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invaderlynx · 4 years

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Booker and La Campagne de Russie

I just watched The Old Guard and honestly, it was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a VERY long time. Of course, now I’m having all sorts of thoughts about the whole thing and particularly about Booker because his backstory intersects perfectly with my historical interests. I know that all the immortals in The Old Guard have experienced all sorts of terrible trauma, but because I am a history major with an affinity for the Napoleonic period, especially the Russian Campaign (and because Booker is my favorite character), I’d like to give you guys an idea of just what sort of torture he faced even before the pain of losing his family (also for fair warning, I have not read the comics):

Please place yourself in Booker’s shoes. You are one of over 600,000 men mustered to march into Russia. You’re serving in an army you never wanted to join, taking up arms for the glory of an empire that’s never done anything for you. You’ve been separated from your three beloved sons and your wife whom you love more than life itself, and have been sent off to fight in a foreign land that’s nothing like the home you’ve left behind. That much becomes evident immediately.

The invasion starts in the summer of 1812 and it is hot, unseasonably hot. You feel it, laboring as you are under the thick heavy materials of your sweat-soaked uniform. Each step is its own torture in the heat as you struggle through mud left behind by hard summer rains. More than a few men kill themselves at this point and although this is just the beginning, you can hardly blame them. Some of your comrades get the bright idea to start discarding some of their extra layers of clothing—underthings and the like. Perhaps you join them, anything to lighten the load. You can’t be expected to carry all this over the long miles ahead. You’ll live to regret that decision.

The fighting itself is worse than the conditions. You never quite get used to the violence. No matter how many times you’re thrust into battle, your mouth still goes dry, your heart still thunders as loud as the military drums’ tattoo, you still choke on that thick gunpowder smoke. You nearly threw up the first time you killed with a bayonet. You remember sticking the man in between the ribs, a swift stab and he is bleeding out. It is only then that you see his face and realize just how young he is. He is a boy, maybe a few precious years older than your eldest. He cries as he falls. You didn’t speak Russian at the time but you didn’t need to to recognize the word “Мама”.

The only thing that makes it possible to keep putting one foot in front of the other (besides your family, of course) is your comrades-in-arms. Against all odds, you’ve found friendship here, men with whom you can share stories and jokes and drinks. You find a few men of around your own age with families, wives and children that they lovingly speak of, but many of these soldiers are young, young enough to be your sons, far too young to be out here slaughtering and being slaughtered. Over your meager meals you tell stories of home and it is enough to hold off the impending horror, at least for a moment. When that doesn’t work, you turn to drink. You drink an awful lot.

The conditions of this foreign land are mercurial at best and your woes are only compounded by your lack of proper supplies. The Russians have been scorching nearly everything in the wake of their retreat, making it difficult for you to forage for food. Your search parties turn up very little by way of provisions and your food supply continues to fall in tandem with the temperature.

Borodino is hell. You see the man to the right of you receive a cannonball to the chest and fall in a spray of red, you see the man to the left crumple as a shot rips through his handsome, hard-lined face. One of your friends, one of those boys that you’d come to regard as a surrogate son who was barely old enough to grow hair on his chin, catches a bullet in the leg. He dies in agony four days later, one of the thousands of casualties of that damned battle. In your lowest moments, you wish you would have joined him.

You were never a particularly happy man, even before the war. Prone to fits of melancholia, they would have said back then. Your darling wife and your three sons certainly helped to alleviate that heavy, aching emptiness that resided in your chest, but it never went away, not fully. It resurfaces with a vengeance now. Sitting with your gun in your hands and far too much liquor in your belly, you think about ending it all. How easy it would be to put a bullet in your brain and finally die. In the end, it’s your family that saves you again. You may not want to live for yourself, but for them- for them you can keep fighting. Besides, Moscow is only 70 miles away and once you take the ancient capital, Russia will have no choice but to surrender. That’s what everyone is saying and you force yourself to believe that it’s true.

Moscow was a lie. You took the capital but there was no peace. There was no food either. The Russians took it all when they abandoned the place, leaving almost nothing for your starving army. Nothing but liquor, which you are very grateful for at least. Your superiors probably aren’t, you think wryly as you raise the bottle to your lips and drink, drink, drink.

Moscow passes in a drunken haze for you. You drown yourself in Russian booze, drinking yourself absolutely insensate. There are entire days you spend propped up against the wall of some ramshackle Russian establishment, surrounded by empty bottles, too drunk to even stand. You remember bits and pieces, shattered memories drifting in and out of the fog. The looting and the things you took (a fine scarf, a silver flask, maybe more), a ladies’ fur shawl wrapped about your shoulders to keep out the chill, the burning heat of a terrible fire and the screams in French and Russian, the acrid taste of bile in your mouth as you splutter sick all over yourself only to raise the bottle to your lips again for another drink. In the end, you’re forced to leave Moscow as the position becomes untenable, the abandoned city burned to a shell of its former self. You never do learn who first started the fire, even years after the fact.

The retreat is hell on Earth, worse than anything else that came before. La Grande Armée is hardly an army any longer, you’ve lost practically all discipline. By now, you’re just a bunch of exhausted, cold, starving men who want nothing more than to just make it home alive. Most of them won’t. The temperatures have dropped to below freezing at this point and you are wishing more than anything that you still had those infernal layers that caused you so much pain in the summer months. The clothing you and your comrades drunkenly plundered in Moscow—silken scarves stolen from abandoned trunks, heavy furs pilfered from store inventories, ladies’ shoes that hurt your feet but do a better job of keeping out the slush than your tattered boots—help, but not enough. Your fingers stiffen to near icicles in the cold as you try your damnedest to massage even a little warmth back into them, your face is wind-chapped and scabbed. You feel as though your very marrow has frozen, and you are one of the lucky ones. Men freeze to death in their sleep in less than an hour. Fifty men will sit down at a fire and only the twenty or so closest will ever get back up again. You all begin to loot the bodies of the dead and—as you grow more desperate—the dying as well. Corpses are stripped naked and left in the snow as the survivors squabble over their threadbare uniform pieces. Sometimes the corpses still twitch and moan but you try to ignore that.

There’s no food either. In addition to freezing, you’re starving too. The lot of you fight and quarrel over moldy crusts of bread, and in some cases even kill each other for them. The more clever turn to other sources to fill their writhing, empty stomachs. Some eat their boots, but there isn’t much leather left in any case. Some carve their meals off the horses as they walk, tearing bits of bleeding flesh off of the warm, moving flanks in a short-sighted attempt to get even a few morsels of meat in their bellies. Others, in mad desperation as the march (if you can even call it that any longer) wears on, turn to each other.

Perhaps you take part in this, perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you sidle a man out of the way to get closer to the fire, perhaps you take a coat off a corpse that you don’t know for sure is dead yet, perhaps you accept a piece of meat that you do not quite know the origin of. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

In the end it doesn’t matter. You die anyway. You don’t really remember how it happened the first time. Maybe you were finally picked off by the advancing Russians, maybe it was exposure, exhaustion, starvation, sickness, any of the hundred ways that you could die in this frozen wasteland. All you know is that one moment you were on your feet, shambling mutely forward, the next you were lying on the icy ground, gasping air back into lungs that had fallen completely still. Four faces are burned into your memory and from one you can still hear the gurgling, watery screams.

That’s when the dreams start, after that first death. Though, you wouldn’t classify them as dreams, they’re far more alike to nightmares. You see that screaming, drowning woman often. You feel her fear as she slams her body against her metal coffin. Even awake you can’t get the sound of her choking out of your head. Sometimes there are soft moments interspersed with the horror. You see a woman with short hair (it reminds you of a coiffure à la victime) laughing, you see two men resting in each others’ arms, foreheads pressed together gently, blissfully happy. To be quite honest, these ones hurt worst of all because they make you regret ever waking up.

You die a few more times before you finally decide to desert. You can’t take it anymore. That tyrant Bonaparte has abandoned this army, why can’t you? You take flight under the cold cover of night, trying to get to the Russian border. You don’t make it very far. You are dragged back—aching, tired, and hungry—and are hanged by the road as a deserter. Perhaps there still is a little discipline left in these ranks, at least enough to allow these soldiers to kill their comrades in the name of orders. You have to wait three days for the road to clear before you can finally run. In that time your body is almost entirely picked clean by looters. You continue your desperate trek back home in spite of it all and die many more times in the weeks (or was it months?) that follow. It never gets any easier.

It’s near the border into Prussia that you finally meet one of the figures from your dreams. Perhaps it is the woman with the short hair who offers you a drink and a coat to put around your shoulders, and tells you bluntly but not unkindly that you’re immortal. Perhaps it is the curly-haired man who helps hold you upright when you stumble and is careful and caring with his words as he gently explains the situation. Perhaps it is his lighter-haired lover who catches you when you fold in on yourself from the weight of his words and offers you affirmations and condolences in a voice reminiscent of a priest. Whoever it is, they ask you to come with them and explain that there are others like them- like you out there.

“What about my family?” you stutter out, almost unconscious of the words as the tumble from your mouth “My wife? What about them?”

They favor you with a sad smile and try to explain, but you will hear none of it. They do not stop you when you tell them that you are going home, and you are glad for it.

With the supplies they give to you, you manage to hobble your way back home. You’ve been taken for a dead man, you realize, everyone you pass seems to think you’re a ghost. You don’t care. You only have one person on your mind.

Your wife answers the door dressed in black. She starts to cry when she sees you and throws her arms around your neck. You nearly crumple, weak as you are. “Bastien, Bastien,” she sobs against your shoulder “What happened?”

That question fills you with icy dread. Your stomach drops as you realize you cannot explain to her what you’ve been through, not in a way that she’ll understand. Even if you explain the immortality and she believes you, she won’t understand the horrors you’ve seen. No one will. A soldier’s burden.

You stay silent and instead cradle her closer as your boys appear in the doorway. You have them and, for now, that is enough. You won’t forget, you will never forget, but for now at least you have this.

#there we go #i made myself sad #you see what this poor bastard had to go through #it does not excuse what he did #not in the slightest #but it explains why he wants to die at least #there are very few things that i would want to go through less than the russian campagne #the old guard #tog #sebastien le livre #booker #andromache the scythian #yusef al kaysani #niccolo di genova #quynh

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sootcloak · 3 years

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Day 14: Commend

Admiral Merlwyb Bloefiswyn looks for a path forward regarding one of her officers, whose repeated sacrifices have left her more machine than aught else.

Roughly 1800 words.

AO3 Link

The Rhotano is calm, the sun bright, and the skies clear. The fair winds off the ocean makes sails and flags billow. Down below, the Admiral can see her people going about their lives. Traders shouting from their stands, noiseless from here. Artisans working diligently, sharing brief words with their guild colleagues. Travelers, new to the city and veterans of her winding, spiraling streets both, arriving at the docks. Adventurers near the Aetheryte, enjoying the sun and one another’s company. Another peaceful, quiet day.

There’s a knock at the door. Merlwyb glances away from her city and people to the signed forms on her desk. She hesitates, a moment. But then, loud and clear, she says,

“Enter.”

The doors swing open noiselessly, the guard directly outside speaking firmly.

“Admiral. Captain Aceris, as requested.” He gives a sharp salute, and stands stiff as a board.

“At ease. Leave us.” She says, arms folded behind her back as she gazes out the windows of her office. He says nothing, simply steps outside and closes the doors behind him.

