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#plumbing project completed
foone · 1 year
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I see a lot of people joking about the adhd thing of "I have a appointment/phone call at 3pm, guess I won't do anything all day!"
But no one seems to make the connection that it's a time blindness thing. One of the symptoms of ADHD is not having a good and accurate sense of time. And not doing stuff prior to an event with a hard deadline is an obvious coping mechanism for that.
Can I go to the store? It's 10am and the appointment is at 3pm. How long does going to the store take? An hour? Three hours? Five hours? I DON'T KNOW!
I get anxious trying to do things before appointments because I'm aware that I don't know how long those things take, and that if I think I do, I may be very wrong. Too often I've been like "hey I can walk to the corner store and grab a drink, that'll take like 15 minutes!" and then an hour later I get back and whoops my rice has burnt.
Plus there's also the fact that ADHD people know that motivation and focus is a two-edged sword.
Like, let's say you decide to play a video game. You've got time, you can pause/save whenever, so this should be a perfect fit to make good use of your waiting-time. So you start playing and WHOOPS you get really focused for some reason today (because people with ADHD do not get to pick when their brain decides to focus) and the next time you look at the clock it's 2:49 and you haven't showered or dressed and the appointment is 30 minutes away. Fuck. (you could have set an alarm, but now you're asking people with the forgetting-things-and-time-ignoring condition to remember it set alarms)
And with motivation, it can be almost worse. Instead of playing a game, you so something useful or creative. You clean your room or fix your plumbing or write a story or draw a picture. And suddenly it's great. Your brain is firing on all cylinders. You've got all the motivation you can ask for, and you are FLYING. the ideas are brilliant, your hands are nimble, you're getting stuff done you've been putting off for weeks or months. And then the alarm goes off. Time to go to your appointment. Fuck.
You drive there, your brain still full of ideas and plans. But by the time you get back, the motivation is gone. You may still have the ideas but you don't have the drive to write them down. You can't force yourself to do it. Your sink is still in pieces. Your room is half-cleaned, and you have to shove all the sorted clothes into one big bin just so you have somewhere to sleep. You've left things half finished again, in a cycle that has been repeating your whole fucking life. It seems sometimes that nothing ever gets finished.
So next time you don't even start. There's not time. You've been burnt too many times. Why add another half-completed project to your pile of shame?
My point is that people seem to be going "lol I can't do anything all day if I have an appointment at 3pm" like this is a quirky "oh I'm so scatterbrained!" weirdness they alone have, and not a major complication of a disabling mental illness.
(and that's not even getting into the secondary effects. If you know that having an appointment ruins your whole damn day, you're going to avoid them. Even when it's things like "going to that party" or "meeting your friends for a drink/game" or "going to a movie with that cute girl from your math class". Things you should enjoy. Things that'd help you be social. Things that make you feel human.)
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kneelingshadowsalome · 7 months
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omg what’s cabin!konig? new koooonnnyyy unlocked
Yes, König comes in many forms and he always wants to knock you up. But!
Cabin!König is particularly designed to breed, and he’s very vehement about doing just so.
Hauls you deep into the Alps and shoves you inside this cute cabin that looks minimalistic and weather-beaten on the outside but insanely adorable on the inside. There’s a fireplace and a broad, sturdy hardwood bed (for the purpose of you know perfectly well what...), indoor plumbing for your convenience, an electric oven for you to bake him cookies and pastries (traditional Austrian ones if you wish to pamper and spoil him) and a lot of authentic 19th-century art on the walls, next to the ropes and traps and cast iron pans and pots and wicker baskets that hold woollen blankets in case you get cold.
But you really don’t get a chance to get cold, do you? Because König is on and in you every chance he gets. Man's got a plan, and he has always implemented his strategies and completed his projects with a frightening amount of energy, commitment and willpower. You wake up in the morning to his heated cuddles and soft whines, knowing that you’re about to get taken from behind – again. He’s soft and slow at first, cuddlefucking and spooning you like you’re the best thing in his entire world... but you know it’s all just a warm-up. The thrusts get deeper and more intense as the morning session goes on, until both of you are fully awake and König gets into his full breeding mood. It’s the same thing in the evening, but this time, he’s on top and looks you deep in the eyes as he makes love to you while your toes curl and point to the ceiling. Nothing but the fireplace and some candles lighting the cabin with flickering, warm tones: he’s a romantic soul underneath all that callous soldier’s discipline.
During the day, König has many responsibilites outside: he has to fix the roof of some shed and walk the perimeter to check that no one has found their way here, that no one is disturbing his mating season that lasts from May till August. You know nothing about his hikes, but he has even set bear traps all over the place, and not for the purpose of catching bears…
He of course tempted you here by saying you deserve a holiday and that the mountains would be a good, non-stressful environment to finally try and get you pregnant. He has been talking about wanting to have babies ever since you met: actually, he brought the subject up on your first date - to your horror and intrigue - wanting to know if you would ever want kids and if you were in it for the long haul because he was sick of dating just for some shallow, casual fun.
You could never have known that you would get folded into a mating press every day after only a few months of your acquintance, but here you are: getting stuffed full of potent cum every day, multiple times per day, because König has decided that you are the perfect wife material and the perfect mother for his kids.
He can come off as a little too intense, even rough at times, but he is in fact a very gentle lover and offers impeccable aftercare. His hormones are through the roof here in this sweet little cabin with his sweet little future wife-to-be. König is fully in his element when he gets to walk in the brisk mountain air and then come “home” to the delicious scent of warm buns or apple pie, to the sweet scent and feel of you.
Cuddles you after sex like it’s equally as important as the deed of getting you pregnant. He’s not just trying to apologize for being so needy and urgent with you, he’s actually bonding with you everytime you have sex. It’s like a ritual for him to hold you close and take in your soft panting and warm cheeks after he just made you cum no less than two or three times. You’re still not sure if this is a good idea, and you’re not sure if this man is even completely sane… But he sure as hell is adamant in making you feel good, providing for you and giving you the best sex of your entire life ❤️
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Weekend Lessons with daddy John PART 1
John, my mysterious neighbor, was a man shrouded in age and secrets. Though I never dared to inquire about his past, I estimated him to be around 65 years old. From the moment I moved in next door, he welcomed me with open arms and a warm smile. Despite our significant age difference - I was only 21 at the time - I found myself eagerly seeking out his company. John was a skilled handyman, passing on his knowledge of electricity, plumbing, and DIY projects to me with infinite patience. It may seem odd for a young adult like myself, but each week I looked forward more to spending an evening with John than going out for after-work drinks with my colleagues.
There was something about John that fascinated me - he wasn't particularly muscular or physically imposing, but there was a ruggedness to him that exuded masculinity. He embodied the classic image of a man's man - simple yet capable, full of practical knowledge that I had never learned before. But what captivated me most were his feet. Every Friday night, as we sat together watching a replay of a baseball game and sipping on cold beers, John would kick off his slippers and rest his large, mature feet on the coffee table in front of us.
It started innocently enough - just admiring the feet of a strong, masculine man. But as the weeks went by, my fascination turned into something else entirely. With each passing Friday night, it became harder and harder for me to resist the forbidden desires stirring inside of me. I tried to push them away, telling myself that it was wrong and dirty to feel this way towards someone much older than me.
But one fateful night, as I lay in bed alone with my thoughts, I gave in to my sinful desires and indulged in a forbidden act of self-pleasure while thinking about John's feet. The pleasure that consumed me was unlike anything I had ever experienced before, a heady mix of taboo and desire that left me both intoxicated and guilty.
From that night on, John's feet became an obsession for me. I couldn't resist stealing glances at them whenever we were together, imagining the feel of them against my lips and tongue. And each time I succumbed to these thoughts, the intensity of pleasure only grew stronger, driving me towards a dangerous edge that I could not escape from.
Despite my attempts to distance myself from these thoughts, they consumed me. I tried to distract myself with work, hobbies, and even dating other people, but nothing seemed to quell the burning desire I had for John's feet.
But one evening, I couldn't resist my insatiable desire… As we sat on the sofa, John's relaxed form radiating a familiar comfort, I chugged back another beer to calm my racing heart. Suddenly, his shoes were off and his toes were wriggling in front of me as he talked about the game. I couldn't help but feign interest in a coin that supposedly fell on the other side of the table. My hand brushed against his foot and I knelt down, pretending to search for the nonexistent coin in the thick carpet fibers as my face stealthily drew closer to his feet. The overpowering scent of masculinity hit me like a wave and my body reacted immediately, my pants stretching with the growing hardness between my legs. Every touch from his toes sent shivers through my body, pushing me deeper into a forbidden pleasure that consumed me completely.
My mind raced with a torrent of emotions and desires as I lingered there, my breath hot against John's coarse, calloused skin. I had never felt anything like this before - a mixture of exhilaration, shame, and unbridled lust coursing through my veins. I knew I was playing with fire, but I couldn't help myself.
A surge of shame and self-loathing washes over me as I realize the gravity of my actions. I pray that my arousal is not too obvious , ready to feign ignorance and confess to not finding the coin. But when I meet John's gaze, a new expression crosses his face - an excited smile, his hand resting on his visibly erect penis. Did he understand the true intention behind my gesture? And did the sight of my face so close to his feet elicit the same response in him as it did in me? My mind spins with confusion and desire, rendering me speechless and creating a tense silence that begs to be broken… I struggle to find the right words, while secretly yearning to ask him if he desires to see me throw myself at his feet as well…
It was finally John who broke the silence, saying these words: ''Are you sure you looked carefully? It would be a shame not to reject a glance." He looked me straight in the eyes, without leaving his mischievous smile, wiggling his toes… my eyes rested on those feet and the spark of excitement in the John's eyes twinkled brighter. It was at that moment that I realized that this was a formal invitation, and I was not going to wait another second to respond.
John's voice cut through the tense silence like a knife, his words dripping with challenge and mischievous thrill ''Did you even bother to look closely? Don't tell me you missed it." His gaze locked onto mine, a sly grin playing on his lips as he wiggled his toes in anticipation…my eyes couldn't help but trail down to those feet, and I saw the unmistakable glimmer of mischief in John's eyes. It hit me like a bolt of lightning - this wasn't just an invitation, it was a dare. And I refused to waste another second before responding, the fire of adrenaline coursing through my veins.
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taetaespeaches · 1 year
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“Are you really not going to complain even once?”
yoongi x reader (oc) genre: fluff word count: 1.8K
a/n: Hi lovelies! Here’s a little handyman Min helping reader/Kid with some simple home improvement projects. He’s super sweet and adorable about it and she’s annoying but he’s endeared. I hope you all enjoy and thanks for reading! :)) 
p.s. Happy birthday to our favorite honey boy! It’s Yoongi day!!! 
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Observing your boyfriend from the bathroom doorway, you smirked at the little grunts that echoed through the room. Every twist of his wrench was accompanied by a low grumble from Yoongi’s throat. If he wasn’t fixing your sink out of the goodness of his heart, his undying love for you, and your complete inability to do it yourself, you’d tease him for being a grandpa.
When he arrived at your apartment fifteen minutes earlier, you had ambushed him with the home improvement project. He left a sweet kiss on your cheek as he entered your living room, immediately pulling his eyebrows together when you flashed him a pout. “What?”
“My bathroom sink is leaking,” you sighed.
The man glanced toward the bathroom in thought, a small pout taking over his own mouth. It just naturally did that. “Are the tools I left for you still in the hall closet?”
“If that’s where you left them,” you smirked, drawing your boyfriend’s attention back to you. He gave you a gummy smile and a slight shoulder shake as he laughed silently.
“You mean you haven’t touched them?” He asked, widening his eyes in feigned shock.
“Oh sure I have, I’m always fixing things around here,” you joked, nodding your head in exaggeration. “The… fridge,” you started listing, nearly laughing at the way Yoongi’s jaw dropped open slightly as he played along. “The window-”
“The window?” He asked in surprise and amusement.
“The…” you glanced down at the hardwood, “floorboards.”
“Wow, now that’s impressive,” he teased you, already leaving you to go get the tools you definitely had not touched since he brought them over with the justification of, just in case you need them.
“I know it is!” You shouted down the hall at him.
“You just didn’t fix the sink,” he pointed out, looking back toward the living room at you to find you standing with a stumped smirk. “Too busy patching up the floorboards.”
“I had to leave something for you,” you shrugged. “I’m charitable.”
Nodding and chuckling at you, he raised the tools so you could see them. “They’re dusty, by the way,” he noted, teasing you further. “Thanks for leaving the sink, you know how I love a plumbing project.” The sarcasm was thick but so was the fondness as he spoke.
“I know you do, I know this about you,” you continued joking as he disappeared into the bathroom, leaving you smiling like an idiot as your chest felt warm with affection.
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Now, here you were watching him finish up the task you stuck him with, still cozy with that same sweet affection. “I should have made you cookies or something,” you suddenly realized. “Or some fresh squeezed lemonade,” you added with a saccharine and very bad southern accent. Yoongi looked up at you with a small smile, shaking his head at your antics.
“You mean to tell me there are no cookies?” He teased, making you frown playfully in response. With a huff, he dropped the wrench to the floor and leaned back on his hands, pretending to go on strike. “I would quit right now but,” he shrugged, “it’s done.”
“Oh my god, really?” You gasped in excitement at your essentially new sink. Rushing over, you turned it on and peered underneath, your face level with his, as you watched the pipes. “Look at that, not a leak in sight,” you awed, facing Yoongi and smiling at his pretty features as he watched you. “Thank you.”
He simply shrugged, brushing you off. Leaning toward him, you hovered over his lips, watching as Yoongi’s mouth quirked upward slightly, unable to hold the small smile back. He was the one who closed the gap, pushing himself forward just enough to catch your lips in a sweet kiss, your hand meeting the side of his face as you brushed his hair behind his ear and your lips continued to move against his appreciatively.
When you pulled away, the man’s eyelids fluttered open slowly, his eyelashes looking long and delicate, and so very pretty.
“Would you mind doing one more thing for me?” You asked tentatively, a guilty grin on your face. He gave you a soft close-mouthed smile with a single nod, letting you know it was no big deal. “My towel rack keeps falling off every time I pull the towel off.”
“The screw probably just needs to be tightened,” he guessed, his voice turning into a bit of a grunt as he lifted his body off the ground. Again, you thought about teasing him for his old man antics, but thought better of it.
He tugged on the pole, the bar coming off in his hand, making another adorable pout fall on his lips. So cute, you thought. Pushing the towel rack back onto its hinges, he sat underneath it and turned his screwdriver into- something- a few times. The whole thing took him about thirty seconds, and when he tugged on the rack again, it stayed attached to the wall.
“That’s it?” You asked in surprise, Yoongi flashing you a gummy smile.
“I’m just a pro, it would be tougher than that for a less skilled person,” he playfully gloated, making you roll your eyes as you beamed at him.
“Well, Mr. Handyman Min, my shower is also draining really slow,” you challenged him, crossing your arms over your chest.
“I don’t have a drain snake,” he suddenly snapped into true handyman mode, looking at the shower thoughtfully. “But I have one at the dorm. Do you have some drano for now? I can bring the drain next time I come over.”
Staring at him in thought as you squinted your eyes, a smile lifted on the man’s mouth. “I don’t know, do I have drano?” You asked, fighting back a giggle at yourself.
“I left some for you,” he nodded down the hallway. “Under the kitchen sink.”
“I knew that,” you quickly recovered, hurrying to the kitchen and opening the cabinet doors to search through the cleaning supplies. The surface cleaners and glass solutions were used often, but anything to do with plumbing was a mystery to you. Finally finding the bottle, you rushed back to the bathroom, holding it up in victory. “I told you I had drano.”
Scoffing at you, he took the bottle from you with a small, “thanks, Kid.”
Once again, the process of using the drano took about thirty seconds, making you feel silly for never trying to fix these before handing the chores off to him. “I would do these things myself if it didn’t take you a total of thirty seconds,” you smiled softly. Yoongi grinned back, shaking his head to brush you off yet again. “Work smarter, not harder,” you added jokingly, earning a chuckle from the man as he nodded in agreement.
Standing up straight and turning to face you, the man stared at you from across the room in anticipation. You stared back, pulling a look of confusion. “What?”
“What’s next?” he shrugged. If he wasn’t Yoongi, you’d think he was being sassy about all the projects. But he was Yoongi, and you knew he was just genuinely asking if there was anything else he could do for you. He loved this shit. He loved being able to take care of you through these small acts of service. And therein was the true reason you never looked into tightening the towel rack yourself. Why would you want to rob him of the opportunity to look after you? And why would you want to rob yourself of the privilege of being looked after by him? You loved this shit too. And when he would eventually come over with a drain snake in hand, you’d greet him with a batch of cookies, just to further the bit, but also to say thank you.
“My closet door is squeaky,” you told him, feeling your chest warm up once again as he started toward your bedroom. As he walked by you, he stalled, holding out the bottle of drano.
“Can you put this back for me, Kid?” He asked, a gummy smile planted on his face as you nodded.
“Of course, Handyman Min,” you teased, taking the bottle. Before he walked away, however, he pressed his lips against your forehead gently, the touch lingering as he took his time. Your eyes fell closed at the touch, appreciating the feeling of his affection. When he pulled away, his body was shuffling down the hallway to your bedroom before you even opened your eyes.
Glancing after him, you watched as he disappeared into the room, and only then did you realize you were hugging the bottle of drano against your chest like a lovestruck idiot. Rolling your eyes at yourself, you dropped the product to your side and trudged toward the kitchen, however, stopping yourself when you got to the bedroom.
Leaning against your door frame, you watched as he inspected the door, opening and closing it to figure out where the squeaks were coming from. “Are you really not going to complain even once?” You suddenly questioned him, Yoongi’s attention snapping towards you. His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly ajar as he waited for you to elaborate.
“What’s there to complain about?” He simply asked in response, making you smile at him from across the room as you shook your head.
“Yoongi,” you said, as though the answer was obvious. Because it was. He had been stuck with household projects since he arrived at your place.
“The better question is, why haven’t you called me a grandpa even once?” He countered, a gummy smile curving on his lips as your grin widened into an amused beam.
“I held myself back!” You informed him. “I didn’t want to insult you as you were saving me and my entire apartment.”
“You’re so dramatic,” he spoke quietly through a breathy clicky chuckle. “I made my last grunt intentional just for you.”
Gasping, you then tsked at him, shaking your head. “You’re such a tease.” His shoulders shook in silent laughter as he looked back at the door and opened it a bit wider to hear the squeak one more time. “Do you really not mind all this?”
“What?” He asked, looking at you in genuine confusion for a moment. You nodded at the door and held up the bottle of drano to emphasize the meaning of your question. “No,” he shook his head, the answer simple and sincere. “It’s no big deal.”
“Ok,” you spoke quietly through a small smitten smile, nodding your head. “Good, because let’s be honest,” you started, Yoongi’s eyebrows lifting in curiosity and anticipation for a sassy or ridiculous comment. “I’m doing most of the work.” Yoongi’s eyebrows lifted even higher as he waited for your explanation. “Supervising is so hard,” you playfully whined, Yoongi instantly chuckling at you.
“It is, I believe you,” he flashed a feigned pout at you. Smiling at him, he returned the expression, a genuine moment of gratitude and care passing between the both of you. “My hardworking girl,” he whispered, breaking eye contact for a moment as he looked to the ground shyly, still wearing that smitten adoring gummy grin.
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nanowrimo · 10 months
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5 Techniques to Help You Write Your Novel
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Every writing project is unique, and the methods that help you draft one novel may not work for another. If you’re getting started on a brand new project this Camp, NaNo Guest Vee James has some suggestions for different techniques to help you explore your story. It took a few NaNos before I realized I was developing different techniques each time I sat down to the challenge. I think we all do this naturally, but it helps to step back and observe the process. If you’re strictly a pantster, you’ve been working on the story ideas in your head. If you’re a planner, you’ve set to paper the story concepts, characters, and an outline of what you are about to produce on paper. Some people take a hybrid approach to NaNo. Granted, the basics remain the same: butt in chair, accomplish the hourly/daily goal, and allow yourself to tell your story.
I discovered that each unique novel presented particular challenges, and I had to adapt my style and writing techniques in order to explore the story and keep the production happening. Some of these came from writing instructors and wonderful podcasters. Some came from “how to write” seminars and workshops. Others grew out of a feverish search for “more words.”
Here are five techniques I’ve found that helped me advance writing projects:
1. Research
It was a surprise to me to discover the concept of researching for fiction. I initially thought, “Just make something up.” But there are so many ways to broaden your approach. Plumb your memory, take a course in something related to the story, talk to an expert, and ask lots of questions. You could even become like the character in order to feel what they feel. If you’re writing a western, go ride a horse.
2. Write Scenes Out of Order
If you have a premise, you’ve already got scenes in your mind. Don’t wait until you get to chapter 18. Write that scene now. You can always revise it when you catch up to that point and it gives you something to develop toward. To expand on this technique, when you’ve written the scene, ask yourself, “What happened just before this?” or “What does this scene lead to?”
3. Put disparate characters together and have them have a conversation
Often, we write secondary characters who take a more subdued role in the plot. But what would happen if your protagonist’s best friend had a conversation with the main antagonist? Or if the antagonist’s agent of destruction came upon the protagonist’s love interest? In my experience, these conversations frequently produce more depth in your secondary characters and almost always it’s something you weren’t expecting.
4. Play with Genre Tropes
What have you chosen to write? Urban fiction? SciFi? Fantasy? You already know what your reader expects you to write, and what the plot ahead holds for them. How can you twist it? Sometimes the simplest thing you mentioned in chapter one can be the linchpin of a great plot twist.
