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requiemesque · 5 years

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On writing characters with psychiatric disorders: Medication and what happens when you fail to take it

Back again for the first time, today we’re going to talk about writing characters with mood disorders and other mental illnesses and what it’s really like when they don’t take their medication. Specifically, we are going to talk about Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) comorbid with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and a sprinkle of cPTSD (child-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), and the effects of skipping one (1) regular dose of a routine selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant that, when taken regularly, works quite well. Because that, dear lovelies, is what I did last night. Long post below the cut.

POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNINGS: mood disorders, medication, pills, therapy, ptsd, depression, dissociation, anxiety

First, let’s go over why I find it even necessary to talk about such a thing

Common Misconceptions about Mood Disorders and Medications

Myth: Medication makes you a different person.

Truth: Medication, in the right dose and prescribed for the correct disorder, helps you overcome the symptoms of a disorder or condition that are severe enough as to impact ordinary daily functions and severely impair life. They help you be you.

Myth: Medications (instantly) cure depression and other mood disorders, yay!

Truth: *buzzer noise* There is no “cure” for mood disorders or other psychiatric disorders. They are, in a very real way, brain trauma, either implicit or explicit, with very real physiological changes in the structure and chemistry of your brain. Medication (again, when taken in the right dose for the correct disorder) helps stabilize or regulate chemical processes in the brain so as to mitigate or alleviate symptoms of the disorder that otherwise impair daily functioning.

Myth: Medications are a chemical evil with lots of nasty side effects.

Truth: Yes, medications alter the chemistry in your brain, but really, everything alters your brain and body chemistry, even physical actions like taking a walk or a jog. Medication makes use of existing chemical systems in the brain to, again, alleviate symptoms. Just as a jog can result in nausea from dehydration, however, medication does come with side effects because we are changing brain and body chemistry. However, if you are taking the correct medication in the correct dosage, your side effects should or can be minimal and less disruptive than the symptoms of the disorder. If your medication does otherwise, you should consult with your psychiatrist and physician and see if a different dose, producer, or type of medication might work better. You may need to go through different medications and doses to get it right. In my case, I got a medication that works correctly the first go-through, but I had to increase my dosage twice before I got it right, and, in the end, I had to add a second medication to help deal with my panic attacks, and down dose that one twice (lots of pill cutting is involved).

Myth: If you take therapy you don’t need medication and vice-versa.

Truth: While this may be true for some people (different strokes for different blokes), in general, research finds that therapy and medication together, of almost any kind (behavioral, cognitive, meditative, etc.) work better than either method alone. This is because medication helps deal with alleviating physiological and emotional symptoms but therapy helps teach proper coping mechanisms for processing the emotions. To put it another way, medication is a layer of fire retardant material, and therapy teaches you fire safety procedures.

On missing medication

In short, I find it necessary to write about this because there are many factors that influence the effectiveness and the effects of medication on psychiatric disorders, and there are even more misconceptions about what they do and don’t do. The biggest one that even I—someone who has several comorbid disorders and who has studied psychology and the neurology of mood disorders extensively—had is that:

Prior to taking my courses, I thought that missing your medication once would have a disastrous effect, partly due to literature and fanfiction about people “going crazy” because they didn’t have their medication one time, and

After taking my degree and going through so much psychological research I thought I was an expert (note: I’m not, I’m just deeply entrenched in academia), I thought that it took 6-9 weeks for medication to out process from your system because that is the period that psychological studies require you to be medication free or active, and that missing one dose wouldn’t harm you.

In actuality, both are wrong. Missing your medication once does not result in erratic behavior, though if you miss it frequently and don’t take it on a regular schedule, you may experience more or worsening side effects or symptoms. And, though psychologists would like you to have been on a medication for 6-9 weeks or off of it for the purposes of a study, this is purely to avoid confounds in their data, and the period is long because of lingering chemical effects. Truthfully, every medication has a different half-life (the time it takes for half the dose to out process from your body) and thus missing one dose has different effects. In my experience and for the purposes of this post, my SSRI (Zoloft, aka Sertraline, 75mg dose daily) has a half-life of 24 hours. So, by the time I should take my next doses, the medication is already wearing off. Now, just because I miss a single dose doesn’t mean that the effects of regular dosage are instantly gone, but it does lead to some of the following effects, which leads us to the actually relevant portion of this post:

It’s a little bit like being drunk, or high. You space out a bit.

