#a lot of snakes rely on movement and heat to figure out where to strike

[buttered-milky]

https://youtu.be/XqXZ0tJppok?si=kF5httv3agxyOzqe

Messmer can actually turns into a snake it's his original form, and he looks soo abused and neglected maybe because of the seal?

Eeeee okay so. The summon he uses a: appears to have more blood and/or burn wounds on it. and b: otherwise has most of its scales and doesn’t have the transparency effect I thought it had like the winged serpents!! Also there’s a bunch of eyeballs all over the place but we’ll get to those later.

Burn wounds are pretty straightforward and also interesting since they imply either the serpent fucked around and found out (Messmer burned it) or the serpent fucked around and found out (burned itself like an idiot, not surprising in the slightest for snakes since they miss prey strikes all the time and are, in my humble snake owner opinion, some of the dumbest creatures you’ll ever meet. Curious yes. But also. Idiots)

The snake Messmer turns into has much deeper wounds and scarring on it than just the summon of the abyssal serpent. This snake also appears to have a blind right eye (note for any reptile keepers who care: not the temporary blindness that comes with shedding). Its body is very misshapen and there are scales trying to protrude along the spine, and in several places where there don’t appear to be any wounds the scales are just…missing. This is as expected not good for snakes! They need those scales! I am honestly not quite sure how to interpret the overlapping layers of scales in some places. Like sometimes it looks like a shedding issue but also it seems like it’s the attempts of two souls trying to occupy one body? Also missing shed transparency effect! Idk what the hell was going on in my brain or if it was just lighting but I was sooooo fucking sure of the shed buildup. I was also really tired though and don’t care. The visual read was still fun. It can be a headcanon to me <3

So on those thoughts of it being two souls trying to occupy one body. What strikes me about this design is that some of the wounds look like bite scarring you’d see from live prey fighting your snake back. Again, this is a thing entirely avoidable with good husbandry (don’t live feed unless absolutely necessary). The scales to me still imply shedding has gone very wrong at some point. You’d expect to see shedding heal and scar over these wounds, but they’re all fresh. Very symbolic. You can’t heal violence by just pretending it doesn’t exist.

Ideally when a snake is wounded, you do routine care to help them with sheds and make sure the wound is clean. The scales will grow back and the wound will scar, but it will take several sheds and consistent work! You cannot, as Marika tried to do, just put a bandaid on it. You also can’t just lock a snake in a cage it will hurt itself trying to get out of (ie messmer himself) and expect that to go even remotely well.

Some of this feels like visual symbolism of self-hatred. Like I said, the base serpent looks like it’s gotten in a fight. With its host. Some of it also feels like visible neglect (ie the wounds not being healed, missing scales)

I’m gonna discuss the eyeballs bc I fuck w them immensely. First of all congrats Messmer on having an Eldritch Horror in ur body. Second of all, all these eyes appear to have lids. Actual snakes don’t. They have hard eye caps instead and cannot blink. Some of the eyes seem like they might not be able to blink, but the scales around them are still more closed than you’d expect? I fuck with it. Fits with Messmer’s blindness motif which maybe I’ll make a post on eventually. But in regards to the base serpent specifically, of course violence can afford to close its eyes and be blind to who it chooses to hurt. Violence is also something that, when committed, always seems to haunt you. Its gaze will always be there.

It’s interesting that Marika replaced Messmer’s eye to seal the serpent off, and so maybe it grew more eyes? That could be why the scales around them aren’t correct—they’re trying to protrude from the body. This occurs in both the summon and the physical snake form Messmer has. Repression of identity = Eldritch horrors? Sure I’ll take that fromsoft.

Final thing on the eyes. They’re red, not green. The winged serpents have green eyes, Elden Ring’s color of endurance. Super fitting! The abyssal serpent’s eyes are all red, the color of rot and death in this game. Red to me also feels primordial given its use in lightning by the dragons, but I digress. It’s pretty obvious why a base serpent would have base powers. This thing is old as fuck.

