j4mboree

[j4mboree]

no one you know is a good person

[j4mboree]

[j4mboree]

i think if you did attempt to shoot the judge, it would take more than one shot. it would have to be three well placed shots and you might even have to double tap him in the head just for comfort.

if its a similar situation to the climax of the book where hes hunting down tobin and the kid, i believe shooting him would elicit extremely violent behavior, because he has no convictions at that point all except for finding you and tearing you to shreds. kind of like how you'd imagine a bear would react, the bear would charge and wouldnt hold back. atleast thats how i perceived it.

I'm pretty sure you could kill holden just by shooting him. Yes I know he said he can never die,but how do you know that he is not bullshitting? Yes I know he could be the devil,the embodiment of imperialism or god ect, but there could be a chance that he's just a guy.So I'm like 20% sure a bullet could kill him.If it doesn't then shove a nuke up his ass and see what happens.

#495

[j4mboree]

Reading sympathetic analyses of the judge feels like reading someone trying to make a Rorschach test out of a blood splatter. Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery,,, or whatever the fuck.

[j4mboree]

sometime before leaving

[j4mboree]

hiii, i’m sorry for the random ask, but you made a post a little awhile ago talking about how you headcanoned the kid as having ginger hair because of the violence that always follows him. and i thought you might like this song!!

i think many of lyrics fit blood meridian in general but i remembered your post while listening to it and i thought you might like it! i always saw him as having ginger hair and your post finally made realize why. he has blood in his hair always.

DUDE YES YES HE IS SO WE WILL COMMIT WOLF MURDER, the lyrics you show especially fit him having no real guidance in his life and being extremely neglected by the people around him and possibly believing he can never aim to be anything more than the violent aspect of himself he has demonstrated throughout the book and especially with the glanton gang. like thats all hes good for in this world.

im glad my post helped you realize your headcanon better!! the kid constantly being surrounded by violence being represented by his hair being red, as if to say it has followed him his entire life and that it is innate to him. itll always stick out to me how he came into this world in an inherently violent way (inadvertently causing his mother's death through his own birth) and is heavily interpreted to leave it in an horrifically violent way in the outhouse. and him having a pentient for mindless violence, its apart of him. his hair being representative of this inherent violence, hes perpetually soaked in blood, the blood of his mother, the blood of the apache, the blood of the innocent.

one painting that reminds me a lot of him is everynight to people's eyes by valera lutfullina, which depicts two men on horseback riding along a shore as the large figures of giants fight each other, one of the giants slaying another. i think this painting represents how the kid's history is entirely violent, and it functions as the backdrop for his life, as well as it representing how his life was in its entirety. filled with violence.

i love him, i love the complexity you can gleam from him even though the narrative doesnt focus that much on him. theres a lot you can infer with him and theres so many ways he can be interpreted, i think it goes to show that he is a very versatile character. not exactly remarkable on the outside, but within the context of the story he becomes intriguing

[j4mboree]

it’s always guys called judge.

[j4mboree]

the reason ppl are fighting is because war waited for us, war is the truest form of divination, etc etc . yall are proving the judge right /j

#469

[j4mboree]

I AGREE SO SO MUCH.

i am not indigenous (im black), but i recognize there is a disconnect that exists within this fandom towards the contents of the book which depicts the horrific extents of colonialism and imperialism through the ethnocides the gang routinely commits. said ethnocides being justified by them and many others of their era by the resounding belief that the people they're destroying the lives of are uncivilized and inhuman, and thus any violence, no matter how cruel or ruthless is justifiable in the fact that their oppressors simply do not view them as human. and this refusal to see the humanity in the indigenous people the gang mutilates, murders, and rapes still presides over the consciences of many white readers when they approach this book. not in the state were presented with in the gang, but in a more passive refusal to perceive the humanness of the apache, the gilenos, and the tiguas, as well as other indigenous peoples, partly because of the books portrayal of these peoples (often they're referred to as "savages" by the narrative itself) but also because there exists a disconnect between white people and the struggles of non-white people that is largely motivated by a refusal to approach, understand, and sympathize with these issues.

