#myths lives in garbage wastes!!

[localceilingdevil]

i have a love hate relationship with six myth's design BAHAH

anywayyy here they are all uh updated. this is their third iteration (ba dun ch)

much happier with this design but do expect things to be fleshed out a little more hehe

[thetechbuyers]

From Discarded to Desired: How to Sell Broken Phones and Buy Used iPhones

Millions of cell phones are thrown out every year as newer models flood the market, building a huge heap of valuable e-waste. Two strong markets in the electronics industry—buying second hand iPhones and selling defective phones—are investigated in this paper. We explore how people might profit both financially and environmentally by engaging in these markets, therefore turning what would at first seem to be the end of a device's life into a fresh beginning for another.

The Untapped Potential of Broken Phone Sell

The path of a Broken Phone Sell starts when many people think their broken or old phones have had their lives cut short. This myth ignores the active market for broken phones, where parts may be salvaged or reused. Selling broken phones not only helps the environment by lowering trash but also receives some monetary value. Designed especially to meet this demand, specialized online markets offer a simple and safe way to sell damaged goods.

Enhancing Sustainability Through Broken Phone Sell

Participating in Broken Phone Sell programs dramatically affects environmental sustainability. Every broken phone sold avoids ending up in landfills, where electronic garbage can spew dangerous toxins into the ground. Participating in this resale market helps consumers support a more sustainable approach to electronic consumption by helping to lower the environmental effect of new gadget manufacture.

Why Consumers Opt to Buy Used iPhones

Turning to the other side of the market, many decide to buy used iPhones as a reasonably affordable and eco-friendly substitute for brand-new versions. Though they still offer the required functionality, used iPhones often come at a significant discount. This choice not only makes financial sense but also lessens the market for new goods, helping environmental sustainability.

Tips for Safely Buying Used iPhones

For those wishing to buy used iPhones, approach the acquisition with a well-defined plan. Maintaining the legitimacy and performance of the device depends on choosing reliable suppliers offering thorough phone histories and circumstances. This relieves consumers of the heavy price tag of a brand-new model by reassuring them they are investing wisely into a gadget that satisfies their requirements.

Conclusion

Broken Phone Sell and Buy Used iPhones present good chances to maximize the lifetime of electronic equipment and promote sustainability from the marketplaces. Whether you want to sell a broken phone or buy a used iPhone, Thetechbuyers.com guarantees that you have access to a trustworthy and quick service and acts as a consistent platform for individuals interested in doing these transactions. By deciding to use Thetechbuyers.com to participate in these markets, customers not only save money but also help to lower electronic waste, therefore benefiting the environment.

[burlveneer-music]

My WVUD playlist, 5/30/2024

(filling in on Java Time)

Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea - Deus (feat. Marc Ertel) Andrew Wasylyk & Tommy Perman - Spec of Dust Becomes a Beam Prefuse 73 - The End of Air Mudd - Eighty Three Psychederek - Pacific State Beth Gibbons - For Sale Garbage - Song to the Siren Keane - Somewhere Only We Know Ash Walker - Time Gets Wasted (feat. Sly5thAve & Denitia) Orville Peck & Elton John - Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting) Elton John & Kiki Dee - Don't Go Breaking My Heart Neil Sedaka - Bad Blood Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Pump It Up The Escape Club - Wild Wild West The Church - Pleasure Paul Weller - Sleepy Hollow The The - Cognitive Dissident Shriekback - Brute Fact View Haircut 100 - Love Plus One ABC - The Look of Love, Pt. 1 (Steven Wilson Stereo Mix) Howard Jones - Things Can Only Get Better (Simlish Version) Messer Chups - Dark Side of Paradise Atomic Mosquitos - The Liquidators Beach Creeper - Chessie's Got a Posse Tomato Flower - Magdalene The Veldt - Willow Tree Snakes Don't Belong in Alaska - Hyper Slap Sun Ra Arkestra - Rocket No. 9 Meshell Ndegeocello - #9 Venus the Living Myth (feat. Immanuel Wilkins & Marshall Allen) The WAEVE - City Lights David Bowie - D.J. Man Man - Alibi

[gefdreamsofthesea]

I can't sleep so here's my review of Devoted to You: Honoring Deity in Wiccan Practice by Judy Harrow (et al).

The content is based on the "Deity Focus" exercise in Harrow's coven, where participants choose a deity and then spend a month researching their myths, cooking foods from their native culture, wearing their colors and symbols, making offerings, etc. The structure is based on the four "Greater" or "Earth" sabbats. Four contributors, four deities: Anubis, Brigid, Aphrodite, and Gaia.

The title says honoring deity in Wiccan practice but two of the contributors are reconstructionists (but don't strike me as particularly hardcore).

Harrow states in the introduction that she hopes the material can serve as a jumping off point for your own devotional practice but I think you'd get the most out of it if you are interested in a relationship with any of the deities named above but I did still find interesting bits. I don't worship Kemetic deities for reasons but found the funeral rite in the Anubis chapter very moving. I think my favourite chapter is Alexei Kondratiev's chapter on Brigid, I really liked how he talked about Brigid as a domestic goddess and a foster mother to her devotees. You can tell that he loved her very much. The sections on Aphrodite and Anubis were fine. The Aphrodite section's author being like "you should definitely try to learn Attic Greek" prompted a slight eyeroll. Listen so few of us have time to learn basement modern Greek. It's great if you can learn another language and feel it makes your rituals more authentic/connected to that deity's culture but I guess I'm just grumpy from the "if it's not in Old Norse it's invalid" language fetishism of some Heathens.

The only section I really didn't like was, funnily enough, Harrow's own chapter on Gaia. She talks about Gaia not as the Greek deity, but as Mother Earth and Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. She also talks about the role of activism (environmental in this case) and ways of connecting to the environment in your area (including mapping out where you live). Where I think this section fell flat for me is that some of her advice strikes me as a bit tone deaf (keep in mind this was published in 2003). She talks about the importance of simple living and how living lightly on the Earth means living according to an adage from the Great Depression. I just feel like idk the Great Depression kind of really sucked and the adage grew out of desperate poverty and not a desire to save the planet. She also falls into that trap where you, the individual, are personally responsible for destroying the environment and so you personally must use less plastic straws and take fewer baths. Ma'am I am not a corporation dumping toxic waste in the ocean. I am a person who uses one garbage bag every two weeks and I don't even fill the garbage bag most of the time.

Anyways aside from that, not a bad book, might recommend if it wasn't oop.

[delimeful]

mere monstrosity (1)

warnings: spiders, misunderstandings, captivity

-

Logan woke up to the familiar soft chime of his alarm, and rolled out of bed bleary-eyed but ready to get the day started. He kept quiet as he crept out of the room.

He didn’t bother grabbing his glasses, knowing that they’d only be of use after his shower. His feet knew the way from his bedroom to the bathroom by heart, and he preferred to shower in the dark to avoid the likelihood of getting one of his light-sensitivity migraines, so he didn’t reach for the lightswitch either.

Instead, he pushed quietly past the half-open door and fumbled for the shower knob, cranking it up to exactly the point before it turned scalding.

The water flickered on a moment later, and amidst the clamor of droplets against ceramic, he heard an indistinct, high-pitched noise, like a chirp or squeak.

“A mouse?” he muttered to himself, squinting at the dark, blurry interior of the shower.

He couldn’t hear anything else over the spray, so he quickly turned the shower off and stepped back to flick the lightswitch on, potential headaches be damned.

He pulled the shower curtain fully to the side, and blinked at the sight of a blurry black splotch in the corner of his bathtub. Leaning in a little further, he could briefly make out individual legs, long and numerous, before they were pulled closer and blended in with the rest of the shape.

“You are… a considerably large spider,” he informed it, grateful that it was him and not Patton who had found it. The resulting terrified shriek would have woken him and Janus, and probably most of the neighbors for that matter. “Are you a tarantula? Are tarantulas even native to this area?”

The spider, rather predictably, didn’t respond, and Logan recalled that he’d just doused the poor thing with jets of cold water. It was probably curling all its limbs in a mock death-curl, trying to process the unexpected threat to its breathing and body temperature.

He reached over to the counter and carefully removed the collection of multicolored toothbrushes from the plastic cup next to their sink, tapping it against the side of the counter to clear out any remaining dust.

“Try to stay still, alright?” he coaxed in a low voice, crouching and leaning over the tub to get a better angle. “I don’t want to catch any of your limbs, just keep them all tucked in close like that and I’ll get you out of there.”

To his surprise, the spider really didn’t make any sudden moves, remaining frozen as he settled the cup over it. The only reason he was sure it was still alive was the tiny motion of its front legs, two little investigative nudges against the edge of the cup.

“Excellent job,” he praised, his curiosity only growing. Most of the spiders he had cupped would immediately run at the glass with arms lifted in threat, or run in frantic circles along the edges seeking an escape. Of course, none of them had been this large. Most wild tarantulas were hunters, though, not spinners. Aggression would serve them well, so why was this one so docile? Was it an escaped pet? Had the cold water been that shocking?

He quickly retrieved a folder from the living room, returning to find that the plastic cup had shifted a couple of inches. It was large enough to push it, then.

“Just a little bit more,” he continued to soothe, carefully sliding the folder under the cup bit by bit, allowing the spider time to shift its legs onto the folder so the tips wouldn’t be pinched. He then carefully lifted the whole ensemble up, keeping a cautious hand on top of the cup. “There we go.”

The kitchen was dimly lit, the small light under the microwave still on so that anyone getting water in the middle of the night wouldn’t trip or run into anything in the dark. Logan glanced at the front door for a long moment, and then gave in to the urge to investigate his catch a bit closer. It would be irresponsible to just release a domesticated tarantula into the wild, after all.

He set the cup and folder down carefully on the counter, and then placed a heavy ceramic plate on top of the cup, reasoning that it was better to make sure the spider wouldn’t push the cup-- and itself-- right off the counter.

“One moment.” That done, he went into his room to retrieve his glasses, leaving the light off so as to not wake up Janus, who had only gotten in from his night shift a few hours ago. His roommate normally slept heavily once he managed to get to sleep, so Logan didn’t have to worry about waking him by climbing out of their shared bed, but better not to risk turning the lights on in the first place.

The world came into a much clearer focus once he’d pushed his glasses into their proper place atop his nose, and with his vision improved, he had no problems finding the hall closet and rummaging through it for one of Janus’s old terrariums.

He set the glass case down on the kitchen counter without any furnishings inside-- he was only planning to get a good look at the specimen, after all-- and flicked on the kitchen light before carefully moving the trapped spider into the terrarium and then lifting the cup away.

The spider frantically scuttled back, smacking thorax-first into the glass wall of the terrarium, and Logan frowned contemplatively at the sight of it.

It was certainly a tarantula, one that he’d probably be able to find online fairly easily with the distinctive white stripes along it’s eight fuzzy legs. Concerningly enough, there was an odd swelling protrusion on the anterior part of the body. It was a similar dark shade to the rest of the body, but almost larger than the thorax, and it blocked off any sight of the pedipalps, fangs, or eyes.

The texture didn’t seem to match the carapace… Perhaps it was a piece of garbage or organic waste that had gotten stuck on the creature? If it hindered movement, that could explain why it had been so still earlier.

It wasn’t still now, exhibiting an odd vibrating throughout its body that Logan had never witnessed from a spider before. He would certainly be doing some research into arthropods after this.

Well, at the very least, he could see if that protruding material would come loose.

Logan carefully pulled on one of Janus’s thick leather gloves, one of the more worn sets in case the spider had urticating hairs, and then reached down. The spider seemed to spot his shadow, going by the way it stiffened, and he reminded himself that though he didn’t know the species and many tarantulas were venomous, it was incredibly unlikely their venom would be able to do more than hurt him.

Confidence restored, he continued reaching down until his fingers met the odd lump, at which point a low, guttural hiss sounded, and the spider threw its front legs up and lunged, slapping its limbs down against the floor of the terrarium in threat.

Logan remained undeterred by the small tantrum, instead focusing on the fact that the obstruction was loose, almost like shed skin on a snake. Studying the spider carefully, he pinched it gently between two fingers, trying to discern what in the world it could possibly be.

The next three movements happened in rapid succession.

First, Logan tugged lightly at the material caught between his fingers. Second, the spider recoiled sharply, pulling away from his grip with surprising strength. And third, the covering came loose, the spider pulling free from it and leaving a limp swathe of fabric hanging from Logan’s fingers.

Below him, now uncovered, there was pale skin, a mop of bedraggled hair, and a tiny, terrified human face.

Logan froze, staring down at it-- them with wide eyes.

The being he’d mistaken for a spider was actually a drider, a creature of myth that was apparently all too real. Logan couldn’t help how stunned he felt. Even apart from the shock of the discovery, there was the shock of their size. Driders were said to have a human-sized spider half, not the other way around!

Below, the drider was still frozen in place, staring right back up at him. He could see the way their little chest was heaving with quick, panicked breaths, could feel the way the tiny makeshift poncho in his hand was sodden and cold, and he felt guilt strike him like a ruler across knuckles.

“I-- Hold on a moment, please,” he managed, his mind racing as he stepped back, turning and hurrying out of the room.

Once again, the hall closet held exactly what he needed, and he mentally rescinded all his past complaints about the amount of extra snake care items Janus had stashed away in their storage closet like a dragon’s hoard.

The heat lamp was compact enough to fit easily in the terrarium, where the spider-person had scuttled back to press themself into the furthest corner, limbs pulled in tightly in what had to be a fear response.

Logan set the lamp carefully inside and plugged it in, sighing in relief when the bulb lit up and began to glow orange. “This lamp is designed for reptiles, not arthropods, so it may be too hot for extended use. However, it will work temporarily as a heat source to get rid of excess moisture, so I encourage you to use it.”

The drider was glaring up at him with the tiniest scowl he’d ever seen, front legs still lifted up defensively, but didn’t say a word.

“Do you speak?” Logan asked, and received only silence in return. “I suppose I should have guessed as much, seeing as you haven’t responded to any of my previous statements. Do you understand me? Do we speak the same language?”

The drider glared harder.

“I find it hard to believe that you have animal-level intelligence,” Logan continued, now mostly to himself. He lifted a hand, displaying the poncho he still held. “Although some birds can ‘sew’, construction of clothing to cover one’s form is a complex and distinctly human sentiment.”

