#in context of the matron and patron for example)

[ride-a-dromedary]

the darkest of nights, in truth, still dazzles.

a halsin fanmix  [listen]

01. Heart of Spring - david arkenstone | 02. Cé Hé Mise Le Ulaingt? / The Two Trees - loreena mckennit | 03. Pussywillows, Cat-tails - gordon lightfoot | 04. Maybe Tomorrow - f&m | 05. Don't Stop Me Now - queen | 06. I Was Born Under a Wand'rin' Star  - bryn terfel  | 07. A Tenuous Bond - derek duke | 08. Closer - nine inch nails | 09.  Into the Darkness - jeremy soule  | 10.  Colorblind - counting crows | 11. Natural Light - ludovico einaudi | 12. Under the Greenwood Tree - royal shakespeare company | 13. The Grove - bear mccreary | 14. Blood Upon the Snow - hozier & bear mccreary | 15. A Quiet Darkness - houses | 16. Spellplague - alderfall | 17. Empty Chairs at Empty Tables - jonathan antoine | 18. Only Everyone Can Judge Me - crywank | 19. Blue Skies - kathryn calder | 20. The Buzzard - old blind dogs | 21. Constant Craving - k.d. lang | 22. The Cave - mumford and sons | 23. Jim Cain - bill callahan | 24. I Won't Back Down - johnny cash | 25. The Ash Grove - laura wright | 26. The Wind - yusuf/cat stevens | 27. To Someone From A Warm Climate (Uiscefhuarithe) - hozier | 28. The Logical Song - supertramp | 29. Tapestry - don mclean | 30. Big Yellow Taxi - joni mitchell | 31. Eat Your Young (Bekon's Choral Version) - hozier | 32. The Flock - david maxxim micic | 33. Changes - david bowie | 34. Ri Na Cruinne - clanaad | 35. The Moments of Happiness - ken page | 36. My Back Pages - the byrds | 37. If This Journey - tom hanford | 38. Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season) - Live - pete seeger

#BG3 Musing #BG3 Fanmix #Halsin BG3 #Halsin #Halsin Posting #my fanmix #i give up this is about as done as it will ever be - i've been talking about this enough i need to get it away from me #i could have made at least one or two other playlists with the number of songs i cut from this #there were some things that hurt me to cut but i figured others had them in their playlists so they're out there #(the impossible dream you will always be famous i am so sorry :(() #i had three goals with this 1. make it more of a timeline in that it follows a narrative order (which hopefully is easy enough to follow) #(it makes sense to me about as much as it is ever going to lol) #2. try to avoid using songs that other individuals have used in their playlists (with a handful of exceptions - i highly encourage you also #take a listen to the others around! lots of good stuff and i figured if you were missing it from this one you can find another with it) #(and if i did use one the context might be different #'closer here is being used in a different way than i usually see it - it's putting more emphasis on the 'you can have my isolation' bit use #in context of the matron and patron for example) #and 3. focus as much as possible on non-romance path elements of halsin's character - i.e. again that's a topic that is highly explored #in other fanmixes to great success - this one is about the childhood he references and the adventures and the capture in the underdark #and the shadow curse and the burying of people he loved and the uptaking of the archdruid position and the healing he did #and possibly did not do #and the radicalization he comes into when his goals are met and he's faced with injustices #and the struggle he has of redefining himself and figuring out who he is after all of it #hopefully the 'eras' are clearly defined but hey it's all gravy from here #honestly if there is one song to listen to that encapsulates halsin for me it's tapestry - highly recommend that #anyway i am blabbing - let the lyrics and such talk for themselves jemi please #but if fanmixes aren't your speed have a kinda nice edit i guess #edit: now with bonus song i just had to add after shamefully forgetting it

[writernopal]

Happy WBW! What are holidays like in your world? Are they religious? Political? Historical? Seasonal? How do your characters feel about certain ones? How are they celebrated?

Happy belated WBW, Tori!

What are holidays like in your world? Are they religious? Political? Historical? Seasonal?

Yes 🧍‍♂️ LOL I'll give one example of each otherwise we will be here forever 😅

Religious: Orran's Day, the Oepus equivalent of Christmas, though primarily celebrated by humans because Orran is their patron god.

Political: Cessation Day, this is a holiday observed by Holtepians to mark the day when The Emperor's War came to an end. This was the bloodiest civil war in all of the Empire's history so it was widely instituted thereafter as a day of reflection and mourning for those lost.

Historical: Kava's Day, the Holtepian celebration of the day that Kava is believed to have ascended to heaven once her work on Oepus was done. Also has a religious aspect to it because Kava is the matron god of the Lizardfolk who inhabit The Holtep Empire.

