#Providence Group of Gold Mines

[providencegoldmines]

Providence Gold Mines Inc. Engages with Prominent Financing Group

Providence Gold Mines Inc. Engages with Prominent Financing Group

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[theunholyvirginemilyprentiss]

THE BAU PLAYING MINECRAFT:

JJ: Is busy filling in the map—no one has seen her for days but she has pillaged 3 villages and has an inventory full of saddles and gold bars. Has not spoken for 30 minutes and has left Cheeto dust prints all over Penelope’s white controller.

EMILY: Will never finish building that mob spawner because she is too busy trolling everyone on the server, especially Morgan—he keeps falling into her TNT traps.

ELLE: Is the one supplying Emily with the TNT, and switches between doing that and helping Spencer make a farm in the corner. Keeps disappearing to the nether and won’t tell anyone why.

SPENCER: Making a detailed inventory system in the base storage room and leaves everyone instructions on little wooden signs.

PENELOPE: Spends all her time dying sheep pink and collecting flowers, is ‘decorating’ their base, and has tamed 6 animals.

MORGAN: Running from Emily by day, by night, is down in the mines ‘providing’ for the group and killing mobs. His death count (thanks to Emily) stands at 9.

HOTCH: Thinks it’s called ‘Mein Kraft’ and leaves game night after 10 minutes to take work calls.

ROSSI: “When were you guys gonna tell me my controller wasn’t connected?!”

Check out my Masterlist for more BAU scenarios!

[ragingbookdragon]

Part of her duties required her to hear the calls of her people. Simon’s words rang true when many of her subjects blessed her at the foot of her throne and thanked her for the food and help she provided. Other times, she was forced to listen to the nobles and children of nobles boast and puff their chests like birds attracting a mate. One moment has stuck out to her when a group of rough looking men entered the hall and she felt a sickening feeling gather when she watched John and Kyle stand up straight from the windows they were leaning on; more so, when she felt Simon and Jonathan come to the left and right of her throne side and stand.

The leader, she assumed from the way he swaggered up to her throne, gave a showy bow. “Your Majesty,” he greeted with a disgusting tone and look in his eye. “It’s a pleasure to be in such a glorious and dignified hall.”

She ignored the desire to have them thrown out on their rears, and lifted her chin, replying calmly, “The pleasure is mine. Might I ask what you’ve come to me in request of?”

“Well,” he drawled out. “My men and I,” he gestured to the men behind him and then himself. “Have been doing an excellent job of keeping your border on the west end clean of ruffians and bandits.”

“I wasn’t aware I had commissioned a new squad of knights,” she answered, arching an elegant brow on her forehead. “Might I ask who your captain is?”

The man’s chuckle was anything but amusing. “Oh, we’re not knights. We’re simply concerned...citizens.”

“Ah, I suspect I shall see more armed citizens soon, then?”

“Perhaps,” he smiled. “My Lady.”

“So, what do you require of me?”

He took another step up but stopped when Kyle and John appeared and held out their arms, effectively blocking him. “Quite the group of knights you command, Your Majesty.”

“They are,” she affirmed. “What do you want from my kingdom? Gold? Land? Titles?”

“Well, if we are going to continue to protect the border, we’d like to know it’s going to be repaid.”

“I’ve never heard of your group before. Why would I repay such?”

“We are good. Better than even your knights.”

She hummed low and waved a hand; a young woman appeared with a golden cup and a pitcher, and she took the wine goblet. “Thank you, Laeneris.”

“Your Majesty,” the woman bowed and stepped down with the pitcher.

“I will offer amnesty, but I will send my own knights to see how you protect my kingdom. You will fight for my kingdom and my people. You will fight for me.” She took a sip of her wine. “I will give you one day to decide.” Waving a hand, she said to a man in the side hall, “Amnie, a few rooms in the inn in town for our…guests.”

The leader gazed at her as the men behind him laughed and cheered with one another; he regarded her with a curious and lewd expression. “Show me your cunt. I want to see if it’s worth fighting for.”

Simon was already drawing his long sword and down a half step when she simply raised a finger. “You are in my throne room. In my castle. And are going to be staying in my inn. You do well to remember as such.” She looked behind his men. “You have a decision to make, and I have more subjects to hear.”

He smirked and nodded his head. “Of course, Your Majesty. I thank you for your hospitality.” He turned and walked past Laeneris, pausing to slap her rear hard; she jumped and made a face as he muttered, “I’ll find you tomorrow evening.”

As they walked off, she leaned back in her throne. “Ser Simon?” she narrowed her gaze on the man’s back. “When you meet them on the border…kill that one first.”

Simon’s gaze darkened behind the visor as he sheathed his sword, and he assured, “Gladly, Your Grace.”

[mistydeyes]

Cigarette smoke w ghost ?

Thank you sm for submitting! This just screamed Simon (ngl half of the prompts are just made for him)

link to the prompt list and 1k celebration!

prompt: cigarette smoke - you share a cigarette (and exchange indirect kisses) while on patrol

pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley x gn!reader (codename: Nightshade)

warnings: swearing

┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊┊

"Ghost, Nightshade, you're up," Gaz said as he sat on the safehouse's ratty couch and closed his eyes. Soap followed soon after and went into the makeshift kitchen to prepare some lackluster dinner. You nodded to Ghost as he grabbed his freshly cleaned weapon. "Cleaning time is over, Lt." you commented as he shook his head. You grabbed your weapon off the table and followed the tall man out the door. Night patrol was one of the worst tasks. You would rather clean the entire weapons cache over walking around and checking the tree line. The continuous security was more a formality at this point but still, your Captain made sure everyone had the opportunity to get some fresh air.

You walked in step with Ghost, minimizing the amount of conversation and providing an extra set of eyes around the darkened home. Patrol usually lasted about an hour which gave the next group enough time to rest, eat, or just do anything else besides remaining vigilant. By your fifth lap, you were essentially over the whole thing. You reached into your tac vest and pulled out your last cigarette and flicked your lighter. Ghost's eyes flew to yours as he gruffly commanded, "Night, put that shit out." "Lt. we walk in the same pattern, if anyone were to ambush us I'm sure you'd subdue them before I could even drop my cig," you replied and blew a puff of smoke in his face. The air smelled of smoke and pine as he looked at you in vague annoyance. You continued walking as you could feel his eyes follow the slow pull of the cigarette from your lips and the exhale of smoke. "Hand it over," he said almost in a whisper and you smiled as your fingers brushed in the passing.

You scanned the tree line and through the corner of your eye, you could see him roughly push the edge of his balaclava up and hold the cigarette in between his pale lips. Something was intimate about the moment, seeing him inhale and hold the smoke in his mouth. "Watch the trees and not me, Sgt." he corrected and you could feel your cheeks slightly warm. "Here," he said and passed it back over to you. As you put it up to your lips, you could almost taste his lips on yours as you inhaled the tobacco. You smiled as you blew out into the cold night air, there was something so cliche about sharing an indirect kiss like this. Eventually after a few more passes and vigilant glances, you had finished the cigarette and allowed Ghost to scorch it out with his calloused hands. You continued in silence as the hour was almost up before someone spoke again. "Was that one of mine?" he asked and this time it was more of a question instead of a sarcastic accusation. "Contrary to popular belief, Ghost," you said as he looked at you under the glow of the moonlight, "other people can purchase Marlboro Golds."

[youryurigoddess]

Maggie’s pendants and good omens

Yes, you’ve read it right. This post is going to deal with some literal good omens, not just title drop! But first things first, let’s take a closer look at the topic of this analysis.

A toucan

The top necklace is a lovely design involving a crowned toucan — believed to be a messenger of gods able to travel between the spiritual and the physical world, often associated with rain and rainbow (a Christian symbol of divine love, grace, and mercy, a reminder of the covenant between God and humanity to spare the latter from future trials like the Flood) — encircled by a gold band (a symbol of infinity, eternal love and promise) spun by a small butterfly (a symbol of transformation, hope, and rebirth). All three symbols combined seem to deliver a divine message of hope for rebirth, possibly resurrection, and the eternal life. Very fitting in the context of the Second Coming.

The fact that toucans were revered by the native South Americans as rainbringers strengthens the symbolic meaning of another type of bird we can spot on Maggie’s clothes in the very first episode, as her character introduction — a swallow. Swallows flying low are also believed to be harbingers of rain and bad weather. If you see one close to Earth or a building, it means that there’s a storm — or a certain biblical tempest — on the horizon.

In Ancient Greece and Rome swallows were representing Aphrodite, goddess of love. In Christianity they were considered to be of God and symbolized hope, awakening, and revival of life as messengers of spring and protectors from winter colds. Also helped Jesus on the Cross — according to a Christian legend, a group of swallows was supposed to take out the thorns from the Crown of Thorns and alleviate His Passion on the Cross. Humans banding together in the name of good have been a big theme in the series ever since The Them made an appearance, and from what we already know about the unpublished Good Omens sequel, we can assume that Jesus is going to take the spotlight in the upcoming season.

Maggie definitely attracts sudden inexplicable weather changes, like a thunderstorm with weirdly localized lightning strikes or a sudden downpour. And we’re still waiting for some vavooming (and the following happy ending) to happen in S3.

A heart with an eye

Now, the more nuanced clue hidden in the bottom necklace. I know that some of us were trying to tackle the concept of Maggie’s eye in a heart pendant suggesting her Masonic connotations, but this symbol (or the Eye of Providence in general) isn’t strictly Masonic, it isn’t even limited only to Judeo-Christian art. And while it is used a lot in Christian iconography, we should focus on a very specific example of it already referenced in the show.

Buckle up, we’re making a parachute dive into S1.

It seems like our old friend, Agnes Nutter, still has our backs.

Prophecy 4020:

Let the wheel of fate turne, let harts enjoin, there are othere fyres than mine; when the whirl wynd whirls, reach oute one to another.

If you look closely at the bottom right corner of this frame, you will see that as an illustration for the above prophecy the production team chose a 1611 engraving titled The Minde should have a fixed Eye On Objects, that are plac’d on High first found in Gabriel Rollenhagen’s Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum.

In 1635 it was published in A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne Quickened With Metrical Illustrations, both Morall and Divine, Etc by George Wither with the accompanying hymn:

A Heart, which bore the figure of an Eye

Wide open to the Sunne; by some, was us'd,

When in an Emblem, they would signifie

A Minde, which on Celestiall Matters mus'd:

Implying, by the same, that there is nought

Which in this lower Orbe, our Eyes can see,

So fit an Object for a manly thought,

As those things, which in Heav'n above us be.

God, gave Mankinde (above all other Creatures)

A lovely Forme, and upward-looking Eye,

(Among the rest of his peculiar Features)

That he might lift his Countenance on high:

And (having view'd the Beauty, which appeares

Within the outward Sights circumference)

That he might elevate above the Sphæres,

The piercing Eye, of his Intelligence.

Then, higher, and still higher strive to raise

His Contemplations Eyes, till they ascend

To gaine a glimpse of those eternall Rayes,

To which all undepraved Spirits tend.

For, 'tis the proper nature of the Minde

(Till fleshly Thoughts corrupt it) to despise

Those Lusts whereto the Body stands inclin'd;

And labour alwayes, upward to arise.

Some, therefore, thought those Goblins which appeare

To haunt old Graves and Tombes, are Soules of such,

Who to these loathsome places doomed were,

Because, they doted on the Flesh too much.

But, sure we are, well-minded Men shall goe

To live above, when others bide below.

And hey, guess what 4020, i.e., the number of the prophecy, symbolizes in Strong’s Concordance? Periergazomai, a Greek word meaning “to waste one's labor about something” — to meddle, going beyond proper boundaries (where a person doesn't belong); to fixate on what others are doing, instead of doing what the person himself is supposed to do.

It appears only once in the Bible:

2 Thessalonians 3:11: We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat. And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.

To make things slightly more interesting, in the Hebrew version of Strong’s Concordance 4020 has another meaning — migbaloth, meaning “twisted things, i.e. cords”. Which doesn’t make much sense until we read the actual passage:

Exodus 28:24 and two chains of pure gold, twisted like cords; and you shall attach the corded chains to the settings.