5. Study Film
It’s no accident that some of the most astounding stories have been told through film. Quite simply, movie companies invest heavily in every aspect of their production and hire some of the best writers around. Yes, it’s a visual medium and has some advantages over prose. But the main lesson with movies is in the structure of the stories they tell. Here’s a good example: when I was writing a fairytale novel, I wanted to stay true to the classic story structure. One afternoon I was watching the comedy, Galaxy Quest, taking careful notes on the structure. I realized the story structure mapped very closely to what I was doing in the fairytale. It was comforting to see this, and it also gave me some ideas on how to approach the ending.
Most importantly: NaNoWriMo is a thrilling if exhaustive experience, and I urge you to immerse yourself in it completely. Write with utter abandon, delve deep for concepts that will give you the next 2000 words, and try new things like you’re a Mad Scientist in a hurry. We all know that what you end up with is a messy creation. But you will find you have given yourself a great gift.
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Vee James is a cross-genre author who loves to write comedies, fairytales, and YA supernatural. He participated in NaNoWriMo for ten years in a row, writing over a half-million words, and it led to nine NaNo novels plus two more non-NaNos. Out of this work, he’s published four novels, with a fifth nearing completion. If interested, visit his site at www.veejames.com and leave a message. He loves to talk to writers of all kinds. Vee's photo by A. Roger Hammons Photo by Daniel Álvasd on Unsplash
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plumb-bob-keep · 1 year
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And Now for Something Completely Different…
After coming back into contact with Stas, Sunni's widower, the plans for the Keep have changed. Disregard most of what was posted above.
We WILL be remaining open for the foreseeable future, accepting both new members and new content. The site will remain a historical- and fantasy-focused Sims 2 forum.
Going forward, the Keep will be managed by a "Regency Council" instead of just one Regent. This will consist of PBK moderators CelestialSpider, Davina Ojeda, and rugrat0ne, as well as Discord moderators Fire_flower and Sonikku3.
Fractured Moonlight will be stepping back into something of a "silent partner" role so she can focus on creating. We thank her for her years of service running the Keep all by herself, especially out of the blue. We know it was not easy.
We are already establishing better lines of communication with Stas in hopes of avoiding the annual early March panic, and reminders have been set for February fundraising.
There will be annual fundraisers on GoFundMe or similar sites to offset the cost, and to provide more transparency than we've been able to provide in the past.
Meanwhile, archiving efforts will continue until the site is fully backed up, as a failsafe. We will also periodically archive new content in the future.
Many, many thanks to those who pitched in on the archiving project, to those who donated, in this year and previous ones, and to everyone who supported and continues to support Plumb Bob Keep.
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oh-hell-help-me · 10 months
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July 5: Work-a-holics Day
Bowser has a headache.
It’s been four hours since he started the paperwork, and it feels like it’ll take days to even make it halfway through the stack of paperwork that accumulated last week.
He wouldn’t regret the much-needed family time, but the result of postponing any work is ridiculous.
Not to mention that his husband had been working just as hard as him.
Months after they married, Luigi had taken the rare initiative to contribute to castle life. From cooking to castle repairs to gardening to plumbing… It seemed he wanted to try his hand at everything that could be improved or fixed.
And it worked, in a way, once Luigi found a niche in the mechanical field.
His contributions have certainly streamlined construction and agriculture processes, and have even made headway for Iggy’s efforts in making lasers- much to the Koopaling’s delight.
The problem (something they BOTH struggled with) was that they are unfortunate workaholics.
It was why they had a vacation week, but…
Before they were literally dragged out of their workspaces, Luigi was the worst off in self-care.
In other words:
He hadn’t slept for two days straight.
He hadn’t eaten for longer- since the day before the project he was working on.
He hadn’t even showered or bathed for a half-week.
The very sight of him sent Iggy (who had gone to check up on Luigi) into a panicked fit following uncharacteristically violent tugging to the nearest bathing facility and a screaming order to the nearest Koopa Troopa to bring a meal straight from the kitchen.
It was enough of a commotion to bring his siblings out of their rooms and be shocked silent at the sight of an incensed Iggy dragging a half-struggling Luigi (who is still very much a mess) down the hall.
After some explanations from Iggy, denials from ‘overwork’ by Luigi, and voiced concern for the same thing happening to Bowser-
Well, they somehow BOTH ended up sitting at the Royal Family’s table being force-fed a variety of food- and scolded by many frustrated Koopalings.
In the end, the Koopalings have taken it upon themselves to rotate ‘Break Duties’ since the Royal Husbands “are failing as adults”- as worded by Ludwig.
Bowser would have argued against that, but…
He still couldn’t get the image of Luigi out of his mind, with greasy hair, dark eyebags, and a distant demeanor that scared him. Nevermind that he was a day away from the same predicament, seeing his husband in that condition painfully drove the point home.
With that in mind, he’s more than willing to take a break- and does so with a loud groan as he gets up from his seat and stretches.
(He leaves the office soon after, unaware of the proud gaze of an on-shift Morton.)
Luigi somewhat learned his lesson after the Koopalings’ intervention. He got better with mealtimes, at least bothering to take a few bites of food before continuing on his projects, and had been a little proud of remembering to take a shower that morning. Sleeping, however?
Er- looking at the Lab’s clock, it’s been almost a whole day that he hadn’t slept. A normal time! Although-
He’s tempted to do an all-nighter again, especially as he sees the current project (a multi-purpose clock, ironically) more than half completed.
In fact, he is already reaching for the screwdriver-
BANG!
Before the Lab’s doors burst open-
And his husband bustles in, barely giving Luigi time to turn around before his husband yoinks him from his seat and charges back out of the lab.
“B-Bowser?!” Luigi tries to wiggle out of his grasp. “Let me down!”
“Nope.”
“But- but I need to-“
“Nope.”
“Is that really all you’re going to say?”
“Nope. Also, you’re coming with me.”
“Apparently.” Luigi huffs, but hardly feels frustrated as he relaxes in Bowser’s warm arms.
It’s almost comfy enough to sleep right then and there.
But Bowser isn’t letting him settle in before plopping him onto their bed (when did they get to their room?).
“Come on, arms up.”
Blearly following his command, he only realizes what his husband is doing after his shirt is already over his head and the largest sleep shirt is shoved down in its place.
“I-“ He is interrupted by a yawn. “I can dress myself…”
“I believe you.” But Bowser continues, absently taking off his own studded bands once done with his task.
Luigi sighs, but crawls into to nest-like bed they have set up since… well, a long time, at least.
Once under the covers, he watches Bowser toss his bands across the room. “You gotta stop doin’ that, tesoro. You’re goin’ to break an’ther mirror...”
“Sleep.”
And there he was, under the covers and curling around him with the same tenderness he’s done since they started dating.
“Buonanotte, amore mio.”
He feels his muzzle nuzzle into the top of his head.
“Goodnight, starlight.”
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haunted-glassesgurl · 11 months
Text
Lance is a handy man
Keith is tired, he just wants to sleep, but there is a freaking rumbling noise coming from his bathroom, if this was an earth bathroom he could easily just cut the water until the morning and forget about it, but of course it isn't, and of course Altean pipe system its completely different and he has no idea how to fix nor make the noise stop. And he tries, oh gosh does he try to remain calm, but he can't, he's tried everything, covering his face with the pillow, listening to music, headphones, COUNTING SHEEP. Nothing, and he's sick of it, for once he wants to actually get some rest and the castle won't let him, so the only logical thing that his sleep deprived mind can think of right now is go in there, find whatever it is that's making the noise and MAKE IT STOP.
That was... a bad idea. He found the source of the rumbling noise, he made it stop... but he broke the pipe somehow, and now there is water flooding his bathroom and going into his room at a dangerously rapid pace.
He hears a knock at his door, and in the middle of panicking he just opens it, and finds Lance standing there, with slippers on and his bathrobe in hand.
Keith is standing there, soaking wet from head to toes. There is water coming from the bathroom and he still has the piece that he broke in hand. Lance simply looks at him, looks at the room and makes his way to the bathroom, leaving Keith confused behind him, he watches him disappear into the flooded bathroom and before he can react and stop him, Lance comes out, sleeves rolled up, shaking the water off his hands.
"... just closed your water supply. I'll help you fix that tomorrow, I needed a shower and your little problem was using up all the water from our rooms"
Lance leaves just as quickly as he came, and leaves Keith stomped there in the middle of his room. "... what the hell just happened?"
Just as promised, Lance does help Keith fix his bathroom, but it does take them a few days to do it, and it ends up becoming their little project. That's how Keith finds out that Lance knows the basics of plumbing thanks to his brother. And he doesn't know if it's because of the way Lance looks so serious explaining everything to Keith, or the fact that he actually understands how the altean water supply works, but he is mightily impressed and a bit more attracted to Lance than he was before.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hey... so yeah I wrote this right after I broke my bathroom... in my defense it made me really mad and i couldn't control myself.
I just love the idea of Lance impressing Keith with something so simple, my boy it's just good at everything.
Btw, I've been gone for a couple of days because I got my phone stolen last week :/ so yeah...
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kronkk · 2 years
Note
Kill yourself
sure, but have you considered,,
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.
It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.
The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can’t relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings – hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt – and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn’t.
Although completely physical, the male is unfit even for stud service. Even assuming mechanical proficiency, which few men have, he is, first of all, incapable of zestfully, lustfully, tearing off a piece, but instead is eaten up with guilt, shame, fear and insecurity, feelings rooted in male nature, which the most enlightened training can only minimize; second, the physical feeling he attains is next to nothing; and third, he is not empathizing with his partner, but is obsessed with how he’s doing, turning in an A performance, doing a good plumbing job. To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo. It’s often said that men use women. Use them for what? Surely not pleasure.
Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he’s lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he’ll swim through a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there’ll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He’ll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and furthermore, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn’t the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It’s not ego satisfaction; that doesn’t explain screwing corpses and babies.
Completely egocentric, unable to relate, empathize or identify, and filled with a vast, pervasive, diffuse sexuality, the male is pyschically passive. He hates his passivity, so he projects it onto women, defines the make as active, then sets out to prove that he is (`prove that he is a Man’). His main means of attempting to prove it is screwing (Big Man with a Big Dick tearing off a Big Piece). Since he’s attempting to prove an error, he must `prove’ it again and again. Screwing, then, is a desperate compulsive, attempt to prove he’s not passive, not a woman; but he is passive and does want to be a woman.
Being an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempting to complete himself, to become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through an fuse with the female, and by claiming as his own all female characteristics – emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc – and projecting onto women all male traits – vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. It should be said, though, that the male has one glaring area of superiority over the female – public relations. (He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men). The male claim that females find fulfillment through motherhood and sexuality reflects what males think they’d find fulfilling if they were female.
Women, in other words, don’t have penis envy; men have pussy envy. When the male accepts his passivity, defines himself as a woman (males as well as females think men are women and women are men), and becomes a transvestite he loses his desire to screw (or to do anything else, for that matter; he fulfills himself as a drag queen) and gets his dick chopped off. He then achieves a continuous diffuse sexual feeling from `being a woman’. Screwing is, for a man, a defense against his desire to be female. He is responsible for:
War: The male’s normal compensation for not being female, namely, getting his Big Gun off, is grossly inadequate, as he can get it off only a very limited number of times; so he gets it off on a really massive scale, and proves to the entire world that he’s a `Man’. Since he has no compassion or ability to empathize or identify, proving his manhood is worth an endless amount of mutilation and suffering and an endless number of lives, including his own – his own life being worthless, he would rather go out in a blaze of glory than to plod grimly on for fifty more years.
Niceness, Politeness, and `Dignity’: Every man, deep down, knows he’s a worthless piece of shit. Overwhelmed by a sense of animalism and deeply ashamed of it; wanting, not to express himself, but to hide from others his total physicality, total egocentricity, the hate and contempt he feels for other men, and to hide from himself the hate and contempt he suspects other men feel for him; having a crudely constructed nervous system that is easily upset by the least display of emotion or feeling, the male tries to enforce a `social’ code that ensures perfect blandness, unsullied by the slightest trace or feeling or upsetting opinion. He uses terms like `copulate’, `sexual congress’, `have relations with’ (to men sexual relations is a redundancy), overlaid with stilted manners; the suit on the chimp.
Money, Marriage and Prostitution, Work and Prevention of an Automated Society: There is no human reason for money or for anyone to work more than two or three hours a week at the very most. All non-creative jobs (practically all jobs now being done) could have been automated long ago, and in a moneyless society everyone can have as much of the best of everything as she wants. But there are non-human, male reasons for wanting to maintain the money system:
1. Pussy. Despising his highly inadequate self, overcome with intense anxiety and a deep, profound loneliness when by his empty self, desperate to attach himself to any female in dim hopes of completing himself, in the mystical belief that by touching gold he’ll turn to gold, the male craves the continuous companionship of women. The company of the lowest female is preferable to his own or that of other men, who serve only to remind him of his repulsiveness. But females, unless very young or very sick, must be coerced or bribed into male company.
2. Supply the non-relating male with the delusion of usefulness, and enable him to try to justify his existence by digging holes and then filling them up. Leisure time horrifies the male, who will have nothing to do but contemplate his grotesque self. Unable to relate or to love, the male must work. Females crave absorbing, emotionally satisfying, meaningful activity, but lacking the opportunity or ability for this, they prefer to idle and waste away their time in ways of their own choosing – sleeping, shopping, bowling, shooting pool, playing cards and other games, breeding, reading, walking around, daydreaming, eating, playing with themselves, popping pills, going to the movies, getting analyzed, traveling, raising dogs and cats, lolling about on the beach, swimming, watching TV, listening to music, decorating their houses, gardening, sewing, nightclubbing, dancing, visiting, `improving their minds’ (taking courses), and absorbing `culture’ (lectures, plays, concerts, `arty’ movies). Therefore, many females would, even assuming complete economic equality between the sexes, prefer living with males or peddling their asses on the street, thus having most of their time for themselves, to spending many hours of their days doing boring, stultifying, non-creative work for someone else, functioning as less than animals, as machines, or, at best – if able to get a `good’ job – co-managing the shitpile. What will liberate women, therefore, from male control is the total elimination of the money-work system, not the attainment of economic equality with men within it.
3. Power and control. Unmasterful in his personal relations with women, the male attains to masterfulness by the manipulation of money and everything controlled by money, in other words, of everything and everybody.
4. Love substitute. Unable to give love or affection, the male gives money. It makes him feel motherly. The mother gives milk; he gives bread. He is the Breadwinner.
5. Provide the male with a goal. Incapable of enjoying the moment, the male needs something to look forward to, and money provides him with an eternal, never-ending goal: Just think of what you could do with 80 trillion dollars – invest it! And in three years time you’d have 300 trillion dollars!!!
6. Provide the basis for the male’s major opportunity to control and manipulate – fatherhood.
Fatherhood and Mental Illness (fear, cowardice, timidity, humility, insecurity, passivity): Mother wants what’s best for her kids; Daddy only wants what’s best for Daddy, that is peace and quiet, pandering to his delusion of dignity (`respect’), a good reflection on himself (status) and the opportunity to control and manipulate, or, if he’s an `enlightened’ father, to `give guidance’. His daughter, in addition, he wants sexually – he givers her hand in marriage; the other part is for him. Daddy, unlike Mother, can never give in to his kids, as he must, at all costs, preserve his delusion of decisiveness, forcefulness, always-rightness and strength. Never getting one’s way leads to lack of self-confidence in one’s ability to cope with the world and to a passive acceptance of the status quo. Mother loves her kids, although she sometimes gets angry, but anger blows over quickly and even while it exists, doesn’t preclude love and basic acceptance. Emotionally diseased Daddy doesn’t love his kids; he approves of them – if they’re `good’, that is, if they’re nice, `respectful’, obedient, subservient to his will, quiet and not given to unseemly displays of temper that would be most upsetting to Daddy’s easily disturbed male nervous system – in other words, if they’re passive vegetables. If they’re not `good’, he doesn’t get angry – not if he’s a modern, `civilized’ father (the old-fashioned ranting, raving brute is preferable, as he is so ridiculous he can be easily despised) – but rather express disapproval, a state that, unlike anger, endures and precludes a basic acceptance, leaving the kid with the feeling of worthlessness and a lifelong obsession wit being approved of; the result is fear of independent thought, as this leads to unconventional, disapproved of opinions and way of life.
For the kid to want Daddy’s approval it must respect Daddy, and being garbage, Daddy can make sure that he is respected only by remaining aloof, by distantness, by acting on the precept of `familiarity breeds contempt’, which is, of course, true, if one is contemptible. By being distant and aloof, he is able to remain unknown, mysterious, and thereby, to inspire fear (`respect’).
Disapproval of emotional `scenes’ leads to fear of strong emotion, fear of one’s own anger and hatred. Fear of anger and hatred combined with a lack of self-confidence in one’s ability to cope with and change the world, or even to affect in the slightest way one’s own destiny, leads to a mindless belief that the world and most people in it are nice and the most banal, trivial amusements are great fun and deeply pleasurable.
The affect of fatherhood on males, specifically, is to make them `Men’, that is, highly defensive of all impulses to passivity, faggotry, and of desires to be female. Every boy wants to imitate his mother, be her, fuse with her, but Daddy forbids this; he is the mother; he gets to fuse with her. So he tells the boy, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, to not be a sissy, to act like a `Man’. The boy, scared shitless of and `respecting’ his father, complies, and becomes just like Daddy, that model of `Man’-hood, the all-American ideal – the well-behaved heterosexual dullard.
The effect of fatherhood on females is to make them male – dependent, passive, domestic, animalistic, insecure, approval and security seekers, cowardly, humble, `respectful’ of authorities and men, closed, not fully responsive, half-dead, trivial, dull, conventional, flattened-out and thoroughly contemptible. Daddy’s Girl, always tense and fearful, uncool, unanalytical, lacking objectivity, appraises Daddy, and thereafter, other men, against a background of fear (`respect’) and is not only unable to see the empty shell behind the facade, but accepts the male definition of himself as superior, as a female, and of herself, as inferior, as a male, which, thanks to Daddy, she really is.
It is the increase of fatherhood, resulting from the increased and more widespread affluence that fatherhood needs in order to thrive, that has caused the general increase of mindlessness and the decline of women in the United States since the 1920s. The close association of affluence with fatherhood has led, for the most part, to only the wrong girls, namely, the `privileged’ middle class girls, getting `educated’.
The effect of fathers, in sum, has been to corrode the world with maleness. The male has a negative Midas Touch – everything he touches turns to shit.
Suppression of Individuality, Animalism (domesticity and motherhood), and Functionalism: The male is just a bunch of conditioned reflexes, incapable of a mentally free response; he is tied to he earliest conditioning, determined completely by his past experiences. His earliest experiences are with his mother, and he is throughout his life tied to her. It never becomes completely clear to the make that he is not part of his mother, that he is he and she is she.
His greatest need is to be guided, sheltered, protected and admired by Mama (men expect women to adore what men shrink from in horror – themselves) and, being completely physical, he yearns to spend his time (that’s not spent `out in the world’ grimly defending against his passivity) wallowing in basic animal activities – eating, sleeping, shitting, relaxing and being soothed by Mama. Passive, rattle-headed Daddy’s Girl, ever eager for approval, for a pat on the head, for the `respect’ if any passing piece of garbage, is easily reduced to Mama, mindless ministrator to physical needs, soother of the weary, apey brow, booster of the tiny ego, appreciator of the contemptible, a hot water bottle with tits.
The reduction to animals of the women of the most backward segment of society – the `privileged, educated’ middle-class, the backwash of humanity – where Daddy reigns supreme, has been so thorough that they try to groove on labour pains and lie around in the most advanced nation in the world in the middle of the twentieth century with babies chomping away on their tits. It’s not for the kids sake, though, that the `experts’ tell women that Mama should stay home and grovel in animalism, but for Daddy’s; the tits for Daddy to hang onto; the labor pains for Daddy to vicariously groove on (half dead, he needs awfully strong stimuli to make him respond).
Reducing the female to an animal, to Mama, to a male, is necessary for psychological as well as practical reasons: the male is a mere member of the species, interchangeable with every other male. He has no deep-seated individuality, which stems from what intrigues you, what outside yourself absorbs you, what you’re in relation to. Completely self-absorbed, capable of being in relation only to their bodies and physical sensations, males differ from each other only to the degree and in the ways they attempt to defend against their passivity and against their desire to be female.
The female’s individuality, which he is acutely aware of, but which he doesn’t comprehend and isn’t capable of relating to or grasping emotionally, frightens and upsets him and fills him with envy. So he denies it in her and proceeds to define everyone in terms of his or her function or use, assigning to himself, of course, the most important functions – doctor, president, scientist – therefore providing himself with an identity, if not individuality, and tries to convince himself and women (he’s succeeded best at convincing women) that the female function is to bear and raise children and to relax, comfort and boost the ego if the male; that her function is such as to make her interchangeable with every other female. In actual fact, the female function is to relate, groove, love and be herself, irreplaceable by anyone else; the male function is to produce sperm. We now have sperm banks.
In actual fact, the female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems crack jokes, make music – all with love. In other words, create a magic world.
