#desolation colony

[obliviousriki]

Wreckage of Alcamoth.

[tenth-sentence]

The bark of some of the Eucalypti falls annually, or hangs dead in long shreds which swing about with the wind, and give to the woods a desolate and untidy appearance.

"Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World, 1832-36" - Charles Darwin

[azzayofchaos]

Since my other Nether worldbuilding post was received pretty well... I'm back on my bullshit!

This time featuring zoning and biomes of the Neath: Lore below cut

Nether (noun): the formidable hellscape straddling the boundery between the Fragments of the Overworld and Death's Realms.

Derived from Beneath -> Neath -> Neth -> Nether.

The Nether is most easily accessable through outer regions of the nether, regions that are comparatively closed-off, and lacking in biodiversity compared to the Deep Nether where most Neath civilizations are centered.

The Neth is divided into three primary zones, distinguished by altitude and general climates.

The Calfactory Zone: the largest and most icon of the three, the Calfactory zone is blisteringly hot and bone-dry, it's most prominent features are its abundant seas and lakes of magma, and the massive Supermagmas atriums that are common above the magma. In the largest of these atriums, the ceiling may be so high above as to be completely invisible from the ground, obscured by an ever present smog of toxic vapor and minerals formed in the self-generated micro-climates that are generated from the rising heat of the lava that begins to cool at a higher altitude.  

In the Basalt Deltas and other biomes around the edges of these lakes, massive pillars of rock and crystals bulwark the more-visible ceiling. 

The most common of this zone’s biomes is the Crimson woods, home to hearty thermal-philic fungi and plants that grow on the minerals and vapors of the lakes. Many are carnivorous in their lack of access to water or sunlight, and these forests contain many sub-biomes and ecosystems of flourishing life. 

The Wastes are perhaps the most desolate regions of the Neath, irradiated deserts of red-rock, brimstone, and sharp sand. Even the vast majority of nether-folk avoid these deserts due to the leftover radiation that rots and destroys anything that waits too long. The only forms of life are particularly robust lichens and bacteria that are happy to sit by the pools of boiling pools of sulfur and mud and toxic sludge that dot the landscape. Growing within the rocks themselves are colonies of amorphous fungus, called geocorpus molds that get their spores into cracks in the soft netherack and slowly feed on it, a delicacy in nether cuisine. 

The Temperate Zone: Cradled in the heights of the Neath’s atriums and sat bellow the roof is the temperate zones, the rising heat of the zone below begins to cool and forming distinct weather patterns in this zone and leaving it, while still sweltering, a cooler though much more humid climate.

The main biome are the luminescent warped-fungal rainforests that collect the high-rising minerals and odd moisture from the lakes. Liquid is actually precent here, though if it’s not safely filtered through the innards of the various plants and fungi, this water is usually aggressively corrosive, and it is best to shelter from the  acidic precipitation to avoid chemical burns. The nether folk and ender local to these rainforests are suited to deal with these conditions and the ender especially do not have trouble with the extreme pH of the water here like they would in the overworld. The zone is lit almost exclusively by the biolumincense of the organisms there and have often been described as false-stars.

In the Deep Nether, the ceiling may give way, allowing one to pass onto the plateaus of the Nether Roof and the yawning void above. The bedrock of the nether roof is jagged and layered in huge slabs, sometimes broken up my mazes of pillar-like structures and shallow, thermal pools of crystal-clear liquid. The kind you don't want to touch of course. fogs may hang low to the ground, but when its clear, or above the fog, the entire universe seems to spill out into the sky. The nether roof was culturally significant and a source of much knowledge and inspiration in the early days, but I'll get more into that in a later post 0.0

The Rime Zone: Plunge deep enough and one might find themselves bellow the lava beds. Here, where the heat can't quite penetrate, the temperatures will drop rapidly to sub-zero.

Namely, the Rime Zone is made up of the soul valleys, flat steppes of cinder and clotted sand, you can imagine it almost with the blindness effect, a fog that pools by your feet, and a heavier darkness hanging from the sky, it feels massive and endless and claustrophobic all at once. Frost collects as crystals on the irradiated, soul-soaked barrens, and the bones of the massive nether wyrms lie fossilized, breaking up the landscape. The sands are also split with patches of crazing on the ground and vents of blue fire that spills out and sets the sand ablaze.

These same wryms can be found sometimes, ancient things that dig through sand and soft rocks and the magma lakes, far and few between and treated with both fear and reverence.

And in the deepest pits of the Neath are the glowing frozen lakes that are colloquially and rightfully called the Gates to Death, glowing blue from beneath their surfaces. Indeed, any further down and you pass into limbo, the edge of Death's Realms.

Extra Notes??:

Soul sand/soil is tread on carefully or not at all, is one form of remnants from the apocolyspe. Like the general radiated rubble present through the Nether, it's a fault of nuclear fallout. Unlike other areas of radiation, its also been infused with the souls of those who didn't survive the joining of worlds.

This infused quality is also precent in Nether Debris, resulting in a material that takes magic particularly well.

Iron cannot be found in dense veins and crystals like gold or quartz in the nether, but it's a pretty rich mineral a lot of netherack, giving it its ruddy coloring.

Sorry for this massive rant that no one asked for. If you have questions please feel free to send an ask, I may not have an answer yet but I'll certainly come up with one if I can.

I'm also hoping to do a pass on my headcanons about history and culture in the Nether and then we might start talking about character headcanons since this is also an actual AU.

If you read this far, here's some notes on striders and ghast

[wachinyeya]

Tiny Indian Ocean Island Shows How Quickly Seabirds Recover When Invasive Predators Are Removed https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/tiny-indian-ocean-island-shows-how-quickly-seabirds-recover-when-invasive-predators-are-removed/

18 years after rats were eradicated, Tromelin Island off the coast of Madagascar is a thriving colony of seabirds once again.

The same story happened over and over during the age of exploration: Europeans brought rats or rabbits on board their ships and dumped them on delicate, pristine island ecosystems.

Hundreds of islands became desolate wastelands this way, damage that has for the most part been reversed, as GNN has reported, in one of the greatest conservation stories ever told.

Now, this small teardrop of sand, rock, and palm trees in the southern Indian Ocean, is the most recent example of conservationists being able to completely rewild a landscape back to a period before European contact.

Spanning just 1 square kilometer, Tromelin Island is now home to thousands of breeding pairs of 7 seabird species like the masked and red-footed boobies.

By 2013, these two species had doubled in number from the precarious, rat oppressed lows of just a handful in 2004. In the subsequent 9 years, white terns, brown noddies, sooty terns, wedge-tailed shearwaters, and lesser noddies all came back on their own initiative.

Matthieu Le Corre, an ecologist at the University of Reunion Island, told Hakkai Magazine how, in some cases, restoring seabird populations can be a tricky thing based on the particular species’ nesting habits.

On other islands where Le Corre has worked, they’ve had to install robotic bird calls and life-size replicas to convince the birds the island is a safe place to nest again. But Tromelin Island needed no such help, since these terns, noddies, and boobies are much more dispersed in their nesting patterns.

“In terms of conservation, it’s a wonderful success,” Le Corre says.

[probablyasocialecologist]

SP: In light of this humanitarian solutionism being so reliant on technology rather than political demands, it seems relevant that Israel brands itself as a tech capital. Water technology is a major part of Israel’s nation-building project, from its aspirations of “making the desert bloom,” to its pride in exporting desalinated water to neighboring countries like Jordan. Israel starves Palestinians of water with one hand, and exports it with the other. How does this benefit its global image? MD: Since its creation, Israel has promoted itself as a modernization project. The idea that Israel is coming to these desolate, undeveloped environments to make them flourish fits into a colonial logic that different colonial powers have used to exploit and erase indigenous presence on the land. When Israel promotes itself as a leader in environmental technologies, it exports not only technology, but also the techniques for governing colonized people. For example, their projects that travel to other places around the world lead to a higher level of privatization of water resources, and higher levels of exclusion of colonized people from their resource development, while ensuring a state hegemony over these resources in those places. For this export to happen, Palestinians must first live with manufactured thirst and manufactured scarcity of resources. Technology doesn’t really move apolitically. 

