selenicseas

My original writing goal for November was 20k. I didn’t actually get to start writing until the 11^th, so I revised my goal to 10k. I didn’t even manage to reach that; I ended up with 5,533 words total for the month. This includes words for Selegesine’s Shadow as well as a couple of different reviews, including a First Impressions for Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

There are a couple of different things I want to get done before the year ends, including a few reviews. I’ll probably make another post in a couple of days detailing them.

Introduction

Askeisk is a North Germanic conlang. It belongs to the West Scandinavian branch and is spoken on the (fictional) island of Askei, located halfway between Shetland and the Faroe Islands. It has around 5,000 speakers, many of whom are also bilingual in either Irish, Icelandic, or Norwegian.

Askeisk was primarily created for a story I was thinking about writing in 2016. That story is permanently on hold, but the conlang has managed to hold my interest for quite a long time.

Phonology

Askeisk's consonants are fairly similar to the other North Germanic languages. At one point, it included /ɬ/, /ð/, and /θ/, but I removed them as I didn't want to deal with too many fricatives. Like in Faroese and Iceland, stops contrast aspiration instead of voicing.

Askeisk's vowels are thoroughly uninteresting. Each vowel is either long or short. Short vowels exist in closed syllables (end with a consonant) and long vowels appear elsewhere.

Consonants

• Nasals: m n ɳ ɲ ŋ
• Stops: pʰ p tʰ t ʈʰ ʈ cʰ c kʰ k ʔ
• Fricatives: f v s ʃ ʂ ç h
• Approximants: l ɹ ɭ ɻ j

Certain consonants & consonant clusters have "soft" (palatalized) versions which only occur before front vowels. I created this rule before I decided on an aspiration rather than voicing distinction, which is really the only reason /g/ becomes [j] and not [c]:

• /k/ → [c]
• /g/ → [j]
• /h/ → [ç]
• /n/ → [ɲ]
• /sk/ → [ʃ]

Certain consonants followed by /j/ become palatalized:

• /nj/ → [ɲ]
• /hj/→ [ç]
• /gj/ → [j]
• /kj/ → [c]
• /tj/→ [ʃ]
• /sj/ → [ʃ]

All geminated, nonaspirated stops become preglottalized:

• /gg/ → [ʔk]
• /bb/ → [ʔp]
• /dd/ → [ʔt]

Meanwhile, geminated, aspirated stops become preaspirated:

• /kk/ → [hk]
• /pp/ → [hp]
• /tt/ → [ht]

Other misc sound changes:

• /nn/ → /tn/ → [ʔn̩]
• /ll/ → /tl/ →[ʔl̩]
• /gl/ → [ll]
• /skj/ → [ʃ]

Vowels

• Close: iː yː uː ɪ ʏ ʊ
• Mid: eː øː oː ɛ œ ɔ
• Open: æ æː a aː

At one point, every first-syllable /a/ was [æ]. I then decided that was obnoxious and made /æ/ its own independent phoneme.

There are quite a few possible diphthongs, but not all of them occur in actual words:

• aɪ aiː aʊ auː
• ɛɪ eiː
• ɔɪ oiː ɔʊ ouː
• œʏ øyː
• ʊɪ uiː

Stress

Like Norwegian and Swedish, Askeisk has a pitch accent! I guess at some point I decided I needed some kind of difference from Faroese and Icelandic, because I absolutely remember there being a stress system initially.

Monosyllables have no accent. Bisyllabic or longer words are pronounced with a rising tone on the first syllable.

Syllable Structure & Consonant Clusters

Askeisk's orthography isn't particularly strange, I think.

I'm including diphthongs & digraphs here because why not?

Orthography

Grammar

Askeisk's grammar is pretty straightforward North Germanic. I did consider adding in some Irish influences, including some kind of initial consonant mutation, but I genuinely could not figure out how to make it work.

Nouns

Nouns have three cases (nominative, object, and genitive), two numbers (singular and plural) and three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter).

The object case comes from the merger of the dative & accusative cases. For the most part, the object case declensions descend from the Old Norse dative declensions.

Nouns - Masculine

The masculine noun declension is basically identical to that of Old Norse:

Examples:

• fadir "father" → fadrinn, fedrar, fedrarnir
• hund "dog" → hundinn, hundar, hundarnir
• mauni "moon" → mauninn, maunir, maunarnir
• ørn "eagle" → ørninn, ernar, ernarnir

Nouns - Feminine

The masculine and feminine declensions were too similar at first. I spent a while thinking about how to distinguish them instead of collapsing them both into common like Danish and Swedish, and came up with something I think is fairly unique.

