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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

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To the summit in a skirt: Lucy Walker, pioneering Victorian Alpine mountaineer

The stories of women just weren’t written, so people tend to think they didn’t happen. There have always been women who have had the courage to step out into the unknown, and that’s what Lucy Walker did. The fortitude, the bravery, the commitment to the goal - women’s power was not invented yesterday.

- Rebecca A. Brown, Women on High: Pioneers of Mountaineering

Leaving behind a quiet life of croquet and cream teas, Lucy Walker became one of Britain’s finest early Alpine mountain climbers. Her climbing career spanned some 21 years, totalling 90 or so different summits, many being first ascents by a woman. Walker was the first woman to summit the Matterhorn and the Eiger - in a billowing Victorian dress no less - but she nearly vanished from history.

Her story as a female pioneering mountaineer has always inspired me in my mountaineering sojourns to the Alps and other mountainous places. During my time in the army flying combat helicopters I enjoyed free weekends that did come my way to take off to the Alps with like minded friends and climb together.

Mountains are so special; they have such magic to them. Maybe it is the fact they are can be so dangerous or maybe it is because they make us feel so small. Even if you don’t even climb them they call to you.You might find that all the problems in your life dissolve when you are around them or that life slows down a bit. All that I can tell you is that after spending time surrounded by them or climbing them you will feel the urge to come back.

Climbing a mountain is the furthest thing from easy. Long stretches of constant vertical climbing can be the most exhausting and hardest thing you do. Not only the physical difficulties but also the mental difficulties will also test you. Exposed and tricky climbing and route finding can get the best of your mental abilities.

The classic quote that tells you “not to look at the whole mountain take it one piece at a time” is something you will come to understand. You will learn to never give up; to know that the reward will be worth the work it takes.

Lucy Walker possessed great strength, endurance and determination and was an inspiration, especially for other women climbers. Indeed she paved the way for a wave of other - largely forgotten - women mountaineers to test the limits of their own mental and physical strength and courage against not only some of the hardest mountains to climb but also some the harshest social strictures against women seeking adventure.

Born in Liverpool in 1836, Lucy Walker was a British woman widely credited as being the first female alpine mountaineer. But this 19th century alpinist left behind no diaries, newspaper interviews, or personal accounts of any kind. And yet her presence haunts the annals of early mountaineering like a persistent ghost. Her serene, inscrutable face stares out from among men in Victorian-era expedition photos, and she lurks in a doorway in a renowned engraving of top 19th century alpinists - all male except for her. In journals, male climbers describe sightings of Walker briefly drying her sodden clothes at a hut or moving fast through deep snow and the astonishment of villagers after she became the first woman to climb the Eiger.

On Lucy Walker’s first trip to the Alps in 1858, she – unlike many people – was not content to remain in the valley but accompanied her brother and father into the high mountains. Whereas today climbers use cable cars or trains for the first part of an expedition, in the 19th century, several hours of steep walking was required. Lucy wanted to climb and at the sight of the Alps she began her life time obesession with mountain climbing.

Walker would go on to become one of the first and most prolific female mountaineers of the 19th century. Over the course of her 21-year career in the Alps, starting in 1858, Walker undertook 98 expeditions, including 28 successful attempts on 4,000-meter peaks. She holds first female ascents on 16 summits, including Monte Rosa, the Strahlhorn, and the Grand Combin, and a first ascent for either sex on the Balmhorn, which she completed in 1864.

But it was perhaps the Matterhorn ascent that gained her the most fame. The Matterhorn was regarded as the most desirable trophy by both men and women mountaineers. Lucy Walker was not the only woman whose dream it was to reach the peak. Various women attempted the ascent, most notably Meta Brevoort (1825-1876), a New Yorker who had settled in England. Just like Miss Walker, Meta was making a name for herself in the mountaineering world in the late 1860s. In 1869, Meta undertook her first attempt to climb the Matterhorn and, approaching from the Italian side, reached an altitude of just under 4,000 metres before being forced to turn back due to severe weather conditions.

Two years later, however, Meta Brevoort decided to give it another go, setting out for Zermatt with the aim of attempting another ascent. Lucy Walker was already in Zermatt though and, on receiving word of Ms Breevort’s intentions, quickly assembled her own group in order to begin her ascent of the Matterhorn, a feat that would make her the most famous female mountaineer of the era.

Long before dawn on July 21, 1871, Walker woke up in a hut on the northeastern flank of the legendary mountain, surrounded by men. She wore her favorite long dress and hobnail boots as she, her father, their guide, and several other climbers set off on snowy slopes in the flickering gloom of candle lanterns.

The mountaineers were probably nervously aware that six years earlier, four men from the first expedition to stand on top of this 14,692-foot spire on the Swiss-Italian border fell and perished on their descent. But Lucy Walker was determined that the American Meta Brevoort would not be the first woman to reach the summit. Walker fully intended to beat her to it.

As the sky brightened and smoke rose from breakfast fires in the village of Zermatt far below, the climbers ascended a skinny, ice-encrusted ridge with heart-palpitating exposure. One mindless step could have sent them plunging a thousand feet down to the valley below. But by midmorning, with willful determination and agreeable weather, they reached the summit. A tableau of rocky pinnacles, meadows, forests, streams, and villages unfurled in every direction - and Walker was the first woman ever to see it all from that iconic perch.

Meta Brevoort arrived just after Lucy‘s achievement to receive the shocking news that she had missed her chance to win the ultimate trophy. That very evening, the two women met each other in Zermatt. What Meta really felt on this occasion is anyone’s guess but contemporary sources state that “there were congratulations” – noblesse oblige.

This would be the only occasion that the two most prominent female Alpinists of the era would meet, somewhat unusual considering that they came from a similar background. Lucy Walker came from a wealthy merchant family in Liverpool and Meta Brevoort from a family of Dutch immigrants who made a fortune in New York as property owners.

Contrary to the strict notions of Victorian society, both women were outgoing and cheerful characters with a lively spirit. According to her obituary, Lucy was known for her “warmth, humour and buoyant personality” while, according to chronicler Cicely Williams, Meta stood out for her “astounding vitality and her exception gift of living life to the full”.

Walker’s other great accomplishment - amongst the many she already had achieved - was the Eiger. Mountaineers down the ages to the present will say hands down that it is the most dangerous of all Alpine mountains.

The Nordwand, or north face, of this peak in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland is an objective legendary among mountaineers for its danger. Reaching nearly 6000 feet, it is the longest north face in the Alps. Though it was first climbed in 1938, the north face of the Eiger continues to challenge climbers of all abilities with both its technical difficulties and the heavy rockfall that rakes the face. The difficulty and hazards have earned the Eiger’s north face the nickname Mordwand, or Murder Wall. Lucy Walker didn’t climb the north face but she did climb it all the same. Nothing daunted her.

At 10.15 am on 25 July, 1864, a group of 11 people arranged themselves gingerly on the narrow arête of the Eiger’s summit, and “proceeded to howl [themselves] hoarse” in celebration of their achievement. The merriment was more raucous than usual because 28-year-old Lucy had just become the first woman to climb the mountain.

Poor visibility, ice and difficult route-finding threatened to defeat them, but as fellow climber Adolphus Moore noted, in a typical example of middle-class Victorian pride: “A repugnance to abandoning an undertaking once commenced…appears to be naturally inherent in the breasts of Britons, male and female alike.” When the party arrived back in the village, Moore noted that “the astonishment amongst the people, collected at the inn, at a lady having performed such an unusual feat, was immense and entertaining.”

Lucy Walker was the person that made women visible in the Alps for the first time. She was the first woman to ascend most of the major alpine summits and crushed through the glass ceiling, making it easier for women to follow. And yet the details of Walker’s life remain largely unknown.

At the time, women were expected to stay out of the public eye, avoid celebrating their accomplishments, and conform to narrow notions of femininity that prized meekness and subservience. While newspapers glorified male exploits in the mountains, they often ignored or satirized women who climbed, painting them as weak and unfit—or sometimes just laughable eccentrics. Women mountaineers of the 19th century generally underplayed their accomplishments in letters and books so as not to appear unfeminine and risk ridicule. Many did not write about their expeditions at all. Walker might have kept quiet about her climbing so that she could continue doing it in peace, but she also didn’t let the inevitable jibes discourage her.

“In those far-off mid-Victorian days, when it was even considered ‘fast’ for a young lady to ride in a hansom, Miss Walker’s wonderful feats in the mountains did not pass without a certain amount of criticism, which her keen sense of humor made her appreciate as much as anyone,” wrote Frederick Gardiner, a friend and mountaineer who climbed alongside Walker up the Matterhorn, in an obituary in the Alpine Journal in 1917.

Over the course of her climbing career, Walker proved herself a model of both skill and endurance, climbing mostly with her father and brother and possibly, as some scholars have suggested, outperforming them. She ascended the tallest technical peaks in Europe, braved spectacular exposure with unreliable ropes, and pioneered long, difficult routes through the high cols. According to friends who wrote about her, Walker was witty and lively and had a penchant for hydrating with champagne.

She also went to great lengths to avoid offending delicate Victorian sensibilities and gender roles—at least until out of sight. While climbing, Walker would walk out of villages looking every bit the proper lady and then stash her petticoat behind a rock. Like a chameleon, she transformed from an elite athlete in the Alps to a prim Victorian Englishwoman at home in Liverpool, where her family ran a lead-dealing business. Walker tended to the family house; kept up with her needlework; read widely in French, German, and Italian; and hosted parties. (She chose not to marry, however, which would have been unusual at the time.) There are no records of her ever scaling a British peak or even partaking in any exercise more taxing than croquet.

Perhaps because she didn’t brazenly challenge social norms, Lucy Walker’s activities in the mountains were occasionally feted. International newspapers covered her Matterhorn climb, and the satirical English magazine Punch even published a poem celebrating her fortitude.

“No glacier can baffle, no precipice balk her,” it read. “No peak rise above her, however sublime. Give three cheers for intrepid Miss Walker. I say, my boys, doesn’t she know how to climb!”

Clare Roche, a historian on 19th-century women’s mountaineering, argued that this recognition likely encouraged other women to be more adventurous in the Alps. Katherine Richardson, Margaret Jackson, and Emily Hornby, three of the best women mountaineers of the late 19th century, started climbing within a couple years of Walker’s Matterhorn ascent. Meta Brevoort was also inspired by her example, according to her nephew and climbing partner.

Even before that time, however, Walker was far from the only woman in the peaks. After examining historic führerbücher, books in which guides kept client testimonials, Roche discovered that from about the mid-1860s, women ventured into the mountains on technical expeditions in much greater numbers than previously thought. In the second half of the 19th century, women completed nearly 60 first ascents on Europe’s high peaks and more than 100 first female ascents. These include Brevoort’s first winter ascent of the Jungfrau in 1874 and Margaret Anne Jackson’s first ascent of the east face of Weissmies in 1876.

Letters suggest that while there were rivalries, women climbers also formed a sort of sisterhood in the mountains and helped each other out, Roche says. Even though women weren’t allowed to file papers in the Alpine Journal until 1889 and were excluded from the Alpine Club until 1974, some of their male counterparts welcomed them in the high country. These wild areas afforded rare freedom in a time of stifling social constraints. In coed expeditions, women climbed and slept alongside men, a practice that would have been unthinkable in the valleys and cities. In the late 1800s, women even led men on expeditions without guides, which had been customary earlier in the century.

In later life Lucy continued to walk in the Alps and meet with friends, including Melchoir Andregg, who was the foremost Swiss mountain guide of his time and is still revered today. When asked why she had never married, her typically direct reply was: “I love mountains and Melchoir and Melchoir already has a wife!”

Walker continued to climb until her mid-forties, when a doctor advised her to stop for health reasons that are now unknown. She continued to walk in the Alps long after her climbing career and acted as a mentor to younger climbers, encouraging them to write about their experiences. Although Lucy was an extremely capable mountaineer, she was never allowed to join the male-only Alpine Club in London but did become the second president of the Ladies’ Alpine Club in which she was involved in the founding in 1907.

Most Victorian doctors advised gentlewomen to refrain from any strenuous exercise; the demands of mountaineering went way beyond strenuous. It is a measure of Lucy’s character that she clearly ignored medical diktats. She was an educated woman, spoke several languages, knew her own mind and was not prepared to conform to any convention if it meant restricting her mountaineering.

In the Alps, she regularly climbed for more than 14 hours a day, tackled some of the most difficult summits and slept in barns high in the mountains, often close by the men in the party. Home life in Liverpool could not have been more different. There she played croquet, entertained and led the respectable life expected of a Victorian lady.

Even on the mountains, she was keen to maintain a feminine appearance whenever possible, always wearing skirts, but removing her crinoline once outside the village. Dresses were arranged so they could be shortened easily on steep or rocky slopes. Trousers didn’t become popular with women until the 1890s, long after Lucy’s climbing was over. She later said how envious she was of the easier conditions women experienced in the early years of the 20th century.

Although Lucy wrote nothing about her climbing, others did, noting her penchant for champagne – a common tipple among mountaineers, especially those who made unprecedented climbs. Lucy would get through several bottles during the course of an expedition. She became a renowned personality in the Alps whom everyone wanted to meet because, as famous mountaineer Edward Whymper, claimed, “no candidate for election in the Alpine club… ever submitted a list of qualifications at all approaching the list of Miss Walker.”

Lucy Walker died, in September 1917, at 81. But in the century since her death, Walker has nearly vanished from the public record. How many other women quietly pulled off great feats of athleticism but fell through the cracks of history without so much as a whisper? Walker at least lives on in the words of those who knew her.

“Her energies were immense and she was a bold, inveterate and able sightseer,” wrote mountaineer Charles Pilkington in the Alpine Journal after Walker died. “We were often roused by her from our laziness and taken to some point of view or interesting place, which but for her insistence, we might have missed. Traveling in her company was always enlightened by her great vivacity.”

#lucy walker #walker #pioneer #mountaineer #climbing #alpine #alps #matterhorn #adventure #history #femme #women #british #society #outdoor sports #nature #icon #personal

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silver-stargazing · 1 year ago

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As another epilepsy awareness month and another excellent Epilepticon wraps up (thank you @haikyuupaladin for bringing this together!), I wanted to stress the importance of learning and researching the history of epilepsy and the epilepsy community, especially for folks with epilepsy.

I know it sounds intimidating. I put off learning about the centuries of history related to epilepsy for ages because I knew I would encounter some difficult and horrifying facts. But I truly think that it is essential that we learn about epileptics from the past, about their lives and how they were treated, in order to continue to make forward progress in present-day society's treatment of us.