Okay. I’m sure you all thought the post was done but one last note on snake biology! So, snakes’ tongues retract into their mouth. When a snake opens their mouth you won’t see a forked tongue just curled up, hanging out. It’s in a little pocket for safe keeping :)

Neither of the base serpent’s forms appear to have the anatomy for this, since there are eyeballs replacing this anatomy. This is problematic for Messmer in a snake form specifically since he’s blind, and real snakes compensate for shitty vision by having an incredibly strong sense of smell. Messmer’s snake form also doesn’t have the heat pits that the abyssal serpent has. Heat pits are another part of snake anatomy, usually located below the nostrils, and are what they use to “see” heat and locate prey. In pythons (like the winged serpents) you’ll see multiple heat pits all in a row above the lip as opposed to the single very deep pit behind and below the nostrils in vipers. This single pit is what the base serpent (summon) has. Neither Messmer’s base serpent form nor his winged serpents have heat pits which is…interesting. It could be a modeling error but I don’t think so given base serpent has very clear heat pits.

My point is, Messmer is somehow even more blind than you’d expect from a snake. Maybe this makes sense given Messmer carries an internal fire, which would likely fuck with infrared? Still interesting nonetheless.

In summary: The base serpent alone (summon) seems overall in better shape than its other form (transformation). I think this is pretty straightforward symbolism—as a being on its own the serpent would probably be fine. It’s just that it uses Messmer as a host and this causes issues. Fuck around and find out I guess, base serpent.

And holy shit Messmer Cannot fucking see. Good luck with the seeing eye snakes babe because snakes notoriously have shit vision !

(Also just an aside both of the base serpent forms kind of have narrower faces than you’d see on a real snake? Like they’re more eel like to me. Anyways.)

[radthursdays]

#RadThursdays Roundup 02/23/2017

A person stands with their eyes closed and arms outstretched while another beside them plays a wind instrument. Behind them is a long row of cops in riot gear, with face masks and batons, in front of the Morton County Memorial Courthouse. Source.

Water is Life

What 4 Indigenous Women Have to Say About Standing Rock's Ongoing Fight: "Colorlines spoke with several water protectors who have worked to end this 'black snake,' asking them to share their message that this cleanup doesn’t mean the battle is over."

All Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters Have Been Removed From Their Camp: "Authorities removed all remaining Dakota Access Pipeline protesters from their camp on Thursday. The final search of the Oceti Sakowin camp — which over the last months has hosted thousands of protesters trying to block construction of the oil pipeline — took about 3 1/2 hours and resulted in about three dozen arrests, the Associated Press reported."

#PeltierNotPipelines Days of Action: "With our rally at Coleman and our actions to stop the Sabal Trail pipeline this week, we aim to honor Leonard Peltier, and remind the world that though he remains locked up, his spirit and his determination continues to inspire us and give us courage. And when we are victorious over the oil and gas companies polluting the water, disrespecting treaties and tearing apart communities with drugs and violence, that victory will also belong to him."

As Construction Near Standing Rock Restarts, Pipeline Fights Flare Across the U.S.: "The fight against DAPL didn’t come from nowhere. It’s a direct descendant of the Keystone XL fight — both pass through the territory of the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires, which includes bands of the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota people. And when Standing Rock tribal members saw that it was time to mobilize, they turned to relatives that had fought the Keystone XL. […] Now, most of the thousands of people that visited Standing Rock last fall have returned home, and some have taken up long-shot local fights against the oil and gas industry. In Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee it’s the Diamond pipeline; in Louisiana, the Bayou Bridge. In Wisconsin, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa actually voted to decommission and remove the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline from their reservation."

The Statue of Liberty, with a banner near the base that reads, in huge letters, "REFUGEES WELCOME". Source.

Resistance

A General Strike Is Possible: “Calls for general strikes began as soon as Trump was elected. They surfaced first on the traditional platforms of the labor left, and slowly crept toward the center, arriving eventually even in the Washington Post and Cosmopolitan. For the radical left, this has been baffling — usually, the term “general strike” was only discussed on the fringe of the Left and labor movement. What could this mean, and what could it become?”

The Resistance Calendar: A calendar of actions / protests on a variety of issues.

