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The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is going to live inside me.

I just love everything about it. It's so important to me. How it comes to the end

SPOILERS AHEAD.

When it's revealed what Good Stab is actually after, how he punishes Arthur Beaucarne, how he leaves his fate to the hands of his great x3 granddaughter.

How at the end, when she sees him and the other Blackfeet people leaving from their memorial, and he is with them, he is with his people. and how she recognizes him, not as a vampire, but as one of his people.

That's what takes Good Stab's story through, that he never stops being Pikuni. He is always Pikuni inside, no matter what he ever looked like, no matter what he turned into. He knew what he was. At some point while reading, I thought that it might end with him eating mice until he turned into one like he kept saying he would, but I realized that for the story structure it would be better if it didn't go that way, and I'm glad it didn't. He lives. He carries all the stories he knew and lived. He is The Fullblood, he is Other, but he is Good Stab most importantly and firstly.

This story lives inside me.

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So I just read Stephen Graham Jones's "The Buffalo Hunter, Hunter" and it is the best book I've read in years.

I have never liked horror. I never found mainstream authors like Steven King scary but in recent years I've realized that is because mainstream horror doesn't ever deal with themes that are scary to me. Monsters are not scary to me, individual evil people are not scary to me, to me horror comes from society and the systems it creates to cause harm. I'm terrified by how individual people are usually not "evil" they are just people who when given the right ideology in the right society will do evil things. That has always been more horrifying to me.

Last year I watched "Get Out" and read the dark fiction anthology "Never Whistle at Night" and suddenly I got it. I understood why people enjoyed horror. I started reading SGJ's novels and I liked most of them but this most recent book- well it's is his best work yet.

If you like IWTV for it's queer allegory and it's meditation on grief you will be obsessed with this book.

The basic premise is a Blackfoot man in 1870 is turned into a vampire-like creature by accident. Decades later in 1912 he tells his story to a pastor as a "confession". I won't spoil the details of the story but it's themes explore what happens when a person whose people are being massacred and systemically starved by colonizers gets turned into one of their monsters. What happens when he has to consume his own people in order to remain like them? Can his newfound immortality be used to their benefit and if it can't be used to their benefit can it be used for revenge?

What unfolds is an epic revenge narrative with the perfect foil in the pastor who says all the platitudes, denials, and historical erasure colonizers use to justify genocide all while being just a "sweet old man".

It starts out slow the first hundred pages I wasn't sure I would finish. The second hundred started to intrigue me. The last 200 I couldn't put the book down.

Be warned this book does not hold your hand. It will often use the literal english translation for Blackfoot place and animal names, and if you don't know the fauna of the high planes and rocky mountains, along with their associated behaviors, it can be hard to understand what animal they are talking about. If you don't know the basics about high plains indigenous cultures and stories you will struggle to understand the significance of many sections. They are not stories, in this book the characters of legend are real characters that are interwoven into the fabric of the world.

The maternal side of my family is Arapaho and they have a lot of similar stories. For example the Blackfoot "feather woman" is similar to the Arapaho "porcupine woman", the Blackfoot trickster "Napi" is similar to the arapaho trickster "Nihancan" and the literal translations of Blackfoot words are similar to the literal translations of Arapaho words so it was pretty easy to follow. However, someone who is completely new to these cultures might find themselves reaching for Google. This is not a bad thing, Google is free, and frankly I'm sick of reading indigenous books that are clearly written for non-indigenous readers (I get they have to do that in order to get published a lot of the time but I'm glad we are finally moving away from it). I think it's a good thing it doesn't hold your hand.

Overall, this is the best book I've read in years.

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What I am is the Indian who can't die. I'm the worst dream America ever had.

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remmick and the vampires present a false dichotomy

Hogwood (the man who sold the twins the mill) and the KKK are very obviously bad, they are outright malicious bigotry, they use the n-word and plan to lynch the moore's and their community, they are so blatantly racist and hateful it's unavoidably obvious

remmick and the vampires however say that they believe in equality, say that they want to create a community, and yet remmick's goal throught the movie is to both metaphorically and literally steal sammie's ability for his own goal of reconnecting with his irish ancestors, a white man wants to harm a young and upcoming black man and use talents for his own goals without giving any regard to said black man's autonomy or agency

when sammie sings 'I lied to you' in the juke joint and calls forth the spirits from the past and future, it's a blend of cultures; west african, east asian, native american, and african american song and dance blend together across time and space to tell the stories of blues; where it takes its inspiration from, the music genres it then inspired, the complex history of black american culture and its intersections with other peoples of colour in the USA

