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daytaker · 3 months
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Sins, Virtues, and Motivations: A Critical Analysis of Characters in Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
In this essay, I will argue that each demon brother some of the demon brothers can be associated with a sin (no duh), a virtue, and a core motivation--and that this motivation is best pursued through a synthesis of that sin and that virtue. Hegel would be very proud. Yes, this is critical media analysis. No, I will not try to explain the twisted, broken path that led me to this point in my life.
I will be looking at Lucifer, Mammon, and Levi in this study. Their core sins are obvious - Pride, Greed, and Envy. Their accompanying Virtues and Motivations are listed below.
I used the Seven Heavenly Virtues for this little game. These are Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, Faith, Hope, and Charity.
They should not be confused with the Seven Capital Virtues, which are inversions of the Seven Deadly Sins. These are Humility, Charity, Gratitude, Patience, Chastity, Temperance, and Diligence. I tried these first and damn were none of them easy to match up. Tell me, fandom for this mobile game designed for players to lust over hot demon men, which brother should have the "chastity" virtue?
Lucifer
Core Sin: Pride. Core Virtue: Fortitude. Core Motivation: To protect his family.
Lucifer's core motivation is to protect his brothers. He looks at this as a sort of penance for the outcome of the Great Celestial War. He knows that he's the reason they rebelled, and he feels responsible for their wellbeing. He is able to endure the relentless pressure of the responsibilities he puts on himself thanks to his core virtue, fortitude.
Fortitude is strongly associated with courage. Specifically, it is courage in the face of pain and adversity. We see him displaying this trait any time those he cares for are in jeopardy, and it often helps him make difficult decisions where neither outcome is ideal. Lucifer is decisive, canny, and accepts the consequences of his choices, good or bad.
His driving motivation is also bolstered by his core sin: pride. He views himself as ultra-competent, while his brothers consistently make mistakes; beyond that, it's only natural that he take responsibility for the choices of his brothers (like the choice to join him in rebelling) because he is so significant an influence as to virtually rob them of their autonomy.
This has led to Lucifer having a somewhat toxic relationship with his brothers. Lucifer often acts as a parental figure rather than a peer, while the rest of them are all in arrested development of some sort, often acting more like kids than the adults they insist they are.
Lucifer either doesn't recognize that by doing everything for the family on his own, he's stemming their ability to grow and learn, or he does know the consequences of what he's doing and he feels conflicted about it. He ultimately blames himself for the fact that they're all in the Devildom in the first place, living as avatars of sins to the extent that they struggle to function as independent adults.
So, while fortitude and pride allow Lucifer to simulate the act of protecting his family, it's a matter of perspective whether controlling every element of their lives is protection or harmful coddling.
Mammon
Core Sin: Greed. Core Virtue: Charity. Core Motivation: To be valued and valuable.
Mammon is simultaneously a vessel of greed and its inverse, charity. This is because his core motivation is twofold, and those are the rewards of greed and charity; to be valued - to fulfill a want, to be desired, to look flippin' cool - and to be valuable - to fulfill a need, to have inherent worth, to serve a purpose.
Setting aside his unhealthy relationship with money, let's examine how Mammon behaves and what his deeper interpersonal motivations tend to be. He clearly places a high value on his brothers and MC, and he has shown on multiple occasions that he is willing to put himself at risk to help or protect them. Early on in both the original game and in NightBringer, Mammon attempts to heroically rescue MC (and his younger brothers, in NightBringer). In both cases, though, Lucifer shows up and does it for him. Mammon's pursuit of his core motivation clashes with Lucifer's quest for his, and Lucifer is strong enough to simply take it from him. Although in NightBringer he and his brothers do earn the not-insubstantial reward of the title "Lords of the Underworld" after Lucifer's rescue, he appeared so dejected by Lucifer's oneupmanship that he spent a good portion of the next day sulking. In the original game, Mammon wants MC to promise that they won't be saved by anyone else besides him in the future. It appears that his greed for an improved status in his interpersonal relationships is left unfulfilled.
Mammon wants to be heroic - to be valuable - and he wants to be admired for it - to be valued. The cognitive dissonance that accompanies motivations like these is all that sustains a person with such a diminished sense of self-worth.
Speaking of a diminished sense of self worth...
Leviathan
Core Sin: Envy. Core Virtue: Hope. Core Motivation: To find joy in the things that give him joy.
Confusing motivation? Yes it is. But envy is a confusing sin. All the other sins--pride, greed, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth--are enjoyable to indulge on some level. Losing your temper when you feel you've been wronged, or eating a bunch of delicious food, or sleeping through the snooze alarm: We know why we do those things. We might regret them later, but we indulge them in the moment because of the enjoyable side.
There is nothing enjoyable about envy. Wanting something that isn't yours, that belongs to someone else, be it tangible goods, talents, a partner, a job... is nauseating. And it makes you feel like a bad person, and it drains the joy out of things that you used to love. Speaking from personal experience for a second, when I was a teenager, I played music in a company with a much younger musician who was incredibly talented, and I was deeply envious of her. I wanted her talent; I wanted the praise she received; I wanted to impress people; I wanted what she had. But there was nothing I could do. I hated feeling that way, but I couldn't shake it. And it ate away at my desire to play music. It took the joy out of something that once gave me joy.
You see the connection?
Levi struggles to find pleasure in anything he does, despite how many interests he has, because, in spite of his blustering dismissal of all things "normie", he is deeply envious of those he perceives as his social superiors. Now, I am not in any way saying that Levi is or would be an inc3l, but there's an element of his character that has a strong parallel to inc3l culture. The idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with him that prevents him from achieving what he wants socially and that the only way he can protect himself from those who would ridicule him is with a defensive contempt for the group that rejects him... Does any of that sound familiar?
But Levi is not an inc3l. No, not because you're willing to **** him and his two *****, though I'm sure that helps. It's because he has his core virtue: hope.
Have you ever heard of the black pill? It's kind of like the final stage of inc3l culture, where you accept that you're not an alpha male, you'll never be one, you'll never be accepted by a woman, you're ugly and unloveable, and you might as well just stop existing. It is sheer despair.
Levi maintains hope for the future, even if he prefers not to admit it out of fear of jinxing himself. He is able to form a deep bond with MC, who he views as a "normie", without renouncing his hobbies or being mocked for them. In fact, I would argue that the anxiety Levi sometimes displays over the possibility of being made fun of (for example, in NightBringer when he considers trying out cosplay) is emblematic of the hope he has that he can be accepted.
"But wait, daytaker," you say. "That doesn't sound like he's making progress towards his core motivation of getting joy out of the things that bring him joy! Being self conscious is not joyful!" Well, you're right. What Levi needs is to somehow find the right balance between enjoying his hobbies and allowing himself to enjoy other people as well. As we can see from his effusive excitement in sharing his favorite games and stories with MC and his brothers, the social component of media consumption is a major component in making it enjoyable. If Levi loses hope, he loses that connection to the world offline, and if he loses that connection, he loses the joy.
@blackstqr (I did it.)
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thegildedcentury · 1 year
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Only The Future Crabs Can Judge Me: Disco Elysium and The Politics of Failure
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jor-elthatendswell · 6 months
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It's a well worn topic at this point but the imminent release of The Marvels has me thinking about how militaristic the Marvel Cinematic Universe is, with Monica Rambeau aka Photon, a habour patrol member in the comics, reimagined as a captain in the US Air Force.
She follows Hawkeye, who was changed from an argumentative former circus performer with a heart of gold (a character so staunchly against lethal force he once revoked his own wife's Avengers membership because she sort of, maybe, subconsciously allowed a villain to fall to his death) into a hard-nosed black ops assassin.
Sam Wilson/ Falcon made his celluloid debut as an army man with twin submachine guns attached to his wrists. It’s a far cry from his print counterpart’s introduction as a social worker by day who uses his skill at falconry to protect his neighbourhood.
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If we allow the argument that modern cinema goers are accustomed to a sprinkling of realism to make their superheroes palatable (and it’s a strange argument really- why should realism be a desirable quality in summer blockbuster escapism?) then what actually constitutes “realism”.
Sure, a man who learnt uncanny skill with a bow and arrow growing up with a travelling show couldn’t possibly hold his own alongside Hulk or Thor in the real world (and, yes, there isn’t a Hulk or Thor in the real world; as I say, this is a strange argument), but if he learned those exact same skills in some kind of military context then that somehow passes the bar for realism? The sinister upshot is that these children’s heroes become more warlike just as, globally, they reach more children than ever before.
Increasing the realism of superhero stories only serves to make them problematic. DC Comics' Batman, who is the frequently subjected to “realistic” treatments, is the prime example. If, in real life, a billionaire tooled himself up with the best weapons and body armour money can buy and began dispensing violent “justice” with no accountability, then of course that wouldn’t be a good thing. If they wore a costume with pointy ears and started calling themselves “Batman” then of course we would question their sanity. But Batman isn’t real; it’s a story. Nobody thinks The Muppet Show advocates animal cruelty. Quite the opposite, if anything. ("Not unless they're watching it", as Waldolf once heckled) Yet if a filmmaker decides they’re going to make a “grounded and realistic” remake where Fozzy is played by a real live bear wearing a pork pie hat and spotty necktie, then that's a whole other story. Suspend your disbelief and superheroes are less like the police or army and more akin to volunteers and activists, doing what they can with what they have to improve the lives of those around them. Their actions take the form of crime fighting only because that’s what makes for exciting colourful adventure stories for children.
