“‘No’?” echoed the space emperor. “‘No’?! No one. Ever. Tells me. ‘No’.”
He advanced, close enough that the threads on his rich robes could be counted by the naked eye. After a furtive glance over his shoulder, he dropped his voice to a desperate whisper and said, “Could you… could you do it again? Please?”
“No.”
The space emperor’s eyes shone like embers as he leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of his face. “So this… this ‘democracy’ you speak of. You’re telling me that people might… disobey me? They wouldn’t have to do everything I tell them to?”
“Not if they disagree with you.”
“They can do that?!” He licked his lips, trembling with excitement. “And voting! You say I… you say I could lose?!”
“Yeah, uh. And you probably would.”
“Incredible,” he breathed. “Why, I could kiss you!” With a surprised laugh, he stopped himself mid-step. “But—you wouldn’t like that! Right? You’d have an ‘opinion’? Gosh… do you think other people have those?!”
The space emperor let out a long, melancholy sigh and turned to the hero, his lip trembling with delicate misery. “I’m going to miss you,” he sniffed. “I don’t think I’ll watch, you know, when they… when they do it.” The tear that had been clinging valiantly to his eyelashes finally broke free and rolled down his cheek. “Oh!” he cried, and threw his arms around the hero’s neck with a great, shuddering sob. “Yours will be the only skull I drink from ever again—I promise! I will think of you every time, and I’ll pretend you’re still here with me!”
“Or you could just… not have me executed.”
The space emperor inhaled sharply and took a step back, his face red and puffy from crying. “That’s an option?!”
The serving-woman stood with her back ramrod straight and her eyes fixed firmly on the floor. Every muscle in her body looked tense, and only the rapid rise and fall of her shoulders betrayed her terror.
“You’ve ruined my gown,” said the space emperor, regarding the growing purple stain on his sleeve. “These fibers were harvested on Lutoya-29, a planet that was demolished six units ago. There is no other like it in the galaxy. I could have you harvested for washing-water for this.” He looked up and met the hero’s eyes, his thoughtful expression melting into a delighted grin. “But I don’t have to, do I?”
“No, Your Incandecense,” whispered the woman. Her sweat-beaded skin had grown translucent with fear.
“I don’t even have to have you killed at all!” he exclaimed. “I could… I could…” he cast around the chamber, as though searching for inspiration in the lavish furnishings.
“Please, Your Incandecense.” The woman’s voice was low and unsteady, but her gaze remained fixed on the floor. “I’ll do anything, please, forgive—”
“Anything! You’re right!” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together, stamping his feet in a little dance. “I could do anything! In fact—” he reached over the table and clasped the hero’s hand in his own. “Nothing is anything! I could do nothing! Nothing at all!” He giggled merrily and then froze, gingerly releasing the hero’s hand and leaning back. He tapped one bejeweled finger against his temple and gave an exaggerated wink. “Oh, right. Consent.”
The serving-woman’s eyes flickered to the hero’s for a moment, nervous questions burning in them. The hero gave a barely-imperceptible shrug and a very tiny, reassuring smile. The emperor did not seem to notice.
“Is there more wine?” he asked. “Splendid. Please. Do it again.”
“What…?” The woman’s skin flashed an alarming yellow.
The emperor gestured enthusiastically between himself and the crystal pitcher. “The wine. My gown. I think you should reacquaint them.”
“He wants you to spill the wine on him again,” explained the hero. “No, really. He’s, uh… he’s having an interesting day.”
“I am learning so many things,” said the emperor. “Did you know that you have feelings, too? It’s not just me! My new friend has feelings, that man over there has feelings, that… whatever that thing is has feelings!” He stood up and threw his arms wide in a sudden, emphatic motion, flinging droplets of purple liquid from his soiled sleeve. “Maybe everyone has feelings! Maybe robots! Maybe my enemies! Maybe—” he stopped, and the delirious grin vanished from his face. “Maybe the Lutoyans have feelings…” His voice dropped to a whisper, and he stared at the hero with a strange expression. “But… there aren’t any more Lutoyans…”
The space emperor took his breakfast in bed, bathed in sweet oils, allowed his hair to be combed and coiffed and his face painted with rare minerals, and then sighed in delicate frustration.
“None of this seems right,” he confessed to his wardrober, after rejecting the seventh gown he was presented with. It was deep blue silk, studded all over with crystals that glinted and sparkled like a night sky. “It’s just not working for me today.”
“That is one of the finest gowns in the galaxy, Your Incandescence,” said the wardrober. “It is an accurate starmap of the constellations as seen from your boyhood home, rivaled in beauty and quality only by your other raiments. But perhaps this is more to your impeccable tastes–” It offered an eighth gown, a trailing cascade of iridescent blue-green fabric layered with shimmering, diaphanous beetle wings. “A species of rare insect went extinct for the construction of this one,” it said. “It was considered sacred to the inhabitants of that world. Wearing this gown declares your might and majesty to the galaxy.”
The space emperor pursed his lips. “Hmm,” he said. “Not that one, I think.” There was an unfamiliar twisting sensation in his gut when he looked at the gown.
