#logistics have largely been the same for like a century

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

[strangelittlestories]

Something interesting about archaeology is that it’s actually not that interesting: even when you’re on a dig, most of it is dirt and logistics and fragments.

Something scary about ghosts is that they’re actually not that frightening: even when you have a haunting, most of it is ectoplasm and low-key longing and echoes.

The fascinating bit about both is that, sometimes, when you piece all the boring bits together, you get a story; a story of how people used to live. It will probably be a story about something mundane, like how people cooked or what their bathroom solutions were.

For example: at this particular dig, we found fragments of large cooking pots in a few larger buildings. The smaller buildings that seemed to be individual homes did not have *any* surviving cooking pots (not even any copper remnants); however, they did have at least one well preserved earthenware bowl inscribed with runes.

These runes turned out to be a close match to an early rune of co-locating folk magic, seen primarily in the Katabasic region. The bowl was also adorned with a slate inlay, of a kind that was often used to write upon in chalk.

The apparent conclusion? This settlement operated a communal cooking operation that delivered food to order. We would assume the recipient would write their request in chalk on the slate inlay of their bowl, and the runes would briefly trick reality into thinking the inside of the bowl and the inside of the pot occupied the same space. Thus, the bowl would magically fill with food.

So, yeah. These folks had invented magical Doordash.

I briefly considered trying to replicate their system on my travel mug. The coffee on the dig site was *dreadful*, so I figured I could have my husband make some nice single origin cold brew back home (or maybe a nice pot of darjeeling second flush?) and teleport it in. But as it was likely tied to local hospitality folk magic, this would likely run across three problems: 1. Range limitations. 2. It may only work for community members. 3. Folk magic sometimes used local deities or spirits as intermediaries and popping a new request in the inbox of a dormant god was usually a bad call.

Oh, and reason number 4: the bowl we’d excavated was extremely haunted.

This may, in fact, explain why it was so well preserved. Theurgic suffusation is the term - if the spirit is clinging tightly enough to the atoms of the object, then time starts to think the material is just as undying as the soul.

You know how I mentioned the scary thing about ghosts is that they’re not scary? They only persist as fully ensouled beings as long as their unfinished business can feasibly *be finished*. Even with generation blood debts, they still tend to become unviable with a couple of centuries. Then the soul slowly starts to move on, leaving only an imprint on the umbra. That’s what’s scary about ghosts: even that which is undying will be eaten by history.

Except this blighter apparently.

So I ran a chemical analysis on the trace molecules left on the lining of the bowl. Then I ran the runes through a penumbral simulation matrix.

The bowl contained traces of calcified aconite. The runes showed an exploit in the magic; the teleportation could be hijacked by holy petition or speculative conjuration.

The ghost had been poisoned. Murdered.

And if they were still a ghost, then whoever killed them was *still around*.

I really really hope that I never meet whatever person or creature is apparently still alive close to a millennia after they murdering someone in a way that is both *really clever* and *really nasty*.

But oh buddy, oh pal … what I want may be immaterial. For surely do intend to figure out the whole of this story.

---

With thanks to Ellie for the submission of the Archaeologist (fearless, frightened, fancy) to the Character of the Month club.

Want to submit your own characters for my stories? Consider supporting me on Ko-Fi with a recurring donation https://ko-fi.com/strangelittlestories

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #5 – The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

I read Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea last year and, despite thinking it was ultimately kind of a noble failure, liked it more than enough to give his new novella a try. It didn’t hurt that the premise as described in the marketing copy sounded incredible. I can’t quite say it was worth it, but that’s really only because this novella barely cost less than the 500-page doorstopper I picked up at the same time and I need to consider economies here – it absolutely lived up to the promise of its premise.

The book is set a century and change into the future, when a de-extinction initiative has gotten funding from the Russian government to resurrect the Siberian mammoth – or, at least, splice together a chimera that’s close-enough and birth it from african elephant surrogate mothers – to begin the process of restoring the prehistoric taiga as a carbon sink. The problem: there’s no one on earth left who knows how wild mammoth are supposed to, like, live- the only surviving elephants have been living in captivity for generations. Plop the ressurectees in the wilderness and they’ll just be very confused and anxious until they starve. The solution: the technology to capture a perfect image of a human mind is quite old, and due to winning some prestigious international award our protagonist – an obsessive partisan of elephant conservation – was basically forced to have her mind copied and put in storage a few months before she was killed by poachers.

So the solution of who will raise and socialize these newly created mammoths is ‘the 100-year-old ghost of an elephant expert, after having her consciousness reincarnated in a mammoth’s body to lead the first herd as the most mature matriarch’. It works better than you’d expect, really, but as it turns out she has some rather strong opinions about poachers, and isn’t necessarily very understanding when the solution found to keep the project funded involves letting some oligarch spend a small country’s GDP on the chance to shoot a bull and take some trophies.

So this is a novella, and a fairly short one – it’s densely packed with ideas but the length and the constraints of narrative mean that they’re more evoked or presented than carefully considered. This mostly jumps out at me with how the book approaches wildlife conservation – a theme that was also one of the overriding concerns of Mountain where it was considered at much greater length. I actually think the shorter length might have done Nayler a service here, if only because it let him focus things on one specific episode and finish things with a more equivocal and ambiguous ending than the saccharine deux ex machina he felt compelled to resort to in Mountain.

The protection of wildlife is pretty clearly something he’s deeply invested in – even if he didn’t outright say so in the acknowledgements, it just about sings out from the pages of both books. Specifically, he’s pretty despairing about it – both books to a great extent turn around how you convince the world at large to allow these animals to live undisturbed when all the economic incentives point the other way, a question he seems quite acutely aware he lacks a good answer to.

Like everyone else whose parents had Jurassic Park on VHS growing up, I’ve always found the science of de-extinction intensely fascinating – especially as it becomes more and more plausible every day. This book wouldn’t have drawn my eye to nearly the degree it did if I don’t remember the exact feature article I’d bet real money inspired it about a group of scientists trying to do, well, exactly the same thing as the de-extinctionists do in the book (digital resurrection aside). The book actually examines the project with an eye to practicalities and logistics – and moreover, portrays it as at base a fundamentally heroic, noble undertaking as opposed to yet another morality tale about scientific hubris. So even disregarding everything else it had pretty much already won me over just with that.

The book’s portrayal of the future and technology more generally is broader and less carefully considered, but it still rang truer than the vast majority of sci fi does – which is, I suppose, another way of saying that it’s a weathered and weather-beaten world with new and better toys, but one still very fundamentally recognizable as our own, without any great revolutions or apocalyptic ruptures in the interim. Mosquito's got CRISPR’d into nonexistence and elephants were poached into extinction outside of captivity, children play with cybernetically controlled drones and the president of the Russian Federation may or may not be a digital ghost incarnated into a series of purpose-grown clones, but for all that it’s still the same shitty old earth. It’s rather charming, really.

[abeautifulblog]

Hi! You said you could help talk me through feudal worldbuilding, and I’d love to pick your brain!

Absolutely! Probably easiest to hit me up over discord (I'm _gremble) and then I would be happy to talk your ear off. 🤣 My wheelhouse is very narrowly focused on mid 9th century England (re: what Anglo Saxon society/military/governance looked like when the vikings rolled up), and iirc, some of the features you mentioned being interested in are more the product of later medieval political structures. I cannot help you with those, but I can probably help with some of the overall mental shifts, because a lot of the things we take for granted in the modern era were just............ not the way things worked back then.

