How are there more than just two genders?
How is it that gender is different from sex?
Why would you consider gender to be a social construct?
How is gender a spectrum?
Why do you feel the need to disassociate gender and sex when biologist have already proved that gender and sex are the same thing?
Personally speaking, I don’t understand why anyone would want to try and push gender identity shit down other people’s throats in the most radical way possible, but it’s fucking annoying as hell. To think that you know better than what biologist have studied for years makes me question your intelligence.
Here’s some food for thought people:
XX chromosomes = Female
XY chromosomes = Male
Penis = Male
Vagina = Female
Testosterone = Male
Estrogen + Progesterone = Female
Gender = Sex
Until you can come up with a reason as to why gender isn’t biological and why I’m a piece of shit for not believing your bullshit, then please stop trying to change around shit just because you hate to hear the opposing voice and accept the facts as they are.
This is an open response to those who believe in the multiple genders/gender spectrum bullshit.
oh boy, you’re in for a hell of a ride. and don’t worry, there will a TL;DR at the bottom of this post just in case you’re too lazy to read or are simply unwilling to have your ignorant worldview dismantled by actual concrete facts.
but first, let’s look into the social construction of the gender binary and gender itself.
the narrow-minded idea that there are only two genders has been continuously debunked by biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and doctors alike, first of all. second, gender and sex aren’t necessarily the same thing, but they are both the same in the sense that they are both social constructs made to describe natural phenomenon, not actually based in any scientific reality. much like the concept of species; it’s a
model, and no model is an actuality—then it would not be a model, it would be a
fact.
simply
put, gender is only your sense of, and internal mental relationship to
masculinity, femininity, and androgyny, which can be expressed through words,
behavior, or clothes. in other words, it is simply an intimate and personal
sense of self in relation to gender, gender roles, and one’s physical body. it
does not actually have anything to do with biology—even less so than sex. reproductive
organs are not related whatsoever with gender. sure, it’s
typical for the majority of people to identify with a gender that’s associated
with their genitals, but that doesn’t mean it’s normal. the majority doesn’t outweigh the minority, and isn’t any more
significant than them. the majority of people are straight, but that
doesn’t mean gay people are abnormal, it means they’re less common. much is the
same with people whose gender does not match the gender they were assigned at
birth. suggesting your gender relies solely on your genitals is also very
harmful for people who are intersex.
ultimately, your gender is in your head and it is mutually exclusive from your
genitals or any other attribute of the physical body. there is truly no
scientific, biological, or medical basis for any sort of binary system of
gender, and in fact the gender binary completely contradicts the laws of
natural variation.
The Yogyakarta Principles on The Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity further elaborates on the definition of gender to be “each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience
of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal
sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or
function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress,
speech and mannerisms.” the principle 3 of this document reads as follows: “A person of diverse sexual orientation and gender identities shall enjoy legal capacity in all aspects of life. Each person’s self-defined sexual orientation and gender identity is integral to their personality and is one of the most basic aspects of self-determination, dignity and freedom”.
– “Sociological
explanations, in turn, often fail to recognize that gender beliefs are
influenced by individual-level factors. For example, people differ in the
extent to which they hold gender identities, or personally identify with a sex
category. Although identities often reflect categories of male or female, they
also may include alternatives (e.g., intersex, transgender). The specific
content of gender identities can include communal or agentic personality
attributes, gender-typed interests and occupations, or gendered ways of
relating to others. Men and women act in gendered ways as
they regulate their behavior in line with a valued gender identity. Thus, people may do gender because it enhances
their self-esteem and positive feelings.” (p.g. 337)
– “If gender is the
cultural meanings that the sexed body assumes, then a gender cannot be said to
follow from a sex in any one way. Taken to its logical limit, the sex/gender
distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between sexed bodies and
culturally constructed genders. Assuming for the moment the stability of binary
sex, it does not follow that the construction of ‘men’ will accrue exclusively
to the bodies of males or that ‘women’ will interpret only female bodies.
Further, even if the sexes appear to be unproblematically binary in their
morphology and constitution (which will become a question), there is no reason
to assume that genders ought also to remain as two. The presumption of a binary
gender system implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to
sex whereby gender mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it. When the
constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex,
gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man
and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and
woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.” (p.g. 10)
– “We understand that gender—the ways that society molds us into proper girls or boys, men or women—is complicated. Gender depends on lots of things—upbringing, culture,the stories fed to us by television and movies, hormones, and power struggles.” (p.g. x-xi)
– “…there is a naivete about the way we ignore the fact that some people don’t fit neatly into the either-or of gender. I believe that gender is rather a continuum than an either-or proposition.” (p.g. 108)
– “All of which brings me back to the five sexes. I
imagine a future in which our knowledge of the body has led to resistance
against medical surveillance, in which medical science has been placed at the
service of gender variability, and genders have multiplied beyond currently
fathomable limits. Suzanne Kessler suggests that ‘gender variability can… be
seen… in a new way—as an expansion of what is meant by male and female.’
Ultimately, perhaps, concepts of masculinity and femininity might overlap so
completely as to render the very notion of gender difference irrelevant.” (p.g.
101)
– “Given the
discrimination and violence faced by those whose cultural and physical genitals
don’t match, legal protections are needed during the transition to a
gender-diverse utopia. It would help to eliminate the ‘gender’ category from
licenses, passports, and the like. The transgender activist Leslie Feinberg
writes: ‘Sex categories should be removed from all basic identification
papers—from driver’s licenses to passports—and since the right of each person
to define their own sex is so basic, it should be eliminated from birth
certificates as well.’ Indeed, why are physical genitals necessary for identification?
Surely attributes both more visible (such as height, build, and eye color) and
less visible (fingerprints and DNA profiles) would be of greater use. Transgender
activists have written ‘An International Bill of Gender Rights’ that includes
(among ten gender rights) ‘the right to define gender identity, the right to
control and change one’s own body, the right to sexual expression and the right
to form committed, loving relationships and enter into marital contracts.’” (p.g. 111)
there are
no limitations on who you are, how you feel, or what identity you construct for
yourself, therefore people can and do construct more gender than the two traditional
ones, and all of them are valid. plus, the simple fact that some people don’t
identify as one of the two binary genders is proof that there are other
genders. if someone identifies are nonbinary, then nonbinary people exist. it’s
that simple. even if that’s just one person, it exists in society, ergo it is.
now this is a fun one; let’s move on to the social construction of “biological” sex.
even if gender was the exact same thing as sex, it still
would be neither binary nor a scientific absolute. in her novel Sexing the Body, Anne Fausto-Sterling explains that there are 5 specific measures of
“biological sex” according to modern medical science:
1. chromosomes (male: XY, female:
XX)
2. genitalia (male: penis, female vulva and vagina)
3. gonads (male: testes, female: ovaries)
4. hormones (male: high testosterone, low estrogen, low
progesterone; female: high estrogen, high progesterone, low testosterone)
5. secondary sex characteristics (male: large amounts of dark,
thick, coarse body hair, noticeable facial hair, low waist to hip ratio, no noticeable
breast development; female: fine, light colored body hair, no noticeable facial
hair, high waist to hip ratio, noticeable breast development)
in real life,
very few people actually match up with all five categories. estimates by the
intersex society of north america notes the frequency and prevalence of intersex conditions, and puts the total rate of human bodies that “differ from
standard male or female” at around one in 100, while anne fausto-sterling
estimates that 1.7% of the population do not fall within the usual sex
classifications. however, both of these estimations are somewhat outdated, so it could easily be a much higher percentage.
there are people out there with XY chromosomes, testes, a
vulva, a vagina, “female” secondary sex characteristics, and “male” hormone
patterns; people with XX chromosomes, testes, a penis, “male” secondary
characteristics and “female” hormone patterns, and there are even people with both “male” and “female” secondary sex characteristics or hormone patterns at the same
time, regardless of their genes, gonads, or genitalia. now, these people are technically intersex
assuming that the two sex system is absolutely true. however, in order for the
binary to even be considered real, every single person on earth must completely match up on
all 5 markers of sex all the time. that’s not what happens in real life. in
real life, literally tens, if not hundreds of MILLIONS of people have bodies that are contrary to the
biological concept of the two sex system.
let’s look further into Fausto-Sterling’s book and consider the case of the athlete maria patiño. patiño
has “female” genetalia, and she has
always considered herself to be female and was considered so by others.
however, she was discovered to have XY chromosomes and was barred from
competing in women’s sports. patiño’s genitalia were at odds with her
chromosomes and the latter were taken to determine her sex, and she successfully
fought to be recognized as a female athlete, arguing that her chromosomes alone
were not sufficient enough to not make her female. intersex people like
patiño illustrate that our understandings of sex differ and suggest that there
is no immediately obvious way to settle what sex amounts to purely biologically
or scientifically. deciding what sex is involves evaluative judgements that are
influenced by social factors.
the only thing in your body
that has a “biological sex” in any sense is your gametes, which some people
don’t even produce, which your body can easily stop producing, and which are a very
minuscule part of the rest of your body. the rest of your body, including your
genitals, has no “biological sex”.
citations from other works of literature:
•
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the
Construction of Sexuality (2000)
– “Consider Angela Moreno’s more
recent tale. In 1985, when she was twelve years old, her clitoris grew to a
length of 1.5 inches. Having nothing to compare this to, she thought she was
normal. But her mother noticed and with alarm hauled her off to a doctor who
told her she had ovarian cancer and needed a hysterectomy. Her parents told her
that no matter what, she would still be their little girl. When she awoke from
surgery, however, her clitoris was gone. Not until she was twenty-three did she
find out she was XY and had had testes, not ovaries. She never had cancer. Today Moreno has become an ISNA activist and credits ISNA with helping her heal
psychologically from the damage done by lies and surgery.” (p.g.