“I hope the feast is to your pleasure, Your Incandescence. We did not have much time to prepare before–”
“It is not to my pleasure!” cried the space emperor, lashing out and knocking the platter to the floor. The attendant winced as the tureen shattered and bent to clean it up. “I want to go back!”
“That would be inadvisable,” said the war magnate, rolling her eyes. “It is not yet safe for you to return planetside; there may be traps or other assassins lying in wait. I’m sure your friend is fine.”
The entire palace was climate-controlled, including the military wing, so there was no reason for the space emperor to feel so cold as he walked through the halls. It was just another concern to bring up with his doctor later that evening, along with the pain in his chest and difficulty swallowing around the tightness in his throat. He so rarely fell ill–even as a child, the diseases of the common rabble had never touched him.
The doctor would have to wait. He had more important business to attend to.
He ran his thumb along the special weapon the General had given him. It was simple in design, as unlike the ornate ceremonial laser he always wore at his hip as it was possible to be. He didn’t understand exactly how it functioned, but he didn’t need to; all that mattered was that it worked. The General assured him that it would be a most fitting punishment.
“What?” said the space emperor. “What just… happened?”
The General bowed his head and held out his arm. The space emperor took it numbly and allowed himself to be led from the room, away from the acrid smoke rising from the dead robot. “You must forgive me, Your Incandescence. I will bear the blame for this… unfortunate oversight. Walk with me, if you please, and I will explain.”
The sprawling facility seemed to become oppressively small. The space emperor sucked in an unsteady breath and discovered that oxygen had suddenly stopped working while he was distracted by the screen. “Air,” he wheezed, stumbling toward the turbolift. “I need air.”
Oh boy, here we go. One of my all-time favorite stories. William and Ellen Craft were both born into slavery in Georgia in the 1820s. They looked like this. You’ll note, just by looking at her, that Ellen was very light skinned. That would be because her parents were an enslaved woman and her master…and Ellen’s mother was also the child of an enslaved woman and her master. You can only imagine what had happened. Slavery is disgusting. Anyway.
William and Ellen met, fell in love, and got married so far as they were allowed (enslaved people were forbidden by law to actually get married in any legally binding fashion; since being sold away from each other forever happened so often, slave marriage vows often included the phrase “til death or separation do you part”–again, slavery is disgusting). As you can imagine, William and Ellen didn’t want to have any children born into the system of slavery. In December of 1848, they decided to escape to the North. And that’s when the Crafts got crafty and came up with a brilliant plan to escape in style.
As we established, Ellen was white passing, and they decided to use this fact to their advantage. William was able to keep a small portion of his earnings from being contracted out as a carpenter, and he saved up that money to buy Ellen some really fancy clothes. Once disguised, Ellen looked like this:
Dashing, right? So Ellen was disguised as a wealthy, white man, someone nobody would think to question, and William would be playing the part of her enslaved manservant. Their story was that they were traveling north because Ellen was in poor health and wanted the expertise of northern doctors. This poor health story was for a few different reasons:
Ellen had been practicing masculine mannerisms and behaviors, but by claiming to be sick, she wouldn’t have to talk much and reveal that she still had a feminine voice.
Ellen had her right arm in a sling, pretending it was badly injured, so she could mark travel documents with an “X” and hide that she didn’t know how to write.
On racially segregated trains, she could keep William in the “white” compartments with her because she would need him to tend to her at all times, what with her “delicate health” and all. Staying together would prevent the two from getting separated accidentally.
It was still a nerve-wracking experience, to be sure, with the threat of discovery at every turn, but William and Ellen Craft managed to escape from slavery by riding first class trains and staying in the nicest hotels along the way. There was even one point where Ellen got to have dinner with the captain of the steamboat they were riding. They arrived in Philadelphia, safe and sound, on Christmas Day, 1848. The Crafts then settled in Boston, fitting in nicely with the free black community in the Beacon Hill neighborhood and making friends with prominent abolitionists. These abolitionist friends, which included the likes of Theodore Parker and Lewis Hayden among many others, encouraged William and Ellen to make their escape story public. They did, and soon the two were celebrities.
Their celebrity status turned out to not be such a good thing less than two years later, when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. Their master back in Georgia had, of course, read all about how the Crafts outwitted all the white people and made a home for themselves in Boston, so he hired two slave catchers to go up to Boston and retrieve his “property.” What the slave catchers didn’t bargain for was that Boston was ready for them.
Up in Boston, the Vigilance Committee consisting of both black and white abolitionists was hard at work coming up with a plan to prevent the Crafts from being captured. William Craft and Theodore Parker even thought of legal loopholes to get William arrested in Massachusetts, if it came to that, because he couldn’t be taken out of Massachusetts jail to be taken South. Loophole 1: since Ellen and William still hadn’t gotten married, a friend could report William for fornication and get him arrested for that. Loophole 2: William could carry various weapons on him, fight back against the slave catchers if they caught him, and get arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. They thought of everything.
When the slave catchers arrived, the Vigilance Committee sprang into action, getting the two slave catchers arrested like six separate times in quick succession, for petty crimes both real and imagined. They had Vigilance Committee member Samuel Gridley Howe doing his Sam thing and making very scary threats. All of this was done to make these slave catchers so sick of Boston that they’d give up and go home to Georgia. All the while, William and Ellen were being shuffled, often separately, between safe houses. Eventually it came to pass that Ellen was staying with Theodore Parker, while William stayed with Lewis Hayden. And that’s when yet another dramatic episode happened.
