Journey: 3 weeks, door-to-door, with about 10 days in each country. April 2-23, 2024.
Me: 54M from Boulder, Colorado, USA, experienced world traveler but first proper solo trip. I heard that Uzbekistan is beautiful, safe, and a worthwhile destination a couple of years ago while on The Adventurists' Rickshaw Run in Sri Lanka. That lodged in my brain, and when I discovered Turkish Airlines offered the best Star Alliance routing to Tashkent from Denver, the pairing with Turkey seemed ideal.
Here is my first ever trip report. Sorry if it's too long.
I spent the first 5 nights in Istanbul in the Karaköy neighborhood, about a 2-minute walk from the Galata bridge. Ideal location, lousy hotel (noisy, hot, and kinda shabby).
On my first full day I joined a "Taste of Two Continents" tour with Yummy Istanbul. We ate two breakfasts on the European side and two lunches on the Asian side in Kadiköy. Our top-notch guide, Leyla, offered a perfect introduction to some sites, some mosques, the Egyptian Bazaar, how to take the ferry and the fascinating neighborhood of Kadiköy. Lots of history, politics, geography, tradition, and fantastic food all baked into these 6 hours (no pun intended). Highly recommended and an excellent way to get oriented to what to eat, variations on kebab, and other culinary tidbits.
I hit the 500-year-old Hurrem Sultan Hammam(Turkish bath) on Day 2. I had never been scrubbed down like that. It hurt like crazy, but well worth it. From there, I wandered toward the Grand Bazaar. On the way, I was cornered twice by aggressive salesmen," trying to get me to buy rugs. It was my second day with a small backpack, and I had no plans to purchase anything. Their "Turkish hospitality" sales style is insistent, to say the least. I basically had to walk out (not easy as an American). I found my way to the legendary Dönerci Şahin Usta — delicious and the best döner sandwich I had in Istanbul (though there can be long lines). I spent the evening eating, drinking, and wandering the steep and bustling streets around the Galata Tower.
Day 3 was a tour of some standard sites: the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. We met at 9am and waited in an already long line for the Hagia Sofia. Beautiful, but I dislike this type of close contact with thousands of other looky-loos at tourist sites — it overwhelms the beauty at hand. The Blue Mosque proved more chill. And then the story of the Obelisk outside the Blue Mosque is extraordinary. After a nap to chip away at my jetlag, I headed back across the Bosphorus to Kadiköy for a rockin' Saturday night. I bought some incredible banknotes from a street vendor (such as old Iraqi dinars with Saddam Hussain, Syrian pounds, and old Iranian rials with the Shaw. Neighboring countries to Turkey, but 6000 miles from my home). And banknotes are an easy souvenir that fits in a fully stuffed backpack.
With no reserved activity for Day 4, I walked up toward Ortaköy. I stopped in at the Dolmabahçe Palace but found myself not in the mood for looking at random fancy things with hundreds of other tourists. Just past the palace is the phenomenal Museum of Paintings (included with my ticket). I got lost amongst the old maps of the Bosphorus, paintings of epic battles, and portraits of famous sultans. Highly recommended, and the first moment, I thought, "I dig this solo traveling thing. No one to check in with or hurry me up or slow me down." I strolled towards the charmingly named "July 15 Martyrs' Bridge." I grabbed a lamb intestine sandwich and a Coke and jumped aboard a 1-hour Bosphorus cruise. While a cliché tourist activity in Istanbul, and these boats abound in the Bosphorus, it is beautiful, timeless, and enthralling. I tried to take the bus back to my hotel with my IstanbulCard, but could not figure out which one to take (Google Maps making it more confusing), so I grabbed a "taksi."
Up early on Day 5 and was third in line for the sublime Basilica Cistern (highly recommended). I walked back along the Bosphorus waterfront to my hotel to catch a taxi for my flight to Cappadocia. I arrived in Göreme where I stayed in one of the myriad cave hotels (search them on the internet) and wandered into town to meet up with a South African couple for dinner and drinks.
After breakfast on Day 6, I walked uphill from the hotel (with one of the many town dogs following me) up a canyon through tunnels, past old houses built in the rocks, and just budding trees. The trail topped out at a chicken farm with a few turkeys to finally give me the appropriate "Welcome to Turkey" I deserved. I continued up to the town of Uçhisar for some Turkish tea on a spectacular balcony overlooking Cappadocia. Now fully caffeinated, I sauntered back down to Göreme for lunch. For a change of pace, I tried an Indian restaurant called Dehli Darbar. Upon my first bite, I realized I longed for more flavor and vegetables. This place was delicious and authentic, and I ate there three more times.
I booked the Green Tour for Day 7 upon the recommendation of a friend. Maybe I had the wrong guide, group, or route, but it was terrible from the get-go. After two 15-minute stops for photos at roadside trinket stands, we then stopped at a jewelry store for an hour. At this point, I just walked off the tour. While the better sites lay ahead (the underground city at Derinkuyu), I could not deal another minute. As I walked into Uçhisar, I enjoyed a delicious local wine tasting, climbed the Uçhisar castle, bought some souvenir 0 Euro notes (I love those things!), and ate a delicious lunch on the divine patio of the Museum Hotel (with tortoises and peacocks wandering around me). From there, I bushwhacked a different route back to Göreme, down a beautiful canyon, through another tunnel, and arrived at the hotel with thunderheads cracking, and rain came in droves 10 minutes later. After the storm, I signed up for a balloon ride (which Cappadocia is genuinely famous for) and feasted on palek paneer and naan.
Up at 5am on Day 8 for the balloon ride with Turquaz Balloons. Holt shit. I have traveled a lot and been to many unique places, and this is a true bucket list activity. It started with a light breakfast and a 20-minute van ride to the balloon. I splurged for a 20-person balloon (most have 28 people). 150+ balloons are flying all at once, and it is a sight to behold. We flew into the clouds, grazed rooftops, and came within speaking distance to people viewing from the ground. Upon landing our basket directly into the trailer (!!!), the van instantly appeared with cake, champagne, ceramic medals, and diplomas (?). A truly amaze-balls hour of my life. Upon a friend's recommendation, I walked into town to Galerie Ikman to say hello to the owner Bilal and was sucked into the moment (kismet?) and bought myself a gorgeous silk rug (shipped for free to Istanbul, where I grabbed it on my way home). While the store is Instagram-ready, it is truly perfect for Instagram. From there, I took a shuttle to the airport and flew back to Istanbul for the night, staying near the airport.
Traveling around Uzbekistan requires more advanced planning (April and May are peak seasons, and trains fill up quickly). I started and ended in the capital, Tashkent, moving along the Silk Road from west (Khiva) to east (back to Taskkent). Either direction is fine, and while there are some excellent stops further out on either end (Nukus on the west and the Fergano Valley to the east), these four stops seemed doable on my timetable. I took a short flight to Khiva, then rode the trains east from Khiva to Bukhara (slow), Bukhara to Samarkand (fast), and Samarkand to Tashkent (fast). I changed one booking the day before departure, so it is worth looking for last-minute cancellations if need be.
Up early again for Day 9, flying from Istanbul to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan (about 4.5 hours). I booked a hotel near the gigantic Chorsu Bazaar which was an eye-opening way to realize I was "not in Kansas anymore." Raw beef abounds in the main building, with maybe a third of the vendors selling a variety of gigantic cuts along with large slabs of beef fat. The main building is designed in a wheel-like fashion with a pickle section, a dairy section, and dried fruit, nuts, and spices upstairs. I found a nearby "food court" and had my first p'lov, the Uzbekistan national dish (a greasy yet tasty rice dish with meat, carrots, raisins, and lots of fat). From there I found the hall of horrors — a very stinky area of cow parts for sale. A lot of cow heads, a handful of cow hearts, inflated cow intestines, quite a few hooves, and a kid digging out the eyeballs (he had a large pile). Very real, very gritty, and very different than the Whole Foods meat counter in Boulder, Colorado.
Another early rise on Day 10 for my Uzbekistan Airways flight from Tashkent to Urgench (Khiva) and a 45-minute cab ride to my hotel. Being 830am, my room was not ready, and I strolled the streets of the old town. The entire inner city is a UNESCO World Heritage site and museum. With one ticket, you can wander in and out of mosques, madrasas, and museums, seeing exhibits and magnificent tiled courtyards. After settling in my hotel room, with a balcony overlooking a rooftop chicken coop, I continued my meandering. Dinner was the local specialty of green noodles (fresh dill-flavored).
I had set up a tour of the Korhzem fortresses near Khva for Day 11. My driver picked me up at 9am for the 2-hour drive out into the desert to visit three of the many 2000-year-old fortresses. I immediately realized my driver was not a "guide," just a driver. He spoke broken English and knew far more about the local Chevrolet models than these ancient sites (FYI: most cars here are Chevy, a handful of old Soviet Ladas, and quite a few brand-new BYDs). Walking around the fortress walls and contemplating the immense Uzbek history is humbling, and I wished I had a guide to impart more information. I spent the evening photographing the Khiva sites against a spectacular sunset and night sky. I also met a wonderful group of Uzbekistan high school seniors eager to practice their English. The people here are delightful, friendly, and chatty.
Moving on from Khiva on Day 12, I hopped on a Soviet-era slow train to Bukhara — seven hours of hot, flat, gray desert. The dining car actually had desert dust flying around, but a cold Sarbast beer still tasted pretty good (you have to remember to ask for it to be cold). At heart, I am a foodie and found the Uzbek cuisine uninspiring. I usually build my travel days around finding or planning interesting meals — easy to do in Spain, London, or New York City. While I found Istanbul's food leaned monochromatic (spiced lamb and beef abound), I built days around the city's culinary destinations. Without that focus, some days felt directionless.
After my fortress excursion, I endeavored to find a non-private tour with other people for Day 13. I ended up with a French couple with a second French-speaking guide alongside my own guide. Our tour was mainly in English, but their guide would interrupt with a few words in French, like "chapeau!" or 'tapis!" It was awkward from the get-go, but on top of that the English-speaking guide was terrible, offering fascinating cultural notes like, "The walls of this building are 20m high." The tour concluded at The Ark of Bukhara, an extraordinary structure from the 5th century. The Ark is is one of the top sites of Bukhara, yet my guide offered no context of what it is and why it is so unique in the world. I tried to nap off the bad taste in my mouth from the tour and later went out for sunset photos of the Bukhara Registan.
After seeing most of the sites in Bukhara, I realized that there was not much left for Day 14. Travel blogs said, "at least three days for Bukhara." Maybe it is traveling solo, but I found one day there plenty. I made it to the Central Bazaar, with the mind-twisting displays of meat, lots of onions and potatoes, and their gorgeous selection of pickles (which never seem to make it on the restaurant menus). I love food markets, especially ones that seem unsanitary relative to our American eyes. I wandered to a few other sites and found an antique dealer. I spent a solid house perusing their humongous collection of old Soviet pins. They had a collection of old USSR passports with photos, stamps, and handwritten notes. I found these poignant, imbued with elements of change, death, and sadness. These well-worn, long-carried, and essential documents are now just ephemera that tourists peruse and bargain over. What will happen to my old passports? I found a restaurant for dinner that served relatively decent (and cold) Uzbek riesling.
Day 15 — another day in Bukhara. I spent the morning writing at a cafe and discovered an enthralling culinary corner of Uzbekistan. I ordered a teapot of Sea Buckthorn and Orange tea, a slightly sweetened delicious concoction of spices and oranges in a large French press. I tried all three teas at this shop (called "Far East" and "Silk Road," each delicious and each with a different flavor profile). I plan to make these at home. I ate lunch at the #1 p'lov spot in town creatively named "The Plov." It tasted like every other p'lov, which that name evokes a combination of plow and shovel (appropriately named). I did order a side of "horse meat" (I know, I know), but that was one of the more tasty things I had in Uzbekistan — rich, nuanced, and savory. The train from Bukhara to Samarkand is a serious upgrade — high speed, first-class seats, way comfy. I met a lovely couple from Cádiz, Spain, and was able to practice my Spanish for a good while. Samarkand is a world away from Bukhara — bustling, clean, and well-developed. I ate at a Caucasian restaurant, enjoying a delicious bottle of Georgian wine and new culinary flavors.
For Day 16, I found a $20 tour through Tripadvisor. An amazing day with a fantastic guide, Elior, and an older well-traveled couple from Canada. We started at the Amir Temur Mausoleum, diving into the extraordinary history of Timur (Tamerlane), and then walked over to the Registan. The Registan is hands-down one of the world's finest sites. Impressively gigantic and exquisitely detailed — simply stunning. In one madrasa classroom was a musician demonstrating a few variations of banjo-like instruments. A highlight of the tour, and I got to play a couple of them and showed him a video of me playing banjo. The tour finished by walking through the local (and huge) bazaar). After another delicious Indian dinner, I returned to the Registan for their evening music and light show. It was not quite like Phish at the Sphere in Las Vegas (which was happening concurrently), but likely cheaper tickets to get to Uzbekistan than inside that venue (Ha!). ​​ Day 17 was another day of wandering the streets of Samarkand, making my way to the Afrosiyob Settlement, an archeological site from 2500 years ago. Dinner at Labi G'orwith an over-the-top decor, parakeets blasting a soundtrack, and giant overstuffed leather sofas as the seating was also delicious (tomato salad, meat salad, kebab, and their famous local bread). I took a taxi home as that night was the first giant rainstorm of my entire trip.
Travel day on Day 18, taking the high-speed train from Samarkand to Tashkent. The classic Soviet-era Hotel Uzbekistan is only a 40-minute walk from the train station, and I met a wonderful Uzbek man whom I chatted with the entire walk. I hopped on a 2-hour bus tour of the city (the only one I saw in Uzbekistan). A good tour and lots of history of sites I'd never have caught on this trip. I found a beer bar and drank a tasty pilsner of unknown origin (the name was in Cyrillic). Then one last Indian meal before heading back to the hotel, where I realized the entire front of the hotel was a giant lit-up billboard. This hotel offered a perfect metaphor for the forward-looking Tashkent and the striking difference and lasting impact of the Soviet era.
It was another travel day on Day 19. I left my hotel at 7am for my flight to Istanbul. There were eight (!!!) passport and security checks to get to my gate in Tashkent. After dropping off my stuff at the boutique Haze Karaköy Hotel, I ran out to pick up lunch, grab the rug I purchased in Göreme, and buy some last-minute gifts at the Egyptian Bazaar (visit Stall #23). Dinner was in the trendy and relatively posh neighborhood of Teşvikiye, giving a broader and deeper view of this fantastic city. Lastly, on Day 20, I flew home to Denver via London Heathrow to start working off my 11-hour jet lag.
Visas No visa is needed to get into Turkey with an American passport, but it is needed for Uzbekistan. It is easy enough to obtain an e-visa on a government website, which came to my email in about five days. The border patrol agent in Tashkent told me it was free at 55, so I said I'd return next year.
Gear: I splurged on a beautiful Boundary Arris pack, which is meticulously designed yet not overly technical and comfortable. It also fits under the seat in front of me on a plane (never necessary on this trip). I brought a small Osprey Daylite Sling, which proved to be an indispensable daily carry. It fits my Kindle, a medium water bottle, sunglasses, sunscreen, and maybe my journal and passport. While I brought my Macbook, there was never a need to bring a laptop around town. When moving from city to city, with a water bottle in the Boundary backpack pocket, the sling was light enough to carry as a "front pack" around my neck (though I could fit it inside if need be). In terms of clothing, I relentlessly culled articles to fit it all into one bag (two pairs of pants, four pairs of socks, four tees, one flannel, one fleece, one sweater, one puffy jacket, one raincoat, one pair of shorts, one bathing suit). Given the shoulder season weather, I used the warmer layers earlier in the trip that sat unused for the latter half (mainly my puffy jacket). No one wore shorts on the streets in both countries (except a few tourists), and I could have left those at home. Turkey and Uzbekistan use the Euro-style plug, and I brought this handy-dandy charger. I find noise-canceling headphones expensive and bulky, and they tend to hurt my ears after a couple of hours. I use these cheapos from Sony, and I don't fret over them and can replace them on a whim (and they are WAY better than the freebies on the plane). My shoe choices are essential for my size 14 feet, so if something is not working, I am SOL when traveling. I brought a pair of Oboz hiking shoes and had a pair of Birkenstocks in my pack.
I did laundry through the hotel about every four days, and I purchased next to nothing on the road except some souvenir banknotes, a few Soviet pins, and some beautiful Turkish coasters as gifts. The silk carpet came with a canvas bag to check, and I bought more things at the tail end of the trip, like saffron, pomegranate tea, and Turkish Delight to bring home to Colorado.
For my phone data, I have T-Mobile from the USA, which offers free data and texting in most other countries and $0.20/minute to talk (but who talks on the phone anymore?). The data could have been faster for scrolling but solid enough for Google Maps, and I appreciated not having that 5G service, which helped me not look at my phone all the time.
What I'd do differently: Regarding travel, I have been a diehard DIY-er for decades. I never considered other options on this trip, even though my research came across dozens of tour operators for both Turkey and Uzbekistan. While the time commitment for planning the Uzbekistan leg was substantial (though not reasonable), I have second-guessed my aversion to tour-based travel as a solo traveler. Most of my day tours in Uzbekistan were flops, and it proved challenging to meet other solo travelers (as most were likely on tours). All this said, I still would want to avoid being on a tour bus in Turkey. As of today, here are my thoughts on some future trips: Namibia: full tour. Caucuses: full tour. India: partial tour. Japan: no tour. But check back in a year, and I may have changed my tune.
Another thing I found as a solo traveler in Uzbekistan was that Khiva and Bukhara only required a day and a half to see. In retrospect, I would add the Fergano Valley for more mountains and hiking to the trip, a Yurt camping excursion, or the Aral Sea (which looks dry and depressing).
Regarding hotels, I'd stay at The Hazy Karaköy in Istanbul, the Amulte Hotel in Bukhara, and the Arka Boutique Hotel in Samarkand.
I wish I bought "The Great Game" instead of "The Silk Road" as a research book before coming. I listen to nonfiction and read fiction, and "The Great Game" was far more engaging, with the opening scene in Bukhara. I did not use guidebooks, only Google Maps, various blogs, Reddit, or a dozen YouTube videos.
Why Uzbekistan?
Of all the 'Stans, Uzbekistan is the best first trip to Central Asia. As an American, Afghanistan is not possible, and Pakistan seems quite sketchy. Turkmenistan is a dictatorship (and I believe we are allowed only a five days transit visa), Kazakhstan is humongous (10x bigger than Italy, or the size of all of western Europe), Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan both sounds excellent, but not considered as safe by the US State Department and don't have the same level of tourist infrastructure (which I wanted on this trip). And Uzbekistan's history spans millennia (evidence of Neanderthals has been found there), and the sites are world-class without being near the crowds like Rome, Paris, or Istanbul.
Final Verdict: I will leave it to a few famous quotes to inspire you.
"Once a year, go someplace you've never been before." —Dalai Lama
"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience." — Eleanor Roosevelt
"Remind yourself that you don't have to do what everyone else is doing." — Banksy

