#this one is of the sad ist art! and it is much worse

[silverysnake]

Tagged by @pumpking64 thank you so much!!

Share your wallpaper: It‘s THIS art by @neverland-in-space (not gonna put it here bc I don‘t wanna repost)

The last song you listened to: I have a playlist with my favourite songs from this years eurovision that‘s just on repeat the whole time so I‘m gonna put the six songs that are in it here: Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä (Finland), Queen of Kings by Alessandra (Norway), Promise by Voyager (Australia), Blood & Glitter by Lord Of The Lost (Germany), Who the Hell Is Edgar? by TEYA and SALENA (Austria), Carpe Diem by Joker Out (Slovenia). Cha Cha Cha and Queen of Kings are definitely the two I‘ve listened to the most tbh bc I keep putting them on repeat until I remember that I could listen to some of the other songs too.

Currently reading: Started rereading Good Omens for idk the sixth or seventh time now and spatort fics of course

Last Movie: Stereo. Please don‘t ask me what it was about it was some weird german movie I found in the depths of netflix, the only thing I know for sure is that there was a ghost that was played by Moritz Bleibtreu. The last movie I‘ve seen in the cinema was the new Guardians of the Galaxy which made me cry my eyes out.

Craving: Some coffee and for my schürk/ross wg fic to finish itself bc I can‘t find my motivation

What are you wearing right now: cargo-pants and a batman-shirt

How tall are you: 173 so pretty average haha

Piercings: Had earrings since I was six

Tattoos: None, but I wanna get one soon

Glasses? Contacts?: Nope

Last drink: Water. Stay hydrated guys!

Last show: ‚last‘ ist good, I‘m watching seven shows rn (and yes I‘m gonna elaborate on that): 1) Spatort, 2) Soko Leipzig, 3) Polizeiruf Swiecko (the sad gay german cop shows, no one should be surprised by this), 4) Magicians with some friends (how does this show have so much plot I still don‘t understand?!), 5) Dark (every time when I say „hey this would be a funny thing to reveal but actually please don‘t i don‘t want the situation to get worse“ that exact thing is revealed like in the next one to three episodes and by now I‘m just horrified by everything), 6) Mord mit Aussicht (my bestie pressured me for weeks until I gave in and honestly it‘s pretty entertaining and another german cop show), 7) Supernatural bc for some reason I thought that is a good idea

Last thing you ate: some bread for breakfast

Favourite colour: Purple and green :)

Current obsession: The already mentioned sad gay german cop shows

Unrelated obsession: Norse Mythology

Any pets: Nope, but my parents have two cats and I‘ve missed them every day since I moved out

Do you have a crush on anyone: Nope

Favourite fictional character: It‘s been Loki for years so I guess he deserves to be on here (not just the Marvel version but in general) and I guess currently it‘s Adam Schürk haha

The last place you traveled: Spent a week in a village near Burg (bei Magdeburg) last month :)

Tagging: @shadow-of-a-cloud @homoromoacecase @neverland-in-space @lyxchen @anotherobsessedfangirl @schuerk-wie-schurke @ancient-namess and anyone else who wants to do this :)

[lilyvines]

anyone wanna be tagged in (another) dsmp edit

[ghostie-my-beloved]

could you possibly do a dream team fighting over the same darling, and decides that then one who capture the darling in a manhunt will win them/the darling, whiest the reader aka the darling is just terrified trying to run away?

chasing the rabbit

Synopsis: The Dream Team have their eyes on a certain prize. That reward is trying to escape their grasp, which is something they will not allow so easily

Pairing: manhunt!Dream / manhunt!George / manhunt!Sapnap x GN!reader (they/them)

A/N: This was the very first request I got with the Dream Team! It was very fun thinking of how to go about with this. I hope this will satisfy all of the Dream Team stans out there <3 (Art credits go to @/beauty_get on Twitter and SAD-ist)

TW: Depictions of violence and hunting, arson, gore, slight yandere/obsessive depictions (it could be taken however way the reader wants to see it though)

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There was no where else to go. You had to keep running from them.

Poor little unfortunate you just had to encounter this hunting team, at the worse time possible as well.

The Dream Team. A notorious manhunting team known for setting up their little chase-the-mouse games, all “for fun” as well. That’s what considered fun in their definition at least.