Lewis Hayden had himself been born into slavery in Kentucky, and he had made his escape up to Boston just a couple years before William and Ellen Craft did. Once William got to his house, Hayden put his own plan into action. One day, the slave catchers, who had already been put through hell by like the entire city of Boston, arrived at Lewis Hayden’s doorstep and demanded that he turn over the fugitive William Craft. Hayden calmly opened the door a little further, not to let them inside, but to reveal the two kegs of gunpowder he had waiting just inside. He told them that he would prefer to blow them all sky high if they took one more step, rather than see himself or William Craft return to slavery. The two slave catchers took the hint and left.
William and Ellen were reunited at Theodore Parker’s house shortly thereafter, and plans were made to smuggle the Crafts up to Canada and then across the Atlantic to England. Before they left, however, there was something Parker wanted to do for them. Since they were heading to safety at last and no longer needed to be able to go to jail for fornication, Parker offered to legally marry them. William and Ellen agreed, and Parker, their minister, did the honors right in his own living room, with a Bible in one hand and–I’m not kidding–a sword in the other. Parker escorted them as far as Maine himself, with a variety of swords and guns on his person so he was basically that trope where a character takes an absurd amount of weapons out of their clothes. When they parted, he gave William and Ellen the Bible and sword he had been holding as he officiated their marriage.
William and Ellen made a home for themselves in England for the next nineteen years. They got to go to school, and they fulfilled their goal of raising their children in freedom. They had five children, as a matter of fact. In 1859, they were paid a visit by their old friend, Theodore Parker, who got to meet their children and see that they still had the Bible he gave them. Parker was on his way to Italy, where he hoped the warm climate would improve his tuberculosis, but he would die in Florence the following spring, at just 49 years of age. After the Civil War, Ellen was miraculously able to figure out where her mother was in Georgia and have her brought over to England to stay with them. They hadn’t seen each other in almost twenty years, so you can only imagine the reunion. In 1868, once slavery was abolished, citizenship was granted to African Americans, and the right to vote was granted to African American men, the Crafts felt like they had work to do. Twenty years after they escaped from it, William and Ellen moved back to Georgia, back to where they began. William and Ellen tried to establish a school for freedmen as well as a farm, but white supremacist violence and laws led to the failure of both after Reconstruction ended.
William and Ellen Craft spent their twilight years living in Charleston, South Carolina with their daughter and son-in-law. Ellen Craft died in 1891, at the age of 65. William Craft died in 1900, at the age of 75.
if you don’t know the difference between a hare and a rabbit you’ve never gazed into the cold wild eyes of a hare and known that if it could speak it would speak backwards
Jack Rabbits are North American Hares and they’re the WORST to encounter at night becuase:
You all know how big a rabbit is. Jack Rabbits and hares are much bigger. they’re the size of large cats or small dogs or just-walking-age children.
They also like to hang out in gangs of a hlf dozen to over 30.
and in the middle of backcountry dirt roads.
perhaps they’re dustbathing
or blood sacrifce
I don’t know because when you come up the road at night because your dog has a tiny bladder and needs to go out at midnight and you have no yard so you’re walking him on the dirt road around your neighborhod because you might aw well get some stargazing in, and you come just over the ridge to see a coven of twenty jackrabbits in the middle of the road
and
they
all
stand
up
not just onto all fours like a proper prey animal
No they get up on thier hind legs and don’t just sit but STAND like tiny rabbit-skinned toddlers, wobbing slightly as they stare directly at you eyes shining in your flashlight’s glow
…Blood Red.
And a chill goes through you on that warm july night because while they’re a puntable size and allegedly herbivores they’re standing and watching you just like people and you are vastly outnumbered.
everyone freezes
you’re considering your odds aganst roughly 200lbs of Suspiciously Humanoid Hare
and they’re considering their odds against you
the only sound in the never-ending high desert wind
somewhere in your peripheral vision you can see the streetlights but they seem awfully far away
The nearest Jack Rabbit
Blinks
and takes a single shuffling step
forward
You area an overdevloped monkey and your prefrontal cortex is capable of some amazing feats but it runs very slowly compared to the reflexes of a rabbit and you’re frozen as you desperately scramble for the appropriate course of action, hands feeling thick and useless, mouth dry and feet imeasurably heavy there’s no way you’d outrun THESE, god there’s a rabies outbreak going around that shit’s not curable-
The Dog
L U N G E S
It’s only the briefest of movements but the animal you’d picked out for his gangly legs and floppy ears and goofy smile is suddenly a dark shape of muscle and teeth and had flung himself at the horrible goblin rabbits faster than mere physics should dictate, appearing in the circle of the flashlight for only the briefest of moments before the jolt from the leash makes you stumble and the light falters
The Jack Rabbits
Scatter
Vanishing into the faintly starlit sagebrush in as so many faint gray shapes that might be mistaken for the dustclouds they kick up
Later, you sit on the couch disquieted
and you wonder
If the sight of the Jack Rabbits standing and studying you was frightening enough to make you yearn for the safety of the yellowed streetlights
what must it be like from thier end?
what terrifying creature
deliberately ties itself
to something so horrible
As a Dog?
