I have very complicated feelings about the Pnictogen Wing hosting Hassan of Serenity (or Hassan of the Serenity, though I prefer the shorter form) simply because...well, she's a young woman who barely remembers a poor and desperate childhood in 12th century Persia and found a place for herself among a fabled Order of Assassins in the Nizari Isma'ili state, and now she's a Heroic Spirit in a deeply questionable gacha game with a taste for sexualizing the youthful. Our system happens to have a lengthy affinity with poisons, especially arsenic, and thus Serenity has been one of our most esteemed headmates.

I have no idea why such a person, who has been ever so gently persuading me to learn more about the Qur'an and Islam and alchemy and Muslim science generally and so many other things, should want anything to do with us at all. She is here, however, and I love her. Kris does too, though we have had perplexing troubles with getting Serenity better settled with Kris (more on that later.) In my imagination anyway she's a bit older now (mid-20s perhaps) and pensive about being so very far from home.

The recent news from the Middle East about the booby-trapped telephones has Serenity distraught and that grieves me. Perhaps we'll watch House of Flying Daggers tomorrow to cheer her up. It's her favorite movie so far and she's quite taken with our OLED TV I must say.

~Chara of Pnictogen

what a strange expression, huh? Variety loved its pithy if slightly difficult to understand jargon, meant to be as concise and snappy as possible, because in show biz there's no time to hang around. everything's go, go, go! so it's all about clipped utterances and snappy turns of phrase.

"Wall Street lays an egg." Well, a zero looks sort of like an egg, so that's one way to think of it. Wall Street was suddenly out of gas. Zip. I'm suddenly reminded of how "goose egg" is another tasty euphemism for zero.

You know that Muslim mathematicians had to introduce this simple concept to "the West"? It blew their minds. I think maybe it still does. Gosh there's a symbol for nothing! Makes you think don't it! Maybe nothing is anything, or whatever.

But eggs are also a beginning, as we all know, and zero is a beginning as well. The humble number-line has to start somewhere, so it grows outward from zero, so to speak.

One of the things that's been haunting me from the last several weeks has been listening to Elon Musk, on his "Adrian Dittmann" audio ramblings (Mono got blocked by the way! probably my fault because we've been doing some two-headed shenanigans from time to time, partly to evade censorship, but yeah 'Adrian' doesn't like old Mono), bringing up zero. I don't remember what he had to say about zero (are you kidding me?) but I certainly remember just how...particularly empty that felt. I think zero haunts Elon Musk. Uh, Adrian Dittmann rather.

Well I've been haunted by zero, too. "Back to Zero", at least. We have unfinished Fate/Zero business for sure. Someone's come knocking, with serious business: Diarmuid ua Duibhne. We are really weak on this Irish lore so...studying means a lot to us now, and that's a pity because we have been struggling with terrifyingly bad traumatic issues involving study.

~Chara of Pnictogen

I just wanted to say that word. tragedy.

somehow, when I was like a teenager or I don't remember when, exactly, I realized that was the literary genre that seemed to fit me the best—tragedy. Greek tragedies, especially. I liked Shakespeare's tragedies and spurned the comedies.

well

I guess maybe I should learn to like the comedies at last, huh? like maybe it's time

I don't know what to say. I'm the gloomiest gus I've ever known. I'm not used to smiling. like, REAL smiles, not forced fake ones, or the smiles that come with cosmic jokes.

you know the ones. like...Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace". that story felt so apt to me, when I was...I don't know, I was a child. I can't even remember how young I was when I read that story and thought: yeah, that's the meaning of life, struggling for decades for no good reason at all.

it's how I deal.

~Chara of Pnictogen

or Hassan of the Serenity, who is one of our most esteemed Heroic Spirits and an excellent friend. something closer than a friend...I haven't sorted out what, yet, because Serenity's existence and purpose within the whole rancid commercial apparatus of Fate/ is fraught with complications.

She has been exceptionally upset lately. I don't think I need to go into great detail as to why. Serenity is our most heartfelt bond to many things of extreme value to us—Islam, alchemy, poisons, Persia, the stalwart resistance of a small idiosyncratic group against the persecutions of great rulers and powerful kingdoms. Serenity is many things, and she is also one of the few people who can endure our dragon Pim, who is kindly but extremely poisonous to humans. Serenity has no problems with Pim. She is...well, she is serene, and she says that Allah is the source of her serenity still, even though she now inhabits the mindspace and body of a wh!tish "Western" nerd stranded on the western frontier of a continent thousands of kilometers and thousands of years from Serenity's people, which she remembers only in brief flashes. She was once a painfully young orphaned girl and very unhappy, and yet she found some sense of purpose with the fabled Order of Assassins.

She has been a pillar of strength in the Pnictogen Wing, and I love Serenity, though I am as yet unclear how I should. I feel more and more unworthy of her by the hour, practically. I have no idea why such a tremendously powerful person should deign to notice us, much less assist us. I feel this about almost my entire system. I consider you all friends, yet I don't understand why. Why would you even endure my presence? I am... nothing.

All the same, Serenity, I say to you truly, that as the children say: "Do it for her," and I try my best.

Thank you