#better dead than fed is a horrific mindset

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

The Bronx Zoo has just released Flaco's necropsy results.

He was not thriving, as the people championing the ideal of "freedom" claimed.

He was poisoned.

He was sick.

He was suffering.

"Freedom" would have eventually killed him. A building just happened to do it first.

"Postmortem testing has been completed for Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl that was found down in the courtyard of a Manhattan building a little over a year after his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo was vandalized on February 2, 2023. Onlookers reported that Flaco had flown into a building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on February 23, 2024, and acute trauma was found at necropsy. Bronx Zoo veterinary pathologists determined that in addition to the traumatic injuries, Flaco had two significant underlying conditions. He had a severe pigeon herpesvirus from eating feral pigeons that had become part of his diet, and exposure to four different anticoagulant rodenticides that are commonly used for rat control in New York City. These factors would have been debilitating and ultimately fatal, even without a traumatic injury, and may have predisposed him to flying into or falling from the building. The identified herpesvirus can be carried by healthy pigeons but may cause fatal disease in birds of prey including owls infected by eating pigeons. This virus has been previously found in New York City pigeons and owls. In Flaco’s case, the viral infection caused severe tissue damage and inflammation in many organs, including the spleen, liver, gastrointestinal tract, bone marrow, and brain.   No other contributing factors were identified through the extensive testing that was performed. Flaco’s severe illness and death are ultimately attributed to a combination of factors—infectious disease, toxin exposures, and traumatic injuries—that underscore the hazards faced by wild birds, especially in an urban setting."

The naturalistic fallacy kills animals in horrible ways. The romanticism of what humans want to think of as a "free, wild, pure life" cannot be allowed supplant the reality of injury, sickness, and death. Releasing captive animals (or keeping them from being recaptured) because it's "better" for them to suffer untethered than live a healthy, safe, captive life is inhumane and horrific.

Flaco's life didn't have to end in pain, sickness, and suffering.

Flaco's death didn't have to be tragic.

But once the idea of "freedom" entered the chat, Flaco's fate was unavoidable.

[gunnrblze]

I hate that Rorke took Logan, yes. Put him through all that horrific torture and brainwashing. Turned him against the only people he had left, flipped his world upside down. However, there’s something I can’t help but be appealed by with this overall scenario. ↓

Maybe it’s the dynamic I think they’d have, the “leader and their dog that follows them endlessly” trope that always hooks my ass for some reason. I think Logan would learn (be forced into) a new flavor of loyalty. That more vicious type, the morally bankrupt type. Assuming he’s treated the same way Rorke was, he’d leave the pit and all of that torture believing the Ghosts/his family somehow betrayed him too.

I have no doubt Rorke would cook up some big lie to help Logan believe it. That those men betrayed him, and by proxy, also betrayed Logan. That his father and brother did so as well. Elias backstabbed Rorke, “lets his men die to save his own ass”, and not only did that make him a shitty lieutenant/soldier, but also a shitty father.

He’d no doubt use Hesh as a tool, I think. A tool to further Logan’s changing beliefs. Why didn’t Hesh save him? Why hasn’t he come for Logan? Tried to save him over himself? We can obviously tell from Hesh’s character that he’d easily sacrifice himself for Logan without hesitation, but I think Rorke would have him believing the same thing he believes about Elias, that he saved himself and let Logan take the brunt of it.

So if he can’t trust his brother or teammates, if his father was a sham in the first place, who does that leave? Rorke.

I imagine they’d be inseparable, bonded by a type of abuse that not many have been through, at least not in the way they had. And there’s something appealing to me about it. About Rorke, in a twisted way albeit, getting something good out of all he’s been through. Do I think the dynamic with him and Logan would be very controlling? Yes. Without a doubt manipulative and deceitful? Yes. But I think it’d be almost healing (again, in his own twisted mindset lmao) for Rorke to take Logan on as a sort of project. To train him to be a Ghost killer rather than a Ghost himself.

And after all the brainwashing, Logan would no doubt be blind to reality of course, and I think he’d follow Rorke without hesitation. In the same way that he followed Hesh blindly, went anywhere his older brother did, I imagine he’d do the same with Rorke. Rather than being bonded with Hesh through brotherhood and the war/enemy they were fighting, he’d be bonded with Rorke through that torture and “betrayal”, through the new enemy.

And given how similar Hesh and Rorke are, the parallels within their characters personalities/goals/motivations, I think Logan would see Hesh in Rorke. Not only would he be forcibly tied to him now, but he’d see his brother in this man, and I think it’d only unintentionally help draw him in.

