Commissioned by Aleph Null
Trigger Warning: Discussions of Rape.
"Revolutions are usually accompanied by a considerable effusion of blood, but are accounted worth it — this appraisement being made by beneficiaries whose blood had not the mischance to be shed."
-Ambrose Bierce, 1906
The color black has many an implication. Seen by many as a mere force of evil, as if the dark was inherently evil solely because it frightens people, in truth it is more of an antithesis to white/light. Its synthesis is found when black is contrasted with the shining nature of light. It highlights shades within the light that might have some rather drastic implications, ones unconsidered by merely looking directly into the sun. But as with many a binary, the binary of black collapses upon closer scrutiny. In truth, there are three colors that contrast with the antithesis of light (or, at the very least, three that this article is interested in discussing). Let us start with the obvious…
white_rose.jpg
I ain't scared of your brother
I ain'ts scared of no sheets
I ain't scared of nobody
Black or White, Michael Jackson
There are many a people in this world whose only choice is to revolutionize the world. None more so than the perpetrators of the cyber attacks occurring on May 9th, 2015 (colloquially referred to as the 5/9 attacks). The attacks were a series of hacks on the electronic and technological corporation known as E Corp wherein several pieces of financial debt various people owed the corporation was swiftly deleted in one fell swoop by the hacker organization known as F_Society.
F_Society consisted of siblings Elliot and Darlene Alderson (the leaders of F_Society; Elliot was an employee of the cybersecurity company Allsafe, which did most of its work with E Corp while Darlene created the malware to get into the servers as well has making contacts with various other hacker groups, most notably The Dark Army), Leslie Romero, Shama “Trenton” Biswas, and Sunil “Mobley” Markesh. Their aim for the hack was for it to lead to a workers revolt against the 1% of the 1%: a revolution of the world. In their quest, they bribed, blackmailed, humiliated, and, in one notable instance, dropped a pair of bronze testicles onto the House of Representatives to achieve their ends.
But a hack of such a scale cannot be completed by small group of independent hackers. Something as big and complicated and patently evil as E Corp (indeed, one wonders if the “E” stands for evil, especially since evil is rarely subtle, merely ignorable) needs to be taken down by something larger than four kids in their basement. It needs the aid of a larger organization, one with its tendrils in the pots of many corporations as part of wider, more… nefarious actions than merely the destruction of capitalism. Enter The Dark Army, an Asian based hacker group with (alleged) ties to Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea with moles in various government organizations including the FBI. They are known not only for their scope and efficiency, but also for their willingness to do anything for their cause, be it brainwash potential liabilities into becoming assets, killing former members and allies to gain a lead, or killing themselves to prevent themselves from being interrogated.
Though faced in America by Francis “Cisco” Shaw and Irving, their leader, Whiterose, also does the majority of her work in the United States. Whiterose is an interesting figure. Little is known about her background beyond the awful truth at the heart of her involvement. She is invested in time, to the point where seeing a person more than once is a rarity. Time is money, so they say.
And therein lies the awful truth. The thing that breaks all hearts and forces those who thought themselves heroes of the 5/9 to recognize that they have sold their souls to the devil and found themselves trapped in their grasp. For Whiterose is the Chinese Minister of State Security. Her game isn’t for the nation of China though, but it is tantamount on the survival of capitalism. For her game is that of a simulation of sorts, a world where all worlds exist simultaneously and orderly. Where one can be free to be who they want to be… provided she’s above them all.
And she plays the game of capitalism so well. She’ll sell out anyone who is a liability to her profit… even those who she claims to have loved. She’ll burn the innocent to get a more efficient solution. She is literally the kind of person who gets to celebrate the annexing of the Congo to China a fucking Mar A Lago. And she’ll break a woman, one Angela Moss, an important character in the grand scheme of things with connections (both direct and askew) to the Aldersons, several high-ranking members of E Corp, and the FBI. She will do it for the ultimately petty reason that a competitor whom Whiterose was working with at the time didn’t want her to break. For those who are good at the game of capitalism, they reject solidarity, the willingness to unionize with other people to achieve a common goal.
