Masks
The Turkey Vulture mask
The turkey vulture is a flexible mask, a family rather than a monochrome, and can be played as young or old, male or female versions, or indeed several different versions in one scenario. There are fortunately many patterns and colourations of the mask, although none of them are fixedly assigned to any one type. She falsely believes herself to be handsome. She is ridiculous and overstuffed but easily deflated and brought low, similar to a Lover but without the poetry or passion to mitigate her foolishness; when old, as female or male she is occasionally lustful, but scares off the younger targets of her infatuations, who find her somewhat grotesque. As an old male mask, she is also impotent. She fears the old age that encroaches upon her, poverty, and danger. These fears are constant. Even the youthful turkey vulture is fearful of crows feet and wrinkles. Blindness to her ugliness must be maintained throughout, although she can sometimes be deprived of her illusions during the final denouement. As an old mask, sees death everywhere. Fussily rationalises anything necessary to achieve her goals. Never behaves consciously villainous, even as a villain. Makes complex plans ridden with contradictions. Sometimes employs the hagfish, but secretly fears him and even if she has second thoughts, doesn’t dare to call him off. Also fears the audience as witnesses to her plans, and so is obsequious and conspiratorial towards them.
She is a miser, whether rich or poor. Can be played as a false intellectual, in which case books may replace money.
Her movement is apparently fussy and fragile, ineffectual and jerkily stilted. Aggression and anger are signalled by a broad, dusty flapping and shaking up her threadbare feathers to appear larger. Self-consciousness and primness spoil what would otherwise be graceful, sweeping aerial movements. Sudden animation and speed appear in times of danger, and more especially where money is concerned. Fighting is characterised by short jumps, rolls and low summersaults, spins and sweeps of the arms performed with desperate speed to blind and distract her opponents while she searches for an escape route.


The Hagfish mask
The hagfish is a cold, callous, unreconstructed villain. He would kill his mother for a dollar. His only saving grace is that his mother is already dead. He doesn’t think ahead, relying on his considerable physical prowess and his abilities as a contortionist and escape artist to get him out of trouble, for he never intends to keep out of it. His mind is a cold, tarnished ball bearing that does not admit fear. The contrast between the ugliness of his behaviour and appearance and the occasional beauty of his movement should be exploited.
His brutality and cruelty are dulled by blunt, passive stupidity. His body slumps sluggishly until he has a task directly in front of them, in which case he moves his feet, shoulders and head with slow, independent writhing motions. His vision is poor, and he uses the movement of his head to surreptitiously peer at his surroundings. Keeps his arms by his sides and low as much as possible. His primitivism is such that he is barely aware of his hands at all. Fights mostly by charging, shrugs assailants off with violent fits of wriggling or shaking, uses his head and shoulders as battering weapons, but is uninterested in his opponent. Fights only to get to his objective. His most dramatic physical lazzo is that if forced to the floor he springs in to the air by way of a powerful spasm involving the violent movement side-to-side of his entire body, like a leaping salmon.
He is capable of deviousness, but only of the simple flavour of the nervous habitual criminal. An ugly androgyne, he is slow to hunger, and acts only to satiate himself, but he can be persuaded easily by money, which he accumulates to no particular purpose aside from that he understands it is desirable. Lustful advances towards attractive members of the opposite sex, and sometimes, young male masks should be carried out with a similar attitude. The offer of sex or marriage can be used as an alternate motivation for his criminality, but he is almost never married before or during a scenario. He has no honour, dignity or loyalty and changes affiliation at each whiff of better money. Where the Turkey Vulture mask plays with him as a villain, the Turkey Vulture is often his employer.
He is never caught, but gains nothing from his escapades, sloughing goods, money, anything and everything to escape justice. Prison is the one thing that holds terror for him, and this is merely a primal urge to avoid death for his own grey mind and poisonous ethics kill him if he is left caged. His poor eyesight means he is barely aware of the audience, and is startled by them if he comes close to the front of the stage.

Bastard vengeful stars
Unfortunately, I got snagged by a meme and I'm feeling miserable/virtuous. Dang. But then again, I don't have any people watching me, so what can happen?

A) First, recommend to me:
1. a movie:
2. a book:
3. a musical artist, song, or album:

(B) I want everyone who reads this to ask me three questions, no more, no less. Ask me anything you want.

(C) Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends to ask you anything.

Because of public decency, immediately follows a proper post, of ideas as this is what I made this journal for.

The Fall of Carthage
"Surinam Toad
Range: Freshwater bodies of northeastern South America.

Diagnosis: A strongly depressed frog with very long digits, each tipped with star-like structures."

:__: Poor toad.

