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zilabee · 3 years

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Robert Fraser

“When he was 8 years old, his mother was telephoned by the anxious headmaster asking her to come at once. Robert had somehow obtained a paperback of Willie Gallacher’s The Case for Communism, and was calling in such eloquent terms for the downfall of capitalism that he was having a profound effect on his fellow pupils. He had produced his own pamphlet, Communism v Capitalism, which contained such phrases as ‘The noose tightens round the capitalist’s neck’ and ‘Capitalists have nothing to offer but further security to the upper classes’. Mummy talked him out of it and he willingly surrendered his copy of Gallacher.”

“From the day it opened, the Robert Fraser Gallery had been a critical success, but there were always problems with money. [...] The big problem was that Robert rarely paid anyone, so he was always having to find new people to borrow stock from.”

Christopher Gibbs: “The thing one never remembers about Robert is that he was capable, on a fairly regular basis, of doing the most terrible things to you. Anything that was to do with money, you’d be screaming and biting your lip and rolling about on the floor and saying, “I’m never going to see this creep again!”, and then, three months later, you’d have completely forgotten the crime, which hadn’t been cleared up, it was still there. There was a litter of corpses all the way through one’s relationship with Robert. Quite amazing things he used to do. And he would look at you, if you asked him to pay, look at you very startled and outraged, you know.”

Brian Clarke: “There’s a lot of artists think that Robert was a crook. And I know better than a lot of people about this because Robert and I did more deals than any of his other artists ever did. And he always intended to pay, but sometimes he didn’t get around to it.”

Paul McCartney: “I’d lend him a bit of money here and there and he wouldn’t give it me back. He was a bit notorious with money, Robert.”

“Clarke recounts how in 1966 Fraser travelled to Newcastle, where Richard Hamilton was an art teacher, to persuade him to give up teaching and concentrate full-time on his painting. “Robert said, 'How much do you earn teaching?’ Richard told him. Robert wrote a cheque, and Richard said, 'That was the moment I became independent.’ It was a really pivotal moment for him. Unfortunately, the cheque bounced. But Richard never lost his devotion to Robert. He signed his letters to him 'Your devoted protégé’.”

“Many of his artists found it baffling to be in his presence but they were fascinated, too. Never has an art dealer been the subject of so many of his artist’s paintings. The gallery became a byword for glamour.”

Paul McCartney: “Once I got to know Robert, a nice thing would be going to the gallery and helping install an exhibition. Just sit around and smoke a bit of pot while somebody else was installing the exhibition. Helping. Play a little music for him.”

Christopher Gibbs: “Robert was a sort of catalyst figure to all those people. He netted them and it was fairly effortless. They were well ready to be netted and they thought it was great fun or sensed it was the hippest scene around and things would be revealed which were quite unfamiliar territory and very intriguing and all that, and I don’t think they were disappointed.”

Jim Dine: “He had a feeling for art and danger, and he was wonderful.”

Nigel Greenwood: “Robert did do parties, with quite a lot of drink, um, for those days... until I think he decided that drugs were much better so he did an opening and there was no drink at all. Everyone just had to snort or sniff or do whatever.”

“Fraser evinced a certain style. He lived on Mount Street in Mayfair, just a few hundred yards from his gallery, to which he would be chauffeured each day in a Rolls-Royce. His suits were by Huntsman, his shirts by Mr Fish. He kept a Moroccan manservant-cum-lover named Mohammed who would serve him mint tea as he lounged at home in a djellaba listening to American soul and Indian ragas.”

Brian Clarke: “I want to say he wasn’t self-destructive – but he was. But it was an artistic self-destructive nature. You just felt when you were with Robert, wherever it was, that you were in the right place. There weren’t any rules. There was a kind of a Lord Byron thing there. Or Lord Rochester.” Clarke thinks about this. “And the fact they’re both lords would have appealed to him.”

A spell in Wormwood Scrubs held few terrors for an Old Etonian. Dine would recall that Fraser told him how “he used to meet a Catholic boy in the chapel and they’d have some action there”.

Paul McCartney: “With Robert’s thing of course there would be gayness. But there was no open gayness, if there was to be gayness it would be a quiet phone call that Robert would go and take in the bedroom or something. That was one of the good things, actually, because I knew he was gay and he knew I wasn’t gay so we were quite safe in our own sexuality, we could talk to each other.”

“In 1969, at the age of 31, Fraser closed the gallery and took off for India, where he would spend the best part of the next five years. He took up yoga, lived with a dancer named Karma Dev, and talked about becoming a dancer himself.”

Paul McCartney on their final meeting: “I remember Linda kissing him, and this was the very early days of the AIDS epidemic and you didn’t know whether you ought to. But Linda kissed him and we said, “Okay, see you around.” He walked from Cecconi’s down Burlington Gardens to Cork Street, and we just went “Bye!” I knew he wouldn’t turn around to wave, and I got a feeling that might be the last time I’d see him.”

Brian Clarke: “Robert was really relieved, because Linda’s very open and it meant a lot to him that Linda felt close enough to him to say “What is this?” He said it so many times to me afterwards, Robert knew they loved him, and that was what was important, that his friends loved him. It supported and encouraged him at the end. Paul was incredibly kind to Robert. He bailed Robert out on many occasions and when he was ill they provided Robert with a car and a driver to get him around, wherever he needed to go. They were very very supportive of him indeed.”

Paul McCartney: “He eventually died at his mum’s place. The lovely thing was that he eventually went home to mummy; which for a public school boy was nice because he’d been separated from mummy aged six to go to prep school, then he went on to Eton. I thought that was good for him and Brian said, “He’s quite enjoying it, actually. He’s enjoying being spoiled.” [...] And then suddenly he was just gone.”

Most quotes from ‘Many Years From Now’ , others from this article, others from round and about, I lost track.

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fatehbaz · 3 years

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Scientists and naturalists in Britain and the US (holding prestigious positions with allegedly esteemed institutions or publications like Scientific American, MIT, American Naturalist, Kew Gardens, and elsewhere), especially from the Victorian era through the 1920s, were just like: “OK, time to describe women and non-white people as insects and carnivorous plants in hyper-sexualized ways that cast them as oddly-alluring threats to established hierarchies, colonialism, and Empire.”

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Carnivorous or insectivorous plants have long induced fascination [...]. There are many amateur botanical societies that focus upon them. The first living specimen of Dionaea muscipula Ellis ex L. came to the attention of the populace of London in 1768, an event that ‘caused a sensation throughout Europe’ [...]. Prior to this event, John Bartram had sent Patrick Collinson, a London botanical collector, several plant parts, after the specimen sent by Governor Dobbs of North Carolina had failed to arrive (Magee, 2007). Bartram used a popular name for D. muscipula, tipitiwitchet, a somewhat ribald Elizabethan term for vulva (McKinley postscript to Nelson, 1990). This connection between female sexuality and carnivorous plants continued into 19th century England and may have had something to do with their popularity and continued public fascination. [...] These ‘queer flowers’, as Grant Allen described insectivorous plants in 1884, reached a zenith of popular and artistic attention during the mid to late 19th century. Allen’s essay demonstrated the lure of the insectivorous plant as a floral femme fatale and in richly descriptive language described its ‘murderous propensities’ [...].

Source: Mark W. Chase; Maarten J.M. Christenhusz; Dawn Sanders; Michael F. Fay. “Murderous plants: Victorian Gothic, Darwin and modern insights into vegetable carnivory.” Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 161, Issue 4, December 2009.

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And while Gothic monsters can express a multitude of alienations, the particular anxieties evoked by botanical monstrosities at this time were tied to imperialism [...]. Like the corpse flower, perilous plants were closely associated with the tropics in the Victorian imagination. This was a deliberate manufacture: in 1874, the American Edmund Spencer (not to be confused with his more famous, earlier English namesake) presented as fact a fictional explorer’s encounter with an African tribe that offered human sacrifices to a man-eating tree. [...] Such plants therefore became part of the imperialist mythos about the bizarre and dangerous recesses of the so-called primitive parts of the world, there to test the mettle of white explorers. [...] An entire genre of imperial gothic literature evolved to deal with the perils of foreign elements invading English bodies and English lands, as the colonizers had themselves inflicted on distant countries. Either out of provocation or opportunism, the once safely remote monsters of the colonized world retrace the explorers’ steps back to the metropole. Such monsters range from Kipling’s heathen curses to Haggard’s sorcerous queens, but also includes potential ecological threats such as H. G. Wells’s “The Empire of the Ants” (1905), in which organized, aggressive ants establish themselves as potential rivals to Britain’s global dominion.

Source: Zoe Chadwick. “Perilous plants, botanical monsters, and (reverse) imperialism in fin-de-siecle literature.” In The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduates. October 2017.

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[Extreme content warning for this one: child abuse.]

A comparison of the personiﬁed “European” ﬂowers with those from the other continents in The Temple of Flora reveals some of the Orientalist, racial, and gendered conventions that connected plants to colonial experiences or aspirations. In The Temple of Flora, Thornton deploys images and texts based on both the iconography of the Four Continents and the Linnaean sexual system to emphasize the productive yet dangerous sexuality of Europe’s others. These personiﬁed images of plant life embody British attitudes toward colonized people and resources, and the tenuous boundaries between personiﬁed plants and objectiﬁed humans become blurry. [...] Dr. George Shaw (1751-1813), the keeper of the natural history section of the British Museum from 1807 to 1813, personiﬁes this plant [stapelia] for Thornton in a commissioned poem, describing the stapelia either as a “hag” with a “gorgon shape, rough arms, and scowling eyes,” a “dire enchantress” who casts “horrid spells” in her “magic rites,” or a cannibalistic, bloodthirsty “mother” who bears maggots and lures poisonous animals like toads and snakes close to her and eats them […]. The cannibalistic female allegories of America ﬁnd their counterparts in Thornton’s ﬂesh-eating American plants. For male botanists in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, the venus ﬂytrap deﬁed classiﬁcation as a specimen on the boundaries between animal and plant. Naturalists such as John and William Bartram, Benjamin Rush, Peter Collinson, and others attributed humanlike passions and sensitivities to the plant […]. The object of peculiar fascination, of both scientiﬁc curiosity and eroticism, the venus ﬂytrap was named in Latin after the goddess of love and was later commonly referred to by the salacious nickname “tipi-tiwitchet” or “twitching fur stole.” Botanist Peter Collinson (1694-1768) exclaimed that he was “ready to Burst with Desire for Root, Seed, or Specimen of the Wagish Tipitiwitchet Sensitive.” He hoped to obtain one from the botanist and North Carolina governor Arthur Dobbs (1689 -- 1765) but lamented that it would probably not be possible because the seventy-three-year-old man had already married a fifteen-year-old bride, whom Collinson referred to as a “Tipitiwitchet,” for him to “play with.”

Source: Miranda Mollendorf. “Allegories of Alterity: Flora’s Children as the Four Continents.” In: The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century. 2016.

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“The transformation of cleaning from a matter of dilettantish dusting to a sanitary crusade against ‘dangerous enemies within,’” in Ehrenreich and English’s words, placed women ideologically (though never materially) at the center of a new discourse of national health oriented around the home as an ecological space. This scalar revisioning of the domestic – what Jennifer Fleissner calls the dis/course of the “the great indoors” – proved a kind of mirror image of the Rooseveltian Wild West, with women at the front lines of a new frontier harboring both danger and the promise of revitalization. “Our enemies are no longer Indians and wild animals,” writes Ellen Swallow Richards, MIT’s first female professor and founder of the American domestic science movement, “[t]hose were the days of big things. Today is the day of the infinitely little. To see our cruelest enemies, we must use the microscope.” [...] During the latter half of the nineteenth century, developments in the fields of public health and domestic science transformed the modern home into a space of dangerous multispecies entanglements. In response, state-sponsored hygiene initiatives aimed at the reproduction of white futurity recruited housekeepers as domestic guardians against nature's encroachments. [...] By the turn of the century, the highest level of insect research in the country, the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Entomology, had fully absorbed the emergent cultural discourses around women’s newfound proximity to their domestic co-inhabitants. A widely circulated public memo titled “The House Centipede” written by Bureau Chief Charles Marlatt, begins with the assertion that “the house centipede, particularly within the last 20 or 25 years, has become altogether too common an object in dwelling houses in the Middle and Northern States for the peace of mind of the inmates.” It may often be seen darting across floors with very great speed, occasionally stopping suddenly and remaining absolutely motionless, presently to resume its rapid movements, often darting directly at inmates of the house, particularly women, evidently with a desire to conceal itself beneath their dresses, and thus creating much consternation. Posing as a practical, informative tract “of interest to housewives throughout the United States,” the memo in fact deploys a complex rhetorical vocabulary that figures housekeeping as kind of psychosexual drama between woman and insect, the stakes of which are nothing less than the security of both home and nation. “The house centipede is a Southern species,” the memo notes, “its normal habitat being in the southern tier of States and southwestward through Texas into Mexico.” [...] To be sure, the Bureau’s memo fits neatly into a familiar [...] historicist narrative whereby domestic discourse – understood as a kind of “soft” or “maternal” power – works toward the consolidation of American empire and the reification of sexual difference. From this perspective, the document’s recourse to the logic of [...] the unreciprocated love of centipedes for women [...] can be said to link what Kyla Schuller calls the “biopolitics of feeling” with what Amy Kaplan theorizes as “manifest domesticity,” such that the (white) woman’s heightened capacity to be affected by her environmental milieu consolidates her authority “to police domestic boundaries against the threat of foreignness both within and without.”

Source: David Hollingshead. “Women, insects, modernity: American domestic ecologies in the late nineteenth century.” Feminist Modernist Studies. August 2020.

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Considering the broader selection of newspaper hoaxes alongside the dozens of botanical fictions that appeared around the same time, one will also notice certain repetitive themes and settings accompanying the Darwinian unease. For one, we can observe the pronounced influence of the so-called “orchid fever” that still gripped Europe in the later 19th century, a time when orchid hunting in exotic locations had become a pastime for the more adventurous gentlemen of means, and, in fiction, the most common excuse to write a tale of a monster plant. ]...] In fact, in America during the late 1920s and early 1930s, we see another surge in the popularity of monstrous plant narratives, precisely around the time that the evolution controversy had come to a head during the national media sensation that was the Scopes Monkey Trial. This was also the dawning of speculative fiction’s pulp era [...]. The monster plant narratives of the pulps no doubt inherited this tension from their turn-of-the-century forebears, a simultaneous recognition that these animal-like monsters must be somehow natural, like the real carnivorous plants so carefully anatomized by Darwin, and that their very existence also threatens to destroy distinctions between the animal and plant kingdoms – as well as the hierarchy that those distinctions support.

Source: T.S. Miller. “Lives of the Monster Plants: The Revenge of the Vegetable in the Age of Animal Studies.”

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Imperial dis/course constructed India as a land of white ants, held India and its inhabitants responsible for the white ant problem, and reinforced the civilizing rhetoric of imperial ideologues by defining white ants as a hallmark of the lack of civilization. [...] Insects were ubiquitous and fundamental to the shaping of British colonial power. British rule in India was vulnerable to white ants because these insects consumed paper and wood, the key material foundations of the colonial state. The white ant problem also made the colonial state more resilient and intrusive. The sphere of strict governmental intervention was extended to include both animate and inanimate non-humans, while these insects were invoked as symbols to characterize colonized landscapes, peoples, and cultures. [...] Contemporary writers in the imperial age, many of them British, appropriated the question of white ants to assert civilizational differences. [...] An article published in the Scientific American in 1891 entitled ‘White ants in India’ implied that in consuming white ants, ‘the Africans’ shared the eating preferences of lizards, toads, and birds’. [...] Before he acquired his notoriety as the pioneer of eugenics, Francis Galton had written a travellers’ manual, first published in 1855, in which he argued that natives of ‘wild countries’ (as distinct from ‘civilised and partly civilised nations’) dug holes ‘in the sides of’ white ants’ nests and used them as ovens for the purposes of cooking. These writers believed that unlike what was to be expected in contemporary ‘civilised England’, white ants were integrated within various social practices [...] of West Africa, in the so-called wild countries and in ‘the east’. An article in the American Naturalist in 1876 argued that advancement of ‘culture’ was antithetical to the proliferation of white ants. It claimed that in Africa and India, ‘where a century ago massive ant-hills were to be found near the shore, now some days’ journey inland have to be made to find them’. This period, according to the article, coincided with the ‘step by step…retreat of white ants…in front of a rapidly advancing culture’, when ‘mankind’ took control over white ants, forcing this representative of ‘nature (to) step behind’. Therefore, the hundred-year period that marked among other developments the advent of colonial rule in Africa and India, this article implied, went hand in hand with ‘the advance of culture’ and the ‘retreat of white ants’. Meanwhile, in India, white ants were described by British naturalists like EHA as ‘the foe of civilization … the Goths … of Indian life’.

Source: Rohan Deb Roy. “White ants, empire, and entomo-politics in South Asia.” Cambridge University Press. 2 October 2019.

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an-apocalypse-of-magpies · 3 years

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On the world of Mortal Engines, class, and the metaphors of consumption

This is less an essay and more a collection of thoughts. Basically I just saw a video on the Mortal Engines film and its being a civilisation too stupid to exist. I got fed up, mainly because so many of the criticisms amounted to ‘the book did it better’ with little elaboration but also the arrogantly grating voice of the presenter got on my nerves, but I cannot deny the points made and in fact wanted to elaborate further on the worldbuilding of this series and, while unrealistic, look at why the books were so engaging.

Some background to start off - Mortal Engines is a four-book series (and three-book prequel sub-series) written by English author Phillip Reeve, and depicts a bleak post-apocalyptic world. North America is uninhabitable and lost to the sands of time, irradiated, poisoned, and flattened by war. Eurasia is mostly barren plains. And, of course, the central premise - towns and cities have raised themselves onto mobile platforms and trundle about. Well, mostly. A major antagonist to this system is the Anti-Traction League, a collective of nations hiding out in old east China, the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia and some of Africa. They are seen as barbarians and heathens by much of the world for refusing to mobilise, instead hiding in stationary citadels behind their mountains. The Traction Cities near-universally engage in a philosophy of Municipal Darwinism, a savage system of bastardised pseudo-biology where cities literally predate each other and ‘consume’ each other for resources. Cities eat towns, towns eat smaller towns. Some towns and cities deliberately adapt to cheat the system and make themselves a less appetising target, or for that matter a more aggressive and efficient hunter.

THE TRACTION CITIES

The first three books tend to focus their action on one or two cities, whereas the last is a bit more of a road trip. The other consistent thread is multiple characters’ stories running concurrently, usually reconnecting near the end. This allows the books maintain an open, almost global scale - you’ll nearly never not be moving, even sitting still on a city, which reinforces the theme of unnatural life. The first book focuses on London, which has been sulking in what was once Britain (by sheer happenstance on their part and pure irony on ours), and is suddenly running at full pelt back into Europe and eastward as fast as her engines can carry her. Why? London’s not the biggest city around, and the vast expanse of Eurasia is now the Great Hunting Ground - it’s where the big boys play, and by play I mean ‘savagely predate each other’. It’s dangerous territory for a little city. But over the first book, it becomes increasingly apparent that Traction Cities are increasingly non-viable option for existence. Fuel is scarce, prey moreso, and what morsels London can confidently snap up will not sustain it for long. There is an ecosystem at play here - static settlements can farm resources, but are universally seen as food, either by small bandit settlements to raid for supplies or for larger towns to just straight-up eat. Small towns too small to hunt tend to be miners or gatherers, either mining minerals to use or trade, or gathering resources like wood from natural deposits or sifting through the waste heaps left by bigger cities. Most cities bigger than that are ‘urbivores’, or hunter towns, that hunt and eat smaller prey or opportunistically scavenge the ‘carcasses’ of dead cities. I mentioned specialisation earlier, and like in nature, species and cities can occupy a niche that gives them an advantage and thus increased chance at survival. Airhaven, for example, is a politically-neutral city in the air that floats around Eurasia seasonally and serves as a rest stop, fuelling station and trading exchange for airship pilots the world over, Tractionist or no. Tunbridge Wheels is a pirate-run town that has a lightweight wooden chassis and flotation devices to hunt amphibiously in a world where many small towns escape threat by setting up on islands. Panzerstadt-Bayreuth is a conurbation of four massive cities, too big to survive long without prey, they banded together to take down the biggest of prey (it’s unclear whether they achieve this through sheer size or whether they decouple and become a pack hunter). Anchorage, the last American city, neutered its own jaws to increase mobility, skating around the frozen north too fast for threats to catch up with, and survives on trade. Brighton is a pleasure city that paddles around the warm Mediterranean, technically still a predator but with no real agenda and about the only city left that can be called a tourist city (it’s run on the back of brutal slave labour). And these are just the major ones. Throughout the books, cities are treated like living things ... like mortal engines.

