"Ah, you're
in for a treat," the Male Trickster, Auguste Moirnoir, said to
the wannabe supra saviour, Jesus Mandam, in Centurium, the capital cavern
of Subterranean Temporis.
"Here
comes the lady herself. How's your German? She never did learn to speak
French properly. Down here, unlike virtually anywhere else on the Head,
the Universal Tongue's considered unauthentic."
"I was
going to ask you about that too. Pre-Babel's
a form of telepathy, isn't it? Whatever words come out, complete babble
even, everyone can understand it. Right?"
"Quit
with the questions already, Jess. Just relax and try to enjoy the moment.
At least her head's on her shoulders today. Can be very disconcerting
trying to carry on a conversation with a beautiful woman whose head's
on a side plate. Hope that's food she's carrying.
Real food, I mean."
"Angel
food."
"What
are you talking about? Devils don't eat angel food, not unless it's
adulation. Neither do faeries."
"On her
platter. It's a kind of cake, Augie."
"Cake?
Of course it is. Marie Antoinette herself brings you a mid-day snack,
-- what else would it be!"
-- from '"Grail
Knight's Sky"', the ninth
chapter of 'The
Volsung Variations'
(NOTE: here's a link to more on Pre-Babel
Babble)
Introductory
Remarks
Greetings. Welcome or welcome
back. Highly disturbingly,
the Summer 2007 update of 'pHpubs' comes a season shy of the
thirtieth anniversary of the publication
of PHANTACEA #1.
(If you're in the slightest
curious as to what it looked like, then do be a goose and have a gander
at this click.)
To
order any of the PHANTACEA Mythos
Print Publications that are still available, including returned copies
of PHANTACEA #1, click here.
(There's still no way to pay online but I'm working on it.)
Next door is the usual Hestia
Housekeeping subsection of 'pHpubs'.
Immediately below is an
alphabetical list of lynx to a number of typically
idiosyncratic mini-essays and/or Character Likeness studies I've prepared
over the years for on the Web.
They illustrate some of
the peculiar perspectives I've developed while writing the PHANTACEA
Mythos.
Contact me [jmcp1749@hotmail.com]
and feel free to ask any questions you might have regarding PHANTACEA.
I'll do my best to answer them either directly or right here in 'pHpubs'.
PHANTACEA
Essentials
-
-
The
Celestial Superior: In both Life and Afterlife she appears (thus
far) in many of the 19/5938 serials; arguably an incarnation of Serathrone
Hallow, one of the two triplet, firstborn daughters of Thrygragos
Byron and the Trigregos Sisters;
-
The
Cretan Snake Goddess: Who dresses a little like Pyrame Silverstar,
the Perpetual Presence, partial mother of the Sed-sons;
-
-
-
Fisherwoman:
The ever-fishifying, deviant daughter of the Dual Entities who features
in many of the web-serials thus far presented online;
-
Freespirit
Nihila: As the firstborn daughter of Thrygragos Lazareme and
the Trigregos Sisters, the eldest female Master Deva; once Harmonia,
the Unity of Balance and, initially, the lone Unity of Panharmonium;
she becomes Nihila, in the Launch sequences set in 19/5980;
-
- Gold-Mining
for PHANTACEA Factoids;
-
Heliosophos:
The
recurring Male Entity; in his 1st Lifetime during the 1955 & 1960
web-serials, his 11th during the 19/5938 serials and his 100th during
the 19/5980 ones;
-
Primeval
Lilith, the Demon Queen of the Night: The immortal, chthonic
or earthborn daemon who must possess the birth mothers of mortal
Sed-sons at the moment of their conception; without Sed-sons alive
on both sides of the Whole Earth the Sedon Sphere would collapse;
arguably the Devil Herself;
-
The
Moloch Sedon: The
skyborn, as in extraterrestrial, lone member of the first generation
of devazurkind, the inspirations for the Gods and Goddesses of Mythology;
his essence composes Cathonia, the Sedon Sphere; arguably the Devil
Himself;
-
The
Silverclouds: The two remaining members of Thrygragos
Byron's three firstborn; plus shots of an actual Rudra idol and that
of an Uma;
- The
Smiling Fiend: Aka Smiler, Ahriman, Sodom, Rhadamanthys, Judge Druj;
claims to be the firstborn son of Thrygragos Sedon;
- The
Thrygragos Talismans: The Cross
of Mithras, the Mask
of Byron and Lazareme's Cloak
of Many Colours;
- The
Time-Tumbling Dual Entities:
The two most confounding characters in the PHANTACEA
Mythos; conceivably the Male and Female Principals;
-
The
Trigregos Talismans: The Three Sacred Objects,
what may hold the secret to controlling devils and therefore Sedon's
Head;
-
Utopians
of Weir:
Extraterrestrials stuck on the Inner Earth since a decade before the
Genesea, the Great Flood of Genesis, those who have them can manifest
gargoyles out of eyeorbs attached to the top of their eye-staves;
- The
VAM Entity: Thrygragos Varuna
Mithras as Sol Invictus; plus more on the A-Guy who thinks the only
thing invincible about Mithras is his presumptuousness;
|
The
Summer 2007 Index Page Image-Flip
Hestia Housekeeping
- What's New Intro - a Sawtooth
Shark - return of the Roatan Boathead - Feel
Theo Progress - Elsewhere Conclusion
-
Hestia Housekeeping
amounts to the 'What's New' section of pHpubs. Consequently
I always start it with a 'What's Old' link to where I put its
previous update.