The horrible treatment of epileptics through the widespread legal discrimination, institutionalization, and forced sterilization of epileptics from the 1800s-mid-1900s is still being felt today, whether it be through the concept of an "epileptic criminal personality" heavily impacting the study and influence of eugenics which still unfortunately has sway over some people in positions of power or the fact that, like many current disabled communities, the modern epilepsy community was founded in the aftermath of the slow collapse of the institution system and that there are still survivors of the institution system in our community. Their histories should not be forgotten.

In terms of where I would recommend starting, I would definitely give The History and Stigma of Epilepsy a read for covering the basics of epilepsy history. It's also a free article so that's nice!

That article also provides some recs for other material such as The Falling Sickness by Oswei Temkin, which I found to be a very engaging read covering epilepsy history dating back to the Ancient Babylonians.

I would also recommend The End of Epilepsy?: A History of the Modern Era of Epilepsy Research 1860-2010 by Dieter Schmidt & Simon Shorvon, which, in addition to giving some very detailed info on the early medical treatment for epilepsy, gave one of the best explanations as to why there always seems to be a slight disconnect between the epilepsy community and the wider disability community (long story short: there was essentially a rift between the communities in the 1800s that is only recently being repaired).

For a Non-Western look at epilepsy treatment, it's been recommended several times over in the epilepsy community but I can't emphasize enough how great The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is at covering how different cultures interact with epilepsy and epileptics, in particular the Hmong culture.

I always recommend reading auto-biographies to understand a lived experience, such as A Mind Unraveled by Kurt Eichenwald (aka the first US citizen to successfully press charges over having a photosensitive seizure caused by a maliciously sent flashing gif) and Gotham Girl Interrupted by Alisa Jones Kennedy.

I would also recommend learning about epileptics in general and how we've impacted the world around us. Learn about Tony Coelho, an epileptic Californian representative who was considered the primary sponsor for the Americans with Disability Act and gave some fairly crucial testimony back in the 80s that helped move the Act into law.

Learn about Louise Augustine Gleizes, a 19th-century French woman who had seizures and, along with several other women, was exploited by her hospital and her neurologist into taking photographs and giving public demonstrations of her seizures that still largely define our visual language of what a seizure looks like. She also managed to break out of her hospital in disguise and completely erase herself from history so that's pretty awesome as well.

I know that epilepsy history is not an easy field to learn about, what with the lack of readily accessible free material and the overall lack of research in this field in general. However, if you get the chance, please consider learning more about the history of epileptics and of the epilepsy community at large.

Epilepticon Day 30 prompt

Thank you to everyone who’s participated this month! Whether you answered one prompt or all 30, it was great to see both new and familiar faces come together to talk this month!

I know I can’t possibly cover everything everyone wants to talk about with my prompts, so today’s prompt is to talk about something you had hoped to have the opportunity to talk about this month but weren’t given the right prompt to talk about it! Whether it’s directly related to your epilepsy or something you hope connects you to members of the epilepsy community in a different way (like maybe you collect something, or maybe you want to go into further detail about the epilepsy spaceship crew), anything is fair game!

#actually epileptic #epilepsy #epilepticon #stargazer rambles #long post

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sunshinebunnie · 3 years ago

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Hello! I've just finished 2nd chapter of the Private Dancer *silly Fez&Lexi* Private Dancer and Prairie Doll have very! different settings, and it seems a bit unusual (in a good way) to me that two such different things could be written by the same pen. How did both ideas cross your mind? And is it hard to work on two premises so separated from each other?

Prairie Doll is a gorg❤

Awwww!!! Thank you so much for dropping me such a lovely note, @mimbletonia-mimbulus!!

As for how the ideas crossed my mind, I’m a pretty big history nerd (US Civil War/Reconstruction—basically pre-WW I is my ultimate jam!), so when I started thinking of ways I could play around with these characters, the American Plains post Civil War just felt like a really natural fit. As for Private Dancer, the gremlins were getting really annoyed at me for how slow burn Prairie Doll was being, and demanded an outlet. 🤣🤣🤣 I got the idea of the sex club with the candies from Babylon Berlin. I liked the twist that Fez isn’t actually a sex worker, but because that’s how they meet Fez and Lexi, they both kinda get stuck on the idea. 🥰🥰🥰🥰

As for keeping the two ideas straight, thankfully they’re so different that knowing what I want to accomplish with each isn’t too bad. The part I do tend to get a little more caught up with is which tense I’m using for each story and some language stuff. Like, wanting to have Ash or Rue say they’re “not a fan” of something in Prairie Doll then remembering that “fan” is a shortening of “fanatic” and that people in the 1860s wouldn’t speak/think like that, and then having to rephrase the idea in a way that’s more authentic to the period. 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️

I have to say, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you saying that it’s hard to believe the same person is writing both stories!! I try to challenge myself with all of my stories to do something I have do before—whether it’s play around with a different trope, do stuff with grammar I don’t normally do, even change up my smut (in one story I wrote for a different fandom, for example, I actually wrote a soul mates smut scene where the guy didn’t actually get the girl off at first and she legitimately felt bad about it!). Especially for someone who is well aware of her brand, and takes pride in being a smut writer quite honestly, I know it can be easy to fall into a formula with that type of storytelling. If people like you are going to share your time with me, the last thing I want you to be is bored because you can already predict how my story is going to turn out by like the 2nd or 3rd chapter. 😊😊😊

Thank you again so much for talking to me!!! I really appreciate it! 🤗🤗🤗🤗

#welcome to my ama #sunshinebunnie psa

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the-scottish-costume-guy · 4 years ago

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JK Rowling, transphobia and a hopefully helpful post.

A few days ago I posted on my Facebook (yes I have one sue me) debunking some of the things Rowling has been saying on twitter. Since she made a statement I felt the need to make another one... but this time Im sharing it here. Please note this is long, it is fairly opinionated in places but her statements have felt so insidious I want to share something in depth. If you are cis I implore you to read, but I understand this is long and a lot of people wont want to. No judgement.

Jk Rowling’s latest statement is a mess of valid concerns and fear mongering. At this point there can be no claim she doesn’t know what shes talking about - she herself has said shes been researching this for years. She throws in token acknowledgements to “real” trans people while framing the rest of her statements as concern for confused teens.So first things first - and something that might not be popular with some of my trans friends. I agree that teenagers should not be able to medically transition. It is a choice that should be made when the brain is fully mature. Hormone blockers are something I trust - and that are reversible. I have seen enough detransitioned people hurting to feel like we do need to be careful - especially with children who are trying to find themselves. I dont know about other people but during my teens I was coming to the crushing realisation that I wasn’t special. I was learning that no matter how well I painted someone else did it better, no matter how badly I hurt someone had it worse - I was learning about the wonderful mediocrity of life, and having anything that made me stand out gave a brief reprieve from learning to be okay with all these things. For me to be fair it was dying my hair outrageous colours and dressing in black leather during 30 degree summer heat - but its still something we cant forget. I KNOW a lot of kids claiming to be trans are - and I dont want to keep that from them, however I dont want to cause harm to the kids that are wrong. Continuing on, I’d like to address her comments about TERFS. Terfs are Self Described Trans-exclusionary-radical-feminists and the term does get thrown around a little too liberally at times. Terf is not and never will be a slur. No more than “White” is. It is about a group of people who have taken it open themselves to segregate another group - and calling that what it is, is not a crime. The reason Terf and transphobe have become synonomic is because the ‘radical feminists’ that subscribe to this have lost focus on nearly all other issues of feminism and sit squarely on “dropping the T” from the lgbt community and “keeping men out of womens bathrooms.” Terfs are overwhelmingly women - this is sadly simply a fact. Terfs are reviled because of how much it feels like a betrayal to the community. A group that fights for rights - except ours. A group that wants equality - except for us. Its different to the conservatives who hate us all equally - with Terfs we are singled out. Terfs are not, as Rowling claims, inclusionary to Trans-men. I’ve been met with a combination of pity, loathing, mockery and revulsion by people within this group. I’ve been told that I shouldn’t let homophobia push me into transitioning - only for all correspondence to abruptly drop when I mention Im marrying another man. I’ve been told my old body was beautiful - only for stunned silence when I agree. I was beautiful - I was curvy, I was a dancer and had a body to match - but I wasn’t Me. When their usual arguments against me fail - I’m met with hate. Im called anti-woman, traitor, homophobic. I even have some such comments saved on my blog. I have yet to meet a Terf who was pro-trans-man. Rowling claims that had she had the ability, as a confused teen, she may have sought to transition. I hate to tell her but she did have the ability and trans people didn’t pop into existence in the twenty-first century. I’m actually looking to do my dissertation topic in my final year on lgbt presentation throughout history - and in my overeager way I’ve already started researching. James Barry has been becoming a common name for years - a transgender surgeon who died in 1865. If Barry was able to at least socially transition from 1790 to 1860, I am fairly sure Rowling could have in 1980 - over a century later. Rowling also claims that groups of friends in schools all suddenly identify as trans at the same time. Speaking from my school experience - the queer kids group together. We seek out others like us, and we take strength from each others bravery to come out - often around the same time. We almost get a rush of resolve when one of our group musters the courage and strength, and some of us use that rush to bite the bullet ourselves. Its one of the beautiful ways the lgbt community is here for one another - and the influx of people identifying as trans is partially a factor of more people knowing the name of their feelings. Survivor bias will ignore the trans people through history without the knowledge or means to transition - and will claim they were never trans at all. Her initial statements about charities worry me in particular. As I said last time - we know sex is real, we just dont really like to be defined by it. She is worried that we’re going to “rebrand medicine” and ignores that medications for years have had warnings in their leaflets about “If you are or become pregnant” regardless of if the person receiving it has a dick or a vagina. We dont advocate for ignoring the differences in how people respond to heart attacks - and I for one would like research to be done on how hormones effect that. I dont actually know if I would respond more like a cis gender woman or a cis gender man if I were to have a heart attack or a stroke. But where possible we do want to change the language around some of these things. I have had a double mastectomy, but some Cis-men have these as well. This is not a gendered term. Why should a period be called anything else? Why call it a “womens problem.” I and Im sure many other trans people, support the research into how different medical and mental issues affect different sexes. I just think that should be extended further - and we know it should, as some medical issues affect people of different ethnicities in different ways and we don’t know how. I am truly sorry that Rowling has experienced abuse and assault of any nature. I am truly sorry that she has felt unsafe. But her feelings do not invalidate others experiences. Of the trans people I know, a saddening number have been assaulted, have been abused and in particular have experienced these things domestically. There is much work to be done on this in the UK. There are nearly no mens shelters for sufferers of violence to my knowledge. I, a trans man who have experienced some of these things in my teen years, would Not want to be around cisgender women even if I could be. A cis woman was responsible for much of the pain I personally suffered - and in fact one of the acts of violence she carried out against me was directly after I came out as trans to her. Trans women, even if they could go to male shelters, should not have to be surrounded by a group that put them in danger - in a place that is detrimental to them physically and mentally and is frankly degrading. The belief that allowing trans women into shelters for those escaping abuse is dangerous is sad. To be so afraid is deserving of pity. To let fear blind you to the suffering of others - to think its better that a trans woman face homelessness or a return to an abusive household because you personally would sleep better at night is the kind of passive evil we should be aware of in this day and age. It comes from choosing to see the word “trans” before “person.” Its from choosing to see a persons genitals before their humanity. Trans people are not dangerous - and cause no greater risk than any other demographic. Her claims that she can empathise with this fear are empty. A gender recognition certificate is not a ticket into womens bathrooms. Funnily enough you dont actually require a piece of paper to go almost anywhere. I do not have a gender recognition certificate and use male bathrooms, can enter male spaces as I please. All a gender recognition certificate does is change the letter on your birth certificate. It doesn’t even affect other forms of identification - my passport, my student id, my drivers license all already say male. I am not sure why so many people have chosen this as their hill to die on because its the least relevant thing to them on the planet. How often have any of you seen another persons birth certificate? Rowling says she and other ‘gender critical’ (a terf dogwhistle) people are concerned for trans youth. Well… she can take her condescending concern and direct it to matters that are relevant to her. Trans people want to be left alone. Its a simple request, and yet people endlessly seem to trip over the dirt level bar.

#transgender #jk rowling #terf #transphobia #lgbt #uk politics #I'm prob gonna get shit for this arent I

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musketeer-system · 3 years ago

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Gabe wanted to share some feelings about growing up as an EP, aware of other parts. He usually swears a lot, and this all really upsets him, so I, Saiph, have helped otherwise it would be incomprehensible.

A general tw for abuse and trauma

George Frederick Watts, Sir Galahad (1860-62)

When I was small we did a nativity play. These days mostly girls are chosen to be angels but in my class a boy desperately wanted to be angel Gabriel and he got the part.

I felt seen and shown to the world somehow, his hair, just below the ear in tight waves, his voice how I wished the body I found myself in sounded.

At this time I genuinely believed I was an angel, from what I heard in church, but I didn't know why I was here on the Earth. Was it punishment? Was it a lesson? Was it to help this body?

Every Sunday I went to church, the at the time host, Saiph, needed my help to keep themselves listening so I'd be there for mass too. This god, my father, was often angry, like the body’s parents. Maybe I had done something wrong, like they said the body I was in always had.

Despite the body I was in, I knew I was a boy, and later a man, right from when I can remember. And I knew I also liked boys. Pre-raphaelite paintings of men gripped me like nothing else.

I remember being around when girls and boys are at that age when they find each other disgusting and icky, about 8 or 9. A group of kids from my street that we used to walk down with to school were arguing about how yucky each other was for their genders and I just stayed out of it thinking it was a very stupid argument, because to me the solution was simple. When we arrived at school and went to class, they were still arguing so I went to the teacher and asked, “If boys don’t like girls and girls don’t like boys, why don’t boys marry boys and girls marry girls?” After a long pause the teacher simply said “They can’t, I’m afraid’ and then told me to sit down.

I don’t know what the teacher thought about queer things, but at the time, it was true, gay marriage wasn’t yet a thing.

A few months later, none of us can remember from whom, but we were told that the christian god didn’t like gay people so then I knew, I was banished from heaven, punished to live in a body with someone who was being hurt every day for being autistic.

So I fought back, too hard. I was angry about a thing I couldn’t explain, and the, what I now know to just be fellow alters, were scared, thinking we were possessed. Everytime our parents smacked us for not eating the food we were given, I slammed whoever was at the front out of the way, I ate the food instead, I even sometimes physically fought back.

I say I’ve always felt 19 before, I dunno if that’s really true, but I’ve always felt older and I know from the body being about 15 I’ve felt 19.

Around 15, I stopped thinking I was an angel, as all of us began losing our belief in christianity. I recognise the body’s parents as my parents now. But I always have this ache, just below my shoulder blades, when I front. I know I’m meant to have wings.

I don’t think they would be any good for flying, but if they were, I know they were meant for us to fly far away from everything. The laughing, the force feeding, the mocking, the hitting, the everything. But my wings aren’t here, so we don’t even have the chance to see if we can be free.