And compare it to the most recent post on the topic published directly by Word of God:

What if all these clues didn’t apply to Maggie and Nina, but Aziraphale and Crowley instead? What if Maggie served as a messenger — consciously or not — just like the toucan, delivering the prophecy to those who need it most?

“When the tempest comes and darkness and great storms, and the dead will leave their graves and walk the Earth once more and there will be great lamentations for the end is near, don’t lose hope, hold hands and look up.”

Basically what Aziraphale and Crowley already did when they performed the 25 Lazarii miracle, only with no interference from Gabriel this time around.

And, if both Strong’s Concordance and Maggie’s personal addition to her second pendant are to be believed, with a wedding band somehow involved in the process.

[cauli-flawa]

West Papua is undergoing a crisis currently.

This is a gross oversimplification of the background, but: Both West and Papua New Guinea was initially controlled by the Netherlands. Separate parts of the land were owned by different powers (Germany, Britain, and Australia). The Netherlands were also controlling Indonesia. But, after the Indonesian National Revolution, the Netherlands agreed to grant Indonesia solidarity, but refused to give them West Papua.

The dispute was brought to the UN, who decided to settle it with a ballot - the 1969 Act of Free Choice. Out of 800,000 Papuans, 1,025 got to vote for the nation's future. Indonesia won the ballot, though they did not do so fairly. The handful of "representatives" selected by Indonesia were pressured into voting in their favor. International journalists claimed that the ballot itself was rigged.

The Free Papua Movement (OPM) stemmed from the indigenous Papuans who rejected Indonesia's occupation. They are currently fighting against the Indonesian military.

Meanwhile, Indonesia continues to violate the human rights of the West Papuans. There is very little coverage due to Indonesia prohibiting journalists from reporting it.

On September 6, 2022, Genocide Watch reported that 500,000 West Papuans were killed since 1969, with 100,000 displaced.

The Papuan people do not have the rights to free speech, freedom, and life. Meanwhile, their land is exploited for gold and copper. The Grasburg Copper and Gold mine, owned by the American Company Freeport McMoRan, is one of the largest mines in the world. It is also a source of human rights abuses and utter disregard for West Papua's land.

Other sources:

International Parliament for West Papua (IPWP) Discusses the many human rights abuses West Papuans face.

Wikipedia article Provides more in-detail context.

Human Rights Watch (August 2023 investigation) An investigation on Indonesia's actions.

Human Rights Monitor Contains a selection of articles on West Papua.

An Article from The Guardian reporting the torture and deaths of detained children The article discusses an event from April 7 of that year. A Petition from 2018 to investigate the violations in West Papua.

West Papua: The Genocide That is Being Ignored by the World Article by the Indigenous People's Major Group For Sustainable Development (IPMG SD)

I am not an expert. Please feel free to add more sources and information, and correct errors made in this post.

[nitkat-rp-stash]

Hewwo as yall know this is my Rp blog where I do most of my bullshit with my scriblos!

It’s also my first time doing this so umm but a lil nice but aside from that! Here are

THA RULES!!! 💥

1. 18 to 21+ Rps since most of the topics that I’ll do are mixed but most of the time it’s normal. ButI want to be as flexible with the settings with the characters as I can but Mature topics are gonna appear so be careful! (Also I don’t want to interact with minors had very bad experiences with them)

2. NO ROMANCE, NO SHIPPING Unless ur a mutual friend of mine and we are consenting of this.

3. I prefer rping to be a semi literate multiple paragraph style. I'll try to adapt to the best of my ability but 10+ long paragraphs or short ones are a no for me like dawg.

4. I’m open to any type of roleplay! But please be considerate with me, and if there’s any shit ya want to pull in the RP we can discuss it in DMs for further details (so both parties can be on the same page).

5. I’m chill with Rping with Ocs! But I’ll start with a few Au characters and Ocs before I expand on more characters.

6. Please for Fucks sake be nice and non rude for fucks sake, I may take a while due to the bullshit I deal with most of the time.

7. Fandoms that I WILL NOT RP WITH: Anything created by Vivzipop, Celebrities/Real people, country/military shit, DSMP (Or any Minecraft related SMPs). And probably more cause I’m still thinking-

8. Series that I’m familiar : Megaman, Transformers, Pokemon, Steven universe, Digimon, Sonic, Spark the electric jester.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Character/Muses info-

Megaman X (Anchorage) He is a Reploid, a robot who can think feel and act on his own will. A member of the maverick hunters, he fights against mavericks. reploids who are a danger to society. He fights on and dreams of a Utopia of humans and reploids coexisting in peace. However he still despises fighting so at times he finds different ways to solve problems without violence. He currently runs a rehabilitation (a surprisingly successful) program of helping former mavericks (Who aren’t infected with the virus) and criminals to be reacquainted with society. Holding the belief of second chances, he’s currently married to Marty leader of the rose thorn pirate group for almost 50 years.



Ref:

Volnutt Caskett Light (Legends Reborn)- he's a Carbon, Biomechanical being with the ability to interfacing and changing their limbs with mechanical parts. He is a young adventurous digouter boy, who descends ruins to collect ancient artifacts and special crystals of energy called refractors. Who enjoys going on adventures, naive on aspects of the world and gets into mischief and Danger face first. but he holds a heart of gold. He loves his friends and family very much. He is, importantly, the Youngest Son of the ancient legend megaman X.

Xavier Light: Once upon a lifetime ago he was formally the legendary hero megaman x but now in this flooded world of no war, he is Xavier Light.The assistant of the renowned professor Barrell, aiding his research of Terra’s old civilizations. At the same time the Flutter’s caretaker, performing most domestic duties around the ship. A hardened yet gentle soul that at times provides wisdom and advice to those who need it, especially his youngest son Rock. Despite living a peaceful life Xavier is still a skilled warrior, but he would rather do diplomacy than fighting but when push comes to shove he’ll fight to the bitter end to keep his loved ones safe.

Note: Reborn!X is called Xavier and Anchorage!X is just named X they are are technically the same person but in different Timelines.

OC Verse:

Alice: Alice is a slime based alien being who explores the stars and medical assistance to those who are needed. A carefree mischievous individual who sought the curiosities to different worlds and what she could learn from it. Despite her duty she’s often dropped into the antics of others curious to see how it goes. She enjoys causing a lil bit of mayhem to entertain herself but still committing to her duty of supporting individuals on her travels. Often she enjoys the thrill of adventure and is surprisingly combative despite her status as a medic.

[seriously-not-horny]

D's D&D Recap: Session 2

Following the parties success in the mines, the group has set about acquiring more money to build their ship. As part of their introduction into the Inner City, they had stopped at the Misfits Consultant Agency, an adventerers guild that went global commercially, offering their services and adventerers to complete various quests and missions for the general public.

In addition to this, those of the criminal persuasion can pick up "The Blacklist" a series of less than legal jobs that are off the books. The Key, being a thief, immediately jumped at the opportunity, and gained intel on a potential heist they could pull in order to steal a chest of gold from Acquisitions Incorporated, a mega-corporation that has developed a monopoly on magical curiosities and the collection and resale of those curiosities.

Spending an evening in the tavern they've been residing in, they plan out their heist, and ultimately decide to hit the caravan transporting the gold before it arrives at the storage facility nearby. They would create a series of dramatic effects, utilising The Aberration ability to shape shift, and a series of coloured smoke grenades they received from a local artificer the Construct had befriended in the city. This same Artificer was also responsible for repairing the Mimir that The Construct had found during session zero, granting the party access to a powerful tool and encyclopedia of planar knowledge.

On their way out of the Inner City, and passing through the Outer City, they pass by the resident temple of The Priest, and discover that the sisterhood of peaceful healers and clerics that worshipped there had been conscripted into the armies of humankind, forced to convert their temple into a triage for the wounded soldiers that would soon be returning from the battlefront. It is during this visit that The Priest, a devout pacifist and pious young woman, was handed her conscription papers, and informed she is to report to the front lines to act as a battle medic. This desecration if her temple is the first prediction from the cards to come true.

The Priest card, Reversed: A place that was consecrated, but has been converted to secular use.

Despite the disrespectful and dismissive tones of the soldiers within the temple, the Priest keeps a level head, and accepts this test of her faith. Mother Lariette, The High Priestess of the temple, and adoptive mother of the young and orphaned Priest, also discovers that the mysterious basket if treats that The Priest had received as a gift happened to be a Haven Satchel, a magical basket containing an extra dimensional space, used to stabilising and transporting wounded or dying individuals. These baskets are rare, and Mother Lariette is both pleased and perplexed as to why someone would offer her adoptive daughter such an important object.

Leaving the temple, they continue on their journey to acquire wealth to provide their group with a ship.

The plan was to disguise The Aberration as a traveler, and plant the smoke grenades along the road the caravan is taking. Thanks to some well timed smoke clouds and The Aberration altering his form to seem petrified, the carvaners panic, cutting their horses loose and running away into the woods, suspecting they have encounters a Gorgon, a bull like monster that petrifies it's foes with it's thick, gaseous breath. In the confusion and the smoke, The Key is able to sneak aboard the caravan and begin picking locks on chests, seeking to locate their chest of gold.

In addition to finding their chest of gold, they also came across a few magical cloaks and a Wildspace Orrery a device that acts as a rotating and changing map that tracks the movements of the planets in the local Wildspace system. Wishing not to leave any evidence of their presence behind, they burn the caravan, and make their escape back towards the Inner City.

Following the success of their heist, the group leveled up, and they set about gathering more materials for their ship. They recruit the owner of the tavern they're residing in, offering to take his busted old ship that had been converted into a bar, and restoring it into a Spelljamming vessel and traveling tavern, allowing the owner to spend his retirement exploring the stars and serving the drinks denizens of Wildspace. They also recruit the Artificer that had provided them the smoke grenades, after learning that he was in considerable debt, and was ultimately the one that posted the heist to the blacklist, revealing that in order to make ends meet, he had resorted to stealing money from Acquisitions Incorporated and salvaging his materials instead. They grant him his share of the gold they stole from the caravan, and hit the Spelljamming dock to get their parts and equipment lists in order.

Finally, they joined up with The Spacer Guild, a guild designed to cater to space faring travelers and Spelljamming captains. The guild offers services to guild members, such as free repairs and restocking of ship supplies, as well as acting as the agency responsible for handling the employment and payment of ship crew.

In summary, my players are progressing a lot faster than I anticipated! They've already managed to acquire materials and a suitable hull for their basic ship, they simply need to arm it, upgrade it, and stick a Spelljamming helm into it, and they'll be ready to enter Wildspace (3 whole levels before I anticipated them to)

[odinsblog]

Executive summary

Since launching its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian Federation has been locked into a long and costly conflict. Russia has been diplomatically marginalized, subjected to sanctions, and shunned by most of the Western world. Many multinational companies have been forced by international pressure to shutter or sell their Russian operations, and profiting from cooperation with the Russian state is no longer considered acceptable. Russia has found itself in dire need of new allies and resources.

In this environment, the Kremlin-financed Private Military Company Wagner, or Wagner Group, has served as an increasingly important source of revenue for the Russian state. Founded in 2014 to support pro-Russian forces in Donbas, since then Wagner Group has evolved into a complex international network of private military contractors, disinformation campaign infrastruc-ture, and corporate front companies. It has deployed fighters, propaganda and disinformation campaigns, and financing as a proxy for the Russian state in numerous conflicts, from Syria and Libya to Mali, Central African Republic, and beyond

Wagner has most often been described as an independent mercenary group. This status has provided Russia with a thin veil of deniability, particularly in relation to the numerous plausible accusations of murder, rape, torture, and war crimes raised against Wagner fighters. But in reality, Wagner has always operated with the political and material backing of the Russian Federation to advance Russian state interests.

In Africa, Wagner has been deployed in a number of countries across the continent since 2017. In each country it enters, Wagner deploys military trainers, mercenary fighters, and propaganda experts to support anti-democratic regimes, drive instability, and commit human rights abuses. The mercenary group's ostensible provision of "security services" creates a framework for lucrative business contracts for the extraction of natural resources including diamonds, oil, timber, and especially gold.

