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Welcome back earthlings. Let's take another look at Terra Firma and our present chances of First Contact, shall we?

Flatten the Curve

I first started writing this series because I noticed inconsistencies and over looked current events, namely, the world wide reports of a distinct sulfur smell around the world. These reports aren't easy to find in search engines, and it took me a number of weeks before I convinced myself that something was happening worldwide that was being kept hidden from us. Flatten the Curve post on sulfur. Source Here
Back then I became convinced that this was part of an ELE that we were going to face in the future. And while the odds remain firmly with that explanation, another possibility has entered into the scenario. What's the possibility?Whelp, hold on to your tinfoil hats;

UFO's

Hold up, back up, this isn't normal New Normal stuff. And you're right, it isn't. Not at all. And trust me, even I'm in disbelief over what I've seen. But maybe I shouldn't have been.
Why?
Because of some strangeness that happened after the first sulfur post. Because after that post, I received a few strange comments or private messages. I can't remember which it was, but I think it was comments, so if you're interested to verify, go back and check (if those comments are still up, because I had an unusually high number of deleted comments back then, and maybe I still do, but I don't know and I don't care.) So what were the comments about? They pointed out to me that a high number of UFO sightings also happened to coincide with the smell of sulfur. Which I thought was nuts. I had read books about UFO sightings as a little kid. A lot of books. And I didn't remember reading that once. And I thought that I would have.

I was wrong

Now, I don't know who sent me that first UFO and sulfur hint. But I will say, that was strange. Very strange. And I should have looked into it. But I didn't. Why? Because that wasn't what I thought was happening, that's why. Despite the tic tac video. And then that report came out about the not of this world material. And I ignored it. And then I started seeing more and more UFO reports, and I finally decided to search sulfur + UFO, and surprise, surprise, nothing. So I kept searching, and guess what, it was exactly like my experience trying to find the sulfur reports; the info is there, but you have to dig to find it.
Now I don't have a lot of information, mainly because there are more pressing issues to write about, but I will keep looking in my spare time. So for now, let's start at the sulfur reports.
(Seriously, I'm still wondering what on earth has happened to Normal, because I'm not a fan of this movie script)

Aliens Stink Like Uranus

Get it? Becaue Uranus has hydrogen sulfide...

FalconLake Then there was the smell. "When I walked into the bedroom there was a huge stink in the room, like a real horrible aroma of sulphur and burnt motor. It was all around and it was coming out of his pores. It was bad," said Michalak, who co-authored the book When They Appeared with Winnipeg UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski. Believing it to be a secret U.S.military experimental craft, Stefan sat back and sketched it over the next half hour. Then he decided to approach, later recalling the warm air and smell of sulphur as he got closer, as well as a whirring sound of motors and a hissing of air. Source Here

Did you notice the sulfur smell? Now let's go on and take another look at the East coast of Canada.
Then there was Shag Harbor Source Here
And now onto Cussac.

On Aug. 29, 1967, a 13-year-old boy and his 9-year-old sister told local police they were watching cows in a field and saw "four small black beings about 47 inches tall" who appeared to rise in the air and enter "a round spaceship, about 15 feet in diameter" that was hovering over the field. The police noted "sulfur odor and the dried grass" at the place where the sphere was alleged to have taken off. Source Here

And West Virginia.

On a steep hillside, a bevy of youngsters drawn away from a game of sandlot football, along with some adults, were shaken out of their shoes by the spectacle of a 12-foot, metallic object that emanated a pungent odor of sulfur and made sounds that reminded one witness of bacon sizzling in a fry pan. Source Here

And the last one is perhaps the strangest.

Bender’s message did not go over well. His rooms continued to fill with the smell of sulphur and he was telepathically ordered to cease delving into matters that were not his concern. A yellow mist gathered in the attic. Undeterred, Bender announced that the July issue of Space Review would hold a “startling revelation.” It never appeared in print. In July 1953 Albert Bender was visited at his home by three men. Bender stated “All of them were dressed in black clothes. They looked like clergymen but wore hats similar to [the]Homburg style.” The notorious Men In Black, always in threes, made it clear to Bender that he was to immediately halt all UFO work. They communicated telepathically: “Stop publishing.” Before departing, the MIB confiscated copies of Space Review and in their wake a yellow fog materialized in the upstairs rooms of 784 Broad Street. Again, the vile odor of sulphur wafted through the attic. Unnerved by their other-worldly presence Albert shuddered that he was “scared to death” and was unable to eat for days. The 32 year-old timekeeper would be the recipient of repeated MIB visits. The telepathic messages, headaches, his being stalked, and of course the surreal warnings by authoritarians in black suits, compelled Albert to shut down the International Flying Saucer Bureau. A year and a half after founding the IFSB the final issue of Space Review was released in October, 1953. It included a cryptic message, and warning: “The mystery of the flying saucers is no longer a mystery. The source is already known but any information about this is being withheld by orders from a higher source. We would like to print the full story in Space Review but because of the nature of the information we have been advised in the negative. We advise those engaged in saucer work to be very cautious. Source Here

Out of this admittedly small collection, there are a couple points that I noticed. They all happened years ago, and a couple incidents are near water. Now that's not a big deal, and because of my limited examples, I can't make a big deal out of it. But.

Do we have Extraterrestrials under water?

The Tic Tac video. That sure got...barely any attention. Strange, right? Almost like everyone is being conditioned to accept news like that as normal. As though our natural born instincts are being dulled. Because real or not, come on, this is a modern day spotting a sabretooth tiger moment, and we don't think it's a big enough declaration to have it on our radar? Really? Ok. Sure. But. If very few people are talking about that incident, they are really not talking about something else Farvor said.

“They reverse the winch and the diver’s thinking, ‘What the hell is going on?’ And all of a sudden he said the torpedo just got sucked down underwater, and the object just descended back down into the depths. They never recovered it.” The helicopter pilot swears the torpedo didn’t sink, per Fravor—and that pilot even told the Times about the incident back in 2017, but the paper never reported it. We’re guessing the editors would reconsider today. As the pilot picked up the BQM, he was apparently at a loss for words. “He’s looking at this thing going, ‘What the hell is that?’ And then it just goes back down underwater. Once they pull the kid and the BQM out of the water, this object descends back into the depths.” One dark mass coming up from the depths is weird enough. Two is officially cause for concern. A few months later, the helicopter pilot saw the exact same thing.

“He’s out picking up a torpedo, they hook the diver up on the winch, and as they’re lowering him down, he sees this big mass. He goes, ‘It’s not a submarine’. He’s seen submarines before. Once you’ve seen a submarine you can’t confuse it with something else. This big object, kind of circular, is coming up from the depths and he starts screaming through the intercom system to tell them to pull the diver up, and the diver’s only a few feet from the water. Source Here

It's a little more common knowledge now, but it definitely wasn't back then. And if we go over to the Russians (apparently, thanks New Normal Fake News for the constant barrage of disinformation) and what they released.

2009 • Russian Navy Declassifies Cold War Close Encounters. Great catch by Phil Ewing at Navy Times‘ Scoop Deck blog: the Russian navy has just declassified its records of Cold War UFO sightings. Turns out “50 percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen [percent] more — with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” one Russian officer explained. Source Here

So now we have Russia and the USA reporting about UFO sightings. And the wall fell just a few short years after Gorbachev and Reagan decided to talk about UFO's and world peace in 1985. So now let's go back to 1984.

Conspiracy theorists believe that the closing ceremony from the 1984 Olympic Games ‘prepared the world for an alien invasion’ The bizarre closing ceremony at the Los Angeles Games raised eyebrows at the time, but alien enthusiasts still claim that the Olympic event had a more sinister purpose. Source Here

Whelp. What. Was. That? Seriously? And then we had the music from Space Odyssey 2001 playing. Kind of coincidental with all of our current Monoliths and signals from Jupiter, isn't it? Flatten the Curve. Part [Source Here]( And here's the crazy aspect, I found that 1984 Olympics clip after noticing our current events invoking themes from the movie.

1984 NY Times • The public hearing was plodding along routinely at the Town Hall one night last month. ''All of a sudden, a cop burst in yelling: 'The U.F.O.'s here! The U.F.O.'s here!' '' said Peter A. Brandenberg, a 43-year-old real-estate developer. ''Everyone jumped up and jolted out. We went flying down the stairs to see this thing, just staring at it.'' On a night before that, William A. Pollard was driving along Interstate 84 near Brewster. 'Whoa! Wait a Minute Here' ''My neighbors said they had seen something,'' said Mr. Pollard, 29, the manager of an automobile service center. ''I said, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' I never believed in that stuff. But off in a field I saw this gigantic triangle with lights, about 30 feet off the ground - hovering. Then it turned off its lights and shot straight up - straight up. That's when I said, 'Whoa! Wait a minute here.' '' Throughout northern Westchester County, Dutchess and Putnam Counties and western Connecticut this summer, thousands of residents have reported strange objects in the sky - each usually in a V-shape or a circle, about the size of a football field, absolutely noiseless and outlined in brilliant lights of white, red or green. Source Here

And there are more prominent UFO reports in 1984. So let's get this straight. We have major sightings in 1984 and then we have a UFO show at the 1984 Olympics. Ok. But then we have Jimmy Carter in 1976.

During the 1976 presidential campaign, Carter pledged that, if elected, he would encourage the government to make public “every piece of information” about UFOs. Once in office, however, he said releasing some of this information could have adverse “defense implications” and pose a threat to national security. Source Here

And then next year we have Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977. And then Spielberg goes on to direct ET in 1982. My point? There seems to be a previous attempt to make Aliens look pretty benign and altruistic. That was followed up by the Summer Olympics UFO show, which honestly makes no sense at all. In the slightest. Not back then. Because unlike now, only crackpots and Conspiracy theorists believed in Aliens. So why the show? Was this a coordinated attempt to get us ready or to deceive us, because I find it hard to believe that the President of the United States in 1985 just blurted out UFO in 1985 as a metaphor.
Let's keep digging and see if we can find more water.

Missing 411

What is that doing in here when we're talking about UFO's? Good question, let me show you.

They are clustered in certain areas, particularly around bodies of water and in national parks. If the people are found alive, they often have memory loss. If they are found dead, the cause of death is hard to determine. The people are sometimes found in an area it seems they could not have reached by foot, or they are found in a location that has already been thoroughly searched. Source Here

Memory loss. Bodies of water. The authorities don't keep a tally of missing people. Dive into it, because something strange is going on, and ot sounds just like an alien abduction would. Are the 411 cases dealing with extraterrestrial incidents? Food for thought, because we're about to go off the deep end. Ready?

Enders Game and the Three Body Problem

A while back I shared a photo of Rita Wilson that caught my attention. It was a picture of her reading, Enders Game. Source Here
And Enders game just so happens to be a novel about humanity waging a war with Aliens. And the picture was oddly getting a lot of traction, HEY LOOK AT THIS PICTURE!
Now let's go into the Dark Forest.

What are some of those books? It’s interesting, the stuff I read just to escape ends up being a mix of things — some science fiction. For a while, there was a three-volume science-fiction novel, the “Three-Body Problem” series — Oh, Liu Cixin, who won the Hugo Award. — which was just wildly imaginative, really interesting. It wasn’t so much sort of character studies as it was just this sweeping — It’s really about the fate of the universe. Exactly. The scope of it was immense. So that was fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty — not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade. [Laughter] Source Here

When Aliens are about to invade. Ha. Ha. Ha. Pretty funny. Right. But then it gets stranger, because it's not just Obama, but our other favorite alien, Mark Zuckerberg.

When Obama and Zuckerberg are your fan boys: On Cixin Liu’s ‘Remembrance of Earth’s Past’ Trilogy

In his Remembrance of Earth’s Past series, Liu doesn’t value this idea enough to even pay it lip service. Organizing earth for a centuries-long project of developing the tools to fight a coming invasion is, in his telling, work exclusively reserved for large planning committees of technical experts given global mandates and staggering resources. In short, it’s a job only properly suited for the nascent technocratic class that has held increasing sway in our world in the last ~30–40 years (and which Liu himself, as a computer engineer in China, is tacitly a part of). The humanity presented within these books is a humanity of government conferences, scientific laboratories and U.N. resolutions. It’s a humanity that is contained and constrained utterly within a world of technical and logistical problem solving. In short, the humanity presented in these books is purely that of a technocratic elite.We live in an age in which the gap between those with technical skills and those without is widening. Our ideas of affluence and upward mobility are increasingly colored not simply by who possesses wealth, but also by who possesses specific types of knowledge and skills. Cixin Liu has written a remarkable science fiction epic which also, perhaps unknowingly, serves as a warning. A world in which a globally empowered technocratic class controls everything is a world that can achieve remarkable outcomes. But it is, by its very nature, a sterile world; one in which the overwhelming majority of human life and experience is a mere afterthought in a plenary session. Source Here

Take note of two things; The title of the series and the theme of the Technocrats saving humanity.
Now. Here are some Stanger Things that I've noticed.
One • Tom and Rita Wilson, Zuckerbuffon, and Obama love to have their picture taken in the water. As in, they we're all prominently featured recently. Zuckerberg
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson
Obama
Could they all just be innocent photos. Yes. Are they? More than likely, yes. But, what if they're signals for people who understand? After all, you don't want that kind of information written down, do you? But why Tom Hanks? Fracked if I know! But his appearance in all this crap just doesn't stop. Now he's appearing with Biden at the inauguration? Really? I mean Zuckerberg looks alien, so maybe Tom is too! Just joking (I think). I honestly have no idea why the Bosom Buddy is right into this New Normal.
But.

Darkforest is a computer go program developed by Facebook, based on deep learning techniques using a convolutional neural network. Its updated version Darkfores2 combines the techniques of its predecessor with Monte Carlo tree search. The MCTS effectively takes tree search methods commonly seen in computer chess programs and randomizes them. With the update, the system is known as Darkfmcts3. Source Here

Ok. We know that Zuckerdork loves the novel. Sure. But he loves it enough to name his AI computer after the book? Words matter. A lot. And while this is all just probably a coincidence, what if it isn't? All the reports about underwater objects. All the photos of the three of them in the ocean. Facebook’s AI being called the Dark Forest. The monoliths that are striking me as more than a natural occurrence. The UFO around the sun during the 2012 solar flare? The sudden surge to protect the energy grid? The sulfur reports and the early reports of smell around UFO activity? All the recent reports about drones being casually dismissed as nothing.

Observations of mysterious drones spotted in northeastern Colorado and western Nebraska were first reported in December 2019.[1] The drones were described as having blinking lights and a wingspan of about six feet (1.8 m). According to the Denver Post, the drones flew in groups of six to 10 and were usually seen between 7 and 10 pm. The sheriff of Phillips County, Colorado described the formation as "a grid search" and stated that the size and number of drones makes it unlikely that they are being operated by hobbyists. One witness in Palisade, Nebraska counted 19 drones at one time, some hovering and others flying in formations in small groups. Source Here

Look. Something is going on these days. Something big. What? Now that's the big question, isn’t it?
Could all the posturing about war be about moving military units around? What about the environmental catastrophe they keep moving closer, not to mention the amount of prominent scientists who claim the numbers aren't adding up for them, including Freeman Dyson.

