Haunted house neenah wi

IGSRep
Looking to trade my spares. SEA region Humble account here, keep in mind when trading with me as keys I open for trading might be country-restricted. Also to be safe I won't be trading gift links. Last traded 3 years ago, witnessed the ban wave sooooo I wanna be extra careful lol
Have:
Humble keys:
1 screen platformer
112 Operator
2dark
911 Operator
A mortician's tale
Adom
Age of wonders 3
Alien spidy
American fugitive
Animal super squad
Armello 3x
Atomicrops
Backbone
Banners of ruin
Barony
Batman enemy within telltale series + shadows mode
Batman telltale series + shadows mode
Bioshock remastered
Bioshock the collection
Blood fresh supply
Bloodstained ritual of the night
Borderlands 3
Borderlands game of the year enhanced
Borderlands handsome collection
Boundless
Broken age
Brutal legend
Calico 2x
Carnival games vr
Children of Morta
Civilization 6 platinum edition
Command and conquer remastered collection (origin)
Control Ultimate Edition (from Humble Heroines)
Crown trick
Crowntakers
Darksiders 2 deathinitive edition
Darksiders 3
Darksiders warmastered edition
Darkwood
Deadly days
Death squared
Deathloop
Desolate
Detention
Disjunction (gog)
Distraint 2
Doom eternal
Draw your game
Darksiders genesis
Duck game
Dusk
Earthnight
Elderborn
Elex
Endless space collection
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Evan's Remains
Fahrenheit indigo prophecy remastered
Fallen enchantress legendary heroes
Farmers dynasty
Figment
Forager 2x
Forgive me father
Framed collection 2x
Frog detective
Fury unleashed
Garage bad trip
Garden Paws
Geometry wars 3 dimensions evolved
Goat of. Duty
Goetia
Going under
Gonner
Greedfall
Guts and glory
Hacknet 2x
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Hiveswap act 1
House flipper
In between
Just cause 4 complete edition
Katana zero
Killing floor 2
Killing floor 2 digital deluxe edition
Knights of pen and paper 2
Lake
Lego batman 3 beyond gotham
Life is Strange 2: Complete Season
Lovecraft's untold stories
Machinarium
Mafia definitive edition
Mafia 3: Definitive Edition
Magicka
Mass effect legendary edition (origin)
Metro exodus
Monster train first class
Mordhau
Mount and Blade: Warband
Mr shifty
My memory of us
My time at portia
Neo cab
Neon abyss
Never alone
Newt one
No time to explain remastered
Nomad Survival
Orwell ignorance is strength
Overlord 2
Pacify
Pacman championship edition 2
Paper fire rookie
Paradigm
Party hard
Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition
Payday 2
Pesterquest
Pikuniku
Planet Zoo
Popup dungeon
Psychonauts
Rebuild 3
Red horizon
Regular human basketball 2x
Remnants of Naezith
Reventure
Scarlet Tower
Shadows awakening
Simulacra
Sins of a solar empire rebellion
Spec ops the line
Starcrossed
State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition
Staxel
Stick Fight
Strange brigade 2x
Summer in Mara
Super chicken catchers
Super hexagon
Survivalists
Syberia 3
System Shock Enhanced Edition
System shock 2 2x
Tales of monkey island complete pack
Teacup
Textorcist
The adventure pals
The darkness 2
The haunted island, a frog detective game
The Long Dark: Survival Edition
The tear
Think of the children
This war of mine
Throne of lies
Tilt brush
Timeshift
Tower of guns
Tropico 4
Uncertain last quiet day
Valkyria chronicles 4 complete edition
Vampyr
Vikings wolves of midgard
Vvvvvv
Warsim realm of aslona
Wasteland 3
Where the water tastes like wine
Wingspan
Worms Rumble
Wrath aeon of ruin
XCOM 2
Yakuza 3 remastered
Yonder: Cloud Catcher Chronicles
Fanatical keys:
198x
Agatha christie abc murders
Alekhine's gun
Ancestors legacy
Anomaly warzone earth
Beholder 2
Bientot Iete
Big dipper
Book of demons
Call of juarez gunslinger
Castaway paradise
Codex of victory
Darkwood
Deep sky derelicts
Dirt rally 2.0
Do not feed the monkeys
Dread x collection
Dungelot shattered lands
Eternity the last unicorn
Fantasy versus
Fatale
Footlol epic fail league
Four sided fantasy
Garfield kart
Gemcraft
Gift of parthax
God's trigger
Going under
Graze counter
Grip combat racing
Guts and glory
Heavy burger
Heroes of normandie
Hitman go definitive edition
Hue
Hyperdrive massacre
Indivisible
Iris and the giant
Kingdom Two Crowns
Kingdom wars 2 definitive edition
Learn japanese to survive hiragana battle, kanji combat, katakana war
Lethal league blaze
Lichdom battlemage
Lucius
Monster slayers
Mordheim city of the damned
Murder by Numbers
Neverwinter nights enhanced edition
Out of the box
Override mech city brawl
Postal 2
Postal redux
Rain world
Red riding hood star crossed lovers
Redout enhanced edition
Return to mysterious island
Rise of industry
Rise of insanity
Road redemption
Salammbo battle for carthage
Shadows awakening
Shadwen
Shark attack deathmatch 2
Showtime 2073
Sir you are being hunted
Songbringer
Spacecom
Spiritfarer
Steampunker
Steel Rats
Strange Brigade
Strawberry vinegar
Sunset
Synergia
Tales from candlekeep tomb of annihilation
Teacup
Technomancer
Tenta shooter
Tesla vs lovecraft
The descendant complete season
The graveyard
The light keeps us safe
The signal from tolva
The vagrant
This strange realm of mine
This war of mine
This world unknown
Through the woods
Toki
Train valley
Two worlds 2 velvet edition
Two worlds epic edition
Vendetta curse of raven's cry
Vikings wolves of midgard
Walking dead final season
Walking dead: a new frontier
Warhammer 40000 Gladius - Relics of War
White Day - A Labyrinth Named School
Windscape
World's dawn
Yesterday origins
Yooka laylee and the impossible lair
Steam gifts:
Bombernauts
Duck game (3 copies)
Metal gear solid v phantom pain
Pyre
Want:
In Case You Missed It: Gems of 2022:
ZERO Sievert
Supraland: Six Inches Under
Powerslave Exhumed
Haiku the Robot
Submerged: Hidden Depths
Or games I'm interested in! Gimme your lists!

My MacBook Pro (M1, up to date) suddenly has no Internet connectivity when connected to my 2.4GHz access point. When connected to the same AP's 5GHz radio, it works fine.
All other devices in the house connect to 2.4GHz and get Internet. I have restarted the computer and router, but have not cut power to the access point (it is separate from the router, a TP-Link EAP620 HD) because it's mounted on a wall behind a projection screen and a massive pain in the ass to access.
Has anyone determined why a single device would be unable to access the Internet through one Wi-Fi band while other devices can? Another interesting thing is that even though the computer can connect to the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, it can't pull up the router's admin page (which doesn't require Internet access, of course).
I should add that I have "forgotten" the network from Mac OS's network preferences and re-established the connection after rebooting, but no change.

What is the best spontaneous act of kindness you've ever witnessed or been a part of?

"I must insist that this house is a black stain on the community. As I've showed you, every single room is plain at best, dour at worst. It sits above a precarious cliff known for countless tragedies ever since the Revolutionary War and over six people have died in the foyer alone due to the infamous Axe Slayings of 1887 which were never solved, all the while being built up on one of the largest massacres of the Civil War. Numerous previous owners have reported horrid regular nightmares and supernatural occurrences. No one has put an offer in this house in some ten years ever since I've tried to sell it. The asking price is 10,000."
The realtor turned between the husband and wife, who were beside themselves with excitement.
"How are the schools?" The wife asked, her voice droll and serious.
"The lowest rated in the state." The Realtor sighed. The husband took his wife's hand to his own and couldn't hide a joyous grin. Gomez Adamms turned to the realtor.
"Seventy thousand."
"The asking price is 10,000. I - look, you really don't want to spend 70,000 dollars on this house. It's likely to fall into the ocean with this winters storms."
"You've already made a sale! Please, monsieur, One hundred and fifty thousand!"
"Your family will be tormented by the numerous curses-"
Gomez took the man by the collar, shaking him with gusto. "I bid thee stop! You're over exciting my wife!"
Morticia gave the realtor a slow blink.
"Will you accept two hundred thousand on a handshake deal?" Gomez asked, composing himself and catching his breath.
Moments later, the realtor stumbled from the home carrying a hand written check, a stunned expression on his face.
Gomez turned to Morticia , giving her hand a kiss. "My beloved. I hope you approve, this place has but a fraction of your charms and beauty."
In the distant hallways of the manor, a woman screamed in a shrill tone, silenced by a wet, abrupt thump, followed by more wet, brutal impacts.
Morticia smiled to her husband.
"It's awful. I love it terribly."