I have severe trauma (visual and auditory triggers), but my ex's family keeps making me believe I was the abusive one. Maybe they are right? Are they gaslighting me, or am I gaslighting myself? I thought that I was just showing addiction to emotional anxiety and depression during that period of time.
At the time I was going through postpartum, and putting my daughter in an Open Adoption that led me to THC, (for some it's alcohol) because my ex-husband Evan Darnell from Lincoln, Nebraska had been smoking marijuana since he was 16, and I went through drug addiction and rehab in less than 2 years, my ex's family refused to help me heal my husband's addiction to marijuana, not because I am against marijuana recreationally, but it felt like it was destroying his life and causing further depression as it did destroy me through the pain of loss and grief.
He's anorexic now, and I'm traumatized in a debilitating way.
I feel that if it's true, and I'm part of the Trifecta, I should commit suicide or be alone forever without the possibility of hurting others. I don't really hold a lot in my life that makes me feel very good about myself, and I've been trying to ask my boyfriend to break up with me because I feel he deserves someone who won't hold him back as my triggers and trauma are quite severe and debilitating, it makes it difficult to live on a daily basis.
I've been suicidal for a few years, but I don't really verbalize it to others anymore, and my anxiety from being abused translates to "Do you want me dead?" Which has taken quite a few years to heal from...
My daughter is in an Open Adoption, and although I could have a luxury life in Mexico with my family who has an easy life, I'm struggling in poverty in America with limited resources as I cannot work in this country, legally.
Whenever someone mentions the word sociopath, psychopath, narcissist, I get triggered to my ex-husband, Evan Darnell, saying his step mother in law called me by those names at some point in our relationship.
I've been trying to fight the traumatic abusive flashbacks that affect my body, but I'm scared they're right and I should commit suicide instead..
I've never been willing or with ill intention harmed anyone...
But what if I'm just lying to myself and manipulating others, and I don't know it? What if I'm just manipulating myself to lie to myself?
I keep feeling the need to have to live in poverty and give money away to others and be as selfless as possible to avoid remembering what my ex husband Evan Darnell, said that my step mother in law, Madeline Fennell, who used to work for the Nebraska State Education Association, and I don't believe she could be wrong.
She's a teacher, and she's a very educated woman, and I find it difficult to believe that she'd be wrong because she has indicated no change of mind in regards to feeling remorse or sadness of what occurred and I'm always crying, and am continuously questioning if I am this terrible person, and if that's why she treated me like I should die? She's so sweet and kind, so I don't understand.
I don't want to hurt anymore, and I feel tied to having to make up for it now, and I have done so for many years now... And at this point it feels like an ongoing wish for me to die, or be homeless or for my life to not be a reality in their past, like I was a mistake and maybe they hurt me but I don't want to make them feel like mistakes.
I've been trying to explain compassion, forgiveness, and kindness through a healing process, and don't want a supply of attention, if anything, I push people away, I've just been happily healing from writing a suicide blog that was triggered from my ex husband's friend, Casey Jillian Nielsen, whom had been abusive toward me during my postpartum months that caused a postpartum psychological symptom, I didn't choke or threatened anyone but I was being continuously hazed...
Am I a narcissist? Or psychopath or sociopath? Am I a vulnerable narcissist? Or covert narcissist?
I thought that my behavioral patterns were monochromatic to neurodivergent bland behaviors, but I'm always insecure about it now.

Part 1: Sappho
Part 2a: Shakespeare part 1
This is part 2b
Part 2c: Shakespeare part 3
This is part 2 (out of 3) of my Taylor and Shakespeare summary! It might not make as much sense without the first part for queer Shakespeare context. Content warnings for this whole three-parter include suicide, murder, rape/sexual assault (both male-on-female and female-on-male), abuse/intimate partner violence, and racism, sexism and homophobia. Shakespeare had a lot going on, y'all.
​
Shakespeare Play
Othello
Taylor Swift Song
willow
Thematic Links
An excellent theory has been put forth on TaylorSwift and TaylorSwiftBookClub that willow may draw inspiration from Othello, specifically from the point of view of Desdemona. Othello is another one of Shakespeare's tragedies; Othello, an intelligent and skilled military leader who is described as "the moor" (a term with some ambiguity of meaning, see this discussion by a historian, which could mean someone who was dark-skinned, who was from southern Iberia or northern Africa, or who was Muslim; in most portrayals Othello is now considered to be black and played by black actors) is nonetheless othered within Venetian society. His secret marriage to Desdemona, daughter of a senator, leads to scandal in Venetian society, and she leaves Venice to travel with him to Cyprus. His ensign Iago, whom he considers a friend, convinces him that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him and provokes him to jealousy and paranoia; in the end, Othello kills Desdemona before realising that she was innocent and killing himself in shame and regret.
As a woman, Desdemona is often subject to the forces of the men around her, not just on major issues such as her death but even on whom and when she is expected to marry, where she is to live, and other matters; in the beginning of the play she defies her father and has a pivotal role in saying "here's my husband" (Act I, Scene III) to confirm that she is married to Othello and change the narrative which is being spun about them. However, over the course of the play, this agency is reduced in a manner which has been considered by some to be passivity and by others to be dignity and restraint in the face of an unravelling situation. The TaylorSwiftBookClub post links this to willow's use of "That's my man"; with "here's my husband" Desdemona defines her early, headstrong character, and at the same time her last words are "my kind lord".
Notably, Desdemona discusses, and then sings part of, a folk ballad called The Song of Willow (known to be in existence before the play, and seen in the 1583 Dallis Lute Book) - but in Desdemona's version the pronouns are changed to she/her), flipping the gender of the subject. Taylor has also been seen to flip pronouns in songs (notably Bye Bye Baby, in which the "you" and "I" roles have been switched from its older version as One Thing; see Lyrics and Themes chapter for times that Taylor has also appeared to sing "she" or "her" instead of "you" or "your") but this may also parallel the idea of Taylor exploring a woman's point of view within a male-dominated play, a feminist trend which has become ever more frequent since the 1980s even in mainstream media (see plays such as "& Juliet", "Desdemona" or "Ophelia", among many others).
The symbolism of the willow tree is a complex one, and reading a dozen different sites will get a dozen different interpretations! One of the better sites which I found, giving actual citations, is from folklorist and author Icy Sedgwick. However, three elements frequently arise: mourning, longevity/immortality, and flexibility. The association of willow trees with mourning goes back to at least 1611, when the King James Bible translated Psalms 137:1 as "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof." While the King James Bible is now recognised as a deeply politicised and in many places outright incorrect text, and in this case the "willows" in question were more likely poplars which would have actually been present in Mesopotamia, it may also have been drawing from existing folk tradition associating willows with death. As The Song of Willow was clearly known in the 1580s, associating willow with lost love, there is evidence of older folklore.
The association of willows with longevity or immortality may at first seem counter-intuitive to its association with mourning, but there has long been the notion that immortal figures must watch their mortal companions die and be forced to mourn them. It is likely that the association comes from the fact that cut willow branches will grow into new trees if placed in appropriately wet soil - cuttings on a very large scale - which gives an interesting twist to willow's lyrics "come back stronger than a nineties trend". Finally, the association of willow trees with flexibility - both literal and metaphorical - is because the branches can be bent, curled and woven in ways that most woods could never manage or survive - perhaps relevant to Taylor's reflection on her self-reinvention and the fact that she has now spent over half her life in the music and media worlds.
Interestingly, Iago's motivation for driving Othello to jealousy is never clearly explained. Over the course of the play he references no fewer than six possible motives - racism, anger at being passed over for promotion, envy of the morals of the person who got the promotion, thinking that the promoted person and/or Othello have slept with his own wife, and desiring Desdemona himself. When asked at the end of the play, however, he replies "Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word." The audience of the play, like Othello, are left aware that Iago has orchestrated the delusion but not of why; Desdemona, meanwhile, does not even know of Iago's involvement and has no idea why or where Othello has come to the idea that she has been unfaithful. This confusion may be reflected in both "the more that you say, the less I know" and the movement from "if this was an open-shut case, never would have known" to "guess I should have known". Many of Taylor's songs which explore themes of betrayal or infidelity also explore this sense of confusion, from the very early song of Tell Me Why (which notably mentions "your reasons" in the plural, perhaps implying that these two are moving goalposts and unfounded or untrue) and A Perfectly Good Heart, through Babe and Dear John, to much more recent hoax ("You know the hero died, so what's the movie for?") and The Great War ("maybe it was ego swinging, maybe it was her", "a blur", "maybe it's the past that's talking", "somewhere in the haze, got a sense I'd been betrayed") while others do not even bother trying to explore, justify or explain the actions of the betraying party (my tears ricochet, happiness, and even All Too Well) - they are focused on the point of view of the one hurt by the actions, who may or may not know exactly what has happened or why, but will be hurt by this all the same.
In the twentieth century onwards, another theory emerged: that Iago had romantic or sexual desire for Othello, and that this was a strong factor in his jealousy of Othello's happiness, his triangulation of desire or projection onto Desdemona, and his unwillingness or incapability to explain them. Emilia also implies that he does not have sex with her, but may do so with others (Act IV, Scene III, "say that they slack their duties, And pour our treasures into foreign laps"). This angle was first explored onscreen by Laurence Olivier (widely reported to have been bisexual, first married to closeted lesbian Jill Esmond, and who died in 1989) who played Iago on stage in 1937 with deliberate and intended queer desire for Othello, and would go on to play Othello in film in 1965 (note that he performed in blackface, which was at the same time very racist but also broke boundaries in terms of having a white Desdemona fall in love with a black Othello during an era when segregation was still widespread) and behave flirtatiously towards Iago in doing so. In 1986, David Suchet (who would later be famous as Poirot) also portrayed Iago as in love with Othello. This concept has now been more widely studied - see for example this masters thesis. Whether or not Shakespeare wrote with the intent of Iago desiring Othello, certain performances and actors have certainly portrayed it in such a way.
There can also be seen parallels between the interracial (and potentially interfaith, depending on whether Othello is treated as a true convert to Christianity or whether it is presumed that he does so publicly for his own protection in a violently Islamophobic time period) relationship and secret marriage between Othello and Desdemona, and the difficulties facing same-gender relationships and marriages in the present day. Many of the arguments being made against gay marriage in the twenty-first century are exactly the same as those made against interracial marriage in the twentieth, the same structures of oppression and narratives of othering being expressed in different ways.
Shakespeare Play
Romeo & Juliet
Taylor Swift Songs
Romeo & Juliet
Love They Haven't Thought of Yet (unreleased): "But I don't think Romeo would be my kind of guy, I want a love that's sweeter than roses"
Dark Blue Tennessee (unreleased): "Missing you like this is such sweet sorrow"
Love Story
Tim McGraw: "You said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia stars to shame"
dorothea: "The stars in your eyes shined brighter in Tupelo"
Use of battle and war imagery, Fearless to Midnights
Thematic Links
Romeo and Juliet is perhaps Shakespeare's best-known and most often misunderstood play. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet are young members of two families whose members hate each other for reasons that nobody can now define, who on meeting become quickly enamored with each other and secretly marry. Tybalt Capulet, Romeo, and Mercutio (friend of Romeo and relation of the Prince of Verona) are involved in another fight and Romeo, the only survivor, is banished from the city. Juliet's parents attempt to marry her to another man, but she fakes her death and sends a message to Romeo that she has done so. The message does not reach him; he kills himself as he believes her dead, and she in turn completes suicide on finding his body beside her. The play concludes with a claim that the Montague and Capulet families later ended their feud in regret of the deaths of so many of their young members. The story has various Italian predecessors, and Shakespeare's version is based heavily upon Arthur Brooke's translation of a French version (by Pierre Boaistuau) which was in turn based on the Italian by Matteo Bandello. (While this series of inspirations may be surprising to some who presumed the work was largely Shakespeare's own invention, the concept of copyright was a long way from existence at this time, and anyone familiar with the flow of themes and tropes through fannish circles may find more similarities in those spaces.)
The notions of "Romeo and Juliet" are often held up as supremely romantic in discussion, and while it is one of the first plays to bring the combination of tragedy and romance to an English audience, the play is one of a tragedy and the senseless loss of it all is often overlooked. Romeo's age is never defined by Shakespeare, but Juliet is only 13 years old - while the legal minimum age of marriage in Shakespeare's time was 12 for girls and 14 for boys, the average age of marriage for women was 24, and similar for men. At this time, marriage without parental consent was also only possible in England at the age of 21. This was done for concerns for the physical and moral wellbeing of younger individuals (it was recognised that pregnancy at too young an age was difficult and dangerous) as well as concerns about increasing poverty from large families. While by the 1600s, marrying for love was considered more of a social possibility, it was not uniformly expected and not always viewed positively - Juliet claims agency in marrying Romeo and in her conversation with Friar Lawrence (Act VI Scene I) seems to be already contemplating suicide as one of her limited options before the Friar offers her the poison instead. Similarly, the ending suicides of both Romeo and Juliet were much more contentious than they would now be considered, as during the sixteenth century suicide was considered a sin, those who completed it (or even attempted it, from the late 17th century onwards) denied a Christian burial. The influence of pre-Christian histories, particularly from the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, made the concept of suicide seem less deviant in some narratives, but never fully removed the shockingness of it. (Whole Masters dissertations have been written on the complexity of societal views of suicide in this period.)
Most of all, the story was a tragedy, not a romance - it does not use the narrative structure of romances, the relationship is underdeveloped, the ending bleak. But, it has been suggested, this is the entire point. From Mercutio's death onwards, the tone of the play turns from light-hearted and rather comparable to a romantic comedy to utter tragedy. (For those au fait with Disney movies, a similar effect is actually seen in the animated Mulan - the movie is a musical comedy up to and including A Girl Worth Fighting For, which abruptly ends with a shift to a darker tone only for the songs to never return.)
Taylor Swift wrote the song Dark Blue Tennessee some time in or before 2004. It is a fictional, narrative story, in which two exes still live in the same town even though one claims to have moved to LA. They both want to visit the other, but never do. The man dies by suicide, leaving a note which forms the chorus of the song whose first line is "Missing you like this is such sweet sorrow". This may well be a reference to the famous Romeo & Juliet line "parting is such sweet sorrow" - although it is rarely remembered that the full quote is from the end of the 'balcony scene' in which Romeo and Juliet first announce their love, where Juliet says: "Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow" [emphasis mine]. Taylor's use of the phrase in conjunction with a suicide narrative implies that she already had a sense of Romeo and Juliet as a tragedy, not the romance as which it is so often portrayed.
Taylor's most famous and extensive reference to Romeo and Juliet is in the song Love Story, both in direct reference ("you were Romeo") and in themes of forbidden young love and parental disapproval. "On the balcony in summer air" likely references the very famous balcony scene in which Romeo and Juliet declare their love for one another (actually not from Shakespeare's original but a 1679 retelling, but now pervasively famous), and "sneak out to the garden" may reference that many of the scenes take place in the Capulets' orchard.
The story of the inspiration behind Love Story has not stayed entirely consistent over the years - in 2008, she said it was about "a guy that wasn't a popular choice [...] and I thought, This is difficult but it's real, it matters--it's not simple or easy but it's real. And so I wrote the song around that, around one line in the second chorus and developed the entire song around it. Everything up till the ending is the actual story" (note the implication that she and the subject did date); in 2009, however, she said it was about someone that she "almost dated" while in 2021, discussing the Taylor's Version rerecording, she emphasised the fictional nature and its link to Romeo and Juliet, saying that she was "mad at my parents for not letting me go on a date or something". The music video of the Taylor's Version song featured images of and was dedicated to her fans, reframing the narrative as being about Taylor's relationship to her fans and her career and her endurance within it. This ambiguity between real experience and fiction is something that is associated more with Taylor's later work, in which she made it clear to her fans and the public that certain elements were drawn from fiction or inspired by the story of others; in her early career, her writing was portrayed as entirely personal and confessional even when it is very likely that this was not always the case.
What is particularly interesting is that even in November 2008, Taylor indicated in interviews (Wayback Machine for those unable to access) that the original lyric had been "this love is different, but it's real", indicating an otherness to the relationship which might account for its forbidden nature rather than the Montague-Capulet feud which leads to tragedy in Romeo and Juliet. This lack of social acceptance is very familiar within queer themes and queer theory, although it has of course been explored in other contexts in recent adaptations - for example Solomon a Gaenor (1998) which places the romance between a Jewish boy and a Christian girl, Bollywood Queen (2002) which has a white British boy and Gujarati Indian-British girl, uGugu no Andile (TV 2008) which is between a Xhosa boy and a Zulu girl, or Romeo & Julio (2009) which uses a modern breakdancing setting and has both Romeo and Julio as male. There have also been a number of lesbian or female/female retellings, from a 2001 UK adaptation which offended bigots, to Guerilla Theatre's 2009 version inspired by Proposition 8, the 2021 Israeli Opera version, a 2022 SHEkspeare version which caused outrage from homophobic reactionaries, or Skye Hass's 2023 version. Some adaptations have had not only female-female lead pairings, but have actively engaged with other facets of gender politics and racial identities, such as 2018's Romeo/Juliet or With a Kiss I Die which has Juliet as a vampire and played by a black actress, living centuries without Romeo only to fall in love again with a human woman.
One of the most famous quotes of Romeo and Juliet is "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?", in which Juliet mourns that it is Romeo's name, as a Montague, which dooms them. This is part of her same speech as the similarly famous "that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet". Her use of Romeo rather than the truly troublesome name of Montague, it has been argued, is an indication that it is the nature of labels, and the distinctions forced onto individuals by society, which are the problem that prevent Romeo and Juliet as individuals from being able to be together. Individuals who are frustrated with the insistence on using "gay marriage" for same-gender couples instead of just "marriage", or bi+/mspec individuals who do not find that their love does not care about gender but that society very much does, may also appreciate the similarly. A similar theme can be found in certain of Taylor's own songs, especially on reputation in Don't Blame Me's "my name is whatever you decide, and I'm just gonna call you mine" and Call It What You Want.
There is an interesting ambiguity about certain of the lines in Love Story, primarily the ending and "is this in my head, I don't know what to think" which may suggest an unreliable narrator overall. Additionally, there are two uses of reported speech within the song, the first of which is the speech supposedly by Romeo which allows Taylor as the narrator to sing "Marry me, Juliet". This fluidity of identity is an early example of Taylor singing 'from a man's perspective' and indicates at the very least a comfort with and openness to doing so. However, also within the song is the line "And my daddy said 'Stay away from Juliet'" which brings with it a strange ambiguity about to whom he is talking - the narrator of the song is implied to be Juliet but never confirmed to be, and is in fact compared instead to Hester Prynne (main character of The Scarlet Letter); it could easily be read that the narrator's love interest is in fact being compared to both Romeo and to Juliet, and that the narrator's father is warning them to stay away from another girl. This again leaves room for reinterpretation of the lyrics. In the cover of the 2021 Taylor's Version of the album, Taylor is wearing a more masculine shirt, perhaps implying that she is stepping into or identifies with the role of Romeo in the song.
Fans have drawn parallels between Love Story of 2008 and Cruel Summer of 2019, with Cruel Summer as a much less romanticised and more tragic exploration - more in the mood of the latter half of the play. From "on a balcony in summer air" to "waiting for you to be waiting below" in the "cruel summer", from "crying on the staircase" to "I cried like a baby coming home from the bar", and from "I love you and that's all I really know" to "I love you, ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?", the songs share narrative aspects but, instead of a romantic ending, Cruel Summer implies or foreshadows a tragic one.
It is also possible, though unconfirmed, that other of Taylor's songs reference Romeo and Juliet, and Romeo's lines that "Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return" (Act II, Scene 2). While descriptions of eyes as shining like stars are attested over several centuries, it is interesting that in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century the phrase starry-eyed, or to have stars in one's eyes, also took on the meaning of being unduly optimistic, giving Taylor's use of the phrase a possible double-meaning that Shakespeare's would not have had. Taylor has used this description as "starry blue eyes" in Making Up For Lost Love (Unreleased, 2005 or earlier), as "He said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia stars to shame that night" in Tim McGraw (2006), as "Starry eyes" in Call It What You Want (2017), as "eyes full of stars" in cowboy like me (2020) and "the stars in your eyes shined brighter in Tupelo" in dorothea (2020). There may also be a more oblique reference in "the constellations in his eyes" in High Infidelity (2022). Where Taylor is able to leverage the potential double or ambiguous meaning between a physical description of beauty or wit, and the concept of naive or unrealistic optimism.
Another of the very famous quotes from Romeo and Juliet is "these violent delights have violent ends". The link between love and violence in Romeo and Juliet has been long acknowledged and explored - not in the sense of abusive relationships or of intimate partner violence, but in the sense of the strength and danger of the emotion itself. The association between death and sexuality, especially of women, in Shakespeare's plays has been discussed - Cleopatra uses her death to reclaim and redefine her own sexuality and agency; Juliet's death is ultimately the way in which she can chose to be with Romeo; Ophelia continues to be sexualised against her will even in death; Cordelia is infantilised and desexualised by others after her death. The relationship between death and sexuality is complex in Shakespeare's plays, but remains an onrunning theme. Meanwhile, Taylor has frequently uses references to dying and death in her discography (note that a few of these references are to death outside of a romantic or sexual context, but others are clearly within it); parallels can also be seen in the conflict between Taylor's attempts to secure agency over and define her own worth, relationship status and sexuality in the face of social and media judgement, discussion and conflict, from describing herself as a "national lightning rod for slut shaming" in 2016 to the discussions of secrecy and hidden relationships in her later albums which are much less to do with parental disapproval or her young age and are doubtless more to do with public, social and media influence. Alongside death, Taylor has also used imagery of battle and war on many occasions in relation to love and relationships. Even excluding discussions of arguments or specific interpersonal conflict, she has used the imagery in Let's Go (Battle) (unreleased), The Story of Us ("I would lay my armour down, if you say you'd rather love than fight"), You Are in Love ("why they lost their minds and fought the wars"), New Romantics ("every day is like a battle"), ivy ("It's a war, it's the goddamn fight of my life") and The Great War. These may, again, harken back to the narrative formalised and made so very famous by Shakespeare about the power and the danger of romantic love and relationships.
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Part 1: Sappho
Part 2a: Shakespeare part 1
This is part 2b
Part 2c: Shakespeare part 3

