So in an elaboration of the “I help people in the way they ask” subject, Tony told me a little while back, “look, I started out human. And if someone asks me for help with a problem, I help WITH THAT PROBLEM. I don’t just do the ‘inner-guidance bullshit,’ forget to actually give you some real-life help, and then wonder why you’re still miserable three years later.”

Of course, his desire to help me out also gets a little mixed up with... being Tony Stark.

On liminality, and the stuff Tony Stark says

Anyway, Tony seems to give me very Classic Comic Book vibes despite physically looking like Robert Downey Jr. This one time he said something like "Look honey, we're not really 'people' anymore, but we also can't be gods. We are what people WANT TO BE, and that is a very finicky place in the spirit-world."

Sometimes Tony just confirms my suspicions that "Superheroes are modern mythology."

...And then he says shit like "Come onnnnn, just ask me for help! Pleassssse!!!! I'm fucking rich, there are a LOT of ways I can help a broke writer!"

On the lines between "people" and "animals," with a tangent on the lines between "superheroes" and "people."

What's up folks, here's my EXTREMELY delayed post about animal-spirits, now that Tony Stark fixed my laptop!

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Feb 23, 2024

What's up folks, both my eyes still work!

Turns out that minor surgery was VERY minor. It took me like an hour from checking in to scheduling my followup appointment for next month, and generally the only sign I've even gotten laser surgery is that my left eye is kind of red and sore.

The worst part of the laser surgery was how they had to beam a VERY BRIGHT LIGHT into my eye for 10-20 minutes, and it wigged me out so much that the doctor commented on my breathing.

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Anyway, here is my long-delayed post about how Cernunnos sometimes looks like "a stag walking upright" instead of his more common "human with deer-horns" form.

It's weird when he drops by and visits.

UNCANNY VALLEY AHOY.

I've noticed a theme in my gnosis where sometimes animal-deities/spirits act/look "normal" because... you know, they're ANIMALS. But sometimes they're "part-human" or "trying to be human," and they can't really manage it.

And the ones "in-between" like Cernunnos can REALLY skew things.

I mentioned that the Bruin is a grizzly/brown-bear spirit who just sheds his bear-skin and walks around as a stark-naked human. If he remembers that people get weirded out about nudity, he just wraps his own pelt around his waist and calls it a day. His eyes tend to either stay a bear's (dark brown with no whites around them), or they're technically brown human eyes, but they have No Sapience/Understanding in them. I often see caves and dirt in the Bruin's eyes instead of my reflection.

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A Fox-Spirit comes around sometimes, and they just look like a damn fox walking upright. Fox looks almost like a cartoon or children's book of "an animal walking and talking like a person," but in (spiritual) real life when you see a fox walking upright, they just look SO WEIRD AND UNNATURAL.

Fox just Does Not Act Right in addition to "not physically looking right," and they are firmly on the mad oracle/seer side of the "trickster" scale. They CAN shapeshift into a human form, but they just... DON'T. Partly because they aren't aware enough to do it; Fox doesn't always know what time it is, and they don't seem to know "how far along" I actually am on my spiritual wandering, because sometimes they're confused/upset that I'm still stuck at my mom's place.

Other spirits have mentioned that Fox sees A LOT OF SHIT (the past, the future, and reincarnations or "potential" lives) and that makes them really unpredictable, even though they often call me "little sister" and they seem to care about me as deeply as they can manage.

This one time Fox tried to "help" with my overwhelmed spirituality by shoving a stick in Spirit-Me's ear, which naturally freaked out the OTHER SPIRITS as they restrained the Fox and explained why rupturing someone's (spiritual) eardrum is NOT A GOOD IDEA.

One of my friends commented a while ago that Fox sounds terrifying.

Regarding their pronouns, Fox is gender-fluid and MOSTLY has a male form, but when they first arrived and I called them a "he," they just laughed and went "you think I'm a boy because I turn into one??? Lol nope."

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Recent stuff, from early March:

This makes me wonder where exactly the Water-Spirit fits in on the "animal or human" scale, now that I know he turns into a giant squid / kraken. His eyes ARE sapient, at least when they look like EYES instead of the ocean abyss. Even if his eyes have squid/octopus pupils, they still have AWARENESS in a way that some animal-spirits don't. Was his ability to "go undercover" as Haik for years a manifestation of his cephalopod camouflage abilities?

