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#jack is basically a free radical
luulapants · 2 years
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The real Stede and Blackbeard weren’t that bad, actually
The only responses I’ve seen to the Hamilton 2.0 discourse on Our Flag Means Death have been ahistorical attempts to say the easiest socially placating response: “No, of course REAL pirates were all bad and implicated in the slave trade and REAL Stede was a bad, evil slave owner and they’re all in Hell now.”
This misses all nuance in discussions of how capitalism drove the slave trade, agency in mental illness, and the sad fact that people rarely have as many choices as we like to think they do. So, using bits of an earlier post of mine, here’s the real deal, which isn’t so neat and tidy:
1) Stede was a slave owner
This is true. His great-grandfather was one of the original colonizers of Barbados and his family had one of the most profitable plantations on the island. However, Stede's parents both died when he was 6, after which he was raised primarily by household servants and slaves. Guardians and other members of high society groomed him to be the perfect gentleman, arranged his marriage, and basically decided his entire life for him.
An important element in his story is that he was seriously mentally ill for most or all of his life. Terms like “emotionally fragile” pepper all accounts of his life. It’s hard to know exactly what mental illness he had. We know that he suffered from severe bouts of depression, was prone to impulsive and dangerous decisions, and all accounts show him as being people-pleasing, easy to manipulate, and unusually willing to do as he was told. This is not to say he didn’t benefit from slavery, but that his illness did not give him the agency to do something as radical as freeing the enslaved people on his estate.
What’s incredible, then, is this: he walked away from it all.
He did not free his slaves. That would have been legally complex in Barbados at that time, if not impossible, and would have left his wife and children destitute. However, he did stop participating in slave society. He left all of his wealth to go on an anticapitalist crusade. After he became a pirate, Stede was placed under the care of Blackbeard, who was kind to him and ran his ship when it became clear he was not mentally fit to do so.
2) All pirates were horrible monsters
There were basically three types of pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy:
Early Golden Age pirates, like Benjamin Hornigold and Henry Jennings, thought of themselves as legitimate privateers and were politically motivated Jacobites who opposed the Protestant overthrow of England. They only attacked ships who flew flags of “enemy” nations and followed a gentleman’s code of conduct. They treated captives graciously and, if they didn’t need to steal it, allowed the crew to return to their ship after looting.
Anticapitalist pirates, like Black Sam Bellamy and Blackbeard, were in active rebellion against European colonial control in the Caribbean and sought to frustrate their claims by attacking the trade networks that enriched them. They relied on psychological theatrics during attacks which, more often than not, caused their targets to surrender without a single shot fired. Blackbeard sought to destroy as many merchant vessels as possible, burning ships and toppling masts. He always left their crews somewhere safe. Though he gained a gruesome reputation, he is not known to have ever killed a person.
Anarchist pirates, like Charles Vane and Calico Jack Rackham, wanted to create chaos. They were terrorists, attacking civilian vessels and torturing the passengers to punish England for the Act of Grace, which threatened to civilize the Caribbean out from under them. Their targets rarely had loot worth taking, but their goal was not loot. It was fear and blood. They were likely disaffected sailors who had been forced into service on navy or merchant vessels, where crews were abused, rarely paid, and lived in conditions so horrid that they had similar mortality rates to slaves during transport from Africa to the Americas. They were monsters created by the horrors of capitalism.
3) Pirates were implicit in the slave trade
I want to be clear: all piracy was fundamentally harmful to the slave trade and the capitalist machine that drove it. Piracy made slave trading more difficult.
The story of the Golden Age of Piracy is not one of Black liberation or antiracism. It is a story of anticapitalism. Their cause could have dealt a devastating blow to the European slave trade and, as a consequence, could have had real, practical benefits for Black people in that era. The slave trade was justified by racism but it was not caused by racism. It was caused by capitalism. By greed. By the realization that the continued commodification of the human body, which the wealthy had practiced for hundreds of years on their own subjects and neighboring populations, could be expanded and exercised with impunity if it were done to people seen as outsiders from European society.
I'll give an example of a slave vessel Blackbeard captured with Stede: there were nearly five hundred captives aboard. Pirate ships could only sustain so many people, so captains had to choose crew for skill and their ability to work with the existing crew. The majority of the enslaved people on that vessel did not share a language with their crew and didn’t understand western customs. They kept sixty-one of the slaves as laborers, but nearly 400 were released back to the captain of the slave vessel.
It's easy to criticize this move, to say they should have freed those people. But to where? Abandon them on an island somewhere? They had no place to put that many people while they sailed around, looking for somewhere they could live. Besides, a few did escape and were later recaptured by the original captain because they were branded with his mark. Of those they took with them, a few later left voluntarily with a small amount of gold dust as payment. They were soon captured, robbed, and sold into slavery.
So, no, Stede and Blackbeard and other pirates didn't have perfect records on slavery, but how could they? And the crusade they did take up, attacking the European economies, was probably a better service to enslaved people than they could have managed by trying to free them directly.
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twopoppies · 2 years
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Hi! I saw DWD on Monday and have had some opinions on the movie since watching it, so I thought I’d share them in case anyone was interested in hearing a rundown/review.
So just to give a basis, I saw the movie with my brother, who is a casual Harry fan while I’m a huge fan. He rated the movie a 4/10 and said that the whole thing could be cut down into one episode of a TV show, which I definitely agree with. We both said that Harry was generally good and that during the parts where he stumbled in his acting, he got away with it because he’s Harry and people love him. Also, the movie has so many repetitive scenes. I’m not talking about the repeating themes of the husbands driving to work or the women making breakfast and cleaning the house, I’m talking about the SAME montages being replayed at least six times throughout the movie or random scenes that we’ve seen before. There’s one montage of a blue eye, a blood drop, and dancers that’s played at least 3 times for multiple minutes and it has no relevance to the plot. There’s so much montage and flashback filler that it actually feels like Olivia ran out of footage and just used whatever scraps she had to fill in gaps. This aspect made the movie boring at times.
In my opinion the really interesting part of the plot was incel Jack being radicalized by Frank and how he got him and Alice in the Victory Project. However, that part of the movie is not explored in depth at all which is truly a shame. It would have been fascinating how he got sucked in to this cult, the dynamics of Internet forums like Victory and their connection to things IRL like 4chan but we got nothing like that. The ending is also lackluster. Basically Alice goes to Victory HQ and gets teleported back to reality and then it fades to black. No word on what’s happening with the wives or other people in Victory.
Also there are so many plot holes like SO MANY. There’s a whole plane crash that’s never explained, lampposts start exploding when Alice kills Jack which doesn’t make sense because nothing happened when Chris Pine’s character died, and Gemma’s character kills Chris Pine’s character but the audience is never told whether she did it so that she could free the wives or she could become the new leader of Victory, who knows.
Also the audience was super annoying. People were wayyy too over-reactive with the screaming and gasping and then other audience members would tell them to stfu etc.
anyways sorry for rambling lol love ur blog btw 💘💘
Hi honey. Oh thank you so much for this rundown. That sounds so much in line with what my friend thought who went to the screening last year.
And yes!! There really was an interesting movie that could have been made. You would think that the part you're describing about how Frank lures Jack in, and what drove these men to do this, would have been really explored because it's so timely. But... no.
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plinkcat-gif · 1 year
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Hi kirpy!! Congrats on 300 followers!!!!!!!!!!!! I love your writing sm,, and im obsessed with ur newest kkobrin story. They make me sooo feral. I also want to mention I really like your taste in music.
So I do have a writing idea, if you are interested. It's basically just punk! kkobrin. I drew some art for this idea myself, but I can't write for shit. Itd be really cool to see you write a short drabble about them in this au being punks and fighting the problematic shinobi system. I dont rrally have any specific prompt about it tho so it might be too vague sorry. If u want to see the drawings and hcs I made for more info, theyre on my art blog @seoz-seoz. And if you don't like this concept, I totally understand!! No pressure. This may not be for everyone. Lol.
Either way, thanks and take care of yourself!!! Congrats again <3
HI SEOZ!!!!!! so i ended up having a lot of fun writing this even if it didn’t display their punk-ness very well, so i’ll just explain my vague ideas for them here AKDJAKDH
rin and minato are both very overthrow the system, but in a legal way. they want to pry power from under danzō’s feet like stripping paint off a wall. rin helps out in the hospital of course, but also plans a lot of educational activities for children of all ages, and underhandedly radicalizes them that way SKDKSK
obito is far more direct, and will attack root agents, destroy root hideouts, and in generally just more uh. violent. but he also participates in rin’s activities because he loves working with kids :3
kakashi just likes to go around vandalizing things with graffiti and yk. openly threatening root agents because he can. he also helps with rin’s stuff, and more often than obito. he also hosts his own art classes where he teaches older kids how to identify root hideouts and get away with vandalizing them SKDBSKDJSKDJ
all three of them only don’t get in more trouble because minato’s the hokage and he turns such a massive blind eye to their activities to piss danzō off dkdkskkd
ok here is the story i love them and i love ur art sm!!!!! <33333 also this isn’t 1k it’s 947 words which is. so annoying. but ik jack shit ab punk anything and couldn’t think of anything else to add :(
Rin let the door to the Hokage’s office slide shut behind her and took a seat on the couch next to, to her surprise, Obito. He glanced up at her, then grinned both in greeting and like the cat that’s caught the canary.
“Whatre you doing here?” she asked, noting the dirt on his clothes, like he’d been up to something. He probably had; Obito was like that.
“You first,” Obito responded, crossing his arms. Rin leaned back on the couch, realizing what Obito meant: he thought she was in trouble. Ah, then this would be news to him.
“Minato’s gonna help me plan an activity for the students where they can learn about the rivers and fish and stuff. Science-y stuff, you know.”
And if watching Obito deflate wasn’t the best thing she’d ever seen. Minato shuffled the papers on his desk, stifling a chuckle. “What’re you in for?” she added, because she wasn’t nice.
Obito slumped deep into his seat, sending the Hokage’s desk a burning glare. “I attacked a ROOT agent with a lead pipe,” he grumbled, and Rin reached over to grab his head and pull him into her chest.
“Awww, and Minato got you into trouble?” she cooed, petting his face as obnoxiously as possible. Obito groaned, long and loud, but made no attempts at escape.
“He broke their arm and leg,” Minato said, raising an unamused eyebrow at their antics. “They had to be hospitalized. According to them, Obito attacked unprovoked, too.”
“They were spying on me!” Obito retorted, spluttering and finally fighting his way free when Rin accidentally stuck a finger in his mouth. “I was only acting in defense of myself,” he added when he was sitting again, glaring at Rin.
“You were vandalizing a building.”
“It was abandoned!”
“I’m pretty sure trying to destroy a building is still illegal, Obito.”
“Well it was obviously a hideout for Danzō’s goons, so really, I was doing you a favor.”
Minato looked up from his paperwork, meeting Obito’s eyes with an icy glare. “Right. My former student wreaking havoc on an abandoned building looks great on my image as a Hokage.”
Obito opened his mouth to retort but Rin grabbed his ear and yanked on it lightly, scowling at him. “He’s very sorry,” she said, rolling her eyes when Obito didn’t take the initiative and instead snapped his mouth shut. She reached around him to grab his lips and, in a poor mockery of his voice, pinched and opened them and said, “I’m so sorry, Sensei, and I promise not to destroy any more buildings for at least a week. Or attack any more ROOT agents. Also you’re the greatest Hokage ever and I’m very thankful you’re going to let me off with only a slap on the wrist and a disapproving glare.”
Minato frowned at Rin’s antics, his disappointment changing none when he shifted his gaze from Obito to Rin, and she grinned in response. “You’re on Naruto duty for a week, too,” he finally said, looking back at his paperwork, and Obito groaned loudly.
Not that he didn’t like Naruto, but Rin understood. He was a handful without his parents around.
“Okay, both of you out please,” Minato said, waving them off, and Obito gladly stood and quickly made his way out.
“Ah, the field trip?” Rin asked, and Minato continued to wave her off.
“Whatever you have planned is fine, I’m sure. You have my permission to do whatever you want,” he said.
Well, not like she expected anything else. “Thanks Sensei!” she exclaimed, following Obito out with a wave to Minato.
It was getting close to dusk, which meant that they needed to find Kakashi because he was on dinner duty tonight. Sometimes it was easy, but other times Kakashi didn’t want to be found. Whether it be a bad mission or he was too involved in his current piece to be bothered, he would be hard to find.
Luckily, today was easy.
“That’s the building I was vandalizing!” Obito yelled, pointing an accusing finger at Kakashi, who was detailing some fur onto a wolf with electricity in its eyes and a bloody ROOT vest in its mouth.
“Subtle,” Rin called, following Obito.
Kakashi looked over at them, then very obviously grinned at Obito who was marching over angrily.
“So you can get away with threatening a ROOT agent in a permanent mural but the second I get caught attacking one, Minato’s about to flay me alive?”
“Maa, favorite’s privileges, I guess,” Kakashi responded, smoothly leaning away from Obito’s attempt to grab at his jacket collar.
Obito growled in frustration at his failed attack, but pushed it no further. “Tch, whatever,” he said, swiping a spray can from the ground. He walked over to the mural and sprayed a small red heart in the corner, before Kakashi could stop him.
“Ah, right over the water details,” he lamented, placing a delicate hand over his wounded heart. Rin grabbed a can and did the same right next to Obito’s, in pink. “You both wound me.”
“I think we should have fish for dinner,” Rin said, ignoring Kakashi’s whines, and beginning to help him pack up his supplies. Obito nodded in agreement, gathering Kakashi’s brushes into a pile. Kakashi worked on transferring his supplies back to his scroll, and then ended their familiar dance.
“Do you want grilled fish?” Kakashi asked, pocketing his scroll. “You guys keep telling me you regret not asking for it every time I make dinner.”
“Eh, I’m not really feeling it right now,” Obito said, and led them out of the alley. Rin snorted. They would absolutely regret not asking for grilled fish again.
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Homestuck, page 3,565
Be Aradia.
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You are now the Maid of Time, recently resurrected from the crypt of Derse. Your name is Aradia Megido, and for the first time in your life, you feel truly alive.
You have just incapacitated Jack Noir with a spell. But a demon so powerful requires your full concentration to subdue. He will break free any moment. You may release him, and die now. Or you may continue to hold him, and die later.
What will you do?
Aside from die, that is.
Author commentary: Aradia currently is an exceptional portrait of a character who absolutely has her shit together finally, in every way possible. I think you will agree she is coming across here as something of a "bad ass." If she didn't straight-up decide to just peace out through Jack as a portal, and if Homestuck rolled somewhat differently, it wouldn't be hard to imagine her unfreezing Jack, getting him in a headlock, and absolutely whaling on him in a frightful display of dominance. But no, it doesn't roll that way, mainly because my tendency was to gravitate away from outcomes involving depictions of action and physical conflict due to it being such a pain in the ass to execute. Also it would probably be stupid if that's what happened next. Mainly because now Aradia herself, like me, also gravitates away from conflict, due to this radical god tier-fueled transformation of her persona into an fairly unusual death and destruction-worshipping pacifist type. Sometimes a character will get their shit together so hard, they experience such a profound transcendence of all the petty matters related to the conflicts and plot, that there's really nothing left for them to do but bounce from the story almost entirely. That's basically what she's doing here. She's absconding to a different plane of reality, and rising above all the petty concerns of mortal beings forever.
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genderoutlaws · 2 years
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hi kerm ! this is not much of a question but a experience i had recently with a classmate.. she is very politically engaged and critical of casual bigotry, in my experience very kind etc. but recently she described herself as a radical feminist and made a bunch of remarks basically insinuating that masculinity is gross/evil (the usual i-hate-males-um-i-mean-men-well-actually-gay-men-are-okay-ig type feminism). she has not been actively hostile to gay and trans people in my experience, mostly the opposite which is more confusing. The statements always makes me wonder like, where is she drawing the line? at what point am i no longer welcome in her 'female-only space'...? am i just too online that the word 'radfem' alone raised red flags to me?? like admitting ure on radfem reddit IS a red flag right... am i reading too much into this 😭😭
anyway, i always appreciate how u approach topics like this, if u dont mind sharing, what is your experience dealing with people like that in real life? how can i know if theyre safe or not?
hey! that is kinda tough, but from what you’re saying it could honestly be that she isn’t aware of that association with radical feminism as a term ? bc i have met cis women who are genuinely just like clueless abt it, or at least used to. i do feel like trvs have crossed from niche internet hategroup to like more well known rightwing activists in the past few years, but there’s still a lot of cis ppl who are just like,, stupid n dont know jack shit abt whats goin on w trans ppl rn or ever. i would try to engage her on like what it is she likes about radical feminism or smth like that, and try to get a vibe from there maybe ?? and if you feel safe and that it’d actually be conductive, maybe bring up some of the common associations especially with the like british hategroups n shit and why it concerns you. hope this helps pls keep in mind im autistic im not stellar at social situations 😭 followers feel free 2 give yr own perspective
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intheseautumnhands · 1 year
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29, 32, 76, 89 talk about them!
29. Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, Sleeping at Last
This is another one mostly here due to writing playlists -- Sleeping at Last and Vitamin String Quartet are basically my default writing music the last couple of years. I like this cover a lot, it's very sweet, but I can't say I have much more to say about it than that. XD
32. The Cult of Dionysius, The Orion Experience
I think this originally showed up at a different spot? But I logged on the next day and the playlist had been almost completely shuffled around for some reason. I don't think I hit anything, but here we are. Anyway -- this would be much, much higher if you could somehow chart all the music I listened to this year, because I defaulted for months to pulling this up first-thing on youtube as a way to wake up and start work.
Favorite lyric: Or start a secret society for the wild and free Our ideology is you can do what you want Too much is never enough We are the light, we are the life We are the envy of the gods above
76. Wild Blue Yonder, The Amazing Devil
I am surprised more TAD songs aren't getting hit, because I did listen to them on a lot of writing playlists this year -- the sound works for me for Blades fic, which is, well, most of what I wrote this year. XD (I also listened to them for fun a lot, but mostly on Bandcamp; most of what's on Spotify was either writing or chores music.)
Favorite lyric: Let's hide under the covers, we don't know what's out there-- Could be all our demons, darling
89. Holy Branches, Radical Face
I loooooove this song. The only reason this song is so low is because I CAN'T put it on too many writing playlists because I WILL stop and listen to it almost every time. I love it even more since learning the characters behind it, but the song itself has always given me chills. The lyrics and the sound of it both.
Creatively, I really want a Jack-and-Lock centric Lost fanvid to this, but generally I just. fucking love it.
Favorite lyric: it is so hard to pick because it's most of the song, but either: "But everybody's bones are just holy branches Cast from trees to cut patterns in the world And in time we find some shelter Spill our leaves, and then sleep in the earth And when we're there, we'll belong Cause the Earth don't give a damn if you're lost"
or
"Trace your fingers down my spine Make your home behind my eyes Line my skull with harmless lies I'll bide my time until I'm something they want"
( Spotify Wrapped asks: give a number, get a song + babble )
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fromcenotaphy · 3 years
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Dean and Sam hunting together: well that’s the show isn’t it? saving people hunting things etc etc. brotherly moments that make you either go awww or want to throw them off a cliff. practically reading each other’s minds on hunts bc they’ve been doing it for so long. terrible communication any other time
Dean and Cas hunting together: hunter husbands. standing 1.5 inches away from each other at all times. constant bickering constant eye sex constant rifling through each other’s pockets oh god they’re so fucking married
Sam and Eileen hunting together: extremely sweet together. heart eyes while discussing lore and/or tactics. pretending not to be worried about each other because they each really want to respect the other person’s independence and hunting skills.
Cas and Eileen hunting together: murder besties. taking turns beating the shit out of villains while the other person nods approvingly. roasting their boyfriends during stakeouts. mutual agreement not to tell dean and sam how many people they’ve blackmailed.
Dean and Eileen hunting together: sky-high levels of competence. kicking ass left right and center. off-the-charts wittiness. spn would only be 1 season long if it was about these two because they would immediately solve every apocalypse in the most practical way possible and then spend the rest of the season getting drunk together at dive bars.
Sam and Cas hunting together: terrible, terrible idea. the case may get solved but fifty new problems will be created. maximum chaos minimum planning. all ancient curses and alternate dimensions are fair game. cosmic regime changes ARE on the table. 90% chance that one of them ends up in a coma.
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makeste · 2 years
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BnHA Chapter 328: Pandora’s Box of Discourse
Previously on BnHA: DEKU TOOK A BATH.
Today on BnHA: 
youtube
Also Naomasa grew a beard. Goddamn. 
please let this be a cool chapter that plays nice with my ADHD lol
(ETA: lol I feel guilty because a lot of people hated this chapter, but I’m just happy there was a lot of stuff to make fun of, and also that I have another week to work on my backlog of meta posts since the kids were MIA.)
around one month ago?? ah, okay, so we’re gonna find out what was in that Tartarus security file huh
I love that they just randomly set the place on fire
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was it necessary to do this in order to escape? no. was it a good idea to set the island they were occupying on fire while they were in the midst of still occupying it? uh. was it cinematic as fuck? fuck yeah
wow it’s a pervert!!