This report focuses on the Kremlin's 'blood gold': Gold extracted from African countries and laundered into international markets that provides billions in revenue to the Russian state, thereby directly and indirectly financing Russia's war on Ukraine and global hybrid warfare infrastructure.

The Blood Gold Report's analysis suggests that Wagner and Russia have earned more than US$2.5 billion from blood gold since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The report focuses on the case studies of Wagner's blood gold operations in the Central African Republic, Sudan, and Mali. In each of these coun-tries, Russia profits from the blood gold trade in different ways:

In CAR, the mercenary group has been granted exclusive extractive rights for the Ndassima mine, the country's largest gold mine, in return for propping up President Touadera's authoritarian regime. Wagner's Ndassima operations are understood to produce US$290 million of gold annually, while local miners have been pushed aside or murdered by the mercenary group.

In Sudan, through control of a major refinery, Wagner has become the dominant buyer of unprocessed Sudanese gold as well as a major smuggler of processed gold. Russian military transporter flights laden with gold have been identified by Sudanese customs officials. While tracking Sudan's unreported gold market is near impossible, estimates suggest that almost Us$2 billion in gold is smuggled out of the country unreported every year, with 'the Russian Company' in prime position to take advantage.

In Mali, Wagner is paid a monthly retainer - estimated at US $10.8 million per month - to prop up a brutal military junta Meanwhile the junta is in turn dependent on a small number of Western mining companies for the revenue it needs to pay Wagner. Mining companies contributed more than 50% of all tax revenues to the Malian state for 2022. Barrick Gold Corporation, a Canadian listed company and Mali's single biggest tax contributor, paid US$206 million in the first half of 2023 alone.

The junta is increasing its financial demands on gold mining companies. Meanwhile, the four largest gold mining companies (weighted by tax contribution) continue to plan further investments in the country, despite the well-documented abuses of the military junta and growing influence of the Wagner Group.

Wagner's blood gold operations in CAR and Sudan have been subject to sanctions, and the Kremlin-backed mercenaries have developed increasingly complex smuggling routes and corporate subterfuge tactics to move blood gold out of these countries and convert this gold into cash.

In contrast, the Malian blood gold system enables Wagner to remain one degree removed from gold production. Instead, legitimate multinational mining companies convert gold into cash for the Malian military junta without triggering international sanctions.

To secure its position in a target country's political and natural resource extraction landscape, Wagner's African playbook consists of a four-pronged attack on the host country's civic institutions and civilian population - suppressing political opposition, spreading disinformation, silencing free media and terrorising civilians.

The ultimate objective of Wagner's playbook is to increase its clients' dependence on Wagner forces to stay in power, thereby securing a long-term revenue stream for the Kremlin and fostering authoritarianism and instability throughout the region as part of Russia's wider geopolitical strategy to distract and bog down the democratic West.

Since the death of Wagner's leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary group has formally come under the control of the Russian State. Yet the Kremlin's focus on Africa, and its blood gold operations, show no signs of changing.

(continue reading)

[lotus-tower]

My Orochi Stood Up: A Draconic Response to "eat shit and die"

tshirt3000’s seminal essay, “eat shit and die,” illuminates the fact that in any sillyserious discussion of Gintama, there is a recurring tension–or overlap, or slippage, or push-and-pull–between the motif of the anus and the motif of the phallus. Far from being contradictory, however, this dynamic conceptual tug of war has the potential to be not only meaning-generating, but fundamental to a thematic understanding of Gintama. In this essay, I aim to illustrate how applying a certain homebrewed framework of mine can help make sense of these interwoven concepts and provide symbolic structure to their analysis. I’m talking, of course, about the ouroboros–also known as the snake eating its own tail.

As we all know, Gintama is full of phalluses. The sword is basically a matryoshka doll of motifs all on its own (or, to invoke tshirt invoking Barthes, the beginning of a chain of images, or significants). But the same vulgar toilet humour that leads to Gintama being chock full of dick jokes (and balls jokes, which for many reasons can be conflated with dick jokes, a primary one being that the Neo Armstrong Jet Cyclone Armstrong Cannon, practically a mascot of Gintama in its own right, stands strong, beautiful, and trinitas) also leads to plenty of hole jokes. Guys like Sorachi thinks it’s funny when the protagonist gets something stuck in his butt, or when gay sex exists, or when a guy is a sub. But there’s no need to discuss this part in depth–just read tshirt’s essay.

There’s a saying among my friend group: “all there is in Gintama is head and hole.” 

Why do the sages say this? First of all because it’s funny. Second of all because it’s true. You can reduce everything in Gintama to essentially two things. Shouyou and Utsuro. Gintoki and Takasugi. Humans and monsters. Those who swing the sword right and those who swing it wrong. Those who take in and those who are taken in. Those who keep struggling and those who don’t. And then you can also always reduce these two things to one thing: Shouyou/Utsuro are, after all, the same being, even if they’re not; Gintoki; simply people, Gintoki once more; Gintoki yet again; and struggling itself. Because losing is part of struggling too. You can’t pick yourself back up if you never lost in the first place. We know that Gintoki has managed to become “a splendid human” by the end of the series–so what was he before that? Was he really a monster? At what exact point in the series did he become human? Was it while he was on-screen, while we were looking, but without us noticing? Was it off-screen, while we were flipping the page, or in the space between the panels? The answer, of course, is that he was learning to be human every day of his life, and if you were to assign him a static, general status to put on a wiki profile under ‘“species”, it would be: “becoming human.” And so “which one is the head and which one is the hole?” is the wrong question. Even if you assigned one to each half and managed not to be wrong, since they’re collapsible into one anyway, they’ll always be both.

In my ouroboros collage, I used western alchemy to stylize this struggle. This forging of the soul into a precious metal, language used by Gintama itself. Chrysopoeia–the making of gold. Or silver, as it were. But the ouroboros isn’t just a major symbol of alchemy. I chose it because, simply put, it’s the It girl. It does it all. It’s a snake. It’s a dragon. It circles the world. It represents eternity. It’s a loop. And while the ouroboros, alchemically, is a western symbol, the snake eating its tail is not. As I noted in my collage, the ouroboros and the world serpent are images that appear in traditions around the world.

I’m going to state the obvious: yes, the snake eating its own tail is the head and the hole. After all, the snake eating its own is also a symbol of fertility: the snake’s tail is phallic, its mouth yonic. Male and female, yin and yang–these are all things the ouroboros represents, because it ultimately embodies the cosmological interplay of complementary forces necessary to sustain a truly endless cycle. Now, tshirt’s essay could not be more clearly about the anus most specifically. But in this essay? Love is love, hole is hole. Sorry tshirt.

In all sillyseriousness, as tshirt details in their essay, the anus “following hocquenghem, normally stands in for the individuating function which itself gives root to desiring within the social sexual system, and the means by which we might therefore transcend the phallus.” Note the term “individuating function.” In my ouroboros collage, I included the following idea from philosopher Bernard Stiegler about the individuation process: “The I is essentially a process, not a state, and this process is an in-dividuation — it is a process of psychic individuation. It is the tendency to become one, that is, to become indivisible.” Indeed, Carl Jung (yes, that Jung) saw the ouroboros as the ultimate symbol of the “paradox” at the heart of the individuation process. Many of the lines in the second half of my poem are from him. Specifically, they’re from this one key paragraph from his Collected Works, vol. 14:

The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feedback' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself, and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he, therefore, constitutes the secret of the prima materia which ... unquestionably stems from man's unconscious.

I believe the relevance of these quotes to Gintama is clear at this point. Because as I said, everything in Gintama is reducible to two opposing forces, which is then reducible to one. The ouroboros fundamentally embodies the paradox of Two, Yet One. And through the style and language of alchemy, it turns this paradox into the preeminent human endeavour, the Great Work of human existence. tshirt’s identification of Gintoki as “a reluctant hole” (very queer I agree) positions him perfectly here as the poor, tragic hero who, despite everything, Is Doing It–who is both recipient and victim of his own wisdom about the undertaking he must choose to embark on. It is a task that will last forever, even after he’s already succeeded. (In Gintama, therefore, to be a reluctant hole can denote both a noun and a verb.) And yet, there can be traced a definite “before” and “after.” In its literal shapes and features, the ouroboros forms an imperfect circle–it is a cyclical figure that necessarily depicts a break in the cycle, where mouth meets tail, where there must be an opening. A gap that must despite the snake’s best efforts exist, because a mouth is not a tail at the end of the day. Something that may seem like an insignificant smudge in the great flow of time, but that was nonetheless enough to shatter Utsuro’s “eternity.” 

Though in some depictions, including the most iconic one, you can see the gap full well. Look. Does it seem like it’s smiling to you?

(We know Shouyou smiled right before he died–do you think that severed head of his still held a smile?)

There are a lot of other things I could say about hole. Like a hole being a sort of lack, something to be filled–a void, perhaps, one that gets artificially filled with all kinds of detritus as part of the process of person-making in Gintama. Or I could say something about the displacement or potential conflation of one kind of hole with another when your protagonist is male, cis, virile (alleged), and obviously straight in a way that makes anal sex jokes funny, and PIV jokes only too racy for Jump. Alas, this isn’t an essay on Gintama hole theory, so while there’s still much to be said about head and hole, I think it’s time we move on to one of the most important elements of the ouroboros thesis: 

The dragon.

Now, the terms ryuumyaku and ryuuketsu were not invented by Gintama. As mentioned in my annotation part one (I now understand why Final Fantasy XV gave out crucial information about its story in disparate chunks spread across multiple mediums instead of behaving normally), the concept of “dragon veins” is part of real life Japanese traditions, and is tied to feng shui. The idea of concentrated life energy, or natural power, flowing through the earth along certain paths, like ley lines, is a rather common one across the world, and thus a basic building block of fantasy worlds. In my poem I highlight the geo-somatic aspect of this, how it conflates Utsuro with the planet that birthed him, effectively turning him into a world snake that walks on two feet. The tendrils of his re-knitting flesh resemble strands of hair, or perhaps the whiskers on a dragon, his blood is a river is Altana is precious oil to be extracted and hoarded by intergalactic powers, his heart is a deep, blood-red stone that denies that his blood was ever liquid, and smoke rises from him when he regenerates as though the fire that Shouyou’s body was thrown into was never truly put out.

What’s notable, though, is the person who delivers the line that draws these comparisons most concretely:

Yes, I’m cannibalizing part 2 of my annotation here. Very sad. But I’ve always said I wished Gintama had more cannibalism. So let’s press on.

Umibouzu is uniquely positioned to make this observation here because he’s the only character to have fought… well, to have come into, shall we say, “fighting range,” with both of the series’ immortals. And as uninteresting as he may be as an individual character, it’s through him that we finally gain access to a straight-on view of Kouka–specifically, Kouka on Rakuyou, before she left her planet to die femininely. 

I won’t rehash too much of what I’ve already said in my collage and annotation. The Orochi on Kouan is a world snake much like the blurry dragon-vein-Utsuro-Shouyou package on Earth: a serpent with innumerable heads, both singular and plural, this time in a more literal way than Utsuro’s multiple selves or the image of a river flowing into countless streams. It’s wrapped all around planet Kouan like… well, a world snake. Or… a world tree. Because as much as it’s clearly a serpent of the Orochi archetype, it’s described in both animalistic and vegetative language (e.g., it has “roots” that spread into the planet’s core, where they soak up the Altana… but the planet is its “nest”). Kouan’s dragon is thus a mutated beast that defies easy categorization, part mythical symbol, part serpent, part plant. Kouan, after all, is no longer capable of supporting normal life, its atmosphere and soil too toxic for anything but mutants. The Orochi, then, is an animated, aberrant substitution for the Lifestream, one whose roots have replaced the planet’s veins, one that can express aggressiveness and loneliness, and whose fleshy corporeality allows Umibouzu to…

…make a bad dick joke. Naturally.

Kouka and the Orochi aren’t conflated the way that Utsuro and the dragon veins are. The Orochi is not her body: being its own creature, it appears much more separate from her than the formless glowing green Sephiroth energy does from Utsuro. But interestingly, they are mistaken for each other through the title of “Master of Kouan,” which the Orochi acts as a decoy for before the story “reveals” that it refers to Kouka. And Sorachi makes clear: the Orochi is lonely. The planet is lonely. Kouka is lonely. The Yato are lonely.