It’s different for everyone. Some of us figure it out when we’re in elementary school, others realize only very late into our lives. Me though? I’ve always known. Some of us interpret it as a very literal transformation; “I used to be a girl, now I’m a boy”. Others feel like we were always our “chosen” gender, simply forced by fate into a body we never asked for. I fall, very strongly, into the latter category. As long as I can remember, I dreamed of being a man, and I mean that very literally.
When I fell asleep, my dream self was quite different from my physical body, with broader shoulders, a square jaw, larger hands and feet, and a deep voice that fills any room I am in like an upright bass. It wasn’t always such a pronounced change of course. When I was very young, the differences were subtler, the unwanted waking nightmare of sexual dimorphism not yet wholly foisted upon me, but changes were still there. I always felt like something was wrong when I woke up to find myself with the long hair my mother insisted I couldn’t cut to the short length I desired. I remember once, after a birthday party, looking at myself in the mirror, wearing a nice, expensive dress I’d received as a gift, and thinking to myself how much happier I’d be wearing the suit I had on in my dreams the night before.
I didn’t have a word for it until high school though. My family was somewhat strict about my access to the internet and what sorts of films I was allowed to watch, so the first time I heard the word “transgender” was when I met someone else like me.
His name was Timothy, and in all truth we weren’t friends. Nobody was friends with Timothy, nobody wanted to hang out with the freak. There were many comments like “So if you’re a man, am I allowed to hit you?”, whispered slurs, and exaggerated caricatures drawn on scrap paper and surreptitiously passed around to a chorus of barely contained snickers. I’d like to say I never joined in, but peer pressure is a powerful force, especially when it comes to those of us who desperately want to fit in. I think part of me resented him too, for so flagrantly living the life I wanted to have. He wore a binder to flatten his chest, his hair was short and slicked back with gel, and he always dressed like someone out of a prior age, a holdover from an era of leather jackets, fast cars, and switchblades. I was jealous.
Eventually the bullying got bad enough that one of his bolder tormentors broke his arm. Nobody confessed to the act, and the school’s administration was less than cooperative in trying to find out who did it. Timothy’s parents wound up pulling him from school, and I never saw him again. My own parents saw it as a relief, saying that he was “a dangerous influence” and that his family should have sent him off to a psychologist rather than “indulging her delusions”. It was the first time I had ever heard them talk about someone like me, and the memory of my own mother and father describing with such vitriol how much they hated Timothy was permanently burned into my developing mind, a scar which I don’t think will ever heal.
I knew there was never any chance of being accepted by my family. At best, they’d see me as a victim of some perverted campaign to corrupt innocent young women into hating their bodies, at worst they’d treat me like a delusional freak. Either way, they would still see me as their daughter, and I very much doubt there is anything I could do to change that.
After so many years of being forced to hide who I am, I finally have the good fortune of living alone, far away from my parents and their bigotry. It was almost unbearable during the final few months of my living with them, when people like me became a political wedge and the hate spewing talking heads on the idiot box began telling horror stories of “groomers” and “radical gender ideology”. But I managed to get out and find a job. I was finally free to be myself. Well, more or less. I was out publicly to friends and coworkers, I bound my breasts, people called me Victor rather than the stupid name on my driver’s license, but in terms of actual medical treatment I was still stuck at square one.
The thing that they don’t tell you is it’s actually rather difficult to get on hormones, at least if you’re a transgender man. Estradiol and the like aren’t controlled substances, if worst comes to worst an uninsured trans woman can get her hands on some hormones via the gray market, and the process of getting a prescription is far quicker. Testosterone, however, is a Schedule III controlled substance, the same tier as anabolic steroids or ketamine. Getting a prescription is a bit more of an involved process, and going through unofficial channels could result in a felony if you get caught.
So, finally liberated from my family, I now had to deal with the frustration of the medical system. My crummy job working at a movie theater didn’t exactly have the best insurance plan, and by the time I did manage to get in touch with a doctor about getting an appointment set up, I was informed the soonest I could see someone would be several months at least. Without going into too much detail, certain conservative politicians in my state had made it rather difficult to get gender affirming care via telehealth, out of a fear that it would be too easy for “impressionable adolescents to permanently alter their bodies”. So I simply had to sit around and twiddle my thumbs, waiting for my turn at one of the rapidly dwindling number of clinics that offered consultations for getting on hormone replacement therapy.
Of course, I knew that hormones aren’t mandatory for being a “real man”, and I knew that even if I did manage to get on testosterone it wouldn’t make the bigots any more convinced of my masculinity, but I still couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness whenever I looked in the mirror. The reflection that stared back at me didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel like me. Do you have any idea how terrible it is to feel trapped in a body which is utterly wrong? To have your own flesh and blood betray you every second of every day?
I coped as best as I could, and spending time with supportive friends helped. But really, the most comforting thing throughout this ordeal was my dreams. Even if I couldn’t pass as male in the waking world, even if I had to deal with the “thank you miss”s and “howdy ma’am”s from the customers at work, when I slept it was as though my mind and body were in perfect alignment. It sometimes felt like my own mind was comforting me, covering me with a blanket of fantasy to soothe the pain. Even in my darkest nightmares, I always had a body that felt like it belonged to me.
Though my dreams are especially vivid while they last, I do find they tend to fade quite quickly upon awakening, something which has only seemed to get worse as I get older. To cope with this, I began to write down records of my nocturnal visions, first in a notebook, then later on a blog under the pseudonym of “DysphoricDreamer98”. I found it easier to reach for my phone to jot down a quick post while the memory was freshest than having to fiddle about with pen and paper. Besides, while my little blog wasn’t especially popular or anything, seeing people comment on my posts, especially other trans men, made me happy. It brought me a little joy to know I’m not alone.
Now, obviously I didn’t put out any sort of personal information on my blog. No photos, no mention of where I work, not my real name, Hell, not even which state I live in. This is why it was so odd when I found the package on my doorstep one morning, all wrapped up in brown paper and twine, addressed to DysphoricDreamer98. There was no return address, so I had no idea who could have sent it.
In a panic, I simply shut the door and left the package outside, running over to my computer to search the web to see if I’d been doxxed or something like that. I didn’t think I’d ever said anything particularly controversial, and it wasn’t as though I had any sort of wide audience. I wrote a digital dream journal with a follower count in the double digits for goodness sake, it’s not like I was a celebrity.
Once I was satisfied that I hadn’t had my personal information posted publicly or stolen in a leak of some sort, I opened my front door again and peaked out at the package, feeling oddly nervous, as if worried it was going to sprout teeth and bite me. After I was satisfied that it wasn’t going blow up or catch fire or anything like that, I brought it inside and set it down on my desk, cutting off the twine with my pocket knife and unwrapping it. I was greeted with an old wooden box, of the sort that would be used to hold expensive jewelry. It was covered all over with elaborate ornamentation, a combination of floral and geometric designs. There was something oddly hypnotic about the patterns formed by the embossed flowers and curving lines, and I spent about a minute simply admiring the craftsmanship of the thing before I actually set about opening it.
The contents of the box were a small glass vial filled with liquid, a metal syringe that looked as though it were fashioned in the Victorian era, and a note, written on very old parchment in elegant looking cursive. This is what it said:
Dear Sir,
You’ve spent every night dreaming of who you truly are. It is time to make those dreams into reality. Inject intramuscularly once per week, one milliliter. Expect results in 3-4 weeks.
Sincerely,
A friend
Now, I’m not stupid. Obviously I didn’t immediately start injecting myself with mysterious fluid I found in a box left on my front door by an anonymous stranger. As a matter of fact, my first thought was that someone was trying to poison me. I didn’t know who would want me dead, but given the circumstances I thought a little bit of paranoia was the healthiest approach to take. Part of me wondered if my family had somehow been informed of my blog, and were trying to discreetly assassinate me in order to ensure I’d never be able to medically or legally transition. I didn’t have any evidence of this, but it seemed far more logical than there being some hormone gifting Good Samaritan wandering about leaving vials of testosterone on the doors of disadvantaged trans men. Besides, whatever was contained within the vial didn’t look like testosterone, at least not in any form I was familiar with. It was tinged slightly purple, and seemed to sparkle when I held it up to the light.
I did consider calling the police, but I decided against it. Realistically all they’d do is confiscate the box, and I was worried that I could get in trouble if the contents of the vial did end up being some kind of poison or illicit substance. Besides, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.
And so, I tried to do my best to forget about the box and its contents. I didn’t tell anyone about it, not even my friends, though I’m not entirely sure why that is. I suppose I may have rationalized it as trying to keep myself safe from being reported to the police, but that’s not really true. Something about it just felt private to me, inherently it was a subject that necessitated secrecy. Its presence kept nagging at me, however, and it never felt like I’d ever be fully able to erase it from my mind. Sometimes, I’d open up the box and just stare at the vial for a while, considering it silently, before shutting the lid and pushing it back under the bed.
Regardless, I managed to more or less successfully ignore the box for around a month. It was a combination of many discrete factors that led to me giving in, and even after what I’ve experienced and even though I know it was a stupid decision, I’m unable to bring myself to feel any sort of regret for it.
The day I gave in started off terribly, with my period having decided to start a day earlier than usual. I don’t feel very positively about my reproductive system at the best of times, and my distaste only grows deeper when it decides to punish me for not getting pregnant with a torrent of blood. After dealing with that unfortunate surprise, I was then faced with my biweekly phone call with my mother, during which I had to play the unfortunate role of dutiful daughter, gritting my teeth whenever she referred to me by the name she gave me instead of my real one, and clenching my hand into a fist as I expressed in the politest tones that I could muster that no, I did not have a boyfriend yet. When she started to go on a rant about the latest news story she’d seen about “woke indoctrination” in schools, I made up some excuse about poor connection and ended the call. Then it was time for work.
The gendered politeness of the South is truly a tailor made Hell for people like me, and that day saw a constant stream of “ma’am”s and “miss”s that culminated in an elderly gentleman remarking “If you don’t mind me sayin’ miss, you are quite the beautiful young woman” while I tried very hard not to strangle him. But really, truly, I think that the deciding factor that made me open up that box and try my luck with my anonymous benefactor’s vial of mystery fluid was the text message I received as I walked through my front door, informing me that my consultation had been postponed again.
I’ll be honest, when I readied that first injection, part of me hoped it was poison. It wasn’t a large part of me, but that urge to just give up, embrace the call of the void and descend into a peaceful oblivion, it was there. “To sleep, perchance to dream”, as Shakespeare put it. When nonexistence no longer frightens you, it is far easier to take risks.
I didn’t use the syringe that came with the box. While it seemed to be in pristine condition, I didn’t trust something that looked that old, and I certainly had no desire to contract tetanus or something. I walked down to the farm supply store across from my apartment building and purchased some sterile syringes and needles there instead. When I got back to the apartment I spent a few minutes looking up where was best to inject, how to make sure I avoided pricking any veins and arteries, etc., until I finally felt fairly confident that I could actually do it successfully. There was no stalling after that, I didn’t want to give myself a chance to change my mind. I popped the cork on the vial, got a milliliter of that strange purple fluid into the syringe, and plunged the needle into my thigh.
It hurt far less than I thought it would, if I’m being honest. If you’d asked me before that day if I would have been able to perform injections myself, I’d have told you no. I’ve always felt slightly uncomfortable whenever I had to get a vaccine or have a blood test done, something about needles just made me deeply nervous. But this felt right, and outside of a slight pinch and some pressure as I pushed down the plunger, it was largely painless.
I pulled out the needle and applied a small bandage to the tiny puncture mark, though the needle was so thin no blood actually welled up at all. Then I went to bed early, hoping that tomorrow would be a better day.
I woke up the next morning, writing down my latest dream on my blog in the haze of half-consciousness, and then got out of bed, pleasantly noting that I was not, in fact, dead. Whatever the liquid in the vial was, it at the very least wasn’t toxic. There wasn’t even so much as a raised bump at the injection site. Thus began my routine of injecting the purplish mystery fluid into my thigh every Friday before bed.
Just as the note said, it was around the 4 week mark when I started to actually see results. I was washing my face as part of my morning routine when I noticed something faint on my upper lip. I looked closer to see it was a few dark hairs, sprouting out from the previously smooth skin of my face. Excitedly, I looked closer, seeing with delight that all over my jaw, here and there, little hairs were poking up from my flesh. I was beginning to grow facial hair. As a matter of fact, on closer inspection of the rest of my me, I was beginning to grow more hair all over my body. It wasn’t as though I’d awoken looking like Bigfoot, but it was a noticeable change from my appearance the night before. I was ecstatic.
Now, I have to be honest here, I didn’t actually know exactly how quickly testosterone was supposed to work, nor what the exact effects were. It may seem lazy but I never really had sat down to read out how long it would take, what specific results I could expect to see, etc. I think a part of me always saw it as a borderline unachievable fantasy, so there was no reason for me to ever look up the details. However, even I should have known better than to think what happened was normal.
For one thing, the injections worked fast. Once the four week mark was hit and the changes began, it was like a dam had broken. By 5 weeks my voice was already starting to deepen. 6 weeks in and I was able to grow a faint mustache. 7 weeks and I had chest hair. Looking back on it now, it should have been obvious to me that this was too fast. These sorts of things take months and years to accomplish, not weeks. There was a faint tinge of nervousness during the 12th week as I looked at myself in the mirror and realized I was taller than I was before. It was the first hint that something was wrong. Testosterone can do a lot of things, but it can’t change your bone structure.
That wasn’t the only sign that something was off. I began to get these feelings of deja vu on occasion, about once a week, and I could never place exactly what it was. I didn’t keep track of every time it happened, obviously, but I do remember a few of the most noteworthy examples.
The first time was when I was doing a bit of shopping downtown and saw a street performer, a clown riding atop a penny farthing bicycle. He wasn’t frightening at all, I’ve never been afraid of clowns, but there was something unsettling about him. He didn’t seem to fit in with his surroundings as he glided through the crowd, occasionally honking his horn and taking his hands off the handlebars to juggle some balls. Nobody else seemed to pay him any mind though, they just kept on walking past him. He seemed so familiar, and I struggled to try and remember if I’d seen him in some viral video or something.
Another incident I remember was at work. I was selling tickets, when a pair of customers walked up to the booth in lockstep. They were identical twins, each the spitting image of the other, and wore the exact same style of formal black suit.
“We’re here-” started the one on the left.
“-to purchase some tickets-” continued the twin on the right.
“-for the 2 o’ clock show” finished the first twin.
The pair of them frankly freaked me out, but I didn’t want to be rude, so I did as they asked and got them their tickets. They paid in cash, using only 2 dollar bills. They bowed in unison after I handed them their tickets, and then marched in time to the theater I had indicated. I actually checked the purchase logs later to make sure I hadn’t imagined it all, as well as looking in the register to see if their 2 dollar bills were still there, and everything was still there. Like with the clown, the oddest part was that they seemed so familiar, as if their names were right on the tip of my tongue.
I had another encounter at a thrift store. I was shopping for some new clothes (my increased height was making some of my older outfits not fit particularly well) when I was approached by a short gentleman with white hair, who asked me “Can I help you to find anything sir?”
I turned to respond that I was fine, when I noticed that his eyes were two different colors, one blue, one brown. Something about this made my mind scream at me to remember, that this was someone who I had met before, but I just couldn’t place my finger on why. I stuttered out some noncommittal grunt and he nodded before walking away. I stumbled out of the thrift store without buying anything and went straight home.
The most recent incident is what made me put all the pieces together. I was taking a nighttime walk, something I felt more comfortable doing now due to my increased bulk and deeper voice. I felt safer knowing that any creeps would be less likely to see me as a potential target, plus I’d been hitting the gym so I felt confident in my ability to fight off anyone who’d try. I was thinking about how much my life had improved since I’d gotten the package, and wondering about what I’d do once the vial had run out. There were only a couple doses left, but my HRT consultation was only a few days away. Should I try and get more of what I was already taking, or should I switch over to a more legitimate source? It wasn’t as though I had any method through which to contact my anonymous benefactor. As I pondered this, I heard a faint hissing noise from a nearby alley, a “pssst” like someone was trying to beckon me inside.
I peered down the alleyway cautiously, trying to get a good look at whoever was trying to attract my attention. I could see the faint outline of a figure hidden partially by the shadows, but I couldn’t make out any details. I gently touched my pocket knife, just to remind myself it was still there, and then stepped into the alley.
I know it sounds like a stupid decision, and it was, but at that moment I thought that they may have been the mysterious “friend” who’d given me the vial in the first place. I figured they may have wanted to deliver the next supply in person, and frankly I wanted to thank them for changing my life. I was still nervous, of course I was, but after all that had happened I didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
I stepped into the alley, cautiously, and made my way over to the figure. They hissed at me again, beckoning for me to come closer with a gloved hand. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw that they were a thin man in a long overcoat, wearing a wide brimmed hat and, despite the night, a pair of dark sunglasses. They looked like some sort of secret agent stock character. His mouth was stretched wide in a toothy grin. When I was about 10 feet from him, I stopped, and asked “Hello? Are you the person who gave me the package? With the vial?”
Without moving a muscle on his face, he hissed at me again, and then held up his hand in front of his face. Using his other hand, he began to slowly pull off the glove. It was hard to tell at first, in the darkness of the alley, what exactly I was seeing, besides the simple fact that the human brain has difficulty recognizing that which ought not to be. His fingers shone slightly as they moved sinuously in the pale reflected light of the far away streetlamps, glittering like stars. Then he began to walk towards me with shaky steps, and I realized with a sudden shock what I was looking at.
The man’s fingers were snakes.
I tried to back away, but he lunged for me, hissing erupting from his writhing fingers as they latched onto my shoulder, extending out several feet from his arm. I didn’t feel them break skin, however, fortunately my denim jacket seemed to take the brunt of it. I slashed at the wriggling serpents with my pocket knife and ran when they retreated from the flashing blade. I kept running all the way home, and didn’t stop running until I was safely in my apartment with the door firmly locked and bolted.
Despite the completely surreal and impossible nature of what had just happened, it all felt so familiar, and finally the gears in my brain started to move, and I realized what it was that linked all of the strange interactions I had. I turned on my computer, and went to check my blog, searching up keywords and reading through my recorded dreams with a sense of dawning horror.
September 12th, 2023
Dreamed I was a lion tamer in some sort of circus. The lions were full of stuffing, one accidentally got caught on some fencing and was ripped open, the audience loved it. They were still heavy though, I lifted one up and everyone cheered. I guess I was a strongman as well as a lion tamer. Dream ended with a clown on an old fashioned bicycle riding across a tightrope over a big pool of water. The ringmaster said the pool was full of piranhas, but all I saw were what looked like eels or big worms. I woke up when the clown fell off his bike.
October 24th, 2023
I was a knight, going to save a princess who was trapped in a big floating tower. Accompanied by a sloth for some reason. On the way there, encountered a very polite two headed ogre. Each head would finish the other’s sentences, and it would bow at me frequently. Eventually reached the tower, but the princess was happy there, and told me to go away. Woke up soon after.
November 17th, 2023
In an old library, trying to do some research for something, can’t remember what. Went to go get help from a librarian, but he was a husky with two different colored eyes, one blue, one brown. Got distracted by this and we got to talking for the rest of the dream, my research forgotten. It was very philosophical, but I can’t actually really remember what we talked about much. He did call me a “handsome young man” though.
January 2nd, 2023
Nightmare. Man made of snakes. Don’t want to think about it.
I sat back in my chair, one hand over my mouth. I felt sick. This wasn’t possible, this wasn’t something that could be real. I told myself that I must be hallucinating, that it couldn’t possibly be real life, but then I looked over at the shoulder of my jacket and noticed the bite marks in the rough fabric. There was even a broken off fang sticking out. I thought about the strange twins and their 2 dollar bills in the register. Besides, it wasn’t as though I was the only person who had noticed the changes to my body. My friends and coworkers had commented on it, customers addressed me as “sir”, I had to buy new clothes to fit my changed physique. This was real. Whatever it was I had been taking, it was making my dreams into reality.
There was a knock on my front door. I got up and checked the peephole, but nobody was there. Opening the door, I saw a new package, wrapped up in brown paper and tied up with string. It was addressed to DysphoricDreamer98.
I don’t know what to do from here. I’ve spent the past day just going through all the posts on my blog tagged “nightmare”, weighing the pros and cons of continuing my treatment. The package lies unopened on my kitchen table, for now. You’ve got to understand, this substance, whatever it is, has made me happier than I’ve ever been before, but I’m worried for my safety. I got lucky this time, I managed to get away, but what about the next time? And the time after that? Do I risk acting out my nightmares in the waking world to live the life that makes me happy?
To make matters worse, I got a text message. My consultation has once again been pushed back another 3 weeks. I don’t even have the luxury of a third option. I have to choose between going cold turkey or sticking with whatever my “friend” has sent me.
I hope I make the right decision.