In particular, the word "general" in your initial ask jumped out at me, because it brought up one of the exact issues that I'd run into. The character I was working with had been presented in canon as "the king's top general" -- not those words, but definitely those vibes -- that he was The Guy In Charge Of The Army. Except as soon as I started researching military structures in that period, I found out that that's not how armies worked. When the king needed to go to war, he would call on all his top landholding nobles to round up a bunch of their dudes -- which would be a large number of armed peasants, and a smaller number of fulltime warriors -- and bring their portion of the army to bear.

But these various segments of the army remained under the command of their various lords, marching under separate banners. The lords, in essence, were the generals -- there's not one guy commanding the entire army as a single unit (except for the king, sort of), and there's certainly not any non-noble who doesn't own any dudes getting to call the shots and dictate strategy. Talented and successful warriors might well get rewarded for their service, and given land grants that would generate tons of money for them and put a large number of conscriptable peasants under their control -- and might have the ear of the king if they're known to be good at tactics -- but they don't have authority over anyone else's forces.

The politically neutral, career military guy that we think of when we hear the word "general," who has no independent power of his own but receives a paycheck from his higher-ups to command their men for them, didn't exist yet.

It's a bit of a paradigm shift, because we're used to the military as something separate, that's subordinate to civilian leadership and works in service to it, not for those to be one and the same. We're also used to a norm of strong nation-states with one centralized army, which was very much not the case throughout feudalism/manorialism -- at least in the Anglo Saxon period, power was decentralized and delegated, and being king involved a lot of herding cats wrangling your nobles, not exercising direct control. The king was the guy who could get the most other guys to back him up.

(In the same vein, early kingdoms also tended to be a patchwork of other, smaller kingdoms that retained a great deal of their own autonomy and identity. The modern nation-state that we're so used to, with a single national identity, is an astonishingly recent invention.)

Anyway, hands-down the most useful and eye-opening book I've read on the subject is Clifford J. Rogers' Soldiers Lives Throughout History: The Middle Ages. It's like $80 to buy (😭) but the pdf is on Anna's Archive, and it's invaluable. It is, essentially, a social history of medieval warfare -- most military histories focus on the politics of a particular conflict, or the technology and tactics involved, but this book is all about what life on the ground looked like. A+++ resource for anyone writing war and military logistics in a medieval (or medieval-flavored) setting.

[gothhabiba]

do u have more details on your mourning veil(s)?? i am not in mourning but i have been wanting to wear veils in everyday life (probably not in black) and i also plan to dress in some kind of modified mourning when i next experience a death in my circles. im curious about whether u wear it over your face ever (im autistic and thats pretty much why ive been wanting to start wearing veils, apart from the aesthetics of it ofc lol), and also curious about the logistics, like what shapes they are & how opaque they are?

Mine is a 1930s (?) French veil; it's a large (34 x 60") rectangle of sheer material that seems to be black silk crepe. A short stretch of fabric in the center of one of the long ends (5") has two threads drawn through it to gather it together, producing a sort of half-circle of negative space where the veil may be attached to a bonnet; when worn, this causes the two corners of the rectangle nearest the head to fall down somewhat lower than the shoulders, while the two corners further away fall over the back and down to the knees: here's a link to a French mourning veil that looks similar.

1930s French veil laid out over a table; close-up on the ruching.

A bunch of writing from the 19th and early 20th centuries decries the expectation for widows to wear veils over their faces, claiming that the veils were heavy, stifling, and difficult to see and breathe through. I haven't found that to be the case with this one—even with my muscle disorder (like, my neck can only briefly and painfully support the weight of my head), the weight of the veil alone is negligible. It's very sheer and not too difficult to see and breathe through.

That being said, I wouldn't recommend wearing an antique veil (on the rare chance you find one—mourning clothes are harder than most antique clothing to come by, since the dye doesn't tend to wear very well, and crepe in particular had a tendency to shed and break down) over your face! You don't know for sure what kinds of dye or fixatives were used on it, and some of the more popular ones are things that you should not be breathing in.

Re-creation mourning veils intended for re-enactors can be purchased online—you may also have some luck looking into things marketed as Goth wedding veils. The only veil I occasionally wear over my face is a modern recreation. However, I found it difficult to come across one that didn't include satin trim or lace (both prohibited in English deep mourning). If you have some basic sewing skills, it shouldn't be hard to get a rectangle of sheer fabric (silk gauze or cotton voile might work; I have some 100gsm black linen on hand so I can tell you that it's a bit difficult to see through) and hem it on all sides.

You will need a hatpin or something similar to attach your veil to a bonnet or other headwear, or else it will blow right off. Headwear with a brim has the advantage of keeping the veil a few inches away from your face. The veil can be worn covering the entire bonnet and falling down over your face, or you can throw it back (so that it's folded over the back half of the bonnet, still held in place by the pin) to reveal your face. If you place the pin or pins about halfway back, you can make this adjustment on the fly. You could probably also just sew the veil to the bonnet if you're never going to wear them separately.

Short, modern veil worn over an 1860s-style bonnet to cover the face; the same veil worn over a bonnet to partly cover the face.

This veil makes everything look a bit darker and more grainy and gives a slight halo to light sources. It's not too noticable and I wouldn't say it impedes vision for the sake of any everyday task you would need to do.

When I'm forgoing the bonnet, I put my hair up into a bun, leaving some hair off to the side to make a braid; I pin the veil into my hair by putting bobby pins through my hair and then around the edge of, not through the fabric of, the veil (so that one half of the pin is between the veil and my head, and the other half is on top of the veil); then I take the braid and pull it over the area where the veil meets my hair, securing it with the halves of the bobby pins that are on top of the veil, and using another few pins to secure the bottom of the braid (the part closer to my forehead than the back of my head). There's no historical precedent for this, but it keeps the veil secure without damaging it, and keeps me from needing to wear a hat inside.

You can get a lot of variation in style by doing this:

1930s French veil worn directly in the hair with one large braid covering the join;

Ditto, with one large braid covering the join and one small decorative one across the head;

Ditto, with two twists of different sizes in stead of the braids;

Ditto, with the hair drawn into two buns at the side of the head under the veil, in stead of into one bun at the back;

Ditto, with one bun and one braid covering the join, with additional hair pinned into decorative swirling shapes on top of the head.

[hopefulvowel]

Letter to a spacefarer

Tell me spacefarer, when you look out, what do you see? What lies ahead on the cosmic horizon? Where are you headed? I think of you visiting far-flung outposts, orbiting space stations, and glimmering megalopolises. I dream of you touching pulsars, nebulas, black holes, and new stars.

Tell me spacefarer, what drives you? Why do you stay in that bubble of life surrounded by the endless void? Are you with family or are they far away? Does a corporation own your servitude, or do you fly for you? I imagine a large family onboard a generation ship excited to start their new life on another planet. I believe in an independent captain, who unites their crew when faced with overwhelming odds.

Tell me spacefarer, is your life filled with excitement? Is every week packed with new adventures? Or has your extraordinary voyage through the void become a repeatable exercise in logistics? Does your job inspire wonder or boredom? I picture your colleagues with titles like fusion technician, anti-matter analyst, or space folder. I envision them leap with excitement at their work, or dread yet another day at the same station.

Tell me spacefarer, how do you see us? Are we specs, stepping stones, or a bridge connecting humanity to the stars? Do you think of us like Verne, dreaming of an impossible submarine? Or are we the Wright brothers, only touching the surface of the inevitable?

I see a man, born in the late 14th century, standing on a dock looking at a newly built ship. He marvels at advances made to develop grander and faster ships that require fewer sailors to operate. He hears exclamations that within a decade these advancements will create new trading routes for all, a thought that intrigues and excites him. He dreams of brave explorers venturing out and imagines what they will discover by going further and faster than anyone before them. He pictures himself, aboard a huge barque, manning the helm and commanding the crew. The speed at which they travel astonishes him, enabling them to explore new lands with ease.