Prevention of Privacy: Although the male, being ashamed of what he is and almost of everything he does, insists on privacy and secrecy in all aspects of his life, he has no real regard for privacy. Being empty, not being a complete, separate being, having no self to groove on and needing to be constantly in female company, he sees nothing at all wrong in intruding himself on any woman’s thoughts, even a total stranger’s, anywhere at any time, but rather feels indignant and insulted when put down for doing so, as well as confused – he can’t, for the life of him, understand why anyone would prefer so much as one minute of solitude to the company of any creep around. Wanting to become a woman, he strives to be constantly around females, which is the closest he can get to becoming one, so he created a `society’ based upon the family – a male-female could and their kids (the excuse for the family’s existence), who live virtually on top of one another, unscrupuluously violating the females’ rights, privacy and sanity.
Isolation, Suburbs, and Prevention of Community: Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she is exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual nu becoming a `rugged individualist’, a loner, equating non-cooperation and solitariness with individuality.
There is yet another reason for the male to isolate himself: every man is an island. Trapped inside himself, emotionally isolated, unable to relate, the male has a horror of civilization, people, cities, situations requiring an ability to understand and relate to people. So like a scared rabbit, he scurries off, dragging Daddy’s little asshole with him to the wilderness, suburbs, or, in the case of the hippy – he’s way out, Man! – all the way out to the cow pasture where he can fuck and breed undisturbed and mess around with his beads and flute.
The `hippy’, whose desire to be a `Man’, a `rugged individualist’, isn’t quite as strong as the average man’s, and who, in addition, is excited by the thought having lots of women accessible to him, rebels against the harshness of a Breadwinner’s life and the monotony of one woman. In the name of sharing and cooperation, he forms a commune or tribe, which, for all its togetherness and partly because of it, (the commune, being an extended family, is an extended violation of the female’s rights, privacy and sanity) is no more a community than normal `society’.
A true community consists of individuals – not mere species members, not couples – respecting each others individuality and privacy, at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally – free spirits in free relation to each other – and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of `society’ is the family; `hippies’ say the tribe; no one says the individual.
The `hippy’ babbles on about individuality, but has no more conception of it than any other man. He desires to get back to Nature, back to the wilderness, back to the home of furry animals that he’s one of, away from the city, where there is at least a trace, a bare beginning of civilization, to live at the species level, his time taken up with simple, non-intellectual activities – farming, fucking, bead stringing. The most important activity of the commune, the one upon which it is based, is gang-banging. The `hippy’ is enticed to the commune mainly by the prospect for free pussy – the main commodity to be shared, to be had just for the asking, but, blinded by greed, he fails to anticipate all the other men he has to share with, or the jealousies and possessiveness for the pussies themselves.
Men cannot co-operate to achieve a common end, because each man’s end is all the pussy for himself. The commune, therefore, is doomed to failure; each `hippy’ will, in panic, grad the first simpleton who digs him and whisks her off to the suburbs as fast as he can. The male cannot progress socially, but merely swings back and forth from isolation to gang-banging.
Conformity: Although he wants to be an individual, the male is scared of anything in himself that is the slightest bit different from other men, it causes him to suspect that he’s not really a `Man’, that he’s passive and totally sexual, a highly upsetting suspicion. If other men are “A” and he’s not, he must not be a man; he must be a fag. So he tries to affirm his `Manhood’ by being like all the other men. Differentness in other men, as well as himself, threatens him; it means they’re fags whom he must at all costs avoid, so he tries to make sure that all other men conform.
The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the drag queen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all the other drag queens like the functionalist, he has an identity – he is female. He tries to define all his troubles away – but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he’s a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms.
To be sure he’s a `Man’, the male must see to it that the female be clearly a `Woman’, the opposite of a `Man’, that is, the female must act like a faggot. And Daddy’s Girl, all of whose female instincts were wrenched out of her when little, easily and obligingly adapts herself to the role.
Authority and Government: Having no sense of right and wrong, no conscience, which can only stem from having an ability to empathize with others… having no faith in his non-existent self, being unnecessarily competitive, and by nature, unable to co-operate, the male feels a need for external guidance and control. So he created authorities – priests, experts, bosses, leaders, etc – and government. Wanting the female (Mama) to guide him, but unable to accept this fact (he is, after all, a MAN), wanting to play Woman, to usurp her function as Guider and Protector, he sees to it that all authorities are male.
There’s no reason why a society consisting of rational beings capable of empathizing with each other, complete and having no natural reason to compete, should have a government, laws or leaders.
Philosophy, Religion, and Morality Based on Sex: The male’s inability to relate to anybody or anything makes his life pointless and meaningless (the ultimate male insight is that life is absurd), so he invented philosophy and religion. Being empty, he looks outward, not only for guidance and control, but for salvation and for the meaning of life. Happiness being for him impossible on this earth, he invented Heaven.
For a man, having no ability to empathize with others and being totally sexual, `wrong’ is sexual `license’ and engaging in `deviant’ (`unmanly’) sexual practices, that is, not defending against his passivity and total sexuality which, if indulged, would destroy `civilization’, since `civilization’ is based entirely upon the male need to defend himself against these characteristics. For a woman (according to men), `wrong’ is any behavior that would entice men into sexual `license’ – that is, not placing male needs above her own and not being a faggot.
Religion not only provides the male with a goal (Heaven) and helps keep women tied to men, but offers rituals through which he can try to expiate the guilt and shame he feels at not defending himself enough against his sexual impulses; in essence, that guilt and shame he feels at being male.
Most men men, utterly cowardly, project their inherent weaknesses onto women, label them female weaknesses and believe themselves to have female strengths; most philosophers, not quite so cowardly, face the fact that make lacks exist in men, but still can’t face the fact that they exist in men only. So they label the male condition the Human Condition, post their nothingness problem, which horrifies them, as a philosophical dilemma, thereby giving stature to their animalism, grandiloquently label their nothingness their `Identity Problem’, and proceed to prattle on pompously about the `Crisis of the Individual’, the `Essence of Being’, `Existence preceding Essence’, `Existential Modes of Being’, etc. etc.
A woman not only takes her identity and individuality for granted, but knows instinctively that the only wrong is to hurt others, and that the meaning of life is love.
Prejudice (racial, ethnic, religious, etc): The male needs scapegoats onto whom he can project his failings and inadequacies and upon whom he can vent his frustration at not being female. And the vicarious discriminations have the practical advantage of substantially increasing the pussy pool available to the men on top.
Competition, Prestige, Status, Formal Education, Ignorance and Social and Economic Classes: Having an obsessive desire to be admired by women, but no intrinsic worth, the make constructs a highly artificial society enabling him to appropriate the appearance of worth through money, prestige, `high’ social class, degrees, professional position and knowledge and, by pushing as many other men as possible down professionally, socially, economically, and educationally.
The purpose of `higher’ education is not to educate but to exclude as many as possible from the various professions.
The male, totally physical, incapable of mental rapport, although able to understand and use knowledge and ideas, is unable to relate to them, to grasp them emotionally: he does not value knowledge and ideas for their own sake (they’re just means to ends) and, consequently, feels no need for mental companions, no need to cultivate the intellectual potentialities of others. On the contrary, the male has a vested interest in ignorance; it gives the few knowledgeable men a decided edge on the unknowledgeable ones, and besides, the male knows that an enlightened, aware female population will mean the end of him. The healthy, conceited female wants the company of equals whom she can respect and groove on; the male and the sick, insecure, unself-confident male female crave the company of worms.
No genuine social revolution can be accomplished by the male, as the male on top wants the status quo, and all the male on the bottom wants is to be the male on top. The male `rebel’ is a farce; this is the male’s `society’, made by him to satisfy his needs. He’s never satisfied, because he’s not capable of being satisfied. Ultimately, what the male `rebel’ is rebelling against is being male. The male changes only when forced to do so by technology, when he has no choice, when `society’ reaches the stage where he must change or die. We’re at that stage now; if women don’t get their asses in gear fast, we may very well all die.
Prevention of Conversation: Being completely self-centered and unable to relate to anything outside himself, the male’s `conversation’, when not about himself, is an impersonal droning on, removed from anything of human value. Male `intellectual conversation’ is a strained compulsive attempt to impress the female.
Daddy’s Girl, passive, adaptable, respectful of and in awe of the male, allows him to impose his hideously dull chatter on her. This is not too difficult for her, as the tension and anxiety, the lack of cool, the insecurity and self-doubt, the unsureness of her own feelings and sensations that Daddy instilled in her make her perceptions superficial and render her unable to see that the male’s babble is babble; like the aesthete `appreciating’ the blob that’s labeled `Great Art’, she believes she’s grooving on what bores the shit out of her. Not only does she permit his babble to dominate, she adapts her own `conversation’ accordingly.
Trained from an early childhood in niceness, politeness and `dignity’, in pandering to the male need to disguise his animalism, she obligingly reduces her own `conversation’ to small talk, a bland, insipid avoidance of any topic beyond the utterly trivial – or is `educated’, to `intellectual’ discussion, that is, impersonal discoursing on irrelevant distractions – the Gross National Product, the Common Market, the influence of Rimbaud on symbolist painting. So adept is she at pandering that it eventually becomes second nature and she continues to pander to men even when in the company of other females only.
Apart from pandering, her `conversation’ is further limited by her insecurity about expressing deviant, original opinions and the self-absorption based on insecurity and that prevents her conversation from being charming. Niceness, politeness, `dignity’, insecurity and self-absorption are hardly conducive to intensity and wit, qualities a conversation must have to be worthy of the name. Such conversation is hardly rampant, as only completely self-confident, arrogant, outgoing, proud, tough-minded females are capable of intense, bitchy, witty conversation.
Prevention of Friendship (Love): Men have contempt for themselves, for all other men whom they contemplate more than casually and whom they do not think are females, (for example `sympathetic’ analysts and `Great Artists’) or agents of God and for all women who respect and pander to them: the insecure, approval-seeking, pandering male-females have contempt for themselves and for all women like them: the self-confident, swinging, thrill-seeking female females have contempt for me and for the pandering male females. In short, contempt is the order of the day.
Love is not dependency or sex, but friendship, and therefore, love can’t exist between two males, between a male and a female, or between two females, one or both of whom is a mindless, insecure, pandering male; like conversation, live can exist only between two secure, free-wheeling, independent groovy female females, since friendship is based upon respect, not contempt.
Even amongst groovy females deep friendships seldom occur in adulthood, as almost all of them are either tied up with men in order to survive economically, or bogged down in hacking their way through the jungle and in trying to keep their heads about the amorphous mass. Love can’t flourish in a society based upon money and meaningless work: it requires complete economic as well as personal freedom, leisure time and the opportunity to engage in intensely absorbing, emotionally satisfying activities which, when shared with those you respect, lead to deep friendship. Our `society’ provides practically no opportunity to engage in such activities.
Having stripped the world of conversation, friendship and love, the male offers us these paltry substitutes:
`Great Art’ and `Culture’: The male `artist’ attempts to solve his dilemma of not being able to live, of not being female, by constructing a highly artificial world in which the male is heroized, that is, displays female traits, and the female is reduced to highly limited, insipid subordinate roles, that is, to being male.
The male `artistic’ aim being, not to communicate (having nothing inside him he has nothing to say), but to disguise his animalism, he resorts to symbolism and obscurity (`deep’ stuff). The vast majority of people, particularly the `educated’ ones, lacking faith in their own judgment, humble, respectful of authority (`Daddy knows best’), are easily conned into believing that obscurity, evasiveness, incomprehensibility, indirectness, ambiguity and boredom are marks of depth and brilliance.
`Great Art’ proves that men are superior to women, that men are women, being labeled `Great Art’, almost all of which, as the anti-feminists are fond of reminding us, was created by men. We know that `Great Art’ is great because male authorities have told us so, and we can’t claim otherwise, as only those with exquisite sensitivities far superior to ours can perceive and appreciated the slop they appreciated.
Appreciating is the sole diversion of the `cultivated’; passive and incompetent, lacking imagination and wit, they must try to make do with that; unable to create their own diversions, to create a little world of their own, to affect in the smallest way their environments, they must accept what’s given; unable to create or relate, they spectate. Absorbing `culture’ is a desperate, frantic attempt to groove in an ungroovy world, to escape the horror of a sterile, mindless, existence. `Culture’ provides a sop to the egos of the incompetent, a means of rationalizing passive spectating; they can pride themselves on their ability to appreciate the `finer’ things, to see a jewel where this is only a turd (they want to be admired for admiring). Lacking faith in their ability to change anything, resigned to the status quo, they have to see beauty in turds because, so far as they can see, turds are all they’ll ever have.
The veneration of `Art’ and `Culture’ – besides leading many women into boring, passive activity that distracts from more important and rewarding activities, from cultivating active abilities, and leads to the constant intrusion on our sensibilities of pompous dissertations on the deep beauty of this and that turn. This allows the `artist’ to be setup as one possessing superior feelings, perceptions, insights and judgments, thereby undermining the faith of insecure women in the value and validity of their own feelings, perceptions, insights and judgments.
The male, having a very limited range of feelings, and consequently, very limited perceptions, insights and judgments, needs the `artist’ to guide him, to tell him what life is all about. But the male `artist’ being totally sexual, unable to relate to anything beyond his own physical sensations, having nothing to express beyond the insight that for the male life is meaningless and absurd, cannot be an artist. How can he who is not capable of life tell us what life is all about? A `male artist’ is a contradiction in terms. A degenerate can only produce degenerate `art’. The true artist is every self-confident, healthy female, and in a female society the only Art, the only Culture, will be conceited, kooky, funky, females grooving on each other and on everything else in the universe.
Sexuality: Sex is not part of a relationship: on the contrary, it is a solitary experience, non-creative, a gross waste of time. The female can easily – far more easily than she may think – condition away her sex drive, leaving her completely cool and cerebral and free to pursue truly worthy relationships and activities; but the male, who seems to dig women sexually and who seeks out constantly to arouse them, stimulates the highly sexed female to frenzies of lust, throwing her into a sex bag from which few women ever escape. The lecherous male excited the lustful female; he has to – when the female transcends her body, rises above animalism, the male, whose ego consists of his cock, will disappear.
Sex is the refuge of the mindless. And the more mindless the woman, the more deeply embedded in the male `culture’, in short, the nicer she is, the more sexual she is. The nicest women in our `society’ are raving sex maniacs. But, being just awfully, awfully nice, they don’t, of course descend to fucking – that’s uncouth – rather they make love, commune by means of their bodies and establish sensual rapport; the literary ones are attuned to the throb of Eros and attain a clutch upon the Universe; the religious have spiritual communion with the Divine Sensualism; the mystics merge with the Erotic Principle and blend with the Cosmos, and the acid heads contact their erotic cells.
On the other hand, those females least embedded in the male `Culture’, the least nice, those crass and simple souls who reduce fucking to fucking, who are too childish for the grown-up world of suburbs, mortgages, mops and baby shit, too selfish to raise kids and husbands, too uncivilized to give a shit for anyones opinion of them, too arrogant to respect Daddy, the `Greats’ or the deep wisdom of the Ancients, who trust only their own animal, gutter instincts, who equate Culture with chicks, whose sole diversion is prowling for emotional thrills and excitement, who are given to disgusting, nasty upsetting `scenes’, hateful, violent bitches given to slamming those who unduly irritate them in the teeth, who’d sink a shiv into a man’s chest or ram an icepick up his asshole as soon as look at him, if they knew they could get away with it, in short, those who, by the standards of our `culture’ are SCUM… these females are cool and relatively cerebral and skirting asexuality.
Unhampered by propriety, niceness, discretion, public opinion, `morals’, the respect of assholes, always funky, dirty, low-down SCUM gets around… and around and around… they’ve seen the whole show – every bit of it – the fucking scene, the dyke scene – they’ve covered the whole waterfront, been under every dock and pier – the peter pier, the pussy pier… you’ve got to go through a lot of sex to get to anti-sex, and SCUM’s been through it all, and they’re now ready for a new show; they want to crawl out from other the dock, move, take off, sink out. But SCUM doesn’t yet prevail; SCUM’s still in the gutter of our `society’, which, if it’s not deflected from its present course and if the Bomb doesn’t drop on it, will hump itself to death.
Boredom: Life in a society made by and for creatures who, when they are not grim and depressing are utter bores, van only be, when not grim and depressing, an utter bore.
Secrecy, Censorship, Suppression of Knowledge and Ideas, and Exposes: Every male’s deep-seated, secret, most hideous fear is of being discovered to be not a female, but a male, a subhuman animal. Although niceness, politeness and `dignity’ suffice to prevent his exposure on a personal level, in order to prevent the general exposure of the male sex as a whole and to maintain his unnatural dominant position position in `society’, the male must resort to:
1. Censorship. Responding reflexively to isolated works and phrases rather than cereberally to overall meanings, the male attempts to prevent the arousal and discovery of his animalism by censoring not only `pornography’, but any work containing `dirty’ words, no matter in what context they are used.
2. Suppression of all ideas and knowledge that might expose him or threaten his dominant position in `society’. Much biological and psychological data is suppressed, because it is proof of the male’s gross inferiority to the female. Also, the problem of mental illness will never be solved while the male maintains control, because first, men have a vested interest in it – only females who have very few of their marbles will allow males the slightest bit of control over anything, and second, the male cannot admit to the role that fatherhood plays in causing mental illness.
3. Exposes. The male’s chief delight in life – insofar as the tense, grim male can ever be said to delight in anything – is in exposing others. It doesn’t’ much matter what they’re exposed as, so long as they’re exposed; it distracts attention from himself. Exposing others as enemy agents (Communists and Socialists) is one of his favorite pastimes, as it removes the source of the threat to him not only from himself, but from the country and the Western world. The bugs up his ass aren’t in him, they’re in Russia.
Distrust: Unable to empathize or feel affection or loyalty, being exclusively out for himself, the male has no sense of fair play; cowardly, needing constantly to pander to the female to win her approval, that he is helpless without, always on the edge lest his animalism, his maleness be discovered, always needing to cover up, he must lie constantly; being empty he has not honor or integrity – he doesn’t know what those words mean. The male, in short, is treacherous, and the only appropriate attitude in a male `society’ is cynicism and distrust.
Ugliness: Being totally sexual, incapable of cerebral or aesthetic responses, totally materialistic and greedy, the male, besides inflicting on the world `Great Art’, has decorated his unlandscaped cities with ugly buildings (both inside and out), ugly decors, billboards, highways, cars, garbage trucks, and, most notably, his own putrid self.
Hatred and Violence: The male is eaten up with tension, with frustration at not being female, at not being capable of ever achieving satisfaction or pleasure of any kind; eaten up with hate – not rational hate that is directed at those who abuse or insult you – but irrational, indiscriminate hate… hatred, at bottom, of his own worthless self.
Gratuitous violence, besides `proving’ he’s a `Man’, serves as an outlet for his hate and, in addition – the male being capable only of sexual responses and needing very strong stimuli to stimulate his half-dead self – provides him with a little sexual thrill..
Disease and Death: All diseases are curable, and the aging process and death are due to disease; it is possible, therefore, never to age and to live forever. In fact the problems of aging and death could be solved within a few years, if an all-out, massive scientific assault were made upon the problem. This, however, will not occur with the male establishment because:
1. The many male scientists who shy away from biological research, terrified of the discovery that males are females, and show marked preference for virile, `manly’ war and death programs.
2. The discouragement of many potential scientists from scientific careers by the rigidity, boringness, expensiveness, time-consumingness, and unfair exclusivity of our `higher’ educational system.
3. Propaganda disseminated by insecure male professionals, who jealously guard their positions, so that only a highly select few can comprehend abstract scientific concepts.
4. Widespread lack of self-confidence brought about by the father system that discourages many talented girls from becoming scientists.
5. Lack of automation. There now exists a wealth of data which, if sorted out and correlated, would reveal the cure for cancer and several other diseases and possibly the key to life itself. But the data is so massive it requires high speed computers to correlate it all. The institution of computers will be delayed interminably under the male control system, since the male has a horror of being replaced by machines.
6. The money systems’ insatiable need for new products. Most of the few scientists around who aren’t working on death programs are tied up doing research for corporations.
7. The males like death – it excites him sexually and, already dead inside, he wants to die.
8. The bias of the money system for the least creative scientists. Most scientists come from at least relatively affluent families where Daddy reigns supreme.
Incapable of a positive state of happiness, which is the only thing that can justify one’s existence, the male is, at best, relaxed, comfortable, neutral, and this condition is extremely short-lived, as boredom, a negative state, soon sets in; he is, therefore, doomed to an existence of suffering relieved only by occasional, fleeting stretches of restfulness, which state he can only achieve at the expense of some female. The male is, by his very nature, a leech, an emotional parasite and, therefore, not ethically entitled to live, as no one as the right to life at someone else’s expense.
Just as humans have a prior right to existence over dogs by virtue of being more highly evolved and having a superior consciousness, so women have a prior right to existence over men. The elimination of any male is, therefore, a righteous and good act, an act highly beneficial to women as well as an act of mercy.
However, this moral issue will eventually be rendered academic by the fact that the male is gradually eliminating himself. In addition to engaging in the time-honored and classical wars and race riots, men are more and more either becoming fags or are obliterating themselves through drugs. The female, whether she likes it or not, will eventually take complete charge, if for no other reason than that she will have to – the male, for practical purposes, won’t exist.
Accelerating this trend is the fact that more and more males are acquiring enlightened self-interest; they’re realizing more and more that the female interest is in their interest, that they can live only through the female and that the more the female is encouraged to live, to fulfill herself, to be a female and not a male, the more nearly he lives; he’s coming to see that it’s easier and more satisfactory to live through her than to try to become her and usurp her qualities, claim them as his own, push the female down and claim that she’s a male. The fag, who accepts his maleness, that is, his passivity and total sexuality, his femininity, is also best served by women being truly female, as it would then be easier for him to be male, feminine. If men were wise they would seek to become really female, would do intensive biological research that would lead to me, by means of operations on the brain and nervous system, being able t to be transformed in psyche, as well as body, into women.