Seasonal: Solas Week, occurs in first week of Sun's Dawn, meant to celebrate bonds between people. Has a political aspect because it was originally instituted as a holiday by Emperor Axeses II and his wife, Empress and Allmother Mazvah of The Pale Kingdom after she weaved him the famous and first ever, Solas Cord. That celebration week was also selected because the holiday of Solas, is in that week and it was her favorite holiday.

How do your characters feel about certain ones?

I'll answer this in the context of the ones I've shared!

Mariel loves Orran's Day! She really likes wrapping presents 🥺 She also really likes Solas Week, she loves the meaning behind it all 💙

Axtapor doesn't care much for holidays. In his mind they're a good excuse to get drunk in the name of celebrating but he will observe them with some respect, especially Cessation Day, if he's around Lizardfolk kin.

Fay doesn't celebrate any. She thinks they're mostly a waste of time.

Wilkes observes Cessation Day with great respect. He led the battalion that ended The Emperor's War and its how he came to acquire his moniker of Son of the Moon, so he takes it very seriously. He usually spends this day alone remembering the men and women lost in that time.

Lexlar and Hartim: The celebrate all Lizardfolk holidays. They are more connected to The Holtep Empire than Axtapor is because they didn't leave it until later in their lives than he did. Cessation Day in particular hits a sore spot for them because they were kids when the war began (this is covered in Man O' War) so it shaped a lot of their pivotal life experiences, like their ikismal or coming of age ceremony.

How are they celebrated?

It's kind of across the board! Some are celebrated by exchanging gifts, like Orran's Day. Others are celebrated by feasting like Kava's Day. Some have festivals and parades like Solas Week and Orran's Day, respectively. And others are more meant for remembrance and reflection like Cessation Day and Solas Day itself.

#thanks for the ask! #nopal answers #sts #aasoaf #m.o.w #mariel #axtapor #fay #wilkes #lexlar #hartim

[techrunes]

Fruits of Your Craft - Day Four

What do you wish you had known as a beginner?

A lot of things! The big ones are; you don't have to be interested in everything related to witchcraft, Wicca isn't the only type of witchcraft/paganism, and religion isn't inherently incompatible with witchcraft.

For the first thing...yeah, you don't have to be interested in everything. You don't even have to care about them. Listing off things people should research when they ask about it is just going to make them go out and learn a whole lot about stuff they will never use and have zero interest in.

When I was first starting out, I would write down every single bit of information I could find and would spend hours looking into every single topic mentioned, even if it wasn't really something that vibed with me. For example, I do not care about crystals outside of their aesthetic value...but, I absolutely had pages and pages of notes on how to use them, correspondences, et cetera. Never used any of it.

I do think reading about it was worthwhile -- how else was I supposed to find out that I didn't care for it? But you really don't need to dive deep into crystals or astrology or whatever just because they're all things that the witchcraft community spends a lot of time discussing (often treating the topics like they are necessities, but that's a topic for another time).

For the Wicca part...context might be needed. I started (consciously) getting into witchcraft when I was about 11, in 2008. In 2008, witchcraft and Wicca were used more or less interchangeably and, even once that was no longer the case, most witchcraft books/blogs/et cetera were written (consciously or otherwise) with a Wiccan framework in mind. Of course, in 2008, Wicca was what paganism was. So, when I started heading more into the religious realm of witchcraft and paganism in the 2010s, I thought I had to pick one god and one goddess to be my matron and patron and those were the only deities I could worship. Wicca was the assumption. It has gotten better in more recent years...though, the influence is still as strong as ever. But it took a long time to unlearn all of the Wiccan stuff I picked up over the years.

Witchcraft and religion are just not incompatible. For a while, when paganism that wasn't Wicca was finally getting attention in the witch part of the internet, a lot of pagans were adamant about witchcraft not being a thing pagans did. Pagans are not witches. And, of course, people are convinced that witchcraft isn't compatible with Christianity/Islam/Judaism/et cetera.

The issue with these assumptions is that we are assuming what people in the middle ages (or earlier!) meant by witchcraft is the same as what we in the 21st century mean by witchcraft. What is and is not considered witchcraft is culturally determined. Witchcraft involving herbalism might not have been considered witchcraft a few hundred years ago. In some places, witchcraft specifically referred to baneful magic. The Bible is not exempt from historical context either.

It's really up to how the person interprets their own religion, isn't it. Seriously, it's between them and their god(s). It's none of your business. It's also mostly used to be incredibly gatekeepy to "monotheists", if we're being honest.

#txt #foyc #30 day challenge