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the--blackdahlia · 4 months ago

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Total Eclipse of the Heart (Beetlejuice x Reader)

Title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

Summary: Beetlejuice and (Y/n) share a bond that's suddenly severed. He would do anything to get her back.

Warnings: Mentions of attempted suicide, depression, longing

Beetlejuice let off a maniacal laugh as Juno yelled about the surprise he’d left on her desk. His favorite pastime was annoying the ever-loving shit out of her, and he wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. He made his way through the halls, a shit-eating grin on his face. He saw people standing around the water cooler, chatting away—typical civil servant behavior. Beetlejuice grabbed a coffee cup from some random desk and joined them.

“So, what are we talking about? Sam and Diane? Frasier and Lillith? Are we still on who shot JR?” The people around the water cooler all quieted at his presence. Something that never really happened before. “What? I got shit on my face or something?”

“Beej,” One of the few friends he’d managed to make since working on his “people skills” with (Y/n), approached him. This was a man named Chris. Beetlejuice didn’t know his whole backstory, but he knew he’d done some really bad shit.

“What?” He snapped. Chris held out a nametag to show Beetlejuice. Placing it in his hand, the demon was able to see the name.

(Y/n).

“What the fuck is this?” He asked before the pain set in. Starting at where his heart should be and stretching down his left hand to where a ring sat. Not a wedding ring, because she wasn’t ready. But a promise ring. Which, in Beetlejuice’s eyes, was the same thing. He dropped the coffee cup, watching it shatter on the ground before he took off running towards the exit. He hit the door with a force he didn’t know he had, falling through the brick wall of the Maitland-Deetz home. He landed on the attic floor, right at Barbara’s feet.

“That looked rough,” Her comment sounded flat, probably due to her and Adam staring out the window, watching for the Deetz to come back.

“Where’s (Y/n)?” The demon stood and dusted himself off.

“We don’t know,” Adam turned to look at Beetlejuice. “Lydia and Matilda are out looking for her.”

“Why? What’s going on?” Adam and Barbara looked at each other. “I swear on Ryan Reynolds, someone better tell me what the fuck is going on!”

“Here,” Barbara handed Beetlejuice a piece of paper. He unfolded it to read.

I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore. Nobody blame yourselves. You were all lovely. I’m the broken thing in this house. Nobody summon Juicebox to look for me. He’ll see me sitting at a desk in the Nether before long. I love you all.

~(Y/n)

“The fuck?” He wasn’t sure he understood what was happening, but he knew it was hurting him. “Where is she?!” He boomed, closing his eyes and hoping to hear her say his name. But nothing came.

So he waited. He stood at the window while Adam and Barbara milled around, doing things to keep themselves distracted but not having much purpose. Neither of them had ever seen Beetlejuice stand so still. He normally bounced off the walls, and if he was sitting, he was bouncing his leg or playing with whatever fidget toy Lydia or (Y/n) would give him. Matilda swore he had ADHD, but how do you diagnose a demon?

Finally, he saw Matilda’s car at the end of the driveway. Beetlejuice was right at the front door as Lydia and Matilda entered. Barbara and Adam were hovering not far behind, and even Delia was waiting.

“We found her. Got her to the hospital,” Lydia explained. “They’re going to observe her overnight, make sure there’s nothing medical that needs to happen. Then she’s going to a psychiatric hospital for a mandatory 72-hour observation. After the 72 hours, they’ll determine if she’s safe to return home.”

“Did you tell her to summon me?” Beetlejuice asked, noting that both Lydia and Matilda stayed quiet. “Lydia!”

“She didn’t want us to summon you there. I don’t think she wants you to see her as anything less than perfect.”

“But she’s always so happy! Always smiling!”

“Beej, sometimes the people who smile the biggest are the ones that are hurting the most,” Matilda was trying to be gentle. But Beetlejuice wasn’t having it. He stormed off to spend time in the graveyard in the attic. Lydia sighed and looked over at Matilda.

“It’ll be ok. They’ll both be okay…” Matilda took her hand and led her towards their home library.

****

(Y/n) sat in the strange, sterile office of the doctor she would be seeing while in the psychiatric hospital. There wasn’t much in the way of decorations. The diplomas on the wall seemed to be laminated photocopies. No glass that way. Instead of porcelain knick-knacks, there were a couple of small, plush toys. Like the little bag clips that kids would load onto their backpacks. Across the strong, oak desk that is bolted to the cold vinyl flooring, sat Dr. Edward Wheeler. An older gentleman with thick graying hair, and glasses placed on the bridge of his nose. He had (Y/n)’s file opened in front of him.