In the MCU, even Marvel’s poster boy, Spider-Man (another champion of non-lethal solutions, known for his compassion even to his enemies and who possesses an enduring appeal to young children) is given a literal sheen of the military-industrial complex in the form of “Stark Tech” armour, replete with military grade strike drones. Tony Stark even thought to equip his 15 year old protégé-cum-child soldier with an “Instant Kill Mode”. In a moment played for laughs in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man rejects his on-board AI's attempt to activate this feature but seems untroubled that such an option exists and, indeed, come Avengers: Infinity War, he voluntarily deploys it. It’s not clear if Spidey actually does kill any of his alien adversaries, but it seems reasonable to assume that one doesn’t say “Activate Instant Kill Mode” without the intention of ending lives. Fans are expected to smile or applaud as Spider-Man says these words, recognising the call-back to Homecoming, rather than find it a gross misrepresentation of Marvel’s most beloved character or an alarming depiction of a children’s favourite.
The MCU Avengers as a whole are a US government “initiative “. The reluctant superheroes need to be cajoled into putting their differences aside for the greater good by army top brass Nick Fury. In a tweak from the source material, the ‘H' in Fury's organisation, SHIELD, stands for ‘Homeland’, making SHIELD as explicitly American venture as opposed to it being ostensibly intergovernmental in the comics.
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There is a comic book precedent for this military take on Earth's Mightiest Heroes in the form of The Ultimates, a 2002 series by the British team of writer Mark Millar and artist Bryan Hitch. The Ultimates ,however, was satire. Millar was an unreformed lefty of the old school – someone who has boasted of voting Brexit for left-wing reasons, someone who once appeared on Russia Today as a guest of George Galloway. The Ultimates took swings at the gung ho jingoism of post 9/11 America. Captain America's “Surrender!!?? You think this letter on my head stands for France?“ is not supposed to be a badass one-liner, but rather a parody of the kind of things US media outlets were saying as Jacques Chirac proved less keen than Tony Blair to follow George Bush in bringing gunboat diplomacy to the Middle East. As Millar commentated at the time:
“The Ultimates is completely different because it's a character-driven piece and (something only a few people have noticed) my attempt as a left-wing writer to tell stories about an essentially right-wing concept and cast. It's very much the Anti-Authority, if you will. Captain America and so on are fully-paid members of the US military machine and this means a very different book and approach from a gang of slightly arrogrant, left-wing, superhuman utopians like The Authority ".
Wildstorm Comics' The Authority, which both Millar and Hitch worked on (although not together), was a precursor to Ultimates, featuring a team of similarly “any means necessary” heroes, albeit with a left-wing bent. The Ultimates does have something of The Authority’s utopian streak; Nick Fury and Tony Stark genuinely want to make the world a better place for everyone. It’s very idealistic – what if the head of the military and the biggest tech billionaire actually had the people’s best interests at heart? – and arguably closer to true superhero ethos (basically “with great power there must also come great responsibility “) than those characters more pragmatic MCU equivalents.
Yet, as Millar's one time writing partner Grant Morrison (who actually ghost-wrote at least one issue of The Authority under Miller’s name) observed in Morrison’s major nonfiction work, Supergods, the likes of The Authority, The Ultimates and, by extension, the MCU represent a “capitulation” to the view “that it was really only force and violence that got things done and not patient diplomacy, and that only soldiers and very rich people had the world figured out”. If the MCU is realistic, then it’s a sad indictment of the real world where the heroes are the ones with the best tech, the best guns and no compunction about using them.
Regardless of intent, The Ultimates left a door at Marvel’s “House of Ideas” just enough ajar to allow a malign notion to creep in: “These soldier superheroes are pretty cool. What If they were like that all the time? Wouldn’t they be more popular then”?
Certainly the navy SEAL aesthetic Bryan Hitch brought to the costumes (replacing the colourful tights and capes with pouches, straps and body armour) was soon adopted by superhero tv and film productions even pre-MCU. In fact, Hawkeye's journey from carny to commando mirrors the changes in superhero attire. Most famously, Superman's appearance with the red “overpants” derives from that of circus strongmen, but seeing any photography of early to mid 20th century carnival and circus performers makes it clear the early superhero creators had them in mind when they first put pencil to paper.
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In an interview (found in Marvel Spotlight: Captain America, published in 2009) Hitch related how he showed an initial Ultimates drawing of Captain America with a machine gun to Grant Morrison, which Morrison then “described as the most obscene Captain America image [they’d] ever seen”. (NB: Morrison has since adopted gender neutral pronouns). Perhaps Morrison said this with glee, in on the joke with their friends, but in the years since, Cap with a gun became a common sight, even in family-friendly movies (where it was divorced from the irony of The Ultimates).
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By a 2015 interview, Morrison lamented the fact that “the Avengers work for the government, and it's been like that since Mark [Millar] did The Ultimates” and said they were “bored with the idea that the best superheroes can represent is some aggressive version of the military. [...] They're supposed to be champions of the oppressed, they help ordinary people, they make things better for people. They don't prop up our grotesque, doddering culture of war and aggression”.
That same year Morrison introduced a new comic book superteam in the pages of The Multiversity. Pointedly the text likens this group, named “Justice Incarnate”, to a “cosmic neighbourhood watch” rather than any formal military or law-enforcement institution.
Millar himself reunited with his Authority collaborator Frank Quitely to create the comic Jupiter’s Legacy, which comes across in part as an apology for The Ultimates and all it begat. It concludes with the protagonists, Chloe Sampson and Eddie "Hutch" Hutchence taking up superhero mantles and promising not to make the moral compromises of their predecessors:
“No more bowing to authority and insitutions. No more deference to people in power”.
“There's a dignity in public service we mistook for old-fashioned, and a humility in having a secret identity, living among the people we protect.“
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The Avengers, Marvel’s breakthrough billion dollar box office 2012 movie, by contrast, concludes with Iron Man dropping a nuclear bomb on the “Chitari”, an invading alien army and it seems likely this influenced Morrison’s comments on modern superhero stories.
In Supergods, Morrison
describes their childhood dread of nuclear weapons. The child of “ban the bomb” activists, the “gruesome hand-drawn images of how the world might look after a spirited thermonuclear missile exchange” which illustrated their parents anti-nuclear literature struck terror into the young Morrison. Therefore they seized upon superheroes as being an idea powerful enough to counteract – and overcome – the idea of the bomb.
“It’s not that I needed Superman to be “real,” I just needed him to be more real than the Idea of the Bomb that ravaged my dreams”.
Within the narrative of the movie, Iron Man takes the only option available to him to save New York. Destroying thousands of alien lives to save thousands of human ones. But The Avengers isn’t a documentary; the scriptwriters could have written a satisfying denouement which didn’t involve mass murder. They could at least have included some words of regret by the heroes over what it took to win, acknowledging that killing is not the ideal solution. Instead the Avengers trade banter and eat shawarma, collective conscious clear.
There is a moment in another Grant Morrison work, Final Crisis, which always brings the MCU to mind. In Final Crisis #3, drawn by JG Jones, (published in 2008, the same year the MCU began) “evil gods” from a higher plain of existence have been reincarnated on Earth. In order for the Justice League to counter this threat, a “draft for Superheroes” is implemented. Green Arrow (a Batman-a-like character who was subsequently reinvented to embody the countercultural sentiment of the late 1960s and has since served as the social conscious of the superhero set) responds to receiving his draft notice thusly:
“If anybody falls for this authoritarian, militaristic crap, it’ll prove I’m absolutely right about absolutely everything!... “
Cue the next page, where the drafted heroes have gathered en mass (including Green Arrow, impotently shaking his fist.)
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Such an assemblage of characters in usually a triumphant moment in a summer "event" story, but here is framed as a sign that evil already has it’s hooks into reality. This world has fallen to the darkness and the superheroes who inhabit it are too morally compromised to realise it.
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andreablythe · 5 months
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Happy Halloween! In honor of the holiday, I'm happy to share my new long-form essay — "The Never-Ending Tedium of Survival: The Final Girls Who Struggle to Stay Alive Again and Again and Again" — up today at Interstellar Flight!
From the opening paragraphs: Horror movie franchises are often recognized by their iconic villains — Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Ghostface, Pinhead, and many other often-masked and often-men baddies who are easily recognizable as a Halloween costume. However, they are not always the core of the series; more often, the heart and soul of a horror franchise is its survivor — the Final Girl (or Guy), who finds herself hunted all over again in the next film, who must learn to survive and survive again as she continuously stares down the ever-looming presence of the monster in the dark.
Bearing the wounds and scars granted by their roles as would-be-victims turned fighters, these Final Girls find themselves perpetually trapped in a limbo of trauma, dragging themselves through the mud and blood in the hopes of coming through the other side alive. This article will present an overview of a number of survivors, who have each appeared in at least three films within their franchise — and who each have their own journeys of coming to terms with their dark worlds.