this isnt to say its all white people in the fandom and this isnt an extensive enough look into the issue, but in my discussions with people in this predominantly white fandom it feels like a presiding issue that not many people bring up because of how normalized it is. im just very glad someone decided to bring it up, because i think its a very worthy discussion to be had and although im scatterbrained im eager to discuss it.

the anon who said this fandom is too white to understand the book is right tbh. I don't mean to be "the friend who's too woke" but some of the jokes about it go way too far. like. scalping jokes? are we serious rn? there is a difference between joking about fictional events in a dark story and joking about a real genocide that actually happened in history. especially considering how close to history this book actually is.

look. I get being goofy about other things in the book, I partake in unserious fandom type stuff as well but we should at the very least remain respectful about it and not make a mockery of a horrific real life event

sorry for the long confession. I just didn't want to put this on my blog

#432

[j4mboree]

Literally the Judge and Glanton 😭?? Canon book event

[j4mboree]

Don't think I'm saying anything new here but I don't really subscribe to the theory of the judge being the devil/the demiurge. Instead, I more so agree with what The House of Tabula said, in that though the judge possess all of the qualities/cliches of a devil (the immense knowledge, the silver tongue, that damn fiddle), it is also not out the realm of possibility for a mortal man to be capable of these things, outlandish as they may seem.

For me, the two main factors that sell me on this is the fact that a) he is susceptible to the elements, his pale complexion (albinism?) making him particularly vulnerable under the desert sun ('He set by the little mud cap and laved water over his burnt and peeling skull and over his face [. . .] His mouth was cracked and his tongue swollen.' Chapter XX). and b) this seemingly omniscient being believes in the pseudo-bullshit of phrenology ('The judge reached and took hold of the man's head in his hands and began to explore its contours.' Chapter XVI).

Now, yes, it is possible that the judge, as a devil, would have full control over his appearance and thus would perhaps have himself seem in a weakened state so as to have his victims fall into a false sense of security - in the scene I quoted from Chapter 20, the judge is trying to lure Toadvine, Tobin and the kid down to join him, and his haggling for Toadvine's hat could just be him trying to evert the social and economic structure of trade, echoing back to his overpaying of two dogs before tossing them into the nearest river in Chapter XIV. And as for the phrenology, well, if the judge so clearly thrives on the disunity between races (how else is he to justify the gang's enterprise as scalphunters?) it would also make sense to endorse a pseudoscience that validates such heinous bigotry, whether he believes in it or not.

Despite this, I still do not wholly believe the judge to be the/a devil, if not for the reasons already stated then at least out of my middling faith in McCarthy to not rely on such a cop-out plot twist. Whilst Blood Meridian is certainly an augmented account of real events both natural and historical, where whirlwinds can haul and spin men 'aloft like dervishes' (IX) and 'little devils with their pitchforks' are thought to prance along the malpais (X), all of these things are still in the realm of possibility, albeit perhaps on the very edge, but still within the ring. A concern of Blood Meridian is mutations of nature, such as those found in the dog freaks of Chapter XVI and in the character of James Robert Bell/the idiot, and if these can exist naturally, then why can't Holden? Having said that, claiming the judge to be mortal also means having to think of him at one time being a baby or, worse, a teenager - which is . . . yeah. idk, what do you think?

[j4mboree]

I had a dream where judge holden and Glanton were pimping out the Glanton gang and holden had these fuckass grills

#258

[j4mboree]

judge holden has the same energy as a super toxic and controlling abusive parent

#333

[j4mboree]

Has this been done before

[j4mboree]

Fax

[j4mboree]

yeah cormac mccarthy was in a relationship with a girl when he was in his forties and she was a teenager. she came out about it after his death

#278

(I'm sorry for the girl who had to go through that)

[j4mboree]

im thinking the judge has hundreds of illegitimate children

#248