#but also might step back into prehistorical weapons

[cirolik]

I should go autism mode on medeival weapons and the manufacturing of

[eyelinerda3euro]

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

In the temperate and tropical regions where it appears that hominids evolved into human beings, the principal food of the species was vegetable. Sixty-five to eighty percent of what human beings ate in those regions in Paleolithic, Neolithic, and prehistoric times was gathered; only in the extreme Arctic was meat the staple food. The mammoth hunters spectacularly occupy the cave wall and the mind, but what we actually did to stay alive and fat was gather seeds, roots, sprouts, shoots, leaves, nuts, berries, fruits, and grains, adding bugs and mollusks and netting or snaring birds, fish, rats, rabbits, and other tuskless small fry to up the protein. And we didn’t even work hard at it — much less hard than peasants slaving in somebody else’s field after agriculture was invented, much less hard than paid workers since civilization was invented. The average prehistoric person could make a nice living in about a fifteen-hour work week.

Fifteen hours a week for subsistence leaves a lot of time for other things. So much time that maybe the restless ones who didn’t have a baby around to enliven their life, or skill in making or cooking or singing, or very interesting thoughts to think, decided to slope off and hunt mammoths. The skillful hunters would come staggering back with a load of meat, a lot of ivory, and a story. It wasn’t the meat that made the difference. It was the story.

It is hard to tell a really gripping tale of how I wrestled a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats.... No, it does not compare, it cannot compete with how I thrust my spear deep into the titanic hairy flank while Oob, impaled on one huge sweeping tusk, writhed screaming, and blood sprouted everywhere in crimson torrents, and Boob was crushed to jelly when the mammoth fell on him as I shot my unerring arrow straight through eye to brain.

That story not only has Action, it has a Hero. Heroes are powerful. Before you know it, the men and women in the wild-oat patch and their kids and the skills of makers and the thoughts of the thoughtful and the songs of the singers are all part of it, have all been pressed into service in the tale of the Hero. But it isn’t their story. It’s his.

When she was planning the book that ended up as Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf wrote a heading in her notebook, “Glossary”; she had thought of reinventing English according to her new plan, in order to tell a different story. One of the entries in this glossary is heroism, defined as “botulism.” And hero, in Woolf’s dictionary, is “bottle.” The hero as bottle, a stringent reevaluation. I now propose the bottle as hero.

Not just the bottle of gin or wine, but bottle in its older sense of container in general, a thing that holds something else.

If you haven’t got something to put it in, food will escape you — even something as uncombative and unresourceful as an oat. You put as many as you can into your stomach while they are handy, that being the primary container; but what about tomorrow morning when you wake up and it’s cold and raining and wouldn’t it be good to have just a few handfuls of oats to chew on and give little Oom to make her shut up, but how do you get more than one stomachful and one handful home? So you get up and go to the damned soggy oat patch in the rain, and wouldn’t it be a good thing if you had something to put Baby Oo Oo in so that you could pick the oats with both hands? A leaf a gourd shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient.

The first cultural device was probably a recipient.... Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier.

So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women’s Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975). But no, this cannot be. Where is that wonderful, big, long, hard thing, a bone, I believe, that the Ape Man first bashed somebody in the movie and then, grunting with ecstasy at having achieved the first proper murder, flung up into the sky, and whirling there it became a space ship thrusting its way into the cosmos to fertilize it and produce at the end of the movie a lovely fetus, a boy of course, drifting around the Milky Way without (oddly enough) any womb, any matrix at all? I don’t know. I don’t even care. I’m not telling that story. We’ve heard it, we’ve all heard about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news.

And yet old. Before — once you think about it, surely long before — the weapon, a late, luxurious, superfluous tool; long before the useful knife and ax; right along with the indispensable whacker, grinder, and digger — for what’s the use of digging up a lot of potatoes if you have nothing to lug the ones you can’t eat home in — with or before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home. It makes sense to me. I am an adherent of what Fisher calls the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution.

This theory not only explains large areas of theoretical obscurity and avoids large areas of theoretical nonsense (inhabited largely by tigers, foxes, and other highly territorial mammals); it also grounds me, personally, in human culture in a way I never felt grounded before. So long as culture was explained as originating from and elaborating upon the use of long, hard objects for sticking, bashing, and killing, I never thought that I had, or wanted, any particular share in it. (“What Freud mistook for her lack of civilization is woman’s lack of loyalty to civilization,” Lillian Smith observed.) The society, the civilization they were talking about, these theoreticians, was evidently theirs; they owned it, they liked it; they were human, fully human, bashing, sticking, thrusting, killing. Wanting to be human too, I sought for evidence that I was; but if that’s what it took, to make a weapon and kill with it, then evidently I was either extremely defective as a human being, or not human at all.

That’s right, they said. What you are is a woman. Possibly not human at all, certainly defective. Now be quiet while we go on telling the Story of the Ascent of Man the Hero.

Go on, say I, wandering off towards the wild oats, with Oo Oo in the sling and little Oom carrying the basket. You just go on telling how the mammoth fell on Boob and how Cain fell on Abel and how the bomb fell on Nagasaki and how the burning jelly fell on the villagers and how the missiles will fall on the Evil Empire, and all the other steps in the Ascent of Man.

If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again — if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.

Not, let it be said at once, an unaggressive or uncombative human being. I am an aging, angry woman laying mightily about me with my handbag, fighting hoodlums off. However I don’t, nor does anybody else, consider myself heroic for doing so. It’s just one of those damned things you have to do in order to be able to go on gathering wild oats and telling stories.

It is the story that makes the difference. It is the story that hid my humanity from me, the story the mammoth hunters told about bashing, thrusting, raping, killing, about the Hero. The wonderful, poisonous story of Botulism. The killer story.

It sometimes seems that the story is approaching its end. Lest there be no more telling of stories at all, some of us out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we’d better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one’s finished. Maybe. The trouble is, we’ve all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.

It’s unfamiliar, it doesn’t come easily, thoughtlessly, to the lips as the killer story does; but still, “untold” was an exaggeration. People have been telling the life story for ages, in all sorts of words and ways. Myths of creation and transformation, trickster stories, folktales, jokes, novels....

The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over, that being his imperial nature and uncontrollable impulse, to take everything over and run it while making stern decrees and laws to control his uncontrollable impulse to kill it. So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn’t any good if he isn’t in it.

I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

One relationship among elements in the novel may well be that of conflict, but the reduction of narrative to conflict is absurd. (I have read a how-to-write manual that said, “A story should be seen as a battle,” and went on about strategies, attacks, victory, etc.) Conflict, competition, stress, struggle, etc., within the narrative conceived as carrier bag/belly/box/house/medicine bundle, may be seen as necessary elements of a whole which itself cannot be characterized either as conflict or as harmony, since its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process.

Finally, it’s clear that the Hero does not look well in this bag. He needs a stage or a pedestal or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like a rabbit, like a potato.

That is why I like novels: instead of heroes they have people in them.

So, when I came to write science-fiction novels, I came lugging this great heavy sack of stuff, my carrier bag full of wimps and klutzes, and tiny grains of things smaller than a mustard seed, and intricately woven nets which when laboriously unknotted are seen to contain one blue pebble, an imperturbably functioning chronometer telling the time on another world, and a mouse’s skull; full of beginnings without ends, of initiations, of losses, of transformations and translations, and far more tricks than conflicts, far fewer triumphs than snares and delusions; full of space ships that get stuck, missions that fail, and people who don’t understand. I said it was hard to make a gripping tale of how we wrested the wild oats from their husks, I didn’t say it was impossible. Who ever said writing a novel was easy?

If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic. “Technology,” or “modern science” (using the words as they are usually used, in an unexamined shorthand standing for the “hard” sciences and high technology founded upon continuous economic growth), is a heroic undertaking, Herculean, Promethean, conceived as triumph, hence ultimately as tragedy. The fiction embodying this myth will be, and has been, triumphant (Man conquers earth, space, aliens, death, the future, etc.) and tragic (apocalypse, holocaust, then or now).

If, however, one avoids the linear, progressive, Time’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic, and redefines technology and science as primarily cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination, one pleasant side effect is that science fiction can be seen as a far less rigid, narrow field, not necessarily Promethean or apocalyptic at all, and in fact less a mythological genre than a realistic one.

It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality.

Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast stack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things; there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool’s joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn’t over. Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars. by Ursula K. Le Guin

[woolishlygrim]

So here’s a thing that has probably been done before but also maybe been done worse: The timeline of Bloodborne.

Like … more or less any Soulsborne game, tbh … Bloodborne is remarkably laconic with its storytelling, leaving a lot of gaps but, more importantly, leaving a lot of stuff that isn’t directly stated but which can be reasoned out if you kind of take a step back from looking at things in terms of a set of facts to be fitted together, and instead look at things in terms of a set of causes and effects, if that makes sense. It’s not thing happens, thing happens, thing happens, it’s thing happens, and since we know who does that thing and what motivates them later on, we can reason out how that thing would then lead on to another thing.

...

Anyway. Timeline.

Massive trigger warning for … hoo boy. References to violence, references to stillbirth and dead infants, references to sexual assault, and references to suicide. Jfc, Bloodborne.

-- So, at some point in the distant, distant past, almost prehistoric, the Isz Civilisation (likely the city of Isz) flourishes in a particular coastal spot on a northern archipelago. The Isz aren’t originally from this place, they hail from somewhere else: Rather, they choose this site for their new city because it is a place within the waking, physical world that passes uncommonly close to the world of dreams.

-- In time, the people of Isz (or at least some of its people) cease to be human, or at least humanoid. We know that they were humanoid at some point, because the Isz labyrinths are laid out for humanoid creatures, but at some point they ascend, and this is likely a deliberate choice on their parts.

-- The mechanism of their change isn’t explicitly spelled out, but since we see in-game one example of a human ascending in a similar fashion, and a great many failed attempts to ascend, we can kind of tease out a rough idea of how it works, namely that it involves gaining more insight into the eldritch truth, and mutations of the blood. Either way, they become the Great Ones, godlike beings who are wholly alien but nonetheless kind and sympathetic in spirit. Every Great One is unique: While they are a species, they are a species that shares no commonalities, with every individual functionally its own species.

-- At some point, the Great Ones ascend in a different way: Their bodies enter an eternal sleep, while their spirits ascend to the dream and nightmare realms. One of them, Ebrietas, is left behind. While it’s never made clear why, the references to her as ‘abandoned’ and ‘left behind’ imply that she didn’t choose to stay behind.

-- Now absent of people, Isz falls to ruin. In time, however, a new civilisation is built on the wreckage: The city of Loran. A desert city despite the coastal location of Isz, we know little about Loran, only that at some point they found the slumbering bodies of the Great Ones (perhaps guided by Ebrietas, as others would be later). They take blood from the Great Ones, blood which can be used to strengthen a person, or heal any injury or sickness.

-- In time, the Beast Plague strikes Loran. At certain times, as the Great Ones brush close to the waking world, those who have imbibed too much of their blood are transformed into monstrous beasts. This is the first time the Beast Plague appears, but it’s not really a plague, not in the truest sense. As we see later on, the more insight into the eldritch truth one has, the more complex, strange, and alien a person’s beastly transformation is, the more they keep their mind in the process, or may even find themselves elevated: Because the Beast Plague isn’t a disease, it’s a mutation. It’s the act of ascending, spurred on by the blood of the Great Ones, to a new form, falling far short of being a Great One but nevertheless becoming something more than human.

-- Nevertheless, Loran falls. In time, the Beast Plague overtakes it, and only monsters remain. The city is swallowed by the sands, and the region goes dormant once again.

-- In time, though, the Pthumerians happen across the same site. It seems likely that the Pthumerians were human, or at the very least human-like, at one point, but they don’t remain that way for long. Anyway, on the ruins of Loran which is in turn upon the ruins of Isz, the city of Pthumeria Ihyll is built.

-- The Pthumerians are wiser than the people of Loran, in a way, or at least more curious. While the people of Loran careless imbibed the blood of the Great Ones, the Pthumerians study, becoming more knowledgeable of the eldritch truth (most likely, once again, under the guidance of Ebrietas). Eventually, they make contact with the Great Ones, and form a kind of friendship with them.

-- An alliance is born. The Great Ones guide the Pthumerians, elevating their civilisation and helping them achieve inhuman forms, less than a Great One but greater than a human, and still keeping their minds. In return, the Pthumerians guard the tombs of the Great Ones, where their bodies slumber. The Pthumerians do seem to eventually partake of the Great Ones’ blood as part of their semi-ascension, but they do not appear to suffer from the Beast Plague (at first), and they seemingly gain a kind of immortality.

-- At some point, a great queen of Pthumeria Ihyll, Queen Yharnam, enters into a marriage with Oedon, a Great One who lacks any kind of physical form (and, it’s worth noting, the only male Great One we ever hear about). The two of them conceive a child together, Mergo. This, we are told, is a preoccupation of the Great Ones, and perhaps not the first time it happens, for each Great One longs for a child, each Great One searches for a surrogate to bear it, but each Great One finds their child stillborn.

-- Mergo, the daughter of Oedon and Yharnam, is no different, born already dead, but there are signs that something truly horrible happened to Yharnam. Her lingering spirit can be seen handcuffed, her body apparently cut open to remove Mergo. Whatever the Pthumerians did at the moment of Mergo’s birth, it was traumatic and violent, and Yharnam does not seem to be a willing participant.

-- Nevertheless, Mergo is stillborn, as all infant Great Ones are. While dead, Mergo is still a god, however, and even a dead god exerts its will upon the world around it. A Pthumerian woman is, through the power of the Great Ones, elevated to a higher form (not, it would seem, a Great One, but something startlingly close), and becomes Mergo’s wet nurse and protector. A nightmare is created to cradle Mergo.

-- After this, Pthumeria Ihyll falls. It’s not entirely clear why, save that eventually they, like Loran, found themselves suffering from the Beast Plague, which consumed their civilisation much as it had Loran. It is speculated in passing that the Great Ones, in spite of their sympathetic and kind nature, may have severed their alliance with Pthumeria Ihyll, withdrawing their support.

-- Time passes. Eventually, humans of the College of Byrgenwerth attempt expeditions into the ruins of Pthumeria Ihyll, and in time a city, named Yharnam for the Pthumerian queen, springs up atop the ruins of Pthumeria Ihyll (which is built upon Loran, which is built upon Isz). Byrgenwerth, led by Master Willem, is primarily interested in learning to perceive more of the eldritch truth, to elevate their minds.

-- However, Laurence, a student of Master Willem, discovers the slumbering Great Ones, and the properties of their blood. While Willem abhors the idea of using the blood, Laurence is fascinated by the idea that they might achieve ascension a far quicker way. He splits from Byrgenwerth, taking several scholars with him, and forms the Healing Church, distributing the blood as a miracle cure.

-- Laurence found allies in this endeavour, of a sort. Micolash, another former student of Byrgenwerth, created the School of Mensis within the Healing Church, devoted to making contact with Mergo. Another scholar, whose name is unknown but who would later take the name Iosefka, establishes the Choir, a section of the Church which, under the guidance of Ebrietas, would endeavour to study ascension without the use of blood. Another student, Gehrman, meanwhile, would keep his distance from the Church -- but when the Beast Plague struck, as it struck every civilisation that abused the Great Ones’ blood, he became the first Hunter, and established the Hunter’s Workshop.

-- At some point, the noble house of Cainhurst take up residence near Yharnam. Their relationship with the Yharnamites is fraught, to say the least, and they covet the Great Ones’ blood.

-- Gehrman takes several early apprentices: Maria, a scion of the Cainhursts; Izzy, a scientist who is fascinated by the beasts; the Crow of Cainhurst, who styles himself as a hunter-of-hunters; Eileen, a woman who would also, in time, come to style herself as a hunter of hunters; Djura, who is dreadfully kind and terribly foolish; and Ludwig, a cleric of the Healing Church who was possessed of an ancient, magical sword, possibly even a relic of Isz, which was both weapon and mentor to him.

-- For all of the Hunter’s Workshop’s goals in containing the Beast Plague, they rapidly find themselves unable to contain it, and their organisation spirals into chaos. Ludwig breaks away from the Workshop to form the Church hunters, recruiting mobs of regular townspeople, but also empowering the Church to form a secret police of sort, a cadre of hunters who were permitted to hide among the populace and strike with impunity if they believed they saw the signs of plague. Maria, for reasons unknown, steals a sample of the Great Ones’ blood and delivers it to the Cainhursts. Their own experiments yield the Vilebloods, an ‘impure’ breed of humanity led by the immortal Queen Annalise, who sets about feeding on the blood of hunters in the hopes that doing so will let her conceive a ‘child of the blood’ with Oedon. The Crow, afflicted by the beast blood, goes mad. Eileen and Djura, both disillusioned with Gehrman, begin to drift away from the Workshop, with Djura gathering his own band of hunters. While Izzy’s fate is unclear, we know that they were a threat to the Church, and were most likely killed.

-- A war breaks out between the Cainhurst Vilebloods and the Executioners, a fanatical sect of the Church committed to wiping them out. The war ends when Logarius, leader of the Executioners and seemingly a man of Pthumerian extraction, dons a crown of illusion and separates Castle Cainhurst from Yharnam. Unable to die by natural means, likely owing to his Pthumerian blood, Logarius begins an endless vigil.

-- At some point, Gehrman and the College of Byrgenwerth discover a fishing hamlet in a symbiotic relationship with Kos, a Great One. In the name of learning more about how to reach the eldritch truth, the Byrgenwerth scholars visit horrifying experiments on the people of the hamlet, cutting them open and carving open their skulls to examine their brains, seemingly while they still lived.

-- Gehrman, facing a losing war against the Beast Plague, and with most of his apprentices and allies having abandoned him in one form or another, does something worse. While it isn’t entirely clear how he does it, since Kos’ physical shape is a gigantic nudiform, he seemingly manages to impregnate Kos in what appears to be an attempt to create an undying, perfect hunter, equipped to kill both beasts and Great Ones.

-- Kos perishes and washes up on the shore of the hamlet. From her dead body emerges the Sweet Child of Kos, the son of Kos and Gehrman. He is ‘wizened’ upon birth, and either born dead or dies of old age shortly thereafter.

-- Responding to the wishes of the people of the hamlet, though, the Sweet Child of Kos, dead but, like Mergo, still able to wield the power of a god, creates a nightmare realm, the Hunter’s Nightmare, and curses every hunter: When they die or lose their minds, they drift into the Hunter’s Nightmare, there to engage in an endless, maddening hunt.

-- The fishing hamlet is destroyed, whether by Byrgenwerth or, perhaps, by simply being transported wholesale into the Hunter’s Nightmare. In disgust at Byrgenwerth and Gehrman, Maria casts her blade, Rakuyo, into a well. She later dies, although it’s unclear exactly how -- but the available evidence points to suicide.

-- In Yharnam, confidence in the Church begins to fail, driven not least by the fact that clerics of the Church, who have more knowledge of the eldritch truth, become the most powerful and most vicious beasts.

-- The situation in Yharnam goes from bad to worse. Perhaps seeking to re-establish the authority of the Healing Church after confidence in the healing blood has been eroded by the Beast Plague, Laurence and the Church poison the water supply of Old Yharnam, and then approach the people of the district with the offer of the blood as a cure. The result is an outbreak of the Beast Plague unlike anything ever seen before. Desperate, the Church and Gehrman seal off Old Yharnam and send in Djura and his Powder-Keg Hunters to burn it and everyone in it.

-- On the same night, Ludwig succumbs to the Beast Plague, transforming into a horrible beast as his mind is shunted into the Hunter’s Nightmare. He is killed, but without his guidance, the Church Hunters fracture, with some of them being absorbed by the Choir and the rest of them becoming little more than a roaming mob.

-- Laurence succumbs to the plague not long after. While his mind takes the form of an ever-burning Cleric Beast within the Hunter’s Nightmare, his body becomes the Bloodletting Beast. While it is decapitated in a battle against Brador, a Church Hunter in the employ of the Choir, it survives this decapitation and flees into the remains of Pthumeria Ihyll. It is never caught.

-- With Yharnam in chaos, and his first plan to create an undying hunter a failure, Gehrman uses the Sweet Child of Kos’ umbilical cord to summon a Great One. The Great Ones are sympathetic in spirit, and so his pleas are answered by Flora, the Moon Presence. The Moon Presence creates for Gehrman the Hunter’s Dream, a dream-realm version of the Workshop. Hunters who are drawn into the Hunter’s Dream can venture out into the waking world as dreams, ensuring that no matter how many times they die, they can always return. But the Moon Presence also imprisons Gehrman in the Dream, to act as its guardian and to guide new hunters.

-- Several hunters are brought into the Dream and allowed to hunt without fear of death. Djura is one, and Eileen is another. Eventually, Gehrman frees each of them from the Dream, an act which also cuts off their ability to dream altogether (and perhaps saves them from the Hunter’s Dream).

-- At Byrgenwerth, a woman chooses to ascend to the very brink of being a Great One, but the imperfect process destroys her mind. The resulting being, Rom the Vacuous Spider, dwells beneath the Byrgenwerth lake, using its powers to shield Yharnam from the encroachment of the Great Ones’ dream realms, and obscure the truth. 

-- Djura’s nephew is struck by a terrible illness, most likely the Beast Plague, but seems to recover from it as something uncannily similar to a Great One. Djura has him smuggled out of Yharnam. His spirit broken by his long career as a hunter, the events with his nephew, and the razing of Old Yharnam, Djura retreats to the ruins of Old Yharnam, there to protect the beasts still living in it.

-- At some point, the School of Mensis succeeds in achieving an audience with Mergo. In doing so, they kick off a resurgence of the Beast Plague. The Player Character, drawn to Yharnam to ‘seek paleblood,’ is drawn into the Hunter’s Dream, as Gehrman’s latest hunter, tasked with finding and killing (or ‘killing’ as the case may be) the infant Mergo.

-- The Player Character kills Rom, removing the last line of defense against Mergo’s influence. The Beast Plague erupts into an even more cataclysmic form. Without Rom to shield Yharnam, Oedon impregnates two women -- the fake Iosefka, who had been attempting to conceive a child with him, and Arianna, a descendant of Annalise who, it would seem, was impregnated with the child Annalise had wished for, as Oedon, being formless and alien, cannot distinguish the difference between them. Neither woman survives the birth, and their children are born dead.

-- The Player Character eventually finds their way to the Nightmare of Mensis, the nightmare realm made to cradle Mergo. Killing Micolash, they proceed onwards to eventually kill Mergo’s Wet Nurse. Without her nurse to nurture her, the dead Mergo finally passes from the world, her long suffering finished. Queen Yharnam bows to the Player Character in thanks, then departs as well.

-- Returning to the Hunter’s Dream, the Player Character confronts and kills Gehrman. The Moon Presence descends, and the Player Character, now grasping almost the entirety of the eldritch truth, and having consumed a massive amount of blood (along with the umbilical cords of four Great Ones -- Mergo’s, the Sweet Child of Kos, Arianna’s child, and Iosefka’s child) battles and defeats it. Consuming it, the Player Character abandons their form as a human and is reborn as an infant Great One -- the first, and only, infant Great One to be born alive.

-- While much of Yharnam is destroyed, there are survivors. Perhaps better for them, there is now a Great One who may yet understand humanity, cradled in the Hunter’s Dream, and when it is grown it will guide humanity towards ascension.

[tyrantisterror]

TT Rambles: Building a Kaiju Cast

As far as I’m concerned, the kaiju renaissance is in full swing - not just because of movies like Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Pacific Rim, but because of all the original novels, webcomics, etc. that the kaiju fandom is publishing.  It’s beautiful to see all these new kaijuverses blossoming.

and I want to see more of them

It takes me back to that brief, shining period in the early 2000′s where there were DOZENS of thriving kaijuverses on Deviantart, all with weird and wonderful takes on giant monsters that oozed with style and creativity.  God that was a good time and 

I want to see more

So, as a person with a semi-successful kaiju-verse of my own, I’ve been thinking about how I could encourage people to make more kaiju beyond, like, just making my own and hoping it resonates and inspires people like the kaiju-verses that I see inspire me.  And then my teacher brain got to thinking - one of the best ways to help people create is to give them structure to build off of.  So that’s what I’m going to do.