So my parents are trying to move to Atlanta for me and we are running into issues. They are moving over there so that I can a better chance at finding a vietnamese girlfriend since Atlanta has a large vietnamese community. We could only afford a house under $250,000 and so we're most likely looking at houses from the 70s and 80s. I don't want to live in an house that old cause of a few reasons. One is that there is a risk of it being haunted and two is that it just look unappealing and it would just make me look bad. I want to be able to impress a vietnamese woman if I happen to meet one in Atlanta by living in an newer home, like one from the 2000s. I told my friend about this and he called me a spoiled brat. He said " Your parents are making a huge sacrifice for you and you just won't accept their offer. Everywhere is the same and your just going to have the same problems trying to find a girlfriend because you won't change your attitude and stop being a spoiled brat. Thats why your 30 and never dated. Put it bluntly, your an a-hole." I don't get how am I an a-hole for wanting to live in a newer house. A newer house is better and it would make me look good in a woman's eyes. I want to look good so that I can find someone to settle down with and have a family since everyone else around me is married. I want to be married and have a family and I just want to be able to make a good impression on a vietnamese woman. How am I a spoiled brat for being picky about living in an old house ??

So my parents are trying to move to Atlanta for me and we are running into issues. They are moving over there so that I can a better chance at finding a vietnamese girlfriend since Atlanta has a large vietnamese community. We could only afford a house under $250,000 and so we're most likely looking at houses from the 70s and 80s. I don't want to live in an house that old cause of a few reasons. One is that there is a risk of it being haunted and two is that it just look unappealing and it would just make me look bad. I want to be able to impress a vietnamese woman if I happen to meet one in Atlanta by living in an newer home, like one from the 2000s. I told my friend about this and he called me a spoiled brat. He said " Your parents are making a huge sacrifice for you and you just won't accept their offer. Everywhere is the same and your just going to have the same problems trying to find a girlfriend because you won't change your attitude and stop being a spoiled brat. Thats why your 30 and never dated. Put it bluntly, your an a-hole." I don't get how am I an a-hole for wanting to live in a newer house. A newer house is better and it would make me look good in a woman's eyes. I want to look good so that I can find someone to settle down with and have a family since everyone else around me is married. I want to be married and have a family and I just want to be able to make a good impression on a vietnamese woman. How am I a spoiled brat for being picky about living in an old house ??

So my parents are trying to move to Atlanta for me and we are running into issues. They are moving over there so that I can a better chance at finding a vietnamese girlfriend since Atlanta has a large vietnamese community. We could only afford a house under $250,000 and so we're most likely looking at houses from the 70s and 80s. I don't want to live in an house that old cause of a few reasons. One is that there is a risk of it being haunted and two is that it just look unappealing and it would just make me look bad. I want to be able to impress a vietnamese woman if I happen to meet one in Atlanta by living in an newer home, like one from the 2000s. I told my friend about this and he called me a spoiled brat. He said " Your parents are making a huge sacrifice for you and you just won't accept their offer. Everywhere is the same and your just going to have the same problems trying to find a girlfriend because you won't change your attitude and stop being a spoiled brat. Thats why your 30 and never dated. Put it bluntly, your an a-hole." I don't get how am I an a-hole for wanting to live in a newer house. A newer house is better and it would make me look good in a woman's eyes. I want to look good so that I can find someone to settle down with and have a family since everyone else around me is married. I want to be married and have a family and I just want to be able to make a good impression on a vietnamese woman. How am I a spoiled brat for being picky about living in an old house ??

What's the most ridiculous thing you've ever done to avoid getting scared during a horror movie or haunted house experience?

Have you ever slept in a haunted house or visited a haunted location?

I recently launched a website and have gotten reports from quite a few users that they were getting SSL protocol errors when attempting to access my site. I could not replicate the error in any web browser running on any OS until today when I happened to try accessing the site on my phone while out of the house and connected to the internet via Verizon 5G. As soon as I got back home and my phone was utilizing Wi-Fi again, the site loaded fine. The error is occurring in both Safari and Chrome. I can load any other website over the 5G connection, just not my own site.
I have run the site through countless online SSL certificate testers and all of them say the certificate is properly configured. I was initially missing an intermediate/chain certificate but fixed that a couple of days ago.
Does anyone have any thoughts or clues on this?

