#'what not externally' no this guy compartmentalizes everything

[ufolvr]

Unable to complete my silly bedtime routine of playing nonogram until the melatonin kicks in bc I'm thinking about this post with gltas Guy @ Citrus whos about to explode into tears internally

[arthur-r]

also this song is hitting me in the face so bad right now i’m not used to wanting sexual autonomy that’s a new college experience and this song is ringing in my ears about it

[poorlittleyaoyao]

14, 48, and 50 for A-Yao?

14. Most heroic moment

Oh, killing WRH, for sure. MY racks up all kinds of big heroic moments during Sunshot--saving LXC! saving QS! making sure civilians are out of the way! the whole spy thing in general!--but killing WRH entailed major risk and sacrifice alongside bravery. After all, MY has a pretty good thing going in Nightless City! Torturing people is, you know, not great, but he's the trusted assistant of the most powerful man in the jianghu. In novel canon, he's one of the few people permitted to greet WRH without kneeling. In drama canon, he has direct input on battlefield strategy. This is the most power he's ever had and the most respect he's ever had. Meanwhile, a good chunk of the Sunshot coalition has treated him like garbage. And there's no guarantee people will believe that he was a spy all along rather than a coward jumping ship at the last minute, especially if LXC has died in battle and there's nobody to vouch for him. But he kills him anyway, because it's the right thing to do. (And he saves NMJ, even though letting WRH kill him would make his life a whole lot easier, also because it's the right thing to do.)

48. Scariest moment of their life

In terms of immediate, adrenaline-rush sheer terror: during the non-horny realtime version of MY and NMJ's encounter at Nightless City in CQL, NMJ almost cuts him in half with Baxia and the poor guy looks PETRIFIED. MY is saved only because WRH grabs NMJ and hauls him away. That would be TERRIFYING, because 1.) he almost died, and 2.) he continues to almost die until WRH incapacitates NMJ, 3.) he's also plainly scared for as well as of NMJ. And, as stated above, it doesn't exactly bode well for his own fate post-Sunshot!

In terms of frightening on an existential level: also in CQL, the moment he hits the bottom of the Jinlintai stairs. JGS dispatches servants to get rid of MY in the novel IIRC, so there's some plausible deniability there; maybe Jin-furen or someone else gave the order and his father had no part in it! In CQL, though, JGS is right there the whole time. JGS looked MY in the eye and chose to violently reject him. There is no doubt that his father doesn't want him. His mother is dead, he's all alone, and his ONE JOB--the ONE THING he's meant to do--he failed. If he wants to crack an unhinged evil smile to cope, he's valid.

50. A memory they’ve blocked out

Given his eidetic memory, I think JGY's problem is that he can't block things out. He remembers everything! Much of it bad! Which must be exhausting not just because that sure is A Lot to carry around, but many of the things he remembers clear as day have been genuinely forgotten by the other parties involved, so if he tries to bring them up, people will be like "lol what are you talking about? that didn't happen."

So what I think he does INSTEAD is kind of... gaslight himself? Like he does these elaborate retcons of his own memories to enable him to compartmentalize better, chief among them being "the only reason my father doesn't treat me as his son is that external forces prevent him from doing so :) and I just :) need to do better :)" until the "not worth mentioning" scene breaks the illusion for good.

[denimbex1986]

'There's a film released in cinemas this week that questions the very notion of life itself. It's situated on the precipice of the dawn of a new world, with its supporting star-laden players instrumental in mapping a path for history in secret while everyone else sits back unaware that everything is about to change. It ruminates on the very idea of what makes us human, the idea of ‘the other’, whether there's truly such a thing as autonomy or if we're all simply pawns to be picked up and disposed of when we are no longer useful. It raises the unanswerable question of how or if we can ever go back once our eyes have been opened to the untold horrors we're capable of experiencing. That film is Barbie.

In case you haven't heard, Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer are opening on the same day. One tells the story of everyone's favourite childhood doll while the other explores the mind of the man responsible for the atomic bomb that decimated Hiroshima and ended WWII. On the face of it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Nolan's examination of humanity's capacity to harm others and what that reveals about us when we let it happen would be the more existential of the two – living in the mind for three hours of the person playing god with tens of thousands of lives does naturally raise some ethical concerns. You will inevitably sit through Oppenheimer interrogating personal qualms about empathy and our capacity to compartmentalize human suffering in service of the greater good, all of which is aided along by Cillian Murphy and the live-in supporting actor that are his cheekbones externalising every moral quandary across his face. But it's Barbie, somehow, that will shake your core more than the Trinity Test reverb.

Margot Robbie's Barbie saying “Do you guys ever think about dying?” was latched onto from the very first Barbie trailer, way back before every product known to man was saturated in pink. It was clear then, and now, that rather than a sugary sweet jaunt into the life of the plastic and fantastic, this film's purpose was to be a brutal philosophical study of the mortifying idea of being alive.

Barbie's (Margot Robbie) journey starts with her perfectly-manicured and matriarchal life in Barbieland shaken by an unknown outside force - the real world. She then has to venture on a journey to reality, where she's rudely awakened to societal problems like patriarchy and oppression as well as crushing personal issues like loneliness and what it's like to be a 14-year-old girl. In her tow is Ken (Ryan Gosling), whose only motivating thought since creation is how to be as close to Barbie as possible.

Barbie is a movie about existentialism. It's about questioning who we are, what we are and, yes, if we're “Kenough” at the end of the day. Behind the glitter and the bleach-blonde bouffants, Barbie and Ken are on opposite but equal journeys to personal enlightenment. For Barbie, the idea of going back to a blissfully unaware life after discovering that the concept of Barbies make women feel bad instead of empowered in the real world is troubling. Ken, on the other hand, who has only ever had one purpose, is paralysed by choice with the realisation that his life can take multiple routes. The pair are caught in the crosshairs of being both sentient and someone else's idea, battling with free will and the omnipresent predetermined rules about where to go and how to act. Ken beaches and obsesses over Barbie, as is his design, while Barbie is essentially nice, beautiful and doesn't think about changing her circumstances at all. Their dream worlds are shattered by the introduction of chaos, something that is deeply relatable to anyone watching. Sure, none of us are factory-made dolls living in a tangible nether world (that we know of!), but being at the mercy of external and unpredictable forces is what ultimately ties us all together.

Where Oppenheimer tells the story of the creator, Barbie tells the side of the creation. In Nolan's crafting of that history, Oppenheimer sits above the world as its hesitant catalyst for destruction and we, the viewers, are the people being played with by chance. It's easy to feel connected to Barbie in that regard, as we too are forced to prevail with a vague sense of constant dread at the endless possibilities of time and the universe. From big to small to everything in between, Barbie reckons with all the ways perceiving things can be kind of a drag. Oppenheimer may drop the A-bomb and change the course of human history forever, but Barbie just found out that heels hurt and are lowkey problematic, actually. Who really is suffering more?'

[bluethepineapple]

Ron and the Horcrux: An Alternate Reading

I've read a whole bunch of theories and discussions about why Ron was the most affected by the Horcrux, and I just want to throw my two cents in.

One of the more popular theories seem to be that either the Horcrux was purposely singling him out because it sensed that Ron would destroy it, and another seemed to be that he was carrying much heavier insecurities and burdens than both Harry and Hermione. (This is as I have seen only though.)

I disagree with both.

While Ron did have quite a lot of worries and insecurities, they weren't significantly more than Harry's or Hermione's. Harry had the weight of leadership and the prophecy on his shoulders. Hermione has been entrusted with not only researching the Horcruxes, she was also practically carrying the logistics of their operations at that point. Any failure or mistake on her part could hold dire consequences for the Wizarding World. Ron's fear for his family and his insecurities regarding his relationships with the people he loves isn't more or less of material for the Horcrux, it's simply a different flavor of the same suffering.

No, I think that Ron was simply more VISIBLE in the way he reacted to the pain. And this happened or two reasons. First, Ron is the member of the trio who is most comfortable expressing his emotions. Second, (and more importantly), he was also the only person in the Hunt for whom leaving was actually a legitimate option.

First: Expressing Emotions.

Harry is the type to endure pain in silence. He is used to hurting, and even more used to no one being there when he needed them the most. He learned to not bother asking for help long before Hogwarts, and his time in school did not make that mentally better. He was constantly disbelieved, and he had to finish adventures alone more often than not. Harry is used to just riding out the pain, and that makes emotional outbursts rare for him. This indicates a tendency towards internalization and self-isolation.

In the Hunt, this translates to getting buried under the weight of leadership. It means feeling as if he has to take everything on his own. Even more importantly, it means sitting in that cesspool of toxic emotion until he suffocated. Worst comes to worst, Harry blows up, but until then, it looks like Harry brooding in silence.

Hermione, on the other hand, functions by compartmentalization. She is highly logical, and part of that means that she works best when there is structure. Sometimes that structure is external. Most times though she builds it herself (as we see through her rigid study schedules), and this holds true for her emotions.

She is a highly emotional person, but she also very rarely acts on them. Her slapping Malfoy, setting the canaries on Ron, and attacking him after his return are so shocking both to the readers and her own friends because her emotions are often quite contained. Instead of acting on them in the moment, she channels her feelings through working and solving the problems that elicited the emotions in the first place. And this is only if she decides not to take the high road.

In the Horcrux Hunt, this looks like her constant movement. She keeps planning, brainstorming, managing the food, and ordering both Harry and Ron around. She had a to-do list, and it is through this constant movement and work that she alleviates the possible negative emotions that the Horcrux may have stirred up within her. Aside from the occassional snappishness, the negative effects on her did not result in visible outbursts.

Now to Ron. Ron is a very emotionally expressive guy. Furthermore, he's a loud guy. Coming from a huge family with a lot of competition, being loud is the only way he gets heard. And we see this all throughout the books. He is outspoken with his opinions. If he finds something stupid, he says so. If he is happy, he shows it. If he is nervous, it affects EVERYTHING he does (see: being the Quidditch keeper). Relative to Harry and Hermione, Ron is very much in touch with his emotions, and that makes him very reactive.

And this means, that coupled with the fact that his sore points all have to do with his place in the team, the effect of the Horcrux means loud blow-ups at the people he perceives have slighted him. The targets for his insecurities are RIGHT THERE, and his already short fuse has been made shorter by not only the Horcrux but also the terrible conditions of the Hunt. Ron loses all control of his emotions, and it manifests as anger against the people he strongly feels have not valued him.

Second: The Option of Home

By the time the Horcrux Hunt started, Harry and Hermione don't actually have homes to come back to. Even worse, there is no chance of asylum for either of them. Harry Potter was condemned by a prophecy and is Undesirable#1. The closest he has to a family is the Weasleys, and his presence will place them all in unnecessary danger.

Then not only is Hermione a muggle-born, but she had voluntary removed herself from her parents lives, and she did it in a way that is pretty difficult to return from. Unlike Ron who is believed to still be with his parents, Hermione is very clearly with Harry. Even if she wasn't an Undesirable, she would still have been hunted by virtue of being muggle-born. There really is no place where she could go back to and expect to remain safe.

Ron, on the other hand, while considered a blood-traitor, is STILL pure-blood. In fact, him going home is probably what is safest for his family. It is an option that he and only he ALONE has. Him storming out of the Hunt isn't a sign that he was more affected than most - that happened because HE COULD. He has a family to come back home to, and one with resources to not only support him, but actually keep him safe. Yes, they'd be mad at him, but they also wouldn't turn him away.

Of the three of them, Ron was the only for whom leaving actually made sense.

Conclusion:

While Ron wasn't disproportionately affected by the Horcrux, he did react in the most VISIBLE manner. This led his suffering to be the most visible among the Trio's, but this does not mean that his suffering was necessarily "worse" by any significant degree. Nor does it mean that he was specifically targeted by the Horcrux. Ron blew up because he could. He left because he could. He was angry and he felt that it was the right thing to do.

His arc is about overcoming his insecurities and learning to stay. To attribute his leaving as anything other than his own personal decision is to do a disservice to his character and development.

[hamliet]

Dabi’s Missing Heart

So I’ve been seeing two main responses to Dabi’s character as portrayed in BNHA 292, both of which I feel touch on a very surface understanding of his character and role in the story despite seeming like opposite takes.  

Take #1: 

Dabi is an unfeeling monster created to show the redeemability of Shigaraki and Enji in contrast with his true eeeevil villainy! He will never be redeemed! 

Take #2: 

Dabi is a sweet softy who did nothing wrong! He will never be redeemed because of this chapter which is so out-of-character! 

Note how they both have the same endpoint. I’m not actually gonna address the redemption question much because I can’t fathom what this panel foreshadows if not Touya’s salvation (alive): 

I’m not looking to debate this either; I’m just putting it here because I know it’ll come up if I don’t.

Instead, I wanna address Dabi’s character. He’s my favorite, and I’ve been asked a few different times whether I enjoy him as a villain or as an uwu poor baby, and my answer is always both. 

Dabi is a villain. This chapter’s rampage is, in my opinion, not remotely out of character for him. But neither is it the summation of his character, and he surely is not meant to make Enji look good by comparison. 

So, who is Dabi? 

Dabi is kind of a flaming jerk, and that’s why I like him. He’s an abuse victim who gets to be angry and crass and sharp. He pushes people away because he doesn’t want to open up to them and get burned (heh). He’s just like Shouto in that, except with a dose of murder. 

Believe it or not, this is a very realistic response to abuse, and very common too. It’s good to see that representation. If the writing was indeed just “he’s bad get rid of him,” well, that would of course be a terrible representation. But seeing a mean victim get redeemed? Now that’s some good sh*t I’m here for. 

If you want a sweethearted, misunderstood soft victim, there is one in MHA, and that’s Shigaraki. Dabi is not these things, but that does not mean he’s not a victim or that he’s somehow an unfeeling monster.

You see, Shigaraki is a heart character. Dabi’s the mind. (Heart and mind characters are a literary pattern that is utilized in literature across the globe; it’s not an eastern/western cultural thing. It has its roots in alchemy.) The problem is that you can’t have a heart without a mind nor a mind without a heart. If you lack one, you’re missing half the picture, and you won’t accomplish anything. 

We see this with Shigaraki in his quest to look for ideals, something to believe in, purpose to justify/enable acting on his feelings/emotions. 

Dabi, in contrast, has conviction and ideals, but eschews any kind of personal connection and care. 

So, both Shigaraki and Dabi struggle to unite heart and mind--but they need to do precisely this. 

It’s not a coincidence that Shigaraki expressly envisions both Dabi and Himiko when musing on what his purpose is. 

Yet Shigaraki is able to unite more easily with Himiko as opposed to Dabi because Himiko is also a heart character. She claims to be motivated by extreme empathy that warps around to become a lack thereof (wanting to be who she loves).

Shigaraki’s motivations are basically revenge for hero society not saving him--which encompasses both a deep internal and external (societal) need for empathy and a need for better ideals. Shigaraki needs Himiko and Dabi. They’re a trio, and all of them need each other to grow. But Himiko, being similarly driven expressly by emotions, is easier for Shigaraki to understand and work with. 

The irony is that Dabi is actually a very, very emotional character as well. But what he does (as is typical for a mind character) is repress them, compartmentalize, dissociate. He constantly pushes people away, yet admits privately, to himself, that he’s primarily (and paradoxically) motivated by family. This is emotional, yet Dabi claims he “overthought” and, according to other translations, “snapped” can be actually be read as “went crazy” as a result over overthinking (note: both are mind allusions). 

Dabi repressing who he is--Todoroki Touya--is symbolic of him repressing his emotional side, because again, family and emotions are tied together for his character. Now his identity is acknowledged, and Dabi claims to be losing his mind (again), claims that he can’t feel, and yet is completely consumed by emotions. Like, does anyone think he’s being methodical and calculating this chapter? 

It’s not just negative emotions (rage, hate) that drive Dabi in response to his family. His seeking belonging and emotional connection is present even in a chapter where he tries to murder two members of his family and laughs off the risk to the life of another. 

See, Dabi first asked Shouto to validate his pain:

But like, given the circumstances, of course Shouto doesn’t really respond well. How Shouto responds is this: 

Shouto’s words are triggering. And keep in mind I am not blaming Shouto: he’s in shock and he’s a kid. I’m merely trying to explain how it likely comes across to Dabi. 

You’re crazy. Your feelings don’t matter. You don’t really care about Natsuo! You’re a villain and that’s ALL you are. Not a brother or abuse survivor. Just a villain. 

So, uh, yeah, Dabi then retreats back to being unable to feel, dissociating as has always been his coping mechanism. But that’s not all: Dabi’s been repressing for so long that of course he’s gonna go a little insane in response to the dismissal of everything he’s trying to point out. Why wouldn’t he? His family dismissed his pain back then and now again, and so, without that heart, without those emotions, principle is all Dabi has. This has been present since long before Stain’s ideology came into his life: 

Now, he answers this question of existence through Stain’s ideology.  Purpose is all he has, and to him, Shouto and Best Jeanist are dismissing that too. Why are they dismissing it? Best Jeanist dismisses him for an ideal: the overall good of hero society. Shouto has a mixture of this ideal and also like, genuine shock and pain. 

Back to Dabi. Dabi’s summation of himself and his purpose is incorrect and harmful to himself and others. I’m not excusing him or justifying, just explaining. It’s a tragic reflection of what Endeavor raised both Touya and Shouto to be (and thereby ironic that BJ uses an ideal to dismiss him): 

Instead of being raised to be the symbol of hero society--as Endeavor intended--he exists to destroy it. The root is the same: Dabi assumes he exists for hero society, as a tool. He dehumanizes himself, hence why his quirk physically harms him (which also fits his almost religious zeal for Stain’s ideology). But it is not all Dabi is. He’s not a tool, he’s a person, but to acknowledge he’s a person involves acknowledging his heart/emotional desires, and that gets to my next point.

Dabi’s not a reliable narrator about himself. At all. I’ve written about Dabi and dissociation before. So let’s look at Dabi’s devotion to his ideals, the ideals he puts above people and claims he only cares about... because there are moments where Dabi goes against those ideals. 

For one example, Dabi’s gone against those ideals when he’s allowed his personal need for revenge (an emotional/heart motivation) to overcome his longterm plan. Like, he was fully about to get himself killed here, even though that would likely mean no one would know the corruption of the Todoroki family and hero society, just for the chance to prove to his father that he hurt him. 

In addition, I’ve talked before about how Dabi’s the only character in the entire damn manga to comment that maybe using child soldiers is not okay. While it’s not explicitly stated, it’s reasonable to conclude that Dabi considers the abuse of children in hero training a sin of hero society that ought to be purged (hence, part of his ideals). 

That said, I have also pointed out that Dabi has gone after children in the past when it benefits his mission (Bakugou would like a word). So let’s look at four examples of Dabi and his principles concerning kids--since, after all, he claims to be motivated by heroes who hurt kids. 

Firstly, Dabi’s “save the cat” when he spared Aoyama. 

Why did he spare Aoyama? We can only speculate, but it seems quite likely there are two reasons: 1) hurting Aoyama would not add anything to his overall goal of downing hero society, and 2) a terrified, cowering kid might just have been a teeny bit familiar to Dabi. Here, his ideals--destroying hero society--either take a backseat to a reflection of his personal pain (and)/or his ideal of not abusing kids directly contradicted his ideal of bringing down hero society. But the important part is that in this instance, Dabi chose mercy and the goal of bringing down hero society was jeopardized as a result. 

So then why did he attack Tokoyami, Nejire, and Shouto this arc? Well, Dabi does things he knows are wrong for the sake of accomplishing his overall purpose. He does things he knows hurt himself for this purpose. This isn’t new. If he can’t be acknowledged, can’t exist as a person with emotions, then he at least will ensure he still has a purpose.  

In addition, let’s look at what sets Dabi off in all of these instances. (Again, this isn’t me saying “well actually Dabi’s justified.” He’s not. I’m just pointing to what’s in the text to explain the machinations beyond “bad guy do bad.”)

Dabi tries to reason with Tokoyami, pointing out that Twice was doing essentially what Tokoyami is doing: trying to save his friend(s), but Tokoyami doesn’t listen (also again: not me saying Tokoyami should have listened--realistically, in this situation, it makes sense Tokoyami trusted his mentor!)

Only after his reasoning was rejected did Dabi go to flames mode. He could have just let Tokoyami save Hawks, but instead he really wanted to kill Hawks and that overrode his other principles. Was this just because of his furthering his goal--killing the #2 hero would help destroy hero society--or because of a sense of personal revenge for Twice? That’s open for interpretation (in my opinion, it’s likely a mixture, because again, it tends to intertwine more than Dabi likes to think it does). His principles and/or emotions are brushed aside, and Dabi Does Not Like That. 