Vavara stands loosely, waiting with an easy patience. Merlwyb continues to stare out over the Rhotano.

“Ma’am?” Vavara asks, a quiet familiarity there.

“Forgive me.” She turns her head to look over at the soldier, “Have a seat.”

Vavara moves on of the chairs slightly closer to the desk, and then sits with both her knees under her, giving her just enough height to have her shoulders rest above the edge of the desk. She takes her hat off, and rests it in her lap, and pulls the loose hair from inside it into a loose tail. She quickly ties it off with a length of black ribbon. Merlwyb lets out a thin, long breath, and then sits down at her desk and faces Vavara.

“Something need doing, Ma’am?” The earnest way Vavara always asks sends a cold chill running through Merlwyb’s chest - is it guilt? Shame? Either way, it doesn’t show.

“No. You outdid yourself at Paglth’an, and by all reports deserve nothing less of a medal.” A restrained, convincing smile works its way onto the Admiral’s face. “Or some other reward.”

“Last we had this conversation was Ghimlyt, Ma’am. Respectfully, I decline.” A weight slides off Vara’s shoulders. Barely-concealed relief. “I would prefer to have my name appear on as few official documents as possible, for all our sakes.”

“I remember.” She says, sagely nodding. Her eyes close a moment, and she seems to gird herself. When they open, her face is steely.

“Captain Vavara Aceris,” The authority in her voice shakes Vavara from the comfortable banter she’d begun to slip into. Her eyes widen a moment, and then she straightens and listens.

“You are hereby removed from service, effective immediately. I had wished to send you off with honors, but if that is not your desire, so be it.” The shock on Vavara’s face stings, the betrayal written in her eyes cuts deeper. “You are discharged of all privilege, authority, and responsibility granted to you by your rank.” The Admiral pauses for a breath, and Vavara swiftly cuts in.

“Ma’am!” There’s a desperation there, raw and open, “I swore to follow you until I could go no farther, I have served faithfully and-”

“Any possessions granted to you by the Maelstrom for your service are yours to keep.” She stands suddenly, her chair squeaking on the floor. “From this moment forward, you are a civilian in the eyes of Lominsan law.”

Vavara sits still as death, eyes glimmering with unsteady light. Her hands are balled into her coat, and her jaw is clenched. Her body trembles, here and there. Merlwyb closes her eyes, and takes a breath in.

“Why…?”

The answer is there, tangible and present in Merlwyb’s mind, but her voice falters a moment, and she does not speak. Instead, the air hangs heavy and bitter.

“I never failed you. I always, always returned with reports of success, of victory.” Vavara speaks between sharp cuts in her voice, as though she were trying to take a breath though she has no lungs. “Have I angered you, Ma’am?”

It stings the Admiral, that she’s directing blame back at herself. The wounded look, the jittering trembles. This hurt her, and she’s trying to find what she did wrong. In her head, she feels this justifies the measure, that she’s right to do it. In her heart, it burns and aches.

“Victory has a price.” She says, quietly and steadily. She has to force her words out evenly. “But I willingly allowed you, my subordinate, to pay it in full. I saw you pay it again, and again. Each time, returning beaten and broken, a report written in blood landing on my desk. After Ghimlyt, I decided it would not happen even once more.”

“I wasn’t injured, and even if I’m damaged I won’t be a liability! If you’re worried of me falling into enemy hands, I prepared a-”

“Stop. Please.” Merlwyb looks away and out to sea. “I took advantage of you, knowing you would bear that weight gladly. But I cannot send you to Garlemald or beyond, knowing I would send you to die for me again. Possibly for the last time.” She turns and stares back into Vavara’s eyes. It’s a piercing, intense look. “You aren’t a ship, to be damaged and repaired as a necessity demands, eventually consigned to sink. And I’ve asked you on more than one occasion to not treat yourself as such.”

“I wish for you to retire. To take a well-deserved rest. You’ve died more than once for the Maelstrom, for me, and each time you did so willingly. I will not lean upon you again.” The Admiral leans on her desk with one arm, pushing a small sheaf of papers forward towards her.

“Ma’am.” Vavara straightens her back, the temperamental, unsteady trembling steadying bit by bit. Her hand moves to her eyes, as though to wipe away a tear, but stops halfway through the gesture. Muscle memory, realization. “Regardless of whether you order it or not, I can’t retire. Not yet, maybe not ever. Even as a civilian, my path leads me back to Garlemald. Whether I do so alone or not has yet to be determined.” She pushes off the chair and slowly stands. She brushes off the top of her cap, and holds it gently in both hands.

“When I was found-” She steps lightly around the Admiral’s desk, and looks out to sea. Merlwyb turns away, grimacing. “As an Imperial, I mean. Detained and questioned. My future was uncertain. I was scared. And then you and I shared words. I had seen Vlybrand by then, of course. The troubles of its people. The shadows made by the sins of your past. I had thought to myself you were ‘Another pretender, claiming hers is the righteous cause’. I had few options, at the time, though. And so I took your deal. Kept my freedom. Lent you my aid.”

“I remember. You’ve stood by us since then. Though I did not know you thought so poorly of me.” The Admiral says.

“Aye. But there was a point, both a long while ago and rather recently, at which my mind changed. Do you remember the Crystal Braves? The banquet?”

She nods.

“You stood by them, and helped me hide and recover when I was presumed dead.” Her gaze is unbroken on the horizon, body steadier now. The ease with which she holds herself, working its way back into her stance. “You proved me somewhat wrong, there. I had thought you shortsighted, more concerned with your own power and influence. But those decisions cost you. They cost you time, reputation, and coin. But it was what was best for the realm, for those other than yourself.”

“And then you upstaged yourself. Reckoned with those looming shadows, faced your own mistakes and those of your forefathers. Were ready to pay for it all, too.” She glances up at Merlwyb’s belt, where the pistols hang, “I do not regret joining the Legion - much in the same way you cannot regret being caught in a landslide. It was the wrong choice, but it was the only one left to me.” Her eyes trace down to the city itself.

“But the Maelstrom? This was the right choice. If you wish me to leave, I will abide by your orders. But I cannot retire. If you would have me, though, I would prefer to continue on with you. Although, I would not complain if my missions in the future are less dangerous, or not as solitary.”

“What, then? Am I supposed to send you back into the storm? Accept that eventually, I’ll send you out to never return?” Merlwyb’s eyes could bore holes into the papers on her desk, and the wood beneath them. “Am I supposed to accept that, when I’ve been given a chance to repay you for your deeds?”

“We all have to play it by ear. Have to keep the faith.”

“If you die, it will have been-” Her hands slam down onto the wood.

“Who says I’ll die again?”

“An educated guess. You’re certain? We could set you up with a workshop, a home on the Rhotano. You could leave the rest to us.” Her voice is leaden with frustration left to sit and tangle. The dismissal forms and property deeds sit neatly stacked between her planted fists.

“I’d certainly be leaving things in good hands. But no. I’ve chosen my path, Merlwyb. I don’t intend on straying from it so late in the journey.”

She turns from her desk, and follows Vavara’s gaze into the city. It’s high sea pillars and white stone bridges nearly glisten in the sunlight. She listens to the tiny sounds of gear and cogs ticking, the soft omni-present hum of her core. Dimly, some part of her has a realization.

In the deafening quiet, in the peace, her whole body sings. Not a corpse, fetid and possesed. Not a thing created of violence and death alone. A music-box, the spirit of its creator alive within. It would be cruel to disregard her wishes. Would it be crueler to let them go unopposed? In her position, what would Raubahn have done? Or the Seedseer? What would her father have done?

Answers rush forward, but none of them find purchase.

“Very well. I’ll see the dismissal redacted.” She concedes. It feels like all the wind rushes out from her, a fatigue setting in immediately. “But afterwards, I’ll see you take that rest.”

“As you say, Ma’am.”

#ffxivwrite2021 #vavara kir aceris #merlwyb bloefhiswyn #i originally misread this prompt as 'command' rather than 'commend' and that led me to some very different responses #but im happy with this one - but maybe im insane and its terrible #i had planned on taking screenshots to use with this before work - but i have to leave in like twenty minutes so i won't have time for that #its a shame too - i was looking forward to posing with the admiral

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thepaperpanda · 5 years

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The Skies of Dead

Summary: When London become devoured by walking corpses and mysterious virus, two complete strangers try to find a way to keep on surviving in the rotten city.

Warnings: zombies, graphic description of violence

Words: 3223

Authors: Cass & Grizzly

A/N: Cass here! My boyfriend has always had a little dream about writing his own story. I am so glad I could have helped him in making this dream come true! Hope you all will enjoy it as much as we did while writing! I love you, sweetie! 😍😍

As Arthur Bristow stood across from the building and debated with himself whether or not he should enter the Shard building, the humming and chanting grew louder.

Arthur held a machete up, breathing deeply as he checked once again if the blade was sharp enough.

Who is in there? What in blazes are they doing?

It had been a horrible week to the man. It was now four days later, and the reports of missing persons and murders in the streets of London had multiplied to shocking statistics. The city was seeing its fair share of violence, too, and it all seemed to orbit around the Shard skyscraper.

That morning four days ago, Arthur had gone to his office, finished his paper work, packed his pocket voice recorder, and set off walking to the London Eye where he had to meet with famous guest, who was about to share an interview to him. When he arrived on place, he realized the recorder wasn’t in his pocket. That made him angry and frustrated. Had he dropped it on the way? It could be anywhere between The Times office and London Eye. Arthur cursed when he realized his foolishness. Nevertheless, he made up his mind to return to his office and look for the recorder. It was when he saw undeads for the first time. Everything bursted out of nowhere, people were chasing others, trying to bite their flesh, and as soon as someone has been bitten, they turned into undeads as well. And most of infected went out of Shard. Was it a coincidence?

This day Arthur had taken a short side trip to London Bridge Street to take a look at the Shard, and here he was. Scared and hesitant. The sweat trickled down his neck. His heart rate had increased.

If you’re going inside, you’d better get going, he commanded himself. Be brave. It can’t possibly be that bad, can it?

He stepped into the street and crossed to the other side. It was then that he realized there wasn’t much traffic. For a Saturday morning, that was unheard of.

Where was everyone? Perhaps the Londoners were just as frightened as he was and were staying indoors. Good for them.

Arthur went up the stone steps and put his ear to the doors made of glass. The ugly chorale was a symphony of moans. It sounded as if the people inside were in pain and were collectively and wordlessly expressing their misery. A bunch of very sick civilians had gathered in...

Steeling his nerves and taking a deep breath, Bristow opened the doors. The stench that met his nostrils almost overpowered him. He gagged and put a hand over his mouth. He considered turning back, but now his curiosity got the best of him. He stepped inside.

The inner foyer was empty, but it was clear that the noise was coming from theinside, off to the left. Artur slowly approached the double doors to the great conference room, swallowed, and opened them.

The horror inside was too much to comprehend. And then the source of the terror turned its attention to him..

The coldness of old, stoned basement was growing with every minute Emily was spending there. The lightbulb was shining brightly but even light didn't change the fact about her position. She sat in the corner of the room, scared and cold with her back pressed hard to a wall.

