israfels shadow

What if the “drifter” archetype continues into space? Like maybe we negotiated for free travel with one of our allies, but because humans come from a death world and are terrfiying, and because humans can be oblivious, we just assume we can board on any ship going anywhere, nbd?

“What is the purpose of this?” Captain Diii asked the young technician assigned to the sector.

Their mood-spots cycled to anxiety-orange as their feet shuffled in discomfort. “The human called it her ‘hammock’ and said it would be out of the way there?”

A human. On Captain Diii’s ship. Her spots flashed from fear to anger to consternation and settled on worry. This had never before happened to her. She’d only been captain for two annuals, and she operated so far from any of the major travel hubs she had hoped she would not have to deal with this.

The problem had started after the war. The terrifying human ‘marines’ had been key to repelling the Kkoin invaders, with their wild recklessness and near-indestructibility. They had put an end to the war very quickly, and the terms of alliance in exchange for this service had been seen as extremely generous. They asked for transportation, mainly, since human FTL drives still lagged behind galactic standard. It had been assumed that by this they meant transporting goods and perhaps colonists by arrangement, but the wording had been ambiguous in translation.

That did happen, but in addition humans would simply… step onto ships going where they wanted to go. And stay. Who would dare contradict a human? Any one of them could turn deadly at a moment’s notice. Their hardiness and ferocity was legend. As of yet, no way of repelling them had been 100% effective. Their comfort range was massive, so keeping a ship hot or cold did not help. Scents designed to be maximally unpleasant to the human sensory array dissuaded some, but others would simply laugh and joke about them as they boarded anyway. It seemed they could acclimate to even the most noxious of scents within a few cycles.

Some humans would uproot their entire families and head for another planet, seemingly on a whim. Other humans would then go visit these families, and go back home, or not. Some humans traveled from planet to planet and station to station to satisfy their near-endless curiosity. Some traveled because to travel and see new things gave them pleasure, and then returned to their homes seemingly refreshed.

Such a strange species.

Captain Diii had been certain she had assigned someone to guard the ship and tell any hopeful humans that there was no space for them if they tried to board. Captain Diii did not have any facilities for humans aboard her ship. She hurried to the nearest communication pod and signaled for her second in command, Taa, to join her.

Taa already had anxiety flashing on her mood spots when she arrived.

“Taa, were you not assigned to inform humans that there was no space?” Captain Diii asked.

“I did, Captain!” Taa protested. “But she answered that she did not need much and walked right past me! What could I do?”

“And where is she now?” Diii asked.

“The kitchens. She… she said she wanted to be added to the duty roster, and that she enjoyed food preparation?”

That was another thing about the humans. They almost all wanted to work on the ships they boarded. Often they threw duty schedules into disarray by simply volunteering themselves to do tasks. At least this one seemed to know to ask the officer in charge of duties.

Diii found the human in the kitchens, as expected. She was very tall and thin for her type, of the morph ‘all bones’, if Diii was remembering the mandatory human-culture lessons that had been recently been added to ships-captain certification classes. She seemed to lack the jiggling bits that were so disconcerting on some humans. She did not reek of artificial fragrances as some humans did, instead scented pleasantly of human natural musk. Her head-covering stands, ‘hair’, was a friendly violet. Diii was certain this was not a natural coloration for the species. Her loose cloth coverings were earthy browns and creams, reminiscent of a child’s camouflage.

The human turned to look at Captain Diii, and showed her white-bone teeth in the body language ‘smile’, a gesture of friendliness and pleasure. Now that she was turned, Diii could see that half of the human’s head was shaved, and an array of electronics were installed directly in her skull. It was testament to their extraordinary healing powers that augmenting themselves with inorganic parts was commonplace in human culture. The humans had the technology to make their implants invisible, but some chose to make them visible because it looked ‘bad posterior’, which was somehow a good thing and aesthetically pleasing to them?

The human’s implants lit up, showing the exact blue of happiness, as she straightened up to give the human ‘salute’–a greeting to a superior. “Captain Diii? It’s good to meet you. I’m Elizabeth, but you can call me Zizi.”