This man stands in his present and looks out to the horizon, the future, dreaming of what is out of reach.

Within a few centuries, whilst this man has long passed, his dream has become a reality. Ships have become so large and fast that they can move cargo from Europe to Asia and back within a year. New worlds have been found. Yet, with the wonders around them the sailors on board are no longer fascinated by the same advancements, but exhausted from the effort. They now see their role, not as brave explorers, but as employees in a repeatable exercise in logistics – often dreading the journey.

Spacefarer, you are my sailor. I look at you and marvel, even if you do not marvel at yourself. I stand here in my present, looking out at the horizon, and dream of what it must be like for you over the bend.

But, spacefarer, I do not write to you to tell you how I marvel. I write to ask you this: when you look out, what do you see? What lies ahead on the cosmic horizon? Where are you headed?

[halfbakedspuds]

One thing I'm trying very hard with Adrian and Lya's relationship is to avoid the overdramatic 'You are my heart, and for you I will die' way of writing romance. I don't mind it, but it feels a tad bit overdone.

I mean sure, they will die for eachother, there's no denying that, but their relationship isn't always this hyper-passionate baring of the soul that seems to permeate modern fiction. Sometimes it's just Adrian working out logistics forms late into the night while Lyanni is reading on the couch, both of them interspersing long, silent minutes of simply enjoying each other's company with some of the most spastic and nerdy discussions of the 27th century.

Sometimes it's Adrian seeing Lyanni passed out on their couch and quietly tossing his coat over her as a makeshift blanket, already knowing that his honour will demand he deny doing it come morning.

Sometimes it's Lyanni scooping Adrian up off his feet and carrying him to bed because he's been awake and working since Monday and Hestavi as her witness, she will force the stubborn human to rest even if she has to sit against his door all night to do it.

Sometimes it's Adrian's usually stoic composure faltering long enough for him to swear in frustration because he knows she won't hold it against him.

Sometimes it's Lyanni not bothering to put on any appearances of being fine before leaving her room after having had a particularly bad flashback, because she knows he's gone through the same hell, and will understand and try to comfort her.

Their relationship is, in this way, very different from their public life. Where they usually need to act out this facade of the almighty angel and the chosen one of the gods- living loud and large as a political tool, their private interaction tends to be a lot more subtle and far softer.

Because that's what they need. They stay together because they make eachother feel like regular people (Adrian doesn't treat her like the outcast monster her people do, and Lyanni doesn't hold him to some inhuman standard like the rest of the planet does). Their subtle interactions are, similarly, what they both want in order to be happy.

Ps: Sorry if my English is bad in this post, it has been... a bit of a day, and I'm honestly too tired to check subject-verb concord or whatever...

[bodaciousalliance]

The Heart of Mr Farouk, 48: Cinema

After their fantastic third date on Tuesday night, Nathan and Youssef meet up on Thursday to see a film and dinner date. But Nathan's determined to not have any 'unplanned sleepovers' on a school night, because of the morning-after logistics...

Youssef pulled up outside Nathan’s place at precisely five twenty-two p.m., and gave a beep-beep on the car’s horn. Nathan was so excited about seeing Youssef again that he was already halfway down the stairs when he heard the tooting. For their date, they’d planned an early film session, which would still give them time for a nice dinner. Given that they still had to front up for work tomorrow, there being still one more day of term left, Nathan was hoping they’d be able to stick to his injunction against ‘unplanned’ sleepovers.

Nathan got in the car. Youssef turned and flashed this beautiful beaming smile at him. It was like they hadn’t seen each other for a year and a half, instead of the day and a half it had been since Wednesday morning.

“It’s so good to see you,” said Youssef.

“Same here. It feels like I’ve waited forever for tonight to come around.”

This was the first time Nathan had been in Youssef’s car. When he’d finally taken in enough of Youseff’s handsome face, he noticed the adaptive controls. On the steering wheel was a metal ring attachment through which he anchored his hook.

“Is that how you drive?” Nathan remarked, “I’ve never seen such a thing.”

“I don’t really need it but the M.O.T. insists.”

The cinema was only a short distance away, in a large shopping complex. The place was very busy, so Youssef had to park right at the far end of the carpark. Of course, if he had a disability permit they could’ve parked right by the entrance, but he wouldn’t have any of that. This came as no surprise to Nathan.

It had been Youssef’s choice of film. They were going to see a period romance, an adaptation of a well-known nineteenth-century novel. Nathan was a little intrigued at this pick, he thought it might be down to the ‘classical’ nature of the film—Youssef seemed to have quite high tastes. He wasn’t sure, there was so much more to Youssef than what he already knew.

Nathan bought a largish tub of popcorn for them to share. Youssef had nothing against popcorn, he was fairly ambivalent about its taste. It was just too darned fiddly for him, reaching in and trying to grab a piece or two. When you had hooks, you really needed to be able to see what you were doing, which was not consistent with the darkened atmosphere of the cinema.

Nathan leant over, “Here…” he whispered, popping a piece of corn into Youssef’s mouth.

“Mmmm,” Youssef mumbled, quietly. The popcorn was rich and buttery, much more delicious than he remembered.

Nathan sent another piece of popcorn his way. And another, and another. It was all looking fairly innocent—to the other patrons—until Youssef started licking the butter off Nathan’s fingers. By this time they were starting to get so horny, they both found Nathan’s hand-feeding so erotic. It was just as well they were sitting in the dark, because their massive erections were creating really obvious tent-poles in their trousers.

Nathan dived into the popcorn again, this time producing a handful. He pressed his whole palm across Youssef’s mouth, for him to virtually inhale the popcorn in a great, satisfying mouthful.

“God! Nathan!” Youssef mumbled in ecstasy. This was a whole new dimension to the cinema-going experience for both of them.

“Shhh!” someone behind them was clearly getting annoyed.

The film continued. At some point in the middle there was a scene where, after a long absence, the heroine and her lover were reunited by a strange twist of fate. Youssef swooned. He let out an audible half-sigh, half-whimper. Settling lower into the seat, he leant against Nathan and rested his head against his shoulder.

Hmmm thought Nathan, this is why we came to this particular film. Dear Youssef, he really is a sweet, sentimental fool of a teddy bear. Nathan felt a warm glow through his whole being as his fondness for Youssef doubled at this very thought.

[princessanneftw]

Royals ignore Princess Anne at their peril

The Queen’s wisest child would be a more respected adviser than her brothers and could help secure the monarchy’s future.

By Libby Purves for The Times

One asset of the British constitution is how rarely we have to think about it. Law by law we wrangle but some old rivers flow smoothly by, turbulent only when someone chucks in a rock: parliamentary sovereignty, independent judiciary, constitutional monarchy.

The last of these is today’s preoccupation, so devout republicans turn away — you are one in five of us and may triumph one day but probably not soon. The nation still overwhelmingly votes the Queen as our most popular public figure, the Cambridges not far behind.

But at some point we will have a new monarch. HM herself has been visibly, unfussedly smoothing the path for this, with the sangfroid of a nonagenarian Christian unafraid of mortality. So if the useful system of constitutional monarchy is to carry on, elegantly representing national identity beyond politics and avoiding ghastly contests for an elected head of state, we should pay attention to how it works. Especially right now. For heredity is at monarchy’s core, and families include problems.

Of the nine nearest in line to the throne five are small children and two of the others unthinkable. The Duke of York is disgraced, barred from royal duties and deleted by charities and regiments. The Duke of Sussex has emigrated, rejecting royal duty and reticence in favour of Californian showbiz contracts and an exiguous PR role as “chief impact officer” for a coaching business.