Humans are Weird – Striking a Pose

Original Post: http://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-striking-a-pose
The third tide of the lunch shift was at it’s peat before Shiftssubtly managed to get clearance from the Shatar medic to move about the base on his own. It was not that he minded the presence of the nurses. The Shatar Brothers were both kind and loving to an almost unusual degree. The human nurse, Damian, somehow managed to find that perfect balance between formal propriety and saccharine affection that many humans missed when faced with an injured Undulate. No, the nurses were fine, he was just delighted to be well enough to move about on his own power, even if the lingering effects of the cold damage make him clumsy and more than half deaf. He bumped into the wall of the stream as he misjudged the current and scrambled to grab onto the portal to the cafeteria before he was swept away and had to circle the base currents again. He was dimly aware that someone nudged him gently from behind and he popped through the portal, into the confusing bustle of the cafeteria. He hesitated a moment as he listened for the voice that would be familiar but muted, like all other sounds, he finally caught the thread of Human Friend Jock’s voice and happily began to swim towards it. Human Friend Jock was sitting at one of the recessed tables. He bare feet dangling down into the water, swinging back and forth in the idle motion that all human feet seemed to indulge in when suspended off the ground. The human was laughing at something another human had said when Shiftssubtly came up to him. Shiftssubtly did not have time to make himself known before Human Friend Jock spotted him and gave a sudden joyful sound. “Shifts!” Human Friend Jock cried out. “Second Sister finally let you out of the medical tank?” “She did,” Shiftssubtly confirmed. He tried not to wince at the sound of his own voice. He had spent so many rotations mastering the subtly of a human vocal range. Now he could tell that his voice was flat and emotionless. He wouldn’t have minded so much, but even through the haze of his damaged perceptions he could see Human Friend Jock wince in sympathetic pain as the sound reminded him of the danger Shiftssubtly had been in. “And I have used my new freedom to seek out you,” Shiftssubtly went on, deliberately guiding the conversation into a new, more productive current. “Well here I am little buddy,” Human Friend Jock said with a wide grin and spreading his arms out to exposed his core as much as possible. “What can I do for you?” Shiftssubtly had been told that that was a sign of trust. Apparently the human core was full of soft, squishy bits that were easily damaged and one of the primary functions of having the arms so close to the body most of the time was to prevent predatory damage. It was a touching gesture when looked at like that. “Second Sister suggested,” Shiftssubtly hesitated as he mulled over the exact meanings of his words, “well, ordered really, that I begin increasing my physical activity in every direction in order to encourage proper tissue regrowth.” “Right,” Human Friend Jock said with a nod that was shared in sympathy by the rest of the humans around him. “Physical therapy, a pain but necessary.” “I researched what was suggested for my species,” Shiftssubtly went on, “and there are a wide range of physical actions that will serve the purpose. However the primary note of import was that such activities are always most effective when done in group settings. I would like you to be my therapy partner if you don’t mind.” “I’d be honored little buddy,” Humans Friend Jock said, but there was a curious frown on his face. “But if you don’t mind me asking why not another Undulate?” “I observed your physical exertions in the communal pools a few days ago and they looked very enjoyable,” Shiftssubtly said. “I could sense that you were enjoying yourself and the joy was very attractive. Added to that you did them for the required half-hour I would need to-” “My what now-?” Human Friend Jock said, his face flexing in perplexity. Suddenly his skin flushed with embarrassment and he gave a startled yelp. “You were there?” he burst out. “I mean of course you were there-I knew that-I just forgot-” His voice cut off suddenly and he ducked his head down over his meal. Up to this point the other humans at the table had been going about their own conversations, but at Human Friend Jock’s sudden change in behavior they began to look between him and Shiftssubtly with obvious curiosity playing over their faces. The human female he had been talking to specifically seemed to be looking at Human Friend Jock with particular interest now. “What movements of his would you be mimicking now Shiftssubtly?” She asked with a hint of a smile playing over her face. Shiftssubtly knew that there was some complex human social game being played in this moment but he didn’t know what it was exactly. Human Friend Jock’s reaction suggested embarrassment but not shame so Shiftssubtly obligingly settled down into the water so that it supported his appendages and proceeded to mimic the four long appendages and head of the human in the movements he had seen. A ripple of chuckles and outright laughter swelled and dipped around him in gentle waves. Human Friend Jock did not laugh the least though there was a wry tone to the sound. “So,” the human female said with a wide grin. “Human Friend Jock was flexing in front of the mirrors for a full half an hour was he?” “Are these movements called flexing?” Shiftssubtly asked. Human Friend Jock gave out a low groan and dropped his head onto the table. “Yes,” he muttered, “yes it is.”

Science Fiction Books By Betty Adams

Amazon (Kindle, Paperback, Audiobook)

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Check out my books at any of these sites and leave a review!
Exciting news! I have just found a major issue with Flying Sparks! In a novel about present day alien invasion of Earth, focused on the military culture of the USA...I did not ONCE mention the US Space Force...Why? How did I make such a glaring mistake? Well, I finished writing the manuscript in 2018...the US Space Force was formed in December of 2019. So....anyway. Time to do some edits.

https://i.redd.it/bpoc8b0a8bbc1.gif

Humans are Weird – Striking a Pose

Original Post: http://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-striking-a-pose
The third tide of the lunch shift was at it’s peat before Shiftssubtly managed to get clearance from the Shatar medic to move about the base on his own. It was not that he minded the presence of the nurses. The Shatar Brothers were both kind and loving to an almost unusual degree. The human nurse, Damian, somehow managed to find that perfect balance between formal propriety and saccharine affection that many humans missed when faced with an injured Undulate. No, the nurses were fine, he was just delighted to be well enough to move about on his own power, even if the lingering effects of the cold damage make him clumsy and more than half deaf.
He bumped into the wall of the stream as he misjudged the current and scrambled to grab onto the portal to the cafeteria before he was swept away and had to circle the base currents again. He was dimly aware that someone nudged him gently from behind and he popped through the portal, into the confusing bustle of the cafeteria. He hesitated a moment as he listened for the voice that would be familiar but muted, like all other sounds, he finally caught the thread of Human Friend Jock’s voice and happily began to swim towards it.
Human Friend Jock was sitting at one of the recessed tables. He bare feet dangling down into the water, swinging back and forth in the idle motion that all human feet seemed to indulge in when suspended off the ground. The human was laughing at something another human had said when Shiftssubtly came up to him. Shiftssubtly did not have time to make himself known before Human Friend Jock spotted him and gave a sudden joyful sound.
“Shifts!” Human Friend Jock cried out. “Second Sister finally let you out of the medical tank?”
“She did,” Shiftssubtly confirmed.
He tried not to wince at the sound of his own voice. He had spent so many rotations mastering the subtly of a human vocal range. Now he could tell that his voice was flat and emotionless. He wouldn’t have minded so much, but even through the haze of his damaged perceptions he could see Human Friend Jock wince in sympathetic pain as the sound reminded him of the danger Shiftssubtly had been in.
“And I have used my new freedom to seek out you,” Shiftssubtly went on, deliberately guiding the conversation into a new, more productive current.
“Well here I am little buddy,” Human Friend Jock said with a wide grin and spreading his arms out to exposed his core as much as possible. “What can I do for you?”
Shiftssubtly had been told that that was a sign of trust. Apparently the human core was full of soft, squishy bits that were easily damaged and one of the primary functions of having the arms so close to the body most of the time was to prevent predatory damage. It was a touching gesture when looked at like that.
“Second Sister suggested,” Shiftssubtly hesitated as he mulled over the exact meanings of his words, “well, ordered really, that I begin increasing my physical activity in every direction in order to encourage proper tissue regrowth.”
“Right,” Human Friend Jock said with a nod that was shared in sympathy by the rest of the humans around him. “Physical therapy, a pain but necessary.”
“I researched what was suggested for my species,” Shiftssubtly went on, “and there are a wide range of physical actions that will serve the purpose. However the primary note of import was that such activities are always most effective when done in group settings. I would like you to be my therapy partner if you don’t mind.”
“I’d be honored little buddy,” Humans Friend Jock said, but there was a curious frown on his face. “But if you don’t mind me asking why not another Undulate?”
“I observed your physical exertions in the communal pools a few days ago and they looked very enjoyable,” Shiftssubtly said. “I could sense that you were enjoying yourself and the joy was very attractive. Added to that you did them for the required half-hour I would need to-”
“My what now-?” Human Friend Jock said, his face flexing in perplexity.
Suddenly his skin flushed with embarrassment and he gave a startled yelp.
“You were there?” he burst out. “I mean of course you were there-I knew that-I just forgot-”
His voice cut off suddenly and he ducked his head down over his meal. Up to this point the other humans at the table had been going about their own conversations, but at Human Friend Jock’s sudden change in behavior they began to look between him and Shiftssubtly with obvious curiosity playing over their faces. The human female he had been talking to specifically seemed to be looking at Human Friend Jock with particular interest now.
“What movements of his would you be mimicking now Shiftssubtly?” She asked with a hint of a smile playing over her face.
Shiftssubtly knew that there was some complex human social game being played in this moment but he didn’t know what it was exactly. Human Friend Jock’s reaction suggested embarrassment but not shame so Shiftssubtly obligingly settled down into the water so that it supported his appendages and proceeded to mimic the four long appendages and head of the human in the movements he had seen. A ripple of chuckles and outright laughter swelled and dipped around him in gentle waves. Human Friend Jock did not laugh the least though there was a wry tone to the sound.
“So,” the human female said with a wide grin. “Human Friend Jock was flexing in front of the mirrors for a full half an hour was he?”
“Are these movements called flexing?” Shiftssubtly asked.
Human Friend Jock gave out a low groan and dropped his head onto the table.
“Yes,” he muttered, “yes it is.”
​
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"Humans are Weird: We Took a Vote" is now Avaliable on Audible!