The fear of long words.
Yes, whoever coined such a long name for this phobia was cruel. I’ve heard that joke a thousand times. But do you know what isn’t funny? The story of why I fear long words. And it’s a story that I’m going to tell here in the hope that it makes people think twice before being callous. I can’t speak for others with this phobia, of course, but I can tell you how it began for me.
It was 2005, and I was 10 years old. My friends and I were watching Mary Poppins. Amy, Stephanie, Brandon, my little brother, and me.
“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” I proudly said, pointing at the piece of paper on which I’d just written the word.
Amy beamed. “You’re so smart, James!”
I caught Brandon eyeing her coldly, but I pretended not to notice. I just thought him to be troubled. Unloved at home by his drunken dad. Envious of my relationship with Amy. Angry at the world. All of the above.
But there was more to Brandon than that. Or less, depending on how you look at it. And however you look at it, what happened next was a horror beyond words. In fact, after all of this time, I’ve finally decided that there isn’t a word for what happened next. And I know plenty of words. That’s what started everything.
“James,” Brandon said as we were walking out of school. “What would you say to a Spelling Bee at my house?”
I shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”
He was quiet for the duration of the walk home. As I said, he was always an unusual, unnerving boy, but I have to admit that he seemed particularly unhinged on this particular evening. I noticed that his driveway was empty as we approached the front door.
“Do your parents know I’m coming over?” I asked.
“Let’s go up to the den,” He said, averting my question and guiding me upstairs.
“Are we allowed, Brandon?” I asked, as he pulled on the string to the attic door. “Where are your parents?”
“They’re away,” Brandon said, beginning to climb the ladder. “Come on. It’s time for the Spelling Bee.”
He turned on the light in the attic, and I followed him into what I can only describe as the first of many traumatic memories. Chained to plastic chairs – yes, chained by a 10-year-old – were my friends and my brother. Stephanie, Amy, and Tom. They were all crying.
“What have you done?” I squealed. “Let them go!”
“Did you not wonder where everyone had gone during our lunch break, James?” Brandon asked. “I thought you were smart.”
“James,” Tom bawled. “I want to go home.”
“I’m gonna untie you,” I said, striding towards his chair. “One second.”
But Brandon lunged at me, pinning me to the rickety floorboards of the attic and wafting a multi-buttoned remote before my eyes.
“That isn’t how the Spelling Bee works, James,” Brandon hissed, dark eyes burrowing into my soul. “If you step out of line again, I press this button and… You don’t want to know what it does to your friends and poor little Tom.”
“I… I’m not little…” Tom whimpered.
Brandon leaned towards my ear and whispered quietly. “By the time we’re finished, he’ll be the littlest thing you’ve ever seen.”
“Just tell me what to do,” I cried.
Brandon smiled wickedly. “Three words. That’s it, James. The world’s easiest Spelling Bee. A word for each of them – Stephanie, Amy, and Tom. Spell each word correctly, and I set them free.”
“And if I fail?” I asked.
“It’s not a pass or fail situation, James. You’ll spell each word, letter by letter. As soon as you get a letter incorrect – sorry, if you get a letter incorrect – I’ll tell you the correct letter and repeat the word so you can continue.”
“But what’s the catch?” I asked quietly.
“Well, there’s a price for my assistance,” He said thoughtfully. “It’s like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. You’d be using a lifeline. I’d have to… creatively… write the correct letter on the whiteboard for you. You lose if… well, we’ll get to that.”
Brandon gestured to a whiteboard stand to the side of my three loved ones. I couldn’t see a marker pen.
“Right, shall we start with Stephanie?” Brandon asked.
“Wait…” I whispered.
“The word is Pulchritudinous.”
I inhaled deeply, preparing to best Brandon at his demented idea of a prank, but I had no idea as to how deep his insanity ran. I was about to find out.
“P… U… L… C… H… R… I… D–”
“– T, not D,” Brandon said.
Then something horrifying happened. Brandon produced a pair of hedge trimmers from a small duffel bag on the floor and took long strides towards Stephanie. He clipped, clipped, clipped, clipped, and clipped.
She wailed as five fingers were severed, one by one, from her left hand. I screamed, as did Amy and Tom. A fountain of blood gushed from the stubs on Stephanie’s hand, and Brandon sinisterly shaped each of the five fingers into various formations.
He was spelling the word with her body parts. Sellotaping P, U, L, C, and H to the whiteboard, much to my horror.
“Need more,” Brandon hissed, a deranged glint in his eyes.
Stephanie was too weakened by blood loss to resist Brandon as he clipped away at her right hand, severing those fingers and moulding them into letters too. Our cries of horror must’ve carried a good mile, but Brandon’s family lived on an isolated plot of land.
“There we go. R, I, and T. T, James, not D. Pulchritudinous. Go on.”
“P… U… L… C… H… R… I… T… U… D… I… N… O… U… S.”
“Wow, James. Just wow. Second try? You really are a genius. And I’m a man of my word!”
Brandon pressed a smaller button beneath the big red one on the remote, and Stephanie’s chains loosened. Bawling, she fell to her knees and began to crawl across the attic floor, holding her stumped, fingerless, bloodied hands before her. But it was already too late – she didn’t even make it to the attic door before crumpling lifelessly and staring at me with unblinking eyes.
“Most unfortunate. Anyway, moving on to Amy. The word is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,” Brandon said.
Still unwilling to grapple with the terror of Stephanie’s death, I found myself collapsing to my knees and spelling Amy’s word before my brain had even caught up – I was in shock.
“P… N… E… U… M… O… N… O… U… L… T… R… A… M… I… C… R… O… L–”
“– L? What?” Brandon sighed. “The correct letter, after O, is S. This is going to be a long one, James…”
I could only observe from my knelt position on the floor as Brandon spelled out the eighteen letters I’d done correctly, plus the nineteenth that he revealed. Eighteen body parts. You can’t imagine my horror as I watched Brandon inflict the same terror upon Amy that he inflicted upon Stephanie. And when he had ten fingers on his whiteboard, what did he use next?
Not toes, as one might have hoped, to give Amy a fighting chance at surviving. No. He clipped her arms. I screeched at the top of my lungs, eyes swimming with terrified tears as Amy’s head swiftly lulled forwards, blood gushing from the open wounds on her torso. And yet Brandon continued to hack up her dismembered body parts, contorting them into each letter of the word and sellotaping them to the whiteboard.
“P… N… E… U… M… O… N… O… U… L… T… R… A… M… I… C… R… O… S... Well, I would say to continue, James, but… it appears you’ve failed. I don’t think poor Amy is moving, is she? That’s how you lose, James,” Brandon faux-sniffled, walking over to her limp corpse and puppeteering her lips. “You’re oh-so-smart, James. Why couldn’t you spell the word properly?”
I wailed inconsolably, horrified by the unfathomably and graphically gruesome spectacle before me. As I collapsed into a ball on the ground, my tormentor continued.
“Now, according to the Oxford Dictionary, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest word in the English language,” Brandon said, unfazed by my hyperventilation. “But did you know that there exists another word – a far longer word?”
I sobbed, unable to breathe properly – nostrils clogged with snot bubbles, and cheeks strewn with tears.
“The Titin protein is the largest protein in the human body, which is why its full name is such an obscenely long word. 189,819 letters, to be exact. So, that brings us to Tom. And the third word is...”
I would include it here, but it’s far too long for a Reddit post.
You can imagine how many times I failed to spell a 189,819-letter-long word correctly. And though I’d accepted that I couldn’t save my baby brother, I hadn’t expected Brandon to make Tom’s end so horribly drawn-out.
The monster plucked minuscule strips of flesh from my little brother’s body to form the letters of the 189,819-letter word. I kept trying to spell it, watching as Tom bled out hauntingly slowly. He sobbed for the first hour or so, before uttering little more than the occasional hoarse grunt or inaudible whisper. Letter-shaped wounds formed where my brother’s skin had been, and Brandon continued to spell the word along the floor after he’d run out of room on the whiteboard.
It took hours for my brother to finally fall still, but Brandon didn’t stop, even after Tom’s death – after I lost. He made me finish the word.
We used up every last piece of my brother’s body to spell out the full word – limbs, eyes, innards, and bones. I don’t know why I kept spelling. There was nothing that Brandon held over me. My only explanation is that sheer shock drove me onwards. Horror at what I’d witnessed. A disconnect from reality.
When the word was finished, Brandon silently left the attic.
I eventually returned to the real world, in a sense, and called the police. It’s hard to explain what followed. I know that Brandon’s parents were found in their bed, throats slit. Their cars were in the garage.
The demented boy has been missing for eighteen years, and my town has never been the same. I’ve never been the same. As I type this post now, I don’t see letters. Not really.
I see body parts.
X

This is a story I kind of put in the back of my mind, but recently some events happened that made me recall it. This happened while I was growing up in Asia.
When I was about 9, my dad took me and my family the usual fishing pond. He'd pay the owner a fee and would fish there all day, drinking and hanging out with his buddies, while I watched him. I wandered off and played with the kids of workers who worked at the pond. An older kid came up to me with a small carboard box with baby rats in it. He said he found it in the house and told me we should feed it to the fish or throw it at the tree. I rejected the idea and took the box away from him, scared he was actually going to do it for real. I had no idea how to save these baby rats at that point. All of a sudden, an old lady walked up to me and asked me if she could see it. I assumed she was going to help me for some reason. She smiled and all of a sudden grabbed a rock and started grinding the baby rats in the box like someone would when grinding something in a mortar and pestle. I was stunned and remembered her laughing when she saw I was taken aback. I ran to my mom and cried, told her what happened. Dad laughed but a nervous laugh since he didn't want to offend the worker's action. I spent the next 5 hours just hating it there, and when it was time to leave, the old lady laughed me and said had to kill it or else it'd infest the house. From then on out, I never went fishing because it reminded me of that particular moment.
I understand now why she had to do what she did, but the way she did it was downright haunting. I also don't know how else she was going to get rid of the rats too, probably a more humane way but I don't want to think about it. Wish she'd croak at that time and up till this day, I still wish she does (I'm assuming she's already dead of old age by now lol)

Motivation — A Close Reading of Tea Time

"I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking: maybe six feet ain't so far down?"
Nimander Golit
Chapter V of Weathered
2002 BS
Click Here for the Introduction to the essay series.

Prelude to the Close Reading

Why, hello there, again. It’s been a few weeks but I promise that this endeavor is still moving forward. For those that don’t know, this essay is a part of a collection I’ll be putting together which investigates the Eleint, their blood, and sorcery within the Malazan shared secondary universe. We’re still laying down our foundations, and today we’ll be covering a sequence of scenes in Chapter 8 of Toll the Hounds.
My intentions were to cover all of the scenes in a single post, but that has proven itself to be difficult. As such, I’ll cover the first scene in this sequence in this post. There’ll be one or two follow-up posts.
There are ten scenes that are in this sequence:

1. Nimander 1
2. Desra 1
3. Desra 2
4. Skintick 1
5. Desra 3
6. Nimander 2
7. Desra 4
8. Kedeviss 1
9. Nimander 3
10. Kedeviss 2

I’ll be approaching these scenes (including the one discussed today) through a few lenses.

A ringing of bells.

