Hi. I'm a queer, mixed race person with disabilities. This is my personal bitbucket/blog-reading tool. Trolling efforts are ignored and automatically deleted.
For fanworks go to ajoraverse.tumblr.com
ETA 2020/12/29: All postings of fan works are at @ajoraverse. My original fandom: Final Fantasy V. Currently wallowing in it. Longer posts, more personal posts, and translation work at Dreamwidth.
ETA 2025/1/12: I work an intellectually demanding job that has me travel periodically, I won’t able to get back to you quickly. Will not post begging and scam asks from people I don’t know and doing this will get you blocked.
You can bring dead people to live again, but for every person you bring back, you have to sacrifice one body part
You knew she could never love you like you love her. You knew it and still you held onto the hope, the hope that a hero could stop and look at you for once in her life.
You stand over her grave. You are the only one alive in the cemetery, but the gate around the perimeter is straining under the weight your audience presses against it. You think most everyone in the kingdom is here to see you work a miracle.
“I told you it was too dangerous,” you say. They’re ritual words now, words that you’ve said a dozen different times to her when she can’t argue back. “I told you to wait for me.”
Here is the real danger in loving a hero; they will never wait for you.
Your tears hit the top of her coffin. You cry like this, every time. The people at the gate used to cry with you too, but, after the first time you brought her back, they stopped. They stopped burying her all the way, stopped mourning her, because you always brought her back. Always.
You are not whole. You are a broken part that’s never found stability whether it be in your parents’ home or by her side. There are parts of you missing and that is both literal and figurative.
You adjust the crutch under your arm. It’s rough still, it needs sanding, but you haven’t had it long enough to do any real work on it. You still have phantom pains in the leg you gave to her eighth life to match the pain in your right arm that fed her third.
You think of yourself like a puzzle that will never be complete. You were never pretty, never full-figured or winsome like her, but you were well-formed. You used to have two eyes, two ears, two legs, two arms. Back then you still had all of your ribs and vertebrae, you stood tall instead of hunched and hurting.
Back then you weren’t used to standing over graves.
“You took everything,” you say and there’s venom rolling over your tongue. It pairs oddly with the love and grief in your heart, like oil and citrus and razors. You swallow. “I told you to be careful. I told you to be careful.”
You breathe heavily, frustrated at your inability to scream the words. You gave up part of your lungs for a half-death and half-life.
“You didn’t listen,” you say quietly. “Or maybe you did. Did you think I was lying? Did you think it was funny?”
She doesn’t answer. She’s dead and the last magic she felt was not yours. Not yours, not yours, not yours.
“I won’t,” you tell her. Your hair has turned white from the strain of resurrection and you are old. A hag in comparison to her never ending beauty. “I won’t. Promises can’t always be kept but, darling, they can’t always be broken either.”
You look out to the sea of faces. They’re hungry, like animals, and none of them care about you. They don’t care about her, either, though neither she or they knew it. Know it. They love what she did for them. She loved the attention.
“They’ll kill me,” you say. You know it’s true. When you walk out of the graveyard without her by your side, they will cast their stones and accusations. You are weak and fragile. You won’t make it to the pyre. “Of all the people you saved, I was never going to be one of them, anyway.”
You look down at her bare coffin. It’s simple and plain; they got tired of wasting their good satin on a temporary death. You stoop down and it takes all your strength to do it without collapsing. You let your crutch fall to the side and use your hand (your only hand) to gather a small bit of cool soil. You bring the soil to your heart and hold it there for a minute, just breathing and trembling.
“This is goodbye,” you say. “Surely we will not meet in the after life. Surely you will have gone on, once again, without me. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
It’s not okay.
You stand painfully, balancing precariously on your remaining leg. You let your hand release the dirt and you hear it impact her coffin like rain.