Science Fiction Books By Betty Adams

Amazon (Kindle, Paperback, Audiobook)

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Check out my books at any of these sites and leave a review!
Exciting news! I have just found a major issue with Flying Sparks! In a novel about present day alien invasion of Earth, focused on the military culture of the USA...I did not ONCE mention the US Space Force...Why? How did I make such a glaring mistake? Well, I finished writing the manuscript in 2018...the US Space Force was formed in December of 2019. So....anyway. Time to do some edits.

 
back to prologue + ch. 1
 

Chapter 2 - Shock of Recognition

.
“I sometimes think the only American story is the one about the reading of the will.”

• Lewis Lapham, ‘Money and Class in America’, 1988

 
‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’

• Matthew 5:5 .

 
Howie arrived in the soaring glass lobby of CoCo tower and immediately worried.
The small coffee kiosk where he was supposed to pickup the coffee for the VIP was closed due to lack of staff from the snowstorm. Howie wanted to call the boss and ask if he should try to get it from somewhere else but the guard at the front desk insisted on taking him upstairs immediately.
The guard had been anxiously awaiting Howie’s arrival ever since Karen Agnani had told him to be on the lookout. She was the general counsel of the Conglomerate Company, the guard’s boss’s boss’s boss. There were as many bosses between Karen and the guard as the Bible had sons between Adam and Noah. It was a lot of layers.
Howie hesitated at the threshold of the elevator while the guard impatiently stuck his arm through the door to hold it open. Howie crossed the threshold, the door closed, and they swiftly rose.
 
They were silent for a moment before Howie spoke.
“Do you think they’ll be mad?” Howie asked. “If I don’t bring up the coffee?”
The security guard shrugged. The day had already been crazy enough without having to worry about coffee. Dead CEO? Blown up plane? Screw coffee. Who cared about coffee?
 
A video screen inside the elevator showed a still image of a bald man who looked familiar to Howie. His portrait was overlaid with animated cursive text that said ‘rest in peace’.
Howie vaguely recognized the bald billionaire on the elevator screen but he was still worried about the missing coffee. What if the VIP gave him a bad rating? Would he be kicked off the Selv app? What if he wanted to sell his personal equity? He wasn’t sure if he wanted to participate in the personal equity program but he also didn’t want to be excluded because of a bad rating. The picture of the man on the video screen gave way to a news clip about a recently escaped Cuban revolutionary named Elian Rodriguez.
“You’re worried about coffee,” the guard said, gesturing to the screen. “But I’m more worried about that.”
The guard pointed at Elian, the radical Cuban dissident who had escaped from an American prison in southeast Cuba that morning. The prison was called Guantanamo Bay. It had been administered by the United States until it was privatized due to budget cuts. Geo LaSalle, the current owner, was onscreen. The video screen showed him vowing to hunt Elian down.
Howie and the guard stepped off the metallic elevator into an open lobby with a two-story glass wall that overlooked the vast circuitboard of the city. The sun was fading and the sky was suffuse with a golden glow interrupted by an occasional cloud from the departing snowstorm.
 
Howie marveled at the space; it was the fanciest place he had ever been. He had never been this high above the streets. He usually delivered to grimy loading docks full of grease and metal. He would typically wait for an assistant to come down and fetch whatever he was delivering. Now, he was seeing the place where the assistants came from.
And yet there was something familiar about it. The upholstered furniture had the slight sheen of mass-produced, flame-retardant fabric. The wood-paneled walls had art that seemed costly but somehow common. There were numerous rolling desk chairs; each was a calligraphy of plastic overlaid with tightly engineered mesh.
 
As Howie followed the security guard, he noticed most of the chairs were empty. There was almost no one there. One person with a bag was just shutting the door to their office. Everyone was either working from home because of the snow or they were preparing for Maggie Barnett’s Best of All Possible Worlds media symposium, the event where Jhumpa would be appearing. It was scheduled for later that evening and the Conglomerate Company was a major sponsor.
Howie noticed each desk had a copy of a book whose cover had the same bald man’s face from the video screen he had just seen on the elevator. His portrait was on the wall, too. Howie tried to remember where he had seen the man’s face before.
 
They arrived at the end of a long hallway. The guard opened a door and ushered Howie into a long conference room. A floor-to-ceiling wall of glass looking out over the city ran the length of the room. Besides the window, the space was dominated by a long oval conference table balanced on a single curving column that seemed to melt inward at the middle and then flare outward toward the floor. On top of the table, in the middle, was an organically-shaped sculpture of pastel-red frosted glass. It was surrounded by curling tendrils, like a heart with ventricles or a snake around an apple. It wasn’t the only art in the room. The wall opposite the window had a large painting that Howie had to look at twice: the canvas looked like a graffiti interpretation of the veins of marble, or a map overlaid with the doodles of a precocious child. It was tremendously expensive and Mr. LeBubb had leased it to his company from his personal collection.
 
A crisply-dressed blonde woman with a short haircut approached. A passing cloud from the departing storm swept its shadow across the room as she extended her hand to greet Howie.
 
“Hello, Mr. Dork,” she said.
Howie didn’t know what to say. He was still embarrassed about the coffee and meekly awaited his punishment.
“This is Karen Agnani,” an ambient assistant said, “the general counsel of the Conglomerate Company.”
“Please, just call me Karen,” she said.
Howie was surprised the coffee was a big enough deal to bring in some kind of general.
“You counsel them on everything?” He asked.
Karen laughed.
“She’s a lawyer,” the assistant clarified. “The chief lawyer for the company.”
Howie thought the situation with the missing coffee was just getting worse.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is this a legal matter?”
Karen blinked.
“I’m sorry?” She repeated, as if she hadn’t quite heard him. But then she remembered the context for why he was there. She placed her hand on his shoulder. “No, no, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“The coffeeshop downstairs was closed,” Howie explained.
Karen scoffed.
“Closed? Of course. Nobody wants to work anymore.”^link
 
Under the vast weight of events, she had momentarily forgotten her trivial pretext for summoning Howie to the skyscraper. The coffee didn’t matter. Karen and her cronies only used the app because it was the surest way to make a selv arrive as quickly as possible. Everyone was surprised that LeBubb’s son turned out to be a delivery driver but at least that meant he could be found quickly. Since then, she had been distracted working on strategy. She knew that even if he was just a delivery driver, it was vital not to underestimate him. His inheritance meant that he was the new top shareholder and she wanted to make sure her own plan to take control of the company wasn’t derailed by this interloper. She began with flattery.
 
“Look at you!” She said. “Everyone at the coffee shop called out but you work hard! You’re out in the snow! Your work ethic reminds me of your father.”
She motioned to another portrait of the bald man that hung above the door where Howie had entered with the security guard.
“Oh, I recognize him now!” Howie said. “I have a photo of that guy, but with hair. He was with my mom.”
“Well yes, of course,” Karen said. “I had assumed so.”
“Wait-” Howie said. “Did you say ‘father’?”
 
Karen was confused because Howie was confused. She had assumed he’d known that LeBubb was his father. But then she remembered that he had complained about one particular NDA that was different than the rest because the woman was a Resurrectionist who refused to get rid of the fetus. Did that end up being Howie?
Karen wondered if she could legally explain to Howie that LeBubb was his father but there was no time. The room began to stir in anticipation of a new arrival. The same security guard who had brought Howie upstairs talked urgently into the radio.
 
“Copy. Yep. Okay, let’s step back, everybody.”
The security guard stepped away from the door as a line of bodyguards followed their leader into the room.
Each bodyguard had a close-cropped haircut and a single flesh-colored wire stretching from their ear, down their neck, and then under their clothes.
They scanned every face in the room, even those of the ambient assistants. Their attentiveness was of the calibre that continually committed eyewitness testimony to memory.
Howie was slightly intimidated until he heard one of them fart.
 
“Goddammit,” their leader, Richard Hathcock said.
“Sorry boss, it was the muscle smoothies. I’m lactose intolerant. I knew I shouldn’t have drank it.”
“Go take care of yourself,” Hathcock said.
The underling was about to leave the room but they had to make way for Nikola Starcatcher, the Creator^TM of the Selv app, who had been Howie’s boss’s boss’s boss until that afternoon.
Nikola had been scrambling ever since he watched LeBubb engulfed in flames on the runway.
He threw up his hands.
 
“We’re in the fog of war!” He yelled. “Nobody knows what’s happening!”
Hathcock rolled his eyes. The rumor had already spread among security forces that Beezle had done it to himself but Hathcock didn’t want to undermine the new height of self-importance his client felt in the face of imminent danger. The mercenary sold safety but he also inflated egos; the second part enabled him to charge the highest fees in the business.
 
“We’re clearing the perimeter of the building,” Hathcock reported.
He knew clients loved to hear that word, perimeter. He had gained a fortune in the military industrial complex because he sold a certain vibe.
 
Starcatcher assumed the one with the wrinkled clothes was Howie Dork, the surprise heir whom Karen had told him about earlier. He was relieved not only that Howie looked underwhelming but that their plan to summon him on the app had worked.
 
Trillions of dollars were at stake.
 
Starcatcher extended his hand.
"Howie Dork, I presume.”
 
Howie wondered if this was the man who was supposed to receive the coffee.
He didn’t know what to say, or how to begin his apology.
He was still afraid of getting a bad rating on the app.
“Uhh,” Howie tried to begin.
“Are you starstruck?” Starcatcher asked. It was his common line. “Happens all the time, I assure you,” he said.
The rich man grinned and then winked at Howie. The wink was magical. It erased Howie’s insecurity and gave him confidence.
 
"How do you know who I am?" Howie asked.
"We pay attention to all our top drivers,” Starcatcher said. “I’m sorry for your loss. The market is closing in a few minutes. I was hoping we could go on live to boost the stock and reassure investors. I know this is the least of your concerns, but the share price is getting hammered.”
 
“He just got here,” Karen said. “I haven’t outlined our proposal.”
“No problem,” Starcatcher said. “Don’t worry about it. I just want to reassure investors real quick, before the market closes, that we’ve found Beezle LeBubb’s heir. People are freaking out. Does that sound good, Howie?”
Starcatcher’s fortune was fresh enough to be in constant flux. His delicately woven wealth floated like a gossamer weave on the warmth of low interest rates and steady asset inflation.
The death of Beezle LeBubb had been an upsetting headwind, especially since the dead billionaire’s purchase of Starcatcher’s app was partially paid for with Conglomerate Company stock, whose value was rapidly declining.
A common appearance with the newfound heir would reassure the market, but more importantly it would reassure Starcatcher’s bankers, who anxiously loaned him his fortune against the value of his stock.
 
“Sure.” Howie said. “We can go on live.”
 
The words heir and father were still rattling around in Howie’s head when Starcatcher raised his phone at arms length and spoke into the screen to the millions of people who regularly watched.
They were broadcasting live.
 
“Hey Starheads! I’m here with Howie Dork - the heir to Beezle LeBubb’s fortune and the new majority shareholder of the Conglomerate Company! We’re here at CoCo tower! Howie,” Starcatcher inhaled gravely, “we’re very sorry for your loss.”
It took a moment for Howie to realize that it was his turn to speak.
“Uh, yeah,” Howie said. “Thank you.”
Heir. Father.
“We just wanted to reassure investors and tell everyone to stop selling COCO stock!” Starcatcher said. “Everything is okay. Everything is under control. We’re here for Howie and he’s here for us. We’re looking forward to an orderly leadership transition. Starcatcher out!”
 
Nikola ended the video and turned to one of his ambient assistants.
“We’re up,” the assistant said. “The stock is ticking up. People like it.”
 
Starcatcher was relieved. He had followed the American trend of turning the things he owned into collateral for loans because debt was more efficient than equity, from a tax perspective. But if the price of his collateral declined, his bankers might ask for the difference.
This was called a margin call and it was always a sad end to an orgy of wealth. Starcatcher’s entire being was geared towards continuing that orgy. That’s why he had been so anxious to take off first for the island of Little St. James.
 
“We’re getting more positive traction on social,” an assistant said.
“Wait - what did you mean?” Howie asked.
“Just the numbers-” the assistant began.
Howie didn’t want to know about the numbers. He wanted to know about his father but Starcatcher had stopped paying attention to him. He had a question for Karen.
 
“Hey - maybe this is too soon,” Starcatcher began, “But is LeBubb’s apartment in the city available?”
“It’s a corporate apartment,” Karen told him. “It’s meant to be used for the CEO of the company.”
Howie tried to interrupt.
“Wait, um-”
But nobody paid attention to him.
 
“I’m not trying to become CEO,” Starcatcher assured her. “It’s not really my thing. I’m more of an E.G.O.-” He meant ‘Executive Group Organizer’. The acronym had come to him after someone told him about Ken Kesey being a ‘non-navigator navigator’^link at Burning Man. “I’m just too late to make it to the party at LSJ,” he explained, “and I don’t have a place in the city tonight.”
Karen felt gratified. She took it as a sign of humility that he tried to lie to her about his ambition. Because who wouldn’t want to take over the company?
 
“I think we both might share similar concerns about the fate of our corporate resources,” Karen said, “both for tonight and for the foreseeable future. But let’s take care of one thing before the other, okay?”
She motioned to Howie. They both turned to him. He had finally gotten their attention.
 
“Did you say father?” He asked again.
The clouds parted and sunlight streamed into the room. One of the ambient assistants stood up to draw down the shades at the far end of the oval table so they could keep working without glare.
 
Howie referenced the portrait above the door.
“Did you say that guy was my father?”
“That guy,” Karen said, “is Beezle LeBubb. And yes, he is.”
“Wait - so I’m his heir?” Howie asked. “Does this mean I’m CEO?”
“Well, no,” Karen said.
“That’s what we were going to talk about,” Starcatcher said.
 
Starcatcher crossed from the shade to the light. The Creator’s^TM pale skin reflected the golden glow from the low sun. When he handed Howie a document, their shadows on the wall momentarily merged.
 
“We’ve prepared a very generous deal for you,” Starcatcher said. “We’re anxious to preserve management continuity. It’s a delicate time, since the merger.”
“And the death,” Karen said.
“Tragic death,” he clarified. That was the adjective they had agreed on earlier. “We’re anxious to have a smooth transition. Shareholders are looking for consistency.”
 
Howie looked down at the piece of paper.
“That’s what we’re willing to offer,” Karen said.
Howie was dazed by the numbers on the paper. The prefixes and suffixes swirled in a fuzzy haze of legal language.
But down near the bottom was a single word: ‘total’, followed by a series of zeroes.
Howie had to check and double-check the relationship of the many zeroes to the decimal point.
The digits seemed to pop out as if they were under a magnifying glass.
 
People talked about ‘loads’ of money or ‘gobs’ of money but Howie had been confronted with a ‘spell’ of money: the quantity required to mesmerize. It was different for each person but its value was roughly indexed by the media attention given to publicly posted lottery jackpots.
A ‘spell’ of money caused an involuntary reaction in the recipient’s imagination wherein they couldn’t help but contemplate the reality of spending it.
 
Starcatcher stood near Howie and watched the work of the spell closely.
He enjoyed watching wealth happen to people. It was a religion for him, as if he was a priest administering a baptism.
He watched an invisible hand sprinkle dreams and fantasies and all forms of blessing into the mind of one newly anointed.
 
“Maybe take a moment,” Nikola encouraged him. “Think about it.”
 
Howie stayed near the window on the sunlit side of the room while Nikola walked back to the shade at the other end of the table.
 
As broad as the view before Howie was, everything within it could be bought with the money on the piece of paper.
No earthly thing (nor heavenly) was off-limits.
He looked out over the endless city and saw an electronic billboard promoting Jhumpa LeGunn’s new book. The gorgeous guru of the American Dream had been right: believing was achieving. Howie had believed in the hype and hustle of the Selv app. He had believed he would become wealthy someday and now it was happening.
He admired her so much: the prophet of profits, author of aphorisms, and dreamer of dreams. Up this high above the street, looking out across the city at her high billboard, they were almost equals.
 
An ambient assistant broke the silence.
“Our video is getting more traction on Blue Blog,” they said. “Jhumpa LeGunn just amplified our post.”
Of course! It was destiny, Howie thought. Like his late mother, he had always felt a personal connection to Jhumpa.
Starcatcher took his assistant’s phone to look for himself at Jhumpa’s message.
“She said she’s sorry for your loss,” he reported.
“Can I tell her thank you?” Howie asked.
“You can tell her in person,” Starcatcher said. “She’s on her way.”
 
A helicopter flew between the sun and the window and cast its shadow across the room.
“I think that might be her now,” Starcatcher said. “She’ll be landing in a moment.”
 
Howie looked out over the city and swelled with the sense of pride and destiny that he imagined rich people were supposed to feel. It was a gratified sense of magnanimity and finality that felt deserved but also bittersweet. But he wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to his old life.
 
