Mutants, Mothers, and Magick, Oh My!
The FREE organizational tool Obsidian and a FREE lore dump!
Last letter was heavy—weighted blanket or sinking stone?
This letter is bursting—overfed or overjoyed?
Welcome to the mangrove forest that is me! Between earth and water, debauchery and divinity! Eat your fill and leave what you don’t hunger for—others will come. Hide in the nursery of my roots. I am a mixed metaphor. I am a bard.
Thank you for joining this offering of The Magick Artist. If you’re new here, my newsletters are collages—composites of concepts and commentary, divination, and divulges. They are rarely singular topics, but they usually carry a theme and are always a channeling.
Table of Offerings
The organizational tool Obsidian
The Children of Mother Kow Part I
An invitation, a seduction
My Unholy Performance!
Most of you read this via email, where it might not show up in its entirety! Substack is always the best way to enjoy this visually or Click “View Entire Message” on your email.
In my last letter, I mentioned that this one would be about techno-feudalism, the purpose of art, the labor of autonomy, and what to do when you want something that you also want to destroy!!!! *lightning crackles above me*
To give that letter justice, I will give it more time.
I have three large-scale projects I am working on all at once. Why? ADHD, that’s why. I have a poly heart, I cannot and will not devote to just one when I have so much love to give. (Yes, that means each one takes longer to finish, I know.)
Gestating in secret, under the darkness of the new moon, communing only with the muses, and then presenting your completed project to the light, like baby Simba over Pride Rock, is a privilege of the old world of writing and publishing. Today, we have to offer breadcrumbs; no, we have to provide little morsels of our projects, like patisserie mouthfuls of cake, to lead people to us through the din of late capitalist existence.
So I, the opposite of an aristocrat, declare to you!
Let them eat cake!
I’m trying to work with my brain here, and if such a robust letter as the techno-feudalism one is feeling difficult to produce promptly *wheezes at the irony* then I’ll share something emerging from me with more ease.
Oh, and if you stay to the end, I have a saucy invitation and gift for you.
Gaydies and Germs, It’s Time for a Lore Dump.
Don’t worry, I’m not that delusional. I know most of you are reading this have little to no context for my creative work. Perhaps that changes today? Or maybe this is too self-indulgent, too rich for your blood, and I ask, what did you think a newsletter was, hun? *clacks long acrylics I do not and will not ever wear*
If you enjoy or relate to any of the following:
Mutations and genetic magick
Fairies
Retrofuturism
Speculative biology and “alien” worlds
Collective consciousness and exploring the power of thought
Unapologetic transness
Fantasy turned Sci-fi
Sci-fi turned fantasy
Daddy issues
Mommy issues
Monster-fucking
Exploring modalities of individuality and collectivity
Tall hot tree lady
Tall hot tree ladies
Taller hot tree ladies
Holding all the responsibility/being a caretaker/being an eldest daughter
Psychic powers
Folklore and mythology
Anarchy and explorations of leadership/power structures beyond Western colonization and capitalism
TTRPGs, especially Dungeons and Dragons
Fungus, so much fungus
Then you’ll probably be into my work!
It’s not been easy to give my projects the attention they deserve. I must continually prioritize immediate ways of making money or caring for others, often leaving me with little teaspoons for my big boys.
Working with Sandra through my Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association fellowship, I have surged with new vigor for my projects, especially my biggest boy, my trilogy about the sentient planet Mother Kow and the drama her children face at the crux of global change.
Part of that has been thanks to this program called Obsidian.
It’s a free organizational program that's helping me by giving me space to organize my hundreds of pages of Mother Kow lore, allowing my project to breathe. In this spaciousness, I am finding my way through the project.
(It just occurred to me I could sound sponsored HA I am not. I am nobody. I just thought it was neat and wanted you to know about it.)
If you know some coding, I’m sure you can get much more out of it; there’s also an open-source community of people sharing their customizations for the program.
It’s not necessarily a place to write the novel, but it would support organization if you’re working on anything large-scale. If you’re a visual learner, it creates a web map of how all of your pieces are connected by where they are mentioned, almost like those cloud word images that were popular in the mid-2000s.