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that’s so great that the villains set loose this fine fellow who I’m sure is definitely not a serial rapist. truly the LoV is so noble and misunderstood. they’re just trying to free society from its chains people
oh my god??!
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SHANKED!!! oh my god I cheered for Stain before I realized what I was doing. time to have an identity crisis I guess
so he’s all “hey what’s going on.” which, while a respectable question, is something I personally would have waited to ask until I had put a bit of distance between myself and the fiery murder island. but that’s just my personal preference
Stain you really are tenacious I’ll give you that
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“what’s the point of escaping prison if you’re not gonna be smart about it” well shit. anyways yeah you’re dead right, society is in the process of collapsing and the outside world is in total chaos, good call there
oh shit
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I mean it’s not like we really expecting anything otherwise, but still. fucking brutal. I feel like these guys’ fates were decided the minute that one guy called AFO “scum” back in chapter 94. AFO is unmatched at getting long-term revenge
??
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ahh, was it the security footage??
fdsdfk he’s still alive??
and he’s immediately launching into an inappropriately theatrical monologue even as the darkness closes in on him fdlfksjdlk. you know, was it ever confirmed that the other guy back in chapter 297 was Seiji’s dad? I’m just saying
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very impressed that he’s still coherent enough to weigh the pros and cons before making the decision to gamble on giving this info to Stain, who at the very least has his own moral code and isn’t allied with AFO. it was definitely still a risk, but as we now know it was also the right call
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what a weird alliance. so Stain tells him that he’ll give it to a just person, and the guy is all,
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okay for real though I’m gonna need someone to run a DNA test on this guy. maybe it was some kind of cuckold situation?? the other guy had the family resemblance, but this guy absolutely 100% raised Shishikura Seiji and you are not going to convince me otherwise
anyway, so Stain is all,
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PRISON GUARD: “???? ??????? what the hell. what the fuck does that fucking mean. I’m dying here, jesus christ, whatever man fuck you”
(ETA: I kind of feel like this might have been Stain’s last appearance in the manga, given all the fanfare. there’s not really much else he can do for the story at this point, and he seems to have gotten all the character development Horikoshi was planning on giving him. so if this really is it, hasta la vista and good riddance I guess.)
DWLFDKSLDK MEANWHILE, OUTSIDE
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(ETA: I feel like this is meant to be evocative of that Sermon on the Mount painting, but in a really fucked up way lol.)
if it were me stumbling upon this scene I would just shake my head and walk right back into the flaming building. not getting involved in that mess. sorry not sorry. I’ll take my chances with the fire, especially given that it’s half-assed neutered BnHA fire lol
blah blah blah and so he decided to pass the info on to All Might -- HOT DAMN, HOLY SHIT
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NAOMASA HOLY SHIT. THE APOCALYPSE LOOKS GOOD ON YOU, BOY
“I really like that facial scruff thing Aizawa’s got going on, I think I’m gonna get in on that” yes sir. “also thinking of ditching the tie in favor of the bulletproof vest look. also thinking of getting totally fucking jacked.” good lord. except I’m pretty sure that’s just body armor, but also I don’t care. anyway I should probably stop staring and actually read the fucking speech bubbles here lol
“All Might first handed this information over to Nao, and then went to see Deku, and then came back to Nao” thanks for that tidy little summary Horikoshi. we are capable of piecing events together in sequential order, I just want you to know that. but thank you
“so has Deku finally gotten a bath? also, sucks that Stain saved the day, but what are you gonna do” Nao I missed you so fucking much and didn’t even realize. how am I just now realizing that you are the perfect man
for a second I was gonna ask why Tartarus’s security systems would be cut off from the outside world, and then I remembered that’s a basic security control, and then I actually got impressed by how sensible that is. like, it’s been a while since I could genuinely say that the good guys (excluding class 1-A) did something smart. not that it helped them much in the end, but still
anyway so they’re talking about how AFO was able to coordinate the attack by communicating between his horcrux self on the outside and his ugly peanut-faced self on the inside
huh
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okay you have my attention. I am taking notes here lol please continue
ah okay so he says that prior to Jakku, the transfer of information between him and his Vestige self was only one-way. but post-Jakku when Deku was in the hospital, he was able to tell what was happening inside the OFA Radical Lisa Frank Dead People Book Club Realm when he touched him. I feel like we established that before, actually. but he didn’t talk about how it actually felt, though
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boy we already know this lol. yes AFO can talk with his horcrux self. and he can also communicate with his little bro in OFA too, let’s talk about that sometime why don’t we. what exactly does that imply, based on the rules we’ve established here
my god I cannot get over Naomasa and his fucking facial hair
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no wonder All Might was in such a hurry to leave Deku and get back here
like I have no idea what this radio waves nonsense is but my god, people
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that jawline. also so it’s a quirk, I see. except last I checked Deku didn’t have a radio waves quirk, so that doesn’t really explain his connection to AFO. but whatever, hopefully we’re at least getting closer to some kind of reveal here
(ETA: since I sometimes forget that other people’s lives don’t revolve around my theory posts, here are the two relevant links if you by chance want to know my thoughts about this.
Hagakure is still The U.A. Traitor™ regardless of whether Deku is passing information on to AFO through his psychic link, which he almost certainly is.
speaking of said psychic link, Deku is a horcrux.
just posting these now, because whenever trippy OFA stuff happens I tend to get an influx of theory asks. so hopefully this will be a bit of a time saver lol.)
-- wait, what
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THAT’S what the recording was??!? holy SHIT. I genuinely was not expecting that. y’all wiretapped his fucking telepathy. fucking quirks, man. wild
AND THEY USED THAT POWER TO DETERMINE WHAT WE ALREADY KNEW, HUZZAH. GOOD SHOW
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-- oh shit wait lol, except I forgot we’re not talking about 38 days from the present, we’re talking about 38 days from the date the conversation was recorded. heh. um
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yeah that’s the face I would make too if All Fucking Might just casually told me we had eight days left until the end times
oh, pardon me. three fucking days
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r.i.p. anyone who thought we were going to have another band arc sob. I sure hope Deku is enjoying that nap
(ETA: I realize people were hoping for a longer rest period here, but given that the man warned us all the way back in chapter 306 that we were entering the final act, you can’t really blame him too much when that turns out to be true. anyway but I do recognize that we’ve reached the point in the story where this kind of discourse is going to become a weekly occurrence, simply because there’s no possible way for Horikoshi’s actual endgame to line up perfectly with the variable headcanons of millions of fans, all of whom have wildly differing and in many cases contradictory expectations which can’t possibly all be fulfilled. anyway, so I’m already bracing myself for that lol. this coming year is going to be a wild ride.)
damn, U.A. out here looking like the motherfucking United Nations
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-- is this U.A.?? I actually just realized, U.A. is four interconnected buildings, not two. wait holy shit is this Shiketsu?
wait holy SHIT
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based on the overwhelmingly powerful vibes of bureaucratic incompetence, I’m thinking this really is the (future) U.N., or whatever organization it is that deals with international hero stuff
“just let them handle it themselves I’m sure they’ll be fine” yeah okay, thanks guys. appreciate it
wait oh shit did he say that it’s not just Japan?
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soooo, what you’re telling me is that AFO is this close to bringing about the end of not just Japan, but the entire world, and you guys don’t think it’s a good idea to help the Japanese heroes stop him? so, genuine follow-up question: are you guys already planning your rich people exodus into space a la Wall-E, and that’s why you don’t give a fuck?? like, what??
omg international heroes
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these guys are from World Hoodie Mission, right? is this Horikoshi’s way of reminding me to buy tickets
(ETA: and it worked too lol.)
WHO??? WHAT???
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don’t tell me you’re introducing yet another badass new female character for me to fall in love with only to watch as you dismember them and/or blow them up, Horikoshi. I’m getting tired of playing this game my dude. don’t lie and tell me this time will be different. we’re not doing this again goddammit
noooooooooooooooooooo
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god fucking dammit lmao. [sighs and rips the previous paragraph into shreds]
on behalf of Americans I apologize for our superheroes always being Like This
I also apologize because I love her already and I’m gonna be shameless about it. so fucking shameless you guys
is her fucking hair red white and blue. it is, isn’t it
this is the volume cliffhanger, 100% lol. it will take every ounce of Horikoshi’s willpower not to put her on the volume cover. he’ll have to settle for the spine or the inner cover this time because Deku VS his class 1-a superpals takes precedence. but it will be a close thing let me tell you
tbh it’s that smile that does it for me. she’s definitely All Might’s protege. get out there and show them how it’s done girl. and maybe call Salaam and BRD and see if you can’t convince them to play hooky from their governments as well. why not. world’s ending in three days you guys. “sorry, I’m busy this weekend” ain’t gonna cut it lol
so while I am not fully caught up with Vigilantes, I have read far enough to know that there’s an American hero named Captain Celebrity whose superpower from what I recall is being a humongous douchebag. and while I haven’t read far enough to know what happens to this guy, I can’t say I’m very disappointed to learn that he’s no longer the number one hero in the U.S. (actually, didn’t they kick him out and that’s why he moved to Japan to begin with?). anyway, so my thanks to Horikoshi for having a marginally higher opinion of Americans than Furuhashi, even though we have definitely not done anything to warrant said opinion lately, and you may have inadvertently opened the door to a pandora’s box of discourse lmao
(ETA: lol I went into the tags and they don’t disappoint. “why is she dressed like a flag” because she’s an homage to Captain America and Major Victory and literally every other character on this list. again, I apologize for fictional American superheroes being Like This. “oh boy another thicc waifu to make the fanboys happy” look, tumblr fandom never seems to have a problem thirsting over Dabi or Tomura or Aizawa or Nao, lol, I’m just saying. “where is Captain Celebrity” idk, probably murdered by the exploding bee cartel, let’s just be grateful for our good fortune and try not to Beetlejuice the man.)
anyway, so let’s see if Horikoshi’s recent character development with regards to making Mineta not terrible anymore will apply to other aspects of his writing as well. I know I was making light of discourse just now, but I do think the complaints about him introducing yet another new character at the 11th hour to be cannon fodder in the final battle are absolutely valid. and again, it wouldn’t be a problem if he didn’t keep maiming/killing off his female characters one by one instead of developing them and letting them kick ass long-term. but that said, I will never complain about Horikoshi adding another female character to the series, regardless of how clumsy the attempt may be. go ahead and pander away, just give us more girl power lol
anyway so we’ll see how it goes, but I think I’m gonna be optimistic and let myself hope once again, even though I’m probably gonna regret it lol. it is what it is. she is standing on an airplane just chilling for fuck’s sake. I’m only human. anyway fingers crossed
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vowled · 3 years
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Kill Your Darlings: An Analysis of its Twists and Themes
A few days ago, I watched Kill Your Darlings, and needless to say, I became completely mesmerized by it. Naturally credible characters with well-crafted backstories portraying a true story of Love, Obsession and Murder, it's everything a person could ask for in a movie. The colour palette of the movie radiates comfort and the sound track takes you back in time when these two bright young men were falling in love. Right from the start it was apparent that there were many themes in the undercurrent of the movie, and these were such that required some amount of thoughtful contemplation. And I was incredibly sorry to not find any post or review which critically discussed the themes of the movie and did it justice- so after doing some reading and digging up as much as I could, here I am making an attempt to analyze the twists and themes of the story.
The Crucial Plot-twist
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The Night In Question- why the movie's recounting of the events is fictitious:
When faced with the prospect of writing the deposition for Lucian, Allen tried his best to gather information about the events that led to David's murder. However, it proved to be a difficult feat as Lucien himself would not speak much about it clearly. So he pieced together what he could from the bits of information he got. However, we see Lucian vehemently opposing the deposition written by Allen and claiming it to be false. After some thought, I find that I believe Lucian's claims. Most of the following arguments are rooted in the fact that Lucien's relationship with David was an abusive one, where David basically groomed Lucian and was a sexual predator. I suggest reading my post here to gain more insight about how the abuse affected him.
"You weren't there, you don't know what happened." These words right here- they're the words of a victim. Being subjected to a form of sexual abuse myself, I found these words hitting me like a brick ton. These are words coming from a pained soul that refuses to recount traumatic incidents. He's practically saying that the abuse was so bad he had to kill his abuser to be free from it.
Even after Allen saw first-hand what a total creep David could be, even after knowing the man had stalked Lucian across multiple cities, he had to ask Lucian why the latter killed David when he "could have run". This tells me he couldn't exactly relate to Lucian's situation and wasn't very keen on believing him. Although he displayed a moment of intimate affection, there's still a lingering feeling of yeah but he broke my heart inside him. After learning how Lucian drowned David, he even begins questioning if he should help him at all. At this point, Allen doesn't trust Lucian enough to actually care how accurate the story is. So he wrote what he could, what he felt right. But even he couldn't condemn his friend/first love to such a fate as prison, so eventually he submitted it as his final paper. In all honesty, I thought that turning it in was a brilliant move, and one which also further proved that the "once you loved him too" version was mostly fanciful fiction.
Throughout the movie, sequences have been played in reverse frames (and I found this so pleasing) and from the nitrogen-inhaling scene, we know that these sequences designated memories playing out in Allen's head or his subconscious creating dreamscapes. And here's the catch- the entire scene of Lucian taking a walk with David and eventually killing him began with frames played in reverse order. This gives the absolute proof that the movie's depiction of the events were fictitious.
Allen's P.O.V. of the events mainly relied on the argument that at some point, Lucian genuinely loved and needed David. This couldn't be further away from the truth. When you're 14 and and being groomed and coaxed by an older guy, a lot many things could feel like love because you haven't experienced them before; but in reality, it's never love, it just is another form of violence.
Themes running through the movie
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"There can be no Creation before Imitation"
We see Professor Steves saying this at the beginning of the movie, hinting that it would be a theme in the story. This statement is reflected throughout Allen's progression and development as a poet:
In the beginning, we see him being hugely influenced by his father's works and possibly trying to imitate him through poetic devices such as consonance.
Next, we see him imitating Professor Stevens' style of writing in his poem "the rose that scents the evening air, grows from by beloved's hair" which Lucian outright criticizes.
It is only with the poem Allen recites to Lucian on the boat that he starts developing some sort of originality. That poem in particular is directly drawn from his personal experiences and delivers splendidly.
This development continues as he proceeds to write "The Night In Question" wherein he brilliantly describes his opinion of how things went down. It was this streak that would eventually propel him to write his most celebrated poem, "Howl".
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The Circle of Life and How Allen Breaks it
We see Lucian telling Allen how "Life is only interesting if it is wide" and about Yeats' "Circle of Life". As displayed by the linked document, turns out the circle of life is quite complex a thing, and the movie displays a lay-man's version of it. As Lucian tells about it to Allen, unbeknownst to them both, Allen also enters the circle and changes the turn of events:
It is obvious that at the party at David's, Allen was a misfit. David even goes so far as to literally call him out and point how unremarkable he was, but says how given the correct circumstances, even Allen could change things. And what's extraordinary is exactly this happens next: the liquor runs out in David's party and Allen suggests they should change the venue of the party- hence hijacking David's party!
We see Allen's life widen as he becomes closer to Lucian and starts doing things he'd never done before. At the same time, he also plays an important role in changing Lucian's life as well. It's Allen who suggests at first that Lucian should break up with David and stop taking his help. Later in the movie, after learning about David's obsessive behaviour, it's again Allen that said "we should get rid of him". Again, here we see some foreshadowing. Allen could have worded it in any probable way, and yet he suggested getting rid of David which subtly implied killing him. I do believe that this happened to become a subliminal suggestion to Lucian and furthered his murderous intent.
Hence, although Lucian radically changes Allen's life, the latter does so too in unlikely and unexpected ways.
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Sacrifices (and Rituals?)
Since the beginning of the movie, we know that the characters are all extraordinary men and that they are capable of something revolutionary. But it was apparent that all of them would need a catalyst to set things in motion- a sacrifice of some sort which would help them break their moulds and free their inner poet. Allen's love for Lucian and his wish to impress him did make him work toward become better at writing. It was the fear of completely losing Lucian to Jack that made Allen put all his effort into writing, and made him come up with his best work yet - here, the fear acted as the catalyst.
However, the most significant thing in connection to this happened in this scene where Lucian cuts both of their palms and holds them up together - this can be considered a Blood Ritual.
"A blood ritual is any ritual that involves the intentional release of blood. Blood rituals often involve a symbolic death and rebirth, as literal bodily birth involves bleeding. Basic to both animal and human sacrifice is the recognition of blood as the sacred life force in man and beast. The participants may regard the release of blood as producing energy useful as a sexual, healing, or mental stimulus. In other cases, blood is a primary component as the sacrifice, or material component for a spell."
The fact that this event took place inside Allen's head during a trippy session outlines how Allen had subconsciously taken a blood oath with Lucian to further The New Vision. This process of developing their revolutionary ideas would successfully progress for the rest of the movie; however, before its completion, the oath demanded a sacrifice- and the murder of David became this blood sacrifice.
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"With Death comes Rebirth"
In the first half of the movie we see the initiation of this theme; after they've agreed upon to bring up something revolutionary, Allen talks about how rebirth comes only after death, and in their naivety, they play out a pseudo-suicide scene to imitate death. Little did they know greater sacrifices would have to be made. Eventually as events play out, we come to realise that it is David's death that became the cause and medium for their rebirth- both academic and intra-personal. Jack and Bill co-wrote the book "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks" about the murder of David Kammerer, and eventually rose to fame, while Allen became popular with "Howl and Other Poems", none of which could have been initiated/inspired without David's death. As for their personal growth, none of them were the same as they were before the affair. I like to think all of them changed for the better. Lucian must have finally felt a sense of relief after getting rid of his abuser, while Allen finally took-off his rose-coloured glasses, saw Lucian under a more critical light, and developed a sense of self-esteem.
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A Study in Violence (I was unsure whether to include this point in this analysis or not due to the violent nature of it. But I figure this analysis would remain incomplete should I leave it out. So here it goes..) The sequence from 1:10:00 to 1:12:00 was an in-depth survey of Violence and how it can occur in different forms. In particular, it focused on how any form of penetration is intimately violating.
We see a lonely Allen being so lost that he's about to have sex with a complete stranger. This itself is very unlike him, who in the beginning of the movie was shying away from Lucian kissing an unknown girl. A few sequences later we see how he wasn't very comfortable with this idea (he wanted to turn off the lights but the other guy turned them on) and yet he was made to shift into a position he did not prefer and hence was made to have rough sex.
We see Bill looking very solemn and injecting drugs into his hands.
We see the violent altercation between Lucian and David. We see David forcing himself on Lucian and eventually being stabbed by him.
We see Jack recieving the news of the death of his friend.
In this way, we see every member of the group being exposed to some form of violence, be it sex, drugs, physical altercations or death.
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First Love and its aftermath First love is also an important theme of the movie as it shows how one's first love has the capacity to radically change a person from within:
Allen's first love changed him from the shy, people-pleasing always-upright persona to the bold, radical, critical and unafraid person he became at the end of the movie.
Allen's discovery of his own style of writing can also be majorly attributed to Lucian's criticism of his rhyme-schemes.
All in all, it was his love for Lucian that drove him to become a more out-going person and ignited the mischief in his spirit, while the heartbreak of realising Lucian didn't feel the same for him also lent him invaluable insight and allowed him to develop confidence and a sense of self-esteem, which would play a significant role in him eventually becoming his own person.
While Allen's first love furnished him with the overall better things in life, the same could not be said for Lucian, sadly. Lucian's first love reminded us how oppressive love can become if the other person isn't suited-well for us; it showed us how sometimes love and obsession are separated by a thin line, and how dangerous it becomes when the line is crossed.
Lucian's story also showed us how sometimes a relationship can be more abuse than love, and when that happened, how easy it became to confuse violence with love.
The most significant message that the theme of first-love portrays is that there will always be consequences.
With this, I bring my arguments and analyses to a close. I hope a future (or even past) lover of the movie happens to stumble upon this someday and learn something fascinating about the movie (or reignite their love for it). Thank you for reading this far!
[P.S. an uplifting fact: in real life, Lucian, Allen, Jack and Bill each got the type of life they wished for, and remained friends for the rest of their lives :) ]
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tobermoriansass · 3 years
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Beautiful World, Where Are You is set in the aftermath of a blockbuster success that sounds not unlike Rooney’s own. Alice Kelleher, a 29-year-old novelist, has come to the west coast of Ireland to live in a big borrowed house and get away from the international pageant of literary publicity (she takes planes, not trains). She has a million euros in the bank and has just had a nervous breakdown, which left her in hospital for a few weeks: ‘I felt very out of control ... I was just extremely angry and upset all the time. I wasn’t in control of myself, I couldn’t live normally. I can’t explain it more than that.’ Normality has totemic significance in Rooney’s writing: her characters either think of themselves as ‘special’ – that is, smart and sensitive but stranded among normal people – or they yearn to be normal rather than fucked up and damaged. There is a relentless keeping score on this account, not only of who is a ‘normal’ person but of who is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘nice’ or ‘evil’ person. Every action, every bit of behaviour, may reveal an essence. It’s a strange way of portraying characters who are basically innocent and not in the least weird.