Friends, enclosed here are some written instructions on how to build a fun and dynamic kaiju cast.  You don’t have to follow these rules to the letter, mind you, but if you don’t know where to start, this might help.

Step 1: Pick Your Flavor

There are more ways to make a kaiju story than you may realize, as the genre is deceptively diverse despite its obscurity.  However, for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to try to reduce it to two main categories:

Hero Monster(s) saves the world from evil monsters

OR

Hero humans attempt to save the world from evil monsters

This is a crucial fact to figure out before you make your kaiju cast, because the differences between these two variants will inform how you structure your monsters.  In the first approach, the monsters not only need personality and motivations, but character arcs, and benefit from being as distinct from each other as possible.  In the second, the monsters generally have to be a bit simpler and less, well, person-y, so we don’t feel as bad when they’re cut down by the heroes.  They also tend to be more uniform in appearance, origin, and personality, to make the division between humanity and monster more clear cut.  The first approach will generally result in a “humanity needs to be more open minded and compassionate to those we deem as other” sort of message, while the latter will generally show how humanity needs to pull together in the face of catastrophic threats.  On the surface these two story routes may seem very similar, but the differences between them are important ones.

Step 2: The Main Kaiju

In addition to OC kaijuverses, another big trend in the glory days of the DA kaiju fandom was revamping/redesigning the cast of the Godzilla franchise.  There were dozens of different takes on it, and a friend of mine noted a peculiar but important lesson that could be learned from each of them: if you looked at how each artist redesigned Godzilla himself, you could basically predict how the rest of the monsters would look.  This is because Godzilla is the crux of his universe - all the other monsters are designed to play off of him, and thus any change made to Godzilla will be reflected in the rest of the cast.

You can see this in other stories as well - Batman’s cast is built around his gothic horror/detective fiction roots, Spider-Man’s around his teen drama/sci-fi genre mashup, etc.  As a general rule, stories are tailored to their protagonist, and in kaiju fiction, the protagonist is generally one of the giant monsters.  Therefore, figuring out your main monster is important, as they will ultimately shape the entire story.

Now, when I say “protagonist,” I mean this in the “main/most prominent character” sense, rather than the “hero” sense.  Your main kaiju may be a bad guy - they may be the villain of the story, the face and root of its conflict.  Alternatively, they may live up the hero label in every sense of the word - one of the coolest things about the Kaiju genre is that it sports a LOT of heroes that are also non-human characters.

If you are going for the second variation of the kaiju genre - that is, the “Humans destroy evil monsters” story - your main kaiju still matters, even though it likely isn’t a prominent enough character to really qualify for protagonist status.  In shows like Evangelion and Ultraman, or movies like Pacific Rim, there are still essentially “main” kaiju - that is, kaiju who define the style and approach that monsters in the series will take.  Often they’re the first monster the heroes encounter - Knifehead from Pacific Rim, for example, establishes early on the aesthetic and rough personality of the giant monsters featured in the movie.  Other times they show up later in the story to make a big impact - Red King and Gomora in Ultraman both showcase the creativity of the show’s designs while having unique personalities and power sets that really leave an impact on the viewer.

When creating your main kaiju, consider the following questions:

- What if your monster’s main motivation?  Is it looking for something?  If so, what?  Is it seeking revenge?  If so, why?  Is it defending its territory?  Is it investigating civilization?  Is it searching for food?  Company?  The greatest kaiju characters have clear and defined motivations to bring them into the plot, just like all good characters do.  What is your monster’s drive?

- How tough is your monster?  Kaiju generally get into a lot of violent conflicts, so determining how much punishment your monster can both withstand and dole out is important.

- What are your monsters’ vulnerabilities?  This includes both physical weaknesses and psychological ones.  Are they weakened by the cold?  Incapable of flight?  Slow moving?  Quick to anger?  Stupid?

- What strengths/powers does your monster have?  Can it heal fast?  Is it smart?  Does it have unique weapons?  Is it creative?

- What quirks does your kaiju have?  Is it gluttonous?  Cocky?  Graceful?  Clumsy?  Does it beat its chest or dance in triumph?  Does it cackle maniacally while wreaking havoc?

- What is your monster’s relationship to humanity?  Does it hate humans?  View them as food?  Feel indifferent to them?  Is curious about them?  Cares for them?  How does humanity feel about it in turn?  Does this relationship change over the course of the story?

- What is your monster’s attitude towards other monsters?  Is it hostile towards them?  Friendly?  Indifferent?  Does its attitude vary depending on the monster?  Is its attitude mostly consistent with a few exceptions?  Does it have friends?  Enemies?

- How did your monster come to be?  Is it an atomic mutant?  A mythic beast?  A space alien?  A prehistoric creature from a forgotten age?  We’ll dive into the archetypes associated with these origins later, but keep the question in mind.

Part 3: Other Kaiju Roles

Once your main kaiju is figured out, you can start building the cast proper in reaction to it.  There are LOTS of ways you can do this, but I’m going to focus on a few common roles supporting kaiju have to play:

- The Arch Enemy: the King Ghidorah to your kaiju’s Godzilla, the Gyaos to its Gamera, the arch enemy is exactly what it sounds like: your main kaiju’s recurring nemesis, a big bastard of a monster that your main kaiju absolutely hates.  You don’t have to limit yourself to one of these, of course - most main kaiju in fiction have a LOT of enemies, since monster battles are one of the main draws of a kaiju story. At the same time, most kaiju stories also tend to have one kaiju that is more wicked than most, whose grudge with the main kaiju is more vicious than normal.  Creating an arch enemy for your main kaiju is a good way to give your story structure - every protagonist needs a primary antagonist to struggle against.

- The Guardian of the Earth: a lot of main kaiju tend to be anti-heroes, often starting off as enemies of mankind before slowly becoming protectors of the earth.  As a result, a lot of kaijuverses often include an explicitly good kaiju who exists in contrast to both the main kaiju AND the main kaiju’s enemies.  If the Arch Enemy kaiju is often what the main kaiju could become if they don’t change their ways, the Guardian of the Earth is what the main kaiju usually works towards being.  Or, in short: every Godzilla needs a Mothra to be the angel on their shoulder.

- The Damage Sponge: Sometimes there are kaiju who are famous not for their prodigious destructive power, but rather for their ability to endure ridiculous amounts of damage, even by kaiju standards.  The damage sponge normally isn’t the main kaiju, since the main kaiju’s job is to establish a baseline, while the damage sponge is defined by being more durable than other monsters.

- The Runt: a smaller than usual kaiju, who often compensates by being faster and more clever than the usual kaiju.

- The Giant Among Giants: the kaiju that makes other kaiju feel small, generally used to escalate the plot by its sheer power.

- The Rival Turned Ally: since kaiju generally socialize by fighting, most kaiju friendships begin with an unsuccessful fight to the death.  Often your main kaiju will have at least one friend who began as a bitter enemy.

- The Big Eater: In large kaiju casts where the kaiju have different motivations and morals, there will almost always be one kaiju whose ethos can be defined as “neutral hungry.”  It’s not good, it’s not evil, it just wants to eat, and unfortunately everyone else looks like a viable meal.

- The Brute: while all kaiju are generally violent and tough, the Brute takes it to another level.  Its violence will be more extreme, its bloodthirstiness beyond compare, and its raw strength will surpass most if not all of the other monsters on the cast list.

- The Clever Bastard: like the Brute, the Clever Bastard makes for a harder than normal fight.  However, instead of relying on sheer strength, the Clever Bastard uses cunning to make the fight more vicious, being a devious schemer who thinks significantly more than the average monster.  It may also have more than a few tricks to its biology to help it as well, and generally manages to throw the heroes off guard by doing things they wouldn’t expect.

- The Innocent: in a world full of violent monsters, this kaiju is a notable exception for its sweetness and (relative) vulnerability.  It means no harm and often has few ways to defend itself, and as a result is generally imperiled by the more vicious and bloodthirsty giants in the setting.  The main kaiju may actively try to protect it, though the harsh world of kaiju means its likelihood of survival is rather slim.

Part 4: Kaiju Archetypes

Ok, now that we’ve talked about the more substantive personality based stuff, let’s get onto some fun surface details.  The origin and design of your kaiju are important in their own right, but work best when they are made in service of your kaiju’s personality and role in the story.  A lot of people start with these archetypes first - “I’m gonna make a fire breathing reptile!” - and while this can result in a good monster design, it doesn’t necessarily translate into a memorable kaiju character.  Tailoring the design and origin to your kaiju’s role and personality, on the other hand, is more likely to result in a character we remember, since the design is now more than a surface detail - it’s an extension of the character.

Archetype 1: The Fire Breathing Reptile - best exemplified by the big two, Godzilla and Gamera, almost every kaijuverse has at least one big reptilian monster, and that monster likewise almost always has the ability to breath fire.  It calls back to the many European dragon myths, and is just a fun visual in general.  This archetype is so prolific that many modern kaijuverses actually skip it because it’s considered cliche, but while it may be hard to make a fire breathing reptile kaiju standout, the trope is still a classic and one many people think of as synonymous with the genre.

Archetype 2: The Big Ape - similarly, King Kong has made giant apes a staple of the genre, to the point where they are almost as common as fire breathing reptiles are.  King Kong vs. Godzilla in turn made it customary to pit these two archetypes against each other, and as a result every kaiju story that has both a fire breathing reptile and a big ape will almost always portray them as natural enemies.  The Big Ape is one of the archetypes that is most likely to be presented as sympathetic/heroic, following the logic that more closely related to humanity a creature is, the more noble it must be.

Archetype 3: The Magnified Bug - since kaiju are in part defined by being way bigger than an animal has any right to be, one of the most extreme visuals you can bring to a kaiju design is to take something that is normally very small and make it HUGE, because this emphasizes just how exaggeratedly big the kaiju is.  As a result, giant arthropods - insects, spiders, etc. - are very common in the genre, as they really sell the idea of kaiju being unnaturally enormous creatures.  Magnified bugs are generally not treated as sympathetic kaiju for the same reason big apes usually are - if we treat “more human = more good” as true, then bugs, being distantly related to humanity, can’t be very good creatures.  However, there is at least one prominent and notable exception to this rule, and to be honest it’s a rather shitty rule anyway.

Archetype 4: The Mechanical Doppelganger

Ever since Mechani-Kong stepped onto the silver screen, it has been a tradition for a main kaiju to have a robot or cyborg made in their image as part of their rogues gallery.  Hell, even Gomora from Ultraman got one, and that’s a show where the monsters aren’t protagonists!  Like the previous tropes, this is one that comes to mind when people think of the genre, as countless parodies (including an infamous episode of South Park) have shown.

Archetype 5: The Alien Invader - a monster from another planet, with all the strange biological quirks such an origin implies.  In Monster Saves the World kaiju stories, the alien is usually brought in late in the tale to heighten the stakes by delivering a stranger threat than the usual kaiju.  In Humanity Saves the World kaiju stories, however, most kaiju tend to be alien in origin, which is used to justify wiping them out since they are an invasive species by nature.  Alien kaiju are rarely sympathetic or heroic.

Archetype 6: The Mutant - whether the result of atomic fallout, genetic engineering, pollution, or some other unnatural mistake, the mutant is a new lifeform whose monstrous form is the direct result of humanity breaking the natural order of things.  A LOT of kaiju are mutants, as the kaiju genre began during the atomic age as a direct reaction to the discoveries of what radiation could do to living creatures (discoveries that ranged from “Wow these radioactive fruits are really big!” to “Oh god this radioactive man is full of tumors!”).  When a mutant is in a kaiju story, it exists at least partially to point out how humanity is screwing up.

Archetype 7: The Prehistoric Monster - often (but not necessarily) going hand in hand with the fire breathing reptile, the prehistoric monster is a kaiju whose kind lived millions of years before humanity evolved, in a time when giants ruled the earth.  It is only a monster now because the world moved on while it didn’t - small creatures took over while it slumbered in some hidden location.  This trope is becoming less common now that science has marched on and we treat the giant fauna of prehistory less like monsters and more like, y’know, actual animals, but it’s still a fun one to play with even if it has little basis in actual science.

Archetype 8: The Sea Monster - the ocean is full of weird animal life, and creatures are able to get much larger underwater than they can on land.  As a result, giant sea monsters are a trope as old as story-telling itself, and are particularly prominent in kaiju fiction.  Sea monster kaiju have a tendency to be particularly huge and abstract as kaiju go - one of the perks of hailing from a relatively alien environment.

Archetype 9: The Mythic Monster - While the earliest kaiju stories lean more sci-fi than fantasy, the genre quickly stretched to take elements from both.  As a result, it is just as common to see kaiju based on real life myths as it is to see ones that are atomic mutants or space aliens.  In fact, some of the bigger names in the kaiju genre have even alternated between having sci-fi and mythic origins, being atomic mutants in one tale and guardian monsters of ancient kingdoms in the next.

Archetype 10: The Defense Robot - Often (but not always) overlapping with the Mechanical Doppelganger, this enormous mecha is humanity’s ultimate weapon in the struggle to survive a world filled with kaiju.  The actually effectiveness of the defense robot varies from story to story, but they often have greater offensive capabilities than flesh and blood kaiju while at the same time being a lot less durable.  The Defense Robot rarely gets out of a battle unscathed - though it just as often comes back with a new remodeled look to fight another day (and also sell more toys).

Archetype 11: The Human Kaiju - most common in Humanity Saves the World from Kaiju stories, the human kaiju is, well, a human who becomes a kaiju.  Sometimes it’s a temporary transformation, other times it’s permanent.  Human kaiju are almost always the main characters of their given story, as the story potential of a human who can take the fight to the monsters is VAST.

Archetype 12: The Blob - our final archetype will be the blob, because sometimes you just want a big ol’ heap of goo in your story.

Conclusion

To reiterate, none of these things should be considered “requirements” for a kaiju story.  Think of this as a set of guidelines rather than strict rules to follow.  Many of the best kaiju stories have thought outside these archetypes, roles, and character questions, so you should by no means feel constricted to follow these ideas to the letter.  However, if you want to start on your kaijuverse but don’t know where to begin, please consider this as a starting point.  If you work with this approach, I think you’ll be on your way to making a fun cast of giant monsters in no time!

[talysings]

The Keepers’ Rite

Pressed in amongst the next pages in the diary are a dried flower from a bouquet . . . and a strange leaf with a scent not unlike mint.

The charging boar’s blood red eyes shone with fury through the downpour as it closed the distance between us. As I strained against the shackle on my leg, my hands sought for weapons which were not there. There was no time for terror, there was only a sort of cold-calculation in my mind as I ticked off the very few options available to me.

That was the worst moment, I think . . . and also, in a way, the best. Because it was uncomplicated. There was life, and there was death. There were no questions of morality, no time for thoughts of those I had disappointed or failed, no time to feel sorry for myself or for dreams which haven’t come true. Life . . . death . . . and the actions that would determine which.

But this, of course, was later. First, there was the parting of ways. I performed in the Palazzo Aldenard’s Children’s Theater in a delightful play directed by Mr. Popito. He is a thoughtful director, and never yelled at us during rehearsal . . . though there were threats of fines for “Awoo”-ing, which some are prone to do. I’m not sure how that is considered disturbing the peace, but there it is. (Side note: I have found a closet in the upstairs of the Palazzo where one can let out an “Awoo” without being caught. Not that I’ve done so or anything.) The crowd was good, and the children the parents brought all seemed to enjoy the plays we put on. Afterward, I spoke to Savo, Fhey, Hani, and Hunter, who all came. I looked for Vylette after the show, but I guess she didn’t attend. I . . . suppose I understand why. And honestly, as much as I want to see her, maybe it’s better I didn’t. I don’t want to cause her any more pain than I already have with my selfishness. Hani and Hunter did not know about my upcoming journey, and since I had not yet told them of the whole tale leading up to this moment, I gave them a very abbreviated version. Everyone wished me luck, but I could sense the trepidation beneath the cheery masks they pretended to.

And so as dawn broke the next day, I was off for the Shroud. My plan was to be in the place I needed to be by well before nightfall, when the Keepers would be waking for their hunts.

This particular band lives very deep in the East Shroud, not far from the Sylphlands. The forest there is thick and dark, even by day. I arrived where I wished to be, set up a small campsite, and then climbed a nearby tree, where I took a nap on a large branch as I waited.

Years of standing different watches as a scout has given me the ability to awaken at a specific time, and I wanted to be awake before they arrived. Therefore, I awoke at sunset, though it was barely noticeable through the trees. Not long after, the Keepers approached my campsite, and began looking around for me. I whistled from the trees above them, which caught them off guard.

“I brought what you asked,” I said, and tossed a jar of the honey down to them. The leader caught it in one hand, her arm moving in isolation from the rest of her body, her gaze intent. She turned her eyes to look at the jar, hefted it as if to judge its weight, and then turned her eyes back to me. “This is all you brought? Hardly enough for a biscuit,” she opined. “You’ll need to go back for more.”

As I mentioned in a previous entry, this was not unanticipated. Vylette had predicted that they would attempt such a scam. I feigned surprise. “Not enough? Do you know what I had to go through for that? How . . . how much more do you need?”

The leader smiled. “3 jars of this size should be sufficient,” she said. “Come back when you have them.” She began to turn away.

“A moment,” I said. As she turned back, I pulled two more jars from my pack, which I had been using as a pillow. I tossed them down. “This should be enough, then . . . if you are as good as your word.” The surprise on her face was evident. She wrestled briefly with a response. In that moment, I leapt down from my branch and approached her.

I knew I had showed her up, and that part of her probably wished to strike me down for the affront, though her own sense of honor (Fhey often decries the idea of Keeper honor, but I think she confuses honor with the law sometimes. Keepers have a code.) kept her from doing so. She had made a deal, thinking I would not survive to return. I decided to appeal to the honor I sensed she had.

I knelt before her, and held my bow up to her. “Test me,” I said. “As my mother was once tested. Let me know what she knew.”

She regarded me for what seemed an eternity. Finally, she said, “Will you do whatever we ask, without question?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Will you accept our judgment, whatever it may be?”

“Yes.”

“Even if that judgment is that you be sacrificed for your failure?”

I swallowed. “Yes,” I whispered. She held my eyes a moment longer, than took my bow. “They you shall be given the Rite,” she said. “Sisters?”

The band closed around me, two of them taking each of my arms. The leader stepped closer. “I am Qina Moshantu.  You will call me Matron.” As I started to give her my name, she silenced me. “No,” she said. “If you become one of us, then we shall know your name.” She glanced at my ears. “Remove those clasps,” she decreed. Her warriors began to take off my ear clasps. She could see the concern in my eyes.

“You object already?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s only . . . they were from my mother.”

“Your devotion to your mother is evident, and honorable,” she said, “but you have not the right to wear them yet. Your mother should have known that. We will hold them, should the moment come when the right is yours.” As I nodded, she looked again at her warriors. “Purify her,” she said, “in the spring. Then meet me at the pit.”

The women took me on a walk through the night to a small meadow open to the night sky. In it lay a small pond bathed in moonlight. They undressed me, and in the bluish light of the night they bathed me, chanting to Menphina as they did. I said nothing, and none of them spoke to me. None of them could know how difficult this was for me, to remain stoic as strangers touched me, exposed as I had never been exposed before in front of so many. Yet oddly, as the process continued, I began to relax, to feel a sense of . . . connection to them. There was nothing for me to hide behind, and in a way, that was freeing.

They marched me back through the forest, still naked, until we reached a place in the forest where deep pit in the forest floor had been carved out, perhaps by some prehistoric flood. A rope was produced, and using it, I was instructed to climb down into the pit. The Matron followed me down. She took me to the center of the pit and bid me stand there. “Arms out,” she said. I obeyed.

She produced the honey I had brought with me, and a brush. She began to apply the honey to my skin, eventually covering me completely. Only my the hair on my head was left without such a coating. In the warmth of the spring night, it was uncomfortable and sticky, but I said nothing.

When she was done, she looked at me. “A sister of the moon must be able to remain motionless,” she said, “no matter what. The lives of her sisters may depend on it. You will stand here without moving until I tell you that you may move. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. She gave a curt nod, then swiftly climbed out of the pit. Even as she did so, I noticed the ants beginning to come out of the walls of the pit. They were large ants, as big as one of my fingers, and they clearly had the scent of the honey. In short time, they found me, and began to crawl up my body. Soon, I was covered in both honey and a milling layer of ants. Still, I did not move.

“Now,” called the Matron, “climb out. Silently.” I looked for the rope, but they had pulled it up after the Matron. I would have to climb the walls of the pit. I walked carefully to the place that looked likeliest, and began to climb.

The first ant bit me almost immediately, disturbed as I placed a foot onto the rock wall for purchase. It was as though a hot poker had been applied to my foot and held there. I stifled the cry that came to my lips, and, after a moment, began again. The bites came more often as I left the floor of the pit behind, and the pain never lessened, only increased with each bite. Halfway up, the Matron called out, “Stop. Hold there.” I clung to the face of the rock, my every impulse to drop back down, to roll on the ground, to tear the creatures from my skin. But I held steady. “Now, climb,” the Matron eventually said. I continued up, the climb becoming harder now as the swelling began to set in all over my limbs. Still, somehow I reached the top, trying not to gasp, and pulled myself onto the ground. I stood, wavering, but on my feet. My eyesight was blurring.

One of the warriors brought an aromatic torch nearby, which produced a great deal of smoke. She wafted the smoke toward me, and when the ants were exposed to it, they fled. Soon, they were off of my body. The Matron examined me, and nodded to her warriors. “Let her clean herself,” she said, then turned to me. “Sleep the day. We will continue at sunset.”

I was taken to a nearby stream, and almost fell into the water. Its coolness was a blessing, and at first I simply lay in it and let the water wash over me. The pain was still excruciating, and showed no signs of fading. I scrubbed the remainder of the honey from my body. When I finally emerged, my clothing was returned to me, and my pack.

I thought about the potion. Someone had delivered me both a bouquet and a potion at the play. Savo gave them to me, but did not tell me who they were from. What she told me made little sense, and before I could pin her down about it, she had left the theater, so I was left to speculate on my own. I considered who might send such a gift, and only one name seemed likely. It was with a pang in my heart that I thought of them.

The potion was called Stone Blood, and would help in closing open wounds. The ant bites did not exactly fit the bill, so I decided to hold onto it. The bites all over my body burned intensely still, and walking was difficult. I stumbled to the base of a tree. One of the warriors caught my arm and helped me sit, which surprised me. There was a look of . . . not approval, necessarily, but maybe surprise? As though she what I had done was unexpected, but welcomed. “Drink this,” she said, and held a flask to my lips. It tasted medicinal, and I began to feel sleepy immediately. As I began to drift off, she pulled a leaf from her pack and began to rub it on the bites. Where the leaf touched, the pain faded somewhat. As the relief increased, I fell deeply asleep.

When I awoke again, the swelling had gone down quite a bit, though the bites were still quite visible. The level of pain was more manageable, and I could move more freely. In front of me sat three warriors. The looked at me expectantly. I climbed to my feet, and they rose up as I did. Wordlessly, they led me to the Matron.

She regarded me as I approached. “You have shown you can follow,” she said, “but at times a sister must also lead. The tempered ones that live on our border have tried to expand their territory into our hunting grounds. This will disrupt the natural order of things, corrupting the very water beneath the soil, as well as that which grows and feeds on it. These warriors are yours,” she gestured to the three who had been with me when I awoke. “Drive them from our lands. But remember—our numbers are few. All must return. Know when to fight, and when to run.”

Fhey had said as much to me before I left. I nodded, and looked to the warriors, who were at the ready. “My bow?” I asked.

“No,” said the Matron. “No weapons for you. They are your weapons. Use them well, and keep them safe.”