Systematic Thirst: An Interview with Muna Dajani

[handweavers]

never forgetting the christian hindutva anti-communist anarchist moron i am distantly acquainted with irl who tweeted with complete seriousness "criticizing the caste system is racist because before british colonialism it didn't mean anything bad, caste was just the people you hung out with" it lives in my head rent free. verbatim "caste was just the people you hung out with" this guy's mind is a desolate place

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Never War with Humans

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps) Extract from “Fall of the Bezenite Empire, By Zimpara Tul”

“The collapse of the Bezenite Empire was a great source of confusion for the wider galaxy. Even more so when it was orchestrated by the Terran Alliance which had so recently sued for peace with them after a nearly three decades long war.

Ironically the downfall of the Bezenite’s was brought about by mere skirmishes between theirs and humanities respective settlers. They had each settled upon the world of Kimpara III but on opposite sides of the world. The terrain and weather patterns of the planet made extensive scouting impossible so for nearly four decades the two species went on developing their respective societies until by chance they ran into each other.

The meeting was far from cordial.

Both species claim that it was the other who initiated the war, either by a misunderstanding or openly hostile action. The resulting devastation to the planet ensured that the truth would remain forever shrouded in mystery as both sides brought increasing military might to the field.

Holding dominion of five star systems and three client races, the Bezenite’s were hardly a super power but in their small corner of the universe they had established themselves as the regional power. Humans on the other hand barely established themselves within their own system and had settlers in a nearby system establishing new colonies. It was expected that the Bezenite’s would use their superior technology to steam roll the humans and claim yet another client race. What had not been accounted for was the size of the human military industrial complex and the amount of war material they could produce.

Opening engagements saw Bezenite ships easily win against human ships even when facing 3:1 odds, but the humans were able to have the ships lost replaced by fresh ones within a matter of months. In terms of ground forces the Bezenites were vastly outnumbered by the humans who held a standing army of nearly 50 million compared to the roughly 8 million Bezenite forces. They had never needed a large army to police their territory so when the full force of the human war machine was brought against them they quickly found the entire length of their shared border under constant attack.

World’s that had never seen the scars of war were attacked overnight as human transports snuck through Bezenite patrols and deposited large invasion forces before retreating. This would have been a horrendous waste of manpower were it for the fact the Bezenite navy would not bombard a planet under their domain. This allowed the human’s a sudo-shield which protected them from orbital strikes and allowed them to conduct extensive ground wars.

As the war ground on Bezenite leadership became infuriated when the primitive humans occupied several border worlds and establishing forward operating bases. The empire’s military, likewise far technologically superior to humans, was not large enough to stabilize the entire front and increasing gaps began to open.

To remedy this situation the Bezenite’s began an increasingly total war footing for the first time in their people’s existence. Numerous recruitment offices were opened throughout the empire, even on client species worlds, to increase the total ground forces. Naval shipyards were constructed or expanded in the core regions drawing in hundreds if not thousands of new laborers to create even large fleets of ships. Even desolate moons were converted into self-contained factories as large scale industrialization projects were carried out on their surfaces to establish new manufacturing hubs.

By the thirty year mark of the war the Bezenite’s military now stood at nearly half of what the humans had at the beginning of the war and showed no signs of slowing down when the humans suddenly initiated peace talks.

The act alone blindsided the Bezenite’s leadership who had been planning out a protracted campaign for another five years to annex the human homeworld. This was derailed by the human’s sudden openness to discuss peace which was well received by the Bezenite civilian population who had grown tired of the more than quarter century of fighting. It was this desire to end the conflict that forced the Bezenite leadership to discuss terms of peace and eventually end the war; and in so doing hand the destruction of their empire.

While the industrial boon for war material had brought great wealth to the empire, it now faced a financial crisis as the war came to a sudden and abrupt end.

Millions of soldiers were now being decommissioned and sent back to civilian life to look for new jobs, which were scarce as the numerous military factories began closing down due to a lack of requested material. Orbital shipyards attempted to convert themselves into civilian manufacturers to stay open, but the demand for civilian crafts was not nearly enough to keep the majority of them open resulting in further layoffs.

What’s more, the Bezenite client races who had served alongside their overlords had been given a taste of the wider galaxy and now returned to their people. They spoke of the wonders from across a dozen worlds and of the ferocity of the humans who had checked the Bezenite’s advances. The once invulnerable image of the Bezenite Empire was shattered and now with returning soldiers with advanced combat experience many client races began revolting.

The Bezenite’s had never faced such a drastic shift in their economy before. Hundreds of thousands of their citizens were now out of work and protesting in the streets and with the sudden revolts of their client races the empire’s domain was further fractured. They attempted to rouse their military once more to quell the uprisings, but with the dishonorable manner in which many of their comrades had been dismissed after serving the empire so loyally the military was sluggish to react and the uprisings amongst the client races soon turned into open war.

Within the next five years the Bezenite Empire was a shadow of its former glory as civil war ran rampant. The client races had driven many of their former overlords from their territory and, having seen how well humans could oppose their former masters, reached out to the humans for alliances and defense pacts. The Terran government was all too happy to send aide and launched several new military missions into former Bezenite space; both to ensure the independence of their new allies, and to carve up their former enemies territories for themselves.

Unlike the Bezenite’s, the majority of the Terran military industrial complex was automated so the ending of the war did not have as severe an impact. When it came to the standing military forces only a fraction were let go due to old age or injuries sustained in the fighting. They had always kept their military at a high number so their budgets calculated the funds needed to sustain such a force at all times, meaning there was no mass dismissal of forces to flood the job market.

When the war had begun the humans knew that in a straight up fight they could not win against the Bezenite’s. Their technological superiority would ensure that the humans always took far more casualties. So a new plan was devised which would force the Bezenite’s to ramp up military spending, then at the peak of the war open peace negotiations and end the war entirely dealing a body blow the Bezenite economy could not recover from so abruptly. The following chaos caused by the economic collapse would leave them vulnerable and disillusioned with the empire as a whole presenting the humans with the perfect opportunity to resume the war.

At the end of the conflict the Bezenite’s had been driven back to their original home system while the Terran’s claimed much of their former territory, even going so far as to award some planets to the former client states which were now seen as galactic partners with the humans; sealing the foundation of a future Terran Empire."

[beguines]

Landscape helps capture the forms in which nations and movements literally and figuratively 'construct' or 'produce' nature, engineering its appearance and infusing it with significations—rendering landscape a 'cultural practice' rather than a given fact. Here landscape is both an object of investigation and a site of intervention; the very medium within which power and resistance are represented and conducted. Put differently, landscape is far from a neutral backdrop but is rather activated, serving as the medium of violence. Dispossession, deforestation, planting, land-grabbing, and acquisitions, privatization, re-modeling, clearance, or the destruction of infrastructures of life, including food sources, buildings, or supplies, all mobilize the landscape in their domination.

Representations of Middle Eastern and North African landscapes nearly invariably include desolate scenes of endless empty and parched deserts, decorated perhaps with an isolated string of camels, or a beach with large mounds of golden sand, a minaret, or an oil tower in the background. The temporality and general impression of these landscapes is slow, hazy, and dizzying, as if they are waiting for 'activation' by someone or something outside of it. Whether reproduced in academic scholarship, literature, film, tourist advertisements, or news media, these imagined colonial representations of the region's landscape place the environment centrally within them, projecting an understanding of the Middle East and North Africa as marginal, on the edge of ecological viability or as a degraded landscape facing imminent disaster due to human inaction. With this, an environmental imaginary enabled storytelling that pushed forward imperial interests in the name of 'development' and, later, of environmental 'sustainability' and 'protection.' In the case of the constructed 'Middle East,' as Diana K. Davis explains,

"Deforestation narratives have been particularly strong in the Levant region since the nineteenth century, where some of the most emotional accounts of forest destruction have hinged on the presumed widespread destruction of the Lebanese cedar forests illustrated in the cover image by Louis-François Cassas. Similar narratives of overgrazing and desertification were used during the British Mandate in Palestine to justify forestry policies as well as laws aimed at controlling nomads, such as the 1942 Bedouin control ordinance, in the name of curbing overgrazing. Such environmental imaginaries, once constructed, can be extremely tenacious and have surprisingly widespread effects."

