#we are a parasitic blight on the world and its not going to get better

[ghostmadewithlove]

I'm not even kidding when I say every single politician needs to be hanged in the streets. Completely vile cunts every single one of them.

[agent-hood]

There are Wondrous things, There are Magical things, There are Dangerous things

We get what we deserve

@the-roanoke-society

The mission was relatively easy on paper, and one Parker had been looking forward to. A possible genius loci popped up in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and she was to go and observe. It was surprisingly hard to stumble across accidentally, but five people have still gone missing. Parker double checked her map and sighed in frustration- she had been out in the woods two days already, hiked majority of the western portion, and was no closer to stumbling upon the eldritch location than when she started. She glanced up at the sky, deciding it wasn’t too early to set up camp and transmit back her report. “Agent Hood reporting. End of day two concerning the mission, code: green-pnw. Still no sign of the target, designation ‘Eld fen’. I’ll wait another day and then try the east half. It’s frustrating,” She started. “It’s almost like the location is hiding. I’d say it sounds silly but... maybe not.” She confirmed the transmission was received and turned in early. She awoke with a strangled gasp, eyes shooting awake and body jolting in shock. For once, the first time since her incident, her slumber had been blank. No memories relived that she then had to catalog in excruciating detail, no lingering aches and pains from injuries outside this reality, just rest and slumber. Even more disorienting was that the environment around her was dark. Almost overwhelmingly so, except it was vivid as well. She could see every tree that surrounded her, every leaf on it, every star in the sky above. Two things were wrong with this: one- she had absolutely fallen asleep inside her tent (three hours ago according to her watch, but the level of pitch-black the sky was suggested it had actually been much longer) and was now outside and free of her camping accoutrements, and two- the sky was wrong. She didn’t hold the same fascination with the cosmos as Ellie did, but she was familiar enough with it to recognize that this sky was not of her world’s. There was not a familiar constellation above her, and any that could be discerned were drowned out by the overcrowded multitude of stars that seemed to blink and ripple as if they were breathing. This meant she had found the target. She was in Eld Fen. She rose to her feet slowly, feeling as sore and tired as if she ran a mile. Her walk was sluggish, but that allowed her the opportunity to take in more of her surroundings. The trees were a brackish brown, nearly red in hue, with bark soft and powdery to the touch. The leaves were an iridescent, deep purple that seemed to curl and shudder at her touch. She walked for what seemed like miles, only coming to a stop after tripping over a tree branch and getting her ankles tangled in it. “So pathetic.” A voice sneered. Parker couldn’t place it at first, not until the person came into view, which only confused her more as she had been the only one on this mission. “Morgan what’re you doing here?” “Lookin’ at the sorriest shit-show I’ve seen since the *last* time I had to bail you out of your mission.” “Morgan please, help me up I-“ “No.” Parker lowered her hand in disbelief. Morgan never had an unkind word for her, even when Parker deserved it most, so to hear her comforting drawl sound so curt was jarring. “Got a few things to say to you that’ve been jumpin’ to get out.” Parker groaned and fought to get up, more constrained by the roots than initially thought; but it was Morgan talking so she still listened intently- sure that it was important to the mission. “I shoulda left you in that ditch. Hell- I shoulda done us all a favor and slit your throat right there, saved us all the embarrassment. No one woulda found you. No one woulda cared.” The words stopped Parker. Oh god... she had always thought- but she never believed someone would have actually agreed with her. “You really think you’re so clever that we can’t see through your little act?” Ellie said. Parker tried to ask where she came from, but found herself growing too tired to question it too much. Besides she had to focus her energy on getting up. “You’re practically screaming for attention; every new conversation, every nice gesture, every. Single. Insipid. Smile. It’s all so selfish.” Parker screwed her eyes shut in an attempt to block out the words, but they only drew closer. “You don’t actually care about us,” Raphaelle sneered, voice heavy with disdain. “It’s all some pathetic effort to be missed.” Parker wanted to get up and leave, argue, anything- but she was held fast in place, muscles asleep and weak. Plus... everything they were saying wasn’t exactly wrong. “You won’t be though.” It was now Ivar, staring down at her as if she were so small and pathetic. Like something to avoid on the sidewalk. ‘Not him,’ she thought desperately to herself, tears now leaking out in spite of her efforts to maintain composure. “Who could miss someone like you.” His deep voice enunciated, friendly accent gone and only sneering judgement in its place. “Cold, broken, judgmental. a little know-it-all who knows nothing. And you jumped into bed so easy- all it took was the slightest bit of affection. What does that say about you? You really think  I’m going to stay with someone who spreads her legs for a smile?” If her body held anything other than an exhausting hollowness, she’d apologize- beg for any sort of forgiveness, because they were right. Everything said was right. “You’re a blight on this agency,” Lilith said, as if she were stating a well known fact. “and you drag your mother’s legacy through the mud. So useless- you think I couldn’t have brought you back at any point? Why wouldn’t you stay gone?” “There’s a reason no one looked for you.” Kieran hissed, deep voice a twisting knife in her gut. “Dad...” She whimpered, squeezing her eyes tighter, not wanting to see how his face would twist and contort like the others. It was one continuous string of horrific familiarity; recognizable but too many eyes and teeth to be comfortable. “Any one of us could’ve went out and found you, but we didn’t. You were finally off our hands and then you had to come back. Ruined everything since- put your brother in danger because you’re such a child you need him like a safety blanket. At least until he does something you don’t like, then he’s discarded like an old toy.” His shadowy figure, blurred and amorphous but still recognizable, reached down and wrenched her face forward, fingers digging in to make sure she saw the hatred in his expression. “That’s my son.” He spat out in a whisper filled with the lethal intent she knew he was capable of when pushed to his limit. “The only reason I acknowledge you, is because he feels sorry that you’d be left out. Powerless and boring as you are, I’m ashamed.” Parker whimpered, unable to do much more than that. She saw Kieran change to Cthylla and she wanted to reach out, selfishly wanting him to stay despite all the times she told him contrary. “How dare you,” The Archivist hissed, face streaked with heartbreak. “You, a mere human, dare tread where I cannot. And dying where I cannot touch. How dare you take my love and spit in my face.” Wait... something was wrong. “You know what?” Carter started. “I’m glad you’re here, dying alone and far away from me! Maybe now I’ll finally get my own life and stop living under your fucking shadow!” “You’re not Carter.” Parker said definitively, voice weak and barely audible above a whisper, but it cut through the creature’s ranting. “That’s not how Carter feels. That’s how I feel that Carter should feel... this is all fake.” And as she said it out loud, her surroundings became clearer. Like a fog lifting, she was able to focus on more than the procession of hatred. She indeed was still in Eld Fen, alone underneath a strange sky, but she was tucked further into the roots against the horrid red tree. It seemed to exude a body-like temperature, and as She tried to pull herself free she found her body was practically caged. Entangled in it roots and covered in small, ghostly moss and luminous mushrooms ; Unsure if it was just blanketing her or growing from her. Further inspection showed that her body was emaciated, like she hadn’t eaten in two weeks, using the tree as a sort of life support with twigs digging deep into her body like IVs. That was impossible though, she hadn’t been here that long,... had she? So this was how she was going to die- fed on by a parasitic forest. This time she hoped she’d disappear with no trace, that no other agent would investigate and fall prey to this place. She would have been surprised at her calmness when faced with her imminent death but... she really couldn’t feel anything, even calm took effort. She closed her eyes in an attempt to slip away when she heard a frantic snuffling beside her. She managed to smile and whisper out Hampton’s name, having forgotten that he would be the last thing she sees when he comes for her. Always a good boy. Hampton began digging and pawing at the plants and lichen that enveloped her, pushing most of it away. Soon her body was free of most of its entrapments and enough of her strength returned to grasp onto his fur so he could drag her away. The farther she got from the tree the better she felt... to a point. She was definitely weak and drained, but now that she had her emotional and mental facilities back, she was pissed. She searched her pockets and was gratified to find her lighter. Normally she held a bit more reverence for nature and the delicate balance it held, which had only been reinforced by her training and dealings with the fae. But this forest needed to fuck right off. Despite the unsettling wetness of the tree, She successfully managed to start a solid fire underneath the roots, in the make-shift cradle where it caged her. Satisfied it would catch and spread, her only clue to this being a high-pitched shriek coming from... somewhere. she clung tightly to her wonderful, beautiful dog and allowed herself to rest, trusting him to take her where he may. ~ She came-to to heavy, comforting weights pinning her down. Hampton was dutifully laid across her feet, keeping her warm, and Carter was wrapped carefully around her, gangly limbs arranged so as not to disturb the various IVs and machines she was hooked up to. Ivar was on her other side- clinging to her as much as he could while still being confined to his chair- which meant he had been here long enough to not visit his main charging station. The walls were lined with chairs and shelves full of differing balloons and bouquets, all wishing her a speedy recovery. She couldn’t help the smile that bloomed across her face, fueled by a re-invigoration she hadn’t realized she had been so missing. Unhooking herself as quietly as she could, she snuck out of the medical bay, only alerting Hampton (who immediately and silently stuck by her side) to the fact she was now up and about. It must have been in the earliest hours of the morning, as the hallways of the manor were dark and quiet. She slowly, still exhausted and worn to her limit, made her way up to Lilith’s office, hoping to get her debriefing done while it was still fresh, but stopped short at the sound of arguing. “-the ever-loving fuck was I not called in for backup when she failed to report for 48 hours?" A voice (clearly Kieran’s) rang out, “Just because you are related to her does not-“ “Hey guys,” Parker interrupted, keeping her voice casual in an attempt to break the heated argument between her father and Lilith. “Sorry to interrupt.” “What are you doing up luv? You need to get back to-“ Kieran flustered, immediately rushing to her side to (needlessly) help prop her up. Parker interrupted him, putting a temporary stop to his worry. “I’m fine right now, I just needed to debrief- Lilith, I think there’s more to that place than we initially thought.” “Ms. Jensen surely this can wait until you’re out-processed from medical.” “No I’ll forget something and lose it by then. I’ll fill out form 87-b(103) later, promise.” The grand matriarch of Roanoke seemed flabbergasted by Parker’s insistence, having never seen the smaller woman show any measure that resembled assertiveness. She sat in the nearest chair, almost surprised she did so, and listened intently. “Ok so we thought ‘Eld Fen’ was some sort of genius loci, a part of the land that held residual energy or intelligence, but when I was being fed off of- by the way it feeds on people, it would generate hallucinations to manipulate my emotions, so maybe it feeds on those specific chemicals in the brain?” Parker shook her head and continued. “Anyways it made me hallucinate that all of you were there, not all at once, it would just pick a person and say something, really dug into my insecurities, but when it formed to Cthylla, I think it recognized her. Like, more than who she was in my life- it said something about ‘going where she could not’, so I think it knew what* she was.” “Hmm, we’ll have to ask her to see if the Ry’lethians had any sort of place known to them that was forbidden. Or persons.” Lilith agreed, already coming to the conclusion Parker had clumsily hinted at. “Kieran, do wait outside for a moment. I have some private words to impart on our Agent Hood.” He left, reluctantly, and let Parker know that he’d be right outside if she needed. “You mentioned that it made you hallucinate people you knew, I’m assuming the visions said horrible things.” “Yes ma’am. I’m not sure exactly what, but I think it fed on things like ‘deepest insecurities’ so having people you know tell you what you’ve always feared they thought would be the best way to get that.” “...May I ask if I was one of the figures you saw?” “You were ma’am.” Lillith’s face fell imperceptibly, if Parker knew better she would have guessed she was hurt by this information. “I cannot imagine what that mirage told you, but I can guarantee it was false.” Parker bit her lip and thought carefully. She could have railed against her, demanding to know about all the things the vision brought up; it was clearly weighing on her. But hearing each and every hurt she held out loud, it made it seem so much smaller than it felt. “It doesn’t really matter if it is or not ma’am. Or at least it doesn’t matter anymore, not to me.” Lilith nodded then, and in a graceful measured show of affection, took Parker’s hands in her own and squeezed them. She punctuated the gesture with a soft kiss, brushing her knuckles with firm lips and clemency. But if she was granting or asking for it, Parker didn’t know. It wasn’t her place to.