In his musings on writing, Erikson discusses the notion of a bell. I’ll let him speak for himself.
In the scenes we’ll be looking at, some of the bells that I believe are used are (and not all of these are represented in this first particular scene):

• Past versus present — ancestors/parents vs. living/children
• How others see us, and how we see others
• The word ‘beast’ and its many meanings
• The words ‘child/children’ and their many meanings
• The relationships between gods and mortals
• Portals/thresholds

Existentialism.

Particularly the genealogy of continental philosophy that led to Sartre’s existentialism and the shared/adapted/bifurcated philosophies of his contemporaries (such as de Beauvoir, Camus, and Merleau-Ponty). This wasn’t my initial intention when I decided to use this sequence of scenes as a launch pad into my collection of essays. However, the beauty of close-reading is that you go into a text with a hypothesis seeking evidence and support, and then end up with new insights.
Some of the concepts that will be brought up are:

• Anxiety
• Facticity and transcendence; Authenticity and bad faith
• The Look/Gaze and being-for-others
• The Absurd and Revolution
• Perception

Genre conventions as grammar.

Particularly, we’ll look at Erikson’s use of genre conventions from the likes of Gothic literature and Weird Fiction — namely the Sublime, cosmic horror, and the Weird — as the subtle language used to convey tension that is congruent with some of the other subtexts. If these grammars are subverted, we’ll try to point that out too.
We will later delve more into Malazan’s literary genealogy in other essays, but I want this lens to be present during the reading to see how Erikson aligns or subverts these genre conventions.
We’ll be using Professor Michael Moir’s YouTube lectures on Weird Fiction as reference.

What the fuck is happening?

This is a question about plot that I will answer at the end of all of the scenes, but keep it in mind as we go through. It has less to do with existentialism and Gothic literature and more on what Gothos was trying to do during these scenes.

Pre-TtH Context

We first meet Nimander and his siblings (unnamed) in House of Chains on Drift Avalii. By Bonehunters, they had left Drift Avalii and ended up at Malaz City, where they then joined Tavore Paran’s fleet while fleeing Malaz City. In Reaper’s Gale, we find the siblings had been ‘adopted’ by Sandalath while they traveled to Lether with the Malazans. Phaed wanted to kill Sandalath. Nimander stopped Phaed from killing Sandalath. Withal (Sandalath’s husband) throws Phaed out a window. The murder is taken as a suicide. The siblings intern Phaed and then meet Clip, who offers to lead them to Anomander in Black Coral via Kurald Galain.
This gets us to Toll the Hounds, where Nimander is being haunted by Phaed. They’ve left Kurald Galain and are now on Genabackis (but not yet to Black Coral). Nimander fears the future meeting his father and the rest of the Tiste Andii. The siblings and Clip ‘stumble’ on Morsko, where Clip is curious about its cult of the Dying God. A ritual takes place there. Nimander and Skintick are nearly enthralled, but are saved by Aranatha (and thus Mother Dark herself). The group then find Clip, who is in a coma. They collect him, and set off in a wagon to follow the Dying God’s priests to Bastion. Along that journey, the siblings stumble upon the High King, Kallor, who reluctantly chooses to not kill them and instead travels with them.
The sequence of scenes in Chapter 8 that we’ll be discussing follows some time after Kallor joins the siblings.
Now that the administrative stuff is out of the way, let’s dive into the first scene.

Nimander 1

Rum-induced memories.

We start this sequence thrust into Nimander’s introspection on ‘rage’ as a breaking of a vessel, impossible to fix. He recalls Deadsmell’s musings that ‘rage in battle’ was a gift while the two drank rum. Rum that awakened memories once ignored by Nimander.
(Note: in Scene 2, we’ll see Desra’s view of Nimander, and we’ll see that Nimander’s ruminations on rage here are what inform Desra’s view of him, and not in the way that Nimander’s doubt imagines.)
In the previous post, we discussed memories and their decay. So much of this series and the lore surrounding it is driven by the memories of ancient beings. Nimander is younger with respect to ancient beings (but ancient nonetheless), and even he struggles with his memories. Perhaps this is a result of the traumas he’s experienced with respect to his being in diaspora and perceived abandonment by his father (a symmetry itself with Rake’s — and the Tiste Andii as a whole — relationship with Mother Dark).
He recalls the rum lighting “a fire in [his] brain, casting red light on a host of memories gathered ghostly round the unwelcoming heart.” He reminisces on the time after Kurald Galain (but before Drift Avalii) and his father’s emotional indifference. He recalls the pranks him and his kin would pull on Endest Silann; the arrival of Andarist and his arguments with Anomander. It is unclear what the arguments were — if you’ve read Forge of Darkness, you might be able to infer what’s likely, but I’m curious if the argument is Andarist asking to take the siblings and Anomander refusing, or Anomander asking Andarist to take the children and Andarist was reluctant? Was the argument about Anomander thrusting the Hust blade, T’an Aros/K’orladis (i.e., Vengeance / Grief), onto Andarist or did Andarist already possess the blade? We don’t know exactly to my knowledge, but it’s fun to speculate.
Regardless, Nimander recalls, like a certain inscribed hearthstone, there was peace. Andarist was to take them all through a threshold, a portal elsewhere (as mentioned, portals end up being a rung bell, so pay attention). Nimander remembers Endest’s weeping as the children were pulled through a “portalway into an unknown, mysterious new world where anything was possible.”
Andarist raised the Tiste Andii children on that portal’s other side, on Drift Avalii. We know (or can infer) that this was a task to protect the Throne of Shadow, but Nimander and his kin didn’t understand this as children. But Andarist led them with his pragmatism, he ensured they learned how the world was. With our knowledge of Kharkanas, this is so powerful. We know Anomander’s hubris was abused as a motivating factor for Hunn Raal’s despicable acts. We know that Andarist likely lacks children of his own in response to this, and so his taking on guardianship over the children of his brother — that very same brother that rejected Andarist’s grief in favour of vengeance (and materialised in the T’an Aros/K’orladis dichotomy) — is a stark, challenging, and ultimately selfless decision.
But this pragmatism created child soldiers. The collision of reality’s necessity to survive and carry out the duty of protecting the Throne of Shadow came at the expense of what little remaining childhood innocence Rake’s brood still had (even as a people on the run, exiled from their home due to a sociopolitical schism). Andarist became a stern teacher, juxtaposed to the echoes of Endest’s gentleness. “The games ended. The world turned suddenly serious.” Nonetheless, the Tiste Andii siblings grew to love Andarist.
Nimander continues his introspection:

See a bored child with a stick — and see how every beast nearby flees, understanding well what is now possible and, indeed, probable.

This reminds me of a general rule of advice: ‘never fuck around when a child has gun.’ Tiste Andii or not, children can be cruel especially when mixed with unknown doses of trauma and violence. Regardless, I want to call attention here that this notion of children and beasts are each bells rung. To Nimander, Andarist “unleash[ed] them, these children with avid eyes.” He “had made them good soldiers,” ones that know rage.
Vessels broken.
As such, from his own experience, Nimander suspects that the Dying God is a child. He speaks to the dialectic between gods and their worshippers (another bell rung):

The mad priests poured him full, knowing the vessel leaked, and then drank of that puerile seepage. Because he was a child, the Dying God’s thirst and need were without end, never satiated.

The group stumbles on desiccated bodies staked among fields: dried up, tapped of their libations. This speaks to a particular exploitation between mortal and god, symbolised literally as worshippers feeding a god to then become the harvested. This perpetuates the Dying God’s power to accumulate more worshippers via addictive kelyk. The language here shows that the Dying God has stumbled upon a sort of cheat code, an exploitation of the god-mortal dialectic that allows him and his priests to arbitrage power. Like a cancer that, via the law of large numbers, is equipped with the mechanisms to divert a body’s resources to it while it slowly destroys the body.
The scarecrows being in fields is such a perfect choice of this analogy: things to be harvested. A product, a commodity — a thing with both use-value and exchange-value, for our Marxians out there. I believe Erikson has said that he was thinking of oil here, and that is fine by itself, but I do like the mirroring to Eucharistic transubstantiation in Catholicism (due to my being a very-very-lapsed Catholic). Especially with wine, an extremely addictive substance, transcending into God’s blood to cleanse us as cannibalistic sacrament.