Rabbits can die of loneliness, you know, etc. etc. And as Kagura delivers to us early on in the series, the only way out of this endlessly repeating, and yet endlessly diminishing (sort of like reverse infinite tumblr chocolate) cycle, is to change.

Umibouzu’s dick jokes return us to the self-explanatory phallic-ness of the snake. I don’t think I need to explain the overlap between snakes and dragons, especially in an Asian context. So if Umibouzu is the phallus–the new arrival that introduces change to planet Kouan–then does that make Kouka the hole? Well, yes, but no. Because Kouka is the one associated with the Orochi. Kouka is the immortal, living her life frozen in time until she decides to leave the dragon behind. And in the end, when Umibouzu convinces her to leave with him, he tells her: “You and I are the same. No matter how busy a planet I’m on, no matter how surrounded by people I am. Without you, I’m lonely.” A hole, as we said earlier, is a type of lack. And neither Kouka nor Umibouzu at this point have dirt that can fill that lack–the dirt that, as tshirt put it, “marks the permanence of one’s relationships.” Because only dirt can stick enough, can stain enough to leave an imprint.

Now, in another world where Sorachi isn’t a coward and a boring misogynist, here is where I would be digging into juicy insights into Shouyou|Utsuro’s milfhood, the genderisms of being an Altana immortal, the obvious implications of Umibouzu having been a failed parent unable to deal with Kamui’s situation due to living in the same (shall we say, hole-sided) world as Kamui, which loops back around to Kamui inheriting eldest daughter female hysteria his body isn’t capable of processing a la Oboro, and Kouka’s relationship to the phallus-as-transmissive-samurai-spirit–but given that we sadly don’t live in that better world, there isn’t much I can add to this enumeration that wouldn’t be self-evident.

As an aside, it does have to be said: the nature of the snake swallowing its own tail as a simultaneously self-fellating symbol and an established motif of macrocosmic heterosexual (re)creation of the universe perfectly encapsulates Gintama’s relationship to sexual jokes and the linkages it creates using vulgar wordplay. And it’s also the sort of thing my friend tshirt would love to quote Freud on. Another way of looking at it is that the microcosm of the universe in Gintama is a queer human, who is probably a pervert. Which seems glaringly obvious when you think about it outside of the context of this essay for two seconds. 

Anyway, as Jung said, the ouroboros is not just self-sustaining, but self-fertilizing. Or perhaps self-sustaining is a potentially misleading term, because by nature it cannot remain static. It can only slay itself, and give birth to itself once more. Utsuro was never the same person twice. But what does it mean to be self-fertilizing? It means, above anything else, that in the end people give hope to themselves. That Shouyou put in the work, and that what Shouyou gave birth to was, in essence, the same as himself. 

An endlessly replicating chain of Shounen Determination.

Of course, this goes both ways as well.

Shouka Sonjuku, then, is the embodiment of Shouyou’s self-fertilization–a motif taken up by Gintoki, our illustrious shounen protagonist enacting the genre-typical inspire and change everyone you touch. At the same time–or, you could say, anachronistically–Gintoki is enacting his own self-fertilization, fertilizing his own soul–or tama, or egg–with pieces of everybody that touches him. Because, though the hole is a lack, it is simultaneously where the crux of this self-transformation takes place. As tshirt puts it so succinctly, “the anus—the dirty human things—is the home for the phallus—the ideals we hold, the source of our power.” The scabbard for the sword of one’s soul, so to speak, but that metal for that sword is made up of fragments from many sources–as the Rakuyou arc anime illustrated for us so memorably.

In the Shinsengumi Crisis arc, Kondou (whose status as butt monkey for the crassest of Gintama’s jokes positions him in a unique way for these things) says something similar: nobody is being dyed in another’s colour. It’s hard to even say what colour other people’s souls really are, if everyone’s soul is made up of broken off bits and shards and dead things (positive) from all over the place, like beach sand. What Itto has mistaken as a form of influence over others, as the level of dominance of one’s soul, is really just:

“Because it’s something annoying that you can’t get rid of, in the end it becomes troublesome when you start to care about it.” Or something like that. The translation here is probably at least a little suspect, but you get the gist of it. tshirt’s analysis of gorillahood is potentially interesting and relevant here as well, but I’m afraid I have to move on for the sake of keeping things on track. 

It’s worth noting that even as, from Gintoki’s perspective, Shouyou smiled at him right before he died, from Shouyou’s perspective (and of course, from Takasugi’s)–Gintoki smiled back. 

Incidentally, the chapter two chapters before this one was named “The Two Utsuros.” Later on in this scene, Sakamoto refers to “the two Yoshida Shouyous.” And on this page, we see two Gintokis. Isn’t Gintama fun?

What of Kouka, then? I think her situation is clear. She created literal children of the flesh rather than of the spirit–and there is unfortunately little else to say, because even this is quite obviously a cliche of the dead anime mom. The context of Gintama’s story is enough for us to assume an implication of her having transmitted something to her children, of them carrying on her legacy in some way… but her character is too woefully undeveloped for me to say anything particularly interesting about that. What little I can say is essentially what I depicted in my annotations. When Umibouzu wants to whisk her away from Kouan, Kouka asks him–why did you remind me of these emotions? At the end of Silver Soul, it becomes clear that Utsuro’s professed “void” is not so empty after all–just like Kouka, he had simply been denying that he felt anything that ran contrary to his driving force, i.e. the power of his great resignation (“eat shit and die” terminology intended). For a long time, Kouka was resigned to staying on her planet–on her dragon–as its heads multiplied. In the end, she chooses to leave the planet behind, willingly sundering her eternity, and the planet watches her go. She dies because she became alive–just like Shouyou. It’s also worth noting that, when Kouka initially tries to disappear from Umibouzu, it’s the Orochi that points Umibouzu to her location, blending them into a sort of phallic comrade-in-arms, even as the Orochi is, as I said earlier, attached to Kouka’s existence. So in this ouroboros reading, Umibouzu simply becomes a device for her self-fertilization. Yayyyyy. 

Here we can see the relevance of wordplay and dick jokes to any sillyserious analysis of Gintama. The motif of self-fertilization, in particular, is a rich arena for the conflation of sex and shit that tshirt notes is enabled by Gintama’s beloved [BLEEP]: “connected by dirty things can implicitly stand in for shit, sex, or the penis itself.” In the ouroboros framework, both sex and shit ultimately denote that which gives birth to others and that which gives birth to yourself. Your legacy is made of the same stuff as you, is you, and you are finally brought into being by your legacy, in a process that transcends linear time. The ouroboros is literally connected to itself by its own tail–or head, depending on how you look at it. It’s all one snake, after all. I suppose you could say this is one reading in which Takasugi’s ambiguously alive-yet-dead state at the end of the series makes sense–he was always a shadow that could be folded inside Gintoki’s body. But I don’t like it, so it’s actually very bad.

In any case, the procreation of the universe, yourself, and other people happens interdependently and simultaneously, yet something has to happen first. It’s a chicken-or-egg scenario, an endless cycle that needs an initiating key moment–or, to be Utena-esque for a moment, a shell-cracking moment–for life to exist. If Utsuro’s eternity was an egg, then the moment of Shouyou’s birth as a human, itself undefinable in time, was what cracked it (Utsuro egg cracking moment). Of course, I think all Gintama fans innately understand that the moment of Shouyou’s beheading is the single most pivotal moment in the series. But after speaking of head and hole for so long, I think it’s finally time to address the obvious:

Gintama is about severed heads. A lot of them. (Shoutout to oomf’s severed head collection.)

The importance of beheading as a motif throughout the series interacts in a very interesting way with the ouroboros thesis. Some heads in Gintama need to be cut off. Others resolutely need to stay on. But even for the ones that need to be severed, it needs to be done right–or watch out. Or, as I once said:

“gintama is like. sometimes people die when they are killed. but this is not guaranteed. and sometimes people survive because they are killed. among the cast are people who need to die and people who need to survive. choose wisely” (me, 2022)

Within the stylized aesthetic framework of the ouroboros, this is where the metaphor of the hydra becomes useful. Cut off one head, and two more will sprout in its place. If you don’t swing the executioner’s blade right, the monster will remain a monster–or grow even more monstrous. Even worse, you will have failed to possess a human’s heart while swinging that blade–so what does that make you? Failing at being human in relation to the sword, then, puts you in danger of falling into the neurotic failure state described by Freud described by Hocquenghem described by tshirt. 

Gintoki didn’t fail, though. He just wasn’t able to succeed yet, without the rest of his story having unfolded yet. And so, within that paradoxical instant, the very heart of the ouroboros, Shouyou was saved and Utsuro was born. There is a persistent, and I would argue intentional, analytical ambiguity to this moment unless you allow for the paradox within it, represented by the moment of duplication where Sorachi likens Gintoki to Utsuro and presents both as the “one” wielding the sword. If Gintoki killed Shouyou with a human’s blade, then why was Utsuro born? If Utsuro killed Shouyou with a monster’s sword, then how did Shouyou’s humanity crystallize? If Gintoki became human throughout the course of Gintama, then how did he possess a human’s sword ten years ago? If he didn’t have a human’s sword and do the right thing back then–how could he have been the bottomless mirror standing unbreakable and infinitely reflective in front of Takasugi, Hijikata, Kamui, Nobume, and so many others?

Diegetically, of course, the answer is that Gintoki simply did the best he could, lost everything, and then picked himself back up and un-lost everything. Shouyou, too, just lost to Utsuro, because he was a human, and humans lose all the time, no matter how wise and gnc they might be. But he came back; or he survived; or the world survived without him–it doesn’t matter. Of course, I don’t believe Gintama is a series where you can really separate the “diegetic” from anything else (if you tried to explain anything that happened in it that way, the result would be not only very dull but hardly accurate). In a blend of shounen inspirational metaphor and absurdity, the series’ main themes are simply delivered through the mouths of various characters, without care for either subtlety or compromise. This is, after all, the series where our protagonist was given strength to keep going through a little girl telling him, don’t worry, mister, when I grow up I’ll become a splendid executioner and cut your head off for you! You could say that Gintama is full of a sort of “head anxiety” that only Gintoki is aware of. Oh man, I cut my teacher’s head off. Oh man, what if I did it wrong, that was so scary. What about my head, is my head weird? I bet it’s weird. Is it coming off? Is it stuck on too tight? Is this normal? Is my head too small for my body? Man, I can’t show people this. When is it coming off? Asaemon’s words also link the promise of death with the promise of life, or redemption–he must live so that he might die, and it’s only through death that he can truly live. Very ouroboros-esque. 

One thing I’d like to point out here is that Gintoki was imprisoned after Shouyou’s death. He hears Yaemon’s crucial, This Is A Surprise Tool That Will Help Us Later speech about beheading only after he’s already gone and beheaded someone. This is both straightforward foreshadowing and also unintentionally funny. But what I’m going to argue here is this: the fact that the Reaper Arc comes before Shogun Assassination for us makes it true enough for Gintoki as well. Because the moment Gintoki sliced Shouyou’s head off was the moment Shouyou’s humanity was affirmed, and thus the moment Utsuro’s “eternity” could be confirmed to have shattered. At the same time, it’s the moment of Utsuro’s birth into the world. In other words, it’s where the ouroboros ends and where it begins–a moment isolated in time and space, located, if anywhere, in the time of monsters. And this is mimicked by the Gintama narrative itself, as Shogun Assassination marks the end of the structure the entire series existed in prior. A two-year timeskip would never have been possible previously, as the series’ time circled on in endless loops, one anniversary after another, one Christmas season after another, without the characters ever aging, even as they grew wiser. The moment of Gintoki’s tragedy, finally fished out from within Takasugi’s eye, shattered Gintama’s “eternity,” too. 