The crowd murmurs like the ocean. This is not what they were promised. This is not the story they want to read.
every prehistoric human reconstruction has me thinking “I want to smoke weed with this bitch”
she looks like she would have been an awesome neighbor, like she would have loved menthols and called me baby
“a Cheeto could have killed a Victorian child” but the opposite. Neanderthals would have loved to go to Hardee’s and get a burger with me.
neanderthals would have walked hand in hand with me into hell (buccees opening day)
When I saw this article two years ago and found out Neanderthals were seasoning their food 70,000 years ago, I teared up thinking about how they never got to try things like beef jerky and Doritos.
R.I.P. great great great etc. grandma you would’ve loved seafood sticks dipped in Sriracha, perhaps battered and deep fried as well ❤️
neanderthals, watching us from the afterlife, absolutely losing their fucking minds when they see us making instant noodles or some shit. “Is she gonna… Oh shit, she’s gonna add an egg to the cheap ramen let’s fuCKING GOOOOO!” “Did he – LOOK AT THIS SHIT, HE’S PUTTING BOUILLON IN THE RICE, HELL YEAH!”
they’d fuckin love hot cocoa. they’d fuckin love microwaves and kettles and drip coffee pots and cast iron. can you imagine Neolithic Man watching his great great great great great grandchild tossing vegetables around in a wok? Can you imagine handing a Blue Moon to an ancient wine maker? Ancient Egyptians loved beer, they’d fuckin love the novelty of a metal can of cold beer, they’d be like “this shit rocks, the future sounds cool”
I really like this russian edition of classic books. Letting famous artists do the covers in YA style was such a simple but clever decision. According to the recent study the number of teenage readers increased, possibly thanks to these covers. I own traditional classics with blank covers but if I ever see one of these in the wild, it’ll probably make me go feral.
Here are some of my favs:
Dracula (art by Renibet)
2.Jane Eyre (art by Ulunii)
3. Little women (art by чаки чаки)
4. The Idiot (the hedgehog-omg-) (art by Xinshi)
5. Pride and Prejudice (art by Cactusute)
6. War and Peace (art by Xinshi)
7. Wuthering Heights (art by Renibet)
8. The Great Gatsby (art by NIKEL)
9. Frankenstein (art by Iren Horrors)
10. Crime and Punishment (art by REDwood)
11. Anna Karenina (art by Ulunii)
12. The Cherry Orchard (art by lewisite)
13. The Master and Margarita (art by Renibet)
These are great
It looks like these artists actually read the novels
Polar bear Station Russian-based wildlife photographer Dmitry Kokh ventured to an abandoned meteorological station on Kolyuchin Island, where polar bears have taken over the station.
Something that I get chills about is the fact that the oldest story told made by the oldest civilization opens with “In those days, in those distant days, in those ancient nights.”
This confirms that there is a civilization older than the Sumerians that we have yet to find
Some people get existential dread from this
Me? I think it’s fucking awesome it shows just how much of this world we have yet to discover and that is just fascinating
@makaeru peer review cos this made me check when the Sumerians happened and I forget how recent history is for every other continent. 7000 - 8000 years ago just isn’t that long when you’re in Australia, and the amount of detailed history we have access to here is wonderful and should be recognised more internationally
And a quote I picked out from a longer interview with an Aboriginal local elder about the area where he touched on the history
Source (the rest of the interview is really interesting and all transcribed, have a look if you’re curious)
This is part of my Ancient Civilizations class that I teach, which does a whole week about Australia and the Torres Strait Islands because I was sick of never seeing them represented in USAmerican history contexts. With the help of @micewithknives and @acearchaeologist I’ve learned so many incredible things about Australia’s past and it’s been incredibly rewarding to share them with students.
My favorite fact about Aboriginal oral history is the fact that we pretty recently discovered that the Aboriginal myth of the 7 Sisters, an origin story for the Pleiades star cluster, accurately reflects a point TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO when two stars in the constellation got close enough together to no longer be distinguishable by the naked eye.
The story? 6 sisters running from something that took their 7th sister.
as a gilgar gunditj woman, i was not expecting to see my culture on my dash.
thank you for spreading our words and treating our culture with respect.
