#but dude. come on. that's like the whole thing about unreliable narrators. even within their own narrative you can find ways of undermining

[meadowmines]

So yeah, I have been listening to the current season of Within the Wires, and I’ve poked the tag a little now and then, and there’s just one thing that’s nagging at me a little: a few people putting Elena’s scavenger hunt at the same level of boundary-overstepping as Hester’s tapes or even Freya’s bullshit and... no? It’s not even close?

Look. However good Hester’s intentions were, Oleta was literally a captive audience so yeah, I absolutely get the discomfort about that. Freya... might have had an actual good intention in there somewhere but she sold her whole Cradle AND HER OWN KID!!! out for martyr points--or, given how unreliable a narrator she was, she very well could have dropped a dime on the Hedmark Cradle as part of a deal to save her own ass. Either way, that was so far out of the average WTW narrator’s creepster behavior league it’s not even the same game, y’all.

So on a scale of “well-intentioned attempt to save childhood friend from horrible experiments”  to “sell out your own daughter for martyr points or maybe just to save your own ass” where, IMO, does Elena fall? 

Pretty fucking low, my dudes. Like... just because of Oleta being a literal captive audience and Anita presumably out in the world living her life and free to do what she wanted about a strange tape showing up, I’d even say she’s lower on the creeper scale than Hester.

(readmore’d for vague but possibly spoilerish rambling)

Elena would have sent one tape directly to Anita. Which, sure, would have required enough stalker behavior to know where to send it. But the rest were scattered all over the world. Anita would have had to decide, for herself, whether or not to follow the trail and how far to follow it. At any point in this scavenger hunt, Anita could have said “hmm no I think I have had enough of this” and gone home. For all we know, she could have listened to that first tape, went “hmm no thank you” and tossed the whole box in the trash and gone on with her life. For all we know, she might not have even listened to that first tape. 

(Hell, for all we know, Elena might have made all the tapes at home, died before she even made it to Miami, and all of them could have been sitting there unheard and gathering dust all this time but for our purposes here I’m going to assume Anita at least received the first tape)

(ETA: ...rrrrrright yes Elena also clearly engaged in enough stalker behavior to know some details about Anita’s life, like, shit she would have had to put effort into finding out. That’s definitely Weird but given what we now know about her motives and the fact that, you know, unlike Rose, she wasn’t given the Potion of Don’t Get Attached To Your (Wife’s) Kid honestly I... can’t really blame her for being interested and also she doesn’t insert herself into Anita’s life to act on anything she’s learned, just... leaves one tape Anita might or might not choose to listen to)

Of course we’re coming up on the season finale and as we know all kinds of bombs get dropped in WTW season finales but going by what we know Elena’s scavenger hunt is, so far, pretty benign as far as WTW Narrator Stalker Behavior goes.

[firearmsandflashdrives]

my main problem with foucaults pendulum is that the flaws of its characters that it critiques are sometimes also the flaws of the narrative/novel as a whole…i feel this particularly with amparo and the whole part of the book set in brazil…like one of the primary flaws of casaubon/belbo/diotallevi is that they start to see the complexity of history and culture as mere symbols reflecting something secret and universal, but also therefore flat, as casaubon articulates in the end: “the moment a secret is revealed, it seems little. There is only an empty secret.” Right? but for eco too i think the brief brush with the long history and culture of brazil exists only to be part of that bigger secret…there is literally zero interest in examining it for what it is the way there is with the italian history of fascism/resistance or with the templars. like the moment of triumph for belbo that casaubon identifies is his holding the note of the trumpet precisely because it doesn't signify anything else. but the mix of cultures that exist in brazil is used in the novel only as a way of signifying something else--where the templars are originally discussed as a nuanced and varied group of men and are reduced to genius masters of the global plot as the protagonists lose themselves, brazil, the agogos, etc, are never anything but symbols.

I think this is most obvious in amparo's reaction to becoming "possessed"--she reveals this really deep internalized racism and hatred for her roots, calling herself a "dirty black girl," that the novel doesnt care to explore the way it does with belbo's feelings towards his moments of cowardice/bravery in the face of fascism and war--his italian roots. i think it's really revealing and honestly embarrassing for eco--it's treated like a neutral or even obvious thing for her to say and i think eco himself doesn't realize the extent to which it implies a rich and tortured inner life for amparo. the novel treats it as essentially the same feeling that casaubon has about his descent into conspiratorial thinking, but it's so obviously not--to be a white italian obsessed with the mysticism of european history is not the same thing as being a mixed-race brazilian woman embarrassed to find herself unable to be as intellectually detached from this aspect of her culture as her white boyfriend, as diotallevi says, you can't do whatever you want with the text. human history is not reducible to a struggle for control over telluric currents.

that's what makes it so frustrating for me--eco's racism, imperialism, and misogyny prevent him from seeing what could have been a really compelling avenue for furthering the themes of the text. but of course doing so would have involved actually giving a nonwhite female character a role in the text outside of furthering a white guy's character development

[whumpurr]

Adrien and Sawdust part 6

cw: pet whump, whump recovery, bodily mutilation, self harm, brief and vague mention of past noncon, dehumanization, conditioned whumpee, unreliable narrator, brief mention of dissociation

masterlist

Sawdust was searching for his bag the second Master was gone. He hopped out of bed, punctuated with a fit of dizziness as he got to his feet, and crawled around the room looking for his duffel bag. The bright blue bag was nowhere to be found, and Sawdust wasn’t great at seeing in the dark either.

He started to wonder, to second guess himself. Did Master put the bag somewhere in the room and Sawdust just isn’t seeing it? Is he overlooking it? Did he even have a bag at all? Did it come with him to this new house, or was it left with his previous master? No, no, he remembered seeing it next to his kennel with those other people.

If he left the room now, Master would surely hear it and question him, or worse, punish him for disturbing his sleep. As much as Sawdust wanted his ears back, he just had to trust that Master would return them in due time.

Sleeping was difficult without the familiar squeeze of his headband around his head, but with a full stomach he managed to eventually fall asleep even if it took a while.

Sunlight came all too soon for Sawdust. The light peeked through the curtains and he couldn’t physically sleep any more. He was dreading going downstairs and having to face his master, having to eat beside him. He could only imagine what his master was going to do to him. Would he record him? Bring his friends over and show him how pathetic and stupid he looked eating out of a bowl on the floor? Sawdust shook himself out of his thoughts; he was just a dog anyways, he shouldn’t have enough of an ego to be embarrassed.

He was getting himself out of bed, going down onto his hands and knees when he heard a soft knock on the door, followed by Master’s quiet voice.

“Sawdust?” Master said from the other side of the heavy wooden door. “Come on, let’s go get some food.”

Sawdust got to the door and opened it with his paw, stepping out and following Master.