Freeman Dyson was a physics professor known for his work in the area of electrodynamics. Dyson formerly worked as a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He passed away at 96 years old in February 2020. According to Dyson's profile at the Institute for Advanced Study, “His most useful contribution to science was the unification of the three versions of quantum electrodynamics invented by Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga. Cornell University made him a professor without bothering about his lack of Ph.D.” Source Here

You know, the guy who came up with the concept of the Dyson sphere.
So if the numbers aren't adding up, but the military is making operational strategy changes to cope with abrupt climate change, something is obviously happening, isn't it? The military doesn't just institute changes for nothing. So is the environment being manipulated bu outside entities? Is that why they're suddenly worried about the power grid?
And what about the by now obvious Covid-19 deaths that are predominantly among seniors. Is it to clean out the hospitals for the upcoming encounter? Before you say no, just remember that a no regrets strategy was actually proposed in a military scenario paper on abrupt climate change.
Here's the definition:

No-Regrets" Approach: "No-regrets" actions are actions by households, communities, and local/national/international institutions that can be justified from economic, and social, and environmental perspectives whether natural hazard events or climate change (or other hazards) take place or not. "No-regrets" actions increase resilience, which is the ability of a "system" to deal with different types of hazards in a timely, efficient, and equitable manner. Increasing resilience is the basis for sustainable growth in a world of multiple hazards (see Heltberg, Siegel, Jorgensen, 2009; UNDP, 2010).

If you would like to read the paper, I do have it linked on Flatten the Curve under Peter Schwartz.
Is this what were seeing? A no regrets approach in action in anticipation of first contact? Is this what they mean by the New Normal? Is this why they're trying to establish a one world government? So we can work together to get ready? Is this why there's an overflow of informational leaks like Moloch worshipers, or Russian Fake News, and on and on. Is it to keep us off balance from the real threat? And could they be so advanced that they're attempting to circumvent our progress through manipulating our planet? Is this why we have so many nukes? Is this why they want to weaponize space?
I'm not saying that my running hypothesis has changed, but I am saying that looking at events from a different perspective can only help. And seriously, right now, I would be lying if I didn't admit that I would be relieved if they weren't a bunch of psychopathic greedy AI loving nutjobs. Which I still think they are, because even if Mars Attacks, or we have War of the Worlds, or Independence Day, I'll still have to see them face to face. Why. One word. Deepfake.
So let's consider a few points before I sign off. We have sulfur reports. Early reports linking sulfur to the UFO phenomenon. An increase in UFO reports. The government disclosing incident reports. Warnings about a possible grid failure through cyberattack or solar flare. Abrupt Climate Change. A No Regrets Strategy for Climate Change. A virus that seems to hit those who would be the biggest burden on the health care system. A worldwide hum and Sky Trumpets. The Pentagon commissioning reports about riot control and then funding training into underground warfare. And we have reports about underwater UFO's and older Conspiracy theories about Aliens living underground.
So, real or fake, I don't think we should discount the possibility that something may occur that could just knock the world's perception of reality.
And trust me, I still don't believe this is likely. Why? Well I find it pretty coincidental that H.G. Wells not only wrote War of the Worlds, but he also wrote a book called New World Order. And he also collaborated with Julian S. Huxley, a known eugenics supporter and brother of Aldous Huxley of a Brave New World fame.
Alright, long story short, I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's....yeah. Buckle up and just be ready, because if our New Normal is based on a No Regrets Strategy, our strategy has to become a No Trust Strategy.
Heads up and eyes open. Talk soon.

The results are in for Match 3…
After one final wood-splintering impact, the clock tower suddenly fell back to it’s relative silence, broken only by the constant mechanical whir of the heavy gears. Keith glanced down through the central railing, and upon seeing Jenny’s writhing, pain-cursing, barb-filled body embedded into the wooden floor four stories below him, wiped blood from his nose before limping toward the south wall.
The Temple had made no effort to conceal their newest addition, at least not yet; two walls of a completely different color jetted out of the southwest corner of the building to form a sort of corner-closet, protected by a heavy locked door. Spying a toolbox still open next to the setup, Keith’s eyes rolled as he sent a remaining cactus clone down to the fifth floor to see if the handyman had the key on him. He drew a long breath, the thought of his lost teammates still weighing heavy on his mind; the fight had let him vent the frustration from the news of their loss, and the anger he felt was likely to thank for pulling him through. With any luck, this whole scheme would be for something-
”Eeaaaugh..!” A scream from the earpiece Keith removed during the fight made him jump, immediately reaching for his pocket to re-equip the device. Metal objects fell onto a marble floor followed by something heavier, “Peart you… fucker… that book… since when..?” Heavily labored breathing made background noise tough to parse, but the deep voice of the reply was clear enough.
“As I said before being so rudely interrupted, Mr. Killian, Fate blesses it’s devoted with myriad gifts; open eyes to see the path before us, and a bulwark of faith to see our journey safely.” The voice grew louder, approaching Kilroy’s body. “Trespassing onto this holy ground will not go unpunished, for you nor your friends in the tower. Tell Ms. Stanton when you see her that her district is now in better hands.”
Keith gritted his teeth, running to the ladder to meet his cactus clone halfway with the key. That Syndicate idiot better have been right about this... He fumbled at the lock, clicking his tongue as he finally got it to turn. Inside was an almost completely barren set of shelves, holding only a small clear plastic case containing what looked to be a bloody heap of rags. Keith was momentarily transfixed, half-surprised to see anything at all, reaching in to grab the case and peer at it from different angles: it was two pieces of connected magenta-colored cloth, one thin and sporting what looked like eye holes while the other was larger with a cartoonish smile design, both badly faded and covered in blood; a mask of some kind? It looked like some kind of combination of a domino mask and a cloth mouth-mask, anyway…
Before he could remove it from the container, a loud crash of glass came from below, pulling Keith back to the present and over to the railing.
Jenny’s body was gone from the fourth floor below, leaving a trail of blood droplets leading to a nearby now-broken stained glass window. Keith nodded, making for the nearest ladder and sliding down to follow in escape. Stepping out onto a vertical path of cacti footholds, sirens and alternating red-and-blue lights approached the gate to the grounds below.
The Winner is Keith Moon, with a score of 71 to Jenny Kidd’s 67!

Category	Winner	Point Totals	Comments
Popularity	Underground Exodus	19-11	A reminder that a two-vote lead can go a very long way when exactly eight people get votes in, what started as an initial lead on Jenny’s part transformed over time into exactly the opposite in number by the end.
Quality	Tie	21-21	Reasoning
JoJolity	BADD GUYS	21-25	Reasoning
Conduct	Tie	10-10

Industrial District, Red Clay Correctional Facility, Later That Night
The metallic canine maw of Kaksi yawned, disinterested in the droning speech coming from the other side of the plexiglass wall. His user sat motionless on the prison cell bed, bathed in bright halogen light from all directions as she chewed away at her fingernails, staring blankly at the wall ahead of her with a tired expression. An attorney stood flanked by armed guards in the hallway adjacent, rattling off legal technicalities and case details at the seemingly distracted Emily. “...is apparently dismissible in court. I guess the court of Los Fortuna hasn’t heard of Stands yet, so evidence gathered using one is ‘tantamount to circumstantial at best’. Morons.” Aile sighed heavily, rubbing the bridge of her nose before continuing her ramble.
Emily shot a glance at the suited attorney while her eyes were closed. Why are you doing this, Aile? Her eyes shot back to the wall ahead of her before she could be caught. Months together and I couldn’t give you the time of day. Refused to. I treated you like dirt, you had every right to leave and never look back… but you still…
“...and the trip here, good lord.” Aile’s legal rant had, at some point, turned into a personal one. “Those ANVIL pricks seized the bridge, apparently. Had to get in by police boat, thank god the city could spare one in all this chaos. And even with an armed police escort, I was stopped every ten seconds by some checkpoint! The guards must be stressed out of their minds, some of them were just staring off into space, like we weren’t even there! PTSD, maybe? I swear, when the city council hears about the conditions of this facility…”
Would take an army to stop you, wouldn’t it? An army, or one heartless idiot with her head up her ass… I was afraid. Afraid of dragging you into this fucking catastrophe I call a life. I didn’t believe you were strong enough…
The electronic bleep of a guard’s radio interrupted the one-sided conversation. “Thirty seconds, Ms. Panther, facility is going on lockdown.”
“Lockdown!? I’ve been through hell to be here for five minutes and you’re kicking me out?!” AIle’s hands wrung her manila envelope violently, nearly tearing it’s documents in half. “I am legally required to relay my client all necessary information pertaining to her case and-”
“Out of my hands, ma’am. We got an incoming prisoner and the facility is already at maximum alert. All non-staff need to be escorted out to secure the indoctrination process. Twenty seconds.”
Aile sighed angrily, straightening out the red sleeve cuffs underneath her blazer before addressing her client once again, stepping closer to the glass and speaking in a hushed tone. “It’s chaos out there, Emmie. The city’s enough of a wreck that it’s spreading out here. I’m doing what I can, but if things get any worse…” She sighed, putting a hand on the glass to eagerly await a response.
You’ve done too much already! Emily’s eyes were still fixed on the wall ahead of her, feigning indifference even now with her mind racing. I’m sorry for using you, I’m sorry for putting this damned city ahead of you, I’m sorry for everything! Aile, please..! Standing from her bed, Emily turned away from her company and moved to her sink, muttering a blunt: “I’ll live.”
“Time’s up. This way, Ms. Panther.” Aile took in a shaky breath as she stepped back, clearing her throat and turning on a dime to begin marching down the hall with a scowl. Looking back at Emily, who’s hands were planted on her sink looking down at the running water, the attorney ended the meeting with a very curt, impersonal, and disappointed response:
“Goodbye, Emily.”
The intrigue of the Gambler, the Church, and the city of Los Fortuna continues to build up. Meanwhile, under new management from the super-stylish Man in Black, a security company outsources developing a training regimen to four unscrupulous Stand Users. There’s only a few hours left to vote in that when this post goes up, so please give it a look - and a vote - if you haven’t!
Scenario:
Midnight Sun University District - A basement space underneath CaraMel’s Confectionery - Afternoon
“Hmmm hmm hm! Hmm hm hmm! Something something I don’t know any Japanese~”
Cutesy hum-singing filled the small, dimly lit well-ventilated chamber, as large bronze boots tapped against the sterilized floor, dark hands washing intensely before donning heart-covered rubber gloves, goggles, and a face mask, arranging and rearranging all number of medical-looking equipment, strange vials and flasks. Of course, she was still wearing plenty of pink, a lab coat over shorts over leggings, looking quite a bit more like a mad scientist than a chef, minus an onion-shaped hair net. Just because she was dressed for the utmost of lab safety and sanitation didn’t mean CaraMel Dansen couldn’t be cute, after all.
She leaned in towards one particular test tube, kept within a glass case, holding a cluster of mysterious white semisolids which seemed to be moving, throbbing, and giggled, waggling her finger at the glass. “Feeding time’s soon, don’t worry! Oh, I wish I could put this on Insta today… But I must be strong!” She pumped her arms. “For his memory’s sake, I will resist you, social media!”
Down the stairwell outside, a pair of sneakers hurried, let through a backdoor by the restaurateur’s younger brother, then hurrying down a stairwell, quite audible in the franticness of its pace. Finally, a sweaty pale hand moved towards the locked door.
Knock knock knock knock.
Rhythmic. Fist positioned against different distinctive parts of the door. This was the secret knock.
So, a Stand body emerged to superheat a locking mechanism, causing its metals to weaken and the door to open, the yellow-hatted thirtysomething on the other side giving CaraMel an unamused look. “That’s a huge fire hazard, you know… If it was anyone but you, you would be yelling about that.”
“Well, I’m just different! Anyway, c’mon, check out what Violet found me in Drankwater’s houseboat-lab! You know what it is, don’t you?”
“I… No, how could I?” Theodore Lloyd was confused, stepping in and idly tapping at his eyepiece-Stand, ‘To Make Believe,’ as he continued, “just because I’m Institute doesn’t mean I can identify every weird thing that one of you guys discovers with a passing glance… Why was she going through his things anyway?”
“Because I asked Oh No to ask her to!” She peppily answered, before growing, momentarily, more serious, “after what happened with the Ocean Soul… What he died for, and having that taken away in an instant, I just couldn’t help but think. The old wizard didn’t just do things for no reason, yeah? The sort of explosive growth you could accomplish with Calamus Root… I knew for certain he must have something in mind for it, some reason to go capture it personally. Something he was working on, yeah?”
“I… I suppose that makes sense, but.” Teddy blinked. “You say that like No didn’t care about that part, so then why-”
“All Oh No wanted was to learn to talk to that sea monster… Communicate, get it to open up. His entire term for the Institute’s cooperation with Peres was that Holiday would split the Stand off, let him keep and help the big angry sea monster communicate with a world that it never got the chance to understand. If you talked to him, you would’ve known that way way way before me!”
“That… That sounds like that person, yes.” He stammered, pacing around carefully.
“Mhm!” She nodded. “Anyway, one of the things that fascinated the Wizard most was Bert… Both as a harmless novelty, a ‘homunculus,’ and then, as the thing that destroyed Capital Island, broke fate, and killed like twenty-thousand people. He’d been studying his actions, researching his history, all for what’s in this tube here.” She gestured to it again. “A ‘bioweapon’ meant to be capable of ‘killing Bert…’ That’s what was in the Water Tower, hidden away, and what I intend to finish, with or without those groundbreaking medical advances people literally died for only for that to be wasted at the last moment!” Her voice grew even higher and cuter; a sure sign she was seething so hard she could set a person on fire. “No is still grieving over the Ocean Soul, so I wanted to ask you to arrange for it… Get the Institute to watch over this thing, and let me help cultivate it.”
“I see… Heh. Guess he’s looking after us even now, then… Of course I’ll help.” He tilted his head, reading over what he’d just discovered of the ‘bioweapon’ with his own Stand… Unsurprised, ultimately. “Where do you factor into this, CaraMel? I thought you’d totally lost interest in biotech… I didn’t even know you’d kept all this stuff.”
“It’s for when I get the food science urges!” She pivoted and huffed, crossing her arms over her chest and shaking her head. “And anyway… I became a chef instead because I wanted to make people smile. To be fed and happy and enjoying good food in a nice place and living, yeah? I know Drankwater would scoff with Dollars behind my back for that, but… He was still a mentor of mine, and this is something I can do so the final projects of his life weren’t for nothing. That ‘Bert’ is a threat to the entire planet if not dealt with… And nobody can smile in a world so terrible!”
She kicked her boot against the ground, then, before adding with a roll of her eyes and a grumble, “plus, now that Byron went and got himself labeled a terrorist and killed a bunch more people, basically every big plan I had in the works for celebrating this February is shot. So I almost have something sort of resembling free time now!”
Teddy chuckled at that, and was about to ask what else he could do, when his phone began to vibrate, and despite not recognizing the number, he had a strange feeling about this… It needed answering.
“Y’hello, Mr. Lloyd… Is your refrigerator running?”
A chill ran down his spine, then. That old, jovial voice… It couldn’t be..! Paralyzed with unease at what he was encountering, all he could say, then, was a small, “y… yes..?”
“Well…”
A dial tone rang out at Teddy’s feet; the very floor tiles below him seemed to transform into cell phone screens beneath him.
Then, as his companion tried to shout something, tried to send her Stand forward to retrieve him, a Sonic blast from those newly-reformed floor tiles sent him and her Stand flying into the walls, knocking over countless pieces of equipment with a very clearly audible punchline to the booms.
“YA BETTER GO CATCH IT!”
The girl’s Stand only just able to stop anything from outright killing the weaker, older Stand User proved, predictably, far from the end of the troubles in the room. As Teddy struggled to stand with CaraMel’s Stand’s support, an old man in a bike helmet, flanked by a Stand of his own, stepped into the doorway, cracking his knuckles.
“Eheh… Refrigerator running. Sometimes, the classics can still crack you up, yeah?”
Naturally, CaraMel was knocked to the ground as well by the blast having struck her Stand, not to mention her own proximity to it, ears ringing and pained as she tried to gather her bearings, hearing a thumping against the walls closest to the ventilation shaft for the small room, only for the grate to be knocked out as something oblong and vaguely humanoid emerged, dress shoes stepping down with feet by her head, before with entirely too much flexibility, a stark white one-eyed figure was staring down at her and twisting his neck.
There was something dark atop the being’s head, something she was having trouble making out, resembling… A cap of sorts, resembling a buck-toothed dog, with…
Bert was wearing a fucking hat in the shape of Goofy, still boastfully bearing the tag from Walt Disney World.
“Yes, hello, I’m here to pick up an order… I hope you’ve kept it warm.”
CaraMel was alarmed, confused, in a horrid state of fight or flight, as her Stand could only be in one place at all, yet needing to protect Teddy, herself, and the bioweapon… How the hell was she supposed to do all three while boxed in like this?
“You gave quite the speech, Dansen…” Bert continued as they paced around, the air tense even through the funny joke Lemon had cracked. His hand rested on the table the weapon’s tube sat on, and and he continued, “it was quite inspirational, I think… And quite enlightening.”
He reached for the weapon, and CaraMel called out. “No, don’t!”
“Don’t what? You are developing something meant specifically to take my life… Is it unfair of me to wish to investigate that? Now, let’s see what-”
With a look on his sole eye indicating genuine surprise, Bert’s hand accidentally slipped and knocked the specimen meant to kill them to the ground, where it spilled out with a crack! The chef and the art school dean both cried out.
“…haha! My fingers slipped! And right now, I don’t feel very dead… Not ready yet, as you said. Though that shouldn’t be a surprise, with what a nostalgic sight that was.” He contorted his neck to the tense scene with Lemon, Lloyd, and CaraMel’s Stand, over 180 degrees away, though turning his head the opposite direction would have been easier. “Lemon, companion and ally, tell my story, why don’t you? Or at least, introduce it…”
“Gotcha!” The old man agreed, “see, my buddy Bert here… Some stuff in a lab made him, and he got out! And then they came here!” Lemon knew more, but he knew a bit when he saw one, and knew that Bert would want to hear themselves talk. It was why, for a Bertsmas gift, he got his good pal two cell phones.
“I was born by what many deemed random luck, some chemicals mixed together just right in some lab… But such things, the creation of life anew, are not the domain of happenstance, or of old men with white beards… No, it’s as I told Walter on my sabbatical, when I popped into his secret chambers to discourse on life extension.” He took a seat on a counter. “‘New life’ is the realm of ‘God,’ don’t you agree? Yet I exist, and I uniquely survive, and I will find a way to yet create life anew myself.” He stood up, then, spreading his arms. “To blaspheme in this way is only within the realm of I, Bert, the one who subverted fate! Who raised the dead! I am going to supersede God itself, whatever form He takes. What chance did two graduates cooking in a basement have to deter me?”
“You…” Teddy stammered again, clearly terrified, but looking to CaraMel, stood. “Your self important vision will die. You will be nobody’s God… You’ll be just another footnote in this city.” He turned, then, to his companion. “CaraMel, recall your Stand. Protect yourself, please. I won’t slow you down here. Do what you must.”
“But… N-no! I refuse to let you play hero now! Think about-”
“Ahahahahahehheaaahhh!” Bert laughed heartily, then, and Lemon snickered as well. “You have gall, you two… I can acknowledge that much at least. Yet it’s funny to me that you think either of you is leaving this room.”
Around the start of CaraMel and Teddy’s conversation - The streets of the College Town