Yet despite these two squeaky wheels and the grating matter of the senior heir having his pet charity investigated by the Met, the royal carriage creaks on. An unappreciated aspect has it that after the Prince of Wales and his son William, the renegade York and Sussex are the other “counsellors of state”: half of a quartet deemed able, under the 1937 Regency Act, to take over responsibilities from the Queen if she were incapacitated. This means granting royal assent to bills, summoning parliament, appointing judges, QCs and others.

These are of course ceremonial functions but like it or not the monarch is part of the legal machinery of British government and assumed to be always available.

It would be rare for both Charles and William to be abroad or ill at once, but all the same it is shocking to note that of four counsellors of state one is a disreputable sleaze and another a commercially compromised émigré, legally able only to hold the role because he has a “UK address” rental at Frogmore Cottage, despite considering it “unsafe” to visit Britain.

But what grates more, in a free 21st-century country, is that this group omits the Princess Royal, Anne (who held the role before William reached 21). Older than Andrew, infinitely more dedicated to Britain’s interests than Harry, the Queen’s daughter is bypassed.

Nor is she even decently placed in the line of succession. In 2013 — not before time — government ended male royal primogeniture but insultingly didn’t backdate it: only girls born after 2011 count. Thus Anne, one of the most intelligent and diligent members of the family, is only 17th in line. Ahead of her lie not only Prince William’s three children but Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor in Montecito, plus the Duke of York’s baby grandchildren Sienna Mozzi and August Brooksbank.

I think this matters because for all the flummery and Zadok-the-Priestery, a constitutional monarchy has to move gracefully with the times and be seen to belong to its century. Scandinavian and Dutch royal houses grasped this long ago, but our progress is more hesitant.

We have had female premiers, ministers and leaders in every field; the science and business logistics of vaccine creation and rollout were largely owed to brilliant women. We are not a backward sexist country. But in this royal area we are starting to look that way: a respected Queen in her Platinum Jubilee year is officially backed by counsellors including a discredited sleazy playboy and a petulant transatlantic psychobabbler, neglecting a dutiful daughter senior to both of them.

It feels particularly raw because the Princess Royal is a clean bright gem in the battered family tiara. The hardest working in actual engagements, she is also properly engaged with her charities. I have encountered her often in such contexts — I sat on a victim-support committee she chaired — and she is always sharply across any brief, from child malnutrition to lighthouses. Interviewing her about the Mission to Seafarers (she visits ships, talks to often-ignored international crews about their lives) I incautiously asked her to define her value to the charity. Eyebrows raised, she delivered a staccato “Fig-ure-head!”.

I deserved that, but the point is she totally understands both the oddity and the usefulness of royal work. Like her late father she is brisk, practical and attentive but not unfriendly. A steady blue gaze, but more stimulating than unnerving to meet. Moreover, unlike the Duke of York she understood the dangers, refused titles for her children and urged them to serious careers. In her private pursuit as a rider she won international medals and made the 1976 Olympic team; in personal life, unlike two of her brothers, she divorced and remarried unobtrusively and without public rancour.

In a less stubbornly fossilised country you would think that the 2013 revision of primogeniture would have included righting the wrong done by history to all women. You would certainly think that the role of counsellor of state would have been quietly returned to Anne when the Duke of Edinburgh died, while a sensible royal house retired Andrew and Harry from it. It might yet happen. It ought to.

[warsofasoiaf]

Do you think old school thinkers, who happen to be left leaning, get more of a pass for problematic thought than right leanings ones? Specifically wondering why Karl Marx is still widely read and respected despite problematic views on the Jewish People and the British conquest of India, but also Che Guevara

Obligatory I hate the left-right political spectrum caveat. I hate ideas and people being categorized on it. It's simplistic, actively working to deny understanding and greater comprehension. But I've had a little whiskey, so who gives a shit now?

If you're talking about academia, yes. Academia has been loathe to call out Karl Marx for his anti-Semitism. It's not just the anti-Semitism though; we've had extensive time with which to see Marx's predictions, the ones which asserted actual data figures that we can measure like the rate of profit to fall over time, have failed to materialize. At this point, Marx is exclusively junk philosophy and pseudoscience; it has no place in rational theory, but it's still there. Chomsky is dismissed for his largely bogus political takes and genocide denial, but still held up as a serious academic even in his field, despite the numerous failures in the Propaganda Model (though it has some value in the conceptual level). Now, this might be me, but I see the failures of Manufacturing Consent as part of a long-running tradition of conspiracy theories within left-wing movements far older than Chomsky that are easily debunked (I particularly hate the "First Red Scare killed the American socialist movement" myth). I hope one day academia will engage with its blind spots and include the Soviet Union in its examination of colonial studies and 20th century authoritarianism, or hold its treasured thinkers to the same standards, but I won't hold my breath. Academics do not take kindly to non-academics thinking that they are wrong.

That's academia, though, America outside of colleges don't really listen to Marx at all - even American left-wing movements these days cleave closer to a European social democratic model and plenty of left-wing students don't actually read Marx, they quote him but haven't actually went through his books (some have, and sadly, they are usually quite authoritarian). In that sense, it's all about who evaluates it. If you look to other places, you see them engage in a similarly uncritical fashion with their own pet theories that similarly flatter the tribe. So, I think that's less of a function of the left-right political spectrum and more of a function of a political interpretation of history that promotes the in-group as a historical protagonist. It is cringe to see someone espousing the horrors of racism from someone wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, but it's also cringe to see someone say "America means freedom," without even the barest hint of recognition that the United States brutalized blacks, Native Americans, etc. to the point where they could rightly say that America took great pains to keep them out of the American Dream and reacted violently when they succeeded anyway - consider actions like the Osage murders or the Tulsa massacre; it was not enough to keep minorities out of prosperity but to violently pull it from them when they succeeded via theft, arson, and murder. Howard Zinn is a polemicist writing bullshit history, but so were plenty of other textbooks in the 1950's. The Trumpist movement largely gives life to "Stop the Steal" absent all empirical, logical, and logistical evidence, rather than accept that Trump just fucking lost under the same rules that he won in 2016. They'd rather establish an autocrat than realize that maybe, just maybe, that people just told them that they didn't want them in charge, that he failed to deliver and the American public decided for something else - it's the same energy that animates Chomsky's writings in the 1980's. Stupidity and tribalism are omni-partisan; it's in the nature of tribal movements to glorify the tribe by denigrating others outside the tribe. And given how easy it is, particularly in liberal societies given the liberal paradox (the real one, not the fallacious one proposed by Amartya Sen), to fall into tribal enclavism, I don't think that's changing any time soon.

Thanks for the question, Cle-Guy.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[theme-park-concepts]

You know I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone ask the question, let alone try to answer it, a question that should be at the core of theme park design.

Why rides?

Rides have been at the core of theme park design for nearly a century, they're my favorite part, I daresay the favorite part for most people that go, but like really why use rides to tell stories? There's a lot of ways to tell stories, and if you really care about storytelling you should really be invested in finding the best medium for the message. And notably not all theme parks choose to use rides. Puy du Fou famously is only large spectacular shows and walkthroughs. Things you'll also find in theme parks all over.

So why rides? I think the lazy answer is that that's what's expected from theme parks. Because of the prototype laid out by Disneyland and the lineage of amusement parks.

So another argument would be throughput. I think this is a much better argument, and basically draws its lineage from worlds fairs. If you're going to make a show, or an exhibit even, and you want to have thousands and thousands of people see it per day - way more than could fit in a traditional theatre or who would linger in a museum...a ride system is a great way to do it. It's literally the same reason factories have assembly lines, thanks Henry Ford 👀. Of course you could also just build giant theaters that sit thousands and thousands of guests - like Puy du fou. But those shows become necessarily grand. there's a lot of reasons to do it that way, longer show times for one. But that also could lead to longer wait times, or at least a static wait, and not every story wants to be a grand spectacle. Though interested most rides turn out to be. A ride can get you a show that's told relatively intimately while being able to show it to a huge audience. Maybe intimate isn't the right word - perhaps personal is better. A ride can tell a story that's just for you or at max a couple dozen other people.