And like living things, they need resources to survive.

A DYING WAY OF LIFE

The books are inconsistent on the origins of Traction Cities, as it turns out deliberately - history is written by the winners, after all. But it’s all closely tied to the ‘apocalypse’ part of the post-apocalytic I mentioned earlier. Long ago in-universe, long into our future, was a terrible event known as the Sixty Minute War. This war tore the world asunder with nuclear and quantum energy weaponry. America, the epicentre, is simply no more (it turns out there are some fertile areas in Nova Scotia, but for the most part America is dead). Entire new mountain ranges were born, notably the Tannhäusers in East Asia that shield the heartland of the Anti-Traction League. There was a long period of geological and tectonic instability. According to legend, Traction Cities arose to escape these instabilities. In other words, like animals will flee a volcanic eruption, cities first became mobile to escape and survive. Trade was likely facilitated by towns literally being able to park next to each other. Ironically, London was also where everything changed. After Nikola Quercus conquered (static) London with his mobile fortresses, he decided to upgrade and raise London onto wheels to become the first fully-mobile city. And he did it for war. After all, there’s no better comeback to ‘you and what army’ then literally rolling up with your entire city. By the series present, the idea had caught on and grown into the ideology described above. But herein lies the problem. Early Traction London was a tiny little thing. Now it’s not even the biggest fish in the pond, but it’s still HUGE. And, as we all know, big things need lots of energy to go. London is described as having a top speed of about sixty miles per hour at the height of a hunt. So, you need fuel. There is still oil in this world, mainly because they now have no qualms about mining Antarctica, but if you think there’s nearly enough crude oil to run a world full of cities like London you are sorely mistaken. Wood’s not much better off. And, of course, Traction Cities tend to run on some form of internal combustion engine - it’s only at the very end of the traction era that science has advanced enough for a town to experiment with magnetic levitation. So what do they burn? Well, bits of other prey towns. Do you see the problem? Use fuel to hunt towns, burn those towns for fuel. What next? And it’s not just fuel. London captures a little salt-mining town called Salthook at the beginning of the first book to introduce us to the concepts at play, and we see what goes on in the Dismantling Yards - part of a system literally called the Gut, in case the metaphor wasn’t clear yet. Everything is recycled. Bricks, mortar, steel, wood, everything. Because the state of technology is so weird in this world, Old-Tech (technology from before the SMW) can be incredibly valuable to history and/or science, and London is keen to snaffle that up too. The people are interred into refugee camps, though if you know anything about how real-life Britain treats refugees you can probably see where that is going. And it’s not enough. It’s never enough. Food is an even more pressing concern. Unless you’re very rich (more on that in a mo), food is mostly algae-based, then hardy vegetables that grow quickly like cabbage. And it’s running out fast. And London’s a big city with a lot of resources at its disposal. Most cities don’t even have that. A lot of cities are starving on the wheels, city and populace alike. A lot of cities run on slave labour, and feed those slaves as little as they can get away with. Shan Guo, home of the Anti-Traction League, is a green and vibrant land only because it doesn’t have cities running over or eating its farmlands every other day (and, again, city folk generally don’t know this - they’re given endless propaganda that Anti-Tractionists are barbarian warbands a la Mad Max). A lot of the A story is told from the point of view of Tom Natsworthy, who until the events of the book had never left London. He’s never seen bare earth or walked on mud before. He’s never seen a horse. The idea that you can survive, much less thrive, outside of a Traction City is alien to him. But on the city he came from, everything is rapidly running out, and some cities are turning to desperate measures to survive, including Arkangel openly bribing pilots to sell out the locations and courses of nearby cities. A chilling scene in the first book even has Tom see, from the safety of the air, the corpse of Motoropolis, a city not unlike London that literally just starved to death, running out of fuel and helpless as the scavengers closed in. It’s been weeks since the city stopped, and the narrative description evokes the grotesqueness and sadness of a whale carcass. Sheer Jingoism is about the only thing keeping Municipal Darwinism alive - Traction good, stationary bad.

CLASS, CLASSISM, AND OTHER SOCIAL OPPRESSIONS

In a world so starved as this, compassion is hard to come by. Cities still exist mainly by virtue of rigid social stratification, and often that stratification is literal - most medium-to-large cities have tiers, and will generally arrange those tiers based on social class. London, for example, has seven tiers. The bottom two tiers are dominated by the Gut, the engines, and homes and communities of the workers who keep them running. Tiers 4 and 3 are miscellaneous proles of increasing social standing. Tier 2 is mostly what I’d call ‘tourist London’ - lots of the nice bits and the establishments that London likes to be proud of. Because of his work at the London Museum, this is the quality of life Tom Natsworthy was most used to. Tier 1 is High London, where all the rich live and have their amenities and nice parks (and even that doesn’t last - London’s food shortage means even the High London parks are eventually, begrudgingly, turned over for food production). Katherine Valentine, the hero of the first book’s B plot, lives here. Finally there’s Top Tier, which is purely administrative. The only buildings are the Guildhall (the seat of government), St Paul’s Cathedral (which the Engineers’ Guild have secretly been installing a deadly superweapon in under the guise of ‘restoration’ work) and the headquarters of the Guild of Engineers, the most powerful of London’s Guilds. Social stratification is nearly non-existant, and people are shown to get very uncomfortable when out of ‘their space’. Tom is sent to work in the Gut during the capture of Salthook as a punishment before the plot ejects him from London, and he notes being actively intimidated by the claustrophobia, the dirt, the rough and burly labourers, and the noise. But despite Tom’s relatively privileged life - he lives near High London, above the heat and noise and smoke of the engines, in the care of one of the top four Guilds of London - he is of very low social status. Tom Natsworthy is an orphan; his parents were Historians, but were killed when an accident occurred and part of Tier 3 collapsed, crushing anything on Tier 4 beneath. Even before that, the Natsworthys were middle class at best, but being orphaned meant being left to the care of an orphanage run by the Guild of his parents, the Historians. The Historians were Tom’s only source of education, and eventually they would employ him, but with no parents or money, Tom can only afford a Third-Class apprenticeship. He has no upwards mobility within the Guild, and with no money he can’t leave and train with another. His dream of being a pilot trader, or better yet adventurer, will never come true under normal circumstances. The rich live in a completely different world yet. Katherine Valentine, daughter of the Head Historian and the Lord Mayor’s ‘right-hand man’ Thaddeus Valentine, has a positively bougie lifestyle with not a care in the world. Ironically, though, it is through Katherine’s eyes that the horrors of London’s class system are revealed. Trying to find information about her father’s would-be killer, Katherine finds herself regularly travelling to the Gut, eventually befriending an apprentice Engineer who witnessed the attack. But in the Gut, life is very different. It’s not just a life of hard labour and smoke - petty criminals and the aforementioned ‘refugees’ are tasked with working dangerous and sickening jobs like managing the city’s sewage. And by that, I mean ‘harvesting literal faeces to be converted into food and fuel’. The foreman overseeing their work admits they feed such criminals nothing else. And he has the gall to be annoyed that they keep dying of diseases like cholera and typhoid! These people are denied medical care, denied treatment, denied even basic food other than being told to literally eat sh*t. And when they inevitably die? They get sent to the Engineerium to be turned into robotic zombies that can never get sick, tired or unhappy. And, eventually, they’ll be put right back to work. The crimes these criminals did to deserve this, remember, include petty theft, criticising the Lord Mayor, and living aboard a town that got eaten. The foreman literally cannot fathom why Katherine would care about these people’s wellbeing - after all, they’re just criminals. The Engineerium’s end goal in all this is, again, to staff the entire lower tiers with robot zombie workers who will never grow tired, get sick, complain or protest their lot in life, and will never disobey orders, and just enough human overseers to keep things running smoothly ... because that’s what these people are worth to London, cheap, unending labour. Katherine can’t even bring herself to tell her high-class peers about what she learned down there, because it’s such a different world that they would never empathise, much less care. Again, slave labour is common in this world, especially child slavery - Brighton runs on it to maintain its image as a floating Caligula’s Palace, and in Arkangel slavery is so normal that we watch a rich man beat a slave nearly to death for the crime of bumping into him. In the second book, we see the logical end-point of this. Anchorage’s social structure has completely fallen apart due to a plague in recent years that turned to once-proud ice city into a ghost town manned only by a skeleton crew. The margravine, Freya, is only 14, but with her parents dead, she finds herself in charge of the whole city. She has no household staff, apart from Smew, who finds himself constantly juggling outfits to adopts the roles of steward, chamberlain and so on. His official role before the plague was ... erm ... the Dwarf. He was there in a manner similar to a court jester, for the amusement of the margrave due to being a little person. But the head navigator is just ... the woman who kept the maps. The head engineer is going half-mad, seeing his dead son staring at him from the shadows, and the only reason the town’s still going is because his systems are the best on the ice and can mostly run on automatic. They have no doctor. The only other people of consequence in Anchorage are the Aakiuqs, the Inuit couple who run the air-harbour. The common workers of Anchorage number in the mere dozens. And yet, because they’re so fixated on their traditions, nobody will drop the formalities and just admits that they’re trying to uphold a class system that doesn’t work anymore. No, that’s not quite right - everybody realises it’s pointless to maintain the artifice of Anchorage’s social heirarchy, but nobody wants to be the first one to say it out loud. Much like Municipal Darwinism, nobody want to address the elephant in the room, that the system is broken and that people hold onto it because it��s comfortable in the face of uncertainty. Only in Anchorage’s darkest hour, when everything has been turned upside down and the conquerors are on their doorsteps, do the agree to drop the formalities, drop the artifice of class, and address each other as people, say what they think, and work to save what they have left. And of course, there’s the racism in the world. Life on mobile cities has made cultures smaller and more insular, considering we mainly see this series from the point of view of culturally-English towns. Throughout the first book there is a clear west vs east divide - the Traction Cities are generally English-speaking or multicultural enough that English will get you by. The Anti-Tractionist League, meanwhile, are south or east Asian, or else African, and are commonly understood to be ‘those brown people’. The only ethnically white Anti-Tractionists are from ‘Spitzbergen’ (likely Scandinavia/Finland and northwest Russia) and Hester Shaw’s family, and the latter lived on a town that floated out to an island and gave up running from predators forever. The way Tom reacts to this attitude calls to mind the way racists might refer to ‘race traitors’. There’s even an in-universe slur for people who live in static settlements; ‘Mossies’, because ‘a rolling town gathers no moss’. However, when Tom is taken to Shan Guo itself, he realises that all the propaganda he’d been fed his whole like is exactly that - propaganda. Shan Guo is described as beautiful - an endless patchwork of rolling fields and farms, colourful, bright, vibrant, heaving with life and energy. The Anti-Tractionists aren’t vicious savages, they’re just ... people. Tom can’t understand it at first. He wonders how people can live without the hum of engines or the vibrations of deckplates - he subconsciously equates city life with, well, life, and the absence of that makes him uneasy. But he can also see this culture before him, thousands of years old, outlasting even the end of the world, and he realises there is another way. The next time he sees London, he sees it from outside, from the side of the hunted, and he realises it’s not beautiful or efficient, just dirty, and huge, wrapped in its own waste smoke and driven only by destruction. For the rest of the series, even with the rise of the radicalised Green Storm (Anti-Tractionists Lv2), large Traction Cities are consistently the enemy. Tractionism as a culture is understood to only represent imperialism, destruction, and consumption, literally and figuratively.

SCIENCES SANS FRONTIERES

It should be noted that science and technology are not universally reviled by the series. As a dieselpunk series, a certain degree of technology is fundamental to the series existence. But this is a very different world than the one we know. On the one hand, engines exist that can drive entire cities. On the other, computers basically do not exist. The rare few that still exist are not in working condition, and nobody knows how to restore them. Heavier-than-aircraft don’t really exist - the third book introduces some, but they’re small, experimental ... barely more than short-range toys designed for flashy air shows but not real travel. The main form of personal locomotion in this world is by airship, and this world’s airships are far beyond anything we’ve made in our time. But lost technologies are heavily associated with the hubris and destructiveness of the Ancients. Until now. Like I said, the most powerful Guild in London is the Engineers’ Guild. And they got that way under the leadership of now-Lord Mayor Magnus Crome. It should be noted that Crome genuinely loves his city and wants it to survive no matter the cost. But under Crome, the Engineers began to dabble in sciences considered unethical to downright taboo. Most notable is the MEDUSA Project. Through Thaddeus Valentine, London came into possession of an energy weapon from the SMW ... and, more importantly, the working computer that runs the thing. In terms of Darwinist Evolution, this is like giving a monkey a gun and teaching it how to use it. MEDUSA exhibits a level of power no other force on Earth can match, and London is forced to deploy it early in a crisis. Originally, the plan was to march up to Batmunkh Gompa, the Shield-Wall that represents the only break in the mountains around Shan Guo big enough to permit a city, and blast it to cinders. Unfortunately, London attracts the attention of a bigger, hungrier city about halfway there, and is forced to fire MEDUSA at it to save its own skin. The sheer terror of what that weapon represents is revealed then. Panzerstadt-Bayreuth was the fusion of four massive cities, each one bigger and more powerful than London. MEDUSA killed it dead in one stroke - the energy beam set the entire city ablaze and ignited its fuel stores. Her engines nearly immediately exploded. When the fires go down enough for an Engineer scout ship to investigate, the people had been almost flashed into glass. The flash of light from the attack is so bright that, hundreds of miles to the south, Tom and Hester see the sky light up like a new dawn. The people of London are relieved, of course, that they didn’t all die that night, but more than that the entire city become suffused with the excitement of just how easy it would be to kill ... well, anyone they like, really. London doesn’t even stop to devour Panzerstadt-Bayreuth, as the Engineers can’t afford for the Shield-Wall to prepare for their arrival. Appropriately, and karmically, the finale has an accident lock down the computer lock down, with MEDUSA unable to fire but unable to stop gathering energy, and London melts under the heat of MEDUSA’s glare. But that wasn’t the only scientific sin committed by London’s engineers. I’ve already mentioned London trying to repurpose faeces as food, but we need to talk more about the Stalkers. Stalkers are kinda like discount Cybermen from Doctor Who - dead bodies, threaded with weird old machines and coated in armour, their brains hooked up to simple computers. Originally conceived as soldiers, they were believed long dead. However, one survived to the modern by sheer survivor instinct - Shrike. Through negotiations that are not the purview of this essay, he allowed the Engineers of London to take him apart and figure out how he worked, and hoo boy they did. The Engineers figured out how to manufacture their own Stalkers. The first batch are used as law enforcement like the Worst Robocops, but, again, the plan was to have Stalker workers all over Low London. Katherine, learning this, likens it to London ‘being a city of the dead’ (Apprentice Engineer Pod, to whom she is talking, grimly notes that the Deep Gut Prison is so awful, so callous with human life, that it already feels like that). Logically, the end-point of this idea is to have all workers in London be the resurrected dead, with just enough living to keep things in order ... oh, and they’d all be loyal to the Engineers, because remember, no Freedom of Speech here, and you can be sent to do the worst form of prison labour for dissenting against the Lord Mayor. With Crome being both Lord Mayor and Head Engineer at once, the Engineers’ creed is as good as law - traditionally, London Lord Mayors forsook their former Guild allegiances to show their representation of all of London, and Crome’s refusal to do that caused a bit of a stir. The Engineers are also keen to arm their security teams with some form of energy pistols, despite guns being outlawed in London and the police are only allowed crossbows. Crome’s rationale is the same as every two-bit mad scientist villain, of course - that science should not be held back by moral restrictions, and that progress for progress’ sake is essential for London’s survival. Really, it’s the Engineer’s survival, as they’re rather loathe to share these advancements except to exert power on those around. London isn’t the only example of technology being used to leverage control and benefit the ruling classes. Grimsby is a sunken wreck of a city somewhere in the north Atlantic, yet due to a complex series of airlocks the interior of the city is a secret hideaway of the Lost Boys, a society of children stolen from aquatic towns and trained to be thieves under the watchful eye of the mysterious Uncle. They will then take submarine walkers, attach to passing towns, steal whatever tools, fuel, food and riches they can carry, and vanish back into the depths. Uncle, naturally, takes the lion’s share of the haul. But Uncle maintains his power by careful access to technology, only letting the Boys have what they need and juggling the power structure by choosing team leaders, and punishing insubordination harshly and publicly. Uncle sees and hears everything in Grimsby with his surveillance network, and can address any give Boy in a heartbeat, training the Boys to never expect privacy from him, so that when he demands a progress update from a mission, they never question him. He rewards Boys who do well on burglaries, but more importantly than that, he chooses team leaders according to apparently inscrutable whims. The Boys believe it’s a mark of favour from Uncle, and thus social status, to be trusted with the limpet command and all the tech that comes with. Really, Uncle carefully give command to people he can trust to remain loyal to him, even if that means passing over a more talented Boy who might get a bit uppity. Even in a more mundane way, higher status in the Lost Boys means you can move closer to the heart of Grimsby, where you’re less likely to wake up and find your bedroom wasn’t as watertight as you thought and flooded in the night. Uncle, naturally, doesn’t care if a few Boys drown, so long as he doesn’t lose anything useful. Technology, and in particular access to unusual technology, is the dimension on which power is really decided.

THE END OF AN ERA

We’ve already established that this world is not a sustainable one. There are only so many cities. The inherent entropy of Municipal Darwinism is really showing. Once upon a time, big cities could ‘reproduce’, creating little satellite towns that could grow and become independent - even London had some - but those are no more. In a greedy desperation to keep moving, the predators are not reproducing, and static settlements can’t spread and grow fast enough to count there. The attack of London, and MEDUSA, turned staunch opposition into outright war, with the Green Storm being willing to doublethink their way into using the weapons of the Traction Cities in their fight to stop the Traction Cities, even recruiting ex-London Engineers to make weapons and stalkers for them, and eventually even seeking out another ancient superweapon - an orbital laser called ODIN - without a hint of irony. The Green Storm eventually face internal resistance, from Anti-Tractionists who disagree with the outright terrorism angle, and eventually crumbles. The last great Traction Cities stop. The last mobile city is New London, no longer a hunter but a trade platform, and even that probably stopped hovering about at some point. The ending is told by the great survivor, Shrike, who has cheated Death again and again, who outlived Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw, Valentine, Magnus Crome, and a thousand other heroes and villains. When he awakes, long in the future, Traction Cities are not even ancient history. They’re a dream, a fantasy, too incredible to be true. But Shrike remembers, and he teaches people the story of London and Anchorage, Arkangel and Airhaven, Brighton and Harrowbarrow. Did they learn the right message from Shrike’s story? Did they learn that ruthless imperialism is like hunting faster than the food can come back, and that you will starve before you have everything you ever wanted? Did they learn that hoarding resources, gatekeeping knowledge, will lead to ruin? Did they learn, or will the repeat the same mistakes of the greed and gluttony of the Traction Era? Well, who knows.