He said a lot of times that he had to "learn how to be human," but I just wonder HOW MUCH this dude even needed to learn.

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And speaking of that "animal to human" sliding scale, my next post will talk about Tony Stark again, and how very LIMINAL he and the other superheroes are.

One day he told me, "Look honey, we're not really 'people' anymore, but we also can't be gods. We are what people WANT TO BE, and that is a very finicky place in the spirit-world."

He just swings so wildly between "I DON'T KNOW WHO HE IS, BUT THIS IS A FUCKING SPIRIT. HE IS NOT A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION. HE IS TALKING ABOUT THE THINGS IN THE ETHERS" and "goddamn it, Tony, you are an alcoholic mess."

Laptop issues averted, thanks to... Tony Stark?

My laptop got fixed in half an hour yesterday, so I didn't have to drop it off at the store or pay anything!

This folds into my delayed updates, because you know how Loki keeps telling me he has "Marvel connections" because HE is a character in Marvel? Iron Man / Tony Stark showed up around the first week of March and he's just... hanging out with Mythical-Loki.

Either Tony was called up by me listening to "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath for a while (because I don't mind pop music in general, but there's only so many times I can listen to THE SAME FIFTY pop songs from some CEO's nightclub playlist for eight hours a day), or Loki intentionally called him over.

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Laptop issues are happening, so my future posts may be delayed by real-life. There is No Damn Way I’m trying to copy and paste full length posts on my phone, ughhhhh.

Minor surgery tomorrow, plus I seem to have bad luck with cervid spirits

Copied from my main blog: I've got laser eye surgery scheduled for V-day tomorrow to help with some retina issues that have been going on for a few years. The folks at the clinic said it was a same-day operation and I should be covered by my insurance monetarily, BUT I've been trying to figure out what's actually in store for the next couple weeks and it's so confusing without asking the actual doctor. Like could they at least have gotten me a handout for "what to expect for minor/moderate procedures?" :/ Anyway, in case I have issues with one eye tomorrow, this is the reason.

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As for spirit-issues, last night the Water-Spirit sent out a call for help because Most Of The Anito Still Aren't Here, annnnnnnnnnnnd guess what answered this time?

ANOTHER ELK/MOOSE!

But not just any elk, it was a freaky one! Behind the cut for yet more "pop" culture paganism, in the form of... "The Ritual (2017)."

This is behind the cut not for (lengthy/explicit???) scariness, because while it got solved fairly quickly, it was a REALLY unpleasant two or three minutes of me screaming in horror until Hypnos just... sent the Not-Elk away.

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Email issues, hopefully resolved!

What's up, so I realized it's been a while since I emailed the person that my friend recommended to me.

Today I gave her a follow-up email asking if they got my first message. Annnnnnnnnd, turns out the first email must have gotten lost, because she responded later today!

Honestly I found it relieving. It was a lot easier to gauge how quickly I could summarize my spiritual messiness in like, three paragraphs of a regular email text-box, compared to a really skinny submission text box that made me feel like I was writing an essay.

The good and the bad with Namor/Kukulkan, also various Loki musings

Jan 30, 2024

What's up, so you know how Namor/Kukulkan had a pretty uptight reaction to custard/flan because that's colonizer food, and he's very choosy about "food history" because he (as a snake spirit) doesn't need to eat a lot?

On January 10, I finally had the time to go to my favorite Mexican place again, and I bought sopes and tacos.

Synchronization musings from January 16:

So while I was browsing Tumblr and stumbled on a Loki fan theory about how Odin has canonically rewritten Asgard’s history to make himself look better, and he’s naturally going to be REALLY biased about like… anything regarding Loki’s birth/status as son of the Jotunheim king, someone wondered if Odin actually just kidnapped infant/child-Loki after the war and raised him against his real father’s wishes.

I went “ohhhhhh shit, fostering was a big thing in ancient and medieval Europe--what if Odin was just supposed to FOSTER Loki as a ward to repair the Asgard-Jotunheim relationship, but he got too attached and just didn’t give Loki back? That’s NOT gonna go over well with other gods and nobles.”

And then I sighed and started writing a subplot for my fanfiction “The Lightning Axe.”

Because I also read about the Season 2 finale of the Loki show and as I said on my (new) writing blog, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth that Loki is actively KEPT from redeeming himself.