I feel like the cyberpunk series Max Headroom was ahead of its time and also too radical for network TV.. it heavily satirized it and the country that produces it.. A shame lots of people probably don’t remember that!
Remembering Max Headroom as either just a talking head shill for Coca Cola or as a hacking prank someone pulled on a television station is a damned shame…
Max Headroom was the first vtuber if you think about it
What a true masterpiece of practical effects, putting Matt Frewer under heavy prosthetic makeup, a fiberglass suit and special contact lenses that strained Matt’s eyes like hell, hence why Max wears shades sometimes.
This was an interesting read. Surprisingly nonpreachy given the subject; and well worth the time.
This is oaywalled but it made me weep with relief to see an honest recounting for once, so I’ve saved some good bits:
He’s also not wrong about that last part. Or any of the other parts, but especially that last part.
There are of course potential genuine fanatics, the people so batshit they don’t care - but they were already a risk and they were already looking to find people like him, so the risk with them remains stable.
Fortean Times (of all things) did a deep dive investigation of el chupacabra and traced its origins to a single woman in Puerto Rico who saw the horror sci-fi movie Species (1995), about a goat-sucking monster that escapes from a government laboratory in Puerto Rico, and believed that it was a documentary.
i guess i’m not as despairing as many people about the future of the planet simply because the fact that we’re not in way worse shape today suggests the earth is crazy resilient
Reading anything about environmental history is like “and by 1956 the river was so full of uranium and bubonic plague that the only living organism found in it was an single amoeba which died immediately after being documented” and I’m like okay maybe today’s problems aren’t necessarily uniquely disastrous and unsolvable
This is only one example but apparently malaria was introduced to the USA by the slave trade but there was a program in the 50’s to wipe it out and we did. by dusting thousands of tons of Paris green (an arsenic compound) as well as a shit ton of DDT all over our wetlands
@notpockets Where are you getting “accept mass death of humans” from this?!
I am very firmly arguing against the “we should not bother planning for the future because we’re all going to die and so we should all sit on the internet and wait for the Glorious Day When Someone Murders All The Billionaires Which Magically Fixes All Problems” school of thought which I would argue is significantly more anti-human than anything else
@casspea I’m pulling this out of replies because I want to give a serious response to it, because this is very important to me. I will start by asking a question that will initially appear unrelated.
Do you know why it is so hard to leave an abusive relationship?
I didn’t. I understood, like most people do, that people don’t get into abusive relationships because they are stupid or made clearly avoidable stupid decisions, but I didn’t *understand*—meaning that I couldn’t really imagine myself getting into that situation. I had a strong sense of my own worth and I knew all the signs of an abusive relationship, so I just…innocently figured I would see that sort of thing coming.
[Narrator: She did not see it coming.]
What I didn’t know was WHY smart people end up in abusive relationships—really, I was mistaken about the whole nature of wisdom and intelligence and knowledge. I saw those things as stable characteristics of myself or any person, facts, failing to realize that everything, everything, everything takes up energy.
Even knowing takes up energy.
Your body and mind evolved to account for this fact. Your body and mind evolved to allocate your energy based on your needs—in order to keep you alive. Have you ever had a panic attack? I have. That’s your body pouring all your energy into preparing for whatever action is necessary to face the threat.
Certain things are necessary for a human to feel safe—to be safe. Steady access to food. Shelter. Privacy. Bodily integrity. Stability. Support from other humans. In terms of energy, it is incredibly costly to not be safe.
Hold onto that, because it’s important. It is incredibly costly to not be safe.
You said in an earlier reply that my post sounded like I had never lived in an impoverished region. I find that offensive, and here’s why: It is incredibly costly to not be safe. If you are just one accident, one mistake, one sickness, one stroke of bad luck away from losing your house, your health, your stability, your family’s supper tomorrow, you are not safe and your body knows. And this is why poverty kills you. Slowly. Every day of your life.