#🍩#musketeer-system #personal experiences #osdd system #osdd #osdd alter #actuallyosdd #(not been diagnosed yet just for tagging so I can find friends)#dissociative system #dissociative alters #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #system #system alter #trauma tw #food trauma tw #abuse tw #physical abuse tw #fighting tw

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ll-underestimated-ll · 3 years ago

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5, in each category

I5. Who Sired them, and into what Generation were they Sired? What’s their relationship with their Sire like, and what were the circumstances of their Embrace?

Beatrix Lehmann sired Leonard Lehmann as the 10th generation of their line on the 15th March 1516. He avoids disclosing his generation at all costs considering the fact that it is very high for a kindred that has survived as long as he has. It's also why he has a bitterness streak towards any kindred younger than him he learns is of a lower one.

His relationship with his sire was one built upon a mutual blood bond. Despite having a rebellious attitude he was a mummy's boy for his first century until through discussions with 'siblings' and exposure to kindred outside of the house started to have him questioning. By the late 1700s his loyalty to her was induced through blood bond entirely, he played into it to maintain an act but with some assistance from contacts he broke away. He has a lot of spite and distaste towards her now. As he rightfully should considering the traumatic abuse and manipulation he endured in his time under her influence.

The circumstances of his embrace were the following: he was adopted originally by his sire due to his resemblance to her son (the original Leonard Lehmann) whom had been the only one of her children to survive infancy let along into their teenage years. She became scared that this doppelganger would change too much and the resemblance would be lost and so she arranged for his embrace to take place on the anniversary of her own son's death, as a sort of way to have him carry on. A ghoul that had been acting as a mentor and friend to the boy arranged to cut tutoring off early on the day, presented him with a new set of clothes, took him to eat dinner and watch the sunset - and ended up being the first person Leo killed in the blind hunger of the initial aftermath of being embraced.

Beatrix was but a neonate herself still at this point and with no permission having been sought for her actions that evening. Her own sire was furious with her but figured the boy would make suitable leverage over her so let him remain. It's for this reason so much time was spent kept aside and masquerading as a ghoul during his first century.

II5. What were they most afraid of in life? How has this changed?

In life it was being accused for the deaths of his family. He felt partially responsible for their demise and the consequences that would of arisen at the time if he were to have that pinned on him? Not entirely pleasant. That and being 'broken over the wheel' for thefts committed in the time between loosing his family and being taken in by his sire. A truly horrific and agonizing way to go, a fear of that specific end is good cause for his remembering of it's existence.

Now however... torpor. The prospect of falling asleep and not rising again for some unknown amount of time is terrifying to him. Especially when he's on this constant rat race to keep up to speed with the times. In his mind getting torpored and taken out of the game for even just a few years could potentially be something he wouldn't recover from.

III5. Which of their Clan’s stereotypes apply to them? Which do they act against, or embody the opposite of?

In regards to what applies: - He definitely has a sense of noblesse oblige. Positioning himself as Prince in such a way that he defines his role less in the keeping of personal power and more in regards to the protecting of his people he serves with it. - He also adheres to quite the degree of Machiavellianism, which sometimes gets associated with his clan. - The suits. The goddamn suits. - Has a cruel power seeking streak prompting the desire to maintain control over his surroundings. While not outright power-hungry as the clan may be stereotyped, having power helps ensure stability.

Regarding what he acts against/opposes: - He has little mind for maintaining dignitas. He would much prefer to be seen as an incompetent fool so he can overlooked briefly enough for a backstab than he would want to adhere to all the tedious rules that come with the clan. - He knows that unlike his cousins he was not chosen for the embrace by courtesy of some kind of skill he possessed. He was not scoped out due to being a suitable protégé. - Will outright make a fool of himself on purpose (-bingo card insert-)

IV5. What do they think about the Kuei-jin?

I admittedly ignore WoD's lore around them cos of the sinophobia that has been engrained into it.

So instead have a little general NZ infomation. (cw: I do go into some current affairs so for anyone that wants to avoid such topics feel free to skip. Also, still not escaping people being shitty via talking about it unfortunately. British colony after all.)

During the 1860s, what was still 'initial colonization time', when many Europeans were coming to settle in the country there were also many Chinese arriving. British colonies being British colonies however held a heap of prejudice so imposed a poll tax upon their entry to the country (following the lead of US & Australia). This lasted from the 1880s to 1940s. Add on top of this discriminatory policies against even those born in the country preventing involvement in politics or work in various professions prior to the 50s and well, shit's been bad to say the least.

Over past few decades there have been several waves of Chinese immigration to the country and those identifying their ethnicity as Chinese make up a notable proportion of the Auckland demographic (~10%). This can be seen reflected in the fact that in many areas of Auckland signs can been seen written in both Cantonese or Madarin and English and also the massive yearly lantern festival and New Years celebrations in the city centre!

On a more serious note: Several of the wave haves come in response to governmental actions back in China, such as the 1997 handover. Conflicts over the CCP do get seen from the community as well - whether it be the group of protesters on Auckland's Queen Street on the daily handing out pamphlets to raise awareness of persecuted groups whilst fearing the long arm of the regime, or the conflict between pro/anti-beijing stances to arise on UoA's campus during the most recent protests in Hong Kong.

Conflict and concern over issues from back in China over the extent of control and actions of CCP's regime are alive within the NZ Chinese community. For an in depth look at part if it - this article from 2018 tries to touch on sources from both sides. And, by golly, does all this not help with the ongoing sinophobia present in society.

V5. What do they think about Clan Lasombra?

He thinks the conflict between Clan Lasombra and Clan Ventrue within the modern era is horrendously petty and grounded in the sect conflict more than anything. He himself is fearful of low generation Lasombra due to their capacity for long distance travel but the average fledgling to jump the ditch over from Australia is of little issue to him. He finds them to typically be smarter and more reasonable than some of the sabbat. Therefore be sorts he's willing to sit down and have a chat with.

The typical lasombra's desire for social climbing however is something of concern to him. They don't play by the same rules as the Ventrue and he finds something relatable in them. Those factors give him cause for some alarm. Even the nicest ones he encounters.

#ooc #long post #about #cw politics #I figured that whole business is something to be touched on considering there is often this external view of nz #as being this really wonderful nice polite place lacking issues #but I am certainly not the most eloquent person to be talking on it #but I do hope that that provides an insight into things here

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tarunsaravana · 3 years ago

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BRAINWASHING CHILDREN THEORY

Now I’m warning you the next theory is pretty dark and probably one of the most unsettleing ones we have talked about in this Blog.

This theory starts with subliminal msgs in kids shows.

SUBLIMAL MESSAGES

By far Spongebob square pants has the most messages that are clearly hidden in grown ups.

There’s jokes about prison “Don’t Drop Them”

Patrick licking sand.

Those are all just jokes, clearly hidden for adults

But there are lot of jokes, some involves suicide.

In a 2001 episode , squidward is being sad the entire time. There is scenes of him walking around dazed stage. There is a scene of him putting in a oven. By far the most darkest moment of them all is sponge bob looks after him thinking his okay. And then he’s says “at least we know he’s alive”. Yeah that might be the darkest line I have ever read in a kids cartoon show. There are plenty of suicidal messages left in other episodes. As I was looking more into it , I found out suicide was in a lot of cartoon tv shows. The ending of looney tunes.this one really gave me chills down spine, in one of the cartoon characters from looney tunes jumping off the bridge shouting “IM FREE”. Once again glorifying suicide. And its not just these clips. Bunny , Daffy Duck, woody woodpecker, daisy and a bunch of cartoon characters ending their life with gun for no reason. the strangest of them all how they made it look exciting to kids.There is a cartoon where mickey gets depressed over Minnie. In that cartoon 3 ways of killing yourself is shown gun, petroleum and for some reason jumping off a bridge. Now I’m not saying this to scare you or not to watch cartoon. These are all just theories none of them are “facts” and they are not meant to hurt anyone/anything. I mean the daisy cartoon where daisy is shown depressed , in that cartoon almost 5 ways of killing yourself is shown and poured into youngsters mind. Gun, grenade ,knife, hanging and bomb.

THEORY(just speculations)

Now why would they put suicide on younger generations brain some people think control of over growth of population, some people think to keep society weak and depressed and fearful state. Because the more younger you are between 1 - 5 years your brain develops and everything you see on your favourite cartoon shows killing themself and also make it exciting. The more society, the more power control over weak society. Think about it kids are depressed , we’re medicating them and putting them on pills and sitting in front of TV while their watching their favorite cartoon character kill themself and also making it seem exciting to kids. I mean the global antidepressant market is estimated over 11.6 BILLION dollars. The government and the economy love depression. We also glorify things like money, fame, success. And of course if we can’t afford things we were told it will set us “free”. That’s why back of our heads teens think suicide is an option. YES , people have severe depression,OCD ,suicidal thoughts me too included in the past. But it is wondering who started all of these negative energy. Think about it your child entertainer Logan Paul filming a dead body in the suicide forest. The nickelodeon shows who show unessasacery content to kids.it involves talking about feet a lot. Even think about the board game which targeted to us as kids.

“THE GAME OF LIFE”. The goal is to succeed or you’ll lose. To win the game of life you need to make money. You should be better than those who are playing against you. Literally the commercial says “Be A Winner in the Game of Life”. I MEAN , COME ON. And the original version of the game of life in 1860 ,created by Milton Bradley ,it literally had suicide on the board as a option. Now its not just suicide being poured into kids pure brain.there’s darkness in every single form. I mean think about the games we used to play as kids. I mean just google “Ring around the Rosie meaning”A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, and posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off the smell of the disease. Sneezing or coughing was a final fatal symptom, and "all fall down" was exactly what happened. Again a another event where people die and has shown as exciting to kids. London Bridge. A song about a huge bridge falling down.“London Bridge is Falling Down” could be about a 1014 Viking attack, child sacrifice, or the normal deterioration of an old bridge. But the most popular theory seems to be that first one. More specifically: the alleged destruction of London Bridge at the hands of Olaf II of Norway sometime in the early 1000s. There’s even a darker line singing iron parts will bend and break , bend and break.

Ouija board, a game that makes fun to contact evil spirits in your house.Twister , a game that is marketed to tight teenagers up and down. Imagine the creepy uncles wanna play the game at thanksgiving.and then we have the darkest of them all Hangman , game where you have to choose the correct word or your little stick figure gets hanged. And the darkest part of them all is that , this classroom game is actually based on real life game in the 18th century, prisoners that were sentenced to death by hanging should guess the word, the exicutioner will give and if they guess the word right they’ll live or if not death. The most messed up part of all of this ,that almost all of the prisoners were illiterate which means they didn’t have a chance , that game was to just publicly humiliate them before they died.

NURSERY RHYMES

And it’s not just games which have a darker turn , what’s the first thing you remember as a kid, nursery rhymes. rock bye baby , a song which a baby’s cradle is in the branch of a tree and the branch breaks and the baby falls to the ground. Humpty Dumpty , he sat on a wall and suddenly “had a great fall” and nobody can save him because he’s dead.”its raining and pouring” a song where a old man hits his head on the wall and then dies, “he couldn’t get up in the morning “

Now one of the most disturbing is Peter peter pumpkin eater. A song about a guy who he’s wife doesn’t want him and puts her in a pumpkin and again, song which normalizes holding women against your will. I mean looking back at London bridge there’s a reference to something along the lines of “LOCK HER UP,LOCK HER UP” “LOCK HER UP,LOCK HER UP “(lyrics from London bridge).

INTERNET

Now on the internet kids start watching YouTube kids but don’t worry there’s bunch of dark messages hidden there. Murder,suicide, violence and for some reason lot of vomiting. Then when you’re a teenager you watch plenty of violence movies, tv shows and now internet challenges like momo challenge and blue whale challenge.

DISCUSSION

Everyone on society questions how much evil, death, hatred, depresssion, destruction but do we even have to question it? By looking back at our childhoods what was being put into us and right in front of our eyes. So what’s the overall theory ,”the way to keep a society in large is by fear, chaos ,the only way to make vote for them is to through destruction”” the only way to unite is through tragedies.”

“The only way to keep people happy , is by showing constant realistic expections that don’t really matter”” money, success”. The society that’s peaceful is not a society that can never be controlled.

CONCLUSION(spreading awareness)

So ,what do you do to make sure that chaos doesn’t appear continuously , well make sure to SHOW children how scary and dark the world is at very young age.

News

A mother bought a toddler this princess wand in the dollar store. Imagine the curiosity , shock and surprise when the child carefully peeled the foil to find a image of a another little girl cutting her wrist full blood.

“If you looked close enough its not a joke ,its actual image of a child slit her wrist, I want to know , what they think,how that’s suitable for a child.

Tarun

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justamusicpodcast · 4 years ago

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Episode 6 out today!

We’re talking about Blues music

Transcript under the cut

Sup, I’m Laura Cousineau and welcome to Just A Music Podcast, where I, Laura Cousineau, tell you about some music history, how it relates to the world around us, and hopefully, introduce you to some new tunes. This show is theoretically for everyone but I will swear and when it comes down to it and sometimes we may need to talk about some sensitive topics so ur weeuns might wanna sit this one out.

And boi unless you’ve had that talk with ur kids about systemic racism you might wanna let them sit this one out because we’re gonna be touching on a bunch of terrible racist shit this week Because we’re gonna be talking about the Blues and various different type of blues musics. I’m actually really excited to talk about it too because blues, as you guys will find out in the future is kinda the basis for a lot of other, what one might consider more modern, genres of American popular musics. So this one’s gonna be important for ur earholes and ur brainholes. Just like last time I will be airing a sensitive content warning for some graphic descriptions of violence and I will put the time stamps in the description for y’all for when that starts and ends.

First though, I wanna issue an apology for being away so long, I tend to work on this podcast in my free time, and currently I’ve had none of that what so ever. It just so happened that October worked out this year that it was thanksgiving and my birthday and then a bunch of big projects due then Halloween and now I’m working on my fucking thesis proposal, I’m actually recording this episode at 1:35 am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, so needless to say all this in combination with trying to deal with my depression hasn’t been a cake walk but we’re making it work. I will likely run up against a similar time issue during the first couple weeks of December because that’s when all my final papers are due. After that thought I should have smooth sailing for about a month. I wanted to make sure I had an episode out this week because as I think… well everyone… is aware the American election took place this week and understandably people were stressed as shit about that. So I think we could all use a little music right now.

