moment for Eternity by Cardinal Hyper positioning.
What is the Law.? First of all, the Law of Attraction is NOT manifestation. It's a WAY of manifesting. And it involves quantum entanglement and tunneling.
1(Like attract like):do you know that particle expirement where two particles were at distance and severed but still instantly reacted? Like attracts like. Tesla used wireless energy by vibrating two components at the same energy/frequency so they could synchronize and connect. electricity wirelessly. When you think of something you become it in the moment. But you are a collection of moments. And being present is hard. [Tip, when visualizing, Focus on Honing the Image, don't expect it to be a full image right away, imagine it like proudly forging a new blade to cut through a new chapter, BUILD the visual slowly]
2(Quantum Zeno Effect and Superpositioning.) the quantum Zeno effect states that what is expected is to be because quantically that is as is. Basically, Quantum Zeno Effect is one of the main principles scientifically responsible for Consciousness itself in a sense;;; it states that whatever is expected basically is and thats it. Now imagine you thinking about time and stress, You Need Pure Thoughts. Mindfulness. Less clutter = more powerful visuals, more intense emotions, Entanglement and quantum tunneling, one, USB and SSD use quantum tunneling for data storage. And two, this is how it works: when you think of something you are asserting it which impacts the superposition (think of superposition as meaning all the other realities that you don't want, Free Will World per sey.) LOCKING IT in place, you DIRECTLY close off logic circuits and through entanglement breach spacetime to effect the electromagnetic atom terrodial field. Manifesting your reality. Basically thinking of something repeatedly prevents it's energetically decay, and consciousness works in a way where it's self emulating even down to instincts and beliefs. Quantum tunneling, then by visualizing and eventually becoming one with the image where it becomes a memory, Entanglement.
3(Magick the Gathering). Ok. You aren't here for Law of attraction ok? Your angels and guides are SCREAMING AT YOU to raise yourself to theevels of the ancients, we are the new ancients. You are the new level, Raise it. - ALL IS MENTAL, every technique works. It's a binary switch that decides whether it works for you or not. It's called Belief and Faith. 0 and 1. Now I will give examples of how everyone around the world manifests.
ALL MAGIC IS NATURETECH AND MENTAL/EMOTIONAL TECHNOLOGY. Wiccan magic uses ceremonies, calling the cardinal directions, ceremonies using full moons which is why I'm likely writing this tonight for you thousands reading this. Calling on the elements And god, JUST LIKE you call on God in a prayer. They move their faith and WITH MINDFULNESS have made their thoughts SACRED. - Celtic magic is where most nature stuff comes from, nature spirits and sigils, shamanism and apothecary stuff, grand ceremonial sacrifices to entities (not bad sacrifices, symbolic ones) - Viking runes and the Galdabòk use energy lines to create vortexes of feminine electric energy which then impacts magnetism when focused on. A simple Viking runes everyone should know is the rune of flow and Anti Stagnation. the branch rune, Fe-Hu. You draw it on your left palm (right for selfless goals), call out it's name in intention, and breath into the rune, then state what you are programming it for specifically. - Shamanism! YOU ALL LIKRLY ARE SHAMANS, How? Do you listen to music to get into a trance state to manifest? Yes. Your a shaman and should look more into energy healing and nature especially if your a empathet or have some "mental disorder", Rituals for breathing and states of mind, connecting with spirit guides and the other and astral sometimes., when you smoke weed and get elated, then listen to music walking around with a intense visual. Your manifesting, just adjust your natural visual to have metaphors representing your goal somehow, BTW medicine and herbs are literally involved in everything. Which brings me to - Voodoo and Hoodoo, which I am new to. Magic with plant roots basically, Voodoo is the SAFEST if your concerned about morals since it's often considered a community thing for goodwill. Keyword Often. Herbs, Roots, Special Trinkets, Lodestones and crystals, mix together and make a Mojo Bag, learn ceremonial magic with a ceremonial dagger (never for cutting or blood magic which I do know) and learn how to cast hexes and jinxes. I'm no Master in these, I am always a learner. - Chaos Magic (look into it) - Ceremonial magic (well, more notable grand ceremonial magic which is advanced and above even chaos and voodoo magic.) which. Is self explanatory look at the elites and True Cults of the world. The real deals. - Kundalini which is breathwork, semen retention, fasting, shamanism, and Samadhi in one. Kundalini AS A PRACTICE is just Pranayana and breathwork (mandatory for manifesting imo sometimes because of resistance), but as a BEING. It's Christ consciousness. When the fire rises through the chakras (again, mental technology for cleansing) and meets the sacred fluid, Illumination happens. - theres tons more magic. I don't need to explain, they're all similar. Faith, important in timing and just overall importance given to the practice.
(4) How to manifest? Ok. I'm going to be honest, this list is going to be MUCH longer if I edit it later soon, but till then here's what your here for. THIS ROUTINE WILL MAKE YOU MANIFEST
5X55 method scripting, 6x66, 7x77, more for more important goals, mess for more mental goals. {YOU SCRIPT TO FIRST BUILD THE CONCEPT, ITS SUBTLE AND UNNOTICEABLE BUT PROFOUND}. I know noone likes writing 55x in one sitting.. so don't! Write 11 times throughout the day till you reach the goal. [PICK A SPECIFIC AFFIRMATION THAT JSNT TOO LONG. **BE SPECIFIC AND CONCISE], you can script however you want. Past present future, with love or in hate. Pick a affirmation. Script it, over the 5 days you will begin naturally comprehending it and contemplating it in your subconscious.
WATER BOTTLE method. Simple, take two water bottles, one empty one full, fill the empty bottle halfway and now have two half full bottles, write on the originally empty bottle The OPPOSITE of your Goal DIRECT and in single terms. Et "stressing, not safe, broke". And then after writing in the bottle, hold it and let the water absorb all your emotions of what your fearing of. Then write what you want on the other bottle "happy, protected, Money Magnet" and Visualize the reality your now moving into while holding the originally full bottle of water. Transfer the negative water bottles water into the positive while whispering or etc (POINT IS WHILE YOUR POURING IT IS TO BE IN A MILD TRANCE.) whispering coherently or incoherently, as you pour the key is to feel the intention of shifting. IT ALWAYS WORKS, just feel like it is faithfully. Now. CHUG THAT WATER WITH THE POSITIVE ENERGY. and imagine it being processed with the positivity throughout the morning or day. You'll feel the energy shift. (Subtle likely)
Visualization and Music (if possible). Just keeping it simple. Every thought actually does manifest, if it isn't for you, your not being mindful enough AKA your thinking too fast and too off the ropes, meditate and practice emptiness or joy. But regardless, you should be left with no resistance after this routine. Imagine your goals, if your have a image you naturally imagine like say you imagine yourself as a epic character fighting enemies. Instead imagine those enemies are Doubt Demons, or Darkness Archons, and you are conquering your Heartland. [THE KEY IS INTENTION ALSO KNOW. AS METAPHOR]
Meditation guided, subliminals. (Moza morph has a great 5 minute one for starting the day, one of the most powerful ones out there)
Breathwork. [EXTREMELY INPORTANT]. When you do breathwork especially with some good music to sync to, you elevate consciousness temporarily. DMT. Do your techniques while doing breathwork. If your feeling down try to see if breathwork can help. My two recommended are alternate nostril breathing (breath in one nostril with other blocked, hold deeply and firmly breath out other nostril, hold deeply. Repeat.) and breath of fire. (Rapid exhales from the diaphragm, make sure not to be too forceful, pain = no gain, and it isn't dangerous to practice just PLEASE hold your breath for shorter periods even if your experienced. You can easily be overwhelmed. Use breathwork with deep meaningful visualization. Again there's no doubt in you. Just do it and it works. All magic is real, and if you put your awareness to proving that, belief or not you will see too.
Tai Chi. (Optional) Ever go outside in a windy cloudy beautiful day in nature and start waving your hands around fluidly and felt that weird chill/glow in your hands? That's tai chi. Fluid movement and intention of a still mind releases energy, great for chakras and meridians and energy work/shadow work. There's no style to tai chi. Whoever invented that wasn't with the best interest of the art.
5x55, water bottle shifting (try for twice a day if possible) Visualization/Shamanic Trancing., guided meditation, breathwork tai chi, and most importantly PATIENCE. I'm going to be honest, you all likely still live in reality. You should focus on still proving to yourself the Craft of Gods of which you wereed to. Write about important questions (et ask for help manifesting or to be led to sacred knowledge), or write about instant manifestation.
I PROMISE YOU. This already worked the second you decided to dedicate yourself. Don't miss a beat with the scripting EVER. Your practices are more important than family and friends.
Imo the most important part is a empty private area and music so you can get into a trance with it. Then visualize
I'm tired, I hope this helped. I will update later if nothing gets this taken down. Cheerio! Oh, and use the Violet flame for karma neutralizing and negativity transmutation, use the Grand Green Flame Of Abundance for speeding up manifesting and abundance. Blue flame for Improved Speech and Answers, Energy, intuition, Pink flame for healing and love, and healing love, and if you must, the orange and red Gilded gold flame of me. Which represents Perturbation of Cycles as well as Morphic energy healing, Inner matrix Hardening, New Grand Gnosis, High end tech, and.. [Divine Providence]
Posted at 10:10, blessed by the god creators of all, and the watchers of other races, Marked by Saint Germain. And Thoth. 🕉️⚕️

