#it's the citations that really sells this
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#it's the citations that really sells this#love him#daily kafka#franz kafka#franz kafka wikipedia page#other
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2024 Book Review #10 – The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
I read A Deadly Education last year and quite enjoyed it (and Novik’s unrelated Spinning Silver is just one of my favourite low fantasy books full stop so she has quite a bit of my trust), so I finally got around to putting in a hold request for the sequel. Broadening your horizons and reading outside your comfort zone means swimming through 400 pages of YA a couple times a year, right? Anyway, despite only barely remembering who anyone but El and Orion were when I went into this, was a fun read!
The book picks up more or less directly where A Deadly Education stops – with the horrible murderous monster-infested extradimensional wizard high school’s cleansing machinery repaired for the first time in generations, and the place therefor incredibly less monster-infested than previously. El, prophesied future dark lady of the apocalypse with a savant’s talent for specifically the sort of magic you cast after cackling and before someone puts a sword in you, doesn’t get to enjoy that much – her senior year seems destined to be spent being the target of just about every monster that’s left. Eventually you really have to wonder if the school is trying to kill you – and that question is where the plot really starts to go off.
So I said it before, but this is very much YA. I don’t mean that as an insult, or even a marker of quality, just that it’s a book from the perspective of a 17 year old looking down the end of high school and clearly written to provide a relatable emotional reality for an assumed audience of the same. So El sometimes acts like a cartoon character, and is pathologically incapable of expressing her emotions coherently or expressing affection for the guy she likes in any sane manner, and is far more blase about murder attempts and soul-eating monsters than emotionally awkward conversations – but honestly all that just rings as pretty true to life. Deeply aggravating at times, and her internal monologue and all its snark and doublethink does occasionally grate a bit, but overall it really works. She’s just a fun character to spend time in the head of, (and far less irritating in basically every way than she was in the last book. So hey, maturity!).
The emotional beats were all pretty simple and clearly telegraphed, and it isn’t exactly a book that requires you to sit down and ponder deep symbolism or metaphor to comprehend, but the pacing is tight and it’s very readable. The prose isn’t really anything to write home about – especially knowing what Novik can do when she decides to get fancy and show off a bit – but it very clear and just dripping with El’s personality on every page. I read this at the same time as I was picking through an incredibly dense and citation-heavy historical reader, and the contrast made me very appreciative of those virtues.
Character-wise – well, there’s El, and Orion (love interest, single-minded and near divinely-ordained monster hunter, golden boy of the most powerful enclave in the world), and there’s El’s few close friends, and then there’s a cast of dozens of students with maybe one memorable character trait who kind of drift in and out of the narrative as required. The amount of nuance and exploration someone gets drops off dramatically with each step down the list you go. Most of the cast shows up precisely when required and is more or less forgotten about directly afterwards – which does sell this being a school with over a thousand students in it! But the number of characters who really feel real drops off pretty rapidly.
(Also like, I assume it just comes down to social progress in the 2010s coming at you fast, but you really get the sense that at some point between the books getting written the publishers sent down a memo that you were allowed to say queer people existed now.)
Even more than Deadly Education, this is a book without any sort of singular villain, or even really any consistent antagonists. Some of the other students are assholes, sure, but the book’s whole thesis is that no one is that murderous or awful for the sake of it – they are because they’re rats in a cage, convinced that amoral self-interest and husbanding and acquiring every resource they can is the only hope they have of maybe living to see their families again. Offered a chance to do good, to actually change things for the better and help everyone without getting themselves killed in the process, just about everyone takes it. Even the semi-intelligent school itself gets in on it by the end, pressing the senior class to figure something out and make it obsolete – and the whole conflict of the final act is how and whether everyone will.
El and Orion can both kill basically arbitrarily large numbers of monsters (or people), so the monster-killing is never really where the book finds its drama either. I mean, both do a lot of it through the climax, but the actual tension mostly comes down to crowd management and logistics and whether everyone else is as committed to this as the two of them are.
As for what they’re struggling against – so like, this isn’t Divergent, by the standards of the YA I read in high school, the social commentary is both subtle and nuanced. But I mean, it’s also a story where highschool is four years or murder-hell-prison and justified only because it’s barely the lesser of two evils, and also a story where the poor and marginalized are only kept around more-or-less explicitly as ablative bodies for the kids the powers that be care about, with their only hope of good life being so impressive and useful to those kids that they try to bring them along when they ascend back up to the gilded paradise that is their birthright. So like, not that subtle.
As far as teenage romances go (which, for me, really isn’t very fair at all), El and Orion’s was surprisingly tolerable. It helps that they’re both actually deeply profoundly weird about it, and also that the book didn’t try to milk any drama out of will-they/won’t-they stuff or a love triangle. The ‘and they have sex for the first time the night before the final climactic struggle where one or both of them could very well die’ did feel right out of an old bioware game, though. (Also I’m just a sucker for tragedy and ironic mirroring/repetition, so the ending was great for me).
Look forward to finishing the series whenever I get around to it sometime in the fall.
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So Anne Boleyn didn't want her nephew Henry Carey at court cause he was supposedly disabled? Just like Gregory, Borman turned a good thing Anne did for her sister into a nasty thing? What evidence does she shows for Henry being disabled, or Anne not wanting him around? And for goodness' sake, isn't it strange that some historians and fiction writers seem to hate Anne (like Borman or Weir) but can't help to end up writing about her, because, let's face it, ANNE BOLEYN SELLS! They must feel so bad for always having to return return to this woman they are so eager to portray as the Worst Human Being Ever.
Literally none, and I'm not even joking. There's no citation, no additional information or details, she doesn't even name this nephew so I don't even know if it's Henry Carey to whom she's referring, or one of the Stafford children (whose existence/survival remains disputed), or even the later Elizabethan priest, George Boleyn, dean of Lichfield, who has been erroneously labeled as the son of Viscount Rochford, George Boleyn(illegitimate at times, by marriage other times), Julia Fox has argued for the likelihood he was some distant Boleyn cousin, and I'm inclined to agree. The claim is dropped into a paragraph about the perils of childbirth to contextualize Anne's own potential fears as if from the sky:
Worse still, Anne's closest female relations had suffered an unfortunate history in this respect. Her mother had lost several babies in infancy and her sister, Mary, had borne a son with mental disabilities whom Anne would not suffer to be at court. But in her favour was the fact that her health was generally considered good, and as one observer remarked, she seemed 'likely enough to bear children.' --Elizabeth's Women, Tracy Borman
So...yeah, if who she meant here was Henry Carey, I have no idea what she's talking about, A, and B, this is the sole* "factoid" she chose to mention about their relationship? Not that she had wardship of him, not that she arranged for him to receive his education from the scholar she patronized, Nicholas Bourbon, alongside Henry Norris (the younger), Henry Dudley, and the son of Nicholas Harvey, her 'strong partisan' and the husband of her great friend, Bridget Wingfield...all signs which point to Carey being in Anne's favour. I have no idea if he was ever at court, but if there's no record of him at court while Anne was queen, does it not seem more plausible to attribute this to A) how brief that time was and/or B) that his mother was banished from court due to the marriage she had made without royal permission?
I just don't...know, with Borman, really? It'd be interesting to have the unedited interview footage from BSR because I was surprised how overall sympathetic she was towards the subject, honestly. And I can't speak to the new book, I haven't read it, but the PR push for it has centered around praise of AB as an individual, as to her character.
For Weir, I mean, she received the deal to do that fictionalized serial on the six Queens of Henry VIII, of course AB had to be included. If I'm being perfectly honest, I feel like everything she has done since Lady in the Tower has had this weird self-animus pushing behind it, guilt over having further popularized a figure she hates so implacably. Her original view ("a total bitch...she alienated so many people that that must be true") has been evident in all her subsequent works and interviews; from claiming in one in 2017 that there exists a letter extant in AB's own handwriting where she orders Lady Shelton to beat her stepdaughter (there isn't), to depicting AB in her latest novel as having been so ugly and "painfully thin" naked that it was an instant boner-killer for her poorest little meow-meow.
*I believe other sections of this book are dedicated to the Careys so hopefully she expands later...I can't remember if she does. So far in my current read she has not mentioned the wardship and it was in 1528 and the book is now in 1533, so....
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Book Review 7/60
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
I had vague memories of this book from when my wife had to read it for school (spoilers: she hated it) and then it turned up in a stack to sell at a used bookstore and I went, hey, why not.
Spoilers: I hated it.
It gets 2 stars for not being ATROCIOUSLY written and for having a handful of compelling points buried in a lot of trash.
Problems:
It's written in a casual tone full of exaggerations for dramatic effect--which whatever, but when the things he's exaggerating are commonly misunderstood scientific principles and he makes no real effort to clarify what actually happens in evolution by natural vs artificial selection... Hm.
He thinks citations are things that happen to other people, except for one page where there are three citations and the entire rest of the book just gets a list of works consulted by chapter. Good luck.
In MULTIPLE chapters about the ills of factory farming and the current meat & dairy industries in the US he somehow fails to mention that this is a system that developed within his lifetime--factory farming started at all post WW2 and only really kicked into gear in the 50s. Jeremy Bentham didn't say anything about the horrors of industrial slaughter because they post-date him by 150 years. Instead he spends multiple pages on Peter Singer (ugh) and animal rights theory, which does belong in this book but there is a total of one (1) mention of animal welfare. Which is like. Much more up his alley. Bro??
Ties into 2 and 3 but he makes a lot of sweeping statements about animals that are misleading or outright wrong, and the entire basis of the book (that omnivores struggle to decide what food to eat and so need to put a lot of cultural or individual energy into choosing foods) is somewhat undone by common counter examples. He talks a lot about rats (as being like humans, and very smart) and koalas (as picky and very stupid), but 1, we know a fair amount about food-based decision making that does not come up AT ALL and 2, bears will eat trash can lids and are not the brightest bulbs in the bunch. Parrots are exceptionally smart despite being aggressively herbivorous.
2/5
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Hmm found the kahoot song https://youtu.be/XDd9Yb0JvjE?si=pJ8nsFOC6BIuimCt
My god the more I read about the Dahomey..
Hey black activists with your hate boner toward confederate statues and places named after them. Fun fact I lived on Fort Bragg for a few year no black person on the base and around it gave a fuck about the name. And demonized the founding fathers, even though there are several documents pointing out that understood the irony of owning slaves while perching freedom.
But kinda hard to end that while your country is very young. There a reason why modern American culture is heavily industrialized.
Also activists erasing uncle Ben and that black lady from syrup.
Then years later that are going to be articles about how some of the biggest black actors of their times basically made the black equivalent of birth of a nation.
The next generation is going to look at you, because they going to point out how black Americans actvists was filled with much hatred towards white people. That they glorify the people who created their disposa in the first place
that opening like hit be like a train, how good is it I wonder
youtube
The tik tok sound makes me think of those tubes you hit to get a note out of, plastic ones, they're cool. This is actually not bad at all.
Hey black activists with your hate boner toward confederate statues and places named after them. Fun fact I lived on Fort Bragg for a few year no black person on the base and around it gave a fuck about the name. And demonized the founding fathers, even though there are several documents pointing out that understood the irony of owning slaves while perching freedom.
Several of them wanted to free theirs after they died since that was basically the only way it could work but iirc there were some roadblocks
This is a well written answer, got citations and everything, I feel like there's still missing information but you might get something out of it, Washington gets a mention.
Was there a "retirement plan" for old slaves in America? How often would slaves reach old age, anyways?
I do remember reading recently that some actually got to enjoy actual retirement on the dime of their "owner" not sure how widespread that was this piece up here doesn't really go into it too much, but you do get to see some of the, positives is a terrible word but still fitting, so less horrid bits maybe.
Enslavement in the Caribbean, for instance, was much harsher than being more north in the American Colonies. Conditions were so terrible, that slave owners like George Washington used the threat of selling their slaves to owners in the Caribbean against their own slaves because their slaves had heard the horrors of the West Indies. (Washington even did this on several occasions to different slaves.) Also worth noting that only about 6% of all enslaved Africans were sent to the American Colonies, with the majority of the rest heading to the Caribbean and South American colonies.
Worth noting that the average cost of a slave in the US in 1850 was $400, and before anyone asks
People that talk about slaves being murdered for fun confuse me, like yes it likely happened but not much, this will get you a new Kia Rio tho how many people are going to buy something like that just to take it to a demolition derby
Also activists erasing uncle Ben and that black lady from syrup.
It's nice of them to take care of the whitewashig for us, now there's only one Uncle Ben. Aunt Jemima is a tragic loss, but maybe we can salvage it
Jemima Rooper is still around, we could use her (Hex ftw) this is how we heal wounds and atone for the past I hear.