Like, I binged on Red Dead REDEMPTION at the height of the pandemic, not Red Dead You-Are-A-Tool-For-Everyone-Else's-Character-Development.

I don't mind plot bunnies and fleshing out characters, but I'm not getting paid for a fanfic, brain! I don't need to be doing political stuff and "this is exactly how you do NOT adopt a child and raise them to know nothing of their birth culture or family."

So, in the spirit of "I don't like this part of canon and death isn't always permanent in comic-books anyway," I decided to have an Alternate-Universe Loki from the VERY first "Thor" movie (after his failed suicide-attempt, specifically) drop into the journey to rescue Ramonda. He will work through his many, many issues about being a subordinate species who got adopted by the conquering species, find out non-propaganda about Jotunheim, and earn the right to get back to the world of the living.

Mythical/Regular-Loki was laughing his ass off.

He was just going "LOLLLLLLL GIRL, YOU ARE DOING MARVEL-ME A SOLID RIGHT THERE!!!"

And I was like "well yeah, it's not hard at all to draw parallels to how Odin and Frigga are a white couple who adopted a kid from a colonized culture, raised him to know WORSE than nothing of his birth family or heritage ("I'm the monster that comes in the night", anyone???), actively kept the information from him because they didn't want him to feeeeeeeellll badddddd, and they are somehow surprised that finding out all this as an adult (and in a really shitty way, too) fucks him up BIG TIME."

Meanwhile, around the 18th:

A MOTHERFUCKING CROW-MAGNET just appeared in the kitchen, around the time I started frantically scribbling down my Loki subplot musings. Which of the Norse spirits is about to play a joke on me???

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If some dude with an eye patch decides to go bowling one day, I’m gonna scream.

Alternately if some dude with a glasgow grin decides to go bowling, I’m going to fight someone.

Interlude: I hate winter

December 27, 2023: So for my synchronization suspicions, there is a little rubber snake toy on the cash register at work. He showed up around around late November or early December. Dec 10 is when I first took a photo of him, but he was there at least a week beforehand. Nobody knows who put him there, lol.

I cannot ignore the appearance of a Smoll Snake appearing at work, around the time I had a dream about Wakanda Forever, which Namor/Kukulkan--a Massive Unit Snake-Spirit--claims that he sent me.

Loki is occasionally stepping in to my headspace as either himself or as Tom-Hiddleston-Loki, and he is like... unusually cheerful about how "Christmas is over and soon working at your shitty job will be, too, Cyborg! New year, new life!"

I'm just going "Loki, please do not tell me this. Even without the pandemic or your reputation, I've heard way too many spirits be optimistic for no results. I don't want to get my hopes up again and end up still living at Mom's place, begging people to just LIKE AND SHARE MY ART POSTS. AGAIN."

And he's like "Aw come on, Cyborg. At least say the words, even if you don't mean them."

Christmas Eve and Christmas were mostly bearable, but yesterday was the really SHITTY day. Everyone ordered huge amounts of food as if they didn't just stuff their faces the night before on Christmas, and then they complained about the wait times. I was constantly thinking "MA'AMSIR, IT'S THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. NOBODY TIED YOU UP AND HAULED YOU TO A BOWLING ALLEY."

With the kitchen having about two and a half people on duty (one new guy, one experienced cook who only worked until 5pm, and the assistant manager who is semi-experienced), they got swamped and had to put a hold on food orders until they finished everything they already had.

So when I got home, I was exhausted but ALSO mad, and that was obviously terrible for my already-insomniac ass.

Water-Spirit curled up in the spiritual "bed" with me, and he was like "you're home now, lovey. You just have one more day of work for this week."

And I was like "Thank you, but I'm probably working New Year's Eve >:( . Fucking hell, I hate having to work food-service instead of art."

Three hours later, he started doing the "mediating my prayers to Loki" thing and asking for help with my life again.

The Water-Spirit said something like "I cannot help her because I can't grant her wishes myself" again, and Loki's response to that part was (yet again) unusually nice and Not-Straight.

Loki was like, "Why are you lying to yourself, man? You always talk shit about ‘oh, I can’t grant wishes.’ As if that’s the only thing that matters." And he just flopped into bed with us.