I think Rorke would no doubt treat Logan like a son, in a way. His soldier, his bred killer, ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. In fact I think he’d make himself a surrogate dad of sorts. The opposition he had with Elias would continue on for him despite the man being dead I think, and it would only continue to fuel him. After all, that’s what started all of this, that was a turning point for him. He’d not only use it to his advantage in manipulating Logan, but I imagine he’d also be willing to take Elias’ place in a way, whether that’s expressly his intention or not. Quite literally just an “Elias wasn’t shit, but I am the shit” type mindset. He’d already told Elias he believed himself better than the man while he was beating the dogshit out of him, so I do think he’d have that type of “I could be a better father than your own father was” mindset. And as much as I hate it, I also can’t help but enjoy the idea (don’t kill me for this lol)

Fed Logan would be a complete monster too. He was already very good, trained by some of the best there was, but after being taken and beaten down by Rorke? After being primed by him? Yeah…as much as I’d like to root for the remaining Ghosts, I’m not sure how much I believe they’d successfully take down both of them given their track record already. Although I think the federation having been largely defeated would put a dent in Rorkes performance/operations, I still think he’d dominate the fight now with Logan on his side. But I also think Hesh could fight god with his bare hands after allat so who knows lmao

They’d be inextricably connected, Rorke would make sure of that. And despite them fighting for the wrong cause and coming after our beloved good guys, I think Fed Logan and Rorke would work so well together that I almost can’t even hate it completely.

[nitrateglow]

Halloween 2017 movie marathon: Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931)

“Dangerous? Poor old Waldman. Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if no one tried to find out what lies beyond? Have your never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy.”

College graduate Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) decides to bunk out in a watchtower with his crazy hunchback assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) and reanimate a dead body. This shocks his conservative mentor Dr. Waldman (Edward van Sloan), fiancée Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), and the storyline’s mandatory normal guy Victor Moritz (John Boles). Henry isn’t too worried about the whole thing, even if his creation was accidentally fashioned with a criminal brain. Unfortunately, the Monster (Boris Karloff) is abused, demonized, and cast aside once its behavior becomes slightly unpredictable. When the Monster escapes from the tower, Henry finds he needs to try and clean up this tragedy of his own making before the bodies start piling up.

These days, everybody begins their reviews of Frankenstein the same way: “Do we need another review of James Whale’s masterwork?” “What else can be said about Frankenstein?” Frankenstein is in that same category as Star Wars: so iconic and influential, so quoted in the popular culture that it seems redundant to talk about it and downright impossible to view it with fresh eyes. Even people unschooled in classic horror could pick out scenes: the grave-robbing, the creation of life in the lab, the little girl by the lake, the bride stalked in her chamber, the burning windmill and the angry mob. So, is the common refrain true? Should I not even bother writing this? Well, if you tell me not to do something—I’m going to do it anyway and do it with gusto! And though we may sneer and scoff, call this movie primitive, Frankenstein still retains a strange power once you cast off that 21st century cynicism and allow yourself to succumb to its spell.

People often ask “did 1930s audiences ACTUALLY find this scary?” And yes, disbelieving reader, they did. 1931 audiences had an advantage we don’t after almost a century of pop cultural osmosis: they got to see all of this with fresh eyes, without Young Frankenstein or anything else coloring their perception. There had been a handful of cinematic and theatrical adaptations of Mary Shelley’s novel before, but nothing proved as memorable as Universal’s version. Looking at Karloff’s make-up alone today, so much of the impact is diminished because of how iconic it is, but if you were a normal cinema-goer back in 1931, it must have been startling. These people were not exposed to modern zombie flicks; Hollywood movies, even in the pre-code age, generally never showed anything like a decaying body. But Karloff’s cadaverous face, imposing physique, and heavy walk must have seemed grotesque.

When the Monster makes his entrance, we get a progressive close-up, honing in on his intense, half-dead stare, forcing the audience to take in every unseemly detail of his haunting visage. One must also remember that the original audience by that point had no clue as to what the Monster would do or if he was criminally lethal. We’re told he’s been implanted with a criminal brain, but Frankenstein and Waldman debate as to whether or not this will affect the Monster’s behavior. This tension probably fed much of the audience’s suspense and kept them terrified once the Monster was loose, even as Karloff and Whale endowed the character with pathos. One of the original newspaper ads for the film claimed of the Monster, “You hate it… fear it… yet it wrings your heart with pity!”

James Whale was a champion of the outsider in many of his films, whether that outsider was a monster, a shell-shocked soldier, or a lonely prostitute. As much as the characters in this movie preach about not transgressing in God’s domain, you know Whale’s totally behind Henry and his unnatural creation. He certainly has no sympathy for Henry’s unpleasable father who criticizes his son for not settling down like a good aristocrat or Dr. Waldman, a scientist with the mindset of a medieval clergyman. Indeed, Waldman is arguably the most loathsome character in the film, crying for the Monster’s head before it harms anyone and even going back on his promise to dispose of the Monster gently, deciding a vivisection before murder might be a nice thing to do. As much as he criticizes Henry for overreaching, he sure has no problem studying his “failure” and profiting from that. As Sir Christopher Frayling mentions in his marvelous commentary track, Waldman is the opposite of Dracula’s Van Helsing, hardly heroic and a regressive figure. Even harmless characters like Elizabeth or her deadly dull suitor Victor don’t capture our attention: they’re nice but they have no ambition, no desire to look beyond as Henry does.