“Well, Ms. (y/l/n)...”

“Please, call me (Y/n).”

“Okay. (Y/n). What led you to being in my office today?” He looked up at (Y/n), watching her fidget in the uncomfortable chair.

“Dunno…” She mumbled. He made a tsk noise and wrote a note on his notepad.

“Well, according to the notes from the ER, you had a high level of opioids in your system. And you told the staff that you took them intending to end your life,” He looked back up at her. “Your friends, Lydia Deetz and Matilda Wormwood, they were the ones that brought you to the hospital, is that correct.”

“Yeah,” (Y/n) signed. “Always seem to know when I’m in trouble.”

“Now, (Y/n), looking at your past medical history, you’ve spoken to a therapist about…seeing ghosts?” He raised an eyebrow. “And specifically, one named Beetlejuice?” He noticed the little smile that spread on her face. “Does that speak to you?”

“If you say his name three times, he’ll come here and prove I’m not crazy,” She was excited to see him again. She knew he’d probably be mad at what she did, and a little overprotective, but they could see each other again.”

“Well, then that is our sign to no longer use that name,” Dr. Wheeler wrote a few more notes. “From now on, that will be a banned word during therapy and as long as you are under my care.” Instantly, (Y/n)’s hand went to the ring that was on her left hand. One made from the same material as Beetlejuice’s. Dr. Wheeler noticed. “How did you get that in here?”

“Oh, this is from Be…Beej. It’s a comfort item.”

“I’m sorry but you can’t have this. It will be placed with your other belongings,” He held out his hand for her to place the ring in.

“Oh please Dr. Wheeler, let me keep it. Please.”

“I can’t do that (Y/n). Now please give it to me. I don’t want to have security come in and remove it from you,” (Y/n) felt the tears welling up in her eyes as she twisted the ring a couple of times before slowly removing it from her finger.

She felt like her heart was being ripped from her chest as she placed the ring in the doctor's hand. She couldn’t feel Beetlejuice anymore, and she suddenly felt really alone.

****

“AHHHH!” Beetlejuice screamed, throwing himself to the ground and holding his chest. The dramatic display spooked everyone, including Lydia, who didn’t scare easy. “(Y/n)!”

“What’s wrong?” Matilda moved through the kitchen to where Beetlejuice was now sitting up, holding his hand out in front of him.

“Her ring is gone. I can’t feel her anymore,” He watched as the light faded out from the band on his finger. He could always tell how (Y/n) felt through the ring. If she took it off to wash dishes, there would be a slight tingle followed by the scent of whatever soap they had that week. If she was mad at him and took off her ring, it burned. But this, this was different. It was just like someone had stuck a branding iron through his chest.

“She’s not…dead, is she?” Adam put down the paper he was reading.

“No. If she was dead, I’d know. She’s not dead,” Beetlejuice managed to stand up. “I have to go see her.”

“How are you going to that? She’s not going to summon you,” Lydia crossed her arms. “And there’s no visitors until she calls us to say she’s allowed visitors.”

“Well, when’s that?”

“Whenever her doctor says she can have visitors.”

“FUCK!!!” Beetlejuice went storming off.

“You think he’s angry?” Barbara was matching paint to the new wallpaper Lydia had helped her put up.

“I think that’s the understatement of the year,” Matilda returned to her baking as Lydia returned to help Barbara.

****

“Hello?” Lydia answered her phone. It was the number for the hospital that (Y/n) was at. It had been two weeks since the incident, and Beetlejuice had alternated between moping around the house and going to perform bio exorcisms to keep his mind distracted. But he was at home, listening to Matila having a book club with Adam and Barbara.

“Lyds? It’s me.”

“(Y/n)! How are you feeling?” That got the group's attention. Beetlejuice was on his feet in an instant.

“Let me talk to her!” He tried to grab for the phone, but Lydia held it away from him.

“I’m doing ok. Dr. Wheeler says I can have visitors. I was wondering if you and Matilda would come visit me.” She sounded different. More relaxed.

“Of course. We’ll come by tomorrow. We both have the day off from work.”

“That works perfectly. I have therapy today, but tomorrow I’m free. It’ll be great to see you guys.”

“Do you want us to bring you anything? Or anyone else?”

“No, that’s ok. Thank you for the offer. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” Lydia hung up then.

“Why didn’t you let me talk to her?” Beetlejuice asked with a slight growl in his voice.