Read the essay here: https://magazine.interstellarflightpress.com/the-never-ending-tedium-of-survival-4c5ab54a0635
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comicbookddr · 1 year
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After 5 months and a lot of writing, it's finally out. You can now check out the most definitive MBAV video on all of YouTube (according to me).
I tried my best, thank for watching!
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Hah! I just found this transcript from the archives. This was all declassified for the extranormal community in the 90s after some Radiant Heart deacons showed up on a wizard talk show before we could stop it.
The following document was assembled from an audio recording and agent recollections during an operation that took place January 2nd, 1950, wherein Agents Saxon and De Boer attended a “revival” religious meeting held by Extranormal Beliefs Group “First National Church of the Radiant Heart” in the guise of reporters from the local newspaper. Elizabeth De Boer is an accomplished psychic medium in Office employ, and Saxon is employed as Security.
===============
[The revival meeting takes place in a large tent, such as that used for a circus. A few hundred people or more are assembled inside. Benches are arranged in three “wings” surrounding a central stage. It was noted after the fact that this resembles the “trefoil”.]
[De Boer] Is it on?
[Saxon] Yes, ma’am.
[Background noise and chatter from the assembled congregants.]
[D] What do you think so far, Saxon?
[S] They put me in mind of my cousins.
[D] Why?
[S] I’m from the hills, ma’am. ‘Round Tennessee way. My family’s church are all snake handlers.
[D] And how do you feel about them?
[S] Pity, mostly.
[D] Because they’re religious?
[S] On account of my uncle dying from the snakebite, ma’am.
[D] Mmm.
[S] Speaking of, how’s the Geiger?
[D] We won’t keel over tomorrow, if that’s what you’re asking. 
[S] But it’s still going off, ma’am?
[D] Chambers said the ███████ would protect us.
[S] Not that I distrust Miss Chambers, ma’am, but a man gets a little nervous when he sees a Geiger counter spinning.
[A rising noise from the crowd quiets them. Clapping and singing commence as Pastor Mayweather himself rises onto the stage, waving, smiling, and grabbing an offered microphone.]
[Mayweather] Thank you, Brother Mark. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you know why we’re here tonight. Don’t we?
[The crowd murmurs agreement.]
[M] We are here in communion, ladies and gentlemen, we are here to give HONOR to the one that unites us, gives us life and POWER, and BRINGS us together both here and in the next life, can I get an amen?
[A chorus of ‘amens’ rises from the crowd. Mayweather continues to speak as he paces back and forth across the stage.]
[S] He’s navigating the stage real well. I thought he was supposed to be blind?
[D] They said he doesn’t have eyes. In our line of work, I wouldn’t assume those mean the same thing. Besides, he’s probably faked it.
[M] --and you are HERE, ladies and gentlemen, to witness a miracle. Am I right? I got to speak about something here folks, let me speak before we bring on our new friend. Do you feel it, folks?
[Shouts of agreement.]
[M] Oh I feel it too. That glow, that warmth. Can you feel it, soaking your body, wrapping your very DNA in radiant love, rebuilding you? Of course you can, family. Of course you can. Brother Mark, can you-- yes, thank you Brother Mark. Folks, this is Emily. 
[A young girl is wheeled onto the stage in a wheelchair. She is shy, but looking up at Mayweather with awe.]
[M] Young Emily here had polio. She has been blighted by that dreadful disease and can no longer walk. Isn’t that right? [E] Yes, Pastor.
[M] Emily, are you here to accept the blessing of our saviour, our light, our POWER and warmth, the Split Atom? 
[E] (tearing up) Yes, Pastor.
[Mayweather puts his hand on her forehead and leans down toward her.]
[M] Sister Emily, will you place your faith in the Glow, the holy radiation, and be PURIFIED by ions, down to the subatomic level, Miss Emily--
[E] Yes, Pastor!
[The lights in the tent flicker and a low hum fills the area. The counter on the silent Geiger counter in De Boer’s longcoat rises.]
[S] What’s he doing….
[M] Sister Emily, by the POWER and AUTHORITY invested in me, we will REMAKE you. We will split one atom, one holy exercise in unlocking the secrets of the universe and we WILL burn away this damage, we WILL heal your damaged nerves--
[The crowd’s cheering rises to a fever pitch. The lights flicker faster and a green glow emanates from Mayweather’s hand. He continues his invocation, and many in the crowd join him, chanting, cheering, reciting scripture.]
[M] BE HEALED, Sister Emily, be HEALED!
[There is silence, and then a crackling energy. Briefly, green light can be seen behind Mayweather’s sunglasses. As the lights come back up, Mayweather holds out his hand.]
[M] Sister Emily, will you rise in the name of the Glow?
[After some hesitation, Emily pulls herself out of her chair. To her amazement, she can stand shakily on her feet. The crowd erupts in cheers and praises.]
[S] Wow. That’s--
[D] Chicanery. Hogwash. 
[S] The girl seemed--
[D] A plant. An actor. Flicker the lights, flash a green flashlight onto the speaker. It’s a show to sell their radiation quackery.
[Mayweather dabs his forehead with a handkerchief as Emily is led off the stage.]
[M] Isn’t that a miracle, ladies and gentlemen. Isn’t that wonderful. We know where our power comes from, don’t we? From the Radiance, from the Great Ionization. Folks, we have another thing to show. Brother Gregory, fetch the- thank you, Brother Gregory.
[A deacon brings a Geiger counter and sets it on the stage on a table. Mayweather stands behind the table, his hand over the counter.]
[M] Ladies and gentlemen….ladies and gentlemen, we are GATHERED here tonight in the name of the Split Atom, I said in the NAME of the SPLIT ATOM to call up the spirit of Sister Josie, isn't that right? Yes family, Sister Josie passed on into the Glow two months ago but her holy atomic soul has lingered to GUIDE us into the holy Glow ourselves. 
[He raises his hand, palm outward, and the crowd goes silent. Saxon notes that De Boer leans forward to watch.]
[M] Sister Josie….are you here? Are you here with us?
[The Geiger counter is silent for a moment, then crackles to life. De Boer clutches her forehead.]
[S] Ma’am? Do we--are you okay?
[D] Yes, yes, just. Keep the recording going, Saxon.
[M] Sister Josie, is that you? Two clicks for yes, one for no.
[The Geiger squeals twice, and Mayweather smiles. The crowd gasps and murmurs.]
[M] Ain’t that something, folks? Ain’t that something? Sister Josie, can you bless us tonight? Bless us with your Radiance? 
[The counter goes haywire, squealing and clicking loudly. De Boer leans on one of the bleachers for support, gritting her teeth.]
[M] Can you feel her, folks? Can you FEEL her ionized spirit coursing through each and every one of us gathered here?
[D] We need to go. I need to leave.
[S] Yes, uh. Alright, ma’am, let’s--
[The sound of the crowd dies down as they leave the tent.]
[S] ….what, uh. Did you hear something?
[D] Yes, I….hold on.
[De Boer takes a moment to compose herself.]
[D] Screaming. 
[S] What?
[D] It was just screaming. Just….screaming. Turn the recording off. We need to get the ERTF involved.
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meerawrites · 4 months
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Censorship: Philosophical Thought and Modern Examples
"If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our infallibility." John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, Page 50).
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jpitha · 1 year
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On What the Heck It Is I Am Doing
Hello readers!
Firstly: Let me say how happy I am at every note I get. With every Comment, Reblog, Tag or even Heart, I am thankful and feel very privileged that you like my stuff.
Secondly: my real love is long-form fiction. The multi-part pieces that may even lead to a book or something somewhere down the line. Those are what I like writing the best. They give me the most freedom to explore my world, to show how they link together, to tell more complicated stories than "so-and-so go somewhere with such-and-such and a funny thing happens, aren't humans wacky?"
Thus, you'll probably see that my one-shots and short pieces get fewer and fewer. Any time I have an idea for one, I'll put one out (I promise) but I will probably spend the majority of my effort working on long form stuff.
I get that long, multi-part fiction doesn't lend itself to a reblog (who wants to come across a fic reblogged in the middle) but, I would like to reach as many folks who like my flavor of science fiction as possible, so if you want, please feel free to reblog the first part of one of my pieces, or reblog as I post.
Don't feel obligated though! I'd write this even if nobody was reading it. Every eyeball is a gift!
Comments are nice too :D
jpitha
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mamoonde · 1 year
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continuation of part 1
Wei Ying doesn't get the green light from Wen Qing. He doesn't get the chance to. 
Even with the cursed item of dubious origins -- er, well, more dubious than usual -- stored under Wei Ying's best containment talismans and protective arrays, he can feel dark tendrils of resentment energy leaking, hissing in his ears.
He ends up closing the shop early, hours before sunset. He puts up more heavy duty protective talismans (albeit self-made, not that they've failed him before) around the shop's walls, doors and windows. Just in time too, because the sealing pouch he’d stored the box in looks decidedly faded. He’ll have to make a new one after this.
The puzzle box is fairly simple to solve. A twist of the odd knob, a camouflaged panel that slides into an invisible latch, and a couple other easy tricks before the top unlocks with a loud clack.
Oddly enough, nothing happens either other than pin drop silence.