The plural declension of feminine nouns exclusively contain front vowels. This causes /u/, /o/, & /ou/ to front to /y/, /ø/, and /øy/. I took this from what happens to the feminine forms of adjectives, which is something I came up with long before I decided to do this.

Many other random back vowels get fronted, but...it's random. I don't think I decided on an actual pattern for it.

Examples:

• aska "ash" → askan, askær, askænæ
• douttir "daughter" → douttrin, døyttrær, døyttrænæ
• gaus "goose" → gausin, gæysær, gæysænæ
• ull "wool" → ullin, yllær, yllænæ

Nouns - Neuter

Neuter nouns are the same in the nominative plural and singular (except for some occasional vowel changes). I did nothing interesting with this declension.

Examples:

• barn "child" → barnit, børn, børnin
• egg "egg" → eggit, egg, eggin
• hus "house" → husit, hus, husin
• navn "name" → navnit, nøvn, navnin

Personal Pronouns

Askeisk's personal pronouns are nothing special. There are singular and plural versions, three genders in the third person, and possessive pronouns have different forms depending on the gender of the following noun.

Subject pronouns:

• 1st person: jeg, veir
• 2nd person: tu, eir
• 3rd person masculine: hann, teir
• 3rd person feminine: hon, tær
• 3rd person neuter: tad, tau

I decided to keep the distinction between the third person plural pronouns because collapsing everything into neuter seemed to be a little boring.

Object pronouns:

• 1st person: mig, oss
• 2nd person: tig, ydur
• 3rd person masculine: honum, teim
• 3rd person feminine: hen, teim
• 3rd person neuter: tad, teim

Here, the third person plural is the same in all genders, which it how it was in Old Norse.

Possessive pronouns:

• 1st person singular: minn, min, mitt, minar
• 1st person plural: vaur, vaurt, vaurar
• 2nd person singular: tinn, tin, titt, tinar
• 2nd person plural: ydar, ydart, ydarar
• 3rd person masculine singular: hans, hansar
• 3rd person feminine singular: henar, henrar
• 3rd person neuter singular: tess, tessar
• 3rd person plural: teirra, teirrat, teirrar

Only the 1st and 2nd person singular possessives distinguish between the masculine & feminine genders on the following noun. The 3rd person singular possessives don't distinguish gender at all, just number.

Here are some examples with 1st person possessives:

• køttinn minn "my cat"
• boukin min "my book"
• augat min "my eye"
• armarnir minar "my arms"
• eidinn vaur "our oath"
• husit vaurt "our house"
• beinin vaurar "our bones"

The third person possessive pronouns do not specifically refer to the subject or speaker; they can refer to absolutely anyone. Like with the other North Germanic languages, there is a separate set of reflexive pronouns - sinn, sin, sitt, sinar - which are used to clear up ambiguity:

• køttinn henar "her cat"
• køttinn sinn "her (own) cat"

"It"

Like the other pronouns, the Askeisk word for "it" is declined for case, number, and gender. The "default" form is tad.

Adjectives

Like you'd expect, adjectives take on the case, number, and gender of the noun they modify. Adjectives with /a/, /u/, and /au/ in the masculine (the default form of the adjective) become /ø/, /y/, and /øy/ in the feminine.

Examples:

• daud, døyd, daudt "dead"
• fraul, frøyl, frault "free"
• heit, heit, heitt "hot"
• redd, redd, reddt "afraid"

Adjectives can "agree" with 1st and 2nd person pronouns by matching the gender of the person:

• Jeg em glad. "I (male) am happy."
• Jeg em glød. "I (female) am happy."
• Jeg em gladt. "I (neuter) am happy."
• Tu ert glad. "You (male) am happy."

For the plural versions of the 1st and 2nd person pronouns, the neuter forms of adjectives are used by default:

• Veir eru gladt. "We are happy"
• Eir eru gladt. "You are happy".

Since adjectives have the same declensions as nouns, gladt is the same in the singular and plural numbers.

Comparatives & superlatives also have different forms depending on the gender of the adjective:

Determiners

Like in Swedish (and probably the other Scandinavian languages, but I don't know for sure since I've only studied Swedish), determiners are formed with a combination of tann "it" + heir/tar.

