My Ex’s Conspiracy Theorist Jungle-Living Uncle
There are a lot of things I don’t miss about one of my exes. However, there’s one thing I do, and that happened to be hanging out with his uncle.
My ex’s uncle was a reedy, fuzzy, unwashed recluse that lived in the middle of the jungle north of Nambucca, Australia. I don’t know exactly what the place is called because it’s off the grid and has no real name, and I still have lingering trauma from the terrifying drive to and from his house.
This was a man who understood that chem trails were real, crystals could talk, music at certain frequencies could induce psychic visions, and that he didn’t mind living amongst giant carnivorous goanas with no indoor plumbing. I have no doubt that he may have been mildly schizophrenic, which only made hanging out with him that much more fun and interesting. I love hanging out with schizophrenics and have spent years as a supporter of an online support group for them. People with schizophrenia are not scary; they’re absolutely fascinating to talk to. I have never been more captivated or engaged in a conversation than I have with schizophrenic people. My dad was schizophrenic, and I’ve never loved anyone more. Even when the symptoms scared him, which happened sometimes, all I wanted to do was listen.
My ex’s uncle was probably the most fascinating and fun character of a man I’ve ever met and still struggle to believe the day I spent at his house wasn’t some kind of psychedelic trip I had back in my apartment in Sydney. It was the middle of November and the heat and humidity was something that even the most seasoned of Floridians would’ve balked at. The kicker? It was a 6 hour drive and my ex’s janky old car’s air conditioning was broken. It was at least 104F (40C) the entire ride, outside. I felt like I had a stamina bar from a survival video game and it was a race to get from rest stop to rest stop to find air conditioning before I got heat stroke.
To get to his house, we had to switch cars to a 4-wheeled SUV. It was the most harrowing 45 minutes in my life as we had to slowly drive along a rail-thin, dirt path cut into a ravine so steep it may as well have been a cliff. My ex was not helping by telling me about the sheer number of deaths that had occurred in his living memory alone from people rolling down the ravine, which was hundreds of feet deep. (Seriously Australians, I know hazing the Americans is fun, but please you live in a land of venom, death, and a simmering disregard for all temporal consequence. Be gentle with us when we’re already shitting ourselves.)
But the view was breathtaking. It was like walking into an episode of Planet Earth. There were vast, green fields that serves as pastures for small farmers with horses and sheep - lamb being a very popular export - between vast expanses of steaming rainforest. The sounds during the day were indescribable. After we got to the end of me Staring Death In The Face For 45 Minutes and I was able to get my shit together, I understood why his uncle wanted to live there.
His house is set on stilts on an almost 45 degree angle on a hill in a clearing in the forest. If you like cottagecore, you should’ve seen this place. He had his own little hydroelectric generator that pumped water and electricity to his house. He had wifi somehow. I don’t know how. The fact that he casually offered me weed growing in a pot on his front porch before my foot touched the ground already had me comfortable with not thinking too hard.
He lived off the land and occasional trips into a town so tiny that you could stand on the top of the decline where the “Welcome To” sign was and see straight down to the “Now Leaving” sign. It was a microscopic little town of hardened badasses that spat in the Grim Reaper’s face on a daily basis. In his house, there were quartz crystals wedged into every conceivable nook and cranny, and he had a boombox from the 90′s playing low, drowning music at a specific frequency he assured me would assist in opening my Third Eye.
I assured him that every eye I had was pretty fucking wide open at that point.
He explained to me his distaste for chem trails, and I nodded along. He made me a cup of tea from a tin kettle over an open-propane burner that fueled his stove and we sat together on a bench on his fenced porch watching the cockatoos and kookaburras flying over us. Inevitably, because I had already come perilously close to wetting myself just in getting there, I expressed a need to use the restroom.
“Oh, well, you’ve got two options. Ya can go around the corner or in the river, but there are more biting flies by the river.”
“Great.” Fortunately, the hill his house was set on was so remote that it was easy for me to find a hiding spot to squat in around the corner. I didn’t want to know where he got the fertilizer for his greenhouse from.