In Palestine, the construction of an 'Israeli landscape' to redeem the purported damage done to the land by its indigenous population commenced with the first Zionist settlers in the nineteenth century and intensified with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Reflected in former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's 1951 public address to the newly formed Israeli Knesset (Parliament):

"We must wrap all the mountains of the country and their slopes in trees, all the hills and stony lands that will not succeed in agriculture, the dunes of the coastal valley, the dry lands of the Negev to the east and south of Baer Sheva, that is to say all of the land of Edom and the Arava until Eilat. We must also plant for security reasons, along all the borders, along all the roads, routes, and paths, around public and military buildings and facilities [ . . . ] We will not be faithful to one of the two central goals of the state—making the wilderness bloom—if we make do with only the needs of the hour [ . . . ] We are a state at the beginning of repairing the corruption of generations, corruption which was done to the nation and corruption which was done to the land."

This 'Israeli landscape' was largely cultivated through the multifaceted and by now well-documented eco-colonial practices of the quasi-governmental Israeli organization, Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which has since made striking efforts to position Israel as an environmental pioneer. Established in 1901, the JNF may very well be the first transnational environmental nationalist NGO, seeking to 'make the desert bloom' by planting forests, natural reserves, and recreational parks over the ruins of Palestinian villages, holy places, and historical sites. Distinguishing itself from other transnational Zionist organizations, such as the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, the JNF has since its inception portrayed itself as an environment-oriented nationalist organization, supporting the 'redemption' and 'reclamation' of the land through colonial policies presented in the language of preservation, maintenance, protection, and development of vital ecosystems and ecologically sound environments. Indeed, its public-facing promotional materials boast proudly that "Israel is the only country in the world that entered the twenty-first century with a net gain in the number of trees"—without context, of course, of the ways in which trees and the 'greened' landscape in the country are mobilized as weapons of erasure as part of a colonial imaginary that naturalizes non-Palestinian presence.

Shourideh C. Molavi, Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance

[witchofthesouls]

I wish the Lost Colonies' cultures and biological quirkw had been delved deeper, especially how they would viciously clash with modern Cybertron, both pre- and post-War.

I mean, I think it's really interesting juxtaposition between the deep scars of Functionism versus the other worlds' sources of prejudice and discrimination. Camien devotion and deification of Solus versus a Cybertron with no femmes with Megatron's and Optimus' cult of personality as well as atheism and agnosticism, especially among their respective inner circles. Cybertron's complete desolation and Eukaris' lush and lively greenery. The meritocracy of racing-obsessed Velocitron. Prion had minicons with multiple alts, and Devisiun yielded split-spark twins. The people of Carcer are those of wardens living in a prison.

Do the Camiens think of their Titan's homeworld as cold and lonely? Would they think of those from Cybertron suffering from disorders from the lack of close, intimate connections and no true community?

Velocritron descended from the scientists of Navitas, and they utilized the scorching heat to derive alternative sources of fuel. Do they scorn the deprived worlds for not searching for solutions?

How do the Eukarians view the others that cyberformed their planets? Do they see Cybertron and the others as sterile and lifeless; their civility is a cheap, hollow mimicry that hides their teeth and claws?

The Carcerians developed an austere culture that prioritized keeping their Titan on complete lockdown to the point sacrificing themselves to achieve that goal. How do they view Caminus' offering to dismantle himself so his own children can thrive in such a harsh environment?

How do diplomacy and common courtesy differ from each planet? The language and food? The behaviors? The relations with nearby neighbors, both mechanical and organic?

[astxrope]

Here's a basic rundown of the species found within the Yggdrasil System. Unfortunately due to the rule of the Aesir under the Allmother, much of the information has been destroyed, censored, or erased, making researching these species particularly difficult. However, I have managed to collect a general consensus on what each of the species look like.

Helheim is impossible to know, any first inhabitants of the planet are long dead or in hiding. No one on Helheim are born there, and few leave alive.

Here's what I gathered:

Jotun: Tall, Digitigrade legs, Pointed ears, Tail, Some have horns

- Examples: Loki, Logi, Fenrir (Heimdall: Hybrid; Jotun/Asgardian)

Vanir: Pointed ears, often blond or ginger, Ungulated legs (hooves)

- Examples: Frey, Freya, (Kvasir, Hybrid; Vanir/Asgardian)

Midgardian: Plantigrade legs (human legs), tails with fur on the end, rarely (but not unheard of) winged. Winged Midgardians often have feathers at the end of their tails and feathered ears.

- Examples: Ottar, Vidfinn, (Lyfrassir Edda (Winged)

Helheim: There are no known natives of the planet. Prison Colony.

- Examples: CLASSIFIED

Asgardian: Plantigrade legs, pointed ears, often with blond or silver hair, occasionally other colours, hair is often braided, and braid patterns are passed down through families. a tradition shared with Midgardians. often blue, grey or dark skinned. They also appear to have extended lifespans, living upwards of 200 years.

- Examples: Odin, Thor, (Heimdall: Hybrid; Asgardian/Jotun), Sigyn

Muspelheim: Able to withstand extreme heat, often lizard-like, digitigrade scaled legs, draconic tail, horns, slitted pupils

- Examples: !!ERROR!! RELOADING

Niflheim: Able to withstand extreme cold, short, covered in fuzzy fur, digitigrade pawed legs, short furred, long furry ears,

- Examples: !!ERROR!! RELOADING

Alfheim: Similar to Vanir, plantigrade legs. golden hair, pointed ears, often have blue or silver eyes, many have symbolic tattoos. rich golden skin, clawed nails.

- Examples: !!ERROR!! RELOADING

Svartalfheim: Similar to Vanir, digitigrade legs, black hair, long pointed ears, often have blue or purple eyes, many have symbolic tattoos. dark skin, often purple-ish, dark clawed nails. pointed tail.

- Examples: !!ERROR!! RELOADING

The train has yet to arrive. It would be a shame if the cultures were to dissapear.

And yet…

————

Other bits of lore here:

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

————

Celest - A star borne researcher and investigator.

Born from the collision of two stars, Celest has dedicated his life to learning all they can about different life forms across the universe, one solar system at a time.

They have a lot of time on their hands, as stars can live for millions of years, and Celest is only a mere 200 years old.

ART

1

2

3

___________

THE FINAL VEIL

-

A Magnus Archives AU

See Below Cut

___________

lore for the final veil, a work in progress magnus archives au surrounding the entities and what happened to their remains after the change was reversed.

THE CHARACTERS

___________

alan frost - an avatar of the dark

lee davies - an avatar of the hunt

-

lore also includes prerequisite stories about their life before and during the change, and how they managed to survive the apocalypse.

-

THE ENTITIES

___________

the extinction - deceased

the lonely - unknown status, likely deceased

the dark - alive

the flesh - unknown status

the eye - unknown status, possibly deceased

the slaughter - unknown status

the stranger - unknown status

the spiral - unknown status, likely deceased

the hunt - alive

the vast - unknown status

the buried - unknown status

the corruption - unknown status

the web - alive

the end - status unknown, possibly alive

the desolation - status unknown

-

THE LORE

___________

1

___________

the final veil is still a work in progress and may take a while for more lore to be released as the story is still being smoothed out along with characters individual backstories and character arcs.

i am one person, and while i doubt anyone will be invested or care about this au, for whoever may be, please be patient.

also, i will say, the lore of the final veil isn't really based off much, just an idea i had that may nit be possible in actual magnus archives lore. it's kind of hard to tell, i don't know what's happening half the time.

if i get anything wrong, please tell me, i'll see what i can do, but if something integral to the story is impossible in the magnus archives lore that is okay as it's an au. i don't particularly care what is and isn't possible i'm having fun okay.

this section of the post will update as lore continues to be added, with links to core posts being added in THE LORE section to make it easier for quickly accessing posts.

also much of this au will ignore the magnus protocol, simply because i haven't listened to it yet. i will, trust me. i just haven't gotten around to it.

may the entities spare you, for they are not quite dead, and they live on in their strongest.

their remnants, their holders, may be unpredictable, and they are in most every way just like regular people.

however some may be violent, and left unchecked and unaccounted for, may cause significant problems.

this is asterope signing off.

[theygotbitchesinmedia]

okay so here is her review: https://arkadymartine.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/the-traitor-baru-cormorant-a-reviewresponse/

admittedly its from 2015- i haven't poked around to see how she may have changed how she feels about it, and i know she did blurb seth's recent scifi novel (Exordia), so there's no bad blood there or anything. it's also a positive review, in general- she ends with this sentence: "I highly, highly recommend this book; I have not thought so much about something I read in a long time."

i am also coming into this as someone who has read all of seth dickinson's work for the game destiny, where he was near-singlehandedly responsible for a good oh… 80% of the interesting women (& overall interesting concepts lol!) in the game, and his writing of one of those characters in particular as a complex and flawed character got him bullied viciously off of all social media. if you've tried to find his social media presence and havent found anything, that's why. so i mayhaps have a little more emotion in the game.