@gallusrostromegalus that last bit gave me such a strong mental image I absolutely had to draw it
WELL HOLY SHIT.
CONGRATULATE, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I WAS GOING FOR.
is it ok if I print it out and stick it on the fridge?
Well this zoomed past 100K while I wasn’t looking but here’s a Picture of Charleston Chew, Terror of Wild Hares and Sometimes Bears:
I buried an elk head up in Kremmling last fall with the intent of digging it up in spring after most of the flesh fell off and cleaning it before mailing it off to someone and now for the life of me I can’t remember who I promised it to.
It was either @systlin@pipcomix@vampireapologist or @a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy or maybe someone else but if one of y’all doesn’t claim it by May when I go back I’m going to draw an addess out of the addresses i have on file and mail it you without warning.
I believe I gave you my address for SOME purpose and it seems likely it was this
…I think we discussed this but you held off on the address becuase you were looking at places in Georgia and weren’t sure you were going to be at your current place by the time it was ready to ship.
This is assuming the coyotes didn’t dig it up in the meantime.
Babe, for the sake of clarity my mom has asked me to put it down in public record that we do NOT want an elk head in our mailbox this spring. <3 Thank you for your consideration, I hope it goes to someone who loves it. XD
I’ll take your name out of the hat. You may reccive other cervine-related consolation prizes.
Vanishingly Smaller Categories:
People with a spare elk head
People who would think of burying it until most of the flesh falls off
People who would actually do that
And then clean it off
For a friend
People who have a friend who might want that head
People who have multiple friends who might want that head
People who have so many friends who might want an elk head that has been buried and left until most of the flesh has rotted away and then cleaned up that they forget which friend wanted it
So What Happened was-
Last November (2018) my mom and I were having wretched anxiety over politics and decied that come election day we’d vanish into the mountains with the dogs and come back tomorrow to survey the damage (we ended up being pleasantly surprised instead)
But to change things up a little, we go out to Wolford State park, just a bit north of Kremmling becuase we hadn’t been there before and even though it was november it’s still lovely out there. Mostly sagebrugh scrubland and not-quite frozen resvior but also lovely mountain views and, apparently, poachers.
We get a ways out on one of the trails with the dogs when Charlie picks up a scent and starts Very Pointedly Investigating, and Arwen’s following him because it’s easier to let the other dog do the work. Arwen ends up spotting the head first and body-checks Charlie out of the way to get it and I have to physically pry Awen’s mouth open to get the VERY fresh head out of her mouth.
Ended up being the severed head of an Elk Cow which I had to examine from arm’s length over my head becuase Arwen was EXTREMELY determined to have more fresh elk face.
“Good Grief did the coyotes do that?” Mom asks, attempting to restrain Arwen. It’s not working.
“Nah. This is tool marks on the bone here, see? Katy says people sometimes cut the heads off deer and elk if they shot a cow when they had bull tags.”
“Oh yeah people used to do that with whitetail back in Ohio. Never worked, the ranger would just check the other end.” Mom nodded. I am a weird-ass adult form of an even weirder kid so she’s gotten used to the carrion by now. “Looks like she has all her teeth. She’d make a lovely skull mount.”
“Shame we don’t have a cooler with us, we could take her back to Joanne for her beetles. Then we could do Art Things with her.”
“What kind of art things?”
“Dunno. Something in the vein of glorification though. Kind of an undignified way to go, you know?”
“Our ” Mom mused for a moment. “You’ve got a shovel in the back of your van, right? You could bury her until spring then take her to Joanne.”
“Yeah that sounds good. I’ll take the head and Charlie- where is h- CHARLESTON CHEW [SURNAME REDACTED]!”
He’d found the rest of the remains of the field-dressing and had been horking down elk viscra in the confusion. Eventually both dogs were persuaded to come back down the hill via me holding the head aloft like the final scene in Princess Mononoke and the dogs leaping for it form either side until they could be forcibly tossed into the back of the van.
It’s probably fortunate that there was nobody else in the lot to see that.
So She’s buried by a distinctive rock near one of the lots in Wolford, and I’ll go back in April or May depending on the weather to see if she’s still there. Even if I can’t find her again she at least got a proper burial.
Charlie had a vet exam and TERRIBLE farts but seemed otherwise unaffected by his surpise elk pre-sausage. Arwen gets real excited now every time she sees someone pick up a shovel.
‘All that you need to know about boars can be summed up in the fact that if you wish to hunt them, you must have a specially made boar spear. This spear has a crosspiece on it to prevent the boar from charging the length of the spear, driving it all the way through his own body, to savage the human holding the other end.’
–Boar and Apples, T. Kingfisher
fuck OFF
Note that pigs are also HUGE. So, yes, they ARE slightly larger pigs.
So I grew up in the city and have never seen a pig in real life and I just googled it and WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS
I thought they were like labrador sized, like, fat labradors, not mini-cows.
every time I see this post there are more people discovering how fuck off huge pigs actually are and I love it I thought this was a thing everyone knew but clearly not and I’m laughing
This is me with our Tamworth boar, a heritage breed closer to their wild cousins than the Yorkshire above. I am a fully grown, average sized human. He was a gentle sweetie who, sadly, is no longer with us. His name was Mr. Big.