Such is the implication of the awful truth: the only way to have the reach to destroy capitalism is to be good at the game of capitalism. But those who are good at that game don’t want it to be broken. No, they will use the power of revolution as tool for their own ends: to increase their power and, in the process (and rarely intentionally for powers such as those do not care enough to see everyone else as individuals), hurt those beneath them. Quoth the chorus, “Someone’s got to win in the human race; if it isn’t you, then it has to be me.”
For America is a nation with revolution in its blood. But like the revolutionary flower children of the 60’s or the punks of the 80’s, America grew up and voted for Regan and Bush and Trump and whoever else will let them have the status they so effortlessly love. It knows the tricks and tools of the game. Costume shops sell masks worn by protestors. Buy this anti-capitalist T-Shirt from SharkRobot. Watch this TV Show about the 5/9 that sympathizes with the hackers. Read this comic and buy his mask so you too can know what it feels like to be an anarchist. And if an actual revolution is on the horizon, it’ll make sure to make it a more civil war rather than a slave revolt. And should a slave revolt come soon, they’ll blame it on some foreigners hounding at the walls of the empire in hopes of tearing it down. They’ll say they were justified for shooting a black man in his own home because they mistook it for their own on the grounds that the black man had weed and weed is illegal.
The path of revolution has been prepared for us. It’s just that those who have prepared it don’t want us taking other, less lucrative paths. The ones that end with swords in the backs of those who went down them and the power of those who paved them increased ten fold.
(It’s Not Pink, it’s Lightish) Red Rose
Canadian mounted baby, a police force that works
Red and black, that's their color scheme
Get their man, in the end
The Red and The Black, Blue Öyster Cult
Once upon a time, there was a Princess and her Handmaiden. The Princess, like many a princess of her age, was bored of the life she had wrought. Indeed, for her, life itself was defined by boredom. No matter how many toys or handmaidens or slaves she was given, her boredom persisted. She thought she knew what she wanted. She wanted a responsibility, she wanted power, she wanted… her own kingdom. And after years and years of whining and begging and throwing countless temper tantrums that destroyed countless properties, she got what she wanted.
But that too wasn’t enough to sate her boredom. All ruling a kingdom was was busywork and paperwork and none of the things stories tell you ruling a kingdom is like. One day, a group of soldiers arrived at the kingdom for their training. Alas, all she could do was watch them arrive from afar. For royalty is not allowed within the realms of commoners and soldiers. It is… frowned upon.
But her Handmaiden had an idea. “Why not pretend to be a Commoner, if just for a day?” The Princess thought this to be a wonderful idea and dressed in the clothes of commoners. Alas, the troops have more pressing matters than to play like the Princess imagined soldiers do all the time. And so the day ended early, much to the dismay of the Princess. But the Handmaiden had another idea: “Since you’re in the clothes of a Commoner, why not explore the kingdom?”
The Princess thought this to be a wonderful idea, and they set off to see the land. And O, what a wonderful world it was. The gardens filled with flowers of infinite colors. Butterflies of pure white flying in a waterless sea of blue. Rivers filled with the most delicious of fish, where the indigenous people clean their clothes. She was, for perhaps the first time in her life, happy. Eventually, the Princess and the Handmaiden had to return home, where the land was barren and lifeless. A kingdom requires the land to be such as that, so that the gold and silver and all the other gems can be discovered.
The implications of this did something to the Princess, something that she never before experienced. It made her sad. Mortified by the knowledge of what royalty does to those that make it sad or angry or anything other than bored or happy, the Handmaiden tried to manage the damage, apologizing for even taking the Princess to see the whole of her kingdom. But the Princess was not angry with the Handmaiden. She was angry with herself. More than anyone, she was angry with herself.
