after the Waking World log

[claudiometer]

Hoo boy. I realise this phrasing may be treading on thin ice right now, but strange things are afoot at the Aratta Skyhook.

First things first. Leah took the news that she was chosen to be the first Conductor deliberately... about as well as we figured she would. She has a theory as to why and asked me to run it by you guys. [And so she does, letting the memory play out from the linked point until Leah says she'd like to talk to the Oracle who uncovered this.]

So yeah, Thace, if she hasn't found you already, find her.

Second. I made sure to get a planetside view while I was out and about. Alexandra had never bothered before, and apparently wouldn't have understood what she was looking at anyway, and for an uninhabitable planet there's a shitton happening on the surface. And, uh, I found the source of the mysterious ticking noise, probably.

They're building a computer chip the size of fucking WYOMING.

Comments

[awitchdidit]

Wait. I'm confused.

Are you saying there's pills for depression?

[eldritchwheelies]

Chock full of neurotransmitters that people with depression demonstrably can't synthesize on their own.

If you can't make seratonin from scratch, storebought is fine!

[awitchdidit]

Someone couldn't have told me this decades ago? Or at least before I got into a damn habit of magically duelling--

[Mental sigh.]

Well, I'm not sure I have a physiology anymore, but I guess that's something to look into.

Anyway if the threat is memetic contamination, that, at least, is something I'm familiar with.

[youandyoualone]

I am just as shocked as you are, milady.

[awitchdidit]

I guess people who can't fight physical manifestations of their repressed emotions with magic deserve something...

[youandyoualone]

I have and I think I would like to have a pill that chases away black moods.

[awitchdidit]

A magical potion to balance the brain's humors. Ahaha, never mind computers or communications devices, I can't even keep up with future alchemy.

[eldritchwheelies]

Depending on when you're from, they might not have known to - or seen admitting to needing pills as unconscionable weakness. Sigmund Freud was a recent development, and even he had to censor his own work to avoid powerful people silencing it; figuring out what neurotransmitters had to do with it, even more recent.

And yeah. I'm weirdly glad that my Cognitohazard 101 and 201 classes are actually seeing some use here. Better to have and not need, of course, and this isn't on the scale of the Story That Wants To Tell Herself. But I'm happy that I can help people shoulder the worst of it, anyway.

[awitchdidit]

I suppose psychotherapy was known but not socially acceptable in the last time and place I was alive...not that many people would offer it casually to a witch haunting a mysterious island.

I'm not as in tune with the mental aspects of Liminal Space as some, but I am quite good at guarding my mind. Most of the time. That's an interesting name for a "hazard", though...perhaps you can tell me about her in a safe environment some day.

[eldritchwheelies]

The short version of Shuizn is that if you pray to an eldritch goddess to pretty please with sugar on top rewrite your character sheet, you have no one but yourself to blame when she crosses out your class and pencils in "Cultist."

[awitchdidit]

Hm...yes, that does sound familiar.

[youandyoualone]

Truly, the apothecaries of the future are more advanced than I could have imagined. Where might one procure such things as to keep black moods away?

[Look. He's a lifelong depressive. It's a problem.]

[helborn]

Yeah. I explained this to Drizzt once - there's doctors to treat wounds of your body. There's doctors to even treat wounds of the physical parts of your brain. But there's also doctors to treat wounds of the medical heart.

It's... a long process and it doesn't work for everyone, but it's worth a try.

I haven't been to one myself, but I kind of ended up doing a rudimentary version of it growing up for the grieving families at my dad's funeral home.

[eldritchwheelies]

Also, this is one of the things that religion was for. Cognitive-Behavioral Theory is even based on Buddhist meditative exercises.

Show of hands who's surprised Leah is a Buddhist? Anyone? Bueller?

[youandyoualone]

'Tis true that religion can work to combat black moods and their presence. I have oft attempted to find surcease in my earthly devotions to Namaah and have even once or twice, when my guilt felt unbearable, gone to the temple of Kushiel to be scourged.

Too, if one visits Gentian House and goes to sleep beside one of their adepts, one shall dream in symbols one what one is troubled by and the adept who shared that dream shall puzzle out what one must do. [He's often wished to have a Gentian adept in liminal space whenever he's hit by one of these awful nightmares.]

[eldritchwheelies]

Show me an impractical faith and I'll show you one that didn't survive. Ask me to tell you why pork was originally forbidden to the Jews.

[No comment on getting whipped by Kushiel's boys.]

I mean, I'm mostly vaguely the Japanese bouillabaisse of Buddhism and Shinto, but comparative religion and the difference between religions and (notionally toxic) cults is something you get drilled into your head at a school for fighting things like Nyarlathotep. Confession does salve the soul. Mitzvot do give you good habits. Meditation is good mental hygene. These aren't arbitrary rules; they're different ways to be happy.

[youandyoualone]

I am familiar a bit with confession. Thorne has described to me the Catholic rites of her childhood and too have many of my infiltrations been brought up so--at least when they have originated in France. In fact, on the walkabout to the world of Pogemon, my childhood friend David, who in my own world became a Cassiline Brother much like Joscelin, was himself a Jesuit priest.

[youandyoualone]

The doctors who are known as shrinks, yes? I have heard mention of them from the Durante siblings. I did not know they could prescribe pills and potions, merely that one would go unto them to talk of their problems, much as we all do with Claudia.

[helborn]

More specifically therapists. Therapists do mostly talk therapy. Psychiatrists are specialized doctors who can prescribe mental health medications. Psychologists are the ones who study the field in general.

It might be hard to find a therapist after all of this, but... well. If I make it past the second titanomachy brewing in my world, I'll probably end up as a god. But there's no reason why I can't just... also go to school in disguise. ... I wanted to be a mortician like my dad, but now I want to be a grief counselor.

And if we're going to be able to visit each other like I hope, that might be a good sort of person to have on hand, yeah?

[youandyoualone]

From what Thorne's brother has said, grief counselors are good and useful fellows, yes. They are the only sort of 'shrink' he has not assiduously avoided.

But this is all very fascinating, Casper--I would like to learn more in time.

[helborn]

I can tell you what I know later.

... And I mean, I'm not exactly trained yet, but you can always talk to me if you need.

[eldritchwheelies]

I'm not a pharmacist, but it's in the arsenal of any modern day drugstore chemist. Not all of them work the same way, or work on the same deficiencies, and expect to be a zombie for a day or two when you overshoot the dose.

I cannot stress how much I am talking from the experience of a friend and not from direct experience. I'm not qualified to throw lithium and Prozac at you. Find someone who is.

[youandyoualone]

And so I shall. Mayhap when I go to visit Alcuin and Thace's almost-in-laws, when this is over--if indeed they would have such people in Thorne, Gil, and Jules' world.

[eldritchwheelies]

Early twenty-first century should be late enough!

public -> private

[youandyoualone]

'Twould be in the 2010s, I believe, yes!

[Going to switch this to private:]

I wonder why it is that Thorne does not take pills or potions against her mind's weasels, for her brother says she has been to the shrinks and does have a diagnosis. Indeed it seems to me that she and little Maria are subtly alike, only that Thorne has been taught better to mimic others around her.