Whether to continue to use females for reproduction or to reproduce in the laboratory will also become academic: what will happen when every female, twelve and over, is routinely taking the Pill and there are no longer any accidents? How many women will deliberately get or (if an accident) remain pregnant? No, Virginia, women don’t just adore being brood mares, despite what the mass of robot, brainwashed women will say. When society consists of only the fully conscious the answer will be none. Should a certain percentage of men be set aside by force to serve as brood mares for the species? Obviously this will not do. The answer is laboratory reproduction of babies.
As for the issue of whether or not to continue to reproduce males, it doesn’t follow that because the male, like disease, has always existed among us that he should continue to exist. When genetic control is possible – and soon it will be – it goes without saying that we should produce only whole, complete beings, not physical defects of deficiencies, including emotional deficiencies, such as maleness. Just as the deliberate production of blind people would be highly immoral, so would be the deliberate production of emotional cripples.
Why produce even females? Why should there be future generations? What is their purpose? When aging and death are eliminated, why continue to reproduce? Why should we care what happens when we’re dead? Why should we care that there is no younger generation to succeed us.
Eventually the natural course of events, of social evolution, will lead to total female control of the world and, subsequently, to the cessation of the production of males and, ultimately, to the cessation of the production of females.
But SCUM is impatient; SCUM is not consoled by the thought that future generations will thrive; SCUM wants to grab some thrilling living for itself. And, if a large majority of women were SCUM, they could acquire complete control of this country within a few weeks simply by withdrawing from the labor force, thereby paralyzing the entire nation. Additional measures, any one of which would be sufficient to completely disrupt the economy and everything else, would be for women to declare themselves off the money system, stop buying, just loot and simply refuse to obey all laws they don’t care to obey. The police force, National Guard, Army, Navy and Marines combined couldn’t squelch a rebellion of over half the population, particularly when it’s made up of people they are utterly helpless without.
If all women simply left men, refused to have anything to do with any of them – ever, all men, the government, and the national economy would collapse completely. Even without leaving men, women who are aware of the extent of their superiority to and power over men, could acquire complete control over everything within a few weeks, could effect a total submission of males to females. In a sane society the male would trot along obediently after the female. The male is docile and easily led, easily subjected to the domination of any female who cares to dominate him. The male, in fact, wants desperately to be led by females, wants Mama in charge, wants to abandon himself to her care. But this is not a sane society, and most women are not even dimly aware of where they’re at in relation to men.
The conflict, therefore, is not between females and males, but between SCUM – dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant females, who consider themselves fit to rule the universe, who have free-wheeled to the limits of this `society’ and are ready to wheel on to something far beyond what it has to offer – and nice, passive, accepting `cultivated’, polite, dignified, subdued, dependent, scared, mindless, insecure, approval-seeking Daddy’s Girls, who can’t cope with the unknown, who want to hang back with the apes, who feel secure only with Big Daddy standing by, with a big strong man to lean on and with a fat, hairy face in the White House, who are too cowardly to face up to the hideous reality of what a man is, what Daddy is, who have cast their lot with the swine, who have adapted themselves to animalism, feel superficially comfortable with it and know no other way of `life’, who have reduced their minds, thoughts and sights to the male level, who, lacking sense, imagination and wit can have value only in a male `society’, who can have a place in the sun, or, rather, in the slime, only as soothers, ego boosters, relaxers and breeders, who are dismissed as inconsequents by other females, who project their deficiencies, their maleness, onto all females and see the female as worm.
But SCUM is too impatient to wait for the de-brainwashing of millions of assholes. Why should the swinging females continue to plod dismally along with the dull male ones? Why should the fates of the groovy and the creepy be intertwined? Why should the active and imaginative consult the passive and dull on social policy? Why should the independent be confined to the sewer along with the dependent who need Daddy to cling to? A small handful of SCUM can take over the country within a year by systematically fucking up the system, selectively destroying property, and murder:
SCUM will become members of the unwork force, the fuck-up force; they will get jobs of various kinds an unwork. For example, SCUM salesgirls will not charge for merchandise; SCUM telephone operators will not charge for calls; SCUM office and factory workers, in addition to fucking up their work, will secretly destroy equipment. SCUM will unwork at a job until fired, then get a new job to unwork at.
SCUM will forcibly relieve bus drivers, cab drivers and subway token sellers of their jobs and run buses and cabs and dispense free tokens to the public.
SCUM will destroy all useless and harmful objects – cars, store windows, `Great Art’, etc.
Eventually SCUM will take over the airwaves – radio and TV networks – by forcibly relieving of their jobs all radio and TV employees who would impede SCUM’s entry into the broadcasting studios.
SCUM will couple-bust – barge into mixed (male-female) couples, wherever they are, and bust them up.
SCUM will kill all men who are not in the Men’s Auxiliary of SCUM. Men in the Men’s Auxiliary are those men who are working diligently to eliminate themselves, men who, regardless of their motives, do good, men who are playing pall with SCUM. A few examples of the men in the Men’s Auxiliary are: men who kill men; biological scientists who are working on constructive programs, as opposed to biological warfare; journalists, writers, editors, publishers and producers who disseminate and promote ideas that will lead to the achievement of SCUM’s goals; faggots who, by their shimmering, flaming example, encourage other men to de-man themselves and thereby make themselves relatively inoffensive; men who consistently give things away – money, things, services; men who tell it like it is (so far not one ever has), who put women straight, who reveal the truth about themselves, who give the mindless male females correct sentences to parrot, who tell them a woman’s primary goal in life should be to squash the male sex (to aid men in this endeavor SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: `I am a turd, a lowly abject turd’, then proceed to list all the ways in which he is. His reward for doing so will be the opportunity to fraternize after the session for a whole, solid hour with the SCUM who will be present. Nice, clean-living male women will be invited to the sessions to help clarify any doubts and misunderstandings they may have about the male sex; makers and promoters of sex books and movies, etc., who are hastening the day when all that will be shown on the screen will be Suck and Fuck (males, like the rats following the Pied Piper, will be lured by Pussy to their doom, will be overcome and submerged by and will eventually drown in the passive flesh that they are); drug pushers and advocates, who are hastening the dropping out of men.
Being in the Men’s Auxiliary is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for making SCUM’s escape list; it’s not enough to do good; to save their worthless asses men must also avoid evil. A few examples of the most obnoxious or harmful types are: rapists, politicians and all who are in their service (campaigners, members of political parties, etc); lousy singers and musicians; Chairmen of Boards; Breadwinners; landlords; owners of greasy spoons and restaraunts that play Muzak; `Great Artists’; cheap pikers and welchers; cops; tycoons; scientists working on death and destruction programs or for private industry (practically all scientists); liars and phonies; disc jockies; men who intrude themselves in the slightest way on any strange female; real estate men; stock brokers; men who speak when they have nothing to say; men who sit idly on the street and mar the landscape with their presence; double dealers; flim-flam artists; litterbugs; plagiarisers; men who in the slightest way harm any female; all men in the advertising industry; psychiatrists and clinical psychologists; dishonest writers, journalists, editors, publishers, etc.; censors on both the public and private levels; all members of the armed forces, including draftees (LBJ and McNamara give orders, but servicemen carry them out) and particularly pilots (if the bomb drops, LBJ won’t drop it; a pilot will). In the case of a man whose behavior falls into both the good and bad categories, an overall subjective evaluation of him will be made to determine if his behavior is, in the balance, good or bad.
It is most tempting to pick off the female `Great Artists’, liars and phonies etc along with the men, but that would be inexpedient, as it would not be clear to most of the public that the female killed was a male. All women have a fink streak in them, to a greater or lesser degree, but it stems from a lifetime of living among men. Eliminate men and women will shape up. Women are improvable; men are no, although their behavior is. When SCUM gets hot on their asses it’ll shape up fast.
Simultaneously with the fucking-up, looting, couple-busting, destroying and killing, SCUM will recruit. SCUM, then, will consist of recruiters; the elite corps – the hard core activists (the fuck-ups, looters and destroyers) and the elite of the elite – the killers.
Dropping out is not the answer; fucking-up is. Most women are already dropped out; they were never in. Dropping out gives control to those few who don’t drop out; dropping out is exactly what the establishment leaders want; it plays into the hands of the enemy; it strengthens the system instead of undermining it, since it is based entirely on the non-participating, passivity, apathy and non-involvement of the mass of women. Dropping out, however, is an excellent policy for men, and SCUM will enthusiastically encourage it.
Looking inside yourself for salvation, contemplating your navel, is not, as the Drop Out people would have you believe, the answer. Happiness likes outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one’s goal, not self-absorption. The male, capable of only the latter, makes a virtue of irremediable fault and sets up self-absorption, not only as a good but as a Philosophical Good, and thus gets credit for being deep.
SCUM will not picket, demonstrate, march or strike to attempt to achieve its ends. Such tactics are for nice, genteel ladies who scrupulously take only such action as is guaranteed to be ineffective. In addition, only decent, clean-living male women, highly trained in submerging themselves in the species, act on a mob basis. SCUM consists of individuals; SCUM is not a mob, a blob. Only as many SCUM will do a job as are needed for the job. Also SCUM, being cool and selfish, will not subject to getting itself rapped on the head with billy clubs; that’s for the nice, `privileged, educated’, middle-class ladies with a high regard for the touching faith in the essential goodness of Daddy and policemen. If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President’s stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.
SCUM will always operate on a criminal as opposed to a civil disobedience basis, that is, as opposed to openly violating the law and going to jail in order to draw attention to an injustice. Such tactics acknowledge the rightness overall system and are used only to modify it slightly, change specific laws. SCUM is against the entire system, the very idea of law and government. SCUM is out to destroy the system, not attain certain rights within it. Also, SCUM – always selfish, always cool – will always aim to avoid detection and punishment. SCUM will always be furtive, sneaky, underhanded (although SCUM murders will always be known to be such).
Both destruction and killing will be selective and discriminate. SCUM is against half-crazed, indiscriminate riots, with no clear objective in mind, and in which many of your own kind are picked off. SCUM will never instigate, encourage or participate in riots of any kind or other form of indiscriminate destruction. SCUM will coolly, furtively, stalk its prey and quietly move in for the kill. Destruction will never me such as to block off routes needed for the transportation of food or other essential supplies, contaminate or cut off the water supply, block streets and traffic to the extent that ambulances can’t get through or impede the functioning of hospitals.
SCUM will keep on destroying, looting, fucking-up and killing until the money-work system no longer exists and automation is completely instituted or until enough women co-operate with SCUM to make violence unnecessary to achieve these goals, that is, until enough women either unwork or quit work, start looting, leave men and refuse to obey all laws inappropriate to a truly civilized society. Many women will fall into line, but many others, who surrendered long ago to the enemy, who are so adapted to animalism, to maleness, that they like restrictions and restraints, don’t know what to do with freedom, will continue to be toadies and doormats, just as peasants in rice paddies remain peasants in rice paddies as one regime topples another. A few of the more volatile will whimper and sulk and throw their toys and dishrags on the floor, but SCUM will continue to steamroller over them.
A completely automated society can be accomplished very simply and quickly once there is a public demand for it. The blueprints for it are already in existence, and it’s construction will take only a few weeks with millions of people working on it. Even though off the money system, everyone will be most happy to pitch in and get the automated society built; it will mark the beginning of a fantastic new era, and there will be a celebration atmosphere accompanying the construction.
The elimination of money and the complete institution of automation are basic to all other SCUM reforms; without these two the others can’t take place; with them the others will take place very rapidly. The government will automatically collapse. With complete automation it will be possible for every woman to vote directly on every issue by means of an electronic voting machine in her house. Since the government is occupied almost entirely with regulating economic affairs and legislating against purely private matters, the elimination of money wand with it the elimination of males who wish to legislate `morality’ will mean there will be practically no issues to vote on.
After the elimination of money there will be no further need to kill men; they will be stripped of the only power they have over psychologically independent females. They will be able to impose themselves only on the doormats, who like to be imposed on. The rest of the women will be busy solving the few remaining unsolved problems before planning their agenda for eternity and Utopia – completely revamping educational programs so that millions of women can be trained within a few months for high level intellectual work that now requires years of training (this can be done very easily once out educational goal is to educate and not perpetuate an academic and intellectual elite); solving the problems of disease and old age and death and completely redesigning our cities and living quarters. Many women will for a while continue to think they dig men, but as they become accustomed to female society and as they become absorbed in their projects, they will eventually come to see the utter uselessnes and banality of the male.
The few remaining men can exist out their puny days dropped out on drugs or strutting around in drag or passively watching the high-powered female in action, fulfilling themselves as spectators, vicarious livers*[FOOTNOTE: It will be electronically possible for him to tune into any specific female he wants to and follow in detail her every movement. The females will kindly, obligingly consent to this, as it won’t hurt them in the slightest and it is a marvelously kind and humane way to treat their unfortunate, handicapped fellow beings.] or breeding in the cow pasture with the toadies, or they can go off to the nearest friendly suicide center where they will be quietly, quickly, and painlessly gassed to death.
Prior to the institution of automation, to the replacement of males by machines, the male should be of use to the female, wait on her, cater to her slightest whim, obey her every command, be totally subservient to her, exist in perfect obedience to her will, as opposed to the completely warped, degenerate situation we have now of men, not only not only not existing at all, cluttering up the world with their ignominious presence, but being pandered to and groveled before by the mass of females, millions of women piously worshiping the Golden Calf, the dog leading the master on a leash, when in fact the male, short of being a drag queen, is least miserable when his dogginess is recognized – no unrealistic emotional demands are made of him and the completely together female is calling the shots. Rational men want to be squashed, stepped on, crushed and crunched, treated as the curs, the filth that they are, have their repulsiveness confirmed.
The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against their disgustingness, when they see SCUM barrelling down on them, will cling in terror to Big Mama with her Big Bouncy Boobies, but Boobies won’t protect them against SCUM; Big Mama will be clinging to Big Daddy, who will be in the corner shitting in his forceful, dynamic pants. Men who are rational, however, won’t kick or struggle or raise a distressing fuss, but will just sit back, relax, enjoy the show and ride the waves to their demise.
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figtreeandvine · 6 months
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So this year's "big project" for NaClYoHo is replacing all my plumbing. Last November one of the fifty-year-old galvanized steel pipes sprang a leak, causing a minor flood. I fixed that bit immediately, but I've known the plumbing is on borrow time since then. I hope to have the replacement completed by the end of the month.
I started work on this in October, though just prep work. Today I removed and replaced the first actual pipe: I replaced the three-foot section coming out of the hot water heater with CPVC. This means I can create new CPVC branches in parallel to the old galvanized branches, without disrupting the galvanized supply until I'm ready to switch.
The pipe I removed has a 3/4-inch internal diameter. In theory. Once upon a time. Rust has narrowed it to maybe 1/2-inch--I could barely see light through it. It took two pipe wrenches, a three-foot "cheater bar" (wrench handle extension), and my full body weight to get it loose. The water ran orange for five minutes in the kitchen when I turned the water back on--like seriously Kool-aid colored!
I also have plenty of smaller, more cleaning-oriented things on my NaClYoHo bucket list, of course. Shampooing the carpets, for one. Sorting out various paperwork. Weeding the kitchen cabinets. Making winter pants.
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themothermary · 1 year
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The SCUM Manifesto  
Valerie Solanas 
--I found an online copy of the SCUM manifesto, at https://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/rants/scum.html , but after a conversation with a friend who couldn't access it, decided to copy it here so more people could read it! all credits to the original woman that copied it down--
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. 
It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples. 
The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings -- hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt -- and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn't. 
Although completely physical, the male is unfit even for stud service. Even assuming mechanical proficiency, which few men have, he is, first of all, incapable of zestfully, lustfully, tearing off a piece, but instead is eaten up with guilt, shame, fear and insecurity, feelings rooted in male nature, which the most enlightened training can only minimize; second, the physical feeling he attains is next to nothing; and third, he is not empathizing with his partner, but is obsessed with how he's doing, turning in an A performance, doing a good plumbing job. To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo. It's often said that men use women. Use them for what? Surely not pleasure. 
Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he's lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim through a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He'll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and furthermore, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn't the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It's not ego satisfaction; that doesn't explain screwing corpses and babies. 
Completely egocentric, unable to relate, empathize or identify, and filled with a vast, pervasive, diffuse sexuality, the male is pyschically passive. He hates his passivity, so he projects it onto women, defines the make as active, then sets out to prove that he is (`prove that he is a Man'). His main means of attempting to prove it is screwing (Big Man with a Big Dick tearing off a Big Piece). Since he's attempting to prove an error, he must `prove' it again and again. Screwing, then, is a desperate compulsive, attempt to prove he's not passive, not a woman; but he is passive and does want to be a woman. 
Being an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempting to complete himself, to become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through an fuse with the female, and by claiming as his own all female characteristics -- emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc -- and projecting onto women all male traits -- vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. It should be said, though, that the male has one glaring area of superiority over the female -- public relations. (He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men). The male claim that females find fulfillment through motherhood and sexuality reflects what males think they'd find fulfilling if they were female. 
Women, in other words, don't have penis envy; men have pussy envy. When the male accepts his passivity, defines himself as a woman (males as well as females think men are women and women are men), and becomes a transvestite he loses his desire to screw (or to do anything else, for that matter; he fulfills himself as a drag queen) and gets his dick chopped off. He then achieves a continuous diffuse sexual feeling from `being a woman'. Screwing is, for a man, a defense against his desire to be female. He is responsible for: 
War: The male's normal compensation for not being female, namely, getting his Big Gun off, is grossly inadequate, as he can get it off only a very limited number of times; so he gets it off on a really massive scale, and proves to the entire world that he's a `Man'. Since he has no compassion or ability to empathize or identify, proving his manhood is worth an endless amount of mutilation and suffering and an endless number of lives, including his own -- his own life being worthless, he would rather go out in a blaze of glory than to plod grimly on for fifty more years. 
Niceness, Politeness, and `Dignity': Every man, deep down, knows he's a worthless piece of shit. Overwhelmed by a sense of animalism and deeply ashamed of it; wanting, not to express himself, but to hide from others his total physicality, total egocentricity, the hate and contempt he feels for other men, and to hide from himself the hate and contempt he suspects other men feel for him; having a crudely constructed nervous system that is easily upset by the least display of emotion or feeling, the male tries to enforce a `social' code that ensures perfect blandness, unsullied by the slightest trace or feeling or upsetting opinion. He uses terms like `copulate', `sexual congress', `have relations with' (to men sexual relations is a redundancy), overlaid with stilted manners; the suit on the chimp. 
Money, Marriage and Prostitution, Work and Prevention of an Automated Society: There is no human reason for money or for anyone to work more than two or three hours a week at the very most. All non-creative jobs (practically all jobs now being done) could have been automated long ago, and in a moneyless society everyone can have as much of the best of everything as she wants. But there are non-human, male reasons for wanting to maintain the money system: 
1. Pussy. Despising his highly inadequate self, overcome with intense anxiety and a deep, profound loneliness when by his empty self, desperate to attach himself to any female in dim hopes of completing himself, in the mystical belief that by touching gold he'll turn to gold, the male craves the continuous companionship of women. The company of the lowest female is preferable to his own or that of other men, who serve only to remind him of his repulsiveness. But females, unless very young or very sick, must be coerced or bribed into male company. 
2. Supply the non-relating male with the delusion of usefulness, and enable him to try to justify his existence by digging holes and then filling them up. Leisure time horrifies the male, who will have nothing to do but contemplate his grotesque self. Unable to relate or to love, the male must work. Females crave absorbing, emotionally satisfying, meaningful activity, but lacking the opportunity or ability for this, they prefer to idle and waste away their time in ways of their own choosing -- sleeping, shopping, bowling, shooting pool, playing cards and other games, breeding, reading, walking around, daydreaming, eating, playing with themselves, popping pills, going to the movies, getting analyzed, traveling, raising dogs and cats, lolling about on the beach, swimming, watching TV, listening to music, decorating their houses, gardening, sewing, nightclubbing, dancing, visiting, `improving their minds' (taking courses), and absorbing `culture' (lectures, plays, concerts, `arty' movies). Therefore, many females would, even assuming complete economic equality between the sexes, prefer living with males or peddling their asses on the street, thus having most of their time for themselves, to spending many hours of their days doing boring, stultifying, non-creative work for someone else, functioning as less than animals, as machines, or, at best -- if able to get a `good' job -- co-managing the shitpile. What will liberate women, therefore, from male control is the total elimination of the money-work system, not the attainment of economic equality with men within it. 
3. Power and control. Unmasterful in his personal relations with women, the male attains to masterfulness by the manipulation of money and everything controlled by money, in other words, of everything and everybody. 
4. Love substitute. Unable to give love or affection, the male gives money. It makes him feel motherly. The mother gives milk; he gives bread. He is the Breadwinner. 
5. Provide the male with a goal. Incapable of enjoying the moment, the male needs something to look forward to, and money provides him with an eternal, never-ending goal: Just think of what you could do with 80 trillion dollars -- invest it! And in three years time you'd have 300 trillion dollars!!! 