Dabi does this again with Shouto this chapter, asking him where he stands on their family issues, and gets brushed aside, and then Shouto goes into his rage mode and Dabi responds. Again, not saying Shouto is rational here or that he should side with Dabi’s murderous plan, but like, his words really don’t come across well to Dabi. 

Dabi going after Shouto after explaining things, asking Shouto for help, and then having his pain dismissed is pretty much a repeat of Tokoyami. When Dabi’s pain is dismissed, he says fine, let’s aim for the highest principle possible: making Stain’s will a reality, and damn any emotional ties. 

Dabi’s obsession with ideals, you might say, is a smokescreen to cover his own pain. Far from feeling nothing, he feels very deeply. (I promise I’m getting to Nejire.) 

So what does this indicate? Well, that Dabi does have a heart and a conscience. But when he lets his heart act, when his heart reaches out, he gets burned. His heart jeopardizes his overall purpose, so he most often dissociates himself from it. But by pretending he doesn’t have a heart, he dehumanizes himself, and he projects that dehumanization onto others (see: seeing Shouto as an extension of Endeavor, when that’s actually the precise image Shouto is trying to shed). 

It’s not a coincidence that Shigaraki has been unconscious during the entire confrontation with Endeavor, nor is it a coincidence that Himiko has been MIA. But, Shigaraki wakes up a bit this chapter not only when hearing Dabi spout about how hero society needs to burn, an ideal/the thing Shigaraki lacks, and through a less important but still-ideal-driven character in Spinner asking him to accomplish his supposed ideal of destruction, but when Dabi saves Shigaraki and Spinner. 

Dabi doesn’t burn Nejire for lols (not that this makes it better because it doesn’t) or even for ideals. He burns her to save Shigaraki and Spinner, because they are his links to full humanity right now. 

(Again, this is also dissociation and projection: Endeavor did this! No, Dabi, you did. You’re perpetuating violence against kids rather than stopping it.)

But anyways, when Dabi calls upon heart, Shigaraki wakes. He lends Gigantomachia and thereby Dabi and the league power. 

Dabi can only grow and actually accomplish anything related to his ideals (fixing hero society) through accepting a heart--even though that will likely mean some painful surgery to shift his ideals to accommodate said heart, because pure ideals don’t leave much room for humanity. He needs to feel to actually change anything, because right now he’s just making things worse (hence, the need for saving and redemption).

I know the League aren’t the protagonists of the serIes, but their complaints aren’t exactly incorrect either (if anything they’re almost a little too valid). But through growing together, Dabi, Shigaraki, and Himiko might actually be able to accomplish something, and get themselves in a place where they can be reached and saved by Shouto, Deku, and Ochaco. Because to be saved, the kids will have to acknowledge the villains’ pain and complaints, and do something about it. 

[paintbrush-stan-babeyy]

uhmmmmm so basic of lly? i get it now. i Understand and i Know. know what, you might ask. 

Him

after ep 14 i did nothing but pace around my house like an excitable fool and while doing so jimmied open my brain cells long enough to finally connect the pieces of knife’s character so liek,,,, here’s a really shitty character analysis for anyone who has trouble writing him like i do dhfgdfhjf **disclaimer: idk how to write a character analysis

1. Da Basics so! knife! what’s up with him? well im here to tell you! he is a bastard nd i like him so much. from the official wiki descriptions we know he is a “ surface level jerk...  with his brash attitude and tendency to bully the other competitors” but then had this turn around in s2 after everyone was like “hey,,, u should be nicer”. there’s more to it but I Will Get There. anyhow the flats of his personality really is him being a dickhead to cover up those soft bits he doesn’t know how to express because he compartmentalizes all the time. who doesn’t do that tho lmao 

2. Da Beginning of a Parable   right now you’re probably thinking “wow rib! that sucked we already knew all that” well watch this *goes stupid goes crazy.* in a show that’s all about the contestants, the only way you can really understand Anyone is to pick apart how they interact with others and in knife’s case he does so Very Specifically. how it works is that so far every major interaction he’s had tends to culminate until it hits a breaking point. for example *points at trophy.* everything that happened there is where i like to mark the start of his character arc. da bully? has become da bullied. it doesn’t last very long but having his softer interests- like dora- exposed, mocked, and then held against him shakes knife up to the very least. having him mention how bad trophy’s blackmail was ten or so episodes later really drives in how Much it stuck with him. it wasn’t the senseless violence he was used too and kind of forced him to realize that “oh shit,,,,,,,, people can?? interact with me???” in ways that got under the walls he set up. *points at nickel nd suitcase* these guys? also reinforced that newborn view he’s looking at. like,,,, he’s still a complete ass and doesn’t quite, Get it? and he doesn’t even know that he’s in a character arc yet but i can confidently say the sarcasm and “random act of kindness” shifted something drastically in him, solely because of how understated these traits are. the biggest issue with seeing knife’s trajectory is the subtlety in it. he is absolutely one of the most subtle characters in the show; his growth shown in snippets, pushed aside for bigger storylines and hidden under his brash nature. he still hides the soft intentions under the asshole and that’s important to remember, but it’s also important to remember that the soft intentions is what you need to focus on.

3. Then Why Is He Acting Like That Now its the subtlety babey!!! its also the compartmentalizing in action. he’s always pushed things into boxes and labels, ie “bully”, “jock”, “nerd”, whatever. in the newest ep he’s doing just that. if you recall, any major external conflict he might’ve had was resolved suuuuper early in the season, so knife has had no way to conflate his problems with the show, unlike other characters. he did all his diagnostics running on the Down Low, influenced by the idea that other characters might know what’s going on in his noggin and then saying “no thanks” to that, all while taking in their advice at the same time. he’s a “take don’t give” kinda guy (except not all the time but I Will Get There). hell, taco technically wasn’t part of the show Either. so basically, his issues? are all internal and ii is really just that to him. a game. y’all might remember a previous post that i made and subsequently lost in the void when i deleted, but when i compared mephone’s memories to the players current situations and then couldn’t for the LIFE of me figure out how knife’s played into it, i was actually lying. my guy’s general “trash” feelings over the show was, at this point, him actually taking it seriously for once. knife got done being “open” once microphone eliminated herself, and it’s back to being selfish because any internal ties, as small as they were, have wrapped themselves up neatly. all that’s left is the game, and gosh darn he really believes he’s got a shot at winning it

4. He Is Not Immune To Being Soft However this is how knickle can still w- “ok then rib, what’s going on in the inside then, huh??” glad you asked! knife has gained delicacy. after suitcase he really did decide to Stop being so thick and actually look at things now, taking up the role of an asshole observer- sort of like mepad in a sense. he got,,, perceptive, coupled with his personal sense of sectionalizing. in the end he likes,,, maybe, three other people, and that influences how he carries any interactions he has later in the series. suitcase? is a ok in his book, and he does give her genuine advice a couple times. microphone is a fairly complex situation that picks up in his box mindset. pickle? hallelujah thats knife’s favorite guy. i can’t say for sure Why he’s knife’s favorite guy but really, there’s no heterosexual explanation on why pickle was the absolute axis of knife’s turning point. ep seven honestly truly is the head of knife’s change overall actually. his random act of kindness Here branches off into any kindness he does Later. suitcase manages to keep up in his head, and microphone probably reminds him of pickle- especially with the similarities of their situations, which is why he pokes and prods at her so much. it’s his very knife way of being nice, it’s him saying “hey, taco? isn’t worth it”. its that hard shell under currented by his arc of playing fair. knife still 100% has a ways to go (apology to marsh in my mouth pls pls pls-) but i can’t wait to see how his one trackedness plays out from here 

[yutaya]

Iron Fist Rewatch: 1x01: Snow Gives Way

-Someone barging into Ward's office acting like they own the place and also know Harold is alive must have sent such a jolt of fear through Ward for a second

-Ward puts himself between Danny and Joy when it seems like Danny might get physical

-Ward tells Joy not to have Danny arrested - Harold concerns?

-Danny PTSD set off by the elevator turbulence?? But he was fine going up. Just stress induced? He's shaking.

-FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT BREAK INTO THAT HOUSE

-Joy's dog just disappears after this episode?

-Danny just meditates or something to get that dog to calm down. Calms his mind so as to seem not a threat / not present? Is Danny some sort of animal whisperer? I'm now positive that at some point during Danny and Ward's Adventures Across Asia, they were stranded somewhere for some reason, Ward is complaining about being stuck in some muddy backwater hick town or whatever, Danny just sort of strolls up to some large animals (attached to a cart? Wait, that would be stealing. Hm...) goes all zen state, then says to Ward "they'll take us to the next town" like that's a normal series of events and not COMPLETELY INSANE, DANNY, WHAT THE F---.

-Pictures on Joy's shelf: Harold with his arm around young Joy, all six of them on some vacation. Rands + Meachums kind of separated in this photo, though. Don't people normally stand closer together in group photos? Also, young Joy much shorter than young Danny. Note: Wendall's hands on both Heather and Danny's shoulders. Harold's hand on Joy's shoulder. Ward and Danny both have hands in pockets.

-"Dad says rules are for pussies" ;___; (Young Ward refusing to pay monopoly rent because he just doesn't want to. Starting the corrupt financial elite training off early, huh?)

-"Oh, here comes Mommy and Daddy to protect you and give you lots of hugs and kisses and tell you what a sweet little boy you are. It's disgusting. *sweeps all the game pieces off the table even though they've clearly been playing for awhile and it's not like Danny just won he was only asking for like $200*" Ward, you dramatic bitch. Also, they were literally only saying they were home, not necessarily rushing in to protect Danny from the Big Bad Ward refusing to pay $200 monopoly money. Metaphorically, I suppose this is still Ward being a sore loser, though. It's not monopoly Danny beat him at, it's having parents who love him. T_T AND THEN HE LIES ABOUT IT, PLAYING THE BELEAGUERED BABYSITTER, ASDFGHJKL - WARD. (Note: neither Danny nor Joy speak up against this blatant unfairness. Previous failure? YOU'RE SUCH A BULLY, WARD.)

-Big Al is first person to be friendly to Danny and I'm sure Danny doesn't forget it. Headcanon Danny is def actively caring towards 'lower class', including homeless and drug addicts, and actually sees + treats them as equals. Classism definitely a theme in these shows with the people who struggle financially like Colleen being the kindest and most charitable and the rich being assholes.

-But also why is he informing Danny that the internet can be used as a search engine with no prior indication in their conversation that Danny doesn't know this? I mean, Danny does not, in fact, know this, but.

-In the news article, the photo of the Rands is the same one in Joy's apartment, but the Meachums are not there. However, they are not merely cropped out: the background extends into the spot they should occupy. Did some poor news article graphic designer have to go find a photo of that tourist spot background at the exact right angle and photoshop them together to get rid of the Meachums, or was Joy's photo a photoshopped family vacation image, which could have explained the awkward distance between the two families, even though it wouldn't have been that hard in editing to set them all closer together? Maybe they all still went on the same vacation together, but instead of asking a passerby to take a photo for them, both families took photos of each other and then someone combined them at a later date? Practically speaking, that still means the angle would be likely to be off for the background, and it's also suspicious that there are zero other tourists around. These rich families rented out the entire space?? Would lend to lack of external parties to take a group pic for them. Obviously, IRL explanation is they're all photoshopped onto a static background, but fun to think of the in-universe reasons. ...Actually, most likely explanation is that they took multiple photos - Rand only, Meachum only, maybe also kids only, Wendall+Harold only, etc, as well as group. So this entire train of thought is inconsequential. Oops.

-Harold had a big event funeral, "mayor and everything"? That must have been fun for both Harold and Ward, with significantly different usages of the word 'fun'.

-Hello Joy, not only did I follow you home to accost you at your front door the morning after I attacked the security at your workplace to enter your probably restricted top floor executives offices, I also did extensive research into your childhood history down to the position you and your friend played on your childhood soccer team, oh and also I broke into your house yesterday where I interacted with your dog. Now watch while I prove my physical prowess by flipping over a taxi.

-Bird flying into city while Danny meditates?? Symbolically, follows the idea of the bird flying through the pass that was Danny's sign to leave K'un Lun and return to NYC. Spiritually - what? AU where the bird is Danny's spirit animal and he's connected to it / seeing through its eyes right now. For the HDM AU fans: bird could be Danny's separated dæmon? (Would a HDM AU Danny's dæmon be a dragon? Honestly, idk how much dragon stereotypes match Danny's personality. Would have to think about that. Would be funny if someone else had the dragon dæmon, not any of the Fist holders.)

-Danny. Danny. Colleen JUST HUNG THAT FLYER UP. Take one of the little tabbies, if you must, that's what they're for, but don't take the entire flyer down! Those cost money, you know. And it takes time to cut all those little tabbies out and then go around hanging the flyers up.

-Colleen be like "dear god, this is why you shouldn't be nice to people, they start trying to hit on you, @ random park dude, please stop talking at me and following me while I continually shift out of your line of vision"

-Danny: "Hey you speak Chinese? I speak Chinese." Colleen: "I'm Japanese you dick. :)"

-Ward: I'm gonna make sure our personal security team is guarding you against this clear and present threat, but also we're still not calling the police??

-Ward turns this from either a crazy homeless guy or a scam artist into a potential organized corporate sabotage - the kind of threat that Joy is more easily able to compartmentalize her emotions on and crush under her heel?

-Ward just gets into a moving vehicle with someone he has verbally acknowledged as an active threat to his family. Did you have ANY stranger danger safety lessons growing up, Ward?

-Danny now appears to be actively threatening Ward, while using the reasoning that Ward and everyone else have been seriously trying his patience and he's in danger of losing his temper, but he's still giving Ward one last chance to back down. Note: this is a technique commonly employed by abusers, and probably more triggering to Ward than Danny knows, even though Danny probably actually does think he's being sincere as opposed to manipulative.

-->Aaaand Ward responds by ratcheting up instead, because of course he does, IMMEDIATELY leading to the gun to head scene. oh, geez.

-Danny provides personal details - probably this is the moment Ward starts to believe it might actually be Danny somehow, against all logic and reason. He looks shaken, then immediately starts trying to gaslight Danny. asdfghjkl WARD.

-->Ward lying to Danny's face and putting himself in the position of the righteous with Danny as the person in the wrong when they both know it's a lie is very reminiscent of the monopoly scene from when they were kids and the implied constant behavior from when they were kids. But this time, Danny doesn't accept it the way he did as a kid. He stares at Ward, remembering this pattern, actively teetering on PTSD flashback mode, and fights back. Makes Ward think he might be about to kill them both - while having flashbacks that hinder his ability to stop so Danny in hindsight gets freaked out about what he almost did too. (Note: looking freaked out and claiming he didn't mean to almost kill them both just now was probably more concerning to Ward rather than less.) And then he promises he'll be back because this isn't over. gdi, Danny, no wonder Ward wants you gone asap.

-Colleen, trying to tell Danny to go away because he's being a creeper: TAKE A HINT TAKE A HINT

-Danny, casually: Oh yeah Master Lei Gun "The Thunderer" used to smack me hard in the face with the practice swords

-Colleen bringing a sword to a gun fight

-Danny grabs enemy's gun, but not to use as weapon/defense - only to disarm it and run off - which Colleen sees.

-What festival is this that's happening in Chinatown? Has anyone figured out an IF timeline? Could compare dates to real world events, see if there's any potential cross over.

-None of these bystanders so much as bother to look at the fistfights happening 2 feet away from them

-Ward sitting in his office eating his food (it has decorative greens so you know it's ~fancy~) and answers his phone smiling because he's expecting the good news that Danny-probably-an-impersonator-but-also-potentially-maybe-not-but-we're-not-thinking-about-that-Ward-get-a-hold-of-yourself is dead. Way to be a villain stereotype, Ward. I know you try real hard at it so good job uwu

-Harold intro. Ward clearly at his beck and call and just as clearly resentful of it. "I think...” *resigned* “-of course, right away." is such immediate shorthand for someone abusing the power imbalance. (Note: Ward puts off approaching Harold with the "Danny problem" until night 2, tries to handle it quietly until he has implicated himself (Danny now knows Ward tried to have him killed) and Danny is still present and now an even bigger threat)

-So many elevators. All express to specific floors/areas? This lobby is so unsettling. Elevator leads to another hall full of elevators, then stairs, then handprint access to hall with second elevator into penthouse. (Note: Ward is one of those people who press the close door button multiple times with a frustrated facial expression)

-Ward to Harold: "How do you even know about that? ...Shit. Are you behind this? Is this another one of your stupid tests?"

-Harold to Ward: "I wish you would take things like this more seriously, so I don't see my company destroyed."

-Photos on Harold's shelf: young Joy, posed photo of Meachums in formal-ish clothing, Harold's hands on both kids shoulders, indistinguishable group of people on a bridge(?) somewhere. Group photo atop a fancy box, Joy photo in front of the Meachum family photo. On Harold's desk: another photo of young Joy, this one looks like one of those posed school photos where they have the kid stand against a "tree" backdrop.

-Ward says out loud that he could ignore Harold and Harold wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Harold casually observes that Ward is now and has always been childish. Ward remarks that Harold has been telling Ward he's disappointed in him his whole life. Harold is still disappointed in Ward right now.

-Harold: this is how you make your employees loyal to you. *proceeds to display his complete dominance over Kyle, who looks nervous and threatened by the direct attention* Ward: "Jesus, Dad, what the hell is wrong with you?" (Still doesn't do anything to remove Kyle from this situation though)

-Harold lectures at Ward as if everything Ward has ever done is wrong, always, including snapping his fingers at him when he starts to speak himself, like a bad dog, and listing off things that Ward has already brought up to Joy as if Ward is an incompetent who would never consider those angles himself

-Ward makes a snide comment, Harold snaps at him, Ward smiles a little bit because he has succeeded in getting under Harold's skin for a moment

-Harold: Leave this to me. I'll tell you exactly what to do. Ward: Like always. Harold: Like always.

-Awww, Danny was rushing back to tell his new friend Al all about Ward sending people to kill him, possibly looking for advice? ;_; (Also, why is there a foreboding music significance to Al having a bird tattoo? Does this ever come back??? I don't remember this mystery going anywhere.)

-Danny is lurking in Joy's office. He doesn't say anything even slightly reassuring, like that he has an appointment, just heavily implies that he snuck in. sigh.

-"I'm not gonna hurt you," Danny laughs, after displaying a whole lot of extremely threatening behavior. Joy smiles, drugs him, and buys time until it kicks in.

[uzumaki-rebellion]

“Wet Sugar” [Part 9 of 30]

Summary: Erik returns...

NSFW. Mature Audience. Smut

If you enjoy it, please like/comment/reblog, etc! Share the love!

"You've crossed my mind, a thousand times The cost was fine, I draw the line I'm back, relapse, I'm fiending Yes, what's that? The fact, I'm dreaming Coconut oil, the scent of your body still lingers on sheets I got a shot at you, you wouldn't reach Cock back, cock back, trigger release Pop that top, take a sip of your holiest water I know I'm a part of your flow now See when you cut her, don't matter you love her And now you got part of her soul, now I ain't know then, but I know now…"

Ari Lennox (Feat. J. Cole) – "Shea Butter Baby"

Erik couldn't breathe any relaxed air until they had flown out of Nigeria.

It became clear after they had left the African continent that Klaue was on a master hit list in several countries he was doing a brisk business with. The man tried to play it off that he was not concerned with the new threats, but Erik could tell from Klaue's unnatural quiet manner that the man was facing a crisis. 

Confirmation came when Erik and Limbano took down two outed S.H.E.I.L.D. agents in Egypt as they slipped into Europe via Italy and had to take a long land haul into Afghanistan with several vehicles. Slipping into ghost-mode, they needed the help of Tahir to route them into Kabul safely. The irony. Kabul being a safe space for them.

Brain on battle mode, Kabul was to be the place to exchange coveted goods that Klaue would not reveal to anyone, not even Erik. Two weeks in the waiting period, Erik was told that he would take the secret goods back to St. Thomas and watch over them until Klaue could find a buyer. Erik could only think in three-hour units of time while in Kabul. Any future thoughts of the Virgin Islands or what waited there for him could not be entertained. Battle mode meant survive while completing the immediate task. Compartmentalize. Stay alert. Prepare alternative solutions ahead of time. Being off the grid was a life of extreme uncertainty even with the best-laid plans.

Stress ate at him.

He was abrupt with everyone around him, including Klaue. His evenings were spent in the bar inside the five-star hotel he stayed in. Klaue's way of rewarding him for saving their asses in Botswana. Erik spent twenty hours of each day holed up in his suite, ordering room service, watching mindless cable, and drinking for the four hours he left the room each day. Klaue gave him a week there. He wished he could enjoy it, but all he wanted was to finish the transfer and get the fuck outta Dodge. Return to sun, sand, clear waters…

He refused to check on Yani. Had to. Too much was happening around him with Klaue that he couldn't spare the mental energy just to look at any recent pictures or posts on her social feeds.