Ok so Like all fuckin things we need to know where blues came from. Now blues is actually a lot older than a lot of people are gonna be expecting, like really damn old. Like pretty much everything in academia (and I mean EVERYTHING, at least in the humanities), the dates are contested, but it seems that the blues, or at least what began as the blues, started in and around the 1860s. For those who didn’t listen to last week’s episode on slave songs, spirituals, and gospel, or just those who don’t know their American history too too well, the 1860s marks a very important time for black people, many of which at that time had been enslaved, because in 1865 the thirteenth amendment was amended into the American constitution. For those who aren’t aware, the thirteenth amendment as stated by the national archives of the United States of America reads as such: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Now this of course was fantastic news of course! And for some people, this might be where you think oppression in the Americas ends for Black people but you would be incredibly wrong! Because this is the period where we see the start of a phenomenon referred to as sharecropping. Sharecropping or crop sharing as it’s known otherwise is considered part of what we historians sometimes refer to as the Jim Crow economy of the American South after the civil war. But what is Jim crow economy, what did it come from, why is it bad, why is sharecropping bad, how does any of this relate to the blues? Well lucky for u lil turnips imma tell ya.

Jim Crow culture is something that I imagine most North Americans will have even the most basic knowledge of but for those that don’t the name Jim Crow as applied to economy, laws, and any other part of American culture during these time periods refers to sets of crazy fucking racist laws written and unwritten that kept black people subjugated under the whims of the government as well as their fellow white countrymen. The term Jim crow itself is reference to a song often featured in the supremely racist minstrel shows of the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s referred to as “Jump Jim Crow” in which a white man in black-face sings in a parody centric dialect about the life of a charicaturishly uneducated back-woodsy Black man named, you fuckin guessed it, Jim Crow. The significance of the Crow being that it was a pejorative term for black individuals which can actually dated back to the early mid 1700s. Now I wanna preface the excerpt of it with the fact that I’m uncomfortable listening to this, I understand if others are too. The thing is that acknowledging these uncomfortable things and knowing about them is necessary in order to understand the type of historical impact that they had. “So laura, you must obviously support statues being raised to commemorate things like slavery and secessionism!” Absolutely not. Where statues and monuments exist to praise the efforts of individuals, the listening to and learning about songs in a teaching context like this very podcast are meant to educate. Statues commemorating culture surrounding one of the worst atrocities to have taken place on American soil should never have been erected in the first place let alone celebrated. One is meant to celebrate while the other is to educate because one is a historical primary source that lets us think critically about the history, the other is a tertiary celebration. The purpose of listening to a clip like this is then to educate and understand a piece of actually history, not to replicate and enjoy. The version of the song that I have is sung without the charicaturish accent but uses the original words but with all that in mind here’s a bit of Jump Jim Crow:

In terms of laws I’m sure just about everyone knows separate drinking fountains and schools but this really permeated pretty much every sphere of life for Black peoples especially those in the south. I say especially those in the south but not exclusively those in the south because racial segregation, although not as supported by law but more socially, also existed in the Northern States as well as in Canada. Anecdotally, my mother grew up in a suburb of Cleveland Ohio, she remembers going into Cleveland when she was a kid when Cleveland was still a very racially segregated city, Black peoples lived in, shopped in, and attended schools in certain areas of the city and white people in other’s. My grandmother who was also raised in the area even remembers Black people having separate lunch counters if any at all in some of the larger department stores in the area.

It might also be handy when I mention the south to actually talk about what the south and particularly the deep south is for y’all outside of America. So when we talk about the south we are talking about a geographically bounded area just not the area that one might think of by looking at a map because where you might be thinking like ah just take the country and cut it in half, and the bottom half is the south that wouldn’t be correct. So, from the United States Census Bureau itself the south we’re talking about is Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Now some who live in the surrounding areas such as Kansas might also consider themselves as being from the “south” somewhat culturally but those states previously listed as the official ones. When we talk about the DEEP SOUTH however, that range closes a little more, and that would mainly just include Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and sometimes Texas and Florida due to their involvement as part of the confederate states of America, meaning states that were on the south side of the civil war.

Also briefly just so we’re clear, again this is for those people who didn’t receive the best education on Slavery and the Civil War in general but to be clear, the civil war was fought over primarily states rights to use and perpetuate slavery. The common narrative you hear a lot in protests by those on the right, who would like to uphold the institutions set out by their forefathers in the creation of the abominable act, is that the civil war was primarily fought over states rights. What they then so often forget to elaborate is that those rights were perceived as the right to govern themselves independently so that they may still be able to employ slave labour in the operation of their economies and also to expand further westward to continue and be able to use slavery out in those areas as well.

The reason that we hear about these Jim Crow laws particularly in the South is because where the Northern states and Canada did have (and still continues to have) some violent racist issues, the Jim Crow south was specifically really bad. And I mean fucking abominable. Though Black people were free from being directly owned, society at large and all it’s trappings found new ways to oppress them. This started with Black Codes which were individual state law codes that dictated where Black peoples could move, for how long they could stay, restricted their rights to vote (or made it extremely difficult to vote via poll taxes, literacy tests, etc), as well as where they could work, and in some cases even if their children could be taken away from them on the basis labour needs. So I really can’t drive home the point enough of how much life sucked for Black peoples under Jim Crow laws and economy in the southern states, to call it any less than abominable would seem to understate it in a major way. In the 1880s Jim Crow laws hadn’t started to be rolled into large southern cities yet so many Black peoples were inclined to move into them because life was actually slightly easier for a short while. White people being offended and upset at this, because “how dare a black person just try to live their lives in my good white pure Christian neighborhood,” then fully supported Jim crow laws being rolled out to remove them from areas where white people would normally interact with them. This included but was not limited to, barring them from public parks entirely, having entirely different theaters at one point and then segregated theaters after a while with separate entrances based on your race, restaurants, bus and train stations, water fountains, restrooms, most building entrances in general, elevators, amusement park ticket windows, public schools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails, elderly care homes and even fucking cemeteries. Of course being treated as diseased subhuman parasites is never enough for the racism machine that is the public conscious at this time so there was also a lot of violence both systematic and grassroots that accompanied this era.

And here’s where I’m going to have to issue a sensitive content warning because I’m about to describe some truly heinous shit in a whole second. So by violence, I mean very public and very culturally accepted violence, similar to what we’re seeing more and more of in the states again. As many will know now in the light of the many many many police shootings of unarmed, unthreatening black people in the states, the police traditionally haven’t been on the side of black citizens. This is due to a number of reasons, for one, on the most basic of levels the police serve to protect the interests of those in power, in our case that means the property and lives of middle to upper class (mostly) white Americans. The natural extension of this is that many police forces in the states, especially in Southern states started out as slave catching forces bringing back runaway enslaved people to their owners. So as time progressed and Black peoples became a “free” population this still meant protecting mainly middle to upper class white people from the “threat” of black people. This was enforced in a number of ways, such as arresting black individuals found breaking these rules, framing black people for crimes committed by others and arresting them for population suppression, and turning a blind eye to the grassroots violence perpetrated by non-black citizens, which very often were white citizens. An example of just straight up police brutality can be found in the case of Isaac Woodard JR. who was viciously beaten by police only hours after being honorably discharged from the fucking military on February 12 1946. The bus driver driving Woodard and some of his fellow soldiers called the police after Woodard asked the bus driver if there might be time for him to use the restroom as they approached a rest stop. When the police arrived, the bus driver accused Woodard of drinking in the back of the bus and he was hauled off, dragged into an alley and beaten with nighsticks. That night he was thrown in the town jail, by morning he had been beaten so severely he was left permanently blind in both eyes.

And that grassroots violence is just as nasty, really fucking nasty. The violence could be perpetrated for things as small as being in the wrong place at the wrong time, entering a white neighbourhood, “talking back to” the wrong person. Since black men have always been are still to some degree subject to the stereotype that they are all sex incensed monsters, being left alone in a room with a white woman could be enough to incite violence against them. In the Mississippi delta during the season where share cropping debts were settled up, there was a sharp uptick in violence against and killings of black people. If you were white, because let’s be real here some white people definitely were on the side of their oppressed countrymen, you could be hung on the basis of being an N-word lover, which could range from being found to being in a romantic/sexual relationship with a person of colour, to just being fucking friends with them. The violence was often varied too, where kidnapping and hanging someone either with or without brutalizing them first (also known as a lynching) is the form most commonly associated with Jim Crow era violence less extreme but still horrible harassment could perpetuate in any form. Mississippi had the highest amount of lynchings from 1882-1968 with 581. You might think that is a low number but first, similarily to when we were talking about slavery in the last episode, 1 lynching is too fucking many, and secondly these are only the ones that were officially recorded. Since lynchings didn’t always happen in broad daylight and since law enforcement really didn’t care about Black individuals, there were almost certainly more that happened that just never were recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493. 79% of lynching happened in the South. So as I said before though, lynching was not the only form though, beatings were also entirely all too common forms of violence perpetrated against blackf people to make them scared and thus more compliant. A good example of this is the case of Emmet Till a 14 year old boy who made the mistake of playfully flirting with a white woman, who was beaten nearly to death, had one of his eyes gouged out, was then shot in the head, and tied to some cotton mill equipment before his body was thrown in a river. This wasn’t even that long ago, the beating happened on the 28th of August 1955.

THE next parts are also gonna be not great but there wont be anymore descriptions of graphic violence, so I’m calling an end to the sensitive content warning. So the then how does sharecropping play into all this and what does it have to do with the blues (we’re getting there babes I promise.) So as I explained previously, sharecropping was a part of the Jim Crow economic era. It was part of the era of reconstruction meaning the period of rebuilding after the civil war. How it worked was that let’s say for a second, come with me into the theater of the mind for a second, take a seat, close your eyes, take a deep breath, Ok so lets imagine for a second you’re a farmer in the south, the civil war has kinda left you in a spot, if you’re black, you’re starting off without an awful lot, you don’t have any generational wealth you don’t have property likely aside from maybe a relatively small plot of land (but this was uncommon,) you probably didn’t have much if any equipment because that would have been way too expensive, and the land you may have had may have been of shitty quality. So what could you do to earn yourself a living?! Well you would go to a landowner, and ask him rather kindly if you might be able to work the land they lived on in exchange for some of the profits of the crops that you would produce. The landowner would provide you with the tools, seed, housing, land, store credits at local shops in order to subsist offa for food and other supplies and sometimes a mule in order to help you work the land seeing as motorized machinery was still few and far between in the united states at this point. The issue of this system is that how much you receive for you labour, the cut that you actually get from selling crops, that you grew with ur own backbreaking labour, is more or less decided by your landowner. And as I mentioned last episode, those who’ve ever had to rely on the benevolence of a boss for any period of time knows that this shit ain’t gonna cut it. So often you would end up underpaid, underfed, and in a debt hole that lasted as long as you did. If it sounds like legal slavery that’s kinda because it was. You would basically remain in indentured servitude to the landowner for as long as you were a part of this system. Like don’t get me wrong there were people who managed to not be a part of it but it was an incredibly largescale problem.

It’s important to note that this wasn’t just a black phenomenon either, white tenants of sharecroppers existed and in incredibly large numbers as well. By 1900, 36 percent of all white farmers in Mississippi were either tenant farmers or sharecroppers (by comparison, 85 percent of all black farmers in 1900 did not own the land they farmed). This all sucks for various reasons but like partially because there was this whole other plan proposed that after the war, all the land that had been seized from slave owners would have been divvied up to the newly freed slave populations. It was colloquially known as the 40 acres and a mule plan but yeah unfortunately never happened cause fuckin president Andrew Johnson was like ”WELL AKSHULLY SWEATY I THINK THE LAND SHOULD GO BACK TO SLAVE OWNERS BECAUSE UHHHHHH” AND THEN IT DID AND THEN WE ENDED UP WITH SHARE CROPPING. But anyway that’s sharecropping. And of course I could go onto describe how all of this still affects black people in the united states and how the effects of systematic racism are still being felt generations later but… we’re gonna save that for a different episode. FOR NOW THOUGH, WHY IS THIS ALL IMPORTANT, WHY DID I TAKE ROUGHLY 3000 WORDS TO TELL YOU GUYS ABOUT THE HORRORS OF RECONSTRUCTION ERA SOUTH!? Well because we’re talking about the blues, and what does it mean when you have the blues, it means that you’re sad as hell, given all that I’ve just described to you is it no wonder that the blues emerged as the soundtrack to the lives these people lived?

So then what is blues? Well as I mentioned last time, blues sort of develops out of the field holler/spiritual tradition. A fair amount of field hollers, a type of work song that enslaved peoples would sing in fields while they were doing their work, were about regular ass things for regular ass peoples; this dude stole my girl, im gonna find me a girl to love, life sucks and im gonna sing about it, life doesn’t suck so much but I’m still gonna sing about it. Blues then tended to explore more themes related to the sadder points of those stories but in similar ways and styles. So where did blues come from specifically, what makes it a different genre than a field holler or a spiritual, and that’s a great question so let’s get in it.

Let’s say for a second you went through a real shitty period in your life, you significant other named steve dumped you, your pet armadillo, also named steve, died, ur mom (also coincidentally named steve) has taken away your showering privileges, you’ve forgotten how to speak ur native language and to top it all off you just burnt your gotdamn mac and cheese. You spiral into a deep situational depression that lasts quite a little while. During this time you listen to one album on repeat just over and over again, you know it all inside out and backwards and diagonal, you know every instrumental part by heart, you’ve got the lyrics tattooed on your ass, the whole 9 yards. And then you start working your way out of it, slowly but steadily the days start getting brighter, you move out of your abusive mother’s house, you find a new partner or get comfortable being single, you appropriately morn the loss of ur pet armadillo, hell you even learn to make a better mac and cheese, things aren’t all fixed, and life isn’t breezes and cakes but it is ever so slightly easier than it was before, at least you have ur freedom right? BUT NOW, everytime you listen to one of those songs from that album it mentally brings you back to the way things used to be and it’s not great. Well that’s kinda what happened with blues music but, ya know, infinitely worse. Essentially, black people wanted a new sound to accompany this new life and so they fuckin made it and it’s great.