How much you enjoy Rooney’s novels – enjoyment is the point, and there’s no denying her broad appeal – depends on your attitude towards her characters. I’m not talking about likeability, or the moral status these people are constantly calculating, or their relentlessly avowed leftist politics: that’s fine – plenty of people talk a radical talk and live their lives as complacent liberals. I mean simply: are they interesting? On my scorecard, Frances and Bobbi come top: Bobbi because she shoots her mouth off a lot and doesn’t seem to give much of a fuck what anybody, except sometimes Frances, thinks of her; Frances because of the tension between her self-image as a virtuous victim (of her father, of the patriarchy, of capitalism, of her own body) and her obvious selfishness, by which I mean her hunger for literary success and for Nick, the husband of her mentor Melissa.
Reading Normal People sometimes feels like doing maths problems, since Marianne and Connell seem less like people than a quivering set of power dynamics. At school, she’s richer than him, but he’s more popular. Their relative popularity switches when they go to university, where wealth is more salient than amiability. He’s taller than her new boyfriend, but the new boyfriend is loaded: who would intimidate whom? When Marianne gets back from a semester in Sweden, she’s skinnier than she used to be. A point to Marianne. In academic achievement it’s a draw, but after the suicide of a schoolmate Connell inches nearer to Marianne on the trauma scale, Marianne having had a headstart thanks to her violent (now dead) dad, not to mention her shit of a brother and nasty mother.
The closest thing to a saint in Rooney’s novels is Lorraine, Connell’s mother and Marianne’s family cleaner. The ‘house is never really clean anymore’, Marianne thinks after she leaves to take a job at a hotel. Lorraine’s love, and the absence of a corrupting father, is understood to be the source of Connell’s virtue. Her analogue in Beautiful World is Felix, the working-class Joe with no path up through the meritocracy – an ‘evil’ system, Marianne and Connell agree in Normal People as they skate to the top. He is the novel’s most interesting character, as well as its least coherent. Scorecard: Alice discovers he likes ‘rough anal’ porn, which is bad; he shows her a cute squirrel video on YouTube, which is good; he had some dodgy sexual relations as a teen, bad but forgivable; he seems to be well endowed, also good; his hands sometimes get cut up at the warehouse, quite sympathetic; he, like Alice, claims to be bisexual, very modern; he sometimes gets too drunk and high at the club and makes a booty call, bad but not too bad; he is musical and at a party sings ‘The Lass of Aughrim’ as someone does in Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, very authentic. Above all, he is uninhibited: he accepts Alice’s offer of a free trip to Rome when she invites him after their second encounter; he asks if she has any good drugs (alas, nobody ever offers her them); he isn’t shy about inquiring how much money people make and how they spend their time. But his openness is less a quality of his personality or class status than a counterpoint to the obvious fact that Alice, Eileen and Simon are uptight.
There is lots of sex. For a good span of the novel, every chapter that isn’t an email climaxes with a sex scene. These weren’t my thing. Relayed in a cold third person, they lack the emotional point of view of the sex in Rooney’s earlier books, which are sparer and less porny. They sound not unlike moving furniture, and have something in common with a couple of scenes of Felix sorting packages at the warehouse. There’s a lot of ‘entering’ and not much kissing. I wondered if Rooney has ever read Don DeLillo’s White Noise, in which Jack and Babette in bed make fun of ‘entering’ as a euphemism for fucking. The word ‘whimpering’ comes up with reference to noises both Alice and Eileen make: I couldn’t tell if this was meant to be sexy or a joke. Either way, I refrained from laughing.
But I did laugh a lot at the emails between Alice and Eileen, because they are pretty vapid: embarrassing to read and perhaps to have written. It’s true that people send one another articles and other trivia over email all the time, but why make characters in a novel exchange Wikipedia pages before veering into discussion of their love lives? I took this as a sign of laziness on Rooney’s part but perhaps it’s a mark of her genius for the broad stroke. Either way, she partakes of the spirit of political futility that has become a cliché in Anglophone fiction over the past half decade, with Trump and Brexit and heightened anxiety about climate change. In the first of these emails, after some sophomoric ruminations about the landscape of Dublin and the contradictions inherent in right-wing free-market politics being labelled ‘conservative’, Alice describes going into a shop for lunch:
I suddenly had the strangest sensation – a spontaneous awareness of the unlikeliness of this life. I mean, I thought of all the rest of the human population – most of whom live in what you and I would consider abject poverty – who have never seen or entered such a shop. And this, this, is what all their work sustains! This lifestyle, for people like us! All the various brands of soft drinks in plastic bottles and all the pre-packaged lunch deals and confectionery in sealed bags and store-baked pastries – this is it, the culmination of all the labour in the world, all the burning of fossil fuels and all the back-breaking work on coffee farms and sugar plantations. All for this! This convenience shop! I felt dizzy thinking about it. I mean I really felt ill. It was as if I suddenly remembered that my life was all part of a television show – and every day people died making the show, were ground to death in the most horrific ways, children, women, and all so that I could choose from various lunch options, each packaged in multiple layers of single-use plastic. That was what they died for – that was the great experiment. I thought I would throw up.
Having stifled my impulse to thank Alice for her concern about the world’s peasants and to hope that she enjoys a nice lunch, what strikes me about this passage is the latent sadism and vanity at play in imagining that whole populations are being ground to death so that you may be served a sandwich or whatever. This is exultation disguised as renunciation: the world perishing in the service of a princess walking over corpses to the till at Marks & Spencer. It isn’t a big step from here to seeing Alice’s relationship with Felix, that working-class stud from the provinces, as a form of sex tourism. ‘Have you ever been to Rome?’
‘Every day,’ Alice writes to Eileen, ‘I wonder why my life has turned out this way. I can’t believe I have to tolerate these things – having articles written about me, and seeing my photograph on the internet, and reading comments about myself.’ She is aware that her problems don’t add up to a hill of beans in this messed-up world, but she keeps on with complaints about the upmarket lit biz. The other writers are vain, insecure and disconnected from real life. The whole scene is full of ‘bloodthirsty egomaniacs’ and nobody ‘genuine’. She resents the invasion of her privacy and feels alienated from her media persona. She retains faith in the value of writing about sex and friendship in the face of apocalypse, but says her books are ‘morally and politically worthless’. It puts me in mind of something another former literary phenom once said: ‘We wanted to change the nature of American life,’ Norman Mailer told a French television interviewer in 1994. ‘None of us ended up as heroes; we ended up as celebrities.’
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swanlake1998 · 3 years
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Article: The Paris Opéra's Diversity Report Proposes Steps Towards a More Inclusive Company
Date: February 9, 2021
By: Laura Cappelle
Five years after Benjamin Millepied was met with fierce resistance for bringing up racist practices within the Paris Opéra Ballet, the French company is finally acknowledging its lack of diversity. This week, the Paris Opéra released an official report with recommendations, commissioned in the wake of last summer's racial reckoning and increased support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
At the time, the worldwide push for social justice encouraged a group of Black and Asian employees, led by the Paris Opéra Ballet's five Black dancers [Isaac Lopes Gomes, Awa Joannais, Guillaume Diop, Letizia Galloni, and Jack Gasztowtt], to write a manifesto demanding change. Among the issues they raised were the continued use of the French n-word, a lack of tights and cosmetics for darker skin tones, and the absence of an effective anti-discrimination policy. The Paris Opéra's new general director, Alexander Neef, who arrived in September from the Canadian Opera Company, lost no time in offering support, and appointed the historian Pap Ndiaye and the civil servant Constance Rivière to lead an independent audit.
Their 66-page report, based on interviews with nearly 100 people both inside and outside the Paris Opéra, is at once measured and unequivocal. In the report, the Paris Opéra is described as "mostly a white world far removed from contemporary French society," with artists, management, board members and donors who remain overwhelmingly un-diverse. (No actual data is available, as racial statistics are strongly discouraged in France.)
Some of the report's 19 recommendations will strike observers outside France as common sense in 2021. Eliminating blackface, brownface and yellowface from the repertoire, or "opening choreographic commissions to diverse choreographers," are hardly radical moves at this point, and the Paris Opéra Ballet should arguably have committed to them a long time ago. Ndiaye and Rivière do insist on the need for more creations rooted in the classical technique, a longtime gripe of many POB aficionados, as the company tends to look to contemporary and hip-hop dancemakers to signal its openness.
POB also took action on some basic demands before the report was even released: A wider range of makeup and hair products was recently introduced (in the past Black dancers had to bring their own products), and in late January, for the first time, Black corps members wore tights that matched their skin tones during a livestream of the annual Défilé.
Other recommendations go much further. The suggestion that POB "reach out to high-level non-white artists in France and abroad to hire them into the corps de ballet," in order to "create role models," will likely be controversial within the company, as it has consistently refused to change its entrance competition system and allow for direct recruitment. Additionally, Ndiaye and Rivière focus much of their attention on the Paris Opéra Ballet School, described as "very homogeneous," with regards to its teaching staff and the very few minority children. They advocate for reform of the admittance process.
At present, the school essentially waits for students to come to it; instead, the report's authors say that it should be "more open to the outside world," step up outreach efforts, rethink its stringent physical criteria and organize auditions all around the country as well as in French overseas territories. A clash looks inevitable with the current school director, Élisabeth Platel. She has long insisted that the school is doing enough and isn't elitist because tuition is free, and recently defended the use of white face powder on Black dancers.
Platel isn't alone in France: The Paris Opéra's newfound interest in becoming an inclusive workplace has already sparked a political war of words. Renewed demands for antiracist action in the country since last summer have been derided by conservative thinkers as American-style divisiveness, and incompatible with France's universalist model, which hinges on a colorblind ideal. In December, the far-right politician Marine Le Pen seized on the Paris Opéra's efforts to accuse Neef of "antiracism gone crazy" and "obscurantism." (POB étoile Germain Louvet rightly pointed out that the Swan Lake video Le Pen tweeted wasn't even a company production. It actually starred the Bolshoi's Svetlana Zakharova and La Scala's Roberto Bolle in Milan.)
Even within the Paris Opéra, proactive, long-term support for this diversity drive is far from guaranteed. According to the newspaper Le Monde, less than 300 Paris Opéra employees, out of roughly 1,500, signed the manifesto last summer; some have even made their reluctance clear on social media.
Many of the recommendations—which include employee training, the appointment of a diversity officer, the creation of a committee of experts and greater contextualization of the repertoire for the audience—will also require significant financial investment, at the worst possible time. Despite a €61 million pandemic rescue package from the French state, the Paris Opéra anticipates additional losses of €29 million through the end of the 2022 fiscal year, as theaters are currently shut for the foreseeable future.
Millepied found out during his tenure just how slow POB can be to change. His successor as ballet director, Aurélie Dupont, expressed support, but Neef is clearly taking the lead and has remained steadfast in the face of criticism. Now the hard work begins: changing minds and ingrained habits, day by day, even as the news cycle moves on.
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punkofsunshine · 3 years
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The (Informal) Miniature Anarcho-Solarpunk Manifesto
The integration of communalism into a classless system away from the main caste-esque system of hierarchy around the world is very costly when viewed from a consumer lens, but is essential in the degradation of the overbearing hierarchy that the main populace is subjected to and thusly become numb to the pressures placed upon them from an early age, spiral into endlessly consuming for a sense of being in a world that doesn’t care if you’re alive, to them you’re just a replaceable cog in the profit machine. The goal of the communalist, socialist, solarpunk, etc. should not be to live in their own bubble, but to expand their influence exponentially through participation with the outside world, turn a commune into a city as it were. Less people in a place that has dictated control by the state and the consumers within, the less control the state and capital have over people. A migration of people increases quality of life and food consumption, luckily food growth can be optimized to accommodate many people when given according to need as opposed to given to whomever has the money to afford produce. One must also keep in mind, the debt accrued is now a community responsibility, so the members will do everything in their power to keep people functioning in the community, that must include people paying off debts. Who are you if you let a fellow worker suffer on their own? Who are you to let a human such as yourself be subjected to the violence of the state in its many forms? Pushing back against such oppression is why we ascribe to this ideology, so we can taste freedom and save the earth from ourselves.
No individual is solely responsible for the pollution and poverty. Multiple corporations and their figureheads are. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Bernard Arnault, Qin Yinglin & family, Michael Bloomberg, The Koch family, Jim Simons, Alaian & Gerard Wertheimer, Mark Zuckerburg, Amancio Ortega, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett, the Walton Family, Steve Ballmer, Carlos Slim Helu & family, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Francoise Bittencourt Meyers & family, Jack Ma, Ma Huateng, Mukesh Ambani, Mackenzie Scott, Beate Heister & Karl Albrecht Jr., David Thomson & family, Phil Knight & family, Lee Shau Kee, François Pinault & family. Sheldon Alelson, The Mars family, Elon Musk, Giovanni Ferrero, Michael Dell, Hui Ka Yan, Li Ka-Shing, He Xiangjian, Yang Huiyan & family, Joseph Safra, Dieter Schwarz, Vladimir Potanin, Tadashi Yanai & family, Vladamir Lisin, Ray Dalio, Takemitsu Takizaki, Leonid Mikhelson, etc. (Forbes) The list could go on, but I’m not about to list four-hundred people, the people have to change what the ruling class refuses to, hijacking corporate manufacturing and removing police of their power is essential. The police are targets due to the fact they protect corporate interests and stunt progressive growth, all of the people listed above refuse to let power be taken from them, there are too few people willing to make attempts to go after them because what would happen to their favourite source of consumption if that happened? What would happen to convenience? It would disappear, they don’t want to have to make things themselves, such is the first world’s entitlement. Doing without the convenience to save the environment should be a priority, things aren’t going to just get better on their own just because you installed solar panels and an eco-friendly water filtration system. The extent of the work that needs to be done is tremendous and must be organized efficiently and with regard to equivalency of power.
The world is in the process of ending due to all the turmoil we put it through, but the fact we’re more worried about comfort and convenience is very telling of what kind of culture western society has, instead of trying to fight those who destroy the environment and oppress us, we’re eager to mimic them. Why? Because they have and we have not. Such is the downfall of the consumerist mind. A majority of Americans think like consumers, not citizens, which is very telling because the anti-communist culture moted it be after the second world war. (Vox) There’s no telling where the zeitgeist is headed, but there’s political radicalization on both sides of the spectrum, sadly the other side of the spectrum is what we fought against, fascism, nazism, and authoritarianism. 2016 through 2020 were the worst years in terms of hate crimes committed on minority groups since the 60’s which is really saying something, neo-nazi groups sprung up and made themselves the focus, where there are fascists, there will always be anti-fascists or to be informal, antifa. I, the author am a background informant for the loose collective known as antifa, our job is simply to let people know where rallies are going down, we use pseudonyms and VPNs so we cannot be tracked. So why am I telling you this? Isn’t this supposed to be about what we can do to rebel against the systems that oppress us? Yes, and I’m getting there. There’s a reason I’m talking about fascism, and that is the fact fascism and capitalism are linked together.
Fascism/imperialism has been described as “capitalism in decay” by Vladimir Lenin due to the fact that neoliberalism is capitalism functioning as normal, communism post-capitalism, and fascism is capitalism going away slowly. It is an unjust and evil way of looking at the world, but once capitalists sense danger to their power, they fund fascism just so they can keep their power for longer. Anti-fascist action is also anti-capitalist action, for every nazi destroyed, we are one step closer to freedom. For every capitalist institution raided and demolished, we are one step closer to freedom. The city isn’t made of buildings that you can buy from, it’s made of the people who live there, so when the BLM protests occurred and stores were “looted” and burned, that was a form of praxis that hasn’t happened in years it was truly inspiring to see the people of Oregon (among other places) fight the police, fight back the alt-right, give capitalists the middle finger, create autonomous zones, and keep people from getting evicted during the pandemic. That is what communalism is partly about, supporting each other in the face of adversity no matter the cost of personal wellbeing, it’s the pinnacle of mutual aid.
Revolutionary action is one-hundred percent essential in securing future freedoms for not only generation Y, but generation Z and subsequent generations. As a member of generation Z, I feel fear, anger, and dread when it comes to climate change and the fact our generation will have to clean up the messes of the former generations when it comes to pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, unsustainable farming practices, soil health degradation, deforestation, the melting of polar habitats, natural disasters, etc. The weight of the world falls upon our shoulders and we realize this as a truth or we reject reality and follow in our parent’s footsteps and do nothing about it, it’s up to us, the most depressed and angry generation in the U.S.’s rather short history to right the wrongs made by former generations when most of us can’t even find motivation to get out of bed in the morning. I am writing this manifesto in my bed as I have been for the past week when I remember to write it down. It’s not enough to just write a theory however, put practice in it and it becomes more than just a talking point. It becomes a movement, how far you want to take it depends on you, but I do not condone violence against any of the people in the list above for strictly legal reasons. It is not absurd to think that we don’t have a snowball's chance in hell to stop the impending climate disaster that is about to fall onto us, because that assumption is correct. The best we can do is rebuild afterwards then hope and pray the next generation continues our work to restore the planet and maybe move outside our solar system, god willing.
I’ve tried writing a short solarpunk novel, I realized that the fiction may be important for outreach, but I was trying to add personal political theory to a narrative that’s supposed to be about a character’s internal conflicts as opposed to what I’m doing now, informal political theory, which is why I’m addressing you, the reader. I’ve read and listened to political theory in the past, and it’s incredibly dry and hard to pay attention to, don’t get me wrong, it’s important when you’re a part of various movements such as eco-socialism, communalist-anarchism, and anarcho-solarpunk, but I think it’s more important to connect with a reader or listener to make sure they understand the message before saying “do some praxis.” That is the goal here, not to be the leftist, humane version Ayne Rand, but instead instill in people a hope for the future that learns to do without mass manufacturing, that learns to make their own food sustainably, that learns that we all have a right to food, clean water, housing, medical treatment, and clean air without having to pay for all of those things. I may not be a part of the bottom percentage of people, but if I were my point would still stand strong, the notion that you have to work to get basic necessities is immoral on many levels, but in “free market” economies that’s the standard and I was as blind to it as most people before I found solarpunk, it started out by liking the aesthetic, but I started thinking about what we do to our planet and realized this isn’t just a bunch of pretty pictures, this is an idea for a utopian future entrenched in equality, sustainability, environmentalism, and anti-corpocracy.
Many people say that socialism has never worked, they give reasoning such as “Income inequality expands under socialism.” Which is just capitalist projection, during the 2020 pandemic, which is still ongoing at the time or writing, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. “. . . in the months since the virus reached the United States, many of the nation’s wealthiest citizens have actually profited handsomely. Over a roughly seven-month period starting in mid-March – a week after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency – America’s 614 billionaires grew their net worth by a collective $931 billion.” (USA Today) The middle class, which skyrocketed post-feudalism/post-monarchy has been getting erased by the ruling class, which is the goal of capitalism. Capitalism is rooted in the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie and was created to have control over the masses without having a direct economic power structure overhead. Things may have gotten better for the growing middle class and the poor marginally, then the industrial revolution kicked in and everything went downhill from there. Pollution began with burning coal, the car came along, now it’s coal and oil, and so on until today where we have access to truly world-altering technologies, but what’s holding us back are the people who continue to exploit non-renewable resources for profit and solely profit. The betterment of mankind isn’t on the mind of the capitalist, they can avoid global catastrophe, they aren’t the peasants, they’re the monarchs. Why do you think billionaires fund space travel and cryogenics research? It’s not to better the rest of the world, it’s to get the hell out of dodge after global warming takes its toll and they have no more workers willing to fill their pockets by letting their labor be exploited. As I said above, it’s up to my generation to fix the mess they made. Maybe we’ll learn a lesson, or maybe we’ll die in the process, either way the situation is dire and action needs to be taken.
Who will take action? Well, if you made it this far into the manifesto without falling asleep or getting angry at the things I have to say, it’s you, me, and everyone else who cares, is tired of selling their soul, and wants freedom. Freedom, not via the dollar, but via being human. It matters not your ethnicity, skin colour, religion (or lack thereof), sexuality, gender, or anything else; you matter, the world matters, and it takes all of us to save it.
-A manifesto by Aeron Fae Greenwood
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rametarin · 3 years
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Amusing interlude.
So an acquaintence of mine just experienced something I’d like to share with some of you as an educational experience.
This nameless person somewhere introduced a statement: “Which mental illness make you the most violent?”
So my acquaintence copy&pasted them something from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The person direct messaged them and said, “Go jack off to some dead deer, you boot licker.”
And I’m like... that’s hilarious. My acquaintence wasn’t really sure what happened here, but I recognized exactly what happened by previous patterns.
