Editing Labels (section)

==Specific examples==
*Non-Demons<ref name="ndj">“No! No, look, listen!” Rose was more agitated. She flipped the book open. “Grandmother wrote some stuff saying that back in the day, before studies in diabolism had come so far, people had a bad habit of chalking up any particularly nasty Other as a demon or something infernal. There was a whole period of history where almost every bad Other was thought to be a demon or demonic, and the classification was harder for some to shake than others. So I’ve been researching, and looking at the criteria.”<br>[...]<br>“I’m kind of surprised that you’re okay with this,” I said. “The danger, the fact that Rose is talking about monsters that are bad enough they were almost classified as demons, not so long ago…” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/05/13 Excerpt] from [[Subordination 6.7]]</ref>
**[[James Corvidae]]<ref name=JumpUp/>
**[[Mary Frances Troxler]]<ref name=mft>“Then, um, let me see here, I’ve got it in one of these books, I color coded the bookmarks. Except I didn’t have a bookmark for the sixth, so I used a sprig of herb. Here. First option. She’s Mary Frances Troxler. Origin unknown, but she may have been a wraith, a ghost that took on other qualities. Mediums used to call on her to help women find their husband to be. The ritual was tainted, too much negativity, maybe it got blamed when the marriages didn’t work out. Calling her a demon or a thing of darkness, and the label starts to become true, in a roundabout way. She started showing up when she wasn’t called, was eventually bound, and she remained a minor tool of diabolists for some time.”<br>[...]<br>We’ve got a Bloody Mary,” Rose said.<br><br>“What’s that?”<br><br>“A boggart or a wraith, not sure. A ghost loaded with enough negativity that it went off rails. Built with echoes that aren’t its own. Lurks in mirrors, carves up women if they spend too long looking.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/05/13 Excerpt] from [[Subordination 6.7]]</ref>
**[[Midge]]
**[[Cubi]]<ref>Incubi and Succubi, Others of shadow that corrupted their targets by changing their dreams and using those dreams to alter the Self. Some did dark things to turn the Self evil, or devoured the Self and weakened or eventually killed the victim, and victims wouldn’t fight the process because the dreams were, um, really pleasant. Others edited the brain through nightmares to corrupt the Self to be salacious, wanton, or just corrupt in a way that had the wantonness and lack of inhibition as a consequence, which apparently created a sex-focused label that might have shaped the Succubi and Incubi that came after. Once confused with demons, because they were so insidious. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/31 Excerpt] from [[Cutting Class 6.2]]</ref>
**[[Havour]]s<ref>Historically they have frequently been confused for possessing demons or demons borne of tragedy, or been described by uneducated innocents as ghosts with enough evil in them to ascend to demonhood.  These assumptions are reinforced by the fact that most practices to banish such evils (exorcism, etc) will work on the Havour. - [[PactDice]]: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/18YlazBvtZmzi8-_p9uwbFHgcqs92btz5IL9Rf_hveIw Bestiary: Havour]</ref>
*[[Dog Tag]]s<ref>“He’s a Dog of War, known in some circles as Dog Tags. I think his name is an older equivalent to John Doe, but for soldiers. When warzones are at their ugliest and most chaotic, and people start losing track of who is where, who is alive and who is dead, certain Others may crop up on the battlefields. Ones that fight, so long as there is conflict around them. If the soldiers in that war are killing innocents, so will the Dogs of War. If they commit other atrocities, so will the Dogs. They don’t sleep, they keep the battle going, and as long as the battle continues, they don’t stay down. Related to Revenants, but Revenants are the province of Death, not War.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/05/19 excerpt] from [[Lost for Words 1.4]]</ref><ref>“The Carmine Beast predated us,” the Aurum said. “But not the Alabaster Doe.”<br><br>“She was an Animus, a walking intent,” the Alabaster said. “Much as your Dog of War is one.”<br><br>“I- I’m not familiar with that.”