Well, that's not creepy at all. Wei Ying thinks.
Wei Ying barely has time to brace himself before darkness engulfs the shop.
"Fuck!"
Having encountered more than his fair share of cursed objects, things filled with resentment, Wei Ying knows what to expect. The ice needles digging in his veins; the heaviness driving his heart to the pit of his stomach; despair that's his and isn't seeping into his bones. He's used to hearing the voices of corrupted souls attached, echoes of the strangers passed, wailing in his head. Those are pretty much par for the course.
What he isn't prepared for is the sheer magnitude of resentment that buffets him. Nor is he prepared for the strange, bone-chilling feeling of familiarity he gets from it. 
Welcome back, master.
A thousand voices hiss and croon and purr and growl in unison, and it's creepy as fuck. 
“What the fuck are you?”
Do you want revenge once more?
“What? No! What are you talking about?”
You’re so weak now, don’t you want power? We can make you powerful once more—
Wei—
Untouchable
—Make everyone fear you—
Wu—
Invincible
—Obey you—
Xian—
Kill everyone who did this to yo—
“Shut up!” Wei Ying shouts through the din.
Immediately, the shop flickers back into view, a ringing silence filling the space. Wei Ying’s head pounds; his nose and cheek feel wet. When he rubs at it, the back of his hand comes away with dark blood stains. Belatedly, he realizes he’s on the floor, the puzzle box open in his bare hands. When had he taken off his gloves…?
Inside, sits an iron tiger amulet, barely the size of his fist, nestled in faded silk. 
Innocuous enough, except, it looks like a replica of the Yin Tiger Seal. It's worn and frankly crudely hewn, clearly not the work of a master toolmaker. For the purported source of evil and chaos that once had the cultivation world in near shambles, it sure doesn't look it.
But given what just happened, Wei Ying doesn't think it's just a mere replica.
In fact, this might really just be the real deal.
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candi-gram · 2 years
Text
Question for the group...
This past weekend @a-cherry-blossoming and I got to thoroughly test out our (my) absolute favoritist new toy, a pocket-sized, but fully capable, cattle prod, we've (I've) affectionately nicknamed, "the Boom Stick."
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We both agreed it - and its 4,000+ volts of wicked fun - was shockingly successful at helping even the dumbest cunt learn. Learn what? So, so many critical and educational things. You might even say it was an electrifying experience to find an implement that could frighten and humble even the most enthusiastic pain slut. Something that could reliably and consistently spark sweet tears, beautiful screams, desperate begging, and pitiful whimpering from even the most stoic toy. A convincing tool to help remind a forgetful girl that her pride and dignity isn't nearly as important as she thought it was. Certainly nowhere near as important as her obedience and usefulness was. After all, who doesn't need a little extra encouragement and motivation occasionally to become the best they can be? See linked post below for reference.
The evidence and results from our extensive research clearly showed that our (my) favorite application of the Boom Stick was to help demonstrate to Cherry how foolish it is to be a selfish bitch who's concerned about her own pleasure or comfort in any way. You see, Cherry has this annoying habit of whining and begging her Sir to please play with and fuck her useless cunt, since her Sir's preference is to just ignore that needy, dripping, gooey and sloppy mess and instead only fuck her much more useful, tighter, and fun asshole instead. Especially once it's already sore after the first few times.
The Boom Stick however, actually made fucking Cherry's cunt almost worthwhile. Almost. We (I) created this fun game where Cherry got her slosh pit pussy fucked all weekend, face to face for the first time ever instead of from behind like the eager, needy slut she is. She even got to use her vibrator and hitachi on her sore, raw, overworked clit over and over and over again while her sloppy, gushing pussy got used for a change. Because her Sir is such a nice and thoughtful dominant, he even "let her" ask to cum when she was close. But, even though her Sir gave her permission, Cherry refused to orgasm. Cherry thought it might have been because the Boom Stick was repeatedly, mercilessly used on her breast, thighs, feet, ass, or cunt every time she got remotely close to orgasm and asked permission to cum, ruining it every time, and making her start the process and rub all over again from scratch. I thought it was because she could feel how hard I got from her pain and see in my face how excited and pleased her suffering made me, and Cherry just wanted her Sir to enjoy it more. In fact, her usually ignored pussy got so much attention Cherry would beg and plead to please just fuck her ass instead, even though she knew how much it would hurt, and to never touch her useless cunt again. I think it's because she learned her lesson that her pleasure is meaningless and that all that matters is what makes her Sir happy. Cherry thought it was because she just wanted a break from the torture, no matter how brief. I guess we'll never know who was right 🤷‍♂️
What made this especially fun was making Cherry rub and edge herself painfully raw, and beg to cum, while deliberately ruining orgasm after orgasm right before she could have it by viciously and brutally zapping her with the cattle prod again and again and again while taunting her that, "this is the only way I am ever going to fuck Cherry's cunt ever again." Threatening and teasing Cherry that I bet with enough consistency, repetition, and training from this that I could condition the desire to want to cum from vaginal sex, or really to ever even have Cherry's pussy fucked, right out of her. That once we spend enough focused time correlating terrible, excruciating pain and endless frustrated, ruined orgasms to getting her pussy used, that eventually a pavlovian connection will be hardwired in Cherry's dumb cunt brain permanently. That if I use the cattle prod on Cherry every time I even remotely play with cherry's lesser hole that eventually Cherry will develop an aversion to having that useless slop pit touched. In order to avoid all that pain and panicked terror that comes from the cattle prod, that eventually Cherry will just turn herself into an obedient little anal-only slut. Never, ever, ever wanting anyone to ever touch her stupid, greedy and selfish pussy ever again. That the juice just wouldn't be worth the squeeze. This idea was mentioned often enough throughout the weekend and the learning process that we definitely know for a fact that while Cherry absolutely hates the idea and is scared of what it might mean to be permanently ruined, broken, and conditioned in that manner, that Cherry's cunt absolutely, positively, without a doubt LOVES the idea (💦💦💦😳)... and we know between her brain and her cunt, what makes her decisions, don't we?
So, here's the question for everyone...
Should we continue to use the Boom Stick on Cherry every single time the fuck-toy gets her selfish, hungry slop hole played with? Should we make her suffer awful, unbearable agony any time it's used until any last remnant of interest in having Cherry's cunt even touched is zapped and conditioned out of her for good? Should we forever connect the fear and lesson of the cattle prod to her identity so that it's impossible for Cherry to ever cum from having her pussy used ever again? So that for the rest of her life Cherry is conditioned and trained to be an eager, enthusiastic anal-only fuck-toy because her pussy gives her no pleasure anymore (not that anyone gives a damn about her pleasure anyway, but still)? That thinking of her pussy only brings to mind memories of suffering and torment.
I vote a resounding, "YES!" And naturally, Cherry gets no vote at all, because her opinion doesn't matter.
So, Tumblr, what do you say? Inquiring minds want to know. Please feel free to reblog and/or comment so we can get the most votes and feedback as possible. Cherry is a lucky girl who gets to have an entire week of quality, alone time with her Sir very shortly, and I know she (and everyone else) is anxious to know what the group decides she has to look forward to 😈⚡💥
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alexbraindump · 7 months
Text
501-B - Chapter 1: Descent
“With the introduction of the brand-new line of Fysi-Apomi hyper-resilient plant life, even those of you out in the most remote corners of the galaxy may create your own little garden! Stuffed with all the nutrients one could need and capable of producing up to quadruple the fresh oxygen of regular plants, our new line of greenery can help improve your life on any industrialized planet.”
A holo-television. A simple piece of technology, light suspended in the air between two strips of projectors. Colors of such depth and motion of such smoothness to suggest reality unfolding right there before oneself. Upon this particular holo-TV, the visage of a well-dressed human woman in a lush greenhouse. Flowing blonde hair and a silky suit to build the impression of one to be trusted.
“As you can see here-” She took hold of a pot. From it grew a little berry bush. “Our wonderful plantlife is capable of sprouting all the food one could need!”
The view panned outwards into a wide shot of the greenhouse. There were trees bearing fruit and bushes bearing berries and sprouts from the ground bearing vegetables. The woman walked backwards to follow the camera panning.
“With Fysi-Apomi, you can-”
Ring-ring. There was a shrill sound across the room. A remote was picked up and pointed at the holo-TV. With a press of the power button, its display dissipated into thin air. A few floating particles of light lingered for seconds. Ring-ring. The remote was tossed down onto a coffee table dotted with empty soda cans, cups of microwave noodles and the disassembled mess of a gadget or two. From the couch arose a bipedal vulpine. He pulled a hood over his face, obscuring all but the end of his snout. Ring-ring.
Dusty boots clacked against metallic flooring as he made his way across the room. It was enclosed, made of metal all around. Piping and exposed wiring ran in bundles along the ceiling and walls. Opposing ends of the room terminated in doors, one of regular size and one of a cargo bay.
Ring-ring. The fox stood before the source of the ringing. A phone mounted to the wall. On its ID screen were the words “CALL FROM: MR. B.” He pulled the phone from its terminal and held it to his ear.
“Where in the name of the gods are you, Cade?!” squawked a shrill voice. “My contact is waiting for you!”