Just a four days ago this young lady was working at a veterinary clinic. She never said her work was hard, being close to animals of all kinds was the main goal in her life. Their size never frightened her but that day all animals acted weird just like they would feel something that people did not, cats were hissing and dogs were nervous.

Due to some unexplained reasons, all patients canceled their appointments or simply didn't show up. This was highly suspicious to every worker but the truth was that there was no one to work for so everyone was sent home.

Emily lived outside London in a small village.

She got into her car and drove through the streets, this was when she saw the undead for the first time even if she wasn't completely oblivious to the fact then.

The man shuffled trough driveway, he was covered in blood and didn't look healthy, Emily did her best to pass him by thinking that it was just some kind of sick person on a lose.

Even if the house was small it still was cozy and enough for a young woman. Even if the day seemed quiet it quickly changed into chaos.

Emily looked through the window as soon as she heard screams outside, the things that she saw made her stomach turned.

People were running and attacking each other, acting like rabid animals which only goal was to bite someone. The sidewalks were already splattered with blood, turned body decorated streets and lawns.

At this point, only one thing hit Emily - thought about finding a shelter. She needed to hide from horrors of the outside world.

An only safe place that she knew was her basement, she ran there as soon as it was possible.

And this was how she ended in such a bad position but she knew she couldn't stay there forever.

Arthur Bristow opened his eyes, winced at the brightness of the new day, and immediately vomited. He forced himself to get to his knees in order to keep the vile stuff from getting on his clothes, although lying in the recesses of a burnt-out building wasn’t the cleanest place he could have hidden.

Soot, ash, and blackened pieces of the wooden roof that had caved into the space littered the floor; its filthiness hadn’t been so obvious last night when he’d slithered inside the structure of Big Ben.

You don’t care too much where you’re going when you’re running for your life. The main thing is to hide—quickly and silently—so they don’t get you.

After he’d finished heaving, Arthur crawled away from the mess and weakly collapsed. He lay on his back, looking up through the gaping hole at the clouds in the bright blue sky. This one building was the most iconic, both palace and clock tower.

Ironically, it was a beautiful day outside. The weather was perfect, although hot, ideal for a relaxing swim in the hotel pool.

Big Ben was now a relic of the past. The luxury establishment was now burned, destroyed, and overrun with Infected. And it had happened so quickly. The siege by the creatures began after ten last evening, and it was over in less than an hour. Everyone who was still alive had fled into the dark, dangerous streets of London. Arthur was surprised no one else had followed him into this little shelter, where he huddled for hours in fear until he had finally fallen asleep.

Sleep. At this point, it was something that wasted precious time. And he didn’t have a whole lot of that left.

Man rolled up the torn sleeve of the windbreaker he had donned to keep warm. The bite on his forearm was angry, red, and swollen. It burned like the dickens. He noted the time on his wristwatch; it had been roughly seven and a half hours since the Infected’s teeth had clamped down and punctured his skin. Now, the wound appeared diseased and putrid. Yellow pus oozed from the several perforations. It was gross, it hurt, and it was certainly deadly. Arthur quickly covered it with the sleeve of his leather jacket, although it, too, exhibited punctures in the fabric.

He stifled a cry, but the tears flowed regardless.

Emily growled pushing the heavy flap of the basement, the morning felt cold even if the sky was clear outside.

She wasn't sure how many days she spent in the basement. Her fear was paralyzing to the point that she refused to leave the safe place, thanks God for jars of food she had there.

Emily moved to window, a view there calmed her down but at the same time gave her weird feeling of danger.

The horror she saw before hiding, disappeared. Now streets were simply empty, some splashes of blood but that was it. Whatever happened she couldn't just stay there and wait for the rescue because that might never come.

Emily had chaos in her head but she had to do something so she grabbed her bag and packed some simple items like a flashlight and some bandages as well as something to eat, then put on her jacket and slowly left using the front door.

How angry she was when she saw her car was gone, all she saw was little bits of glass scattered over driveway.

Emily decided that she had to get to London, the capital of the whole country simply had to have some kind of a shelter or at last information of what the hell happened.

The young woman opened the garage and looked inside, the only useful thing there was a bike. There was no other way so she had to use the bike.

The way to London was terrible, it was a long time since she used the bike for the last time.

No matter what place she went by, they all were almost empty. Almost was the word, on her way she saw some moaning, whining, mangled figures but she never dared to get close.

The City of London was always beautiful and full of life, it was one of the most popular cities in the whole world but now it looked sad and empty.

Streets splattered with blood, old newspaper scattered all around the city, wrecks of cars.

Was it war or something else?

Emily jumped off the bike as soon as she got to one of the most iconic places in the whole city - Big Ben.

Looking around Emily smiled seeing someone walking the street.

"Sorry!," she yelled. "Hello! Excuse me but do you know what happened here? I look for some information and maybe... some government shelter," she said walking to the stranger. The horror grew big as soon as she got closer to the person

It wasn't really a person. It was a living corpse. Empty eyes and grey-white skin, its jaw was half ripped exposing everything inside. It was missing a whole arm. The creature let out a weird sound and started quickly moving toward Emily.

"Fuck! What is this! Help, can somebody help!?," Emily let out a high pitched scream and started running, trying her best to lose the monster or hide from it.

How long did he have? There was no question that he would turn. It happened to everyone who was bitten. Sometimes it took a few hours, but he had seen others fight it for up to two days. His former friend had wisely conjectured that it depended on how healthy a person was. If you were young, strong, and in good shape, then you lasted longer. The weak, elderly, and very young children turned quickly. And it was horrible. Arthur had seen first-hand what transpired when a person turned. He didn't want that to happen to him.

The nausea had passed, but Arthur felt as if he had the flu. He placed a palm to his forehead and realized he was burning up. How high was her fever? No way to know. Could his healthy resistance keep himself from turning before the medicine arrived?

If the medicine arrived.

Arthur dug into the backpack again and pulled out the handgun. It was a Colt. He appreciated the weight in palm, and then he lifted it to his head. He placed the end of the barrel to temple and wrapped finger around the trigger. It would be so simple. Just squeeze. Perhaps a moment of pain and surprise, and then blackness. Arthur would never have to experience the horror of turning into one of them. It was truly the sensible thing to do. Who was he kidding? He was doomed. Nothing was going to stop him from turning, unless... The fucking medicine.

But before he could bolt, Arthur heard some noises outside of his shelter. And a voice. NORMAL VOICE OF SOME WOMAN.

"Fuck," he cursed and put gun back into his backpack, then took a bat with himself as he headed downstairs and out of Bog Ben, right onto empty street.

The woman was running out before one of Infected.

Arthur sighed and made some noise to distract undead.

The thing that used to be a guy emitted a howling snarl and leapt forward with surprising agility. Reflexively, Arthur swung the bat as if he was trying to knock one out of the ballpark. The club smashed into guys’s head, throwing him back onto ground. Arthur swung the bat again, striking the man’s arm. There was a loud snap and the man wailed. Arthur was sure he had broken a bone. Again, Bristow struck with the weapon. This time, the bat hit the man’s neck, surely snapping it. The horrid noise coming out of his mouth abruptly ceased as his throat was crushed. Arthur kept swinging wildly. Thing tried to get up. He drew closer and then,the bat walloped him in the head. He fell to his knees but kept grappling. Arthur clouted him again, and this time Infected dropped to the ground, unconscious.

All was quiet, except for Arthur’s rapid breathing. He shut his eyes, said a silent prayer, and then looked at the body, only to move his glance at the stranger.

Emily was sitting on the ground, her back pressed against the wall, arms covering and tightly holding her head. Her eyes were wide and cheeks were wet from fresh tears, she was hasping for air.

She was never attacked before, since begining she didn't know what was happening but this was madness, horror.

She loooked at stranger, shivering hard. He just killed this... Thing. What if he will kill her next.

"I do not have anything that would be valuable with me! Don't kill me!," Emily whimpered with voic full of fear.

Arthur tilted head aside and snorted shortly.

"I don't care. Come," he walked to her and offered his hand. "Unless you wanna rather stay here and wait for death."

Emily blinked a few time, thinking about all of this. After a moment she nodded and wiped her eyes before taking stranger's hand.

There was no other hand, and she had to survive somehow, no matter what happened here. She had to trust him, looking at the situation from a minute ago she would never survive alone.

"What... What had happened here? I don't understand, one day everyone went crazy," Emily said as she followed the stranger.

He hushed her by raised hand. "Quiet or we will become their dinner."

He led her inside the clock tower and as soon as they passes threshold, Arthur made sure to lock door and push heavy drawer in front of them, just in case.

All the windows were covered with anything that was available then: rags, furniture, newspapers glued to glass.

She pressed her lips together and nodded, studying his face carefully. Emily had to admit he was a handsome man, she couldn't say his age but he wasn't old. She followed him.

Inside Big Ben, Emily looked around amazed and terrified. Emily looked at stranger waiting at the permission to speak.

"What were you doing out there, all alone, no weapon?," Arthur asked as he took a trip along the wooden stairs. "You had wanted to get your head cut off by their teeth?," he continued leading the way.

Emily watched him unsure what to say, finally, she found the right words. "What do you mean? I have no idea what was that... I guess I spend a too long time in this basement of mine," she said and quickly followed the man. "I just saw this madness and hid, I have no idea how long I spend there. When I left I simply packed some food, bandages and went to London. Is this some kind of government shelter? Or maybe you know how to get there... Oh! I am Emily, by the way," young woman smiled sweetly at the stranger.

"You have bandages? I'll need them," he said simply, he didn't pay more attention to her other words. "No. There's no government shelter. The government is dead by now I bet," Arthur growled as they approached the controlling room at the higher level of clock tower.

He opened door ans shifted aside to let Emily in. He followed her closing door behind him.

Emily looked around and nodded. "Yes, I have bandages and what do you mean, they are dead? What even happened? Is it the War Wold 3?"

She took off her jacket and bag and looked inside then back at the man.

"Come here... I will help you with whatever happened to you. I hope that my bandages will be enough."

"Don't," he growled deeply eyeing her. "I don't need your help, who you are, a fucking nurse?"

Arthur felt even worse now. The flu-like symptoms hit him more strongly than before. He sat down on the cot laying under the window, he rested back of his head against the wall and gasped. "No one knows," he said after moment of silence, "It just happened. People turned into killing machines. They attacked everyone on their way. Nothing could have stopped them, even a gun shot. Now I know only a headshot can take 'em down."

"You don't need my help so you don't need need my bandages, sir," Emily growled with a frown and went to find herself a nice place to sit. She found it in the corner of the room, she put the jacket on the floor and then sat down and looked at the man. "Sounds like zombies or something. So? We are stuck in a real-life horror movie? What now?"

"Can you shut your mouth for a bit, my head hurts," he told her coldly gazing up at her. "I just need them. And be grateful, I happened to save your life," Arthur said.

He felt rotten and didn’t know if he could find the strength to stand again and keep moving. Should he grab the revolver and shoot himself now? The sickness was worse.

Emily frowned and took the bandages out of her bag. She threw them to him with some little snack she had with herself. "Thank you," Emily whispered to not annoy him anymore.

Arthur had gotten up. For a few seconds he felt dizzy and was afraid he would be sick again, but it passed quickly. He moved to the side and waited until his thumping heart slowed.

He looked at her. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to be mean. I am scared and lost, just like you," man said.

