Ars Narratae

To some, the return of magic is a miracle; to others, a catastrophe. For physicist Julia Chen, it’s all a colossal headache. Now, she’s setting out across the wintry, post-apocalyptic landscape of Fairy-controlled Canada in search of answers. The subject of her inquiries: an enigmatic Fae known only as Mr. Elsevier, who seems to have power over matter and energy at the most fundamental level and who is willing to share this knowledge—for a price. But Julia’s quest does not take place in a political vacuum. In Ottawa, the new Fairy Viceroy draws up her plans for the country, even as her puppet Prime Minister, Chuck Oakes, struggles desperately to protect his people. But rebellion is brewing, and Mr. Elsevier may just be the key to human victory. Now, with the murderous politics of the Fae heating up, Julia will soon learn that, in sorcery as in science, simple questions can sometimes have very dangerous answers. She is on the cusp of ultimate knowledge: a theory of magic that would explain what has become of the world and how it can be reversed. But asking the wrong question may well unravel reality itself...

Filled with, magic, dark humour and memorable characters, Reality's End is the first part of an epic science fantasy trilogy that you will not want to miss! Order your copy today!

(Amazon link for ebook & paperback) (Other platforms for ebook)

"You are beautiful when you do beautiful things."

"The present tense of regret is indecision."

"We understand so much, but the sky behind those lights-- mostly void, partially stars-- that sky reminds us we don't understand even more."

"Be proud of your place in the Cosmos. It is small and yet it is."

"Believe in yourself. You are an ancient, absent god, discussed only rarely by literary scholars. So if you don't believe, no one will."

"Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you."

“Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won’t. That’s what love is.”

"Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?"

"When we talk about teenagers, we adults often talk with an air of scorn, of expectation for disappointment. And this can make people who are presently teenagers feel very defensive. But what everyone should understand is that none of us are talking to the teenagers that exist now, but talking back to the teenager we ourselves once were – all stupid mistakes and lack of fear, and bodies that hadn’t yet begun to slump into a lasting nothing. Any teenager who exists now is incidental to the potent mix of nostalgia and shame with which we speak to our younger selves."

"We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that?"

"Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error."

"We have nothing to fear except ourselves. We are unholy, awful people."

"A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A basilisk."

"There's nothing under your bed. There's nothing in your closet. Nothing waits in every darkness. Nothing is the most terrifying thing of all."

"The night sky is ten miles wide, eight miles deep, and floats three miles up. Its favourite food is grape jelly. It wants to be a drummer."

"Look to the sky. You will not find answers there, but you will certainly see what everyone is screaming about."

"Ignorance might not actually be bliss, but it is certainly less work."

"And now, a special report. Crocodiles: Can they eat your children? *YES.*"

"Lie down and look up at the ceiling and breathe with those curiously fragile lungs of yours and remind yourself: Don’t worry. Don’t worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don’t worry."

"As long as I’m reminding myself things, I’m a good person, worthy of love – both from myself and others."

"Guns don't kill people! It's impossible to be killed by a gun. We are all invincible to bullets and it's a miracle!"

"Everything is exciting! Particularly existence. Existence is the most thrilling fact of all."

"There is a monster under your bed. A monster at your window. A monster any place you imagine one. You project your monsters on the world."

"You miss 100% of the bank robberies you don't commit."

"I like my coffee like I like my nights. Dark, endless, and impossible to sleep through. "

"A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale."

"And now, the weather."

I discovered this podcast at the beginning of high school, and let me tell you, it rewired my synapses.

Not only was it my first experience with positive LGBT representation, it was the show I clung to when everything else went to shit. Whatever was going on in my life, I knew I had this show in my corner, making me laugh, making me cry, making me feel okay about my place in the universe.

However.

I think that they are trying to get at something real, namely, that the humanities (and social sciences) train you to look at society systemically, whereas STEM disciplines, as a rule, do not. So there are some features of society that a STEM person would just look at and take as a given, whereas someone who'd studied the social sciences or humanities, particularly at a more advanced level, would know how to interrogate this in more detail. So, for example (tw for racism), certain North American STEM people of my acquaintance look at the genocide in Gaza and just say "Well, the Middle East is always at war. Those People (TM) have been killing each other for thousands of years, so it's nothing we need to get worried about." As if (1) "Middle-Easternness" essential quality, unaffected colonialism or orientalism or any other sort of historical or economic legacy, (2) mass murder is an intrinsic aspect of Middle-Easternness, and (3) there is a categorically different type of person who possesses Middle-Easternness and They are not Us, so we don't need to worry about it. Whereas, I think most people who'd studied humanities or social sciences beyond a surface level would know to ask questions like, "Well, have They really been at war for thousands of years, or is that just how it looks from the outside?", "Haven't We also spent a substantial portion of the last several thousand years at war?", "Isn't it a terrible coincidence how the region of lawless barbarians incapable of refraining from murder just so happens to be the same region from which We want to extract oil?", "What exactly is the history of this conflict? What exactly is the history of 'the Middle East' as a category?" and "Don't you think that our nation's habit of providing bottomless quantities of weapons and diplomatic support to only one side of this conflict might have something to do with the current genocide?" And if you have spent years being taught, as STEM education generally does to some extent, that human culture is an externality or a superstructure on the natural and logical processes that are what's really going on in the world, then all of these questions can seem irrelevant.

This isn't even just applicable in the cases of notably right-wing politics. I know many people, doctors especially, who look at antivaxxers and just say "well these people are stupid"; and, indeed, it's very easy to fall into this. They are self-destructively wrong in a way that is trivially obvious to anyone who with a detailed knowledge of epidemiology. But it's also not productive to think of them that way! It's a thought-terminating cliche: why do they think this? Well, because they're stupid. Case closed. Hopefully enough smart people will be along soon to shout them down. But like...why do they believe this? Why do some people who are demonstrably intelligent believe things that can be empirically demonstrated to be wrong? How do people in general form their opinions? How does propaganda and the structure of the media play into this? Who benefits from large numbers of people believing things that are wrong? How do the history and economics of pharmacology affect trust in scientists? What role does public education play?

on survival

All of these are by @mattxiv on Instagram.

Reverse is appealing as well