He looked down to see if he could find his car. The vehicle was unreliable enough and unpredictable enough that it seemed to have a personality. They had been friends on a long journey - on the road and in life - leading to this final deliverance from suffering. He would have to retrieve that precious photo of his mom from the passenger’s seat before he said goodbye. She was his posthumous partner in success.
 
But when he looked down and finally located his car on the street, he saw a tow truck pulling in front of it.
 
He was quickly brought down to earth from his heavenly perch.
The magnified zeroes on the paper lost their luminescent magic.
The tow truck re-awakened old instincts honed over years in the fragility of poverty.
As a devout driver on the Selv app, he had adopted the hustler ethos and tried to go with the flow, faithful that his destiny would float ever-upward.
But now his face tightened over the recollection of the harsh, binary choices forced by poverty.
 
Out of shame, he didn’t want to tell anyone in the room about his predicament. He thought he was being towed because he couldn’t afford to pay for parking. It didn’t occur to him that Hathcock was merely clearing the perimeter.
So, he was embarrassed by his struggles even when their end was so near at hand. And he especially couldn’t admit to these great entrepreneurs - these paragons of prosperity - that he wasn’t just losing his car but also the place where he slept.
And Jhumpa was on her way! What would he tell her?
 
“Do you mind if we take a short break?” Howie asked. He wanted to run down before his car - and all his possessions - were taken away.
Starcatcher and Karen looked at each other uncertainly. They didn’t want to sacrifice this moment of maximum leverage over the naive neophyte. Now would be the time to get him to sign.
“Are you sure?” Karen asked.
“We’d like to get this signed,” Starcatcher said, “not because we don’t want you to be CEO, but just for the stability of the business. You saw how skittish the market was.”
 
Howie looked down and saw his car being lifted.
It was about to be dragged away.
He was probably too late to run down.
He still felt ashamed but a lifetime full of reversals had taught him to quickly re-focus on getting core practicalities under his control: shelter, food, and safety.
 
“But there was an apartment,” Howie said. “Did somebody say something about an apartment?”
“What?” Karen asked, not sure why he was asking. “Your father stayed in the corporate penthouse. Is that what you mean?”
“Would I get that?” Howie asked. “Do I inherit that?”
“That’s for the CEO,” Starcatcher said.
 
Howie looked down. The tow truck was already pulling away, with his car close behind.
Luckily for Howie, the instability of his circumstances had sharpened the resilience of his mind.
He held up the piece of paper.
 
“So if I sign this paper, I don’t get to be CEO?” He asked.
“Correct,” Karen confirmed.
“But if I was CEO, I could stay at the corporate apartment?” Howie asked.
Karen tried to divert him.
“We can get you a place to stay, whether you sign or not,” she said. “That’s no problem. It doesn’t have to be a company apartment.”
“And we could deposit an advance on your inheritance in your Selv app account,” Starcatcher said. “So you wouldn’t have to wait.”
But Howie didn’t trust his Selv account. He had already lost his tip earlier. Would he have control of his money? Could they garnish it or turn it into a donation?
“You always try to teach your drivers independence,” Howie said. “And I don’t want to depend on favors.”
“Well, that’s noble Howie, but-”
“Would I get to stay at my father’s house? Like, if I put myself in charge?”
“Put yourself in charge?” Starcatcher repeated incredulously. “I mean - that might be rushing things."
 
Howie looked again out the window. The tow truck rounded the corner. He would never see his car again.
 
“But I inherited my dad’s shares, right?” Howie asked. “Can I make myself CEO? And then I’ll stay at his old apartment?”
Starcatcher regretted fostering so much independence among the independent contractors whom he employed.
“CEO is a big step,” he told Howie.
“Look, why don’t you go home,” Karen said, “and we’ll figure this all out tomorrow?”
“I can’t go home,” Howie said. “They just towed it.”
“Towed it?” Karen asked.
“They towed my car,” Howie admitted.
 
Karen smiled and tried to stifle a laugh. For a guy who was about to become one of the richest men in the world, he was very stressed out about mundane things.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but we can get your car. We can send you home in a luxury vehicle. That’s a very solvable problem.”
 
Why was she amused? Normally, Howie might laugh along, but now he didn’t see what was so funny. She laughed as if it would be so easy, as if everything in his life should be so easy.
 
“We can get you a thousand new cars,” Starcatcher said.
“But that one has all my stuff,” Howie said. “I was using it to sleep.”
“Using it to sleep?” Starcatcher asked. “You mean you were living in it? Like a camper? I did that once at Burning Man. Not so bad.”
“Don’t worry,” Karen said. “We can get you a place, get you a hotel.”
 
But Howie wasn’t sure if he could trust her. She took his misfortune so lightly.
He looked back out over the city as if the skyline was a graph that could give him an answer. The same digital billboard that had earlier showed Jhumpa now turned Maggie Barnett’s show. Howie remembered an important piece of advice he had gotten from one of the offenders.
He set the paper down on the long table.
 
“Never sign anything without a lawyer,” he murmured.
“What?”
 
Howie became resolute. The paper with all the zeroes was inert, like a scratched-out lottery ticket littered on the pavement. It carried the dead weight of a lost dream.
 
“I shouldn’t sign without a lawyer,” Howie told them. “I don’t want to give up control. I want to be CEO, like my father.”
Starcatcher and Karen looked at each other. Neither knew what to do. Where was Jhumpa? They could use her help.
 
“But are you sure you don’t want to sign?” Karen asked. “We could make it so easy for you. We could take care of you.”
 
Starcatcher couldn’t believe that Howie was actually refusing to sign. Did he really intend to run the company? Was he trying to negotiate? He felt betrayed by one of his drivers.
“But you don’t have any experience!” He said.
 
The digital billboard changed from Maggie back to Jhumpa.
 
Howie wasn’t sure what to do but he knew that following Jhumpa had worked for him so far. He would meet her in a moment. He tried to search his own reflection in the window. How did he look? Would Jhumpa like him? He worried what Jhumpa would think if he wasn’t a boss but merely a rich man. He remembered what she had said on the radio and he no longer felt starstruck.
 
“According to Jhumpa LeGunn, technically I already am a CEO,” Howie said. “I’m the CEO of the brand I."
“I think she was speaking figuratively,” Karen said. “Motivationally rather than legally.”
“I think she meant ‘CEO’ as a state of mind,” Starcatcher said. “But in real life, there are an infinite number of precise details you would need to learn.”
“I could learn,” Howie said. “Jhumpa says it’s never too late.”
Starcatcher scoffed and threw his hands up.
“You can’t just learn how to run a multi-trillion dollar company, Howie!”
“Didn’t you?” He asked. “I mean, didn’t you start from the bottom?”
“Howie, I learned as I went,” Starcatcher said, “but I had experience beforehand. I got my MBA under Milton Summers. I was on Wall Street. I earned millions for myself and billions for my company before I struck out on my own!”
“I thought you came from nothing,” Howie said, disappointed.
“I did!” Starcatcher insisted. “My parents were single-digit millionaires, including their houses! They flew commercial. I worked to get where I am!"
 
But Howie had decided. Whatever the future would bring, he would at least have a place to sleep.
 
“I don’t want any favors,” he said. “You don’t need to find me a place. You don’t need to advance money into my Selv account. Independence and entrepreneurial thinking - isn’t that what you’re always advocating, Mr. Starcatcher? It’s like you said: we have to be able to lift ourselves up. So that’s what I’ll do, with my inheritance.”
 
Karen was disappointed. Deep in the contract she wanted Howie to sign, there was a stipulation that he would hold the company harmless over the chemical spill from the train derailment that had (arguably - very distantly arguably)^link killed Howie’s mother.
 
 
link to ch. 3+4
 

Hi all, wanted to share some research I did on descriptions of alien bodies in UFO lore. This is a post copied over from my blog:
Skeptics of the Nazca mummies like to call them “puppets”, and while I personally believe the bodies are authentic, it seems there's still something appropriate about that description. The biologists and anthropologists from Peru have noted that their bodies seem barely capable of movement, they are small (~2-3 feet), frail, and lack a lot of components that allow for more fluid and dynamic motion in humans. Their bones are simplified, they could not turn their wrists, heads, or hips, as we could. Oddly enough, it looks like their movements would in fact be very robotic or puppet-like.
But what is really fascinating about this description is that it matches up exactly with other accounts of alien bodies from a diverse set of sources in UFO lore:
Philip Corso, US Army Colonel, The Day After Roswell

perhaps we should consider the EBEs as described in the medical autopsy reports humanoid robots rather then life forms, specifically engineered for long distance travel through space or time. In these biological entities, the blood system and lymphatic systems seem to have been combined. And if an exchange of nutrients and waste occurred within their systems, that exchange could have only taken place through the creature's skin or the outer protective covering they wore because there were no digestive or waste systems. The Walter Reed doctors were also fascinated by the nature of the creature's inner skin. It resembled, although their preliminary reports didn't go into any chemical analysis, a thin layer of fatty tissue unlike any they'd ever seen before. And it was completely permeable, as if it were constantly exchanging chemicals back and forth with the combination blood/lymphatic system. Was this the way the creatures nourished themselves during their journeys and was this how waste was processed? The very small mouths and the lack of a human digestive system troubled the doctors at first because they didn't know how these things were sustained.

Kit Green, CIA Scientist, Leaked NIDS Memo

its heart was three-chambered and was a single contiguous non-muscular vessel with no aorta nor vena cava; a conjoint liver and gut; one lung; no anus, etc. Colm: A long time ago, you mentioned some gross anatomical differences in brain structure, can you elaborate in detail? Kit: NO CORPUS CALLOSUM, NO SYLVIAN FISSURE, NO TEMPORAL LOBE, NO OCCIPITAL LOBE, NO VERNIX, NO CEREBELLEM, NO MEDULLA OBLONGATA, NO RUGAE. Colm: You mentioned three-chambered heart in the same message. Was it similar to reptilian design or different i.e. was there aorta/vena cava etc. Kit: YES, SIMILAR NO AORIA AND VC. WAS A SINGLE CONTIGUOUS NON-MUSCULAR VESSEL THROUGH THE HEART.

Whitley Strieber, Communion)

Sam: "They were almost like under military discipline." Whitley: "That was my impression." Sam: "They had instructions and they followed their instructions, and that was it." Whitley: "Do you suppose we see robots?" Sam: "I thought of that." Mark: "Fanatic, or just disciplined?" Sam: "Disciplined." Jenny: "That's right, I remember them all walking the same way." Sally: "Moving in unison, speaking in unison?" (Unified movement is often reported, such as three individuals walking in lockstep.) Joan: "I can imagine something above them that's speaking through them. They're to do their job." Jenny: "You don't feel any personality —"

Credo Mutwa, African Shaman, Interview on Ancient Alien Species

the first person was brought to me with an incredible story to tell the person had been a school boy called see poor people told us that he had been captured by strange creatures whom he called dolls and these dolls had brought him to a strange place and had done straight things to him that had made him almost met with terror and fear through the haze I saw things moving, they looked like dolls, they looked so incredible that I couldn't believe what I was seeing my mind faintly registered the spectacle I wasn't even scared just mildly surprised and stupefied the damn thing please forgive my weight was standing less than eight inches away from me it was short it had a very large round hairless head it had long black eyes jet-black eyes it had small nostrils no ears and a slit of a mouth, its neck was long almost shaped like that of a crane these creatures looked exactly like this they are the type of alien creature that has been known and feared throughout Africa for generations this creature is about three feet tall it looks for all the world like a child who is on the last stages of dying

These quotes below are potentially derivative of the quotes above, but still interesting statements from people with connections in the US intelligence community:
Gary Nolan, Stanford Professor, Tucker Carlson Interview

So I think, and again, this is from inside the intelligence community, most of what we think we are seeing are avatars — biological robots. That are basically put there to be the minions, if you will.

Tom Delonge, Blink 182 Tour

Person: Tom, do aliens have cool wieners or what, dude? Tom: They don't, they're robots

There is a pretty consistent theme here of alien bodies being simplified and more efficient than our own. Both Philip Corso and Kit Green describe the complete absence of a digestive system, as well as the simplification or absence of other organs. The puppet-like movements are also described by both Credo Mutwa and Whitley Strieber. It'll be interesting to see if the ongoing research on the mummies continues to corroborate these descriptions of bodies from UFO lore.

I am not the OOP. The OOP is u/cringecoop posting in tifu and confessions
Content warning - racism, domestic violence, drug use
Concluded as per OOP
2 updates - Long
Original - 17th December 2023
​ Four updates on the same post - 17th December 2023
Final Update - 18th December 2023
​
​
TIFU by trying to add novelty lobster oven mitts to my wedding registry. Now I’m rethinking things.
​
Oh lord.
I, M(24) met my fiancé F(26) in college, about six years ago.
We were instant sweethearts who bonded over both feeling “out of place” at the fancy California state school we ended up at. Things have been going decently well for years, I love her very very much.
My fiancée has always had some unique quirks, but she has a diagnosed anxiety disorder and is from rural Idaho, so I maybe give her the benefit of the doubt a little bit too often. Something I have been silently aware of is the fact that my fiancé has always been a little weird around black people.
I am white, and so is she, but I was adopted into a black family when I was little, so my whole extended family is black. My best friend “Tim” is also black, we grew up in the same city and were roommates mates the first two years of college.
My fiancée has never liked Tim, despite him being my childhood best friend and someone who is clearly important to me. She’s always said that Tim is too loud or rude to her or that she doesn’t like the way he “smells”. She’s always tried to get me to hang out with other (white) friends over Tim.
She even suggested I have HER best friends boyfriend as my best man over Tim. At the time all of these things registered as weird of course, but as I said she’s a very naturally quirky woman who does strange things sometimes. I told her that I still planned on having Tim as my best man, and that was that.
Flash forward to today, and wedding planning has been going great. My three sisters along with my fiancées best friend are going to be bridesmaids, and my wife is supposed to pick out and order bridesmaid dresses by the end of next week.
We’ve been having a ton of fun building our wedding registry. We live in a nice house but are working on remodeling the kitchen, so most of our registry is kitchen stuff.
Earlier today, I saw an ad for some hilarious-but-tasteful lobster oven mitts, and I grabbed my fiancée’s laptop to add them to our wedding registry.
To my absolute horror, when I opened her computer, the browser was opened to a search along the lines of “colors that make black women look ugly”
I looked through her search history. “What colors wash out dark skin” “worst bridesmaids dresses for dark skinned women” literally dozens of searches across these lines.
I closed her laptop and put it back, but I feel like I have to bring it up after she gets home this afternoon. I know it’s “her big day” but this is seriously raising some red flags. I feel like I’m going to throw up but maybe I’m reading too far into things?
TLDR: Tifu by trying to add something to my wedding registry, and was met with my fiancés racially charged search history.
​
4 Updates on the same post
EDIT:
​
It’s been a hectic few hours but there’s a few updates.
I called my oldest sister who I’m closest with to try and get her read on this shit after reading the comments. I hadn’t even considered that maybe she was trying to be helpful in some sort of backwards way by finding a flattering color or something, but really some of the wording of these searches feels really racially charged so I doubt it’s that.
My sisters have always had much better interactions with my fiancé than Tim, honestly I think that’s why it took me so long for all of the racial weirdness to sit in. My sister was kind of shocked, but mainly laughing. She’s never had a explicitly bad interaction with my fiancé and never got the “racist vibe” (her words) from her, but “has always thought she was super weird, like maybe the zodiac killer”
But here’s the thing. When I was talking to my sister, she started cracking up and told me that my fiancé had “sent her pictures of the bridesmaids dresses she was thinking of” last night when she was searching all of this shit.
THE NASTIEST. MOST WASHED OUT. BEIGE YELLOW DRESS. I HAVE EVER SEEN.
I think my sisters are all beautiful women and they would probably look just fine in these dresses, but the fact that my fiancé had chosen them out of some weird racially charged evilness makes this all feel really sour.
I told my fiancé I’m going to Tim’s tonight for a beer, which I am. I want his perspective because I feel like she’s the most explicit when talking to him, and maybe there’s some things I don’t know about. I feel like I’ve been a shitty best friend if all this time I’ve been enabling her racist behavior and excusing it as her just being a weird person.
Nothing is off officially yet, but I do feel like this has really opened my eyes and made me aware of some traits in my fiancé that I feel like I was just too stupid to see.
​
Edit 2, Talked to Tim:
​
Tim has really changed my mind about a lot of this. He ran to the corner store to buy me a pack of my favorite smokes and really helped me calm down, I was flipping my shit when I went over there. He’s like the brother I never had.
He agrees that there’s been a few times where she’s made some unsavory comments, but he denies there ever being a time that has made him really uncomfortable outside of some off color jokes. He’s known my fiancé as long as I have, so he kind of gets the cards on the table. She can really work herself up and get paranoid, and maybe she was having an irrational moment when picking out the dresses.
He said he had no idea that my fiancé even had a problem with him, which honestly kind of broke my heart. Tim’s a great guy. I am really really hoping we can work this out.
I’m going to have a real conversation with her when she gets home this evening. I’m going to try to come at this completely honestly and let her explain herself before I jump to conclusions and assume my girl is in the klan or something.
Edit 3:
Everything’s off. It ended with us getting in a screaming match and her telling me to fuck off if I’d rather “suck that [N word]’s dick” than be with her.
I feel like I’m dreaming.
​
Edit 4:
It’s been a weird big day. A lot of people have been asking for updates so here it goes.
I ended up in a pretty bad spot after everything happened. I’ve spent the last six years not really being a person, she really relied on me to be her constant mental stability. Once it was officially called off I just felt really scared. It felt like I had hit my head and didn’t know who I was.
I was CONVINCED that the solution to feeling like this was to smoke some motherfuckin salvia😎, but Tim talked me down and I ended up smoking some bud and taking a lil shrooms. We went and saw trolls at the movie theatre to keep me from getting too in my head.
I wouldn’t recommend coping with substances the way I do, but the absurdity of the last 24 hours required a factory reset. I’m doing much better now.
I don’t know what’s going to happen going forward, there aren’t many updates there. The house is in her name. My dogs paperwork is in her name and that stings the most. She handled a lot of the financial stuff and honestly it’s going to be a nightmare to get everything settled.
I’m having a lot of trouble posting updates without Reddit nuking them as spam because I’m usually a Reddit lurker lol. so if anyone has any advice there I’d appreciate it. I don’t know how many communities this post has circulated to so if there’s a common thread of questions I can try to answer them.
​
Comments
wiedmaier
Are you ready to marry a racist? You might want to really soul search before it’s too late to answer no.
giveme25atleast
Yep. He didn’t fuck up - he found the truth.
​
Update - 2 hours later (Probably between Edit 3 and Edit4)
I’m having the worst day of my life.
I hate Reddit. I usually don’t use it but some crazy shit was going down today and I felt like I needed to put it somewhere
My relationship of six years ended on an extremely sudden and uncomfortable note and I can’t stop myself from just live-blogging this terrible day and reading the terrible shit people are saying about me over and over and over again.
I feel like I’m going crazy. I’ve never been hit by a woman before. I didn’t hit back.
I’ll be okay. I’ve got a pack of my favorite smokes and I’m going to pick up some beers on the way to the motel I’m staying at tonight.
Fuck man.
​
Comments
panicnowforfun
You're going to make it, man! You dodged a huge bullet and things will get better!
PristinePanda2714
Dodged a bullet, top comment 👍🏼
​
Revolutionary_Wrap76
I just caught up on this wild ride and..... I'm so, so sorry. I know you're so sick of people saying this but you actually got off lucky! I know, I know. But just imagine how much worse it would be if you had gone through with the marriage! Tim is a real one and your fiance will rot right where she belongs. Did she really hit you too?? Add domestic violence to the list.

