The Other Factor Is That Of Course The SNP Has Managed To Take Labour And LibDem Seats In Scotland. If

The number of clueless fucking "leftists" already falling for the exact same fucking "don't vote at all if the candidate isn't left enough" garbage (that was liiiiiiterally pushed by Russian trolls last election) is ASTOUNDING.

You vote as progressive as possible every single election. Every time. Whether your choices are SUPER progressive, or kinda progressive, or just 'less evil than the other guy' you vote for your best available option every time.

Refusing to vote helps no one but the most evil option.

Push for progressive candidates. Campaign for them. Donate to them. Support them. Vote for them. And always always always vote for the best option on the ballot.

Having read Dracula all the way through now, every adaptation of the story that puts Mina and Dracula together and frames them as being in love makes me physically ill.

Dracula didn’t love Mina. He assaulted and violated her after doing the same thing to her best friend. She was an object to be coveted and nothing more. How anyone can read that and see a love story baffles and infuriates me.

Jonathan and Mina loved each other. They were willing to condemn themselves to hell just so that the other wouldn’t be alone there. Both of their characters get gutted in so many adaptions to make way for sexy vampire shit, it’s infuriating. Making Mina be in love with her assaulter is fucking rage-inducing.

Gimme an adaptation where Mina loathes this pestilential demon with every fiber of her being. Where she’s just as driven to stamp out this stain upon the world as her husband is. He murdered her friend. He violated her body and soul. He mentally tortured and traumatized her husband. Gimme a Mina with all the fury of Hell behind her.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around Men at Arms.

It's a fantastic book, but it is also so different from Guards! Guards! in tone. And maybe that's where the key is. It's not that the villain of the story is perhaps one of the most proficient killers in all of Discworld (all two and a half of them... D'Eath, Cruces, and The Gonne) and their goal is to actually kill. It's not even that the crimes that the watch are investigating are murder, because even though paid assassinations are legal death and murder are part of the setting. Death is literally a character here, though much more briefly than G!G!. Frankly, I don't even think it's because of the racial allegories.

The tone in Men at Arms is different because the first one to die is a clown. Because Pratchett literally killed the joke (the entire thing and all of its subsets). There's nothing funny about a clown funeral, the dogs are the biggest allegory for racial issues, a gun really is evil, Cuddy literally draws the short straw. It's all literal. Everything is extremely literal. For once, Ankh Morpork isn't a joke. For once, the city feels like a city. And it's the book where Carrot, the most literal character there is, becomes a man (literally and in every sense) and takes his mantle of leadership.

Everything in Men at Arms is literal. Because the villain killed the joke to death and it was the shining moment for Carrot to step up.

There's also an extensive running bit that even the silly construction of the silly, courtesy of Bloody Stupid Johnson, is actually stupid. Within the narrative itself, the book is calling itself out. It is saying that this absurd veneer that we have found ourselves on is just that. This city was built on itself, on its own bones, on the the bones of empires--fueled with the blood of many. The architecture beneath Johnson's flawed works, the aqueducts and sewer systems below the city, are vast and strong and powerful--maybe even beautiful. But they're dangerous. The past is incredibly dangerous. Even Carrot, whose potential is very much rooted in the past of the city, is dangerous. His victory is not one I expected in the moment it came. The line about how you must hope that whoever is looking at you from the other end of their weapon is an evil man... Was harsh and true and honestly a little frightening for a story which also contains a scene where a sentient rock man chucks a dwarf through the skylight of Schrodinger's pork warehouse to save both of their lives.

Perhaps this puts the rest of the book in context as well. Especially the things that made me cringe when I read them. Like everything about Coalface, Angua being included in the story because she was a woman and every book needs at least one (preferably one that can leap over a building or deadlift a draft horse), the high school clique-ificarion of all the guilds, Vimes talkin to the nobles after dinner and almost letting himself believe he could be like that (even though he ends up laying into them with some excellent biting sarcasm), Vetinari not being in control and not realizing it. It's all very real, but real like a real serial killer in real life and not a crime drama. Maybe even real like a normal guy in a costume with their mask off.

Maybe not.

It's not a perfect book (which bites, because G!G! was nearly there), but it remains a very intentional book. I feel like less people have read it than G!G!, and I can see why. It's messier, it's not as funny, there's a lot more allegory and it's a lot more blunt.