So throughput and personal connection are reasons. What else? I think the other element has to be visceral experience. Motion and movement are an additional source of story and emotion that no other medium has access to. Books don't have background music (audiobooks excepted), movies and theatre do. It's an extra dimension of storytelling that we find almost essential these days. Movement is another. Is it essential? I don't think as many people would say it is, but it certainly can be for certain stories. If you're story is about flight, feeling the flight is kind of inextricable. Though at the moment I'd say most people expect movement to be diegetic to the story. Non-diegetic movement isn't something we've seen a lot of, baring just the physical logistics of a moving omnimover etc.

So it would seem the main reason to build a ride is to tell personal stories, with high throughput, and/or that ideally benefit from the use of physical body motion/sensations to tell it. Are there other reasons? Probably. What do you think they are?

[licncourt]

Why did Lestat decide to stay with a closeted, homophobic, and frankly unproductive Louis while being an 'out & proud' bisexual guy? Atleast, Nicki embraced it all 'with pride' if only to spite God (the courage counts). He was ambitious and create 'goodness' out of it. He would also have an impressive academic background which is more than 'reading pretentious books'. How did all of these translate into Louis as 'the chosen one'?

Alright, so this ask has been in my inbox a little while mainly because some of the implications really bother me, as well as other assumptions seeming to directly contradict canon. I have no idea if this ask is in good faith or not, but I'm going to go through it and break down what my issue is.

First of all, I'm going to start by saying that I would not consider Nicki or Lestat to be "out". Lestat never seems to struggle with any shame over his orientation, but he is very much closeted. He and Nicki never give any indication of being public about the nature of their relationship, and why would they? France was less severe in its legal treatment of sodomy than most other places, but the social penalties would've been extremely severe. Being confident in your sexuality =/= out.

As for Nicki, I would disagree that "the courage counts" when what he's essentially doing to fully embracing his internalized homophobia to the most extreme extent. What he's doing is self harm of a spiritual type. Hurting himself and Lestat with his acknowledgment of his orientation is very sad and unfortunate more than it is courageous. It's also rather hurtful to suggest that someone is objectively better than another if they use their pain to make art ("goodness"). No one is obligated to make their suffering something for consumption.

Regarding the fact that Louis is/was closeted and dealing with internalized homophobia...I really dislike the implications here. Louis was obviously extremely ashamed of his orientation and had no desire to share it publicly. And why on Earth would he feel any other way?

He grew up in the 18th century in a Catholic area where he would have been at best shunned from his community and family and at worst killed if he was outed. A gay person who doesn't feel safe or ready to come out is just as deserving of love as someone who is. It's not a moral failing or a strike against them as a person. Besides, even if Louis felt exactly the same as Lestat, there's no way they would've been out advertising it any more than Lestat and Nicki because of sheer logistics.

As far as being "unproductive", I mean, yeah. But Lestat was certainly not a productive member of society either. By definition, vampires are leeches. And Louis and Lestat are wealthy landlords who literally feed on humans. They spent seventy years doing absolutely nothing of value. If Louis is unproductive, Lestat is equally so, if not more because at least Louis ran the household and business.

Finally, the academic background is a strange thing to bring up. There's no indication that this is something that matters to Lestat in a partner. He himself is uneducated in the formal sense and it doesn't ever appear to be something that attracts him to Louis or Nicki. And if we ARE comparing (which there's no reason to do, Nicki and Louis are both very intelligent), I disagree with your assessment. Nicki was from a rural family and attended a few months of schooling at the Sorbonne for law. Impressive, but he was ultimately a drop out who never wanted to be there in the first place.

Louis is from a very wealthy family nearby a large city. We don't know if he attended college (it's possible, maybe unlikely), but he would've had private tutors all his life and possibly something like an elite boarding school education. And yes, reading is not formal education, but he clearly cares about and enjoys learning and I don't think what he accomplished on his own should be discounted as just "pretentious books".

At the end of the day, love isn't determined by a pros and cons list or what looks good on paper. Louis is the "chosen one" because Lestat loves him. Utimately, they're compatible, probably more than Lestat and Nicolas (I've talked about why here and here) and it works. Personally, I'm glad love doesn't work on a rational system like the one being described in the ask. Where would we all be if it did?

[rigmarolling]

Historical Holiday Traditions We Really Need To Bring Back

Here comes Santa Claus, and also a bunch of annual holiday Things we do to ensure he commits a truly boggling act of breaking and entering and leaves goods underneath the large plant in the living room.

Because I’ve always got a hankerin’ for the days of yore, here are some historical holiday traditions we really need to bring back:

1. Everything that happened on Saturnalia

Saturnalia was the ancient Roman winter festival held on December 25th--which is why we celebrate Christmas on that day and not on the day historians speculate Jesus was actually born, which was probably in the spring. 

Saturnalia was bonkers. As the name suggests, it celebrated the god Saturn, who represented wealth and liberty and generally having a great time.

Above: Their party is way cooler than yours could ever hope to be.

During Saturnalia, masters would serve their slaves, because it was the one day during the year when everybody agreed that freedom for all is great, actually, let’s just do that. Everyone wore a coned hat called the pilleus to denote that they were all bros and equal, and also to disguise the fact that they hadn’t brushed their hair after partying hard all week, probably.

Gambling was allowed on Saturnalia, so all of Rome basically turned into ancient Vegas, complete with Caesar’s Palace, except with the actual Caesar and his palace because he was, you know. Alive. 

The most famous part (besides getting drunk off your rocker) was gift-giving--usually gag gifts. Historians have records of people giving each other some truly impressive white elephant gifts for Saturnalia, including: a parrot, balls, toothpicks, a pig, one single sausage, spoons, and deliberately awful books of poetry. 

Above: Me, except all the time.

Partygoers also crowned a King of Saturnalia, which was a predecessor to the King of Fools popular in medieval festivals. The king was basically the head idiot who delivered absurd commands to everyone there, like, “Sing naked!” or “run around screaming for an hour,” or “slap your butt cheeks real hard in front of your crush; DO IT, Brutus.”

Oh, wait. Everyone was already doing all that. Hell yes.

(Quick clarification: early celebrations of Saturnalia did feature human sacrifice, so let’s just leave that bit out and instead wear the pointy hats and sing naked, okay? Io Saturnalia, everybody.)

2. Leaving out treats for Sleipnir in the hopes of avoiding Odin’s complete disregard for your property

The whole “leave out cookies and milk for Santa” thing comes from a much older tradition of trying to appease old guys with white beards. In Norse mythology, Odin, who was sort of the head god but preferred to be on a perpetual road trip instead, took an annual nighttime ride through the winter sky called the Wild Hunt. 

Above: The holidays, now with 300% more heavy metal.

Variations of the Wild Hunt story exist in a bunch of European folklore--in Odin’s case, he usually brought along a bunch of supernatural buddies, like spirits and other gods and Valkyries and ghost dogs, who, the Vikings said, you could hear howling and barking as the group approached (GOOD DOGGOS).

That was the thing, though; you never actually saw Odin’s hunt--you only heard it. And hearing it did not spark the same sense of childish glee you felt when you thought you heard Santa’s sleigh bells approaching as a kid--instead, the Vikings said, you should be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

Because Odin could be kind of a dick.

Odin was also known as the Allfather, and like any father, he hated asking for directions. GPS who? I’m the Allfather, I’m riding the same way I always ride.