FUCK OFF
Forever laffin’ at people who don’t understand how enormous, terrifying, and tenacious wild boar are.
They’re like if bears had knives protruding from their closed mouths and Didn’t Know When To Quit. Their survival instincts when they’re wounded aren’t “run away and minimize injury” it’s “take the thing that hurt you down with you” They also make sounds like someone crossed a pig with an alligator.
Their head and neck alone can be like the size of an entire human torso.
Also forever laffin’ at people who think pigs are tiny, ‘cause we designed those things can get in the neighbourhood of a thousand pounds in ideal circumstances.
It’s like when people assume Tuna must be small because they’ve only ever experienced them in hockey puck form.
Like seriously why the fuck y’all think everyone FREAKED THE HELL OUT when Dorothy fell into the pig pen in Wizard of Oz? It’s because pigs are HUGE and weigh a shitton and would crush her in an instant.
also dont they eat like, basically anything?
YUP. Pigs will eat people, if given the chance. They dgaf.
That’s why boar hunters use a team of very tenacious dogs to hold the boar so they can be speared without fucking you up. The dogs wear body armour.
I’ve heard stories of people shooting boars, and if it didn’t kill them, it just pissed them off.
how the hell did we ever domesticate these things?
…“how the hell did we ever domesticate these things?”
Very carefully, I would imagine.
WIld boar babies are rather cute, like living humbugs…
…but the adults and their ferocity have been associated with warriors for thousands of years, from Mycenaean Greece (a helmet made from sections of boar tusk)…
…through Celtic Europe (reconstructed carnyx war-horns and standards)…
…Ancient Rome (the crest of Legion 20 “Valeria Victrix”). A couple more legions also used a boar as their crest – I wonder did they squabble over which was the “right” one the way a couple of Swiss cantons had a little war over whose bear was best…?
…then Anglo-Saxon and pre-Viking helmet crests…
…right up to the late Middle Ages (here the white boar badge of Richard Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III of England)…
…and the blue boar badge of the Earl of Oxford,
more usually represented by the De Vere arms, quarterly gules and or, in
the first a molet argent.
After Richard was defeated at Bosworth in 1485, there was a run on blue
paint as inn-signs were changed to reflect new loyalties since Oxford
was on the winning side…
It gets mentioned in the movie “Snatch”, the book/movie “Hannibal” and the webcomic “Lackadaisy Cats”, among numerous other fictional sources, and IRL it’s suspected to be the reason why numerous missing persons have stayed missing.
More here (another comment to this same OP) and here (slightly different).
Here’s some boar-hunting armour for dogs, ancient…
…and modern…
…and the modern one looks very like a simple style of ancient…
So when Odysseus’s old nurse recognizes him by the scar he got from the boar-tusk slash that almost killed him… now you get the resonance.
This post…it just really went places on me.
I hope you read this entire post, and that it made your entire day so much better, even if just for a few moments, like it did mine.
giant fuckoff alligator wolves
While in Sweden I was warned by the family I stayed with to be careful about not touching any fences, because apparently they’re all electrified to TRY keeping boars off properties. I was also walking the family dog each morning through the forest and was warned to turn the fuck around and walk back speedily if the dog ever stopped and just… wouldn’t budge. At all. Unless it was in the opposite direction.
Fastforward a few months to when I’m back home and hearing about the boar problem a family friend is having. I recommend electric fences, since that obviously works for Swedes. The guy tells me that won’t work for him since it’s a herd of boars, so the boars will just charge the fence enmasse, sacrifice the first few, trample over them and enter orchard to feast.
Welp.
Regarding how humans tamed wild pigs, I have a hypothesis that it’s not unlike how humans tamed dogs. Human garbage dumps are a reliable source of food, which encouraged pigs to interact with humans. The wolves that evolved into dogs did the same thing.
Another factor that pigs have in common with those wolves is that they’re very social animals. While older wild boar tend to be more solitary and territorial, wild boar sows and piglets are more social, organizing themselves into groups called sounders. These groups can include several generations of sows and their piglets, and even sows from outside the sounder’s original family group, provided they find a place within the sounder’s pecking order through duels with the other pigs.
Members of a sounder cooperate with each other to survive. Other sows can help watch over the babies, and they can defend themselves and their herdmates from predators. Male boar are also still pretty social, even though fully-matured intact boar tend to be more aggressive due to hormones. Young males live in the sounder as piglets, then split off into their own social groups of males before they’re old enough to strike out on their own and establish their territory. And even though boars don’t like other males in their territory, they don’t stray too far from where sounders are, sometimes going miles to find eligible bachelorettes. Neutered pigs, or barrows, being less hormonal, act more like young males in that they integrate into a sounder and socialize with other pigs without being overly territorial and aggressive.
Being social animals means that pigs are very quick on the uptake in order to figure out how to communicate with their herdmates and other animals. Pigs have passed the “mirror test” and can recognize themselves in reflections (at least, in experiments where knowing what a reflection is allows them to access food), although the merits of the mirror test as a measure of consciousness have been debated by scientists. They have complex social structures within their herds where hierarchy is determined by “duels” where they test each other to see who backs down first.