After polishing off what amounted to a full bottle of whiskey in one of the few hotels in Kabul that allowed liquor for tourists only, Erik received a private text from Klaue that the pick-up would go down the next day.

"Shit," Erik whispered, feeling a little unsteady as he went back to his suite. Everything was need-to- know with Klaue there, and Erik wished he had word four hours previous before he drowned his liver in alcohol. He would have to drink a lot of water to piss it out.

Showering and then packing, Erik wasn't surprised when Klaue showed up at his door.

"You look quite comfy in that robe, mate," Klaue said.

Erik finished organizing his duffel bag on the king-sized bed and stuck his hands inside the pockets of the plush robe.

"Wish you woulda mentioned go-time sooner."

"I have to keep things close. You know this. We're going near the Bagram base. My contact is an insider. Only you know this."

Erik studied Klaue's face.

"That's risky."

"What are great rewards without great risks?"

"Shits been hella sketchy, man—"

"I told you. Last gig before a little break. I'm going deep underground right after."

"How long?"

"I'm going to play it by ear, but I need you working the moment you get to Our Lady's Manor. You are going to take my prosthetic with you."

The statement gave Erik pause.

"Do what you have to do to stabilize the damn thing. I have some vibranium there, enough for you to experiment with. Use all your goddamn talents to fix this thing. I'm heading to Jo'Burg after this—"

"Are you fucking crazy? Why would you go back—"

"Why wouldn't I? The place I'm least expected to show up. I have more security there and ways to completely vanish."

"What are you gonna do? Fly over and parachute down, because there is no way you can cross borders…fuck…you're going to jump in? You crazy muthafucka."

Klaue gave a wicked smile.

"I'm a pirate at heart. You know that. Fly in…drop in."

Erik did his absolute best to keep his face neutral. He should go with him. If things were different, that would be exactly his plan. Go to South Africa, experiment on Klaue's arm there and other weapons, then prep for a Wakanda opening. Smart move would be to post up on the continent.

But he wasn't being smart.

He was being reckless. Unscripted. Compulsive. Opening himself up to trouble.

It would be so easy to tell this devil that he was going to Jo'Burg too. Huntsman or Limbano or Shipley could oversee the St. Thomas compound. He didn't need to be there…

"Run it down for me. I don't want to wait for tomorrow. You know I don't like last-minute shit."

"That's why I'm here," Klaue said.

Erik sat on the bed and focused.

###

"I don't like this."

Limbano drove to the second checkpoint of their journey, his voice gruff, and his fingers tapping on the steering wheel of the jeep they were in.

"Everything is cool, my friend," Tahir said, checking his cell, "the man up ahead is one of ours. Move over to the next lane and relax."

Limbano did as Tahir instructed and Erik could feel the man's tense mood escalate. They just needed to get past the checkpoint and then head out toward the desert following the GPS coordinates Klaue finally released to them.

Fake I.D.'s clipped to their military-issue gear, the first checkpoint had been a breeze to cross through. Erik just had to keep his face forward when he spoke so his slugs wouldn't tip off the private contractor's checking them through.

Their rendezvous point had a limited time gap, and they were ahead of schedule thanks to Tahir and his groundwork. The military base did external vehicle patrols in ninety-minute intervals and Erik had their timing down to a T. Once they passed a certain point that brought them closer to the base, they could not afford to attract any attention, hence the U.S. military get-ups to blend in.

The guard at the second checkpoint was a beefy-faced Afghan police officer in a drab olive-colored uniform. A brown flak vest covered his chest and the helmet he wore on his head looked cumbersome. He had an AK-47 pointed toward the ground as he directed cars to drive through or pull over to be inspected. Several vehicles were pulled to the side and being thoroughly checked by other officers. At their approach, his furtive glances inside their jeep let Erik know he was a newbie. But a newbie easily swayed by money to look the other way.

The police officer held up a biometric scanner to Limbano's face. He cleared.

They were waved on and Limbano visibly relaxed. Tahir patted him on his shoulder.

"Head West," Tahir said.

Behind them were Klaue, Shipley, Huntsman and a native interpreter…just in case. Erik and Tahir were fluent in Arabic, but not the nuances of a lot of Afghan contacts they could possibly run into. A third jeep brought up the rear. They all made it through the checkpoint with ease.

Simple plan.

Get in. Collect the goods Klaue had planned for Erik to smuggle back to the island. Get back to the local airport and part ways. Outside of Erik and Tahir, everyone else was firepower, each jeep filled with enough weapons to start a mini-war if needed. Whatever was inside those artifacts needed a small vetted army to get it out of the country. On top of that, Klaue only wanted Erik to guard it while they all went into hiding.

Someone inside the Airforce base was in cahoots with Klaue. Whatever was in the "package" was worth the risk, and worth going underground for a spell. Erik could only think of one thing. Intel. Intel that could destroy lives and save Klaue's as long as he held it. Intel he wouldn't take with him to South Africa. Intel that couldn't be downloaded or transferred from military protected servers, but handed off in person. Saving the man's life twice had afforded Erik the privilege to hold the goods. Alone.

They bypassed going through the private contractor checkpoints and went off-road to rendezvous ten miles from the base.

"Fuck is that?" Erik said.

They all caught sight of a speeding unescorted military S.U.V. heading their way kicking up a sandstorm behind it.

"Klaue, what is this?" Erik barked into a two-way radio.

It was too damn soon for the pick-up and too damn close to the base. They didn't even have a chance to do reconnaissance…

"It's our guy. Don't know why…shit—"

Klaue's voice dropped on the radio as they saw a wide swathe of desert sand billowing up at least five miles behind the runaway S.U.V. A caravan of vehicles chasing the lone rogue.

"Gun it!" Erik shouted to Limbano as he grabbed the AK-47 Tahir handed him.

The jeep surged forward as Limbano switched gears.

"Always cutting it fucking close…" Erik grumbled.

Limbano swung the jeep around next to the S.U.V.

A white woman in civilian clothing leaped out of the vehicle carrying a gun-metal hardshell attaché. A camo bucket hat covered her hair, and dark wrap-around visors kept her eyes hidden.

"My cover was blown!" she shouted handing Klaue the case.

Klaue's eyes peered over her shoulder as the surprise vehicles barreled down on them. Erik counted five S.U.V,'s and three military jeeps. Tahir stood next to Erik with an RPG resting on his shoulder.

"They'll scatter and surround us if I shoot this now," Tahir said.

"They'll circle us either way," Erik said as the other men stood near their closely parked vehicles with their AKs. They'd have to use their own jeeps for cover.

"What happened?" Klaue asked as the men grabbed weapons.

The woman removed her shades.

Shit. She was Klaue's squeeze from St. Thomas. Amy.

"Site exit codes have been switched every four hours on base. It took longer to secure the package and I had to move before the attache was seized and I missed your window. There was nothing I could do. I had to move," Amy said. Her eyes glanced behind her.

The vehicles were separating.

"Good luck!" Amy said as she ran back to her S.U.V., hopped in, and gunned it past them.

SSS-BLAM!

A rocket grenade streaked overhead from the sky and hit one of the oncoming jeeps.

Erik's eyes stared as a Mi-17 flew in low and fast.

Tahir let one of his rocket grenades fly striking another S.U.V. Erik kept his eyes and AK-47 on the chopper.

"This you?" Erik yelled at Klaue.

"Always have a Plan B, C, and D," Klaue said winking.

The chopper touched down behind their jeeps and a woman jumped out in full fatigues carrying a small laptop. She slammed it on the hood of Erik's jeep and typed fast.

"Nice to finally meet you in person, Killmonger," the woman said when her eyes caught his.

Erik grinned.

"Nice entrance, Linda," he said.

"Load up!" she yelled. Klaue and the others ran to the chopper. Limbano stood next to Erik, accustomed to seeing things through like him.

"This will shut down their S.U.V.s. They put Safetrak software on their cars to retrieve stolen vehicles, but that left them vulnerable to people like me. I can only disable the S.U.V.'s though…one more second….and done. Last one back!" she yelled running toward the chopper.

Once Erik and Limbano dived into the chopper behind Linda, the Mi-17 lifted up fast. Linda grabbed two hand grenades from her vest pockets, popped the pins, and dropped them down on their jeeps blowing them up.

Swooping away from the scene, Erik glanced out the open side door. Below them, he could see Amy driving her S.U.V. like a rabid bat out of hell as she headed for the mountains.

"She might make it," Erik said.

"She'll make it. I gave her a nice nest egg for this," Klaue said clutching the attaché that brought all the trouble.

Erik buckled up into his chopper seat. Linda plopped down next to him securing her own belt.

"Nice work," he said holding out his fist. She bumped her fist with his.

"I get your final approval then?"

"Hell yeah," he said.

Her face was flushed from the exertion and her smile was wide.

"Buy me a drink and thank me properly," she said.

"Bet."

###

Linda drank him under the table.

Once they escaped the desert, Klaue released everyone after money was deposited in offshore accounts and secret banks on the deep web. Erik was already comfortable with funds, but the Kabul job rewarded him handsomely with extra. Part of it was a babysitting fee to keep Erik off the market in St. Thomas for the next three months, or until Klaue was ready to emerge again from hiding.

Housed in a Lebanese hotel, Klaue treated them all to a lush meal and the best alcohol he could throw money at. They cut loose.

Everyone spruced up a bit for dinner, and Erik was right about Linda being sexy when she went all out. She was comfortable and fit in with all the testosterone and masculine energy surrounding her. Even while wearing a fancy red cocktail dress. She cursed like the best of them, and damn if she didn't make some of them look like children trying to hold their liquor.

The Black geek in both of them came out later in the evening when they started discussing ways to shut down security systems that were more complicated in just two years. He felt like he was back at M.I.T. or his old Stark internship while shooting the shit with her over coding and cybersecurity. She had a brain he could respect. She also didn't make fun of him when he had to slow down his drinking to keep his eyes from swimming. For the first time in weeks, he was feeling breezy. He survived some tough jobs and could now chill for a couple of months with a bounty in his bank account.

Tahir found a club that played decent enough music and he brought along more women that made their little party merrier after dinner.

Erik couldn't tell exactly when he let his guard down low enough for her to climb over, but on the cab ride back to the hotel Klaue set up for all of them, Linda crawled onto his lap, her lips smacking on his, and the liquor pushed him to respond.

He missed being around a woman.

Missed how they smelled.

Missed titties.

And feminine curves.

Kissing.

Softness.

He took her to his hotel room, and in his stupor, tried his best not to think of where he was headed next once he left Lebanon. Erik wiped away all images of a certain young woman with eyes that cut deep and a voice that melted his insides.

What he was about to do was just a release. No different than jerking off to porn. He wasn't cheating. That island girl was not truly his woman yet. Not until he had her in the biblical sense. And she was probably dating or seeing someone for sure. Some nigga probably slid into her DMs and wore her down. He wouldn't blame her if she moved on fast. Hell, he expected women to handle their business in his absence. He couldn't be mad if some other dude got between her thighs before he did…

Liar.

He must've been really off with the sauce if he was hearing Yani's voice in his head.

She told him before he left St. Thomas that she hadn't been with a man all the way since Chez got her pregnant. He wanted to be the first man stroking her walls with his dick. Be the first to cum inside of her. Over and over.

The liquor didn't stop his manhood from plumping up and making his pants tight.

Linda took notice and kissed him with a passionate fervor. He let her tongue slip deeper into the recess of his mouth as he felt up her chest, groaning when he held breasts and nipples again.

Stress relief.

That's what he kept telling himself.

Rolling a condom on his engorged length, he widened his knees on the carpeted hotel floor as Linda arched her back for him, ass poked out, her hands gripping the couch she was facing. She must've been really horny for him because she cut the foreplay the moment she saw his dick. They went from kissing to him lining up his glans against her weeping slit in zero to five.

"When's the last time you had dick?" he said as he pushed into her.

Her head turned back to look at him.

"Good dick, or just dick?" she asked.

He slapped her ass.

"Good dick," he huffed out as he let her feel inch by slow inch of him. He was planted in her nice and tight and her gasps let him know she was pleased.

"Oh…shit…your dick is feeling fucking great right now and you haven't even started yet," she said moaning when he pulled out slowly and sunk back into her again.

"You acting like you wanna rush shit," he said swiveling his hips as he pumped into her. Her back muscles quivered. She clutched the couch tight and pressed her forehead into the cushion.

"Fuck! You're stretching me out…hold up…let me—"

He slapped her ass again and grabbed both of her arms and pulled them back. Her head was lifted up and she couldn't get loose from him.

"Ain't no holding up. You want this hard and fast. That's how you're acting," he said.

"Oohhh!"

"Huh? Saw my shit and wanted the dick bad—"

"Yeah…yeah—"

"You gettin' it-"

"God, yes! Fuck me!"

Lips curled, balls slapping her ass, erratic horniness fueling his thrusts, Erik made Linda beg for the pounding he gave her. Pumping in and out of her his glutes flexed and unflexed, his back muscles working just as hard.

Her cell phone lit up and vibrated on the couch.

"Who calling you right now?" he asked, not stopping his thrusts. He could see the avatar of some tanned male torso.

"Shit, Sergio!" she squealed.

"Boyfriend?"

"Ooohhh!" she screamed letting her head drop down even as his grip held her arms tight.

"You fucking me and your man is calling?"

"Shut up and keep fucking me!" she shouted.

"Answer your phone."

Erik released her hands and they dropped to the floor. Her head turned to the side looking back at him.

"Hell no!" she yelped as he double-tapped her pussy, cramming himself even deeper making her eyes squeeze shut, "You feel so fucking good Eri—"

"Answer your phone, bitch!"

He struck Linda's ass again then reached down and gripped her neck. He stopped thrusting and she threw her ass back trying to keep his momentum in her pussy.

"I can call him back later."

Reaching for her phone she lifted a finger to swipe it silent, but Erik snatched up her hair and yanked her neck back.

"I said answer your damn phone. Now!"

His tone froze her. He kept his body still.

"Bitch, don't play wit me. Answer it. Talk to him."

"You are so foul," she hissed.

"I'm foul?"

The weight of his dick had her mouth open.

Erik leaned over her sweat-laced back and swiped her phone putting it on speaker. Linda slapped his hands.

He resumed fucking her.

Slowly.

"Sergio?"

"Linda…sweetheart, why haven't you returned my calls. You have me worried…"

Spanish accent. A few words of Spanish endearments to seduce her ears from so far away. Andulusian dialect. But not native to the region. His English was perfect. A dual-language learner like himself.

"I am fine, babe. New job is keeping me…keeping…busy…hmmm"

Erik pumped a little faster as he gripped her waist, causing her to lose track of language. "Sounds like your phone is cutting out," Sergio said.

"N-n-no…it's fine…"

Linda shoved her right hand over her mouth as Erik squeezed her nipples and long-stroked her pussy.

"Get this dick," Erik whispered and her hand left her mouth and reached back trying to hit him once more to silence him.

"Squeeze my dick, bitch," he said a little louder. "What was that?" Sergio said.

"I have the t-t-tv on, Serg," she blurted out in an odd octave.

"Is everything okay?"

"It's good…soooo good," she hissed dropping her head on the couch again. She bit the cushion to prevent her cries from escaping her lips.

Sergio prattled on about his job, the weather, when she was returning to Spain, and Linda responded with muffled grunts and groans that made Erik's dick harder.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asked.

"I'm just tired, Babe," she blurted out fast. She pressed the mute button on her end and Sergio kept talking. Linda tossed her ass back hard.

"That's it…give it to me…show me how much you want this dick."

"Erik! Shit!"

"How you letting me fuck you like this?"

"Oh God! You're so deep inside my pussy…Erik! Erik!"

She was turned on by her boyfriend being on the phone.

"Take it off mute. Let him hear me wearing this pussy out! I'm bustin' this shit wide open—"

"Damn—"

"You want him to know I'm digging you out—"

"Fuck—"

"Play with my balls."

Linda's fingers reached past her mound and stroked his fat sack.

"Take it off mute!"

Her fingers left his balls for a second as she unmuted herself while Sergio was still jabbering non-stop. Erik hunched down tight against Linda's back.

"You a dirty bitch," Erik whispered in her ear. "Yes," she squeaked.

"Yes, what?" Sergio asked.

Erik tried to hold back a laugh as Linda covered her face from embarrassment.

"Nothing," she gasped into the couch.

Erik pulled out of her while she still held her phone in her hand. He motioned for her to lay back on the couch facing him. She did what he wanted and he plunged back into her while holding her legs wide open.

Her slippery walls made him hit the bottom off her vagina and his long strokes made the squelching sounds their friction created louder. Soon, her pussy was taking in too much air and queefing sounds erupted. Erik threw his head back. Her pussy felt so good to him at that moment.

"Oh shit!" he shouted.

When he looked down at Linda her face looked horrified that her pussy was making farting sounds.

"Linda, what's going on?"

Sergio sounded distressed.

"I'll call you back, Serg. I'm getting a call from my boss," she shrieked into the phone. She ended the call and tossed her cell on the couch. Erik pulled all the way out so that her vagina could release the rest of the air trapped in it. He settled himself behind her on the couch and pulled her body to line up with his so he could insert his erection back in while holding her leg up.

"You didn't want your man to hear me cum in your pussy?"

Linda yanked on his locs with her right hand. He shifted his arm so that he held her leg back and could stroke her clit that sat like a tiny pink pearl. He could feel the light stubble on her shaved mound and outer lips as he rubbed her clit. "You gon' let me cum in this pussy?"

"You know I will," she said, a bit of sass in her voice. He pumped harder to knock the confidence out of her voice. He liked her begging voice more.

"Show me you want me to nut all in you."

He pressed that slick pearl of hers harder and her legs trembled. She arched her back and pushed against him, trying her best to slam her pussy down his shaft.

"I like that. Keep doing that," he commanded. Pinching her clit, he watched her breasts jiggle as she forced herself back on him, trying to match his pace. Her body jerked and shuddered. She was cumming on him and he wasn't ready for her to tap out so soon.

He held still as the last big gasps fell away from her tense mouth. When he thought she was done he thrust his hips into her again and she laid there like a dead fish.

"Help me out, baby," he whispered to her, trying to coax her to wiggle or grind her hips, or anything that would help him release.

She gyrated a little bit and he heard her suck in a breath when his dick went deep. She came back around again and started fucking him with added zeal, ushering back the intensity of his arousal.

"I'm gon' cum on your clit."

His heated panting had grown heavier and he could hear her whimpering as she opened her legs wider for him.

"Here it comes!"

He pulled out and she removed the condom from his erection. Rubbing the tip against her clit, his semen splashed a fierce streak across the top of her mound and all over her stomach. Her fingers rubbed all over his sensitive glans, smearing his cum around the spongy slick head. It was a decent orgasm. He wanted another.

They retired to the hotel bed and Erik fucked her again in missionary, this time making sure to cum first. Linda's orgasms wiped her out and it took her time to snap back from her release. His second orgasm with her was so much better, the condom felt like it had more ejaculate in it than the amount he spewed on her stomach earlier.

She gave him a nice blowjob in the early morning before they had to leave the hotel. He found it interesting that she didn't like oral sex done to her. He tried to go down on her, but she admitted readily that it wasn't her thing. His curiosity compelled him to pester her about it until she explained.

"I just don't like it. I don't get pleasure from it. It doesn't excite me."

"Have you ever had one great session?"

"No."

"Really? Cuz I can eat some pussy—"

"Erik, I don't like doing it. Do you know how many men have told me they eat pussy well? It doesn't matter. I don't enjoy it, so I don't do it."

Her voice had a touch of petulance to it so he didn't push her further on it. It was just a rare thing for him to encounter.

They shared a friendly kiss when they separated at the airport. He almost felt bad that her first job with Klaue went well but she would be left hanging until he came out of hiding.

"Hopefully we will work together another time," she said. Eyes twinkling at him, she sounded sincere. Welcoming to anything more that could happen in the future. She knew her stuff and would come in handy when he decided to make that final move. He'd keep her name on the backburner. Klaue was stoked on her so Erik would see her again. She rubbed his arm and the non-sexual touch bothered him suddenly. He was going to fly into Turkey, change planes with Klaue's goods hidden in his computer bag, fly to Miami, and then hop a flight to the Virgin Islands. He didn't want to feel another woman's touch on him. Not now. His body was filled with strange jitters. He felt nervous. Perhaps it was a bad idea to mess with Linda. He needed to feel pure. Clean. And he didn't feel that way. He had killed four people while he was away from Yani and Sydette. He didn't want that energy around them.

When he landed in St. Thomas, his mood lifted tremendously. Whatever it was about this place, it made him feel lighter and unsullied when he rode the taxi to the compound.

Once his retina scan gained him complete access and control of the compound at the front gate, Erik stood in the main driveway for ten minutes with his belongings and Klaue's next to him. Three months. He had ninety days to experiment and watch the compound. That's all. Ninety days to be still when he wanted to be.