Taking your medication in the morning/whenever you find it again can lead to some weird side effects. Do so at your own risk (me, I suffer, because if I take it in the morning instead of before bed, I will ptfo)

Hyper focus on everything and focus on nothing at the same time.

Headaches

Brain smog

What day/time/week/year is it?

Who am I? / Dissociation levels ↑

????

Did you know that your tongue has a taste?

Feeling extremely motivated and at the same time like you just need a nap

Exhaustion

Emotional spikes in both directions

Increased sensitivity to anxiety attacks, panic attacks, or triggers as applicable

??????????!?

In the morning you won’t remember any of this happened

Time is an illusion, nothing is sacred, everything is permitted, reality is a lie

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grimmoiresque · 5 years

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color me witchly

i have not been a very colorful person lately, unless you count my language. in true form, the new moon and i are not getting along; i am sullen, in physical pain, and grousing about like a wet cat, swiping at anything that makes me mildly inconvenienced. i had meant to post this back on the second day of this witchblr, and then on the third; after a long, late night of mourning a passing family dog last night, i still really don’t feel like posting this today, or doing much of anything. but, sometimes things need to be done or said that are hard or tiring, and i think this may do me some good. so. let’s talk colors.

colors and crystals and auras, oh my. i gave my husband a book of norse runes and divination practices for yule, and i picked myself up a gift at the same time: a little bit of auras: an introduction to energy fields by cassandra eason (you can find it on amazon; i found it at barnes & noble). it’s simple, and easy to pick up, and for me, a comfort, because colors and auras were one of the first things my late mentor passed on to me. all things, living and not, have energy. livig creatures and plants are made of energy, inanimate objects may have psychic imprints left by their owners or those who have touched them, and the remains of those living creatures that have passed on retain energy from their previous lives as well; the magic of reading these energies is psychometry, but we won’t touch on that here. what’s important is that these energies, whether you see them, feel them, or sense them however it is you do, have colors, and these colors have meaning.

eason talks about colors specifically as they relate to auras and energy fields, but colors have a place in all parts of magic, from the energy you manipulate to the energy you release, the crystals you use, the candles, you light, the colors you’ve painted your walls, the clothes you wear, everything. below is just a quick master list of color symbolism in magic for the seven major colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet), and the two base colors (black and white). when casting magick, preparing a spell, or even just preparing yourself for the day, you should choose the colors of your tools carefully to boost your intent, or at least be aware of the impact they may have on your spells. so, without further ado:

𝓻𝓮𝓭 ➳ action, survival, change, power, courage, determination, passion, love

𝓸𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓰𝓮 ➳ confidence, independence, identity, creativity, self-esteem, personal desire, fertility

𝔂𝓮𝓵𝓵𝓸𝔀 ➳ changeability or restlessness, communication, travel, intellectual achievement, memory

𝓰𝓻𝓮𝓮𝓷 ➳ love, fidelity, trust, harmony, natural growth, nature, money, prosperity, grounding

𝓫𝓵𝓾𝓮 ➳ ideals, visions, healing powers (esp. those connected to celestial entities), natural authority, justice, truth

𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓲𝓰𝓸 ➳ inner vision, psychic awareness, spirituality, future and past lives / worlds, sight, third eye

𝓿𝓲𝓸𝓵𝓮𝓽 ➳ medium senses and dimension crossing / communion, ancestors, angels, self & spirit

𝔀𝓱𝓲𝓽𝓮 ➳ limitless potential, boundless energy, life force, spirits, quest, purity, cleansing, healing

𝓫𝓵𝓪𝓬𝓴 ➳ transitions, rest, regeneration, sorrow, obstacles to overcome

shades and variations, such as pink, grey, or gold, also have their specific meanings, but i can discuss those in a later post if interested. i hope this reference has been helpful, and maybe it will brighten someone’s day or help them achieve a higher vibration. for more information on color associations, i do still recommend eason’s work, as she also includes information about associated essential oils, crystals, archangels, etc. i may do individual color posts at a later date. but until then,

fair winds and following seas, lovelies.