And that was pretty much it: “I took this road last year and I’m taking it again this year.”

“But,” someone would pipe up from the back, “there are houses on the road now--we’re gonna run right into them. We could just take a different path; there’s actually a detour off the--”

“Nope,” Odin would say. “They know the rules. My road, my hunt, my rules. We’re going this way.”

So if you were unlucky enough to have built your house along one of Odin’s favorite road trip sky-ways, he wouldn’t just plow right past you.

He would burn your entire house down--and your family along with it.

Kids playing in the yard? Torch ‘em; they should have known better. Grandma knitting while she waits for her gingerbread Einherjar to finish baking? Sucks to be her; my road, my rules, my beard, I’m the Allfather, bitch.

Above: Santa, but so much worse.

To be fair to Odin, he could be a cool guy sometimes. He just turned into any dad when he was on a road trip and wanted to MAKE GOOD TIME, DAMN IT, I AM NOT STOPPING; YOU SHOULD HAVE PEED BEFORE WE LEFT.

To ensure they didn’t incur Odin’s road trip wrath, the Vikings had a few ways of smoothing things over with Dad.

They would leave Odin offerings on the road, like pieces of steel (??? okay ???) or bread for his dogs, or food for his giant, eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, because the only true way to a man’s heart is through his pet. 

People would generally leave veggies and oats and other horse-y things out for Sleipnir, whose eight legs made him the fastest flying horse in the world and also made him the only horse to ever win Asgard’s coveted tap dancing championship. 

(Side note: EIGHT legs...EIGHT tiny reindeer...eh? Eh? See how we got here? Thanks, nightmare horse!)

Above: An excellent prancer AND dancer. 

And if Odin was feeling particularly charitable and not in the mood for horrific acts of arson, children would also leave their shoes out for him--it was said that he’d put gifts in your boots to ring in a happy new year.

If all that didn’t work and the Vikings heard the hunt approaching, they would resort to throwing themselves on the ground and covering their heads while the massive party sped above them like a giant Halloween rager. 

So this holiday season, leave your boots out for Odin and some carrots out for his giant spider horse or you and your entire family will die in a fiery inferno, the end.

3. Yule Logs

Speaking of Scandinavia, another Northern European winter solstice tradition was the yule log. Today, if you google “yule log,” something like this will pop up:

...which isn’t an actual log, but is instead log-shaped food that you shove into your mouth along with 500 other cakes at the same time because it’s CHRISTMAS, and I’m having ME TIME; so WHAT if I ate the whole jar of Nutella by myself, alone, in the dark at 3 am?

But that log cake is actually inspired by actual logs of yore that Celtic, Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples decorated with fragrant plants like holly, ivy, pinecones, and other Stuff That Smells Nice before tossing the log into the fire.

This served a few purposes: 

It smelled nice, and Bath and Body Works scented candles hadn’t been invented yet.

It had religious and/or spiritual significance as a way to mark the winter solstice.

It was a symbolic way of ringing in the new year and kicking out the old.

Common belief held that the ashes of a yule log could ward off lightning strikes and bad energy.

Winter cold. Fire warm.

Everybody loves to watch things burn. (See: Odin.)

The yule log cakes we eat today got their start in 19th century Paris, when bakers thought it was a cute idea to resurrect an ancient pagan tradition in the form of a delicious dessert, and boy, howdy, were they right.

In any case, I’m 100% down with eating a chocolate yule log while burning an actual yule log in my backyard because everybody loves to watch things burn; winter cold, fire warm; and hnnnngggg pine tree smell hnnnnggg.

(Quick note:  The word “yule” is  the name of a traditional pagan winter festival, still celebrated culturally or religiously in modern pagan practice. It’s also another name for Odin. He had a bunch of other names, one of the most well-known being jólfaðr, which is Old Norse for “Yule father.” If you would like to royally piss him off, or if you are Loki, feel free to call him “Yule Daddy.”)

4. Upside down Christmas trees

I just found out that apparently, upside down Christmas trees are a hot new trend with HGTV types this year, so I guess this is one historical trend we did bring back, meaning it doesn’t really belong on this list, but I’m gonna talk about it, anyway.

Side note: Oh, my god, that BANNISTER. I NEED.

Historians aren’t actually sure where the inverted Christmas tree thing came from, but we know people were bringing home trees and then hanging them upside down in the living room as early as the 7th century. We have a couple theories as to why people turned trees on their heads:

Logistically, it’s way easier to hang a giant pine tree from your rafters upside down by its trunk and roots. You just hoist that baby up there, wind some rope around the rafter and the trunk, and boom. Start decorating.

A Christian tradition says that one day in the 7th century, a Benedictine monk named Saint Boniface stumbled across a group of pagans worshipping an oak tree. So, instead of minding his own damn business, he cut the tree down and replaced it with a fir tree. While the pagans were like, “Dude, what the hell?” Boniface used the triangular shape of the fir tree to explain the concept of the holy trinity to the pagans. Some versions have him planting it right-side up, others having him displaying a fir tree upside down. Either way, it’s still a triangle that’s a solid but ultimately very rude way of explaining God. Word’s still out on whether anyone was converted or just rightly pissed off that this random guy strolled into their place of worship, chopped down their sacred tree, and plopped HIS tree down instead. Please do not do that this holiday season.

Eastern Europeans lay claim to the upside-down tree phenomenon with a tradition called podłazniczek in Poland--people hung the tree from the ceiling and decorated it with fruits and nuts and seeds and ribbons and other festive doodads. 

(God, who lives in these houses? Look at that. That’s like a swanky version of Gaston’s hunting lodge. Where do I get one? Which enchanted castle do I have to stumble into to chill out in a Christmas living room like that?)

Today, at least in the West, upside-down trees are making a comeback because...I don’t know. Chip and Joanna Gaines said so. 

Some folks say it’s a surefire way to keep your cats from clawing their way through the tree and then puking up fir needles for weeks afterward, which checks out for me.

5. Incredibly weird Victorian Christmas cards

So back in the 19th century, the Christmas card industry was really getting fired up. Victorians loved their mail, let me tell you. They loved sending it. They loved getting it. They loved writing it. They loved opening it. They loved those sexy wax seals you use to keep all that sweet, sweet mail inside that sizzling envelope. (Those things are incredibly sexy. Have you ever made a wax seal? Oh, man, it’s hot.)

The problem, though, was that while the Victorians arguably helped standardize many of the holiday traditions we know and love today (Christmas trees, caroling, Dickens everything, spending too much money, etc.) back in 1800-whenever, a lot of that Christmas symbolism was, um...still under construction. No one had really agreed on which visual holiday cues worked and which...didn’t.

Meaning everyone just kind of made up their own holiday symbols. Which resulted in monstrous aberrations like this card:

What the hell is that? A beet? Is that a beet? Or a turnip? Why is it...oh, God, why does it have a man’s head? Why does the man beet have insect claws? 

What is it that he’s holding? A cookie? Cardboard? A terra cotta planter?

And then there’s this one:

“A Merry Christmas to you,” it says, while depicting a brutal frog murder/mugging. 

What are you trying to tell me? Are you threatening me with this card? Is that it? Is this a threat? How the hell am I supposed to interpret this? “Merry Christmas, hide your money or you’re dead, you stupid bitch.”

Also, why is the dead frog naked? Did the other frog steal his clothes after the murder? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS?

Victorian holiday cards also doubled as early absurdist Internet memes, apparently, because how else do I explain this?

Is this some sort of tiny animal Santa? A mouse riding a lobster? Like, the mouse, I get. Mice are fine. Disney built an empire on a mouse. And look, he’s got a little list of things he’s presumably going to bring you: Peace, joy, health, happiness. (In French. Oh, wait, is that that Patton Oswalt rat?)