People have learned to stray away from this group of dangerous and rowdy boys, including yourself. And still, you still somehow managed to rope yourself into their little shenanigans.

One of the members of the trio, who goes by the name of Dream, has taken a special interest in you. And by that, he’s gotten very intrigued by you. And no one really knows why, not even yourself. You were just some random person that was trying to live their life, distancing yourself from any form of trouble. But that could no longer be avoided when you got dragged into their plans.

Dream and his other friends, Sapnap and George, decided to bring you into one of their little “games”.

All you have to do, is outrun them and survive throughout the woods for a full 24 hours, and make sure to not get caught. Simple enough, right? If you made it, they would leave you be. But if one of them one, they got to keep you to themselves.

Well, let’s just say these boys turned this game of hide-and-seek, into one of the most thrilling manhunts they’ve had in a long time. You were the prize after all, and a very valuable one at most.

Their little game that they deemed, “Chasing the Rabbit.”

The one who had started it all. The one who had the idea to bring you into the manhunts

Dream was the one who decided to tie you into his little plans. Tagging his friends along into the act as well

He found it both entertaining and adorable, that an individual like you could struggle so much against him, yet it almost didn’t do anything for your favor

The thrill of getting close to almost capturing you for himself, only for you to slip away last minute, absolutely frustrated him. But he also loved it

This is what a manhunt is supposed to feel like. The feeling of danger and excitement surging through your veins. Dream would do anything to experience this feeling

When Dream first noticed you, he took an interest in your mannerisms and actions, and he wanted to see how you’d react in a situation like this

“They’re an interesting one.” Is all he said to his best friends, George and Sapnap. And he wasn’t wrong, you were doing relatively well for a beginner

You weren’t crying or screaming like how many people expected, but outwitted all of the boys with what little survival knowledge you had. And Dream absolutely loved it

He wouldn’t hesitate to give you scars and bruises while trying to catch you, even though it twinged his heart with slight guilt

It had to be done though

Anything to catch the rabbit.

George. The one who’s usually the voice of reason within the trio

So when he heard about the idea of Dream bringing in some random person that they didn’t know personally into their games, he was against it as first

Of course, the two younger men forced the idea and he naturally had to comply with their plans

However, after finally getting fully immersed into the game itself. George soon started to enjoy the experience. Not as much as how Dream was enjoying it, but he was most definitely entertained

He would use his knowledge and skills with a bow to aim precise shots to try to get you to slow down, even tipping some of the arrows with potion effects

There were times where he almost caught you, but he would let you get away on purpose last minute

Mostly because he felt bad, but also started to grow fond of you through this strange form of “bonding time”

George himself wasn’t so sure on why he thought of it like that, but he believes it’s just the way they’re interacting is how he sees it as “bonding”

Even then, he never missed the occasional excited looks on your face as well during the hunt. He also knew you were enjoying it times, whilst being terrified at the same time

He found it cute, not gonna lie

Maybe this new game wouldn’t be so boring after all.

Finally, the certified pyromaniac of the group. Sapnap

A rambunctious and reckless boy, the youngest of the trio had stars in his eyes at the mention of a new game to play

And with someone completely new to the concept of manhunt as well? Sign him up

He was about ready to just explode everything on the spot, he couldn’t contain his excitement

A new game? Great! And with a new person as well? Even better! In Sapnap’s eyes, the thrill of playing a game with a new person gets him all hyped up

When he first saw you, he thought you were drop dead gorgeous. Not even kidding, man’s was practically drooling over you

He quickly got over it, and focused on the game. And boy did he get hella competitive about it

He would start off with setting the forest brush ablaze with his torch, in order to close in the gap on you. Dream and George were hacking and coughing from the smoke, but Sapnap came prepared with the right gear

The youngling would then get closer and closer to you, watching as you were swiftly trudging your way through the thick and foggy smoke, before grabbing your wrist in triumph

Sapnap felt so proud of himself in that moment, but before he could announce he had caught you, you caught him off guard

With your quick thinking, you managed to outsmart him by throwing a quick potion of invisibility onto the ground, and slowly making your way away from Sapnap, using a wet towel to prevent you from coughing

Stunned from the move, and slightly hazed from the effects of the potion, Sapnap could only sigh in embarrassment while George and Dream laughed hysterically at him

This new guy wasn’t such as much of a newbie as he seemed

—

“Awwwww, Y/N~!! Just give up now! There’s no where else to go!”