<br><br>“Forces between spirit and incarnation that exist for purpose. Often malign, but not always. Physical. They are defined by the task they accomplish. The Swordbearer animus exists to find the noble and heroic, equip them, and send them on their path. The Dog of War exists to perpetuate the senselessness of war. Muses inspire art.”<br><br>“What did she do?”<br><br>“Before she was the Carmine Beast, she reminded civilized men who had come here why their ancestors were so afraid of the deep night,” the Alabaster said. “Henhouses emptied, livestock slaughtered. Howling that shook hearts, and fangs that took the lives of people who were in the midst of discovering just how dark a forest can be without the torches, candles and lamps of a nearby city.”<br><br>“Was she evil? I know we asked, but- before?”<br><br>“She wasn’t good or evil so much as she simply ''was''. Just as she ''was'' the Carmine Beast. The role precedes all.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/08/18 Excerpt] from [[Leaving a Mark 4.1]]</ref><ref name=dtdt>Munch shrugged. “We have terms. Don’t try to remember them, they’ll change or get forgotten. Goblins don’t like labels. You’ve got your bumps, they go bump in the night, scare kids, mess with people. You’ve got the snots, they’re just gross, they make gross things grosser. The scrappers, obvious enough. You could call me a lunk, you could call Gashwad a blighter who thinks he’s a scrapper.”<br>[...]<br>Munch gave her a blank look.<br><br>“The Sick Dog?”<br><br>The blank look continued.<br><br>“John Stiles’ friend.”<br><br>“The Black Dog,” Munch grumbled. “You’ve got special, specific terms for everything… labels, labels… goblins don’t truck much with that. Call a spade a shovel, then use the shovel to beat the person who crawls up your ass about it being a spade, specifically.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/30 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.7]]</ref><ref>He reached into his coat-<br><br>And they attacked.  Dog Tags.  Technically Animus by label, though it got complicated.  They were spirit, and that might’ve made the spider webs easier to venture into than it was for others.<br><br>It was still ''Scott’s'' spider webs, still the domain of a powerful shaman-<br><br>But they only had to get so far.  The guns weren’t spirit. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/05/07 Excerpt] from [[Wild Abandon 18.c]]</ref>
*Goblin Specifics<ref name=dtdt/> - Puissance and specialties are mutable,<ref name=":1">[[Butty McButtbutt|“Butty’s]] thing.”<br><br>“The mayo bomb?”<br><br>“He’s a fester, you know. That’s what he does.”<br><br>“I’m not playing that game, Gash. I’ve been told he’s a bulge, a fester now, ummm, I think Cherry called him a boil. You guys make this up.”<br><br>“Exactly! Perfect, you’re not so dumb after all. That’s what he does. He takes all the ugly, all the mess, all the bile and crap and he ''concentrates'' it. Longer he waits and lets it sit before it goes ''pop'', the better. Rest of the time, he’s just a greasy stain. He’d be good to have around if he wasn’t so ''shit''.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/13 Excerpt] from [[Back Away 5.4]]</ref> in some cases even reactive to an attempt at classification.<ref name=":0">Goblin, third class, which put her between lesser and middle tiers. The problem was that goblins despised and defied boundaries and convention, and trying to apply one saw a given goblin slip into a tier above or even a tier below. They came in all shapes and sizes, humanoid and not, and as Deedee went, she was a beauty among goblinkind and she was a beauty to him. - [https://reddit.com/r/DoTheWriteThing/comments/cvf1vn/_/eyr7gbo Excerpt] from [[Poke 2]]</ref>
*[[Oni]]<ref name=Oni/>
* [[Choir]]s<ref name=Ch>“Demons and devils fall into choirs.  Choir of dark, choir of chaos, choir of ruin, choir of madness, choir of the feral, choir of sin, and choir of unrest, in order. [...] The choirs aren’t real things… only an idea that some have clung to, some demons and devils included.  They’re a handy way of categorizing.” - [http://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/04/19 Excerpt] from [[Conviction 5.5]]</ref> - What demarcates between kinds of [[Demon]]s and [[Angel]]s.