Hi everyone! In this article, I will be talking everything OR3, though we have barely gotten any information about this album, I still have a lot to unpack, so let’s get started with a brief introduction for those who don’t know what OR3 is.
OR3 is another name for American Singer and Songwriter Olivia Rodrigo’s 3^rd Studio Album. This not yet released album had gotten a lot of attention right after Rodrigo’s 2^nd Album ‘Guts’. Many people were predicting the name of the album (since Rodrigo has mentioned that she loves 4 letter album names), what the theme could be, and a possible love themed album contrary to her debut album Sour. So now, let us discuss about everything OR3, by first starting off with information we already have about this album from Miss Rodrigo herself. (creds to Olivia Rodrigo Wiki for the info below)
“I’m working on my new album. It seems a little fast for that, but I’m more inspired than ever.”
2023
In an interview with Open House Party in July 2023, Rodrigo confirmed that she was thinking of new ideas for her third album. She also confirmed that she already had a concept in mind.
It’s more than likely that this album will follow the pattern of the previous albums and be a one-word, four-letter, word capitalized and tracks all lowercased.
2024
In an interview with Billboard on January 10, 2024, Rodrigo confirmed to Billboard that she was preparing for her third studio album by also stating she was more inspired than ever.
That’s all we have from Olivia’s side, now, I will discuss about a very interesting theory that I support heavily, a possible rebrand into the color Red.




By now, everyone knows that Olivia’s color theme is Purple, it’s her favorite color and she has it as the background of her two studio albums, ‘Sour’ and ‘Guts’, however there are many pieces of evidences to support the above theory of her rebranding to red. (creds to Nicky Reardon for the following information)
It all started when Olivia released ‘Vampire’, there we can see that Olivia was wearing a purple bandage around her neck in the single’s album cover, with rest all black and white, where the purple bandage represents her childlike innocence and her wonder of being a creative person. That’s why, it was the album cover of Vampire, and not the entire Guts album, because in my opinion, she wanted to show how that childlike innocence was sucked out of her by the vampire, like literally, the life was sucked out of her by the vampire, and the only thing repairing her is that small piece of her childlike innocence aka the purple bandage, because as mentioned above, it represents her innocence and wonder of being a creative person, that’s why it was also specifically put on the neck as well, where vampires bite people.
Next, we can see that in the music video of ‘bad idea right?’ Olivia along with everyone is wearing red lipstick and it’s not just the lips, the cheerleader’s outfit, her necklace, her ring, the costumes people wearing, any texts that pop up on screen, it’s all red. I believe she is intentionally putting the color red right next to purple to represent a clear transition between the two colors.

Next, in the MV when she is going to her ex- boyfriends house, she is on the bus when she gets splashed with a red slurpee on her face, like red is just hitting her in the face, and I think red is meant to symbolize her next chapter, like that’s why is hitting her in the face, it’s an abrupt type of way to symbolize who she is coming into next. Next, she steps out of the bus and reaches her ex’s house, then, she takes off her light purple sweater and reveals a white tank top with a very visible red bra underneath, and this is clearly representing who is coming into next, and I also think that vampire is how she got hurt and is just still trying to keep that child like innocence that got sucked out of her, probably by one of her ex’s aka the vampire in the song and bad idea right is just her moving on and showing her next chapter in her life, I think rest of the songs just talk about her healing era from being bitten by that vampire while she was still trying to hold on to that like wonderous childhood theme. However, I do think she will still hold that childhood wonder persona close to her, since of course, it is very important to her, but that’s probably the end of her purple era. We can also see the adult theme portrayed in the music video, which shows how she is an adult now, with a different personality and identity unlike her typical teen breakup songs in Sour, which show how she was a child when she got her heart broken and that one vampire sucked the life out of her, and that’s when she had enough, and naturally became the matured (and very different from her childhood image she had since she was a teen) person she is today, and I’m all here for it. She also was wearing a red bra in her Guts (deluxe) album when she was wearing a purple one in the original Guts album cover. There is a clear pattern that we can see here and this just doesn’t get any more obvious.
Once, again credits to Nicky Reardon, since I got all this info from him!
Next, A possible Love album is also something that many livies are looking forward to, because after releasing so American, fans went crazy because this is her first ever love song she ever released and that’s when rumors started flooding that her next album could be a love album, because she seems to be truly in love with Louis Partridge , and many fans, including me, believe that this is the first time she has ever been treated right by her boyfriend. There are also many people speculating that the next album could be called ‘DAZE’ if we are keeping to the Love Album theme. There are also many other album name titles that people are predicting like: Pain
Blue
Sink
Swim
Wake
Dare
Lust
High
Rose
Fall
Snow (Christmas EP)
Rise
Nude (feminism album)
Hurt
Moon
Rude
F*ck
Weed
Drug
Love
Sick
Meth
Gray
Cake (lol)
Scar

(from user Megangullotta on reddit)
Now, these are just a few of many album names that could be there, but so far, majority of people are sticking with ‘DAZE’, ‘LUST’, ‘LOVE’ and ‘FUCK’. Now, though we have very few clues dropped by Rodrigo about her new album, we are sure that it will be a great album, so, even if it does end up being a love album, it may contain sad songs and that is okay, since her songs are like her diary, and I just wish her the best for her new album!
That’s the end of the blog, hopefully you gained some information by reading this and I just want to convey that this is just a blog where you can come to to see anything related to OR3, subtle hints, predictions or anything regarding OR3 and all this information comes from different livies and I take no credit for any of this information, the only thing that is not derived from other fans are just some of my thoughts on other people’s predictions and that’s it lol. This blog is just meant to be a blog to visit to read about everything OR3 while it is still unreleased and ofcourse, I couldn’t include every single prediction by every single livie on the internet here, and I only used information that I was interested in, in this blog.
Ok Thanks so much for reading lol have a great day or night <3Hi everyone! In this article, I will be talking everything OR3, though we have barely gotten any information about this album, I still have a lot to unpack, so let’s get started with a brief introduction for those who don’t know what OR3 is.
OR3 is another name for American Singer and Songwriter Olivia Rodrigo’s 3^rd Studio Album. This not yet released album had gotten a lot of attention right after Rodrigo’s 2^nd Album ‘Guts’. Many people were predicting the name of the album (since Rodrigo has mentioned that she loves 4 letter album names), what the theme could be, and a possible love themed album contrary to her debut album Sour. So now, let us discuss about everything OR3, by first starting off with information we already have about this album from Miss Rodrigo herself. (creds to Olivia Rodrigo Wiki for the info below)
“I’m working on my new album. It seems a little fast for that, but I’m more inspired than ever.”
2023
In an interview with Open House Party in July 2023, Rodrigo confirmed that she was thinking of new ideas for her third album. She also confirmed that she already had a concept in mind.
It’s more than likely that this album will follow the pattern of the previous albums and be a one-word, four-letter, word capitalized and tracks all lowercased.
2024
In an interview with Billboard on January 10, 2024, Rodrigo confirmed to Billboard that she was preparing for her third studio album by also stating she was more inspired than ever.
That’s all we have from Olivia’s side, now, I will discuss about a very interesting theory that I support heavily, a possible rebrand into the color Red.

In the heart of the countryside, veiled by the thick foliage of an ancient forest, loomed the foreboding silhouette of Blackwood Manor. Its towering spires clawed at the sky, its weathered walls whispered tales of forgotten horrors, and its overgrown grounds harbored secrets too sinister to name. For generations, the mansion had cast a shadow over the nearby village, its name synonymous with darkness and despair.
Evelyn Hart, a young and audacious historian with a penchant for the occult, had long been fascinated by the legends surrounding Blackwood Manor. Raised on stories of restless spirits and cursed bloodlines, she saw the mansion as a puzzle begging to be solved, a mystery waiting to be unraveled.
Gathering her courage and armed with a thirst for knowledge, Evelyn embarked on a journey to uncover the truth behind the whispers that echoed through the halls of Blackwood Manor. Accompanied by a small band of fellow enthusiasts, she stood before the rusted gates of the estate, her heart pounding with anticipation.
With a creak of protest, the gates swung open, revealing a path choked with weeds and overgrown vines. Undeterred, Evelyn and her companions pressed forward, their lanterns casting long shadows against the moss-covered stones.
As they crossed the threshold into the mansion, a chill wind swept through the grand foyer, sending a shiver down Evelyn's spine. Ignoring the ominous chill that hung in the air, she led her companions deeper into the heart of darkness, her eyes alight with the thrill of discovery.
Room by room, they explored the labyrinthine corridors of Blackwood Manor, uncovering forgotten secrets and hidden passageways along the way. But with each new discovery, Evelyn could feel the weight of the mansion's history bearing down upon her, a reminder of the darkness that lurked within its walls.
As night fell and the darkness deepened, Evelyn found herself drawn to the upper floors of the mansion, where the air grew thick with malevolence. Whispers seemed to fill the halls, their voices barely audible yet filled with a sense of foreboding.
And then, in the darkness, they heard it—the sound of footsteps echoing from somewhere unseen. With hearts pounding in their chests, Evelyn and her companions followed the sound to a door at the end of the hallway, its surface adorned with strange symbols and sigils.
With trembling hands, Evelyn pushed open the door and stepped into a room bathed in moonlight. But what she found inside would haunt her forever.
Before her stood a figure cloaked in shadow, its eyes burning with a malevolent glow. It spoke in a voice that seemed to reverberate through her very soul, weaving a tale of tragedy and despair.
As the figure advanced, Evelyn and her companions knew they had stumbled upon something beyond their understanding. With a cry of terror, they turned and fled, their lanterns casting long shadows against the walls as they raced through the darkness.
But the curse of Blackwood Manor would not be so easily escaped. As they reached the courtyard and crossed the threshold into the forest, they felt a chill wind at their backs, and the sound of echoing footsteps followed them into the night.
And though they escaped with their lives that night, Evelyn knew that the darkness of Blackwood Manor would forever haunt her dreams, a reminder of the dangers that lurked in the shadows and the price of seeking the truth.