The familiar voice of a certain masked man sung from behind you, as he was closing in on you. He was running fast, faster than you even. You sucked in a sharp breath and focused on the path ahead of you.

You swiftly ran through the grassy terrains, adrenaline coursing through your veins as you ran with all of your strength. Plant life blossomed throughout the fields, and wildlife could be seen very easily. It would’ve been a great landscape to relax in if it weren’t for the trio chasing you from behind.

George was only firing arrows at you skillfully, some of them grazing your delicate skin while the rest of them whirred past you and blazing speeds. Meanwhile, Sapnap was only chasing after you at equal speed to you, throwing occasional daggers at you to try to get you to slow down. You only scoffed at their little attempts to get you to stop running.

“You boys are gonna have to try harder than that if you want to catch me!!” You yelled out to them, only to have a burning feeling pierce your lungs painfully. It was only then you realized how much stamina you were losing. You can’t afford to waste your energy, otherwise they would catch up to you.

“Come on, Y/N!! It won’t be so baaad~!! Just let us catch you, darling!” Sapnap commented playfully, the usage of a nickname throwing you off completely. George could only sigh and Sapnap’s antics and aimed an arrow at you, directly shooting you in the leg.

“Bullseye.”

You squeaked in pain and tumbled down to the grass, clutching your leg in pain. You then started to panic, and you tried to crawl away, but you were too late, as the sound of hunting boots clanking together already indicated that you lost the chase.

“Well well well. Would you look at this? The little rabbit finally got caught.” Dream commented sneakily, making you let out an annoyed breath.

“Rot in hell, don’t speak of me like I’m some pet.” You snide at him, but Dream could only chuckle deeply.

“Oh is that so? You certainly seem like one to me. An adorable one if I may.”

“Excuse me?”

Dream only sighed and put his foot to your back to make sure you didn’t try anything funny. He then shifted his face closer to yours, a little too close if you may, but you would be lying if you said you didn’t find his cockiness the slightest bit attractive.

The other two then approached Dream from behind, a little salty that he got to you first.

“Ah, so I guess we finally have a winner for this game, huh?” George stated.

“I believe so.” Sapnap replied.

You only looked up at the three boys, seeing the sly smirks of the two boys behind the masked one, while Dream only chuckled and spoke up.

“Looks like I won now, huh?”

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[dillydedalus]

what i read in march

several antigones & some other stuff

call me zebra, azareen van der vliet oloomi

oh boy. i really wanted to like this one, but uh. nah. so this book is about zebra, a young iranian-american from a lineage of ‘autodidacts, anarchists and atheists’, still traumatised by her childhood experience as a refugee (incl. her mother’s death on route). when her father dies years later, zebra decides to retrace the route of her exile thru barcelona, turkey, and back to iran. this sounds great! the beginning is good! but zebra is a quixotic figure (don quixote is unsubtly flagged as THE intertext several times), delusional about her own importance, obsessed with some kind of great literary mission and obnoxious & condescending & egotistic as all fuck (she looks down on students but treats her realisation that like, intertextuality is a thing, as this grand revelation when like..... we been knew since Lit. Theory 101) - and this is intentional & part of the quixotic thing & in general i approve of abrasive & bristly & difficult female characters BUT i expected there to be a gradual process of realisation where she sees that a) maybe her entirely male lineage of geniuses ain’t all that, c) her mission is uh.... incomprehensible. instead, once she reaches spain, she gets bogged down in endless pretentious bullshit and a #toxic relationship that takes up way too much space. knowing that all of that is likely intentional doesn’t.... make it good. also the writing is pretty overwrought for the most part & not even your narrator’s voice being Like That excuses plain bad writing, like the  absurd overuse of ‘intone’ and ‘pose’ as dialogue tags. i see the potential and i see the point & i liked some of it but uh. not good. 2/5, regretfully, generously

in the distance, hernan diaz

i don’t really go for westerns or man vs wilderness stories but damn i’m impressed. despite the violence & deprivation and sheer amount of gross shit, this story of a swedish immigrant getting lost in the american west for decades remains at its core so human, so tender, so sad (honestly this book is SO SAD, yet sometimes oddly hopeful), so evocative of isolation, loneliness, and the desire for human connection. 4/5

