#and the only time anyones ever looked at me and seen Aboriginality in my features was that............... Hmm didnt feel great | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

floppyhatwitch · 4 months

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This is Part 2 of my 2023 new year's resolution recap. If you want to see part 1, click here.

And we're back! If you've read the first part, you're all caught up with the gist of everything, so I'll spare the extensive intro.

Long post coming up again, art under the cut :)

This is one of my favourites

I saw some tips on how to make a sketchbook more fun that included working with the fact the drawings are within a book and so I decided to make a portal between two characters.

How whimsical!

I reused the cutout bits to decorate the glossy front cover of the sketchbook too, which resulted in me having to glue it back on more times than I'd like to admit.

The return of my son <3

I think the key features to really nail down when drawing bonnie are the upper jaw and the eye socket. Obviously not the be all and end all, but they really add to his signature style. I mention this only because my bootleg bonnie plush is widely different for both those features, which I find funnier than it has any right to be.

This one was a joke about drink driving and getting pulled over, but it was probably the best anatomy lesson I had all year. I somehow managed to portray the likeness of my friend half decently while working with dramatic lighting. I mean, it's no like, groundbreaking work or anything, but it's one that I take great pride in.

I LOVE HATSUNE MIKU AND JERMA!!!!! RAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

If I could do this one again (which I inevitably will because look at them) I would definitely make Jerma more like the creature he is and exaggerate his distinct features a little more.

Anyway the reason I put this up is because I accidentally titled it "Jerma and Hatsune Mike" because of autocorrect, which led to the creation of

HATSUNE MIKE!!!!

Miku's older and less famous sister. Although from what I've been told, her slices are the best in Queens, hands down.

Quick Australian politics tangent. We recently had a referendum that proposed adding an advisory group for First Nations peoples into the constitution. It was like the tiniest step forward towards actually repairing the generational trauma and long-term effects of colonialist genocide by simply asking Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people how they could be best assisted.

Despite being one of the easiest choices I've ever seen in my life, the referendum DIDN'T PASS. I was genuinely pissed when I found out so I tore up the bullshit misinformation flyers handed out by the opposition volunteers and made it into this. It's probably the most "teenager with too much angst and no actual action" thing ever, but it was how I felt at the time.

After that whole debacle I went through a phase where I used a lot of imagery of revolutions to try and process the feelings I was experiencing on the matter.

I thought the foreshortening and perspective on this one kinda popped off. The decision to place the viewer at the level of the executed was intentional. It's one of the only angles anyone would have seen a guillotine this close up in practice.

On Day 300 I saw the FNAF movie and wow was it different than what I expected. I drew my son looking on in horror as his character was assassinated in front of his eyes. Looking back, it might have been a little dramatic, but I'm just like that at the end of the day.

BONUS: If you wanna see my full review of the FNAF movie, you can read it here

I really wanted to get some expressive posing and particle effects going so I took inspiration from that "THINK FAST CHUCKLENUTS" meme and tried to imagine what it would look like if it was an overedited comic strip.

I lobe scou tf2 :))))

This was the day before my Media exam and holy hell was I nervous. If I'm remembering correctly, I was actually so anxiety-ridden that I was nauseous, which doesn't happen often. I channeled my borderline religious regard of the exams power into creating a monument to its supreme importance. That's me praying underneath it.

As you can tell, I was hoping so hard that I would do well on it, which makes the next one just even more satisfying.

I DID WELL ON IT!!!!!

I legitimately felt like omni man afterwards, so I did a study of that scene where he crushes red rush's head. It's a bit rough around the edges but that final panel still gets me. I should watch the new season.

Spidergwen Spidergwen Spidergwen Spidergwen Spidergwen

I'll know I'm a good artist the day that I make a couple pages as good as Miles does in atsv. Like that dude is talented as hell WHY CAN'T I DO THAT.

Speaking of the dude. Spider-Man, Spider-Man and his pal Spider-Man. Technically spectacular spider-man, but I kinda messed up the head shape a bit so it's not as obvious. Whoopsieeeee

I will always consider myself superior to fish because if I saw a mysterious hook in my environment I would simply disregard it. I will however, walk blindly into a situation that will inevitably lead to my downfall under the pretense that it will be beneficial for my future. No I don't see the irony in that, it's different I swear.

FUN ANGEL FACT! While it is technically correct to refer to these as "biblically accurate angels", they aren't the only forms of them. These are specifically referred to as Ophanim, and they're like wheels? I don't know, my knowledge kind of falls off after that point, the way they're described reminds me of those eldritch horrors that make people insane from their incomprehensibility.

Anyway I adore theological imagery but steer far away from the actual implications of any of it. To quote one of my favourite tumblr posts of all time, "narratively christianity is pretty cool i think it should have been a jrpg instead of a religion though" - Roisheep

This one came straight out of the brain tubes after I accidentally created an endless loop in my twine project and I got scared shitless that it was gonna brick my computer or something. In reality, it was the equivalent damage of refreshing a page a whole bunch of times, but I'm always jumpy when it comes to techy stuff.

One little detail I really like about this one is that the green light from the screen is actually reflected on the face and eyeballs! How fun!

This is how I'm gonna die, if it has to happen. To dissipate into a swarm of butterflies and have your cloak float down to the ground is to have lived a fulfilling life. They gotta have some pink ones though, I like those ones.

I saw a tiktokker who shades with a whole bunch of dots like some crazy kind of pointillism (if you know who I'm talking about PLEASE tell me, I can't find them) so I wanted to give it a crack.

It's nowhere near the same thing that they do, but I think it really sells the macabre and grotty nature of the cow skull and doesn't look half bad in the process. One day I'll do the cool stuff though.