The sun warmed his body and he took off his shirt, letting the light and heat burn away the tension he carried in his body from being with Klaue. He was back in the same place as her. That girl was somewhere on that rock with her baby. Their baby.

He tilted his head back and let the light strike his closed eyelids until all he could see were visions of pure red.

Go to the beach.

He could cleanse his body in her seawater. Take a few days alone to settle himself.

Then and only then would he feel secure enough to face her once more.

###

Yani stared at the estimate on the piece of paper that the mechanic handed her.

"This much?" she said fretfully.

"I'm afraid so, Miss."

The mechanic, Petey, gave her a sympathetic look.

"Are there things you can hold off on doing right now?"

"I took off as much as I could already."

Sydette wiggled on the side of Yani's hip, the yellow and red beads in her hair pressed into Yani's shoulder.

"I'll have to come back," she said.

"I wouldn't wait too long to fix—"

Yani left the auto shop ignoring the rest of the mechanic's words.

She felt cheated.

Buying the little-used Subaru seemed like a great deal at the time. She finally had her own car, her own transportation, and things had been going well until she noticed the Subaru vibrating hard when she came to a stop sometimes. Then there were the transmission leaks, and the need to replace two balding tires. She took the car in and the diagnosis was a failing U-Joint. It would cost about five-hundred dollars for everything and a little more if they had to order and ship parts from the States. She couldn't afford all that now. She had just put aside hard-saved money for the deposit and first month's rent on a new apartment she was sharing with a fellow nursing student from the university. She and Marla were both single-mothers and decided to pool their resources and share childcare duties around their school schedules in the fall.

She texted Chez.

I coming by to pick up the baby's money.

As she drove into Red Hook, she prayed that he had all that he was supposed to give her. His portion of childcare funds would help her get through this crisis. She could dip frugally into her savings to cover the rest. The summer season at the restaurant was coming, so she could count on tips to help plump up her funds again soon.

Pulling up in front of Chez's house, she texted him again.

I'm here.

Come inside.

Bring me the money, I have to take the baby home.

I can't, I'm here with Star. Ursula is at work.

Bring her outside then.

She's sleep.

"Fucking annoying, man," she yelled at her cell.

Sydette babbled at her from the backseat.

"I know, I know…it's your little sister. I won't wake her up. Shit."

Yani unbuckled herself and then Sydette from her car seat and carried her to the front door.

"Detty!" Chez squealed holding his hands out for his daughter.

Yani let him take her and put her hands on her hips.

"Come in for a minute," he said.

"No."

"Let me have some time with her before you jet. Let her play with her sister—"

"You said she was asleep—"

"She was, but my ringtone woke her up. Ten minutes. Let the girls be together."

"I'll just go to the house and come back—"

"Don't waste gas. You here."

"If that bitch comes home, I don't want no problems—"

"She's not coming back until three. Trippin' all the time."

Yani stepped in and saw the chaos of their household. Clothes everywhere, adult clothes, and tons of toys. More than Sydette owned. The place stank of baby wipes, cheap perfume, and cigarettes. Shoes were everywhere unorganized. Chez's various trainers, flats and heels that belonged to Ursula. A whole two-bedroom house and no place to put things away properly? Pigs.

Chez made space for her on the hard couch that was all fashion and no comfort. It made Yani's ass hurt immediately.

Chez set Sweet Pea on a blanket on the floor, and their daughter sat there looking around confused. This wasn't Auntie's house. He ran into a bedroom and came back carrying his now nine-month-old. Wide-eyed, Star looked half-sleep and irritated, her thin hair plastered to her skull.

"Look whose here!" Chez said sticking Star into a walker where her legs dangled. Sydette looked at her sister, then stared back at Yani.

"Say hi to Star, Sweet Pea," Yani said.

"Mum," Sydette said. She stuck a finger in her mouth and then pointed at Star.

"Yes, that's Star."

Chez patted Sydette's hair beads. He walked back to the couch and sat down next to Yani. They both watched the girls.

"See, they get along good."

"If you say so," Yani said. The annoyance was back.

Sydette crawled over to a pile of wooden builder blocks and began playing with them. Star shook her body to try and move, and Yani cracked up with Chez. The baby looked hilarious flopping her arms and legs like someone electrocuted her. She was cute. Literally Chez in tiny light-skinned female form. The laughter left her when reality came back again. That was his cheat baby. The outside house child. The creation that tore apart their family.

It wasn't Star's fault, and Yani did her best to keep her hateful feelings toward Star's mother away from the baby itself.

Chez turned on the tv and found a toddler-friendly channel that caught both children's attention. Yani held her hand out.

Chez reached into his pocket and pulled out some folded bills.

"All good in the hood. I even got you two hundred extra this month," he said. She was relieved.

She reached for the money. He put it back in his pocket.

"Tell me about school. You all set?"

She rolled her eyes.

"C'mon, Chez. I have to go—"

"You can put your business on social media, but you can't talk to your baby's faddah about it? How that sound, Yani? Serious? I need to know what you are doing while you have my child, just like you get in all my business—"

"Chill, damn. I have my schedule ready for the first semester."

"You look excited."

"I am excited."

"Good. What are you taking?"

"Pathophysiology, Health Assessment, Intro to Nursing, and Communication for Health Professionals…yeah that's first semester."

She explained to him what the courses would entail and how she was excited about wearing a nurse's uniform. She excluded any mention of her new apartment and roommate. Yani didn't want him to know anything about that until school had started for her and she had a routine going that Sydette was comfortable with. She didn't need Chez rolling by checking on her and scaring the other woman.

Yani checked her cell.

"We need to go, Chez."

"I miss talking to you like this."

He glanced over at the girls. They seemed content. Star played with the noise-makers on her walker and Sydette had her hands clapping with Cookie Monster on Sesame Street. Star squealed and Sydette stared at her, reaching up and hitting one of the noise-makers herself. Star grabbed her fingers and Sydette squealed too, then looked over at them with a smile on her face.

"I want the girls to be together more. I want them to be close. No matter how much I messed up, they are still blood. Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He pulled her money out again. She reached for it and he pulled his hand back.

"We can still be close too, gyal."

"No, we can't."

"I think we can."

She felt her skin crawl. Her belly clenched tight.

"What is this?" she asked. Her eyes went to Sydette.

"I give you something extra this month…you give me something a little extra. We stay real friendly."

Closing her eyes, Yani shook her head. She should've never come into the house.

His hand snaked over and rubbed her thigh. She kept still. Ran through options. Came up with none. She needed that money. She had to fix her car so that it was safe for her and her baby. She needed to have her own apartment so that she could be close to school and the inexpensive daycare she found. Her Aunt's house was too crowded, too loud, and too stressful for her and Sydette.

"What…what do you want me to do?"

"Everything you used to do," he said.

His eyes looked unbothered by the request. She leaned forward as he spread his legs, then snatched the money from his hand and stuffed it down her bra.

She jumped off the couch and hurried over to pick up Sydette.

"You are a piece of shit!" she screamed at him.

He sprang from his seat to catch her and she used her foot to push Star's walker, rolling the baby toward him.

"Kicking mi pickney?!"

"I didn't kick her!"

Her heart was in her throat when she rushed to the front door as Chez picked up Star.

"Bitch!"

She flipped him off and slammed the front door on her way out.

###

J'ouvert was not for the weak.

Yani was up at three in the morning doing her make-up for the breaking in of carnival season before daybreak. There would be a shit-ton of drinking and walking. And dancing. Playing Jab Jab with colored chalk and paints. And people-watching. She was going to meet her friend Kemba's co-worker who was single. Conrad. Two kids. A J'ouvert fete seemed the best occasion to meet and dump someone if there was no connection. Conrad's IG photos were cute, and they spoke a few times over the phone. He had liked a couple of her swimsuit photos and didn't act creepy about her posing on Junior's album compilation. Good job. Good teeth. Baby Mama lived in Orlando, Florida.

Yani watched Twyla throw a purple plastic shower cap on her head.

"Last year I thought that shit would wash out my hair easy without protection…nope!" Twyla said tucking loose locs under the cap.

Their cousins Cee Cee and Sonya wore black satin bonnets.

"You sure you want to leave your hair out? Some people were throwing colored paint like last year. That shit was thick and took too long to come off." Sonya said.

"What is a little colored paint or powder on a baldie, huh?" Yani said.

Sonya sucked her teeth, "Yuh brave cuz."

Yani adjusted her blue jean bootie shorts, tugged on the black fishnet stockings that pinched at her thighs, and admired her black sleeveless top with the silver lettering under her breasts: Cruzan Junction. Twyla's shirt said, 'Thirsty?'. Her other two extra-thick cousins had 'It's All Natural' on their shirts.

"Kendall really on the mobile stage?" Cee Cee asked lining her lips with a lip pencil and pushing Yani away from the bedroom wall mirror.

"You loud women woke the babies up," Leona said carrying Sonya's toddler son, Bam.

"Twyla's the one that's loud," Yani fussed shoving Cee Cee back over so she could check her eye make-up. She rubbed mica-infused lotion on her arms, neck, and face to make her skin sparkle like Killmonger's earrings once the sun rose up.

"It smells like liquor in here," Leona said.

Yani watched her cousin Sonya hide the big plastic cup of Henny she was already breaking in behind her back. Yani hid her drink in a yellow custom cup, pretending not to hear the liquor comment. Her hips were already revving up and Conrad texted her that he would meet her by the mobile music truck/stage.

Leona took Bam back to Sydette, and once she was gone, more Henny was poured into other hidden cups.

How she missed this time with her cousins preparing to fete. She had laid up in her bed with a tiny newborn Sydette the previous year watching the women prepare and she felt sad, tired, and out of place. But not this year. She was going to make her bumper roll, and if Conrad was choice, he would get her rump on his groin as she threw it in a circle.

Cee Cee pulled out a joint and Twyla snatched it stuffing it into her bra.

"Yuh, craze gyal? She right there in the next room!" Twyla hissed slapping Cee Cee's arm.

"You know Auntie did this in her day. She nuh always a saint."

"True!" Sonya clucked. They all giggled and sipped.

"Aw, damn!" Twyla said peeking out of their shared bedroom window.

"What?" Yani said coming up next to her.

It was sprinkling.

"It's not supposed to last long. On and off. But it'll help cool us down," Yani said.

"It'll be messy out there," Twyla said with a scowl.

"Messy is your middle name," Yani teased.

Twyla punched her.

"Ow, bitch. You always so rough!" Yani complained.

"Let's go!" Cee Cee cheered clapping her hands.

Moist air, a soft sprinkling of water dropping from the dark sky, Yani rode shotgun in Leona's car with the window down and her right arm hanging out feeling the air.

Cleansing.

That's how it felt riding with her family.

A stripping away of stress and worry. Freedom to dance in the streets as a Galiber Queen, long blood descendants of the first rebel Queen in their family, Queen Mary Thomas of St Croix.

Self-proclaimed royalty was still royalty and having Thomas blood in her veins garnered respect on the island to those who knew. Every girl born to them was a Queen, skipping Princess on mere principle. From St. Croix to Copenhagen, to St. Thomas, Mary's bloodline was kept alive.

"What you grinning for cuz?" Twyla asked, glancing at her as she drove toward Charlotte Amalie.

"Fireburn!" Yani shouted.

All of her cousins laughed.

"Fireburn!" Twyla yelled out of her open window.

"Respect," Yani said. She sipped more Henny from her cup, the burning of the liquor down her throat equal to the burning that lived in her DNA.

Her eyes appreciated the light rain. A cleansing. Water. And fire. And faith in her heart that all things came together for her good, a Galiber Queen.

###

Erik bought a Henny rum punch from the mobile bar with "V.I. Feters" spray-painted with pink, green, and purple letters over its white covered façade. Drinking that hard so early in the morning was a different kind of treat. He sported black trainers, black joggers, and a white tank, his body enjoying the itinerant sprinkles of rain as revelers partied hard. This J'ouvert thing was no joke. He had no problem mingling and dancing with the crowd.

The early morning darkness brought out the surreal beauty of the hills twinkling with house lights on looking like stars decorating the island. Stars and diamonds. The dancing crowd reminded him of Brazil and the times spent celebrating carnival there as a child and a young man. He gazed in wonder at all the different people dancing as individuals or as part of clubs wearing matching colored t-shirts, waving white towels or shirts, blowing whistles, and partying hard. The Black diaspora was the same everywhere they were in the world celebrating any type of bacchanal.

He was confused when he saw so many women wearing shower caps, and bonnets, but when colored chalk flew around him striking bodies with gleeful exuberance as the sky turned a brilliant purple, Erik figured out why the coverage was needed. Dark black and dark brown bodies decorated in pink, green, blue, purple, red and yellow colors smeared from the light sprinkling of rain looked wondrous and whimsical. The colors became more vibrant as the sun rose above them and the music became more infectious. Soca rhythms soaked the streets and rattled the mobile D.J. stage that most of the people followed like a huge New Orleans second line. Umbrellas included.

Erik tried to stay low key and not very close to the mobile stage. He had heard a radio broadcast mention Kendall's name, and he knew if the young rapper was there, Yani would possibly be there too, and he still wasn't ready to see her just yet. He followed the source music from a distance, sipped on his drink and flicked hands from grabbing him. The women were pretty aggressive, especially the white ones, and although he appreciated the variety of beauty and revealing shapes around him, he didn't want to be touched by strangers, didn't want to be rubbed upon while he walked and drank and shook his ass a little bit. He just wanted to observe. Marvel. Allow his drink to keep him comfortably buzzed.

The revelers became a little too dense when the mobile D.J. truck stopped. Erik slipped back near a light post to give himself room to breathe. The merrymakers surged around him anyway and a familiar face caught his eye. Her hips shook fast and she danced with a man with a t-shirt wrapped around his head.

Erik drifted away from the light post as a slender woman climbed up part of it to wiggle her backside suggestively to the crowd while wearing an outfit that was almost a bathing suit. He eased over to the woman he spotted that had his heart beating a little faster. He reached out and touched her hand and she jerked away from him, her eyes narrowed and her lips curled up in a challenge.

"Who this big nigga, yeah?" she said in a loud voice.

"Your name is Twyla, right?" he asked.

"Who you?" she said standing closer to him.

These Galiber women were fine as fuck and Erik saw men shaking hips and moving around them while sneaking looks at her tall amazon ass sprinkled from head to toe with colored chalk.

"I know your Aunt Leona and your cousin…Yani."

"How you know dem, Black?"

Twyla had her own red cup in her hand and guzzled down its contents. Her eyes took him in.

"Our Lady's Manor."

Her eyes did a slow pan of him from top to bottom.

"Ah, the bad man on the hill. You fuck up Chez, yeah?"

"Something like that."

"Why are you pestering me? Yani is around here somewhere—"

"I was just saying hi, that's all."

"Okay, hi. Now what?"

She made him smile.

"You cute bad man. Mi see why Auntie liked you so much. You not ugly like dem other ones."

The longer he stood talking to her, the more anxious he got. His nerves were spiking. Why did he actively talk to Twyla? Yani could probably spot him now. He needed to blend back into the sea of colored black bodies. He wasn't ready—

"Mi call her for you—"

"Nah, I'll find her eventually…"

He walked away from Twyla as she held her cell, making his escape toward the mobile bar that pulled up far behind the D.J. truck. Ordering straight up Hennessey he leaned against the side of the bar and took small sips of his drink. He felt weird. Off-balance. The push and pull of yearning to see her, but not wanting to see her was confusing. He was a grown-ass man who had faced shit in his life over the past two months that most people would never recover from in a lifetime, and yet there he stood hiding near a liquor stand afraid to see a woman. Him. The fuck?

On God—

His stomach dropped when he heard Yani's voice over the loudspeakers on the D.J. truck. She stood near the D.J. and Kendall on the portable stage. The mic was near her cheek and she talked to a man next to the D.J. who had switched the Soca beats to a grime sound that echoed around them all. It was a nice switch from the Soca and Reggae. Kendall's voice was picked up too and there seemed to be some confusion over another person being on the stage with them.

"Just start it and we'll figure it out," Yani mumbled.

Kendall took his own mic and faced the joyous fete crowd.

"This is for my Queens," Kendall said with a quiet storm drawl. It made Yani laugh and that sound made Erik shake his shoulders as if something light crawled across them.

Yani was covered in blue and pink chalk. Her bootie shorts accentuated the thickness of her lower half, and her black top was just titty spillage. Her short fade was no longer blonde, but platinum and somewhat straight.

"Queen Yani!"

Twyla shouted from the crowd to her cousin.

"Yes, yes, y'all, the Black Mermaid is here, Queen Yani, mi blood, mi Fam. We come from a long line of women rebels, seen? Yeah…tell 'em, Yani."

Yani lifted the mic to her lips and sang what sounded like a vengeful folk song.

"Queen Mary, ah where you gon' go burn?

Queen Mary, ah where you gon' go burn?

Don' ask me nothin' at all

Just get me the match and oil

Bassin Jailhouse, ah deh de money dey…"

Some of the revelers knew the words to Yani's a cappella performance and joined in until Kendall jumped on it.

"Where you gon' go burn, Queen? She gon' burn it all!" he yelled as a thunderous futuristic-sounding bass line slammed down and he shook his head in a wild frenzy to accompany the hard beats. Yani jumped up and down getting Kendall more hyped before she declared,

"And Queens don't vibe, hear me now…"

"With no fuck niggas!" the crowd responded back as Yani held the mic out to them.

The fete audience went buck, booties thrown in wild circles standing, and on the ground, backs arched deep, heads bobbing like marionettes being plucked by puppet master strings. It was just a cold as fuck live performance.

He couldn't get over how bold Yani was. That one line was the refrain throughout the entire song, the call and response from the crowd always the same. They finished and another boisterous Soca beat pumped up again and Erik watched Yani drop down from the truck into the arms of a man who pulled her into the melanated wave of people. The throng of bodies grew.

Yani danced with Twyla and her younger sister Anika who wore a pink tutu and carried a super soaker that sprayed blue colored water. Erik smiled when he saw Yani toss pink powder at her friends and sister with packets she held in their hands. The merriness was infectious and Erik wanted to join her, but there was pleasure in watching her be free. She bent over to allow Twyla to smack her butt and Anika shot a stream of blue onto her chest. Yani chased her tossing colored powder that flew over other people who also threw colors at everyone.

A few revelers, mainly males, asked to take pictures with her, probably fans of the album compilation. He didn't like how close most of them got to her, arms thrown around her shoulder or waist.

He lost track of her and drank a little more. It sprinkled again and he moved closer to an occupied bench and watched people jump on top of cars to dance, hang off of the D.J. stage to shake ass and grind on willing participants. He enjoyed the view of the waterfront and boats.

He thought about returning to the compound before the street party officially broke up to avoid gridlock. Perhaps get some sleep since the whole celebration started at four in the morning. A few women brushed up against him trying to entice him to dance but he wasn't feeling it. A frisky college-aged white woman standing up behind him on the bench tapped him and then wrapped her arms on his shoulders, her beer breath odor strong as she tried to rock with his body to the music.

"Nah. Let's not," he said when he turned back to make sure she knew he wasn't having it.

"You're not all that," she snapped.

"Yeah, okay," he replied turning from her and enjoying the last of his drink.

She kept bumping into him from dancing and he stepped a couple of inches away from her so he could keep his spot and not be bothered. He tossed his empty cup into the trashcan next to the mobile bar and saw that the D.J. truck was moving along with Kendall still bouncing to the music.

The bitch's hands came down on him again and his anger flared up white-hot.

"I told you once already—"

Lips on his neck.

The alluring scent of vanilla and nutmeg and fresh rain on soft brown skin.

He froze and his eyelids shut.

Sliding his hands up to caress the arms that held him, a shuddery breath left his chest and made his throat tight.

He spun around and she stood on the small bench a little above eye level with him.

Yani.

Her bewitching eyes connected with his and her inviting smile centered him. Wrapping his arms around her painted waist, he pressed his forehead into hers.

"Killmonger, why are you shaking? I scare you?"

Yes.

###

Part 10

Previous Chapters Here

Tag List:

@fd-writes​ @soufcakmistress  @cherrystainedlipsbaby @tclaybon  @thadelightfulone @allhailqueennel @bartierbakarimobisson @cpwtwot @shookmcgookqueen @yoyolovesbucky @raysunshine78 @the-illllest @terrablaze514  @l-auteuse @amirra88 @jimizwidow @janelledarling @chaneajoyyy @sweetestdream92 @purple-apricots @blackpinup22 @hennessystevens-udaku @scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade @bugngiz @stariamrry  @honeytoffee

[ernmark]

Do you have any theories about how Nureyev is going to interact with Juno in the beginning of the next season, and what their dynamic will be like? Peter’s so hard for me to read, I can’t tell what’s going on in his head, but his line at the end didn’t seem to have any malice in it.