84)
– “We stand now at a
fork in the road. To the right we can walk toward reaffirmation of the
naturalness of the number 2 and continue to develop new medical technology,
including gene ‘therapy’ and new prenatal interventions to ensure the birth of
only two sexes. To the left, we can hike up the hill of natural and cultural
variability. Traditionally, in European and American culture we have defined
two genders, each with a range of permissible behaviors; but things have begun
to change. There are househusbands and women fighter pilots. There are feminine
lesbians and gay men both buff and butch. [Transgender people] render the sex/gender divide virtually unintelligible.” (p.g. 101)
– “Because of their
loyalty to a two-gender system, some scientists resisted the implications of
new experiments that produced increasingly contradictory evidence about the
uniqueness of male and female hormones. Frank, for example, puzzling at his
ability to isolate female hormone from ‘the bodies of males whose masculine
characteristics and ability to impregnate females is unquestioned,’ finally
decided that the answer lay in contrary hormones found in the bile. Others
suggested that the finding of adrenal sex hormones could ‘save’ the hypothesis
of separate sex-hormonal spheres.” (p.g. 191)
– “But scientists are a
diverse lot, and not everyone responded to the new results by trying to fit
them into the dominant gender system. Parkes, for example, acknowledged the
finding of androgen and estrogen production by the adrenal glands as ‘a final
blow to any clear-cut idea of sexuality.’ Others wondered about the very
concept of sex. In a review of the 1932 edition of Sex and Internal Secretions, the British endocrinologist F. A. E. Crew
went even further, asking ‘Is sex imaginary?… It is the case,’ he wrote, ‘that
the philosophical basis of modern sex research has always been extraordinarily
poor, and it can be said that the American workers have done more than the rest
of us in destroying the faith in the existence of the very thing that we
attempt to analyze.’” (p.g. 191-192)
– “Deciding
whether to call a child a boy or a girl, then, employs social definitions of the
essential components of gender. Such definitions, as Suzanne Kessler observes, are
primarily cultural, rather than biological. Consider, as another example of this
claim, problems caused by introducing European and American medical approaches into
cultures with different systems of gender. For example, a group of physicians from
Saudi Arabia recently reported on several cases of XX intersex children with
congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a genetically inherited malfunction of enzymes
which aid in making steroid hormones. Despite having two X chromosomes, some CAH
children are born with highly masculinized genitalia and are initially identified
as males.” (p.g. 643)
– “…bodies differ in
many ways physiologically, but they are completely transformed by social
practices to fit into the salient categories of a society, the most pervasive
of which are ‘female’ and ‘male’ and ‘women’ and ‘men.’” (p.g. 569)
-“One of
the most important developments in early 1990s’ anglophone feminist theory is
seen to be the destabilisation of the apparent orthodoxy regarding the
relationship between sex and gender. It is no longer assumed that sex is a
‘natural’ or ‘biological’ category, with gender a social or cultural
construction somehow imposed on top of it. ‘Sex’ is increasingly recognised as
a sociohistorical product, rather than a fixed, transhistorical, or
taken-for-granted category.” (p.g. 15)
– “… that the division of society into two
sexes is the product, and not the cause, of oppression; that ‘sex’ is a
political category and there would be no ‘sex’ without oppression; and that
heterosexuality is of central importance in defining the sexes as natural,
different and complementary.” (p.g. 16)
– “Despite [countless] anthropological and medical studies to the contrary,
society presumes an unambiguous binary sex paradigm in which all individuals
can be classified neatly as male or female.” (p.g. 6)
– “…the human X
chromosome carries a large collection of male sperm genes.” (p.g. 909)
– “Currently, there is a
broad popular, scientific, and medical conception of the X chromosome as the
mediator of the differences between males and females, as the carrier of
female-specific traits, or otherwise as a substrate of femaleness… associations
between the X and femaleness are the accumulated product of contingent
historical and material processes and events, and they are inflected by beliefs
rooted in gender ideology.” (p.g. 927)
– “In truth, humans come in an amazing number of forms, because human development, including human sexual development, is not an either/or proposition. Instead, between “either” and “or” there is an entire spectrum of possibilities. Some people come into this world with a vagina and testes. Others begin their lives as girls but at puberty become boys. Though we’ve been told that Y chromosomes make boys, there are women in this world with Y chromosomes, and there are men without Y chromosomes. Beyond that, there are people who have only a single unpaired X chromosome. There are also people who are XXY, XXXY, or XXXXY…There are babies born with XYY, XXX, or any of a dozen or more other known variations involving X or Y chromosomes. We humans are a diverse lot.” (p.g. xi-xii)
– “Nondisjunction can happen with any chromosome, including the sex chromosomes X and Y. A single sperm or egg may end up with two, three, or more X chromosomes, and a single sperm may hold more than one Y chromosome. In truth, sperm and eggs come in variety packs. If that alone isn’t enough to derail the simple XX/XY, female/male idea, a mystery known as anaphase lag can also cause developing sperm or ova to lose an X or a Y chromosome along the way. And even after fertilization, sex chromosomes can be lost or gained. And even among men with the normal 46,XY karyotype, the size of the Y chromosome can vary. That means that my Y chromosome might be three times the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Y chromosome. Here certainly, quantity matters; perhaps size does as well. The end product is a panoply of possible sexes by any definition, an array of human beings as grand and as varietal as the fragrances of flowers: 45,X; 47,XXX; 48,XXXX; 49,XXXXX; 47,XYY; 47,XXY; 48,XXXY; 49,XXXXY; and 49,XXXYY.” (p.g. 62)
– “Intersex people are not a few freakish, unfortunate outliers. They are instead the most complete demonstration of our humanity… We, as a society, are very hard on people who don’t fit out preconceptions, especially our preconceptions about sex. What intersex people have shown us is the truth about all of us. There are infinite chemical and cellular pathways to becoming human. […] Sex isn’t a switch we can easily flip between two poles. Between those two imaginary poles lies an infinite number of possibilities.” (p.g. 163)
•Anonymous Author, “The Problematic Ideology of Natural Sex” (2016)
– “Around the world, over the past four or five hundred years,
people have been cajoled, threatened, forcibly re-educated, beaten, imprisoned,
locked in mental hospitals, put in the stocks, publicly humiliated, mutilated,
and burnt at the stake for violating one or more of the precepts of ‘Natural [Biological] Sex.’ That’s the sure sign of enforced ideology, not a true natural law…”
– “If we truly believe in science, in a rational world where we
look objectively at what is, rather than impose our beliefs onto reality, then
we need to reject the Ideology of Natural Sex. We need to see the reality of
the sex spectrum and stop framing intersexuality as a rare disorder that
somehow violates natural law. We need to understand that different societies
have divided the sex spectrum up into different numbers of social sexes, and
that binary sex is no more or less arbitrary than trinary or quartic sex
systems…”
– “It is no surprise,
then, that the sex binary is so firmly rooted in Euro-American thought, along
with many others (think body and mind, nature and culture). It underpins and
naturalises gendered divisions of labour through, for example, the notion of
women as the weaker sex. Language mirrors the distinction between male and
female, as in the way we talk about the sexes as ‘opposite’, and throughout
life we are encouraged to think in binary terms about this central aspect of
our existence.”
– “While these gendered
binaries play out in social life in reasonably clear ways, they also seep into
places conventionally seen as immune to bias. For example, they permeate sex
science. In her paper ‘The Egg and the Sperm’ (1991), the anthropologist Emily
Martin reported on the ‘scientific fairy tale’ of reproductive biology… scientific knowledge is produced in culturally patterned ways and, for
Euro-American scientists, gendered assumptions make up a large part of this
patterning.”
– “In Gender Trouble (1990), the feminist theorist Judith Butler argues that the insistence on sex as a natural category is itself evidence of its very unnaturalness. While the notion of gender as constructed (through interaction, socialisation and so on) was gaining some acceptance at this time, Butler’s point was that sex as well as gender was being culturally produced all along. It comes as no surprise to those familiar with Butler, Martin and the likes, that recent scientific findings suggest that sex is in fact non-binary. Attempts to cling to the binary view of sex now look like stubborn resistance to a changing paradigm. In her survey paper ‘Sex Redefined’ (2015) in Nature, Claire Ainsworth identified numerous cases supporting the biological claim that sex is far from binary, and is best seen as a spectrum. The most remarkable example was that of a 70-year-old father of four who went into the operating room for routine surgery only for his surgeon to discover that he had a womb.”
– “Looking to other
times and to other cultures, we are reminded that sex is to some degree
produced through the assumptions we make about each other and our bodies.
Modern science is moving towards consensus on sex as a spectrum rather than a
simple male/female binary, and it is time to start casting around for new ways
of thinking about this fundamental aspect of what we are. Historical and
anthropological studies provide a rich resource for re-imagining sex, reminding
us that the sex spectrum itself is rooted in Euro-Western views of the person
and body, and inviting critical engagement with our most basic biological
assumptions.”
– “For quite different
reasons, Catharine MacKinnon argues explicitly that gender is the division of
men and women caused ‘by the social requirements of heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual
dominance and female sexual submission’; sex-which comes to the same thing-is
social relations ‘organized so that men may dominate and women must submit.’
‘Science’, Ruth Bleier argues, mistakenly views ‘gender attributions as natural
categories for which biological explanations are appropriate and even necessary.’
Thus some of the so called sex differences in biological and sociological
research turn out to be gender differences after all, and the distinction
between nature and culture collapses as the former folds into the latter.”
(p.g. 13)
– “There are two
explanations for how the two modem sexes as we imagine them were, and continue
to be, invented: one is epistemological and the other is, broadly speaking,
political.” (p.g. 151)
•Asia Friedman, Blind to Sameness: Sexpectations and the
Social Construction of Male and Female Bodies (2013)
– “Thomas Laqueur argues
that in the past, specifically prior to the 19th Century, male and female
bodies were seen very differently than they are today. They were perceived as
more similar than different, and instead of two sexes, there were just two
variations of one sex. Laqueur further demonstrates that the shift in
perception to seeing the sexes as two categorically different things was not
the result of gaining more scientific knowledge, since many of the relevant
discoveries were actually made after the fact… So the question for Laqueur is,
if it was not due to advances in specific scientific knowledge of sex differences,
what was responsible for that shift from seeing one to seeing two sexes? And
his answer is essentially cultural change. He argues that sex or the body is
the epiphenomenon, while gender, what we would normally take to be the cultural
category, is what is primary. Marian Lowe makes a similar point when she argues
that ‘if race, sex, and class were not politically and economically significant
categories it is likely that no one would care very much about biological
differences between members of these groups. To pay attention to the study of
sex differences would be rather peculiar in a society where their political
importance was small.’” (p.g. 45-46)
– “Further, regarding chromosomes,
keep in mind that XX and XY are 50% the same, and the egg and the sperm
actually have the same sex chromosomes every time both contribute an “X” to
make a female. Sarah Richardson offers a much more scientifically precise
version of the same fundamental argument in her critique of recent accounts
claiming significant genetic variation between males and females. “Sex differences in the genome are
very, very small: of 20,000 to 30,000 genes, marked sex differences are evident
in perhaps half a dozen genes on the X and Y chromosome, and, it is
hypothesized, a smattering of differently expressed genes across the autosomes…
In DNA sequence and structure, sex differences are localized to the X and Y
chromosomes. Males and females share 99.9 percent sequence identity on the 22
autosome pairs and the X, and the handful of genes on the Y are highly specific
to male testes development. Thinking of males and females as having different
genomes exaggerates the amount of difference between them, giving the
impression that there are systematic and even law-like differences distributed
across the genomes of males and females, and playing into a traditional
gender-ideological view of sex differences.” (Richardson, Forthcoming: 8-9) The essential point is
this: Males and females are much more genetically similar than different.” (p.g. 206)
“biological sex” is just as biased,
unscientific, and subjective as the concept of gender is, and to base sex or gender on chromosomes or genitals or some other
arbitrary feature is to ignore and marginalize the truth. there are millions of
people who have different genitalia, lack them all together, or are intersex, people with differing karyotypes (i.e. XXY, XXX,
XYY, X, etc) or chimerism (a body where some cells are of one karyotype and
others are of another), and there are people with all kinds of genetic/epigenetic/biological conditions. these are all normal, natural
variations of the human body that aren’t inherently connected to each other. to
say sex or gender is defined by any of these features is erasive, intersexist,
transphobic, and entirely contrary to what actual biologists and geneticists
have been saying for decades.
just because you cannot handle your societally constructed worldview surrounding sex, gender, and genetics being smashed by sociology & biology itself doesn’t mean, additionally, that you have the right to make other people feel unsafe and uncomfortable just because you don’t like having your viewpoint being dismantled. don’t act as if you somehow know everything about sex and gender just because you took 10th grade biology and ate up some oversimplified explanations. the complexities of human behavior & the diversity of sex and reproduction in life can’t be completely covered in a simple high school biology class. shocker!
not to mention, the idea of a gender binary is a very, very recent concept solely rooted in colonialism and racism, not science.
in fact, the idea of third and nonbinary genders is as old as human civilization. (the list below is a very VERY brief history of nonbinarism):
§ 2000 BCE: in mesopotamian mythology, among the earliest written records, there are references to types of people who are neither men nor women. in a sumerian creation myth found on a stone tablet from the 2000 bce, the goddess ninmah fashions a being “with no male organ and no female organ”, for whom enki finds a position in society: “to stand before the king".
§ 1800 BCE: inscribed pottery shards from the middle kingdom of egypt, found near ancient thebes, list three human genders: tai (male), sḫt (“sekhet”) and hmt (female).
§ 385-380 BCE: aristophanes, a comic playwright, tells a story of creation in which “original human nature” includes a third sex. this sex “was a distinct kind, with a bodily shape and a name of its own, constituted by the union of the male and the female: but now only the word ‘androgynous’ is preserved.”
§ 77 BCE: genucius, a roman slave is denied inheritance on the grounds, according to art historian lynn roller, of being “neither a man nor a woman.” he is “not even allowed to plead his own case, lest the court be polluted by his obscene presence and corrupt voice.”
§ 1871: british administrators pass the criminal tribes act in india, effectively outlawing the country’s hijras—a community that includes intersex people, trans people, and even cross-dressers. celebrated in sacred indian texts, hijras had long been part of south asian cultures, but colonial authorities viewed them as violating the social order.
§ 1970: mexians in oaxaca state establish vela de las intrepidas (vigil of the intrepids), a festival celebrating ambiguous gender identities. the zapotec culture embraces a third-gender population called muxes. muxes trace back to pre-columbian times, when there were “cross-dressing aztec priests and mayan gods who were male and female at the same time”.
§ 2014: india’s supreme court recognizes the right of people, including hijras, to identify as third-gender. the court states, “it is the right of every human being to choose their gender.”
this binary gender system of ours is comparatively very new, and has been
forced upon the rest of the world by white europeans in destructive and
violent invasion, genocide, and complete appropriation and destruction of the original cultures
of each land. really, it is the binary system that is unnatural. multiple genders have always existed in this world. and despite the best attempt of european colonialists, they continue to exist today, indicating that it is part of human nature to not fit in a neat binary and instead have multiple genders.
even within the united states, multiple native american tribes have a system that includes up to six distinct gender categories.
– “Lugones introduces a systemic
understanding of gender constituted by colonial/modernity in terms of multiple
relations of power… gender itself is a colonial introduction, a violent
introduction consistently and contemporarily used to destroy peopks,
cosmologies, and communities as the building ground of the ‘civilized’ West.”
(p.g. 186)
– “As global, Eurocentered capitalism
was constituted through colonization, gender differentials were introduced
where there were none. Oyeronkk Oyewhmi has shown us that the oppressive gender
system that was imposed on Yoruba society did a lot more than transform the
organization of reproduction… many Native American tribes
were matriarchal, recognized more than two genders, recognized ‘third’
gendering and homosexuality positively, and understood gender in egalitarian
terms rather than in the terms of subordination that Eurocentered capitalism
imposed on them. Gunn’s work has enabled us to see that the scope of the gender
differentials was much more encompassing and it did not rest on biology.”
(p.g. 196)
– “Our history suggests that we haven’t always imagined that humans come in only two sexes, and that things far removed from what we might call facts have played major roles in determining our thoughts about sex. Even today, several human societies believe in more than two sexes.” (p.g. xi)
•Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction
of Sexuality (2000)
– “Were we in Europe and America to
move to a multiple sex and gender role system (as it seems we might be doing),
we would not be cultural pioneers. Several Native American cultures, for
example, define a third gender, which may include people whom we would label as
homosexual, transsexual, or intersexual but also people we would label as male
or female. Anthropologists have described other groups, such as the Hijras of
India, that contain individuals whom we in the West would label intersexes,
transsexuals, effeminate men, and eunuchs. As with the varied Native American
categories, the Hijras vary in their origins and gender characteristics.