THAT SAID. here are some specific parts from her review i find really fucking annoying! and color the way i feel about Memory & Desolation, despite them being so incredibly targeted at me as a classics person AND someone who fucking loves the specific sub-genre of scifi her novels are.

"[Traitor] asks a question which I find compelling as a student of an empire and as a queer woman. That question is: what do we gain by complicity? What do we – we barbaroi, we women, we queer people, we imperialized – what do we get when we say yes? When we say yes I will hide my true nature? When we say yes I will subsume myself into the beautiful machine? When we say can we speak English? Or the literature I love just happens to be written by straight white men – and mean it, too, mean it with the kind of depthless love that a person can have for a text that speaks to them, which holds up a mirror to them?"

i dont think the use of the greek word for barbarian does anything here (she also keeps coming back to the greek term orthos in her review, which also pisses me off lol), i dont think empire is a "beautiful machine," and i don't think the invocation of identity politics is useful. like. i know she's a byzantine scholar but if your first association with empire is purely a finite Historical Empire instead of, like, modern US imperialism, or British colonialism, you are going into this discussion with a certain set of values and opinions! a set of values and opinions that let you call an empire a "beautiful machine" in all earnestness. this claim probably seems unsubstantiated and nitpicky now just from this excerpt but ill come back to it with more i promise. on the idpol front, she also says immediately after this that she does believe that straight people can and should write queer people, but that they should listen to queer people when they point out those errors. she then continues:

"But then, critique: there are two points on which I think Dickinson’s portrayal of a queer protagonist has faltered, and I think both of these errors arise from the fact that he isn’t part of – as far as I know at the time of writing this review – a queer community. Firstly, I disbelieve Baru’s awareness of her own desires… …For the first portion of the book, her queerness felt more like a character trait assigned to her for reason of plot than a naturally built part of her as a person… Secondly, I wonder where queer people in Falcrest are…"

theres more to these excerpts, but. i personally didnt find the depiction of baru's desire to be unrealistic, and also this was a review of Traitor, specifically, so where on earth would baru have heard about queer people in falcrest? and more importantly, why should we care so much about queer people in the imperial core? moreover i think the way seth does it with svir is very very well done, and illustrates the hypocrisy of empire in a way that does NOT seem like what martine is asking for here!!!

"Why am I invested? I myself am a student of empire. I’m a Byzantinist. My academic work is about empire and its seductions; it is the animating principle of my professional life. And: I am myself someone who loves order over disorder. Who looks for systems in all things. Who is comforted by structures; who is concerned deeply with propriety. But here’s my real criticism of this book: I don’t buy the seduction of the Masquerade. And I think if this book fails, it’s there: in that its empire is too easily read as undesirable. As profane, unethical, fundamentally wrong. It is really overtly evil." … "The Masquerade isn’t civilized. It’s civilization, but I don’t recognize it as civilized, and this is a problem with a constructed empire. An empire relies on itself as the definition of civilization – I would footnote here Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch as a SFnal example of an empire which is built on this principle, and which, for this reader at least, achieves the facsimile. (But then my ancestors were not enslaved, we were exterminated; not annexed, but exiled. Perhaps I like the Radch better than the Masquerade because I can find a place for myself in it, and cannot imagine a place within the Masquerade someone like me would ever be safe –)"

and THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE IS MY BIGGEST PROBLEM. critiquing the masquerade as not "seductive" enough, calling it too evil to have people join it- how does someone miss the point THIS badly??? like. are you FUCKING serious??? how do you read a book about the immense violence of colonialism and your problem is that it is boohoo too violent for people to join willingly. google literally fucking anything the US has done ever!!! and the invocation of the concept of "civilized" as an objective quality, despite the recognition that the empire constructs what counts as "civilization" is so fucking unserious/simplistic/juvenile! why do you need to imagine yourself a place in the empire? in the imperial core specifically!

and i think this particular approach bleeds into her books. i read them at Least 2 years ago, so this is mostly vibes-based, and i will avoid spoilers.

there is such a focus on the allure of the imperial core, on the "beautiful machine" of the empire as she calls it. there is violence done, but it is abstracted away from the wealth of the imperial core. there are no economics there. the empire sees her independent station as a backwater, and there is some cultural tensions there, but there is no realistic violence and exploitation! it is not clear at all what maintains the empire, besides some abstract idea of trade. i also don't know what her Point is with the naming & language conventions, which are very clearly inspired in part by ancient Mayan- e.g. the empire and core planet are called Teixcalaan. and idk this may be reductive of me but i think if you are going to pull features from civilizations that have been colonized and use them to inspire fictional colonizing forces, you ARE saying something there! idk! and like, the ancient Mayan

and on the ~representation~ front, i also don't think she does a better job than seth tbqh!!! i felt like the characters getting together came out of nowhere and felt anticlimactic- there is also not the tension i think there should be with the main character being an ambassador-ish and the love interest being… idr. junior intelligence officer iirc? idk! and for all her critique of baru's desire for women not feeling "real" or present enough, i do not remember the main character in Memory having any real focus on it!

i enjoyed Memory just fine, but i don't think it says anything interesting or novel or even critical about empire, and i found her review of Traitor extremely shallow and useless, if very revealing about her own outlook on empire lol!!!

this has been at best Minorly proofread and edited but im not like, writing an academic essay on the matter and so i apologize for any inconsistencies.

oh man thanks for this this is really interesting. i went and read the whole thing and i agree a ton with your critique. i'm going to stick my thoughts below the cut because i went on for a bit here, in typical fashion.

i personally didnt find the depiction of baru's desire to be unrealistic, and also this was a review of Traitor, specifically, so where on earth would baru have heard about queer people in falcrest? and more importantly, why should we care so much about queer people in the imperial core?

NO BUT EXACTLY... for starters this is explicitly a novel about colonized people taking place in a colony where none of the major characters are from the empire. where, when, and how would we take the time to explore what queerness looks like for them and more importantly, like you've asked, why the hell should that be a priority for the narrative in this case.

in terms of 'i found this to be an unrealistic depiction of queer desire' 9/10 times i feel like what that means is 'i found this to be an unrelatable depiction' which is an entirely different critique. i know i'm working with two additional books worth of context that martine isn't working with here. but even taking into account just the characterization we have for baru in traitor i think this is suuuuch an unfair complaint. i'm gonna pull the entire quote she says about baru's sexuality here because i have additional specific gripes with it.

Firstly, I disbelieve Baru’s awareness of her own desires. In the first portion of the book, I do not ever feel the weight of Baru’s own awareness of her sexuality; there is an absence of carnality, a kind of intellectual version of lesbian desire which is, to me, inconsistent with the sort of desire I expect. Not until the introduction of Baru’s eventual lover Tain Hu do I get a sense of Baru as a woman who loves women. Further, considering how very much the Empire of Masks and Increastic philosophy criminalizes the sin of queer desire, I wish Baru had struggled more with the nature of her desire. For the first portion of the book, her queerness felt more like a character trait assigned to her for reason of plot than a naturally built part of her as a person. This markedly improved in the second half, where Baru notices women in a way she does not notice men.

For starters, it is insanely hypocritical to me to complain that her desire both isn't carnal enough and she processes it too intellectually, but that she isn't struggling enough with it. Baru intellectually processes things! That's her entire character from the getgo! She also has a difficult time conceptualizing other people as fully realized beings with their own agency. These character traits paired together don't make for a particularly passionate and carnal relationship to her sexuality. She is also, at her absolute oldest in this book, 21! (Or 22? I can't remember. I know she spends 3 years in aurdwynn) and has spent her entire youth being groomed to be a scholar. Of course detached intellectualism is her primary way of navigating all things. Why wouldn't it be?

Baru primary motivation is to save taranoke, she wants to save the taranoki way of life, and part of that way of life includes an acceptance of nonhetero nonmonogamous relationships. Sure, a different character arc may have involved baru actually internalizing and then having to break free of the trappings of race, gender, and sexuality that the empire tries to impose upon its citizens. but that's not baru and acting like this is a writing flaw rather than a character choice is insane to me.