Captain Diii could not help but be somewhat charmed. She must have the latest language-translation chip, Zizi’s speech was near perfect, and that she had something that functioned nearly like mood-spots was comforting. Her chosen name, as well, was easy to pronounce and nonthreateningly low-status.

“A greeting, Zizi,” Captain Diii answered carefully. “May I inquire your purpose aboard my ship?”

“Oh, I’m just a drifter,” Zizi said. “I just love traveling, you know? I heard the moons of Sigma7 were gorgeous, so I’m working my way that-a-ways.” Zizi’s pseudo-mood spot lights switched to anticipation before cycling back to happiness. “I’ll be off your ship at the next supply depot, if I can find someone heading more that direction.”

Ah, the ‘drifter’ type. Captain Diii had heard of them. ‘ship-hoppers’. An entire sub-class of humans who wandered the galaxy simply because they did not want to do anything else. They were famously the most difficult to dissuade from boarding a ship, and most likely to board from strange ports and going strange directions. Clearly it was not Taa’s fault she had been unable to keep Zizi out, and Diii signaled brief apology toward her.

“I won’t be any trouble,” Zizi continued. “I can set my hammock up anywhere to sleep, if it’s in your way?”

“The location you have chosen is… acceptable,” Captain Diii allowed. Zizi’s hair’s constant show of friendly had her own spots heading toward that color in automatic prosocial response. It was somewhat disconcerting. “I will leave you to your work,” Captain Diii said, retreating, and Zizi smiled and threw another quick salute before turning back to the food on the stove. Her implants showed concentration and curiosity, and then Captain Diii was outside the room with her again.

She turned toward Taa, who was still concerned. “I have heard that ships with a human listed on their crew roster have a 30% lower chance of being targeted by pirates?” Taa volunteered.

“Yes, yes,” Captain Diii mused. The risk was very low to begin with, especially for a ship like hers that did not haul valuable cargo, but anything that lowered it further could not be all bad. “It is not your fault in any case, Taa. Nothing could have prevented this human from boarding.”

Taa relaxed some, and Captain Diii returned to her inspection of the ship. Then she went to the helm and transmitted her updated crew roster to the main control base, encrypted only very lightly.

finally searched for a solution and there IS in fact a giant hand-curated list of sites containing this content. it can be imported to ublock origin on desktop or mobile, and even can be used on iOS via the ublacklist extension in the safari app. it's updated regularly, and importing via the link as described should allow those updates to go into effect automatically.

i've only tested it a little bit, but after importing the list and repeating my duckduckgo search for backpack recommendations, my top results now lead to websites that appear to be linked to actual organizations in some form, with an "about us" page and the name of a founder and everything. the text is still often a bit wordy and SEO-optimized, but it now has actual recommendations that are relevant to the query. BIG IF TRUE???

finally searched for a solution and there IS in fact a giant hand-curated list of sites containing this content. it can be imported to ublock origin on desktop or mobile, and even can be used on iOS via the ublacklist extension in the safari app. it's updated regularly, and importing via the link as described should allow those updates to go into effect automatically.

i've only tested it a little bit, but after importing the list and repeating my duckduckgo search for backpack recommendations, my top results now lead to websites that appear to be linked to actual organizations in some form, with an "about us" page and the name of a founder and everything. the text is still often a bit wordy and SEO-optimized, but it now has actual recommendations that are relevant to the query. BIG IF TRUE???

So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.

So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.

So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.

This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner. 

So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.

These are people whose life works exist entirely in conceptual space, where the limits of what they can achieve are only their And they are impressive, don’t get me wrong, but few of them would I value more than a team of decent scientists. The amount of skill, intelligence, and diligence required to outwork even half a dozen of your fellows is pushing the limits of human ability. 

Even Albert Einstein, famed example of the brilliant lone scientist, was not that special. I’ve read his papers in detail, and those of his contemporaries (took a class on it actually). Without him the discovery of general relativity would have been delayed two or three years at most, the mathematical and conceptual groundwork that enabled his brilliance was laid down by others and being investigated by others as well. And I’d pit a decent team against Einstein any day of the week, an individual can only do so much. 

For the amount of money Jeff Bezos earns working for a day, $215,000,000 (x), I could hire a thousand such hardworking geniuses for a year. Maybe ‘only’ a hundred if they were from an exceptionally competitive and valuable field.