“None’a your business, man,” Cade bit back. “You’ll get everything you need, don’t you worry.”
“Scrapbots could be encroaching upon that ship as we speak-”
“Off my back, B, goddamn. I’m just about there.”
“Define ‘just about.’”
“Close enough that I’ve gotta hang up and get ready for entry now now. Byeeee!”
“We need that part, Cade! Don’t let this end up like-”
Cade slotted the phone back into its terminal. It was followed right up by another call from Mr. B. He removed the phone, slammed it back into place and then shut the terminal off completely. Both the terminal and holo-TV having gone blank, the only sound to accompany the room was a slight, electronic droning. Cade strode off back towards his TV.
Between the TV and the wall was an empty space. Just about enough to house a person. Cade stepped into it. He pulled up his sleeve, revealing a watch underneath. Upon lifting it towards the wall, a small chime of approval sounded off. The wall creaked for a moment, hissed out a puff of air and then slid open. Its movement was staggered and jittery, but upon completion a roomy compartment was revealed within.
Green. Lots of green. Plants lined the back of the compartment, blossoming vines spread up the walls and around the corners. There was a row of synthetic sunlight strips above them, flanked on either side by watering pipes. Droplets of water dripped from the nozzles. Cade reached in and began shuffling around the plants. His clawed paws tended to the plants with gentle grace. Branches were nudged back into place, dying leaves were snipped off.
On the compartment’s floor sat multiple leather pads. They were a dark shade of brown that mirrored Cade’s own fur. Next to them laid a handgun - contained in a leather holster. Five spare magazines were scattered around it. And off in the corner was a backpack propped up against the wall. Cade took a hold of it and set it down on the floor outside before continuing on tending to his garden.
Centralized amidst all the plants was a single flower, sat in a pot of its very own. Its pedals burned a bright red, a standout look amongst the green surrounding it. Cade investigated it with movements gentle enough not to wake a sleeping mouse. He pushed it around with as much ease as his paws could muster until finding a single wilting leaf on its stem. With a grumble, he snipped the leaf off. It fluttered down into a pile of dead plant matter gathering on the compartment’s floor.
Cade swiped a few bits of debris off the leather padding. A sigh escaped his lips as he took hold of the largest piece. It was a set of straps, ones that he fastened over his torso. They made up a belt around his waist and a slash that crossed his body diagonally. Another piece - surface marked with a burn - affixed onto the strap over his left shoulder. Cade stretched and flexed his body around, allowing the upper armor to slide into place.
The handgun and its holster clipped right onto Cade’s belt. Pockets stitched on the opposite end served as perfect housing for the magazines. And with that, Cade removed the last leather plate and hit a button on the compartment’s wall. Its door came hissing shut as it returned to an airtight seal with a satisfying little click, all the while Cade began on his way across the room.
The smaller of the doors opened as Cade approached it. Beyond it was a small cockpit. A whole array of windows lined the walls. Through them a planet could be seen straight ahead. Trailing wisps and puffy blots of gray filled the atmosphere and shadowed out the surface. A central chair swiveled itself around just as the door had finished opening.
Cade tossed himself into it, setting the chair off to turn back around and present its pilot with the ship’s controls. Display panels ignited with green light in response to the fox’s presence. Each screen was pure black with nothing but green text displayed on them. A central terminal beckoned Cade to begin inputting commands, but the fox instead opted to lift his right leg and rest it on the dashboard. The final leather pad fit snugly around his thigh. He gave it a little pat, lowered his leg and sat back up.
A keyboard was situated below the central terminal. Cade reached around the ship’s control stick and typed a command. A list appeared, a long one. Each entry was a string of random letters and numbers. Cade deliberated over the long list until settling upon one of the latter choices with a click of the enter key. 076-RDMPTN24.
The control stick’s position allowed Cade’s paws to slide right off the keyboard and take hold of it. Its ergonomic design slipped into one of his paws with ease. He flicked a switch on the base of it and then began tilting it forward. One of his feet applied light pressure to the rightmost of two pedals beneath the dashboard. His free paw reached off to the side of the cabin and flicked a handful of switches. The ship angled forward, ramping up the speed of its descent.
A small crackling sounded off beside Cade, prompting an ear to perk up and nearly push his hood off. He took his paw to a dial above him and began to twist it ever so slightly. The crackling came in and out, pulsing between loud and quiet. His movements became finer and finer until the sound had plateaued out into a consistent buzz. A voice was peeking through the haze, small glimpses given of something resembling words. Syllables struggling to coagulate into complete statements.
“W..elcome to…” A robotic twang drenched the voice. “BZZT… an industrial outpost… Now welcoming trad- BZZZZT… Quality index of- BZZT… Safety equipment… nearest arrival station- bzt…”
Silence. The signal died off with one last whimper of a beep. Cade attempted to twist the dial further, but got nothing but varying degrees of static in response. A small beep here and there maybe, but nothing of substance. A lost cause, he reasoned to himself as he gave his attention back to that which awaited outside the window.
Speed was building from Cade’s planetary approach. The white-speckled blackness of space vanished from the corners of his view, replaced by writhing clouds of gray. They only seemed to darken as his approach pressed on. Cade gave a check to the gauge cluster. Dials were increasing across the board, all except for planetary surface distance.
BOOM! 
A crack of lightning caused Cade to jump in his seat. Storms announced their presence with great booms and thuds. Cade tightened his grip on the steering stick and allowed himself a deep breath. As if in response, turbulence jutted itself into the equation. Cade reached for his central dashboard and turned up a slider that was jury rigged into the wall and labeled “compartment stabilizer.” with a piece of tape. The ship was putting up its best attempt to level out, though even its best could generously be described as rocky.
Rain began speckling the glass. Cade flipped a lever and a pair of wipers began swiping in vertical motions. Almost like it was fighting back, the rain grew stronger. It grew stronger to the point that the default wiper speed failed to keep up. Cade clicked the speed up a notch. Not enough. Two notches, getting there. Three notches - as high as it would go - and they were hardly keeping the windows clear, though they offered just enough downtime to see through. Not that there was much to see beyond the whirling gray abyss of storm clouds.
Cade reached across his seat, grabbed the seat belt, and clicked it into place. His ship rattled and creaked, its computer systems beeping and crying in distress. The control stick was jolting around, necessitating Cade wrap his other paw around it. Yet even the strength of both his arms wasn’t enough to keep the ship under control. A particularly close arc of lightning sent his ship careening to the side. Cade yelped, the seatbelt barely managing to keep the fox from being flung across the cockpit. It was more than enough to break his grip on the control stick, though.
The ship was sent into a spiral. Even a hearty set of internal gravity generators couldn’t save Cade from growing dizzy. He struggled to reach out with his body being wretched in circles over and over. His eyes put up a fight to stay open, the contents of his skull feeling more akin to a stew than a solid brain. And - as if matters couldn’t get any worse - the clouds began to thin…
Cade’s mind struggled to register the fact that he had broken the cloud layer. A spinning mass of gray had been replaced with a spinning mass of green. His head was caving in, a pounding headache giving way to his eyes shutting. One last desperate bid to grab the stick, one last strained reach of an arm, one last chance…
Synthetic leather, in his paw. A rejuvenating burst of energy pulsed through the fox. Through a scrambled mind he managed to wrangle the stick back into some semblance of control. Enough to thrust his other paw onto it. What little strength he had left was invested right into yanking the stick into place, opposing the terminal roll his ship had been sent into.
Spinning colors of the planet’s surface slowed. Hazy green and obscured blots of dark brown. Cade yanked harder, hard enough to have instilled fear of breaking the steering system in any other situation. The death spin began to slow. Cade’s eyes managed to pry themselves open and the pure adrenaline pumping through his veins gave him the final sliver of energy required to bring the ship out of its spin. Relief poured into Cade’s clouded mind.
And relief was blown away nigh instantaneously. Saving himself from the spin hadn’t changed a thing about the fact that Cade was hurtling towards the surface at a speed so high that the dials of his gauge cluster went beyond their highest numbers. The surface was close. Too close, so much closer than it should’ve been. With the same hold that managed to save himself from the spin, Cade tugged the stick back towards him hard enough to slam it into his chest.
There was a near-deafening screech. Both the ship’s engines and frame screamed in protest to the sudden motion. Cade clenched his sharp teeth. A metallic tearing sounded off somewhere from the rear of his ship. His foot came slamming down onto a pedal and he yelled at the top of his lungs.
Mere moments to spare, the ship managed to straighten itself out. The whole thing rattled as its bottom side clipped a rusty smokestack. Cade almost fell out of his seat again. Industrial structures flew by in a blur around him. Whatever was left of the ship’s momentum had been sent to hurtling it forward instead. It grazed between smokestacks and long catwalks, missing some by mere inches.
Adrenaline flowing like water through his veins, Cade’s sweat-laden hands struggled to keep hold as he weaved between metal structures. With his attention darting from side to side, he hardly managed to notice the wall of piping he was hurtling towards. But when he did, he screamed out a curse and instead directed his arms to pulling back up once more.
A metal plate flung off the ship and slammed into the wall of pipes as Cade managed to pull the ship up into clear sky. Or, as Cade would come to realize as he collapsed back in his seat, an especially cloudy sky.