Emily got up and slowly walked to him. "I am kinda used to this but fighting won't get us anyway. Come on, let me help you with whatevere happen. I am a vet but... bandaging man can't be harder than bandaging a dog," she shrugged with soft smile.

"It's gonna be rough tough," he said glaring at her. "I was bitten."

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canchewread · 5 years

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Editor’s note: after a weekend of doing precisely nothing and vaguely enjoying it, I’m back writing today. I’ve been waiting a solid five months for a news hook to allow me to share the above quotation and Donald Trump’s attempts to dog-whistle his support for the Crusader conquest of the Middle East finally presented one in the lead up to Memorial Day, but I ended up too busy to get to it until now. Buckle up; we’re headed back to 2007 folks.

---

A Brief Look at Blackwater by J. Scahill

Today’s quotation comes from one of the most important books to come out of U.S. Iraq War and Occupation journalism, “Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army” - written by journalist Jeremy Scahill, who is now a founding editor at The Intercept; a publication I reference often in my work.

On the surface it may seem a curious decision to reach back in time to review a book originally published in 2007 and about a company (Blackwater) that in theory (and only in theory) no longer exists. That surface appearance however is precisely why it’s a shameful tragedy that Scahill’s excellent work has largely fallen down the memory hole in America - because Blackwater isn’t really gone, the U.S. still makes extensive use of largely unaccountable private mercenary corporations to enforce the interests of Western elite capital abroad, and governments throughout the Pig Empire continue to subsidize these private mercenary corporations with public money. Although the prosecution of a select few Blackwater war criminals remained something of a political football during the early portions of the Obama presidency and Erik Prince’s recent attempts to privatize the forever war in Afghanistan created a moderate amount of controversy in the mainstream media, the once impassioned resistance to accepting government-employed mercenaries as a consequence of empire has largely dissipated in “the West.”

This is unfortunate because at its heart Scahill’s “Blackwater” is more than an investigation into founder and now “former” owner Erik Prince’s infamous private mercenary army and its role in the Iraq war. The book is also about the terrifying and then-rapidly expanding (now, fully entrenched) role of private mercenaries in the Pig Empire’s permanent war economy.– mercenaries employed in volatile combat, assassination and security roles, both abroad and domestically in America. From deployment as a modern “Praetorian Guard” serving high level American officials in Iraq, to acting as an ad hoc private army for the wealthy in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and including ongoing training and even war zone contracts with various Western governments, Scahill lays out a virtually unassailable argument that private mercenary forces are simply unregulated thugs in the service of the American imperial project - an argument that now appears to be largely mainstream, if still rarely articulated thinking.

In terms of writing style, Scahill has the instincts of a war correspondent and the meticulous attention to detail of a prosecutor; useful traits for documenting what amount to war crimes, massive levels of bribery and direct protection for Blackwater employees provided by the Bush administration. This has led some commentators to critique Scahill’s writing in Blackwater as lacking an overall “narrative” flow, but personally I didn’t find that to be the case at all. Sure, you can argue that Blackwater lacks the casual storytelling of say Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone" but by that same measure, Scahill’s book is vastly more consequential. Frankly if you can read (Scahill’s friend and colleague) Seymour Hersh, you should have no problem following along with and enjoying Blackwater’s supposed “bombardment” of facts. Blackwater is, and remains both a rewarding and a monumentally important book in terms of exposing the inner workings of Pig Empire conquest and colonialism.

Mercenaries, Erik Prince and the Swine Emperor

All of which brings us to Downmarket Mussolini’s recent musings about possibly pardoning a number of accused American war criminals as a way of honoring veterans for Memorial Day; an objectively insane and monstrous idea Trump apparently decided not to go through with, at least for the moment. While much of the mainstream media coverage has (rightfully) focused on Herr Donald’s politically motivated potential pardon of depraved and murderous ex-Navy Seal Edward Gallagher, there was another curious name Trump was ruminating over - former Blackwater mercenary Nicholas Slatten.

For those unfamiliar with the exploits of Mr. Slatten, he’s the soldier of fortune the Department of Justice has successfully argued fired the first shot at a busy Baghdad intersection on September 16, 2007, triggering the depraved American war crime that would come to be known as the “Nisour Square massacre” or “Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday” - a morally repugnant and utterly unjustifiable mass murder that lasted for up to fifteen minutes and resulted in the deaths of at least fourteen (and likely more) innocent Iraqis during the later stages of the Bush Administration. While the crypto-Crusader right wing media protests his innocence and Slatten himself declares that he‘s a “POW in his own country” the simple truth is that there is very little reason to doubt Slatten’s guilt - as noted by former assistant U.S. attorney Glenn Kirschner:

“Please bear with me for a moment while I relate some basic public facts about the Blackwater case. The defendants were US civilians (veterans) who were being paid to perform security services in Iraq. Multiple Blackwater employees opened fire on innocent Iraqis in what was a massacre in broad daylight. They killed 14 unarmed Iraqi citizens and injured 17 others in front of dozens of witnesses

"Some of the testifying witnesses were the defendants own Blackwater teammates," Kirschner said. "Many of the fellow Blackwater members testified about how the defendants were in the wrong - they did not even attempt to defend their teammates, rather they described their teammates’ use of deadly force as being wholly unjustified and without provocation. Evidence at trial included how one defendant, Nicholas Slatten, called Iraqis 'animals' and 'less then human.' According to Slatten, Iraqi lives were worth 'nothing.'”

On a related note, the 2008 paperback edition of Jeremy Scahill’s “Blackwater” opens with a detailed expose of the Nisour Square massacre. While Scahill doesn’t mention Nicholas Slatten by name, the updated introduction does offer a devastating account of Slatten and Blackwater’s wanton slaughter and violence; an account delivered by numerous Iraqi witnesses, including doctors, police officers and heartbroken relatives of the slain - many of whom were women and children. In light of the fact that all of this evidence has existed in the public sphere since at least 2008, I think it’s fair to say that justice has been a very long time coming for Nicholas Slatten; while justice for then-chief Blackwater corpse-farming scumbag Erik Prince, remains deferred.

This of course brings up the puzzling question of why Trump would even consider pardoning an almost certainly guilty piece of dogshit like Nick Slatten. Is the Swine Emperor indeed merely courting Fox News nation? Is he dog-whistling to a fanatically pro-Crusader, anti-Muslim reactionary right that worships at the altar of the Pig Empire “troop?”

Perhaps, but I also think it’s important at this juncture to consider Trump’s disturbingly close relationship with Erik Prince, their shared network of wealthy far right patrons and the political ramifications of a potential pardon. Prince donated at least $250,000 (and possibly more through other channels) to Trump’s election campaign, his (nearly as infamous) sister, Betsy DeVos serves as Herr Donald’s secretary of education and it certainly appears like Prince lied under oath to cover up a August 3rd, 2016 Trump Tower meeting to discuss Iran policy involving himself, Donald Trump Jr, advisor Stephen Miller, “George Nader, an emissary for the Saudi and Emirati crown princes; and Joel Zamel, the Israeli head of the rather dodgy private intelligence company Psy-Group.”

More importantly however Prince has clearly demonstrated that he has privileged access to President Trump for the purposes of pitching potential lucrative mercenary contracts - including the aforementioned proposal to privatize the war in Afghanistan, a plan to deploy a US-backed private mercenary army to Venezuela and even the creation of an “off the books” private spy network to fight Trump’s political enemies at home and abroad.

Although intense public pressure has prevented the Swine Emperor from accepting any of Prince’s offers thus far, the “Dark Prince’s” continued presence in Trump’s inner circle seems to suggest that the President certainly wants to indulge the former Blackwater founder. Unfortunately for both men, while Nicholas Slatten is no longer “a troop”, he was serving as a private military contractor employed by Blackwater at the time he opened fire and touched off the mass murder of at least 14 Iraqi civilians. Since Prince is synonymous with Blackwater, and Slatten’s endless and exceptionally high profile series of trials has made Blackwater synonymous with “war crimes” - the would-be mercenary king has found it rather difficult to convince the American people he should be entrusted with multi-billion dollar government contracts.

While a pardon for Slatten won’t make all of that bad press go away, it would provide the necessary veneer of respectability for Prince’s ongoing attempts to worm his way back into the Pig Empire’s good graces; either now, or in the future. And if there’s one thing that anyone who has watched the rise, fall and rebirth of Erik Prince can say about that twisted son of a bitch, it’s that he knows how to grease the right wheels and he’s more than happy to play the long game.

- Nina Illingworth.

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

Updates available on Twitter and Facebook.

#Blackwater #Erik Prince #Donald Trump #Politics #Books #Quotes #Jeremy Scahill #The Intercept #Nicholas Slatten #War Crimes #Pardons #mercenaries #Betsy DeVos #Veterans #Memorial Day #Iraq War #Nisour Square massacre #blackwater: the rise of the world's most powerful mercenary army

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zenosanalytic · 8 years

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Discworld: Jingo

I think I’d have to say the central theme of this one was people getting caught up in things.

Vimes gets caught up in “the chase” and just being a “copper”, because he’s HARDBOILED(and, of course, in Cadram’s assassination plot).

People get caught up in Carrot, and the dream of him.

Carrot gets caught up in Vimes’ unspoken political philosophy.

A-M gets caught up in Jingoistic War-Fever!!

Leonard gets caught up in his creative engineering genius, designs terrible weapons, then lies to himself about people-nature because he NEEDS to so badly believe that they are Harmless; that folks would never be so terrible as to use them(and how heartbreaking was his closing vignette, locking himself away in the secret prison of his own design, his own Labyrinth, after seeing how people truly are, and how dangerous his ideas can be. Thought I WOULD have liked more justification for this; his interactions with Nobby were a good start, but I don’t think they “earned” such an affecting ending.).

Captain Jenkins and his crew gets caught up in Vimes’ chance to save Angua.

Cadram gets caught up in the ambition and self-perpetuating logic of empire building.

Klatch gets caught up in obedience to Cadram.

Colon and Nobby, and then everyone, get caught up in Vetinari’s endless political juggling act; the reactive, analytical, sharp-sighted improvisation through which he tries to keep good old chaotic A-M in the air and Magical for just one more show. And what an excellent subtle little metaphor that is; comparing Vetinari’s rule to street theater and magic tricks? Unseen University and Street Theater are two Morporkian Quintessentials, and presenting Vetinari’s style of rule as such marks it as equally, Essentially, A-Mian :)

Lord Rust gets(has always been?) caught up in his fantasies about War; an out of place Romantic playing at a role his class has been obsoleted from for generations, without him realizing it.

And of course everyone -from the fishermen to Colon to Rust to Slant to Wilikins to the Mob/Chorus, but excluding the fishermen’s kids, Vimes, Vetinari, Angua, and Ahmed- seems to get caught up in Nationalism; the unthinking belief in one’s own polity’s and place’s Superiority to any other place or polity.

In all this “getting caught up” going on, I find it somewhat funny that the Curiosity Squid -the fishermen’s original targets and a species known for being easy to catch because of their tendency to get caught up in what fishermen in their waters are doing- are one of the few who didn’t get “caught up” by their city; when it floats to the surface they get out of the way, rather than being dragged along to a death by exposure.