The proximal demonstratives "this/these" are:

And the distal demonstratives "that/those":

Examples

• Tann heir er køttrinn minn. "This is my cat."
• Tad tar epli eru raudt. "These apples are red."
• Tøn tar er døttrin sin. "That is her daughter.
• Tønir tar røydhakar eru smølær. "Those robins are small."

The Definite & Indefinite Articles

The definite article is suffixed to the noun. The indefinite article comes from the word einn meaning "one". It declines in the way any other noun does.

Verbs

Verbs are not nearly as complex as they are in Old Norse. I prefer to create highly regular conlangs, and there was a lot that was irregular in Old Norse. Still, this is supposed to be a naturalistic language, and natlangs have a lot of irregularity and redundancy built into them.

Verbs have four classes: strong, weak, preterite-present, and irregular. There is no subjunctive mood, primarily because I couldn't find enough examples of it on Wiktionary. That, and I didn't want to make more verb tables.

Verbs are marked for person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), number (singular, plural), tense (present, past), mood (indicative, imperative) and have infinitive, present & past participle forms.

Strong Verbs

In strong verbs, the past tense and participle are indicated with a vowel change. This happens for every single vowel:

• /a/ → /e/
• /au/ → /ei/
• /æ/ → /ø/
• /ei/ → /øy/
• /i/ → /ei/
• /o/ → /a/
• /ou/ → /au/
• /ø/ → /y/
• /u/ → /au/
• /y/ → /ø/

The present participle ends in -andi, past participle ends in -inn, singular imperative is the stem, and plural imperative ends in -id.

Indicative verb endings are shown in the table below:

Example: at falla "to fall"

• Present participle: fallandi
• Past participle: fellinn
• Imperative singular: fall
• Imperative plural: fallid

If a strong verb starts with the consonant /v/, then the first vowel in the past tense plural and past participle shift to /u/ while the initial /v/ is dropped.

Example: at verda "to become"

• Present participle: verdandi
• Past participle: urdinn
• Imperative singular: verd
• Imperative plural: verdid

Weak Verbs

Weak verbs have no vowel shift, only verb endings to indicate tense and person.

The present participle ends in -andi, past participle ends in -dur or -tur, singular imperative is the stem, and plural imperative ends in -id.

Indicative verb endings are shown in the table below:

Example: at læra "to learn"

• Present participle: lærandi
• Past participle: lærdur
• Imperative singular: lær
• Imperative plural: lærid

Preterite-Present Verbs

These are only a handful of verbs in this class, but they were interesting enough that I decided to keep them instead of putting them with the strong or weak verbs.

Present tenses are the same as strong verbs' past tenses, and past tenses are formed like weak verbs' past tenses. The participles are the same as weak verbs', the singular imperative is the stem, and the plural imperative ends in -ud.

Indicative verb endings are shown in the table below:

Example: at muna "to remember"

• Present participle: munandi
• Past participle: munadur
• Imperative singular: mun
• Imperative plural: munud

Irregular & Auxiliary Verbs

Askeisk only has a few irregular verbs. The most used is the copula, at vera "to be":

• Present participle: verandi
• Past participle: verit
• Imperative singular: ver
• Imperative plural: verid

Auxiliary verbs follow the same declension as weak verbs.

Passive Verbs

Passive verbs are formed by suffixing -sk to the verb form.

The Future Tense

Askeisk doesn't have a specific verb ending for the future tense. Most of the time, an auxiliary verb (munu, skulu, or vilja) is used in front of the bare infinitive form of the following verb.

Jeg munu fulgja tig. "I will (in the future) follow you."

Jeg skulu fylgja tig. "I will (must) follow you."

Jeg vilja fylgja tig. "I will (intend to) follow you."

A temporal adverb can be used with a present tense verb to indicate that an action occurs in the future:

Jeg fylgjir tig senn. "I'll follow you soon."

Negating Verbs

The adverb ekki "not" is used to negate verbs:

Jeg em ekki gladur. "I am not happy."

Tau er ekki fornt. "They are not old."

The Present & Past Perfects

The weak verb hava "to hold" can be used as an auxiliary verb when the following verb is in its supine form. The supine form is formed by suffixing the verb stem with -(a)t.

Jeg havi fylgjat tig. "I have followed you."

Jeg hava fylgjat tig. "I had followed you."