Should also mention
that the list of lynx I established last time around to the gold-mining
boxes found scattered throughout PHANTACEA on
the Web now lives here.
Now that that's done, we can get on with
this edition of Hestia Housekeeping. So what is new
in the Summer 2007 edition of PHANTACEA on
the Web?
Actually, with the exception of the aforementioned
provisional preview of "Feeling
Theocidal", which constitutes the entirety of Today's Topic,
there isn't a great deal of it.
That is to say, while there's not much
new, what is new is of course great.
The non-pHpubs
bulk of it can be found here.
Yep, after over a decade of PHANTACEA on
the Web I've finally started to do some detailed synopses of the storylines
contained in the comic books
and graphic novel.
The inspiration was GCD, the Great Comicbook
Database, which you're welcome to google up at your leisure. Apparently
they've had the covers of some of the PHANTACEA
publications up on its comparatively enormous (to my minuscule) portion
of Cyberia for years now.
Although it is just a start, what I'll
do is provide the meat within the wrap, albeit in point form. I'll also
insert some images from the comics' innards, which GCD doesn't do.
If you like what you read or see, kindly
click on over to the In-Print Publications
ordering page and stock
up on what's left.
Top of Page - Top
of Hestia - On to Topic
Next door is the latest
list of lynx to the illustrated mini-essays and/or
Character Likeness studies I've done or redone of late.
 One
image you won't find in any of them is that of the
Sawtooth Shark
to the right of this paragraph.
I scanned it in from the
Vancouver Sun not because it's cute. Sharks aren't cute in my books.
They're not even cute in
my novels. Indeed, on the rare occasions they do make an appearance,
it's usually to eat someone or get themselves eaten by someone.
Which reminds me of everyone's
favourite, ever-fishifying Fisherwoman
(born Scylla Nereid) over in 'The Vampire
Variations'. She's described as
having shark-sharp teeth because she does - two rows of the razorlike
things truth told.
 No,
I scanned it in because its expression reminds of that on the Roatan Boathead
to the left of this paragraph.
And, before you ask, I still haven't
reread all of either Vamvar or 'The
Volsung Variations',
the two Web Wheaties, as in serials,
I'm currently presenting out here in Cyberia. Sooth said I haven't read
any more of them than I had last time around.
Maybe I'm falling down on the job. Maybe
I'm otherwise too occupied writing the follow-up to Feel Theo.
Maybe I'm about to go back to Brazil. Maybe all of the above.
The PHANTACEA
fact of the matter is I not only haven't finished their teasers
yet, I'd barely began adding to Volvar's synoptic
summary section when I realized I wouldn't have time to finish it before
I left.
At least I managed to spell check and
put up its next three chapters. I didn't even get that far with respect
to Vamvar. Needles to
say, best get to reading what I have
put up while they're still online and available for your fee-free perusal.
Top of Page - Top
of Hestia - On to Topic
As for "Feeling
Theocidal", here's what I thought I'd be typing for this edition
of pHpubs:
"Right, you agents, editors and publishers,
you've had your chance. Now it begins. Rather, now it begins anew. Yep,
for Jim McPherson's PHANTACEA
Mythos, it's self-publishing time again."
Obviously I did type it but it's not
an accurate statement. I've sent the second draft of Feel Theo
off to a paying publisher who, miracle of miracles, claims to consider
non-agented, non-edited submissions.
Top of Page - Top
of Hestia - On to Topic
Beyond
all of the above, about the only other new material
this time around can be found in Serendipity Now.
There's three additional entries there: "Bad
Rhad Gets Planetarily Demoted Even More Humiliatingly"; "Is
the Signallers' Silver really Black (Widow) Silk?" and "Helios
on Mars".