Anthropologists debate about how to interpret Native American gender systems.
What is important, however, is that the existence of other systems suggests
that ours is not inevitable.” (p.g. 108-109)
– “Colonialism as practiced by Western
culture is used to erase traditional non-binary roles of gender orientation and
systems of sexuality, i.e. the Two-Spirit. Identifying as Two-Spirit becomes
not just a traditional way of expressing Indigenous beliefs of gender
orientation and sexuality but a political identity in resistance of
colonialism. Through the use of inherently violent, assimilative measures,
these traditions of the Two-Spirit in Indigenous societies are lost in many of
our communities and are replaced by the Western gender binary and spectrum of
sexual orientation. As this paper will show, this plays into the colonialist
logic of white supremacy and how it relates to the Indigenous body, colonizing
Two-Spirit identity.” (p.g. 1)
– “When Europeans came to Turtle
Island, much of their culture, their ideals, their beliefs and institutions
came with them through the continued centuries of settler-colonialism. Building
their own nation upon this land, they were able to more permanently construct
and impose their culture upon others. The Western colonization of the Americas
brought forth many institutions which sought to erase and displace Indigenous
cultural traditions and beliefs. Through the use of violence, forced
assimilation, demonization of Indigenous beliefs and then appropriation of
Indigenous culture, the subjugation of Native sexuality and gender roles have
continued unquestioned in the minds of the settler and of our own people. It
can be said and will be shown, that the Western binary is a system of
oppression and repression and is actively a form of institutional violence
against the Two-Spirit. This is all connected to the idea of white supremacy
and domination over Indigenous bodies and beliefs, of colonization of our very
selves. Thus an analysis of colonization and white supremacy is not complete
without an approach towards Two-Spirit identity in our own communities.” (p.g.
1-2)
– “Before
the colonization of this land, there were as many as six traditional gender
orientation roles among numerous tribes. However, due to boarding schools erasing
these traditions […] the Christianized related the existence of the Two-Spirit
as sin… The Western Gender Binary is thus superimposed upon all cultures and
their histories seen through the gaze of not only male dominance but a
male/female paradigm that does not account for the existence of third, fourth,
fifth and even more varieties of non-male/female expressions and identities. […]
The Western Gender Binary does not see the Two-Spirit, the Western Gender
Binary only sees a Man acting in ‘Unmanly’ ways or a Woman acting in
‘Unwomanly’ ways… The influence of Western culture on the erasure of Indigenous
“queer” and Two-Spirit peoples has created a system of sexual assault,
homophobia and transphobia used against our peoples, entangled with the history
of colonialism. As part of the settler mentality, we can see these actions as
colonial violence against the Two-Spirit and are also the results of genocide.
To reiterate previous statements, the Western gender binary is a form of
superimposed and universalized colonialism upon Indigenous bodies and minds.”
(p.g. 5-6)
•Anonymous Author, “The Problematic Ideology of Natural Sex” (2016)
– “…we have ignorance of the long and violent history of the imposition of the Ideology of Natural Sex under European colonialism. The genius behind framing an ideology as ‘natural’ is that its history erases itself. Why would anyone study the history of something natural and eternal? We don’t study the history of covalent bonds in chemistry or cumulus clouds in meteorology. And so we don’t study the spread of European binary sex ideology under colonialism. If you do, you’ll find that all over the world before European colonialism there were societies recognizing three, four, or more sexes and allowing people to move between them—but that’s a subject for another post. Suffice it to say that societies were violently restructured under European colonialism in many ways, and one of those was the stamping out of nonbinary gender categories and stigmatization of those occupying them as perverts.”
to say that nonbinary genders don’t exist would not only be scientifically incorrect and historically inaccurate, but it would be to say that the cultural traditions of these people are invalid, and only the white european standard of gender, which was forced onto indigenous people via genocide and forced assimilation, is “correct”. trying to enforce western concepts of gender on other cultures is an act of blatant racism and imperialism, and presumes that one group somehow knows more about the human condition, which is,
on all levels, factually as well as historically and ethnically wrong.
TL;DR:
neither gender nor biological sex is innate, binary, or a scientific reality in any way, shape, or form, and the vast majority of biologists, scientists, doctors, psychologists, historians and anthropologists have been debunking these ignorant claims for decades and proving that both of these concepts are socially constructed. since gender as completely subjective, nonbinary genders have existed since the dawn of human civilization, even dating back to mesopotamia, the VERY FIRST human society, at that. there are many countries today where there are officially more than two genders recognized, and there are multiple languages that are entirely gender-neutral. the gender binary itself is an entirely european theory based on a complete lack of understanding of science, and was only recently forced on the world via colonialism, violence, and genocide. saying that nonbinary genders aren’t real is an act of transphobia, racism, and imperialism, and is the same as saying that thousands of cultures around the world, millions of personal experiences, and entire societal structures throughout history are not real, which makes no sense. it is part of human nature and basic natural variation to not fit into oversimplified binary categories.
but you know, curse those special snowflakes, or whatever.
this is an updated version of my original response. please reblog this edited version of my post instead if you’ve already reblogged the previous/original version.
You were never meant to be here. Never forget this. You are an ape of the equator, built to run the savannah and swim in tropical waters. Whatever terms and conditions your body has, they are void here. Mother nature never certified to function in a Death World.
Enduring the cold is never a matter of “how much” as much at it is “how long”. Think of it as the water levels of the vieogames you have played. No matter what equipment enables you to remain longer, you can’t stay there indefinitely. The coat that keeps you warm and toasty for three hours in -15 is enough to keep you functional for an hour of -40.
Whatever the locals say, listen to them. Err to the side of caution if you must. You may not endure what they can endure, but you SURE AS FUCKING NOT cannot survive what they say cannot be endured.
That being said, alcohol is a filthy fucking liar and so is anyone who offers it to you. The warmth it gives is an illusion, and a sign of damage. You are worse off feeling comfortable with a mouthful of whiskey as you are freezing your gonads off stone cold sober.
Winter tires. Studded winter tiers are a MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH when you drive on a frozen road. That being said, whatever the locals tell you that your car will need to run as theirs do, take it. Taking the risk of being pranked is worth survival, and you can always stab their tires in the spring if they were shitting you.
Eat. For the love of god, make sure that you eat. Heavier meals might be unpalatable at first for someone used to lighter nutrition, but maintaining bodily warmth in a cold climate takes up a lot of energy, and you will feel tired and drowsy for a long while shile your metabolism adjusts to producing more heat than Mother Nature ever intended. The skinny people in your party are especially vulnerable, ensure their well-being on a regular basis.
If you have a smartphone/other essential technology on your body, keep them close to your body to keep them warm. They were not designed to be frozen any more than you were.
Sleep is death. SLEEP IS DEATH. Never, ever stop to rest in the cold, if you do not have the means to make a fire/otherwise produce heat. The cold tires you out because keeping warm takes energy, but taking a rest will not return your energy. If you feel the need to sit down and rest because you are tired because of the cold, call for help. This is not a hyperbole, if you feel like you are too tired to go on in a cold climate, CALL A FUCKING AMBULANCE. If you fall asleep in the snow, you will not wake up. Hypothermia can and will literally kill you.
Avoid skin-to-snow-contact if you can. It hurts because you were not supposed to do it. Consider ice to be like acid. Touching is bad for you.
Feel free to add to the list if you feel like I missed something.
Some things to add from a native northerner moved south who’s surrounded by people who know fuck-all about harsh winter weather:
If you are expecting severe weather that might take out your electricity, and you can afford a generator, GET ONE. They aren’t terribly cheap but you can find one in the $400-500 range at Home Depot or any other store like it really.
Gas up your car. Seriously. If your power goes out and you need to move because your current residence is in the sub-fucking-zeros you need to have fuel to get where your going. Not only that but even IF you don’t have anywhere to go, sitting in a car with the heat running is much better than freezing your ass to death in your house.
Stock up on water bottles and canned goods. You will need both if you get snowed in. Eating is absolutely essential to staying alive, because as OP stated, keeping warm burns a LOT of calories.
If you have time before the storm hits, buy some good, thick blankets. Wool or fleece are your two best bets. Hell, if you can’t find a good place to get blankets, go to Walmart and buy straight up fabric. The more, the better.
If you have a pet reptile, and the power goes out and the temperature inside your house is very cold, don’t feed them, and don’t leave them in their tank. Take them out, put them on your chest, and wrap yourself in a blanket with them. The best way at this point to keep them alive will be to share the body heat you have.
Bring your pets inside. Yes, I’m looking at you, Nancy with the “outdoor cat”. Their cute little toe beans will freeze the fuck off and they’ll die of hypothermia. I don’t care if your 300 pound Tibetan Mastiff isn’t housebroken, unless you wanna explain to your 2-year old why Captain Fluffball is frozen to your front porch, bring him in.
If you have a fireplace, utilize it, but don’t set a fire inside your house that you can’t control. And don’t use fucking gasoline. That’s how you blow shit up.
If you’re stuck out in the cold and you start to feel tired and strangely warm, you have hypothermia. Get the fuck to a place with actual warmth. Leave your clothes on. The cold is lying to you. You’re not hot, you’re slowly freezing to death. If you can, call a fucking ambulance.
Remember that extremities freeze first. That means your toes, your nose, and your fingers. Layer the fuck UP. If I have to go out in the snow, I usually wear a pair of knit/fleece gloves under a pair of snow gloves. And then I duct-tape that shit to the sleeves of my coat. It looks silly but it keeps moisture from getting stuck in there and freezing my hands off. For shoes, wear boots and like, 3 pairs of socks. The warmer and fuzzier, the better. Your feet will thank you. If you have a ski mask, use it. If not, wear a scarf and wrap that shit as tight around your face as you can.
On the topic of moisture, if any part of you gets wet while you’re outside, locate the nearest warm place you can go to and take the wet garment off and dry that shit. I don’t care if it’s your socks, your shirt, or your undies. Get em off and get em dry. Wet clothes are a fast way to get yourself frozen to death.
If you absolutely need to do shit outside, velcro or duct tape your gloves and boots to your sleeves and pants. I know it will limit your movements a bit. I know that it will look stupid. I know it will be hard to get off. But duct tape doesn’t let SHIT through it. And as I’ve mentioned before, you don’t want ANYTHING you’re wearing to get wet.
If you do have a portable heater or fire or heat in your home or whatever, have a fan blowing too. It will spread the warm air around faster. It might not feel warm at first, but it’s circulating the air. It will heat up eventually.
If you’re with other people, huddle up with them. Share your body warmth. Have a nice cuddle session with your friends/family/neighbors. It might just save you.
IF A CHILD IS IN THE SNOW, THEY WILL FREEZE A WHOLE FUCKIN LOT FASTER THAN YOU WILL. This doesn’t mean be chivalrous and give them your coat. It means you pick their tiny ass up and shove them IN your coat or hold them as close as you can while you try to get to a warmer area. The smaller they are, the faster they freeze. Time is absolutely critical. And if your kid is out in the snow, you need to be out there with them and keep your eyes on them at all times.
Finally, invest in a blow dryer. If your hair gets wet and you gotta go back out in the cold, you’re going to be miserable as fuck. Blow dry your hair so it can be nice, warm, and voluminous when you go back out to punch Jack Frost in the face.
(I’ve been reading so many posts about earth being Space Australia the Death World that I didn’t even notice there weren’t aliens in this one until my third read-through, so I’m counting it for the blog theme.)
A few further points from me, having grown up in Canada’s coldest major city:
The wind can be even more dangerous than the cold, and if your skin is exposed to it, it can freeze and even necrotise. Frostbite is a serious medical problem. So bundle up; wear a touque, wear your hood up, wear a balaclava or hike your scarf up over your nose because you could lose it otherwise. If the wind gets in your face, walk backwards. That’s not a prank; walk backwards.
If it’s really cold, your gloves aren’t going to do shit; you’ll want mittens and handwarmers. It’s not convenient but at least you won’t be dropping fingercicles on the frozen pavement.
There is no such thing as winter chic. Not in a place with a real winter. You’re going to look like a bundle of cloth if you dress properly anyways, so there’s no sense in trying to be stylish about it. There is no fashionable/unfashionable, there’s only practical/impractical
Get a block heater for your car; if you come from a cold place, it’s probably standard equipment.
If you fall through ice into frozen water and can’t climb out, allow yourself to freeze to the ice – someone might see you and save you, even if you pass out.
Snow is a great insulator and if you need to, you can build shelter out of it. A quinzee is fastest. It can keep you alive if you are lost.
PUT A SHOVEL IN YOUR CAR. PUT AN EMERGENCY WINTER SUPPLY KIT IN YOUR CAR.
In a blizzard, do not travel. I know you’d rather be home than stuck at work overnight. But low visibility in a blizzard is not the same as low visibility in fog. You can get easily twisted around in areas that you know like the back of your hand, and no one will be able to see you to help you if you need it. Do not travel in blizzards.