So I was not even to be allowed to help? I had not expected that. I have never been a leader in warfare, always part of unit under someone else’s command. The only time I have led anything was directing a play for the Palazzo, and that is hardly the same thing. And since I had no command of huntspeak, I felt even more limited. But I led the warriors away, and off toward the border of the Sylphlands.

The incursion was easy to find. The tempered ones had found a forest spring and doubtless had decided to make it their own. No wonder the Matron is concerned, I thought. The influence of these dark ones would spread from here to wherever else that water touches.

“I don’t speak your huntspeak,” I whispered to the warriors. “But I shall need to signal you.”

“We can’t teach it to you now,” said one of them, an edge in her voice.

“Of course not. But you can teach me how to say “Attack,” and “Withdraw.” And I can point. That will have to be enough.”

So they taught me the two words I needed, and I told them where to go, sending each of them to a different spot in preparation. The sylphs had the greater numbers, especially without me being able to fight. And they had magic, which is always a difficult thing to counter in any battle.

But though I could not fight myself—well, at least I wasn’t supposed to—it did not mean I could do nothing. I crept as close as I dare without being seen. Checking to see that the others were in place, I sprang forth with a cry.

The sylphs reacted with predictable anger. A flash of electricity sizzled through the air, which I dodged. I ran. Many followed me, while a few stayed behind to guard the camp. I ran past the first of my warriors, signaling them to attack. They waited until I had passed, then began to pick off the sylphs in the rear of the pursuers as they passed. I did the same as I passed the hiding spots of each of the other warriors, and their careful shots soon reduced the number of pursuers to nothing. I stopped to catch my breath, the run having been strenuous. All that remained were the sylphs guarding the camp, and their numbers were now few. I directed the warriors to approach from all sides, and again distracted the sylphs by appearing in front of them. As the surprised sylphs angrily confronted me, they were decimated from the other three sides by a rain of arrows.

The warriors returned to me, nodding in satisfaction. But before we left, we burned anything in the area with a touch of corruption to it. We returned to the Matron.

“Is it done?” she asked. I simply nodded. She looked to the warriors.

“The sylphs are gone,” one of them said. “Her plan was cleverly crafted.”

The Matron had a glint in her eye, but nodded. “Good,” she said. “The final task is before you, then.”

She and the warriors led me to a thicket of briars. I noticed some consternation amongst the warriors, but the Matron stifled it. The thicket was quiet, and no other creatures were about, not even the sound of insects. From her pack, she took out a heavy shackle. The Matron gestured, and one of the warriors reluctantly drove the spike on one end of the shackle deep into the ground. The other end they fastened to my left leg.

I have a fear of captivity . . . for obvious reasons. But I held steady. “We are near the lair of an old one,” the Matron said. “None dare trespass on his land. They will arise with the dawn. You will face them, and be judged. Defeat them, or make peace with them, it matters not. If you are alive when we return, you will have succeeded.”

The warriors continued to seem unhappy, but she led them away. One of them whispered, “Here, sister,” and placed a vial in my hand. It was the Stone Blood potion. I stashed it in my shirt. “You may be an outsider, but this is not right,” she whispered, giving my shoulder a squeeze before hurrying to catch up to the others.

I judged how much time remained before sunrise, and laid down to get what sleep I could before whatever was going to awaken did so.

I awoke just before dawn, and tested the boundaries my shackle would allow me to roam within—how far I could run, essentially, or jump. I kept watch in all directions, not sure from which way the “old one” would approach.

The light of morning was diminished by an encroaching storm, yet as the rain began to fall I heard heavy footfalls coming though the wood. A wild boar appeared, such as I had never imagined could live. It was massive both in height and breadth, and it sniffed the air angrily. It noticed me quickly, and I braced myself for the charge I knew was imminent.

Which is where I began this tale. And so it lumbered across the space between us, the ground shaking from its passage. I gazed into those eyes, red with anger and . . . something else. Pain? I was familiar with both, and recognized them. A look passed between us, a moment of understanding, though it did nothing to slow the charge.

When it was almost upon me, I looked to my right, hoping to draw the attention of the creature that way, if only for a moment. The ploy worked, and it broke its gaze on me for the smallest of instants. I leapt the moved the other direction and leapt up, so that my shackle went under the enormous and caught the creature’s legs. While it did succeed in tripping the beast, its forward motion pulled the chain viciously along with it, flinging me to the ground before the creature. I was stunned briefly, as was the “old one.” I regained my feet first, though I was bleeding severely in the area of shackle. Staggering, I wrapped the chain several times around the creature’s snout. As I did so, I noticed an unpleasant odor emanating from its mouth. Looking closer, I noticed one of its tusks was clearly infected. That’s where its pain is coming from, I thought. I felt pity for the beast.

Feeling weaker from loss of blood, I took out the potion and treated my leg to stop the bleeding. It was immediately effective, and I gave silent thanks to whoever had sent it to me (was it her?), then turned back to the beast, which was trying now to regain its feet. Our eyes met a second time, and I reached out to gently touch its snout, murmuring calming sounds. I rubbed the potion onto the infection, hoping it would numb the area to pain. Finally, bracing my legs, I gripped its tusk with both hands and pulled as hard as I could.

The tusk broke free rather more easily than I expected, probably because the infection was so deep. The boar roared in pain despite the potion, though, and reared up. This had two effect: I was pulled up into the air by my leg, and the boar was pulled back down by the end still buried in the earth.

I landed on top of the boar’s head, and took hold of its rough hair. From this perch, I poured more of the potion on the empty place where the tusk had been, leaving me with none left. The boar calmed, however, and as the storm continued, I tried to urge the boar into motion.

It began to pull on the chain, once more attempting to gain its freedom, and with its great strength, it eventually wrenched the shackle from the ground. I slid from the boar’s head and unwrapped the chain from its snout. We regarded each other for a moment in the midst of the tempest. Finally, it lumbered away. Was it allowing me to live in thanks for removing the source of its pain? I shall never know.

The storm continued throughout the day, and as night fell it raged on. I returned to the Keeper’s campsite to find them sheltered beneath the trees. Lightning flashed as I strode into the campsite, dragging the shackle behind me, and holding aloft the boar’s tusk.

“For you,” I said, and tossed it at the Matron’s feet. With a last flash of lightning, the storm abated, and it grew very quiet in the forest.

The Matron said nothing for a moment, then bent and retrieved the tusk. She nodded. “Menphina has smiled on you,” she said, disbelief in her voice.

“Tell her,” said one of the others. “She should know,” said another.

The Matron sighed. “I think I wanted you to fail,” she said. “It is tradition that you be tested with the shackle like this, but the choice of opponent . . . it was unfair to choose an old one of the forest for such a task. I have disgraced myself in the eyes of Menphina. You clearly have her favor.”

I shook my head. “I honor Menphina, though she is not my patron. But she is a goddess of love. I don’t think she favors me at all.”

“Menphina works in her own time. How else could you have survived the Rite?” asked the Matron.

“Then it is over?”

“Yes,” she said. “You may not be a Keeper like us, but you are a sister of the moon now. Tell us, sister, what should we call you?”

I gave them the only name they would understand. “Ahlia Chelewae,” I said.

There was a murmur among the warriors. “Chelewae?” said the Matron. “Your mother was a Chelewae? Few of that name remain . . . but there is strength in that bloodline. Now Menphina’s choice makes more sense. Now, let us celebrate.

Dry wood was brought out, and a fire soon raged. “The ear clasps,” the Matron said with a gesture. A warrior produced them and approached. In the flickering light, I could see the silver of their making was no longer bright.

“They’re red,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes,” said the Matron. “They are like ours now, stained with the blood of your sisters, then covered with a clear resin. They will bind you to us always, now.” She reached up and attached them to my ears. “Welcome, Ahlia. Now greet your sisters.”

My face was painted like a warrior’s, and the celebration began. We danced through the night around the fire, and played music that thrummed like the blood running through my veins. At dawn, I bid them farewell, with embraces and clasping of hands. I wondered how my mother, who had rejected all this, would feel about what I had done. Would she be angry? Or would she be pleased I now had sisters she was never able to give me?

I traveled swiftly, pausing to rest from my exertions only briefly, and traveled to the North Shroud. My feet once again took me to Fallgourd Float, and in the Bobbing Cork I confronted the Elezen gentleman who had first put this task to me. He was quite shocked to see me arrive in full war paint.

“I have done as you asked,” I said. “Now, tell me what I wish to know, starting with who you are, and for whom do you work?”

“My name is Gallafort Regier,” he said, “but my employer’s name must still remain a secret.” He glance at the ear clasps and nodded. “So you succeeded, after all. I am surprised, I must admit, though my employer will be pleased. Yet there is more that must be done.”

“More?” I said, stepping closer, in what must have been a threatening posture with my current appearance. “Do you have any idea what I have been through?”

“Only some,” he admitted. “Yet the test is not complete. You have explored your mother’s heritage, but what of your father’s?” He handed me an envelope. “The same task is before you as before: gain the favor of a Seeker tribe. Prove yourself your father’s child as well. Then return to me here.”

“What’s this?” I asked, waving the envelope.

“A name. Ask for them in Forgotten Springs, and you will find direction. Or don’t, and resolve yourself to failing the test.”

I turned and strode away, and walked out of Fallgourd Float toward home. After everything . . . how could more be asked? Was a house worth all of this?

Yet I knew this had become about more than just a house. In my heart, I knew Regier was right, and that I was only half done. Still there was a lot to consider. I knew who I wanted to talk things over with . . . and I also knew, it wasn’t possible. My heart clenched, and my breath caught in my throat.

I opened the envelope on the walk home.

[dailycharacteroption]

Saurian Champion (Cavalier Archetype)

This week we’re doing something experimental with the entries: Adding images! For now they’ll be mostly stock images, but who knows, maybe I’ll put in some work contacting folks to get permission for higher-quality art. Be sure to give me feedback on what you guys think!

  If you have ever been a child at all, you’ve probably wanted a pet dinosaur of your very own. There are plenty of ways to relive those fantasies in Pathfinder, from playing a druid with either wild shape and/or a saurian animal companion, or a ranger, or even certain cavalier archetypes like the one we are focused on today.

Of course, the big issue with having any companion or mount using the standard rules is that normally, the bigger beasts in the vast selection tend to cap out at large size, even if a fully-grown adult of the species is normally bigger than that, leaving you with a juvenile all the way to 20th level. Not so with today’s archetype, as these warriors utilize the might of dinosaurs to their fullest ability, though at the expense of many of the trappings of the cavalier class.

Indeed, you may find these champions make the most sense in savage lands where primeval beasts roam. Those that do have a stronger connection to civilization no doubt belong to societies with a strong connection to these ancient beasts.

 The saurian champion, while favoring honor and glory much like any cavalier, fights very differently from a traditional mounted combatant, eschewing lances and most ranged weapons in favor of weapons they can swing or throw. Additionally, they only see creatures larger than a human to be true challenges, and don’t put in as much effort when challenging such small foes. That being said, they fight harder the bigger the foe is, eager to prove their might.

Additionally, these cavaliers have little interest in the orders and trappings of traditional cavaliers, forgoing having an order at all.

What they do focus on, however, is training a mighty dinosaur companion. They even learn how to distribute their weight to ride those of equal size to them until they grow enough to properly support them, and are experts at gauging the strength of their mount and distributing weight, increasing the cargo they can carry. Naturally, they also train their mount to better use their natural weaponry in conjunction with the rider’s skills.

With such a large surface area, these warriors don’t so much sit on their mounts as they do clamber around their backs, making it easier for them to dodge oncoming blows.

So strong is their bond with their saurian mounts that these mighty beasts are resistant to nearly all types of mental effects. Furthermore, not even death or the perversion of nature holds sway over them, ignoring the unnatural aura of monstrous foes, or even that of their own master, should they fall to some curse or form of undeath. These resistances only increase with time.

Though their mounts are massive, these warriors construct custom saddles and know the best places to grab and step to rapidly mount their beasts in a hurry.

Whether by selecting a mount coming into a turn of age, a particularly hearty and massive specimen, or some other blessing, eventually these beasts grow even bigger than what you normally see with companion-based classes, truly reflecting the massive nature of most dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts.

If the vanilla cavalier relies in part upon their mount to be effective, this goes double for a saurian champion, whose massive mounts may eventually become too big to go on your average dungeon crawl. Remove ceilings and tight corridors from the equation, however, and at high levels you’ve got a powerful mount that the cavalier can use to the best of their abilities. With the limitations on weaponry though, you’ll definitely want to pack a reach weapon as well, just in case you get a GM that factors your height into your reach when you’re mounted.

A further note on the mounts, though the archetype specifically says dinosaur, I would personally allow players to also pick any large, reptilian cryptid with a clear dinosaur basis as well, such as the mokele-mbembe.

 Their tendency to dwell in wild, dinosaur-filled places, lack of order and implied philosophy behind it, and tendency to stay away from traditional forms of mounted combat could mean that in many case, these warriors are mistaken for other classes, namely barbarians. Despite not having much tactical know-how either, they remain their own particular beast in their own right.

  Deep beneath the surface, the Star-Gem jungle is a vast cavern containing a primordial rainforest beneath a ceiling of glowing crystals which fluctuate in brightness. There, where primeval animals of a bygone era and earth magics mix, do kingdoms of oreads rule, herding the saurian fauna as surface dwellers might herd cattle or horses. The most coveted mounts of these planetouched are the beasts touched by the elemental power of earth as well.

 Bal-Ashon is a self-proclaimed “purveyor of exotic reptiles” as evidenced by his familiar, a calligraphy wyrm. The party has been hired to as bodyguards in shipping a powerful tyrannosaurus rex across the country to a prospective noble buyer. However, said beast is actually the mount of a powerful dinosaur rider, and he wants his trusted friend back.

 Very few people have ever seen a mokele-mbembe and come away unscathed, and even fewer people can be said to have seen the bandit known as the River King without losing their lives or their possession, for the mighty warrior has tamed a particularly impressive specimen among the elusive water reptile’s species, and they are a terrifying duo together.

[dndbackstories]

Stonesong: a prehistoric campaign setting outline.

Everyone knows the world of dragons and castles. Of danger in dungeons. Of steel ringing and the peace of a village.

But there is a time before the first forge was lit. Before the first homestead was built. Before the races had even met one another since the splitting world.

Unlike many other items you will find on this blog, this is not a back story. I hope this will inspire others to run a prehistoric campaign, because the opportunity it presents in opening your world up. It explores your world as it likely has never been seen before.

The first step will be organising your players. Since this setting is so different, it is unlikely your characters will be a hodgepodge of different races. Additionally, discourage arcane magics. Think of what magical aptitude could be found in your world. Maybe sorcerers, druids, and clerics are ok, but bards, wizards, and warlocks are out. Remember the primitive nature of your setting, and keep in mind that magic will be viewed with superstition, awe, and fear. Skills too will need some adjustment: eliminate arcane, and the tool proficiencies, replace them with more advanced nature, and survival checks.

If you do not know a lot about survival, look at survival blogs. Google hunting and trapping. Learn what it takes to create a tool or weapon. When your characters make or find a weapon, think carefully about the race that made the weapon: environment, resources, and other uses. I.E. Dwarves would probably not use a boomerang, and Elves have access to many wood and amber resources, but little metal or stone.

How will any given race react to meeting another race? Are your elves pure, and magical? Or do they take after their Fae idols and kidnap children? Are your races going to go around making halflings everywhere they go? Additionally different races may be at different stages of development, so your gnomes look down on the barbaric humans? Are they teachers? Or do they follow the prime directive? Even within races, you have different tribes and factions. Different gods.

The game itself will also be different. Your characters do not have access to those dried rations yo get them through long journeys without having to worry about hunting and gathering. Instead, you should absolutely enjoy some hunting and gathering missions in place of long dungeons. Think of what it takes to track or trap a stag. The tracks in the snow, broken branches, trails and flattened grasses all tell of the animals location. Throw in a few details like a melted patch, or a burned tree. Gently hint there may be a magical beast around. What lurks in the waters when your dwarf party gathers snails from the underlake? The deep snow can shift as your orcs dig for treenuts. You should dig through your monster manual and choose enemies based on region, or let Xanathar do it for you.

Finally, some suggestions for weapons, armor, tools and traps.

An additional rule for weapons and armor.

Crude: weapons or armor that may break. These are easy items to find, like stones, sticks, bones, ice, and so on. Give an item hit points at creation or finding. When it inflicts or takes that much damage, it breaks and is no longer usable in that form. (Long stick might become heavy stick or just stick)

Treated: these weapons are sturdier, and do not break as easily. But it has more material cost and time.

You can use these to replace items in the phb. These items can also be made of bone, shell, coral, wood, ice, anything you think your players may have access too. Feel free to add any prehistoric weapon or armor, There are literally hundreds.

Weapons

Rock

Sharp rock

Heavy rock

Stick

Sharp stick

Heavy stick

Club

Stick with sharp (rocks, teeth, amber, shell pieces, chitin etc.)

Heavy stick with sharp

Long stick

Atlatl

Bow and arrow

Bone hoe

Small stick with heavy rock on it.

Armor:

Hide

Wood

Bone

Fur

Chitin

Shell

Traps:

Snare

Counterweight

Pit fall

Bow/dart trap

Glue

Weight drop

There are many other traps, weapons and armors, but they are at your disposal, and you have ideas of your own that will better suit your worlds.

I hope you have enjoyed this guide. I will likely expand upon it in the coming months as I playtest, balance, and expose it to a larger playerbase. Please let me know your experience if you use it. I would love to know what stories your minds can create.

[moodboardinthecloud]

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

Ursula K. Le Guin

In the temperate and tropical regions where it appears that hominids evolved into human beings, the principal food of the species was vegetable. Sixty-five to eighty percent of what human beings ate in those regions in Paleolithic, Neolithic, and prehistoric times was gathered; only in the extreme Arctic was meat the staple food. The mammoth hunters spectacularly occupy the cave wall and the mind, but what we actually did to stay alive and fat was gather seeds, roots, sprouts, shoots, leaves, nuts, berries, fruits, and grains, adding bugs and mollusks and netting or snaring birds, fish, rats, rabbits, and other tuskless small fry to up the protein. And we didn’t even work hard at it — much less hard than peasants slaving in somebody else’s field after agriculture was invented, much less hard than paid workers since civilization was invented. The average prehistoric person could make a nice living in about a fifteen-hour work week.

Fifteen hours a week for subsistence leaves a lot of time for other things. So much time that maybe the restless ones who didn’t have a baby around to enliven their life, or skill in making or cooking or singing, or very interesting thoughts to think, decided to slope off and hunt mammoths. The skillful hunters would come staggering back with a load of meat, a lot of ivory, and a story. It wasn’t the meat that made the difference. It was the story.

It is hard to tell a really gripping tale of how I wrestled a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats.... No, it does not compare, it cannot compete with how I thrust my spear deep into the titanic hairy flank while Oob, impaled on one huge sweeping tusk, writhed screaming, and blood sprouted everywhere in crimson torrents, and Boob was crushed to jelly when the mammoth fell on him as I shot my unerring arrow straight through eye to brain.

That story not only has Action, it has a Hero. Heroes are powerful. Before you know it, the men and women in the wild-oat patch and their kids and the skills of makers and the thoughts of the thoughtful and the songs of the singers are all part of it, have all been pressed into service in the tale of the Hero. But it isn’t their story. It’s his.

When she was planning the book that ended up as Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf wrote a heading in her notebook, “Glossary”; she had thought of reinventing English according to her new plan, in order to tell a different story. One of the entries in this glossary is heroism, defined as “botulism.” And hero, in Woolf’s dictionary, is “bottle.” The hero as bottle, a stringent reevaluation. I now propose the bottle as hero.

Not just the bottle of gin or wine, but bottle in its older sense of container in general, a thing that holds something else.

If you haven’t got something to put it in, food will escape you — even something as uncombative and unresourceful as an oat. You put as many as you can into your stomach while they are handy, that being the primary container; but what about tomorrow morning when you wake up and it’s cold and raining and wouldn’t it be good to have just a few handfuls of oats to chew on and give little Oom to make her shut up, but how do you get more than one stomachful and one handful home? So you get up and go to the damned soggy oat patch in the rain, and wouldn’t it be a good thing if you had something to put Baby Oo Oo in so that you could pick the oats with both hands? A leaf a gourd shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient.

The first cultural device was probably a recipient.... Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier.

So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women’s Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975). But no, this cannot be. Where is that wonderful, big, long, hard thing, a bone, I believe, that the Ape Man first bashed somebody in the movie and then, grunting with ecstasy at having achieved the first proper murder, flung up into the sky, and whirling there it became a space ship thrusting its way into the cosmos to fertilize it and produce at the end of the movie a lovely fetus, a boy of course, drifting around the Milky Way without (oddly enough) any womb, any matrix at all? I don’t know. I don’t even care. I’m not telling that story. We’ve heard it, we’ve all heard about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news.

And yet old. Before — once you think about it, surely long before — the weapon, a late, luxurious, superfluous tool; long before the useful knife and ax; right along with the indispensable whacker, grinder, and digger — for what’s the use of digging up a lot of potatoes if you have nothing to lug the ones you can’t eat home in — with or before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home. It makes sense to me. I am an adherent of what Fisher calls the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution.

This theory not only explains large areas of theoretical obscurity and avoids large areas of theoretical nonsense (inhabited largely by tigers, foxes, and other highly territorial mammals); it also grounds me, personally, in human culture in a way I never felt grounded before. So long as culture was explained as originating from and elaborating upon the use of long, hard objects for sticking, bashing, and killing, I never thought that I had, or wanted, any particular share in it. (“What Freud mistook for her lack of civilization is woman’s lack of loyalty to civilization,” Lillian Smith observed.) The society, the civilization they were talking about, these theoreticians, was evidently theirs; they owned it, they liked it; they were human, fully human, bashing, sticking, thrusting, killing. Wanting to be human too, I sought for evidence that I was; but if that’s what it took, to make a weapon and kill with it, then evidently I was either extremely defective as a human being, or not human at all.

That’s right, they said. What you are is a woman. Possibly not human at all, certainly defective. Now be quiet while we go on telling the Story of the Ascent of Man the Hero.

Go on, say I, wandering off towards the wild oats, with Oo Oo in the sling and little Oom carrying the basket. You just go on telling how the mammoth fell on Boob and how Cain fell on Abel and how the bomb fell on Nagasaki and how the burning jelly fell on the villagers and how the missiles will fall on the Evil Empire, and all the other steps in the Ascent of Man.

If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again — if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.

Not, let it be said at once, an unaggressive or uncombative human being. I am an aging, angry woman laying mightily about me with my handbag, fighting hoodlums off. However I don’t, nor does anybody else, consider myself heroic for doing so. It’s just one of those damned things you have to do in order to be able to go on gathering wild oats and telling stories.

It is the story that makes the difference. It is the story that hid my humanity from me, the story the mammoth hunters told about bashing, thrusting, raping, killing, about the Hero. The wonderful, poisonous story of Botulism. The killer story.

It sometimes seems that the story is approaching its end. Lest there be no more telling of stories at all, some of us out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we’d better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one’s finished. Maybe. The trouble is, we’ve all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.

It’s unfamiliar, it doesn’t come easily, thoughtlessly, to the lips as the killer story does; but still, “untold” was an exaggeration. People have been telling the life story for ages, in all sorts of words and ways. Myths of creation and transformation, trickster stories, folktales, jokes, novels....

The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over, that being his imperial nature and uncontrollable impulse, to take everything over and run it while making stern decrees and laws to control his uncontrollable impulse to kill it. So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight thereand THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn’t any good if he isn’t in it.

I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

One relationship among elements in the novel may well be that of conflict, but the reduction of narrative to conflict is absurd. (I have read a how-to-write manual that said, “A story should be seen as a battle,” and went on about strategies, attacks, victory, etc.) Conflict, competition, stress, struggle, etc., within the narrative conceived as carrier bag/belly/box/house/medicine bundle, may be seen as necessary elements of a whole which itself cannot be characterized either as conflict or as harmony, since its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process.