“I didn’t want to bombard her with things. Especially as she’s trying to heal Beej,” Lydia’s voice was calm and even, the complete opposite of Beetlejuice’s voice. “She asked for Matilda and I to go visit her tomorrow.”

“I’m going too.”

“Beej…I don’t think…”

“I’m. Going.”

“Okay, fine. But if she doesn’t want you there, you pop out. Wait in the car or something, okay?”

“Deal.” Beetlejuice turned and went back to Matilda’s deep discussion on A Game of Thrones.

****

“We’re here to see (Y/n),” Lydia told the receptionist.

“Just the two of you?” She wrote out their name tags. Beetlejuice was trying to stay hidden—part of the deal he made with Matilda and Lydia to get to join them. Stay hidden until they get to see (Y/n).

“Yes ma’am,” Matilda smiled and accepted the nametag.

“More than likely, she’s either in the garden drawing or she’s in the great room playing piano. I’d try the garden first. It’s a nice day.”

“Thank you,” Lydia, Matilda, and Beetlejuice made their way to the garden. A few people were walking around, talking with each other or with a nurse. They saw (Y/n) settled into a molded plastic chair, sketching an older gentleman just down the walkway. He was sitting on one of the concrete benches, watching birds.

“(Y/n),” Matilda was trying to make her voice as soft and even as possible. (Y/n) looked up and smiled, setting her sketchbook down and getting up to hug Lydia and Matilda.

“You guys made it. I’m so glad to see you.” She smiled, but it didn’t really show in her eyes. To Beetlejuice, it seemed that the life had been sucked out of her.

“Hey babycakes, I’ve missed you,” Beetlejuice spoke up. But it was like (Y/n) didn’t see him. “(Y/n)?”

“Let me show you guys my room. A couple of the teenagers here drew some art for it. I’ve got a radio, and Nurse Shelley brought me a big fuzzy blanket to cuddle up with,” (Y/n) led the group towards her room. Matilda walked ahead of Lydia and Beetlejuice.

“What the fuck is going on? She can’t see me?” He asked. “Why the fuck can’t she see me?”

“I don’t know Beej. We’ll figure it out, okay?” Lydia patted his shoulder.

“Here it is! I’ve even got a window. I love sketching the sunsets,” (Y/n) showed them the small room with bars on the window. “I’ve gotten a lot better. Dr. Wheeler has hope that I should be able to go home soon.”

“Well, I know Adam, Barbara, and Beej miss you,” Lydia tested the waters. (Y/n) looked at her like she had two heads.

“Adam…Barbara…oh. The ghosts. The ones that I made up to represent the homelife I never really had,” (Y/n)’s smile fell a bit. “They’re not real.”

“(Y/n), you know that’s not true. Plus, Beetlejuice really misses you…” Matilda stopped when (Y/n) backed up from her. “(Y/n)?”

“Please don’t say that name. That is a bad name. We don’t use that word here,” Lydia glanced over at Beetlejuice, whose mouth was hanging open. (Y/n) couldn’t see him, because she didn’t believe in him. Not anymore.

“Excuse me,” Dr. Wheeler knocked on the door. “(Y/n), is everything okay?”

“Yes, Dr. Wheeler. I was just showing Lydia and Matilda my room,” (Y/n) smiled at the doctor. “Lyds, Tillie, this is Dr. Wheeler. He’s helped me so much.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you two,” He shook their hands. “(Y/n), it’s almost lunch and medication time. I’m going to take your friends to discuss the process with them. Oh, it’s pizza day.”

“Oh, I love pizza day,” (Y/n) walked past the doctor. Beetlejuice wanted to follow. He wanted to be near (Y/n), but he also felt like his heart was breaking. So he walked behind Lydia and Matilda as they followed Dr. Wheeler to his office.

“So, you’re Lydia Deetz, and you’re Matilda Wormwood, am I correct?” Dr. Wheeler asked once the girls had settled in chairs across from his desk.

“Yeah. We’re (Y/n)’s best friends and roommates,” Lydia could feel Beetlejuice standing right behind her, sizing up the doctor.

“Then you must know how fragile (Y/n)’s psyche is,” Dr. Wheeler opened (Y/n)’s file. “In her first therapy sessions, we asked her to draw things. We just wanted to get a sense of what she was seeing, what she was feeling,” He laid a few drawings out. One was Adam and Barbara, sitting on the couch together. But there was a dark haze to it. Too much black crayon was used on what was a pretty sunny memory. Another was Beetlejuice sitting at a table, feet up, smoking a cigarette. Lydia taking pictures of food, and Matilda making books float around the room. All of them were memories, but all of them seemed to be have a shadow over them.