Here’s a sliver of what my Obsidian looks like. On the left are the organizational folders and tabs I’ve created to help find order in the chaos of my brain. While I did utilize the organizational headings in Word, transferring only the absolutely necessary research and discovery is helping me to hone my focus. The fact that Obisidan has folders also visually helps with this because I can hide away anything I don’t need to be looking at. It also features a “canvas” where you can manipulate different shapes, add text, change their colors, and use arrows to point to specific elements. If the web feature isn’t enough, you can create your custom visual map for your writing.
Currently, I am using the canvas to create parallel timelines.
First is the linear timeline history of Kow compared to the order of events as they show up in the story. The book skips around in time non-linearly, so this feature helps me ensure I’m exploring in a way that makes sense for the world I’m creating.
If you use it, let me know your thoughts!
Mother Kow
The first time I shared my thoughts on Mother Kow and the concepts of embracing death and addressing Earth’s trauma on Substack was in this letter: Destroying an Era, Not a Planet.
Or you can WATCH me read an abridged version of “Destroying an Era, Not a Planet” here: I Am Infinite in One. I Am One of Infinite.
Now, where shall we begin? What should I share?
Let’s start where everyone always tells me to start: characters
Where do I normally start? Usually at places like, “What are the compatible genetics between a boar and a radish and what kind of baby would they make?” or “If you knew god was real and she talked to you, how would that impact your development and the development of culture?”
I’m not going to share everyone, and certainly not everything, but here are a few of my babies, with some factoids. I am exercising GREAT RESTRAINT in this because I don’t want to spoil, but I do want to entice.
I’ve decided to share three characters that I am writing/have written short stories about.
I have attempted to write short stories of Mother Kow for fellowships such as Tin House and Roots. Wounds. Words. but I struggled to fit so much of the world into such a small place. That’s why I stopped writing chapters and short stories, and I started deep-diving into answering every question I could come up with about Kow. It has been a most fruitful process. I wanted to get to the point where I felt like I was going to burst with story because I had figured so much about the world. I feel nearly there.
I expressed my insecurity to Sandra about the “alien” nature of my world. If someone puts my book down, I want it to be because they didn’t like the story, not because they didn’t understand what was going on.
She reminded me that, despite my near-feral levels of speculative biology and evolution world-building, I'm writing this story because I have something I want the reader to relate to.
I’m going to try to frame these three characters in this way. How could you potentially relate to these characters? And then I will tell you what they are.
Content Warning: These three characters experience such tragedies as parental loss, suicidal ideations, abandonment, misgendering/transphobia, parental manipulation and co-dependency, and there is some body horror/mutilation mentioned.
I am trying to focus on the information at the beginning of each of these characters’ narratives. The kind of info you’d find out in the first few pages. Some of these characters transcend their tragedy, while others do not.
**All lore and story subject to change as this project, despite all of the pages, is still so so so new and could be rewritten at any time*
The Children of Mother Kow: Part I
Innoxia -
Relation:
Innoxia has been thrust into a position of leadership that wasn’t her choice because of the loss of the previous matriarchal figure. This leadership role alienates her from her sisters, yet they now depend on her for survival, whereas before they survived alongside her. Innoxia has a suspicion that the previous matriarchal figure took her own life because of the alienation and pressure this leadership role brings. She becomes the first one in her family to befriend someone outside of their clan. Through this outside influence, Innoxia begins to fall in love with a world beyond familial responsibility and feels great shame for it.
Alien-a-fication:
Innoxia is a plant. More accurately, she is the adaptation of a mycotrophic flower that can move, speak (telepathically), and exist beyond and outside of the flower’s roots. The translated term for these creatures, so that we understand, is, of course, fairies. Mycotrophic flowers on Earth do not produce chlorophyll and have no means of digesting sunlight; instead, they entwine their roots with fungus to process nutrients from other plants, utilizing the fungus as a means of doing so.
On Kow, Innoxia’s species grows mobile flowers that share a hive mind, allowing them to hunt together. She is one of these mobile flowers. These plants are called Xia, or rather, they refer to themselves as Xia. Once a kill has been made, it is brought to their home cluster of mushrooms. The fungus will then slowly digest the rotting animal. The Xia unfurl their feet, revealing sensitive tendrils like mycelium, and bury them in the soil where they and the roots of their stationary floral counterparts can feed off the nutrients that the fungus digests. It’s a symbiotic relationship where more than enough food is brought to the fungal system by the Xia, and the Xia use the fungus as external digestion.