She went to her parents, pleading for them to stop expanding the empire, the kingdom, the land. Let what little has survived remain so that it could thrive once more. Her parents only heard more temper tantrums. More begging. More whining. It seemed to them that a kingdom wasn’t enough for her. Nothing would ever be enough. They would concede, however, that the indigenous people ought to be put into a reservation.
But when her parents left to tend to the other kingdoms, the Princess felt something new. Not sadness or boredom or happiness. This was a more primal feeling. It was the rage of a revolutionary. No longer would she be the “Princess.” She would become something else… something that could stop the tyranny and cruelty of this so-called kingdom. She would become a warrior.
The first days of her little war were minor skirmishes. More fear tactics against those who serve the kingdom than real battles. For she merely wanted them gone and thought that would be enough. Sadly, revolutions such as hers are known and planed around by those in power. A Seer in the high courts of the kingdom foretold the collapse of this “rebellion” on the day the Queen would come and visit, though it would come at the cost of her life. No matter, she thought, if that is the way it ends, then so be it.
The Warrior and her handmaiden arrived as they were expected. The path of revolution was prepared for them. And as the blow that would slay the Seer and spell the doom of the “rebellion” was to be made, a Guard leaped in front of her to prevent her death. Neither of them died, but the act was enough to provide a distraction for the Warrior and her servant to make their escape.
The Warrior was marveled by the experience. She realized what was going to happen as it was happening. For the path of revolution is known throughout the royalty. For it to be prevented in such a way is shocking to say the least. Shocking enough for her slave to try to kiss her. In the wake of this, the servant made a confession: she had thoughts above her station. She wanted more out of life than to be a handmaiden, to do more than just stand around and follow orders. She wanted to love and be loved; to see the world and all its wonders with her; to go on adventures with her as if they were never master and slave in the first place, but equals in a strange and wonderful world. She wanted to be… a Knight.
They almost made love on that very spot, but were interrupted by a pair of Lovers falling down a hill. It was the guard and seer, who had fled the kingdom after breaking the future. Whilst on the run, they had fallen in love with each other and wanted to be together forever. Seeing them, an idea came to the mind of the warrior: all the people of the kingdom were as much slaves as the Knight, even those who claimed to be free. For the kingdom was an idea, a system by which those within it were trapped. It would be her mission to shape this war into something else, something that could free everyone. She would have to become… a Revolutionary.
The Revolutionary spent many a year fighting and convincing those who aligned themselves with the kingdom to fight against it. One such person was a lowly Blacksmith. The Blacksmith had spent her life building things she would never be allowed to touch. Never be allowed to see, but in her memories. They weren’t art that she wanted to build. Merely commissions she felt no joy in creating. One day, the Revolutionary came to her and asked a simple question with many a meaning hidden within: “What do you want to build?”
And so she joined the Revolutionary in her gigantic war against tyranny. She would build many a weapon to liberate her fellows. As she was building though, she felt the war wouldn’t end unless something drastic was to happen. An idea sprouted in her head. She went to the Revolutionary with the idea in hand: Why not kill the royal family? The revolutionary paused at the thought of that. To kill her parents to stop the war? Would that be enough… would they stop if she did such an act? But then another thought sprouted in her mind: she loved her parents. In spite of everything, she loved her parents. She couldn’t bare to see them die.
And so, the revolutionary locked up the Blacksmith where no one would ever find her, and tried to dissuade the thoughts festering in her mind. But it just. Wouldn’t. Leave. Kill her family, she thought… would that be enough to free the people… but then a realization that had always been there in the subtext, but until then never crossed into the text: She too was royalty. If she were to die, to become a Martyr… then the Royals would want to leave forever. It’s not like they wanted her, she thought, she was always a burden on them, always whining and moaning and never being satisfied. They wouldn’t miss her.