Still, nothing. Their gaze was caught by the poncho for a moment before they looked away entirely, looking for all the world to be sulking.

Logan sighed, and then slowly moved to place the poncho next to the heat lamp, laying it out flat for easier drying. “I’m going to attend to my morning routine. It should only take me a few moments, but please feel free to call or make noise if you need my attention between now and then.”

The drider’s expression had eased into confusion at the sight of their garment laid out before them, but their legs remained warily upright as Logan left the room.

As promised, he only made a brief stop to make sure both of his roommates were still soundly asleep before climbing into the shower and preparing himself for the day, roughly fifteen minutes behind schedule.

It wasn’t too disruptive-- it had eaten into the time he normally allotted for sitting at the table and eating breakfast, so that would have to be skipped today, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

Honestly, he’d likely spend the rest of the day thinking about the surprise addition to his morning. There were so many questions he’d love to ask, but seeing as the creature had attempted to hide their existence even at risk of being perceived as a normal spider (and therefore possibly squashed), he expected he wouldn’t be receiving any answers.

Talkative or not, the drider clearly had sapient levels of intelligence, and Logan was loath to start off humanity’s relationship with a vulnerable and secretive species by keeping them trapped in a snake terrarium against their will.

Even if he was willing to weigh scientific advancement over his morals, his roommates would never allow it. Patton would naturally be terrified and possibly sympathetic when witnessing their clear terror, and he’d had enough extensive debates on ethics with Janus to know that his opinion on keeping them captive would be much the same.

So, when he returned to the kitchen and saw them toppling over and scurrying back from the heat lamp that they’d clearly been attempting to use as a makeshift ladder to freedom, Logan didn’t bother commenting, simply moving forward and looking them over.

“You seem to have mostly dried,” he stated instead, able to appreciate the subtle design work of the poncho better now that it wasn’t being used as camouflage. The drider gripped it like they thought he might take it away.

They would react fairly badly to him reaching out with his hand, and reasonably so. Logan hadn’t exactly done much except douse, capture, and then gently interrogate them. Not exactly trustworthy behavior.

He studied the terrarium for a moment before grabbing a washcloth and draping it over the side, providing an easy textured surface for the spider to climb up. There. “You are free to go.”

The surprised expression that flashed across their face was almost comical.

“I’m not sure what your purpose in the bathroom was, but I’d ask you to be more careful in the future. One of my roommates…,” Logan sighed through his nose, exasperated even imagining it. “Well, suffice to say you should avoid him at all costs.”

The tiny drider continued to stare at him, gaze occasionally flickering over to the towel with clear suspicion. It was saddening to be so distrusted, but perhaps this show of goodwill would help prove that he didn’t intend any harm? He hoped he hadn’t frightened them from the residence entirely-- he shuddered at the many, many potential dangers the creature would find outside.

“My roommates will wake later in the day, so if you intend to avoid their notice, I’d suggest leaving the enclosure as soon as I have departed for work,” he gave a little farewell wave, not reacting to the slight flinch it elicited from the little guy. “It-- well, you probably don’t share the sentiment, but still-- it was nice to meet you. Goodbye.”

Forcing himself not to turn back and get one last look, Logan hurried out the door.

[redux-iterum]

Maybe this might sound rude, but I need to know: with all the work and care you give to build up the lore and story of this project, why would you just limited it as a Warrior Cats fan AU, like many others out there, instead of your own IP only loosely based on it? Seriously you can as well make a profit out of it!

DULLARD: A very fair question! How to explain my answers... they may be foolish ones, but they are true.

When I started this universe years ago, it was a compulsion to fix a setting and story that I felt had so much potential to be incredible. I felt an obligation to try, because I'm a storyteller by nature and I hate when potential is wasted. As time went on, I did give up because of the culture surrounding me growing rather terrible, but I've returned because that compulsion is back and I have a chance to better not just Warriors, but the Redux itself. These ideas - myths, characters, etc - were created and maintained because they could flesh out this world in particular and give it some life, and that's their purpose.

Related to that last sentence, I feel like most of these ideas - the plotlines and characters in particular - can only really work in this sort of project. They wouldn't be as interesting or impactful in any other setting. Similar to my own fanClan: its driving force of a concept can only really work within Warriors-based context; otherwise it doesn't have the punch it can have.

I do have original stories with concept I find very interesting, though! One is a comic which you can read here (pardon the old art). The problem is that, well, no one really cares about original stories. They want to see fandom things. Iterum and the Redux are partly here to build up an audience who may, perchance, be curious enough to see what kind of original things I've made and may, perchance, check them out and enjoy them. My eventual goal is to earn a living through storytelling, and this is one of the stepping stones to get there.

Finally... honestly, Warriors has kind of cornered the market on cat-based stories. None of this is easily translatable to a different feline setting, and even if it was, I don't have any more to say about cats than anyone else does. It'd be a pointless endeavor. Fanfiction works well enough for me while I work on non-cat things that I believe to have much more potential.

LYNX: This is branching into a larger... thing I've noticed about cat xenofiction. It's incredibly hard to step out of Warriors' shadow, just look at Clouded Moon as an example. The fact that it's a former Warriors fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off is incredibly obvious, even with the new lore and worldbuilding. Same goes for Cattails being Warriors Untold Tales with the serial numbers filed off.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it's a thing that at least bothers me. It's why I've been struggling for the past three years with my original cat fiction because I just don't know how to not be Warriors. Hopefully that'll be amended when I read actual good xenofiction, but that's not the point, we're talking about Warriors, not my garbage.

Honestly though, considering that Iterum is (at least for now) the first four arcs of Warriors condensed into three arcs of similarish story beats and characters (at least in name or in what scraps of a personality we can salvage), it doesn't feel right to me to take the plunge and say this is ours and earn money off its sales. This scrap art isn't mine; I pillaged the broken bike from the mansion's dumpster and helped make it into something else. That metaphor probably doesn't fit well, but it's the best I got.

There's also the thought that these characters deserve the best shot at existing in a deep world and living through thought-provoking stories. The Erins and HarperCollins will retcon the world over and over and the characters will be considered lucky if they've been given a half-second of thought towards their depth in their characterization. We as fans have the opportunity to remedy that. Even if it's technically illegal.

[cabiba]

Horror of horrors! I am a climate change denier. I don’t believe the bellicose activists who glue themselves to Botticellis. Nor do I believe in the pseudoscience that chooses consensus over fact. What I do believe is that these climate change promoters and activists are becoming more and more unhinged. They would love us all to be living in dark caves like our distant ancestors, but then we’d be eating meat. That would really get the vegans going. Oh, my. Leftists will never be happy.

No, I refuse to believe that human advancement in the 20th and 21st centuries affects hurricanes, tornadoes, monsoons…the things even insurance companies call acts of God. I am not God, and my religion is not the climate.

Keep in mind, though, that I have been around a while. Certainly I’ve been around long enough to know that climate change was once called global warming, and these alarm bells have been going on since the 1970s. In school, we learned about doing our part to help the environment. And there were PSAs like Woodsy Owl telling us to “Give a hoot. Don’t pollute.”Yet by 1989, the news wasn’t so cute. The the U.N. gave us the dire prediction that there was only 10 years before we were all doomed. By then global warming lovers had decided to change their moniker because that’s what people do when they feel they are losing support—abortion becomes pro-choice, global warming becomes climate change, and a recession becomes undefinable. Yet even after the precious ten year threshold passed the year 2000, the sky didn’t fall. We were all still here. Gosh! Come to think of it, Y2K didn’t get us either.Then in 2008, Al Gore was at it again giving us only 10 years before there was irreversible damage to the world. Yet we were all still here in 2018. Now Al Gore is suddenly in the news again. And for people like me who live in the real world, we look at these doomsday people like Al Gore and John Kerry and realize that this hoax has made them rich. You stop looking at the weather patterns of a “consensus” of scientists and turn, instead, to the wealth patterns of those in charge.

And to make Al’s point even clearer, when he was interviewed last Sunday, he disgustingly compared climate deniers to Uvalde police officers. So, you need to understand he really means it this time. We must act!

But haven’t we been acting? We were told to do our part by recycling. We have an extra garbage bin that takes our recycled junk be it glass bottles, cans, or plastics. You know the very plastics you use in everyday life created from *gasp* oil. Surely, our efforts to recycle have helped the world. Yet a May 5, 2022 report by Frank Kummer for phys.org states, “Only 5% to 6% of the 46 million tons of plastic waste generated annually in the U.S. gets recycled…” Wait. What? So, what happens to the plastics not recycled? They get incinerated or shipped off to a third world country to deal with. Neither saves the planet. Another myth busted.

Additionally, our fossil fueled cars have high city and highway miles per gallon, yet it’s still not enough. So our government is investing billions of our tax dollars in private car company GM to build electric vehicle battery factories. How is this free market competition?

I could continue in this vein, calling out the hypocrites within the climate activist movement, but you know where I stand. I’m tired of the debate between whether or not there is climate change. Instead, I want to focus on a different, yet connected, idea.Let’s, for argument sake, wave the white flag and say that climate change is real. Who are we saving the planet for?

Duh! It should be about us and our progeny. However what seems to be an idiotic question, suddenly becomes a head scratcher because we see governments doing things antithetical to the betterment of our lives.

Currently countries like the Netherlands and Canada are forcing its citizens to reduce carbon emissions. That’s the stated goal of their edicts. In the Netherlands, the government wants emissions cut in half by 2050. To achieve this objective, livestock must be reduced by 30% and they are omitting a certain amount of fertilizer usage.

So, the government is demanding that farmers kill their livestock because they fart, reduce fertilizer usage by becoming more organic without natural fertilizer, and, in turn, go out of business. But the Netherlands is the second highest exporter of agricultural products in the world. This will have far reaching effects beyond the Netherlands.

Concurrently, in Canada, Justin Trudeau is demanding a nitrous oxide emissions reduction of 30%. He claims he is not singling out fertilizer. Of course this is smoke and mirrors, and Canadian farmers are not stupid. They have been keeping a close eye on the Netherlands.

Concurrently, in Canada, Justin Trudeau is demanding a nitrous oxide emissions reduction of 30%. He claims he is not singling out fertilizer. Of course this is smoke and mirrors, and Canadian farmers are not stupid. They have been keeping a close eye on the Netherlands.

But really, all you have to do is look at Sri Lanka and its omission of fertilizer to see what happened to its citizens and economy. Their president is now in exile. India has had its issues with anti-farming laws, too. In other words, there are enough examples out there for Mark Rutte and Justin Trudeau to know their plans will not work, but they are doing them anyway.

This climate change push is, also, happening here in the U.S., and someone has been giving insider knowledge to China and Bill Gates. For they are buying up farmland at alarming rates just as we are having food distribution plants spontaneously combust and are having issues producing uncontaminated baby food. Mayor Pete likes to tell us this all has something to do with supply chain issues and infrastructure, both of which are on his watch as Transportation Secretary. Yet Pete is more interested in marriage equity than the jobs he was appointed to perform. I wonder why.

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I’d say that what we are seeing around the globe sounds like intentional starvation measures are in place in order to “save the planet.” Empty shelves and high food prices follow these ridiculous quests to change the climate. Thus, this green movement is not about helping people currently living on Earth. Instead, they are trying to kill us off or force us to eat bugs, like in North Korea. So if all these initiatives are not about us now, what about the future?

Our world population growth is declining and is expected to decline for decades (see chart). Instead of worrying about a lack of babies being born who will one day be workers driving our economies, the mantra has been that female bodily autonomy and choice is paramount to living in a free society. Golly! Even Prince Harry, known genius, is on board with abortion and wants to go on record about America’s failings. He must be taken seriously because he trashed his own family for love. Isn’t is obvious that we should all be more like freedom-loving China where their government has its own state run abortion clinics— without women’s consent?

On top of all this, the West is pushing trans rights and are unable to identify a difference between male and female. Clearly, our globe is not being saved for future generations. There won’t be any.

So if our world population is trending downward, wouldn’t that mean less carbon emissions because less people are driving, heating homes, farming, eating…? If so, why are we pushing these climate initiatives?

Climate change leaders have been serving Kool-Aid to agitators and are trying to get us to drink it also. We are told to make detrimental lifestyle shifts for a utopian future that doesn’t exist. Get rid of all fossil fuels. Go electric. Don’t eat meat. Fertilizers are bad. Get rid of air conditioning. You MUST follow the rules or else. What’s the point? Well, if I was a conspiracy theorist…

Global domination. This is not a science fiction novel or a video game. What is happening is a power grab under the guises of green energy, Covid, CRT, BLM, LGBTQ, and war in Ukraine. It all comes out of the Communist playbook. There is a reason all of these upheavals are happening, and it has nothing to do with our founders or all of Western civilization being racist. It has everything to do with erasing any trace of patriotism, ties to our past, and hope for our future. Despondency breeds insecurity and dependency.If you need an example, review the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976). Chairman Mao Zedong, fearing he was losing power and concerned about the capitalistic ways of Soviet Communism, closed schools and created a Red Guard in order to rid China of The Four Olds—customs, beliefs, habits and culture. The Red Guard would publicly dishonor the elderly verbally and/or physically and ensure that those supporting anti-Communist or capitalists views would be turned over to authorities and purged. Neighbors turned in neighbors. Children ratted out teachers and parents. What remained was over a million-and-a-half people dead and a country without ties to its history or culture. If you need a first hand account, read Red Scarf Girl.

If you need an example, review the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976). Chairman Mao Zedong, fearing he was losing power and concerned about the capitalistic ways of Soviet Communism, closed schools and created a Red Guard in order to rid China of The Four Olds—customs, beliefs, habits and culture. The Red Guard would publicly dishonor the elderly verbally and/or physically and ensure that those supporting anti-Communist or capitalists views would be turned over to authorities and purged. Neighbors turned in neighbors. Children ratted out teachers and parents. What remained was over a million-and-a-half people dead and a country without ties to its history or culture. If you need a first hand account, read Red Scarf Girl.

Even today, for all of its progress economically, China has reeducation camps for those that don’t tow the company line. There are massive human rights violations against the Uyghurs and Christians. And no U.N. in sight.

Think: If you are a maniacal leader(s) looking to bring a democratic republic to its knees, all you need are a few billionaires, the media, and crises—real or fictional—that cause fear.