ღ 𝓻𝓮𝓺𝓾𝓲𝓲

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requiemesque · 5 years

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on writing falling injuries

Yesterday, I took a pretty bad fall, banging up both knees, my arms, and shattering my favorite coffee cup. from that experience, and the unfortunate aftermath today, I have observed and learned several things about falling injuries that I did not know before, and which might be useful for the rest of you writers out there.

CONTEXT DISCLAIMER: My injury was a short distance fall onto corrugated concrete, caused by tripping on uneven pavement, and I did not break any bones. The rules change when you break bones, and where and how your character falls will impact (ha) the injuries they receive and how severe these injuries are. For my part, I cut open my right elbow, scraped my left elbow (roadburn), lost a quarter-sized round of skin at the base of my left palm, put a nasty welt on my right knee, and an even nastier one on my left knee, where I also lost a chunk of skin. Nothing that required severe medical attention, but I did take about 45 minutes of first aid care and lots of bandages. It should also be noted that I was treated with bandages of several different types, bone and muscle repair oil, helichrysum essential oil, lavender essential oil, and rubbing alcohol. i also took aleve on the first day. characters with access to less medicines or less advanced medicines may suffer worse or different effects

Now, on with the show. Life lessons from an injured cat who couldn’t land on her feet if you dropped her feet first below the cut.

EMOTIONAL WOUNDS & REACTIONS

your character is going to hurt their feelings as much as their fall, even if they intentionally jumped and fell; they'll think of how they could have handled it better, and if there are witnesses, they'll be embarrassed.

witnesses will make them feel worse than they would have if they'd fallen alone. I was less concerned about myself than the joggers who saw me were, but I teared up when they talked to me.

pride hurts worse than your wounds on the first day

I was more concerned about shattering my coffee cup than the possibility of having broken a bone at the time that I fell.

If your character was carrying something with them, particularly something valuable, they will protect it with their body and probably check on the item before they check on themselves. I was bleeding and dazed but I yanked my laptop out of its bag to check and be sure it wasn't broken.

Humans say “ow” a lot even if we're just annoyed. We say “ow” the same amount at a 1 on the pain scale as an 8.

Unless you are a combat medic used to assessing injuries when under duress, when someone asks if you're okay, you are more likely to say “i'm fine” than to recount your injuries.

No, really, you say as you bleed everywhere with chunks of skin missing, I’m fine.

PHYSICAL WOUNDS : DAY 1

Our wounds tell us how we fell, and they are not symmetrical, even on the same limb. My left arm and knee got the worst because I turned my body left to protect my laptop, and I scraped my elbow in the fall down (vertical run against sharp concrete edge) and used my palm as a brake.

Everything mostly stings a lot.

Bandages are itchy and inconvenient and pull against clothing.

Your skin is hella sensitive. Soft clothes pls.

Even if your clothes don't rip, you can still sustain serious injuries underneath. My jeans were unharmed, but I lost just as much skin on my covered knee as on my uncovered hand.

The same goes for skin: Just because skin did not break or you do not SEE any bruising, you may have received injuries underneath that are just as severe.

Bones can in fact bruise.

Open wounds will bruise at the edges or around them.

A bruise is a discoloration of skin caused by broken blood vessels. It turns green and yellow as it heals, and swells as blood comes to the surface to heal. A welt is a knot of injured tissue without broken skin. It may or may not bruise.

Even if the skin is not discolored, you may have a bruise anyway. Certain medicines can reduce the discoloration, but the injury still occurs

Pain on the first day is centralized primarily on the actual points of contact and injury. No stiffness, movement only hurts when you bump the wounds or if they’re on joints. It’s easy to forget.

PHYSICAL WOUNDS: THE DAY AFTER

Your entire body hurts. You aren’t sure how some places are hurt because you swear you didn’t hit them.

This is when you really learn that bones can bruise and you can do some heavy internal damage based on tension when you hit the ground. My ribs are in so much pain.

Everything hurts.