WIZARD! TESTICULAR! TORSION!!!!!!!!!!

Still gotta learn how to render cloth folds.

This was me dramatically kicking the door down when I realised I had a new idea for a video game to make. This is definitely a more accurate depiction of how inspiration feels for me than anything else.

Madvillainy!

I knew from the moment I started studying metallic objects under light that I had to take a crack at the illest villain. Even just from recreating the album cover, I feel so much more knowledgeable in shading metal. You gotta get those hard transitions between highlights and shadows to sell the shine.

Almost there! This was a tribute to all the PHENOMENAL art I find on here. Like HOLY HELL everybody is so talented. Sometimes it can be demotivating, but then I remember that I could be phenomenal if I keep up with the practice. And that is the BEST feeling.

Seriously though, if you're an artist on tumblr and you're reading this, without exception you are unbelievably amazing at what you do. I haven't seen a single piece that didn't absolutely rock.

And that brings us to the last one!

I did a little caricature of all the different forms of art and expression I did throughout the year.

Clockwise from the green we have witch, punk, cyber, trans, goth, everyday, Rodney (character in my short film) and media versions of who I am. Isn't that cute?

Decided to go back and do a rundown of all my pieces and make a little recap within a recap.

But that's the lot! 2023 was a super fun year and I attribute a majority of that to this project. If you're reading this and you have something you want to do, this is your sign to just do it! Forget about new years resolutions, start today. Right now. Doesn't matter what it is, if you start now and do it every day, you'll get it done. 5 minutes, an hour, 30 seconds, whatever. This is the best choice I've ever made and that's why I'm doing it again!

A lot of the stuff I make is private or classified, but I'm gonna post all the publicly presentable stuff here, cause why not!

Anyway, that's all. Take care, stay hydrated, eat your greens, love you xx

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lorenfangor · 3 years

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I heard that #40 was super homophobic :/ so I skipped it. But now your fic is making me want to give it a try. How problematic is it? Are the characters worth it?

Okay.

Let’s talk about #40.

The plot of The Other (a Marco POV) is that Marco sees an Andalite on a video tape sent in to some Unsolved Mysteries-esque TV show, and he assumes it’s Ax and hauls ass to save him from being captured. Ax, being Ax, has videotaped the show, and they pull it up and Tobias uses his hawk eyes to figure out that it’s not Ax, it’s another Andalite - one without a tailblade. Ax is appalled at the presence of this vecol (an Andalite word for a disabled person) and we find out that he and others of his species have deep ingrained prejudices against at least some kinds of disabled people.

Despite this, Marco and Ax go looking for the Andalite in question because he’s been spotted by national TV, and they meet a second one, named Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad. The vecol is Mertil-Iscar-Elmand, a former fighter pilot with a reputation and Gafinilan’s coded-gay life partner. The two of them have been on Earth since book 1; they crashed their fighters on the planet and have been trapped there thanks to the GalaxyTree going down. Gafinilan has adopted a human cover, a physics professor, and they’ve been living in secret ever since.

Thanks to that tape, Mertil has been captured by Visser Three, and he’s not morph-capable so he can’t escape. Gafinilan wants to trade the leader of the “Andalite Bandits” to the Yeerks to get his boyfriend back; he can’t fight to free Mertil because he’s terminally ill with a genetic disorder that will eventually kill him, and (it’s implied that) the Yeerks aren’t interested in disabled hosts, even disabled Andalite ones. Despite Ax’s ableism, the Animorphs agree to work with Gafinilan and free Mertil, and they’re successful. Marco ends the book talking about how there are all kinds of prejudices you’ll have to face and boxes that people will put you in, and you can’t necessarily escape them even if they’re reductive and inaccurate, but you can still live your life with pride.

So now that I’ve explained the plot, I’m gonna come out the gate saying that I love this book. I love it wholeheartedly, I love Marco’s narration, I love Ax having to deal with Andalite society’s ableism, I love these characters, and as a disabled lesbian I don’t find these disabled gays to be inherently Bad Rep.

that’s of course just my opinion and it doesn’t overshadow other issues that people might have? but at the same time, I don’t like the seemingly-common narrative that this book is all bad all the time, and I want to offer up a different read.To that end, I’m going to go point by point through some of the criticisms and common complaints that I’ve seen across the fandom over the years.

“Mertil and Gafinilan were put on a bus after one appearance because they were gay!”

this is one I’m going to have to disagree with hardcore. I talked about this yesterday, but in Animorphs there are a lot of characters or ideas that only get introduced once or twice and then get written off or dropped - in order off the top of my head, #11 (the Amazon trip), #16 (Fenestre and his cannibalism), #17 (the oatmeal), #18 (the hint of Yeerks doing genetic experiments in the hospital basement), #24/#39/#42 (the Helmacrons’ ability to detect morphing tech), #25 (the Venber), #28 (experiments with limiting brain function through drugs), #34 (the Hork-Bajir homeworld being retaken, the Ixcila procedure), #36 (the Nartec), #41 (Jake’s Bad Future Dream), and #44 (the Aboriginal people Cassie meets in Australia) all feature things that either seem to exist just for the sake of having a particular trope explored Animorphs-style or to feature an idea for One Single Book.

This is a series that’s episodic and has a very limited overall story arc because of how children’s literature in the 90s was structured - these books are closer to The Saddle Club, Sweet Valley High, Animal Ark, or The Baby-Sitters’ Club than they are to Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events. Mertil and Gafinilan don’t get to be in more than one book because they’re not established in the main cast or the supporting cast, I don’t think that it’s solely got anything to do with their being gay.