Xia have a leader called the Inno or Innoxia. Becoming an Innoxia is a chemical and involuntary process, like puberty. Do you know what an axolotl is? It’s a cute lil salamander native to Mexico. Axolotl can choose not to grow up. Xia similarly stay in a juvenile state, but like axolotls, can still reproduce in this state without undergoing full metamorphosis.
When the previous Innoxia dies, one Xia goes through the metamorphosis latent in her DNA. It is unclear how a single flower is “picked” for this, in the same way it is unclear how bigender fish on Earth know when to change their sex from male to female or vice versa. For example, clownfish are social and led by a female. If she dies, the second-in-command male fish will become female and assume the leader role. (Finding Nemo seemed to leave that bit out hmm…) The Innoxia will become larger, develop a healing sap to tend to the Xia instead of the neurotoxic sap that the Xia have to stun prey, and most importantly, the Innoxia will separate from the collective consciousness of the Xia.
Innoxia, for the first time in her short life, is alone.
This drawing was created in 2019, before I was familiar with Mother Kow. When I think of the Xia, I think of a form similar to this. Did I mention my book will be illustrated?
Brother-Witch -
Relation:
Brother-Witch was born and promptly abandoned by his birth mother, along with his siblings. He was born a Witch (explained below), so different from his siblings that he experienced his childhood largely alone. They were left with a surrogate mother who cared for them dutifully. On the cusp of adulthood, violence from one of his siblings took his surrogate mother. A new mother found him, one who wanted to keep Brother-Witch innocent and childlike, and in doing so, never taught or helped him control his volatile Witch abilities, thus leaving Brother-Witch unable to self-regulate and highly dependent on his new maternal figure.
Alien-a-fication:
Brother-Witch was born of a creature called a Swamp-Teeth, a feline-like semi-aquatic, large predator that stalks the murky swamp layer at the bottom of the jungle. Brother-Witch is not simply a Swamp-Teeth; he’s a Witch. Witch is a word that is the closest translation for the Kowian word for what they are. A Witch is born when a Creature of Instinct (a beast we would think of as an animal) gives birth to an offspring that has rapidly mutated physically and mentally. For example, it’s like if a lion suddenly gave birth to a cub that could learn human language…and also had an extra set of legs and bat-like wings.
Witches do not live long for internal and external reasons. Internally, their genetic makeup is highly unstable. If able to mature, they are often mentally unstable too, as they are often either not socialized or experience varying chemical imbalances due to the rapid mutation. Externally, if they are not raised, they will likely be consumed. The parent creature might eat them or abandon them because they sense a difference. If that abandoned creature is not found by a Creature of Reason (a beast we would associate with the intelligence of a human) and raised, it will surely die. Different cultures hold widely varying beliefs about Witches. One culture, finding a Witch born in their midst, might rejoice and worship it as a gift from Mother Kow, and raise the Witch with devotion, while another culture might immediately kill such a thing, fearing the “curse” or “bad luck” it can bring. This fear is not entirely unwarranted, as Witches are born with an innate proficiency for manipulating the collective psychic mycelial network of Kow, which links all things. A Witch’s gift may harm or hurt, depending on the nature of the manifested power and the Witch’s ability to control it.
The physicality of Brother-Witch is inspired by some of my favorite chimeric creatures—haetae, hakutaku, xiezi, lion dogs, etc. They have different names in different cultures. They are sometimes the mix of a lion and ox, making a unicorn, or a dog and lion and ox, or a goat and dog, or multiple oxen, and so on. I have not drawn Brother-Witch yet, so here is a little Brother-Witch mood board.
First, the Korean haetae. When I set out to write this book, I told myself that I would find a way to make all my favorite mythological creatures “real” and have biological reasoning behind their existence, rather than simply a magical mashup of animals.
Haetae are probably my favorite of the “lion-dog” category, although haetae translates to “unicorn-lion.” The haetae is a protective spirit that guards humans from natural disasters. This is…relevant…to Brother-Witch’s character. I love their teal colors and swirls. The wide mouth is also everything to me, so Swamp Teeth have maws that extend to the back of their neck, allowing them to fully open, like constricting snakes. Swamp-Teeth also smell through a palate in the roof of their mouth, like house cats, so a wide mouth helps them sniff the world. I love the diverse ways patterns and horns are interpreted in the antique artworks of haetae. Do they stick out? Do they swirl? Do they form a crown or stay close to the skin in little lumps?