Finally, it’s clear that the Hero does not look well in this bag. He needs a stage or a pedestal or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like a rabbit, like a potato.

That is why I like novels: instead of heroes they have people in them.

So, when I came to write science-fiction novels, I came lugging this great heavy sack of stuff, my carrier bag full of wimps and klutzes, and tiny grains of things smaller than a mustard seed, and intricately woven nets which when laboriously unknotted are seen to contain one blue pebble, an imperturbably functioning chronometer telling the time on another world, and a mouse’s skull; full of beginnings without ends, of initiations, of losses, of transformations and translations, and far more tricks than conflicts, far fewer triumphs than snares and delusions; full of space ships that get stuck, missions that fail, and people who don’t understand. I said it was hard to make a gripping tale of how we wrested the wild oats from their husks, I didn’t say it was impossible. Who ever said writing a novel was easy?

If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic. “Technology,” or “modern science” (using the words as they are usually used, in an unexamined shorthand standing for the “hard” sciences and high technology founded upon continuous economic growth), is a heroic undertaking, Herculean, Promethean, conceived as triumph, hence ultimately as tragedy. The fiction embodying this myth will be, and has been, triumphant (Man conquers earth, space, aliens, death, the future, etc.) and tragic (apocalypse, holocaust, then or now).

If, however, one avoids the linear, progressive, Time’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic, and redefines technology and science as primarily cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination, one pleasant side effect is that science fiction can be seen as a far less rigid, narrow field, not necessarily Promethean or apocalyptic at all, and in fact less a mythological genre than a realistic one.

It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality.

Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast stack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things; there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool’s joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn’t over. Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction

[brown9045luis]

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[ratherhavetheblues]

INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘SAWDUST AND TINSEL’ “We’re both stuck, Anne–stuck like hell”

© 2019 by James Clark

     Back in 2011, when (at Wonders in the Dark) I foolishly assumed that Ingmar Bergman was one of a small horde of filmmakers (including, Billy Wilder) after something very new, I was years away from comprehending what he had in store. Over the past year or so, I’ve wakened up a bit, to appreciate the momentousness of the range of his concerns, a range, despite good-will, leaving no impact where it really matters.

A constellation of conundrums of intent began to dawn upon me; and putting in place their dynamic has been quite a ride. But the elusiveness of the innovation has proven to be only slightly recognizable. Therefore, it’s time again to return to Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), which provides remarkable immediacy to those staying the course.

   Whereas oracular figures—in Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), Winter Light(1963) and The Magician (1958)—would afford the thrill of seeing fit to trip up facile enforcement, the balance of power in the narratives remains so weighted against extreme change that understanding would almost absolutely trickle away. Similarly, the mea culpa, in Fanny and Alexander (1982), being brought to bear in terms of “the little world” (and its nagging spoiler, “the big world”), tends to be submerged by the Niagara of sturdy foibles. Then there is the perhaps too vague volcano of acrobatics and juggling, stemming from, The Seventh Seal (1957), and flashing over many subsequent entanglements the dark potency of which being lost on most viewers. The recherche dialogue between Eva and her muse, in Autumn Sonata (1978)—though a crucial clearing—becomes a victim of that protagonist’s hysterical self-importance. The action of silence (most salient in Persona [1966] but also on the move in, The Silence[1963] and Cries and Whispers [1972]), tends to be upstaged by the strong suit of survival. A mystical consummation, like that seen in, Wild Strawberries (1957), tends to maintain the status quo even more rigorously. Therefore, our second attention to this visceral production must be intent upon illuminating, as never before, the sensual structures and energies of players who live or die upon a cosmic scale.

One major expository  response to that singular involvement is to spotlight two minor figures to lead the charge—the two stars of the show being brought to light as auxiliary weight for the previous marvels of poetic intensity. There is, of course, a saga, in this case pertaining to a slipping itinerant circus impresario and his slipping love life; but that’s not where the magic and the lift-off inheres. Careers and romantic complications are a dime a dozen; and they don’t tend to generate game-breakers.

Near the outset, a long-term carnie regales the rather recent owner, Albert, about an event of some rarity which happened 7 years before, involving a husband and wife team of clowns, still in the company. The troupe was set to entertain at a place along the seaboard, where an artillery regiment was engaged in training maneuvers. The flashback covering this crucial action has been given a medium of saturated sunlight in which to carry us on an even longer way from the mundane than killing fields and wandering sensationalism. “Tell the story if you want,” the boss allows (sitting on the driver’s bench of one of his caravans plodding along, early in the morning, drinking beer with the storyteller, and soon falling asleep, missing [as always] a remarkable revelation). “It was a hot summer day… The officers lay on the grass, hot and sweating, drinking out of boredom… Then along came Alma, an imposing woman… Carried herself like a queen, if a bit past her prime.” We see her, alone, on a ridge near the sea, bearing down upon the mere military, and carrying a basket for what might come along. Her dress of straight lines implies a mood not for curving away from her sterling desires. In fact, she is a vision of the goddess or medium, Aphrodite, she of coherent passion. As she approaches the fighting force, their cannonade becomes an imaginary orgy. Then, by way of an officer with cat whiskers in close-up yelling something where there is not a sound, except the cannon blasts, the recent workaday becomes even stranger. Cut to the brain-trust playing cards on the flat rocks. Advantage in the air. Cut to more of those silent mouthings, which disappear with a wave of sharp white space, soon displaying a division by way of the black uniforms. Alma merrily walks right over the improv poker table, spins around and produces an ironic smile and bow to her subjects. (The troopers on the ragged ground are not alert to their being overrun by a sworn enemy, as well as a congenial visitation to a lesser world. A soldier ridicules her, and she ridicules back.) Alma then begins to pull up her dress and challenge the power clique to live up to her powers. (In a cut, her advantageous mis-en-scene has been momentarily rescinded, to convey the human, often failing, interplay with the works of primary creativity.) The innuendo of coitus is taken up by the troopers and their shooting. Back on the topspin, Alma takes off her dress and tosses away her sun hat for the sake of a sunniness very seldom reached. (Such steps of hers like that will be repeated, somewhat, by that sleeping slug, unprepared for a crisis of cosmic proportions.)

Another stretch of fiery sky graces the beach; but disgrace looms, even during her ascendance to the ways of Aphrodite. Breaking the stalemate of mob ridicule and her wielding a secret weapon, an officer orders a cadet to go to her husband whereby more mundane resources would tip the scale and force a retreat. The apparition’s beloved clown and alcoholic, with infrequent rallies, lacks her ambition; and therewith we are to keep an eye on her miseries nearly buried by the ordinary two protagonists. And that Frost (where to start with that?—with Death, in the wings) rallies handsomely, though unevenly, that day. Never without his deathly white, cosmetic coloration (in glaring light he nearly disappears), his first appearance doesn’t seem much of anything. Brought out of the tent to meet the cadet, he mutters, “I once had the opportunity to perform for his Majesty…” [Frost being an exponent of trivial nostalgia in lieu of demanding traction]. (This is a gambit soon to re-emerge, in The Magician. As we work along here, we are impressed by how prepared this sojourn traces back to this film.) Only half-comprehending the dilemma, Frost misses the mark (as Albert will repeatedly miss the mark in the second part of that war-couplet which moves apace with great distinction): “The captain pays homage to me…” The cadet, who had conveyed that, “The captain sends his greetings,” sharpens up the message, to, “Your Alma is swimming naked with the regiment!” This causes his more realistic colleagues to laugh maliciously. A woman angrily confronts that drifter with, “Show you’re a real man! We’ll help you give her hell!” Someone else adds, “We’ll help you tar that saucy hide of hers!” With this, Frost pushes the sort of well-wishers away and rushes to the shore in a frenzy. Adding to his presence, are the pantaloons he always wears, trussed up in such a way that his physical proportions resemble an ostrich or a prehistoric bird. Frost being, in his eccentric and erratic way, also a primordial force, of questionable efficacy. With this crisis in the making, at a strategic point, we have our opportunity to regard this drama being very unlike others in its priorities. These presumed, by convention, also rans, are actually nearly the whole story. Their coming a cropper of the military devolves from the widespread war intrinsically bearing down upon creatures like our two clowns—too strange to readily stomach its stand in canniness; and too frail to mount a viable stand of uncanniness, going somewhere very few of humankind want to touch. Though cast as a problematic item of the preponderant in choices—a “circus and romantic saga”—in fact the action is devoted to a striking disclosure, beyond theatre and almost musical in its dynamic. The putative protagonists, Albert, and Anne, “lovers,” are the true also ran. They are trammeled with being not nearly crazy enough to be creatively balanced. And, therewith, the motif of  the “little world” and the “big world” (explicit in Fanny and Alexander) hits the bricks to make of this entire Bergman filmic campaign, not a setting in relief of domestic exigencies but how the hell one might carve out a rhythm of sanity on a grotesque planet. As such, the entire (independent) corpus of Bergman’s endeavor must be seen as wall-to-wall war movies.

   Frost, with the whole carnie nation delighting in his plight and racing close to his heels, encounters the mob of jeering heroes as he beholds Alma splashing offshore with an amphibian group. His shock, in close-up, is accompanied by a moment of all-out silence and stillness—as if the precinct of primal destruction clamps down for a moment. The white-out of the sun once again endows the chaos with pristine dignity. (Each of such stations emanating singular resources as to the massively ignored and dangerously beloved ways of life.) Then Frost calls out to her (no sound, no subtitles; but the cheesy, calliope circus theme). What was a regal bid to really live now begins to collapse. Jeering (now with the added non-strangers) recommences. Taking off his outer gear and struggling over jagged rocks provides another spew of black laughter. He does reach her, and those groping her drift away. In the capacity of a small but memorable rally, to consign to filmic archives, there is a close-up of him holding her and, as they behold the sea and the sky, they constitute an army of two. As that was transpiring, the cadet gathers up their clothes and hides them in a cravass.  A girl from the circus laughs about that. Frost brings Alma to shore by having her on his back. The visual atmosphere is a slate sea and dark grey sky; and Frost, losing the energy to savor this austere beauty, begins to succumb to unsteadiness in negotiating the rocks while carrying her. Another silence obtrudes, as the couple resemble dying beasts. (The protagonists will prove to be all too human—predictable and presumptuous, leaving us more alerted to the fringes than the center.) The underestimated “clowns” are seen at a distance. The crowd closes in. Alma becomes stiff in his arms, her body like a cardboard sign. A deep drum roll sounds. The captain orders the heroes back to training. Frosts feet, shown in  close-up, become very unsteady. That blazing outburst stages another fanfare to kindred spirits. A close-up finds them strangely glamorous at a watershed. Frost falls, and nearly faints. Another blinding brightness, another drum roll. They’re seen at a distance, on a ridge. (After such effort, this being a premonition of surrender, four years hence, in The Seventh Seal.) A feathery cloud formation becomes a confirmation that much had been well done. Then he falls, seen from afar. One more effort to proceed, and he’s flat on his face. He tries to crawl. (We’ll see Albert in a somewhat formally similar sequence, but with very little concern on the part of the cosmos.) Alma, no longer Aphrodite, fears for Frost’s life. Carnies and the cadet carry him home to the circus tent. Alma angrily (and silenced) reproves the wayward. She begins to cry out (silently covered).

Back to the seat at the caravan emanating this strange event, with Albert, as always, missing in action. He and the driver jounce, due to the bad roads; they look like rather identical puppets. The driver concludes, “Alma began to shriek that we’d done her old man in. We got angry and told her it was her own fault. But we picked him up and carried him back anyway…”

  The last sight of the two who rocked Sweden for a few hours, was Frost being carried by several men of the art of the body, as if he were a white caribou. His head is thrown back and the pan shot moves backwards, as if he’s the subject of a hunt already dead. Seven years beyond this oddity/ odyssey, the driver has rounded out his harangue with, “That’s a woman and love for you!” It is, of course, nothing of the sort, the eyewitness not having a clue of what had really taken place. Here’s the moment to introduce the virtually sterile protagonists, now running the show, very badly—by way of their phony business names: “Alberti” (as in, “Alberti Cirkus”); and, “a fiery Spanish rider astride an Andalusian thoroughbred,” being hopefully antidotes to mask their lack of lyricism, their lack of poetry, their lack of courage. The day we first see them together, they’re entering the town where Albert dragged his wife and two children (from a modest retail business) into showbiz as being, at last, his supposed reality. This venue, in contrast with the puppets and cold and fatigue on the first occasion, musters cinematography of beauty, in the form of a close-up of a wagon wheel moving over a bridge showing its reflection in the water, and an imposing windmill. A rooster crows. A dog barks a welcome. Forward motion in the air. But who’s up for what it takes?

   The mid-20th century “fairground,” a scene of desolation itself, becomes the scene of the staff, many having seen far better days from far better management, announcing to the boss their displeasure in not having been paid for quite a while, with an outbreak of fleas in all the caravans, and lacking viable costumes. (During the hubbub Alma is aghast in hearing that one of her colleagues wants to have her pet bear [and vignette for her work] killed and eaten.)  In response, we receive some idea of the details of Albert’s being unfit for bringing off viable imaginative work. He muses that in America there is a healthy market for circus activity. “In America, circus folk ride through town, while bands play and the elephants trumpet. Everyone puts on their biggest smile and people line the streets cheering. A booming voice announces the show for that evening…” The goofiness of that razzmatazz premise transplanting to rural Sweden, is part and parcel of the goofy business plan in Jacque Tati’s film, Jour de Fete (1949), where a French farm town mailman attempts to wow the citizenry with big-market, American systematics.

On the spot to at least seem to be a businessman, he proposes one of those effervescent, Jimmy Durante circus parades for the permafrost customers, only to be busted, the horses impounded on the grounds of failing to secure a permit. Albert’s other excellent idea—on stronger grounds, in view of the Swedish government lavishing tons of cash for the arts (the theatre building in this tank-town having been designed upon the model of the royal palace)—was to borrow some of the costumes of the rich store, in order to put on a memorable spectacle. But there is a significant more, bearing down upon this disarray, whereby Albert was to pay a visit to his former spouse and (formerly unhappy) former circus partner (now the successful lone tobacconist of the present scene). Sleepy Alberti’s career of running the show into near collapse has inadvertently alerted Anne, the non-Spaniard, at this window of opportunity, that he’ll be returning to retail and she’ll be needing to make very different plans than she had bargained for.

   Albert and Anne constitute, however, not mere perverse dullards and fools, but rather facile, effete revolutionaries lacking the nerve to prepare for what their excitement involves. Each releases a mission statement in face of discouraging mainstream forces. Albert’s ex declares, “I’m happy now. It was always a time of frenzy and fear.” He counters with, “It’s always the same, summer and winter. For me, it’s emptiness.” Encountering rather feminine and arrogant Frans (an actor she meets during negotiations for the costumes; and perhaps her best bet if Albert bolts), she maintains that an earthy matier like the circus is the place to be. “I’ll bet you apply cosmetics. You have beautiful hands… You’re a weakling… You can’t [as he did] treat me like that or speak of my husband that way…” Frans pushes back, “If we were alone, I’d crush you. I’d crush your resistance like a piece of dirty paper.” She quickly attacks, “What play does that come from? Save it for your pale, flat-chested actresses…” Stirring declarations; but hollow. Anne does go in for “dirty paper.” And Albert proposes returning to the good old days. His wife had prefaced the little  reunion with, “All I can offer is pancakes.”

The theatre personnel arrive late. And Frans, having been roundly insulted by Anne en route to a pancake tryst, feels entitled to trip up an inelegant entertainment. Although this very intense incident could be imagined to be (as with the battle on the shore could seem) a simple display of dispatching, by the powers that be, foolish, obsolete eccentricity—road kill—the membrane on tap copiously speaks otherwise, to the horror of so many who don’t care enough, and where that leaves those who do show audacity of sensibility reaching an astounding threshold. That the figures being tracked do not handle their audacity well, is beside the point of this reflection per se. Sawdust and Tinsel offers to us a conveyance inviting the viewer to behold emotion so raw that normal dimensions become shattered and thereby become an intimate challenge. By the time the caravan comes to the little town playing it safe, we notice Alma and Frost having abandoned the realm of Aphrodite in favor of variations of Aphrodite-Lite, the specialty of Albert and Anne. Frost and Albert clearly spend a lot of time getting drunk. Alma has her low-key bear; Anne has her Tarot cards. By the end of the saga, Albert is heard to lament, “We’re both stuck, Anne—stuck like hell…”

Whereas the insulting regiment, at the (double) beginning, never gets to be heard, Frans, showing off to a pretty actress in the troupe (where affluent, educated elites would have honed a range of useful skills), and with Anne astride her horse circling the sawdust stage, he calls out, “Feel alright after our adventure, Sweetheart?” This elicits from Albert, the ringmaster’s, whipping off of the show-offs straw hat. In one of those grand, dramatic ironies Bergman excels in, Albert’s shock and fury at that moment had landed him in depths of pain whereby he had put in his place the smooth cynic. Frans, not expecting lightning from such a source, experiences, almost uniquely, disarray. As he puts his hat on, the girl he brung laughs in his face. The supercilious small-town sensation had, remarkably, retreated. Were Albert truly conversant with squelching vain nobodies, his evening might have included modest rewards from which to invent circus theatre to surpass the sclerosis of the local artistes. But Albert, on a high and afraid of heights, repeats the fun—flashing his whip as if the smattering of Americana Conestoga covered wagons in the convoy endows automatic magic—and Frans, feeding on hate, smashes the pretender to a pulp.

Much about this bloody gore reminds us of Alma’s sunny day at the beach. Frans’ fighting skills (the Artistic Director of the big/ little theatre mired in lostness organizes the bad feelings in terms of a duel, which is to say, a stupid way to die and a stupid way to live) are a reprise of the artillery  display which punctuated the ridicule of Alma. Albert’s baby-peal crying in pain, from a dirty trick directed at his balls, is a reprise of the fake crying of a clown in the first scene of the show, where Frost is now merely ordinary, wielding a ladder (going nowhere—not even funny) and squabbling with the crybaby. The townsfolks (including the ex), recalling the civilian population witnessing Alma’s abortive ascent, present a variation of the universal amusement—most enjoying the massacre, while a few being sickened by it. On the other hand—as with the conscripts to the nation—the theatre employees show 100% satisfaction, in their prissy way. Distributed about this maelstrom, we have Anne thrown from her horse, due to a guy in the last row throwing a missile hitting the thoroughbred; Alma’s gig with her bear totally washed out by the late-comers from civilization wandering across the ring (and, to worsen her latter days lot, yelling to hapless Albert, “That’s it, Albert!”); and the ringmaster both humiliated and on a roll of visceral courage, hopelessly misplaced.

   At the end of the fight, Frost becomes a voice of the status quo: “Ladies and gentlemen, the show is over. Thank you for coming this evening…” Albert’s nightmare finds him in the role of an abused bear, in a bearpit. On gaining what he’d call consciousness, he grabs his pistol and shoots Alma’s bear. You could say, that was the last bit of integrity this company would see. But, for what it’s worth, the tug of creativity is hard to entirely kill.

The circus caravan is on the move later that night. Frost and Albert are walking along in crepuscular light and crepuscular mood. Albert maintains a depressive glare, never looking, nor, once again, listening to the outer limits of life itself. Frost, an artist to Albert’s merchandising, speaks up, with, “Yesterday afternoon I had a dream while I slept off the booze. I dreamt that Alma came to me and said, ‘Poor Frost, you look tired and sad. Wouldn’t you like to rest a while?’ Yes, I said. ‘I’ll make you small [smallness virulently in effect already] as a little unborn child. You can climb into my womb and sleep in peace.’ So I did as she said, and crept into her womb, and I slept there so soundly and peacefully, rocked to sleep as if in a cradle. Then I got smaller, until, at last, I was just a tiny seed, and then I was gone.” Frost had not gone much further than hysteria in that initial struggle. But his dream carried him to the frontiers of creativity, which is to say, a fresh start upon getting real, the precinct Alma inhabited when an instance of Aphrodite (which failed to find traction). Alma, from the cozy confines of their caravan bed, interrupts, “Stop trudging along out there! Come inside and sleep!” Frost, the alcoholic Everyman, explains to the bemusing navigator, “You see? She can’t sleep without me beside her!”

Here we come to an unexpected minefield. Do the fidelities, at this stage of the careers of the once-briefly brave, still reach the point of magic? Or do those gentle moves conceal a crime? The dream of starting again seems to tell us, “Yes.” Bergman, being one very, very tough dude, is not one to settle for sort of. Does his investigation (and that of a host of other investigators) leave room for leveraging the daily juggle where the daily acrobatics have startled? Sort of. But the film wants us to consider hostile armies that aren’t going away.

After Frost, the unfocused family man, goes to bed, Albert comes to a halt, and Anne (not needing to go to bed) has her moment of truth, which is something else from a moment of vision. (Along a trajectory of job-shopping with Frans in his dressing room and beyond, in the light of Albert bidding for a less American Dream, she doubles back, in memory, to catch Frans rehearsing a drama that could only avail as a purgative. “I am but a poor jester in this farce of dark shadows. Her deceitful heart, her frailty, even her taunting indifference, turn my world upside down every day and every hour…Art that Count Badrincourt of Chamballe, or the most miserable of wretches? Farewell, O world…May my tears water my poor grave…” The intruder that is Anne is positioned behind a damaged backdrop, and we see only part of her face breaking through the musty garbage in knowing to be something better. [Far from Aphrodite; but a physical key still in play].) There they are (Anne and Albert), in the dull light, now apprehensive. (While Albert was carried out of his sawdust bailiwick—a position repeating Frost’s unconsciousness after breaking down in aid of Alma—Anne was busy gauging Frans’ cheek. A few years later, in Hour of the Wolf  [1968], a woman at a party gauges the cheek of an effete rebel, whose confused bid to manage there being no heaven costs his life.) Each manages a wan smile. And they walk along that pregnant roadway and its links coming close to the dance of death, about to be fully unveiled in The Seventh Seal. Our guide’s dramatic genius presents a disaster without recourse, while, on a wider front, things could improve.

[skimmonsfiction]

Wherever You Go, Ch7

COWRITTEN with @pitkin084 (Pitkin on Ao3)

Read it on Ao3

Chapter 7 (Only One Jemma):

Unlike the past few days, neither of the girls woke on their own time. Jemma jolted awake, probably accidentally pushing against Skye's chest too hard too quickly, and bolted upright in their makeshift bed. People were yelling outside and Jemma's first thought was an animal attack of some kind, but she heard angry shouting. "Skye, wake up!" Jemma was sure Skye was awake (because how could she not be) but she still shouted anyway and scrambled out from underneath the blankets. Too quickly to even be embarrassed, Jemma was out of her pajama pants and jumper and pulling on jeans, a thick strapped tank, and her converse sneakers. She grabbed her knife and didn't have time to wait for Skye, she needed to know what was happening. When she slashed the tarp away with her arm she scanned the beach for prehistoric carnivores, but what she saw may have been worse. Multiple fights had broken out across the beach and some people had knives to their throats, caught in the crossfire as hostages.

It had been so long since Skye'd had any actual restful sleep rather than merely physical exhaustion sleep, that the initial noise hadn't been what had woken her up. The sudden jerky movement of Jemma launching away from her, complete with the shove at her chest, was the thing that did it. Before she was even consciously awake she was out of the bed, swapping her pajama pants for her jeans and jamming her feet into her boots. "Jemma, wait!" Jemma was out of the shelter before Skye could stop her. Skye grabbed the gun from her bag and jammed it into her back waistband and tugged her shirt down over it. Her hunting knife was sheathed at her hip and she grabbed the machete as she pushed through the tarp.