#mortal engines #wow that was a ramble and a half

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notjanine · 3 years

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2020 in books!

the only kind of new year’s resolution i made as a naive baby last january was to try to read 40 books for the year. (i read 37 in 2019, for context.) well, with all of my commuting time eliminated and an increased need for immersive escapism, i ended up surpassing that goal three times over lmao (thanks library ebooks!)

idk how to summarize my year in books in a way that makes sense but

(f) = fiction, (nf) = nonfiction, (p) = poetry.

books that rewired my fucking brain:

braiding sweetgrass by robin wall kimmerer (nf)- GOD?!?!?! good. dr. k is right. ostensibly a book about plants, but actually a book about shut up and go outside. consumerism and capitalism are doing their damnedest to fuck you up, but you can just choose to value different things. take care of yourself by taking care of your environment. etc etc.

wasp by richard jones (nf)- lissen. when i got this book, my wasp-phobia was so severe that i had to put it away face down on a high shelf because there are wasps on the cover and i couldn’t bear to RISK even GLIMPSING them. now i am like... a wasp evangelist. (also due to the bugs 101 course on coursera it’s so good.)

wag by zazie todd (nf)- i have a dog, but i am NOT a Dog Person (i.e. i love my dog, but please keep yours away from me, thanks.) this book helped me understand my little guy better, plus it gives actionable tasks and activities to do with and for your pup! plus, y’know, learning about things you’re scared of helps to lessen that fear. i’d recommend this to anyone who has, wants, or regularly interacts with a dog.

a closed and common orbit by becky chambers (f)- is this series complete fluff? absolutely. am i fundamentally different after reading this one? maybe.

the best we could do by thi bui (nf)- this is so far outside of my personal experience but somehow still made me come to peace with my relationship with my mom?? and it’s barely even about that?? idk. this is probably objectively the best book i’ve read this year.

books that were just fun as hell:

mexican gothic by silvia moreno-garcia (f)- this book made me YELL out loud

death on the nile by agatha christie (f)- i grew up on agatha christie shows, but never actually read her before this year! she really was That Bitch. read this before the movie comes out

cosmoknights by hannah templer (f)- i read this in one sitting through the worst headache i’ve had in years. it is a goddamn DELIGHT. this book has everything: spaceships. mech suits. fighting the patriarchy. a perfect otp. fun art in bright colors with clean lines. onomatopoetic WAPs from before the song gave that hilarious context. 800 lesbians. this is an antidepressant in graphic novel form.

stiff by mary roach (nf)- ms. roach is like the 4th most represented author on my bookshelf because she 1. stays writing about shit i’m interested in and 2. manages to talk about gross and ridiculous things without resorting to sensationalism. it takes skill to write a hilarious book about corpses.

black sun by rebecca roanhorse (f)- excellent sexual tension between a horny siren pirate and a hot doomed... monk, kinda? set in the pre-columbian gulf of mexico with magic and shit.

cuisine chinoise by zao dao (? n/f)- this graphic novel about chinese food history/mythology is BEAUTIFUL.

the color of magic by terry pratchett (f)- you’d think a hardcore douglas adams stan would have gotten to this sooner, but no, i had to date a nerdy white boy to get here. it’s fun though! i’m not gonna read them all, but this one was good. bonus: contains one (1) great himbo.

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir (f)- like 500 pages of action and mystery and jokes and space necromancy. harrow the ninth gets a special mention bc it has a meme reference that took me out so hard i had to close the book, lie down, and groan for an entire minute before continuing.

other minds by peter godfrey-smith (nf)- i love octopuses. on one tma bonus ep, jonny sims says that if a creature can choose to do evil, then it’s a Person. octopuses are People. but anyway frfr this has an explanation of the evolution of consciousness that is cool af. (this one is much better than the other recent popsci octo book which i will not name out of politeness.)

the perfect predator by steffanie strathdee and thomas patterson (nf)- i read this bc my microbiology prof recommended it and it’s cool as heck! it’s got adventure, drama, mystery, Science-with-a-capital-S. i’m biased bc i’m a bit of a microbes nerd, but i had a blast with this. (but only bc we know going in that everything works out okay; if i hadn’t known that, i would have been TOO stressed!)

books that were a little less fun but still very readable:

my sister, the serial killer by oyinkan braithwaite (f)- i couldn’t find this as funny as other people bc i, too, have a beautiful sister who’s an insufferable narcissist, so it hits a little too close to home, but. it is a wild ride.

piranesi by susanna clarke (f)- idek what to say! i went into this one blind just bc it had a cool cover and title, so i guess i’d recommend that for other people too.

the sixth world series by rebecca roanhorse (f)- monster hunting! a post-apocalyptic take that doesn’t feel tired.

the shades of magic trilogy by v.e. schwab (f)- easy escapism. some ideas feel a little first draft-y, but idk, it’s also a pretty simple premise (which isn’t a bad thing). it’s a decent urban fantasy set in ~georgian?-era london. very actiony. suffers from a bit of i’m-not-like-other-girls disease, but i didn’t even notice until book two or three, so.

the only good indians by stephen graham jones (f)- starts off a little ??? (and reeks of being Written By A Man) but picks up. the pacing’s great and there’s just a super fucking cool monster.

robopocalypse by daniel h. wilson (f)- this reads like a tv miniseries so much that i can’t believe it isn’t one yet.

confessions of the fox by jordy rosenberg (f)- not my usual cup of tea, fiction-wise, but still compelling. a fresh take on the white-male-english-professor-self-insert? but not insufferable. gets weird!

spinning silver by naomi novik (f)- rumplestilstkin, but make it interesting! a great, richly-told fairy tale, but like, large scale. good to read on a cold day while you’re wrapped up in a blanket with some hot tea.

interior chinatown by charles yu (f)- compulsively readable. a couple things bugged me, but not enough to make me dislike it. a fun companion piece to how to live safely in a science fictional universe. i like this guy’s style.

cannibalism by bill schutt (nf)- COOL. mostly covers the animal kingdom (fun), spends too much time on the donner party (less fun), ends with a SPICY take on prions that i cannot get out of my head!!!

buzz, sting, bite by anne sverdrup-thygeson (nf)- BUGS! broad but not overwhelming, neither dumbed down nor overly scientific, short enough to finish in a day or two. recommend this to literally everyone.

books that made me want to read everything else in the author’s ouevre:

the time invariance of snow by e. lily yu (f)- this FUCKS but it’s too short!!!

an unkindness of ghosts by rivers solomon (f)- okay this book is SO good and so well-written and interesting and blah blah blah all the good things, but... the whole time, i was just like?? why???? why is this what you’re choosing to write about??? (i did also read the deep and blood is another word for hunger after this one, and i did like them both, especially the latter, but i think they can do better! like i think they could write a perfect book and i am gonna be *eyes emoji* until then.)

the space between worlds by micaiah johnson (f)- a fine debut novel, but i want to see her do something a little more... idk, refined? i think she overreaches here, like it’s a little... idk looper? this is how you lose the time war? there’s a better comparison, but i can’t think of it, but you get the idea. and then halfway through it shifts gears to mad max. there’s something weird about one of the central relationships, like it’s not complex enough to take as long to resolve as it does. idk idk. there are just a lot of little nitpicky things. it’s not bad! but i think she can do better and i look forward to finding out.

postcolonial love poem by natalie diaz (p)- thinky! like i tried to read this before bed, but it’s not the sort of thing to parse out while you’re falling asleep, it requires more attention than that.

books that Learned Me Somethin:

smoke gets in your eyes by caitlin doughty (nf)- i am a self-professed death obsessed weirdo, fascinated by death and mourning, but i didn’t know all that much about what happens to a body between the dying and the funeral! this book isn’t big, but it covers a lot and doughty’s writing style is engaging and honest. it’s very memorable.

queer by meg-john barker and julia scheele (nf)- i’m gonna be totally honest and say Queer Theory is above my intellectual pay grade, but this book takes you by the hand and explains the basics.

vitamania by catherine price (nf)- LMAO my fellow americans, never take a supplement. this book is great and well-researched, but normal folks don’t need to read it, just listen to season two of the dream podcast, which definitely cribbed from this.

vegetable kingdom by bryant terry (nf)- this is a fine cookbook, my favorite of his that i’ve read so far. gets a special mention bc i had a religious experience just reading one of his kohlrabi recipes. absolutely gutted that i didn’t have an opportunity to try it this year, since the pandemic put the kibosh on all family bbqs.

the best american food writing 2020 edited by j. kenji lopez-alt (nf)- this really is just a great collection.

are prisons obsolete? by angela y. davis (nf)- yes.

i moved to los angeles to work in animation by natalie nourigat (nf)- before reading this, i had basically zero knowledge of how the animation industry works. now i know like three things.

the secret lives of bats by merlin tuttle (nf)- BATS! okay this book is more about the adventures of being a bat scientist than it actually is about bats, but there are bats in there. insectivorous bats basically shit glitter, you should know this.

books from valuable perspectives:

hood feminism by mikki kendall (nf)- a breakdown of who’s getting left out of feminist spaces, why that’s happening, and why it shouldn’t be happening.

all you can ever know by nicole chung (nf)- a (transracial) adoptee’s take on adoption and learning more about her birth family. the personal storytelling of this one really stuck with me.

motherhood so white by nefertiti austin (nf)- a single-mom-by-choice’s take on the foster system/adoption process. walks you through some things i always wondered about and some things i wouldn’t even have thought about.

this place by kateri akiwenzie-damm et al (? n/f)- i, like a lot of non- native americans, only know that history in broad strokes. getting this many highly specific stories in one dense and beautiful book felt like a lucky find. and taking that perspective into the future in the context of that history is v good.

empty by susan burton (nf)- eating disorder stories are important to me bc i care about food so much. this one is so relatable- not in its specificity, but rather its generality. it’s easy to empathize with her perspective because it’s like, Oh, i don’t have that exact problem, but i struggle with different problems in a very similar way. (feels like the opposite of roxane gay’s hunger, in a way.)

obit by victoria chang (p)- this exploration of grief is... woof.

short story collections are hard to evaluate bc you’ll never read one where every single story hits but i generally enjoyed these:

a thousand beginnings and endings edited by ellen oh and elsie chapman (f)

how long til black future month? by n.k. jemisin (f)

her body and other parties by carmen maria machado (f)

books i revisited:

the broken earth trilogy by n.k. jemisin (f)- i read the series backwards this time and like... i can’t really find any faults in these books, man. they’re just the best.

everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too by jomny sun (f... but is it really?)- half of this book’s sales are from me buying it for other people bc it’s the only way i know how to say i love you. i reread it every time just to make sure it still feels right and it always does.

other honorable mentions:

white is for witching by helen oyeyemi (f)- not to pit two bad bitches against each other, but this book does what akwaeke emezi’s freshwater was trying to do. it’s a little weird, a little haunted, a little of a lot of things. read this only in the dead of winter. (and with stephen rennicks’ score for the little stranger playing in the background.)

homie by danez smith (p)- there’s a lot going on here, but this just made me crack a smile a couple times in a way that no other book of poetry has ever done.

the murder of roger ackroyd and murder in mesopotamia by agatha christie (f)- That Bitch!

blues by nikki giovanni (p)- she sure has some Things To Say

the three-body problem by cixin liu (f)- interesting concepts, but... idk something’s missing? felt weirdly soulless to me. i’m probably not gonna read the sequels. but it did make some points!

the sisters of the winter wood by rena rossner (f)- i’m a slut for shapeshifting, okay. but this is a good fairy tale, it works!

parable of the sower by octavia butler (f)- i read this in march, when the pandemic was just kicking off and boy that was not the right time. def my least favorite of hers so far, but an octavia butler i don’t love is still better than a hell of a lot of other books. no idea when or if i’ll get to a good enough headspace for the sequel.

faves:

saturnino herrán by adriana zapett tapia (nf)- i got to learn new things about my mans and see some of his paintings i’ve never even seen online! GOSH.

on food and cooking by harold mcgee (nf)- yeah yeah, i’ve already mentioned this book half a dozen times on here this year, but i don’t care. this book lives off the shelf in my home bc i reference it like every other fucking day. this book is a part of me now.

#long post #final total for the year will be 120 by the end of the day!#and i had a pretty good hit rate. would probably recommend at least half #and only outright hated four

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sirjustice410 · 4 years

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My sirjustice tumblr account starts with sirjustice1 - sirjustice1000 and even upto sirjustice10,000, keep checking dude, read as well utwo tumblr a/c meaning u r sick in local jargon to see the rough inside homes many long not the smooth ones we got, things different from others we got Vatican blood wants. Many hardworking tribes got bukina Faso blooded tribe which is know with Key like penile made when having sex with their women when that pussy not bought as Kenyan Kikuyu buys from Burkina faso deed kids or women or even Germans which now makes many want not Women from disturbing tribes like luo/kikuyu as the same can be done and give to another woman dude. King of the jew another version to remind us dude

Like malindi Kenya has up-to 1 km off-shoreline shallow water that do not reach the height of electric power line, to make a big city, u can as well build estates other island apart from the city as building cities in fertile lands breeds curse as discuses previously, so inch part of the city falls on that land to be small, rather build island on water than encroach on fertile lands yet we got deserts bro. Enoch taken to heaven. TALK ill on ya on ya misbehavior cause they got loopholes to block ya like with exams which if u got like tamblr a/c to store they are left with stumbling words 4 the same and like what they cherish put on credit 4 every1. U Negros get to USA or red Indians of old Gabon Kamba blood not of ya tribe whose dirty side in ya was eliminated as per the bible like kikuyu/luo blooded to be eliminated now. Get ya self together and get to the same USA u say its poor shifting attention to Russia cause it has gas which now know how to make as much as wheat grows in much lands to share profits, moreover Russian 1 hinders brain working as Rusian thmselves has payed ya to officiate AE technologies in FB a/c kevinelson wandeterading ombuorading which u cant now hack so a detriment to ya shown in ya hush kamba and Russian portrayed character of wanting free things as internet they thought they will have 1st many nations have come up with as much as what they produce as military vehicle dude. Stop Kamba, with ya character of disturbing people with ya kids u cant go to another nation as later ya kids will disturb that way, cant u see dude, now that Kenya is poor not as u thought with flowers and tea to make u rude as saying its like a flowing river will never atrophy like minerals but can be made in boom process. If u get to ya home, another nation can accept ya as ya kids can hustle when they lost the grip that u got, not doing the same as u do dude, cant loose the whole generation bro

The winding road of good Samaritan parable in the bible currently the old eten road as Italians wants ya to accept it was the same as they got no military hardware making technology and fear the thing Russians did to Christ which now they got to have the same courage as shown above which if u dont accept not tantamount to actions of war.

King of the jew, they got kiyo/mirror without such the guard could have gotten them, they prayed when they knelt down and miraculously the door opened as in the link below

https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-google-coop&q=true+story+prison+break+from+pretoria+sa

The rocky not tarmacked RIFT VALLEY road, Road to emus Jericho not Kericho as K was omitted 4 J as many insinuates, another version parable

Do not investigate me if i want to be with ya, stop dude, my mission is international, then come cut me at night it ends, u poor braggart where rusinga island was a head land like 1.5 km off land then dug its side to form narrow path to cheat people u head debris to get to the island, who know not ya plan which draws much people b4 they had idea of making big rocks using garbage and placed cut lemon in the boom process. As in the links below

https://sirjustice409.tumblr.com/

https://earthporn.tumblr.com/post/625297970388189184/seascape-serenity-vancouver-island-oc-8256x5504

https://sirsermons.tumblr.com/

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/utwo

My sirjustice starts with sirjustice1 - sirjustice1000 and even up-to sirjustice10,000, keep checking dude

Uranium made with pineapple juice placed inside is cut lemon, cabbage pieces or raw mango pieces in the boom process.

They could have killed many races as those who knows how to make gadgets but when the writings herein are printed even the few that survives in that country has still the same to merge. Using the dredger technology to cut fissures unto the world crust to use E-cargo drone technologies to get there dude.

Plastic apparels like toothbrush, jerricans are made using garbage, rye, wheat dough solution and more as mentioned below and placing like condom or cut flower inside synonymous with plastic chairs and of similar stature in the boom process while the like water plastic bottles are using the same placed inside Tropical not all that tiny leaves of trees like osiala in local jargon and bougainvillea tree leaves and many similar apparatus which come out not, try with many tree leaves or fruit grain even wild around ya by placing many people to try to come out with the same.

Even the tiny medical gadgets like thermometer and medicine bottles make mini-missiles mixed with the uranium technology as explained above to make the detonator and with big missiles using made plastic bottles as above.

With saucer jets that stand on her stand like a stove made like American football shape, is made when such leaves that makes the plastic chair or the chair itself inserted in Garbage or solutions as named below or above and still the leaves that made like the water bottle inserted or the bottle itself with its water in the boom process makes that saucer jet explained above

Teaching little kids to kinda act like grabbing ya manhood which if u refute them breeds quarrel with people in the estate, teach ya kids manners dude, u kamba blooded not early prostitution bro, peleka hunger ukambani, i did not write ya a letter inviting u to locality i leave neither did i append my signature, take ya hunger bull by its own, u who is turf headed, was a blessing Kenya made 1, so we know ya, so it hampers your movement later when all gets well cause without knowing u with money we wont have known ya to get ya bad side, we need bad people without money and vice versa dude, rather its vice versa bro as Jamaica people got the former syndrome as they are Kisii blooded dude, good with u when both are poor when u did not know how to make gadgets but once u know the same needs the reverse bro. Ya turf headed now cant bring food unto the table bro

As in the link below dude

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2Lw9YWLVts

Baby star-soft, either made with white guava, tangerine, banana, yam, bringanya and flowers in the boom process inserting all the below into the grinned solution of the above.

Gear bolt remover auto-matic and hand rotated as with the pulley, too soft that u realize not u r untied the bolt from the nut dude as in the below link

https://alexnld.com/product/3-jaw-inner-bearing-puller-tooll-kit-inner-hole-bearing-pull-maintenance/

https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk01nkADmgIQC-YVWfoySyjuiCcoEGw:1596346626448&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=automated+car+wheel+remover+machine+alibaba+images&client=firefox-b-d&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjn_e3M5vvqAhUJfBoKHWAPBJ8QsAR6BAgKEAE&biw=1280&bih=910

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Ctp89AH58

House super drum size armored glass where on the edges to the ground, it has sweeping on the ground normal bullet proof cloth as with most African lorries or buses mad guard.

When subdued but still wanna continue to claim people their own yet with bad character b4 they tell u to feed their own which aint ya shit again which if u refute they organize ya attack must end, when many who knows how to see those who see things on the eye are employed to settle the dust of disputes. Mr Hindu now time is ripe to get to ya nation. mFalme wa yawhodi to bring the fact of many such people from different walks of like who have known how to make military vehicle and missiles yet partake corpse not as u claim.

Small medical bottles like surgical spirit or eye/ear drop bottles when place inside rye, Garbage or dough, fruit juice and the below as hay, cut raw mango pieces, groundnut husks, African broom stick, pineapple, purple fruit, charcoal water, pumpkin pieces, okwaju outer peel makes mini-missiles like in the link below that uses the solar generator as explained earlier in other following tumblr a/c

https://www.edrmagazine.eu/idex-2019-lig-nex1-unveils-40-mm-mini-missile

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fweaponews.com%2Fimages%2F2019%2F05%2F05%2F7242c9080cf140bab7ad1cbf52884f0f.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fweaponews.com%2Fnews%2F65350426-turkey-showed-a-mini-rocket-yatagan-and-bought-ukrainian-missiles-cone.html&tbnid=KZP6nw-NbbywPM&vet=12ahUKEwjbhYLQ6PvqAhVGiRoKHSe2DTgQMygEegUIARCsAQ..i&docid=dSAwRLgDX_yjmM&w=800&h=436&q=south%20korea%20mini-missiles%20images&client=firefox-b-d&ved=2ahUKEwjbhYLQ6PvqAhVGiRoKHSe2DTgQMygEegUIARCsAQ

http://earthfinds.co.ug/index.php/features/item/778-man-making-missile-in-hoima-wants-to-meet-museveni

At the red houses adjacent or opposite to White Gate Kisumu along odinga oginga road on ya way to kibos sugar factory, harbors a super drum size hole which detective from different nations can come to see to atest that what is in book about the earth crust radius is a hoax as its from 10 -16 KM as Some Nigerians and Ghana men have made it here to attest the same above yet Mr white man still want to bother or rule us with day time lies. Fuck u dude synonymous with the bible, was made that way so a blessing in disguise to us.

Skyscraper and roads, u make holes with like bore hole digger machine, then mix much ya city garbage with sewer or just normal water, fill the hole, inside insert the explained/mentioned above along wire cut wires, bolts and nuts from hardware then with high intensity water pump, hurl cold water in the boom process or spit saliva from up high and boom ya building or road as per your style gotten from internet pictures or PS4 OR 5.