The similarities of blues to field hollers and spirituals are relatively easy enough to hear if you know where to look which isn’t really surprising given that blues is the evolution of it. For example the basic structure stayed pretty similar, simple rhyming schemes, simple harmonies, melismatic vocal structures in places, and many times the lyrics were often very similar to those forms before them. But it goes even further than that! Most of the early blues melodies were directly derived from their spiritual predecessors. So for some comparison here’s some songs, first one is gonna be a field holler, next one is gonna be a spiritual, and then the last one is gonna be a blues song mmk? And here we go:

AND ACTUALLY YOU KNOW WHAT WAIT, JUST CAUSE IM FUCKIN, OOO BABE, OK, SO WHEN I WAS RESARCHING THIS FUCKING EPISODE I WAS TRYING TO FIND GOOD AUDIO CLIPS TO USE, AND LEMME TELL YA MAN YOU WOULDN’T THINK SPIRITUALS WOULD FUCKIN EXIST OUTSIDE THE LIBRARY OF FUCKING CONGRESS CAUSE APPARENTLY THEY HAVE A GODDAMN STRANGLEHOLD ON ALL BLACK SPIRITUALS EVER RECORDED BY THE LOMAX’S. The thing is is that fuckin copyright at least in the states is supposed to run out 75 years after the death of the recorder or fucking owner of the rights, which it certainly has been for Alan Fucking Lomax BUT NOOOOOOO, I HAVE TO NEARLY PURCHASE A GODDAMN CD IN ORDER TO GET YOU GUYS A FUCKING ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF MUSIC THAT CAME OUT LIKE 100 YEARS AGO. To be clear I refuse to buy anything for this podcast other than my recording equipment, but man researching this podcast is big joab hours, god just keeps fuckin testing me. Just slap my ass and call me a pickle, ok, rage is over, time for songs:

These freed populations wanted a new music, a music that fit their current situation better, that didn’t rely on the imagery of the past in order to get across the situation they were in. And so that’s what blues did, it was a new sound for a new era and even more importantly it was a sound entirely their own. Whereas field hollers and various other types of music sung by enslaved peoples were by definition their invention, many of them still borrowed heavily from the dominant cultures of their oppressors, and so in creating blues what they had was something they could 100% call their own. Even if they didn’t own the land they worked/lived on, and had few rights to the crops they sewed and reaped, they did have blues, and that’s something beautiful.

But when does it become a thing, like when does blues start becoming a thing? And that’s a hard part. Like any cultural phenomenon it’s hard to fuckin say, there’s some accounts that say 1865 like the fuckin second the civil war ended, then there’s some that attribute it to the 1920s. Most of the sources I’ve looked at put it around 1890-1910. It originates unsurprisingly in and around the Mississippi Delta Region and East Texas where you have a lot of farmland and thus a lot of poor folks just trying to scratch out a living for themselves. AND SO THE BLUES BECOMES A THING AND IT’S COOL AS HELL AND IT DEVELOPS IN SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS! And I’m sorry that I’m not gonna get enough time to do every subgenre of blues, but we’re gonna look at 3 of the big regions or subgenres of blues.

So blues first of all have all those things that I mentioned before simple rhyming schemes, like ABAB or ABCC, simple harmonies, Call and response is definitely a thing that still happens in this specific style, but then they also have blues notes, for those who missed the last episode, blues notes are notes within a standard scale that are “bent” (or at least that’s how they were initially described.) These notes are lowered by a semitone making the overall colour of the sound a bit darker and more… emotional, sad? Like we ascribe emotions to the way things sound and that might be western centric, I’m actually gonna have to look into it later, but for western listeners we’re gonna read the emotion in these tones as sad. So the notes specifically are lowered the 3rd 5th and 7th degrees of a regular scale. I’m going to play you guys an example of blues scale in just a second but the guy playing the example is using the pentatonic version of the scale meaning only 5 notes of it.

In terms of instruments the most standard you’re going to find in any blues band is at it’s most basic one guitar and a person singing. You could even make an argument that just singing could be blues if you’re using a blues scale but usually there will at least a guitar and one dude singing. The rest of the intstruments are gonna depend on the region you’re playing from. So remember the moaning thing I mentioned last time? The moaning style vocals? Not pioneered by but made popular by a man that went by Blind Lemon Jefferson? This one:

Well he falls under the Mississippi/Texas type of blues which we’re gonna call texasippi. It differs from other types of blues in the united states for a couple reasons but one of them is that moaning style of vocals, in other parts of the country the style where the blues vocals function similarly to other styles of singing, clean and clear, no moaning. Another cool thing that texasippi blues also does is they incorporate a lot of metal into the way they play their guitars. Not like the heavy screamy kind that’s come to be MY fave, but like actual metal objects! How they incorporate this is through the strings of the guitar specifically causing a little extra twangy buzzing when the strings resonate but also a sort of pleasing screech when they’re shifted up and down the strings like this:

but what did they use to make this sound? Well just about anything small enough and metal you could thread between the strings or held against them while playing, this coulda been bottle caps, pocket knives, silverware. Remember, we’re still talking about a type of music that was very much being played by people without very much or no money, so you’re using what you can to make it. Nowadays you can purchase wee cylanders made of glass or metal that go over ur fingers that you press up against the strings to create the desired effect. In addition to this, something that’s pretty regional to the blues in this area is the harmonica. I’m assuming most of you know about the harmonica and have heard it but for those who don’t, the harmonica is a squanky reed instrument that you play with your mouth. I would tell you the physics of how it works but fuck if I ever studied physics. Basically when you blow in it, it vibrates the reed and makes a note depending on the holes you blow into, and when you suck air in it, it makes other sounds! They can be very very large or very very small thus changing how low or high the sound is respectively. They were invented somewhere in the early 1800s in Germany we think and they sound something like this:

How were harmonicas introduced into blues music? Well turns out, much like some of the other instruments we’ll see in a hot minute, harmonicas were often carried by soldiers during the American civil war, even President Abraham Lincoln himself was reported to have carried a harmonica with him in his coat pocket and would play it as he “found it comforting.” Thing about the harmonica was that it was relatively easy to make and it was extremely cheap to buy in comparison to other instruments at the time, even better was that you really didn’t need lessons to figure out how to make it sound good. So during the reconstruction period, as industrialization rapidized in America, and harmonicas became more available, and previous soldiers reminisced about the songs they heard played in their camps during the civil war, more and more people started picking up the harmonica. And so poor southern americans were able to incorporate the instrument into this new music they were developing like this:

Also I would big time recommend just watching the video for that song, dudes just sittin there legit just suckin on his harmonica at some point, that’s what I fucking call dedication bud. The cool part about blues from the texasippi way is then during the great migration, the phenomenon that I mentioned last episode, where black southerners just start heading northwards, is that the blues travels with them too. Just briefly on the great migration, remember all the shitty stuff I discussed earlier, the lack of work, sharecropping, lynching and what have you? That’s why the great migration takes place. Basically black people all around the south are going jesus fucking christ shit sucks let’s get out of here and find somewhere better to be, and so they do, and about 6 MILLION Black Americans head north to where it’s… better. I mean there’s definitely still racism and all sorts of jim crow era laws and practices up north but it is still some degree better than the south. So this great migration is how texasippi blues music then comes to be transplanted into Chicago, and turns into Chicago blues.

“BUT LAURA” YOU SAY, UR HANDS CLENCHED INTO FISTS AT UR SIDES, “IF TEXASIPPI BLUES IS THE SAME AS THE ONES IN CHICAGO THEN HOW’RE THEY DIFFERENT!?” YOU CRY WITH TEARS FORMING AT THE SIDES OF YOUR EYES. And you’re right b, they are the same so why are they different? Well ya gotta remember that time does funny stuff to music similarly as it does with language and just abut anything else, things change over time, AND, things get invented over time. And time as we’re moving into now is like 30s and 40s era. So in the case of Chicago blues we get the additives of the piano, which has been around for some time but people are now just being able to put into their blues music due to becoming more financially stable, BUT WE ALSO GET THE COOL NEW INVENTION OF THE ELECTRIC GUITAR. Now there is some speculation over the invention of most things throughout history, for example, y’all might be familiar of Thomas Edison not actually inventing the lightbulb and being a bit of a dick about things, so when I talk about inventors of things, unless otherwise stated, please take it with some amount of a grain of salt. So Paul H Tutmarc may have been the first person to invent the first electric guitar when he managed, by some feat of science, which I will not explain because science is for wizards and freeks and while I am both of those I am not at all qualified or able to explain it, but essentially he managed to electrify a Hawaiian guitar! He supposedly invented this sometime in the 1930s. Here’s an example of what that sounds like:

Very Spongebobby… spongeboblike…spongebobesque… so EITHERWAY the electric guitar, as well as the electric bass is invented and so those are then infused into Chicago blues. In some cases you will also get the addition of drums and saxophone, but it is the electrified elements as well as the piano that really characterize the biggest difference between Chicago blues and texasippi blues. Overall, it sounds like this:

Something you also probably heard in there was just the level of intensity, the volume or what I’m gonna call the perceived volume, is louder. Whereas the songs of the texasippi blues is a little softer, quieter, very much just dude and his guitar volume, Chicago blues is gonna sound a little louder and a little more intense at most times. This is due to blues clubs becoming a big thing during this time period. And why shouldn’t they? In diaspora communities, that is communities consisting of people from a similar ethnic or national background, you often get patterns of similar settlement. So in our case, when Black Americans started moving northward, they would often settle in similar communities or move into similar communities based off of their ethnicity. Afterall you wanna be able to live in places where people understand your experience. There’s also the element of racism of course, homeowners associations making it hard for Black folk to move into white neighbourhoods and of course school segregation which didn’t end until the 1954. So while in some cases there was def an element of wanting to feel safe in a community of people who understand you, there’s also a big ol element of racism as there pretty much always is when we talk about anything. Seriously ur gonna be surprised at how far reaching and fucking just convoluted and stupid racism is, especially when we get into like Europeans being racist against other Europeans. So since we have all these people moving up north they need to be entertained, we all need entertainment after-all, but lo and behold! They can’t go to white clubs in a lot of cases because fucking racism (unless you are a performer in which case sometimes you can go to white clubs but only to perform, I’m gonna get more into that when we have our jazz episode.) So we start having blues clubs and because they’re a club and there’s drinking and talking and what not, often these songs tend to be a little louder or more rowdy to compensate.

On the other end of the country we also have my favorite flavour of blues which is the New Orleans blues. I’m definitely 100 percent biased when I say this but why does everything in New Orleans just sound better? If I had to guess it’s the multiculturalism and thus people bringing in tonnes of different ideas, but it’s hard to quantify awesome so we’re just gonna leave it there. BUT YEAH so we have texasippi blues that travels down the river (cause things rarely travel up a river) and hits New Orleans. But again, if we’re talking about the same style of blues then what makes it different? A lot hunny, a lot. So as we talked about in our last episode there’s a lot of different cultural elements at play in Louisianna culminating in some cool ass musical styles and changes. It’s also absolutely something we’re gonna talk about when we go back and do the Jazz episode cause lord knows New Orleans jazz is just as fuckin hot and dangerous (like serious lemme just go fuckin hangout with you guys down there, that’s all I want, musical tour of louisianna) I will say though that the line between jazz and blues does tend to get a little blurry though when we’re talking about New Orleans Blues so just hold onto ur femurs there yall and strap in.

So New orleans blues is different from other types of blues again by incorporating horns and piano into the music, most notably this will be the trumpet cause trumpets after the civil war just kinda leached out into the general public and since people got used to them in that capacity they became sorta naturally engrained into the soundscape of the music of the area. “but laura doesn’t Chicago also have horns?!” and ur right man they absolutely do, but there’s even more. So where texasippi blues relies on a rather standard rhythms in most cases, the New Orleans Blues scene takes from some of that different heritage and combines Caribbean inspired or based rhythms. We can find a good example of the inspiration for those rhythms in another genre of music that was popular at the same time, Calypso. Calypso is a genre of music which we will look more in depth in the future but just really generally for now it is popular in the Caribbean as well as certain parts, South America (particularly Venezuela), Mexico, and of course New Orleans during this time. It is usually up-beat and relies a lot on emphasizing the offbeat, and these are all things that we hear being incorporated into New Orleans blues during the time. So when we hear blues from New Orleans, one of the things we can usually use to tell the difference is merely just the upbeat tempo of things and slightly more rhythmically complex manner in which it existed. In fact Blues in New Orleans was so fuckin different it actually started what we know of as R&B or rhythm and blues which sounds like this:

Just a quick detour, I fuckin love like, blues and jazz names. The Man I played just there was Roy Brown but man the names really take off on occasion my personal favorite being Guitar Slim Jr., but we also got Fats domino (sometimes just known as fats, or the fat man), we god fuckin Professor Longhair, we got a dude who just goes by the name sugar boy, like… guys…. What happened to nicknames like that, I wanna walk around and when people see me comin at a distance they just point and go oh lord here comes swamp papa, like, that’s livin man, I dunno what to tell you but that’s absolutely livin.

Anyhow, what ur gonna notice, or maybe you didn’t notice but I’m gonna tell you and you can go back and notice is that blues, (along with jazz but we’re gonna get to that) as it goes on and evolves starts sounding a lot like early rock and roll music, and that doesn’t happen by coincidence. Also you’re probably noticing that blues at least as far as it goes for the Chicago variety and the New Orleans variety we talked about, sound a hell of a lot like Jazz and again we’ll get more into the specifics later. The thing is when we talk about invention, whether it be music, or physical things, or even sometimes schools of thought and ideas is that things get borrowed and changed and moulded into something else by other people. Hell the phenomenon of something being invented in multiple different places at the same time is so common enough that it even has a name, it’s called multiple discovery. Generally people in North America prefer a more black and white “this thing was developed at this time and this place by this person because definitive reason definitive reason definitive reason.” Because we have this weird sense of individuality and crediting individuals with discovery as opposed to a group or the society itself as maybe it should more rightly be. This means that in our endless want to categorize and systematize and ize all these things, particularly things like music, it gets sorta difficult to discern what is what and why and how. Of course we’ve already seen this with spirituals and gospel, and now we’ve seen it with blues/jazz/and early rock.

I just wanted to bring it up sooner than later because, especially as we move into more modern north American Genres, and honestly genres from various other places throughout the world. I wanted to bring this up now before we go any further in this podcast because as we get into more modern genres and hell maybe even with this episode I imagine I might get some rather angry mail from elitests who will smash their foreheads on the keyboard in absolute blind fuckin dismay and rage accusing me of putting the wrong genre lables on the wrong songs. The thing is though, like most art, or definitions in life, things are salient. Just because music fits one genre doesn’t mean it only fits within that genre, in the case of the Rhythm and Blues song by Roy brown that I played earlier, while it is definitely Rhythm and Blues there’s also gonna be other people who strongly consider that Rock and Roll. And that’s alright! Music doesn’t have to rigidly fit into one genre, we give things genre titles or group things into genres to help more easily understand their histories and identify other things that sound like it! All music is going to have variation, and in the case of rhythm and blues, a style of blues that very much informs early rock, you’re going to have cross roads like that. So instead of getting defensive, maybe take some time to think about how cool it is that music exists on an ever evolving spectrum.