The Chronicles of Evelyn Hart
In the heart of the countryside, veiled by the thick foliage of an ancient forest, loomed the foreboding silhouette of Blackwood Manor. Its towering spires clawed at the sky, its weathered walls whispered tales of forgotten horrors, and its overgrown grounds harbored secrets too sinister to name. For generations, the mansion had cast a shadow over the nearby village, its name synonymous with darkness and despair.
Evelyn Hart, a young and audacious historian with a penchant for the occult, had long been fascinated by the legends surrounding Blackwood Manor. Raised on stories of restless spirits and cursed bloodlines, she saw the mansion as a puzzle begging to be solved, a mystery waiting to be unraveled.
Gathering her courage and armed with a thirst for knowledge, Evelyn embarked on a journey to uncover the truth behind the whispers that echoed through the halls of Blackwood Manor. Accompanied by a small band of fellow enthusiasts, she stood before the rusted gates of the estate, her heart pounding with anticipation.
With a creak of protest, the gates swung open, revealing a path choked with weeds and overgrown vines. Undeterred, Evelyn and her companions pressed forward, their lanterns casting long shadows against the moss-covered stones.
As they crossed the threshold into the mansion, a chill wind swept through the grand foyer, sending a shiver down Evelyn's spine. Ignoring the ominous chill that hung in the air, she led her companions deeper into the heart of darkness, her eyes alight with the thrill of discovery.
Room by room, they explored the labyrinthine corridors of Blackwood Manor, uncovering forgotten secrets and hidden passageways along the way. But with each new discovery, Evelyn could feel the weight of the mansion's history bearing down upon her, a reminder of the darkness that lurked within its walls.
As night fell and the darkness deepened, Evelyn found herself drawn to the upper floors of the mansion, where the air grew thick with malevolence. Whispers seemed to fill the halls, their voices barely audible yet filled with a sense of foreboding.
And then, in the darkness, they heard it—the sound of footsteps echoing from somewhere unseen. With hearts pounding in their chests, Evelyn and her companions followed the sound to a door at the end of the hallway, its surface adorned with strange symbols and sigils.
With trembling hands, Evelyn pushed open the door and stepped into a room bathed in moonlight. But what she found inside would haunt her forever.
Before her stood a figure cloaked in shadow, its eyes burning with a malevolent glow. It spoke in a voice that seemed to reverberate through her very soul, weaving a tale of tragedy and despair.
As the figure advanced, Evelyn and her companions knew they had stumbled upon something beyond their understanding. With a cry of terror, they turned and fled, their lanterns casting long shadows against the walls as they raced through the darkness.
But the curse of Blackwood Manor would not be so easily escaped. As they reached the courtyard and crossed the threshold into the forest, they felt a chill wind at their backs, and the sound of echoing footsteps followed them into the night.
And though they escaped with their lives that night, Evelyn knew that the darkness of Blackwood Manor would forever haunt her dreams, a reminder of the dangers that lurked in the shadows and the price of seeking the truth.

Blood Summoning
Inspired by the River of Blood Quest series, I aim to create a idea linking necromancy to Summoning, using magic as the conduit with vampyres as the central theme. Players will experience a fourfold increase in Summoning experience by summoning blood elementals, offering a unique and rewarding path to mastery.
🩸🔮 Introducing a Dark Path to Power: Blood Summoning in RuneScape 3! 🔮🩸
Brave adventurers of Gielinor, heed this call to unlock the secrets of forbidden magic! Prepare to delve into the shadows and harness the ancient art of Blood Summoning. With this newly unveiled training method, you'll wield dark powers and command formidable blood elementals to aid you in battle.
🔥 Master the Sanguine Ritual: Sacrifice a portion of your own vitality to summon powerful allies or enhance your existing minions. Will you summon a crimson guardian to shield you from harm, or perhaps empower your undead minions with newfound strength?
💀 Unleash Blood Elementals: Choose from a diverse array of blood elementals, each with its own unique abilities and role on the battlefield. Whether you seek a healer to mend your wounds or an assassin to strike from the shadows, the choice is yours.
📜 Delve into Forbidden Lore: Uncover the dark mysteries surrounding blood magic and its ties to the enigmatic god Zaros. Explore ancient ruins, consult forbidden tomes, and unlock the true potential of your arcane prowess.
Are you ready to embrace the darkness and forge your path to power? Prepare your rituals, gather your materials, and step into the realm of Blood Summoning in RuneScape 3 today! 🌑🔮
In RuneScape 3, the Blood Summoning ability allows players to perform a Sanguine Ritual, sacrificing a portion of their health to summon a powerful blood elemental or enhance existing minions. Here's how it works:

Sanguine Ritual

• Description: The player performs a ritual that requires sacrificing 50% of their health while the familiar is summoned.
  
• Effect: Upon completion of the ritual, the player can either summon a blood-based minion or enhance their existing undead minions.
  

Summoning a Blood Elemental

• Requirements: Requires the player to have the necessary Magic Summoning, & Necromancy levels and the required summoning pouch or scroll. (45 Summon, 68 Magic, 27 Necromancy)
  
• Effect: Summons a powerful blood elemental familiar to aid the player in combat. The blood elemental may have abilities such as life drain, blood-based attacks, or defensive buffs.
  

Enhancing Existing Minions

• Requirements: Requires the player to have existing undead minions summoned through Summoning or Necromancy.
  
• Effect: The ritual enhances the abilities and stats of the player's existing undead minions, making them more powerful and durable in combat. This enhancement could include increased damage, health regeneration, or additional special abilities.
  

Usage and Strategy

• Strategic Sacrifice: Players must weigh the benefits of summoning a blood elemental or enhancing their current minions against the significant health sacrifice required to perform the ritual.
  
• Combat Support: The blood elemental familiar can provide valuable support in combat, dealing damage to enemies or providing buffs to the player and their allies.
  
• Minion Enhancement: Enhancing existing undead minions can bolster the player's army, increasing their effectiveness in battles against tough enemies or bosses.
  

Lore and Theme

• Blood Magic: Reflects the dark and powerful nature of blood magic within the game's lore, allowing players to harness its energy to summon formidable allies.
  
• Necromantic Rituals: Emphasizes the player's mastery of necromancy and summoning arts, showcasing their ability to command undead forces and harness dark powers.
  

The Sanguine Ritual in RuneScape 3 adds depth to the Summoning skill, offering players the opportunity to summon powerful allies or strengthen their existing minions through the dark arts of blood magic and necromancy.
Blood Elementals
Blood elementals can come in various types, each with unique abilities and characteristics. Here is a list of different types of blood elementals:

Types of Blood Elementals

1. Crimson Guardian

• Role: Tank/Protector
  
• Abilities:
  
  • Blood Shield: Creates a protective barrier around itself and allies.
  • Coagulate Armor: Hardens its form to increase defense.
  • Vampiric Embrace: Drains health from attackers to heal itself.

1. Hemomancer

• Role:

Damage Dealer (DPS)

• Abilities:
  
  • Blood Surge:

Engulfs enemies in a wave of blood, dealing damage.

 - **Hemorrhage**: 

Inflicts a bleeding effect on enemies, causing damage over time.

 - **Blood Nova**: 

Sacrifices some health to cause an explosion of blood, damaging nearby foes.

1. Sanguine Healer

• Role: HealeSupport
  
• Abilities:
  
  • Blood Rain: Summons a rain of blood that heals allies and weakens enemies.
  • Vampiric Aura: Drains health from enemies within range to heal allies.
  • Lifeblood Transfer: Transfers a portion of its health to an ally.

1. Blood Wraith

• Role: Stealth/Assassin
  
• Abilities:
  
  • Crimson Cloak: Turns invisible and phases through enemies, dealing damage.
  • Sanguine Strike: Executes a high-damage attack from the shadows.
  • Blood Mark: Marks an enemy, increasing damage dealt to the target.

1. Plague Blood

• Role:

Debuffer

• Abilities:
  
  • Blight Cloud: Creates a cloud of bloodborne pathogens, infecting enemies.
  • Necrotic Infusion: Enhances minions with disease, spreading contagion.
  • Contagion Pulse: Releases a pulse of infectious blood, weakening enemy stats.