Must have for ya kitchen if still living in traditions, now that artificial charcoal also made using garbage and inserting the name above inside alongside sample of charcoal real or from photos making such Kg prices to reduce by up-to 70% cause involves not cutting down trees with lawn moving, grass cutting machines that required earlier robust men to eliminate such as now we need semi-weak men, of respect to the law, not all generous and outside the house thinkers as partially business oriented to move the world as can not spoil human race or not snoopers as chicken out dude as 2 fold homey, houses as well and welded gates window can be made as charcoal above to eliminate the pride of robust men with women once and 4 good

https://goldsen.en.alibaba.com/product/60229068498-805560538/TOLHIT_Small_Handheld_Speed_Variable_Metal_Wood_Steel_Cutting_Saw_Machine_Pneumatic_Portable_Band_Saw.html

U mean Nija still reach, yet our attention was shifted to that side with women as calabar, men, i feel like i want to puk as vomit, where will we turn to to get the women we have desired 4 life,maybe middle east dude. Yam can be sold to nations in the temperate world who produce such not and make shampoo, baby star-soft and soaps we did not know bro, see that market dude

my cooperative bank of Kenya a/c no 01116294445000, name is kevin nelson omondi, ID no 26540140, car and electric or plane, boat, submarine company who wish to pay me tribute send me dem cash into that bank a/c number as wire, away out of no way dude to tell me shit again to get to the counter, i debit my money anyway i wanna Mr Lazy!!! As in the link below

https://transferwise.com/gb/swift-codes/KCOOKENAXXX

Gold good than steel as makes ya head shape-full as rye bread and small and always thinking as good feeling synonymous with Manhattan island NY.

Cut carrot juice also when placed take the place as mentioned below, hay, pumpkin, coconut leave dry stick, purple fruit, Ginger, groundnut, broken sticks pineapple, lemon, orange outer peel, yam, sweet potato, raw mango or water lily as u can try many people with every machine to see which comes out good and even charcoal water or mix all that dude

Candy can be made like sugar, where in that juice like orange, pineapple, purple fruit or any fruit that makes juice u place the above as orange outer peel and boom ya candy or cough drops as with it u can mix need leaves with Ginger and lemon and boom ya cough drop or syrup dude

Carrot, human feces brown 1, red guava makes gold in the boom process when placed in sewer water or garbage and even corpse of rude people. Soda make as candy above as with cut oranges, sprite with female pee, Bitter lemon with cut lemon while stony with cut Ginger as the above all placed to remove the benefit of doubt dude. Coke u mix neem plant leaves with Wild sunflower, add much water in the boom process

Negro its up to u, to desist other tribes as not u as u have learnt as well to make Gadgets dude, maybe white-men playing dice to depict ya of being rude to facilitate ya annihilation by another nation cause u got no-sense which aint our problemo but yours dude

Ice cream is even made with ice placed in yogurt in the boom process or u place bubble gum as same in the boom process and ya ice cream as it builds cities like Chicago which when other spheres have learnt the same, its collapse dude. Hay or gum tree sticks can also take space of ice or use interchangeably. Ice cream IC, Jama-ic-a, icu, bury me dude, ica in local jargon. Tryna playing my insanity as portrayed in my writings which much i got from people on other tumblr a/c, aint mine dude, and if so my being insane has led to almost 2 thirds of world countries making airplane, military vehicle, missiles, cars, buses, phones all ahead of them, which if they as portrayed above they could have made it 1st or if were mine and could rob them their self-hood, they could have annihilated me to officiate such innovations which now they want to delete of what they cant delete, meaning they are insane claiming me to be them yet i don’t give them what they have ever wanted most to give them leverage well ahead b4 any other world tribe. Dem insane dude, AE your u claim, my writings on tumblr yours as those countries made machines as airplane or phones, u want to sue them dude, the above can also make paints with rye dough, flowers or gum tree extract dude

SAUCER JETS as in the link below are made with inserted yellow egg albumen or sweet potato in garbage as planes can be made using the same as above heaped with much cut used water bottle to have the metallic shinny appeal not as dry synonymous with many made African emerging airplanes

https://www.google.com/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=nasa+saucer+jets+images&client=ms-google-coop&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwihjcCn8_nqAhXvA2MBHVAVD_QQsAR6BAgKEAE&biw=1280&bih=891

Maroon Kenyan money note is made with cut strawberry where many spit and boom ya cash after placing all mentioned above.

Known Kenya is poor when her cash crop can be made well in the boom process but still wants the leisure associated with many inland lakes like Victoria and trukana, the Negro blooded and that’s it dude as TZ or UG lakes are much deeper like Tanganyika 4 the above, Get to chad or Malawi dude, go shallow inland lake that can offer u the same as above dude

When u place purple fruit as Zambarau or yam or orange peel in the boom in Garbage, solution makes even range rovers, Cadillac, heavy machinery, electrical appliances and accessories, jets, planes, military vehicle, when what u want u place their cut diagonal photo as well. When it fails with charcoal water, pumpkin, pineapple, coconut leaves/sticks or as those mentioned above try as well with the above and even the Fanta black currents u can add into the solution 4 more results with other gadgets that has not been made as u keep on trying to get the best results dude.

Germans time is the essence, u sponsor some men who behaves like your own to say shit in my ears, i cant dude, take it all away, who is greatest, what has disturbed u 4 ages, here i come and i give the client like nation b4 u like Uganda, Tz and Jamaica and still not ashamed like Internet and pay TV, phones and home appliances. Cant u see u r a toddler to me, get ya way dude, what i can do great to ya, is sleep with ya woman not to marry but to pay as will bring bad disturbing kid without respect. U r the epicenter, u came with Illuminati and must eradicate it lest u r annihilated dude.

Shinny airplanes like the USA or air peace Benin made 1 are made with Garbage but much ripe mango of the same magnitude added to give it that feeling dude or rye as u add made or after the plane made, repaint it with shinny paint as with like Burkina Faso or Mali 1 in the links below which aint shinny

https://allafrica.com/stories/201906300137.html

Getting money online thinking u got by as a head of ya pals, then shortly u r forced to pay like with 2goinvoice, even getting jobs 4 kids and building homestead 4 respects, which eliminates the same altogether so u get back to insulting ya long ago homies 4 no apparent reason. U Mexican as u heard carli or Texas were the same so wanting good life 4 ya kids and connected with Mexicans 4 that to happens as enjoy bar kalare make u insane water now can be made much in the boom process as in tumblr a/c sirjustice350, so ya plan fails so harsh with others. Eblotong'i bwana, warn them if u r not their described dude and Christ thing infused on 1 now failed, eating corp of this tribe or person made u to be innovative, so sell the same to the whole world to get cash as failed dude. Go to hell and die, where now are ya long time plans, dead and gone dude, stop ya shit bro lest 1 cut ya with machiethe

Rye paints or unhurt u add sweet banana in the boom process then ya paint or rubber tree extract like 1 in Liberia or other cut banana u add purple fruit or egg shell and boom ya paint bro, or detergent in water then add sweet potato and boom ya paint bro

Iran fighter jet in the link below

https://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/kowsar-fighter-jet/

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 5 years

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A Critique, Not a Program: For a Non-Primitivist Anti-Civilization Critique

So the anarchist individualist as I mean it has nothing to wait for [...] I already considered myself an anarchist and could not wait for the collective revolution to rebel myself or for communism to obtain my freedom. — Renzo Novatore

I conceive of anarchism from the side of destruction. This is what its aristocratic logic consists of. Destruction! here is the real beauty of anarchism. I want to destroy all the things that enslave me, enervate me, and repress my desires, I want to leave them all behind me as corpses. Remorse, scruples, conscience are things that my iconoclastic spirit destroyed [...] Yes, iconoclastic negation is most practical. — Armando Diluvi First of all, there is nothing inherently primitivist about a critique of civilization, particularly if that critique is anarchist and revolutionary. Such critiques have existed nearly as long as a self-aware anarchist movement has existed — and not always even connected to a critique of technology or progress (Dejacque felt that certain technological developments would allow human beings to more easily get beyond civilization; on the other hand, Enrico Arrigoni, alias Frank Brand, saw civilization and industrial technology as blocks hindering real human progress). The real question, in my opinion, is whether primitivism is any help at all to an anarchist and revolutionary critique of civilization. The word primitivism can mean two rather different things. First of all, it can simply mean making use of what we know about “primitive” societies[1] to critique civilization. This form of primitivism appears relatively harmless. But is it? Leaving aside the obvious criticism of the dependence on those experts called anthropologists for information about “primitive” societies, there is another problem here. The actual societies that we call “primitive” were and, where they still exist, are living relationships between real, living, breathing human beings, individuals developing their interactions with the world around them. The capacity to conceive of them as a model for comparison already involves a reification of these lived relationships, transforming them into an abstract thing — the “primitive” — an idealized image of “primitiveness”. Thus, the use of this method of critiquing civilization dehumanizes and deindividualizes the real people who live or have lived these relationships. In addition, this sort of critique offers us no real tool for figuring out how to battle against civilization here and now. At most, the reified, abstract conception of the “primitive” becomes a model, a program for a possible future society.This brings me to the second meaning of primitivism — the idea that “primitive” societies offer a model for future society. The adherents to this form of primitivism can themselves rightly be called primitivists, because, however much they may deny it, they are promoting a program and an ideology. In this form, I actually consider primitivism to be in conflict with anarchic thought and practice. The reason can be found in the Novatore quote above. Simply replace “communism” with “primitivism” and “collective revolution” with “industrial collapse” and everything should be pretty clear. As I see it, one of the most important differences between marxism and anarchism is that the latter is not essentially an eschatological vision of a future for which we wait, but a way of confronting the world here and now. Thus, revolution for the anarchist is also not something historical processes guarantees for the future, but something for us to live and create here and now. Primitivism is no more livable now than the marxist’s communism. It too is a program for the future, and one that depends on contingencies that are beyond our control to bring about. Thus, it has no more to do with anarchist practice than Marx’s eschatology.I have already pointed out how the very concept of the “primitive” reifies the real lives and relationships of those given this label. This manifests among primitivists who seek to practice their ideology now in the way this practice ends up being defined. In a way far too reminiscent of marxism, “primitive” life gets reduced to economic necessity, to a set of skills — making fire with a bow drill, hunting with an atlatl, learning wild edible and medicinal plants, making a bow, making simple shelters, etc., etc. — to be learned in order to survive. This might then be spiced up a bit with some concept of nature spirituality learned from a book or borrowed from new age bullshit perhaps referring to a return to a “natural oneness”. But the latter is not considered necessary. The totality of the life of the people labeled “primitive” is ignored, because it is largely unknown and completely inaccessible to those who were born and raised in the industrial capitalist civilization that now dominates the world — and that includes all of us who have been involved in the development of an anarchist critique of civilization. But even if we only consider mere survival skills, the fact is that even in the United States and Canada, where real, fairly extensive (though quite damaged) wilderness exists, very few people could sustain themselves in this way. So those who learn these skills with the idea of actually living as “primitives” in their own lifetime are not thinking of the destruction of civilization (except possibly as an inevitable future circumstance for which they believe they will be prepared), but of escape from it. I won’t begrudge them this, but it has nothing to do with anarchy or a critique of civilization. On a practical level, it is much more like a more advanced form of “playing Indian” as most of us here in the US did as children, and, in reality, it is taken about that seriously. Nearly all of the people I know who have taken up the development of “primitive” skills in the name of “anarcho-primitivism” show how ready they are for such a life by the amount of time they spend on computers setting up websites, taking part in internet discussion boards, building blogs, etc., etc. Frequently, they come across to me as hyper-civilized kids playing role games in the woods, rather than as anarchists in the process of decivilizing.An anarchist and revolutionary critique of civilization does not begin from any comparison to other societies or to any future ideal. It begins from my confrontation, from your confrontation, with the immediate reality of civilization in our lives here and now. It is the recognition that the totality of social relationships that we call civilization can only exist by stealing our lives from us and breaking them down into bits that the ruling order can use in its own reproduction. This is not a process accomplished once and for all in the distant past, but one that goes on perpetually in each moment. This is where the anarchist way of conceiving life comes in. In each moment, we need to try to determine how to grasp back the totality of our own life to use against the totality of civilization. Thus, as Armando Diluvi said, our anarchism is essentially destructive. As such it needs no models or programs including those of primitivism. As an old, dead, bearded classicist of anarchism said “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge”. And one that can be put into practice immediately. (Another dead anti-authoritarian revolutionary of a generation or two later called passionate destruction “a way to grasp joy immediately”).Having said this, I am not against playfully imagining possible decivilized worlds. But for such imaginings to be truly playful and to have experimental potential, they cannot be models worked out from abstracted conceptions of either past or future societies. In fact, in my opinion, it is best to leave the concept of “society” itself behind, and rather think in terms of perpetually changing, interweaving relationships between unique, desiring individuals. That said, we can only play and experiment now, where our desire for the apparently “impossible” meets the reality that surrounds us. If civilization were to be dismantled in our lifetime, we would not confront a world of lush forests and plains and healthy deserts teeming with an abundance of wildlife. We would instead confront a world full of the detritus of civilization — abandoned buildings, tools, scrap, etc., etc.[2] Imaginations that are not chained either to realism or to a primitivist moral ideology could find many ways to use, explore and play with all of this — the possibilities are nearly infinite. More significantly, this is an immediate possibility, and one that can be explicitly connected with a destructive attack against civilization. And this immediacy is utterly essential, because I am living now, you are living now, not several hundred years from now, when an enforced program aimed toward a primitivist ideal might be able to create a world in which this ideal could be realized globally — if primitivists have their revolution now and enforce their program. Fortunately, no primitivist seems willing to aim for such authoritarian revolutionary measures, preferring to rely on some sort of quasi-mystical transformation to bring about their dream (perhaps like the vision of the Native American ghost dance religion, where the landscape built by the European invaders was supposed to be peeled away leaving a pristine, wild landscape full of abundant life).For this reason, it might be a bit unfair to call the primitivist vision a program (though, since I have no use for bourgeois values, I don’t give a shit about being unfair...). Perhaps it is more like a longing. When I bring up some of these questions with primitivists I know, they often say that the primitivist vision reflects their “desires”. Well, I have a different concept of desire than they do. “Desires” based on abstract and reified images — in this case the image of the “primitive” — are those ghosts of desire[3] that drive commodity consumption. This manifests explicitly among some primitivists, not just in the consumption of books by the various theorists of primitivism, but in the money and/or labor-time spent to purchase so-called “primitive” skills at schools that specialize in this.[4] But this ghost of desire, this longing for an image that has no connection to reality, is not true desire, because the object of true desire is not an abstract image upon which one becomes focused — an image that one can purchase. It is discovered through activity and relationship within the world here and now. Desire, as I conceive it, is in fact the drive to act, to relate, to create. In this sense, its object only comes to exist in the fulfillment of desire, in its realization. This again points to the necessity of immediacy. And it is only in this sense that desire becomes the enemy of the civilization in which we live, the civilization whose existence is based on the attempt to reify all relationships and activities, to transform them into things that stand above us and define us, to identify, institutionalize and commodify them. Thus, desire, as a drive rather than a longing, acts immediately to attack all that prevents it from forcefully moving. It discovers its objects in the world around it, not as abstract thing, but as active relationships. This is why it has to attack the institutionalized relationships that freeze activity into routine, protocol, custom and habit — into things to be done to order. Consider this in terms of what such activities as squatting, expropriation, using one’s work-time for oneself, graffiti, etc., etc. could mean, and how they relate to more explicitly destructive activity.Ultimately, if we imagine dismantling civilization, actively and consciously destroying it, not in order to institute a program or realize a specific vision, but in order to open and endlessly expand the possibilities for realizing ourselves and exploring our capacities and desires, then we can begin to do it as the way we live here and now against the existing order. If, instead of hoping for a paradise, we grasp life, joy and wonder now, we will be living a truly anarchic critique of civilization that has nothing to do with any image of the “primitive”, but rather with our immediate need to no longer be domesticated, with our need to be unique, not tamed, controlled, defined identities. Then, we will find ways to grasp all that we can make our own and to destroy all that seeks to conquer us.

#Wolfi Landstreicher #anti civ #insurrectionary anarchism #primivitism #anarchism #extinction rebellion #anti politics #green anarchy #nihilism

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thetravellingvagrant · 5 years

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Day(s) 5/6 - Iquitos-San Rafael- Iquitos again - In Which I Live Out My Genuine Nightmares

This is going to be a very special (and very long) double entry, because a) the following two days were largely spent doing the same thing b) I am so far behind with this blog that cramming two entries into one seems like perhaps the only way I will ever be able to catch up and c) I didn't really sleep enough to properly separate the two days, anyway, so functionally, they really do count as one for me.

I remember being in no more than primary six or seven, when a man came to speak to our class about the Amazon rainforest. I don't remember who he was or why having a guest speaker tell us about the jungle was particularly necessary, but I do remember in vivid detail the things he told me. More specifically, I remember the things he told me about all the things that could - and most likely would - kill, maim or otherwise damage me, should I ever be fool enough go. Poison tree frogs that can kill you with a single touch, spiders as big as dinner plates that'll snatch your toes right off you, jaguars, scorpions, snakes, wasps, venomous ants, millipedes and even trees; the list went on seemingly forever and I distinctly remember, even at that young age thinking, very firmly to myself “fuuuuuck that.” - except probably a bit higher pitched. More recently, I remember being in Budapest zoo (an excursion featured in this very blog) and there being a very big sign at the entrance to their Amazonia exhibit, describing the area as simply “the green hell”, for much the same reasons. Both of these things have stuck with me for more than twenty and more than five years respectively and, to be honest, did combine mentally to rather put me off ever going to such a horrible, godless locale. It seemed almost unreal, almost like a fever dream, then (Not least of all, because I actually was running a fever, still being fucked into a paste as I was, by my jungle flu.), as I loaded my bags into the back of a tiny little tuktuk motor-taxi, to be whisked away to this nightmarish place, which I swore I would never visit, for actuals and reals.

Before that though, I had a tuktuk to ride. These little things are basically the only way to get around Iquitos, other than a truly abysmal bus service, or just owning a bike; cars are essentially a non-entity here, being very difficult to actually transport over from other citites as they are, as Iquitos is entirely inaccessible by road. They're also quite fun – the tuktuk taxis, that is- I have to be honest, however not-in-keeping with the tone of this blog that statement is. Riding one is sort of like being the terrified non-player-character passenger in a Grand Theft Auto taxi driving side-mission, as your driver weaves carelessly through a sea of other motorcabs, paying no heed whatsoever to the rules of the road or the safety of pedestrians, hoping against hope that they don't lose interest in the task at hand and drive you off the edge of a cliff, or into a deserted field at night, to shoot you in the head with an AR-15 and take all your money.

All too soon though, we were ejected from our mental little death-wagon and ushered into a sort of garage, that appeared to be serving as the headquarters of Maniti Expeditions; the company that was due to take us jungle-side.

We took a seat and waited while the other members of our tour filed in. As it turned out, we were rather a small group. We were joined by a family of Pakistani-Americans from New Jersey, a Portuguese man, who I think was called Pedro, who was nice, though verging dangerously on the pretentious, and, of course – because apparently there is a God, but unfortunately he's just a bastard – the Indian couple from the night before. Of course they were there. Of course they were. Also, it turned out they were actually American, so that made my accidental racism one degree worse than it had even been before. Whizzer.

After a brief interlude wherein a man, whom I did not realise had just wandered in off the street, handed me a torch - which I assumed was just an extra they gave you as part of the tour, but after some time and a lot of him refusing to let me hand it back to him, realised he was trying to sell me, for a frankly ludicrous price, resulting in me having to physically force the thing back into his hands while shouting “no gracias” as politely, yet firmly as I could - we were loaded on to a shitty, rickety old bus and sent towards Bellavista Naney port with our new guide. His name was Alfredo.

Alfredo was, as you might expect a jungle tour guide to be, an interesting chap. He was a short, sturdy, sixty-five year old man, sporting a Peruvian national football shirt, a pair of quite small shorts with sailboats printed on them, a camouflage backpack with a Cannibal Corpse patch poorly sewed onto it and one hell of a coke-nail. He told us, also, not long after we had met that he had been doing Ayahuasca, that traditional Peruvian mind-fuck broth for the last fifty years or so of his life. This was our expert. This was the only barrier between ourselves and definitely dying at the hands of a cruel and dangerous jungle. A junkie death-metal-head. Great. (though, to be totally fair to Alfredo, he was only about 20% as fucking weird and unreliable as this description makes him out to be. In reality, he was very knowledgeable, friendly and really, clearly cared a lot about making sure we were all safe and happy. He was both a top lad and a ruddy good bloke)

We were rushed through Bellavista port by Alfredo, stopping only briefly to marvel at the culinary delights the small port had to offer

Like these buckets full of fucking grubs, for some reason. Apparently they taste just like butter

and before we knew it, we were boarding a small, rickety boat bound for jungletown in the least official looking dock I had ever been to.

