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vaguelyhumanshapedbeing · 2 months ago

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THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE

By H. P. Lovecraft

West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs.

The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. It must be this which keeps the foreigners away, for old Ammi Pierce has never told them of anything he recalls from the strange days. Ammi, whose head has been a little queer for years, is the only one who still remains, or who ever talks of the strange days; and he dares to do this because his house is so near the open fields and the travelled roads around Arkham.

There was once a road over the hills and through the valleys, that ran straight where the blasted heath is now; but people ceased to use it and a new road was laid curving far toward the south. Traces of the old one can still be found amidst the weeds of a returning wilderness, and some of them will doubtless linger even when half the hollows are flooded for the new reservoir. Then the dark woods will be cut down and the blasted heath will slumber far below blue waters whose surface will mirror the sky and ripple in the sun. And the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep's secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean, and all the mystery of primal earth.

When I went into the hills and vales to survey for the new reservoir they told me the place was evil. They told me this in Arkham, and because that is a very old town full of witch legends I thought the evil must be something which grandmas had whispered to children through centuries. The name "blasted heath" seemed to me very odd and theatrical, and I wondered how it had come into the folklore of a Puritan people. Then I saw that dark westward tangle of glens and slopes for myself, and ceased to wonder at anything besides its own elder mystery. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood. There was too much silence in the dim alleys between them, and the floor was too soft with the dank moss and mattings of infinite years of decay.

In the open spaces, mostly along the line of the old road, there were little hillside farms; sometimes with all the buildings standing, sometimes with only one or two, and sometimes with only a lone chimney or fast-filling cellar. Weeds and briers reigned, and furtive wild things rustled in the undergrowth. Upon everything was a haze of restlessness and oppression; a touch of the unreal and the grotesque, as if some vital element of perspective or chiaroscuro were awry. I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this was no region to sleep in. It was too much like a landscape of Salvator Rosa; too much like some forbidden woodcut in a tale of terror.

But even all this was not so bad as the blasted heath. I knew it the moment I came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley; for no other name could fit such thing, or any other thing fit such a name. It was as if the poet had coined the phrase from having seen this one particular region. It must, I thought as I viewed it, be the outcome of a fire; but why had nothing new ever grown over those five acres of grey desolation that sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields? It lay largely to the north of the ancient road line, but encroached a little on the other side. I felt an odd reluctance about approaching, and did so at last only because my business took me through and past it. There was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse, but only a fine grey dust or ash which no wind seemed ever to blow about. The trees near it were sickly and stunted, and many dead trunks stood or lay rotting at the rim. As I walked hurriedly by I saw the tumbled bricks and stones of an old chimney and cellar on my right, and the yawning black maw of an abandoned well whose stagnant vapours played strange tricks with the hues of the sunlight. Even the long, dark woodland climb beyond seemed welcome in contrast, and I marvelled no more at the frightened whispers of Arkham people. There had been no house or ruin near; even in the old days the place must have been lonely and remote. And at twilight, dreading to repass that ominous spot, I walked circuitously back to the town by the curving road on the south. I vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for an odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul.

In the evening I asked old people in Arkham about the blasted heath, and what was meant by that phrase "strange days" which so many evasively muttered. I could not, however, get any good answers, except that all the mystery was much more recent than I had dreamed. It was not a matter of old legendry at all, but something within the lifetime of those who spoke. It had happened in the 'eighties, and a family had disappeared or was killed. Speakers would not be exact; and because they all told me to pay no attention to old Ammi Pierce's crazy tales, I sought him out the next morning, having heard that he lived alone in the ancient tottering cottage where the trees first begin to get very thick. It was a fearsomely ancient place, and had begun to exude the faint miasmal odour which clings about houses that have stood too long. Only with persistent knocking could I rouse the aged man, and when he shuffled timidly to the door I could tell he was not glad to see me. He was not so feeble as I had expected; but his eyes drooped in a curious way, and his unkempt clothing and white beard made him seem very worn and dismal.

Not knowing just how he could best be launched on his tales, I feigned a matter of business; told him of my surveying, and asked vague questions about the district. He was far brighter and more educated than I had been led to think, and before I knew it had grasped quite as much of the subject as any man I had talked with in Arkham. He was not like other rustics I had known in the sections where reservoirs were to be. From him there were no protests at the miles of old wood and farmland to be blotted out, though perhaps there would have been had not his home lain outside the bounds of the future lake. Relief was all that he showed; relief at the doom of the dark ancient valleys through which he had roamed all his life. They were better under water now—better under water since the strange days. And with this opening his husky voice sank low, while his body leaned forward and his right forefinger began to point shakily and impressively.

It was then that I heard the story, and as the rambling voice scraped and whispered on I shivered again and again despite the summer day. Often I had to recall the speaker from ramblings, piece out scientific points which he knew only by a fading parrot memory of professors' talk, or bridge over gaps, where his sense of logic and continuity broke down. When he was done I did not wonder that his mind had snapped a trifle, or that the folk of Arkham would not speak much of the blasted heath. I hurried back before sunset to my hotel, unwilling to have the stars come out above me in the open; and the next day returned to Boston to give up my position. I could not go into that dim chaos of old forest and slope again, or face another time that grey blasted heath where the black well yawned deep beside the tumbled bricks and stones. The reservoir will soon be built now, and all those elder secrets will lie safe forever under watery fathoms. But even then I do not believe I would like to visit that country by night—at least not when the sinister stars are out; and nothing could bribe me to drink the new city water of Arkham.

It all began, old Ammi said, with the meteorite. Before that time there had been no wild legends at all since the witch trials, and even then these western woods were not feared half so much as the small island in the Miskatonic where the devil held court beside a curious stone altar older than the Indians. These were not haunted woods, and their fantastic dusk was never terrible till the strange days. Then there had come that white noontide cloud, that string of explosions in the air, and that pillar of smoke from the valley far in the wood. And by night all Arkham had heard of the great rock that fell out of the sky and bedded itself in the ground beside the well at the Nahum Gardner place. That was the house which had stood where the blasted heath was to come—the trim white Nahum Gardner house amidst its fertile gardens and orchards.

Nahum had come to town to tell people about the stone, and had dropped in at Ammi Pierce's on the way. Ammi was forty then, and all the queer things were fixed very strongly in his mind. He and his wife had gone with the three professors from Miskatonic University who hastened out the next morning to see the weird visitor from unknown stellar space, and had wondered why Nahum had called it so large the day before. It had shrunk, Nahum said as he pointed out the big brownish mound above the ripped earth and charred grass near the archaic well-sweep in his front yard; but the wise men answered that stones do not shrink. Its heat lingered persistently, and Nahum declared it had glowed faintly in the night. The professors tried it with a geologist's hammer and found it was oddly soft. It was, in truth, so soft as to be almost plastic; and they gouged rather than chipped a specimen to take back to the college for testing. They took it in an old pail borrowed from Nahum's kitchen, for even the small piece refused to grow cool. On the trip back they stopped at Ammi's to rest, and seemed thoughtful when Mrs. Pierce remarked that the fragment was growing smaller and burning the bottom of the pail. Truly, it was not large, but perhaps they had taken less than they thought.

The day after that—all this was in June of '82—the professors had trooped out again in a great excitement. As they passed Ammi's they told him what queer things the specimen had done, and how it had faded wholly away when they put it in a glass beaker. The beaker had gone, too, and the wise men talked of the strange stone's affinity for silicon. It had acted quite unbelievably in that well-ordered laboratory; doing nothing at all and showing no occluded gases when heated on charcoal, being wholly negative in the borax bead, and soon proving itself absolutely non-volatile at any producible temperature, including that of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. On an anvil it appeared highly malleable, and in the dark its luminosity was very marked. Stubbornly refusing to grow cool, it soon had the college in a state of real excitement; and when upon heating before the spectroscope it displayed shining bands unlike any known colours of the normal spectrum there was much breathless talk of new elements, bizarre optical properties, and other things which puzzled men of science are wont to say when faced by the unknown.

Hot as it was, they tested it in a crucible with all the proper reagents. Water did nothing. Hydrochloric acid was the same. Nitric acid and even aqua regia merely hissed and spattered against its torrid invulnerability. Ammi had difficulty in recalling all these things, but recognized some solvents as I mentioned them in the usual order of use. There were ammonia and caustic soda, alcohol and ether, nauseous carbon disulphide and a dozen others; but although the weight grew steadily less as time passed, and the fragment seemed to be slightly cooling, there was no change in the solvents to show that they had attacked the substance at all. It was a metal, though, beyond a doubt. It was magnetic, for one thing; and after its immersion in the acid solvents there seemed to be faint traces of the Widmänstätten figures found on meteoric iron. When the cooling had grown very considerable, the testing was carried on in glass; and it was in a glass beaker that they left all the chips made of the original fragment during the work. The next morning both chips and beaker were gone without trace, and only a charred spot marked the place on the wooden shelf where they had been.

All this the professors told Ammi as they paused at his door, and once more he went with them to see the stony messenger from the stars, though this time his wife did not accompany him. It had now most certainly shrunk, and even the sober professors could not doubt the truth of what they saw. All around the dwindling brown lump near the well was a vacant space, except where the earth had caved in; and whereas it had been a good seven feet across the day before, it was now scarcely five. It was still hot, and the sages studied its surface curiously as they detached another and larger piece with hammer and chisel. They gouged deeply this time, and as they pried away the smaller mass they saw that the core of the thing was not quite homogeneous.

They had uncovered what seemed to be the side of a large coloured globule embedded in the substance. The colour, which resembled some of the bands in the meteor's strange spectrum, was almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all. Its texture was glossy, and upon tapping it appeared to promise both brittleness and hollowness. One of the professors gave it a smart blow with a hammer, and it burst with a nervous little pop. Nothing was emitted, and all trace of the thing vanished with the puncturing. It left behind a hollow spherical space about three inches across, and all thought it probable that others would be discovered as the enclosing substance wasted away.

Conjecture was vain; so after a futile attempt to find additional globules by drilling, the seekers left again with their new specimen—which proved, however, as baffling in the laboratory as its predecessor. Aside from being almost plastic, having heat, magnetism, and slight luminosity, cooling slightly in powerful acids, possessing an unknown spectrum, wasting away in air, and attacking silicon compounds with mutual destruction as a result, it presented no identifying features whatsoever; and at the end of the tests the college scientists were forced to own that they could not place it. It was nothing of this earth, but a piece of the great outside; and as such dowered with outside properties and obedient to outside laws.

That night there was a thunderstorm, and when the professors went out to Nahum's the next day they met with a bitter disappointment. The stone, magnetic as it had been, must have had some peculiar electrical property; for it had "drawn the lightning," as Nahum said, with a singular persistence. Six times within an hour the farmer saw the lightning strike the furrow in the front yard, and when the storm was over nothing remained but a ragged pit by the ancient well-sweep, half-chocked with caved-in earth. Digging had borne no fruit, and the scientists verified the fact of the utter vanishment. The failure was total; so that nothing was left to do but go back to the laboratory and test again the disappearing fragment left carefully cased in lead. That fragment lasted a week, at the end of which nothing of value had been learned of it. When it had gone, no residue was left behind, and in time the professors felt scarcely sure they had indeed seen with waking eyes that cryptic vestige of the fathomless gulfs outside; that lone, weird message from other universes and other realms of matter, force, and entity.

As was natural, the Arkham papers made much of the incident with its collegiate sponsoring, and sent reporters to talk with Nahum Gardner and his family. At least one Boston daily also sent a scribe, and Nahum quickly became a kind of local celebrity. He was a lean, genial person of about fifty, living with his wife and three sons on the pleasant farmstead in the valley. He and Ammi exchanged visits frequently, as did their wives; and Ammi had nothing but praise for him after all these years. He seemed slightly proud of the notice his place had attracted, and talked often of the meteorite in the succeeding weeks. That July and August were hot; and Nahum worked hard at his haying in the ten-acre pasture across Chapman's Brook; his rattling wain wearing deep ruts in the shadowy lanes between. The labour tired him more than it had in other years, and he felt that age was beginning to tell on him.

Then fell the time of fruit and harvest. The pears and apples slowly ripened, and Nahum vowed that his orchards were prospering as never before. The fruit was growing to phenomenal size and unwonted gloss, and in such abundance that extra barrels were ordered to handle the future crop. But with the ripening came sore disappointment, for of all that gorgeous array of specious lusciousness not one single jot was fit to eat. Into the fine flavour of the pears and apples had crept a stealthy bitterness and sickishness, so that even the smallest of bites induced a lasting disgust. It was the same with the melons and tomatoes, and Nahum sadly saw that his entire crop was lost. Quick to connect events, he declared that the meteorite had poisoned the soil, and thanked Heaven that most of the other crops were in the upland lot along the road.

Winter came early, and was very cold. Ammi saw Nahum less often than usual, and observed that he had begun to look worried. The rest of his family too, seemed to have grown taciturn; and were far from steady in their churchgoing or their attendance at the various social events of the countryside. For this reserve or melancholy no cause could be found, though all the household confessed now and then to poorer health and a feeling of vague disquiet. Nahum himself gave the most definite statement of anyone when he said he was disturbed about certain footprints in the snow. They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits, and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement. He was never specific, but appeared to think that they were not as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and rabbits and foxes as they ought to be. Ammi listened without interest to this talk until one night when he drove past Nahum's house in his sleigh on the way back from Clark's Corners. There had been a moon, and a rabbit had run across the road; and the leaps of that rabbit were longer than either Ammi or his horse liked. The latter, indeed, had almost run away when brought up by a firm rein. Thereafter Ammi gave Nahum's tales more respect, and wondered why the Gardner dogs seemed so cowed and quivering every morning. They had, it developed, nearly lost the spirit to bark.

In February the McGregor boys from Meadow Hill were out shooting woodchucks, and not far from the Gardner place bagged a very peculiar specimen. The proportions of its body seemed slightly altered in a queer way impossible to describe, while its face had taken on an expression which no one ever saw in a woodchuck before. The boys were genuinely frightened, and threw the thing away at once, so that only their grotesque tales of it ever reached the people of the countryside. But the shying of horses near Nahum's house had now become an acknowledged thing, and all the basis for a cycle of whispered legend was fast taking form.

People vowed that the snow melted faster around Nahum's than it did anywhere else, and early in March there was an awed discussion in Potter's general store at Clark's Corners. Stephen Rice had driven past Gardner's in the morning, and had noticed the skunk-cabbages coming up through the mud by the woods across the road. Never were things of such size seen before, and they held strange colours that could not be put into any words. Their shapes were monstrous, and the horse had snorted at an odour which struck Stephen as wholly unprecedented. That afternoon several persons drove past to see the abnormal growth, and all agreed that plants of that kind ought never to sprout in a healthy world. The bad fruit of the fall before was freely mentioned, and it went from mouth to mouth that there was poison in Nahum's ground. Of course it was the meteorite; and remembering how strange the men from the college had found that stone to be, several farmers spoke about the matter to them.

One day they paid Nahum a visit; but having no love of wild tales and folklore were very conservative in what they inferred. The plants were certainly odd, but all skunk-cabbages are more or less odd in shape and hue. Perhaps some mineral element from the stone had entered the soil, but it would soon be washed away. And as for the footprints and frightened horses—of course this was mere country talk which such a phenomenon as the aerolite would be certain to start. There was really nothing for serious men to do in cases of wild gossip, for superstitious rustics will say and believe anything. And so all through the strange days the professors stayed away in contempt. Only one of them, when given two phials of dust for analysis in a police job over a year and a half later, recalled that the queer colour of that skunk-cabbage had been very like one of the anomalous bands of light shown by the meteor fragment in the college spectroscope, and like the brittle globule found imbedded in the stone from the abyss. The samples in this analysis case gave the same odd bands at first, though later they lost the property.

