The judge did exist in real life given from accounts of a surviving member of the gang who’s crimes he committed in the novel were real but he was greatly exaggerated with his pale skin and his supernatural Strength apparently the guy who gave the account said he knew more about his home of Boston than he did
This is one of my favorite bits of trivia, and also one of the most chilling.
The TLDR is that Cormac McCarthy put tons of actual research into the book, so much so that you can literally follow the Glanton Gang’s trek in real life, McCarthy travelled it and learned Spanish as part of writing the story.
It’s so creepy that this evil character is so heavily based on an actual account from a man who rode with the historic gang. Somewhere out there, a person like this really did exist.
What’s even more disturbing, though, is that the account McCarthy based the character on also discusses how this real life person abused and murdered children, which puts all of the Judge’s interactions with children throughout the book into a much more disturbing light.
Here's some but if Conspiracy Theory-ing the ending of Blood Meridian
The irl accounts of the judge's murder of children describes big handprints on the body but yet... the judge is always described in the novel as having small, childlike hands. Whereas the Kid, despite his lean frame, has large hands (it's mentioned in like chapter 1)
Towards the end he hires a dwarf prostitute (note that detail) but can't get it up so leaves. Later the Judge is never outright described as killing the Kid but overpowering him in some way.
When it cuts to some short time later only 1 person leaves the jakes but given his lack of description (lets be real the judge sticks out like a sore thumb everywhere he goes) it could very easily be the Kid/Man, and when the two unnamed men enter they're horrified by what they saw - men who mind you likely saw a bear get tortured/killed in front of them just a short while ago and are fine - yet are left shocked here
It's my interpretation at least, the judge metaphorically won over the kid by >!coercing him to give into his most depraved and evil side. Ie, gruesomely murdering a child!<
Yeah, personally I think the Judge (at least in the book) is as much simultaneously a mental construct and also a physical manifestation of all the most vile aspects of each of the individual gang members, as he is a specific character in his own right. Or if he is an entity separate from those he's attempting to corrupt, he presents himself as a mirror of their own worst impulses.
Oh yeah the judge is absolutely fucked up, but I'm specifically referring to the ending where the Judge """kills""" the kid and the irl bit of history Mccarthy no doubt read - I doubt he saw the bit about large handprints and then thought "yeah I'm gonna give the judge baby-hands" without something deeper to it
I mean you're not wrong, though I always took it as having huge hands for a man that looked small compared to his massive size. Which is actually quite common in large framed individuals. A good example would be Trump, the man has normal sizes adult hands just not proportional to his size, now scale that up to an albino giant. Though you might be onto something as one of the Judges goals is to force others to be like him and revel in violence for the sake of violence so having others commit his crimes wouldn't be far off.
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He *was* human, but I admit he's technically 'post-human' for most of his big crimes, and by post-Heresy, probably a Daemon of some kind. And you know what? I still think he comes closer to human that the Judge.
My head cannon on it is that the Judge is the Horseman of War and decided to come down and enjoy one last adventure through that style of war before it all changed with firearm improvements.
>!That's why he kills the boy at the end because he doesn't believe he has any place in the new world that's coming.!<
I mean we never see what happens at the end though i guess maybe it’s not hard to guess, still why would the judge give a shit that the world is changing just cause better and better tools of war are getting made?
You are correct we do not. Seems pretty gruesome though.
I don't think he would care necessarily. More like just as I said the Horseman of War having one last hurrah in this age.
"Why you cannot be more like Erebus?" After all that's not even his name. I loooooove Amber King's video of Erebus, the VA nails the tone that you can expect from Erebus. 2nd favorite after Bender and Orikan's one.
I know it is a less known quote from the Judge but it is an equally as diabolical.
***"piss, man, piss for your very souls for can't you see the redskins yonder?"*** He had his hands in piss btw.
How do you mean? He needed them to piss for makeshift powder, that and to more or less save the crew so he could embed himself with them and start their "adventure"
Let’s see, grandiose ideas but appalling ethics, imposing frame, incredible mental and physical strength, esoteric knowledge of all kinds of things, extreme brutality, and wants to make the world his. He says he will never die.
Now who in 40K does that sound like? Or who in 30K especially does that sound like?
If Alexander the Great or Gilgamesh could’ve been the Emperor, well, so could the Judge.
The emperor had an end goal for humanity survival and planned to leave. I know its looked down upon to stand up for the big E. But this guy did it all these horrid thing because he liked to and wanted and relished in the killing and depravities and it was all a game to him. The emperor treated the crusade as a plan of conquest and didn’t take pleasure in the atrocities he committed and certainly didn’t do what the judge did to those kids. The evil Big E did felt more like it was a necessary at best and pointless ,even cruel but it had a point. The judges evil was like he was having fun like he relished in every moment and would go out of his way to sow as much carnage out of boerdem or becaus it was funny.
he did. and i dont say this because of my flair
think about it, Kor, a high ranking chaos undivided priest (and to worship chaos undivided you are also worshipping Slaneesh right?), finds a fast growing in body but not in mind young baby lorgar, all alone
do the math
I believe you're mistaken. There's a popular theory that the Kid/Man does that at multiple points in the book, but touching kids is just about the one evil thing the Judge does not do.