Then years later that are going to be articles about how some of the biggest black actors of their times basically made the black equivalent of birth of a nation.
Go look up what the theology of the nation of islam is. Also I can't think that it could possibly be worse than Battlefield Earth.
Wonder how many favours the screwball crew at scientology hq had to call in to get this one distributed.
The next generation is going to look at you, because they going to point out how black Americans actvists was filled with much hatred towards white people. That they glorify the people who created their disposa in the first place
God I hope so, that would progress beyond my current dreams.
For a little extra fun reading, here's a bit about a indigenous people that the government of Mexico was selling as slaves up into the early 20th century.
one of those weird things even most Mexicans don't know about I don't think
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I need to stop watching this one YouTuber, because every time she makes a video I just get infuriated by the claims she makes and the air of authority with which she makes them. In this particular instance, I'm highly dubious of the claim that adult women calling themselves "girls" is a new thing and that it's always and only driven by a lack of confidence in their own adulthood and/or a fear of ageing.
Like... I remember being a tiny, highly literal autistic child in the 90s and getting Very Annoyed with my mother for saying she was meeting "the girls" (her adult woman friends) or when she'd tell me to give "the girl" at the checkout her loyalty card while she loaded the trolley, because to me a girl was only ever a child and the casual inaccuracy was as infuriating as people calling fully five year old children "babies" (my mother ran a business from home selling baby slings and had been involved in a non-profit centred around breastfeeding and an advocacy/educational group for people who wanted to have home births for most of my childhood, so I knew from babies and someone who was old enough to go to school was no baby in my eyes). This wasn't a high minded objection about women being infantilised or anything, I just hated when people said The Wrong Thing because it confused me and I already was confused enough as it was, lol.
But yeah, it definitely doesn't seem to be a 2010s invention to call women girls in this way and that it's necessarily indicative of a lack of self belief or a Peter Pan syndrome thing? Also, not to be getting too far out of my lane, but it seems to be really... white to me to be like "women have never called themselves girls before and this is a thing we need to be very worried about now that they are suddenly doing it for the very first time!" Like. Girl is AAVE and has been for some time, as far as I can tell. Granted I am a white non-American non-linguist, but I've been exposed to American media for my entire life, and this does not seem remotely new to me. And I also feel like adult women calling themselves and their female peers "girl" is something that's been really normal for a long time in a lot of other cultures beyond Black American culture and my culture tbh, but I don't have citations or anything, so this is mostly just My Opinion based on vibes and impressions.
Ugh. Anyway. I feel like video essayists sometimes just... are wrong. Actually. And I have very strong feelings about people being wrong, lol.
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Raising Prices
So I've fallen upon a claim that states: "Customers purchasing more of a product, means that product can sell for a cheaper price". This has to do with bulk purchasing, and easier money flow within the business entity.
This is one of the reasons behind "Trickle Down economics." It enables them to sell more for less. Though, whether or not they opt to take advantage of that is shady business.
What this means is that high demand forces supply chains to provide more supply, which increases demand on productivity and material acquisition.
Those end points of productivity and material acquisition are some of the worrisome key points we as employees think about, because it often results in an attack on wages first, instead of, utilizing technological advancement and ethical material prospecting.
This may tie in with another concept that says "as the supply of a product dries up, the cost of the remaining supply goes up in price." This happens for multiple reasons, at the end of the day it's to increase the operating budget for as long as possible.
Which is supposed to come with increases on expansion of productivity and material acquisition... Supposedly. Business people could probably tell you that's not always how it works.
What happens, is that sometimes entities decide to increase price in order to increase profit. Despite material and production costs remaining the same. They do this in an effort to expand and grow the business.
What ends up happening many times [citation needed] is that the increase in price, drives less people to purchase them. And they expect that the current customers will continue to purchase the product without going to a cheaper competitor.
Their reasoning is that they are selling the "normal" or "luxury" product, and their competitors are "inferior" products. Per the economic definition, though I'd wager some don't actually *mean* the economic definition.
In some cases this works out. Especially if a product can be resold for at least half of its purchase value at a later date. Retention of value is part of the reason to buy goods after all.
And there's thrift stores and goodwills all over that can make profit on used goods. But that's where it gets tricky; in this day and age, used goods are what we consider "inferior goods". And new goods are our "Normal Goods".
There is no "Luxury" brand, because our current definition of "Luxury" includes things out of reach for a normal person. Like a Yacht, or a house, or a Luxury Vehicle.
Which isn't quite true, because vehicles either drop in price like any other used good, or they are verblan goods. Which only retain their value *because* of the initial sale price, and manufacturing name.
No your Tesla truck will not be a collectors item until 20 years from now. There's really people on the waiting list expecting to resell their Tesla truck at 10x the purchase cost.
I bet a handful of people might even spend that much.
Which is actually a problem for Tesla, because they need feedback on the operation of the Truck in order to improve the quality in the future, but if people don't use them, they can't get that feedback.
And as we've already discussed, Used goods are Inferior, and so using a thing that you buy makes it worthless. So people buying goods as an investment won't use them, because that'd make them worth less.
It reminds of people collecting comic books, that don't realize the only reason golden age comics are so valuable, is because most of them were destroyed due to the war effort requiring the production of paper and cardboard.
Where the f* was I? because I went on such a tangent.
So they raise the prices thinking they're *luxury goods* which might initially look good on paper; less purchases, same profit. But what often happens is it kickstarts a cycle where less and less purchases happen. If you're calling yourself a "luxury product" eventually, people are going to start treating you like one, as they purchase alternatives instead.
Because of that key factor that consumers will purchase less of a luxury product, because of the budget requiring other luxury products.
Like Homes, and vehicles. Necessary Luxuries as opposed to Inferior Luxuries.
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That's fair... hey is it true spiders don't like conkers? Or lavender? 👀
Simple answer:
No.. Not really?
Full answer:
I’m not fully sure. There have been numerous studies on the effects of different scents detracting spiders. But many have had conflicting results. There are SOME that are in full agreement though.
Generally most smells will not repel spiders, conkers I have read do not show signs of really repelling them at all? Though chestnuts have shown some very slight repelling properties in this study I was only able to read the abstract for. That same study however did mention mint oil to be a strong deterrent! I would assume both dude to the potency of the smell and because oils in general are something spiders tend to really not like as it can gunk up their little feets and make it hard for them to climb :( That study also mentioned that lemon oil had no sign of repelling spiders at all.
Some other popular articles I read mentioned that there were no natural remedies to repel spiders from your home, but I would also probably not fully trust them as quite a few were written by spider extermination businesses?? Like.. that had their own chemical sprays meant to kill/repel spiders that they were probably trying to subconsciously advertise… So I wouldn’t fully believe those if I were y’all as they can have a very strong bias XD (for example one claimed that in all studies there were no natural substances that repelled spiders or else they would be using those instead of their products… but then they also never cited the study I mentioned before that talked about how mint oil showed repelling properties, they instead only cited a single article talking about a study where there were no results for other commonly claimed repellents.
Lavender is a tricky one for me as I couldn’t find any studies for you right now talking about experimentation with lavender oil and spiders and the effects of it, but there are many articles and more heavily claiming that yes it is a repellent due to the strong smell. However many of these articles again could have ulterior motives as many were selling essential oils or in their citations were not citing any studies, only other articles that were, you guessed it, also selling essential oils and fragrances..
So.. to summarize. I am not too sure about Lavender oil. If many people say yes, it is a possibility that it does at least have some effect! But conkers have shown little to no signs of doing so.
If you want a repellent that has some evidence of repelling spiders, mint oil may be a good one. But that’s the only one I found that had an actual peer-reviewed study supporting the claim.
#random rambles#ask response#if anyone finds other studies that do show more evidence please link them for me-#I hadn’t really done much research on this topic until just now so I’m sure there are a lot of studies I may have missed#biology
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Fair warning, this chapter is a bit of a doozy. That seems to happen with poor Wolfwood. Also, it sprung into my head fully-formed while writing the LAST Wolfwood chapter, so that was fun. Anyways, AO3 link in a reblog, enjoy the full chapter below, happy Wolfwood Wednesday!
the unknowable tomorrow | a tristamp fanfic
part thirteen: wolfwood
content warnings: religious trauma, psychological abuse, physical abuse/torture, mass murder, gore, displayed corpses, dissociation, guilt/self-loathing, and references to human trafficking
citations: this chapter is based on events described in trigun maximum vol. 12 ch. 6. it also uses a quote from 1x3 of trigun: stampede.
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Wolfwood stepped from darkness into darkness of a different kind.
As his eyes adjusted, he could see he was in some kind of storage room, packed full of odds and ends. He’d think he was in the back room of a general store, but something about it was off. A second look confirmed that none of the clothes had duplicates, none of the bags matched, and the boxes were haphazardly packed with odds and ends. It was either a thieves’ hoard or a scavenger’s hoard, maybe both, all prepped to be sorted and resold to people who didn’t care where their purchases came from. If a portal had taken him here...
Wolfwood started rummaging through the clothes. His fingers glanced over a familiar material. It was hard to see color in the low light, but he knew that coat.
Damn it, Vash.
It took some feeling around the pockets, but eventually, Wolfwood was able to find his lighter. He took the rifle off his back long enough to throw on the coat. It felt perverse to wear it, but he needed to keep his arms free. He grabbed the rifle, clicked the lighter on, and used the dim light to start looking for more of Vash’s things. Vash’s bag, a pair of pants and a shirt that looked like his, a pair of boots that were roughly the same size and look. Various survival supplies that probably didn’t belong to Vash, but weren’t going back to their original owners any time soon anyway. No sign of the pistol, but weapons might be stored in a different place, or taken by the thieves instead of being resold. He'd worry about it later. Wolfwood clicked the lighter off, readied his rifle, and carefully opened the door to the storeroom.
There was a storefront on the other side. It looked like every general store he’d ever been in, but with a strangely abandoned feeling to it. All the shelves were empty, and the roof was partially collapsed, but he could hear voices coming from outside. Wolfwood crept across the room, trying to stay low. The voices grew clearer as he got closer to the door. “…can mock them all you want,” said an immediately familiar one. He sounded hoarse, weak, but it was definitely Vash. “But they’re not the monsters you think they are.”
“Is that so?”
Wolfwood froze. His mouth went dry.
No, no, no.
Wolfwood kept moving, even though his legs felt like they were turning to sludge. The moons were full outside, giving him a clear view of what was happening. He saw Vash, chained up by his flesh and blood arm in the middle of a town square. He was in rough shape: stripped down to his underwear, practically dangling from the handcuffs, prosthetic gone, body covered in bruises. And standing over him, glinting in the moonlight…
Millions Knives, in the flesh.
“These men beat you and left you out here to suffer,” Millions Knives continued. He sounded amused, as if he were talking to a toddler who was doubling down on a really obvious lie. “They intend to sell you into slavery. What is that, if not monstrous behavior? How can you defend this?”
“I’m not defending it,” Vash said. “It’s wrong. But they’re not malicious. Didn’t you see their faces? The Plant building? There was an explosion. She flooded the place with radiation when she died. The town and everyone in it was abandoned. They can’t go anywhere and they don’t have any other way to survive. They have people depending on them, people they need to protect…” Vash glared up at his brother. “…and they wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t crashed those ships.”
Knives’ head tilted. “So, you’re blaming me for this?” he asked. The amusement was gone from his voice. In its place was a deliberate blankness. The sort of calm that never led to anything good. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying you have no right to judge them. No right at all.”
Stop it. Stop talking. You’re just going to make this worse. Wolfwood’s grip on the rifle was so tight that his hands ached. Vash, please, for once, shut up…
Suddenly, he had a terrible thought.
I could end this all right now.
Knives didn’t know he was here. He had the element of surprise. In the back of his mind, Wolfwood remembered that he didn’t believe that Knives was anything close to an angel, that if Vash could bleed so could Knives, that if Vash could be killed, so could Knives. He remembered all the harm that he’d cause so many people, all the lives lost, Vash and the kids and even Wolfwood himself…
I could stop it.
One bullet was all it would take.
He raised the rifle.
Knives didn’t turn around. He had no way of knowing Wolfwood was there. But the second Wolfwood got a clear look at him, he froze. It wasn’t just the sight of a being more powerful than him that did it, wasn’t just the Eye of Michael’s bullshit spreading through his mind and freezing him in place. It was the look in Knives’ eyes as he stared down at Vash. Wolfwood knew that look. Even when it was directed at someone else, it made him want to run and hide.
But still, Vash met Knives’ eyes. Stared up at him in defiance, not fear.
How? How can he do that?
After what felt like an eternity, Millions Knives sighed. “If that’s how you feel, perhaps you haven’t learned.” He turned away. “Rot with these humans, if you’re so convinced they’re not malicious. See how you enjoy their hospitality. We can talk again when I come back for them.”