Covid was a perfect trial run. Everyone around the world shut down. Schools closed. Economies suffered. Governments tracked its citizens. Mandates were…well…mandatory. Those who were Covid deniers—even doctors—were publicly shamed and canceled from social media platforms.

The canceling continues in every area of our culture and society if it counters the elites. Political enemies are interrogated, committee-d, and jailed. CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, etc. hit certain stories harder than others. They completely overlooked Hunter Biden’s laptop in order to influence an election and, until recently, have been turning a blind eye toward the mental fitness of President Biden. Regular citizens are being canceled on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for speaking their minds on issues like transgenderism and groomers (a term we are now told is off limits).

Billionaires like George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg did their part by funneling monies to “get out the vote” to ensure their candidates won. Soros has been instrumental in ensuring DAs like Kim Foxx and George Gascón got elected. Working hand in hand with mayors in blue states, they are supportive of lawlessness. Crime is rampant in major blue cities, perps get arrested and released, and those in leadership attempt to justify their inaction as a policing problem (e.g. defund the police) causing even more distrust of government and our institutions.

The closing of our schools during Covid was an eye opener for parents who now have a clue about what their kids have been taught. It also gave leaders a chance to add to or delete things from curricula. Now students must be taught about gender identity. History books are more heavily anti-Founding Fathers and pro-CRT. If a parent raises their voice in opposition at a school board meeting they are labeled a domestic terrorist.

Speaking of history, remember those statues that were toppled during BLM and Antifa riots? If you thought that stopped, the rewriting of history during tours and on placards at Mount Vernon, Monticello and Montpelier are in place. Montpelier’s renovation was done via a generous contribution by billionaire David M. Rubenstein. Some visitors claim that not one American flag was flying at Montpelier, yet the Pride flag was waving at our embassies during Pride Month.

At the same time, our Constitutional rights are under siege. For example, ATF officers can show up at your house to check that legally purchased weapons are in your possession if you dared to purchase multiple on your shopping trip. Our rights to free speech are under daily assault by those who have become word police. Though there are HIPPA laws in place, our right to privacy and our right to make decisions about our health with our doctors has been

removed. The government now mandates health via one man in charge at WHO and another in charge at the CDC. Both are unelected, and we are being tracked.

Follow their rules or you cannot go into a store or take public transportation, which seems ironic since public transportation is supposed to help defeat climate change. Even though Covid panic is over, professional tennis player Novak Djokovic can’t come into the U.S. without complying to mandated vaccination to play a tournament; but, illegals immigrants are transported to various states for free and God knows what diseases they have.

Have you connected the dots yet? Nothing being done is for our benefit, though we are told otherwise.

In this silent coup, those who are most vulnerable are the ones who will be the hardest hit in this seemingly non-violent war. The poor, ill, disabled, and elderly will be the first to go as they always do when there is a Revolution. We will be left with a weakened society led by elites, and those of us left standing will be dependent on them for food, clothing, work, healthcare, transportation, and housing. Their mission is controlling our lives because, of course, they know what’s best. The means to the end is creating chaos, division, and fear.

It was easy for Mao to start his Cultural Revolution. China was already Communist. For our elites, they need to weaponize our culture, education, institutions, and history through a willing media and education system. Each piece of the puzzle is there and being put together by those that want to dominate. That’s who we are saving the planet for. The only thing standing in their way is us.

[cruelfeline]

Hey Feline, here's a (suprise!) non-Hordak ask for you:

You're a veterinarian, right? What can you tell me about your animal dietetic expertise as a vet? I know vets in my country have very little classes on dog/cat diets and when they do the classes are often sponsored by Certain Big Kibble Brands convincing the poor students that their dry, almost meatless kibble is The Best Choice for pets. How does that look in your country and in your college? Do you, as a vet, feel comfortable giving out dietetic advice or would you rather reccoment consulting an animal dietetic specialist?

Feel free to reply in PM if you want :)

Ah, I always enjoy animal questions!

This is a really common sort of thing that people ask about all the time, and it's a bit frustrating for vets because yes: we do get nutritional training. And no, it's not provided by food brands.

It's provided by nutritionists. Sometimes, like when we're learning about specific conditions (let's say, chronic renal insufficiency), we're taught condition-specific nutrition by experts on said condition.

Now, do those nutritionists sometime work for food brands? Absolutely. But thags because a good food brand will hire veterinary nutritionists and utilize their expertise. If a food brand doesn't have a dedicated vet nutritionist on staff, I wouldn't really recommend them.

The issue with the whole "vets are taught to feed meat-less kibble by food brands" is multi-factorial.

First, who perpetuates that myth?

The people who want to sell you more expensive, boutique pet foods.

Second, why do they say that, specifically? Rather than, say, showing you the copious research they've done to prove that their food is healthier for your pet.

Because they haven't done any research.

Pet food is a huge industry, and there's a lot of money to be made within it if you can find a niche and convince people to buy your product. But! Research, specifically well-done, live-animal research that truly tests formulas, is very expensive to do.

So many of these small companies will formulate products based upon math calculations (using research done by the bigger companies, who can afford it!), throw a bunch of nice-sounding ingredients together, and call it good. Then they will spend money on marketing, rather than factual research, to convince people to buy their products.

And it works! People stop trusting doctors, stop trusting research, and listen to the latest "homemade all natural dog food" company that tells them things that sound nice.

The thing is, this often doesn't really matter too much. Dogs are, for the most part, able to do well on a variety of diets.

Because that's the thing about dogs: by and large, they're not these obligate-carnivore, meat-eating machines. They're not cats. They're not wolves. They're animals that essentially evolved and became domesticated by living on the edges of human settlements and eating our garbage. Ancient dogs didn't receive choice cuts of meat from ancient humans. They ate scraps. They ate junk. They ate whatever. And a lot of that "whatever" was agricultural waste, often grain-based, because ancient humans were going through their agricultural revolution at the time.

This is reflected in the canine genome.

Now, that's not to say that certain breeds don't do better on higher-meat-protein diets. Northern breeds, various sled-pulling breeds, do. Again, genetics-based. And related to the fact that the humans in those regions dong really farm, they hunt. So, again: following human diet in domestication.

But most dogs that you find, day-to-day? They really are okay on many of the diets on the market. Some do better on fancy diets. Some actually do worse, getting diarrhea from the high protein. Others need hypo-allergenic, lab-made diets because of how severe their food allergies are.

It all depends on the individual dog, but again: generally speaking, dogs are adaptable. And they don't require what many of those boutique brands say they do.

Now! An example of what can sometimes go wrong.

Back in the summer of 2018, there were a bunch of dogs that ended up with what appeared to be a nutritional dilated cardiomyopathy. Some died. Others returned to health when they were taken off of their grain-free, exotic ingredient boutique diets (which is how docs knew it wasn't genetic; there's no cure for genetic DCM).

And this sort of showed an issue you can run into with these non-research based diets: if you don't do studies to see how your formula behaves in an actual live animal, you may end up using a mix of ingredients that sound very nice, but they don't allow appropriate nutrient absorption and utilization. In this case, it seemed that the high proportion of pulses and legumes in some diets caused problems in some dogs.

So you get dogs eating great-sounding diets whose hearts fail because they can't absorb taurine from those diets. Yet, when placed back on the "dry, almost meatless kibble," they recovered.

As a vet, I feel very comfortable advising people to pick a diet that is complete, balanced, and well-tested. There are many diets that fit those criteria.

What I generally refer out to a veterinary nutritionists is people who want to make homemade diets for their animals: that requires very specific knowledge and is best handled by a veterinarian who is board-certified in nutrition.

Now, as far as cats go: most cat-savvy vets will tell you that high protein/fat, low carb, wet food is best for kitties. Short, sweet, simple. Still needs to be balanced and tested, but that's the usual cat-vet recommendation nowadays. Not food-manufacturer recommendation. Vet recommendation.

Which is, again, were we tend to get our info! Fellow vets who specialize in nutrition.

[kinsey3furry300]

A very confused Star Wars Fan desperately tries to justify their belief that “Caravan of Courage” shows the way forward for the franchise. No, really.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved Star Wars. And I mean, all of it. The books, the games, the Lego, the spin-offs: I even enjoy the Holiday Special in a The Room so-bad-you-just-need-to-see-it sort of way.  But particularly the films. But here is when we run into the big problem: I’m just the wrong age. The original trilogy launched before I was born, the prequel trilogy hit cinemas when I was already a teen and while I went and saw them and enjoyed them, I was at that age where I was self-conscious about seeing a “kids” film, and hyper-aware of how silly and cringy those films were in parts. So my indoctrination, my inoculation with the Star Wars bug didn’t happen in the cinema, and it didn’t happen with any of the main franchise works. It happened on home video, on a skiing trip in the French Alps in the early 90’s. I’d have been about 6, and this was the first time I’d ever been abroad other than to see relatives in Ireland.  And I loved it: to this day I love skiing, but more than that, I have very, very fond childhood memories of this trip. This was shortly before I lost my biological mother to cancer, she’d have received her diagnosis just after we got back from the trip. This was when my younger sister stopped being an annoying screaming thing and became and became an actual person I could talk and play and share ideas with, this was before the combination my mothers long illness and my father having just launched his own IT start up meant I didn’t see him or her any more, despite the fact they were in the same house as me. This was this wonderful, nostalgic child-hood bubble when my family was intact, and nothing could ever go wrong. I skied all day with mum and dad, and would come back to the chalet in the evening. It was an English speaking chalet, I met my first real-life American there, and having grown up in the 90’s in the UK nothing was cooler than making friends with an actual American my own age. He had a hulk Hogan action figure with springs in the legs so if you put him on a hard surface and punched his head down, when you let go he’d jump really high in the air. We used to play with it together in the bath, back in that weird 90’s time-bubble when it was possible to convince two sets of parents that this kid you’d just met was you best friend in the world and of course shared bath time was, somehow, normal and appropriate. And fresh from bath time, tired from the day, the parents would give us some hot coco, dump us kids in front of the tv and grab the first shitty low-budget VHS they could find to keep us distracted while they went to the bar. In this particular time, in this particular place, that shitty low budget cartoon was the  complete set of the 1985 Lucasfilm/ABC Ewoks cartoon, plus the two spin off movies, and to this day that cheap, kitschy, kind of bad series has a special warm and cosy place in my heart. I remember being enthralled by the world, in love with the characters, applied by the bad guys and the injustice they caused (to this day I’m still irate about that time Wicket lost his set of beads documenting his progress towards becoming a full warrior and the older Ewoks basically said, tough, you need to re-earn all those merit badges from scratch. This struck me as exactly the sort of bullshit an adult would pull, and pissed me off) and on tenterhooks about what would happen to the characters.

It was also, by a coincidence, the first ever Star Wars media I was exposed to, and the above combination of events probably explains a lot about me.

So I was surprised, the other day, when scrolling Disney+, to find they’d added Caravan of Courage AND Battle for Endor to the roster in my region. Surely Disney wouldn’t want their slick, cool brand associated with this old trash? Surely there could be no place for this in the post-Mandalorian Star Wars cannon? Surely this is a horrible mistake some intern made, right?

Unless…. What if I’ve miss-remembered? What if it’s not just rose-tinted nostalgia goggles, and it’s, in fact, secretly really, really good?

I rushed to my comfy chair, got a blanket, dimmed the lights, made some coco (with rum in it, because why the hell not?) and sat down to re-examine this lost gem.

And wow: it’s every bit as shit as you’d expect.

It has aged exactly as poorly as you’d expect a cheap, mid 80’s direct to video spin-off to age. Caravan of Courage? More like Caravan of Garbage, am I right?

And yet… I still enjoyed every moment.

And it was sitting there, in my pyjamas, watching a cheaply made direct to video cash-grab from just before I was born, seeing it again for the first time in nearly 30 years, and I realised something.

It doesn’t really matter if this film is bad, so long as I enjoy it. And if it doesn’t really mater if this is bad, then I, like many Star Wars fans, wasted a huge amount of time and emotional effort on being butthurt about stuff I didn’t like about the Rise of Skywalker and it’s ilk. Because somewhere, right now, a tired and frustrated parent is putting Disney+ on to keep their kids quiet for two hours. And they won’t think too hard about what they put on, so long as it keeps little Timmy busy for a bit. Somewhere, right now, a kid is watching Rise of Skywalker, and it’s the first Star Wars media they’ve ever seen.

And that’s okay. Because we don’t know what that kids home life is like. We don’t know if it’s good or bad. Maybe it’s great, maybe it’s about to take a dramatic plunge like mine did, and this moment here will be the cosy, warm memory they look back on in 30 years time, and that’s beautiful.  They’re getting introduced to a fun, wonderful fantasy world that could be with them all their lives, through good times and bad, and as fans we should be happy about that.

Star Wars will never, die: it’s too darn profitable, Disney will never let it. And while I hope they learn from their mistakes and make sure every future Star Wars is a timeless gem of story-telling, statistically, if you keep making enough films, some of them will be bad. And while I’d like them all to be great, it’s still okay if they’re bad.

Because nothing can take away my memories of that week in that chalet. Nothing can take-away my memories of when they put the original trilogy on in cinemas for the special edition and I had my jaw hit the floor with how good it was on the big screen, not knowing or caring who shot first. Nothing can take away you memories of the Original Trilogy, the Prequels, or the Clone Wars. Nothing can tarnish the bits of the sequil trilogy that you like, and there are good bits in there.

But wait, what about continuity? What about the sacred, perfect written time-line that used to exist?