And really it’s a wonderful little irony Pratchett sets up regarding them with this snippet to bookend this book. Through the Fishermen, he introduces Curiosity Squid as “Stupid”. Then, through the Fisherman’s reactions to their city and the generic work of mystery on the human mind, he surrounds them, clandestinely, with Ominous Abyssal Foreboding. Only to, at the end, reveal them to be smarter than the Fisherman who hunted them and benign; having neither any influence on their city’s cycle of rising and sinking, nor any understanding of the havoc war-mad surfacers use it to justify >:] >:]

And speaking of Ominous Abyssal Foreboding, this was also a really great send up of Lovecraft. The C-Squid, of course, but now that I’ve written that line and I’m thinking about it, Jingo more broadly. Because, of course, Lovecraft was an inveterate racist, terrified to the point of petrification by foreign cultures, non-whites, and “miscegenation”. The reflexive racism of the Ankh-Morporkians, Fantasy equivalents of Romans and the English and(maybe) of USians(itself a bit of a joke, shared by the whole series, on how Romans in Movies and TV are ALWAYS given posh English accents), is the reflexive racism of Lovecraft, only presented in a context and aspect that reveals how ridiculous and small-minded it is. And the C-Squids ARE eldritch(otherworldly and ghostly; they live in the ocean and are white[and don’t they glow slightly, I seem to recall that but my brain could be lying to me |:T]), ancient(their history stretches back beyond the first time Leshp rose from the ocean floor), and incomprehensible(the fisherman can’t even recognize their intelligence, let alone attempt to understand them. Though, in typical Pratchett fashion, this is more because of the FISHERMEN’S hangups and how that limits their perception than anything to do with the Squid), with a particular geometric aesthetic that is vaguely disturbing to humans, just like Lovecraft’s cephalopodic antagonists. The one difference: rather than feeling an uncaring malevolence for people contradictorily expressed through a drive to manipulate them to their ruin, the C-Squids are benevolently curious although perfectly content to leave Surfacers to their own lives.

And it isn’t just the Curiosity Squid either. Lovecraft also had an unhealthy, racist obsession with the “Ancient and Decadent” peoples of the South and Eastern Med basin and their “heathen” knowledge/ways, particularly Mesopotamia and Egypt, expressed primarily through his presentation of old Mesopotamia deities as twisted, amoral, deadly beings of madness and untamed appetite(a depiction still common in Fantasy products today though, to be fair, one can’t put it ALL on Lovecraft; he was participating in a tradition of infernalization going back centuries). The Klatchians are expys of these cultures(as well as those of the Middle East; Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, ect[1]), obviously, and they are consistently portrayed as being just as civilized and religious as the A-Mians, if in different ways.

So onto the Elephant in the Room. Jingo isn’t a pun title like most of Pratchett’s it’s a straight forward one. “Jingo”, the word, refers to unquestioning, over-the-top, often violent, patriotism, and its reflected hatred of “foreign” people. That touches on racism too, particularly through all the things Fred Colon “knows” about Klatchians. We’ve certainly seen a lot of that in the US over the last 17 years directed at anybody with a Near Eastern, North African, or Central/South Asian heritage, though demonization of “Arabs” goes back far longer in the US than that, and of Latinos too, for reasons less different than one might think. In all this hyperbolic “Reconquista” and “Sharia” talk we see the same ugly white supremacist urge for cultural purity, hiding behind a fear of invasion and bullshit about “the good old days”. As if it were a fear of “Mexico” for its Spanishness rather than a belligerence towards it for its Nativeness; towards a vibrant neighboring mestizo culture that, purely by existing, shines a light on the barbarities of USian history while grappling with its own, and proving that “a white land for white men” was neither destiny nor necessary. As if it were a fear of Islam and those white culture “sees” as Islamic “taking over” rather than a cruel desire to assert the US’s “Christian Identity” by tormenting and driving out those who are USian without Christianity.

The vicious behaviors and ignorant opinions we see are certainly recognizable in our own xenophobia, but I don’t feel like one can draw a direct line between how events unfold in Jingo and how they have in the US, allegorywise. Lord Rust once asks Vimes to arrest(or was it exile?) all A-Mians of Klatchian heritage “for their safety”, and he’s content to bad-mouth them oblivious to how his opinion promote the mob violence he decries, while consider all of it “nothing personal”, but he really isn’t the equivalent of a hate-mongering race-demagogue like Donald Trump, or Ronald Reagan, or the general Republican party of the last 40 years.The A-Mian hatred of Klatchians is a Fever, stirred up among the Chorus almost magically by the resurfacing of the possibility of strategic competition between A-M and Klatch; not a long-simmering antipathy, long-nurtured by Authority for the sake of its own objectives. Being a Fantasy, the warmongering racists and nationalists of Jingo are, mercifully, frantic Cranks squawking in a city-park, not leading figures of the State. Such muni-park tirades are a rathermore British scene than USian, though, not being British(let along English), I can’t really speak to how Pratchett’s treatment of nationalism and racism in Jingo tracks with the UKian experience of those social ills. And, of course, in Sam Vimes you have a police officer who truly believes in Law and Justice and in seeing them done, who can hardly abide killing, let alone to see injustice done, let alone unjust killing. Such a police officer is certainly fantastical to the USian experience. Pratchett makes it easy for readers to forgive the Fred Colon’s of the world by keeping his ignorant prejudices a bodyless act, learned and preformed by rote for the obvious sake of his ego, rendered mostly harmless to others by his own monumental buffoonery, and repudiated by the end, in the face of his own experience with Klatchians, besides. The unfortunate truth of our world is that the Fred Colon’s in it typically end up doing far more harm while playing out their little roles, and often are never even brought to confront it, let along come to regret and denounce it.

I liked the inclusion of the Goriffs, and that Pratchett through to make the attempt to portray what it is like to be on the nasty end of terroristic behavior, as a family, as individuals, and as a community(the Klatchian ex-Pats, fearing the rising xenophobic tide, misunderstanding the Goriff’s protective custody), and particularly Janil’s plotline. That’s not an experience I’ve ever lived through, so I can’t say how it worked as a depiction, but it struck me as compassionate and sincere, and well written. One would wish things irl could end as they do in this book, with almost everyone whole and healthy, the danger averted, everything maybe not put back exactly the way it was, but thoroughly Fixed and with a ribbon on.

Ok, that’s all I can think of to write about this right now. I’ll end by saying that I continue to really Like Pratchett as a political writer even if, as with the example of curry, the allusions and literary devices he uses in his satire don’t always carry the same cultural salience for me[2].

NOTES

[1]what we usually think of as the Middle East today -Mesopotamia and the Phoenician Coast- were really “The Near East” in this old British Imperial system of designation, and I think the original form is more sensible

[2]which isn’t to say I don’t Love curry. I do. I just mean that, in Britain, if Red Dwarf taught me anything, it’s an Institution u_u u_u u_u

#Discworld #Terry Pratchett #Jingo #Critical Analysis #Writing #Satire #Analogy #Book Reviews

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sheminecrafts · 4 years

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Does tech have the guts to deploy its resources against police brutality?

The protests and unrest of the last week have produced enormous volumes of footage documenting police brutality and other crimes. Where is the platform for this important evidence to be collected, collated, and made public? If a major tech company doesn’t step up to the plate soon it can only be attributed to hypocrisy and cowardice.

Right now the world’s largest, most capable tech companies are deploying their immense computing and product resources towards myriad consumer, enterprise, and increasingly government and military needs. Live video and unlimited storage, image analysis, indexing and sorting of complex data streams — these are services being offered for a huge variety of purposes.

It’s striking that one thing that cannot be found among those purposes is systematized documentation of citizen-collected video of violent incidents like police brutality. Despite their leadership blithely repeating slogans, sliding into hashtags, and making the occasional donation, these companies are not taking one potentially transformative action that only they can take.

Asymmetric warfare

Axon Evidence being used in a promo image.

One can see a sort of mirror image of how such a platform would look in the video evidence management services of Axon (formerly Taser), which provides body cameras and media management for police departments around the country. Video is ingested, tagged, and automatically processed — for instance, blurring the faces of bystanders unrelated to an incident in a clip that could be released publicly.

Systems like Axon’s, though they can in some ways advance accountability, also place the immense resources of modern technology firmly in the hands of the authorities. All state-gathered evidence of an incident is in one place, processed, audited, and ready to be deployed or suppressed as needs dictate, in a streamlined purpose-built suite of tools.

There is no such system available to people on the other side of the law. Once gathered by witnesses, footage may be scattered across a dozen sites and services, subject to as many license agreements or media restrictions. It may be stripped of metadata, have details lost in re-encoding, be reposted or edited by others, and so on.

(To be clear, there are multiple efforts to surface other official information, like written police reports, complaints, training methods and regulations, and so on, but the increasingly important video evidence of improper use of force has no high-profile champion.)

Venture firms rush to find ways to support Black founders and investors

For those on the receiving end of state violence, technology is available to them but disorganized and unreliable. It has been organized and weaponized by authorities in ways that make it easy for them to leverage technology against their chosen targets, and as has been proven repeatedly they cannot be trusted to exercise that power fairly or justly. And this is all in addition to the already overpowering protections and resources, formal and informal, inherent to being a part of law enforcement.

What is needed is a counterweight. A site or network of compatible sites where:

Video can be uploaded freely and, if desired, anonymously

Proof of origin and chain of custody is reasonably established

Uploaded videos are arranged by geotag and timestamp

Tags and annotations can be proposed by the community

This data and metadata is systematically analyzed and indexed

It’s worth noting that none of these capabilities is anything new or special. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Snapchat, all these and more employ some or all of these already, at scale, for ordinary everyday purposes in their apps and services.

Features like Snap Map were established (and in some cases dropped due to privacy fears) years ago.

A simple example of how this might be used in the context of police brutality is the following.

In an altercation between police and protestors, the police have body cameras rolling. By selecting which footage they make public, the police can advance the preferred, official narrative, such as that police were responding to violence from the crowd. Their evidence is secure, well-organized, and homogeneous — and like all other evidence collected by the state is intended for deployment against its enemies.

Ordinarily, any documentation collected by the protestors would be, at best, organized by hashtag but more likely scattered across a number of services and difficult to find after the fact. Here was the scene in Seattle last night, a screenshot of a live stream with no timestamp or credit. If it was important, how would I find the original video, if it even exists, contact the creator, link it to other angles?

If there was a site like the one described above, dozens of people could upload their videos to it (streams could archive automatically to it), with timestamps and geotags to provide a basis for their presence there, and cues visible in the video (street signs and buildings) that can confirm it. If people in the crowd want to present evidence that the police provoked the crowd rather than vice versa, they have more than their own tweet, screen grabs from a live stream, or a video being passed around on a Telegram or Discord group.

Anyone can go to the site, pick a time and place, and see videos verified within reason to have originated there and then. This invites the viewing of different perspectives on the same events and better visibility for media that may not have been shared as widely in the moment.

This system doesn’t take sides and doesn’t need to. It is not there to advance one particular narrative over another but to correct an asymmetry of resources in the ability to present and support a narrative in the first place.

Who dares, loses

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify before a joint hearing of the US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, April 10, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Why don’t we have a system like this? The two usual reasons: money and politics.

In the first place, building and maintaining even the simplest version of such a system would be expensive — likely millions of dollars in initial costs and a fair amount for upkeep, moderation, and so on.