notes on a thesis, tiphaine rivière (tr. from french)

god, if i ever considered doing a phd i sure don’t anymore. this is a short graphic novel about a young woman’s descent into academic hell while writing her dissertation about labyrinths in kafka. it’s funny, the art is expressive and fanciful, and it is incredibly relateable if you’ve ever tried to actually write your brilliant, glorious, intricately constructed argument down, battled uni administration or had a panic attack over how to phrase a harmless email to a prof. Academia: Not Even Once. 3.5/5

red mars, kim stanley robinson

this is a very long hard sci-fi novel about mars colonisation & terraforming, discussing the ethics of terraforming, the potentials of a truly ‘martian’ culture, and how capitalism will inevitably fuck everything up, including outer space. all of this is up my alley and i did really like the first half (early colonisation efforts), but the 2nd half (beginning of terraforming, lots of politicking) was a slog - i liked reading about how terraforming was going, but the rest was just bloated, scattered and confusing. also there’s a tedious love triangle the whole time. 2/5

dragon keeper (rain wild chronicles #1), robin hobb

i love robin hobb she really can write a whole 500+ page book of set-up, characterisation and politicking and make it WORK. anyway, this has disabled dragons, a quest for mystical city, lots of rain wilds weirdness, a dragon scholar in an unhappy marriage, liveships, a sweet dummy romance, and uh... a lil penpalship between two messenger bird keepers? not much happens but it’s so NICE & so much is going to happen. also althea & brashen & malta turned up & i screamed. 3.5/5

season of migration to the north, tayeb salih (tr. from arabic)

this is a seminal work of post-colonial arabic literature, a haunting tale of the impact of colonialisation, especially of cultural hegemony in the education system, the disturbing dynamics of orientalism and sex, and village life in a modernising post-colonial sudan. it’s important, it’s well-written, it’ll make you think, but fair warning, there is a lot of violence against women - it has a point but still uh... wow. 3.5/5

dune, frank herbert

SOMETIMES.... BOOKS THAT ARE CONSIDERED MASTERWORKS OF THEIR GENRE.... ARE WORSE. so much worse. the writing in this is atrocious (”his voice was charged with unspeakable adjectives”), herbert somehow manages to make court intrigue and plotting UNBELIEVABLY DULL and sure, it was the 60s, but i’m p sure people knew imperialism was bad in the 60s! the main character, the eugenically-engineered chosen one or whatever, literally spends years among the oppressed & resisting natives of a planet ruled by a space!empire and at the end he’s like ‘i own this planet bc imperialism is Good Actually’. emotionally neglecting/abusing your wife, who you (!!!) decided (!!!) to marry for political reasons bc you’d rather marry your gf is also Good Actually (cosigned by the protag’s mother....) the worldbuilding is influential for the genre, sure w/e, but mainly notable for there just.... being a lot of it, the whole mythology-science makes No Goddamn Sense, all around this is just Bad. Bad. 0.5/5 i hope the Really Big Worms eat everyone 

dragon haven (rain wild chronicles #2), robin hobb

this healed my soul after toxic exposure to dune. anyway w/o spoilers: everyone is very much In Their Feelings (including me) and there’s a lot of Romance and Internal Conflict and Feelings Drama and Complicated Relationships and Group Dynamics and also dragons, which are really like very big, very haughty cats who can speak, and a flood and a living river barge with a mind of his own (love u tarman!). it’s still slow and languid but so so good. also: several people in this have to be told that People Are Gay, Steven, including Sedric, who is himself Gay People. 4/5

an unkindness of ghosts, solomon rivers

super interesting scifi story set on a generation ship with a radically stratified society in which the predominantly black lowerdeckers are oppressed and exploited by the predominantly white upperdeckers, mixed in with a lot of Gender Stuff (the lowerdeckers seem to have a much less stable and binary gender system than the upperdeckers) and neuroatypicality. it’s conceptually rich and full of potential, but just doesn’t quite stick the landing when it comes to the plot. 3/5

sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass, bruno schulz (tr. from polish)

more dreamy surreal short stories (ish?). i didn’t like this collection quite as much as the amazing street of crocodiles, but they are still really good, even tho you never quite know what is going on. featuring flights of birds, people turning into insects, thoughts about seasons and time, fireman pupae stuck in the chimney, and the continuing weird fixation on adela the maid. 3.5/5