But it's still extremely topical (sadly). I retain my opinion that it may be one of the most important books I've ever read. And I'm beginning to understand, finally, why.

here’s a story about changelings

reposted from my old blog, which got deleted:   Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch. She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage. Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings. “Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child. Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin. “I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.” “I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.” “Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.” Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine. “We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…” “Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.” Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has. “Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.” Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project. She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still. “Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once. Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.” Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.   They all live happily ever after. * Here’s another story: Gregor grew fast, even for a boy, grew tall and big and healthy and began shoving his older siblings around early. He was blunt and strange and flew into rages over odd things, over the taste of his porridge or the scratch of his shirt, over the sound of rain hammering on the roof, over being touched when he didn’t expect it and sometimes even when he did. He never wore shoes if he could help it and he could tell you the number of nails in the floorboards without looking, and his favorite thing was to sit in the pantry and run his hands through the bags of dry barley and corn and oat. Considering as how he had fists like a young ox by the time he was five, his family left him to it. “He’s a changeling,” his father said to his wife, expecting an argument, but men are often the last to know anything about their children, and his wife only shrugged and nodded, like the matter was already settled, and that was that. They didn’t bind Gregor in iron and leave him in the woods for his own kind to take back. They didn’t dig him a grave and load him into it early. They worked out what made Gregor angry, in much the same way they figured out the personal constellations of emotion for each of their other sons, and when spring came, Gregor’s father taught him about sprouts, and when autumn came, Gregor’s father taught him about sheaves. Meanwhile his mother didn’t mind his quiet company around the house, the way he always knew where she’d left the kettle, or the mending, because she was forgetful and he never missed a detail. “Pity you’re not a girl, you’d never drop a stitch of knitting,” she tells Gregor, in the winter, watching him shell peas. His brothers wrestle and yell before the hearth fire, but her fairy child just works quietly, turning peas by their threes and fours into the bowl. “You know exactly how many you’ve got there, don’t you?” she says. “Six hundred and thirteen,” he says, in his quiet, precise way. His mother says “Very good,” and never says Pity you’re not human. He smiles just like one, if not for quite the same reasons. The next autumn he’s seven, a lucky number that pleases him immensely, and his father takes him along to the mill with the grain. “What you got there?” The miller asks them. “Sixty measures of Prince barley, thirty two measures of Hare’s Ear corn, and eighteen of Abernathy Blue Slate oats,” Gregor says. “Total weight is three hundred fifty pounds, or near enough. Our horse is named Madam. The wagon doesn’t have a name. I’m Gregor.” “My son,” his father says. “The changeling one.” “Bit sharper’n your others, ain’t he?” the miller says, and his father laughs. Gregor feels proud and excited and shy, and it dries up all his words, sticks them in his throat. The mill is overwhelming, but the miller is kind, and tells him the name of each and every part when he points at it, and the names of all the grain in all the bags waiting for him to get to them. “Didn’t know the fair folk were much for machinery,” the miller says. Gregor shrugs. “I like seeds,” he says, each word shelled out with careful concentration. “And names. And numbers.” “Aye, well. Suppose that’d do it. Want t’help me load up the grist?” They leave the grain with the miller, who tells Gregor’s father to bring him back ‘round when he comes to pick up the cornflour and cracked barley and rolled oats. Gregor falls asleep in the nameless wagon on the way back, and when he wakes up he goes right back to the pantry, where the rest of the seeds are left, and he runs his hands through the shifting, soothing textures and thinks about turning wheels, about windspeed and counterweights. When he’s twelve–another lucky number–he goes to live in the mill with the miller, and he never leaves, and he lives happily ever after. * Here’s another: James is a small boy who likes animals much more than people, which doesn’t bother his parents overmuch, as someone needs to watch the sheep and make the sheepdogs mind. James learns the whistles and calls along with the lambs and puppies, and by the time he’s six he’s out all day, tending to the flock. His dad gives him a knife and his mom gives him a knapsack, and the sheepdogs give him doggy kisses and the sheep don’t give him too much trouble, considering. “It’s not right for a boy to have so few complaints,” his mother says, once, when he’s about eight. “Probably ain’t right for his parents to have so few complaints about their boy, neither,” his dad says. That’s about the end of it. James’ parents aren’t very talkative, either. They live the routines of a farm, up at dawn and down by dusk, clucking softly to the chickens and calling harshly to the goats, and James grows up slow but happy. When James is eleven, he’s sent to school, because he’s going to be a man and a man should know his numbers. He gets in fights for the first time in his life, unused to peers with two legs and loud mouths and quick fists. He doesn’t like the feel of slate and chalk against his fingers, or the harsh bite of a wooden bench against his legs. He doesn’t like the rules: rules for math, rules for meals, rules for sitting down and speaking when you’re spoken to and wearing shoes all day and sitting under a low ceiling in a crowded room with no sheep or sheepdogs. Not even a puppy. But his teacher is a good woman, patient and experienced, and James isn’t the first miserable, rocking, kicking, crying lost lamb ever handed into her care. She herds the other boys away from him, when she can, and lets him sit in the corner by the door, and have a soft rag to hold his slate and chalk with, so they don’t gnaw so dryly at his fingers. James learns his numbers well enough, eventually, but he also learns with the abruptness of any lamb taking their first few steps–tottering straight into a gallop–to read. Familiar with the sort of things a strange boy needs to know, his teacher gives him myths and legends and fairytales, and steps back. James reads about Arthur and Morgana, about Hercules and Odysseus, about djinni and banshee and brownies and bargains and quests and how sometimes, something that looks human is left to try and stumble along in the humans’ world, step by uncertain step, as best they can. James never comes to enjoy writing. He learns to talk, instead, full tilt, a leaping joyous gambol, and after a time no one wants to hit him anymore. The other boys sit next to him, instead, with their mouths closed, and their hands quiet on their knees.   “Let’s hear from James,” the men at the alehouse say, years later, when he’s become a man who still spends more time with sheep than anyone else, but who always comes back into town with something grand waiting for his friends on his tongue. “What’ve you got for us tonight, eh?” James finishes his pint, and stands up, and says, “Here’s a story about changelings.”