“Gafinilan has AIDS, this is a book about AIDS, and that’s homophobic!”

Okay, this is… hard. First, yes, Gafinilan does have a terminal illness. Yes, Gafinilan is gay. No, Soola’s Disease is not AIDS.

I have two responses to this, and I’ll attack them in order of their occurrence in my thought. First, there’s coded AIDS diseases all over genre fiction, especially genre fiction from that era, because the AIDS epidemic made a massive impact on public life and fundamentally changed both how the public perceived illness and queerness and how queer people themselves experienced it. I was too young to live through it, but my dad’s college roommate was out, and my dad himself has a lot of friends who he just ceases to talk about if the conversation gets past 1986 or so - this was devastating and it got examined in art for more reasons than “gay people all have AIDS”, and I dislike the implication that the only reason it could ever appear was as a tired stereotype or a message that Being Queer Means Death. Gafinilan is kind, fond of flowers, and fond of children - he’s multifaceted, and he’s got a terminal illness. Those kinds of people really exist, and they aren’t Bad Rep.

Second off, Soola’s Disease? Really isn’t AIDS. It’s a congenital genetic illness that develops over time, cannot be transmitted, and does not carry a serious stigma the way AIDS did. Gafinilan also has access to a cure - he could become a nothlit and no longer be afflicted by it, even if it’s considered somewhat dishonorable to go nothlit to escape that way. That’s not AIDS, and in fact at no point in my read and rereads did I assume that his having a terminal illness was supposed to be a commentary on homosexuality until I found out that other people were assuming it.

“Mertil losing his tail means he’s lost his masculinity, and that’s bad because he’s gay! That’s homophobic!”

so this is another one I’ve gotta hardcore disagree with, because while Mertil is one of two Very Obviously Queer Characters, he’s not the only character who loses something fundamental about himself, or even loses access to sexual and/or romantic capability in ways he was familiar with.

Tobias and Arbron both get ripped out of their ordinary normal lives by going nothlit in bad situations, and while they both wind up finding fulfillment and freedom despite that, it’s still traumatic, even more for Arbron I’d say than for Tobias. And on a psychological level, none of the main cast is left unmarked or free of trauma or free of deep change thanks to the bad things that have happened to them - they’re no less fundamentally altered than Mertil, even if it’s mental rather than physical. And yes, tail loss is equated with castration or emasculation, but that doesn’t automatically mean Mertil suffering it is tied to his homosexuality and therefore the takeaway we’re intended to have is “Being gay is tragic and makes you less of a man”. This is a series where bad shit happens to everyone, and enduring losses that take away things central to one’s self-conception or identity or body is just part of the story.

Also, frankly? Plenty of IRL disabled people have to grapple with a loss of sexual function, and again, they’re not Bad Rep just because they’re messy.

“Andalite society is confusingly written in this book, and the disability aspects are clearly just a coverup for the gay stuff!”

Andalite society is canonically sexist, a bit exceptionalist and prejudiced in their own favor, and pretty contradictory and often challenged internally on its own norms. In essence, it’s a pretty ordinary society, and they’re really realistic as sci-fi races go. It makes sense from that perspective that Andalites would tolerate scarring or a lost stalk eye or a lost skull eye, but not tolerate serious injuries that significantly impact your perceived quality of life. Ableism is like that - it’s not one-size-fits-all. I look at Ax’s reactions and I see a lot of my own family and friends’ behaviors - this vibes with my understanding of prejudice, you know?

“Mertil and Gafinilan have a tragic ending, which means the story is saying that being gay dooms you to tragedy!”

Mertil and Gafinilan have the best possible ending that they could ask for? They are victims of the war, they are suffering because of the war, they get the same cocktail of trauma and damage that every other soldier gets. But unlike Jake and Tobias and Marco, unlike Elfangor, unlike Aximili? Their ending comes in peace, in their own home. Gafinilan isn’t dying alone, he’s got the love of his life with him. Mertil isn’t going to be as isolated anymore, he’s got Marco for a friend. Animorphs is a tragedy, it’s not a happy story, it’s not something that guarantees a beautiful sunshine-and-roses ending for everyone, and I love tragedy, and so I will fight for this story. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it deserved better. But it’s not less meaningful just because it’s sad. Nobody is entitled to anything in this book, and it’s just as true for these two as it is for anyone else.

“It’s not cool that the only canonically gay characters in this series don’t get to be happy and trauma-free and unblemished Good Rep!”

This is one I can kind of understand, and I’ll give some ground to it, because it is sucky. The only thing I’ll say is that I stand by my argument that nothing that happens to Mertil and Gafinilan is unusual compared to what happens to the rest of the cast, and that their ending is way happier than Rachel and Tobias’s, or Jake and Cassie’s. But it’s a legitimate point of frustration, and the one argument I’ll say I agree has validity.

(Though, I also want to point out that I think there are plenty of equally queercoded characters in the story who aren’t Mertil and Gafinilan - Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco all get at least one or two moments that signal to me that they’re potentially LGBT+, not to mention Mr. Tidwell and Illim in #29 and their long-term domestic partnership. There’s no reason to assume that the only queer people here are those two aliens when Marco’s descriptions of Jake exist.)

“Marco uses slurs and reduces Gafinilan’s whole identity to his illness!”

Technically, yes, this is true, except putting it that way strips the whole passage of its context. Marco is discussing the boxes society puts you into, the ones you don’t have a choice about facing or escaping. He’s talking about negative stereotypes and reductive generalizations, he’s referring to them as bad things that you get inflicted upon you by an outside world or by friends who don’t know the whole story or the real you. The slurs he uses are real slurs that get thrown at people still, and they’re not okay, and the point is that they’re not okay but assholes are going to call you by them anyway. He ends by saying “you just have to learn to live with it”, and since this is coming from a fifteen-year-old Latino kid who we know is picked on by bullies for all sorts of reasons and who faces racism and homophobia? He knows what he’s talking about. He’s bitter about what’s been said and done, he’s not stating it like it’s a good thing.