Master gave him a bowl of dog food once he was downstairs. Sawdust half contemplated asking Master about his ears, but really, if Master had taken them away then it was because Sawdust did not deserve them any more.

“Master,” Sawdust murmured, “Is- is there anything your pet can- can do? To assist?”

Master looked thoughtful for a moment then laughed, laughed at Sawdust.

“I think my work stuff is a bit advanced for you,” Master took a bite of his own food, “I want you to focus on… recovery, for now. Okay? That means you rest up and come get me if you want anything, food, water, whatever.”

Sawdust nodded, “Yes, Master,” before he continued eating, the hard kibble crunching satisfyingly between his teeth. He couldn’t work up the courage to ask Master about the ears or his bag, or where they’ve gone.

Lunch and dinner went similarly, with Master coming, getting his pet, and taking him downstairs to eat. Each time Sawdust couldn’t work himself up enough to ask Master about his ears. The lack of his ears made Sawdust feel… Wrong. Like he wasn’t a real dog, like he was a subpar pet. He wasn’t good enough to this new Master who had otherwise been so kind to him. What had he done to deserve this?

Night eventually fell, and Sawdust did his best to do as Master said and get to sleep. He curled up in the nest of blankets and pillows that his Master had made in the corner for him, and let himself begin to drift off. As he was doing so, he couldn’t help but wonder why his Master was withholding his belongings from him. Nevertheless, his eyelids grew heavy, and he eventually fell into a deep sleep.

--

Adrien was still getting accustomed to feeding someone using a dog bowl, with dog food, on the floor. It was a strange experience, and doing it made him feel dirty, but it was all Sawdust was going to accept so if it was between that or making the pet starve again, he would have to go with the former.

He was still very aware of just how lost he was in all of this. He searched the internet and scoured his social media for something that could give him some kind of life preserver in all of this. Finally, finally, he found something. A chatroom for pet owners. From the looks of it, it was heavily moderated and geared more towards pet liberation activists, and pet rehabbers, and people who actually cared for their pets. He requested to join and was accepted within the hour. He immediately sent a message to the ‘help’ section.

Adrien: >> Hey guys, I’m a new owner and I didn’t do as much research as I should have. >> Long story short, I didn’t keep as close an eye on my pet as I should’ve, and he ended up not eating because I wasn’t giving him dog food. Is that a normal thing? How can I help him?

It wasn’t five minutes before one of the other owners responded,

1Y4N4: >> oof, thats no good dude.. definitely watch him harder and probably just stick to feeding him what he wants for now. u said hes new right? let him stay in his comfort zone for a little bit probably

Adrien: >> Thanks. I’ll do that.

1Y4N4: >> np, im a bit more experienced as an owner but i dont think mine were as conditioned as urs >> at least not in that way

Zo: >> Bro wtf? You’re the source of your pet’s whole life and shit, you really should’ve done more research.

Adrien sat and watched as this ‘Zo’ person continued to rip into Adrien for his irresponsibility, though the ‘1Y4N4’ user at least tried to defend Adrien. It wasn’t long before Zo quieted down and 1Y4N4 was able to speak up again,

1Y4N4: >> lots of actual dogs eat things that arent dog chow >> maybe show your pet some videos of people feeding their dogs other stuff, maybe hell be more open then

Adrien thanked the user, and used the rest of his evening compiling some videos and researching, finding the outer bounds of what dogs could eat in hopes that he could convince Sawdust. It was far from exactly what he wanted, but he felt some semblance of satisfaction that there was at least a way to progress forwards.

--

Sawdust finally came up with a plan when he was coming out of the bathroom the next morning. It was before Adrien had gotten up. As Sawdust was leaving the bathroom, he caught sight of himself in the mirror.

His hair was all matted, and the fringe at his forehead was beginning to grow to hide his eyes. He looked lacking without his ears. There were deep circles under his eyes. At least the peaks of his cheeks and his lips were starting to regain some color now that he had a steady supply of food which he undoubtedly did not deserve. The scratched scar across his nose bridge and cheek that one of the other dogs gave him was still there. He looked at that and followed it across his face to his second ears.

His dumb second ears, the ones on either side of his head that his last master hated so much. His previous master had always told him that they made him look less like a dog, less like a pet, when a pet was all Sawdust ever wanted to be. Because if he wasn’t a pet, then he was a toy for both Master and the other dogs, and that was one step above the most reprehensible thing he could be. He had been downgraded to ‘toy’ for a short amount of time previously, and he was eternally grateful that he was never dropped even lower, to being nothing but food for the other dogs.

Master threatened that sometimes, chopping him up and feeding him to the other dogs.

Whenever Sawdust looked at himself in the mirror, he couldn’t help imagine it. Being cut up and thrown to other animals to eat. He found some part of himself that felt that- even if he could never do anything else right- he could do that right. He tried to halt that train of thought as quickly as he could, before his mind shunted him off to some dark, foggy place where he couldn’t think or feel until the bad thoughts went away.

But at the root of those thoughts, he found the problem, as well as the solution. He scrambled down to the kitchen as fast as he could go, wanting to work quickly before he could stop himself.

He got to the kitchen sink, and stood up on trembling, unused legs. They could hardly support his weight, he had to lean onto the granite countertop with his elbows as he reluctantly removed the tape from his paws using his teeth. He would need his fingers for this.

Sawdust’s breath was quick in his throat, the edges of his vision grew blurry as he tried to focus on this and only this. He had one task and he was not going to fail it. He wanted his ears back. He wanted his master to be happy with him again. Maybe this way he could earn his master’s attention and... Maybe even his affection, if a pet was allowed to hope.

Sawdust’s paws were shaky and clumsy as they took out the biggest knife out of the wooden blog. It was heavy and cold in his paw. With one paw he held the tip of one of his second ears and pulled it as far away from his head as he could.

The cold edge of the blade rested on his skin, at the valley between his second ear and his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, he couldn’t break down now, he couldn’t stop now. He took a deep, sharp breath and pressed down on the knife as hard as his feeble paws could.

--

Adrien shot out of bed to the sound of a piercing, howling scream from downstairs.

taglist: @starnight-whump @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi@neuro-whump @whump-me-all-night-long @cupcakes-and-pain @whumpzone @whumpcreations @dancinglifeboat @pinkraindropsfell @looptheloup @cowboy-anon @meetmeinhellcroutons @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight @firewheeesky @maracujatangerine

[nostalgebraist]

Some quick reactions to Perhaps The Stars.

Spoilers below. My spoiler-free reaction can be found here.

I'm having a specific reaction to this book that I've had before... I had the same reaction to the Homestuck Epilogues, for example.

With PTS, as with the Epilogues, I greatly enjoyed the experience overall, but there were some elements I strongly disliked or was simply baffled by -- and it's also a work that does clever things with unreliable narration and reader expectation, and clearly expects you to notice that it's doing these things, and approach it with a paranoid, scrutinizing interpretive style.