Continued: Obviously peter knew juno was part of the crew but like is the job just Worth it (if juno isn’t in his good books)?

I ADORE that I have gotten multiple asks about this in the first couple of days since the episode aired– and that you’re asking me to make coherent guesses based on all of seven words of dialogue.

That just makes me really freakin’ happy.

So let’s break it down a little:

The theory goes that anytime someone experiences a loss, they’re going to go through the five stages of depression. Anger, denial, depression, bargaining, and acceptance, in whatever order, and I think Juno walking out on him was a big enough blow to count as a loss. The thing is, I have no idea where Peter is currently. So let’s look at them all. 

(Thank god for READ MOREs, because this is gonna be long.)

Bargaining

For being A Man Without A Past, Peter Nureyev sure as hell makes a whole lot of callbacks to his and Juno’s shared past right when Juno’s trying to move on with his life.

Let’s look at the last time Peter uttered almost those exact words, in Midnight Fox:

JUNO (NARRATOR): It’s more trouble than it’s worth. History, I mean– relationships with other people. You regret things you knew you had to do; you do things you know you shouldn’t. And why? Another warm body in your bed doesn’t help anything – it doesn’t stop killers or end hunger or make the world any better than it is. Just makes your bed a little warmer. That’s all. That’s all.

[…]

That’s why I don’t bother with all that. This is the new Juno Steel, now; the PI who doesn’t let a pretty face stop him from doing what matters. The PI whowon’t let history weigh him down. Without a past to hold him down, a guy could take on the world. And in the morning… once I get a little sleep… that’s what I’ll do.

JUNO: (MUTTERING TO HIMSELF) Can’t remember the last time I was this tired… Where’s that damn light switch?NUREYEV: Hello, Juno. It’s been a while.JUNO:  Nureyev?!NUREYEV: The very same. Don’t get too comfortable, Detective. We’re leaving immediately.JUNO: If you think I’m going anywhere with you—NUREYEV: I don’t think, Juno. I know. You called me, after all – by way of one Valles Vicky.JUNO: You’re Vicky’s… This can’t be happening.NUREYEV: It is, I’m afraid, and I’ve neither the time nor inclination to prove what’s plainly in front of you. Now, put on your coat and give me your keys. We’ve a long night ahead of us.

The reason I copied the entire scene is that I’m using it as context. 

In Midnight Fox, Juno resolves to distance himself from the past. He tells himself that he’s moving on with his life and trying to take it into a new direction… tomorrow. Seconds later, Peter shows up, posing in Juno’s apartment with the lights off.

Similarly, in Soul of the People, Juno is taking physical action to move on from the past by boarding a ship with a bunch of near-strangers (and Rita), and Peter shows up, dramatically posing on a car.

Notably, in Midnight Fox, Peter is decisively cold towards Juno. There is no flirtation, there is no banter. It’s crisp and clean and straightforward. He interrupts Juno. He gives him instructions that leave no room for argument. 

It is quite possible that this is the kind of attitude that we’re going to see from Peter, at least initially, especially considering the way Juno left. He’s got a job to do, and he intends to see it done.

The thing is, his cold tone doesn’t last long. Over the course of the hours that they spend driving to the Oasis, Peter goes back to flirting, to playing, to showing off. I suspect that he’s too mercurial to hold a grudge for very long against someone he likes. 

But let’s look again at his entrance in Soul of the People:

He repeats, verbatim, the line that he said at their last reunion: Hello, Juno. It’s been a while. He’s deliberately calling back to their last grand adventure in the Oasis Casino, the train robbery, their weeks underground in the Martian Tomb, their fight against Miasma.

He’s sitting on the Ruby 7– the car they stole together, the car they drove back to Hyperion City after it all ended. And he’s sitting on the hood (as Sophie, Kevin and Joshua said non-canonically, “knee up, booty popped”) posing dramatically. Vain as he is, he’s not putting on that show for Rita.

All of these little callbacks communicate very clearly that he wants Juno to remember what they had, and that at least on some level, he wants Juno back.

He could easily be thinking, “I got you into bed once and I can do it again,” and just be constantly throwing himself at his favorite grumpy lady, which would be a delight. 

Depression

On the other, there is a not-insignificant chance that he’ll be far more closed off and less flirty than he was before. The first–and last– time they were intimate, Juno was only halfway reciprocating. He was traumatized and numb and still halfway considering suicide, and honestly? Sex probably was not the best thing for him right then. There’s a strong chance that Peter decided that he was wrong to push it the way he did, and then overcompensate by trying to remain entirely platonic out of guilt, despite his own wishes. 

You could actually get some really good drama with that– with both of them thinking that the other one wouldn’t want to pick up the relationship again, and both of them miserably pining for the other while everyone else in the ship collectively facepalms. (Honestly, I’m kinda hoping a little bit for that one.)

Disorientation

(It’s not an official stage of grief, but bear with me)

Even before Juno left, Peter had trouble keeping up with Juno’s changing moods– largely because they tended to be steered by Juno’s depression than by any external logic (and it wasn’t like Peter could research a formal diagnosis, because Juno’s gone out of his way to avoid anyone who could give him one). 

Juno started to warm up to him– particularly when they were in danger– and then suddenly would go cold and mean when things seemed to be going well. They won a card game, and then Juno accused him of trying to kill him. They beat Engstrom and successfully stole the Egg, and Juno demanded that he give up the Ruby 7. They defeated Miasma, and Juno started talking way too enthusiastically about mass suicide. They slept together, and in the morning he was gone. 

Knowing what we know about the inside of Juno’s head, that makes sense– he’s scared to trust, scared to have loved ones who could leave him, scared to have anything good in his life that he could potentially ruin, and so he’d lash out and isolate himself. 

Without that context, though, it paints a confusing picture– so confusing that it’s really hard to guess exactly how Peter interpreted Juno’s leaving in the first place. 

And that’s going to get even more confusing now that Juno’s trying so hard to be better. 

Peter knew a very specific incarnation of Juno, and the Juno we have now is a very different person. He’s going to have to get reacquainted with this new Juno Steel, who acknowledges his mistakes and apologizes when he hurts people and lets go of the past, who isn’t nearly as grumpy or surly as he used to be and is maybe still figuring himself out after all this time. A lot of the things that Peter used to do to get under his skin will just glance off him now– and maybe the little flirtations that Peter expected to just bounce off might actually be openly reciprocated.

And that’s gonna be weird. 

What I’m saying is that Peter’s going to have to internally recalibrate, and that’s gonna be weird, and I don’t know how much of it we’re going to see on the surface. 

Maybe he’ll see it as a game, but he may just as easily get frustrated and upset at Juno for being so difficult to figure out. 

Denial

Let’s not forget: Peter Nureyev compartmentalizes like a champ. 

He could be 100% in the same mode that he was in when he and Juno were working together against Engstrom for quite some time, and only later admit to Juno (or even himself) that he was hurt by the way Juno left.

Alternatively, he could deny to himself, at least) that he ever actually loved Juno in the first place. He’d still play and flirt with Juno, but only in the way he does with everybody, without the sincerity and vulnerability he expressed before. 

Anger

I’ve mentioned it several times as part of the other stages, but there’s a lot of room for anger.

The fact that Peter is lounging on the Ruby 7 takes on a slightly different meaning when you remember that Juno made Peter promise to turn it into the police, and now he’s flagrantly showing off that he still has it. In the same vein, Peter promised that if Juno didn’t want him, he’d leave Mars and never return– now here he is in all his glory. There is something defiant and vindictive about that kind of display.

If he struggles to keep up with Juno’s latest change of heart, there’s room for him to get frustrated and angry– for a lot of reasons, really. I could never see him getting violent with Juno, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Peter responding to a relatively minor slight with a cold and cutting remark, as an expression of the anger from everything that happened before. 

[funkymbtifiction]

Searching: David Kim [ISTJ]

OFFICIAL TYPING by: ENTP Mod. (Warning: SPOILERS GALORE!)

Functional Order: Si-Te-Fi-Ne

Functional Perceiving Axis:

Introverted Sensing (Si) / Extroverted Intuition (Ne)

David Kim is a guy who pretty much is comfortable in his job and lives with the memories of his deceased wife Pam, and their family that once was. When his daughter Margot goes missing, he looks to reliable things in order to help him reach his daughter. Rather than make up some crazy theory about Margot, he makes logical conclusions based on prior knowledge of his daughter's schedule and behaviour ("It is a Friday, therefore she will be at piano class") before placing the call to 911. He is good at creating profiles and chronological timelines for every single one of his daughter's 289 social media contacts. No detail misses his eye. He combs through everything carefully. He is heartbroken when he sees her livestreams, which leads to his realization "I didn't know my daughter". He has implicit faith in the system, and works well alongside the assigned police detective. His intuition is fairly low; but he trusts the feeling that his daughter is alive, and has NOT run away. He emphatically asserts that he KNOWS his daughter. He jumps to conclusions, making erroneous connections after seeing the text messages between Margot and his brother Peter. However, his intuition also leads him to sense that something is amiss, even after the confession which leads to the case being closed. There is a great example in the movie where his Si works in tandem with Ne, identifying an obscure contact and matching it against a stock photo online; thus he realizes that his daughter was being catfished, could still be alive and gets the case re-opened for further investigation.

Functional Judging Axis:

Extroverted Thinking (Te) / Introverted Feeling (Fi)

David is a take charge kind of guy from the get go. He throws himself into the investigation, checking up public databases for statistics related to Missing Persons, the Silicon Valley P.D.'s closure rate etc. He organizes his external environment into a task force to help him locate his daughter, along with the help of law enforcement. He thinks clearly and makes decisions objectively. At the same time, he is out of touch with his own emotions, as well as that of his daughter Margot's. Peter reminds David that as the adult and parent, David has to approach Margot to talk about her feelings regarding her mom's passing and not expect it to happen the other way around. He is not good at articulating emotions. He chooses to literally remove traces of things which make him emotionally uncomfortable. Such as deleting a picture or video file of his deceased wife because he can't bear to look at it. On Pam's birthday, he goes up to his daughter's room but finds it hard to talk with her. Instead he makes a comment about watching The Voice together, which is his way of reaching out to her and seeking her company. When he gets the call regarding the confession and possibly Margo's death, his unexpressed emotions take a huge toll on him. He curls up into a ball and starts weeping uncontrollably. Other displays of emotion by him include punching an insolent classmate of hers at the movies for making disrespectful remarks about his daughter on social media; and taking out his frustration on his brother, very nearly strangling him rather than express his anger. He doesn't bring it up with well intentioned friends of Pam, leading him to eventually shut off everyone including his own daughter. This leads to a communication breakdown to the point where she lies to him for months about continuing piano class. He is completely clueless to everything till her disappearance shakes up his life.

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor

David shows a lot of qualities such as valour, resourcefulness and unconventional thinking but what ultimately defines him is how he stands, unwavering. When his wife is diagnosed with cancer, he takes it upon himself to create workout schedules to pro-actively beat it. When his wife passes on, he is loyal to her memories and works hard towards his commitment to raising Margot well. When Margot goes missing, he works tirelessly and patiently sifting through every bit of evidence that could possibly lead him to her. In his life, he values hard work. He places emphasis on Margot practising regularly in order to become an accomplished player. He is steadfast and patient. His determination to find his daughter pushes this gentle guy over the edge, causing him to behave recklessly, which gets him pulled off the investigation. But all this is coming from a place of fear and frustration over failed attempts to locate his missing daughter.

Enneagram: 6w5 (so/sp)

David is a good husband and father. He works well to provide for the family, ensures that his daughter's needs are met. Ordinarily he is shown to fuss around his daughter but like a true Six, his courage comes into play in times of crisis. He keeps it together and is able to efficiently assist the detectives. When he disintegrates to 3 under stress, he over works himself and gets into aggressive "get shit done" mode. He exhibits an implicit trust in the law enforcement (social 6 adherence and reliance on systems to make them feel secure), yet he prefers to conduct independent investigations on his own including background checks of detectives assigned (due to the 5 wing). The 6 sense of scanning for logical inconsistency pays off well when he realizes the cop has dishonest intentions. It is because of his wing that David is able to easily compartmentalize his emotions and go on with life when his wife passes. However, it also means that he works alone to find his daughter without confiding in anybody.

Other Quick Profiles:

Detective Rosemary Vick is an ESFJ because she operated out of emotional motives, worked off of her previous knowledge as a law enforcement officer to keep David off the scent of the true whereabouts of Margot. She focuses on affirming him in an emotional manner, relaying incidents about her own son in order to build a rapport with, and comfort David.

Margot Kim is an IxFP. An introverted girl at school, she requires time to privately process the grief of her mom's death. She doesn't talk about it with anybody except some select people she trusts deeply. She is hurt by her father shutting her out, leading to some pretty extreme measures to cope with her emotions such as cutting school to smoke weed, sending enormous sums to a person she barely knows who preys on her vulnerability. (too little information to discern her perceiving function axis) <- sounds rather like ISFP. - INFP Mod.

[creativeprompts]

How To Write An Awesome Movie, According To Some Of Hollywood’s Best Writers (Part 3)

Knowing Your Characters

Brian Koppelman: That part of the process remains mysterious to me. And I’m glad it does. The less I am aware that I am thinking, and the more that the subconscious takes over, the better. I think I understand the characters and how they think. But again, none of that is conscious. Great impressionists talk about thinking at different speeds when doing certain voices. It’s like that. You just write from the characters perspective because in those moments, you are fused together (when it’s working, flowing, alive. The other times you feel like Barton Fink).

Mark and Jay Duplass: On the movies that we improvise, we spend a ton of time on backstory. On the ones we fully script, we don’t fuss too much over it.

Weber and Neustadter: For us, creating backstories isn’t as helpful as, say, asking what a real person would do in the situation and jumping off from there. If your character wouldn’t do what a normal person would do, then why not? What’s the deal with that? We’ve always found bringing it back to reality to be the most helpful tool with every project.

Feig: I think you pretty much have to play out all sides of your personality in your characters. Otherwise, I don’t think you’re truly able to know what they may or may not do. “Write what you know,” as the saying goes. As a writer, you tend to compartmentalize different parts of your personality so that you can pit those various personalities against each other in your head as you’re writing. It’s sort of the fun part of the process, the therapeutic part that can be more productive than therapy.

You just have to be very honest with yourself when you’re doing this so that you get true responses and decision making from each side of yourself. There’s an unconscious tendency a lot of us have to make characters do things that we’ve seen in other movies or television. So, you constantly have to ask yourself, Would I really do that? What would I actually do if I was in that situation? You’d be amazed how many times you end up calling bullshit on your first idea.

Lindsay Weir on Freaks and Geeks was always my favorite. She was the mouthpiece for who I really was at that moment in my life. I was a 35-year-old man and all the problems and insecurities and questions about life I was having fit perfectly into the mind of a mature 16-year-old girl. She wasn’t based on anyone I knew. She was basically the big sister I always wanted. (I was an only child.)

Wain: Lead character certainly need to be thought through all the way back so there’s a cohesiveness and depth to what is presented on screen. Although sometimes it’s interesting (or funny) to purposely leave certain questions unanswered.

Curtis: I think the leading character is the sort of model usually between me and my best friend Simon and the circumstances of that character, as it were. It’s very interesting how the other things occur to you. They’re very rarely based on anyone, but they’re aspects of people who have really interested you or touched you.

Sometimes, you start with a line. I think Emma Thompson’s character [in Love Actually] — I never thought this before, I never said it — came from a line in a novel. Someone in a novel finds out that her husband’s been unfaithful, and she suddenly realizes that who she is is a completely different person. Suddenly, in the course of one minute, and she hasn’t done anything. That was such an extraordinary bold thought, and then I built up my version of that, but that character was based on that one moment of discovering that your whole life has changed and you haven’t done anything, you’ve just unwrapped a Christmas present.

Feig: I start out many characters based on people I know or have met but then once you start mixing your personality into them and adjusting the characters to the story you’re telling, they start to get further and further away from the person who was the initial inspiration for them. Which is good because you never want somebody coming up to you and saying, “That bad guy was based on me, wasn’t he, you son of a bitch?”

I want their journey through the world to be what drives the story. I’ve always been less a fan of movies that are event-driven, meaning external events happening that our characters are then thrust into. I like my stories to be driven by the decisions my characters make. And so in order to do this, I have to know those characters pretty intimately so that I can be surprised by their decisions and let those decisions drive the story and relationships forward.

Holofcener: Definitely in Walking and Talking, at one point in my life, Catherine Keener’s character was very much me. So many things in that movie were kind of autobiographical, more than other movies. I guess, in Please Give, Catherine Keener’s character, not in all respects, but many respects. Eva, in Enough Said, I’m kind of all over the place. Sometimes I’m even the daughter of somebody. Like in Please Give, the daughter with the acne, she really felt like me, or I felt like her, when I was a teenager.

I feel like, well if I’m going to make fun of other people, I’m going to make fun of myself, and I always want to make fun of myself. If anything, that feels more cathartic than writing about other people, because I can show the world and myself that I know how inadequate I am, and that somehow I’m kind of forgiving myself a little bit. If I know I’m a really guilty person and I know that my guilt makes me act like an idiot half the time, it’s kind of entertaining to put it out there.

Cody: I relate to my characters, yeah, but at this point I’m hesitant to talk about it. Because for some reason — maybe because I’m female and chatty and accessible — everyone thinks EVERYTHING I write is completely autobiographical. It’s weird.

I like Jennifer in Jennifer’s Body! She had it all figured out. And I love Juno’s stepmom; she’s a badass. As for relating to a character, I think Loray (Octavia Spencer) in Paradise is an obvious extension of me. She has a lot of cool wigs and she drinks a ton.

Source: Buzzfeed

[alternative-eyes]

Dr. Eric Davis, Chief Science Officer of EarthTech Int’l, Inc. and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, was a recent guest on Open Minds UFO Radio. He has worked with Robert Bigelow for decades researching the paranormal, including UFOs. He also worked on the projects related to the Pentagon’s UFO program and the To the Stars Academy. In order to break down all of the amazing information he shared during our recent interview, we have created a transcript of it. Visit this page to listen to the interview. A transcription service was used, so there are mistakes that we will try to correct over time. Reference the audio for clarification. Time stamps in the transcript begin at the start of the interview with Davis.

Alejandro Rojas: I am very happy to welcome to the show for the first time, Dr. Eric Davis. Hello, how are you?

Dr. Eric Davis: Fine. I’m doing great. How are you doing?

Alejandro Rojas: I am doing very well. And I guess my first question, because we have a lot to get into is, what do you think of this news coming just recently that the Navy is working up some guidelines on UFO reporting?

Dr. Eric Davis: Well, it’s about time. And the Navy has always led all the service branches in many areas. And this is just another example where they’re ahead of the curve, whereas the Army Air Force just shy away. For example, the Navy is the leader in directed energy weapons development in the Department of Defense. So they have had the most accelerated schedule for developing directed energy and deploying it on car that test vehicles will first doing experimental prototyping and testing and then deploying it on a combat vehicle out in the Persian Gulf. So they’re way ahead of where the army the Marine Corps and the Air Force have done. Those services haven’t even yet fielded any prototypical combat weapons that can be fielded that have been fields that they haven’t done that they’re just doing development and testing, and they’ll be doing prototyping inside the United States. They’re just lagging behind and then with the UFO subject comes along year, well, what do you know; it’s the Navy that’s having all the problems with the encounters of tic tac, like UFO shows or other UFO shows. And, and so they’re the ones that are going to take the lead to no data specific recording, reporting protocol for everybody that has such encounters.

Alejandro Rojas: And they do you think as far as leadership is concerned, are they concerned about a possible unknowns? Or do you think that they mostly feel that these could be foreign adversaries just using technology we don’t recognize?

Dr. Eric Davis 2:04: Well, the first hypothesis is it’s a foreign adversary that we don’t recognize. But then once you do the analysis of the F8 fighter FLIR videos and radar from the surface warships at like, for example, I’m speaking of the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike groups encounter with the Tic Tac back in November 2004. In the first week, I believe for a hope for about a week of the encounters.

And when you look at visual sightings, timings, scope sightings that were done from onboard the ship’s using sophisticated observational scopes that they use out in the ocean.

And then of course, the weapons systems radar and aviation radar, and then the fighters have their own systems and so forth. We look at when you look at when first contact is made, and then how rapidly the object moves and changes altitude and hovers over the ocean and sips off again. And it’s changing altitude by dozens of thousands of 10s of thousands of feet, or dozens of times 10s of thousands of feet.

In a matter of three to five seconds, you’re not basically talking about human technology. There is no Russian or Chinese or North Korean or Iran or anybody else. No, no NATO or any other Alliance, design Alliance country, not unlike countries have any sort of technology that can form the way these tick tax were found to be performing.

