Hi there, my name is Mariah, but my username is the ever-corny . I've been on Wattpad for a while now (since 2016)- but I tend to fly under the radar. You may have read some stuff by me (any #enchiladaheads?), but I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't. Anyway, I'd like to send a big thanks to Kelly for hosting this block party- it's a lot of work. You go, girl!

Without further ado, here's a companion piece to my latest work in progress, Buzzfeed, Boys, Black Magic.

x

Mariah

We tried 4 Glam AF Ways to Gain Supernatural Control Over the Entire Universe (And One Worked).

YOU'RE NOT GONNA BELIEVE NUMBER 4

By Poppy Clarke

HAI HAI HAI you might not know this, but it's hard to be ~Buzzfeed~. Like there's only so many times we can repost "25 Twitter Jokes by Women You'll Cry-Laugh over If You Have a Vagina (Or Know Someone Who Does)." People start to complain.

WHY IS THERE NO ORIGINAL CONTENT ANYMORE? HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU HAVE TO SAY THE WORD VAGINA? YOU'RE TWENTY-EIGHT, POPPY, WHY DO YOU CARE SO MUCH ABOUT DISNEY PRINCESSES? THEY'RE NOT REAL, POPPY. MAGIC IS NOT REAL.

Well surprise basics, ~magic~ is totally real. And I have all the receipts. The Buzzfeed Biz Dev team and the Try Guys recently attempted 4 methods to gain incomprehensible power over the pliant masses take over the universe YAY!, and ermagerd fam, one method totally worked. Here's what we learned.

So, seems pretty intuitive. Find a sea witch, offer her a voice, acquire immense supernatural powers in return. Fair exchange of goods and services, right? WRONG. First off, it is like SO HARD to fina legit sea witch. You actually have to go to the ocean for that.

And lol, Eugene hates the sun (he's 100% a sexy vampire) so we literally had to drag his fiiiiiinne ivory ass to Venice Beach. Where the only Sea Witch we could find was an exotic dancer named Jorge. While we were able to sell Jorge Zach's voice (because fuck Zach), all Jorge could offer us in return was the ability to impregnate female porpoises with our eyes.

It's like, real magic, but I mean. Jorge's magic was just not strong enough for our intended ~porpoise~ LOL GET IT.

Side Note: there's totally a bumper crop of baby porpoises at the Los Angeles Zoo this year.

This was Ned's idea, so we knew it was gonna be whitebread AF. But we went along with it, because who can say no to Ned's chubby cheeks? Plus it was a ~perfect~ excuse to go to the park during work hours (Buzzfeed HAS ALL THE PERKs, be jealous, corporate peons with useful jobs).

Basically how the ritual worked is Ned wore a brown, coarse-linen robe, chanted ancient Celtic poetry or some shit, and fondled a tree. The rest of us got lunch from El Greco's Food Truck. Let me just tell you, whoever first combine Greek and Mexican food was a freaking ICON.

Uhm, no. But Ned got so many splinters we've been calling him Groot, so LOL. Worth it. Also the lunch humus was liiiitttttttt.

Eugene is basically Buzzfeed's Dr. Facilier. All sharp angles and sex appeal. And that's why we thought he was the perfect candidate to send to a Voodoo boot camp in New Orleans.

The boot camp's founder, "Mama" June Lalaurie, is a fierce QUEEN who downright slays. Lalaurie founded Normies who Conjure after experiencing discrimination in the New Orleans Voodoo community. Her boot camp's mission is to prove that ~anyone~ can learn to wield black magic in 45 days and acquire skills ~invaluable in today's economy~.

When Eugene came back to Los Angeles he was EXTRA woke. So woke that for like, three days, all he talked about was the discrimination Normies face in occultist circles. "I had no idea that it was so difficult for someone who isn't a neckbeard or legbeard to get into the dark arts," Eugene said to me over a charcoal ice cream cone. "The people in magic down there, they're uh, really weird."

Yes, but with caveats. Eugene agreed to try to give Zach back his voice. Eugene was able to get Zach a voice. Sailor Moon's voice (which is admittedly an improvement over his previous voice, amiright? Fuck ZACH).

Anyway, it turns out that voodoo boot camps can give you a strong handle on conjuring syntax and the basic skills that can get your foot in the black-magic-door. But if you want to land a high-paying development position, or take over the universe YAY!, you're going to need a stronger theoretical background than what a 45-day camp can give you- the kind of background you can only get from years of devoted study.

At this point we were getting pretty tired of trying all these methods and barely experiencing any kind of real magic. Also Buzzfeed Corporate was antsy for results (they actually threatened to throw one of us into a volcano lol). So we wondered, why not actually throw one of us into a volcano?

Keith studied Phoenician mythology at college (GO RED BIRDS). Legend had it that if you sacrificed a virgin to the god of death, Mot, six months prior to a solar eclipse, you would be able to harness great celestial power. Power so great you could, like, make EVERYBODY subscribe to your YouTube channel. And what should we discover was coming up in six months? That's right, a big dick solar eclipse, fam.

THE STARS WERE ALIGNING. So we told Zach we shelved the black magic project, and all of us took an end-of-year trip to Greece. The day before we scaled the Methana Volcano southwest of Athens, we had to fast in preparation for the ceremony (that's what our random 'Ramadan for a day in December' video was about, lol. Couldn't tell our virgin the real reason he couldn't eat anything).

When we reached the top of Methana, we encircled Zach, chanted some ancient Phoenician bullshit, and WOKE that crusty ol' volcano Moana-style. After we pushed Zach into the lava (FUCK ZACH), we had to close the ritual with the ceremonial spilling of our blood. Pro-tip, don't use a serrated blade to slice your palms. It's not worth it.

You read this garbage article, didn't you? You could have been learning a new skill, or having sex, or otherwise improving yourself. But you're here. You're always here. We know.

We know everything about you.

Don't believe me? Go try one of our quizzes. I dare you. We know who you are and who you will be. And we sell what we know to the advertisers.

The hand that uploads the memes, rules the world. YAS BUZZFEED YAS QUEEN. WE SPILLED THE TEA. So go forth, fam, and live your best lives. We'll be watching.