And so the final battle had begun with a simple lie: a faked assassination of the princess by the Knight. Purely spectacle meant to end the conflict. A bloodless end to such a bloody war. Quoth the Spider, “Everybody wants to change the world, but no one… no one wants to die.” In the wake of the final battle, the kingdom fled, the remaining indigenous were able to heal, the land was razed asunder, some of it never to be used again, and those who fought on either side either died or were so broken they couldn’t exist in the world without hurting everyone else. The only ones who survived relatively unscathed were the Lovers, the Knight, and the martyr.
The martyr couldn’t be a Martyr anymore since there was no one to die for. She would have to become something new again… a Nomad, wander the world trying to contain the fallen survivors and try to be happy once more. One day, she came across a Bard. No one else was listening to him but her, but he played so wonderfully. His songs were of wanderers, those who fallen to inspire others to be something new. She fell in love with the music.
They stayed together for a time. Playing music, dancing, and other such things one does with a Bard. But the Bard was growing restless with the Nomad. She wasn’t taking anything he was saying seriously. She was wonderful and amazing, like star in the night sky. But all she did was laugh. Finally, he snapped and told her to treat him like he was a real person, not some toy for her to play with.
She froze at his words. A realization came to her. She was not a Person. Princess, Commoner, Warrior, Revolutionary, Martyr, Nomad, these were all well and good things to be. But none of them were being a Person. They were all just roles she played. Things she did because she wanted other people to be happy. Be they the role she played, those she loved, or even those she inspired. To be real Person required things she could never be, so she thought. They required the ability to change on a basis that she, an immortal ageless being, could never do.
But she could try being a Person. And so she did. She did a good job at it for many a year, though admittedly she never was the best of people (there was the time with the Baby, but that’s perhaps best saved for another time). But she did a good job nonetheless. She was, overall, a good Person. One day, she found out she was pregnant with a child from the Bard. She would die in childbirth, knowingly. She had enough time to confer with the Bard with what to name the child. Eventually, they decided to name you… Steven.
EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA!
“It’s simple: all we have to do is hang a bell around the cat’s neck!”
-Oh, Mousie! What a great idea!
/But how will we get the bell around the cat’s neck?
“Don’t worry about that! The bell’s already around its neck! The truth is, I just snuck out and did it!”
-Outstanding!
/Oh, Mousie, you’re wonderful!
“Okay, Mr. Cat, sir. I gave ‘em that phony story! Tonight, they’ll go to sleep without suspecting a thing! You’ll catch and eat ‘em without any problem! So, you’re gonna let me live, like you promised, right?”
[Meow]
“Uh, Mr. Cat? Wait a minute! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”
[Munch… munch… munch…}
You reap what you sow.
Definitely.
And I Still Can See Blue Roses Through My Tears
I'm so forlorn. Life's just a thorn
My heart is torn. Why was I born?
(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue, Louis Armstrong
America is a nation defined by Blue Rose cases, from the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony in 1590 to the thing that fell onto Littlehaven, NY in 2014. There are others that permeate this nation’s history. There was the Pilgrim fellow who was shot with a laser gun in ’76. A would be terrorist plot involving by a splinter group of P.R.O.J.E.C.T. calling itself M.A.Y.H.E.M. in ’96. Then there was the mystical murder/suicide case from ’87 involving a superhero who (somehow) brought himself back from the dead.
But perhaps the most important of all the Blue Rose cases concerns a small mountain town in Washington calling itself Twin Peaks and a girl by the name of Laura Palmer on February 24, 1989. There is many an angle one could take with the Laura Palmer case. One could look start with those who brought about her end from her murderer, BOB (Beware Of BOB), to Leo Johnson and Jacques Renault, the two men who put her in the position to be murdered. One could look at the various conspiracies surrounding the town of Twin Peaks from prostitution to drug rings to embezzlement. One could even look at the ties to the Nuclear Bomb, The Absolute Destiny Apocalypse, and the subsequent mystical implications of July 16, 1945.