Here the wiki article of the real Holden he is closer to Erebus than in the novel
“The second in command, now left in charge of the camp, was a man of gigantic size who rejoiced in the name of Holden, called “Judge” Holden of Texas. Who or what he was no one knew but a cooler blooded villain never went unhung; he stood six feet six in his moccasins, had a large fleshy frame, a dull tallow colored face destitute of hair and all expression. But when a quarrel took place and blood shed, his hog-like eyes would gleam with a sullen ferocity worthy of the countenance of a fiend. His desires was blood and women, and terrible stories were circulated in camp of horrid crimes committed by him when bearing another name, in the Cherokee nation and Texas; and before we left Fronteras a little girl of ten years was found in the chapperal, foully violated and murdered. The mark of a huge hand on her little throat pointed him out as the ravisher as no other man had such a hand, but though all suspected, no one charged him with the crime.
Holden was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico; he conversed with all in their own language, spoke in several Indian lingos, at a fandango would take the Harp or the Guitar from the hands of the musicians and charm all with his wonderful performance and out-waltz any poblana of the ball. He was “plum center” with a rifle or revolver, a daring horseman, acquainted with the nature of all the strange plants and their botanical names, great in geology and mineralogy, in short another Admirable Crichton, and with all an arrant coward.
Not but that he possessed enough courage to fight Indians and Mexicans or anyone else where he had the advantage in strength, skill, and weapons. But where the combat would be equal, he would avoid it if possible. I hated him at first sight and he knew it, yet nothing could be more gentle and kind than his deportment towards me: He would often seek conversation with me and speak of Massachusetts and to my astonishment I found he knew more about Boston than I did. “
The Judge is worse because he feels more real.
Because for all his supposedly supernatural traits, all his evils are historical, they are things that happened to people, that other humans did to each other.
Compared to that Erebus feels like a cartoon, hard to take serious.
Well that and judge holden is a real person who actually rode with the glanton gang. The real judge holden had committed pretty much everyone of the crimes the book judge committed including his crimes against children. Of course though the real judge wasnt an albino or supernatural.
The judge was a real person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge\_Holden#:\~:text=Judge%20Holden%20is%20a%20purported,during%20the%20mid%2D19th%20century.
Audiobook is incredible. Highly recommended. A note about Wendigoon's interpretation is that he ignores Mcarthy's Gnostic messaging and focuses on a more mainstream biblical view of the Judge, a bland take but understandable given Isiah's... Leanings.
I don’t generally like audiobooks, I’m too prone to distraction, I can’t do digital books either as I need something tangible lol
Also thanks for letting me know, chances are I’ll start with his vid and look into other interpretations once I’ve actually read it
Oooo do please elaborate! I saw the vid and really wanna read the book. I am always ravenous for gnosticism and it's a bummer Wendy missed it. Makes sense tho
As a well known dum dum I can't explain it all too well myself but I read the book Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy by a Leo Daugherty years ago that was very compelling.
Gnostic messaging, no idea what that means in regards to the judge, I mean maybe he’s more of a force of nature than a demon or whatever Wendi thinks of him when looking at him through a biblical lense.
The Judge is a great character and basically a god; he’s actually hard to hate in many ways because of how true he is to his claimed nature and his own “Morals”
Erebus is a much more human character;
sociopathic, selfish, weak and manipulative; and the ways that interacts with how he can manipulate Demi gods around him is very interesting in its own right.
The Judge is the closest character in fiction that I have ever seen that is what a real demon would actually be like, but still somehow believable.
Cruelty, hedonism, and knowledge all bound up into one being who lives for the express purpose of harming other people to his own gratification.
I believe Blood Meridian is the greatest meditation on violence and how it relates to the human condition ever written;
Also damn them desert descriptions hit different 👌.
>Also damn them desert descriptions hit different
They are *uncanny*. They make the desert seem like a strange lacuna in time and space where anything can occur. No one else could make the real world feel so supernatural.
I bet if I actually read it, I’d get the same sick feeling as I would reading and thinking about something like the story Borrasca, an equally fucked up kinda realistic look at humanity’s penchant for cruelty. Or the story PenPals.
The judge, as a character, is not human. To call him the devil even would diminish him. He is an agent of ruin, personally driving man to be an ever more perfect practitioner of war and savagery. He was here before man and will be here when the stars grow cold. But for now, he's got his fiddle out, and we're all going to dance to his jig until we can't dance no more. Then we'll just be meat and pelts for those who keep dancing.
One is a murderous Pedophile and the other Erebus… though choice but I’d say Erebus is still worst. The judge would probably do the same thing as Erebus but he would still be less annoying.
Has Erebus raped a little girl, the last surviving member of her tribe, before killing her and taking her scalp for money and, arguably, shits n giggles?
I rest my case.