hey casey jill’s rly upset cuz a friend of hers did some dumb bullshit again
the journalist? oh no… how bad?
not like war crime bad but ‘legit a srs dick move and self important about it’ bad
ugh. that’s always a pain… why tell me, though?
well bc im tryna console her an figured she could cope with sweets!
as one does.
as one does
anyway yea. u mind runnin to caramel’s an pickin up some of those sweet onion cream filled donuts? just a huge dozen to go to town on. ill pay u back promise. well have girls night itll be gr8
sure! jillian seems nice, and i never mind helping a friend of a friend!

Casey Williams looked over that text log again as she made her way to the Confectionery which had so often been a hotly desired source of nutrients and socialization about the college town and adjacent areas, frequented by students, faculty, and people just living in the very expensive college town alike, but most popular of all among young women, children, and couples, no doubt because of how cute and pink the place was.
Food was damn good, even if it tended to be pricey. One of those onion donuts honestly sounded real good right now, though…
Thus, to that end, Casey kept walking, stepping off of a trolley and moving through a piece of environmental art she’d grown entirely used to by now, something where that Andre guy sought to successfully recreate something looking like a recursively looping set of stairs in the middle of a public park, only to notice something in the corner of her eye; Perseus Drakos was sitting up high on one of the stairs in question, waving down at her and, with a cheery tone, calling out, “afternoon!”
Then, he seemed to slip off of the heavy drop, yet still bore a confident look on his face. This time, he’d have an awesome heroic entrance; he’d do a somersault and jump up right in front of his teammate, and it would be so awesome, and-
“Ow!” He winced, hitting the soft grass below as Casey looked concerned, offering him a hand up.
“Are you alright? That was a hell of a-”
“I’m fine!” Desperate to save face, Perseus jumped up, putting his fists at his hips and puffing out his chest. “The glass dragon won’t shatter like that! That’s all I wanted to prove to you right now!”
“Are you well? You must let me catch you before you run off like that!” The Stranger’s ethereal voice came through, then, as it manifested, fixing Perseus’ posture as he tried to shoo his Stand away.
“I got it, c’mon. I know what I’m doing!” He sighed, then, before turning back to face Casey. “So what brings you out this way? Mind if I tag along? I’d been trying to survey this area for signs of trouble or villainy, but so far it’s… Pretty safe. I think I could use more scenery!”
“Oh, I wasn’t doing much, actually,” Casey answered, “just headed down to CaraMel’s to pick some stuff up for Violet… Cheering up a friend, so basically an emergency, yeah? I’m sure it wouldn’t be any trouble for you to hang out, though.”
The Stranger and Perseus both gave Casey blank expressions.
“What? Don’t want to after all?”
“CaraMel’s closed early today. Like, right after breakfast early…” Perseus huffed. “I was gonna buy myself lunch there, too, so it was really bothersome…”
“…huh, really. Hope nobody’s sick or something.” She got her phone out. “Guess I’ll just let Violet know that-”
“Wait.” The Stranger’s voice cut her off, then, and Casey and Perseus looked to him. “Think about who we’re dealing with here… This Violet Lange. It isn’t the first or last time she’s goaded one of us towards something or another on secretive, even duplicitous pretenses. And with how connected she is… There’s no way she didn’t hear anything about that. Couple that with how CaraMel’s has been used as a base of operations for the University Board before, and…”
“She was trying to get me to do something else?” Casey asked, catching on now. She considered Violet a friend, but she really could be a pain sometimes like this…
“Exactly. Whatever it is you were actually sent there for… Proceed with caution, if you mean to proceed at all.”
“Forget that!” Perseus defied his Stand’s warning. “If it’s that important, and that dangerous, we’re going to be a part of it! Don’t abandon your friend, and don’t even say a word about leaving me out, either! Because if you do, I’ll just follow you anyway!”
Casey… Couldn’t rebut a word of that, and neither could The Stranger. Both simply nodded. “Follow my lead, and don’t do anything crazy, alright?”
“Why are the ceilings so high here..?” Perseus asked as he led the way into the closed-yet-unlocked door. “I mean, it’s basically a bakery with house space above it, right? But so much bigger than everything else…”
“Because it’s artsy… And I imagine Mr. Dansen appreciates the distance from all the kitchen noise, with his condition.” Casey mused. “Makes for a real nice climbing spot. Once I ran into that ‘Black Angel’ eating up there with Wrenn, and it really is a great view-”
Their conversation was stalled, then, by the realization of what lay before them, tossed through a glass display case and with a rolling shelf knocked over. A tall, hurt-looking figure with blue hair was struggling to keep it from crushing him, a sight which, with an “oh my God!” from Casey, both MFAs hurried to remedy, helping pull him free and sit him up.
“What happened?!” Perseus asked, not noticing a response, before realizing exactly why… The man’s ears were bleeding profusely, worse than anywhere else he’d been injured.
“Hhh… hhahh…” He struggled to steady himself, trying and failing to stand and move towards a backdoor. “Sister’s… Still down there… Old man… Phones… Ghk, fuck..!”
The young man collapsed again, quickly being steadied by Casey, who looked him in the eye and spoke slowly, yet firmly. “Don’t worry. We’ll help her. Just… Clear out.”
Someone is attacking CaraMel’s..? But what for? Violet… Is this what you really sent me for?
With that, then, she had to pick up her pace and run into the backdoor stairwell. Perseus had already begun to charge in.
The stairwell was decorated with pink carpet and soft orange wallpaper, the railings a clean, sleek white. It was quiet… Uncomfortably quiet.
Then, a door down below opened, and Casey had to grab Perseus by the back of his shirt to stop him from rushing blindly down to meet the threat.
“I swear, to try and assassinate me with the first trick I ever learned… The audacity of it all. Well, at least that’s been nipped in the bud.”
Casey and Perseus both froze, then, feeling their skin crawl. Of course, both had heard the recordings of Jack Aurel’s final stand, of the way a serial killer and an artificial human challenged him… And that self-important tone was unmistakable.
“Hehh, yeah. Say, d’you think her brother’ll still sell us bagels? I know the sign said they’re closed today, but I really got a hankerin’ for an everything with dog-cream-cheese.”
“Regardless of his willingness to sell to us, there will be bagels, my friend. I assure you they will be delectable!”
“Ehehh, awesome! Can’t wait to-” Lemon Demon stopped, then, his humorous tone momentarily evaporating. “There’s someone up there. Two of them, looks like.”
“Ah! Excellent catch,” Bert praised Lemon. “Lucky we ended that fight unscathed and unexhausted, then… I have a feeling that they’ll be more of a worthy trial than those two were.”
Casey gasped, then, still trying to bide her time, observe their moves, now that the element of surprise was gone completely.
“Yeah, you’re telling me, Bert. Imagine if we were hot off the heels of those Red Carpet guys, or Jack, or even that keytar guy… I told you about how I barely beat him, right? Still a dang shame, that… Gotta respect a man in a thong rockin’ and rollin’ in the ID. Reminded me of me back in the day!”
Perseus felt himself grow even tenser, then… Angry, beyond even his usual hatred for villains, at such words passing. “Casey… This guy… I think the old guy has to be the one to…” He had seen how utterly devastated Aaron had been at the news of Rudolf’s death, and to hear someone speaking so casually about it, having clearly seen it, been there, probably been responsible…
He called out, heroically, “Hey, Bert! Old-timer! Chat up all you like, because this is the last fight you’ll ever fight! Here and now, it’s over for you!”
Before he could charge, however, Casey grabbed him and began running up the stairs, well aware that at this point, a fight in the stairwell was inevitable… Hell, hearing something like that, and knowing what was at stake, she couldn’t back away in good faith either!
Every fight she’d been in so far, she could run away, leave the dirty work to someone else, but here, she wasn’t going to simply cower behind a child. She would get them a tactically advantageous spot, work out a plan, and beat these bastards here and now!
“Those kids sound kinda mad… Hope I didn’t strike a nerve there.” Lemon remarked, nonetheless preparing for battle. He knew kids, how hotheaded they could get. This wasn’t a situation he could defuse with a funny joke or two, and hell, he didn’t really want to.
“We’ll be striking more than just nerves in a moment, Lemon… We’ll be striking up another chapter in the Book of Bert. Just try not to bring the whole house down. Those bagels won’t taste half as good with drywall and concrete in them, after all.”
OPEN THE GAME!
(Credit to CaptainSpooky27 for yet more awesome match art!)
Location: Inside of a stairway. This is a general reference image of the layout of the stairway. Note this image does not match up to the stairway in the match, only the general structure. So the railings, floors and stairs themselves are different.
Here is a top down view of the general layout. The left and right sides are flat and the south and north are the stairs. The center is completely open. The stairs go upwards following the arrows.
The flat portions are each 5 meters long and 2 meters wide. The stairs are 1 meter wide and there is about 9 meters between each floor.
Bert and Lemon Demon start at basement level (on what would be the right side) and Casey and Perseus are 25 meters vertically above the other team and on the left side.
Goal: RETIRE your opponents!
Additional Information: Leaving the stairwell over the course of the match is prohibited. After all, there are civilians and bagels that will be in great danger if you retreat now!

Team	Combatant	JoJolity
Suburban Regalia	Bert	“I see, you're above me... you're hanging on a branch, huh?!” You are starting from the very bottom of this stairwell, but rise and rise you will, until you tower over this entire city! Make creative usage of the verticality and arrangement of the stairwell!
Suburban Regalia	Lemon Demon	“What would Koichi think if he sees a lit lighter resting on top of a piece of bread..? Would he think nothing of it? Definitely not! He would extinguish the flame!” Last big fight you went in, you destroyed an entire factory, and that looks like it got people real mad… Best to avoid that, and besides, bagels are on the line! Ensure that the stability of the building isn’t compromised over the course of the match!
Masters of Funky Action	Casey Williams	“If they stand just 'above' you, it'll be over.” You have the high ground, and you intend to make damn good use of this fact. Make creative usage of the verticality and arrangement of the stairwell!
Masters of Funky Action	Perseus Drakos	“For 24 hours, you are to guard that lighter without letting the flame go out!” These guys think they can just bust into someone’s home, someone’s business, and smash it to bits like it’s nothing? You will protect this place, and its occupants! Ensure that the stability of the building isn’t compromised over the course of the match!

Link to the Official Player Spreadsheet
Link to Match Schedule
As always, if you would like to interact with the tournament community and be among the first to get updates for the tournament, please feel free to PM a member of our Judge staff for an invite to our Official Discord Server!

I'm literally copying and pasting this article from Fight the New Drug's blog because I know people read posts more than they do links, but I recommend checking out the actual site. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy these points and find them as encouraging as I did:
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1. Have better sex/understanding of sex

Perhaps the biggest lie porn sells is that its fantasy world is filled with sex positivity: sexual education, more sex, better sex, etc. What it doesn’t mention, however, is that the deeper a consumer dives into that fantasy world, the more likely their reality is to become just the opposite. Porn is complicated, the science is simple: the more pornography a person consumes, the harder it can become for real relationships and sexual experiences to measure up. Ditch the shallow counterfeits and put the “sex” back in sexy. Or if you’re not ready or not old enough for sex in your relationship, get stoked on having a healthier mindset and expectation around sexuality.

2. It can become an obsession or addiction

On the surface, tobacco and porn don’t seem to have a lot in common but more and more studies are coming out showing that consuming pornography tricks your brain into releasing the same pleasure chemicals as other behaviors, or even drugs. Much like a drug, when these pleasure chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin pulse through the brain, they help to create new brain pathways that essentially lead the consumer back to the behavior that triggered the chemical release in the first place, similar to other compulsive or even addictive substances and behaviors. Although quitting can feel just as daunting and impossible as quitting a substance, the support out there is making it more possible than ever and the reward will feel just as liberating!

3. Habits and addiction can escalate

Because of its addictive nature, in order to retain the same level of interest and excitement, an individual usually needs an ever-increasing dosage of porn and constantly evolving material. Over time, their appetite escalates to more hardcore versions just to achieve the same level of arousal. The unshackling feeling that comes from breaking free from addiction before it escalates will empower you to live your life to its fullest potential!