Pigs have a scent-based language that helps them track down food and know what their herdmates are feeling, and they also have a spoken language of grunts, squeals, huffs, and other noises that they use to signal their herdmates. What’s really remarkable about them is that they can develop an ear for human language, too. There are many examples of pigs raised by and socialized to be around humans learning simple vocal commands to do tricks and recognizing the names humans give them.
Here’s an example of a trained wild boar from a (now sadly closed) theme park in Izu, Japan:
Domesticated pigs, large and small, can also be trained to do tricks and follow commands.
So, what does this all mean? What pigs have in common with dogs is that they’re willing to accept humans as herdmates with a place within the sounder’s social hierarchy. If a human proves themself through accepting challenges and defeating the more aggressive pigs in the herd (usually by stonewalling them with a sorting board or other protective gear while the pig tries to charge and bite them), the other pigs become less aggressive towards them, at least when they aren’t provoked. Farm pigs that are spayed or neutered and used to humans also tend to be friendly and curious about people, often going up to the fence to investigate strangers, as long as they aren’t frightened or provoked. There’s even an exotic pet trade for the smaller breeds of pig, like the Vietnamese Potbellied pig and Kune Kune pigs, although they’re also one of the most likely pets to be given up by owners that don’t understand their pig’s needs.
There’s also a certain other thing that humans can give pigs that they can’t get anywhere else: belly rubs.
That’s not to say that pigs won’t hurt humans, or that pigs only
associate with humans out of the goodness of their hearts. Pigs are prey
animals of the variety that gets aggressive when scared. Wild boar that
aren’t used to humans tend to attack because they judge humans as
potential threats, and fighting off a threat can be the difference
between life and death. Pet pigs also tend to be abandoned or placed in
sanctuaries when they reach the age where they start challenging the
other members of their “herd.” If humans respond to their challenges by
running away, then the pig thinks they have to be aggressive to get what
they want and responds to any attempt to change this as a challenge to a duel.
Being clever, they’re also opportunistic little jerks who can be very
manipulative in order to sneak food regardless of where they stand in
the social hierarchy, much like human toddlers.
However, they deserve better than to be characterized as mindlessly aggressive. Every animal does what they do for a reason, and sometimes they can be negotiated with, as we did when we domesticated pigs.
Also, pigs are omnivorous, and tend to scavenge carcasses. They might go out of their way to kill and eat smaller mammals like ducks for their meat, but they only eat larger animals when they come across them after they’ve died. They only “eat people” in the same way that wild dogs do, by scavenging corpses. Cases of farm pigs actually eating a live human being are extremely rare.
Superheroes that are like “if we kill them we’re just as bad as they are uwu” ? Micro dick energy
The only exception is Aang, whose whole “I’m not gonna kill him if i can find another way” thing is less false moral equivalency and more “I’m twelve and I have been through way too much bullshit this year to add ‘commit my first murder’ to the list.”
I do respect superheroes who don’t kill, and I really think “we’re as bad as they are if we do it” is a terrible oversimplification of why someone would come to that moral conclusion.
Three reasons why a hero might not kill:
1. They are not granted by their society a “licence to kill.” Many (not all) people accept that a soldier or a judge might need to kill a wrongdoer in the course of their duties. Those people (should) act under strict rules and processes to determine when a death is just. A society, to be peaceful, usually functions under a guarantee that people won’t on their own judgement decide to off people. Vigilantes don’t usually have state-sanctioned authority, but they do rely on public goodwill to be counted as heroes and not menaces or even villains. A hero, especially an independent, self-proclaimed one, may lack the authority or judgement to serve as executioner. Most just societies require a trial before delivering a sentence.
2. They don’t need to. Paradoxically, or maybe not so much so, the stronger a hero is, the less they need to kill. One of the most common defenses for a murder is “self defense,” the idea that the person making the plea was in so much danger from the deceased that killing them was justifiable. But once you’re a swordsman swift enough to cut bullets or a muscleman strong enough to lift trucks, who’s that big a threat? As your control over your power and your ability to master an opponent both increase (and barring completely wild or uncontrolled abilities, these two are very linked) the easier it becomes to hold back, to subdue with the minimal amount of damage and to render even the worst villains neutralized without going nuclear.
3. The power to kill is bad for their mental health.Not everyone can perform even a “just” killing with a clean conscience. A hero might fear the trauma of killing, and seek to avoid the damage. Or a hero might introspect, and realize that, should they kill today, tomorrow the choice will be easier. Killing an opponent, rather than subduing them, is often the easy way out, and a hero who comes to rely on that solution might find themselves killing more and more, Even if killing isn’t addictive, a hero might still fear that mindset.
Now, a common version of this problem is Batman, who wouldn’t kill the Joker even if the Joker is at maximum edge, dealing out huge terrorist acts and body counts. The best reason for Batman not to kill him isn’t “I am as bad as the Joker if I kill,” but more, “I am a man who uses superheroism as a trauma coping mechanism, and if I start committing extrajudicial killings my mental state and my loose alliance with the police will both deteriorate.”
THANK. YOU.
All of this! And if I may add:
Heroes are not responsible for the future actions of villains.There’s this really (in my opinion, fucked up) prevalent mindset in a lot of superhero franchises that if you, the hero, had the power to stop someone, and instead let them live, and they later caused harm, then it’s YOUR fault. And to me that’s just absolute bullshit.