If the haetae inspired the Swamp-Teeth, the Japanese hakutaku inspired Brother-Witch’s mutations.
Brother-witch has eyes set on either side of his torso, hidden in the fur, but one eye on each side, rather than the semblance of a face. He is also inspired by the Greek mythological creature, the centaur, which has the body of a horse with the upper body of a human protruding where the head should be. So if Brother-Witch’s mother is like a haetae, then Brother-Witch is a haetae centaur, entirely haetae features, but with an upright, extended torso and arms. Swamp-teeth have neither of those adaptations.
Lyr Lyr -
Relation:
Lyr Lyr is expected to be exactly like his father. But Lyr Lyr is not like his father. Lyr Lyr isn’t even truly he. Lyr Lyr is under a lot of pressure because she is the result of years of not only the father, but the whole village, trying to have a baby. So she feels she must be perfect, must be he, even though that doesn’t feel true.
Alien-a-fication:
Lyr Lyr is the first changeling clone, the product of an experiment in asexual reproduction. Allow me to elaborate.
Changelings are the children that are the direct result of dryads (trees that are femmes, femmes that are trees) having a child with Creation of Reason of bestial heritage. Dryads procreating with beastial beings is forbidden by the Dryad Conclave, a group of warrior dryads who see themselves as the law and order in the jungle, really the world. Due to the flexibility of genetics, the Dryad Conclave works hard to maintain the purity of their species, their genetic line. There are consequences for this rigidity, to be explored at another time, but it feels worth noting that only a parent of dryadic heritage can carry a baby to term due to the way that beast and plant genetics interact.
What’s important here is that while this is a law of the Dryad Conclave, it is a law that is often broken. Dryads, ones not in the Conclave, who become pregnant, become with seed, of a bestial child will feel forced to abandon their fruit. Needless to say, if a Conclave warrior were to experience an unsanctioned pregnancy, there would be grave and immediate consequences. If said non-Conclave dryad has a relationship with the beast(s) they procreated with, perhaps the child can be raised with them. Usually, the fear of being caught by the Conclave forces the dryad to abandon the child outside the boundaries of the jungle, where jungle becomes savannah.
For as long as this law has been in place, the abandoned children of dryads have been scooped, planted, cared for, and raised by the beings who now call themselves changelings. At first, it was the Nommos who found the abandoned children who survived long enough to take root at the edge of the jungle. The Nommos are a species, not unlike humans evolving from apes. They are an upright, nomadic culture of Creatures of Reason who have evolved from amphibians.
The Nommos regarded the found growing children as divine gifts from Mother Kow herself and became dutiful guardians of the jungle’s edge, seeking such children. They had no context for the seedlings’ abandonment, only that they would appear at random along the border of their savannah. They saw the changelings as perfect beings, embodying the balance of plant and beast.
As the first changelings grew, they had questions about where they came from, and the Nommos gave the very little info they knew. Being children of dryads, of trees, they were much longer lived than the beastial Nommos. By the time the first changelings were adolescents three generations of Nommos past.
The story goes as follows. The adolescent changelings went into the jungle to seek what they assumed were their mournful dryad parents. Dryads were the only clue. While the tree heritage was obvious in each changeling youth, their bestial genetics varied so significantly that the bestial heritage could not be traced.
What they encountered at the Dryad Conclave was near slaughter. The truth of their existence could not populate, as dissent against the Conclave would surely follow.
Only three of the over a dozen changeling youth survived to return to the savannah. These three changelings vowed vengeance against the dryads—vowed eternal hatred. A grudge, for a tree, is slow, patient, long. In the hundreds and hundreds of years, in the many lifetimes of Nommos that burst and faded, the three changeling youth grew into the triad chiefs of what grew into a changeling village. This village seperated from the Nommos as their ways of life split away from each other.
Though long-lived, the tirad died. Over time, they became worshiped nearly as gods in their own right.