And it’s really easy to discern the difference between even an unknown manmade object and, and, and this phenomenon, because unknown manmade objects have to obey the laws of aerodynamics, and the engineering that’s associated with that. And, excuse me, when the Tic Tac don’t have any observable control surfaces, they don’t have any attendance. They don’t have any external engines and an engine mounts and pylons. What am I thinking of? I can’t think of the word that right now. But that’s how the engines are connected up. And so control surfaces are lacking.

External propulsion is lacking. You don’t see windows and so you know what, what is this is it. Anything a drone, even a drone wouldn’t look like this. All drones have an engine propulsion system, which is very easy and obvious to observe.

Their structural fuselages are also very easy to discern and, and determine when they adhere to the human designs for aeronautical platforms that move through air. The things were are not shaped in the usual typical way that we humans would shape them. So you, you don’t got to come up with another hypothesis and the only hypothesis is something unknown. And then it’s got a good chance that it’s not human technology.

Alejandro Rojas: Thank you for that. But we’ll get into your background now. And kind of, you know, related to this, you’ve been doing this, and a lot of your colleagues that you work with; in particular, Hal Puthoff of course, you’ve been working in this arena for decades. But there are these ideas out there right now that this is part of some controlled disclosure that you know, this is all been planned. And if that was so that would mean that you are part of some bigger plan. I mean, is that something that you feel is credible at all? Do you see that? Or is this just kind of the fruits of your efforts, all of your efforts to bring credibility to what would be considered fringe areas of science?

Dr. Eric Davis 6:02: Well, it’s two things. It’s, it’s the cumulative effect of all of our efforts, decades of efforts of hard work. But the release of this information is driven strictly by the phenomenon itself. All this nonsense about plans disclosure, or confirmation, that’s all conspiracy theory nonsense. And it’s one of the first order hypotheses that jump into many people’s minds when they’re uninformed about what’s going on. The United States government is such a big and complex organization, multiple organizations, as you say, interconnecting interlocking and you know, by by deliberative reasons, parts of it are secret, and other parts are no secret. And so parts that are secret, don’t talk to the non secret parts. And even the parts that are secret don’t talk among themselves within themselves because of compartmentalization, or certain or the differences in classification many different secrets out. So there is no coordinated anything, because I have to guarantee you that the United State Government is not that coordinated, especially in the Donald Trump era. Right? Anyway, anyway, this is there’s no such thing as a coordinated or uncoordinated or planned or unplanned disclosure, that’s all been a salesman pitch that was invented by a lot of the more local high profile celebrities, and you fall with you. And that’s how they sell their books. That’s how they sell tickets to their special events. And that’s how UFO conferences, sell tickets to their conferences when these people are invited as guest speakers just flies in the in the realm of rational scientific and bureaucratic thinking.

The UFO phenomenon has countering Naval Weapons platforms repeatedly. And it’s created a dangerous environment for the pilots for the human pilots that are involved. And so now it’s becoming the great safety issue because the numbers or the frequency? Well, I should say the numbers and the frequency of the encounters is pretty big. And it is not my new it’s not rare. It’s not once in a while, it’s more like Yeah and it’s pretty often. And it isn’t located in one geography, it’s spread across the globe. And it’s interacting with US Navy. So that’s been driving their desire to want to do this new reporting protocol and put it out there, which political just reported yesterday. So and then, as far as what Lou Elizondo did after he retired from the God is he was pretty upset that this program, the AWSAP program, it’s not really called the hf a tip that’s the advanced aerospace threat identification program that Harry Reid pulled out from thin air and made it up on his own and a letter that he wrote to Deputy Secretary of Defense William Boykin many years ago. And the actual program is AWSAP and I forget advanced aerospace weapons, something or another application program.

Alejandro Rojas: I think this goes back to a communication issue, because it turned out, I think, what had happened is Harry Reid was aware that Lou and the guy running AAWSAP had been working on AATIP and using that term, but that information probably didn’t get to you all because you were hired by and working with AAWSAP.

Dr. Eric Davis 9:56: No, it’s just that Harry Reid wasn’t fully briefed on everything.

Alejandro Rojas 10:00: That’s how Lou had said that that actually happened.

Dr. Eric Davis 10:05: Okay, well, I’m not going to contradict Lou, then. That’s fine. My view is, yeah, we were working as subcontractors to Bigelow Aerospace, advanced Space Studies who have to contract to the Defense Intelligence Agency. And so yeah, our world view was AAWSAP. And then all of a sudden, we see AATIP up. Okay, so I’m not going to contradict Lou, he knows more about it. At that level. I didn’t sit in his office and hear all this jargon go flashing by. I’m one of the worker bees who are expediting the missions. And anyway, so no, there’s no, there’s no, there’s no conspiracy, that theory, there’s no there’s no wrong, you know, it’s like the long awaited rate of return to Jesus. Well, everybody’s had the long awaited disclosure. And it’s like, no, this, isn’t it?

Well, and we’re, however, however, officially, the United States government, via the God, of course, I reverse, the God has issued an official confirmation. So that’s what they’ve done. They’ve, they’ve officially confirmed it. Now that they help you disclosure, what they’ve disclosed is, hey, they have had encounters with unusual craft that they can identify as human made, or unknown human made craft? In other words, they don’t, the objects don’t follow the aerodynamic rules of engineering. Okay, they just don’t. Okay, and that’s driven by physics. And they are not saying that they’re breaking the laws of physics. So don’t quote me on anything having to do with while they’re, they’re operating on a new physics, we have an event, or no, they’re breaking the laws of physics, it is possible to operating on the physics we have invented or haven’t discovered yet. That’s possible, we don’t know. So anyway, the point is, is that these things are operating there you go way outside the envelope of our engineering and physics technologies. And, and I can guarantee you that no laws of physics are broken whatsoever.

It’s just that it’s either the existing ones that we have that we haven’t extrapolated it further enough, further enough, or expanded it up into realms or, say areas of phase space where we could discover new solutions to these existing physical laws, which would give us advanced propulsion and power that would produce this type of technology, once you have an engineering and manufacturing technology to create these things. So that’s where we’re at. And these things don’t look like anything that we can manufacture on Earth. So we don’t have the manufacturing or industrial technology for it. We don’t have engineering for it. In other words, the blueprints and designs to get something shake like shape like air fighter sighs piece of candy mouth bed and get that to fly through the air stapling. And I do the wonderful things that they do in the years reported by dfj teen pilots at the associated with the Nimitz Carrier Strike. Row. And then of course, and then we have the history of you fall of UFO encounters that we’ve seen all you know, we know that, you know, shock really is recorded all this in his books.

Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallee, and Bob Emin agar and his book associated with his TV, documentary, UFO, it has begun or UFO is past, present and future which, you know, two different versions because one was an updated version of the other. And so all the other well known UFO researchers in academia and industry, and government who had done all the investigations and identified as many witness descriptions of UFO is when you look at these things, which were really well exemplified in the schematic artwork shown in Bob emulators book from 1974. It’s clear that these things have different shapes that are not aerodynamic; they just don’t follow the human engineering, physics, principles for aviation, or aeronautical rural spaceflight.

Alejandro Rojas 14:22: Want to get into a few things. And I think that you’ve shown that well, and I do appreciate you answering the question about the, you know, disclosure, conspiracy, and I am even a little embarrassed to ask because I do not see that President, when looking into and researching any of this, I see a history a rich history of you all working on this for years. But you know, it’s something that comes up and readers wanted to know, but I want to get into your background and that history. So when was it that you began working on I’m not sure what you refer to it, but kind of what is considered kind of fringe science.

Dr. Eric Davis 14:58: I don’t call it fringe. I call it I call it out of the box science. Fringe has a negative connotation. It’s not exactly an accurate word to use. We just call it out of the box, cutting edge, breakthrough science, etc.

I became among the world’s first few full time paid professional scientists who were investigating UFO when I got hired by Bob Bigelow to work at the National Institute for discovery science in July of 1996. And then I went to work for him in Las Vegas. And then I was joined by Colm Kelleher who’s got a PhD in biochemistry, molecular biology and technology. And he’s got quite a background in immunology and diseases, mostly biology and cancers. So and then we were joined by Dr. George Arnett, who is a world famous, world renowned Romanian veterinary pathologist who specialized in avian and bovine diseases. And we joined together with Colonel John Alexander who has PhD in psychology and he studies death. And he was interested in you know survival consciousness after death. And he was working for Bob Bigelow at the time on the net staff. And so we all came together. And of course, John had been working for Bob for some time before we got hired; the three of us got hired in July of 1996.

And all of our work it shows about work was well recorded and documented in Kellher and Knapps’s book Hunt for the Skinwalker, which you’re familiar with. Yeah. So especially our workout on the NIDs UFO Ranch, up in northeast Utah, Utah Valley. And so that documents a good chunk of what we did at NIDs, and it’s not everything, because that book was about the ranch. And we did a lot more than just the ranch, right? We often use the ranch and Las Vegas as our headquarters to go investigate cattle mutilations and UFO and crypto terrestrial sightings. And so just whenever was convenient, the ranch is really nice because it’s closer to the upper western side of the Midwest. And Las Vegas is really, you know, closer to California. So we’re in the Pacific Coast area in Las Vegas. So we can reach quite a bit of places from there. But we’re still kind of far removed from the, from the actual Midwestern the East Coast areas. So it’s just that Bigelow, didn’t want to expand NIDs any further than Las Vegas. And so we just had those two, jumping off basis from which we could do investigations. So we make mainly stayed regional within that area. And we had a one eight hundred number line that was set up and the FAA collaboration was set up so that if anybody called in UFO reports, they could call one 800 number. And we could do a preliminary interview with the call or take information to make a decision on whether it was necessary to send investigators out to investigate their sighting and whatnot. So anyway, we I did that for six years until my job got eliminated during a downsizing of NIDs because of the emergence of Bigelow Aerospace, Bob, Bob Bigelow shifting his attention away from UFOs, because he kind of had about a five year attention span on these types of things. And he figured we have all the problems solved by then. And that’s not possible.

There are a lot of scientific problems, especially in phenomenology, which can take more than a decade of research and study and investigations, collecting data and analyzing it and forums in reforming or changing hypotheses, until you finally converge on the hypothesis or the theory that is that is doing very well to explain all the data you are collecting.

I was just going to wrap it up. So I was there. And then I went to work for the Air Force Research Lab as a contractor to the advanced concepts program office at Edwards Air Force Base, California. And I did that from, actually I started working for them before my job got eliminated, so from January until mid 2005 I was working for them. But I started working for Hal Puthoff as a research physicist in November of 2004. And I’ve been working with Hal since then. And I got promoted up a few years ago up to Chief Science Officer. So like, became Senior Research physicist, among the other staff of the other physicists we had, who had been there about six years earlier than I have six years longer than I have, Hal was also on the staff as the director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin. So he was the directors he is also a research physicist in his own right, of course, which you probably know. And so there were three of us physicist on the staff. And then we had a couple of lab engineers who would put our experiments together, and then other support personnel. And so I just rose up through the ranks and became the chief science officer, which is where I’m at now.

Alejandro Rojas 20:33: Now, in that history, when you talked about Skinwalker, for instance, I’ve talked with Colm and Alexander and I guess the first question would be, they both kind of had this view that they were outsmarted by the phenomenon. In fact, you know, Alexander uses his term,  a pre-cognitive sentient phenomena. Would you agree with that kind of estimation or thought?

Dr. Eric Davis 21:00: Yeah, that’s pretty much true. That’s pretty much true. Yeah, it was always one step ahead of us.

Alejandro Rojas 21:05: And John talked about one person in particular that the phenomena seem to center around, and from what I gather that might have been you. Is that true?

Dr. Eric Davis 21:16: Yeah, pretty much but Colm Kelleher witnessed events too. So I wasn’t the only one that had all of the experiences, I had many experiences and some of those I had with Colm. And then there were experiences that Colm and I did not have because we got to a point where we needed to rotate staff on off the ranch because Colm and I were fathers to very small children, very young children in school back in those days. And so you know, we needed to stay home a lot more, otherwise our wives would get angry if we were gone too long. So George Arnett was relatively single, and he was still married, his kids were grown and his wife was working as a professional scientist in another state where they originally lived before he came to Las Vegas. So he didn’t have any family duties in Vegas. So we had him and then we had Canadian field investigator Chad Deacon. And, and we didn’t have Shelly Wadsworth involved with us directly. She was indirectly involved because she worked for Bob Bigelow as one of his field investigators. And so she would be more like a conduit of information. And but she would do background stuff for us or bring information our direction and we’d act on it. So we had Shelly Wadsworth, Chad Deacon, but of the people that went to the ranch, it was basically Colm, George, myself Chad, and the former ranch owner. And after he left and moved, moved away with his family to another state, we got the retired chief deputy of the Uintah County Sheriff’s Department to take over the former ranch manager’s job. And he became the new ranch manager and his work for us also included him doing some investigations in the area for us. So he became an investigator as well. And then later on down the road NIDs hired a couple more investigators. We had John Blair, who’s a retired FBI special agent. And then Roger Pinsent, who was retired from the San Diego police department who had worked for the Nevada State law enforcement, I can’t remember which it was it had to do with the transportation policing on the highways. I’m not sure if it was I don’t know that he was a highway patrol officer but he was in that capacity. And then he left that job and came to work for us as a full time investigator, Roger, before becoming a police officer was actually at the AFOSI, he was a special agent with AFOSI. So he’s an expert investigator like John Blair. So we had quite a bit of staff and we were investigating a lot of UFO cases, not everything was on the ranch. So we had periods of quiescence on the ranch. So there were always up cycles, down cycles, where the activity would get hotter, or just got cold. And then it reached the point by about 2000, and started getting and stayed cold, through 2001. And by early 2002, that’s when Bob decided to start, actually starting in 2005, started cutting personnel because that’s when the ranch phenomena started getting too cold, it didn’t justify having all that staff. Also, we didn’t have that many outside UFO cases called into our one eight hundred number. So we didn’t have a lot coming in. And the FAA wasn’t reporting a lot to us either. So it just got very slow. And Bob is very frugal about his money. So he, you know, he wants to cut back, he’s building that aerospace company up, and he needs the money to do that. So we had to cut our budget to come up with more money every time. So by 2001, 2002, John Alexander and Pete pick up and I think Chad Deacon Shelley Wadsworth, we all had lost our positions.

Shelly and Chad weren’t full time. So I got to be clear, they were only paid when they have an assigned. And so they were they were like 1099 employees. But Colm, George, and John Alexander and I were all full time employees of NIDs. And John Alexander also lost his job the same time I did in the spring in the late winter of I should say in early 2002, which was still winter. And then my job actually terminated in the spring because I had some unused vacation and sick leave I could use up before I was actually off the payroll.

Alejandro Rojas 25:41: All right, we’re going to break and then we’re going to come back because I have a lot of questions about some of the stuff that you’ve gone over. And you’re just a wealth of information, which is so helpful. But we’ll be right back after this short musical interlude or if you’re listening on a station, a commercial break with Dr. Eric Davis so stay tuned.

BREAK

Alejandro Rojas 26:20: Welcome back to Open Minds UFO Radio  I have the pleasure of speaking for the first time with Dr. Eric Davis. And you’ve gone over a lot of really interesting information when it comes to the UFO reporting, in 2009, you know, BAASS, Bigelow’s advanced aerospace group had a partnership with MUFON. And I was actually the PR guy. So I was coming up with like the press release is for all of this stuff. But now in hindsight, you know, I kind of scratch my head and I think, wow, I was part of that program. But did that reprogram receive some of the AATIP funding? Do you know, did it?

Dr. Eric Davis 26:58: I didn’t get that. Can you repeat, please?

Alejandro Rojas: Did the MUFON/BAASS relationship, Was that funding from AAWSAP or AATIP?

Dr. Eric Davis 27:07: I believe so.

Alejandro Rojas: It would make sense.

Dr. Eric Davis: That was nothing I had any roll in. But my recollection is, I believe, that MUFON funding did come out of that.

Alejandro Rojas 27:23: So, another question that is related, and I want to ask more about some of this, so Kit Green and Gary Nolan are both kind of working on these projects to kind identify people who experience paranormal phenomena or even have remote viewing skills, can we identify in their DNA or parts of their brain set that make them more capable of the things are more susceptible to experiences? Have they come to you and taking samples from you?

Dr. Eric Davis 27:53: There’s a part of that question… Can you repeat that last part of that question? You have you skipped out.

Alejandro Rojas 27:59: Were you part of that experiment?

Dr. Eric Davis 28:03: Oh, no, I was a test subject. In other words, I contributed blood. But no, I’m not a part of that. Because I’m not a medical guy. That’s…

Alejandro Rojas 28:13: That was the sense I meant it. Were you kind of a test subject because you had these experiences at Skinwalker? And I guess, were you ever frightened? Did you feel threatened?

Dr. Eric Davis 28:25: Me? Not really.

Alejandro Rojas 28:29: What was the most harrowing experience, I guess that you had?

Dr. Eric Davis 28:35: I never really had a harrowing experience. I think the dark shadow experience was pretty startling, I would say startling experiences… Oh, yeah, the dark shadow and the ball of light that came before the orb that came before it. And then the shooting incident that we had in a separate time.

Alejandro Rojas: I am not aware of that one.  I don’t think I don’t remember it.

Dr. Eric Davis 28:56: Oh, that was in the book. Yeah, that’s the one in the book where…

Jesus, that’s, that’s over 20 years ago. Basically, we were out in the field at night, I think we had to do something to deal with pregnant cow that was giving birth. And the herd was getting restless. So the ranch manager thought well, you know, there might be big cat lurking around. And they usually like to lurk when the cows are at their most vulnerable, because they’re giving birth. So he was kind of concerned, we had to go look outside to find out, we had to get in his pickup and go drive around to find out if there’s any big cats out there. And then take a look at what the cows are doing and find out about that pregnant cow. And I believe that was the case about the pregnant cow. I may be wrong about that. But that’s what I thought. That’s what I’m thinking in my mind is I thought we were worried about a pregnant cow.

But in other words, I do know that we were worried about the cows overall being stirred up by something. And so we’re in the near pasture, closest to the ranch to the, to the manufactured home that Bigelow had installed for the staff to live. And we call that the observation house. And right next door to that is the house where the previous owners lived. And, and so anyway, so we were out that night, I don’t remember now what time in the night it was, it was kind of late, it was definitely dark. I don’t remember what time of year, it was warm, it could have been spring or fall. You know, I’m not that good about bovine issues, I think it might have been the spring to the point of being born and probably be born in the spring or late winter, but it was in warm season. So I’m, we’re driving around in the near field near pasture. And there’s a certain tree on a corner where the set with a barbed wire fence makes a 90 degree turn from going west to going north I believe, and what I may have my directions turn around. So but nevertheless, it’s a corner tree. It’s a big rush and the entire tree. And I this is you know, it may have been the beginning of spring because I remember there were no leaves in the tree yet. So it might have been the end of winter beginning spring, but it was still you know, not cold.

So I noticed two really large glowing yellow eyes, they looked like the eyes of a big predator cat. The only problem is they were too big. They were too far apart. And they were up near the top of the tree, you know, in the in the in the main bulk of the branches, but close to the top, somewhere in the top one third of it. And they’re just blinking. And I’m thinking what the hell that is? I’ve never seen a cat that big or with eyes that wide and big. And I think you know, that’s no cat.

So I called, you know, Colm Kelleher was with me and so was the ranch manager. So I caught their attention to it and they saw. And then the ranch manager thought, Oh my God, that’s a cat. You know, he immediately jumped to conclusions. It was a cat. He had his rifle in the spotlight with him.

We drove toward it. And what I remember is that the lights the eyes disappeared, and it looked like something fell from the tree and hit the ground. And then I didn’t see anything after that. It’s just, it’s just like the eyes closed up in the tree. And it might have and I thought something was falling and hit the ground and I didn’t see anything run away but there’s nothing there. So we parked the pickup in front of the left to the left of that in front of the fence and that’s and behind the fence is all the stick folies, Russian olives and all kinds of other trees and shrubs and bushes out there overgrown grass and whatnot. And now that I think about it, yes, it was near the end of winter. It was it was wintertime.

As a matter of fact, now that I think about it wasn’t really that warm. And I remember because we had snow on the ground. It wasn’t snow covered, it was just patches of snow that was left over from an earlier snow and the ground had warmed up enough that a lot of it melted off. And all the cool part only parts of it that were in the shade all the time, where the only patches that stayed intact, but slowly molding way as the temperatures were warming up. So I think we were in the winter spring transition. So anyway, we parked the truck, Jerry got out with his rifle and handed me the spotlight. I got out. And he told me to aim the spotlight, we’re looking along the fence line in the trees to look to this animal. Because he’s worried it’s a big cat and he’s got to shoot it. We didn’t see the thing with the glowing big eyes. But we saw something whose body profile we saw right in front of us. On the other side of the wire, you couldn’t see the rear end, you couldn’t see the front and you just saw the middle of this body that looks fairly big. To me, it looks like a big cow. But to Terry, it looks like a bear.