So my burning questions are all of the form "this part I didn't like, was that on purpose?" and then "but, if so, what could it possibly mean? even if it was on purpose, was it a good idea to do it?"

----

After an extremely good first half, the book just kind of falls apart in the last 200 pages, and the last 100 especially.

Like, consider the sheer difference in quality between "The Second Battle for the Almagest" and "Peacefall"! Not just in quality, even, but something like "sense that the writer cares about doing a good job," "sense that the writer gives a shit."

I mean sure, the unusual structure of "Peacefall" -- with the outcome narrated before the action, and then most of the action offscreen and told-not-shown, and told so briefly, the whole chapter only 11 pages -- I can imagine justifying those choices by saying they make a point about how we shouldn't be basking in the glory of war anymore, that it shouldn't matter how exactly the war was finally won so long as it was.

But even by that standard, the chapter fails! Mycroft, who lectures us so much on such matters elsewhere, never comes out and says "I'm making this chapter short because..." Plus: anticlimax is one thing, bathos another. Mycroft, dude, you're literally sneaking into a Bond villain's secret complex with a crazy plan that's your last hope to alter the future of the human race forever. And you relate this event in prose like:

Together we hacked the surveillance, the comms, the doors, and finally the transit program which these ba'sibs mastered in their childhood when most kids master bicycles. It was easy

Mycroft? Are you there, Mycroft? It's me, Reader. Could you try actually, like, narrating? This is a fucking plot outline!

Maybe this chapter feels off because we're not meant to believe it. But then, the questions that always follow, and are difficult to answer with conviction: "why?" "and then what, exactly?"

----

One night, after finishing the chapter "Until My Uncle Answers Me," I lay awake sleepless, ruminating on 9A.

There was something wrong about 9A, I felt. It either indicated a failure of writing, or an upcoming plot twist, and I feared the former outcome.

9A is simultaneously a world leader "in the room where it happens," like our other protagonists, and . . . a naive kid. I don't remember if we learn their actual age, but they feel immature, and in a different way from the characters who are merely immature-as-adults. Like a real adolescent, lacking the lessons of experience.

When 9A believes in something, they do it with an uncomplicated purity, and they have an adolescent's raw shock when one of their beliefs is threatened.

Their sections of the book have an almost "YA" feel distinct from the rest of the series: a courageous young nobody is thrust into prominence, their hands grasp the world's fate, and yet the plot shapes itself conveniently, so that the emotions, the dramas faced by the world's helmsman are all somehow the familiar ones of adolescence: one's first world-shattering falling-out with a dear friend, learning to bear the pain of leaving a beloved family home, seeing external sources of validation and stability fail and learning to rely, instead, on resources within oneself.

And yet this kid is a world leader, trusted not only by their friend the Censor but by everyone, on the basis of what exactly?, and what's more, they're also the Anonymous!

We are told they pen brilliant essays that shape the opinions of the masses. But I'd seen their prose, I'd seen how they think, and I just didn't believe it. Take this passage, which stuck out to me on first reading, as I'm sure it was supposed to:

That's what we're afraid of really, that, in our information efforts, we're going to poison this war like the free-speech-mongers poisoned the last centuries of the Exponential Age and vomited out the Church war. Free speech, that old tool of plutocracy [...] None of us wants that. I hope none of us wants that, but there are still Free Speech zealots in this day and age, and they're just the type to have communications tech, to build a radio or study Morse code, and volunteer to join our network as a link and pass on . . . death. I'm panicking, I know it. Everyone understands why we need censorship.

It's not the harsh unfamiliarity of the opinion that jars here (although there is that). Mycroft too could have expressed this opinion. But Mycroft would never have said it like that. In this childish, too-readily-convinced way, with the dull cliche deadness of the op-ed papers, and the chillingly casual generalization: "Everyone understands why we need censorship." And Mycroft would have at least understood the irony of saying this while claiming, with rapture, a lineage that began with Voltaire of all people!

It is not a coincidence that this occurs only three pages before Mycroft re-appears as narrator.

Because 9A, as this passage and many others show, could not have done all 9A was said to have done. But Mycroft could have -- and we're told that 9A temporarily called upon Mycroft and partially became him when the need arose.

It's not a coincidence, either, the special way we experience the reveal.

At first, reading "No One," I was convinced this would be the chapter that reveals it was all just bad writing, the whole time. For "No One" appears, at first, to block off unreliable narration as an excuse.

We witness an exchange between 9A and Sniper that is . . . well, whatever else you might say about it, it's a very "9A-style" exchange, sentimental (and not the way Mycroft gets sentimental), chatty, colloquial, and other qualities I don't know quite the words for. And we witness this via Mycroft transcribing a video. So either we are seeing exactly the words that that were really spoken, or we're seeing those words doctored as Mycroft, not 9A, would choose to doctor them. No longer (I thought) could I shrug and say "well, that's just how 9A sees the world."

As the problem reaches its breaking point, we are teased with a joke lampshading that problem:

9A: "Oh. Cato made a space cyborg technoimmortality deus ex machina resurrection thingy -- I'm gonna start that sentence over."

Sniper: [Laughter] "I see our Anonymous has a wide range of rhetorical styles."

(Indeed, Sniper, indeed.)

... and then, only then, comes the twist, the true breaking point, and I learn that all my discomfort, all along, was part of the plan.

This validation of my readerly paranoia is the strongest evidence I have that, despite all other appearances, there might be something better lurking under the surface of the book's limp, airy, empty conclusion.

"Everyone understands why we need censorship," 9A?

Maybe it is not so perverse to be paranoid, after all.

----

The Brillists and their social/thought control powers. What the fuck?

The characters debate for pages and pages over whether JEDD (among others) can be trusted with dictatorship. They shiver before the power of nukes, even before ordinary guns.

And yet we are told that Felix Faust wields power beyond any dictator's dreams, that Faust can move the guards of the Empire's deepest sanctum like chess pieces, that he can not only create mass movements on command but fine-tune their properties to achieve precise effects on the social fabric. He decides he wants to end the "smaller" war, and then he just makes one side win it, which he can apparently do!

This is far beyond nukes, it's the power to choose exactly when and where nukes are made and fired. It's the death of free will itself, or close to it. Faust's grip on Earth far outstrips Big Brother's grip on Oceania; it's more like IT's grip on Camazotz.

The characters don't like this state of affairs, but they discuss it only as an immediate problem to be overcome, not an atrocity in principle. They ask, "how can we beat Faust?", but they -- these statesmen, these Remakers -- never ask "how can we stop anyone from ever having this power again?" They hold Faust accountable for war crimes, but not for his power itself. They fret over Utopia's big spaceship, but not over Faust's superweapon to end all superweapons.