angela merkel ist hitlers tocher, christian alt & christian schiffer

a fun & accessible guide to conspiracy theories, focusing on the current situation in germany and the current boom in conspiracy theories, but also including some historical notes. i wish it had been a bit less fun & flippant and more in-depth and detailed bc it really is quite shallow at points, but oh well. also yes the title does indeed translate to ‘angela merkel is hitler’s daughter’ so. yes. 2.5/5

the midwich cuckoos, john wyndham

fun lil scifi story in which almost all women in sleepy village midwich are suddenly pregnant, all at the same time. the resulting children, predictably, are strange, creepy, and possibly a threat to humanity. i get that it was written in the 50s but it is strange to read a book where almost all women, and only women, are affected by A Thing, but all the main characters are men & no one tells the women ‘hey we think it’s xenogenesis’ -  like realistically 80% of women affected went to the Neighbourhood Lady Who Takes Care of These Things like ‘hello, one (1) abortion please’ and the plot just ended there. i still liked it tho! 3/5

antigone project

antigone, the original bitch, by sophocles (tr. by fagles)

god antigone really is That Bitch. that’s all i have to say. 4.5/5

antigone, That Bitch but in french, jean anouilh

the Nazi-occupied france antigone. loved the meta commentary on what tragedy is and how antigone has to step into the Role of Antigone, which will kill her “but there’s nothing she can do. her name is antigone and she will have to play her part through to the end”. i didn’t really like (esp. given the ~historical context) the choice to make creon much more sympathetic, trying to save antigone’s life from the beginning. hmm. 3.5/5

antigonick, anne carson

look, antigone really is That Bitch and you know what? so is anne carson. best thing i’ve read so far this year, don’t ask me about it or i’ll yell the task of the translator of antigone at you. 5/5

home fire, kamila shamsie

honestly i really wanted to like this bc politically it’s on point and an anti-islamophobia antigone sounds amazing, but it just doesn’t succeed as a book/adaption. it spends way too much time in build-up/backstory (the play’s plot only starts in the second half of the book!), waaayyy to much time on the weirdly fetishistic antigone/haimon romance, and even the most interesting characters (ismene & creon) don’t fully work out. sad. 2/5

currently reading: the magic mountain by thomas mann, but i should be done in a week or so! also: the paper menagerie by ken liu, a collection of sff short stories

[inkskinned]

you used caps n your most recent prose i am shook

i know this is a joke but let me tell you that 100% of the time i use caps it’s bc i typed on mobile; i’m so happy you recognize my usual style! 

the truth is (not to get fake deep) when i started this blog i was ... in a bad place. a swallowed place. i was eaten by what haunted me. i churned out piece after piece after piece after piece. a lot were bad. but they needed to be written, ripped out of me. 

i suffer from ocd. i don’t talk about it a lot, because it feels like a silly thing to suffer from. a very Fancy Disorder. ocd is people who fix things to be beautiful. i live in a mess. ocd is pristine, is perfection. i am not either of those things. my ocd supplies me with a lot of terrible commands, and i follow them. they are not “clean it”, they are secret tiny rituals i have to complete. and i can’t tell you what they are because if i tell you (so says the ocd) they won’t work and i’ll have to find a new magic to help me. it also involves self-denial: i used to restrict constantly, on food and life equally, because i genuinely believed that if i didn’t, i’d be the reason for the end of everybody. it’s kind of a big ask when you feel like literally the whole world will end if you ever indulge in anything - and i do mean the whole world ending.

i was undiagnosed at the start of this blog, and struggling in every way a Youth Can Struggle. and i found that one of the things i Had To Do was get rid of capital letters. i never saw it as a pretentious Art Choice; it was because capital letters had this enormous weight to them that belonged to loudness - they felt loud, sharp, heavy in my head. they belonged to people who had something to say, who were exposed teeth instead of a cower. i wanted my words to be quiet. to be the muted whisper that i felt everything at; the numbness, the entropy. a falsehood, easily-overlooked. it also involved having the same letter start a line twice (even now, i dislike it), the number of lines i was allowed to use, and why so many of my freestyle pieces end in a rhyming couplet (i was plagued by poems that didn’t feel “ended”, would lie awake trying to think of a way to “tie” them). lower case became so important to me, so crucial to how i think, that i would struggle writing papers for school because they required the sharp letters of a voice I couldn’t reach.

