i. stars get it wrong, of course–they assume too much phosphorus and not enough fear of death, pulsar instead of pulse. They leave out uncertainty, not knowing what it was above the subatomic level; the softer shades of melancholy and the gentler warmths. But they get the shape right, the brighthot of blood. They get that right too.
ii. all their metaphors are for burning, and they ascribe to soft tongues a taste for sulfur, fingers at the ends of spiral arms. They drink liquid helium from a cracked Dewar flask and wonder aloud if humanity is looking up, looking back.
(how cold they must be, the stars’ carbon cousins–wet and cold, and can humanity do arithmetic in parallax, do you think, counting parsecs between two stars in inexorable collision?
it’s called a kiss, cygnus X-1 says quietly. they call it a kiss.)
iii. they say when you feel your child’s protoplanetary disc first differentiate, you will cry methane tears.
iv. it’s called the Kindling, when the faint sheen of protostellar mass catches alight, and burns with all the brightness of adulthood. Protostars of thirteen stand around bathroom mirrors, examining their helium layer for bright spots, looking for stray molecular clouds in their nail beds. All of them are in love with the astrophysics teacher, whose stellar wind sends flickers of light across the meteor fields.
late at night (but what is night to a star?) they trace the spiral arms of their evolving galaxies, and dream dry dreams of neutron star collisions hotter than blue hypergiants.
v.we are made of starstuff, says a man, craning his thread-slender neck, looking up into the abyss of wind and fire of the universe.
oh, breathes a star, squinting down at the infinitesimal speck of rock, turning and turning in the vastness of space. oh.
ok so I DON’T BELIEVE IN THE STAIRS IN THE FORESTS! mainly because I’m A Search and Rescue Officer for the U.S. Forest Service, and I Have Some Stories to Tell a) is posted on /r/nosleep so it’s definitely made up, b) the op admits to knowing about David Paulides, and lbr knowing about = being influenced by, so it’s definitely made up, and c) if you read all the way through to the end it stops being even vaguely believable and starts reading like a WTNV transcript, and then he plugs his book, so it’s DEFINITELY MADE UP. however, it is an amazing (read: terrifying) thread, some of it is obviously based on truths/insider SAR knowledge which means a lot of it is probably uncomfortably close to actually being true, and it’s a good Gateway Read into MISSING PEOPLE IN NATIONAL PARKS CONSPIRACY THEORIES, which is where I live now. (plus, if you read this before getting into anything else it imbues every single missing persons case with an unsettling sense of Eldritch horror, which is why I had to turn on three overheads and unfocus my eyes all the way to the bathroom last night at 2am.)
so yeah, after reading that /r/nosleep thing for the first time I drew a line under it and moved on until SOMEONE (ahem, @roundtop) sent me a link to an article called How 1,600 People Went Missing from Our Public Lands Without a Trace (on a legit and sensible outdoorsy people website), like ‘haha, stairs in the forest!’ and I SWAN DIVED DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE. thus: the documentary-watching, staying up till 2am and spending all day today trying to find copies of David Paulides’ books for less than $80 inc. postage.
THIS DUDE DAVID PAULIDES. he was in law enforcement before, for some reason, deciding to become a ~*~cryptozoologist~*~ and certified gung-ho Bigfoot conspiracy theorist, and through that found out about how many people had disappeared without a trace from National Parks in the U.S., did 7,000 hours worth of digging, and wrote a bunch of books about it. his books are called Missing 411 and are about the ridiculous number of people who go missing in National Parks, the usually weird circumstances around their disappearances, the fact that when people are found (dead or alive) it’s often in places miles and miles and sometimes waaaaay higher up mountains than where they disappeared from, and all sorts of creepy crap to boot. like they can’t get bloodhounds to find a scent, or they find tiny children miles away from where they got lost, barefoot, without a scratch on the soles of their feet, human remains being found years later in places that were search dozens and dozens of times. not to mention the National Parks… People (? I really don’t know enough to be making this post) are aware of what’s happening but don’t keep a list of the people who’ve gone missing on their lands.
(which is all part of why I’m A Search and Rescue Officer for the U.S. Forest Service is so freaky – enough of it (people being found miles away, kids being found up mountains, the people in charge being cagey about it all) sounds real that you can believe it was actually written by a SAR Officer. heebies!)
it’s all real nightmare fuel, if you’re the sort of person who is absolutely terrified by all this Scary Forest Disappearing People Unexplainable Deaths stuff, i.e. me. luckily I can’t afford to buy any of them! phew! however, I haven’t let that stop me from a) SCARING MYSELF SHITLESS and b) BECOMING A TIN HATTER, and it shouldn’t stop you either: you can read loads of stuff over at /r/missing411, listen to one of his initial interviews (in which he talks about how he was approached by two park employees in plain clothes who were like ‘please investigate this, there’s SOMETHING going on and it’s so goddamn weird’) on Coast to Coast AM (which is, like, a paranormal radio station… I’m sorry), watch a bunch of Paulides’/CanAm Missing Project’s vids about disappearances on youtube, and listen to hours worth of interviews and late night spooky radio/podcast discussions with Paulides.
the documentary I thought I was watching was Missing 411, which is based on his books and Kickstarted by the public in 2015, but it turns out that they’re apparently shopping it around at festivals so it’s not out yet. what I was actually watching (and quickly abandoned) was a weird supercut of all of David Paulides’ tv interviews and some cryptozoologist chatter about Bigfoot. Paulides, god love him, never ever SAYS Bigfoot in any of his books, and everything he presents is 100% factually accurate and extensively researched, but… I think we can safely say he thinks it’s Bigfoot. tbh, after reading about JarydAtaderoI think it’s Bigfoot. I mean, goddamn.
so, yeah. I’ve finished reading every search and rescue story on this blog (Hunt for the Death Valley Germans is LONG but awesome), I’ve got West of Memphis ready to watch after work tomorrow because I remembered how much I love that case and spooky true crime things, if you have any related LINKS or STUFF about This Shit then REBLOG THIS/MSG ME AND TELL ME, or if you have a copy of a Missing 411 book you wouldn’t mind mailing to me then LET ME KNOW, and in conclusion I can’t believe America is so fucking huge and unkind, goodnight.
Authonomy It’s been a while since I used this website in particular, but it’s useful for helpful critique and to get your original works out there. If your book get on the top five list at the end of the month Harper Collins will read it for possible publication.
How to write Funeral Directors I’ve read quite a few fanfics where they just have funeral directors slapping clothes on a body and calling it a day. As a former funeral services major I can tell you that’s not the only thing they do.
kototyph 