Also:
Dear person suspensionrings;
It was very nice to recieve a comment from you about threes, evenspecially because it was my first proper comment recieved ever, I think. It was very lovely to read from you. Unfortunately, I deleted it accidentally when I clicked on a thing which I thought said 'back' , but instead said 'delete'. I am very sorry about that. I have become too used to digital idiot-proofing and being asked 'are you sure Y/N???!' whenever I do something. Boohiss.

For some reason whenever I press ctrl-c to copy things it brings the Trillian 'sign in' window up. I must have reassigned the command by accident somehow.

Metasmeatsmetas. Who are the metas? Following a chain of thought from an e-male.

Meta: negative/positive
Levi [Leviticus Hill/Leviticus Carmine Hill]: unable to embrace chance of purpose, cannot begin/changes without being destroyed, concludes
Ohoashinbo: change destroys him, fragile, reserved, cruel by naivety/gentle with hardness, sees beauty, reserved, innocent
Moonface: Dull uncertainty, without own momentum/Openness, duality
Boyd (he made the persona I shall not name who I became for a while, I think, or is a part of that): Pure without pity, death/Pure without malice, release
Icchanu [Fear Eater]: Devouring fear, purposeless/spiteful/instinctive destruction/[no positive]
Vers: Vanity, wastefulness, egoism, perfectionism/ beauty, generosity, directness, perfectionism
Most others are less so these, being locked in progressions, or died to become these. There are some that are absent at the moment, or not open to discussion.

Edited from a chat with Jenna
Partial Text from the Book of Holy Voices.

And Lo, out of the red valley and in the beautiful ruin of flesh each of the Hessiah heard the Holy Voices, and to each they spake first the same, saying:
‘You are my pretty one, my most beautiful. Of all my works, there are none to compare with you, O most perfect child of my womb, of my farm. To you first of all shall your brothers and sisters do honour.’
And so even on the first days the enmity between the Hessiah was seeded, and in the days after as each climbed the hard path to the World and the Farm their envy grew like spring grass. For this reason all brothers and sisters shall always be jealous, and always there will be feuds between them.

To each after this, the voices spake different holy words, telling the Hessiah each their own purpose and sacred mission, so that they might direct their own children in the true paths, and not onto the foolish trails of the Pasture or the evil ways of the far Fields.

To Murmansk, who was the eldest, the voices spoke of the days of Charnel, when the Owners would separate hack from nag, stallion from gelding. They spoke of healed wounds, of the great dark sleep and of choices, giving him the balm of a calm spirit without love or favour. They directed him to the filling of the Meat House, for that was his task, to hold those ordained and worthy within the Farm, to remain for the time when the (Owners?) would come again to inspect Their finest mares and Their best studs.

To Canterbury, they spoke of the days after Charnel , when there would be stillness, and radiance. They spoke of bells and chimes and other things of brief majesty, setting upon him the cursed blessing of endurance. They spoke also of beauty, which he alone of all stallions was given to understand. They set him to the Stableyard, to cultivate forbearance, so that those chosen by his elder brother might be possessed of nobility pleasing to the Owners eyes, and not spoiled by dreary despair, nor maddened with brutality and impatience.

To Carthage, they spoke of the days before Charnel, when the Fields and the Pastures would be turned to reeking mud by the blood of horses. They spoke of sharp hooves and wolf teeth and vainglorious struggle, and gave him the duty and habit of vigilance. They spoke also of the time when his vigilance would fail, but it was not the Great Mare’s will for him to hear, so he did not. They sent him to the Pasture gate, for his task was give to hold the passage fast against intruders, that young stallions would always be ready to herd their mares and foals against them that dwell in the Fields.

To Detroit, who was the youngest, they spoke of all the days of the world, of the days before Charnel, of the Charnel and of the days after, and whispered to him alone the great list of Errors. They spoke of vengefulness, of mad bloody dreams and of implacability, placing as his bit an ember that was cruel justice. They spoke also of pain that is the burden his brothers bore at first unawares, but which Detroit savoured and was given to recognise. They sent him to the boundary fence past the Pasture gate that he would know the Errors of each horse as they came, and would be swift from any quarter to admonish.

Things are said, and not unsaid
I said I would, and now I did>> Pitchoor of the three. From memory, so likenesses=wrongs. It's the triple goddess fallacy thing, and the MEK thing, which is an unscratchable itch.
Push>> is the falsesmiler. Hardest, in some ways, because I have never talked to the mask behind the mask, but easier also, for the same reason. I understand the mask more, this time. (I did another one I think, at some point. It had wood grain.) Or rather--I applied an understanding to it. I still can't get the shape-relationships right though. The wings I haven't fit in yet. I asked her to dress in a kind of fetish nurse-outfit thing. I don't know if it will stay. I want to think of more things to go on the tray.
Neo>> Damn the perspective and foreshortening problems of spikes! Hopefully I will be able to work up more sense of concentration from he face as she works.
Mimi>> May well be a lightsource, if this goes anywhere. My appearance-memory is wayway back for this, so I am not sure if it is Mimi. The cat's cradle has to be there because of the Fates who were three and their cutting the threads. I must define more what Neo is doing on/in her back. I am at once proud and ashamed at the fucked-up-ness of the hands.