Those were the words that made Vash’s eyes light up with fear. “Come back for…no. No, Nai, don’t…” He scrambled after Knives until he hit the limits of his restraints. “Please, no!”
“Don’t worry. I won’t let them sell you.”
“That’s not what I mean, Nai, please! You don’t have to do this!”
“Don’t have to keep you safe?” Knives stopped, glanced over his shoulder. “Of course I do. You’re my little brother, after all.”
He kept walking.
“Nai, no! Please…don’t! Don’t!” Vash strained against his restraints. “I don’t want you to do this!”
But it was too late. Millions Knives was gone, disappearing into the shadows of the night. Wolfwood lowered the rifle with a sharp gasp. It felt like a vice had suddenly been removed from his chest.
Stupid, stupid, you should have taken the shot, you should’ve taken the damn shot!
But Wolfwood didn’t have time to berate himself. He had other things to worry about, like the people suddenly running out of nearby buildings to see what Vash was screaming about. “Will you shut the hell up?!” someone snapped.
“Please, you have to run!” Vash begged. “You have to get out of here while you can, he…he’s coming back, he’ll kill everyone here, please!”
Someone scoffed. “He’s lost it already…should we bring him in?”
“After the fight he put up? Nah, let him stay a bit longer. We don’t want any trouble when the merchants come over.”
“You’re not listening to me! You have to think of the kids, you’ve got to…”
“Shut up!” A well-aimed kick made Vash double over with a pained sob. “Quit yelling or we’ll put the gag on!”
“Please,” Vash begged. “Please, you have to go…I don’t want you to die…”
“Right, because the boogeyman’s coming for us.” Another kick. Another sob. “Shut the hell up. Trying to sleep here.”
The figures departed, but Wolfwood stayed rooted in place. Other people were probably awake. Other eyes were probably on Vash. If he wanted to grab him and run, he’d have to wait a bit longer, make sure that the town was quiet again before he made his move.
It hurt, sitting there and listening to Vash’s hoarse sobs instead of helping. But it at least gave Wolfwood time to plan.
He wasn’t sure where they were, but he could make some guesses. If the community had survived this long cut off from most other people, they had to have a water supply nearby. Probably one of the planet’s rare springs or aquifers, since their Plant had died, and one close enough that outsiders wouldn’t risk the residual radiation of the Plant explosion to harvest from it. If he made a break for the water supply, figured out a safe place to stash Vash…that’d be a start. He could improvise from there. He busied himself with sneaking around the store and grabbing a few more empty bottles. They’d need as much water as they could get if they had to keep running.
Assuming Vash could run. Leaving your captives tied up and letting the elements weaken them was a tried-and-true method of pre-breaking people for slavers. Depending on how long he’d been exposed…
You’ll figure it out. You don’t have any choice.
The moons marched across the sky. Eventually, the town felt still again. Even Vash’s weeping had quieted. Wolfwood was still cautious as he made his way out of the building. Vash was slumped against the pole, curled up tightly, his body shaking in the cold night air. He’d been out there a while, if the peeling on his shoulders and his dry lips were anything to go by. Wolfwood carefully brushed his fingers against Vash’s cheeks. Despite his previous sobs, they were completely dry, caked in sand that hadn’t been disturbed by tears any time recently.
Shit. Not good.
Vash shuddered at the touch, flinching away. His eyes took a second to focus. “Nico…?”
“Shh.” Wolfwood looked around. “Hold still, okay? I’m getting you out, but you have to be quiet.” Vash did as he was told, which almost worried Wolfwood as much as how dry he was. Wolfwood picked the handcuff lock in record time, letting Vash slump to the ground. “Can you walk?”
Vash struggled to stand, but quickly slipped. Shit, okay. Plan B. Wolfwood made sure the pack and rifle were secure on his back before scooping Vash up. Vash curled up against him immediately. Wolfwood examined their surroundings. Buildings in various states of disrepair. Rough road cutting up the middle of town. In front of him, a gate leading out into a vast expanse of sands. Behind him, further off, another gate leading out of town, this time to a nearby cliffside.
And if there’s a road leading there, that’s probably where the water is.
Wolfwood adjusted his grip on Vash and started jogging.
No one tried to stop him as they left, so they hadn’t left any guards posted. Probably figured Vash was too broken-down to run or smart enough to realize that running without any supplies was suicide. Fine by Wolfwood; trying to shoot his way out with all this extra cargo would’ve been a pain in the ass. He paced himself best he could, stopping only long enough to re-adjust his hold on Vash or straighten out the pack and the rifle. Vash whined quietly every time Wolfwood had to put him down, and clung desperately to him once he was back up. Whatever fire had driven him to backtalk his brother had bled out of him with his screams, or been kicked out of him by the townsfolk.
And yet he’d still begged Knives not to kill them.
And Knives still left him, Wolfwood thought, suddenly furious. That bastard left his own brother with these people…to what? Teach him a lesson? Because it sure felt like that was what he was doing. Let him suffer a few days, then make him watch as Knives massacred the place. Wolfwood might not have agreed with Vash about whether or not these people were monsters, might not have agreed with him about killing, but what Knives was doing here…
This isn’t about protecting Vash. It’s about sending him a message. He almost growled in frustration. Son of a bitch…
But he had to abandon that line of thinking for now. They were getting close to the cliffs. He had to focus on following the trail up. It was wide enough, well-maintained to allow for water to be moved up and down it, but tripping and falling down it would be embarrassing at best.
Wolfwood kept following the path up the cliffside and into the caves within. The walls were marked with some kind of glowing substance—cultivated fungi, maybe, another sure sign there was water somewhere—that lead them deeper and deeper inside. Eventually, they emerged into a large room, marked by more glowing fungi, a sleeping worm colony, and below all of that…
Water, thank God. An entire spring coming right up from the ground, trickling down into a river leading deeper into the caves. Wolfwood carefully set Vash down and pulled the first water bottle he could get access to out of his pack. In an ideal world, he’d boil it first, but he decided to cross his fingers and hope that it was fresh enough from the source to be clean. Vash needed water now, and he didn’t have anything to burn anyway. He filled up the bottle and brought it back to Vash. “Here…”
He had to help Vash sit up. For a moment, Wolfwood was worried the kid had fallen unconscious, but Vash’s eyes sprung back open the second water touched his lips. Wolfwood went from being worried he wouldn’t be able to get the guy to drink to angling the bottle so he wasn’t drinking so much. “Slowly, slowly…kid, you really can’t be throwing up right now…”
Vash’s hand jerked up, tilting the bottle back down and splashing water over his face and neck. That was fair; some of the burns looked like they stung. Wolfwood moved him closer to the spring and grabbed the first piece of cloth he could find out of the bag. He soaked it in water and draped it over Vash’s shoulders. “There, that better?”
“Mm.” Vash relaxed almost instantly. His next few sips of water weren’t so frantic, and his eyes looked a little clearer when they met Wolfwood’s. “Nico.”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“You came back.”
“’Course I did. Had to get my lighter, didn’t I?” Wolfwood smiled gently, resting his hand against Vash’s forehead. He felt hot. Even with how cold the night was, he felt hot. “How long did they have you out there?”
“Couple days…sun’s…bright…is that my…?”
“Yeah, I know, it looks like shit on me.” Wolfwood shrugged off the jacket and lay it down next to Vash. “But I couldn’t just leave it there. Do you know where they took your arm?”
Vash shook his head. “Brad’s gonna kill me,” he mumbled.
“If Brad’s an even halfway decent man, he’ll just be happy you’re alive. Maybe wait a week to kill you.”
Vash nodded. His eyes suddenly grew frantic and scared again. “My brother…Nai, he…”
“I know. I saw him.” His skin still crawled at the memory. “Don’t worry, we’ll be long gone before he gets back.”
“But he’ll kill them. I know he will. He can do it. I’ve…heard stories, and after the Fall, I…” Vash struggled to sit on his own. “I have to warn them…”
“You already tried. Vash…” Wolfwood caught his shoulder. “You can barely walk. I had to carry you up here.”
“I…” Vash tried again, but had to lie back down just as quickly. His face crumpled, but he still didn’t have enough water in him to shed actual tears. “I can’t let them die. I can’t…”
“You’re not letting them die. Hey, look at me.” Wolfwood carefully tilted Vash’s face towards him. “You tried. If they don’t want to listen, that’s on them.” Wolfwood didn’t point out the obvious: that Vash shouldn’t care so much about people who hurt him so badly, that maybe this would teach them that if you fucked around, you’d find out one day. He knew what Vash’s response would be, and he didn’t especially want to go through that whole conversation again. “And whatever Nai’s going to do, it’s not your fault.”
A pained noise tore out of Vash, almost like the noise he’d made when he’d been kicked. He curled up towards Wolfwood. Wolfwood was worried if he hugged him, he’d just drive his body temperature back up, so instead he rested his forehead against Vash’s.
It was still too warm.
“We’ve gotta get you cooled off,” Wolfwood said. “Here…”
He pumped as much water into Vash as he could, carefully doused his head, re-wet the cloth around his neck. He examined Vash’s injuries while he was at it. Bruises, scrapes, sunburn. Nothing too deep, nothing that would kill him any time soon, and Vash claimed that none of his bones felt broken. Could be worse.
But he already had some scars hiding among the bruises. The bullet wound Wolfwood had treated last time had left a thin white line along his leg. Wolfwood felt his throat close up at the sight, but he tried not to get too visibly angry. Vash needed to rest. Them having the same old debate wasn’t resting.
Slowly, Vash’s skin cooled. The feverish look faded from his eyes.
The pain didn’t.
“We should get out of here,” Wolfwood said quietly. “They’ll notice you’re gone eventually and this is probably gonna be one of the first places they look.” There were other branching tunnels moving off from this area; all he had to do was make them hard enough to find that it wasn’t worth looking. “Can you walk, or do you need me to carry you?”
“I’ll…I’ll try…” Vash sat up slowly. He was able to make it upright on his own power, though Wolfwood had to help him stand and support him as he walked. They moved slowly through the first random tunnel they could find. Wolfwood carefully tracked the twists and turns until they hit a dead end. The space was larger, with a crevice that overlooked the space leading back to the town. Technically, they were cornered, but it was a convenient sniper post. Wolfwood decided to take the risk and helped Vash sit back down. “You sleep,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”
Vash hummed quietly and leaned against Wolfwood. His hand tightly gripped Wolfwood’s sleeve. That would slow Wolfwood down if it came to a firefight, but Wolfwood couldn’t bring himself to make Vash let go.
Afte the night he’d had, he deserved some comfort.
.
By sunrise, he had a plan, or at least a workable half-plan.
Step One: grill Vash about the town once he was awake. Did they have any working transport, any thoma, food or ammo stashes. Did he know where his pistol and arm might be. The answers would help him shape his mental shopping list.
Step Two: Lay low for the day. Let Vash get his strength up. Catch some worms, fill up the water bottles.
Step Three: Once it got dark, make their way into town, grab what they could for supplies.
Step Four: Run and don’t look back.
There were a lot of holes, a lot of places things could go wrong, but it would have to do for now. Unfortunately, once the plan was squared away, he didn’t have much else to think about except what he’d seen that night. The conversation between Vash and Knives specifically.
It infuriated him, pissed him off in a way that made him want to get violent. He didn’t agree with Vash about a lot, he’d argue with the man until he was blue in the face, but he could never imagine just leaving Vash so casually. If he ever treated any of the littles that way…if he ever treated Livio that way…
I’d deserve worse than a bullet. Worse than any kind of death.
Wolfwood knew how messed up people could be. This was the first time he couldn’t fully grasp the level of cruelty he was faced with.
He’s your brother. How could you? Wolfwood glanced down aft Vash, still sound asleep. Still clinging to Wolfwood’s sleeve. He loves you more than you deserve. Isn’t that enough? What’s the end goal, here?
To break him, probably. And the sick part was, Wolfwood knew it wouldn’t work, at least not the way Knives wanted it to. It didn’t matter how many times Knives left Vash to humanity’s cruelty; Vash would never give up on them. He’d never give up on Knives, either, no matter how incompatible those two things were.
Something had to give. Vash would have to pick a side, eventually. Wolfwood just wasn’t sure which side was worse.
The rising sun sent rays of light in through the crack in the wall. Vash whined quietly and buried his face in Wolfwood’s shoulder. “Morning, Blondie,” Wolfwood said.
There was a pause before Vash leaned back. He looked genuinely shocked to see Wolfwood there. “Am I dreaming?” he asked.
Wolfwood smiled and poked Vash between the eyes—gently, though, just enough pressure to make his point. “100% real,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
Vash broke into a wide, relieved grin. “Oh, that’s…” He leaned forward until he was resting against Wolfwood. “That’s good. That’s really good.”