Pictured: Not a dock

Just as I was going to take my seat, something pale darted across the corner of my eye. I quickly spun to face the movement and there it was, sitting, bold as brass, right next to where I was about to park my – frankly 10/10 – arse was a massive, white spider, about the size of the palm of my hand, staring up at me, human blood dripping from its fangs, hissing threats in some esoteric spider-language. Fortunately, I was too fucked with the flu to have any energy left to make a fool of myself by panicking and so, instead, quietly just moved down the boat, screaming myself hoarse inside. Alfredo, then noticing the spider himself, then scooped the horrible thing into his hands and very softly deposited it off the side of the boat as if it was nothing, thereby tacitly making a total bitch of me for being so scared of it. Thanks Alfredo. Prick. Fortunately, though that seemed to be the only spider that had snuck on board, as I remained unbothered by any of its kin for the duration of our (very long) boat-ride up the Amazon river.

The boat ride was, despite my malady and my intrinsic fear of ever being submerged in the Amazon river, for any amount of time and for any purpose, fairly incredible. The river is bizarrely fascinating to be on, even when nothing of any interest is happening, and once I had gotten over my terrible, terrible fear of the boat capsizing, or a piranha flying out of the water and biting my face, I settled in to really quite enjoying myself. Alfredo's talk about the river, much like the thing itself, remained interesting, even at points when he was pretty much just babbling a load of shit about nothing, and a conversation with the father of the Pakistani-American family (who was every inch the spitting image of a brown Todd, from The Last Man On Earth) revealed that he, too, was something of an absolute delight. Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad, after all.

We eventually pulled in to San Rafael, the little community adjacent to our lodge and, after veeeeery fucking carefully removing myself from the boat, we walked for about ten minutes through very nearly actual proper jungle

Aaaaaah!

seeing some wild tamarins on the way and everything (which are apparently very rare to spot in the wild, so that was neat). By this point though, the heat was almost unbearable and lugging around my heavy backpack with a swirling vortex of fluey malaise sucking me ever deeper into its terrible maw was really starting to wipe me out. Before long, though, we arrived at the lodge, which was really quite nice, though perhaps a little too similar to the Others' village in Lost, for me to be totally comfortable in.

Delightful, yet sinister, like if Ted Bundy could make balloon animals

I quickly scooted off to dump my bag in our... fairly modest room

Hey, cool, I’m definitely going to die here.

before, with little to no chance for me to rest, being dragged straight back out for a short taster walk, into the actual and for reals jungle.

The walk was definitely an interesting, if very tiring excursion, especially for a gross, snotty flu-man, which I very much was. I think, though that it was largely the novelty of being in a new biome that really did the bulk of holding my attention, as, presumably due to the lovely, but very loud and panicky American family's constant hoots of fear, we didn't see a huge amount in the way of wildlife. Especially not anything that might bite, poison or constrict you. Still, though, it was quietly quite comforting to not be the most scared person there. Grow up, Americans. God.

Around half an hour later and fifteen pounds heavier in mud caked to the bottom of my shoe and trousers, we returned to the lodge for a surprisingly nice lunch of mashed potato and beef. I couldn't really enjoy it, however, as my sinuses were full beyond bursting and the room was spinning horribly around me, as I ate. We were given, mercifully, around an hour to relax before the next part of our tour, which I spent soundly asleep, not even caring that spiders could and probably would be crawling over my exhausted, broken body as I did.

The nap turned out to be a good choice. I awoke feeling slightly more human, albeit by the scantiest margin possible. It wouldn't have mattered if I was literally dying though- I'd still have gone on the next bit of the tour; was I fuck missing a trip to Monkey Island, under any circumstances.

We boarded the boat once more; one tour member lighter - in the form of Pedro who had decided to go off with another, different guide to camp in the jungle for a night, though with the new addition of Karl, another American man and weird lookalike of his namesake Karl Pilkington, arriving late - and were away to Monkey Island. Fuck yes we were away to Monkey Island.

Monkey Island, as its name suggests is a rehabilitation centre for monkeys who were rescued from the black market's pet trade, and that's all brilliant and everything, but jesus christ, it was just a little patch of jungle with all friendly woolly monkeys running around and, jumping through trees and tumbling around and playing and coming up to you to hold your hand or climb onto your shoulders and it was everything I have ever wanted and I don't expect I will feel joy like I did while being there, ever again. Or any sort of joy at all, to be honest.

L O O K A T T H E M

It was so good that for around the hour and a half we were there, I basically forgot I had the flu. That's how good it was; it was good enough to override my body slowly shutting down through fatigue and illness, like a lemsip for the soul. It was genuinely fantastic; the only thing that marred the experience, even slightly was the American family being a bit too loud and overbearing, pushing to the front of every experience, and so taking all of the monkeys' precious attentions for themselves, for the vast majority of the time. I suppose it can be forgiven of people for being a little over-excited about a god damned island full of monkeys though, so for once, I will bare no grudge against them. But let it me known, if anyone physically comes between me and a monkey, ever again, I will cut a bitch.

Way, way too fucking soon, though, we were pulled away from Monkey Island, in much the way its inhabitants were pulled away from the still-warm corpses of their mothers by poachers (...too dark?) and loaded back onto the boat.

We returned to San Rafael and, by this point, a combination of the heat, the flu and not being allowed to spend literally forever on Monkey Island in a perpetual state of utter bliss had ruined me. I badly needed a nap, again, for fear that if I did not take one, I might actually die, but alas, I was not to be afforded such a simple pleasure. Alfredo informed us, once we were back on land, that we'd be heading out into the jungle again, for an hour long night-walk to look for spiders and shit. I couldn't think of a more terrifying sentence for him to say, to be honest, but I decided that was probably actually quite unlikely that I was actually going to die and it would be quite an experience to miss out on if I just spent the time asleep in the relative comfort of my room, and so, like the solider I am, I nutted up and just did it.

I've genuinely had nightmares about being stuck in the jungle at night. If you'd have asked me a week ago to describe my top most terrifying real-world scenarios I'd never want to be in, that probably would have ranked in the top three. Actually experiencing it, however, really wasn't all that bad. I don't know if my mind and body were just too mangled to process exactly what was happening to me (I do remember spending a lot of the time, almost asleep on my feet, not fully knowing where I was, but being quite convinced that I was in a forest in Scotland), or if the lovely, but loud American family had just spooked all the dangerous animals in a fifty mile radius away with their unforgivably loud hollers and yelps, but I didn't find myself feeling at all anxious, or frightened, or...anything, really. It was just something that was happening to me before I could sleep.

youtube

Although in retrospect, it looks fucking terrifying

The walk progressed slowly, with little of interest being spotted, other than a couple of (admittedly pretty sick) stick insects and apparently an opossum (although I didn't see it, myself) and seemed to be winding down without incident. Then, ten minutes or so from camp, Sam's left leg stated burning. Panicking, she told Alfredo what was happening, who traipsed back to her, lifted her trouser-leg and saw, to Sam's horror, but his own light amusement that a not insignificant amount of fire-ants were swarming around her calf. Apparently she had stomped her little stompy feet through their nest and was now paying the price for her murderous hubris. Alfredo swatted the ants away as best he could and we continued walking (or in Sam's case, badly limping) back to the camp.

Once back, we ducked back into our bungalow to make sure neither of us had any more of the nasty little fuckers on us, which thankfully, we did not, and everything was great,forever. The End.

Nah, just kidding; we had an entire fucking colony milling around our socks and lower trousers. We very quickly and with very very little dignity, stripped our khakis off in a bit more of a girlish panic than I'd honestly like to admit, shook the ants free from the trousers, outside and just straight up binned the socks like the unwearable garbage they now were. When we were absolutely sure that we now ant-free (which took so much more time and energy than my body could realistically spare), we headed to dinner; another fairly nice affair full of chicken legs and mashed potato, so I'm told, at least. Genuinely, I don't know, I was so far beyond physically okay that the entire thing really was a bit of a blur for me. I do remember being given a pill by the Indian couple, which they claimed was a combination of painkillers and muscle relaxant and which knocked me out almost as soon as I returned to our room. At least I was too sick to care about spending a night in the jungle- the part of the trip I was most worried about, previously – so uh. Every cloud and all that, I guess. Also, the muscle relaxant didn't even one, as I had worried it might, make me piss the bed. So that's two silver linings, which honestly, is pretty good going, as far as silver linings are concerned.

I was up several times in the night. The jungle is (shockingly) pitch black during the evening and, much like the night before, I found myself awaking with a jolt every two hours or so, to empty my bladder and perform a full and thorough inspection of my bed, using the torch on my phone, to make sure no errant tarantulas had decided to become my erstwhile bedfellows. They hadn't, to be fair, but that doesn't make me hate them any less. Furry, spindly little pricks.

Despite this, I did sleep better than I had the previous night (albeit again, only by the slimmest of margins) and actually found myself, for once, being woken up by my alarm, rather than just being awake several hours before it was due to go off, anyway. Take that, alarm.

Our morning plan was to take the boat out once more, to watch the sun rise over the Amazon and then around to go river-dolphin spotting, which, to be fair, did sound appallingly lovely. The sunrise was mostly obscured by clouds, so wasn't perhaps as impressive as it could have been, though still managed to remain fairly bloody impressive

Neat, I guess.

and what the clouds took away from the gravity of the experience, Alfredo more than added back in by uttering the cryptic, slightly frightening and just very, very metal line of “...His eye opens” as the sun just began to peek over the horizon

BEHOLD!

By the time we had begun dolphin spotting, I had once again grown weary and while I was definitely thoroughly enjoying the experience, and managed, at points, to get incredibly close and take some pretty okayish videos of the ugly, pink little jerks

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I have no way of editing videos out here, but if you wait until around the 30 second mark, you should see a big splashy boy

I was definitely not enjoying my nostrils turning into a snot-faucet and my head being slowly crushed into a singularity from the inside, so by the time we packed it all in and returned home, I was super glad to be doing so, despite feeling a little guilty for thinking like this. To be honest though, as amazing as this experience was (and indeed all the experiences the rainforest had to offer thus far – save for fire-ants, which can go fuck themselves), it was hard for me to really, properly enjoy them, as each time I got close to feeling like I was, the realisation that I am a comparatively rich, white tourist who paid for this experience set in, hard, and, in what has to be the most first-world-problemy way possible, did rather make the entire thing seem a bit...plastic. Not the monkeys though; they were legit.

Once home, we took a quick break; not long enough for a recovery nap, but just about long enough to relax in a hammock for a while

So relaxed...

before being ushered out onto the river by Alfredo once more. This time to go and meet some members of a local tribe. I wasn't particularly thrilled about this part of the tour, feeling that it was perhaps a little ...colonial and exploitative; parading us around this relatively primative tribe, oohing and ahhing at their grass skirts and shitty little home-made crafts and rudimentary hunting techniques and all that, but I did pay...quite a lot for this tour and didn't really want miss any part of it; especially a bit so awkward and unwanted that it was almost guaranteed to generate some dynamite blog-content, so I bundled myself back into the boat and headed off to tribesville.

We arrived at the small village and were directed to sit down inside, what I assumed was the main hut. We had been joined by another, different tour-group for what was about to ensue, which I was uncharacteristically thankful for, as it, at the very least, would dilute some of the attention that our group would get. After a brief talk on the tribe from Alfredo, which didn't exactly blow me away with any fascinating insight into their way of life (they're farmers who grow rice and bananas, they hunt for their food and use blowdarts), we then got another small talk in the tribe's native tongue from the chieftain; short, stern and stocky man, wearing a grass skirt and a large ornamental headdress, who was, hilariously, just called Richard, who essentially just went over the same things as Alfredo, but in a language that seemed to only consist of three independent syllables.

The tribe then demonstrated two of their traditional songs, both of which were accompanied by a dance, with which we were invited to join in (an offer which every single member of our group declined)

Not this guy, though. He was fucking loving it.

and both of which, with the best will in the world, were a bit shit. After a gruelling and genuinely awkward few minutes, the music abated and we were led to a different area to try our hand at blow-gunning, which, I'll be honest, I did rather enjoy, despite myself.

P-tew!

with no time to enjoy my definitely 10/10 blowgun prowess, we were directed immediately to the tribe's market stall, in which we were expected to spend our money on various bits of, to be totally honest, absolute garbage, which the tribe had made. Sam had brought very little money with her and I hadn't thought to bring any, at all, so we had a quick look around to see what we could buy with fifteen soles that was something either one of us would actually like and we weren't just buying because it felt awkward not to. It was then that li'l chief Richard approached us, his hand outstretched, rubbing his thumb against his middle and fore-finger – the international symbol for “give me money”

“Para la musica” he told us. For the music.

Great. Now apparently we had to pay for enduring their shit music which wasn't good and which I didn't enjoy listening to. Perfect. We (Sam) handed him five of our soles and he looked disgusted with us. We (Sam) apologised for not giving more and Richard walked away, unspeaking. I don't care if you are in some jungle tribe with all different culture and everything, rudeness is rudeness. Fuck you, Richard. Prick.

Now feeling a little like what little shine the experience had possessed, previously had very much worn out, we continued being made to browse the tribe's wares, until we finally succumbed to pressure and bought ourselves some tat.

Glad I spend money on this sweet little number

With everyone's pockets now entirely emptied and the lines on who was exploiting who blurred beyond all recognition, we loaded ourselves back onto the boat. Also, a little side-note here, but it was at this point that I watched a portly lady who was on the other tour, lean out of the window of her boat to take one final picture of the tribe, though instead managed to let her phone slip out of her hands and straight to the bottom of the river; an act which I singularly enjoyed infinitely more than I had the last hour or so of tribal interaction and having my money guilted off me. They should genuinely employ someone to do that on every tour, because, honestly, I nearly enjoyed it as much as Monkey Island.

Our next stop was one I could be fucked with almost as much as the previous; piranha fishing. I'm not a huge fan of fishing, to be honest, because I don't really like killing things (although, being in the Amazon does generally make you a little kill-happier. There was no way in hell I was going to scoop up each individual fire-ant on a bit of cardboard and pop them outside on the bungalow's windowsill. It was the boot for them), but we were told by Alfredo that the lodge's chefs would cook up what we caught and we could have them for lunch, which did remove some of the grey morality which which I was struggling.

Turns out I needn't have worried about any of that, though, because I was fucking terrible at Piranha fishing and didn't land a single catch. I couldn't get them to stay on the hook, no matter what I tried and more than likely emptied our group's reserves of spare bait, single-handedly in the process, like the saint I am. Sam, however, being a salty Geordie fish woman, was great at it and caught, as she kept boastfully reminding me of, as if ending the lives of innocent little snappy-boys was something to be proud of, no fewer than four fish. Five, actually, but one wasn't a piranha and was therefore too small to bother cooking (it was, however, too badly damaged to go back in the water and so had to be stomped to death, anyway. What a monster she is.)

After a while, even Sam's bloodlust was sated and we unanimously decided to pack in this whole fishing lark and go back for lunch. I got back on board the boat, over the piranha infested waters as carefully as I have ever done anything in my life and we returned to the lodge for what would be the final time.

We were afforded enough time, once back, for me to have another nap, which, at this point were the only things making me feel even vaguely alive or human, in any sense, before being served our last lodge supper. More mashed potatoes, jungle-beans, the piranhas Sam caught and a big chunky fillet of another, different (and anyone with tastebuds would say) better fish called Pacu and which looks like this

...yummy

I am told that this all tasted quite nice, but by this point, the flu had cruelly taken away my senses of both smell and taste, so I had no idea. I could just about make out that it was very salty, though, so that was something. Small victories.

With that, our jungle experience came to a close and after a strangely intimate hug goodbye with Alfredo, we and the Indian couple (who were the only other guests not booked to stay any longer than a single night) were plopped back on our boat and ferried upstream back to Belavista. A trip which I spent nearly the entirety of asleep, which I like to think was because I had grown so comfortable with being in the jungle, at that point, that I could relax fully in it, but more likely was because I had just been crumpled into a ball of misery and fatigue by my flu over the previous three days. Overall though, being in the jungle was a surprisingly good experience and one that I might even consider doing again at some point, should the opportunity arise. A solid 9/10, except for, as I've said, the fire-ants which can go fuck themselves.

Back on terra firma, we were wizzed via tuktuk first back to the company's headquarters, where we finally parted ways with the Indian couple – hopefully actually to never see them again this time, and then to our new AirBnb, in which we would spend out final few days in Iquitos.

Our new AirBnb, as it happens, was actually a collection of luxury riverfront apartments, in which, we had unknowingly booked the nicest room. We were checked in by the receptionist, Diego, who looked the spitting image of a brown Zach Woods and who was incredibly welcoming and helpful to an almost snivelling degree (not entirely unlike every character Zach Woods plays, now I think of it.) Diego explained everything there was to explain about the apartment in frankly laborious detail and, after dropping this info-dump on us and bidding us welcome, asked us point blanc

“what's my name?”

I suppose this was as some kind of test to see if we had retained the information he had just said, rather than a test of politeness, or some weird ego-trip. Regardless, I did not remember what it was. I was hard-humped with flu and generally disregard someone's name the first three times they tell me it, even when it is someone I know I'll actually see again.

“...What's. My. Name?” he repeated.

I laughed and told him I'd just be in the jungle for two days, so I'd forgotten. This seemed to be an acceptable enough answer for him and he immediately flicked back to his friendly, helpful self, creepily seamlessly. The entire interlude was really quite odd, totally out of keeping what the rest of what I'd seen of his personality and I'm almost certain, a preamble to my own murder.

Doing our best to put whatever psychosis we had just witnessed behind us, we settled in to our new digs. This apartment, a penthouse suite overlooking the Naney river, was about as different from living in the jungle as it was possible to get, and let me tell you, the change was one hundred percent welcomed by me.

The view is spectacular

...I mean if you’re into things like that.

The bed was comfy, the fridge loaded with pre-cooled water bottles, the kitchen fully stocked and the entire apartment almost entirely bug-free, due in no small part to its remarkably effective AC system, which really did turn the flat into a little icy paradise of excess, amidst a sea of poverty and sweat.

We couldn't quite settle in fully just yet, though. Sam insisted that we make a quick outing to the supermarket, because apparently she needed shampoo and apparently wasn't willing to go alone, for fear of being “mugged” or “abducted and killed” by a “crime man”, which to be honest, I felt was very selfish of her.

For the final time that day, then, I dragged what was left of my body out through the streets of Iquitos, to the supermarket and back, before finally being able to collapse onto our exceptionally soft airbnb couch, to eat a modest dinner of a single sausage and a couple of minty biscuits, while watching the Peru episode of an Idiot Abroad - because watching someone else suffer through what I just had was really the only thing that had the capability of making me feel any better at that point – and then heading directly to our comfy, comfy bed, which I believe I must have fallen asleep in, before my head had even touched the pillow. I have never been more done.

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aridara · 5 years

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Soo, apparently there’s a new asshole in Tumbrtown. dev2c4u has been sending me a lot of hateful messages through the chat in the last couple of days. They reached the point where they openly advocate in favor of shooting me.

Fun times.

Here’s the complete transcript. TW for transphobia, misogyny, homophobia, racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and pretty much every form of bigotry.

DEV2C4U: You stupid cunt! Thats rich that you say "Nazis" make things up! That must mean the "progressive left" are the new Nazis! You grotesque imbeciles tell more lies in a day than a "Nazi" will in 10 years!

Are you a fat cunt too? That's more blood you filthy pigs will have on your hands trying to say "fat is ok" it definitely fucking isnt ok! You can add this blood to the blood already on the lefts hands from promoting :

Transsexual/Transgenderism

Filthy faggotry

Letting subhuman "immigrants" in so they can kill more Americans and leech off of them! Abortion: learn to keep your legs closed you filthy twats! If you want to murder babies that is on you---but as a taxpayer i will not pay for your irresponsibility

And slutty ways! God you lot are a bunch of filthy diseased (I would say animals but you are beneath animals) so I will call you turds!

Promoting pedophilia----I hope you empty headed cunts burn in hell for this fucking sickos (it almost makes me wish i believed in heaven/hell)

In short, the "progressive" left in the nations of the West are a lower than the hemorrhoids on Hillary Clintons asshole!

I hope you all die of something like lung or pancreatic cancer ---IOW ---I hope you dirty subanimals die in horrible pain and regret-'-fuck you all!

ARIDARA: That's funny. I, instead, hope that you live.