So this is how a smart person gets into an abusive relationship: You live with this person, and it’s okay right now. If things can just stay okay for a while…you can make it. You just need things to keep being okay, because you are not safe you’re tired, and you need a little time to recharge after the last time you had to talk and set a boundary with them, because you are not safe that conversation was stressful and took a lot of energy.
You set a boundary. And it takes a lot of energy to explain to them what they did to hurt you and why, but you think they get it, finally.
And then they push that boundary. And you have the conversation again. And things are okay.
And then they push.
And the less privacy, the less security, the less you have—the more they encroach upon your basic needs—the costlier it becomes to set and enforce boundaries, because you have less and less energy left to change or interrogate your situation.
And they start raising the cost. Pricing you out of the boundaries you have already set. You can’t afford to defend those boundaries anymore, so you back off, ceding more and more of your safety to them. And not being safe is incredibly costly.
You were a smart person. Now you’re too tired to think. You don’t have the energy to do anything, anything, anything except survive, and you can’t even see your situation for what it is, because you are expending all your energy trying to stop it from getting worse.
Now, I guess the idea of people being terrified all the time about climate change and thinking about dying and other people dying and losing everything they value and love and not having a future for themselves or their children (if they were so bold as to have them) is really, fucking, gratifying in the sense that it means they feel the gravity and seriousness of the situation the appropriate amount. I guess. Awesome!
But terrified people are not very good at solving problems because being shitting-your-pants terrified all the time makes you stupid (for reasons that are not your fault)
And terrified people are incredibly resistant to change because adjusting to change takes energy and they don’t HAVE energy because literally all their energy is going toward the fucking monumental task of staying fucking alive
And people that have KNOWN their whole goddamn lives, in the marrow of their bones, that they don’t have a future, cannot imagine the future.
We have to imagine the future.
We have to.
Have you ever had a panic attack? Like a bad panic attack? Have you ever fully, truly, deeply believed you were going to die? I have. I was 10. Panic attacks are supposed to last 20-30 minutes max but I guess my body wants to live more than most because I have 2-3 hours of it in me. And yet there is a point at which you lie down and wait for it to kill you, because you can’t hang on anymore. Because you can’t DO anything.
And you can learn to be resilient! I sure fucking did! I learned to shove on through that shit like a zombie, indestructible, completely unable to locate or name my own discomfort screaming through my body like an air raid siren! I pushed through! Except I wasn’t moving ‘through’ anything! I was just Dying Physically!
This is to say that the gut-wrenching certainty of facing a future ruled by unspeakable horrors is quite familiar to me thankyouverymuch, and it wasn’t exactly fertile ground for developing a “solutions” mindset.
The idea that not being in despair about the earth means you must not love it? Well, that just about boils my blood.
Because I did love the Earth when I was a little kid, but all throughout my whole teenage years I never thought of doing any kind of volunteer work or getting involved in my local community or even LEARNING about it that much. Why?
Because I thought we were all fucked anyway, so why bother. Because I was already dealing with my own shit and I couldn’t bear taking that grief upon my own shoulders. I HATED my hometown, hated it, never had the tiniest bit of love for it in my heart, and honestly in my mind it was worthless, because the old growth had been cut down and the wolves and bison were gone and housing developments were built, and I was convinced i would live to see it get worse, and worse, and worse, see more woods get destroyed and my beloved creek be bulldozed and polluted, and I couldn’t just go out and pour my heart into something I knew was doomed to be fucking obliterated anyway. I was trying to fucking survive.
And that’s what I saw everyone else doing. Mourning. Bemoaning how we were going to watch tigers go extinct and the forests burn. Nervously joking about the unlikely possibility that we would make it to 50.
I fucking grew up in the Bible Belt, surrounded by people who thought the Earth was nothing more than a piece of tissue to be crumpled up and thrown away! My parents grew up having nightmares about nuclear bombs raining down on their hometown and so did I! The only stories about the future I can think of have zombies, fascism and/or child death tournaments! We are not exactly encouraged to give ourselves gentle things in our dreams of what tomorrow may bring.