Simētra the Hunter
Regna the Light
Niap the Seed
They left behind a legacy of opposition to everything the dryads value. Where the dryads all move with feminine honorifics, the changelings chose masculine honorifics. The changelings became a stationary, agricultural culture, which did not align with the nomadic life of the Nommos who must travel with the waters of the wet and dry seasons. The Nommos also never stopped revering the changelings as divine, and thereby revering Kow. The changelings renounced Kow, and work to shape her to meet their will, their desires. Despite these differences, the two cultures remained deeply linked.
Lastly, the changelings have a tumultuous relationship with reproduction. While genetics are very malleable on Kow, reproductive viability is still always a gamble. Bestial creatures evolved much later than plant creatures, it is thought that this is why only the plant parent can bring a plant and bestial baby to term, to germination. There are ways that this can shift over generations (to be elaborated on another time). The genetic complexity between changeling and changeling means that no coupling of changelings has ever been able to produce living offspring. All changeling babies are still found along the edge of the savannah. It has become THE way. Dryads drop their fruit with the legends of the ferocious, yet protective changelings in their hearts. The very few jungle dryad who have actually seen a changeling, have returned to tell the tale. Changelings have been able to procreate with Nommo, but only some changelings can bring the Nommo-changling child to term. These changelings hold high ranking esteem in both the Nommo and changeling culture. Nommo-changeling offspring are seen as “Kow-touched” or “god-touched” by the Nommos. A fertility festival (big ole orgy) is celebrated at the start of soaking season (once the rains have fallen and transformed the savannah to a marsh again), which also marks of the return of the Nommos.
This brings us to Lyr, Lyr Lyr’s father. Lyr is a scientist that has found many innovations in crossbreeding plants and fairies to create stronger, more plentiful crops. Lyr had a beloved who died in an experiment to help them have a child together. Lyr has always been obsessed with unlocking the secrets of changeling reproduction. He believes that unlocking changeling reproduction will mean that this small, advanced agricultural culture could expand far beyond their corner of the savannah and inspire all of Kow with their ways. His obsession became so great that he turned to his own body. Lyr began to cut off chunks of his own body to experiment on and found they started to sprout into new changelings. These sprouts were not enough material to grow a child, so Lyr chopped off his own leg. From this leg, Lyr Lyr grew. This started the trend of body mulitations for the sake of reproduction, an adaptation that not all changelings possess, and many changelings died in the process. Those who died, yet grew a clone, gave the village solace for at least their friend was returning again, as they see the clones as the exact replicas in every way, down to the soul.
Lyr Lyr is about to prove that while she is a genetic clone of her father, they are not the same person. A truth that will rattle the grief of the village.
I have no art to reference for the changelings because they all look so wildly different, so enjoy making combinations in your head of trees and animals…that’s a changeling.
THANK YOU for indulging this lore dump! Your eyes on it helps me feel that this project is real and now I am beholden to ALL OF YOU, to finish it.
Any questions that arise from these blurbs, I WANT TO HEAR IT! It doesn’t have to be in the comments, feel free to message/email me, though comments are welcomed! Did you enjoy reading my lore dump? Did it annoy you? Tell me everything! Don’t be shy! I want to know! I’m tuff! This is just a new baby and I welcome collective raising of it.
And Now Your SUCCULENT Reward!
(See what I did there? Cuz like, succulents are plants that reproduce asexually and Lyr bloodied himself because….ah you get it)
I am performing at Philly Hot Bits 2025 Friday, June 13th!
You can learn about Hot Bits from this article I wrote for In These Times magazine, or directly from the website.
What is it? Why darling, it’s only THE queer XXX film festival!!!
I will be performing a piece to honor water and her many spiritual incarnations, from angry waves to seductive swamps.
AND
If you missed my performance for my birthday at my UNHOLY party, I gift you the footage of it!!!! Shot by Angel Edwards. <= Who has a beautiful Substack!
Read about why my party was Unholy here!
CW: Religious iconography, rope, fake blood, simulated torture, simulated crucifiction, foot stuff, impact play, general horny queerness and erotic bodily motions *gasp*
ENJOY THIS PERFORMANCE
May it entice to you attend Hot Bits on Friday for the sultry, slimy, slitering, soaking, sensual seance I have in store for you!!!!!
While my Hot Bits performance will not be an entire theater troop’s worth of a productive (that we only rehearsed three times day of btw), but it will be DRAMA as I only give DRAMA honey.
May your imagination flow and flower, decompose and delight into new forms!