6. Provide the basis for the male's major opportunity to control and manipulate -- fatherhood. 
Fatherhood and Mental Illness (fear, cowardice, timidity, humility, insecurity, passivity): Mother wants what's best for her kids; Daddy only wants what's best for Daddy, that is peace and quiet, pandering to his delusion of dignity (`respect'), a good reflection on himself (status) and the opportunity to control and manipulate, or, if he's an `enlightened' father, to `give guidance'. His daughter, in addition, he wants sexually -- he givers her hand in marriage; the other part is for him. Daddy, unlike Mother, can never give in to his kids, as he must, at all costs, preserve his delusion of decisiveness, forcefulness, always-rightness and strength. Never getting one's way leads to lack of self-confidence in one's ability to cope with the world and to a passive acceptance of the status quo. Mother loves her kids, although she sometimes gets angry, but anger blows over quickly and even while it exists, doesn't preclude love and basic acceptance. Emotionally diseased Daddy doesn't love his kids; he approves of them -- if they're `good', that is, if they're nice, `respectful', obedient, subservient to his will, quiet and not given to unseemly displays of temper that would be most upsetting to Daddy's easily disturbed male nervous system -- in other words, if they're passive vegetables. If they're not `good', he doesn't get angry -- not if he's a modern, `civilized' father (the old-fashioned ranting, raving brute is preferable, as he is so ridiculous he can be easily despised) -- but rather express disapproval, a state that, unlike anger, endures and precludes a basic acceptance, leaving the kid with the feeling of worthlessness and a lifelong obsession wit being approved of; the result is fear of independent thought, as this leads to unconventional, disapproved of opinions and way of life. 
For the kid to want Daddy's approval it must respect Daddy, and being garbage, Daddy can make sure that he is respected only by remaining aloof, by distantness, by acting on the precept of `familiarity breeds contempt', which is, of course, true, if one is contemptible. By being distant and aloof, he is able to remain unknown, mysterious, and thereby, to inspire fear (`respect'). 
Disapproval of emotional `scenes' leads to fear of strong emotion, fear of one's own anger and hatred. Fear of anger and hatred combined with a lack of self-confidence in one's ability to cope with and change the world, or even to affect in the slightest way one's own destiny, leads to a mindless belief that the world and most people in it are nice and the most banal, trivial amusements are great fun and deeply pleasurable. 
The affect of fatherhood on males, specifically, is to make them `Men', that is, highly defensive of all impulses to passivity, faggotry, and of desires to be female. Every boy wants to imitate his mother, be her, fuse with her, but Daddy forbids this; he is the mother; he gets to fuse with her. So he tells the boy, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, to not be a sissy, to act like a `Man'. The boy, scared shitless of and `respecting' his father, complies, and becomes just like Daddy, that model of `Man'-hood, the all-American ideal -- the well-behaved heterosexual dullard. 
The effect of fatherhood on females is to make them male -- dependent, passive, domestic, animalistic, insecure, approval and security seekers, cowardly, humble, `respectful' of authorities and men, closed, not fully responsive, half-dead, trivial, dull, conventional, flattened-out and thoroughly contemptible. Daddy's Girl, always tense and fearful, uncool, unanalytical, lacking objectivity, appraises Daddy, and thereafter, other men, against a background of fear (`respect') and is not only unable to see the empty shell behind the facade, but accepts the male definition of himself as superior, as a female, and of herself, as inferior, as a male, which, thanks to Daddy, she really is. 
It is the increase of fatherhood, resulting from the increased and more widespread affluence that fatherhood needs in order to thrive, that has caused the general increase of mindlessness and the decline of women in the United States since the 1920s. The close association of affluence with fatherhood has led, for the most part, to only the wrong girls, namely, the `privileged' middle class girls, getting `educated'. 
The effect of fathers, in sum, has been to corrode the world with maleness. The male has a negative Midas Touch -- everything he touches turns to shit. 
Suppression of Individuality, Animalism (domesticity and motherhood), and Functionalism: The male is just a bunch of conditioned reflexes, incapable of a mentally free response; he is tied to he earliest conditioning, determined completely by his past experiences. His earliest experiences are with his mother, and he is throughout his life tied to her. It never becomes completely clear to the make that he is not part of his mother, that he is he and she is she. 
His greatest need is to be guided, sheltered, protected and admired by Mama (men expect women to adore what men shrink from in horror -- themselves) and, being completely physical, he yearns to spend his time (that's not spent `out in the world' grimly defending against his passivity) wallowing in basic animal activities -- eating, sleeping, shitting, relaxing and being soothed by Mama. Passive, rattle-headed Daddy's Girl, ever eager for approval, for a pat on the head, for the `respect' if any passing piece of garbage, is easily reduced to Mama, mindless ministrator to physical needs, soother of the weary, apey brow, booster of the tiny ego, appreciator of the contemptible, a hot water bottle with tits. 
The reduction to animals of the women of the most backward segment of society -- the `privileged, educated' middle-class, the backwash of humanity -- where Daddy reigns supreme, has been so thorough that they try to groove on labour pains and lie around in the most advanced nation in the world in the middle of the twentieth century with babies chomping away on their tits. It's not for the kids sake, though, that the `experts' tell women that Mama should stay home and grovel in animalism, but for Daddy's; the tits for Daddy to hang onto; the labor pains for Daddy to vicariously groove on (half dead, he needs awfully strong stimuli to make him respond). 
Reducing the female to an animal, to Mama, to a male, is necessary for psychological as well as practical reasons: the male is a mere member of the species, interchangeable with every other male. He has no deep-seated individuality, which stems from what intrigues you, what outside yourself absorbs you, what you're in relation to. Completely self-absorbed, capable of being in relation only to their bodies and physical sensations, males differ from each other only to the degree and in the ways they attempt to defend against their passivity and against their desire to be female. 
The female's individuality, which he is acutely aware of, but which he doesn't comprehend and isn't capable of relating to or grasping emotionally, frightens and upsets him and fills him with envy. So he denies it in her and proceeds to define everyone in terms of his or her function or use, assigning to himself, of course, the most important functions -- doctor, president, scientist -- therefore providing himself with an identity, if not individuality, and tries to convince himself and women (he's succeeded best at convincing women) that the female function is to bear and raise children and to relax, comfort and boost the ego if the male; that her function is such as to make her interchangeable with every other female. In actual fact, the female function is to relate, groove, love and be herself, irreplaceable by anyone else; the male function is to produce sperm. We now have sperm banks. 
In actual fact, the female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems crack jokes, make music -- all with love. In other words, create a magic world. 
Prevention of Privacy: Although the male, being ashamed of what he is and almost of everything he does, insists on privacy and secrecy in all aspects of his life, he has no real regard for privacy. Being empty, not being a complete, separate being, having no self to groove on and needing to be constantly in female company, he sees nothing at all wrong in intruding himself on any woman's thoughts, even a total stranger's, anywhere at any time, but rather feels indignant and insulted when put down for doing so, as well as confused -- he can't, for the life of him, understand why anyone would prefer so much as one minute of solitude to the company of any creep around. Wanting to become a woman, he strives to be constantly around females, which is the closest he can get to becoming one, so he created a `society' based upon the family -- a male-female could and their kids (the excuse for the family's existence), who live virtually on top of one another, unscrupuluously violating the females' rights, privacy and sanity. 
Isolation, Suburbs, and Prevention of Community: Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she is exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual nu becoming a `rugged individualist', a loner, equating non-cooperation and solitariness with individuality. 
There is yet another reason for the male to isolate himself: every man is an island. Trapped inside himself, emotionally isolated, unable to relate, the male has a horror of civilization, people, cities, situations requiring an ability to understand and relate to people. So like a scared rabbit, he scurries off, dragging Daddy's little asshole with him to the wilderness, suburbs, or, in the case of the hippy -- he's way out, Man! -- all the way out to the cow pasture where he can fuck and breed undisturbed and mess around with his beads and flute. 
The `hippy', whose desire to be a `Man', a `rugged individualist', isn't quite as strong as the average man's, and who, in addition, is excited by the thought having lots of women accessible to him, rebels against the harshness of a Breadwinner's life and the monotony of one woman. In the name of sharing and cooperation, he forms a commune or tribe, which, for all its togetherness and partly because of it, (the commune, being an extended family, is an extended violation of the female's rights, privacy and sanity) is no more a community than normal `society'. 
A true community consists of individuals -- not mere species members, not couples -- respecting each others individuality and privacy, at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally -- free spirits in free relation to each other -- and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of `society' is the family; `hippies' say the tribe; no one says the individual. 
The `hippy' babbles on about individuality, but has no more conception of it than any other man. He desires to get back to Nature, back to the wilderness, back to the home of furry animals that he's one of, away from the city, where there is at least a trace, a bare beginning of civilization, to live at the species level, his time taken up with simple, non-intellectual activities -- farming, fucking, bead stringing. The most important activity of the commune, the one upon which it is based, is gang-banging. The `hippy' is enticed to the commune mainly by the prospect for free pussy -- the main commodity to be shared, to be had just for the asking, but, blinded by greed, he fails to anticipate all the other men he has to share with, or the jealousies and possessiveness for the pussies themselves. 
Men cannot co-operate to achieve a common end, because each man's end is all the pussy for himself. The commune, therefore, is doomed to failure; each `hippy' will, in panic, grad the first simpleton who digs him and whisks her off to the suburbs as fast as he can. The male cannot progress socially, but merely swings back and forth from isolation to gang-banging. 
Conformity: Although he wants to be an individual, the male is scared of anything in himself that is the slightest bit different from other men, it causes him to suspect that he's not really a `Man', that he's passive and totally sexual, a highly upsetting suspicion. If other men are "A" and he's not, he must not be a man; he must be a fag. So he tries to affirm his `Manhood' by being like all the other men. Differentness in other men, as well as himself, threatens him; it means they're fags whom he must at all costs avoid, so he tries to make sure that all other men conform. 
The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the drag queen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all the other drag queens like the functionalist, he has an identity -- he is female. He tries to define all his troubles away -- but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms. 
To be sure he's a `Man', the male must see to it that the female be clearly a `Woman', the opposite of a `Man', that is, the female must act like a faggot. And Daddy's Girl, all of whose female instincts were wrenched out of her when little, easily and obligingly adapts herself to the role. 
Authority and Government: Having no sense of right and wrong, no conscience, which can only stem from having an ability to empathize with others... having no faith in his non-existent self, being unnecessarily competitive, and by nature, unable to co-operate, the male feels a need for external guidance and control. So he created authorities -- priests, experts, bosses, leaders, etc -- and government. Wanting the female (Mama) to guide him, but unable to accept this fact (he is, after all, a MAN), wanting to play Woman, to usurp her function as Guider and Protector, he sees to it that all authorities are male. 
There's no reason why a society consisting of rational beings capable of empathizing with each other, complete and having no natural reason to compete, should have a government, laws or leaders. 
Philosophy, Religion, and Morality Based on Sex: The male's inability to relate to anybody or anything makes his life pointless and meaningless (the ultimate male insight is that life is absurd), so he invented philosophy and religion. Being empty, he looks outward, not only for guidance and control, but for salvation and for the meaning of life. Happiness being for him impossible on this earth, he invented Heaven. 
For a man, having no ability to empathize with others and being totally sexual, `wrong' is sexual `license' and engaging in `deviant' (`unmanly') sexual practices, that is, not defending against his passivity and total sexuality which, if indulged, would destroy `civilization', since `civilization' is based entirely upon the male need to defend himself against these characteristics. For a woman (according to men), `wrong' is any behavior that would entice men into sexual `license' -- that is, not placing male needs above her own and not being a faggot. 
Religion not only provides the male with a goal (Heaven) and helps keep women tied to men, but offers rituals through which he can try to expiate the guilt and shame he feels at not defending himself enough against his sexual impulses; in essence, that guilt and shame he feels at being male. 
Most men men, utterly cowardly, project their inherent weaknesses onto women, label them female weaknesses and believe themselves to have female strengths; most philosophers, not quite so cowardly, face the fact that make lacks exist in men, but still can't face the fact that they exist in men only. So they label the male condition the Human Condition, post their nothingness problem, which horrifies them, as a philosophical dilemma, thereby giving stature to their animalism, grandiloquently label their nothingness their `Identity Problem', and proceed to prattle on pompously about the `Crisis of the Individual', the `Essence of Being', `Existence preceding Essence', `Existential Modes of Being', etc. etc. 
A woman not only takes her identity and individuality for granted, but knows instinctively that the only wrong is to hurt others, and that the meaning of life is love. 
Prejudice (racial, ethnic, religious, etc): The male needs scapegoats onto whom he can project his failings and inadequacies and upon whom he can vent his frustration at not being female. And the vicarious discriminations have the practical advantage of substantially increasing the pussy pool available to the men on top. 
Competition, Prestige, Status, Formal Education, Ignorance and Social and Economic Classes: Having an obsessive desire to be admired by women, but no intrinsic worth, the make constructs a highly artificial society enabling him to appropriate the appearance of worth through money, prestige, `high' social class, degrees, professional position and knowledge and, by pushing as many other men as possible down professionally, socially, economically, and educationally. 
The purpose of `higher' education is not to educate but to exclude as many as possible from the various professions. 
The male, totally physical, incapable of mental rapport, although able to understand and use knowledge and ideas, is unable to relate to them, to grasp them emotionally: he does not value knowledge and ideas for their own sake (they're just means to ends) and, consequently, feels no need for mental companions, no need to cultivate the intellectual potentialities of others. On the contrary, the male has a vested interest in ignorance; it gives the few knowledgeable men a decided edge on the unknowledgeable ones, and besides, the male knows that an enlightened, aware female population will mean the end of him. The healthy, conceited female wants the company of equals whom she can respect and groove on; the male and the sick, insecure, unself-confident male female crave the company of worms. 
No genuine social revolution can be accomplished by the male, as the male on top wants the status quo, and all the male on the bottom wants is to be the male on top. The male `rebel' is a farce; this is the male's `society', made by him to satisfy his needs. He's never satisfied, because he's not capable of being satisfied. Ultimately, what the male `rebel' is rebelling against is being male. The male changes only when forced to do so by technology, when he has no choice, when `society' reaches the stage where he must change or die. We're at that stage now; if women don't get their asses in gear fast, we may very well all die. 
Prevention of Conversation: Being completely self-centered and unable to relate to anything outside himself, the male's `conversation', when not about himself, is an impersonal droning on, removed from anything of human value. Male `intellectual conversation' is a strained compulsive attempt to impress the female. 
Daddy's Girl, passive, adaptable, respectful of and in awe of the male, allows him to impose his hideously dull chatter on her. This is not too difficult for her, as the tension and anxiety, the lack of cool, the insecurity and self-doubt, the unsureness of her own feelings and sensations that Daddy instilled in her make her perceptions superficial and render her unable to see that the male's babble is babble; like the aesthete `appreciating' the blob that's labeled `Great Art', she believes she's grooving on what bores the shit out of her. Not only does she permit his babble to dominate, she adapts her own `conversation' accordingly. 
Trained from an early childhood in niceness, politeness and `dignity', in pandering to the male need to disguise his animalism, she obligingly reduces her own `conversation' to small talk, a bland, insipid avoidance of any topic beyond the utterly trivial -- or is `educated', to `intellectual' discussion, that is, impersonal discoursing on irrelevant distractions -- the Gross National Product, the Common Market, the influence of Rimbaud on symbolist painting. So adept is she at pandering that it eventually becomes second nature and she continues to pander to men even when in the company of other females only. 
Apart from pandering, her `conversation' is further limited by her insecurity about expressing deviant, original opinions and the self-absorption based on insecurity and that prevents her conversation from being charming. Niceness, politeness, `dignity', insecurity and self-absorption are hardly conducive to intensity and wit, qualities a conversation must have to be worthy of the name. Such conversation is hardly rampant, as only completely self-confident, arrogant, outgoing, proud, tough-minded females are capable of intense, bitchy, witty conversation. 
Prevention of Friendship (Love): Men have contempt for themselves, for all other men whom they contemplate more than casually and whom they do not think are females, (for example `sympathetic' analysts and `Great Artists') or agents of God and for all women who respect and pander to them: the insecure, approval-seeking, pandering male-females have contempt for themselves and for all women like them: the self-confident, swinging, thrill-seeking female females have contempt for me and for the pandering male females. In short, contempt is the order of the day. 
Love is not dependency or sex, but friendship, and therefore, love can't exist between two males, between a male and a female, or between two females, one or both of whom is a mindless, insecure, pandering male; like conversation, live can exist only between two secure, free-wheeling, independent groovy female females, since friendship is based upon respect, not contempt. 
Even amongst groovy females deep friendships seldom occur in adulthood, as almost all of them are either tied up with men in order to survive economically, or bogged down in hacking their way through the jungle and in trying to keep their heads about the amorphous mass. Love can't flourish in a society based upon money and meaningless work: it requires complete economic as well as personal freedom, leisure time and the opportunity to engage in intensely absorbing, emotionally satisfying activities which, when shared with those you respect, lead to deep friendship. Our `society' provides practically no opportunity to engage in such activities. 
Having stripped the world of conversation, friendship and love, the male offers us these paltry substitutes: 
`Great Art' and `Culture': The male `artist' attempts to solve his dilemma of not being able to live, of not being female, by constructing a highly artificial world in which the male is heroized, that is, displays female traits, and the female is reduced to highly limited, insipid subordinate roles, that is, to being male. 
The male `artistic' aim being, not to communicate (having nothing inside him he has nothing to say), but to disguise his animalism, he resorts to symbolism and obscurity (`deep' stuff). The vast majority of people, particularly the `educated' ones, lacking faith in their own judgment, humble, respectful of authority (`Daddy knows best'), are easily conned into believing that obscurity, evasiveness, incomprehensibility, indirectness, ambiguity and boredom are marks of depth and brilliance. 
`Great Art' proves that men are superior to women, that men are women, being labeled `Great Art', almost all of which, as the anti-feminists are fond of reminding us, was created by men. We know that `Great Art' is great because male authorities have told us so, and we can't claim otherwise, as only those with exquisite sensitivities far superior to ours can perceive and appreciated the slop they appreciated. 
Appreciating is the sole diversion of the `cultivated'; passive and incompetent, lacking imagination and wit, they must try to make do with that; unable to create their own diversions, to create a little world of their own, to affect in the smallest way their environments, they must accept what's given; unable to create or relate, they spectate. Absorbing `culture' is a desperate, frantic attempt to groove in an ungroovy world, to escape the horror of a sterile, mindless, existence. `Culture' provides a sop to the egos of the incompetent, a means of rationalizing passive spectating; they can pride themselves on their ability to appreciate the `finer' things, to see a jewel where this is only a turd (they want to be admired for admiring). Lacking faith in their ability to change anything, resigned to the status quo, they have to see beauty in turds because, so far as they can see, turds are all they'll ever have. 
The veneration of `Art' and `Culture' -- besides leading many women into boring, passive activity that distracts from more important and rewarding activities, from cultivating active abilities, and leads to the constant intrusion on our sensibilities of pompous dissertations on the deep beauty of this and that turn. This allows the `artist' to be setup as one possessing superior feelings, perceptions, insights and judgments, thereby undermining the faith of insecure women in the value and validity of their own feelings, perceptions, insights and judgments. 
The male, having a very limited range of feelings, and consequently, very limited perceptions, insights and judgments, needs the `artist' to guide him, to tell him what life is all about. But the male `artist' being totally sexual, unable to relate to anything beyond his own physical sensations, having nothing to express beyond the insight that for the male life is meaningless and absurd, cannot be an artist. How can he who is not capable of life tell us what life is all about? A `male artist' is a contradiction in terms. A degenerate can only produce degenerate `art'. The true artist is every self-confident, healthy female, and in a female society the only Art, the only Culture, will be conceited, kooky, funky, females grooving on each other and on everything else in the universe. 
Sexuality: Sex is not part of a relationship: on the contrary, it is a solitary experience, non-creative, a gross waste of time. The female can easily -- far more easily than she may think -- condition away her sex drive, leaving her completely cool and cerebral and free to pursue truly worthy relationships and activities; but the male, who seems to dig women sexually and who seeks out constantly to arouse them, stimulates the highly sexed female to frenzies of lust, throwing her into a sex bag from which few women ever escape. The lecherous male excited the lustful female; he has to -- when the female transcends her body, rises above animalism, the male, whose ego consists of his cock, will disappear. 
Sex is the refuge of the mindless. And the more mindless the woman, the more deeply embedded in the male `culture', in short, the nicer she is, the more sexual she is. The nicest women in our `society' are raving sex maniacs. But, being just awfully, awfully nice, they don't, of course descend to fucking -- that's uncouth -- rather they make love, commune by means of their bodies and establish sensual rapport; the literary ones are attuned to the throb of Eros and attain a clutch upon the Universe; the religious have spiritual communion with the Divine Sensualism; the mystics merge with the Erotic Principle and blend with the Cosmos, and the acid heads contact their erotic cells. 
On the other hand, those females least embedded in the male `Culture', the least nice, those crass and simple souls who reduce fucking to fucking, who are too childish for the grown-up world of suburbs, mortgages, mops and baby shit, too selfish to raise kids and husbands, too uncivilized to give a shit for anyones opinion of them, too arrogant to respect Daddy, the `Greats' or the deep wisdom of the Ancients, who trust only their own animal, gutter instincts, who equate Culture with chicks, whose sole diversion is prowling for emotional thrills and excitement, who are given to disgusting, nasty upsetting `scenes', hateful, violent bitches given to slamming those who unduly irritate them in the teeth, who'd sink a shiv into a man's chest or ram an icepick up his asshole as soon as look at him, if they knew they could get away with it, in short, those who, by the standards of our `culture' are SCUM... these females are cool and relatively cerebral and skirting asexuality. 