October was quite a busy month. I wrote reviews for Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. I also started a review for Alan Wake 2’s Lake House DLC, but I have not yet finished the DLC or the review.

I finally finished redoing the character profiles for Selegesine’s Shadow and did a large amount of outlining. This story is probably going to end up being five acts long, and my outline is complete through the end of act 2. I was really hoping to have the entire outline done by now, but with how detailed they end up, that was simply not going to happen.

Like I’ve mentioned before, I won’t be participating in NaNoWriMo. I’ll still be writing and publicly talking about it, most likely on Pillowfort. I don’t know yet if I’ll be doing weekly status update posts like I’ve done in the past. I’ve also signed up for Writing Month; my username is selenicseas.

I’m excited to be getting back into writing again!

Purchased through: Steam

Hours played: 102.8 (main game, Jaws of Hakkon, The Descent, and Trespasser complete)

Of the three Dragon Age games, Inquisition was the one I’d heard the most about. It was released in 2014, which is coincidentally the year I started using Twitter. I wasn’t involved in any gaming circles at the time, yet I still managed to hear about this guy named Solas, who was some kind of traitor and also bald.

Over the years, I heard plenty of other things – like the choice you make in Here Lies the Abyss and that Morrigan was in the game – but with little to no context. I also learned that Inquisition used a different engine, so things would be different from what I’d gotten used to in Origins and 2. That did not prepare me for just how different this game was.

This review is basically all criticism. While there are plenty of good things about this game (like the environments, which are gorgeous), the previous two games set up standards that Inquisition simply did not meet, in my opinion.

I had my first issue with the game as soon as I got out of the character creator and started playing. The controls themselves were different; the mouse buttons did the exact opposite of what I’d gotten used to in the previous two games. Keyboard shortcuts were also different. “Space” was now a jump button instead of pause. “V”, which had previously been used to turn off the HUD, was now a pulse that scanned the area for interactable items. In previous games, holding down “tab” highlighted objects. “Tab” now switches between enemies. Speaking of the HUD, there was no keyboard shortcut to easily turn that off. I had to go into the settings and do it manually.

All of this made me realize pretty early on that this was a console game ported to PC – and it wasn’t done that well, either. Maybe I’d have had a different experience if I’d played the game with a controller rather than mouse and keyboard, but I’m unable to use a controller for more than an hour without it triggering a massive amount of wrist/hand pain.

Inquisition is an open-world game. The maps are huge and there’s a lot to explore. There are crafting materials and upgrades to collect, people to recruit, rifts to close, and plenty of sidequests. There’s a lot to do, and plenty of it is optional.

That’s not obvious at first. While you gain power (used to unlock main missions through the War Table) though finishing sidequests, recruiting people, etc., there are dozens more opportunities to gain power than there are opportunities to use that power. I gave up on trying to finish 100% of the content in the game, and I still ended up with 100 more power than I needed by the end. I do appreciate there were so many different ways to gain power – so if you didn’t want to do one thing, you could do another and not miss out – but this was a little too much, in my opinion.

Actually, I think the entire game was too much, by around 30%. There were multiple maps (the Fallow Mire and Hissing Wastes, for example) that weren’t visited during any main story quests. And, due to how the story-relevant maps have tons of things to do on them, there’s no actual reason to go to the optional maps, unless you really want to go for completionism.

I have to wonder what Bioware was thinking with creating three (!) separate desert maps – the Western Approach, Hissing Wastes, and Forbidden Oasis. There’s no reason the important part of the Forbidden Oasis (Solasan) couldn’t have been integrated into the Western Approach. The Hissing Wastes could have been part of the Western Approach as well, since it’s got a large amount of nothing in it. Would it have been realistic to have a bunch of elven ruins, dwarven ruins, and Tevinter ruins in such close proximity to each other? No, but it would have been less frustrating to deal with.

I also think the Emerald Graves and Exalted Plains could have been merged into one area, but that’s mostly because the names are so similar that I keep getting them mixed up.

I played a mage in Dragon Age 2 and had so much fun that I thought I’d play a mage in Inquisition as well. Unfortunately, mage combat was a lot less fun here. I couldn’t hit people with my staff like Hawke did. Why, Bioware? Why?

Combat in general felt a little strange. Not just because of the reversed mouse buttons or the greatly reduced skills available, but because of how the game controlled in general, I think. Things felt very floaty, both in and out of combat – like the characters had no weight to them.

Related to this, NPC pathing was odd. Party members would follow you, but once you stopped walking, they wouldn’t stay still – they’d run around like they were trying to get to something and couldn’t. Sometimes this meant they’d jump on and off of the furniture in the environment.

I’ve heard that Inquisition, like Dragon Age 2, was originally designed to only have a human player character. It definitely shows. There were instances where my elf should have known something – like, you know, who Mythal is – and did not. Oddly, there’s also plenty of reactivity in other places (plenty of anti-elf racism, for example, and on a more positive note, Josephine greeting Lavellan in Elven), so I’m thinking this is a case of missing things due to rushed development.

What’s especially weird about this is how hard the game went on the elf lore. It is, as Sera would say, “too elfy”. I don’t think I would mind that so much if so much of the series so far hadn’t focused on elf lore. I’m feeling a little overexposed on it. I want to learn about the dwarves and qunari! The Descent helped scratch that itch a little, but it definitely wasn’t enough.

As an antagonist, Corypheus is kind of half-baked. He doesn’t actually do very much, and since you can take as long as you want between quests, he doesn’t feel like much of a threat. The game may have benefited from some time-critical missions like in Mass Effect 2 and 3, where there were pretty serious consequences if you didn’t complete certain missions in a certain timeframe. That would have made the stakes feel higher, especially if those consequences cut off access to certain areas or ended up with you losing some of the Inquisition’s forces.

The final mission and boss fight were underwhelming. It was much shorter than I expected it would be, and only the current party was involved. That wasn’t the case in Origins or 2; all of your party members were involved, even if they weren’t in your active party. But Inquisition’s final battle was so easy that more allies on your side would have ended the fight much quicker, so it might be for the best that everyone isn’t involved.

The DLC was much better than the base game. Jaws of Hakkon introduces an entirely new region, but there’s no actual filler in it. The sidequests are tied into the story and lore of the region. It’s also way harder than the base game. I was genuinely not prepared for the difficulty spike.

The Descent is much tighter and goes deep into dwarf lore, which I personally think is the most interesting part of the Dragon Age series. I’d say the only bad thing about it is the gear collection, but that’s entirely optional.

Trespasser is the last DLC. I’ve heard that there was some controversy when it was first released, as it’s the “real” ending to the game and shouldn’t have been unnecessarily cut out. I do agree with this; I’ve never liked cutting out companions and missions (Shale, Return to Ostagar, Sebastian, etc.) and selling them for more money. It’s really something that should be included in the base game, since it sets up The Veilguard. I think that someone who didn’t play Trespasser and then went right into Veilguard would be pretty confused as to why Solas is doing what he’s doing.

My main complaint with this game is that it’s an open-world game with all the faults of an open-world game. There was a time in my life when I would have loved an open-world game – when I was a teenager and would play one game for years at a time – but as I’ve aged, my tolerance for open-world games has gone down. A 100-hour game better have the content to fill 100 hours without resorting to filler or bloat, and that’s unfortunately what Inquisition does.

I do think there’s a good 40-50 hour game in here somewhere. I did like the game enough that I’d replay it again – with more quality-of-life mods – but only while skipping as much of the side content as possible.

Halfway through Dragon Age: Origins, I started thinking about the kind of character I'd like to play in Dragon Age 2. I didn't want to play another warrior, so it was either rogue or mage. I was leaning toward rogue – mostly because I kept running directly into traps – all the way until the late game of Origins. By that time, I'd been impressed enough by Morrigan's high level spells that I settled on playing a mage in Dragon Age 2.

This was without any knowledge of the Mage-Templar conflict that made up most of the game. Needless to say, my roleplay decisions were as affected by playing a mage as they were by playing an elf in Origins. It made for a story that felt very personal.

I don't think I encountered any bugs in my playthrough, unless you count characters getting stuck on the environment and not being able to path their way out of it. Since they end up teleporting to you if you move too far away, it's more of a minor annoyance than anything else. I did experience a few random crashes, but half of them were provoked by a f.lux notification popping up (this has actually crashed a couple of games on my PC, not just Dragon Age 2). I'm not sure what caused the others.

Dragon Age 2 plays largely the same as Origins did. Both games use the same engine and have the same key bindings and controls. Combat is better; it's much faster-paced and easier to follow. Combat animations are greatly improved, especially for mages. A mage will even start hitting an enemy with their staff if the enemy gets into melee range, rather than just using spells. I thought that was a neat touch.