“These are good,” Matilda commented. “(Y/n) doesn’t draw as much as she used to. We have some of her work hanging in the library.”

“We asked her to draw what she sees at home. And she drew ghosts. She told us that this is Adam and Barbara Maitland, who, according to our records, died quite some time ago. She drew Ms. Wormwood using magic to move things around the house. She drew Lydia doing possibly the only normal thing. But what is most concerning is this personification of her depression, the mess in her mind.” He pointed to the picture of Beetlejuice.

“That’s not a personification of anything,” Lydia started, but Dr. Wheeler raised a hand to stop her.

“She says this is named Beetlejuice. She told me if we said his name three times, that he would show up. We have worked very hard to help her work through this creation. She now draws happier things. Flowers, birds, the sunset. We banned this name from being said, and she has come to terms with the fact that she created these imaginary characters to help her cope with the stresses of life. These people do not exist.”

“Dr. Wheeler, you don’t understand…”

“No Ms. Deetz, you don’t understand. (Y/n) is sick. We are trying to heal her. If I had my way, she would not be returning to the house on the hill. But she’s an adult and we can’t stop her from going someplace. And since we are so close to getting her to a healthy point, I will have to ask that you do not visit anymore until she is ready to be discharged.

“WHAT?!” Beetlejuice all but screamed, but Dr. Wheeler didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss.

Reluctantly, Lydia and Matilda left his office. He promised he would take care of informing (Y/n) about the new arrangement. Beetlejuice wanted to stick around the hospital to watch over (Y/n), but Lydia pulled him away.

“We’ll get her back Beej,” Lydia promised him when they got to the car. But when Lydia looked at Matilda, there were tears in her eyes.

Maybe they had actually lost their best friend.

****

“Okay, I’m going to go pick up (Y/n),” Matilda told Adam, Barbara, and Beetlejuice over a week later. “Lydia will be home from work shortly. Now, we don’t know if (Y/n) is going to be able to see all of you guys or not. We just have to be gentle with her, okay?”

“We will all be on our best behaviors,” Adam promised. Beetlejuice rolled his eyes and went back to staring out the window at the driveway.

That’s where he was when Lydia got home from work. Watching for Matilda’s car to come up the drive. Lydia sat down next to him.

“It’s like watching water boil or paint drying, isn’t it?” She asked him.

“What’s taking so long?” He grumbled, watching a bird fly in front of the window.

“Paperwork probably. It takes a while,” Lydia looked out the window with him. That’s when Matilda’s car appeared, pulling up the driveway. Everyone waited as (Y/n) and Matilda got out, (Y/n)’s few belongings in a bag in her hands. They walked into the house.

“It’s a little chilly in here,” (Y/n) walked right past Barbara and Adam without saying a word. “But it’s so good to be home.”

“We’re glad to have you back,” Lydia hugged (Y/n). Beetlejuice watched (Y/n) curiously like a cat just watching his territory.

“Babe,” He whispered, but it fell on deaf ears as the girls headed upstairs to (Y/n)’s room. Beetlejuice started to follow.

“Maybe you should give her some space,” Adam commented, but Beetlejuice just glared at him before heading upstairs as well.

“Here, I drew some new things,” (Y/n) handed Lydia and Matilda some new artwork she had done. “I think I might take painting up again.” Lydia wanted to say that Adam would love to have a painting friend, but she kept quiet. “Oh, there’s that ring.” The two other girls looked back at Beetlejuice, who was excited. Once (Y/n) put her ring back on, she’d be linked to him again. He’d be able to feel her, to help her. “Do either of you know where I got this? I don’t remember.”

“Uh…” Was all Matilda could muster. (Y/n) shrugged and looked at the elegant band again before setting it on her dresser.

“Who’s hungry? I’m starving,” (Y/n) walked past Beetlejuice, stopping for a second. “Man, I just got a draft. I think I need to get my hoodies out of the closet.” She walked away then as Beetlejuice stood there.

****

It had been a couple of weeks since (Y/n) had returned home. While things were peaceful, Lydia felt she was walking on eggshells, trying to keep the ghost talk to a minimum. Beetlejuice was pining a lot. He just wanted (Y/n) to see him. But nothing seemed to work. So he was currently sitting in the kitchen, watching as (Y/n) did dishes and sang along with the music from her phone. He heard the beginning piano of that Bonnie Tyler song playing.