Axon’s system (Evidence.com and its related brands) is a successful business because its customers, usually city and state governments, have deep pockets and plenty of motives to use body cameras (these motives, it must be said, are not always shared by individual officers). An analogous system designed to be deployed against the government will almost certainly not be self-sufficient.

So this is a money pit to begin with, although the magnitude of that pit, compared to the ordinary waste in spending produced by misguided Silicon Valley endeavors, is hard to say. (My guess is that when placed next to extraordinary boondoggles like Magic Leap or Google Plus, the cost of the proposed platform will seem trivial.)

The second problem is that building a resource to combat police brutality is, unfortunately, a politically charged act. It is an endorsement of the view that not only is state violence a problem, it’s enough of a problem that private companies need to step in to mitigate it.

Alexis Ohanian steps down from Reddit board, asks for his seat to go to a black board member

Despite the last few days demonstrating that this is in fact the case beyond a reasonable doubt, it is still politically risky for companies to take a step like this. They risk disfavor in government contracts, alienation of certain political groups, and invite legal complications from hosting controversial videos.

The simple truth here is that a platform for tracking police brutality, however useful or needful, will make no money and expose its creators to unknown liabilities. The companies with the resources to create such a platform didn’t get where they are by biting the hand that feeds them — and by relying on the custom of the establishment, they have gradually become it.

These companies often emit noises resembling sympathy, and on occasion sponsor uncontroversial social movements as they reach the mainstream. But their posturing only serves to highlight their reticence to take direct action.

Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and their like marshal truly enormous sums of money, create and control some of the most advanced technologies on the planet, and employ a large proportion of the smartest (and often most progressive) people in the industry. They are in a unique position of empowerment to create the change they ostensibly champion, but prefer to contribute the corporate equivalent of a golf clap rather than roll up their sleeves.

Does any one of these companies have the guts to take action and put their bottom line at risk the way protestors are putting their lives at risk fighting against police brutality every day? I suspect it’s a foregone conclusion, but it would be nice for once to be pleasantly surprised.

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technicalsolutions88 · 4 years

Link

Asymmetric warfare

Axon Evidence being used in a promo image.

Venture firms rush to find ways to support Black founders and investors

What is needed is a counterweight. A site or network of compatible sites where:

Video can be uploaded freely and, if desired, anonymously

Proof of origin and chain of custody is reasonably established

Uploaded videos are arranged by geotag and timestamp

Tags and annotations can be proposed by the community

This data and metadata is systematically analyzed and indexed

It’s worth noting that none of these capabilities is anything new or special. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, Snapchat, all these and more employ some or all of these already, at scale, for ordinary everyday purposes in their apps and services.

Features like Snap Map were established (and in some cases dropped due to privacy fears) years ago.

A simple example of how this might be used in the context of police brutality is the following.

Who dares, loses

Why don’t we have a system like this? The two usual reasons: money and politics.

Alexis Ohanian steps down from Reddit board, asks for his seat to go to a black board member

Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and their like marshal truly enormous sums of money, create and control some of the most advanced technologies on the planet, and employ a large proportion of the smartest (and often most progressive) people in the industry. They are in a unique position of empowerment to create the change they ostensibly champion, but prefer to contribute the corporate equivalent of a golf clap rather than roll up their sleeves.

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cedarrrun · 5 years

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The Jivamukti Yoga studio in NYC closes its doors on December 22. Here, dedicated students share their stories of the iconic studio that changed the face of yoga.

David Life and Sharon Gannon of Jivamukti Yoga Center on the cover of our June 2002 issue

As long as there has been a New York City, there has been a Jivamukti, at least for me. When I first stepped off the plane in 1997 from California, hoping to penetrate the New York theater world, my dancer friend Kelly told me I had to go to a class. “It’s this amazing yoga studio,” she told me, “All the teachers are great, but you have to take class with David or Sharon.” David Life and Sharon Gannon, I soon learned, were the studio’s founders. But what did Jivamukti mean? “Liberation in this lifetime,” Kelly responded.

The Second Avenue studio was inconspicuous on the outside, perched beside a Thai restaurant and jazz club called Purple Basil, but once you climbed the rickety steps to the second floor, you were hit by a waft of Nag Champa incense and the glow from Christmas lights bedecking images of saints, sadhus, and deities. A picture of Gandhi floated over a picture of Paramahansa Yogananda, whose image shared space with images of John Lennon, Mother Teresa, and Bob Dylan, and assorted Indian mystics, all wreathed in garlands atop a massive altar. This festive atmosphere was laden with a deeper meaning; the collective energy of devotion and meditation practically dripped off the fixtures.

The first time I visited, Kelly and I nudged through the throng of sweaty hipsters at the front desk, passing Willem Defoe as we purchased our classes and rented our mats, then made our way into the packed main studio. I felt like I was trying to find a patch of earth to sit on at a sold -out rock concert. I realized my goal of hitting a New York City night club had been replaced: everything was going on here. A hush descended over the room as David entered, a beautiful lean man in a loincloth and not much else, exuding a piercing clarity that matched his blue eyes. He instructed us to sit upright in Sukhasana (Easy Pose). Following his cue, we raised our voices and the room resounded in a mighty “Om.”

Jivamukti Yoga Teachings

David then gave a dharma talk on the universal energies known as the gunas. “Everything is composed of these three energies,” he explained, “Tamas is slow and sluggish, and absorbed through eating meat or fat. Rajas is fiery, like caffeine, spicy food, or someone with a temper. Sattva is the highest vibration, the vibration of truth.” I thought about my caffeine consumption guiltily. David then explained that the more one practiced, the more one attained a higher energetic frequency, leading to a state known as sattvic. I resolved to head that direction. Then we started moving. Form flowed into form as David led us in Sun Salutes, and from there into increasingly difficult combinations of poses.

See also How a Sattvic (Pure) Diet Brings You Into Balance + 2 Ayurvedic Recipes

Much to my astonishment, two thirds of the way into class I found my inflexible body in full splits, or Hanumanasana. Our ending Savasana (Corpse Pose) was so deep and profound that elements of it are still embedded in my subtle energetic body to this day. I floated out after class, blissed out and sweaty. My fate was sealed.

I returned promptly the next day to take Sharon’s 10 a.m., worried I might not get a spot, as it frequently sold out. As subtle and understated as David had been, Sharon was equally magnetic and regal. Slender, pale, and elegant, with a red bindi dotted on her forehead. I thought she resembled one of the many goddesses hanging in frames on the wall. But which one? I scanned the female deities, trying to decide. She resembled them all, which I thought was interesting since she was clearly not from India. I started to wonder why she wore the bindi at all: Was she a practicing Hindu? (Today, dressing in traditional Indian garb might be viewed as cultural appropriation, but at the time, I interpreted it to be a sincere attempt to pay tribute to the culture from which yoga emerged, and in which David and Sharon had been immersed for over a decade). I pulled to attention as Sharon pulled the silk cover off the harmonium and we started chanting a Sanskrit mantra from laminated prayer sheets.

The topic was Gandhi and ahimsa, or non-violence. Sharon exhorted us to read his autobiography and directed the talk toward veganism. I began to realize that beneath Sharon’s serene exterior was a goddess-like ferocity. Then she cued us to start moving into the opening sequence.

See also How to Be Fierce

Shastra (scriptures)

Bhakti (devotion)

Ahimsa (nonviolence)

Nada (music)

Dhyani (meditation)

How Jivamukti Changed NYC Yoga

Sharon Gannon & David Life featured in the June 2007 edition of Vanity Fair Magazine.

See also Yoga + Activism: 4 Steps to Find Your Cause

The Jivamukti Community

See also Seeds of Change: Yogic Understanding of Karma

The Cost of Running an NYC Yoga Studio

When One Door Closes, Another Opens?

Saidman-Yee agrees: “I remember my mission every time I walk up the steps to my studio in Tribeca. I remember what Sharon taught me.”

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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Five Years Later, The Spirit of Japan Animator Expo Lives On

It’s been 5 years since Japan Animator Expo, a festival of animated shorts produced by Hideaki Anno’s pet studio Khara. Many of these shorts came and went like the wind, while others (like Endless Night and Denkou Choujin Gridman) were expanded into fuller versions that took the industry by storm. But what about the other ones, the fantastic stand-alones that currently languish in Khara's vault? Japan Animator Expo’s shorts are inaccessible at the moment, but if they ever see the light of day again I’d recommend any of the entries below. They’re all shorter than your typical episode of anime, but each of them packs more punch in that span than your average twelve or thirteen episode season.

Two of my favorite anime series are FLCL and Gunbuster 2, and both were directed by Hideaki Anno’s protégé Kazuya Tsurumaki. Since working on those two series, though, he’s been hard at work in the bunker at Studio Khara crafting the Rebuild of Evangelion films. I’m certainly excited to see what comes of the last film in that series, but I can’t deny that part of me wishes Tsurumaki was given a chance at making something completely disconnected from Gainax’s past. Lo and behold, Japan Animator Expo gave him not just one, but two chances to do this! I enjoyed The Dragon Dentist, which he worked on with Otaro Maijo. But it’s the second short he directed for this project that I think best stands up as a unique experience: I can Friday by day! (second season), a very odd military science fiction drama rendered in candy and pastels. Tsurumaki was assisted on this project by Hajime Ueda (famous for the FLCL manga and ending animation for Monogatari) and Sushio (friend of Trigger). You can see their handiwork in the cute characters and expressive animation. I can Friday by day! is unabashed pop art, constructing its world with building blocks of spun sugar hiding something just a little wrong and off. I found this to be a more flavorful follow-up to FLCL than its official sequels.

Content warnings: body horror involving (cute) automated school girls and boys.

I’ve loved everything that Akemi Hayashi has ever worked on. From her touching episode of Space Dandy to the emotionally devastating twentieth episode of Penguindrum, she’s never done wrong in my eyes. One day they’ll give her a movie to direct and slay us all with, but until then we’ll have her fantastic short for Japan Animator Expo: Tomorrow From There (first season). A music video telling the story of a young woman struggling with her move to the big city, it perfectly captures the feeling of living in your mid-twenties and fearing that you’ve gotten everything wrong—and the excitement that comes when you see the new opportunities and experiences in front of you. The song is great, the environments all have a ton of character, just watching this thing gives me Pavlovian tears. If I’d recommend any single video from the Expo for most audiences, it’d be this one.

Content warnings: Deep millennial anxiety, but otherwise appropriate for all audiences.

Although Tomorrow from There is my sentimental favorite of Japan Animator Expo’s first season, its greatest technical achievement is probably 20min Walk From Nishi-Ogikubo Station. A young woman wakes in her apartment, only to discover she’s become very, very small. Meanwhile her boyfriend is terrorized by a hideous insect! If you’re familiar with Kafka’s Metamorphosis, you probably know where this is going. 20min Walk is one of the longer shorts in this project, but it’s easily one of the most impressive, pulling off shot after complicated shot. There are elaborate multi-planar set-pieces, there’s a segment at the end by master animator Shinya Ohira. And while it's hilarious to watch, there's a fair share of horror, pain and anguish in there too, the nightmare of miscommunication between two lovers. 20min Walk makes full use of the medium of animation, and is recommended to anyone looking to see that format stretched to its very limits. The only tricky thing about it is that the heroine is naked the whole way through, which makes it difficult to take screenshots of (I did my best!).

Content warnings: Lots of nudity, there is a cockroach.