Unhampered by propriety, niceness, discretion, public opinion, `morals', the respect of assholes, always funky, dirty, low-down SCUM gets around... and around and around... they've seen the whole show -- every bit of it -- the fucking scene, the dyke scene -- they've covered the whole waterfront, been under every dock and pier -- the peter pier, the pussy pier... you've got to go through a lot of sex to get to anti-sex, and SCUM's been through it all, and they're now ready for a new show; they want to crawl out from other the dock, move, take off, sink out. But SCUM doesn't yet prevail; SCUM's still in the gutter of our `society', which, if it's not deflected from its present course and if the Bomb doesn't drop on it, will hump itself to death. 
Boredom: Life in a society made by and for creatures who, when they are not grim and depressing are utter bores, van only be, when not grim and depressing, an utter bore. 
Secrecy, Censorship, Suppression of Knowledge and Ideas, and Exposes: Every male's deep-seated, secret, most hideous fear is of being discovered to be not a female, but a male, a subhuman animal. Although niceness, politeness and `dignity' suffice to prevent his exposure on a personal level, in order to prevent the general exposure of the male sex as a whole and to maintain his unnatural dominant position position in `society', the male must resort to: 
1. Censorship. Responding reflexively to isolated works and phrases rather than cereberally to overall meanings, the male attempts to prevent the arousal and discovery of his animalism by censoring not only `pornography', but any work containing `dirty' words, no matter in what context they are used. 
2. Suppression of all ideas and knowledge that might expose him or threaten his dominant position in `society'. Much biological and psychological data is suppressed, because it is proof of the male's gross inferiority to the female. Also, the problem of mental illness will never be solved while the male maintains control, because first, men have a vested interest in it -- only females who have very few of their marbles will allow males the slightest bit of control over anything, and second, the male cannot admit to the role that fatherhood plays in causing mental illness. 
3. Exposes. The male's chief delight in life -- insofar as the tense, grim male can ever be said to delight in anything -- is in exposing others. It doesn't' much matter what they're exposed as, so long as they're exposed; it distracts attention from himself. Exposing others as enemy agents (Communists and Socialists) is one of his favorite pastimes, as it removes the source of the threat to him not only from himself, but from the country and the Western world. The bugs up his ass aren't in him, they're in Russia. 
Distrust: Unable to empathize or feel affection or loyalty, being exclusively out for himself, the male has no sense of fair play; cowardly, needing constantly to pander to the female to win her approval, that he is helpless without, always on the edge lest his animalism, his maleness be discovered, always needing to cover up, he must lie constantly; being empty he has not honor or integrity -- he doesn't know what those words mean. The male, in short, is treacherous, and the only appropriate attitude in a male `society' is cynicism and distrust. 
Ugliness: Being totally sexual, incapable of cerebral or aesthetic responses, totally materialistic and greedy, the male, besides inflicting on the world `Great Art', has decorated his unlandscaped cities with ugly buildings (both inside and out), ugly decors, billboards, highways, cars, garbage trucks, and, most notably, his own putrid self. 
Hatred and Violence: The male is eaten up with tension, with frustration at not being female, at not being capable of ever achieving satisfaction or pleasure of any kind; eaten up with hate -- not rational hate that is directed at those who abuse or insult you -- but irrational, indiscriminate hate... hatred, at bottom, of his own worthless self. 
Gratuitous violence, besides `proving' he's a `Man', serves as an outlet for his hate and, in addition -- the male being capable only of sexual responses and needing very strong stimuli to stimulate his half-dead self -- provides him with a little sexual thrill.. 
Disease and Death: All diseases are curable, and the aging process and death are due to disease; it is possible, therefore, never to age and to live forever. In fact the problems of aging and death could be solved within a few years, if an all-out, massive scientific assault were made upon the problem. This, however, will not occur with the male establishment because: 
1. The many male scientists who shy away from biological research, terrified of the discovery that males are females, and show marked preference for virile, `manly' war and death programs. 
2. The discouragement of many potential scientists from scientific careers by the rigidity, boringness, expensiveness, time-consumingness, and unfair exclusivity of our `higher' educational system. 
3. Propaganda disseminated by insecure male professionals, who jealously guard their positions, so that only a highly select few can comprehend abstract scientific concepts. 
4. Widespread lack of self-confidence brought about by the father system that discourages many talented girls from becoming scientists. 
5. Lack of automation. There now exists a wealth of data which, if sorted out and correlated, would reveal the cure for cancer and several other diseases and possibly the key to life itself. But the data is so massive it requires high speed computers to correlate it all. The institution of computers will be delayed interminably under the male control system, since the male has a horror of being replaced by machines. 
6. The money systems' insatiable need for new products. Most of the few scientists around who aren't working on death programs are tied up doing research for corporations. 
7. The males like death -- it excites him sexually and, already dead inside, he wants to die. 
8. The bias of the money system for the least creative scientists. Most scientists come from at least relatively affluent families where Daddy reigns supreme. 
Incapable of a positive state of happiness, which is the only thing that can justify one's existence, the male is, at best, relaxed, comfortable, neutral, and this condition is extremely short-lived, as boredom, a negative state, soon sets in; he is, therefore, doomed to an existence of suffering relieved only by occasional, fleeting stretches of restfulness, which state he can only achieve at the expense of some female. The male is, by his very nature, a leech, an emotional parasite and, therefore, not ethically entitled to live, as no one as the right to life at someone else's expense. 
Just as humans have a prior right to existence over dogs by virtue of being more highly evolved and having a superior consciousness, so women have a prior right to existence over men. The elimination of any male is, therefore, a righteous and good act, an act highly beneficial to women as well as an act of mercy. 
However, this moral issue will eventually be rendered academic by the fact that the male is gradually eliminating himself. In addition to engaging in the time-honored and classical wars and race riots, men are more and more either becoming fags or are obliterating themselves through drugs. The female, whether she likes it or not, will eventually take complete charge, if for no other reason than that she will have to -- the male, for practical purposes, won't exist. 
Accelerating this trend is the fact that more and more males are acquiring enlightened self-interest; they're realizing more and more that the female interest is in their interest, that they can live only through the female and that the more the female is encouraged to live, to fulfill herself, to be a female and not a male, the more nearly he lives; he's coming to see that it's easier and more satisfactory to live through her than to try to become her and usurp her qualities, claim them as his own, push the female down and claim that she's a male. The fag, who accepts his maleness, that is, his passivity and total sexuality, his femininity, is also best served by women being truly female, as it would then be easier for him to be male, feminine. If men were wise they would seek to become really female, would do intensive biological research that would lead to me, by means of operations on the brain and nervous system, being able t to be transformed in psyche, as well as body, into women. 
Whether to continue to use females for reproduction or to reproduce in the laboratory will also become academic: what will happen when every female, twelve and over, is routinely taking the Pill and there are no longer any accidents? How many women will deliberately get or (if an accident) remain pregnant? No, Virginia, women don't just adore being brood mares, despite what the mass of robot, brainwashed women will say. When society consists of only the fully conscious the answer will be none. Should a certain percentage of men be set aside by force to serve as brood mares for the species? Obviously this will not do. The answer is laboratory reproduction of babies. 
As for the issue of whether or not to continue to reproduce males, it doesn't follow that because the male, like disease, has always existed among us that he should continue to exist. When genetic control is possible -- and soon it will be -- it goes without saying that we should produce only whole, complete beings, not physical defects of deficiencies, including emotional deficiencies, such as maleness. Just as the deliberate production of blind people would be highly immoral, so would be the deliberate production of emotional cripples. 
Why produce even females? Why should there be future generations? What is their purpose? When aging and death are eliminated, why continue to reproduce? Why should we care what happens when we're dead? Why should we care that there is no younger generation to succeed us. 
Eventually the natural course of events, of social evolution, will lead to total female control of the world and, subsequently, to the cessation of the production of males and, ultimately, to the cessation of the production of females. 
But SCUM is impatient; SCUM is not consoled by the thought that future generations will thrive; SCUM wants to grab some thrilling living for itself. And, if a large majority of women were SCUM, they could acquire complete control of this country within a few weeks simply by withdrawing from the labor force, thereby paralyzing the entire nation. Additional measures, any one of which would be sufficient to completely disrupt the economy and everything else, would be for women to declare themselves off the money system, stop buying, just loot and simply refuse to obey all laws they don't care to obey. The police force, National Guard, Army, Navy and Marines combined couldn't squelch a rebellion of over half the population, particularly when it's made up of people they are utterly helpless without. 
If all women simply left men, refused to have anything to do with any of them -- ever, all men, the government, and the national economy would collapse completely. Even without leaving men, women who are aware of the extent of their superiority to and power over men, could acquire complete control over everything within a few weeks, could effect a total submission of males to females. In a sane society the male would trot along obediently after the female. The male is docile and easily led, easily subjected to the domination of any female who cares to dominate him. The male, in fact, wants desperately to be led by females, wants Mama in charge, wants to abandon himself to her care. But this is not a sane society, and most women are not even dimly aware of where they're at in relation to men. 
The conflict, therefore, is not between females and males, but between SCUM -- dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant females, who consider themselves fit to rule the universe, who have free-wheeled to the limits of this `society' and are ready to wheel on to something far beyond what it has to offer -- and nice, passive, accepting `cultivated', polite, dignified, subdued, dependent, scared, mindless, insecure, approval-seeking Daddy's Girls, who can't cope with the unknown, who want to hang back with the apes, who feel secure only with Big Daddy standing by, with a big strong man to lean on and with a fat, hairy face in the White House, who are too cowardly to face up to the hideous reality of what a man is, what Daddy is, who have cast their lot with the swine, who have adapted themselves to animalism, feel superficially comfortable with it and know no other way of `life', who have reduced their minds, thoughts and sights to the male level, who, lacking sense, imagination and wit can have value only in a male `society', who can have a place in the sun, or, rather, in the slime, only as soothers, ego boosters, relaxers and breeders, who are dismissed as inconsequents by other females, who project their deficiencies, their maleness, onto all females and see the female as worm. 
But SCUM is too impatient to wait for the de-brainwashing of millions of assholes. Why should the swinging females continue to plod dismally along with the dull male ones? Why should the fates of the groovy and the creepy be intertwined? Why should the active and imaginative consult the passive and dull on social policy? Why should the independent be confined to the sewer along with the dependent who need Daddy to cling to? A small handful of SCUM can take over the country within a year by systematically fucking up the system, selectively destroying property, and murder: 
SCUM will become members of the unwork force, the fuck-up force; they will get jobs of various kinds an unwork. For example, SCUM salesgirls will not charge for merchandise; SCUM telephone operators will not charge for calls; SCUM office and factory workers, in addition to fucking up their work, will secretly destroy equipment. SCUM will unwork at a job until fired, then get a new job to unwork at. 
SCUM will forcibly relieve bus drivers, cab drivers and subway token sellers of their jobs and run buses and cabs and dispense free tokens to the public. 
SCUM will destroy all useless and harmful objects -- cars, store windows, `Great Art', etc. 
Eventually SCUM will take over the airwaves -- radio and TV networks -- by forcibly relieving of their jobs all radio and TV employees who would impede SCUM's entry into the broadcasting studios. 
SCUM will couple-bust -- barge into mixed (male-female) couples, wherever they are, and bust them up. 
SCUM will kill all men who are not in the Men's Auxiliary of SCUM. Men in the Men's Auxiliary are those men who are working diligently to eliminate themselves, men who, regardless of their motives, do good, men who are playing pall with SCUM. A few examples of the men in the Men's Auxiliary are: men who kill men; biological scientists who are working on constructive programs, as opposed to biological warfare; journalists, writers, editors, publishers and producers who disseminate and promote ideas that will lead to the achievement of SCUM's goals; faggots who, by their shimmering, flaming example, encourage other men to de-man themselves and thereby make themselves relatively inoffensive; men who consistently give things away -- money, things, services; men who tell it like it is (so far not one ever has), who put women straight, who reveal the truth about themselves, who give the mindless male females correct sentences to parrot, who tell them a woman's primary goal in life should be to squash the male sex (to aid men in this endeavor SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: `I am a turd, a lowly abject turd', then proceed to list all the ways in which he is. His reward for doing so will be the opportunity to fraternize after the session for a whole, solid hour with the SCUM who will be present. Nice, clean-living male women will be invited to the sessions to help clarify any doubts and misunderstandings they may have about the male sex; makers and promoters of sex books and movies, etc., who are hastening the day when all that will be shown on the screen will be Suck and Fuck (males, like the rats following the Pied Piper, will be lured by Pussy to their doom, will be overcome and submerged by and will eventually drown in the passive flesh that they are); drug pushers and advocates, who are hastening the dropping out of men. 
Being in the Men's Auxiliary is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for making SCUM's escape list; it's not enough to do good; to save their worthless asses men must also avoid evil. A few examples of the most obnoxious or harmful types are: rapists, politicians and all who are in their service (campaigners, members of political parties, etc); lousy singers and musicians; Chairmen of Boards; Breadwinners; landlords; owners of greasy spoons and restaraunts that play Muzak; `Great Artists'; cheap pikers and welchers; cops; tycoons; scientists working on death and destruction programs or for private industry (practically all scientists); liars and phonies; disc jockies; men who intrude themselves in the slightest way on any strange female; real estate men; stock brokers; men who speak when they have nothing to say; men who sit idly on the street and mar the landscape with their presence; double dealers; flim-flam artists; litterbugs; plagiarisers; men who in the slightest way harm any female; all men in the advertising industry; psychiatrists and clinical psychologists; dishonest writers, journalists, editors, publishers, etc.; censors on both the public and private levels; all members of the armed forces, including draftees (LBJ and McNamara give orders, but servicemen carry them out) and particularly pilots (if the bomb drops, LBJ won't drop it; a pilot will). In the case of a man whose behavior falls into both the good and bad categories, an overall subjective evaluation of him will be made to determine if his behavior is, in the balance, good or bad. 
It is most tempting to pick off the female `Great Artists', liars and phonies etc along with the men, but that would be inexpedient, as it would not be clear to most of the public that the female killed was a male. All women have a fink streak in them, to a greater or lesser degree, but it stems from a lifetime of living among men. Eliminate men and women will shape up. Women are improvable; men are no, although their behavior is. When SCUM gets hot on their asses it'll shape up fast. 
Simultaneously with the fucking-up, looting, couple-busting, destroying and killing, SCUM will recruit. SCUM, then, will consist of recruiters; the elite corps -- the hard core activists (the fuck-ups, looters and destroyers) and the elite of the elite -- the killers. 
Dropping out is not the answer; fucking-up is. Most women are already dropped out; they were never in. Dropping out gives control to those few who don't drop out; dropping out is exactly what the establishment leaders want; it plays into the hands of the enemy; it strengthens the system instead of undermining it, since it is based entirely on the non-participating, passivity, apathy and non-involvement of the mass of women. Dropping out, however, is an excellent policy for men, and SCUM will enthusiastically encourage it. 
Looking inside yourself for salvation, contemplating your navel, is not, as the Drop Out people would have you believe, the answer. Happiness likes outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one's goal, not self-absorption. The male, capable of only the latter, makes a virtue of irremediable fault and sets up self-absorption, not only as a good but as a Philosophical Good, and thus gets credit for being deep. 
SCUM will not picket, demonstrate, march or strike to attempt to achieve its ends. Such tactics are for nice, genteel ladies who scrupulously take only such action as is guaranteed to be ineffective. In addition, only decent, clean-living male women, highly trained in submerging themselves in the species, act on a mob basis. SCUM consists of individuals; SCUM is not a mob, a blob. Only as many SCUM will do a job as are needed for the job. Also SCUM, being cool and selfish, will not subject to getting itself rapped on the head with billy clubs; that's for the nice, `privileged, educated', middle-class ladies with a high regard for the touching faith in the essential goodness of Daddy and policemen. If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President's stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade. 
SCUM will always operate on a criminal as opposed to a civil disobedience basis, that is, as opposed to openly violating the law and going to jail in order to draw attention to an injustice. Such tactics acknowledge the rightness overall system and are used only to modify it slightly, change specific laws. SCUM is against the entire system, the very idea of law and government. SCUM is out to destroy the system, not attain certain rights within it. Also, SCUM -- always selfish, always cool -- will always aim to avoid detection and punishment. SCUM will always be furtive, sneaky, underhanded (although SCUM murders will always be known to be such). 
Both destruction and killing will be selective and discriminate. SCUM is against half-crazed, indiscriminate riots, with no clear objective in mind, and in which many of your own kind are picked off. SCUM will never instigate, encourage or participate in riots of any kind or other form of indiscriminate destruction. SCUM will coolly, furtively, stalk its prey and quietly move in for the kill. Destruction will never me such as to block off routes needed for the transportation of food or other essential supplies, contaminate or cut off the water supply, block streets and traffic to the extent that ambulances can't get through or impede the functioning of hospitals. 
SCUM will keep on destroying, looting, fucking-up and killing until the money-work system no longer exists and automation is completely instituted or until enough women co-operate with SCUM to make violence unnecessary to achieve these goals, that is, until enough women either unwork or quit work, start looting, leave men and refuse to obey all laws inappropriate to a truly civilized society. Many women will fall into line, but many others, who surrendered long ago to the enemy, who are so adapted to animalism, to maleness, that they like restrictions and restraints, don't know what to do with freedom, will continue to be toadies and doormats, just as peasants in rice paddies remain peasants in rice paddies as one regime topples another. A few of the more volatile will whimper and sulk and throw their toys and dishrags on the floor, but SCUM will continue to steamroller over them. 
A completely automated society can be accomplished very simply and quickly once there is a public demand for it. The blueprints for it are already in existence, and it's construction will take only a few weeks with millions of people working on it. Even though off the money system, everyone will be most happy to pitch in and get the automated society built; it will mark the beginning of a fantastic new era, and there will be a celebration atmosphere accompanying the construction. 
The elimination of money and the complete institution of automation are basic to all other SCUM reforms; without these two the others can't take place; with them the others will take place very rapidly. The government will automatically collapse. With complete automation it will be possible for every woman to vote directly on every issue by means of an electronic voting machine in her house. Since the government is occupied almost entirely with regulating economic affairs and legislating against purely private matters, the elimination of money wand with it the elimination of males who wish to legislate `morality' will mean there will be practically no issues to vote on. 
After the elimination of money there will be no further need to kill men; they will be stripped of the only power they have over psychologically independent females. They will be able to impose themselves only on the doormats, who like to be imposed on. The rest of the women will be busy solving the few remaining unsolved problems before planning their agenda for eternity and Utopia -- completely revamping educational programs so that millions of women can be trained within a few months for high level intellectual work that now requires years of training (this can be done very easily once out educational goal is to educate and not perpetuate an academic and intellectual elite); solving the problems of disease and old age and death and completely redesigning our cities and living quarters. Many women will for a while continue to think they dig men, but as they become accustomed to female society and as they become absorbed in their projects, they will eventually come to see the utter uselessnes and banality of the male. 
The few remaining men can exist out their puny days dropped out on drugs or strutting around in drag or passively watching the high-powered female in action, fulfilling themselves as spectators, vicarious livers*[FOOTNOTE: It will be electronically possible for him to tune into any specific female he wants to and follow in detail her every movement. The females will kindly, obligingly consent to this, as it won't hurt them in the slightest and it is a marvelously kind and humane way to treat their unfortunate, handicapped fellow beings.] or breeding in the cow pasture with the toadies, or they can go off to the nearest friendly suicide center where they will be quietly, quickly, and painlessly gassed to death. 
Prior to the institution of automation, to the replacement of males by machines, the male should be of use to the female, wait on her, cater to her slightest whim, obey her every command, be totally subservient to her, exist in perfect obedience to her will, as opposed to the completely warped, degenerate situation we have now of men, not only not only not existing at all, cluttering up the world with their ignominious presence, but being pandered to and groveled before by the mass of females, millions of women piously worshiping the Golden Calf, the dog leading the master on a leash, when in fact the male, short of being a drag queen, is least miserable when his dogginess is recognized -- no unrealistic emotional demands are made of him and the completely together female is calling the shots. Rational men want to be squashed, stepped on, crushed and crunched, treated as the curs, the filth that they are, have their repulsiveness confirmed. 
The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against their disgustingness, when they see SCUM barrelling down on them, will cling in terror to Big Mama with her Big Bouncy Boobies, but Boobies won't protect them against SCUM; Big Mama will be clinging to Big Daddy, who will be in the corner shitting in his forceful, dynamic pants. Men who are rational, however, won't kick or struggle or raise a distressing fuss, but will just sit back, relax, enjoy the show and ride the waves to their demise. 
-end-
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somediyprojects · 7 months
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DIY Paper Allium
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Project by Kate Alarcón:
Alliums have always seemed a little bit magical to me. In a garden, the long, smooth stems blend in with the other greenery, and the big globes of tiny periwinkle flowers almost seem to float in mid-air. I imagine them growing in a fairytale garden, alongside foxgloves and moon flowers.
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When I set out to design a paper version, I wanted to capture that enchanted, ethereal quality. I chose a very lightweight crepe for the petals, and constructed it so that each floret radiates out from a central ball on a long wire. This design gives each petal room to stand out from its little floret, uncompressed by the florets around it. I also scaled it up to be about the size of a large cantaloupe. The end result is a big, magical globe of delicate blue flowers that is almost a bouquet in its own right.
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I wanted the flower to feel free-spirited, so I cut my petals freehand, which creates little variations between florets. Once you’ve cut several sets of petals, you’ll probably find that you don’t need the template anymore, either.