The trees budded prematurely around Nahum's, and at night they swayed ominously in the wind. Nahum's second son Thaddeus, a lad of fifteen, swore that they swayed also when there was no wind; but even the gossips would not credit this. Certainly, however, restlessness was in the air. The entire Gardner family developed the habit of stealthy listening, though not for any sound which they could consciously name. The listening was, indeed, rather a product of moments when consciousness seemed half to slip away. Unfortunately such moments increased week by week, till it became common speech that "something was wrong with all Nahum's folks." When the early saxifrage came out it had another strange colour; not quite like that of the skunk-cabbage, but plainly related and equally unknown to anyone who saw it. Nahum took some blossoms to Arkham and showed them to the editor of the Gazette, but that dignitary did no more than write a humorous article about them, in which the dark fears of rustics were held up to polite ridicule. It was a mistake of Nahum's to tell a stolid city man about the way the great, overgrown mourning-cloak butterflies behaved in connection with these saxifrages.

April brought a kind of madness to the country folk, and began that disuse of the road past Nahum's which led to its ultimate abandonment. It was next the vegetation. All the orchard trees blossomed forth in strange colours, and through the stony soil of the yard and adjacent pasturage there sprang up a bizarre growth which only a botanist could connect with the proper flora of the region. No sane wholesome colours were anywhere to be seen except in the green grass and leafage; but everywhere were those hectic and prismatic variants of some diseased, underlying primary tone without a place among the known tints of earth. The "Dutchman's breeches" became a thing of sinister menace, and the bloodroots grew insolent in their chromatic perversion. Ammi and the Gardners thought that most of the colours had a sort of haunting familiarity, and decided that they reminded one of the brittle globule in the meteor. Nahum ploughed and sowed the ten-acre pasture and the upland lot, but did nothing with the land around the house. He knew it would be of no use, and hoped that the summer's strange growths would draw all the poison from the soil. He was prepared for almost anything now, and had grown used to the sense of something near him waiting to be heard. The shunning of his house by neighbours told on him, of course; but it told on his wife more. The boys were better off, being at school each day; but they could not help being frightened by the gossip. Thaddeus, an especially sensitive youth, suffered the most.

In May the insects came, and Nahum's place became a nightmare of buzzing and crawling. Most of the creatures seemed not quite usual in their aspects and motions, and their nocturnal habits contradicted all former experience. The Gardners took to watching at night—watching in all directions at random for something they could not tell what. It was then that they all owned that Thaddeus had been right about the trees. Mrs. Gardner was the next to see it from the window as she watched the swollen boughs of a maple against a moonlit sky. The boughs surely moved, and there was no wind. It must be the sap. Strangeness had come into everything growing now. Yet it was none of Nahum's family at all who made the next discovery. Familiarity had dulled them, and what they could not see was glimpsed by a timid windmill salesman from Bolton who drove by one night in ignorance of the country legends. What he told in Arkham was given a short paragraph in the Gazette; and it was there that all the farmers, Nahum included, saw it first. The night had been dark and the buggy-lamps faint, but around a farm in the valley which everyone knew from the account must be Nahum's, the darkness had been less thick. A dim though distinct luminosity seemed to inhere in all the vegetation, grass, leaves, and blossoms alike, while at one moment a detached piece of the phosphorescence appeared to stir furtively in the yard near the barn.

The grass had so far seemed untouched, and the cows were freely pastured in the lot near the house, but toward the end of May the milk began to be bad. Then Nahum had the cows driven to the uplands, after which this trouble ceased. Not long after this the change in grass and leaves became apparent to the eye. All the verdure was going grey, and was developing a highly singular quality of brittleness. Ammi was now the only person who ever visited the place, and his visits were becoming fewer and fewer. When school closed the Gardners were virtually cut off from the world, and sometimes let Ammi do their errands in town. They were failing curiously both physically and mentally, and no one was surprised when the news of Mrs. Gardner's madness stole around.

It happened in June, about the anniversary of the meteor's fall, and the poor woman screamed about things in the air which she could not describe. In her raving there was not a single specific noun, but only verbs and pronouns. Things moved and changed and fluttered, and ears tingled to impulses which were not wholly sounds. Something was taken away—she was being drained of something—something was fastening itself on her that ought not to be—someone must make it keep off—nothing was ever still in the night—the walls and windows shifted. Nahum did not send her to the county asylum, but let her wander about the house as long as she was harmless to herself and others. Even when her expression changed he did nothing. But when the boys grew afraid of her, and Thaddeus nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him, he decided to keep her locked in the attic. By July she had ceased to speak and crawled on all fours, and before that month was over Nahum got the mad notion that she was slightly luminous in the dark, as he now clearly saw was the case with the nearby vegetation.

It was a little before this that the horses had stampeded. Something had aroused them in the night, and their neighing and kicking in their stalls had been terrible. There seemed virtually nothing to do to calm them, and when Nahum opened the stable door they all bolted out like frightened woodland deer. It took a week to track all four, and when found they were seen to be quite useless and unmanageable. Something had snapped in their brains, and each one had to be shot for its own good. Nahum borrowed a horse from Ammi for his haying, but found it would not approach the barn. It shied, balked, and whinnied, and in the end he could do nothing but drive it into the yard while the men used their own strength to get the heavy wagon near enough the hayloft for convenient pitching. And all the while the vegetation was turning grey and brittle. Even the flowers whose hues had been so strange were graying now, and the fruit was coming out grey and dwarfed and tasteless. The asters and goldenrod bloomed grey and distorted, and the roses and zinnias and hollyhocks in the front yard were such blasphemous-looking things that Nahum's oldest boy Zenas cut them down. The strangely puffed insects died about that time, even the bees that had left their hives and taken to the woods.

By September all the vegetation was fast crumbling to a greyish powder, and Nahum feared that the trees would die before the poison was out of the soil. His wife now had spells of terrific screaming, and he and the boys were in a constant state of nervous tension. They shunned people now, and when school opened the boys did not go. But it was Ammi, on one of his rare visits, who first realized that the well water was no longer good. It had an evil taste that was not exactly fetid nor exactly salty, and Ammi advised his friend to dig another well on higher ground to use till the soil was good again. Nahum, however, ignored the warning, for he had by that time become calloused to strange and unpleasant things. He and the boys continued to use the tainted supply, drinking it as listlessly and mechanically as they ate their meagre and ill-cooked meals and did their thankless and monotonous chores through the aimless days. There was something of stolid resignation about them all, as if they walked half in another world between lines of nameless guards to a certain and familiar doom.

Thaddeus went mad in September after a visit to the well. He had gone with a pail and had come back empty-handed, shrieking and waving his arms, and sometimes lapsing into an inane titter or a whisper about "the moving colours down there." Two in one family was pretty bad, but Nahum was very brave about it. He let the boy run about for a week until he began stumbling and hurting himself, and then he shut him in an attic room across the hall from his mother's. The way they screamed at each other from behind their locked doors was very terrible, especially to little Merwin, who fancied they talked in some terrible language that was not of earth. Merwin was getting frightfully imaginative, and his restlessness was worse after the shutting away of the brother who had been his greatest playmate.

Almost at the same time the mortality among the livestock commenced. Poultry turned greyish and died very quickly, their meat being found dry and noisome upon cutting. Hogs grew inordinately fat, then suddenly began to undergo loathsome changes which no one could explain. Their meat was of course useless, and Nahum was at his wit's end. No rural veterinary would approach his place, and the city veterinary from Arkham was openly baffled. The swine began growing grey and brittle and falling to pieces before they died, and their eyes and muzzles developed singular alterations. It was very inexplicable, for they had never been fed from the tainted vegetation. Then something struck the cows. Certain areas or sometimes the whole body would be uncannily shrivelled or compressed, and atrocious collapses or disintegrations were common. In the last stages—and death was always the result—there would be a greying and turning brittle like that which beset the hogs. There could be no question of poison, for all the cases occurred in a locked and undisturbed barn. No bites of prowling things could have brought the virus, for what live beast of earth can pass through solid obstacles? It must be only natural disease—yet what disease could wreak such results was beyond any mind's guessing. When the harvest came there was not an animal surviving on the place, for the stock and poultry were dead and the dogs had run away. These dogs, three in number, had all vanished one night and were never heard of again. The five cats had left some time before, but their going was scarcely noticed since there now seemed to be no mice, and only Mrs. Gardner had made pets of the graceful felines.

On the nineteenth of October Nahum staggered into Ammi's house with hideous news. The death had come to poor Thaddeus in his attic room, and it had come in a way which could not be told. Nahum had dug a grave in the railed family plot behind the farm, and had put therein what he found. There could have been nothing from outside, for the small barred window and locked door were intact; but it was much as it had been in the barn. Ammi and his wife consoled the stricken man as best they could, but shuddered as they did so. Stark terror seemed to cling round the Gardners and all they touched, and the very presence of one in the house was a breath from regions unnamed and unnameable. Ammi accompanied Nahum home with the greatest reluctance, and did what he might to calm the hysterical sobbing of little Merwin. Zenas needed no calming. He had come of late to do nothing but stare into space and obey what his father told him; and Ammi thought that his fate was very merciful. Now and then Merwin's screams were answered faintly from the attic, and in response to an inquiring look Nahum said that his wife was getting very feeble. When night approached, Ammi managed to get away; for not even friendship could make him stay in that spot when the faint glow of the vegetation began and the trees may or may not have swayed without wind. It was really lucky for Ammi that he was not more imaginative. Even as things were, his mind was bent ever so slightly; but had he been able to connect and reflect upon all the portents around him he must inevitably have turned a total maniac. In the twilight he hastened home, the screams of the mad woman and the nervous child ringing horrible in his ears.

Three days later Nahum burst into Ammi's kitchen in the early morning, and in the absence of his host stammered out a desperate tale once more, while Mrs. Pierce listened in a clutching fright. It was little Merwin this time. He was gone. He had gone out late at night with a lantern and pail for water, and had never come back. He'd been going to pieces for days, and hardly knew what he was about. Screamed at everything. There had been a frantic shriek from the yard then, but before the father could get to the door the boy was gone. There was no glow from the lantern he had taken, and of the child himself no trace. At the time Nahum thought the lantern and pail were gone too; but when dawn came, and the man had plodded back from his all-night search of the woods and fields, he had found some very curious things near the well. There was a crushed and apparently somewhat melted mass of iron which had certainly been the lantern; while a bent pail and twisted iron hoops beside it, both half-fused, seemed to hint at the remnants of the pail. That was all. Nahum was past imagining, Mrs. Pierce was blank, and Ammi, when he had reached home and heard the tale, could give no guess. Merwin was gone, and there would be no use in telling the people around, who shunned all Gardners now. No use, either, in telling the city people at Arkham who laughed at everything. Thad was gone, and now Merwin was gone. Something was creeping and creeping and waiting to be seen and heard. Nahum would go soon, and he wanted Ammi to look after his wife and Zenas if they survived him. It must all be a judgment of some sort; though he could not fancy what for, since he had always walked uprightly in the Lord's ways so far as he knew.

For over two weeks Ammi saw nothing of Nahum; and then, worried about what might have happened, he overcame his fears and paid the Gardner place a visit. There was no smoke from the great chimney, and for a moment the visitor was apprehensive of the worst. The aspect of the whole farm was shocking—greyish withered grass and leaves on the ground, vines falling in brittle wreckage from archaic walls and gables, and great bare trees clawing up at the grey November sky with a studied malevolence which Ammi could not but feel had come from some subtle change in the tilt of the branches. But Nahum was alive, after all. He was weak, and lying in a couch in the low-ceiled kitchen, but perfectly conscious and able to give simple orders to Zenas. The room was deadly cold; and as Ammi visibly shivered, the host shouted huskily to Zenas for more wood. Wood, indeed, was sorely needed; since the cavernous fireplace was unlit and empty, with a cloud of soot blowing about in the chill wind that came down the chimney. Presently Nahum asked him if the extra wood had made him any more comfortable, and then Ammi saw what had happened. The stoutest cord had broken at last, and the hapless farmer's mind was proof against more sorrow.

Questioning tactfully, Ammi could get no clear data at all about the missing Zenas. "In the well—he lives in the well—" was all that the clouded father would say. Then there flashed across the visitor's mind a sudden thought of the mad wife, and he changed his line of inquiry. "Nabby? Why, here she is!" was the surprised response of poor Nahum, and Ammi soon saw that he must search for himself. Leaving the harmless babbler on the couch, he took the keys from their nail beside the door and climbed the creaking stairs to the attic. It was very close and noisome up there, and no sound could be heard from any direction. Of the four doors in sight, only one was locked, and on this he tried various keys on the ring he had taken. The third key proved the right one, and after some fumbling Ammi threw open the low white door.

It was quite dark inside, for the window was small and half-obscured by the crude wooden bars; and Ammi could see nothing at all on the wide-planked floor. The stench was beyond enduring, and before proceeding further he had to retreat to another room and return with his lungs filled with breathable air. When he did enter he saw something dark in the corner, and upon seeing it more clearly he screamed outright. While he screamed he thought a momentary cloud eclipsed the window, and a second later he felt himself brushed as if by some hateful current of vapour. Strange colours danced before his eyes; and had not a present horror numbed him he would have thought of the globule in the meteor that the geologist's hammer had shattered, and of the morbid vegetation that had sprouted in the spring. As it was he thought only of the blasphemous monstrosity which confronted him, and which all too clearly had shared the nameless fate of young Thaddeus and the livestock. But the terrible thing about the horror was that it very slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to crumble.

Ammi would give me no added particulars of this scene, but the shape in the corners does not re-appear in his tale as a moving object. There are things which cannot be mentioned, and what is done in common humanity is sometimes cruelly judged by the law. I gathered that no moving thing was left in that attic room, and that to leave anything capable of motion there would have been a deed so monstrous as to damn any accountable being to eternal torment. Anyone but a stolid farmer would have fainted or gone mad, but Ammi walked conscious through that low doorway and locked the accursed secret behind him. There would be Nahum to deal with now; he must be fed and tended, and removed to some place where he could be cared for.

Commencing his descent of the dark stairs, Ammi heard a thud below him. He even thought a scream had been suddenly choked off, and recalled nervously the clammy vapour which had brushed by him in that frightful room above. What presence had his cry and entry started up? Halted by some vague fear, he heard still further sounds below. Indubitably there was a sort of heavy dragging, and a most detestably sticky noise as of some fiendish and unclean species of suction. With an associative sense goaded to feverish heights, he thought unaccountably of what he had seen upstairs. Good God! What eldritch dream-world was this into which he had blundered? He dared move neither backward nor forward, but stood there trembling at the black curve of the boxed-in staircase. Every trifle of the scene burned itself into his brain. The sounds, the sense of dread expectancy, the darkness, the steepness of the narrow steps—and merciful Heaven!—the faint but unmistakable luminosity of all the woodwork in sight; steps, sides, exposed laths, and beams alike.

Then there burst forth a frantic whinny from Ammi's horse outside, followed at once by a clatter which told of a frenzied runaway. In another moment horse and buggy had gone beyond earshot, leaving the frightened man on the dark stairs to guess what had sent them. But that was not all. There had been another sound out there. A sort of liquid splash—water—it must have been the well. He had left Hero untied near it, and a buggy-wheel must have brushed the coping and knocked in a stone. And still the pale phosphorescense glowed in that detestably ancient woodwork. God! how old the house was! Most of it built before 1700.

A feeble scratching on the floor downstairs now sounded distinctly, and Ammi's grip tightened on a heavy stick he had picked up in the attic for some purpose. Slowly nerving himself, he finished his descent and walked boldly toward the kitchen. But he did not complete the walk, because what he sought was no longer there. It had come to meet him, and it was still alive after a fashion. Whether it had crawled or whether it had been dragged by any external forces, Ammi could not say; but the death had been at it. Everything had happened in the last half-hour, but collapse, greying, and disintegration were already far advanced. There was a horrible brittleness, and dry fragments were scaling off. Ammi could not touch it, but looked horrifiedly into the distorted parody that had been a face. "What was it, Nahum—what was it?" He whispered, and the cleft, bulging lips were just able to crackle out a final answer.