I’ve already gone and used the hydra, so I’m going to be exceptionally silly here and invoke another piece of ancient Greek mythology, as a homage to hole and to Gintama’s dedication to bad puns: Uranus. According to Hesiod’s account of Aphrodite’s birth, when Uranus’ balls were cut off by his son, the goddess emerged from the white foam that flowed into the sea. You might be asking, am I really going to compare ball removal to decapitation? (This is a rhetorical question. No true Gintama fan would question this.) As I hinted at earlier, Gintama itself already provides the grounds for this kind of comparison through its ideological commitment to balls. It is, after all, Gintama. Phallic or yonic is largely irrelevant here, as this isn’t really about castration (sorry tshirt). Instead I want to emphasize the “head” in this case being the symbolic object imbued with transmissive and procreative power. This interpretation is, in the spirit of Gintama itself, built on playful punning between tama (ball) and atama (head). In the series, Shouyou and Gintoki are the characters who embody the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm most substantially–with Utsuro’s geo-somatic embodiment of Earth juxtaposed with his dominion over the forces of space, while of course also being the premier “dragon” of the series; and Gintoki enfolding the entire story within himself, both the silly and the sad. And so when Gintoki cut off Shouyou’s head, it was the birth of a universe, the “seed” spilling out from that severed neck and setting in motion the story we know and love. 

(Incidentally, the magic sci-fi spark that gives Tama, who ended her introductory arc as a severed head in Otose’s snackhouse, the ability to be human is called “the Seed.” Did you know that Fuyou means lotus?)

(I just thought that was interesting.)

Incidentally, while Japanese mythology sadly doesn’t feature any testicular cosmology, it does offer a rather interesting tidbit. According to the Kojiki, Izanagi and Izanami were tasked by the other deities to create land together using the heavenly spear Amenonuhoko. This is described thus:

Granting to them a heavenly jewelled spear, they [thus] deigned to charge them. So the two Deities, standing upon the Floating Bridge of Heaven, pushed down the jewelled spear and stirred with it, whereupon, when they had stiffed the brine till it went curdle-curdle, and drew [the spear] up, the brine that dripped down from the end of the spear was piled up and became an island. This is the Island of Onogoro.

…I think this account speaks for itself. The island of Onogoro became the first piece of Japan (and thus the world), formed out of briny white water, reminiscent of the white foam that Aphrodite sprang out of. Izanagi and Izanami then erected a pillar on the island and built a palace around it, then moved in and started making children. There’s more I could say about Izanagi and Izanami in relation to the ouroboros, but I think that would be too much of a digression. In any case, it takes little effort to imagine why multiple peoples long ago might have looked at sea brine and seen in it an intuitive symbol for creation and genesis–especially a people for whom the sea was a literal source of life. But what I’d really like to draw your attention to is the translator’s footnote on the translation of “jewelled spear”: 

The characters translated “jewelled spear” are [], whose proper Chinese signification would be quite different. But the first of the two almost certainly stands phonetically for [] or [],—the syllable nu, which is its sound, having apparently been an ancient word for "jewel" or "head," the better-known Japanese term being tama. (Unfortunately, the characters can't be displayed.)

And there you have it. Is a “spear” really that different from a sword when you think about it, especially when it’s a spear carrying that kind of symbolism? Or, as tshirt put it, “the pole and the hole.” And I’d like to remind you that Utsuro’s body is likened to the land of Japan itself through the very-much-Japanese concept of ryuumyaku, not just my own artistic derangements. His blood is the life-bringing sea, his flesh the earth of the archipelago. When he fell back into the mouth of the earth at the end of Silver Soul, he was falling back into his own mouth, the serpent devouring itself once again. 

Unfortunately for Utsuro, within the confines of this essay the mouth is akin to the asshole. Hole is hole: this I did solemnly swear to you at the start of this essay, and I intend to uphold my vow. Utsuro, then, falls back into Hole, and the earth spits him back out–hydra head clumsily cut off, having sprouted into two once more. You could compare, perhaps, Shouyou only re-emerging after having been thrown back into the dragon vein and shaken around a bit to Gintoki’s soul’s own instinct to fly towards buttholes when knocked out of its proper container. In the bodyswap arc, Gintoki gets hit by a truck and sadly survives, though his soul is shaken loose and part of it breaks off (no wonder, when it’s made up of so many little bits), and ends up entering the asshole of a dead cat. Gintoki is essentially a dead-eyed catboy, so this is an easy mistake to make. Additionally, in one of the most memorable gags of  the final arc, Gintoki gets swallowed by Sadaharu and pooped back out, but missing two-thirds of his body that, again, accidentally came apart from him while he was in there. They need to be recombined in Sadaharu’s guts, which through his connection to Altana as an inugami constitutes a makeshift dragon hole, until Gintoki finally exits hale and whole from his dog’s asshole.

What did he mean by this?

Well, first of all, it seems like you have to be gentle with Gintoki, despite appearances. He’s made up of so many bits and pieces and people that parts of himself will break off without him even noticing. Second, these gags link the idea of plurality to dirt to the anus as the site of the reconstitution of the self. Or, as Jung said, the “integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow.” Gintoki’s shadow can be represented by Takasugi. Or it can be represented by a naked, hyper-muscular Hello Kitty monster made up of his memories of war and his gambling addiction. They’re both missing an eye and have PTSD, so close enough. What’s fun is that in the Sadaharu gag, the punchline, “Gin San,” is about Gintoki’s name–the “Gin-san” identity he must take on once more to be able to face Shinpachi and Kagura. The joke faintly echoes the tonally very different scene on Rakuyou, where Gintoki told Kamui that Kagura and the others filled his emptiness, giving him the new name of “Gin-chan.” Asaemon, of course, also echoes parts of this, as her primary narrative role is to not-so-subtly provide guidance for the reader to understand and resolve Gintoki’s thematic journey, a parallel made more digestible through her distance from Gintoki as a feminine, vulnerable, indecisive character whose past is totally illuminated to us. At the end of her arc, she kills herself, and gives birth to her new self, like any healthy Gintama character.

Indeed, Gintama’s moral is to “fight yourself,” so naturally all the characters who haven’t given up yet are constantly in the process of devouring themselves. But this is a different process than emptying yourself, which is what the antagonists are doing. All Gintama villains are hole-sided, desperately trying to destroy themselves while pretending, as hard as they can, that they don’t know that you can’t destroy a hole–only make it bigger. I emptied myself on purpose, Kamui insists. I did it intentionally and edgily, so it’s different and your criticism is void. He truly is an 18 year-old boy. Kamui and Takasugi were unable to accept themselves as the ultimate fruit of Kouka and Shouyou’s transformations–their magnum opus. It’s interesting that in their very last snapshots, both of them are bodily changed, taking on younger forms invoking a sense of renewal; Takasugi literally being pooped out of a dragon hole as an ugly infant. While I don’t subscribe to Altana immortal Takasugi theory, in a literal sense Shouyou died and Takasugi was reborn–or, to be more precise, Shouyou returned to the macrocosm, to the lands and grasses and waters of the dragon’s earthly body, and Takasugi re-emerged in his micro (short joke) place. After all, the ouroboros always gives birth to itself, and Takasugi was never expelled. He has always been a part of Shouyou. As Sakamoto said, it’s only natural. 

As for Kamui… I originally had a section here discussing his case, centered on his tag-team battle with Kagura against the Eldest, that one-off Silver Soul villain who is first presented to us almost like a strange, low-budget imitation of Utsuro. 

However, as much as this guy does end up being a living dick and balls joke, I’ve decided to reserve this material for a future essay where I can delve into the question of blood more fully. So consider this a teaser. This essay has gone on long enough, I think.

So what can we conclude from it? As tshirt observes, Sorachi cannot resist the phallus (or the balls), even beyond the obvious “sword” metaphor. Viewed from the lens of the ouroboros framework, however, Gintama’s insistence on wordplay enables interesting meaning to be derived from these dirty jokes and their interaction with other motifs in the story. After all, the name of the series itself elevates the spirit of the balls joke, even if unintentionally, to the same level as the other metaphor in the title: “silver.” In “eat shit and die,” tshirt notes the important role that conflation plays in both Gintama’s humour and meaning-making, a role we’ve seen repeatedly in this essay with the purposeful blurring of person and dragon and planet, and its deliberate use of paralleled “other selves.” 

But perhaps the singularly most important example is the -tama in Gintama, with its plethora of potential meanings, each of them just silly and dirty enough that you have to take it seriously. Beyond the obvious joke on kintama (balls) and the “silver soul” meaning (which the series could not be more explicit about), we’ve seen that tama is also easily conflated with atama (head), and even with tamago (egg). This is clearly demonstrated with the series’ fixation on beheading leading to the salvation of the soul and the bodyswap arc hinging on the pun between soul and egg, which English translators very impressively retained using “egg” and “ego.” The fact that the characters end up turning into giant turds, likening the soul-egg-balls to an asshole, only drives the point in further. In this essay, I took things one step further in mapping these different motifs onto the phallic and yonic/anal (the holeic, if you will). After all, the tension between the phallic and the anal is fundamental to the ouroboros’ symbolism. It is this tension, and this complementarity, that leads to both destruction and creation, death and renewal. One of the reasons I chose the ouroboros as my stylization of choice is that Gintama perfectly encapsulates that central concept of death as rebirth–while throwing in the seemingly contradictory case of the main villain, who is very much Rebirth, But Bad. The ouroboros, then, supplies the symbolic technology to convert the inherent contradictions and sometimes difficult to navigate ambiguities of Gintama’s thematic structure into a more legible, metaphorically potent form.

As I noted in the beginning of this essay, every character in Gintama is ultimately both head and hole, both the beginning and end of the serpent, as the two belong to a single entity. If the head demands the cold bite of the executioner’s sword, the void inside of people also needs to be filled with the essence of others before they can be properly human. You can’t behead yourself–you need someone else to swing the blade. And yet that person is also, in some way, you. The one restoring you to humanity is yourself, the one slaying you is yourself, the one you give birth to is ultimately yourself.

The serpent eating its own tail’s self-fertilization schema is the key tying together the draconic motif of the ouroboros with the tangle of messy metaphors, tautological themes, and fraught relationships that make up Gintama. Naturally, the throughline running through it all is dirt–of the dirty joke variety, but also dirt as that which clings to others, dirt that fills, dirt that stains, dirt that, in short, remains. If the phallic is what inseminates and transmits (as the sword that releases and crystallizes, as the heavenly spear that leads to genesis), in other words tama as “balls,” then the anal is the scabbard for the sword, the vessel that receives and holds on to the seed that is dirt, the cradle where our soul is fertilized–in other words tama as “egg.” Tama as “soul,” then, is simply the combination of these things, the result of this self-fertilization: it is ourselves. When all is said and done, this is reducible to a rather simple message that Gintama has always had: you cannot make yourself alone, but that is hardly a problem or an excuse, because you are never as alone as you think you are.

Let us end on the question of Gintoki’s wooden sword, or as tshirt put it so insightfully, his “prosthetic phallus.” In the end, in Gintama all souls are artificially–yet organically–created through the process of chrysopoeia. tshirt’s argument that Gintoki’s wooden sword is made all the more transgressive for not being a “real” sword highlights the fact that even in the most surface-level reading, Gintoki’s wooden sword is more sword-like exactly because it invokes the idea of one without the technical reality. The “human’s sword” that Gintoki attains at the end of the series is airy and abstract, but more than readily understood by the reader because that is the kind of sword he’s been wielding all along.

As I noted before, even if Gintoki has become human, his task has not ended. The Great Work will continue forever, even after it’s already been accomplished. If the human is the microcosmos and the stuff inside them is, as Jung says, the prima materia, the formless base element of the universe, then it is not only the fruit but also the process itself that creates the world. And though this essay has not been about queer theory, let it be said that the profundity with which Gintama treats the act of self-transformation, along with the nuances and textures of Gintoki as a “reluctant hole,” make him a captivating protagonist on more levels than one. And of that desperate struggle to produce a human being, of the base substance inside of people that is their only natural material, let me quote the 17th century Theatricum Chemicum, on the subject of the prima materia:

They have compared the "prima materia" to everything, to male and female, to the hermaphroditic monster, to heaven and earth, to body and spirit, chaos, microcosm, and the confused mass; it contains in itself all colors and potentially all metals; there is nothing more wonderful in the world, for it begets itself, conceives itself, and gives birth to itself.