Because living as a hateful, violent bigot like you is punishment enough.

DEV2C4U: Say what you will you whore! But I'm not a bigot in the least! I just wish each race would deny political power to their dumbest losers and then the world would know peace---on this list --faggots, niggers and those who enable them ---like why the fuck hasnt disgusting queer nigger, Jussie Smollett admitted to his horrible racist hate crime of bearing false witness been made to apologize for his story which anyone with an IQ above 80 could tell was a lie from the start??!! Islamic cunts like ilhan Omar

Pedophilic cunts like most gay democrats and Roman Polanski

Feminazi whores like Cameltoe Harris

----I could go on and on and on---sadly!

Every now and then there is a bright spot like Gov Northsm hanging on to his seat in Va ----Haha Haha and the other Va democratic polisluts--suck it dems!

And there was a delightful "rainbow" in the news today with some WVa pol. Calling LGBTQ people "terrorists" like the KKK----which is true beyond a shadow of a doubt

I wouldn't expect a filthy commie fatass dyke like you to understand---after all a whore is a whore and a lady is a lady forever! But I do want people to know how much you silly twats on the left are hated! BTW ---great job with your phoney Indian Veteran ---that piece of shit needs to face charges as much as Jussie. Fuck You and have a shitty life!

ARIDARA: "I'm not a bigot" (uses a ton of slurs, falsely claims that LGBT+ people are pedophiles).

In case you haven't noticed, I'm not your father, and you aren't impressing me.

DEV2C4U: How come every two-bit faggot, dyke, transcum, nigger, cameljockey, beaner and white trash liberal feels that it is their business to get in everyone else's business?

Fuck each and every one of you freaks in your self-righteous assholes! Except for fags of course, since youd enjoy it too much!

This nation not only needs to be disinfected--it needs a fucking exorcism! Where are our modern Torquemadas and Savonarolas?!

ARIDARA: ...Says the one who thinks that it's their business to get into the business of leftists, fat people, LGBT+ people, migrants, pro-choicers, women, people of color, Muslims, Latino people, and allies to any of the above.

In fact, you think that it's SO MUCH your business, that you openly advocate in favor of GENOCIDE.

Here's a question for you: if leftists, fat people, LGBT+ people, migrants, pro-choicers, women, people of color, Muslims, and Latino people are genociding your precious nation just by existing...

...doesn't that mean that your nation is incredibly weak?

I mean, WE live with leftists, fat people etc., and we survive just fine. Maybe it's YOUR people who has some evolutionary problems.

DEV2C4U: Ooooooohhh Score one for Mega-Twat! I admit I come on strong But i dont get why this dyke----this cunt----Ellen Page. Whoever the fuck she is---- has any fucking right to question Chris Pratts (whoever the fuck he is) where he goes to church? Where she gets that I have no idea---

I would much rather NOT be around any shitstabbers, carpetmunchers, Alabama porch monkeys, spics, or tranny cunts

Because i think most of you are filthy diseased trash

But as much as I dislike some of you ---I would never get in any of your faces and say lose some weight and stop carpet carpetmunching or stop fucking camels---or get some of dat goddamn melanin out of your skin. Or stop smoking poles

You know why fat cunt? Because Momma raised a gentleman!

And i wont get in any of your worthless, trashy faces as long as you stay out of mine!

But you fucking hypocrites better stay the fuck out of my very happy, proud, white life!

Fuck you again Ellen Page ---Whoever or more appropriately whatever you are!?

Keep your warped baby murdering opinions to yourselves!

ARIDARA: Man, your mum will be SO HAPPY to know how much you hate marginalized people. Or how you think that your own mum should have less rights than a corpse.

DEV2C4U: Anyone who feels "marginalized" in the USA is a fucking loser! I'd like to see any of you pigs try to pull this shit in a non-white majority/ non Western country!

Especially fucking trannies, faggots and dykes! Go to Saudi or Zimbabwe (at least Robert Mugabe was right when he said gay people are lower than dogs and pigs!) For any other people of different races---if you don't fucking like it here--then dont be such losers---put your goddamn cards on the table and go to a black or brown majority nation where you will not be a minority anymore---of course I know that most if these nations are disgusting shitholes---but that just means you belong there even more!!

To baby murdering sluts---I do think you should be able to get an abortion---with a goddamn clothes hanger you fucking whores!

You are just as bad as the faggots in the 1980s blaming Reagan for AIDS---it wasn't Reagan forcing you to put your schlongs in each others assholes!

IOW---try to take some personal responsibility for once in your silly fucked up lives!

I bet some faggots would be hard pressed to thank any of the STRAIGHT, WHITE, MALE researchers who saved their worthless lives by finding anti hiv drugs?? Well fuck you then!

This world would be no more than a fucking garbage dump without white people (and Asians)! Nigras and spics---ask yourselves why other pocs/ethnicities such as East Indians, Asians and conservative Persians (people who fled the Khomeini regime) can come to this nation and be enormously successful ?? You dont hear these people bitch and bawl 24/7/365 about how put upon they are! They just get to work, stay out if trouble and become great citizens!

If all this horse shit about "white privilege" and racism were true why are many of these other ethnicities more successful than many whites?

One last thing ---I so wish with all my might that the police could open fire on any traitors that say things like "No borders, no walls, no USA at all"

ARIDARA: Yyyep, we've got threats of violence alright.

Thanks for violating Tumblr's Terms of Service. You'll hear from the staff shortly.

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aerislunam · 6 years

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Eastern Cottontail / Sylvilagus floridanus

Facts of Interest

Crepuscular feeders - most active during twilight.

Some crepuscular animals may be more active on a moonlit night or during an overcast day.

Cottontails are active when visibility is limited, such as rainy or foggy nights.

Way more similar to Brown Hare/European Hare than other rabbit species in that they

do not burrow; lay in “forms” - depressions in the ground

are solitary, yet also have some sense of community (will warn others of danger)

Aggressive, territorial - males fight other males for females, females will fight other females for control of territory.

They have 17,000 taste buds - can taste and enjoy more intense flavor and subtleties in their food than humans can ever image.

Used to inhabit only deserts, swamps and hardwood forests, as well as rainforests and boreal forests. In current times, it prefers edge environments between woody vegetation and open land.

Its range of habitats includes meadows, orchards, farmlands, hedgerows and areas with second growth shrubs, vines and low deciduous trees.

Their diet varies between seasons due to availability. In the summer, green plants are favored. About 50% of the cottontail's intake is grasses, including bluegrass and wild rye. Other summer favorites are wild strawberry, clover and garden vegetables.

In the winter, the cottontail subsists on woody plant parts, including the twigs, bark and buds of oak, dogwood, sumac, maple and birch. As the snow accumulates, cottontails have access to the higher trunk and branches.

Folklore & Mythology (Rabbits and in some extension Hares, as well)

“In many mythic traditions these animals were archetypal symbols of femininity, associated with the lunar cycle, fertility, longevity and rebirth. But if we dig a little deeper into their stories we find that they are also contradictory, paradoxical creatures: symbols of both cleverness and foolishness, of femininity and androgyny, of cowardice and courage, of rampant sexuality and virginal purity. In some lands, Hare is the messenger of the Great Goddess; in other lands he is a god himself, wily deceiver and sacred world creator rolled into one.”

- Terri Winding in "The Symbolism of Rabbits and Hares"

Brer Rabbit is a trickster character found in African, African-American, and Native American folktales.

“The rabbit in Algonguian folklore was a trickster whose name was cognate with dawn and whose behavior reversed the order of nature as it was originally created, causing problems for those who followed. In the story of the Potawatomi Medicine Society the land of the dead was ruled by Chipiapoos, whose name translates as Corpse Rabbit. The Potomac Great Hare ruled the land of spirits and dwelled in the east where the sun rose.”

- “An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual” by Robert L. Hall

My Thoughts

When I first got the urge to look into rabbits and hares, I was expecting the typical “fertility,” “lunar,” “spring goddess” symbolism that most people think of when they think of these animals. After I started reading more about their biology, and their true natures, I was fascinated and intrigued at the amount of unassuming fierceness these guys have.

Rabbits and Hares in the context of Trickster folklore of the Americas resemble very similar to Coyote. In biology/ecology, they are both edge animals living off the hedgerows, the liminal here and there, and also neither-nor. They are paradoxical. They are typically shapeshifters, and are associated with the spirit world and “reverse-order behavior.” Also like Coyote, they are very good at surviving and thriving in the world of humans. And have become known as pests, at the same time.

To me, through reading into the existing Native lore and ecology of the two animals, I feel this very faint thread between them. Almost like two sides of the same similar spirit coin.

Rabbit seems to be way more connected to the Underworld than Coyote, however. Perhaps because most rabbit species burrow and live underground. Closer to the dead. Coyotes will use dens, but will often use found dens instead of tunnel systems like Rabbits.

The Eastern Cottontail, however, do not burrow. They are more similar to their cousins the Hare and Jackrabbits in that they do not burrow to make dens. They will be more often found in depressions in grass, or under logs. In Illinois, we find their young a lot in our yards and people have to be very careful not to run over the poor little guys with the lawnmower!

On to the magic...

Being Crepuscular animals, Eastern Cottontails (and Hares) are more active during the twilight hours, and bonus points if the evening has low visibility in general. This is good to stay off the radar of predators that may be looking for a high visibility night to go hunting wabbits.

The fire flies, moths, and rabbits are coming out. Twilight is the liminal time between day and night, the blending of one world and the next, where the unexpected can happen, where magic is worked and woven, and where some spirits are said to tread easier (such as the fae) closer to work with us. The Eastern Cottontail is a natural in-betweener, living at the edge of their environments, and perhaps can teach a lesson or two on how to better tune in to this time of day-night. Of which, their large sensitive ears, whiskers, and big deep eyes are adept at aiding them.

Another thing is their amazing trait to detect flavors between different plants, something we can’t even vaguely imagine. Calling upon this idea may allow you to think more carefully on herbal use, and also to be more aware of the plants in your local. What can you use in your backyard? What can you use, what can you learn about in a parking lot? Near a riverwalk? At a campground? You don’t need to ingest or apply plants to learn about them, get to know their spirits, what they’re all about. Most people gaze out into a community park or neighborhood and just see “green.” Trees, shrubs, maybe some pink and white flowers. Open your eyes wider. How much can you actually see? Use your senses to see just how diverse the plant population around you really is.

Another point to bring to attention is that they will find food in any season, but are often left with more woody plants and bark to eat during the winter. This may be a “beggars can’t be choosers” lesson, or even a “take your opportunity and be grateful for it.” Cottontails do not hibernate, so they need to take every opportunity they can get to feed and house themselves through the colder months.

As mentioned before, these animals are unassumingly fierce. They look innocent, even anxious, and they may be some of the time... but between each other, they fiercely fight. These are the true unexpected warriors. They kick, spit, growl, scratch, “box”, chase off. They are extremely territorial and both males and females fight with each other. They are solitary most of the time, but are not too fierce against each other to warn of a predator or impending threat.

Perhaps look to them for a time when you have to stand your ground against your own peers, and stand up for what you believe in. Or simply just to protect your territory, literally or figuratively.

On the other hand, they know when to keep their energy close and save it for when they need it the most. Eastern Cottontails can lay still in a hiding place for up to 15 minutes at a time, especially during the day or while hiding from predators. They don’t know when they will need to activate their literal fight-or-flight, and often have a lot to lose if they are going up against something larger than themselves.

When they do need to get up and go, they use their fur coloring to their advantage to blend into their environment. And spring away fast in a zig-zag pattern, as to give a predator the least amount of chance to grab hold of them. Perhaps one could use these elements to their benefit in a protection sigil, or glamour spell to seem more unassuming.

References & Credits

http://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2014/12/the-folklore-of-rabbits-hares.html

http://www.americanfolklore.net/folklore/brer-rabbit/

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Folk-Lore_Journal/Volume_1/The_Hare_in_Folk-lore

https://books.google.com/books?id=yUvbvgFakkwC

http://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Sylvilagus_floridanus/

https://www.psu.edu/dept/nkbiology/naturetrail/speciespages/cottontail.htm

https://extension.psu.edu/managing-habitat-for-eastern-cottontails

https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/mammals/cottontail-rabbits/about

https://www.the-digital-picture.com

#eastern cottontail #illinois wildlife #rabbits #hares #sylvilagus floridanus #animals #bioregional animism #animal folklore #terri windling #magical significance #animal familiars #witchcraft #magick

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sending-the-message · 6 years

Text

Bad blood runs deep by IamHowardMoxley

I first saw my wife Sally during my last year of college, standing alone in the hall of oaks leading up to the oldest building of our university. She was thin, tall and pale. The wind played with her black waist-long hair. She was apart from everything I dared to know about this universe, like a legend that lives on in modern obscurity. It was impossible for me not to fall in love with Sally Ganes instantly.

I stayed in love with her even after meeting her family. Each one of them had handshakes as hard and as cold as marble. They had the money to afford any jewelry they wanted, but they each wore an American “Indian” head nickel. Her sister wore one as necklace, her mother folded the nickel into a tennis bracelet, her aunt wore it woven along with the gold of an over sized broach pin. Even her father's right incisor was replaced with a tooth made from a 1935 nickel. I could read the date when we ate dinner. Each wore the coins proudly in their own fashion, openly and always against their flesh. I assumed it was another aristocratic fashion I didn't know.

All the members of the Ganes family were slow to speak and move; it was as if some great force was hiding within Sally's parents, brother, sister, aunt and uncle, a force that weighed down each member of the Ganes family, making them seem as heavy and meticulous as industrial machines. They each spoke in monotone, thudding, inquisitor voices. Solid, unwavering voices. Ageless. As if Time itself worked for the Ganes family, and had no intentions on taking them anywhere.

Each member of her immediate family had a mansion worth at least fifty million USD, all containing vast libraries packed all the way up to the 20' ceilings with of old vellum bound books and ancient bits of pottery, jewelry, weapons and musical instruments; it was as if even the Ganes's prodigious wealth struggled to contain everything they wished to keep from the world. I, on the other hand, was an arts student from a broke family. I honestly thought it wouldn't work- why would this beautiful, rich, talented girl want to be trapped with me? Why would her family ever approve of me? I feared these things all the way up until the wedding day. Then we were married. I kissed Sally in the oldest church in Rome. It will always be the happiest moment of my life.

My wife picked the honeymoon spot, a secluded little harbor off the Pacific in Mexico, a vacation “loveshack”, a 3 bedroom, 5 bath McMansion on it's own paved road, behind a locked barbed wire fence and gate with it's own private beach. We unloaded the wine and champagne from her her Porsche SUV, turned on the house lights and checked our cell phones. No reception. The place did not have a landline or internet, but we both agreed that a complete disconnect from tech for a while was what we needed. We were popping open our first bottle of champagne when we heard the sound of multiple trucks driving up to our house.

Groups of men in dirty jeans and beaters jumped out of dusty pickups holding assault rifles, men with track pants and button-down shirts, almost all of them wearing bandannas hiding their face, all of them armed. A short, muscular man with a stubble mustache was the last to get out of a white sedan. He smiled as he approached me, holding up 1 of 4 keys on the realtor’s give-away rubber keychan. His English was accented but good. I could tell he was used to calling the shots in both English and Spanish.

“My cousin put in the gates in around this place, my brother re-did all the locks. Nice villa. Nice car. Nice...woman. But you trespassing, hombre. This our land, was always, always will be our land, no matter what American name's on the fucking mailbox.” The sound of a shotgun cocking came from one of the 20 or so men in the background.

“So, as a fine...we'll take your your car. And your wife. We'll bring them both back, in 3 days. All the police around here are ALL right here, gringo. Nobody's gonna help you. There is no 911. You have no car, nowhere to go...and my boys will see you on the side of the road if you leave here. If they do-” the man produced a polished bowie blade with a razor edge and made a slow gutting motion, starting low and drawing upwards. “-understand, amigo? Don't put your beautiful little wife in danger. Stay here. If you don't, we have cells. We'll kill her. Before we kill you. Andele!”

My wife stepped forward, holding out the keys to her Porsche, head down, silent. I want to say I said something, that I struggled, somehow. Anything other than admitting what I did, watching the love of my life being taken into the sedan by the leader, held firm by one huge meaty paw on her delicate arm while the others laughed. In less than a ten seconds, I was alone.

I couldn't tell you in words the mix mixture of emotions I ran through. I spun around in panicked circles, not knowing what to do, feeling the most worthless and helpless I have ever been. I had no idea how I would survive 72 hours, let alone my wife.

I didn't know what to think when I saw headlights driving back up to the beach house 6 hours later. It was Sally, driving her Porsche with a smug little smile. She hopped out of the SUV and gave me a long hug for what seemed to be MY sake. After a minute, before I could ask how she escaped or what she did, she gave me a loving squeeze and breathed into my ear: “give me a hand with the bodies in the back, dear.”

Sally opened the tailgate hatch to her SUV and tossed the 2 wool blankets aside to show three men who came to our house stacked shoulder-to-shoulder. Sally was able to yank each body out of the SUV with ease while I struggled to even move one leg...I realized then that a woman who weighed barley more than 90 pounds was much more than what met the eye. By the light of the vehicle's dome and tail-lights, I saw the nickle jewelry Sally family wore on the bodies. The ring, the broach, the tennis bracelet, the ring. The short, muscular leader with the stubble mustache had his right incisor replaced with the same fake tooth Sally's father had.

We worked quickly to place the 6 bodies face up on the ground behind the SUV. When the last one was yanked out, Sally jumped back as if she knew when the light of the nearly full moon would break from the clouds. When the silvery light fell on the corpses, the bits of metal flashed brightly and then died to their natural luster as soon as the moonlight touched them. I was about to speak when my wife put her finger on my lips. “Watch”.

After the flash, the skins of the 6 bodies became hard and waxy, their faces inflating, detaching. The old bodies and clothes melded as one. They were becoming sarcophagi. The muscular leader's entire body crumbled away from the one tooth made from the nickle. A pair of lanky legs dressed in loafers and formal slacks burst from the stumpy legs of leader. Sally helped her mother hatch from body beside her husband's as I gave a hand to Sally's father a hand. He swept away a hard, waxy bit attached to his shoulder and gathered his family together...me included.

Sally's mother broke the silence.

“My new son...Sally's aim was only to rebirth herself through her husband...as is the custom of all women of the Ganes family. I took your young father to a hunting cabin near where two moonshiners were hiding from lawmen. I had my great aunt's nickle broach- I was able to rebirth myself and her that night. We Ganes take it as a sign of good fortune for how strong the marriage would be based upon...well. Enough talk. Six. All Six! All of us are reborn, tonight!”

“-and I hid the other 15 away” Sally added. Her family stroked her face lovingly before they all turned to me. Sally's father cleared his throat before producing a small velvet box with sharp corners.

“You did the right thing by not attempting to fight these men. Without the element of surprise, the Ganes do not have much of an upper-hand. This operation would not have gone as well as it did without your patience to allow Sally to operate. We now consider you part of our family. And as such...the family shall always be a part of you.”

Sally's father opened the box. Inside was an orb, fashioned from an old nickle. It was a false eyeball.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

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lyraparadigm · 7 years

Text

Troy Otto One Shot Series

“Let’s Try this again doll. I’m Troy.”

The rain beat down on her with purpose. It was as if the skies had decided to break her spirit that night. After a particularly loud burst of thunder, her feet shook out of fright, causing her to trip and fall face first onto the muddy ground. The pouring rain hid her brief sob of anguish as she allowed herself to lay there for a few moments. She gave in, in those moments and wondered what it would be like to just die. Right there, in the middle of god knows where. Atleast she wouldn’t get eaten by the dead.

The thick coating of mud on her hands and face somewhat warmed her and she sneered in disgust at herself. It had been five days since she’d had a shower. The last time she had attempted to cleanse herself by jumping into a river, she had come across floating corpses. One by one, in abrupt succession, they had started turning. She had hacked away at them with her machete till her body was drenched in crimson water. Her throat had been raw for the next few days. She would only belatedly realise, through nightmares, that it was because she had screamed bloody murder till every single one of them had died. Again.

She gave up on simple pleasures like showers that day. She chose to simply let the rain clean her. She chuckled and turned on her back, letting the downpour purify her soul. She laughed some more at that last thought; purity. Those were things of the past. She was lucky if she spent one day without blood on her hands; be it the blood of the dead or her own.