There's absolutely no reason for Baru to lie awake at night pontificating about how wrong and dirty of her it is to want to have sex with women because we are never lead to believe even for a minute that Baru puts any emotional weight in incrasticism. She doesn't conceptualize it as sinful she conceptualizes it as illegal!

And "Not until the introduction of Baru’s eventual lover Tain Hu do I get a sense of Baru as a woman who loves women. " is killing me in particular because like. Yeah. Tain Hu is baru's first love. thats the point. But beyond that this is just not being able to see anything other than what she's looking for because i think the chapters covering baru's childhood make it pretty clear that her feelings for aminata and cousin lao (im not double checking the name but im pretty sure it was this) are deep and strong. the fact that they're not as explicitly and straightforwardly romantic and sexual as her relationship with tain hu doesn't change that, and in fact, points to baru's struggle with/development of her sexuality that she claims was somehow missing in this book.

like i just simply can't see anything here but someone who is seeing an emotional landscape they can't relate to and assuming that means it's flawed writing. skill issue frankly.

She's also fucking insane for acting like the masquerade is too cartoonishly evil to be appealing. once again im going to post her full quote here because i think its important to see

its empire is too easily read as undesirable. As profane, unethical, fundamentally wrong. It is really overtly evil. It punishes sexual “deviants” with mutilation and death. It murders children callously. It inflicts plague and withholds vaccines. It lobotomizes its own emperors for the sake of convincing its populace that the emperor is just. Most of all, the Masquerade is a eugenicist empire: it is explicitly founded on not purity of bloodline but on purification of bloodline, on making people useful to it. It makes people: it breeds them carefully, it indoctrinates them through schools, it uses drugs and operant conditioning to transform their minds and make them into automata tools. It commits every atrocity that a modern Western reader recognizes as abhorrent. This is a problem. It is a problem because we are asked, as readers, to believe that there are reasons besides blackmail that a person would willingly become an agent of the Masquerade. We are asked to imagine that the Masquerade is a beautiful machine.

for starters. "It commits every atrocity that a modern Western reader recognizes as abhorrent." MODERN WESTERN EMPIRES DID, AND OCCASIONALLY STILL DO, MOST OF THESE THINGS!!! THIS IS US! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!! I FEEL INSANE!!!!

I think the book makes it more than explicitly clear why the empire is appealing??? it has all of the capital???? its building schools and sewage systems and importing food and goods and teaching reading and writing??? baru's own internal narrative often shows her own strife at the fact that the empire has made genuinely incredible scientific advancements that offer significant improvements in quality of life to many, many people. martine actually acknowledges this in the next paragraph of her review, and then brushes it away as not being good enough. why? what about that doesn't convince you?

she is seeming to hugely ignore the fact that in the case of aurdwynn specifically, the bureaucracy of the empire is coming in to unseat feudal aristocracy! what the masquerade offers may not be particularly tempting to most of that ruling class, but its economic opportunities are more then believably appealing to the common people. i think this is made pretty clear when baru's ploy to use the fiat bank to make loans to the aurdwynni people and basically lessen the massive tax burdens from the duchies wins her huge favor with the public.

and frankly even for the ruling class the potential economic benefits are massive too if you're willing to participate in the empire properly. yes the empire doesn't have Moral appeal. it doesn't fucking have to. it owns pretty much every economy outside of the oriati mbo. the fact that that's not enough for her is as you've pointed out really really showing her biases and blind spots. 'no reason besides blackmail' MONEY!!!! MONEY! IT'S MONEY! THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT ACCOUNTING! HOW DID YOU MISS THAT!!!

and the invocation of the concept of "civilized" as an objective quality, despite the recognition that the empire constructs what counts as "civilization" is so fucking unserious/simplistic/juvenile! why do you need to imagine yourself a place in the empire? in the imperial core specifically!

And this is really it for me too, yeah. It's gross. It's absolutely gross. "An empire isn't believably appealing unless I, personally, find it appealing" there are people alive who are eugenicists, who love community policing, who believe in race science. the masquerade is an empire for them. the thing about empires is that they are only actually empowering for an incredibly small subset of people, and the fact that You, Specifically, Arkady Martine can't imagine being one of those people in this instance doesn't make it not believable. This is a shatteringly individualist way of engaging with a work.

As for your points about the way she handles empire in her own book obviously i can't have anything to say there because i haven't read it yet, but i do absolutely agree with you on this bit:

and idk this may be reductive of me but i think if you are going to pull features from civilizations that have been colonized and use them to inspire fictional colonizing forces, you ARE saying something there! idk! and like, the ancient Mayan

1000% i don't think this is reductive of you. whether or not you're consciously saying anything is one question but it's a choice that absolutely doesn't exist in a vacuum. out of curiosity i googled her to see if she was of mayan descent or anything and maybe she chose that due to some personal ties to the subject matter but she doesn't seem to be. which of course i don't think means she can't or shouldn't draw any inspiration from there but i do think all of these sorts of choices are meaningful

i don't really have much to say here to round off a conclusion but. wow. deeply deeply telling review that does not particularly make me want to read anything she has written beyond this.

[fatehbaz]

[T]hey frequently transgress the spatial boundaries imposed by humans to organize and govern spaces […]. [W]etlands spread out and do not conform to the straight and consistent lines between land and water. […] The smells of wetlands, of decomposing vegetation, of sulphur, were […] off-putting for [British] settlers in Aotearoa […]. Soon after the British-led military invasion of the Waikato region in 1863 and the confiscation of 480 000 ha of Maori lands, [...] [t]he ‘great swamp region of the Waikato’ was described as a picture of ‘desolation’ and ‘stagnant water’ where the ‘ground quaked and quivered beneath’ one's feet, and opened up unexpectedly to suck people down into ‘horrible depths of [the] black, stinking bog’. […] The omnipresent dangers of ‘damp vapour arising’ were deemed ‘highly prejudicial to residents’ health throughout Aotearoa. […] The ‘tepid swamps’, it was reported, poisoned the ‘otherwise pure air’ […].’ The Napier Swamp Nuisance Act enabled local government officials to ‘fill in’ (meaning to drain, establish levees, and build up the soil) any parcel of land deemed a muddy watery odorous ‘nuisance’ without the consent of the landowners. […] [P]oliticians suggested [that Aotearoa] be decontaminated through strategic interventions to remove and remake wetlands […]. Such ideas, which fused medical and socio-economic theories, justified indigenous dispossession and drainage works […].

Text by: Meg Parsons and Karen Fisher. “Historical smellscapes in Aotearoa New Zealand: Intersections between colonial knowledges of smell, race, and wetlands.” Journal of Historical Geography Volume 74, pages 28-43. October 2021.

---

On 24 December 1928 Italy’s fascist regime launched […] a fourteen-year national land reclamation programme aimed at [...] Italy's ‘death inducing’ swamps […]. The Pontine Marshes, a marshland spreading across 75,000 hectares south of Rome was given top priority […]. [T]he fascist regime used an extensive propaganda machinery to promote the programme […] as a heroic quest for producing an 'ideal' [...] landscape [...]. Newsreels documented step by step the struggle […], with Mussolini himself often featuring, overseeing the project, or even working the land. […] Nearly 3,000 newsreels and many documentaries were produced [...]. This was [...] [among] Italy's most important public works project[s] [...], a transformative enterprise that [...] would engage with an "untamed" natural environment and [force] it into a sanitised version of ideal fascist nature. [...] [The marshes] were linked to the idea of wilderness, [...] undisciplined, uncivilised, and unproductive [...]. This policy […] aimed […] [at] removing “unhealthy” [...] areas, through the process of sventramento (disembowelment). […] The construction of New Towns [...] in the Pontine Marshes [...] aimed at producing the 'ideal' settlement [...]. [These newly constructed] municipal buildings often boasted prominent towers [....] reigning supreme over the Marshes [...].

Text by: Federico Caprotti and Maria Kaika. “Producing the ideal fascist landscape: nature, materiality and the cinematic representation of land reclamation in the Pontine Marshes.” Social & Cultural Geography Volume 9. 2008.