over time i got help. six years have passed, and you must be wondering: okay, she talks regularly about how much better she is than she used to be. first of all, am i truly better if i have spent six years of my beautiful life on tumblr? the jury is out (what great opportunities it afforded me versus how much time i wasted, scrolling). but the lower case remains actually for a new reason entirely, another thing i don’t talk about because i just feel sad every time i admit it’s happening: i have a neurological problem in my hands. the problem looks and sounds and feels a lot like arthritis, except my brain is doing it, it’s getting worse, and i’m losing control. small shortcuts like no uppercase letters help me save spoons and have the energy to write, because, gosh, it hurts every time i do. yikes! 

today’s a bad hand day. i know it’s because i might have spent my spoons wildly yesterday (i knew i was borrowing them from today), but it still sucks every morning. writing is hard! writing with mental illness is hard! writing with hands like these? that’s the worst part. so please forgive me for how Incredibly Pretentious my Artistic Choice is, i know it’s annoying! i’d be annoyed too! 

but so many people will derail a really important conversation to literally get on my ass about “ugh i want to support this cause but all the lower case letters are KILLING me” like dude chill you’ll live i promise. all the time, my work gets taken less seriously because i need to take this shortcut - it’s “less professional” to write without uppercase, even though my writing tends to be fairly grammatically correct (okay. when i’m trying to do that).

and i don’t mean to make this into a rant, but i am, because i’m in the Artistic Place of only writing Absurdly Long Pieces at this point, but the tl;dr of this was “I had a mental illness which forced this behavior, only to be backed up by a developing physical disability,” and that isn’t to make you feel bad! it’s my way of saying: this is a large reason i think grammar is complete bullshit and tends to be classist, racist, and a whole bunch of other -ists. 

i’m lucky. a lot of people assume it’s just “writer’s choice!” and that i’m doing it because i’m a darkly edgy person. i’m literally doing it to save myself the .000002% of a spoon. and if you don’t know how important that .000002% is, i’m glad! but i know. and i’m in the blessed position of getting away with it a lot of the time, and having it look like style. 

but how many people, i wonder, just get discredited out of hand, because of something they can’t control? 

[kai-keda]

My thoughts exactly.

I was a fan of the DreamSMP and MCYT people for a long while there. Doing a redraw of a scene from one of SAD-ist’s animatics and being super proud and surprised by how well it turned out helped get me out of a super long art slump that was nearly a year long.

I eventually started actively searching for something new to hyperfixate on, though, because the hate coming from people who were “just tired of seeing it trend on twitter” or “looking out for these kids because devoting your life to something isn’t worth it” (which that last one especially ticks me off because the only things these people would use as evidence of that were common fandom things like having a PFP related to it WHILE HAVING ANIME GIRLS AS THEIR PFP) were seriously getting to me.

It wasn’t the people in the fandom that made me feel like shit and were always causing problems, it was the people who were NOT involved in any of it besides telling the fans they were terrible people JUST FOR TRYING TO HAVE HARMLESS FUN!

These people would actively seek out and point at any negative thing the fandom did (which wasn’t that hard to find considering how MASSIVE it was).

It was weighing on me so much that I’m now super grateful to have gotten out of it. And, surprise, it wasn’t that they were telling me I was terrible that bugged me. It was that I knew a TON of innocent teenagers were getting mocked, ridiculed or worse for just having HARMLESS FUN at a time in their lives when that shit WILL effect them forever.

It felt an awful like “These kids are skateboarding on the street and annoying me with it so now I’m gonna request that skateboarding be banned.”

So, no, having harmless fun, acknowledging the faults of those you follow and being mindful of who you are supporting is NO REASON to feel bad about yourself.

Pay the old people in their lawn chair screaming at you for your music being too loud at your party across the street no mind. If someone politely asks you to turn it down, be understanding and do your best to follow their requests.

That’s all anyone should ever ask of you.

Full stop.

Period.

You're okay, by the way. You're not some monster for watching people play Minecraft. Yes, it's important to not blindly support a content creator, but don't let the hordes get to you. Most big fandoms get considered the worst thing ever at some point or another

[bastardtravel]

November 25, 2017. Vienna, Austria.