OOP: I don’t know if “hit” is the right term I’m kind of just in the haze of the chaos and posting shit.
Basically, she made that final remark with the hard R and I turned to walk away. She told me to stop and when I didn’t she ran up to the side of me and kind of shoved her hands into me to the side so I couldn’t go out the door. Wouldn’t call it domestic violence.
Thanks for the kind words man this shits bananas

MewMixDNA
You grew up in a black family, right? How are you so unaware about micro aggressions against black people? Just wow and you stayed with her up until this point.

OOP: Listen man. My whole black family liked her too. I swear to god that my family has always just thought she was kind of weird as I did. She went on trips with my sisters all the time, she spent more time with my younger sisters than I did. Please don’t be shitty. This is a shock.

​

I keep forgetting this started with the fucking lobster oven mits. This is the kind of thing that makes people crazy 😭

Revolutionary_Wrap76
Those lobster mitts SAVED YOU Praise the lobster mitts!!
​
​
I am not the OOP. Please do not harass the OOP.

Hi all, wanted to share some research I did on descriptions of alien bodies in UFO lore. This is a post copied over from my blog:
Skeptics of the Nazca mummies like to call them “puppets”, and while I personally believe the bodies are authentic, it seems there's still something appropriate about that description. The biologists and anthropologists from Peru have noted that their bodies seem barely capable of movement, they are small (~2-3 feet), frail, and lack a lot of components that allow for more fluid and dynamic motion in humans. Their bones are simplified, they could not turn their wrists, heads, or hips, as we could. Oddly enough, it looks like their movements would in fact be very robotic or puppet-like.
But what is really fascinating about this description is that it matches up exactly with other accounts of alien bodies from a diverse set of sources in UFO lore:
Philip Corso, US Army Colonel, The Day After Roswell

perhaps we should consider the EBEs as described in the medical autopsy reports humanoid robots rather then life forms, specifically engineered for long distance travel through space or time.
In these biological entities, the blood system and lymphatic systems seem to have been combined. And if an exchange of nutrients and waste occurred within their systems, that exchange could have only taken place through the creature's skin or the outer protective covering they wore because there were no digestive or waste systems.
The Walter Reed doctors were also fascinated by the nature of the creature's inner skin. It resembled, although their preliminary reports didn't go into any chemical analysis, a thin layer of fatty tissue unlike any they'd ever seen before. And it was completely permeable, as if it were constantly exchanging chemicals back and forth with the combination blood/lymphatic system. Was this the way the creatures nourished themselves during their journeys and was this how waste was processed? The very small mouths and the lack of a human digestive system troubled the doctors at first because they didn't know how these things were sustained.

Kit Green, CIA Scientist, Leaked NIDS Memo

its heart was three-chambered and was a single contiguous non-muscular vessel with no aorta nor vena cava; a conjoint liver and gut; one lung; no anus, etc.
Colm: A long time ago, you mentioned some gross anatomical differences in brain structure, can you elaborate in detail?
Kit: NO CORPUS CALLOSUM, NO SYLVIAN FISSURE, NO TEMPORAL LOBE, NO OCCIPITAL LOBE, NO VERNIX, NO CEREBELLEM, NO MEDULLA OBLONGATA, NO RUGAE.
Colm: You mentioned three-chambered heart in the same message. Was it similar to reptilian design or different i.e. was there aorta/vena cava etc.
Kit: YES, SIMILAR NO AORIA AND VC. WAS A SINGLE CONTIGUOUS NON-MUSCULAR VESSEL THROUGH THE HEART.

Whitley Strieber, Communion)

Sam: "They were almost like under military discipline."
Whitley: "That was my impression."
Sam: "They had instructions and they followed their instructions, and that was it."
Whitley: "Do you suppose we see robots?"
Sam: "I thought of that."
Mark: "Fanatic, or just disciplined?"
Sam: "Disciplined."
Jenny: "That's right, I remember them all walking the same way."
Sally: "Moving in unison, speaking in unison?" (Unified movement is often reported, such as three individuals walking in lockstep.)
Joan: "I can imagine something above them that's speaking through them. They're to do their job."
Jenny: "You don't feel any personality —"

Credo Mutwa, African Shaman, Interview on Ancient Alien Species

the first person was brought to me with an incredible story to tell the person had been a school boy called see poor people told us that he had been captured by strange creatures whom he called dolls and these dolls had brought him to a strange place and had done straight things to him that had made him almost met with terror and fear
through the haze I saw things moving, they looked like dolls, they looked so incredible that I couldn't believe what I was seeing my mind faintly registered the spectacle I wasn't even scared just mildly surprised and stupefied
the damn thing please forgive my weight was standing less than eight inches away from me it was short it had a very large round hairless head it had long black eyes jet-black eyes it had small nostrils no ears and a slit of a mouth, its neck was long almost shaped like that of a crane
these creatures looked exactly like this they are the type of alien creature that has been known and feared throughout Africa for generations this creature is about three feet tall it looks for all the world like a child who is on the last stages of dying

These quotes below are potentially derivative of the quotes above, but still interesting statements from people with connections in the US intelligence community:
Gary Nolan, Stanford Professor, Tucker Carlson Interview

So I think, and again, this is from inside the intelligence community, most of what we think we are seeing are avatars — biological robots. That are basically put there to be the minions, if you will.

Tom Delonge, Blink 182 Tour

Person: Tom, do aliens have cool wieners or what, dude?
Tom: They don't, they're robots

There is a pretty consistent theme here of alien bodies being simplified and more efficient than our own. Both Philip Corso and Kit Green describe the complete absence of a digestive system, as well as the simplification or absence of other organs. The puppet-like movements are also described by both Credo Mutwa and Whitley Strieber. It'll be interesting to see if the ongoing research on the mummies continues to corroborate these descriptions of bodies from UFO lore.

Hi All
Now that we're a few weeks post-release for Murtagh and Christopher's AMA, I am so excited to put everything together finally.
This may be my longest post ever, but bear with me. I think it will be worth it in the end.
tl;dr
* Azlagur is called a Dreamer, Firstborn, and Devourer
* Gogvog is The Great Dragon, the same Great Dragon that Rahna, mother of all Urgals, fled while raising the Beors
* This also implies that Rahna was alive/in Alagaesia when the dwarves inhabited it (~8000 years ago)
* Gogvog is not Azlagur directly, but Gogvog is the form Azlagur takes above ground. But the mind is not bound to the body.
* Azlagur in his above-ground form is a Serpent, not a Dragon (no wings)
* The Urgals are intimately connected with the Draumar, more so than any other race. Specifically: * Their legends are both directly connected/influenced by the Draumar (Nar Tulkhqa and Kulkarvek) * Urgals (under influence from the Draumar) killed Galbatorix's dragon * Urgals (under influence from the Draumar) wiped out the Empire's army in the Spine, heading to destroy the Draumar * Urgal mythology lining up with Gogvog
* Vermund is NOT Gogvog (Gogvog is a serpant/has no wings)
* Usage of the word Disjunction across TSIASOS and Fractalverse
* The etymology of Azlagur corresponds with "The Ocean"
* Oth Orum means "With Serpant", which equates to Jormungandr and Azlagur
* Parallels between Eragon and Norse Mythology, specifically: * Jörmungandr and Azlagur * Murtagh/Nasuada's vision and Ragnarok * Other worlds (Hel/Helgrind) * Yggdrasil * Black Sun, Fading Stars, Ragnarok * Carved Door in Uru'baen Citadel, Ouroboros, Jörmungandr, Azlagur
>! * Teasing Part 2: Revenge, Azlagur Etymology equates to Jörmungandr Thrown in the Ocean, Du Fyrn Skulblaka misleading, Root Cause of binding the AL to magic. All discussed in Part 2.!<
Let's start with Azlagur. Who, or what, is he?
Let's take a look at several descriptions in the book.
"We are the devotees of Azlagur the Devourer. Azlagur the Firstborn. Azlagur the Dreamer. He who sleeps and whose sleeping mind weaves the warp and weft of the waking world" (Part 3 Chapter 15).
Devourer... Firstborn... Dreamer... Interesting. What else?
"What do you know of Azlagur? A dark cloud settled on Uvek's face... 'Only that the Draumar worship that one. I never heard the name before Nal Gorgoth... Bachel is mad but does not mean power is imagined" (Part 4 Chapter 17).
Uvek also acknowledges Azlagur's power (through Bachel). There is another interesting aspect to Azlagur that I'll touch on later.
"The Draumar has been part of the warp and weft of the world far more than you realize... a Speaker sat in the Hall of Soothsayer, whispering visions of what might be to into the ears of the elves... There are places deep underground where Azlagurs dreams become reality. It is true. Specters acquire substances, and the roots of mountains seem to move" (Part 4 Chapter 28).
So, Azlagur dreams and the deeper underground one gets, the more it can affect physical reality. Got it.
We also see him connected to the "The Great Dragon" and "Gogvog" in Murtagh's visions. Let's take a look.
"The great dragon, Gogvog, will rise from the ocean and eat the sun and the stars and the moon, and then he cook world with his flames" (Part 3 Chapter 17).
Eating the sun... interesting. From one of Murtagh's visions:
"a sense of impending and unavoidable doom hollowed out his chest. And far in the distance, a humped mass stirred along the horizon and began to ascend to eat the guttering sun..." (Part 4 Chapter 21).
That vision sure sounds similar to Urgal mythology. There are three other exciting things I'd like to note about the connection between the Draumar and the Urgals.
As mentioned above - Gogvog is called The Great Dragon by Uvek. And we've seen that title once before in connection with the Urgals. In Brisingr:
[Nar Garzhvog] "Rahna is mother of us all, and it was she who invented weaving and farming and she who raised the Beor Mountains when she was fleeing the great dragon" (Over Hill and Mountain, Brisingr).
CP has also confirmed the two are the same here:

"There is an Urgal legend about Rahna fleeing "the great dragon" and raising the Beor Mountains. Is this the apocalyptic dragon Gogvog that Uvek talks about?"
Yes

However, keep in mind this next bit.

" And if Gogvog is Azlagûr, does that mean that the magical growth of the Beors is in some way connected to Azlagûr?" That's a big IF. But yes, IF that is true, then yes."

Chris confirms that Gogvog is the apocalyptic dragon (The Great Dragon), but does not confirm that it is Azlagur. He later NC'd a comment asking the same question, so something is up here. He later seems to verify that Gogvog and Azlagur are the same entity:

Q: Is Azlugar the wingless dragon from Murtagh’s visions? Is that his form above ground
A: Yes.

Given his NC to the other comment directly asking if they were the same being, my take is that Gogvog is the above-ground form of Azlagur, but Azlagur (the mind) is not limited to the body itself. So, as it exists now, Azlagur is not "in" Gogvog, but if Gogvog were to rise, it would be Azlagur's mind inside of it. Does that make sense?
Before moving on to the second connection to Urgals, I want to discuss the timeline here. If Rahna is the Urgals' "Mother", she must have been alive relatively recently, and IN Alagaesia.
We know that the Beors were created AFTER the dwarves were in Alagaesia from this passage here:
"Each step carried them through uncounted years of history. Eragon saw how the dwarves were once nomads on a seemingly endless plain, until the land grew so hot and desolate they were forced to migrate south to the Beor Mountains" (Celbedeil, Eldest).
Combine that with this from CP:

Q: "Was the Hadarac made into a desert because Rahna used the energy of the land to raise the Beors?"
A: "It was a spell, yes"

So Rahna, and Gogvog, were both alive before the Dwarves migrated to the Beors. And Rahna, fleeing the Great Dragon, raised the Beors herself. That means Rahna, the Urgal goddess and "mother" of the entire race, was alive and IN Alagaesia at least as recently as 8,000 years ago relative to today's story. And we don't know her ultimate fate. Interesting.
The second connection is between the Draumar and Urgals is from the Barrows of Anghelm. CP has confirmed that the Barrows of Anghelm (where the urgal king, Kulkarvek, lies in state) is another site of Black smoke, indicating dreamers. The only urgal king being burried at a black-smoke location cannot be a coincidence.
The third connection is the usage of the Urgals to wipe out Galbatorix's army in the Spine. CP confirmed Galbatorix's army in the Spine was marching on the Draumar in Nal Gorgoth. And we know the Urgals destroyed it. AND, we know the Draumar were directly involved in that army's destruction.
"When he came to power, he sought to destroy our race forever. He sent a vast army into the Spine... We had a great war chief to lead us, Nar Tulkhqa. He had once been captured by humans, and he had spent many years fighting him'... 'So it was you! Eragon exclaimed. All my life I've heard it said that Galbatorix once lost half his men in the Spine, but no one could tell me how or why" (Mooneater, Inheritance).
Take that into context with this answer from CP:

Q: Was Galbatorix's army that got destroyed in the Spine on their way to attack the Draumer? And if so, did the Draumar have a hand in their destruction?
A: Yes and yes.

Interesting.
That makes two Urgal legends, the only two we know of (Tulkhqa and Kulkarvek), directly related to/used by the Draumar. Take note.
The last bit I want to point out related to the Urgals is that they were the ones to kill Galbatorix's first dragon, Jarnuvosk. Galbatorix was on the way to scout for the Draumar when his dragon was killed, and the Draumar had a direct hand in killing Galbatorix's dragon and the other riders.
It seems like the Urgals, more than any other race, are connected heavily to the Draumar in relation to pivotal events in Alagaesia.
OK, we got on a bit of a tangent there talking about the Urgals. Back to Azlagur. So, we know he's connected to Gogvog/The Great Dragon. But, is he Gogvog himself?
As referenced above, CP has confirmed that Gogvog = The Great Dragon. But he has not confirmed Azlagur = Gogvog/The Great Dragon. Let's return to the text for additional information.

"Are dragons not sacred to your people? A dismissive wave of Bachel's hand. 'The lesser worms matter not" (Part 3 Chapter 12).

And

"Azlagur has no regard for the little worms... The little worms are not gods. They are noisome spawn, weak, blind, and benighted... The little worms are aspects of Azlagur, but they are not Azlagur himself" (Part 4 Chapter 3).

Extrapolating from both of these passages, we can infer that Azlagur is a "Greater" Worm. But... what does that mean? What is the "Greater" part of "Greater Worm"?
We don't know for certain. But naturally, I have to make a guess.
I think that Azlagur and the Great Dragon are not one in the same, but that the "mind" of Azlagur is what we saw in Oth Orum. That it can, effectively, use The Great Dragon as its Avatar and inhabit its body, but it is not directly the dragon or worm itself; its consciousness extends beyond the body of the Great Dragon. So the mind, Azlagur, is distinct from the body of Gogvog/The Great Dragon. Does that make sense?
But for now, I want to touch on a popular theory in post-Murtagh; that the Great Dragon is Vermund, the Worm of the Kulkaras from FWW. I don't believe they are the same creature due to one main physical difference: Vermund has wings, whereas the Great Dragon does not. They are both black, yes, but the wings is a major feature that I cannot explain.
Vermund:

"Soft and silent, he swept across the valley, blotting out the sun with his velvet wings" (The Worm of the Kulkaras, FWW).

and

"There was talk of making weighted nets big enough to snare Vermunds wings" (The Worm of the Kulkaras, FWW).

Vs. Gogvog:

"The beast rose rampant against the black sun - a wingless dragon, apocalyptic in size" (Part 3 Chapter 8)

and

"A disjunction, and Murtagh once again found himself cowering on the desolate plain... while the monstrous, mountainous, humpbacked dragon rose wingless against the horizon" (A Question of Faith).