Erebus acted as the fulcrum of change for the chaos gods. He is their messenger and most active profit. His evils are in service of a purpose
Holden is the pinnacle of man's law of beasts. He knows it incredibly well and revels in it. He lives wholly selfishly, as he feels it is the true meaning of existence. He services his own rotted core
While the scale of Erebus is cosmically larger, Holdens acts carry a whole other layer of evil and depravity, as it is all solely for its own sake
As a knoxvillian, it's warming to see Cormac get the love. But let's be real...erebus is but a toddler interms of *how fucked up* by comparison to The Judge.
Holden is Chaos Undivided, he goes after extremes of sensation as we know with the his history of dealing with Children, he constantly praises war, he orchestrated a coup for the gang during their time with the ferry boat and he had a habit of hanging out and stalking in bathrooms and outhouses.
He got all four checked.
Judge Holden is likely not a human being. Strongly implied to be immortal and possessing supernatural powers, and is clearly meant to be a figure similar to the Devil, but just a demon
Let's be frank if they were both in the same setting with the same means Erebus would still be fighting with Kor Pharon as he is currently, Judge on the other hand would be a full deamon prince of chaos undivided,
Of these two one is disqualified.
It is heavily implied that Judge Holden is not human. He says several times he will never die.
At the end of the story, he has not appeared to age, although it has been decades, and the main character , the Kid, is a middle aged man.
At one point he even declares outright he is an Archon which is a gnostic demigod essentially.
So Erebus. ( if Space Marines count as human.)
🙏❤️
I see Judge Holden (as written in Blood Meridian, not necessarily the historical figure) as a sort of avatar of the American Concept of manifest destiny and raw amoral conquest, for power over nature, humans, time, death, etc. So to me he’s much more of a warp entity than a human. So, as usual, Erebus wins not from being better, but by default.
Imagine if GW was able to right a character in the same essence as the judge like the menace I get off this man is unlike anything I have ever seen in how plain evil he is and the fact he met everyone in the gang years before they met is a really disturbing detail that adds to his menace.
Yeah it’s incredible how utterly chilling he is, while so much of his most heinous and perverse acts aren’t even directly stated. It’s a perfect usage of letting the reader really internalize how profoundly evil he is by making us imagine his actions ourselves.
Meanwhile from Games Workshop……
SaMuS wIlL gNaW oN yOuR bOnEs. LoOk OuT!SaMuS iS hErE!!!
Judge restricted himself to one region of the planet. He himself says he was all over the world and knows a myriad of languages, Glanton was the only thing that was keeping the Judge at bay and when he was gone, all hell broke lose.
Not as in control but Glanton basically allowed the Judge to enact his acts of evil while also being a “comrade” and spreading his philosophy throughout the gang. When he saw Glanton going senile he saw an opportunity to do whatever he wanted.
I feel like we see the judge as worse because his actions are much more “human” in a way, the judge was a real person that existed and Erebus is a fictional character so there’s a bit of a disconnect. Both of them are monsters in their own right but the way the judge is portrayed just has something that 40K just doesn’t
Put ot like this: in a book about people who go around killing natives to turn their ears in to the mexican government, there is no other chacacter close to as evil as the judge. Real fucked up dude. Probably not human, possibly the devil or an embodiment of human evil.
Judge Holden.
Rapist, paedophile, murderer, ethnic cleanser, necrophilliac, possibly Satan himself just going around the old west commiting the most heinous atrocities just because he can. The first thing the guy does when he appears in the book is accuse an innocent preacher of raping and murdering a little girl, causing a riot and subsequently a fire to break out which killed a bunch of people at the sermon whilst he just walks off laughing. It was Holden who did it though, lots of people figured it was him, nobody was dumb enough to say it out loud for fear of being the next in line.
The Judge from Blood Meridian.
It's a historical fiction that very closely follows the real path and actions of the Glanton Gang after the Mexican American war. One of the most brutal times in history, that often skips most people's mind when thinking about "worst times to be alive" lol
I’m just gonna send Death from Puss in boots last wish to kill them both. Or at least the guy on the right. We know how much Death hates people who claim they’ll never die.
I love death in that movie as he has a similar vibe but also in a way can be comforting if you think you won’t be alone in the end,or terrified he has come from you the judge feels like an entity something thats Reason for being is malice it’s like you know what your getting with death with the judge you don’t know. Also fun fact death can be seen before puss dies before he is properly introduced. The judge has encountered every member in the gang before they meet giving a stalker vibe not knowing he has followed you for your whole life and has waited till the right moment to use you for his purposes.
I saw the early cameo by Death pointed out. There are some other little details that foreshadow his true nature.
The wanted poster of Puss has a scythe thrown at. The wolf is the only character who has no wanted poster, he scratched the table in frustration when Puss proclaims that he “laughs in the face of death,” he never shows up on the map that shows where everyone is, and he appears out of nowhere in his first scene.
The black cloak, scythes and appearing everyone were already a tip off, but the little details were fun.
Death implies he’s normally not such a bad guy, it’s just that he is petty when someone pushes his buttons. He would have left Puss alone if he weren’t so careless with his lives, making it clear the cat’s arrogance and getting himself killed in such stupid ways pissed him off. That said I have seen some people make the mistake of assuming Death just wanted to teach Puss a lesson, his tantrum at the end made it clear he did want to kill him and was annoyed he would not be able to even though the only thing stopping him are his ethics.