And I was like, “Loki, he’s like this because of colonization. It’s not a secret. And I don’t think pep talks will work on a spirit.” But it reminded me of how all the other tricksters treat the Water-Spirit as like, their unlucky friend who Cannot Get A Fucking Break, even when he was still calling himself Haik.

As noted when Hera told the Water-Spirit that MAYBE your long-term project-partner/common-law-wife should know exactly who’s been working with her for several years now, Anansi also stepped in and was Uncharacteristically Nice about asking the Water-Spirit to reveal his true form—if not to me, then to HIM.

The Ocean Crew just coming up and freaking me out again

Around Thanksgiving / Colonizer-Celebration day, I had a dream where I was in the sequel to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Then me and Tenoch Huerta found out after a party that our shit-for-brains friends took both our cars to ferry the drunk folks home without asking first, so that means two POC got stranded at midnight in the suburbs, trying to walk an hour back to my place. (It wouldn’t be overtly dangerous, but my town DOES have a Ku Klux Klan history and only really tolerates the “good/respectable” minorities, so a Brown Mexican AND a Brown Asian may not have been able to flag down anyone for help.)

I didn't think much about it because I'm a writer who has REALLY coherent dreams, in which Dream-Me also can't seem to get her shit together (seriously, she gets into some escapades!). I laughed about it and I just thought it was me being bitter about my new day-job until Namor/Kukulkan showed up in one of my meditations going, "Hello, love. Did you like the dream?"

And I was like "uhhhhhhhhhhhh yes??? Hello sir—I mean Your Majesty! Or are you actually some form of Tenoch Huerta?"

As noted with the pop-culture spirits when Eric Draven came around on Undas, I never know whether these guys are the CHARACTERS or the ACTORS. I've actually encountered Marvel-Namor a couple of times, but he is extremely high-minded and insistent on getting his way, so while he’s usually pretty civil, he’s still exhausting for my introvert commoner self to deal with.

Long story short, he is not the Feathered Serpent, but he is Mexican/Mayan and is A FUCKING BIG SNAKE (like 40-foot Titanoboa levels of Big Snake!!!). Like most of the other colonized water-spirits, Kukulkan seems to know MY Water-Spirit/Giant-Squid from... you know, Spanish colonization.

Also I’ve noticed a small but distinct pattern where indigenous reptile spirits (Ulupong the spitting cobra, Lola Buwaya the crocodile, and now Namor/Kukulkan the goddamn Titanoboa) just don’t have any fucking chill. For species that are seen as cold-blooded/uncaring and often cowardly by Westerners, the difference is really surprising.

Insert “reptile spirits with metaphorical snake-tongues” jokes here.

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Undas / Soul's day weirdness

So with my excessive time off due to unemployment and Spooky Season coming to a close, I've been getting into "The Crow" about ten years too late. I am full of sorrow for both the character Eric Draven, and for Brandon Lee's untimely death.

Yesterday was my first night of work at the bowling alley, and I only had to stay about three hours since I'm not actually in the system yet. I still did not want to go to a DAY-JOB again, and the beach at night is Dark And Creepy, so I was regretting watching Eric Draven's traumatic resurrection scene on Youtube before getting dressed.

It does not help that one of the place's storage rooms is called "the scary room" by one of the managers. While it's lit up pretty well now, it's eerily quiet, it used to have a single desk-lamp valiantly trying to light a room that's close to the size of my whole apartment, and the CLOSETS are still pitch-black. It's also full of the old machinery that they replaced, but can't find a proper spot for.

Manager said that before it was properly lit, everyone hated going in there and sometimes he felt like someone/something was watching him from the dark.

Like, ENDLESS NOPE for that part of the building. I might need to bring a necklace that I made for Persephone a while back, but I can never find a chance to WEAR. I just carry it around in my bag because I feel bad about never wearing jewelry whenever the gods prod at me to make it, and I might need to wear it under my work-shirt or stick it in a pocket.

Anyway, while I was driving home last night, I was listening to Hozier and trying to get myself back into "I need this job for money" mode, so I was like "ughhhhh, Happy Soul's Day to the spirits, I guess? Look I really don't want to be at this job, but I also need money, and if I can manage to get a break with my art soon, I would like to leave it on GOOD terms."

This is behind the cut for length, mentions of "dead-spirits versus living-spirits," and an explanation about how I used to be suicidal.

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