So with that, that’s all for just a music podcast this week, I hope you’ve heard something new, and I hope you’ve heard something that you like. If you haven’t there’s always next time where we’re actually gonna do something a little different. Next time we’re gonna look at the Minstrel show which I’m subtitling right now, “why we don’t wear black face.” In the meantime, though if one of y’all would like to suggest a topic I would love nothing more than to answer your musical questions or talk about topics that interest you guys in music. Feel free to drop me a line at [email protected]

List of Music: Jump Jim Crow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjIXWRG09Qk

Belton Sutherland's field holler (1978) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CPJwt14d5E&list=PLAyuUbD3Cdhxx__cTlFDrkxxKiYllrYwJ&index=2

Wash Dennis & Charlie Sims - Lead Me To The Rock - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmPqmLovNms&list=PLAyuUbD3Cdhxx__cTlFDrkxxKiYllrYwJ&index=4

Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell - How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEw0ek2BhJE

Blind Lemon Jefferson – Black Snake Moan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3yd-c91ww8

Mississippi Fred McDowell - You gotta move - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtlVSedpIRU&feature=emb_logo

Red River Valley -Traditional - Harmonica solo by Kyong H. Lee - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKM4bn4kS-0

Sonny Boy Williamson - Keep it to Yourself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtRxJDb3vlw

Paul Tutmarc performs - My Tane - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUOms5y6cmI

Buddy Guy - First Time I Met The Blues - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1jruvTBleY

Roy Brown - Mighty Mighty Man - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhp8jMykAVg

Technical Clip I used: PianoPig (on youtube) - Minor Pentatonic vs Blues Scale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwz0b-At1ys

#music #music podcast #podcast #just a music podcast #music history

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lotusik · 4 years ago

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How Hecate came to Vancouver Island. (June 7the 2020)

Image from Hecate Park & image of Hecate I made into a postcard.

I’ve grown up here on Vancouver Island. We moved here from Manitoba by the time I was 6 years old. It wasn’t til summer 2013 when I really became aware of the goddess Hecate (a story for another post!) and it was another few years before I clued into the connection between two local places I knew about, Hecate Park and Hecate Strait, with the goddess Hecate. I think the delay was due to the difference in pronunciation, the locales are pronounced Hek-et, and after hearing it my whole life, it just took me some time to connect the dots!

Hecate Island, image by Kira Hoffman

Since that time I have discovered there are 16 locales (as well as a fishing lodge and an inn) named Hecate on Vancouver Island and the surrounding areas! Obviously as a devotee of Hecate, I was thrilled to have this physical connection to a goddess associated with such faraway lands in history, and lands so different than the Pacific Northwest. But as so often happens, the actual story of how these places came to be named Hecate is neither terribly exciting, nor surprising really when the history of this island is looked at.

1903 Nootka House

Kwakwakaʼwakw children in Yuquot (Friendly Cove)

Vancouver Island historically, and presently, is home to the Kwakwakaʼwakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and Coast Salish peoples. In the 1800s the British came and began their colonization of these lands as if they did not already belong to others. While this post isn’t about the atrocities that happened here, I would be remiss not to mention them. The repercussions are still being felt to this day. I recall being really surprised when I learned that a large proportion of Canadians actually knew almost nothing about the attempted genocide. Though it is now finally starting to be talked about in schools, the information being shared is not entirely accurate and still quite problematic according to a young Kwakwakaʼwakw woman I spoke with, whom has recently finished with the school system. I am grateful to my grandparents (an amazing couple whom I have much more to write about in another post) that raised me to be respectful of the land and the original inhabitants, and for always having been aware of what happened in this place. It has led me to feel a strangely conflicted feeling about living here. Feeling both so at home with this island’s spirit, yet always feeling a deep longing for Europe, and being but a guest here. I feel the same conflict about being thrilled to have locations named Hecate here while knowing how those locations came to be named.

HMS Hecate aground in Neah Bay east of Cape Flattery between 15 and 21 August 1861

In 1860 Captain George Henry Richards first came to B.C. to do survey work on the H.M.S Plumper until she was decommissioned, he then continued the work aboard the H.M.S Hecate. And thus we see the origins of all these places being named Hecate. Captain Richards did survey work around Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast for two years. By all accounts he was a kind and fair man. Oftentimes he was called to break up disputes between the Indigenous people and whites, and he would invariably always call out the whites as being in the wrong. There are also stories of him giving treats and gifts to the Indigenous people and being generally very kind. I was personally very glad to read this. He also had some sweet mutton chops.

Captain George Henry Richards, Royal Navy, BC Archives

In naming places around coastal BC, apparently the indigenous names were kept as much as possible, but much that was not named already or if the indigenous name could not be used, then those places would be named. Many of the names given by Capt Richards were for his crew and even a favourite racehorse.

Here is the list I compiled of all the places named Hecate, on and around Vancouver Island, starting from the South and moving upward North Island and over to the Sunshine Coast.

Hecate Passage (E. of Chain Islets, W. of Plumper Passage)

Hecate Park (Cowichan Bay)

Hecate Street (Nanaimo)

Hecate Mountain (NE of junction of Uchucklesit Inlet and Alberni Inlet)

Hecate Bay (NW. of Meares Island, E. of Catface Range)

Hecate (abandoned locality NE side of Nootka Island)

Hecate Lake (N. end of Nootka Island, E. of Saltery Bay)

Hecate Channel (Between Zeballos and Tahsis Inlets)

Hecate 17 (East shore of Zeballos Arm of Esperanza Inlet)

Hecate Cove (N. side of Quatsino Sound, E. of Quatsino) [There is also the Hecate Cove Fishing Lodge]

Hecate Island (Just N of Calvert Island)

Hecate Strait (Between Haida Gwaii & mainland) [On Haida Gwaii there is the Hecate Inn]

Hecate Rock (shoal in Duncan Bay)

Hecate Rock (Goletan Channel, Mount Waddington)

Hecate Reefs (I’m assuming this refers to the reefs in Hecate Strait)

Hecate Place (street in Vancouver)

According to British Columbia Coast Names by John, T. Walbran, Hecate Strait, Bay, Passage, Channel, Cove, Island, Rock (there are two in two different places) and reefs were named directly by Capt Richards between 1861-1862. The other places will likely have been named directly from those named by Richards.

{With libraries & archives being closed due to Covid 19 I wasn't able to access some of the information I'd originally gathered when I started this article several years back. That said, I think it contains most, if not all of the relevant information.}

While I was doing this research I realized there are quite a lot of places all over the world named Hecate, She certainly has made her way around the globe!

And lastly, I recently was also made aware of someone local who at one time had a boat named Hecate (retired), which if I get permission I will share a photo here of the boat herself, or at the very least, the beautiful wood sign with the name that was on the boat. They named the ship actually due to the goddess, the family having had a long time interest in Greek mythology.

Resources and references:

The private journal of Captain G.H. Richards: the Vancouver Island survey (1860-1862) (The first part is here: http://ronsdalepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Private-Journal.pdf ) Ronsdale Press 2012

British Columbia Place Names G. P. V. Akrigg, Helen B. Akrigg, UBC Press 1997

British Columbia Coast Names 1592-1906 by John Walbran, J.J. Douglas Ltd 1977-2003

BC Geographical Names https://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/bcgnws/

The Coast of British Columbia: Including the Juan de Fuca Strait, Puget Sound, Vancouver and Queen Charlotte Islands, United States. Hydrographic Office, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1891 - British Columbia

Dictionary Of Canadian Biography http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/richards_george_henry_12E.html

Cobble Hill Historical Society https://cobblehillhistory.org/vignettes/item/26-hms-hecate

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/vancouver-island#:~:text=The%20Treaty%20of%20Washington%20(1846,of%20British%20Columbia%20in%201871

Image Citations:

Nootka (Nuu-cha-nulth) House, 1903, Meany, Edmond S. (1862-19350 IN Meany Album v.2, p. 26, Digital Collection: American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Images, Edmond Meany Collection no. 132, Negative Number: NA 1150

Nuu-chah-nulth children at Friendly Cove, 1930s Alamy Stock Photo/Contributor Matteo Omied, Image ID 2BD7Y77

HMS Hecate - Public Domain

Captain George Henry Richards, Royal Navy; HMS Hecate and HMS Plumper, BC Archives, A-02432

#vancouverisland #hecate #hekate #history #colonization #uncededland

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imagine-that-one-thing · 5 years ago

Text

Her Majesty. || 4

Everything Grows With Love.

Harry and I have hardly spoken since our arrival from Ireland. I've been bustling with royal duties and assisting my mother to prepare for the Garden Party of the year. I used to cherish these functions as a kid, it was always entertaining to sneak away from the nanny and roam the grounds of Buckingham Palace that would be filled with more people than I could count at the time. Of course, the King And Queen were well aware of me roaming and sipping on tea and had bodyguards a few steps behind me at every moment, however, at the time, I thought I was getting away with being sneaky and participating in an adult-only event.

Now, as I am older, I dread most of the garden parties due to the fact the garden parties are not about sipping tea and eating sandwiches anymore, they're more so for conversing with Lord-Lieutenants, Societies and Associations, those in the higher power of government and the elite. Quite frankly, I don't fancy dealing with members of parliament at what's proposed to be a party; it's not much of a party when you're forced into the world of politics. Garden parties are a royal tradition dating back to Queen Victoria's time in the 1860s, so trying to get out of attending them is... hard and almost impossible.

I glance out the window, peering down at the terraces that are Elysium-green and silk soft this summer. The staff are scurrying to get everything ready for the garden party that's meant to open its gates in just a few hours. Against my mother's requests and somewhat complaints, my father refused to reschedule the garden party, insisting that even in a heatwave, it was necessary for the party to go on.

I overhear the doorknob of my room rattle before the door rasps open, diverting me from my gaze below. "Your father needs to get that fixed, sounds hideous," my mother shakes her head at the racket of my door, ironically though, the door shouldn't be the main priority for what needs to be fixed in this household or family. What needs to be fixed is the unfairness of the damn monarchy and its rules that should be abolished, but what would I know? After all, I am only the Princess.

"Good afternoon, it's good to see you're on schedule with getting ready," my mother half beams, solely being sarcastic but endeavouring to lighten the mood and keep high spirits.

I don't respond, instead, I offer my mother a fake smile the best that I can. "Anastasia, your dress is on its way up, you'll be expected to be ready promptly."

I roll my eyes, irritated by the fact royal protocol is only followed when it is damn convenient for my Father. "Please tell me Dad isn't going to force me to follow royal protocol for what I wear."

My mother nods her head, "You still have to follow protocol, Anastasia, it's a royal event."

"I'm not wearing pantyhose, and this isn't a royal event, this is an announcement for whom I'm meant to be dating." I remind my mother of what today is about, it is thereby forcing me on a pedestal and narrating to the world that I am dating, declaring a soon to be engagement and crown take over.

"Anna—"

"No," I cut her off, "Unless you're going to tell me that we don't have to go through with this, then I don't want to hear another word," I bluntly reply, not having any regard for the fact that she is the Queen. If anybody else was to speak this way to her, they'd be calling for their heads.

My mother clears her throat and heavily sighs, "Your dress will be up in a minute, be ready to walk the gardens by three," my mother informs me with her soft-sounding voice before she walks out of my room, her heeled shoes sounding against the dark floorboards.

I shift back to gaze out the windowpane down at the terrains below me where shortly I will be thrown into the swarm of people who want to know every detail about me, but I don't have any details to bestow. The details I want to share, I am forbidden to. I never thought I would end up in a forbidden love just because of royal blood. But here I am, standing speechless with a mind overflowing with racing thoughts, contemplating on which Prince I should choose when ultimately, I should be talking to Harry; I should be choosing him.

♔ ♔ ♔

The gardens are bustling with people, the staff can't keep up with the demand of food and drinks, and the band is playing modestly enough for me to catch the melody of the birds sheltering in the trees, but loud enough for me to disregard the conversations around me that more than likely pertain to me. The bad thing about these events is the fact that more times than none, the conversations are about me, about the future of the crown or about the upcoming tours.

The shadow that has been lingering behind me since I stepped out of my room, steps closer to me as there is a gap between me and others.

For a moment, there is silence between us and it takes everything in me not to turn around and speak to him. I don't know whether he wants to speak to me, as I have said, we have barely uttered a word to each other, and to be honest, we both have every right to be avoiding each other. I have my reasons and he has his, but what good are any of the reasons to let them determine our relationship?

"You look cute wearing a hat," Harry comments while proceeding to scan every inch of the garden he physically can observe.

I stop to smell some of the roses before I turn to him, "It's a fascinator," I bitterly correct Harry, but I immediately retract my tone of voice, "But thank you. You look good in your suit." I dully compliment Harry.

"It's the one I wear all the time."

I nod my head, trying not to quietly chuckle at his smartass comment. I am well aware it is what he wears all the damn time. The man isn't one for change, he has been wearing the same cologne for years, his hair hasn't changed; I am pretty sure he has been going to the same barbershop since he was six. He quite literally has a wardrobe filled with the same attire. It is very rare I see him dressed any other way than in his typical black suit. I have suggested before he changes things up, perhaps change the white button-up for a maroon button-up, but he was not amused by my suggestion. "I'm aware. Must you be so close to me? I'm still upset with you." I mutter despite the fact I enjoy him being close to me.

I have missed him being close to me, I have missed him being with me as more than just my bodyguard; I have missed him, but I don't want to admit it, I can't admit to it.

"Princess, there are over 8,000 people here, of course, I have to, it's my job as your bodyguard... and as your boyfriend," he trails off in a whisper just for the two of us to understand as we walk closer and closer to other people in the gardens.

For a moment, I feel a sense of comfort.

After days of not knowing where I and he stand, it's reassuring to know he is still my boyfriend. Despite the fact that I am upset with him for embedding pressure on me due to particular circumstances, I feel more at ease knowing we are still together.

"Harry," I breathe out and he hums for me to continue but I can't find my words.

How do you tell someone you're in love with them when you're being forced to date someone else?

I want to tell him I love him, I want to tell him that we can pack a bag and run off to wherever we would be accepted. I want to tell him that I choose him, that I will choose him, over and over again. But I can't, I can't muster up the right words.

"I'd like space, please," I inform Harry, still uncertain of how to arrange my thoughts about the entire situation, especially today when in a few mere hours it will be announced that I have a boyfriend... and it isn't Harry.

"As you wish, Princess... space from me or everybody else?" Harry questions and I can't help but smile to myself.

I need space from everybody, but the soon to be Queen cannot lock herself in her room and ignore the royal duties or royal parties thrown at the palace. Space is something that is foreign in the royal family, everybody knows everything. Every move I make is reported back to the staff or the press, I am never truly alone. Even when sleeping there is a guard outside my bedroom, and although I am not complaining, on some nights my bodyguard is in my bed. I do wonder what it would be like to be alone, with no staff, no security, no press, no assistant, nothing; it would be blissful to be solely alone and left in peace.

I heavily sigh as I see the mother of one of the men who are on the list to date. "Need space from her?" Harry asks.

"Yes, but I'll allow this encounter, my father would be mortified if I avoided her," I respond, expecting Harry to take his usual step behind me, but he doesn't, he stays beside me.

Victoria wanders closer to me and grants me a smile, and for a moment I hope she marches past me, but she doesn't. "Anna, hello, darling," she's cheery and enthusiastic with her greeting.