So i was a creative writing major for a while and as a result read a lot of literary poetry, and if you don’t know what literary poetry is, it’s poems by someone who has a MFA or PhD in poetry and are published in very fancy self-important journals.
Anyway once upon a time I read this poem
And I wasn’t exactly shining rays of sunshine out the crack of my ass in those days but this shitty poem snapped me out of my pessimism. Oh God, I thought, I may write edgy and depressing shit sometimes but I’ll never put a cold wet snot rag like this into the world.
Ants? Ants are going to go extinct? Fucking ants? I want to punt this writer out of the solar system for the hubris of that alone.
It’s so…self centered, this mindset the poem shows. So self-pitying. Poor little me! Humans are the virus and I’m so sad that we’re such a disease upon the earth! Boohoo!
And it seriously got me thinking: Do these projections and predictions actually motivate anyone to take action? Do they do anything except satisfy some self-indulgent urge to wallow in depression and misanthropy?
This poem doesn’t emerge from love; that’s what struck me at the time. The author doesn’t love the Earth if she lacks the basic curiosity to learn what algae even is (photosynthetic! Not found in caves!) nor to learn of the wonders of the world of ants (definitely not going to go extinct). Her projected future is bizarre—why would humans live in caves? Why are cockroaches the only animal expected to survive? Is she confusing climate change with a nuclear war?
But it’s the air of admonishment that gets me. The bold insinuation that people are “doing nothing” while the Earth dies non-specifically.
Lady, trees fucking died for the paper this sludge was printed upon.
People think instilling dread is doing something. It’s not. People think cultivating despair is doing something. It’s not. People think that fear, fear of a thousand horrible futures shown to us by every imagination on every screen and page, will be a goad to jab people toward some unclear but presumed-accessible “action,” but this ongoing fear and grief and despair over our world DOES NOTHING except deplete what meager reserves of energy people have left after being alive in the world these days.
My generation is constantly desperate for numbness, rest, and escapism because living gets more and more untenable all the time. Have you noticed Fascism? What about the economy? Have you seen the people around you just constantly shutting themselves down to avoid thinking about a future that feels hopeless?
What is the expectation? That people feel terrified forever? Terror isn’t fuel, it’s the act of burning up all your fuel at once. After your energy runs out, something arrives to replace terror. For most people today, that something is apathy and despair, because it’s easiest.
We need solutions to the climate crisis. We need community building. We need ideas, we need WORK, steady unsexy boring slow work, we need commitment to the work and to our communities, commitment that is only driven by love and genuine investment, and fear will not create these things.
Without hope, we have NOTHING.
I have hope because I believe there is hope, and I have hope because I fucking have to. I came to the place where I could no longer sustain being terrified, and I had to choose.
I can’t exist in a world this scary, I thought. I can’t do it. It’s impossible. To accept this world as it is exceeds the tensile strength of the human soul.
And the answer was, Then don’t exist, but I didn’t like that answer, so the answer was, Then you must change it.
Once upon a time I could not imagine the future. All I saw was death. Fire. Extinction. I saw no hope for me or my planet. I only wished to experience some happiness before it all collapsed.
And then I rescued a tree.
Well. A lot of trees. It took me a while to learn to care for them. But I rescued a tiny sycamore tree from the edge of a parking lot and I took care of that tree and it grew and flourished under my care, and I marveled at my own power to make a difference to this one tiny tree…
…and I thought, this tree will grow taller than me. This tree will be big enough for birds to nest in its branches someday. Someday…
and I looked ahead, at that horizon many years in the future that had always been filled with nothing but ash and dust, and I saw something new.
I saw a tree.
I returned to Nature—to my Nature, the pavement and gravel and scrubby woods—and, just, holy fuck, I started to see. I observed the weeds—the dandelions, the amaranth, the tough little bastards that grow in pavement and concrete, and something clicked. They adapt. They survive. They are tough as nails, growing in places nothing else can grow in spite of all our attempts to eradicate them. And they help everything else survive and grow. They are healers.