The U.S. Midterms are Tomorrow, November 8, 2022

If you're eligible to vote in the midterms already and haven't yet, make a plan for how to go vote tomorrow.

Know your polling place and when it opens and closes. Know the rules in your state and at your job about taking off from work to vote. Be prepared to wait in line.

And then go vote!

Would that there were five of me, one for each child, so I might keep them all safe.

Hi there I adore your wriding on Dracula and especially how wonderful and sinister/sweet (is there a word for that? There should be a word for that.) Your Jonathan/Mina is. Is your plan for the novel/sequel to be published? Or will you be putting it up online either behind a pay wall or for free? If it's to be published formally I hope and wish you all the success with finding a publisher that you deserve because once again your writing is terrific.

if you have already answered this my apologies.

First, thank you, my ego is always happy for the confidence boost

Second, hopefully it gets finished and published! Something about Dracula Daily really hammered home how disappointed I've been with the bulk of Dracula-based media and how shoddy the pop culture understanding of it is. I want Barking Harker (and maybe some other Dracula-adjacent projects I'm poking at right now (🤐) ) to get out on the bookshelves.

Likewise for SO MANY COOL IDEAS that other folks have come up with since this book club started. Everyone should take a crack at writing and publication for their plots too! Don't just leave it in fan fiction where only a few of us will see it! We have to get our stuff out in the wider world so the characters and ideas we love get the limelight they deserve.

@ my uk followers: REGISTER TO VOTE. if you're a student and you're going to be at uni on december 12th (or you think your vote could be more useful in your uni constituency) then you can register at both your term time and home addresses. last election, only 59% of 20-24 year olds voted, and the tories are counting on young people not voting. it takes like five minutes and you can do it here.

on september 11th 2001, two planes crashed into the world trade centre in new york city. It was a massacre. 3000 dead in a matter of 24 hours. the entire world was in shock of the atrocity, the brutal, diabolical murder of scores of innocents. 

the american government reacted accordingly. a full investigation was launched to hold the culprits responsible – what nation could have sanctioned such a brutal attack on so many innocents? what kind of soulless country could, regardless of vendetta, allow such a heinous crime? 

by 2002, the united states had their answer. the investigation was complete. A 600 page document known as the Congressional Report on 9/11 was released. approx 20 pages detailing the workings of the nation responsible were produced. The report was published. 

Except the name of the country responsible for 9/11 was redacted in the report. blackened out with a sharpie. It would remain redacted for 14 years. The country in question? Saudi Arabia. 

Instead of declaring to the world who was involved in orchestrating 9/11, the u.s. would hide this information for over a decade. 