“Turn around,” He whispered along with the guy on the song.

“Every now and then, I get a little bit lonely, and you're never coming 'round,” (Y/n) sang. Beetlejuice perked up a bit. Maybe this was what he needed.

“Turn around,” Beetlejuice watched her.

“Every now and then, I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears,” (Y/n) sang into the wooden spoon she had been drying.

“Turn around…”

“Every now and then, I get a little bit nervous that the best of all the years have gone by,” She rinsed a plate and set it in the drying rack.

“Turn around…”

“Every now and then, I get a little bit terrified, and then I see the look in your eyes,” Beetlejuice stood behind (Y/n) then.

“Turn around, bright eyes…”

“Every now and then I fall apart…”

“Turn around, bright eyes…”

“Every now and then I fall apart,” (Y/n) turned around to face Beetlejuice and he swore for a brief second, she was looking right at him.

“Turn around,” He reached out to touch her, but she was just a little out of reach.

“Every now and then I get a little bit restless and I dream of something wild,” The Maitlands, Lydia, and Matilda could hear (Y/n) and Beetlejuice singing from the kitchen. They didn’t want to break whatever spell was going on. They all wanted (Y/n) back, but they also needed to see what was going on.

“Turn around…”

“Every now and then I get a little bit helpless and I'm lying like a child in your arms,” (Y/n) could feel the cold air in the kitchen with her, the same cold feeling that had been following her around the house since she came back. She could also feel eyes on her from the dining room but made no move to look that way.

“Turn around,” Beetlejuice watched her. He could tell she was feeling something. He was feeling that spark back in his heart.

“Every now and then I get a little bit angry and I know I've got to get out and cry,” (Y/n) could feel tears in her eyes.

“Turn around.”

“Every now and then I get a little bit terrified but then I see the look in your eyes,” (Y/n) couldn’t stop singing even if she wanted to. Something was compelling her to keep going.

“Turn around bright eyes,” Beetlejuice couldn’t stop the smile from spreading on his face.

“Every now and then I fall apart.”

“Turn around bright eyes.”

“Every now and then I fall apart!” Right then, Beetlejuice made his move. He reached out and was finally able to touch her. He wrapped one arm around her waist and held her hand in his other one. She rested her other arm on his shoulder. She couldn’t see what was going on, but she could feel cold against her skin.

“And I need you now tonight, and I need you more than ever. And if you only hold me tight we'll be holding on forever. And we'll only be making it right 'cause we'll never be wrong,” (Y/n) sang as she was twirled around the room. Right then, she was able to see Adam and Barbara standing with Lydia and Matilda.

So the ghosts were real after all.

“Together we can take it to the end of the line. Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.”

“All of the time,” Barbara, Adam, Lydia, and Matilda found themselves singing backup. Part of the Beetlejuice band apparently.

“I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark. We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks,” (Y/n) sang to the invisible force in front of her. She knew who it was, but she just couldn’t make the connection. Not yet. “I really need you tonight. Forever's gonna start tonight.”

“Forever gonna start tonight,” The quartet sang as (Y/n) stopped moving around the room.

“Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I'm only falling apart. There's nothing I can do, a total eclipse of the heart,” (Y/n) looked around, a little confused as to why she had stopped dancing. “Once upon a time there was light in my life but now there's only love in the dark. Nothing I can say, a total eclipse of the heart.”

That’s when she felt herself being lifted up and placed on the breakfast table, a clattering of glassware on her less-than-graceful landing. She felt herself moving around the table again with the same invisible force. Now the other four stood around the table, watching her.

“Turn around, bright eyes. Turn around, bright eyes,” She could hear them sing, but there was a fifth voice there. A deeper, more gravelly one. One that she heard whisper her name many a night. “Turn around.”

“Every now and then I know you'll never be the boy you always wanted to be.”

“Turn around,” Beetlejuice sang, and (Y/n) could hear him clearly this time.

“But every now and then I know you'll always be the only boy who wanted me the way that I am,” She could feel her feet leaving the table as she floated up into the air. The rest of the world just seemed to melt away as a hazy figure entered her vision.

“Turn around,” He sang to her, with an accompaniment. But she knew it was him.

“Every now and then I know there's no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as you,” There he was, with that shit-eating grin he always wore. The one she loved to see, even when he was pulling pranks on her.

“Turn around,” He whispered to her, moving his head to kiss the hand that he was holding.