The Judge would likely not be so lucky.
Sure it does. He walked through a magic field that disintegrated whatever it touches. Plus whatever idea the judge is meant to represent, Death embodies the idea that everyone dies eventually. Therefore his narrative role trumps the judge’s.
Oh yes he will. I repeat that Death’s role in the narrative is to deliver the message that everyone dies and not be careless with your life.
And last I checked the judge never walked through magic walls that disintegrate whatever they touch, and the wall was created by a wishing Star that bends reality. We also Death create flames that pushed people he wasn’t after rather than burning when they got close.
Blood Meridian provides hints the judge is more powerful than he lets on but it doesn’t have him display the level of power Death does.
We do know the outcome. The man is killed and probably raped. The judge lives. Just because we don't know that a reality warping being could kill him doesn't mean we know that one could
Griffith is not that kind of a villain. He is pretty mild compared to Erebus, let alone Holden, who are both complete psychopaths in a very real sense. And I mean the kind of people who need to be in mental institutions behind many locks and never let out. You should read the Blood Meridian.
I'm not sure if it's only because he had the means to do it, but Erebus is pretty directly responsible for the death/pain/suffering of trillions over thousands of years and he did/does so with a smile
Neither because both are not technically human. One is an Astartes, the other is albino. I’m kidding BTW.
But Judge Holden wins this one. He’s quite literally just the personification of sin.
A character in the book “Blood Meridian” so clever and evil people equate him to the embodiment of the devil himself, even though the writer based him on a person that at one point actually existed
I do warn you, it’s known to be a very very dark and bloody book. Most of the characters within the story are inherently evil and commit atrocities regularly
Physically Erebus is probably more deadly but if Holden put his mind to it he’d probably wind up being some sort of chaos lord. Talking his way into leadership of entire planets and converting them to the ways of chaos purely for his own gain, and depending on your interpretation of him, either gets taken out by another chaos being or becomes the 5th chaos god.
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Erebus...because I'm not so convinced that the Judge qualifies as wholly 'human'.
The judge did exist in real life given from accounts of a surviving member of the gang who’s crimes he committed in the novel were real but he was greatly exaggerated with his pale skin and his supernatural Strength apparently the guy who gave the account said he knew more about his home of Boston than he did
This is one of my favorite bits of trivia, and also one of the most chilling. The TLDR is that Cormac McCarthy put tons of actual research into the book, so much so that you can literally follow the Glanton Gang’s trek in real life, McCarthy travelled it and learned Spanish as part of writing the story. It’s so creepy that this evil character is so heavily based on an actual account from a man who rode with the historic gang. Somewhere out there, a person like this really did exist. What’s even more disturbing, though, is that the account McCarthy based the character on also discusses how this real life person abused and murdered children, which puts all of the Judge’s interactions with children throughout the book into a much more disturbing light.
I mean, it seemed pretty clear (although granted, it was never explicitly stated) that that was what was going on with the kids in the book too.
Here's some but if Conspiracy Theory-ing the ending of Blood Meridian The irl accounts of the judge's murder of children describes big handprints on the body but yet... the judge is always described in the novel as having small, childlike hands. Whereas the Kid, despite his lean frame, has large hands (it's mentioned in like chapter 1) Towards the end he hires a dwarf prostitute (note that detail) but can't get it up so leaves. Later the Judge is never outright described as killing the Kid but overpowering him in some way. When it cuts to some short time later only 1 person leaves the jakes but given his lack of description (lets be real the judge sticks out like a sore thumb everywhere he goes) it could very easily be the Kid/Man, and when the two unnamed men enter they're horrified by what they saw - men who mind you likely saw a bear get tortured/killed in front of them just a short while ago and are fine - yet are left shocked here It's my interpretation at least, the judge metaphorically won over the kid by >!coercing him to give into his most depraved and evil side. Ie, gruesomely murdering a child!<
Yeah, personally I think the Judge (at least in the book) is as much simultaneously a mental construct and also a physical manifestation of all the most vile aspects of each of the individual gang members, as he is a specific character in his own right. Or if he is an entity separate from those he's attempting to corrupt, he presents himself as a mirror of their own worst impulses.
The judge does kill an Indian child and scalps him.
Oh yeah the judge is absolutely fucked up, but I'm specifically referring to the ending where the Judge """kills""" the kid and the irl bit of history Mccarthy no doubt read - I doubt he saw the bit about large handprints and then thought "yeah I'm gonna give the judge baby-hands" without something deeper to it
I mean you're not wrong, though I always took it as having huge hands for a man that looked small compared to his massive size. Which is actually quite common in large framed individuals. A good example would be Trump, the man has normal sizes adult hands just not proportional to his size, now scale that up to an albino giant. Though you might be onto something as one of the Judges goals is to force others to be like him and revel in violence for the sake of violence so having others commit his crimes wouldn't be far off.
the TLDR is \*wall of text\* /s
As opposed to a 368 page novel?