Well, what about it? Have you seen any other big, epic fantasy universe before? They’re all a mess. A work of fiction, particularly fantasy, can be extensive, or tightly written, but not both. Harry Potter is only seven books, and the last two feel, tonally, like they’re from an entirely different series. I love them, but the grim-dark kicked in so fast you’ll get whiplash. The Hobbit is a perfect written self-contained novel, and LOTR is *The* big boy high-fantasy trilogy: fast forward 50 years, and Christopher Tolkien is desperately squeezing every last drop of money out of his father’s corpse by finishing and publishing every unfinished note JRR ever wrote right down to his shopping lists. Even Dune goes of the rails with sequels. I can only think of four fantasy works that are both extensive and consistently tightly written, Song of Ice and Fire, Wheel of Time, Malazan: Book of the Fallen and Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe. And even then, the prequels and spin-offs mess with the timelines: the Dunk and Egg novella’s change some character’s canonical ages and timelines, Wheel of Time was going slowly off the rails even before the Jordan died, Forge of Darkness made what was a good metaphor for the creation of it’s world into a literal war deep in the past, and Sanderson’s first Novel Elantris got a re-write to bring it more in line with the rest of the shared universe. The MCU, oft held up as the modern example of tightly planned, well thought out ongoing storytelling, is a lie: it was never as pre-planned out as Disney wants us to think; the first Iron Man, apparently, barely had a script, with Downey ad-lib-ing most of his scenes. None of the MCU films are direct sequels to each-other other than Infinity war and Endgame. There are three Iron Man films, and Three Thor films, and none continue an ongoing story line across multiple films, and the Cap films barely continue an arc, but only where Cap’s relationship with Natasha and Bucky is involved.  Much like these, Star War’s cannon is a complete, nightmarish, confusing, tangled, illogical mess. And it has been since 1984, as Caravan of Courage proves. It was never consistent and well planned.

And that’s okay.

I used to care about plot holes. I used to care about which works were cannon in Star Wars lore. I’m over that now. I’m happy to imagine the books, films and games not as a blow-by-blow historical account of a galaxy far far away, but as campfire stories from within this fun, imaginative world that we’re all invited to listen to. Stories that are in-universe myth and folklore, that we can all snuggle up and listen to while drinking highly alcoholic rum and remembering better times, knowing that wherever the future throws at us, no matter how the world goes to hell around us, we’ll still have the memories, and the ability to make our own new stories in the wonderful Star Wars world we all share.

And that’s okay. No, more than that: that’s beautiful.

Also Star Wars is completely unambiguous on the fact we’re allowed to kill fascists no matter how many times they keep coming back with a new logo, so that’s timely I guess.

So, there’s my hot take two-years after everyone else stopped caring about this stuff, as per bloody usual. Tell me why I’m wrong below, and does anyone else have any truly awful spin-off shows that they kind of have a nostalgic soft spot for?

[silvysartfulness]

Omg I saw that you used to write for the assassin’s creed fandom and honestly what a throwback 😭 are they on livejournal?

Aahhh, this is the part where I have to admit, I don't think I ever put any of those drabbles online! It was more a fun thing me and wife used to do, writing very very short 5 minute one-shots based on single word-prompts.

Oh, wait! Apparently I actually still have them, in an old folder of mine! Will post under a cut. These are AC 1-3-brotherhood, primarily focused on the latter.

La Volpe/Cesare post the fall of the Borgia was my main rarepair ship in that fandom, so that's the main (if occasionally only implied) focus for a lot of these. (CW some dubcon/non-con under the cut, so be warned.) 😊

1 Unwillingness

It goes against everything he is, a greater challenge than any battlefield taken on. Snarling, eyes blazing his defiance, Cesare submits for now.

2 Memento

”Something to remember me by,” murmurs Volpe softly against the sensitive skin of his neck, and it's all Cesare can do not to yelp as those vicious teeth leave a bleeding gash in his ear.

3 Baseline

He still doesn't trust Machiavelli, Volpe muses, and it's equally clear Machiavelli doesn't trust him. Perhaps their shared love of secrecy is the one dependent thing about their relationship.

4 Sniper

He has shot guards from rooftops, towers, horseback, beams and the treacherous crumbling tops of ancient stone pillars. So why was it, muses Ezio afterward, that he hadn't even thought of pulling crossbow or gun out as his sworn enemies held their short council in the courtyard a few measly yards below his feet?

5 Birthplace

It is in Masyaf the order of Assassins was born into what it is now. Searching for answers Ezio sets out on the longest journey of his life, back to the beginning of all.

6 Denunciation

It is hard to remember what it was like to have faith, Cesare thinks, but easy to remember when it was lost. What God could ever work through the instrument that was Alexander VI, his father?

7 Distaste

”Volpe, you didn't!” Ezio exclaims, his face a mask of distaste. Volpe smirks.

”Oh, it was not at all bad. Cesare is well trained.”

Ezio shudders. ”That is exactly what bothers me!”

8 Elimination

Constantly, frustratingly one step behind, it is little Cesare can do as his allies are meticulously taken out by the Assassins one by one. And yet it is not until the last of those on his side willingly turn their backs on him that he realizes this battle is lost.

9 Bluntness

”You can do as I say,” says the master thief matter-of-factly, turning the vial of antidote over in his spindly fingers, ”or you can spend the night dying slowly while vomiting your innards all over the floor. The choice is yours.”

Pale with fury Cesare chooses to live.

10 Turf

The Assassins had been myth, legend, bed-time stories to frighten a young boy already afraid of the dark. But as they dealt an all but deadly blow to his father inside the Vatican itself, Cesare grimly declares war. Roma is his city, and all who oppose his rule must be swiftly and mercilessly dealt with.

11 Assassination

He burns for the ideals, fights the fight with passion and utter devotion. But when Shaun's shaking hands lower the suddenly impossibly heavy gun he knows something he'dnever even thought about (Innocence? Compassion? Humanity?) has perished as surely as that very first body at his feet.

12 Apprentice

He remembers a gangly youth skidding across slippery roof tiles, trying so hard to keep up and even harder to hide his inability to do so. La Volpe silently studies Il Mentore and considers he's no longer sure who would lead the way across the rooftops.

13 Debris

Ezio swears as the ceiling collapses over the bed he shared with Caterina until moments ago – his armor and weapons are buried in the rubble and will be hard to replace. He does not yet know they will be the least of his losses this day.

14 Scolding

Altaïr has never been one to accept blame or criticism for his actions, but something about the way Malik's not-there left arm twitches as to shake a not-there fist in his face as the man speaks makes him look away in hidden shame.

15 Torrent

The rain pours down over the city, making roofs and cobblestones alike wet and slippery. Volpe tugs his collar tighter around his shoulders against the biting cold and idly contemplates if a trip to the Castello would be worth the trouble.

16 Anchor

He cheats and steals and tells honeyed lies with the ease of a snake. But his eyes can be oceans and his touch velvet – sometimes Ezio wonders if his always restless, inspiration-ridden friend keeps Salai around just to remember what it's like to be human.

17 Truce

”It would be nice,” says Machiavelli evenly, ”if you would not so readily name yourself judge, jury and executioner the next time you fall victim to unfounded suspicion.”

”Fine,” mutters Volpe, frowning. ”It would be niceif you were not so secretive. And stop trying to steal my spies. Get your own.”

”Fine,” Machiavelli replies with a minute smirk.

Fellowship is knowing just when your brother-in-arms is lying.

18 Nook

There are many unknown and unseen hiding places among the rooftops of Florence. On his back, hair plastered against his face and hot breath against his ear, Giovanni concludes it's very handy that La Volpe always knows to find one when you need it.

19 Orgy

These parties are more to his father's tastes than his his, Cesare firmly tells himself, perhaps letting his eyes linger thoughtfully on the multitude of courtesans a moment longer than intended. Then a familiar slender hand grazes his thigh and he is reminded that the only person even close to matching his own schemes, cunning and skill is the woman on the throne next to his.

20 Scoff

”I spend all my time in the Animus,” Desmond frowns, ”Lucy's keeping an eye on Abstergo and Rebecca... hacks and stuff. What do youdo, really? Anyone could use, what, Google and Wikipedia?”

Shaun grins or at least bares his teeth.

”You mean Templar Central One and Two? No, it's called obtaining knowledge, Desmond - sifted like little gold nuggets of fact from the vast sands of ignorance you're so fond of burying your head in. Google can't help you there, I'm afraid.”

21 Scolding

At the time, Ezio always figured Giovanni's constant nagging and pleading with him to stay out of trouble was only the worrying of an overprotective father. Only later was he taught discretion was part of the ancient Assassin's creed. He never got very good at it, even so.

22 Bonfire

No-one is entirely sure why Julius II has tempered justice with mercy for now and opted for his enemy's imprisonment rather than death sentence. As far as la Volpe is concerned, the way Cesare goes pale whenever the topic is brought up is at least good for entertainment.

23 Nakedness

Being exposed holds no particular shame for him, but the walls and floor are freezing to the touch, draining precious warmth from his aching body. Now would be a prudent time for an accursed thief to show up with a blanket to bargain for.

24 Arbiter

It was funny, Machiavelli drily noted in his notebook, how God and Divine Justice so often were on the side of the biggest army with the sharpest swords.

25 Purgatory

The land burns, smoke choking the sky and tinting the sun a sickly shade of blood. It is with a cold and unfamiliar sense of foreboding Cesare hurries through the flames toward the towering walls of the fortress to escape this hell on earth – one way or another.

26 Fingernail

Ezio has more than his fair share of scars adorning his hardened body, some remembered more fondly than others. He would never dream to ask Caterina to trim her nails, or use them just a touch more carefully.

27 Slavery

The Creed dictates freedom of thought, and in his reckless youth Altaïr would use it as justification for any rash impulse. But the older he grows, the more he comes to realize freedom and all its crushing responsibility can be the harshest master of all.

28 Carnivore

When confronted on his nasty habit of biting, Volpe only grins and quips something about foxes and their nature. Cesare is tempted to snap he's often seen dirty foxes prowling the back streets for garbage, but can see where Volpe would go with that, and so holds his tongue.

29 Bluntness

Ezio is too flustered after his mother's blunt request he find other outlets than vaginas to realize the enthusiastic young artist at his side seems more than eager to offer a few suggestions on the particular subject.

30 Vow

He will live, Cesare vows. He will live, he will regain his freedom, his power and his army. At any cost. And then they will. All. Pay.

31 Blending

It was simply not fair, thought Machiavelli, that no matter how solid your acting, no matter how meticulousyour disguise, Volpe would immediately spot you in a crowd and grin at you. Clearly spying on the sly old fox called for more cunning means, he conceded as he made his way to the Rosa to shamelessly bribe Claudia for information.

32 Misconduct

“Not that we are in any particular hurry to the Castello,” Orsini says, the knuckles of his war-gauntlet quite pleasantly buried in Cesare's face, “but things would just be easier all around if you would stop squirming and came quietly.”

33 Ultimatum

“If you don't stop hogging my mp3-player,” Rebecca whispers softly in Shaun's ear, “I'll tell Lucy exactly whatyou and Desmond used her yoghurts for last night.”

34 Takeover

“Stop!” Lucrezia commands as the soldiers feed the paintings to the fire – already the image of a swan is crackling and fading to black amongst the flames. Such a waste of beauty. She hasn't even realized Cesare is standing behind her, fierce and bloodied after the battle, until he speaks.

“You like them?”

She nods, and he touches her cheek with a smile, careful not to stain her hair.

“Then they are yours. A memento of the day the Assassini fell.”

35 Afterlife

“I blame you for this,” says Cesare flatly as the imps re-heat the lake of boiling tar. Again. “There is no God, you said. No heaven and no hell, you said. Stupid old bastard.”

Rodrigo mutters something about Hell being other people, but will have to concede that in this trifling matter, yes, he was mistaken.

36 Distaste

He would rather be hated than forgotten, Cesare sullenly thinks, rubbing his stiff hands for warmth. Bony, filthy, with the matted long hair of a hermit falling into his face, he has to settle for the guards' contempt. At least it's better than pity.

37 Slavery

He isn't really paid, Leonardo thinks, merely kept alive, yes. Not really compensated as such. And so the construction of the intricate war-machines is really on the consciences of his masters, not his. Sting of guilt quenched he returns to the blueprints with renewed fevered enthusiasm.

38 Probation

“What's the catch”, asks Cesare with deepest suspicion.

“No catch,” Volpe assures, looking innocent. “Just a reward for your recent good behaviour. Keep it up and there may a meal and a hot bath in it for you, too.”

Cesare does not for a moment believe they are just going out 'to stretch their legs', but a meal does sound inviting. He follows.

39 Adversity

Ezio strongly disapproved of the idea of his little sister taking over the Rosa in Fiore, and he frankly can't say whether he is more disappointed or proud when it flourishes under her care.

40 Bluntness

“You are a thief,” Machiavelli growls, piqued into a rare display of anger. “A liar and a cheat and an honourless thief!”

Volpe grins.

“All those things. And I'm still better than you.”

41 Scheming

Ezio gave the Apple to Mario, who had it stolen by Cesare, who gave it to Leonardo, who found it plucked out of his helpless hands by the Pope and his daughter. He ponders life was easier when he was just a painter. The Apple is a thing of awe, but the intrigues in its wake make his head hurt.

42 Favorite

It wasn't that Cesare particularly hated his older brother. It was just that while he no longer childishly sought his father's approval, the position as the Pope's favorite son came with several practical perks. Unfortunately for Juan, that meant he simply had to go.

43 Truce

When things are civilized, they can be bearable, almost even pleasant. The food is good, the wine plentiful, and Volpe's skilled fingers all but gentle. An unspoken truce, no matter how temporary. But neither man ever forgets the truth, which is war.

44 Scour

They answer to no-one, self-proclaimed executioners beyond all law. Too much blood on their hands now. Just before sunrise Cesare gives the command to attack. The cleansing of Monteriggioni has begun.

45 Extrovert

To hold his own council and play his cards close to his heart has always been his way, and he knowshe is a master at his game. And yet, Machiavelli can grudgingly admit to himself, it isn't until the boisterous chaos in human guise that is Ezio bursts in on the Roman scene that he begins to see how they will win this war.

46 Protagonist

“I will avenge the cowardly, treacherous plot against my father,” he thinks. “I will root out all those involved, every single one, and I will kill them and all they stand for.”

No-one ever sets out to be a hero, only to do what is right.

For Cesare, the path ahead is clear.

47 Willpower

It is never easy. Every time Altaïr visits his (his!) bureau in Jerusalem, Malik has to struggle with himself not to slay the man in his sleep. On many a moonlit night, only a lifetime of discipline stays the blade in his white-knuckled hand.

But strangely, it does get easier over time.

48 Esacalation

At first it had been mere proof of his ability to go anywhere in Roma as well he pleased, the taunting and impotent rage in response a given bonus. After some time, forced still-furious intimacy gained through blackmail had appeared a logical step. Then force turned out redundant. As Cesare clings to him, nails biting into his arms and teeth bared with need, Volpe admits to himself he would never have suspected the caged Borgia would so willingly use him to sate his desires – nor the other way around.