4. Improve behavior

Sooner or later, consumers start to find themselves getting aroused by things that used to disgust them or that go against what they think deep down is right. Once they start regularly watching extreme and dangerous sex acts, these porn consumers are being taught that those behaviors are more normal and common than they actually are. There’s an obvious destructive behavior pattern caused by porn that compromises beliefs, changes ideas and turns relationships sour when pressure is placed on a partner to perform or live up to the standards set by porn. Reversing destructive behavior will happen soon after deciding to cut this hazardous influence from your life.

5. Form deeper connections

The porn industry objectifies people and commoditizes the act of sex. There’s nothing romantic or realistic about porn sex, and it seriously puts a disconnect between the consumer and reality. This makes it hard for them to have an intimate connection with a real person. You’ll only feel complete when you disconnect with porn and connect with a real person!

6. Appreciate your body

The makeup, surgery, Photoshop, and acting that goes into porn gives us an unrealistic view of the human body and sexuality. We start to subconsciously compare ourselves to what we’re seeing, causing overthinking and low self-esteem when it comes time to be intimate. Kicking your porn habit will restore a healthy body image and reinstate the sense confidence that you deserve.

7. Appreciate those you’re attracted to

In addition to affecting the way we see ourselves, porn can cause consumers to under-appreciate their partners by training them to see others as sexual objects and not as humans with beautiful and unique features. It’s likely due to the fact that porn promotes a completely fictional version of how people look and behave, and creates a false, exciting reality that their partners can never live up to. One of the first positive effects that people report soon after quitting porn is the ability to truly appreciate the beauty of real people without constantly objectifying them.

8. Prevent sexual dysfunction (ED)

This one is for the guys out there. The fact is porn often leads to less sex and less satisfying sex. For a surprising amount of consumers, porn eventually means no sex at all. Regular porn consumption has been found to affect the brain in such a way that it hinders sexual performance when they get with an actual human being. Porn-induced erectile dysfunction is a real thing in men, a side effect of watching porn that they probably never see coming. But thankfully, there absolutely is hope. A cure is to quit porn and let their brain “rewire” and return to normal

9. Stop supporting sex trafficking

The facts are clear: clicking porn directly fuels the demand for sex trafficking. There are countless victims of human sex trafficking who are forced to have sex on camera. Even in the “legitimate” adult industry, porn performers are frequently victims of violence, coercion, and drug abuse. There’s just no way to know the dark origins behind what we’re watching. By refusing to click, you’re refusing to contribute to the demand for sexual exploitation.

10. Porn promotes violence against women

From making actors participate in unsafe sex to the countless real stories of performers speaking out about the rape, violence, and drugs behind the camera, there is certainly a dark reality to this industry. Porn tries to normalize this exploitation, but we’re not buying it. To watch porn is to support a questionable industry that abuses its actors and uses misogyny and domestic violence fantasies as entertainment, all in addition to harming those who watch it. How is this acceptable?

11. Porn can lead to violent behavior

It’s true that not all porn is the same, but the reality is that the majority of even the most mainstream porn is packed full of people (especially women) being physically and verbally abused—and watching it takes a serious toll on the consumer. Even the non-violent porn portrays a power difference between partners where men are in charge and women are submissive sex objects. But unlike violence in movies where someone gets mad and fights back, research has shown that 95% of the victims of aggression in porn scenes reacted neutrally or responded with pleasure. This confuses frequent consumers to believe violence is sexy, and can lead them to hurting women in real life during sex. Unlearning this violent behavior will undoubtedly benefit you, your partner, and your sex life.

12. Increase your creativity

We believe that in order to be truly creative, you have to connect with the deepest, most honest parts of yourself. Porn clogs up your imagination with cheap content that disconnects you from feeling real passion and motivation. Once you let explicit images stop distracting you from inspiration, you’ll feel more imaginative than ever.

13. Live a more honest life

Not every porn consumer lies about their addiction, but most feel ashamed and obligated to hide it. Whether they admit it or not, they know that their partner wouldn’t like the idea of them sexually bonding to a computer screen. When you live a lie for long enough, you start to convince yourself of it as well and the more lies you tell, the harder it becomes to tell the truth about anything. Bring your secret out into the light and we guarantee you’ll feel freer than ever before.

14. Free up some time

You’ve probably realized by now that porn takes up a lot of your time. Porn consumers spend anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours daily consuming these harmful images. Anyone who frequently watches porn knows that as the years have gone on, they watch harder material for longer periods of time. Think of it this way: if you spent just 10 minutes a day watching porn, that’s over 60 hours at the end of the year you could have spent doing something beneficial to your life! Time is precious; spend it on making memories that last, not on images that disappear with a click.

15. Find someone special

In porn, everything from the way people look to how and why they have sex is a lie. Porn consumers often get so obsessed with chasing something that isn’t real that they miss out on actual relationships. Research has even shown that fewer men are getting married because they feel porn takes care of all their sexual needs. Ditch the lies and go find the love of your life! They’re waiting for you.

16. Be a better partner

Porn doesn’t just affect you, it affects your partner as well. While a great deal of information exists for those suffering from addiction, partners are often left feeling alone with equally real wounds of their own. Partners of porn consumers commonly feel betrayed and neglected when their significant other chooses to share their sexuality with a screen instead of them. When you cut porn from being the third party, you’ll find it easier to build a healthier relationship, emotionally and sexually.

17. Become a better parent

The harmful effects of porn don’t always revolve around romantic partners like boyfriends/girlfriends or husbands/wives. There are countless stories, like this one, that show how porn can isolate, consume, and eventually even destroy families. Additionally, children and teens these days are exposed to hardcore porn at a young age, and many receive their information about sex from porn which depicts unrealistic portrayals of human sexuality, leading to lifelong issues in the bedroom. Promote healthy displays of affection in your home and promote a porn-free life for your future family.

18. Become a better friend

Your porn habit can isolate you from valuable social time with friends and the shame that comes with watching porn can cause you to be distant at social gatherings. When you no longer allow yourself to be a prisoner to this habit, you no longer have to worry about the chains that come with it.

19. Maintain mental/emotional health

Being tied to a consistent porn habit requires you to spend a lot of time alone and can quickly make you uninterested in the everyday pleasures of life such as having conversations with real people and being active. Research has shown that frequent porn consuming is connected to mental/emotional health issues such as anxiety and depression. There is a strong victory over these challenges that comes with quitting porn that can be truly liberating.

20. Take back control

Research shows that one in five people who regularly watch porn admit to feeling controlled by their own sexual desires. As a result, many consumers start feeling like something’s wrong with them because they don’t know how to be turned on by a real person. This only leads to watching more porn because it’s the only escape that works. Quitting porn allows you to take back control of your sexual desires and connect with a real person.

21. Be the author of your own sexuality

With the exaggerated bodies and rehearsed scenes in porn, consumers can quickly lose perspective on their own natural desires, as well as their partner’s. Unplugging from porn will help you become more in tune with what you and your partner want instead of influencing you to reenact what you’ve seen in porn. Be the author of your own sexuality, not an imitation of something that isn’t even real.

22. Increase sexual energy

Many people deep in their porn habit can often be too busy venting their sex drive through porn, they’re not going to have much interest in real sexual intimacy with a partner. You may have already experienced a lack of drive or the inability to perform with your partner, but by quitting porn, you’ll likely reclaim that natural energy.

23. Increase overall energy

It’s obvious that porn consumes your time and your sexual attention, but do you think about how that doesn’t leave you with energy for much else? A demanding porn habit can definitely drain your body of the mental and physical energy it needs to keep up with the daily hustle of life. By turning off the monitor, you can focus on being productive and making a difference in your life and others.

24. Regain focus

People often watch porn as an escape when they become overwhelmed by the daily decisions of life. Quitting porn allows you to assume responsibility and become accountable for your own goals. By getting this distraction out of your life, you can start to focus on the things that really matter to you.

25. Reclaim self-confidence

A belief in yourself is a huge casualty of consistent porn consumption. People who feel they don’t have control over their porn habit often believe they are broken human beings with a damaged capacity to love and feel joy. These negative feelings come from your own negative feelings about porn mixed with your inability to quit, or from any of the negative side effects that go with repeatedly watching porn. By kicking the habit, you might begin to feel happier, which will fuel your confidence in all aspects of life.

26. Protect your marriage/relationship

Addiction to pornography is cited as a major reason couples divorce annually around the world. Whether you are currently married or one day hope to be, it’s a sure bet that porn is a poisonous ingredient in a marriage, or any type of committed relationship. When porn is preferred to a healthy sexual relationship with a spouse, the outcome is often a broken home. With a risk as serious as this, it makes sense to remove porn from your life altogether and avoid a bunch of issues later on.

27. Save your money

Porn is a global, estimated $97 billion industry, with $12 billion of that coming from the United States. How much have you spent on it? Even if the answer is nothing, think about it this way: your time spent watching porn could have been spent on either A) making money or B) performing better at work where you could now be making more money. Time is money after all, and by ditching porn, you’re ditching an unproductive habit that can only drag you down from living your fullest potential.

28. Maintain your natural sexuality

Porn removes the concept of intimacy and emotional connection from sex. It teaches consumers that sex is about taking selfish pleasure rather than giving love. When you fill your mind with the explicit material porn offers, it takes away the excitement of intimacy and even distorts your sexuality. By kicking the habit, your brain can return to normal and reset your arousal patterns to normal.

29. Protect your passions

The more you watch porn, the less desire you might have for the things that previously got you excited. Hanging out with friends, playing sports, making music, etc., all these things lack the “shock factor” that porn gives the brain. But not to worry, the sooner you cut out porn, the sooner you can restore a healthy and fulfilling approach to the things you care about most.

30. Prevent sexual compulsion/addiction

Addiction is never a healthy thing, regardless of what it is. Porn can create a constant need for sex/sexual material that needs to be fueled, but is never truly satisfied. This cycle can quickly grow into an obsession for the consumer, which inhibits their ability to function like a normal person in the company of people, especially the opposite sex, and can also lead to serious and harmful behaviors like soliciting sexually exploited people to act out what they’ve seen in porn. Not making porn a part of your life is a sure way to not step foot down a potentially life-changing road.

31. Don’t bond to a screen

Oxytocin is commonly called the love hormone or the “bonding chemical” because it plays an important part in intimacy by connecting two people. Because the chemical is naturally released during sex, watching porn triggers the release of oxytocin as well, tricking your brain and essentially bonding you to the experience of sexual release and watching porn. Keep love real, and don’t take fake.

32. Prevent anxiety

As talked about earlier, porn can be the onset of a number of different anxiety problems. When consumers feel like they have to be watching porn or can’t stop thinking about it, it creates serious anxiety. Not to mention, this anxiety can transfer over to the bedroom and contribute to porn-induced erectile dysfunction. Anxiety can be extremely crippling and most people experience it to on some level from the daily stresses of life as it is. Why add to it?

33. Prevent depression

We know that pornography and other addictions or compulsions are used as self-medicating tools which only lead to feeling worse than before. The momentary escape only leads to feeling lower than before. Porn is a negative influence in your life, and an easy way to start feeling happier and more free is giving it the boot.

34. Live without shame

It’s pretty simple: no porn equals no porn-fueled shame. The secrecy surrounding your habit can have huge negative effects on your life and shame can quickly settle in. You may find yourself watching things you find unacceptable, but can’t seem to stop. When this feeling starts to take its toll, it usually leads to medicating with more porn. You’re guaranteed to feel relief when you break the chains of this vicious cycle.

35. Increase productivity

Think about what more motivation could mean for you. Do you want to be more ambitious and driven? Are you wanting to achieve your goals? A survey of a Reddit community called NoFap, which is committed to breaking free from porn, found that 67% of those who quit had an increase in energy levels as well as productivity. Put it to the test for yourself. What are you waiting for?

36. Be better at your job

Besides the obvious fact that porn is a waste of time, consuming it can also fuel anxiety and depression, and make them perform worse at their job. In fact, real stories of people being caught watching porn at work prove that more and more people are putting their jobs at risk by looking at porn during work hours. Don’t let this destructive material ruin the things that matter most for your daily life.

37. Prevent STD’s

Researchers have repeatedly found that people who have seen a significant amount of porn are more likely to start having sex sooner and with more partners, and to engage in riskier kinds of sex, putting them at greater risk of getting sexually transmitted infections.

38. Be proud of yourself

By quitting porn, you’re taking a stand against a dangerous, exploitive industry and becoming an advocate for positive personal and social change. This is definitely something you can feel proud of. Change yourself, and change the world.

39. Better the world

Every single click made on a porn site is counted by the greedy companies that make that content. Clicking fuels the demand for more, feeding and growing a dark industry that harms society as a whole. For all of the harmful reasons mentioned above, stop contributing to something that ruins people’s lives and supports sexual exploitation. This negative influence doesn’t have to affect you, your peers or the countless people in the industry who are forced, coerced, and abused behind the camera. Take a stand and be the change you want to see in the world.

40. Ditch loneliness

Porn can fulfill feelings of loneliness in exchange for making them worse in the long run. Porn promises immediate satisfaction, endless excitement, and easy intimacy, but in the end, it robs a consumer of all three.

41. Avoid normalizing violence

Normalizing violence isn’t normal. It’s grown “normal” for 11-year-olds to be exposed to the most hardcore, degrading content imaginable. Imagine what that does to their expectations for real relationships and true intimacy—it corrupts and hurts it. Avoiding violent porn, and all porn in general, means avoiding the normalization and romanticization of abusive, violent behaviors that only serve to harm our society.

42. Respect others more

No one ever woke up and said, “Today, I want to get out there and ruin my current and future relationships. I’m going to cut myself off emotionally, undermine trust, and leave my partner feeling confused, rejected, angry, and betrayed.” No one says that, but a pile of research shows that’s exactly what can happen as a result of consuming porn. Choosing real love, and choosing not to consume porn means that you’re that much better at respecting others and yourself.

43. Object to objectification

There is a direct relationship between the sexual objectification of girls and aggression toward them, according to research by psychologists at the University of Kent in the U.K. We fight against porn because people aren’t just the sum of their parts, to be used and discarded without a second thought. The facts are clear: porn is harmful and research is proving it. No matter what people say to try and make pornography seem normal or harmless, there’s enough evidence out there that says it’s not.

44. Ditch fake sex

Don’t take sex tips from an industry that profits from fake orgasms. Enough said.

45. Protect youths and children

A common plotline in porn is that a teen or underage person is being taken advantage of by someone older or more powerful. By avoiding porn, you’re avoiding the twisted and unhealthy fetishization of kids and teens, and that’s a great thing. By ditching porn, you’re helping to slow the demand for youth-themed porn content. Isn’t that worth the fight?

46. Enjoy real, flawed bodies

Photoshop isn’t something you can have in real life, but that’s a good thing. Perfection means predictable, and boring. But real, flawed human bodies are unique, and beautiful. A world without porn and synthetic “beauty” is a world where comparison doesn’t overtake appreciation. We’d like to live in that world, wouldn’t you?

47. Avoid romanticizing unhealthy relationships

Real intimacy offers so much more. Real intimacy is a world of satisfaction and excitement that doesn’t disappear when the screen goes off. It’s the breathtaking risk of being vulnerable with another human being. It’s inviting them not just into your bedroom, but into your heart and life. Real intimacy is about what we give, not just what we get. Porn doesn’t portray true connections, it can only scratch the surface.