The wounds should have a second layer of skin and be dry to the touch if you let them air out overnight, but they are not healed, will sting, and can bleed if they become too dry. Bandages are not needed unless the wound was deep and still bleeding.

Did I mention that everything hurts. You are stiff in bone, muscle, and joint.

Perpetual exhaustion. It feels like you’ve run a marathon thanks to how tightly wound your muscles are.

The pain is no longer localized but rather generalized, and presents not only as stiffness but as a general throbbing/pulsing ache from the areas that saw injury.

If you hit a joint hard enough, you may lose feeling in the associated limb periodically. My left knee occasionally sends a sharp, pinched feeling down my calf, and I feel nothing for a few minutes. Possible pinched nerves, definite joint damage.

There is no comfortable position. Comfort is a lie.

Wounds that were previously neat will look red and agitated at the edges, and your bruises will be darker than they were on Day 1. You may also note more bruises. Everything is bruised. If anti-bruising medicine was not applied on the second day, you will have been black-and-blue by sundown and worse by sunrise.

Snap crackle pop, bitch, every movement will make a sound, whether it’s your ribs snapping back into place or you saying “ow, fuck me.”

#long post #writing reference #falling injuries #writing injuries #writeblr #writers of tumblr #ref: falling injuries #requii's in pain #life lessons learned #--*𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚝.𝚖𝚎

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requiemesque · 5 years

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wip name game

【ｔａｇｇｅｄ　ｂｙ】 @lookslikechill thank you love!

【ｒｕｌｅｓ】list all of your wips and explain how you came up with their names. if any are unnamed, what are you thinking of calling it? finish by tagging authors you wish to know more about.

oofh, so first off, yikes, do you know how many wips I have? second, buckle up buttercups because you’re in for a ride. game below the cut.

1. legends of lacuna (series) ➳ the overarching series for my novels involving chi and the rest of the scions is titled legends of lacuna, and it earned its name about a year ago, halfway into an already year-long D&D campaign based on the world i had created for the novels. throughout that campaign, and related others, characters from the novels were used as npcs, or referenced in lore: they were, ultimately, legends. lacuna was the name of the world, although it was originally named zxann; the world earned its name because i was 1) in love with the aesthetic of the word itself and 2) enthralled with the meaning. a “lacuna” is a blank space, particularly in memory or literature, and this world is one in which memory, dreams, and reality are not all as they seem. chi’s particular set of novels is referenced as thewulf saga because it is about her journey of becoming and existing as the wulf

1a. feast of shadows (book 1 of the wulf saga) ➳ originally titled “blood moon rising” because of the obvious werewolf and violence reference, feast of shadows earned its new name mostly by playing around. when chi first melds with the wulf, it communicates to her primarily through single-sentence impulses based on animal instinct, the primary set being “predator,” “prey,” and “feast.” the idea of consumption, primal hunger, and feasting is all that the wulf is, and in the first book, chi’s life and soon the world around her are overwhelmed and consumed by darkness.

1b. war of shadows (book 2 of the wulf saga) ➳ book 2 was originally titled “zenith,” which references the highest point of a celestial body and was intended to reference this as the “highest point” of chi’s saga, emotionally and metaphorically. the single-word celestial body theme was prominent among the original titles, but they were difficult to understand at a glance, and i was told they weren’t so appealing. hence, the second round of names. war of shadows continues the “of shadows” template, and is so-called because it covers the majority of the wars between humans and non-humans which chi and mael were involved in. additionally, the “of shadows” may refer to some ~shady~ shit that goes down between chi, mael, and the conclave, and the fact that these wars, like most things in lacuna, were not all they seemed. the wars are also referred to in the canon as either the “shadow wars” or the “silent wars”.