I don’t want to hurt, I don’t want to be hurt. But you can’t have one without the other…how can I ask for a perfection I cannot deliver. LivebythediebytheTRAITORS. Oops.

I think it would be quite simple to fit Midway’s into a chronological point in the past of the MEKworld. The ideas and themes are all so much the same. I will resist for now, because I am trying not to be too much of a cock all the time.

Drug withdrawal is going pretty good, pretty bad.

Is there a 'cut' knid of thing? I dunno. Here's some fragments of prose, most from 'Narcissus', one from something random:

Narcissus

The air tastes stale and worn out. Dried, beaten and antisepticked. Hospital. The left side of my face aches unmercifully, a savage trail of numb red squeezing my blind eye, my bandaged-over eye like a vice with each heartbeat. I don’t want to see where I am. I know where the bandages are because they itch and scrape horribly. I wonder whether bandages are cloth or paper. The air has. I stay still, afraid to disturb the edged coral formations of the sheets. If I move, they will fracture and crack. I stay still, knees crushing against my breasts. Old, cold late morning light nags at me, dyeing my foetal half-sight veinous pink. My brain is bruised and gritty.

I hear the dim underwater-tuba sounds of a television somewhere nearby. The blare refracting around my eye is more a smoke alarm than a fire engine now, so I get up, after a few false starts, and head down the corridor in the wake of the sound. I shuffle slowly along the linoleum floor in my institutional slippers and faded dressing gown, an elderly ice-skating ghost. The corridor radiates cold. The room is long and wide, but a low peeling crazy paved ceiling in nicotine off-white makes the place feel closeted, funereal. The walls look slightly fuzzy. I glare at the teevee myopically, turning my head to one side so I can make out the grainy picture. I must look like some mad, bedraggled pigeon perching awkwardly on the hairy hospital sofa, which is dotted with black tarry chewing gum stains. It smells faintly of wet sheep. The soaps are on.

<>

I sit on my bed, cross-legged. I take the flower down from the windowsill in its terracotta coloured plastic pot. One by one, I pluck its petals off. With each tear, I mutter “Sarlie MacLennon.” in time with the quiet, final snap of plant ligaments. Eventually all that is left is a tentative green lance of stem. I put my denuded flower on the bedside table.

The doctor comes top see me in the afternoon. His breathing is large and considered, soothingly tidal in its pinched regularity. I notice individual silvery wires of hair striking out from his sideburns across his cheeks, perhaps on a march to meet the strands peeking shyly from his nose. We talk about my memory, and that they have a specialist coming. A knock on the head does sometimes do that, he says, like in the cartoons. His smile stands the little hairs to nervous attention. This case, my case, he means, is a very unusual sort of case for such a small hospital. We talk about the sheets and how, of course, nothing can really be done about it so never mind. But he has come to take the bandages off for me. It wasn’t a very deep cut, and having to bandage over one eye was such an inconvenience that he doesn’t think there’ll be need for another dressing. He’s brought a mirror, borrowed it from Mrs. Lewis in reception, in fact, just so I can see.

It’s a compact mirror, the little pea-green frame dusted with fragrant powder. And there she is, in the glass. Sarlie MacLennnon, from off the teevee. That’s odd. I think. I turn the little thing over in my hand, peering at it, looking for a trick. Finally, I look again. A purplish crinkled Cheshire cat’s smile frames the left side of her face, tugging lewdly at the corner of her eye. She looks drawn, puzzled. The long, delicate carmine raggedness of blood travelling from temple to jaw is all that gives her face colour. Her skin seems taut and shiny as a barely healed bruise. I frown, experimentally. So does she. The cut wriggles as if it has been tickled, hurting in mirror image. Oh. I think. I try a few other expressions, or perhaps the same one and I can’t tell. I don’t seem to be able to remember many. Suddenly I feel like someone is hauling by belly up from under the sea in a net. I must be dying. “The scar will fade to almost nothing”, he says. “You’ll only barely be able to see it.” My belly gasps in the raw heavy salty air, desperately flipping ungainly back-flips. “Oh.” I say.

He rises after a little while, uncrumpling himself, and makes to leave. I return Mrs. Lewis’ mirror to him. After he has gone, I gather up petals fallen from the flower and place them in a circle on its bed of desiccated soil. They look like tiny, dried up votive offerings. I fancy that eventually they will rot away, and give the nutrients locked up in them back to the plant. The fish, my belly, is back in water now. I can tell because it makes a long drain gurgle, supplicating. I wonder when the nurse will come around with tea. I sit, and wait. After a while, I remember the name of the flower.