Yes, absolutely, this speech is a product of its time, but it’s a product of its time that speaks of defiance and says “We aren’t what we’re said to be,” and in the year this was published? That’s a good message.

tl;dr The Other is good, actually, and Mertil and Gafinilan are incredible characters who deserve all the love they could possibly get.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #mertil/gafinilan #mertil #gafinilan #mertil-iscar-elmand #gafinilan-estrif-valad

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firehawk12 · 6 years

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Call of Duty: WWII — War, War Never Changes

Another cross post from Medium that I forgot to bring over.

“Lest we forget” is a phrase that Canadians are asked to consider once a year, as the country momentarily pauses so that we can remember the sacrifices of Canadians who served in combat. I’m sure that Activision didn’t have Canada (or the UK) in mind when they decided to release Call of Duty: WWII a week before Remembrance Day, but its release is certainly timely and at least forced me to consider how I process the memory of war.

Now, CoD: WWII is very much a game about the American experience in the Second World War, but the game raises several issues that I feel are applicable to anyone who lives in a country involved in that war. Perhaps the biggest issue with the game is the fact that the game itself is fairly routine. Giantbomb’s review of the game noted that the game feels like a retread of Band of Brothers and other seminal modern depictions of WWII, and that’s essentially how I felt about the whole experience.

You play as a soldier haunted by an early childhood experience, looking for a chance to redeem himself in combat. There’s the smart ass whose nickname is “College”, a tough-as-nails sergeant, a compassionate lieutenant that everyone would die for, and the best friend who you are bonded to because the game tells you that you’re close buddies who would watch each other’s backs. Since your character is in the 1st Infantry Division, you essentially play through the events depicted or referred to in the film The Big Red One(1980), starting from D-Day all the way to the Battle of Remagen.

While I’ve written previously about how I’ve been mostly disappointed by the CoD campaigns after Modern Warfare 2 — they’ve stopped innovating entirely and just rely on tired war cliches — I was cautiously optimistic going into this game because of this trailer:

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One of the biggest criticisms of the first batch of WW2 games is that while they dutifully replicated the “ping” of the M1 Garand ejecting the cartridge, these games ignored the fact that the Holocaust was happening while all these famous battles were occurring. Although I may be wrong, I believe that this is the first big budget WW2 game to not only have a Jewish character whose Judaism plays an important part in the game’s story, but also actually references the Holocaust and confronts players about the fact that soldiers weren’t the only ones who were suffering during this time.

Unfortunately all that optimism was flushed down the drain when I finished the game. Yes, the Holocaust is an integral part to the game’s denouement. But it’s so trite and perfunctory that it might as well have not been included in the first place. Even the way the Holocaust is brought up is contrived — for some reason these German soldiers, who are being slaughtered by Americans left, right, and center, take the time to capture your best friend in front of your eyes. The only reason they do so is that your character has a reason to go to the Berga concentration camp at the end of the game to kill the Nazi camp commander and rescue your friend right in the nick of time.

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The developers turn the Berga concentration camp into a walking simulator sequence, as the player character speaks to you from sometime in the future, telling you about the horrible conditions at the camp and hinting at the atrocities committed by the Nazis while you slowly walk through the camp. It’s a sequence that might have been meaningful nearly 20 years ago in the first Medal of Honor or Call of Duty, but in 2017 it feels like a lazy afterthought. They didn’t even have the courage to create an interactive sequence where you play as the character being forced to serve in Berga, instead relying on what amounts to a cutscene to try to do all the heavy lifting.

It’s frustrating when put in context of an earlier scene where your squad interacts with a group of German civilians. At one point a little girl is separated from the group because she wanted to find her teddy bear, and you volunteer to go find her:

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When you find the girl, it becomes a (simplistic) stealth sequence where you hold the girl while trying to sneak past Nazi guards. It’s reminiscent of the first Bioshock, where you can save the Little Sisters, and while not necessarily the most original moment in the game, it’s one that at least tries to get you invested in the moment by making you play through it. The tragic ending to the level — you save the little girl only to see her sister get killed by a German soldier soon after — rises beyond pure cliche because you had a role in creating that moment. I would argue it’s the only interesting interactive moment in the campaign, and even then, it’s not all that original.

Perhaps the other major point to consider is the issue of representation. I’ve seen articles criticizing the campaign for not featuring multiple points of view like the very first Call of Duty, but I understand why they chose to primarily focus on this single squad from the 1st Army. The Call of Duty games have trended away from the anonymous soldier gimmick since Mason and Black Ops, and WWII is no exception. I think it’s fine that the designers wanted to have a focused campaign to try to create characters that players might care about. Certainly Daniels, the character that the player inhabits for most of the game, is the most talkative Call of Duty protagonist ever and the only one with a concrete backstory that starts from childhood.

And I suppose the game should be given some bonus points for featuring diversity as well. There’s a sequence where the player temporary plays as Rousseau, a French resistance operative who works with the 1st Army to help liberate Paris:

Which, incidentally, is probably one of the only times where the player controls a female character for a significant period of time in any Call of Duty game.

The game also acknowledges the big elephant in the room — that America was a racist, segregationist society when they introduce Howard, an engineer who ends up helping the 1st Army during the battle of Bastogne and near the end of the game.