Dal Honese burial practices.

Nimander sees these fields as “bizarre cemeteries, where some local aberration of belief insisted that the dead be staked upright, that they ever stand ready for whatever may come." This makes him recall some shipwrecked Dal Honese on Drift Avalii. He thinks on the ancestor cult and burial practices of Dal Hon: literally constructing their homes with their dead in the walls as both material and essence, the building stretching out with additional rooms as time moved on and kin died.
This reminds me of the Neolithic proto-city, Çatalhöyük, found in Anatolia within modern-day Türkiye where ancestors have been found to be buried beneath platforms in living quarters. See: Chapter 6 of The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow.
With or without intention, I like to view this ritual via an existentialist lens, particularly Sartre’s notion of the Look. To Sartre — in contrast to other phenomenologies — being is in flux, some path of a given chaotic double-pendulum switching to and from poles of being-in-itself***\**¹* and being-for-itself***\**²*. The Look, to Sartre, is a sort of symmetry breaking — a realisation by being-for-itselves that decentralises it, the sudden awareness of its being an object, an Other, to Other consciousnesses.
A heuristic often used to showcase Sartre’s notion of the Look (or Gaze) is that of a voyeur peeping through a keyhole into someone’s room that hears a noise down the hall. Regardless if that noise is from another person (another being-for-itself) or not (say, the house settling), the subjective voyeur suddenly objectifies themselves, collapsing the chaotic pendulum from being-for-itself (nothingness as "no thing-ness") to their facticity — their being-in-itself, their thing-ness — whose meaning to Other being-for-themselves is relative to a separate centre than the voyeur’s own.
To Sartre, the resulting anxiety experienced snapping from subject to object is a proof against any nihilistic approach to solipsism. The fact that we can Other our own being-for-itself means that we can also recognise being-for-itself external to us since those we Other too can Other us as we Other ourselves. The reflexivity as a result of the Look is evidence against solipsism to Sartre.
As a result, this Dal Honese practice is a cultural self-burdening via Sartre’s Look by literally having your ancestors clay-filled bodies decentralise your subjectivity and externalise you as an object that can be judged by its facticity. This results in a sort of collective Dal Honese being-for-others, Sartre would argue. This isn’t inherently good or bad to existentialists, but it does necessitate a calculus that discerns if the living descendants are authentically expressing their freedom with each moment they accept this practice, or if they are living in bad faith.
Regardless, though, this is a haunting of the Past. This haunting isn’t something that is only important to existentialism or other philosophical traditions (such as post-structuralism — see: Derrida’s hauntology), but to the genre conventions and tropes of Gothic horror and its descendants (such as cosmic horror, weird fiction, and their influences on sword and sorcery, etc.).
There are mappings (some more subtle than others) between the Sublime and the existential anxiety and dread experienced in phenomena similar to the Look. The experience of looking upon the vastness of the sea, of stumbling upon an ancient statue, of learning of the size of the universe — which are described as the Sublime, the Weird, or Eldritch in some literary traditions (e.g., Romantic, Gothic, Horror, the Weird, etc.) — are the same experiences that are often analysed in continental philosophies using words such as angst/anxiety/despaiabsurdity/alienation.
Nimander goes on to further expose the relationship between this Dal Honese ancestor cult and inter-tribal conflicts that lead to deaths and stolen bodies that leave physical voids in Dal Honese architecture. He muses how this physical representation of wounds begets a cycle of vengeance (a cultural tradition, a product of facticity and bad faith): “blood back and forth,” he says. He mentions that this cycle is what pushed the shipwrecked Dal Honese from their homes, an act of revolt and perhaps even authenticity to Sartre. Eventually the Dal Honese recovered and “paddled away — not back home, but to some unknown place, a place devoid of unblinking ghosts staring out from every wall.”
I love that Erikson has this whole little short story in this scene, especially in the contrast of its being some rum-induced reflection by Nimander on his own past’s haunting of him and his siblings. Moreover, these Tiste Andii are travelling with Kallor, the Undying Unascendant: a being-for-itself that literally manifests the past’s haunting on the present — a man cursed, jaded, who carries the past with him wherever he travels. All of these together show that one’s freedom can have one flee (even be redeemed — which balances with other plotlines in TtH), but that doesn’t necessarily — nor sufficiently so — annihilate the past.

Finding a tower.

After this, Nimander’s reminiscing is interrupted by his hearing Kallor nearby (like a footstep in a hallway). Kallor comments on the use of the corpses and notes that the flora “[is] not even native to this world, after all.” Nimander replies that the corpses are being used for saemankelyk. The mention of the plants not being native to this world should orient the reader back to the Weird, especially since it brings upon a sense of unease, an Othering — the house settling that again serves to reduce both Nimander and the readers to our thing-ness
‘The past’ versus ‘the present’ versus ‘the future’ (and their hauntings of one another) bubble up again with some banter between Skintick and Kallor about the state of things. Kallor states ‘nothing changes.’ Skintick counters ‘it keeps getting worse,’ to which Kallor claims is but an illusion.
I find this dialogue to be a comical little conflict between Kallor’s perceived-postmodern, nihilistic judgement of the state of things being inert versus Skintick’s pseudo-Rousseauian, inverted-Hegalian, modernist grand narrative of things getting worse.
Again, it alludes to a haunting of the past on the current generation. Interestingly, this is a trend within the Book of the Fallen in general: not as an espousing of the ‘old vs. young’, but Erikson’s decentering/challenging/deconstruction of that binary. Think of Raest in GotM; Menandore, Sukul and Sheltatha in RG; Karsa in HoC; the Witness trilogy. He does this via a sort of Ancient's Hubris colliding with its differences to the Present’s Ingenuity, and this being dual to the Present’s Naivety colliding with the Ancient Wisdom.
Kallor eventually hits a sore spot with the Tiste: he brings up Rake. Unlike the Dal Honese whose freedom had them flee the cultural practices of letting their ancestors haunt both literally and figuratively, Nimander and his siblings were pulled/pushed away from their father (and people) as children — by what very well could be their father’s request. The Tiste siblings are haunted by Anomander’s active absence. Their continued distance from their father isn’t an act of expressing their freedom against an Ancestor’s Gaze — it isn’t an act of revolution — it is their facticity and a source for their Othering of themselves. We often see this from Nimander’s POVs up to and including this sequence.
Kallor sniffs out this weakness and presses upon the wound. Nimander gets flustered and retorts. To which Kallor responds:

'Anomander Rake is a genius at beginning things. It’s finishing them he has trouble with.'

Damn, Kallor.
Also, I didn’t need my ADHD called out so harshly, dude. What the fuck.
Without diving into what Erikson was dealing with while writing this book, this hits hard for Nimander, and is an interesting commentary nonetheless. His father, Anomander, is the leader of a diasporic people who’ve been without home, without a centre, for 400,000 years. I think Kallor’s words hurt Nimander so much because the Tiste siblings don’t know Anomander’s current plans nor have they experienced the "settling-down" from the unveiling of Kurald Galain in what is now Black Coral. They are unaware of Rake’s teleology for his people, for himself even. Regardless, we see again and again that Kallor isn’t just a strong skirmisher, his words cut nearly as well as his blades.
Kallor goes on to confirm that he knows Rake before the group notices a ruined tower among the alien plants and scarecrows. Kallor says its Jaghut. Kallor trudges forth indifferently, pushing corpses out of his way as he bee-lines it to the ruined tower. I don’t think such a sequence of action has ever described Kallor’s whole raison d’être and modus operandi so well: just a man seemingly indifferent to the corpses in his path as his will pulls him forward.
We get a small interaction between Skintick and Nimander that reveals Skintick’s acuity in reading Kallor’s take on Rake. Kallor sees their father as an equal (it isn’t just the readers that need to be keen to subtext, characters do too).
Skintick offers the idea of sicking Kallor on the Dying God, hoping he “decid[es] to do something for his own reasons, but something that ends up solving our problem.” I like the use of “deciding to do something for his own reasons,” as this aligns so well with authenticity in existentialism (and the absence of some absolute morality for authenticity).
As Nimander approaches the tower behind Kallor, both Nimander and the readers get a great sense of horror, the weird, the uncanny, and the sublime with how Erikson describes the scenery:

Drawing closer to the ruin, they fell silent. Decrepit as it was, the tower was imposing. The air around it seemed grainy, somehow brittle, ominously cold despite the sun’s fierce heat.
The highest of the walls revealed a section of ceiling just below the uppermost set of stones, projecting without any other obvious support to cast a deep shadow upon the ground floor beneath it. The facing wall reached only high enough to encompass a narrow, steeply arched doorway. Just outside this entrance and to one side was a belly-shaped pot in which grew a few straggly plants with drooping flowers, so incongruous amid the air of abandonment that Nimander simply stared down at them, disbelieving.