We were at point blank range so he just shot, he just fired some shots at it. It didn’t flinch. And it just walked off into the shrubs and disappeared. We couldn’t see the hind end of this thing. So we yeah, so all three of us got our way through the barbed wire with the split the barbed wire part to get through. We got in and there’s a clearing behind all the shrubs and trees. And we followed the clearing thinking well, that’s the only place it is going to go. And there’s no footprints in the in the in the ground underground at all. Yes, there’s no blood, there’s no broken twigs or anything. Then we finally run into the little patches of snow. And in the patches of snow, there’s no footprints and no blood drops, or trails of lots of blood that you would expect from an animal that’s been shot several times. And nothing except one single dear hoof print.

Just one single deer hoof print. not two, not three, not four, just one, and it was pointed back in the direction of the pickup, not in the direction that we would expect if it was running away from us. So that was odd. And we didn’t see any other footprints. And I mean this ground is muddy from the snow melt. And so this is this print was on the patch of snow. So anyway, we gave up because we looked all around we couldn’t find anything. So we reported it to Bob Bigelow later on. And the next the next morning Bob got his master hunter tracker who’s the ranch manager for his private ranch and I won’t say what state that is. He, I think he managed his Bob’s personal vacation ranch in another state and Bob flew in on his jet to our ranch.

And actually went to the airport Vernal, Utah, and you have to drive 23 miles to get to to get the Fort Duchesne. So that guy showed up. And he’s an expert hunter tracker. So he started working in a five mile radius starting from the shooting spot, and just tracked that thing everywhere. He just could not find a single sign of a large animal that had been shot multiple times. And no carcass no nothing no blood. No footprint no prints or, or Yeah, no hoof prints like what you would expect. So that was the that was the one experience.

And then I had a couple of crazy experiences actually one in the same just two separate buildings. It’s the second home is the homestead the crumble down 19 century homestead where I had the dark shadow incident and the orb incident we call and Kellehr and I went into those homes doing some field readings with the radiation Geiger counter and the tri-field meter looking at the field situation, electric, magnetic, and radio and whatnot, and then the and then looking at the nuclear radiation. And of course, it’s nothing out there is quiet, I stepped in one of the homesteads and I got attacked, and what looked like bats to me, these are swirling around like they were angry. And I just ran out of there.

I would say yeah, I got frightened. But that that was. So I kind of have to backtrack on my earlier statement that I had.

You know, I was, you know, the experience I previously described, it considered to be frightening. But this frightened me because got my heart rate going. And I had to run out of there because I didn’t know what to do. So I got what I thought were back swirling around. Well, that happened a second time. And I don’t remember now whether it was the same incident or whether I went in a separate time, a separate day, and had the same thing within the second house. There are two little houses next door to each other. And so I went into the second one have the same experience and these are taking place in the living room areas. And what I upon reporting it to call and we go back in and another the next day, take a look when we got salsa showing. And I think this happened late afternoon, early evening, so I don’t have full sunshine going on. And pick actually they were they were just after dusk.

Now that I remember that events were just after dusk. So we sound Sparrow nest up on the corners of the wall in the ceiling. More than one there were several Sparrow nest and sparrows use mud. They take in mud in their beaks, and I don’t know if they actually swallow it, they probably swallow it. And then they regurgitate it to make these little meth heads up in the wall in the corner area to protect your eggs. And that’s what they were they weren’t bats. They were sparrows and they scared.

Yeah, but, you know, we attribute that actually, if you want to look at another scientific basis holistically, you don’t want to say I just walked in and scared the shit out of a few sparrows, mother sparrows that were protecting their eggs. What it could have been is yet yeah, they were there. But and I think the common denominator with the Yeah, that’s what I did, I scared them. So they decided to go on the attack by flying around me. Problem is, is that it may have actually been a part of the phenomenon that I would have stepped into there and gotten attacked. Now I wasn’t disturbed. This is the funny thing. I wasn’t disturbing anything. I did not poke those things. I didn’t see them. I didn’t poke them.

I wasn’t making noise; I was actually walking around quietly. And just using the meters taking a look at stuff and all of a sudden, these black things he’s bringing black things that I thought were bats were just rushing my head and circles. And I just don’t know I just john alexander has a has a good background calm killer, who doesn’t that that I do on explaining that part of the part of events, but that would column has written about it in the sense that he can come up with an explanation. And it was a phenomenal and it was the act of the phenomenon that that had happened to me and me only, whereas other people have been in those two houses, and never had that problem like I did. It seemed to that problem only had followed me twice. So do you feel that I had another?

Alejandro Rojas 40:07: I was just goanna ask you. Do you feel that you were a magnet for the phenomena? And if so do you know why do you have any ideas?

Dr. Eric Davis 40:13: Well, that’s a hypothesis we have on people like abductees or people who are not abductees but have more than the usual statistical probability of close encounter experiences of the worst or the, the mediocre or the worst kind of people you’re you, you can actually psychically act as an antenna for the phenomenon. And it turns out that the studies that the tech green and Gary Nolan had done along with call themselves is that they have discovered that the bio, well, if they’re not physicist, I put it in the terms of biophysics, I’ll just say the biology or the bio immunology or the bio science of the immune system, is that your immune system, which I don’t know how many of Americans people know that this we’re aware of it, depending upon your degree of education, is that your immune system is an organ in your body. It’s not just a system of chemicals. Your immune system is an Oregon, and it regenerates itself, like some of your other organs. And also, it’s super sensitive. And genetically, Gary Norman and Tom calendar discovered that the immune system records every single event that has ever happened in your life. So it’s like the Library of Congress that every that records everything that occurred since the day you were born, probably even before you were born.

And one of the things that records are the insults that your body has taken due to environmental exposure, or injuries or diseases, and it keeps a perfect record that stuff. And so they hypothesized that, you know, this is this is really greater, it’s acting like a brain is responding like a brain in a in a psychic way. So although it’s tied into your fist, you know, your real brain, but it does behave as if it has its own mind. So anyway, their hypothesis is that I don’t remember all the discussions that we’ve had on this, because that was many, many years ago. But the gist of what I know is that the new system works like an antenna, it absorbs everything in the environment around you. And that might be the reason why the phenomenon is interested in you. Because there might be, it may know that you’ve got some genetic predisposition that is interested in the most. And that’s what Gary and kits work is all about, is why are certain people highly sensitive to being this having this genetic disposition to phenomenon encounters. And then they go into the Kotick containment studies using MRI scans, and whatnot.

And so you know, the rest of that story. So it seems that there are people that are more sensitive than others, and it’s just isn’t in the straight, old fashioned brain psychic sense, you might be to throw the immune system into it because the immune system does behave like an antenna that sucks in information records it, and it’s got knowledge and it may be communicating on its own way that we you know, we haven’t fully discovered everything that it does to my understanding. And so it’s still under studying genetics is very complicated. Genetics is not straightforward, and it’s not linear. It’s a very nonlinear, non straightforward, not very counterintuitive thing that produces life in this, you know, at least on this planet. And as far as we know, there’s still much more to be learned we have learned all there is to know about or to find out about it, we’re still making those discoveries. So the same goes for the immune system because immune system is a function of genetics, of course so when you refer to abduction, do you believe that people actually are being taken physically taken by extraterrestrials?

I don’t think they’re being taken by extraterrestrials. We don’t have proof that there are extraterrestrials we know that whatever it is, is not human. Now there is a hypothesis that they been abducted by a covert clandestine, bro non state operation that looks at people of specific backgrounds with specific predisposition, maybe it’s a genetic thing too. And they get abducted because they’re being tested or examined or there’s a purpose involved with that. That’s a hypothesis I’ve been, I’ve heard among the colleagues. And the standard hypothesis that comes from john Mack and David Jacobson, and Budd Hopkins work is all been the Extra Terrestrial hypothesis that UFO is from another planets are coming down, they’re going to pick a few humans off to off the ground to evaluate them, just like you just like a cattle rancher who’s breeding specific breed of Black Angus or specific breed of Charlie’s cattle wants to walk random going into the pen or into the pasture. Now that particular cow take it back. And like the former ranch manager, the original owner of the ranch at the time that we in our era, the one who reported all of his family’s problems with that phenomenon, and I ended up working for Bob Bigelow when they left the ranch.

What he was was he was a college educated, very sophisticated animal husbandry expert, and wasn’t just his skill, running ranch raising cattle. It was his skill in that he was able to do crossbreeding and hybridization breeding using the techniques he learned in college. And that was he could transplant embryos, he could teach new all the process and procedures for developing bovine embryos and transplanting them in order to get the best breed of cattle with the best meat quality for market. So he was that sophisticated. So he’s gonna wander into the ranch and just grab it, you know, this, this female there asking me all there and take them into the to the lab or whatever yet up at the ranch, that pizza that serves as a spot for examining his cattle, his two camels is breeding cows. So you know, that’s, that’s similar. In a way, it’s almost a similar function. The only thing I caution your listeners is, don’t assume that you can apply human ways of thinking about these things. Because although there’s a metaphorical analogy to it.

The fact is, is that anything that’s non human necessarily will not think like a human, because of the way they evolved, the way their senses developed. And the senses bite information into whatever neurological complex neurological cognitive system organ in the in their bodies, which we would call a brain. So they’re not going to have the same way things are methods and frame of mind and processes to think, rationalize the way humans do because of the environment they came from. So we can assume that now if you’re thinking they’re a row covert operation of some sort, whether military or non state actors, sure, they’re going to behave like humans do, they’re going to operate like humans do. But if you’re going to take the hypothesis that this is a human, then don’t overlay human thinking and human framework or human frame of mind, I should say, and human theories and human explanations and speculations on what they’re doing. Because what they’re doing, you do not know. They haven’t communicated that to us. We have no idea what that’s about. We could speculate endlessly. So right. And that’s a hard time very cautious about that.

Alejandro Rojas 47:43: The hard part is speculation, especially with science, we don’t know what we don’t know. And typically the answers are things we can’t even speculate because we don’t know.

Dr. Eric Davis 47:51: Yeah, we know, we do know one thing. They’re there. They’re doing something. We don’t know their origin because they don’t want to communicate that to us.

Alejandro Rojas: Right. What about crashes? Like there’s been some references. I’m pretty skeptical when it comes to alleged UFO crashes. But I think you’ve made some comments, maybe some others, who have worked with AATIP have made comments that there may be a program to look into that or there, there may have been crashes you all feel

Dr. Eric Davis: I yeah, there have been crashes.

The super powers on the earth has had their share of crashes. And they have recovered the vehicles from their crashes. So that’s why shockingly, and I agree that even though these things behave like a conscious spiritual, psychic entity, they do have a advanced technology, they have hardware, and there’s a craft, and there’s occupants, or you forgot that he calls him that shocked. And he calls new phenomena. So there’s you for not running these craft, whatever they may be. And he likes to make an analogy, these of these paintings to the little people are the fairies of Europe, Ireland, and macgiolla remember that the passport to go into one of his books, and stuff, that kind of thing. So that’s fair enough. So anyway.

So yeah, they have that technology. We do too. And it’s a very super sensitive topic. Because it’s it’s something that your listeners, you’re probably going to be shocked at, probably less than one 1,000th of one 100,000 of the United States military and the government overall doesn’t even know about it. Arm so I got said that contradictory. I said probably a minute fraction, it’s like less than one 1000 or 100,000 of the people with See, need to know, access need to know authorization, and security clearances to be involved with that type of work, are the only ones that know, the vast majority of the rest of the government really doesn’t know. And that’s why one hand, like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

Virtually because of the stovepipe thing that goes on in compartmentalized programs. And you just can’t knock on doors and say, Hey, here’s who I am I, you know, I don’t have a bachelor’s, but not the right ones. I don’t have a need to know. But I want to know, so can you tell me and you’re going to be lied to? Because that’s, that’s the rule. You don’t want to tell the enemy anything when this guy is knocking on your door asking you about UFO crashes, could be an asset for the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation, or the Chinese p LA. Or the nincompoops over and ran for three and so forth. So, you know, even if it’s an American, you still don’t want to answer that question because you don’t know who they are. And you’re not supposed to be revealing that information. So it takes a lot of hard tracking and digging after working. And it can take years and years and years. And then you develop the security clearances and the authorization for you to know that appropriately, appropriately allow you access to that information, then you find out hey, yeah, it’s there, it’s true. On the other hand, sometimes the information does come out on its own. But it doesn’t come out in the way that you followed, you likes to fantasize about it. It comes out only to specific people who have specific talents or skills, who have security clearances, they may not have the need to know. But they could have the need to know if they were presented with that requirement.

Or if they were presented by a crash retrieval program and saying, hey, I want to bring in gentlemen, x, y, z, he’s got the security clearances, but he doesn’t have the need to know I want to give them the need to know because I need this town to help us solve this problem with the crash retrieval reverse engineering studies. So then they will do that other times. That’s the official way of doing it. That’s how you officially get brought in. The other unofficial way is, again, you build the level of trust among certain individuals, and people within the network who, after a few years of knowing them to work with them, they know who you are, they know what you’re capable of, they know your competencies. And they want to bring the topic up on an informal basis with you sometimes not even an informal basis, they may want to bring the topic up outside the realm of the security apparatus. But within a skiff. In other words, there’s going to be no passing of security clearances to establish that I have is going to be allowed to be ready and on the crash approval program.

But they’ll bring me into a skiff and want to talk informally and discuss about it and say, Well, this is what we can tell you that there’s things that we can’t tell you. And we can tell you those things if you can get the next level security and authorization to get the need to know and then we can do business with you. But before we get to that point, here’s what we can tell you without having to cross that red one of the need to know and the proper clearances. So so you work this stuff out over a number of years, you build networks, and you find the right people. And then you know, you don’t do it by knocking on doors, you do it just through the happenstance of having a contract with somebody or a subcontract. And you’re interfacing with them. And then lo and behold, you find out through the vice president or the president of one of the legacy aerospace corporations. And they happen to be a PhD of some sort of their, you know, some discipline, their own stem discipline on their own their own court. And it just so happens that they were a guy that worked on the crash retrieval program. Oh, lo and behold, and then they find out that you’re working in UFO, you’re on the UFO subject for upwards God programs. And the same Oh, that’s wonderful. You’re officially government contractor or subcontractor.

And you’re working with another aerospace company. Okay, well, that’s fine. You’re working on us as well, guess what, we did it too. And we don’t do it now. But we did it in the past. And here’s what we, here’s what we can tell you off the record. And here’s what we can in here. And you’ll have to go another step before we tell you what it is on the record. But it has to be through that, again, you have to have the right clearances, you have to have the authorization for the need to know and then you can get the full story. So it’s a very complex process. It just the way Steve Greer went about it for his disclosure program that was called the shotgun approach, the shotgun approach move. He was putting himself out there during the 1990, say, talking about crash retrieval. And I won’t go through his whole story I’m sure you’ve already covered in other people covered it. But one thing led to another and he life was like a bar magnet tracking all these retirees from various parts of the government, US military, who had some knowledge about the UFO subject and the crash Retrieval Subject in particular. And a good majority of them were crackpots. They were phones. But there was a small number of them that were there real deal. And so he successfully picked up a very small number of them, and got some information. And now as to the veracity and quality of that information. That’s another story. But he did get some interesting information. Okay, so can you share with us who you might have been the real deal?

Alejandro Rojas 55:20: Could you share with us who you think might have been the real deal out of his witnesses?

Dr. Eric Davis 55:24: No, what I mean, is the information. The information was not was verifiable. In other words, once people looked into it, they said, yeah, this is realistic. Whereas a good chunk, a good chunk of this disclosure, witnesses. You know, you had middle road, guys, they had some information, but it was too purple. It was just anecdotal. And then you had the guys that were real liars. He’s got a chunk of liars out there that real that he I don’t know, how much effort he spent on vetting any of those people. And I’m not going to name names Mr. who they are. It’s not important, because that doesn’t, because the fact that they have no real information means it’s noise, we’re dealing with signal, we’re interested in signal and science folks, not the noise. Check the noise. So so he did have a small signal of people that had verifiable information. And unfortunately, that’s like I said, it’s the shotgun approach. They came forward, they gave him information that was freely given to him. But it was after the fact it was nothing that could be acted on. The people that gave him information were they weren’t directly involved with the crash retrieval. That all they actually were either peripheral, or they heard it from somebody reliable. So the vertical information was high quality, but they were not firsthand.

People, you know what I mean, even with first hand knowledge, right first hand exposure to this whole subject. So he got pretty close. But that’s the shotgun approach, where you’re going to shoot the shotgun, your post, you’re going to hit all over the wall, and there’s going to be a small part of the wall where the hell hit the right targets. And all the rest of the pellets, pretty much only just a few pellets at the right target. And all the rest of the pellets just randomly hit a bunch of bad targets.

Alejandro Rojas 57:17: Hard part is that the target’s invisible? We don’t know.

Dr. Eric Davis 57:20: Yeah.

Alejandro Rojas 57:22: Read it, right. Shotgun spray, but we don’t know where the target is. Oh,

Dr. Eric Davis 57:28: Yeah. So here’s the thing that you should know is that the crush approval program is very small program. It is not a massive, huge government infrastructures. It’s, it’s a very, it’s a very poorly funded program. And it hasn’t actually probably hasn’t had money for a while.

I do know that the program was terminated 1989, for lack of progress in reverse engineering, anything that they had any of the hardware that they had, and don’t worry directed every maybe so often, so many years go by and they’ll try it again. And they just don’t succeed. compartmentalization is killer, scientists cannot communicate with other scientists to get help. It’s like, I’m doing this, this first semester differential calculus homework problem, I’m doing the rocket equation. And I am stuck on the boundary conditions. So I can come up with the right solution that gives me the right answer to the propellant mass flow rate. And I’m having a hard time. So what do I gotta do, I’m missing something, I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this and just be able to solve this differential equation.

So I got a call my buddy who’s in my class, he’s a, he’s a math whiz. And he’s the one that gets straight A’s. So I’m going to call him on the phone and say, help me with this, this is what I got done. And this is what I stuck doing. And he’ll explain it to me. Well, if you’re in the crash retrieval program, or any black program for that matter, and you come up with the Roadblock, a technical Roadblock, you can’t call your best buddy, or, or any experts, you don’t know and just call them cold and say, Hey, this is who I am, this is what I’m doing. This is what I’m working on. I’m stuck. What do you suggest I do to get past this roadblock? You can’t do that.

Alejandro Rojas 59:13: Nick Pope had talks about the same problem, when they did the Condign report, they genuinely had some intelligence people who wanted to look into the issue. But they had no access, they couldn’t talk to anybody who had they weren’t cleared for all of these things they wanted to write about. So they just had to speculate.

Dr. Eric Davis 59:32: So and this isn’t just unique to the crash proof program, this type of problem is unique to all the black programs that the God has. DHS has and the military services, service branches houses, that Department of Energy has their own versions. And, you know, you, the purpose of a black program with a special access program security rap is you got to limit the information and exposure to the information to a few people’s possible in order to produce the maximum security protection against espionage by the enemy. And so that limits who you can work with that, that also is clear to know, that limits the amount of experts that you can have working with you. And gosh, you know, if your if your small group of experts are stumped, you’re screwed, because you basically can’t call your buddies or somebody you know, or somebody you know, who’s an expert better than you or better or, you know, a bigger expert on the subject at a university either near you or at a university across the country, you can’t call those guys, you can’t even read them in because you’re not supposed to acknowledge some of these black, mostly black programs, you’re not supposed to be acknowledged.

So, you know, for that basis that you don’t legitimately exist. So you can’t tip off the university expert, that there’s a program by calling you and saying I’m stuck on something, you just can’t do it. If it’s really dire. And it’s a problem that really the expertise is desperately needs it outside of the cleared group, then the program manager and the security officer will write a justification to go reach out to the university expert and read him in on the program. And they’ll have to be given security clearances and sign the NDA and I’ll fill out the SF 86 and, and all those forums and get the DD to 54 filled out. And then they’ll be told, you know, you go you die with this information, you can ever talk about it until after you die till after you’re dead.

So that’s how that works. And it happens in Christmas programs. It happens mostly programs involving covert clandestine operations and their logistics, it happens with nuclear weapons development and deployment. It happens with intelligence operations, and, and it happens with technology development. And the interesting thing is today, there’s a big move away from Special Access Programs. They’re extremely costly to maintain, extremely costly, let me tell you this, the cost of maintaining information personal and physical security for special access program can be 10s of times larger than the cost of the program itself. So let’s say the program is building the P 21. bomber, right? Let’s just assume, let’s say for the sake of argument, the final project is $50 billion. So that’s probably not even reasonable to say that the security for that is going to be could be as much as 10 times higher. I mean, it could be stretched out over a number of years, of course, not all at once. So to be as much as 10 timers, because you’ve got to maintain all kinds of security.