They talk about a compromise with Gordian, but they must know any compromise with Gordian hands everything to Gordian. What Gordian does not take, they will make you give "willingly," as long as they have possession of their powers.

In the end they decide to . . . distribute knowledge of the superweapon equally across the populace? That might work, or it might, I dunno, cause the apocalypse. It kind of depends on the details of the superweapon. Seems like kind of a big deal to me!

Possibly we're meant to think "this is how the victors write history," but I'm not sure that can explain it. Something has to, though.

----

On a lighter note, consider the two sides of the Trunk War.

On the one hand, a bunch of space-obsessed nerds.

And on the other, a Hive that opposes Set-Sets, whose leader talks in patronizing psychobabble, who have vast powers of social manipulation and a scary ability to . . . read your emotions by looking at your face. The neurotypicals are at it again!

----

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things I wanted to say, but if so, I'll add it in a reblog.

[bellaslilpapercut]

Eclipse reread part 2! This is gonna cover a lot of chapters because I forgot to include stuff from chapters 4, 5, and 6 in part 1 (in my defense your honor, this book is very grating to read). Awayyy we go:

1. so chapters 4-6 really could have been one chapter tbh since the plot is: Bella ditches work at Newton’s Outfitters to hang with Jake and then writes some graduation invites with Angela. She pushes her rusty old behemoth as fast as it can go through driving rain but then hangs outside with Jake the whole time so I don’t really know where the rain went. She also manages to hear Jake gasp through her closed car door! Super sonic! Anyway, Bella insists that Edward is a good guy, Jake makes Bella hold his hand, Jake explains imprinting (yuck we can skip that), and then Edward drives threateningly past Bella while she’s on her way to Angela’s house. Angela reminds Bella that, at his core, Edward is a teen boy who is Totally Jealous of how Ripped and Sexy her 16 year old best friend is. Then Alice kidnaps Bella. Fun times!

2. During the imprinting convo it becomes very apparent that Meyer thinks the worst thing that can happen to a girl is getting broken up with. Somehow Leah got the “worst end” of the Sam/Emily/Leah fiasco despite Sam turning into a “monster” and Emily getting literally mauled in the face. What’s worse is later in the book, during the “Legends” chapter, when Bella wonders if Leah thinks Emily’s scars are a form of “justice.” Yea, Bella, that’s justice. 

3. I love this Rosalie quote but hate the entirety of they way meyer writes her story. Others have mentioned it before but Meyer writes Rose's dialogue there as if Rose is an author and not like...a person telling a story. An easy fix would be to format Rosalie's story "flash back" style rather than have her narrate all the way through. Then you can include all the superfluous details of exactly what everyone's voice sounded like and all the excessive dialogue tags you want.

I also Violently Abhor this quote here:

Yea, meyer, the Hot Girl hates your self-insert because her stupid ass brother didn't have the hots for her. It just reads like weird middle school revenge fantasy "I only hated you because you were so Special!!!" Sure, sure. Also "all those females!" People don't talk like that @stephanie

4. I do love the scene when Bella “escapes” from Alice with Jake (I don’t know why i put escape in quotes, Alice could definitely murk Bella) but then that whole adventure ends with Jake telling Bella he’d rather she die than turn into a vampire. And yeah, fair buddy, but also you’ve known Bella for a long time. This should not be a surprise to you at all even a little bit. a) she mentioned it before, b) you knew she would never get over Edward even if your plan in NM had worked, and c) you’ve known that she’s fully obsessed with the Cullen’s since you started hanging out with her again. The last time you guys hung out she went on an impassioned rampage about how lovely and good and fantastic Edward is (footage not found) I really don’t know why you’re surprised that this hard-headed girl is prepared to commit to vampirism for him. She is not normal lmfao.

5. The legends chapter. Oh boy. Stephanie, Meyer, Smeyer. Honestly it might have been less offensive if she had just made up a whole new tribe to give these backstories to, for all that they have in common with real Quileute legends but actually that would still be offensive and terrible anyway. I don’t know how to describe this adequately but if you’ve ever seen G.I. Joe’s portrayal of indigenous people that’s exactly what meyer made Old Quil and Billy’s dialogue sound like. Just absolutely dripping with Mystical Native/ Magical Native trope from the content to the tone. https://mthg.org/ Because it can’t be plugged enough.  

6. The legends chapter ends with this Wuthering Heights quote:

I have no qualms with it's inclusion, if you really want to push the Edward is Heathcliff and Bella is Cathy agenda, I don't believe it but fine, whatever. But those last two paragraphs are such a dumb way to end a chapter. Every chapter ending should make the reader want to turn the page: this makes me want to shut the book (actually I did take a long break after this lmfao). Anyway, just end the quote on "drank his blood," bold those three words, and end the chapter there. Don't go back and say "the three words that stood out were... Anyway it could have fallen to any page I believe in coincidence teehee!!" That's just annoying.

7. Okay guys I hate to say it but Edward does get a lil bit of ~character growth after the first few chapters. He comes home after having Bella kidnapped (she decides not to be angry, surprise surprise) and is all "so I've been thinking about it and you're right my Beloved Angel Face or whatever, please hang out with Jacob but also wear a helmet on your motorcycle my Beloved Dumb Idiot or whatever" (paraphrase). And he also says this in chapter 12:

Which is like, man I hate when I agree with Edward but I agree with Edward here. Now I know from MS that he only wants Bella to stay human because he's creating an Unfolding Drama in his head but this bit of dialogue is really sweet. And it's funny that he thought Bella didn't want to marry him because she just wanted to use him for immortality but it's also a Dark Reminder that he's literally only romantic with her because he can't read her mind and can't tell that she's just as obsessed with his looks as the other Teen Girls TM.

8. uuuh Jasper’s Backstory Time. This is so infuriating to read for so many reasons. So we know that smeyer got Jasper’s name from a confederate memorial/ listing (from a New Moon Q&A but the link isn’t secure so I can’t share) so I know that his backstory was always meant to be Confederate Soldier which makes everything else about his characterization just baffling. Again, he was the only Cullen that was genuinely kind to Bella besides Carlisle for the entire first book and he’s still incredibly kind during Eclipse (which is another issue I have though because no one mentions again that Jasper tried to eat Bella and they stand close to each other and hang out and Bella’s never like “this is scary, this dude tried to kill me” but i digress). The point is: smeyer knew he was going to be a confederate from book 1. She never addresses that this was bad, she never has Jasper mention that he regrets his role in the war, he is the only Cullen that’s actually capable of empathizing with humans anymore (Carlisle cares but I would not categorize him as empathetic), it just... None of these pieces fit together. This is a fraught and bloody history that smeyer throws in with no thought to how it might alienate black readers (though tbh she constantly emphasizes “white beauty” throughout the series so I doubt she cares) and the editors don’t question it either. No one, at any point in time, said “Hey, steph, you know confederates fought for slavery, right?” Every black american deserves reparations. White women and men who glorify the civil war should be the first to pay up. 