1. Vampiric Revenant

• Role: Balanced Fighter
  
• Abilities:
  
  • Life Siphon: Drains life force from a target to heal itself.
  • Crimson Wave: Deals damage and heals allies it passes through.
  • Revenant’s Wrath: Unleashes a fury of blood attacks, enhancing its own power with each hit.

1. Blood Revenant

• Role: SummoneController
  
• Abilities:
  
  • Blood Puppet: Animates blood into minion forms to fight alongside.
  • Sanguine Binding: Controls blood within enemies to immobilize them.
  • Blood Ritual: Sacrifices health to summon a powerful blood elemental ally.

1. Blood Fiend

• Role: Berserker
  
• Abilities:
  
  • Blood Fury: Enters a frenzy, greatly increasing attack speed and damage at the cost of health.
  • Sanguine Spikes: Launches spikes of hardened blood at enemies.
  • Regen Rage: Regenerates health rapidly while dealing increased damage.

Characteristics of Blood Elementals

• Appearance: Typically appear as amorphous, flowing masses of crimson liquid, sometimes forming semi-solid shapes like tendrils, spikes, or humanoid figures.
  
• Nature: Created or summoned through powerful blood magic rituals. They are bound to their summoner's will or driven by their own primal instincts if uncontrolled.
  

Summoning and Weaknesses

• Summoning:

Requires complex blood magic rituals, often involving a blood sacrifice or rare magical components. The summoner must have significant magical knowledge and power.

• Weaknesses:
  
  • Fire and Heat: Extreme heat can coagulate or evaporate their blood form.
  • Holy or Healing Magic: Can counteract their necrotic and vampiric nature.
  • Blood Dependency: May weaken or dissipate if deprived of a source of blood or life force. Times:

60minutes - Full Hp
50minutes - 16.66% total of blood elementals health returns to Player
40minutes - 16.66% total of blood elementals health returns to Player
30minutes - 16.66% total of blood elementals health returns to Player
20minutes - 16.66% total of blood elementals health returns to Player
10minutes - 16.66% total of blood elementals health returns to Player
0minutes - 16.66% total of blood elementals health returns to Player then the blood elemental dies
These types of blood elementals offer diverse abilities and roles, making them versatile additions.
In RuneScape 3, performing a Sanguine Ritual for Blood Summoning typically requires specific materials or components to complete the ritual successfully. While the game mechanics might not explicitly mention the materials, we can speculate on the thematic elements that could be involved in the ritual based on the description and lore surrounding blood magic and summoning. Here are some potential materials that players might need:

1. Blood Offering:

• Players may need to provide a sacrificial offering of blood to fuel the ritual.

~Blood rune
~Coagulated blood
~Blood necklace shard
~Blood of orcus
~Blood talisman

1. Summoning Focus:

• A magical artifact or focus might be necessary to channel the player's energy and intentions during the ritual. This could be an enchanted gemstone, an ancient relic, or a ritualistic symbol.

~ Necromantic Focus (Artifacts)
~ Summoning Focus

1. Summoning Pouch or Scroll:
   • Depending on the specific familiar being summoned, players may need a summoning pouch containing the essence of the blood elemental or a scroll inscribed with the summoning ritual.

-Lesser Ensouled Material-Blood pouch (Conjealed blood & Pouch)
-Lesser Ensouled Material-Blood Charm (Conjealed blood & Charm)

1. Necromantic Components:

• Given the dark nature of the ritual, players require various necromantic components such as inks, Flame Skulls, and necromancy runes to augment the summoning magic.

1. Magical Reagents:

• Various magical reagents or components might be needed to empower the blood elemental or enhance the player's minions. These could include rare herbs, alchemical stone, essences, or enchanted crystals.

Gems:
-Sapphire
-Moonstone
-Topaz
-Diamond
Herbs:
-Spirit Weed herbs
-Blood Weed
-Fell Stalk
Divine Energies:
-Elder Energy
-Gleaming Energy
-Bright Energy
Essences:
-Pure Rune Essence

1. Altar or Ritual Site:

• The ritual might need to be performed at a specific location, such as an ancient altar, or a necromancer's lair to attune the magic properly. To Summon Familiar must use:

-Vampyric ritual site
-Vampyric Altar
Creates Pouches & Spirit Shards can use
-Duke Orcus Altar
-City Of Um

1. Dark Offering:

• In addition to blood, the ritual might require a more substantial sacrifice, such as the soul of a captured enemy, the essence of a fallen foe, or a tribute to dark entities.

These materials contribute to the immersive experience of performing a blood summoning ritual in RuneScape 3, emphasizing the dark and mystical aspects of blood magic and necromancy within the game's lore. Players may need to gather or acquire these materials through exploration, quests, or trading with NPCs to successfully perform the ritual and summon their powerful blood elemental familiar.
In RuneScape 3, the concept of blood summoning and the associated Sanguine Ritual would likely be associated with the god Zaros.
Zaros is one of the major gods in the game, known for his focus on ancient and powerful magic, as well as his mastery of control and manipulation. Blood magic and necromancy align with the themes of darkness, control, and power commonly associated with Zaros.
Here's why blood summoning could be linked to Zaros:

1. Dark Magic:
   Zaros is known for his affinity with dark and ancient magic, including blood magic and necromancy. The Sanguine Ritual's dark and sacrificial nature would fit well with Zaros's sphere of influence.
   
2. Control over Minions:
   

Zaros is depicted as a god who seeks control and dominance. Blood summoning, which involves summoning powerful minions or enhancing existing ones, would align with Zaros's desire for control over forces and beings.

1. Mysterious and Ancient Knowledge:

Zaros is associated with ancient knowledge and secrets. Blood summoning, being a complex and powerful form of magic, would likely require esoteric knowledge that Zaros could possess or grant to his followers.

1. Thematic Consistency:

Blood magic and necromancy are often depicted as dark and forbidden arts in fantasy settings, which would resonate with Zaros's image as a mysterious and enigmatic figure.
While other gods in RuneScape 3, such as Zamorak or even the Mahjarrat, may also have connections to dark magic and blood rituals, Zaros's emphasis on control, ancient knowledge, and mastery of the arcane makes him a likely candidate for the source of blood summoning in the game.