Nimander notes an incongruity of this place — its aesthetic of abandonment juxtaposed with a curated garden. “The cold despite the sun’s fierce heat.” This evokes a certain unsettledness to Nimander (and thus, the reader). These genre conventions are sources of tension and anxiety, similar to non-diegetic violins building up to a real or false jump-scare in a slasher flick.
Arrogantly, Kallor chooses to go out of his way and insult the presumed Jaghut within the tower. Classic Kallor. The Jaghut replies “nothing changes,” resulting in Kallor shooting Skintick and Nimander a “pleased smirk.”

Tea time, but before falling into a rabbit-hole and not after.

Before Kallor can announce himself, the Jaghut lists off Kallor’s titles, his facticity. Kallor’s reputation precedes him and there’s an asymmetry here in which the Jaghut knows who Kallor is but Kallor doesn’t yet know who the Jaghut is. This is our first hint that this meeting isn’t serendipitous, and is instead an intentional interaction with regards to the plot. And if this Jaghut knows of Kallor, does he know those who Kallor travels with? Who is this Jaghut’s intended audience among those options?
I also like the play here with facticity: the Jaghut lists out things about Kallor, but is Kallor some sum of those thing-nesses? How many are true, how many are manufactured myths? It’s an act by this Jaghut to Gaze upon Kallor, to show to Kallor that he’s being seen. It’s a deliberate tactic to destabilise and decenter Kallor: an offensive.
We as readers are informed of Kallor’s limitations from the Azathanai curses via Draconus, K’rul and Nightchill, but these limitations on Kallor don’t necessarily restrict his freedom until Kallor allows them.
We get a flash of Jaghut humour and guest rites — this ancient dismisses Kallor while inviting everyone in for tea. Interestingly, Erikson has this Jaghut use the proper noun of ‘Others’ which lends me to think that an existentialist lens hasn’t been the worst pick (not that ‘Othering’ is strictly existentialist by any means).
So, we’ve had corpses drained dry for kelyk, alien plant-life, a ruined tower of an unknown age stumbled upon beyond the urban, a preternatural creature to Nimander and his kin (something they’ve maybe only witnessed a handful of times) and then we get this description:

The air of the two-walled chamber was frigid, the stones sheathed in amber-streaked hoarfrost. Where the other two walls should have been rose black, glimmering barriers of some unknown substance, and to look upon them too long was to feel vertiginous — Nimander almost pitched forward, drawn up only by Skintick’s sudden grip, and his friend whispered, ‘Never mind the ice, cousin.’
Ice, yes, it was just that. Astonishingly transparent ice–

I love this. First: “it was just that” screams “no it isn’t” to anyone paying attention to the words Erikson is using to make the reader uncomfortable. We know: Jaghut + Ice = Omtose Phellack. The atmospheric setting here is directly being called out in not just a sublime way, but his description has an added layer of horror to Omtose Phellack.
Erikson uses “vertiginous,” giving both Nimander and us a sense of vertigo, being decentred and unoriented. This isn’t too different from descriptions found in works like Vandermeer’s Annihilation or other New Weird authors. This ice wall calls to Nimander, draws from him feelings of unknown when he’s caught himself staring for too long — emphasis on staring.
For all intents and purposes, this ice wall is a thing, a being-in-itself, neither active nor passive. But its effect on Nimander is similar to the Dal Honese ancestors’ Gaze — this ice wall objectifies him, calls to him, evokes his being-for-others, and emotionally alienates him. The pull Nimander feels is his submitting his being-for-itself with the freedom of those that Gaze upon him. A justification of his facticity, his bad faith. This will be important later.
Eventually we get this awesome line from the Jaghut host:

’Once, long ago, a wolf god came before me. Tell me, Kallor, do you understand the nature of beast gods? Of course not. You are only a beast in the unfairly pejorative sense — unfair to beasts, that is. How is it, then, that the most ancient gods of this world were, one and all, beasts?’

There’s so much going on to unpack in this paragraph.

• He’s called Kallor a beast, but says his doing so is unfair to beasts (damn, this ice orc just roasted Kallor).
• It calls back to Nimander’s thoughts on children wielding sticks and beasts fleeing as a result. With or without knowing it, this Jaghut is calling Kallor a child, too, in the pejorative sense, unfair to children.
• He says the first gods were beasts, but does he mean these early gods were explicitly Beasts (in essence, not the pejorative sense) or that they were beast-like akin to the pejorative sense used on Kallor (or some combination of both)?
  • Interestingly, we know that this wolf god is possibly an Azathanai d’ivers from FoL — with this knowledge, would Fanderay and Togg count as a Beast-as-literal-beast beast-god?

Later, again, we get this Jaghut saying Others as a proper noun, and then the Others are called Tiste Andii.

‘Ah, and what of the Others with you? Might not they be interested?’
Clearing his throat, Skintick said, ‘Venerable one, we possess nothing of worth to one such as you.’
‘You are too modest, Tiste Andii.’
‘I am?’
'Each creature is born from one not its kind. This is a wonder, a miracle forged in the fires of chaos, for chaos indeed whispers in our blood, no matter its particular hue. If I but scrape your skin, so lightly as to leave but a momentary streak, that which I take from you beneath my nail contains every truth of you, your life, even your death, assuming violence does not claim you. A code, if you will, seemingly precise and so very ordered. Yet chaos churns. For all your similarities to your father, neither you nor the one named Nimander — nor any of your brothers and sisters — is identical to Anomander Dragnipurake. Do you refute this?’

Above, the Jaghut goes on to describe genetics, but also calls out the fact that they are children of Anomander — dude definitely knows more than he’s leading on, that’s for sure, and is winking directly to us readers, seemingly going over the heads of both Kallor and the Tiste. Also, the bit about chaos in blood will come up again and again in later scenes and later essays.
Moreover, we see that the Jaghut says that which he scrapes "contains every truth of you, your life, even your death" — our genetics are facticities, among our thing-nesses. "Yet chaos churns," the Jaghut rebuts. That chaos in our blood is a source of our "no thing-ness," from which we may express our freedom against the determinism of genetics — of facticities — and transcend.

For each kind of beast there is a first such beast, more different from its parents than the rest of its kin, from which a new breed in due course emerges. Is this firstborn then a god?’

I love this for two reasons. One, it speaks to a criticism of the assumption that a prime-mover is necessarily divine. But, through the existentialist lens, it’s a challenge and criticism of the presumed Authority of Genealogy. Jumping back to the early musings on ancestry: if ancestors haunt us and dictate our facticity as a result of suppressing our being-for-itself, then where does that chain of dictating/suppressing end? And is that terminus also an Authority above all generations below it just due to its being something new, something sufficiently different from its own genealogy, its ancestors ‘behind’ it?
I also like the subtext of trauma as hereditary here with the double entendre behind ‘beast’, we can think of this Jaghut as asking if the primordial source of generational trauma has authority over its descendants? What does this dialogue mean for Nimander and his siblings and their place with respect to their father and the rest of the Tiste Andii people? Does this inform an analysis of Nimander’s chaotic double-pendulum between being-in-itself, being-for-itself, and his being-for-others?
A huge thing I would like to point out here, too, is that neither Skintick, Nimander, nor Kallor have used the Tiste Andii’s names, yet this Jaghut knows them by name. Kallor could deduce they were Rake’s children, but he didn’t know their names. Even though Skintick showcased an acuity to subtext when considering Kallor’s opinions of Rake, he doesn’t catch onto this subtlety. This Jaghut not only knows of Kallor, he knows of Nimander and his siblings. The evidence that this meeting isn’t serendipity continues to build.