Related to this: the normal rules do not apply in the cold. You can knock on a stranger’s door for help; you can take strangers in to warm up. You can approach a stranger in the cold and offer them rides if they look like they need help. Children should know that if forced to choose “talking to strangers to ask for help” and “freezing to death,” they are to choose “talking to strangers.”
If you ARE too warm in your many layers, but it is still deathly cold out, DO NOT unzip your coat. Lowering the temperature of your core is dangerous. You can easily cool down by removing a mitt or glove. You can lose fingers and toes if your extremities aren’t protected, but if your core gets too cold you can die.
Do not go ANYWHERE without appropriate winter gear, even if you think it’ll only be a quick jaunt from here to there. You never know when your car will break down or get stuck. You need that coat.
Don’t leave either your children or your pets in your car while you go into a store, or my god what is WRONG with you?
Everyone who has grown up in a cold climate knows what it feels like to be so cold you can’t bend your fingers or feel your face, knows what it’s like to be so cold that touching anything warm burns, to be so cold it takes hours to warm up, to be genuinely worried that they’ll lose their fingers or toes. No one will judge you for being so cold you start crying only to have your eyelashes freeze together. We’ve all been there. We will help.
Fun fact – after moving to a much colder area I’ve gained 6 kilos. Skinny people can and will store additional fat – it’s to help them survive after changing climate zones. If you are moving to another climate area (namely, colder climate area), invest in a better wardrobe. Boots with thick sole. In Russia we have valenki and we wear woolen socks underneath
Wool is your friend. The fluffier the better. The more fluff the better insulation. Skiing clothes are also a good help, especially coupled with other layers and wool. And, oh! If you can, get one of those:
Woolen shawls like these ones are usually handmade, so as to preserve the fluff, and they are wonderful for heat insulation. You can use one for yourself, you can bundle up your kid, and it’s gonna be warm and snug. Like, I wore one when we hit a -30C streak a while ago, and it was nice.
GUARD YOUR HIPS! I mean, it’s pretty easy to bundle up your torso, but your hips and thighs and knees… Yep. Not so much. If you have some woolen kneewarmers for arthritis, or you can procure some for yourself – do it.
Okay wear does one acquire such a shawl because I a) need that for aesthetic reasons and b) it’s so fucken cold in my house help
(Google tells me that this is an Orenburg Shawl)
The reason wool is great is because it stays warm when wet, polar fleece does too but never seems as toasty.
If you allergic to wool and can afford it get silk long underwear and sock/glove liners and wear them under woolens. If you can’t afford it try to find a cheaper alternative. Also figure out which kind of wool you are least reactive to because even with a base layer you are going to get itchy.
Back to pets: if you have fish and the power goes out cover the tank with space and wool blankets right away. Every once in a while check the temp, if it is falling below ideal scoop out some of the water and warm it over a camp stove, not too hot, then gently pour the water back in. This will also help aerate the tank a little. plus it gives you something to do if you’re bored.
Also, if you know the powers is likely to go out you should fill the tub/buckets with as much water as you can. You can boil it for warm drinks and bucket flush the toilet, which you’re going to want.
Edited to add: this is no joke. My cousin’s friend fell asleep in his car a couple winters back and froze to death. It happens. Be safe.
I have had several friends move to Canada and not realize that you can lose fingers. Also, if it doesn’t look like you gained 30 pounds its not a winter coat.
Canadian here: A good winter coat isn’t necessarily “you gained 30 lbs” unless you’re north of the tree line, but that’s a good guideline. Personally I swear by military-issue wool trenchcoats as a nice combination of thin, flexible, full-coverage, water-tolerant (and mildly resistant), warm, and usable in the summer – but keep in mind that we bottom out at -20 here in a typical winter. (Our big problem is that it’s wet and windy.)
A few tiny details I can add:
When shopping for a coat, check the fastenings (zipper, buttonholes, etc) for a cover flap that can be anchored in place (on a zipper, generally by velcroing to the other side of the zipper; on my trenchcoat it’s sewn over the buttons). Even if it looks like a good coat otherwise, this is a dealbreaker – without it, the wind will stab you directly in the chest with a thousand needles at the slightest provocation.
That thing above about the blow drier? Downplays how miserable wet hair is. It will freeze. Into icicles. Directly on your neck/face. And insult to injury, you will lose hair if and when you break one.
Get a backup battery for your phone. When traveling, keep it in a pocket against your body. Your phone is your only lifeline in an emergency, when you need help you will need it now, and cold eats batteries for breakfast. Having a warm battery can make the difference.
Do not drive faster than the locals, unless you have no particular will to live. Ever. Of particular note, 4WD/AWD doesn’t make a single fucking bit of difference on ice. Every year in my area a couple people get killed because they forgot that.
On a related note: If you have to drive in the snow, your instinct will be to follow the tracks of the last guy. This is generally good advice – in most snow conditions it will improve traction – but be careful. There have been a few times I almost followed someone’s tracks right into their accident.
Layer with different materials. Wool is a great insulator, but knit wool in particular is extremely porous; you want something tighter either below or above it.
Do not cross running water without a bridge, or still water without an experienced guide or a clear manmade trail. (Do not drive across a body of water period. This is an advanced skill, and failing will kill you. You are not a local.) You’d think this would be obvious, but every year when I lived in Truro at least one person would get to watch their car floating away on an ice floe – if they were lucky.
The Norwegian Mountain Code is a short list of basic rules to follow when TRAVELLING IN HARSH, COLD TERRAIN.
If you need to take a rest while out and there is deep snow, MAKE A SNOW CAVE. Snow is airy. It will insulate. Make sure the entry is BELOW THE SPACE WHERE YOU WILL REST as warm air travels upwards. The smaller the cave, the less air for you to lose body heat to. MARK THE CAVE with skis, branches, anything tall. Call for help. It helps to know where you are – a GPS is useful, your phone will do.
BRING THE SHOVEL INSIDE. You might need to re-open the entrance if it’s windy. You can always use your skis to dig a cave if needed be.
You can make a sitting/laying place inside the snow cave from twigs or branches to avoid contact with the snow.
When dressing, ALWAYS layer:
innermost layer is wool. Always.
outermost layer waterproof. Windproof inside of that one.
remember that clothes will not keep you warm. AIR KEEPS YOU WARM. Make sure your layers are not too tight – you want your clothes to TRAP AIR between you and the environment to minimise heat loss.
Re-emphasizing the ‘Cold Sucks The Life Out of your Battery’ – I don’t know how many times my car battery died due to the bitter cold. Like, it just went ‘nope, too cold’ and refused to start my car.
My friend has to go take pictures for work, even in the winter – She makes sure to have her phone plugged into an external battery tucked inside her bra, cord strung through her coat sleeve, because her phone battery alone goes from ‘100%’ charged to ‘10% charged, plug in!’ with zero apps running, in less than a half hour. I have watched it happen. Warmth saves your batteries. cold kills it.
ALSO: WOOL, NOT COTTON! Wool wicks water away from your skin, and stays warm even when wet. Cotton will hold that soggy foot sweat right to your skin, and suck all your heat away. Tends to give you boot blisters faster, too. That cotton T-shirt getting sweaty is going to drop your core heat fast af if you open your coat.
Water resistant boots. With actual traction. Cute booties with smooth soles are to be worn inside only. If you plan to be outside a while, those boots with the rubber lower part and the removable felt inserts are what you want. The insert can be dried (fully dried, not meh kinda dry) in front of the fridge or over an air vent.
If you’re driving/in public transit and walking and otherwise in an urban area, you still want to winterize your boots. Rub some good quality dubbin on them if they are leather. Check if you can get some with wool already sewn in, preferably not just at the cuff as decoration.
Also, on the car: if you are running your car to stay warm, make sure that the exhaust pipe is clear. If it gets blocked by snow, you are going to have a bad day.
Rebloggig for that shawl. I want one.
All excellent points … but why is there no mention of down? And we’re not talking about any of that down-alternative mess. Real honest to goose down!
Down is a very fluffy, and excellent insulator, especially when paired with Gore-Tex waterproof material (what the military uses fyi…) Is it cheap? No. But if you’re going to live in a frigid environment, some things are worth the cost. Just make sure it is 100% down and not a down and feather blend. Also look for a high fill-ratio (the amount of down in the garment itself) and “quilted” squares (the smaller, the better) that keep the down from shifting around the garment. If you can’t afford a full down coat, look for a well-filled down vest to keep your torso insulated.
Wool is an excellent insulator too, but I see no mention of the different types of wool out there. There’s sheep’s wool, goat’s wool (aka cashmere), alpaca, and llama wool. Alpaca wool for example is warmer, softer (not prickly or scratchy), has no lanolin (which makes it hypo-allergenic), and is almost completely naturally waterproof. Woven or felted wool will keep you warmer than knitted or crocheted wool. Any sheepskin or shearling clothing items should be turned so the skin faces outward, and the wool is toward your skin for maximum warmth – just be sure its real sheepskin, and not synthetic.
Silk is also an excellent natural insulator, and makes for a wonderful base layer in the form of socks, glove liners, and long underwear. Buy it from a reputable source to insure the best protection!
I’m going to veer into a red zone with this one … but … genuine animal furs (especially when sourced as ethically as possible) will provide you with excellent protection from the viciousness of extreme winter weather. Make no mistake, I am not talking about the fashion coats seen in department stores or on runways. Rather the very practical, and necessary, fur coats, pants, footwear, and other outerwear that native peoples world-wide have been sporting since the last ice age. If you are going to live in an extreme environment, be prepared to do what is actually necessary to survive!
LAYERS!!! … LAYERS!! … LAYERS!!!
Some other good winter advice:
Invest in a box of chemical hand warmers (the kind you snap to activate) and keep them in your car. Should you become stranded, or need to leave your vehicle, activate them and place them in your boots, mittens, under your hat, and close to your chest. They will help keep you warm until you reach safety.
Keep at least a 4 day supply of MRE’s in your car – especially if you live in, or travel thru, any suburban or rural area. Not only will these have all the nutrients you need to keep you alive, but they also come with a little chemical cooker pack that can be used to melt snow for drinking water. These can easily be sourced thru any Army surplus store, and have a shelf life of years.
Speaking of water … if you ever are stranded anywhere DO NOT EAT SNOW IN PLACE OF DRINKING WATER!! Your body will burn precious calories trying to convert the snow to water. You need those calories to keep you warm and alive! Keep a source of heat on hand to melt the snow for you, as well as a heat safe container.
if you live in an extreme winter weather zone, get a set of tire chains and learn how to put them on, and use them, LOOOOOOONG before you ever need them. Keep them in your car.
Sleeping bags, sleeping bags, sleeping bags!!! No lie, a sleeping bag can mean the difference between life and death if you are stranded in your car in winter. I speak from personal experience on this one. Find yourself a heavy-duty, thick, wide and long sleeping bag. Get fully dressed in your winter gear (boots and all) and hop inside it – if you can’t do this easily, and if it doesn’t cover you up to at least your chin, keep looking till you find one that does! Keep at least 2 in your car from the last gasp of summer until it has fully returned. No excuses! You won’t always be able to run your car to keep warm when stranded, so you better have a plan b. Should you ever need to use it DO NOT REMOVE ANY CLOTHING BEFORE CLIMBING IN!! You will need all the protection you can get to stay alive! Share your sleeping bag with any small children to keep them warm too.
Set your cellphone to alert you to any weather warnings. Most come with the feature, but it may require you to turn it on or update settings. This is important all year, not just in winter. It is best that you “shelter in place” during severe weather, but if you can’t do that, make sure to plug your phone in to the charger while your car is running. This way it will be fully charged. Once you unplug it, keep it warm as advised above.
Get yourself some quality sunglasses, or better yet, snow-goggles. Snow blindness is a real thing and very dangerous. Likewise, if its cold enough, you can get frostbite on your eyeballs.
Let people know you are going out, where you are headed, how you will be getting there, the route you will be taking, and how long you anticipate being gone for. No one will know to look for you if they don’t know you went out!!!
And one last thing, if you become stranded in your car during a heavy blizzard, the following are absolute musts:
DO NOT run your engine unless you can, and do, maintain a 4 foot clearance around your exhaust. This includes horizontal AND vertical clearance. Failing to do so results in death. No ifs, ands, or buts about it … you will die!
Allow the cabin area of your vehicle to become covered in snow. This will act like an igloo and help keep you warm. Do not allow more than 3 feet of snow to accumulate on the roof of your car. Wet snow is especially heavy and can collapse the roof, trapping and killing you.
Periodically clear the area around a door on the leeward (downwind) side of the vehicle so that the door can be fully opened and in a full arc at least 3 feet away from the vehicle. You may be stranded, but nature will still call. Also, you can’t dig yourself out after the storm passes if you can’t get out of your vehicle.
REMEMBER … IT IS BEST TO STAY SOMEWHERE SAFE (”SHELTER IN PLACE”) UNTIL SEVERE WEATHER PASSES!!! If you must go out in it – it is best to be over-prepared!!!
what the fuck. theres not even a fucking joke here. its just the fucking alphabet. i was expecting some kind of fucking meme like “gun” or “john cena” or something like that but no its just the fucking alphabet. here. on tumblr.com. 26 users just fucking banded together to write the alphabet. what the fuck, man.