Mahiro Maeda has had a fascinating career: he’s best known for his fantastic and visually ornate Dumas adaptation Gankutsuou, but he’s also contributed to projects like Shin Godzilla and Mad Max: Fury Road. Unfortunately, just like Kazuya Tsurumaki, Maeda’s been holed up at Khara for the past several years busy working on the Rebuild of Evangelion movies. Japan Animator Expo saw him really let his freak flag fly, resulting in the fantastic Kanon (an adaptation of a novel by Karl Capek, as Maeda does). But even better was his contribution to the Expo’s third season, Hammerhead, scripted by Dragon Dentist creator Otaro Maijo. Hammerhead is just under ten minutes of extreme violence, and certainly isn’t suitable for all audiences. But it overflows with some of the most outrageous and creative superhero fights I’ve seen, as well as some thoughtful if nihilistic mediations on why superheroes make the sacrifices that they do, and why the culture responds to them. We live in a world flooded with superhero media, movie and television screens filled to bursting with them. Hammerhead puts nearly all of it to shame, and is essential viewing for anyone able to deal with its violence. I'd love to see a feature-length version, but until then we have Otaro Maijo scripting an entirely different series next year to tide us over! Here's hoping it measures up to this phenomenal effort.

Content warnings: extreme graphic violence and mutilation. For mature audiences!

Takashi Nakamura directed and wrote the very good series Fantastic Children, which looked like a World Masterpiece Theater series but was at its heart an epic science fiction tragedy. Studio Colorido produced a fan-favorite McDonalds commercial some years ago, and more recently adapted Tomihiko Morimi’s Penguin Highway into a film. Together they made Bubu and Bubulina, which is nothing like Fantastic Children or Penguin Highway. Instead, it’s a throwback to classic cartoons, with rough line-art, a jazzy soundtrack and a girl with the power to make giant freaky-looking balloons. It’s also an unexpectedly melancholy story about a spirit coming to terms with its inability in life to find an audience. Bubu and Bubulina walk on and off the stage of Japan Animator Expo as if they’ve come from a long and varied tradition of shorts in which they are prominent stars. We may never see them again, but I’ll always remember their memorable appearance here. After all, they represent the Expo at its best: talented people empowered to make unusual art that wouldn’t find a home anywhere else.

Content warnings: None! Appropriate for all audiences.

What will be the future of Japan Animator Expo? Khara's been busy with the final Rebuild of Evangelion film for so long, it's hard to say what they'll do next—perhaps work on Hideaki Anno's Ultraman film? There's certainly enough untapped material in these shorts to be expanded into future projects. But more than anything, I'd love for these works to be made accessible once again. Animated shorts may not be as marketable or popular as longer series. But in an industry bent on working people to the bone to produce as much material as possible, we need more projects like Japan Animator Expo that give creators the money, time and space to make work only they could make. Until then: keep an eye on the artists here and elsewhere doing their best, and do what you can to support good work.

What are your favorite shorts from Japan Animator Expo? Have you seen The Dragon Dentist yet? Upset that we didn't mention ME!ME!ME!? Let us know in the comments!

---

Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. If Mahiro Maeda is looking to adapt another novel by Karl Capek, perhaps he'd enjoy working on The War With the Newts? Adam W sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? Follow him on Twitter at: @wendeego

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

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Review: The Blade Itself

by Wardog

Tuesday, 01 April 2008Wardog is really fucking impressed.~

This was another of my Hay-on-Wye One Pound Bargains (the first being, of course,

Locke Lamora

) except it's been gathering dust under my bed for the past six months. What can I say, the cover was a bit lame and the blurb on the back made it sound a bit generic and, let's face it, it was available in bulk via an outlet booksellers on the Welsh Border for less than my breakfast croissant so how good could it be? Well I'm pretty much kicking myself for the delay because the answer is bloody good actually. Bloody bloody good. Possibly the best fantasy I've read for a very very long time.

Into a cocked hat with you, Mr Locke Lamora. This is the Real Deal.

The Blade Itself, which is the first part of a trilogy because fantasy cannot be anything else although it gets points from me by not being a fucking septology, has three main protagonists, and the story unfolds through each of their perspectives. They are: Captain Jezel dan Luthar, a shallow and feckless swordsman in the King's Own, Logen Ninefingers, a battle-weary barbarian and Sand dan Glokta, a crippled and bitter Inquisitor who was horribly tortured during the war. So much so GRRM I know, but here it really really works. The POV switching is deft and absorbing and there's a genuine difference in narration and perception between the three characters - Glokta's sections are dominated by his sarcastic interior monologue and Jezel's actually seem to pout and whinge at you:

He had always assumed that everybody loved him, had never really had cause to doubt he was a fine man, worthy of the highest respect. But Ardee didn't like him, he saw it now, and that made him think. Apart from the jaw, of course, and the money and the clothes, what was there to like?

The stories interweave but only occasionally overlap; however the fleeting opportunities to see a character you've grown familiar with through the eyes of another are fascinating and serve to deepen your understanding of both characters in a quite subtle ways. It's also a world-building winner because knowledge of the world (which seems quite detailed but, thankfully, is never presented in those indigestible chunks so popular with fantasy writers) filters down to you gradually through the different character's responses and preoccupations. When you first see the city the other characters inhabit through the eyes of the barbarian, for example, it's startling and arresting and gives you a whole new insight into something you've pretty much taken for granted throughout the book so far. If Abercrombie's technique can be faulted at all (and I hate myself for even mentioning it), it's that he's presented his three protagonists so effectively that his occasional deviations into other characters (and to be fair, these are rare) seem jarring and I often found myself skimming in order to get back to the people I cared about as quickly as possible.

The secondary cast consist of a finely tuned assortment of the types of people you might expect to find in this kind of book: a man of common birth striving for advancement and recognition in the King's Own, a scheming Arch-Inquisitor, a cantankerous old man who may or may not be (but probably is) the all-powerful First of the Magi, a feral slavegirl, grasping nobles, pretentious officers and corrupt officials. The world they inhabit is dark and gritty (typical low fantasy fare in fact): the book is set in the Union, a sprawling confederacy of disparate countries (presumably an analogue to Europe) united under a, in this case, completely weak and hopeless King and a parliament of hereditary, bickering nobles. The Blade Itself concentrates mainly on establishing its characters and their position within the larger events taking place on the fringes of their awareness: there's clearly going to be A Big War although the details are as hazy to the reader as they are to the characters. Bethod, ruthless Barbarian king cementing power in The North, the Emperor Uthman al-Dosht eyeing up The East.

I think this may be The Blade Itself's only arguable weakness: it's pretty much a 400 page prologue. There is a sense of a gathering storm but there's very little elucidation of the over-arcing plot, which I presume will focus on the Big War through the eyes of the individuals caught up within it. This is not to say the book is devoid of excitement or tension, it's just that if you want to get into the thick of things straight away ... well ... why the hell are you reading fantasy trilogies? It may be a slow build but it it's so damnably well done that it's a pay off all on its own and I found myself so absorbed by the characters that I didn't care it was primarily set up for the books to come.

The other thing to note here is that my crude summary in no way does the book justice. Its generic premise and easily recognisable fantasy world are actually strengths: Abercrombie manipulates the usual fantasy tropes so skilfully that the book is both a delicate riff on the epic fantasy genre itself and an epic fantasy masterpiece in its own right. Its sly playfulness is one of the (many) pleasures of the book:

"How's the book?" asked Jezal. "The Fall of the Master Maker, in three volumes. They say it's one of the great classics ... Full of wise Magi, stern knights with mighty swords and ladies with mightier bosoms. Magic, violence and romance, in equal measure. Utter shit."

To some extent it reminds me of The Lies of Locke Lamora but only because they both seem to share a similar self-referentiality when it comes to the mainstays and expectations of the genre, and a healthy affection for the word fuck. If I was feeling momentous I'd dub it post-modern fantasy. But actually I think Abercrombie is better, particularly because he has a fine ear for dialogue and, although there are plenty of irreverent fast-talkers to be found within, it is at the very least possible to distinguish between them. His characters are complex, complicated and far from sympathetic but nevertheless they feel utterly and convincingly human. Jezal may be a shallow and selfish waste of space but you applaud his occasional moments of heroism. Glokta tortures people for a living and yet still you root for him. And although Logen, the thinking man's barbarian, was initially the least interesting of the three to me, after a while I really came to appreciate Abecrombie's take on this fantasy staple. Logen is a killer exhausted with killing, living in a world that has no other use for him:

He could have bragged and boasted, and listed the actions he'd been in, the Named Men he'd killed. He couldn't say now when the pride had dried up. It had happened slowly. As the wars became bloodier, as the causes became excuses, as the friends went back to the mud, one by one. "I've fought in three campaigns," he began. "In seven pitched ballets. In countless raids and skirmishes and desperate defences, and bloody actions of every kind. I've fought in the middle of the driving snow, the blasting wind, the middle of the night. I've been fighting all my life, one enemy or another, one friend or another. I've known little else. I've seen men killed for a word, for a look, for nothing at all. A woman tried to stab me once for killing her husband, and I threw her down a well. And that's far from the worst of it. Life used to be cheap as dirt to me. Cheaper. I've fought ten single combats, and I won them all, but I fought on the wrong side and for all the wrong reasons. I've been ruthless and brutal, and a coward. I've stabbed men in the back, burned them, drowned them, crushed them with rocks, killed them asleep, unarmed, or running away. I've run away myself more than once. I've pissed myself with fear. I've begged for my life. I've been wounded, often, and badly, and screamed and cried like a baby whose mother took her tit away. I've no doubt the world would be a better place if I'd been killed years ago, but I haven't been and I don't know why."

Logen, if anything and unlikely as it sounds, is (at the moment at least) the moral centre of the book. Although his battle cry is "I'm still alive" his life of violence has led him to a point where mere survival is no longer sufficient and the decisions he makes over the course of the book are based on an emergent, personal moral code. For the battle weary Logen, fighting has become something he will no long do out of necessity or for profit: he is fighting for a cause. Jezel, by contrast, in training for the fencing Contest, fights for glory and even then he only really puts any effort in because he wants to impress a girl. And Glokta, who does terrible things to people over the course of the book and knowingly allows himself to be used as a tool by the ambitious Arch Lector Sult, too physically and emotionally broken to really take any pleasure in survival at all, has no idea what motivates him to do the things he does.

That same question came into his head, over and over, and he still had no answer. Why do I do this? Why?

Glokta is most certainly the most difficult character in the book. Really, he can be thought of as a little more than a villain but the agony of his day to day life is described in such detail, and with such bitter wit, that it's very hard not to feel sympathetic towards him. However, although he's a fantastic character, I cannot help but wonder if his portrayal is entirely successful. The fact of the matter is, he kills and hurts people without remorse or regret and yet it's remarkably easy to forget it as you get drawn into the story. You might say this is yet another strength of the characterisation but I think that if you are going to find yourself responding positively to a character who is a torturer then you have to be able to do so with full knowledge of what that character is capable of doing. You might also say that this is a problem with me as a reader and that I shouldn't need to see constant and gruesome teeth-extraction scenes to remind me that somebody is a Bad Man but I actually suspect it's something to do with the nature of fiction itself (yeah, heaven forefend it was me).