"You curtsy to Princess Anastasia," Harry makes it a point to remind Victoria to be courteous and curtsy, also making a point that he doesn't like her being informal and calling me Anna. Nobody outside the family calls me Anna, it is informal and impolite. Harry, however, is the exception to the rule.

The woman narrows her eyes towards Harry as if an attempt to show dominance and superiority, "And who are you?" Victoria questions with a tone of voice that only indicates she's talking down to him.

I don't have to look at Harry to know he's more than likely giving her the glare that is a warning not to try him. "SO14 bodyguard." He bluntly responds. "Curtsey," He instructs in a firm manner.

He despises being questioned and talked down to, whether it be by Royals or by those who are considered normal.

"What level?" She inquests.

"None of your business." Harry sneers.

"Hm, I don't think I like your attitude, you won't be the bodyguard accompanying the princess and the prince when they're in public."

"My bodyguard doesn't change," I immediately inform Victoria who appears to believe her son is the chosen one. To be quite honest, I don't care who is chosen, Harry will not be going anywhere. No changes in my security will be made without my say.

Victoria can hire her own set of security for her son but she sure does not account for me.

"We'll see about that one," she mutters, looking Harry up and down, commencing to make me feel uncomfortable.

"Princess, you're needed by the marque of food, the Queen is requesting you," Harry informs me, cutting the conversation with Victoria short.

"I will see you for dinner with Prince Henry," Victoria informs me and I excuse myself politely and step away from Victoria.

I make my way towards the marque of foods that are set up meticulously. Garden Parties always consists of cakes, tea sandwiches, and sweet and savoury finger foods, all of which I am meant to avoid. It is not okay for me to be photographed eating, it isn't ladylike. Lucky for me, the staff make sure to put aside food for me in the palace, they always leave me with Scones with homemade Balmoral jam and clotted cream on top.

"Well, she's a royal bitch," Harry murmurs when there's nobody but the staff around us.

I glance over towards Harry and roll my eyes, "Be polite, she's still royalty."

"Mhm, a royal bitch," he nods, a clear indication he's pissed with such comments, and he has every right to be, "Does she think she can get me fired or moved from your service? Because I'd like to see her try."

"Harry," I sigh, "You're staying on my service, don't do anything, okay? Just stay with me."

"Oh, Princess," Harry grins, "I wouldn't want to go anywhere else."

"Harry," I narrow my eyes on him, "You know exactly what I mean."

"So I can't force you into a safety protocol the second she comes back around?"

I shake my head. "No."

"It won't be anything major, level one safety procedure."

"Don't start," I mutter, keeping an eye out for anyone who may get too close to hear the conversation. "The quicker this day is over, the better. It's bloody hot in this dress."

Harry smirks before he softly speaking, "Take it off?"

"Aren't we meant to be arguing?" I question, referring to the fact he has barely spoken to me and has been an outright asshole to me. I didn't start these issues and neither did he, but it doesn't mean he has the right to ignore me or be an arse.

"Anastasia, we can discuss the problems later in private. Must you hold such a grudge?"

"In case you forgot, Harry, you're the one who made it seem like you were breaking up with me over something stupid."

"You being in a relationship with some tool isn't something stupid. What's stupid is hiding our relationship for the sake of a fucking crown." Harry harshly whispers.

"That's no way to speak to a princess."

"You and I both know I'm not speaking to the princess right now. Are you doing this to aggravate me?"

"A little," I shrug, "But in all seriousness, we need to discuss things, okay?"

Harry nods, "You need to go back to your royal duties," Harry subtly gestures towards the crowds of people who are chatting away and enjoying the company of the royal gardens.

"Yeah, my royal duties of figuring out whether my father has chosen Theo or Henry as my boyfriend."

"Rub it in why don't you," Harry mutters unhappily, taking a step behind me and gesturing towards the path he wants me to take in order to get back to my duties.

I don't obey, I stand my ground and I turn to look at him. He clenches his jaw and he heavily sighs, "Anna, you're making my job difficult. I need to focus on this crowd, not our argument," Harry mutters, his eyes shifting like they always do.

I cock my head to the side, "What are you looking for? You're making me nervous."

"Looking at hands, eye contact, dress code of others, all signs of a threat, now stop and do your bloody job so I can do mine and keep you safe." Harry again gestures towards the path he wants me to take. "I will change my service if you continue to be defiant."

I shake my head, "No, you won't. You never let anyone take me at such big events."

"Anna—" Harry begins.

I cut him off, "I am going," I roll my eyes, noticing the fact he is getting highly frustrated with me at this very moment.

♔ ♔ ♔

I take a few steps behind me, well aware that Harry is always just a few steps behind me, I clear my throat, "Harry," I grasp his attention and he steps to the side of me.

"Princess?"

"H-Harry I-I'm scared."

"Of what? I'm right here, there is no threat," he assures me, but I shake my head.

It is a different type of fear. I'm not scared for my safety; I am scared of my heart falling in the hands of the wrong person, I am scared of my relationship becoming a failure. I'm scared of losing someone I love over something that I can't control. Everybody dreams of being royalty, they think it's all about pretty dresses and tiaras, what they don't see is the downfall of relationships because of a royal curse, also known as protocol and tradition.

"You know they're—— they're announcing things in a minute, and I... " I trail off in an attempt to find my words and perhaps a breath of relief, but I don't find the clarity and the air that I need.

"Breathe Anna, it's okay."

"No," I shake my head, "It isn't."

This isn't okay there is absolutely nothing okay about my parents trying to marry me off to someone I am not in love with. Royalty or not, there is more to marriage than a crown, and there is more to obtaining a crown than marriage.

Don't be fooled, with or without a man, I can run a monarch and do a damn good job at it. I don't need a King, but a King needs me.

"Your parents are right for making you choose a royal, sweetheart."

For a moment, I'm stunned that Harry is suddenly on board with me dating someone besides himself, I thought he would have fought a little harder. "I don't want that, Harry. I don't want Henry or the other guy."

"I can't give you what you deserve, you know that. Now isn't the place to discuss this. You're panicking, don't panic, it will be okay." Harry informs me, his eyes intently watching every person that walks past me.

He has a point, right now might not be the right place to discuss the matter, but when is the right time and place to discuss whether or not a relationship is worthy of continuance or not?

Is there ever a right place to discuss things?

My thoughts continue to spiral and the world around me feels as though it's spinning.

I look at Harry and his eyes lock with mine, "Anastasia?" he questions, stepping closer to me, overstepping the usual distance between bodyguard and princess, "Anna, are you alright?" He questions and I nod my head.

I'm not quite sure when life got so hectic, perhaps it was always chaotic and I just don't remember having to share the burden as much as I do now.

Growing up, I was told I'd grow up to marry a lovely prince where we'd get married at Westminster Abbey, we'd be welcomed and adored by the crowds of Britain and they'd accept my husband as King while I reign as Queen. But here I stand, in the middle of the gardens surrounded by people who have had too much of a say in my life from the moment I was born. Here I stand, watching as my father begins to introduce Henry as my boyfriend while the man I love stands behind me.

I take deep breaths, the summer sun shining down on me as the relentless heat continues to suffocate everyone. We are only on day two of this heatwave and I already want to whisk myself off to a cooler place, one where nobody will find me nor bother me for quite some time. I take a breathe and take my fascinator from my hair before turning to Harry. He raises a brow as he stands in his perfect stance, hands behind his back, his eyes aware of everyone's positions and his lips pursed into a fine line, his facial expression being of one that simply expresses nobody should fuck with him. "I need water, please," I softly inform him, beginning to fan my face with my fascinator, well aware that I am breaking royal protocol, it is impolite for me to do this, but with the weather spiking at a harsh thirty-five degrees Celsius, I have no choice.

Harry nods immediately and firmly, yet somehow gently grabs the arm of a waitress who I hadn't even taken notice of, "The Princess needs water right away," Harry instructs.

The woman nods and hurries off, "Be polite, Harry."

"Your Father is watching, turn around, Princess," Harry instructs, subtly gesturing to my Father who I can only assume is far from pleased with me.

I turn to watch my father as he begins to welcome the guests with his charming voice that the public relish hearing and so do other royals. He starts off lightheartedly joking, something he has grown to do a lot more lately in an attempt to show the public that he is still an ordinary man... Somewhat. The crowd laughs and I, too, have to fake a laugh. While the crowd laughs at the small jokes, my inner thoughts eat me alive with the idea that in just a few minutes, my father will announce my boyfriend, which will, in turn, send everyone into fits of happiness. It will be the only thing people talk about for quite some time, both within the royals and the public.

I continue to fan myself, struggling to cool down as this dress hugs my body. With every moment that passes it feels as though the dress gets tighter and tighter, and the sun gets hotter and hotter. I press my hand to my forehead for the moment and look down, closing my eyes briefly to shield them from the sun.

I feel a hand to my shoulder, "Anna, are you okay?" Harry questions and I nod.

"Yeah, it's just hot." I respond, "This announcement is killing me," I whisper and Harry takes a step back, going back to watching the crowd and doing his job.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that my father is nonchalantly entertaining everybody or the fact that I am the only one anxious and upset about everything. Harry is calm and collected, my mother, whom I can see in the corner of my eye, is content with a drink in her hand. Despite this being a dry party, I am sure there is some alcohol in her drink, I know my mother well, and I know deep down, she too, is dreading what is about to happen, as a mother she understands my outrage, but as Queen, she has to stand by her husband, and perform her duties.

I turn to Harry, my eyes feeling heavy as my chest rises; my chest feels as though it is fighting a heavy force over it with each breath. "Harry," I begin dryly, "Where's that water?"

"It's coming." He responds, his eyes darting around before he speaks into his shoulder, "The Princess needs water, now," he mutters, sending his orders out to not only the security staff but the entire palace of staff to make sure my requests are fulfilled.

Suddenly, I feel it all at once, the heat, the anxiety, the rush of everything hitting me at once. A turning pit in my stomach begins and my body feels heavy as if every inch of my body has a weight on it, weighing me down. I can feel my body wanting to sway from side to side. "Hey," I press my hand to his chest, closing the space between us, "I feel unwell," I confess, unsure of how to handle myself right now. "I'm—" I struggle to find my words, my world spinning as I try to focus.

"Fuck," Harry mutters under his breath, his arm wasting no time with wrapping around my body.

♔

The last thing I remember hearing is Harry calling my name before he instructs nobody around us to move with a voice like bottled thunder, a measure of his vitality.

"Welcome back, Anna," Harry smiles the moment my eyes open, "Don't try to get up, just relax for a moment." Harry gently presses on my arm, stopping me from sitting up.

I listen and I take a breath, taking the time to look around, surprised that I'm not in the gardens like I was.

"What happened? Are we in the tunnels?" I ask, feeling the distinct change in air temperature. I went from scorching hot heat to mildly cool temperatures.

"Yes, and you fainted, why didn't you tell anyone you were unwell?" Harry asks.

"I did," I respond, slowly sitting up with the careful help of Harry, "I told you."

"Once it was too late," Harry mutters, "The doctor is waiting, I'm going to carry you through the next tunnel before we will enter your wing."

I shake my head, "I'm fine, really, I don't need a doctor."

"Protocol," Harry shakes his head, "Everybody saw, I can't hide this one, my love," Harry informs me and I sigh.

There are times Harry does his best to cover for me and to hide things from everyone. When the time calls, he will hide things from the media the best he can and he will leak a different story, other times he will hide things from the family and other royals. There have been numerous occasions he has had to cover for me as well, especially at events I don't want to be at.

"Why are we in the tunnels?"

"Well, I needed to get you away from everybody safely and it's cooler down here."

"Can we stay here for a moment?" I softly ask, taking note that for the first time this entire day, I have nobody around me, no maids, no royals, nobody that needs my attention. For the first time, I am finally alone.

Harry nods and he leans closer and pushes a few strands of hair behind my ear, "When I ask you if you're okay, I would appreciate if you were honest with me."

I nod in agreement, "I'm not okay, I don't want to do this, Harry."

"You don't want to do you and me?" Harry asks, assuming I'm referring to the relationship.

"No, I mean— I don't want to go ahead with all this bullshit, I don't want to be a princess, I want to be normal, why can't I just be normal?" I let out a sigh, "This would be easier if I wasn't Royal."

"Anna—"

"Don't Anna me, with that sweet, caring tone," I mutter, "Fix it."

Harry sighs and his eyes soften as he looks at me, "Baby, I can't fix this, I can't make you normal. If I could change things, I would, but I can't sweetheart."

"I wish things were different."

Harry nods, "Me too, we will figure it out, stressing is what got you in this mess," Harry gestures to the fact I am sitting on the cold stones of the tunnels instead of enjoying the garden party happening above us.

"You said you wanted to call for a protocol."

"Anastasia, not like this." Harry mutters unhappily, "At least you fainted in my arms and not to the floor."

"You'd have caught me either way," I respond, "You're the knight in shining armour."

Harry rolls his eyes, "Princess, you keep me on my toes, for sure," he leans closer and gently kisses my cheek.

"This dress needs to come off," I gesture towards the white dress that is not only heavy, but also becoming dirty.

Harry nods, "I need to get you to your wing, the Doctor is waiting," Harry informs me before he slides his arms under me and picks me up, carrying me to my wing.

♔♔♔

I lie in the comfort of my bed, Harry right beside me as a few staff roam my room, doing their best to stay out of the way but to stay close just in case they are needed for any reason. They are waiting for the commands from the doctor or Harry.

I overhear Harry's phone and I glance over at him, "If you need to go, you can go."

Harry shakes his head, silencing his phone before resuming his position beside me, making sure to stay the rigid bodyguard everyone knows him to be. It is times like this that I wish he didn't have to put on a show and stand there like my bodyguard, sometimes it would be nice to have my boyfriend even when people are around.

"This really isn't necessary," I sigh as the royal doctor stands by my bedside taking my blood pressure and doing god knows what else. "I really just need some rest." I continue, well aware of what caused me to faint. It is clear and obvious, the heat got to me, it didn't help that royal protocol had me in a damn dress that was tight and heavy.

"Let me be the judge of that, Princess Anastasia," she smiles softly down at me and I tilt my head to the side to look over at Harry. He's standing with his hands crossed in front of him, his eyes moving between me and the door ever so often.

"Who will be the main one staying with you?"

"Harry," I gesture towards him, well aware the King and Queen are far too busy with their current event. It would be rude for them to leave their guests unattended, and to be quite honest, I don't want to be around my parents.

"Mr Styles, I expect you'll make sure she stays in bed and rests for the remainder of the evening?" The doctor asks and Harry nods. "If she passes out again, she's to be taken to the emergency room, we will have staff waiting once given the call. Once the IV is done it can be taken out carefully, Watch to make sure she doesn't accidentally pull it out. Someone will need to make sure she stays hydrated the next few days with this heat."