Emphasis mine.

Appendix A:

[lookninjas]

You know, it's interesting to me that I saw an article as I was scrolling through my dash this morning that (supposedly) blames the U.S. for being deeply involved in a genocide in Sudan. You might think from such a description that we'd be talking about U.S. military aid or boots on the ground or the CIA or something like that, and not just the Trump administration tanking our diplomatic efforts and Biden's administration not making the best decisions to right the ship. You might also think that such an article would not include a section like this:

David Satterfield, who replaced Feltman as US special envoy to the Horn of Africa and who has since resigned, said that Washington did not have anything but bad choices in Sudan, and therefore had to strike deals with the Sudanese military. According to Satterfield, “If there is ever an opportunity to return to a path towards restoration of a civilian-led government, you’re going to have to talk to the military then as well.

You also might not think that such an article would outright reference Russian involvement in Sudan, which it does.

Russia believes that its strong presence in Sudan will augment its status in Africa and the Middle East, which is considered an American redoubt. Since 2014, and with Moscow’s aspirations to exploit African mineral riches, the Kremlin has strengthened its ties to Sudan in order to ameliorate western sanctions following its invasion of Crimea, sanctions that became even harsher after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.16 In 2017, former Sudanese President al-Bashir visited Russia and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two countries agreed to establish a holding company run by the paramilitary Wagner Group to mine gold ore. Russia also signed a 25-year lease in December 2020 to build a military base at Port Sudan on the Red Sea that can receive nuclear-powered ships. It was also interesting that Hemedti headed an official delegation to Moscow on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

And while we're talking about Russian involvement in Sudan, which is why I'm here in the first place, it's really really really interesting to me that this article was phrased as proof that the U.S. was heavily involved in genocide in Sudan, despite the fact that the Russian Wagner group (accused of war crimes in Ukraine) has been providing missiles and military training to the Sudanese paramilitary group RSF while smuggling gold out of Sudan to fund their own activities in Ukraine. Fun fact about the Wagner group: They're also heavily involved in social media misinformation campaigns.

Wasn't there a Russian misinformation campaign on tumblr leading up to the Presidential elections in 2016?

And despite the "mysterious" death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash (a short time after his aborted march on Moscow), Russia is still working on bringing the Wagner organization back under their control. Because, you know, they still have that whole invasion of Ukraine they're working on. An invasion of Ukraine that would sure be a whole lot easier for them if they could convince Americans to stop providing military support to Ukraine. They're already doing pretty nicely with the Republican party, but the Democrats (and the American left in general) have been harder to get on-side.

It does kind of feel like tying American military involvement in other countries to active genocide would be a great way to discourage people on the American left from supporting continued involvement in Ukraine, wouldn't it?

We're slightly less than a year away from the next American presidential election. There is no reason to believe that the Russian propaganda machine, which has already been operating at full blast since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, is going to slow down. This quote from the linked article is particularly chilling:

A particular challenge is that people tend to spread falsehoods “farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth”; this is particularly the case for false political news (Vosoughi, Roy and and Aral, 2018[7]). For example, one study found that tweets containing false information were 70% more likely to be retweeted than accurate tweets (Brown, 2020[8]). Another study found that false information on Facebook attracts six times more engagement than factual posts (Edelson, 2021[9]). In addition, feedback loops between the platforms and traditional media can serve to further amplify disinformation, magnifying the risk that disinformation can be used to deliberately influence public conversations, as well as confuse and discourage the public.

I think it's important to remember, especially now, that we are capable of spreading misinformation. The article about U.S. involvement in Sudan wasn't placed on there by an algorithm. This is fucking tumblr. That was one of my mutuals. Because they're concerned about American military intervention and they're against genocide and it sounded bad and they were upset and they didn't think to read the article. Because they didn't spend the time of Prigozhin's march on Moscow mainlining information on the Wagner group the way that I did, so they didn't go "Hey, Sudan? Wait a minute --" the way I did. Because misinformation that isn't targeted at your group is designed to be easy to spot, so you'll think that the misinformation that is targeted to your group will also be easy to spot, and it fucking isn't.

Because this culture of "If you care, you'll share" has gotten people to click that reblog button without thinking twice about it.

Don't keep falling for it. You don't have to spend an hour digging up sources and pulling out quotes for a ten-note post the way that I did. I'm like this as a human. It's fine if you're not. But if you're not even going to click the link to read the article and actually read it critically (or if there's no sources at all except a twitter screenshot, which I've also seen quite a bit of), then don't reblog it. Save it as a draft for when you have time to do the research, or just don't do anything with it at all. You're not obligated.

And if you have the relevant background to spot the disinfo, I mean -- again, look, you're not obligated to take that hour and search those sources. Even I don't do this all the time. It's hard, it's frustrating, and it will not spread the way the disinfo does. I'm gonna see that genocide post like five times at least on my dash, and I'm probably going to see it at least once from someone who has at least liked this post (if not reblogged it as well). But if you can. If you have the energy and the time. Try to put a little info out there. It might help someone.

That's all. Be good. Be skeptical.

[illarian-rambling]

Sending hugs always!

Fire: share a snippet with some dialogue you’d like to show off.

Ice: share a snippet where a character is taking a risk.

Poison: share a snippet that’s all about relationships (good or bad).

Breath: share a snippet that makes you laugh.

Storm: share a snippet where a character is angry.

Please and thank you!

Thanks for the ask <3

Oh lordy, here we go! This turned out to be a lot, so keep reading for Izjik arguing with a timeless being on how blinking works, Astra joining a terrorist organization, Djek’s absolutely fucked vibes with his former mentor, Elsind and Avymere having an average interaction, and the walking ass worm that is Ivander’s father ;)

Fire:

Why didn’t I know about this before? the woman asked openly. If there’s an End cult, why couldn’t they have busted me out of religious jail? Hell, why didn’t they bust me out of the Trench in the first place and use me to spread the good word of misery and silence and crying orphans?

“Like we said, they are a small group and none of them have a connection to us as you do. And what makes you think we did not want you taken by the Chosen?”

Izjik gave a mental sigh, though it didn’t have the same satisfaction as it did when she could feel her lungs. I guess that’s cunning or whatever. But then what the hell are these people good for anyways?

“Numbers. Within our empire, we are many and the many can do much. Here on this stolen planet, though, we expeditionary few are forced to share one skin. The Heralds provide more skin. Skin we will need in the days to come.”

Will you please stop saying skin…

“It is the truth.”

Izjik could hear splashing as End waded through a shallow spring, though she couldn’t feel the water on her feet. Probably for the best, given the presumably chilly weather. At the sound of water, the woman had a thought.

End, the Heralds are just regular people, right? Not, like, mini-End-Made-Flesh?

The fiend cocked her head quick enough to cause her neck to pop. “Yes, they are but mortals. We require nothing more than that from them.”

Well, then…. Spirits, you’ve never been around mortals before, have you?

“We have been around you,” End protested. “Previous to your ascension, you were mortal.”

Izjik ignored that last bit and soldiered on. Well, mortals have these things called standards. They expect you to be presentable or else they’ll lose respect for you, maybe even scoot out on you if they’re disgusted enough. But you’ve never been mortal before, so how would you know?

“Find your point, oh flesh of mine,” End snapped.

You are fucking filthy. Though the fiend did not stop, its stride did slow just a bit. Izjik had its interest—she just had to keep it. You’re wearing pajamas, you haven’t eaten for nearly a day—hell, I’m not sure if you’ve blinked in all that time! Tell me, End, do you feel a pain in your gut? You feel lightheaded at all?

“What is pain?”

Izjik sighed at the genuine confusion in the question. It only made sense that End couldn’t feel pain. Or, more likely, its weird, demon brain just didn’t know enough to understand that pain was bad.

A squirmy feeling in your gut. One that wasn’t there before.

“Ah, that. We know of what you speak. What of it?”

You’ve got about three days until that feeling kills the both of us.

Now, End stopped. Through her stolen eyes, Izjik could see that they’d made it most of the way up the bluff. Surrounding her like an ocean of green and gold were unbroken miles of trees. They tossed like waves in the hissing wind, threatening to sweep over her little island of high stone.

“This… this pain—it can kill us?”

Pain can kill us, walking through streams without shoes can kill us. Not blinking might not kill us, but it can’t be healthy, that’s for damn sure.

End was silent for a while. Izjik tried to take in the view as it pondered her words, but she was too jittery to appreciate much of anything. Fucking hell, was she really briefing a timeless being on the fact that if it didn’t eat, it’d die?

“How do we remove this pain?” it finally said. “The starmind said we would be invulnerable to all wounds but those made with divine power. It said nothing of pain.”

Well, you’re going to have to drink water and eat food. Probably these Heralds’ll have some, but you should let me run things for that, because, believe it or not, if you mess that up, you’ll die as well. You’re still working on blinking and breathing, so I’m not sure if I trust you with chewing and swallowing.

“You wish for control.”

Izjik winced at End’s statement. The halawemavar had never been the subtle sort. Even if she had been, there was a decent chance End could hear all of her thoughts anyways. It was a flimsy play she was making. However, she gained an important advantage by making it. None of what Izjik said was a lie. And if she didn’t have to lie, then she might just have a chance.

Yes, End, I wish for control. You’ve never spoken to mortals except for those under your direct power. I obviously have. Let me get us cleaned up, let me speak to these Heralds as another mortal would, and let me get us some food for fuck’s sake! Again, I would like to remind you of the fact that, if you screw up eating, we die.

End made a strange sound, like something between a hawk’s keen and a choking dog. It took Izjik a second to realize that it was trying to laugh.

“You know this venture is foolish, yes? It will take us barely a scruple of power to overcome your will, avatar of ours. The moment you try to run, you will be our flesh once more.”

I know, Izjik said. I won’t run. I just want to feel something again. I want to feel the breath in my lungs and water over my skin. And I want to, you know, not die! We can agree on that, right? Neither of us wants to die?

“Neither of us wants to die, that is correct.”

Then are we cool?

Ice:

Astra’s mind ticked through the possibilities. Damn if these people weren’t swaying her. It was a decent plan, with more motive than anyone deserved. The serfs up here were a sort of sister people to the debtors of the Republic. If such a drastic example was set, once word reached the south, who knew what could happen?

And if the Archduke died, she would have free reign in his library. No more sneaking around for scraps in the night. She could spread the knowledge hoarded there to everyone—she might be the only one outside the noble book mages who properly could. The witch remembered those heating runes inscribed on the inner city fountains, then she imagined one in every outer city hovel. She imagined gravitation runes in the fields of Nakaow to relieve the heaviest of burdens and contracts renegotiated by fearful lords looking to their deposed peers to the north.

Aw hell, I’m about to make a stupid decision, aren’t I? Somehow, those always end up bein’ the best ones.

Only one question remained; was it right to kill a man for being a poor leader? It didn’t take Astra long to find an answer. She recalled the frozen bodies she’d seen on the side of the outer city roads, recalled the children reduced to hunting rats for survival. Once a person stripped the dignity from another, they lost all right to that dignity themselves. Those deaths were on the Archduke’s hands—and this wouldn’t be the first time Astra had supported the murder of a person who’d killed many others, even if they’d never met.

“I’m in.” Astra gave each of the leaders a dutiful nod, though she kept her grip on Loic, who’d been doing his best to be invisible for this entire conversation.

“You’re what?” Indre squawked.

“I wanna help y’all,” the witch said. “I was raised a debtors’ daughter down in the south and if some folks like you had been there, I’da joined ya in a heartbeat. However, I do have some demands. My help ain’t for free, after all.”

Poison:

Squinting, Djek could just make out the hazy form of a small child. He wasn’t any good with kids’ ages, but this one was on the young side. Her cotton nightgown stood out fiercely against her coppery skin. In the dark, it was hard to make out the details, but Djek didn’t need good vision to tell the girl’s cheeks were wet with tears.

Shit!

Djek glanced back into the bedroom. The floor was a smear of red. Like a splattered fruit, petals of gore spread from the shuddering body of the debtor. In one corner, Eztli Izel sobbed, one hand covering her face while the other reached for her love.