A clear second group was breaking away. Their fragile civilization had finally broken, probably because Ward, Garrett, and those who hung around them, which made up hardly less than a third of the entire group, had realized there would be no rescue coming and no rules enforced. There was no government and they appeared to be claiming the power for themselves. The biggest groups of people were near the meeting fire where their food was cooked and stored, along with the entrance to the fuselage less than a hundred meters from the shelter. Ward immediately caught her eye, him and a younger guy, a teenager named Donnie, and a few others had a suitcase each and Jemma recognized them as the ones they kept group supplies in. She watched as Bobbi, who had one of the bigger hunting knives, shouted at them and got closer, as if to take some of their things back, but Ward seemed to pull a much smaller body out of nowhere. It was Ace, and about five others from the crowd of witnesses began shouting in protest. Mike made a move like he was going to reach for his son, but Ward held the knife against his throat and everyone froze, including Jemma. She stopped her approach a few meters away, considering the possibility that the situation may be too dangerous to just charge into, but Ward had already spotted her. "Look who decided to join the party! Come on over, Sweetheart!" Ward called out to her. Jemma took a step back, but immediately bumped into someone she hadn't even seen sneak up behind her. It definitely wasn't Skye. "Bring her on over, Creel!" Before Jemma had really processed what was going on, Creel wrenched her knife out of her hand and dipped down to stow it in his boot. His hands shoved at her shoulders and Jemma stumbled through the gap in the crowd that seemed to open up when the huge man came near. Creel gave Jemma another good shove in the back and she was forced to step forward. Ward passed off Ace to Donnie and roughly grabbed Jemma by the upper arm. She leaned away from him but he held her tightly and close. "We've got the complete medical kit now!" He barked a laugh and the cronies he had with him joined in. Jemma turned and figured out what he meant when she saw one of them with the blue first aid kit. They were stealing everything important and considered her a part of that list of objects.

 Skye was only seconds behind Jemma in leaving the shelter but by then, it was too late for her to do anything by racing into the fray. Against every urge in her body to run headlong into the mess the moment they cornered Ace and Jemma, Skye forced herself not to. The other group hadn't spotted her yet, so Skye slipped around the front edge of the plane wing. She grabbed a couple of rocks from the sand before she climbed up into the plane from one of the emergency exit doors. Trip, who was standing by the trough, watching and waiting for a moment to attack, spotted her. He kept subtle watch of her movements, waiting to see what her plan might be. Yoyo looked over at Mack and as she did, Skye managed to catch her eye through one of the small plane windows. Yoyo gave only a very slight tip of her head. Mack caught it and realized she was looking past his shoulder. He turned his eyes back toward Ward, Creel and Donnie, ready to jump into action whenever it happened. Skye caught Trip's attention. She motioned for him to cut the lead on the dragonfly's leash. The dragonfly was already straining against the rope since it wanted to get to Jemma. Skye and Jemma had been taking time to bring the giant bug around with them so he wasn't stuck just at the trough all the time. They also made sure to feed him or send him with the water crew to hunt mosquitos at the waterfall. So whenever he spotted the two of them, he tried to get to them. Skye was hoping today would be no different and he would buzz his way around Jemma and freak the fuck out of Ward enough to get Jemma away from him. She had no doubt it would freak Donnie out as she'd witnessed him avoid the trough whenever the dragonfly was there "Let go of me." Jemma grunted. She jerked her arm away, but Ward went as far as to hook a finger under her waistband and pull her back so he could grab onto her arm again. Jemma snarled at him and it made him laugh harder. "Hey now, don't make this hard on yourself." He chuckled like it was all a game to him. If he hadn't somehow managed to get his knife back she would punch him in the throat.

 Trip waited until Skye moved further toward the back opening of the fuselage and subtly shifted closer to the trough. He moved his hand quickly and in a quick tug with his knife the taut rope snapped. The dragonfly was off in a shot, immediately over the heads of everyone else, too high to grab the bug itself and too fast for anyone to snatch the rope. It slipped past Ward and Jemma and buzzed Donnie's head as it circled back toward Jemma and Ward. Donnie screamed and wildly swung his knife when it passed. He missed the dragonfly and a second later he was on his back in the sand, bleeding from the temple after Skye hurled one of the large rocks at his head. Ace landed in the sand next to him and immediately sprang up and raced for his dad. Mike caught Ace and immediately turned his back to prevent anyone from getting to him. Mack, Yoyo and Bobbi all pushed in front of Mike and Ace as Creel, Quinn and Garrett moved into the now chaotic fray. Skye jumped from the fuselage and rushed for Ward and Jemma, who was fighting to break free with the help of the dragonfly's distraction. Elsewhere on the beach, May, Coulson, Trip and Will all rushed to try and stop the others from looting. Before she could reach Ward, Creel changed course and tackled Skye into the sand. She lost the machete for the moment and the wind was knocked out of her. She coughed and sputtered and had just enough time to dodge to the side as Creel swung. The large man's fist sent up a spray of sand as Skye rolled back, swinging her elbow up as hard as she could, she clocked him high on the cheekbone near the corner of his eye. Creel let out a curse and as Skye landed down on her back once more, she swung a left hook to follow through and double up on the pain. She ignored the pain that shot through her knuckles and swung again, trying to land as many quick, hard punches as possible since Creel was over twice her size. This one landed solidly against his Adam's apple and Creel fell to the side. As soon as his weight was off of her, Skye grabbed the machete, sprang up from the sand and turned, looking for Jemma and Ward.

 Jemma had been watching as the whole plan was formed and carried out. As soon as the scene broke into chaos, Jemma took the opportunity as Ward was startled to jerk so hard she thought her arm might just come out of her socket, but Ward's grip soon left her and Jemma pushed against the sand as hard as she could manage to get a running start out of the middle of the fight. She wasn't the best runner, however, and her desperate attempt to flee was cut short when an arm wrapped around her waist and Ward's entire body slammed into her back, sending them sprawling into the sand. Jemma wheezed and coughed, trying to recover, but Ward was already dragging her to her feet by her hair and Jemma froze when a cool pressure was applied to her throat. "HEY!" Ward shouted with deafening volume. Silence fell over the beach like a heavy blanket and all eyes turned to him. "You can have the good doctor back with all her blood inside her body if you let us go nicely with our weapons and half of the food and water." He proposed. Jemma could tell he was angry he hadn't gotten everything he wanted, her included, but it seemed he was settling. She didn't know why he wanted ownership of the supplies, but she was sure they were about to find out. "We'll be on our way once it's done. We're tired of this beach crap, we're going to relocate closer to the resources and not hide here and put our survival in the hands of the few." Ward said it in a way that made the society on the beach seem like a dictatorship, which was quite ironic. "Just make the trade and we'll be out of your hair." Ward jerked at Jemma for emphasis and she grumbled, feeling the sting of it in her scalp, but shut her mouth when the blade pressed tighter against her throat.

The only thing that kept Skye in place when she saw Ward grab Jemma up by her hair was Mack's hand as it clamped down hard on her still scratched up shoulder. Teeth ground together, heart hammering in her throat, her eyes met Jemma's and her hand itched toward the back of her waistband. A bullet versus a blade at this distance was a clear advantage. She felt the panic creeping in and very much clouding her thoughts as she watched Ward manhandle Jemma. She barely heard all of his demands and digs at their group set up over the loud pounding of her pulse in her ears. May had secured the first aid kit. Ace was safe with Mike. Jemma was the clear priority. Skye's face was a mask of red fury. If steam could have protruded from her ears, it would have. She didn't give a flying fuck about his petty insults about their survival. They hadn't done anything to earn their survival other than attack women and children. "Take it and go," Skye growled before even Coulson could speak up. "Spill one single drop of her blood, the deal's off and I promise you, by the time I'm through with you, every last one of you will wish you'd died in that crash." They could gather more water, catch more fish and pick more fruit. There was only one Jemma and there were only so many times a person could come back from the dead. Skye’s mind was in a very dark place. With the knife at Jemma's throat, all she could see in her mind's eye was the blood draining out of her artery like it had from Mace's.

Ward watched Skye's face carefully and Jemma noticed the slight loosening of the blade at Skye's threat. He held strong however and nodded once to let Skye know it was a deal. Without a word, his friends started filling backpacks with food and bottles of water. Jemma knew they could gather more, but it was the loss of the actual water bottles Jemma knew would be the worst. They wouldn't be able to bring back as much water and people would need to start sharing. Jemma's anger didn't die down the whole time they took what wasn't theirs. Even when they were done and gathered in a group near the tree line, her rage had not subsided. Ward, Garrett, Donnie, Malick, Raina, Creel, Quinn, Hall, and Bakshi- all were betraying them and selfishly taking off with supplies they hadn't earned to begin with. Ward glanced back and forth between his group and Skye, judging the safety of his next move. He knew he needed Skye to be distracted, so almost at the same time he removed the knife from Jemma's throat, he stepped back and pushed her, but not with his hands. It was a half push, half kick to her lower back and Jemma yelped and fell so quickly she didn't have time to react and got a face full of sand, shoulder buried into it as Ward turned tail and jogged off with his group. "We'll be back for the rest of what's ours!" He called back at them, not directly stating if that meant more supplies, or Jemma herself.

Skye was instantly in motion the moment the blade was gone from Jemma's throat. She was an excellent runner. When half of your life was spent running for your life, you learned how to be fast or you got caught. Her mind reeled with fury at Ward and panic about Jemma. She didn't know what kind of force those pins and metal bits in Jemma's spine could hold up under. A direct kick to her spine could do anything to them. "Jem!" She reached for Jemma to pull her out of the sand. "Are you-," Skye looked to Ward's retreating form, her face darkening at the threat. she grabbed at the rock in her pocket and was up on her feet in the next moment, launching the rock with all her might. It hit Ward in the back of the head right where his skull met his neck. She would have sprinted after him, too, if it wasn't for the hand that wrapped around her wrist.

 "Just let him leave." Jemma clutched at Skye's wrist and got up onto her knees, wiping sand out of the corners of her eyes. They were stinging and she definitely hadn't expected to go face first into it. "I'm fine, promise." Jemma rubbed at her sore back. She saw the terrified look in Skye's eye and sought to remedy it. "My back is just as strong as anyone else's now, it's okay." She assured her. She was agitated they had gotten away with taking half of their food, but she also knew it was her own fault for running into the fray. “Are you alright?” She wasn’t going to make the mistake of not checking up on Skye again.

Skye was still wound up tight in anger (at Ward) and fear (over Jemma), but the gears shifted quickly and she moved to help Jemma up, eyes moving all over her to look for any other injuries she might have incurred during the fight as she moved to use a clean portion of her sleeve to help Jemma wipe off her face. She breathed only a little bit easier when Jemma gave her the reassurance that her back was alright. She knelt in front of Jemma and pushed her hair out of her face and touched her cheek. "Me? I'm alright, are you sure you're alright?" she asked. The dragonfly buzzed back around their heads, returning now that the scuffle had died down. Skye had a split knuckle but other than that she would just have some bruising around her ribs and her jaw from the fight. "Well it's just wonderful that you're both alright," Victoria spoke up from nearby the trough. "Now that you've doomed us to dehydration and starvation!" "We're not going to starve. We have plenty of food and water," Coulson replied. "Until they come back for the rest of it!" Robbie pointed out. "They're not coming back for food and water," Mack said, casting a grave glance toward Jemma. "That's what he said!" Victoria snapped, waving a hand toward the jungle. "No," Trip shook his head and crossed his arms. "He meant Jemma," He nodded toward the doctor. Murmurs erupted throughout the rest of the camp. Skye frowned as she looked away from the others and over to Jemma. She moved to stand and held her hands out for Jemma to help her up. "We need to focus on rebuilding the damaged second trough and storing what's left of our food in a secure place," Will spoke up, wanting to shift the topic away from the attempted abduction of one of their own. "Trip, do you have any fish or crab traps set out?" he asked. Trip nodded. "Good, check them and see what else you can catch to replenish our stock?" Trip nodded and glanced at Jemma and Skye before he headed down the beach toward the area he'd set his traps in the water. Alisha and Joey went with him. Coulson turned to Mack and Yoyo. "Find every possible container with a seal that you can, we're going to need them for the next water run."  Coulson continued to delegate tasks from there. Skye stuck by Jemma to help with patching up some of the others from the fight. Ace came bounding their way with Mike in tow. Skye's face relaxed almost reflexively when the little boy approached "Are you hurt?" she asked, trying to mask her worry. Ace shook head and Skye exhaled a sigh of relief. Ace took two steps and launched himself at Skye, throwing his arms around her shoulders. Skye froze, startled by the gesture for a moment before Ace thanked her for saving him. Skye wrapped her arms around his middle and hugged him back, glancing over his shoulder and up at Mike, who thanked her as well. Skye could only nod in return. Jemma gave Skye and Ace a minute to hug it out before Ace finally let go and Mike guided his son away to start helping with whatever they could. "We should get that hand cleaned up." Jemma gingerly slid her fingers under Skye's hand, which was already swollen, red, and bleeding some at the knuckles. She got a good taste of how Skye felt as guilt rushed through her veins. She looked down, focused on her hand, so she didn't have to make eye contact with her. "I'm sorry I'm so reckless, I keep getting us both in the middle of these situations." She sighed.

Skye tried her best not to flinch while Jemma cleaned up her knuckles. She leaned across the small gap between them and kissed Jemma's forehead. "It's not your fault they attacked us," she said once she leaned back and managed to catch Jemma's eye. "You were just trying to protect everyone. There was no way you could have known it was them," she pointed out as she brought her freehand up to touch Jemma's cheek again. Her heart was still racing at the very palpable fear of nearly losing Jemma again.

Despite everything that had happened, Skye's soothing words and gentle touch could make her smile. He cheeks flushed pink and she wished so badly that they could just go on a normal date. She had to push those feelings aside though. There were so many more important things that needed to be worried about in order for them to stay together and in one piece. "Do you think they're right? About me being what Ward wants?" Jemma asked. It made sense. If they wanted to survive on their own in the jungle, of course they would want to take the doctor, but Jemma was afraid because of the threat. We'll be back for the rest of what's ours, that was what he had said. Jemma didn't think she belonged to anyone, but she knew being the only doctor had its disadvantages.

Skye frowned. She shifted and moved until she was next to Jemma and pulled her over against her side. "I don't know," that wasn't completely true. Still. She leaned over and kissed the side of Jemma's head. "It's possible," she conceded. She let it sit between them for a moment and then took a long breath and began to speak. "I know everyone's been treating you like a commodity because of what you can do," she said. "But you're not an object. You don't owe any of us anything. You're a human being. No one on this island owns you," She shifted to make sure she could look directly into Jemma’s eyes. "I promise, Jem, whatever he meant by the threat, I won't let them take you anywhere you don't want to go. Whatever you decide at any point, wherever you choose to go, or choose to stay, I'm going with you."

"Well good, because I'd hate to sleep alone." Jemma breathed. She closed her eyes and let the comfort from Skye's kiss radiate through her body before she did anything else. "Your shelter is home now, whether we like it or not." Jemma sported a small grin and twisted some, leaning her head so she could kiss Skye properly. "Let's go lovebirds, there are things to do!" Will clapped his hands together several times as he passed by with a laugh. Somehow he managed to stay optimistic through the whole thing and didn't take the rejection like Fitz did, which Jemma was grateful for.

Skye was okay with considering the shelter as home. She’d had worse homes. She’d had no home. Having a rickety shack designated as ‘home,’ didn’t really sound all that bad with Jemma involved. She allowed herself to get a little caught up in that kiss and so when Will came by and poked fun at them, her ears turned a bright shade of red as their kiss broke. “Yeah, yeah,” She waved him off but smiled still. She moved (reluctantly) to stand up and held her hands out to Jemma to help her up. “Y’know, I’ve had worse homes than a shared beachfront property with a beautiful woman on a tropical island…” She teased with a somewhat dopey little smile.

A bark of a laugh that came from Jemma's chest floated across the air at the way Skye put it. She was flattered and giddy because of the compliment but she couldn't ignore the hilarity of Skye's joke. "You make it sound like a vacation!" She laughed loudly as Skye helped pull her to her feet. She brushed sand from her clothes and gave Skye an ear to ear grin. She had been held captive with her life threatened less than ten minutes ago, but here she was, back to normal and unaffected, all because of Skye. She made the whole traumatic experience bearable in a daily life kind of way and Jemma had absolutely no idea how she did it. "All we need now is a terror bird for dinner and the place will get five stars." Jemma had her own sense of humor and bumped at Skye's side.

Skye felt relief when Jemma laughed and smiled at her like that. Jemma was safe and Skye meant to keep it that way. Part of that meant keeping both their heads in healthy mindsets, right? They had to be as optimistic as possible. Skye knew that was important, especially after the day’s setback. She shrugged innocently. “I’m just saying it’s more than a little bearable with you,” She grinned. Ward, his goons and the threat were all still on her mind, but she could compartmentalize it to focus. She tipped her head back and laughed at Jemma’s joke. She caught her around the waist and leaned over to kiss the top of her shoulder. “Stay out of trouble and maybe we’ll get rewarded with a terror bird barbecue,” She smirked and slipped her hand into Jemma’s. She pulled Jemma’s hand up and kissed the back of it. “Let’s help clean up and see if there’s still time after to run for water and gather extra fruit,” They started walking and soon the dragonfly was buzzing about their shoulders again. Sky hadn’t expected him to stay around once he realized he was free. She really wished she had a nest or something of mosquitoes to feed him since he’d helped save Ace and Jemma and still came back. “He needs a name,” She said. 

"Buzz seems fitting." Jemma giggled as the massive bug landed on her head, wings still fluttering. The oversized insect rubbed its head with its front legs and lifted off again, flying so close to Jemma's ear she had to tilt her head to avoid being tickled by the vibrations alone. It was strange, but Jemma felt almost normal with Skye complimenting her and kissing her around every corner, even with the giant bug. Her smile didn't fade and she didn't even mind the strange looks they were getting from people around them. Maybe it was the dragonfly though, as it was now on Skye's shoulder.

"Well if he hasn't gone anywhere yet, I don't know why exactly, but he might have created some kind of bond with us." The whole thing was puzzling to Jemma. She didn't think dragonflies could have such an advanced thought process to make a connection like this. It was a prehistoric, massive dragonfly though, and Jemma couldn't exactly proclaim expertise. She gingerly removed the string around Buzz's body without damaging his fragile wings. Once it was off he shot into the air, did a few circles, and came back down near the water trough. Jemma spotted Bobbi coming from near the fuselage and blushed all the way to her ears at the devious smile the taller woman was giving them. She winked at Skye and Jemma raised a brow, wondering just what exactly Skye had shared with her. "As much as I hate to split up the power couple, Skye, we need to make a run." Bobbi gestured to the trough and its very low water level. Jemma tensed just thinking about Skye going back into the jungle now with Ward out there as well, and she opened her mouth to volunteer to help, but Bobbi cut her off. "Nope. Definitely not." Bobbi crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. "The further away from Ward you are, the better." Bobbi said. She looked to Skye for agreement and knew she wouldn't have to convince her.

Skye felt panicked when Buzz shot up into the air immediately, but then he returned and she felt relieved since she’d gotten used to the big bug since Jemma initially caught him (when she’d been freaked out by the fact that she was tethered to a gigantic bug). The tops of Skye’s ears were a deeper shade of red than her normal blushing. She wasn’t at all surprised by that devious grin on Bobbi’s face. She looked over at Jemma after Bobbi shot her down before she could even ask. “The boss has spoken,” She pointed with her free hand toward Bobbi. Buzz fluttered his wings from the trough and Skye added, “Even Buzz agrees, see,” She teased, giving Jemma’s hand a quick squeeze. “Do you think he’d be able to find us a different water source than the waterfall?” She asked. It was a possibility. It wasn’t one they could explore today. Today they would have to try to fill up perhaps at the creek instead of going all the way to the waterfall, to avoid running into Ward and Co. Skye wasn’t going to be able to control herself if she ran into them today after this morning.

Jemma let out a small huff on an exhale, but she knew they were both right and she needed to stay here. She had promised Skye she would be finished with her jungle exploration alone and now was not the time to start. Maybe she would remind Skye of her offer to visit the waterfall once things calmed down again. "He might keep trying to lead you to the waterfall, since that's what he's been positively reinforced to do. I suppose he is capable of finding water elsewhere though." Jemma was hardly an expert on animal behavior, but they were looking to her for advice on anything related to the plants and animals of the area and Jemma had to give her best guess at a lot of them.

Skye actually did want to bring Jemma to the waterfall, but given the day’s events, she wasn’t going to chance it right now, not after Ward’s threat. It would be like serving Jemma up on a silver platter for the buzzards to pick at. She nodded and looked between Bobbi and Jemma. “We should consider that going forward after today,” She said. “They’re going to be lurking around the waterfall, they’ve already got the path. We’re going to need to find somewhere else,” She sighed and pulled her hair tie from her back pocket to tug her hair up out of her fair and off her neck. She looked over at Bobbi. “The creek’s deep enough to fill the bottles and containers we’ve got left. We can make a run there in a third of the time, hopefully avoid Ward and his crew and then we might have enough time to stock up on food before it gets too late?” It wasn’t a perfectly safe plan, nothing was, but hopefully it was the safest out of their possible plans.

"I think a better use of our time would be to make two water runs to the creek." Bobbi suggested. "We don't have as many containers to collect the water now. We can go a day with less food, we even have the stores from the tail of the plane if we need it, but we can't go without water." Bobbi reasoned. Jemma agreed that it was a valid point. The group could complain all they wanted about stomach grumbles, but water was more important. "We also can't forget about the compys. They seem to have a lot of tracks there so we'll need to keep our eyes open." Bobbi added. Skye considered it all a moment. Having potential compy attacks hanging over their heads while also worrying about other, terrible, humans all while they were trying to replenish their water stocks...it was just a shitty situation. Not, of course, that being stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere after a plane crash wasn’t a shitty situation, but that was besides the point. “Alright. Mack and Yoyo coming with us?” She asked. When Bobbi confirmed it, Skye nodded. “Wanna grab them and I’ll go grab my bag and meet you back here?” she asked. A few minutes while she gathered things to talk to Jemma would be reasonable before running off into the jungle, right? It’d had been a harrowing morning.

"See you in five." Bobbi used two fingers to do a little salute with a smile and gave Skye a wink before she spun on her heel to go grab her things and pick up the others. "Hey," Jemma snagged Skye by the waist with both of her hands. "I don't care if the jungle is unpredictable, promise me you'll come back." Jemma was firm and demanding. She supposed she was much more concerned about it now than before with the added human threat. Their nerves were being tested and Jemma was trying to hold onto her sanity- to Skye.

“Hm?” Skye’s mind was already running its way through all the possible things that could happen on their water runs when Jemma reached for her waist. Her focus snapped back to the present as she watched Jemma’s face while she made her demand. All jokes were put aside for the moment. Her hands came up to frame Jemma’s face. “I promise, no matter what, I’m coming back,” She said before she pulled her in for a kiss.

Jemma let herself melt into that kiss. It had been less than a day since they were officially together, as much like a couple as they could be here, but Jemma kissed her like they were much more than even that. They had been through more together in less than twenty days than most couples in their entire lifetimes, so it was safe to say their bond was stronger than a one day romantic relationship made it seem. So Jemma leaned into Skye, both hands on her waist, fingers ever so slightly digging into her. Her mouth moved against Skye's with ease and she went as far as to nibble at Skye's bottom lip before they were interrupted. "Come on, Skye! Your lady lover will still be here when you get back!" Jemma pulled away and knew her cheeks were flushed. Bobbi, Hunter, Mack, and Yoyo were all laughing at Bobbi's joke. "I thought I'd bring a few more people to see if we could get away with one run."

Skye's ears were red when they broke apart but she grinned after quickly liking her lips. It was cruel that she had to go run through the jungle instead of just be in allowed to stay here on the beach with Jemma today. "Yeah, she better be," she said. She grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulders and pulled up the machete by the handle. "Try to stay out of trouble, hm?" she teased and stole one last, no, two, three, okay it was four quick kisses before she jogged toward the others.

"I will if you will." Jemma grinned, still riding the happiness high she got just from kissing Skye and being near her. Jemma waved her off as Skye joined the pack of hikers, all of which were snickering at them, some more outwardly than others.