“I dunno about good.” Wolfwood checked Vash’s forehead again. He was cooler than he had been the night before, but still warmer than the usual. “Thirsty?”
Vash nodded eagerly. Wolfwood passed him one of the water bottles. He waited until Vash had taken a few good chugs before asking, “How do you feel?”
“Sore. Really sore. Head hurts.” Vash winced as he tried to straighten up. “Tired.”
“Do you think if you took the day to rest, you’d be able to walk out of here?”
“I could…try.”
That’s a “no,” then. “Do you know if they have any transportation down there? Cars, bikes, thomas? Did you have anything when they grabbed you?”
“I had a thomas, but she got away when they grabbed me. Probably kept running to the meetup point, so…” Vash trailed off, then shook his head. “Sorry. Ship Three will know something is wrong when she shows up without me, but without any way for me to…”
Another pause. This time, Vash seemed to hold on to whatever thought he’d had, and grabbed his jacket. He reached into a hidden pocket even Wolfwood hadn’t been able to find, and pulled out some kind of thin contraption with an earpiece attached. “Okay. Okay, good. We can call for help.”
Perfect. Wolfwood would have to dodge seeing anyone from the ship, but at least Vash would be somewhere safe. “How close can they get?”
“We’d have to move away from any population centers…” Vash froze. “Nico, was Nai really there last night?”
Damn it. Should he lie? Vash would be furious if he caught Wolfwood in a lie, but if Wolfwood told him the truth, he’d probably do something stupid. Try to fist fight Knives on his own or get himself recaptured while trying to warn the town, or something like that. Unfortunately, Wolfwood took too long to decide one way or another, and the silence was all the answer Vash needed. He tried to get on his feet; his expression was furious, not terrified like it had been the night before. “That asshole...”
“Steady on!” Wolfwood was glad to see Vash getting visibly pissed for a change, not just mopey and depressed, but he did not like the thought of where that anger might lead them. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“I have to stop him.”
“How? You going to give him an ass-whooping with no gun? Bite him into submission or something?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
Heaven help me, he’s serious about this. Wolfwood dragged Vash back down as best he could without hurting him. “You are not going to fight your brother. We are staying put until you can walk, and then we are getting you home.”
“But…”
“But nothing.” Wolfwood tightened his grip on Vash’s arm. “You want to see Ship Three again? Because I can promise you that you won’t if you go after him.”
“He wouldn’t hurt me – “
“He left! You were baked to a crisp when I got to you, and he wasn’t planning on coming back until you were completely burned up! All that to prove a point. How is that not hurting you?”
Vash’s lips parted. His eyes slowly widened as a dozen retorts formed and died. Wolfwood could see something in there was close to breaking, so he grabbed his chance, even though he knew it would hurt.
“Don’t you think killing those people is more about getting to you than it is keeping you safe?”
Cruel to be kind.
Wolfwood couldn’t tell if the question was enough to sever Vash’s loyalty to Knives entirely—in fact, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t. But from the way Vash’s face crumpled, it had fractured something. “Oh,” Vash said quietly.
A few tears slipped down his cheeks; the sight only compounded the guilt Wolfwood felt. This is the right call. You didn’t tell him anything that wasn’t true. You’ve seen where that stupid loyalty to Knives gets him. He has to face what his brother is. Still… “Hey, c’mon.” Wolfwood pressed the bottle of water back into Vash’s hands. “Vash, I…”
Voices suddenly started carrying up the tunnel. Wolfwood and Vash froze at almost the same time, their eyes locking onto each other. After a pause, Vash leaned over and whispered, “It’s not Nai. I’d know.”
So, it was just people from town. Probably entered the caves while Wolfwood was arguing with Vash. So much for my sniper position.
Wolfwood put on his sternest face and pressed a finger against his lips. Vash nodded.
It was hard to get a read on where the speakers were. Too many tunnels, too much echoing. Wolfwood caught snippets of conversation—can’t have gone far, maze in here, probably come crawling out—but the voices grew quieter from there until it was silent again. This time, Wolfwood made sure to keep his eyes glued on the valley below. A small group crossed back into town eventually, hauling a water wagon behind them.
As Wolfwood had suspected, they’d assumed a fleeing Vash would come here. Probably figured he’d either wander the tunnels until he died (in which case, there was no reason to potentially lose men looking for him), or wander out on his own when he couldn’t find a way through (in which case, they could just kidnap him again). Maybe they’d left a guard, but considering the haul of stolen goods they already had, they probably didn’t need Vash to get by.
Good. That works out in our –
“I have to warn them,” Vash said.
Wolfwood closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten. “No,” he replied with gritted teeth, “you do not. And spare me the victims-of-circumstance speech. I heard it all last night and I don’t care.”
“I care, though.”
“Well, we’ve already established that you’re insane, and way too forgiving, so…”
“Do you really think they deserve to die? All of them?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think. This is called consequence. They messed with the wrong person and pissed off someone stronger than them. It was gonna happen someday, even if they never met you. And the consequence of us showing our faces is them capturing or killing us, so if you don’t mind, I’d rather stay…”
“They have kids down there.”
Damn it.
Damn it, Vash knew that was a tactical missile of a statement. And he kept going, too: “At least one that I’ve seen, but they’ve talked about more. Kids who weren’t affected by the blast. They don’t have anyone to defend them. If the town goes, they’ll die.”
Wolfwood tried to think of a rebuttal. Almost all of them left him feeling like a raging hypocrite. How was he supposed to point out the brutality of their caretakers when he had the same damn log in his eye? How could he argue without Vash sensing that hypocrisy?
“Do you see why I have to try, now?” Vash said.
Wolfwood did. He hated it. He hated what he knew he had to do even more.
“Not you,” Wolfwood said. “I’ll go.” He glanced Vash’s way, then looked away again at the startled look on his face. “Listen, you can barely stand, and I was gonna see if I could grab some transportation anyway. If you’re serious about this, I’d rather it be me.” He started checking the rifle. Not many bullets left; he’d have to be careful, however he handled this. “Do you know where these kids are kept?”
“Uh…not in town. I saw people going towards the cliffs with supplies, sort of southeast, so I think over there.”
“Right. Might start there.” He wanted to confirm that he was dealing with actual helpless kids before he put his safety on the line. “I need you to promise me you’ll stay put. Don’t come out for anything, understand?”
“I promise.” Vash sighed heavily when Wolfwood gave him a scrutinizing glare. “I really do. Look.” He held out his pinkie. “Please be careful.”
Wolfwood rolled his eyes, but relented enough to link his pinkie with Vash’s. “I’ll be more careful than you are,” he grumbled. He shoved the water bottle back towards Vash again. “Drink up. I’ll refill when I get back.”
If I get back, he couldn’t help thinking, though he had no intention of letting these people get the best of him. Didn’t matter if he was out of vials and down to a handful of bullets. He was Nicholas the Punisher. He’d figure it out.
Wolfwood crept back through the tunnels to the spring room. No guard there. No guard anywhere else along the passage out, or down the cliffside. The sun beat down on his head as he reached the bottom and scanned the valley. The path up into the cliffs forked off, leading to a cluster of buildings he hadn’t paid much attention to the night before. Didn’t necessarily look like residential buildings, but they weren’t falling over, so they were probably suitable enough shelter. He jogged towards the building, his head on a swivel. Everyone must have been inside to avoid the heat of the rising sun, because he didn’t hear any shouts of alarm and he wasn’t shot at.
So far, so good.
He arrived at the buildings. It looked like a storage building, probably for keeping surplus water. He could hear movement inside, voices. Wolfwood peered in through a window.
His stomach sank.
Vash was right; there were kids. The youngest looked maybe ten or twelve, the oldest pushing adulthood (sixteen, maybe?). They had a weary maturity to their eyes that said they hadn’t really been kids in a long time. He knew that look. He’d seen so many kids come in with it—kids even younger than these ones. Their clothes were patched up, but clean, their skin unmarred by the Plant explosion or excess sun exposure. They may have been alone out there, but they hadn’t been shoved outside the nest by necessity just yet.
Because they had people providing for them.
He watched two of the middle-looking kids play cards. Another one had his nose in a book. It was quiet, aside from the humming of the oldest girl as she folded laundry, but the space still felt comfortable. A bit sad, but…safe.
Is it far enough away from the town that Knives will spare it?
Wolfwood knew it wasn’t. That Knives wouldn’t see any innocence here. That even if he did spare them, not all of them would survive being thrust into the world on their own. Maybe none of them would
Damn it…
Wolfwood’s head snapped away from the window at the sound of creaking wood. Someone was coming up the path, dragging a cart behind him. Wolfwood ducked to cover behind the corner. Just one guy, from the look of things, all wrapped up to keep the sun away from their skin as much as possible. And as they got closer…
Bingo. There was one item on Wolfwood’s mental list crossed off. Vash’s gun was pretty distinctive, even when it was strapped to a stranger’s waist. And since it was just one guy…
I can take him. I can definitely take him.
But still, Wolfwood waited. He waited until the cart had been pulled up alongside the house and unloaded, until the person had knocked on the doorway and stepped back. The oldest girl was the one who answered and hauled in the supplies. She chatted with the stranger from the village, asked how things were going. Wolfwood noticed the way the stranger skated past their escaped captive, instead saying that they’d had some issues with supplies but everything would work out. They also issued a stern reminder that everyone needed to stay inside tomorrow until the convoy left.
Yeah, because if the slavers see a group of healthy young people, they’ll take them by force. They were fine with selling other people, but not with their own people being taken. Wolfwood would be bothered by the hypocrisy if it weren’t so common. Even people who weren’t active participants tended to turn a blind eye to No Man’s Land’s human trafficking. The various gangs who engaged it in were too powerful, especially the Roderick gang. All your average person could do was lay low and hope they weren’t singled out as especially valuable.
Still, his frustration with the situation made the next steps a lot easier.
He waited until the door was shut, until the stranger from town had turned around and was headed back. He moved from behind the corner, first at a slow crouch, then at a careful sprint. It was a lot easier to move quietly without the weight of his old weapon on his back; he was still a little surprised that he wasn’t noticed until he was within range and had the rifle aimed at the stranger’s head.
“Don’t move.”
The stranger froze and glanced over their shoulder. Their face was obscured by scarves and goggles, but Wolfwood could see the shock in their body language. “Not a sound. Hands where I can see them.” The stranger obeyed. Wolfwood could see their hands were shaking. That worked for him; if they were scared, if they wanted to live, that made it easier to control them. “Slide the pistol over here.”
The stranger hesitated before removing the pistol and sliding it towards Wolfwood. Wolfwood stepped forward carefully to kick it behind him. “What do you want?” asked the stranger shakily. Their mouth was so muffled it was hard to tell if he was dealing with a man or woman, but it didn’t matter. Either one could trounce him if given the opportunity. “We don’t have much…”
“Yeah, I know that’s not true. I want to talk to whoever’s in charge.”
“I’m vice-foreman. You can talk to me.”
Wolfwood narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t tell if the stranger was lying or not, but he decided to take the gamble. Rolling up into town, even with a hostage, was probably asking for more trouble than he could handle. “Can I see your face while we’re talking?”
The stranger hesitated again before pulling off the goggles and lowering the scarf covering the lower half of their face. As expected, Wolfwood saw a face laced with scar tissue, white and shiny and definitely more sensitive to the sun. One eye looked blinded. The whole effect made it hard to tell if he was speaking to a man or a woman, young or old. They were just a human person worn down to grim survival instincts. “What do you want?”
The voice was female, though. It reminded him of Miss Melanie a bit, a thought that Wolfwood shoved aside as quickly as possible. He didn’t need to be thinking about her right now. “I don’t know how else to say this, so I’m gonna cut to the chase,” Wolfwood said. “You fucked up big time. That guy you were holding last night? His brother’s coming and he’s going to be pissed.”
The vice-foreman rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we all heard him screaming last night. Unless his brother’s bringing an army…”
He wasn’t. He wouldn’t need one. But Wolfwood had no way of explaining that without it sounding impossible, so he tried a different angle. “What year is it?” Wolfwood asked.
“…what?”
“What year?”
“Thirty-Four, abouts? What, you want me to try and figure out what Earth Year it is? No one knows that anymore, pal.”
Planetary Year Thirty-Four. That gave him something to work with. Wolfwood pulled out his lighter and held it up so the design etched into it caught the light. “Does this look familiar?”
It was a gamble that paid off. The vice-foreman’s eyes widened at the emblem. Must’ve had a run-in with the Eye before, so this half-formed plan of his would probably work. On paper, Wolfwood was one of their pastors. He’d been taught to do the whole fire and brimstone bit, shock and awe before the bullets started, but he never did. They wanted him to kill, so he killed. No sense in dressing it up as something other than a slaughter. That was why he preferred to refer to himself as an undertaker. Fit the job description better.