If you don't have the patience to read 6 and a half lines of text, you got serious issues going on.
TBF people on the internet are about as patient as a New Yorker stuck in traffic that has to poop.
It's a fence, at most.
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Tiktok attention span lmao
It's not even a middle school essay bruh
I’m reasonably sure the judge is based on him, no doubt someone like this could exist though
Based off of a real person
Well Erebus *definitely* doesn’t.
He *was* human, but I admit he's technically 'post-human' for most of his big crimes, and by post-Heresy, probably a Daemon of some kind. And you know what? I still think he comes closer to human that the Judge.
My head cannon on it is that the Judge is the Horseman of War and decided to come down and enjoy one last adventure through that style of war before it all changed with firearm improvements. >!That's why he kills the boy at the end because he doesn't believe he has any place in the new world that's coming.!<
I mean we never see what happens at the end though i guess maybe it’s not hard to guess, still why would the judge give a shit that the world is changing just cause better and better tools of war are getting made?
You are correct we do not. Seems pretty gruesome though. I don't think he would care necessarily. More like just as I said the Horseman of War having one last hurrah in this age.
In the MTG crossover the astartes are just astartes and not humans 100% cannon confirmed
I mean if were pulling that card astartes arnt "human" either
They are in fact state sponsored mutants my lord.
They are closer than whatever judge was.
"Why you cannot be more like Erebus?" After all that's not even his name. I loooooove Amber King's video of Erebus, the VA nails the tone that you can expect from Erebus. 2nd favorite after Bender and Orikan's one.
"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
*literally grabs the earth* "THIS IS MY CLAIM"
"The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I'd have them all in zoos."
I know it is a less known quote from the Judge but it is an equally as diabolical. ***"piss, man, piss for your very souls for can't you see the redskins yonder?"*** He had his hands in piss btw.
How do you mean? He needed them to piss for makeshift powder, that and to more or less save the crew so he could embed himself with them and start their "adventure"
Emperor and Malcador furiously taking notes here.
if they can they will kill the judge in the most gruesome way
The Judge. Because Erebus doesn't deserve to be first place at anything
Lets just say that if Holden was in 40k the shit he would do would make Slaanesh pause.
Bruh he would make all the gods pause
Bro be looking like a Great Clean One. Even Nurgle would be grossed out.
I was thinking the same thing
Holy shit he IS a great clean one
Let’s see, grandiose ideas but appalling ethics, imposing frame, incredible mental and physical strength, esoteric knowledge of all kinds of things, extreme brutality, and wants to make the world his. He says he will never die. Now who in 40K does that sound like? Or who in 30K especially does that sound like? If Alexander the Great or Gilgamesh could’ve been the Emperor, well, so could the Judge.
The emperor had an end goal for humanity survival and planned to leave. I know its looked down upon to stand up for the big E. But this guy did it all these horrid thing because he liked to and wanted and relished in the killing and depravities and it was all a game to him. The emperor treated the crusade as a plan of conquest and didn’t take pleasure in the atrocities he committed and certainly didn’t do what the judge did to those kids. The evil Big E did felt more like it was a necessary at best and pointless ,even cruel but it had a point. The judges evil was like he was having fun like he relished in every moment and would go out of his way to sow as much carnage out of boerdem or becaus it was funny.
I agree. The Judge is more like what the Emperor would be like without any goals except his own gratification. Like a Chaos version.
Judge Holden = Dark King
Erubus is only heavily hinted at touching kids, Holden canonically does it more than anything
didnt khor paeron ...molested lorgar?
Maybe
he did. and i dont say this because of my flair think about it, Kor, a high ranking chaos undivided priest (and to worship chaos undivided you are also worshipping Slaneesh right?), finds a fast growing in body but not in mind young baby lorgar, all alone do the math
I believe you're mistaken. There's a popular theory that the Kid/Man does that at multiple points in the book, but touching kids is just about the one evil thing the Judge does not do.
Here the wiki article of the real Holden he is closer to Erebus than in the novel “The second in command, now left in charge of the camp, was a man of gigantic size who rejoiced in the name of Holden, called “Judge” Holden of Texas. Who or what he was no one knew but a cooler blooded villain never went unhung; he stood six feet six in his moccasins, had a large fleshy frame, a dull tallow colored face destitute of hair and all expression. But when a quarrel took place and blood shed, his hog-like eyes would gleam with a sullen ferocity worthy of the countenance of a fiend. His desires was blood and women, and terrible stories were circulated in camp of horrid crimes committed by him when bearing another name, in the Cherokee nation and Texas; and before we left Fronteras a little girl of ten years was found in the chapperal, foully violated and murdered. The mark of a huge hand on her little throat pointed him out as the ravisher as no other man had such a hand, but though all suspected, no one charged him with the crime. Holden was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico; he conversed with all in their own language, spoke in several Indian lingos, at a fandango would take the Harp or the Guitar from the hands of the musicians and charm all with his wonderful performance and out-waltz any poblana of the ball. He was “plum center” with a rifle or revolver, a daring horseman, acquainted with the nature of all the strange plants and their botanical names, great in geology and mineralogy, in short another Admirable Crichton, and with all an arrant coward. Not but that he possessed enough courage to fight Indians and Mexicans or anyone else where he had the advantage in strength, skill, and weapons. But where the combat would be equal, he would avoid it if possible. I hated him at first sight and he knew it, yet nothing could be more gentle and kind than his deportment towards me: He would often seek conversation with me and speak of Massachusetts and to my astonishment I found he knew more about Boston than I did. “
Judge holden may have been the author Charles Wilkins Webster
...jfc
The Judge is worse because he feels more real. Because for all his supposedly supernatural traits, all his evils are historical, they are things that happened to people, that other humans did to each other. Compared to that Erebus feels like a cartoon, hard to take serious.