Heroes are not responsible for the actions of the villains that exist in their world. Even if the villain says, “I’m doing this because of YOU, hero!” they’re still not responsible. Villains have autonomy and the ability to make their own decisions. If they decide they’re going to be villains who run around murdering everyone, well–yeah, that sucks. And yeah, trying to get them locked up or into a hospital is definitely a good thing. But if the hero decides not to kill? That doesn’t make any subsequent loss of life the hero’s fault. The decision to take that life still falls on the villain.
The idea of killing to prevent further harm– ‘preventative murder’ –is all kinds of complicated, morally speaking. It’s not as simple as, “If I kill you, I am definitely saving lives,” it’s “I am making the decision to kill you based on the assumption that you are likely to try to kill again” and that’s…well, like I said: complicated.
I hate to have to call on something so obscure, but there’s an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys where sidekick character Iolaus is being tormented by Dahok, a demon. He’s shown a vision of a man hanging from a rapidly-unraveling rope bridge over a deep ravine and is given the power to save him. He starts to do so, no questions asked. But then Dahok shifts the vision and shows a young family having a picnic not far away. He tells Iolaus that the man hanging from the bridge is a petty thief, and that if Iolaus saves him, he will happen upon that family and murder them for their belongings.
Iolaus then decides to let the bridge collapse. The man plummets to his death in a ravine. At which point Dahok points out that Iolaus just murdered an innocent man who had not yet done anything wrong. Iolaus argues that he was just trying to protect the family, but Dahok tells him that trying to prevent a future crime doesn’t change the fact that what Iolaus just committed was murder.
Trying to account for future crimes in order to justify taking a life is a moral quagmire. And killing because of past crimes is punitive revenge–something heroes generally try to avoid and leave to the justice system (which, in theory, is far enough removed from the situation to be impartial and make a decision based on facts, not emotions).
Condemning heroes for doing their best to stop as much damage as they can without stepping over the line into taking a human life is perhaps not as simple as “they’re wussies, haha.” It has to do with how much power over other life individuals should have, and frankly, heroes are already walking a pretty fine line when it comes to how much authority they have to make judgement calls outside the law (see also: Captain America: Civil War).
So yeah. Wanting to stay firmly on one side of a complicated moral divide is not necessarily something I condemn superheroes for.
exactly 1 minute ago i had absolutely no idea what the plants sesame seeds and peanuts came from look like and i am shocked and surprised
for some reason every time I see pineapples growing I laugh out loud. Like, the punchline is it’s a pineapple!!!!!!!!! it’s a pineapple
An Interesting Fact About Peanuts, while we’re on the topic of food-plants:
Peanuts-you-eat grow underground, but they are NOT part of the peanut plant’s roots. Peanut plants are ambitious little fuckers and plant their seeds themselves. They flower like any perfectly reasonable legume, but once the flowers have been pollinated the plants do something called “pegging” (no really), in which they drill the stems where the flowers used to be into the ground. And that’s where the peanuts you eat form. Like so:
I’m going to pull myself together to endorse this Extremely Interesting Fact, but it’s going to be a real struggle
Ain’t botany fun?
I grew a pineapple so I definitely can confirm how pineapples are grown.
This came back around to my dash again, so thank you @theordinaryjd for this excellent pineapple, which has once again provided an excellent punchline.
I just… look at it!! it’s a pineapple! that’s so great!
A decade ago, when there were still people laughably insisting that the
internet was the worst thing that ever happened to musicians, I kept
pointing out examples of artists who were creatively embracing the
internet to great success – connecting with fans, building new business
models, and succeeding. And every time I did that, people would
complain that this example was an “exception” or an “anomaly.” And, they
had a habit of qualifying any success story – even if the
qualifications were contradictory. For example, if I highlighted an
independent artist’s success, people would say “well, that’s just a
small independent artist, they have nothing to lose, no big rock star
could ever succeed that way.” And then, when I’d highlight a big rock
star having success embracing the internet, I’d be told “well, it’s easy
for him, he already had a huge following.” It got so silly that back in
2008 one of our commenters coined “Masnick’s Law” to describe this phenomenon:
Masnick’s Law states that in any conversation about musicians doing
something different to achieve fame and/or fortune someone will
inevitably attempt to make the argument that “it only worked for them
because they are big/small and it will never work for someone who is the
opposite,” no matter how much evidence to the contrary might be readily
available.
Over the past few years, I thought this kind of “exception” thinking had
mostly died out, but it showed up again recently. We posted famed
science fiction author Ken MacLeod’s excellent opinion piece
arguing that, even though he’s a big supporter of copyright and against
anyone pirating his books, he’s absolutely against the EU’s plans for
Article 11 and Article 13 in the EU Copyright Directive. The key line:
“Far greater than my interest in copyright is my interest in a free and
open internet – or, failing that, in keeping the internet as free and
open as it is now.”
Straw-man argument, since he has a big publisher to both pay him and
defend his property rights. He’s not an indie who markets his own work
on the internet and has to fight mass piracy on his own. He doesn’t need
copyright protection when he has distribution sending his fans to pay
for his work (while the same fans might pirate the indies).