"Nothin' ... nothin' ... the colour ... it burns ... cold an' wet, but it burns ... it lived in the well.... I seen it ... a kind o' smoke ... jest like the flowers last spring ... the well shone at night.... Thad an' Merwin an' Zenas ... everything alive ... suckin' the life out of everything ... in that stone ... it must o' come in that stone ... pizened the whole place ... dun't know what it wants ... that round thing them men from the college dug outen the stone ... they smashed it ... it was that same colour ... jest the same, like the flowers an' plants ... must a' ben more of 'em ... seeds ... seeds ... they growed ... I seen it the fust time this week ... must a' got strong on Zenas ... he was a big boy, full o' life ... it beats down your mind an' then gits ye ... burns ye up ... in the well water ... you was right about that ... evil water ... Zenas never come back from the well ... can't git away ... draws ye ... ye know summ'at's comin', but 'tain't no use ... I seen it time an' agin Zenas was took ... whar's Nabby, Ammi? ... my head's no good ... dun't know how long sence I fed her ... it'll git her ef we ain't keerful ... jest a colour ... her face is gittin' to hev that colour sometimes towards night ... an' it burns an' sucks ... it come from some place whar things ain't as they is here ... one o' them professors said so ... he was right ... look out, Ammi, it'll do suthin' more ... sucks the life out...."

But that was all. That which spoke could speak no more because it had completely caved in. Ammi laid a red checked tablecloth over what was left and reeled out the back door into the fields. He climbed the slope to the ten-acre pasture and stumbled home by the north road and the woods. He could not pass that well from which his horses had run away. He had looked at it through the window, and had seen that no stone was missing from the rim. Then the lurching buggy had not dislodged anything after all—the splash had been something else—something which went into the well after it had done with poor Nahum....

When Ammi reached his house the horses and buggy had arrived before him and thrown his wife into fits of anxiety. Reassuring her without explanations, he set out at once for Arkham and notified the authorities that the Gardner family was no more. He indulged in no details, but merely told of the deaths of Nahum and Nabby, that of Thaddeus being already known, and mentioned that the cause seemed to be the same strange ailment which had killed the livestock. He also stated that Merwin and Zenas had disappeared. There was considerable questioning at the police station, and in the end Ammi was compelled to take three officers to the Gardner farm, together with the coroner, the medical examiner, and the veterinary who had treated the diseased animals. He went much against his will, for the afternoon was advancing and he feared the fall of night over that accursed place, but it was some comfort to have so many people with him.

The six men drove out in a democrat-wagon, following Ammi's buggy, and arrived at the pest-ridden farmhouse about four o'clock. Used as the officers were to gruesome experiences, not one remained unmoved at what was found in the attic and under the red checked tablecloth on the floor below. The whole aspect of the farm with its grey desolation was terrible enough, but those two crumbling objects were beyond all bounds. No one could look long at them, and even the medical examiner admitted that there was very little to examine. Specimens could be analysed, of course, so he busied himself in obtaining them—and here it develops that a very puzzling aftermath occurred at the college laboratory where the two phials of dust were finally taken. Under the spectroscope both samples gave off an unknown spectrum, in which many of the baffling bands were precisely like those which the strange meteor had yielded in the previous year. The property of emitting this spectrum vanished in a month, the dust thereafter consisting mainly of alkaline phosphates and carbonates.

Ammi would not have told the men about the well if he had thought they meant to do anything then and there. It was getting toward sunset, and he was anxious to be away. But he could not help glancing nervously at the stony curb by the great sweep, and when a detective questioned him he admitted that Nahum had feared something down there—so much so that he had never even thought of searching it for Merwin or Zenas. After that nothing would do but that they empty and explore the well immediately, so Ammi had to wait trembling while pail after pail of rank water was hauled up and splashed on the soaking ground outside. The men sniffed in disgust at the fluid, and toward the last held their noses against the foetor they were uncovering. It was not so long a job as they had feared it would be, since the water was phenomenally low. There is no need to speak too exactly of what they found. Merwin and Zenas were both there, in part, though the vestiges were mainly skeletal. There were also a small deer and a large dog in about the same state, and a number of bones of smaller animals. The ooze and slime at the bottom seemed inexplicably porous and bubbling, and a man who descended on hand-holds with a long pole found that he could sink the wooden shaft to any depth in the mud of the floor without meeting any solid obstruction.

Twilight had now fallen, and lanterns were brought from the house. Then, when it was seen that nothing further could be gained from the well, everyone went indoors and conferred in the ancient sitting-room while the intermittent light of a spectral half-moon played wanly on the grey desolation outside. The men were frankly nonplussed by the entire case, and could find no convincing common element to link the strange vegetable conditions, the unknown disease of livestock and humans, and the unaccountable deaths of Merwin and Zenas in the tainted well. They had heard the common country talk, it is true; but could not believe that anything contrary to natural law had occurred. No doubt the meteor had poisoned the soil, but the illness of person and animals who had eaten nothing grown in that soil was another matter. Was it the well water? Very possibly. It might be a good idea to analyse it. But what peculiar madness could have made both boys jump into the well? Their deeds were so similar—and the fragments showed that they had both suffered from the grey brittle death. Why was everything so grey and brittle?

It was the coroner, seated near a window overlooking the yard, who first noticed the glow about the well. Night had fully set in, and all the abhorrent grounds seemed faintly luminous with more than the fitful moonbeams; but this new glow was something definite and distinct, and appeared to shoot up from the black pit like a softened ray from a searchlight, giving dull reflections in the little ground pools where the water had been emptied. It had a very queer colour, and as all the men clustered round the window Ammi gave a violent start. For this strange beam of ghastly miasma was to him of no unfamiliar hue. He had seen that colour before, and feared to think what it might mean. He had seen it in the nasty brittle globule in that aerolite two summers ago, had seen it in the crazy vegetation of the springtime, and had thought he had seen it for an instant that very morning against the small barred window of that terrible attic room where nameless things had happened. It had flashed there a second, and a clammy and hateful current of vapour had brushed past him—and then poor Nahum had been taken by something of that colour. He had said so at the last—said it was like the globule and the plants. After that had come the runaway in the yard and the splash in the well—and now that well was belching forth to the night a pale insidious beam of the same demoniac tint.

It does credit to the alertness of Ammi's mind that he puzzled even at that tense moment over a point which was essentially scientific. He could not but wonder at his gleaning of the same impression from a vapour glimpsed in the daytime, against a window opening in the morning sky, and from a nocturnal exhalation seen as a phosphorescent mist against the black and blasted landscape. It wasn't right—it was against Nature—and he thought of those terrible last words of his stricken friend, "It come from some place whar things ain't as they is here ... one o' them professors said so...."

All three horses outside, tied to a pair of shrivelled saplings by the road, were now neighing and pawing frantically. The wagon driver started for the door to do something, but Ammi laid a shaky hand on his shoulder. "Dun't go out thar," he whispered. "They's more to this nor what we know. Nahum said somethin' lived in the well that sucks your life out. He said it must be some'at growed from a round ball like one we all seen in the meteor stone that fell a year ago June. Sucks an' burns, he said, an' is jest a cloud of colour like that light out thar now, that ye can hardly see an' can't tell what it is. Nahum thought it feeds on everything livin' an' gits stronger all the time. He said he seen it this last week. It must be somethin' from away off in the sky like the men from the college last year says the meteor stone was. The way it's made an' the way it works ain't like no way o' God's world. It's some'at from beyond."

So the men paused indecisively as the light from the well grew stronger and the hitched horses pawed and whinnied in increasing frenzy. It was truly an awful moment; with terror in that ancient and accursed house itself, four monstrous sets of fragments—two from the house and two from the well—in the woodshed behind, and that shaft of unknown and unholy iridescence from the slimy depths in front. Ammi had restrained the driver on impulse, forgetting how uninjured he himself was after the clammy brushing of that coloured vapour in the attic room, but perhaps it is just as well that he acted as he did. No one will ever know what was abroad that night; and though the blasphemy from beyond had not so far hurt any human of unweakened mind, there is no telling what it might not have done at that last moment, and with its seemingly increased strength and the special signs of purpose it was soon to display beneath the half-clouded moonlit sky.

All at once one of the detectives at the window gave a short, sharp gasp. The others looked at him, and then quickly followed his own gaze upward to the point at which its idle straying had been suddenly arrested. There was no need for words. What had been disputed in country gossip was disputable no longer, and it is because of the thing which every man of that party agreed in whispering later on, that strange days are never talked about in Arkham. It is necessary to premise that there was no wind at that hour of the evening. One did arise not long afterward, but there was absolutely none then. Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge-mustard, grey and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the standing democrat-wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense, godless calm the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving. They were twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in convulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds; scratching impotently in the noxious air as if jerked by some allied and bodiless line of linkage with sub-terrene horrors writhing and struggling below the black roots.

Not a man breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper darkness the watchers saw wriggling at the treetop height a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that come down on the apostles' heads at Pentecost. It was a monstrous constellation of unnatural light, like a glutted swarm of corpse-fed fireflies dancing hellish sarabands over an accursed marsh; and its colour was that same nameless intrusion which Ammi had come to recognise and dread. All the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting brighter and brighter, bringing to the minds of the huddled men, a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image their conscious minds could form. It was no longer shining out; it was pouringout; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow directly into the sky.

... and in the fearsome instant of deeper darkness, the watchers saw wriggling at that treetop height, a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo ... and all the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting brighter and brighter and bringing to the minds of the huddled men, a sense of doom and abnormality.... It was no longer shining out; it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well, it seemed to flow directly into the sky.

The veterinary shivered, and walked to the front door to drop the heavy extra bar across it. Ammi shook no less, and had to tug and point for lack of a controllable voice when he wished to draw notice to the growing luminosity of the trees. The neighing and stamping of the horses had become utterly frightful, but not a soul of that group in the old house would have ventured forth for any earthly reward. With the moments the shining of the trees increased, while their restless branches seemed to strain more and more toward verticality. The wood of the well-sweep was shining now, and presently a policeman dumbly pointed to some wooden sheds and beehives near the stone wall on the west. They were commencing to shine, too, though the tethered vehicles of the visitors seemed so far unaffected. Then there was a wild commotion and clopping in the road, and as Ammi quenched the lamp for better seeing they realized that the span of frantic grays had broken their sapling and run off with the democrat-wagon.

The shock served to loosen several tongues, and embarrassed whispers were exchanged. "It spreads on everything organic that's been around here," muttered the medical examiner. No one replied, but the man who had been in the well gave a hint that his long pole must have stirred up something intangible. "It was awful," he added. "There was no bottom at all. Just ooze and bubbles and the feeling of something lurking under there." Ammi's horse still pawed and screamed deafeningly in the road outside, and nearly drowned its owner's faint quaver as he mumbled his formless reflections. "It come from that stone—it growed down thar—it got everything livin'—it fed itself on 'em, mind and body—Thad an' Merwin, Zenas an' Nabby—Nahum was the last—they all drunk the water—it got strong on 'em—it come from beyond, whar things ain't like they be here—now it's goin' home—"

At this point, as the column of unknown colour flared suddenly stronger and began to weave itself into fantastic suggestions of shape which each spectator later described differently, there came from poor tethered Hero such a sound as no man before or since ever heard from a horse. Every person in that low-pitched sitting-room stopped his ears, and Ammi turned away from the window in horror and nausea. Words could not convey it—when Ammi looked out again the hapless beast lay huddled inert on the moonlit ground between the splintered shafts of the buggy. That was the last of Hero till they buried him next day. But the present was no time to mourn, for almost at this instant a detective silently called attention to something terrible in the very room with them. In the absence of the lamplight it was clear that a faint phosphorescence had begun to pervade the entire apartment. It glowed on the broad-planked floor where the rag carpet left it bare, and shimmered over the sashes of the small-paned windows. It ran up and down the exposed corner-posts, coruscated about the shelf and mantel, and infected the very doors and furniture. Each minute saw it strengthen, and at last it was very plain that healthy living things must leave that house.

Ammi showed them the back door and the path up through the fields to the ten-acre pasture. They walked and stumbled as in a dream, and did not dare look back till they were far away on the high ground. They were glad of the path, for they could not have gone the front way, by that well. It was bad enough passing the glowing barn and sheds, and those shining orchard trees with their gnarled, fiendish contours; but thank Heaven the branches did their worst twisting high up. The moon went under some very black clouds as they crossed the rustic bridge over Chapman's Brook, and it was blind groping from there to the open meadows.

When they looked back toward the valley and the distant Gardner place at the bottom they saw a fearsome sight. All the farm was shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour; trees, buildings, and even such grass and herbage as had not been wholly changed to lethal grey brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues of foul flame, and lambent tricklings of the same monstrous fire were creeping about the ridgepoles of the house, barn and sheds. It was a scene from a vision of Fuseli, and over all the rest reigned that riot of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow of cryptic poison from the well—seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scintillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and unrecognizable chromaticism.

Then without warning the hideous thing shot vertically up toward the sky like a rocket or meteor, leaving behind no trail and disappearing through a round and curiously regular hole in the clouds before any man could gasp or cry out. No watcher can ever forget that sight, and Ammi stared blankly at the stars of Cygnus, Deneb twinkling above the others, where the unknown colour had melted into the Milky Way. But his gaze was the next moment called swiftly to earth by the crackling in the valley. It was just that. Only a wooden ripping and crackling, and not an explosion, as so many others of the party vowed. Yet the outcome was the same, for in one feverish kaleidoscopic instant there burst up from that doomed and accursed farm a gleamingly eruptive cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance; blurring the glance of the few who saw it, and sending forth to the zenith a bombarding cloudburst of such coloured and fantastic fragments as our universe must needs disown. Through quickly re-closing vapours they followed the great morbidity that had vanished, and in another second they had vanished too. Behind and below was only a darkness to which the men dared not return, and all about was a mounting wind which seemed to sweep down in black, frore gusts from interstellar space. It shrieked and howled, and lashed the fields and distorted woods in a mad cosmic frenzy, till soon the trembling party realized it would be no use waiting for the moon to show what was left down there at Nahum's.

Too awed even to hint theories, the seven shaking men trudged back toward Arkham by the north road. Ammi was worse than his fellows, and begged them to see him inside his own kitchen, instead of keeping straight on to town. He did not wish to cross the blighted, wind-whipped woods alone to his home on the main road. For he had had an added shock that the others were spared, and was crushed for ever with a brooding fear he dared not even mention for many years to come. As the rest of the watchers on that tempestuous hill had stolidly set their faces toward the road, Ammi had looked back an instant at the shadowed valley of desolation so lately sheltering his ill-starred friend. And from that stricken, far-away spot he had seen something feebly rise, only to sink down again upon the place from which the great shapeless horror had shot into the sky. It was just a colour—but not any colour of our earth or heavens. And because Ammi recognized that colour, and knew that this last faint remnant must still lurk down there in the well, he has never been quite right since.

Ammi would never go near the place again. It is forty-four years now since the horror happened, but he has never been there, and will be glad when the new reservoir blots it out. I shall be glad, too, for I do not like the way the sunlight changed colour around the mouth of that abandoned well I passed. I hope the water will always be very deep—but even so, I shall never drink it. I do not think I shall visit the Arkham country hereafter. Three of the men who had been with Ammi returned the next morning to see the ruins by daylight, but there were not any real ruins. Only the bricks of the chimney, the stones of the cellar, some mineral and metallic litter here and there, and the rim of that nefandous well. Save for Ammi's dead horse, which they towed away and buried, and the buggy which they shortly returned to him, everything that had ever been living had gone. Five eldritch acres of dusty grey desert remained, nor has anything ever grown there since. To this day it sprawls open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields, and the few who have ever dared glimpse it in spite of the rural tales have named it "the blasted heath."

The rural tales are queer. They might be even queerer if city men and college chemists could be interested enough to analyze the water from that disused well, or the grey dust that no wind seems ever to disperse. Botanists, too, ought to study the stunted flora on the borders of that spot, for they might shed light on the country notion that the blight is spreading—little by little, perhaps an inch a year. People say the colour of the neighboring herbage is not quite right in the spring, and that wild things leave queer prints in the light winter snow. Snow never seems quite so heavy on the blasted heath as it is elsewhere. Horses—the few that are left in this motor age—grow skittish in the silent valley; and hunters cannot depend on their dogs too near the splotch of greyish dust.