In my humble, the gist of this last
(made when I googled up Sedonia and came up with Cydonia) is right up
there with some of the spookily serendipitous discoveries I discussed
years ago on the Sedon's Head:
Inspiration or Destination?
webpage.
Feedback
encouraged. Oh and, lest we forget, as always, good reading.
|
Lynx
to complete mosaic novels within the PHANTACEA
Mythos whose potential covers,
background information and introductory chapters are still online
|
'Feeling Theocidal' - A Provisional Preview
Top
of Page - Top of Topic - On
to Potential Cover for 'Feel Theo'
|
"Feeling
Theocidal" began life in the mid-80s as a 2-part backup
strip for the PHANTACEA Phase One Project.
As noted on the 25 Years
Plus webpage, I abandoned Phase One after only
one issue due to a suddenly once again precipitous market. (I collected
the backup strips that Ian Fry did complete in the 1990 graphic
novel entitled "Forever
& 40 Days - The Genesis of PHANTACEA",
which can still be ordered.)
I wrote a prose version of the basic story
for Feel Theo in the early 1990s. Again a 2-parter, I
thereupon serialized it as the first and the last chapters of "The
Trigregos Gambit". (Entitled Thrygragon,
their synopses remain online.) Indeed, 'Thrygragon - 4376 Year
of the Dome' is Feel Theo's subtitle. |
Top of Page - Top
of Topic - On to Backcover Blurb for 'Feel
Theo'
Backcover
Blurb
Most of the text on the reproduction of the potential full
cover for 'Feel Theo', above,
is impossible to read without a magnifying glass .Therefore, as a community
service, what follows is a big print version of the copy on the backcover.
The lynx internal to the blurb take you to more details than you might
want to know right now but they'll still be here after the novel's published
in case you do want them then.
 The
Great God, Thrygragos
Varuna Mithras, has named the day. Let it be called Thrygragon,
as in gone, gone his Thrygragos Brothers.
He’s reacquired his
Godly Glory from his half-son, Taurus Chrysaor Attis.
He’s claimed the Godly
Glories of his
two brothers and knows how to obliterate All, Incain’s fearsome
Gynosphinx. Nothing can go wrong.
 Call
it what you will, Jordan Tethys is having a lousy day. His wives have
discovered he’s both a deviant and a perfidious
polygamist. They not only keep killing him, they’re determined
to sink his soul forevermore.
No one’s happier about Thrygragon than the never remembered, ever-smiling
Fiend. At least
he has enough sense to stay away from his mothers’
talismans, the thrice-cursed Godly Glories.
Smiler’s myrionymous. He has many names. One of them might be
Demogorgon, the
Devil-Eater!
NOTE
1: The collage in the upper left hand corner
of the backcover consists of a number of images previously used out here
in my minuscule portions of Cyberia. The big, shiny blue eye in the background
is a metallic fixture I photographed in Mexico City in 2005. I took the
shot of the Lilith figure at the British Museum in London, England. The
Susasword is actually an engraved elephant's tusk I spotted in Delhi,
India in 2005. I shot the flower down the block from my house. Fortunately
the owner wasn't around to shoot back. Additional description can be found
here.
NOTE
2: Behind the blow-up of the 'Forever & 40 Days' logo in
the upper right hand corner of the backcover
is the main image for the
VAM Entity piece I did for the Winter
2006/7 edition of phpubs. Additional description
can be found here.
NOTE
3: A larger version of the Anheroic
Fantasy logo on the bottom of the backcover
can be found on the ordering
page More details and a couple of additional lynx can be found here.
|
|
|
Notes
on some of Feel Theo's Characters and Concepts
There are two Image Maps on this page. One's in the masthead
whereas the other is here. Run your mouse
over either/or then click on any of the magically made manifest, handy-dandy
hands. You'll thereupon end up in any one of the three sections making
up Today's Topic.
Even easier, especially if you're not interested
in interactivity, here's a cheat sheet list of the lynx. (Other than notes
at the bottom of some of these entries, all of the copy is taken from
'Feeling Theocidal'.)
| Angelycs | Djinn
Domitian (The Masochist) | Saudi the Steg Sari
| The She-Sphinx & Attis's Pegasus | Valkyrie
Swan Maidens - The Choosers of the Slain | Taurus
Chrysaor Attis | Jordan Tethys - the
Legendary 30-Year Man | Garden (Yeast) Tethys
| The Rajput Nutcracker | The
Deadly Dryads | Tee-Tee Tales & Tails
|
ANGELYCS:
Indentured yazata Angelycs built the Whole Earth’s original
Mithraeum for Thrygragos Varuna Mithras late in the first century
of the Dome. They’d done so atop the antediluvian, multi-stepped
mastaba that surmounted Theopolis Hill on Apple Isle, Sedon’s
Human Eye-Isle. Mithras had taken over the then flat-topped mastaba,
renamed it the Mithradium, and made it his home, as well as the
centre of his worship, shortly after the Flood.