I think the update broke them, and almost everyone else.
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72 …..why not….making the best out of this sad situation
73… I got so angry at this post I had to reblog it and continue
“HELLO NEIGHBOR STEVE, I WOULD LIKE TO INVITE YOU TO BARBEQUE ON THE EVE OF THE BLOOD MOON. I FEEL WE GOT OFF TO A BAD START.”
“NEIGHBOR STEVE, DO YOU NOT WISH TO PARTAKE OF THE UNCLEAN FLESH-MEATS OF PIGS AND THE POLLUTED ESSENCES OF TOMATO? PERHAPS YOU ARE A CAROLINA STYLE MAN, NEIGHBOR STEVE?”
“PUT THE GUN AWAY NEIGHBOR STEVE, YOU KNOW I SHALL ONLY RISE AGAIN WITH THE DAWNING OF THE MOON. WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH THIS MANY TIMES.”
“LOOK AT THIS PICTURE MY SON DREW OF YOU AND CHILD TIMMY, YOUR SON. ARE THEY NOT THE PICTURE OF PACT-MATES? THIS COULD BE YOU AND ME, NEIGHBOR STEVE.”
“YOU MISSED THE UNHOLY NEXUS OF POWER THAT IS THE KEY TO MY CORPOREAL FORM, NEIGHBOR STEVE. YOU WILL NEED TO RELOAD NOW, SO I WILL GO INSIDE TO MY HELL-WIFE AND PUT YOU DOWN AS A SOLID ‘MAYBE’.“
I have the feeling that the families get along great except for Steve. Like, the wives are baking (questionable) brownies together, the kids are playing together, Antler Guy occasionally takes Son and Timmy to school (no car, just carries them in huge swinging strides through a nexus of ungoldly sights in a swirling netherworld shortcut. Sometimes they stop for McDonalds). Hell-wife gave them a potted Audrey Jr., Steve’s wife (who I now christen Sharon) gave them a begonia.
One time Steve tries throwing holy water but all Antler Guy does is thank him, saying that no, Antler Guy isn’t Catholic but it’s the thought that counts, he is so kind to water his creeping deathshade vines regardless.
For Christmas Antler Guy gives Steve a case of ammunition. To be funny/sarcastically mean Steve gets Antler Guy the world’s most hideous Christmas sweater, singing light-up reindeer included. He immediately regrets it because not only does Antler Guy love it and wears it for several months, it will never need batteries because Antler Guy powers it with his own eldritch aura.
When they come back from a holiday to Hawaii, Steve is horrified to find out Sharon bought them matching Hawaiian shirts. He is even more horrified that his wife means it that if he doesn’t wear it he will forever sleep on the couch.
I want to expand on this, since I see it’s still passing around and the ideas have grown in my brainmeats.
What drives Steve up the wall and down the other side is how… normal… everyone treats the Abominations. (Yes, that is their last name. No, it is not a joke. Son was asked his last name for the standardized testing at school, had a quick conference with Timmy, and decided that Son Abomination sounded good, “Since my dad calls your dad the Abomination anyway and we can paint it on your mailbox just like the Henderson’s did theirs!”. Antler Guy agreed and did a lovely rendition of it for the mailbox, with only a few glyphs of soul-rending terror added to keep up to snuff.)
The Great Plant Exchange went beautifully, though the Audrey Jr. (named Aubergine for the lovely shade of purple poison that drips from her fangs) is on a diet at the moment. She was in cahoots with the cat and the dog to get into the good people food and ate two frozen turkeys all herself. Now she’s restricted to the hallway table to answer the phone and the door. (Steve actually likes her, and keeps slipping her hotdogs when Sharon isn’t looking. Their door-to-door salesman rates have dropped dramatically since she changed abodes.) Hell-wife has almost gotten the begonia to bloom and say it’s first words.
The homeowner’s association just loves the Abominations. All paperwork stamped and dotted, in on time and in triplicate. Antler Guy likes filing, says it reminds him of his old job. There is a resident who spent 20 years as a lawyer and they have long, animated conversations about all sorts of things that make Steve swear to never need legal counsel.
Hell-wife joined the PTA and spearheaded a committee to fundraise in the fall with a haunted house. It was a county-wide hit, though the claims that a particularly rowdy group had been deliberately lost in a timeslip to the Outer Doors Of Chaos was firmly rebuffed. Most young people nowadays, it was agreed, just couldn’t appreciate flute music.
Antler Guy really does try to connect with Steve. The surprise birthday party was perhaps a bit much, given that most participants do not have the ability to suddenly materialize in front of the guest of honor to give them a hug. Sharon assured them that Steve normally screams on his birthday, and the remains of the cake were heartily enjoyed by all. (A plate was saved for Steve once he came down from the treehouse.)
After the Hawaii trip (which was a present for his birthday) and the Matching Shirt Ultimatum (which was Sharon’s attempt at patching things up with Antler Guy, he really was sad about the birthday screaming), Steve finally grabs his courage in both hands (plus the shotgun, which let’s face it is about as useful as a teddybear at the moment but it does comfort him) and confronts Antler Guy, about why such a group of……Abominations could possibly come to his quiet slice of suburban bliss.
“……BUT NEIGHBOR STEVE, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE.”
“No no no, I read it in a book! Don’t you have to be invited or something?!”
“WELL YES, TO THE HUMAN WORLD. BUT THIS IS NOT THE HUMAN WORLD AS YOUR THREE-DIMENSIONAL BRAIN PERCEIVES IT.”
“What the hell does that mean?!!”
“DID YOU NOT KNOW, NEIGHBOR STEVE? LEGALLY SPEAKING, ALL OF THE VASTNESS OF HUMAN SUBURBIA IS, IN FACT, A PART OF HELL.”
“……..”
“THE FLAMINGOES ARE THE BOUNDARY MARKERS. IT WAS DECIDED THAT THE FLAMING SKULLS WERE TOO KITSCHY FOR MODERN TIMES.”
Reblogging cause I kind of want more of this….
Since you asked nicely ^_^
Antler Guy, as one may have noticed, is a calm sort of fellow. In the face of human atrocities he displays a curious Zen sort of state of mind. Timmy asks Son if he’d ever seen his dad angry, and Son hasn’t. (When asked, Timmy says that yeah his dad gets mad, but it’s like the Fitz-Simmon’s chihuahua down the street- mostly high-pitched noise and occasionally TV remote chewing. Sharon replaces the poor thing every 3 months or so.) When pressed (gently, at the monthly book club, and with many cups of tea and at least one daiquiri), Hellwife admits that this comes from serving many years at his old job.
After the revelation of the nature of his neighborhood, Steve has not been overtly mean to Antler Guy. Not yet in the realm of friends, but vastly better than before. No more holy water, no more shotgun blasts. (Still the occasional jumpscare, but Antler Guy really can’t help that part.) They even occasionally share news over the fence as Antler Guy trains the creeping deathshade vines in proper oral hygiene, and Steve waters his lawn (and occasionally slips a goldfish cracker to a deathshade vine that looks particularly adorable. Aubergine has trained him well.)
Which is how Antler Guy learns about the peeping tom that’s been plaguing the adjacent streets. Apparently the pervert has been getting bolder, and rattling doors. He almost broke into one apartment, whose occupants were a single mother and her daughter, Mildred. Millie, a shy girl who is a great horror fan and firm friends with Timmy and Son, had missed school because of it.
Steve knew because Sharon had told him, on her way to deliver a tuna casserole and a double batch of brownies to the pair. (Sharon has been dubbed the unoffical mob boss of the Mother’s Mafia. She is quite pleased with this title.) He tells her to wait, confers briefly with Aubergine, and sends her along with, “Only as a loan, you know, but Auby wants to stretch her roots and she’d probably like getting all ribboned and curled anyway. Little girls still do that, right?” She has strict orders to bite anyone that makes Millie or her mother cry. (Steve is dubbed the official neighborhood marshmallow for this. The bookclub buys him a jar of marshmallow fluff in commemoration.)
He turns to look at Antler Guy, and freezes, much as a chihuahua will when faced with a hungry hellhound.
Steven makes a very ungraceful exit when space starts bending around Antler Guy’s still, unmoving form.
When Steve sees a shadowy form in his back yard when he gets up to pee that night, there’s no hesitation. He grabs the shotgun from the cabinet and peeks out the back door window.
Just in time to see a nebulous form of soul-wrenching terror engulf the man reaching for the door handle. A sliver of moonlight reveals a very familiar eyesocket. After a moment (and a sincere prayer of thanks that he had already peed, cause otherwise he’d have done it then and there) Steve opens the door. The nebulous form freezes, reality bending around the edges.
“Good. G’night then. Oh, and if Hellwife has an extra Audrey Jr. that needs a home, let me know. Millie likes Aubergine a lot but Augy’s just too big for the apartment. Dunno if they come in miniatures though.”
There are no more peeping reports. Millie brings back Aubergine and spends an entire afternoon teaching Steve the particulars of Augy’s new “hairstyle” (a gravity-defying mass of teased tendrils, ribbons, and barrettes) in between games of tag and hide-and-seek with Timmy and Son.
When Antler Guy and Hellwife present her and her mother Beatrice with a tiny Audrey Jr. (”pOOr ThinG Is a ruNT And wOn’T geT MorE Than A FooT taLL, BEa, aNd NeeDS a New FRiEnD”, assures Hellwife), both mother and child burst out crying. Millie names it Bella, after Bella Lugosi, and shows it to the excited group of boys (Steve and Augy included).
IT GOT SO MUCH BETTER!!!!
Life in a subdivision partly populated with eldritch and possibly magical (officially classified as “extra-dimensional”, for even when faced with the physics-defying nature of their new co-habitating citizens the government cannot bring itself to acknowledge them as “magic wielding hell-beasts”, as some high-ranking staff members initially suggested) goes on fairly normally.
Sure, there are a few hiccoughs. The creeping deathshade vines get a stern talking to about appropriate afternoon snacks (”NOT the Fitz-Simmon’s chihuahua, I don’t care how much he has it coming or what he excreted where, now spit it out!”), Aubergine sheds all her leaves at once and snowballs the house (but does helps sweep up afterwards), and moonrise is a good time to watch the night-gaunts fly by (but on moondark it’s best to stay inside, no matter how prettily they glow. They’re somewhat similar to fireflies, and don’t always check to see if their partner glows as well. It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if they didn’t dive mid-coitus and drop just above the ground.)
While the neighborhood in general is accepting of the Abominations, when things get to be a bit much they tend to come to Steve. Since meeting Beatrice and Millie (and the formation of the Terrifying Triad known as Millie, Son, and Timmy) Steve is the adult human male most comfortable dealing with Antler Guy on the whole street. (Sharon as U.M.B. is widely held to have, well, steel-whatever-the-hell-she-wants, and Timmy is known to run over to Antler Guy and ask for rides through “that wobbly grey place, you know, the one with the REALLY BIG alligators?”. Still, the courtesies must be observed.)
So when a writhing sparking ball of snarling terror and teeth takes up residence in the Manzo’s tool-shed, and when Animal Control refuses to come (the street is banned due to a run-in with the deathshade vines), Steve is called. Having heard the description, Steve brings Antler Guy.
When they get there, Mr. Manzo is forcibly holding the door shut. Unholy yowling is coming from inside. At a gesture from Antler Guy, Mr. Manzo leaps away, and the doors blast open.
A 150 pound ball of whimpering, flaming something hits Steve and knocks him on his ass. The whimpering, flaming something proceeds to slobber all over Steve, his shirt, his pants, and a decent portion of grass in between distressed yelps.
“GACK!”
“NEIGHBOR STEVE, ARE YOU IN DISTRESS?”
“GAAACKLEARGHSPLUH- DOWN boy, HEEL, that’s a good- Antler Guy, what is this?!”
“I BELIEVE IT IS A HELLHOUND, NEIGHBOR STEVE.”
“Good grief, I didn’t know they came this big and…..and….. Guy?”
“YES NEIGHBOR STEVE?”
“Is he supposed to be…..skinless?”
“YES NEIGHBOR STEVE. THIS VARIETY WAS BRED TO BE LAP DOGS. THEIR FLAME IS MOSTLY WITHOUT HEAT, AND THEY HAVE NO SKIN FOR THOSE WHO ARE ALLERGIC.”
“…….laPDOG?!”
“YES NEIGHBOR STEVE.” Antler Guy lays a hand on the hellhound, who tries to burrow further into Steve with little success. “HE APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN RECENTLY WEANED. IT WILL TAKE TIME FOR HIM TO GROW TO HIS FULL SIZE.”
“……”
“THE SMALL BREEDS GROW MORE SLOWLY.”
A vile hissing emanates from the shed. (Mr. Manzo has long since fled for the safety of his kitchen.) As Steve attempts to calm the frantic hell-puppy, Antler Guy investigates. He reaches one long hand in behind the riding lawnmower and….. winces.
“NEIGHBOR STEVE?”
“Yeah- I’m right here, uh, doggie, not going anywhere- Guy?”
“I APPEAR TO HAVE AN…. ATTACHMENT.”
Steve is awed at the tiny ball of white fluff attached to one long, thin finger. He didn’t know that Antler Guy’s fingers COULD be bitten, much less by a tiny kitten.