Instead, they would point fingers at Iraq, whilst knowing that iraq had nothing to do with the attack in the first place. They would orchestrate journalistic propaganda in the new york times about “weapons of mass destruction” – a narrative that had been proven false by their very own intelligence officers, a narrative that had been shot down by every journalist that had ever stepped foot in Niger (where the purported ingredients of mass destruction were coming from). Regardless, the New York Times would dutifully publish the perverted stories anyway. NYT editors would say “to not invade iraq is the bigger mistake”. 

In 2003, the months of building up false stories in the media, propaganda in every mainstream newspaper, journal and t.v. show would pay off. The u.s. would invade iraq. 

from 2003 -  2011 the country of iraq would be brutalized in ways never seen before by mankind. modern, 21st century warfare would decimate the very spirit of iraq. at least 460 000 innocent, iraqi civilians murdered in 8 years. entire generations were wiped out in less than a decade. we will never know their names. 

waves of sexual violence committed upon “captured” cities ensued at the hands of american soldiers. many of the survivors, if not dead at the hands of their occupiers, would take their own lives. we will never know their names. 

in 2011, the blood in iraq is finally dry. we’ve leeched all of it. we’ve procured the natural resources we came for – it’s time to head out. the so called WMD we came for were never found, they did not exist, they were never real to begin with. A far cry from how things got started, we start seeing articles about the falsehood of the iraq war. the same publishers who willingly handed out propaganda to the masses about WMD in Saddam’s hands are now saying “wait…we’ve made an error.” the narrative shifts. the occupation ends 3 years after a new commander in chief is granted the power to end it. in its wake we leave behind military bases and mercenaries that are ready to activate whenever called upon. 

That same year, the u.s. supports various popular movements across the arab world. tens of regimes are flipped. 

and in that same year, using the same weapons left behind by valiant american rapists and invaders, an army of another kind of mercenaries is born. they call themselves ISIL, then ISIS. 

ISIS vows to cleanse the muslim world of shia muslims, minority sect muslims, christians, yezidis, Jewish people. ISIS also vows they are enemies of the u.s. America vows vice versa. Their feud is a celebrated one. ISIS, the evil nemesis of the Brave & Courageous America. 

But then, 2012 happens. America, losing their influence and control over the levant, start funding ISIS factions. America starts funding Al-Qaeda factions. 

The same NYT that once convinced us that Iraq had WMD is now INSISTING that these al-qaeda factions, that themselves claim to be brothers of al-qaeda, are moderate rebels simply looking for democracy and liberation. people believe it. 

America’s proxies in the levant go on to destroy the region in unimaginable ways–and then, 2018 happens. 

Iraqis & Iranians destroy ISIS. Indisputably, action from both nations led to the destruction of ISIS, now a paid member of the U.S. military. America, once using ISIS and AQ factions to regain control over the levant struggles to position themselves as the heroes – attempting pathetically to play both sides of the same coin. Again, the same way outlets like NYT backtracked their Iraq war propaganda, they start apologizing for identical mistakes in naming actual american funded terrorists as “freedom fighters.” another cycle ends. 

ISIS is gone, but the real loss is America’s. They’ve lost the barbaric feudalistic control they once held in the region via ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Their terrorist assets have been reduced to ashes by a people they once themselves invaded from 2003 - 2011.

This brings us to today. The united states has assassinated Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s second in command. this is akin to another nation murdering the likes of mike pence, joe biden or dick cheney. it is an act of war. 4000 troops have been deployed to the Iraq-Iran region. It is an invasion. 

And just as in 2003 the NYT & MSM justified the faulty invasion of iraq, and just as in 2012 the NYT & MSM justified the funding of ISIS & AQ factions, in 2020, a new propaganda will circulate to justify the illegal assassination of sovereign leaders. 

New propaganda will circulate to justify a new era of bloodshed in Iraq & Iran and the rape and murder of innocents.  New propaganda will vilify young, brown children as terrorists.  New propaganda will circulate to return us to the year 2003. 

There is nothing I can do within my capacity to help anyone. I am completely useless in saving any of the lives that will be taken in the next several years. 

All I can do is ask that when you see a piece of information that attempts to justify the actions of the u.s. on foreign soil, in any foreign nation, that you reduce it to ashes. They lied to you in 2003, they did it again in 2011, they are doing it again in 2020. 

Reject the lie. It’s all we can do.