For payment they naturally wanted to consume him. Angelycs were
like that. To satisfy them he contrived the doctrine of transubstantiation
and fed them bread and wine, alongside what subsequently became
a frequently repeated, ritualistic feast of bull braised in its
own blood. The bull in particular seemed to fit the bill. After
all, it was the Age of Taurus.
... for more on Angelycs, click here;
their devic god is Djinn Domitian, aka the
Masochist;
Top of Page - Back
to Lynx List
|
DJINN
DOMITIAN (The Masochist):
Mithras returned his attention to the Sedon Sphere.
He expected to spot a falling star and, sure enough, one star was
twinkling almost as luminously as Star Sedon, the Moon’s after
dark competitor for intensity above the Hidden Headworld. Did that
indicate it was falling? Not precisely. His masochist, his angelic
courier and most reliable Heliodromus, Djinn Domitian as Illuminaries
had him, was merely returning from his Mithras-mandated, mailman
mission to the Moloch.
The Great God hoped the Mighty Eye-Mouth in the Sky hadn’t
chomped on him too severely. Messengers weren't supposed to enjoy
themselves until after they returned with their responses.
... there's more on the Masochist's most common
seeming here and a
shot of Sedon as the Mighty Eye-Mouth in the Sky here
|
NOTES
re ROLLOVER
|
SAUDI
THE STEG SARI:
The assassin rumbled out of the Weird. At least Helena
presumed she was an assassin. That she was a young Saur Tsarina
was manifest. Her being an anthropomorphic stegosaur gave that away.
Worse yet, she was a Sari Witch, had to be. Otherwise she couldn’t
have come off one the witch-stones Helena habitually kept about
her person even though Masters of Weir in their own Weirdom were,
approximately, infinitely more powerful than any Ant Nightingale.
Worst of all, stegs were omnivorous. Plus, they were always hungry.
Although reptilian, anthropomorphic Saurs did not have a dinosaur’s
size. Rarely more than 10-feet tall and maybe three or four hundred
pounds, they were nevertheless mammoth for a vaguely humanoid specie.
Stegs were still stegs, though.
The Sari had double rows of cartilaginous plates or extruding disks
running up and down her backbone. They culminated in a bulky, formidable
tail tipped with what looked to be iron pitons but were presumably
exceedingly sharp shards of bone. She didn’t wear much in
the way of clothing. What did drape her seemed little more than
strategically placed rags that might once have been an actual sari.
There was no mistaking her gender. Feminine anthropomorphism required
breasts, proportionately huge in her case.
Top of Page - Back
to Lynx List |
ALL + PEG:
Awe, reverential fear, dread mingled with veneration: comparatively
commonplace stuff on a hidden continent that virtually everyone
who dwelt on, in, above or below it knew was a hidden continent.
Nonetheless, after a while there was something of the ho-hum about
seeing an immortal god or goddess walking amongst you.
A Pegasus-psychopomp bearing a familiar, head-to-toe-armoured rider
in front of an unfamiliar, for most, and apparently oppositely unarmed
passenger flying out of the blue, even if was the grey of between-space?
Yawn-inducing that.
Seeing a gigantic, winged sphinx emerging behind Peg? That was
so unusual it qualified as awe-inspiring.
How could something that size fly? And was she really made of stone?
... for more on All of Incain
(aka Ginny the Gynosphinx) and her moribund boyfriend, Andy
the Androsphinx,
click here
|
VALKYRIE SWAN MAIDENS - THE CHOOSERS OF
THE SLAIN:
“By daddy and old man, Master,” Hopi replied to Helena’s
unspoken query, “I mean your hubby. And mine! And hers!”
The ‘her’ in question, Helena had realized, was a
Valkyrie. The shapely, even muscular, nicely preserved and therefore
only vaguely older-looking woman following Georgie and the teenager
had to be the latter’s mother. Swan Maidens, minus a maid’s
claim to maidenhood, could still ride swan-psychopomps when they
went to work.
Valkyries were choosers of the slain. They hailed from Valhalla,
Hell’s Halls, a Mithradite territory in the Head’s
north, within or just below the Mystic Mountain Range, Sedon’s
Crown. Helena didn’t need an introduction.