A loud crackle reverberated through the air, disrupting the steady thrumming of the rainfall. Fear crept through her body in waves as she shot upright at the intrusion. She knew that sound; gunshots…and gunshots meant humans. They sent more fear through her than the dead. The humans of the after world were selfish and amoral; destructive and hypocritical. She had seen enough in the past month to know not to trust them.

Her feet moved faster than the lightning that struck in the heavens above but then another thought hit her. Everyone turned. If the dead were successful in killing the humans then they too would turn and search for the closest living being…her. Licking her lips as she hid behind boulders, she felt tempted at the thought of stealing a riffle or two. It would come in handy for sure. Feeling rather impulsive, she spun one-eighty and bolted towards the gunfire. Keeping her footsteps light and her body in the shadows, she threw her daggers with precision. The voices surrounding her bled into white noise as she darted through the bangs and screams of humans and dead alike. Being covered in mud provided her with much needed camouflage but constant streaks of lighting ripped through the inky night, illuminating her figure.

“There’s someone here!” A voice shouted, louder than the rest. It had a commanding air to it. “The knives!” He screamed. She sucked in a soft breath as she stood as tall and silent as the trees surrounding her. An eery silence had descended upon them as the last of the dead were killed. She was surrounded by predators of a different kind now; ones that appeared as friendly as the dead that she had just killed.

Men, military, guns. She jumped to conclusions at an instant but before her feet could so much as stumble, another crack of lightening lit up the night sky in pure white.

“She’s there!” A voice tore through the tense silence and within moments she’d been surrounded; guns pointed at her from every angle.

Gritting her teeth, she clenched and unclenched her fists as she slowly raised them in the air. Her mind raced as she thought of her play. Her go to was usually pretending to be a pathetically defenceless girl but that wouldn’t work here. They had already seen her skill with daggers. Calloused hands gripped her wrists as a bright flashlight shone in her face. Unable to look, her eyes squinted shut and her head swivelled away.

“Well isn’t this a surprise.” A Texas accent rose above the thumping of her heartbeat in her ears. “What’s your name doll?” “Let me go.” She spoke clearly, “I can just disappear into the night. You’ll never see me again.” His eyes appraised her like she was some kind of artefact or museum piece. “What are you, Mexican?” Her eyes squinted in disbelief. As if he was going to prove every stereotype of Texans. “No.” “Persian?” Scoffing out loud, she answered, “American; Indian; female, 24…anything else you wanna interrogate me about?” “Ooh Indian! We’ve never had her kind before.” Panic seized her and her form hunched over in tension. It wasn’t the man before her that spoke. It was another man dressed in military garb, holding a riffle to her back. The soldier before her simply smirked, “We’re not savages, doll. He wasn’t talking about…rape.” He dipped his head as he spoke to her but nothing about his tone or his words were a relief to her. This man reeked of danger. “What was he talking about then?” She mirrored his tone. His gaze turned calculative as he looked her up and down again. She remained still, unwilling to show weakness. His roaming eyes didn’t make her feel uncomfortable; little did, these days. He took a slow step back and her heart dropped a little. He must have decided against trusting her.

“Let’s take her to the base boys!” He called out and a round of cheers resounded in the air. “She rides with me.” He snapped and the cheering died down.

“I’m Troy, doll.” He smirked as he watched her jump into the back of his truck. “Let’s try this again, shall we? What’s your name?” He hopped in after her, his lips now fully stretched into a grin. Her eyes caught sight of a glint in his right pocket. She recognised that sharp edge and the inscription carved in it. Her blade. Eyes flicking to his, she took in a few observations of her own. Sighing, she realised there was no way she could escape yet. Not till she was at the base and away from Troy.

Stretching her legs and shuffling to get comfortable for the night, she met his gaze again. “Arya.”

*---*---*---*

She had pretended to fall asleep at one point in the night, hoping to eavesdrop on the mutterings of the soldiers in the truck. They looked to be talking about bets and ‘exception that proves the rule’. She heard a hushing sound from beside her and she had to fight to remain still. Troy. Her internal grumblings began, as she realised he probably knew to be cautious around her. Upon feeling a twinge of tiredness seep into her bones, Arya attempted to ‘wake up’ as naturally as she could. She scowled deeply when she caught the twist of his lips, half way to forming a smirk. She wasn’t fooling Troy. “So my wrists are tied, I’m in a truck and you all have guns aimed at me…” “Yes.” Troy affirmed. “And since I’m not an imbecile, I think we can safely conclude that there is a 0% chance of me trying to escape.” “Go on,” Troy’s eyebrows were quirked, as mild amusement flooded his features. “So you might as well tell me what the hypothesis of your experiment is. Oh and the parameters…aside from weight and height and skin colour.” She sneered towards the end and took a little pleasure in watching all the soldiers in the truck gape at her. Troy, however, simply smirked. She could sense his curiosity in her by the way his beady eyes squinted. She couldn’t help but let her muscles tense; her instinct was to run from him as fast as she could and while her instincts had never been wrong before, she knew she had to put more thought into her words and actions in this new after - world. “How did you-” Arya interrupted one of the soldiers as she rolled her eyes and explained, “You said ‘I bet she’s 130’ which I’m guessing is 130 pounds. And of course, if weight is being taken into consideration then height must be too and…metabolic rate?” Her brows were furrowing as her thoughts raced. Was this a science facility they were taking her to? Were there scientists in lab coats actually working on finding a cure? Troy took note of how vibrantly her eyes lit up. “So what do you do?” She leant forwards in her eagerness, “Take blood samples of the dead and compare that to human blood samples?” Huffing, she began muttering to herself, “but it can’t be that simple or you’d have found the cure earlier.” Unable to help himself, Troy blurted out, “You can’t find a cure till you understand why we spoil. Everyone spoils…some faster than others…but why?” Her eyes snapped to meet his as her mind processed his words. Troy watched in wild fascination as her features morphed and her body stiffened. He could pin point the exact moment she figured out their rather sinister approach to this experiment. He waited with baited breath for her reaction but aside from closing her eyes and sighing deeply, she showed no reaction.

Sucking in a slow, weary breath, Arya leant back and closed her eyes again. She’d have to tread her next steps with utmost precaution. She’d wait till they arrived at the base.

Another hour passed by relatively fast in the dark of the night and soon they reached the base. Rough hands grabbed at her wrists and tugged her out of the truck. She tripped at one point but aside from a muffled groan, she made sure not to show any weakness. She had to convince these people that they needed her alive.

The bathroom of the facility had a distinct stench to it; stale blood, urine and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Then she saw three other men sat on the floor with their wrists bound and mouth gagged. She knew what it was then; the pungent stench of fear. She could almost taste it in her mouth as she was shoved to the ground beside them. Her mouth hadn’t been gagged like the others and she took liberties in thinking it was as per Troy’s instructions to his men. A few minutes later they dragged her up again and took her to the weighing scales. She scoffed as ‘Willy’ lost the bet. ‘130 pounds, my ass’ she thought to herself. She was getting by on scraps ever since she began travelling alone, about a fortnight ago. “Look at her clothes! Baggy and shit,” Willy whined excuses. Arya scoffed, what did he expect? It was easier to get by in this world if people thought you were a man or at the very least, ambiguous. “Alright, height; 5’5.” Another soldier barked and then she was taken back to her seat on the floor by the other three captives. She took a moment to ignore all the soldiers that were mouthing off, and observed the captives. One of them was injured but the other two looked tired, if not incredibly scared. After staring at them for a few more minutes, she came to the conclusion that the only thing they had in common was their gender and their skin colour. Mexicans. “We caught them at the border.” Troy’s voice alerted her to his entrance. She was a little disconcerted as to how she had missed him coming in; but no matter, she would begin convincing him now. One look at him and his gleaming eyes, lead her to believe he was just as eager to hear her out as she was to speak. So she got right to it.

“Killing me would be utterly useless to your experiment.” She spoke flatly. “Oh is that so?” Troy asked, with a small smirk that sparked a flint of annoyance in Arya. “Think about it this way,” she rose to stand, ignoring the guns being raised at her. Troy had to put his hand out to stop his troop from shoving her back down. “You’re unlikely to come across another one of my people any time soon…so what are you going to compare my time of turning with? What if I’m a total anomaly? You’ll have to ignore my death then…what a waste. I’m more useful to you alive than dead.” “Why don’t you elaborate?” Troy was semi grinning now and it worked well in pissing Arya off. “I’ll contribute. It’s clear from watching these idiots that neither of them are scientists. I went to college. Majored in forensic science. You want to know why we spoil? I’m your best bet to help you find out.” “But I’ve got it all figured out doll” he grinned, thoroughly enjoying putting her on the spot. “I’ve got a calculation that works damn near every time.” “But you want more.” She was emphatic as she approached him, “You’re never going to be satisfied by just coming up with a time frame for when to say goodbye to your loved ones.” Arya has picked up that little tit bit from Willy boasting about their progress to one of the captives. “You’ll want to know how it happened in the first place and eventually how to stop it. There has to be a way-” She was playing on his curiosity; on his intelligence and drive. He hated it. He was also mildly intrigued by it. “And what, you’ll find the cure?” He mocked. “I’ll help you understand.” She stated with confidence. “There are a few things you could pick up on, to survive in this world. Did you know you can cover yourself in the blood of the dead and become invisible to them? How did you think I survived on my own for so long.” He watched her with interest now. He hadn’t pegged her as someone who would go to such lengths to move freely in this world…to survive. She appealed to his sinister side…the one her instincts warned her about, “You’ve seen my skills with knives. I have no qualms in killing the wasted.” His eyes lit in levity, “Why did you join the fight last night? You could have just run away…but you chose to fight for us. Why?” His tone changed to suspicion by the end of the sentence. “I didn’t choose to fight for you.” She spat out, heatedly, “I chose to fight against them.” The intense rage in her features excited him. She had risked getting caught by a group of men with guns, just so she could kill a few of the wasted? She was under the haze of blood lust, he realised. Blood lust and…vengeance.

“Troy.” Mike snapped, gaining Troy’s attention. “What do you want us to do with her?” Troy blinked a couple times; his gaze alternating between Arya and the other captives. Arya used this moment of indecision to her benefit. “You need me.” She stated softly. “Why?” he found his tone mirroring hers. Her stare was hard and unforgiving; cold and ruthless. It resonated within him as she spoke, “Because I survive. No matter what.” She could see a ghost of a smirk grace his lips and then slowly, she could feel her racing heart calm to a steady rhythm. “Get cleaned up. I’ll show you round the base later. You start tomorrow.” She waited till he left the room before releasing a heavy sigh of relief. Her hands shook as Mike cut through her restraints. “The showers…show me.” She implored, unable to even form complete sentences. This entire experience had unnerved her. Every judgement she had made about mankind in this afterworld had been proved correct by this group of soldiers. There were two kinds of evils in this world…and the dead were the lesser evil of the two.

#troy otto #ftwd #daniel sharman #otto #troy otto one shot #troy otto imagine

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geek-patient-zero · 5 years

Text

Part 1, Chapter 11

Or: Oh Boy, Here I Go Killing Again

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

Washington DC—March 12, 1994

We’re back with Makish as he continues his contract work for the Red Death.

Normally, a city the size of the nation’s capital could support a dozen Kindred comfortably.

It’s implied any more than that and people will start noticing the disappearances, or all the people waking up with less blood in them than the night before and no memory of why that is. I think it’s also a holdover from the tabletop game, where you’ve got the established canon characters living in a city, the player characters, and a few of the storyteller’s OC’s. You don’t expect the poor storyteller to come up with a whole functioning Kindred community, so your average game might have about a dozen or so vampire characters. Though, that population number makes many vampire conflicts seem sillier and pettier. All that political maneuvering and deception just to rule over about eleven other dudes.

Despite half of the city being a warzone where even the police fear to tread, the city still gets over ten million tourists visiting a year. Disaster tourism, I guess. Combined with the regular political changing of the guard resulting in a constantly shifting population, a city that can usually fit in a dozen vamps can fit several dozen.

Last night, the Red Death had lowered that number by two. This evening, Makish planned to continue that trend. Following the instructions of his grisly employer, the Assamite intended to wipe out more than a quarter of the Kindred residing in Washington. It was an ambitious plan, but Makish enjoyed challenges. The Red Death had proposed a sliding-scale bounty for each vampire slain. The greater the number killed, the larger the reward per Final Death. Tonight, Makish was feeling very greedy. And quite lethal.

Makish’s target this chapter is in a “popular private men’s club” called The Deadlands, located in Anacostia.

It was located east of the Anacostia river in one of the worst neighborhoods in Washington.

Hopefully Anacostia’s being portrayed like this because it’s the World of Darkness, a Harsher, Crueler Version of Our World, and not because it’s a low-income black neighborhood.

No one visited The Deadlands without a bodyguard. Or tried to enter without an invitation.

The club’s owned by an eighth-generation Toreador named John Thompson, a Camarilla liaison with the U.S. government who controlled several powerful politicians by, well, pimping to them.

Well connected with the most corrupt power mongers in the capital, Thompson worked hard to satisfy the most decadent wishes of his establishment’s exclusive membership.

Unfortunately for his “employees”, Thompson’s pimping style seems to be a Littlefinger as Jeff Epstein kind of deal, his services ranging from offering your typical vanilla paid sex to crueler fair.

No desire was too extreme for those who frequented the Deadlands. Sex and drugs were the norm. Orgies took place every night. Sadism, torture, even ritual sacrifice could be experienced—for the right price. More than one tax increase had been passed to help pay Thompson’s fee for a Congressman’s outrageous request.

You know what’s sad? In this real life hellworld, if politicians were paying to torture and murder prostitutes with their constituents’ tax money, would we even be surprised at this point? Plus, a chunk of the country would suddenly become openly pro prostitute murder and pay more money in taxes to “trigger the libs.”

Despite being Camarilla, Thompson’s business practices sound like something a Toreador antitribu would do, those guys finding beauty in the suffering of others. Makish seems to agree.

Makish was, in his own twisted manner, a highly moral individual. He considered Thompson a necessary but unfortunate link between the world of the living and undead. To ensure their safety, Kindred needed control over important people in government. That much Makish accepted. The assassin, however, found extremely distasteful the constant pandering to the basest instincts of the politicians. He felt such acts put the Camarilla on the same level as the hated Sabbat. Removing Thompson promised to be an enjoyable artistic endeavor.

Makish arrives at the club just after 1:00 am, with a bag full of handy assassin gadgets. He’s already in high spirits because he killed three racist thugs who tried to jump him on his walk to the club.

Before attacking, they had stupidly made several insulting remarks about the color of his skin and the nature of his ancestors. It had been bad judgement on their part. The Assamite had strangled the trio with their own intestines. Makish considered the horrified look of stunned disbelief in their eyes as they choked to death adequate repayment for their affronts to his dignity.

The club’s front entrance guarded by a half-dozen brick shithouse ghouls openly carrying AK-47′s.

No police patrolled this section of the capital. None dared.

More likely the ghouls look white enough to carry assault rifles in an American city, so the cops leave them alone.

Makish smiled and shook his head. Like too many of the Kindred, Thompson had grown complacent. He believed himself invulnerable. Dealing with ordinary humans had dulled the edge of his wits. Ghouls were stronger and faster and deadlier. However, they lacked imagination and realization what a truly powerful Kindred could do if provoked.

The Red Death mocked Kindred who depended on basic technology like security cameras. Madeleine Giovanni tore through the Mausoleum’s defenses and criticized its dependence on ghouls. Now Makish is doing the same. Is there any kind of security method these undead pricks don’t smugly look down on? I’m starting to think Vampire: The Masquerade should have kept the “vampires need to be invited in” rule.

Wait, I remember now. Madeleine couldn’t infiltrate Don Caravelli’s hideout. ‘Course, what defenses he has, beyond Kindred bodyguards, are suspiciously unmentioned. Maybe next book.

They were no match for an Assamite assassin. Especially this particular Assamite assassin. A direct assault would take too much time and give Thompson a chance to escape the surroundings. But there was more than one way to enter a fortress. Any fortress.

The Assamite Clan was renamed as the Banu Haqim in V5, and the term “Assamite” was changed into a disparaging nickname. At first I thought this change was because Assamite may have been a slur, but every google result leads to something V:TM related. It looks like Assamite’s just the word “assassin” changed up, making phrases like “Assamite assassin” sound redundant. No insensitivity in this case. Just a stupid name.

Makish does some rooftop hopping to get to The Deadlands.

The club was less than thirty feet away. The ghouls never looked up.

John Thompson exclusively ghouls stealth game NPCs.

The Deadlands is a rebuilt and reinforced Victorian mansion. Pretty extensively rebuilt too, since it’s five stories tall and Victorian homes typically had only two or three. It has alarms and motion detectors embedded in the roof and gables, which don’t go off when Makish lands on it.

The Assamite had mentally locked them into their present setting. Makish possessed incredible powers over machinery.

This again. I did some digging and learned there’s a branch of Thaumatergy called the Path of Technomancy. It could allow Makish to do this, but it was introduced in the Revised version of the Camarilla sourcebook released in 1999, four years after Blood War was published. It could also be a form of telekinesis. Whatever the case, it’s still a bullshit power to bust out so casually. It isn’t even unique to Makish.

Sensing that the only people on the top floor are two humans “engaged in an act of passion,” he hardens his fingers, peels off a section of the roof, and jumps down.

Thompson was two levels down, talking business with a pair of potential customers. Running on a tight schedule, Makish had no time for subtlety. He planned leaving no survivors of his attacks. While he disliked killing innocent bystanders, these lawmakers could hardly be described as guiltless. Murdering them was probably doing their constituents a favor.

The moment Makish enters, his stealth rating is immediately ruined. Those two mortals banging in another room? The ones Makish specifically noted and decided were unlikely to notice him entering? Makish was so busy fantasizing about killing corrupt politicians that he didn’t notice one of them, a high-priced prostitute, rush out of the room until she starts screaming. He quickly reads her mind, because he didn’t have enough powers. Look, he’s a thousand years old, so he gets a shmorgishborg of disciplines. He learns that her john, an old fuck of a senator, had a heart attack during his throes of passion. Classic scenario, I know. She ran out to find help, only to find this random Indian guy breaking in through a hole in the roof.

I’d like to say things go well for the woman. That Makish can also erase memories and wipes her mind so she forgets ever seeing him, or that he just knocked her out. But this is a dark fantasy story, and typical of dark fantasy, the sex worker dies.

“My apologies,” said Makish regretfully and slapped the screaming woman hard across the temple. The blow instantly shattered her skull and she collapsed on the floor in a pool of blood.”

Oh Makish. You were almost the most heroic character in this book. But hey, at least he feels sorry about it, eh? Eh? Eh.

He then checks on the senator in the room she ran out of, dragging her corpse along with him.

The senator lay on the bed, clutching his chest, gasping for breath. He had suffered a minor coronary. Enough to incapacitate him, but not to kill. Makish completed the job by tearing out the man’s heart.

Unnecessary, but I’m not going to judge him for that one.

“Casually, he threw the woman’s body across the politician’s. United in life, he felt it proper that they should be united in death.”

This I’ll judge him for. You already killed the poor woman, you don’t have to make it worse by trying to symbolically link her with the gross old guy she was paid to fuck. Friggin’ artists...

Alarms, activated by the girl’s screams, were ringing throughout the house.

You ask me, scream-activated alarms aren’t a good idea to have in a whorehouse.

Seriously though, a guard must have heard the screaming and sounded the alarm. Makish doesn’t use his maybe-tehcnomancy to turn them off.

He preferred minor chaos when he worked. Confusion served him well.

See? He meant to blow his cover the instant he entered the building.

Makish hurries downstairs and bumps into three armed ghouls. Pretending to be a terrified innocent bystander, he points them upstairs, telling them the now-dead senator might be dying. Then he tears out there throats as they run past him.

There aren’t any more interruptions on his way to Thompson’s office. He slips in, nods pleasantly to the two politicians inside, then kills them by smashing their heads together.

Thompson, a short, squat man with a huge handlebar mustache, gaped in astonishment.

Toreador are stereotyped as the Beautiful Vampires, but for every sexy male Toreador you get an average-looking schlub like Isaac Abrams and this guy. And no, I’m not giving him any points for the mustache. People with handlebar mustaches after 1900 are compensating for having no personality.

“Who-who are you?” he asked.

“I bring justice,” said the assassin, aware of the hidden camera and tape machines recording his every word and action. His rather stilted dialogue had come directly from the Red Death.