48. Have realistic relationships expectations

Relationships are hard work. They aren’t always flawless, and sex (if sex is involved) won’t be easy and perfect every single time. Love can be messy but that’s the beauty of it—it’s real, not synthetic. It’s natural, not produced. And porn has no way of showing that, because it’s all about the performance and not about the connection. Real love is immeasurably better than porn because real love is exactly that—it’s real. Ditch the porn and have your expectations adjusted.

49. Believe in love

Sometimes, when porn has clouded a consumer’s idea of what healthy relationships are and what real love can provide, they start to believe it doesn’t exist. We see comments often on our Facebook page from frequent porn consumers who can’t believe that real, healthy love exists, and that it’s worth fighting for. Getting porn out of the picture means that you’re one step closer to healing from the lies that porn infects consumers with.

50. Choose real love

This is by far the most important reason to quit porn.
Above all, porn can seriously come between you, your partner, and every other relationship in your life. It can get in between the love you have for even yourself. It distorts the meaning of love and intimacy, in all forms. The most common true stories we receive are from partners who lost the love of their life due to a struggle with porn that tore their relationship apart slowly but surely. We all want and need love. It’s the most important thing we can experience in life.
If fighting for love isn’t the best reason to stay away from porn, we don’t know what is. Porn can kill love, but it doesn’t have to. Choose love, not porn.

Is it cool if I share my new blog? No ads, I'm not selling anything. Just looking for some feedback on my writing. Here's my latest post, copied and pasted below, before you click the link.
www.c0nsumeconf0rm0bey.com
I look forward to all of your harshest criticisms. :)
(the links don't work on this copy and paste job, but they should work on the site. )

COVID19, Transhumanism, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, and The Great Reset

These topics are being discussed all over world right now, as humanity is slowly becoming aware that we are being herded, like livestock, into The New World Order. We’re being prodded, poked, and jostled into a global authoritarian system. It was agreed upon a long time ago by The Powers That Be, that humankind is not fit to govern itself. They’ve allowed some of us to exist within false democracies, and provided the illusion of control, until they were ready to take complete control. That time is nearly upon us. I wanted to take some time to break down what we know (what’s been revealed to us) about the New World Order being built around us currently.
Transhumanism was a new word for me, until I first dived down the Pandemic rabbit hole. A quick internet search for the term brings us the standard definition:
“The belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology.“
Doesn’t sound all that bad. Many would argue that humankind is already on this path with the evolution of computing technology in recent decades, and they would be right. The transhumanism being discussed by the elite, however, has a nefarious purpose. Its being sold to us under the guise of inclusion, sustainability, and fairness for all. Make no mistake, the subjugation of humanity is the end goal. The 99% is to be transformed into a docile obedient slave class, more sub-human than trans-human, in order to serve the self appointed rulers of the human race. The transformation has already begun. So how does the manufactured COVID19 crisis tie into the transhumanist endgame? Let’s look to the work of World Economic Forum executive chairman Klaus Schwab, for the answer.
“Advances in digital technologies and new materials over the last 20 years have enabled forward leaps in areas such as the understanding of genomes, genetic engineering, diagnostics and pharmaceutical development. Like fire in ancient Greek mythology, stolen from the gods by Prometheus and given to humans, the power represented by biotechnology is sometimes portrayed as a civilizational leap for humankind.“
“ …the ability to ‘read and write to’ the brain heralds new industries and systems for value creation, which will have deep social, political and economic impacts…our brains are at the core of what makes us human—they enable us to perceive and make sense of the world, to learn, imagine, dream and interact with others. Influencing the brain in more precise ways could change our sense of self, redefine what it means to have experiences and fundamentally alter what constitutes reality. By affecting how we govern ourselves, the system management of human existence, brain science encourages a huge step for humans beyond natural evolution.”
Those were excerpts from Klaus’ book “Shaping The Future Of The Fourth Industrial Revolution”. {You can obtain a copy to read yourself here} The second quote is from a chapter titled neurotechnologies, in section 2.3 Altering The Human Being. Think of Klaus Schwab as the spokesperson for The Great Reset. Is he the grand mastermind behind the entire NWO? probably not, but he is certainly involved, and he’s been pretty vocal about it. In his other book, COVID19: The Great Reset, Klaus lays out exactly what his vision of an ideal world looks like. More on that very soon.
Let’s return to our current situation, the Pandemic Crisis. Mankind is being manipulated on a never before seen scale. Across all national borders, every continent, every single individual, is being made to fear their own fellow man. We’re being socially conditioned to believe that every other person we encounter is a potential threat to our lives and the lives of our loved ones. We’re are being taught that we need to lesson physical social interaction (Unless you’re on TV) in order to save lives. We’re being deceived into rewriting our own “social contract” of what it means to be human, and in doing so, consenting to subjugation. The real issue here is not the virus itself, but the precedent that is being set.
If every single person is potentially a carrier for an extremely contagious, potentially deadly or symptom-less virus, it creates a state of general mistrust of others. You never know who might have the virus. The solution is to monitor every individuals location and contacts, as well as health status with tests. All citizens are encouraged to stay home as much as possible. They are discouraged to spend time with family on holidays. Medical masks are mandated everywhere you go in public, even though their is clearly no correlation whatsoever between mask wearing and the spread of the virus. I could write an article about masks alone. How they are useless, they don’t stop the spread of anything, they’re uncomfortable, inconvenient, and besides all the general complaints, they anonymize every individual, making facial expressions more difficult to read. Babies learn to empathize and recognize emotions by seeing their parents faces. Masks will surely negatively impact this process. Above all, masks are dehumanizing. They are a symbol of the slave class, a muzzle. Masks are essential to the Scamdemic because they make it real. They provide tangible evidence that we are living in a Pandemic. As event 201 clearly displays, the exact rules and regulations for COVID, including mask wearing, were planned down to the last detail years in advance. What we can learn from this, is that the elite are training us, not unlike how you might train your own pet. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, as described by Schwab, is a new chapter in human development.
Many hard working members of the middle class have heard the rumors or robotics and automation replacing human labor. More and more jobs, particularly in manufacturing, will be done by robots. As Artificial intelligence technology matures, human computer interaction becomes almost as natural as talking to a person. Imagine a world where this technology replaces people you see every day. People working at the gas stations, hotels, retail stores, fast food drive-throughs, restaurants. The fourth industrial revolution is planned to keep physical contact between people to the bare minimum (as well as make labor as cheap as possible). With the advent of the manufactured health crisis, we now have the perfect excuse to fully implement the proposed system.
A New World Order means the 99% are being lorded over by the 1%, who have obtained absolute power. The fourth industrial revolution is a facet of the NWO, it’s the more powerful and more present role of technology in our every day lives. The elite could never build an army out of the 99% to rule the 99%, so they seek to automate our rule, while ensuring compliance with the technocracy. We will exist within this technocratic system that rules us, while the elite enjoy their extravagant lifestyles, completely free and unhindered. An individual will be monitored every second of every day, by cameras, microphones and other sensors found all around them. Live data will be recorded, stored, and analyzed by AI algorithms. If the algorithm detects an abnormality, such as an individual staying out past curfew, not wearing a mask, saying something disparaging of the government, or breaking a law, the AI would report you to local authorities. (even determine a suitable punishment, or send a fine directly to your bank account.) If you don’t believe that such a system can exist, just look at present day communist China. I will be writing more on that in a separate post.
The transhumanist element comes into play with the advent of neurotechnology. Another great quote from Klaus:
“Neurotechnologies help us to better understand the brain and how it works, and also to influence consciousness, mood and behavior.”
By using classical conditioning on the entire population, the elites have effectively completed a “soft test” of our willingness to conform. It seems that the majority of people are willing to give up their personal right to bodily autonomy, given the proper stimulus. Now with the COVID vaccine coming soon, people are more than willing to ignore the red flags of the rushed experimental vaccine, and take the jab in order to feel safe from the invisible plague of death. Coercing the worlds population into a mandatory regular vaccination schedule is another step towards domination of humankind. Again, consider the precedent that is being set. Any number of agendas could be implemented against the population through the vaccination scheme. All we can do at the moment is speculate, but my worst fear would be the implementation of eugenics and population reduction on a global scale. Besides using chemicals to alter the way our brains work, technology could one day be used to read our very thoughts, or even send foreign thoughts directly to our brains. Sounds like science fiction, but our transhumanist slave master Schwab sees this as a real possibility. The push for a digital ID by the elites demonstrates the elitist perspective of the rest of our species. Putting everyone’s identification, health records (vaccination records), and even our digital wallet, on a biometric chip embedded in the individuals body, would be the easiest and most convenient way to manage the worlds population through the technocracy. 5G cellular networks and the Internet of Things play a role in the technocracy as well. Next generation cellular bandwidth allows much more data to be transferred over the network much more quickly, never mind the hazard of electromagnetic radiation all around us. The Internet of Things is simply a framework for more and more every day devices to be able to connect to the internet independently, in order to share information. Everything from toasters, light bulbs, door locks, or a refrigerator, can be used to monitor you, harvest data from you, and send that data to a remote server to be analyzed.
As I have mentioned many times, the announcement of The Great Reset is the announcement of The New World Order. The manufactured COVID19 pandemic is laying the groundwork of societal changes that need to be normalized in order to usher in The Fourth Industrial Revolution. If the globalists plans come to fruition, by 2030 the global technocracy will be in full effect. We will not be governing ourselves, we will be governed by algorithms processing incalculable amounts of data about our personal lives, sent by the population control grid being built around us. The groundwork for mass surveillance is already in place in most of the world, once all the harvested data is being funneled to our technocratic overlords, the system will be complete. There will be no escape from the watchful eye of Big Brother. Subliminal messages will be sent directly to our minds. Consume. Conform. Obey. Resistance will be made impossible. Before that dark age occurs for mankind, we have the opportunity to put a stop to it. We must resist now, while it is still possible to do so.
I hate to end the post on such a foreboding note, so instead I’ll leave you with this. The time to act is now. Rise up and claim your humanity before you are robbed of it. The elite mean to change the very meaning of human. We must show them now, that we will not allow it. Stand up to the subjugation. Take off your slave mask. Stop living in fear. We must unite to take our freedom back from those who wish to subjugate us. Civil disobedience is how we show them we wont comply with the enslavement agenda. Plant yourself firmly, hold your ground, and say no. Stay strong brothers and sisters.
Aur31ius