9. I’m gonna jump back to chapters 9 & 10 here (target & scent, respectively) to say: no tension is being effectively built. I get it, someone stole your clothes. You’re annoyed because you have nothing to wear and Victoria is scary. But where is she? Where is the volturi? Move it along, please! This is one of the challenges of 1st person narrative because the author is stuck in the eyes of, usually, the person who knows the least. Meyer is not a talented enough author to make this interesting. Not to bring up THG again but Suzanne Collins really knew how to work 1st person. Everything that Katniss asserts with certainty throughout the series gets either confirmed or denied by the narrative, keeping it interesting. She assumes the worst of the people around her so we’re pleasantly surprised when people violate those assumptions. We’re kept on edge by how little Katniss knows and SC never gifts Katniss with more knowledge than she could be expected to have. Bella is constantly gifted with knowledge and her assumptions are rarely proven wrong. You can dig into the canon a little bit more, read the lexicon and the guide, and find all the examples of Bella being unreliable or making wrong assumptions. But within the narrative she is rarely incorrect. She doesn’t get opportunities to grow out of her false assumptions (while Edward does, at least in Eclipse). So to keep the Victoria debacle interesting, smeyer has to plant seeds like- during these two chapters- Bella thinking of Laurent and Victoria while the cullens discuss who could have been in Bella’s room. That just doesn’t cut it for me. 

This is hella long and I’m only halfway through the book. I probably should split the second half into two parts as well but based on how talented smeyer is at stretching out the mundane, especially just before the climax, I probably wont need to. 

[terramythos]

TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 22 of 26

Title: House of Leaves (2000) 

Author: Mark Z. Danielewski

Genre/Tags: Horror, Fiction, Metafiction, Weird, First-Person, Third-Person, Unreliable Narrator 

Rating: 6/10

Date Began: 7/28/2020

Date Finished: 8/09/2020

House of Leaves follows two narrative threads. One is the story of Johnny Truant, a burnout in his mid-twenties who finds a giant manuscript written by a deceased, blind hermit named Zampanò. The second is said manuscript -- The Navidson Record -- a pseudo-academic analysis of a found-footage horror film that doesn’t seem to exist. In it, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson moves into a suburban home in Virginia with his partner Karen and their two children. Navidson soon makes the uncomfortable discovery that his new house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Over time he discovers more oddities -- a closet that wasn’t there before, and eventually a door that leads into an impossibly vast, dark series of rooms and hallways. 

While Johnny grows more obsessed with the work, his life begins to take a turn for the worse, as told in the footnotes of The Navidson Record. At the same time, the mysteries of the impossible, sinister house on Ash Tree Lane continue to deepen. 

To get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don’t let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can’t see it, something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact you can only hear it as silence. Find those pockets without sound. That’s where it is. Right at this moment. But don’t look. Keep your eyes here. Now take a deep breath. Go ahead and take an even deeper one. Only this time as you start to exhale try to imagine how fast it will happen, how hard it’s gonna hit you, how many times it will stab your jugular with its teeth or are they nails? don’t worry, that particular detail doesn’t matter, because before you have time to even process that you should be moving, you should be running, you should at the very least be flinging up your arms--you sure as hell should be getting rid of this book-- you won’t have time to even scream. 

Don’t look. 

I didn’t. 

Of course I looked. 

Some story spoilers under the cut. 

Whoo boy do I feel torn on this one. House of Leaves contains some really intriguing ideas, and when it’s done right, it’s some of the best stuff out there. Unfortunately, there are also several questionable choices and narrative decisions that, for me, tarnish the overall experience. It’s certainly an interesting read, even if the whole is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. 

First of all, I can see why people don’t like this book, or give up on it early (for me this was attempt number three). Despite an interesting concept and framing device, the first third or so of the book is pretty boring. Johnny is just not an interesting character. He does a lot of drugs and has a lot of (pretty unpleasant) sex and... that’s pretty much it, at least at the beginning. There’s occasional horror sections that are more interesting, where Johnny’s convinced he’s being hunted by something, but they’re few and far between. Meanwhile, the story in The Navidson Record seems content to focus on the relationship issues between two affluent suburbanites rather than the much more interesting, physically impossible house they live in. The early “exploration” sections are a little bit better, but overall I feel the opening act neglects the interesting premise. 

However, unlike many, I love the gimmick. The academic presentation of the Navidson story is replete with extensive (fake) footnotes,and there’s tons of self-indulgent rambling in both stories. I personally find it hilarious; it’s an intentionally dense parody of modern academic writing. Readers will note early that the typographical format is nonstandard, with the multiple concurrent stories denoted by different typefaces, certain words in color, footnotes within footnotes, etc. House of Leaves eventually goes off the chain with this concept, gracing us with pages that look like (minor spoilers) this or this. This leads into the best part of this book, namely... 

Its visual presentation! House of Leaves excels in conveying story and feeling through formatting decisions. The first picture I linked is one of many like it in a chapter about labyrinths. And reading it feels like navigating a labyrinth! It features a key “story”, but also daunting, multi-page lists of irrelevant names, buildings, architectural terms, etc. There are footnotes that don’t exist, then footnote citations that don’t seem to exist until one finds them later in the chapter. All this while physically turning the book or even grabbing a mirror to read certain passages. In short, it feels like navigating the twists, turns, and dead ends of a labyrinth. And that’s just one example -- other chapters utilize placement of the text to show where a character is in relation to others, what kind of things are happening around them, and so on. One chapter near the end features a square of text that gets progressively smaller as one turns the pages, which mirrors the claustrophobic feel of the narrative events. This is the coolest shit to me; I adore when a work utilizes its format to convey certain story elements. I usually see this in poetry and video games, but this is the first time I’ve seen it done so well in long-form fiction. City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer, both of which I reviewed earlier this year, do something similar, and are clearly inspired by House of Leaves in more ways than one. 

And yes, the story does get a little better, though it never wows me. The central horror story is not overtly scary, but eeriness suffices, and I have a soft spot for architectural horror. Even Johnny and the Navidsons become more interesting characters over time. For example, I find Karen pretty annoying and generic for most of the book, but her development in later chapters makes her much more interesting. While I question the practical need for Johnny’s frame story, it does become more engaging as he descends into paranoia and madness.