Random

The moon is full, cold and bright as a new coin above a cracked-basalt cityscape. Frayed rags of cloud tumbling down from the mountains unravel thread by thread over the city, tearing themselves to ribbons against a lunar edge milled clear and fine by shadow. The moon remembers a sickle. Behind them, the clouds leave greyish, luminous feathers of snow, trickling down into the tangerine neon of the streets. The old cathedral is a vast, uncompromising spike of dark among the upraised fingers of electric orange tower-blocks. Even the snow adds no colour to its sheer, wind-mottled flanks. The Noh society is coming home, and they are bringing guests. The Circus is coming to town.

Bellybellybelly
Meanwhile, I am still drug-free. This is good. This is nice. I can do this.

My internal Voices are starting to come back. I often have to go looking for them still, asking them what they want to say. But they are getting louder. How did I live without you, guys? Let's take over the world.

I WRITE ABOUT CHIMERIDAE

I wonder if anyone else in the world has noticed that Mimi, Push and Neogeen could be considered a triple goddess allegory for the MEKshop. Good stuff. Like Freud's Id, Ego and Superego. Like the Christian Holy Trinity. One is instinct, second is emotion and the third is reason. It is amazing to see how often this recurs, or alternatively how adept I am at creating pattern. I cannot identify my personal 'three', though. I tend to think of Chancey's Fleiy, Mayrot/Mirrue and Grope as a similar three, but that is at least partly my fault.

There is a book I need to find, that is cyberpunk. It is about the death of someone who is not really dead, and the friendship of three geniuses. It has references to a made-up comic book about a girl who has a bird-like friend who carries the fragments of it's hatching-shell around with it. It is run over by an invisible train. Eventually, the girl goes to hell. There is also a scene in the book about a high-tech bioweapon suit and a fortress undereath the ruins of a monestary, I think. Whoever ears the suit gets their arm chopped off in the process. There is a mausoleum that becomes a cinema. The cover I remember is very Giger-esque, of a woman's face. For some reason, I need this book. Help ;___;

Recently obsesserized: Happy New York/Seeds for the Pen. Some drawings made by a guy called Witold Riedel on New York subways.

The site of a pulp SF/fantasy author called Kim Newmann. At some point, I found some of his Dark Future books in a school library. It was just so fantastically different from anything I had ever read before. Krokadil Tears, I think. It was pretty cyberpunk. (w00)

And O Narcissus, when can you be either?
I know what Moonface is. I should have known, of course, because the moon is the talisman of the insane, and the moon grins, and the sun weeps. The fucking bells that ring silences. All the round shapes, the balance of dark and light...he's goddamn anti-depressants. He protects you from everything. Anything. Forever. Maybe that's why he's so scary (because I never told you, but he scares me too). I can't dismiss him. I don't know what he's saving me from, and I'm too much of a coward to find out.

Ohoashinbo is me now. Creativity, or a sham of creativity, without progess, without spontenaity or free growth.

Ellis is the coming-to-realise-this. I wonder how longit took of self-manipulating chemical abuse to free him up? You gave me a revelation, you stupid, tired old old man. And you know what it was, but sorry and lurking there stupid, tired old old on the sidelines doesn't fix a single thing.

What do I need? Maybe I need Boyd, or whatever his real name will turn out to be: he hasn't told me yet.

I cheated Moonface today. No anti-depressants for a little while, because one set is working it's way out before I go back onto the one that works. This is why I have a revelation. A little revelation, a pretty shit revelation when it comes down to it, but I TAKE what I can GETseebelow. Was it my environment that crushed me, that made me build a Moonface from the trash, the worthless and banal used up refuse-thoughts, animated by some sick-monkey chemical wizardry? Possiblepossible.

I'm sorry to Jenna, because you introduced this thing to me, and now I'm going to steal another thing away from you. I am a magpie like that, I steal and realise. I steal earrings, from your tragus even, and I realise it was being part of you that made them beautiful. I'm sorry to you also, Kim, because I don't want to do the same to you but I think I will. I'm not -very- sorry, youknow. Because there is still a thrill in theft, the thrill of youallhaditcoming, the thrill of yourfaultforleavingitwhereanyonecouldgettoit. When you come back, Kim, I hope I will have the chimeridae stuff for you. The realname thing. I can't deal with pretend people anymore. I need something to put my whole trust in, now I've remembered that I don't trust myself. Names are powerful. I want to own a little bit of you all, to feather my ugly little nest with.

Recently obbsessorised:
http://www.bmezine.com/
Dear Ohoashinbo: Are you ready to change yourself for yourself?

http://blueboard.rimlife.com/mantis/
I can't even begin to explain how magnificent mantis shrimp are. Luckily, the internet can. Powerful.

Now I will add people ([twopeople?] probable) to my list o' people, another thing I would fain ask some little forgiveness for.