1c. silence of shadows (book 3 of the wulf saga) ➳ honestly, book 3′s original title was my favorite, and i was sad to see it go. book 3 was originally titled “penumbra,” which refers to a place not-quite-shadow but not-quite-light, and more specifically to the ring of barely visible light that outlines the moon during a total lunar eclipse. book 3 was also originally the first book in the series--i wasn’t ever planning to cover the events of feast or war until i realized that the story wasn’t complete without them to anyone who hadn’t lived with the characters for as long as i had. this volume’s original title referenced chi’s life eclipsing into shadow, and the inherent moral grey area she inhabits; if you think her life choices and behaviors are questionable in books 1 or 2, boy, you better grab some whiskey or wine for book 3. the current title, silence of shadows alludes to the silence in the aftermath of a tragedy or storm, that eerie, too-quiet peace, and refers to the heavy silence after the war. it also refers to chi’s desire for a quiet, peaceful afterlife--one that she doesn’t get, thanks to a certain butterfly.

1d. zenith of shadows (book 4 of the wulf saga) ➳ we’re back with the celestial terms. there wasn’t ever going to be more than one book, never mind 4, and here we are. i can’t, or rather, won’t, explain the precise significance of this title, lest i spoil things, but i will say that it has a double meaning: it is, again, chi’s zenith, but also a true “zenith of shadows”. she may ascend to her highest point here, but so does something darker and more terrible.

1e. the butterfly effect (book 5 of the wulf saga) ➳ what???? requii, you must have made a mistake, this is just the title for your evil!au, right??? guess again motherfuckers. after a long conversation with my husband, the co-creator of this world and several of the characters (mael was actually his first, and he’s writing the druid’s series himself), we found that not only did we like the evil!au but we could completely and totally justify it within the actual plot of the novels. i can’t tell you how, again, spoilers. however, if we dissect the title, you’ll get a hint. “the butterfly effect” is the theory that every small decision can influence something much larger father down the road: a butterfly’s wing beat in asia becomes a hurricane off the coast of florida. butterflies, coincidentally, are also the favored form of one particular eldritch horror who happens to be a sore loser after the events of books 3 and 4, and will do anything to get his way, even if it means rewriting the fabric of the universe itself.

2. simulacra ➳ the word simulacra is plural for “simulacrum” which is “ an image or representation of someone or something,” generally with the idea or implication that an original no longer exists or never did in the first place. simulacra takes place in a war-torn dimension that is only a single-city wide, half of which “no longer exists” or was made out to never have existed in the first place, in order to maintain the government’s image of complete control. the novel plays around with reality vs. illusion, the wearing of masks, personas, and so on.

3.darling girl (when all else fails) ➳ this one’s easy. it came from the quote “darling girl, when all else fails, join the circus,” which inspired the story’s setting in a dark circus.

4. lacebound ➳ at first, the title for lacebound was just a pretty string of words, but it came to shape a lot of the story. on one level laceboundrefers to aerynna’s feeling of being bound to her life and duty as a princess, trapped within layers and layers of lace and satin. on another, it hints at the bdsm in the sexual relationship she has with thaelas, a man who wants to bind and control her.

BONUS ROUND: THE AUs

alexithymia ➳ another pretty word that wound up shaping a lot of the world, alexithymia is an inability to verbally express emotion. this is a story about my emotionally constipated children chi and mael in a modern world, who find expression through each other in various non-verbal forms. (yes. sex is one of them. leave me and my modern! and self-indulgent au alone)

wild hearts / wyld härts ➳ the fae!au for chi and mael, wild hearts came from the quote “hearts are wild things; that’s why our ribs are cages,” which came from an item on my pinterest board. the alt title wyld härts played on the “wild/wyld hunt”, the celtic wyrd, and although “ härts “ is just an aesthetic phonetic spelling of “hearts,” it also is a visual play on the word “hart,” which is an adult male deer over 5 years old, often the target of noblemen’s hunts.

【ｔａｇｇｉｎｇ】 @thecadmiuminkwell @kavqnsky @monstrouswrites @wrathfulwriting @pilipalea @agent-me @katerinarevel

#long post #-- 𝖗𝖊𝖖𝖚𝖎𝖎 𝖗𝖊𝖕𝖑𝖎𝖊𝖘 ;#-- 𝖗𝖊𝖖𝖚𝖎𝖎 𝖜𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖊𝖘 ;#wip title game #wip title meme #title origins #lookslikechill #wip name game #tumblr game #writeblr game #writeblr #writing #tysm #needed to do rambling like this you're a saint #© ᴄ. ɢʀᴀʜᴀᴍ #ᴀʟʟ ʀɪɢʜᴛꜱ ʀᴇꜱᴇʀᴠᴇᴅ