[myndopeus]

y'all did it

well, we reached the goal, so i am slightly mortified to present:

YA ES HORA IS GAY: AN ESSAY

(under a readmore because its literally 1.5k and i’m not an asshole. but i might be posting from mobile so if it doesn’t work i apologize)

there’s no context to this, i literally was just so mind-blown and shook that i ended up actually analyzing the whole video for plot subtext. this is probably more literary than y’all are expecting, but apparently you wanted it. citation is of @bisexualpowerranger.

At this point, I’m sure we are all aware of the Ya Es Hora video, whether it be through watching it yourself or listening to your wlw friends nutting over it. The video is practically overflowing with gay subtext, to the point where only the most oblivious cishet would be able to say that it’s just “Gals being Pals”. But even though the gay aura is clearly visible from space, it is also presented with some conflicting implications of hetero nonsense. Thankfully, this is just to throw the straights off, and serves to enhance the gay factor if you look close enough. On the surface, the plot might be easily interpreted as a classic story of a man cheating on two women, who then unite and become close with each other, dumping the fuckboy in unison. It’s a classic plot in both hetero- and homo- literature, but this video adds an intensely Sapphic spin on the trope, proving once again that Our Lord and Savior Becky G truly is one of the Gays. Rather than having the focus on some irrelevant man who is called out on being a blight and parasite to society, this retelling focuses on the bond of two women, and the attraction between them, with the presence of whats-his-face merely acting as a catalyst for them to act on their feelings for one another. How Iconic.

Given that Becky G technically just features on this track, we can safely say that Ana Mena can be considered the “protagonist” of our story. This is reinforced by how she has the widest variety of settings, from poolside view to weird glass room to living room to strange countertop shot. We are given the most insight to her life, so to speak. Her interactions with the other two “characters”, aka De La Ghetto and Becky G, are heavily skewed to aid the point of this interpretation. She only ever communicates with “DeLa” over text, while she shares like, half the damn video with Becky. This is our first clue that the connection between the two women is more important, but this could also be brushed under the bed as friendship. Fortunately, they gave the gays everything we could want, in the form of symbolism. The shots of Ana Mena and Becky G feature them in two rooms that are only separated by a glass wall as thin and transparent as this metaphor is. The décor of the two rooms tells us all we need to know about these two. Ana Mena’s side of the room is covered in posters and artwork on the walls, with lamps and fluorescent lighting giving it a nice purple and pink shading, which is like trying to smother someone with the bisexual flag, but anyways. This implies a more lived-in state, kind of like a teenager’s bedroom or something. Teenagers are notorious for beginning to explore outside of their comfort zones and beginning to branch out past the world that they are accustomed to. Key word being ‘explore’, as we turn to Becky G’s side of the room, which is legit just a fucking indoor jungle. While Ana Mena’s room represents a more controlled area, this jungle represents something exciting and undiscovered. A word used in the lyrics that seems appropriate is “adventure”. This connection indicates that the “adventure” referenced in the sexually charged lyrics is a woman. What we can surmise from this is that Ana Mena is a young woman beginning to question her sexuality because of the absolute snack that is Becky G, a known Bicon. If we were to get literary about this shit, jungles are commonly used to symbolize the heart (Shay R[edacted], 2018). Contrast this with the artificial lighting of the other side of the room, and you get the classic head vs. heart dilemma. I don’t know about you guys, but so far I am loving this.

 But wait! There’s more! If you, like me, are an adept user of Google Translate, all it takes is a few simple clicks to get a relatively inaccurate translation of what they’re actually saying. As far as I could make out, the lyrics carry a theme of two people who are clearly very interested and attracted to each other, but for whatever reason have not been able to meet in person. Thus, most of their communication and flirting is carried out through text, pictures, and voice messages. Although he does communicate with both girls individually through text, De La Ghetto is only ever shown in solo shots. In contrast, Becky G and Ana Mena are separated by that glass wall, which is clearly a better representation of the tension that comes from flirting over text, but not being able to actually see or be near the other person. The lyrics are referencing the pull that the two women feel towards each other. De La Ghetto is irrelevant. He’s so irrelevant that I didn’t even bother to look up the translation for his rap. Because who cares. The lyrics talk about sending photos and voice messages, which both Ana Mena and Becky G are seen doing. What’s interesting about those parts of the video is that the other person is never shown responding to the picture/message. In other shots, the color of the respondent’s text message shows that they are messaging De La Ghetto, but it is left suspiciously ambiguous with the pictures and voice messages. Thus, it is not out of reason to suspect, or even conclude, that those pictures and messages weren’t being sent to De La Ghetto, but were being exchanged between the two women. This makes even more sense when you note how the shots of them sending voice messages are consecutive.  Therefore, what we have so far is two women carrying an online flirtation with each other, while simultaneously juggling a man in the offhand.

And now we get to the part everyone’s been waiting for, where they ditch the man and get together. De La Ghetto sends Ana Mena a text message saying that he can’t meet her at 7 like they planned, not giving a reason. She is clearly upset by this, and we later find out that he is ditching her to meet up with Becky G. What’s super gay about this detail is that when Becky G gets the message from him, she isn’t even looking at her phone. She’s gazing off into the distance like Sappho herself just descended from heaven and roundhouse kicked her in the head. So we definitely know at this point that Becky is so over whats-his-face, and that she’s got it bad for Ana Mena, but Ana Mena is still concerned with men for some reason, so she hasn’t reciprocated yet. Becky is probably waiting for Ana Mena to make the first move. A possible interpretation in line with common tropes is that Becky is already comfortable with her sexuality and attraction, while Ana Mena is struggling with the new feelings of being attracted to women. One way this is shown is in the pictures they send (see above paragraph for further reference); Becky is the first one to send a picture, god bless, and when Ana Mena later sends one, it is in almost the exact same pose. In a very wholesome turn of events, Becky waits for Ana Mena to make the first move confirming their relationship, which she does in a very dramatic and thinly-veiled metaphor for sex by shattering the glass wall, leading to a shot of Becky G that gives off such strong bottom vibes that I was shocked and had to pause the video for a few moments. They spend the rest of the video dancing suggestively with each other while De La Ghetto looks down at his phone and is as shook as we all feel.

The concluding paragraph of an essay is essentially a tl;dr, so here’s a summary of the Hidden Meaning of the Ya Es Hora video: a young woman, Ana Mena, finds herself caught between the physical relationship she has with a man, and the exciting but unknown venture of an online flirtationship with a woman that is clearly progressing rather quickly. The other woman, Becky G, is not pressuring her or pushing boundaries, while the man is pretty much blowing her off. Coming to her senses, Ana Mena realizes that women are amazing, and she goes off and basically has sex with Becky G, and they lived happily ever after. One entertaining tidbit of detail that was not strong enough to support the overarching interpretation, but is still funny, is that in the tail end of the video there is a Parental Advisory sign in Becky’s side of the room. Indeed, she is such a bad influence, turning all the women gay and scattering glass all over the damn place. Also her jawline is sharp enough to kill a man. The moral of this story is that I’m pretty sure Becky G is literally on the verge of coming out, and if you haven’t seen this gay-ass music video then what are you doing with your life. Go watch it, and make sure to bring a glass of water, because the thirst is real.

References

R[edacted], S. (2018) Jungles are usually used to represent the heart. Discord DMs.

[cuddlywritesthings]

Arcane Explosion

Genre: World of Warcraft

Characters: Taviast Duskwither, Elric Marlowe

Characters mentioned: Clayton Whatley, Jendrick Camden, Guntharius Plaguespitter, Shokhi Ebondraft

Timeline: The next morning after Declivity into Holy Fire takes place.

Trigger warnings: Heavy themes, racism of certain races, strong language, severe injury, interrogation and torture, character death.

-----

“So, you’ve come to have a nice little chat with me, too.”

Clayton Whatley strained against his bonds just so he could get a good view of the person who had just entered this sad, pathetic, craven little dungeon. His chains rattled as he moved, his slumped position against the wall causing his back to ache.

He had been left to his own devices, or so he had assumed. After the fuzzy bitch with the knives and the poisons had attempted to wheedle her way through his ironclad defense, he had been left for what he assumed would have been the rest of the following day. He knew the routine. This wasn’t the first time he had been captured. He was a pro at it by now. Had it all down.

After all, he had captured and taken care of many people during his time in the Cult of the Gaze of N’zoth.

First, the captured prisoner would be forced down in some enclosed space used as a dungeon. From there they would be tied up or, in this case, chained at the waist, bound at the wrists, and collared like some mangy mongrel. Second, the first interrogation. This would be to survey the prisoner and to scare them into talking. Torture techniques more than likely used, given by the proof of the various cuts and acidic burns on his own body. Third, the waiting period. Here the prisoner would stew in his cell, left alone to the dark and their thoughts until they went mad with apprehension. When would their next visitation be? Would they be fed? Would they starve? Would they be taken out, found to be useless?

It was only then, after a generous time left alone, would the prisoner finally have their second interrogation. This one, of course, would be the one to smooth things over, with the interrogator begging, pleading, cajoling for a deal. This is where he could easily have the upper hand, so long as he played his devilish cards right. He was a master at sleight of hand. It’s how he had escaped his past two imprisonments.

He had been looking forward to settling in among the dank stones and the skittering rats in the walls when he had heard the descending footsteps and the ghastly creaking of an unoiled door, opening.

“You just missed your friend. The furry bitch roughed me up good. I think she gave me some fleas, too. Is she a pet of yours? Didn’t see a collar or anything, so I wasn’t sure.”

It was an elf, judging by its ridiculous ears. Whatley had always hated elves. Arrogant, uppity things. They thought themselves better than the rest. They deserved to have their whole race wiped out. For Azeroth, they were the rats skittering in the walls. The Sin’dorei, the Ren’dorei, the Shal’dorei and even some Kaldorei. Looks like this order liked to house the scum from the asscrack of this world. Fucking degenerates, all of them.

This one was a fancy elf, too. Looked to be a mage. Or perhaps higher up on the make believe caste system those mages liked to come up with. This one was an old geezer, too. White hair stood out against the dim lighting of this foul place. And the elf walked with a slight limp. Robes did a pretty good job at hiding the limp, but not from his keen eye.

“Nice limp you’ve got going on there,” Whatley sneered. He lifted his arms a little, letting the heavy clinking of the chains echo across the cavernous room. There were other cells here, and other chained areas, like this one, but none of them were occupied. “Get that recently? Did one of my men do it? You’ll have to give me their name so I can promote them once I get out of here.”

The fancy mage silently moved through the room, over to a table strewn with papers. Probably notes on how to make ‘a pig squeal’. Whatley knew who owned this dungeon. He was well aware of The Circle and its members. Plaguespitter was a blight that had to be eliminated. More so a target of purging than the fucking elves in this rat hole.

The elf had golden eyes. A mark of purity, or some bullshit. Whatley had learned that the Sunwell had been purified through the typical grapevine. But that didn’t matter to him. Elves were elves, and whether they were purified or not, they were still filth that had to be scrubbed clean.

He may have been a servant to the void and a loyalist to N’zoth’s teachings, but even he knew what races were worthy enough to follow his master’s words. He begrudgingly dealt with them in the Cult but, otherwise, he didn’t care much for their existence outside of it.

“Not very talkative are you,” Whatley taunted. A trickle of blood snaked out from beneath his hairline, and he lounged against the hard, compact stone wall. Stretching his legs, he cocked his head lazily to the side. “Is most of this order as rude as the fuzz-bitch? I should have gotten my delicious meal of pig slop and rotten rinds by now. I’m a guest at your place. How about treating me like the royalty I am?”

The elf was spreading out something on the table, and he was reading it over. His face was cold and guarded, and he could barely make out the elf’s eyes moving as he scanned the page. Flashy bastard. The elf had a penchant for purples and blues. Probably just as egotistic and vain as the rest of his useless race. Probably gay, too. Like some gay-ass peacock, coming to be intimating. Pathetic.

“Hel-llllooo,” he called out, shaking his chains a little on purpose. The acid burns on his hands and arms stung with the motion, but he relished their sweet pain. “I am having a conversation with you!”

Quietly the elf looked his way. Finally! The insect was taking notice of him. Whatley flashed him a smug smile. He found himself clever for finally getting the inferior pest to acknowledge his presence.

“There we are,” the crazed cultist began in a sickeningly cordial tone. He figured it was perfect for this little get-together. Sound a little inviting, lure this elf into a trap. Not that he, himself, looked intimidating at this point. His robes were in tatters; slashed in a few areas, with burned flesh exposed. “Hello, there. What’s your name?”

The bug stared at him, a hint of a flame beneath that expressionless mask and those golden eyes. His hands were without gloves, but Whatley could tell there was something transcribed upon his skin. If he squinted just right and turned his head to the left a little, he’d probably come to the conclusion that they were runes of some sort. But he didn’t have time to study this inferior beast.

“I’m trying to be the civilized one here,” Whatley snapped. “I understand it’s hard for you elves to be civilized. You pretend that you are, but you really aren’t. You elves live in the woods and worship your little spirit friends. Or some elves do, at least. You worship the sun, right? Your kind enjoys sunburns and going blind in its bright light. You probably stared at it too long, and that’s why your eyes are like that. Probably too stupid to look away.” He scoffed as the elf turned his attention to two chairs in the room, grabbing their backs in order to pull them over. “Oooh, a chat? Are we going to have a bloody tea party? I’m sorry, I don’t speak your fancy speak, so I am afraid communication will be lost on your primitive brain.” Shrugged, he added in a snippy tone, “I could try, if you want me to. Doubt you’d listen.”

The elf had brought the chairs to him. With a surprising amount of rough strength, he grabbed Whatley by the arm, lifting him before shoving him down into the chair. The chains rattled like bones.

“Durr a thor-y-a moo-thil,” Whatley mocked him. “Or whatever the hell you’d say to me now.”

The elf had settled down into the chair across from him. Almost an arm’s length away. Pathetic. Rats getting so close to him, touching his arm. He’d have to wash that arm, once he was brought some water. Who knows the parasitic germs the cretin had.

Relaxing in the chair, and making a show of it, Whatley smugly smiled. “So, elf. I’ve been dying to ask someone. I mentioned his name to your pet you sicced on me, but I didn’t get so much as a lick of emotion out of her. That’s what you get for enlisting dumb animals.”

With a slow, barely noticeable lifting of his chin, the elf merely stared at him.

Getting bold and brazen, Whatley leaned forward a little, testing the limitations of his chained collar. The chain pulled taut, its post grinding against stone. “How’s Plaguespitter?”

Whatley didn’t have time to comprehend. All he felt was the disruption from movement and the blur of the chair coming towards him. The goddamn elf had stood up, and with a violent motion he had reached around, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and slammed his head down on the chair before him. The chair, of course, had been strategic in its placement, so that the front edge of the wooden seat met his forehead. And the chain to his collar didn’t help him any. It snapped taut from the action, throwing his head back, nearly choking him.

After all, the Archmage had been crafty enough and calculated the chair’s placement, keeping it just close enough that when he slammed Whatley’s head down, the chain had enough slack give that it didn’t prevent the action from happening, nor the man from having his spine instantly snapped.

“FUCK YOU,” Whatley exploded, as a gush of red flowed freely over his left eye and down his nose. He had found himself slumped back in his own chair, a strong, runic emblazoned hand pushing him against the back, holding him there. “FUCK YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE RACE,” he screamed, losing control of his anger for that moment. “YOU CRAVEN BEAST, HOW DARE YOU--”

Again, Whatley filled the air with curses as the elf had repeated the same gesture. This time the gash that had split the skin so cleanly had deepened, and widened, nearly blinding him with red. He couldn’t help but reflect on it all.

This damn elf. This inferior beast, touching him!

His chair was kicked out from under him, and he fell back, sprawling, to the stone floor. He could hear the elf’s soft, light footsteps as he stared upwards, vision red, towards the ceiling.

“Good morning,” came the light, aristocratic tone of the elf. He spoke Common fluently, with hardly a hiss to his words betraying his elven accent. “My name, translated in your language, is Taviast Duskwither.”

“You fucking--- ahh-!”

The elf, this Taviast Duskwither, had stepped down, harshly, on his arm. Right where the arm set snugly into the socket of his shoulder. He dug his heel into the man’s bone, letting it grind out a wave of pain.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the elf darkly purred as he waggled a finger. “None of this ‘fucking elf’ business. I am a Sin’dorei. You will get this correct. Not merely an elf, by your baseless standards, but a child of shed blood and of the sun. And,” he ground his heel in a bit more, eliciting more curses from Whatley’s mouth, “you will be wise to hold your tongue in my presence, human. For I am an Archmage. And you will address me as such, for I have earned this title and you are nothing but scum beneath my boot.”

Whatley shot him a defiant glare through the curtain of his blood. This primitive beast was inflicting pain on him! How dare he! How dare he touch him!

Before Whatley could respond, he felt the chain connected to his collar yanked on, hard. His neck was jerked as he was pulled, hard, back towards the wall. The vertebrae in his spine popped, and he gasped out in agony.

The fuzz-bitch Pandaren had tortured him, but she had used more convenient methods of torture. Knives, poisons and acid. The typical shit. Whatley admitted he would have never expected a skinny-ass, wispy looking, limping motherfucker to do this to him.

Spitting out a wad of stringy blood, Whatley defiantly glared at the heathen before him. He wished his head would stop spinning. An explosion of pain throbbed in his head. Shit, being dazed was a bitch and a half to deal with.

“This isn’t how the next interrogation is supposed to go,” he snapped. Fucking elves, thinking them superior. Whatley bristled at the way he was being talked to. Like a damn child! It stoked the fires of his rebellious nature, and he sneered at the elf. “You’re supposed to try to coax me to talk. Make a deal, maybe. Get me to spill more of the beans by playing the ‘nice guy’ role. Where’s the duality? Is Rosecrown filled with the crust from Azeroth’s own asshole?”

“In a fairer world, perhaps,” Taviast coldly replied, his words cast about in an almost offhanded sort of way. “But in your world, things aren’t always fair, is it? Oh, and do pardon me of my prudence, but I don’t have any bloody tea to give to you.”

“That’s no way to treat a prisoner,” Whatley growled. “And you expect me to cooperate after that little stunt of yours? Consider my mouth shut.”

“Oh, I don’t expect you to speak,” the Archmage replied without missing a beat.

“Do you now?”

"You don’t seem like someone who would freely talk to us.”

“Then fucking make me, you piece of shit.”

“I am not interested in that. I only want silence, from here on out.”

“...What?”

“Forever.”

Whatley’s eyes began to widen in his sickening sense of realization. He had caught the distant, harsh look in the Sin’dorei’s eyes, and he saw that there was not a scrap of mercy behind the elf’s sun-bright eyes. Only a simmering flame of hatred, the only sparse bit of warmth to the elf’s being.

“W--Wait,” Whatley said, mentally scrambling for his figurative cards. “H--Hey, now. What do you mean by that?”

“If you thought I had personally come to bless you with my presence, consider this meeting more an omen of ill-fate. I have no further time to spare. You have clearly been exhausted of your resources, and you’re no longer a priority to us.”

Whatley’s heart began to slam against his ribs in a panicked frenzy.

“B--But--”

“It’s clear you won’t cooperate with us,” the elf cooed in an almost sinister tone. He was attempting to placate Whatley in the most mocking way possible, and it only added anxiety to the cultist’s mind. “Shokhi was exceptional in her technique, but what you’ve given us is useless. Fraught with red herrings and filled with lies.”

“You don’t know that,” Whatley blurted out, suddenly fearful. He attempted to stand up, but he was far too woozy from the hits to his head, and so he sank back down to his knees. “You fucking psycho! You don’t know that!”

“Oh, but I do. You are of no further use to us.”

This was going wrong. This was going all wrong. Whatley could see that the elf was approaching him, and the only thing that could go through his mind was of his failure. He had to get back to the cult. He had to get back to his fellow cultists.

And he had to get back to him.

His fearful heart lurched downwards and plummeted into the pit of his stomach at the thought of being unable to return to his leader. And not simply his leader. His leader, and his lover. He had made him feel complete. Made him feel whole. His ingenious nature had whiled away the pain from his life. He had helped lick at the wounds riddling his heart and soul, and had taken him in, teaching him the glory of N’zoth and the judgement day to be. It was because of him that he had grown strong against the injustices of this world. He had learned to have a voice. He had learned to hold himself up above the inferior beasts of this world.

Through his beloved leader, he had learned how powerful he truly was.

And now here he was, with an insane elf bearing down on him, realizing he had to act fast if he were to ever return to him alive.

“L--Let’s strike a deal,” Whatley all but sniveled. “P--Please, let’s talk this over!”

Taviast Duskwither had reached his side. Harshly he gripped his arm tight-- the very one he had stepped on earlier-- and twisted. It elicited an agonized cry from Whatley. “You couldn’t even tell us what your name actually is.”

“M--MARLOWE,” he gasped out, tears stinging his eyes. “Elric Marlowe! Marlowe! I’m our leader’s second-in-command! I--- his name! His name is Clayton Whatley!”

Another vicious wrench to his damaged arm, and Elric Marlowe shrieked out in misery. His vision popped as colors exploded in his head. He could feel his body begin to tremble. Too much had happened to him in such a little amount of time. He couldn’t get past the pain.

Marlowe was then thrown forward from a well timed backhanded strike. He slumped against the ground, a miserable pile of human pestilence. His body continued to quake as he coughed and sputtered, flecks of blood speckling the dirty stone flooring.

“Je--Jendrick! That’s who you want! Jendrick Camden is the Paladin you’re seeking!”

With a sickening wheeze, Marlowe felt the toe of the Archmage’s boot slam against his ribs. Instinctively he curled in on himself, tears beginning to flow freely, streaking down his grimy face.

“You w--want him, not me,” he groaned out, his stomach flopping as vomit threatened to push up his throat. “H-He’s the one who took out your fucking deader.” He paused, waiting for a reaction from the elf. Once he was sure the elf didn't move an inch, he continued on, pressing the matter. “That’s… that’s it. It’s Jendrick you truly want. H--He went and fucking killed your precious reanimated corpse! I--I mean,” he corrected himself, after hearing the elf shift a step closer towards him, “he hurt your friend. And now your entire order is seeking revenge. That is who you’re after. He’s the one you want. It’s true. This was a trap. We had wanted him dead.”

Taviast’s boot came down on the back of Marlowe’s shoulder, and he screamed into the stone. His vision swam and a slew of curses spilled forth from his rancid mouth.

He was going to die here. He was going to die, and never get a chance to return to his beloved, his life, his everything-- Clayton Whatley. He owed him so much, but he knew he had to try and offer up some tidbit offering to this manic elf in order to gain any sort of chance towards escaping Rosecrown alive.

“I do not have all night,” Taviast said, just a bit testily. “I have matters to attend to. Let’s make this quick.”

Rolled over by the elf’s foot, Marlowe could see the elf standing above him through the haze of pain and blood that clouded his vision. A wave of rebellion coursed through him, fueling him for one more act of rebellion in his lover’s name.

Aiming just right, Marlowe spat. The somewhat gooey wad landed right on the Archmage’s robes. A ripple of laughter coursed through him. The elf wasn’t wiping it away, which surprised him all the same, but no matter. Perhaps this worthless piece of shit wasn’t as vain as the rest of them.

With an almost bored sounding sigh, Taviast acknowledged the action with a toneless, “very well.” He moved over to the post in the wall that connected the chained collar to the stone. “I had wanted to make your demise a quick one, but your superfluous sense of pride chose this fate for you. You could have truly been someone of good in this world. But you chose this path.”

He had almost snapped out something arrogant in response but had, instead, stopped dead in his tracks. He had found that his throat had gone dry. He was witnessing something that had turned his stomach out of sheer panic.

The bastard elf had grabbed the chain, right at the lock that secured it to the post. The runes on his bare hand began to glow a sinister hue of purple. From his fingertips a glaze of frost began to creep down the chain and towards him. Almost instantly Marlowe was aware of the chain progressively getting colder the closer the chilly frost encroached.

“You fucker! You fucking madman!”

“I am not the one here who is mad,” Taviast replied calmly, as the chain froze ever closer to him. “You are the one who joined a cult worshiping an Old God. Not I. We are all mad to our own various degrees: this I have come to learn. But there can be no comparison between you and I.”

His panic full blown now, Marlowe twisted and turned, as if trying to wiggle free from the collar. The chain and his collar were getting cold now, as was the space around them. And the frost was already halfway, and the ice magic had already frozen solid up to that point.

“S--Stop--”

“When your collar freezes,” Taviast intoned in an almost bored voice, “the cold will make it hard for you to breathe. Essentially, given enough time and exposure to the cold, you might develop frostbite of your throat which, well... I don’t have to be the one to tell you how disadvantageous that might make breathing for you. I am sure you could have figured that out all on your own.”

“You piece of shit,” Marlowe hissed out, fear gripping at his heart. He stood to his feet, pulling back and away as much as the chain would allow him, as if to get away from his fate. His chilled breath escaped his lips, and he could see that the chain had frozen most of the way to him. “You honestly think this will work? That they won’t come for me? That they’re not looking for me, right now?”

The elf tilted his head to the side, the sun soaked glow to his eyes somehow colder than before. Ice had begun to spread out from underneath the Archmage’s feet and, like gnarled, searching fingers they had begun to spread out towards the cultist.

“I don’t know,” the elf replied, mockingly feigning innocence. “Tell me, Marlowe… are they coming for you? Truly? Are they?”

It was now a few inches from his collar. Marlowe was sucking in his breath, already finding the chill of his cell space to be too much.

“After all,” the elf pressured, “how would they know? How would they know you’re here, under our incredibly loving care?”

Marlowe opened his mouth to say something, but he quickly shut it and, instead, whimpered. No. He couldn’t say it. What if the eye was actually around? That damn eye. That goddamn eye of the Archmage’s!

The Eye of Arcanum. Where was it right now? Was it nearby? Was it eavesdropping? He couldn’t let that thing hear him. He couldn’t risk that!

The thought sent a new wave of panic to wash over him, and he began to beg almost hysterically. What if the eye had been somewhere? What if it had heard, and seen, his act of betrayal? His slip of names? His slip of their intentions?

It was now a few inches from his collar. Marlowe was sucking in his breath, already finding the chill of his cell space to be too much.

“W--We know where Rosecrown is. We know who you are. And we are ready to strike, at any time! They’ll be here! They’ll rescue me! So how about you just spare yourselves any more casualties and just let me go?” 

The collar had just begun freezing over when the elf ceased the flower of magic. The Archmage’s fingertips stopped glowing blue, and the runic markings on his hand lessened in their intense glow. Marlowe took a deep breath in order to steady himself. What a close call that had been.

“Perhaps it is true, what you’re saying. That they’re coming to rescue you. But, then again, you are the second-in-command, one of the head rats.”

Marlowe felt his throat close up out of dread.

“You, the head rat,” Taviast continued slowly, almost thoughtfully, “leading the filthy swarm towards us. And you quite possibly have a bug somewhere on you, quite likely somewhere we can’t detect.”

Elric Marlowe could hear his hope shattering in his ears.

“And this bug, this leak... is sending out your location to them,” Taviast continued. “Gnomish technology, perhaps. Maybe Goblin. I wouldn’t put it past your types to use that particular type of primitive technology.”

His plan had backfired. He saw it now. Saw it in how the elf’s body language tensed.

“N--No, wait, you’ve got it wrong!”

“I suppose this changes matters a little, seeing as how we can’t risk this lasting a moment longer than it already has.”

Moving towards the elf, Marlowe held out his shackled hands in a begging gesture. “I’ll work with you. I’ll tell you everything! J--Just let me live. Let me go! I promise I won’t--”

“I already know you won’t give me the locations of your encampment,” Taviast began, “and I already know what most of your intentions are. I am already aware that this was a trap and, based on what I have learned over the past few hours, and I know that our base of operations might been compromised this entire time. Quite possibly from you. So the less information is heard coming from your mouth, the better.”

Swallowing nervously, Marlowe watched as the Archmage began approaching him, once more. “Hey, now. I didn’t say a thing about your base being compromised or bugged!”

“I could see it in your eyes.”

Roughly, the elf grabbed him by the arm and yanked him to his feet. Marlowe wobbled for a bit, and his legs buckled for a second, but he remained upright.

“PLEASE! RECONSIDER! I’LL COOPERATE! I’LL DO ANYTHING! I JUST NEED TO GET BACK TO CLAY--”

With a cry, Marlowe found himself pinned back to the wall of his prison. He struggled and fought against the Archmage, but the elf was surprisingly strong for being so slight. And the elf’s hands, despite being so delicate, were incredibly harsh in their grip. Even with the cultist’s extra weight and muscle, he couldn’t quite throw the beast off of him, even as the elf pressed all his body weight up against him.

“H--HEY! WHAT ARE YOU--”

Marlowe’s words were muffled behind the elf’s hand. With wide, terrified eyes the cultist looked down his nose just in time to see that the runes on Taviast’s hands had begun to glow brilliantly.

Another pitiful fit of struggling, and the cultist had realized that he was slowing down. It must have been his previous injuries, or the bashes to his head. Or maybe the poisons from the first interrogation had finally taken effect, and something was, in fact, happening to his body to sap him of all strength.

Or perhaps the elf was truly that enraged. After all, the Archmage’s calm guise had warped with a sinister edge into that of a mask of malevolence.

“Band'or shorel'aran,” Taviast Duskwither snarled out.

The only thing Marlowe saw in those final, agonizing minutes before his eventual demise was the color purple. Electrifying, brilliant, intense. Crackling energy snapped through the air, popping off of the Archmage’s body, consuming his own in a fit of otherworldly hunger.

He opened his mouth wider to scream, but the channeled arcane flooded down his throat. It rampaged through his system, sizzling organs and frying his blood in a great cataclysmic affair. His skin began to change color as boils bubbled to its surface.

Elric Marlowe’s body jerked and spasmed as the Archmage continued to pour the ethereal energy into his weakening body. His muffled scream became ragged, uncontrollable in its volume and foreign to his own ears, up until his bloodied vomit began to fill his lungs.

And then… silence.

As the cultist’s eyes sizzled in his skull, the Archmage tossed the limp body to the ground, hair and skin still sizzling from the intense heat of the electrifying magic.

With a look of a resigned sense of calm, Taviast looked over his robes and spotted, once more, the wad of spit that had clung to his robes and the spattering of blood particles from the cultist’s death rattle. Sighing to himself, he stepped over the prone, smoking body before heading towards the exit.

“Oh, dear. I suppose a change of clothes is in order...”

[a-scorpio-king]

Passive Females, Aggressive Bodies

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about abortion and the constant push by so-called “pro-life” individuals to limit the ability of those with birth-capable bodies to control their reproductive health.  Ok, let’s be honest, I think about this stuff all the time but I read an article not long ago, the second such in the past year or so, that talks about the biology of human reproduction and the ways in which the gestating parent’s body literally fights for control, and survival, with the growing fetus pretty much from the second the thing is implanted.  

The article, published on aeon.co, essentially lays out the many ways in which human reproduction is anything but romantic, natural, or, especially, safe for those doing the gestating, and only instilled in me even further the idea that a fetus, until the person carrying it effectively gives it birth and, by so doing life, is nothing more than a parasite that will kill the person carrying it if it can, all in the name of its own survival.  Likely, this is largely--the article goes on to explain--due to evolution, which has caused these conditions to occur over many thousands of years in order to create humans with large brains, brains which require huge amounts of resources during the pregnancy stage in order to properly develop.

Further, the number of pregnancies successfully carried to implantation, and not even to term, is significantly lower than those which end up in the toilet every month, carried away by a menstrual cycle that is guarding the person’s health so rigidly it is literally safer for the person to bleed for 5-7 days than to carry a developing fetus anywhere other than (un)safely attached to the uterine lining where the parent’s body can keep a watchful eye on it.

This isn’t the miracle of life, it’s fucking war.

But the point I’m trying to make is that in a situation where the person’s body is actively trying to starve and stymie a fetus’ access to the parent’s resources, for so-called pro-life individuals to portray abortion as an act and allowing an unwanted fetus to gestate as simply allowing “nature” to take its course is not just hypocrisy but actually quite monstrous.  The act of gestating a child has become so dangerous to the human species that the parent’s body will fight tooth and nail to get rid of it because the alternative is being stripped of health and life one heartbeat at a time until the parent’s body is nothing more than an essenceless husk at the end of it.  I’m put in mind of the scene in Mad Max: Fury Road in which the lifeless fetus is cut out of Angharad’s dying body in order to take possession of a potential male offspring.  So-called pro-life individuals see only the poor dead fetus, so ripe with potential and life, while completely ignoring the life of the woman draining out on the dashboard, robbed of autonomy and made into just a vessel for someone else’s ambitions.

The passivity with which so-called pro-life individuals try to paint themselves is so aggressive, so demeaning to people with pregnancy-capable bodies.  It’s wrapped up in the false premise that pregnancy, the state of being pregnant, is a passive state, and any movement to change that state is an aggression, when, as the article referenced earlier ad nauseum shows, pregnancy is anything but a passive thing.  To end a pregnancy is less violent than the violence being enacted daily between parental body and fetus.  The article poses it as a sort of natural selection, that any embryo not strong enough, not fully implanted, must die in order to protect valuable resources, but when it comes to abortion, shouldn’t it be only the natural progression that the final say over the continued existence of a parasitic embryo lie with the one in whose body said embryo came to be?  And to take it further--because a lot of people are afraid of so-called late-stage abortion because suddenly the even-more-voracious parasite is bigger and has a face--shouldn’t the decision of whether to potentially sacrifice one’s own life in order to bring that squalling parasite into the world lie with the one, the only one, who will forced to give up their life for that to happen?  

But this all plays into the idea that pregnancy-capable individuals--generally gendered female--be always passive, accepting of whatever comes to them, never taking what they want or in any way making demands on others, especially on cis males.  Besides being just wrong--not all pregnancy capable bodies are female--it feeds into cultural norms that are designed to privilege the cis male individual, which we can all identify as patriarchy.  

In thinking about these juxtapositions of passivity/aggressivity, I’m minded of a novel I read recently (on audiobook, to be specific), by Emma Donoghue.  Her most recent novel, The Wonder portrays the experience of an English nurse, a Nightingale Nurse, to be specific, trained by the redoubtable pioneer of the profession herself, hired by a tiny Irish village to investigate the wondrous little girl in their midst who seems to subsist indefinitely without eating.  Now, this post is soon going to cross over both into the realm of Discussion of Actual Scenes in the Book (aka spoilers) and also pregnancy and sexuality specifically dealing with cis women.  I’ve done my best to keep this post as non-transphobic as I am capable till now, but as the subject matter of the novel specifically deals with cis-coded women, I will generally be talking about women and gendered cultural expectations around being women, so please just know that I’m not unaware of what’s happening, but to avoid complications I’ll use the gendered terms from the novel itself.  (I certainly understand that trans women and trans men are even more pressured to conform to cultural gender expectations and receive even more harassment.)  As to the spoilers, well, reader beware, I guess.  Or stop here and go read the book.

The Wonder deals with the parallel storylines of Lib Wright, a widowed nurse, and Anna O’Donnell, and eight-year-old girl who refuses to eat and has become a source of spiritual tourism for her community.  Lib has been hired to watch Anna and ascertain whether she is in fact eating from some hidden source, or to keep her from eating, or to prove she is a saint, depending on whom Lib meets during her two-week stay in the impoverished village.  Already this is ringing cultural bells--a little girl becomes famous for literally doing nothing, the only acceptable way for a female to gain notoriety.  Lib, on the other hand, is part of possibly the only profession remotely acceptable for a woman to have outside the home--taking care of others, mothering--even though to do it for money is a cultural indicator that Lib is used up, not good enough even to care for her own family, which the reader finds out is far too close to home for her.  

Throughout her two-week stay in Ireland, Lib fights the opposing urges to nurture Anna and convince her to eat, and to conduct her watches as a strict experiment, reveling in the moment she foresees herself finding Anna out and proving that there is no such thing as manna from heaven upon which a little girl can sustain herself.  Lib wants science, not superstition, to be proven the authority--something all people who believe in reproductive autonomy can support--and yet for that to happen Lib must completely relegate Anna to the guardianship of people who have something to gain from her continued starvation, which runs completely counter to what Lib’s professional calling.  This internal conflict isn’t helped by the apparent inaction of Anna’s parents, who seem to revel in Anna’s wondrous behavior and treat her as though she were some sort of saint come to earth.  The aggressive passivity of Anna’s mother, in particular, is almost violent in its insistence that Lib, a representative of science and reason, is an enemy to be defeated through Mrs. O’Donnell’s faith alone.  Adding to all this is Lib’s own ignorance of Catholicism and treatment of the Irish she encounters; she looks at all of them as superstitious savages who continue in their poverty and malnutrition out of some perverse desire to follow their backwards religion, when in reality the post-Blight state of Ireland is anything but simple.  

 Lib’s ability to solve the mystery of Anna’s wonder is primarily the result, though, of her character arc as she meets various members of the community as well as an outsider--a newspaper reporter from Dublin who is both educated and intelligent--and comes to understand their position and why they act the way they do.  Lib grows as a character, is brought to see her own errors, and is then in a position to investigate the true mystery behind Anna’s situation.  Lib is that horror, the intelligent woman capable of thinking for herself and coming to logical conclusions, whom many of the so-called pro-life agenda seek to hobble, or in whom they don’t believe; they harbor such fear of those capable of pregnancy making their own choices about their bodies, and take the--un-asked-for--role of “my sister’s keeper,” seeking to take away choice before a choice can even be made, in case that choice runs counter to the aggressive and broken morality of those who value the unborn over the living.  Of course, as Lib learns, so does the reader.  The reader is exposed, through Lib’s interactions with Anna’s family, and eventually with Anna herself, that Anna’s wonder is a result of sexual abuse and the inaction of those who are supposed to care for her physical and emotional well-being--namely, her parents and her priest.  Anna is starving herself to get her brother into heaven, on the belief that reciting a particular prayer while fasting will release him from purgatory sooner.  The problem is that her dead brother is only in purgatory--or better, hell--because of the sins he committed against her.

Like Lib, Anna’s situation is a direct result of the actions of a male member of her family, but she has been blamed for it.  Nothing Anna could have done could have prevented her brother’s desire to rape her, just as nothing Lib could have done would have saved her newborn child and made it live, and thus her husband’s leaving her because, in his words, there was no reason to stay any longer.  Even when women are passive, they are forced to carry the blame for men’s actions.  Lib went to the Crimea and became a nurse, attempting to care for men injured in imperialist violence; Anna tried to starve herself.  Both were trying to atone for something they didn’t do, and for which they could never be redeemed in the eyes of their respective societies.

The events of The Wonder may not be identical to what happens today, in a modern society that still actively keeps women from exercising autonomy over their own bodies, but it is a stark illustration of the fact that women--and girls--will always be held responsible, will always be culpable for the actions of men, will always be expected to adhere to an enforced--and false--passivity, as long as women are considered second-class or not-the-default.  Being pregnant is not passive; to be and remain pregnant is the violent path, the way of force, the dangerous way to travel.  To end what can turn out to be the most perilous thing a person can do--is the path of least resistance.

Unless, that is, those who would prevent an abortion consider it a personal attack on themselves and their petty, interfering morality, just as Mrs. O’Donnell considered Lib’s attempts to find the cause of Anna’s starvation a personal attack on the righteousness of the entire family, on the Catholic church itself.  Lib only wanted Anna to do what was natural--to eat, to take care of herself, to find a way to live a good and normal life--just as every person capable of bearing a pregnancy should have the ability to make the natural choice about what is right for themselves and their bodies, independent of the self-righteous and holier-than-though guilt being heaped upon them by those who violently persist in confusing intrusiveness with saintliness.