Harry nods, accepting the instructions, "I'm trained in first aid, this one isn't my first rodeo with all due respect," he smiles at the doctor.

I mentally roll my eyes, doing my best to conceal my smirk. This man is trained in many areas, and he isn't afraid to make it known when he needs to. He has had training courses on everything from anti-hijack driving and unarmed combat to firearms handling and emergency life support. It is a bit of a turn on to know that he has many capabilities, even ones outside his job description.

"I know, it's a force of habit, I forget sometimes that you have watched over unwell royals before."

"Mhm," Harry hums, "Happens a bit with this one," Harry gestures towards me, "She can never stay out of trouble. Always has to leave with a bang." Harry chuckles, giving me a small smile.

♔♔♔

The moment everybody leaves my room, Harry closes the door behind them and I get comfortable between the soft sheets. For a moment, there is nothing but silence between us and I can't say that I am ungrateful for it. It is nice to have some silence.

"Would you like to talk, Anastasia?" Harry asks as he carefully sits on the bed and presses a kiss to my forehead.

"What about?"

"Today. Henry. All of it."

"Harry, what happens is up to you. You're the one that keeps saying my parents are making the right decision, you're the one saying it'll be okay."

"Sweetheart," Harry sighs, "You and I both know I'm not suitable for all of this, you don't want to tell them about us, so what is it you want to do?"

"I want to be with you."

"Well... how are you going to be with two men at the same time?" Harry asks and I look away from him for a moment.

I don't know how we are going to make things work, but when two people want something bad enough, they work for it, they fight for it and they do what it takes, even if it isn't easy. When two people love each other, they fight against all odds, they break through and take things on together. When summer ends and autumn befalls upon us, the once eminent and blooming flowers of the garden begin to wilt away, they leisurely but inevitably fade away from the unrelenting winter, but they don't give up. They come back to life once spring welcomes it's sunbeams and warms the cold world again.

When the gardens are struggling to bloom after a cold and frigid winter, all they require is some extra love and attention. This is what love is like. When it feels like everything is withering away, petal by petal, there is always a little extra care that can be given to bring it back to life, all it takes is someone willing to see how something can flourish again. Everything grows with love.

"My father has arranged this relationship with Henry... what if I carry along with it for a few weeks, give everybody what they want, make the public think he's the one, and then we break up?" I propose to Harry the only reasonable idea that I can come up with that doesn't include breaking up with Harry or breaking the publics hearts by refusing the crown.

"Anna, surely you're not suggesting you stage this charade of a relationship." Harry seems surprised by my suggestion.

"Do you have a better option? Shall we just run away together? Stage my own death, change our names and go where nobody knows me? Do you have anything else better, Harry?"

Harry heavily sighs, "I'm going to trust that you have this planned out, somehow... so I'm going to go along with it, but after a few weeks, you call it off with the tool, okay?"

"Okay," I nod, "Are you going to be okay?"

"I don't have a damn choice, Anna. I love you and if this is what it takes then so be it. It is better than you running off to god knows where and changing your name."

"We will go public once the Henry charade is over with, okay?"

"Okay," Harry nods in agreement with a heavy sigh before I take his hand and tug him towards me, wanting him to get in the bed with me. He shakes his head, "I can't, I'm on duty."

"Please?" I pout my lips, not caring that he is still technically on duty.

"Baby, if I get caught, I will be fired."

"But I feel unwell, we can't have the princess feeling unwell, especially when you can make it all better."

Harry rolls his eyes and takes a breath. "I hate when you do this," Harry mutters, taking his phone from his pocket, his fingers typing away, I can only assume he is about to make sure the head of security secures my wing and guards the door for us. "I am surprised I haven't gotten fired yet," He presses, placing his things down on the side table before unbuttoning his shirt, revealing the delicate skin and tattoos he hides under the white button-down.

"They wouldn't dare fire you," I respond, gawking at him as he steps closer and I move to the middle of the bed, giving him room to slide in between the sheets and to take his position next to me.

Harry takes his position beside me, tugging at the covers before pulling me closer and draping his arm around me. I feel at ease with his arm around me. "How are you feeling, Anna?" His voice is soft and gentle and in a manner where I know he isn't asking as my bodyguard but as my boyfriend.

"I have an IV in my arm, three doctors on call and thousands of guests at my house, how do you think?" I respond.

"Do you ever give me straight forward answers?"

"No," I shake my head, "Keeping you on your toes is part of my job," I softly smile before I kiss his cheek. "I love you."

"I love you, too. But seriously, how are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," I assure him, "I just need to rest," I respond, noticing how tense Harry is and the way his hand is twitching.

I frown for a moment but ignore his restlessness as I curl up closer to him, finally feeling a sense of comfort.

I notice Harry fidgeting with the ends of the sheets, his fingers digging into the thread count while his foot is continuously moving under the sheet, almost as if in a tapping motion. Harry moves away from me, forcing himself to his feet as he reaches for his shirt. I look over at him, confused by his sudden movements. "Anna, do not move, do you hear me?"

"Harry—"

"Nobody has done a second sweep of the floor, don't move," Harry again instructs, not giving me time to even ask the questions I want to ask. He grabs his phone and conceals his pistol in the waistband of his pants, "You know where the spare is hidden, right?" Harry asks, referring to the spare pistol that he securely hid in my room as a safety precaution.

I nod my head, propping myself up on my forearms, wincing as I forget about the IV. "Don't worry, just lie down, don't pull that out." Harry huffs as he steps around the bed and takes my hand, checking the IV, he shakes his head and looks at me, "I just need to double-check nobody else is on the floor. Don't pull this out."

"Didn't someone already check before I came up here?"

"You know that I like to double and triple check, I will be back." He responds, walking out of my room and closing the doors behind him, leaving me to stay in my bed, alone like always.

#harry styles imagines #imagine harry styles #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles blurbs #harry styles prompts #harry styles fanfictions #harry styles fic #harry styles one shots #harry styles preferences #1d imagine #imagine 1d #imagine one direction #harry styles fanfics #fanfic one direction #one direction fanfiction #one direction fan fiction #one direction blurbs #harry styles blurb

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caelenath · 4 years ago

Text

Sweet Child of Thine - chapter 5

Happy Sweet 16th Anniversary to Power Rangers SPD!

In celebration and humble homage, here’s a new chapter of my pre-canon fanfic. Cross-posted to AO3, FFnet, and caelenath.com.

Length: 1860 Warnings: concerns child abduction Chapter summary: If there was one thing Mirloc despised more than weakness, it was wasted potential.

5. destiny

The woman next door had sworn she'd heard a child crying inside the house, but had seen no one go in or come out in over six months, so she did what any sensible person would do—she told her daughter over a lunch date that the abandoned bungalow must be haunted, and planned to call somebody to see about mending the fence between the two properties sooner rather than later. The daughter fortunately happened to be a PD officer and immediately relayed her mother's observation to the people handling Sky's case.

So here Nate and Jay were, standing in front of the bungalow feeling hopeful but dreading at the same time what they'd find inside. The front yard was scrubby and rough, riddled with crab grass and dandelion stalks that showed the months of neglect more acutely than the house did. According to city records, the property was in foreclosure, so they hadn't bothered with a warrant. They prowled around the front windows before knocking on the door. There was no doorbell.

"SPD!"

There was no answer, not that they had really expected one. Jay squinted through the window, but everything inside remained dark and still. He knocked again, louder this time, and the ensuing silence was somehow more disappointing than before.

"Should we go in?" Nate asked.

Jay nodded. If there was any possibility a child was inside, abandoned, trapped, or otherwise endangered, they couldn't just walk away. Nate rattled the door handle a few times, and Jay thought he was going to try to wrench it. Instead, he took out a thin, flat card from his pocket and managed to jimmy the lock open just like in the movies, but the funny thing was, Nate looked as surprised as Jay felt. When Jay shot him an incredulous look, Nate just shrugged and put the card away.

Don't ask, his expression said.

The door creaked as he pushed it open and cautiously stepped inside. The interior was dim, dusty, and claustrophobic thanks to low ceilings and oblique sunlight. An uncomfortably narrow doorway tucked right against the back right corner led into what looked like the kitchen. Somewhere in the house was the hum of something electronically powered. Jay exchanged a quick look with Nate and was about to announce their presence again when they heard muffled footsteps upstairs followed by a scraping against the floor. Jay's pulse immediately quickened.

"Sky!" he shouted.

The reply was immediate. "Daddy!"

That little voice that had been missing for too long sent relief and fear surging through Jay's veins, and he sprinted up the stairs like gravity didn't exist.

"Sky!"

Sky called out for him again and it was the only thing he was aware of as he hit the top of the staircase and kept running. He didn't notice the electronic hum from earlier growing louder nor the device affixed over the bedroom door—obvious in hindsight—until it was too late. He slammed full speed into the invisible barrier and went sprawling backwards hard, his vision flaring all white, then all black before slowly filling back in. His forehead throbbed painfully.

Nate was leaning over him, weapon ready in one hand while his other reached down to touch Jay's shoulder. "You okay?" he demanded.

"Yeah," Jay managed to gasp out with what little air hadn't been knocked out of him. He urgently motioned for Nate to keep moving without him. The other Ranger did as he was told, and by the time Jay got back on his feet, Nate had disabled the forcefield device and entered the room.

It was empty. Nate's weapon hung limply at his side.

"I'm sorry, Jay," he mumbled as Jay came to stand beside him. Together they stared at the old, sagging bed and the pile of twisted blankets on it that had clearly been tossed aside in a hurry. Empty baby food jars and a familiar picture book littered the floor, but the most disturbing sight of all was the small thin belt cast aside atop the bedclothes—Sky's protective shielding device. Kat had designed it for him when he was one and a half, after an accidental forcefield unleashed in his sleep had blown his crib apart.

Jay felt sluggish and disconnected, like he was fighting to move through a dream, as he stepped forward to pick it up. Sky's cries for him still rang in his ears.

They had been so close.

* * *

The child's fury began even before they escaped into the dusty window pane. To avoid anyone overhearing, Mirloc transported them to the woods beyond the city where they emerged from a bubbling brook beneath soaring trees in full summer flower. There had been no time to use his mirror dimension as an intermediary. As the boy's father raced up the stairs, Mirloc had simply snatched the boy up in his arms and taken them together that way through the glass.

They reached the woods not a moment too soon. The instant they appeared, a wave of blue energy repelled him and he half-dropped the child onto the mossy ground. He staggered back as the boy howled, wave after wave of blue light pulsing outward from his small body. These were stronger than the little phantom the boy had created the night before. These scraped back the moss at his feet clean and sent stones hurtling into tree trunks and the brook. Dust and detritus kicked up in an ever-widening ring around him with each successive wave. It was like watching a tiny cyclone rage right there on the forest floor.

Mirloc's acquaintance had not named a price or a purpose for this job, but Mirloc was beginning to think no price would have been adequate. Against his better judgment, he began wondering what this boy would be like in his prime, as a strong young man with an extraordinary power at his disposal. What mores would he follow? Who might attempt to tame him? If they failed, how far would that storm devastate?

It had been far too easy to rob his cradle, which meant his father, Ranger though he might be, was either useless or a fool. But here the child was, crying out for that father all the same.

Your daddy doesn't love you enough, Mirloc was tempted to say. Not only does he bind you, he can't even protect you properly.

The boy fell onto his rear in the dirt and continued to scream inconsolably, fists clenched until they were bloodless and his entire body shaking with the effort. His face was reddened as if his anguish burned him from the inside and he might burst at any moment.

The wretchedness was unbearable and Mirloc had half a mind to just walk away, but then he wondered for the first time whether the boy could actually hurt himself carrying on this way. Such tempestuous emotion and power, one with or without the other, rarely came without a price.

Mirloc carefully inched closer, mindful of the rocks and debris still flying about. He stopped when a twig scraped his shin and he stood there frowning deeply, uncertain of his next move. The glisten of tears on the boy's face gave him an idea and he turned to the brook instead. He scooped a handful of water in both hands and brought it over.

When the boy paused for breath, Mirloc quickly interjected, "I will let you see your daddy if you are quiet and look here. You must be careful not to spill it."

Once more, he found himself facing those round, dewy eyes, bluer than the sky above their heads. Had the boy been named for them? Did he choose the hue of his power?

Thankfully the glow around his arms faded sooner than his sniffles. When the ground finally stopped skittering, Mirloc knelt down and lowered his hands so that the boy could see his makeshift mirror. Set against his dark purple skin, it was not a bad one.

The water flared bright gold, and when the surface had sufficiently stilled, an image of the boy's father and his fellow Ranger appeared. The two were still searching the house and the image dimmed each time they moved out of sight of an adequate reflective surface.

"Daddy!" the boy cried.

"He cannot hear you this way," Mirloc said.

"I want my daddy," the boy said again, but this time it was a whimper rather than a scream.

"Tonight," Mirloc said. "I have a friend who wants to see your special power. After you meet him, I can bring you home to your daddy. But you must promise to be good and do what I tell you."

The boy didn't answer. Instead, he just mopped at his eyes and hiccupped, and Mirloc wondered if even he could tell by now an empty promise when he heard one. He was no longer interested in seeing his father, or in brewing another storm, or in anything at all. He simply sat there mewling in the dirt, tears still leaking, looking small and alone and miserable.

Mirloc released the water in his hands and wondered how he was to pass the day with such a sight picking at the pity in his heart. He could hide the boy in another safe house, but now that he was quiet, the atmosphere of the woods was something close to pleasant.

Remembering how fascinated the boy had been by stories of a desert world, the mercenary mused carefully, "My home had no forests like this."

For a moment, it seemed like the child would continue to ignore him. In the end, his curiosity allowed no such thing and he reluctantly asked, "No trees?" His failed pronunciation of the letter 'r' yet again made the question sound all the more innocent.

"Only small ones, more stick than tree."

The boy glanced at Mirloc's hands. "I can see?"

It was an astonishingly astute response. Did this youngling actually comprehend what Mirloc's power was, or was it merely a conjuring to him—magic as he had called it—of images as artificial as those in a picture book?

The realization that he truly no longer intended for his promise of reunion to be an empty one struck the mercenary hard. A child such as this had a greater destiny than to be subjugated by others. Perhaps it was not mere chance that had led Mirloc to intercede at the right time to prevent that very thing. If there was a thing he despised more than weakness, it was wasted potential.

The boy was still looking at his hands as if an image would appear on its own. Mirloc held them out and said, "Yes, you can see. Would you like to go there?"

The boy's eyes widened, and when he suddenly scrambled to his feet, Mirloc took that to mean assent. The child did not protest this time when he was picked up, and his sense of adventure secretly pleased the mercenary.

Mirloc stepped up to the edge of the brook, and for the first time in his long life, he did not traverse the universe alone.

#power rangers spd #power rangers #fanfiction #sky tate #pre-canon #Mirloc #my fic

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