‘You spoke of a wolf god,’ Skintick said. ‘You began to tell us a story.’
‘So I did. But you must be made to understand. It is a question of essences. To see a wolf and know it as pure, one must possess an image in oneself of a pure wolf, a perfect wolf.’
‘Ridiculous,’ Kallor grunted. ‘See a strange beast and someone tells you it is a wolf — and from this one memory, and perhaps a few more to follow, you have fashioned your image of a wolf. In my empires, philosophers spewed such rubbish for centuries, until, of course, I grew tired of them and had them tortured and executed.’

This sequence of dialogue is fantastic and reminds me of arguments foagainst the strong/weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis/es. We see the Jaghut musing on a seemingly prescriptive Platonic idealism that Kallor interrupts with a more descriptive, pragmatic, empirical framework in which he follows with a jest of torturing and executing philosophers (remind me to never live in the Kallorian Empire).
Kallor speaks as if his words contradict the Jaghut and show the assumed idealism to be wrong. But, by Kallor’s own argument, the Jaghut’s words of ‘pure’ and ‘perfect’ are just as empirically contingent to one’s memories as ‘wolf’ is. The combinations of signs and symbols language users use give flesh to those signs’ and symbols’ own meaning — but bury that meaning beneath the flesh by doing so. The concept of a ‘perfect wolf’ (i.e., ‘perfect’ + ‘wolf’) emerging from one’s own contingency with the notion of ‘perfect’ and ‘wolf’ is entirely possible without that imagined ‘perfect wolf’ being actually some idealisation, i.e., some Platonic Perfect Wolf.
The Jaghut responds with laughter to Kallor’s absurdity: both in his misinterpretation of the Jaghut’s musings as well as the nature of Kallor’s brutal reaction to those that question things he finds to be rubbish. This pairs well with Skintick’s future POV in this sequence, but the contrast between Kallor and this Jaghut is entertaining nonetheless. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish when Kallor is telling the truth about his brutality or if his mutterings are just words congruent to his reputation.
The two then have a pissing contest. We find out the Jaghut was in disguise — I don’t have the evidence or time here to say, but there are ideas that this particular Jaghut is a d'ivers and it is fucking awesome even if untrue. The discussion here points to some T’lan Imass’ Jaghut War. It being the Kron, I’m inclined to wonder if there is a relationship with the bones Karsa stumbles upon in HoC (where he and his war party find Calm).

Skintick squatted to pick up two of the cups, straightening to hand one to Nimander. The steam rising from the tea was heady, hinting of mint and cloves and something else. The taste numbed his tongue.

Don’t take candy from strangers tea from Jaghut, people.
We find out that Raest is this Jaghut’s child. We find out that this Jaghut took on 43 T’lan Imass and a Bonecaster, killing them all. This is a threat rallied back against Kallor’s assertion that he’s killed Jaghut.

Teeth bared, Kallor bent down to retrieve his cup.
The Jaghut’s left hand shot out, closing about Kallor’s wrist. ‘You wounded that wolf god,’ he said.

Oh shit. What follows is one of the first times I can recall that Kallor is scared. Contrast with his earlier treatment of Rake as equal.

'Oh, be quiet, Kallor. This tower was an Azath once. Shall I awaken it for you?’
Wondering, Nimander watched as Kallor backed towards the entrance, eyes wide in that weathered, pallid face, the look of raw recognition dawning. ‘Gothos, what are you doing here?’
‘Where else should I be? Now remain outside — these two Tiste Andii must go away for a while.’

The revelation: the Jaghut is none other than the Lord of Hate himself, Gothos. You can understand why Kallor, always so arrogant, submits to Gothos and listens to his instruction.
Immediately after the reveal, Skintick and Nimander succumb to the effects of whatever extra ingredient Gothos had slipped into their tea. We get this final sequence:

Nimander’s eyes were drawn once more to the walls of ice. Black depths, shapes moving within.
He staggered, reached out his hands–
‘Oh, don’t step in there–’
And then he was falling forward, his hands passing into the wall before him, no resistance at all.
‘Nimander, do not–’
Blackness.

Again, the readers eyes are drawn along with Nimander's to the icy, abyss-like, objectifying, Gazing threshold. Here's where the sublime and the weird really flavour the setting in this scene.
There's a bell’s echo here from the start of this scene: this sequence starts with Nimander discussing the uncertainty related to moving through a portal with Andarist away from the rest of his kin, a breaching. During these final lines of this first scene, we get a tension between us and the unknown, between what has happened and that-which-is-to-come, between what we’ve imagined about Malazan’s cosmos and some contorting of those assumptions. What’s beyond the veil decentres not only Nimander in its draw and pushing him to being-for-others, but it decentres the readers too. Hic sunt dracones, terra incognita, the sublime, the enigmatic, the terror. We’re made to feel small and inconsequential by this icy threshold.
It isn’t mysterious because it evades our Gaze like other fantastical things (e.g., many renditions of some archetypal tricksters found within various folklores), instead it invites our Gaze eventually since It Gazes back (almost Nietzschean).

Thoughts

Calling back to the genre conventions, this extended scene is one that definitely plays with the established conventions of Gothic literature and its descendants. Constantly, Erikson hits us with tension sewn into his choice of words in Nimander’s ruminations, his angst associated to diaspora, the notion of Dal Honese ancestors gazing upon their descendants from clay walls, absent ancestors that too haunt the same, the fields of scarecrows as desiccated (and harvested) bodies of worshippers, the alien plant-life, the ancient Jaghut tower, the ice threshold. Each of these (and those unmentioned) add onto to the dissociation (de-centering) of both Nimander and us, the readers. Each of us seem small and inconsequential to the dynamism of the cosmos: everything we know, including that of what we already know about the Malazan universe (and our own) can be challenged. We’re each just travellers who have stumbled upon a shattered visage in the desert that reads: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
This stands in contrast to — almost a revolution against — the modalities one can garnish from the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment that favour an almost religious rationalism and positivism. This is why I believe (and hope I have shown) that the existentialist (and those schools of thought peripheral to it) lens is apt. The genealogy of Gothic literature serves as a grammatical sandbox that gives way to exploring the things that existentialism tries to frame in its study, such as the dread and anxieties — the nothingness (no thing-ness) — of being.
Not only are the Dal Honese clay-filled ancestors present to alienate the reader by entertaining a certain ‘exoticism’ (by the readers’ juxtaposing such practices against what we consider ‘normal’ — here's where Sartre is applied to White or Male Gazes), but they are there as conduits for understanding how Nimander is affected by Others, by their Looks — his siblings, his absent father, his dead uncle, Kallor, Gothos, and the icy threshold — even if this ‘othering’ is one done only by Nimander onto himself (the house settling perceived as a footfall). This becomes more important in the scenes that follow.
So, how does this relate to the Eleint, dragonblood or sorcery? If you want to know now, please read ahead in the text — i.e., he future scenes in this sequence in Chapter 8 of TtH — you’ll find out. Otherwise, I’ll attempt to provide more clarity in the follow-up post(s). Until then, I just want put forth some questions:

• Are the Eleint actually dragons in the usual fantastical/conventional sense, or are they something different, something alien, something terrifying, something that evokes horror?
• If meaning-making (and, as such, essentializing) — according to my reading of existentialism — is a choice of ascribing/burying the Real with its facticity, what does this mean for K’rul’s warrenification and the birth of sorcery? What does this mean for aspecting, particularly for the Eleint and the Azathanai?