Of course, conveniently the player character and all his friends are the ones who have no problem accepting help from a Black soldier (the most that happens is a short scene where everyone expresses surprise at seeing a Black soldier, before quickly moving on), but it’s an implicit acknowledgement of the contribution that marginalized Americans made during the Second World War.

My problem with this type of representation is that if they wanted to create a campaign that was memorable, it would have been very easy to build a campaign around a character like Howard or perhaps the 442nd Infantry Regiment (the all Japanese-American unit) and address the complicated feelings that come with choosing to defend a country that despises you and treats you as less than human. Certainly it would have been a more interesting meditation on patriotism, nationalism, and the cost of war than the one we got featuring a cast of characters that fell out of a TV Tropes page.

To bring it back to Remembrance Day, I’m reminded of the beaded poppiesand the desire to remind Canadians of the contributions that Aboriginal Canadians made during WWII.

Yes, it’s co-opting a symbol used for the purpose of remembering the sacrifice of veterans, but it’s re-contextualizing it to point out that there were Canadians of different backgrounds that contributed to the war effort. For me, I like to take the time to think about Chinese-Canadians who volunteered to serve a nation that not only disenfranchised them but also had a law that banned all Chinese from entering the country. A Call of Duty game that hijacks the traditional narrative of the franchise — that war is hell, but that the player is always fighting on the right side — to try to make us think more about the actual realities of war would have been very exciting. Instead, we get a game that takes few chances and barely tries to take the player out of their comfort zone.

Call of Duty: WWII has the best intentions in trying to produce the familiar WWII experience that we’ve seen countless times before. But the story it tries to tell and the interactive moments that it presents are so dated that it all contributes to a dull and uninspired experience. Much was made about Call of Duty returning to its roots, but I think this is perhaps a confirmation that the Call of Duty experience is one that is simply past its prime.

#call of duty: wwii #video games #review #wwii #videogames

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braindamageforbeginners · 5 years

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Intermezzo: Writing

Pre-Cycle 11

I will not be writing about my Thanksgiving, again, although I intend to once I can feel my left side (again, nothing bad happened but I’m still amazingly worn-out, which, for neurology patients, is a uniquely terrible feeling because it usually exacerbates your symptoms). However, when I come back and discuss Recent Personal Events, one thing I wanted to cover was the writing process. Or my writing process, anyway.

As usual, I tell most people that even though I might exaggerate some things or clarify details or the sequence of events, I try not to to fictionalize my experiences too much, not only because that would possibly be a disservice for anyone trying to replicate my “results” (again, for the complementary stuff, I do take CDB and a combined THC/CDB edibles for pain/chemover issues, I eat mostly fiber-based stuff, and lots of protein - usually in the form of protein supplements, but I’m not picky; make no mistake, I don’t think those will cure me, but they will enable me to survive the cure by eating, going to the gym, and those other issues that tend to promote health while not simultaneously giving the disease an edge)(also, to my LDS friends who were asking about medical marijuana, the new law says that it’s acceptable for “cachexia” - that’s the wasting that comes from final-stage cancer, by which it has so thoroughly taken over your system, it’s actually stripping you of nutrients - you want it to fight the weight-loss that comes with chemo, especially since even dear ol’ Zofran will make you too queasy to eat regularly); but also because I genuinely don’t have a good enough imagination to improve upon reality. This isn’t to say that I don’t like fiction or that it doesn’t have its place, just that, if you know how to look, you can find stuff that is way, way weirder than fiction. Case in point, my neighbor is a cop (true), owns a bloodhound (sorry, coonhound - I guess it’s bad form to mix up hunting hounds) which he uses to hunt... wild boars, not raccoons (also true). Which he makes into sausage. He also makes his own wine. When I was introduced to his dog, the line used was - and this is verbatim - “He’s named ‘Henry,’ but he prefers ‘Hank.” Let us just pause and appreciate what a glorious universe we live in where that line could be used unironically to describe a dog. All of this is true and not exaggerated - or not consciously exaggerated, anyway. Faulkner himself couldn’t imagine a character that good.

And that’s really how I was trained to write. Even though I’ve had many, many formal classes on writing, they were mostly focused on history, or science, or art/literature discussions - really, I’ve had a fair amount of training as a journalist more than a creative writer (I’m not really sure I’ve taken a creative writing class, come to it). Again, though, sometimes you can, with some research and observation, find something far more interesting than fiction. Which brings us to the main topic; a recent, hilariously bad attempt at contacting a real-life lost tribe. I normally try not to describe current (or even historical) events, but, sometimes, I just can’t help myself. So, before I go on, I will go with my usual warning that this is not a broad endorsement or condemnation of anything other than stupidity and/or incompetence (I have specific opinions that we’ll get into shortly, but, this tale does feature the world’s most disastrous missionary attempt, and that might put people on edge),