But all of it was still there. Wolfwood dug into the deep recesses of his brain, drawing out all the details that had been drilled in there.
“In the past, God rained fire from the sky, destroying the city of depraved fools. We seek to fix the world once and for all…”
He barely recognized his own voice then. It was flat, dull, the voice of a kid who was barely hanging on, who ignored the pain and the smell of blood and thought only of home. Of everyone who would be safe as long as he kept his head down, said everything correctly, did as he was told.
“…to bring everything back to even.”
He never thought he’d say those words willingly, but here he was.
The vice-foreman took a step back. “They sent you?”
“Not they. The man you kidnapped. He doesn’t want you to die.” Wolfwood pocketed the lighter again. “Shit if I know why, but his brother…he won’t listen. You really picked the wrong guy to try and sell.”
“But he escaped. We don’t have him anymore, I swear.”
“Doesn’t matter. You did what you did, and now you pay the price.”
“We have children…”
“Don’t.” Wolfwood shook his head. “I’m just the messenger. I’m not here for your excuses or your explanations. I’m just here to tell you to run. Get as many people as you can and get out before he comes back. Far as you can.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere. How…how do I know you’re not lying to me?”
Wolfwood lowered his glasses. “Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m not dead serious about this.”
He held eye contact with the vice-foreman. Watched as her expression changed from defensive to quiet dread. “Why warn us?” she asked. “If you’re with them…”
Wolfwood shrugged. He could’ve corrected her, but he wasn’t not with them. If letting her think he was currently made the warning more credible, he’d take it. “I owe that man a few. Frankly, I don’t care if you live or die, but…he does. He’s terrified for you, even after everything you did. Think about that.” He tilted his head back. “And think about them.”
And with that, he backed away, keeping his eyes on the vice-foreman as he backed up to scoop up Vash’s pistol. Holding it felt wrong. This thing was as close to a weapon of peace that a gun could be; he wasn’t worthy of touching it. But it wasn’t going to grow legs and walk back to Vash, so he did what he had to. “What time is the convoy coming in?”
“Tomorrow morning. Sunrise.”
“Then I suggest you get out of here before then. Assuming you’ve got transport…”
The vice-foreman laughed sharply. “Do you think we’d still be here if we did?”
Good point. Guess we’re walking after all. And he’d wasted time he could’ve spent stealing having this little chat, so…
I hope you like eating worm for the foreseeable future, Vash, Wolfwood thought as he kept backing away. I really hope this is worth it to you.
Once there was enough distance between them, the vice-foreman picked back up the cart and started walking away. Wolfwood still didn’t turn his back until she was far, far down the road. It was only then that he made his way back to the cliffside path, running as fast as he could.
No one chased him down on the way in. Vash was exactly where Wolfwood had left him, more or less. He’d moved a little up the tunnel to get out of the sun and was curled up under his jacket, eyes closed, breathing slow. Wolfwood had to step over him to check the crack in the wall. No sign of any pitchfork-bearing groups coming to storm the cliffs so far.
“Did you tell them?” Vash asked quietly.
Wolfwood glanced Vash’s way. “I told the second in command. She’ll pass it along. Think I left an impression. And I got your gun back.” He stepped back to lay it on the ground near Vash. “That’s all, though. We’re on spring water and worm meat rations until Ship Three picks you up.”
Vash carefully picked up the pistol and rolled over onto his back to examine it. There was something sad in his eyes as he did. “I know,” he said. “But…thank you for trying.”
Wolfwood looked down into the valley and didn’t reply.
.
He couldn’t sleep again that night.
It wasn’t that he was worried about their upcoming travels. Vash was on the mend after a lot of water and rest; they probably would’ve run for it that night, if it hadn’t been for the threat of crossing paths with Millions Knives. Right now, it was a waiting game. See if he followed through on his threat. If the town would still be standing come sunrise.
Vash took ages to doze off. Wolfwood stayed glued to his spot near the crack in the cliff wall and watched.
He tried to tell himself at first that he was just keeping an eye out, to see if anyone came up looking again or if anyone ever left. But as the night wore on, as his eyes kept scanning the valley for flashes of silver…
“So, what did the Ninevites do? Did they listen?”
It was one of Miss Melanie’s secret stories, the ones he carried deep in his heart but would never repeat to a soul. The one about a prophet who decided he would rather run away than preach to a people he hated. God had a whale (like a grand worm, apparently, but not a worm) swallow him up, then spit him out at the right port when the prophet repented for his disobedience. The name had come up in the Eye’s teachings, he remembered, something about the disobedient nature of man, but only Miss Melanie had ever told him the whole story.
“They did listen. They wore ash and sackcloth and prayed for forgiveness. And God heard them. He spared them.” That was the part the Eye would have objected to. Sinners didn’t get reprieve in their teachings. “But that wasn’t enough for Jonah. He wanted to see them suffer for what they had done to his own people. God rebuked him for that. It’s not right, to hate others so much that you would…” She’d trailed off, up to her wrists in soapy water. “It’s not right.”
He remembered the smell of laundry soap, the dampness of his palms as he hung up small shirts to dry. The distressed look on her face as she contemplated the cruelty of denying others forgiveness. He’d been upset for her, changed the subject so she wouldn’t look so sad, but now…
Shit. I’m the guy she was talking about, aren’t I?
Because he wouldn’t lie: there was a part of him, deep down, that wanted to see that place torn down. There was so much cruelty in the world, cruelty that those people had undeniably contributed to. Wolfwood couldn’t stop any of it. Sometimes it felt like no one could. He hadn’t been lying when he told the vice-foreman that he didn’t care what happened to them. If they lived, whatever. If they died, they’d brought it on themselves, and at least they wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else.
But then he remembered the look in the vice-foreman’s eyes, the flat sound of his voice, how monstrous he must have looked to her…
I had let go. I don’t like who I was back then.
Wolfwood shut his eyes tightly.
I don’t want you to do that for me. Please don’t do that for me.
Just an extension of Millions Knives’ hatred.
When other people change your destination for you…it’s one of the worst things you can do to a person.
He dug his thumb into his bruise until Vash’s voice stopped echoing in his head. Until the pain was so bad that he couldn’t help jerking his hand away, hissing sharply as he did. The sun was starting to peek over the horizon. Dawn was coming.
Vash was awake.
“Sorry,” Wolfwood said. “Go back to sleep, it’s…”
But it wasn’t nothing.
Vash wasn’t looking at him; he was looking past Wolfwood, towards the crack. His eyes were wide, afraid, and he clutched the jacket around him as tightly as possible. “Vash?”
Whatever Vash might have said was cut off by the sound of an approaching truck. Wolfwood turned around in time to see one pulling up to the outskirts of town. Just the one, which felt weird since they were expecting a convoy. Unless…
Of course, Vash took off running. Wolfwood raced after him. “Vash, Vash…” He knew what was coming. They both did. “Vash, don’t…”
For a man who’d only just stepped back from death’s door, Vash was quick. He was out of the side tunnel, darting past the spring, and heading towards the entrance before Wolfwood could stop him. Wolfwood was terrified he was going to have to wrestle the guy back inside, but Vash collapsed at the entrance, gasping for breath, staring down over the town.
It was already burning.
Wolfwood was briefly transfixed by the carnage below. He could hear the flames, the slashing of blades, the sound of gunfire being abruptly cut off. If he listened very closely, he could hear screaming. “…come on,” Wolfwood whispered. He grabbed Vash’s arm, ready to haul him back to his feet, to carry him if he had to. “Vash, you don’t have to…”
Vash jerked his arm away and stayed where he was. His body shook and tears streaked his face as he stared down into the valley, watching carnage Wolfwood had been so quick to dismiss as consequence. Seeing it now, seeing the horror in Vash’s eyes…
Wolfwood looked away. His own hands started shaking, but for different reasons. He waited for one of those blades to come streaking up the cliffs and cut his throat.
It never did
.
The sun rose. The screaming stopped. For a while, it was quiet.
Vash’s voice felt like a sudden slap in the face.
“Help me up.”
Wolfwood blinked. He wasn’t expecting it to be so bright. How long had he been standing there? Long enough that his legs ached as he turned around. Vash looked terrible again—the mad sprint to the entrance must’ve taken a lot out of him. Wolfwood did as he was told, walking to Vash’s side to help him to his feet. Vash wobbled, took a deep breath, then pulled away to start hobbling down the path. “Where are you going?” Wolfwood asked.
“Some of them might have…” Vash had to stop not too far away. “…some of them might have gotten out. I need…I need to find survivors.”
Wolfwood tried to remember if he’d seen anyone leave. There had been some activity around the town that night, but he couldn’t grasp any details. His mind was still someplace else, still bracing itself to be struck down for being such a miserable piece of shit. That guilt was what shut his mouth. Objectively, he knew they should be focused on getting out of there, that Knives might still be there, but those thoughts stayed stuck in his head. He just jogged to catch up to Vash and helped him down the path.
The walk seemed to take ages. They took a detour to check the kid’s building. It was completely empty, door wide open, no sign of carnage. Didn’t mean there were any survivors. Each step closer to town from there brought out new details. Most of the buildings had been leveled. Wolfwood thought he could see the truck peeking above the ruins. There was blood on the sand—people had tried to run, hadn’t gotten far, but no sign of the bodies. Just rubble, bullet casings, blood, and the unoccupied truck that had started it all.
Then they reached what had been the town center.
The post Vash had been tied to was the tallest thing left standing. The bodies were laid out in a neat spiral around it, their scarred faces turned to the sky. Throats cut. All missing their left arm.
Vash’s prosthetic was hanging from the post by its wrist.
Wolfwood couldn’t help it: the sight of the arm yanked a disbelieving, strangled yelp of a laugh from him. What kind of sick joke is this? Was Bluesummers here already? Or had he learned how to be such a monster from Knives? Vash stared over the tableau with a dull expression before walking to the truck. It was unoccupied, but the driver’s seat was stained with blood. “Guess he found the slavers, too,” Vash said quietly. “What would you have done?”
Wolfwood tore his eyes away from the bodies. “…huh?”
“You told me that you don’t go out of your way to be nonlethal. That you choose the people you care about. If you were in Nai’s position…”
The question jarred Wolfwood out of the nightmarish fog clinging to his mind. “If I were in Nai’s position, we would’ve been long gone by now,” he said. “I wouldn’t have let anyone stop me, but…Vash, I wouldn’t have…”
He wouldn’t, right? He may have been a monster, but he wasn’t this.
No, you’re just fine with seeing it happen. Is that much better?
“You wouldn’t have done this,” Vash finished, unaware of Wolfwood’s crisis of conscience. “Because this isn’t…normal. This isn’t…” He looked over the wreckage. “This isn’t how people act.”
Wolfwood suddenly understood what Vash was really getting at. The realization that was slowly sinking in. He’d wanted Vash to understand what his brother was, to pick a damn side already, but…
Not like this.
Vash’s hair was slicked back and sticking up from restless sleep and the repeated soaks he’d taken to cool off. Getting the golden mop out of his eyes made him look older. Wolfwood wasn’t sure he liked it. “…we should get moving,” Wolfwood said finally. He stopped to tousle Vash’s hair as he walked to examine the truck, trying to push it back into place. “Do you think this thing still has juice?”
Someone started screaming.
Wolfwood’s first thought was that someone was still alive in there, somehow, half-bled out or trapped under rubble. What he saw when he turned around was almost worse. There was a handful of people nearby, all wrapped up in clothes and scarves and goggles, save for one. It was the eldest girl from the depot. She collapsed on the ground in front of Knives’ bloody display, sobbing hysterically. The others standing nearby were frozen in place, staring at the carnage. “Don’t let the kids come over here…no, stay over there!” one called.
The vice-foreman. Her and maybe four other adults, and from the sound of it more someplace on the edge of town with the other kids. Some of them had run.
They had survived.
“You’re alive,” Vash breathed.
The vice-foreman’s gaze jerked over to them. Wolfwood didn’t need to see her face to tell how terrified she was at the sight of them. “Please,” she said. “Please, you made your point…”
“You’re alive,” Vash repeated, seemingly not hearing her pleas. “You…” He cupped his hands over his mouth, tears suddenly flooding his eyes. “Oh, thank God…”
Wolfwood had never heard Vash invoke a higher power of any kind in the future. It sounded genuine here and now. As if he had been struck by lightning and suddenly believed that maybe God could exist. Something had finally worked out. Even something small.
Wolfwood had stopped getting that feeling a long time ago.
He wondered if the same thing would happen to Vash.