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grimmoiresque · 5 years

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new moon, new year, new blog

greetings, all ! back again for the first time, i’m requii (you can find my main blog & writeblr @requiemesque), and i’d like to welcome you to grimmoiresque, a.k.a. leanan sidhe and tea, a sideblog dedicated to wicca, witching, druidry, pagan traditions, and assorted magickal feels, aesthetics, and, knowing me, some shitposting about life as a witch. are these things even different? you may be asking. yes. the answer is yes. although they are often interchanged, the words wicca(n), witch(ing), druid(ry), pagan(ism), and even magick/magic are all different. they borrow from each other and meld, colored threads in the same weave, but here’s the jist of it:

- paganism is, technically, any religion that is not christianity (thanks, early roman christians !). here is not the place for this etymology, but when i refer to “pagan traditions,” i’ll be referencing neo-paganism, the revival of ancient religious practices and traditions, such as worship of the norse pantheon, slavic pantheon, a varied deism, etc.

- wicca is a pagan religion based on principles of ancient witchcraft and shamanism (Cunningham, 1988), but it is not witchcraft, nor can it be interchanged with paganism. all wiccans are pagans, but not all pagans are wiccans. wicca, like shamanism before it, subscribes to a belief that “nature includes a broad spectrum of mental and spiritual states of which most of us are ignorant” and that ‘deity’ is not separate from ‘me’ or ‘we’ or ‘us’ (Cunningham, 1988). “This is the universality: there is nothing that isn’t of the gods” (Cunningham, 1988). it is a religion of balance, of harmony, within ourselves, between us and others, and between us and the world. the two primary deities are Father Sun and Mother Moon, the latter of whom is generally depicted as a triple goddess, The Maid, The Mother, and The Crone. wicca is a religion that is more about spirituality than anything else.

- witchcraft is a practice rather than a religion. like paganism and like wicca, however, witchcraft means many different things for many different people. it may mean sigils, it may mean daily prayers, keeping an altar, wearing crystals, collecting crystals and never casting a spell, etc. in a broad sense, it is the recognition, use, or practice of magic, which can be thought of as the ways in which our words, intentions, and general energy affect the world around us.

- druidry can be either a religion or a practice, an amplification of the concept that “there is nothing that isn’t of the gods,” and more specifically that nature is divine in and of itself. druidic magic is always firmly rooted in the elements and physical properties of the world. druids are also connected to ley lines, magical fault lines in the world.

all wiccans are pagans, but not all pagans are wiccans. all druids are pagans, but not all pagans are druids. all druids are wiccans, but not all wiccans are druids. not all wiccans practice witchcraft, and not all witches are pagan or even wiccan. you see how it gets a bit complicated? i’ll simplify a bit: i consider myself a witch and a deistic wiccan—i believe in a higher power that made the world, though perhaps not as we see it now, and who (or which) does not intervene in the world, but i also believe that the world itself and all creatures in it have some spark of divinity in them, and that my intentions have a real effect on the world around me and i actively practice magic. my husband, in contrast, considers himself a pagan (not a wiccan) because he practices and holds faith in the norse pantheon and their traditions, but he no longer practices magic, so he does not consider himself a witch. in truth, he used to be a druid, but, again, no magic, and that’s okay.

what i don’t do is live my life shouting “i’m a witch, look at me!” so this is a new venture for me, and somewhat uncomfortable. i was raised christian, stifled by it, grew bitter about it, atheistic, agnostic, and then drifted back down to a level of peace with and acceptance of my past with the help of my late mother-in-law. in a way, wicca gave me some of the structure i’d been missing in my life, but in another, it just gave a name to the feelings i’d had about the world all along. i won’t say that my religion is right, and i definitly won’t say that it’s the only one that could be right. most days, i prefer not to refer to it as a religion at all so much as a spirituality, a general sense of connection with the energy of the world around me, come what may. i didn’t start this blog to evangelize, to convert, or even to teach (though i may wind up doing so anyway). i wanted to start it to explore, to brush up on my photography again, to be a resource, to be a comfort. if there’s a spell you’re looking for? great, message me, i have several digital grimoires and i bet i can find something to suit you. just starting wicca or a venture into witchcraft? you’re doing awesome, sweetie. need a good tea recommendation or want to talk about the moon? hit me the fuck up.