So why the relatively low rating? Well... as I alluded to earlier, there’s some questionable stuff in House of Leaves that leaves (...hah?) a bad taste in my mouth. The first is a heavy focus on sexual violence against women. I did some extensive thinking on this throughout my read, but I just cannot find a valid reason for it. The subject feels thrown in for pure shock value, and especially from a male author, it seems tacky and voyeuristic. If it came up once or twice I’d probably be able to stomach this more easily, but it’s persistent throughout the story, and doesn’t contribute anything to the plot or horror (not that that would really make it better). I’m not saying books can’t have that content, but it’s just not explored in any meaningful way, and it feels cheap and shitty to throw it in something that traumatizing just to shock the audience. It’s like a bad jump scare but worse on every level. There’s even a part near the end written in code, which I took the time to decode, only to discover it’s yet another example of this. Like, really, dude? 

Second, this book’s portrayal of mental illness is not great. (major spoilers for Johnny’s arc.) One of the main things about Johnny’s story is he’s an unreliable narrator. From the outset, Johnny has occasional passages that can either be interpreted as genuine horror, or delusional breaks from reality. Reality vs unreality is a core theme throughout both stories. Is The Navidson Record real despite all evidence to the contrary? Is it real as in “is the film an actual thing” or “the events of the film are an actual thing”? and so on and so forth. Johnny’s sections mirror this; he’ll describe certain events, then later state they didn’t happen, contradict himself, or even describe a traumatic event through a made-up story. Eventually, the reader figures out parts of Johnny’s actual backstory, namely that when he was a small child, his mother was institutionalized for violent schizophrenia. Perhaps you can see where this is going... 

Schizophrenia-as-horror is ridiculously overdone. But it also demonizes mental illness, and schizophrenia in particular, in a way that is actively harmful. Don’t misunderstand me, horror can be a great way to explore mental illness, but when it’s done wrong? Woof. Unfortunately House of Leaves doesn’t do it justice. While it avoids some cliches, it equates the horror elements of Johnny’s story to the emergence of his latent schizophrenia. This isn’t outwardly stated, and there are multiple interpretations of most of the story, but in lieu of solid and provable horror, it’s the most reasonable and consistent explanation. There’s also an emphasis on violent outbursts related to schizophrenia, which just isn’t an accurate portrayal of the condition. 

To Danielewski’s credit, it’s not entirely black and white. We do see how Johnny’s descent into paranoia negatively affects his life and interpersonal relationships. There’s a bonus section where we see all the letters Johnny’s mother wrote him while in the mental hospital, and we can see her love and compassion for him in parallel to the mental illness. But the experimental typographical style returns here to depict just how “scary” schizophrenia is, and that comes off as tacky to me. I think this is probably an example of a piece of media not aging well (after all, this book just turned 20), and there’s been a definite move away from this kind of thing in horror, but that doesn’t change the impression it leaves. For a book as supposedly original/groundbreaking as this, defaulting to standard bad horror tropes is disappointing. And using “it was schizophrenia all along” to explain the horror elements in Johnny’s story feels like a cop-out. I wish there was more mystery here, or alternate interpretations that actually make sense. 

Overall The Navidson Record part of the story feels more satisfying. I actually like that there isn’t a direct explanation for everything that happens. It feels like a more genuine horror story, regardless of whether you interpret it as a work of fiction within the story or not. There’s evidence for both. Part of me wishes the book had ended when this story ends (it doesn’t), or that the framing device with Johnny was absent, or something along those lines. Oh well-- this is the story we got, for better or worse. 

I don’t regret reading House of Leaves, and it’s certainly impressive for a debut novel. If you’re looking for a horror-flavored work of metafiction, it’s a valid place to start. I think the experimental style is a genuine treat to read, and perhaps the negative aspects won’t hit you as hard as they did to me. But I can definitely see why this book is controversial. 

[thornsickle]

Let’s talk about the word ‘destroy’ in the Star Wars. I was jumping in my seat with joy when Kylo uttered: “I’ll destroy her. And you. And all of it.” Here’s why (hint, it’s never literal).

First, here are three coupled examples, so far, of this word being used in a non-literal manner (”DESTROY THAT BOMBER!!!!” ahem, does not count).

A New Hope (Episode IV)

Luke: How did my father die?

Obi-Wan: A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.

Return of the Jedi (Episode VI)

Luke: Ben! Why didn’t you tell me? You told me that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father.

Obi-Wan: Your father… was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be the Jedi Anakin Skywalker and ‘became’ Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So, what I told you was true… from a certain point of view.

……………………….

The Force Awakens (Episode VII)

Han: He was training a new generation of Jedi. One boy, an apprentice, turned against him and destroyed it all. Luke felt responsible. He just walked away from everything.

The Last Jedi (Episode VIII)

Luke: I saw darkness. I’d sensed it building in him. I’d seen it in moments during his training. But then I looked inside, and it was beyond what I ever imagined. Snoke had already turned his heart. He would bring destruction, and pain, and death, and the end of everything I love because of what he will become. And for the briefest moment of pure instinct, I thought I could stop it. It passed like a fleeting shadow. And I was left with shame, and with consequence. And the last thing I saw were the eyes of a frightened boy whose master had failed him.

…………………………………..

Attack of the Clones (Episode II)

Anakin: It doesn’t have to be that way. We could keep it a secret.

Padme: We’d be living a lie. One we couldn’t keep, even if we wanted to. I couldn’t do that. Could you, Anakin? Could you live like that?

Anakin: No, you’re right, it would destroy us.

Attack of the Clones (Episode II)

Anakin: Don’t be afraid.

Padme: I’m not afraid to die. I’ve been dying a little bit each day since you came back into my life.

Anakin: What are you talking about?

Padme: I love you.

Anakin: You love me? I thought we had decided not to fall in love. That we’d be forced to live a lie and that it would destroy our lives.

Padme: I think our lives are about to be destroyed anyway. I truly… deeply… love you and before we die I want you to know.

……………………………….

The Last Jedi (Episode VIII)

Kylo Ren: I’ll destroy her. And you. And all of it.

Luke: No. Strike me down in anger and I’ll always be with you. Just like your father.

The dialogue, I think, speaks for itself. This specific word NEVER means what it first appears to mean in Star Wars and it has been purposefully used throughout the saga to demonstrate when a character is either an unreliable narrator, unconvinced in what they are saying or outright lying. It is actually a pretty nebulous word since it suggests one thing but could very well mean something else. The crux of the matter is, Rian Johnson chose to use this word DELIBERATELY.

Why would he decide to use this specific word, other than to imply that Kylo’s statement would come back to mean something different other than the obvious, either subverted, misunderstood or revealed to be a lie.

Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

In ‘The Last Jedi’, Luke finally comes to understand what Obi Wan meant, which is why we are given different versions of what happened between the Jedi Master and his nephew. It is to prove both Obi Wan’s point and also how Luke has evolved as a person and become a wiser man than before. He understands Kylo’s pain, understands that, for him, the truth will always be that Luke betrayed him and left him no choice. Luke acknowledges this truth, which is why he is finally able to accept his failures and also Kylo’s choice to be on the dark side. However, having understood Obi Wan’s words, he also knows that Kylo’s words will not ring entirely true when he states he will destroy Rey.