Seriously though, and with all due self-irony, it's easy to forget - especially when it comes to fantasy where getting completely subsumed in the world is an expected part of the reading process (or "fun" if you're feeling generous) - the artificiality of fiction. We do not, however we might wish to pretend otherwise, respond to fictional people and situations as if they were real. We do not grieve for the fictional dead. We don't care about the billions of lives lost on Alderan, we just think it's really damn cool and evil that a whole planet got blown up by Darth Vader. Similarly, the people Glokta tortures have no narrative presence of their own. Therefore, it's hard to care that horrible, horrible things happen to them and it's hard to condemn Glokta for perpetrating the horrible horrible things. The issue here is not about morality it's about narrative: it's not whether or not the reader should be able to forgive Glotka for his unforgivable actions, it's why they should be so easy to forget.

But to bring this back to where it's supposed to be: The Blade Itself is an exceptionally accomplished and, indeed brilliant, debut. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Just one more thing: Fantasy Rape Watch

Women raped: 0

Somebody give the man a big gold star.

A brief aside on the subject of women in The Blade Itself since it's something that seems to be preoccupying us here at Fb: women tend to be peripheral to the novel as a whole. However, given the world, this seems entirely appropriate. The few female characters who do have parts to play are well-written, interesting and can hold their own against the men. None of them get their pale breasts fondled by rough barbarian hands. Win!Themes:

Fantasy Rape Watch

Books

Joe Abercrombie

Sci-fi / Fantasy

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Arthur B

at 23:17 on 2008-03-31

I've fought ten single combats, and I won them all, but I fought on the wrong side and for all the wrong reasons.

And with that, you've sold me on it. I know you said you'd lend it to me, but I'm tempted to just go to the Works and pick it up - ISTR that they have some cheap copies going there - since if you give it to me I'll want to keep it and then we will have to fight.

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Wardog

at 10:37 on 2008-04-02I feel absolutely evangelical about it - I would walk down Iffley Road just to give it to you, I think it's THAT good.

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Arthur B

at 15:19 on 2009-09-22So, I've finally gotten around to reading it a year and a half later and I'm pretty impressed.

I agree that the book is let down by the fact that it's a prologue, but I don't think it's let down that much. It's clearly the setup for Bayaz getting an adventuring party together to go to the edge of the world, but it almost never explicitly focuses on that, and always makes sure there's heaving, groaning piles of other stuff happening at the same time to make up for it like the war in the North and the fencing contest. If Robert Jordan had written this it would be 400 pages exclusively about Bayaz and his companions shopping for travelling gear.

Personally, I don't think the things Glotka does are that forgettable - we get constant little reminders of the lives he's destroyed throughout the book, like the bit where he casually mentions that the man he wrecks right in the opening chapters has "moved up north", and the implications of the responsibility he's given at the end of the book is pretty horrifying. Also, Glotka constantly thinks about his own torture, because his thought processes end up warping everything and making them all about him and the fact that he was tortured, but whilst he's a self-centred prick who can't see beyond his own pain I think at the same time his pains and tribulations are also a nice reminder for the reader about the implications of what Glotka does. That said, I think this is a point where people's interpretations will vary.

Oh, and on "Women raped: 0", I'm not sure that's

completely

true. I think it is pretty clear that in her past Ferro was either raped or in dire peril of being raped, but I think it's allowable because a) it's backstory, backstory inherently less real than stuff that actually happens onstage, and b) she actually acts like someone who has been brutally victimised in her formative years and then spent years as an outlaw running a guerilla campaign against the authorities. Pretty classy work on JA's part.

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Arthur B

at 15:22 on 2009-09-22Oh, there was one thing that got to me though - the world didn't quite hang together in a coherent manner, Abercrombie seemed to want to have the Renaissance-era Holy Roman Empire bordering Viking-era Scandanavia, and there were some puzzling things that came out of that. I'm all for fantasy worlds not sweating it too much when it comes to emulating a particular time period - deliberate anachronism can be pretty fun - but the Northmen don't know about crossbows?

Seriously?

That's the sort of weapon where once it's discovered it gets propagated

fast

because it's too useful not to adopt.

On the flipside, I did like the fact that Logen and Bethod and the other Northmen have no doubt that Bayaz is who he says he is, whilst in the Union they all freak out about it. It implies either that things are wilder and woolier and more magical in the North, or that time actually passes more slowly there; I'd be interested to see which.

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Dan H

at 23:27 on 2009-09-22It's pretty much standard in Fantasy for you to have Renaissance city-states, Vikings, Knights, Egyptians and Samurai rubbing shoulders in the same setting (often along with Victorian street urchins and spacemen).

It's also pretty standard for "civilized" people to be all "no no, the big dark evil is totally not coming" while "simpler" people are like "zomg".

Just once I'd like the civilised people to be right. After all, most things that people Don't Believe In Any More are - y'know - genuinely not real.

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Arthur B

at 00:50 on 2009-09-23

It's also pretty standard for "civilized" people to be all "no no, the big dark evil is totally not coming" while "simpler" people are like "zomg".

Again, a setting feature which made me genuinely wonder whether time passes more slowly the further you get from the central nation in the book. If 500 years have passed in the Union whilst only 15 have passed in the utter North a lot of this stuff makes sense: the Northmen don't know about crossbows because from their point of view they were only invented days ago, the Union have forgotten about magic and the Dark One because to them it's ancient history whereas to those at the periphery it's recent news, and Bayaz can have an influence on the life of the Union spanning generations because all he has to do is step beyond the mountains and time, for him, slows to a crawl.

This is almost certainly not the case but it would be fun to imagine a world where it was true.

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Niall

at 11:25 on 2009-09-23

it would be fun to imagine a world where it was true.

I believe this is the concept underlying Jo Walton's Lifelode. (Also some short stories by Stephen Baxter, eg "PeriAndry's Quest", "Climbing the Blue".)

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Jamie Johnston

at 22:49 on 2009-09-23I vaguely remember being absolutely fascinated by a slightly-outside-my-syllabus lecture (weren't they always the best kind?) about the Rus, a slightly mysterious pagan people from the northern Volga who pop up from time to time in Byzantine texts and who, the lecturer argued quite convincingly, later ambled vaguely westwards and arrived in Scandinavia just in time to become the Vikings. Maybe Abercrombie vaguely remembered a similar lecture.

Studying ancient and medieval history totally ruined the whole fantasy genre for me. I can't read any specimen without getting incredibly frustrated by the many many ways the fantasy world at hand would never under any circumstances work the way the author wants it to. (Not in a 'No, there can't be dragons' way, just in a 'No, if you had domesticated dragons it would completely revolutionize long-distance transport which would internationalize urban élite culture and thus destablize the ruling theocracy, not to mention the implications for agriculture...' way.) It makes me rather sad.

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Arthur B

at 23:12 on 2009-09-23This is the sort of thing which was simply never a problem with pulp fantasy of the Howard/Leiber/Clark Ashton Smith vein - because that genre was dominated by short story, no particular story revealed enough of the world that you could see where the seams were. Leiber's stories, for example, are all set in the environs of Lankhmar, and because you never really get to see the wider context of where Lankhmar fits in with the global political and economic scene none of that stuff matters even slightly and you can just forget about it and have fun.

Brick-sized novels tend to be trickier, especially since the instinct to write a fantasy story longer than 50 pages seems intimately tied to a love of excess worldbuilding. The more detail you provide about the setting, the more you reveal of the economic and political underpinnings, and 99% of the time they're going to turn out to be made of wet cardboard and string (because coming up with a convincing society from scratch is horrifyingly difficult).

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Arthur B

at 01:07 on 2009-09-24(Oh, and I'm pretty sure that the Union isn't based on Byzantium but the Renaissance-era HRE, so Abercrombie almost certainly isn't thinking of the Rus. The Union appears to incorporate at least the southern extremities of not-Scandanavia, for starters, and there's an utter lack of Greek-sounding names.)

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Dan H

at 11:38 on 2009-09-24

'No, if you had domesticated dragons it would completely revolutionize long-distance transport which would internationalize urban élite culture and thus destablize the ruling theocracy, not to mention the implications for agriculture...' way

Ironically, I often find that sort of thing actually balances out quite well.

"But if you could do that, it would totally revolutionise agriculture..."

"... which sort of explains why 90% of your country isn't covered in farmland so - fair enough then."

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Jamie Johnston

at 22:52 on 2009-09-24

This is the sort of thing which was simply never a problem with pulp fantasy of the Howard/Leiber/Clark Ashton Smith vein...

Perhaps I should try mining that vein. Where's a good place to start?

... the Union isn't based on Byzantium but the Renaissance-era HRE...

D'oh, yes, you did say exactly that in the first place and my brain perpetrated an unhelpful act of lumping all post-Roman imitations of the Roman empire together.

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Arthur B

at 22:54 on 2009-09-24

Perhaps I should try mining that vein. Where's a good place to start?

Any of the Fantasy Masterworks reprints of their work is decent (as is Lord Dunsany, if you want something a bit more poetic... and come to think of it, their compilation of Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories is pretty good).

Be aware that Leiber's output is a bit more variable than the others - the earlier Lankhmar stories are generally better than the later ones - and the Masterworks reprints of Lankhmar put the books in their internal chronological order, not the order of publication. So it's worth skipping to the stories with the earlier dates of publication when dipping into those.

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Ash

at 20:49 on 2011-03-15

time passes more slowly the further you get from the central nation in the book

Which raises the question, how does this work exactly? If 20 years inside makes 1 year outside, what happens when you cross on the border? Do you get ripped apart? Can you cross on the border? What about the cycle of day and night? Does one side have extremely long/short days and nights? If not, why not?

I don't know, it seems that it poses more problems than it solves.

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Dan H

at 22:36 on 2011-03-15I don't for a moment think that the Abercrombieverse actually works that way (it seems a pretty out-there way of describing what boils down to a bit of cod-fantasy world-handwaving) but I don't think it would actually be *that* hard to deal with, the same thing happens in the real world on a much smaller scale (time is slower in strong gravitational fields so clocks really do run faster in orbit than near the earth - GPS satellites need to be calibrated to take this into account). As long as there's a relatively smooth gradient, it shouldn't matter when you move from one to the other.

If it's got sharper edges, then you're dealing with something more like fairyland or Narnia - it's basically a metaphor for the way in which things can seem to change radically when we are separated from them for what appears to us to be a short time (this happens to me in real life all the time, you'll meet somebody you haven't seen for a while and they'll turn out to have had a baby or become a vicar while your back was turned).

But it's fairly clear that the world of The Blade Itself does not actually work that way anyway, so the point is rather moot.

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Andy G

at 23:51 on 2011-03-15Just re-read this review. Two things leapt out at me.

Firstly, I must read these books again.

Secondly, it was Grand Moff Tarkin who blew up the whole planet, not Darth Vader!

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Arthur B

at 00:24 on 2011-03-16And Tarkin did it wearing comfy slippers too.

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Wardog

at 09:33 on 2011-03-16Incidentally, I don't think you're allowed to have a 'verse if you name has more than 2 syllables in it. Maybe it should be the Joeverse.

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Ash

at 20:01 on 2011-03-16

The point is rather moot.

Sorry, I just like to overthink things.

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 20:21 on 2011-03-16

Sorry, I just like to overthink things.

Fortunately, that's the raison d'être of this website.

#Ferretbrain #Wardog #Joe Abercrombie #The First Law #The Blade Itself

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