Stretching for miles in front of him was a vast expanse of metal and haze. The air was thick, tainted sickly green. Rain poured down and ran through the fog as if carrying it down to the surface - where it coagulated into a thicker mist. Old factories expanded into a horizon rendered near by fog, a complex dwarfing all else in scale. Cade’s weary eyes danced across it all. Not a single smokestack seemed to be in operation - some had even broken and collapsed. Everything was packed so dense as to disallow any comfortable ship landings.
Ring-ring. A screen off to the side lit up. CALL FROM: MR. B. Cade groaned and hit the accept call button.
“Our contact saw that pathetic entry of yours, Cade. You’re making an awful first impression.”
“As if they could’ve done any better,” Cade grumbled. 
“You’ll be meeting them at clearing J-11,” Mr. B chugged on without skipping a beat. “It’s taken you long enough to arrive already. Get there quick, lest you taint the reputation of this organization even further. And clean yourself up, you look and sound like a mess.”
“Because our reputation is spotless as is.”
“Maybe it would be without inconsiderate units such as you.”
“Ouch, that burns,” Cade sneered. “Get your ass out here and enter an unregulated atmosphere through a pollution storm. Shouldn’t be a problem for a bird brain like you, yeah?”
“My job here-”
“Is to get me my money after I get this done for you.”
The hang up button received a hearty press. Bzt. Cade glanced around the area. From the edge of the fog, an abrupt cutoff in all the industry revealed itself. A big red sign jutted out from it, J-11. He directed his ship towards it.
It expanded down several stories. Down and down it went until terminating in a lengthy parking lot. Almost all of its spots went unfilled, minus the select few which held the corpses of long abandoned cars at rest. Coffins lined with faded white paint.
In the furthest corner stood out one vehicle in particular. A ship in pristine condition. Comparatively pristine, at the very least. Its design was sharp and bulky. A fighter. Wing-mounted cannons larger than a person and paint bearing its fair share of scorches and chips. There was a figure standing outside of it, doing some kind of work made unrecognizable by distance.
Cade reached to the side of his cockpit and flipped a lever down. With some loud cracks of opposition, the ship’s engines rotated to face upwards. “Hover mode engaged, landing gear deployed” was printed on the center console. A press of the left pedal ensued and the ship began to lower as Cade maneuvered it to hover a few spaces away from the fighter. He depressed the pedal with as much ease as he could, but then the ship’s engines sputtered a few feet from the ground.
The ship jolted and hit the ground. One of the legs of its landing gear failed to deploy. Cade grunted and stumbled out of the cockpit, his legs taking their precious time growing steady once more. He ran a double check over himself as he entered the main room. Gun, check. Ammo, check. Armor, check. Bag… Unchecked. Cade took a small detour across the living room, over to the holo-TV. His backpack wasn’t in the space he left it, instead having been tossed into the nearest corner.
He stepped over and kneeled in front of it. Inside was an array of little devices, gadgets and rations that he shuffled through. Though their arrangement had been scattered, none of them had broken. Cade breathed a sigh of relief, shut the bag and slung it over his back. But as he stood, a sudden flash of panic lit upon his face. He turned to the wall compartment and its door, flush with the surface around it. A step was taken towards it when-
Clang-clang!
Knocking on the ship’s cargo bay door. Cade looked back at the compartment only for the knocking to sound off again. Clang-clang-clang! Even harder that time. He bit his lip, cursed under his breath and took off towards the cargo door. An empty noodle cup caught itself under his foot and put him into a stumble, one he only stopped by reaching out and catching himself on the wall. One of his paws had hit a panel next to the cargo door, causing it to begin lowering.
A rush of noxious air came flooding in. Its presence spurred a cough out of the vulpine the instant it came in contact with his windpipe. His lungs were made ten times heavier in the blink of an eye. He fell forward against the wall and propped himself up with an arm. Tears welled up in his eyes. There was a knock on the outside of his door that only barely registered to his ears.
“You’re late.” A gruff voice, clouded behind a digital filter. “Didn’t even listen to the arrival broadcast, did you?”
Cade looked up through tear-filled eyes and bore witness to a tall, human man. Face concealed behind a bulky gas mask and body clad in heavy metal armor, he was near double the size of the small fox. Another gas mask hung from one of the man’s hands. It wasn’t as bulky, seemingly a standard model lacking in any advanced additions.
“Boss didn’t-” Cade tried to speak, but was wracked by another coughing fit. “...Didn’t warn me about this air, fuck!”
“Your eyes should’ve.” The man tossed the mask over to Cade, who fumbled and nearly dropped it. “Call me Steel.”
With shaky hands, Cade shoved the mask over his face. A deep breath through its filters allowed a wave of relief to wash over his lungs. The mask was loose on his face, though a seal around its edges adhered to his fur. Fresh air gave Cade the energy needed to regain his posture and step out from his ship. Rain pelted against the top of his hood as he did so.
“One hell of a name,” the fox said. “Real subtle.”
“Codename, smartass. What’s yours?”
“Cade. Something that sticks to the whole ‘normalcy’ shtick. Not tryin’ too hard to sound all tough-”
“Shut it.”
“Pfft. Struck a nerve there, huh? Noted.”
Steel gave nothing more than a growl before facing himself towards the open space beyond the lot. A train station stood a short distance away. Holes in its walls revealed that a passenger train - though rusted - remained idle within. Perpendicular to the tracks stretched a vast expanse of what used to be roadway, now reduced to mere fractured chunks of color-bleached concrete.
Alongside the road was a whole forest of dead trees, their colors muted to a similar degree. A good lot of them had been felled. Those that remained standing were either stripped bare or covered with dead branches like veins that clawed towards the sky. Deeper and deeper into the fog the road winded, the only sense of termination provided by a large structure obscured in fog. 
“Ship’s out there,” Steel said. “According to my trackers.”
Cade nodded. “And is there any particular reason we had to land all the way out here, or was it just to get your steps in for the day?”
“Locals.”
“People live on this shithole?”
Steel let out a sigh. “The fuck did I just say?”
“It was a rhetorical question. Hell, you really are what it says on the tin.”
“That being..?”
“Dense.”
Though the lenses of his mask were tinted to the point of acting as shiny black walls, Steel’s glare burnt a hole into Cade. The fox opted to laugh it off. Steel, though unamused, directed the fox to follow him. Cade bent over to grab the door of his ship and slid it shut. It hissed as it sealed itself.
The duo set out on their way down the road. Steel drew a weapon from his back, a lever action laser rifle. Cade’s eager eyes affixed right onto it and he fell a pace or two behind. Slick black metal ending in sharp corners, its form invaded with duct tape and bundles of wires. An ejection port and feeding tube were present, though the latter had a charge package taped and welded into it. A rack holding three extra charge packs had been affixed to the side of the weapon.
Cade glanced down at the handgun on his hip and grumbled to himself. Instead of letting his eyes lock onto the other weapon once more, he forced himself to take a gander at the scenery. What little of it there was, at the very least…
Every now and then a road would splinter off and venture off into parts unknown. Or there’d be a road sign, or a billboard. Cade gave the billboards particular attention. Most had been worn by the elements to the point of illegibility. There were a select few that managed to stay just barely on the cusp of being comprehensible, though.
NixCo Cybernetically Enhanced Lungs!
Breathe better, live better with NixCo!
Ask about your local installation clinic today!
Bright colors - though dimmed by the elements - and a peppy cartoon human taking a nice, deep breath of air drawn so fresh Cade could almost feel it in his lungs. The pulsing inhales and exhales of the fox’s gas mask grounded him right back into reality, out of the ad’s own imitation of it. The reality where even reading the ad’s fine print was somewhat difficult from the noxious fog in the air. A shiver tickled his spine…
Miles dragged by. Steps faded into each other and became a blur of forward movement into swirling clouds of death. Steel hadn’t a word to say, and Cade’s head was still throbbing just enough to dismantle the idea of casual conversation. All their ears had was the booming of thunder overhead and the steady drone of rainfall. Their boots splashed in cloudy puddles of water. The monotony of it all kept Cade’s mind just as fogged as the planet he had found himself on.
“Snap out of it,” Steel barked, his voice shattering the glass of Cade’s focus like a hammer. “We’re just about there.”
The fox blinked and shook himself awake again. His paw pads were sore and his mouth yearned for a drink from within the confines of his mask. But one sign of tangible progress crammed itself into the forefront of his mind, pushing all else aside in the process.
Great walls of scrap metal. They were fashioned around something, but were tall enough to obscure vision inside. Light emanated from behind them and peeked through unsealed holes in the aged metal. Dotted along the walls were a handful of watchtowers. Spotlights shone down from them, swaying from side to side in rhythmic fashion. Banners had been hung atop each of the towers. They were tattered near the bottom, colored in a faded purple. Some royal-looking golden star was planted in the middle. There were stitches across each of the stars, the pattern of them uniform across every banner.
Cade stopped in his tracks. Steel kept walking a few paces forward before taking notice - at which point he too stopped. The man gave Cade an annoyed grunt. Cade grunted right back, only in an exaggerated mock fashion.
“Hold your horses, jackass,” Cade said. “How about we don’t walk right up to their front door?”