The vice-foreman looked confused, even pulled off her goggles to get a better look at Vash’s relieved face. “I’m sorry,” Vash said, his voice muffled by his hands and his tears. “I tried to stop him, I did…what can I do? We have this, there has to be someplace we can go…”
“The truck might not be charged.” Wolfwood wasn’t sure why he said that. He was pretty sure he was still in shock. Vash’s bittersweet joy at seeing survivors didn’t help.
I don’t understand him.
“We’ll figure it out. We’ll…” Vash’s voice cracked as a tears started slipping down his face. “We’ll figure it out.”
The vice-foreman kept staring. So did the other adults. Wolfwood wondered if any of them had been the ones to strap Vash to that pole, if they’d been the ones to kick him when they tried to warn him or if they’d just turned a blind eye when it happened.
He wondered if the guilt choked them as much as it did Wolfwood.
“We need to bury them,” said the eldest girl. “We can’t just leave them like this.”
Vash hobbled over to kneel next to her. “We will,” he said. “I’ll help.”
“No,” Wolfwood said. “You’ll rest. I’ll help.” He sighed quietly. “Undertaker, remember?”
It was going to take hours, especially if they insisted on individual graves. He wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to find a shovel in this wreckage. But it was his job.
Maybe digging a few graves would make up for his inaction.
.
In the end, they made burial mounds out of the town’s rubble.
Wolfwood tried not to think too hard about the fact that they couldn’t find the missing arms. He tried not to think too hard about any of it. He just kept moving rocks, stacking them carefully over body after body after body.
“Nico?”
Wolfwood looked up from the latest stack. The sun had moved across the sky. Vash was standing near him with a water bottle. “Here,” he said quietly. “Are you hungry?”
He wasn’t. He was barely even thirsty, but he forced himself to down some and dump some more over his head and neck. “How long have I been working?” he asked hoarsely.
“It’s been a few hours. I think I got the truck working.” Vash took the water bottle back. “It has a built-in solar recharger, so the battery’s topped up. We just have to figure out where we’re going.”
“Anywhere that isn’t here sounds good.” Wolfwood looked down at his hands. They were coated in dust, and the rough edges of the stones were starting to bite into his skin. He’d tear right through if he wasn’t careful. It wasn’t until Vash gently took his hand that Wolfwood noticed he’d popped his arm back on. “Good thing they didn’t break that.”
“Yeah.” The smooth surface of his prosthetic fingers slid over Wolfwood’s palm, as if testing the integrity of his skin. “You should wrap these. Come on.”
Wolfwood let himself be led to the truck. Details about Vash filtered in as his mind started settling back into his body. He’d put on some clothes and shoes along with his coat. His hair was starting to flop back down into his face. His eyes were tired, tired, tired, but focused as he cleaned off Wolfwood’s hands. The water evaporated almost instantly in the heat. “Are you okay?” Vash asked.
“Are you?” Wolfwood retorted.
“I’m not the one who’s been on autopilot for hours.”
“I’m not the one whose brother…” Wolfwood took a deep breath. “Sorry.”
“…no. No, you’re right.” Vash dug one of the random shirts Wolfwood had grabbed out of his back. “Honestly, I’m…not great.” He grabbed the hem and tore fiercely, tearing a long strip off starting from the bottom. “I’m not doing great.”
He kept tearing. The destruction seemed to do him some good, because when he’d gathered enough cloth to wrap around Wolfwood’s hands, his next words came easily.
“I don’t like being angry. I don’t like how it makes me feel. But I’m so angry at him right now, and I don’t know what to do with it. Has that ever happened to you? You get angry and it just…” He tied off the makeshift wrap. “…sits there? Right here.” He tapped his chest, right on his sternum. “I feel like I’m going to explode.”
“Think that might be heartburn,” Wolfwood said. The joke was instinctive, but he knew it wasn’t what Vash needed right now. He forced himself to be serious: “I get what you mean. I do.”
“How do you deal with it?”
Wolfwood snorted. “You don’t want my advice on that. Did Brad never tell you I broke his nose?”
“Fractured his orbital bone,” Vash corrected. “But yeah, he told me. And that you broke a tablet.” He didn’t sound disappointed or shocked at all. “Usually, when I’m mad about something, I can figure out a way to fix things instead. That’s part of why I come out here. But I don’t know what to do about this.” Vash met Wolfwood’s eyes. “I’m not that crazy, am I?”
That felt like a trick question. “I’m gonna need some more context for that one, kid.”
“I mean…I’ve tried to talk to him about things before, but it feels like he doesn’t hear me. Ever. So, either I’m crazy and I’m not making sense, which I can fix, or he doesn’t want to listen, which I can’t fix. And that would also mean that a guy who’s been falling through portals scattered around my life cares more about me than my own twin.” Vash let out a strangled laugh and tore another strip of fabric. “Which, as much as I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, is kind of messed up.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is fucked.”
“There’s kids around, you know.”
“They’ve heard worse by now.” Or at least, he had by that age. “Listen, you probably don’t want to hear this, but your brother isn’t a good person.”
“Like your uncle. How did you…?”
Wolfwood grimaced. “I…shot him, actually. In my defense, he shot me first, so I figure that made us even.” His free hand strayed to his side, to the place where there had once been a scar. “Don’t ask me if it was fatal. I didn’t stick around to check. But I shot him, and I ran, and I found someplace safe. Have you called Ship Three yet?” Vash shook his head. “Maybe you should.”
It was the last thing Wolfwood ever thought he would say, but the way Vash had described the place made it sound better than out here. He just hoped Brad and Luida had actually put in some effort.
“Okay,” Vash said. “Okay, I’ll call. Thanks, Nico.”
“For what?”
“Listening.”
Vash walked a safe distance away to start speaking into that device of his. Wolfwood stared after him, suddenly too tired to stand back up.
He wished it could be that simple for Vash, that all he’d have to do was break things off with Knives and run back to Ship Three. He knew better, though. Wolfwood’s uncle had never bothered looking for him, assuming the son of a bitch had survived, because he didn’t care. He’d never wanted Wolfwood anyway. But Knives did want Vash for whatever crazy scheme he was cooking up. He wanted Vash shattered to pieces, malleable. And he’d never stop until he got that.
I should have taken the shot.
But he hadn’t. All he could do now was keep driving a wedge between Vash and Knives. Make it so a few decades from now, going back to July was unthinkable. Or at least, going back to negotiate was unthinkable.
Sorry, me, Wolfwood thought as he pulled out a cigarette. If this goes well, our job is gonna be a lot harder.
Future him would just have to deal with that.
Vash walked back over as Wolfwood lit his cigarette. He had a few new tear tracks on his face, but he looked relieved. “Someone can pick me up,” he said. “I know where to go. I don’t know what it will mean for the others, but it’s better than here.”
“Sounds good to me.” Wolfwood took a long drag from the cigarette. “So? Where to, co-captain?”
Vash smiled, and Wolfwood was relieved to see it looked genuine. “East,” he said. “We’re going east.”
East it was. Hopefully, no trouble would follow them that way. Especially if that trouble’s name was Millions Knives.
.
They buried the last of the bodies, gathered what supplies they could find, and drove east. It was almost two straight days of near-continuous driving, and they were two of the most awkward days of Wolfwood’s life.
No one really knew what to do with each other. The survivors were wrapped up in their grief. Vash was still in pain, and napped to escape it. Wolfwood still felt the haze of his guilt trying to drag him under, along with all the aches and pains he’d accumulated since this whole mess started.
(His ankle still looked fine. Wolfwood was still afraid to ask Vash what he might have done to it.)
Vash, on the rare occasion he did talk, didn’t bring up Knives again. He tried to talk to the kids (they just stared at him), then the adults (who gave short, terse answers and sounded like they were scared he’d go full Knives on them), then Wolfwood (the ensuing debate about the merits of mechanical versus animal transport killed a few hours, even if that came at the cost of Wolfwood having to admit he had no clue how to ride and had eaten dirt every time he tried to learn). At least most of the adults knew how to drive well. He didn’t have to deal with Meryl Stryfe’s ability to find every pot hole in her path.
Scratch that. He would’ve preferred it if Meryl were there. Her driving may have been bad enough to put the fear of God in the staunchest atheist, but she’d probably do a better job helping Vash find answers than Wolfwood.
The relief Wolfwood felt when he saw signs of civilization felt like having a glass of ice water dumped on his head. “This the place?” he asked.
Vash discretely checked one of the many gizmos he had tucked in his coat’s seemingly endless pockets. “This is it,” he confirmed. “Hopefully, they won’t think we’re here to cause trouble.”
Wolfwood kept one hand on his rifle as they got out of the truck, just in case. They got a few odd glances, but no one tried to talk to them, which was fine by Wolfwood. “Right, we’re off,” he said as he tossed the keys to the vice-foreman. “You can keep driving…sell the thing…whatever you want, I don’t really care.”
She caught the keys and stared at the two of them. “That’s all? Really?”
“What, you want a kiss or something?”
Vash rested a hand on Wolfwood’s shoulder and shot the vice-foreman a reassuring smile. “That’s all. No bad blood from me, I promise.” The vice-foreman looked immediately confused. Vash kept on smiling. “Just be safe. You can do something better now. Look after each other…” He turned and started walking away. “Look after other people, too.”
The vice-foreman’s baffled eyes locked onto Wolfwood. He shrugged. “You heard the man,” he said as he turned to follow Vash. “Ash and sackcloth.”
And that was that. They walked into town and no one tried to stop them. It felt anticlimactic, but Wolfwood wasn’t going to complain. He’d had enough craziness to last him two lifetimes.
“Do we need to get a hotel?” Wolfwood asked.
“I don’t know,” Vash said. “They said our people were about two days out, too, so I might just have to – “
“Vash!”
Wolfwood recognized that voice. It took him a second to spot its owner, though. Brad was out of his Ship Three uniform, wearing a battered brown jacket and jeans, but it was definitely him.
Wolfwood still wasn’t sure how he felt about the man. The look on Vash’s face nudged him towards a more positive opinion: joy, then relief, then crumpling under the weight of everything he’d been through. When he dodged his way through the crowd and reached Brad, the man didn’t hesitate to give Vash a tight hug. Vash sank into the embrace with shaking shoulders. Safe to cry.
He's okay now.
As if on cue, Wolfwood felt that familiar, someone-hovering-over-him feeling again. A portal had formed at the end of a nearby alley. When he looked back, Brad had his back to him and was examining Vash’s visible bruises like a mother thomas fussing over her chick. Vash glanced over Brad’s shoulder and caught Wolfwood’s eye. Wolfwood tilted his head towards the alley, then pointed to Vash and gave him a questioning thumb’s up. You good?
Vash smiled and nodded.
He was safe. He’d be back on the ship soon. Wolfwood had done as much as he could. It was time for him to go. Still, he lingered by the alley entrance until Vash and Brad vanished into the crowd.
The eldest of the depot kids had wandered into town with the adults. They looked overwhelmed by all the people, but determined. Maybe this would be a good place for them. Maybe they’d get a second chance here.
He just hoped they used it for something good.
Wolfwood slipped his hand into his pocket as he stepped towards the portal. He still had his lighter. He hadn’t had the chance to give it to Vash.
Next time, he thought as he stepped through.
I’ll give it to him next time.
#three guesses who shows up in this chapter first two don't count#trigun#trigun stampede#fic: the unknowable tomorrow
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"Because the only thing human Griffith did that hurt Guts was sacrifice the Band - and Guts never seemed to really blame him for that anyway." What you've said here is directly contradicted in black Swordsman. He blames Griffith for branding him and by extension the hawks. He says "Thanks to me, who's fighting an army of the dead because of you...!!!" He blames him for his circumstances because he branded him and it wasn't femto who did that, it was Griffith.
reference is to this post
Yeah I've actually gotten into this in other posts a little. The Black Swordsman arc portrays Guts' feelings as a betrayal paralleled directly to his father selling him to Donovan, sans fridged girlfriend. Guts is messed up over it because it's a symbolic replay of his childhood trauma. He absolutely blames Griffith in the Black Swordsman arc, because the only thing that fucked him up in the Black Swordsman arc was being sacrificed (as it should've been). But then that's virtually retconned away.
During the actual Eclipse Guts isn't angry at Griffith/Femto until Femto rapes Casca. He looks sad when Griffith sacrifices him, he spends a few minutes ignoring the Hawks getting eaten to try to cut Griffith out of whatever he's incubating in with his dagger, he sends a wistful look back at him when he finally acknowledges the sacrifice and gives up to fight monsters. He expresses rage at the monsters eating the Hawks, but not at Griffith, until the rape scene.