i took the photograph above first thing this morning, fully prepared to introduce you to this blog as soon as i’d had my first cup of coffee, but here i am, twelve hours later, finally putting my thoughts onto the screen. life is about our intentions, the energy we put into the world and the energy we breathe back in. with the new moon on january 5th, we’re dead in the middle of the dark moon now; if you go outside, you won’t see it in the sky. in wicca, the dark moon is a time of self reflection and introspection, and the new moon one for setting intentions. fitting for a new year, right? maybe we didn’t end last year where we wanted. maybe we didn’t even start today like we wanted. but we’ve only just begun.

oh, and if you’re curious, those runes, on that sign?

ᛒᛚᛖᛋᛋᛜᛋ ᛫ ᛟᚾ ᛫ ᚦᛁᛋ ᛫ ᚺᛟᚢᛋᛖ ᛫ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛫ ᚨᛚᛚ ᛫ ᚹᚺᛟ ᛫ ᛖᚾᛏᛖᚱ

they read ｂｌｅｓｓｉｎｇｓ　ｏｎ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｈｏｕｓｅ　ａｎｄ　ａｌｌ　ｗｈｏ　ｅｎｔｅｒ, and the same rules apply here.

~ 𝓻𝓮𝓺𝓾𝓲𝓲

𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝓉𝑜 @kavqnsky & @katerinarevel for supporting and loving me through the creation of this blog even though they’ve known me less than a month.

#actually terrified to post this #you have no idea #requii rambles #wiccablr #witchblr #wiccablr intro #witchblr intro #witches of tumblr #wiccans of tumblr #new age witch #neo-paganism #druidry #druidcraft #witchcraft #digital grimoire #reliquary #hearth and home #blessed be

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requiemesque · 5 years

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【ｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒ　ｃｒｅａｔｉｏｎ　ｔａｇ】

【ｔａｇｇｅｄ　ｂｙ】 @katerinarevel

【ｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒ】 chi

1. what was the first element of your character that you remember considering?

oofh. hair color. would you believe if i told you it was originally purple? y i k e s

2. did you design them with any other characters from their universe in mind?

nope! chi was the first. in fact, at the time that i created her, the world of lacuna as it stands now doesn’t exist.

3. how did you chose their name?

can….can i not admit to this? i was fourteen when i designed the first iteration of chi, and i just…let’s just leave it at me looking up words in foreign languages, and i chose one that meant “delicate” for a sweet sense of irony. i rarely refer to her by her full name now, and generally go with “chi”, which turned out to be great because “chi” is a type of energy found in all living things.

4. in developing their backstory, what elements of their world played the most influential part?

chi’s family by and large had the most impact on her backstory, but if we’re looking into actual pieces of lacua’s lore that influenced her (whether she knows it or not), then it would be the god of true death, and rising racial tensions on her continent.

5 / 6 / 7. is there any significance behind their hair color/eye color/height?

yes/yes/no

chi was born with dark hair and blue eyes, but after her first death, her hair begins to turn gold (dark and tarnished in book one, gradually lightening to almost white by the end of book four). immortal creatures in lacuna, such as elves or phoenixes, tend to have lighter colored hair, though not always blonde, as a pigmentation side effect of aether exposure. their blood, likewise, is often gold. the longer they’ve lived, the more apparent the color. in some rare cases, like chi, a full and sudden pigment shift may be the result of trauma.

now her eyes? oh, her eyes are my favorite. she was born with blue eyes, but after her death, her eyes are a much darker shade of blue, with veins of gold that burn bright and bleed into the full iris when her emotions or the wulf’s instincts are heightened. her wulf’s shape eyes are gold through and through. as with immortality, gold tends to be a sign of powerful magic as a result of aether exposure, and for chi, it also has a strong link to her emotions and the animalistic side of her. the color fluxes over time with the books, and is quite interesting to watch.