“Are you tired or something, wanna set up a picnic back here? Make the boss wait even longer for this godforsaken job to get done?” Steel bit back. “Hope you packed some sandwiches then, because I didn’t pack for a pleasant afternoon getaway.”
“No, I wanna make sure we know what we’re getting into before we go storming in.”
Steel huffed, but stayed in place. Cade shook his head and removed his backpack, placing it on the ground in front of him. He rummaged through it for a moment and took a pair of binoculars out. They were a bit awkward to press against his mask and didn’t provide the best view of things, but he made it work just enough to observe the towers ahead.
Within each tower was an armed individual. All of them carried aged bolt-action rifles. Too old to be laser weapons, Cade reasoned. Scrap metal armor adorned their bodies, painted a knightly shade of silver. They weren’t operating the spotlights, those moved on their own. Cade trailed the binoculars downward with the beam of one, down to the base of the walls. The main entrance was hard to miss. A large set of double doors. About as ornate as scrap possibly could be. Guards stood post outside it, armed with… swords?
Cade removed the binoculars from his eyes. “Lots of guards.”
“Lots? Let me be the judge of that.” Steel snatched the binoculars from Cade’s paw and began examining the place. “Hmphf, odd choice of weapons this lot uses.”
“Old ones, doesn’t seem like they get out much.”
Steel held the binoculars down, but didn’t gesture them out towards Cade. The fox took it upon himself to swipe the pair back for himself, tucking them in his bag right away. Steel responded by drawing his rifle and aiming it towards a tower.
“I’ll take out the guys in the towers, you move in and-”
“That’s stupid,” Cade interrupted. “Are you stupid? Shoot one of ‘em and the rest can trail that laser back here and shoot us both, bonehead.”
“Not if we take them out fast enough.”
“Okay, yeah. You’re stupid.” Cade sighed. “How about this; you stay here and cover me. Just - get behind a tree or something. I’ll head in and talk to those guys at the gate, see what’s goin’ on. And then, if they shoot me, you can do all the blasting your little heart desires, yeah?”
Steel groaned. “Gotta make a problem out of everything… Fine. But let it be known I’m not risking myself to save you if you get in over your head, fox.”
“Trust me, big guy,” Cade teased. “I got this~”
[Stay tuned for Chapter 2, hopefully coming within the next few weeks. Feedback is welcome & encouraged, this is my first time ever posting an original story I've written :3]
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dustedmagazine · 7 months
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Tony Buck — Environmental Studies (Room 40)
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Environmental Studies by Tony Buck
Tony Buck’s main gig is as the drummer with Australian improv group The Necks. On Environmental Studies, he presents a two-hour long piece, released via USB due to its duration. In addition to percussion instruments, Buck employs guitar and electronics. From the beginning, Environmental Studies presents all three in dialogue, the guitar playing a riff that could appear on a Tortoise album, while thunderous percussion and howling sustained high notes provide a noisy rejoinder. 
Ideally, such a large piece involves formal organization. Theatrical events routinely run two hours, as do live concerts. These provide the benefit of visual stimuli to maintain an audience’s attention. Two hours of recorded avant improv requires willingness to attend to a complex journey through the purely audible. Happily, Buck provides a sonic adventure full of surprises well worth experiencing. He deftly balances a sense of trajectory with moments of spontaneity. The blending of pitch and noise is a consistent factor. Recurring sonic gestures take on a motivic impact, helping to coalesce an abstract design.
A favored technique on Environmental Studies is collage, with different instruments and electronics darting in and out of the piece. The aforementioned large-scale design isn’t diminished by its digressiveness. Rather, it is stirring to continue to be surprised. Dynamics run the gamut as well, with hushed and emphatic sections providing a further layer of contrast.
Buck is best known as a percussionist, and Environmental Studies includes some extraordinary kit and auxiliary instrument choices and diverting polyrhythms. His guitar-playing and use of electronics are more economical, but impressive in their versatility.
Calling the recording Environmental Studies is an interesting and provocative choice. So often environmental sound pieces are associated with field recordings and natural sounds. Buck has instead created his own sound ecology, an environment that is scaled long enough to be immersive. In a time when focused listening for two hours is the opposite of the default, Environmental Studies asks much and rewards much.
Christian Carey
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thetingus · 11 months
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Streeeeeetch
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anthrakhan · 1 year
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Centralization and the Inverse Empire
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Broadly speaking, an empire is a state that encompasses many disparate groups, with a dominant core (metropole) and subordinate peripheries. Often added is the condition of a hierarchy in which a group, often of the metropole, sit higher than the others.
Usually brought into being through conquest, I think much the same conditions can come into being with inwards expansion, centralization, but without consolidation, of an existing state.
Indonesia I think in many ways is an empire, or at least to some degree, and on the course to an increasing degree, if deliberate action isn't taken.
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What was once a sort of federation, born through shared struggle and a desire to stand on our two feet by getting together, the idea for an Indonesia, was born. Such a concept never truly existed, despite the whole Srivijaya and Majapahit thing (they were both primarily seeking the subordination of the isles beneath them, not the unity of them). The birth of this Identity was strong, and having a neutral, agreed-upon lingua franca played a massive role in this newborn identity of statehood and nationality to survive, and subordinate local, regional, and religious loyalties and identities beneath it.
Over the decades, and with the permanent cementing of this identity, this state has chugged along, but the natural course of development has brought the federation to a pseudo-empire
Jakarta-, and Java have grown to be the metropole, a natural course given geography and population and such and such, but it was left to continue on its course, if not encouraged to.
Indonesian binds the country together, and is a lingua franca and second language to the vast, vast majority of the people. But over in urban centres, especially in Java, generations have been raised only on it, with no local regional mother tongue. Moving into the cities, the various groups intermixing and intermingling, and the influence of globalisation, have slowly brought around a new generation, a new people, who are purely Indonesian with no regional local tribal ethnic identities, heritage, culture, or language. They (me) have a disconnect and a whole different identity than the majority of the populace. Your tribal ethnic affiliation is no more than a little fact and has absolutely no weight and significance, no one cares, in the metropole a new sort of creole exists. Not helped at all with continuing globalisation and the youth having even less heritage ties.
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As the metropole, government and other powers are more centralised to metropole, and around its people. Only compounded by the fact of actual political centralisation.
And slowly there is more discontent growing at the current state of affairs, people feel everything is becoming more and more Java-centric, feel left behind, backwaters to the Java political machine.
The federation of vast groups, has birthed in its core, a new ruling class, and slowly the rest is subordinated. Inwards expansion. Centralisation. Inverse Empire.
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schismusic · 21 days
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Tom Waits and the art of believing
Somewhere in Simon Critchley's book on David Bowie he has an anecdote about Bowie redoing a vocal part a billion times because it's not authentic enough and — hold up, let me get the book:
"If Bowie’s art is inauthentic, if it is F for Fake, as Orson Welles might have put it, then is it also F for Falsehood? I remember reading an interview many years ago with Robert Fripp where he talked about watching Bowie in the studio in the late 1970s. Bowie was listening to a track or a tape loop and was very carefully, repeatedly, quite deliberately, and for the longest time, trying to generate the right emotion in his voice. What could be more contrived and fake than that? Shouldn’t true music come straight out of the heart, up through the vocal cords, and into our waiting, shell-like ears? Yet, as others have observed, Bowie’s genius lies in the meticulous matching of mood with music through the medium of the voice." (Bowie, Simon Critchley, p. 37)
— so yeah, if you've ever listened to so much as a smidge of Tom Waits this should be a pretty obvious connection to make.
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It gets even better when you realize that Waits's inauthenticity is actually kind of the point. It's really hard to pinpoint where Thomas Alan Waits ends and Tom Waits begins, or more accurately the other way around - which makes what Tom Waits says immensely compelling, in that you never know for sure whether it's the cookie-monster-demon-thing talking or the man behind the legend poking his nose into the words. So this necessarily makes for a number of different possible listening experiences. This one time I was playing D&D with my old party and as we were playing my DM needed to introduce the Skaven — it was a Warhammer 40K type thing, I have never played any Warhammer 40K, whatever, that's besides the point — and he was like "all of a sudden, from the underground, you hear that song from Robots" and everybody was like "ooh yeah I know that!" and I was like "holy shit you mean Tom Waits?".