"Yeah, good call," Skye said with a nod, trying to prepare herself for the teasing she was no doubt about to be subjected to on this water run. She cast one last glance over her shoulder and gave Jemma a small wave before she shifted her focus to the jungle and keeping alert.

"Which one? Bringing more people or telling you to woman up and kiss the doctor?" Bobbi poked fun at her.

"I didn't kiss her," Skye smirked a Bobbi. She didn't really care all that much that her ears and parts of her cheeks were red and pink at the teasing. "She kissed me," a flimsy technicality, but it gave her something to say in response to the teasing at least. She knew this was a serious trek into the jungle and they needed to pay attention to their surroundings even more than usual because of the danger of running into the other group, but Skye couldn't seem to wipe the dopey little smile off her face right that second.

 "I told you she has the hots for you!" This statement got Hunter to crack up as Bobbi continued the relentless teasing. They weren't quite finished with their fun and planned on going on with it until they were deep enough into the jungle to require their full attention.

 "Hey, I didn't want to treat her like a piece of meat!" Skye defended herself with a sheepish shrug. "These are very delicate matters..." She insisted. "Sometimes they can't be rushed." Or, you know sometimes a girl was insecure enough to be a chicken while the woman she liked was kissing other people. "At least we know you've got the bickering down pat," Yoyo quipped with a smirk of her own.

 "Alright, alright, that's enough fun and games." Bobbi said, even though the biggest culprit was herself. "Keep your eyes and ears open." Bobbi pointed at their feet, where multiple layers of compy tracks headed in different directions. It was a bit concerning that they came across them without being too deep in the jungle. It would take an hour or so to get to the creek, so they needed to watch their step.

 The group fell more serious instantly as they all looked down at the tracks. Skye tried to look for any signs of droppings to see if she could figure out whether or not they were fresh the way Jemma had pointed them out the time they'd fought when she'd ventured in and caught Buzz. They moved at a decent pace and kept as quiet as possible as they made their way to the creek. They caught up to human tracks smashed through the compy tracks but they didn't hear Ward and his crew so they figure they'd continued on to  the waterfall. Skye and the others stopped at the creek, not willing to chance going further and running into the others. A second confrontation in a single day wouldn't be good for anyone. They worked quickly to fill all the containers they had,being sure to securely seal all the lids before repacking them. On the way back they detoured for the closest of the fruit paths on the walkway between the beach and the waterfall, which was a small grove of fig trees. They stuffed as many as they could into the extra pockets of their bags and then went back to the path and continued on to the beach to refill the trough so they could see if a second run was necessary.

 "Go check in with Jemma, I can handle your pack." Bobbi offered when they got back to the beach. She saw Skye scanning the area for her and knew she'd want to spend some time with her before they needed to make another run, if that was necessary. "Go on, I got it. If we need to go on another run I'll find you." Bobbi promised, hand held out for the strap of her messenger bag.

 “Thanks,” Skye handed her bag to Bobbi, but loaded some of the figs from the bag into the front of her shirt, folding up the hem to make a pouch to hold them. She scanned the beach again as she she turned and started for their shelter first. If Jemma wasn’t there, she’d find her in the plane. When she made it to the shelter, she pushed the tarp aside with the hand holding the machete and stepped inside. She stopped there, glad when she saw Jemma, but frowned slightly when she saw her messing with the stitches on her leg. “Hey,” She said. “How’s your leg?” She let the tarp go and stepped further inside. She set the machete down so it was standing up in the sand and moved so she could sit next to Jemma, leaning to look at her leg to see if the splotches from the allergic reaction the other day were gone or not.

 Jemma looked up and smiled, pausing her work to take a breather when Skye entered. She leaned back onto the heels of her palms so she didn't have to look at the mess that was her leg while they talked. "Decent, considering." Jemma's shoulders shifted in an awkward shrug. The splotches from her previous allergic reaction were just slightly red areas instead of painful sores like they had been before. Her stitches were another story; many of them had been stuck and they took a good tug to get them out. Little dots of blood kept leaking out of her skin and Jemma had to dab it away with a clean cloth, but most of it was sealed and starting to turn into an indented scar. "Any trouble on the trip?" Jemma's eyes scanned over Skye's body once to check for blood or any sign of injury, but she found none and relief flooded through her chest.

 “Quit ogling me, ya flirt,” Skye used her elbow to nudge Jemma’s arm while she was still looking at Jemma’s leg. She tried not to frown at the state of it, even though it looked a bit better than the other day. “There were fresh compy tracks on the way but we didn’t run into any. Made it to and from the creek without incident. Bobbi’s supposed to come find me if we need to make a second run.” She picked one of the figs up at out of the makeshift pouch she’d made of the bottom front of her shirt and held it out for Jemma. “We detoured for a some extras,” She smiled and then nodded to Jemma’s leg. “Want me to pull the rest of those?”

 Jemma stuck her tongue out at Skye's teasing accusation, but her face brightened when she saw the gift fruit. She refused to take more than one, since food stores weren't at their highest, but she was still grateful. "Would you?" Jemma was also grateful for Skye's offer to help her with the stitches even though they weren't her favorite. Jemma didn't much like to take them out of herself, especially when they needed a good tug. It was difficult for her to just suck it up and pull them out, but foreign hands would be less afraid. "They're stuck in there a bit because it's been so long and I've been active." Jemma sighed. It wouldn't be an enjoyable job for either of them. "The only thing to do is pull them out, I've done about half but it's difficult." Jemma's face scrunched up just thinking about it.

 Skye moved to set the rest of the figs she’d grabbed (about six in total besides the one she gave Jemma) down on top of a small makeshift wooden table in the corner. She took a small one and tossed it into her mouth before she moved to kneel in the sand in front of Jemma. She tried not to frown at Jemma’s explanation. She hadn’t thought to ask Jemma yesterday about her leg. Maybe they wouldn’t have been stuck if she had. She wiped her hands off on her shirt and then gingerly reached out to pull Jemma’s foot into her lap. She held her hand out for the scissors and such so she could get to work. “I promise,” She said after she swallowed her food. “I will do my absolute best to distract you from the discomfort once we’re done,” She looked up the length of Jemma’s leg to her face and smiled. She got to work, as always trying her best to make sure she caused the least amount of pain as possible. “Have I asked you yet what your favorite color is?” She asked as she worked, her favorite kind of distraction.

 Jemma laughed at the ridiculously simple question. It was silly and she appreciated the distraction Skye tried to give her. She finished chewing the piece of fig she'd bitten off before she answered. It was better than thinking about the sting when Skye tugged on her skin a bit to get the thread out. "Blue. Light blue. Probably cerulean." Jemma answered after thinking for a moment. "It reminds me of a lab." She smiled, knowing full well Skye could tease her about her nerdiness. It was better than saying she liked to wear blue. "What's yours?"

 Skye grinned as she worked. She liked the specific progression of that color pick. Jemma had been wearing blue the day they met in the terminal. “Dynamic Magenta,” She answered without looking up from her task. Her smiled faded, partly genuine smile at the memory that hit her, partly sad from it. “The Brodys wanted my room to be mine. So they let me pick what color we painted it.” She pulled the last of the stitches and pressed the clean cloth to it to stop the last beads of blood that appeared before she looked up at Jemma. “I picked Dynamic Magenta.”

 "I imagine it looks lovely." Jemma commented. There were so many shades of color Skye could possibly be imagining and Jemma only wished she could see it too. "When we get out of this hellhole it will be the first thing I google." Jemma's lips turned up on one side into a bit of a small smirk.

“Dynamic,” Skye teased. “It looks dynamic,” She smiled, if maybe a little sadly still. She chuckled when Jemma said it’d be the first thing she googled. It was a bittersweet memory really. She was glad she had some of the nice ones, but she was never really going to heal from the way they’d been ripped away from her.

Jemma could see that sad look in her eye again, and she wanted to fix it. She wanted her to be happy, or as happy as one could be stranded on an island. So she popped the other half of her fig into her mouth, chewed it as she quickly taped a piece of gauze over her leg to prevent infection, just in case, and then she shifted and got onto her knees. "What was that bit about distracting me from the discomfort?" A different grin was on Jemma's face, but Skye wouldn't see it for long before Jemma was on all fours, leaning forward with her lips pressed against Skye's. She picked up where she left off before, nibbling at her bottom lip with a teasing smirk.

 Skye put the tools and clothe off to the side in the mini kit they’d come from. She turned just in time to spot that devious little grin before Jemma’s lips were on hers well before she even had the chance to think of replying. Her muscles relaxed and she exhaled a soft hum of approval as her fingers slipped along Jemma’s jaw and curved around the back and side of her neck. Their lips fit together in a perfect mold and pulled together in time. Skye was just reaching for her waist and moving to pull Jemma into her lap when someone pushed the tarp to the shelter aside and stuck their head inside the shelter. Skye sighed out a disgruntled groan as she reluctantly pulled back from the kiss just as Fitz was stammering his way through his untimely intrusion on them.

 "Ok, that's not what I wanted to see." Fitz had initially covered his face with his hand when he realized what was going on, but he peeked through his fingers and finally moved it when he saw they were both fully clothed. "I would knock if I could, I- ok yes, I should have announced myself." Fitz rubbed at the back of his neck and tried to avoid eye contact with both Jemma and Skye. "What is it, Fitz?" Jemma's sigh was more exasperated than frustrated. She knew he didn't mean anything by his intrusion. Like her, he wasn't always as aware of social norms. It was even more difficult where most others had been thrown to the wind. "I just wanted to apologize for being a-"

 “Temporarily out of his right mind jerk who didn’t really mean to hold it against his very best friend in the world that she didn’t have the kind of romantic feelings for him that he had for her?” Skye arched her eyebrows as she looked over at Fitz without having actually let go of Jemma.

 Jemma raised a brow too, but at Skye. She hadn't realized she had paid so much attention to it. Clearly she had to have thought about it before to have that preplanned response all fired up and ready to go. "Yeah. That." Fitz forced a laugh, but it died immediately when he got no reaction from either of them. "I was an arse, I don't know what got into me." He sighed. Nothing seemed to be getting through to Jemma, who just kept staring at him quizzically. "You don't owe me anything, so I'm not demanding forgiveness." Fitz raised his hands in surrender and turned to walk out, but it was that that finally convinced Jemma he was being sincere. "No more rudeness to Skye or anyone else because of jealousy." Jemma laid out her terms and Fitz turned back around hopefully. Jemma couldn't ask him not to be jealous, because asking him not to have feelings for her was just as impossible as him asking for her to have them. She could expect him to control himself though. "Deal. You also deserve an apology. I'm sorry." Fitz looked to Skye, hoping the both of them would forgive him.

 Skye was maybe still a bit salty about the way Fitz had intruded on her tech tinkering just to throw it in her face that Jemma had kissed Will. He’d been possessive of Jemma before that too, trying to kick her out of his and Jemma’s shelter that second night after the crash when Jemma was sleeping on her lap, all the times shooting glares at her, all those accusatory comments he threw at her whenever Jemma wound up injured as if it was Skye’s fault. Skye already had the incredible ability to blame herself for a vast number of things with her guilt issues. She glanced from Fitz to Jemma and back. Skye hadn’t exactly been nice to Fitz. She’d tried a couple of times to be as nice as she could since he was Jemma’s best friend, but he hadn’t made it easy at all. She’d stopped trying mostly after his outburst on Jemma, other than that conversation they’d had while working on the electronics. It was nice that he was apologizing to Jemma, though.  She hadn’t expected him to actually apologize to her too.

 She gave Fitz a small nod. “Thanks,” She said. “Sorry for the times I’ve been short with you too,” She added. It was only fair since he was being sincere and all, right? They all had to survive together on this hell hole of an island. It would be better to keep things as civil as possible, especially with at least one group of (assholes) people splitting off from the main group.

 "I can hardly blame you." Fitz added. He had had a few days to analyze what he had done during the time he and Jemma had been separated, and he hadn't liked it. He deserved every bit of Skye's bitterness, Jemma as well. "I hope things can be better between us. I'll leave you to yourselves, I told Trip I'd help him fish." Fitz pointed over his shoulder with his thumb and backed out of the tarp. "Thank you, Fitz." Jemma called after him. She really was glad he'd come to his senses. It was hard to imagine him not being her friend, and here, she could use every last one. Every day they spent fighting was another day things could end on bad terms. It was a dark thought, but it was realistic. She would, however, much rather be focussing on other, happier things. "Now that all is well in the Fitz department, where were we?" Jemma slyly scooted closer and put her hands on Skye's shoulders. She was just beginning to lean in when the tarp flew back to the side once again. "Fitz-" "Nope, it's Bobbi, here to interrupt you two before you start something you can't finish." Bobbi winked and Jemma blushed profusely as she broke contact between them. Jemma knew the feelings were there, but it was embarrassing when someone outside of themselves could see it so obviously as well.

 Skye hung her head back and sighed when the second intrusion came. She frowned when Jemma pulled away from her. Damnit, their inability to keep from being interrupted was entirely cruel. She wasn’t embarrassed about the fact that the others could see whatever between them. It wasn’t like they were hiding, exactly. She was frustrated at the interruptions though. “That sounds like a challenge,” Skye looked at Bobbi and then lifted her head to look at Jemma and smirked, unable to help the joke as she went on, “That was definitely a challenge. Start the clock, Bobbi I’ll meet you guys at the path in five-,”

 "Skye!" Jemma's voice was shrill, but it came with a laugh as she slapped her shoulder playfully. A day was too soon for this, wasn't it? Or were they just some kind of miraculously fast couples. Maybe time was warped on the island. Whatever the cause, to Jemma it felt like they had been together forever. The pull in her abdomen was recognizable, but she chalked it up to needing something very human when they were starting to act like animals (at least some of them anyway). "Go on," Jemma gave Skye a light shove and tried not to remember too vividly the feeling she got when she had accidentally fallen on Skye and somehow ended up being groped. "I can busy myself until you get back."

 Skye was grinning a bit stupidly at Jemma’s reaction. She’d laughed at least and that was the point since it was a joke. It was mostly a joke. Damnit, Skye just wanted some uninterrupted private time with Jemma when they both weren’t completely exhausted and worn out and ready to collapse into sleep. She’d spent all those wasted days trying to distance herself because of a number of reasons that seemed so absolutely stupid now, she just wanted to make up for lost time. And she maybe wanted to stop having to venture into dangerous jungles that had dinosaurs and prehistoric deadly gigantic turkeys and who knew what else that hadn’t found them yet. In comparison, staying in the shelter with Jemma seemed much more agreeable.

 “Mhm,” Skye hummed. She leaned closer to Jemma and stole a couple of quick kisses. “Try not to busy yourself too much without me,” She gave Jemma a wink as she stood and grabbed the machete. She made her way out of the shelter to meet up with Bobbi, who handed over her messenger bag before they  headed back into the jungle again, once again picking on Skye for the first bit of the trek.

 _________________

 "Skye?" Jemma whispered, "are you awake?" She brushed her thumb back and forth slightly over Skye's stomach and shifted her head on her shoulder. They had been laying there, eyes closed, for quite a while, but Jemma didn't think either of them were asleep. She knew Skye had just been joking earlier that day when Bobbi interrupted them, but maybe there was a ring of truth and want in it. Jemma just wanted to talk before things got back to how they had been before, when they ignored anything and everything complicated.

 Skye was awake. She was exhausted from both runs plus the physical and emotional overload of the morning and she wanted to be asleep because she was entirely relaxed and comfortable curled up with Jemma, but for whatever reason she just couldn't fall asleep properly. "Yeah," Skye replied to Jemma's question, her voice a bit thick, matching her general exhaustion. "You alright?" she asked, unsure why Jemma was still awake herself.

 "It's only been a day." Jemma said, not realizing how vague and out of context it seemed until it was already out of her mouth, though she was sure Skye could make the connection that it had been a day since Jemma kissed her on the beach. "It feels like it's been a lot longer than a day. We act like we've been together for years and it's strange." Jemma sighed and slid her hand across Skye's stomach to her waist so she could hug her a little more tightly.

 It took a few moments for it to click in Skye's mind, as her brow furrowed, what Jemma was talking about. She waited, though, for her to elaborate. Her stomach muscles reflexively tightened and relaxed at the light grazing touch and Skye had to fight to ignore the warm pull below her belly that it caused. "Good strange or bad strange...?" she asked. It was strange, Skye would definitely grant that. Even the few relationships she'd had that had lasted past the first few weeks hadn't been anywhere near as intense as she thought her feelings were for Jemma. It was illogical, sure, and perhaps amplified by their situation. Did that mean it was necessarily a bad thing, though? Skye preferred to think no, but Jemma was the one bringing it up, so she must have some reservations about it, right? Skye tried not to let her mind get too ahead of her without hearing whatever else Jemma thought about the topic. It wasn't as if Jemma was pulling away from her. She was holding on tighter in fact. The hand Skye had lazily resting along the small of Jemma's back moved in light strokes and patterns against her back.

 "Good strange." Jemma answered. That wasn't something she had to think about. She knew she was happy with their situation and didn't want to lose Skye for anything. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid because you're meaning so much to me so quickly." Jemma took a deep breath and tried not to let her eyes water. Nothing had even happened yet. "Either of us could be gone at any moment." She said quietly. She was scared she was falling for Skye so quickly because she was scared it would end just as fast, but somehow these words wouldn't come out of her mouth.

 These were thoughts that had already crossed Skye’s mind a handful of times in the days before their kiss on the beach. She did her best to choose not to focus on them but sometimes it was unavoidable. She brought a hand up to rest along the edge of Jemma’s jaw and the side of her neck and leaned back just enough to be able to look at Jemma. Her thumb swiped a ghost light graze along her cheek. “Jem, we can’t play that game,” She kissed the end of Jemma’s nose and leaned her forehead to hers. “Even if we’d made it back to LA and got together, either of us could be gone at any moment for any reason there too,” She went on. “I’m not saying I’m not scared of those things too, but we can’t focus on the what-ifs. All we can do is take everything as it comes at us and survive.” Skye was much more adapted to that kind of living, she supposed, than Jemma would have been. “I’ve never felt so intensely...connected to another person so quickly in my life as I feel about you,” She confessed. “I don’t intend to let anyone or anything take that away from us.”

 Jemma's eyes were watering now and she couldn't stop it. Skye was verbalizing what Jemma knew within herself and she felt a huge amount of relief as she was told that Skye felt the same intense pull she did. It wasn't like any other relationship Jemma had ever had, and not just because their plane had crashed. It was something special, Jemma was sure of it. "You're so strong." Jemma sniffled. The hand on Skye's waist planted itself on the cushion by Skye's side, arm still across her body, and she sat up some and leaned over. Her lips grazed against Skye's once and she gave her a lingering watery kiss. Her tears fell from her cheekbones to Skye's face and Jemma kissed her with even more vigor.

 Skye wanted to protest that she wasn't strong, but Jemma kissed her before she had the chance. Skye's lips responded in kind with equal fervor. Her hands framed Jemma's face, thumbs gently swiped across Jemma's cheeks to try and wipe the rest of her tears away. As much as Skye wanted nothing more than to get completely lost in the contact, to let her hands wander, to kiss Jemma until both their brains stopped working entirely,  the tears and Jemma's comments worried her.  She struggled between the want to keep kissing Jemma and the urge to pull back and double check in with Jemma. The former won out at first. Her hand traced down along Jemma's side,  fingers pressing into her skin along Jemma's hip, just under the hems of her shirt and pants,  pulling her hips closer. "Jem,  wait-," she broke the kiss just barely enough to get the breathless words out. Her brain was just muddled enough that she didn't have an immediate follow up to that.

 Jemma heard Skye, she just didn't actually listen. She silenced her with her own mouth, crushing them together carelessly and bumping noses with her. She pulled at Skye's bottom lip with her teeth and soothed it over with the tip of her tongue. She could tell something was holding Skye back though, so she separated them, but only an allotted inch to breathe and speak. "We don't know if there's enough time to wait." Jemma was getting worked up and upset and she wanted something physical.

 Skye's brain went sufficiently blank initially. A strangled sound caught in her throat and her hand slipped around the back of Jemma's hip and pulled her closer. It would have been so easy to ignore the nagging voice in the back of her mind and just let this happen. Skye wanted it to happen, she really,  really did.  But she didn't want it to be a lust crutch, initiated because of pent up fear and anxiety.  She knew she had to stop it,  at least for now, when Jemma spoke again.  Her hand left Jemma's hip and moved back to her neck and the edge of her jaw. She pulled back when Jemma leaned in and took a steadying breath, closing her eyes for just a second.   "You have no idea how much I want to give into this..." she said on slow exhale as she opened her eyes. "I've spent most of my life fearing my feelings,  being afraid of....everything, Jem," It was no easy struggle, stopping herself from surging forward to go right back to kissing Jemma. Every thought,  every feeling,  every nerve and neuron in her body screamed to be allowed to go back to the feverish intimacy. The tight coil below her belly pulled angrily at the heat between her hips,  outraged that the moment was brought to a stand still. Skye licked her lips and avoided looking at Jemma's lips. She locked their eyes instead. "Whatever this is between us, it's  more than...situational fear and lust..." she swiped at one of Jemma's stray tears. "I want it to be more than that, Jem,  because it is." She thought Jemma felt that way too, despite her current actions.  She didn't think she'd have the willpower to stop a third attempt.  "I'm not going anywhere,  and I'm not going to let anything happen to you," she swore.

 Jemma let out a big sigh and her taut muscles slowly loosened. Skye broke through her haze and made her calm down enough to stop. She knew Skye was right, but she still felt the urge within her to give in to her instincts. "I think we're going to die here." A small choke of a sob came out of Jemma and her body jumped ever so slightly. She knew Skye had promised to keep her safe, but could anyone do that now? She dipped her face into the hollow between Skye's neck and shoulder and cried. She hadn't cried, not really, since the very first night. She was terrified they would be eaten by a prehistoric beast or die slowly of starvation or dehydration. There wasn't a rescue. Jemma didn't know how they didn't find the island on the flight path with satellites, but they hadn't. "We're going to die and I wish I could have had longer to know you." Jemma was sobbing now. The floodgates had opened and there was no stopping it. Nobody had even had time to stop and acknowledge the fact that they had fallen out of the sky onto an island full of dinosaurs and nobody was coming for them.

 When it happened,  Skye almost didn't know what to do right away.  The gears had shifted so suddenly and Jemma was now in the middle of a very real breakdown.  The arm that was under and around Jemma bent and came up, her hand cradled the back of Jemma's head.  Her other arm wrapped around Jemma's middle and stroked along her back. She felt multiple painful tugs in her chest as she let Jemma cry,  unsure how to comfort her.  It was very real,  palpable even, the fear that they were on borrowed time and that any moment the sand would run out of the hourglass. One of them needed to believe for the both of them.  Right now,  that would be Skye. "Hey," her lips were against Jemma's ear as she murmured it. "Don't write us off so soon," she turned her head slightly and kissed the back of Jemma's jaw just behind her earlobe. She paused a few moments,  rocking slightly as she held onto Jemma. "Look at what we've already survived, Jems. We didn't come this far just to die here," she said with conviction.  "We've got time, " she insisted. "I don't know how,  or when,  but we're gonna find a way to get off this island and get back home.  Until then,  you should know that I miss pizza with pineapple and anchovies, I'm nowhere near as smart as you, in fact,  I never actually finished high school, I live alone with Spike the cactus and I cannot stand peas." It was her best attempt at trying to soothe Jemma's fears. Well, except the promise. That was sincere. She didn't know how,  yet, she would accomplish it, but Skye didn't break her promises,  ever. It was a promise made, so it was a promise she would keep. She kissed the spot on Jemma's jaw behind her ear again. "We're here now, Jem...I never knew I would find someone like you to begin with...I intend to make the most of every second I have with you until we return stateside and you tire of me hanging about, " She kissed the back of Jemma's jaw,  her neck, her shoulder and rubbed her back gently.