After doing my business, I came back and we resumed chatting. He was telling me about how the wooden tool shed across from the house had once been his house, because he’d built the house with his bare hands while living out of a shack no larger than 9′x6′.
As I’m marveling at the sheer incalculable mass of this delightful madman’s testicles, I hear a rustling from the bushes.
The biggest goana I have ever seen in my life (meaning the only goana) crept out from the underbrush directly from where I’d just taken a leak. It crawled up the stoop and stared at me, forked tongue flicking as it stared at me and considered me.
My ex’s uncle grinned from ear to fucking ear while I realized that I was sitting on the hill I was literally going to die on. I froze as this gigantic, toothy lizard looked me dead in the eye, and then noticed a kookaburra in a nearby tree and decided I wasn’t worth it.
Suddenly, I feel a metal cylinder in my lap.
This man has placed a 12 gauge shotgun in my lap. “Don’t be scared! They’re just looking for birds this time of year.”
“You... can have that here?” I may be American and I may live in a swamp, but I’ve never handled guns before. I’ve never needed to. And then there was the matter that I had been convinced that Australia had banned firearms to civilians.
“I use it to protect the cockatoo chicks! They’re rare out here!” he explained, constantly chipper about the entire thing as he took the gun away and set it aside. He explained to me that a flock of a rare, endangered species of cockatoo lived in the trees around where we were sitting, and he had a permit for a shotgun in order to protect himself from exactly what just happened 2 minutes before.
Meanwhile, my ex is casually slapping my arms and legs to keep biting flies the size of quarters from making me cry for my mother, stunning them, tying a strand of hair around them, and then flinging them around like they were tiny dogs on leashes, and explaining that that’s what kids out there did for fun.
I prayed to Steve Irwin for strength. That explained Crocodile Hunter.
His uncle decides it’s time for us to have some fun and leads us away from the relative safety of his house and down to the shallows of the river we’d driven over to get there. He proceeded to teach me to catch frogs until dusk.
He brought us back to his house, and when I explained to him that I was a Bandrui and that magpies were a major spirit animal in my work in my faith, he told me to wait where I was standing and disappeared into the upstairs of his house I never got to see. He returned with a bundle of feathers. Including a tailfeather from the black-and-yellow, endangered cockatoos he had collected.
“Take them,” he said, practically shoving them into my arms while I had to take my jaw off the floor.
“What?! They’re rare! I can’t pay you!” I was shocked.
But he insisted. “No. You have important work to do. Take them.” He was so confident that I had to wonder if he knew something more than I did, and so I thanked him gratuitously. I still have his bundle of feathers to this day.
“Time for you to get back!” he abruptly pronounced as the sky started to turn pink.
“Huh?” I had no idea why he was insisting on it, but he sounded like he was confident of something.
“You’ll see!” he replied with another grin, and waved as we drove off with the sun going down.
The drive back meant another 45 minutes on the Death Road. In the dark.
That was how I discovered that, in the jungle when the sun goes down, millions of tree frogs migrate down the Death Slope. One jumped down my boobs. Getting back to where we were staying, I almost walked face-first into a Golden Orbweaver Spider, and decided I missed Bigfoot and the innocuous red eyes in the dark. At least they kept their distance.
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So I've been wondering about one particuar point on the "Jiang Cheng marriage recquirement" list and it's the one about low cultivation.
Now on its face, except for the "must be nice to jin ling" point, the whole thing just looks like the most standard list of "ideal wife characteristics under a patriarchal society." naturally beautiful, graceful and obedient, coming from a good family, voice not too loud, etc. This leads to either the interpretation that jiang cheng really wants that (doubt dot png) or just... put all the most stereotypical things on a list even though that's not what he really wants.
In that context "cultivation must not be too high" sounds like a typical "men are scared of women who are smarter/stronger" thing. you know, the dudes who feel 'intimidated' when their wife or girlfriend makes more money than them.