Close reading of Florida!!!
I've seen a few people not fully sure what to make of Florida!!! and since I view it as maybe THE gayest song on the album (the prophecy/guilty as sin/fresh out the slammer are all top contenders, though), and perhaps the idea/thought process that creates the basis for the rest of the songs (hence the exclamation points!!!) I figured I should share my interpretation of it. Thoughts and notes are very welcome!
You can beat the heat, if you beat the charges too - Okay, so the you pronoun here is important, the I and the You are the two characters who are having a duet. Taylor's I is singing to Florence's You the only way to "beat the heat" aka avoid Florida, is to make sure there are "no charges" - allegations that is.
They said I was a cheat, I guess it must be true - Who are they? Likely the press talking about TayloMatty/Joe, right? But the 'I guess' is there to denote the next line as a little sarcastic, a little playful - she means something subversive to what she is actually saying. 'I guess it must be true', how can this be honest, and still toy with the original meaning? Well, if she had relationships while being with the person she was publicly tied to - but that was agreed upon, she was meant to 'be a cheat'.
And my friends all smell like weed or little babies And this city reeks of driving myself crazy - There is no one who understands the titular I's (likely Taylor) situation. Either they are in heteronormative relationships - having babies isn't literal here, it is a symbol for sticking to the normative - or they are dissociating from the reality - where the weed is a symbol for turning off, forgetting, disconnecting. Her immidiate surroundings (the city) are isolating her with her own thoughts (driving myself crazy) - reeks is especially interesting here, as it is mostly used for something hidden or concealed, but still noticeable. She is working so hard at not showing anyone these thoughts.
Little did you know Your home's really only a town you're just a guest in So you work your life away Just to pay for a timeshare down in Destin -Here you can read home as an analogy for her identity, and I think you should, specifically because none of her homes are in towns - she lives in cities, but her home is where she lives, where her heart is if you will. And that is the interesting thing about this line anymore - your home, where you used to live/who you used to be, is no longer a home/no longer where your heart lies. It is just a place, one you can get evicted from, one built not from you (after all you are just a guests, guests don't leave their mark) but from other people and their notions and ideas (you know, a town). Now this one is admittedly a jump but I have a theory based on a different person who talks about Florida as a freedom you'd give anything for - so this is partially based on that, this idea of Florida as the ultimate place to go to find yourself. However, I feel like the lyrics really lend themselves to this as well, even without that interpretation "so you work your way, just to pay for a timeshare down in destin" - Destin is such an interesting choice of a place, it feels like it is trying to allude to destiny, i.e. the life you want for yourself and believe must be coming (and from a gaylor perspective, being out and queer, and getting to love whomever you want). So this like can be read as like you make sacrifices and work harder than humanly possible (look at Taylor's career) only to get to finally feel a a small sliver (pay for a timeshare) of destiny, the life you wish for (in Destin). Why would this be Florida, why would it be Destin specifically? Well, Florida is at least internationally known as a retirement state, someplace you can eventually settle down and find peace. Other people dream of LA, NY, London, or even Nashville - but she has been there and she was miserable. I think there is something alluring in an anonymous suburb where she can just be herself and be in love. I also think she is trying to comment on how a free future isn't nessecarily one where she is loved and appreciated, and she is aware of that.
Florida is one hell of a drug Florida, can I use you up? She can't dissociate and flee anymore (like her friends who smell of weed) so she needs to find another drug to sustain her current life - dreams of who she can be once she has reached her destin/her destiny/her destination.
The hurricane with my name when it came First of all, role switch indicated by Florence singing! This is the You that Taylor was talking to, the one that has been established as the one who beat the heat (Florida), and the charges (rumors of being gay). This is the Taylor that doesn't dream about coming out, who has accepted a life without freedom and without love.
This line is also really clever, because it calls back to Taylor's earlier usages of storm imagery (like "Storm coming, good husband, bad omen" from High Infidelity, that can be read as Taylor being the storm that is a bad omen for her 'good husband', the Taylor that acts on her secret thoughts. Same with "Every mornin', I glared at you with storms in my eyes/How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dyin'?" from You're Losing Me, again a Taylor ready to wreck havoc on the status quo with her secret, inner thoughts. And once again with "To see you there, to see you there/And now the storm is coming, but/It's you and me, that's my whole world/They whisper in the hallway, "She's a bad, bad girl" (Okay)" from Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince qhere she honestly spends the most of the text establishing herself as the opposite of Miss Americana - she is running from homecoming, she sees America burning before her and she wants no part, just like she wants no heartbreak prince, she wants the 'you' in the song, and oncs she sees her she becomes the storm, the Taylor that acts on, or wants to act on, her secret thoughts. This is hopefully enough to establish a pattern, but seriously look up storm mentions in her song and think of it from this perspective - it makes. sense.) but also because it is Florence singing, it also calls to memory her song Hurricane Drunk.
Florence described it like this: "This was written in about 10 minutes. I'd never had my heart broken before, and when I did I realised how delicious it can be, how intoxicating. You suddenly realise that all the little things you cared about don't matter. You don't care about anything. You think, I'm going to drink myself to death.' And then you bump into them and they're with another girl. You've been waiting for the worst to happen, and then when it does – you're free. Nothing matters. All the wind is taken out of you, but then all of a sudden you're like 'I'm going out! And nothing can stop me, nothing can hurt me any more! I'm invincible, because you've hurt me so much.'" So, imagine what the consequences of letting storm-Taylor free would be, she would be free, but it would also be the worst that could happen.
I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away Barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine - Few things here, this "You" the Taylor that has given up, is daring the other Taylor, the "I", the storm-Taylor, to make her disappear. Some part of her wants it, and being drunk is often used for symbolising sharing your innermost thoughts (you only hear the truth from drunk men and babies), deep down she hasn't truly let go. She decides to lock herself up further, so that it can't happen, waiting it out with wine. Wine has been a symbol with a double meaning in her earlier songs - it is both nice memories of people she seem to feel genuine love for (see maroon, dress, willow) and memories of or a symbol for what she has lost (see BDILH, ((honestly also the alchemy...)), ILIPW, Ivy, Clean).
Well, me and my ghosts, we had a hell of a time Yes, I'm haunted but I'm feeling just fine Just reaffirming and validating the speculation from the last line, the Taylor that has given up has chosen to stay in her memories and her past. She claims to be fine with having nothing other than that. Fully also a callback to Haunted, that is pretty obviously about a gay girl being left by her sapphic lover, and having to go home to a man she doesn't love - she is saying that the heartbreak and the betrayal has stayed with her, but she can't care about it any longer.
All my girls got their lace and their crimes And your cheating husband disappeared - I truly think this should be read this way: All my girls got their lace/And their crimes and your cheating husband disappeared. If so, all my girls got their lace could be referring to all the girls she loves getting married to someone else, lamenting over that, and over the fact that they no longer have a record (have escaped the rumors of queerness) and the given up-Taylor is pondering the fact that her beard (cheating husband) is nothing she needs to take into account anymore, he disappeared without exposing her secret
Well, no one asks any questions here No one truly wishes to know what happened.
So I did my best to lay to rest All of the bodies that have ever been on my body And in my mind, they sink into the swamp "To lay to rest", to allow herself to forget the possibilities that have been, the love she could have had, as that is now out of her reach - however, she lays them to rest in a swamp - where do we have swamps? Florida. The place she doesn't ever think she can truly go but loves, and longs for. That is where she places those memories, so that if she ever suceeds, she can still have them, they can still be hers.
Is that a bad thing to say in a song? Somewhat of a double entendre - the surface interpretation is idk female rage, she committed murder, she doesn't care about her previous relationships maybe even? The deeper interpretation however would be, if she feels shame about the part of her that longs for Florida, is it okay for her to say that she keeps her memories, is it okay to tell the world that she will return to them one day, can she even in heavy metaphors touch on the part that she works so hard to keep hidden
[...]
So you pack your life away Just to wait out the shitstorm back in Texas - Current Taylor, storm-Taylor is singing again, mocking given up-Taylor for her choices of giving up her life and making these sacrifices (pack your life away), with no other grater purpose than to wait - and actually, here is a wonderful double meaning again. She could either be waiting out "the shitstorm back in Texas" i.e. waiting for a better less republican climate or waiting out "the shitstorm" (herself, her urges to come out, her urges to break free) "back in Texas" (hiding behind conservative values, toying with this image of her as the boy crazy future wife, with the picket fence and the 2.5 children)
[...]
I need to forget, so take me to Florida Really only validating the interpretation so far, she needs to forget what her life is, so she dreams of Florida (aka freedom). Storm-Taylor is singing this line, the one who actually wishes to break free.
I've got some regrets, I'll bury them in Florida Can it be more literal than this? It is referring back to the bodies she left in the swamp, i.e. her memories and her real loves, the things she could have had. She will "bury them in Florida" i.e. not pretend like they exist, but they stay in the dreamworld. This is giving up-Taylor singing.
Tell me I'm despicable, say it's unforgivable Storm-Taylor is singing this, she is saying that she is ready to take the consequences. Ready to hear from the homophobes thatthese are "despicable acts" and "unforgivable sins" as they so often do.
At least the dolls are beautiful, fuck me up, Florida - This is both of them!! So important. Both versions of Taylor are so gay that at the thought of beautiful women they are both like, what the hell, maybe it doesn't sound so bad after all. 🤷‍♀️ Literal perfection, no notes on this line. Of course what finally gets her on the same track is ✨️women✨️. There isn't a sapphic that can't relate to making the hardest descision for no other reason than bc cute girl.
I need to forget, so take me to Florida - this is just like before I've got some regrets, I'll bury them in Florida - but this is now sang by them both, and an alternate meaning of this line could be that any regrets they have about how they handled themselves and their career won't matter anymore once they are free (in Florida)
Tell me I'm despicable, say it's unforgivable What a crash, what a rush, fuck me up, Florida It's one hell of a drug - This is just storm-taylor, and she is ready to let it burn, she knows the pain is coming and welcomes it
It's one hell of a drug Love left me like this and I don't want to exist So take me to Florida - This makes me very emotional actually. It is both of them singing. A bit more reluctantly than in the previous stanza, but they are obviously both looking at the destruction that has been left in their life by their own love (gay) and people's expectations of love for them (not gay), and it has hurt them so much that they don't even want to be alive anymore. It is too tiresome. So they both agree to finally be free, because the other option, quite frankly, is death. They'll go to Florida. 🩷🧡🤍
Little did you know Your home's really only a town you're just a guest in (take me to Florida ) So you work your life away Just to pay for a timeshare down in Destin (take me to Florida ) - This is a call and response, so storm-Taylor says one line, and giving up-Taylor says the other, really just to show that they now agree with eachother's worldview. For now, the non bolded part in the parenthesis is just Storm-Taylor though, really being the leader, whilst the bold is the both of them actively now showing their longing
Little did you know Your home's really only the town you'll get arrested (take me to Florida ) So you pack your life away Just to wait out the shitstorm back in Texas (take me to Florida ) Call and response continues in the same way, but I just wanted to point out this line since I didn't before. We have established that Home is Taylor herself, and The Charges are queerness/rumors of being queer, the town is views/other views. So this would mean: You are really the only one who's views keep you jailed, you are the one who is preventing you from being free/queer
Florida is one hell of a drug (take me to) Florida Florida, can I use you up? Florida is one hell of a drug Florida, go on, fuck me up -Nothing new really happens here, the bolded bits are storm-Taylor singing, the rest is both of them. One piece of note, however, is that the "(take me to) Florida" bit has the same tempo as 'the lakes', potentially drawing similies between the lakes ("I don't belong, and my beloved neither do you" [...] "I'm setting off, not without my muse") and Florida, emphasizing the difference between a version of freedom where you have to hide your love away from the world and decide to eulogize yourself to get peace, and true freedom, where you decide to take the punches and get fucked up just to not have to hide ever again (being in Florida, in the smack of the middle of the hear of the dab - I realize this reference is only useful to dropout fans, but the rest of you hopefully get my point regardless.)