During the Hill of Swords confrontation there's one mention of "all those you betrayed," which suggests anger over the sacrifice, but it's a minor note compared to the fact that every single time post-Eclipse Guts thinks about Griffith it's with sadness and regret. If he's feeling rage, he thinks about Femto. If he's thinking about Griffith, it's Griffith kneeling in the snow after the second duel signifying Guts' regret, or it's Griffith facing away from him looking noble, Griffith glancing back at him on a battlefield which makes Guts cry, Griffith as a warm light in his memories, Griffith as part of the campfire from those days that still burns in his chest, etc.
Most directly, when he sees NGriff for the first time he forgets his urge to kill because it's like Griffith has been stolen from the past, the way he used to be. Plus he tells Rickert "that's not the Griffith you know anymore." He differentiates between Griffith and Femto/NGriff, and being reminded of human Griffith makes him forget his rage, so yeah, not a lot of anger aimed at that version of him, even if that's the same guy who sacrificed Guts to monsters.
I have a list of illustrations from the manga actually, of the way Guts thinks about Griffith post-Eclipse, if you want the visuals and the citations, plus the one post-Eclipse exception I could think of lol.
I do wanna add though that it does track with Guts never hating Gambino either and feeling regret towards him, so while I think the themes were tighter in the Black Swordsman arc, Guts' mixed feelings and love + regret towards Griffith fit his character perfectly.
So I did exaggerate a bit with that line, but I stand by the sentiment. Imo Guts' anger at Griffith is one of those aspects of the Black Swordsman arc that shifted around and evolved as Miura actually wrote the story and came up with things like the Eclipse rape and maybe Guts' own regrets over leaving, the intense homoeroticism, etc lol.
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Author brands 'n shit, I guess
So I somehow managed to lose a post I really wanted to reblog to an unexpected re-log. The post was about a Vox article talking about how the concept of a personal brand and a platform is poisoning artistic industries, particularly writing and music. So we're just doing a new post instead.
The article makes some really good points, especially about how now more than ever, authors (and musicians, but I write books so that's what we're mostly looking at) can't just do the thing that's in their job description. We have to do the marketing as well. And that is such a wild concept to me, who grew up convinced that I would one day land a publishing deal and be a famous author. I had this idea of how the traditional publishing industry worked, and for a long time, that idea was fairly accurate. Now?
If we now also have to do most of the marketing for our book to even stand a chance.
If advances are shrinking to the point where even successful authors are forced back into day jobs.
If print-on-demand means that nobody has to shell out thousands for a print run anymore without knowing that they'll even sell a fraction of the books.
What do we even need the traditional publishing industry for anymore?
Midlist books and authors are disappearing. The focus is on bestsellers, on "the next big thing", to the exclusion of almost everything else. That's not a sustainable plan. Sure, in theory, producing nothing but bestsellers would make you thrive. But you can't. You simply cannot guarantee that 100% of your books are going to be bestsellers. The vast majority are not. Even big pre-existing audiences don't guarantee that. Just look at these incredibly funny numbers provided by the New York Times, about celebrity books that "flopped". And I'm using that word loosely - tens of thousands of copies sold are GREAT, actually. But when you calculated your sales potential based on an audience of millions? It's nothing.
This really pokes a lot of holes into the idea that big platform = big sales, but here we are, being asked to flap our arms about and make silly voices in funny little TikToks to promote our work. When that should be the publisher's job. So, again - what are they even still good for, if you aren't coming to them already famous?
Though the article also comes with some questionable takes, albeit when it cites other writers. Specifically when it cites Defector writer Israel Daramola about music criticism, and how more and more professional outlets are closing or get incorporated into other publications. How this means that the ecosystem of criticism is shifting to "a loose collection of Youtubers and influencers", and how "This has all helped produce a mass of music fans who don’t understand the value of criticism and outright detest being told the things they like might suck." Which is just so baffling to me. Of course they don't like that! Do you?! If you think the point of criticism is to forcibly explain to people why the thing they enjoy is bad, actually, you really suck at criticism. Criticism is meant to give you an idea before you engage with something, of what the quality might be and whether or not you'll like it. It's not meant to make you go "oh, well, if this artist I love is bad, I should probably not listen to them". Stop doing that! Let people enjoy things, it doesn't matter if you, personally, think the thing in question is "objectively not good". People are allowed to enjoy "bad" things, for fuck's sake. This is the exact kind of elitism that drives people away from professional, thoughtful and educated critique.
I find this particular citation odd, because Daramola does make a point much more related to the subject of the article - that the reduction of music criticism to subsections and listicles is a symptom of a similar problem as "author brands" in the music sphere. If you don't already have a big platform, a successful brand, you won't find support. Budding artists struggle the same as budding authors, where the industry whose entire business model is built upon taking risks on new talent and building that talent up is now refusing to do that, and shifting all of that work onto the artists. This has very little to do with the audience, and everything to do with the business people calling the shots behind the scenes.
There is a whole lot wrong with my industry these days. Art gets more and more commodified. The content doesn't matter anymore as long as you, the author, can sell a lot of it. Once you have proven yourself, the publishing gods might decide that you're a guaranteed success, and deign to give you the kind of support they should have given you from the beginning. Only now, there is no risk for them anymore. That risk was all taken by you, the person with the most to lose.
One last time - if that's how traditional publishing works now, what is it even still good for?
And I haven't even gotten into how this entire system is also rigged heavily in favour of the (white, attractive) Anglosphere, while the platforms themselves have global reach. So the Anglosphere is actively sucking the air out of the room with its ever-growing cultural hegemony even on the level of individual artists. The article touches on this, too, though it brushes past that pretty quickly, and one of the linked articles in the section basically just says "if you're from a different culture, consider simply ignoring that and doing it the American way". Fabulous.
I don't have any quick, easy fixes for this problem. I don't think anybody has. But if you're a reader, if you're a music lover, maybe next time you're looking for something new, consider looking past the big hits. Ignore the huge platforms, and maybe go and find some indie artists to try. There's a lot of gold to be mined here, even if it's getting harder and harder to find. It takes a little more effort, but it would mean the world to the indie artists on the other side.
#writing#books#publishing#self-publishing#publishing industry#music industry#author marketing#author branding#American hegemony#long post
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My biggest problem with tech like ChatGPT is that the profit motive behind it means shoving it into applications where it really shouldn't be used and selling it as a way more finished and accurate thing than it really is.
Like, I don't think it's bad to use it for writing help. I fundamentally don't. It takes an EXTREMELY generous definition of theft to make that argument (it's literally just "what words are LIKELY to go together throughout all of human writing to mean xyz"); hell, if it were stealing, it wouldn't just make up fake citations when you try to use it for formal papers! Being able to go to something and say "okay I have this and that and the other but I'm stuck on this transitional scene, got any ideas to help me past that block?" or something and editing what comes out to fit the tone of your work better - that's fine, and at this point that's what it's REALLY good for when it comes to writing.
But there are certain things it CAN'T do.
It can't write an entire novel or script or whatever for you without introducing a ton of inconsistencies. It's a probability engine, not an actual, sapient, intelligent being. Maybe one day it will get the hang of continuity - the breakthroughs we've made recently are certainly doing better on that front than predictive text chat bots have over the past couple decades - but, I mean, go play with it just for funsies (or try talking to Frank nostalgebraist-autoresponder right here on tumblr dot com, she's a GPT-J bot) and soon enough you'll see it contradict itself within two lines. It CERTAINLY can't write your papers for you - maybe it can help you translate "the fish I was trying to tag BIT me so I reflexively launched the fucker back into the drink before I got the tracker on" into professional speak, but again, it's just a probability engine, NOT a search engine - it knows what a citation LOOKS like, but it DOESN'T have a directory and encyclopedic knowledge of the contents of every extant piece of reference material. Not to anthropomorphize too much - that's part of the problem - but it's bullshitting you on EVERY piece of reference material it cites, because it's just throwing words together based on context-sensitive probability. It's genuinely fascinating math, but it does not a researcher make.
But do OpenAI/Bing/Google/every other megacorp insistent that neural nets Are The Future care about that? Fuck no! Are they putting those disclaimers out there? As half-heartedly as they can get away with to downplay the problem - all the disclaimers saying that the bot CAN be wrong so you should fact-check anything it says tend to imply that it's rare for this to happen. Acknowledging that their product has limitations and is largely still experimental, after all, might mean they don't make as much money, and we can't have THAT!
In short, holy fuck I can't wait until these corporate assholes see a NEW shiny thing and move on and leave neural nets to people who actually give a shit about what they can and can't do, and about using them safely and ethically.
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This week in people trying to overextend their Degrees...
https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1742233111037870259
Original comment I'm responding to:
I'm afraid you totally misunderstood my point. 1. Many authors I know are more motivated by the impact of their intellectual productions than by the income it might generate through books and other publications. 2. Many of them face the following trade-off: will I give up income in exchange for increased readership by making my book free for download, or will I generate income while decreasing readership by charging for my book? (Note that offering a free download does not preclude also selling physical books). 3. The calculus is this: since the expected income has a 50% chance of being below $2000, I'm not going to drop my day job. Perhaps I should give up on what is likely to be a modest short-term income and maximize prestige and recognition instead. Prestige and recognition through intellectual impact can turn into future income (e.g. by getting a prestigious position). 4. Lots of people in the academic world have made this calculus and have offered their books for free download. Some of them simultaneously offer print version through publishers who don't mind (generally some non-profit university press). 5. Many of those people have realized that the free download, instead of reducing printed sales, actually *increases* sales. There are famous examples. 6. Academics are very familiar with the idea that you don't get paid directly for your writings. Scholarly publications (and talks) do not generate any income (in fact, they can cost money!). The income is indirect: intellectual or artistic impact is a precondition to a position in academia or industry research labs. 7. Computer scientists are also familiar with the concept. It's called open source software. You give away your software for free. Sometimes, your employer pays you to do so. Sometimes, you just want to make a name for yourself by contributing to an important project. 8. A similar phenomenon exists in music, particularly in jazz: a number of jazz musicians achieve financial stability through a teaching position at a university or conservatory. Additional income comes from performance. They get almost nothing from recordings. I'm not suggesting people shouldn't get paid for their work. In fact, I find it quite sad that most people can't live off of their creative work. If you can make a living by selling your books, music, or video games, more power to you! But I'm wondering whether the modus operandi that is prevalent in the academic world and the open source software world could not apply to other types of intellectual and artistic production. It may cause some creative productions to exist that would not otherwise see the light of day because of lack of commercial interest from publishers.
1. Many authors I know are more motivated by the impact of their intellectual productions than by the income it might generate through books and other publications.
Many Who? Did you read #Publishingpaidme? No? Really? Did you see the last person who declared something like this and people jumping on them—it was an agent? You haven't been paying attention. Many who? Cite your sources. Do you have sources or any publishing experience in novels? I have industry experience and I can cite sources beyond one article. Should we start with Bisheng in China?
Authors and writers who do creative works are more desperate, but want to be paid and paid fairly.
Backing into the "many" without citation creates a fallacy. You can do better as someone who teaches at NYU and has a degree teaching computer science. (Though no lie in my last project on story structure, professors were the worst at citations. And yes, I can name names with that and posted long and ranted long about that and their plagiarism.)
2. Many of them face the following trade-off: will I give up income in exchange for increased readership by making my book free for download, or will I generate income while decreasing readership by charging for my book? (Note that offering a free download does not preclude also selling physical books).
This is because society, in general misinterprets creativity and devalues it as a "real skill" It has nothing really to do with your first assumption. Much like AI often pulls from large creative datasets and devalues creativity and artists' skillsets.
Also, this doesn't prove to be true, but then you haven't really looked at selling models for books. There are more complicated things going on that you don't know and aren't accounting for.
Like the psychology of reviewers and trying to game for more reviewers when your book isn't getting attention, which you would know if you knew the last debacle with the whole gaming the Goodreads reviews by over reviewing.
The calculus is this: since the expected income has a 50% chance of being below $2000, I'm not going to drop my day job. Perhaps I should give up on what is likely to be a modest short-term income and maximize prestige and recognition instead. Prestige and recognition through intellectual impact can turn into future income (e.g. by getting a prestigious position).
Ummm… this isn't calculus. Did you take Calculus? I did This seems like a mix of unsupported statistics pulling numbers wherever you feel like it without cross referencing.
You're trying to use fancy words to sound smarter while proving you don't seem to understand basic psychology and don't know how publishing, artists, or self-publishing works.
Most artists don't do things for prestige value. They don't want to be famous. It's more like sharing is caring. This might be your value set, but it's not everyone's. Have you interacted with artists and creatives? The majority of the time we're swapping different techniques and trying to help each other to the top, again, see Xiran's expose on Goodreads debacle.
For those who want to be famous, etc, you know what they preach over and over again? Don't fuck this up for the rest of the artists: Make sure you get paid for your art.
Do you need a name? John Scalzi. He is famous for saying both things.