Okay so. What happened here was this person was trying to use this technique radical feminists and guerilla socialists would use to try and “start conversations” by the water cooler. Capitalizing on how most people aren’t walking encyclopedias of facts and information they can prove on the spot, they “start the conversation.”
Statements like that have no roots or origins or seeming ulterior motive in anything else, but they absolutely are when in the context of how this type of person uses them. But the ice breaker. “Which mental illnesses do you think make people the most violent?”
If you’d said schizophrenia, or bipolar, or borderline personality disorder, then their next step would’ve been to say, “And why do you think that?”
Do you see what has happened here? Unprovoked, without the other person making any proactive statements for or against anything, by querying and controlling the context of the discussion and the topic, they have forced and coerced the other person to proactively stand for something. They have forced the person to either admit they do not know, which itself will become clay the speaker will mold, or they’ve forced the person to prove their statement that they have voluntarily given and put forwards.
They have forced someone to make a claim and put them on the spot, disguising this provocateurizm as simple water cooler talk.
Radfems would do this shit of bad faith questioning when I was a kid, and next thing you knew you’d said something inflammatory, BECAUSE YOU’D BEEN SET UP TO DO SO by the topic of conversation and the direction, and then depending on how you respond, they try to use you.
If you admit you do not know, their next diatribe will be about how, “people who don’t know assume, and our culture vilifies the mentally ill.” They’re PROBING you. To see if you know, one way or the other. Because if you don’t, they’re going to claim they know.
And as they’ve pre-meditated this topic, they likely have some cherrypicked statistics or an academic and book that states something, one way or another. THEY’RE SO GLAD YOU ASKED.
If you make a declaration from a place of confidence, they’ll “kindly” ask that you prove it. And since this technique relies on the recipient and the group not being well read or career members of this field, capitalizing on how most people don’t know, aren’t in the circles to be informed about it, and are absent any sources to check for spur of the moment flareups of intellectual discussion and debate, most people cannot prove it.
In which case, the disingenuous conversation starter garrotes the person that cannot support their stance, which they will, regardless of whether or not it was made from a place of absolute confidence, treat as if they have. Treat the person and their ignorance like it’s only not malicious because the person, “didn’t know better,” and then talk about how perpetuating falsehoods is endemic of an “ablist society that hates the mentally ill for being different.”
That’s when they declare the person to be a victim of society demonizing the mentally ill, but not having any evidence to support the common consensus.
The person they just chose to make an effigy of societal wrongthink can then flounder and doubledown without proof and then be mocked and derided and patronized for “not knowing what they’re talking about, by their own admission. Do you HAVE any PROOF!? No? Then shut up.” while leftist-funny-man “laugh now” facing the peers and audience, just to let them know if they wrong-think in public the mocking mob will make them lose social standing, too.
By just asking loaded, probing questions that beg an answer, they give the illusion of empirically minded, scientific and scholarly. When the truth is they only know enough to use as a weapon in a game of social clout and perception, starting conversations by shitting all over someone else and making it look like a, “teachable moment.” By pausing to speak in the abstract, they basically get a free pass to call you a bigot by actions you’ve been tricked into taking and then spun to endorse.
They deliberately find groups of people that may not know the particulars of this topic specifically to have this “conversation.” Feigning being feely compassionate and how stereotypes are harmful. Then throwing out, “Actually, the mentally ill are much less violent than sane people! These stigmas against the mentally ill are largely just vilification and heroification of mentally well people.” As if a person that thinks they see ghosts and shadowmen is the same as a person that keeps picking fights with strangers compulsively.
When, no, statistically, those who tend to be insanely violent and instigate violence with strangers, tend to be insane in some form or fashion. Clinically diagnosed, or not.
But you see, this amazing interaction that capitalizes on peoples usual inability to breach the gap beyond their own station. With the help of a google search and resources from professionals and institutions with the empirical medical and scientific data to speak for them, this acquaintence of mine gave the disingenuous speaker nothing and no one to rail against. They were not given an individual’s subjective opinion with which to then accuse them of personal emotional and enlightenment failings. They were not given, “I don’t know,” and then the person that claims to be informed tries to lead them around with cherrypicked “facts” or subjective opinions or charitable interpretations that basically amount to, “my ideology is right and you wouldn’t know one way or another.”
No. All that was side stepped by removing the acquiantance from the equation. This Mr. Magoo of a person I know let them play chess with a robot.
So rather than continue down that line of conversation, this asshurt loser that now had nothing to work with basically called my acquaintence a redneck fascist and ran away, for seemingly no god damned reason.
Usually what happens when you do this, if you can play dumb for them until they feel confident enough that they might trust what you say as the truth on a subject you allegedly know nothing about, they count on there not being anybody coincidentally around that can disagree with prove them wrong. So they’ll take what is definitively said for granted and not question it. Sure, whatever, “The mentally ill are less likely than sane people to be violent.”
But if you reveal your powerlevel and reveal yourself to be an expert, especially in front of a group of people they were playing to, to sow doubt, and you undress their statements, and can then cite the exact books, chapters and lines as proof and may even have those definitive sources on you somehow, they look bad. Good ones try to suss out what the audience knows before pulling this shit stunt. Bad ones... heh.
If you then undress them publicly enough and force them to walk back their statements, they eventually resort to the tired, classic, “I was just twying to have a convuhsayshun about da mentawy iww.. uwu.” Pouting bottom lip and big dewey rose tinted lenses eyes.
Or they’ll just simply start walking away. Either trying to appear casual about it or stomping off outraged at you (generally the latter is socially acceptable, if female.) And if you try to pursue them to keep them in the discussion, they’ll SCREAM and make the immediate discussion the priority of you following them.
But. Really. The miraculous thing is how cell phones and ease of access to these sources have passively innoculated so many to this bad faith technique. It’s truly amazing. The contrast is like living in a world with syphilis and living in a world where it can be cured..
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party-gilmore · 3 years
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New SPN Theory: okay hear me out - incoming Fictional Theology that may mangle a few things but it's all in good fantasy and to alleviate some of my own personal discomfort at G-d being portrayed Like That.
Chuck isnt actually The God.
He's thinks he's The Almighty and fully believes it and has most of the necessary memories associated with it BECAUSE, drumroll please...
...he's actually the youngest of the pagan gods (albeit incredibly powerful) born into existence by the sheer number of radical, evangelical, frightening fervent worshippers all over the earth who believe in this wildly inaccurate, fictitious, end all be all perfectionist micro-managing judgement day apocalypse/revelations obsessed twisted TPTB version of Him.
The sheer power of their belief and worship had to go SOMEWHERE, and it wasn't to the actual Creator because They were so very far removed from this fictional version of Herself made up based on homophobic translations of the misogynist translations of the racists translations of the original text (also conveniently explaining meta-wide SPN and its TPTB and their own trouble with such content) to the point where there was hardly any similarity at all.
And so came into being Chuck - a pagan god born from the power of enough people's belief in an almost tulpa-like manner, who's frightening power is less because of the strength of his followers beliefs and more because a core tenet OF those beliefs is his ommipotence.
Because they believe he created everything, HE believes he created everything, and has even convinced his own self that he has the memories to back it up - to a degree. He's working with an incomplete deck and he knows it, repressed that part of himself that knows he's not The God and shoved it away, but some lingering instinct remains.
He spends so long not revealing himself to the angels because part of him knows there's gaps in his memories that cant be found in, or even outright contradicts, what's publically available to the believers that bolster him and what's in the available lore.
Things like, what his first words were to certain angels, discussions he might've had with then right after Lucifer's fall, etc. Personal stuff that if he spends too much time around them, might get found out he doesnt know.
It was touch and go there for a while when The Darkness came around, because truth be told he only had vague insinuations and as much info as the Winchesters could dig up that one - but luckily, it turns out The Darkness had been sealed away for so long, her perception of her original Sibling was so faded there was no way she was going to recognize any differences. Chuck's vague omniscience (as granted him by any one who believed in a god who patrolled your mind for sinful thoughts to punish you even if you dont act on them) let him keep one step ahead by skimming her surface thoughts and emotions whenever around her.
ANYWAY ALL THAT TO SAY:
We get to the end of series.
And The Actual Almighty has had enough.
They stepped away in the first place, so long ago, because in order for Free Will to matter, for ANYONE'S choices to matter, everyone's choices had to matter. Even the shitty people. Even the evil beings.
If She were to begin picking and choosing which courses of action He thought were good versus evil, or if They let some consequences or butterfly effects occur but others, isnt that just arbitrarily ignoring Free Will for one in favor of another? It's still saying "I dont think this choice should happen, so even though theyve made it, I'm removing it from the table." They would be no more than a puppet master. Of happy puppets, but puppets nonetheless.
No, regardless of morality, remaining involved would invalidate the entire point of Her creation: life must be able to make choices, good AND bad - so long as it's a choice. He must even remove himself from the presence of The Host, for as long as they are with Her they will only think of what to do that would be pleasing to Him, as opposed to what they themselves want.
And now, this Chuck fellow is making quite a stink.
Normally, Her own rules state that They shouldnt get involved, but in this case Free Will is already being removed from His creations. Something on a smaller scale happened once before, but the Winchesters through their own choices and will subverted that path.
This is on a much larger scale though, so perhaps They should get involved. Just a little bit. So She disguises Themself and finds Dean in an abandoned gas station on an empty earth, and Dean calls Him his little Miracle.
From then it's canon-divergent from mid 15x19 where the dog is basically G-d but like in the same way as the armadillo in Road to El Dorado, where She helps in clever little unnatural ways to aid the boys in their task so as to never openly reveal His hand.
Also when They go and get Cas from the empty, because of course He does, She has a wonderful little talk with him where Cas gets to be filled and surrounded by a divine presence of love and pride and delighted surprise that is telling him you were right to think for yourself, right to step away from simply trying to please Me to living for your own, right to love. You were never broken; there was never a crack in your chassis - you are the ONLY one who did what I hoped you all would. Castiel - Cas - you are my beloved son and i am so, so proud of you and it's all at once Motherly and Fatherly and also something wholly Neither, and Cas realizes that this whole time the "divine" has just been a massively scaled up macrocosm of humanity, in it's staggering entirety (or rather, the other way around since it was the Divine which begat Man), so of course They understand
Cas steps back onto this earth with new confidence in his purpose (to fight for his family and this world) and new assuredness of self (in that he is fully at ease with the massive yet now feather light awareness of his love for Dean) and neither of the brothers can figure out why he's being so formal to their dog and Cas Wont Tell Them.
He does, however, tell Jack that he spoke with his real actual Grandmother and that He is so, so very proud of him and They love him and She just knows he's going to do great things.
Halfway because They asked Cas to pass on the message, but only if he wished, and the other half because he knew Jack deserved to hear it.
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EPISODE ONE TRANSCRIPT
Warning: The following podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Trespassing is not only illegal, but often incredibly dangerous. The hosts do not condone any activities that could put their listeners in harms way, and encourage you to proceed with caution and do your research before exploring the unknown. We cannot be held liable for any accidents, injury, or hauntings that may occur. Listener discretion is advised. 
(full transcript under the cut.)
E:Alright I think this is right.
Z: Is it?
E: Yeah, yeah that's right, okay.
Z: Beautiful.
E: Let me find this tweet. The first thing in my drafts, is (laughs)-
Z: I'm scared.
E: (laughs)...I remember typing this out at like 2 o'clock in the morning when I had to be up for work at five. I put, “I love not learning new pop culture terms. Love being blissfully unaware. I still am not sure what poggers means. I do not care. I am free.”
Z: (laughs)
E: And I was so tired I thought that was profound. Let's see.
Z: (continues laughing)
E & Z: (laugh)
Z: Damn. That's like our declaration of independence.
E: (laughs) I'm going to print that out on the wall.
Z: That's Gen Z's declaration.
E: Let's see, where is it? There's one about Jack Black being sexy.
Z: Yeah, and it's in the drafts, why?
E: (laughs) This one says, this one all it says, no capitalization, no punctuation is, “I want Ellen Ripley to knock me out cold.”
E: (laughs)
Z: (laughs)
E: And I live by that.
Z: That's your truth and you should speak it.
E: Okay, here it is. “Sometimes, facing your fears means letting out that earth-shattering fart in the public restroom, even if there are other occupants. Speak loud, even when your voice shakes, babes.”
Z: (laughs) Shut the fuck up.
E: (laughs)
Z: No!
E: Yeah, that one...uh, that one is in the drafts. Alright, well. You asked about an intro, and I had something that was work shopping.
Z: Oooooo...
E: Do you wanna hear it?
Z: Yes, please. Please, please.
E: Alright. Hello, welcome to The Abandonment Issues, a periodical podcast about the past, the paranormal, and the just plain perplexing. I'm your host, Em.
Z: And I'm Zack.
E: How'd you feel-
Z: The other host. (laughs)
E: How'd you feel about that alliteration?
Z: You know I love alliteration.
E: I do too, I got really excited about it.
Z: (laughs)
E: I was like dead asleep, well, I wasn't dead asleep. I was very close to being though.
Z: Right.
E: And I had that thought, and I was like “Fuck, I gotta wake up and type that.” So...
Z: It was worth it though.
E: Thank you.
Z: I like it.
E: I don't know if that'll stick, but I think-
Z: I don't know, it's a start
E: It's a good start. Yeah.
Z: Yeah. Well..
E: So.
Z: Howdy doody, how ya doing.
E: Oh god, well um, I just whacked my headphones against my mic and I think it's still vibrating. But otherwise, I'm doing great.
Z: (laughs) Well, that's good.
E: How ya been?
Z: I mean, I've been alright.
E: That's good.
Z: We haven't seen each other, I mean, we haven't like recorded-recorded in two weeks?
E: Yeah.
Z: It's been like two weeks, so.
E: Yeah, I think so.
Z: It's been a second, but yeah.
E: Oh?
Z: So.
E: This is our first official, like official recording, the other ones were just tests, so.
Z: So, it's a little different, yeah. Like Em said, we did a couple recordings, so we kind of like, dipped our toes in the water of what it's like to just get behind the mics and stuff, but again this is our first episode, and we kinda just wanted to, lean in and kind of explain why we are here.
E: Yeah.
Z: What we are going to be doing, things we are going to talk about et cetera, et cetera.
E: Yeah.
Z: So. Do you want to-let's start with the-we have a couple ice breaker questions.
E: I'm so excited.
Z: Because, okay, so, you have a college degree.
E: I do.
Z: I have college credits. So we both went to college. (laughs)
E: Yes.
Z: You know, it's fun to do the ice breaker questions when you start a class.
E: Yeah.
Z: Because, even if you don't pay attention to anything that anybody else says-
E: Someone is going to change something that changes your life.
Z: Every single time-
E: Especially, I'm sorry to interrupt.
Z: No, you're good.
E: But, especially if you are playing two truths and a lie. I have found that that is the ice breaker game that I come away changed forever, like I've learned some things about some people playing that game. Are you okay?
Z: There's a burp coming.
E: (laughs)
E: Just let 'er out.
Z: (burps) There it is. (laughs)
E: Wow, that was lovely.
Z: Not to derail, real quick, but-
E: Go for it.
Z: Have you ever used Bumble?
E: Very briefly.
Z: One of my favorite things about Bumble, is that you can do like questions or whatever-
E: And that's one of 'em.
Z: That's one of them! It really, it's really telling. And I love, cause one of my truths is always so bizarre. You know which one I am talking about, but no one ever goes for it.
E: I honestly can't-
Z: The car. *laughs*
E: Oh! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that one is pretty unbelievable. But-
Z: Yeah, we'll save that for another time.
E: I've seen that one, uh, I've seen the repercussions of that one in real time.
Z: Anyway.
Z: (laugh)
E: Alright, well...
Z: Episode one, we are going to expose my entire past.
E: Yeah.
Z: Okay, so. When we first kind of, started talking about the idea for this podcast, which really was just bred, I think just kind of like a joke text that I sent. Or that you sent.
E: I honestly don't even remember.
Z: It was, I mean just the, the very cliché, “We should start a podcast!” and then it just kind of went from there. Just I mean, 2020.
E: Yeah.
Z: It's nothing but boredom. When when we first started talking about, what we wanted to do with our podcast. It really just stemmed from, for me anyway, just really wanting to bring light to the history that exists here in the south.
E: Yeah we didn't really say that, we-
Z: No. (laughs)
E:...we are in the south, we are some good 'ol southern boys.
Z: Just a couple of southern boys.
E: Yea!
Z: We grew up very close to each other, as far as, location.
E: Yeah.
Z: And you know, our high schools probably taught around the same genre and path of like history.
E: Yeah.
Z: It's all white washed and gross. Bleh. But-
E: It's only getting worse, did you hear that Tennessee is like, passing laws to, how did they put it, it's so, it's such bullshit. Basically erasing any history of slavery or discrimination. I think that call it something like Radical Race Theory.
Z: Well, that's great. Welcome to our podcast where we are gonna nip all that in the butt.
E: Yeah.
Z: Because truly, like Em just stated, it's only getting worse, apparently. Jesus Christ, I hate Tennessee.
E: Yeah, I found out like a week ago.
E: Hi guys this is Em, I'm doing the editing, and I just wanted to clarify something really quick. When we were recording this episode, I misspoke and I said that this concept was called Radical Race Theory, but that is incorrect. The correct term is Critical Race Theory. So, I am sorry for that error. If you don't know what a ban like this would mean, the short version is basically, is that American lawmakers are trying to dictate and restrict what can and can't be taught in public schools about the history of systemic racism and slavery in the United States. I'm going to include some links in our resources for the episode where you can learn more about this and we really encourage you to check those out and do your research, because this is obviously an important part of American history for everyone. To erase these topics from lesson plans, really presents a biased and skewed version of events. Anyway, I'm sorry for that error and I hope you enjoy the rest of the episode .
Z: There's just so much history and just stories that are just passed down even by even just word of mouth-
E: Mmhmm
Z:...down here in the south. That literally no one knows about.
E: Yeah.
Z: I think that's, that really is what piqued our interest. When we were throwing around the idea of this podcast to begin with, it really was just like, “We're gonna find an abandoned building, we're going to dig into the research of it, and we're going to talk about this abandoned place.” And from what we are now, it's really expanded to literally just like a history lesson.
E: History, I think it's important to not only to cover the actual facts, but also, I think, not necessarily, like fiction and urban legends and that kind of thing. I think that sort of thing has a lot to do with like story telling, and the culture of the area like-
Z: Right.
E:..like there are, you know, you have things from like, the stories that your grandmother would tell you to keep you from being a little shit when you were a kid.
Z: (laughs)
E: Or, you know, why if there's like an anecdote for why is the sky blue, how did this mountain range be formed. Y'know I think stuff like that is really interesting. When you're driving along some random ass back road and you see an old house, and you think, “Huh, I wanna know the history of that place.” That is the kind of, the kind of thing, that I think really inspires me, is like. Seeing something, not knowing anything about it, wanting to learn about it.
Z: Exactly. And-
E: (laughs)
Z:...we had created like a little baby list of questions that we wanted to ask. When we first started kind of throwing around the idea of what we wanted to do. We kind of already covered a couple of them. But I guess I'll just kind of go down the list again.
E: Okay, sure.
Z: Just to kind of like, ya know, put the nail in the coffin, so to speak.
E: Yeah.
Z: So, the first question that we have, is who or what are our inspirations?
E: Okay.
Z: So I would say, for me personally, like I said, just growing up, and like I can't think of anything off the top of my head. But like growing up and learning that an event happened. Or someone did this thing and, you come to realize later on in life that what you were taught, wasn't necessarily the truth. The whole truth, anyway.
E: Yeah.
Z: So for me, I guess, it's not so much a who, as so much as a what. For me it's just really like uncovering what is real.
E: Okay, yeah.
Z: So.
E: I think, I think that's a good way to put it. And I feel like, y'know, disclaimer, we are not perfect, we are probably not always going to do perfect research. You know, we're not exposing all the facts, in their, 100% true form, 'cause you know. We're just taking the information that we can find and putting that to use. But I agree, I think that that's a big part of it for me is like. I can remember several times when I was younger, like having a teacher, do a lesson and be like, “Oh well this thing happened,” and then being like well, “Okay I want to know more about that but I don't know how.” And now, you know, I'm an adult, and I have better research skills, so.
Z: Right.
E: I think it's a far more entertaining use of my time, that what I was doing previously. Which was just, laying on the floor and looking at TikTok.
Z: Right. (laughs)
E: (laughs)
Z: TikTok truly, worms in my brain.
E: Yeah.
Z: But, it truly, this is just, even, I mean, we've been batting around the idea of this podcast for a couple months.
E: Mmhmm.
Z: And just getting started, and doing the research and like looking into these stories, has been so much fun.
E: Oh yeah.
Z: And, I know the story that you're going to cover today has been one.
E: Yes.
Z: And I know that I've heard bits and pieces throughout our friendship, pretty much.
E: Mmhmm.
Z: And we've known each other for awhile.
E: Mmhmm.