There’s really no missing the Pestsäule. The 60-foot baroque monstrosity juts up out of the center of the Graben like an ornate middle finger to God. It’s actually emperor Leopold I delivering on his side of one of those pleading prayer bargains we’ve all done. Leo’s was “Please, let the plague stop. I swear I’ll build you a really dope art phallus right in the middle of the city, just stop killing everyone.”

The Plague Column is also called the Trinity Column due to its three sides, each one presumably representing some aspect of the tripartite God.

About a block away is the Stock im Eisen, or staff in iron. That’s misleading, it’s not a staff, it’s a tree trunk full of nails, kept in a tube that makes it totally immune to photography.

I did what I could. Now, you might be asking, “Why is there a protected chunk of tree, full of nails, on a street corner in Vienna?” Good question. I’d love to answer it, but it doesn’t seem like anyone can. Every website has a different interpretation of the Stock im Eisen‘s history, and the locals who were attempting to explain its significance to their visiting friends were telling conflicting stories.

Here’s what I’ve pieced together. In the Middle Ages, nail trees (Nagelbäume) were used by craftsmen, or anyone else with nails, for good luck. This particular nail tree had something to do with the Devil. There’s a ballet about it by Pasquale Borri, so if anyone more sophisticated than me can check that out and report back, I’d appreciate it.

There was a locksmith who wanted to marry his master’s daughter, or maybe he just wanted to be the greatest locksmith who ever lived. Dude shot for the stars. So he calls Mephistopheles out of Prague, who shows up on a FlixBus a few hours later. The locksmith sells his soul in exchange for just a really, fuckin’, top-notch padlock. It’s amazing. He puts that on the tree and issues challenges to either his master in exchange for his daughter’s hand in marriage, or to all the locksmiths of the world in exchange for World Locksmithing Supremacy. Since the Devil made the lock, nobody could crack it, and he lived happily ever after until he burnt in Hell. The tree remains with a lock on it to this day, and also full of nails, for some reason.

This is confirmed bullshit. They looked into the padlock and it’s empty, there’s no tumblers or anything in there. It would pop right open. Maybe that’s why the whole thing’s behind the bulletproof glass.

Well, that was most of center city, barring museums and palaces. I sidled all the way across town to the Freud Museum.

  I thought it was interesting, but Freud was what got me through college. I’d read the bulk of his debunked wackadoo theories long before I got “higher educated”, and since every class in undergrad wanted to beat both Freudian and Pavlovian dead horses as much as possible, I got to recycle the same paper, with subtle stylistic changes, something like ten times.

My favorite, bar none, was a History and Systems project where we were required to adopt the persona of our chosen theorist and have an open debate with the rest of the class. We got extra credit for accents, props, and convincing portrayal. I shaved my scruff into an approximation of his beard and showed up to class with a grape White Owl in my mouth and a baggie full of flour smeared around my nose. The only Austrian accent I’d ever heard at that point was the Terminator’s, so that was how Freud talked. I sat next to B.F. Skinner, as portrayed by a gorgeous little ghoul with dichromatic eyes, and we became a vitriolic tempest of condescending reductionism, laying waste to anyone fool enough to have chosen a humanistic or positive psychologist. The Carl Rogers surrogate got the worst flaying. I think he might still be institutionalized.

speaking of my college

hoo i heard that

Siggy’s personal necromancy cabinet. easily puts mine to shame, but the museum did keep repeating that his three great passions were “traveling, smoking, and collecting”

I laughed so hard and so inappropriately at that adorable picture of Carl Jung. Look at him go! With his little hat, and his little disapproving frown!

I love Jung, I think his work is interesting, if convoluted, arcanist rambling, but I wasn’t prepared for this. From here on out, I’m never gonna be able to think of Freud and Jung as anything but Germanic Rick and Morty.

On my way back to the hostel, I located the only grocery store in Vienna (I’d been looking) and picked up a box of juice brand named “Munter und Aktiv”. Well, I got half of that. I asked Google Translate and it said Munter means “blithely”. I recognized this as impossible. I activated my German field agent and she told me it’s a mixture between happy and awake and active. Well, we already have active. I asked the lady at the hostel desk, planning on averaging all these translations into one definitive Munter.