Which is how Steve and Sharon got Clifford (”Aww c’mon Sharon, how could I pass that one up?”), and Antler Guy and Hellwife get Fluffy (”NEIGHBOR STEVE ASSURES ME IT IS A TRADITIONAL TITLE.”)
This might be the most amazing thing that ever crossed my tumblr dash
OMIGOSH I’m in love.
I LOVE EVERY BIT OF THIS
This is like the stoplight post. It is Tumblr legend, and I feel I must reblog it for those fortunate few who get to experience it for the first time.
We need more of Antler Guy and Neighbour Steve
So one day Son comes home from school and goes straight to his room without speaking. Hell Wife and Sharon confer over tea and scones, and it’s revealed that Timmy is also shut away in his room.
Neither mother can get a word out of the boys, and after a quick word with Steve (who is busy trying to train Clifford to stop slobbering on his shoes), the mothers go to Antler Guy for advise, since he has a good relationship with both boys.
Antler Guy listens attentively to the women. “I WILL TAKE CARE OF THIS. THE TWO OF YOU SHOULD ATTEND YOUR BOOK CLUB.”
Sharon is dubious, but Hell Wife assures her that Antler will fix things.
When the women are gone, Antler Guy waves his long, spindly fingers, and the two boys appear before him. Both look sullen and teary eyed. Antler Guy observes them silently. “They pushed Timmy,” Son explains in a small voice. “I told them to leave him alone but… They called me…” Antler waits silently. “Freak,” Timmy supplies in a whisper. Antler Guy looks between the two boys, then lifts one in each vine-writhed arm.
He takes the two boys to the ether, showing them various hellish sights including a homunculous type creature that has a cold and sprays acid every time it sneezes, a cat that’s twice the height of Antler and picks Timmy up by the neck like a kitten.
Both boys have a great time and return home in high spirits. Steve goes out into the garden to find out what happened. (He’s been defeated by Clifford and decides he’ll just get new shows and hide them).
“I MUST LEAVE FOR AN HOUR OR TWO,” Antler Guy tell Steve after a brief explanation.
Steve looks puzzled. “It’s getting pretty late, Guy,” he points out.
Antler Guy merely inclines his head and stalks into the night in long, surprisingly graceful strides.
The next day, Steve listens to Timmy babbling about how the boys who had been mean to him and Son the previous day had left them alone. Timmy stops and looks baffled. “Actually, any time we looked at them they ran away.”
Steve has suspicions of where Antler Guy had gone on his late night stroll.
(Ohmigosh, someone added, I’m so excited! :D)
Time passes, as time does (which for Earth is generally somewhat faster than The Dimension That Smells Of Shrimp, and slower That One Wibbley Place With Murderous Flying Potato Crisps- Timmy was allowed to select human-dialect names, and Antler Guy refuses to change them. He says they are far more pleasant than the terms he used to use.)
Fluffy remains on the small side. This in no way impedes her rule of the neighborhood. In order of preference, her resting places include the top of Antler Guy’s head, Hellwife’s ample lap, and wherever else she damn well pleases. (The deathshade vines have a healthy respect for her, all of Clifford’s six-foot-plus frame is terrified of her, and she actively conspires with Aubergine. The prior pets of Steve and Sharon, Mr. Paws- a mild mannered netutered tom of advanced years- and Puggles- his nearly as elderly pug cohort- are ignored with royal disdain. Which suits them fine, they’d much rather be made much of by Aubergine, and relax in the gentle, soothing warmth of Clifford’s flames.)
Within short order, her routine is established. The neighborhood, and neighbors, know better than to mess with the White Puffball of Doom (one of Timmy’s better efforts) on her daily patrols. In return, her rule is moderately benevolent.
So when she goes missing, literally no one has any idea where she has gone.
It starts with Antler Guy striding through the neighborhood, making a peculiar call somewhat akin to a humpback whale with a headcold. When that produces no results, he starts asking. Very earnestly. Very. Earnestly. He even folds himself up enough to take tea with Mrs. Giotto, the resident cat lady. He emerges with a delightful recipe for snickerdoodles, but no information.
Steve knows something is wrong when he starts getting texts at work. By the end of shift, he’s inundated with calls, texts, voicemails, and a singing telegram sent by one particularly frazzled neighbor, whose message was only “HELP.” His boss is not pleased.
He almost expects it when Antler Guy materializes as soon as he shuts his car door. He still almost craps himself.
“Hi Guy, what’s up-”
“FLUFFY. FLUFFY IS MISSING.”
“Really? Have you tried looking in Mr. Manz-”
“YES. TWICE.”
“Oh, ok, well, let’s try-”
“NeIGhbor SteVE!”
“Hellwife?”
“FLuffY Is MissINg!”
“Well yes, Guy just told me-”
“STEVE!”
“Sharon?!”
They decide to move the confabulation into Sharon’s kitchen. (A quick phone call to Beatrice assures that a) the sleepover of the Triad is going smoothly, b) the news of Fluffy’s disappearance hasn’t made it there yet, and c) it won’t until further news is secured.) Sharon has called on her information network to no avail, Hellwife has questioned every plant in a five block radius, and Antler Guy is distraught. Apparently he cannot feel Fluffy, which means she is either dead or out of his range. (”AND SHE WOULD NOT BE SO UNCARING AS TO NOT RETURN HOME IF DEAD, SHE IS A VERY LOVING MAMMAL.”)
Steve is quiet. Steve is thinking. Steve….has an idea.
“Guy?”
“YES?”
“Exactly what constitutes your range?”
“ALL OF THE ENVIRONS OF HELL, NEIGHBOR STEVE.”
“So……when we run out of flamingos, right?”
Clifford is supplied with a squeaky sorta-looks-like-a-mouse-don’t-ask-so-many-questions toy belonging to Fluffy. The direction he doesn’t want to go is the way they head. They decide that cramming Antler Guy into Steve’s Prius would be unhelpful, sunroof or not, so up on Antler Guy’s shoulders Steve goes. (Steve has always wanted to try it, in his heart of hearts. Its everything Timmy described and more.)
They set out, following the cringing hellhound. Even cringing and following the scent of the Feared Fluffy Thing, Clifford has some speed. (It helps that both Steve and Sharon explained the situation, via Aubergine.) In the space of perhaps an hour and a half, they hit the end of Antler Guy’s range.
Literally. If Steve hadn’t had a deathgrip on Antler Guy’s horn’s he’d have gone flying.
“NEIGHBOR STEVE, I CAN GO NO FARTHER.”
“Ugh, kinda got that Guy….”
Steve slithers off and looks at Antler Guy. He’s pushing at the air like there’s a forcefield. (There isn’t. Steve checks, just to be safe.) So, after a short conversation with Clifford, Antler Guy waits next to the last flamingo as Steve rides his big, red, skinless flaming dog onwards. (Steve had wanted to try this since he first read the Clifford books.) (Well, something close to it anyway.)
It is a measure of the surrealness of his day to day life that he isn’t surprised by the gate guarded by gun-toting gentlemen. Nor by the flurry of activity he and his dog raise by jumping it. A short, balding fellow in a Very Important Labcoat comes out of the concrete building and gives shrill orders to “apprehend that vile extra-planar sympathizer and his hideous creature”. As Clifford starts drooling green flames as he snarls, no one seems particularly interested in following his orders.
Luckily, a man riding a walking nightmare and then a hellhound garners attention. Specifically, a shitton to social media attention (and no few memes). And the government, unsurprisingly, monitors the areas inhabited by its extra-planar citizens very closely. So before the standoff gets beyond the tense stage and into the itchy trigger finger stage, a swarm of black SUV’s hit the scene.
Steve sits serene upon his noble steed as the wave of black suits descend. In record time the labcoat is escorted away, the guards are pacified, and an ominously growling cat carrier is presented to Steve. Clifford lets out a tremulous “BOOF?”, to which the carrier “Mrowls?”. Steve opens the carrier (the guards, as one, flinch- some of their compatriots are still in medical from trying to get the damn thing IN the carrier), and Fluffy walks out, dignified as the queen she is. She kneads Clifford’s head (without claws, for once), and settles in.
They make a strange parade returning, the dog and the biggest, shiniest, and most ominous of the SUV’s. (Strangely, all pictures taken of the cavalcade go mysteriously missing.) Antler Guy doesn’t care- as soon as he’s in range, Fluffy jumps to his head and purrs ferociously.
When the suits try to talk to him, he brushes them off, preferring to murmur in hair-raising tongues to his cat, who is still purring fit to split and is trying to groom his antlers. Steve sighs.
“What do you guys need? They’ll be busy for a while.”
“Well Mr. Anderson, we would like to offer our condolences at this unfortunate occurrence, and tender our assurances that it will never happen again.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We would also like to ascertain Mr……?”
“Antler Guy Abomination.”
“……Beg pardon?”
“Antler Guy Abomination. That’s what my son named him.”
“……”
“Technically he named him Antler Guy when he first saw him.”
“…………..”
“Abomination came later, when Son needed a name for that standardized testing stuff.”
“…..your son attends school with his offspring?”
“Yep. They’re at a sleepover right now. Sharon’s probably baking brownies with Hellwife. They’re both stress bakers.”
The suits have a whispered conference. Two short phone calls later, the suit with the shiniest pair of sunglasses has an offer for Steve.
Steve’s official title is Extra-Planar Liaison. Sharon calls it Neighbor Herding. Steve doesn’t care about the title. He gets twice his previous salary plus full benefits to ensure the smoothness of Antler Guy’s “integration in the fabric of human society”, which means all the things he was doing, plus field trips into other planes of reality. (Fluffy is fond of the gigantic mother cat; Clifford tries to eat the homunculi’s acid snot and regrets it immediately).
(Written for http://lkludwig.tumblr.com/, who won a contest and a choice- an original short story or to be written into Antler Guy. This was the choice!)
It started, innocently enough, with Timmy’s birthday party.
Steve, armed with the wealth garnered by his new job, not
only rented a bouncy house beloved by the Terrifying Triad, Auberguine, and
Steve himself, he finally upgraded the family phones. (His and Sharon’s anyway.
Timmy’s phone was lost to a scintillating puddle of mud and bones. Steve
shrugged, taught the acidic glop how to play Bejeweled, and cut the service
when they got home. The glop got better reception on it’s own.)
Upon gentle (i.e. at the monthly review meeting there were
pointed questions and a very well put together powerpoint given by a pair of
sunglasses that owned a luxurious handlebar mustache) prompting from his new
employers, Steve’s next task was to “show our new extraplanar neighbors in
a positive light to the greater population.”
Steve decided this was an excellent time to make an
Instagram account.
His first post, of Antler Guy delicately cutting his slice
of cake with his fingertips, nearly broke the notifications on Steve’s phone.
His second one, a short video of the Triad sneaking up on Antler Guy to smear
bright purple frosting on his face, did break the notifications. (Steve
restarted and adjusted his settings. Thank god he’d put the thing on silent.)
Antler Guy took the new development in stride, indulging
Steve in his posing and carrying the “selfie stick” Steve insisted
they bring on their excursions. His favorite part was scrolling through the
notifications (well, watching Steve scroll since his fingertips a) couldn’t
control the touchscreen and b) made the screen itself shimmer with rainbow
colors), seeing those who “followed” him.
“NEIGHBOR STEVE, I HAVE NOT HAD SO MANY FOLLOW MY LEAD
SINCE I CAME TO THE UPPER WORLD. THIS INSTANT-GRAM IS QUITE AMUSING.”
“Yeah, it is fun. Even the trolls are kinda
funny.”
“TROLLS? I DID NOT KNOW THE TROLLS HAD MIGRATED TO THE
INTERNET AS WELL.”
“…..as well as….? You know what, nevermind, I don’t
wanna know.”
Antler Guy even made friends over the social platform,
including one particularly nice lady in Pennsylvania,
an artist by the name of LK. He told Steve that some of her work reminded him
of home, especially the photo album and her husband’s sculptures. He purchased
one through Steve, “TO SEND TO COUSIN %&*@^^@, ZIR BOY LOOKS JUST LIKE
IT.”
“Just like that? But that looks human. Well, minus the
horns and the snarling.”
“YES. AMADEUS HAS MUCH OF HIS PREVIOUS LIFE.”
“……you lost me there, buddy. Previous life?”
“BEFORE HE WAS….. ADOPTED.”
“Wait, adopted? You guys adopt, what, human kids?”
“…….IN A SENSE.”
“Still lost here, buddy.”
“….I BELIEVE I HEAR MY HELLWIFE CALLING.”
“What, I don’t hear-”
“GOODNIGHT, NEIGHBOR STEVE.”
Never before had Steve seen Antler Guy run from him.
(Usually it was the other way around.) Sharon
didn’t believe him, until hours turned into days without a sign of Antler Guy.
Hellwife wouldn’t say anything no matter the daiquiris, she just looked at
Steve and sighed sadly. Son didn’t know anything either. He played quietly with
Timmy and Augy, sniffling occasionally. Even Millie practicing her zombie
makeup on Steve didn’t help. Finally, he murmured the reason to the Triad, who
took it to Steve with wide-eyed solemnity.
His father wouldn’t look at him.
“Guy, open the door.”