“Every now and then I know there's nothing any better. There's nothing that I just wouldn't do,” She returned the favor, kissing his hand this time.

“Turn around bright eyes.”

“Every now and then I fall apart,” She felt him pull her a little closer at that statement.

“Turn around bright eyes.”

“Every now and then I fall apart! And I need you now tonight. And I need you more than ever. And if you only hold me tight, we'll be holding on forever. And we'll only be making it right 'Cause we'll never be wrong. Together we can take it to the end of the line. Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time!”

“All of the time.” The quartet sang back to her.

“I don't know what to do, I'm always in the dark. Living in a powder keg and giving off sparks!” She was putting emotion into this that needed to be let out for years. Tears were streaming down her face, but she never wanted Beetlejuice to let her go. “I really need you tonight. Forever's gonna start tonight.” He lowered them back down to the table.

“Forever’s gonna start tonight,” He whispered in her ear as he pulled her against his chest.

“Once upon a time, I was falling in love. But now I'm only falling apart. Nothing I can do, a total eclipse of the heart,” She all but cried into his chest. “Once upon a time, there was light in my life. But now there's only love in the dark. Nothing I can say. A total eclipse of the heart.”

The pair didn’t hear the four finishing off the song as Beetlejuice kissed (Y/n) deeply, emotions pouring off of both of them. Once the world seemed to come back into focus, (Y/n) looked up into his eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” She whispered, more tears threatening to spill. He cradled her face in his hands.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he wiped the tears away with his thumb. “I’m not going to let you fall again. I promise.”

#beetlejuice #michael keaton #beetlejuice x reader #reader insert #fanfiction #also has matilda

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 6 months ago

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"In these circumstances, the commercial economy of the fur trade soon yielded to industrial economies focused on mining, forestry, and fishing. The first industrial mining (for coal) began on Vancouver Island in the early 1850s, the first sizeable industrial sawmill opened a few years later, and fish canning began on the Fraser River in 1870. From these beginnings, industrial economies reached into the interstices of British Columbia, establishing work camps close to the resource, and processing centers (canneries, sawmills, concentrating mills) at points of intersection of external and local transportation systems. As the years went by, these transportation systems expanded, bringing ever more land (resources) within reach of industrial capital. Each of these developments was a local instance of David Harvey's general point that the pace of time-space compressions after 1850 accelerated capital's "massive, long-term investment in the conquest of space" (Harvey 1989, 264) and its commodifications of nature. The very soil, Marx said in another context, was becoming "part and parcel of capital" (1967, pt. 8, ch. 27).

As Marx and, subsequently, others have noted, the spatial energy of capitalism works to deterritorialize people (that is, to detach them from prior bonds between people and place) and to reterritorialize them in relation to the requirements of capital (that is, to land conceived as resources and freed from the constraints of custom and to labor detached from land). For Marx the

wholesale expropriation of the agricultural population from the soil... created for the town industries the necessary supply of a 'free' and outlawed proletariat (1967, pt. 8, ch. 27).

For Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1977) - drawing on insights from psychoanalysis - capitalism may be thought of as a desiring machine, as a sort of territorial writing machine that functions to inscribe "the flows of desire upon the surface or body of the earth" (Thomas 1994, 171-72). In Henri Lefebvre's terms, it produces space in the image of its own relations of production (1991; Smith 1990, 90). For David Harvey it entails the "restless formation and reformation of geographical landscapes," and postpones the effects of its inherent contradictions by the conquest of space-capitalism's "spatial fix" (1982, ch. 13; 1985, 150, 156). In detail, positions differ; in general, it can hardly be doubted that in British Columbia industrial capitalism introduced new relationships between people and with land and that at the interface of the native and the nonnative, these relationships created total misunderstandings and powerful new axes of power that quickly detached native people from former lands. When a Tlingit chief was asked by a reserve commissioner about the work he did, he replied

I don't know how to work at anything. My father, grandfather, and uncle just taught me how to live, and I have always done what they told me-we learned this from our fathers and grandfathers and our uncles how to do the things among ourselves and we teach our children in the same way.