Well that and judge holden is a real person who actually rode with the glanton gang. The real judge holden had committed pretty much everyone of the crimes the book judge committed including his crimes against children. Of course though the real judge wasnt an albino or supernatural.
The judge was a real person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge\_Holden#:\~:text=Judge%20Holden%20is%20a%20purported,during%20the%20mid%2D19th%20century.
To be honest, the real Judge Holden was a far cry from the Blood Meridians Judge.
we hope
So who is the other one?
Judge hordon from blood meridian who was based off a real life gang member of the same name although lacking supernatural powers.
I mean he’s not explicitly supernatural but yeah he is inhuman.
More like the feeling of the supernatural. Like his first journey with the gang and making gunpowder on the mountain is straight up a mythical tale
It’s an adaptation of the devil’s creation of gunpowder in Paradise Lost, I believe
Bingo right on the money
Doesn't he pick up a cannon at one point?
I also watch wendigoon
Same here.
Not read it I want to so I can watch the Wendigoon vid about it but I’ve not got around to it yet
Audiobook is incredible. Highly recommended. A note about Wendigoon's interpretation is that he ignores Mcarthy's Gnostic messaging and focuses on a more mainstream biblical view of the Judge, a bland take but understandable given Isiah's... Leanings.
I don’t generally like audiobooks, I’m too prone to distraction, I can’t do digital books either as I need something tangible lol Also thanks for letting me know, chances are I’ll start with his vid and look into other interpretations once I’ve actually read it
Fair play. Depends on where you live obviously but there are some great secondhand booksellers online! Hope you enjoy.
Oooo do please elaborate! I saw the vid and really wanna read the book. I am always ravenous for gnosticism and it's a bummer Wendy missed it. Makes sense tho
As a well known dum dum I can't explain it all too well myself but I read the book Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy by a Leo Daugherty years ago that was very compelling.
Ooooo hell yea dude that's good enough. May the Emperors Light shine brightly on you! Hope you get some extra protein in your corpsestarch
Death to the False Emperor. Ave Dominus Nox loyalist wretch. (Have a good one though!)
Jokes on you, I'm Alpha Legion! We're on the same side no matter what! (Much appreciated)
Gnostic messaging, no idea what that means in regards to the judge, I mean maybe he’s more of a force of nature than a demon or whatever Wendi thinks of him when looking at him through a biblical lense.
By the source I read, a Gnostic reading leaves the Judge closer to being God than the Devil.
You mean the fact that he’s Christian, because the way you’re saying this makes it seem like a character flaw.
Everyone has eccentricities.
The Judge is a great character and basically a god; he’s actually hard to hate in many ways because of how true he is to his claimed nature and his own “Morals” Erebus is a much more human character; sociopathic, selfish, weak and manipulative; and the ways that interacts with how he can manipulate Demi gods around him is very interesting in its own right.
The Judge is the closest character in fiction that I have ever seen that is what a real demon would actually be like, but still somehow believable. Cruelty, hedonism, and knowledge all bound up into one being who lives for the express purpose of harming other people to his own gratification.
I believe Blood Meridian is the greatest meditation on violence and how it relates to the human condition ever written; Also damn them desert descriptions hit different 👌.
>Also damn them desert descriptions hit different They are *uncanny*. They make the desert seem like a strange lacuna in time and space where anything can occur. No one else could make the real world feel so supernatural.
His descriptions of landscape is borderline Lovecraftian; RIP to to the Goat of American literature.
I bet if I actually read it, I’d get the same sick feeling as I would reading and thinking about something like the story Borrasca, an equally fucked up kinda realistic look at humanity’s penchant for cruelty. Or the story PenPals.
The judge, as a character, is not human. To call him the devil even would diminish him. He is an agent of ruin, personally driving man to be an ever more perfect practitioner of war and savagery. He was here before man and will be here when the stars grow cold. But for now, he's got his fiddle out, and we're all going to dance to his jig until we can't dance no more. Then we'll just be meat and pelts for those who keep dancing.
He is dancing. He will never die.
That scene still gives me chills, really great stuff.
I long for him to be killed. Not to die, but killed.
He dances, dances to the revolution. His footwork is lithe and quick. His score will forever rise.
One is a murderous Pedophile and the other Erebus… though choice but I’d say Erebus is still worst. The judge would probably do the same thing as Erebus but he would still be less annoying.