Between them stood Tyche. His friend was focused on methodically wiping clean her brass knuckles. Swiftly, Djek shifted his focus back towards the child.

He almost screamed when he noticed how close the girl had crept. Why the fuck are kids so damn creepy! Do I kill her—

No! The thought, then the brutal realization that he’d had it, hit Djek like a knife to the gut. No, no, no, no!

Glancing side to side, Djek shuffled closer to the girl. This close, her face resolved itself into one of soft features and a cleft lip. Her mouth quivered, eyes locked on Djek’s. She seemed to be almost about to ask him something.

In a panic, Djek summoned his shadows. Immediately, the girl’s face shifted from mute shock to fight-or-flight terror. She ran. Who wouldn’t after such a display? Djek gave a prayer of thanks for the home’s sumptuous carpet. Her escape was all but silent.

A hand clapped over his shoulder. This time, Djek screamed for all he was worth.

“Hey, cool it!” Tyche spat. “We’re done here.”

“Sorry! Sorry. I— I guess I’m just a little jumpy.” Djek’s heart pounded so loud he could barely hear his own excuses.

Tyche sighed. “You done good out here. Now let’s get the fuck out. I need a good bar crawl.”

“Isn’t the retrieval early tomorrow?”

“Sure is,” Tyche shrugged. “But… Well, we have to take the fun times when we can. Who knows what tomorrow holds?”

Djek gave a weak smile, but a sincere one. “You know me, always up for a good bar crawl.”

Tyche smiled back. Something glistened in her eyes, though after a moment Djek realized it was just moonlight. Roughly, the woman put a hand on his shoulder.

“Come on, time to go.”

Behind them, a guttural wheeze echoed through the room. A whimper followed on its heels, a pathetic whine of pain and betrayal.

“Please, Gabi,” Eztli wheezed. A ragged sob was the woman’s answer.

And this is why you shouldn’t borrow what you can’t repay.

Gods, I’m a fucking hypocrite.

Djek squared his shoulders and tore his focus away from the bedroom-turned-abattoir, following in the wake of Tyche’s path. The night was warm. He was getting drinks with his best friend. He’d managed to not fuck up a job for once! The present was bright and new and shiny as could be. So why did the debtor’s screams keep echoing through his mind?

Breath:

"You said you needed paper?” Elsind asked, hoping to change the subject.

The Duchon nodded. “We have chalk for the message slate I can write with, but I need paper specifically. Or leather or anything else one can write on. I just have no idea where we’d get that in this blasted desert.”

Paper…. A ripple went through Elsind’s body as they recalled an unwise decision they’d made while purchasing supplies. Well, not unwise. But definitely not practical. And they’d used group money to buy it.

Cringing, Elsind drew a slim paperback from their supply satchel. Immediately, Avymere’s eyes went wide.

“Is that a book?” the elf exclaimed.

Elsind nodded, blushing profusely. “I, uh, when we split up to buy supplies, there was this stand selling them, and I— I thought riding with the caravan was going to be really boring, so… so…. Yeah. I’m really sorry. It didn’t cost that much, I swear! Only three tuec. I just… just wanted something to distract myself from all”—They gestured sheepishly at the desert expanse—“this.”

Avymere squinted as they read the title. “...The Leviathan’s Bride: A Monsterous Romance?”

“You don’t need to worry about that!” Elsind squeaked. “There are some blank pages at the back, we can use those.”

They held the book to their chest; partly because they didn’t want sand to get into the pages and partly because they didn’t want to give Avymere’s myopic eyes time to focus on the rather bawdy cover art. A person had to have their guilty pleasures, sure, but that didn’t mean everyone had to know about them.

The Duchon shook their head in mild shock. “That’ll work. And… and don’t feel bad spending a little group money.”

From their own pack, the elf pulled out a small wooden box and opened it to reveal a half-burnt stick of incense.

“What’s that for?” Elsind asked thoughtlessly. Two seconds later, their brain caught up and connected the dots. Immediately, their headfins flushed purple. “N-never mind, actually! I’m sorry.”

Avymere continued, not seeming to mind their witless remark, though Elsind did notice a slight tremor to the Duchon’s hands as they held the incense. “We can use the ash from this; it’ll be more convincing. Now, if you could lend me that book, I shall begin.”

(For context with the incense, that'd be like if Avymere had pulled out a funeral urn and Elsind had gone "What's that?")

Storm:

Antonin gestured out to the flooded expanse of the basement. Really, it was more of a massive crypt, if Astra was being honest. A crypt with no bodies. Or so she hoped.

“In the undercroft, there lurks a beast. It has been here for years and knows the territory well. Kill it, bring me proof, and your first job is done,” Antonin said.

Astra couldn’t help herself. “A fuckin’ what? A beast? Who keeps a godsdamned beast under their house? That can’t be up to code.”

“You are here to do what I tell you, not to ask questions.” Antonin tapped his cane on the floor, then nodded towards the dark, waterlogged halls. “If you do not return in two days, I will assume you have failed. Don’t fret though—I’ll send someone to retrieve your bodies should that come to pass.” His eyes latched onto Mashal’s chest, where the man’s heart rune resided. “I know some people who’d pay handsomely for such a unique dissection subject.”

Instinctively, Astra reached for one of her fire patches, while Mashal took a step back, clearly startled. Gods a’mighty, this was why she hated bastards in suits. They always felt entitled to anything they could buy, but never realized that some things weren’t for sale.

“We’ve already got a deal, so I don’t gotta play polite ’round you no more.” Astra stormed up to the Montane patriarch and jabbed a finger into his chest, not caring that she only just came up to the man’s chin. “If you ever say some creepy as shit like that again, I’m gonna set your desk on fire. I can’t get outta this contract and neither can you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make your life real fuckin’ difficult. Don’t ever talk to Mashal or me like that again unless you’re ready to piss on your favorite important papers when they go up in flames, ya feel me? We are your business partners. Treat us like it.”

Antonin looked down at Astra, his lip curled ever so slightly in an expression that conveyed it was beneath him to even feel disgust towards her. Distantly, something more than mortal seemed to shift within his amber eyes. It peered out at the little animal yapping at its vessel. It did not hide its disgust in the slightest.

“You seem to have an over-inflated opinion on how I treat my business partners,” Antonin replied curtly. “Go into the undercroft. Hunt the beast. Return with proof.”

“Smarmy shitsmear…,” Astra muttered. However, she stepped back. The sooner she got this over with, the sooner they could get on with stopping Vermir.

[mariacallous]

Al Qaeda is back to its old tricks in Afghanistan. Much as it did before masterminding the 9/11 attacks, the terrorist group is running militant training camps; sharing the profits of the Taliban’s illicit drug, mining, and smuggling enterprises; and funneling the proceeds to affiliated jihadi groups worldwide.

An unpublished report circulating among Western diplomats and U.N. officials details how deeply embedded the group once run by Osama bin Laden is in the Taliban’s operations, as they loot Afghanistan’s natural wealth and steal international aid meant to alleviate the suffering of millions of Afghans.

The report was completed by a private, London-based threat analysis firm whose directors did not want to be identified. A copy was provided to Foreign Policy and its findings verified by independent sources. It is based on research conducted inside Afghanistan in recent months and includes a list of senior al Qaeda operatives and the roles they play in the Taliban’s administration.

To facilitate its ambitions, al Qaeda is raking in tens of millions of dollars a week from gold mines in Afghanistan’s northern Badakhshan and Takhar provinces that employ tens of thousands of workers and are protected by warlords friendly to the Taliban, the report says. The money represents a 25 percent share in proceeds from gold and gem mines; 11 gold mines are geolocated in the report. The money is shared with al Qaeda by the two Taliban factions: Sirajuddin Haqqani’s Kabul faction and Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada’s Kandahar faction, suggesting both leaders, widely regarded as archrivals, see a cozy relationship with al Qaeda as furthering their own interests as well as helping to entrench the group’s overall power.

The Taliban’s monthly take from the gold mines tops $25 million, though this money “does not appear in their official budget,” the report says. Quoting on-the-ground sources, it says the money “goes directly into the pockets of top-ranking Taliban officials and their personal networks.” Since the mines began operating in early 2022, al Qaeda’s share has totaled $194.4 million, it says.

After regaining power in August 2021, the Taliban integrated a large number of listed terrorist groups that fought alongside them against the U.S.-supported Afghan republic. The Biden administration, however, has persistently denied that al Qaeda has reconstituted in Afghanistan or even that al Qaeda and the Taliban have maintained their long, close relationship.

Those denials ring hollow as evidence piles up that the Taliban and al Qaeda are as close as ever. The U.N. Security Council and the U.S. Congress-mandated Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) have consistently reported on the Taliban’s symbiotic relationship with dozens of banned terrorist outfits, including al Qaeda.

Few experts believed Taliban leaders’ assurances, during negotiations with former U.S. President Donald Trump that led to the ignominious U.S. retreat, that the group’s relationship with al Qaeda was over; bin Laden’s vision of a global caliphate based in Afghanistan was a guiding principle of the war that returned the Taliban regime, which one Western official in Kabul said differs only from the previous regime in 1996-2001 in that “they are even better at repression.”

The historic relationship hit global headlines when bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed on July 31, 2022, in a U.S. drone strike as he stood by the window of a Kabul villa. The property was linked to Haqqani, the head of the largely autonomous Haqqani network and a member of al Qaeda’s leadership structure. He is also a deputy head of the Taliban and its interior minister, overseeing security. He is believed to harbor ambitions for the top job of supreme leader, with aspirations to become caliph.

Now that they can operate with impunity, the reports says, the Taliban are once again providing al Qaeda commanders and operatives with everything they need, from weapons to wives, housing, passports, and access to the vast smuggling network built up over decades to facilitate the heroin empire that bankrolled the Taliban’s war.

The routes have been repurposed for lower-cost, higher-return methamphetamine, weapons, cash, gold, and other contraband. Militants from Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and the Palestinian territories also circulate through the al Qaeda training camps that have been revived since the Taliban takeover. Security is provided by the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence.

The report includes a list of al Qaeda commanders, some of whom were bin Laden’s lieutenants when he was living in Afghanistan while planning the attacks on the United States. Those atrocities precipitated the U.S.-led invasion that drove him, and the Taliban leadership, into Pakistan, where they were sheltered, funded, and armed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

The report’s findings “demonstrate that, as expected, the Taliban leadership continues to be willing to protect not only the leadership of al Qaeda but also fighters, including foreign terrorist fighters from a long list of al Qaeda affiliates,” said Hans-Jakob Schindler, the senior director of the Berlin- and New York-based Counter Extremism Project and an expert on terrorism. “It is clear that the Taliban have never changed their stance toward international terrorism and, in particular, al Qaeda.”

Many analysts believe President Joe Biden’s decision to stick to Trump’s withdrawal deal led to Afghanistan becoming an incubator of extremism and terrorism. Leaders of neighboring and regional states, including Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and countries in Central Asia, have expressed concern about the threat posed by the Taliban’s transnational ambitions. U.N. figures, including Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett, have repeatedly called out Taliban suppression of rights and freedoms and the imprisonment and killing of perceived opponents.

In February, the George W. Bush Institute released the first report in its three-part Captured State series titled “Corruption and Kleptocracy in Afghanistan Under the Taliban,” which recommends action by the United States and the U.N. to rein in Taliban excesses. It calls on the United States and allies “to pressure foreign enablers of Taliban corruption and reputation laundering to stop facilitating corrupt economic trading activities, illicit trafficking, and moving and stashing personal wealth outside Afghanistan.”

Pointedly, it says the U.N. and other aid organizations “should demand greater accountability for how aid is spent and distributed” and urges international donors to support civil society, which has been decimated by the Taliban.

It’s a reference to the billions of dollars in aid that have been sent to Afghanistan since the republic collapsed—including, controversially, $40 million in cash each week, which has helped keep the local currency stable despite economic implosion. The United States is the biggest supporter, funneling more than $2.5 billion to the country from October 2021 to September 2023, SIGAR said. Foreign Policy has reported extensively on the Taliban’s systematic pilfering of foreign humanitarian aid for redistribution to supporters, which has exacerbated profound poverty.