For the money Jeff Bezos earns in a year, I could hire a village. I could create a project with so many educated minds it would be larger than the Manhattan Project. About a dozen times over. 

No one is that irreplaceable. No one has a percent of that worth. If someone is a billionaire, they are earning beyond their contribution to society, at the expense of other’s well-being. 

You can have money and not be evil. You can make a few million in your life through legitimate hard work on your own part and save it and not use it all and have it make sense, numerically.

But when you hit the Bs? Nah. No. Sorry. If you are staying a billionaire and not giving and being taxed enough to drop back down into multi-millionaire status?

You’re no longer a person.

You are Smaug the Terrible wearing a flesh suit and I’m not surprised you are involved in global warming because what do western dragons do but hoard and burn?

It is important to consider the culture of the person who created the piece, absolutely; but the different perspectives offered by the viewers is fascinating in and of itself and does not always detract from the message.

As an example, when I was younger, I watched Schindler's List. This movie is famously shot in black and white except for one section, concerning a little girl in a red coat. The camera follows her until her eventual death.

I am Turtle Island Indigenous and I was always taught that the only color spirits could see was red, because it is the color of life and blood.

So the second the girl in the red jacket came on screen, something inside me chilled with fear.

The only color in the movie was that red. At some point, I, the viewer, had died.

I remember sobbing at the sight of the burning human piles that were shown, convinced I was buried in there somewhere. The reason I had only seen red on the girl was that my death was recent. I was the ash in the air mistaken for snow. I had died before her and had followed her, helplessly, until she followed me.

The message I got for that was maybe not what the creator had intended: that there was no "being clever enough" or "good enough" or "kind enough" that would shield or protect you from such a massive tidal wave of evil.

You are not exempt from tragedy, that red jacket whispered. You are not special.

When I told some of my white friends about my experience with viewing Schindler's List, some were shocked and the rest just out-and-out mocked me for my "media illiteracy".

"it was just a filming trick to make you feel something," I remember one saying, which terrified me. How had he not felt anything even before she showed up?

Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery

There's atleast 3 types of racism in here, against French Acadians, against Arabs and the purpoted race mixing happening in the wilds of London and general settler colonial erasure of indigenous Canadians because tbh that is what pastoralist fantasy is. This is just the first chapter.

Home boys here refers to the practice of rounding up street children in London, housing and feeding them for a bit and shipping them off to the colonies for labour, with all the abuse that follows at institutions that hire isolated children.

According to the British House of Commons Child Migrant's Trust Report, "it is estimated that some 150,000 children were dispatched over a period of 350 years—the earliest recorded child migrants left Britain for the Virginia Colony in 1618, and the process did not finally end until the late 1960s." It was widely believed by contemporaries that all of these children were orphans, but it is now known that most (88%) had living parents, some of whom had no idea of the fate of their children after they were left in children's homes, and some were led to believe that their children had been adopted somewhere in Britain.

I wish I could get more feedback on it.

I've worked on this series for a little over a year now and it has over 350k words and counting.

Always In Pieces is a multi-part series following Sirius Black through the shattered, scattered moments that shape his life. It's a story about trauma and healing, memory and identity, love found and lost, and found again. Across timelines and continents, through grief and joy, Sirius keeps surviving, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

NSFW. Rated E.

cw / tw:

We've run out of beer.

There's cones on all of the statues heads.

which is why you get all these books that embrace hyper violence but flinch away from any -phobias and -isms, because that would be uncomfortable.

what makes the dissonance especially jarring is that viewing violence as abstract is a privilege. in Canada and the States, we get to sit comfortably in our homes while our governments fund weapons and send troops to inflict violence overseas. and sure, we can watch a genocide live-streamed on social media, but it still feels distant.

Celine: Girls…why did you go to Mexico?

Zoey: The World Cup!

Rumi: And it’s good for fans to see us just relaxing and having fun. Helps them not just see us as rich idols.

Celine: Okay…while I don’t disagree with that I would like to know who’s idea it was to go to a bar, for Rumi to get on Mira’s shoulders while Zoey is on a chair as you three lip sync to Gangnam Style.

Rumi:

Zoey:

Mira:

Celine: