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things2mustdo · 3 years

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Nature has given humanity a roughly one-to-one ratio of adult men to women, but the most attractive women are being taken out of circulation to either join alpha male harems or participate in degenerate lifestyle choices. This leaves the average man practically no choice in settling down with a mentally stable and cute woman in her prime.

In Islam, a man is able to marry four wives, which is what my wealthy Iranian grandfather did on his way to siring 24 or so children that included my dad (the exact number is a mystery). He took away three women that an Iranian man of lesser means could have married, creating a societal imbalance, but that’s nothing compared to what we have in the modern Western world, where a single famous man can command the sexual attentions of dozens—if not thousands—of women in their sexual prime, spoiling these women for normal men who don’t have the ability to tingle their vaginas with the same intensity.

How many actors, musicians, and sports athletes are trying to plow through as much prime pussy as possible? How many Hollywood directors and music producers are leveraging their positions for sexual gain? How many club owners, restaurateurs, Arab sheikhs, and politicians are doing the same? Each one is taking way more beautiful women out of circulation than men like my grandfather, all while elevating their standards to such an extent that no average man can ever gain their love, let alone two hours—or even two minutes–of their uninterrupted attention.

We also have to account for female lifestyle choices that are designed to delay or prevent pair bonding and marriage. The biggest is career. Most girls, while embarking on a career, balance out the boredom of working a meaningless job by hopping on the cock carousel and banging at least a few men every year. By the time a girl hits 25 years old, any man who meets her will have to deal with a walk-in closet of emotional issues and hang-ups from being pumped and dumped as much as a 1930’s brothel whore.

Then there is the Instagram and Facebook lifestyle that creates crippling dopamine addiction, which causes a girl to only be satisfied if dozens of men are actively thirsting for her every day. I estimate that if a girl has over 500 followers on Instagram, she is so used to attention from throngs of men that the love of one man cannot possibly satisfy her.

We must also throw in the growing “travel blogger” lifestyle where, instead of using only her body to get attention, a girl uses pictures and video from exotic locations to enhance her beauty. Other girls, with nothing substantial to offer the world, decide to showcase pictures of pets or their tasty overpriced meals, but even that puts them on a dopamine loop that ruins their future interactions with men.

By far, the most damaging lifestyle choice women make is becoming a sugar baby, a politically correct term for “prostitute.” For some easy cash, she whores out her body to the highest bidder (some women combine Instagram and prostitution in a seamless package). How can such an Instagram prostitute ever settle down with a man who has a normal salary? There are also the hundreds of women who enter porn every year, some from seemingly stable families. Sadly, men are so desperate for love that many would wife up a former prostitute or porn star, but it’s highly unlikely those women will make for stable families.

The Western world is a sinkhole for women. The prettiest of the bunch fall into the hole and get spit out years later an entitled #MeToo hag who can never be happy, making the Islamic four-wife rule seem downright egalitarian. The sad truth is that if you meet an attractive girl today, she was pumped and dumped by numerous sexy men, prefers to nurture her career than children, is addicted to attention via the internet, and has participated in some kind of scheme to exchange social status or cash for her pussy. She’s more than suitable for a bit of fun, but would it be wise to seek a relationship with her?

Even with the obesity and short-hair epidemic, I still see a bountiful supply of cute girls I would happily reproduce with. I would love them, let them caress my beard, and lay my seed deep within their vaginal guts, but the problem is that those guts are not for me—they are for the Chads who would never marry her, the beta orbiters who await her newest selfie as if it were a source of food, or the rich and lonely men who would sponsor her for thousands of dollars a month. They’re taking her out of circulation at the time I want her most, and by the time they are done with her, I no longer want her. I guess I’ll try to weasel in a bang or two when she is not yet fully degraded, and enjoy the fleeting pleasure that comes from it as much as I can.

https://www.rooshv.com/how-to-stop-the-fall-of-women

An acronym that you’ll often come across is AWALT, which stands for “all women are like that.” It is used in response to someone trying to point out that a particular woman is different than all the rest and more deserving to be placed on a pedestal of some sort when it comes to relationships. While that acronym is useful for newbies who are just beginning to de-program themselves from egalitarian ideas spewed by the establishment, it breeds a hopelessness among men that they can never extract more than casual sex from women.

Most men have seen firsthand how women change due to the presence of corrupting factors in the environment. If you give a woman an open bar, she will over-consume and make decisions that harm herself. If you give a woman a smartphone with social networking apps, she will become a narcissist in a short amount of time, falling in love with her own image. If you give a woman a liberal education, she will come to firm belief than men were born to bring pain and slavery unto women.

Only a woman with an exceptional upbringing can resist alcohol, social networking, and university brainwashing, and for the women who can initially resist it, she will surely succumb after enough time and pressure. It is in this way that AWALT is true: all women who face corrupt influences in their lives will become corrupt and behave in a similar way that degrades their virtue, making them unsuitable for long-term partnerships. But if AWALT is true in describing the universal fall of women in the presence of toxic influences, it must also be true that they possess universal purity in environments which lack bad influences that attack her virtue.

A reliable corrupter of a woman’s virtue is having plentiful male choice. If over the course of five years a woman in New York City has her choice of 100 alpha male cocks, she will be unable to resist the thrill ride that these men offer. She will begin to structure her life around a neverending alpha male sex party where she receives and expects fun, excitement, drama, and entertainment in exchange for willingly accepting her place on various booty call rotations. During this time, she loses most ability to be a suitable wife and mother, or even to be a good person, because the alpha males who use her for late night sex do not place demands upon her that make her more feminine, loving, or nurturing. She becomes damaged goods, suitable for nothing more than casual humping.

But now let’s imagine that instead of being born in New York City, this girl was born in a poor Ukrainian village that only has a population of 1,000 people. For whatever reason, she was unable to get out of this village and a complete blackout of internet prevents her from meeting thirsty foreign men. It’s quite easy to see how she marries a village man while still young because it’s a better prospect than suffering alone to earn her bread in a place where employment opportunities are few. The environment a girl is placed in will mostly determine her worth as a life partner.

Most women who are put in New York City will, within a few years, default to becoming a promiscuous slut. Most women who are put in a tiny village with no way out, with little choice in men, and with positive religious influences, will default to being a good wife and mother, possessing normal and acceptable human flaws like all men have. Women put in specific environments will act in specific ways, which is why looking for a unicorn in a Western city is fruitless, since she’s within reach of the devil’s workshop. He will get to her and make sure she experiences all manner of vice.

Western nations facilitate the “fall” of women from a state of purity and innocence to one of abject corruption. I don’t believe women are inherently born to be degenerate, just like how I don’t believe men are, but once we put a woman in an environment that enables, facilitates, and even encourages her corruption, she will certainly become corrupt. But what if you can catch a woman before she inserts herself into this environment and then shield her from it? What if you grab her at the time she is about to jump into the abyss, and through your diligence, power, and knowledge, protect her from Western influences that will destroy her? Would it be safe to give your time, energy, love, and commitment to this woman? It’s important to note that I’m not stating you save a corrupt girl, since by then it’s too late, but to prevent a woman from becoming corrupt in the first place.

It is completely your responsibility to create the environment of a good home, a good city, and a good country to prevent the fall of your women. It’s your responsibility to create the right environment where all women remain good instead of succumbing to an evil where within a short amount of time she becomes a useless, tattooed, overweight, and masculine slut. It should be clear to you by now that women absolutely can not save themselves, and have no inherent resistance to the pollution that tempts them in this world. It’s solely up to us men to shield their natural virtue so that they become the wives and mothers that allow you to fulfill your biological destiny while furthering the health of your society.

It’s not a matter of telling a girl that sleeping around is bad or that Facebook is bad, because by then the ship has sailed and her soul is likely long gone. It’s a matter of creating the environment where women are restrained from sleeping around, blocked from becoming addicted to taking selfies, and prevented from becoming brainwashed by social justice ideas. We must stop them from entering the environments that destroy them. We must guard the door of evil that they are hurtling themselves towards while resisting evil ourselves.

Before you raise your hands in despair and claim that this is an impossible task, that Western society is finished, I say this: what is a society but a collection of the people within it? What is a society but an assembly of living humans that include ourselves? We are a part of this whole, and it’s up to us to ensure that the truism of “all women are like that” serves in our benefit and our society’s benefit instead of being at the forefront of our most terrifying nightmares.[culturewar]

Read Next: Women Must Have Their Behavior And Decisions Controlled By Men

After a long period in society of women having unlimited personal freedom to pursue life as they wish, they have shown to consistently fail in making the right decisions that prevent their own harm and the harm of others. Systems must now be put in place where a woman’s behavior is monitored and her decisions subject to approval of a male relative or guardian who understands what’s in her best interests better than she does herself.

Women have had personal freedoms for less than a century. For the bulk of human history, their behavior was significantly controlled or subject to approval through mechanisms of tribe, family, church, law, or stiff cultural precepts. It was correctly assumed that a woman was unable to make moral, ethical, and wise decisions concerning her life and those around her. She was not allowed to study any trivial topic she wanted, sleep with any man who caught her fancy, or uproot herself and travel the world because she wanted to “find herself.”

You can see this level of control today in many Muslim countries, where expectations are placed on women from a young age to submit to men, reproduce (if biologically able), follow God’s word, and serve the good of society by employing her feminine nature instead of competing directly against men on the labor market due to penis envy or feelings of personal inferiority.

The reason that women had their behavior limited was for the simple reason that they are significantly less rational than men, in a way that impaired their ability to make good decisions concerning the future. This was eloquently described by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in his important essay On Women. He described them as overgrown children, a comparison that any man who has dated more than a dozen of them can quickly agree to after having consistently witnessed their impulsive and illogical behavior firsthand.

Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long—a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the full-grown man, who is man in the strict sense of the word. See how a girl will fondle a child for days together, dance with it and sing to it; and then think what a man, with the best will in the world, could do if he were put in her place.

[…]

…women remain children their whole life long; never seeing anything but what is quite close to them, cleaving to the present moment, taking appearance for reality, and preferring trifles to matters of the first importance.

[…]

That woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of complete independence, immediately attaches herself to some man, by whom she allows herself to be guided and ruled. It is because she needs a lord and master.

When you give a female unlimited choice on which man to have sex with, what type of man does she choose? An exciting man who treats her poorly and does not care for her well-being.

When you give a female choice on what to study in university, what does she choose? An easy liberal arts major that costs over $50,000 and dooms her to a life of debt and sporadic employment.

When a female lacks any urgent demands upon her survival, what behavior does she pursue? Obsessively displaying her half-naked body on the internet, flirting with men solely for attention, becoming addicted to corporate-produced entertainment, and over-indulging in food until her body shape is barely human.

When you give a female choice on when to have kids, what does she do? After her fertility is well past its peak, and in a rushed panic that resembles the ten seconds before the ringing of the first school bell, she aims for limited reproductive success at an age that increases the likelihood she’ll pass on genetic defects to her child.

When you give a female choice of which political leader to vote into office, who do they vote for? The one who is more handsome and promises unsustainable freebies that accelerate the decline of her country.

When you give a female unwavering societal trust with the full backing of the state, what does she do? Falsely accuse a man of rape and violence out of revenge or just to have an excuse for the boyfriend who caught her cheating.

When you give a female choice on who to marry, what is the result? A 50% divorce rate, with the far majority of them (80%) initiated by women themselves.

While a woman is in no doubt possession of crafty intelligence that allows her to survive just as well as a man, mostly through the use of her sexuality and wiles, she is a slave to the present moment and therefore unable to make decisions that benefit her future and those of the society she’s a part of. Once you give a woman personal freedom, like we have in the Western world, she enslaves herself to one of numerous vices and undertakes a rampage of destruction to her body and those who want to be a meaningful part of her life.

A man does not need to look further than the women he knows, including those in his family, to see that the more freedom a woman was given, the worse off she is, while the woman who was under the heavy hand of the church or male relative comes out far better on the other side, in spite of her rumblings that she wants to be as free as her liberated friends, who eagerly and regularly post soft porn photos of themselves on social networking and dating sites while selecting random anonymous men for fornication every other weekend.

Men, on average, make better decisions than women. If you take this to be true, which should be no harder to accept than the claim that lemons are sour, why is a woman allowed to make decisions at all without first getting approval from a man who is more rational and levelheaded than she is? It not only hurts the woman making decisions concerning her life, but it also hurts any man who will associate with her in the future. You only need to ask the many suffering husbands today on how they are dealing with a wife who entered the marriage with a student loan debt in the high five figures from studying sociology and how her wildly promiscuous sexual history impairs her ability to remain a dedicated mother, with one foot already out the door after he makes a reasonable demand that is essential for a stable home and strong family.

I propose two different options for protecting women from their obviously deficient decision making. The first is to have a designated male guardian give approval on all decisions that affect her well-being. Such a guardian should be her father by default, but in the case a father is absent, another male relative can be appointed or she can be assigned one by charity organizations who groom men for this purpose, in a sort of Boy’s Club for women.

She must seek approval by her guardian concerning diet, education, boyfriends, travel, friends, entertainment, exercise regime, marriage, and appearance, including choice of clothing. A woman must get a green light from her guardian before having sex with any man, before wearing a certain outfit, before coloring her hair green, and before going to a Spanish island for the summer with her female friends.

If she disobeys her guardian, an escalating series of punishments would be served to her, culminating in full-time supervision by him. Once the woman is married, her husband will gradually take over guardian duties, and strictly monitor his wife’s behavior and use all reasonable means to keep it in control so that family needs are met first and foremost, as you already see today in most Islamic societies. Any possible monetary proceeds she would get from divorce would be limited so that she has more incentive to keep her husband happy and pleased than to throw him under the bus for the most trivial of reasons that stem from her persistent and innate need to make bad decisions.

A second option for monitoring women is a combination of rigid cultural rules and sex-specific laws. Women would not be able to attend university unless the societal need is urgent where an able-minded man could not be found to fill the specific position. Women would not be able to visit establishments that serve alcohol without a man present to supervise her consumption. Parental control software on electronic devices would be modified for women to control and monitor the information they consume. Credit card and banking accounts must have a male co-signer who can monitor her spending. Curfews for female drivers must be enacted so that women are home by a reasonable hour. Abortion for women of all ages must be signed off by her guardian, in addition to prescriptions for birth control.

While my proposals are undoubtedly extreme on the surface and hard to imagine implementing, the alternative of a rapidly progressing cultural decline that we are currently experiencing will end up entailing an even more extreme outcome. Women are scratching their most hedonistic and animalistic urges to mindlessly pursue entertainment, money, socialist education, and promiscuous behavior that only satisfies their present need to debase themselves and feel fleeting pleasure, at a heavy cost for society.

Allowing women unlimited personal freedom has so affected birth rates in the West that the elite insists on now allowing importation of millions of third world immigrants from democratically-challenged nations that threaten the survival of the West. In other words, giving women unbridled choice to pursue their momentary whims instead of investing in traditional family ideals and reproduction is a contributing factor to what may end up being the complete collapse of those nations that have allowed women to do as they please.

I make these sincere recommendations not out of anger, but under the firm belief that the lives of my female relatives would certainly be better tomorrow if they were required to get my approval before making any decisions. They would not like it, surely, but due to the fact that I’m male and they’re not, my analytical decision-making faculty is superior to theirs to absolutely no fault of their own, meaning that their most sincere attempts to make good decisions will have a failure rate larger than if I was able to make those decisions for them, especially with intentions that are fully backed with compassion and love for them to have more satisfying lives than they do now.

As long as we continue to treat women as equals to men, a biological absurdity that will one day be the butt of many jokes for comedians of the future, women will continue to make horrible decisions that hurt themselves, their families, and their reproductive potential. Unless we take action soon to reconsider the freedoms that women now have, the very survival of Western civilization is at stake.[culturewar]

Read Next: People Should Not Be Allowed Unlimited Personal Freedom

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land-of-brains-and-chocolate · 5 years

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rambling about eddie and religion... mention of real-life suicide and homophobia

i really, really, really feel like eddie’s one of those types for whom religion feeds into all their worst thought patterns (and feeds off of them). like i’ve seen people very close to me consumed by wanting to be someone worthy of god’s love or by thinking themselves the self-righteous extension of god or just. it’s hard to describe but a certain kind of person, there’s no other word for it, it just consumes them. and eddie’s so perfectly set up for that.

it’s intensely obsessive and interesting and exciting and an important part of his character i’m deeply invested in, it’s very much like his early relationship with the symbiote and venom’s early sense of purpose, and just like that, it is actually very unhealthy. i think the times he went all-in on purity/corruption rhetoric and framed himself as a saviour and all that are like, totally in character, i don’t think it’s part of an agenda that his religiousness is mostly portrayed in extreme contexts, i think it makes perfect sense.

(the ultimate intent behind anti-venom is a mystery for the ages, but i think we can all agree he was at least several layers removed from reality.)

anyway, like, i’m sure you could develop eddie into someone who has a healthy relationship with and gains something from spirituality or whatever, if that was your goal, i’m not saying it can’t be done. but whenever i think of it i just think of the member of our community who kept coming to my almost equally messed up mom for advice on how to cope with being unable to spread the good word as he should and to live untainted by sin (read: he was gay) and who ended up disembowelling himself in his parents’ kitchen so like. someone who’s also that big on the notion of losing innocence and worth... also suicidal... also thinks he has a higher calling... it’s not gonna work for me.

i really felt like costa!eddie giving up on the belief in a higher power to please or feel possessed by or be punished by was a necessary part of his healing process. there’s the argument that religious doctrine could act as his conscience, asking god for forgiveness and all that, but mostly he’s just twisted it to suit whatever his agenda was, anyway, i think it was a symptom of him reexamining himself, not the cause. it wasn’t the cause of his twisted morality, either, but it sure boosted it.

what am i saying. i’m personally never going to be comfortable with eddie’s catholicism as a good thing, i think it’s harmful to him.

also i’m never going to take it in the internalised homophobia direction but that’s just a preference. it’s kind of canon, anyway, conway eddie was religious and still said Gay Rights. i think eddie’s, like i said, much more likely to twist the good word into whatever matches his intentions and to use them to give himself that extra self-righteous kick, that bit of obsessive zest, the validation that his ideas really are that transcendentally important. he is extremely anti-self-flagellation at first, and he thinks bonding and the symbiote are sacred, not opposed to his beliefs, but part of them. so i don’t necessarily think he’d feel bad about boinking it just because it’s not female. at least until, like, way later, when symbiote- and self-flagellation are in fact his intent and the church has handed him all the tools. god fucking knows canon has enough of those #vibes

#everyone remembers how my headcanonverse goes right

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mhysa-the-druidess · 5 years

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The Arcana: A Mystical Fanfic Chapter II - A New Family

„What's the matter, already had enough?“, I heard Morga mock me as I found my face in the dirt for so many times that I have already gotten used to tasting my own blood mixed with the ground under me.

„ I'll give up...when you finally end me“, my words mixed with heavy panting as I made myself rise once again, only driven by sheer will power, since my body was on the verge of falling apart.

Morga's face lit up with a bright grin, I swear I could see flames in her eyes. She was pleased. „I would expect nothing less“, she said almost kindly, as she came at me once again.

This has become a common practice for the two of us, ever since I've started living among her tribe. I've enjoyed our „sparrings“, I've enjoyed how she always pushed me to my limits and made me expand them, more and more every time. I was bold to believe that she enjoyed them as well, she admired my will and spirit. Ever since I've joined them, she's been treating me like her own offspring. Now, don't mistake that for something loving and nurturing, no, not from a woman like her, a warlord. Her love was rough, intense, but great. The tougher time she gave me, the more I knew I was growing on her. She would never express emotions, except through her steel. Most of the people would think her cold and stark, but I knew her better than that, I saw through her rough facade.

I came to her tribe as a sorceress, to serve their every need in exchange for leaving my family and our land alone, but I became more than just that. I was never the type to sit on the bench while the others have all the fun, I craved action, adventure, unknown. Besides, what better way to get to know better the people I'm living with and their culture, tradition, beliefs, souls, than to ride side by side with them into battle?

Few years ago I've made this request to Morga, to train me in the ways of the warrior, and she will have me, not just because of our agreement, but body and soul too. She said she knew that it would turn out like this, during our first battle, she saw the spirit of a warrior inside me, and that she would be glad to strengthen it and get me to realize my potential.

Being a warrior also helped me ensure my security among these wildlings. Even though Morga was fond of me, her men were vile and savage, a drunken moment alone with any of them could cost me more than I could ever afford to lose. At first, during my arrival, I came up with a perfect white lie to help me protect my purity from the possible defilers. I've announced that my mystical abilities come from my virginity, and should I ever lose my chastity, the powers would also be gone with it. Morga said she would personally gut anyone who dares to compromise her sorceress with his filthy paws. This was effective, but not completely reassuring, so I had to make sure I felt safe, or at least safer around the men. I've seen how they watch me with something beastly in their glares, as wolves would stare at their next catch. This was understandable and expected – I was different from their women, more gracious, delicate, almost royal as far as they were concerned. And I was an outsider.

There was one other thing that was threatening to compromise this whole charade I've created. Montag.

Montag, or Monty as everyone called him, was Morga's only son, and heir. In any other surrounding this would mean that he was probably extremely pampered and spoiled, but not here. This only meant that she was giving him the hardest time of us all. I knew this meant that she loved him most, but I was pretty sure he did not see it that way. Monty was different from all of them. While everyone's goal was just to raid, pillage, plunder and wreak havoc, Monty was above all that. He was destined for greater things, I felt that must be true. He was ambitious, he was a dreamer, he wanted more of life than what he had here, he just wasn't sure how and what exactly, because he knew little of the world outside his tribe. I've enjoyed telling him stories of kingdoms, cities, world beyond. About magic, about spiritual world, about everything I loved, I shared my world with him and we dreamed together of what life can be. He was kind of bubbly, loud, overly energetic. His emotions were as transparent as if they were written on his forehead. Those were all qualities I loved him for...and Morga scolded him for. She considered them to be a sign of weakness, of a weak future leader she never wanted him to become. She believed he would've never survived on his own, and she reminded him of that all too often. But I believed them to be virtues, to be his strengths, to be exactly the things that make him a great human being that I saw him for. I've tried many times to make him see it that way, but in vain. My word could never compare with his mother's, every letter cutting into his heart and soul like a tiny knife. He would've never showed it, though. To anyone except me, that is. I was his oasis, his escape from reality, from his fears, troubles, doubts. And he was mine.

Of course, we had to keep our little oasis a secret, because it could make people talk and compromise my safety, and neither one of us wanted that to happen. Regardless of our discretion, I was almost certain that Morga knew everything. There was just no hiding from her. She always knew...everything. Even so, she never disapproved. I wondered why at first, but the answer came to me one day, as we celebrated one of our many victories.

I held a little ceremony, semi-religious, thanking the great spirits and forces for giving our warriors the strength to subdue our targets and crush them under our feet. They loved these ceremonies, with the mystical forces gleaming and flowing all around, fire coming out of the great bonfire and embracing my figure, spirits rising from all around and dancing around them in the form of a ghastly fog, filling their hearts with courage and sense of higher purpose. My magic has gotten even stronger during my time with the tribe, and I have truly become their seer, their sage. I would contact the Arcana for omens of victory or defeat, before battle I would encourage and bless the warriors using not only my magic and herbalist mixtures to enhance their potentials, but also motivational speeches to fill their hearts and minds with greatness and flames of passion and bloodlust. They were an unstoppable force, thoughts of defeat never even crossing their minds.

After the ceremony, we all got drunk together, danced around, sang and just enjoyed life to the fullest. I felt content, I've managed to accomplish a lot during these few years, I've managed to become a lot, a lot more than I could've ever dared to dream of. It was a lot of gamble and hard work, but in the end it payed off. I've just watched them all being merry and ecstatic, feeling of bliss filling every inch of me. They weren't the savages they once were, they were more than that now, they have evolved so much. I couldn't help but feel partially responsible for that, and I was glad. Murdering and pillaging was very hard for me at first, but I knew I had to do it to prove myself as one of them, as equal, to ensure my position. With my role as a sage, I was able to direct their attacks and actions through „omens“ and such, and protect the innocent people they would've destroyed as much as I could without seeming suspicious. Luckily, no one ever suspected a thing.

„So, are you just going to watch from your pedestal, oh great seer, or are you going to enjoy your victory with the rest of us?“, Monty cut me from my thoughts. I didn't even notice him coming, I was too lost in my own thoughts. He came up to me, giving me his hand, teasing me with his smirk, as he usually does.

„OUR victory, Monty. I couldn't possibly take all the credit, now could I?“, I smirked back at him, staring him right in the eye as I put my hand in his.

He pulled me into his strong arms, so hard I almost lost my balance, his eyes never leaving mine: „You're just being modest, as usual“, he continued mockingly. Staring into his unusually gray eyes made me lose my words, which was not something that happened to me often. I just let him lead me into the dance. This caused curious looks from the rest, but in that moment we trully couldn't care less. He was the only one there at that moment, his golden hair glimmering under the light of the Moon, flickering lights of the bonfire dancing on his pale skin. He wasn't much of a dancer, he was a much better warrior, but he knew a dance or two. Everything he ever did, he did so confidently, as if he was a god, no matter if he was actually good at it or not. I loved that about him, another one of his qualities I cherished.

We were so lost in the moment, that we've barely noticed the dance has stopped. He made a little clumsy bow at me, something not characteristic for his people's customs, but as I've mentioned earlier – he was above all that. I responded with the same curtsy. I've desired him so much for so long, and if I could've taken him with my eyes at that moment, I would've. It was so hard keeping the whole chastity act together all of this time. I wanted to be his, I wanted him to defile every inch of me right there on that spot.

As we stared into each other’s eyes with such incredible passion, we were interrupted by a familiar voice: “Mhysa, a moment in private. Now. Follow me”. Morga. Both Monty and I were startled and froze like kids after making a mess and getting caught in act by a parent. ”Y-yes, of course”, was all I could muster, after which I followed in silence. Monty only stood there awkwardly, like a statue.

She led me away from the crowd, into an isolated part in the woods. We stopped when the party sounds got far enough. She didn’t turn to face me, she looked into some distant spot as if lost in her own thoughts. After some time of chilling silence, she spoke: “My son and you…are acting very friendly lately, spending every possible moment together, alone”. My heart skipped a beat. What if she thinks we were intimate? What if, by my foolish behavior, led by emotions, I have finally blown my cover and now she is going to expose me and this will be the end of me? I couldn’t breathe and the thoughts kept running through my head, I had no idea how much time has passed before Morga spoke again, it could’ve been seconds, years, it was all the same to me. “Look, I know I’ve always been…hard on him. It might seem like I don’t care for him, but that’s not how it is. I do it BECAUSE I care. This world is cruel, especially our world, and if you’re not the toughest dog around, the other dogs will devour you. And he…he is so delicate and carefree, it’s making him weak, he is weak. And I won’t always be around to protect him, and when I’m gone…” I swear, this is the first time I’ve seen Morga open up to anyone ever and show…feelings? I wasn’t even sure if she was able to do that at all. The unease and worry were clear in her tone, she stopped for a moment, like she was catching breath, letting out a loud sigh before turning up to face me for the first time since we came to this place. I now understood she must’ve been ashamed to look at me while showing her own weakness and fears. The fact that she was now facing me, staring me right in the eye, confirmed just how brave she actually was. It’s easy facing enemies in battle while wielding a spear and charging in a leather armor, but to show your naked feelings to someone, completely unarmed and open, to let them see the real you, your true self – that takes real courage. “I am well aware that he is vulnerable and weak, clueless even. Maybe one day he will change, maybe he will not. Either way, I don’t want to take that chance. He’s…he’s my only boy. I don’t want to see him devoured by rabid wolves that surround him. However, I will not always be able to protect him. So, what I’m saying is…I need to know that you are going to look after him. I need you to promise me that”, she finished, words still heavy on her tongue. The look in her eyes was…almost pleading. Underneath that cold and rough exterior was an actual caring mother, genuinely worried for her son’s well-being. “Morga, I swear to you, I swear on my life that I will never let anything bad happen to Monty while I still hold breath”. “Good”, she let the single word out with a sigh of relief. I could swear I saw something resembling a smile on her face. Second later, the mask was back on, as well as her standard grin: “Well then, we have a party to attend, let’s not keep the eager people waiting any longer”. As she passed me by, she slapped me on the back so hard it pumped the air from my lungs. I’ve let out a short chuckle and followed.

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theaurorfileshq · 6 years

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C A M D E N S A V A G E / A U R O R C O R P O R A L

AGE: Forty-Five

BADGE NUMBER: F01V25

BLOODSTATUS: Pureblood

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Trans Man, He/Him

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: Piercing blue eyes, high collars buttoned all the way up, severe haircut speckled with white, scarification (Sacred Heart on chest, several arrows on rib cage, crude flame on left wrist, upside down cross below that, eyes on the palm of left hand)

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Potion-making, decisiveness, precision, independence

(-): Combative magic, skewed moral compass, pretension, apathy, only truly respects older brother

BACKGROUND:

cw: self harm, body horror

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Poor in spirit, poor in body. So the kingdom has always been your family’s then, yes?

It has, at least in your parents’ minds, and your grandparents’, and your great-great grandparents’, and everyone before them. No matter what has changed in the world, the Savages remained just as they were. A snobbish upright morality, a longing for the past, when the world was right. And a desire to hold onto that, at least in their own households. A diminishing fortune that never seemed to take them off their high ground.

You were never going to be the strong one. There were stories of crusaders in the family, those who fought chivalrously for the family, for the community. But that wasn’t your calling, that was your brother. Your parents seemed to know that from the moment you were born, and decided on the path for you from the start, all by gifting you with a name, with no care for what your birth might’ve indicated you would be.

Silas Camden Savage.

The original Silas Savage came to America years and years ago, bringing with him a religion for all of the wixen population, preaching salvation and doling out mercy to the lost souls who seemed to believe religion was only for no-majs.

And so when you announced, after your older brother, that you were also a boy, your father took it as a divine sign, confirming what he had already come to believe, that you were meant to carry on Silas’ work, and help return the family to their religious importance.

The thing is, though, then, you were a follower. You followed your brother everywhere he went, did everything he did, looked up to him as a hero. You ate up every word your father spouted, easily believing whatever was said. And it felt a little bit like somewhere you had lost something. A little piece of yourself gone, and replaced with what you were meant to be.

That was your whole childhood, really, in a way, wasn’t it? Mourning. For self lost, independence lost, innocence lost. Always something lost, never something found.

But it’s a good life, a proud and blessed life, even when the robes you wore were barely better than rags, and the things you already preach fall on deaf ears upon leaving the safety of home. Sometimes you wonder if it might be easier to drop the Silas entirely, after graduating, to just stay Camden, or find who Camden is at all in the first place, to follow your brother to the aurors, and serve God in that way. But there’s this feeling in your soul that tells you Camden isn’t holy, Camden isn’t good.

So you pray and you pray and you pray and you beg for some kind sign

And a week before your graduation, you receive it.

You were never one to mourn, and so maybe it’s fitting that there was no time for comfort after your father’s death. Now you have to take charge.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

After that, there wasn’t a meek thing about you, but in a way, that’s why you were always so effective.

You go from a student of magic to a student of God. Three years spent preparing to take vows, fitting in more seamlessly there than you ever had at school. You revel in it, finally feeling like you’ve found your place, your calling. You remember how passionately your brother always spoke of becoming an auror and that is how you feel about your work on the road to the priesthood. You’re doing what you were meant for, and saving souls, spreading the Word, all at once.

And maybe it helps that it’s a little like being royalty, in a way, being a Savage entering the priesthood. Maybe there some less than graceful thoughts when you’re recognized, when you shadow established priests, and you’re the one listened to as if Jesus himself is in the room.

You get your choice of assignments, even, and it’s no surprise that when you pray on the decision, you’re called to your own parish back at home. It’s only right, after all, to continue your work where your ancestor started his, to shepherd the flock your family has always been apart of. And the parish is blessed to have the new Father Silas saying their masses.

As time goes on, something changes, though. You can feel the hold that Satan has on the world, can feel his influence spreading, and you worry that perhaps you read your signs wrong and your father’s death wasn’t a calling, but a defeat.

Your sermons become more intense, your penance becomes harsher, you worry for the souls of your people as well as the souls of the world. Most of all, though, you worry for your brother, out amongst criminals and the darkness, trying so hard to make the world as good as he is. But you’ve heard just how evil the world can be, and you’re terrified that he’ll fall into the darkness, too.

You spend more time praying, more time visiting him, when you can, unable to keep from wondering if there’s something more you should be doing. But isn’t that part of the job? You shoulder the burdens of those who have faith, you watch over them, you pray for them and take their worries, to give them that chance at peace, that chance at goodness.

There’s something there in the pit of your stomach as time goes on, though. A hunger and a thirst deep within you for something more, docile, but waiting to be awakened when the time is right. You think it’s a hunger for goodness, for justice, but sometimes late at night your thoughts turn to the what ifs, the greedy, prideful things you want, things you’ve done, and it’s hard to know if it’s just the devil tempting you, or if it’s your nature.

You’ve gotten good at ignoring the things that don’t fit with what you should be, though, and so you continue on your quest for salvation, passing on the grace of God that you have found to those who need it the most, watching over your flock, building a life of good, just as the last Silas Savage did.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.

But why should you show mercy when no one has shown mercy to the person who matters most to you?

You’re in the middle of writing a sermon when you receive the news. An injury, out on a case, the sort of thing you’ve spend countless nights praying to never hear, countless candles lit to protect him, countless sinful thoughts hoping someone else might take his harm and keep him safe, since you can’t be there.

That moment, suspended in time, is a moment that changes it all. Terrible things that no prayer could prevent, terrible things happening to a person who has done nothing but good, no mercy in sight, despite everything he’s tried for.

God has a plan, God looks after those who do His will.

Does He?

God helps those who help themselves.

That feels more like it.

Instinct is to go to him immediately, pray by his bedside for some form of mercy that you can feel won’t come. But instead, you do something else. He won’t be conscious, anyway, likely won’t be in any state to even know you’re there for days, and for once, there’s something concrete you can do for him. You can make certain he’s never again in a situation like he was, you can be there with him. You can protect him.

What good is prayer, when you can offer something concrete?

Perhaps this is the sign you had been hoping for years and years ago, only you hope it hasn’t come too late.

If there is one thing that you’ve always valued above the faith you were gifted with, the desire to save others, and do even an ounce of good, it is your brother’s life. And if protecting that means abandoning your flock, abandoning your grace, your mercy, then so be it. Some things are more important than saving your own soul, after all.

Two weeks later, you finally show up to your brother’s bedside, letter of acceptance to the New Orleans Auror Academy in hand, with the full intention of being finished by the time he’s healed and ready to go back into the field, this time with you by his side.

Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.

It was long ago that you stopped believing in purity of heart as more than an abstract concept, an unattainable goal to strive for surrounded by so much sin, and the world was out to prove you right, it seems.

For a while, you try to do both, all while spending as much time with your brother as you can. Moving back and forth between the academy and your parish in Kentucky, still saying mass on Sundays, coming in to help with meetings and give confessions in between trainings and classes. It’s not as if you’re particularly interested in making friends with any of your classmates, who are nearly all at least fifteen, if not twenty years younger than you, anyway.

You try, at least at first, to pass some of your knowledge onto them. After all, that’s always been your calling in life, spreading the Word, saving the souls of those who are lost. But you see quickly enough that you’ve been living in a pleasant little bubble in which your thoughts, your religion is taken seriously, believed. Here, you receive laughs, eyes rolling, strange looks. You receive stories about how they’ve been hurt by beliefs like yours, how they could never accept something that believes suffering can elevate the soul.

There are arguments that make you feel a lot like you’re a teenager again, pointless arguments with those who wish to remain Godless. Between that, and the training, less time is spent going home, less time for the ones you promised to watch over and steer on the right path.

And then one day, without any real ceremony, you stop going back.

You pray and you pray and you pray and you realize, you cannot be both. You can’t shepherd a flock you can’t give the time to, you can’t preach while focused on saving only one soul.

And so you will be a martyr.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

You become a peacemaker, if that’s what you can call it.

The work is dull and tedious, not the sort of saving you’ve ever been interested in, but you finish your time as a student once again, and easily enough find your way onto your brother’s squad. Even if you haven’t worn the collar in more than a year, there’s still a certain amount of respect that comes with the past you have, even if they don’t quite seem to understand why you gave that life up.

Or at least there’s respect from some people.

The first day on the squad, the first day back for him, the first day for you, he looks at you, with a smile that takes you back to when you were just a boy, and he says, “Just like old times, right?”

And you smile back, because it is.

But the smile doesn’t last long. You try, again, to offer your own sort of salvation to the members of your new congregation. You offer peace, you offer prayer, you offer your own soul for theirs. And yet no one seems to want it.

And if they don’t want what you have to offer, what’s the point in giving a part of yourself at all?

Something breaks in you, as time goes on. A slow decay that you realize has been happening for years, a decay you hid from even yourself behind fiery sermons and harsh penance, devoted pray with your flock and deep confession to your fellow priests. But none of that can hide the realization that you’re not good.

Camden is not good.

The one thing that kept you good is gone, abandoned for the sake of the one life you care about above your own, and now you’re left with the dregs.

You still pray, every night, every morning, every moment you feel that darkness creeping up, but it feels a whole lot like your prayers are falling on deaf ears.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Because you couldn’t forsake your brother, and so you’ve forsaken your own salvation. It’s only fair. Nothing is free.

At least it feels worth it, when you go out into the field with him, when you watch over him, keep him from trying to sacrifice himself again for someone who would never show him the same mercy.

At least your soul is being put to good work.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

You have to wonder, though, does it still count, if the persecution is your own?

This is a persecution you chose, after all. There was no need to abandon your flock, to leave behind the cloth and fight against a sea of troubles that was meant to be for your brother, not you. You just want to do good, to be good. Both of you do, only, he’s succeeded. You watch him, and you see so clearly just how good he is, how he helps so many. And you’ve failed. You couldn’t even keep him safe, and you didn’t realize your prayers weren’t enough until it was much too late.

Can you still be a martyr, if it is your own thoughts that throw the stones, heat the grill?

You revel in the feeling of the collars around your neck, too tight, nearly choking, making it just hard enough to breathe that you’re constantly reminded of your own mortality, your own mistakes. Tighter than the white collar you gave up years ago, but just as oppressive, in a new way. You’re guilty, after all, of leaving so many behind, giving up their salvation, as well as your own. And all there is now is to try to bear the shame, to give back even an ounce of that salvation in any way you can.

If you bear some of that sin on your body, perhaps it takes away the sin of all the lost confessions you never heard, the sermons you never finished, the flock you left alone. Letting yourself feel the pain in your heart for your faith must be holy.

The solution comes in a dream, the first a Sacred Heart burning on your chest, a divine message that only seems to confirm your suspicions, your guilt is productive, a representation of your love for the lost, the broken, those you left behind; a divine love of humanity, of mortality. And so when you wake, you pull out your wand and give yourself the heart you were gifted in the dream.

Then come the arrows, just as Saint Sebastian, a flame gifted, for Joan of Arc, the reverse crucifix, Saint Peter, and most recently eyes resting in the palm of your hand, as Saint Lucy. And it’s a blessing to finally feel some sense of peace, knowing you’re doing good, even if you yourself have never been quite as good as you prayed you were.

Maybe you can save souls and save your brother, all at once.

There are times, of course, when you think of leaving, after a particularly hard case, or rough day, you think of finding a new parish, and going back to your old life. Those thoughts rarely stay once you think of your brother, though. There was never another purpose for you. It’s all worth it if you have even a chance of keeping him from finding more harm, after all the real good he’s done in his life.

After all, you would gladly follow him to hell and back if it meant you’d both survive.

#retired auror

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akumageist · 6 years

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Gonna Analyze all the Devilman Media

You can totally ignore this, I'm just comparing elements I liked and didn't like. The good news is they all contain both, so it's an even playing field!

Devilman Manga (1972):

Alright this is the original core story, and I really adore Mr. Nagai for writing such an intense and powerful story. EDIT: Apparently Ryou wasn't even supposed to be Satan and was supposed to DIE and THEN Devilman was born, so all the foreshadowing/plot twist was total bullshit and frankly that really crushed me. I respect Mr. Nagai in a different way now, but..... man, I really liked it better as this huge intense plot....

Akira was portrayed as a crybaby in the manga, so I'm happy to see that change in character! But unfortunately once he became a demon he lost that intense compassion and became a sort of basic hero in my opinion, so that was a little disappointing.

I liked how Mr. Nagai also mentioned real life problems. There was an an entire page of humans accusing each other of being the next to become demons, and it was exactly as you expected; choosing eachother based on evil hate that had nothing to do with actually becoming demons. I liked how Nagai had humans react, clearly portraying how evil humanity was, and exactly what would happen if something like this happened in the real world. I fuckin love super heroes, but goddammit humanity would never come together as efficiently as we (and Akira) hope.

I LOVED how Akira realized humans weren't worth saving. I loved how he saw that humans were destroying each other and were just as bad as demons, and that Akira literally said he was ashamed to be trying to save them, and that there was truly nothing in the world left to save. I'm always a sucker for a hardcore optimistic character getting shot the fuck down, so that's also a factor, eheh.

I disliked Miki. She was funny as hell, but she was an absolute fuckin useless character. She didn't care for Akira until he demoned out, so she only genuinely liked him for being so "manly". She could have been cut clean out and it wouldn't have changed the story. I did like how she fought back, though. Less Good Little Christian Girl, and more able to stand her own ground. She fought literally to death.

I disliked that Akira acted as though she was so great, she was so important, but we never had any basis for this because of her lack of character, and therefore were going off of Akira ~~suddenly~~ caring about her deeply when everyone else was dead.

I disliked Jinmen's victim was some random girl that suddenly showed up and supposedly meant a lot to Akira. We never knew her because she died on the train two fuckin pages later, and again, had to take Akira's word for how much she mattered.

I LOVED how Satan repented, apologizing to Akira for doing exactly what God had done to the demons in his rage, trying to defend the demons against God. I didn’t like that Akira’s death was so lackluster. His last words are “the moon...”, but you never see how he died. And when Satan reacts, he’s clearly sad, but seems... still too calm about it. But it could simply be the outdated manga style.

Devilman TV Series (1972):

Sorry folks it just doesn't follow the actual story at all and I can't say I liked it all that much? Basically just Miki being a damsel in distress and Amon, who is possessing Akira and falls in love with her, rescuing her and fending off demons who are mad he's protecting and staying with humans.

BUT it gave us Devilman No Uta and for that I am forever grateful. Plus it was entertaining, so I mean!

Devilman OVA (1987-1996)

Went pretty much by the manga, so the same factors kind of stick for a bit. With Jinmen, however, it was his mom, who was killed in the ice caverns they resussitated the demons from. I LOVE JINMEN. He is my favorite Devilman villain, because of this scene. He taunts Akira because the faces are still alive, and Akira would be the one to kill them. Akira must fight his own morals to know that they are suffering.

It is a tragic scene when Akira is crying naked after he defeats Jinmen because of what he had to do. No other Devilman media has given such a powerful potrayal.

I didn't like Miki's weird interactions, they made her out to be in love with Akira but Akira... not really like her again...? It was a little more weird and perverted in this version on both sides.

Amon: Apocalypse of Devilman

This is heavily based on Amon: Darkside of Devilman but goes on a totally different tangent! I'm really gay for Amon so this was a treat to see big red fuzzy demon boy (who looked arguably cooler in the anime than the manga, whoops)

It was still kind of random and you really would have to know everything else about Devilman to een follow this one, because the entire thing was the first chapter of DOD, revolving around Akira being trapped in Amon.

I LOVED when Akira saw Miki dead HE FUCKIN OBLITERATED THE ATTACKERS BY HAND and the scene cuts to him just dropping a body part into a fuckin lake of blood surrounding him. It was powerful and angry and raw emotion, and it made Miki's death more powerful to the viewer in this version, because you saw just how angry Akira was over it.

That being said, I didn't like how Miki and Akira's relationship was in this, with Akira seeing a weird in-school dream with Miki, and him telling her it was all his fault she was dead. She kisses him and idk something about it wakes him up? It was powerful but random, because it really insinuated there was this whole love story that wasn't actually there..?? I think everyone remaking Devilman just really wanted Akira and Miki to be a bigger thing than it was...?

The Amon vs Akira fight scene was wayy extra too, he legit just kept fucking punching him and there was no build up AND THEN IT CUT TO AMON BEING DEFEATED that was dumb af not gonna lie

Again, only loosely based on DOD so I really dunno what they were going for in this.

Amon: Darkside Of Devilman:

Arguably my FAVORITE Devilman media, even if it’s more of a “behind the scenes” edition. I really liked the fact it hyper focused on Amon and Satan's past, building their characters and giving you a soft spot for Satan. It also painted angels as not "good" but just obsessed with purity, and all in all, makes you question God's authority.

It made me fall head over heels for Silene, who I unfortunately did not care much for at all up until this point. It also portrays demons as just as emotional as humans, and is very important for the reader to understand demons aren't the sinister barbarians they were painted as in the other versions by humans.

The only downfall I suppose was a kind of confusing main antagonist. And maybe that was deliberate, so I won't go too much into that.

I LOVED Satan actively defending Akira against Amon, and admitting again his love for Akira “Do you love someone so much you would destroy the world for them?” This version of Satan is my favorite. A lot of it is him sulking over Akira not loving him back, and being tender towards Akira. As mentioned, it really expands him as a character.

Devilman Crybaby:

Aaaandd last but definitely not least!

I liked how Akira was portrayed as a tiny baby child who ran fuckin, track and field and no one gave a damn about him. Even in the small amount of time, he was portrayed as a sweet kid who would defend any of his friends at the blink of an eye. He's such a good boy in every version, but this version of Baby Akira takes the bait for #glowup but remaining pure.

I liked how Akira was still a big fat crybaby, crying for others and seeing straight through emotion lies. He was still a good boy despite being all demoned out, and stayed confident in humanity till the very end, which I adored because it made you feel it 10 times harder when you saw everything be ripped away from Akira and watched him crumble, but hold strong.

I LOVED how Miki was his friend before everything, and that throughout she was constantly reassuring Akira she was there for him. It made her all the more important to the viewer, because we fell in love with her! Not to mention her innocence and naïevity but strong belief in humanity made you WANT to root for her. She was so genuine.

I liked how Miko was a huge character in this, seeing as the only other time was in DOD and AOD, which she was the boob-hole chick they showed in the very end of Crybaby. I liked how they redesigned her so majorly, bringing light and giving you yet another character to fall in love with even if you weren't always sure of her intentions.

I LOVED Taro's death in this. It was the most powerful, and the most heartbreaking. I wasn't sure if you were supposed to like Akira's parents personably, but I didn't because they had a child and proceeded to travel the world and leave him with family friends, hardly knowing him aside from occasional visits. Akira's finded fucking memory with his mother was her teaching him how to TIE HIS SHOES!

It did in fact make Jinmen a slightly more powerful villain, dealing with the possession of his father and the murder of his mother, however I was disappointed Jinmen didn't have that "they're still alive... i didn't kill them, you are!" Factor to him as he always did. It really ruined the

It was still hard, but easier for the viewer to not care, seeing as they were telling Akira they were already dead anyway. Jinmen was also a slightly bigger feat in the other ones because of this.

I hated all the sex scenes. Unnecessary and uncomfortable, the first 3 episodes make you want to turn it off. The first episode I was in love, but the second, I began questioning if I should keep watching if this anime was always gonna be a sex fest. Not because I’m such a prude, but jesus christ we get it already.

It was in no other media, and I really think it was just for a weird sort of "sex and gore" shock value. It was offputting for Akira, kicking his sex drive into high gear and almost portraying him as a creep to Miki, AND RAPING SILENE?? She was in fact asking for it, and she was evil, but that was uncalled for and once again not based off any other Devilman media.

I HATED Silene's arc, in no other media was she in love with Amon, in no other media did she fuck Akira. I legit skipped the scene because I didn't like the fact they randomly through more and unecessary porn, especially between a 17 y/o and a clearly much older demon who was in love with his demon not him ??? which was hardly a canon fact, but rather, a joke other Devilman media played off of insinuating that’s why she was angry at Akira. It really put a damper on Silene as a character too, you saw her as this big pervert instead of just absolutely hating Amon for no clear reason as she always had in the past.

I always love Kaim and Silene's story, but I liked how Akira actively pointed out to Ryo that they had been in love, and had felt love. This was a great refefence to Ryo and Akira towards each other, but also a good character build.

I liked Miki’s death in this one. Really gripping and tragic and close to her original death. I also loved Akira’s choked sobs when he saw her head on a stick. That hurt.

I understand a hero to the end is tragic in and of itself, but I much prefer Akira losing his faith in humanity. I didn’t like “they were frightened, Ryo!” But I did like Akira saying he wanted to cry for Satan, but couldn’t.

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troublecominghq · 3 years

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character name(s)/alias/etc: sirius black.

character age and date of birth: 35 when he died, it’s complicated. november 3rd, year 76.

character's pronouns/gender identity/romantic & sexual identity: they/them or he/him, non binary, identifies as bisexual & biromantic but is more on the grey side of things and tends not to develop romantic feelings for a person until after sex, romantic feelings are pretty rare for sirius. also identifies as polyamorous.

character faceclaim: damiano david.

oc or canon + which fandom affiliated with: canon, harry potter/magical universe.

currently located: grimmauld place in kirington, albion but he also has a much smaller home outside the main city he spends most of his time at since grimmauld place belongs to harry.

moral alignment + people/groups etc they are aligned to: chaotic good through and through. sirius has always had pretty intense, personal moral codes he follows in life. so much so, that he doesn’t tend to trust or even tolerate those that don’t align to his views. in that respect, he can be pretty quick to judgement and disregarding someone. he has a huge superiority complex in spite of his self loathing tendencies, and stands pretty strong on his morals. though, given his history, he’s not the same kid he was. he understands better now that good and bad are shades of grey, that everyone has potential for it all and it’s not as black and white as he once thought, but it’s still difficult to let that way of thinking go entirely and he’s prone to falling back into those habits. sirius remains aligned to groups that fight for good, and while he doesn’t by any means support any kind of government groups, he’s all for the underground fighters-- like the order were. he’s aligned to harry, specifically, and to his god son’s desire to reshape the magical political landscape in albion.

tell us about their personality/the kind of character they are/what kind of goals etc they have: sirius black has always been somewhat of a sufferer to the ‘black family rage’. it’s an ugly and loud thing within sirius. he’s always been the kind of person to believe his thoughts and feelings on a matter are the most important, he’s stubborn and rarely budges and as such, when coming up against someone with conflicting thoughts and feelings, sirius is quick to anger and rage-- of which, he feels 100% justified in. nobody else could possibly ever be right against him, so surely, his fury is justified and he could never be in the wrong in the actions he then indulges in? one perfect example of this is the fact sirius had zero regrets over nearly killing snape at fifteen years old by sending him down to the shrieking shack on a full moon. snape wasn’t backing off and was threatening people he loved? he had to be punished? sirius never once admitted fault for that. his stubbornness wins out, every time. it’s something he’s clung to throughout life and while his morals/views on black and white morality has shifted, sirius is still an incredible stubborn and at times hot headed individual. but, he also has a deep and intense heart. he loves with all he has, and when he attaches himself to someone, he gives them everything he has. he’s intensely loyal and would go to great ends to ensure the safety of those he loves. he’s a protector at heart, and his goals have always revolved around that, about making a safer, better world for the people he loves to live in. now? his goals are more personally aligned to the few people still around in his life. he’s all about helping others achieve their goals while he tries to figure out what the fuck he even wants to do with this new life he’s been granted for better or worse. however, he also has a lowkey drive to go out and see more of the world and explore other types of magic.

biography: when asked about his life, sirius would say it never truly started until the christmas of his sixth year of study at hogwarts. this was when sirius ran away from home for good and started living with his best friend, james potter. of course, there is plenty of life before that to delve into, no matter how much he tries to ignore it.

sirius was born a bastard son of his father’s infidelity to his mother. he never came to know his true mother’s identity, but he heard rumours among the family that the witch was taken care of in order to retain the family legacy of purity. sirius grew up raised in a heavy pureblood culture and for the first portion of his life before hogwarts, he very much supported these beliefs too. it was all he knew, he didn’t know there was another way or that this mentality was wrong. however, just because he followed along with these beliefs, didn’t mean that things were easy at home. given his origins, sirius more often than not clashed with walburga and the two would get into heated arguments constantly. so much so, that sirius developed a hatred for his family that drove him to practically beg to be placed in gryffindor when he got to hogwarts. anything but slytherin. it worked, and in spite of the way it at first got him a lot of suspicious looks from his fellow housemates, sirius eventually came to fit right in. of course, being fast friends with james potter and then peter pettigrew & remus lupin thereafter went a long way to securing this sense of comfort.

sirius spent most of his childhood at war with his family. for all the shit they have him, he gave just as good. sirius suffered abuse from his mother in particular, but he also did a lot in return: he was never some innocent victim here. the only times he really ever tried to behave was when it came to his younger brother, regulus. he hated subjecting his brother to this environment so he really did try, but of course, it’s sirius ‘stubborn as fuck’ black, it could never last.

after school, sirius joined the order of the phoenix and helped in the fight to take down lord voldemort and end the first great wizarding war. this ended terribly for sirius, who ended up wrongfully accused of the betrayal of lily and james potter and then the death of peter pettigrew. he then spent the next twelve years of his life in azkaban, a prison in the north of the true sea to holds witch and wizard criminals from across albion. sirius became only the second person to ever break out of the prison and at first, he came to the wandering isle before making his way to albion where he eventually revealed the truth about the night harry’s parents died, but still had to live in secret, hidden away from the world for fear of being thrown back into azkaban. sirius offered up his family home to the order who were now fighting the second wizarding war against the returned lord voldemort, and sirius spent a few years honestly, utterly depressed but dreaming of true freedom one day.

true freedom that never came. instead, sirius only got death.

until, that is, six years later, when sirius black is brought back to life by the godson he spent his life trying to protect and ensure the safety of. powered up by the deathly hallows, harry made a mistake on the night of sirius’ return. the plan was to bring back his parents. it was the anniversary of their deaths, and just after harry’s 22nd birthday-- he’d now lived longer than they ever got the chance to, and the grief broke him, drove him to attempt a dark and terrifying magic. but it backfired. perhaps his parents had been dead too long, sirius and harry still aren’t entirely sure, but what happened instead, was sirius was brought back. but stranger still: his younger, almost twenty one year old self is brought back. a fuck up in the magic? the universe playing a trick on them? they aren’t sure, but here is sirius black, almost twenty one years old, with some confusing as shit pieces of memories to try and put together.

so that is where sirius has been for the last almost three years of his life-- remembering more and more of his life after being sent to azkaban, and trying to figure his place in the world now. as it stands, sirius now remembers all of his life before death, but connected to being that person is still difficult at times, but it’s where he’s at.

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Leah Sottile | Longreads | July 2019 | 45 minutes (9,790 words)

Part 5 of 5 of Bundyville: The Remnant, season two of Bundyville, a series and podcast from Longreads and OPB. Catch up on season one of Bundyville here.

Stella Anne Bulla was born in November 1949 in Asheboro, North Carolina to Dorothy Ann Lemon and Brinford Bulla, a man who served in the Navy and worked for the federal government as a postal employee most of his life. Stella — who, at some point, preferred to be called by her middle name, Anne — was one of five children: brothers, Artis, John and Brad, and a sister, Cara. The children were raised devout Southern Baptists, attending church meetings once during the week, and twice on weekends. Anne wanted to grow up one day and live in a place where she could ride horses.

By high school, Anne adhered to the “higher the hair, the closer to God” school of thought: Where other girls of Grimsley High School smiled with youthful innocence from photos, Anne grinned knowingly, hair teased high and wide into a flipped bouffant.

Later, Anne met a man named Barry Byrd, and the two married, had a daughter, and moved to Stevens County, Washington in 1973, after Barry got out of the Air Force. He took a job in a Colville body shop — finally starting his own in the tiny town of Northport. The Byrds started a band called Legacy. Anne’s brother, Brad Bulla, joined them, playing mandolin, lead guitar, and banjo along with the Byrds’ vocals. The group released two records: Sons of the Republic and, in 1984, Judah’s Advance — which were sold via mail order by Christian Identity groups as far away as Australia. “Legacy is unique in that their music is designed with the Israel Identity image, and is an excellent way to introduce the subject to thousands of people,” the Australian group wrote in a newsletter.

Keep the characters of Bundyville: The Remnant straight with this character list.

The Judah’s Advance cover features a drawing of a ship bearing down on a rocky coastline, where a stone tablet engraved with the Ten Commandments sat amongst a pile of rocks that had fallen from the sky. In the center, an American flag — bearing just 13 stars and the number 76 — whips in the wind.

On Judah’s Advance, Dan Henry, the pastor at The Ark — the Christian Identity church where Byrds worshipped, but that has also helped produce violent acolytes — read a line of scripture, and the band thanked him in the credits. The producer for the album, they said, was YAHWEH.

The back of the album is even more Christian Identity than the front. Alongside a photograph of the grinning musicians, the band lays out its beliefs: “Our forefathers understood that the establishment of this country was the fulfillment of the prophecy concerning the re-gathering of the nation of Israel,” it explains. The savior, the band writes, was a descendant of the “Judahites”, while “the true children of Israel,” after being freed from captivity, migrated westward, settling in “Scotland, Ireland, Britain and every other Christian, Anglo-Saxon nation in the world today.”

It reads like the liner notes to a Christian Identity concept album, and it made Legacy a popular feature on the Christian Identity and white supremacist conference touring circuit. In 1986, the band played the Northwest Freedom Rally in Richland, Washington alongside a bill of racist speakers. And from 1987 to 1989, the group reportedly traveled yearly to Colorado to play Pete Peters’ Rocky Mountain Bible Camps. Peters had been a guest at The Ark and the Aryan Nations, lecturing on the end of the world, and his hatred for Jews and homosexuals.

But Legacy was more than a band providing musical accompaniment to racists: In 1988, Barry Byrd and his brother-in-law and Legacy bandmate, Brad, were two of just 15 men who deliberated for about a week about their beliefs, and authored a document entitled “Remnant Resolves.”

The document elaborates that the men felt a “spiritual burden”: “This burden was the need and desire to see Biblical principles of government once again established in our nation,” it reads. The men agreed that if they could not come to a consensus on solving that burden, they would not proceed with writing the document.

What comes next are resolutions to fix society for “the remnant” — the way for the chosen people to live in the fullest realization of liberty. Biblical principles should be put into practice at every level of government. The band maintained that in the home, women should be submissive to their husbands. Locally, the civil government should punish evil and protect the good. And at the federal level, taxes need to stop, since you can’t tax what God created.

“It is blasphemous to regard antichrists as ‘God’s chosen people’ and to allow them to rule over or hold public office in a Christian Nation,” it reads. “Aborticide is murder. Sodomy is a sin against God and Nature. Inter-racial marriage pollutes the integrity of the family. Pornography destroys the purity of the mind of the individual and defiles the conscience of the Nation.”

At the end, when it was all down on paper, there they are smiling wide for a picture — as if someone had said “say cheese” when they took it — and all fifteen men signed their names.

A year after the Remnant Resolves, Legacy (now named Watchman) was back on tour, scheduled to play a Santa Rosa, California church affiliated with Dennis Peacocke, a self-described political activist turned leader in the “shepherding movement” — a religious movement in the 1970s and ’80s that involved congregants turning over all personal decisions to a spiritual leader, and has been criticized as cult-like.

The Byrds made more than one trip to Peacocke’s church for Fellowship of Christian Leaders (FCL) conferences. During one visit, they stayed with a church host family: the Johnsons. Rick Johnson would eventually move his family north to Marble in the mid-1990s, and still lives there today.

At the time, Johnson’s son Jesse was just a kid, but he still recalls meeting the Byrds. Something about Anne immediately stuck out to him. “She has these piercing blue eyes,” he recalls. “I remember kind of being off put by that and … just by her presence. Because she didn’t smile very much. She was really intense and when she talked to you it was about what you’re doing to have a better relationship with the Lord. And I was, like, 8.”

Within a week of living at Marble, Jesse Johnson says he and one of his brothers “made a pact that we were leaving as soon as we were old enough.”

But back in 1992, when the Byrds were still working on bringing their vision of a “Christian covenant community” to life, people in Stevens County were nervous, citing concern over the couple’s connection with Pete Peters. People called the group cultish; the Byrds made a brochure that said they weren’t “the least bit cultish or isolationist.” In that same brochure, the couple predicted “cataclysmic events.” At a city council meeting, they claimed to their neighbors that they weren’t racist, and didn’t “condone hatred”— in fact, Barry told the Spokesman-Review that they wanted to create a ministry and a working ranch to “take youngsters” of all races in. The couple claimed they’d severed ties with Peters and that their attendance at the Rocky Mountain Bible Camp was only to play music. They didn’t mention the “Remnant Resolves.” Debate about the Byrds and Peters raged for months in the pages of the Colville Statesman-Examiner.

In May, a Colville man expressed concern in the paper: “We would love to have our fears allayed,” he wrote of the Byrds. “But the trail back to Pete Peters appears to be pretty warm.”

The Byrds attempted to shoot down a list of rumors they were asked to address by Northport’s mayor at a May 1992 city council meeting. They said they had no relationship with Peters, never held white supremacist beliefs, and concluded that people with concerns should come to Marble. Barry Byrd “advised that reading newspapers was not a worthwhile way of attaining accurate information,” according to a report on the meeting.

Meanwhile, in nearby North Idaho, Bo Gritz — a former Green Beret who once ran for President, and who famously served as a liaison between federal agents and Randy Weaver at the end of the Ruby Ridge standoff — attempted to create his own Christian covenant community, called “Almost Heaven.” Some said he modeled it after what the Byrds created at Marble.

Paul Glanville, a doctor, liked the idea, too, when he heard it. He brought his family north to Marble in 1992, several years after meeting the Byrds. He was delivering a presentation on low-cost or free medical care at a Christian seminar when he encountered the couple, who were giving a talk on establishing covenant communities. “They are very charismatic,” Glanville recalls. “I really was interested in this idea of a Christian community where I could practice medicine in what I considered a very Biblical way.”

Once at Marble, he says he enjoyed the close community, the focus on church and family. It felt like his family had moved to the promised land. People would get to church early, chattering with the company of the other people who lived there, hurrying downstairs to stake a claim for the casserole dishes they’d bring each Sunday for a potluck, before rushing up again for church.

But over time, cracks emerged in the smooth veneer of the Marble promise. Nothing drastic, just small fissures that, over time, built up. In the spring of 1997 Glanville noticed a strangely competitive drive behind — of all things — Marble’s softball teams. He says he felt there was a need to win, to conquer all of the other church teams from the area, as if to prove Marble’s superiority. Glanville sometimes skipped the adult games to watch his kids play softball. Soon after, the leaders called an emergency meeting to chastise anyone who skipped the adult games. Glanville found the suggestion that he watch the Byrds’ team over his own child’s bizarre.

After a few years, Glanville started to feel that he hadn’t made a covenant with God so much as with the Byrds. “What they mean by ‘covenant’ is total, absolute obedience to the leadership without questioning, and that the leadership eventually has your permission to question you and scrutinize your life in the most invasive ways that you can possibly imagine,” he says. “They might not start that out from the beginning like that, but they will end up that way.”

From the pulpit, the couple preached about “slander,” about never questioning their leadership, and turning in anyone who did. The Byrds gave sermons about submission, obedience. The word “individual” was sinful — individuality being a sin of pride.

The church leaders would encourage the families there to turn against their own blood — parents reporting on children, children reporting parents, neighbors against neighbors — if that meant preserving perfection at Marble.

Glanville says his own children went to Marble’s leadership and told them that he was skeptical of their intentions and teachings. By the summer of 1994, he says, “My kids and wife had been totally brainwashed.” He continues, “They were turning me in to Marble for negative talk.”

But even he didn’t understand how quickly he’d lost them: When he finally decided to leave, Glanville was shocked that his wife and family refused to come with him. “My wife filed for divorce when I left. And my kids basically all signed the divorce papers,” he says.

“I could do a lot of things in this church,” Barry Byrd said in one 1994 sermon. “I have the authority. I could misuse it. I could manipulate you and intimidate you, which you know, I’m sure we’ve done some of that. Not meaning to, but that’s just part of the deal.”

The pulpit too, was Barry Byrd’s megaphone for talk of a country ruled by Biblical law, of the sins of the government, about the entire reason Marble was here at all.

“We’re fighting for something that much blood has been shed for, beginning [with] the blood of Jesus,” he said. “If the spirit of the Lord does not reign supreme and this book is not the law that governs all of life and living, then there is no peace and there is no liberty!” He spoke of righteous anger and “holy hatred” for those getting in the way of “the government of God.”

Byrd even glorified martyrdom as a way to achieve the church’s goals: “So you see, I don’t have any problem being martyred if I know it’s what God’s called me to. If I know that my blood is going to water the tree of Liberty and build for future generations, I would gladly give my life today.”

Two decades since he left Marble broken-hearted, alone, Glanville still sometimes hears the Byrds’ words in his head, nagging at him, pulling him back to that time, making him question how he could have fallen under the place’s sway.

His mind goes back to the moments he still blamed himself for not being perfect. Times when Marble convinced him he was the problem, meetings when Barry Byrd stood over him shaking a fist, making him believe he was lucky they were being so patient with him.

“And you could say ‘well why did you put up with that?’” he tells me this spring. “A lot of people who are trying to leave a cult have magical thinking. That if they just could say the right thing, or do the right thing, the leaders will suddenly see the truth and repent and everything will be alright.”

***

Back in 1988, when the Byrds’ band was on tour, Anne Byrd’s own brothers, too, were positioning themselves as chosen ones.

The Bullas were a family of prophets. It was as if they believed their ears were calibrated to pick up the unique pitch of the Lord’s voice.

Anne’s eldest brother, Art Bulla, at the time, was living in Utah and had converted away from the family’s Southern Baptist roots to his own racist interpretation of Mormonism. He found himself maligned from the mainstream LDS church in the early 1980s when he called himself “the one mighty and strong,” claiming he was receiving revelations. He also expressed his belief in polygamy, but admitted he’d had trouble recruiting women to marry him. He split from the church when it started ordaining blacks.

Art Bulla, who I reached by phone at his Baja, Mexico home, says he visited his siblings Anne and Brad Bulla, and his brother-in-law Barry, in the early days of their Marble community. And though he says his sister and Barry were still practicing racist Christian Identity beliefs — which he points out he actually agrees with — he thought the couple seemed to be controlling the people who would form Marble.

“Barry had a very strong personality, and Anne did too, and so they were able to hornswoggle if you will, the gullible,” he says. “I had suspected that Anne had gone too far with the controlling thing.”

Art Bulla tells me he’s the only prophet in the family — not Anne and not their brother I found who pastes notes that say “God’s only priest” to cutouts of naked women and posts the pictures to Twitter. Art says he is the chosen one.

“[Anne] always felt that she had to be in competition with me. And since I’m receiving revelations, then she’s got to receive revelations, too,” he says, “You see what I’m saying?”

***

By the late 1990s, Paul Glanville, the doctor who had come to Marble hoping to bring God into his medical practice, was hardly the only person questioning Marble’s leadership, and the Byrds’ true intentions for the community. According to letters written during this time, between 1997 and 1998 Anne Byrd excommunicated her brother and Legacy bandmate, Brad, and his family. (Requests for comment by Brad Bulla were not returned.)

The excommunication drew the attention of Jay Grimstead, an evangelical scholar who had briefly lived in the Marble community and become known for pushing dominionism. Grimstead wrote several letters to the Byrds detailing his concern for what he saw as the community’s increasingly authoritarian structure.

In one letter to Barry and Peacocke, from September 1997, Grimstead wrote that Marble “is a clear, ‘top down’ monarchy that is governed primarily by a queen, ‘Queen Anne,’” he wrote. “The people at Marble live in great fear of displeasing the Byrds, particularly Anne.”

Grimstead also excoriated Barry for not publicly condemning Christian Identity, which he referred to as “weird, unbiblical stuff.” He was even being told by Marble members that the ideology was still being discussed in 1997.

In January of the next year, he wrote to Anne and Barry: “Please respond in some way to the letter of grave concern wherein I told you I was receiving an increasing amount of evidence that Marble, under your leadership, was fast becoming an authoritarian cult,” he wrote.

Grimstead, with each letter, begged for answers, and grew more suspicious. “I am having more and more concern about the mental health (sanity, ability to process reality, etc) of both Anne and Barry, but Anne in particular,” he wrote in a letter to Peacocke.

That same year, letters came to Grimstead, too — not from the Byrds, but from families who’d left Marble. They wrote of financial manipulation, of tithes that went to the Byrds (one person told me their partner tithed tens of thousands of dollars without their knowledge, and racked up a credit card bill of $55,000), of public confessions of sins that would later be weaponized against members. “No one was ‘forced’ to do it. Yet we all did,” one person wrote of these public confessions, where even children would allegedly confess dark thoughts. “What else could any of us done? Barry and Anne knew best. We trusted them. They were hearing from God, they told us.”

People who’d gotten away still feared Christian Identity was the agenda driving the church, despite what the Byrds had said about leaving the ideas of Peters and the Ark behind. One man, who had adopted non-white children, wrote to Grimstead, recounting a meeting with the Byrds. “Barry stated he did not believe in interracial marriage and that our non-white children would not be allowed to marry any of the sons and daughters at Marble, and that we would have to have faith that God would provide them with mates of their own race,” he wrote.

But by the fall of 1998, 15 men signed a letter on FCL letterhead saying that Grimstead’s questioning of Marble’s intentions forced the organization to “mark him.” They called him a “factious and dangerous man” and sided with Marble. Among those signatures were Peacocke’s and — in the same loopy letters that marked the Remnant Resolves — Barry Byrd’s.

I wrote Grimstead this past spring, to see if he’d talk about that time, about those letters, that mark placed on him by his good friends. Grimstead’s response was curt: “If you have any of my letters from those years … my opinion of the Marble Fellowship under the Byrds has not changed,” he wrote in an email. “What I said in those letters is still true and provable as far as I know and I was never proven wrong in what I said.”

He declined to comment further. He is “too busy with positive work for the Kingdom.”

***

Jesse Johnson is 33 years old now, and for years he lived in Los Angeles, where he attended art school and came out as gay. He lived at Marble until he was 17, when he was excommunicated, and left to live with his maternal grandmother. For years prior, Johnson says his grandmother begged his mother to leave, believing Marble was a cult. She didn’t listen.

I meet Johnson in the spring of 2019, at a small house in Northport, Washington. A dog gnaws at a bone under the table. We’d been talking on the phone for months about his time at Marble. He tells me about a childhood dictated by fear of the Byrds, and an exclusion of the outside world. “The world is evil and the government is evil, and their whole thing is wanting to get back to Puritan America,” he says. “They would talk about that all the time: the founding fathers and how this isn’t what they wanted.” Johnson says leaders continually reminded the congregation of what happened to the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas — how something like that could play out at Marble, too. He recalls being told the community was on a federal watchlist. “I’m pretty sure that was all made up,” Johnson says, “but they were telling us that, so it was almost like stirring up the fear … are we next? Maybe we should prepare. That was definitely talked about from the pulpit, like, what we would do when — it wasn’t if — it was when the world collapses.”

Church was a harrowing experience: In one instance, Johnson says he was locked in a basement with all of the other children, who were told only to emerge only when they were speaking in tongues. “One of my friend’s dads whispered in my ear ‘just make something up,’” he remembers when he was one of the last in the room.

Illustration by Zoë van Dijk

Teenagers were expected to follow stringent courtship rituals, which condemned even the smallest displays of affection, like hand holding, and punished offenders by garnishing their wages or with physical labor making repairs or cleaning leaders’ homes. Every year, a “purity ball” celebrating chastity was held for teenagers, and formal etiquette lessons were given. Homosexuality was not tolerated in the community — Johnson tells me stories of boys who were sent to conversion therapy. I hear stories of suicide.

Punishment for children was constant and rules were always changing. Johnson says one day, he suddenly found out the Byrds had been made his godparents. “When I found that out it was kind of off-putting because if anything ever happened to my parents, the hope was that we wouldn’t have to be at Marble anymore.”

When families left or were forced out, “they were basically dead to God, dead to the community,” Johnson says. “To have contact with them would be hurting Marble.” Some people wanted to leave, but couldn’t sell their homes. Marble had the first right of refusal.

Several women who were raised there spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, expressing fear for the safety of family members still involved in the community. From all of them, I got the sense that to be a female at Marble is a particularly cruel experience: a life of shaming, abuse, and fear. They weren’t allowed to show skin — even swimsuits were deemed inappropriate. “We couldn’t show our arms. It was our job to protect the men from having bad thoughts, so we had to cover ourselves,” one woman said. I heard stories of physical and sexual abuse. Another shared a journal entry with me. “It was called Marble, and like the stone, it was beautiful and soft to touch and wrapped you up in its pure form,” she wrote, “But held the capacity to crush you under its cold weight, so that even if you escaped, the scars would never heal properly.”

One woman claimed that when she was 4, she was molested by an older boy in the community, but her parents were told not to go to the police, that Marble would handle the problem on their own. Confused about why she felt the community didn’t take action, she swallowed a bottle of pills one day when she was 12 in a suicide attempt — but survived. “I didn’t tell my parents until a year or two later,” she told me. “I definitely did not want to continue living like that.” Today, she says she can’t even walk into a church without feeling overwhelming, paralyzing fear.

“I’ve gone back [to Marble] once or twice,” she said. The people “literally look like zombies walking around. They look like… just zombies. They don’t have a soul. They don’t have any control of their lives. They’re just being little robots for Barry and Anne.”

Children allegedly grew up handling firearms — something that is not unique or strange about living in a place as rural as Marble. But “most people around here with guns aren’t talking about the end of the world or having to protect themselves from the government,” Johnson tells me. “I don’t think tomorrow they’re all gonna take up arms… my concern is there are certain people that are impressionable, especially some of the younger people, and they do have access to quite a lot of guns.”

But not everyone sees harm in the way things are run at Marble. Zion Mertens moved there when he was 6 years old, leaving briefly. He moved back as an adult with his own children, but doesn’t attend the church. He says today about half the community is like him. I ask him if Marble is a cult, and he says no but then offers this: “I prefer to avoid groupthink,” he says about the church. “I try to avoid it. So it’s not really so much that I disagree with them, it’s that I don’t really like sacrificing my own identity to the identity of a larger group.”

Mertens says he’s never caught a whiff of Christian Identity there, despite volunteering that the Byrds used to attend the Ark. “That place is, without a doubt, a white supremacist group,” he says. But things like homosexuality definitely are condemned. He doesn’t disagree completely with the Byrds on that, and he says it’s grounded in the leaders’ hope to make society “better.”

I ask about how the outside world is supposed to reconcile his feeling that Marble isn’t racist with the guest appearance of a neo-Confederate racist preacher, John Weaver, in 2015. He says that surprised him, too. “I actually really don’t have an answer on that one,” he says. “I had never encountered anything like that there, so when I ended up finding out that was his background, for me it was kind of like a little bit of a shock.”

But it’s clear it didn’t bother people in the community enough for them to speak up. I get the sense that maybe it’s just easier to turn a blind eye. Pretend it’s not there — to only see the place for the Christian, patriotic flowers pushing through the surface, not the roots of where they come from.

Jesse Johnson was excommunicated for not attending “prep school,” what Johnson describes as a religious pre-college program held at Marble to prepare young people to rebuild society after an “inevitable global and national conflict.” Later, when he came out as gay, he received a barrage of scornful emails from the Byrds and people still living at Marble. He changed his email address, but his family continued to shun him.

“I was informed by my family that I wasn’t allowed contact with any of my siblings,” he says. “One day I called just like crying and begging if I could just talk to one of my brothers and sisters. And [my mom was] like ‘yeah, change your lifestyle and come back to God and we can talk about it. But I’ve got to go to church,’ and then she just hung up.”

Life on the outside was not easy for Johnson. He says he was homeless for a while. “They say ‘you’re going to leave and everything’s gonna go wrong for you and everything is gonna be horrible until you come back,’” he says.

“Were they right?” I ask.

“No, not at all,” he says. “I don’t think anyone who’s left has had an easy time. And I think the majority of people I’ve talked to they say they felt like we were part of a psychological experiment… we were the guinea pigs.”

Paul Glanville, the doctor, agrees. Today, he’s reconciled with most of his children, but his ex-wife and one of his sons still live near Marble. He says he believes Marble is a cult that took away his family.

Johnson, too, has gone to great lengths to open communication with his parents again. A few years ago, Johnson moved back to the rural area after spending 14 years away. By then, his siblings had left Marble. His family was talking to him again. But his parents remained in the Marble community. “My mom and I had to come to an agreement that she wouldn’t talk about my sexuality and I wouldn’t critique her religion,” he says. “I wouldn’t say it’s worked well but it’s definitely allowed us to have more of a relationship.”

I wanted to understand how Johnson perceived Marble’s growing association with the Patriot Movement, with politicians like Shea. Johnson told me he suspected the Biblical Basis for War was from a Marble sermon. And he says the group is now filled with vehement Trump supporters — which flew in the face of everything he’d told me about how the Byrds felt about the federal government.

“There’s an underlier of something that’s a little more sinister,” he says. It isn’t about loving the government, suddenly, but loving what might come next. “I think it’s more of the fact that [Trump] is destroying everything so quickly. Like maybe this will progress to their revolution that they’re waiting for.”

Trump is, potentially, “bringing the apocalypse,” he says. “They definitely have thought the world was ending a few times and were super excited about it.”

This reminded me of something Glanville had told me, about how people at Marble were always talking about what to do when the end times came. And it sharpens something Matt Shea — their friend and acolyte, who sees the end times as an “opportunity” — has brought up in the Biblical Basis for War and the state of Liberty. They’re the blueprints for a rebooted nation.

***

I ask Johnson about what Tanner Rowe and Jay Pounder — the guys who made the Biblical Basis for War public — advised me: I’d need to be armed and in body armor to go to Marble. He was excommunicated, but he still offers to take producer Ryan Haas and me there that afternoon. He said that since his parents still live there, it’s not strange for him to be on the property.

When we pull under the gates of Marble, there’s not a person to be seen. Up ahead there’s a street sign: “Liberty Way,” it reads. There are signs for a bunkhouse, a hitching post.

Admittedly, I’m nervous, afraid to have my notepad out, and Haas tucks the microphone away as Johnson’s car crawls up a rocky road, up a hill where he says you can see the whole community. At the top, a group of people are out for a stroll. They stop and stare at the car. For a second, it feels like maybe we’ve been caught.

But Johnson throws the car into park and pops out. He knows everyone here. “Hey, Barney!” he yells and struts toward them with a big smile across his face. They talk for a minute or two, and Johnson comes back. Everything’s just fine. “Have a good one guys!” he calls to them.

We keep driving up the hill and stop at the place a big white cross has been mounted, overlooking the community. Johnson says groups pilgrimage up the hill from Marble, down below, every Easter Sunday.

For a few minutes, we stand there overlooking a patchwork of green fields, under a sky that feels bluer and wider than anywhere I’ve ever been. The sound of chickens clucking carries its way up the hill. It’s the opposite of the Branch Davidian compound or the remote cabin at Ruby Ridge. It’s a sparse community of houses. Some are big, beautiful homes — the type that rich people might call “the cabin.” Others are rickety shacks melting back into the earth. The Byrds don’t live on the Marble property, but instead, in the nicest house of them all up one of those side roads Rowe told us to stay away from. Johnson doesn’t disagree with that advice.

“It’s beautiful,” Johnson says, standing there, looking out over it. And it’s striking to me that someone could look out over a place that caused them so much pain, and still see a kernel of good in it. By the end of the day, we’ll have driven all around the property for two hours, and Johnson keeps hopping out of the car to say hello to someone, to tell them he’ll stop by soon, to ask how they are.

He says he figures if he’s nicer than anyone here, no one can hate him anymore — no matter what the Byrds say.

II.

Just before I moved to Spokane, Washington as a college freshman, at age 18, in 1999, a girl at my high school jibed that the place was filled with Nazis — living, breathing white supremacists. I ignored her, figuring that, like myself, she didn’t know what she was talking about.

In fact, both being Oregon-bred white teenagers, we’d both been living around white supremacists our entire lives. The state of Oregon was a haven for Confederate ideas even after the Civil War, a place that, from its very start, was built for whites and whites alone — a part of the state’s history that was omitted from our education. We didn’t learn that the KKK once had a strong presence among Oregon’s state officials. We didn’t know neighborhoods where our friends lived — only decades before — had exclusion laws discriminating against who could own property there.

In January 2011, I thought of that conversation with that girl again.

It was a cold winter morning in Spokane: the day of the Martin Luther King Jr. Unity March, a parade that went right down Main Avenue through the center of the city, and was always filled with kids and people with their arms linked. Sometime that morning, a Stevens County white supremacist named Kevin Harpham planted a backpack bomb on the parade route near a metal bench and a brick wall, a block away from my apartment.

Before the parade could begin, as marchers gathered, milling in the streets, filling the city with energy, Harpham — armed with a remote detonator — strolled amongst the crowd taking photos of himself. But before it detonated, several city workers saw that black backpack, thought it seemed out of place, and they called it in.

Inside the backpack was a six-inch long pipe bomb welded to a steel plate. The bomb was packed with more than a 100 lead fishing weights coated in rat poison and human feces. The backpack also contained two T-shirts commemorating events that took place in small towns in nearby Stevens County.

If those city workers had continued on, ignored the backpack, and that bomb would have gone off, it would have immediately twisted that metal bench into daggers of shrapnel. Those shards and the fishing weights would have rocketed at that brick wall, ricocheting off and firing into the marchers’ bodies. The rat poison — which contained an anticoagulant — would have made sure the people hit wouldn’t have stopped bleeding easily; the feces was likely there to cause an infection in every wound.

At the time, most of my day-to-day life happened in the two city blocks surrounding the bomb site. Police tape closed off the entrance to my apartment building. Traffic was re-routed. When it happened, I remember looking at all the guys in hazmat suits, the bomb robot, the closed streets, and figuring it was a big fuss over nothing. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Violence like what was narrowly missed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day has plagued this part of the Northwest for decades. But that history was something I’d had the privilege to navigate around as a white person living in a majority white city in the whitest part of the country. When I was a kid I had an excuse: No one told me. But as an adult, I’d come to believe that good always had, and always would, prevail.

But white racism in the American West was not a rumor or a chapter of history that had been solved and tied up with a bow. Racists weren’t burning crosses over there, in some other place, wearing KKK hoods, and performing Nazi salutes, wearing swastikas so they could be easily spotted. It seems like such a cartoon image of a racist now, when I think about it. What willful ignorance to think the enemy is always one you’ll recognize, that they’ll always look and act the same.

Those history books I read as a kid never talked about weapons made of rat poison, fishing weights, and human shit. But when Kevin Harpham chose my neighborhood to try to commit mass murder, he didn’t bring a burning cross or a Nazi flag. His hatred had him making that bomb for who knows how long. Investigators later found he bought those weights in batches. Piece by piece. That attempted bombing was my introduction to this entire subject.

I started devouring books and documentaries on the history of North Idaho and the Aryan Nations compound that had, for years, sat within an hour of my home. I read about the militias that had long thrived here in the Northwest, and the conspiracies that inspired them to action. I learned about Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Montana Freemen.

I needed to understand how hate had stayed so alive in America, what the fuel was that kept it burning — not just in the hills of some faraway place, but right here. Hate happened here. Hate happened in the morning. It happened on a Monday.

Five years later, on another cold January morning, another explosive event occurred in my backyard. By then I was in Oregon, back in my hometown.

A group of armed men took over a wildlife refuge in the far southeastern corner of the state. Among them were militias and white racists who had really radical ideas about the federal government, race and religion.

My editor at the Washington Post asked if I could help with coverage. My life hasn’t been the same since.

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III.

In late 2016, I started asking people about the bombing in Panaca — a thing I’d read about, but never heard much about what happened. Finally, in May of 2019, I got some answers.

I’d asked the Kingman Police Department, in Arizona, for documents about the raid on Glenn Jones’ trailer — that’s the guy who blew himself up and the Cluff’s house in Panaca, Nevada. Kingman was Jones’ last address before the bombing. Police reports had talked about his journal, about some writing about LaVoy Finicum — so I asked if I could see it.

They sent over photos of a spiral bound notepad of graph paper with a bright red cover. Inside, Jones had carefully written a note in black marker: “This is for the murder of LaVoy Finicum and all the other Americans who have died for freedom.”

He had flipped the page, and written it again: “This is for the murder of LaVoy Finicum and all the other Americans who have died for freedom.”

He’d done it a third time, and had written the same words.

I needed more pages. I asked Kingman police for more photos, more pictures of his trailer. I wanted everything I could get so I could try to answer this one question I’d had rolling around in my mind: Was Glenn Jones a suicide bomber for the Patriot Movement?

I asked for web searches on his laptop, GPS waypoints on his Garmin. I wanted photos of journals, photos of the trailer, photos of the storage unit. I couldn’t stop thinking about how no one really knew Jones. How people in Panaca just called him “the person” or “the suspect” because, even though he lived in the tiny town for years, no one seemed to really know him.

They said he was quiet, shy, forgettable. They were the same words people used when TV reporters descended on Stevens County, Washington to describe Kevin Harpham — the Spokane MLK Day parade bomber, who was eventually sentenced to 32 years in prison. They’re the same words people used to describe Stephen Paddock, the man who killed 58 people in a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017. Or Dylann Roof, when he murdered black parishioners in a church in South Carolina. They’re the same words used to describe people who’ve spilled blood in the name of an ideology from Virginia to Colorado.

Kingman officials told me I’d have to get all that from the FBI. They’d handed most of their files over. For months, I sent requests for comment. Calls went nowhere; I couldn’t tell if my emails were reaching anyone. Finally, I got a response. The FBI said, “It is the policy of the FBI not to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.”

Illustration by Zoë van Dijk

But two departments had told me the FBI had taken everything over. I knew it was an investigation — wasn’t it? Still, no comment.

I couldn’t believe the story of what really happened there was solely one being kept by Josh Cluff — who had also declined to talk to me. So, in a journalistic hail mary, I told Kingman officials that, well, since the FBI says maybe no investigation even exists, I guess you can send me that evidence now.

On a rainy Saturday, two weeks later, a CD filled with photos arrived in my mailbox.

There was no manifesto, no clear explanation of why Glenn Jones did what he did. They didn’t even send most of the things I’d asked for. But the photos did make the story clearer: Jones was not just a nice guy who blew up a house one time, but a guy who was so invisible to the rest of the world, no one had any idea who he really was. He had navigated nearly six decades on the planet like a specter who’d been walking in the shadows his whole life. No one noticed the guy living in the RV with very little else besides bombs.

At the end, he lived inside the type of camper a family of four might take on a tour of national parks. It was a tight, cramped space — not a place someone appeared to be living, but a space used as a workshop to build explosives.

Every window was covered, and every surface was covered with wires and gun powder, fuses and power tools. If he was truly living there, it was like he was existing inside a junk drawer. The only food in his cupboards were cans of soup, some chips, and some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The silverware drawer had no forks or spoons or knives, but pliers, scissors, and wire cutters. The fridge and microwave were spotless. The shower floor was crusted with black gun powder; there was no showerhead.

Investigators hauled bucket after bucket of supplies outside. They stacked huge antique bomb shells on a picnic table, and several metal ammunition boxes that were filled to the brim with gunpowder, fuses snaking out of holes drilled in the sides. There were guns — some modern, some antique. White briefs and socks were folded neatly in one cabinet. A pair of puffy white sneakers sat next to the bed.

Next to denture cleaner and cigarette butts, they found some of his journals: They contained shopping lists, to-do lists, notes about cars for sale, phone numbers for realtors. There were also drawings of bombs, complete with careful measurements of gunpowder, what charges were needed.

I kept flipping through the photos again and again, trying to absorb what story they told about Jones. I did it again: dirty trailer, no food, handwritten notes, stacks of materials.

I was idly staring at a photo of an open notepad, a note telling some unnamed person they’d better watch their back, when I realized the dark handwriting on a previous page was showing through to the other side — a page the police department hadn’t sent me. I zoomed in, flipped the image so I could read it.

It was a letter — a letter written to Josh Cluff, dated July 3, 2016.

Hay Stoupid [sic] —

Remember the $8,000-$10,000 I needed?

I could have leveled out the whole BLM Building — But, NO, you had to get greedy and not pay back any of the $60,000 you borrowed.

Plus, you bet the “farm” you went “All In,” You almost had this Bomb delivered to your houses. Never bet your family on a desperate idiot. Don’t ever assume somebody won’t shoot you + wife + kids over money.

Fuck You, Josh.

Glenn

I wish I had 2 Bombs. You would [illegible]

But the thing was, ten days later, he had two bombs. He delivered them to Cluff’s house, and told his wife and children to leave before they went off.

I started flipping all of the pages, looking for more shadows left by an invisible man. “We are different than Iran and Syria,” he wrote in one note, “… Another generation doesn’t need to see [illegible] of Waco and Ruby Ridge.” He wrote the word “ranchers” at the bottom of the page, but I couldn’t read the rest. On yet another page, he wrote the name of the man who baptized LaVoy Finicum in the 1960s. It’s Josh’s grandfather.

The letter Jones never sent to Cluff made it clear that he was planning to commit an act of terrorism that would destroy a Bureau of Land Management building. And then, the day before the bombing was supposed to happen, the plan fell apart. Something — or someone — got in the way of that plan. He turned the bomb on Cluff.

But the journal showed Jones was thinking like so many other people I’d interviewed over the years across the West, from a Nevada rancher to a Utah militiaman, to an Arizona widow, to people in Washington who grew up being told the government was out to get them. Jones was writing about revenge and martyrdom and all the things the Patriot movement thrives on.

But he wasn’t always like this. When investigators called his ex-wife, Kathi Renaud, and told her that he died in such a violent way, she was shocked. They hadn’t spoken in years, but it didn’t sound like the guy she’d been married to. She had a hard time even believing it was true — her daughter demanded proof, she tells me, “whatever to make sure that’s really him. You know? Because this is not his demeanor.”

But it really was her ex-husband. And I asked her why she thought Jones changed.

“I think somebody, in my own opinion, I think had to put that into his mind to make him think that, cuz like you know. No, he never talked bad about the government or anything. Nothing bad. At all.” I asked her for names of more of Jones’ family, friends. She gave the name of one guy — who never got back to me — but no one else. No one really knew him.

But someone, she says, along the way must have gotten to him. Put an idea into his head.

***

The Jones bombing showed me that extremist violence, in some ways, is changing. I talked to one extremism expert after another, asking if they’d ever heard about a Patriot suicide bomber. All of them said no. Some people had committed suicide by cop, trying to go out in a blaze of glory. A guy even once crashed a plane into a building that housed IRS offices on purpose. But a suicide bomber? That would be new.

Adam Sommerstein, who used to be an analyst with the FBI, told me, “that is a particular phenomena I have never seen in either the Patriot movement or the overall right-wing terror movement.”

A suicide bombing is saying something different than an attack. It’s a sign of devotion to an idea. And it says that this idea is important — more important than my life. And by blowing myself up, I believe this idea will reach more people.

But domestic terrorism still seems to be a thing lots of Americans aren’t even aware exists. And now here — with Jones — it was changing, evolving, maybe becoming even more extreme. And yet his bombing barely made the news outside Nevada.

After so-many high profile shootings, the violence at Charlottesville and other ideologically motivated killings in recent years, lawmakers in Washington are pushing for change. They’ve held hearings on white supremacy — even introduced legislation to create a better response to domestic terrorism. They say the government needs more power to stop extremists in this country.

“But that’s absurd,” Mike German, from the Brennan Center for Justice, told me. He’s the one who infiltrated and helped take down white supremacist and militia groups as an undercover FBI agent in the ’90s. He says this discussion about passing new terrorism laws as a way to stop extremist violence is a huge red herring.

“There are 57 federal crimes of terrorism. That’s what they’re called in the United States Code. Of those 57 federal laws of terrorism, 51 of them apply to domestic terrorism as well as international terrorism,” he says. “And if there is a group of intergalactical terrorists, it will apply to them too. It just applies to terrorism. But the fact that it doesn’t say in the law — domestic terrorism — the Justice Department is using that as an excuse to argue for new powers.”

In German’s view, the more of a power grab law enforcement can pull off, the more the government can become like the thought police. And that’s not just anecdotal: He says the government has been doing it against Muslims regularly since 9/11. Someone gets a label and their rights are gone. Historically, those people are brown or black, not white.

German says it’s a flawed thought pattern to want to snatch away the civil liberties of someone who holds racist or radical anti-government views, and thinking that couldn’t also be done to you with the next shift of the political winds. People can hold despicable views — politicizing what thoughts are OK normalizes the continual pushing of the envelope that’s been common since the Twin Towers attack. It’s “the opportunity to target people who you don’t like,” he says.

And I can’t help but think that making the issue of radical violence something that the government needs to fix as a new way for people to make it someone else’s problem. If that law doesn’t pass, things just stay the same. We say, ‘god, why don’t lawmakers do their job?’

But, see, I think that’s a misdirection — putting the onus on powerful people, who benefit from power structures that have just one definition of terrorist. It ignores that radical violence is the end result of the extreme ideas that have crept into our daily lives.

Where, once, conspiracies were stories someone had to seek out, or that came to a person on a flyer at a militia meeting or a gun show, they’re now commonplace in everyone’s home. They come through Facebook feeds, Twitter posts and YouTube videos. And maybe you don’t click on them. You already know they’re crazy. But maybe one of them you do, and so do 1000 other people. A video on guns leads you to a fake news story about firearms regulations, which leads you to Agenda 21, or theories about the New World Order. And maybe something there speaks to a certain pain that feels familiar. You agree just enough — so you post it to Facebook. Your friends like it, and that feels good — so you keep posting things just like it.

And then conspiracy theories aren’t fringe anymore. Online, they become prevailing arguments — things worth entertaining, at the least. They’re noise — noise we’ve all gotten used to drowning out. They’re posts your uncle or your neighbor or brother-in-law is sharing, that your family is liking and re-sharing. And none of those people consider themselves members of the Patriot Movement. They’d never take over a wildlife refuge. They wouldn’t drive away from cops if they got pulled over. But, in daily life, they’re indulging the ideas that have led to instances of violence.

Sometimes those ideas get in the wrong person’s head, and turn violent. And unless it’s directed at you, it feels like someone else’s problem to fix.

It seems like the real battle here is over the narrative. The prize is to get your version of things on top — at the top of politics, at the top of search results — no matter how based in falsehoods and hatred it is.

***

After I found everything in Glenn Jones journal, I called Sheriff Lee, back in Panaca. When we’d sat down in person over the winter, he really couldn’t tell me much about the motives behind the bombing. But as I reported, people kept asking me ‘hey, if you find something out, will you let me know?’ I got the sense they felt a little forgotten — like the biggest thing that had ever happened in their town was the smallest concern to the rest of the world.

Sheriff Lee hadn’t heard of any of the evidence I uncovered — so I read him the entries from Jones’ notebook over the phone.

“My first words are: Wow,” he said, a solemness to his voice I hadn’t heard in any previous interviews I’d had with him. “My second words are: It sure would have been nice to have that shared with another law enforcement entity whose conducting an investigation on this.”

He’s shocked that the target really was supposed to be a BLM office. “And it looks like he had more of an intention than just putting bombs, talking about shooting people,” he says. “This could have been a hell of a lot worse than it was.”

For such a nice guy, Lee sounds pissed — I get the sense he’s not a guy to throw the word “hell” around willy-nilly, too. But I get it: A bomb went off in his tiny town, a place that was always supposed to be this perfect haven of purity in a wild state. And even he can’t give people answers about what happened. The feds never told him.

“Who radicalized him?” he asks.

Glenn Jones said he could have “leveled out” a government building because he believed so much in the story of LaVoy the martyr. He was willing to die for it.

Ultimately he didn’t bomb the BLM. I don’t know why he didn’t carry out his original plan. I don’t know what the FBI knew about him. I do know, though, that during that very same summer, the feds “wanted to push [Keebler] outside his comfort zone to take his temperature” on a bombing… when right here, just a few hours away, Glenn Jones was sitting in an RV making a bomb so large it would shower a town in a mile’s worth of shrapnel.

Lee thinks somebody knew — Panaca’s too damn small for people not to — he thinks they just didn’t say anything, says people might consider it not their business, or figure “nah — not my problem,” he says.

I think until Kevin Harpham’s bomb arrived just down the street from me in Spokane, maybe I was like that, too. Nah, not my problem. Figured domestic terrorists were over there, white supremacists over there.

But now I know, I just wasn’t letting myself see what had always been around me. Until that happened, I think I was trying to protect myself from the from the messy business of dealing with hate, unwilling to acknowledge that white supremacist structures support white people who are willing to be violent in the name of ideology and how those people are rarely called terrorists.

Americans think terrorists are these fictional people streaming over the borders, when in reality, most terrorists are already here — they are white, they are Christian, they were born in America. According to the Anti-Defamation League, 2018 was one of the deadliest years for domestic extremist violence since the Civil Rights era — and almost every attack had some link to a type of right-wing extremism, especially white supremacy. A government assessment of mass attacks in public spaces from that same year also showed that about a third of those attackers believed in a violent ideology — from white supremacy to conspiracy theories, to sovereign citizenry.

But transparency could change how Americans see terrorism. So when instances of violence happen, the government could tell people what homegrown terrorism really looks like. Because every time the feds cover something up, or use questionable tactics, or don’t say anything at all, it hands the Patriot Movement a new victory. It helps them tell their story. The narrative is in their hands. One more thing they could point to and say ‘look, the government always lies to you.’

I think that’s one step in fixing all this, in creating new Patriots — just not the kind in the Patriot Movement.

Maybe real Patriots are the ones who can look at themselves, their own communities, and have some uncomfortable conversations about who they really are. Maybe they’re people who can say something is out of place in their own community.

Like the city workers in Spokane who saw that backpack and trusted their guts to say something, likely saving hundreds of lives.

Or Tanner Rowe and Jay Pounder, who leaked the Biblical Basis for War: two conservative guys who used to work for Matt Shea but weren’t so hypnotized by a belief system that they couldn’t recognize when it was turning into something dangerous.

Or Jesse Johnson, who didn’t turn anyone in, but instead simply turns a cheek again, and again, and again to the people at Marble. Extending a hand out to the people who hurt him, killing them with kindness. Or trying to. They can believe what they want, but he doesn’t have to hate them back.

Because Johnson knows that hate takes work. He was raised in a place where anger and violence were preached as virtues, but grew up to be a man who knows those weren’t the words of God. They were words of people trying to play God.

So each of them took a risk. They all stood up. They all exposed a problem. They stopped living in fear.

They know that in the light, there can be no shadows.

***

Listen to the audio version of this series.

Leah Sottile is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Playboy, California Sunday Magazine, Outside, The Atlantic and Vice.

Editors: Mike Dang and Kelly Stout Illustrator: Zoë van Dijk Fact checker: Matt Giles Copy editor: Jacob Gross

Special thanks to everyone at Oregon Public Broadcasting.

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Post D: Final Textual Analysis draft

How is Revenge a prominent theme in Carrie and The Woman in Black?

Carrie is a 2013 physiological horror film, directed by Kimberly Pierce and distributed by Metro Golden Maywer, it is a reimagining of the Stephen King novel of the same name and the 1976 and 2002 film adaptions of the novel. The 2013 version of Carrie tells the same story, only in a more modern setting.

The Woman in Black is a 2012 British-American horror film, released in 2012 by HammerHead Studios; it is an adaption of the 1983 horror novella, of the same name (written by Susan Hill), and the second adaption of the novel, the first being a TV movie, released in 1989.

Carrie stars Chloe Grace Moretz in the titular (protagonist) role, a misfit, and abused teen with the terrifying gift of telekinesis, who seeks a literal bloody revenge when she is pushed too far at her senior prom.

Likewise, The Woman in Black also features a supernatural force seeking vengeance for the premature death of her son, Nathanial.

For both films, revenge is a prominent theme and is the climax of them.

For this essay I will be discussing how revenge is prominent in both films and how it conveyed using the four key micro features of film, and how these key areas contribute to make these scenes all the more dramatic to enhance the audience’s viewing experience.

In Carrie, the titular character slays the majority of the attendees at her prom after being doused in pig’s blood by merciless bullies who label this as a ‘prank’. The use of pig’s blood is symbolic and a foreshadowing element of how Carrie is seen as a pig and as a result, treat like an animal by her peers, both in school and by her own mother.

For example, when Carrie is elected as prom queen, dark foreboding orchestral music (non-diegetic score) under vamps the scene as she and Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort) begin to ascend to the stage, this reflects the malicious intent of Chris and Billy, who are both hiding up in the stage rafters.

This choice of character placement denotes to the audience that the other characters, aside from those who are in on it are blissfully unaware of Chris and Billy’s presence (and as a result, for many, their upcoming deaths).

When Carrie is on stage, the camera briefly frames her, happily smiling in a close up, the length of this shot (about one second) reflects how short lived her happiness is, before the camera cuts to a long shot of the blood being dumped over the unsuspecting Carrie, this shot shows the reactions of both Tommy and Carrie. The camera then also cuts to the same event, repeated again, only this time in a aerial frame.

As Carrie comes to realize that she has been pranked again, the camera zooms in on her now bloodied hands, almost simulating how the prom-goers are looking up and realizing that something is wrong, imitating their point of view. This is also repeated from what is presumably Carrie’s point of view, a Dutch tilt has the camera tilting up from the floor to the audience as they step back, shocked at what has happened to Carrie.

Through this sequence, the lighting was mostly high key, perhaps due to the diegetic spotlights on the stage, however, after the intense close up on Carrie’s eyes as she begins her revenge, the lighting becomes much darker, which reflects how Carrie’s darker and murderous side of her personality is beginning to show. This use of mise-en-scene is also aesthetically beneficial as it allows the fires (started by Carrie destroying the lighting rigs) to stand out more because their ‘prank’ has ignited her thirst for revenge, which though it reduces what the audience can see allows for a more realistic and in turn horrific point of view, as the audience can interpret and imagine just how Carrie is killing each of her classmates, emphasized by the use of asynchronous foley sound, such as smashes and screams.

A stark contrast to this is how The Woman in Black presents it’s theme of revenge, instead of relying mostly on on-screen action, this film relies on a mix of sound and small visual clues, such as set pieces moving slightly across a screen. This helps to build up tension by using physiological effects to make the audience feel as if they are being watched, putting them into a similar scenario that Arthur Kipps (the protagonist) is going through, therefore almost breaking the fourth wall. This means that the movie submits to the convention of stalking during a revenge, this is done to help build up the anticipation for the penultimate revenge, and is also done so that the spectre can intimidate Arthur as well as the audience, thus she assures her dominance over Arthur, almost telling him that hshe is going to ‘get him’ in a subliminal manner.

One way in which this is emphasized in this film is through the use of lighting. In one of the scenes where Arthur hears a noise coming from somewhere in Eel Marsh House (asynchronous diegetic sound), he rushes up to the source of the noise, gripping a candle due to the low key lighting in the room, whilst being framed in a mid-shot. This stylistic choice was made to not only emphasize the historical time frame of the story, but also to help build a somewhat daunting, spooky and dangerous atmosphere. Making the audience feel as of they are also being stalked by her, reflecting Arthur’s fears and exhillerence.

The audience can connote that Arthur’s candle (a prop) is not only to aid him to see in the dimly lit house, but perhaps to also deter the specter that only the audience know is indeed stalking him, this links in with the secondary theme of religious imagery as well as the primary theme of revenge, as he white color of the candle connotes purity, peace and innocence, a stark contrast of Jeanette’s evil, unnatural and vengeful personality, white is also considered by many people to be a godly colour, whereas black, the colour Jeanette is dressed in is considered to be dark and demonic.

Much like Carrie, the antagonist’s penultimate revenge occurs right at the end of the film, when everything was supposed to be restored back to normal. This plot twist shows us the death of Arthur and his son, once again at the hands of Jeanette. During this scene, Arthur and Sam’s dialogue fades away as Joseph begins to become distracted and eventually spots the Woman, this puts the audience in the shoes of Joseph as he mindlessly walks towards the train tracks in a suicidal trance. In the ‘run up’ to this scene, we see Joseph framed in a mid-shot with a shallow field of depth, which creates an almost bokeh like image due to the blurred station lights behind him. Because Joseph is the principle focus of this shot, it can be connoted that this shot is from the point of view of the Woman herself as she plots her final revenge, by killing he protagonist and his child.

A long shot is also used to show Joseph standing on the train tracks after being hypnotized by the Woman, his is effective as in shows how tiny Joseph is in proportion to the tracks and further reinforces the fact that he is a child, making this scene all the more unsettling, due to the fact that it isn’t until Arthur notices the missing grip on his hand that his son is actually in grave danger, as he rushes to save him, but is still too late. Their deaths however, are not shown, only the aftermath, such as Sam’s horrified reaction (close up) and his point of view as the train goes by in slow motion, revealing the ghosts- though perhaps hallucinogenic victims of Jeanette, staring at him through the train windows on the opposite window. This scene is mostly silent aside from the ambient sound of the train going past Sam as well as grainy, somewhat demonic and iconic noises that resemble some kind of human scream, only heavily distorted.

The fact that Sam sees his and visibly reacts with horror connotes that he has seen the ghosts as well as Arthur’s death and judging by his physical reaction, that the event will haunt him, for the rest of his life, this links in with the interweaving storyline that his wife knows of the Jeanette’s existence (due to her son presumably) being killed by her, but was deemed as mentally insane and was often chloroformed whenever she’d have a fit or an episode, regarding her existence.

However, the aforementioned belief of her existence is a crucial yet subtle part of the story, she carves a crude sketch of a woman hanging herself; which is later hallucinated by Arthur himself and is revealed to be the way that Jenette actually died after Natheniel (her son, whom she is avenging) died after drowning, which is also in turn how Elisabeth and Sam’s son actually died.

This contrasts with Carrie because in Carrie, she only seeks her revenge at the end and is a human being, (granted with the gift of telekinesis) whereas Jeanette is a former human turned spirit, who seeks her revenge throughout the entire length of the film but remains largely unseen, much like an ominous presence, mirroring how Jeanette cannot usually be seen by adults, but mainly only by young children, who always die after spotting her,

The main theme the of The Woman in Black is revenge, and very much like Carrie, also has visual motifs of religion and supernatural enties/powers and death,

Both of these films adhere to common conventions found in horror movies, such as heavy orchestral scored music, that will often plunge into silence and from there rely solely on sound effects, often due to the fact that hearing a sound alone is frightening due to the fact that in horror movies, it shouldn’t normally be occurring in a normal situation,

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lodelss · 5 years

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Bundyville: The Remnant, Chapter Five: The Remnant

Leah Sottile | Longreads | July 2019 | 45 minutes (9,790 words)

Part 5 of 5 of Bundyville: The Remnant, season two of Bundyville, a series and podcast from Longreads and OPB. Catch up on season one of Bundyville here.

Keep the characters of Bundyville: The Remnant straight with this character list.

At the end, when it was all down on paper, there they are smiling wide for a picture — as if someone had said “say cheese” when they took it — and all fifteen men signed their names.

Within a week of living at Marble, Jesse Johnson says he and one of his brothers “made a pact that we were leaving as soon as we were old enough.”

In May, a Colville man expressed concern in the paper: “We would love to have our fears allayed,” he wrote of the Byrds. “But the trail back to Pete Peters appears to be pretty warm.”

The pulpit too, was Barry Byrd’s megaphone for talk of a country ruled by Biblical law, of the sins of the government, about the entire reason Marble was here at all.

***

Back in 1988, when the Byrds’ band was on tour, Anne Byrd’s own brothers, too, were positioning themselves as chosen ones.

The Bullas were a family of prophets. It was as if they believed their ears were calibrated to pick up the unique pitch of the Lord’s voice.

“[Anne] always felt that she had to be in competition with me. And since I’m receiving revelations, then she’s got to receive revelations, too,” he says, “You see what I’m saying?”

***

He declined to comment further. He is “too busy with positive work for the Kingdom.”

***

Illustration by Zoë van Dijk

“Were they right?” I ask.

Trump is, potentially, “bringing the apocalypse,” he says. “They definitely have thought the world was ending a few times and were super excited about it.”

***

When we pull under the gates of Marble, there’s not a person to be seen. Up ahead there’s a street sign: “Liberty Way,” it reads. There are signs for a bunkhouse, a hitching post.

He says he figures if he’s nicer than anyone here, no one can hate him anymore — no matter what the Byrds say.

II.

In January 2011, I thought of that conversation with that girl again.

Five years later, on another cold January morning, another explosive event occurred in my backyard. By then I was in Oregon, back in my hometown.

My editor at the Washington Post asked if I could help with coverage. My life hasn’t been the same since.

Kickstart your weekend reading by getting the week’s best Longreads delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.

III.

In late 2016, I started asking people about the bombing in Panaca — a thing I’d read about, but never heard much about what happened. Finally, in May of 2019, I got some answers.

He had flipped the page, and written it again: “This is for the murder of LaVoy Finicum and all the other Americans who have died for freedom.”

He’d done it a third time, and had written the same words.

Illustration by Zoë van Dijk

But two departments had told me the FBI had taken everything over. I knew it was an investigation — wasn’t it? Still, no comment.

On a rainy Saturday, two weeks later, a CD filled with photos arrived in my mailbox.

I kept flipping through the photos again and again, trying to absorb what story they told about Jones. I did it again: dirty trailer, no food, handwritten notes, stacks of materials.

It was a letter — a letter written to Josh Cluff, dated July 3, 2016.

Hay Stoupid [sic] —

Remember the $8,000-$10,000 I needed?

I could have leveled out the whole BLM Building — But, NO, you had to get greedy and not pay back any of the $60,000 you borrowed.

Fuck You, Josh.

Glenn

I wish I had 2 Bombs. You would [illegible]

But the thing was, ten days later, he had two bombs. He delivered them to Cluff’s house, and told his wife and children to leave before they went off.

But it really was her ex-husband. And I asked her why she thought Jones changed.

But someone, she says, along the way must have gotten to him. Put an idea into his head.

***

Adam Sommerstein, who used to be an analyst with the FBI, told me, “that is a particular phenomena I have never seen in either the Patriot movement or the overall right-wing terror movement.”

Sometimes those ideas get in the wrong person’s head, and turn violent. And unless it’s directed at you, it feels like someone else’s problem to fix.

***

Sheriff Lee hadn’t heard of any of the evidence I uncovered — so I read him the entries from Jones’ notebook over the phone.

“Who radicalized him?” he asks.

Glenn Jones said he could have “leveled out” a government building because he believed so much in the story of LaVoy the martyr. He was willing to die for it.

I think that’s one step in fixing all this, in creating new Patriots — just not the kind in the Patriot Movement.

Like the city workers in Spokane who saw that backpack and trusted their guts to say something, likely saving hundreds of lives.

So each of them took a risk. They all stood up. They all exposed a problem. They stopped living in fear.

They know that in the light, there can be no shadows.

***

Listen to the audio version of this series.

Leah Sottile is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Playboy, California Sunday Magazine, Outside, The Atlantic and Vice.

Editors: Mike Dang and Kelly Stout Illustrator: Zoë van Dijk Fact checker: Matt Giles Copy editor: Jacob Gross

Special thanks to everyone at Oregon Public Broadcasting.

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