I used tactics maybe twice in both games, so I can't say if there was much of a difference or improvement there. I always found it easier and quicker to micromanage companions rather than create a new tactic.

There aren't as many skills and abilities as there are in Origins, but they feel more manageable here. In that game, it felt like I needed at least one of each class in the party at all times – one mage, one warrior, and one rogue. That felt less important here; there were times where my party was three mages and one rogue, and I didn't feel like I was missing something critical by not having a warrior.

Much to my delight, lockpicking was no longer linked to a skill. It became linked to an attribute (cunning) that you'd be increasing on your rogue characters. Opening locked chests was no longer an issue as long as you had a rogue in the party.

This game has a different companion approval system – rather than approval and disapproval, it's friendship and rivalry. Companions that disagree with you and don't approve of your actions won't leave your party – they'll stay, and their attitude toward you will change. They also get access to different abilities depending on whether you push them toward a friendship or rivalry. I think this contributed towards me liking the companions in 2 more than the ones in Origins.

I thought this was a massive improvement on the regular approval system. It had an actual impact on combat! I hadn't seen that in a game before. Admittedly, I've only been gaming seriously since 2018, so I haven't really had the chance to play that many games. This might not have been a new or novel thing in 2011. I genuinely have no idea. I was impressed by it, though.

Graphically, there are quite a few improvements over Origins. Aside from better textures on just about everything, there's also unique art direction! Elves and Qunari no longer look like humans with pointy ears or gray skin – they actually look like different species. I'm not a fan of non-humans looking exactly like humans except for one or two odd traits, so this was great.

Instead of having a list of dialogue choices, there is now a Mass Effect-style dialogue wheel with three separate options: diplomatic/peaceful (blue), sarcastic/comedic (purple), and violent/aggressive (red). Choosing a majority of one type of dialogue (blue, for instance) will affect Hawke's general personality and comments. Hawke ends up having more of a set personality than the much more blank-slate Warden of Origins, but that's fine with me. I'm not the sort of person who needs a blank slate in order to roleplay a character.

Now on to the negatives. There are a lot of repeating maps – a single cave, for instance, that is used in a lot of missions, with the only changes being that some areas are blocked off – and the game is largely confined to the city of Kirkwall and the surrounding areas. There are fewer "major" decisions you can make, and most of them limited to the endgame.

The third act is much less fleshed out than the other two, with one boss fight (Orsino) not making much sense if you sided with the mages rather than the Templars. The reveal of the final villain (Meredith) is very sudden, and the ending of the game itself is quite abrupt.

Overall, this game felt like it improved on Origins. The scope of the story was much smaller, but much more personal. There are fewer choices, both in character creation and in the game itself, so replay value for the sake of seeing different paths is much lower. It really could have used another year or two in development, but it's a good game even though it was rushed. It introduced mechanics that I thought worked very well, and I was very interested in seeing how those mechanics could evolve in future games.

Fiction

Annabelle's Heart by Anuja Mitra (Translunar Travelers Lounge)

Queen of the Rodeo by Cory Goodfellow (Nightmare Magazine)

Something Small Enough to Ask For by AnaMaria Curtis (Uncanny Magazine)

The Music Must Always Play by Marissa Lingen (Clarkesworld)

We the People Excluding I by Osahon Ize-Iyamu (Lightspeed Magazine)

Just like everything else, I exist in a state of flux, or impermanence, or anitya – whatever you want to call it. Priorities change, situations change, values change. What may have been useful in the past may no longer be useful now or in the future.

Every so often, I examine the beliefs I hold. Then, I’ll choose whether to keep them, discard them, or adopt new beliefs altogether. I'm past the part of my life where I want to be attached to any belief – or anything, really – so this is a fairly simple, almost unconscious process.

I lean very anarchist, so I focus on certain things that others may not. Here are some of them:

• What use do I derive from the belief? How does it benefit me? Why should it benefit me?
• Does it benefit others? I the benefit for a particular class of people? If so, is that class a power-holding class?
• Does it allow me access to a community? Why should I want access to that community to begin with? Will it allow me certain privileges or access to certain things I did not have before?
• Do I hold this belief in order to gain superficial acceptance from a power-holder, ruling class, or majority population?
• Is the belief used to enable a hierarchy? Does it serve a power structure?

Personally, I think this keeps me grounded and focused on the things that matter, rather than the things that are inconsequential. Perhaps it may be useful to others as well.