“Guy, I’m sorry I asked, please open the door.”
“……”
“Dammit, you can be mad at me but please, don’t let my
mistake mess it up with Son. He’s a great kid and he doesn’t understand that
it’s my fault not his, he needs his dad-”
“I AM NOT HIS FATHER.”
“You are in every way that cou-”
“I DO NOT DESERVE TO BE HIS FATHER.”
“Wha-?”
“HIS PATERNAL BEING MURDERED HIM AS AN INFANT AND WAS
IN TURN MURDERED.”
“…..holy….fu-”
“THEY CAME TO MY JURISDICTION. THE…..FATHER…..STILL
HELD ONTO THE SOUL OF THE CHILD HE HAD KILLED. I REMOVED HIS TOUCH FROM
HIM.”
“Good. Bastard deserved the worst you could throw at
him-”
“I KEPT HIM.”
“What?”
“I KEPT THE CHILD.”
“….So? He’s a cute kid, you guys are great
parents-”
“I SHOULD NOT HAVE KEPT HIM.”
“What the hell Guy?! That’s your Son!”
“HE WAS PURE.”
“…..and you lost me again….”
“HE WAS PURE. A PURE SOUL. HE DID NOT BELONG THERE.
NOT…. THERE. BUT I WAS WEAK, AND I WANTED……”
“….come on Guy, you can do it, I’ve got you.”
“…I…I WANTED…..A…..CHILD. A-AND WE
CANNOT….B-BREED ONE SO I….I CHANGED H-HIM AND K-KEPT H-H-HIM
FROM…..”
“Come on Guy, I’m here for you.”
“…..I KEPT HIM F-FROM HEAVEN.”
Nightmare eldritch abominations can cry. Its rare, so they
don’t keep Kleenex. (Steve never cared much for that shirt anyway.)
“Now you listen here. You are a damn fine father.
Hellwife is a damn fine mother. And Son is a damn fine kid. I doubt Heaven
would be as good for him as you two are.”
“…BUT-”
“No buts, buddy. I listen to Sharon, and she listens to everything. You
didn’t come here just for the green lawns and the flocking plastic flamingos,
did you?”
“…….NO.”
“Why’d you come here?”
“…….NEIGHBOR STEVE-”
“Why. Did. You. Come. Here.”
“….BECAUSE HE DESERVES BETTER.”
“Better than?”
“BETTER THAN….THERE. HE…. DESERVES THE CHANCES
HE….. SHOULD HAVE HAD. TO BE….HUMAN.”
“And you’re giving that to him. He goes to school, he
has friends, he takes spelling tests for pity’s sake! Yeah, he’s a little
different, but he has that chance. You’re giving him that chance. And you
shouldn’t beat yourself up for giving it to him.”
“…….”
“He loves you, Antler Guy. And he needs to know why his
father won’t look at him.”
“…….PLEASE, WOULD YOU….SEND THEM OVER?”
“Sure thing buddy.”
Sharon
bakes no less than 5 separate types of custard and Steve spends an extra hour
reading to Timmy that night. The next morning, Hellwife hugs Steve so hard he
squeaks. Twice. Son calls an emergency meeting of the Triad, and absconds with
two of the custards. They emerge later (Hellwife, Bea, and Sharon having drunk
several cups of coffee and polished off two more of the custards and a tray of
Hellwife’s cheesecake brownies) and immediately begin a game of tag.
Antler Guy also hugs Steve. They both sniffle a little.
(Also, thanks to this lovely user who’s post and resulting willingness to answer questions helped make this update what it is. Told you guys I read what you write ^_^)
~~~~~
For on who quite literally oversaw Hell, and lived there, Antler Guy has a hard time lying. (There is little point in it, really, the truth hurts far more.) When asked why he closets himself with the Terrifying Triad, Fluffy, and Steve’s home computer, he almost gains enough facial expression to be shifty.
Almost.
Steve doesn’t press too hard. The origins of Son are still new and a tender area, one that he’s unwilling to accidentally tromp on, and he figures that Guy will spill when the time is right. Patience. Patience is key. And trust. And patience.
He lasts almost a week before he caves and checks the browsing history on Timmy’s account.
His eyebrows start climbing at “HOW TO ASSIST SMALL HUMANS”, and don’t stop until they hit hairline with “animals to help at hospitals”. Its not something he’s ever considered before, but the more he thinks about it, the more he likes it. And it would be good PR for Antler Guy.
(The suits would like more progress than an Instagram account.)
(……the suits will not like this.)
(……….)
(Steve starts making calls that same day. Sharon gets an excited text from him, and makes much more effective calls.)
~
“NEIGHBOR STEVE, I AM UNSURE.”
“C’mon Guy, we talked about this. We got Fluffy and Clifford registered and Hellwife made them matching vests and everything!”
“I DO NOT FEAR FOR FLUFFY. SHE IS A FINE MAMMALIAN AMBASSADOR. I HAVE NOTICED THAT HUMAN YOUNG OFTEN FIND ME ………INTIMIDATING.”
“I think you’ll be surprised, Guy.” is all Steve will say on the subject.
And he is. Due to height concerns, the first part of the visit to the Shriner’s hospital near their area of suburbia is held outside. Clifford is a big hit- he lays down still as can be as the kids (and nurses, because they can) climb all over him. Those steady enough enjoy a ride get their fill as he lopes along the strip of grass, his passengers held perfectly steady and whooping all the way. Sharon stays with Clifford and shows a rapt audience how a gigantic dog (past 8 feet tall and creeping on 9) will beg for treats. Drool is involved. A lot of drool.
Steve and Antler Guy push on. The first stop is the children’s cancer ward. Antler Guy is hesitant, but the greeting stops him in his tracks. Every child there is smiling at him- and every Monster Under The Bed is smiling too. (Those of them that have faces, anyway. The mass of tetrahedrons glitters in a friendly fashion.)
The hospital’s Director of Extra-planar Concerns smiles too. She adjusts her clipboard, and scritches Fluffy’s head when she wraps around her ankles.
“At this hospital, we believe in helping our patients to the best of our ability. And our Monster Helper program allows beings who no longer fit in their old jobs to have gainful employment. All of our monsters here are certified Eaters of Bad Dreams, and have been known to form close bonds with their assigned child. Some even leave with the patient once their illness has been cured.” She patted Antler Guy’s arm and pointed towards a large chair suitable for his frame. “Why not get acquainted?”
Antler Guy immediately descends into chittering conversation with the assembled monsters, gravely introducing himself to each and every child, listening to their stories and boasts about how their Monster is a lot more scary than him, but with time he can learn to be scarier. A tiny girl with a terrifying amount of IV lines and no hair pats his long hands gently, under the careful eye of her ever-watchful Monster (being mostly a mass of eyes with a long, long, long purple tongue).
Fluffy is the center of her own social whirl, purring magnificently despite the occasional hair-pulling so children who hadn’t seen their own pets in far too long could hold something soft, and warm, and good. (Fluffy Monsters are something of a rarity, and sometimes are too busy for communal pettings.)
Steve, having no special power going for him and only the standard human kit, plays round after round of Go Fish with a shy young boy missing an arm. His Monster, a tentacled starfish thing, assists him while playing it’s own hand and holding cards for the tetrahedron, who’s human child is too tired to participate, but looks on none-the-less and calls out the tetrahedron’s choices in a whispy voice.
It becomes a regular stop. They set up a family day, where each family gets to meet the Abominations and see what their children were so excited about. Antler Guy and Hellwife are the epitome of grace and kindness. Timmy and Millie lead a massive game of tag with Auberguine as It, and Son gets to cut the cake.
(The donations that come from the Instagram posts made that day are staggering– three months operating costs in the first hour. The Director of Extra-planar Concerns can be seen weeping in the embrace of a dew-clawed lizard, also weeping.)
Two months (and many moments spent at the hospital, both bitter and sweet) later, the smoking letter arrives on Antler Guy’s doorstep.
It really was too good to last.
The whole street knows something is wrong the day It arrives.
A glowing ball of impossible light floats down the street. To look directly at It is impossible; a glance out of the corner of the eye is almost managable, but still useless. A melody just beyond the edge of hearing follows It, but no one tries to get closer. Some residual memory hiding deep in the hindbrain warns that to approach is to burn, lit up within by the purity of one’s soul trying to rejoin the source before it’s time.
The eldritch of the street do not sense It until It is there, an implacable, unstoppable force. Most hide. Miss Cravandish- the gorgon that teaches Physical Education at the middle school, currently on maternal leave until her eggs hatch- drops a pot full of her prized daffodil bulbs. Peabody scoops up his Pomeranian in all sixteen arms and runs, flat out, for home. He ignores the pain when his shoes slide off his tentacles and the asphalt burns his squishy skin.
No one dares warn the Abominations, or Steve and Sharon. It is only due to great good luck that both families were out that day- the kids at school, Sharon coordinating a bake sale to fundraise for more inclusive programming at the After School program, Hellwife shopping, and Steve and Antler Guy checking on a recent addition to the Shriner’s Ward- a tiny baby girl riddled with tumors. Her Monster was a living floofy rug that hummed gently. It had good news for them- her vitals were improving, the tumors seemed to be shrinking. The ride home was joyful; Antler Guy grinned the whole way, waving at passing cars from the sunroof of the Prius, Fluffy in the back seat. (Clifford had stayed home. He was currently cowering behind Mr. Manzo’s shed with Mr. Manzo as It passed.)
His joy ended the moment they turned onto the street and saw the unearthly light in front of his home.
“NEIGHBOR STEVE. STOP THE CAR.”
“What the fuck is tha-”
“STOP. THE. CAR.”
What happened next was hard to see, and hear. Steve, when trying to explain to Sharon later that night, mostly remembers a liquid feeling in his ears and a tightness in his eyes. He was pretty sure Antler Guy approached It, but he couldn’t be certain. Neighbors said Steve screamed and Antler Guy shouted something, and It left. But It left behind Steve, passed out in the concerned embrace of the deathshade vines, and Antler Guy, holding a gently smoking envelope, laid out flat on his own doorstep.
Sharon comes home to this moments after It leaves. Later, most folk agree that it was best this way. Her concern is surpassed only by her rage when she learns what happened. Almost immediately she grasps the situation from neighbors coming to check. 911 is deemed useless, as are the Suits. Sharon makes only two calls- one to Beatrice, to warn her and ask that she pick up the children and bring the boys home (Beatrice agrees, and wishes her good hunting), and one to Hellwife.
Moments after the second call is made, reality warps and Hellwife appears, kicking aside a pile of Wal-mart bags that appeared with her. Where Sharon is fiery rage tightly held, Hellwife is icy calculation spilled everywhere- the whole street shivers when she delicately picks the envelope out of her unconscious husband’s long fingers. On a balmy summer day, the decorative thermometer on Mrs. Giotto’s porch drops 30 degrees as she reads it carefully. Twice. And folds it neatly.
“ThEY. HavE. NO. RIGHT.”
Clifford, who was nosing his master and gently licking him to rouse him, immediately starts howling. Fluffy pauses her grooming of Antler Guy’s brow ridges to yowl with him.
~~~
The menfolk eventually rouse. No lasting harm is done, but a family meeting is called. Beatrice and Millie are included at Hellwife’s insistence (“You aRE Kin Of My Son, AnD sO
mY kIN.
yOu ArE famILy.
PlEase, StAY.” They do.)
To put it simply, and without the complicated and unutterable by human tongue language involved, the letter delivered by It is two things- a cease-and-desist order for Antler Guy to stop interfering with the business of Heaven, and a summons for one human soul, male, to be returned to Heaven.
Antler Guy had been doing a bit more than just visiting at the hospital. He had been strengthening the children and the ill, a breath at a time, and some had lived who should have died and gone to the Heavens. He had also deliberately misfiled the paperwork of Son’s mortal life, and it had taken this long to solve the mix-up.
The Heavens wanted Son, and they wanted punishment for Antler Guy’s crimes.
There is a hierarchy to Hell, and to Heaven. Hell is, very simply, Not Heaven. There are some very pleasant places that would not swear to Heaven, and so are regarded as Hell. Earth was left as a neutral area, one where both sides could leverage influence to see who, finally, Wins. No direct action can be taken by either side.
Officially, that’s all there is. Heaven, Earth, and Hell.
Unofficially…
~~~
“Do yOu KnOW yOur LinEs, neIghBor SteVe?”
“Yes ma’am!”
“NEIGHBOR STEVE, BEATRICE, SHARON, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO-”
“HUSH husBand. They are Sure, As aRE we All.”
“BUT I DO NOT DESERVE-”
“Enough.” Everyone- Triad, associated parents, Antler Guy, even the plants and the pets- shivered in the parking lot. Hellwife normally was… nondescript. Not nearly as terrifying at first glance as Antler Guy could be. But the last week, she had started to gather an invisible force to herself (not a literal force, Steve had quietly asked one day.) An air of regal power surrounded her now. A very large and insistent air of regal power. “I Am Your WiFe, HusBanD, And I WiLL deCIdE WhAt yoU DeServe.”
She tenderly scritched around the base of his horns as he sat in the middle of the circle of friends and family (and some vines carefully grown and shed under Hellwife’s specific instruction. Aubergine and Bella refused to be left behind.) Antler Guy quieted under his wife’s gentle claws. The moon shone pale on his polished skull as the hour inched closer to 2 AM.