I thought, can we learn from them? Can we ally with them?
Nature is our ally. Not as a princess in a tower waiting to be saved. Nature adapts, moves, changes. Nature is constantly, relentlessly fighting back.
I think Nature has a lot to teach us about adaptation, about collaborating and helping one another. About survival. I learned much more—I learned to see the symbiosis that connects all things, and saw how we fit into that symbiosis, when we are willing to participate in it.
This is what the dandelions showed me: When you heal, when you thrive, when you are happy and flourishing, you make the world more habitable for others. Dandelions pry open compacted soil with their taproots, provide pollen and nectar for survival of insects, keep the ground moist and encourage organic matter to collect. Dandelions are food and medicine, and they can sprout and grow at any temperature. This is how an ecosystem works: when one hardy weed takes hold and thrives, the others, more delicate, can then begin to arrive.
You are not separate from every other thing. You are part of humankind, part of a social community, part of your family and friends. This means that hope is powerful.
The more joy and love you cultivate in your relationship with the planet, the more she will replenish you, restore your hope. The more you share this joy, the more powerful the force for change becomes.
I have seen this in my own life, when I have healed and improved my own life, I have been able to give back so much more to the world than ever before. I try to enact this—as people flee my impoverished, deep red state for their safety, as Fascism tightens its grip, I dig my roots in deeper. I am relief in this wasteland. I will stand my ground. I will be visible, opinionated, uncompromising, because the more vulnerable cannot be.
Despair is poison. It will kill us dead. It will kill our planet. We need hope. And there is hope, both in us and the ecosystems around us.
I believe we, humans, hold the potential to be a weed species. Not only surviving, but facilitating, creating a path for the healing of Earth. We are caretakers. This role has been well recognized by indigenous peoples for thousands of years.
In this wasteland, the beautiful flowers struggle to grow and the little trees do not dare reach for the sky. So I’m a fucking dandelion. Kudzu kicking ass on a lifeless abandoned copper mine. I’m Amaranth utterly refusing to die. I’m a sycamore tree patiently inching roots under asphalt. I’m a scrappy cedar grabbing hold amid the rocks. I’m crabgrass and spotted spurge and all the weeds that make the guys on r/lawncare weep and wail.
I got sprayed with despair and survived, and now I’m resistant. My seeds and pollen are everywhere now. Hehehehehehe.
Nat Turner’s Rebellion (also known as the Southampton Insurrection) was a slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, between 21 and 23 August 1831. Led by Nat Turner (l. 1800-1831), an educated slave, the insurrectionists killed at least 55 White people before the revolt was put down, making it the deadliest slave uprising in US history.
Turner eluded a massive manhunt until 30 October 1831, when his hiding place was discovered by one Benjamin Phipps, and he was imprisoned at the Jerusalem jail the next day. While awaiting trial, he was interviewed by the lawyer T. R. Gray (l. c. 1800 to c. 1834), who has sometimes been identified as Turner’s defense attorney but was not (James Strange French was to take the case, but Turner wound up being represented by William C. Parker). Almost all of what is known of Nat Turner comes from The Confessions of Nat Turner by T. R. Gray, published in November 1831.
In the aftermath of Turner’s rebellion, at least 120 enslaved and Free Black residents of Southampton County were murdered in retaliation, and so, Turner’s fate was sealed as soon as he was apprehended. He was found guilty of “conspiring to rebel and making insurrection” and was hanged on 11 November 1831. To the White community, he was a dangerous criminal who had been justly executed, but, to the Blacks and abolitionists, he was a freedom fighter and martyr, which is how he is regarded today.