They say the mental influences are very bad, too; numbers went queer in the years after Nahum's taking, and always they lacked the power to get away. Then the stronger-minded folk all left the region, and only the foreigners tried to live in the crumbling old homesteads. They could not stay, though; and one sometimes wonders what insight beyond ours their wild, weird stories of whispered magic have given them. Their dreams at night, they protest, are very horrible in that grotesque country; and surely the very look of the dark realm is enough to stir a morbid fancy. No traveler has ever escaped a sense of strangeness in those deep ravines, and artists shiver as they paint thick woods whose mystery is as much of the spirits as of the eye. I myself am curious about the sensation I derived from my one lone walk before Ammi told me his tale. When twilight came I had vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul.

Do not ask me for my opinion. I do not know—that is all. There was no one but Ammi to question; for Arkham people will not talk about the strange days, and all three professors who saw the aerolite and its coloured globule are dead. There were other globules—depend upon that. One must have fed itself and escaped, and probably there was another which was too late. No doubt it is still down the well—I know there was something wrong with the sunlight I saw above that miasmal brink. The rustics say the blight creeps an inch a year, so perhaps there is a kind of growth or nourishment even now. But whatever demon hatchling is there, it must be tethered to something or else it would quickly spread. Is it fastened to the roots of those trees that claw the air? One of the current Arkham tales is about fat oaks that shine and move as they ought not to do at night.

What it is, only God knows. In terms of matter I suppose the thing Ammi described would be called a gas, but this gas obeyed laws that are not of our cosmos. This was no fruit of such worlds and suns as shine on the telescopes and photographic plates of our observatories. This was no breath from the skies whose motions and dimensions our astronomers measure or deem too vast to measure. It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.

I doubt very much if Ammi consciously lied to me, and I do not think his tale was all a freak of madness as the townsfolk had forewarned. Something terrible came to the hills and valleys on that meteor, and something terrible—though I know not in what proportion—still remains. I shall be glad to see the water come. Meanwhile I hope nothing will happen to Ammi. He saw so much of the thing—and its influence was so insidious. Why has he never been able to move away? How clearly he recalled those dying words of Nahum's—"can't git away—draws ye—ye know summ'at's comin', but 'tain't no use—" Ammi is such a good old man—when the reservoir gang gets to work I must write the chief engineer to keep a sharp watch on him. I would hate to think of him as the grey, twisted, brittle monstrosity which persists more and more in troubling my sleep.

THE END

#lovecraft #hp lovecraft #Yes it is the whole book #Enjoy

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nancydrewandthecluecrew · 1 year ago

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NANCY DREW CASE FILES: 16

THE WHITE WOLF OF ICICLE CREEK

In the Backcountry of the Canadian Rockies, A recent string of accidents have been occuring at the Icicle Creek Lodge. A lone white wolf has been spotted at the scene of each accident and disappearing into the snow moments later, leaving nothing but an eerie feeling and a bone chilling howl.

Some believe the wolf to be a omen of bad luck, with many wanting to do whatever's necessary to get rid of the troubled animal, But is it possible they're following the wrong tracks?

With each accident occuring it's best to tread lightly when everyone around you is already on thin ice. Who is there to trust? Hurry to uncover the mystery before this case turns cold.

Pedro Pascal as Ollie Randall

The gruff handyman, With a grudge against a local wolf, which he believes to be the cause of all the mishappenings occurring at the lodge, that he so happens to have to repair. With his young daughter, Freddie, to care for, as well as the guests and the lodge itself. Maybe the handyman would do anything to fix this situation that strains him.

William H. Macy as Bill Kessler

An ice fisherman who enjoys his solitude, except for when it comes to a game of fox and sheep, or two. But, when he's not able to do what he's come all this way for, What might he be capable of to get his solitude?

Alex Lawther as Lou Talbot

Among the guests, a quiet loner, who's rather tight-lipped, except when it comes to his side of the wolf debate. He's among the few who believe it's not really the wolf who's to blame. But, is that because he knows who is?

Morena Baccarin as Guadalupe Comillo

A guest staying at the lodge with plenty of time on her hands taking to enjoying the local wildlife, one in particular. Mostly found spending her time at the lodge birdwatching, is it merely a cover to keep her eye on the one animal she's actually here for? Maybe she'd do anything to protect..

Pasha D. Lychnikoff as Yanni Volkstaia

A vain Olympic cross-country skier, using the vast snowy landscape to his advantage, with a sense that everything and everyone is merely a distraction to deter him from winning, why is he keeping his training so guarded? Or is it something else he spends all that time in the cold for?

7.DOG 10.SHA 11.CUR 13.TRN 15.CRE 16.ICE 17.CRY 22.TOT

#Nancy Drew Case Files #Nancy Drew Show #the white wolf of icicle creek #nancy drew characters #nancy drew #nancy drew games #Pedro Pascal #Nancy drew cast #Nancy drew fancast #nancy drew aesthetic #nancy drew dreamcast

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mostlyinthemorning · 1 year ago

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fic stats meme

Thanks to @stereopticons for the tag!

rules: give us the links to your fic with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the least words.

most hits: Sometimes, Home Is a Person Five years after David and Patrick’s wedding, Clint and Marcy decide to move to Schitt’s Creek. This time, David's not the only one who has to come to terms with his family.

second-most kudos: Second Best [T, 2487 words] Patrick tells his parents that he and David are engaged.

third-most comments: No Mountain High, No Valley Low [E, 39.5k words] June 1905. Patrick has been taking tourists on pack trips into the Canadian Rockies for five years when David steps onto his ranch and changes his life. Meanwhile, David can’t believe Alexis tricked him into riding horses and sleeping in a tent, but meeting Patrick almost makes up for it. A life in the mountains sounds like a nightmare to David and Patrick has never dreamed of going back to the city. But if they want a future together, one—or both of them—will have to give up everything.

fourth-most bookmarks: Where Have All the Flowers Gone? [E, 29k words] All David wants is to order some flowers. What he gets is a very cute, very snippy shopkeeper who he can't stop thinking about. After taking over his parents' shop, Patrick feels like he's being crushed by the weight of expectations. Until he meets someone who turns everything upside down.

fifth-most words: A Tale as Old as Time [E, 35.7k words] When a business arrangement requires his mom to spend a year at the remote Rose Manor, Patrick volunteers to take her place. Little does he know that Rose Manor, and its mysterious resident, will change his life in ways he could never imagine. An AU inspired by Beauty and the Beast.

least words: #honeymoonlife [T, 2 words] (technically it has words, they're just all in the images). David and Patrick take a honeymoon road trip to Niagara Falls. As seen through their Instagram posts.

Tagging @blackandwhiteandrose @missgeevious @weathereyehorizon @dinnfameron @likerealpeopledo-on-ao3 @noahreids

#this was fun!#fic stats game

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floatingcatacombs · 2 years ago

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On Reading Yuri with a Death Wish

12 Days of Aniblogging 2022, Day 1

This essay will discuss suicide.

Existentialism is the study of why you shouldn’t kill yourself. This is a noble pursuit, because I’m never sure what to do with the philosophers who commit suicide, if that act retroactively invalidates their theories or not. (Hegel, on the other hand, died sane but has driven more philosophers to madness than any other individual)

What I mean more specifically is that a lot of existentialist texts and theories are rooted in the anguish that humans alone face due to our consciousness. We’re talking depression, despair, and existential angst. In this way, existentialist writing serves as a therapy workbook, a reminder that individuals are wholly responsible for their own actions, which includes finding meaning, personal values, and contentedness. Of course, an absurdist would say that there’s no point to searching for any of that and only through giving up can we be free to truly live, but it’s all in the same spirit.

These deeply human themes lend themselves well to art, and anime is no exception. Unfortunately, most of these attempts are pretty trite. How often do you put on an show only for it to get fake-deep during the narrative climax by reciting a bunch of out-of-context philosophy? We can punch down at Death Note all day if we want, but there definitely is anime and manga out there that actually succeeds in weaving an existentialist core. Being who I am, I particularly care about the stuff that does it through the lens of yuri, and well.

Otherside Picnic is one of these works, if you ask me. One thing that reveals itself very quickly, especially if you’re reading the novels where Sorawo’s thoughts are on full display, is that our main character is downright suicidal. She’s rescued from an early watery grave by future love interest and partner-in-crime Toriko, who makes a quip about her looking like the drowned Ophelia. Sorawo is familiar with the Millais painting from reading a Wikipedia article, but not Hamlet itself, which serves as a great early example of her encyclopedic strengths and shortcomings, as well as the author's tendency to source from the internet. The two quickly become well-acquainted (partners-in-crime, even!) and set out to explore the mysterious Otherside they’ve independently stumbled upon, which is rife with monsters straight out of scary stories passed around on 2channel.

my eternal rival, Ms. Boston Dynamic, makes an appearance

Once the premise of a slowburn yuri like this is set up, the author usually throws an obstacle in the way of the relationship to prevent things from working out immediately. If said author is a hack, it’s a romantic rival, in the worst-case scenario a childhood friend. Sometimes it’s a miscommunication, where the girls treat the blossoming relationship differently and don’t realize they’re seeing past each other. Sometimes it’s life circumstances, like the girls going to different schools or having different social standings. And sometimes, it’s because one of the girls has something deeply wrong with her. Ideally both.

As it turns out, Toriko has just as much of a death wish as Sorawo. She hides it better at first, by being a manic pixie Canadian gun otaku dream girl, but the sheer desperation and denial present in her search for her old mentor quickly comes into focus. She’s lost someone close to her and is throwing herself into dangerous situations because it’s easier than facing her grief.

There’s a stretch of the series where Toriko and Sorawo are in a rocky patch over the exact issue of Toriko’s mentor Satsuki and whether seeking her out is worth it (with the undertone of Sorawo trying to figure out if Toriko actually likes her or is just using her to help find Satsuki). This manifests as the two of them throwing themselves into the Otherside again and again, with less, more quarrelsome recovery time between each stint. They start drinking more and more irresponsibly in their post-expedition celebratory dinners they start. All of this culminates in the Otherside starting to come to them instead of the other way around.

For all of creepypasta set-dressing, this is the one part of Otherside Picnic where there’s genuine terror and dread. If you don’t have enough anchors to the real world, you’ll lose yourself for good in there, as Sorawo gets warned a handful of times. Obviously this is meant to frame the Otherside in eldritch horror terms, but to me it brings it closer to representing suicidal ideation. Hell, a few times Sorawo finds herself drawn into Otherside specifically because of her harmful thoughts. When she’s mentally at her worst she keeps inadvertently ending up there – and the monsters are trying to get her to cross the point of no return. It’s barely even a metaphor at times.

So yeah. Can’t get away from the Otherside, can’t give in to it. Sorawo and Toriko are left to just…learn to live with it. After buying a tobacco harvester on a drunken bender (long story) the two of them start to chart out rudimentary roads, establish supply bases, and do plenty of small construction jobs to make the place just a bit less hostile. It’s all very Minecraft, which Sorawo just flat-out says at one point. This aspect of Otherside Picnic is definitely indulging Miyazawa’s hobbyist tendencies in the same way that all the creepypasta and gun otaku stuff is, but it also establishes a certain kind of coping. Though Sorawo and Toriko keep finding themselves in dangerous situations, the sense of dread never returns to the narrative in the way that it does in the early sections. These later volumes are definitely a bit less interesting, but you can only give your characters an absolute death wish for so long before it gets stale, and something of an iyashikei atmosphere emerges as a periodic counterbalance. Life must go on, even with the absurdity of SCP monsters hunting you and your kinda-girlfriend down.

shoutout to the offhand remarks these girls make to each other. the weirder they are, the more genuinely romantic

Have I mentioned how fun of a protagonist Sorawo is? She’s a subculture weirdo with a poster’s soul, she’s a walking encyclopedia of 2channel netlore, and her sense of reality is so distorted that she takes truly terrifying events at face value and gets lost in the details on regular human relationships. She’s something of an accidental lesbian chad, getting Toriko to go from leading her on to falling desperately in love with her without even really trying. She’s got unprocessed childhood trauma straight out of a ghost story, which gets weaponized to scary effect down the line. She makes the most baffling offhand remarks. And her dry wit is a perfect fit for the narrative, which, like I said earlier, is at its best in the novels where we get to spend more time in her headspace.

It's out of character for me, but I haven’t actually talked much about the yuri parts of this yuri manga. I’m save that for the second part of this writeup, alongside the elephant in the room: author Iori Miyazawa’s ‘yuri of absence' interview. I’ll wrap up my Otherside Picnic talk by saying that the anime adaptation is pretty terrible, failing to understand everything I’ve been talking about up until now by changing the pacing to that of an action series. The manga, on the other hand, is quite good, with some especially interesting panel composition during the more surreal moments. It’s worth a look, but you’re ultimately best off reading the original novels.

I want to bring up another philosophical yuri manga I read this year, Shimeji Simulation. It’s definitely on the absurdist side of things, but that doesn’t become apparent until you’re further in. What we get in the opening chapters is pure depression-core, exactly as expected for mangaka Tsukumizu, whose previous works include Girl’s Last Tour and the Touhou doujin Flan Wants to Die. Our protagonist is a driftless shut-in who hasn’t been to school in two years after something unspecified and traumatic happened to her in middle school. She scrapes together the will to go to school this year, and makes fast friends with a classmate who has a giant fried egg on her head. Fast girlfriends even, though it’s unclear what that really means for the two of them.

I’ve found that Shimeji Simulation is difficult to pitch, so I’m just going to write about my favorite character: Mogwa, the depressed art teacher. She moonlights as the club advisor and only active member of the “hole-digging club”, a club that…digs holes. When asked why, she starts waxing philosophically about the absurdity and futility of the act. With each following chapter she becomes further obsessed with hole topology. When Shimeji’s sister develops a boring machine, Mogwa falls into despair. Evidentially, her digging had become deeply important to her regardless of its uselessness, and a machine doing all the digging for her sapped all the joy out of it. She lets herself slip into the seemingly bottomless pit, only saved from her fate by someone with nigh omnipotence.

The thing I love the most about Mogwa is how she’s a clear manifestation of the Myth of Sisyphus. She condemns herself to a futile impossible task, and this ends up becoming the very thing keeping her going. Only through accepting absurdity can she be truly free, and the opposite when her self-made purpose is pulled up from under her.

Buried away in the depths of Dynasty-Scans is a prequel comic to Shimeji Simulation that shines a light on the whole comic, and why it’s so strange, contemplative, bleak, and snarky all at once. I’m not linking it because it’s pornographic and more than a bit questionable, but the gist is that in middle school, Shimeji’s only friend had sex with her and then inexplicably killed herself the night after. That’s it, end of one-shot. It’s a cruel joke. Even disconnected from the published manga itself, this suicide casts a very long shadow, making the whole of Shimeji Simulation a “well…now what?” affair.

It’s why the characters in this manga are so willing to invoke philosophy, and ultimately to take the plunge into total surrealness, irrevocably writing over their world to create a weirder one. This act is self-detournment and a fitting spin on Tsukumizu’s typical depressing yuri, the fantasy of a world which responds perfectly to our desires. It’s existence preceding essence made literal, an ultimate reminder that humans are responsible for their identities and must continue to live, so they have the freedom to keep making choices and acting upon the world.

possibly one of the best pages of manga out there, period

This was a difficult and disjointed article to write, and recent personal events have made it harder yet also more necessary to get out. Next time, I’m going to talk about Otherside Picnic again, but from a different perspective: yuri and the act of authorial self-abnegation.

#12 days of anime #otherside picnic #shimeji simulation #existentialism

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juniaships · 1 year ago

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Okay oc lore time

Jonny Quest the real adventures and the direct to video scooby movies takes place in the same universe. Myra is friends with the Quest Kids and Jessie Bannon.