She didn’t care what her given name happened to be. The
Valkyrie’s surname didn’t matter either. Seeing her,
the Master of Weir knew right away whom they, jointly, would shortly
choose to slay.
|
|
| |
TAURUS
CHRYSAOR ATTIS:
" Father?"
Mithras raised his head. The speaker entering his tent unbidden was a
near giant, six and a half feet tall and almost as broad as he was wide.
Not an inch of his skin was visible. Metal-plated gauntlets with raised
knobs on their knuckles and topsides covered his hands. A fearsome war
mask hid his face. From the top of his head to the tip of his toes, a
hooded, multi-coloured cloak obscured the rest of his body.
The cloak was cinched around his waist by a belt that seemed to be constructed
from human vertebrae. From his right shoulder hung a satchel or solitary
saddlebag that held much more than would seem outwardly possible. Strapped
to his right side a scabbard contained the standard sabre of a legionnaire
officer. It had a P-shaped grip and an X-shaped guard.
The mask was hinged onto a Hellene helmet reminiscent of an ancient gorgonian.
Fringed by long spikes and plumed with the Garuda-like feathers of a female
sphinx, it protected his entire head. In addition to a pair of boggle-eyes
and a protrusive tongue, the mask featured two long horns like those of
a bull and the gruesome caricature of a boar-demon’s head complete
with up-turned tusks.
 Looped
around his neck was a circlet inlaid with glowing rubies or fully red
bloodstones from which depended a blazingly golden sun-shape embossed
with a lion's head. Strapped to his right arm was a shield burnished to
a mirror's sheen. In his left hand he held a slender yet solid, metallic
javelin pointed at either end.
His hooded garment had so many colours to it, the fabric itself might
have been fashioned out of stars forged in the night’s sky. The
Great God didn't need his devic eye to know that, underneath it, his remarkable
child was wearing a tunic made from the hide of an enchanted elephant
or some such near-impervious beast, a front and back plastron, greaves
and talarial winged sandals.
His every shred of clothing, every ornament and armament he had, shimmered
with Brainrock. They were devic talismans won in single combat, the spoils
of glorious battle against undying foes. To Attis, his legions’
Taurus or Boss Bull for more than half his latest succession, victory
and defeat were meaningless concepts. Dead or alive, he would survive:
He, Chrysaor, the ‘Golden Sword’, the Universal Soldier.
Mithras said nothing.
|
|
|
|
Top of Page - Top
of Topic - Back to Lynx List
JORDAN
TETHYS - THE LEGENDARY 30-YEAR MAN
“Your big brother Jordan
still alive, son?” he [the Legendarian] asked Glee [aka Gordon Tethys],
hoping to mollify Volsanga [nee Nibelung] by showing some degree of interest
in their family.
“His name’s Jotan, dad. Or should I call you granddad. Jotan’s
wife’s due today.”
“You do know what a wife is, don’t you, dad?” contributed
Ute, whose voice and looks seemed the only pleasant things about her.
She probably wasn’t a Hellion, yet, but attitudinally she struck
him as more of a chip off the maternal blockhead than off the paternal
one.
“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Ute?” said Hopi [Tethys,
a brew master]. “Jordy’s an unmitigated jerk. Make that a
perfidious polygamist, to fay-say some. His problem isn’t what a
wife is, it’s what a husband’s supposed to be. He couldn’t
spell faithful even if Aerial [Tethys, a sylph or air sprite] gave him
back his quill.“
“You should be thankful Master Helena’s such a do it by the
book type, taleteller,” provided Durga [Tethys, a Rajput princess
from Ophir/Moorset]. “Because, if it was up to me and a few others
here, Georgie would have been right about you being dead already. You
do recall my father’s recipe for roasted nuts, don’t you?”
Tethys winced involuntarily. “Ah, I see you do. Well, so do I!”
Garden
(Yeast) Tethys
(Jordy doesn't realize he's looking at George
Masterson, an earlier born son)
Their talented eldest –
Garden to his mother, Yeast to him – was not only present he seemed
to have taken up the recorder. The lad must be past twenty by now or close
to it. Oddly, he looked somewhat older than that. He was also much plumper
than he’d been the last time he saw him three or four years ago.
Tethys himself had reddish hair and fair skin, prone to burning. So, in
that respect at least, Yeast and his siblings were far more like mom than
like him. In every other respect, though, he was a regular chip off the
old paternal blockhead. Partying heartily, while swilling Hopi’s
pilsners, likely accounted for his unexpected maturation and expanded
waistline. Nonetheless, Tethys was surprised to see him favouring a totally
different instrument.
