genuinely obsessed with our wars have ended's approach to the great man theory of history. the way caul'd father invokes lord dourmarrow as cyshane's lone defender against the "foreign hordes" reminds me so much of how, say, american conservatives are always going around invoking fuckin george washington or whichever other dead founding father against any and all progressive ideas and movements, or the UK's persistent and rather pathetic nostalgia for the bad old days of the british empire at its height, and all the ways in which dead "heroes" can be weaponized in service of bigotry.
i think the big man is also super interesting as an absurd, grotesque literalization of that theory, a literal great man (and of course it was assumed to be a man, specifically), larger than life, larger than the whole mass of humanity, striding through the stars as a singular and unstoppable engine of history.
it's all really cool and really fucked up and horrible and i can't wait to see where the series runs with all these ideas. i mean god, we're three episodes in and already it has to be one of if not the most thematically-rich fiction podcasts i've ever listened to.
babe it's me i'm just covered in dirt and blood because i had to claw my way up into the light and crawl on my hands and knees back home to you stop screaming
the nametaker: hey, check this shit out. alexa, play despacito [rotting corpse starts shrieking] pretty cool, eh? why don't you ask me how much it cost. go on. i know you want to.
caul serrikane, who couldn't give a shit if you tried to waterboard one out of her:
caul serrikane the character ever. rolls up to a gangster and is like. fuck your pronoun circle, my gender is I Just Wanna Get Paid. I'm gonna kill myself for money, resurrect me in an hour. every day I dream of murdering my dad. btw here's a severed head I carry around in my designer bag, she sings me to sleep. I'll tell your dead employee that you said hi. *drinks poison and dies horribly*
one of my favorite things about the silt verses is the phrase "a god must feed." on it's surface it is a factually true statement, as uncontestable as the sky is blue, but what it hides is that they must have gods and they need to keep making sacrifices. It implies that the proceeding and expanding of the systemic killing of people is as fundamental as the turning of the earth. It's dogma for an enlightened age.
all of that to say i wonder what is in store for our wars have ended's "all things want to return to what they were." like yeah that sounds like the basis of some type of magic but also that' fascism baby!! i'm so curious what a "kill your gods" for this story would sound like
If I had a dollar every time Eskew Productions has an audio drama that spends the first two chapters setting up the lore with a pair of siblings who are already enmeshed in the weirdness of the world before switching to a new POV character in a completely different location, whose job leads them to witnessing a horrifying story revolving around consumption, AND animal sacrifice is involved, I would have two (2) dollars, which isn't a lot but it's amusing to me that it's happened twice.
I'll forever be obsessed with the fact that this show has not one, but two characters who are Normal Guys, who very much enjoy being Normal Guys, and are yet constantly thrust into all of this crazy sci-fi shit against their will
To say nothing of the fact that one of them is over 170 years old and the other is literally unkillable
Midnight burger really does an incredible job of having hope as a theme; but like, the teeth-gnashing, tongue-biting, everything-tastes-like-iron-and-dread kind of hope. Everything is fucked and they only get more fucked as time goes on. But they also get better as time goes on. And maybe they don't get always better, but they make it through so that they can get better someday, y'know?
Hopeful not because we can believe but because we must believe. Hopeful in blood, sweat, and tears way. Hopeful in an empathetic way, hopeful in a bitter way, hopeful in a hopeless way, hopeful in a curiosity way. Hopeful in a we will get there and we will make it fucking better, we have to, way. Hopeful in a we make the world way. Hopeful in a we open at fucking six way.
"I had an old friend. Ron Haydon was his name. Grew rice, as most of us wound up doing back then. Not much to him, the sort of fellow you could easily lose in a crowd. But one day, Ron was on his way back from church and something blew across his path like a tumbleweed. It was a hat: a dusty, black bowler hat. Wasn’t really the style in our part of the country, not quite sure where it came from. But he found that it fit like a glove when he’d put it on and, well, now Ron Haydon had a new hat, didn’t he? Now you could pick Ron out in a crowd. He was the one with a bowler hat. After a time, you began to see Ron change. A bit more confident. A man not afraid to speak his mind during town meetings. Even managed to nab himself a bride after we’d all written him off as a bachelor farmer. It was as if he had been waiting this whole time for something to complete the picture. A centerpiece for the man he wished to be. Somehow, it was a hat that completed him. Odd, don’t you think? It does beg the question, what makes a man? How do we choose to be the one we present to the world? What is the centerpiece that sums up our parts?" -Zebulon Mucklewain, Midnight Burger
PART ONE of my first Sterling Girl infographic! 🧚♀️♾️
PART TWO
This is an abridged version of my initial pitch essay I wrote for university. The changeling child myth is what inspired me to undertake this project in the first place, and I knew this post would be essential for conveying why it evokes so much passion in me. I hope you enjoy it — maybe you'll learn something new!
Including but not limited to: the release date! That's right, release is set for July 5th, 2026. I am so near completion on editing the piece, and I absolutely cannot wait for you all to hear it.
The biggest, sincerest THANK YOU to everyone who has followed this account and supported me thus far. Please look forward to more information and previews coming soon! ⚙️🎀
(PS: As this is my first post of this kind, feedback on formatting, conciseness and things of that nature is encouraged and appreciated!)
Plain text version below the cut!
What are 'Changeling Children'?
Content warning: This post contains references to child abuse & ableism. Please take care!
‘Changeling children’ feature in a series of historical myths and legends, largely dating back to pre-scientific societies. These narratives see a “normal” human child abducted by a supernatural creature such as a goblin or fairy, and replaced with one of their own kind — much to the horror and grief of their parents.
The replacement child is “characterised by unresponsiveness, resistance to physical affection, obstreperousness, inability to express emotion, and unexplained crying and physical changes”. (Leask, et al, 2005: 271). For many, this description resonates with what we now know about autism.
As a parent, realising that your child is disabled in a time where psychological research and social support were practically nonexistent must have been shocking, difficult and isolating, hence the turn to folklore for an explanation. However, this does not excuse the harrowing real-life cases of physical abuse against suspected ‘changelings’, as seen in 19th century court records (Ashliman, 1997).
The changeling child myth has always fascinated and haunted me. There is something so painfully resonant, even to this day, about the sentiment of: “you are growing up so incorrectly that you must not be human”. As a late diagnosed autistic person who took comfort in relating to robots and fairies before I found the terminology to understand myself, it hits especially hard.
The majority of real and fictional changeling child accounts focus on the grief of the parents whose child has suddenly changed. A foremost aim of my work on The Sterling Girl was to instead centre the experience of Etta, the twelve-year-old girl (allegedly) “replaced”, and her reclamation of her own humanity in a paranoid society that will do anything to deny it to her.
Other shows will have one antisocial guy as their ace rep. Meanwhile, Doctor preist Rebecca Moore ripped out her own uterus as an offering to her meat god because she knew she could never love a husband or child more than she lived her god and her congregation
I try not to fall into the "I never liked their work anyway" ditch when an artist/creator reveals themself to be a terrible person
BUT
a feeling I do have and will stand by is "While I enjoyed their work overall I did have some gripes that I overlooked out of affection and whimsy, but now that my loyalty is gone and my affection tainted there is nothing holding me back from enumerating my many grievances, to which the revelations of the creator's shittiness may or may not provide a new and infuriating context."
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