---

[I]n Recife in the Northeast of Brazil [...] the transformation of the city was predicated on [...] [a] notion of whiteness that required the enclosure of wet, amphibious space to make dry land. [...] Racialised groups – of black, indigenous, and mixed heritages – and the houses, marshlands, and mangroves where they lived, were subject to eradication [...]. [F]rom the 1920s to 1950s, during the rise to hegemony in Brazil of [a form of eugenicist, modernist nationalism,] [...] [the] idea's heartland [was] the Northeast. [...] Recife is also a centre of Brazilian black culture [...]. One of the key sites in Brazil's slave and sugar trades [...], the city was [...] [a] hub. Many of these people lived in what came to be called mocambos, a word that designated an informal dwelling, but came to mean much more. [...]. Mocambos were seen as [...] the place where exploited labour was kept out of sight. [...] They were also [...] the inheritance [...] of the quilombo - the community of escaped slaves. [...] In July 1939, the proto-fascist administration [...] of Agamenon Magalhães, put in place by Getúlio Vargas' repressive Estado Novo, launched the Liga Social Contra o Mocambo (Social League Against the Mocambo, LSCM). The League emerged out of a tellingly named “Crusade” against the mocambos. [...] Mocambos were characterised as repellent, unhygienic, and dangerous: “the mocambo which repels. The mocambo which is the tomb of a race … a sombre landscape of human misery … which mutilates human energy and annuls work" [...]. These were the decades of the embranquecimento of the Brazilian population through public policies of immigration, miscegenation, and sterilisation [...]. This white supremacist ideology was inseparably a politics of nature. Magalhães wrote [in 1939]: The idle life, the life that the income of the mocambos provides [...]. It is a life of stagnant water. … [that] generates in its breast the venom of larvae, which are the enemies of life. Enemies of life, as are the mocambos and the sub-soil of cities, where the polluted waters contaminate pure waters [...]. Attempts to “cleanse” the city functioned through a distinct process: aterramento, the making of land. [...] Or as 1990s mangue beat [mangrove beat] musicians [...] put it, “the fastest way also to obstruct and evacuate the soul of a city like Recife is to kill its rivers and fill up its estuaries” [...].

Text by: Archie Davies. "The racial division of nature: Making land in Recife". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Volume 46, Issue 2, pp. 270-283. First published 29 November 2020.

[valiart]

Behold, little baby fanfiction. I've never written one before, but the whole Sulemio fandom and the Sulemio week got me a bit inspired at the final hour. I don't have Ao3, so here it goes:

The Wedding We Didn't Get

(3500 words, Wedding Prompt/Free Day)

The sun rose over the craggy walls of the Caloris Basin on Mercury. Suletta held her thumb up to the burning orb, failing to eclipse it by a factor of three. All her life, she’d help up a fist to cover the star, but on Earth and the more distant planets, people just held up a thumb. Non-Mercurians always imagined the sun to be monstrously huge when seen from Mercury, as though it devoured the whole horizon. The idea seemed rude to Suletta. They made the sun out to be some kind of monster, boiling her planet alive.

Suletta had never looked at the sun that way. She loved the way it broke into rainbows across visors and windows. She watched, through the glassy walls of the most refrigerated place on Mercury, as the morning light sublimated nighttime rime into puffs of steam. She’d never been in a place to watch the sun for more than a few minutes; the suits couldn’t handle much more than that. But those few minutes in the light of the full sun were beautiful, the literal definition of radiant.

The only thing that could ever surpass the sun stood before her right now.

***

Miorine had wanted to wear a suit. She’d always dreaded the idea of her own wedding; after all, she’d expected to despise her spouse, if not directly rival them. Her father had apparently intended for the competition to protect her, to give her the strongest possible partner, but one that wasn’t her choice. He’d never trusted her to make the right decision. He’d always thought someone else should lead in her stead.

So dreaming of being married in a suit always made her feel strong, powerful. She wore the pants. She had the power, chauvinistic as it was. Her spouse was lucky to be marrying her, and not the other way around.

Then Suletta had said “I always imagined seeing us in our dresses.”

The last thing Miorine had expected from her spouse was love. Much less love at first sight. Much less the stupid insipid head-over-heels heart pounding, sweaty-palmed, short-of-breath bullshit wrought by the mere sight of her volcanic victor, her red-earth lover, her insanely perfect wife. How someone so sweet could have come from a desolate rock such as this completely escaped Miorine. The very idea that joy could come from these blasted plains and half-melted crags was absurd.

And yet the proof stood before her, resplendent in a puffy green dress decked out with live roses and tomatoes. Suletta’s hair was sewn into the same shapes, an intricate hairstyle she’d said was popular in Roman times. Suletta wobbled a little bit on her crutches; even with the support rigging built into the dress, the fruit was heavy and cumbersome. With its flared frills and borderline Victorian volume, it was the kind of dress Miorine would never have been caught dead in.

“Your garden was how I fell in love with you, Miss Miorine,” Suletta said. Had said, but still did. “I want everyone to know that side of you.”

Idiot. Miorine thought, as her face turned bright red and tears welled in her eyes, threatening her tastefully winged eyeliner and immaculately porcelain blush. Stupid asshole idiot. I hate you. I hate you so much. I wish I could punch you. I wish I could tear those crutches away and throw you into orbit.

Suletta held up her thumb to the sun, then back down to Miorine, eliciting chuckles from the small audience. The dome was only big enough for twenty people; any larger and the amount of refrigeration necessary to keep it livable would have been prohibitively expensive. Unreasonable when the rest of the colony needed every watt they could scrape together.

Earth House et-al sat stage right, with only Sabine to break up the mix, a surprise plus-one from Nika. No matter. The old rivalries were moot now. Everyone wanted the same thing: peace. And Miorine was going to see it delivered.

She’d never thought she’d come this far. When she’d gone out in her suit on that fateful day, she’d half expected to simply float into deep space and die. That possibility hadn’t scared her. She’d welcomed it.

And then this dumbass came into her life, and suddenly living became the only thing Miorine cared about. So long as she lived with Suletta. So long as she could listen to that embarrassed stammer, see that pitiful blush, feel those calloused hands. So long as she could see that saccharine smile, Miorine could go any distance, hurdle any obstacle.

So when Suletta said she wanted dresses. Suletta got dresses. Even after Suletta described hers. Miorine had wanted to die. Instead, she’d simply said: “Do whatever you want.”

Miorine wore white lace, gauzy across the chest. Body-tight, so Suletta could not imagine anything but her. Simple lines, with faint silver threads drawing the vines of the garden they’d made together. Subtle enough that only a careful viewer would notice the design, but obvious enough that Suletta would understand. She wore crystal heels and simple pearl earrings. She’d cut her mullet, and kept the bob. Simple, professional, herself. Her outfit may as well have been in the dictionary as a visual definition of class.

She felt so fake next to Suletta.

She felt so hopeful as she took her place beside her.

She shivered when Suletta took her hands.

“Enough flirting, you two. You’re making this embarrassing.” Guel said, with false authority. When they’d asked him to officiate, his first question had been “Why me?” Then he’d shaken his head. It was, after all, better not to know that Suletta just felt bad for all the trouble she’d caused him. In a way, no one had suffered more than him from Suletta’s arrival at Asticassia. It seemed only fair.

“Do your job.” Miorine hissed. She tapped his phone, where the entire ceremony was laid out in plain text. She hadn’t trusted him to remember it all. No matter how much Suletta had changed her, Miorine still had trouble letting go of control.

Guel coughed into his hand. He began reading the nondenominational, interplanetarily legal text Miorine had picked out. A simple declaration that they would share assets, interests, and fulfill each other’s obligations in the eyes of the law—whichever law that happened to be at the time, corporate or Spacer or Earthian. Simple, unemotional, with nothing for anyone to pick at that might show favor to one belief system or government.

“The groom has chosen to write her own vows.” Guel said, with relief. His part was effectively done. Though he routinely gave speeches himself, being at the centre of an actually emotional scene clearly went above his capacities.

“As the champion of Asticassia’s dueling tournament, Suletta Mercury has earned the right to recite her vows first.”

***

Suletta stared down at her notes. The tablet, and therefore the words, trembled in her grip. She really thought she’d be braver than this. She’d killed people, for goodness’ sake. To protect Miss Miorine, of course, but that didn’t change the facts. She was someone with blood on her hands. She should be able to handle getting married.

She looked to her mother, silent and still in her wheelchair. Mr. Rembran sat next to her, equally still, but from stoicism rather than paralysis. She had dressed her mother in a simple blue dress, easy to take off and on, comfortable and soft. A red-white-and-blue striped blanket kept her warm. She couldn’t speak, even with computer aid. Eri said her brain refused to make the connections. She wasn’t brain-dead, but she wasn’t far from it. Still, there seemed to be light in her eyes that hadn’t been there the day before. As ruthless as her mother was, she’d always acted out of love. She cared. No matter how present or gone she might be, she was here, today, watching her daughter get married.