You need another name? Harlan Ellison. Harlan Ellison argued freaking hard for this. He won court cases for us. He is famous for preaching over and over again to make sure you get paid while also wanting the prestige.
Most artists that want prestige alone don't survive in the publishing industry. It simply doesn't work because you need the skill set to go with it, and there are certainly less masochistic ways to gain prestige.
You have who exactly? Desperation isn't the same as knowing marketing skills.
Lots of people in the academic world have made this calculus and have offered their books for free download. Some of them simultaneously offer print version through publishers who don't mind (generally some non-profit university press).
This isn't calculus either. Many who? This is also false equivalency. There is a faster road and more sure road to this than getting a novel published or a nonfiction book published. You should realize the fallacy of this and also be able to own you just don't know the artists that create the art you're claiming on.
Many of those people have realized that the free download, instead of reducing printed sales, actually increases sales. There are famous examples.
No. It increases customer dissatisfaction, actually to give things away from free. I can cite Mur Lafferty with a lot of interviews with self-publishers. You have who, exactly to back your assertion?
Second one backs the assertion. I could go more academic, but it's not like you're pulling anything to support your assertions, despite being an NYU professor.
It's actually a higher satisfaction rate to charge for your book rather than to give it out for free. You get better reviews. So when people charged 1.99 for their books over free, the amount of reviews and reviewer satisfaction went up. This might be inverse of what you expect, but this is well-known among self-pubbed authors.
Psychologically, this is inverse because sometimes people think cheap is lower quality. And free is the equivalent of a mattress left on the curb–it must be used and worn and not very good–in fact it might have bed bugs.
Academics are very familiar with the idea that you don't get paid directly for your writings. Scholarly publications (and talks) do not generate any income (in fact, they can cost money!). The income is indirect: intellectual or artistic impact is a precondition to a position in academia or industry research labs.
Academics is not the same thing. You're asserting that you know because oranges are also fruit like apples, so growing oranges must be exactly like apples. That's not the case. Because Academia takes a different skill set, but a related skill set from creating books in the creative sphere. It doesn't seem you have enough publishing knowledge to back your claim, so you try to make a related claim and then claim the feelings around it must be the same.
Because the proess of publishing nonfiction and novels and short stories is different from academia, the atmosphere and the reasons why people want to publish or have a publishing career also change. There is a lot of difference in this industry compared to academia.
But it's not. It simply is not. Also, academic papers get better pay than your average article. Ask me how I know this. I fucking looked it up. You get better residuals too, in the form of prestige means you get better pay in your career itself. It doesn't work this way in general publishing. You can fuck up one day and lose your entire career. The publisher says goodbye, no more sorry, you didn't sell well that we no longer want your books. BTW, you need a reference? Brandon Sanderson said this on Writing excuses that he felt lucky that he's been able to have a continued career in this regard.
Computer scientists are also familiar with the concept. It's called open source software. You give away your software for free. Sometimes, your employer pays you to do so. Sometimes, you just want to make a name for yourself by contributing to an important project.
Open source software is totally a different type of field and psychology from what you're arguing here. Also false equivalency and computer science as a core career pays well, that people can do it for prestige? No. They want to innovate the field further and try to find other computer programmers and learn and explore things.
My Dad was a computer engineer. I know this from personal experience of being near computer engineers. I know how they think. I also worked professionally in UX. You're thinking the psychology must be the same without experiencing the people. This is over extending.
A similar phenomenon exists in music, particularly in jazz: a number of jazz musicians achieve financial stability through a teaching position at a university or conservatory. Additional income comes from performance. They get almost nothing from recordings. I'm not suggesting people shouldn't get paid for their work. In fact, I find it quite sad that most people can't live off of their creative work. If you can make a living by selling your books, music, or video games, more power to you! But I'm wondering whether the modus operandi that is prevalent in the academic world and the open source software world could not apply to other types of intellectual and artistic production. It may cause some creative productions to exist that would not otherwise see the light of day because of lack of commercial interest from publishers.
No. You're jumping in order to cover your lack of knowledge of a thing. Focus on the feelings of the publishing industry. Show your knowledge of the people that produce books.
Jazz Musicians don't have the same psychology either.
So, in total, you're confessing you don't know anything about publishing industry, how it operates and who is working in it and for what reasons, but assert you must know because apples are fruit like oranges, so you have to be growing apples and oranges in the exact same way–don't you water them and put them into full sun? So then you must be able to understand that how you grow them and the pests that come onto them and the things the farmers have to care about as an apple grower and an orange grower must be exactly the same.
This is how your argument sounds like. Why not actually do the investigating and stop spitballing and, ya know, act like an academic and ASK THE PEOPLE and stop doing your backfire effect in the wrong way?
Also, it might behoove you to look into scams writers face and why people fall for those scams.
BTW, Anthropology Degree and minor in comp lit. Also published. So yeah, I know what I'm doing when I pick on your argument.
#writing advice#problems with academia#stop misusing your degrees#investigate and actually have citations before making big false claims#fuck it as artists get paid
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I was looking at the Three Frats AU for ideas to potentially get me out of writers block, and I realized-- I couldn't find any of their majors anywhere! Do you have any specific in mind? This goes for the Jugdral/Ylisse club as well.
I've not given too much consideration to it, but a few concepts for majors or careers I've had drifting around in my mind are:
Garreg Mach
Ignatz - business major; wishes he were a fine arts major
Dorothea - not a performance major; she's trying to study something "practical" so that she will have other prospects once her voice and looks fade
Hubert - computer science; there's something about a lot of the dark mages that makes me think oh, they're computer geeks, and while Hubert's not like, a nerdy prodigy like Annette or Lysithea (or Leo and Soren), the idea of his underhanded saboteur tendencies manifesting as like, him being a hacker is really funny to me. The Agarthans are super into crypto and Hubert keeps ruining their prospects. Thales knows it's Hubert and there is nothing he can do. Thales has also been locked out of his email again.
Claude and Edelgard - political science; Edelgard's more interested in relations within Fodlan, while Claude focuses on Fodlan's relations with the rest of the world. Both of them agree that the best spectator sport is Jugdral politics.
Constance - chemistry; needs to be closely supervised in the lab
Jugdral - most of them are out of university now
Quan, Eldigan, Sigurd, Arvis - all polisci majors.
Lewyn - took a gap year that turned into a gap many years that turned into "I don't think I want to go to college". He has a soundcloud.
Quan, Eldigan, and Arvis now all have jobs in politics/government now; I have no idea what Sigurd does.
Edain attended seminary.
Ethlyn is helping Deirdre get set up with doing tarot readings for people online.
Oifey and Shannan - high school students; Oifey also wants to go into polisci, and Shannan wants to study The Blade.
Ylisse - the Shepherds are all over the place in age/uni status
Miriel - she's into everything: biology, chemistry, physics...
Tharja - sells curses on etsy
Henry - has a ghost/cryptid-hunting youtube channel where his ultimate goal is to get killed by a ghoul on-camera
Maribelle - pre-law
Robin - dabbles in everything, but she's going for her graduate degree in history and her thesis topic is about dark dragon cults. Unfortunately, "my estranged father told me this about Grima" is not a usable citation for a thesis paper.
#three frat houses au#eldigan gets elected president of agustria as a write-in candidate who was not officially on the ballot;#claude and edelgard do not stop talking about this for a month and a half#anyway hope you clear up your writer's block soon! it's a bastard. i want to write. let me write!! -shakes bars of fence-
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hi!! what do you think of the fake dating and crossover tropes in fanfiction?
fake dating
B: Like it. Not one of my bigger cravings, but it can scratch a certain itch if I’m in the right mood.
ok so.... it isn't something i specifically go looking for like... ever! but like the entirely of GtN is just built on a fake dating premise, which means a LOT of fic in the tlt fandom features it, and therefore I end up reading it a lot. i don't think i have ever disliked it, and it is featured in some of my favorite fics
because of that i don't even have specific fic recs for this because it is just at least 50% (citation needed) of the griddlehark tag i genuinely don't know how to pick
crossover
C: Neutral. A good author might be able to sell it, but a bad one will kill it deader than dead.
for me this REALLY depends on what specific fandoms are involved and how they are crossed over! i'm generally incredibly apathetic about characters from different media interacting with each other, and i'm more interested in crossover fics that really just focus on the characters from 1 media, exploring the other media's universe/treating it like an AU with pre-built characters/setting vs specifically a crossover.
between the devil and the deep blue sea, by pipistrelle on ao3, is my absolute favorite crossover fic i've read for tlt. it's tlt/moby dick crossover, harrow and gideon are called to go on a "whale hunt" for resurrection beasts with the other house heirs. it's INCREDIBLE, i have reread it at least three times, highly recomend
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Jesus at the Temple- Rereading an Old Story
Lately there’s been a lot of talk about the story of Jesus “cleansing” the Temple, or “the Temple Tantrum,” as many have taken to calling it. I’m not the type to say scripture is inerrant, I’m happy to criticize when I think it’s valid, but I also try my best to discern what is in the text from what we add to it. My eyes glanced down to the passage in Luke 19 during Sunday’s church service: “45 When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. 46 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’[c]; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’[d]”
[d] Jer. 7:11
*Record-scratch*
What? There’s a reference? When Jesus quotes the Torah or the prophets, he’s doing it for a reason, this might be the key to the whole thing! I’ve gotta check this out right now!
Jeremiah 7:
“‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. 3 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. 4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” 5 If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. 8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.
9 “‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury,[a] burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord.”
Am… am I the only one who sees this? Doesn’t this make the meaning of the story blatantly obvious? If you’re mistreating your fellow man in your day-to-day life, and if you’re worshipping other gods on the side, you can’t hide from the consequences in the Temple. As several other people have pointed out, the “den” is where the robbers hide out from the law after they’ve committed robberies. Jeremiah, and by extension Jesus, are saying that God isn’t going to protect you from the consequences of your actions. It’s not just Jeremiah, Isaiah says this, Micah says this, Ezekiel says it. They all say that the ritual observances of your religion are empty at best and insulting at worst if they don’t inform the way you live your life. None of them are saying “the system of sacrifices is bad and exploitative.” How does everyone get this wrong?
To be clear, I’m not saying “Jews are wrong to say this is antisemitic,” they have every right to feel that way given how it’s been used. I’m saying “we Christians are doing a terrible job reading this story, twisting it into a form that lets us attack Jews.” I don’t know how I never saw that citation before, and I will plead ignorance, but I do blame my teachers for never pointing out the obvious. Now I don’t know who specifically he’s talking to here, but of course not everyone who worked in or attended the Temple was an upstanding citizen. He MAY be saying the people who run the Temple are in bed with the Roman Empire, but that’s not a criticism of the fact that they exchange money for sacrificial animals. The link with Jeremiah suggests Jesus is positioning Rome as the new Babylon, and calling people to repent so God can deliver them. This isn’t a radical replacement for the Covenant, it’s demanding the people of God start following it again. It’s not saying that commercial activity is off-limits in the Temple, it’s saying that you shouldn’t use it to paper over your transgressions outside. If we want a lesson here, it should be “going to church once a week isn’t enough if it doesn’t affect the rest of your life.” That’s a lesson any faith that believes in justice should be able to embrace (substituting whatever formal observation you have in place of “going to church”).
So, how do we keep getting it wrong? Well, as usual it starts with John. The synoptic gospels aren’t perfect (Matthew is the origin of the “blood curse”), but John went whole hog on antisemitism. If you read the synoptic accounts of the Temple Tantrum, they’re pretty brief and basically just say he turned over a few tables. It was theatrics to make a point. Disruptive, sure, but doing stunts to get attention is well within the prophetic tradition (look at Ezekiel). John is the one who brings in the whip, and he also changes “den of robbers” to “house of commerce.” So John makes Jesus violent (potentially- it’s not said if he actually struck anyone or just threatened) and implies the system of commerce itself is a problem. I saw a claim that he was quoting Zechariah, and that would require more study on my part, but frankly I’m less inclined to give John the benefit of the doubt. Being the latest writer, John was motivated to drive home that Christians and Jews are two different faiths (ironic given how many Christians today want to appropriate seders). He frequently referred to The Jews as antagonists throughout his gospel. John’s version of the story strikes me as indefensible.
Then the text fell into the hands of Protestants and progressives, both of whom eye religious authorities in general with suspicion. Everyone likes to see ourselves in our heroes, so we want to think that Jesus was fighting a corrupt version of his religion as well. But that’s not what the text says. My current pastor likes to say that anytime we think Jesus is criticizing someone else, we should stop and think if he’s actually criticizing us. We need to stop acting like this story is about how ancient people were misguided until we came along and fixed things. The criticism of people who follow the form of religion without the substance isn’t a cudgel, it’s a mirror.
As always, I welcome any disagreement or correction on mistakes I may have made.
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