It’s Frankenstein, the Monster, and Fritz who remain the most memorable, the people who aren’t seen as normal; however, the outsiders have no solidarity in this world. The misshapen Fritz sees the Monster not as another ostracized person, but as a thing to dominate and torment, as though he’s elated to find someone who’s more of an outsider than himself. Though disappointed by his own father’s lack of emotional support, Frankenstein doesn’t learn from his father’s mistakes and quickly gives up on his creation the moment things go wrong. And of course, we all know how the Monster lashes out once he accidentally kills the one person who treated him well. It’s a world of lost, lonely people, and that’s one of the saddest elements of this movie.

Though the Monster is a sympathetic figure, his motivation in the second half of the film becomes muddled. The question of whether or not the Monster was doomed to violence from the start is never resolved and it is easy to assume that his mistreatment at the hands of his creator is the sole cause for his strange behavior. The moment when the Monster breaks into Elizabeth’s room has always struck me as strange, because it isn’t entirely clear what his intentions are. In earlier screenplay drafts, the Monster was a demonic id-figure that clearly had sexual designs on his creator’s bride, even going as far as to tear her clothes and attempt to climb atop her according to historian Rudy Behlmer (even for the pre-code era, that would have been strong material, had they gotten away with it!), but the Monster is certainly not that, well, monstrous in the final version. He does growl in a rather flirtatious manner at the terrified woman, but he ultimately leaves her alone once she swoons. (Maybe he was just curious. Maybe he wanted to see if a grown woman might float better than a little girl.) It’s the same with his kidnapping of Henry. When he knocks his creator unconscious during the last pursuit, the Monster does not immediately kill Frankenstein, but instead carries him to an old windmill to—do what? It’s never made clear whether he plans on killing him or not. These ambiguities were likely a big part of the Monster’s fear factor for 1930s audiences who didn’t have the same fond nostalgia most classic horror movie fans now have for the character.

Some viewers regard these moments as plot glitches, and maybe they are, but one cannot deny that these bizarre scenes lend the film a dreamlike tone. If the gothic expressionism of the set design does not signal that this is a different, more heightened reality than our own, the story events certainly do. I’ve always felt the 1931 Frankenstein was like a nightmare committed to celluloid because of how bizarre certain story elements are in addition to the gothic mise en scene. It possesses an otherworldly feel, an almost fairy tale like conceit that became more pronounced in the sequel.

Over the years, this film is usually deemed a historically significant yet artistically inferior film when compared to its sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein. The follow-up does have the benefit of more sophisticated cinematography and some truly striking editing, as well as memorable characters like Dr. Pretorious and the Bride herself. However, when it comes to horror, the first movie retains a chilling power and sense of tragedy that the sequel does not accomplish as well, at least not for me. I believe the more primitive nature of the first movie is a strength; the crackling hiss of the soundtrack and the lack of music lends the movie a sort of creepiness, as does the silent Monster’s far more alien nature. Since 1931, filmmakers have created Frankensteins truer to the novel or more viscerally horrific; some of them are quite good or even great, but none have haunted cultural memory like James Whale’s and I think the reason for that goes beyond mere nostalgia.

[deepbreakfast]

I was so heartbroken when I read about this poor owl. There is a difference between releasing a wild animal after it has been healed from its injuries and releasing an animal that was born in captivity. Nature is beautiful but it is also deadly.

The Bronx Zoo has just released Flaco's necropsy results.

He was not thriving, as the people championing the ideal of "freedom" claimed.

He was poisoned.

He was sick.

He was suffering.

"Freedom" would have eventually killed him. A building just happened to do it first.

"Postmortem testing has been completed for Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl that was found down in the courtyard of a Manhattan building a little over a year after his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo was vandalized on February 2, 2023. Onlookers reported that Flaco had flown into a building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on February 23, 2024, and acute trauma was found at necropsy. Bronx Zoo veterinary pathologists determined that in addition to the traumatic injuries, Flaco had two significant underlying conditions. He had a severe pigeon herpesvirus from eating feral pigeons that had become part of his diet, and exposure to four different anticoagulant rodenticides that are commonly used for rat control in New York City. These factors would have been debilitating and ultimately fatal, even without a traumatic injury, and may have predisposed him to flying into or falling from the building. The identified herpesvirus can be carried by healthy pigeons but may cause fatal disease in birds of prey including owls infected by eating pigeons. This virus has been previously found in New York City pigeons and owls. In Flaco’s case, the viral infection caused severe tissue damage and inflammation in many organs, including the spleen, liver, gastrointestinal tract, bone marrow, and brain.   No other contributing factors were identified through the extensive testing that was performed. Flaco’s severe illness and death are ultimately attributed to a combination of factors—infectious disease, toxin exposures, and traumatic injuries—that underscore the hazards faced by wild birds, especially in an urban setting."

The naturalistic fallacy kills animals in horrible ways. The romanticism of what humans want to think of as a "free, wild, pure life" cannot be allowed supplant the reality of injury, sickness, and death. Releasing captive animals (or keeping them from being recaptured) because it's "better" for them to suffer untethered than live a healthy, safe, captive life is inhumane and horrific.

Flaco's life didn't have to end in pain, sickness, and suffering.

Flaco's death didn't have to be tragic.

But once the idea of "freedom" entered the chat, Flaco's fate was unavoidable.