“The first time I saw you,” Suletta began, her voice wavering, “I thought you were trying to kill yourself. You were so angry with me for saving you. Then you stole Aerial, and tried to fight Guel yourself. I thought you had a death wish. Then I got engaged to you! I thought I was coming to school to make friends, not get married. I thought you were terrifying. I still do. But when I saw how messy your room was-“

“Hey!” Miorine scowled and blushed. Laughter broke out.

“A-and how beautiful your garden was,” Suletta said quickly, scrolling past the paragraphs where she described Miorine’s mess in intricate detail, down to a particular stain that had taken three long weeks to remove even with industrial solvents. “I quickly learned how caring you were, how much love was in your heart. It takes a lot of love to raise plants. It seems so simple on Earth, but here we have to make the soil from the ground up. We have to purify the water. We have to make the air, and import fertilizer at great expense. Asticassia is not too different from Mercury in that way. And the tomatoes you grew were the most delicious I have ever had. You were callous and distant, and beautiful.”

Suletta’s hands shook. One of her crutches slipped loose. Even with Mercury’s low gravity, holding herself up with one arm was borderline impossible. She tipped forward.

Miorine darted forwards and caught both the crutch and her. She very carefully placed the crutch back under Suletta’s armpit, and propped Suletta back up. She rearranged the tomatoes that had been dislodged in her brief fall, and stood back, eyes closed. She took a small breath, and waited.

Suletta stared at Miorine, lost in her grace.

“Keep talking.” Miorine said, with perfect calm.

“Ah! Um, I… I’ll always remember the way you pushed me up against the window and told me you needed me. When you said to email you three times a day, I thought you were still mad at me, because I would have messaged you more. I want to share every moment with you. I want to tell you about the little bug I saw, or the nice thing someone said, or just share a photo of the sunlight on the rocks. I want to be with you every day, to protect you, to help you, to turn your forever frowns forever upside-down.

“I promise that even though I’ll never pilot a mobile suit again, I’ll always fight for you. I’ll always stand by your side, even if I can’t stand. I’ll never betray the trust you’ve given me. And I swear to get better at cooking so you can stop ordering food all the time. Most importantly, I promise to make you happy. I want to see you wake up with a smile, to put you to bed with a kiss. I want to see our babies. I want to see how beautifully you age. I want to know you, so completely that I can’t separate you from myself. I promise that these wants will never change. I promise to be the best partner there can be.”

Miorine stood like a statue now, still as marble and just as white. As the sun shone down on her, it seemed that she did not reflect its burning light, but radiated on her own with a cool brilliance of greater magnitude than any star.

“As best I can, that is…” Suletta said, looking down from Miorine’s placid expression.

Guel bit his lip and tried not to cry. He failed. Voice choking, he said: “How you can you just stand there like that?”

“That’s not your line,” Miorine said, quietly.

Guel swallowed his pride and wiped his tears. “The bride has also chosen to write her own vows,” he said. “Miorine Rembran, please recite your vows.”

***

Miorine sucked in a breath. She couldn’t lose her composure now. She had to be strong. She had to be perfect. She was the youngest President in history. She could not fail, for even her wedding was a public, political act. No matter how human she wanted to be for Suletta, she had to be a public figure first.

She told herself all this to no avail.

“I…” she carefully opened her eyes and looked down so the sight of Suletta wouldn’t overwhelm her. She had her speech memorized. All 100 words. Simple, curt, effective.

Suletta. You are a powerful, strong person. I respect you completely. I trust you. You are more than a fighter, you are a friend, and you are the correct fiancée for me. I solemnly vow to support your efforts to advance education across the system, and to support those who have no one else. I promise to listen to you, to believe you, and to consult you. I am grateful for the opportunity to call myself your wife. It is difficult for me to say this in front of so many people, but I love you. I always will.

Tears plopped onto the tiled floor. Fat and heavy, and soon joined by more.

“I hate you!” Miorine cried. “How am I supposed to follow that, huh? How am I supposed to match you?”

Earth House howled with laughter. Even her father cracked a small smile.

Miorine sobbed, staring into those innocent blue eyes, quivering above the stupidest fucking smirk Miorine had ever seen, so small and serene and sure, as though this shame were cute, and fuck, it must be to her.

“How can I possibly stand next to you when you are everything in this universe. You are bravery. You are valor. You are my knight in shining armor, even when you’re not wearing anything at all.”

Suletta gasped.

“See! I can make you flustered too. So don’t think you get a monopoly.”

“Mioooo…” Suletta whined.

“Everything you do drives me completely insane,” Miorine said. “The way you know exactly what I want before I know it. The way you follow my instructions to the letter, and better. The way you always stand up for me even when I don’t deserve it. The way you can just pop into a room like a tray of free cookies and make every single person smile. The way you look at me makes me want to rip my face off.

“I love you so intensely that just thinking your name makes my heart pound. You make it so easy to love you. So easy to stand up. You make me want to wake up every day. To take care of myself, so I can take care of you. You may not pilot a mobile suit anymore, you may never be able to walk on your own again, but you are still the most powerful person I know. Nevertheless, I promise to protect you. I promise to carry you when you fall. I promise to hold your hand. To tuck you in. To let you call me Miomio when when Suletta is upsetta. To clean you if you can’t, to feed you if you can’t. To take care of your mother. To take care of whatever family we have. You have done so much for me. I owe you my life.”

She sucked in a breath, deep and shaking.

“I owe you my life,” she repeated, between sobs. “But I’m giving you my heart. So don’t break it!”

Laughter interrupted audible sobs from the small crowd.

“Now rest, my noble warrior.” Miorine said, cradling Suletta’s warm brown cheek in her hand. “Rest, my precious groom. Rest, because I will hold you. I will stand for you. And I will be there with you for everything, until I no longer draw breath.”

“Miorine…” Suletta’s blue eyes shivered beneath an ocean of tears.

Guel coughed, and waved a nearby drone over. The drone was shaped like a giant tomato, and had only one function. Though no one else could know it, Ericht controlled the drone; she couldn’t take much more part in this ceremony than to be a digital flower girl, but that was enough for all of them. They were together, and would be, forever.

“We will now exchange rings.” Guel said, trying hard to maintain his composure. The drone’s top flipped open. Inside lay two small rings. One was a simple platinum band studded with rubies; it had belonged to her mother. Suletta, ever the teacher, wanted to give her something with history.

The other ring was a bright silver mash, not a single piece of metal but a fused conglomerate of shards. Aerial’s pieces, almost microscopic, sifted from the vacuum at great expense. Her researchers had wanted to study the shards. She’d given them what remained after this came together. Love trumped research.

“Miorine! That’s not the ring we picked out for me.” Suletta said with a gasp.

“I know.” Miorine said. “But I think this one suits you better.”

“It’s supposed to be the other way round,” Guel interjected, “But President Rembran, please place the ring on the groom’s finger.”

Miorine wiped the tears from her face and picked up the Aerial ring. She gently slipped it onto Suletta’s finger long, strong fingers. Suletta covered her mouth and shook with sobs.

“Ms. Mercury, please place the ring on the bride’s finger.”

Suletta trembled as she picked up the simple band, and slid it onto Miorine’s thin digit. Miorine could not help but think that Suletta was so strong. So gentle. So effortlessly perfect.

“By the power vested in me by the Sol Compact, I now pronounce you wife and wife. Mrs. Mercury, you may now kiss the bride.”

They stared at him.

“Ah, the original Mrs. Mercury.”

***

Suletta couldn’t move. She could barely see through the veil of tears. She could only vaguely lurch forward with trembling legs and shivering arms and hope that the shimmering white shape in front of her was her wife and not a particularly attractive pole.

Her Mio’s hands found her. One wrapped around her hand, pulling her upright. The other wrapped around her waist, pulling her in. Miorine’s delicate lips brushed against Suletta’s at first, gently sharing a warm breath, a flicker of tongue, so swift and temporary that Suletta couldn’t be sure it happened. Then they were pressed together, breath joining breath, lips against lips, tongues seeking tongues, desperate for each other even in this disturbingly public view, in this tiny glass dome on a boiling rock.

Suletta pushed away, exclaiming with shame: “Mio!”