Adults, men only moderately less so than women, got as teary eyed as post-pubescent
girls did when Yeast strummed on a lyre while ardently intoning romantic
verses, much of which he’d either composed himself or stolen from
his father. Plucking was always preferable to blowing. You can’t
tongue and mouth melodies instrumentally at the same time you’re
emoting poetry passionately.
Additionally, it being well before noon, it was a mite disappointing to
see him awake and making music rather than in bed making love. He should
be out sowing his wild barley. Every Tethys, male or female, inherited
a procreative imperative. One only had to look around the canvas enclosure
to appreciate just how successful he’d been at attending to his
obligations.
Ravi
(The Multi-Stringed Lutenist) + Mom
“Isn’t war wonderful?”
said the Rajput princess. Durga would say that. Even on the Outer Earth
Rajputs belonged to a warrior caste.  “Otherwise
we never would have had the opportunity to get together like this.”
“We’ve different hair and skin colours, dad,” said her
son, the lutenist he’d identified as one of the worst sufferers
of last night’s after-effects.
Tethys avoided hangovers. He approved
of lutes, however. He turned his quill into a lute almost as often as
he turned it into a lyre.
“Some of us are even from different
species. But we all look sort of alike. I’m Ravi, as in rave, by
the way, and, no, we’ve never met. You abandoned mom and me before
I was born.”
“Funny,” Tethys observed, eying his cap and quill. Aerial
held them as if a snake in a nest. She wasn’t far wrong. There was
still a chance. “You don’t look like a grapevine, Ravi, or
an Ophidian or a Steg.”
“I don’t look like a chair either.”
The chair in reference developed arms, the better to hug him tightly.
She didn’t let go, pinning his hands to his lap.
Mama
Sylvia + Wooden Tethys (The Deadly Dryads)
“I’m Wooden,” the chair
introduced herself, “As in Wooden Tethys. But you can call me Woody,
everyone else does. I hear you’ve been a very knotty boy.”
  “You’re
barking up the wrong tree on that, Woody,” he protested, lamely.
Usually trees didn’t grow so fast.
Then again trees, even oak trees, usually weren't dryads.
“And my bark’s every bit
as bitter as my bite,” she fay-said. “I’m Sylvia, in
case you haven’t figured that out yet. Saudi tells us you’re
a deviant, in all senses of the word.”
Every
Tee-Tee Has 2 Tales to Tell - One Tale's Their Tail
Tee-tees were a rat-like, possibly chthonic
by-product of old Eden’s discredited science.
In the centuries prior to their comparatively small continent, or big
island, sinking into the Atlantic Ocean – where the flotsam-choked
Sargasso Sea has been bedevilling shipping lanes ever since – these
Edenites deposited the living, breeding results of their biological experiments
on the opposite side of the planet from their homeland. Eden’s dumping
grounds were the thousands of islands dotting the then archipelago of
Pacifica, the Places of Pieces as the joke went, in what was the North
Pacific Ocean of today’s Outer Earth.
 In
addition to having vocal chords, a highly selective memory and the triggering
device of pulling their tails, tee-tees were almost as good swimmers as
they were stowaways. They rapidly overran Pacifica and thereafter, in
boats embarking from the archipelago, spread across much of the rest of
the world. That there weren't any left outside came down to one thing:
Tee-tees made better eating than storytellers.
Some of them recorded in the nodules of their tails – tails some
of their descendants inherited much as humans do the colour of their skin,
eyes or hair from their ancestors – the arrival of a devic scouting
party on the Whole Earth over seven hundred years before the Great Flood
of Genesis. They further recorded how many of the devils accompanying
the expedition’s leader, Thrygragos Lazareme, fused together with
dozens of daemons to order to launch an assault on the nowadays millennia-moribund
Androsphinx of Egypt’s Giza plateau.