Let’s look at what ‘destroy’ actually means, within the context of Star Wars.

The instance (release date-wise) where we see the first use of this nebulous word is in RotJ, with Obi-Wan’s famous words revealing his misdirection. In this instance, the word ‘destroy’ is revealed to not directly mean ‘betrayal’ and ‘murder’. It DOES mean these words, but not literally, more figuratively. This understandably frustrates Luke, but it shows how Obi Wan was not lying. The point of this example is to show ‘self-destruction’ and how destroy does not directly mean murder.

So if we compare that to Kylo’s line, it becomes clear, especially to Luke, that though Kylo believes this to mean murder, it will likely result in something quite different, even if Kylo succeeds (which he won’t because Rey is our heroine haha, but he might come close, more on that later).

The example in The Force Awakens always felt fishy to me. Han’s use of that cursed word ‘destroy’ sent alarm bells through my mind. Check out this short post about my thoughts then.

http://sakurau121.tumblr.com/post/153877814060/one-apprentice-a-boy-turned-against-him

As we saw in TLJ, my doubts were well founded for. Kylo literally destroyed Luke’s academy, but Luke was the reason it finally happened. Luke played a part in that destruction and while Han does not lie, his words are now viewed in a very different light. His words suggest Kylo decided to turn against Luke when in reality he was given no choice but to turn against his master. Even as Luke describes how Kylo Ren would bring ‘destruction’ to the galaxy, it is not clear what ‘type’ of destruction that is and later in the film when Kylo kills Snoke, we realize the true scope of what Luke foresaw, which again subverts our expectations. I have a feeling Episode IX will continue to do this. It should be noted as well that Kylo does not ‘destroy it all’ as he took some of Luke’s students with him (we have still to find out why, whether this will be developed in Episode IX or not, I’m not sure).

In Episode II, Anakin’s words are ominous. When he states that their love for each other would ‘destroy’ them, he is right. In this instance, George Lucas uses this word because it ties into Obi Wan’s description of what happened to Anakin (this is the wonderful thing that happens when you have one dude writing the whole thing but whatever, I digress). In both cases, we know Anakin won’t ‘die’ but he will self-destruct. For Padme, the word ‘destroy’ does literally mean she will die.

Which makes it all the more tragic, because it shows that they were aware their love would bring about destruction but they decided love was more important than death. Yes, their own death.

So now we return to Kylo Ren and his final statement. I will lay out all the possibilities, based on what has come before. I don’t believe all of them, but I’m just putting them out there for the purposes of this post. ‘I will kill her and you and all of it’ is the literal translation, but I am 100% sure this is not what is foreshadowed.

1. Kylo’s words will show how he does not end up killing Rey, but rather destroying her light, turning her to the dark side, like what happened with Vader. He will merge the Resistance with the First Order once they are defeated. 

This won’t happen, at least not permanently, but I still think she could dally in it. Luke does during his final battle with Vader, so to keep up the tension, I think this is a possibility. But Rey won’t turn into Darth Vader 2.0 obviously. The grey still has to be analyzed but I’ll do a separate post on that.

2. Kylo’s words reveal he will destroy ‘all of it’. As in, he will end the First Order and the Resistance. This is hinted at because it is clear he has no real affinity with any group (revealed during his final speech to Rey), strangely rather like his father. He is in fact a rogue at heart, so it’s possible he will bring about the First Order’s destruction. Either by causing it to fall, abandoning it, purposefully betraying it or causing it to surrender. This ties back with the ‘destruction’ Luke foresaw when Ben was his student. It won’t mean what Luke thought it meant. This is why he says ‘no’ in response because he realizes the possibilities are endless. Perhaps he only foresaw Ben’s future in one way but in fact did not see the other side to what his fate could be.

3. The third one is a bit tragic and for me, sad but here it is. Anakin and Padme’s love for each other ‘destroyed’ them. George Lucas tied these two words together ‘destruction’ and ‘love’, so it is possible to see the link here too. Kylo reveals through his words that he loves Rey because it will bring about her destruction, as it was with Anakin and Padme. But note again, that Luke replies with ‘no’. So perhaps this is foreshadowing that Kylo’s love for Rey will not bring about her destruction at all.

‘I thought we had decided that love would destroy our lives.’

‘I will destroy her.’

In this context, Kylo’s words take on a very different meaning. At the end of their confrontation, Rey rejects Kylo’s hands because she knows he does not see her side. Rey is crying because she sees she cannot accept Kylo’s promise of unity because it would mean the end of who she is. The ‘self-destruction’ which Obi Wan talks about when speaking of Vader. The love which resulted in Padme’s death.

What is beautiful is that Luke knows Rey will not be destroyed. That Kylo won’t destroy her. Unlike every other exchange I have mentioned in this post, the one between Kylo and Luke is actually foreshadowing something positive that is to come in Episode IX. It means the fate of Kylo and Rey’s connection is not that of ‘destruction’.

If you need anymore confirmation, just think. Kylo has already been proven wrong. He didn’t destroy Luke at all, in fact he helped Luke become one with the Force.

[durenjtmusings]

The Great Meta Scavenger Hunt #5: Only a Dream

(or great big Meta fail for me; I can’t follow the rules at all)

For Round 5 we were challenged by @elizabethrobertajones​ to:

Find yourself a break from the normal [SPN] narrative and tell me how an episode/story arc/season/entire chunk of the show was in fact a story within a story or a dream within a dream or an unreliable narrator unreliably narrating.

I tried. I had this GREAT idea - I knew IMMEDIATELY how I wanted to answer this, but it Would. Not. Be. Meta. It wanted to be a story. So you get a story instead. I hope this still counts for points. (But really I don’t care, this story just POURED out this morning - it was AWESOME and I am very happy.)

I am happy to take questions about the ‘meta’ in the story - just ask me!

***************

Family and Sacrifice by djtmusings   1629 words, rated PG for some strong language only

“Jesus Christ!”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Yeah, I know.”

“How are these guys even still alive?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know…shit, Kyle, help me with the collar on this one.”

“God! He’s got a lot of burns.”

“Yeah, this one’s got a few too, plus a concussion, and who knows how many internal injuries.”

“How long have they been out here?”

“Gail estimates between six to eight hours.”

“What! Holy fuck. They should be DEAD.”

“Yeah, well, part of that, we think, is that third guy over there.”

“What, trench coat dude?”

“Yeah, good Samaritan. Looks like he arrived to pull them from the wreck right about the time it caught fire. There are signs of CPR on both of them. They’ll owe him a big one for saving their lives.”

“What the hell? So why is he unconscious? Smoke inhalation? Knocked out by an explosion?”