 Jemma's laugh sounded like a half sob (it probably was) and it made her body jump again. She had her arms wound around Skye, holding on for dear life. It was the random, amusing facts about Skye that got her to stop crying. They were little, unimportant details in the span of things, but they were preferences Jemma otherwise never would have gotten to know about Skye living in this place. She continued sniffling for a few minutes, just clutching Skye and trying to breathe, making sure to enjoy every light kiss Skye gave her like it was the last one. "I failed my first driver's test." Jemma mumbled into Skye's skin. It was a little known fact about her and at the time it had felt like the end of the world. "I have a weakness for pretzels and I can't stand fuzzy socks." Jemma giggled as she said it. She rolled a bit so she was laying at Skye's side instead of crushing her. She left her arms where they were though, and she wasn't letting go anytime soon.

 Skye rolled to the side with her. She let go of Jemma only to properly pull the blanket back around them and then wrapped her arms back around her too. She smiled at the mental image of a teenage genius Jemma failing her driver's test. "Is that the only thing you ever failed?" She asked, picking that as her talk point, though she filed the tidbit about pretzels and fuzzy socks away for future reference. She tried to think of something car related to share. "I lived in a van," she said. "Before I actually had a license. Until after I was almost twenty." If it would calm Jemma down, soothe her fears for the time being and somehow make her less upset, Skye would lay here all night and think of random things to tell Jemma about herself until the sun came up.

 "A van does actually sound very comfortable right now." Jemma snickered. She would definitely take four solid, sturdy walls and a roof to keep out whatever was in the jungle. The tiniest of smiles graced her features as she looked into Skye's eyes. It was incredibly dark, but the dim, orange light from the fire outside cast shadows across her face and Jemma couldn't think about anything other than how beautiful she thought Skye was. "You're gorgeous, you know that?" Jemma said suddenly. She just wanted Skye to know that. She hadn't spent much time before to just stop and give her a compliment, and Jemma wanted to do more of it.

 Skye was glad for the relative darkness because she knew right away that her cheeks and the tops of her ears lit up in shades of pink that would hopefully be indistinguishable in the orange glow of the fire. She let out a bashful little huff of air and ducked her eyes. It wasn't the kind of compliment she received often. Not, of course, that she didn't know she did well in the looks department. It was just the sincerity of the complement. It wasn't a cat call on the street, or dished out after a few drinks at a club. "I think you've got it backwards, Doc," she brought her eyes back to Jemma's and smiled. "That's you," she said as she brought her fingers up to trace the curve of Jemma's face and her her eyes followed the lightly drawn invisible lines drawn in their wake. Her fingers traced across the freckles dotting Jemma's forehead, careful not to disturb the healing wound there. "By the time we get home," she said. "I'm going to have mapped a star chart of the constellations of your freckles," she grinned and traced a few by her temple as if she were drawing a picture out of connecting them like a set of stars.

 Jemma grinned and closed her eyes as Skye's fingers traced across her face. It was one of the better moments on the island and Jemma was content to just enjoy it. All her troubling thoughts were forcefully shoved from her mind. "I'm glad you like them; I'm sure I'll only get more under this sun." Jemma added. She scooted close enough to press their foreheads together and took a deep breath.

 When their faces were pressed that close, it was entirely impossible to resist the urge to kiss the end of Jemma's nose. She also saw no reason to hold back. She dotted a few more random ones too, the little corner crook of her nose, the tip of her cheekbone, her chin and lastly, the corner of her mouth as she combed her fingers through Jemma's hair. "I like much more than just your freckles, you know," she smiled as her eyes shifted around Jemma's face, memorizing every little spot, every curve, every contour, following the small muscle movements here and there as she made them.If there was one imagine she wanted seared into her mind, it was definitely Jemma.

 Jemma's smile didn't fade as Skye kissed her face. It tickled in some spots and her nose crinkled up. The comfort of it all was starting to finally make her sleepy. She had been tired, but hadn't reached a spot where her mind was relaxed enough to sleep until now. She closed her eyes, just for a second. She didn't want the moment to be over yet. "You're just saying that to try to get under my shirt." Jemma joked. Her voice was slightly slurred from tiredness but she still smiled. If she could keep her eyes open she would have loved to see Skye's face.

 Skye breed out a laugh a bit louder than she meant to when Jemma threw that line back at her. If it wasn't for the fact that Jemma seemed ready to fall asleep, She might have jokingly pointed out that she'd been one the one to stall her own chances at that just a few minutes ago. She wanted the calm closeness that settled over them to remain, though, so she lifted her head and kissed Jemma's forehead before pulling her in closer and urging Jemma to settle her head against her shoulder and collar with the hand combing through strands of Jemma's hair. "Tell ya what," she murmured, pausing only to stifle a small yawn. "I'll give you a full list in the morning to prove it," She hoped this subtly underlined the fact that they would both still be right here in the morning.

 "Mhm." Jemma hadn't really heard. She was so close to falling asleep and the combination Skye holding her so firmly and her hand combing through her hair was enough to put her to sleep.

[vodka-aunt-coran]

archaeology au???? i'm currently writing a shallura fantasy au in which shiro meets allura because he's an arch nerd so I'm listening

oh boy oh boy oK LISTEN

(ok sorry i’m adding a readmore. this got long. beware y’all this is ENTIRELY self-indulgent, like, 100%, and i don’t expect anyone else to enjoy it.)

this begins in college but it’ll extend to post-graduation

i’ll start with shiro, a poor, tired grad student who took a few years after his masters to split his time between CRM and projects whenever he got the chance, but now he’s back to fight for a PhD

his focus is on…hmmm…for now i’m going to go with historical archaeology, mainly focusing on the cultural interactions between china and japan?

shiro is also a TA! and each semester, whatever class he’s teaching, he like. straight-up adopts the undergrads in his section. there are four undergrads in particular who keep popping up. they are his children now.

matt is also a PhD student! he got 2 majors and 2 minors in undergrad, completed his masters really quickly, and then tried to go for a PhD immediately but burned out :x he’s back now! just under heavy supervision from shiro.

matt specializes in reconstructing paleoenvironment. this is done through paleoethnobotany (looking at old seeds n shit), sometimes geoarchaeology (looking at dirt n shit), AND getting climate information………………from ice cores.

(and lake cores but i know what the people really want to hear)

allura is like…everyone’s goals. she took her time getting her degrees (coughcoughmatt) and had a 4.0 probably, she’s worked on a frankly astounding number of projects, and people can hardly believe she doesn’t have a PhD yet.

i’m not 100% sure what allura’s specializing in. i feel like she wouldn’t either? like, she’s worked on such a variety of projects that she took a while to figure out what she really wanted to stick with. my guess is that, like matt, she decides to focus on technical rather than area so she gets to work all over the place. i’ll go with…osteoarchaeology. aka. bones n shit.

that’s right allura’s the badass who gets to work with burials and is probably cursed 93% of the time

her dream job is working on the domuztepe death pit

(don’t look up the death pit if you’re squeamish and also bc the information won’t be as good as if you dm me for the deets update: i made a post concerning The Deets, but proceed with caution, because it is about horrific deaths)

allura and matt are TAs too but matt is not super helpful if it’s not about his own field? and allura is rly intimidating. so people generally just go to shiro for help.

The Children are just undergrads BUT what they end up specializing in:

keith: warfare lmao boy loves his weapon artifacts. he’s like. A1 at identifying them too, show him an old sword and he’ll be like “oh yeah that looks like a viking design from the early 8th century”

lance: he rly…rly likes working on sites near water…like every time he gets to work on a shipwreck or anything underwater his soul grows brighter. that being said, i wanna say his specialty is in preservation and possibly curation? so during important digs he’s on site and nagging everyone to be as careful as possible

hunk: does a lot of lab work! he’s like. the king of the lab. need that sample carbon dated? hunk’s got you. need to know the composition of that ceramic? hunk’s your guy. need lipid analysis? bring it to hunk. he can even get the ancient XRD machine to work, even though no one else can figure it out. he’s a legend.

pidge: …i want to make a her a paleoethnobotanist so bad. but like. i know she wouldn’t simply bc matt’s already doing that and the independent will of second children is strong.fcuk it, she’s a paleoethnobotanist. she’s ridiculously good at identifying samples, and usually ends up helping matt with it. she’s also really into reconstructing diets and stuff and gets excited when she gets to work with stable isotope data.

bonus! shay is a geoarchaeologist who asks for hunk’s help mayyybe more often than is strictly necessary. then again, hunk will sometimes ask her opinion on samples when she’s pretty sure he’s already interpreted it perfectly. a modern romance

ok some more nonsense about them follows in no particular order

all of them are rly passionate about combating looting, collecting, and other destruction of sites. keith almost dropped a collector at a convention once. shiro held him back, but they still got kicked out bc while his back was turned allura and lance were cursing out a rly skeezy (but rich) curator.

shiro: hunk, why didn’t you stop them?hunk: [writing a paper about the museum’s poorly provenienced polynesian artifacts] what?

shiro is more careful about who he brings along to his academic conventions.

i mean. obv he also wrecks these garbage people. but with heavily researched papers n shit.

[while in undergrad]professor holt: ok class today we’re going to watch a documentary on the excavation of this famous site in the 60s!whole class: [cringing at the poor methodology]professor holt: i know, i know, we’ll roast our predecessors after the video is over

keith and pidge are huge conspiracy theorists right. like. aliens are real and out there, you know? so you’d think they’re all about those aliens built the pyramids stuff

some loser: hey you know how the aliens built the pyramids right?keith: ok listen math and astronomy existed before greece there is so much evidence showing that the egyptians themselves built their pyramids and there’s a clear progression from stepped pyramids to perfect ones and the fact that stepped pyramids appear around the world doesn’t mean anything more than making it obvious what the easiest way to build a large structure is and while we’re at it let’s talk about the nasca lines–

basically they call out Certain Theories for what they are bc…like…bro didn’t u notice that u only claim aliens abt incredible achievements when the people aren’t white

shiro: so, wait. if you don’t believe that aliens interacted with prehistoric peoples, why do you believe in them at all?pidge: because they infiltrated european politics beginning with ancient rome and have currently shifted their focus towards controlling american governmentkeith: [pulling out a Conspiracy Board] do you want to see our research, we think it could be our thesis project

like how pidge and keith are into aliens, lance deeply believes in ghosts. he’s convinced that allura has a million curses on her and the fact that she’s still perfect is evidence that she is A Goddess.

allura: lance, there’s no such thing as ghosts. you won’t be haunted or cursed if you help me handle this burial.lance: …alright, fine. only for you.[three days later]allura: [picks up phone] hello lance. how are you?lance: A TREE FELL ON MY CAR YOU LIAR

[at a historical site w shiro]lance: so uh. how many ghosts do you think are in here.shiro: oh my god, you’re just as bad as the other two.pidge: don’t group me in with that! i know ghosts aren’t real.keith: eh, they might belance: you work with violent deaths, how could you sleep at night believing in ghosts?keith: i’m not a coward like some peoplelance: !! i am not a coward!![door slams down the hall]lance and keith: [sprinting back outside]

lance gets on everybody’s case abt what they should and shouldn’t touch, and how to bag things, etc

when anyone wants a lipid or dna sample run, hunk makes sure that lance is there to make sure they properly handle the artifact sharon if you don’t wear gloves and the facemask all your research won’t count for shit

keith is The Worst at bagging and labelling his shit like. lance sometimes just makes a point of coming to his digs for the express purpose of labelling all the stuff for him.

lance: keith are you really going to make me waste shelf space on all these soil sampleskeith: [softly] lance i don’t know why the fuck we even take soil samples this isn’t my job

lance made the mistake of going to pick up boxes of artifacts from the holts on april fools day. when matt ‘tripped’ and dropped the box, it didn’t matter that it was really empty, because lance was already in tears. shiro had A Word with them. pidge and matt had to be a lot nicer to lance after that.

allura and keith work together pretty often bc. y’know. war stuff and remains tend to overlap. they’re besties with a sense of morbid humor to rival shiro’s.

allura: keith you’ll never guess what happened to this femur!keith: it looks…bad?allura: yes. the individual was killed by a boiling tar poured over the nearby wall!keith: i guess he didn’t get a heads up?allura: haha!! exactly!! or else he would’ve suffocated horribly!!both: [laughing]shiro: [hunched over faded old documents] god i wish that were me

pidge: hey lance, i was sieving through dirt from the hearth area for seeds, but i think i just found a tooth?lance: oh god ok put that back i’ll call allurapidge: dude it’s just a tooth, it might not even be human. i think we can handle it.lance: what if it is!! where do you think teeth come from pidge!!pidge: look, someone just happened to drop a tooth in the fireplace!!keith: hey guys i think i just found a skull in the hearthpidge: DAMN ITlance: AHA!!keith: not the reactions i was expecting but,

hunk: keith, i need to break off a piece of it if you want composition. you know how this works.keith: [cradling knife to his chest] but i love her

(update: here are a few bonus additions to this, since this is more or less the main post and this is main stuff)

[mst3kproject]

315: Teenage Caveman

This is yet another movie that goes under multiple titles, and like several previous examples, the new title is actually an improvement. Roger Corman wanted to call his movie Land of Prehistoric Women, which would certainly have gotten butts in the seats, but they'd have been very disappointed butts by the time the end credits rolled. Teenage Caveman is a much better description of the movie we've actually got.

A primitive tribe – albeit a very clean one whose women are curiously lacking in body hair – lives in Bronson Canyon, hunting taxidermied deer and men in bear suits.  The 'teenage' son of the cave painter wonders why the tribe lives by such strict rules – particularly, why the taboo against crossing the river into the jungle?  Eventually he decides to go see for himself, and finds a world full of monsters: crocodiles with fins glued to their backs, stolen from other movies!  Adorable dogs who want to lick you to death!  Men in dinosaur costumes even less convincing than that one who used to be a Vine star!  The She-Creature in a cameo appearance!  And oh my god... is that... it can't be... but it is... it's the parrot-bear from Night of the Blood Beast!!!

I was kind of surprised to look up actor Robert Vaughn and learn that he was only twenty-six when this movie was made.  I guess everybody just looked ten years older in the fifties.  He's also got really small ears.  I never noticed that before but now I can't stop seeing it.

Before I try to talk about anything in this movie, I'm going to have to deal somehow with the fact that the characters have no names.  Our hero is referred to only as 'the Symbol-Maker's Son', and other characters have signifiers like 'the Fair-Haired Boy' and 'the Blonde Maiden'.  This seems very strange to us, but there are peoples in the world who do not use personal names – the best-known example is the Machiguenga of South America, who address each other by relationships and occupations, just as the characters in Teenage Caveman do.  The lack of names in the movie seems to serve two purposes: it suggests a very small, isolated group, where everybody knows everybody else and there is unlikely to be more than one 'Symbol-Maker' or 'Fair-Haired Boy'; and it tells us that this group values collective over individual identity and survival.

As far as it goes, this an interesting artistic choice and a nice piece of worldbuilding.  The problem for me as reviewer is that it's very awkward to type out 'the Symbol-Maker's Son' or 'the Black-Bearded Man' over and over.  I will therefore adopt Joel and the Bots' informal designation of the main character as 'Travis' and his rival as 'Allen'.  

The movie has a couple of points to make, although being as it's Roger Corman, it makes them with a sledgehamer.  The first is about tradition and asking questions, and this is indeed so heavy-handed that Joel and the Bots actually talk about the movie in these terms during a host sketch.  Travis is constantly questioning the inherited wisdom of his tribe, despite punishments from his elders.  In the end, his curiosity drives him to investigate for himself, which leads him to the film's second point: that if humans are not careful with our technology, we are doomed.

The 50's Caveman Movie is a genre mostly associated with women in fur miniskirts being menaced by plasticine dinosaurs (exactly the sort of movie one might expect from the working title Land of Prehistoric Women), so having a message at all is honestly kind of impressive.  Teenage Caveman's messages are unsubtle, but they are also surprisingly well-explored.  The film tells us that pushing boundaries is the key to progress, but it does not present this as a smooth road.  When Travis and his friends venture into the wilderness, one of them drowns in quicksand, and Travis himself is injured and cannot immediately return with the others.  He comes back having invented the bow and arrow, a new weapon with a longer range than the spears the tribe normally uses, but also having actually seen the God that Gives Death with its Touch, the monster he believed to be mythical.  Much has been learned, but much has also been lost.

At the end, the laws the clan have lived by for as long as anyone can remember (hundreds of years?  Thousands?) are declared null and void, and they must forge a new way of life in new territory.  This is good, in that new possibilities and better food sources are now open to them, but it is also terrifying, in that they don't even know how to begin.  The God that Gives Death has been vanquished, but other perils, such as the wild animals and the quicksand, are still out there to menace them.  The benefits of exploration outweigh the dangers, but Corman does not romanticize it. More of the tribe are going to die on their journey of discovery.

Opposed to Travis and his urge to explore are the various voices of conservatism within the tribe.  The clan's received wisdom, the Word, represents safety but also stagnation, and the desire to stick to it has two different faces.  One is Travis' father, who warns him away from exploration and is quite stern with him at times, but it clearly comes from his love and concern for his son.  He tried leaving the safe area himself and suffered for it, and he doesn't want Travis to repeat his mistakes.  Yet when the clan wants to punish Travis, his father urges them to be lenient in the hope that the boy has learned his lesson.  When asked to choose between his tribe and his son, he chooses Travis.

The other voice of tradition is the Black-Bearded Man, Allen.  At first he encourages Travis to explore and to question what he's been told, but then turns around and demands the boy's death when he actually does so.  His real motive, as we learn, was to disgrace both Travis and his father and step into their family's important position within the tribe.  He wishes to preserve the existing power structure in order to advance within it – Joel remarks that people like this have been with us since the beginning of time, and they will doubtless be around until the end of it. DOes anyoNe Among my Lovely reaDers wanT to pRovide Us with an exaMPle?

At the end of the movie, the God who Gives Death with its Touch is killed, and turns out to be an old man wearing some kind of college football mascot costume that is probably supposed to be a radiation suit.  We get a voiceover from this man, most likely representing what's supposed to be written in the book he is carrying, telling how the world ended in nuclear war and the land of hairless cavepeople and mutant dinosaurs we've been seeing is actually the aftermath of that apocalypse (so it's basically Yor! The Hunter from the Future without Rip Steakface).  He fears that this is destined to be cyclical – that man will simply rise only to fall again and again and again, until we are finally extinct.

Interestingly, and quite realistically, this message goes entirely over the characters' heads.  They have no idea what the book represents, only that there are pictures of human beings and symbols that clearly have some kind of meaning.  They hope to find other people who may know how to read them, but there is nothing to indicate that they will ever succeed.  The one foreigner we see in the entire movie appears to be just as primitive and illiterate as the main characters, and the old man's voiceover suggests that in a life of perhaps thousands of years in length, he has never seen anyone more advanced.

Throughout the movie, we have seen people persist in spite of warnings, but for the most part this was presented as a good thing: if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.  Travis' persistence in the face of his elders' disapproval and his own failures allows him to forge a new way of life for his clan.  But like everything else in the world of Teenage Caveman, tenacity has two faces. The people of the past persisted in making war and brought themselves to a bad end.  The ultimate point of the film is that 'progress', whether scientific or social, is never straightforwardly good or evil.

The reason the movie is about a teenage caveman is because rebellion and pushing of boundaries are what teenagers are best-known for doing.  Another level of the film's story asks parents to stop and think about why their children are asking questions and trying out different ways of behaving, but this, too, has two sides: children are also invited to think about why their parents discourage them from doing so.

That's really a hell of a lot of theme for a fifties caveman movie, and audiences must have been rather confused to get this when they were probably expecting dinosaur fights and screaming women.  Looking back on my review, I realize I've probably made the movie sound much better than it is.  Don't get me wrong, Teenage Caveman is still very, very bad.  The costumes are terrible, the dialogue is stilted, the actors are bored, the animals are fake, and the tribe seems to consist of twenty men, four women, and no children.  But if nothing else, I can appreciate the film for its ambition, and the story as presented manages to have a satisfying conclusion without sacrificing the ambiguity that is so important to its point.

Teenage Caveman was remade in 2002, by people who apparently found the fate of the nigh-immortal scientist far more interesting than bland cave kid angst.  They may have had a point, but they were also utter hacks.  Their movie is an aggressively bad metaphor about STDs, where the original is just a blandly bad mull about progress.  Personally, I prefer Disney's recent version, which ditched the post-apocalypse thing, made the God who Gives Death far scarier and more tragic, and featured a fab glam-rock number by a giant crustacean.

Help me.