Erich Thorne promptly hit his brakes when he saw the customized purple Tesla sitting in the guest-parking spot of his laboratory.
The Alchemy Street Technology Park was a bit of an anomaly in the city of Sombermorey, and that was saying something. Conveniently located between Thorne Tech’s research partners at Avalon College and their manufacturing facilities in the Industrial District, it was inconspicuous and out of the way. Most people who had no business there gave it no thought, which was exactly how Erich liked it.
It was rare for that guest spot to be filled, and even rarer for it to be filled unexpectedly. Even so, Erich was certain he knew who had come to see him. Nervously clearing his throat in preparation for the inevitable conversation, he pulled into his own reserved parking space.
“Good morning, Doctor Thorne,” his receptionist greeted him with a cheery, if canned, salutation. Someone unfamiliar with the lab could have been forgiven for thinking that the pretty young lady was simply sitting behind a glass wall. She was, in actuality, a proprietary virtual assistant inside of an equally proprietary volumetric display.
“Good morning, Lumi. I see we have a guest today?” he asked rhetorically, looking around the empty waiting room. “She’s in my office, then?”
“Yes, sir. You had tagged her as a VIP, and so the security screening was waived,” Lumi responded. “She also presented proof of vaccinations, so I waived Covid restrictions as well, per your new policy.”
“Very good, Lumi. Please don’t interrupt us unless it’s an emergency,” he instructed.
“Of course, sir,” the bot nodded.
With a quick, nervous exhalation of air, Erich gingerly proceeded to his office. When he opened the door, sitting across from his desk was a young woman he had at one time been very familiar with; Ivy Noir.
The porcelain skin of her sylphlike face was as pristine as it had been since the last time he saw her, which simultaneously proved her resourcefulness at acquiring novel means of rejuvenation as well as her deeply rooted vanity. Her onyx black hair, worn in a blunt bob, was likewise free of a single strand of grey, and if anything, her body was even shapelier than the last time Erich had seen her.
While some may have thought that a woman of her intellect should know better than to be so obsessed with her appearance, Ivy saw it as nothing more or less than acknowledging that beauty was a prized form of social capital that helped her achieve her goals.
Appropriately, her sleek AR glasses were extremely stylish and tinted purple, obscuring the cobalt blue of her eyes. Her turtleneck, pleated short skirt and knee-high socks were all spun from cashmere, and her ankle boots were made from equally fine suede.
Erich, while nowhere near as flawless as Ivy, was still far from unattractive. He was tall, broad-shouldered and square-jawed with deep brown eyes and black hair greying at the temples. He was, however, much less fashionable, having already donned his dark Howie coat over his street clothes, leaving only his black boots visible.
Ivy gracefully spun her chair towards the door, greeting him with a warm smile.
“Hello, Erich. It’s good to see you again,” she said with seeming sincerity.
“Hello, Ivy. I’m… delighted to see you as well,” he replied as he sat down in his chair, trying his best to match her tone without surpassing it. “Welcome to Sombermorey, and congratulations on your promotion.”
“You’re up to speed, then?” she asked, unable to suppress a proud, smug grin.
“I am, and after having to put up with Chamberlin’s reckless frivolity and ego all these years, I couldn’t be happier you’re the new Head Adderman of the Harrowick Chapter,” he assured her.
“You’re not jealous?” she gently teased.
“I have my lab. I wouldn’t have accepted the position if it was offered,” he claimed. “It was a bit surprising that the Ophion Occult Order appointed a relatively young woman as a Chapter Head instead of another supernaturally old man, though I suppose that speaks volumes about your talent. I was even more surprised that you accepted, considering Harrowick County is more than a bit rustic. What about your operation in London?”
“I can rent lab space from you, move anything that requires my personal oversight here, and let my proxies take care of the rest,” she shrugged.
“I thought you might say that,” Erich nodded, struggling to conceal his concern. “Your main project right now is researching the Children of Erebus, isn’t it?”
“It is. You’re not afraid of the dark, are you Erich?” she teased.
“No one’s afraid of the dark; they’re afraid of what’s in it,” he countered. “I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Tell me, where are you staying? The Golden Horus?”
Ivy scoffed at the suggestion.
“No, I’m not entirely comfortably staying anywhere owned by Chamberlin,” she replied. “He’s been reasonably accommodating during the transition, and outwardly he’s contritious enough, but… I don’t trust him yet. It’s a bit of a problem, since he seems to own the only luxury apartment buildings and is quite chummy with all the millionaires up in Arthur Heights.”
“Yes, I’m afraid there’s not much of High Society around here that Chamberlin isn’t involved with on some level,” Erich informed her. “You didn’t answer my question though. You didn’t sleep in your car last night, did you?”
“No, I… I rented a room at the Somber Starlight Roadhouse up the highway,” she confessed. Erich arched an eyebrow at her.
“You’re staying at a ninety-nine dollar a night truck stop motel?” he asked in disbelief. “A motel that’s beside a haunted forest and a trailer park?”
“Well, it obviously wasn’t the kind of place that Chamberlin would have anything to do with,” Ivy explained.
“You probably should have slept in your car,” Erich retorted. “Are you really going to sleep there until you find your own place?”
Ivy bit her lip, considering her response.
“I was actually wondering how you would feel if I moved back in with you?” she asked hesitantly. She had been hoping his reaction would be obvious, but instead he was putting on an unreadable poker face. “Look, I came to you first for a reason. I know you. I trust you, and I need someone I know and trust on my side right now. You know Harrowick County, you’re already set up here, and… I want you back, okay? It’s been difficult finding a man who’s both intelligent enough to be engaging and secure enough not to be threatened by my own intelligence.”
“So, you want to get back together with me because it’s convenient for you and because you couldn’t find anyone better?” Erich asked dispassionately with a raised eyebrow. Ivy shamefully averted her gaze to the floor.
She fidgeted with a platinum mood ring on her finger, one which Erich had made for her long ago. He still wore its mate, and the two shared a quantum entanglement with one another, each reflecting the mood of the other. Ivy's ring wasn't helping her much, indicating that Erich was mostly calm with some slightly mixed feelings.
Erich glanced at the ring on his own finger, and saw that it had a core of remorse and regret with an outer ring of nervousness and uncertainty.
“Would it help if I apologized?” she asked.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Erich shrugged.
“I was the one who ended it. You have every right to be indignant at me asking you to take me back after all this time,” Ivy admitted. “But the only reason I broke up with you was because of our age difference. As much as I liked you, in my more lucid moments I worried you might be taking advantage of my naiveté.”
“Well, I’m still older than you, genius,” he smirked.
“Yes, obviously, but the difference is that instead of being barely legal, I’m now a confidently mature adult, so there’s nothing remotely inappropriate about our age gap. If I want to date a man more than ten years my senior, that’s my business,” she said self-assuredly. “I’m not apologizing for breaking up, but I do still care about you, and if I hurt you, I truly do regret that. I'm not denying that a big part of the reason I want to get back together now is that it would be eminently practical, for both of us. You said yourself you weren’t on the best of terms with Chamberlin. Now you have an opportunity to be the new Chapter Head's boy toy. Are you going to pass that up? Is that sex-bot you got in the lobby really worth it?”
“She’s not a – first of all, I wasn’t even personally involved on that project, and how would that even work? She’s a hologram confined to her display, she doesn’t even have any -” he cut his protest short at the sound of Ivy’s snickering.
Letting the matter drop, he paused for a moment to consider the implications of what Ivy was offering.
“Eminently practical, you say?” he asked, tenting his fingers.
“That’s right,” Ivy nodded with a confident grin. “You must have something you wanted from Chamberlin that he never let you have. Tell me what it is, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Erich fell silent again, debating on whether he could really trust Ivy with what he was working on.
“I think… you should see our sublevels before you commit to any promises,” he said at last. Ivy’s eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning, her mind clearly racing with the possibilities of what he could be working on down there.
“I think you’re right,” she nodded.
Erich led her into a spartan service elevator, which required both an access code and pass card before it would descend to the subterranean levels.
“When I asked Seneca about you, he didn’t seem to think that you lived up to your persona as a mad scientist,” Ivy remarked. “Said you were just working on shoving your off-brand voice assistant into vending machines and whatnot. I’m guessing you never showed him what you’re about to show me?”
“He never asked,” Erich shrugged. The elevator hit the bottom of the shaft with a soft thud, its doors sliding open to reveal a heavy set of steel blast doors on the other side. Erich punched another code into the keypad, and with a very low beep, the blast doors opened as well.
Before them was a long and wide room with a high, convex ceiling made of reinforced concrete. In addition to the expected light fixtures, utility conduits and electrical cables, the ceiling also supported a system of rails from which sets of automated arms moved to and fro. While the room did have some standard lab equipment in it, its main purpose appeared to be for the containment of live specimens. Tanks of thick, ballistic glass were bolted either to steel tables or the floor depending on their size.
And within those tanks, Ivy could see something squirming.
She looked up at Erich with a gleeful smile, to which he gave a permissive nod, letting her know that it was safe for her to go in for a closer look. She ran to the tank nearest her and saw that it contained what looked like overgrown rat pups. They were blind and hairless and dark pink, but were big enough to fit in the entirety of her hand. They were also lumpy and irregularly shaped, their skin peppered in wart-like growths. Their limbs were oddly misshapen as well, and the poor creatures seemed almost completely immobile.
Ivy glanced over the tank for any indication of what had been done to the rodents when she spied a label that read ‘Tithonus Project, Rodent Test #16. Received V14.8 Anastatic Treatment on March 8th, 2012’.
Immediately grasping the implications, she laughed in astonishment.
“These rats are almost nine years old?” she asked. “That’s amazing.”
“What’s more amazing is that not only are these the oldest rats in the world, but that they’re still alive after being poisoned, infected, mutilated, irradiated, frozen, burned, starved, dehydrated, and asphyxiated multiple times over,” Erich boasted proudly, hands clasped behind him as he sidled up beside her. The revelation that the lab rats extended lives had been mostly filled with horrific torture only impressed Ivy all the more.
“How?” she asked in wonder.
“You recall that I was researching quantum biology, and in particular its relationship with panpsychicism and paranormal phenomenon?” he asked. “That research eventually led to the creation of what I’ve taken to calling anastatic nanoparticles, or motes. When absorbed or injected into biological cells, they induce novel bioquantum effects that make the cells abnormally resilient. Virtually any injury that doesn’t outright destroy the cell can be recovered from, and this includes dead cells that received the nanoparticles posthumously. If a cell lacks the necessary nutrients to sustain or rebuild itself, instead of dying it will enter an indefinite state of diapause until resources are once again obtainable. It works in multicellular organisms as well, as you can see, with a few caveats.”
“Yes, I assumed there was a reason you named this the Tithonus Project,” Ivy said as she examined the rats more closely. “Your nanoparticles grant functional immortality, but not negligible senescence?”
"Short answer; yes. Over time, treated cells do show a marked decline in function and increased rate of harmful mutations, including cancerous ones," he nodded. "I've been fine-tuning the design though, and I have found a few that prevent and reverse senescence in human cells, at least in vitro. There are, however, some concerns that have made me reluctant to move to live trials.”
“Such as?”
“Well…” he gestured to a larger containment tank on the floor, this one encased in a mesh cage with a small electronic device sitting on top of it. Inside were several rats huddled together, all with black fur and red eyes, but otherwise looking normal and healthy.
Their label read ‘Tithonus Project, Rodent Test #37. Received V21.7 Anastatic Treatment on April 04, 2017. TANTIBUS RATS, EXTREME SAFETY HAZARD – DO NOT HANDLE OR REMOVE FROM CAGE*. Notes: In addition to the intended anastatic and rejuvenating effects, V21.7 has produced paranormal effects, believed to be caused by enhancing the cells’ innate interaction with panpsychic fields. When frightened, subjects are capable of telepathically projecting nightmarish hallucinations into the minds of anyone within their direct line of sight as a defence mechanism. Said ability has greatly impeded attempts to study subjects further’*.
“Psychic rats?” Ivy asked with a tone a wry amusement. “I’ll be honest, a side of psychic powers with my immortality doesn’t exactly sound like a bad thing.”
“It’s still a variable I need to get a much better grasp on before I’d be willing to try this stuff on humans, let alone myself,” Erich insisted.
“And that’s where I come in?” Ivy asked hopefully.
“Yes. I never told Chamberlin about this. He has his own methods for extending human lifespan. They’re not scalable or sustainable, but he’d never admit that. He also never would have let me push him out of the market with a mass-produced elixir of immortality. But you, Ivy, I trust you.”
Ivy nodded as a mawkishly satisfied grin spread across her face.
“Tell me what you need, darling.”
***
In an impressively, possibly even shockingly, short amount of time, Ivy had acquired everything on Erich’s wish list; thirty feet of Blue Moon Silver chain, forty pounds of Chthonic Salt, and a dozen year-old jack-o-lanterns that had somehow survived well past their prime.
Erich expressed his profuse gratitude for these items, primarily by not asking how she had obtained them.
Erich, for his part, had acquired a corpse, and Ivy extended the same courtesy to him.
“But why a cadaver, darling? Was it really easier to get a hold of than a live subject?” she asked as the two of them stood around the pale, blue body that had only just thawed from the cryogenic tank.
“It will be easier to get rid of if something goes wrong,” he answered as he connected the corpse to the cardiopulmonary bypass machine. “Besides, I want to test full-organism anastasis in a human test subject, and I’m not risking killing a live person just for that.”
“Commendable, but your little motes will certainly have their work cut out for them trying to patch up a body this far gone,” Ivy said as she strapped the cadaver down with the silvery blue chains. The metal was an alchemical alloy of primarily silver, copper and iron that maximized the mystical properties of all three, and could be counted on to burn anything from faeries, to werewolves, to the undead.
“I’ve successfully resuscitated entire rats and human organs that were in cryogenic storage for months. I see no theoretical reason why this shouldn’t work,” he replied. “My main concern is that the unparalleled complexity of the human brain will prove too much to adequately regenerate to full functionality.”
“Mine is that the regenerated nervous system will form a wholly new soul out of the panpsychic Aether instead of pulling its original one out of the astral plane, otherwise I wouldn’t call it a resurrection at all,” Ivy added. “What good does it do me if I’m stuck in Hades while someone else is walking around in my body?”
“Based on my work so far, I’d lean towards it being the same soul. Those Tantibus Rats are clearly from Hell,” Erich said. “Alright, everything’s hooked up on my end. What about you?”
“The body’s secure, the salt circle is cast to contain any unexpected psychic activity from the subject, and I’ve lit no less than twelve bewitched jack-o-lanterns to fend off Persephone, in case she has any objections to us abducting one of her citizens,” Ivy replied, admiring the jack-o-lantern that was nearest to her. “You were right, darling. Chamberlin was very reluctant to part with these. The Witch who carved these really knew her stuff. I do hope he didn’t acquire these from her under duress. Anyway, I’m green on all signal checks. I’m ready when you are.”
Erich nodded, switching on the bypass machine with a single unceremonious hand gesture. The crimson donor blood, cold and dark and saturated with Thorne’s anastatic nanoparticles, began to gradually flow into the lifeless body.
“Nothing to do now but wait for the motes to diffuse into the cells and work their magic,” Erich announced, his voice equal parts optimistic and impatient.
And so, they waited, eyes constantly glancing back between the readouts on the transparent screens and the lifeless body strapped to the operating table, blood constantly flowing in and out of it and spinning around inside of the bypass machine.
“Hmmm, might have something, love,” Ivy announced as she compared data points from the start of the experiment. “The core body temperature’s gone up, more than the blood transfusion can account for. The bypass machine is drawing in more oxygen as well. Possibly a sign of cellular metabolism, but CO2 levels are unchanged.”
“The metabolism of anastatic cells is highly efficient, so much so that waste products are often negligible,” Erich nodded. “Any EEG or ECG activity yet?”
She didn’t respond immediately, instead just incredulously scrutinizing the information her instruments were giving her.
“Ivy?”
“I’m picking up some nervous system activity, but it’s sporadic,” she replied. “The particles are definitely doing something, but I can’t tell if it’s anything useful.”
“It’s twitching,” Erich said softly, now stepping as close to the body as he dared, eyes glued to it, wanting to witness the exact moment it sprang back to life. It twitched subtly and sporadically, supporting Ivy’s statement, but Erich swore that as the seconds ticked by the movements became stronger and more consistently directed to struggling against its restraints.
Suddenly, without warning or fanfare, the cadaver took in a deep gasp of air, its chest rising as high as its restraints would allow. Startled by the sudden outburst, Erich stumbled backwards, but neither he nor Ivy would take their eyes off of their test subject. The corpse breathed in again, and again, each breath just as desperate as the last.
“EEG is more stable now, but still limited to autonomic activity,” Ivy announced. “Its cardiopulmonary system is working on its own. It doesn’t need the bypass anymore.”
Erich didn’t respond. He remained transfixed upon his creation, gazing upon it in a mix of overwhelming wonder and pride.
“Go on; say it,” Ivy smiled. “I know you want to. Come on, you have to say it.”
Erich spared her the briefest of glances, and then started giggling.
“It’s… alive,” he murmured. “It’s alive. It’s alive! It’s alive, it’s alive! It’s alive!”
Ivy broke out into laughter and even applauded a little. The creature itself was, for the moment at least, far less impressed by its own resurrection. As soon as it had enough air, it began to scream and roar, fighting against its restraints with all its strength.
“Should we sedate it?” Ivy asked.
“Not yet. Let’s give the brain a bit more time to regenerate, and see if the subject displays any sign of higher cognition,” Erich replied. “What sort of thaumatological readings are you getting?”
“I’m not picking up on any spectral entities, and the body’s psionic signature is exactly what I would expect for a braindead husk,” she reported. “There’s no soul yet, old or new.”
The body screamed again, only this time it sounded a little less enraged and a little more terrified, as though it was begging for mercy in the only voice it had.
“Are you sure about that, Ivy? That scream sounded quite soulful to me,” Erich remarked. Enraptured by the abomination he had made, he slowly walked up to its side, caressing its face with the back of his hand in a meaningless gesture to calm it.
It screamed again, but this time its roar was accompanied by a telekinetic shockwave that sent Erich tumbling backwards to the floor.
“Erich!” Ivy screamed, rushing to help him to his feet.
"I'm fine, I'm fine! Hit the sedatives!" he ordered. Ivy nodded and flipped a switch on the bypass machine to introduce a powerful tranquilizer into the being's system. "That was telekinetic, wasn't it? I thought we weren’t getting any psionic readings from it.”
“It must be the motes. They’re lowering the threshold for psionic abilities somehow," Ivy guessed. There was another great, painful bellow, and this time the bypass machine was smashed to bits. “Quickly, get outside the salt circle!”
Helping Erich to his feet, the pair crossed the boundary of midnight blue Chthonic Salt, thinking that would be enough to protect them.
But Chthonic Salt was a fickle substance. Like common Witches’ Salt, it was made with ash. What made it special was that those ashes came from the body of a sacrifice that had been ritualistically burned alive. The ritual specifically took advantage of an anguished soul departing for the underworld, using the brief hole in the Veil to imbue the ashes with specific Hadean properties. While it was potent stuff, its effects were only truly predictable in a few very specific circumstances.
Erich and Ivy had both thought that, being of the underworld, it should have been highly effective against any sort of undead abomination they might whip up. But they had blurred the lines between science and magic just a bit too much, and their experiment’s paranormal abilities weren’t coming from demonic possession, but from whatever vague quantum woo Erich’s nanoparticles did.
As such, their monster’s telekinetic reach extended past the perimeter of the salt circle with barely any resistance at all.
Cages and equipment were battered around like debris in a hurricane. Vents were pulled down from the ceiling and the blast doors to elevators were crushed like soda cans. Finally, the room began to shake like an earthquake, a rain of cement dust foreshadowing its imminent collapse.
“Erich! Erich hit the failsafe! The salt’s not working, we’ll die if you don’t!” Ivy pleaded.
Erich looked back at their creation, still screaming and roaring as it fought against its restraints. The undead flesh was now visibly burning against the silver chains, fuelling its agony. But if it burned long enough and hot enough, it would melt through its chains and be free to do whatever it pleased, after it dug its way out of the collapsed lab, of course.
Accepting that failure was marginally preferable to death, Erich pulled out his remote and activated the powerful electromagnet beneath the slab. The chains were pulled downwards with such immense force that the body was instantly dismembered into numerous disparate pieces. More importantly, the anastatic nanoparticles were wretched from their cells, robbing them of their superpowers while also killing them on the way out.
Within seconds, the corpse was inanimate once more, and its psychic assault on the laboratory ceased just as abruptly.
Erich and Ivy remained huddled together on the floor, awaiting either the collapse of the roof or some yet other unforeseen calamity that would end their lives.
“Well… that was a bit anti-climactic,” Erich chuckled, gently waving the remote he had used to vanquish their monster with the press of a button. “At least it’s over now.”
“Erich,” Ivy whispered softly, staring with unblinking dread at something on the other end of the lab.
Erich followed her gaze, and in the pale emergency lighting he could just barely make out the silhouettes of seven black rats scampering their way across the laboratory floor and into the fallen vent. One by one, they crawled up it, the last one pausing to look back with its shiny scarlet eyes, before scurrying after its fellows.
The Tantibus Rats of Erich Thorne were now free upon the world.
“Well… rats.”