Reboot (the cgi cartoon from 1994) also takes place in the same universe; Mainframe can access QuestWorld. Race Bannon flirted with Hexidecimal much to the horror of everyone else.

Swat Kats take place on another planet (nearly canonized in a scrapped ending for one of the episodes). I have a SK OC who works as the Kats' mission control/backup member.

Beau is a government agent who got cursed by the evil werecats; after their defeat died he was cured but had to send all his findings to the Quests so they can help the victims' families find closure. He then goes on to be an informant for various super teams.

Skysurfers also exists because that show was made by the same creators of Scooby Doo; Jack Hollister's father used to be lab partners with Dr. Quest.

Acceleracers takes place in the same universe due to being made by the same folks who made Reboot (being Canadian productions irl).

Mainframe and Cyberspace (of Cyberchase fame) may be linked, technically considers Mainframe a Site.

Gen 13 (mix of comics & the animated film) is set in the same verse. Unlike the movies Matthew Callahan doesn't die but remains under the custody of John Lynch; also he doesn't rejoin Ivana as he did in the comics. Also, unlike the comics Gen 13 actually has 13 members. They rotate time from time. Matthew is forced to be a part to undo the damage he caused working as Ivana's underling. Caitlyn is not his sister, his siblings are Sarah and Nicole as in the comics. Cait and Roxy are half sibs.

Im not sure if I want TFA in the same verse but for the sake of it yes; the year is current but still with the theme of Detroit rebuilding, to go along with Animated's theme of redemption

Jackie Chan Adventures are set in same verse as the 2006 legion of superheroes, the 03 Teen Titans, Xiaolin Showdown, and 2004 Batman.

GI Joe Sigma Six is set in the same verse as TFA.

GI Joe Renegades and Transformers Prime are set in the same verse detached from Sigma Six and TFA.

Universal's Monster Force is set in same verse as JQTRA and Scooby Doo

The 2000s Mummy and Tintin take place in the past; 1930s at the earliest. Bayformers and the live action Joes take place in that timeline's future.

Mummies Alive take place in San Fran and likely set in the future of the Mummy cartoon. It also takes place in the same verse as the 90s King Kong & Godzilla cartoons.

My Descendants rewrite takes place in a world where the heroes never agreed to send villains on the Isle. Instead the isle is simply a mysterious place said to harbor riches beyond legend.

Gargoyles, Atlantis, The Mighty Ducks cartoon, BLOSC, and OUAT takes place in the same verse. BLOSC is set in space and has a ranger from the same planet the Swat Kats come from

Osmosis Jones is in its own solar system based on organic body parts. Its "star" pulses like a heart beat. Sorry but I hate Bill Murray.

Loonatics Unleashed takes place in the same time period of the regular looney tunes; instead of being descendants theyre distant cousins. Acmetropolis is a mega city using Sumdac Tech

Zadavia comes from a planet English translaters describe as Freleng. The common export is energy crystals and its rocky deserts is a haven for geologists and unlucky miners everywhere

The civil war was sparked by General Deuce and Optimatus's betrayal

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kammartinez · 1 year ago

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When spring came in 1805, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left their winter camp near Mandan and Hidatsa villages on the Upper Missouri River and resumed their search for a route to the Pacific Ocean. The day was Sunday, April 7. Included in the party, Clark noted in his journal, was a French-Canadian trapper and trader along the Upper Missouri named Toussaint Charbonneau “and his Indian Squar to act as an Interpreter & interpretress for the snake Indians.” By “Squar” Clark meant an Indian “wife” acquired by purchase in the local manner. By “snake Indians” he meant the Shoshones, a tribe in the Rocky Mountains important to the explorers in two ways: as a source of horses when the expedition left the river and as one of the tribes Lewis and Clark hoped to recruit for an ambitious diplomatic effort to end intertribal warfare and bring peace to the Northern Plains. That sounds like overreaching and it was, but it was high on the list of what President Thomas Jefferson had sent Lewis and Clark to do.

This Indian woman’s story is complicated from start to finish, but one detail deserves mention at the outset. When Clark hired Charbonneau he had two Shoshone-speaking wives, sisters whom he had separately purchased from their father. Marrying sisters, called sororal polygyny by anthropologists, was a common practice among the Plains tribes at the time. Clark noted that both wives spoke Shoshone, but the older one was too sick to travel when the boats departed.

The younger sister, who joined the expedition, was about eighteen or nineteen years old, and she was carrying an infant son, born two months earlier with Lewis attending, though he wasn’t a doctor. Labor was prolonged and difficult “as is common,” Lewis noted, with first babies. Another French Canadian, René Jusseaume, who spoke a rough but workable English, told Lewis that labor could be eased by breaking up the rattle of a rattlesnake and administering it mixed with water. Lewis said OK, it was done, and the boy was promptly born.

Over the next sixteen months Clark began to call the Indian woman “Janey” and grew fond of her son, but when the expedition headed upriver on April 7, he noted him on the roster only as “Shabonahs infant.” After Clark had learned to sound out and spell the woman’s name, he went back and inked it into his journal entry for the departure day: “Sah-kah-gar we â.”

The standard spelling now is “Sacagawea.” It is said as one word but is actually an amalgam of two words, one for bird and one for woman, in the language of the Hidatsa, the tribe of the man who sold the sisters to Charbonneau. Clark is notorious for his erratic spelling—multiple ways for Charbonneau and Jusseaume. But for the younger sister Clark made a special effort. He learned to pronounce her name, he understood its meaning—Bird Woman—and he tried to spell it correctly.

Among the members of the Corps of Discovery, Sacagawea was the youngest, save her son; she was also the only woman, the only Native American, and the only speaker of Shoshone. Today her Hidatsa name is probably recognized more widely than that of any other member, Lewis and Clark included. More statues have been erected in public spaces in her honor than for any other American woman. Why this is so is one of the mysteries of fame. Sacagawea performed useful service on the expedition and once or twice even pointed the way, but that doesn’t explain the broad appeal of the young mother who carried her infant son across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific and back, a journey second in significance in American history only to Columbus’s. It’s not easy to explain how Sacagawea steals the scene in Lewis and Clark’s journals whenever she’s on the page. But scholars sometimes think too much is made of her, scant her role, and never seriously ask who and what she was, exactly, or consider the ways in which that might matter.

Toussaint Charbonneau was paid $500 for making the trip, Sacagawea nothing. Their journey ended in August 1806 when the expedition left them at the villages on the Missouri River where Lewis and Clark had found them. Charbonneau was about forty, Sacagawea nineteen or twenty. Then what?

Charbonneau lived into his seventies. In the last half of his life he attracted frequent notice from the keepers of diaries and journals as a trapper, trader, and translator on the Upper Missouri before dying in a still-unknown place at an unknown moment: after 1838 and before 1843 is as close as the Utah historian Larry E. Morris can get in The Fate of the Corps (2004),his history of the afterlives of the expeditioners.

But for the much earlier death of Charbonneau’s Snake wife, Morris can pin down the cause, day, and place—“putrid fever” on December 20, 1812, at Fort Manuel Lisa, a trading post downriver from the Hidatsa villages where Clark had hired Charbonneau because his wife spoke Shoshone. That death date for Sacagawea has not been seriously challenged by scholars for seventy years or more because two brief diary entries recorded twenty months apart seem too clear and explicit for error.

But the death date matters. The standard 1812 date describes a short life with a sad ending. A new date proposed by Sacagawea’s descendants and other interested members of the Hidatsa tribe suggests a longer life of broader drama and significance—fifty-seven years longer. The Hidatsa argument arrives in Our Story of Eagle Woman: Sacagawea: They Got It Wrong, by the Sacagawea Project Board of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. No single author is named or thanked within. The book is a tribal effort led by five Project Board members who are all relatives of Sacagawea: Calvin Grinnell, Bernie Fox, Gerard Baker, Carol Newman, and Wanda Fox Sheppard (who died after its publication). The research and writing of the book was organized by Sheppard’s brother and his wife, Dennis and Sandra Fox. Additional research was contributed by Professor Michael Welsh of the history department at the University of Northern Colorado. These eight and other volunteers share a belief common among Native Americans that they have something important to add to their history.

Our Story of Eagle Woman is the clearest and best example of a book written in this spirit that I have seen. Its claims are specific, broad, hard to resolve, and above all numerous: that Sacagawea had a Hidatsa name because she was Hidatsa; that except for travels with Charbonneau, she lived the whole of her life among the Hidatsa on the Upper Missouri; that late in life she had three additional children, all daughters; that her brother, Cherry Necklace, was a notable leader and religious figure; that after 1845 she lived with her brother in a traditional earthen lodge in Like-a-Fishhook village, near the trading post known as Fort Berthold; that her life there was intimately connected to the Hidatsa in all the village ways of the time; that she lived into her eighties; and that she was fatally wounded in 1869 by Sioux Indians—very likely Hunkpapa belonging to a war faction led by Sitting Bull—while traveling with a group on its way to a trading post upriver near Fort Buford.

Every detail of this expansion of the standard story is certain to be debated to exhaustion, but here, too, one detail in particular should be kept in mind from the outset: Our Story of Eagle Woman, drawing on tribal records and the family traditions of Hidatsa elders, asserts that Sacagawea’s father, Smoked Lodge, was Hidatsa, but that her mother was a Crow named Otter Woman or Comes Out of the Water. The Crow and Hidatsa were closely related tribes, but not the same. Having a Hidatsa father and a Crow mother opens a question of what Sacagawea was, exactly.

The revisions proposed by the Project Board begin with a name change: a claim that Bird Woman’s name was actually Eagle Woman—Maeshuwea or Maeshuweash—which proved too difficult for whites to pronounce. But Bird Woman is not wrong in any meaningful sense, and it is a name used frequently throughout Our Story.

The Project Board’s new material supports an extended personal history collected a hundred years ago, on May 29, 1923, by a US Army officer with an interest in the Northern Plains Indians. Captain A.B. Welch had just finished delivering a Memorial Day speech to a gathering of the Old Scout Society on the Fort Berthold Reservation when he was approached by Bulls Eye, one of the old-time scouts, who said:

I want to talk with you now. We have heard about some white men who wrote about my Grandmother. Her name was T(Sakakawea)ish [Welch’s spelling]. These white men came along here about a hundred years ago. They made a mistake with the interpreter. He could not speak the Indian well and told it wrong. He could not talk English either. He talked French. It has been wrong ever since that time. T(Sakakawea)ish was not a Shoshoni. She was a Hidatsa.

First on Bulls Eye’s mind that day was his grandmother’s tribal identity—not Shoshone, Hidatsa. But more important, in my view, were the date and circumstances of her death, which Bulls Eye described to Welch later in the day. Welch had asked the old scout to bring others familiar with the story to ensure he got the details right, and Bulls Eye arrived with seven leading men of the village including one, Arthur Mandan, who would later become the first tribal chairman of the Hidatsa. He was fluent in Hidatsa, Mandan, and English and often interpreted for early ethnographers like Alfred Bowers, the author of an authoritative ethnography of the Hidatsa, and Martha Beckwith, a folklorist who identified Bird Woman as a sister of Cherry Necklace in a 1937 work on Mandan and Hidatsa myths.

We also have good reason to believe that Mandan’s father knew Sacagawea during her last years. The presence of Mandan and the others attested to Bulls Eye’s standing in the Hidatsa world and offers evidence that his story of his grandmother was common knowledge throughout the tribe. When all were seated the old scout began his story:

My name is Bulls Eye. I am of the Hidatsa. I have seen fifty-eight winters…. My father’s name was Lean Bull. He was Hidatsa…. My mother’s name was Otter Woman. She was of the Hidatsa too. I was four years old when she was killed by an enemy. She died sitting up against a wagon wheel. The name of my mother’s mother was Sakakawea. She was my grandmother. (Welch note: The two fingers to the mouth sign was given—blood relationship sign.)… My grandmother, Sakakawea, had a brother whose name was Cherry Necklace. He lived with our relatives in Montana. These people are called Absarokee [“Absaroka” is the spelling used now] or the Crows, sometimes. But they were Hidatsa a long time ago…. When my grandmother was seventeen years old, her father gave her to a white man. The white man was my grandfather. His name was Sharbonish (Charbonneau)…. This white man and Sakakawea had several children. The first one was a man child [Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, delivered with the aid of Meriwether Lewis]. The second was a woman child. They named her Otter Woman. She was my mother (Here the sign for birth was given). The third child was a woman child also. Her name was Cedar Woman.

In other meetings over several years Bulls Eye gave Welch further details about his early life, some based on the stories told to him as a child and young man by Cedar Woman, his mother’s sister, who died around 1895 when he was in his thirties. He recounted his memories of the fight in 1869 near Fort Buford in which his mother bled to death leaning against a wagon wheel, and of his grandmother, who was shot in the side but managed to walk him to safety. “We walked over the hills and prairie to the trader’s store,” Bulls Eye told Welch. “I got well and lived. Sakakawea, my grandmother, died at the trader’s place, seven days after that.”

The Sacagawea Project Board refers to this account as “the Bulls Eye story,” and it is not easily dismissed or explained away, but it was almost completely forgotten after 1923, and the new book has so far been ignored by scholars. The Hidatsa fear their work is overlooked because they are Indians, and they may be right. But just as likely is the sprawl of the Bulls Eye story, offering, with little warning, a counterhistory on so many points at once. Which end of this thing do you tackle first? The best place to start is with the 1812 death date. The long-accepted argument for that is not strained but it is thin. It rests on two diary entries and a single word jotted down by William Clark a dozen or more years later.

The first diary entry was recorded by a young traveler, Henry Brackenridge, on his way up the Missouri River in April 1811 with a group bound for a new trading post built by the noted Indian trader Manuel Lisa:

We had on board a Frenchman named Charbonet, with his wife, an Indian woman of the Snake Nation, both of whom had accompanied Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, and were of great service. The woman, a good creature, of a mild and gentle disposition greatly attached to the whites, whose manners and dress she tries to imitate, but she had become sickly, and longed to revisit her country.

The “Indian woman of the Snake nation” is not named but is unmistakably Sacagawea.

Second in the chain of proof is a diary entry some twenty months later by John Luttig, the chief clerk at Fort Manuel Lisa, on December 20, 1812: “This Evening the Wife of Charbonneau a Snake Squaw, died of a putrid fever she was a good and best Woman in the fort, aged about 25 years she left a fine infant girl.” Charbonneau had two Snake wives. One of them died in 1812, but which one? The standard telling of the Luttig story ends with the single word that Clark, sometime in the years between 1825 and 1828, wrote next to Sacagawea’s name on a roster of expedition members: “Dead.”

I call the 1812 argument thin because it offers no evidence for where Charbonneau and his two Snake wives were between April 1811 and December 1812 or for which Snake wife died in 1812, because it cannot tell us when or why Clark concluded that Sacagawea was dead, and because it overlooks the fact that Clark in 1813 wrongly believed that Charbonneau was dead. If he was wrong about Charbonneau, was he perhaps wrong about Sacagawea as well? Finally, there is the element of doubt introduced by the figure of Charbonneau himself, who had many wives. Lewis and Clark knew two, and a third was noted by Sergeant Patrick Gass at a Christmas party in 1804 that “continued in a jovial manner till 8 at night; and without the presence of any females, except three squaws, wives to our interpreter.”

Charbonneau had two Snake wives while working for Manuel Lisa and later, at Fort Clark in the 1830s, had at least two other wives, tribes unidentified. In February 1834 a German prince, Maximilian of Wied, noted in his diary that his translator at Fort Clark, Toussaint Charbonneau, “was absent again. This seventy-five-year-old man is always running after women.” In October the clerk of the trading post, Francis Chardon, recorded in his journal that

Charbonneau and his Lady started for the [Hidatsa village] on a visit—(or to tell the truth,) in quest of one of his runaway Wives—for I must inform you he has two lovely ones—Poor old Man.