...Except wasn't Yanli openly mocked for her low cultivation? Like, wasn't one of the reasons Jin Zixuan was such an ass to her initially because he shallowly assumed her lower cultivation made her an unworthy marriage candidate? Jin Guangshan may hate women who can read but society overal doesn't give the impression that high cultivation in women is seen as something undesirable. I mean... a wife that never looks like she's over 20 even as she starts aging? yeah I have no problem believing a misogynistic society is okay with high cultivation.
So if it's not there just to fit the stereotypical standard of an ideal wife...
Jiang Cheng, are you just describing your sister?
LIke?? Every single point on this list applies to Yanli. All of them. I don't mean this in a freudian incest-y way but in a "jiang cheng are you so unaware of what you want in a partner you just took the only woman you've had an unambiguously good relationship with and hoped no one would notice???" way. Does he know the difference in what you should like about your sister and what you should like in a spouse? Is he even aware he's doing this? Jiang Cheng answer meeeee.
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It still amazes me the number of people who see the juxtaposition between Nami and Usopp during Wano and their fight against Ulti as "Nami's devotion to Luffy is unmatched, unlike Usopp's" when she isn't able to say he won't be the king of the pirates but Usopp is telling her to lie.
I think most people don't have in mind, either, that Usopp isn't the one being directly asked. He is looking out for Nami and begging her to lie to keep her alive because he is scared to death they might lose her for something as insignificant as lying. For him, lying is a form of survival and it is not that big of a deal because he trusts Luffy enough to tell Nami to lie about her feelings. It is something that will only stay between them because he knows it is better to lie than to die and Luffy would want it that way too.
And that doesn't mean he isn't loyal to Luffy or his dream. He is just looking out for Nami's safety. And as I said-- He isn't being asked directly, either. It is easier to tell others to lie about something of the sort than to do it yourself, and if the roles were reversed I personally think he'd have the most awful of times with it too.
Nami refuses to say Luffy won't become the king of the pirates because for her, even if lying has gotten her out of messes, she puts her trust and loyalty in Luffy before her own instincts of survival because lying is what got her to push them away when they first met and this is the one thing she can't lie about because it would hurt more than death.
Then again, I think she would do the same exact thing Usopp did if she wasn't being the one asked. It is the whole point of the scene, actually. They both know the most rational thing is to lie so the one witnessing the scene will always be cold-headed about it, but the one having to lie is the one suffering the bitter realization of how lying about this and saying it out loud is way harder than it seems from an outsider's perspective.
So I am tired of seeing people criticizing Usopp for his decision during the fight against Ulti as if it were that easy for him to see Nami being about to get killed if she doesn't lie. Sorry for the guy to actually want to protect the people he loves instead of letting her be reckless and basically kill herself freely for telling a truth even Luffy would tell her to lie about if it meant living.
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I finally finished reading the fourth volume of svsss in full, and thing is--the first time through I only read the bingqiu content because I was ravenous for more of their happy ending.
Turns out that was a perilous mistake.
Because I started reading the airplane extras. And I swear to god. MXTX is trying to kill me
What do you MEAN demon lord Binghe was sitting on his big fucking throne. All stoic and forbidding. Surrounded by his demon generals who don't know shit about human courtship. Asking them what he should do, fully demoralized by constant rejections from sqq, only to have airplane tell him to act more pathetic and needy. Which is already hysterically funny and insane, UNTIL LBH'S RESPONSE IS THIS, KILLING ME INSTANTLY:
LUO BINGHE. WHY DOES HE SAY IT LIKE: "I already tried that, didn't work--nothing works :/ not mean, not maidenly, not housewife, not spicy, not capable disciple. Is doubling down on clingy really all it will take? What's a born hater with only one love in his life to do????"
