He thought he was the only one, eh?

Looks that way.

Ah, excellent... two thoughts. First one... she's not an alternate version of him is she? While on first notice, that seems to be a potential case... it's interesting to hear how there's a "loose collection of others" out there.

Second thought?

I wonder if they can get into the Backrooms.

Her being an alternate version of him wasn't my initial intention, but it isn't ruled out yet, either.

As for the Backrooms... possibly if they aren't paying enough attention to where they're going. Though it would probably feel even more 'off' to then than to most people, given it's not-quite-reality status.

(Though reading up on that reminded me of 'The Multiversal Office' from some old Usenet fics and the Academy of Superheroes stories. That was pretty much the elemental plane of Bureaucracy, manifest in the form of an unmanned reception desk, a pre-fab cubicle farm with generic motivational posters and computers that tended to induce a hunger for filling out paperwork, and an elevator that automatically knew which locations you were authorized to enter.)

Not helped by the whole thing being split off into three different branches and all claim to be real...

(Then again, a third thought as I was left pondering other things... Evalia blinking as a snow leopard manifests in her lap as she's entertaining a guest, and muttering about "third time this week" before gently tossing them over the garden wall.)

*laughs* Taking 'walking through Shadow' a little more literally than necessary, hmm?

Well that is how Evalia travels! :)

Well, yes. And Evalia being a Shadow Vixen, it does make a sort of sense that others who travel through shadow could in effect step through her...

Well, if you're going to be followed, that is as nice of a pursuer that you could wish. Thank you for sharing!

This is true, and she's quite willing to let go if he doesn't want to follow. Though she may have learned the necessity of that from experience.

"First lesson: the rule about making sure nobody's watching you doesn't apply if the person watching you can also do this and is going the same direction you are."

That line reminds me of Aleister Crowley once being asked if he could prove he could do magick (coincidental magick, by my interpretation of context), by making a man across the street from Crowley and his doubter by matching that man's walk, then becoming that man's walk, and then suddenly scuffing his feet, like he'd deliberately tripped.

And the man across the street, coincidentally, fell down. "Magick," he said, "is in basic format an active improvisation and interpretation of the connection between two points in space, whatever things or forces those points occupy, did or will occupy, like any psychic power. It isn't really about power or summoning from a source beyond one's self; it is about integral connections, and finding and harnessing them for your chosen purpose. Like friendship, after a fashion."

-2Paw.

And, I mean, Alan Moore is often called the Magus of Northampton, and certainly considers himself a practitioner of magic of some form. Of course, Moore read and studied Crowley's work extensively.

And if one defines magic as the manipulation of symbols to have a greater effect on the world at large, then isn't any sufficiently public act of artistic creation a form of magic? In his own way, Alan Moore has had much more of an effect on the world than most people. His work has lead to many new ideas and in some cases new language to express them with.

That is very interesting, per Alan Moore's relationship per se with Aleister Crowley's work and his study of it. There's a character called Alan Crowe, appearing as an agent of the Global Frequency- a 12-issue comic book series about a humanity-wide global rescue organization of the same name, each issue written by Moore but illustrated by a different artist and inking team- whose lines I've cribbed and expanded upon per my explanation about Aleister Crowley demonstrating how magic actually worked via coincidence and intersection of points and counterpoints.

I somehow think by that principle the Magus of Northhampton inserted himself a bit more directly into that particular story of his. If you're curious to read the series, or that issue in particular, it may be hard to find in individual printed issues as it dates from 2006, but Amazon Canada has both a Kindle version and print version available of the whole series available.

Kindle: https://www.amazon.ca/Global-Freque...../dp/B00B9OYON0

Print: https://www.amazon.ca/Global-Freque...../dp/1401237975

The issue (or chapter) regarding Alan Crowe and his unique talents in rescuing the population of a small, rural Norwegian town from their own minds is called Big Sky.

-2Paw.

Quite possibly. I mean, Moore's Promethea was a whole story very deliberately riding the boundary line between ideas and reality, and the concept that ideas take on a life of their own outside the lives of their authors; the idea of Moore writing a thinly disguised version of himself into his work doesn't surprise me, though I'd have some expectations of the character based on that. (A fairly intense fellow, looking a bit weathered, and quite possibly playing Cassandra as people often didn't listen to him until too late.)

I'd heard about Global Frequency, but haven't read it yet. I may have to check it out.

nicely done... my mind was there...

Vix

Thanks. I mean, really, so much of it is just about having characters with have their own motives, and letting those play out.

that does help a lot...

Vix