Alejandro Rojas 1:02:38: That’s amazing. So we’re pretty much out of time. Okay. Yeah. So I want to ask you one last question. And it has to do with the technology development, like you had just mentioned, but essentially, you know, the goal, I think it’s been your goal and house goal and it to the stars goal is to actually use what you’ve learned, learned from the observation of the phenomena, develop a technology? Do you think that’s possible? And is that possible in the near time?

Dr. Eric Davis 1:03:11: It’s hard to predict. It’s really hard to predict. It probably is long term, not near some of these projects that were like, for example, that’s what the 38 papers that the CIA wanted in their tasks. There Bigelow Aerospace advanced Space Studies contract was to take the physics, physics and engineering of 23,009 and 2010, extrapolated to 2015. Are we going to be able to have the physics and engineering and a technology industrial base that will produce a vehicle that will match the Tic Tac? By 2050, because what it does decide all of a sudden, to turn against us, and they use their advanced weaponry, whatever they have, and start hurting people start destroying things. I mean, we haven’t seen that happen. But we’ve seen that during books investigation of the Northern Tier stock encounters with the giant UFO is that shut down the warhead navigation system. And it happened multiple times that happened in the late 60s and happened in the mid 70s. And so and so we know that they’re quite capable of rendering our nuclear warheads, an ICBM useless, which is very dangerous, because if the Soviet Union had decided to launch war right then and there, just coincidentally, the damn UFO had rendered it impossible for us to do a counter strike. Because our goddamn ICBM up in the northern tier, we shut down. So that’s an example of winning is that and then there’s Polaris. Polaris is an example where the box shake UFO is that they called troopers were actually killing some people and entering large numbers of people. And, and they were using beings to do it. I’m sure you’re familiar with the coolers case, from the 1970s I think it was some land. What that was project play.

That’s what that’s what the Brazilians called Project played, I believe. So the personally in our force, so that’s, you know, us those have not been more benevolent, they have not shown any brother leaf, you know, space, brotherly love and peace type movements toward us. It’s all been just hide and seek hide and seek. We use stuff as much as possible so that humans don’t see us in the environment, and then want to expose ourselves; we expose ourselves, do our little fun games and then take off. And they may be testing our technology may be testing in the US Navy’s capabilities when they do this. And, and also, they’ve done it with the Air Force, too. So you know, what are they doing it for? Well, again, they’re not humans, so they don’t think like humans, right? They’re doing it for whatever it takes, they decide to become aggressive, we’re screwed. Basically, we don’t have aircraft that can match them. We know we haven’t shot out of those, you know, the limits was out on a on a certification trail, meaning to get certified to go deploy the Persian Gulf in November 2004. And so for the certification training, they just have their fighters taken off the carrier deck of Nimitz and flying around doing maneuvers. But they’re not armed. Because they’re not supposed to be you know, you don’t want them shooting at your at your fellow planes. It’s not a red. I said, I think they might have had Red Team Blue team. Things going on. Yeah, they might have just been doing routine. Yeah. So but you can have like ammunition for right.

When they want to do Bonnie is tracing. They do that out it’s data, Airforce weapons testing range near the test site. That’s where they can do all the strange thing and bombing they want with five more minutes. But when you’re over the ocean, and you’re near ships, and you’ve got your buddies in the air, and in a Red Team Blue Team cut configuration, you don’t want to you can’t have like ordinary right, I had no way of shooting them down. They weren’t asked if they were on. So they could attempt to shoot one down or just least send off the missile or fire something kind of scared the UFO was responding. And they you know, the pilot said no, we’re not armed, we don’t have anything. It couldn’t shouldn’t. So that was a test that could not be performed to determine whether you could shoot one down. So we just don’t know. But you got to worry about it. That’s what intelligence and military doctoring are all about. It’s about planning for potential realities. And we have to worry about something more advanced could be overwhelming or military technology. And so we’ve got to be able to extrapolate to 2015. Will our physics be there?

Will our engineering be there? Will our industrial manufacturing technology be there to produce Tic Tac type technologies? And on the flip side of that, boy, that would be wonderful if we could get there, because commercially, it would revolutionize transportation and energy on the earth, you know, broken through. So TTSA is looking to benefit, you know, that’s a public benefit corporation. So we’re looking to benefit the public with this. We’re not looking at making weapons, the military needs to look at making weapons, and that’s why we have the 38 papers.

Alejandro Rojas 1:08:01: Exactly. So that was a lot of help. That was a lot of information. Thank you so much. It’s great that you talk fast, because there’s a lot of information to convey. But it was an absolute pleasure to have you on and I hope we can have you on again one day.

Dr. Eric Davis 1:08:15: Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you very much, and I enjoyed helping you out with your show. We’ll talk we’ll reconnect in the future.

Read more about Dr. Davis here: EarthTech.org

Header Image from Hunt for the Skinwalker documentary: Watch here

 Dr. Eric Davis Investigating and Experiencing the Paranormal Interview Transcript http://www.openminds.tv/dr-eric-davis-investigating-and-experiencing-the-paranormal-interview-transcript/42351

[hipsterscribbles]

—Angelguard - Chapter 1

⇠ Previously | AO3 | Next ⇢

Insomnia Is Burning

The beginning of the end. Still unhappy about being taken off of guard duty during the treaty, Jasz heads to her favorite bar with hopes of drinking the day away. However, her plan soon falls apart once all hell breaks loose in the Crown City. With death and destruction all around her, she needs to concentrate on finding her loved ones and getting out of the city alive.

     The light of the early morning sun slipped through a small gap in the curtains, casting a thin beam of light across the room and right onto my face. As I was slowly pulled from my sleep I squinted over at the offending source of light and rolled over, for once not wanting to get out of bed to face the day. It was kind of weird, the fact that my alarm didn’t wake me up as it usually did when I'm on duty at the Citadel. With a heavy sigh, I sat up and wiped the sleep from my eyes, frowning as I thought through the reason why I wasn’t going into work today. After a few minutes of moping, I got out of bed and did my morning stretches, warming up my previously dormant limbs before shuffling over to the floor to ceiling windows in my bedroom. I pushed back the heavy curtains to peer out at what I could see of the city and sighed again.

     It was the day of the treaty, the day that King Regis would formally surrender the rest of Lucis in exchange for peace and immunity for Insomnia. My gaze raked over the picturesque Insomnian skyline, my eyes moving from building to building, to the busy streets below despite the early hour, then roamed over in the direction of where the wall should be though it couldn’t be seen from the position of my apartment. It was such a bittersweet feeling, the Crown City would be spared but everything outside of the wall would fall to the Empire. Most of the citizens were fine with the trade, it would have only been a matter of time before the Imperials found a way in to destroy us, but there were plenty who were far less than pleased with the arrangements. I couldn’t blame them but at the same time, I could see why this treaty was so necessary. It was either surrender and live to fight another day or fight until everything we had was forcibly taken. With a sad sigh, I moved from my window and headed to the bathroom to start my day.

     After an early morning jog and a long, hot shower, I checked my phone for messages. There was one from Iris asking about my plans for the day. There was also one from Nyx, a continuation of our text convo from last night but I’d fallen asleep before I could answer. I knew I shouldn’t expect anything from Gladio yet but the disappointment was still there as I saw no new messages from him. For one ridiculous moment, I got the urge to scroll through our old messages then internally scolded myself for acting like some lovesick schoolgirl. Instead, I texted Iris to let her know that I’d probably just go somewhere public to watch the ceremony, not mentioning that the somewhere in question would have nice, stiff drinks to go with the show. Then I texted Nyx, trying to liven up my quickly darkening mood. “Happy treaty day!” I found myself smiling at my phone as I quickly received an answering text.

“A joyous occasion huh?”

     I playfully scowled at my phone as I replied, “Not at all. Can’t wait til it’s over so those bastards can get back behind the wall where they belong.” I frowned as I sent the text and threw my phone on the bed, hoping it wouldn’t come across the wrong way. Insomnia had been my home for 13 years now but technically I was from outside the wall too, as was Nyx and the rest of the Glaives. I sighed as I grabbed up my phone again and sent another text before he could answer. “Hope you know what I meant by that. Headed in to report for duty?” I sent the text then belatedly remembered to look at the time. A glance over at my clock made me guess that he was probably on his way to the Citadel at the moment. I was putting on my clothes for the day when I received his next text.

“Yeah, I know. Getting dressed right now, headed out right after.”

     After reading the words on the screen I spared a quick glance in my full-length mirror. Despite being off duty I’d dressed in my “uniform” anyway, out of habit or maybe rebellion. Sturdy black leather pants, fitting but not too tight or restricting. Simple black shirt cropped to show off the tattoo taking up most of the right side of my torso. I paired it with my military style jacket adorned with the Crownsguard insignia and decorated with patches, compliments of Prompto. My leather gloves, a birthday gift from Iggy, were stowed away in my pockets as usual. It couldn’t hurt to always keep them on hand as they made working with my daggers much more comfortable.

     I replied to Nyx’s text as I gathered up my essentials and left my apartment, planning to hang out with Iris until it was time for the ceremony. “Good luck. Don’t let the Nifs get ya down :)” I was well on my way to the Amicitia manor when I received his one-worded reply. Somehow I could imagine his voice as if he said it in person, it was full of determination, conviction, all hidden behind a playful smile.

“Never.”

“It’s starting, it’s starting!”

     Cheers enveloped me from all sides as I sat at a table in my favorite bar and I looked up in time to see King Regis and Emperor Aldercapt on the large screen tv above the bar. I’d only spared a brief glance before going back to my game of King’s Knight, something that Noctis and Prompto had me hooked on lately. Gladio was just as bad, and Iggy, to my surprise, usually played along. With a sigh I put down my phone and stared at my untouched drink, knowing full well that I probably shouldn’t be drinking at a time like this. Well, I thought, if I’m not of any use to anybody I might as well get drunk and sleep my way into the peace that the treaty's gonna bring. This is what I told myself but so many years of discipline and training wouldn’t allow me to do it, even if I wasn’t on duty. Instead, I let my mind wander beyond the wall.

     I wondered what the guys were doing and if they were having a good time exploring. Knowing Iggy he would try to keep them on track, so would Gladio to a certain extent. But I knew that he, along with Noctis and Prompto, would also try to take full advantage of being in an unfamiliar place. Iggy wouldn't keep them from having their fun as long as it was reasonable. I was smiling to myself, full on making up scenarios in my head about what adventures they would get up to when faint sounds of explosions and tremors pulled me out of my own head.

     I looked up at the television and saw that the scene had cut to the front of the Citadel, which was in utter chaos. The camera had fallen sideways but we could still see the people scattering in a panic, could hear the screaming, could see the large plumes of smoke that quickly clouded the visuals that the camera was giving us. The patrons of the bar seemed to be in as much shock as I was, we all stared at the television in complete disbelief.

     Suddenly a thought came to me. This was the real reason we Crownsguard were put on external patrols. This is what the Marshal meant by protecting the citizens. Had the king known this would happen all along? It didn’t take long for me to snap out of it, for me to kick into emergency guard mode. “Everyone out! Get to the gates! We need to get out of the city!” In hindsight I knew that was completely the wrong way to go about it but, truth be told, telling them to evacuate in an orderly fashion was so not going to work in a situation like this.

     A few people looked at me skeptically but plenty had heeded my warning. The sudden rush to exit the bar was punctuated by more explosions and what sounded like gunfire. We were far enough away from the Citadel to not be in immediate danger but we were close enough that the sounds echoed both in the air and from the television. I quickly moved around the bar helping along any stragglers who were glued to the television screens and didn’t immediately exit, flashing my Crownsguard insignia to anyone who had the mind to question me.

     Satisfied with emptying the establishment I followed the crowd out, pulling out my phone and dialing up the Marshal. When I got no answer I dialed Iris, relief washing over me when she answered in a calm but shaky voice. “Where are you?” I raised my voice so that she could hear my question over the panic but her answer was drowned out by another explosion, this one was louder and somehow sounded more frightening than the others. I looked up in the direction of the blast and nearly dropped my phone as I saw where it was coming from.

“The crystal!”

     Someone had screamed out what we were all observing. The whole city seemed to be at a standstill as the tower holding the crystal was rocked with more explosions. I could vaguely make out the cries of the citizens around me as we watched the protective force field over the city shatter and crumble away. We were no longer protected, the new wall was no more.

“Jasz? Jasz! Jasz, are you there?!”

     Explosions seemed to sound off from all around us now but the sound of my name somehow broke me out of my trance. I’d still had my phone pressed to my ear and Iris was practically screaming at me. I had to choke back a sob, to blink away tears and find my voice again. “I’m here. I’m…” I paused as I glanced around me, trying to get my bearings. Compartmentalization was all a part of being a guard and it was sorely needed now. With a few deep breaths, I could feel my composure coming back to me. “I’m going to get as many civilians as I can to the south gate. Are you alright? Can you make it out?” The panic threatened to overcome me again as I thought about little Iris trapped so close to the carnage going on at the Citadel.

“I’m with Monica and Dustin and the Hesters, we’re headed to the south gate too.”

     I sighed, briefly relieved at some good news in this chaos. “Okay I’ll meet you there--” My words were cut off by even more explosions and gunfire. I looked up to see Imperial ships drifting in over the city, something no one ever thought they would ever see. I squinted up at what looked like people falling from the ships and cursed under my breath as I quickly realized that they were magitek troopers. “Out of the city now! Go!” I tried my best to raise my voice over all the carnage while still keeping a tone of authority. When I looked at my phone I nearly panicked as I noticed that the line had gone dead but pushed the feeling away and quickly slid my phone into my pocket.

     The sounds of gunfire were getting close as I tried to help get as many panicked and confused civilians packed into cars and send them on their way to the gate. As I was closing the door to a particularly packed minivan, the sounds of ricocheting bullets had me ducking. It was so disorienting that I’d barely got out of the way as the minivan peeled off, the tires screeching in its haste. I hurriedly pulled on my gloves and summoned my daggers, my fingers closing around the hilts right as I caught sight of the first swarm of magitek troopers just a few feet away.

     Just seeing those soulless buckets of bolts heartlessly gunning down anyone in their sights lit a fire in me. I was seething, practically seeing red as I charged towards them. With practiced speed and agility, I blindsided the first metal soldier, making sure to keep to its sides and back as I sliced at its arms, torso, then finally the head. The severed pieces of the first had barely even hit the ground before I moved on to the next. I ran full speed at 2 more that were in close proximity of each other, tossing my daggers into the back of the closest one. As the sharp, ornate blades embedded themselves into the metal armor I leaped forward, my hands closing around the hilts and driving them even deeper with the use of my body weight. I’d barely registered the flying sparks and the smell of burning rubber as both I and the heap of damaged metal toppled over.

     Without stopping, or thinking, really, I used the momentum to flip myself forward and thrust the red soles of my boots into the second soldier’s chest. While it was falling, I dismissed my daggers from the back of the previous unmoving pile of scrap then quickly summoned them again, just in time to sever the metal and wires of the soldier’s neck as it hit the ground. My feet never left its chest and I felt angry enough to stomp on the glorified toy soldier until I made a good sized dent in its armor for good measure. To any onlookers I might have looked like a child having a temper tantrum but it felt too damn good for me to feel self-conscious about it.

     I’d been quick enough to take 3 of them down before the rest focused on me. As I paused and took cover to catch my breath I counted them in my head, there were at least half a dozen left within range and no doubt there would be more dropping in soon. I hastily wiped at the sweat that was beginning to form on my brow and began moving again, the adrenaline pumping through my veins like never before as bullets whizzed past me. There were two more troopers within range and I made to rush them but a flash from the corner of my eye had me skidding to a halt and scrambling to avoid the blade of a huge, unfamiliar axe. I’d barely skirted out of the way of the weapon as it hit the ground near me, making part of the pavement split open with a resounding crack.

     Another magitek soldier had joined the fray, only this one was slightly bigger and didn’t have machine guns for arms like the others. I was forced into defense mode as I narrowly evaded the strikes of this new soldier, each swing bringing the menacing looking blade closer and closer to my body. Panic was still fighting to overwhelm me as my eyes frantically scanned the damned thing for a weakness, anything that could give me an opening. Before I could make my move, the soldier suddenly lunged at me with its axe raised above its head. It was all I could do to cross my daggers and defend myself. The clang of metal on metal was nearly deafening as the axe struck between my daggers with the blade stopping only inches from my face. Gods why is this thing so strong?! My arms began to shake and a panicked yelp escaped from my lips as I struggled to keep the damned thing from slicing me in half.

“Jaszmin!”

     The relief of hearing my name called by a familiar voice was almost overwhelming. I chanced a quick glance to my right to see Cor the Immortal charging towards me, his hand on the hilt of his Kotetsu and ready to strike. Before I knew, it the pressure of the soldier’s brute strength was gone as the Marshal severed its arms and head with two lightning quick slashes. I had to brace myself to keep from falling into a heap next to downed soldier. “Thanks… for that…” I panted as I dismissed my daggers in favor of leaning forward and resting my hands on my knees, trying not to dwell on the fact that I was seconds away from losing that fight.

“Are you alright?”

     I smiled up at the Marshal and nodded, dismissing his concern with a wave of my hand. I only just noticed the transport vehicles that were now parked further away, with some of our fellow Crownsguard busying themselves with the remaining magitek soldiers. My already pounding heart seemed to speed up double-time as he pat me on my shoulder and ushered me to one of the awaiting vehicles.

     The sound of an airship had all our attention shooting upward and I gasped at the sheer number of ships floating in over the city. The largest one leading the flock looked particularly menacing. They were nearly overhead when suddenly one of the smaller ships was rocked with explosions from the inside. It caused a chain reaction as it veered off course and slammed into the neighboring ships. We didn’t get a chance to watch the aftermath for long as the sound of gunshots commanded our attention once again. There were more magitek troopers coming from all directions, it seemed, flooding the streets and gunning down anyone who had the audacity to fight back. Just the sight of them had my anger flaring up again. I summoned my daggers, meaning to jump back into battle, but the Marshal laid a restraining hand on my shoulder.

     I turned to assure him that I was okay to fight but he was still looking up. I followed his gaze and gasped at the chaos in the skies. The formation of ships was in complete disarray with some of them dropping out of the air like dead flies. The last of the airborne ships careened into each other and began to fall as well. It didn’t take long to realize where they would crash.

“Get out of there! Move! Move!”

     I’d only ever heard the Marshal raise his voice once so I was a little awestruck when he practically roared at his subordinates. As loud as his voice was, it was completely drowned out as the falling ships crashed into one of the taller buildings. Without warning I was shoved into the waiting vehicle, barely realizing that it was already running. I felt myself go numb as I scrambled to the back window and pressed my face against the glass. My eyes, widened in horror, moved from the rapidly crumbling building and the falling airships to the still fighting members of the Crownsguard below. They were in the path of destruction. It was too late for them, they were already lost.

     Darkness settled over the city as the few remaining citizens pushed onward. Every once in awhile the sounds of shuffling feet and mournful cries were interrupted by an explosion. The destruction was well behind us now but the sounds of war still made most of us cringe. I fought hard to keep a brave face for the sake of the civilians around me but Iris had sensed my inner turmoil as soon as she saw me. She walked with her hand in mine and gave it a little squeeze every now and then. Little Talcott clung to my back, nodding off every now and then but jerking awake with the sporadic sounds of war.

     I glanced around, craning my neck in futility as I looked for the Marshal. He’d saved my life but lost many good men and women in the process. After leaving that scene we’d headed for the south gates, picking up any stragglers we found along the way. Once we got close to the gates we had to abandon the vehicle in favor of going on foot since the streets became more and more congested with cars abandoned in panic. One would have thought that the outlying areas were safe but everywhere we looked there was chaos. Destroyed buildings, magitek troopers, citizens running for their lives. I saw more death and destruction than anyone should in one lifetime and no matter where we went it just wouldn’t end.

     The Marshal had run off as soon as we found Iris and the others. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going but I could guess. He never wanted to leave the citadel. He understood and obeyed the king’s orders, sure, but, like the rest of us, he hated it. The Marshal would go back for the king, no matter what the cost. I sighed as I adjusted Talcott on my back, earning a worried look from Jared. My mouth opened to reassure him for the hundredth time that I was okay but the sudden sounds of startled citizens cut off anything I was going to say. A new fleet of airships flew overhead, this time carrying in something terrifying.

“Daemons!”

     While some of the refugees screamed out, the rest of us just looked on in exhausted horror as Niflheim released its favorite weapon. The city of Insomnia would be torn apart by daemons and there was nothing any of us could do about it.