Two different worlds were facing each other, and one of them was fashioning very deliberate plans for the reallocation of land and the reordering of social relations. In 1875 the premier of British Columbia argued that the way to civilize native people was to bring them into the industrial workplace, there to learn the habits of thrift, time discipline, and materialism. Schools were secondary. The workplace was held to be the crucible of cultural change and, as such, the locus of what the premier depicted as a politics of altruism intended to bring native people up to the point where they could enter society as full, participating citizens. To draw them into the workplace, they had to be separated from land. Hence, in the premier's scheme of things, the small reserve, a space that could not yield a livelihood and would eject native labor toward the industrial workplace and, hence, toward civilization. Marx would have had no illusions about what was going on: native lives, he would have said, were being detached from their own means of production (from the land and the use value of their own labor on it) and were being transformed into free (unencumbered) wage laborers dependent on the social relations of capital. The social means of production and of subsistence were being converted into capital. Capital was benefiting doubly, acquiring access to land freed by small reserves and to cheap labor detached from land.

The reorientation of land and labor away from older customary uses had happened many times before, not only in earlier settler societies, but also in the British Isles and, somewhat later, in continental Europe. There, the centuries-long struggles over enclosure had been waged between many ordinary folk who sought to protect customary use rights to land and landlords who wanted to replace custom with private property rights and market economies. In the western highlands, tenants without formal contracts (the great majority) could be evicted "at will." Their former lands came to be managed by a few sheep farmers; their intricate local land uses were replaced by sheep pasture (Hunter 1976; Hornsby 1992, ch. 2). In Windsor Forest, a practical vernacular economy that had used the forest in innumerable local ways was slowly eaten away as the law increasingly favored notions of absolute property ownership, backed them up with hangings, and left less and less space for what E.P. Thompson calls "the messy complexities of coincident use-right" (1975, 241). Such developments were approximately reproduced in British Columbia, as a regime of exclusive property rights overrode a fisher-hunter-gatherer version of, in historian Jeanette Neeson's phrase, an "economy of multiple occupations" (1984, 138; Huitema, Osborne, and Ripmeester 2002). Even the rhetoric of dispossession - about lazy, filthy, improvident people who did not know how to use land properly - often sounded remarkably similar in locations thousands of miles apart (Pratt 1992, ch. 7). There was this difference: The argument against custom, multiple occupations, and the constraints of life worlds on the rights of property and the free play of the market became, in British Columbia, not an argument between different economies and classes (as it had been in Britain) but the more polarized, and characteristically racialized juxtaposition of civilization and savagery...

Moreover, in British Columbia, capital was far more attracted to the opportunities of native land than to the surplus value of native labor. In the early years, when labor was scarce, it sought native workers, but in the longer run, with its labor needs supplied otherwise (by Chinese workers contracted through labor brokers, by itinerant white loggers or miners), it was far more interested in unfettered access to resources. A bonanza of new resources awaited capital, and if native people who had always lived amid these resources could not be shipped away, they could be-indeed, had to be-detached from them. Their labor was useful for a time, but land in the form of fish, forests, and minerals was the prize, one not to be cluttered with native-use rights. From the perspective of capital, therefore, native people had to be dispossessed of their land. Otherwise, nature could hardly be developed. An industrial primary resource economy could hardly function.

In settler colonies, as Marx knew, the availability of agricultural land could turn wage laborers back into independent producers who worked for themselves instead of for capital (they vanished, Marx said, "from the labor market, but not into the workhouse") (1967, pt. 8, ch. 33). As such, they were unavailable to capital, and resisted its incursions, the source, Marx thought, of the prosperity and vitality of colonial societies. In British Columbia, where agricultural land was severely limited, many settlers were closely implicated with capital, although the objectives of the two were different and frequently antagonistic. Without the ready alternative of pioneer farming, many of them were wage laborers dependent on employment in the industrial labor market, yet often contending with capital in bitter strikes. Some of them sought to become capitalists. In M. A. Grainger's Woodsmen of the West, a short, vivid novel set in early modern British Columbia, the central character, Carter, wrestles with this opportunity. Carter had grown up on a rock farm in Nova Scotia, worked at various jobs across the continent, and fetched up in British Columbia at a time when, for a nominal fee, the government leased standing timber to small operators. He acquired a lease in a remote fjord and there, with a few men under towering glaciers at the edge of the world economy, attacked the forest. His chances were slight, but the land was his opportunity, his labor his means, and he threw himself at the forest with the intensity of Captain Ahab in pursuit of the white whale. There were many Carters.