Three years later, as a smallpox epidemic was sweeping through the Mandan and Hidatsa villages in mid-August, “Charbonneau and his family” fled Fort Clark but proved unlucky. “Disease has not yet broke out among [the Hidatsa],” Chardon wrote, “except his squaw, who died four days ago.”

Chardon tells us that a year after that, in October 1838, the eighty-year-old trapper-trader “took to himself…a young Wife, a young Assinneboine girl of 14,” captured in a fight that summer. So many wives, only one with a name.

Charbonneau kept no journal and left nothing like the full account delivered to Captain Welch by Bulls Eye, whose story is not two sentences, plus a word, but an expansive account of the death of his mother and grandmother. With the rest of the material gathered in Our Story it offersa swath of history as substantial as a deposition delivered to lawyers. Outside of the Lewis and Clark journals nothing else comes close to telling us as much about Sacagawea. One way or another, every future history of her life will have to take it into account.

At stake in this inquiry is the truth of two long-standing claims—that Sacagawea was a Shoshone and that she died at twenty-five. The principal argument for a Shoshone tribal identity is the fact that Lewis and Clark believed that’s what she was based on her report that a Shoshone chief, Cameahwait, was her “brother.” This is not a question to be settled in a minute. How Hidatsa address relatives is an extremely complicated matter. Any person addressed as “mother,” “brother,” “father,” “sister,” or “cousin” may be one in our sense of the term, or may not. The Sacagawea Project Board believes that Cameahwait had been adopted by Sacagawea’s father, Smoked Lodge, and that she had learned Shoshone on family visits to the tribe. The book makes its case and invites comment.

But in the meantime it also stresses the problem of translation. Everything Lewis and Clark knew about Sacagawea’s history and identity came from her as reported in Hidatsa to Charbonneau, who passed it in French mainly to René Jusseaume, who gave Lewis and Clark the English version of it. Questions went back by the same route. But Washington Matthews, an army doctor in the 1870s who was the first serious American student of Hidatsa, reported that it was a difficult tonal language like Japanese and that Charbonneau had never learned to pronounce it properly. Jusseaume in turn was said by a British trader of the time, Charles MacKenzie, to speak “bad French and worse English,” and he added that the two Frenchmen argued about the meaning of every word going in both directions. This suggests but does not resolve the tangle of the argument.

The Project Board weighs the matter but settles in the end on the conclusion reached by Sacagawea’s son, Jean-Baptiste, who spent the last few years of his well-documented life looking for gold in California. Soon after he died of “mountain fever” on his way to Montana in 1866, a remembrance appeared in an Idaho newspaper, the Owyhee Avalanche, by a man who had known him since 1852. “Mr. Charbonneau was born in the western wilds,” the writer reported, “in the country of the Crow Indians—his father being a Canadian Frenchman, and his mother a half breed of the Crow tribe.” That view is hard to distinguish from Bulls Eye’s account. When son and grandson agree on the identity of a mother and grandmother it is likely that both were assured of its truth by the same sources.

The question of when Sacagawea died is simpler—yes or no for two dates. If Bulls Eye is right, his grandmother lived into her eighties and witnessed three great events: the transformation of Native American life on the Northern Plains, an unending war between the river tribes and the Sioux, and the near extinction of the river tribes by a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1837. Before the disease ran its course, half the Hidatsa and 80 percent or more of the Mandan had died. It was this terrible die-off, Our Story of Eagle Woman suggests, that prompted Sacagawea in her late forties to have additional children: Otter Woman in about 1838 and Cedar Woman in 1839. Early tribal records listed no father, but Bulls Eye tells us that it was Charbonneau in both cases. Every Hidatsa woman at the time did the same if she could. In 1845 the remnants of the Mandan and Hidatsa built a new community about sixty miles up the Missouri called Like-a-Fishhook, where Sacagawea’s brother, Cherry Necklace, built two lodges for different wives. In one of them Sacagawea lived during her last years.

Just outside Like-a-Fishhook, in the bottom lands near the river where the soil was good, the women of the Hidatsa and Mandan (later joined by the Arikara) raised corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers in fields they cleared, in the early years, with hoes made from the shoulder bones of deer or oxen, which were replaced by metal hoes as soon as people could get them. How they planted their corn—in little hills about four feet apart, with six or eight kernels poked finger-deep into the sides of the hills—is described in a remarkable book by an early student of the Hidatsa, Gilbert L. Wilson, a Presbyterian minister who lived for extended periods on the Fort Berthold reservation between 1906 and 1918. Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden, first published under another title in 1917,was written by Wilson but drawn from the memories and told in the voice of a Hidatsa woman also known as Waheenee,who moved to Like-a-Fishhook in 1845 when she was six. There, after her mother died, she grew up in the lodge of her father, Small Ankle, and addressed both of her mother’s sisters as “mother” in keeping with custom. Perhaps a hundred yards to the east of Small Ankle’s lodge were the two lodges of Cherry Necklace, whose sister, Bird Woman or Eagle Woman, had a garden in the bottom lands touching on the field where Buffalo Bird Woman in her teens tended her corn and scared away crows.

Wilson accumulated an immense body of notes from Buffalo Bird Woman (who died in 1932) and from her brother, Wolf Chief, and her son, Edward Goodbird—material often cited in Our Story of Eagle Woman. Wolf Chief was also an informant of the photographer E.S. Curtis and the anthropologists Robert Lowie and Alfred Bowers, who spent a year (1932–1933) living at Fort Berthold and thirty years later published one of the basic books on the tribe, Hidatsa Social and Ceremonial Organization. These scholars would all have met Hidatsa who had known Sacagawea, but none seemed to take a close interest in her story. The notes of Bowers, in particular, contain a wealth of detail from Wolf Chief about Sacagawea and her family. Bowers might easily have gone on asking questions of Wolf Chief and worked up the answers into an extended narrative like his eight pages of dense text on Wolf Chief’s romantic life, but he held back. Why so much attention to Wolf Chief, but not the Hidatsa woman? My guess is that Bird Woman’s fame stood in the way. Bowers wanted to be seen as a scholar, not a journalist seeking sensation, so he let the story go.

When Bulls Eye is considered in a serious way, the broad narrative of Sacagawea’s life becomes clear, but it is in the journalsof Lewis and Clark that the woman herself is seen most clearly. There she is often mentioned and quoted, frequently on the subject of some herb, root, or fruit that the Hidatsa like to eat or use. When Lewis in mid-July 1805 described at length how the Hidatsa made bread of sunflower seeds collected in the river bottoms and ground into a fine flour, it seems likely Sacagawea was his source. Who else among the corps would have known, or thought it important?

But Sacagawea was not just interested and helpful; she was bold. When she wanted something, she had the courage to argue that it was not just reasonable but right. In Oregon one evening in January 1806 she spoke up firmly while Clark was planning an expedition to the Pacific coast the next day to examine the carcass of a whale. Clark had not thought to ask Sacagawea if she might like to go. She made sure he knew. Clark noted in his journal on January 6:

[The] Indian woman was very impatient to be permitted to go with me, and was therefore indulged; She observed that She had traveled a long way with us to See the great waters, and that now that monstrous fish was also to be Seen, She thought it very hard that She Could not be permitted to See either (She had never yet been to the Ocean).

But when the expedition ended in 1806 Sacagawea was lost from sight. In the six years that followed she is present on a page only a handful of times, always in the company of Charbonneau. Over the following fifty-seven years there is even less: by my count just two brief moments that give us a glimpse of her. The first is a homely detail in Bulls Eye’s account of his grandmother’s death, quoted in Our Story. He began by explaining to Welch why Sacagawea had joined a group heading for a trading post near Fort Buford:

She had learned to like coffee terribly well. She could not get along without coffee. When she got out of coffee she would travel long distances in order to get a new supply. She saved the coffee from the pots and would put it on her head so it would smell like coffee.

That was Sacagawea at eighty-two. A second story, unremarked till now, describes her when she was a few years younger. It is found in Gilbert Wilson’s second book told in the voice of Buffalo Bird Woman, called Waheenee, after the name she was given in childhood. The book, originally published in 1927, is a coming-of-age story, a portrait of Hidatsa life from the death of Buffalo Bird Woman’s mother when she was six until the birth of her only child, Edward Goodbird, in November 1869, a few months after the death of Bird Woman.

Late one spring a few years before that, in the mid-1860s, Waheenee and her second husband, Son-of-a-Star, joined a group on a buffalo hunt just before corn-planting time. Waheenee’s story spans a dozen pages, with a warm portrait of six Hidatsa women working and talking as the group, a dozen in all, make their way upriver. They have left their horses behind in Like-a-Fishhook, since they were still too weak from winter for heavy work. Helping them move butchered meat and hides are dogs pulling travois. One evening, with dinner eaten, they talk late in the rambling way of campers enjoying their ease around a fire. The six Hidatsa women have come with their husbands: “ten in the party besides Son-of-a-Star and myself.” Buffalo Bird Woman names the other men: Crow-Flies-High, Bad Brave, High Backbone, Long Bear, and Scar.

“I have heard that white men eat turtles,” said Long Bear’s wife. “I do not believe it.” “They do eat turtles,” said High Backbone, “and they eat frogs. A white man told me. I asked him.” “Ey! And such unclean things; I could not eat them,” cried Bird Woman.

The shock in the line is the name. Nothing in the tale says, Stop, take note. Why is this name here? To get that the reader has to know that Wilson is one of the four or five great students of the Hidatsa. When he published Buffalo Bird Woman’s story of the spring buffalo hunt, he had known her for twenty years.

Knowing this prompts us to ask questions of the story. Two of the men on the hunt, High Backbone and Long Bear, were sons of Cherry Necklace, Bird Woman’s brother. She was traveling with her nephews. Her garden in the 1860s was in the bottoms along the river at Like-a-Fishhook village, and it touched the field gardened by Buffalo Bird Woman. The back-and-forth of talk around the campfire indicates that Bird Woman is likely the wife of Bad Brave, but possibly Scar, who was commonly known as Wounded Face.

In the course of his research Wilson took several photographs of Wounded Face, his family, and his corn-drying scaffold in 1910. When the musicologist Frances Densmore studied the river tribes for the Bureau of American Ethnology in the early 1900s, she was given seven songs by Wounded Face. She recorded his Mandan name as a single word—Pau, translated as “scar.” I think the meaning is probably closer to “disfigured.” His Christian name was Howard Mandan Sr. He died in January 1921 and was the father of Arthur Mandan, the interpreter and future tribal chairman who went with Bulls Eye in 1923 to tell Captain Welch the story of the death of Bird Woman. In the collections of the North Dakota Historical Society is a photograph taken at a tribal meeting in 1909 of Wounded Face, Old Dog, Long Bear, and Sitting Bear. Forty years earlier, Wounded Face and Long Bear had both been on the buffalo hunt described by Waheenee. Both were sitting by the campfire when Bird Woman cried out, and both would have seen her face scrunch up at the idea of eating frogs.

How do we know this happened? Buffalo Bird Woman was there, she told Wilson, and Wilson told us. It’s even possible that Wilson confirmed it with Wounded Face. This simple story, published by a man careful with facts, might tell us two things about Bird Woman in the 1860s: she was squeamish, and she was alive.

#our story of eagle woman #books #history #sacajawea #sacagawea

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mjspickett · 2 years ago

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Pre-order Today!

An expedition in the Canadian Rocky Mountains takes mysterious turn after a strange underground temple is discovered. While investigating, Anthropologist Alexander Jackson and his research team are attacked, every member of the team slaughtered in cold blood and the temple destroyed. Only Alex manages to escape but at a high cost.

He lost everything...

Or so he thought.

Years later, Alex teams up with handsome Archeologist, Lucas Griffiths and his equally dashing brother Owen, to finally learn the truth of what happened that fateful day. Alex will rediscover a part of himself he spent years hiding from the outside world. Together, they may finally discover the secret of the temple...or unleash something far more dangerous then any of them has faced before.

https://www.amazon.com/Whispers-Immortal-Book-1-ebook/dp/B0BN74LT2F

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kurt-wagner-official · 2 years ago

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Post #35: Wolverine issues 1-4

Wolverine's first solo series is a self-titled four issues mini is written by Claremont with art by Frank Miller. It opens with one of the most iconic Logan sequences of all, him hunting a bear through the Canadian Rockies. He tracks it to its cave and kills it in a brutal battle. It seems like Logan is as much a wild beast as his quarry, until we learn why he was hunting it- a hunter shot it with a poisoned arrow. It wasn't strong enough to kill it, just drive it mad with pain and bloodlust, going on a rampage to kill 16 people. In one scene we're presented with the person that Logan appears to be in the surface and are then introduced to a what lies beneath the surface: mercy, honor, and a drive to protect the innocent. But the sequence isn't done yet, as Logan tracks the hunter to a bar to seek justice. When he confronts the man, he tries to hit him and blow him off, to Logan's pleasure. He beats the man up but lets him live and brings him to trial. We cut to a few weeks later, after Logan has returned home to find Mariko, his girlfriend over the last few years, has returned to Japan without warning. He's on the next flight out to Tokyo, but when he tries to go through immigration he comes up on several watchlists because of his checkered past. He's confronted by Asano Kimura, a Japanese secret agent and an old friend. He tells him that Mariko's father, one of the most powerful crime lords in the city, has recently resurfaced and made several deals, one of which involved marrying Mariko off to someone. Asano tells Logan he can't understand what she's going though and going after her could hurt her more, but he refuses to give up and goes to find her. Her estate has new guard dogs, which he intimidates into letting him pass. He says he's glad, because unlike people, he doesn't like killing animals. He finds Mariko, who tells him that she loves him but that he shouldn't have come. When he gets closer, he's horrified to see her face covered in bruises. He begs her to get a divorce, and she refuses, showing him a pair of swords that have been in her family for hundreds of years and to her represent her duty to family and tradition. This story puts an uncomfortable amount of emphasis on the idea that Japanese people live their lives by honor and tradition, which is obviously problematic and unfortunately pretty common in eighties comics. There's no defense, but I will say that at least the artwork isn't as racist and caricature-y as in a lot of comics. The writing here is at least better than Claremont's stuff with Sunfire, but that's not saying much. Anyway, Mariko's husband, a business associate of her father named Noburu, walks into the room and starts yelling at her, and Logan threatens to kill him until she begs him to leave. He's walking out the door when he's hit by poisoned throwing stars. They're meant to kill, but because of his powers he wakes up in front of Mariko and her father, Lord Shingen, who challenges him to a battle with wooden swords. Logan is weak from the poison and out of practice with swords, but Shingen expertly hits pressure points intending to kill. Logan has to pop his claws to defend himself, and realizes he's played into Shingen's hands- Mariko doesn't realize her father can kill with this weapon, so it looks like Logan is attacking unprovoked. Logan's heart isn't in it anymore, and as he loses consciousness, he hears his opponent tell Mariko that he's nothing more than a mindless animal, unworthy of her. The last thing he hears is her agreeing with her father. He wakes up broken in body and soul on the street, where some muggers approach until they fall to the ground, murdered by a mysterious savior. She's a woman who approaches Logan, telling him that she's hers now as the issue ends.