On the one hand, I love that Red D.’s canonically a bad writer. On the other, this is coming from an actual writer who’s allergic to contractions, and it’d be hard to notice when the dialogue is intentionally stilted without us being told so.

“For too many years your presence in this city has offended the Sabbat. Tonight that insult ends.”

You’d think being recorded claiming to represent the Sabbat would cause Makish future trouble getting Camarilla contracts, but he doesn’t look worried about it.

Thompson tries to stall for time, saying they can make a deal, but Makish already read his mind and knows about the already-pressed security button under his desk, and the hidden emergency escape passage nearby.

Makish toyed with the idea of letting Thompson escape into the passage, extending the hunt by a few minutes. It appealed to his sense of irony. But business was business and he had numerous other killings to perform tonight. Sometimes art had to be sacrificed in the name of expediency.

And sometimes expediency is needed to get an artist to make art at all. Am I right or am I right?

Makish reaches into his assassin bag and pulls out a big-ass wooden stake. Thompson shrieks and tries to escape, but Makish quickly stakes him in the heart.

Contrary to popular belief, a wooden stake didn’t kill a vampire. However, it did paralyze the Cainite until removed. Thompson was unharmed, merely immobilized. Which was exactly what Makish wanted.

I’d like to thank Weinberg for not subjecting us to yet another one of those “everything the movies say about vampires is bullshit” speeches that’s in every other vampire story. Even Bloodlines couldn’t resist one.

Also, “unharmed” like stabbing someone in the chest with a big wooden spike leaves no mark.

Next out of Makish’s bag is a roll of gray tape and “a small circular device two inches in diameter.” He also technomances all the recording devices off.

He preferred not displaying his special toys to the eyes of either the Camarilla or the Sabbat. His fondness for Thermit was well known. Death by high explosives was Makish’s favorite artistic expression.

This is one of those scenes that’s stuck with me since I first read this book all those years ago. The way Makish kills Thompson is actually pretty awesome, and is a better example of an “artistic kill” than just disemboweling someone in one quick blow. Just ignore how he’s able to do all this before the ghouls Thompson summoned reach the office.

“Open wide, please,” said Makish politely, and with one hand forced the round ball into Thompson’s mouth. A thin strand of wire connected the device to the stake buried in the vampire’s chest. Carefully Makish wound the heavy-duty tape around his victim’s mouth and upper body. Reinforced with optical fiberglass threads, the tape was nearly indestructible. It could not be torn, only unraveled. Taking it off required hours of hard work. Removing the stake, though, took much less effort.

“Your ghouls should arrive shortly,” declared Makish cheerfully. “Seeing you frozen on the floor, they will immediately think to withdraw the cause of your anguish. You will not be able to tell them not to. Unfortunately, when they pull out the stake, the action will activate the trigger of the plaything in your mouth. It is a small but extremely powerful Thermit bomb. The resulting fire should burn your body to ashes in seconds. The colors will be spectacular. It will be an artistic finish to your existence.”

Taking his bag, Makish stepped into the secret passage. It was a quicker, easier escape method than returning to the roof.

“Goodbye”’ he said to the unmoving Thompson. “Thank you for your cooperation. Enjoy the wait.”

Funny story about this scene.

Like I said, this kill made such an impression on me I still remembered it twenty years later. But over that time, I forgot certain other details about the story. Like Makish. As in, I forgot the character existed at all. The same thing happened with Mad-Eye Moody between Harry Potter books. I read Order of the Phoenix when it came out, several years after The Goblet of Fire, and thought “Wait, who’s this guy with the fake eye? Is he important?”

While I was forgetting details about Blood War, I’d been reading online discussions about Bloodlines after it came out. I’d never played the game before 2019, but I knew a bit about the plot, characters, and notable events... I’d say through cultural osmosis, but let’s be real, Bloodlines was hardly popular enough to be called part of a culture. I was just good at remembering useless geek crap with no real-world applicability. The stuff I knew about the game included a character in it who also made an impressive kill using explosives.

What I’m saying is, memories blurred together and for several years and until now, I would have sworn the killer in this scene was Smiling Jack.

Now I know Jack was introduced in Bloodlines, but just a year ago I’d thought that maybe he was a character from the tabletop or an early novel, like Beckett. Also, I misremembered his name as Mad Jack. Long story short, I read the book, learned about Makish, went “oh”, remembered that my family has a history of senility, and sunk into existential despair.

The explosion was so loud that Makish heard it two blocks from The Deadlands. He nodded in satisfaction, deciding it was an excellent beginning for the evening’s endeavors.

#vampire the masquerade #vampire: the masquerade #vtm #vtmb #world of darkness #blood war

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lkeke35 · 7 years

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Bass Reeves and the Bigotry Behind “Historical Accuracy”

Bass Reeves

"He stepped out into the open, 500 yards away, and commenced shooting with his Winchester rifle… his first bullet cut a button off my coat, and [the] second cut my bridle reign in two. I shifted my six-shooter and grabbed my Winchester and shot twice. He dropped, and when I picked him up I found that my two bullets had hit within a half-inch of each other."

Note: I had to put down my 19-year-old cat last night. I realize this is one of the least-badass reasons to punk out on my weekly update (I didn't even skip weeks when my grandparents passed away!), but, as I sit here working on my update, I find that I am really not feeling particularly interesting, funny, or motivated. So in lieu of trying to crap out something that is going to totally suck, here's one of my favorite chapters from my book, BADASS.

A lone rider came to a leisurely halt along the side of the dusty trail. Standing in his path were three of the deadliest outlaws in the Indian Territory – the notorious Brunter brothers. These infamous murderers and thieves were the sort of cop-killing fugitive bastards who would just as soon have immolated you with a blowtorch as urinated on your burning corpse. The men, all looking like they'd just stepped off the set of the movie Tombstone, pointed a multi-flavored assortment of shotguns and revolvers at the interloper, gesturing for him to dismount from his horse. The rider complied.

Bass Reeves calmly took three steps towards the Brunter brothers, his grim face registering neither fear nor respect for these punk-ass bitches. He was an intimidating, serious-looking man, standing over six feet tall and solidly built. His clothes and equipment were nondescript, covered with the dust from several thousand miles of hard riding, hard fighting, and hard drinking. His beaten-up black hat and long black coat sported a variety of bullet holes and blood stains. The brass star proudly displayed on his lapel was tarnished with age.

"What the hell are you doing out here, lawman?" the elder Brunter brother demanded.

Bass spit. "Well, I've come to arrest you," he said in the sort of nonchalant, matter-of-fact way that an evil mechanic tells you that you need a new transmission. "Got the warrant right here." He reached into his coat pocket, produced a worn, folded up piece of paper, and casually handed it to the elder brother.

The Brunters all looked at each other in disbelief. They couldn't believe the stupidity of the man standing before them to have admitted this fact as plainly as he had. Sure, they respected the fact he possessed what obviously must have been solid brass balls, but they were still definitely going to have to kill his ass.

The eldest brother unfolded the warrant, and jokingly showed his brothers the lengthy list of serious charges leveled against them. The moment their collective eyes looked down towards the page, Reeves' right hand twitched ever so slightly. Then, in a flash, he closed his fingers around the handle of the .45-caliber Colt Peacemaker strapped to his thigh, drew his weapon and fired two shots from the hip in rapid succession. Both bullets hit home, sending two Brunters spinning into a dance of death. The eldest brother pointed his gun at the lawman's head, but before he could fire it Bass Reeves was on him. Reeves grabbed the man's revolver with one hand, redirected the weapon so it was pointing up into the air, and then proceeded to pistol-whip the dude unconscious with his free hand. In the span of about twenty seconds, the toughest U.S. Marshal West of the Mississippi had just taken out three of the Indian Territory's deadliest criminals.

A Colt Peacemaker

Starting his life out as a young, illiterate slave belonging to Confederate Colonel George Reeves, Bass was an unlikely candidate to become one of the most insane, over-the-top, jerky-chomping asskickers in the American West. Sure, he was big, tough, and strong, but for a lot of black slaves living in 1860s Texas there really wasn't a whole lot available in the way of social mobility. Growing up, all Bass really had to look forward to was a lifetime of servitude and bullcrap menial labor.

Well screw that. One day, Bass and Colonel Reeves were playing a nice friendly game of cards, when all of a sudden things became a little less than friendly. The Colonel was being a ten-gallon jackoff, so Bass leaned back and coldcocked the dude in the chops with a lights-out roundhouse punch. Colonel Reeves hit the deck like a sack of lead potatoes, TKOed by a solid George Foreman-esque right hook.

Realizing that he'd basically just signed his own death warrant, Bass decided it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. He fled the plantation and traveled several miles north, crossing the Red River into Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The law of the White Man had no sway there, and Bass was soon taken in by the Seminole Indian tribe of Oklahoma.

While living with the Seminoles, Bass learned how to speak the languages of the Five Civilized Tribes, and trained himself in the arts of sweet badassitude. He enthusiastically took up shooting, becoming a deadly marksman with a rifle and an incredibly fast quick-draw with pistols. He was ambidextrous, could fire equally well with both hands, and could dual-wield pistols Chow Yun Fat-style. He became such a crack shot with a rifle that that he was actually forbidden from participating in all competitive turkey shoots in the Indian Territories.

After the Thirteenth Amendment made the south a little less suck-tastic for black people, Bass Reeves left his adoptive home with the Indians, bought a home in Arkansas, got married, had like ten kids, and lived for a while as a farmer and a horse breeder. That was cool and all, but Bass Reeves was the kind of guy who was always looking to serve up a nice warm knuckle sandwich to anything capable of feeling pain and he wasn't happy living the boring life of successful rancher. So when the infamous hardass "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker put out a call for U.S. Marshals in 1875, Bass was one of the first volunteers ready and willing to bring lethal hordes of armed-and-dangerous felons to justice. Thanks to his mammoth physical strength, tracking skills, intimate knowledge of the terrain, and language proficiency, he easily earned a spot on the force.

Now back in the 1870s the Indian Territory was a sick nightmare from hell. The vast uncharted expanse – nearly seventy-five thousand miles of lawless terrain – was infested with fugitives, criminals, and escaped convicts, and was a horrible bitch that feasted on the broken dreams of wayward travelers and drank the blood of anyone foolhardy enough to cross her. It was up to guys like Bass Reeves and the U.S. Marshals to go into that dangerous territory, hunt down murderers, rapists, bank robbers, bootleggers, legbooters, and cattle rustlers, and bring some of the West's most dangerous outlaws in for some cowboy-style justice. Bass quickly proved that he was more than up to the task.

Going out on lone-wolf style missions deep into unknown territory, Reeves relied on his toughness and his wits to survive and bring his men to justice. He used tactics he had learned from the Seminoles to traverse vast distances quickly and leave no trace of his trail. He tracked his foes down, never backed away from a job no matter how many bounties or death threats were leveled at him, and never blinked in the face of extreme danger. In thirty years of service, Bass Reeves arrested over three thousand fugitives – including one trip to Comanche country when he single-handedly captured and brought in seventeen prisoners. He was also the man who took out the notorious bank robber and murderer Bob Dozier. Dozier had eluded capture from posses and lawmen for several years, but he wasn't quite as adept at eluding a gunshot wound to the brain from Bass effing Reeves.

Another famous Reeves arrest was Belle Starr, the "Bandit Queen of Dallas," who was a hard-drinkin', hard-ridin', hard-swearin', gunfightin' hardass who wore enjoyed gambling, wearing over-the-top outfits, sleeping around, and raking in cash hand-over-fist through an organized racket of horse thievery and stagecoach robbery. During her sixteen-year career as an outlaw, Bass Reeves was the only lawman to ever successfully apprehend her.

Despite the fact that he spent much of his life drilling folks in the head with bullets, Reeves' service record was utterly stainless. He killed fourteen men in gunfights – more than Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, and Wild Bill Hickok - and wounded dozens more, but was never once convicted of unlawful use of force or murder or police brutality or any of that stupid crap. He couldn't be bribed or paid off, and one time he even hunted down and arrested his own son when the kid murdered Bass' daughter-in-law. Unbelievably, Bass Reeves was also apparently more bulletproof than a Steven Seagal movie, seeing as how he was never wounded once during his time on the force. He had his belt shot in two, his hat brim shot away, a button on his coat shot off, and his bridle reigns cut in half by bullets, but never felt the sting of a gunshot to any part of his body.

Bass Reeves served valiantly for three decades, and when his branch of the Marshals was disbanded in 1907, the seventy year-old lawman took a job as a police officer with the Muskogee Police Department, walking the beat with a cane and a revolver. He retired two years later and died in 1910, one of the most badass and obscure heroes of the American West and a man whose story is so over-the-top awesome that it pretty much generates its own gravitational field.

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/bassreeves.html

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tipsycad147 · 4 years

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Sacred Sites & Pagan Places: Origins and How to Find Ley Lines Near You

Ley lines are defined as being straight tracks or lines across the earth made by man. The ancients were said to have marked these lines with stone monuments and pagan temples. This definition makes sense but doesn’t provide the whole picture of what ley lines truly are. Our ancient ancestors could feel the magic and power emanating from these energy lines and so they marked them for their own spiritual and physical benefit. They set up pagan places and called the intersections of ley lines their sacred sites. But how do these ancient ley lines affect us in modern times? How can we find local ley lines and harness their energy?

DISCLOSURE: I may earn a small commission for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this website. Your purchase helps support my work in bringing you information about the paranormal and paganism.

Sacred Sites of the Ancients: Ley Lines Origins

If we look at some of the world’s most important ancient sites on a map, we can draw straight lines between one and another. These lines end up forming a grid-like pattern across the entire globe. Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and Machu Picchu are sacred sites that can be connected on lines to other sites on the globe including natural landmarks like Mount Everest. You won’t find these lines on a geographical map nor in a history book of any kind. Ley lines are mostly recorded in folklore and occult books, the original concept developed by a man named Alfred Watkins in 1921. Watkins believed so strongly in ley lines he organised a club that would gather in England and walk the countryside in search of ley lines and their powerful energy.

Corpse Roads, Fairy Paths, and Ley Lines

It’s long been known that spirits travel the earth in straight lines – these straight lines could be ley lines. In Britain and other places in Europe, there’s something known as a corpse road. A corpse road was a path taken by a funerary procession to move the dead from his or her place of death to the appropriate church where the funeral would be held. Some rather terrifying stories are told of these corpse roads, including a headless black dog, ghostly lights known as corpse lights, and soul-sucking wraiths. Do these spirits haunt the corpse roads because it was the last place their body travelled or are they drawn to the spiritual energy of ancient ley lines?

“Imagine a fairy chain stretched from mountain peak to mountain peak as far as the eye could reach…” ~ Alfred Watkins, The Old Straight Track (1925)

Fairies, also known as the “wee folk” and “sidhe”, are known to travel along specified pathways as well. There are many tales in Britain and Ireland that point out fairy pathways into hills and over fairy bridges. These pathways are known as fairy paths and folks are warned not to get caught on a fairy path during twilight hours or at night for fear the fay might carry them away. Are these fairy paths ley lines?

Ley Lines Today: Why Are They Important?

So why should we care about ley lines? How do ley lines affect us today? Though it seems an outdated, ancient idea, ley lines affect us in modern times just as much as the past. If you are a believer in vibration and energy, if you believe Mother Earth is a living, breathing being, then you’ll understand why ley lines are important. I like to think of them as open veins of Mother Earth – sacred sites where the earth opens up her energy source to us. If you feel revitalised after taking a dip in the ocean, hiking in the mountains, or dipping your feet into a creek, then you’ll feel the energetic potency of being near or on a ley line.

How to Find Ley Lines Near You

I recently went on a quest to find my local ley lines. I had no idea how easy it would be until I began researching. First thing I suggest is to think of your local area and if there are any significant historical landmarks. If you live in Europe, there are literally hundreds. This should be the easy part. If you live in the United States, I recommend looking specifically at Native sacred sites over Colonial sites. The indigenous Americans were more in-tune with nature and knew of the ley lines. The pilgrims most likely did not.

Immediately, I thought of a local Native burial mound located in Safety Harbour, FL. I had a feeling it was built by the Natives on or close by a ley line. Then, I simply googled “ley line maps + United States” and BOOM. There were dozens of maps accessible online. So I looked up the historical mound on a map of Florida. Then I compared to the ley line map and found a match. One particular ley line that converges with others just off the Eastern coast of Florida also runs directly north of Tampa and straight through the sacred site of the Tocobaga Indian mound in Safety Harbour! I was shocked and thrilled to discover my guess was correct!

A map showing the U.S. and ley lines gridwork over top. Use to compare to your local area.

After finding your local ley lines, it’s time to take a journey to a ley line and confirm. This is a sacred journey and you should prepare as such. Take a cleansing shower or bath before traveling to these sacred sites. You can also smudge yourself beforehand. You want to be as spiritually clean as possible so the energy from the ley lines is easier to sense. Ideally, you’ll take your pendulum with you. Once there, notice how you’re feeling. Do you feel nervous? Excited? Like you’re about to meet up with a friend you haven’t seen in years? This is how I felt when I visited my local ley line. I had butterflies in my stomach that didn’t go away.

You can use your pendulum to dowse and find certain areas at the site that have high energetic charges. Stop in places where you feel the energy the strongest, then hold your pendulum out and still. Let the pendulum swing or circle on its own. If it does nothing (which I doubt if you’ve found a ley line), then move on to another spot. I guarantee you’ll find the pendulum swinging vigorously as mine did. This is a form of dowsing, which is a method that’s been used for years to find ley lines. Use your pendulum to also communicate with the spirits travelling the ley lines. Don’t forget to cleanse the pendulum and yourself after any communication with spirits.

My Pendulum Session at the Tocobaga Mound

The mound is beautiful – luscious greenery and centuries-old trees dot this man-made hillside that overlooks the Bay. Walking to the top of the mound, I received flashes of the Tocobaga tribe that once inhabited the site. I saw a woman wearing a necklace of shells and tree fronds on her clothing. I heard the hustle and bustle of an entire civilisation of people travelling up and down the mound. I chose a park bench on the front side of the Tocobaga Mound, as far away from the other park visitors as possible. It was quiet and I made it known to the spirits I was there in peace and just wanted to connect to better understand. I stated aloud clockwise motion meant yes and counterclockwise motion meant no. I asked the spirits if they were nature spirits, they confirmed. Then I asked if there were native spirits there, they confirmed. When asked if the spirits there were angry, they confirmed. At this point I got a little uneasy and asked if the spirits were angry with the people on the mound today, the pendulum moved counterclockwise (phew!). I made an educated guess and asked if the spirits were mad at the Spanish men who came from the water. They confirmed. You see, on the same site there was turmoil between the Spanish seafarers who landed there in the sixteenth century and the natives who had been there for centuries before. The Spanish were slaughtered but today there are historical markers commemorating them.

This is the view from the top of the Tocobaga Burial Mound where a Ley Line crosses. Copyright Nicole Canfield 2018

Ley Line Magick

In addition to speaking with spirits at local ley lines, the energy of ley lines can be used in various forms of magick. Enlightenment is number one. This should go without saying that a journey to local ley lines will give you divine insight. Healing is another form of ley line magick. While there, ask Mother Earth to send healing vibrations through your feet and into the rest of your body to the top of your head. Stand still for a while and you can literally feel the healing energy pulsing up from the earth. It is truly amazing. Other forms of ley line magick include: drawing love to oneself, abundance, grounding, and cleansing. Have a ritual that needs a particularly strong amount of energy? Perform all or part of it at local ley lines and see the difference!

If you live in the United States, here are some of the sacred sites located on ley lines:

Montana Megaliths

Pryor Mountains Megaliths, MT

Bighorn Medicine Wheel, NY

Sedona, AZ

Serpent Mount, OH

Mount Shasta, CA

Mount Denali, AK

Tocobaga Indian Mound, FL

Ley Lines All Over the World

It doesn’t matter where you live in the world – there’s bound to be a ley line close by whether its a large one or not. Think of your historical sites close by and think of the natural landmarks that might have once been sacred to the indigenous people there. England has dozens of sacred sites and pagan places that align on one particular ley line running from the southwest to the northeast. There’s a ley line that runs directly through Easter Island in the Pacific. A huge intersection of ley lines is found in northern Egypt. And another runs over Dublin, Ireland. Wherever you live in the world, look up the ley line world map and start hunting! I promise the journey and ley line magick will create a profound impact on your spirituality and life.