* Imprecision - including nebulous others<ref>
- [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/05/14 Excerpt] from [[Wild Abandon 18.9]]</ref>
**[[Urban Legend]]s - [[Bugge]],<ref>“Mr. Rudbeck is a Fancy, an old version of a Bugge or Buggane, or an old version of an Urban Legend, though I despise how imprecise that particular term is. In an era before the printing press, certain ideas or glyphs would take hold, recur in the public consciousness, and find something to latch onto or manifest within. The recurring story or idea feeds the Fancy, and the Fancy can, on rare occasion, become crafty enough to perpetuate the story that feeds it. Mr. Rudbeck is one such Fancy, and attained a level of influence approaching that of a lesser divinity.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/27 Excerpt] from [[Cutting Class 6.1]]</ref>, [[Nex Machina]],<ref>[Nex Machina] tend to arise from or be linked to online urban legends or particular websites that have ceased to be managed. - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cwFiwUBPuDm4wV5THrv_dRfM7PuPHW6mCDxnPLvffV0/edit Beastiary: Nex Machina]</ref> of course an odd [[Bogeyman]] now and then.
**Imaginary Friends - can include [[Todd]]s, [[Bugge]] (again) [[Jockey]] and possibly other parasitic others.
*Pre-[[Seal of Solomon]]<ref name="yikes">“Don’t know, doesn’t exactly matter,” Milly replied.  “Basil would be better at explaining this.”<br><br>“Would I?” Basil asked.<br><br>“Labels, Others, old Others, constraints and confinement.”<br><br>“Ah.  Yeah.  Some say that we invent labels and constrain Others by those definitions and ideas tied to the label.  We categorize Fae and then Fae are obliged to act a certain way.  That because these categories exist, when a new Other comes around, they tend to go in a bucket.  Or mostly in a bucket.  Pretty relevant to what I do, because I deal with a lot of Others who are pretty nebulous up until they bucket themselves.”<br><br>“And then there’s things like the Beorgmann, who were around a long time before we had good labels,” Milly said.  “Could say it’s a bit Fae because it lures children away, a bit goblin because it’s wretched, a bit bogeyman because it’s scary.  Could say it’s divine, a godling thing that gets worship or feeds off the fact it’s the sole presence in the lives of the trapped children…”<br><br>“Pre-label,” Basil mused.  “From a time when goblin, spirit, ghost, and horror were interchangeable.”<br><br>“Like [[Primeval|Durocher’s things]]?” Avery asked.  “From the Blue Heron?  She calls out these monsters…”<br><br>“Those are pre-label and pre-language.  They take the same idea further back,” Milly replied. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/05/14 Excerpt] from [[Wild Abandon 18.9]]</ref>
**[[The Beorgmann]]
**[[Primeval]]s<ref name="yikes"/>
**Very Old Thing<ref>Say you're a practitioner in Europe. Your town is hundreds of years old, and it borders a bog. In that bog lives a Very Old Thing. It predates Solomon, it predates tidy labels, and it is nasty, predatory, and prone to kidnapping children to eat. It can't be killed and most conventional ways of binding it will see it throwing itself against the walls of its metaphorical cage until the people who set up the seal give up or people start to notice something's up. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/7xd9c0/_/du80qzl Wildbow on Reddit]</ref>
*Personal names<ref>“Yes.  I see it in the light that reflects in your eyes,” he said, shifting his posture, picking one hand up off the desk to sit upright, instead of leaning out to one side.  “You, who named yourself Lucille in your awakening, have clarified your name since.  That which was established in your awakening is violable, by your very name.  I could concede this point and leave you with a supplementary argument, but I’d be obliged to dismiss your name in ''all'' matters.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/06/28 Excerpt] from [[Crossed with Silver 19.10]]</ref> and nicknames<ref>“Some newcomers came in and dropped that into my open mouth while I was sleeping, before anyone could tell them the rules,” Toadswallow said.  “Did you know my given name isn’t even Toadswallow?”<br><br>“Huh?  I almost forgot,” Verona said.<br><br>“But nicknames can have power.  Including inspiring goblins to find toads to feed me when I’m not paying sufficient attention.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2023/02/14 Excerpt] from [[Go for the Throat 23.5]]</ref>
{{Reflist}}
[[Category:Basic Information]]