8. what do you relate to within their character/story?

mmfh. the hard parts, of course. dealing with instincts that are yours but at the same time aren’t, reconciling ctpsd…but also the good things, like mael, and a need to feel human.

9. are they based of you in any way?

oh, yeah. fuck yeah. i realized a few years back that chi’s wulf was a metaphor for my depression and anxiety. chi had always been the emotions i couldn’t express, the anger, the viciousness, the meanness and refusal to give a fuck because i had always given too many, but the wulf? instincts that were hers but not. a voice in her head that dealt in black and white extremes, predator or prey, a creature that is separate and same.

10. did you know what your character’s sexuality would be at the time of their creation?

effectively, yeah. she’s not my trouble child, unlike a certain shitty edgelord son.

11. what have you found is the most difficult art form in creating your character?

actual art. i can’t draw. like at all. not people anyway.

12. how far past canon events that take place in their world have you extended their story?

what even is canon? my wip alexithymia is an entire modern dark academia au devoted to chi and mael. if we’re talking what canon events past those that take place in the novel, i’ve gone all the way out to her adopting a child and having one of her own (with whom? guess you’ll have to find out)

13. if you had to narrow it down to 2 things you must keep in mind while working with this oc, what would they be?

➳ there is something still human in her. she may not believe it, nor may she behave like it, but there is still humanity in her, and that influences little nuances of her behavior. ➳ she has been through insurmountable trauma, both before she became a wulf and certainly after. i used to write her as such a dead end, stoic, numb character, and numbness is certainly a part of her behavioral profile, but trauma presents in more ways that numbness or even just flashbacks. i rewriting her story, i’ve had to reexamine my own traumas and keep exactly what that means as far as behavioral shifts, even small ones like the details she does (or doesn’t) notice.

14. what is something about your oc that makes you laugh?

she can’t get drunk. like wolverine and captain america, her regeneration factor is so high that the best she can get is a light buzz before the alcohol is out of her system. it leads to some shitty moments (trying to get drunk in the aftermath of a war or a bad wound), but there was also a hilarious moment in her original history where she used to be able to get drunk, and man she was a lightweight. she fell on the ground, whined about being out-drunk, and tried to pull open a push door; she didn’t even have to be locked in to stay safe. i still laugh to this day.

15. what is something about your oc that makes you cry?

the loss she experiences at the end of book 2 and her regression through book 3 (spoilers ;3 can’t tell you much more)

16. is there some element you regret adding to your oc or their story?

aye, is this make requii remember all her regrets day? the blatant cultural appropriation in her past that i did my best to wipe out, the massive amounts of emo edgelord bullshit that i put her through when i was younger….we all make mistakes, y’all. i’m at least trying my best to smooth it out and make reparations. her story has gone through so many iterations; the one regret i can’t fix because of its necessity to the story is the way her second book ends. i can’t fix that hurt.

17. what is the most recent thing that you’ve discovered about your oc?

the revelation of what the wulf was, although that’s more about what she means to me than anything new about her.

18. favorite oc fact?

mael taught her how to play piano. she learned by watching and listening; can’t read music, but if she can find an instrument, she plays to soothe her nerves. when no instrument is available (frequent), she mimics keystrokes by tapping her fingers on her thighs. this was the first piece she learned to play.

【ｔａｇｇｉｎｇ】 @kavqnsky @thewinedarksea @girlnovels @lookslikechill @monstrouswrites @omgbrekkerkaz @thecadmiuminkwell & anyone else looking to join in! if you’ve already been tagged, either ignore me or post another character so you can haunt my dash.

#;; 𝖈𝖍𝖎𝖒𝖎𝖙𝖘𝖚 𝖟𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖓 #;; ʟᴇɢᴇɴᴅꜱ ᴏꜰ ʟᴀᴄᴜɴᴀ #tumblr tag game #wip tag game #character creation tag game #tag game #-- 𝖗𝖊𝖖𝖚𝖎𝖎 𝖜𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖊𝖘 ;#original writing #my writing #© ᴄ. ɢʀᴀʜᴀᴍ #ᴀʟʟ ʀɪɢʜᴛꜱ ʀᴇꜱᴇʀᴠᴇᴅ

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