Before we move on, I want to call out this VERY interesting verbiage from CP.
Disjunction. That's a funny word. We've seen it before, but not in the world of Eragon. Where else have we seen it...?
TSIASOS Flashbacks. Usage of the word disjunction specifically relating to visions/flashbacks. Almost too similar to be coincidental, considering the rare usage of the world (only six times across all books). Here are some examples:

"A disjunction, and she stood in familiar flesh upon a now-vanished cliff" (Shouts and Echoes, TSIASOS)
"A disjunction, and she saw the staff of blue (Icons & Indications, TSIASOS)
"Another of the now familiar disjunctions. She was crouched next to a tidalpool" (Exposure, TSIASOS)
"A flash, then. A disjunction, and somehow she knew, it was an earlier time, and earlier age" (Integratum).

Just calling out the connection between flashbacks/visions and the usage of the word disjunction across both TSIASOS and World of Eragon. You can interpret that how you will.
Anyways, back to Azlagur. Now that we've confirmed he's wingless, I want to touch on the etymology of the word Azlagur and the meaning of the underground chamber, Oth Orum.
First, Etymology of Azlagur. Phonetically, it aligns closest with Urgalish.
It combines Az (the Urgal word for "The") with Lagur. Lagur aligns with two different root words from Old Norse, but CP clarified in his AMA that it refers to Ocean/WateSea.

Q: Can you share more about the etymology of Azlagur?
A: Name is derived from Laguz/Lögr [WateOcean/Sea]

So, why is this significant? Let's revisit Urgal mythology from Uvek.

"Do you know how the Urgralgra think the world will end? ... The great dragon, Gogvog, will rise from the ocean and eat the sun and the stars and the moon, and then he cook world with his flames"

Rise... from the Ocean? And Azlagur, etymologically speaking, refers to "The Ocean/Sea" in Old Norse. Very interesting.
Now let's look at Oth Orum, the name of the underground place where Murtagh confronts Bachel. What does it mean?
It means "With Serpent".
Serpent. That's a new word. Let's connect that word, Serpant, with the next bit from Bachel.

"This place is Oth Orum, the hidden heart of the world, the very center of all being" (Part 4 Chapter 3, Murtagh).

The hidden heart of the world, the very center of all being. Closely related to a Serpent. You know what that sounds like? It sure sounds like Yggdrasil and The World Serpent, Jörmungandr, from Norse Mythology.
And we know connections between Eragon and Norse mythology exist (see my previous posts for full details), specifically with Jörmungandr, from CP here:

It's really an awesome game. Very impressive. (The world serpant's name was the inspiration for Jörmundur's name.)

Awesome. There's definitely a connection here. Let's take the dive together. We know that Azlagur means "The Ocean", and we know that Gogvog is a serpent-like (meaning no wings) figure that will rise near the end of days. End of days... that sounds awfully similar to an event in Norse Mythology. It sure sounds like... Ragnarok.
Ragnarök is a foretold series of impending events that depict a great battle. It will entail a catastrophic series of natural disasters, including the burning of the world. The term Ragnarök is derived from an Old Norse word meaning "fate of the gods" or "twilight of the gods.
I specifically want to quote this passage from the poem Völuspá in Poetic Edda, from Stanza 41, in relation to Ragnarok:
"Black become the sun's beams in the summers that follow." According to experts this can be interpreted as "the sun becomes black while the earth sinks into the sea, the stars vanish, steam rises, and flames touch the heavens"
So, the specific descriptors of Ragnarok are: Burning of the world, black sun, earth sinks into the seas, stars vanish, flames touch the heavens. Let's compare to one of Murtaghs visions.
"A black sun rimmed by black flame... the stars were faded, guttering; the air cold and dry, and a bitter win blew from the north... the beast rose against the black sun... eater of light" (Part 3 Chapter 8).
Black sun. Fading stars. Eater of light. Sure seems to line up. Let's look at another vision from Murtagh.
"with the black sun rippling with tendrils of black flame... Stars pricked on the blackened sky, and a sense of unavoidable doom hollowed out his chest... a humped mass stirred along the horizon and began to ascend to eat the guttering sun" (Part 3 Chapter 21).
It's not just Murtagh though. Nasuada, in Inheritance, is influenced by Azlagur in the Hall of the Soothsayer to show a similar vision:
"she felt the darkness twist, and ... Haze. Ribbons of smoke drifting across a barren field similar to the burning plains" (And All the World a Dream).
Barren field like the burning plains? Sure sounds like the world is burning, in-line with to Ragnarok.
And CP confirms here that Azlagur DID influence Nasuadas visions here

Q: So when Nasuada is in the hall of the soothsayer, Galbatorix gives her a lot of visions. Is it possible that some of the visions she saw were from the fumes?
A: Yes. Good catch.

And, specifically, the passage above (less detailed vision then the switch/twist):

Because at that point, the visions are starting to get less and less detailed, and then it suddenly switches to that.
Yeah.

I want to call out one more thing that solidifies this theory.
The door on the Citadel of Urubaen. Previously, I've speculated that the doors to the Citadel of Urubaen were far more important than we realized. I think I'm correct in saying that it depicts the World of Eragon in a unique perspective. Let's evaluate.

"Eragon looked up at the shining expanse of gold. Embossed across the doors was a life-sized oak tree, the leaves of which formed an arching canopy that joined with the roots below to inscribe a great circle about the trunk. Sprouting from either side of the trunk’s midsection were two thick bundles of branches, which divided the space within the circle into quarters. In the top-left quarter was a carving of an army of spear-bearing elves marching through a thick forest. In the top-right quarter were humans building castles and forging swords. In the bottom left, Urgals—Kull, mostly—burning down a village and killing the inhabitants. In the bottom right, dwarves mining caves filled with gems and veins of ore. Amid the roots and branches of the oak, Eragon spotted werecats and the Ra’zac, as well as a few small strange-looking creatures that he failed to recognize. And coiled in the very center of the bole of the tree was a dragon that held the end of its tail in its mouth, as if biting itself" (That Which Does Not Kill, Inheritance).

Now, we don't know specifically how Alagesia connects to the other realms - but if we're following Norse Mythology, there should be a connection to other realms; it should connect to Hel (Helgrind, Gates of Hel?) and potentially to Jotunheim, the world of the Giants. I'll get more into this in another post, but one could argue that Alagaesia IS Jotunheim, given it was the ancestral home of the Giants. But one could also make an argument for Midgard, the world of mankind. I see no definitive conclusions that can be drawn either way, but I suspect it is the former (Jotunheim).
This last bit is especially curious:

"And coiled in the very center of the bole of the tree was a dragon that held the end of its tail in its mouth, as if biting itself"

This depiction is also known as an Ouroboros. It's an ancient symbol that depicts a serpent eating its own tail, and it shows up in Norse mythology with the World Serpent, Jörmungandr, who encircles the earth and bites its own tail.
Let's review the specific parallels here:
The etymology of Azlagur (The Ocean) connects with the Midgard Ocean where Jormungander was thrown. It also connects to the Urgal myth about Azlagur rising from the Ocean to devour the world.
Oth Orum means "With Serpent", and we know that Gogvog is wingless (e.g. a Serpent).
The center of all being aligns with Yggdrasil, around which Jormungander is wrapped.
That depiction (Ouroboros) is also reflected/confirmed in the doors of the Citadel of Urubaen.
Ragnarok, specifically the descriptions of the events (World Burning, Black sun, stars vanish, etc.)
Wow. A lot of stuff seems to line up. I'm sure I've missed a few things here, too. Let me know if you find anything that I missed.
So, as per the parallels, that would make Azlagur the equivalent of Jormungander the World Serpant. Let's pull this thread together. First, let's quickly recap Jormungander.
As per this source on Norse mythology, Jormungandr is the son of the Giant Loki, and the Giantess Angrboda. He also has two siblings; the Giant Wolf Fenrir, and Hel, goddess of the underworld (Helgrind, anyone??).

After these creatures were born, Odin was so fearful of the havoc that these beings might cause on the universe that he placed each of them somewhere that they could cause the least harm. He threw the then small serpent Jormungandr into the ocean that surrounds Midgard, which is why he is also known as the Midgard Serpent.
In this Midgard sea Jormungandr grew to such an enormous size that he could encircle the entire world of men and hold his own tail in his mouth. This is why he is called Jormungandr, which means ‘earth necklace’ in old Norse. Jormungandr was associated with the Ouroboros, a symbol of a serpent biting its own tail and forming an unending circle.
By far the most important role that Jormungandr has to play in Norse mythology is as part of Ragnarok. It may be that Jormungandr himself triggers Ragnarok. According to Norse mythology, the apocalypse will be preceded by three years of relentless winter in Midgard, the world of men.
Jormungandr will become uncomfortable in the icy waters that surround Midgard, and make his way to the surface. His huge bulk means that this movement will cause powerful earthquakes.
These earthquakes will allow his brother, the wolf Fenrir, to break the chains that hold him in Asgard. It will also allow his father Loki to escape his prison.
While Jormungandr is portrayed as an enemy of the Aesir gods in this story, it is hard to see him as the villain. Surely it is understandable that he would want revenge on the group of gods that treated his family so viciously.
Thrown in the ocean - Parallels to Azlagur, as discussed above. Association with Ragnarok/end of days - Parallels to Azlagur. Depiction of a serpent (specifically an Ouroboros) - Parallels to Azlagur. Earthquakes/Mountains moving caused by the serpent - We've seen that in Murtagh already.

Neat stuff.
Well, I wanted to fit this all in one post, but we're getting up there in word count, so I will end it here and save the rest for Part 2. Okay, maybe one little teaser for Part 2.
Revenge. The Urgal word, Gorgoth, equates to Revenge. Nal Gorgoth = Place of Revenge.
How does revenge/vengence/recompense relate to Azlagur, or Jormungandr?
Could it be that.. The entity known as Azlagur was thrown in the equivalent of the midgard ocean (between the worlds) by the Gods, mirroring Norse Mythology, which is why he goes by the title of "Azlagur"? Because from our perspective, Azlagur appears to "be" the ocean?
Maybe.
I also think one can draw a distinct line between his imprisonment, the binding of the AL to magic, and the creation of the riders themselves.
I will leave you all with this: All is not as it seems with Du Fyrn Skulblaka. Someone, somewhere, is obscuring vital information that misleads the world at large about the cause of the conflict. Something related to Azlagur.
I plan to cover that, and more, in Part 2 of my post. Stay tuned! :D
As always, thanks for reading - Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Humans are Weird – Crumpled Paper

Original Post: http://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-crumpled-paper “I think the human might be more amenable to sharing his artwork with you if you approached him even marginally less like an ambush predator about the subject,” Second Sister observed in the general direction of Professor Nine Trills’s hunched back. The Trisk gave a hist of frustration and shook out his shoulders. He had begun life as a rather pale amber and the advancing years had added quite a bit of white to his fur. His sensory horn had begun to shrink and wrinkle a bit but his eyes still sparkled with health and interest. He shifted his carry pack between his wings and with only a little obvious effort he sprung into the air and flew over to where Second Sister was sorting through the first recycling bin in search of something useful wast water absorbency. “If you see anything that was obviously crumpled by human hands could you toss it into the consideration basket for me?” Professor Nine Trills asked. Second Sister took a moment to adjust the protective gloves on her hands as she tilted her triangular head to look down at the professor of art history. “Would I be aiding you in violating the privacy of a colleague if I did? She asked as her frill pressed tightly to her neck. “No!” Professor Nine Trills insisted, and then a moment later with less confidence in his tone, “no.” “You have repeated tried to get a view of that particular artist’s work,” Second Sister observed as she turned the majority of her attention back to her task. She found a nicely shaped scrap of absorbent paper that would just cover the underside of the starts tray and placed it in her basket. “The artist has refused. I do not see why you persist in your attempts,” she observed. “The artist has not refused to let me see his work!” Professor Nine Trills snapped. “Not directly in any case. In fact when I mention that I had done just this and observed one of his discarded works he did not censure me. That one down there!” Professor Nine Trills exclaimed, eagerly pointing a wing claw at a ball of crumpled drawing paper. Second Sister resisted the urge to flap her frill at him and reached down to pick up the paper. The Winged immediately began smoothing it out while clicking happily to himself. “Yes,” he said. “A very nice example of their focus on muscle-structure as observed through the membrane, and a few practice attempts at shading cylinders. There’s another, do grab it for me.” Second sister weeded out about half a dozen of the rejected drawings and handed them over to the Professor. She glanced down at the first drawing. It was clearly a highly accurate rendering of a human hand in the graphite medium that most traditional human artists preferred. According to her sisters who had taken a more optical medical track humans saw the medium as a slightly reflective gray while she saw it as a fine, chaotic rainbow haze. However the density of the application meant that the anatomy was still clear to her. She clicked her mandibles in surprise. “I cannot detect any error in this representation of a human hand,” she observed. The Professor glanced at it absently twitched a wing in agreement. “You said that he discards these because he is frustrated with his failure,” she continued. “How is this a failure.” The small Professor expanded with a sigh and began to roll the papers up. “This is not an attempt to manifest an illustration for an anatomy textbook,” he said. “This is Art.” Second Sister wasn’t quite sure how she knew that he considered it a proper noun but somehow she heard it in his voice. “This work of art has failed to meet the expectation of it that he had so he considers it a failure,” Professor Nine Trills finished. “Even so,” Second Sister replied. “It is inconvenient for you to have to retrieve these from the recycle bin. The human is reported to be a very cooperative and engaging personality. He knows that you want these sketches for academic purposes. Why does he risk their destruction by crumpling them and tossing them away?” “I don’t know,” the Professor said with a huff. “When I asked at the relevant time he would only snarl that it wasn’t good enough. One of the other humans observed that he had a perfectionist streak, and no I do not know what that means.” "Humans are Weird: We Took a Vote" is now Avaliable in Audiobook format!
​

Science Fiction Books By Betty Adams

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Check out my books at any of these sites and leave a review!
"Humans are Weird: We Took a Vote" is now Avaliable in Audiobook format!

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Humans are Weird – Crumpled Paper

​
Original Post: http://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-crumpled-paper
​
“I think the human might be more amenable to sharing his artwork with you if you approached him even marginally less like an ambush predator about the subject,” Second Sister observed in the general direction of Professor Nine Trills’s hunched back.
The Trisk gave a hist of frustration and shook out his shoulders. He had begun life as a rather pale amber and the advancing years had added quite a bit of white to his fur. His sensory horn had begun to shrink and wrinkle a bit but his eyes still sparkled with health and interest. He shifted his carry pack between his wings and with only a little obvious effort he sprung into the air and flew over to where Second Sister was sorting through the first recycling bin in search of something useful wast water absorbency.
“If you see anything that was obviously crumpled by human hands could you toss it into the consideration basket for me?” Professor Nine Trills asked.
Second Sister took a moment to adjust the protective gloves on her hands as she tilted her triangular head to look down at the professor of art history.
“Would I be aiding you in violating the privacy of a colleague if I did? She asked as her frill pressed tightly to her neck.
“No!” Professor Nine Trills insisted, and then a moment later with less confidence in his tone, “no.”
“You have repeated tried to get a view of that particular artist’s work,” Second Sister observed as she turned the majority of her attention back to her task.
She found a nicely shaped scrap of absorbent paper that would just cover the underside of the starts tray and placed it in her basket.
“The artist has refused. I do not see why you persist in your attempts,” she observed.
“The artist has not refused to let me see his work!” Professor Nine Trills snapped. “Not directly in any case. In fact when I mention that I had done just this and observed one of his discarded works he did not censure me. That one down there!” Professor Nine Trills exclaimed, eagerly pointing a wing claw at a ball of crumpled drawing paper.
Second Sister resisted the urge to flap her frill at him and reached down to pick up the paper. The Winged immediately began smoothing it out while clicking happily to himself.
“Yes,” he said. “A very nice example of their focus on muscle-structure as observed through the membrane, and a few practice attempts at shading cylinders. There’s another, do grab it for me.”
Second sister weeded out about half a dozen of the rejected drawings and handed them over to the Professor. She glanced down at the first drawing. It was clearly a highly accurate rendering of a human hand in the graphite medium that most traditional human artists preferred. According to her sisters who had taken a more optical medical track humans saw the medium as a slightly reflective gray while she saw it as a fine, chaotic rainbow haze. However the density of the application meant that the anatomy was still clear to her. She clicked her mandibles in surprise.
“I cannot detect any error in this representation of a human hand,” she observed.
The Professor glanced at it absently twitched a wing in agreement.
“You said that he discards these because he is frustrated with his failure,” she continued. “How is this a failure.”
The small Professor expanded with a sigh and began to roll the papers up.
“This is not an attempt to manifest an illustration for an anatomy textbook,” he said. “This is Art.”
Second Sister wasn’t quite sure how she knew that he considered it a proper noun but somehow she heard it in his voice.
“This work of art has failed to meet the expectation of it that he had so he considers it a failure,” Professor Nine Trills finished.
“Even so,” Second Sister replied. “It is inconvenient for you to have to retrieve these from the recycle bin. The human is reported to be a very cooperative and engaging personality. He knows that you want these sketches for academic purposes. Why does he risk their destruction by crumpling them and tossing them away?”
“I don’t know,” the Professor said with a huff. “When I asked at the relevant time he would only snarl that it wasn’t good enough. One of the other humans observed that he had a perfectionist streak, and no I do not know what that means.”
​
https://i.redd.it/yf9fd255m63c1.gif
"Humans are Weird: We Took a Vote" is now Avaliable in Audiobook format!

Science Fiction Books By Betty Adams

Amazon (Kindle, Paperback, Audiobook)

Barnes & Nobel (Nook, Paperback, Audiobook)

Powell's Books (Paperback)

Kobo by Rakuten (ebook and Audiobook)

Google Play Books (ebook and Audiobook)

Check out my books at any of these sites and leave a review!
"Humans are Weird: We Took a Vote" is now Avaliable in Audiobook format!

Humans are Weird - Audiobook Trailer - Due Date Animatic