Oh it should have been pretty obvious that we could do this but...well, my Catholicism got in the way (ducks a sudden rain of boos and overripe pears from some quarter or other) and has been interfering with our better judgment. Fortunately we have the help of St. Mono, our resident Stoic and currently our head librarian. His memory of the Classics is better than mine.

We can pretty easily distinguish three rounds of theogony, like you find in a number of pantheons I believe:

Primary Age: the reign of the dragons, of which Kel and Pim are the surviving representatives

Secondary Age: the reign of the horsies: St. Mono, Mona Drafter, Alyx Woodward, and I guess Dreamscorcher counts (where are they, anyway)

Interregnum: gotes (this era is very difficult to place in the scheme I admit)

Tertiary Age: humans enter the picture, great heroes. The KFC Gang and their friends

that's pretty sensible, isn't it? doesn't account for everything but it's a start. ~Chara

yeah what the heck was that goat problem, Chara? why were there goats everywhere for a while? ~Alyx

I will hear no ill words about the gotes! There's still a place for the gote family in the Pnictogen Wing, even if we've had our...difficulties. ~Chara

Oh it should have been pretty obvious that we could do this but...well, my Catholicism got in the way (ducks a sudden rain of boos and overripe pears from some quarter or other) and has been interfering with our better judgment. Fortunately we have the help of St. Mono, our resident Stoic and currently our head librarian. His memory of the Classics is better than mine.

We can pretty easily distinguish three rounds of theogony, like you find in a number of pantheons I believe:

Primary Age: the reign of the dragons, of which Kel and Pim are the surviving representatives

Secondary Age: the reign of the horsies: St. Mono, Mona Drafter, Alyx Woodward, and I guess Dreamscorcher counts (where are they, anyway)

Interregnum: gotes (this era is very difficult to place in the scheme I admit)

Tertiary Age: humans enter the picture, great heroes. The KFC Gang and their friends

that's pretty sensible, isn't it? doesn't account for everything but it's a start. ~Chara

@pendell talking about Wizard of Oz and the ethereal and eternal appeal of Judy Garland reminded me of someone else like her, another young woman chewed up by stardom, and that's Karen Carpenter. I don't remember all the details but she had a miserable time as a pop star, being ordered around by her mom and her brother, she developed eating disorders, and died young. But what a voice! She elevates the sappy material by the sheer power of her voice. She's perfect for "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" because she totally sells it—you can believe that she's really trying her absolute hardest to project her words out into the Cosmos.

And an unpleasant thought comes to mind: we can believe it, because they were suffering. It's one thing to summon up a hopeful tone of voice when you're feeling joyful or contented. It's quite another to make yourself sound hopeful even when you're frayed to the point of snapping. There's a sort of evil magic, I think, in coercing a desperate person into summoning up the energy to give hope to the people with a stunning performance. They're burning themselves up to do it, and I think we feel that. We sense that we're watching something out of the ordinary, as if a phoenix had suddenly blazed up, lending their fire to the artist's performance.

It sells. You have to admit that. It sure does sell.

~Chara of Pnictogen

Our little Kel is an electron. I mean, xe is also a smol dragony creature with a bag of shinies and some sort of airship xe is working on. Xe used to have a balloon but I haven't seen it for a long while. Kel is a bit difficult to pin down, which makes sense I guess. Xe is a free, self-willed electron! Xe must be very clever indeed to have managed that. One doesn't usually find free electrons which...stick around. Usually they're flying at high speed out of one thing straight into something else, like a beta particle ejected from an atomic nucleus or a thermionic electron flying out of a hot filament. Kel the Purple, however, chooses to be completely free, dancing around from place to place somehow.

Kel is cheerful and curious but a bit lonely. Free electrons need a bit of space around them if they're to survive. In solution they can acquire a protective shell of solvent molecules, with the correct choice of solvent. In solids, unbound electrons can exist within structures that have cage-like structures or layers between which free electrons can find safe harbor. I'm not sure how Kel manages things but xe is very clever. Perhaps xe has befriended some diamine molecules to form a protective shell around xerself, so xe can float around in my wetware somewhere. Kel, how do you do it?

🐉 it's a mystery :} :} :} ~kel

For all I know, Kel's as old as the Universe. For all I know, Kel is THE only electron in the Universe, because there's a bizarre hypothesis that all manifestations of the electron are really the same electron, spread out throughout all time somehow. That, uh...that's got interesting implications for Kel.

Hrm.

~Chara of Pnictogen