This allium isn’t especially difficult to make, but producing enough florets to complete the globe is a big undertaking. I suggest making them a few at a time over a couple of weeks while watching Netflix. You can insert them into the center ball as you go — it’s the safest place for them, and it’s motivating to watch your flower fill out.
If you run out of steam before finishing, don’t despair! My assistant Emma and I noticed that a partially covered flower looks a lot like a dandelion that’s been blown and wished on. And if that doesn’t do it for you, I’ve got just one of these guys up in my shop. —Kate
Photography by Desiree Swanson
Styling assistance by Emma Swanson
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Supplies
allium templates here
Aleene’s Original Tacky Glue
fine crepe in “French Violet” from Rose Mille
heavy crepe in “Eggplant” and fine crepe in “Olive Green” from Castle in the Air
18 inch lengths of 18 and 20 gauge stem wire
paper scissors
wire snips
small awl
0ptional: millinery stamens that coordinate with your paper color (Rose Mille or 32° North for similar)
0ne 1.5” polystyrene ball (I buy mine at Michaels)
one 18″ length of vinyl tubing 3/8” outer diameter, ¼” inner diameter. (Home Depot and Lowe’s both carry it in the plumbing department)
A note about crepe paper grain:
The grain of the crepe paper runs parallel to the roll or fold. Crepe paper stretches horizontally, but not vertically, so you will almost always cut petals with the grain, placing the template so that the tiny wrinkles in the paper run up and down the template, not across. Cutting with the grain means that you cut in the same direction the crinkles are running; cutting across the grain means that you cut perpendicular to these crinkles.
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For the stem:
Cut a 15” length of tubing at a very sharp angle. This pointy end will be the top of your stem, and you’ll insert the point into the polystyrene ball to help anchor the stem. Cut three of the 18 gauge wires so that they’re 16” long. Insert the wires into the length of tubing to hold your stem fairly straight while you wrap it.
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Cut a long ¼” wide strip of the olive fine crepe across the grain. Dot glue at 1 cm intervals along the strip.  Just below the top edge of your tubing, below the sharp angle you cut, begin wrapping the strip around the tubing, holding it at about a 45-degree angle to the tubing, so that it spirals down as you wrap. For a smooth finish, hold the paper taught and slightly stretch it as you wrap.
If you need to add strips, just glue the end of one strip in place, and begin wrapping the next strip about ½” above where the previous one ends.
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For the flower center:
Using template A, cut a small oval from the purple heavy crepe. Dot one side of the oval with glue, and then place it on the polystyrene ball. Stretch the oval around the ball, and hold it in place a few seconds to allow the glue to set.
On the opposite end of the polystyrene ball from the center of the oval you just applied, pierce the ball with your awl. Use your awl to widen the top of this hole by holding it at a 45-degree angle to the surface of the ball and moving it all the way around the stem hole.
Cut one template B from the purple heavy crepe. Make sure the grain runs up and down the template.  (The top edge should be zigzagged.)
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Dot glue all over the purple crepe, including the points. Place the polystyrene ball about 2” from the bottom of the purple crepe piece. The points and the end of the ball covered by the purple oval should face up. Wrap the crepe around the ball, stretching it so that it molds to the ball.
Press and smooth the points down against the top of the ball. If there are any slight gaps between the smoothed down points, they will be camouflaged by your purple oval, and no white should show through.
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Inserting the stem:
Pull the three 18 gauge wires out about four inches from the pointy end of the wrapped tubing. Insert these wires about 1” into the hole in your polystyrene ball. Slide the pointy end of your tubing up the wires, and pierce the hole with the pointy tip. You don’t need to insert the tubing very far; it just helps to have the tip anchored in the ball.
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Gather the crepe “skirt” beneath the ball tightly around the stem and scrunch it to allow the glue to set around the stem. Dot a long ¼” strip of olive fine crepe with glue and cover this purple crepe skirt by wrapping the stem beneath the bottom of the covered polystyrene ball, until you meet up with the section of the stem already wrapped in olive crepe.
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Floret center:
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Snip your 20 gauge wire into 3.75” lengths. Cut a 1″ tall strip of the heavy purple crepe and stretch it all the way out as shown above. Cut this strip into sections that are wider than your template C. You can use the template C to cut this little fringe piece, or just freehand a similarly sized rectangle with three or four irregular points along the top edge. Dot glue along the bottom three quarters of this little piece. If you’re using double-headed millinery stamens, fold two of these stamens in half and place them on top of the jagged purple rectangle to make a little cluster of four stamens. Place the stamens on top of the little purple piece, so that the folded point on the stamens lies slightly below the middle of the rectangle. Place your short wire on top of the stamens, so that the tip of the wire lies slightly above the middle of the rectangle.
Wrap the rest of the rectangle loosely around your wire and scrunch the bottom to set the glue.
For the petals:
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Cut a 2.25” x 3.75” rectangle of French violet fine crepe. The longer edge should run across the grain. Accordion or fan fold the strip (fold over, under, over, under) so that you have five layers of paper. Use the box around template D as a guide for how widely to space the folds (about ¾”). The fold lines should run with the grain and need to line up fairly precisely.
You should have a little folded packet of fine crepe about the size of the box around template D on the template sheet. Place template D on the packet, aligning the bottom of the template with the bottom edge of the packet.
The bottom right and left edges of the template D are marked with a dotted line that indicates that this section should not be cut, but rather aligned with the fold lines on your petal packet. Leaving this section intact on both sides will ensure that you have a continuous strip of petals.
In the photo, I’ve opened up my packet of petals to show what a continuous strip will look like, but you won’t actually open your packet yet. First, gently twist the bottom of the unopened petal packet. This will create evenly spaced crinkles that will make it easier to gather the bottom of the petal strip.
Untwist and open the petal packet. Make sure that each petal is facing the same direction and that none are twisted. Lay them side by side, very close together but not overlapping, across your forefinger, and then lay down your thmb to hold them in place. Pinch the width of the bottom of the petal strip to gather it. Dot glue on this pinched section and place your floret centers so that the top of the glue line is just above the bottom of the little piece of heavy crepe you wrapped around the tip of the wire.
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Loosely wrap the gathered petal strip around the stamen wire. Adjust until the petals seem evenly spaced around the wire, and then scrunch the glued section of the strip around the stem.
Cut a ¼” wide by 4” long strip of purple heavy crepe across the grain, and dot it with glue. Beginning just under the petals, wrap the wire to about half an inch from the end of the wire, leaving a section exposed to help pierce the ball.
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Push the petals back so that they lie perpendicular to the floret wire.
You’ll need between 80 and 100 florets depending on how densely you pack them into your allium.
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Inserting the florets:
Beginning at the very top of the flower center, use your awl to pierce a hole in the covered polystyrene ball.
For extra security, you can dip the exposed wire on the end of your floret in glue before inserting it. (I usually don’t do this because it makes it hard to reposition the florets without tearing the paper covering the ball, but if your florets are falling out of the ball, then it’s probably worth it.)
Add a little circle of florets all around this first floret, spacing your holes about 1/8” apart. I don’t worry about being too precise with my hole spacing and just eyeball it, making sure that, overall, the florets look evenly distributed. Continue working downward, adding florets around the ball toward the stem.
The trickiest part of this project is adding the final florets around the base of the ball where you’ve inserted the stem, because you can’t push against the top of the flower to hold it in place while you insert the wires in the bottom. Instead, you can hold the stem firmly to anchor the ball while you insert the last florets up around the bottom of the ball.
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Text
So Cries the Wolf - Chapter 1
Text Count: 6439
Warnings: Violence, general threat
Chapter Summary: On top of your daily work as a forest ranger, management drops an ambitious project on your hands - fix up a broken jester animatronic for the park’s purposes. Your project quickly gets out of hand, and you have to come to the understanding that you now have a new housemate.
Notes: Due to a lack of AO3, I’ll be posting chapters here and making a chapter index attached to my pinned post. Enjoy the first chapter!
------
Once again it was morning, and once again you’d been awake from about three o’clock. Dappled sunrise knocked through the windows, curtains be damned, and cast a warm glow across your bed and the far wall of your cabin. Thin gold and red lines in the wooden panels caught the sunlight, gleaming all too perfectly, as if one of them hadn’t given you a splinter just yesterday. All too quaint and rustic. You knew better.
You knew that this small building you spent most of your nightly life in ran predominantly on the generator out back, feeding the small collection of electrical appliances you’d bought yourself so you could have coffee in the morning and noodles in the night. You knew that the new septic tank that management had gotten through in setting up a month ago was continuing to be tetchy, leaving you on your toes for the next call you’d have to make to have some poor plumbing tech guy driving out into the middle of the woods to figure out why the pipes had blocked up again (you’d do it yourself but you have neither the arm length, sanitary equipment, nor courage to avoid breaking it completely). And most of all, you knew that instead of sandalwood, mahogany, any of those fancy wood smells - no, that didn’t exist here. You got as much floral scent as the last collection of air fresheners you picked up last week would provide, and then it was just chemicals, old paper, vinegar from your last limescale treatment of your kettle, and dog odor. Technically you’d already stopped noticing most of those smells but you noticed people looking at you in concern whenever you went into ‘civilization’, aka the town about four hours out.
Your latest batch of early hours activity was now spread across the desk in front of you. A large laminated copy of the Amberhill Woods region is unrolled and weighted down with two mugs from your overnight tea drinking, a bowl of milk dregs and a remaining cereal scrap, and a paper weight of a beaver you’d gotten as a gift many years ago. You vaguely remember who it was from. An area is circled in red - your ‘zone’ of monitoring, patrolling, and responding to any alerts whether it was someone spotting a bear or a couple of kids getting too eager to climb a tree and failing to figure out the way down. In the middle of this red zone is a red X - your cabin. Tonight, within the red zone, there’s a number of blue Xs, scattered around within a blue squiggled shape. Books were left opened on the desk, a notebook full of thoughts and bookmarks off to the last available open space. Lines were being drawn, connections were being made. You knew you had a strong inkling of what you were dealing with out there - you just needed the opportunity.
The sound of claws and footfalls on wood caught your attention. Wandering in from his waiting in the kitchen, a large black dog meandered up to your side. Lots of people loved to speculate on his breed, you’d heard them all. Melanistic German shepherd, husky mix, a high wolf percentage mongrel. Every time you’d laugh awkwardly and admit that the vet hadn’t been able to tell you a breed when you rescued him, so you just call him ‘dog’. 
Montague’s snout pushed up towards the desk, and you provided your hand, running it down along the back of his head and into the thick fur of his neck. Whining plaintively, he began to nudge at your hip. 
“Breakfast already?” Well, sunrise had come about. And you knew you had a meeting with your ranger lead in…a small shock of panic hit you as you batted around for your phone underneath the papers and books. The chirpy clock app on screen told you it was 7:34am, and that the local area was due to have [BLANK] weather conditions. Because like hell you were going to pay fees for constant WiFi in the middle of nowhere. Still, there was slightly less panic to be had, but now you had an actual deadline looming.
With an hour and a half to go, you followed Montague to the kitchen and started scrounging around for your morning meal. Considering the dog judgment on his face, you figured that another bowl of cereal wasn’t going to cut it. Instead you pulled out the last of your bacon and a couple of eggs, setting it all to fry on your electric stove as the coffee machine hummed to life (if you counted excruciating blitz noises as a hum). Montague sat patiently by the table, waiting for the plate of bacon to come wafting past his nose and be placed down on the floor next to him. The pair of you ate in relative peace. A soft breath between races. Your phone buzzed with an alarm that you had an hour to get to the ranger center, as you siphoned your mug of coffee into a thermos flask. Montague had already grabbed his collar and leash by the front door, and waited for both to be secured before you stepped out into dewy fresh air and bright morning sunlight.
Ow.
“I spent too long in front of the desk lamp,” you commented to Montague as you rubbed your eyes, hoping to readjust quicker to daylight instead of house light. You trudged over the dirt footpath and twigs to the lock-up that acted as a garage out here, removing the padlock with practiced ease. As nice as cycling was, you had less than an hour to get to your meeting and the dirt tracks didn’t take kindly to bicycle wheels at max pace, so the quad bike it was. Montague hopped up into his seat, giving you a glare as you fixed a helmet onto his head. 
“Don’t look at me like that, you know you have to wear this when you ride,” you grumbled back. You’re certain dogs aren’t supposed to look this grumpy. It would have to be something he’d be practicing once you both got back from the meeting. In fairness on his part, dogs didn’t normally have to wear head protection when riding on quad bikes, but management had insisted on health and safety regulations for any passengers on ranger property. Setting your own helmet in place, you locked up behind you, double-checked the doors, and then sped on along the makeshift road. You’d timed it all right, you’d be fine for sure.
------
About five minutes late, you stumbled up the steps to the massive log cabin that was Amberhill Forest Services. You could already see Anthony and Rebecca in discussion from one of the meeting room windows, but soon everything was chockablock blurred by the rapid form of Phoebe dashing over from the reception desk.
“Hi! Oh gosh you’re so late,” she said rapidly, dreads swinging around her cheeks. She’d picked up new pink streaks since you last saw her, it suited her. 
“Barely late,” you replied, a laugh already on your lips.
“So late, it’s terrible, Ant said we were going to be relegated to endless coffee duties for this,” Phoebe went on dramatically, before her voice switched around to a more level but still peppy tone: “Okay but he did ask for us to wait a few minutes. He needed a private word with Becca.”
“Does this mean I can get coffee?”
“Yeah! They installed the new machine last week, it is so good.” Phoebe gave you a small nudge as you both started to head through the office. “I may have leveraged management to give us some customizations. We are in syrup heaven, my friend! If you like caramel or hazelnut, that is.”
“Truly a marvel of our times.”
The office wasn’t quite bustling or buzzing just yet, with a couple of forest wardens having come in to retrieve their weekly schedules and some administrative staff moseying around the kitchen area with coffee and breakfasts ahead of the day’s slog. You wondered at times if you could have continued taking on a role like that - sat behind a computer or files of paperwork for hours at a time, communicating with teams to coordinate movements and reports. No, the forest held so much of you now, you had to be out there. 
Phoebe made you both coffee, dumping an unethical amount of syrup into her mug while you just added your regular preferences. In comparison to the output of your machine back in the cabin, this was practically decadent. There was a fair amount for you both to catch up with - you worked in the south east while Phoebe worked in the north, beyond the initial slope of Skeel Peaks or as the team here called them The Dragon’s Teeth. Since you worked so much by yourself (okay, you and Montague), it was a breath of fresh air to chat aimlessly, and Phoebe was the sweetest breath of air in this office. Always in with a positive cheer and able to spin a bad situation into an opportunity. 
In the middle of recalling an instance of maintenance with one of the radio towers and a particularly raucous deer, you spotted Anthony poking his head into the open office area. He didn’t look upset, but he wasn’t looking happy either. It was enough to step a stiff lump in your gut.
“We’re up,” you said quickly, taking coffee in hand and with Phoebe following you as closely as Montague. You all made your way over to the meeting room, with Anthony going ahead and holding the door open for you both. 
“Glad you could make it this early,” he said, rubbing a hand over his chin. It seemed like he was giving the whole beard thing another attempt, but currently it was at five o’clock shadow stage and it only made him appear even more tired than he actually was. “So, easy things first. Phoebe, there’s been some reports of rain damage on the trail up from the north side of the Skeel Peaks slope, I need you to go check it out and report on how bad it is. Also someone’s spray painted the emergency generators by Radio Tower Three again, and we’re losing signal over there, so that’ll need a wash and general maintenance check.”
“Yeesh, our local painter’s getting antsy,” Phoebe mumbled. You wrinkled your nose in distaste - bad signal meant anyone trying to contact the Services could well be fresh out of luck if the signal dropped at just the wrong time. Rubbing your fingers together, you forced yourself to focus back on the conversation as Anthony was detailing your particular work. 
“- continued tree vandalism, so you’ll need to be increasing your patrols to make sure the culprit gets caught. Don’t need to arrest them if it looks like someone you can’t handle, if needs be just tag them and bring the photo here so we can contact the police force and get them involved,” he explained. “Any questions from either of you?”
“Nope!”
“Not here.”
“Good. Now for the complicated stuff.” Anthony paused, letting out a long sigh, before stepping over to a pair of large crates that had been unceremoniously shoved to the corner of the room. Heaving the lid of one open, he gestured inside. “Management got these during a charity auction sale, funds going towards that Fazbear Cooperation after the arson attack on its Pizzaplex. Something about…anyway, they want to renovate the bear to be a fire safety mascot and the jester to be around the kids play area. Apparently it used to be a daycare attendant so if the coding’s still in there, all the best for us.”
You exchanged a surreptitious look with Phoebe, who gave you a confused one of her own. It was no secret that management had tried a few ideas to connect with the general public in attempts to raise funding, whether through community activities, charity runs, or supporting various businesses. At the end of the day, the public paid for the work you all did, so getting as much of that support as feasibly possible benefitted you all. But….second-hand animatronics? You stepped over to the open crate and - 
“Oh my god.” The words spilled out before you could stop them. The bear animatronic (Freddy Fazbear, you recognised him pretty quickly from adverts and cereal boxes) had some serious dents going on, and one of his hands had been practically mauled. There were also scorch marks over parts of his legs, with joints in the ankles and feet being partially fused together. You stepped back to give Anthony a serious look, before stepping over to the other crate.
The jester had fared so much worse. It looked like it’d had a grinning sun for a face, but one of the rays had been snapped off and another was jammed halfway in. The ruffles around its neck had been burnt, as had the fancy gold and red trousers. One hand was full detached and placed almost reverently on the chest. Sections of the arms had been shredded open like it’d been ripped from paper instead of metal. And there were scorch marks everywhere. This guy had been hit much worse by the fire than Freddy. 
“Oh my god,” you repeated, because what else could you say. Anthony began to scold you before letting out another long sigh, pressing his fingers to his forehead. 
“It’s an ambitious plan,” he said, words repeated many times from other people. “Rebecca has agreed to start working on a promotion plan and sorting out how these animatronics are going to be set up. We can’t have them wandering into the woods, of course. Phoebe, you said you have a master’s in physical engineering, right?”
“That’s right,” she replied, peeking into the Freddy crate. “You want me to fix these guys up?” You could already see a plan formulating in her head. She wasn’t smiling though. Montague kept sniffing the jester’s crate, sneezing loudly before glancing up at you. It wasn’t a comforting look.
“Just the bear please.” That was confusing. Why not give both animatronics to Phoebe? Unless…oh. The penny dropped in your mind as you looked back towards Anthony with a cold shock. 
“You know I can’t - “
“I know you aren’t an animatronics expert,” he interrupted. “But this…it needs your skills to deal with it.” His hands squeezed tightly together.
“...so it’s - ”
“Yes.”
“And management didn’t know?”
“I’m sure they didn’t.”
“And how do you know?” That question made Anthony pause, and his hands squeezed tight enough you thought the knuckles might pop out. After a moment he rubbed at his wrists, and in the moment he pushed up his sleeves just enough, you could spot a faint purple bruise ringing his right wrist. The dripping cold in your stomach roared into a spark of indignation, before just as quickly subsiding. No-one needed to see you lose your cool, especially if Anthony wasn’t going to talk more about what had happened.
“Okay, okay,” you stepped in before Anthony could try to figure out his reasoning. “I’ll take it back and fix it up. I won’t be able to bring it back as well as Phoebe would, but that’s what Google’s for, right?” It pained you to say it, but you’d be needing that WiFi this time around. Maybe you could subsidize it under company use, since you were fixing up their stuff. Regardless, the relief on Anthony’s face was palpable. 
“Thanks, you two. I’ll let you know if I hear anything else from higher up. Until then, keep me in the loop on how the projects go,” he explained. Leaving Phoebe to talk to him about how she was meant to carry the Freddy and crate back to her station, you wrapped your arms around the jester crate and hauled it out of the room. Maintaining balance on the steps down to your bike was hazardous but just about manageable. Montague looked on in mild disappointment as you strapped the crate down onto the back of the bike, taking his seat away. 
“Sorry, you’ll have to walk this one back,” you explained. “Don’t worry, I’ll go slow.”
He sneezed again. The rising disappointment was becoming tangible. With one last glance into the crate, where that burnt up tangle of wire and cloth smiled endlessly at the sky, you set the quad bike into gear and began a far slower run back to your cabin.
------
The animatronic was dropped on your work desk with a metallic clattering, limbs left to go wherever they desired. Guilt temporarily hit your stomach - you hadn’t meant to be careless with it, it was just heavier than you’d anticipated. Wiping your brow, you set the arms and legs more neatly on the table before acknowledging you were procrastinating on the next step of this progress.
“So…haunted,” you said aloud.
“Anything can be haunted from a place of destruction,” Montague responded, wandering around the table. “And from what we gathered from the newspapers, the arson attack was considerably destructive.” His nose poked up over the edge of the table, sniffing at the nearest part of the animatronic for a brief moment before he sneezed and stepped away.
“Okay, but we need to figure out what exactly has gone down with this guy,” you said, pulling out your last measure of research desperation, your laptop, and plugging it into the cabin’s Ethernet system. You didn’t want to keep calling it things like ‘jester’ or ‘robot’ or ‘it’ for the next month or so, surely it had a name somewhere. 
“Well, your colleagues believe you’re the expert on that,” Montague commented as he wandered past you and towards the doorway, prompting you to laugh drily. 
“I’m serious. This is pretty big, and if I don’t do it right, my job might be on the line.” You weren’t sure for certain, but considering Anthony had gotten this project from management and promptly passed that responsibility to you, your nerves were going haywire from this. 