But the truth of the matter is… Laura Palmer is the key to understanding the case of Laura Palmer. All these potential roads listed above inevitably lead to the life of Laura Palmer. To act otherwise is to lie about the nature of the case. To pretend that it’s about something other than Laura Palmer would be akin to spitting on her face. Let us try to do justice to her story then. Let us try to understand her as best we can. For what is the point of us if we cannot…
Laura Palmer considered herself to be the villain of her own story. A jezebel, a drug addict, a manipulator, these were all things she thought herself as. She certainly played the role relatively well, putting her best friend, Donna Hayward, into a position where she would be drugged and rapped, prostituting herself at One Eyed Jack’s, a bar that’s a front to, among other things, extortion, drugs, and sex slavery, and then there was the thing that happened with her father…
Of course, there is more to it than just what I listed. For starters, when the scenario wherein Donna was to be rapped after being drugged, Laura, upon seeing what was going to happen, screamed at the potential rapist to stop what he was about to do to her friend. Furthermore, there are several instances throughout her final days, and indeed her whole life, of her being fiercely protective of those who are closest to her. Be it her unwillingness to let her secret boyfriend, James Hurley, be involved with a drug deal that would go sour, her wiliness to be with Harold Smith, an agoraphobic man whom she trusted with her most personal secrets, and her willingness to save fellow survivor of the events of February 24, Ronette Pulaski. Additionally, sex work isn’t an inherently bad thing to do, merely frowned upon by capitalist society on the frankly childish grounds that such things should remain free. Certainly working for such a patently evil organization is a bit dubious, but then how many corporations aren’t patently evil in some form or another? And then there was the thing that happened with her father…
The truth of the matter is Laura Palmer has a low self esteem to a nigh suicidal degree. She believes that she is going to hell and deserves to go there. She sees herself as the villain because to be otherwise would imply her suffering wasn’t deserved. It wasn’t, I should make clear. There are those out there who believe that she was, in fact, the villain of the story. All her empathy and love and caring are just lies to fuel her apocalyptic agenda. (Not apocalyptic in the “The World is shit and needs to be burnt down” sense, but in the “I AM THE ANTICHRIST AND I BRING FIRE AND BRIMSTONE AND REALLY BAD CARPENTRY” sense.) She is the villain who brings nothing but Garmonbozia to the world. (Going to break character briefly to make this point even clearer: People who come out of watching Twin Peaks with the belief that Laura Palmer is the secret main antagonist are up there with “Clara Oswald should have stayed dead after Face The Raven because The Doctor knows what they are doing and she doesn’t” and “Luke Skywalker was in the wrong for blowing up the Death Star because it would make the money sad” in having wrong opinions on fiction.) This view of her is especially galling considering the thing that happened with her father…
I suppose I should stop dancing around it. But first, BOB. BOB is a point of contention. On the one hand, he is a manifestation of all the evils birthed by the nuclear bomb. An evil that festers in the subconscious of America to such a degree that it warps space and time and roots itself into the mythology of those indigenous to America, before the colonizers came. On the other hand, BOB is a coping mechanism that allows Laura to not admit to the awful thing that happened with her father…
Simply put, Laura’s father raped her since the age of 12. Leland Palmer is a lawyer working for Benjamin Horne, the owner of One Eyed Jack’s. Horne is, shall we say, a less savory figure (such that he thinks the wrong side won the American Civil War), and Leland is no better. Aside from the whole “rapes his daughter on a nearly nightly basis” thing he has going for him, he is a cutthroat lawyer who uses loopholes and shady deals to allow those he works for to make more and more money. He is verbally abusive to his wife and child and is charismatic enough to con people into believing that his love for them makes up for his abusive tendencies. They do not.
But what they do do is make Laura believe in her subconscious that there must be some rational reason for her father to abuse her as he does. Perhaps, she believes, she is the villain bent on ruining and corrupting those around her. Having affairs with people she doesn’t love whilst convincing them that she does. Sleeping with men of her father’s age. Imagining her rapist isn’t her father, but some other person entirely. (BOB being an actual supernatural being does nothing to deter this. Quoth the magician who longs to see, “The one place Gods inarguably exist is in our minds where they are real beyond refute in all their grandeur and monstrosity.”) Lies created to obfuscate and perpetuate true, awful suffering.