But a LOBSTER? What’s with the lobster? It’s basically a sea scorpion. Why in the name of all that is good and holy would you saddle up a LOBSTER? I hate it. I hate it so, so much. Just scurrying around the floor with more legs than are strictly necessary, smelling like the seafood section of Smith’s, snapping its giant claws.

This whole card is a health inspector’s worst nightmare. It really is.

I gotta say, though, I am a fan of this one:

Presumably, that polar bear is going in for a hug because nothing stamps out a polar bear’s innate desire to rip your face from your skull than candy canes and Coke and Christmas spirit.

This next one is actually fantastic, but for all the wrong reasons:

I know everyone overuses “same” these days but geez, LOOK at that kid. I can HEAR it. SAME.

If you’ve ever been in a shopping mall stuffed with kids, nothing sums it up better than this card. This is like the perverse version of those Anne Geddes portraits that were everywhere in the late 90s. “Make wee Jacob sit in the tea pot; everyone will--Jacob, STOP, look at Mommy; I said LOOK. AT. MOMMY--everyone will love it.”

Actually, you know what? Every other Christmas card is cancelled. This is the only card we will be using from now on. This is it. 

Wait, no. We can also use this one:

Merry Christmas. Here’s a fuckin’...just a dead fuckin’ bird.

[awed-frog]

If you can call GOP terrorists then I'm pretty sure you can call Israelis terrorists as well 😂

And anyway, killing is not the only solution to terrorist organisations or terrorist states. So the issue of genocide does not arise.

(Whoa that also means when you called GOP terrorists you were also arguing they should be killed?)

I was not arguing for anyone to be killed. I was simply saying that generally speaking, you do want a terrorist organization disbanded and its members put in a position where they can no longer do harm. Personally, I’d rather give everyone a fair trial and we do know that deradicalization programs work, but since the Arab world has been called for the end of Israel (and the end of Jews) for decades, I think we need to be clear about that: supporting that point of view is not understood to mean, ‘Let’s gently move all the Jews out of the Middle East and gift them a pony and a house in Sweden’, but rather ‘Hitler should have finished the job so now let’s do it properly once and for all’. So even if you personally don’t mean it that way, that’s how it will be understood because this is what many people argued for for a long time.

(“The issue of genocide does not arise” - please read a book or learn something about the relentless anti-Semitic propaganda that’s been spread in the Muslim world for the last fifty years.)

That said, yes, I would say that a part of the IDF and some political parties in Israel are indistinguishable from terrorist organizations like Hamas, but again - Israel is not the IDF and is not La Familia or Otzma Yehudit. There are many normal, decent, fair-minded people in Israel who do not deserve to be called terrorists because they have a shitty government. 

I mean - same goes for pretty much every country around the world at this point, but again - the difference is, when people get frustrated and say ‘Americans are insane’ - 1) pretty much everyone understands Americans are a diverse population and not magically the same person just because they’re Americans and mostly 2) no one has been massacring (white) Americans for centuries in a deliberate effort to wipe them out, and no one - even the very few who say (white) Americans have no right to their country - have the logistical or military tools to actually be a threat to the United States right now. Meanwhile, the opposite is true for Jews. A lot of people still think Jews are all the same (think the same, present the same personality traits, are all blindly devout to Israel even when citizens of a different country), a lot of people still think all Jews should be hunted down, a lot of people still think destroying Israel is a good way to start (and some of those people own large weapons arsenals). 

So this is the difference. As I’m sure you know, I’m left-wing and I’m very critical of a lot of stuff Israel does, and I do think they should be held accountable for war crimes they committed and for ignoring international treaties, but because of historical reasons, speaking of Israel the exact say way you would speak of the UK or the US - I don’t think that’s a good idea, and I think doing so fuels more violence, including on civilians who have nothing to do with what’s going on in Palestine (like all the children currently enrolled in Jewish schools in France, who’re still under police protection after three children were killed when a school in Toulouse was targeted by Islamic terrorists). That’s all.

[heavenunderthemoon]

Growing Pains- Spencer Reid {Chapter 1}

This is a sequel to the prologue, I recommend checking that out!

QUANTICO

OCTOBER 2011

The coffee shop was bustling with activity, despite it being nearly six in the morning. Early risers and morning commuters in the like seemed to mob the small shop, the poor baristas doling drinks out at an impossible speed.

It was a chilly morning,Spencer's jacket collar itched at his neck and he made a grab for it in irritation, swatting the hairs that he had been meaning to cut out of the way as he did so. His curls were beginning to look a bit unruly, the case load preventing him from focusing on anything other than catching serial killers. Though, to be fair, he hardly ever focused too much on his appearance, his socks were a testament to that. The different patterns poked out of his cuffed slacks and he forced himself to look back at the board, scanning the menu even if he knew what he wanted.

Pumpkin drawn in chalk stared back at him until it was his turn to order and the baristas barely looked at him before punching in his black coffee. He didn't need any additive, at least, not from them. no, his main source of fuel was on the other side of the room, the sugar cart winking back at him. Spencer stepped back, letting the people behind him up to the counter as he waited for his freshly brewed coffee, his mind still a bit muggy without caffeination.

The lack of caffeination is what he would blame it on later that day. A mere delusion from sleep deprivation, or maybe he had even been dreaming still, falling asleep right where he stood and imagining the whole thing. He would chalk it up to any reason, any reason at all, because he couldn't have possibly heard your name.

"Y/N!" The barista called out.

The Reid's head snapped up, following the figure grabbing the coffee and his eyes trailed your back. No, that couldn't possibly be you. It couldn't be you, because, well, the last time he'd seen you was when you were both fourteen. Children, wishing upon stars and making pinky promises. The last time he had heard from you was when he was still in college, your voices tossed back in forth between the staticky phone booth's reception, and even then you both knew that your friendship was fizzling out.

He remembered quite clearly what you looked like too. Your hair had reached your back and still shoved into that dirty baseball cap that you never quite took off. That was the girl he remembered.

The back he followed left out the for and his foot twitched, as if to follow, but, had it really been you? It hadn't, Spencer reassured. It couldn't have been you. Just because they had called your name- a name he supposed other people could have, of course- didn't mean it was you. In fact, he hadn't even gotten a good look at your face. And, yes, while the hair color may have been the same, he was probably just overthinking it.

Right, that's what it was. He was overthinking it.

He always overthought things. In fact, he notoriously over thought things. He was absolutely mad if he actually thought that he saw his childhood best friend in a coffee shop, exactly 2,406.9 miles away from the last location he had seen her.

"Spencer." The barista called with a smile, extending the styrofoam cup, steam billowing from the small opening at the top. His name was written across the side in block letters, and his hand covered the lettering as he grabbed it, nodding as a thank you before retiring to the sugar station.

Y/N L/N.

Your name danced across his mind, flashes of your childhood playing almost against his will and he soon found himself lost in a memory, his feet taking him to work as he did.

-

NEVADA 1991

"Ow! Spencer, you keep stepping on my toes." Nine year old you complained, breaking apart from the boy's hold and sending him an exasperated look.

Your overalls hung loosely on your body, a hand-me-down from your brothers that didn't quite fit you yet. Your father had done his best to stitch it, but the man couldn't sew to save his life. Differently colored threads poked out in seemingly random places, and Spencer found himself staring at them from time to time.

The boy's cheeks tinted pink, his eyebrows furrowing as he stepped away, shutting off the music and going back to his book that sat propped upon the table. That morning, the two children had turned on your father's TV set. Diana didn't particularly let the boy watch it at home. On her bad days, she said the TV was a ploy from the government, destined to rot his brain and turn him against her. On her good days, she said it wasn't mentally stimulating enough, Not as mentally stimulating as a book, ushering him off with another literature classic if he requested watching something before bed. You, on the other hand, weren't given as many restrictions. besides, your father worked during the day which left you and your brothers with free rein of the house, and, with it being summertime, your brothers were both away at football camp.