Beyond those questions (which align with my grander narrative shared in this collection of essays) — in regards to the plot, I think it is smart to continue asking, ‘why has Gothos ensured that Anomander’s children and Kallor would stumble upon his tower?’
¹ the facticity of what can be understood as objective states ascribed to things, including social constructions — thing-ness — e.g., how things are thrown into the world, a mode of existence that simply is, the contingent being of ordinary things, such the language(s) one speaks, one’s occupation, etc.
² the mode of existence of consciousness that stands in contrast to being-in-itself, “no thing-ness”, that which negates being-in-itself

Hello my name is jeslyn I’m a 20 year old female before I start this is my first post so It was a little bit hard to write this seeing as it brings up too many bad memories
For a little context when I was younger my father wouldn’t show off his abusive side even when I was younger I remember when I was younger my mother was pushed into the wall by my father when she was pregnant with my little brother I also remember being hugged by my older sister well my mother and father had a screaming match
My father’s abusive signage was more prominent when I was in my teens going in high school any time I wanted to go to school early to do homework or to get a project done you would call me a slut or whore saying that I would be messing with the boys that would be there but I was doing well and all my classes and whenever I show to my grades it wasn’t enough he didn’t care
His abuse was physical emotional and mental through things and push me into things he even jumped over the couch when me and my mum were just having a small fight he smacked my head into the ground and I ended up crying my eyes out saying my mum just watching me with a blank look on her face
When I was a little bit older my father suspected me sending nudes to a boy I liked I need took me straight to the police station to get me in trouble but it was never the case and I told the police officer that I just had a little episode in self harm to myself and I had sent photo to your friend as more of a concern
High school whenever I was sick he would say that I would have to stay at school he didn’t care when I was sick or he just wanted me out of the house or when I did finish school I had to go home straight away and if I was late I would be punished he also didn’t understand the concept of menstrual cycle and then he would say that it was just a phase angel up passing out vomiting and the only person to look after me with my younger brother he gave me a plate of food mainly fruit
And whenever my mum and father were having a screaming match I would get involved so my mother wouldn’t have to deal with his abuse
but soon enough I couldn’t take it any more and I found my older brother on a live stream I told my brother but I couldn’t take it any more and for him to pick me up when it came for me to leave I packed everything I could say goodbye to my cat and just leaving saying goodbye to my Younger brother and when my father realised I was not at the house he kicked my mother out and told her to look for me she ended up walking all night and my sister had to help her go home again My father ended up texting me multiple times to get my ass home even resulted to guilt tripping me telling my mum and brother were upset and crying bawling their eyes out but my brother helped me pack my stuff and he knew about it I just wish that I could take him with me
While I was living with people who knew my father they told me story’s of him being abusive to his mom putting a knife to her and he even got my older brothers mom pregnant and only paid $5 or even of child support even my uncle on my fathers side gave him cocaine I even knew my father was cheating and doing weed in the house but my mother was oblivious to it even through I saw he was talking to some blonde bimbo I sorry for my words I hate cheaters and I despise my father of everything he has done to everyone that gets close to him
And I knew when I finally turned 19 they couldn’t do anything about me leaving home and they couldn’t get the police involved I visited my sister a few times even my little brother and my mum my mum insisted of me going to the house and seeing my father I was scared but I agreed stupidly when I was face-to-face with my father he told me to take off my mask that I had on my face and that masks are not allowed in the house when I said I didn’t want to he left he just left the house and you go with his drinking buddies so I also left
When I was visiting my mum a second time I told her about what happened in high school and I was sexually assaulted 3 time by three different people but all she said was that she didn’t want to hear about it it seems like she didn’t really give two shits I told my younger brother what I told my mum and he ended up punching the wall telling me that he would hurt them for hurting me but I just hugged him saying that I’m okay now and I have been talking to a psychiatrist talking about my problems
last year was just a big whole year for me moving into different houses because of drama issues with family members finally I found a house with me and my boyfriend to live I’m doing better now and I’ve got medication to deal with mental issues I’ve got because of David my father
While being diagnosed at Sonder they told me I had to split personality disorder associated disorder social anxiety depression and I’m even getting tested for autism
I’m not talking to my mom as she just wants to push a relationship on to me with my father but I do talk to my sister and I try to talk to my Younger brother but my mum told me that David won’t get a Wi-Fi router so then I can talk to him right now I’m just dealing with myself right now trying to heal from the scars that my father caused me
But I am happy that I have people by my side especially my boyfriend‘s been there with me every step of the way helping me and caring for me and even supporting me when my family couldn’t even do that
So am I the jerk for not wanting a relationship with my abusive father

My home came pre-wired for IP cameras for outside the house. What are my options? I really like Eufy and Arlo with then flood lights but they only seem to have a Wi-Fi connection. Any guidance would be appreciated.

As the night settled in, casting its eerie shadows across the room, a sense of unease gripped me. It was the kind of night that seemed pregnant with secrets, where every creak and whisper held a sinister undertone. I sat alone in my dimly lit study, surrounded by stacks of books and the faint scent of musty pages, contemplating the stories I had heard—the tales of horror and the supernatural that had haunted the very fabric of my being. Little did I know that on this particular night, I would become a protagonist in a story that defied explanation.
It began innocently enough, with a peculiar dream that invaded my slumber. In this dream, I found myself wandering through a desolate forest, a thick mist obscuring my vision. The silence was deafening, broken only by the distant howl of a lone wolf. As I walked deeper into the woods, an unsettling feeling washed over me—a sensation of being watched, of unseen eyes peering into my soul. It was a presence I could not shake, even as I awakened in my bed, drenched in a cold sweat.
Shaken but determined to dismiss it as a mere figment of my imagination, I rose from my bed and made my way to the kitchen for a glass of water. The floorboards creaked under my weight, adding an unnerving soundtrack to the darkened house. As I reached the kitchen, I froze, my hand poised above the faucet. There, in the dim glow of moonlight filtering through the window, I saw it—a figure standing in the corner, shrouded in darkness.
My heart raced as I fumbled for the light switch, illuminating the room. But as the warm light flooded the space, the figure vanished, leaving nothing but an eerie echo in the air. The encounter left me unnerved, questioning my own sanity. Had my mind conjured this apparition, or was something more sinister at play?
Days turned into nights, and with each passing moment, the supernatural occurrences intensified. Objects inexplicably moved from their resting places, whispers echoed through empty hallways, and the temperature plummeted in certain areas of the house, despite the absence of drafts. My nights became sleepless, fraught with a sense of impending doom that no amount of logical reasoning could dispel.
Seeking answers, I delved deep into research, poring over books that chronicled the occult, searching for clues to the malevolent force that had invaded my life. The more I learned, the more I realized that I was not alone in my plight. Countless tales from across the ages told of similar hauntings, of unseen forces that fed on fear and misery, tormenting their victims until their very souls withered away.
In my quest for understanding, I reached out to paranormal experts, hoping they could shed light on my torment. They arrived armed with equipment, their faces etched with skepticism and curiosity. As we ventured through the labyrinthine corridors of my haunted home, their devices flickered and beeped, detecting unusual energy fluctuations that defied scientific explanation. Yet, their presence seemed to stoke the ire of the supernatural entity that plagued me, as if it resented our intrusion into its domain.
Night after night, I confronted the malevolent force, engaging in a psychological battle that wore away at my sanity. Sleep eluded me as the entity whispered its macabre promises, each word dripping with malice. I saw shadows dance along the walls, contorted figures lurking just beyond the periphery of my vision, and heard disembodied voices urging me to surrender to the darkness. It was a relentless assault on my psyche, eroding the barriers between reality and nightmare.
But even in the depths of despair, a flicker of determination burned within
me. I refused to succumb to the clutches of this otherworldly evil. Armed with ancient rituals and incantations, I sought to banish the entity back to the abyss from which it had emerged.
The night of the final confrontation arrived, a storm raging outside my home, mirroring the turmoil within. Armed with salt, sage, and my unwavering will, I ventured into the heart of the darkness that plagued me. Chanting the ancient words, I confronted the malevolent force head-on, challenging its dominance over my life.
An indescribable battle ensued—a battle of wills and of faith. With each incantation, the air crackled with energy, and the walls trembled with fury. I could feel the entity's desperation, its grip on reality slipping as my resolve strengthened. And then, in one climactic moment, the room exploded with blinding light, banishing the darkness that had haunted me for so long.
As the light faded, I stood alone, the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders. The house, once a den of horrors, now basked in tranquility. The entity, defeated, had retreated to the realm from which it came, leaving me scarred but victorious.
That night, I slept soundly for the first time in months, knowing that I had conquered the unexplainable. But in the darkest corners of my mind, I wondered if my victory was truly complete, or if another horror awaited its turn to grip my soul. Only time would tell.