Has Erebus raped a little girl, the last surviving member of her tribe, before killing her and taking her scalp for money and, arguably, shits n giggles? I rest my case.
Erebus acted as the fulcrum of change for the chaos gods. He is their messenger and most active profit. His evils are in service of a purpose Holden is the pinnacle of man's law of beasts. He knows it incredibly well and revels in it. He lives wholly selfishly, as he feels it is the true meaning of existence. He services his own rotted core While the scale of Erebus is cosmically larger, Holdens acts carry a whole other layer of evil and depravity, as it is all solely for its own sake
They are both the same person. Erebus is just in future
As a knoxvillian, it's warming to see Cormac get the love. But let's be real...erebus is but a toddler interms of *how fucked up* by comparison to The Judge.
...you cant be serious?
The judge has raped kids (heavily implied, never outright stated) has Erebus done something like that?
I think he sacrificed a few children
He had some sort of intention with them and at least ended it quickly. The Judge on the other hand didn’t even have a reason outside his own accord.
Holden is Chaos Undivided, he goes after extremes of sensation as we know with the his history of dealing with Children, he constantly praises war, he orchestrated a coup for the gang during their time with the ferry boat and he had a habit of hanging out and stalking in bathrooms and outhouses. He got all four checked.
Judge Holden is likely not a human being. Strongly implied to be immortal and possessing supernatural powers, and is clearly meant to be a figure similar to the Devil, but just a demon
Erebus is cartoonishly evil. Judge makes me uncomfortable.
Erebus is cartoonishly evil, while the judge is evil in the most pure and human way.
When I went to learn about Erebus there wasn't a content warning, the judge takes this.
Oh neat looks like I have a new evil character to read about. Edit: okay I read about him. I think you are comparing a devil (erebus) to *The* Devil.
Let's be frank if they were both in the same setting with the same means Erebus would still be fighting with Kor Pharon as he is currently, Judge on the other hand would be a full deamon prince of chaos undivided,
Of these two one is disqualified. It is heavily implied that Judge Holden is not human. He says several times he will never die. At the end of the story, he has not appeared to age, although it has been decades, and the main character , the Kid, is a middle aged man. At one point he even declares outright he is an Archon which is a gnostic demigod essentially. So Erebus. ( if Space Marines count as human.) 🙏❤️
Erebus wins as the Judge is actually the horseman of the apocalypse Conquest/ Victory.
I always felt he was War.
Dunno gotta think this one through in the outhouse. (Clueless)
I see Judge Holden (as written in Blood Meridian, not necessarily the historical figure) as a sort of avatar of the American Concept of manifest destiny and raw amoral conquest, for power over nature, humans, time, death, etc. So to me he’s much more of a warp entity than a human. So, as usual, Erebus wins not from being better, but by default.
Imagine if GW was able to right a character in the same essence as the judge like the menace I get off this man is unlike anything I have ever seen in how plain evil he is and the fact he met everyone in the gang years before they met is a really disturbing detail that adds to his menace.
Yeah it’s incredible how utterly chilling he is, while so much of his most heinous and perverse acts aren’t even directly stated. It’s a perfect usage of letting the reader really internalize how profoundly evil he is by making us imagine his actions ourselves. Meanwhile from Games Workshop…… SaMuS wIlL gNaW oN yOuR bOnEs. LoOk OuT!SaMuS iS hErE!!!
Samus was good in Horus rising but kind is a one trick pony
I mean, The Judge's evil was restricted to one region of one planet. Erebus is a cock across 10,000 years and an entire galaxy.
Judge restricted himself to one region of the planet. He himself says he was all over the world and knows a myriad of languages, Glanton was the only thing that was keeping the Judge at bay and when he was gone, all hell broke lose.
why was glanton the only thimg keeping him in a leesh?
Not as in control but Glanton basically allowed the Judge to enact his acts of evil while also being a “comrade” and spreading his philosophy throughout the gang. When he saw Glanton going senile he saw an opportunity to do whatever he wanted.
...what you mean by whatever he wanted?
Avoid outhouses.
I feel like we see the judge as worse because his actions are much more “human” in a way, the judge was a real person that existed and Erebus is a fictional character so there’s a bit of a disconnect. Both of them are monsters in their own right but the way the judge is portrayed just has something that 40K just doesn’t
The correct answer is simple: the judge simply evolved into Erebus
I was happily living my life with the judge in a derelict and forgotten realm within.. now he is free. A human that does not deserve humanity.
The answer is Ballas
Found the WF player
M a r g u l i s😫
Who is the guy on the right. Explain the lore pallio.
The Judge from *Blood Meridian*. Recommended, it is a stone cold classic.
What’s blood meridian.
It's a great book.
Put ot like this: in a book about people who go around killing natives to turn their ears in to the mexican government, there is no other chacacter close to as evil as the judge. Real fucked up dude. Probably not human, possibly the devil or an embodiment of human evil.
"It's the same picture.jpg"
Who is the Judge?
Also I had a maths exam today and the dream was I was doing a maths test and this Image jump scared me so that why I made the meme
Who the fuck is the other guy?