Z: So I'm excited to get, like the full, like get in there.
E: Yeah, I'm excited about yours too, because like,it-it's, I mean, I think, I feel like maybe comparatively I might know just a tiny bit more about yours than you might know about mine.
Z: Right.
E: Just because I've been to this location.
Z: Right.
E: And I've like snooped around there.
Z: Everyone has in this area.
E: Yeah.
Z: Well, goals for the podcast. Do you have any goals in mind?
E: I want a Lamborghini.
Z: I want to be Mr. Beast.
E: I thought you were *laughs* I thought you were gonna say Mr. Bean.
E&Z: *laugh*
E: Oh my god, which actually-
Z: That too.
E:...derailed, for a second, but this is relevant considering what I just said, um, did you know-do you listen...I know you like Gracie Helbig and Mamrie Hart.
Z: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
E: Do you listen to their podcast?
Z: Oh yeah.
E: Have you heard the one where they talk about how Mr. Bean has wrecked two McLarens?
Z: YES!
E: Apparently the man has like a 170 IQ and a passion, a deep burning passion for sports cars. And he has-I don't know if he has if he has wrecked two different ones or if it's the same one that he's wrecked twice. But he is currently trying to sell it for like 12 million dollars. And that, I have thought about that fact all fucking week. All week. They were talking about cars at work yesterday and I had to just like clench my fists and hold in the fact that I wanted to yell across the expo station, “MR. BEAN HAS WRECKED TWO MCLARENS!” Anyway.
Z: Truly it's a-
E: So sorry, but I had to get that off my chest
Z: Oh my god.
E: Rowan Atkincenter, what is his name? Ronan? Rowan Atkinson?
Z: Mr. Bean?
E: Yeah.
Z: I don't know his-the only thing I know about Mr. Bean is that he has wrecked two McLarens.
E&Z: *laughs*
E: Oh my god..
Z: Um, jesus. Goals for the podcast for me um. Yeah, a Lamborghini would be nice.
E: It would be nice, wouldn't it?
Z: No, truthfully, and I feel like I've said this like 50 times already. It's just getting the information out there. Letting people be in the know about what's going on in the south. Because I feel like *clears throat* excuse me. There's like this weird stigma against the south.
E: For sure.
Z: And it's just poor and dirty...
E: And ignorant.
Z: And ignorant. And like, there's so much that goes on down here that no one really knows about because it is so outside of “normal society?”
E: Yeah.
Z: I guess in other people's eyes? And that's even just like in the United States, even outside of the United States I'm sure that...The south is just like a cesspool of jokes.
E: Yeah.
Z: But-
E: Well I agree with that. I think that it's very much, uh there's a disconnect between like, people who actually live here and people that have never been here. And just like how it's, you know portrayed in the media. There's so. I think there's something like, I don't know the exact statistics, but I'm pretty sure that if you actually look at the numbers there is so much more diversity than in a good deal of the United States. Like, um I was reading something the other day that said that the south, like the American south is one of the most diverse places in terms of like LGBT folks and I'm not sure if that's true. But honestly, I would believe it. But yeah, I think that that's very much, getting the information out there, but also, it's a desire, personally, it's you know, a desire for more information in general.
Z: True.
E: Because-
Z: Yeah.
E: You know, I've lived here my whole life and I feel like I know a lot of cool little bits and pieces about stuff but you can always learn more.
Z: Oh yeah.
E: That is my motto.
Z: 100%.
E: You can always, always find something else out. Even if it's something that you think that you know everything about it, you can always dig deeper and find out more. So.
Z: 100%.
E: For sure, for sure.
Z: This next question is past exploration stories. I'm about to tell one of mine.
E: Okay.
Z: That's my whole story. So, do you have any that you would like to share?
E: Hm...
Z: I mean, I've done like geocaching, that sort of thing, but like.
E: Yeah,
Z: Other than that, like.
E: Yeah. I have been geocaching, I actually, I have been to the location you're going to cover today. And I thought I was going to get in big trouble, because the owner pulled up in his pickup truck and I was so afraid. I was there with my sister and, Vivian, I don't know if you'll hear this. But um, my friend Vivian, and we were walking around. We climbed the steps. We like went-I was too chicken shit to go all the way up to the top because it's a very tall structure and the stairs are very old. And I was like “nope, Imma go halfway but this step is broken, I'm not going any farther.” And then we came back down and this guy pulled up and I was like “Oh god, he's gonna get so mad at us.” He pulled up and we had Vivian's puppy with us and he rolled the window of his truck down, and he was like, “Can I give the dog a biscuit?!” And we were like, “Yes sir you can!” And he just stood there and talked to us for a little while, it was very cool.
Z: Yeah.
E: But yeah, I can't think of anything other than that, not offhand. I would like to make some more.
Z: Yeah. Same.
E: I have not been in an old building in a cool minute. Um, actually, I'm sorry, I did think of one.
Z: No, you're good.
E: Uh, we were walking around, I don't want to triangulate our location. *laughs*
Z: Right.
E: But we were, a couple of my friends and I, were walking around in this, kind of like, like uh small back road I guess you would say near one of their houses. And there was this old kind of a house? I don't know if it was actually a house at one point or if it was just like a shed. But we uh, hiked back a little off the road and went in there, and there was just like all these old bottles. Like, from the '50s all over the floor and that's something that I collect, and I was like “Oh shit, this is private property, I know we're probably trespassing. Imma take some of these bottles.” And I had a coat on with big pockets. So I put a couple of them in my pocket.
Z: *laughs*
E: And we hiked back out, and my mom called me, and I was probably like, I don't know sixteen, seventeen maybe?
Z: Sure.
E: She was like, “Hey where are you?” And I was like “We went for a walk, we're walking back to so and so's house.” and she was like “ Okay well, we'll meet you up there, I have something to give you,” and I was like “okay.” And when she pulled up I was like, “I have something to give YOU.” And she was like “What?” and I pulled out this crusty ass bottle of like vanilla extract from the 1960s, and was like, “Here ya go!” And my mom of course, I get that fascination from her, she also collects that stuff. So she was like, “Wow! This is so cool, where did you get it?” And I was like, “Well...-
Z: *laughs* That spooky building! As the thunder claps.
E:...we went in that spooky house.” And she was like, “Oh my god that's dangerous!!” And I was like, “Well, we already did it.”
Z: Yeah.
E: So yeah, that was fun. I love doing shit like that.
Z: God, me too. Is this trespassing? I love trespassing.
E: (laughs) I do, I do.
Z: Oh my god.
E: Yeah.
Z: Any topics that you wanna cover, discuss, why?
E: I think we both have a list of stuff that we would like to cover in the future.
Z: Right.
E: I will say, I don't want this to be like specifically true crime. Like I don't want to have all my stories be in one genre. I will say that some of them are paranormal related, some of them are true crime related, some of them are just general history.
Z: Same yeah.
E: I am always, I have very much a morbid curiosity.
Z: Same.
E: I will do my best to treat those with respect and there is one in particular that I am very interested to cover, because I have never heard of it, and it happened, like, in the town that I grew up in, which is very small.
Z: Right.
E: Not a whole lot of reported murders, but his name is Joe Shepherd and he was a killer in that area in the 70s I believe? And I was having a conversation with a friend of mine one day, when we were, like, first work shopping this. I don't think we'd even bought our mics yet-
Z: I don't think so either
E:...and we were talking about it, and she was just like, “Oh you know about Joe Shepherd right?” And I said, “No?” And she was like, “ Yeah, he murdered somebody and put her in the wood pile.” And I was like, “EXCUSE ME, how have I never heard this?!” So I uh, I have to, have to know more about that. I gotta know whats going on.
Z: Right. For me it's kind of in the same vein of, I mean my stories are kind of gonna be everywhere, but I'm really excited for my story for the next podcast that we're gonna do. Because it was right around the time where we started really figuring out what we wanted to do for sure with this podcast. And we went to just like a couple of used bookstores just to look for some, just some paper sources. And I found a book that was super cool, very interesting. Loved it, I've read it like twice already.
E: Oh really the whole thing?
Z: It's not very long, but I've read it like twice already, just reading through. The first story in that book is truly whacko-
E: Yeah?
Z:..so I'm going to cover that the next time we record
E: That's exciting.
Z: And I'm really excited for it. It's a missing persons. We won't say true crime, but I'll say it's a missing persons.
E: Yeah, 'cause we're not really sure if a crime was committed. Like I don't really know the whole story obviously but you've told me bits and pieces, and you know, there's several theories right? Of what actually happened?
Z: Oh yeah, I've got a couple theories that I have that I wanna, but we'll get to that.
E: We'll get to that next time.
Z: Alright, so full disclosure, this whole operation, it's just us, it's me and Em and Em and me. We do have an assistant.
E: Vanessa.
Z: Her name is Linda and we love her.
E: We love Tracy with all our hearts
Z: Veronica, she really gets it done. We asked our lovely assistant, Carly, to get some normal ice breaker questions outside of the podcast because it's really, like we said before it's really telling of someone's character to have these questions answered and we just told. We told Carol to go nuts, so.
E: I'm excited for this, because you've had a little bit of a look at these, I don't know anything.
Z: I've read like the first two, and was like okay, I can see the direction that Sharon's going. Okay, so you haven't looked at these, I've read a couple so I'm just gonna go for it.
E: Let's go.
Z: The first one is if you could be on any reality/game show what would you choose?
E: Wheel of Fortune.
Z: Wheel of Fortune?
E: I always loved Wheel of Fortune. Or Jeopardy. I'm not smart enough to be on Jeopardy, but I love Jeopardy. I miss Alex Trebek, rest in peace.
Z: Rest in peace.
E: That man, god fucking bless.
Z: God bless. For me, and you'll know this, here lately, I've been really into discord, like, essentially role play survivor games. They're so much fun. I've applied to play my first one, but they're so much fun to watch. So I would say maybe that, or if it had to be a game show, I'm going to go with either Press Your Luck-
E: Okay.
Z: Or Shop Till You Drop.
E: I don't know what either of those are
Z: Really? Press your-
E: What is press your luck?
Z: Press your luck is the no whammies, no whammies, that one?
E: I don't know what that is.
Z: You don't know that one? I will show you a clip of.
E: I feel like I've heard someone say that.
Z: So well, here's the tea, my grandma would wake up in the mornings and she would watch us before we went to school. She would wake up in the morning, she would make my grandpa food. She would sit her butt in her recliner and turn on game show network, until her husband came home from work, and then she would make him dinner and then she would watch more game shows until she went to bed. That's all this woman did.
E: I love that.
Z: So, this brain-
E: It's in your brain forever.
Z:..is a rolodex of game show trivia, but that one's a fun one. Shop Till You Drop was essentially, I don't know which one came first, but Supermarket Sweep.
E: Okay.
Z: Have you ever seen that?
E: Like guys grocery game?
Z: Kind of, but they don't like cook, so they'll have like a list, like you'll get carrots on aisle five, and tuna on aisle six, and baby formula on aisle 12, and they just, they go for it. And the first to do it wins or whatever.
E: That sounds like a lot of fun. I do love to grocery shop. I think that would be a fun one too.
Z: So number 2, if you could eliminate one food, so that no one ever ate it again, what would you pick to destroy?
E: My gut instinct says tomatoes, because I hate tomatoes.
Z: *whispers* Same.
E: But I do, it's only, like. I like tomato based sauces and I like tomato soup, so I feel like I would regret that choice.
Z: Ketchup.
E: I don't know if you're for or against ketchup.
Z: I like ketchup but I hate tomatoes. I was adding to tomatoes' cause.
E: Yeah. That's a tough one.
Z: I'm gonna go with green beans.
E: I don't think I can agree with you on that one, I'm sorry.
Z: That's fine, you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm destroying green beans.
E: Okay, okay, um, god, that's really hard. I don't, I don't like tomatoes at all. I hate touching them, I hate dealing with them. I work in food service. I could also say mushrooms 'cause I really hate mushrooms.
Z: I love mushrooms.
E: That is something I find so interesting about you.
Z: That I like mushrooms?
E: Yeah, you know. You're kind of a-I don't know much about. I don't know, you're-in my eyes you're kind of a picky eater. Cause you don't like, like lettuce.
Z: I don't like lettuce.
E: What about like a good arugula? Do you like arugula?
Z: What's arugula?
E: Okay, we're gonna get you some arugula. It's a leafy green. You'll probably like, well no okay. I should-I take that back. You like Spinach.
Z: I do like Spinach.
E: Okay.
Z: Baby kale.
E: Do you like kale?
Z: I like baby kale.
E: Oh, okay.
Z: I don't like that-
E: I don't know that I've ever had the baby-
Z: It's just like spinach.
E: I mean it's-okay. Yeah that's fair.
Z: But.
E: Yeah, I'm gonna hard answer, I'm gonna say mushrooms 'cause I really fucking hate mushrooms.
Z: Valid.
E: Alright question 3.
Z: What is your favorite restaurant? In parenthesis, Zack, you cannot say McDonald's.
E&Z: *laugh*
E: Oh.
Z: Well.
E: Oh, Clarice. She's roasting ya.
Z: She really is. Shoot. I'm just going to go with fast food because-
E: Okay.
Z: Restaurants can mean any-
E: Fast food/fast casual, I think that's good.
Z: Sure. Dang, I really like. Well fast casual, I'm going to say Chili's.
E: Ooh yes.
Z: That street corn, honey chipotle tenders.
E: Those honey chipotle tenders, if I ever get married, that's what I want at my wedding.
Z: Catered?
E: Yeah, catered.
Z: Remember when I went to a-if you're hearing this Morgan, I'm sorry, remember when I went to a wedding that was catered by Cracker Barrel?
E: Yes!
Z: Morgan, I love you but, a choice was made. Okay, favorite restaurant?
E: The first thing that popped into my head was Olive Garden.
Z: *gasps*
E: I unironically, unashamedly, unabashedly. I love Olive Garden. I am-
Z: I'm white.
E: Very. Yeah, I am-I think like I don't wanna go all 23 & me, given that I haven't even taken one of those fucking tests. As far ass my family has told me I am like an 8th or a 16th Sicilian or something, so that Italian blood, it makes be crave Olive Garden like nobody's business.
Z: The breadsticks.
E: I see like the sign in the sky and it's like a werewolf to a full moon. And I go crazy.
Z: *laughs* I love Olive Garden.
E: The tiramisu? The chicken gnocchi soup with breadsticks?
Z: Gnocchi!
E: The Tour of Italy? Ah.
Z: The five dollar, to go entrees? You have lunch tomorrow.
E: That is a brilliant business plan.
Z: True.
E: You know what I want? What I desperately desperately want one. The unlimited pasta pass. I have wanted one of those since the day. Justin McElroy did an unboxxing and he got one.
Z: Olive Garden.
E: I really wanted one ever since.
Z: *whispers* Same.
E: Olive Garden sponsor us?
Z: Please god, I know this is our first episode but please.
E: I had an idea for another sponsor. Oh, Subway! Subway should sponsor us.
Z: Truly.
E: I can't believe that neither of us said Subway, actually. We-fun little BTS, behind the scenes, not the K-Pop group, sorry.
Z: Why did my brain go there first?
E: We know why.
Z: Not today. That's a song.
E: LITERALLY every time we've gotten together to brainstorm, put together anything for this show, with the exception of maybe once or twice, that I can't even recall, it's subway every single time, so.
Z: We gotta eat fresh.
E: Somebody, at Subway headquarters, say, “Hey, sponsor The Abandonment Issues-”
Z: Sponsor these people.
E: Plead our case, please.
Z: Please, please, we'll send you merch if we ever
get any.
E: I'll figure it out. I'll use my art degree. Alright. Question four!
Z: If you could take a trip anywhere in the world, where would you go?
E: Hm.
Z: Forks, Washington.
E: Oh my god.
Z: Final answer.
E: Oh my god. That's a good one, shit.
Z: (laughs) 'Cause genuinely, I don't know 'cause there's so many places to go.
E: Yeah, yeah it's very hard. I always did-okay, well on the topic of my Italian heritage.
Z: Oh Jesus.
E: I was supposed to go to Italy my junior year of college and, the trip got canceled because we didn't have enough people to go. And I was very excited for it, and I would still really enjoy it. I would love to go make that trip, because we were going to stay at a farm in Tuscany that's been there for like, I don't even know. Since like 700 A.D. Or some shit.
Z: That is crazy.
E: It's called Spannocchia if you want to look it up. There's this incredible little-they have this website with like a video that you can check it out. You get to eat like all the food that they give you and all the wine that they have is like made on site. We were going-they have like the original wood kiln-
Z: Wow.
E:...on site, and you could make things in their ceramics studio and you fire it in the kiln at the end of the trip. But they also do like chefs and like butchers internships there where you can go over there and learn how to do things the way they do them and I think that's fascinating.
Z: That's really cool.
E: One day I would love to go there.
Z: Oh yeah, 100%.
Z: Get the swear jar ready.
E: Oh god.
Z: What game or movie universe would you most like to live in? Kingdom Hearts.
E: *Did you bring a roll of quarters?
Z: I'm just gonna leave it at that. Kingdom hearts.
E: I know you said game or movie-
Z: Book?
E:...but can I fudge it a little bit and say podcast?
Z: Sure!
E: I would love to be a citizen of the town of Nightvale. I know you don't know anything about Welcome to Nightvale, but boy lemme tell ya. I would live there in a heartbeat. I love it. It's so weird. I know that that's maybe not some people want because it's kind of fucked up. Bad things happen to people there all the time.
Z: Right.
E: But it's that cosmic horror, but in a fun lighthearted way.
Z: Right.
E: That's the best way I can explain it. I just love it so much. Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Kramer.
Z: God bless.
E: God bless you. You two really do some amazing work. I'm literally looking at a signed photograph of Symphony Sanders and Cecil Baldwin right now. They watch over our podcast. But yeah, I would love that. I think that the aesthetic is immaculate. There's deserts, there's glowing lights in the sky above the Arby's.
Z: There's an Arby's in this Universe?
E: Yes bitch! They're just regular people like you and me. There's literally, I wanna say in episode one, there's this beautiful passage where Cecil is like “Lights, blinking in the sky above the Arby's. Not the glowing sign of the Arby's, but something higher.
Z: Did I write this? Did I ghost write this?
E: You could have. I have all the books behind me, I'm very much a fan.
Z: If you could be any mythical creature, what would you be?
E: Hypogriff.
Z: That was a fast but good answer. I would probably be a gnome.
E: (laughs) Oh fuck! Yeah.
Z: I spend my entire life-
E: Yeah.
Z:..being 6 foot tall, I just wanna live a little down there.
E: That's a good one.
Z: Yeah. What small, insignificant thing gives you joy?
E: Thrift store knick knacks.
Z: Sure.
E: That's pretty much the biggest one. I go into Amvets like once a week. And I'll get-I don't have my Keith Urban mug in here. But I get so many tiny dingy things and they always bring me such joy. That tiny little frog that I got at the antique store the last time you and I went, that thing? I'm still riding the high.
Z: For me, I would say it's like when you, complete a book series, and you get that final one and you put it up on the shelf, and you see it on the shelf together. That's my-and it doesn't have to be like, for me it's like books, video games, manga, whatever.
E: Yeah.
Z: Just seeing it complete on the shelf just does it for me.
E: I love that. That's a very good feeling.
E: Yeah.
Z: What is the dumbest purchase you have ever made?
E: Oh Zack, oh Zack, this is a hard question, cause I really-
Z: I don't know! Because I make a lot of dumb purchases.
E: I know exactly what mine is, I'm afraid to say.
Z: Can you say it? What is it?
E: You know what it pertains to.
Z: Do I? Why are you blinking? You don't have to say it if you don't want to.
E: No, I'm gonna say it.
Z: Thank god.
E: So, what was the year? I wanna say 2011/2013.
Z: Uh-oh. I know where we're going!
E: God, I made you promise not to mention this, to not drag me about any of this but i'm going to go ahead and out myself in episode one.
Z: Oh no.
E: I was a backer of the-
Z: Ahaaahaahaaaaa!!!!
E: Stop screaming and just let me get the words out. I was a higher tier backer of the Homestuck Hiveswap Kickstarter in 2013. And that haunts me to this day. To this day I will never-I will never recover from the amount of money that I spent on that when I was god-I was not a legal adult. I spoke to my mother, and I said, “Listen, I need to get this money out of my savings and I need it now.” And she was like, “Are you sure you wanna do that?” and I said, “Yes please.” and then she let me do it. And I respect that she gave me that freedom but I wish that she had just told me no.
Z: That's fair.
E: It was not worth it, and the worst part. It's been like a long time. I still have not played that game.
Z: That's just how the cookie crumbles.
E: Yeah.
Z: Dumbest purchase, my mind just scrambled. Because me and Em just shared a very panicked glance at one another before this story was told and it just jumbled everything I had lined up. I make very-
E: I'm like sweaty.
Z: (laughs)
E: That really stressed me out that I had to admit that. Feel my hand.
Z: Oh, you're clammy!