49 Torrent

Raw grief fades over time, a broken heart healed into a dull ache. The thing that keeps Claudia from sleeping at night is not all she has lost, but her screaming frustration at not being able to take her fate, and that of those responsible, into her own hands.

50 Danger

The peaceful life he had envisioned just the evening before will have to wait, Ezio grimly decides, pressing a hand to his wounded shoulder and focusing on not falling off his horse. And despite the shock, grief and pain, it somehow feels right. He has lived this life so long, he isn't sure he remembers how not to.

51 Splattering

Leonardo likes to buy birds at the market and set them free, watching with dreaming eyes as they take to the endless sky. Once, Ezio surprises his friend with twenty white doves. Much belatedly he wishes he'd remembered that stressed pigeons prefer to lighten their load before taking off.

52 Ramification

“It is time you take responsibility for your actions,” Rodrigo snarls, and Cesare struggles with the impulse to scream, childishly, “But father, younever did!”

53 Concession

“I'm not sure we should...”

Lover and Thief, silhouettes in the dark, alone. A light touch.

“Come now. It will be good, I promise.”

“But, what if...”

“Ssh. Are we not both Assassins? Everything is permitted.”

His honed thief's nerves tingling with foreboding warnings, La Volpe allows Claudia to persuade him in the end, knowing Ezio will probably kill him, and that it will no doubt be worth it.

54 Leer

You can't even seehis face in the shadows beneath the cowl. And yet, Volpe just standing there outside the bars, nonchalantly leaning one hand against the wall, makes Cesare want to scream. Or punch him hard. Preferably both.

55 Whisper

Ezio reflects that there are few other voices he would instantly recognize by just a short, urgent uttering of his name. His hesitation to turn around stems not from uncertainty, but the childish wish to postpone the trial of his oldest friend's rumored treason just a few moments longer.

56 Absurdity

At first Ezio had felt confused, then worried and finally terrified. But as they've fled Florence and the man introducing himself as uncle Mario tells him that his family belongs to an ancient clan of legendary assassins, relief washes over him. Finally is clear it has all been an insane dream. He can't wait to wake up.

57 Experimentation

Leonardo da Vinci is a true genius, his brilliant mind always seeing the world through a lens of wonder. Nothing escapes his never-sated curiosity – but that a small poseable wooden mannequin could be used like that? Cesare is a man not easily impressed, but will have to admit the artist rarely fails to amaze.

58 Farewell

It is with uncharacteristic kindness Volpe kisses him, between shared gasps for air after their final tryst. A last goodbye before the approaching dawn will see Cesare on his way to exile in Spain.

”Growing sentimental, old fox?” the younger man scoffs at him. ”No need. I shall return soon enough, and repaint the walls of Roma with Assassin blood.”

Volpe just smiles. He has already helped Ezio prepare his own journey and knows with certainty that Cesare will never again return to Rome.

59 Turf

”Maybe Giovanni could get away with doing paperwork all day over in Florence,” Mario says, and his tone clearly states what he thinks about his brother's choice. ”But arround here we train Assassins, not accountants or delivery boys.”

Ezio's body has never ached as much in his life as it does after his first day of training with his uncle.

60 Smoothness

When she smiles her deep red lips are like tantalizing rose petals, framed by sun-ray golden hair. She is smooth, flawless, perfect. But every rose has its thorns, and Lucrezia's are laden with poison.

61 Kneeling

Every fiber of Ezio's body strains desperately to regain control as he jerks like a puppet on golden strings of light.

”You are lucky,” breathes Rodrigo in a low, husky growls, leaning hard on the staff after the battle, ”So verylucky, little Assassin, that I am in a hurry.”

As the dagger sinks into his guts, Ezio briefly thinks that indeed, it could have been so much worse.

62 Purgatory

The imps don't know whether to feel amused or put out that the screaming, flailing argument between father and son has by now escalated to the point they don't even seem to register the lake of boiling tar anymore. A bit of respect for good solid workmanship, is that too much to ask?

63 Lick

It has to be said in favour of Machiavelli's assassin reflexes that the unexpected lick at his ear out of the dark earns Volpe neither a jump or a shriek but a rapid fist to the nose.

Only half an hour later, safely home in his bedroom, does Niccolo allow himself to contemplate what might have otherwise transpired.

64 Bonfire

It is a sad thing, reflects Ezio in hindsight, older, wiser, that compared to all the priceless art and knowledge fed to fire during Savonarola's mad reign of Florence, the mere loss of a human life that ended it is remembered with little sense of loss or revulsion.

65 Last

After Mario's death, Ezio has felt the weight of being the last Auditore Assassin ever heavier on his shoulders. But as he watches Claudia fearlessly take her leap of faith, he wonders how he could ever have been blind enough to think himself alone.

66 Well

The guards in hot pursuit yell and stab at wells, haystacks and dark alleyways. From his perch on a rooftop Ezio smiles. He always did prefer to take to the sky.

67 Wrongdoer

As his support falters and the opposition grows ever bolder, Cesare becomes increasingly frustrated with their attacks and accusations. He would prefer to answer only for his own sins, not those of his dead father.

68 Deliberate

It really is getting unnerving, decides Machiavelli, the way Volpe has taken up the habit of commenting on his every observation with a frosty ”Indeed” or ”Yes, quitethe coincidence”. He wishes he could believe the man isn't doing it on purpose.

69 Counter

When he first arrives in Jerusalem, Altaïr can't quite shake the feeling that the only thing between him and certain death is a rather narrow, map-strewn desk.

70 Bribe

Cesare has always been good at striking a profitable bargain. Unfortunately Borgia as a currency is bitterly deflated, and these days he often have to sell himself too cheap for comfort. Even though it isa warm, snug blanket.

71 Chess

Cesare knows he is a brilliant strategist – not so much because of the expected praise from his subordinates as from the satisfactory number of pins currently adorning his map of Italy. He would like to believe himself modest in this, careful not allow hubris to cheat him of a victory. And yet he never knows whether to frown or laugh helplessly as the absent-minded artist all but appologetically check-mates his king time and time and time again.

72 Feel

Leonardo never knows how to feel when Cesare enters the room. At first he is apprehensive, but as weeks turn into months and he realizes he's not only allowed but encouraged to dream up grander designs than ever before he is thrilled.

In the end, seeing the Assassins' plans put into motion long before Cesare even knows the final battle has begun, he can only avert his eyes in regret.

73 Mister

”Outside the kingdom of God is the realm of men,” Salai says, leaning just an inch too close. ”You worship there, Messere?”

Only years of training his clueless look on Leonardo helps Ezio keep a straight face as he blankly waves for the boy to follow him.

74 Fine

There are simply too many guards around for a discreet kill, so Ezio grudlingly counts the florins and hands them over. How was heto know he wasn't allowed to park his horse there? Time to liberate another stable from its Borgia-tower shadow, he decides. Burning them all down is easier than keeping track of territories anyway.

75 Dog

If La Volpe is the fox and Ezio the bird of prey, Pantasilea ponders, then Bartolomeo reminds her of a large, lumbering dog. Faithful and loyal unto death, but with a booming bark and a vicious bite for those who threaten those dear to him.

76 Forgotten

When Volpe appears he is the first person Cesare has seen in days. He greets the thief with his usual brazen curses, careful not to let any trace of relief shine through. Of all things he is most afraid to be left alone to die; not slain out of hatred or need, but simply ignored and forgotten.

77 Changed

Had Ezio been the kind of man to think upon such things, he might have noticed the Cesare facing him atop the towering walls is not the self-assured young general he met a handful years previous in Roma. Tired-looking and hunched over he looks defeated even before the battle has begun. But Ezio is here for one single purpose alone, and has never been the kind of man to think of such things anyway.

78 Gondola

Antonio assures Leonardo that only from an extensive tour with his private gondola will the artist truly get to know his new home town. As it happens, a rocky two-hour boat ride later, Leonardo still hasn't really seen much of the city. But that's quite alright, as he happily agrees to repeat the endeavour soon again.

79 Casino

It never hurts to try to win Fortuna's favour when gambling is one of your favorite pastimes, Salai knows, but in this particular case divine intervention is quite a bit closer at hand. As long as you have La Volpe's favor, the dice at the Sleeping Fox will never let you down.

80 Soup

The first bowl of watery gruel ends up thrown in the guard's face with enough force to break his nose. The next morning the second splinters against the wall. Nearly a week passes before he forces himself to eat the fifth, to preserve his strength.

Cesare closes his eyes as he quickly raises the bowl to his face to wolf down the hundredth, before the reflection in the dull surface can show him what he has become.

81 Carrot

”Tell you what,” murmurs Volpe in the starving prisoner's ear, dangling the vegetable in front of his face, ”If you give me a good enough show I'll even let you keep it for supper when you're done.”

82 Madame

Volpe has to admit himself impressed – Claudia is shrewd, ruthless and horrifyingly practical, and stillmanages to be praised a good businesswoman rather than cursed a thief.

83 Kilt

Yes, Ezio decides as he flexes his body inside the unfamiliar weight of Romulus' armour, there is definitely a draft around his nether regions. Whatever the old Romans may have thought, a skirt of leather belts does notconstitute proper clothing.

After some swearing and creative arranging of his spare cloak he considers it may well look even moreof a skirt, but at least this cut preserves his manly dignity when he jumps.

84 Theft

He has stolen valuables, information, people and lives. La Volpe draws in a deep breath as he surveys Roma in the first light of morning, then exhales in satisfaction. She is the greatest city in the world, and she is all his for the taking.

[upcycleability]

We Do NOT Have an “Overpopulation“ Issue

This is more likely than not going to lose me some subscribers, but as an environmentalist, a disabled person, and a minority, I feel I NEED to get the facts out there when it comes to climate, pollution, environmental health, and the myth of overpopulation.

The Pseudoscience of Overpopulation

Some infographics say that reducing the number of kids you have will make a marked difference on the planet. Personally speaking, I think we all should adopt more instead of having our own kids, but that far surpasses environmental reasons and gets into foster care and other issues I will not get into here.

But overpopulation is not an issue. The poorest 50% of the world, or 3,5 BILLION people, only account for 10% of CO2 emissions. The richest 10% account for half of all emissions. In fact, according to Oxfam, the richest 1% of people in the world create more CO2 emissions than the bottom 50% combined.

And it is not just greenhouse gasses, rich people are also far more likely to create more waste overall, with rich countries generating 2-5 times more trash overall than poorer continents like Africa.

And this does not take into account CAFOs, global factories, massive fisheries, overseas production, etc. Demand for cheap goods have been artificially inflated over the years, and multimillion, if not multibillion, dollar corperations are to blame, not population.

We have the money, the tech, the know how, and the power, as a people, country, etc, to eliminate plastic pollution, to drastically reduce the creation of cheap commodities, to tax carbon emissions by factories, to reign in the exporting of labor and pollution, and to work on slowing the demand for crap products. But rich corperations and lobbyists have blocked those at every turn. Suing governments over plastic bag bans due to “violations of free trade“ and using the same bullsh!t excuse to force countries like Rwanda to take our garbage secondhand clothes.

You can’t just tell consumers that it is their fault for consuming when they only reason they are consuming at all is because corperations and lobbyists have created products and advertising based around enticing human’s evolutionary desires. Junk food, for instance, was specifically tailored to appeal to our evolutionary desires for fats and salt, making it hard to resist the urge. It is far easier to go after the maker of the junk food than it is to tell every human on earth to stop eating as much of it.

The Fascism of “Population Control“

Population control as a means of curtailing environmental issues does little to actually curtail environmental issues. As I said above, the vast majority of the population of the planet create an acceptable amount of emissions, pollution, and more. The issue is with the small number of rich people who exploit natural resources for monetary gain.

But what is the issue with enacting population control? Well, first of all, by enacting how many kids one is “allowed“ to have, you are using the government as a means of oppressing women’s bodily autonomy. This also threatens women with shame, suppression, fines, or even forced vasectomies, if they dare to commit the “crime“ of having "too many” kids.

There are also historical precidents when it comes to population control that ultimately harms minorities, women, the poor, and the disabled. China’s 1 child policy plus their Patriarchal nature made it so that men were favored more than women, and female babies were left to die. Eugenics in the US also forcefully sterilized people who were seen as disabled, mentally ill, etc, and often targeted minorities and the poor.

We have gotten so far in medical science that we may be able to determine if a child might have a disability before the 13 week mark, allowing for that child to be choiced out via abortion. I have spinal issues, and deal with severe ADHD. This means that under this ideal of population control, I would be choiced out.

And this does not even take into account other methods in which people will kill their children, leave them out to die, lie about their child being “kidnapped,“ or giving them up for adoption because they don’t fit the mould of the parent.

What to do instead

Instead of spreading this myth of overpopulation, and thus blaming poor and/or non-white countries for having lots of kids, there are more important things we can do. For instance, VOTE!

Vote for people in state and local elections who will have a direct impact on your environment. Vote for people who actually care about reducing emissions and living a more eco friendly lifestyle.

Pressure companies into making changes to their pacakaging, to work on providing end-of-life alternatives for their goods, switching to nuclear or renewable energy for their grid, and more.

Living an eco friendly lifestyle ourselves is a good starting point, but the governments and corperations make the majority of the trash and environmental harm. Do not harm minorities because you have an ignorant misunderstanding of how the world works. Do your part, and force the people who are causing this problem: rich folk, corperations, and governments, to do theirs.

***

If you liked this article and want to help me with creating a more eco friendly and sustainable space, as well as providing upcycled and hand made options to buy, please purchase from my Etsy shop at Upcycleability.

Check out my eBay account at Luceines

And find used clothes that I get when dumpster diving at my Poshmark account UpcycledLucy

[morgana-ren]

Come Down to the Black Sea

Summary: The sea seems to call to you, but it’s not the tumultuous clash of the waves you should fear. Something lurks deep beneath the black waters, something sinister with a piqued interest and ill intent. 

Rating: Teen, unless I chose to post the later chapters. Then things get all dirty and stuff.

Warnings: Siren!Shigaraki. So, there’s that. Foul language, as always. Slight struggle.