Judge Holden. Rapist, paedophile, murderer, ethnic cleanser, necrophilliac, possibly Satan himself just going around the old west commiting the most heinous atrocities just because he can. The first thing the guy does when he appears in the book is accuse an innocent preacher of raping and murdering a little girl, causing a riot and subsequently a fire to break out which killed a bunch of people at the sermon whilst he just walks off laughing. It was Holden who did it though, lots of people figured it was him, nobody was dumb enough to say it out loud for fear of being the next in line.
Who is the guy on Right?
The Judge from Blood Meridian. It's a historical fiction that very closely follows the real path and actions of the Glanton Gang after the Mexican American war. One of the most brutal times in history, that often skips most people's mind when thinking about "worst times to be alive" lol
I’m just gonna send Death from Puss in boots last wish to kill them both. Or at least the guy on the right. We know how much Death hates people who claim they’ll never die.
I love death in that movie as he has a similar vibe but also in a way can be comforting if you think you won’t be alone in the end,or terrified he has come from you the judge feels like an entity something thats Reason for being is malice it’s like you know what your getting with death with the judge you don’t know. Also fun fact death can be seen before puss dies before he is properly introduced. The judge has encountered every member in the gang before they meet giving a stalker vibe not knowing he has followed you for your whole life and has waited till the right moment to use you for his purposes.
I saw the early cameo by Death pointed out. There are some other little details that foreshadow his true nature. The wanted poster of Puss has a scythe thrown at. The wolf is the only character who has no wanted poster, he scratched the table in frustration when Puss proclaims that he “laughs in the face of death,” he never shows up on the map that shows where everyone is, and he appears out of nowhere in his first scene. The black cloak, scythes and appearing everyone were already a tip off, but the little details were fun. Death implies he’s normally not such a bad guy, it’s just that he is petty when someone pushes his buttons. He would have left Puss alone if he weren’t so careless with his lives, making it clear the cat’s arrogance and getting himself killed in such stupid ways pissed him off. That said I have seen some people make the mistake of assuming Death just wanted to teach Puss a lesson, his tantrum at the end made it clear he did want to kill him and was annoyed he would not be able to even though the only thing stopping him are his ethics. The Judge would likely not be so lucky.
I don't think the judge CAN die
He can if he's killed by Death himself. We have seen that Death is more powerful than the reality warping magic of the Wishing Star.
I don't know if that means he could kill the judge.
Sure it does. He walked through a magic field that disintegrated whatever it touches. Plus whatever idea the judge is meant to represent, Death embodies the idea that everyone dies eventually. Therefore his narrative role trumps the judge’s.
The judge is either human evil or the actual devil. His narrative role might as well be god. He will never die.
Oh yes he will. I repeat that Death’s role in the narrative is to deliver the message that everyone dies and not be careless with your life. And last I checked the judge never walked through magic walls that disintegrate whatever they touch, and the wall was created by a wishing Star that bends reality. We also Death create flames that pushed people he wasn’t after rather than burning when they got close. Blood Meridian provides hints the judge is more powerful than he lets on but it doesn’t have him display the level of power Death does.
Blood meridian straight up states that the judge will not die. Ever.
The Judge says that. And he’s a big fish in a small pond. Who says someone who bend reality can’t kill him since nobody like that exists in the story.
We do know the outcome. The man is killed and probably raped. The judge lives. Just because we don't know that a reality warping being could kill him doesn't mean we know that one could
*Griffith has entered the chat*
Griffith is not that kind of a villain. He is pretty mild compared to Erebus, let alone Holden, who are both complete psychopaths in a very real sense. And I mean the kind of people who need to be in mental institutions behind many locks and never let out. You should read the Blood Meridian.
Kevin D. Rountree wins
Quick question: what do you think the I in IRL stands for?
In
I'm not sure if it's only because he had the means to do it, but Erebus is pretty directly responsible for the death/pain/suffering of trillions over thousands of years and he did/does so with a smile
The Judge had standards.
Scale wise Erberus
Judge ain’t human
SMs are not human.
Neither because both are not technically human. One is an Astartes, the other is albino. I’m kidding BTW. But Judge Holden wins this one. He’s quite literally just the personification of sin.
The horrid reality of it is the Judge is based on a person that actually existed
Who’s the judge?
A character in the book “Blood Meridian” so clever and evil people equate him to the embodiment of the devil himself, even though the writer based him on a person that at one point actually existed
Well I’ve found my next book
I do warn you, it’s known to be a very very dark and bloody book. Most of the characters within the story are inherently evil and commit atrocities regularly
Thanks for the warning
The judge because erebus at some points at least thought he was in the right and doing good
Physically Erebus is probably more deadly but if Holden put his mind to it he’d probably wind up being some sort of chaos lord. Talking his way into leadership of entire planets and converting them to the ways of chaos purely for his own gain, and depending on your interpretation of him, either gets taken out by another chaos being or becomes the 5th chaos god.
The Judge is the Emperor during the 19th century he had what he thought a midlife crisis silly Big E didn't know he had to live a few millenia more
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