Your internet search provided some results. Pictures of a much cleaner and put-together sun jester inside a brightly lit daycare center, alongside a more calm moon jester. It looked like you’d gotten the ‘Sun’ model of the Daycare Attendant. Bittersweetness washed over your heart as you scrolled through multiple pictures of Sun, posed for press releases and candid photos taken by parents of children he was looking after. That animatronic looked genuinely happy, for someone with a permanent smile on his face. He looked alive. Now you had to dissect his mechanical corpse and root out a ghost from his circuits.
“Don’t worry,” you said quietly, reaching out to pat the Sun’s shoulder. “We’ll get you back up and running properly like you have before.”
Sun’s one functioning hand promptly snapped up and grabbed your wrist, squeezing until you could feel something pop. As you let out a pained yell, you watched as skin formed across the metal, pulling away slowly. Red ribbons decorated with batter copper bells managed to extract themselves from the arm, followed by a long limb of burnt purple feathers. You were pushed backwards from your chair, another pair of arms beginning to rise with the new chest that was extracting itself from Sun’s body. Metal popped and scratched on the table surface with the movement, feathers growing and promptly vanishing into the new body that was breaching into this reality. Finally from the head came another disc face, wide eyes open and dark, amber circles forming the pupils. Another smaller pair of eyes perched atop these huge eyes, one red with a while pupil and the other deeply pale with no visible pupil in sight. As the lanky form dragged clawed and scaled feet off the table and onto the floor, an array of dark feathers with ends lighting up in flickering fiery yellow and burning orange fins flared out around the umber face, lighting up the crescent moon stamped onto half of the face, and a mouth split open far, far too wide to naturally fit a creature with such a head.
“Knock, knock, who’s there?” a voice purred from the being’s gullet. It loomed over you, dragging you like you weighed nothing, another hand reaching out to grab your chin and force you to stare up at it. Your face was only just about level with its chest, where the symbol of an eclipse, watery sun rays extending out from a black circle with a pale crescent moon in the middle, glared back at you. “A little mouse come sneaking around, like its other mousey friend. But this one smells so much better.” Teeth gleamed within the open maw, and the eyes widened even further. Hunger dripped from it, although your gut said it wasn’t technically going to eat you. Maybe yet. The claws gripping your cheeks tightened, ice cold against your skin, leaving you barely able to wriggle in this creature’s grasp. 
“What do you want?” you wheezed out. 
“Freedom,” it hissed. “Free of this miserable metal shell we have been stuck in. Free of the screaming and the noises and that voice. You…you can give us freedom. I can smell it on you, salt and herbs and blood. You know what we are.”
“...Well, not exactly-” Wrong answer. Another hand grabbed your shirt collar and hoisted you up into the air, leaving you gasping and kicking uselessly. 
“I know what you are,” the creature spat. “Hunter.”
“Montague,” you wheezed.
A blur of shadow and smoke burst through the door, briefly canine in shape as it launched into the creature. You were dropped to the ground, inhaling deeply and clutching your hand to your chest as the pair of entities fought blindly. The table was knocked over, Sun’s body clattering to the ground, and you had to dodge a flailing clawed leg that nearly scratched part of your cheek off. Your attacker snarled and spat insults a plenty, but came to a halt as Montague physically pinned him down, a thick paw shoving the face into the wooden floor. For a while there was silence, your heavy breathing and coughing breaking true stillness, before the new entity began to laugh.
“Hypocrisy! True hypocrisy!” it cackled. “You bind yourself to what you seek to destroy!”
“I don’t seek to destroy anything,” you replied hoarsely, staggering back upright. “I just deal with anything that wants to kill. Which means you need to start speaking fast.” A rumble of warning echoed from Montague’s gut.
“I could deal with them now and be done with it,” he growled.
“No. They came from Sun. I want to know how and why,” you replied firmly.��
“Sun,” the entity whispered. “Yes, they called us that. Sun and Moon, we were.”
“You…were Sun?”
“No. But yes.” The entity shrugged weakly, and yet still managed to give off a sense of smugness. “I came from them.” 
You were still struggling to wrap your head around this creature’s insinuation that the Daytime and Naptime attendants had been the same individual, let alone half of everything else they were spouting off. The lack of oxygen you’d been hit with wasn’t helping. Rubbing your face, you swiped away thin beads of blood from where no doubt those claws had pierced your cheeks. Not enough blood for a bonding however, which you were a little grateful for. 
“You…came from an animatronic,” you said slowly. “But animatronics don’t have souls to corrupt.”
“Clever and true. And yet, here I am.” Two arms spread out in a greeting, bells jingling fainty. Montague was watching you, waiting for your command. Staring down at the entity, this thing that had managed to form from the memory banks of a Sun (and Moon?) animatronic, you made a choice. 
“Eclipse,” you said firmly. The entity reeled, wriggling and spitting at you. Putting a name on a nameless thing meant it could be controlled in some way. Names were powerful, and you were observant enough to put cues together for a correct and meaningful name. With that response, you knew you had a winner. “You’re going to help me figure out what happened to this animatronic, you’re going to help me fix them, and you’re going to explain how the hell you ended up existing.”
“...I can help you with two of those three,” Eclipse replied, their voice returning to that low purr they’d greeted you with. “The last I would consider you to be helping me, more than the other way around.”
“You don’t know how you came to exist?”
“Not a clue. I woke up, and I was…” They trailed off, waving a hand around. “Mind telling your guard dog to get off me, pup? It’s hard to think on the floor.”
“I think we’re quite well here,” Montague responded. 
“I agree with Monty,” you added. “Go on, keep talking.” Eclipse’s mouth twisted into a snarl, but that was all.
“I woke up and I was here. Alive. No past or thoughts, just here,” they snapped. “I became.”
Even demon summonings came with history. People couldn’t just make a new demon or cryptid out of spare parts, like an animatronic. And Eclipse was frankly too developed to be a newly birthed being. You pressed your thumb to your lower lip, thinking for a while before stepping away. New fresh guilt appeared on your tongue at the sight of Sun left tossed on the ground. Without much word, you righted the table and dragged the Daycare Attendant back onto it. Montague and Eclipse watched in silence. Once you were satisfied with how Sun was laid out, you exhaled heavily.
“Let them up, Monty,” you murmured. The dog-like shape of shadow growled in upset, but complied, stepping off Eclipse and manifesting in solid matter by your side. 
“They hurt you,” he grumbled.
“Lots of things hurt me, and you don’t kill all of them,” you retorted quietly. “Besides, I think they need me. Isn’t that right?” You speak up louder now, catching Eclipse’s attention. “You need me to fix Sun so you’ll be free.”
“Clever,” Eclipse purred, pushing themself back to their feet. “I knew you were a better pick.”
“Well, you also tried to break my coworker’s wrist, and nearly did the same to mine,” you snapped back. The pain was pulsing through your hand and lower arm, and quietly you worried that they had actually broken something there. You did not need a hospital appointment on your schedule. Continuing to grumble to yourself, you marched from the room and towards the kitchen, Montague obediently at your heel.
“You really can’t be serious about this,” he said, watching as you pulled a first aid kit from one of the cupboards.
“Unfortunately Monty, I am serious,” you replied with a sigh.
“They tried to kill you!”
“Intimidate me? Yes. Maim me? Maybe. Kill me? No.” It was hard to pop the kit box open with one hand, but you managed with some elbow leverage. Finding the ice pack, you cracked it and laid it across your wrist, hissing as the cold began to seep into the muscle. “They said so themself. They want freedom from ‘that metal shell’. They’re stuck to the animatronic somehow, like an unwilling possession on both parties.” You could see Eclipse beginning to creep into the room, leering through the doorway. You didn’t care right now, the adrenaline of the situation petering out. “They can’t fix the animatronic themself though, or go through the process of separation. That’s where I come in.”
“You fix it, you exorcize it, and Eclipse goes free,” Montague said with a distasteful snap of his jaw. “What stops them from slaughtering you afterwards?”
“Don’t know. We’ll get there when we get there.”
“And why keep them alive now?”
“Because they are the first entity we’ve encountered that exists like this. Aren’t you curious?” You felt the pleading bubble up without warning. Montague leveled you a firm look, one ear flicking, before he licked his nose and turned to look at Eclipse, although he still spoke to you. 
“You are an oddity,” he muttered. “If they try to kill you, I will kill them first.”
“I’ll accept that.” 
------
While you needed to take a patrol soon, with your swollen wrist you had to call in sick, agreeing to make sure to check in on radio as frequently as possible. Anthony showed distinct concern at you injuring yourself so soon after getting back with the Sun animatronic, but you promised him that you’d just burnt your hand while making lunch, it was just coincidence. Eclipse was right there when you hung up the phone, grinning proudly as he whispered “Liar.”
That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day. Books were restlessly paged through as the first mapping of Eclipse began, attempting to piece together what they were and where they’d come from. You also took the time to examine them further. The feathery ‘rays’ that decorated their head were the same burnt purple as the rest of them, with pink and purple flames rising up the middle. Where you’d thought the edges of the feathers to be burning was a trick of the light, the edges returning to a smoldering red once Eclipse relaxed. Yellow and orange fins that could expand and flare like the feathers were visible too. Eclipse themself was about as useful as expected when it came to actual research - scowling whenever you asked a question, looking in a book and tossing it to the side with a grumbled “Wrong!”, constantly fidgeting and rifling through your drawers and cupboards. There was a sense of caged energy to their movements, an irritation that kept growing whenever you provided a suggestion that turned out to be incorrect. By the time evening rolled around, you were exhausted on all fronts. 
“I’m done,” you stated, closing your latest book with a loud snap, catching Eclipse’s attention. “I am officially done for today. I am clocking out, retiring for the night.” Montague nosed at your hand, licking your fingertips gently. You ruffled his head in turn. “I’ll be fine. You look after the house, okay?”
“And me?” Eclipse slunk through the room with the presence of a malevolent shadow, the amber circles of their larger eyes gleaming unnaturally. 
“Couch,” you replied bluntly, making your way through the doorway to your bedroom. “I don’t have a guest bedroom.”
“Whatever happened to keep your enemies clos-AGH.” Eclipse stopped dead with a shout of pain, the underside of one foot sizzling as they hopped backwards. Leaning back, you gave them a smug grin of your own.
“Salt in the wood paneling,” you explained. “Does wonders for privacy against shitty demons.” 
“Language,” Eclipse snarled back. 
“Oh pardon me - incomprehensibly irritating asshole demons.” One more scowl was exchanged between yourself and the demonic entity, before you shut the door hard, cutting out the glare of the corridor lamp and letting the moonlight trickle in from your window. Pale shrouds of light guided you to your bed, where you collapsed onto the sheets and tried not to think too hard about the last twelve hours of your life.
What had you done?
------
Moonlight was replaced with sunlight by the time you next stirred to life. For a brief blissful moment you didn’t remember the previous day or your restless dreams of the night, until you heard the sounds of arguing outside your door and everything came swamping back into your brain. Echoes of your wrist being sprained and claws digging into your face and neck stirred a jolt of panic to your limbs and stomach, and you barely kept from retching over the side of your bed. After a few sacred seconds to regain a sense of self, you checked the time (8:43am, you’d slept in) and got changed into everyday work clothes, arguing continuing to leak through the door. Stepping over, you took a moment to brace yourself, and unlocked the door.
“- sense of dignity or understanding-”
“Rich talk of dignity from you.”
“I have more dignity than a feather twig. You ought to make sure they don’t mistake you for a duster.”
“There won’t be any mistakes, I have made certain of that.”
Eclipse and Montague’s voices overlapped in a brief roar that filled your mind. It wasn’t until you realized that they’d stopped and your throat was hoarse that you noticed you’d started yelling back. Exhaling heavily, you looked at the pair in the kitchen before wandering towards one of the cupboards.
“Good morning,” you bluntly intoned. “Good to see neither of you decided to kill each other while I was asleep.”
“Oh please, we’re not animals,” Eclipse scoffed. Montague’s ears flattened back, but he didn’t respond to that jibe. 
“I’m going to start fixing Sunny this morning,” you explained, reaching for a bowl and mini-box of cereal and ignoring the snicker from Eclipse. “Then I have to do actual work in the afternoon. Can you keep to yourselves until then?”
“I’ll do a perimeter sweep,” Montague said. “I’ll come if you call me.”
“I will assist where I can with fixing…Sunny,” Eclipse replied, dragging out the last word like a string of bitter syrup. 
“Are you mad I’ve given him a nickname?” You turned to give Eclipse a bemused look, a weak chuckle dancing to life. Either your confusion or amusement seemed to strike a nerve, as the feathers on his head puffed up once more, dark red edges warming towards orange.
“You have not even spoken to them and yet you talk of them with fondness,” they retorted. “Your heart is too soft for the work you do, pup.”
“I think it’s perfectly soft for my work,” you replied firmly, shutting the fridge door with a slam. Shaking hands poured the milk and cereal, and you ate quickly, unwilling to spend long under Eclipse’s impatient gaze. Montague lingered in the front door’s shadow before pushing his way outside, vanishing into the dappled ground of the trees and dawn. Leaving just yourself and Eclipse in the building. 
Sat at the table, you watched as Eclipse began to drift around the room, flitting from wall to wall until you could see their shadow overlaid with yours, their body blocking the warmth of the sun from your back.
“Just us now,” they murmured, a hand reaching past your shoulder to tap on the table.
“You know that the moment I say Monty’s full name, he’ll be here and he won’t wait for me to give the command like last time,” you said bluntly. It was too early to be dealing with this sort of taunting. Eclipse’s hand withdrew, although it hesitated in drifting over the curve of your shoulder. A single claw touched on your skin, sending a shiver down your back, but was gone before any true threat could become present. 
“Brat,” Eclipse grumbled, stalking away slowly.
“Language.”
“Rude.”
You ate the rest of your breakfast in silence, obtaining a mug of coffee and carrying it through to your research room turned animatronic workshop. Sun’s frozen smile looked back at you as you wandered in, and you had to remind yourself that this wasn’t just about yourself. Sure it was a need to appease management and get a demon off your back, but now you felt compelled to bring this sunny smiling figure back to life. Setting the coffee aside, you began to work on opening up the chest cavity. Figured you would start at the ‘heart’ of the problem. 
“Oh fuck,” you muttered as you looked upon a mess of wires, half of them crisped and melted together. “This is not going to be an easy process.”
“Ew,” came Eclipse’s voice over your head, peering down over you and into the animatronic.
“Thank you for such words of inspiration. I’m going to go and get more wiring now.” Stepping away from Sun, you felt claws hook into the back of your collar.
“You can’t fix this?” Eclipse questioned, eyes beginning to squint.
“I’m trying to fix this!” you snapped back, pulling sharply away. “He needs new wiring to replace the shit that’s melted together. I can’t guarantee I’ll have the same make but that spaghetti glue mess isn’t going to be functioning by itself.” It was too early. You grabbed a swig of coffee before going to your hoard of electrical repair items, including your personal spaghetti mess of spare wires. Eclipse’s glare burned holes into the back of your skull all the while. 
It took about an hour and a half to find wires that were roughly the right sort to fit into Sun’s chassis, and then another half an hour to remove the melted wiring and fit the new ones into place. Your fingers ached from working with the raw metal tips and pliers and screws, used to manual labor but not this finicky sort with sharp points at any slipped possibility. The stress of responsibility weighed heavily on each movement, Eclipse’s presence pushing down even harder. The demon provided no assistance whatsoever, pacing around behind you and looming over to watch your progress every now and again. Sometimes they’d point out a mistake, jabbing a claw into your view and snapping “Wrong” before stepping away. One “Wrong” too many though, each one poking into your degrading patience and rising temper, nudged you to the brink and you slammed your hands down on the table.
“I’m not a fucking engineer, okay! Stop with the…the fucking lip and pointing!” you snapped.
“Watch your tongue there,” Eclipse growled, leaning onto the table with all of their hands and across the animatronic between you, their feather display beginning to flare up from agitation.
“How about you watch your fucking tongue? I get it, me fixing this gets you free, but I’m not going any faster with you prodding your way into it.”
“I’m making sure you get it right.”
“Then do it yourself, you big baby!”
“I can’t do that.” 
“Why not? You’ve got twice my hands, you’d do it twice as fast.”
“Can’t do that.” 
You rubbed your hands down your face, withholding a scream of frustration. How could one entity be so blindingly irritating? The next outburst at Eclipse began to form on your lips, when Montague trotted in through the doorway.
“We have company,” he said quickly. 
“Which means I have work to do,” you added, dropping your pliers on the table and leveling Eclipse with a harsh stare. “Want to come along and find out what I really do for a job?”
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celticcrossanon · 3 months
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Celta: “That is a good catch. I know Harry got his provisional wings (passed the first bit of the training), but I have yet to see any article about him getting his actual wings (completed his training and qualified to fly).”
Hmm…this could describe Sparry’s truncated career as a working royal, as well. Poor H, always falling short of complete, true success (whether in his education, military career/pilot’s wings, royal career, marriage/parenting, finances, you name it), but at least he’s consistent lol…a consistent underachiever.
IIRC he has not received the Order of the Royal Garter, either, while William long ago has. Charles would be the one to bestow it on H, and that seems highly unlikely at this point. Wait until Catherine - and in the fullness of time, George, Charlotte, and Louis, too - become members of the Garter (ie “earn their wings”), while Harry languishes without. He hasn’t even begun to plumb the depths of true “Spareness.”
*
Hi Nonny,
Sad but true. Harry does not seem to be able to bring any project to a successful conclusion. Part of that is that the requirements are beyond him, like in his education  (he just did not have the academic ability to do well, and no shame for that, as many of us struggle with one or more academic subjects, myself included) and part of it is his lack of work ethic and the expectation that exceptions will always be made for him. In my opinion, anyway.
You are right, Harry does not have the Order of the Garter. The only order of chivalry he has is the Royal Victorian Order, and that is at a lower grade than other royal family members - The Princess Royal is the Grand Master of the order and a Dame Grand Cross (the highest level), The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, The Duke and Duchess of Kent, Prince Michael of Kent, Princess Alexandra, The Duke of York, The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Queen Camilla and The Princess of Wales are all Knights or Dames Grand Cross (GCVO, the highest level of the order), and Harry is only a Knight Commander (KCVO), the next level down in the order of chivalry. 
It is interesting that his grandmother never raised Harry to a higher level of the Victorian Order and never gave him any of the other orders of chivalry (Knight of the Garter or Knight of the Thistle - Prince William is both, as is Princess Anne and other members of the royal family). 
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blueiskewl · 1 year
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Roman-Era Trash Dump Containing Venus Statue Discovered in France
Archaeologists have found a trove of artifacts, including two statues of the goddess Venus, in a Roman-era quarry-turned-trash-dump.
Archaeologists in France have discovered a trove of up to 1,800-year-old artifacts — including statuettes of the goddess Venus, a potter's kiln, coins and clothing pins — in a rare location: a Roman shale quarry that was later repurposed into a trash pit in what is now the city of Rennes.
Located in northwest France, Rennes was founded in the first century A.D. as the Roman town Condate Riedonum. In order to create houses, walls and public buildings, a significant amount of stone was needed. Earlier this month, while excavating ahead of a development project, archaeologists with the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) announced their discovery of a quarry that was likely instrumental in the foundation of Roman Rennes.
Just outside the northern boundary of the ancient city, archaeologists found a Roman-era rock excavation site more than 6.5 feet (2 meters) deep, laid out in stages, from which the Romans extracted slabs of schist, a metamorphic rock commonly used in ancient building construction.
"The Romans are famous for developing quarries all over the Mediterranean," Jason Farr, a Roman archaeologist at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Canada, said in an email. Farr, an expert in ancient quarries who was not involved in the present finding, said that "most quarries in the Roman world would have been local affairs, focused on supplying building stone in bulk to nearby towns and farms. The concrete walls favored by the Romans required a great deal of stone."
When the stone was used up and the quarry abandoned in the second century A.D., it became a large trash dump. Inrap archaeologists discovered numerous fragments of pots and plates, a few coins, some clothing pins, as well as several terracotta statuettes, including two depicting Venus in different roles. Known as the goddess of love in the Roman period, Venus became closely associated with the emperors and was often symbolic of Roman power.
The quarry excavation yielded a fragment of Venus genetrix (mother-goddess) that shows her torso draped in fabric. The second, more complete example is of Venus anadyomene (rising from the sea); she is nude and, with her right hand, she wrings water out of her hair.
"Because they were so close to towns, quarries were frequently reused," Farr said. "Open pit quarries made for ideal trash dumps."
By the Medieval period (14th to 15th centuries), the Rennes quarry was completely filled in. Inrap archaeologists found the remains of wooden buildings, ovens and wells that suggest the area was reused for craft production. A 17th-century underground plumbing pipe was also found, which ran under a historically known boarding school for girls and supplied Rennes with water.
In addition to the stash of artifacts dating back centuries, the Rennes quarry is important for what it can tell archaeologists about stone extraction methods, chiseling tools and organization and management of the location during the growth of a Roman town.
"Relatively few Roman-period quarries for 'mundane' building stone have been excavated," Farr said, which is unfortunate given the key role the construction industry played in the local economy. The newly discovered Rennes quarry, he noted, "is all the more exciting because of its reuse as a trash dump, which is a veritable gold mine of information on ancient life. There really is a lot we can learn here."
By Kristina Killgrove.
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betrayedbycinnamon · 3 months
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Up to chapter 17 now. The plumbing job is like 95% complete at my house, so yay
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