Hello, please take my garbage. This was originally a discord exclusive ficlet that ended up too fucking long. I meant to post it a while back but got distracted. I’ve read over it and I hate it a lot more than I did originally, more than I can really convey, but I feel bad for not posting anything story related for a while and maybe some folks will enjoy this. I promise I edited, I swear. Never thought I’d write something like this. Ever. and by ‘like this’, I mean no filth less than 500 words in. Either way, here it is. 

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”

The sea is as much a constant to you as the gentle breeze that blankets your little port town. Every action you take daily in some small way reminds you that not so far away, the unforgiving tides are lapping hungrily at the shore and the restless ocean waters stir miles from the coast. Every breath you take is somewhat tinged with the briny smell of sea salt and slight sulfur. Seafood stalls and restaurants dot the coastal region, making up a large portion of the diets and employ of the folks who make their homes here. 

Yet, for as big of a part of their lives as it is, there is so little known about it. 

The ocean’s mysteries are as vast as her expanse and as deep as the trenches that lurk within her depths. 

Children are raised on cautionary tales, made acutely aware of the ever-present dangers of life near the open water. Rip currents and drowning, sailors lost at sea and boats that never make it to harbor. Hostile creatures that make their nests within the darkened deep  beyond the pale of human experience. These things are often as mysterious as they are tragic and leave behind loved ones mourning not only the loss of lives, but the answers they’ll never have.

Sometimes, you can’t help but wonder if your kind has gotten just a bit too comfortable near the seaside. 

You’re not the only one that thinks so. 

It’s not by any stretch of the imagination to consider humans a loud and overwhelming presence. They dominate any space they come across, often having little to no regard for any other living creature and imposing their will on anything unfortunate enough to cross their path. Once tranquil steads are trampled, native creatures baited and hunted, and soon there’s no semblance of the beauty that once existed. Humanity leaves behind an impossibly large footprint that destroys whatever is caught beneath its crushing boot.

The ocean is no exception. 

Sailors, whalers, and fishermen blot the waters, disrupting the natural cycles of the creatures that make their homes beneath them. Garbage, rot, and other various forms of filth are callously dumped and left to drift. Human hubris has seen the death of the coral reefs, the extinction of entire species, and even radiation left to leak and poison everything in its path. 

The only place safe from the fecund shadow of destruction that looms wherever humans may roam are places far too treacherous to facilitate their survival. 

You’ve come to believe that maybe beings that are forced to breed in that darkness grow to harbor a grudge against that which pushed them there.

Your little seaport city has always been relatively calm. It attracts enough tourists to keep it economically stable, but not so many as to make it a cultural hub. The signature beaches are only mildly clogged with tourist trap giftshops, and while the sands are busy, there’s not so much foot traffic as to make it unpleasant to visit. 

Things have run relatively smoothly for your hometown, at least for the majority of your life. There’s the one-off oddity every now and again, but for the most part, it’s a fine place to live. The native folk are kind enough, and there’s decent opportunity for growth. Still, life always left something to be desired; some greater need that tugs at you and calls you toward the ocean.

Watching the fishing vessels come to and from the bay can be calming. What started as a time wasting hobby as a child has turned into a nightly practice. The marine layer makes it difficult to see early mornings, and the incessant chatter of tourists and their screeching younglings make it difficult to think during the daylight hours. It didn’t take long before the boats mattered little, and it was the time alone you valued. You’d curl up in the still-warm sand, gazing out into the horizon and watching the moon rise high above the waves, listening to the sound of the ocean and losing yourself in its subtle song.

Even as adulthood inevitably sought you out, you found time for your solitary moments that existed between no one but you and the horizon. 

It brought you a sense of peace. No matter how much time passed, a part of you stayed anchored to the beach. 

Yet, nothing stays peaceful forever, especially near the rocky shoreline.

It started with a missing boat.

It was the talk of the town. A small schooner had gone missing just off the coast and never returned. A band of brothers had set out for a weekend voyage and by Tuesday, no word of them had returned to shore. It had made the local news, pictures of the men aboard flashed across the screen, all smiling faces and sunburned skin. They were experienced sailors, raised on the waves and having spent more time in a boat than they did on land.

Surely, they were fine. Everyone hoped for the best. 

At least until pieces of the boat washed ashore a week later, no sign of brothers anywhere.

That incident was the first of many.

Early morning swimmers began to disappear without a trace, divers vanishing without warning. More and more boats failed to make it to harbor despite calm conditions, and soon some people rejected the water all together. The missing persons board was filled with more macabre grinning faces that served as reminders than ever before, and inevitably, people became paranoid.

Superstition gained favor over logic, and tales spread of a malevolent being plaguing the coast began to spread. Children were warned against playing in the tides and tourists begin to shy away from the port. Locals and witnesses talk amongst each other, claiming to see a pair of vicious, glowing red eyes from deep within the water after dark.

Those who denied the possibility shunned those who fell into the myth, claiming that it was clearly boat lights and that folks were too finicky. There was no mysterious sea monster, only misfortune and the loose lips of idle handed fools. 

Still, that didn’t account for the sudden surge in disappearances nor did it explain why no remains were ever found. 

The mysteries intrigued you, but you worry little for the danger. While you weren’t entirely sure what to think, you never stepped far into the ocean on your nightly visits, mostly only skirting around the water’s edges and observing. Superstition be damned, this was the one place you felt a sense of utter calm and peace. You’re not disturbing the sea or her inhabitants; only sitting by her and admiring her beauty.

You mind your business along the beach and you think that keeps you safe, but that doesn’t spare you his wrath.

A lonely night walker, you loiter along the sands and drag your feet through the wetness. You never let the water flood past your ankles, opting to squish the damp muck beneath your toes instead. He watches you, just out of his reach and still so close. Rage simmers in his chest and his fingers twitch, longing to rip you apart, feel your heartbeat as it slows and ceases beneath his fingertips. He doesn’t dare try his luck against the surface, but you infuriate him. 

Time and time again, he’s tried to lure you out.

You never fall for it, though he can tell by the way your eyes linger on the ocean a tad too long that you're curious. If he cared enough to place it, he'd say you look sad, maybe a little forlorn. After all, who comes to a deserted beach alone at night that isn't?

Always the same section of sand, always the same look on your face. You kick at the particles stuck to your grimy feet like it'll sooth whatever repressed emotion you're stewing in, and he can't help but scoff. 

Humans are completely ridiculous. 

Still, he watches, determined to see you inhale deep the waters around you while what little light you have left in your eyes leaves, same as the rest of your kind that has fallen prey to his deadly actions.

Night after night he waits, and night after night you resist. You don't fall for his tricks, even the ones that beguile the seasoned sailors. It's curious, he'll admit. No matter how longingly you look at the ocean like it could offer you something you need desperately, you never give into the temptation to wade just a little deeper, just take a few fucking steps forward. Perhaps you come from a sea fairing family who had elders that warned against the seduction of the low night tides, or maybe your primal human brain still holds an inkling as to what dwells deep beneath your world, but either way, it agitates him more than he'd like.

He's always had a wanderlust and never sticks around the same sections for long, but the fact that you've been evading the watery grave he dug just for you grates at him. He finds himself waiting moonrise after moonrise to see your form emerge, wracking his brain for ways to trick your feeble human mind into his waters. He's better than you, in every sense of the word. This shouldn't be this difficult. 

If he didn't know better, he would say that you know. You never quite look directly at him, but your head is always turned in his direction, as if you have some sixth sense of his location. He doesn't like it. Even though you're the one in the sights of a predator, it makes him feel like a goldfish trapped in a tank. You piss him off.

But eventually, one night, his patience finally pays off.

Warily, you perch yourself on some rocks that stray into the ocean. You don't even dip your feet in, which, while not ideal, would have been enough for him to work with. Instead, you sit with your arms crossed over your knees, same distant grimace on your face that you sport every night. You seem hypnotized by the reflection of the moon on his waters, hardly blinking or even really breathing except for the occasional despondent sigh.

The thing that stirs you from your daze is a flash of silver just under the water beneath where you're sitting. At first you think it's a fish, since it's not uncommon to see them around when all the beachgoers retreat for the day, but the eerie luminescent glow is unlike any fish you've ever seen before in a life almost wholly occupied by the sea. You watch intently for a moment, hoping to see it again, but give up when all that greets you is the deep, murky blue of sunsetted waters. 

Still, once you pull your eyes from the gently splashing waves, it catches your attention once more. You're curious if you're just seeing strange broken reflections of the moon, but that wouldn't explain why once you offer it your attention, it disappears.

You keep your eyes down and stare long into the water, and eventually it appears again. Long and stringy, it’s definitely unlike any fish fin you've ever seen. It's incandescent almost, reflecting the silvery light of the moon with an oddly hypnotizing pearlescent glow. You’ll admit, it’s strange, but what alarms you the most are the two crimson eyes staring up at you from beneath the tangle of silvered webbing.

You almost recoil, but you're anchored in place by some hybrid mix of fear and curiosity. The urge to scream becomes paralyzed somewhere deep in your throat when a thin, gangly arm reaches up and grasps at the craggy surface of the rock before your feet. It looks… human... or at least it would, if it wasn't for the slight iridescent sheen of the skin- if you look closely, you can almost make out what appears to be scales and a thin fin that runs the expanse of the forearm. Thick, slimy webbing coats the inside of each finger, becoming more apparent as long claws stretch and crawl toward your retracted legs.

Those maliciously alluring eyes draw closer and closer to the surface and soon enough, you can make out what appears to be a face somewhere just under the waves staring right back up you.

Another hand joins the one currently clinging to the rock and the figure hoists itself up partway from the water, and soon you're face to face with... 

Well, you can't really say what. 

You were right, it's human. He's human. At least… half human?

Drenched white hair slicks back just below his shoulders and clings to the sides of his face, beadlets of water sliding down from the wintery strands down to what appears to be a pair of gills that encircle the rounds of his neck. There's something akin to black fins parting the slicked hair where his ears should be, but even that's not enough to pull your attention from the perverse scarlet eyes burning into yours from behind the severely salt-chapped flesh of his face. 

Unnatural hue aside, they’re utterly petrifying, and while something deep in your body tells you that you should run, you can't bring yourself to move from the spot. 

He pulls himself up a bit, lithe torso exposed as he lazily rests his head on his finned forearms by your feet. His body language is completely contradicted by the obvious hate in his expression, which only makes it even more difficult for your brain to try and decide what in the fuck you're supposed to do in this situation. 

What the hell is he?

You try to ask, but the shock of seemingly stumbling upon a possibly malevolent supernatural creature in the dead of night has caused a severe regression in your speech capabilities. The only thing your mouth is capable of producing is a series of incoherent babbles and sounds, hands shaking as your resist the urge to touch him to see if he's real or if you've been slipped some form of extremely powerful hallucinogen.

He studies you briefly through pale lashes and you could swear you see him roll his eyes before a prolonged blink. 

I'm sorry, is this not the expected result? He's looking at you like you're the weird one in this scenario?

Regardless, he lets you stare at him and allows your feeble human brain to come to terms with what you're seeing. Amazing, how quickly your kind forgets you don't exist alone. He draws the line, however, when you finally find the ability to go to poke his fins. He swats you away with an unnaturally quick movement from his slippery, wet hand and you stare at the water spots he leaves behind like it's the strangest shit you've ever seen.

"Are you often so rude as to touch strangers, human?"

You skitter back on your ass, eyes wide and disbelieving even as the truth stares you back with a mocking expression. His voice is raspy and graveled, cracking from what you assume is disuse. It takes you a moment to process his words, despite being absolutely certain that you’ve heard them.

 "Holy fuck, you're real!"

"Just grasping that, are we?"

"What the fuck are you?"

His face contorts and his lips lift in a snarl, revealing the extremely sharp looking fangs on either side of his mouth. Okay, so that might've been extremely rude. He's obviously sentient, so maybe saying something so brash and offensive wasn't really the way to go.

"Sorry, I mean -fuck - I've just never, uh-" You clear your throat awkwardly, still trying to decide whether or not to bolt. He watches you through tautly narrowed lids, and you get the feeling you should tread very carefully. Whatever emotion it is you see in his face, it certainly isn't patience.

"Are you a..." What would you call him? A mermaid? A fish-man? A sea spirit? It doesn't quite matter, since he doesn't give you time to finish your line of thought.

"Your people have no word for what I am." He speaks the words almost bitterly. "But just because your kind doesn’t acknowledge me doesn't mean I don't exist."

You're not entirely sure if you should apologize on behalf of the human race or admit yourself into a psych ward.

"What, uh, what should I call you... Um, sir?" Smooth. But you're not really sure what to say here. What exactly are proper honorifics when it comes to situations like this? 

"My name," He sighs again, as if it's some great chore to introduce himself. "Is Shigaraki."

"Okay, Shigaraki," You say his name, trying to get the hang of it as it rolls off your tongue. "It's nice to meet you- I think?"

He pays your attempt at polite conversation no mind at all. 

"What are you doing here, human?" 

Okay, he's curt and to the point. Good to know. He seems to have very little consideration for your bewilderment, despite being the one that demanded your attention in the first place, which isn’t necessarily a good thing when you don’t really know how to answer his question between the confusion and the sheer oddity. To be frank, you can’t muster much of a response. 

"Just... sitting here?" 

"No, I mean what are you doing? Every single night, you come here, you look at the sea for hours. Why?"

His pointed tone demands an answer, seeming irate or even provoked by your harmless nightly activity. 

"I don't know." For some reason, the question frustrates you as well, mainly because you really don't know. The ocean soothes you, even if you're just spectating it. It's too busy during the day, packed with tourists and teenagers yelling and bounding around in the sand, and while you're happy they're having a good time and all, the voices are impossible to drown out. Even the sea seems to protest their presence, the tide becoming higher and higher and more rambunctious until it almost forces the invaders out. More than once, folks have almost drowned for being too stubborn and refusing to cut their beach day short despite the obvious danger.

It seems to calm itself at night, waves gently washing ashore instead of slapping angrily at the feet of anyone treading the sand as if it's trying to coax them deeper only to pull them under. 

"You don't know?" It seems more like a statement than a question, and it's an unimpressed statement at that.

"Yeah. I don't really know. I just like being here, I suppose." You shrug, letting your arms fall limp at your sides. It could be the shock, but somehow, you’re actually managing to carry on the conversation with him. "Is there something wrong with that?"