I was always a gamer. I've personally been playing video games since age 4, and I love them. I was always better than my cousins and friends, because I always believed video games were a test of wills, and I believe my will is unbreakable. I was introduced to Starcraft by a friend from my 8th grade middle school, Chad, who had let me borrow the disc and either forgot about it or didn't care to get it back for almost 6 months (I think). It was my first time being introduced to online, competetive gaming, and the first time that I wasn't the best around. I was instantly in love. I quickly realized clans were where it was at, all members sharing a prefix or suffix tag to symbolize their membership. So I went searching for anyone that would have a n00b like me.
I found Ultimate Races, {UR}, after personally playing a couple good 1v1s, or 2v2s with my closest friend of the clan, Hydra{UR}, who later used the name De(V)oN{UR}. His real name is Jay. He asked if I could join, after my incessant hounding. C-Zero{UR} was our leader. He was the best of us (at the time), and was exactly what you'd expect as a leader. The strong silent type, he wasn't prone to the chit chat of the rest of the clan, but I remember he was a beast with Zerg. Other members that I remember were Omar, who was like co-leader or underboss (Sorry Omar, I can't think of ur gamertag right now) and JRowan{UR}. My tag was Black_Lotus{UR}.
It was the time of dial-up modems, when there was no deep web or surface web, and everyone was using AOL. A time of Icq and Napster, and Winamp and .mp3s. I never wanted to be a pro more at any game (not even COD, and I was top 30 weekly in BO1 for Xbox 360). I literally wasted 5 years of my life playing almost 12-16 hours daily. I once made a girl sit naked in my bed while I finished a 50 minute game, that I expected to be over in 15. I shouldn't be that proud of admitting this, but I totally am. Cause we still banged, and she actually waited without much protest. I always loved how respected the elite, gosu players and clans of the times were. A time before replays, where u literally had to know a friend of a friend who was either participating, or spectating in order to get one of the coveted 6 boxseats to view a 1v1 between 2 legendary players. By boxseats I mean choosing terran, destroying your scvs down to 1 left with 5hp, and lifting off to a corner while the competitors allied and gave u vision to enjoy the show. God bless the person who invented the observer map, which finally offered 12 spectator seats, I think, in addition to whoever was playing, without requiring you be in the game, and which also revealed the entire map without fog.
If you werent privy to Clan -x17's channel (or clan chatroom), you probably wound up in the Ladder channel, where the famous SCers clan used to hang their hats. I believe it was SCCHeMy who got me the invite to obs a game of LiquidDrone Vs X'Ds~Kiwi, and I was giddy as a schoolgirl because X'Ds~ was the most famous clan I knew of, and Team Liquid was newly formed with few members, who were known by reputation to all be individual giant slayers. Drone was my personal favorite player, as a local server legend who was still seen and talked about often, because he mingled with the public. Honestly, I can't tell u what Drone did for the SC community, it's immeasurable. Eri, if u read this, you're my personal hero and the reason I gave my life to this game for 5 years straight. Because I wanted to wear the Liquidbadge so bad, and wanted to be good enough for you to personally acknowledge and respect me. Thank you for the drive, for the forums, and for personally organizing competitions and your own seasonal league that literally replaced battle.net's own ladder system. God I forget what it was called, but the entire world took part, with national flags and everything!! You ARE Team Liquid to me. Nazgul might've gotten more famous, and that always pissed me off because you were ahead of the curb before replays came around and stole everyone's secret build orders and caught up to u, but u took so much time into helping and building and giving back to the community that it's a shame your name isn't on a plaque in gold letters somewhere.
I was so excited when I was finally good enough, and kept good company enough, to be given the invite to Clan -x17's channel, where ALL the big boys played. Local legends like Maynard and X'Ds~Grrrr..., LiquidNinja along with LiquidNazgul, long before he donned the [pG], SCMarine and SCF!R3B@t~ (hope I got that right) and legit anyone who was anyone were there chillin' like it wasn't a big deal. Names that inspire greatness, that are in SC history FOREVER, and I was apart of it. Quietly sitting there in utter awe, hoping I wasn't noticed and banned for being a weak link, secretly bugging Maynard and Grrrr... for a match with my annoying whispers, chomping at the bit for a chance to test my prowess. I played X'Ds~KiWi in an online tourney once, TvZ, I think, me T. Got smoked. Might've been under my EchoOfDreaMs tag. I was upset because I'm a P player, but I had a really good TvP game, and someone tipped me incorrectly, saying he was playing P at the time, though I remember he played Z vs Drone. I wish I had just played my P, cause that's always been my race. And I take pride in that, because P was long considered the weakest of the 3 in tournament play, at the time having never won a championship since season 1 with Grrrr... That is, until Oops[Reach], the material toss, gave us something to believe in. I personally smurfed under the tag MaterialToss on U.S. West vanilla because I heard they called him that due to his insane macro and for hotkeying like 5 gates (I personally only hotkeyed 3 to 4 on keys 5-8).
I myself always believed my macro was phenomenal. It had to be, because my micro is what made me quit competitive play, and I ruled U.S. West under the name iDoMiNaTe, a tag I stole from [CREW]iDoM on U.S. East, cause the name was fitting. I never claimed to be him, and actually ran into [CREW]Arrow once on a rare East server appearance for me after moving West, and asked if iDoM still played and that no disrespect was intended. He told me he didn't personally think [CREW]iDoM played anymore, but I paid my respects. Your name on Starcraft was everything, and games and 1v1s were so hyped that many famous players, and make no mistake, I became famous on U.S. West in the vanilla community under iDoMiNaTe, played incognito on smurf accounts, and I would never claim to be another player.
I remember when I knew, without a doubt, that I was the top dawg around on pub servers, when familiar server players started challenging me. Ling...br00dling??? He was an active member and had some respectability, though he talked like he was amazing. He goaded me once, talking smack for a good hour, trying to get a game. He had remembered me from like a year or 2 before and was saying I was a nobody, and not that strong. Small thing to a giant, but I finally agreed to 1v1 him, and I mopped him in a PvZ in under 20. I look back now, and realize that was the highest form of honor I could've gotten, and what I must've looked like to Eriador (Drone) and Maynard a year or 2 before. Some months later, I saw him again and he had a link to a tourney he had played that he won (of course, showboating as always) with some player under the tag ThePrelate (iDoMiNaTe), as a runner up. I was personally offended that he thought or assumed it was me, cause it wasn't. I said something to him personally. Like dude, that wasn't me and I'm more than a litte upset u thought it was please take it down or fix it. He kinda shrugged it off, but that's how important your handle and identity on Starcraft was.
So now that I've given most of my history as an amateur SC player, I'll tell u why I quit. For 1, I met and played Artosis personally at the 2002, I'm pretty sure it was 2002, state qualifiers at Comp USA in Braintree, MA. HoVz, a name that disappeared into obscurity, had won the previous year in 2001, with Artosis coming in second at that time. I live in Lowell, MA, and Braintree was almost an hour and a half away for me, and I had to go through Boston to get to it. Anyway, I finally got there in 2002, playing under the name I had been most known as, iDoMiNaTe. My best friend came with me for moral support. We blazed a joint of some bomb skunk weed in the parking lot before it began, to settle the nerves amd take the edge off, and I came in reeking of some dank nugz. I believe they'd say that stuff was LOUD AF nowadays, and I got quite a few glares. Fuck em, I do what I want. I want to stress that I never enjoyed BW. I prefer the balance of original SC, casually known as vanilla. But I knew if I wanted to be pro, I had to play it. I got slaughtered by KiWi in that tourney, not just cause of the TvZ matchup, but also because I didn't have the right balance of units and he came in with more lurkers than I expected. Even though I expected some, the amount was overwhelming and I had marines with range/medics, and teched fast to science vessels with irradiate. I was missing a key component, though. If I had included firebats and had brought siege tanks, and waited to tech to vessels with irradiate later on, it'd have been diff. I think I lost to Liquid`Ninja in the same tourney, double elim, to a DT (Dark Templar) rush. He went right for my cyber core and it was a wrap. Looking back now, I personally believe my lack of BW play was known, as my name was known, and used against me.