There had been other insurrections and slave revolts before Turner’s. In the Colonial era, Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) and the Stono Rebellion (1739), among others, and, after the US declared independence during the American Revolution, Gabriel’s Rebellion (1800), the 1811 German Coast Uprising, and Denmark Vesey’s Conspiracy (1822), among still others. Denmark Vesey (l. c. 1767-1822) and Gabriel Prosser (l. c. 1776-1800) were both betrayed before their revolts could be launched and were executed.
Turner, on the other hand, although his revolt was put down, was able to put his plan into action and, although the legislation was eventually sidelined, his revolt encouraged discussions in the Virginia State Legislature of emancipation or colonization of the Black population of Virginia (and elsewhere) and added fuel to the fire of the abolitionists, both in the North and South, arguing for an end to slavery, which was finally achieved, after the American Civil War, in 1865.
Nat Turner’s Rebellion was popularized in the modern era by the American novelist William Styron in his The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), and, most recently, Turner’s story was dramatized by Nate Parker in The Birth of a Nation (2016), which, though it makes ample use of poetic license (as Styron’s novel also does), depicts the life of a slave in 19th century USA accurately.
Life & Revelations
Nat Turner was born into slavery on 2 October 1800, the property of one Benjamin Turner. In his Confessions, he relates a memory that had a profound effect on him:
Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother overhearing, said it happened before I was born. I stuck to my story, however, and related some things which went, in her opinion, to confirm it. Others being called on were greatly astonished, knowing that these things had happened, and caused them to say, in my hearing, I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had shown me things that had happened before my birth. And my father and mother strengthened me in this my first impression, saying in my presence I was intended for some great purpose.
(7)
He tells Gray that he “acquired with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet” and that people, noting his natural intelligence, told him he “would never be of any service to anyone as a slave” (8). He was drawn to religion, prayed often, and read the Bible. As he says, the early estimation of him as destined to be a prophet, coupled with his interpretation of scripture as well as revelations by the Holy Spirit, encouraged in him the belief that he was destined for some great work and that this was nothing less than freedom for himself and all the others then enslaved in Southampton County. As he says to Gray:
At this time, I reverted in my mind to the remarks made of me in my childhood and the things that had been shown me…that I had too much sense to be raised, and if I was, I would never be of any use to anyone as a slave. Now, finding I had arrived to man’s estate, and was a slave, and these revelations being made known to me, I began to direct my attention to the great object, to fulfil the purpose for which, by this time, I felt assured I was intended.
(9)
When Benjamin Turner died in 1810, Nat became the property of his son, Samuel, and was placed under a harsh overseer, from whom he ran away. He lived in the woods for a month before, as he says, receiving a message from the Holy Spirit that he should return. Sometime later, he received another message from the Spirit and a vision of “white spirits and black sprits engaged in battle” and understood his mission, devoting himself further to prayer and fasting in order to make himself worthy of his calling and “obtain true holiness” (10). Scholar Stephen B. Oates describes Turner as a young man at about this time (c. 1825):
Physically, the young mystic was a small man with what whites described as “distinct African features.” Though his shoulders were broad from work in the fields, he was short, slender, and a little knock-kneed, with thin hair, a complexion like black pearl, and cavernous, shining eyes.
(27)
At some point, he married Cherry (also given as Chary), who was also a slave of Samuel Turner. The couple may have had three children (this is unclear), but at least two since they are later referred to in the plural. When Samuel Turner died in 1823, Nat was sold to a Thomas Moore while his family was sold to one Giles Reese.
Fugitive Slaves in the Dismal SwampDavid Edward Cronin (Public Domain)
By 1830, Turner had been sold to Joseph Travis, whom he describes as “a kind master” (11), but a “kind master” is still a master to a slave that is considered property, and Turner rejected this role for himself. Interpreting further ‘signs’ and revelations that the time was approaching for him to act, Turner revealed his plan to four confidantes – Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam – who brought in others. Turner’s plan was to kill all the Whites, freeing the slaves, and then (perhaps) disappear into the swamplands of Southampton. Until they were armed and organized, he tells Gray, the understanding was that “neither age nor sex was to be spared,” and they began the attack at the home of Travis (12).
