• they/them

plural system in Seattle, WA (b. 1974)
lots of fictives from lots of media, some horses, some dragons, I dunno. the Pnictogen Wing is poorly mapped.

host: Mx. Kris Dreemurr (they/them)

chief messenger and usual front: Mx. Chara or Χαρά (they/them)

other members:
Mx. Frisk, historian (they/them)
Monophylos Fortikos, unicorn (he/him)
Kel the Purple, smol derg (xe/xem)
Pim the Dragon, Kel's sister (she/her)


permit me to quote Tolkien—the real Tolkien, you understand, not racist action-movie Peter Jackson Tolkien:

'For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!'

[Gandalf] looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

'I liked white better,' I said.

'White!' he sneered. 'It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.'

In which case it is no longer white,' said I. 'And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.'

it's a famous scene. it's almost fitting: Saruman is the sort of cheap and corrupted mage who would trade in plain white for rainbow bling. and yet...Gandalf says something very irritating and frankly wrong in reply: "breaking things to find out what they are" is intrinsic to the act of discovery. that's how we find out that nuts have edible meat in them, and tell solid wood apart from rotten stuff—we test things by breaking them. I don't think it's possible to be a user of tools without breaking things, is it?

the trick is knowing what's safe to break, and doing it with minimal intrusion. but still, analyzing things means breaking them. Gandalf is practically implying that science and technology are themselves folly, and...well, I can rather believe that from J. R. R. Tolkien. sometimes he seemed to think the worst thing that ever happened to us was that we stopped being farmers and villagers, and given his life experiences—can you blame him?

~Chara of Pnictogen


You must log in to comment.