[leftpress]

Fear Factor

From Black and Green Review - by Sky Hiatt

The advanced civilization of the present is marketed as a stronghold of fortified security where citizens can confidently live out their lives free from the dangers posed by uncivilized life. Life spans advance, health improves, and we are protected from the threat of wildlife attacks, attacks from nation states or terrorist invasions. Considering this popular narrative on its own terms, it would seem that those fortunate enough to be living in such societies would be typified by fearlessness and living fearless lives. But, ironically, though securities have advanced and proliferated, our fears have not receded. To the contrary, they have evolved in step and thus are ever-escalating. So far at least, our fears are always one step ahead of our security technologies. When European settlers landed in North America facing a primal paradise unknown even in their fantasies, reaction was mixed. Some, perhaps only a few, embraced it. Many, if not most, feared the untamed, wild world and set forth to alter and destroy it. According to Brooks Atkinson in This Bright Land, many pilgrims despised the “hideous wilderness full of wild beasts and wild men.”[1] At least one settler committed suicide rather than face life in the howling wasteland of the New World. These were the vast primordial forests of the lost continent into which light could barely penetrate nor men pass through. Europe had already reconfigured most of its prehistoric woodlands into rolling farmlands, shrub-bound homes, lawns and formal gardens. From this subdued world the conquerors, entrepreneurs, freed-serfs, and adventurers set sail for a place where Nature reigned unrestrained. The newcomers, oppressed subjects of the Old World social order, were a fear-based people who often struck an antagonist approach to the New World. Fear was their untiring, constant companion. The settlers were un-wild and perhaps over-civilized, so it was difficult for them to see themselves as the future would see them—intolerant, misled, sickly, cruel, uprooted. To calm their fears, they pushed back the forest, cleared the land, killed the animals, exiled surviving tribes, and they prevailed. But this did little to assuage their fears. And hundreds of years later, that day is yet to come. The uprooted, surging Old World masses, dislodged from inherited knowledge and fleeing the industrialized hubs of Europe, were at a historic disadvantage and poorly prepared to accept advanced philosophies of the native people to whom nature was a consoling confidant. Only a few took advantage of these ideas and the chance to be wild themselves. The rest picked up their saws and axes and bit into the empires of white pine, chestnut, red cedar, and other trees of the Eastern forests. They felt more secure in their solid log cabins with muskets by the door. But they would live and die in fear in that strange, unfamiliar New World, unaware the muskets fed the fear and helped set up an ill-fated model for the future. Transplanted to the present day, the pilgrims might be astonished at how their tentative venture has prevailed and they might well yearn to live among us. But if they got that chance, they would soon notice, with the objectivity of time travelers, that we had suffered a series of unfortunate setbacks. The early hopes and ambitions carried unsuspected consequences. Surviving descendants still feared the forest, what was left of it. In the cities, some even feared the individual trees. They still feared the wolves, bears and bobcats, rarely seen but still terrifying. By now they’d come to fear almost anything wild: foxes, coyotes, opossums. Bats, spiders. Even bees. And new fears evolved. The weather—wind, cold and rain, became increasingly difficult to tolerate. The Sun had become a hazard. There were increasing concerns about the purity of food, air and water. There was a growing distrust of other people. Community, family and extended families all depreciated. Tribes lingered as a faint mystic memory. Doors were locked, mace tucked into pockets. With wealth came fear of poverty, fear of the poor, fear of crime. In some areas, the modern vocabularies had trouble keeping pace. Neighborhoods were fortified by suburban version of the Great Wall—gated and patrolled communities. Such a monumental stronghold civilization had become, the size of it was also worrisome. And so, in the cycle of cyclic times, the word fear became systematically outdated and the nomenclature advanced accordingly. The modern pilgrims suffered from clinical fears. Generalized anxiety. Chronic stress. Panic attacks. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Imaginary fears—hypochondria, paranoia. And phobias—lists too long to memorize. Fear of open spaces, fear of closed spaces, fear of heights, fear of the dark. Hydrophobia—fear of water. Phobophobia—the fear of fear itself. Obsessive compulsive disorder, personality disorder, multiple personality disorder. At a certain point, even the cracks in the sidewalk can get you down. By the twenty-first century, civilization and advanced technology, working together, had transformed fear into pathology. Against such fears as these the muskets didn’t help much. Self-help came to monopolize whole sections in the bookstore. Stress Management. From Panic to Power. Plato Not Prozac. The Anxiety Disease. Panic Attacks. Don’t Panic. 10 Simple Solutions to Panic. The Anxiety Answer Book. Anxieties, Phobias and Panic. Coping with Social Anxiety. Overcoming Anxiety. Feel the Fear and Beyond. Feel the Fear and do it Anyway. And so many more. To keep up with the neuroses, entire professions were carved out of the social bedrock to treat the teeming plague of fears. Fear therapy offered hope in coping with crippling real-life symptoms. Toward this end, pharmaceutical industries stepped up as a natural godsend manufacturing mood stabilizers, anti-depressants and anti-psychotics and soon became the most profitable industries of their time. Microscopes revealed a universe of germs we never knew were there. Bacteria, virus, protozoa—extreme germs with unsettling resistant capacities. And the armaments intensified. Antibiotics, vaccines, hand sanitizers, placebos of medical nothingness. But, in the inevitable undertow of seething industrial antagonisms, the germs the scientists discovered, others yearned to weaponize. First there was fear, then terror, then terrorism, then bio-terrorism—a toxic epiphany of interdisciplinary cooperation synchronized by history. As innovation advanced, out-pacing human cunning, progress became the vehicle of perpetual promise that never quite materialized. We built the walls, made the weapons, manufactured the drugs, designed the surveillance cameras, home-security systems, smoke alarms, house alarms, car alarms, bullet-proof glass, gated communities, peep-holes, missile systems, cudgels, nerve gas, razor wire. We refined basic tools into the tools of agriculture, refined the tools of agriculture into weapons, refined the weapons into an arsenal, refined the arsenal into a military industrial complex to appease the conquering mind. The result? Even thermonuclear warheads, the special weapon, were tainted with the promise of radioactive contamination that could make the planet unfit to live on. An unlivable planet was just another uneasy compromise for the security-seeking mind. The bomb brought with it gamma rays, long-lived isotopes and radioactive-waste, assembled from a teeming sea of equations invented to stabilize our sanctuary and yet our worries easily outpaced them. In the end, the mushroom cloud was just another hollow victory eating away at the DNA. These were the high-tech fears that neither Australopithecus nor Neanderthal ever knew of. Had there always been this nascent temptation in technology to disgrace us? By the Twenty-first Century, as academia filled the pages of textbooks with secrets of heavy water and plutonium, we were born again, the ultimate suicide bombers: masters of potential self-immolation , self-termination. Lewis Mumford observed that we had given technology the authority to destroy us.[2] Sheltered in our luxury fortresses, we’ve sharpened our enhanced perception of risk, and erected an advanced warning, global positioning radar of risk assessment. Yet, the wider the moats, the higher the walls, the more our security seems jeopardized. Where is the absolute equation of refuge? Is it asking too much to be invincibly protected in the error-prone wasteland of the melting pot? When carbon nano-fibers confirm the singularity and molecular machines become self-healing and self-replicating, what then? Acute fear? Totalitarian fear? Are we on a quest to distill fear into its deadliest form? Outfitted with our accentuated perceptions of fear, we have navigated toward an aversion to discomfort of any kind. In an increasingly eccentric, sterile, but clearly still hazardous world, catering to the overly protected, overly troubled population inching their way toward a bondage to comfort, a mandatory aversion to being cold, hot, wet, thirsty, hungry or bored. By now, as our instincts and hardiness continue to fail us, we drift off course from original species strengths, practical achievements and intimate associated, primal joys. The wild boy of Aveyron ‘rescued’ from the forest of France around the age of twelve in 1799, could sit exposed for hours in the cold rain. He could lift hot coals from the fire with his bare hands. On the inside, he spent his days by the window looking longingly at the moon and the forest.[3] He was wild. He wanted out. But his kindly captors trained him to crave comforts and he lost his feral vigor. We’re a lot like him, implausibly altered versions of our former savage selves, domesticated into ghosts and apparitions. As the present tightens its grip on urgency, we pass our days within a system of nesting shells, layers of security, walls within walls, each one more costly, forbidding and impregnable than the one before. But what happens when pressures from all other species, and the demands of the Earth’s extremes, are removed? Diamonds fail to crystallize. Coal does not solidify. Species die out or unwind back into plasmids. Muscles atrophy. Inertia takes over. For us, species essence and genetic promise have corroded into a dependent lethargy. Crippled by machines and dependent on them, fluent in the jargon of compliance, how can we ever again comprehend our lost potential? How could a courageous, healthy future ever materialize among us? Rachel Carson once wrote of “the irony of our accomplishments.” Did she mean that living is a risk technology can never wholly minimize? Or, is there another New World out there waiting for us beyond this one? Is there a permanent demilitarized no-fire zone, a green zone, an archdiocese of absolute impregnable asylum? Or is it the human race, but with another meaning? It’s called the “revenge effect”—unanticipated negative consequences of new technologies. Infinite fallibilities. Legacy defects. So much risk that the messages sent out in Voyager must have fallen out of date by now. Perhaps the gold, anodized disc should have suggested a declaration of technological wariness. By the time it reaches anyone we will have begun to suspect we’re not immortal. Those that find it may already suffer from the blindness that afflicts us. From vacuum tubes to solid state and digital dementia, we memorize the electronic hierarchies, sit back and wait for them to happen. From hostile take-over to hostile nations, to failed-state syndrome, we’ve seeded distressed signals of endangerment into the airspace of our exceptionally moribund version of paradise. So much has happened since the pilgrims faced off with the forests and the wild men. Not even the prophets among them could have predicted it. The tentative pioneers thought the howling wilderness was dangerous. Now their fear has grown and endangers everything. Nature was subdued, the price alarmingly high. It’s sad to win and realize you have won nothing. We’ve become the fragile cyberian wanderers who submitted to fear and built a world -dependent on it. Daily life has become a kind of war we never counted on. The newest fear? That the wounds of our discontent now run too deep to ever heal. Some say technology is innocent—it is the human mind that sins. But that’s just linguistic mockery of real events. From the day that the first sword was raised, the sword has punished us. We’ve become the master criminals, but childlike, and incapacitated. Technology has generated an implausibly plundered planet, lifted us from the primordial past, tempted and tormented us. Ancient aptitudes have been bred out. Silhouettes of grandeur lie emulsified in doubt. Technology has created non-remedial, chronic fear where only natural fear existed before it. As Chilean social critic, Ariel Dorfman wrote in The Empire’s Old Clothes, there‘s been “destruction of inner fears….survival of nightmares.”[4]

[1] Atkinson, Brooks. This Bright Land. Doubleday Natural History Press. 1972. [2] Mumford, Louis. The Myth of the Machine: Pentagon of Power. A Harvest/HBJ Book. 1970. [3] Lane, Harlan L. The Wild Boy of Aveyron. Harvard University Press. 1996. [4] Dorfman Ariel. The Empire’s Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and other Innocent Heroes Do To Our Minds. Duke University Press. 2010. Pg 180.

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[tripstations]

5 of the best ancient archeological sites to visit on a private yacht charter in the Greek Cycladic Islands

Amidst the white cubic houses with cobalt blue trim, the blue domed white churches, the white trimmed stepped walking streets, the arid beautiful terraced landscapes, the olive, lemon and orange trees, and the grazing goats, are remnants of the ancient civilizations that also once roamed these beautiful islands millenniums ago. And for the historian, and archeology buff, the best way to visit the various and fascinating excavations taking place on these islands, some only having unearthed 5% of what is still to be revealed, is by private yacht charter, as there is no regular ferry system that connects exactly the islands that have these archeological sites, nor is there airline service. The only way to travel between the Cycladic Islands of your choice is to charter a yacht and let the Captain know where you want to go. As after all, this is what private yacht charter is all about….cruising where you want to go, when you want to go.

Akrotiri, Santorini Island

Explore the many secrets of the magical mystical Cycladic Island of Santorini as tucked away on the Island of Santorini, excavations continue revealing the remains of an ancient wealthy trading city. This is a city lost in time; covered by ash and debris in the massive volcanic eruption in the 1600’s BC when the island blew its top, literally. It was in 1967 that excavations began in earnest, and still continue at a site in Akrotiri on the island of Santorini where only 5% of this ancient city is said to be revealed to date. The ruins are fascinating to see, and excavated artifacts are on display at the Archeological Museum in Fira.

The lost city was discovered in the 1800’s in fields in an area of the island known today as Akrotiri. As the origin of the civilization that built this extraordinary city with three story apartment buildings, running water and a city sewer system was unknown, the excavations are now known as Akrotiri by their location on the island. That which has been excavated, based on excavations in other parts of the world, is now felt to have been a wealthy Minoan trading city, that clearly evacuated the city before the final and most devastating volcanic eruption on Santorini Island completed covered the abandoned city which was then lost in time.

Today, the excavations continue under a covered area where boardwalks and raised walkways allow the visitor to walk amongst that which has been revealed to see what was left behind so many years ago, including city streets, apartment buildings, storage rooms, even what may have been bathrooms with running water. Important wall murals have been removed and carefully restored to be seen in the Archeology Museum in Fira along with artifacts from the excavation. Guides are available to be hired on site, and are recommended.

Delos Island

Delos Island, the center of the Cyclades, has been inhabited since at least the 3rd millennium B.C. As did the Hellenic Nation, this island rose in importance and around 480 BC, became the center of the Delian League. The Delian League located their treasury here solidifying the importance of this island in the ancient world. Today Delos is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most important archeological sites in the world. This island, located just next to Mykonos is open to visitors 12 hours during the day, every day of the week.

Claimed as the mythological birth place of Apollo, Delos was immensely wealthy and was so impressive that the Romans retained this island as a free port when they came into power. Delos finally collapsed in 88 BC when conquered by Mithridates. Today, the remains of what was once a very powerful island are only partially excavated.

Visit the museum first which is where the famous marble lions that once guarded the sacred lake are now stored. The ‘sacred lake’ is the supposed birthplace of Apollo which is close by, but now over grown and dry.

All over the island are the remains of temples, homes, and monuments. There is also an impressive array of different cultures that left their mark on the island. Shrines for Samothracian, Egyptian, and Syrian Gods are interspersed amongst the Greek shrines. The Temple of Isis stands high above most of the town. Entire sections of the residential areas are more or less intact. The streets are still clearly outlined, many of them with sewers running underneath. The northern section of town featured more modest living quarters with smaller apartments, each with only several rooms.

Wildflowers have gained foothold in the ruins, peaking out in various places, to add color. A hill rises on the south side of town in an area known as the theater district. It is here that some of the truly opulent houses can be found with beautiful mosaic floors often showing dolphins, which symbolized Apollo or panthers, which symbolized Dionysus. In the House of the Masks, which is virtually fully intact, a mosaic can be seen of Dionysus riding a panther, along with another mosaic of theatre masks. Several rooms in this building contain large sections of the original wall decoration as well as the floor mosaics.

It is well worth spending a full morning exploring this island and visiting the museum by having your yacht anchor in Delos Harbor and coming ashore by ship’s tender. Private guides are available and are recommended.

Milos Island

A volcanic Island, Milos was prized in Ancient Times due to the cache of volcanic created obsidian rock found on the island and mined for making weaponry, and knives needed for everyday living and hunting. Mining obsidian and the creation of weapons, knives and other utensils and implements on the island was the main industry on Milos in Ancient Times making Milos a very wealthy island which perhaps provided the money to commission the beautiful and famous sculpture of Venus de Milo found on the island and now on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The archeological and historic sites on the island are several.

Phylakopi excavation site on the island was one of the greatest pre-historic settlements in the Aegean. The settlement was heavily inhabited starting from the Early Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age and into the Mycenaean Period until around 1100BC when the settlement was abandoned. Artifacts found show that the inhabitants were traders with the rest of the Cycladic Islands, and as far away as mainland Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. Trade items from this Milos settlement were items made mainly of local obsidian. Numerous clay and stone vessels, stone, clay and bronze figurines, and bronze items have been found, however, the most impressive find is a gold face mask.

Right above Klima and below the settlement of Trypiti overlooking the sea where the ancient town of Milos once was is an ancient Roman Theatre, along with a stadium, an ancient market, and an early-Christian baptistery. The Roman Theatre however is the most impressive structure left, with 7 tiers built to hold 700 spectators that accessed the theatre via 6 stairways. Parts of the stage are preserved along with carved marble reliefs.

Also, on Milos are early Christian Catacombs, the only preserved catacombs in Greece dating back to the 2nd century AD and used until the late 5th century AD as the cemetery of the first Christian community on the island. To date 291 tombs have been found, however it is estimated that there are at least 1500 to 2000 tombs in the area with over 8000 bodies buried within the tombs, as each tomb housed more than one body. The tombs were all arched and dug into the soft rock. The catacombs were discovered accidentally by looters in 1840.

On the island is an Archeology Museum and a Mining Museum. For any archaeology buff and historian, Milos offers quite a bit of history and important archeological sites, and several museums, in which time can be spent learning the fascinating history of an island that grew wealthy from that which its volcanic origins provided, caches of obsidian.

Antiparos-Despotiko – Tsimintiri

Once believed to have been one island in Ancient Times, these three islands, just off of the coast of Paros Island, and only reachable by private yacht, are the site of what is increasingly being understood to have been an important ancient settlement. Tsimitiri mainly has graves located on the island, and it has not yet been determined exactly how the land on Antiparos was involved, however, excavations are ongoing on Despotiko where there appears to have been a very important Sanctuary to Apollo.

Despotiko was a maritime crossroads where visitors and goods came from mainland Greece, other Aegean islands, the Ionian Islands and Rhodes, Cyprus and Egypt. The sanctuary, originally built by the Parians from Paros out of famous Parian marble, may have been larger than the Sanctuary to Apollo on Delos Island.

Many artifacts have been found including small oil and ointment containers, clay figurines, ceramic objects and statuettes, signet rings with semi-precious stones, bronze and ivory clasps, stone, glass and gold beads, bronze, silver, lead and iron objects, swords, domestic implements and many agricultural tools, ceramic vases, basins, bottles, lamps, pots and amphorae, as well as fragments of marble Kouros statues and other sculptures; gold and bronze jewelry; faience scarabs; and a striking clay statuette depicting a goddess (ca. 650 BC).

The ruins are open air and easy to wander around. There may be archeologists at work as this is an ongoing relaxed archaeological dig, relying on volunteers and donations and may be an archeology site where you can engage the archeologists and volunteers, depending on who might be there for more information on what might be happening and being found in a more “hands on” manner.

Ios Island

On Ios is the very important archeological site of Skarkos, thought to be over 4500 years old and the best ancient Cycladic prehistoric site in Greece. Located in western Ios, the archaeological site is overlooking one of the finest natural harbors in the Cyclades, and is easily reachable by having your yacht on anchor in the harbor with the archaeological site of Skarkos up on the hill overlooking all. Skarkos was inhabited from around 2800BC to 2300BC during what is the Early Cycladic II period.

Excavations reveal well built houses set closely together along narrow streets and squares. Today still able to be seen are the ground floors, doorways and stairways. Most of the buildings were at least two stories built with stone walls. The settlement was abandoned after an earthquake and never re-settled which kept the remains well preserved until found again in recent history.

Many artifacts have been found including pottery, stone tools, figurines, and obsidian tools. Skarkos prospered as it lay at the junction of several key trading routes that linked the Cycladic Islands with Crete, Asia Miner, and mainland Greece. Visit the Archeological Museum in Ios as well to see artifacts from Skarkos as well as the archeological site. In 2008 the site received a European Union Prize for excellence in Cultural Heritage Conservation.

Private yacht charter is your own hotel and restaurant that you can take with you, with your own private crew for full service, while you visit archeological and historical sites in the beautiful Cycladic Islands of Greece. And as an added bonus, also enjoy the crystal clear blue green waters and cool off with a swim, relax on a beach, join the villagers around a table at a local taverna for ouzo and octopus, and overall enjoy all there is to enjoy in addition to the history and archeological remains of the Cycladic Islands of Greece. And perhaps at night, after learning all there is to know about the history and archeological sites during the day on an island, perhaps at night, kick up your heels in a lively Greek dance or two in a village square under the stars, in the cool evening air

Missy Johnston is Owner of Northrop-Johnson Yacht Charters Newport. Northrop-Johnson Yacht Charters is a luxury crewed yacht charter company offering top notch private yachts with great crews in every worldwide cruising destination.

If you would like to be a guest blogger on A Luxury Travel Blog in order to raise your profile, please contact us.

The post 5 of the best ancient archeological sites to visit on a private yacht charter in the Greek Cycladic Islands appeared first on Tripstations.

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[jurassicparkpodcast]

INTERVIEW: Jack Ewins | An In-Depth Look at Dino Defenders Extreme!

As anyone who follows The Jurassic Park Podcast team will know – whilst we all love the Jurassic films, we also all have a deep affinity for dinosaurs in general – and love writing about all things to do with them. I’ve been lucky enough to cover a wide breadth of dinosaur-related materials in the past – from museum collections to live arena spectacles and much, much more. But, one of the things to get me most excited, was when I learned that friend of the podcast Jack Ewins was working on an epic new adventure: Dino Defenders Extreme. We sat down with Jack to learn a little more about the piece:

Tom: Hey Jack! So, firstly, for anyone who doesn’t know you (I don’t know how!) – tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do:

Jack: My name is Jack Anthony Ewins, I help run a production company with my friend Tim called Chaos Theorem, some of you out there might know our work from the viral marketing for Jurassic World and JW: Fallen Kingdom.

Tom: Awesome – so obviously, dinosaurs are a big part of life for you then! Was it your affinity for Jurassic Park which led you down the path to work on your latest project?

Jack: Above anything else it was my love of story-telling that led me down the path towards Dino-Defenders. Jurassic Park has inspired the visual canvas for setting, and the basic set up for where the story begins (a group of specialists head to a secret base where dinosaurs have been cloned) but the challenge was how to make it different. Dinosaurs are a fascinating part of Earth’s history and I firmly believe in fiction there’s more we can do with them. I’m hopeful that Dino-Defenders can do that. Also, my wife challenged me to better my artwork of humans, this was back in 2015 not long after Jurassic World was out, she said “you can draw/paint dinosaurs really well but humans are your undoing”. At first I decided to try and tackle this via our web comic Jurassic World: Regenesis but that project was eventually shelved and I didn’t do anything else for a while. Not until the idea for DDEX came along. I’ve figured this project will put me to the test by having humans in many different situations and positions for me to better my art and by having the characters be stylised and cartoony would be a good starting point. So far, I’ve learnt a lot. Thanks wife : ).

Tom: So – Dino Defenders Extreme. What kind of stories can we expect from this project?

Jack: DDEX is one story split into chapters. Like Alien, Jurassic Park and Frankenstein its a story of playing god and exploiting the miracle of life, but it won’t do this by simply having dinosaurs escape to teach the nasty humans a lesson, I want to tell something different with these animals that we haven’t seen in other stories, and I believe that starts with the human characters. We’ve seen people promote dinosaurs for entertainment, we’ve seen them try to use them as weapons, but with Dino-Defenders I’m asking what if someone was using prehistoric lifeforms to search for other ways to play god, and how deep does that go.

Tom: In your announcement, you mention being inspired by modern films like Prometheus, but also by the works of film icons like Ray Harryhausen. How have these inspirations shaped the project so far?

Jack: Ray Harryhasen in particular has inspired the project purely from a motivational stand point. If you’ve ever watched an interview with the late icon its apparent that he never let go of his passion of bringing monsters and dinosaurs to life. It’s his drive and commitment that inspired me to commit to this project and really be passionate about it. As for Prometheus being an inspiration it boils down to two things, I love the ascetic of the character Weyland’s living quarters on the ship, and what we see at the beginning of Alien: Covenant, there’s a sleek, clean Romanesque feel to the way Ridley Scott and crew brought that character to life. I wanted to emulate that certain aspect for the character Rose Ankor who is the mastermind behind the operations in Dino-Defenders. Obviously, the look of this project is heavily inspired by cartoons from the 90’s, but also the Overwatch animated shorts. With those they tell short 7 minute stories that have been very inspirational in lessons of compact story-telling.

Tom: Obviously, you’re still hard at work developing the show – but do you have an estimate for how many episodes you expect the show to be?

Jack: It’ll be released in 6 chapters, each around 15 mins in length. Once they are all finished I’ll edit them together into a feature length video. The goal is to reach at least 1 hour 10 minutes’ worth.

Tom: What has been your biggest challenge you’ve encountered so far?

Jack: The biggest challenge so far has been finding time to work on it. I have the story planned out and the tools to bring it to life but finding the time has been the biggest obstacle. I began work on DDEX in July 2017, and had some time over that summer to get the project off the ground, then life got in the way, and after that we really got stuck in with Fallen Kingdom, I would love to work on it 24/7, which is why I have set up the Patreon to try and find support in order to do this. The show will come out regardless but with support it’ll be with us sooner rather than later. I’ll admit the second challenge is getting the word out there and letting like-minded people know that a project like this exists. So I truly appreciate you guys helping get the word out! Thank you.

Tom: Where can people learn more about the project?

Jack: People can learn more about the project over a the Patreon http://www.Patreon.com/Ewinzilla/Overview … or go to my Terrordome 3000 youtube channel you can catch me live streaming painting frames for the project whenever I can and people can talk directly to me about information on the project. We also look to have a laugh when streaming.

Tom: Can Jurassic Park fans expect fan-favourite dinosaurs to make appearances or should we expect Dino Defenders Extreme to bring all new dinosaurs to the centre stage?

Jack: Oh yes, there’ll be lesser known dinosaurs in this series. I’ve omitted A LOT of the most well known dinosaurs, some examples being Tyrannosaurus Rex, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Triceratops, Spinosaurus, Velociraptor, and Parasaurolophus because I feel there are some really interesting prehistoric creatures that I can use in unique ways that’ll be different to what has been seen previously. The ones I’ve publicly announced being in the show are Megalosaurus, Dimetrodon, Proceratosaurus, and Megaraptor. I’ll admit there is one particular prehistoric creature that has a scene I think people will love. But thats a secret for now.

Tom: Where do you hope Dino Defenders Extreme will go in the future? What’s the end goal?

Jack: The end goal of DDEX is to entertain those like minded folks out there who have longed for a more mature dinosaur story, and those that have been longing for an animated show of Jurassic Park. I’m also framing the shots in a cinematic way, like animated story boards to show how it could work on a larger screen. So who knows what could happen if people really embraced this. I’d love to take it to a animation studio and have it made into a fully animated film, *COUGH* Don Bluth. But I must take baby steps and put the work in to prove its worth.

Tom: Lastly, where can people excited get more involved?

Jack: At this current stage people can get involved via the Patreon: http://www.Patreon.com/Ewinzilla/Overview …. No one has to support it of course but for $1 per MONTH (76p for those in the UK) I think it’s a small price to pay to help with the creation of something that has been missing for the last 25+ years. If people can’t afford to help but still wish to I’d say spread the word!

There you have it – an in-depth look at Dino Defenders Extreme! I am personally incredibly excited to see where this goes. Jack and Tim have shown real talent for expanding story materials through Chaos Theorem in the past – so I am excited to see Jack put that to good use with DDEX. Stay tuned here on The Jurassic Park Podcast – as we hope to continue to cover the project as it grows and expands!

In the meantime, if you are excited, check out the first teaser trailer:

Written by: Tom Fishenden