the deep moans round with many voices

I am in Act 4, on... uh... page 3543, I think. In other words, yeah, I have kind of started to meet the trolls. A little. And there have been explanations which, true to my prediction, have only made everything weirder. But they kind of make sense? By which I mean there is an internal logic (...sometimes) to the story, even if it makes no normal sense, and you can get a feel for the story logic as you go even if you don't have all the pieces yet.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go see what Dave means about ( mysterious action )

...After I go back to page 3541 and watch the animation again, because that one's kind of cool. *sheepish*

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ETA: Brief note upon reaching the end of Act 4 (i.e. page 3832). John. Bro. Seriously, what the everliving fuck did you just make me watch.

ETA2: Okay, I'm now at the real end of Act 4 (page 3841), which is much cooler (and also direly portentous and so on and so forth), but even so, I am still kind of scarred by page 3831. (Do not go watch it. It's not squicky or anything, but ack, my eyes.)

What I did today: slept a lot. I also tried to reorder checks, but ran into two problems. First, my bank removed an extraneous zero from every account number last year, so the number that deluxe.com has on record for me is not actually my account number anymore, and I'm not sure how long my bank will continue supporting the old numbering system. Second, deluxe.com only has my old address on file, and I would need to call a special phone line to change that information. (As a security measure, you cannot change things like that online, which is both comforting and extremely annoying.)

In other news, I wrote about 500 words of "Intervention," the Red Cross-and-space-pirates Star Trek: AOS fic I started a bit over two years ago and stalled out on, bringing the rough draft to 13,500 words. I have now written every scene up to the actual space battle, which I am leery of writing (hence the stalling out). But I do have an outline, and maybe I can get that done sometime before the next movie is released. *sigh*

It's hard to write while in a blue funk. It's even more like pulling teeth than normal. But writing also helps make me feel less empty, so. *deeper sigh*

I should try working on my Narnia Big Bang, but I don't know, I just am not feeling either of those stories right now. Maybe I can make some progress on something else instead.

1. I feel kind of dumb for not noticing for nearly a week, but hello there blue funk! *arms self, refuses to let go of the world*

I think it crept up on me mixed in with the cold-that-was-mostly-exhaustion, which threw my sleeping schedule completely out of whack with any pretense of normal circadian rhythms. One symptom of depression for me is that I kind of... I guess the best way to put it is that I forget to go to sleep. It's partly because I start losing my connections to the outside world and so while I abstractly know that I will deeply regret getting only four hours of sleep a night, I can't quite make myself care. And it's partly because I start losing my connections to the outside world and so I start narrowly focusing in on something like a lifeline, and that something tends to be obsessive reading -- and you can't read while you're asleep.

The problem, of course, is that lack of sleep exacerbates the depression, which exacerbates the lack of sleep, which exacerbates the depression, etcetera etcetera. It's a positive feedback cycle going nowhere but down.

I am probably not going to get to sleep at a rational hour tonight either. I always mean to, but somehow it never quite happens. Fortunately I have Wednesday off work and no urgent errands to run, so I can sleep thirteen hours if I need to and maybe yank myself up and out by my shoestrings or something. Even if not, this will pass within two more weeks at most. It always does. (And you have no idea how grateful I am that it passes, and that I know it passes.)

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2. In other news, I mentioned a while back that Vicky got me two CDs for Christmas. One is Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons, which I had mentioned to her as an "oh, if you can't think of anything or don't want to get me one of these two specific books, maybe something by them or Florence + the Machine? I've heard them on the radio and kind of liked them?" sort of thing. And I do indeed like them.

The other CD is Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit, which is a group I'd never heard of. Vicky does that sometimes -- introduces me to artists she thinks I might like, based on other groups she already knows I like. Sometimes this works out, as with the Decemberists; sometimes it doesn't, as with the Mountain Goats. (I tried hard to like the Mountain Goats, but while the lyrics are interesting, I just find the songs musically unlistenable. De gustibus and all that.)

Frightened Rabbit is a (currently) five-person band, kind of indie light rock. Also Scottish. Very Scottish. And awesome. :-) I think I am going to look into their other albums sometime this year.

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3. Here is a horror story I have never figured out how to write properly, so I will just tell you the bare bones in 1,000 words:

( Red )

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Now I will continue not going to bed.

Okay, so. Background. My version of Calormen has a nine-deity pantheon: five gods, four goddesses. (Three of them are even mentioned in canon, yay!) The fifth god, Azaroth, is god of death, darkness, and silence. Also deserts. Anyway, the clergy of the other deities are gender-linked; women serve the goddesses, men serve the gods. In big temples, Azaroth only has a priesthood, but in rural areas and smaller city shrines and so on, it's basically equal opportunity. His clergy do funerals, mostly. Also sometimes they're healers if there isn't anyone around who serves Soolyeh or Nur.

There was, actually, a way for Aravis to get out of marrying Ahoshta without killing herself. The catch is that by Calormene lights it might be worse than death. It involves renouncing your name, your family, your possessions, your afterlife -- basically everything. You give all that to Azaroth. In return, you get out of whatever obligations were making your life unbearable, because you are not that person anymore. After your death, Azaroth will recycle your soul. You will be reborn as someone else and maybe do a better job the second time around.

Calormenes do not think reincarnation is a good thing. Not at all. The idea is for your soul to live in the lands of the gods after death, as part of your family. Also, breaking family ties? Very bad. Throwing everything away is more shameful than suicide. At least suicides keep their selves and their blood ties, and can make it to the heavens after a time of torment if they're very determined. Even if twice-born souls make it through life faultlessly on the second try, they will always bear a mark to show they gave up the first time around.

(This is theology, btw. Whether it bears much relation to reality... eh. It's a world created by a talking lion. And Tash, at least, is unquestionably real. Either everyone goes to Aslan's country regardless, or your afterlife -- because Narnian cosmology does canonically have immortal souls, even in Lewis's version of England -- is determined by your own gods. Pick whichever option makes you happier. My opinion on Aslan's attitude toward comparative religions need not determine yours.)

Back to the main subject! Nobody will help people who've sworn away their lives to Azaroth. They are not his clergy. They're just empty.

So they help each other. And since he's the god of death, generally what they do is band together and either do a lot of dirty jobs nobody else wants, or follow armies around as mercenaries, last-resort healers, and burial squads.

I need a name for them.

Nicknames include the walking dead, the living ghosts, the black-robes, the forsworn, the hollow ones, the nameless, etc. But the only official name I am coming up with is the Renunciates, which, well... shades of Darkover. And while there are similarities to the concept, this is not a female-only thing. Sacrificing your entire self to Azaroth is an option of last resort for anyone, and it's a LOT more severe than Bradley's Free Amazons.

If I called them the Renunciates, would that throw anyone out of a story? And does anyone have a better name?

This post is all about real estate and the UU congregation I grew up in. Unless you are one of the maybe three people on earth who cares, feel free to ignore my babbling.

( The Unitarian Church in Summit was founded in, IIRC, 1908... )

And that is that. :-)