“We have no idea. Gail can’t find a mark on him. He’s simply out cold, just like these guys. Everything’s stable – all three of them have a decent heart rate, fairly steady breathing, minimal blood loss…it’s like they’re on frickin’ life support or something.”

“Damn. These two were in the car, then? What about the truck driver?”

“The semi? Yeah, that’s how we found out about this. He showed up in town, out of his wits, babbling about smoke and fire and blood. Took the sheriff almost an hour to get some facts and a location out of him. No surprise, he also had a concussion and a dislocated shoulder.“

“And he walked to town? Holy hell, that’s like five miles. Explains the delay.”

“Yeah. We did have one DOA – over in the car. Pretty sure he was dead before the fire, tho”

“What the hell were they doing on this road anyway? What the hell was a SEMI doing on this road? No one takes this road since the interstate came in.”

“No idea. Not my problem. C’mon, help me get this one on the board. Choppers are like 10 minutes out. Gail wants ‘em all ready when they get here. Takin’ all three to the big city hospital.”

“Got it. Man these guys are lucky. Shame about the car, ‘tho. Looks like it was cherry.”

“If you go in for that kind of thing. I like ‘em small and fast, myself.”

************

Family. Family was everything. Family was her heart, her soul, her life. She would do anything for family. Her family.

Her family was smaller now. She hadn’t been able to save them all. Evil things had come for them right away, while she was still struggling to keep all three safe. She’d fought the things off, kept them from taking her favorite, but lost the oldest in the process. That had hurt. He’d been with her the longest, and she knew him the best. But then again, he had left her - abandoned her even after the loss of the youngest. That had been a bleak time, when her family had narrowed down to just one. She’d worked hard to keep him safe and she had become his favorite in return. Like her, he had wanted the family whole again; he’d worked hard to find them all, to make them understand. She’d been so happy to have her whole family back together and now...and now this.

It had been difficult, keeping them alive. When they struggled to wake, they’d screamed in pain and that was torture for her. She’d wrapped them in shared dreams, steadied them, kept them calm. She told them stories, gave them monsters to hunt in their dreams. Their minds did most of the work, drawing from favored memories. She had only to watch and nudge them at first, keeping them from the reality of the waking world. Things were not often easy in these dreams, just as they were not easy in life. Pain and anger, secrets and lies, loss and despair...these were what defined her family awake; they should define them in dreams as well.

As time passed, evil things continued to try to take away her family and she fought them off again and again. These battles leaked into the dreams and the stories became more complex. She had to pull ideas from deeper in both of their memories as well as from her own. Places she’d been, passengers she’d met, bits from the stories they’d told…but then there had been the fire. She was so very frightened. She couldn’t save them from the fire. She couldn’t save herself. She’d been so very, very lucky the stranger had come.

He’d saved her family. Pulled them from their places in her bosom and tended their wounds in nearby safety. He’d known what to do to keep the bodies breathing. When he’d tried to leave, however, she’d panicked. Thrown her Self at him to make him stop - her core, her essence – desperate for him to stay. Then there had been a time of confusion and fear and pain. She wrestled with the man, fought for dominance in an environment completely foreign. The dreams had stopped and she’d almost lost her favorite again. She won out eventually, negotiated a temporary peace, a sharing of this new space. This new messy container for her Self. Together she and the stranger worked to keep her family alive.

It had never occurred to her that she could leave her body. Her container shaped who she was, her need for rhythm and travel and speed. But it was her family who gave her heart, who gave her life. She would do anything for them. Anything to save them, sacrifice her beloved container, sacrifice herself… even kill. At first, the partnership was easy; the stranger taught her many things about caring for flesh and blood and bone. But then he became unhappy,  relinquishing control and retreating to a far corner of his own mind. Thankful for his service, she had drawn him into the shared dreaming, providing him an important role. It was fascinating, for a time, to be able to draw on memories that were not family. The stories grew deep and rich. But the man did not stay quiet. He would gather his strength and suddenly attack, struggling for control. To hurt her he would strike out at her family through dreams and she would strike back. The dream stories grew wild then, frantic, and eventually the youngest’s life was threatened. She’d had to do the unthinkable. She’d lashed out and pushed and pushed until the stranger was gone, until she alone inhabited the container.

That had been a strange time. The dreams had become almost absurd. She’d struggled with learning basics like pumping blood and breathing (lungs pulled open, relaxed - over and over and over again). She’d had to retreat from the dreams, remove her image, leaving her family to a story spinning out of control. When she’d adapted, when she was able to fully rejoin the dreaming, she found her old body gone and her family in a new place. A place designed to care for the bodies, where she could focus on only the dreams while her family healed. Re-entering the dream story, she was surprised to find that the stranger, the one she had sacrificed for family, had become important – had become, in his own way, family himself. So she became two things in the dream, herself and the stranger. Both caring for her family.

Together, her two selves continued the stories, disturbed when difficulties arose in the healing. Time and again she fought off the evil things. No one would hurt her family. Non one would take them. No one, no thing.

It is easier now. The machines keep the bodies alive and her family is healing well. There is more happy in the stories, more ease. Soon she will be able to let them go, to let them wake from the dreaming. Soon she will become awake herself, in a new container, a new body. That will be different. She will miss the simplicity of mechanical order and smooth speed. But it will not matter, really. For her family is her heart and soul. Without them, she would be nothing. When they all wake, she will once again travel with them, protect them, and hunt with them. Because that is what families do. Hunt things. Save people. And sacrifice anything, anything for each other.

 The variety in spectral manifestations is vast and not limited to human form. It is common for inanimate objects that are precious to an individual to become imbued with a portion of that individual’s essence or ‘soul energy’ over time. After death, these objects may be connected to the deceased spirit, forming an anchor to the mortal world. In the case of more complex machinery, the object itself may be able to become animate, carrying on its function under the influence of the deceased spirit, rather than that of mortal control. A special case is that of vehicular manifestations where the vehicle itself has been destroyed along with the driver. There are numerous anecdotal reports of ‘ghost cars’ or ‘phantom trucks’ (with or without a visible driver) roaming roads on errands ranging from benign to helpful to harmful. According to Masters (1946), it is believed that the care and connection between the mortal driver and vehicle over a significant length of time lead to an almost ‘shared soul’ situation which is able to ‘carry the vehicle’s essence beyond the grave.’ Researchers in the specific field of paranormal vehicular study refuse to speculate on what may happen in the case of an accident where such a ‘shared soul’ vehicle is destroyed, but the driver is not.

Dr. Victor Heinrickssen, professor of advanced paranormal theory, Berlin University

Image credits: GHOST CAR 1 FOR HARPERS BAZAAR, 1937      NORMAN PARKINSON (1913-1990)

Screencaps - DJTmusings from SPN 2.01