“It is like waking up with coffee in the morning,” she said. “Like chipper.”

“All right, thank you.”

She asked me if I still had my key card. I said I did.

“Good work,” she told me. She seemed serious, but she may have just been possessed of the Wiener Grant.

“Do people lose them a lot? Is that a big problem here?” I asked, blithely. Munterly.

“No, no problem. We don’t have problems here,” she said, then she honest to God slapped the table and shouted in the thickest, most Germanic accent I’ve ever heard, “VE HAVE ZOLUTIONS!”

She laughed after and clarified that she was just kidding, but I was deer-in-the-headlights frozen. One of those disbelieving grins, you know? When what’s going on… can’t be what’s actually going on.

I know we have a sad little Nazi party movement in America, but realistically that’s like 40 lonely dudes with bad haircuts who get way too much media coverage. In much of Europe, they seem mighty sorry for World War II. The Mahnmal in the heart of Vienna is a good indicator, but there’s more going on than monuments, culturally. The aforementioned German girl is currently crossing eastern Europe and self-inflicting a sort of guilt tour (or Schuldtour). Warsaw and Auschwitz, that I’m aware of. Die Madchen ist haunted.

(As a quick aside, I looked up the German word for ‘haunted’, and, unbelievably, it is spukt. Go ahead. Say it out loud. Spukt. This fuckin’ language, man.)

In the Athens flea market, after divulging her nationality to an antique dealer for reasons I will never understand, he rolled out a bunch of old Nazi medals.

“You want?”

She literally backpedaled, shielding her face like a tall, rigid vampire from an iron cross. But she went on to tell me that there are people back in Germany — in America, we’d call them hicks — that love that kind of thing.

The modern nationalism necessary to breed either sentiment is lost on me, but I don’t think that’s because I’m an American. I’m just not much of a joiner.

A final, weird note, and the last Hitler point I plan on making: the Indian guy told me that Hitler is sort of fondly remembered in India and China. In the course of the war, Germany did a lot of damage to Great Britain, and India is still carrying a pretty understandable grudge against their former imperial taskmasters.

I sat down and collected myself until my chronic and intractable antsiness returned, then I figured I’d go check out the craft beer bar half a mile away. I hadn’t eaten in six or seven hours, so that seemed like the ideal time. They had a Bier dem Wochen flight for the cost of a regular half-pint, so I got that. They brought me 4 beers, all from Anchor Brewing, which I learned from a hipster’s t-shirt is in San Francisco.

welp

The Steam beer must be called that because that’s what it tasted like. The stout was palatable, in a cream soda kind of way. I downed it and ordered a local imperial stout called Der Schnittenfahrt from a company called Brauwork. Hilarious though that may sound, it means “cut drive”, and washing down a flight with it on an empty stomach was perhaps ill advised.

“schnittenfahrt” tho

The bar was very excited about rugby. Ireland vs Argentina. I didn’t know who they were rooting for, but they were rooting for them with all their heart. I went to the bathroom and laughed so hard I scared a dude.

now that’s opulence

That was enough for one night. I had a bus to catch the next morning. I stumbled back to my hostel and passed out. I slept like a rock, except for at around 3 AM when I was awake just long enough to see the dude in the opposing bunk sit up like a mummy, slam his face into the wood support of the bunk over him, and release a long, low-pitched, closed-mouthed moan. It was sort of like a cow mooing, but in slow motion. Absolutely fantastic.

The next morning I threw all my stuff into my bag and wrote in the kitchen until my Brazilian DJ friend rejoined me, looking much worse for wear.

“Bunch of bastards,” he told me out of nowhere.

“Huh?”

“The club I played at,” he spat. “Didn’t pay me a DIME. Bastards. Didn’t even give me free drinks. I had four beers, and they charged me.”

I shook my head. “Animals. Well, chalk it up to experience, I guess.”

He made a vague allusion to being all about peace and love. I shook his hand, wished him well, and headed for the door.

Oh, right. The bus was to Bratislava, and hoo boy, do I got some stories for tomorrow.

    heard yo mama in the movies

Love,

The Bastard

Vienna: Phallic Fixations November 25, 2017. Vienna, Austria. There's really no missing the Pestsäule. The 60-foot baroque monstrosity juts up out of the center of the Graben like an ornate middle finger to God.