Kaminiwa

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Nephalia of Knowledge
{U}{U}{B}{B}{R}{R}{G}{G}
Legendary Creature - Nephilim
8/8
Protection from White
Whenever any player would draw a card, instead you draw a card.

Nephalia of War
{W}{W}{U}{U}{R}{R}{G}{G}
Legendary Creature - Nephilim
8/8
Protection from Black
You determine how creatures attack and block.

Nephalia of Chains
{W}{W}{U}{U}{B}{B}{G}{G}
Legendary Creature - Nephilim
8/8
Protection from Red
All other players skip their untap step.

Nephalia of Will
{W}{W}{U}{U}{B}{B}{R}{R}
Legendary Creature - Nephilim
8/8
Protection from Green
Other players cannot cast non-creature spells.

Nephalia of Destruction
{W}{W}{B}{B}{R}{R}{G}{G}
Legendary Creature - Nephilim
8/8
Protection from Blue
Whenever a permanent dies, instead return it to the battlefield under your control.

---

The basic theme of each of them is that they are a powerful being representing 4 of the 5 colours of magic. Each one has an ability that would be out of place in that missing colour, but which the missing colour wouldn't philosophically mind (black doesn't really care what happens in battle - as long as creatures die! White never draws extra cards, preferring to focus on what is already available. Etc.)

The protection from the missing colour means that it's still a large threat which said colour will have a lot of trouble dealing with, of course :)

Sitting at the bus stop today reading "Namaah's Kiss" (part of the Kushiel Nonology), and someone asked me what it was about. The first answer I could think of was "Well, this polyamorous bisexual woman is chosen by God to have sex with random strangers. I assume at some point she'll also save the world, but I'm only a quarter of the way through the book". I didn't think he would have taken that terribly well, though.

I'm starting to notice this problem applies to a lot of my reading ("Well, the protagonist just got brutally gang raped as a price for the ultimate magical power he's seeking to unlock - so it's sort of a consensual non-consent scene...")

Clearly I need to stop talking to people ^.^

*does a quick Tarot reading* *checks top card of presumably pre-shuffled deck*
3 of cups.

Alright, for real now! *shuffles, draws a card*
King of Cups.

Hmmm, okay *7-fold shuffle, as per M:TG tournament rules, then draw 7th card down*
Ace of Cups.

*takes a drink, spreads cards out randomly, picks one*
4 of cups

*stares, takes another card*
3 of cups

O.o what the fuck? *takes another*
5 of cups.

Okay, last card, this is ridiculous. *draw*
2 of cups

*stares, goes to write post* Okay... um... how do I reboot my Tarot deck, it's stuck on cups o.o

P.S. *draws one last card*
High Priestess, with a dragon pouring rainbow oils. In to a cauldron. Har. Har. Har. O.o

Not something I normally talk about, less out of shame and more simply because it never occurred to me to mention it: I'm afraid of the dark. Specifically, being indoors or on a bus or around a crowd, especially just after sunset/dusk. Being in an altered state (schizophrenia / autism / *ahem*) seems to amplify it, whereas being mildly drunk helps a lot. Being in a very well lit room helps.

I seem most relaxed in an area I can close off, as opposed to common space - my bedroom is usually ideal. Laying down seems to help a bit, and in my bedroom I lie on the bed to use my laptop, rather than sitting at a computer desk or in front of a TV. Having a clear view of the doorway also helps (I generally arrange my bed so that I sleep as far from the door as I can, and with a view of it)

Tends to be a fairly general unease - I'm jumpy and nervous, but not about anything specific. Shadows can freak me out a bit. Going outside feels scary (it's even darker out there!) but once I'm outside I actually tend to relax. Going for an evening walk can be extremely relaxing.

The sensation tends to pass after a while. I absolutely love those quiet hours from midnight to dawn, and the ones JUST before dawn are especially beautiful. Once I get past the fear, I tend to enter in to a very nice headspace - a mix of benevolent schizophrenia and creativity, a simple ability to relax and explore ideas and see worlds in my head.

Edit: Cuddling with someone seems to generally dispel this. One of the nicer parts of having a roommate who gets home right around night time is that I haven't dealt with this in quite some time ^^;

Little snippets of trees, flashes of darkness and willow branches. Feelings of safety, within the leaves. Holding her safe, warding away the world. Keeping away the people. Keeping away the voices.

"I don't want to die", she whispers to herself, clutching the knife tight in her hands.

The trees sing back to her. "Yet, this is where dreams come to die."

"I don't want to die", she whispers again.

"Are you a dream?"

"I don't know."

A sofer, quieter melody. "Dear, no one ever wishes to be here. To be here means there's no other option left. It means you have to finally face up to the choice."

She stares at the ground, stares at the knife. She knows the answer, but still she asks. "What choice?"

"Life or death, live or die."

She spits on the ground, fear suddenly replaced with anger. "You call that a choice? You've seen my life! No one would choose it."

"No," sings the grove. "We've seen you resting in Limbo. We have never seen you *live*"

"Oh."

