Some Fragments (11/08/2025)
‘Did it ever occur to you that the communist dictators – Stalin, Mao – adopted communism not out of an ideological love of communism, but out of a recognition that it provided a reasonable framework the working classes could trust, and that by leveraging that trust, they could gain absolute power?’
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To hall of the mountain king – a moment amidst the revelry when dancers in the great hall unmask, decloak, and begin to kill the guests (and each other) in a choreographed storm of blood and blades, as the mad king looks on and laughs and dances in time as the orchestra plays.
Making the King’s nightmare, or his dream, real.
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A bird cheeped. Somewhere in the grass beside the road, a black flash flitting among the drying yellow.
“What’s he staring at, then?”
The bird alighted on the hanging seed-head at the top of a grass-stalk, like a very tiny head of wheat, pecked at the seed-head once, and cheeped again. The bird sounded afraid, as if it had lost something. Someone. It cried out one more time, then twitched into the grass, and was gone.
“E’s never seen a bird,” the carriage-driver said. “E’s from the big smoke.”
The bird couldn’t even be heard, now. There were other sounds – the thud-clicking of the horse’s hooves, the rattle of its harness, the wind int he grass and the trees, the vague murmur of the distant ocean – like the heart of a river’s rush opened to the sky. But that bird, whatever its quest, was gone.
The plumber wrenched up his face in confusion. “But there’s birds in the city.”
“Are there? I thought they’d been chased away by the fumes – or by the war, at any rate, like this little lad.” The carriage-driver reached out to <?>, where he sat between them, and flicked the evacuee’s tag pinned to his coat.
“There’s birds,” the plumber affirmed. “Pigeons, mostly.”
“Coo,” the driver replied, only to burst into raucous laughter. “And how about you, lad? Are you looking forward to staying at <Methesne?> house?”
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The girl on the far side of the carriage turned up her nose, archly. “I shan’t be a girl much longer. I shall put on trousers and inform the registrar at school that I am a boy, and give my name as Harrison, and that shall be the end of it.”
Chris felt something complex well up inside him. “You can do that?”
“Of course I can. I shall be a wizard, I can do anything I like.”
“... Can I do that?” he ventured, meekly. “Be a girl, I mean.”
“I don’t see why not,” Allison/Harrison replied.
“That’s disgusting,” Vincent said, pulling a face.
She (he?) turned on him immediately. “You’re disgusting!” Allison/Harrison sneered back. “You put worms up your nose. So who cares what you think?”
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Forgiveness is the greater strength – it is saying, ‘I am willing to return to conflict’. To withhold forgiveness is weakness – it says, ‘I believe I will not be able to protect myself in the future’.
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https://youtu.be/g6oj-QtqfWc?t=3177
A tomb of the ancient kind, where the bodies moulder to bone. Left in place so long that all memory of them erodes, name and selfhood failing. Afterlife continuing as they are remembered... and as memory fades, the bones are gathered and join the ossuaries where undifferentiated remains become part of the ancestral community, distant spirits at the far end of eternity – nearer the dawn of time.
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‘From squalling babe, to corpse.’ (raven-fodder? raven-loved corpse?)
War thing – someone’s old friend’s child, who they helped raise, only for war (civil?) to lead to them on opposite sides, and the someone’s had to kill them in their adulthood.
Huge mourning thing.
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‘The war’s been going for twenty-five years. The new kids, they don’t know what peace was. They’ve never had a lazy Saturday with nothing to do – it’s always check the front line reports and make sure air def is up before going to the park to play. Do the chores and check the civil defence gas masks and portable bunkers are in good condition after coming in from swimming. Listen to the artillery a hundred miles away, not the breeze in the trees.’
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'I like Capitalism. I like the freedom of money, it's a good system. Yes, it lets down the poor, the sick. But you know what? That's because the people with the money don't want to spend it benefitting others. And that's bullshit, but people should have the freedom to be heartless bastards. Legislating against it? Draconian. But if you don't like living in a society where the poor, and the sick, are left to ruin, there's a simple solution. Put your money where your heart is, play the philanthropic card, and stand up for what's right in society.'
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‘They didn’t make you to be happy. They made you to be so strong you’re capable of breaking your own bones by accident.’
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Responsible capitalism. Let a tree grow too big – in fact, force it to grow too big – and it will snap itself at the roots, tear its own branches off, rot. Prune it, responsibly, and it will be healthy, strong, of immensely better quality and, perhaps it will be stable, or still grow – but slowly, but most importantly, it will not destroy itself.
(Good metaphor – the roots are societal monetary flow. Which capitalism can kill. )
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Evil billionaire – survived a horrific accident. (Like the submarine Titan thing). Happened to involve cannibalism, which was kept secret by losing the remains of the individual. Now, constantly, hungers for human flesh. Or does he hunger for a situation where he felt like he actually had agency? Either way, man is on the menu.
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Now, let’s say some idiot boy with his father’s inherited money thinks he can make money out of my company by buying it, stripping it down, and selling the pieces for more than he paid. That’s a standard asset raid.’
‘Right.’
‘What do you think I should do about that, really?’
‘I... don’t know. Avoid public trade of your stocks?’
‘That’s one option. The one we actually used was Andercom.’
‘... What?’
‘What, you didn’t think all of the money in the neo-cartels was criminal, did you?’