Issue 2 starts with Logan waking up in the apartment of his savior, who introduces herself as Yukio, as they come under attack from dozens of Hand ninjas. The battle lasts several pages while Logan narrates exposition and his own powers for any new readers. With a different artist, this might be a tedious sequence, but Frank Miller is never more in his element than with street level battles against hordes of minions. When the dust settles, Logan and Yukio are the only survivors, and they flee as the police arrive. Later, at another apartment, they get to talking. Yukio keeps her motives mysterious, but she says the Hand were sent by her enemy, a powerful crime lord. She then comes on to him, but he still loves Mariko and shuts her down. We cut to Yukio arriving at Shingen’s building, where we learn that she’s working for him. The Hand were sent to drive Logan into her arms, but unknown to Yukio, they were also sent after her to test her skill as Shingen’s top assassin. Shingen has arranged a peace conference with his crime lord rival, Katsuyori, planning to send his daughter and son in law to lull him into security. Yukio returns to Logan and says that Katsuyori is the one who tried to kill him, and he agrees to go with her to put an end to it. He hopes to resolve it peacefully by intimidating Katsuyori, but Yukio plans to start a fight that’ll end with Katsuyori and Logan both dead. Logan sneaks them into the peace summit while taking out the guards, without killing them, to Yukio’s displeasure. The summit is at a performance of a Kabuki play about the tale of the 47 ronin who embarked on a suicide mission to avenge their master. Logan is shocked to see Mariko and her husband alongside Katsuyori and his wife in the audience, but he puts it to the side for now, entranced by the performance but keeping his eyes open for the trap from Katsuyori that expects to come. At the climax of the show, he realizes the weapons are real- the performers are assassins that Katsuyori has brought to kill Mariko. Logan intervenes and takes on the entire troop to defend his love. Katsuyori and his wife try to slip out, but Yukio kills them in their getaway car. Inside, one of the assassins finally gets a good hit on Logan, driving him into a berserker rage that quickly ends the battle in his favor, although he still leaves many of them breathing. It’s the first time Mariko has seen Logan’s berserker side, and it sickens her as she leaves.

A few weeks later, Logan is on a drinking binge and dating Yukio, going to bars and getting in fights with whoever he can find. He’s approached by his friend Asano, who asks for his help in taking down a criminal empire that’s growing in power and threatens the country. To the reader, he’s clearly talking about Shingen, but it’s unclear whether Logan has put those pieces together, and either way he doesn’t care, turning Asano down and leaving with Yukio. She brings him to what she says is her secret favorite place, a place on the train tracks where they start making out. Logan, completely wasted, doesn’t realize until the last second that they’re playing chicken with a bullet train that they dodge at the last second. He’s angry that she would risk their lives like that, but she says they’ll die someday, so they should live and die spectacularly. Logan passes out and dreams that he’s a samurai fighting his way through an army to reach Mariko. But when he gets there, she says she could never love a beast like him and shoots him in the soul. In the waking world, the Hand tell Yukio that this is her last chance to obey Shingen and kill Logan. She responds by killing all of them and shaking Logan awake, but he calls her Mariko and she knocks him back out. She runs off, cursing Logan for winning her heart without giving her his, and lamenting her imminent death at the hand of Shingen. But the first person to come after her is Asano, who she murders. Logan comes to his hotel room, hoping to find her, but instead finds the corpse of his old friend Asano. He smells the poison on Yukio’s knife in his throat, and realizes it’s the same as the poison that took him down when Shingen first kidnapped him. He puts all the pieces together- Yukio has been playing him from the start, and the Hand was working for Shingen. When she enters the room, he tells her to kill him now or he’ll kill her, and she runs. He catches up to her in a rooftop Zen garden and prepares to avenge Asano when they’re both attacked by the Hand. When the fight’s over, Yukio is gone, and Logan is standing alone in a wrecked garden that was supposed to symbolize tranquility. He reflects on his failed relationships- Yukio accepted the monster in him, while Mariko wanted him to grow and be better. Logan loved them both but lost himself in the confusion. But as he restores the Zen garden, new patterns emerge in the gravel, and realizes that even if he can’t change his nature, he wants to try to evolve and see where the journey takes him. He’s a man, not an animal. Shingen was wrong about that, and Logan says it’ll cost him.

Logan travels through the city, crippling Shingen’s operations everywhere from street drug deals to lieutenants in their bases. He tells everyone he takes out to deliver the message to Shingen that he’s going down. When he’s ready, he sends a note to Shingen challenging him to combat. Logan has been gathering weapons from all the Hand assassins that have come after him, and is ready to take down their employer once and for all. Meanwhile, Mariko prays for guidance. She loves Logan, but felt obligated to marry to serve her father. She realizes now that he’s evil, but is torn between her love for her family and her conscience. She enters her fathers room when she hears a commotion, which turns out to be Yukio here to kill him to redeem herself in Logan’s eyes. He tells her to take her best shot, but he overpowers her and is about to kill her when Mariko stops him. They’re interrupted by Logan’s arrival outside the building, where he has killed the Hand army with their own weapons and is here for Shingen. Noburu takes Mariko and flees while Shingen waits to confront Logan, but Logan finds them first. Noburu takes his wife hostage and shoots at Logan, but is killed by Yukio. Logan hates her for killing Asano but is filled with gratitude for saving Mariko, so he lets her go, not knowing what to feel. He leaves Mariko silently to go find Shingen, who he kills in a silent, brutal duel. Mariko arrives and picks up Shingen’s sword, one of the two that she showed Logan in the first issue. He expects she’ll kill him for killing her father, and does nothing to stop her. But she tells him that the honor of the swords should not belong to the head of the clan, but to the one who is worthy of them- Logan. She herself planned to kill her father and then herself, but luckily that didn’t happen, and she embraces the man she loves. A few months later, he and Mariko are engaged, and send an invitation to the X-Men.

I will always prefer stories like this to Weapon X conspiracies. Logan works best in the context of X-Men, but when he does have solo stories, they should be like this- a fish out of water grappling with his own nature without the guidance of his family. The X-Men have helped him grow and see that he can be more than his worst nature, but this is the first time that’s been put to the test without them there. And really, Logan being an honorable, cultured samurai type fighting his animal nature is so much more interesting than him just being a murder machine. I really dislike Frank Miller as a solo writer, but as an artist and a collaborator with Claremont he’s really well suited for this series. The fights feel intense and dangerous, which is exactly what you want in a Wolverine book, and I love the way he draws Logan’s face. Overall, this was a great book. I haven’t read much solo Logan stuff cause I’m not a fan of most of the stuff I’ve read, but stories like this make me want to find more stuff with him.

#wes reads xmen

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antoine-triplett · 2 years ago

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"He tells of the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America."

(THG chapter 1)

"In school, they tell us the Capitol was built in a place once called the Rockies. District 12 was in a region known as Appalachia."

(THG chapter 3)

Where do you think location of Capitol and Panem's districts exactly?

The Appalachian’s span multiple states. Where do you picture District 12?

How long between this time and Panem rise? 200 hundred years? More?

Thank you so much

@curiousnonny

It’s funny because I’m Canadian and my knowledge of American geography is not great tbh 😬 You got a lot of states down there. I know it’s not accurate to the book, but I imagined it taking place across Canada. Just helps when I’m picturing things because I’ve been to most Canadian provinces but never to the States.

So District 12 would be on the West Coast in BC where the mountains are and the prairie provinces would be the agricultural districts. Power, military, and factory districts all could go in the middle provinces (Ontario/Quebec), the fishing and lumber districts in the north, and then the Capitol sitting on one of the islands on the East Coast.

My brain works in mysterious ways? 😛

I feel like it would take longer than 200 years to come back from almost being wiped out to the level they were when the series started. Maybe closer to 500 for an arbitrary guess? But that really depends on what was left behind before.

#the hunger games #my brain is like what map haha directions I don’t know those #jessies thg revival #ask #jessie speaks #curiousnonny #conveniently already divided into 13 sections though just sayin

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danwhobrowses · 2 years ago

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AEW Full Gear 2022 - Review

Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, but also sleeping, and thus I opted to get one last good sleep before I have to get ready for returning to work...it didn't work so well XD

Nevertheless, now it's time to catch up with Full Gear. 10 matches on the main card filled with in-ring debuts, bitter rivalries and 7 titles on the line. Let's see how it went

Spoilers for the PPV

The Buy-In

Best Friends, Rocky Romero & Danhausen def The Factory (QT Marshall, Lee Johnson, Cole Karter, Nick Comoroto & Aaron Solo) [Pinfall by Danhausen on Comoroto via Big Boot] The babyfaces interestingly started without their 'Very Mysterious, Very Evil' partner but the tag synergy of Best Friends/Roppongi Vice held the early advantage over QT and his rookies. QT's experience did allow openings for the Factory to have brief moments of number advantages, including QT catching the Orange Punch with a Diamond Cutter, but when he attempted a steps piledriver Danhausen came out with the jar of teeth, outwrestling the Factory members up to Nicky C, who ate an Orange Punch, was fed the jar of teeth and then hit with the big boot for the 3. QT tried to escape but was hit with the spike by Danhausen. A nice pre-show opener to unveil Danhausen's Very Evil side, probably would've had QT take the pin if I were booking it but it was some nice fun. One does have to continually worry about the Factory, not only do they now have a size of at least 6 members (remember Anthony Ogogo is a part of them, Blake Li is a question mark now) but they lack firm direction, which can be a negative for the likes of Lee and Comoroto, they may need repackaging and downsizing.

Post-Match latest AEW recruit Konosuke Takeshita was interviewed by Renee, Beloved Cinnabon Man basically sad he's happy to be here, more a 'in case you missed it' kinda thing.

World Championship No.1 Contender Eliminator Semi-Final Ricky Starks def. Brian Cage (w/Prince Nana) [Pinfall via Roshambo] Ethan Page joined commentary to scout his opponents as Cage immediately went for the weakened Ricky. Page was very focused and intelligent on commentary, noting how he wants his opponents to wear each other out but he only cares about fighting Mox or Max. Naturally, the Machine used his monster strength to further damage Ricky's ribs, back and neck but it's Ricky's quickness and counter-wrestling that kept Cage on his toes. After kicking out of a Spear from Ricky but failing to beat him with a Discus Lariat, Cage went for an Elbow Drop but missed, Ricky tried the Roshambo but was overpowered into an F-5 position, but countered it into a Canadian Destroyer, a labored Roshambo finished Cage and books the desired outcome of Ricky vs Ethan - delayed however to be fought on Dynamite due to Ricky's legit injury last week. It was a good match, maybe could've gone a bit longer but given how there was a desired outcome they also didn't drag out Ricky fighting from underneath.

Fight Forever's trailer was aired after the match, followed by the promo package and an Eddie interview, Eddie was all jitters and butterflies about facing his hero, further selling his mindset on his personal dream match.

Eddie Kingston def Jun Akiyama [Pinfall via Uraken] The Buy-In Main Event started scrappy with both men trying to get the early advantage, the trade in chops and forearms get things further into the King's Road style. Akiyama got a lot of offense with a guillotine knee drop on the apron, a spike piledriver, a curb stomp and a running knee but Eddie hit back with an Avalanche Brainbuster, back and forth they went trading moves, Akiyama kicked out of the Uraken but Eddie kicked out of an exposed running knee, Eddie got the win with a Northern Lights Bomb and following up with a second Uraken to put the legend down. Very emotional, Eddie showed his respect to Akiyama who shook hands, when given the ring he embraced Ortiz and thanked the crowd, Akiyama, King's Road Style and all the past Japanese legends who aren't with us anymore, before telling the audience to 'buy the damn pay per view' in his classic tongue-in-cheek manner. It's a good match enhanced by Eddie's visible emotion and passion, they should've just let him run down the card - I mean he almost did - I probably preferred the Ishii match from a wrestling standpoint but frankly I'm just happy Eddie's happy.

The steel cage lowered to telegraph what the opener would be as Jim Ross joins commentary.

Main Card

Steel Cage Match 'Jungle Boy' Jack Perry def. Luchasaurus (w/Christian Cage) [Submission via Snare Trap] A battle between tag partners in the same arena they struck gold, Jungly Jim came in quietly and focused, shutting the cage door behind him as he faced the Dark Dino-Man. Jack's athleticism and Luchasaurus' power were both positions of advantage in the cage, but Jack was busted early by a lawn dart, Cage making sure to mock Perry from outside the cage. Jack was almost sent to the shadow realm after his rebound clothesline was shrugged off and he was thrown a fifth time into the cage wall, almost being caught in between. Christian however pulled a pickpocket by stealing the keys to the cage, unlocking the door just before Mike Posey got security to drag him out, Luchasaurus' attempts to save him were cut short by Jack, but he ate a slingshot into the cage's outer wall. Out came the table, and the chairs, JB got an advantage hitting a Destroyer for 1 and a Killswitch on the chair for 2, but Luchasaurus hit a Chokeslam on the chair for 2 also. After an Avalanche Sliced Bread, Luchasaurus did the sit up, but so did JB, Jack's refusal to stay down unleashed a babyface rally and a piledriver for 2. Luchasaurus though again hit back, a Tombstone and his swinging Tombstone facebuster only good for 2, he tried to powerslam JB through the table but Jack went into a sleeper, cracked his partner with a chair shot to keep him laid on the table and scaled the top of the cage for an elbow drop, after locking the snare trap, Luchasaurus tapped out. After climbing out the cage Jack embraced his mother and sister before leaving.

I have to say it, AEW Cage Matches > WWE Cage Matches. Compare this to Drew vs Kross and there's no contest, just shows how much more intensity can come by eliminating the 'escape cage finish' options. JB and Luchasaurus pulled off a wonderful 'irresistible force vs immovable object' battle as Jack's relentless babyface energy once again pulls out a banger from the underrated pillar. Take nothing away from the big man either, he was a great mountainous adversary for Jack, though I do think we lacked comeuppance for Christian, I did feel like him stealing the keys was gonna go somewhere more, but I'm sure the two will eventually collide in the future.

AEW Trios Championship Death Triangle (c) (w/Alex Abrahantes) def The Elite (w/Don Callis, Brandon Cutler & MT Nakazawa) [Pinfall on Omega by Fénix via Hammer-assisted Roll-up] Penta back in Joker mode (without his vest) while Fénix was en fuego, PAC was of course PAC. But everyone was awaiting the Elite's return, who came to Kansas' Carry On My Wayward Son to a big ovation. Callis joined commentary as PAC and Kenny began the fight, the Jersey fans erupting in 'Fuck him up' and 'Colt Cabana' chants. PAC and Kenny did roll back their earlier feud with PAC flipping out the Kotaro Crusher and spitting in the face of the Best Bout Machine, so the tag went to the Flipshow Nick vs Fénix and Power Brothers Matt vs Penta. I needn't tell you that Lucha Bros vs Young Bucks went exactly how you'd expect it to, the back and forth concluding with all of Death Triangle eating superkicks, the Elite pulled the playbook with Nick being given a cola? by the audience, but PAC intercepted a You Can't Escape to put the champions back in position. It became very clear that PAC would be central to the finish, with him continually antagonizing Kenny, but Nick got a slight in the match too hitting Punk's rising knee/bulldog combo. Matt murdered Fénix with a leaping apron DDT while Nick super hurricanrana'd Penta into the group of Elite and DT members, leaving PAC and Kenny in the ring, the Bucks recovered to attempt a Superkick Tombstone combo but DT came in and spiked them all with a triple Tombstone (every time someone hits a Tombstone Undertake gets a nickel). DT almost had it with a splash to Kenny, classic step-over destroyer to Matt, rolling cutter to Nick and then PAC hitting the Black Arrow/Brutalizer combo on Kenny but the submission was broken up.

The ring hammer came in though with PAC throwing it to Fénix while Penta had Bryce distracted, but once more Fénix refused, eating a V-Trigger for his troubles, Tiger Driver 98 was only good for 2. Trios BTE trigger broken up by PAC, who prepped to clock Kenny with the hammer but was blindsided by Nick's superkick. After hitting Fénix with a V-Trigger, Kenny was unable to see PAC hand his partner the hammer once more, who clocked Kenny while up in the OWA position to roll up Omega, retain the titles and spoil the Elite's return...and it was magnificent. Honestly the heat is gonna be fantastic for this because heel Lucha Bros are great too, even if Fénix feels dirty by it right now, I knew the hammer would come into play but I was thinking it'd be a DQ. I was surprised the House of Black did not show up though. The match unsurprisingly was great, and swerving the crowd will further both teams' direction.