So, bit of background, We live in an era where there are almost no blank spaces left on the map. Hell, thanks to Google Earth, we have a few photos of the Area 51 terrain (again true, but it happened almost 10 years ago). However, there are a few left, like the Darien Gap (the undeveloped jungle-y area between Panama and Colombia, inhabited mostly by drug or gun-running operations), the Kibera Slums of Nairobi (by all accounts, an exceedingly dangerous place to go), parts of Beirut and the Gaza strip, and northern Pakistan. I realize it might be a bit of a stretch to cal them terra incognita, but, go ahead, try and get there and back. I’ll wait. There is also North Sentinel Island. That last one has been featured in a few Cracked articles. Now, even though I loved visiting France - and would do so again, especially if I didn’t have to do it as part of a package tour - I have, later in life, developed a much more, shall we say, spartan view of travel. This really kicked into overdrive after going to the Emerald Pool in Dominica, which I would absolutely endorse to anyone who doesn’t mind a few mosquito bites, and is largely protected because it’s way off the beaten path (if I hadn’t gone to grad school in the vicinity, I probably wouldn’t have gone). Even though I love the Met and Times Square, my most memorable stories from my week in New York a few years ago are from venturing out to Brooklyn, to find a little-known nerd bar that was Doctor Who themed (also true; it’s called The Waystation). My favorite spot in Miami was a dive bar in the middle of an upscale neighborhood (it has, sadly, since been demolished). In other words, I prefer those weird, unique places that seem to last only for a minute or two before they implode. Places like that require finding, and, in some cases, some reliable, competent guides or local fixers to get you there and back (well, not to Zeke’s in Lincoln Road, although finding a parking spot was hairy). North Sentinel Island, however, has stayed on my radar for a while, under the “NONO” file, because the minute it opens up for a nanosecond, it will vanish (it’s worth noting that, even though); also because, like traipsing through Waziristan, being the first one there is not a good idea, for reasons we’ll get into very quickly.

North Sentinel Island is home to a completely uncontacted tribe. And they (the Sentinelese) are super-murder-y. This is an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean - so it’s not like you’d bump into it on the way to Monte Carlo, so I can understand the appeal and mystique right away. The tribe in question hasn’t had contact with the outside world for... well, my sources differ, but since we’ve had records in the area, certainly. If they came over when the aboriginal tribes of Australia migrated from Asia (that’s a weird anthropological riddle unto itself, but we’ll talk about it another day), 30,000-40,000 years wouldn’t be out of the question, although, again, my data on this subject is from anthropologists and/or travel writers, which aren’t exactly “hard” sciences. That’s like “Skull Island” in Kong. Except scarier, because, what do have definitive, written records of, is a very, very hostile environment combined with the Home Owner’s Association from Hell. Literally every single account of the place involves the natives - or the terrain - killing and driving back any outside force. For all of our recorded history. The most recent recordings we have are from fishermen who go near the island, being harassed and shouted at by the inhabitants; that was twenty years ago. None of this is not an exaggeration, although that’s all from secondhand sources, at best (and I’m not going out there), and I’m trying to provide the sort of context I use to figure out if something’s interesting or not. If you’re like me, you’re getting an odd tickling sensation at the top of your spine that indicates something far more interesting than fiction is in the offing. Because no one has any real contact with the Sentinelese (well, no one’s coming forward, anyway), even though most experts think they’re related to other tribes in the chain (which may not mean much - as Maarten Troost points out, some of these islands can be such dangerous, divided places that over a dozen completely different languages were spoken on a single island), they’re also all completely susceptible to modern germs. Which is another one of life’s delightful oddities to consider that a used Kleenex might wipe out the scary natives (well, it would be more delightful if we weren’t celebrating that one time the European powers successfully used that approach to colonize the Americas and utterly decimate the locals long before most had even seen a white man). The Indian Government - who has jurisdiction over the area - has declared it off-limits to anyone without special government clearances and permission. Which I think is fine and agree with, but, I also think it’s to ensure that the Sentinelese don’t get access to boats and decide to expand the neighborhood. Again, we are talking about a people who the British Crown thought it wasn’t worth the risks to actively conquer, and we all know Queen Victoria’s life expectancy was dependent on how many countries her own occupied (okay, so that’s not true, but if you compare how long she reigned vs how many places she claimed ownership of, there’s an odd correlation). Like the other places on my list of “Don’t Ever Go There/Travel Musts,” it combines seclusion with danger, and I’d think the Indian Government might be as effective at banning travelers to it just by ignoring it and discouraging commercial activity in the area. Telling people not to go there or do something isn’t always the wisest policy, as Adam and Eve can attest. At the same time, 30000 years?! The last time they had contact with the rest of the species, we were eating Mammoths. And they’ve been actively resisting/killing everyone else for that long (okay, terminal cancer patient moment, there’s a bit of me that’s shouting.”I hope they never give in!”).

So, the second part of this drama involves organized religion. I will try not to get into my snide, militant agnostic (the older I get, the more I think it utter arrogance to claim absolute certainty - one way or another - about anything, let alone deities), but it will, at points, be somewhat unavoidable, because it’s both too amusing, and because someone claiming to represent God made something of a boo-boo that might endanger our bloodthirsty paleolithic friends there. Or, worse, give them access to boats. So, to all my religious friends, I don’t have any particular problems with your beliefs, as long as you aren’t doing anything horrible with them (like the Catholic Church and that long-running problem regarding pedophilia in the employees)(also, to all my friends who got in touch about the recent legislative/ballot measures, even though I love you all and your church, I hate to say it, but it’s not like your church would be above the sort of greed and corruption that plagues any institution run by humans, and I’d be immediately suspicious of the stock portfolio or intentions of any authority figure who tells you how to vote), but, at the same time, historically, religion has not always been, shall we say, totally beneficial to every situation. Which is important in this context because some nitwit recently tried to make contact with the Sentinelese in order to convert them. That was his stated intention; if I were inclined to be cynical, I’d point out that visiting Skull Island would be the travel story of a lifetime, and, as a species, we are amazingly good at rationalizing selfish motives to unselfish ones; and I see lonely, desperate people in the chemo ward every Tuesday who’d probably love to talk to you about beliefs (in other words, if you’re actually serious about converting someone, there’s far more receptive and easily-accessible groups than the Lost Atlantis Colony). This is particularly important because John Chau’s method of first contact was also uniquely unsubtle, and had a depressingly predictable (albeit amusing, if you have my twisted sense of humor) outcome.