[thesunflowerfarm]

Accuro AgriServices - A Green World leader in non-toxic products for your Farm and Home

Who’s ready to roundup all the Roundup? Accuro AgriServices, Inc., co-founded by Ray Nielsen, Cord Ederer and Cris Luce has acquired proprietary formulations from scientist Ray Nielsen and his previous company, Green World Path, Inc. founded in 2007. Accuro AgriServices has launched a line of non-toxic, natural products for the farm and ranch, landscaping industry, home, and garden. With their products, Accuro hopes to replace industrial chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers for all users, large and small. Nielson, also a farmer, has developed 45 (and counting) non-toxic, sustainable and organic products including: Fertilizers, Pesticides, Herbicides, Soil Amendments, and products that control and eliminate harmful diseases and infestations, most recently developing an organic cure for Citrus Greening. Accuro rolled out many of their products at The Fort Worth Botanical Gardens lecture hall, August 30, 2016. Texas state and local elected officials, local farmers and growers, reporters and writers, and others were in attendance including those from the Henrietta Creek Apple Orchard, where Accuro is about to begin use of their bee-friendly products. They are in talks with City planners to locate the manufacturing and distribution centers somewhere in or between Fort Worth, Dallas and Denton, expanding west from their original location in Brooksville, Florida.In Texas, wheat farmers and cattle ranchers could greatly benefit by applying their products to wheat fields and grass pastures currently being treated with chemical products and fertilizers, provided the products have a positive effect. Green bugs and blackleg are our biggest problems, to which Accuro has products for treating them rolling out early this year. Also in development is a product to battle prickly pears, which are quickly enveloping Texas.I have decided to begin using the Accuro products on my own farm here in north Texas as a test site. Nielsen, Ederer, and Luce loaded me up with these fertilizer, pest and disease control products to get me started:Total Plus: A natural fertilizer (6-1-2)Outbound: Insect controlEco Plus: Soil amendmentIn early November, I began use of the Total Plus on a two-acre portion of my field, then reapplied the fertilizer the first of December. While I expect the full effect of its use to show in the Spring of 2017, I can already see that the rye grass is greener, and has grown at a faster rate than the untreated rye acres nearby. I will also use a harrow to work the fertilizer into the soil this spring, although I am becoming more of a fan of no-till farming. I have several barren areas of my farm where the old wheat farmers of yore have depleted the soil to the point turnips wont even grow. If Accuro products revive these plots, I’m signing up for the long haul.At the meeting last year, Nielsen explained how the products work by basically attaching themselves to the soil and plants, attacking pests, disease and blight from within. Treating the soil with non-toxic products is equally important, according to Nielsen.“In 1949, chemicals were introduced into farming and that’s when the decline in our soil began,” Nielsen stated. “The chemicals have been killing our soil and the biologicals in it ever since, which has turned from dark brown to a gray color.” Nielsen has spent his entire life since figuring out how to get back to original methods using non-toxic methods. He introduced the Organic Bill, it was passed in 2003 then signed in 2004. He is a farmer, professor, government liason and inventor. His company is committed to providing non-toxic, natural products including herbicide, pesticide, fertilizer and soil amendments.There are many problems in agriculture and gardening. Here are some of Accuro’s non-toxic products designed to fix them:

TOTAL PLUS: Multipurpose Soil Amendment - Prevents problems before they occur, and eradicates them after they have taken hold by improving Root Mass, Crop Yields, Quality, and more. A plant which is out of balance, deficient in minerals, from a soil out of balance, provides a host in which infections and disease will thrive. Plants living on synthetic fertilizer, in a dead soil, deprived of microbes, have no ability to defend against these opportunistic infections.

ECO PLUS: a companion product to Total, can provide protection against a range of opportunistic infections – which destroy millions of acres of crops, vegetables, trees, and plants of all kinds throughout the world.  Made from natural and renewable materials, ECO PLUS will protect plants systemically – and promote a defense reaction before many pathogens try to infect plants and soil. When applied as a foliar spray, ECO PLUS protects all types of plants ensuring better crop yields, and protecting against late blights and rusts. As a seed treatment, and soil-applied, ECO PLUS prevents and protects against root diseases, soil borne insects, blights, and other infections of seedlings, sprouts, and tender young plants Applications of ECO PLUS will go directly to the cause to prevent soil and plant disease, and help restore balance to soils, plants, and help restore balance to their soil web.

ECO PLUS increases water holding capacity. Reduces irrigation requirements in all field crops and turf. Encapsulates nutrients for plant availability while preventing nutrients from leaching into groundwater and downstream. Provides plant protection against nematodes, bacterial and fungal infections. Prevents the cause of fungus in turf grasses, and existing fungal infections. Builds resistance to plant diseases. Works synergistically with Total to reduce plant insect infestations. Protects against Phytophthora root rot and bud rots in palms and other tree crops. Used as a seed treatment to provide protection from pathogens, nematodes, and other soil borne insects. Encourages deeper, more massive root systems. Provides leaf surface protection from spores and fungus. Can be applied on seed, soil or foliage. Helps all plants endure stressful conditions such as drought. Increases soil particle water holding structure by tying moisture to soil particles for future use by plants. Non-phototoxic – will not harm plants when used as directed.

CEDAR FOG: The ingredients in Best Ever CedarFog have been successfully used for centuries for their pesticidal properties. It provides Natural Protection, is extremely versatile, long-lasting and economical. Use Best Ever CedarFog to control insects in homes, offices, restaurants, hotels, stables, and barns. The EPA believes there is negligible human environmental risk posed by exposure to the key ingredient in CedarFog. The ingredients in CedarFog have long lasting residual properties used throughout history to help control insects. CedarFog is designed for use with hand-held, electric cold foggers. No tenting required! No license is required to spray the product as there is with chemical pesticides. CedarFog has a pleasant, fresh cedar smell, like a cedar chest.

OUTBOUND: A natural alternative to pesticide controls insects and acts as a residual deterrent. It is a blend of several plant essential oils “with a bite” that build a “bubble of repellency” protecting the spray zone. Insects outside the bubble that detect the presence of OutBound won’t cross the barrier. Flying insects, crawlers, hoppers, ants, pests, grubs, digging insects – all bugs are repelled by the scent in OutBound, and will avoid any treated area. OutBound is not harmful to people, pets, crops, or the environment in which they live, and has no limit on re-entry time. It can be applied in combination with any Accuro product as well.OutBound repels and suppresses parasitical infestation and insect damage, providing protection to all growing arenas. OutBound contains complex sugars with extracted essential oils in a custom fermentation matrix. It increases a plant’s energy levels and boosts its phytodefense ability. OutBound meets all standards of the USDA’s National Organic Program and is formulated to repel and suppress parasitical infestation, reduce crop and plant damage. OutBound is designed to strengthen plants and create protective barriers to insect damage without upsetting the beneficial insect ecosystem. The ingredients in OutBound are approved by the EPA, Section 25b, for insecticide use.

Accuro AgriServices is the type of forward-thinking company we in the Agriculture and growing world needs. They are committed to providing non-toxic, organic products designed to battle the extreme forces which attack animals, crops and our homes, but without the detrimental side-effects of harsh, manmade chemicals. I welcome this company to my farm and already see the positive results. Hopefully, you will give them a try. Contact Info for Accuro AgriServices: www.AccuroAgriServices.com Cris Luce - 214-802-8696 | Cord Ederer - 832-283-2949