The dichotomy of him sitting there like 'how can I reach the unfathomable depths of shizun's heart?' A HEART HE'S ALREADY WON OVER, MIND and then in the Holy Mausoleum solving the puzzle without blinking and being like 'oh yeah you just have to hit the acupoints, no sweat.' Literally the comedy writes itself I'm so--
How am I supposed to be normal about this. MXTX understands the juicy quintessential queer joy of a person with the world's power at their fingertips wishing only for love. Willing to do anything to earn that love, when unbeknownst to them it's already been freely given. Totally not screaming and yelling and clawing at the walls
And that's not even touching airplane's uproarious account of events. The way he's like 'lol what's next, lbh and sqq are best friends now? smfh' only to see lbh TACKLE SQQ LOVINGLY. FOR SQQ TO BE BASHFUL ABOUT IT BUT SO SO FOND OF THE LITTLE SCAMP. This when we've been experiencing sqq's constant inner monologue of 'I'm so cool and so dignified about my role, truly the epitome of propriety and poser-level fortitude.' Meanwhile, in their universe:
Airplane constantly flaming???? Sqq and lbh in his observations????? His absolute bewilderment and confusion????? Legendary. No notes every single second of this shit was hilarious.
Airplane's comment that sqq + older adolescent lbh traveling together was just watching a couple in their honeymoon phase. OR the fact that lbh is exceedingly petty and refuses to share their food in the wake of airplane's interruption of their time together, until sqq relents sheepishly and insists airplane eat what's left (ONLY AFTER PLACATING LBH WITH MORE FOOD FROM HIS PLATE, SOBBING)
Watching airplane salivate over Mobei-Jun and acting like that's totally normal behavior. Finding out mbj and airplane got together first. Finding out sqq encouraged airplane. LIKE THIS. WHILE HE IS STILL IN DENIAL ABOUT HIS OWN FEELINGS:
Mobei-jun clearly thinking their arrangement is a forever thing, heartbroken his human abandoned him with all the hapless fury of a scorned wife swept away by false promises of fidelity. Airplane writing demons to be the type to beat up their crush lovingly and still unable to connect the dots about mbj's feelings. Mbj letting him go and respecting his wishes, only relenting when there's indication airplane was poorly processing his own feelings and didn't actually want to leave. Mbj caring for him and listening to him as soon as airplane voices what he needs directly and with clarity. None of these gays are functional and it's everything to me
Unrelated, but I physically can't hold this information in anymore:
I'm still reeling from younger lbh having his sexual awakening from the image of sqq wrapped in the immortal binding cables. Condemn me as you like he was so, so real for that.
And no I will not be taking any comments about how luo bingge couldn't bear to see luo binghe cherished in ways he never got to have and all the haunting implications of that. I will also not be taking any comments about luo binghe's instinct to look for sqq in that alternate universe, only to be shaken to the very core to be unable to find his shizun anywhere. The unspeakable and latent horror of his relentless mind likely piecing together what happened, but unable to say it; to suspect what is true, and live with the harrowing confusion of his double's actions. To blame himself, to assume that he had let his anger get the better of him in that world and result in unspeakable folly...
I also refuse to talk about how heartrending it is to hear Tianlang-jun weakly say "In the end, I really can't bring myself to hate humans." The implication that the foolishness of that hope and bright-eyed fondness--the very thing that put him through such unspeakable agony--couldn't be beaten out of him entirely. To discover that his faith in Su Xiyan hadn't been misplaced, to the contrary: his beloved hadn't scorned him at all, but rather fought to the miserable end to protect the fruition of their genuine feelings of love when she couldn't protect tlj or herself.
How MXTX has sqq deliberately draw parallels between their situation and that of ygy+sj and tlj+sx; desperately wishing it might not be too late for them. The concept of breaking cycles of abuse and harm pervasive throughout the newly devised story, how it evolves for the better only when love takes the place of power, pride, and domination. How the moment sqq chooses vulnerability instead of saving face, the genre shifts to the so-called "cringe" girly genre where most if not every character is more fulfilled, more true to themselves. How the "male-oriented" former genre was aimlessly sensationalized and sexualized, how it was a sustained performance of aspirational toxic masculinity. How men objectify other men without end. All of the unspoken gendered implications that come with that.
Anyways. Going to go put my head in a sandbox and try to process everything I just witnessed because even a second reading is not enough to find a modicum of closure.
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