It isn’t until the night Laura Palmer died that she accepted the truth. But that’s not how she won that night. (Death, as many ought to know, isn’t the same as losing. One can die a thousand million times and still win in the end. For Laura though, her death would have impact and implications and influence spanning over 25 years. She would change both the world she grew up in and worlds beyond that which she had known. Even in the other place Agents Cooper and Cole refer to as the Black/White Lodge, her ripples coalesce into infinity, warping time and space with her radiance.) Victory came in the form of a different shape of revolution…
As with many a Blue Rose case, those involved experienced dreams. Laura Palmer dreamed of a place outside of what we know. Where people talk in languages that call themselves English, but have the wrong syntax, as if they were speaking backwards but the universe rewound the audio track. There lay a ring, an innocuous little item, seemingly of no importance. Except, in that room stood an agent of the FBI, a man of the law, a man of the rules, a man who lays paths for others to follow. He told Laura to not take the ring.
In the end, Laura found herself trapped in a train car with Ronette Pulaski. Her father, the man she knew as BOB, stands before them. They are screaming for someone, anyone, to save them. Ronette prays to god. BOB, the supernatural entity that is also a metaphor for many a conflicting idea, wants to possess Laura. To continue the cycle of abuse her society allows to exist. To keep the game going on and on and on forever. To possess her. To own her. To control her.
Ronette is pray to god. She is apologizing for all her sins, both the ones she believes she did and the ones that actually matter. She wants to be acknowledged. She wants to be seen. She wants to be cared about. She wants someone to love her. She doesn’t want to die.
Laura is looking in the mirror. A ghost of what her father is looks back.
Ronette prays. She doesn’t pray to god anymore. The almighty father isn’t listening. But she prays nonetheless. Ronette has no conscious idea what is going on beyond the basic facts of the text: they were raped and are about to be murdered. She prays nonetheless. Does she know, in the subconscious of her mind, who the players are? What Laura represents in the mystical implications? Though they are not the key to understanding the events of that night, they still have a part to play. For someone sympathetic to Ronette’s plight was listening to her prayer. Someone who could never make that prayer, but nonetheless understood what it meant to her.
Someone who loved Ronette as much as she loved James Hurley or Harold Smith or Donna Hayward. Someone who wouldn’t… couldn’t let any harm come to those she loved. Someone who is flowing with love like a river. Who, up until that moment, didn’t believe herself of… not deserving, no one deserves anything. Nor redeemable, for that is a thing love can never do. No, capable of receiving love. Capable of giving love to others. Laura Palmer can be loved. Laura Palmer can love. Laura Palmer isn’t the villain of the story she calls her life. She’s the hero.
Ronette escapes with the aid of an angel who aligns herself with Laura, who unties her hands so she may flee from the train car. She heals from the events of that night. What happened next is her own damn business.
A ring presents itself to Laura. How does one whose only choice is to revolutionize the world prevent the revolution from being a tool of those in power or a massive slaughter of those whom the revolution was meant to serve? It’s quite simple really: Laura Palmer put on the ring and burned the rules of revolution to the ground. I suppose anyone could do it really. But then, 25 years later, there are more people out there whose only choice is to revolutionize the world. Or, at the very least, more people who are listened to...
"I think we're at a time where we're feeling a shift. We're understanding... that the people have the power. That it's going to take us to make these changes. I think it's easier for us to hate, it's easier for us not to talk and to communicate. But it's hard for us to love, but it's the best thing when it happens. And if you look throughout history, you look throughout any movement, love had to be at the center of it... It's contagious... it's a good virus. Yeah... I want to infect people with love!"
-Janelle Monáe, 2018