TBS Championship Jade Cargill (c) (w/Kiera Hogan & Leila Grey) def Nyla Rose ('c') (w/Vickie Guerrero & Marina Shafir) [pinfall via Jaded] Nyla continues to endear herself to me by coming out in an Eddie Guererro-esque low rider, Vickie sporting the 'I'm Your Papi' shirt too. Lord though, Jade sporting the Cheetara from Thundercats gear, Jade does not miss when it comes to gear (I'm sorry but if you're not seeing this you cannot tell me to contain my thirst, I am not strong enough for this). Nyla went for the Baddies first though which allowed Jade to enact her aggression on Rose, including a pump kick over the barricade. Nyla hit Jade into the steps to regain the advantage, scouting much of Jade's trademark offense and hitting the Beast Knee. Jade hit back with a sit out powerbomb of her own for 2 and managed to counter Nyla's scrappy attempt to roll out of the Jaded, she ended up eating her own finisher for 2, but the true TBS Champ got the win thanks to avoiding Nyla's Swanton, allowing her to nail the Pump Kick and Jaded, 42 and 0.

I think that may've been Jade's best match so far, a proper physical challenge for the champion. Give nothing away from Nyla too, her physicality was a great match for Jade but her antics to help build this match has been great, Nyla being a hilarious tweener is her best position.

ROH World Championship Chris Jericho (c) def. Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli & Sammy Guevara [Pinfall on Castagnoli via Judas Effect] Ian Ribacconi joined commentary for ROH representation. Sammy's entrance gear was...a thing, like devil cape with SG on the straps makes sense but it also kinda looked like the Borat swimsuit, Jericho's bedazzled shirt was clean though. Naturally the match started with BCC vs JAS, Claudio facing Jericho and Bryan facing Sammy. The BCC managed to dispose of the JAS leaving both alone in the ring, a lingering handshake foretelling that the two were set to exchange blows. Jericho intercepted Bryan and Claudio's clinic but ate a flapjack and double crab, but Sammy hit a flying cutter on both men. Le Sex Gods then divided and conquered the BCC members, aiming for Danielson's injured eye like they did on Dynamite. A little tension though as Jericho had Sammy stand by as he pinned Danielson for 2, Danielson though rallied in Danielson fashion, raining kicks on Jericho and Guevara, but Sammy's athleticism evaded him enough to hit a Spanish Fly, which led to Jericho pouncing with a Lionsault. Claudio gutwrenched back into the match but ate a Codebreaker, which Sammy then broke up! Allegiances became damned as Guevara fought Jericho, hitting his own Codebreaker for 2, but he ended up in the Walls, Danielson tried to dropkick him but ended up in the walls too. Jericho was unrelenting in the hold against Claudio's big boots, but a suplex broke the hold and put Jericho in a Sharpshooter - which he had tapped to on Dynamite - wily, the Ocho crawled to pin Danielson in front of him, but ended up being locked in a LeBell Lock as well, saved by Sammy's superkicks. Sammy helped Jericho up and embraced him, but he maintained wrist control when the hug broke, landing a GTH and a Shooting Star Press for 2. Sammy Hammer and Anvil'd Danielson but it was no sold by the American Dragon, who had Claudio gorilla press Sammy out the ring into Jericho, only for Claudio to eat the Buisaku Knee for 2. Hammer and Anvil was exchanged between the two BCC members, exchanging nearfalls, as they tussled on the turnbuckle Sammy went double time with a cutter on Claudio and then a Super Spanish Fly on Danielson, but Danielson got him into a LeBell Lock, Jericho breaks the hold, Claudio then becomes the Tour de Force; uppercuts to Jericho against the barricades, he catches Danielson's knee and hits a Gotch Neutralizer outside the ring, Sammy hits the Shooting Star but his second dive is caught into a Pop-Up Uppercut for 2, Sammy uses the ropes to try and roll up Claudio for 2 but ends up in a Swing, Jericho then dives in with a Judas Effect on the swinging Sammy, and then another on Claudio to retain.

A great match again, hate Sammy for his personality but god did he wrestle out of his skin tonight. Claudio, Jericho and Danielson are once more fantastic, though I'm surprised we went for Jericho pinning Claudio again, especially without shenaniganry or a surprise Final Battle opponent showing themselves. Nevertheless, you rarely bet against the heel champion in the multi-man.

Saraya def Dr Britt Baker DMD [Pinfall via Ram-Paige x2] With her brother Zak Zodiac identified in the crowd, Saraya made an emotional return to the ring. Baker intentionally arrived alone, intent on making a point. Chants of 'welcome back' rung in the crowd as the two women locked up, though Saraya acted tender to her neck. Britt honed in on the neck with a neckbreaker to the outside, before mocking Zak who cheered his sister on. In control, Baker continued to act confidently, preparing the glove early, but her frustration with Saraya was palpable also, who kept firing back - a crossbody to the outside gave the former Anti-Diva the rally, Baker did hit the turnbuckle facebuster but also ate a Paige-Turner for 2, Baker hit an Air Raid Crash and a Curb Stomp for 2 also having failed to get the Lockjaw fully cinched. At the turnbuckle, Baker's Avalanche Air Raid Crash was countered into a Sunset Powerbomb and a Ram-Paige (I dunno what the Saraya-names are for this) for 2, but she escaped the Cloverleaf to ram Saraya into the turnbuckle pad and get the Lockjaw, both exchanged Crucifix Pins for 2 but Saraya came out on the advantage with a thrust kick and running knee. DMD hit a ripcord forearm and her own Paige-Turner and Curb Stomp for another 2, but her next Air Raid Crash attempt was reversed into a Knee Strike and two Ram-Paiges for the win. Afterwards Saraya embraced her brother before departing.

This was a good match, the crowd however hurt it. I dunno why but they seemed kinda gassed, maybe it was an energy dip due to the quality of the prior matches but the lack of energy did make it feel less impactful of a match, which is a shame because both women worked really well. Saraya had a bit of ring rust which is passable given how long it's been, her running knee perhaps needs a bit more theatrics to it because sometimes it looks a tad messy plus we need to know the non-WWE names of her finishers, but this is a starting point for Saraya, hopefully we can see her shake off the cobwebs and even go beyond the level she was before.

TNT Championship Samoa Joe def Wardlow (c) & Powerhouse Hobbs [Submission on Hobbs via Coquina Clutch] - NEW CHAMPION! Our Triple Beef Barbecue began with Wardlow releasing frustrations on Joe, which allowed Hobbs to take advantage. Hobbs held the early advantage being able to fend off Joe's attacks when interrupted, but Wardlow roared back with a moonsault on both his opponents, Hobbs was tendered by a Swanton by Wardlow and an Elbow Drop by Joe, the Samoan Submission Machine taking advantage next with his classic offense. Beef continued to slap outside of the ring with each men trading advantage, Wardlow kicked out of the Hobbs Spinebuster, so Wardlow started hitting the Powerbomb Symphony, Joe however snuck in, hitting Wardlow with the TNT title and getting a dazed Hobbs in the Coquina Clutch for the win.

It was as advertised, but also I have to say I enjoyed this the least so far. It was way too short for one but I also felt that Joe didn't need the win, you know who did need the win? Powerhouse Hobbs. Hobbs was coming back from losing to Ricky after all, giving him the TNT Championship would've helped elevate him while Joe and Wardlow fought over the ROH TV title, instead he took the fall and Joe's a double champion. Now I get it, we all like Joe, but you did pick the oldest dude in the match to hold 2 championships while the two bright and young talents get nothing, Hobbs hasn't touched gold and this was kinda the perfect time for it, so it was a let down.

Post-match Jericho praises Sammy's competitive spirit, only to be met by Orange Cassidy and Danhausen. Neither are his challenger though, on Wednesday the Ocho will be challenged by the Stone Pitbull, Jericho vs Ishii. Hager and his Hat also is gonna face OC for the All-Atlantic Title.

No DQ Sting & Darby Allin def. Jay Lethal & Jeff Jarrett (w/Sonjay Dutt & Satnam Singh) [Pinfall on Lethal by Allin via Coffin Drop] Ric Flair's last match without Ric Flair, Jarrett came out with some Sting-mask goons as well, which is often a bad strategy. A Body bag was left on the ramp to bait Lethal and the Sting Goons as Darby charged out with a skateboard to lay them out, Sting meanwhile appeared behind Jarrett in the ring. Lethal did return in time to divide the fights between Sting/Lethal and Darby/Jarrett around the crowd. Darby got out a ladder to coffin drop Jarrett but was caught like a baby by Satnam Singh before being dumped on the ramp. Singh caught Lethal before he was dumped out too, but Sting dived from the crowd to down the giant, erstwhile Jarrett used weaponry to punish Darby. Back in the ring it suddenly just turned into a 'with rules' tag match, since there are legal tags (I mean what's the ref gonna do?) Sting hit the hot tag to Stinger Splash both men and lock Jarrett in the Scorpion Deathlock, Sonjay tried to break the hold and failed, so Satnam shoved him aside and chokeslammed the Icon. Lethal and Darby fought next, Lethal catching a Coffin Drop and getting a Lethal Combination, Jarrett whipped out the guitar but stopped before hitting Lethal by mistake, allowing Darby to hit the flip stunner, Darby's Coffin Drop was met by the guitar shot, but Darby kipped up! Unleashing the Sting-rally that prompted Singh to come out, Sting tries a Scorpion Death Drop but cannot get the Drop part, so Darby lands the Coffin Drop on him too, smashing Jarrett with a suicide dive as Sting catches Lethal's Lethal Injection with a Scorpion Death Drop. Since Sting was either winded or not legal, Darby finished the match with a Coffin Drop.

If you want a chaotic fun tag match, you call Sting and Darby. It's a great Palate Cleanser I must admit, it might not always feel like it belongs but it's entertaining, and it does remove the TNT bad taste. Where it goes from here is a bit of a down because it doesn't really advance anything but the result is the right call, Satnam Singh also deserves credit for his role in the match.

AEW Interim Women's Championship Jamie Hayter def. Toni Storm (c) [pinfall via Hayterade] - NEW CHAMPION! I do really wish that we made Toni the official world champion, like it wouldn't have hurt Rosa to appear backstage and call Toni the de facto world champ, she's held it long enough. Regardless, Hayter appeared alone just as Baker did, highlighting the support the crowd had for her. The women started with their technical prowess, narrowly avoiding the other's finishers. Hayter ate the ring post while Toni hurt her hand chopping it, but the weakness activated Hayter's aggression, swinging Toni into barricades, turnbuckles and into the mat, exerting her physical dominance over her former friend. Toni struck back with a Thesz Press, Hip Attack and Crossbody for two, falling into her common strategy of using DDTs, a headbutt led to Toni falling on Hayter for 2 which prompted Rebel to come out. Seemingly unbeknownst to Hayter, Rebel cracked a rope-prone Toni with the belt, leading to an Ushigoroshi and a sliding Lariat for two, when Rebel protested though Hayter was disappointed by her inclusion, but watched on as Rebel was kicked out. Toni reversed the Hayterade (her ripcord lariat) to hit her own, she went for a hip attack but ended up out the ring, where Baker hit a curb stomp on the belt, Hayter hits the Storm Zero but it's another nearfall! Now it seems like Hayter was in on the plan, but her Hayterade misses again for a Half-and-Half and a Storm Zero for 2, she goes for the Texas Cloverleaf but decides to swipe at Baker on the apron, causing Hayter to hit back with her Backbreaker for 2. As Hayter attacks Toni in one corner, Baker attempts to remove the turnbuckle pad on the other, but collides with Hayter during the removal, Hayter however still throws Toni into the exposed turnbuckle dazing her enough to hit the Hayterade and get gold.

The crowd erupts for Hayter despite being a heel. Toni had a fantastic showing in demonstrating her toughness which made it a dramatic battle, however I do wish that Hayter won either clean or without knowing of Rebel and Baker's interference, Tony is right to put the belt on Hayter, striking on her popularity, but he seems to be delaying the inevitable face turn.

AEW World Tag Championships The Acclaimed (c) def Swerve in our Glory [Pinfall on Swerve by Bowens via Avalanche Falcon Arrow] Caster came out with an extended rap for the champions but they were noticeably without Daddy Ass, so sadly no Scissor Me Daddy Ass, the crowd at least kept the spirit alive. The focus once more was on Bowens' injury, this time his shoulder established on Wednesday, Lee took a nasty bump hitting his knee on the apron when clotheslined over but he was walking well, the champions focused on Swerve with a Scissor Me Timbers but the challengers continued to hone in on the injury, Swerve trying isolate Caster from Bowens. Bringing out a barricade, Swerve and Lee remained at odds over tactics, but it didn't get used for a while. Bowens got a tag after hitting a Poison Rana on Lee, but he couldn't lift the Limitless one. Bowens came in again to hit Swerve with a Facebuster/Cutter combo, but Swerve attacked the arm once more. The barricade came into play when Lee saved Swerve from being kicked into it, only to be crossbodied into it himself by Bowens. Swerve kicked out of an Arrival, catching Bowens with a Flatliner and a foursome of Swerve Kicks, when he set for the Swerve Stomp Bowens avoided it and hit the Arrival again, Bowens hit the Mic Drop but Lee broke up the pin.

Swerve avoided a team move because of the injured shoulder, allowing Lee to be tagged in and pounce both men, Fall From Glory on Bowens was only good for 2, Bowens is tagged in thanks to Caster reaching from a powerbomb position, but Lee just throws Bowens into him continually, Swerve attacks Caster and has the Pliers, which has Daddy Ass come out. In the chaos of the refs trying to eject him, Swerve passes Lee the pliers, but Lee throws it away, so Swerve slaps Lee! Incensed, Lee picks Bowens up, and leaves Swerve to fend for himself. Swerve escapes the roll up twice, including one that reverses the JML Driver, his roll up is stopped by the blind tag making him eat a dropkick, Swerve is finished though by an assisted Falcon Arrow.

It was a good match, maybe not the best of the trilogy but one that narratively sends Swerve and Lee to fight one another. You can't go too bonkers before the main event also, so it was a good match where the right people won.

Announced for Thanksgiving however was Elite vs DT again, announced now to be a Best of 7 Series! Which will go throughout the entire year including Holiday Bash and New Year's Smash.

AEW World Championship MJF def Jon Moxley (c) (w/William Regal) [Pinfall via Brass Knuckles shot] - NEW CHAMPION! I'm a little confused because my stream had no entrances, maybe something was running too long? Things started ruggedly as Moxley ensured that this would be his kind of match, MJF however popped the crowd with antics - which only further aggrieved Mox, playing the heel. Mox was whipping out submissions befitting of the BCC with STF and a Cross Armbreaker, but MJF was pulling classic wrestling, Flair's strut, Atomic Drop, Rhodes jabs, back rake etc. Out came the table but Mox came out with the Cutter and the BCC Stomps. MJF jacked his knee hitting an apron Tombstone, which allowed Moxley to hit a Piledriver through the table. MJF beats the count out but lands into a Paradigm Shift for 2, Mox then wrenches the knee with a Figure Four, Max turns though so Mox uses the rope break. Heatseeker is only good for 2, his knee prevents a second so Mox uses the Chop Block and hones in on the injury, on the turnbuckle it's hammer and anvil and an Avalanche Paradigm Shift, but MJF is saved by a rope break. Mox trades blows willingly with Max, but when he tries the Lariat Max pulls the ref in the way. He brandishes the ring, which brings out Papa Regal, telling him to not, which he does. However, Mox locks in the Bulldog Choke, Max tries to pin Moxley but he simply releases and locks in again, a second Ref Bump appears as Max visibly taps from the choke, but Regal tells Mox the ref is still down. Astonishingly, Regal passes Max the Brass Knuckles! Smacking Moxley with it for 3.

It was the right winner, but I can't say I loved that match. It kinda trudged, and although it was possible for Regal to betray BCC for Max, I never liked the option. BCC are now without the leader, which seems more of a loss than Max just faking the whole Firm betrayal like I had anticipated was the case. It wasn't a bad ending like Revolution's fizzle was, but I do feel a little deflated.

As a result, this was a really good PPV, just edged out of being great. Full Gear stumbled from being an all timer by the curious booking choice of the TNT title match and the world title finish. For the most part the direction we are going is good and this is certainly worth the price of admission, but I feel like the personal weak points diminished the feeling I have. Regardless, huge praise has to go to so many people in this show, and Moxley can finally have his well-overdue holiday as we can finally begin Max's world title era.

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