when remmick and the vampires kill and turn the people in the juke joint, and then perform rocky road to dublin, only remmick's irish culture is on display, there is no influence from the black and asian people he has forcibly assimilated into his song, it's juxtaposition with the earlier scene is blatant, remmick is more than happy to assimilate people of colour into his 'community' of 'equals', and yet its only whiteness that is celebrated, that is normative

remmick claims that he's doing people a favour by turning them immortal, conviently ignoring that he literally has to suck the life out of them to do so, trapping their spirits on earth, he claims that he's the good guy, that the KKK were gonna come and lynch everyone at the joint in the morning anyways, conviently ignoring that he's doing the exact same thing; a white man leading a mob to kill a bunch of black people

in the final confrontation with sammie remmick repeatedly dunks him into the river, a forceful baptism. both the celtic irish and enslaved west africans had their religions suppressed and destroyed by colonialsm, had christianity forced upon them by the british empire, and in that scene we see remmick repeating that cycle, using christianity to inflict harm, and sammie reclaiming christianity, despite all the complex emotions he has arround it, as many colonised peoples have and still do, when he recites the lord's prayer

remmick and the vampires are no less racist than hogwood and the KKK, are no less predatory or evil, they're just less blantant about their bigotry, they represent the system, the normalised white supremacy that is seeped into the very foundation of culture in america, the point isnt that remmick would call any of the black characters in the movie the n-word, i dont think he would, the point is that his exploitation and desacration and inserting-himself-into-when-he-wasn't-invited of the juke joint is a microcosm of what white people have done to black american arts and culture since ever since there have been black and white people in america, and even before that

theres a reason vultures are shown early on in this movie

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The portrayal of white people who have been violently separated from their own culture stealing the power of black culture and music to try to get reconnected was SO literal and somehow not at ALL heavy-handed or trite. Fkn remarkable.

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I can't get over how Sinners is such a rich text on assimilation and whiteness and the dangers of "civility" and music as a way to look both forward and back

And it's also a phenomenal vampire movie where a lot of hot people get covered in blood and there's a B plot about eating out girls

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it really frustrates me to think about how people are inevitably going to take Remmick’s one (1) singular statement about how much he resents the way the Irish were colonized and forcibly converted to Christianity and use it as fuel for “actually he had a point” and “he was right actually” and “he’s not really the villain here” posts, when the whole point is that Remmick is, through the vampiric hive mind he’s creating, forcibly assimilating people into yet another manipulative and parasitical system. he doesn't value the cultures of the people he assimilates—notice how all the vampires he turns dance to his culture's music using his culture's dances, and how he only uses the languages or knowledge other vampires have to offer when he needs to manipulate someone. Remmick is extremely transparent about the way he sees the people he turns as resources to exploit.

he’s perpetuating a cycle that he claims to hate and resent, and I think the movie is pretty damn clear about the fact that he doesn’t see anybody as valuable or useful to him except as prey and as pawns—otherwise he would just, you know, focus solely on people who actually consent to being turned. but he looked sad in that one scene and he’s an apparently attractive white cis man so people are gonna bend over backwards justifying all the harm he did.

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saw a theory that the SmokeStack twins were posing as one man in Chicago, which helped them get away with stealing from both sides. i'm poised to believe that because visually their clothing was very clearly of the two mobs. smoke was full irish— tweed, bowler hat. while stack had the full mafia look. yk italian leather shoes, fedora etc etc . like the details!!

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The portrayal of white people who have been violently separated from their own culture stealing the power of black culture and music to try to get reconnected was SO literal and somehow not at ALL heavy-handed or trite. Fkn remarkable.

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every single platform i post this on i feel more bad tagging everyone who initially made these designs LMFKAOODKD SORRY. at least im finding them all on platforms i havent followed them on yet

ANYWAYS. trolling pinterest saving gillion fanart while relistening to riptide. collecting just absolutely Stunning designs. really cool to feel invigorated by smth again :-)

@skywerse, @saturndigital, @bananabugg & @sea_lems on instagram created the designs i drew here! and gillion tidestrider himself is from hit dnd podcast jrwi go listen to it NOW ok goodbye

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two of my favourite frames from a waning crescent animatic that im too lazy to finish

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Siblings

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All I’ve got in me today is a messy comic lol!

Anyway, I think Jayson definitely pitted Ava and Jay against each other as kids, and I definitely think Jay is weak little runt of the family. She doesn’t do well in hand to hand and Ava excels at it. It’s why she picks up archery later and works with her mom at the beginning of the series.

(Btw I am only on episode 87 rn! Please no spoilers!)

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I have had an idea

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We'd play our parts and be people later

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my ava ferin design for a ittle secret thing

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tmk finale was pretty good methinks