Successive incarnations of Jordan Tethys could read tee-tee tails. Most
devils, Utopian Illuminaries, Ant Nightingales, most other tiptop witches
and most of the Head’s wise men or wizards, for want of a better
word, could as well. Despite many puzzling gaps in them, virtually everyone
agreed Demogorgon was the name tee-tee tails ascribed to the form the
initial Devil Eater took. |
| |
Notes
on Graphics - Footnotes and off-page links:
- The web-shot in the masthead
at the top of 'pHpubs' is an Image Map; run
your mouse over it and, when a hand appears, click there to take you
to one of eight elsewheres on this page; clockwise, they are: a cheat
sheet list of lynx to entries on some of Feel
Theo's Characters and Concepts; The
Deadly Dryads (Sylvia and Wooden Tethys); Hellion
Valkyrie (Volsanga nee Nibelung and her teenage
daughter, Ute Tethys); The
Masochist (Mithras's non-swan trumpeter, messenger
and sun-runner); descriptions of Garden
(Yeast) Tethys (actually George Masterson), his
father (the Legendarian) and the Tethys Family's procreative imperative;
Angelycs
and the Rajput Nutcrackers (Durga and Ravi
"Rave" Tethys); the mouse-over message reads: "Detail
of Bosch's Haywain, image taken from the Web"; you can see
the 'Haywain' itself at Madrid's Prado Museum, though I didn't
take a picture of it when I was there in 1999; return to masthead
; the outer wings (closed) of the Haywain triptych can be found here
==>
- The mouse-over message reads:
"Sawshark image scanned in from a newspaper
because its expression reminds of that on the nearby boathead";
The newspaper was the Vancouver Sun, June12, 2007. The headline read:
"Australia wins UN ban on sawtooth shark trade". Click to
return; Click to go to the nearby boathead;
- The mouse-over message reads:
"Boat head spotted off shore of an Island
in Honduras, photo by Jim McPherson, 2003"; the island was
Roatan; Click to return; Click to see the boathead
image in its original setting;
- The Potential
Cover for 'Feeling Theocidal' is another Image Map; run
your mouse over the graphics incorporated within it and, when a hand
appears, click there to take you to one of a number of entries in the
cover area; clockwise, they are: the collage in the upper left
hand corner of the backcover; the collage and blow-up of the 'Forever
& 40 Days' logo in the upper right
hand corner of the backcover; a quick reminder as the origins
of 'Feel Theo' in terms of the PHANTACEA
Mythos; the roll-over
of a couple of alternative versions of the framed picture on the front
cover; the blue PHANTACEA logo
("Anheroic Fantasy Illustrated - Since 1977")
and a reiteration of the Backcover Blurb; the
mouse-over message reads: "Potential Cover
for 'Feeling Theocidal', constructed by Jim McPherson using
his own copy and photos, 2007"; Click to return;
- The mouse-over behind the blue PHANTACEA
logo ("Anheroic Fantasy Illustrated
- Since 1977") is: "Logo reads Anheroic
Fantasy Illustrated - PHANTACEA - Since 1977";
as for the two heads, one is of course a colourized version Sedon's
Head as it appears on the places
page; the other, though, isn't a head at all; it's a weird confection
of light on the parking lot near the Giza pyramids
and All's pal, Andy
the Androsphinx,
as photographed in the late twenties or early thirties; I've used in
on the Serendipity
pages ever since I first discovered its existence in the late 90s; there
more info on it here and there,
among other places; additional notes re the graphics on the backcover
can be found starting here; return
to image;
- The mouse-over message
for the collage in the upper left
hand corner of the backcover reads: "Image
reads "The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories - Book One", prepared
from his own photos by Jim McPherson, 2006"; click to return;
- The mouse-over
message for the collage in the
upper right hand corner of the backcover
reads: "Image reads "From the Creator/Writer
of the Graphic Novel - Forever & 40 Days, prepared by Jim McPherson
2007"; click to return;
- The
mouse-over message for the roll-over
of a couple of alternative versions of the framed picture on the front
cover reads: "Cluttered and Uncluttered Versions
of the Images in Front Cover Frame, prepared by Jim McPherson from his
own photos, 2006/7"; additional notes are here;
click to return to image;
- The mouse-over message behind
the familiar image of Mithras slaying the bull reads: "A
statue of Mithras or Attis slaying the bull, as photographed in the
British Museum by Jim McPherson in 2005"; I've used it and
an earlier shot of the same statue a number of times out here in Cyberia,
most recently here; click to return
to image;
- The mouse-over message behind another image
familiar to long time visitors to PHANTACEA on
the Web reads: "Postcard bought
at the British Museum in 2003, it's of a Pictish warrior, painting by
John White (active ca. 1575-93), scanned in by Jim McPherson, 2004";
most notably I used it as part of the potential cover for "The
Trigregos Gambit" but it's also here;
click to return to image;
- I went to the justifiably famous Knights
Templar cathedral in Chartres, France in 1996; I haven't been back since
but, while there, I took stack of shots, including one of the 'Fall
of Lucifer'; it wasn't brilliant so I took this image of it from