But other immigrants did become something like Marx's independent producers. They had found a little land on the basis of which they hoped to get by, avoid the work relations of industrial capitalism, and leave their progeny more than they had known themselves. Their stories are poignant. A Czech peasant family, forced from home for want of land, finding its way to one of the coaltowns of southeastern British Columbia, and then, having accumulated a little cash from mining, homesteading in the province's arid interior. The homestead would consume a family's work while yielding a living of sorts from intermittent sales from a dry wheat farm and a large measure of domestic self-sufficiency-a farm just sustaining a family, providing a toe-hold in a new society, and a site of adaptation to it. Or, a young woman from a brick, working-class street in Derby, England, coming to British Columbia during the depression years before World War I, finding work up the coast in a railway hotel in Prince Rupert, quitting with five dollars to her name after a manager's amorous advances, traveling east as far as five dollars would take her on the second train out of Prince Rupert, working in a small frontier hotel, and eventually marrying a French Canadian farmer. There, in a northern British Columbian valley, in a context unlike any she could have imagined as a girl, she would raise a family and become a stalwart of a diverse local society in which no one was particularly well off. Such stories are at the heart of settler colonialism (Harris 1997, ch. 8).

The lives reflected in these stories, like the productions of capital, were sustained by land. Older regimes of custom had been broken, in most cases by enclosures or other displacements in the homeland several generations before emigration. Many settlers became property owners, holders of land in fee simple, beneficiaries of a landed opportunity that, previously, had been unobtainable. But use values had not given way entirely to exchange values, nor was labor entirely detached from land. Indeed, for all the work associated with it, the pioneer farm offered a temporary haven from capital. The family would be relatively autonomous (it would exploit itself). There would be no outside boss. Cultural assumptions about land as a source of security and family-centered independence; assumptions rooted in centuries of lives lived elsewhere seemed to have found a place of fulfillment. Often this was an illusion - the valleys of British Columbia are strewn with failed pioneer farms - but even illusions drew immigrants and occupied them with the land.

In short, and in a great variety of ways, British Columbia offered modest opportunities to ordinary people of limited means, opportunities that depended, directly or indirectly, on access to land. The wage laborer in the resource camp, as much as the pioneer farmer, depended on such access, as, indirectly, did the shopkeeper who relied on their custom.

In this respect, the interests of capital and settlers converged. For both, land was the opportunity at hand, an opportunity that gave settler colonialism its energy. Measured in relation to this opportunity, native people were superfluous. Worse, they were in the way, and, by one means or another, had to be removed. Patrick Wolfe is entirely correct in saying that "settler societies were (are) premised on the elimination of native societies," which, by occupying land of their ancestors, had got in the way (1999, 2). If, here and there, their labor was useful for a time, capital and settlers usually acquired labor by other means, and in so doing, facilitated the uninhibited construction of native people as redundant and expendable. In 1840 in Oxford, Herman Merivale, then a professor of political economy and later a permanent undersecretary at the Colonial Office, had concluded as much. He thought that the interests of settlers and native people were fundamentally opposed, and that if left to their own devices, settlers would launch wars of extermination. He knew what had been going on in some colonies - "wretched details of ferocity and treachery" - and considered that what he called the amalgamation (essentially, assimilation through acculturation and miscegenation) of native people into settler society to be the only possible solution (1928, lecture xviii). Merivale's motives were partly altruistic, yet assimilation as colonial practice was another means of eliminating "native" as a social category, as well as any land rights attached to it as, everywhere, settler colonialism would tend to do.

These different elements of what might be termed the foundational complex of settler colonial power were mutually reinforcing. When, in 1859, a first large sawmill was contemplated on the west coast of Vancouver Island, its manager purchased the land from the Crown and then, arriving at the intended mill site, dispersed its native inhabitants at the point of a cannon (Sproat 1868). He then worried somewhat about the proprieties of his actions, and talked with the chief, trying to convince him that, through contact with whites, his people would be civilized and improved. The chief would have none of it, but could stop neither the loggers nor the mill. The manager and his men had debated the issue of rights, concluding (in an approximation of Locke) that the chief and his people did not occupy the land in any civilized sense, that it lay in waste for want of labor, and that if labor were not brought to such land, then the worldwide progress of colonialism, which was "changing the whole surface of the earth," would come to a halt. Moreover, and whatever the rights or wrongs, they assumed, with unabashed self-interest, that colonists would keep what they had got: "this, without discussion, we on the west coast of Vancouver Island were all prepared to do." Capital was establishing itself at the edge of a forest within reach of the world economy, and, in so doing, was employing state sanctioned property rights, physical power, and cultural discourse in the service of interest."

- Cole Harris, “How Did Colonialism Dispossess? Comments from an Edge of Empire,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), p. 172-174.

24 notes · View notes