Something flashes in his eyes, and it sends a shiver down your spine. Once again his body language drastically contradicts the vibe you're getting from him. He leans back casually in the water, and just beneath the edge, you see something slick and shiny flutter where you're certain his legs should be. "I guess not. But if you like it here so much, why don't you ever come in?"

"I-I don't know... The water is dangerous at night..."

“Is ‘I don’t know’ all you know how to say?” He gives you a derisive smile, mocking your tone while swimming graceful circles back and forth in front of the rock with an inhuman grace that sets you on edge. "Don't tell me you're scared, little human."

"I'm not scared, I'm just not stupid."

He runs his tongue over his fangs and something akin to a smile crosses his features. "Sure you're not. A little girl like you could never be afraid of a little water."

He's taunting you and you know it, but the way his eyes stay locked with yours as he swims around and around and around is making you feel a little dizzy...

"I'm not afraid-" 

"Come in then."

He dips into the water and disappears, and despite knowing better, you find yourself leaning over the rock to see where he's gone. He's waiting for you just under the waves. You can see the fluid flap of an ebony tail glimmering in the moonlight, silver hair haloed around his head. One clawed finger beckons you toward him, and you can feel yourself leaning further and further.

You're willing yourself to draw back, but the closest you can come is ceasing your forward movements. Even as you try, you can't pull your eyes away from his, staring unblinkingly up at you and glowing that foreboding sanguine shade that cuts even through the darkness of the waves.

'Come in, little girl. Show me you're not scared.’

His webbed hand threads up through the rippling surface, ready and waiting for yours. 

You can't help it. 

You reach.

You feel the slippery surface of his scaley skin interlocking with yours before something in his expression morphs into something wholly ominous and knocks you from your stupor. His magnetic eyes darken, sinister snarl hinting through the smile he’s straining to keep. This isn’t a serene sea creature playfully helping you face your fears; the ill intent is written on his face too prevalently as his mesmeric movements lure you toward the water. 

This is a predator, one determined to sink his teeth deep into your neck and steal the life from your still beating heart. You can feel it as his grip begins to tighten on your own palm.

Whatever spell he might have been casting has been broken if only just enough for you to shake yourself free. He's almost fully closed his fingers around yours before you jerk sharply, yanking your hand away. In anticipation of your movements, he thrusts up and out of the water, sharp claws digging hold into the skin of your forearm. You cry out from surprise more so than the pain even though the tips of his pointed talons slice open your skin with little to no resistance.

Fangs bared and enraged, he’s clearly livid now. All facade of relaxation falls away as his tail flaps furiously trying to pull you into the water with him. He's strong, but your will to live is stronger. The layered skin of your knees breaks as it scrapes against the jagged rock, body thrashing and desperately try to release yourself from his unyielding grip 

"Let go of me!" 

"Get in, you little brat!" 

"No!"

Falling backwards and trying to use your weight as leverage, you do your best to kick the creature off. You land a few good hits on his lean chest, but it's not enough to fully dislodge his grip. It takes a well-placed, hard slap to the side of one of his headfins to finally stun him. It was a last-ditch effort, but oddly enough, it works. 

He instinctively releases you in favor of cradling his tender, damaged fin. It isn’t long before he realizes his error and comes to his senses, but it gives you just enough time to pull away. He snaps forward several more times in pure, seething rage, fingers clamping around nothing but air in his failed attempt to seize you once more.

Sputtering and hissing, he even crawls partway onto the rock as you're furiously backpedaling away from the water to save yourself, giving you good look at where his hips meet the sleek scales of his pitch-black tail. It’s fascinating, beautiful even, but your body knows better than to slow to give yourself a better look. The split-second flash in your memory will have to suffice, coupled with the sheer and utter terror that will no doubt be permanently ingrained in your memory from this encounter. 

His inflamed face and vividly gleaming red eyes that watch you with palpable hate written in his expression are the last thing you see before pushing yourself up on your haunches and sprinting away from the sea as quickly as your little human legs can carry you. 

He watches you run, slamming a fist down on the rock in frustration and spitting out curses. He almost had you. He was so fucking close!

Once he manages to calm himself, he allows himself to coax the sore fin on the side of his head. Its thrumming in pain, overly sensitive to the touch. It was like you had known just where to hit him to make it hurt. Yet, as angry as he is, he can't deny that you're interesting.

"You can't escape me, girl. You'll be back."

The sea calls to you, and you can’t resist that call forever. You can’t resist him forever.

[fae-fucker]

Zenith: Chapter 72-75

Chapter 72

We’re in Nor’s POV. She’s moping around in her ruined palace. We find out she ordered the attack on Adhira on a whim after learning Valen was there. Cool.

This entire chapter is about how Nor is doubting herself and how she feels shitty even though this should be a triumph, and Zahn, her boytoy who’s literally described as being “too good” and “too pure” for her, telling that she’s a girlboss. Then they make out and “lust tumbles through her” and the chapter ends on them fucking.

Chapter 73

Last we left her, Andi had angsted herself out of the room after an argument with her dad. She walks the gardens for a bit, thinking about the creation myth of this world. It involves Light Bringers and Night Spirits, and two of them fall in love and from their union a black hole is born, but around it a galaxy forms, and it also creates the Godstars, which are described as “all-knowing beings with the power to give and take, the perfect mixture of darkness and light.”

So with all this wank about light and dark, you bet your ass Andi’s gonna start rambling about how dark and/or light her soul is, which she promptly does.

The creation myth is ... fine? In theory? But something light and something dark falling in love and creating the world is a bit trite, innit? Baby’s first creation myth.

Arcardius was the first planet inhabited by the Ancients hundreds of thousands of years ago, and many believed that the Godstars must have given the settlers this gift to welcome them to their new home. But whatever the reason, Andi was grateful for it. She didn’t want to be in the presence of darkness after everything that had happened. She needed to clear her mind of all that had been clogging it since the beginning of the rescue job.

I think “clogging” is a more apt description than Shinsay realized.

Andi angsts herself to a new place with a floating rock waterfall fountain thing, where Valen is, equipped with his painting gear. We get a description of how hot he is despite having been beaten and starved for two years, because of course.

His brown hair was cropped short and, skinny as he was, it made his strong jaw more pronounced. Everything about his once-soft face was now hard edges. No doubt, with some more meat on his bones, he would be striking.

The boy she remembered from years ago had now become a man.

Damaged as he must be on the inside, at least his physical wounds would heal. The awful things he had experienced at the hands of Xen Ptera would hopefully become a distant memory, as well, and more bearable with time.

The way the “hope he’ll heal emotionally as well, I guess” is tacked on right after “at least he’ll be hot” is wildly hilarious.

Valen asks if he can paint Andi. For some reason he immediately starts putting paint on canvas, because fuck sketching, he’s too fucking good for that. Also what’s the lighting situation like? He’s waxing poetic about the way the light hits Andi’s cheek plates and purple streaks (with red tips that reaches her mid-back), but seemingly doesn’t need any light on his canvas to see what the fuck he’s doing, in the middle of the night? Ok.

Later Valen, with a paint-stained face because Artiste, asks Andi if they can go somewhere else because he needs a break. They go somewhere with a view of the Magical Purple Pinterest Garden, and it’s very breathtaking and shit.

“We’ve been through darkness, Andi,” Valen said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t still live in the light.”

He closed his eyes, and Andi was left to ponder how much his words echoed her own thoughts from earlier, about the balance between the light and the dark.

Thank you for pointing out the thematic connection from THREE PAGES AGO IN THE SAME CHAPTER, Shinsay. I couldn’t have figured it out myself if you hadn’t held my hand like the imbecile I am. Seriously, I can’t figure out whether this is supposed to be helpful, or if Shinsay really thought they were geniuses and just had to point it out so we wouldn’t miss how cool and deep their writing is.

Anyway, Valen asks Andi to the obligatory ball portion of the story, saying he’ll have to dance as the future ruler of the planet (???) and he wants to dance with a friend rather than a romantic interest.

A friend.

He said the word as if he really meant it. As if, somehow, despite what they’d been through, the horrors they’d shared, Valen had begun to think of Andi as a friend.

Wow ... When he said friend, he meant friend, as in friend? Amazing. What a shocker.

Also, yeah, they did go through some horrors together. Like that time Dex tossed him down a flight of stairs while Andi was somewhere else. Or that time Valen was tortured for two years and Andi wasn’t.

Truly, a friendship of the ages.

I guess this is supposed to be a misdirect, but given how blatantly unrealistic this is and how easily Andi falls for it, it just makes her look a bit like an idiot, doesn’t it?

Chapter 74

This chapter is just Andi heading back to bed but taking a detour to the library, discovering that Alfie has been destroyed while some servants throw his body in the garbage on the way.

Oh no! Not Alfie, who’s only the most annoying character! Anyone but Alfie!

We get this:

As she turned to leave, a small, shiny object on the floor caught her eye. Quickly, Andi reached down and palmed it while the maid wasn’t looking. She didn’t know much about AIs, but the object in her grasp looked like a memory chip.

[...]

It could be nothing, a useless memento, but her gut told her something different. She’d look into it later.

I-is this supposed to be foreshadowing? You literally already told us what it was, why would Andi’s “gut” be telling her something she already suspects according to her narration?

Henlo? Editors? Anyone? Hello?

Hewwo? Mistew Pwesident?

Chapter 75

Dex has been following Andi around like a whole creep and watches her enter the library. He follows her inside and then we get the obligatory “shitty writer praises the magic of literature” bit.

“The general scoured the galaxy for this collection,” Andi said suddenly.

Dex turned. She stood near him in the dark room, softly lit by a beam of moonlight. The sadness in her eyes could almost be felt, like a tangible thing.

“You said Kalee was a reader,” Dex said. He laughed softly. “I didn’t know she was this much of a reader.”

“She loved exploring,” Andi said. “The general loved keeping her close. And so she turned to books for her adventures.”

“The sadness in her eyes was almost tangible.” There, I fixed it. Now shut the fuck up.

“What is it about memories,” Andi said suddenly, walking back toward him, “that gives them the ability to hurt us so badly?”

Dex shook his head. “The past is powerful. I think you and I both know that.”

She finally looked into his eyes. “I’m tired of letting the past control me, Dextro,” she whispered. “Aren’t you?”

I’m tired of letting this book control me, that’s for sure. What is this fucking dialogue? They keep talking in clichés without really saying anything, wasting our goddamn time instead of having an actual conversation.

Anyway, they finally get everything over with, apologize to each other, then make out but decide that uwu they can’t be together because they’re so hurt and damaged and whatnot. And honestly this wouldn’t be so cringeworthy if we didn’t know it’s all just a fucking ploy to drag out the will-they-won’t they subplot that I’m sure you’re all on the edge of your seats over.

The main reason this doesn’t work is that we don’t really get any sense of why this can’t work out? They just mutually agree, after having a hot makeout sesh, that they’re not meant to be for ... reasons? Even though they’re clearly attracted to each other, have no other attachments, romantic or otherwise, and have forgiven one another. Dex thinks they both “ruined” their future together in their own ways, but we don’t get any explanation for why they can’t just ... try to build a new one. Not even a “the memories hurt too much” or “I can’t afford the mental and emotional effort right now” or “there’s no time for it with the galaxy in chaos” or even a simple “I don’t want to.”

Instead it’s “I know we’re not meant to be because we both screwed the pooch last time we tried” and you’re just there like yes and? What’s stopping you from trying again? Give me a reason. IRL that would’ve been fine, but here it just feels like the authors are trying to convince US that they won’t get together, trust me, I promise, don’t even think about it and let it blow you away when they do.

I think, weirdly enough, the reason this doesn’t work for me is the perspective. Andi has actual valid reasons for rejecting Dex and seems like she’s still conflicted about her feelings for him, which would give her plenty of justification to not jump back into the relationship. But instead, we’re stuck with Dex, who’s been desperate to talk to Andi, be around Andi, who thinks about Andi constantly, but now, when a new beginning is within his reach, he decides without reason to not go for it because what, he feels like it’s not right and assumes it’s mutual? It doesn’t track with his previous behavior, which has been constantly focused on Andi up until this point. His sudden and inexplicable decision to not pursue this anymore goes against his behavior and motivations so far, which is why it strikes me as hollow and manipulative writing.

Had he maybe wanted to offer a new start but then Andi said something or he saw how unsure and hurt she still was and decided against it, then it would’ve made sense. Had we been in Andi’s POV and she just straight up rejected him, it would’ve made sense. But here, we get:

“We can’t... This won’t ever...”

“I know,” he said.

And in his heart, he knew that it was true. Their two worlds were never meant to become one. That even through the forgiveness, even with the unavoidable feelings that echoed between them, they could never share a future. They had already had their chance, long ago. They’d both ruined it in their own ways.

Andi doesn’t even give him a proper reason, he just assumes what she’s saying because apparently he’s been thinking the same thing? His “heart” just tells him it won’t work, when all this time, he’s seemingly done everything in his power to fix what he always knew wasn’t fixable? Huh???

I’m not saying this to say that Dex should’ve pestered Andi, he can very well accept her rejection but still pine for her silently. What I am saying is that this doesn’t track with his previous behavior, and just shows the authors’ hands in this as being a cop-out for the sake of melodrama and to keep the romance subplot going through cheap conflict.

Anyway, Dex asks Andi to the ball and she’s like “lmao too late” and then the chapter ends on this note:

When they parted ways, Dex couldn’t help but feel as if he were seeing Androma Racella for the very last time.

God, I wish that were me.

[momo-de-avis]

what are 2 books you feel you should be financially compensated for reading (beyond reimbursement for purchasing them)?

hard mode: nothing by zuzas.

now those are high stakes

first of all, this is hard for me to answer because I genuinely cannot read a book through to the end if I don't like it. I won't go past fifty pages if it's annoying me. So there are only a handful of books I can say I hated because I wasted time reading them, and even those I didn't finish.

But there are two, and one of them I actually talk about it all the time

First of all, fuck you, Flaubert. Fuck Emma Bovary. Fuck that book. Not only financial compensation, but emotional of some sort, cause you go through the 7 stages of grief reading that piece of garbage. Not after, during.

Like, every time I try to explain why I hate Madame Bovary so much I tell this little anecdote about my life. It was probably 2AM, I was still living with my mom, and I was in the living room. Back then, the History Channel---before it became exclusively devoted to Aliens, Hitler, and World War II---had a super interesting show called, I believe it was, Great Books. I caught only a few episodes, there was one on Janes Austen, another on Dostoevsky---and yes, one for Madame Bovary. Which was the one I saw that night.