A music video depicting a teenage couple had been the first channel you had landed on and, their sweet, slow dance had made you both curious about the logistics. Spencer, of course, had taken a more theoretical approach to learning the concept. Grabbing a rather large book about dance and movement from the nineteenth century, the boy had spent the better part of the day with his nose embedded in the pages, his hands flailing about every so often, as if trying it out before going back to reading. You, on the other hand, had taken to attempting the dance with the kitchen broom as Spencer read. It couldn't be that hard, could it? Besides, you couldn't really know how to do it without actually doing it. Well, that was your opinion, anyways.

After a while, you both glanced at each other from across the room, you watched the idea click onto both of your faces, both of your cheeks reddening at the thought.

"Merely experimental." Spencer had said, his voice an octave higher than it usually was.

Your cheeks still hadn't calmed, and you had fixed him with a glare, swearing him to secrecy before agreeing. You knew Spencer wouldn't ever tell, not just because he didn't particularly have anyone to tell, but because you knew the prospect of slow-dancing with his best friend embarrassed him just as much as it did you. But, he still nodded.

And that was how you had found yourself getting your toes stepped on, the music shut off as Spencer re-read his book.

"You can't learn this by reading, Spence, c'mon." Your hand tugged at his, pulling him away from the book as he huffed. Your other hand slapped the music back on, an Elvis album that was your dad's. He didn't really own anything else, and it was either that or Barry Manilow.

The boy's face was cross, as if frustrated at the concept of something not being capable of being taught from literature. Nonetheless, he followed your slow, awkward steps, focusing all his energy on not stepping on your toes. Slowly, but surely, the two of you seemed to get the hang of it, even being able to move around the room as you danced and you laughed wildly when you spun, just as the girl had done in the movies.

Spencer watched with a smile. His best friend, his only friend, but to him, the best. Because he was certain that you would be the best of the best for the rest of his life as you soon around, one hand still latched onto his own.

-

QUANTICO 2011

His tongue ached as the hot liquid ran across it.

Spencer hardly ever waited long enough to drink his coffee, the liquid scalding his mouth due to his impatience. It was small price to pay for the sweet relief caffeine gave him, the way his mind sharpened and allowed his body to catch up with his brain.

"How many cups have you had this morning, Spence?"

JJ's voice cut across the bullpen. It was one of those rare paperwork days, much to the disdain of Rossi. The man absolutely loathed paperwork, claiming that he would never stoop to such degrading tasks (though the team saw him helping out on reports when he thought they weren't looking). The blonde had previously been stopped at Emily's desk, the two chatting about their weekend plans, tones filled with hope that they might actually be able too fulfill them rather than being forced to cancel due to a case.

"Not enough, apparently. Pretty boy's been spacing out for the last hour. Actually, I think I got more done than he did." Derek teased, his eyebrows raising as he dipped his head toward the stack of forgotten papers near Spencer's outbox.

The Reid man scoffed, setting down his now empty cup. He had grown quite accustomed to the Morgan's teasing, and it never bothered him anyways. But, Spencer hated to admit that the man was correct- perhaps miracles do happen. Spencer was distracted. His mind seemed to abandon him, running off to Nevada, slow dancing with you in your childhood home's basement. Your laugh as you spun echoed in his mind and the sound of his name being called once more made him glance up.

"Spencer?" Derek fixed the man with a concerned look, his paperwork left forgotten. JJ's smile faded, Emily raising a brow as well. Rossi had gone off with Hotch somewhere, Penelope in her bat cave, but the group's effect still had Spencer trying to ice any remnants of you off his face, plastering on a small smile.

"Hmm?" He hummed in response.

JJ's eyes narrowed, scanning his face with concern. "Are you feeling okay today? You've been really quiet and...spacey." The blonde settled on the word, and Spencer did his best to assuage her. The pen in his hand twirled, his head nodding.

"I'm fine. I just thought I saw-"

The small creak of the glass doors opening caught the man's attention once more and now, three cups of coffee to back up his acclamations, Spencer was sure that he wasn't;t hallucinating now. No, not this time.

You, you, but twenty years older. You, with a neatly placed outfit, his mind flashing between the jeans you wore and the overalls he had once seen you in. You were there, in the BAU, fifty feet away, it was you. Sure, you were older, you didn't have your head shaved into a baseball cap, or dirtied sneakers on your feet, but it was you.

"Y/N?" His voice came out a whisper.

This is a part two to the prologue! I recommend checking that out!

[wearethekat]

I just saw a post claiming that Spanish colonial sources shouldn't be counted as proof for Aztec/Mexica human sacrifice. while this is a valid take, it needs more nuance. this sent me on a 40 minute rabbithole researching indigenous sources for Aztec human sacrifice. as I am a model of restraint and tolerance, I have made my own post to comment on this. So! Aztec human sacrifice.

Point 1: the Aztecs absolutely did practice human sacrifice, but it’s been exaggerated and sensationalized for centuries.

The Aztec practice of human sacrifice is one of the most sensationalized and bloody cases of mass killing in history, but perhaps one of the least under- stood. Although the Aztecs were highly sophisticated and expressive creators of great architecture, poetry and art, the most enduring image of their society is the brutal ritual of human sacrifice which was the focus of their religion. 

Point 2: The Spanish also practiced large-scale state-sponsored murder. The reason the Aztecs are the culture portrayed as the violent irrational ones is in a large part due to racism.

the Aztecs pursued a policy of human sacrifice which brought about the deaths of thousands of individuals, both natives of Tenochtitlan and strangers captured in war. The deaths of these sacrificial victims occurred in the same period that the Iberian church and state were executing heretics and opponents in bloody displays of ritualized violence, but it is the ceremonies of the Aztec people which have preoccupied the modern mind and created the perception of a brutal and heartless people, standing out- side of the norms of human behaviour. 

Point 3: The actual number of people human-sacrificed is less clear. Spanish sources have alleged numbers such as 20,000 per year, but this is a fairly dubious figure, due to the abovementioned racism and also because older sources often just make up large round numbers. this paper characterizes these numbers as “sometimes hysterical and largely unsubstantiated claims.” to be entirely fair, the people making up numbers were not all Spaniards, one of them was “indigenous writer Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl.” 

Point 4: and here some indigenous sources for said human sacrifices:

The Annals of  Cuautitlán (a work in Nahuatl, probably copied from earlier sources) claimed that 80,400 people were sacrificed in the dedication of Templo Mayor over the course of four days. This number has been questioned by later historians (at the very least, it’s logistically implausible. They had only four people conducting the sacrifices). But despite the exact figure, it’s clear that the Aztecs were performing sacrifice at a large scale.

but dedicating the temple was a special occasion. estimates made from analyzing accounts of the Aztec calendar estimate that about 500 people were sacrificed per year in the capital. (this is from the Florentine Codex, which was a study by a Franciscan friar. however, it was co-authored by Nahua writers, illustrated by them, and written in Nahuatl. so in my books it counts at least partially as an indigenous source.)

so the author of this paper concludes that the actual number of sacrifices was about 1,000 to 20,000 a year.

there’s more out there and I can look them up for people if they’d like to know more. but for now I shall stop because the rabbithole has already eaten 40 minutes of my time. 

source: I’m drawing most of this from Caroline Pennock’s paper, “Mass Murder or Religious Homicide? Rethinking Human Sacrifice and Interpersonal Violence in Aztec Society” from 2012 (you can read a free copy of it here: https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/37888). This is a very interesting paper and it’s worth checking out.