He is the one who wants big publishers to continue to dominate and
profit, while the indies want direct access to the public and the
elimination of the middleman that is this man’s meal ticket.
Of course, that’s nonsense. That comment is based on the idea that you
need to “fight” mass piracy, rather than looking for ways to build a
successful business model that involves connecting with your true fans.
And, of course, the impact on independent artists will be even more
serious than those signed to big publishers/labels/studios/etc. Indeed,
Ken’s own Twitter feed pointed me to an independent musician in the UK,
Stephen Blythe, who has written about why Article 13 will make life worse for him
as an independent musician. After detailing his situation as a
musician, he explains that if you want to get your music out there, so
that you can build a fanbase, you need to get your music onto the “most
popular music” sites. And to do that you have to use a special third party:
If an independent artist wants to get their music out there into the
world, to the most popular music sharing sites, they need to use some
kind of recognised distributor – as direct submissions are either
impossible, or extremely restricted. A pile of these have sprung up,
including Amuse, RouteNote, DistroKid, etc. Some charge a subscription
fee per year, some take a cut of any revenue generated, and some of them
don’t even have a website – operating just from an app. The concept is
simple: You send your music to them, and they distribute it digitally to
the various partners. One of these partners is YouTube.
But it turns out that those services, as part of their “value add” will “enforce copyright” for you:
What isn’t made clear by these distribution networks is that by
submitting your music to YouTube, you essentially give the distributor a
licence to enforce your copyright on the platform using the ContentID
system. This automatically detects any music uploaded along with a
YouTube video (including short clips), and flags it up as unauthorised.
To many this might sound great. Stop people stealing your stuff!
The problem of course is that there is very often no way to denote
authorised uses or channels with these common distribution services.
He then details two separate scenarios of artists being harmed by this
kind of “enforcement” including one that happened directly to himself:
An artist (A) is asked by a fellow musician (B) if they would be
interested in a collaboration. The process is simple: B will supply A
with some vocal samples that A can then chop up and use however they
wish. A gladly accepts, and comes up with a whole electronic composition
that brings the vocals to life. B loves the track, and asks if they can
use it on their upcoming DIY release. A agrees. B’s friend runs a small
label who agrees to put out the album, and they use a distribution
service which sends the album to all the major partners automatically –
including YouTube’s ContentID system. A few years later, A is producing
short video blogs and decides to use one of their old tracks as
background music. It gets flagged up as a copyright violation
automatically, which A disputes – but the appeal is rejected by the
distributor, who has no knowledge of how the track came about in the
first place.
He then explains that in a world where everything involves a massive
ContentID-like filter, you create a terrible situation for independent
musicians, who are at the mercy of much larger companies with no
flexibility:
Independent musicians are at the mercy of a system which locks them
out from negotiating their own contracts without major label backing,
and they therefore have to rely on gatekeepers which provide an
inadequate level of information and control over their own music.
Artists who are starting out lack the information required in order
to make informed decisions about their interaction with such services,
and can inadvertently give away their ability to exploit their creations
commercially due to how the systems are constructed.
The ContentID approach to copyright enforcement gives huge clout to
the first entity to register a piece of work within their system – which
is rarely going to be the artist themselves.
This model has no room for the ad-hoc, informal, and varying ways in
which independent musicians create and share their works online.
Or, in short:
The current ContentID system works on a first-come, first-served basis.
It puts huge power in the hands of intermediary distribution services
which do not provide a service that can ever give artists the amount of
control over their licenses they would require to fully exploit their
creations. The nature of the beast means that informal collaborations
between like-minded folks can unexpectedly tie up their creative
expression years down the road. Article 13 will only expand these
systems, which will inevitably be less sophisticated on other platforms
than ContentID. Independent artists lose the ability to share their work
even further.
I’d argue it goes much further than that. First, the major record labels see everything stated in the paragraph above as a benefit of Article 13.
Giving huge power to the middlemen gatekeepers puts them back in the
position they were in year’s ago, where they get to decide who gets
distribution and who doesn’t. That system created a world in which
musicians had to hand over their copyright and nearly all of the revenue
generated from their works in exchange for a pittance of an advance
(which was really just a loan). So, putting more gatekeeper power back
in their hands is the goal here.
Second, and even more concerning, is that Article 13 is premised on only
the largest platforms being able to comply – meaning that there will
be less competition on the platform side and fewer and fewer places
for independent artists to distribute their work, should they wish to
do so. That gives them fewer options and less ability to build a
fanbase, unless they get plucked out of obscurity by a giant gatekeeper
(again, going back to the way things were a couple decades ago).
Now, I’m sure that someone will pop into the comments and point out that
this example doesn’t count because it’s just a “small, independent
artist,” and that his concerns don’t matter to “real” artists (meaning
major label ones), but, haven’t we played that game long enough?
I haven’t even gotten around to posting the story about the dead body yet.
The dead body isn’t even the most exciting part of the story.
PLEASE elaborate, my gods
So I want you to know that I’ve been sitting on this story for about a week and a half now because the amount of work drama is sometimes so intense that even the interesting parts of my job have to be shelved for the sake proper emotional processing.
But this isn’t about that. This is about milestones.