And on that night, I was just chilling on my ass, and there was this expert on Flaubert explaining how the guy came up with the idea for the book. This woman had a PhD in literature. She studied Flaubert's life and history down to the letters and his intimacy. And I chuckled to myself, completely alone---and listen, you're free to believe whatever the hell yall want, but I swear on my cat this shit is true---and said to myself: "I bet this guy ran away to a cabin and dressed himself as woman to write this book." In fact, I hate Madame Bovary SO MUCH I've making this joke for YEARS, and it's why I call that pile of regurgitated french trash "literary transvesty" because it is literally a man playing dress up with no counter-balance to the absolute derailment of this woman's down-spiral. It's just the story of Emma Bovary going off her rockers, and there's no point where there might a slight indication of societal criticism. She's just a piece of shit. You know, at LEAST Tolstoi gave us Kittie and Levine as a counter-point. At LEAST Tolstoi built-up an immense backdrop with Stepane's adultery to understand the horrid treatment Anna is subjected to. At LEAST we are given a good characterisation of Karenine enough, whereas Charles Bovary is limper than a soggy sock. The only Ken doll I owned as a child had more charisma, and that bitch had no clothes.

And AT THAT POINT in the documentary, that lady expert with a whole PhD says something to this effect: APPARENTLY, Flaubert DID run off into a cabin in the fucking woods or some shit, and he did so with a locket, and what was in that locket? The hairs of his lover. Like, oh my God, I hate you so fucking much.

What I hate THE MOST about Madame Bovary is that despite being a shit book and shit story, and having been written by a guy who purposefully isolated himself from the woman he loved in the ass of the world, with a piece of her hair, as he dead ass attempted to "become a woman", whatever the hell that meant (but then again, so did every romantic writer back in the 19th century), this motherfucker was trialled in a court of law for this book (because adultery, women are frail, scandal, blah blah blah), and his defense was so amazing he actually coined a very important term in writing called Indirect Free Speech. Like, I genuinely hate this motherfucker but this absolute genius final take on his shit book just makes me hate him more. (For reference, this is where I learned this, Hans Robert Jauss explains this in his book Reception Theory)

The second book I think I deserve financial compensation for wasting the like, 3 days I wasted reading those first 100 pages or so, was Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest. Oh my God. Listen, back in the day, like every teenage girl in the early/late 2000s, I was discovering paganism and that kind of crap, so I had a lot of wiccan friends. And there was Charmed. Not the rebooted crap, the OG Charmed, when Rose McGowan was closeted terf and we believed she was cool. Everyone loved Charmed. And everyone who bought into the new-pagan stuff and wiccan stuff, they were all introduced by one of two ways: either it was Charmed, or The Mists of Avalon. Either or. No other way. At least around my circle, that is.

So I had a lot of friends squealing over this one book from Marillier. I was absolutely obsessed with Arthuriana because of Mists of Avalon, and my wiccan/goth friends were all over me telling me "OH you GOTTA read Daughter of the Forest if you love Mists of Avalon". It's comforting to know the one wiccan friend who persisted with that crap went wacko and literally vanished into the horizon because I wanted to smack her in the face with that stupid book.

Basically, at the time, I was balls deep into Irish Mythology. And as I read it, I thought it was EERILY SIMILAR to the Children of Lir. Evil stepmother transforming her step-children into swans? Hm? The one thing that threw me off was that, in the story, the hero had to sew these shirts from some godawful plant that fucked up her hands, and that ISN'T in the original Children of Lir story. Then again, Children of Lir is genuinely not a compelling story. Of all Irish myths, it might be the least compelling.

However, I recently learned that IT IS the same tale, despite what Marillier sold as being "inspired by the Brother Grimm". It turns out the Children of Lir is a tale known throughout Europe, spanning from Spain to Ireland, with some variations, and it exists in Germany, where the sewing of the shirts with that weird plant is a plot point. So I guess that was a determent, considering the story is set in Ireland. Also, you can tell the story was written by a herbalist because, oh my god she goes off about plants all the time.

I basically stopped reading because the heroine is a bit obnoxious and it felt like the plot was going nowhere. And at some point, it was literally a book about plants. Like, Marion Zimmer Bradley's books can be boring (take the Forst House, which is one of my favourites, there's gotta be like 100 pages in there about Eilan's boring life picking flowers, but it builds up to her character, at least). But this one, it was going nowhere, while at the same time, Bretons were landing in Ireland? What? My anger came from when I checked the wikipedia page before I gave up because I wanted to see if there was something redeemable in that shit, like, come on, motivate me. And when I read that there's a fucking rape plot thrown in there that bears no relevance for no other reason than... I don't know, fear of men? I gave up. That was definitely when I stopped reading and decided to set it aside. It's weird cause, from what I remember, I think the author wanted to write it in pagan Ireland, but I don't remember a single mention of a pagan god? It was so convoluted, man.

And why the Children of Lir??? I 100% share the opinion of Sorcha Hegarty from Candlelit Tales regarding the Children of Lir: it is THE LEAST interesting tale in Irish Myth, and also---and these are her words, not mine---the least Irish lmao

Honourable mention: Thérèse Raquin by Zola is another one that made me SO FUCKING PISSED OFF that piece of shit book REQUIRES psychological counseling. Like, financial compensation isn't even enough to go through that crap.

[fatehbaz]

The sea, as “a space unexplored […] offers a fleeting experience of an absolutely unknowable realm” [...]. It is, therefore, unsurprising that an important subcategory of the Weird focuses on oceans. [...] The Oceanic Old Weird is suffused with fear and loathing of the unknowable sea, which is imagined as a force of malevolent antagonism directed at ships and sailors, or as embodying the natural immanence of death and entropy. While Jolene Mathieson has previously discussed “hypermateriality” and “wet ontology” in the Oceanic Weird through a new materialist lens, alleging that the genre troubles the limits of “earlier modes of oceanic thought within the natural and social sciences,” we [...] instead [...] analyse the ways in which the genre’s aesthetics and themes mediate the violence, epistemes, and socio-ecological relations corresponding to the eco-racial regimes of capitalism and colonialism [...].

The Oceanic Weird emerged within a larger tradition of ecophobic tales at the turn of the twentieth century in a world still dominated by European colonialism, but increasingly reshaped by emergent US imperialism. [...]

[W]e elaborate on two tropes that flourished in an era when European and American powers competed for dominance in the Caribbean: monstrous octopi, which would metamorphose into the Lovecraftian anthropoid tentacular figure, and the Caribbean-centred myth of the Sargasso Sea as a “Weed World” [...].

-------

In legends of the weed-clogged Sargasso Sea, “ships became becalmed and trapped by the weed” in an area of the North Atlantic that would later be nicknamed the Bermuda triangle [...]. Several late nineteenth-century American and British writers “used the Sargasso as a setting for societies of people trapped there for generations” [...]. At the dawn of the twentieth century, one of the most influential authors of Sargasso tales, English author William Hope Hodgson, describes it as a place of absolute loneliness, an “interminable waste of weed -- a treacherous, silent vastitude of slime and hideousness” (p. 4) that eclipses humanity and enlightened rationality. Hodgson’s “From the Tideless Sea” (1906) depicts monsters of the deep lurking beneath this stagnant surface: “some dread Thing hidden within the weed” devours almost all of the crew [...].” In his subsequently published Sargasso-themed horror novel, The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” (1907), the tentacled creature is joined “by giant crabs, octopodes, and tentacled devil-fish, [..] giant fungi [..] trees that howl [and] […] weed men” [...].

As Emily Alder observes, these “[a]nimal monsters” are so unsettling because they “reveal the limits to scientific mastery over the natural world” (Alder 2017, p. 1084). “They violate,” she continues, “existing norms and knowledge systems; they flourish in environments in which humans are unfit and cannot dominate” and disturb “a colonialist centrism structuring relationships between humans and the more-than-human world” (ibid.). The Atlantic Ocean and its Weird creatures mark the limits of capitalism’s attempts to control the submarine world.

The Old Oceanic Weird imagines the Sargasso as a depository of a secreted, miserable history which invokes the temporality of the longue durée -- whether deep time provoking terror because it is seemingly beyond human conceptualization, or the catastrophic history of the four hundred preceding years of capitalist modernity. UK naval officer Frank H. Shaw’s “Held by the Sargasso Sea” (1908), which offers a paradigmatic condensation of imperialist tropes associated with the sea. mobilises both temporalities [...].

Shaw’s invocation of C*lumbus situates the Weird within a colonialist tradition that imagines the Caribbean both as site of triumphal European conquest and of fearfully insurgent natural alterity that might thwart or exceed European power and epistemes. At the same time, the passage offers a prescient, if unwitting, registration of capitalism’s transformation of the ocean into trash-heap and dumping-ground, full of derelict ships, but also the detritus of the Atlantic mercantile economy, trapped within a vortex that anticipates today’s garbage patch within the North Atlantic Gyre. The rampant seaweed reconfigures the ecophobic trope of monstrous tropical fecundity to imagine the loathsome vegetation as clogging and obstructing the technics and vehicles of maritime capitalism, thus resisting the rigid abstraction of nature.

-------

It is within Lovecraft’s sea horror that tentacular monsters and abyssal terrors achieve their most potent distillation, developed and refined throughout the Cthulhu mythos and its related tales of ancient underwater beings [...]. Critics have often noted that the horrors of the two world wars are central to the Old Weird, particularly in stories such as “Dagon” and “The Temple.” However, they have been less attentive to the geopolitical environmental unconscious of Lovecraftian eco-racial-phobia, which registers, even if often in displaced form, the emergence of the US as the new global hegemon in the world-ecology. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the US aggressively expanded into the Caribbean and Latin America, establishing the ecological regime of the “American Sugar Kingdom,” increasing its control over commercial sea lanes, and justifying “dollar diplomacy” through patriarchal-racist ideology. [...]

Furthermore, during the early twentieth century, tentacled figures were explicitly used to refer to Standard Oil. [...] More broadly, tentacled creatures were employed to critique new forms of imperialism. [...]

Within the more radical politics of the New Oceanic Weird, ecological crisis is often explicitly thematised, no longer mediating the imminent transition to a new oil-fuelled regime but rather the epochal exhaustion of the neoliberal ecological regime. As a mode that estranges “our sense of reality” (Noys and Murphy 2016, p. 117), the New Weird is particularly suited to addressing the changing realities of a warming planet. The uncanny totality of climate change is aptly captured in Gerry Canavan and Andrew Hageman’s concept of “global weirding,” understood as “a cognitive frame” aimed at refocussing “our attention on the localities within the totality of the global.” As they write, it “was intended to show us is that we are now living in postnormal times: we can no longer depend on the climatological patterns that up till now have more or less reliably structured our behaviors” [...].

Given the crucial role of the oceans in regulating the climate, it is no surprise that the Oceanic Weird should experience a revival in this context. [...]

-------

[T]he utopian trace in Indiana’s novel lies in its intimation that prospects for radical transformation lie in finding alternative, non-capitalist, ways of viewing the marine world, in restoring the numinosity of the oceans and revaluing all forms of life.

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Sharae Deckard and Kerstin Oloff. ‘“The One Who Comes from the Sea”: Marine Crisis and the New Oceanic Weird in Rita Indiana’s La mucama de Omicunle (2015).’ MDPI Humanities. August 2020.

[drferox]

Fantasy Biology: Living Snowmen

Time for a seasonal Fantasy Biology, and this time my lovely Patreon supporters have chosen the Living Snowman. Not something I’d ever see down here in Australia... or would I, out of their disguise?

Living snowmen are a frequent occurrence in Xmas myths, from the friendly Frosty...

To a creature more my style...

Because of course I look at this pile of ambulatory snow and think “This is clearly a well-camouflaged ambush predator.”

And because I am Australian, I also think that it is a snake. It’s clearly not a spider, and so snake is the only other option.

Imagine the scenario. There’s a perfectly normal clearing one day, in snows overnight, and as the snow piles higher these roughly columnar shapes appear, coated in snow, with a face at the top. The snow falls, and the snowmen appear.

Imagine it from the creature’s point of view. You’re a reptile used to hunting at ground level, then it unfortunately snows and the ground is far too cold for your long, slinky body. So you curl up to minimise head loss, and keep curling up over yourself like a coiled spring, gaining height above the building banks of snow.

Eventually you have this coiled serpent with its head on top, slowly being covered by more and more snow to hide its true nature, until a suitably sized prey item comes by. That’s why some snowmen look fatter than others.

And because I don’t strictly have to be bound by the current laws of nature, which are really just guidelines anyway, these serpents could have a later of fine downy feathers, a little like emu feathers, to help both insulate them from the cold, and collect the protective layer of falling snow. Eventually, all you see is a tall mound of snow with two dark eyes peering out at you.

These snowmen leave no footprints. They appear to melt away when the snow is gone. They may mostly be striking at birds and small mammals, but we all know snakes will take anything they think is small enough to fit in their jaws,

They wont strike at something they can’t eat. After all, if they strike and move, they’ve lost all their snow camouflage. So customs develop where people mark the snowmen with sticks if they are ‘safe’, but still wont let small children near them. Some bolder adolescents start marking them with hats, scarves, or funny faces. Their humor is wastes on the serpents within. Some people make fake snowmen, really big ones that absolutely look large enough to eat an adult human, which is all fun and games until a new one shows up after snowfall that wasn’t there before...

And when the warm weather comes, the snow melts away, the serpents shed their skin and downy coating and go back to a regular snake lifestyle, until the cold comes again.

Merry Xmas.

Consider these variants for your stories or games:

Pets. Sneks are cute! Somebody, somewhere, keeps small variants of the living snowmen and add artificial snow to their vivariums to encourage their unique behaviors. 

Jörmungandr. To the surprise of many, when the next ice age came, Jormungandr and its offspring also display the living snowman behaviors, though what they think they need the extra height to capture only inspires concern.

Circus. Constantly driven by the need for curiosity, humans in amusement facilities began experimenting with whether the serpents would behave similarly with alternatives to snow such as glitter and confetti. They will, and will also make use of smaller pieces of garbage when they escape into the urban environment.

Brought to you by my jolly Patreon supporters.