text: Once upon a time, 200 some-odd years ago, a bunch of Maws decided that there was a thing called "Mod" that made everything they did right because they did it. They took credit for the efforts of the people they enslaved, and, because they were chosen by Mod, they lost the ability to see right from wrong and instead their understanding of good and bad were defined only by profit. The Maws kept this up and built weapons that not only killed people but vaporized life and all existence. They used these weapons to extort and and project their way of life around the world. They called it "saving the world" but in truth, the Maws gave the people of foreign lands a choice "either live under the Maw or be consumed by it". In those moments, true bravery and humanity stood up to an unstoppable force and said "not only no, but FUCK NO" and were instantly slaughtered. Their silenced rebellion was another victory for Mod, and more resources to send home. This was the real story of the Maw; not who they were, but who stood up to them and decided they'd rather return to the living earth than be party to its destruction. Men, women, boys, girls, animals of all species, and even plants and trees, stood their ground against something too big to stop and decided that preserving their integrity was worth more than their lives. This cycle continued endlessly and these stories will never be known, let alone told, but every life the Maw thoughtlessly erased as an imposition was beautiful in a way the Maw couldn't appreciate. The individual Maws, being chosen by Mod and only living for themselves, experienced all this as blissful affirmation of their position as the center of the universe. Their shelves were fully stocked, more variety than ever, and somehow, they had more than any generation before them. Instead of asking questions of where that excess came from and who really paid for it, they reveled in the gifts that Mod had bestowed upon them for living so fruitfully and in Mod's image. Of course, by this time, the lessons that came from Mod had been ignored and the only thing that the Maws kept with them was that Mod chose them so their actions were always justified. The rules were the Maw's to write, and they wrote them to reward themselves and punish every other way of existing with violence and slavery. And with that, humanity was wiped out by a parasitic and destructive self-importance. The Maw consumed at an increasing pace. At every possible step where the Maws could have looked at their lives and realized they were accessorizing their bodies and lives with the pain of others, the original idea was instead reinforced because the admission of the brutality of their existence would be an indictment of Mod, and even worse, a total bummer. Self reflection wasn't the way of the "successful" Maw. The wheels of time continued to turn and the appetite of the Maw only grew. Around the world, brave and beautiful humans stood their ground "Not only NO, BUT FUCK NO!" and were slaughtered into silence, and the few too frightened and weak to fight back accepted Mod as a master and thief to be feared. To them, Mod wasn't about love it was about control and fear. It was about dominance and a hierarchy. All they needed to do to prove Mod's power was to stand in defiance against the Maws and be erased from the earth. The choice of being a human was no longer in the cards. You could either be a Maw or die at their hand. One of the biggest losses in all of this are the beautiful human moments where the truly good and brave stood up to the Maw. They knew it meant death but what was life if it meant belonging to a beast that rapes and murders its way into power and wealth? They died as humans, defending the forest that had given them and their ancestors everything they needed. The Maws recorded this behaviour as an insult that was corrected. There was never any plan, just a cycle of abuse and subjugation, with its pace increasing, which the Maw sickeningly named "progress". Beauty, honor, bravery sacrificed at the alter of greed. The protest of "Not only NO, BUT FUCK NO!" was now only heard by the machines that dealt with pestilent humans that stood in the way of the maw. The machines distanced the maw so much from the consequences of their actions they didn't notice when they'd run out of beauty and life to steal. When every last human had been purged or converted, and all the trees and animals processed, the Maw watched, confused as everything around them started to fall apart. They had no plans for this because Mod had a plan and planning wasn't their responsibility. They'd long forgotten they'd invented Mod and that all the splendor and luxury in their lives was at the expense of everything else in the world, so they couldn't process what they were seeing, and decided it was a sign from Mod they weren't taking and punishing enough, rather than realizing that it was the thievery and imposition that was the problem. With nothing to subjugate, there was nothing to eat. And, like any beast convinced of its own importance above all else, in the name of Mod, the Maw turned on itself in acts only such a beast could accept or comprehend. The pollution of hundreds of years of 'letting Mod sort it out' poisoned every attempt life made at coming back. The entire paradigm of life was forced to surrender to Mod. An idea formed in the heads of a few members of one species that fueled the brutal rape and murder of a four billion year old miracle. The injustice ran so deep that the Maws were seen marching on behalf of humanity in the last days, entirely unaware that they were protesting their own existence. They would chant the right words, but when it came to giving up what separated the Maw from the humans, they dismissed it as an insanity. And then there was silence.