I personally believe I played SlayersBoxer on vanilla once, under a smurf account of his. I had seen his replays and if it wasn't him, he had a similar style. My macro is incredible, not to toot my own horn, and I played a random public game at like 3am EST where we had barely 1 skirmish for an hour straight as we both just expanded and covered the map, and legit the sonofagun did what I used to do - when we had nearly mined the map, he gave me vision and he had expanded to a dropship spot that was on my side of the map, which gave him 2 mining spots over me, and about 55% to my 45% map coverage. U gotta understand, it was a PvT matchup and T have supply depots and bays and barracks and shit that litter the map, and are far more effective at drawing auto-attack than pylons and the occasional gate or photon cannon because they're MOBILE distractions as well as stationary, creating far more difficult obstacles to maneuver through. We had 1 big skirmish, and although he didn't gain ground, the one dropship base he had on me that I should've gotten to, was the last base unmined and I said gg and then typed "SlayersBoxer?" And he left. I swear it was him.
Onto why I quit. At the 2002 qualifier I had practiced BW exclusively for a couple months leading up to it. It was double elim. My first game, I had THOUGHT the map selection was gonna be the same as the year before, and it was a map I had never played. I scouted later than usual, focusing on my macro and fully believing I was unmatched in it with my personal build orders and nuances that I had never seen anyone, not even pros, use. Turns out it was a map similar to HoV, an air map, and although I found out relatively quickly, I had double robo'd with no stargate, intending reavs for PvZ with some dropship harassment, and he went mass muta and I was friggin' demolished, much to my chagrin, without any corsairs or scouts. Forget who I played first game, didn't recognize the name. Second game was vs Artosis, PvP, my personal worst matchup with toss, and he won. But I was sure that I was as good as him. I play on a laptop, and had to use desktop, and I wanted to prove it. So I found him on the servers, whispered him and told him who I was, and asked for a rematch saying I'm a lot better on my personal laptop. We played on the map Jungle. He won, but it was close. Afterwards he was like who were u again? And I told him what I was wearing at the qualifier, and he was like oh ok I remember, and then followed up with "u and I were the best one's there," which I very much appreciated him saying. Told him it sucked to have to play on desktop, and that I was thankful for the respect. U gotta understand how it worked back then, SC was the first professional game where players were sponsored and paid to play. Only the best from each state went to nationals. Second place meant nothing, and I didn't even come in second. Anyway, literally less than a month after the qualifier, a buddy of mine, his tag was something like Indig0, came to me on U.S. West outta nowhere. He whispers me like "yo I found the pro room, I'm a give it to u but u gotta be quick." Love him for that.
So at this point in SC, they had private server korean leagues and stuff, and I had personally thought the pros had left public servers for good. I joined a few of those leagues, forget the names, but enjoyed the legendary status and recognition and familiarity I had earned on U.S. West, where I was actively sought and challenged, and where I was known. Plus most didn't speak English. Replays were out over a year now, and the average players skill had gone up because of them, but I was still the best around on public servers. When the pros are on public servers, and the channel gets leaked, it gets flooded with scrubs and they move somewhere else, so I knew my window was short. I was literally at my peak, hadn't lost a serious game or best of 3 in forever, and I knew I wasn't gonna be better than I was then, so I had to know for sure whether or not I could compete with them. I kept up with and got the nod of respect from Artosis, so I knew I wasn't exaggerating my skill level in my head. So I joined the channel and sought a game. Please understand why it's an honor even to be allowed a match in SC from a pro player, and why they move channels and don't respond to whispers or challenges from pub players. If u aren't playing the very best competition, it actually lowers your skill level. Iron sharpens iron, if u will, which is funny cause that's who I got a game with.
I asked around humbly, stating I really need a game with a professional to see if this was something obtainable for me, or just a dream. I talked to a player, forget his tag, who said he'd ask around. I saw a player with a new account, but a famous tag. His name was Iron[pG], and he only had 9 games played. He agreed to play me, and the other player I spoke to who said he'd look around, joined to observe. PvT, a fav of mine, and it ended in 5 minutes. My macro and tech were right on par, better even, but he came with a dropship and single tank/2 scvs, and his micro literally crushed my initial 2 goons and the 3rd coming out. I tried my best to target him properly as he picked up and dropped his tank, alternating between the tank and dropship with my goons, but I just couldn't land a hit on his damn tank for the life of me. I almost got the dropship, but his scvs quickly repaired it. Another dropship came with 2 more tanks, and it was over. And I knew without proper training on micro from another pro, I would never get any further. I asked the obs what he thought and he said "at first, I thought u gosu" and that made me feel good, but I decided 5 years was enough, I had plateaud, and my micro wasn't nearly good enough. I mean in bigger skirmishes, I micro well enough. But my goon targeting vs drop ships totally sucked, clearly!
MY contribution to Starcraft, and this is a fact cause I've never seen anyone else with the build order, and I DID have countless replays to prove it, all lost in the annex of time, is a slightly faster variation of the usual 8 pylon/10 gate. The apm program that came out, bwchart, if that's still around and the cloud still there, I may be able to retrieve some old replays of mine by logging in. I watched that tourney they had when sc: remastered came out, with rematches of seasons 1-5's finalists, and didn't see Grrrr... or Reach use the build. I learned that by holding off on a probe for just a second count at 7, I could get a faster pylon. And by doing so, I could warp a gate at 9. So my contribution to SC:BW, apart from being a member of the community and an actual legend on U.S. West vanilla, is the toss build order 7 pylon, 9 gate. Even the pros don't use it. Or they didn't when I was active. I dunno I literally quit forever after losing to Iron[pG], whoever he was he was a pro for sure. I wish someone would've trained me in micro targeting. Those stupid micro maps with the rounds just weren't enough.
There's a lot that came from SC. Profession esports for 1, but also online regional qualifiers, TeamLiquid, and a community of dedicated players like I have never seen in a game since. I wish there was a memorial site where the legends of the game could be honored and remembered. I was in awe of you guys. And gals, even. h.ANG)Dodo I believe, I remember as being the first professional female player. Your name is forever in my memory. X'Ds~Grrrr... you made me fall in love with toss. Oops[Reach], u inspired me and made me believe macro was good enough to counter micro, and I overwhelmed my opponents in many games with superior map expansion and unit production. LiquidDrone you are my personal favorite player, and I got into pissing contests when other top players said u weren't that good, not understanding that at one point, u were amazing and ahead of the curb, and that u personally sacrificed time u could've spent honing skills to organizing and creating leagues those same players played in, or how humble u were. To my first clan, Omar and JRowan and Jay of Ultimate Races (not the coolest clan name), I literally lied and u guys allowed me to make a clan url page, when the web was still young and domain names were abundant, and websites were free to make. I took the time to learn html in order to create it, and I hope it's there somewhere, in the deep web, an incomplete but personal page just for us. And thank you guys for that little reunion we had where we found each other years later. To Artosis - I personally look at you and think to myself, that might've been me. Thank you for saying I was the best there that year, next to u. Your wiki is wrong, however. U didn't win states for NH, u won for MA, unless it refers to a later year. And to all the legends, I know my name deserves inclusion. I played with the best, I lost to them, but I was on the level. I learned from u guys, admired u guys, followed u guys, and I hope and believe that you guys, too, remember me and deemed me worthy. To CHeMy, thanks for allowing me to join the SCers, though it was for a short while and at the end of their reign. It meant a lot, and as a player I looked up to, and actually defeated in a few games as we shared a short friendship when I joined as SCRaVe, it helped me realize that I had become that which I admired. We're legends boys! Apart of history forever! And I'll never forget. If any u guys read this, I hope u reach out