Just as I kind of have to give props to the Sentinelese for utterly committing to their way of life, I have to admit that religion has - mostly for the better - evolved with us. It’s had to - we started off painting on walls in France in the hopes it’d control aurochs, and now it’s an entity in the modern array of nation-states. In order to do that, it’s had to reign in that impulse to spread the word of God at the end of a sword, and use much more subtle techniques. Again, that sort of sentiment isn’t something you think about until you see the world’s most convoluted form of suicide in action.

And I bring this up because, when I thought about it, if I decided to visit Mega Murder Island (and I’m not sure I would, since I still have strap on an ankle brace any time I think I’m going to need to move at more than two miles an hour, and I still haven’t survived any of my other “Amazing/Awful Travel Destinations”) there might be a few ways I’d go about it, 1. Go back to school and study anthropology and/or linguistics (as needed) and become a Noted Figure in the field, and get official public permission/funding for such a project. 2. Hire a PMC or similar mercenary group to storm island and force my way into the interior at gunpoint (not recommended, this was the approach the British took in the 19th century and they still didn’t subdue the natives). 3. Make friends/contacts among similar tribes in the island chain, in the hope that one of them would offer an “in,” 4. Very quietly organize some sort of quiet, covert expedition to reconnoiter the island while avoiding the Sentinelese in hopes of parlaying that information into a better strategy later, also while staying alive.

It’s not often you get John Chau’s approach, which is to bribe local fisherman to take you within kayak-range of the shore, and read the gospel to the natives, loudly, and then, after a while, paddle back to the waiting fishermen. Let us just pause - again - and appreciate that the same way you ask for directions in Helsinki or St. Petersburg when you have a clumsy phrasebook was the chosen method of contact by a modern human to people whose customs and culture would - if the estimates are correct - completely predate the Lascaux cave paintings. Again, to put it into context, to paraphrase Dan Carlin of “Hardcore History,” it’s a little hard to understand or empathize with writers from 500 BC, because the values and beliefs of the time are so out-of-sync with modern thought. And now imagine a culture that branched off from the rest of us over ten times earlier than that. Predictably, like every other time the outside world has tried to intrude on their island, the natives killed him. I guess the moral of the story is that Jesus won’t interfere on your behalf if ten minutes’-worth of research on a smart phone would inform you that, hey, maybe going to visit the uber-hostile cavemen isn’t a good idea. Another dream deferred, perhaps, but such is the price of remaining not-killed-by-obviously-not-friendly locals. Yes, my finding this darkly hilarious is probably callous on my part, but, at the same time, in the wake of Honnold ascending El Cap unaided, I’m thinking we, as a society, need to have a discussion about the difference between a calculated risk, and recklessness. Also, as mentioned, life is frequently weirder than fiction, and if you develop an instinct for that (and it’s very easy to do), there’s really no need to agonize over character motivation or plot.

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xottzot · 7 years

Text

2017-10(OCT)-01st-Sunday

2017-10(OCT)-01st-Sunday.

Firstly, my apolgies for accidently putting down the wrongly typed date as the 20th when it should have been the 30th of September 2017. It was just a slip of the finger in typing. Both posts hve been edited by me to correctly show the correct date...not that anybody cares or bothers.

Things are almost at their shitty criminal 'normal' for around this hellhole today on Sunday....

A lone car parked for many hours in an open totally empty carpark next to the Koongamia school oval (to keep an eye looking up into the Kalara Way street)....so they can gather intelligence to formulate new ways to cover things up.....

I saw a duo walked up the foopath during the day, one young man and one African? or aboriginal woman, aimlessly walking along the foopath past the scene of last nights riot with the aboriginals.

The duo were aimlessly walking about, first to the shops area, then returning but then going through the criminals pedestrian walkway......

Around 3:35pm....criminal aboriginals, an adult female wheeling a pram with an aboriginal brat in it for an alias and a younger aboriginal criminal openly invaded the 2 Kalara Way property AGAIN and went around the back, through a gate that is normally closed SHUT, and they eventually exited through the driveway. They casually walked on down and went into the 6 Kalara Way, Koongamia, Western Australia, aboriginal criminal household that was the scene of all teh shit last night, the assaults, the screams, the smashing, and everything else.

Later they're doing it ALL again they're roming all around over and over endlessly, teaching the younger abo girls to be just like the adults, and AGAIN they invaded that porperty. They actually go out of their way to to invade it. It's not an 'accident' or any other lame arse excuse that POLICE and authorities are forced to accept (but they do). - And all this is winding up and along. And nothing will happen.

Maybe there's going to be another riot in the streets? - Maybe there's going to be MORE smashing and invading of that property? - They've been entering it so much now that they've taken 'possession' of it wnd will smash it all up just like they did with 'Ms New Ages' place. - And STILL nobody ever believed anything I said, and WHO was doing it all.

All that is just 'normal' for them all because they are all criminals. You should have no pity whatsoever at all for those fuckers. They exploit others 'pity' to their own ends and leave destroyed lives in their wakes. THAT is the way they wantonly live and DEMAND to live. And in any 'NEWS' you only ever read one side of it all...the criminals side. - Get rid of them ALL.

Another vehicle parked strangely about....dunno what that was about.

Earlier a vehicle (4WD or SUV type) full of aboriginals drive into the aboriginla house next door to the main aboriginal CRIMINAL HOUSEHOLD, which has today seemd to be VERY VERY quiet and subdued. - Funny that eh?

It seems the criminal 'poor innocent darlings' were taken away becaus eof last nigts violent shit in the streets JUST OUTSIDE OF THEM and across the road from them that they all had a hand in.