the Web; the mouse-over message reads: "Chartres
Cathedral's Fall of Lucifer, taken from Web"; the non-religious,
PHANTACEA Mythos
version of much the same storyline is part of Feel Theo's
generously large ladling of lathering (storyline) layers; email
to remind me to tell it to you someday; click to return
to image; more on one of a number of PHANTACEA's
Lucifers can be
found here;
- This is not an Image Map; it is something
of a collage, however; the mouse-over message reads: "Collage
entitled "Jordan Tethys", b/w artwork by Ian Fry, circa 1988;
rest prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2007"; click
to return to image;
- The mouse-over message reads: "Jordan
Tethys as he appeared in 4Ever + 40 Days, artwork by Ian Fry circa 1988";
click to return to image;
- The mouse-over message reads: "Hieronymous
Bosch's 'The Wayfarer', scanned in from the Web"; my Bosch-book
states this version 'The Wayfarer' was done about a decade
after the one in the Prado; it can be seen in Rotterdam, which is in
the Netherlands, at the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen; I prefer this
one to that one because the Wayfarer is
holding onto a cap with what looks to be something like a quill stuck
into it; Jordy's Brainrock quill, which once belonged to the devil,
Rumour of Lazareme, is what grants him stacks of his knacks, to quote
him directly; click to return to image;
- The mouse-over message
reads: "Hieronymous Bosch's Outer Wings of
the "Haywain" triptych, scanned in from the Web";
my Bosch-book states this version 'The Wayfarer' was done about
a decade before the one found at the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in
Rotterdam, Holland; as noted above, you can
see the 'Haywain' itself at Madrid's Prado Museum; click to
return to image;
- Here's a couple of other long time residents
of PHANTACEA on the Web
; they're also presumably pre-me residents of my front yard; that means
they've been stuck in the same tree for the better part of 30 years,
poor faeries; although I identify one fay as female and the other as
male in the mouse-over, in the entry above I identify them both as female;
the mouse-over in the first one reads: "Woman's
Face in Tree, taken by Jim McPherson"; click to return
to images; here's a link
to another webpage where they live;
- The mouse-over (rat-over?) reads: "Wax
rat spotted on Faerie Tree near Kensington Palace in London, photo by
Jim McPherson, 2003"; the rat, albeit as a rat and not tee-tee,
has also done double duty; it's also not a rat, as noted in the rat-over
it's a wax figurine deposited on the Fairy
Tree in London's Hyde Park, beside what's nowadays the Lady Di Children's
Playground just off Bayswater Street; you can see it here
as well as here;
as a perfidious polygamist I'm sure Jordy
qualifies as a rat but the image is here because
the entry is about tee-tees;
- Notes on the tiled image of some of the Saturna Island cliff
heads, the ones behind
the Sites with Loads
of Graphics section, can be found here ==>
- The tiled image making up this page's background
is of All's pal, Andy
the Androsphinx;
the first feature done on the two sphinxes found most prominently within
the PHANTACEA Mythos
is here ==>
|
Sites
with Loads of Graphics:
Google.ca supplies what amounts to a pH-Webworld
web gallery. Just go to http://www.google.ca/,
hit the images link and type in PHANTACEA. Pasting
into the address area of your browser the following Url might work as
well: http://images.google.ca/images?q=phantacea&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&start=100&sa=N&filter=0
PHANTACEA on
the Web is chock-a-block with visuals. Good places to ogle
artwork from the comic books and graphic novel are One
to Six, 'Twenty-Five Years Plus'
and what began as 'The Genesis
of PHANTACEA' webpage. Most of the other graphics
are scans I did of my own photographs or material I put together using
PHOTOSHOP. All the essays
are loaded with images. Try out the framed version
of the Main Menu. You won't go anywhere else but,
then again, you won't get lost either.
-
The PHANTACEA
Home and Prime Picture Gallery
WARNING: Image Intensive
-- Might take awhile to load!
-
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-
-
-
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-
-
PHANTACEA
- 2003: A Quarter Century and Counting: The
Celebratory Collage
-
The
PHANTACEA Mythos:
Beehive Ghost
Houses
-
The PHANTACEA
Mythos: Heliodyssey
WARNING: Graphic
Summary -- Might take awhile to load!
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-
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Terms
Peculiar to PHANTACEA
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Places
Peculiar to PHANTACEA
-
-
An Overview
of the 1990 graphic novel "Forever & 40 Days - The
Genesis of PHANTACEA"
Top of Page |
Latest
List of Lynx to some previous Web-Publisher's Commentaries
| Winter 2006/7 | Summer
2006 | Winter 2005/6 |
Summer 2005 |
Winter 2004/5 | Summer 2004|
Spring 2004 | Autumn
2003 | Summer 2003 | Autumn
2002 | Summer 2002 | Autumn
2001 | Spring-Summer 2001 |
Winter 2000/1 | February
1999 | November 1998
| August 1998 | Samplings from
other Not So Recent Commentaries
| June-March '97 | February
'97-July '96 |
Top of Page |