Then she realized that Miorine’s hand was no longer entwined with hers. Instead, she reached under Suletta’s legs, and swept her off her feet.

“You’re lucky this is Mercury.” Miorine said. “I can’t do this on Earth.”

“Miorine, I’m supposed to-“

“You’re not my groom anymore. You’re my wife. And I choose to carry you.”

As Miorine carried Suletta past their friends, past their family, all standing and clapping, Suletta looked once again to her mother. She expected to see nothing. After all, she was barely present. At her healthiest, she had been stoic and stalwart, cunning and sweet, but never soft.

A single tear travelled down the creases of her face, dripping onto the blanket below. Mr. Rembran took out a small handkerchief and wiped the tear away. He nodded to her.

Suletta nodded back.

“You know,” Miorine said, as the pressure doors sealed behind them, “you’re lucky your legs don’t work right now.”

“Why?” Suletta said, completely confused.

“Because after tonight, you won’t be able to move a muscle.”

[jesslovesboats]

So You Want To Learn About Ada Blackjack

Interested in learning more about polar survivor and finalist in the Polar Explorer Showdown Ada Blackjack? You've come to the right place! I am not a professional academic, but I am a librarian and research professional who has been hyperfixating on the Wrangel Island expedition (and its spiritual predecessor, the Canadian Arctic Expedition or CAE) for a hot minute. My current research is more focused on the boys, but Ada is amazing and more people should know about her!

Here's some background info that will be helpful:

The Wrangel Island expedition was organized by Icelandic-Canadian explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Stefansson was a skilled survivalist and solo explorer, but also a terrible organizer, an attention seeker, and Not A Particularly Good Guy. In 1913, the Karluk, one of the ships associated with the CAE, was frozen in. Stefansson, a seasoned polar explorer, could have stayed and helped his inexperienced crew cope with the challenges of their situation. Instead, he abandoned them to go on a "hunting trip" with a small group that included his personal secretary and the expedition photographer. The Karluk crew made it to a desolate island between Alaska and Siberia named Wrangel Island, where the survivors lived for many months until their eventual rescue. You can read more about this story in The Ice Master by Jennifer Niven and Empire of Ice and Stone by Buddy Levy!

After abandoning the crew of the Karluk, Stefansson stayed in the Arctic until 1918. As soon as he returned to Canada, he immediately started plotting and scheming to get back in the spotlight. Somewhere along the way, he had the brilliant idea that Canada should claim Wrangel Island, the place where the Karluk survivors were marooned (and a known Russian territory). The Canadian government was not at all interested, and neither was the British government, but he didn't let that stop him!

He gathered a crew of 3 eager young Americans- Fred Maurer (28, a survivor of the Karluk disaster), E. Lorne Knight (28, a veteran of the CAE), and Milton Galle (19, had briefly served as Stefansson's secretary while he was on the lecture circuit, no polar experience), and told them that he wanted to claim Wrangel Island for Canada and set up a colony there. However, since all three were Americans, Stefansson needed to find a Canadian citizen willing to lead the expedition. Enter Allan Crawford (20, university student, no polar experience). These four men would claim Wrangel Island for Canada, a thing the Canadian government did not ask them to do, and set up a colony there, planning to stay for at least a year.

Stefansson promised the men that he would hire Indigenous hunters, cooks, and seamstresses to travel with them. However, only Ada Blackjack agreed to go. Ada was a petite 23 year old Iñupiat woman, a survivor of an abusive marriage, and a single mother with a sick son. She was uncomfortable being the only woman and the only Indigenous person in the group, but she needed the money to pay her son's medical expenses. She joined these 4 men (and a cat named Vic) and traveled to Wrangel Island in 1921.

And… you'll have to pick up a book to find out what happens next!

I highly, HIGHLY recommend the book Ada Blackjack by Jennifer Niven. It's meticulously researched and absolutely stunning! Please read it, fall in love with (some of) these people, and join me in Wrangel Island hell.

If you don't have time to read a book but still want the whole story, this Atlas Obscura article is excellent.

Want to read Ada's diary? It's digitized and available through Dartmouth Special Collections, along with a bunch of incredible photos!

Stefansson also wrote a book called The Adventure of Wrangel Island, and every time I think about it, it makes me want to throw up. He's an unreliable narrator, but there are some good pictures.

I hope you've enjoyed learning about Ada! PLEASE read the Niven book, I promise you won't regret it. If you have any questions I will do my best to answer them!

[beehiveofblorbos]

here’s my favorite names for the Entities and why! (I won’t include the Flesh, the Hunt, the Slaughter, or the Vast since they have max two names)

the Spiral: Es Mentiras, which I already discussed in another post

the Eye: Ceaseless Watcher. I feel like that kind of epitomizes the horror of the Eye to me. The idea of never being alone, always being accompanied by something that knows everything about you, that will not look away no matter what you show it or what you do to try to stop it. Also brings a sense of how uh… wide reaching it is? A lot of the Eye’s other names feel really personal: It Knows You, Beholding etc feel like it’s a limited scope. Ceaseless Watcher captures how it doesn’t particularly care about what it’s watching.

the Web: the Story Spinner. I love stories, so to have them synonymized with the Web and its spiders helps me almost understand how the Web is unique in having a mind and a purpose to its horror. I like Mother, too, something about how youre supposed to trust that your parents are looking out for you and understand the world at a deeper level (even if they’re not, and they don’t), but Story Spinner takes cake

the Buried: Choke. it’s just so direct compared to the other stuff, yknow? Universal. I feel like it gets at the core of the fear. Be it under debt, water, or dirt… choke. It’s like a command too, which I like since often Choke has some kind of calling/drawing aspect to it.

the Lonely: the Lonely. the Lonely’s nicknames aren’t very creative. Just saying Lonely feels so plaintive and deeply sad, it does the work and does it well

the Stranger: I Do Not Know You. I like how it pairs with the Eye’s It Knows You enough that it made it on this list despite only having two names. It’s also like… hm, the Stranger is typically an imposition: not a fear from within like many of the others can be, but requires a trigger. I Do Not Know You sort of feels like the Entity itself is telling the world that, and in turn the world cannot know it. Perhaps it’s all the more comprehensible because of the Unknowing…

The Extinction: The Terrible Change. Honestly, the idea of it makes me surprised that it didn’t come on sooner. I’ve got an enduring fondness of apocalypses, but the concept of The Terrible Change makes me think of almost it as akin to evolution. To becoming something that you once would’ve hated, but you have no choice but to become it. Hm.

The Corruption: the Crawling Rot. Yeah, I bet you’re surprised it’s not the Flesh Hive, right? XD To be honest I’m really surprised that I’m not a bigger fan of it overall, considering the combination of bees and disease that falls beneath its jurisdiction. I feel like the Crawling Rot speaks more to the aspect of the Corruption that I do like: that the things you hate most will endure, no matter how hard you try to stamp them out, and eventually they will consume whatever was worthy or decent or good about your purpose, your life, or the world at large. And nothing is pure or safe or clean, not for long. Diseases don’t die, and neither do ant colonies or beehives or what have you. You can’t control it and its spawn or destroy it… and forever that rot will keep crawling towards you, trying to ruin everything you love

The Desolation: the Ravening Burn. It’s another one that serves dual purpose: the Ravening Burn, in the sense of the ravenous burn that consumes everything it stumbles upon, no more and no less. But also, the burn that leaves behind this empty loss in you, this sense that everything came to nothing after all. Like some of my other faves, it encapsulates the fear as a whole best imo

The Dark: Mr. Pitch. I recall Manuela was particularly distasteful towards this one, but I get it. Of course there’s the Pitch black of absolute darkness, but the “Mister” puts a childishness to it. Which is nice both because it’s heavily fed by children and the innate fear of the dark, but also the concept of the Dark as something that draws on the loss of a sense of comfort and control, the things you grasp blindly for like a child when you are losing it. No, thank you, Mr. Pitch. I’ll find my way back. My parents told me not to talk to strangers.

The End: The Coming End That Waits For All And Cannot Be Ignored. Saying it in such a cumbersome and lengthy way feels sort of like the slow march towards death, exactly what the true horror of the fear is. Oh, I’m not scared of what happens after, not really so much anyway. The most compelling part of the fear to me is the moment: when it’ll come for you or me and how it’ll feel. The Coming End That Waits For All And Cannot Be Ignored encapsulates that