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This kind of threw many of the people around the table for a loop and the night ended with me lending my Bone Machine CD to the home owner. He promptly returned it a while later and I suspect he didn't get to the end of it. More Tom Waits for me I suppose. When I first got that exact copy of Bone Machine (spoken like someone who has more than one copy of Bone Machine, whereas this is very much not the case, it's still the same one, bought used in January 2020: I was dating a girl and it lasted for like thirty seconds flat but luckily our relations are still very much positive, we got to base one and then dipped, then we lost track and exchanged like holiday wishes or birthday wishes if we got lucky, then all of a sudden I meet her again downtown last November — what happened is she apparently takes dance classes in town and has to spend like two hours on the train everyday just to train, pun not necessarily unintended but also definitely not intended entirely — and we have this wonderful little chat and then we're both like "actually let's stay in touch I'd love to get coffee at one point" and then sometimes we have short conversations and honestly I might just actually ask her for this coffee thing, have a more relaxed conversation and all, she's a nice person you know, she has her own way of dealing with the cards she gets dealt, a slanted skewered sense of irony about herself and everyone else that's very Southern-Italy-expat-into-the-North most likely mutuated from her parents and perhaps even derived from a sense of inadequacy of sorts, there's a lot to unpack I think, meanwhile I at the time — January 2020, that is — was still trying to process the previous relationship, which I might or might not have mentioned in the Godflesh piece, which actually might have become the veritable centerpiece of most of the stuff I write on here, and damn this sentence is really long, you guys are enjoying the ride I hope, I mean you must, after all this is the name of the game on here, don't I usually just run around in circles until all of a sudden you look the other way or roll your eyes in immense frustration and/or inveterate anger and while you're not looking I get to the point and the story ends?), it was January 2020 and I was on lunch break from studying. I was getting ready for a Linear Algebra exam. Linear Algebra is pretty cool but it doesn't leave much room for emotion, necessarily — it has its reasons of which the heart knows nothing. So here I was, this girl I was dating on her first relationship, me with one relationship too many, as young as I was. And at one point it entered my mind that maybe, just maybe, to stop being a crybaby I probably just needed to get into different music. Potentially music that had mystified me in the past. And nothing had mystified me like this one 128kbps CD dump of Tom Waits's Rain Dogs had, uploaded on a USB drive for me by a friend's father. So obviously I picked up Bone Machine. And I pop it in the stereo that night and this shit hits me right on the temple.
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Imagine my shock when I realize that all of a sudden you don't need to be Godspeed You! Black Emperor to sound like the end of the world. Even crazier to me that the apocalypse could sound so flawlessly and tastefully arranged and yet so tangible and even brutal, and that there was basically no divide between the two. Which obviously prompted me to ask "how does this even work?" and to keep listening. So maybe all I needed to do was approach this with a musician's mentality, which is what I still do and it genuinely helps me a lot when talking Tom Waits. At the same time I wouldn't argue Tom Waits is a musician's musician, so to speak. He's also a writer's musician, crucially. Bones Howe defined his work on Nighthawks at the Diner as "Allen Ginsberg with a really, really good band" (I'm linking it here in full so you can check it out on your own time, which I highly recommend you do), and while I feel like Waits's work on average is a bit more humorous, which is kind of why even among the Island era works Bone Machine is the only one that actually does that homicidal maniac thing where everything, and I mean everything spectacularly ties into that general sense of apocalyptic abandon. The more personal numbers relate excellently to that, better than they ever have — and this is from that same guy who wrote, I don't know, Time. This one time, right before the pandemic hit, I was invited to a birthday party and as many things did back at the time it spiralled into a lot of heavy feelings being spilled onto absolute strangers. I had this CD in the car and I felt like I had to put this track on, I just knew it, don't ask me why. So I did:
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And then a while later I found myself toying around a lot with this other track, called I Don't Wanna Grow Up (music video courtesy of Jim Jarmusch, by the way). Obviously 2020 wasn't the best time for many people. I was trapped with five other people — two of which had COVID — in a house meant for four, I seemed unable to hold one person down for long enough to actually become friends and my academic career, if there even was one, was very clearly dead in the water. And let's be clear here: would you wanna grow up in that context? God knows I didn't. And I guess it makes it even funnier when it's a guy who has very much grown up already telling you that he doesn't wanna grow up — and that you find yourself believing him. Because ultimately Tom Waits, as opposed to Thomas Alan Waits, does not in fact grow up. He is born fully formed and trudges through life in eternal decay, he faces memories of his past haunting him and turning ever less beatnik and ever more hallucinatory and modernist and distorted. His blues become his decomposing greys/greens, they become toxic miasmas that end up deforming and corroding the songs. And even icons of religious salvation turn into broken contract killers — the sole ones capable of providing a truly beautiful death. "Some say he killed a man with a guitar string… some say under his coat there are wings." Fitting that the music should turn a slow country instrumental into a metaphysical number, chilling and perfectly inexplicable precisely in direct proportion to how close it is to the reach of sheer intuition.
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But what originally got me into the record was Waits's balladry, as funny as it may seem. You don't usually listen to Tom Waits for the ballads, mostly because lately (that is, from 1983 onwards, at least) that's very much not what he's remembered for. And yet not many people can just as easily write Goin' Out West — a track that goes so hard it's been covered, basically unaltered, by Queens of the Stone Age — as he does Whistle Down the Wind — a track that's so touching it's been covered, with very different instrumentation and vocal interpretation, by Joan Baez — on the same record, no less. The one that got me at first was A Little Rain, a murder ballad so brutally honest it doesn't even have to say it out loud: a sixteen-year-old leaves her small hometown to see the world. "I love you mom, and a little rain never hurt no one" are the words she leaves her mother with. To the cost of sounding redundant, it probably wasn't the rain that hurt her. You are left with a profound sense of evil that, unsurprisingly, pops up in a track like Springsteen's Nebraska — "well, I guess there's just a meanness to this world".
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But the one that speaks to me, fellow imposter syndrome having asshole, the most is Who Are You, more eloquently (perhaps a bit too eloquently) titled Who Are You This Time on some live albums of Waits's. It's very easy to construe yourself as a suicidal buttfuck-insane maudit rat bastard, but most other people see right through it when you're twenty. My obsession at the time was to be taken seriously, to be taken as a ticking time bomb, to be taken as a menace even. I don't think it was necessarily a form of posturing; it could more appropriately be interpreted as me trying to get people to notice how fucked I felt this shit to be. Unfortunately it gets old fast. I guess Tom Waits, or likely Thomas Alan Waits, kind of saw it too. It's reasonable to interpret this track as a song against itself, or rather a song against whoever is singing it, or rather a song about whoever is singing it pretends to be in front of an audience, which necessarily entails some interesting reflections on identity and artistic integrity and the understanding that who says the thing is just as important as the thing being said. I am making no sense because it's almost 2am. I don't give a fuck. Here's a song that makes me cry:
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spettriedemoni · 1 year
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Tre cani (che poi erano quattro)
Non si parla di enciclopedie
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Ho rivisto un mio caro amico poco tempo fa. Non ci vedevamo da un po', ci eravamo sentiti nel lockdown poi gli impegni e il caso ci hanno allontanato. Fortunatamente la nostra amicizia fa sì che appena ci ritroviamo è come se ci fossimo lasciati il giorno prima.
Anni fa, appena sposato, avevano trovato lui e la moglie una cucciolata di cani abbandonati poco dopo ma nascita. Erano stati chiusi in una busta e buttati come dei rifiuti. Non so quanta crudeltà sia necessaria per un gesto simile eppure qualcuno lo fece. Caso volle che una delle due femmine di questa cucciolata sia riuscita ad aprire la busta e a scappare. Il mio amico si trovò a passare proprio allora e i fari della sua auto illuminarino quello che inizialmente sembrò un grosso topo. Scese dalla macchina assieme alla moglie e si accorsero che invece era un cucciolo che attirò la loro attenzione verso i fratelli. Erano quattro in tutto, due femmine e due maschi. Cercarono consigli su come prendersi cura di questi cuccioli e chiamarono un amico veterinario il quale disse loro di non affezionarsi troppo a questi quattro cani perché senza la mamma sarebbero vissuti poco visto che non hanno capacità di termoregolazione e hanno bisogno del latte materno come nutrimento, un latte molto più grasso di mucca per esempio che prendiamo noi.
Non sono più andati a chiedere consiglio a questo amico veterinario e si arrangiarono come meglio poterono per far sopravvivere i cuccioli. Acqua bollente in bottiglie di plastica cambiata ogni due ore o poco più, coperte, latte di cagna acquistato in un negozio di animali a cifre esorbitanti (quasi 20 euro a litro mi pare di ricordare) e i cani sono sopravvissuti quasi tutti: uno non ci riuscì un maschio. Rimasero Mucchetta pezzata bianco e nero come una mucca, Daisy la seconda femmina color beige e Birillo colorato come Daisy, molto esuberante e affettuoso ma con la vescica debole. Si emozionava tutte le volte che vedeva qualcuno cui era affezionato.
Mucchetta era la capobranco, colei che quella notte aveva salvato i fratelli. Crebbero bene tutti e tre, amati e qualche tempo dopo si aggiunse Pallino un cane disabile che i miei amici andarono a prendere fino a Parma per portarlo nella loro famiglia. Pallino si riprese al punto da non dover più camminare con le rotelline. Purtroppo Pallino fu anche il primo che se ne andò.
Più recentemente se ne sono andati anche gli altri tre. Prima Daisy, poi Birillo. Mucchetta è stata l'ultima anche se ormai era malconcia pure lei ha aspettato fino a che non se ne sono andati i suoi fratelli. Come ha sempre fatto in vita è stata la capobranco che si è presa cura dei fratelli, li ha salvati e li ha accompagnati fino alla fine della loro vita prima di andarsene pure lei.
Non so se davvero esiste qualcosa dopo la morte, non so se esiste un paradiso o un inferno a seconda di come ti sei comportato in vita, ma se esiste mi auguro esista un paradiso per i cani e per gli animali in genere.
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