Daytrips and 'holidays' for the crimanal kiddies.....THAT happens almost everytime. And it's all bullshit they do. - CRAZY shit. - Nobody believes how 'rewarded' the criminal aboriginals are even when they perform criminal shit upon themselves and their 'friends' they get 'rewared'.....whilst everyone who is innocent suffers....

If anyoen tries to dig a little deeer they soon run up against the OTHER reason for aboriginla-upon-aboriginal violence..........'yeah, they're aboriginals...so what? - They're not 'our mob'......'

Internecine violence based on mafia-like lines.

Sunday darkness of night is still to eventuate. That is very likely to mean MORE invading of houses and properties, and possibly MORE violent shit in the streets.

No good counting on the West Australian POLICE for anything. They're too busy bitching about wanting to be paid more for 'all their troubles as part of their jobs'. - And so trying to get them to so anything at this hellhole that has a lasting impact for innocents is totally useless. - They are the servants of aboriginals and the vested interests who are using aboriginals. Politicians and rich bastards.

Like a certain rich millionaire in Western Australia who never can do enough to supopsedly 'help' aboriginals whilst decrying all the woe and shit. But in the background he's still making a LOT of money and I daresay has a new lifelong profitable 'career' in being involved in it all for his own selfish life. -- He's just announced in the NEWS a new attack upon companies for their supposed part in the aboriginals exploitation and yet anyone who has been 'exploited', more than willingly entered into it all fully knowing beforehand everything because it's part of open Australian culture and has been for many many decades. -- It' amazing that a rich fucker says something and everyone never bothers to ask questions about anything about it all. But then again, he's making millions on what he does, what he sems to do, what he has planned...and everything else that's conveniently forgotten about in all the media hype and propaganda.

But that's okay because he's a 'man of the people'......(trademark probably pending).

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I've stated it countless times that aboriginal men are VERY violent and criminal, just about everyone in Australia knows that, but the females are JUST as and quite often MORE violent than the males. People only find that out after they have been robbed, or assaulted or worse by them.

And of coure there's a new round of engineered bullshit 'woe is us' shit in the NEWS......and it features women (woman are used all the time to try to gain pathos) from the Australian population to try to get them to back them.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-01/dont-ask-us-to-get-over-the-stolen-generations,-member-says/9003010

Translation:--- We are the ones who will carry on the fight and violence forevermore even when you least expect it. Maybe not us....but your neighbours.....

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4:20pm....a scooter (registered, but that's never a cretainty), just came tearing through the criminals pedestrian walkway and rode away tearing away. - Sam old, same old bullshit. The fuckers can do ANYTHING they like. And they have routines that must adhere to.- All this has been going on for YEARS.

Still not dark yet. Which is the race-start flag to be wave for crime and criminals. all this shit is just leading up to it. -- ALL this shit has been going on for YEARS.

Before it was all happening upon Ms New Age's place. It escalted. It was investigated. NOBODY DID ANYTHING AND NOTHING WAS DONE. - Then it all was repeated...and repeated....and repeated....and repeated....and repeated endlessly. It was investigated. NOBODY DID ANYTHING AND NOTHING WAS DONE. - Then it all was repeated...and repeated....

The it was set upon and smashed up. It was investigated. NOBODY DID ANYTHING AND NOTHING WAS DONE.

The place was resumed by gentle Ms New Age, and the massive repairs are forever ongoing.

And because they place has agents of Ms New Age there, the criminal aboriginals have simply switched across the road to the unfence corner house to smash and invade it and have long since instaged it all to keep going ON and ON and ON and ON and ON and ON and ON and ON and ON...until they get 'rewarded'.

That's how these criminal fuckers operate. Keep doing shit. Nobody can handle them or deal with them. - Then the rampant quiet 'placating' of the criminal aboriginals moves in.....I've seen ALL of this shit going on for YEARS at this hellhole.

By the way, I saw a little article in one of the latest community NEW papers for a person in Midland who was organising adults to get back into bicyling for their health and so on. All that is commendable and normal. -- But NO aboriginals AT ALL EVER WEARS BICYCLE HELMETS EVER. NOT EVEN IN FRONT OF POLICE WHO JUST LET THEM DO THAT, WHILST AT THE SAME TIME COMING DOWN HARD UPON ANYONE ELSE FOR NOT WEARING A BICYCLE HELMET WHICH IS THE LAW. ---- So...riding bicycles is a protected 'traditional' aboriginal thing is it and they are exempt from any and all laws? - That goes for EVERYTHING they aboriglas do to around this hellhole.

Once again.....NONE of that you will ever see in the NEWS, least of all in any community NEW papers.

If a vehicel ever strikes an aboriginal on any road, it's automatically assumed its the drivers faults and they come down so VERY hard uopn them. And exactly the same happens to aboriginals and shitheads of all ages on motorbikes (licensed or not or ANY type), and motorised motorbikes, and skateboards, and roller skates, and even just deliberately running out in into the path of oncoming cars......it's always hammered to everyone that it's the fault of the innocent cars and drivers.

And the other thing the media is utterly rampant guilty of is NEVER mentioning that a shithead was guilty of doing something illegal. Instead they just take a totally bizarre stance of totally NEVER mentioning it AT ALL. - Absolutely fucking crazy.

Online NEWS is worse because they just re-edit the already published NEWS article, and continually 'massage' all NEWS stories to be devoid of truthfulness and so NEWS has long since become worthless through omission. (GUILTY THROUGH OMISSION)

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I love you dear Fliss and want to be with you. -- Sam has once again had VERY loud terrible nightmares, crying and whining and howling in his sleep. Max was the same but to a lesser extent. - There is no volcano for us all to throw ourselves into and die and escape.

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