E: I am disgusting right now.
Z: You're a whole seafood buffet with them clammy hands.
E: I am.
Z: Oh my god. What was the question? Dumbest purchase. I don't know man. I make a lot of dumb purchases. I'm probably, most recently, I'm going to say my book drug dealer.
E: Oh yeah.
Z: Robert. I feel, like I feel obligated at this point to meet up with this man to buy antique books and some of them aren't really the best.
E: But still it's a cool hook-up.
Z: Yeah, I buy them anyway. So, the last time I saw this man, I bought this falling apart copy of Orwell or something.
E: That's pretty dope though.
Z: I mean it's cool, it's got a bunch of his novels and shit. It was pretty cool, but it not in the condition that he said it was in.
E: Aw, that sad.
Z: It's fine. Sorry Robert if you are listening. I'm just going to say that because literally my coworkers put me on a Facebook Marketplace timeout, and I wasn't allowed to buy from Facebook Marketplace.
E: I didn't know about that, oh my god.
Z: They were like, you have to take off two weeks. And I was like, “Fine, that's fine, we get paid in two weeks it's fine.” So, I'm just gonna say that. (laughs)
E: Oh wow.
Z: Question number 9 is what is the longest you have gone without sleep and why? I know mine.
E: Oh man.
Z: I know mine.
E: I mean, the why really for me is-it's one of two answers. College or the pandemic. And I'm leaning more towards the pandemic because I was basically only sleeping like once every other night. Over when I got furloughed from my job last spring. I remember a couple of times I was like, “I'm gonna start a craft project!” and was just cracked out on Monster Energy at 6:00 in the morning, ironing patches onto a denim jacket and shaking my ass to Glass Animals. But yeah, I wanna say the longest amount of time was like three days, but I know you got me beat, I think.
Z: You know mine.
E: Do I?
Z: You know mine. When I was in high school and I watched Men in Black.
E: Yeahhhh.
Z: So I didn't watch Men in Black when I was a child. Probably watched the first one when I was in high school and then I watched the second one, and then there's that whole subplot that there's a universe wrapped around a cat's collar or whatever.
E: It's in his little tag.
Z: It sent me down a rabbit hole. I did not sleep for four days because I was deep in infinite space theory because I just drove myself crazy. Because I was like, “If a cat collar can hold a universe, what if we're the universe inside the cat collar? Which I feel like was the entire point. But it drove me up the walls. I couldn't sleep, I just stayed up for four days straight in front of my computer just googling infinite space theory, and learning more and digging into it, and then I crashed, obviously after four days, and I woke up and was like, “Never again.”
E: Well.
Z: So.
E: I bought a book not long ago, it's called Time Warps. And I opened it and the first two pages this guy starts talking about time travel and the secrets of the universe and everything and reincarnation and physics are all connected and that really reminded me of that. So, maybe I'll read you a little passage of that after this and see if it-
Z: I can't wait.
E:..jogs anything in your brain.
Z: I'll see ya next week and I will still be awake.
E: (laughs) Oh my god.
Z: Last question, who is the most intelligent
person you know?
E: Brownie.
Z: Where is he?
E: He just walked right behind you.
Z: Oh.
E: He's not a person. He's very smart.
Z: That's a tough question.
E: Yeah, that is a really tough question.
Z: I'm gonna say it's our assistant Becky.
E: Yeah, yeah. Trisha, she really, she's probably. What even is her IQ it's gotta be in the 170s?
Z: It's probably at least a thousand.
E: The smartest person that I know of is Mr. Bean. I genuinely can't believe he has an IQ that high. Not anything against that man, I don't know him personally, but the fact that that is the kind of movie that he makes.
Z: Oh my god, and apparently there's only like 12 episodes of that show.
E: 13 I think.
Z: Yeah, so he really stretched it out.
E: Yeah.
Z: I don't know. Welp.
E: Well yeah.
Z: Thank you to Veronica for all those icebreaker questions. Really eye opening.
E: It was great. You really did the damn thing.
Z: Well. I guess that now everyone knows our deepest darkest secrets since we exposed them in episode one, I guess we can kind of get into our topics a little bit?
E: Yeah.
Z: So I feel as if you're gonna go hard.
E: Perhaps, perhaps.
Z: So if you don't mind I'm gonna go first.
E: Okay.
Z: I'm not gonna go as hard as I could. With mine, mostly just because I wanna leave it open for a return, if I want to cover it again maybe later on. My first topic is going to be about the Roundhouse that exists in Tellico Plains, TN.
E: Nice.
Z: Fairly local, kind of close to us for the most part. Here's the issue with this, is that it was a silo for a local mining company and dating back to even before the civil war, this thing was operational. So there's a lot of stuff that has gone on-
E:Okay.
Z:...in this big old building. Another problem is that there's not a plot of information online.
E: Yeah, that was a problem I ran into mine too actually.
Z: Unfortunately, the person who posted this, the beginning of this is going to be a lot from Reddit.
E: Oh, okay.
Z: The person who posted this is a local urban explorer. I've seen some of their stuff, all of their stuff is really cool, their photographs are amazing. They do posts on Facebook and stuff here and there. All of their stuff is really well researched and really good, but I don't want to set a trend of making Reddit a, you know.
E: For sure, it's not like a primary source. So do you want to-did you make note of who that person was though.
Z: Yeah, the post that was made thearcherofred on Reddit. That is their username. When we post all of our sources I will give a link to this specific person I am talking about.
E: Excellant.
Z: Yeah, that's the problem I ran into and I guess that's probably why I didn't get as into it. Mostly because I wanted to leave it open so I could share a little bit about my own experience when I went.
E: Cool, okay.
Z: I am going to give a little bit of a backstory about the area, the place, what all happened. Like I said this was a post made by thearcherofred on Reddit, all one word. About 30 years after the Civil War, Southern Slate Works purchased the land where the Roundhouse exists now. This land before used the be part of the Tellico Iron Works Company. The Iron Works Company basically mined iron and other ores during the Civil War. It was demolished during the war, and really from what I can tell, nothing really happened in this area where the Roundhouse exists now up until it was purchased on December 7th of 1893.
E: Okay.
Z: In June of 1920, J.B. Preston bought 300 acres of land from another citizen of Tellico named Cyril Herford with the intent to mine the area. It is unknown if this was part of the Southern Slate Company or a solo kind of gig. Preston had plans of making a fully working mine complete with machinery, houses for the mine workers, storage facilities, and other stuff you'd need to run a mine. He also was-he was also given permission to construct a railroad system to the mine and the quarry was set to open on January 1st 1921. He then leased this area out to Tennessee Rocks Products Company and it was operational from 1921-1928. In '22 Cyril then sued the rock company because some of the debris had gotten into the creek that ran through his property and it polluted the water. There was another lawsuit that same year against the rock company. This lawsuit came from a local farmer named Henry Fritts. He was suing for very similar reasons as Herford, because the dust coming from the mines and quarry had killed crops and vegetation. That lawsuit was settled for 600-I'm assuming there's no information about the 1st lawsuit, because there was no information on this post about it. From what I can tell, nothing really happened after that, company shut down until 1928-er shut down in 1928, that is until the mid to late 50s.
E: Okay, that's kind of a long time.
Z: Yeah, it's a minute. At this point, a man named Dr. William Alfred Rogers purchased the property in the 50s, and he was a local practicing doctor. A little bit about Mr. Rogers, he was born in Violet, NC. During the late 50s he was one of 6 doctors that lived in the Tellico Plains area during that time. He had a small stone house, that stood in downtown but eventually he built a large three story home on Unicoi Mountain.
E: Oh, okay.
Z: He thought that the high altitude would help his more chronic patients, so that's why he wanted his house to be so far up in the mountains. Rodgers and his wife ran the practice out of their home for about six years before the couple had the idea of turning the silo into a hotel/Air BnB. Not Air BnB. Sorry, that's the Gen Z in me speaking. Just a B&B. Just a normal B&B.
E: A 1950s Air BnB.
Z: Beautiful, ahead of their time, truly.
E: You get a telegraph after and they're like, “How was your stay? Please rate us.”
Z: God. So he essentially divided the space inside the silo into multiple floors and created small apartment like rooms on each story. Supposedly, right when it was set to open, a fire marshal came to inspect it and it was deemed unsafe as there needed to be two clear exits from each room, but there was only one considering that it's a large tall vertical-
E: It's just a tube.
Z: It's literally, quite literally a tube. I will. I will post some pictures and some links to some pictures so you can kind of see. But truly, it's an old silo, it's a big stone, round silo. Cylinder, and on the outside there's a staircase that leads into the first floor but there's essentially just a round staircase that-
E: It's like a fire escape.
Z: It just wraps around the outside of it and that's how you would go up there and get into your little hotel room or whatever. The fire marshal said it was no good so they couldn't really open it as a hotel.
E: So did it ever have guests like that? Or did he just kind of kill that immediately?
Z: It's hard to really pin down what really happened after that. Some sites claim that Mr. Rogers and his moved into the Roundhouse after this and they continued the practice there. Other sites claim that they went back to the house at Unicoi and ran the practice out of it. I also read somewhere, and I couldn't really pin it down again, now that I started doing the research on it again but there were some rumors about someone running a restaurant out of it.
E: I think I've heard that one actually.
Z: And it was just on the first floor, it wasn't on any of the other floors, I think there's 5 stories in that thing. I couldn't really find that again, so I don't really have any information on it. The doctor passed away 10 years after this ordeal in '67, and it has just kinda sat dormant since then, aside from the possible restaurant owner being in there, but there's not really a whole lot to go off of on that route. Unfortunately as of now, the inside of the roundhouse has been completely destroyed by vandals. The walls are covered in graffiti and there was a house that was right next to it, and again, I can't really pinpoint what that was really for. I would assume that it was probably just another house that was-
E: Yeah, I heard from somewhere that that was something to do with the hotel aspect of it.
Z: Sure, I mean. I wouldn't doubt it, but that house is all but rotted to the ground. I've been inside, and the floor is rotted to the ground. There's no foundation, there was also a large fire that happened inside the roundhouse. Can't really pinpoint a date or time. Because it sat, it was just out in the middle of nowhere.
E: Not necessarily keeping track or reporting that to-
Z: Right.
E:...anyone.
Z: It basically made everything from the bottom floor to the top floor inaccessible. I've been on the top floor. Probably wasn't that smart of a move.
E: Prolly not.
Z: I was like 17, and you're invincible at 17, nothing matters. We went up there and just kind of hung around, and I'll talk about that in a second. But that basically made all the other floors inbetween inaccessible. That's really, literally all I could find online about it. I definitely have tried to join the local library to get some book sources or something about it, but I'm currently fighting with our local library. It's so shrouded in mystery that no one really knows what's going on in there. We've got a couple reports about the lawsuits and the early 20s. Nothing until the 50s, and then this random guy wants to build a hotel there, and someone says no and it just sits there again.
E: Do you know-I know when we first started doing the research, we were talking about how it was for sale. Do you know if it still is or did it get bought?
Z: I looked at it yesterday before I was putting the finishing touches on everything. It is currently off the market, it was not sold, but it is off the market. It was going for upwards of like $500,000.
E: I would love to buy it.
Z: Same I would also-Subway?!
E: Subway sponsor us!!
Z: Please.
E: Subway just buy us The Roundhouse.
Z: We will put a Subway in the bottom floor.
E: (laughs) Like the food court in a mall.
Z: Truly. That's all the information that I have on it.
E: Well tell us your story.
Z: Well, when I was like 17/18, I worked at a local grocery store and one of my cashiers, the current at the time, the caretaker now is a new guy, but at the time she was friends with-the caretaker was a family friend. And she basically reached out to him and was like, “Hey we wanna explore after work one night. Do you think it would be cool if we went up there?” And he was like, “Yeah, sure no problem, let me know and I'll leave the gate unlocked for you guys.”
E: Cool.
Z: We went up there after work and it was probably like 10/11 o'clock and we were just gonna check it out and then leave, but I was just very curious and very fascinated so we went into the first floor and I will try to dig up photos because I took photos. The test of time has not been kind to them-
E: Absolutely not.
Z:...with phones and just everything, I think they're on my twitter somewhere so I have to really dig and find them, but like I said, the first floor there was a fire. You can look up and see the damage has been done to this place. It's covered in graffiti. We kind of poked around a little bit, there's not really much to see. There's old appliances, wood here and there, debris, vandalism, that sort of thing. We found the beginning of the staircase that leads up around the side of the Roundhouse and we climbed up to inspect it, about halfway up, it's broken-
E: Yeah that was-
Z: Very teetery.
E: Yeah.
Z: Once you get over that step it's solid again, bolted into the side of that wall or whatever, and you just keep on trucking. We went up to the top and we sat down on the floor up there, we pulled out a Ouija board.
E: Oh my god Zack.
Z: (laughs) Not my finest moment.
E: (laughs)
Z: It wasn't even a good Ouija board, it was obviously, very much produced by Hasbro, and it had the glow in the dark light in it, to where if you pushed down on the planchette it would glow.
E: Oh my god.
Z: Obviously, we got nothing because nothing happened in that building.
E: I can't believe it.
Z: Then we went back down the stairs and then we went into the house that's next to it. Like I said, there was very few places where I was comfortable standing. Floors rotted, walls punched in, knocked in, burned. We were able to go up-there's an attic.
E: Oh really?
Z: Yeah, there's an attic in there. I wasn't able to go-I didn't go up in it because I didn't really trust it. I stood at the top of the staircase and peered in a took a picture or two.
E: Cool, I never knew that.
Z: Then, we discovered a basement.
E: Oh god! Under that same house?
Z: Yeah. Here's the deal. You didn't know this did you? About the basement?
E:About the basement, no.
Z: So there's a basement, and the stairs have rotted off, so you kinda had to hop in that hole and-
E: Love it.
Z: We got down there, and it was trash.
E: Yeah.
Z: Broken glass, beer bottles, cans, old screen doors, anything that you could think of, old appliances everything, underneath that house. Then I saw a little filter of light off in the distance, so I was like, I'm gonna go in that direction. There was a tunnel.
E: I know you were going to say a tunnel and I was so afraid.
Z: A tunnel that lead directly underneath the roundhouse.
E: Bro!
Z: It's crazy.
E: That's really cool. Very scary.
Z: Very scary. I was like, “This is some-,” have you every seen House of Wax?
E: No but I think I know what you're talking about.
Z: Very House of Wax. Secret-
E: Like trap doors and stuff.
Z: Was not a fan. So then after that we kinda booked it outta there. 'Cause I was like, “Who's idea was it, to build a tunnel-,” I don't even want to know. I'm sure there was a reason.
E: I wonder if was with the intent of it being a hotel, if it was a service hallway or something like that?
Z: I mean, has to be. Has to be. Otherwise-
E: It's the only non-creepy answer.
Z: It's what's gonna let me sleep at night.
E: Oof.
Z: After that we kinda hightailed it out. I have since reached out to that cashier, and obviously neither of us work there anymore. I've since reached out, and asked if she knew who the current caretaker was and unfortunately that caretaker had passed away. There's currently a new one.
E: I wonder if that was the guy I met that gave us a dog biscuit.
Z: Might've been if he was nice.
E: He was just a nice old man.
Z: I never met him, but I'm assuming if he let a group of teenagers go wild out at the Roundhouse he probably didn't care and was a nice guy.
E: That's sad.
Z: Like I said a minute ago, it's not on the market, but when it does come on the market, I will be very eager to see if it sells this time. Hopefully, to me.
E: Maybe by then we'll get some sponsorship cash.
Z: Olive Garden please.
E: Can I trade an unlimited pasta pass for this house?
Z: Truly.
E: It's worth it's weight in gold.
Z: Truly, 'cause you think about it. We go to Olive Garden three times a day, lunch, dinner, second dinner. We don't eat breakfast anymore.
E: Oh my god, well I don't eat breakfast to begin with. Who has time for that nonsense?
Z: I do, but only because I'm at work.
E: Eating a banana. You're being very healthy.
Z: I'm eating a banana, having a monster.
E: Alright, well.
Z: Well, that's it for the Roundhouse. Like I said, thearcherofred on Reddit, thank you so much for that post. They're a couple more that they have made about the Roundhouse. I've only used the one, so feel free to look into it yourself. I'll be posting a couple links to some pictures, and hopefully I will be able to find the pictures that I took when I went. We'll post all those.
E: Thank you very much for that story. Today-
Z: Please, go off.
E:...I'm very excited about this story, because this is a story that has fascinated me literally since my childhood. I remember my teacher telling me about it when I was in, I wanna say 5th grade. Then, it turned out that there was a book about this guy, and I had the book because it was my dad's copy, and that's actually the copy that I used today for all my research. I am about to tell you the story of Mason Kershaw Evans-
Z: Yeeesss!
E:...the Hermit of Chilhowee Mountain.
Z: Yes.
E: Basically, my sources-I did have a couple, just for a little bit of fleshing out about the area and a couple facts about the specific region, but everything about Mason himself came from the book. As I discovered, the man doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.
Z: Right.
E: Which isn't really that surprising to me. 'Cause the area that he was from was a very tiny place, it was in the early 19th century. There wasn't a whole lot.
Z: Right.
E: So, let's get into it! Our story takes place in the area surrounding Chilhowee Mountain, which is more commonly known today as Star Mountain, but it was named that because of a plantation owner named Caleb Star, who back in the day, he basically owned the entire mountain. Chilhowee Mountain is located partly in the southwest corner of Monroe County, TN and in Polk County. It is in the Cherokee National Forest. The flat, plateau like mountain is about halfway between Tellico Plains and Etowah and it's elevation ranges from 750 to 2,290 ft. This mountain was a favorite hunting ground for deer. So that's actually how it got it's name, because Chilhowee means cold deer in Cherokee. During the 19th century, this area was the home to Mason Evans. As I said before, it's kind of hard to find anything about him on the internet, he doesn't have a Wikipedia page, so everything I know about him I pulled from this book, Torment in the Knobs by R. Frank. McKinney. To quote the book, “This book was written give it's readers the highlights of the main events from the early advent of the early white settlers in the area during the early 20s, during the Hiwassee purchase of 1817, the removal of the Indians in 1838, the great American Conflict, The Civil War of the 60s, the building and operation the fabulous White Springs Hotel atop Star Mountain, the coming of the railroads into McMinn County, and many other events of that century. So it's not just about Mason's life, it kind of encapsulates basically everything that was going on in this area at the time. Because there was a lot of stuff going on, there was a lot of conflict, it was the time of the Civil War. It was a lot. It is a very interesting read, it's one of the more detailed accounts of this area, however, it's not without it's flaws. It was published in 1976. R. Frank McKinney was an old white man living in a very rural area of the south. He had some prejudices. I'm not really going to talk about that a whole lot, but if you do decide to-if this story does interest you and you do decide to get a copy of this book and read it, just go into it knowing that. There is also a lot of dramatization and speculation. That is explained by, another quote from the book that said, “Torment in the Knobs is a historical novel but throughout the author was at many times forced to draw his own conclusions to what was said in the conversations or dialogues between the people. This he believed was actually said, but not verified. The pages of the book are mostly written in the newspaper reporting style, but not all in together for into the phraseology of fiction writers. In many places, it combines the two. There would have been no need to write this book, Torment in the Knobs had there been a printed history of the east side of McMinn County and the lower regions of Monroe during the 19th century. What little had been printed in the newspapers and periodicals was wildly scattered and never compiled into a comprehensive history of the area. This book is not intended to be a history of either McMinn or Monroe counties, although the events mentioned took place in one or the other. The book was inspired by this pamphlet and was written in 1890 by W. F. McCarron, who was the founder and editor of The Athenian newspaper. The pamphlet was called-this is a hell of a title. I thought The Abandoment Issues was kind of a long name. This pamphlet was titled The Wild Man of Chilhowee: the True Story of Mason Evans the Hermit, 40 Years in the Wilderness, the Most Wonderful Creature of Modern Times Lives in a Cave in this County, Subsists on Raw Meats and Stolen Food. That's the whole ass title of a pamphlet.
Z: A pam-that's the whole pamphlet!
E: Yeah, literally. The book also says the great many people thought was a legend was unfolded as fact as 90 years later when a house in east Etowah was being raised to the ground. An 1890 issue of The Athenian was found in a chimney and brought to me, the author R. Frank Mckinney, who was then the editor of The Etowah Enterprise. Mickinney also did extensive research and interviews with local folks who's parents and grandparents has either met Mason, or had seen them visit their homesteads. Okay, so, there's this hermit..
Z: (laughs) I was waiting for it! Oh my god.
E: So there's this hermit..R. Frank Mckinney is the king of the fucking run-on sentence. This man could ramble. I think he's dead now? Probably. He had a lot to say, and not a whole lot of punctuation to put in it.
Z: He had a lot to say and no comma, period, comma splice was gonna get in his way.