Original post, with commentaries on the first 9 chapters
Commentaries on chapters 10-24
———
CHAPTERS 25&26
Ishmael still isn't done beating his advocacy pulpit. He's run his mouth so much that he's hungry, talking about coronation rituals with salt and castor and salad oil—oil as intellectual lubricant, "sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils", the one case where people can use non-medicinal hair oil and not consign themselves to mediocrity and contempt. Yet anointment is a staple of Christianity, supposed to be used in baptisms and meant to ward off evil and demons; perhaps it is a bad omen for common folk to be visibly anointed, since people don't like to be reminded of their own fallibility and prefer to pretend they are self-reliant.
After declaring that whalemen are integral to coronations, Ishmael is finally done, and introduces chief mate Starbuck to us. Starbuck is a man of great vitality, managing his trauma through fortitude that doesn't flag in any clime and through caution that treats some superstition as rational and courage as a tool dangerous in excess:

I will have no man in my boat who is not afraid of a whale.

This caution is a compromise: he wants to return safely to his "young Cape wife and child", but can't imagine forsaking the business of whaling, despite its traumatic effects on him being visible to Ishmael. Maybe both despite and because of that, since Starbuck lost his father and brother to whaling; there is a timebomb in him, due to his bravery being weak to spiritual terrors "which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man."
Ishmael would be loath to write about "the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude" were it to happen, because

man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes

—yet this chapter exposes such a blemish while claiming it won't be relevant. How would Ishmael even know about it?
For Ishmael, something essential in each of us bleeds at the exposure of ignominy in another, because the valor ruined by such exposure is "that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture"—the strength of the soul, accessible to commoners, the foundation of democracy, which any man, no matter how mired in grief or sin, can use to "lift himself to the exalted mounts", and Ishmael vows to robe such men in "ethereal light", as if he's a prophet who can say whom God has championed. My man went straight from advocating for whaling to advocating for humanity, but not even treating his position as objectionable—and he built his case around Starbuck, whose only apparent weakness is to the spiritual assault of an authority figure that would cave in his integrity and his democratic dignity.
Starbuck is a reliable, worldly man, but limited by his resignation to what he takes to be his place; he doesn't strive for more, not to defeat a vicious whale and not to stand up against a domineering man, so the source of his competence is the seed of his downfall. Losing people to whaling accidents stripped Starbuck of the trust in himself to act with integrity and boldness in crisis situations, boldness being taken for recklessness—not a terrible position for a man who just wants to earn an honest living for his family, but with how unpredictable profits from whaling voyages can be, this isn't a stable career suitable for someone who wishes to be content with their lot in life or who is excessively aware of how little control they have over nature at her worst. Ishmael frames Starbucks' timebomb as a "fall of valour", but I think it would be the revelation of the lack of valor in that area, contrary to Ishmael's grandiose optimism about human greatness. In his effort to defend democratic principles, Ishmael's framing only betrays the flaws of democratic ideals—above all, the fact that they're ideals, requiring great pretension to present them as widely fulfilled.
Ishmael doesn't even try to throw robes over man's flaws; he prefaces that optimism with "Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be", the world wicked in all meridians. The appearance of such blemishes, quite real before becoming visible, is taken as an offense to piety, which amounts to blaming God for Adam and Eve's decision to sin and thereby plunge mankind into unfulfillable debt. But this is all overlooking the nobility of the man who accepts the thankless responsibility to preach truth and virtue, as Father Mapple and Jonah before him did, and as Queequeg did upon realizing that this is a joint-stock world (rather than companies, which economizes the original sin and implicitly treats salvation as competitive and zero-sum) that should encourage pagans and Christians alike to look out for each other.
This chapter is conspicuously devoid of any moral judgments about Starbuck, narrowly brushing past them wherever they could be brought up naturally. Ishmael rather focuses on the equality of men in their God-given opportunities to rise above each other in their roles in providence—Bunyan, Cervantes, Jackson—even though democracy is a collective affair and any man's ascendance is predicated at the very least on its validation through others' recognition and sanction, and almost always on the social, spiritual, and physical resources that are needed from others along any path to nobility.
Starbuck doesn't need an ornate robe thrown over his flaws; he needs a friend who can show him how to realize and navigate his flaws so he doesn't make any despair-inducing decisions when his timebomb detonates and someone like Ahab commands something unreasonable of him. And Ishmael would probably do well to not project his ideals and aspirations onto others; he ends up saying more about himself than the characters when he does so.
———
CHAPTERS 27&28&29
Ishmael introduces second mate Stubb, who poses a stark contrast to the overcautious Starbuck in having a carefree, cheerful, fearless—though not valiant—demeanor, like that of a carpenter:

He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster.

Ishmael figures that Stubb's carefreeness comes from his addiction to smoking on his pipes, the smoke acting as a sort of counter-miasma "against all mortal tribulations". Stubb is go-with-the-flow even about death, but Ishmael believes he sees death as a call upwards, whose contents would only be known when he obeyed the order—and he was neither hurrying nor hesitating toward that call.
Careless, not but boldly reckless like the third mate, Flask, whose vitriol toward all whales reduced them in his eyes to "a species of magnified mouse, requiring only a little circumvention and some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil." Starbuck must not have a say in Flask's presence; Stubb's a liability enough, but Flask's utter lack of reverence and mystification can't possibly end well. Not only is Flask openly motivated by spite, but he has fun on the voyages that probably bore others to death; he's built "to clinch tight and last long", to brace the ship against nature's onslaughts—but Ishmael doesn't acknowledge what a hazard his attitude is.
The three mates are very different men, ranging from careful to carefree to reckless, and each serves as a knight with one of the harpooneers as his squire: Starbuck with Queequeg; Stubb with Tashtego, a Native who traded his father's bow and arrow for the harpoon; and Flask with Daggoo, a giant of imposing humility. The harpooneers have each been hunters in some form since their youth, and retain their native customs because they haven't spent enough time on land to integrate into American or other culture, whereas the officers are American-born.
The Pequod is a miniature of Hobbes' Leviathan mentioned in the extracts, a diverse mixture of men marshalled by Ahab, American-born sailors providing the brains and everyone else supplying the muscle. Whaling may be a staple of the American economy in this time frame, but it wouldn't be so without the many, many non-Americans onboarded for the opportunities whaling provides. Even if it's a dangerous, unreliable career, and your credit will go to the shareholders and officers, it's a legitimate investment if your prospects are limited by illiteracy, non-acculturation, and lack of education.
All these whalers are "federated along one keel" "to lay the world’s grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back." They're united by their quest to slay whales, but each man has a very different relationship with the whales, whether as receptacles for monstrous projections whereby to eradicate the monstrosity so projected, or as mere paychecks, or as rats to enjoy exterminating, or as harbingers of God's wrath—as creatures through which to rebel against God while clinging to piety.
At last, Ishmael introduces Ahab, who delivers vicarious orders through the mates while continuing to brood, while Ishmael can no longer suppress his suspicions—though it's well too late to back out now. During a gloomy morning of the Pequod's latitudinal descent, Ahab appears to the crew, appears "like a man cut away from the stake", which I'm interpreting as his hellfiery executors (the whale's jaws of despair) changing their minds and sparing him, leaving him with a decocted body of "solid bronze", like Cellini's cast of Perseus (depicted holding Medusa's head).
Ahab has a scar that may be a head-to-toe—man's reach from Earth or hell to heaven, I suppose—birthmark or the brand of lightning—the crew doesn't speculate much about it, nor can those who do—with zero basis—agree. Ahab replaced his leg, lost all the way over by Japan, with a peg carved from a sperm whale jawbone.
Ahab is silent as he looks over his crew, and unease seizes all under his "troubled master-eye"—there is "crucifixion in his face", that of bearing with dignity an immeasurable and fatal woe. What makes a noble hero tragic is first that they bring upon their own downfall somehow, but second that they bear a superhuman load of trauma before buckling. Ahab is then seen every day, his presence longer each time, as the foul winter weather departs, although he is still unneeded so long as there's no whaling to be done. The clouds themselves settle on his brow, as though he were a great mountain or Atlas shouldering the sky.
Ishmael implies that the sunny weather alone is what lifts Ahab's mood, but it could well be that the ship is getting palpably closer to the whales, to the whale, which must be on Ahab's mind every waking and sleeping second. The now-vernal days are "warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant"—that sounds like Ishmael trying in vain to milk all the hope he can from the now-realized imagery that Bildad left him with, and even looking forward to some action.
The tropics bring to them dazzling nights that wring out memories as frigid, clear crystals, and Ahab is out of his cabin more than in it because it feels like a tomb and he must be having nightmares too. Ahab barely sleeps, but despite his restlessness, is often considerate of how his heavy steps would keep people below from sleeping.
When Stubb insults Ahab within earshot, suggesting there be a way to muffle his steps, Ahab, indignant, asks if he's a cannonball, but is willing to brush it off, dismissing Stubb to his "nightly grave" like a dog to the kennel. Stubb argues back, but can't stand his ground against the fearsome captain, and departs, monologuing an existential crisis, deliberating retaliation against or prayer for Ahab—Stubb isn't pious; Ahab even put the fear of God into Stubb. Stubb suspects Ahab holds late clandestine meetings; that might be noteworthy.
———
CHAPTERS 30&31
Ahab calls for his pipe, and realizes that smoking no longer soothes, that his nervous puffing resembles the plumes of a dying whale, "the strongest and fullest of trouble," so he discards it overboard. The pipe is meant for serenity, like that of Stubb or a mild elder, like whom Ahab is neither. On this day, the puffs blew back in his face against the wind, which other men may have found undignified, but which unlikely perturbed Ahab, despite his royal bearings on his ivory stool. Throwing away the pipe may have been impulse from a mild inconvenience, or a decision to not let smoking dull his fire, or disgust at the pipe reminding him of his own mortality—or all three.
The next morning, Stubb tells Flask about a bizarre dream he had, where Ahab kicked him with his ivory peg, and Stubb trying to kick the captain in retaliation but only hurt himself, as though he were attacking a "cursed pyramid"—the most imposing, unassailable tomb ever built. Stubb rationalized that getting kicked by a dead appendage wasn't so bad, as "there’s a mighty difference between a living thump and a dead thump." While kicking in vain, he's accosted by a "badger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back"—sperm whales have small humps on their backs, and badgers (known for toughness and aggression) can have "iron-grey" hair like Ahab, so I figure this merman is a mixture of the two.
Stubb threatens to kick even him, backing off after seeing spikes lodged in the merman's back—a sperm whale could endure with harpoons buried in non-vital areas. The merman convinces Stubb to stop his pettiness, because the merman considers it a wisening honor to be kicked by that ivory leg—implying that this is the whale appearing in a dream with great respect for Ahab that he imparts onto Stubb, who, concluding his reminiscence, declares it best to ignore Ahab from now on. Right then, the first whales are spotted at sea, with a caveat: "If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!"
———
CHAPTER 32
Now that the first whales have been sighted, Ishmael starts to lay out his blueprint for a science of whales, a "classification of the constituents of a chaos"—on top of their divine and sublime qualities, whales have thwarted naturalists, philosophers, and shipmen alike to try to capture them in thought, but their great size has made the the object of many such attempts by figures as diverse as "Authors of the Bible" (isn't it weird for him to not think the Bible was written by God?), Scoresby, Aristotle, and Linnaeus. The list of whale-authors Ishmael provides shows just how much work he laid upon the sub-sub in the extracts.
Ishmael regards Scoresby as the leading expert on Greenland (bowhead) whales, the "usurper upon the throne of the seas", taking offense to the bowhead whale's status, established and perpetuated through traditions of poetic allusions to such whales, because the sperm whale, no matter how shrouded in obscurity and fable, is the proper monarch of the sea. It's Ishmael's goal to be the first author to breathe life to the sperm whale, the only two reliable accounts then-extant about the whales being "mostly confined to scientific description".
It seems almost like Ishmael is setting out this taxonomy primarily to accentuate the sperm whale at the head as the leviathan of leviathans; he doesn't even concern himself with the completeness of the program he lays out, "because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty." But even trying to map the contours of a cetology is a monumental effort, equal for Ishmael to having "one’s hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world", which is ironic because the fact that whales surface proves that they need to breathe, and, having limited lung capacity, can't swim into the abyss unless it is shallow—and then it's not an abyss!
Ishmael's cetology tries to capture and thereby control—to bind this "chaos" in a rigid, hierarchical order—God's power incarnated in these sea-beasts. "Behold the hope of him is vain!" He cites reasons for whales not being fish, "waiving all argument" and declaring the matter settled—even though whales' vertical swimming, lungs, and warm blood, like those of other mammals, vs fishes' horizontal swimming, non-lungs, and cold blood is damning evidence in evolutionary biology, which Darwin was then hard at work laying the modern foundations of—, happily defining the whale as "a spouting fish with a horizontal tail" simply because nothing else he knows of fits that description: fishes don't spout and walruses can move on land. Ishmael's criteria for what counts as a whale are rather arbitrary, letting anything "the best-informed Nantucketers" regard as whales count as whales—despite having given a definition with unambiguous criteria—and excluding some fish not just for lacking spouts, but for being "noisy, contemptible".
The cetology program is divided into three books for tiers of size, subdivided into chapters for species, selecting as mascots for each tier the sperm whale (folio), the grampus (octavo), and the porpoise (duodecimo). True to form, Ishmael starts with glorifying the sperm whale as the most formidable, majestic, lucrative, and large whale—and, by extension, organism—on Earth, but ends with the note that the sperm whale's name comes from a mixture of a popular misconception that the oil is that "quickening humor" found in bowhead whales, and of the term's retention by drug dealers from back when spermacetti was a precious commodity used for medicine, retention to "enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity." The sperm whale's overratedness is built into its philology, which Ishmael recognizes but merely dismisses as "absurd" instead of seeing irony—and he's otherwise in a comedic mood in this chapter.
The powers of hearsay, abstraction, erudition, and convenient assumptions (conflating the bowhead and right whales, which are now recognized as different species) allow Ishmael to recognize in many different names one and the same whale in each chapter. The finback whale (which can grow up to 90 feet long, longer than any confirmed sperm whale) is characterized as misanthropic, elusive, and reclusive, as "the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race", and is conflated with other whales whose bones are harvested on the basis of similarities in hump, back-fin, teeth, and baleen—these traits strike Ishmael as the obvious discriminators to categorize whales, but he admits that "it is in vain to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan" around these traits.
This ungeneralizable heterogeneity has thwarted whale-naturalists, but even if any had the flexibility to realize that such differentiable traits weren't a sound basis for a taxonomy, the tools (of dissection and concept) to pursue stronger leads were inaccessible to them. Half-recognizing this, Ishmael proceeds boldly under the pretense that his way is the only "practicable" program. The folio book concludes with sulphur-bottom whales, which are in fact blue whales, and which Ishmael speculates with no trace of sarcasm got their "brimstone belly" by "scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of [their] profoundest divings"—what lung capacity to manage a descent to hell!
Folio and octavo book formats have similar proportions despite differing in size, whereas quarto, the size between them, doesn't preserve their shape. Although Ishmael wants to show that octavo whales are like folios, simply smaller, skipping quarto emphasizes the gap in size. The octavo whales have distinct superstitions: grampuses portend sperm whales, hyena whales bear an "everlasting Mephistophelean grin", narwhals are "sinister" (left-handed or witchy) unicorns, and orcas are killers like all of us.
Ishmael's knowledge is heavily skewed by his agendas and limitations. He does seem to be committed to thoroughness while knowing his blueprint is woefully incomplete, and adds "a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales" for later investigators to fit into his system, and glosses over mentions of whales in ancient texts, "suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing."
Since this novel symbolizes whales as God's wrath (fury motivated by justice), and because Ishmael narrates as the survivor of a shipwreck, probably having seen the literal jaws of death several times, and because Ishmael had been struggling with his faith since before he boarded the Pequod, and since the Shakespeare reference feels out-of-place, it's all the more fitting—now finished laying out his cetology, many of the connections Ishmael has formed about them must be fresh on his mind, and some of those connections weigh heavily.
Because Ishmael leaves this blueprint for his successors, it seems to be his vie for transcendence, not quite immortality, but something to leave when his body rots and his soul is silenced, for "grand [architects], true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity"—a lot of grandiosity to cover the fact that Ishmael has no idea what he's doing, stuck in a lifelong obsession that didn't grant him wisdom, worldliness, or even legitimate knowledge.
I highly doubt Melville, these connections made, supported the cetology he has Ishmael voice, especially because he had access to Darwin's notes from his Beagle voyage, notes that included existentially unsettling musings about the origin of species: their malleability, diversity, and adaptations, musings that had to be born of overwhelming evidence because Darwin was an orthodox Christian, unlike Ishmael.
———
CHAPTER 33
In the history of whaling, command of the ship used to be divided between the captain, tasked with "the navigation and general management of the vessel", and the specksynder or chief harpooneer, in charge of "the whale-hunting department and all its concerns". By the present, the latter's dignity had been reduced, and the harpooneer's command confined to "night watches on a whaling ground", but due to their importance for whaling voyages' profits, harpooneers were given the boarding of officers, set apart from the crewmen despite being their "social equal".
Many captains used the rigid social norms normal to whaling ships to parade themselves around like emperors, and although Ahab "was the least given to that sort of shallow assumption", even he exploited his privileges of "practical, available supremacy over other men", the "irresistible dictatorship" that almost all in positions of unchecked power inevitably succumb to, and that are only possible through the "external arts and entrenchments" established to situate authorities and exempt them from "the world's hustings", from debate, election, and even accountability.
For Ishmael, dictators earn the highest honor due to their fallibility compared to "the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert", which I take to mean saints with principles of faith and justice that are unmoved by anything material or at "the dead level of the mass", over which it is no great honor to reign. Ahab is no saint, despite and probably due to his "moral indomitableness", which is a trait that saints have, but there's no indication that Ahab's is buttressed by principles: he's not a pious or God-fearing, and he's willing to exploit his powers for selfish and unstated ends, and this novel promises to end in disaster—were Ahab a saint, he wouldn't bring tragedy that would make it into the history books; he would have a stable, respectable, and unassuming life and career.
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CHAPTER 34
The dinner ritual has a fixed structure: the dough-boy summons Ahab, who summons Starbuck and goes to the diner, who waits a minute and summons Stubb and goes to the diner, who waits a minute and summons Flask and goes to the diner, who breaks into a mocking dance when the officers are gone before donning his expected persona and going to the diner. "Wherefore this difference? A problem? Perhaps not." A harmless, or rather impotent, bit of rebellion against the dictator whose supremacy is doubled as the head of the diner.

Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding.

The order of entering the diner and eating is upheld because otherwise the balance of power could tilt—and remind everyone that power is nothing more than an agreement between the ruler, the ruled, and the relevant infrastructure—, which could be awkward or worse. A great king eating at a host's house would be during that meal second in power to the host. The officers treat Ahab like a stern father, themselves as "warlike but still deferential cubs". The weight of the hierarchy renders these "solemn meals, eaten in awful silence", despite silence not being enforced; the officers simply mirror Ahab's own refusal to speak—wait, wait, Ishmael isn't allowed down here, so how does he know what's going on in the dinner ritual? Did he sneak in? Get promoted? (That seems unthinkable with his experience and temperament.) Fabricate all of this?
Ishmael assumes that Flask could but wouldn't help himself to better portions than he was directly offered, wouldn't because "never more would he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world" and could because "Ahab never forbade him". Because the officers leave in inverse order, Flask barely has time to eat, and "once admitted in private"—to Ishmael? to someone Ishmael overheard?—that his hunger was permanent; even as a crewman he'd eaten better.
Flask is in the awkward position of being at the bottom rung of the upper class, almost ascetic in his timidity to test his boundaries. "There’s the fruits of promotion now; there’s the vanity of glory: there’s the insanity of life!" Yet Flask has no complaints about the added responsibility or other possible difficulties of being an officer, just that he doesn't feel that he's allowed to eat well. Ishmael tattles on how he figured out the details of the dinner ritual: it's easy enough for a sailor to peep into the aft cabin, but he says the only motivation for doing so would be if a sailor had a grudge against him—it's not clear whether the pity this peep would produce would be sadistic or understanding, but Ishmael seems not to dislike Flask.
When the officers cleared out, the harpooneers took their place with a "frantic democracy" of barbaric consumption, bullying the dough-boy for fun into constant fear and respecting no etiquette. There is some contrast between Queequeg, the sadistic Tashtego, and the moderate Daggoo, the latter having to sit on the floor so his "hearse-plumed head" doesn't bonk the ceiling—hearse-plumes adorn horse-drawn funeral processions, a stark cultural contrast. The dough-boy has a physically easy job that he can't have imagined would be so mentally taxing. Ahab clung to the mutually alienating belief that the cabin belonged to him, and that the mates and harpooneers were as doors that briefly turn in to enter their house while, "as a permanent thing, residing in the open air."
Ishmael compares Ahab to a grizzly bear, his soul, "shut up in the caved trunk of his body", hibernating and eating away at the fat reserves of his gloom in the winter of his heart—one step past a damp, drizzly November, his shelter from the elements—the turbulence of connection—all the more isolating. This is a moody, hard-hearted man with the mental and physical conditions to use people as tools on a whim, and none would have the guts to mutiny against him.
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CHAPTER 35
Ishmael gets his first lookout duty and compares being atop the ship to being an astronomer on a pyramid—the Egyptians' pyramids being, for Ishmael, the original documented mast-heads, even if older civilizations may have had similar designs—; or a statue atop its pillar, the imposing historical figure it represents no longer vigilant, and silent with their secrets even if their visions would be worth sharing; or an early Nantucket shoreside watchtower waiting to direct moored, ready boats. All of these being obsolete, the whaleship mast-head stands as the one true mast-head, situating a whaler at the summit of the vast expanse of sea to be attentive from the time the ship departs to the time it either docks or is saturated, not one vial left empty—a dogged determination to maximize profits, which befits every man to adhere to because his stake in the whaling voyage is his share in the profits of the whale parts harvested.
The mast-head is unhomely, lacking a crow's nest or any comfortable amenities to cloister—as a corpse in a hearse or Father Mapple in his pulpit—oneself from the elements and the panoramic view of the sea, but that view is blissful, especially in calm tropical weather, where a sailor can lose himself in the timeless, placeless sprawl, a "sublime uneventfulness" with no concern for stock markets, sensational news, or where to find the next meal—Ishmael may not be motivated by profit, but the draw of free food may be a greater motive than he acknowledged.
The Sleet's crow's nest is described in longing detail, Ishmael torn between wanting one and considering the view in its absence to more than compensate for the discomfort. The mast-head is a bridge between man and the stars, the skies, and the seas—yet it is the waters in which sailors lose themselves rather than the skies, which serve rather to guide and orient them, courtesy of the arts of navigation.
After admitting that he shirked his duties of being attentive at the mast-head, Ishmael cautions whalers against hiring people like himself: "For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber." Way to tell on yourself. The discomfort of the mast-head should be a constant reminder to stay on-task for your two-hour shifts; maybe a crow's nest would've been a wise investment. With it, Ishmael wouldn't be able to fantasize about being a colossus or saintly stargazer.
Also, Sleet is clearly Scoresby; the real crow's nest was invented by father Scoresby with help from son Scoresby; it's no more arrogant to name your patents after yourself than your children, and I'd say far less so. Might there be an Ishmael Sr.?, maybe a drunkard and a whaler? Ishmael took on a mocking tone when saying that Sleet forgot to mention the alcohol that should've been his friend and comforter at the summit of the watery world.
Ishmael blames his incompetence on his education—Plato's Phaedo, on the immortal life and memory of the soul, instead of Bowditch's navigation handbook foremost in his mind—and his short-sightedness instead of his lack of discipline, even though he's here to marvel at whales. But what good is vision on such incomprehensible constituents of chaos, where "every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form" is inextricable from the oceanic soul it's born from and borne through, as we and all things living are through the ungraspable and bottomless sea of God—the very sight of the unobstructed expanse dissolves and diffuses Ishmael's identity until he startles himself back to reality, or even tumbles overboard to reunite with his source amidst the leviathanic phantoms he's making a lot of excuses not to look for. Moby Dick itself could've swam by and Ishmael would've missed it.
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CHAPTER 36
Ahab's pacing is so frequent and intense that it leaves signature dents, but his thinking is more-so in "the foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought" that it leaves on his brow, ribbed and weighed down by the weight of the sky and that of the sea—that of the whale that dismasted him, surely. Stubb sees a change hatching in Ahab, and hatch it does in the evening: the previous chapter established that manning the mast-head at all times is almost ritualistic for whaleships, but here, Ahab summons everyone, "an order seldom or never given on ship-board except in some extraordinary case." The crew is rightly anxious, seeing the storm brewing in the man, and Ahab lets that anxiety marinate until he's collected his thoughts or resolve enough for a speech.
He exhorts the crew to recite the tenets of whaling:

"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?" "Sing out for him!"
"And what do ye next, men?" "Lower away, and after him!"
"And what tune is it ye pull to, men?" "A dead whale or a stove boat!"

For enough men to know these lines to be able to create such a singular chorus, they must be standard, whether to Ahab's ship—if most of these shipmen be returnees loyal to the captain—or to a manual most whalers ought to be acquainted with. Satisfied with the impulsive and unified replies, Ahab offers a gold coin worth ~$530 in today's currency to "Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw"—this sends the men into a frenzy, but the three harpooneers are particularly interested. Tashtego gets Ahab to confess at last that he's after Moby Dick, the whale, and that's why we're here, readers and characters alike. Each of the harpooneers cites peculiar details about the whale that Ahab affirms; each of them has encountered the white whale up-close and lived to tell the tale. Starbuck gets Ahab to confirm that it was none other than Moby Dick that "razeed" him, and that this is a revenge quest.
Ahab vows to chase the whale "round perdition’s flames" "till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out"—and he's dragging all the whalers along the journey with him, himself unmotivated by money but earning the whalers' unity on this undertaking with his incredible charisma—even reading his speech is exciting—and the gold coin. Starbuck, the voice of reason, reminds Ahab that they're here to work, that this whale won't pay for the voyage by itself—though that if they cross it, he's happy to face its jaws of death to harvest it, probably treating it as a rather ordinary whale—, and Ahab pounds his chest, declaring that the vengeance will "fetch a great premium" for his heart. Stubb muses that his chest "rings most vast, but hollow"—that Ahab has let his outward revenge altogether replace inward substance despite there being immense capacity in him to harbor such substance, whether of profit or connection.
When Starbuck is taken aback at Ahab's "Vengence on a dumb brute", Ahab channels Ishmael's Platonism, seeing in the monster the wall imprisoning and masking all phenomena, the masks being unreasoning but undergirded and shaped by some reasoning enigma:

If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me.

This is Ahab's quest for transcendence, projected onto a concrete object and delivered with compelling charisma, weaving the concept of fairness into the reason cohering the world so he can exploit the former to justify vengeance against the latter:

I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations.

Ahab is the indomitable nobility of the human spirit and the emptiness that befalls who tries to realize it. No master, no God, no fate—only the man, the truth he can reach and pierce, and the vitality for doing so.
Ahab blasts Starbuck with a solid page-and-a-half of passionate monologuing, giving Starbuck chances to speak but being met only with silence. What is there to say? That's a dense wall of chaotic energy, and Starbuck is the coward Ahab accuses him of being, one of the only people with a chance of talking Ahab off the warpath and not even attempting to at his final opportunity. Mirroring Starbuck's mental defeat, the wind dies down and the ship's heart sinks—predictions or warnings from without, or "verifications of the foregoing things within"—the synchronicity of personally significant concurrent events that do not share a cause—, in any case they were brief and undriving.

For with little external to constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these still drive us on.

Starbuck perks back up out of sheer "stubbornness of life", and none of the crew, taken in as they are by the sermon, registers the portends. Ahab passes a strong drink around the crew:

Men, ye seem the years; so brimming life is gulped and gone.

This is the opposite of the universal thump of punishment; this drink is passed around to commemorate their new common cause, to celebrate the passional and consumptive joys of life—those that aren't clutched and hoarded—, and to presage their descent into hell:

[The drink] spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping eye.

Unlike Satan despising the sun for reminding him of his lost glory, Ahab only takes offense that is personal and direct, although his temper and education lead him to defy the fatal inner workings of the world that shackle him by the masks that comprise the visible world by unseen clockwork: to hunt Moby Dick would be, on some level, to slay (and thereby replace) God and then use the parts for money—and not even a lot of money compared to any regular sperm whale harvest! Mad Ahab even relishes that his charisma could kill a man at full blast as he leagues the officers, strong men, who can't meet his gaze.
———
Ahab is an amazing character. Like, wow, Melville is channeling the full brunt of his influence from Milton here. Ahab and Satan are by far the best depictions I've seen of supernatural charisma. In one day, Ahab turned the Pequod into a death cult, and excited me in doing so. This is an extraordinarily difficult book, and it feels almost self-demonstrating in what it's doing with Moby Dick: its truths feel vast, ungraspable, submerged—you could chase them your whole life, but you couldn't force them up. It has many insights, fins jutting from the water, but what they imply is obscure and daunting; to pull them out would bring their whole massive body up with them.
At the crux of the work's knotted vision seems to be the tension between views on fate, its knowability, and its malleability: 1. Providence, which to obey is inauthentic but which to disobey is apostatic, which Ishmael regards as an arbitrary jailer; 2. Yojo's prophecies being reliable but fallible; 3. Elijah's forecast, where fate is set in stone but somewhat inscrutable; 4. Ahab's defiance of the gods, vowing to have no master in body or spirit; 5. the compulsion of inward, unconscious motives; and 6. the self-fulfillment of some prophecies where pursuing or avoiding them realizes them. The white whale itself seems to reflect each of those conceptions in its mythos.
Ahab's parallels with Satan pose big questions about what it means for man to defy or conquer God, and if the distinctions between various forms of fate matter: whether free will means following God's plan or one's inner directives, whether it affects man's redeemability (Satan was considered irredeemable), in what sense redeemability matters when you're trying to conquer God and if the soul or heaven don't exist (in which case the traditional God can't exist), whether fate is malleable and why mastering it would matter, whether you're a hypocrite for having a clean conscience killing whales while forswearing human bloodshed, how defying God dooms you to despair and when Ahab crossed the line. I'm just trying to sketch out these questions' field and let them marinate in me as I soak in the novel.
I'm hooked. This is everything I hoped it would be except accessible (lol).