Bullying, Be Gone!

I know this is weirdly timed, but I literally just wrote this last night. It takes place in the Ravenstone setting. Given the Ravenstone series takes place in a canonical multiverse, it might be canon in some universe, it just isn't canon to any of the universes in the series we've seen so far. Anyway, I could see it being a fictional work written by one of the Ravenstones. It IS from Orpheus's point of view, after all.

Another note: The Ravenstones are multi-cultural. The adults, sans Nizoni, are all Yoruba practitioners who have syncretized their faith with Wicca and other neopagan traditions, so they celebrate Yule and Samhain and other neopagan holidays as well as the holidays of the Yoruba culture. (Dalia is also Yoruba. Maybe Ashkii too, I haven't made anything canon about that. And I don't know Chooli's beliefs yet either.) Samhain also syncretizes well with the "Dia de los Muertos" tradition of Morgana's youth (she was born and raised in Mexico until she and her mom moved to the US when Morgana was 12.) Oh and remember that "Samhain" is pronounced "saw-when."

BTW, it starts serious and gets funny.


"Twas The Night Before Samhain."

Twas the night before Samhain, and all through the home,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a gnome.
The ofrendas were placed on the altar with care,
In hopes that the ancestors soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar skulls danced through their heads.
And Maddy¹ in her bonnet and myself in one too,
Heading bed-ward the last thing of the night left to do,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang down the stairs to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a gale,
Tore open the shutters and opened the veil.
The moon in the heavens like a baleful eye,
Shone like the sun at noon from the sky.
When what did my wondering eyes did regard,
But a cadre of spirits afloat in the yard.
With an old African woman dressed all in white,
Leading this train of ghosts in the night.
More rapid than ravens these specters they came,
And she moaned, and wailed, and called them by name:
“Now Accalon! Now Pandora! Now Oluwatosin!
Now Ife! Now Bunmi, Iyabo, and Kayin!
Now Henry! Amadi! Now Lanre and Femi!
On Boniface! On Celeste! On Justine and Remy!
To the tops of the roofs! Past the top of the wall!
Now haunt away! haunt away! haunt away all!"
All as ephemeral as a feverish dream,
The ancestors flew through the streets for to scream:
Thus to every house of the whole HOA,
Our ancestors flew with little delay.
With a lifetime of nightmares for the Karens so vile,
As I watched, I laughed more than I have in a while!
And then, in a moment, I heard from the houses
The terrorized screams of those self-righteous louses.
I stuck out my head, and with a quick spell,
My voice amplified to a tsunami-like swell.
Thus did I call out to the frightened masses
Of all of those Karens, those HOA asses:
“Happy haunting to me on this wondrous night in the fall!
Merry Samhain to you, to one and to all!”



Might add to it, describing some of the mayhem, to better fit the original poem, since the original poem was quite a bit longer.

1 = Maddy is a mix of "mommy/daddy," and is what the kids call Morgana.

Afroman got swatted. Cops raided his house because some random person who didn't like him told them he had drugs and guns and kidnapping victims in his house, which was a lie.

So these officers did a home invasion, destroyed his property, and threatened his family, all for no good reason, and they didn't even have to fix anything they broke? Also they gave no apology, and seemed to enjoy it. Cops really are just criminal gangs given legitimacy by the government. Anyone else doing those things would be going to prison AND paying restitution. But the pigs? Nope. "One rule for thee, another for me."

On that note, check out these other videos related to it:

Officer Pound Cake explanation
Lemon Pound Cake song

One silver lining to all this is that his many, many songs about the whole ordeal are SUPER pissing off the cops he's singing about. Even other cops are calling that sheriff guy "Officer Pound Cake." They're so angry about it that they sued him for defamation... and LOST.

I do not understand how steak tartare, which is just raw meat, is even legal to sell anywhere. And I don't understand why anyone would WANT to eat raw meat. If you want to eat raw meat, it'd be a lot cheaper to just buy a pound of raw hamburger and scarf it down like the animal you clearly are.

Slightly less gross, but only slightly, is people eating rare steak. What is so hard to understand about this simple fact: if it's rare, it is RAW. And raw meat is NOT safe to eat. Also, as human beings, we cook our meat. If you eat raw meat I'm going to call you Ug. No wait, I'll call you Lucy because even Neanderthals and Cro Magnons cooked their meat.

Potentially controversial take: a lot of what gets called "necromancy" is actually the domain of life magic. Resurrection? Life magic cuz you're restoring life. Talking with the dead? If that's possible, that means there's life after death, it's just a different kind of life. So, life magic because you're speaking with those whose spirits live after they've died. About the only form of necromancy I can think of that doesn't fit life magic is where you're just puppeting corpses around, and that's just glorified telekinesis.