E: Lots of question marks though. That is evidenced by his introduction to the story of what happened to Mason Evans. He said, “What happens to a man when his sweetheart suddenly jilts him? Does he take it in stride, or does his brain snap and he resort to unearthly things? What really did happen that day in 1848 in that little school house in Monroe County, TN, that caused a brilliant teacher to suddenly walk out of the school room, head to the mountains, never to say another intelligent word? And live there on snakes, rabbits, or other raw meat and whatever he could forage from mountaineers' chicken houses or gardens, and for forty years? Let's find out.
Z: Let's. Find. Out.
E: Mason was born May 10, 1824 in a log cabin at the base of the Chilhowee Mountain. At the time, the Chilhowee Mountain region was occupied primarily by the Cherokee Trible of the Native Americans. The capital of their nation, Chota, was only a few miles from the Evans's home. Mason's parents were names Robert, I'm sorry if I pronounce this wrong, I believe it's Hebrew. Her name is Karen-Happuch. That is K A R E N – H A P P U C H. I think Karen-Happuch.
Z: Okay.
E: I'm not sure though. They immigrated to Greene county in 1820, but they moved to Monroe after the Hiwassee purchase of 1817. The Evans' family was of Quaker faith, and their family consisted of Robert and Karen-Happuch, and their four boys and five girls: Moses, Robert, Mason, Samuel, Abigail, Sophia, Demaris, Caroline, and Octavia. Don't you just love that name? I love an Octavia.
Z: It's so out of left field though.
E: It is. I wonder-is that like a biblical name?
Z: I don't think so.
E: I've never thought of it as such but maybe it is.
Z: I don't think so, but go off, Imma google.
E: Mason was said to be the most talented of those children. I don't know how I'd feel about that as a Sophia or an Octavia in that family. Mason-that's kinda not fair, you don't get to be the best. Anyway, art seemed to come naturally to him. His penmanship was the talk of the settlement. Men in the region would commonly come to him to solve medical problems. In his youth, Mason was good friends with many of the Cherokee children of his age. He was 14 when the Native American Removal began, and it impacted him for the rest of his life. I mentioned Caleb Starr before, he's the one that lived on this mountain and basically gave it its current name. I had never heard anyone call it Chilhowee, fun fact, until recently. One of his son's named James was very active in Cherokee politics and he actually worked to negotiate the treaty that would result in the Trail of Tears.
Z: Ah.
E: Because of his native ancestry, eventually forced him and his own family to leave home and move westward, and he was accused-rightfully fucking so-of selling out the Natives to the white man. Eventually he was killed because of this. James, come the fuck on, what did you expect?
Z: Truly. Hello? Okay.
E: I don't want to make light of that obviously, because it was this horrible thing. At one point I had the numbers written down here, but I must have moved them. Thousands and thousands of people lost their lives on the Trail of Tears and this man basically was just-
Z: Didn't help!
E: Yeah, I don't know what he was-what he thought was going to happen. His whole family had to leave and give up their land. Hundreds of other families had to, too. Caleb Starr, as I said was a slave plantation owner and he had many 100 slaves. This is another really grim part of the story, because the way it is written, it kind of makes it sounds very praisy? They basically kind of put him on a pedestal a little bit, and they talk about about how-they talk about how much the people Caleb Starr literally bought and sold adored him and how much pride they took in their work they took for him. It is said when he left on the Trail of Tears some grieved themselves to death and were buried alongside the waters of Conasauga Creek. And that may have been true, they were grief stricken but it really grossed me out that a book written in like the 20th century was like, “Yes, this man was great, he owned 100s of people.”
Z: Yeah.
E: Anyways, but that's just-I only included that to highlight the way that it is kind of a biased telling of the story, but again it was pretty much the only source I had. Within a year the treaty was signed and the removal began in 1838. What at one time had been 50,000 square miles of native territory were reduced to only a few hundred. Until he saw them driven from their homes to an unwanted territory in the west, Mason Evans pleaded the case of the white settlers. After 1838, he formed a different opinion but kept it to himself, is what the book says.
Z: Okay.
E: I would imagine that was a pretty traumatic experience. Having all these friends and then seeing them be forced to move away.
Z: Right, yeah.
E: Anyways, so Mason went on to become a captain of a militia commissioned as such by the governor in 1841. He was 17 years old. Then, in his adulthood, instead of-I think he was supposed to go on to be a general or something. Initially thought he would have a career with the military, but he was so smart we would really rather you be a teacher, so he accepted a job as a teacher at a local school. Now we get into 'The Heartbreak' is what I have titled this chapter.
Z: Yay.
E: Essentially, the cause that is attributed to Mason deciding to go off into the wilderness forever is that he had his heart broken by his sweetheart. No one knows her true identity. What is known about her, is that she was the daughter of a prominent doctor in the area. “She was the apple of his eye, an only child whom he love more than life.No one would say, nor was it in print who the prominent doctor was, or what was his daughter's name. Was it because people wanted to protect the girl? Or was it because the doctor was so influential in Monroe County, that no one would even think to breathe a scandal such as the Mason Kershaw Evans affair.” It's all written very dramatically.
Z: Right.
E: Like a tabloid, but she was a co-teacher with Mason at the same school. They spent a lot of time together in the schoolhouse, but they would also go out together and roam around in the forest. They would ride their horses together. Mason would paint pictures for her, and draw for her. They just had a great time together. When he proposed to her, and she accepted. Mason didn't really wanna tell anybody, but she insisted that she had to tell her daughter, and he was like, “Okay, well, you tell your father, and I'll tell my mother and that'll be the only people that we tell.” Earlier, before we got started this was one of those where you could tell I was getting tired of their bullshit and just tired in general. Despite her anonymity, the author of the book gave her a name, that I quite honestly to be fucking hilarious. Dawn O'Day, and I put here, “Like bitch what is she, a leprechaun?”
E&Z: (laughs)
E: The whole that there was, there's this very dramatic story of her birth because Mason's mom a midwife, and though her father was a doctor, he decided it was bad luck to deliver your own baby, so he called for Mason's mother because she was an experienced midwife, and she was actually pregnant with Mason at the time. He and Dawn are only a few months apart in age, so she was born at the brink of day, and so the author was like, her name is Dawn O'Day.
Z: Oh-
E: Yeah
Z:...my god. What's his name again? The author?
E: R. Frank McKinney.
Z: R. Frankly, I don't like it.
E: (laughs) As I said, Mason's mother was the midwife who delivered his eventual sweetheart. What?
Z: Another thing.
E: What?
Z: I wouldn't care about bad luck. Well, I guess this was a different time period. But-
E: Yeah.
Z:...just, it's free. Just have the baby, you ain't gotta worry about it.
E: That's free real estate.
Z: That's free real estate, truly, but I mean, as soon as I said it, I was like “They didn't really have hospital bills.” But!
E: Well here's the thing that bothers me too about this whole debacle in the-I had a lot more of this whole birth scene when I initially was doing my notes because it was just. It's so hard to tell what of this was actually true, and what of it was speculation because everything seems like it was speculation the way that it was written.
Z: Right.
E: Basically there's this whole scene Dawn's mother is obviously in distress, she's in labor, she's in pain, and he just fucking backhands her and tells her to quiet down, and then she dies. Yeah, she fucking dies. She dies in childbirth. Okay first of all, he smacked the hell out of her, she falls back quote, “whimpering onto the pillow,” he drugs her to keep her calmer, and when she does deliver the baby, she dies. And he's like “Oh my god, my wife died, and I slapped her.” Like no shit. First, you shouldn't be slapping your wife in the first place, what the hell? That really-I'm sorry I just got real loud.
Z: No you're fine, speechless.
E: Oh, it frustrated the hell out of me. I could really go on about this book. He slaps the mother of his child, until she literally falls back on the bed, she dies, and that is part of why he was so protective of his daughter. Ironically, in turn, when Mason was born the doctor was the one that they called on to deliver him. This family structure, this community, they're all very tight nit, it's a very small place, they all know each other. As they got older, Dawn was very drawn to Mason because of his skills in the arts. She quickly became friends with him. She was allowed to spend some of her free time hanging out with Mason, but her father said, “Mason Evans is a bright chap, but I just don't have any use for soldiers.” It was speculated that he felt this way because he maybe had something in his past that made him kind of resent the military. A lot of people in this story in particular were draft dodgers for the Revolutionary War, which is a really weird thing to think about.
Z: 100%
E: I don't know why, I never really thought about the Revoutionary War having been-having had a draft. I guess that makes sense?
Z: Yeah.
E: It's possible that that's why he felt that way. He in general was very possessive and protective of his daughter. So she never really brought up the topic of her having any sort of affection for Mason until he proposed to her, and she said, “Well, I have to tell my dad.” She went home, and when she told him that she had intended to marry Mason, they had this massive argument and he forbade her to marry him. As incentive for her to not marry him, he promised her the farm and $1,000.00 in gold if she would turn Mason down. Now, I didn't google how much $1000.00 would have been in 1820 whatever, actually no that was later. I think this is like 1840. This is also one, in your story you had said there aren't a lot of really exact dates. There are very few exact dates in this too. Basically, I have his birth date and his death date and anything pertaining to the Civil War that was recorded by the government, but nothing specific in between. So, he promised her the farm and $1000.00 in gold, and he said, “Compare that to tending babies, scrubbing floors, tilling the ground, never having money of your own, your own husband being gone from home, soldiering, leaving you with all the chores to do. If you're in your right mind, you'll never do it.” And I have here, which, this guy was a raging shithead, but he did make some valid points. I would take that money.
Z: (whispers) Same. And a farm?!
E: A farm?! Yes.
Z: Cottagecore!
E: Yes, exactly.
Z: I don't mean to scream.
E: It's fine. That's how you feel about cottagecore.
Z: I love it, I love it.
E: Dawn didn't go to school the following morning. Mason received a note from her father's gardener, informing him that she would not be in school that day, and her students were to be sent home and return the day following. Mason accepted that, but he was acting very strangely after that. He was very anxious, and his students were taking notice. “At times he would lose his train of thought, stop his teaching, stare into space, and after a moment of silence, would again gain his pupils attention by frequently running his fingers through his hair, laughing foolishly, and whispering to himself.” Students feared that he had been bewitched because they had seen him act similarly at religious camp meetings, writhing, wringing his hands and crying. There's another quote here, “This was the first time anything had happened to him since the time he fell sick at his brother's home in Mississippi several years back.” He had gotten really ill. I don't think they ever said exactly what he had, but he had a very high fever. This is kind of where they think things started to really effect him, because he was kind of-It was a a high enough fever to where it was starting to effect his brain function, and they think that that may have permanently damaged his brain. His brother had actually said he had congestion of the brain, but Mason said, “But I wasn't crazy.” This is another-basically, any quote that I'm gonna say is certainly written by R. Frank McKinney, not by the actual people that said them. It says, “But I wasn't crazy, it was the high fever that caused me to go out of my mind,” he rationalized with himself. Mason had studied enough medicine to know something about fever. If he hadn't became a teacher, he would certainly have became a doctor, as he had said many times before. He wrote all of this behavior off of his anxiety and he told himself that he would see Dawn after class. The gardener came back, and brought him another note, telling him not to leave until Dawn showed up. Which I think is kind of funny, because why send this poor man to the schoolhouse, when you could have just said “She ain't coming to school today, also Mason, hang out for a little bit after.”
Z: Yeah.
E: Put it in the same note!
Z: Yeah.
E: I digress. So Dawn comes up, and they have this fight, she breaks it off with him. She basically does that whole thing of, even though she didn't actually hate him, she played it up like she really hated him, just to make it a cleaner break, which I get, I guess.
Z: Been there.
E: Yeah, it happens. Doesn't make it hurt any less, but that's what happened. He was devastated, and he got on his horse and he rode away into the forest to be alone. After that, he eventually went home, but Mason didn't come inside to get his food like he always did. His mom looked outside and she saw him run into the barn, grab a coat of a hook, and run back into the woods, leaving his horse behind. She said to his brother Milton, “Mason's gone off without his supper, wonder where he's headed for?” Milton replied, “To Panther Cave, I guess.” That's where he's gone a lot lately to write poetry and compose songs for that female school teacher. He said that Panther Cave is the quietest place in the Knobbs for when you wanna meditate.” Now what we'll learn here is that Mason is a douche. Oh, not Mason, sorry, Milton. Milton very much hated this girl. He, the whole time is portrayed as just thinking she has the worst of intentions. He literally calls her a witch at one point. That's another thing about this, all the exaggeration I've talked about before, instead of portraying as what I believe it to be, and what I think most people that would read this in modern times to believe, is that Mason was sick, he had some underlying illness and his behaviors after this point were possibly inflamed by trauma. To me it all reads as very much this man had undiagnosed mental illness in the 1840s. However, they demonize the shit out of Ms. Dawn O'Day.
Z: Great.
E: Constantly talking about Mason is wandering around in the woods just thinking about how he misses her, thinking about how she destroyed his life. Milton is constantly quoted as saying she ruined everything for him, and destroyed his future. It's fucked. Literally, all she did was break up with him.
Z: Right.
E: That really is another beef I have with this book. Panther Cave. Panther Cave is this cave on the western side of Chilhowee Mountain that was as the name implies known for being a hiding place for panthers and it became Mason's primary hide out in the years following this event. His family went looking for him there after he ran away, but they didn't find him because he had already left, and he was on his way back to the house. That evening, they heard someone in the barn and they thought that someone had broken in. When his father went in to investigate, he found Mason sitting on the floor in his horse's stall hugging his legs. Which, they say, this is a great horse, but I would not wanna be down there.
Z: No.
E: A horse could kill you straight up with one kick.
Z: Oh yeah.
E: Not the point.
Z: Mason's crying, he's sitting on the floor hugging his horses legs. He keeps repeating to his family, “I had to see my horse, I had to see my horse, he's the only one that would understand me.” And same, Mason I get it. Listen I understand you. I was a horse kid, okay? My mom still has horses. They're good animals. You still coulda got kicked in the head. His family convinced him to stay and have a meal with them. His mother told him to sit down at the table but he wouldn't. “Instead he began pacing the floor with bodily agitations and jerks. He ran his hands through his hair, jerking his head back and forth, then letting his body fall on the floor, writhing as if in extreme pain. Robert and Milton tried to get him off the floor but he fought them off. Finally, Mason righted himself, began to sing in words never heard before, singing most melodiously, not from the mouth or nose, but but entirely from the breast. I don't-that still boggles my mind, I have no idea. He would run from one end of the kitchen to the other and back again, often barking and grunting with each stroke of his head. His family basically thought what was happening to him was “a spell,” similar to behavior that they had seen people exhibit at Methodist camp meetings. Such as like speaking in tongues, that kinda thing. Mason was obviously in distress and they didn't know what to do. One of his parents said, “Mason's just like the man in the Bible that was possessed by demons, full of unclean spirits, until Jesus sent them into a heard of swine. But what could have caused such a thing? That was another point in which Milton was like, “It's all that woman's fault.” called her a witch. Like I said, they didn't have any idea what was happening because they had no understanding of mental illness or any kind of brain injury, knowledge or anything like that.
Z: Right.
E: So they just tried to make him comfortable and placate him. They finally fed him, and it said, “Mason ate his meal ravenously, with his hands rather than any other utensils. He ate everything they put in front of him and downed two quarts of coffee.” Which sounds like a great day. I would love for that to be me.
Z: Same.
E: I wanna do that.
Z: Same.
E: They tried to convince him to explain what had happened, but he jumped up from the table, grabbed a knapsack from a hook on the wall, and ran back into the woods. His brother Milton was a medical student and he insisted that one day he would become a doctor and he would fix Mason's problems. We're gonna time skip a little bit.
Z: Sure.
E: In July of 1850, there was a 10 day stretch of near constant rain. It brought widespread flooding to the region. Many people were forced out of their homes, and dead animals, human waste, and debris were washing up in massive quantities on the farmland. I feel like I should specify, in this area where this is all taking place. It's a lot of flood planes between mountains, so when it rains, even now, it's really easily flooded. Ten straight days of rain is bad. It was very bad. Mason, at this point, had been living in the wilderness about two years. His father had sold off his horse because Mason wasn't around to care for him. He gave him the money from the sale, he was paid $100.00, and he told Mason that he needed to take it and use it, but Mason didn't want it. He put it in his backpack, and just let this $100 bill get shredded up in his backpack.
Z: Mason.
E: Yeah. He didn't have any use for money, he was out in the woods-
Z: Fair.
E:...and at this point he had become an expert at chicken snatching, taking food from gardens in the middle of the night, anything that he could find, he could eat. He was an expert forager, he knew all the berries and roots and stuff he could eat. He did eat all his meat raw, but he didn't really have anything to cook with in a cave.
Z: You gotta do whatcha gotta do.
E: Yeah, although it's not like he didn't know how to light a fire, it's just he apparently didn't cook his food. That didn't kill him, so I guess it's okay. Disclaimer, if you're listening to this, and you're considering the Mason Evans Diet, don't.
Z: Don't.
E: Don't. Cook your chicken thoroughly. At this point, he'd lived out there for two years. Dogs would bark and chase him up trees and hunters had to come and call them off to rescue him, because they would tree him like a bear. Overall, he was adapting to his new life. He was learning how to function out in the wilderness, but things were about to take a turn because the Evans family was victim to a lot of the flooding damage. They lived right on the banks of the creek and they had to clean up a lot after the storms. By this point, all of Mason's siblings had grown up and moved away and gotten married, so his parents were all alone to deal with this. This is topical, unfortunately, the flooding brought with it something much worse than just property damage, it brought illness. There was an epidemic of typhoid fever, and people just started dropping like flies. Entire families were dead in days. Milton had gone to Knoxville to go to medical school. He was called home, not because they were enlisting all the doctors in the region to care for people, but because both of his parents died like (snaps fingers) immediately.
Z: Jesus.
E: It was horrible. He said, “I wonder how many people thought to boil the water before drinking it.” 'Cause they wouldn't have known.
Z: Right.
E: That was a lot of what was killing people was they were drinking unclean drinking water. The Evans family all came together to make arrangements for their parents, and the question came up, “What do we do about Mason?” Milton, always the spokesman of the group, decided he was going to track his brother down, but when he did find him, he decided to just yell at him. He told him that he was disgusting and that he looked like a wild animal, that he didn't look like a person at all anymore. He told him, “If you'll come and get cleaned up you can go with me, but not before. You can't see Ma and Pa looking like that.” He was just now finding out that his parents had died, he's already traumatized by a number of other things. Mason of course, didn't want to hear it and he ran off into the woods again. He didn't do what Milton told him to do, however he did attend their funeral. He followed the procession of, there was like a wagon with matching white horses that carried their caskets. It's described in this very beautiful and flowery way that honestly, genuinely very sad, and his parents were buried at Hickory Grove Cemetery, while Mason watched from the woods. After that, this is where things are getting up into the Civil War, because we are coming up on the 1860s. At this time, the construction was finishing up on the White Cliff Springs Hotel. It is a very important location in Mason's life, in his history. The owner, Harvey McGill, and instructed Jonas and Betsy Jefferson, the couple that ran the hotel kitchen, to attend to all of Mason's needs. They would feed him, and often, Mr. McGill would come to the kitchen while Mason was there and he would talk to him and kind of give him the scoop on what was going on. I also feel like I should mention at this point, Mason basically went non-verbal. He didn't really speak very much, if at all. At lot of time in the book they describe him as kind of communicating in grunts and hand gestures, but it wasn't that he didn't understand things that people were saying to him. A lot of things in the book kind of-at the same time they're like, “yes, he was brilliant,” there was kind of this air of, “well he didn't talk anymore so he was stupid.” I just want to say, that's not how it works.
Z: Right.
E: You can be nonverbal and understand things, you know.
Z: Yeah.
E: Anyway, that's a whole other spiel for another time. So he would come in, and he would get the hot goss, and he would find out what was going on. He basically learned, at the White Cliffs Hotel, that the war was coming. He learned all about states seceding from the Union and that sort of thing. He was like, “Well, I am of the age of the draft,” he would be draft-able, so he was like, “I gotta hide.” He hunkered down Panther Cave for a little while, a long time, several months I guess? While he was still in hiding there was an accident. He decided that he was afraid of being caught by the authorities, he wasn't even gonna go to the hotel, he was just kinda gonna stockpile supplies, stay in his cave. One night while he was out foraging, he sees this light in the sky. He followed it, and the hotel was on fire. Burning to the ground. He shows up, and the fire marshal is there, and they're like, “Well, there's your fire bug,” and they basically threatened to arrest him. He is very upset, he ends up-they describe him as kind of having a fit. He started convulsing, he was very upset, he didn't know how to communicate that he hadn't been the one to do it because people were basically just accusing him already.
Z: Right.
E: Fortunately, at the same time that this was happening, this woman came forward, and was like, “My daughter knocked a candle over into a laundry basket, and that's what happened.” He was exonerated and he got up and ran away. The hotel burned to the ground. Mason went back to Panther Cave. This is another one of those points in the story where the author speculates that Mason spent much of his time lost in the memory of his ill-fated love affair.
Z: I don't think so.