“ArE You reADy, mY Son? TimmY? MilliE?”
“yes mama.”
“Yes Miss Hellwife.”
“Yes Missus Hellwife.”
The bright parking lot lights grew strangely dim.
“ThEn Let Us Begin.”
~~~
Unofficially, there’s Denny’s.
~~~
Hellwife held out the envelope outside of their circle, and began to Speak. (For the sake of human brains, she had carefully applied her own sort of runes on all participating non-eldritch creatures, including Fluffy. Even cats have their limits.) It glowed, burning itself up into strangely-scented smoke that drifted out into a pool, one that glowed in the same way that It had glowed.
It did not appear, for that was not It’s function. But two other Things drew themselves out of the mist, Things that triggered pain, and fear, and the agonizing knowledge that you deserved this, you deserved whatever They did to you because you are impure, imperfect, not worthy of such Light–
“Enough.”
They…flinched.
“I did not Call for such lackeys. Either send a proper representative, or I will consider the matter closed.”
They roiled uncertainly.
“Do not try my patience.”
They converged on the pool. Steve could feel that liquid sensation in his ears again, only the squiggles Hellwife had carefully drawn kept it from being painful. He had a mighty desire for a Q-tip, though.
Something Else flowed out of the pool. It was not an It, nor a They. This one radiated something else. This one had Power, the kind that would squish a lesser being with no regard, Power that pressed at the mind to be obeyed.
This… was a Boss.
Again, the liquid feeling, only mixed with…derision? If water could hold a snort, that’s what the Boss would radiate. Steve decided a baseball bat would be a better choice.
“Better. A proper Witness.”
Quizzical waterslosh?
“Steve, if you’ll get started?”
“Oh, I, uh, I do so swear…”
Sharon grabbed his right hand, Beatrice his left. In the small circle they made were Antler Guy, the Triad in his lap. Fluffy rode Clifford’s head as he lit the vine circle that surrounded them all, Aubergine and Bella forming a living one within it.
“-of my own free will-”
Hellwife stood between them and the Boss at the edge of the circle, staring at the Boss and it’s increasing distressed They.
“-pledge my son-”
The Boss quivered.
“-as I pledge my son-”
“-as I pledge my daughter-”
The Boss billowed menacingly. Hellwife narrowed her eyes.
“-AS I PLEDGE MY SON-”
The Boss screamed. Hellwife smiled. And stage-whispered.
“-aS I PleDGe My Son-”
The Boss screamed again, and They threw themselves at the barrier of hellfire, fed on wood freely given, reinforced by living flesh. Hellwife smiled.
“““-as we pledge to eachother-”””
And spoke.
“As witnessed by Heaven, Hell, and Earth, our children are pledged Betrothed. Their souls belong to each other, and none other.”
They were looking worse for the wear, Their light dulled and curls of smoke flickering over Them. The Boss was pissed, and the tickle of water in the ears became a torrent, one so angry that words were almost visible.
HE WHO FELL IS MINE.
The force behind the words was direct, and nigh unavoidable for one who had touched Heaven, much less one who fell from it. Antler Guy shook, and tried to stand. The kids, the adults, the plants- even Clifford held him down. Fluffy stood on his head, hissing softly.
Hellwife bared her teeth in a grin that had nothing at all of goodwill in it. She delicately stepped outside of the circle and spread her arms. The aura of regal power bloomed.
The Boss yelped.
“I Invoke my right as Wife to Fight for my Husband. The winner may keep Him.”
The Boss tried it’s best to rally the troops, even call for help- a wave of her delicate claws and the misty gate dimmed in brightness. No help would come from there.
“And since I never Fell…” She stepped forward. The forces of Heaven cringed.
“…you will fight me Fair.”
The mortals kept their heads down, as she had warned them to. A shield of leaves from Aubergine hid the sight and some of the sound as Bella sang her best rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. Sharon joined for some of the duets.
“Who’s First?”
~~~
The victory feast in the diner was somewhat confusing for the servers, but justly deserved for the family. (A side door was opened for Clifford and Auberguine, who just couldn’t fit in the restaurant.)
(Hellwife occasionally hiccups slightly glowing mist. Beatrice folds her a birthday crown, and Bella waves the indigestible bits of holiness out the side door. Sharon hugs her, Steve orders her favorite birthday cake-flavored shake. The kids are smiling, and her husband’s claws entwine with her own.)
Ah, good, they’re friendly. Gravescratch sets one servo on the ground and leans down to lightly sniff at Specter from a reasonable distance, resisting the urge to lick some part of him, then sets all four servos on the ground, crouches slightly, and fluffs his plating just a bit in a clear invitation to touch. He’ll gladly indulge curiosity, if there is any to be had. “I have seen Shockwave from far too close up. I try to avoid him and his utter lack of morals. I would not welcome his curiosity. Yours, though, I will invite.” he rumbles, ducking his helm slightly to let Specter reach. And Bruin, too, he seems calm enough. Actually, speaking of Bruin…
Tilting his helm slightly to watch Bruin with the three optics on the right side of his helm, Gravescratch rather blatantly looks him over for a moment, humming softly in contemplation. “Would you be willing to let me come over there and look you over? I am quite curious, I admit. I will stop if you ask, and I promise not to intentionally touch anywhere too personal. No promises on accidental overstepping of bounds, I am frankly very prone to forgetting social norms, but I am not the sort of person who intentionally pushes the boundaries of others to advance my own curiosity.”
As he talks, Gravescratch arranges one primary and both secondary arms into a makeshift but rather obvious ladder, clearly an invitation for Specter to climb him. Curiosity that involves contact means he gets to figure out the curious being a bit more without having to reach out, touch, and probably overstep about 10 boundaries.
Now… how can he get close to Bruin and maybe surreptitiously get a taste of him? He definitely wants to lick Bruin. Not sure why, or where, but, hey, might as well indulge the urge if it’s safe. Might learn some things. People tend to taste like where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing.
Ah, good, they’re friendly. Gravescratch sets one servo on the ground and leans down to lightly sniff at Specter from a reasonable distance, resisting the urge to lick some part of him, then sets all four servos on the ground, crouches slightly, and fluffs his plating just a bit in a clear invitation to touch. He’ll gladly indulge curiosity, if there is any to be had. “I have seen Shockwave from far too close up. I try to avoid him and his utter lack of morals. I would not welcome his curiosity. Yours, though, I will invite.” he rumbles, ducking his helm slightly to let Specter reach. And Bruin, too, he seems calm enough. Actually, speaking of Bruin…
Tilting his helm slightly to watch Bruin with the three optics on the right side of his helm, Gravescratch rather blatantly looks him over for a moment, humming softly in contemplation. “Would you be willing to let me come over there and look you over? I am quite curious, I admit. I will stop if you ask, and I promise not to intentionally touch anywhere too personal. No promises on accidental overstepping of bounds, I am frankly very prone to forgetting social norms, but I am not the sort of person who intentionally pushes the boundaries of others to advance my own curiosity.”
As he talks, Gravescratch arranges one primary and both secondary arms into a makeshift but rather obvious ladder, clearly an invitation for Specter to climb him. Curiosity that involves contact means he gets to figure out the curious being a bit more without having to reach out, touch, and probably overstep about 10 boundaries.
Now… how can he get close to Bruin and maybe surreptitiously get a taste of him? He definitely wants to lick Bruin. Not sure why, or where, but, hey, might as well indulge the urge if it’s safe. Might learn some things. People tend to taste like where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing.
Specter had known something was alive in the rubble, but the sheer bulk of it had hindered his readings. At least until the bot had pulled itself out.
Bruin debates for a moment on pretending to ignore it and maintaining the element of surprise, but shuffles that aside quickly. Spotter and the wolves are off on long distance recon, alert to what’s happening but unconcerned as Bruin is.
A silent command is given, and Specter, in all his shadowy glory, whips around to face the mound of rubble hiding the unknown entity. Neck coiled back, tail arched, and legs planted, his biolights flickering out. He is more than eager to hunt, even if it’s only a turbofox.
::Steady Specs, no jumping the gun::
《I know the game, quit worrying》
Ah, good, they’re friendly. Gravescratch sets one servo on the ground and leans down to lightly sniff at Specter from a reasonable distance, resisting the urge to lick some part of him, then sets all four servos on the ground, crouches slightly, and fluffs his plating just a bit in a clear invitation to touch. He’ll gladly indulge curiosity, if there is any to be had. “I have seen Shockwave from far too close up. I try to avoid him and his utter lack of morals. I would not welcome his curiosity. Yours, though, I will invite.” he rumbles, ducking his helm slightly to let Specter reach. And Bruin, too, he seems calm enough. Actually, speaking of Bruin…
Tilting his helm slightly to watch Bruin with the three optics on the right side of his helm, Gravescratch rather blatantly looks him over for a moment, humming softly in contemplation. “Would you be willing to let me come over there and look you over? I am quite curious, I admit. I will stop if you ask, and I promise not to intentionally touch anywhere too personal. No promises on accidental overstepping of bounds, I am frankly very prone to forgetting social norms, but I am not the sort of person who intentionally pushes the boundaries of others to advance my own curiosity.”
As he talks, Gravescratch arranges one primary and both secondary arms into a makeshift but rather obvious ladder, clearly an invitation for Specter to climb him. Curiosity that involves contact means he gets to figure out the curious being a bit more without having to reach out, touch, and probably overstep about 10 boundaries.
Now… how can he get close to Bruin and maybe surreptitiously get a taste of him? He definitely wants to lick Bruin. Not sure why, or where, but, hey, might as well indulge the urge if it’s safe. Might learn some things. People tend to taste like where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing.
Specter is rather impressed by all the eyes. Not touching the other mech yet but he is watching to see if they can all move and focus independently. Specter has about a 270 degree field of view and his sensory equipment more than makes up for the missing 90, but this bot could probably see even more.
Bruin gives a sharp nod, “Only good Shockwave round here is a dead Shockwave. 2 million years of his… “curiosity” is something I’ll never manage to forget.”
He is distracted for a moment by a ping from Sidewinder, << Big bot, we got a dead one. Not too fresh but I don’t think the lines are dry yet>> A quick confirmation. The wolves found what they were searching for and will be dragging it back.
He refocuses as the other mech eyes him and makes both his offers. With the rest of the pack on the way, Bruin is confident enough to accept.
< <Can I- >>
::Go on. If he tries anything you’re already in a position to do some damage::
Specter is going to spring up, by-passing the courteous ladder entirely, tail swinging out for balance as he lands on Gravescratch’s shoulder. All his claws except the massive two on his rearmost feet are retracted for safety as he digs toes into armor seams to hang on. No one likes scratched paint and torn wires. He is careful to avoid the antennas as his tail swings.
Bruin considers for a moment, “You can. But,” he holds up a hand, “I’ll hold you to that promise”
Licking isn’t likely to even register on his radar of uncomfortable unless it’s his cod piece.
Gravescratch’s optics all move independently of each other, giving him such a range of vision that he can see just about as far back as the bases of his antennae, so he can watch Specter all the way up his shoulder. Further back, too, he can see anywhere but right behind his own helm.
Two of his smallest optics fix on the odd being for a moment, but he stays relaxed, antennae quivering slightly towards the little creature. Hey, he’s got a good look at this weird little thing. And a good feel for those bizarre little feet. And he can listen to the soft lifesigns, thanks to Specter clinging onto him right near his antennae.
Slowly straightening up as much as he easily can (which means he’s still hunched over and creepy-looking), Gravescratch rolls his shoulders gently back and forth, testing how well Specter can hang on, then gives in to impulse, twists his helm around, flicks the tip of his tongue out just enough to touch it to Specter’s servo for a very quick taste, and then spins his helm around like nothing happened.
Field unfurling enough to broadcast greeting/reassurance/curiosity to both the large mech in front of him and the small mech sitting on him, Gravescratch hums gently and approaches the impressively, intimidatingly large mech, moving rather slowly to be certain it’s not a threat.
Just in case, he starts with Bruin’s arm, both primary servos drifting gently across the plating and occasionally dipping into seams, though not hard enough to hurt or even be all that noticeable. He’s not trying to start anything (he likes being able to walk, thank you, and he doubts this mech does anything but top), so he keeps the seam inspections short rather than stroking in and rubbing, and he moves quickly up to Bruin’s shoulder without lingering. The curiosity in his field strengthens gradually, as does the volume of the soft growl-hum he’s making, and it’s definitely peaked as he finds the bright orange antennae (?) on Bruin’s helm.
He should not lick these, particularly since he’s not certain how sensitive they are, but he does venture a tiny lick of one of those angled cheek guards, then ducks his helm slightly and repeats the motion with the workings of Bruin’s shoulder, though a slightly longer lick and a tiny nip to the plating.
Whoops, wait, that’s not normal. “Terribly sorry, taste is a primary sense for me. I was built to be a scavenger and given a rather strong drive to figure out what is edible and what is not. You are technically edible, but, as you are alive and not threatening me, I will not eat you. This is not me figuring out if you are edible, this is me figuring out where you have been. Do ignore that unless it makes you uncomfortable.
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