I've seen a few people not fully sure what to make of Florida!!! and since I view it as maybe THE gayest song on the album (the prophecy/guilty as sin/fresh out the slammer are all top contenders, though), and perhaps the idea/thought process that creates the basis for the rest of the songs (hence the exclamation points!!!) I figured I should share my interpretation of it. Thoughts and notes are very welcome!
You can beat the heat, if you beat the charges too - Okay, so the you pronoun here is important, the I and the You are the two characters who are having a duet. Taylor's I is singing to Florence's You the only way to "beat the heat" aka avoid Florida, is to make sure there are "no charges" - allegations that is.
They said I was a cheat, I guess it must be true - Who are they? Likely the press talking about TayloMatty/Joe, right? But the 'I guess' is there to denote the next line as a little sarcastic, a little playful - she means something subversive to what she is actually saying. 'I guess it must be true', how can this be honest, and still toy with the original meaning? Well, if she had relationships while being with the person she was publicly tied to - but that was agreed upon, she was meant to 'be a cheat'.
And my friends all smell like weed or little babies And this city reeks of driving myself crazy - There is no one who understands the titular I's (likely Taylor) situation. Either they are in heteronormative relationships - having babies isn't literal here, it is a symbol for sticking to the normative - or they are dissociating from the reality - where the weed is a symbol for turning off, forgetting, disconnecting. Her immidiate surroundings (the city) are isolating her with her own thoughts (driving myself crazy) - reeks is especially interesting here, as it is mostly used for something hidden or concealed, but still noticeable. She is working so hard at not showing anyone these thoughts.
Little did you know Your home's really only a town you're just a guest in So you work your life away Just to pay for a timeshare down in Destin -Here you can read home as an analogy for her identity, and I think you should, specifically because none of her homes are in towns - she lives in cities, but her home is where she lives, where her heart is if you will. And that is the interesting thing about this line anymore - your home, where you used to live/who you used to be, is no longer a home/no longer where your heart lies. It is just a place, one you can get evicted from, one built not from you (after all you are just a guests, guests don't leave their mark) but from other people and their notions and ideas (you know, a town). Now this one is admittedly a jump but I have a theory based on a different person who talks about Florida as a freedom you'd give anything for - so this is partially based on that, this idea of Florida as the ultimate place to go to find yourself. However, I feel like the lyrics really lend themselves to this as well, even without that interpretation "so you work your way, just to pay for a timeshare down in destin" - Destin is such an interesting choice of a place, it feels like it is trying to allude to destiny, i.e. the life you want for yourself and believe must be coming (and from a gaylor perspective, being out and queer, and getting to love whomever you want). So this like can be read as like you make sacrifices and work harder than humanly possible (look at Taylor's career) only to get to finally feel a a small sliver (pay for a timeshare) of destiny, the life you wish for (in Destin). Why would this be Florida, why would it be Destin specifically? Well, Florida is at least internationally known as a retirement state, someplace you can eventually settle down and find peace. Other people dream of LA, NY, London, or even Nashville - but she has been there and she was miserable. I think there is something alluring in an anonymous suburb where she can just be herself and be in love. I also think she is trying to comment on how a free future isn't nessecarily one where she is loved and appreciated, and she is aware of that.
Florida is one hell of a drug Florida, can I use you up? She can't dissociate and flee anymore (like her friends who smell of weed) so she needs to find another drug to sustain her current life - dreams of who she can be once she has reached her destin/her destiny/her destination.
The hurricane with my name when it came First of all, role switch indicated by Florence singing! This is the You that Taylor was talking to, the one that has been established as the one who beat the heat (Florida), and the charges (rumors of being gay). This is the Taylor that doesn't dream about coming out, who has accepted a life without freedom and without love.
This line is also really clever, because it calls back to Taylor's earlier usages of storm imagery (like "Storm coming, good husband, bad omen" from High Infidelity, that can be read as Taylor being the storm that is a bad omen for her 'good husband', the Taylor that acts on her secret thoughts. Same with "Every mornin', I glared at you with storms in my eyes/How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dyin'?" from You're Losing Me, again a Taylor ready to wreck havoc on the status quo with her secret, inner thoughts. And once again with "To see you there, to see you there/And now the storm is coming, but/It's you and me, that's my whole world/They whisper in the hallway, "She's a bad, bad girl" (Okay)" from Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince qhere she honestly spends the most of the text establishing herself as the opposite of Miss Americana - she is running from homecoming, she sees America burning before her and she wants no part, just like she wants no heartbreak prince, she wants the 'you' in the song, and oncs she sees her she becomes the storm, the Taylor that acts on, or wants to act on, her secret thoughts. This is hopefully enough to establish a pattern, but seriously look up storm mentions in her song and think of it from this perspective - it makes. sense.) but also because it is Florence singing, it also calls to memory her song Hurricane Drunk.
Florence described it like this: "This was written in about 10 minutes. I'd never had my heart broken before, and when I did I realised how delicious it can be, how intoxicating. You suddenly realise that all the little things you cared about don't matter. You don't care about anything. You think, I'm going to drink myself to death.' And then you bump into them and they're with another girl. You've been waiting for the worst to happen, and then when it does – you're free. Nothing matters. All the wind is taken out of you, but then all of a sudden you're like 'I'm going out! And nothing can stop me, nothing can hurt me any more! I'm invincible, because you've hurt me so much.'" So, imagine what the consequences of letting storm-Taylor free would be, she would be free, but it would also be the worst that could happen.
I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away Barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine - Few things here, this "You" the Taylor that has given up, is daring the other Taylor, the "I", the storm-Taylor, to make her disappear. Some part of her wants it, and being drunk is often used for symbolising sharing your innermost thoughts (you only hear the truth from drunk men and babies), deep down she hasn't truly let go. She decides to lock herself up further, so that it can't happen, waiting it out with wine. Wine has been a symbol with a double meaning in her earlier songs - it is both nice memories of people she seem to feel genuine love for (see maroon, dress, willow) and memories of or a symbol for what she has lost (see BDILH, ((honestly also the alchemy...)), ILIPW, Ivy, Clean).
Well, me and my ghosts, we had a hell of a time Yes, I'm haunted but I'm feeling just fine Just reaffirming and validating the speculation from the last line, the Taylor that has given up has chosen to stay in her memories and her past. She claims to be fine with having nothing other than that. Fully also a callback to Haunted, that is pretty obviously about a gay girl being left by her sapphic lover, and having to go home to a man she doesn't love - she is saying that the heartbreak and the betrayal has stayed with her, but she can't care about it any longer.
All my girls got their lace and their crimes And your cheating husband disappeared - I truly think this should be read this way: All my girls got their lace/And their crimes and your cheating husband disappeared. If so, all my girls got their lace could be referring to all the girls she loves getting married to someone else, lamenting over that, and over the fact that they no longer have a record (have escaped the rumors of queerness) and the given up-Taylor is pondering the fact that her beard (cheating husband) is nothing she needs to take into account anymore, he disappeared without exposing her secret
Well, no one asks any questions here No one truly wishes to know what happened.
So I did my best to lay to rest All of the bodies that have ever been on my body And in my mind, they sink into the swamp "To lay to rest", to allow herself to forget the possibilities that have been, the love she could have had, as that is now out of her reach - however, she lays them to rest in a swamp - where do we have swamps? Florida. The place she doesn't ever think she can truly go but loves, and longs for. That is where she places those memories, so that if she ever suceeds, she can still have them, they can still be hers.
Is that a bad thing to say in a song? Somewhat of a double entendre - the surface interpretation is idk female rage, she committed murder, she doesn't care about her previous relationships maybe even? The deeper interpretation however would be, if she feels shame about the part of her that longs for Florida, is it okay for her to say that she keeps her memories, is it okay to tell the world that she will return to them one day, can she even in heavy metaphors touch on the part that she works so hard to keep hidden
[...]
So you pack your life away Just to wait out the shitstorm back in Texas - Current Taylor, storm-Taylor is singing again, mocking given up-Taylor for her choices of giving up her life and making these sacrifices (pack your life away), with no other grater purpose than to wait - and actually, here is a wonderful double meaning again. She could either be waiting out "the shitstorm back in Texas" i.e. waiting for a better less republican climate or waiting out "the shitstorm" (herself, her urges to come out, her urges to break free) "back in Texas" (hiding behind conservative values, toying with this image of her as the boy crazy future wife, with the picket fence and the 2.5 children)
[...]
I need to forget, so take me to Florida Really only validating the interpretation so far, she needs to forget what her life is, so she dreams of Florida (aka freedom). Storm-Taylor is singing this line, the one who actually wishes to break free.
I've got some regrets, I'll bury them in Florida Can it be more literal than this? It is referring back to the bodies she left in the swamp, i.e. her memories and her real loves, the things she could have had. She will "bury them in Florida" i.e. not pretend like they exist, but they stay in the dreamworld. This is giving up-Taylor singing.
Tell me I'm despicable, say it's unforgivable Storm-Taylor is singing this, she is saying that she is ready to take the consequences. Ready to hear from the homophobes thatthese are "despicable acts" and "unforgivable sins" as they so often do.
At least the dolls are beautiful, fuck me up, Florida - This is both of them!! So important. Both versions of Taylor are so gay that at the thought of beautiful women they are both like, what the hell, maybe it doesn't sound so bad after all. 🤷‍♀️ Literal perfection, no notes on this line. Of course what finally gets her on the same track is ✨️women✨️. There isn't a sapphic that can't relate to making the hardest descision for no other reason than bc cute girl.
I need to forget, so take me to Florida - this is just like before I've got some regrets, I'll bury them in Florida - but this is now sang by them both, and an alternate meaning of this line could be that any regrets they have about how they handled themselves and their career won't matter anymore once they are free (in Florida)
Tell me I'm despicable, say it's unforgivable What a crash, what a rush, fuck me up, Florida It's one hell of a drug - This is just storm-taylor, and she is ready to let it burn, she knows the pain is coming and welcomes it
It's one hell of a drug Love left me like this and I don't want to exist So take me to Florida - This makes me very emotional actually. It is both of them singing. A bit more reluctantly than in the previous stanza, but they are obviously both looking at the destruction that has been left in their life by their own love (gay) and people's expectations of love for them (not gay), and it has hurt them so much that they don't even want to be alive anymore. It is too tiresome. So they both agree to finally be free, because the other option, quite frankly, is death. They'll go to Florida. 🩷🧡🤍
Little did you know Your home's really only a town you're just a guest in (take me to Florida ) So you work your life away Just to pay for a timeshare down in Destin (take me to Florida ) - This is a call and response, so storm-Taylor says one line, and giving up-Taylor says the other, really just to show that they now agree with eachother's worldview. For now, the non bolded part in the parenthesis is just Storm-Taylor though, really being the leader, whilst the bold is the both of them actively now showing their longing
Little did you know Your home's really only the town you'll get arrested (take me to Florida ) So you pack your life away Just to wait out the shitstorm back in Texas (take me to Florida ) Call and response continues in the same way, but I just wanted to point out this line since I didn't before. We have established that Home is Taylor herself, and The Charges are queerness/rumors of being queer, the town is views/other views. So this would mean: You are really the only one who's views keep you jailed, you are the one who is preventing you from being free/queer
Florida is one hell of a drug (take me to) Florida Florida, can I use you up? Florida is one hell of a drug Florida, go on, fuck me up -Nothing new really happens here, the bolded bits are storm-Taylor singing, the rest is both of them. One piece of note, however, is that the "(take me to) Florida" bit has the same tempo as 'the lakes', potentially drawing similies between the lakes ("I don't belong, and my beloved neither do you" [...] "I'm setting off, not without my muse") and Florida, emphasizing the difference between a version of freedom where you have to hide your love away from the world and decide to eulogize yourself to get peace, and true freedom, where you decide to take the punches and get fucked up just to not have to hide ever again (being in Florida, in the smack of the middle of the hear of the dab - I realize this reference is only useful to dropout fans, but the rest of you hopefully get my point regardless.)