E: I have here, “Like come on bro, it wasn't that serious.” After that he visited his sister Demaris and her husband Horner Coltharp, and to his surprise, he learned that his brother, Milton, had become a doctor, like he said he would. Instead of doing anything to help Mason, he filed paperwork with the court system in Monroe County to declare Mason a lunatic and subject to the confinement of a lunatic asylum. Milton also sold the land that was willed to Mason, without his consent, and basically was like, “Okay cops, go get him. Lock him up.” Very helpful. So-
Z: I don't like Milton.
E:...yeah, Milton is a shithead!
Z: Truly.
E: Demaris and Horner explained to Mason that Milton had moved away, but he had alerted local authorities to be on the lookout for him. Demaris requested that her husband build a shelter for him, where he could be supervised and he could be safe. Horner Coltharp did what he was asked. He constructed an 8x10 shanty for him, supplied him with food. They implored him not to wander off. He did, of course, try to leave to go back to the forest, and he was captured and chained to the floor. Which was great, because when people heard about this, people would come and just stare at him like he was a fucking zoo animal.
Z: Great.
E: Yeah, but there is a silver lining to this because this group of women heard what was happening to him. They were sympathetic so they came to see him and they brought him some supplies. They asked him if he could make use of a file, and he was like, “Yes, fuck yes, I can use a file. I can get out of here if I have a file.” So they baked him a loaf of bread with a file hidden in it.
Z: (gasps)
E: He was able to eat the bread, get the file out, and escape. How cool is that?
Z: I love that.
E: I know! These vigilante southern mamas are just like, “Nah this is not okay, you can't be doing this. This is a grown man, let him live his life. Let him out, here's a file, go be free!” I have so much respect for that. That's probably my favorite part of this whole story.
Z: I love that.
E: Yeah, so he escaped and he basically-he vowed never to return to his sister's property again because even though they had tried to help him, he didn't wanna get captured again. He continued to wander. He did go back occasionally and visit the White Cliff Hotel because they were constructing a second one, or rebuilding it. But he felt really uncomfortable being around there. He set up a number of outposts throughout the knobs with supplies and shelters where he could hide, should the authorities come to hunt him down again. A lot of people had complained about him raiding their gardens, and stealing their animals. The police never really caught him. Four years passed from the night of the fire and Mason showed up and he was very surprised to find that there was another hermit living there. Well, he wasn't living there, but he was a visitor, and they were treating him the way they were treating Mason, where they would feed him and give him whatever he wanted. His name is Gabriel North, and he'd had a very hard life. He had been fending for himself since childhood due to a strained relationship with his family. The book also implied that he had some mental illness as well and that that might have been effecting the way that his family treated him, so he was on his own. He did, however, have two dogs and Mason did not like dogs. When Harvey McGill was like, “I don't want you two at my hotel at the same time, I think you both should leave, go show him Panther Cave.” Mason was like “Cool, let's go,” Gabriel was like, “Okay well here's my dogs, and the dogs immediately attacked him. Immediately attacked Mason. They get into a fight, he hits the dog, because the dog is trying to attack him, and Gabriel was like “If you ever hit my dog again, you'll regret it Mason.” He kind of explained, “I have a checkered past with dogs, they do not like me,” and Gabriel basically was like, “Okay, cool that's fine. Just don't do it again,” and they became friends. But, another epidemic of illness hit the region. Yellow fever this time, and Gabriel was like, “I don't wanna be around for that. I'm afraid, I don't wanna get sick, I'm leaving.” So he left, and Mason was left alone again. That was in 1878. At this point, the book talks about what Mason had done for companionship previously. Allegedly, he had a couple of different animals for companionship. He had a rooster that he stole from a farm, like a prize rooster. This rooster and him were like BFFs. He kept it in a hollow oak tree that he called his rooster house. It road in his pocket until the action of squeezing in and out of his pocket caused it to loose all it's feathers. So he had a naked chicken that-
Z: (laughs)
E:..that was his best friend.
Z: (still laughing) I love that.
E: I know!
Z: Oh my god!
E: He also befriended a very large yellow tomcat, which followed him around for a long period of time. Now, here's the thing that's kind of icky. The rooster eventually died, and Mason ate it. Which, yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say, I get it because he, you know. You gotta do what you gotta do to survive, and he was already catching and killing chickens before that.
Z: Sure.
E: The thing that bothers me about this, is that people were very into the speculation that he ate the cat too.
Z: I was afraid you were gonna say that.
E: I don't know that that happened. That's another thing that is in there just for shock value I think.
Z: I think so too. I feel like he was smart enough to know not to eat the cat.
E: I don't know, and honestly who the hell am I to judge him if he did.
Z: I've never had cat, who knows maybe it's good.
E: Living in a cave in the woods, you forage for all your food. Honor every part of them right.
Z: Yeah...
E: I know that's kind of fucked up to say about a cat but yeah. I just thought that that was-it was just randomly tossed in there between, “Here's a story of the Civil War,” “Mason Evans may have eaten his cat.” Like what??
Z: (laughs)
E: What are you talking about??
Z: Written. Like. A. Tabloid.
E: It must have been a slow news day.
Z: Truly.
E: Anyway, we're finally winding down. In the 1880s, a lot of things began to change. Lumber became a big industry in the Monroe County area, therefore, railroad started moving in. It was also at this time, that The Athenian, the newspaper that printed the pamphlet that I mentioned in the beginning, began it's operation. The publisher was a man named Wilbur F. McCarron. McCarron had promised the people of McMinn County “a newspaper of prestige, one whose literary content would be the best in the nation. There, the people who subscribed to the newspaper could be assured of many interesting features about McMinn, Meigs, and Monroe Counties.” The funny thing about this, is that people were not about this happening because they were like, “We wanna know about politics, we don't give a shit about whatever literature you're trying to bring us.” They also didn't like him because this was in the time period where Democrats and Republicans were flipped values wise-
Z: Right.
E:...and he was a Republican, and I thought it was really funny because they were like, “We don't like republicans around here.” And I was like “Boy you better fast forward 200 years.
Z: You better buckle up!
E: That's all we got. Within a month of the publication's beginning, McCarron came to visit the White Cliff Hotel and he told Mr. McGill that he wanted to know about Mason and eventually write a piece about him. Mr. McGill basically told him that the best person to talk to would be Horner Colthrop, his brother-in-law. When he returned to Athens, McCarron immediately published a series of articles in his paper about quote, “The Wild Man of the Chilhowee.” He recounted the stories of the people who had encountered him through direct interviews. The article stirred up a lot of controversy, and on January 9, 1886, ,the sheriff captured Mason and brought him to the Athens County Jail, and yet again, his capture drew in a lot of spectators. A lot of people came to watch them, arrest him basically and put him in prison. They took his photo on the steps of the courthouse, gave him a change of clothes and sentenced him to an insane asylum in Nashville. Very, for context, Monroe County is like the bottom eastern corner of Tennessee. Nashville is 4 hours away?
Z: Yeah, like three of four.
E: Three or four hours away, so that's very far from anything he's every known. In The Athenian, Mr. McCarron wrote, “Till a short time ago, Mason Evans kept with regularity the date of his birth, the day of the week, the month, and the year, and when urged to do so, would write a few sentences and solve problems with as much exactness as the days of yore. But age is creeping upon him. His eyesight is failing, and the little spark of passion and the reason that should have never left him is gradually being extinguished. It was only by the exercise of strategy and urgent persuasion he was induced without using force to come down from his mountain home and get into a wagon waiting to convey him into town, a distance of some 15-20 miles.” Mason did not want-whether they forced him or not, he did not want what they took him to do. He attempted to escape several times. So far as to get the start of his guards, several 100s of yards going at full speed toward the mountains. Mostly reports said that he was harmless, but a few people had said that in his older age he would get confused, he would lash out a little bit. What it actually said was, “attacks of raving lunacy.” Which, yikes. A few weeks later, McCarron wrote that Mason was taken the McMinn County Poorhouse. Once he arrived there, he very quickly made his escape. He walked a distance of around 20 miles back to his brother-in-law's house. Horner Colthrop provided him a shelter to stay in at night and he was free to roam during the day. Which is kind of what the situation was before, but this time there wasn't really much of an issue with it. He actually used the shelter he was given, the cops didn't try to come take him away, they all kind of came to an agreement. At this point, things were really, finally starting to calm down for him. During the winter of 1891-1892, Mason stayed in the cabin intermittently. He continued to visit the White Cliff kitchens and he was very grateful for the services that they gave him, because he was 68 years old, and his health was beginning to decline. Any food that they could give him, any warmth, he was grateful for. Unfortunately, on the morning of January 11, 1892, Mason's body was found frozen sitting under a tree. His brother-in-law claimed his remains, and Mason was buried in a simple wooden casket near his parents at Hickory Grove Cemetery. For 40 years, he had lived alone in the wilderness, kept himself alive. I think that that is fucking crazy.
Z: Truly.
E: Obviously, if you threw me out there now, given that I am of the-I'm on the millenial/gen z cusp. I've basically always had a cell phone in my hand. I would not last a day.
Z: I can't even poop in the woods.
E: Exactly! Thank you! I know it was a different time but wow. 40 years, completely alone.
Z: Yeah.
E: Didn't have a house, lived in a cave. Finally I have a quote here from Harvey McGill, the owner of the White Cliff Hotel who said, “Mason Evans is much better off dead than alive and Hickory Grove is a much better place than the shack he lived in. The final resting place of his soul is with God, I am sure.” That is-
Z: That's sweet.
E:...the story of Mason Evans.
Z: Oh my god. I am still shook about those women.
E: I know.
Z: The loaf of bread.
E: It's so cool. It's so cool.
Z: Oh my god.
E: That just goes to show you. That's the definition of southern hospitality.
Z: Truly.
E: Truly.
Z: Well, thank god I finally know all about Mason.
E: I'm sorry that was so long-
Z: Nah.
E:...for our first run, but I really just needed to
get that one off my chest. Fortunately, it had given me kind of a branching off of some other topics that I want to cover too. I definitely want to talk more about the White Cliff Hotel and I am actually planning on doing an episode on sinkholes.
Z:OOooo.
E: Caves and sinkholes are all kind of connected. So that's that. Thank you for listening.
Z: Of course.
E: What's your issue this week?
Z: My issue this week, and-okay there is a side of TikTok-
E: I'm afraid now.
Z:...currently, and again, brain worms. My issue this week is cleantok. Cleaning TikTok.
E: Ooo, that sounds nice.
Z: I'm gonna do a little bit of a trigger warning here-
E: Oh, okay.
Z:...for child abuse.
E: Okay...
Z: Because skip ahead like 2 minutes, if you don't want to hear about this, but-
E: I was not expecting this.
Z:...have you ever read the book A Child Called It?
E: No, but I know about it. I know like the general plot.
Z: There's a scene where household chemicals are mixed and it's supposed to be-
E: Oh.
Z: Okay.
E: Like the mustard gas?
Z: Yeah, pretty much.
E: I think I know where this is going.
Z: There's this side of TikTok now where people are like, “We're on cleantok, we're gonna clean.” and they'll dump half a container of AJAX, Clorox, Dawn, literally everything under the-
E: Ammonia.
Z: Ammonia, everything and that's just where my brain goes is mixing chemicals together and making deadly toxic gases and I'm just waiting, because there's livestreams of people that'll just go live and dump-
E: Yeah, I've seen a couple of those videos where people are just throwing in 4 different kinds of powder and dumping multiple liquids on top of it.
Z: Yeah!
E: How are you not dead? Someone's gonna get hurt.
Z: Truly, and that's where my brain went. I was like, someone is going to not realize it. 'Cause it's science, they're chemicals. You're mixing shit together, you don't know what you're mixing. Somethings going to happen, someone is going to get hurt, because these people on TikTok are like “Oh I'm going to make a rainbow in my toilet today.”
E: Can I say, I feel like a lot of that we don't have home-ec in schools anymore.
Z: Yeah.
E: Because I learned, my mom was the one that told me, don't mix ammonia and bleach cause you'll make mustard gas, but I don't know if that's actually true. I know that it makes something that is very dangerous, but that is kind of where you would learn about these household things. Schools are so underfunded that you don't have that anymore.
Z: Yep.
E: That's just sad.
Z: Well, that was my issue. Sorry to get a little dark there for a second but truly I saw just one video, and you know how TikTok is, they'll be one here or there, and it really made me mad.
E: Well, hey, PSA don't do that. Don't mix things.
Z: Please.
E: Do your research if you're going to use multiple chemicals because, because holy shit you could literally gas yourself to death.
Z: Here's the tea. One is enough.
E: Yeah, most of the time.
Z: Scrubbing bubbles? Fine.
E: Yeah.
Z: Dawn Dishwashing Liquid? Fine. Don't start mixing shit. You don't need to. That's what they're there for.
E: Yes, yes. Please be safe. Please don't get hurt.
Z: What's your issue now that I'm all worked up?
E: My issue, maybe this is dark, my issue is honestly that I had to take Brownie to the emergency vet.
Z: Yeah.
E: 'Cause that was a nightmare.
Z: Yeah.
E: I had to take my sweet little boy to the vet because I came home from work and he had poopied blood and I was terrified and I thought he was gonna die. It turns out that he just had a mild infection, and he's had his antibiotics. He's good to go now. We did his follow up, and the vet said he looked fine. His issue this week is probably the fact that they shaved that funky chunk out of the side of his neck, because they had to give him fluids, so he has this wonky ass-it looks like the state of South Carolina.
Z: Have you ever seen that episode of Bob's Burgers where he gets the stitch in his finger-
E: Yes!
Z:...and he's like, “Why did you shave my arm?”
E: That is exactly it, yeah. God that's such-I love Bob's Burgers.
Z: Same.
E: But yeah, that's my issue. He's fine. I'm still-I don't think I'm ever gonna recover from that. That was so stressful. He's okay and he's standing here staring at me because it's been two hours, and he probably needs to poop.
Z: He probably needs to poop.
(dog shaking his head noises)
E: Yeah.
Z: We'll take that as a yes.
E: Alright, well, thanks for listening.
Z: Of course, thanks for listening to me ramble, thanks for listening to Em ramble.
E: Thanks for really listening to me ramble.
E&Z: (laughs)
Z: Well we'll hopefully see you next time, hopefully we'll see you next time, I'm really excited for my topic next week.
Z: Hi guys.
E: Hey.
Z: How's it going? So when we initially recorded this episode, we didn't have all of our social media set up completely. There were a couple that had different usernames or whatever, just rookie mistakes that we had made, but we just wanted to rerecord the ending here. Kinda touch base with you, so you know exactly where to find us so there's no confusion, and we're all on the same page. So Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube @issues-podcast. Our Tumblr is @theabandonmentissues. Or you can simply go to our LinkTree whick is linktr.ee/issues_podcast. And all of this will be linked in the description below. But that's got all of our relevant links including our cited sourced, social media, and our Patreon can be found there as well.
E: We also have an email for listener story submissions now. So if you have any places nearby you that you think are relevant to the topics that we cover, we would like to hear from you. You can send those to us at [email protected], and we might read it out on the air.
Z: You never know what could happen.
E: You never know. You can also send whatever you want to that email. Anything you want us to know. Anything relevant.
Z: Send us memes. We'll print them out, and we'll hand them to Gertrude.
E: Exactly. Yeah.
Z: No problem.
E: That should pretty much cover everything, contact wise.
Z: We appreciate you guys understanding that we're fools.
E&Z: (laughs)
E: We're just some fresh faced youngsters.
Z: Listen, we're little rookies, we gotta figure it out as we go, and unfortunately this is one of them.
E: If you need anything from us, that's were you can find us.
Z: Please, send me memes.
E: (laughs) Please. It's what keeps him going.
Z: It's all I got left in this world.
E: Yeah.
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didanawisgi · 3 years
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“After I wrote Why it's time for a new social networking platform and how to make it successful, I was contacted on Twitter by an account I'd never heard of. The account was Minds, and they invited me to give its social networking platform a try.
Minds was launched five years ago by Bill Ottman; since then, the site has continued on in the shadow of the Facebook juggernaut. With a nod to irony, a large portion of Facebook users complain about the service on a daily basis--some even go so far as to say they'd leave Facebook if only an alternative existed. It seems that alternative does exist.
Case in point: Minds is surprisingly similar to Facebook in layout and features, though Minds isn't a simple clone of Facebook. Minds offers much of what I detailed in my previous article about a new social networking platform.
It's open source and transparent.
It offers free and paid accounts.
Its ownership and management enforce no political or social bias.
User data is not monetized.
It offers all the features users are accustomed to.
It minimizes hate speech without infringing upon free speech.
Minds uses cryptocurrency that users can earn and spend. The earned tokens can be used to boost posts, and a paid user account costs five tokens per month. The paid account earns users features like:
Access to exclusive content;
The ability to become verified; and
The ability to banish all the boosted posts from their feed.
Users earn tokens by:
Posting;
Commenting;
Receiving upvotes (similar to Likes on Facebook); and
Inviting others to join the platform (referral link).
So my curiosity was piqued. I created an account and began to poke around. After a few days, I drew the conclusion that Minds could very well be that social networking platform we've all been waiting for. To that end, I reached out to the CEO of Minds, Bill Ottman, to ask the questions that were on my mind about the site.
Jack Wallen: What made you start Minds?
Bill Ottman: I have always considered it an absolute necessity and historical inevitability that a free and open source social network rises up to become competitive with the proprietary tech titans. The top global communication platforms of humanity need to respect the freedom and voice of the community; otherwise, we end up where we are with a status-quo of surveillance, algorithmic manipulation, and exploitation. We knew we could not possibly be a sustainable network without building an independent social engine from the ground up, totally non-reliant on big tech APIs.
Jack Wallen: What is it that the likes of Facebook and Twitter are doing wrong?
Continuously audit configs and get alerted if a device is out of compliance. Be able to remediate vulnerabilities through bulk config deployment. Help prevent unauthorized network changes through change delegation, monitoring, and alerting.
Bill Ottman: There's minimal transparency with regards to both governance and software. Proprietary software should not be acceptable from our top networks, as it is impossible to audit. Their content policies are essentially indecipherable, inconsistent, and subjective. They prevent you from reaching your audience with hidden default algorithms. We are not anti-algo, but believe users should decide if they want to use them or not. They pretend to care about your privacy, offering a number of visibility controls, but ignore the ability to be invisible from them.
Jack Wallen: What is it that Facebook and Twitter are doing right?
Bill Ottman: The UX and design is excellent. Clearly they have brilliant developers and product designers who are able to build out robust features from live streaming to messaging services all interoperating cross-platform. They have vast resources to make acquisitions and deeply understand the functionality that people want. Unfortunately, the foundation of everything is upside down.
Jack Wallen: Explain, to the uninitiated, what sets Minds apart from other social platforms?
Bill Ottman:
We try to push the boundaries with radical transparency with open source code and even financials.
We are community-owned from an early stage with over 1,500 users who actually own stock.
We have implemented revenue-sharing and monetization tools to help people earn money, both fiat currency and crypto.
We believe that you should be rewarded for your contributions to the network and the engagement that you drive.
We don't require any personal information and encrypt any given.
We want to minimize hate speech with free speech, not censorship. In fact, we launched a whole initiative about this at https://change.minds.com. Research shows censorship may in fact cause greater polarization and radicalization than facilitation of legal civil discourse.
Jack Wallen: What made you opt to go the crypto route?
Bill Ottman: Prior to moving to Ethereum, we had a centralized virtual currency called points. This was one of our most popular features, as 1 point=1 view and could be used to Boost posts for greater reach, which people were losing on Facebook at alarming rates. You earned points for many types of engagement. Once Ethereum emerged we saw every reason to migrate the wholereward system to it, as this allows the token economy to become decentralized where users can hold their tokens in their own wallets and transact on-chain, which provides greater transparency as well.
Now, users can accept fiat (via stripe), Bitcoin, Ether, and Minds tokens which are ERC-20. The crypto community typically adheres to values aligned with internet freedom. You can't and shouldn't run everything on a blockchain , but we are committed to the P2P route everywhere that makes sense and isn't an impossible UX. Providing people with options and control is paramount. Do I want to publish this post to an immutable distributed system or not? That's a choice we want to provide rather than forcing a particular path.
Jack Wallen: How will Minds deal with some of the issues that have faced other platforms such as hate speech and groups that espouse such speech?
Bill Ottman: We launched the Change Minds initiative with our advisor Daryl Davis, who famously deradicalized over 200 members of the KKK through open discourse, basically, befriending them. This human approach, based in free expression and civil dialogue, is much more aligned with our values and peer-reviewed research than blanket ban policies. The goal is to provide a breeding ground for changing minds via civil discourse as Daryl has proven can work, even if it takes years. We also built a jury system for the appeals process to bring the community into the moderation structure. Our approach is long-term and synced with the First Amendment. We care a lot about building tools for people to not see anything they don't want to see as well as reporting truly harmful content. We think policies involving censorship should be data driven. What actually works?...”
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