The Bush Institute paper is one of the few comprehensive studies of the impact of the Taliban’s return to power to publicly call for the group to face consequences for its actions. It suggests, for instance, the enforcement of international travel bans on Taliban leaders, which are easily and often flouted.

Recognition of the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan “would reinforce the Taliban’s claim to power and strengthen their position” by giving them even greater access to “cold, hard cash,” the report says, a warning that comes amid growing fears that the United States could be preparing to reopen its Kabul embassy, which the Taliban would see as tacit recognition.

By “capturing the Afghan state, the Taliban have significantly upgraded their access to resources,” the Bush Institute argues, putting the group “in the perfect position now to loot it for their own individual gain.”

That plundered resource wealth also appears to be boosting the coffers of like-minded groups. The London firm’s unpublished report identifies 14 al Qaeda affiliates—most of them listed by the U.N. Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team—that are directly benefiting from the mining proceeds. They include seven inside Afghanistan (among them, the anti-China East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the anti-Tajikistan Jamaat Ansarullah, and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, which is fighting the Pakistani state) and seven operating elsewhere: al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda in Yemen, al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in Syria, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, al Qaeda in the Mahgreb, and al-Shabab, largely active in East Africa.

For Western governments that might be pondering a closer relationship with the Taliban regime or even diplomatic recognition, Schindler of the Counter Extremism Project sounded a note of warning. The Taliban, he said, are “not a viable counterterrorism partner, even on a tactical level.” Instead, the group “remains one of the prime sponsors of terrorism” worldwide.

[dawn-of-worlds]

Finders Keepers

[emex 11: rest (3) + bonus (3) + dice (3+2) + avatar (2) - create order (6) - advance city (4) = 3]

In the ruins of Tonghattulka, the Kobolds find many treasures. While traditionally, they would always share these among all Kobold-kind, there are some among them that grow greedy, and resentful of having to send parts their rightfully looted treasures back to the Mountain-of-Light.

A group of these find a treasure trove like no other; an undespoiled temple filled to the brim with gold, jewels, and unimaginable fortunes. As they begin plundering it, they quickly discover the Godess it belongs to is not as dead as the inhabitants of her city. But Tutsokis is not jealous with her treasures, and in fact shares with them visions of further troves out there in the world, ready for anyone bold enough to grab. And for them to keep, as their justly won prize.

From this core group of new disciples, soon a new force emerges within Kobold society: the Guild of Adventurers. They are dedicated to discovering the wonders and treasures of the world, and are against any authority or imposed rules. They will often work together in small troupes and gladly share their magical treasures with their comrades, but refuse to hand over hard-won trinkets to the greater community. This often causes strife with more traditional Kobolds, but that conflict only further separates them from the collective, and fuels the split into a parallel society of the most ambitious, daring, and egotistic. For now they remain more or less integrated and tolerated, if not exactly accepted, and if they keep to the outskirts (and often beyond) of society, that is mostly by choice.

Meanwhile, in the Pale City, the long experience with mining chalk provides much of the necessary skills for mining other materials. Explorers from the city have discovered the huge mineral wealth in the great mountains surrounding the Bluewater lagoon. They begin mining iron, lead, gold, pitchblende, and whatever else they can find. Combining this with their extensive chalkmining, they develop a metalworking, as well as glassworking, enamel, and paints.

[montecristohq]

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐌𝐀𝐏 — 𝙪𝙣𝙡𝙤𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙙 𝙡𝙤𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨.

MONTE CRISTO .

monte cristo is a ghost town northwest of monte cristo peak in washington . the town was active as a mining area for gold & silver from 1889 to 1907 , and later became a resort town that operated until 1983 . following disastrous flooding of the road in december 1980 , and the decision not to make bridge or road repairs , the lodge closed for good . it burned under suspicious circumstances in march 1983 . people who hike to the monte cristo ghost town have reported voices yelling into the void , the sound of chopping wood , footsteps inside the cabins , the sound of hoarse laughter from the center of camp , and even apparitions that seem to shapeshift amongst the trees .

THE FISH LADDER.

ebbing off from a majestic waterfall, the fish ladder runs along the edge of the river. the incredible power of these falls have generated over the years, & the spring that flows through this narrow section of river is thunderous. however, the falls gradually become a turbulent stretch of thrashing whitewater. if you visit at lower flows you'll see the evidence of this power in the riverbed's smooth and sculpted granite. incredibly, a 240-foot tunnel was blasted out of the granite to allow the fish to access the fish ladder. built in 1954, they constructed what was at the time the world's longest vertical baffled fish ladder to provide salmon with an opportunity to reach the 30 miles of river above the falls.

OLD TRACKS & TRAIN BRIDGE.

the everett and monte cristo railway was built to transport gold & silver ores from mines in the central cascade mountains to a smelter in everett, washington. the first train reached what became the town of monte cristo in august 1893. however, the mining boom ended in 1903 as the failure of the railway to maintain service to monte cristo in the face of floods, landslides, winter snows, fires, and other disasters led to collapse of the industry. the railroad found a second set of customers among the timber companies. the everett and monte cristo tracks gave access to large areas of virgin forest, so the railroad was used to move raw logs down to existing mills. as the railway pushed further into the woods, new sawmills and roof shingle mills were established, and finished lumber and shingles were also shipped out by train. tourism was a part of the business from the beginning of the railroad. the mountain scenery was then and still is an attraction. a resort hotel, the inn at big four, was opened in 1921 along the rail line for guests who wanted more than a day trip to the mountains.

DWELLINGS.

maybe of the cabins are locked up, but old tools belonging to workers of the original township are still scattered about. these small buildings are less than half a mile from the main town & were mostly used as workshops and storehouses. *this will be the base camp. room assignments are as follows : kody + isla. reeve + kingston. milo + thomas. eliza + camille. muses are welcome to re-assign rooms or move thorugh in-character interactions.

THE GHOST TOWN.

the town survived as a tourist destination for several decades after its initial decline, but the county road was flooded out in december 1980, and the only remaining business in town, a lodge, burned down in 1983. that same year, a nonprofit group called monte cristo preservation association stepped in to save and restore the historical site ( cleanup of arsenic and other toxins left behind began in september 2012 and was mostly completed in 2015 ). notable buildings: the inn, the general store, the saloon.

THE MINES.

there are eight known mines surrounding the area of monte cristo : mystery, new discovery, pride of the mountains, pride of the woods, golden cord, comet, justice, and rainy mines.  some mining tunnels are dilapidated and unstable, making the traversing of them a daunting task.

ABANDONED HOMES.

MOUNTAIN CAVE.

[warningsine]

The rise of Sudan’s most notorious paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, shows how armed groups can infiltrate state institutions – often with disastrous results for society.

Sudan’s central government created the Rapid Support Forces in 2013 as dictator Omar al-Bashir’s private protection detail. The group has now become a predator seeking to gain control of Sudan.

Sudan’s war broke out in April 2023 when the military tried to subdue the Rapid Support Forces.

Since then, fighting has ravaged much of the country, including the capital Khartoum. At least 15,500 people had been killed by June 2024. More than 6 million people have been displaced and over 25 million pushed into acute hunger, according to the United Nations.

The Rapid Support Forces followed a strategy which is similar to those of other militia groups aiming to infiltrate and co-opt state institutions. Such strategies have military, economic and political dimensions.

These groups tend to exploit conflict to enlarge their areas of influence, weapon stockpiles and numbers of fighters.

They generate revenues from business lines created by conflict. Partnerships with foreign states and international smuggling networks are most often involved.

They provide jobs and patronage to get political support in key constituencies and seek institutional roles.

As a political scientist specialising in conflict studies and irregular warfare, I have spent over a decade researching insurgents, paramilitaries, militias and other armed groups. In a recent article, I examined armed actors pursuing “state capture” – the covert and gradual infiltration of state institutions to influence policy. In addition to the cases of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shia militias in Iraq, I looked at the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.

The study involved interviews with a diverse group of participants. Academics, political analysts, government officials and individuals affiliated with armed groups were among them.

I found that militias bent on state capture initially pursue their objectives without openly antagonising the state. They often position themselves as pro-government. But they also signal that any attempt by the state to neutralise them would lead to a devastating confrontation.

Over time, these strategies enable armed groups to gain political influence and formal institutional roles. This allows them to shape public policies to their advantage. When armed groups achieve a measure of state capture, they undermine governmental effectiveness, contributing to institutional breakdown and state failure.

In Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces now controls vast swaths of territory, though it’s not yet in full control of the country.

Growing influence

The Rapid Support Forces emerged from the Janjaweed militias, which spearheaded al-Bashir’s genocidal counterinsurgency in Darfur in exchange for funding and arms.

In 2013, al-Bashir restructured the Janjaweed into the Rapid Support Forces to counterbalance the army and preempt potential coups. To lead this new force, al-Bashir chose a former highway robber turned Janjaweed commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti.

Al-Bashir’s support enabled Hemedti to deploy tens of thousands of battle-hardened fighters across Sudan to secure strategic locations for the regime. These included the capital, troubled borderlands and economic hubs like gold mines.

Capitalising on this positioning, the Rapid Support Forces expanded its involvement in gold mining, smuggling and trading. It also generated income by supplying mercenaries for conflicts in Yemen and Libya.

Bashir’s government tacitly endorsed these activities, possibly calculating that the forces would be cheaper to maintain if self-funded.

For a time, the Rapid Support Forces collaborated closely with Sudan’s army. When the military’s leadership decided to oust Bashir in 2019 amid anti-regime protests, Hemedti didn’t oppose the decision.

During the subsequent political transition, Hemedti became vice-chair of the Sovereign Council. The institution was tasked with guiding the country towards democratic elections.

This institutional role shocked and dismayed many within Sudanese civil society. Some, however, argued that attempts to dismantle the Rapid Support Forces or sideline Hemedti would spark armed conflict.

Both the army and Rapid Support Forces had established secretive business networks generating billions of dollars. They shared a short-term interest in protecting their power and economic assets from any civilian encroachment.

This alignment of interests formed the foundation of their partnership and paved the way for the October 2021 military coup – which abruptly halted Sudan’s democratisation process.

As a new regime took hold in Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces grew more powerful. The forces profited from gold mining, smuggling and business deals with the United Arab Emirates, Russia’s Wagner Group and Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar.

Hemedti’s forces bolstered their arsenal and expanded their ranks. They presented themselves as champions of ordinary Arabs from Sudan’s rural provinces and borderlands.

Concerned by these developments, the Sudanese Armed Forces attempted to forcefully integrate the Rapid Support Forces into the military chain of command. But by the time the military launched its ill-fated offensive in April 2023, the Rapid Support Forces had fielded 100,000 fighters equipped for highly mobile urban warfare.

They quickly inflicted heavy losses on the military and seized control of most of Khartoum. They also took over the adjoining Gezira state, Darfur in the west and Kordofan in the centre, shattering both the Sudanese state and society.

In areas under their sway, the Rapid Support Forces have perpetrated crimes against humanity and war crimes, including ethnic cleansing, massacres, rape, torture and widespread looting.

The Sudanese army, which retains control of Port Sudan, has blocked humanitarian aid from reaching territories under the Rapid Support Forces. This has contributed to an impending famine.

Bleak prospects

The prospects for a peaceful resolution to Sudan’s conflict currently appear bleak. Even a temporary ceasefire to facilitate humanitarian aid remains improbable. The United Nations Security Council remains deeply divided, and the African Union has yet to propose a workable plan.

The United States and its European allies have squandered their political capital in Sudan. They failed to adequately support the 2019-2021 democratic transition and to reverse the 2021 coup.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Russia bear significant responsibility for the current situation. Their support for opposing sides has deepened divisions, contributing to the failure of initiatives like the Jeddah peace talks.

Local neighbourhood committees, once pivotal in grassroots democratisation, have been marginalised by armed actors.

International actors aiming to help Sudan should recognise that these civil society groups still represent the country’s best hope. They possess a deep understanding of the country’s most pressing needs. These include unimpeded humanitarian aid, as well as exposing and curtailing the military and financial lifelines of leading armed actors. This could help foster a political transition free from these actors’ influence.