She pauses.

"Oh."

The knife slowly drops to the ground, forgotten.

The grove is once again empty.

Woman balancing on a narrow (~6 inch wide) bridge, being confronted by ...something... offscreen. Backdrop is darkness, but vague impression that she is walking above a city. There is noise, but muted, as though it *should* be far louder but she is focused on the off-screen assailant. She throws up her right hand in defiance, a solid, assured pose, and makes a hemispherical barrier of brilliant, solid red light to ward off the creature, casting the scene in that ember light.

After that was the... the shield cracks, and she is impaled by a spear. And she seems to be dying, and then her eyes glow with that same red light, and then the scene is again cast in ember shades, and her back glows and unfolds in to wings of fire and her flesh simply peels away, is simply gone and forgotten as she becomes a demon of dark cold-ash coloured flesh marbled and shaped like stone, flames burning between cracks in her skin, blood still wet on the spear as she pulls herself up rising up and without a voice crying out in a hellish tone that she is not to be trifled with, not so easily destroyed.

She tears the spear free, holds it in one bloody claw. She screams at the world, "LEAVE ME ALONE" and this time she has a voice. A thousand eyes stare at her from the shadow, yet none of them have faces. Then, slowly, they blend in, appearing out of nowhere. Looks of disdain, disapproval. "LEAVE ME ALONE!!!" she shouts again. She swings the spear in a wide, chaotic arc. Uncontrolled, skill-less. She collapses crying on the crowd, spear dropped to her side. "Leave me alone" she sobs.

The faces all frown, then fade away again. Eyes in the shadow cold on her.

I was curious what the official wording on MichFest's vaunted "womyn born womyn" policy was, and I discovered that their website doesn't even mention it as a "womyn-only" space except in the page discussing child care for young boys. It certainly doesn't include anything that excludes trans-women. There don't really seem to be ANY posted rules.

My brain is sort of hurt at the idea of creating an exclusionary space, defending that exclusion as "vital to the community spirit we want to create", and then... not bothering to mention it anywhere. There's not so much as a "are you female?" check box for buying tickets, much less "are you really a genetically-XX female who was identified as such by both mandatory genetic screening and a 5 second assessment by your doctor the moment you were born?"

(Much digging around Google finally turned up that the policy apparently vanished off the website about a year ago, presumably due to legal concerns / unenforceability)

Sometimes I realize the reason I do not grok racism, is that autism, while different, often produces overlapping forms of discrimination. When people first taught me about the horrors black people go through, my reaction was "but *I* go through that", and because no one seemed to take it seriously when I talked about it, I'd concluded that clearly EVERYONE went through this, and that was just what life was like.

Found particularly resonant, the idea that immigrants are forced to learn how to assimilate in to mainstream culture. Once you can *act* like "one of us", you're mostly safe. Except, occasionally, you still get some jackass that notices you're Not Normal and decides to make a scene.

It's one of the big reasons I value the label "autistic" - it gives me a framework where I can actually understand, much less communicate, this part of my experience. Occasionally it even results in people actually taking me serious, which for some reason never happened when I was just a lone victim instead of a nice, clearly-labelled minority :P

http://tacit.livejournal.com/373355.html

"I've seen the idea that we are all responsible for our own emotional state become distorted by the Radical Honesty™ Effect in some parts of the poly community, where it seems to be taken as a code phrase for "I can do whatever I want to you, and no matter how it makes you feel, that's your shit to deal with, not mine.""

This is something I ran in to about four years ago, and really had trouble dealing with. In principle, it made sense - it was just extending a virtuous principle (honesty), and making it "Radical." I couldn't really express why "Radical" seemed like a step in the wrong direction, how it seemed to take a virtue and turn it in to a negative.

It pretty thoroughly destroyed a relationship, because I felt like I was completely alone - there wasn't really any relationship there, just really awesome sex, wonderful adventures, and the illusion that I had a caring, supportive partner. Excise the illusion, make it clear that emotional support wasn't part of the deal, and I think it would have been an amazing relationship, too. But it seems like part of the "Radical" philosophy is that it's a one way street: Radically Honest people don't want to be bluntly called an asshole, and Radically Responsible people seem to hate it when someone throws their shit back in their face and says "this is yours, YOU deal with it."

I think that's the line that keeps my own behaviour in check. If I'm going to feel comfortable with a certain level of self-responsibility or honesty, I have to be comfortable with it in BOTH directions. I also have to be fairly upfront and honest about it - I need to be able to explain it to someone who might not even be aware of the concept, someone who might not realize WHY this relationship isn't like the ones they've come to expect.

Forecasting my differences, making my style clear, so that people can make an informed decision, seems like a very central part of my life. I don't relate to people in particularly normal ways, and some people get really bothered by this. I've had partners freak out to discover they didn't have veto power over my new relationships - in fact, I'd gone and started a relationship without even mentioning it for weeks. It's not that my way of doing things is "bad", just sometimes different and unexpected.

Setting proper expectations seems to be a very critical social skill in relationships, both romantic and in general :)