The Devil’s Foot: Among Savages

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Title: The Devil’s Foot: Among Savages
Author: gardnerhill
Word Count: 60
Rating: G
Warning: None.
Summary: Dr. Leon Sterndale didn’t specify, did he?

***

Some Cornishmen doused coastal warning lights to lure ships to ruin, to salvage the wrecks.

I cannot marry my love because of this land’s outdated laws.

A man poisons his siblings – murders my darling – over a little money.

I must return to central Africa, to brave hunters and clever weavers and beautiful children. I have lived too long among savages.

Comments

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Yeah poor man. Makes you question the definition of civilized.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Once you read up on what was actually going on in places like India and Africa during the Victorian Empire, and you read this stuff written at that time, you shake your head and say "So when brown people fight back against horrific injustice and brutality committed by their white conquerors, THEY'RE the 'savages'?"

Today? Just look at the Facebook racists whining about black folks getting angry just because white cops keep shooting their children.

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Which is one reason, despite the allure of facebook, I never joined. One Thanksgiving dinner is enough to sit through, to do so online all year round...well, that's not the fun kind of masochism, is it?

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Ugh, tell me about it. I stay away from RacistBook and Twitter for the same reasons. (Fortunately I don't even have to put up with that garbage at Thanksgiving - it's just me, my awesome sister and her son, and a lot of good food.)

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

A very neat reversal. You make a good point.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

All those Thrilling Adventure tales that sold like hotcakes in Victorian times were neat propaganda that helped whitewash the horrors perpetrated by colonial policies. (As one Twitter comment said about a black protest, "If you're really upset about looting y'all better close the British Museum.")

[debriswoman]

Very neatly turned around:-)

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Read some history of colonial occupation not written by white propagandists pulp-fiction writers of the time and you wind up thinking, "And WE called THEM 'savages'?"

[debriswoman]

Absolutely.

[laurose8.livejournal.com]

Very well thought! Including the first line. Thank you.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Lots of those coastal craggy places had a problem with land pirates deliberately causing wrecks for the salvage rights.