All the News You Didn’t Even Know Was Going Down: "Welcome to the first edition of All the News You Didn’t Even Know Was Going Down since the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. Due the growing demand and increased use of the IGD we’ve fallen behind on putting this column out every week, but in the future we hope to turn this around and get back to regular columns. But as for now, there’s a lot of ground to cover so let’s not waste any time and get straight to the news."

Milo Yiannopoulos looks dejected during a press conference. Source.

Schadenfreude

Milo Yiannopoulos Resigns From Breitbart News After Pedophilia Comments: “Milo Yiannopoulos had everything he needed to be a smash success in today’s conservative world: A big personality, an intuitive sense for baiting the left and no inhibitions about causing offense. It hardly mattered that he did not consider himself much of a conservative. But Mr. Yiannopoulos’s downfall this week — a dizzying 24 hours in which he lost his speaking slot at the pre-eminent conservative conference, had a book deal canceled and, on Tuesday, resigned under pressure from his job as a senior editor at Breitbart News — was a sign that in today’s political culture, when each day seems to bring a fresh lowering of the bar for decency and civility, some limits still remain.”

Milo Is Not the Victim Here: “So to sum up, the demonstrations against Yiannopoulos’s appearance weren’t just about “free speech.” They were direct action in defense of some of the most vulnerable people on campus, against someone working in league with the police state to rob them of their basic human rights. Yiannopoulos is despicable, and any “libertarian” who defends him is likewise despicable.”

A figure with arms outstretched in front of the transgender symbol above the words, "Protect Trans Youth". Source.

Issues

Trump Rescinds Rules on Bathrooms for Transgender Students: "President Trump on Wednesday rescinded protections for transgender students that had allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, overruling his own education secretary and placing his administration firmly in the middle of the culture wars that many Republicans have tried to leave behind."

Paleocons for Porn: “A new right is alive in America — and it’s weird. While some alt-right figures like Richard Spencer aspire pretentiously to a style of European blood-and-soil right-identitarianism, the real creative energy behind the new right-wing sensibility online today springs from anonymous chan culture. Nihilistically reveling in shock, transgression, and trolling, you’re more likely to find these young men posting diaper porn, My Little Pony hate, and swastika-laden Pepe memes than listening to Wagner or reading Alain de Benoist.”

A tweet from MuseoftheCityNY (@MuseumofCityNY) reads, "#NYCFacts By 1910 immigrants accounted for 40% of the city's population. #DayofFacts #FactsMatter," accompanied by a picture of an immigrant family with their belongings. Source.

Resources

Anti-Racist Neighborhood Watch Manual and Resource Toolkit: "Anti-Racist Neighborhood Watch Quick Start Manual is an initiative created by the Portland Assembly and the Pacific Northwest Antifacsist Workers Collective as a way to generalize and broaden anti racist work in our communities in Portland and across the country. It is the hope that this packet can be used as an entrance-way to start addressing these issues by new comers to the movement and veterans alike. It is a suggested model on how to get organized in your communities with some tangible tools to get started right away."

Incarceration by Executive Order: Remembering Japanese American internment camps, 75 years later: Stunning to-scale graphic representations of the internment camps. "75 years ago an executive order by Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Families were allowed to take only what they could carry and shared sparsely furnished apartments. Up to six apartments could fit into a barrack. Walls covered in tar paper did little to insulate against the heat of Arizona deserts or freezing Wyoming winters. Barracks, along with communal bathrooms and a mess hall, formed a single block. The internment camps isolated Japanese people from the rest of American society by barbed wire, guard towers and wilderness. In all, more than 120,000 Japanese people were incarcerated in 10 camps throughout the United States."

Direct Action Item

Take some time this week to think about the community and area where you live. Are you active in the community? Are there any community efforts that try to address a need through people power rather than appealing to authorities?

If there’s something you’d like to see in next week’s #RT, please send us a message.

In solidarity!

What is direct action? Direct action means doing things yourself instead of petitioning authorities or relying on external institutions. It means taking matters into your own hands and not waiting to be empowered, because you are already powerful. A “direct action item” is a way to put your beliefs into practice every week.